THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
VOLUME II
(PART THE FIRST 1768-1800 cont.)
[BOOK VII][1]
I go to see my mother—Saint-Malo—Progress of the Revolution—My marriage—Paris—Old acquaintances and new—The Abbé Barthélemy—Saint-Ange—The theatres—Changes in Paris—The Club des Cordeliers—Marat—Danton—Camille Desmoulins—Fabre d'Églantine—M. de Malesherbes' opinion on the emigration—I play and lose—Adventure of the hackney-coach—Madame Roland—Barère at the Hermitage—Second Federation of the 14th of July—Preparations for the emigration—I emigrate with my brother—Adventure of Saint-Louis—We cross the frontier—Brussels—Dinner at the Baron de Breteuil's—Rivarol—Departure for the army of the Princes—The journey—I meet the Prussian army—I arrive at Trèves—The Army of the Princes—A Roman amphitheatre—Atala—The shirts of Henry IV.—A soldier's life—Last appearance of old military France—Commencement of the siege of Thionville—The Chevalier de La Baronnais—Continuation of the siege—A contrast—Saints in the woods—Battle of Bouvines—A patrol—An unexpected encounter—Effects of a cannon-ball and a shell—Market in camp—Night amid piled arms—The Dutch dog—A recollection of the Martyrs—The nature of my company—With the outposts—Eudora—Ulysses—Passage of the Moselle—A fight—Libba, the deaf and dumb girl—Assault of Thionville—The siege is raised—We enter Verdun—The Prussian evil—The retreat—Smallpox—The Ardennes—The Prince de Ligne's baggage-wagons—The women of Namur—I meet my brother at Brussels—Our last farewell—Ostend—I take passage for Jersey—I land at Guernsey—The pilot's wife—Jersey—My uncle de Bedée and his family—Description of the island—The Duc de Berry—Lost friends and relations—The misfortune of growing old—I go to England—Last meeting with Gesril.
I wrote to my brother in Paris giving him particulars of my crossing, telling him the reasons for my return, and asking him to lend me the money wherewith to pay my passage. My brother answered that he had forwarded my letter to my mother. Madame de Chateaubriand did not keep me waiting: she enabled me to clear my debt and to leave the Havre. She told me that Lucile was with her, also my uncle de Bedée and his family. This intelligence persuaded me to go to Saint-Malo, so that I might consult my uncle on the question of my proposed emigration.
Revolutions are like rivers: they grow wider in their course; I found that which I had left in France enormously swollen and overflowing its banks: I had left it with Mirabeau under the "Constituent," I found it with Danton[2] under the "Legislative[3]" Assembly.
The Treaty of Pilnitz, of the 27th of August 1791, had become known in Paris. On the 14th of December 1791, while I was being tossed by the storms, the King announced that he had written to the Princes of the Germanic Body, and in particular to the Elector of Trèves, touching the German armaments. The brothers of Louis XVI., the Prince de Condé, M. de Calonne, the Vicomte de Mirabeau, and M. de Laqueville[4] were almost immediately impeached. As early as the 9th of November, a previous decree had been hurled against the other Emigrants: it was to enter these ranks, already proscribed, that I was hastening; others might perhaps have retreated, but the threats of the stronger have always made me take the side of the weaker: the pride of victory is unendurable to me.
On my way from the Havre to Saint-Malo I was able to observe the divisions and misfortunes of France: the country-seats were burnt and abandoned; the owners, to whom distaffs had been sent, had left; the women were living sheltered in the towns. The hamlets and small market-towns groaned under the tyranny of clubs affiliated to the central Club des Cordeliers, since amalgamated with the Jacobins. The antagonist of the latter, the Société Monarchique, or des Feuillants, no longer existed; the vulgar nickname of sans-culotte had become popular; the King was never spoken of save as "Monsieur Veto" or "Monsieur Capet."
My marriage.
I was tenderly welcomed by my mother and my family, although they deplored the inopportune moment which I had selected for my return. My uncle, the Comte de Bedée, was preparing to go to Jersey with his wife, his son, and his daughters. It was a question of finding money to enable me to join the Princes. My American journey had made a breach in my fortune; my property was reduced to almost nothing, where my younger son's portion was concerned, through the suppression of the feudal rights; and the benefices that were to accrue to me by virtue of my affiliation to the Order of Malta had fallen, with the remainder of the goods of the clergy, into the hands of the nation. This conjuncture of circumstances decided the most serious step in my life: my family married me in order to procure me the means of going to get killed in support of a cause which I did not love.
There was living in retirement, at Saint-Malo, M. de Lavigne[5], a knight of Saint-Louis, and formerly Commandant of Lorient. The Comte d'Artois had stayed with him there when he visited Brittany: the Prince was charmed with his host, and promised to grant him any favour he might at any time demand. M. de Lavigne had two sons: one of them[6] married Mademoiselle de La Placelière. Two daughters, born of this marriage, were left orphans on both sides at a tender age. The elder married the Comte du Plessix-Parscau[7], a captain in the Navy, the son and grandson of admirals, himself to-day a rear-admiral, a red ribbon[8] and commander of the corps of naval cadets at Brest; the younger[9] was living with her grandfather, and was seventeen years of age when I arrived at Saint-Malo on my return from America. She was white, delicate, slender and very pretty: she wore her beautiful fair hair, which curled naturally, hanging low like a child's. Her fortune was valued at five or six hundred thousand francs.
My sisters took it into their heads to make me marry Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had become greatly attached to Lucile. The affair was managed without my knowledge. I had seen Mademoiselle de Lavigne three or four times at most; I recognised her at a distance on the "Furrow" by her pink pelisse, her white gown and her fair hair blown out by the wind, when I was on the beach abandoning myself to the caresses of my old mistress, the sea. I felt myself to possess none of the good qualities of a husband. All my illusions were alive, nothing was spent within me; the very energy of my existence had doubled through my travels. I was racked by the muse. Lucile liked Mademoiselle de Lavigne, and saw the independence of my fortune in this marriage:
"Have your way!" said I.
In me the public man is inflexible; the private man is at the mercy of whomsoever wishes to seize hold of him, and, to save myself an hour's wrangling, I would become a slave for a century.
The consent of the grandfather, the paternal uncle and the principal relatives was easily obtained: there remained to be overcome the objections of a maternal uncle, M. de Vauvert[10], a great democrat, who opposed the marriage of his niece with an aristocrat like myself, who was not one at all. We thought ourselves able to do without him, but my pious mother insisted that the religious marriage should be performed by a "non-juror" priest, which could only be done in secret. M. de Vauvert knew this, and let loose the law upon us, under pretext of rape and breach of the laws, and pleading the imaginary state of second childhood into which the grandfather, M. de Lavigne, had fallen. Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had become Madame de Chateaubriand, without my having held any communication with her, was taken away in the name of the law and put into the Convent of Victory at Saint-Malo, pending the decision of the courts.
There was no rape, breach of the laws, adventure, nor love in the whole matter; the wedding had only the bad side of a novel: truth. The case was tried and the court pronounced the marriage civilly valid. The members of both families being in agreement, M. de Vauvert abandoned the proceedings. The constitutional clergyman, lavishly feed, withdrew his protest against the first nuptial benediction, and Madame de Chateaubriand was released from the convent, where Lucile had imprisoned herself with her.
It was a new acquaintance that I had to make, and it brought me all that I could wish. I doubt whether a finer intelligence than my wife's has ever existed: she guesses the thought and the word about to spring to the brow or the lips of the person with whom she converses; to deceive her is impossible. Madame de Chateaubriand has an original and cultured mind, writes most cleverly, tells a story to perfection, and admires me without ever having read two lines of my works: she would dread to find ideas in them that differ from hers, or to discover that people are not sufficiently enthusiastic over my merit. Although a passionate judge, she is well-informed and a good judge.
Madame de Chateaubriand's defects, if she have any, proceed from the superabundance of her good qualities; my own very serious defects result from the sterility of mine. It is easy to possess resignation, patience, a general obligingness, equanimity of temper, when one interests himself in nothing, when one is wearied by everything, when one replies to good and bad fortune alike with a desperate and despairing "What does it matter?"
Madame de Chateaubriand is better than I, although less accessible in her intercourse with others. Have I been irreproachable in my relations with her? Have I offered my companion all the sentiments which she deserved and which were hers by right? Has she ever complained? What happiness has she tasted in reward for her consistent affection? She has shared my adversities; she has been plunged into the prisons of the Terror, the persecutions of the Empire, the disgraces of the Restoration; she has not known the joys of maternity to counterbalance her sufferings. Deprived of children, which she might perhaps have had in another union, and which she would have loved madly; having none of the honours and affections which surround the mother of a family and console a woman for the loss of her prime, she has travelled, sterile and solitary, towards old age. Often separated from me, disliking literature, to her the pride of bearing my name makes no amends. Timid and trembling for me alone, she is deprived, through her ever-renewed anxiety, of sleep and of the time to cure her ills: I am her chronic infirmity and the cause of her relapses. Can I compare an occasional impatience which she has shown me with the cares which I have caused her? Can I set my good qualities, such as they are, against her virtues, which support the poor, which have established the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse in the face of all obstacles? What are my labours beside the works of that Christian woman? When the two of us appear before God, it is I who shall be condemned.
Upon the whole, when I consider my nature with all its imperfections, is it certain that marriage has spoilt my destiny?
I should no doubt have had more leisure and repose; I should have been better received in certain circles and by certain of the great ones of this earth; yet in politics, though Madame de Chateaubriand may have crossed me, she never checked me, for here, as in matters affecting my honour, I judge only by my own feeling. Should I have produced a greater number of works if I had remained independent, and would those works have been any better? Have there not been circumstances, as shall be seen, in which, by marrying outside France, I should have ceased to write and disowned my country? If I had not married, would not my weakness have made me the prey of some worthless creature? Should not I have squandered and polluted my days like Lord Byron[11]? To-day, when I am sinking into old age, all my wildness would have passed; nothing would remain to me but emptiness and regrets: I should be an old bachelor, unesteemed, either deceived or undeceived, an old bird repeating my worn-out song to whosoever refused to listen to it. The full indulgence of my desires would not have added one string more to my lyre, nor one more earnest note to my voice. The constraint of my feelings, the mystery of my thoughts have perhaps increased the forcefulness of my accents, quickened my works with an internal fever, with a hidden flame, which would have spent itself in the free air of love. Held back by an indissoluble tie, I purchased at first, at the cost of a little bitterness, the sweets which I taste to-day. Of the ills of my existence I have preserved only the incurable part. I therefore owe an affectionate and eternal gratitude to my wife, whose attachment has been as touching as it has been profound and sincere. She has rendered my life more grave, more noble, more honourable, by always inspiring me with respect for duty, if not always with the strength to perform it.
I was married at the end of March 1792, and on the 20th of April the Legislative Assembly declared war against Francis II.[12], who had just succeeded his father Leopold; on the 10th of the same month Benedict Labre[13] was beatified in Rome: there you have two different worlds. The war hurried the remaining nobles out of France. Persecutions were being redoubled on the one hand; on the other, the Royalists were no longer permitted to stay at home without being accounted as cowards: it was time for me to make my way to the camp which I had come so far to seek. My uncle de Bedée and his family took ship for Jersey, and I set out for Paris with my wife and my sisters Lucile and Julie.
We go to Paris.
We had secured an apartment in the little Hôtel de Villette, in the Cul-de-Sac Férou, Faubourg Saint-Germain. I hastened in search of my first friends. I saw the men of letters with whom I had had some acquaintance. Among new faces I noticed those of the learned Abbé Barthélemy[14] and the poet Saint-Ange[15]. The abbé modelled the gynecœa of Athens too closely upon the drawing-rooms at Chanteloup. The translator of Ovid was not a man without talent; talent is a gift, an isolated thing: it can come together with other mental faculties, it can be separated from them. Saint-Ange supplied a proof of this; he made the greatest efforts not to be stupid, but was unable to prevent himself. A man whose pencil I admired and still admire, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre[16], was lacking in intelligence, and unfortunately his character was on a level with his intelligence. How many pictures in the Études de la nature are spoilt by the writer's limited mind and want of elevation of soul.
Rulhière had died suddenly, in 1791[17], before my departure for America. I have since seen his little house at Saint-Denis, with the fountain and the pretty statue of Love, at the foot of which one reads these verses:
D'Egmont avec l'Amour visita cette rive:
Une image de sa beauté
Se peignit un moment sur l'onde fugitive:
D'Egmont a disparu; l'Amour seul est resté[18].
When I left France the theatres of Paris were still ringing with the Réveil d'Épiménide[19], and with this stanza:
J'aime la vertu guerrière
De nos braves défenseurs,
Mais d'un peuple sanguinaire
Je déteste les fureurs.
À l'Europe redoutables,
Soyons libres à jamais,
Mais soyons toujours aimables
Et gardons l'esprit français[20].
When I returned, the Réveil d'Épiménide had been forgotten; and, if the stanza had been sung, the author would have been badly handled. Charles IX. was now the rage. The popularity of this piece depended principally upon the circumstances of the time: the tocsin, a nation armed with poniards, the hatred of the kings and the priests, all these offered a reproduction between four walls of the tragedy which was being publicly enacted. Talma, still at the commencement of his career, was continuing his successes.
While tragedy dyed the streets, the pastoral flourished on the stage; there was question of little but innocent shepherds and virginal shepherdesses: fields, brooks, meadows, sheep, doves, the golden age beneath the thatch, were revived to the sighing of the shepherd's pipe before the cooing Tirces and the simple-minded knitting-women who had but lately left that other spectacle of the guillotine. Had Sanson had time, he would have played Colin to Mademoiselle Théroigne de Méricourt's[21] Babet. The Conventionals plumed themselves upon being the mildest of men: good fathers, good sons, good husbands, they went out walking with the children, acted as their nurses, wept with tenderness at their simple games; they lifted these little lambs gently in their arms to show them the "gee-gees" of the carts carrying the victims to execution. They sang the praises of nature, peace, pity, kindness, candour, the domestic virtues; these devout philanthropists, with extreme sensibility, sent their neighbours to have their heads sliced off for the greater happiness of mankind.
*
Paris in 1792.
Paris in 1792 no longer presented the outward aspect of 1789 and 1790: one saw no longer the budding Revolution, but a people marching drunk to its destinies, across abysses and by uncertain roads. The appearance of the people was no longer tumultuous, curious, eager: it was threatening. In the streets one met none but frightened or ferocious figures, men creeping along the houses so as not to be seen, or others seeking their prey: timid and lowered eyes were turned away from you, or else harsh eyes were fixed on yours in order to sound and fathom you.
All diversity of costume had ceased; the old world kept in the background; men had donned the uniform cloak of the new world, a cloak which had become merely the last garment of the future victims. Already the social license displayed at the rejuvenation of France, the liberties of 1789, those fantastic and unruly liberties of a state of things which is engaged in self-destruction and which has not yet turned to anarchy were levelling themselves beneath the sceptre of the people; one felt the approach of a plebeian tyranny, fruitful, it is true, and filled with expectations, but also formidable in a manner very different from the decaying despotism of the old monarchy: for, the sovereign people being ubiquitous, when it turns tyrant the tyrant is ubiquitous; it is the universal presence of an universal Tiberius.
With the Parisian population was mingled an exotic population of cut-throats from the south; the advance-guard of the Marseillese, whom Danton was bringing up for the day's work of the 10th of August and the massacres of September, were recognisable by their rags, their bronzed complexions, their look of cowardice and crime, but of crime of another sun: in vultu vitium.
In the Legislative Assembly there was no one whom I recognised; Mirabeau and the early idols of our troubles either were no more or had been hurled from their altars. In order to put together the thread of history broken by my journey in America, I must trace matters a little further back.
*
The flight of the King, on the 21st of June 1791, caused the Revolution to take an immense step forward. Brought back to Paris on the 25th of that month, he was then dethroned for the first time, since the National Assembly declared that its decrees would have the force of law without there being any need of royal sanction or acceptance. A high court of justice, anticipating the revolutionary tribunal, was established at Orleans. Thenceforward Madame Roland[22] demanded the head of the Queen, until such time as her own head should be demanded by the Revolution. The mob-gathering had taken place in the Champ de Mars, to protest against the decree which suspended the King from his functions instead of putting him upon his trial. The acceptance of the Constitution, on the 14th of September, had no calming effect. There was a question of declaring the dethronement of Louis XVI.; had this been done, the crime of the 21st of January would not have been committed; the position of the French people in relation to the monarchy and in the eyes of posterity would have been different. The Constituents who opposed the dethronement thought they were saving the Crown, whereas they undid it; those who thought to undo it by demanding the dethronement would have saved it. In politics the result is almost invariably the opposite of what is foreseen.
On the 30th of that same month of September 1791, the Constituent Assembly held its last sitting; the imprudent decree of the 17th of May previous, which prohibited the re-election of the retiring members, gave birth to the Convention. There is nothing more dangerous, more inadequate, more inapplicable to general affairs than resolutions appropriate to individuals or bodies of men, however honourable in themselves.
The decree of the 29th of September for regulating popular societies served only to make them more violent. This was the last act of the Constituent Assembly: it dissolved on the following day, bequeathing to France a revolution.
*
The Legislative Assembly.
The Legislative Assembly, installed on the 1st of October 1791, revolved within the whirlwind which was about to sweep away the living and the dead. Troubles stained the departments with blood; at Caen the people were surfeited with massacres and ate the heart of M. de Belsunce[23].
The King set his veto to the decree against the Emigrants and to that which deprived the non-juror ecclesiastics of all emolument. These lawful acts increased the excitement. Pétion had become Mayor of Paris[24]. The deputies preferred a bill of impeachment against the Emigrant Princes on the 1st of January 1792; on the 2nd, they fixed the commencement of the Year IV. of Liberty on that same 1st of January. About the 13th of February, red caps were seen in the streets of Paris, and the municipality ordered pikes to be manufactured. The manifesto of the Emigrants appeared on the 1st of March. Austria armed. Paris was divided into more or less hostile sections[25]. On the 20th of March 1792, the Legislative Assembly adopted the sepulchral piece of mechanism without which the sentences of the Terror could not have been executed; it was first tried on dead bodies, so that these might teach it its trade. One may speak of the instrument as of an executioner, since persons who were touched by its good services presented it with sums of money for its support[26]. The invention of the murder-machine, at the very moment when it had become necessary to crime, is a noteworthy proof of the intelligence of co-ordinate facts, or rather a proof of the hidden action of Providence when it proposes to change the face of empires.
Minister Roland had been summoned to the King's Council at the instigation of the Girondins[27]. On the 20th of April, war was declared against the King of Hungary and Bohemia[28]. Marat published the Ami du peuple in spite of the decree by which he was stricken. The Royal German Regiment and the Berchiny Regiment deserted. Isnard[29] spoke of the perfidy of the Court, Gensonné[30] and Brissot[31] denounced the Austrian Committee. An insurrection broke out on the subject of the Royal Guard, which was disbanded[32]. On the 28th of May, the Assembly declared its sittings permanent. On the 20th of June, the Palace of the Tuileries was forced by the mob of the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, the pretext being the refusal of Louis XVI. to sanction the proscription of the priests; the King was in peril of his life. The country was declared in danger. M. de La Fayette was burnt in effigy. The federates of the second Federation were arriving; the Marseilleise, called up by Danton, were on the march: they entered Paris on the 30th of July and were billeted by Pétion at the Cordeliers.
*
By the side of the national tribune, two competing tribunes had sprung up: that of the Jacobins and that of the Cordeliers, then the more formidable because it sent members to the famous Commune of Paris and supplied it with means of action. If the formation of the Commune had not taken place, Paris, for want of a point of concentration, would have split up, and the various mayoralties become rival powers.
The Club of Cordeliers.
The Club des Cordeliers had its abode in the monastery, whose church was built in the reign of St Louis, in 1259[33], with funds paid as damages for a murder: in 1590 it became the resort of the most famous Leaguers. Certain places seem to be the laboratories of factions: "Intelligence was brought," says L'Estoile (12 July 1593), "to the Duc de Mayenne[34] of two hundred Cordeliers newly arrived in Paris, supplying themselves with arms and concerting with the Sixteen[35], who held council daily at the Cordeliers of Paris.... On that day the Sixteen, assembled at the Cordeliers, cast aside their arms."
The fanatics of the League had therefore handed down the monastery of the Cordeliers to our philosophical revolutionaries as a dead-house.
The pictures, the carved and painted images, the veils, the curtains of the convent had been pulled down; the basilica, flayed of its skin, presented its bare skeleton to the eye. In the apsis of the church, where the wind and the rain entered through the broken panes of the rose-windows, some joiners' benches served as a table for the president, when the sittings were held in the church. On these benches lay red caps, with which each speaker covered his head before ascending the tribune. The latter consisted of four buttressed stop-planks, crossed at their X by a single plank, like a scaffolding. Behind the president, together with a statue of Liberty, one saw so-called instruments of ancient justice, instruments whose place had been supplied by one other, the blood-machine, in the same way as complicated machinery has been replaced by the hydraulic ram. The Club des Jacobins épurés, or purged Jacobin Club, borrowed some of these arrangements of the Cordeliers.
*
The orators, who had met for purposes of destruction, were unable to agree in electing their leaders or in the methods to be employed; they treated each other as scoundrels, pickpockets, thieves, butchers, to the cacophony of the hisses and groans of their several groups of devils. Their metaphors were taken from the stock of murders, borrowed from the filthiest objects of every kind of sewer and dunghill, or drawn from the places consecrated to the prostitution of men and women. Gestures accentuated these figures of speech; everything was called by its name, with cynical indecency, in an obscene and impious pageantry of oaths and blasphemies. Destruction and production, death and generation, one distinguished naught else through the savage slang which deafened the ears. The speech-makers, with their shrill or thundering voices, had interrupters other than their opponents: the little brown owls of the cloisters without monks and the steeple without bells played in the broken windows, in the hope of booty; they interrupted the speeches. They were first called to order by the jingling of the impotent bell; but when they failed to stop their clamour, shots were fired at them to compel them to silence: they fell, throbbing, wounded and fatidical, in the midst of the pandemonium. Broken-down timber-work, rickety pews, ramshackle stalls, fragments of saints rolled and pushed against the walls, served as benches for the dirty, grimy, drunken, sweating spectators, in their ragged carmagnoles, with their shouldered pikes or bare crossed arms.
The most deformed of the band obtained the readiest hearing. Mental and bodily infirmities have played a part in our troubles: wounded self-love has made great revolutionaries.
*
Following this precedence of hideousness, there appeared in succession, mingled with the ghosts of the Sixteen, a series of gorgon heads. The former doctor of the Comte d'Artois' Bodyguards, the Swiss fœtus Marat[36], his bare feet in wooden clogs or hob-nailed shoes, was the first to hold forth, by virtue of his incontestable claims. Holding the office of "jester" at the Court of the people, he exclaimed, with an insipid expression and the smirk of trite politeness which the old bringing-up set on every face:
"People, you must cut off two hundred and seventy thousand heads!"
To this Caligula of the public places succeeded the atheistical shoemaker Chaumette[37]. He was followed by the "Attorney-General to the Lantern," Camille Desmoulins, a stuttering Cicero, a public counsellor of murders worn out with debauchery, a frivolous Republican with his puns and jokes, a maker of graveyard jests, who said that, in the massacres of September, "all had passed off orderly." He consented to become a Spartan, provided the making of the black broth was left to Méot the tavern-keeper[38].
Fouché[39], who had hastened up from Juilly or Nantes, studied disaster under those doctors: in the circle of wild beasts seated attentively round the chair he looked like a dressed-up hyena. He smelt the effluvium of the blood to come; already he inhaled the incense of the procession of asses and executioners, pending the day on which, driven from the Club des Jacobins as a thief, an atheist and an assassin, he should be chosen as a minister.
Marat.
When Marat had climbed down from his plank, that popular Triboulet[40] became the sport of his masters: they filliped him on the nose, trod on his feet, hustled him with "gee-ups," all of which did not prevent him from becoming the leader of the multitude, climbing to the clock of the Hôtel de Ville, sounding the tocsin for a general massacre, and triumphing in the revolutionary tribunal.
Marat, like Milton's Sin, was violated by death[41]: Chénier wrote his apotheosis, David[42] painted him in his blood-stained bath; he was compared to the divine Author of the Gospel. A prayer was dedicated to him: "Heart of Jesus, Heart of Marat; O Sacred Heart of Jesus, O Sacred Heart of Marat!" This heart of Marat had for a ciborium a costly pyx from the Royal Repository. In a grass-grown cenotaph, erected on the Place du Carrousel, were exhibited the divinity's bust, his bath, lamp, and inkstand. Then the wind changed: the unclean thing, poured from its agate urn into a different vase, was emptied into the sewer.
*
The scenes at the Cordeliers, of which I witnessed some three or four, were dominated and presided over by Danton, a Hun of Gothic stature, with a flat nose, outspread nostrils, furrowed jaws, and the face of a gendarme combined with that of a lewd and cruel attorney. In the shell of his church, as it were the skeleton of the centuries, Danton, with his three male furies, Camille Desmoulins, Marat, and Fabre d'Églantine[43], organized the assassinations of September. Billaud de Varennes[44] proposed to set fire to the prisons and burn all those inside; another Conventional voted that all the untried prisoners should be drowned; Marat declared himself in favour of a general massacre. Danton was besought to show mercy to the prisoners:
"——the prisoners!" he replied.
As author of the circular of the Commune, he invited free men to repeat in the departments the enormities perpetrated at the Carmelites and the Abbaye.
Let us consider history: Sixtus V.[45] pronounced the devotion of Jacques Clément[46] to be equal, for the salvation of mankind, to the mystery of the Incarnation, even as Marat was compared to the Saviour of the World; Charles IX.[47] wrote to the governors of provinces to imitate the St. Bartholomew[48] massacres, even as Danton summoned the patriots to copy the massacres of September. The Jacobins were plagiaries; they were still more so when they offered up Louis XVI. in imitation of Charles I.[49] As these crimes were connected with a great social movement, some have, very unaptly, imagined that those crimes produced the greatness of the Revolution, of which they were but the hideous pasticcios: while watching a fine nature suffering, passionate or systematic minds have admired only its convulsions.
Danton, more candid than the English, said:
"We will not try our King, we will kill him."
He also said:
"Those priests and nobles are not guilty, but they must die, because they are out of place; they trammel the movement of things and obstruct the future."
These words, beneath an appearance of horrible depth, possess no extent of genius, for they presume that innocence is nothing, and that moral order can be withdrawn from political order without causing the latter to perish, which is false.
Danton.
Danton had not the conviction of the principles he maintained; he had donned the revolutionary cloak only to make his fortune.
"Come and 'brawl' with us," he advised a young man: "when you have grown rich, you can do as you please."
He admitted that, if he had not sold himself to the Court, it was because it would not pay a high enough price for him: an instance of the effrontery of a mind that knows itself and a corruption that reveals itself open-mouthed.
Though inferior, even in ugliness, to Marat, whose agent he had been, Danton was superior to Robespierre, without, like the latter, having given his name to his crimes. He preserved the religious sense:
"We have not," he said, "destroyed superstition to establish atheism."
His passions might have been good ones, if only because they were passions. We must allow for character in the actions of men; culprits with heated imaginations like Danton seem, by reason of the very exaggeration of their sayings and doings, to be more froward than the cool-headed culprits, whereas in fact they are less so. This remark applies also to the people: taken collectively, the people is a poet, author and ardent actor of the piece which it plays or is made to play. Its excesses partake not so much of the instinct of a native cruelty as of the delirium of a crowd intoxicated with sights, especially when these are tragic: a thing so true that, in popular horrors, there is always something superfluous added to the picture and the emotion.
Danton was caught in the trap himself had laid. It availed him nothing to flick pellets of bread at his judges' noses, to reply nobly and courageously, to cause the tribunal to hesitate, to endanger and terrify the Convention, to reason logically upon crimes by which the very power of his enemies had been created, to exclaim, smitten with barren repentance, "It was I who instituted this infamous tribunal: I crave pardon for it of God and men!" a phrase which has been pilfered more than once. It was before being indicted before the tribunal that he should have declared its infamy.
It only remained to Danton to show himself as pitiless for his own death as he had been for that of his victims, to hold his head higher than the hanging knife: and this he did. From the stage of the Terror, where his feet stuck in the clotted blood of the previous day, after turning a glance of contempt and domination over the crowd, he said to the headsman:
"Show my head to the people; it is worth showing."
Danton's head remained in the executioner's hands, while the acephalous shade went to join the decapitated shades of his victims: a further instance of equality. Danton's deacon and sub-deacon, Camille Desmoulins and Fabre d'Églantine, died in the same manner as their priest.
Camille Desmoulins.
At a time when pensions were being paid to the guillotine, when one wore at the buttonhole of one's carmagnole, by way of a flower, a little guillotine in gold, or else a small piece of a guillotined person's heart; at a time when people shouted, "Hell for ever!" when they celebrated the joyful orgies of blood, steel and fury, when they toasted annihilation, when they danced the dance of the dead quite naked, so as not to have the trouble of undressing when about to join them; at that time one was bound in the end to come to the last banquet, the last pleasantry of sorrow. Desmoulins was invited to Fouquier-Tinville's[50] tribunal.
"What is your age?" asked the president.
"The age of the Sans-Culotte Jesus," replied Camille facetiously[51].
An avenging obsession compelled the assassins of Christians unceasingly to confess the name of Christ.
It would be unfair to forget that Camille Desmoulins dared to defy Robespierre and to atone for his errors by his courage. He gave the signal for the reaction against the Terror. A young and charming wife, full of energy, had, by making him capable of love, made him capable of virtue and sacrifice. Indignation instilled eloquence into the tribune's coarse and reckless irony: he attacked in the grand manner the scaffolds he had helped to erect. Adapting his conduct to his speech, he refused to consent to his execution; he struggled with the headsman in the tumbril, and arrived at the edge of the last gulf with his clothes half tom from his back.
Fabre d'Églantine, author of a play which will live[52], displayed, quite contrary to Desmoulins, a signal weakness. Jean Roseau, public executioner of Paris under the League, who was hanged for lending his offices to the assassins of the Président Brisson[53], could not bring himself to accept the rope. It seems that one does not learn how to die by killing others.
The debates at the Cordeliers established for me the fact of a state of society at the most rapid moment of its transformation. I had seen the Constituent Assembly commence the murder of the kingship in 1789 and 1790; I found the body, still quite warm, of the old monarchy handed over in 1792 to the legislative gut-workers: they disembowelled and dissected it in the cellars of their clubs, as the halberdiers cut up and burnt the body of the Balafré[54] in the garret of Blois Castle.
Of all the men whom I recall, Danton, Marat. Camille Desmoulins, Fabre d'Églantine, Robespierre, not one is alive. I met them for a moment on my passage between a nascent society in America and an expiring society in Europe; between the forests of the New World and the solitudes of exile: before I had reckoned a few months on foreign soil, those lovers of death had already spent themselves in her arms. At the distance at which I now find myself from their appearance, it seems to me as though, after descending into the infernal regions of my youth, I retain a confused recollection of the shades which I vaguely saw wander by the bank of Cocytus: they complete the varied dreams of my life, and come to be inscribed on my tablets of beyond the tomb.
*
It was a great pleasure to meet M. de Malesherbes again and speak to him of my old projects. I stated my plans for a second journey, which was to last nine years; all I had to do first was to take another little journey to Germany: I was to run to the Army of the Princes, and come back at a run to kill the Revolution; all this would be finished in two or three months, when I should hoist my sail and return to the New World, having got rid of a revolution and enriched myself by a marriage.
And yet my zeal exceeded my faith; I felt that the emigration was a stupidity and a madness:
"I was shaven on all hands," says Montaigne. "To the Ghibelin I was a Guelf, to Guelf a Ghibelin[55]."
My distaste for absolute monarchy left me with no illusions concerning the step I was taking. I cherished scruples, and, although resolved to sacrifice myself to honour, I desired to have M. de Malesherbes' opinion on the emigration. I found him much incensed: the crimes continued under his eyes had caused the friend of Rousseau to lose his political toleration; between the cause of the victims and that of the butchers he did not hesitate. He believed that anything was better than the existing state of things; he thought that, in my particular case, a man wearing the sword was bound to join the brothers of a King who was oppressed and delivered to his enemies. He approved of my returning to America, and urged my brother to go with me.
I raised the ordinary objections based upon the assistance of foreigners, the interests of the country, and so on. He replied and, passing from general arguments to details, quoted some awkward examples. He put before me the case of the Guelphs and Ghibhelinnes, relying on the troops of the Emperor and the Pope; in England, the barons rising against John Lackland. Finally, in our times, he quoted the case of the Republic of the United States imploring the assistance of France.
"In the same way," continued M. de Malesherbes, "the men most devoted to liberty and philosophy, the Republicans and Protestants, have never considered themselves to blame when they have borrowed a force which could ensure the victory of their opinion. Would the New World be free today without our gold, our ships, and our soldiers? I, Malesherbes, who am speaking to you, did not I, in 1776, receive Franklin, who came to renew the relations entered into by Silas Deane[56], and yet was Franklin a traitor? Was American liberty any the less honourable for being assisted by La Fayette and won by French grenadiers? Every government which, instead of securing the fundamental laws of society, itself transgresses the laws of equity, the rules of justice, ceases to exist, and restores man to the state of nature. It is then lawful to defend one's self as best one may, to resort to the means that appear most calculated to overthrow tyranny and to restore the rights of one and all."
Talks with Malesherbes.
The principles of natural right as set forth by the greatest publicists, developed by such a man as M. de Malesherbes, and supported by numerous historical examples, struck me without convincing me; I yielded in reality only to the impulse of my age, to the point of honour. I will add some more recent examples to those of M. de Malesherbes: during the Spanish War of 1823, the French Republican Party went to serve under the banner of the Cortès, and did not scruple to bear arms against its own country; in 1830 and 1831, the Poles and the constitutional Italians invoked the assistance of France, and the Portuguese of the "Charter" invaded their country with the aid of foreign money and foreign soldiers. We have two standards of weight and measurement: we approve in the case of one idea, one system, one interest, one man of that which we condemn in the case of another idea, another system, another interest, another man.
These conversations between myself and the illustrious defender of the King took place at my sister-in-law's; she had just given birth to a second son, to whom M. de Malesherbes stood god-father and gave his name, Christian. I was present at the baptism of this child, which was to see its father and mother only at an age at which life leaves no memory and appears at a distance like an ill-remembered dream. The preparations for my departure lagged. They had thought that they were making me contract a rich marriage: it appeared that my wife's fortune was invested in Church securities; the nation undertook to pay them after its own fashion. Not only that, but Madame de Chateaubriand had, with the consent of her trustees, lent the scrip of a large portion of these securities to her sister, the Comtesse du Plessix-Parscau, who had emigrated. Money was still wanting, therefore; it became necessary to borrow.
A notary procured ten thousand francs for us: I was taking them home to the Cul-de-sac Férou, in assignats, when, in the Rue de Richelieu, I met one of my old messmates in the Navarre Regiment, the Comte Achard. He was a great gambler; he proposed that we should go to the rooms of M——, where we could talk; the devil urged me: I went upstairs, I played, I lost all, except fifteen hundred francs, with which, full of remorse and humiliation, I climbed into the first coach that passed. I had never played before: play produced in me a sort of painful intoxication; if the passion had attacked me, it would have turned my brain. With half-disordered wits, I stepped out of the coach at Saint-Sulpice, and left my pocket-book behind, containing the remnant of my treasure. I ran home and said that I had left the ten thousand francs in a hackney-coach.
I went out again, turned down the Rue Dauphine, crossed the Pont-Neuf, feeling half inclined to throw myself into the water; I went to the Place du Palais-Royal, where I had taken the ill-omened vehicle. I questioned the Savoyards who watered the screws, and described my conveyance; they told me a number at random. The police commissary of the district informed me that that number belonged to a job-master living at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Denis. I went to the man's house; I remained all night in the stable, waiting for the hackney-coaches to return: a large number arrived in succession which were not mine; at last, at two o'clock in the morning, I saw my chariot drive in. I had hardly time to recognise my two white steeds, when the poor beasts, utterly worn out, dropped down upon the straw, stiff, their stomachs distended, their legs stretched out, as though dead.
The coachman remembered driving me. After me, he had taken up a citizen, whom he had set down at the Jacobins; after the citizen, a lady, whom he had taken to the Rue de Cléry, number 13; after that lady, a gentleman, whom he had put down at the Recollects in the Rue Saint-Martin. I promised the driver a gratuity, and, the moment daylight had come, set out on the discovery of my fifteen hundred francs, as I had gone in search of the North-West Passage. It seemed clear to me that the citizen of the Jacobins had confiscated them by right of his sovereignty. The young person of the Rue de Cléry averred that she had seen nothing in the coach. I reached the third station without any hope; the coachman gave a tolerably good description of the gentleman he had driven. The porter exclaimed:
"It's the Père So-and-so!"
He led me through the passages and the deserted apartments to a Recollect who had remained behind alone to make an inventory of the furniture of his convent. Seated on a heap of rubbish, in a dusty frock-coat, the monk listened to my story:
"Are you," he asked, "the Chevalier de Chateaubriand?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Here is your pocket-book," said he. "I would have brought it when I had finished: I found your address inside."
An honest monk.
It was this hunted and plundered monk, engaged in conscientiously counting up the relics of his cloister for his proscribes, who restored to me the fifteen hundred francs with which I was about to make my way to exile. Failing this small sum, I should not have emigrated: what should I have become? My whole life would have changed. I will be hanged if I would to-day move a step to recover a million.
This happened on the 16th of June 1792. Obeying the promptings of my instinct, I had returned from America to offer my sword to Louis XVI., not to associate myself with party intrigues. The disbanding of the King's new guard, of which Murat[57] was a member; the successive ministries of Roland[58], Dumouriez, Duport du Tertre[59]; the little conspiracies of the Court and the great popular risings filled me only with weariness and contempt. I heard much talk of Madame Roland, whom I never saw: her Memoirs show that she possessed an extraordinary strength of mind. She was said to be very agreeable: it remains to be known whether she was sufficiently so to make at all tolerable the cynicism of her unnatural virtues. Certainly the woman who, at the foot of the guillotine, asked for pen and ink to describe the last moments of her journey, to write down the discoveries she had made in the course of her progress from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, that woman displayed an absorption in futurity, a contempt for life, of which there are few examples. Madame Roland possessed character rather than genius: the first can give the second, the second cannot give the first.
On the 19th of June, I went to the Vale of Montmorency to visit the Hermitage of J. J. Rousseau: not that I delighted in the memories of Madame d'Épinay[60] and of that depraved and artificial society; but I wished to take leave of the solitude of a man whose morals were antipathetic to mine, although he himself was endowed with a talent whose accents stirred my youth. On the next day, the 20th of June, I was still at the Hermitage, and there met two men walking, like myself, in that deserted spot during the fatal day of the monarchy, indifferent as they were or might be, thought I, to the affairs of this world: one was M. Maret[61], of the Empire, the other M. Barère[62], of the Republic. The amiable Barère had come, far from the uproar, in his sentimental, philosophical way, to whisper soft revolutionary nothings to the shade of Julie. The troubadour of the guillotine, on whose report the Convention decreed that the Terror was the order of the day, escaped the same Terror by hiding in the head-basket; from the bottom of the bloody trough, beneath the scaffold, he was heard only to croak the word, "Death!" Barère belonged to the species of tigers which Oppian represents as born of the wind's light breath: velocis Zephyri proles.
Ginguené, Chamfort, my old friends among the men of letters, were delighted with the 20th of June. La Harpe, continuing his lectures at the Lycée, shouted in a stentorian voice:
"Fools! To all the representations of the people you answered, 'Bayonets! Bayonets!' Well, you have them now, your bayonets!"
Although my travels in America had made a less insignificant personage of me, I was unable to rise to so great a height of principle and eloquence. Fontanes was in danger through his former connection with the Société Monarchique. My brother was a member of a club of enragés. The Prussians were marching by virtue of a convention between the Cabinets of Vienna and Berlin; a rather fierce engagement had already taken place between the French and Austrians near Mons. It was more than time for me to take a decision.
My brother and I emigrate.
My brother and I procured false passports for Lille: we were two wine-merchants and national guards of Paris, wearing the uniform and proposing to tender for the army supplies. My brother's valet, Louis Poullain, known as Saint-Louis, travelled under his own name; he came from Lamballe, in Lower Brittany, but was going to see his family in Flanders. The day of our emigration was settled for the 15th of July, the day after the second Federation. We spent the 14th in the Tivoli garden, with the Rosanbo family, my sisters and my wife. Tivoli belonged to M. Boutin[63], whose daughter had married M. de Malesherbes[64]. Towards the end of the day we saw a good many federates wandering about after disbanding; on their hats was written in chalk, "Pétion or death!" Tivoli, the starting-point of my exile, was to become a centre of amusements and fêtes. Our relations took leave of us without sadness; they were persuaded that we were going on a pleasure-trip. My recovered fifteen hundred francs seemed a treasure sufficient to bring me back in triumph to Paris.
On the 10th of July, at six o'clock in the morning, we climbed into the diligence: we had booked our seats in the front part, by the guard; the valet, whom we were supposed not to know, stuffed himself into the inside with the other passengers. Saint-Louis walked in his sleep; in Paris he used to go looking for his master at night, with his eyes open, but quite asleep. He used to undress my brother and put him to bed, sleeping all the time, answering, "I know, I know," to all that was said to him during his attacks, and waking only when cold water was thrown in his face: he was a man of about forty, nearly six feet high, and as ugly as he was tall. This poor fellow, who was very respectful by nature, had never served any master except my brother; he was quite confused when he had to sit down to table with us at supper. The passengers, great patriots all, talking of hanging the aristocrats from the lanterns, increased his dismay. The thought that, at the end of all this, he would be obliged to pass through the Austrian Army, in order to fight in the Army of the Princes, completely turned his brain. He drank heavily and climbed into the diligence again; we went back to the coupé.
In the middle of the night we heard the passengers shouting, with their heads out of the windows:
"Stop, postilion, stop!"
They stopped, the door of the diligence was opened, and immediately male and female voices exclaimed:
"Get down, citizen, get down! We can't stand this! Get down, you beast! He's a brigand! Get down, get down!"
We got down too, and saw Saint-Louis hustled, flung out of the coach, stand up, turn his wide-open but sleeping eyes around him, and take to flight in the direction of Paris, without his hat, and as fast as his legs would carry him. We were unable to acknowledge him, or we should have betrayed ourselves; we had to leave him to his fate. He was caught and taken up at the first village, and stated that he was the servant of M. le Comte de Chateaubriand, and that he lived in the Rue de Bondy, Paris. The rural police passed him on from brigade to brigade to the Président de Rosanbo's; the unhappy man's depositions served to prove our emigration, and to send my brother and sister-in-law to the scaffold.
The next day, when the diligence stopped for breakfast, we had to listen to the whole story a score of times:
"That man had a perturbed imagination; he was dreaming out loud; he said strange things; he was no doubt a conspirator, an assassin fleeing from justice."
The well-bred citizenesses blushed and waved large green-paper "Constitutional" fans. We easily recognised through these stories the effects of somnambulism, fear and wine.
We cross the frontier.
On reaching Lille, we went in search of the person who was to take us across the frontier. The Emigration had its agents of safety who eventually became agents of perdition. The monarchical party was still powerful, the question undecided: the weak and cowardly served, while awaiting the turn of events. We left Lille before the gates were closed: we stopped at a remote house, and did not start until ten o'clock at night, when it was quite dark; we carried nothing with us; we had a little cane in our hands; it was no more than a year since I, in the same way, followed my Dutchman in the American forests.
We crossed cornfields through which wound hardly traceable footpaths. The French and Austrian patrols were beating the country-side: we were liable to fall in with either, or to find ourselves in front of the pistols of a vedette. We saw single horsemen in the distance, motionless, weapon in hand; we heard the hoofs of horses in the hollow roads; laying our ears against the ground, we heard the regular tramp of infantry marching. After three hours spent alternately in running and in creeping along on tiptoe, we reached a cross-road in a wood where some belated nightingales were singing. A troop of uhlans, posted behind a hedge, fell upon us with raised sabres. We shouted:
"Officers going to join the Princes!"
We asked to be taken to Tournay, saying we were in a position to make ourselves known. The officer in command placed us between his troopers and carried us off. When day broke, the uhlans perceived our national guards' uniforms under our surtouts, and insulted the colours in which France was soon to dress her vassal, Europe.
In Tournaisis, the primitive kingdom of the Franks, Clovis resided during the early years of his reign; he set out from Tournay with his companions, summoned as he was to the conquest of the Gauls: "Arms always have right on their side," says Tacitus. Through this town, from which, in 486, the first King of the First Race[65] rode to found his long and mighty monarchy, I passed in 1792 to go and join the Princes of the Third Race on foreign soil, and I passed through it again in 1815, when the last King of the French abandoned the kingdom of the first King of the Franks: omnia migrant.
When we reached Tournay, I left my brother to grapple with the authorities, and in the custody of a soldier visited the cathedral. In days of old, Odo of Orleans, the scholasticus of the cathedral, seated at night before the church porch, taught his disciples the course of the planets, and pointed out to them the Milky Way and the stars. I would rather have found this artless eleventh-century astronomer at Tournay than the Pandours. I delight in those days in which the chronicles tell me, under the year 1049, that, in Normandy, a man had been transformed into a donkey: that was like to have happened to me, as the reader knows, at the house of the Demoiselles Couppart, who taught me to read. Hildebert[66], in 1114, saw a girl from whose ears grew spikes of corn: perhaps it was Ceres. The Meuse, which I was soon to cross, was suspended in mid-air in the year 1118, as witness Guillaume de Nangis[67] and Albéric[68]. Rigord[69] assures us that, in 1194, between Compiègne and Clermont in Beauvoisis, there fell a storm of hail, mixed with ravens which carried charcoal and caused a fire. If the tempest, as Gervase of Tilbury[70] tells us, was unable to extinguish a candle on the window-sill of the priory of Saint-Michel "de Camissa," we also know through him that, in the Diocese of Uzès, there was a fair and clear spring which changed its place when anything unclean was thrown into it: our latter-day consciences do not put themselves out for so little.
Reader, I am not wasting time; I am chatting with you to keep you in patience while waiting for my brother, who is arranging things: here he comes, after explaining himself to the satisfaction of the Austrian commander. We have leave to go on to Brussels, an exile purchased with too much care and trouble.
*
Brussels.
Brussels was the head-quarters of the upper Emigration: the most elegant women of Paris and the most fashionable men, those who were able to march only as aides-de-camp, were awaiting amid pleasures the moment of victory. They had fine brand-new uniforms; they paraded the very pedantry of frivolity. Considerable sums, enough to keep them for a few years, were squandered in a few days: it was not worth while economizing, since we should be in Paris directly. Those gallant knights, reversing the practice of the olden chivalry, were preparing for glory with successes in love. They scornfully watched us trudging on foot, knapsack on back, small provincial gentlemen that we were, or poor officers turned into private soldiers. Those Hercules sat at the feet of their Omphales spinning the distaffs which they had sent us and which we handed back to them as we passed, contenting ourselves with our swords.
In Brussels I found my scanty luggage, which had fraudulently passed the customs ahead of me: it consisted of my Navarre uniform, a little linen, and my precious papers, with which I could not part. I was invited with my brother to dine at the Baron de Breteuil's; I there met the Baronne de Montmorency, then young and beautiful, at this moment dying; martyr bishops in watered-silk cassocks and gold crosses; young magistrates transformed into Hungarian colonels; and Rivarol, whom I saw only once in my life. His name had not been mentioned; I was struck by the conversation of a man who held forth all alone and was listened to, with some right, as an oracle. Rivarol's wit was prejudicial to his talent, as his tongue was to his pen. Talking of revolutions, he said:
"The first blow aims at God, the second strikes only a senseless slab of marble."
I had resumed my uniform of a petty infantry subaltern; I was to start on rising from dinner, and my knapsack was behind the door. I was still bronzed by the American sun and the sea air; I wore my hair uncurled and unpowdered. My face and my silence troubled Rivarol; the Baron de Breteuil, perceiving his restless curiosity, satisfied it:
"Where does your brother the chevalier come from?" he asked my brother.
I answered:
"From Niagara."
Rivarol cried:
"From the cataract!"
I was silent. He hazarded an uncompleted question:
"Monsieur is going——?"
"Where they are fighting," I broke in.
We rose from table.
This fatuous Emigrant society was hateful to me; I was eager to see my peers, Emigrants like myself with six hundred francs a year. We were very stupid, no doubt, but at least we aired our sword-blades, and, if we had obtained any successes, we should have been the last to profit by victory.
My brother remained at Brussels with the Baron de Montboissier[71], who appointed him his aide-de-camp; I set out alone for Coblentz.
There is no more historic road than that which I followed; it recalled in every part some memory or greatness of France. I passed through Liège, one of those municipal republics which so often rose against their bishops or against the Counts of Flanders. Louis XI.[72], the ally of the Liégeois, was obliged to assist at the sack of their town in order to escape from his ridiculous prison of Péronne. I was about to join and to become one of the soldiers who glory in such things. In 1792, the relations between Liège and France were more peaceful: the Abbot of Saint-Hubert was obliged every year to send two hounds to King Dagobert's successors.
At Aix-la-Chapelle there was another offering, but on the part of France: the pall that had served at the funeral of a Most Christian King was sent to the tomb of Charlemagne as a vassal banner to the lord's fief. Our kings thus did fealty and homage on taking possession of the inheritance of Eternity: laying their hands between the knees of their liege-lady, Death, they swore to be faithful to her, after pressing the feudal kiss on her mouth. This, however, was the only suzerain of whom France acknowledged herself the vassal.
Le Comte de Rivarol.
The Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle was built by Karl the Great and consecrated by Leo III[73]. Two prelates failing to attend the ceremony, their places were filled by two Bishops of Maastricht, long deceased, and resuscitated for the purpose. Charlemagne, having lost a beautiful mistress, pressed her body in his arms and refused to be separated from it. His passion was attributed to a charm: the young corpse was examined, and a tiny pearl found beneath the tongue. The pearl was flung into a marsh; Charlemagne became madly enamoured of the marsh, and ordered it to be filled up: there he built a palace and a church, to spend his life in one and his death in the other. The authorities here are Archbishop Turpin[74] and Petrarch[75].
At Cologne I admired the cathedral: if it were finished, it would be the finest Gothic monument in Europe. The monks were the painters, the sculptors, the architects, and the masons of their basilicas; they gloried in the title of master-mason, cœmentarius. It is curious to hear ignorant philosophers and chattering democrats cry out to-day against the monks, as though those frocked proletarians, those mendicant orders to whom we owe almost everything, had been gentlemen!
Cologne reminded me of Caligula[76] and St. Bruno[77]; I have seen the remains of the dykes built by the former at Baiæ, and the deserted cell of the latter at the Grande Chartreuse.
I went up the Rhine as far as Coblentz: Confluentia. The Army of the Princes was no longer there. I crossed those empty kingdoms: inania regna; I saw the beautiful valley of the Rhine, the Tempe of the barbarian muses, where the knights appeared around the ruins of their castles, where one hears the clash of arms at night, when war is at hand.
Frederic William II.
Between Coblentz and Trèves, I fell in with the Prussian Army: I was passing along the column when, coming up with the guards, I noticed that they were marching in battle order, with cannon in line; the King[78] and the Duke of Brunswick[79] were in the centre of the square, composed of Frederic's old grenadiers. My white uniform caught the King's eye: he sent for me; the Duke of Brunswick and he took off their hats and saluted the old French Army in my person. They asked me my name, my regiment, the place where I was going to join the Princes. This military welcome touched me: I replied with emotion that, on learning in America of my King's misfortunes, I had returned to shed my blood in his service. The generals and officers surrounding Frederic William made a movement of approbation, and the Prussian sovereign said:
"Sir, one always recognises the sentiments of the French nobility."
He took off his hat again and stood uncovered and motionless, until I had disappeared behind the mass of the grenadiers. Nowadays people cry out against the Emigrants: they are "tigers who rent their mother's bosom;" at the time of which I speak, men loved the examples of old, and honour ranked as high as country. In 1792, fidelity to one's oath was still accounted a duty; to-day, it has become so rare that it is regarded as a virtue.
A strange scene, already rehearsed with others than myself, almost made me retrace my steps. They refused to admit me at Trèves, where the Army of the Princes was:
"I was one of those men who await the course of events before making up their minds; I ought to have joined the cantonment three years ago; I came when victory was assured. They had no use for me; they had only too many of those heroes after the battle. Every day, squadrons of cavalry were deserting; even the artillery was melting away in a body; and, if that went on, they would not know what to do with those people!"
O prodigious illusionment of parties!
I met my cousin Armand de Chateaubriand: he took me under his protection, assembled the Bretons and pleaded my cause. They sent for me; I made my explanation: I told them that I had come from America to have the honour of serving beside my comrades; that the campaign was opened, not commenced, so that I was still in time for the first fire; that, however, I would go back if they insisted, but not before I had obtained satisfaction for an undeserved insult. The matter was arranged: as I was a good fellow, the ranks were opened to receive me, and my only difficulty was to make my selection.
Frederic William II.
*
The Emigrant army.
The Army of the Princes was composed of gentlemen, classed by provinces and serving as private soldiers: the nobility was harking back to its origin and to the origin of the monarchy, at the very moment when both the nobility and monarchy were coming to an end, even as an old man returns to childhood. There were, moreover, brigades of Emigrant officers of different regiments, who had also become soldiers: among these were my messmates of Navarre, with their colonel, the Marquis de Mortemart, at their head. I was strongly tempted to enlist with La Martinière, even though he should still be in love; but Armorican patriotism won the day. I enrolled myself in the seventh Breton Company, commanded by M. de Goyon-Miniac[80]. The nobles of my province had furnished seven companies; to these was added an eighth consisting of young men of the Third Estate: the steel-grey uniform of this last company differed from that of the others, which was royal blue with ermine facings. Men attached to the same cause and exposed to the same dangers perpetuated their political inequalities by odious distinctions: the true heroes were the plebeian soldiers, since no consideration of personal interest entered into the sacrifice they made.
Enumeration of our little army:
Infantry of gentlemen-soldiers and officers; four companies of deserters, dressed in the different uniforms of the regiments from which they came; one company of artillery; a few officers of engineers, with some guns, howitzers, and mortars of various calibres (the artillery and engineers, almost all of whom embraced the cause of the Revolution, achieved its success across the borders). A very fine cavalry, consisting of German carabineers, musketeers under the command of the old Comte de Montmorin and naval officers from Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, supported our infantry. The wholesale emigration of these last-named officers plunged naval France back into the condition of weakness from which Louis XVI. had extricated it. Never since the days of Duquesne and Tourville[81] had our squadrons covered themselves with more glory. My comrades were delighted: I had tears in my eyes when I saw pass before them those ocean dragons, who no longer commanded the ships with which they had humbled the English and delivered America. Instead of going in search of new continents to bequeath to France, these companions of La Pérouse sank into the mud of Germany. They rode the horse dedicated to Neptune; but they had changed their element, and the land was not for them. In vain their commander carried at their head the tattered ensign of the Belle-Poule, the sacred relic of the White Flag, from whose shreds honour still hung, but victory had fallen.
We had tents; we lacked all beside. Our muskets, of German make, trumpery weapons and frightfully heavy, broke our shoulders, and were often not in a condition to be fired. I went through the whole campaign with one of these firelocks, the hammer of which refused to fall.
We remained two days at Trèves. It was a great pleasure to me to see Roman ruins after having seen the nameless ruins of Ohio, to visit that town so often sacked, of which Salvianus[82] said:
"O fugitives from Trèves, you ask again for theatres, you demand a circus of the princes: for what State, I pray you; for what people, for what city? Theatra igitur quæritis, circum a principibus postulatis? Cui, quæso, statut, cui populo, cui civitati?"
Fugitives from France, where was the people for which we wished to restore the monuments of St. Louis?
I sat down, with my musket, among the ruins; I took from my knapsack the manuscript of my travels in America; I arranged the separate sheets on the grass around me; I read over and corrected a description of a forest, a passage of Atala, in the fragments of a Roman amphitheatre, preparing in this way to make the conquest of France. Then I put away my treasure, the weight of which, combined with that of my shirts, my cloak, my tin can, my wicker bottle, and my little Homer, made me throw up blood.
I tried to stuff Atala into my cartridge-box with my useless ammunition; my comrades made fun of me, and pulled at the sheets which stuck out on either side of the leather cover. Providence came to my rescue: one night, after sleeping in a hay-loft, I found, when I woke, that my shirts were no longer in my sack; the thieves had left the papers. I praised God: that accident assured my "fame" and saved my life, for the sixty pounds that pressed upon my shoulders would have driven me into a consumption.
"How many shirts have I?" asked Henry IV. of his body-servant.
"One dozen, Sire, and some of them are torn."
"And of handkerchiefs, is it not eight that I have?"
"There are only five left now."
The Bearnese won the Battle of Ivry[83] without shirts; the loss of mine did not enable me to restore his kingdom to his descendants.
*
We received orders to march on Thionville. We did five to six leagues a day. The weather was terrible; we tramped through the rain and slush singing, Ô Richard! ô mon roi! and Pauvre Jacques![84] On arriving at the encamping-place, having neither wagons nor provisions, we went with donkeys, which followed the column like an Arab caravan, to hunt for food in the farms and villages. We paid for everything scrupulously; nevertheless I had to do fatigue duty for taking two pears from the garden of a country-house without thinking. A great steeple, a great river and a great lord are bad neighbours, says the proverb.
We pitched our tents at random, and were constantly obliged to beat the canvas in order to flatten out the threads and prevent the water from coming through. We were ten soldiers to every tent; each in turn took charge of the cooking: one went for meat, another for bread, another for wood, another for straw. I made wonderful soup; I received great compliments on it, especially when I mixed milk and cabbage with the stew, in the Breton way. I had learnt among the Iroquois not to mind smoke, so that I bore myself bravely before my fire of green and damp boughs. This soldier's life is very amusing; I imagined myself still among the Indians. As we sat at mess in our tent my comrades asked me for tales of my travels; they told me some fine stories in return; we all lied like a corporal in a tavern, with a conscript paying the reckoning.
One thing tired me: washing my linen; it had to be done, and often, for the obliging robber had left me only one shirt, borrowed from my cousin Armand, besides the one on my back. When I lay soaping my stockings, my pocket-handkerchiefs and my shirt by the edge of a stream, with my head down and my loins up, I was seized with fits of giddiness; the motion of the arms gave me an unbearable pain in the chest. I was obliged to sit down among the horsetails and watercress; and, in the midst of the stir of war, I amused myself by watching the water flow peacefully past. Lope de Vega[85] makes a shepherdess wash the bandage of Love; that shepherdess would have been very useful to me for a little birch-cloth turban which my Floridans had given me.
An army is generally composed of soldiers of nearly the same age, the same height, the same strength. Very different was ours, a jumbled gathering of grown men, old men, children fresh from the dovecot, jabbering Norman, Breton, Picard, Auvergnat, Gascon, Provençal, Languedocian. A father served with his sons, a father-in-law with his son-in-law, an uncle with his nephews, a brother with a brother, a cousin with a cousin. This arrière ban, ridiculous as it appeared, had something honourable and touching about it, because it was animated with sincere convictions; it presented the spectacle of the old monarchy and afforded a last glimpse of a dying world. I have seen old noblemen, with stern looks, grey hair, torn coats, knapsack on back, musket slung over the shoulder, drag themselves along with a stick and supported by the arm by one of their sons; I have seen M. de Boishue, the father of my schoolfellow killed at the States of Rennes in my sight, march solitary and sad, with his bare feet in the mud, carrying his shoes at the point of his bayonet for fear of wearing them out; I have seen young wounded men lie under a tree, while a chaplain, in surtout and stole, knelt by their side, sending them to St. Louis, whose heirs they had striven to defend. The whole of this needy band, which received not a sou from the Princes, made war at its own expense, while the decrees finished despoiling it and threw our wives and mothers into prison.
The old men of former times were less unhappy and less lonely than those of to-day: if, in lingering upon earth, they had lost their friends, there was but little changed around them besides; they were strangers to youth, but not to society. Nowadays, a lagger in this world has witnessed the death not only of men, but of ideas: principles, manners, tastes, pleasures, pains, opinions, none of these resemble what he used to know. He belongs to a race different from that among which he ends his days.
Old France.
And yet, O nineteenth-century France, learn to prize that old France which was as good as you. You will grow old in your turn and you will be accused, as we were accused, of clinging to obsolete ideas. The men whom you have vanquished are your fathers; do not deny them, you are sprung from their blood. Had they not been generously faithful to the ancient traditions, you would not have drawn from that native fidelity the energy which has been the cause of your glory in the new traditions: between the old France and the new, all that has happened is a transformation of virtue.
*
Near our poor and obscure camp was another which was brilliant and rich. At the staff, one saw nothing but wagons full of eatables, met with none save cooks, valets, aides-de-camp. Nothing could have better reproduced the Court and the provinces, the monarchy expiring at Versailles and the monarchy dying on Du Guesclin's heaths. We had grown to hate the aides-de-camp; whenever there was an engagement outside Thionville, we shouted, "Forward, the aides-de-camp!" just as the patriots used to shout, "Forward, the officers!"
I felt a chill at my heart when, arriving one dark day in sight of some woods that lined the horizon, we were told that those woods were in France. To cross the frontier of my country in arms had an effect upon me which I am unable to convey. I had, as it were, a sort of revelation of the future, inasmuch as I shared none of my comrades' illusions, either with regard to the cause they were supporting or the thoughts of triumph with which they deluded themselves: I was there like Falkland[86] in the army of Charles I. There was not a Knight of the Mancha, sick, lame, wearing a night-cap under his three-cornered beaver, but was most firmly convinced of his ability, unaided, to put fifty young and vigorous patriots to flight. This honourable and agreeable pride, at another time the source of prodigies, had not attacked me: I did not feel so sure of the strength of my invincible arm.
We reached Thionville unconquered on the 1st of September; for we had met nobody on the road. The cavalry encamped to the right, the infantry to the left of the high-road running from the town towards Germany. The fortress was not visible from the camping-ground, but, six hundred paces ahead, one came to the ridge of a hill whence the eye swept the Valley of the Moselle. The mounted men of the navy joined the right of our infantry to the Austrian corps of the Prince of Waldeck[87], while the left of the infantry was covered by 1800 horse of the Maison-Rouge and Royal German Regiments. We entrenched our front with a fosse, along which the arms were stalked in line. The eight Breton companies occupied two intersecting streets of the camp, and below us was dressed the company of the Navarre officers, my former messmates.
When these field-works, which took three days, were completed, Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois arrived; they reconnoitred the place, which was called upon in vain to surrender, although Wimpfen[88] seemed willing to do so. Like the Grand Condé[89], we had not won the Battle of Rocroi, and so we were not able to capture Thionville; but we were not beaten under its walls, like Feuquières[90]. We took up a position on the high-road, at the end of a village which formed a suburb of the town, outside the horn-work which defended the bridge over the Moselle. The troops fired at each other from the houses; our post remained in possession of those which it had taken. I was not present at this first action. Armand, my cousin, was there and behaved well. While they were fighting in the village, my company was requisitioned to establish a battery on the skirt of a wood which capped the summit of a hill. Along the slope of this hill, vineyards ran down to the plain joining the outer fortifications of Thionville.
The siege of Thionville.
The engineer directing us made us throw up a gazoned cavalier for our guns; we drew a parallel open trench to place us below the cannon-balls. These earthworks took long in making, for we were all, young officers and old alike, unaccustomed to wield the mattock and spade. We had no wheelbarrows and carried the earth in our coats, which we used as sacks. Fire was opened on us from a lunette; it was the more irksome to us in that we were unable to reply: eight-pounders and a Cohorn howitzer, which was outranged, formed all our artillery. The first shell we fired fell outside the glacis and aroused the jeers of the garrison. A few days later, we were joined by some Austrian guns and gunners. One hundred infantry men and a picket of the naval cavalry were relieved at this battery every twenty-four hours. The besieged prepared to attack it; we could distinguish a movement on the rampart through the telescope. When night fell, we saw a column issue through a postern and reach the lunette under shelter of the covert way. My company was ordered up as a reinforcement.
At daybreak, five or six hundred patriots began operations in the village, on the high-road above the town; then, turning to the left, they came through the vineyards to take our battery in flank. The sailors charged bravely, but were overthrown and unmasked us. We were too badly armed to return the fire; we pushed forward with fixed bayonets. The attacking party retreated, I know not why; had they held their ground, they would have wiped us out.
We had several wounded and a few dead, among others the Chevalier de La Baronnais[91], captain of one of the Breton companies. I brought him ill-luck: the bullet which took his life ricochetted against the barrel of my musket and struck him with such force as to pierce both his temples; his brains were scattered over my face. Noble and unnecessary victim of a lost cause! When the Maréchal d'Aubeterre[92] held the States of Brittany, he went to M. de La Baronnais, the father, a poor nobleman, living at Dinard, near Saint-Malo. The Marshal, who had begged him to invite nobody, saw, on entering, a table laid for twenty-five, and scolded his host in friendly fashion.
"Monseigneur," said M. de La Baronnais, "I have only my children to dinner."
M. de La Baronnais had twenty-two boys and a girl, all by the same mother. The Revolution reaped this rich family harvest before it was ripe.
*
Waldeck's Austrian corps began operations. The attack became livelier on our side. It was a fine spectacle at night: fire-pots lit up the works of the place covered with soldiers; sudden gleams struck the clouds or the blue firmament when the guns were fired, and the bombs, crossing each other in the air, described a parabola of light. In the intervals between the reports, one heard drums rolling, gusts of military music, and the voices of the sentries on the ramparts of Thionville and at our own posts; unfortunately, they called out in French in both camps:
"Sentinelles, prenez garde à vous! All's well!"
When the fighting took place, at dawn, it would happen that the lark's morning hymn followed upon the sound of musketry, while the guns, which had ceased firing, silently stared at us, with gaping mouths, through the embrasures. The song of the bird, recalling the memories of pastoral life, seemed to utter a reproach to mankind. It was the same when I came across some dead bodies in the middle of fields of lucerne in flower, or by the edge of a stream of water which bathed the hair of the slain. In the woods, at a few steps from the stress of war, I found little statues of the Saints and the Virgin. A goat-herd, a neat-herd, a beggar carrying his wallet knelt beside these peace-makers, telling their beads to the distant sound of cannon. A whole township once came with its minister to present flowers to the patron of a neighbouring parish, whose image dwelt in a wood, opposite a spring. The curate was blind: a soldier in God's army, he had lost his sight in doing good works, like a grenadier on the battlefield. The vicar administered communion for his curate, because the latter could not have laid the consecrated wafer upon the lips of the communicants. During this ceremony, and from the depths of night, he blessed the light!
Our fathers believed that the patrons of the hamlets, John "the Silent[93]," Dominic "Loricatus[94]," James "Intercisus[95]," Paul "the Simple[96]," Basil "the Hermit[97]," and so many others, were no strangers to the triumph of the arms which protect the harvests. On the very day of the Battle of Bouvines[98], robbers broke into a convent dedicated to St. Germanus[99] at Auxerre, and stole the consecrated vessels. The sacristan went to the shrine of the blessed bishop and said plaintively:
"Germanus, where wert thou when those thieves dared to violate thy sanctuary?"
A voice issuing from the shrine replied:
"I was near Cisoing, not far from Bouvines Bridge; together with other saints, I was helping the French and their King, to whom a brilliant victory has been given by our aid: cui fuit auxilio victoria præstita nostro."
*
Fierce fighting.
We beat the plain and pushed as far as the hamlets lying under the first entrenchments of Thionville. The village on the high-road crossing the Moselle was constantly being captured and recaptured. I took part in two of these assaults. The patriots abused us as "enemies of liberty," "aristocrats" and "Capet's satellites." We called them "brigands," "murderers," "traitors" and "revolutionaries." Sometimes we stopped fighting while a duel took place in the midst of the combatants, who became impartial seconds: O strange French character, which even passions were unable to stifle!
One day, I was on patrol in a vineyard; twenty paces from me was an old sporting nobleman who banged the muzzle of his musket against the vine-stocks, as though to start a hare, and then looked sharply round, in the hope of seeing a "patriot" leap out: every one had brought his own habits with him.
Another day, I went to visit the Austrian camp. Between the camp and that of the naval cavalry, a wood spread its screen, against which the place was directing an inexpedient fire; the town was shooting too much, it believed us to be more numerous than we were, which explains the pompous bulletins of the commander of Thionville. While crossing this wood, I saw something move in the grass: a man lay stretched at full length with his nose against the ground, showing only his broad back. I thought he was wounded: I took him by the nape of the neck and half lifted his head. He opened a pair of terror-struck eyes and raised himself a little upon his hands. I burst out laughing: it was my cousin Moreau! I had not seen him since our visit to Madame de Chastenay.
He had lain flat on his stomach to escape a bomb, and found it impossible to get up again. I had all the difficulty in the world to set him on his legs; his paunch was three times its former size. He told me that he was serving on the commissariat, and that he was on his way to offer some oxen to the Prince of Waldeck. In addition to this, he carried a rosary. Hugues Métel[100] tells of a wolf which resolved to embrace the monastic condition, but which, failing to accustom itself to the fasting diet, became a canon.
As I returned to camp, an officer of engineers passed close by me, leading his horse by the bridle; a cannon-ball struck the animal in the narrowest part of the neck and cut it right off; the head and neck remained hanging in the officer's hand and dragged him to the ground with their weight. I had seen a bomb fall in the middle of a ring of naval officers who were sitting eating in a circle. The mess-platter disappeared; the officers, tumbling head over heels and run, as it were, on a sand-bank, shouted like the old sea captain:
"Fire starboard guns, fire larboard guns, fire all guns, fire my wig!"
These singular shots seem to pertain to Thionville. In 1558, François de Guise[101] laid siege to the place. Marshal Strozzi[102] was killed, "while talking in the trenches to the aforesaid Sieur de Guise, who had his hand on his shoulder at the time."
*
Market in camp.
A sort of market had been formed behind our camp. The peasants had brought octaves of white Moselle wine, which remained on the wagons: the horses were taken out and ate fastened to one end of the cart, while the soldiers drank at the other end. Here and there gleamed the fires of ovens. Sausages were fried in pans, hasty puddings boiled in basins, pancakes tossed on iron dishes, puffcakes swollen out on hampers. Cakes flavoured with aniseed, rye loaves at one sou, maize cakes, green apples, red and white eggs, pipes and tobacco were sold under a tree from whose branches hung coarse cloth great-coats, for which the passers-by haggled. Village women, seated astride portable stools, milked cows, while each presented his cup to the dairy-woman and waited his turn. Before the stoves roamed cutlers in smocks and soldiers in uniform. The canteen-women went about crying aloud in German and French. There were groups standing, others seated at deal tables planted askew on the uneven ground. One sought shelter at random under a packing cloth or under branches cut in the forest, as on Palm Sunday. I believe also that there were weddings in the covered wagons, in memory of the Frankish kings. The patriots could easily have followed Majorian's[103] example and carried away the bride's chariot: Rapit esseda victor, nubentemque nurum.[104] All sang, laughed, smoked. The scene was extremely gay at night, between the fires which lit up the earth and the stars shining overhead.
When I was neither on guard at the batteries nor on duty in the tent, I liked supping at the fair. There the stories of the camp were told again; but under the influence of liquor and good cheer they became much finer. One of our fellows, a brevet-captain, whose name I have forgotten in that of "Dinarzade" which we gave him, was famous for his yarns; it would have been more correct to say "Scheherazade," but we were not so careful as that. As soon as we saw him, we ran up to him, fought for him: we vied with each other as to who should have him on his score. Short of body, long of leg, with sunk cheeks, drooping mustachios, eyebrows forming a comma at the outer angle, a hollow voice, a huge sword in a coffee-coloured scabbard, the carriage of a soldier poet, something between the suicide and the jolly dog, that solemn wag Dinarzade never laughed, and it was impossible to look at him without laughing. He was the necessary second in all the duels and the lover of all the barmaids. He viewed all he said on the dark side, and interrupted his recitals only to take a pull at a bottle, relight his pipe, or swallow a sausage.
One night, when it was drizzling, we were seated round the tap of a wine-cask tilted towards us in a cart with its shafts in the air. A candle stuck on the cask lighted us; a piece of packing-cloth, stretched from the end of the shafts to two posts, served us for a roof. Dinarzade, with his sword awry after the manner of Frederic II., stood between one of the wheels and a horse's crupper, telling a story to our great content. The canteen-women who brought us our rations stayed with us to listen to our Arab. The attentive group of bacchantes and Silenuses which formed the chorus accompanied the narrative with marks of its surprise, approval, or disapproval.
"Gentlemen," said the story-teller, "you all knew the Green Knight, who lived in the days of King John[105]?"
Every one said:
"Yes, yes."
Dinarzade swallowed down a rolled pancake, burning himself as he did so.
"This Green Knight, gentlemen, as you know, since you have seen him, was very good-looking: when the wind blew back his ruddy locks over his casque, it looked like a twist of tow round a green turban."
The audience: "Bravo!"
Dinarzade's tales.
"One evening in May, he sounded his horn at the draw-bridge of a castle in Picardy, or Auvergne, no matter which. In that castle lived "the Lady of Great Companies." She welcomed the knight, told her servants to disarm him and lead him to the bath, and came and sat with him at a splendid table; and the pages-in-waiting were mute."
The audience: "Oh, oh!"
"The lady, gentlemen, was tall, flat, lean, and shambling, like the major's wife; otherwise she had plenty of expression and an arch look. When she laughed and showed her long teeth beneath her stumpy nose, one did not know what one was about. She fell in love with the knight and the knight with her, although he was afraid of her."
Dinarzade emptied the ashes of his pipe on the rim of the wheel and wanted to refill his cutty; they made him continue: "The Green Knight, utterly dumfoundered, resolved to leave the castle; but, before taking his leave, he asked the lady of the keep for an explanation of many strange things; at the same time he made her an offer of marriage, always provided she was not a witch."
Dinarzade's rapier was planted stiff and straight between his knees. Seated and leaning forward with our pipes, we made a garland of fire-flakes beneath him, like Saturn's ring. Suddenly Dinarzade shouted, as though beside himself:
"Well, gentlemen, the Lady of Great Companies was Death!"
And the captain, breaking the ranks and shouting "Death! Death!" put the canteen-women to flight. The meeting was closed: the uproar was great, the laughter prolonged. We approached Thionville amid the roar of the cannon of the place.
*
The siege continued, or rather, there was no siege, for the trenches were not opened, and troops were wanting to invest the place regularly. We reckoned on receiving intelligence, and waited for news of the successes of the Prussian Army or of Clerfayt's[106] Army, with which was the French corps of the Duc de Bourbon. Our scanty supplies were becoming exhausted; Paris seemed to draw farther away. The bad weather never ceased; we were flooded in the midst of our works; I sometimes woke in a trench with water up to my neck: the next day, I was a cripple.
Among my fellow-Bretons I had met Ferron de La Sigonnière[107], my old class-fellow at Dinan. We slept badly under our tent; our heads went beyond the canvas and received the rain from that sort of gutter. I would get up and go with Ferron to walk in front of the stacked arms; for all our evenings were not so gay as those with Dinarzade. We walked in silence, listening to the voices of the sentries, looking at the lights of our streets of tents as we had formerly watched the lamps in the passages at our college. We discussed the past and the future, the mistakes that had been made, those that would still be made; we deplored the blindness of our Princes, who imagined that they could return to their country with a handful of adherents and consolidate the crown on their brother's head with the aid of the foreigner. I remember saying to my friend, in the course of these conversations, that France wished to imitate England, that the King would perish on the scaffold, and that our expedition before Thionville would probably be one of the principal counts in the indictment of Louis XVI. Ferron was struck by my prophecy: it was the first I ever made. Since that time, I have made many others quite as true, quite as unheeded: when the accident occurred, the others took shelter and left me to struggle with the misfortune which I had foreseen. When the Dutch encounter a squall on the open sea, they retreat to the interior of the ship, close the hatches, and drink punch, leaving a dog on deck to bark at the storm; the danger past, Trust is sent back to his kennel in the hold, and the captain returns to enjoy the fine weather on the quarter-deck. I have been the Dutch dog of the Legitimist ship.
The memories of my life as a soldier have engraved themselves upon my thoughts; I have related them in the sixth book of the Martyrs. Armorican barbarian in the Princes' camp as I was, I carried Homer with my sword; I preferred "my country, the poor, small isle of Aaron, to the hundred cities of Crete." I said with Telemachus:
"The harsh country which only feeds goats is dearer to me than those in which horses are reared[108]."
My words would have brought a smile to the lips of the warlike Menelaus: άγάθος Μενἐλαος.
*
The rumour spread that we were at last coming to action; the Prince of Waldeck was to attempt an assault while we were to cross the river and make a diversion by a feint attack on the place from the French side.
My company.
Five Breton companies, including mine, the company of the Picardy and Navarre officers, and the regiment of volunteers, composed of young Lorraine peasants and of deserters from various regiments, were ordered up for duty. We were to be supported by the Royal Germans, the squadrons of musketeers and the different corps of dragoons which covered our left: my brother was with this cavalry with the Baron de Montboissier, who had married a daughter of M. de Malesherbes, sister to Madame de Rosanbo, and therefore aunt to my sister-in-law. We escorted three companies of Austrian artillery with heavy guns and a battery of three mortars.
We started at six o'clock in the evening; at ten we crossed the Moselle, above Thionville, on a coppered pontoon bridge:
Amæna fluenta
Subterlabentis tacito rumore Mosellæ[109].
At daybreak, we were drawn up in order of battle on the left bank, with the heavy cavalry in echelons on both flanks, and the light cavalry in front. At our second movement, we formed in column and began to defile. At about nine o'clock, we heard a volley fired on our left. A carabineer officer came dashing up at full speed to tell us that a detachment of Kellermann's army was about to join issue with us, and that the action had already begun between the skirmishers. The officer's horse had been struck by a bullet on the forehead; it reared, with the foam streaming from its mouth and the blood from its nostrils: the carabineer, seated sword in hand on this wounded horse, was superb. The corps which had come out of Metz manœuvred to take us in flank: they had field-pieces with them, whose fire reached our volunteer regiment. I heard the exclamations of some recruits struck by the cannon-balls; the last cries of youth snatched living from life gave me a feeling of profound pity: I thought of the poor mothers.
The drums beat the charge, and we rushed in disorder upon the enemy. We came so close that the smoke did not prevent us from seeing the terrible expression on the faces of men ready to shed your blood. The patriots had not yet acquired the assurance that comes from the long habit of fighting and victory. Their movements were slack, they felt their way; fifty grenadiers of the Old Guard would have made head against an heterogeneous mass of undisciplined nobles, old and young: ten to twelve hundred foot-soldiers were taken aback by a few gun-shots from the Austrian heavy artillery; they retreated; our cavalry pursued them for two leagues.
A deaf-and-dumb German girl, called Libbe, or Libba, had become attached to my cousin Armand and had followed him. I found her sitting on the grass, which stained her dress with blood: her elbow rested on her upturned knees; her hand, passed through her tangled yellow tresses, supported her head. She wept as she looked at three or four killed men, new deaf-mutes, lying around her. She had not heard the clap of the thunderbolts of which she saw the effect, nor could she hear the sighs which escaped her lips when she looked at Armand; she had never heard the sound of the voice of him she loved, and she would not hear the first cry of the child she bore in her womb: if the grave contained only silence, she would not know that she had sunk into it.
For that matter, fields of slaughter lie on every hand: in the Eastern Cemetery[110] in Paris, twenty-seven thousand tombstones, two hundred and thirty thousand corpses, will show you the extent of the battle which death wages day and night at your doors.
The assault of Thionville.
After a somewhat long halt, we resumed our march, and arrived under the walls of Thionville at nightfall. The drums did not beat; the word of command was given in a whisper. The cavalry, in order to repulse any sortie, stole along the roads and hedges to the gate which we were to cannonade. The Austrian artillery, protected by our infantry, took up a position at fifty yards from the advanced works, behind a hastily thrown-up epaulement of gabions. At one o'clock on the morning of the 1st of September, a rocket, sent up from the Prince of Waldeck's camp on the other side of the place, gave the signal. The Prince commenced a smart fire, to which the town made a vigorous reply. We began to fire forthwith.
The besieged, not thinking that we had troops on that side, and not foreseeing this assault, had left the southern ramparts unprotected; we did not lose for waiting: the garrison armed a double battery, which penetrated our epaulements and dismounted two of our guns. The sky was aflame; we were shrouded in torrents of smoke. I behaved like a little Alexander: weakened by fatigue, I fell sound asleep, almost under the wheels of the gun-carriage where I was on guard. A shell, bursting six inches off the ground, sent a splinter into my right thigh. I awoke with the shock, but felt no pain, and perceived only by my blood that I was wounded. I bound up my thigh with my hand-kerchief. In the affair on the plain, two bullets had struck my knapsack during a wheeling movement. Atala, like a devoted daughter, placed herself between her father and the lead of the enemy: she had still to withstand the fire of the Abbé Morellet[111].
At four o'clock in the morning, the Prince of Waldeck's fire ceased: we thought the town had surrendered; but the gates were not opened, and we had to think of retiring. We returned to our positions, after a tiring march of three days.
The Prince of Waldeck had gone as far as the edge of the ditches, which he had tried to cross, hoping to bring about a surrender by means of the simultaneous attack: divisions were still supposed to exist in the town, and we flattered ourselves that the Royalist party would bring the keys to the Princes. The Austrians, having fired in barbette, lost a considerable number of men; the Prince of Waldeck had an arm shot off. While a few drops of blood flowed under the walls of Thionville, blood was flowing in torrents in the prisons of Paris: my wife and sisters were in greater danger than I.
*
We raised the siege of Thionville and set out for Verdun, which had been restored to the Allies on the 2nd of September. Longwy, the birthplace of François de Mercy[112], had fallen on the 23rd of August. Wreaths and festoons of flowers bore evidence on every side of the passage of Frederic William. Among the peaceful trophies, I observed the Prussian Eagle affixed to Vauban's[113] fortifications: it was not to stay there long; as to the flowers, they were soon to see the innocent creatures who had gathered them fade away like themselves. One of the most atrocious murders of the Terror was that of the young girls of Verdun.
"Fourteen young girls of Verdun," says Riouffe[114], "of unexampled purity, who had the air of young virgins decked for a public festival, were led together to the scaffold. They disappeared suddenly and were gathered in their springtime; the 'Court of Women,' on the morrow of their death, looked like a garden-plot stripped of its flowers by a storm. Never have I witnessed such despair as that which this act of barbarity excited among us."
Verdun is famous for its female sacrifices. According to Gregory of Tours[115], Deuteric, to protect his daughter from the prosecution of Theodebert[116], placed her in a cart drawn by two untamed oxen and had her flung into the Meuse. The instigator of the massacre of the young girls of Verdun was the regicide poetaster Pons de Verdun[117], who was infuriated against his native city. The number of agents of the Terror supplied by the Almanach des Muses is incredible; the unsatisfied vanity of the mediocrities produced as many revolutionaries as the wounded pride of the cripples and abortions: a revolt analogous to that of the infirmities of mind and body. Pons attached the point of a dagger to his blunt epigrams. Faithful, as it seemed, to the traditions of Greece, the poet was willing to offer none save the blood of virgins to his gods: for the Convention decreed, on his motion, that no woman with child could be put on her trial. He also caused the sentence to be annulled condemning Madame de Bonchamps to death, the widow of the celebrated Vendean general[118]. Alas, we Royalists in the train of the Princes attained the reverses of the Vendée without passing through its glory!
We had not at Verdun, to pass the time, "that famous Comtesse de Saint-Balmont[119], who laid aside her female apparel, mounted on horseback, and herself served as an escort to the ladies who accompanied her or whom she had left in her chariot..." We had no passion for "old Gallic," nor did we write "notes in the language of Amadis[120]."
The Prussian evil[121] communicated itself to our little army: I caught it. Our cavalry had gone to join Frederic William at Valmy. We knew nothing of what was happening, and were hourly expecting the order to march forward: we received the order to beat a retreat.
I am weakened by my wound.
Very greatly weakened, and prevented by my troublesome wound from walking without pain, I dragged myself as best I could in the wake of my company, which soon dispersed. Jean Balue[122], son of a miller at Verdun, left his father's house at a very early age with a monk, who burdened him with his wallet. On leaving Verdun, "Ford Hill" according to Saumaise[123], ver dunum, I carried the wallet of the Monarchy, but I did not become Comptroller of Finance, nor a bishop or cardinal.
If, in the novels which I have written, I have drawn upon my own history, in the histories which I have told I have placed memories of the living history in which I took part. Thus, in my life of the Duc de Berry[124], I described some of the scenes which took place before my eyes:
"When an army is disbanded, it returns to its homes; but had the soldiers of Condé's Army any homes? Whither was the stick to lead them which they were hardly permitted to cut in the forests of Germany, after laying down the musket which they had taken up in defense of their King?...
"The time had come to part. The brothers-in-arms bade each other a last farewell, and took different roads on earth. All, before setting out, went to salute their father and captain, white-haired old Condé: the patriarch of glory gave his blessing to his children, wept over his dispersed tribe, and saw the tents of his camp fall with the grief of a man witnessing the destruction of his ancestral roof[125]."
Less than twenty years later, the leader of the new French Army, Bonaparte, also took leave of his companions: so quickly do men and empires pass, so little does the most extraordinary renown save one from the most common destiny!
We left Verdun. The rains had broken up the roads; everywhere one saw ammunition-wagons, gun-carriages, cannon stuck in the mire, chariots overturned, cutler-women with their children on their backs, soldiers dying or dead in the mud. Crossing a ploughed field, I sank down to my knees; Ferron and another comrade dragged me out despite myself: I begged them to leave me there; I had rather died.
On the 16th of October, at the camp near Longwy, the captain of my company, M. de Goyon-Miniac, handed me a very honourable certificate. At Arlon, we saw a file of wagons with their teams on the high-road: the horses, some standing, others kneeling down, others with their noses on the ground, were dead, and their bodies had grown stiff between the shafts: it was as though one saw the shades of a battlefield bivouacking on the shores of Styx.
Ferron asked me what I meant to do, and I answered that, if I could go as far as Ostend, I would take ship for Jersey, where I should find my uncle de Bedée; from there I should be able to join the Royalists in Brittany.
And catch the smallpox.
The fever was sapping my strength; I could only with difficulty support myself on my swollen thigh. I felt a new ailment lay hold of me. After twenty-four hours' vomiting, my face and body were covered with an eruption: confluent smallpox broke out; it appeared to be affected by the temperature of the air. In this condition, I set out on foot to make a journey of two hundred leagues, rich as I was to the extent of eighteen livres Tournois: all this for the greater glory of the Monarchy. Ferron, who had lent me my six small crowns of three francs, left me, he having arranged to be met in Luxembourg.
*
As I was leaving Arlon, a peasant took me up in his cart for the sum of four sous, and put me down five leagues farther on a heap of stones. I hopped a few paces with the aid of my crutch, and washed the bandage round my scratch, which had developed into a sore, in a spring rustling by the roadside, which did me a great deal of good. The smallpox had come quite out, and I felt relieved. I had not abandoned my knapsack, the straps of which cut my shoulders.
I spent that first night in a barn, and had nothing to eat. The wife of the farmer who owned the barn refused payment for my lodging. At daybreak she brought me a great basin of coffee and milk, with a black loaf which I thought excellent. I resumed my road quite merrily, although I often fell. I was joined by four or five of my comrades, who carried my knapsack; they were also very ill. We met villagers; by taking cart after cart we covered a sufficient distance in the Ardennes, in five days, to reach Attert, Flamizoul, and Bellevue. On the sixth day I found myself alone. My smallpox had grown paler and was less puffy.
After walking two leagues, which took me six hours, I saw a gipsy family encamped behind a ditch around a furze fire, with two goats and a donkey. I had no sooner reached them than I let myself drop to the ground, and the strange creatures hastened to succour me. A young woman in rags, lively, dark, and mischievous, sang, leaped, skipped around, holding her child aslant upon her breast, as though it were a hurdy-gurdy with which she was enlivening her dance; she next squatted on her heels close by my side, examined me curiously by the light of the fire, took my dying hand to tell me my fortune, and asked me for "a little sou:" it was too dear. It would be difficult to possess more knowledge, charm, and wretchedness than my sybil of the Ardennes. I do not know when the nomads, of whom I should have been a worthy son, left me; they were not there when I woke from my torpor at dawn. My fortune-teller had gone away with the secret of my future. In exchange for my "little sou," she had laid by my head an apple which served to refresh my mouth. I shook myself, like John Rabbit, among the "thyme" and the "dew"; but I was not able to "browse," nor to "trot," nor to cut many "pranks[126]." Nevertheless, I rose with the intention of "paying my court to Aurora:" she was very beautiful and I very ugly; her rosy face proclaimed her good health; she was better than the poor Cephalus[127] of Armorica. Although both of us young, we were old friends, and I imagined that her tears that morning were shed for me.
I penetrated into the forest, feeling not too sad; solitude had restored me to my own nature. I hummed the ballad by the ill-fated Cazotte[128]:
Tout au beau milieu des Ardennes,
Est un château sur le haut d'un rocher[129].
Was it not in the donjon of this ghostly castle that Philip II. King of Spain imprisoned my fellow-Breton, Captain La Noue[130], who had a Chateaubriand for his grand-mother? Philip consented to release the illustrious prisoner if the latter consented to have his eyes put out; La Noue was on the point of accepting the proposal, so great was his longing to return to his dear Brittany. Alas! I was possessed with the same desire, and to lose my sight I needed only the ailment with which it had pleased God to afflict me. I did not meet "Sir Enguerrand coming from Spain[131]," but poor wretches, small pedlars who, like myself, carried their whole fortune on their back. A wood-cutter, with felt knee-caps, entered the woods: he should have taken me for a dead branch and cut me down. A few carrion crows, a few larks, a few buntings, a kind of large finches, hopped along the road or stood motionless on the border of stones, watchful of the sparrow-hawk which hovered circling in the sky. From time to time, I heard the sound of the horn of the swine-herd watching his sows and their little ones acorning. I rested in a shepherd's movable hut; I found no one at home except Puss, who made me a thousand graceful caresses. The shepherd was standing a long way off, in the centre of a common pasture, with his dogs sitting at irregular distances around the sheep; by day that herdsman gathered simples: he was a doctor and a wizard; by night, he watched the stars: then he was a Chaldean shepherd.
A weary journey.
I stood still, half a league farther, in a pasturage of deer: hunters went by at the other end. A spring murmured at my feet; at the bottom of this spring Orlando (Inamorato, not Furioso) saw a palace of crystal filled with ladies and knights. If the paladin, who joined the dazzling water-nymphs, had at least left Golden Bridle[132] at the brink of the well; if Shakespeare had sent me Rosalind and the Exiled Duke[133], they would have been very helpful to me.
After taking breath I continued my road. My impaired ideas floated in a void that was not without charm; my old phantoms, having scarce the consistency of shades three parts effaced, crowded round me to bid me farewell. I had no longer the power of memory; I beheld at an indeterminate distance the aerial forms of my relations and my friends, mingled with unknown figures. When I sat down to rest against a mile stone, I thought I saw faces smile to me in the threshold of the distant cabins, in the blue smoke escaping from the roofs of the cottages, in the tree-tops, in the transparency of the clouds, in the luminous sheaves of the sun dragging its beams over the heather like a golden rake. These apparitions were those of the Muses coming to assist the poet's death: my tomb, dug with the uprights of their lyres under an oak of the Ardennes, would have fairly well suited the soldier and the traveller. Some hazel-hens, which had strayed into the forms of the hares under the privets, alone, with the insects, produced a few murmurs around me: lives as slender, as unknown, as my life. I could walk no farther; I felt extremely ill; the smallpox was turning in and choking me.
Towards the end of the day, I lay down on my back, in a ditch, with Atala's knapsack under my head, my crutch by my side, my eyes fixed upon the sun, whose light was going out with my own. I greeted in all gentleness of thought the luminary which had lighted my first youth on my paternal moors: we retired to rest together, he to rise in greater glory, I, according to all appearances, never to wake again. I fainted away in a feeling of religion: the last sounds I heard were the fall of a leaf and the whistling of a bullfinch.
*
It seems that I lay unconscious for nearly two hours. The wagons of the Prince de Ligne[134] happened to pass; one of the drivers, stopping to cut a birch twig, stumbled over me without seeing me: he thought me dead and pushed me with his foot; I gave a sign of life. The driver called his comrades and, prompted by an instinct of pity, they threw me into a cart. The jolting revived me; I was able to talk to my deliverers; I told them that I was a soldier of the Princes' Army, and that if they would take me as far as Brussels, where I was going, I would reward them for their trouble.
"All right, mate," said one of them, "but you'll have to get down at Namur, for we're forbidden to carry anybody. We'll take you up again t'other side of the town."
I asked for something to drink; I swallowed a few drops of brandy, which threw the symptoms of my disease out again and relieved my chest for a moment: nature had endowed me with extraordinary strength.
We reached the suburbs of Namur at ten o'clock in the morning. I got down and followed the waggons at a distance; I soon lost sight of them. I was stopped at the entrance to the town. I sat down under the gateway, while my papers were being examined. The soldiers on guard, seeing my uniform, offered me a scrap of ammunition bread, and the corporal handed me some peppered brandy in a blue glass drinking-cup. I made some ceremony about drinking out of the cup of military hospitality:
"Catch hold!" he exclaimed angrily, accompanying his injunction with a Sackerment der Teufel!
My passage through Namur was a laborious one: I walked leaning against the houses. The first woman who saw me left her shop, gave me her arm with a pitying air, and helped me to drag myself along. I thanked her, and she replied:
"No, no, soldier,"
Soon other women came running up, bringing bread, wine, fruit, milk, soup, old clothes, blankets.
"He is wounded," said some, in their Brabançon French dialect.
"He has the smallpox," cried others, and kept back their children.
"But, young man, you will not be able to walk; you will die if you do; stay in the hospital."
The women of Namur.
They wanted to take me to the hospital, they relieved each other from door to door, and in this way helped me to the gate of the town, outside which I found the wagons again. You have seen a peasant-woman succour me; you shall see another woman show me hospitality in Guernsey. Women who have aided me in my distress, if you be still living, may God help you in your old age and in your sorrows! If you have departed this life, may your children share the happiness which Heaven has long refused me!
The women of Namur assisted me to climb into the wagon, recommended me to the driver's care, and compelled me to accept a woollen blanket. I noticed that they treated me with a sort of respect and deference: there is something superior, something delicate, in the nature of Frenchmen which other nations recognise.
The Prince de Ligne's men put me down for the second time on the road just outside Brussels, and refused to accept my last crown-piece. In Brussels, not one inn-keeper was willing to take me in. The wandering Jew, the popular Orestes, whom the ballad represents as going to that town:
Quand il fut dans la ville
De Bruxelle en Brabant[135],
met with a better reception than I, for he had always five sous in his pocket. I knocked: they opened; when they saw me they said, "Move on, move on!" and shut the door in my face. I was driven out of a café. My hair hung over my face, hidden behind my beard and mustachios; I had a hay bandage round my thigh; over my tattered uniform I wore the blanket of the Namur women, knotted round my throat by way of a cloak. The beggar in the Odyssey was more insolent, but not so poor as I.
I had at first presented myself to no purpose at the hotel where I had stayed with my brother: I made a second attempt; as I approached the door I saw the Comte de Chateaubriand stepping from a carriage with the Baron de Montboissier. He was alarmed at my spectral appearance. They looked for a room outside the hotel, for the proprietor absolutely refused to admit me. A wig-maker offered me a den suited to my wretchedness. My brother brought me a surgeon and a doctor. He had received letters from Paris: M. de Malesherbes invited him to return to France. He told me of the day's work of the 10th of August, the massacres of September, and the political news, of which I knew not a word. He approved of my plan to cross to Jersey, and advanced me twenty-five louis. My impaired sight hardly permitted me to distinguish my brother's features; I believed that that gloom emanated from myself, whereas it was the shadow which Eternity was spreading around him: without knowing it, we were seeing each other for the last time. All of us, such as we are, have only the present moment for our own: the next belongs to God; there are always two chances of not seeing again the friend who is leaving us: our death and his. How many men have never reclimbed the staircase they have descended!
Death touches us more before than after the decease of a friend: it is a piece of ourselves that is torn away, a world of childish recollections, of familiar intimacy, of affections and interests in common, that dissolves. My brother preceded me in my mother's womb; he was the first to dwell in those same sainted entrails whence I issued after him; he sat before me by the paternal hearth; he waited several years to welcome me, to give me my name in the Name of Jesus Christ, and to ally himself with the whole of my youth. My blood, mingled with his blood in the revolutionary receptacle, would have had the same savour, like a draught of milk supplied by the pasturage of the same mountain. But, if men caused the head of my elder, my god-father, to fall before its time, the years will not spare mine; already my forehead is shedding its covering; I feel an Ugolino, Time, stooping over me and gnawing at my skull:
... come'l pan perf ame si manduca[136].
The doctor could not recover from his astonishment: he looked upon that which did not kill me, which came to none of its natural crises, as a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of medicine. Gangrene had set in in my wound; they dressed it with quinine. Having obtained this first aid, I insisted on departing for Ostend. Brussels was hateful to me, I burned to leave it; it was once again filling with those heroes of domesticity who had returned from Verdun in their carriages, and whom I did not see in Brussels when I accompanied the King there during the Hundred Days.
I reached Guernsey.
I travelled pleasantly to Ostend by the canals: I found some Bretons there, my comrades-in-arms. We chartered a decked barge and went down the Channel. We slept in the hold, on the shingle which served as ballast. The strength of my constitution was at last exhausted. I could no longer speak; the motion of a rough sea broke me down completely. I swallowed scarce a few drops of water and lemon, and, when the bad weather compelled us to put in to Guernsey, they thought I was going to breathe my last: an emigrant priest read me the prayers for the dying. The captain, not wishing to have me die on board his ship, ordered me to be put down on the quay; they set me down in the sun, with my back leaning against a wall, and my head turned towards the open sea, facing that Isle of Alderney where, eight months before, I had beheld death in another shape.
It would seem that I was vowed to pity. The wife of an English pilot happened to pass by; she was moved and called her husband, who, assisted by two or three sailors, carried me into a fisherman's house: me, the friend of the waves; they laid me on a comfortable bed, between very white sheets. The young barge-woman took every possible care of the stranger: I owe her my life. The next day I was taken on board again. My hostess almost wept on taking leave of her patient: women have a heaven-born instinct for misfortune. My fair-haired and comely guardian, who resembled a figure in the old English prints, pressed my bloated and burning hands between her own, so cool and long; I was ashamed to touch anything so charming with anything so unseemly.
We set sail and reached the westernmost point of Jersey. One of my companions, M. du Tilleul, went to St. Helier's to my uncle. M. de Bedée sent a carriage to fetch me the next morning. We drove across the entire island: dying as I was, I was charmed with its groves; but I only talked nonsense about them, having fallen into a delirium.
I lay four months between life and death. My uncle, his wife, his son and his three daughters took it in turns to watch by my bedside. I occupied an apartment in one of the houses which they were beginning to build along the harbour: the windows of my room came down to the level of the floor, and I was able to see the sea from my bed. The doctor, M. Delattre, had forbidden them to talk to me of serious things, and especially of politics. Towards the end of January 1793, seeing my uncle enter my room in deep mourning, I trembled, for I thought we had lost one of our family: he informed me of the death of Louis XVI. I was not surprised: I had foreseen it. I asked for news of my relatives: my sisters and my wife had returned to Brittany after the September massacres; they had had great difficulty in leaving Paris. My brother had gone back to France, and was living at Malesherbes. I began to get up; the smallpox was gone; but I suffered with my chest, and a weakness remained which I long retained.
Jersey, the Cæsarea of the Itinerary of Antoninus[137], has remained subject to the Crown of England since the death of Robert, Duke of Normandy[138]; we have often tried to capture it, but always unsuccessfully. The island is a remnant of our early history: the saints coming to Brittany-Armorica from Hibernia and Albion rested at Jersey. St. Hélier[139], a solitary, dwelt in the rocks of Cæsarea; he was butchered by the Vandals. In Jersey, one finds a specimen of the old Normans; it is as though one heard William the Bastard[140] speak, or the author of the Roman du Rou.
The island is fertile: it has two towns and twelve parishes; it is covered with country-houses and herds of cattle. The ocean wind, which seems to belie its rudeness, gives Jersey exquisite honey, cream of extraordinary sweetness, and butter deep-yellow in colour and violet-scented. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre conjectures that the apple came to us from Jersey; he is mistaken: we have the apple and the pear from Greece, as we owe the peach to Persia, the lemon to Media, the plum to Syria, the cherry to Cerasus, the chestnut to Castanea, the quince to Canea, and the pomegranate to Cyprus.
And Jersey.
I took great pleasure in going out in the early days of May. Spring in Jersey preserves all her youth; she might still be called by her former name of Primavera, a name which, as she grew older, it left to her daughter, the first flower with which it crowns itself.
*
Here I will copy for you two pages from the Life of the Duc de Berry; it is as though I told you my own:
"After twenty-two years of fighting, the brazen barrier with which France was girt about was forced: the hour of the Restoration drew nigh; our Princes left their retreats. Each of them made for a different point of the frontier, like travellers who, at the risk of their lives, seek to penetrate into a country of which marvels are related. Monsieur set out for Switzerland; Monseigneur le Duc d'Angoulême for Spain, and his brother for Jersey. In that island, in which some of the judges of Charles I. died unknown to their fellow-men, Monseigneur le Duc de Berry found French Royalists grown old in exile and forgotten for their virtues, as in former days the English regicides for their crime. He met old priests, henceforth consecrated to solitude; he realized with them the fiction of the poet who makes a Bourbon land on the island of Jersey after a storm. One of these confessors and martyrs might say to the heir of Henry IV., as the hermit of Jersey said to that great king:
Loin de la cour alors, dans cette grotte obscure
De ma religion je viens pleurer l'injure[141].
"Monseigneur le Duc de Berry spent some months in Jersey; the sea, the winds, politics bound him there. Everything opposed his impatience; he found himself on the point of renouncing his enterprise and taking ship for Bordeaux. A letter from him to Madame la Maréchale Moreau gives us a vivid idea of his occupations on his rock:
"'8 February 1814.
"'Here I am like Tantalus, in sight of that unhappy France which finds so much difficulty in breaking its chains. You whose soul is so beautiful, so French, can judge of my feelings; how much it would cost me to move away from that shore which I should need but two hours to reach! When the sun lights it, I climb the tallest rocks and, with my spy-glass in my hand, I follow the whole coast: I can see the rocks of Coutances. My imagination rises, I see myself leaping on shore, surrounded by Frenchmen, wearing the white cockade in their hats; I hear the cry of 'Long live the King!' that cry which no Frenchman has ever heard with composure; the loveliest woman of the province girds me with a white sash, for love and glory always go together. We march on Cherbourg; some rascally fort, with a garrison of foreigners, tries to defend itself: we carry it by assault, and a vessel puts out to fetch the King, with the White Ensign which recalls the days of France's glory and happiness! Ah, madame, when removed by but a few hours from so likely a dream, can one think of betaking himself elsewhere!'"
*
It is three years since I wrote these pages in Paris; I had gone before M. le Duc de Berry in Jersey, the city of the exiled, by twenty-two years; I was to leave my name behind me, since Armand de Chateaubriand was married, and his son Frédéric born there[142].
Gaiety had not abandoned the family of my uncle de Bedée; my aunt continued to nurse a big dog, descended from the one whose virtues I have related: as it bit everybody and had the mange, my cousins had it secretly hanged, notwithstanding its nobility. Madame de Bedée persuaded herself that some English officers, charmed with Azor's beauty, had stolen it, and that it was living, laden with honours and dinners, in the richest castle of the Three Kingdoms. Alas, our present hilarity was compounded only out of our past gaiety! By recalling the scenes at Monchoix we found means of laughter in Jersey. The case is rare enough, for in the human heart pleasures do not keep up the same relations one to the other that sorrows do: new joys do not restore their springtime to former joys, but recent sorrows cause old sorrows to blossom over again.
For the rest, the Emigrants at that time excited general sympathy; our cause appeared to be the cause of European order: an honoured unhappiness, such as ours, is something.
M. de Bouillon[143] was the protector of the French refugees in Jersey: he dissuaded me from my plan of crossing over to Brittany, unfit as I was to endure a life of caves and forests; he advised me to go to England, and there seek the opportunity of entering the regular service. My uncle, who was very ill provided with money, began to feel straitened with his large family; he had found himself obliged to send his son to London to feed himself on starvation and hope. Fearing lest I should be a burden to M. de Bedée, I decided to relieve him of my presence.
I set sail for England.
Thirty louis, which a Saint-Malo smuggler brought me, enabled me to put my plan into execution, and I booked a berth on the packet for Southampton. I was deeply touched, on bidding farewell to my uncle: he had nursed me with the affection of a father; with him were connected the few happy moments of my childhood; he knew all I loved; I found in his features a certain resemblance to my mother. I had left that excellent mother, and was never to see her again; I had left my sister Julie and my brother, and was doomed to meet them no more; I was leaving my uncle, and his genial countenance was never again to gladden my eyes. A few months had sufficed to bring all these losses, for the death of our friends is not reckoned from the moment at which they die, but from that at which we cease to live with them.
Were it possible to say to Time, "Not so fast!" one would stop it at the hours of delight; but, as this is not possible, let us not linger here below; let us go away before witnessing the flight of friends and of those years which the poet considers alone worthy of life: Vitâ dignior ætas. That which delights us in the age of friendships becomes an object of suffering and regret in the age of destitution. We no longer desire the return of the smiling months to the earth; we dread it rather: the birds, the flowers, a fine evening at the end of April, a fine night commencing in the evening with the first nightingale and ending in the morning with the first swallow, those things which give the need and longing for happiness kill one. You still feel their charms, but they are no longer for you: youth which tastes them by your side, and which looks down upon you with scorn, fills you with jealousy and makes you realize the completeness of your desolation. The grace and freshness of nature, while recalling your past happiness, adds to the unsightliness of your misery. You have become a mere blot upon that nature; you spoil its harmony and its suavity by your presence, by your words, and even by the sentiments which you venture to express. You may love, but you can no longer be loved. The vernal fountain has renewed its waters without restoring your youth to you, and the sight of all that is born again, of all that is happy, reduces you to the sorrowful remembrance of your pleasures.
*
The packet on which I embarked was crowded with Emigrant families. I there made the acquaintance of M. Hingant[144], an old colleague of my brother's in the Parliament of Brittany, a man of taste and intelligence, of whom I shall have much to say. A naval officer was playing chess in the captain's room; he did not recollect my features, so greatly was I changed; but I recognised Gesril. We had not met since Brest; we were destined to part at Southampton. I told him of my travels, he told me of his. This young man, born near me among the waves, embraced his first friend for the last time in the midst of the waves which were about to witness his glorious death. Lamba Doria[145], admiral of the Genoese, after beating the Venetian fleet, learnt that his son had been killed:
"Bury him in the sea," said this Roman father, as though he had said, "Bury him in his victory."
Gesril voluntarily left the billows into which he had flung himself only the better to show them his "victory" on shore.
And land at Southampton.
I gave the certificate of my landing from Jersey at Southampton at the commencement of the sixth book of these Memoirs. Behold me, therefore, after my travels in the forests of America and the camps of Germany, arriving, as a poor Emigrant, in 1793, in the land in which I am writing all this in 1822, and in which I am living to-day a splendid ambassador.
[1] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.—T.
[2] Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), perhaps the least contemptible of the demagogues of the time.—T.
[3] The National or Constituent Assembly passed the Constitution on the 3rd of September 1791, the King accepting it on the 13th. This Constitution created a Legislative Assembly, which alone was to retain the power of making laws, subject to the veto of the Sovereign. On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and immediately succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, which consisted of 745 deputies elected by the people, and sat from 1 October 1791 to 21 September 1792. It was in this assembly that the parties of the Mountain and the Gironde were formed.—T.
[4] Jean Claude Marin Victor Marquis de Laqueville (1742-1810) commanded the corps of the nobles of Auvergne under the Comte d'Artois. He was impeached on the 1st of January 1792. He returned to France under the Consulate, and lived in retirement until his death.—B.
[5] M. Buisson de La Vigne, a retired captain of the Indian Company's fleet, had been ennobled in 1776.—B.
[6] Alexis Jacques Buisson de La Vigne, the Indian Company's manager at Lorient, married in 1770 Mademoiselle Céleste Rapion de La Placelière, of Saint-Malo.—B.
[7] Anne Buisson de La Vigne (1772-1813) married, in 1789, Hervé Louis Joseph Marie Comte du Plessix de Parscau (1762-1831). She died at Lymington in Hampshire, and is buried there with seven of her thirteen children. In 1814, the Comte de Parscau married Mademoiselle de Kermalun, a lady of forty, for the sake of the six young children left to him.—B.
[8] Knight of St. Louis.—T.
[9] Céleste Buisson de La Vigne (1774-1847), who became Madame de Chateaubriand.—B.
[10] Michel Bossinot de Vauvert (1724-1809), formerly a king's counsel and attorney to the Admiralty. He was an uncle, "Brittany fashion," of Mademoiselle Buisson de La Vigne.—B.
[11] George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron (1788-1824), the poet.—T.
[12] Francis II. Emperor of Germany (1768-1835) ascended the Imperial Throne in 1792. In 1808 he renounced his title and assumed that of Emperor of Austria, as Francis I.—T.
[13] Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783) had died, after a life supported by unsolicited alms and spent in constant mortifications, of a tumour in the leg resulting from his habit of being always upon his knees.—T.
[14] The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795), Keeper of the Royal Cabinet of Medals, member of the French Academy and the Academy of Inscriptions, and a distinguished archæologist. In 1788 he published his Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce vers le milieu du IVe. siècle avant l'ère vulgaire, which made his name. He spent the greater portion of his life with the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul on their estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise.—T.
[15] Ange François Fariau (1747-1810), known as M. de Saint-Ange, became a member of the French Academy just before his death. His translations in verse of the Metamorphoses and other of Ovid's works are of great merit; but he appears to have been cursed with inordinate vanity, in addition to the stupidity of which Chateaubriand speaks.—T.
[16] Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), the famous author of the Études de la nature and of Paul et Virginie. He preached virtue in all his works; his personal character and conduct were far from being irreproachable.—T.
[17] 30 January 1791.—B.
[18] "D'Egmont with Love one day this bank her presence gave;
For a moment the water stained
With the image of her beauty upon the fleeting wave:
Then D'Egmont disappeared; and Love alone remained.—T."
[19] By Carbon de Flins des Oliviers.—T.
[20] "Our brave defenders' warlike zeal
Wakes pride within my breast,
But when through gore the people reel,
Their fury I detest.
Let Europe of us dwell in fear,
Let us live ever free,
But Gallic wit our lives shall cheer,
And amiability."—T.
[21] Anne Joseph Terwagne, Demoiselle Théroigne de Méricourt (1762-1817), a formidable virago of the Revolution. She was fustigated and driven insane by her fellow-bacchanals in October 1792, and died mad at the Salpétrière.—T.
[22] Manon Jeanne Roland (1754-1793), née Philipon, wife of Jean Marie Roland de La Platière, Minister of the Interior in 1791. She and her husband espoused the party of the Girondins; and Madame Roland was guillotined at the instance of the Mountain, 8 November 1793. Her husband killed himself on hearing the news.—T.
[23] Major the Comte de Belsunce (d. 1790). He was cut up into pieces and his heart was eaten by a woman.—B.
[24] Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (1759-1794) was elected mayor on the 14th of November 1791. He took no step to suppress the insurrections of June and August 1792, nor the massacres of September. Having voted, however, at the trial of Louis XVI. for "death with delay and appeal to the people," he became odious to the revolutionaries and was proscribed with the Girondins, 31 May 1793. He fled and perished in the Bordeaux marshes, where his body was half eaten by wolves.—T.
[25] Before 1789, Paris was divided into 21 quarters. On the 23rd of April 1789 the King ruled that, for the convocation of the three Estates, the town should be divided into 60 arrondissements, or wards, and districts, for which, on the 27th of June 1790, the Constituent Assembly substituted 48 sections.—B.
[26] On the 17th of Germinal Year II. (6 April 1794) a citizen presented himself at the bar of the Convention and offered a sum of money "towards the expenses of the support and repairing of the guillotine" (Moniteur, 7 April 1794).—B.
[27] 23 March 1792.—B.
[28] Francis II., Emperor of Germany, etc., etc.—T.
[29] Maximin Isnard (1751-1825) voted for the death of the King, but, after distinguishing himself by the violence of his language and opinions, underwent a remarkable religious and political conversion. He was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, but took no part in public affairs after the advent of Bonaparte.—B.
[30] Armand Gensonné (1758-1793), the friend and confidant of Dumouriez, executed 31 October 1793.—T.
[31] Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793), at one time editor of the Moniteur and of the Patriote français, and prime mover in the declaration of war against Austria. He was guillotined on the same day as Gensonné.—T.
[32] The decree ordering the dissolution of the King's Constitutional Guard was voted 29 May 1792.—B.
[33] It was burnt down in 1580.—Author's Note.
[34] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1554-1611), second son of François Duc de Guise, and head of the League.—T.
[35] A political club connected with the League and called the Sixteen from the number of its leading members, each of whom was put in charge of one of the then sixteen quarters of Paris.—T.
[36] Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) was born either at Geneva or at Boudry, near Neufchâtel, in Switzerland.—T.
[37] Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (1763-1794), the inventor of the Feast of Reason, self-known as "Anaxagoras Chaumette," and guillotined 13 April 1794.—T.
[38] Méot kept the best tavern in Paris, in the Palais-Royal.—B.
[39] Joseph Fouché, Duc d'Otrante (1754-1820), had been a schoolmaster at Juilly and principal of the Oratorian College at Nantes, when he was sent to the Convention. He became subsequently a Conservative senator under Napoleon, a duke and a peer, and was Minister of Police under the Directory, Napoleon, and Louis XVIII.—T.
[40] Triboulet (1479-circa 1536), Court Fool to Louis XII. and Francis I.—T.
[41] Paradise Lost, II. 790-814, in which Sin is represented as being violated by her own offspring, Death.—T.
[42] Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), the great painter of the Revolution and the Empire.—T.
[43] Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (1755-1794), a light dramatic poet of no mean order, acted as Danton's secretary. He was subsequently traduced for accepting bribes from the Indian Company, and guillotined on the same day (5 April 1794) as Danton and Desmoulins, who protested at being "coupled with a thief."—T.
[44] Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756-1819), a very bloodthirsty member of the Convention. Billaud was transported with Collot d'Herbois to Cayenne, and succeeded in making his escape, after twenty years, to the Republic of San Domingo, the President of which gave him a pension.—T.
[45] Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V. (1521-1590), was elected to the Holy See on the death of Gregory XIII. in 1585. His short reign was marked by a magnificent internal administration. In France he patronized and encouraged the League.—T.
[46] Jacques Clément (1564-1589), the Dominican monk who assassinated Henry III. and was himself killed on the spot. It is a fact that some of the extreme Leaguers called for his canonization.—T.
[47] Charles IX. (1550-1574), elder brother and predecessor of Henry III.—T.
[48] 24 August 1572.—T.
[49] King Charles I. (1600-1649) was murdered on the 30th of January 1649; King Louis XVI. on the 21st of January 1793.—T.
[50] Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (1747-1795), Public Prosecutor to the Revolutionary Tribunal, guillotined 6 May 1795.—T.
[51] The blasphemy was not even accurate. Desmoulins was in his thirty-fourth year.—T.
[52] Le Philinte de Molière, ou, la suite du Misanthrope, a comedy in five acts, in verse, first performed at the Théâtre Français on the 22nd of February 1790, is Fabre d'Églantine's best piece: it is one of our good comedies of the second rank. What will live longest of Fabre d'Églantine's is his ballad, "Il pleut, il pleut, bergère" ("O shepherdess, 'tis raining").—B.
[53] Barnabé Brisson (1531-1591), made First President of the Parliament of Paris by the Sixteen (vide supra, p. 15), when Henry III. had left the capital, instead of Achille de Harlay, whom they had sent to the Bastille; but they were dissatisfied with him, owing to the attachment he preserved for the royal authority, and eventually murdered him by hanging him.—T.
[54] Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1550-1588), nicknamed the Balafré from a disfiguring scar which he received at the engagement of Dormans (1575). He was the son of François Duc de Guise, and brother to the Duc de Mayenne (vide supra, p. 15) and Louis de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise. In 1576 he became the head of the newly formed League. In 1588, after conducting a long and active opposition to the Throne, he attended the States-General summoned by Henry III. at his castle at Blois, and was murdered by the royal guards at the door of the King's closet, 23 December 1588. His brother Louis II., Cardinal de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims, was put to death by the King's orders on the following day.—T.
[55] Florio's Montaigne, Booke III. chap. 12: Of Physiognomy.—T.
[56] Silas Deane (1737-1789), a member of the first American Congress, was sent to Paris to rally the Court of France to the cause of the insurgents. His negotiations were fruitless, and Franklin was sent to second him. The latter was more successful, and signed two treaties with the Cabinet of Versailles in February 1778.—B.
[57] Joachim Murat (1767-1815), later King of Naples. He was the son of an inn-keeper, enlisted at the commencement of the Revolution, and was a member of the King's Constitutional Guard for about a month in the spring of 1792. He was in command of the sixty grenadiers who dispersed the Council of Five Hundred, and Bonaparte rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline. When Bonaparte became Emperor, Murat received his marshal's baton and the title of prince. In 1808, Napoleon made him King of the Two Sicilies. He did not cross the Straits, but reigned peacefully on the mainland until 1812. In 1814, the Powers consented to leave him on the throne, but, declaring in favour of Napoleon on his return from Elba, he was defeated at Tolentino, captured at Pizzo in Calabria, and shot, by order of King Ferdinand II., on the 13th of October 1815.—T.
[58] Jean Marie Roland de La Platière (1734-1793), twice Minister of the Interior, and husband of the more famous Madame Roland. He committed suicide with a sword-stick on hearing of his wife's execution.—T.
[59] Louis François Duport du Tertre (1754-1793), Minister of the Interior from 1790 to 1792, and guillotined 28 November 1793. His wife committed suicide in despair a few days later.—T.
[60] Louise Florence Pétronille de La Live d'Épinay (1725-1783), née Tardieu d'Esclavelles, wife of Denis Joseph de La Live d'Épinay, a rich farmer-general. She built the Hermitage for Rousseau in the Forest of Montmorency, ten miles north of Paris, and lavished benefits upon him. Eventually, however, the philosopher grew jealous of Grimm, and turned ungrateful for the favours shown him.—T.
[61] Bernard Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839). Bonaparte made him Secretary-general to the Consuls, and, in 1804, Secretary of State, in which capacity he accompanied the Emperor on all his campaigns. In 1811, he was created Duc de Bassano, and appointed Foreign Minister; in 1813, Minister for War. In 1815, he was exiled, returning to France in 1820. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France, and he held office for less than a week in 1834.—T.
[62] Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841), one of the meanest turn-coats and time-servers of revolutionary France. He was exiled on the Restoration, and returned to France on the usurpation of Louis-Philippe.—T.
[63] M. Boutin (d. 1794), Treasurer to the Navy, had built the Tivoli garden in the middle of the Rue de Clichy. He was guillotined 22 July 1794.—T.
[64] This is not accurate. Madame de Malesherbes was Françoise Thérèse Grimod, daughter of Gaspard Grimod, Seigneur de La Reynière, farmer-general. M. and Madame de Malesherbes were married on the 4th of February 1749.—B.
[65] Clovis I. (465-511), grandson of Merovius or Merowig, was the real founder of the First or Merovingian Race of Kings of France (418-752). The second was the Carlovingian Race or Dynasty (715-987); the third the Capetians (987), who were subdivided into numerous branches, and preserve their right to the French Throne to this day.—T.
[66] Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (circa 1057-1134), author of a number of Latin treatises, letters, and poems.—T.
[67] Guillaume de Nangis (d. 1300), a Benedictine of Saint-Denis, author of a Chronicle of the Kings of France, etc.—T.
[68] Albéric, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines, near Châlons-sur-Marne, who lived in the thirteenth century, and wrote a Chronicle which goes from the Creation to 1241.—T.
[69] Rigord, Rigordus, or Rigoltus (d. circa 1207), author of a History of Philip Augustus, in Latin, continued by Guillaume le Breton.—T.
[70] Gervase of Tilbury (fl. 1211), author of the Otia Imperialia.—T.
[71] The Baron de Montboissier was Malesherbes' son-in-law, and uncle by marriage to Chateaubriand's brother.—B.
[72] Louis XI., King of France (1423-1479), who had incited the town of Liège to revolt, was enticed to Péronne by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on the pretext of a conference, held as a prisoner, and released only on condition that he accompanied the Duke to the siege of the insurgent city.—T.
[73] Pope Leo III. (d. 816), elected to the Papacy in 795, was driven from Rome by a conspiracy to murder him, and took shelter with Charlemagne. He consecrated the octagonal Cathedral of Aix in 799; and in 800, in Rome, crowned Charles Emperor of the West.—T.
[74] John Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims (d. circa 794), Charlemagne's secretary, friend, and comrade-in-arms. He was falsely reputed the author of the be Vitâ Caroli Magni et Rolandi, popularly known as Archbishop Turpin's Chronicle.—T.
[75] Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch (1304-1374), tells the legend in his poems.—T.
[76] Caligula (12-41) was the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, at whose instance Germanicus enlarged Cologne, calling it Colonia Agrippina.—T.
[77] St. Bruno (circa 1030-1101), founder of the Carthusian order, was born at Cologne.—T.
[78] Frederic William II., King of Prussia (1744-1797), nephew and successor (1786) of Frederic the Great.—T.
[79] Charles Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1735-1806), Commander-in-Chief of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Auerstadt (14 October 1806), and was the father of "Brunswick's fated chieftain" killed at Waterloo.—T.
[80] Pierre Louis Alexandre de Gouyon (not Goyon) de Miniac (circa 1754-1818).—B.
[81] Anne Hilarion de Contentin, Comte de Tourville (1642-1701), a famous French admiral; fought under Duquesne, commanded under the Maréchal de Vivonne at Palermo (1677), went to Ireland in 1690 to support the cause of James II., was defeated by the English at the Battle of the Hogue (1692), but defeated them at the first Battle of St. Vincent (1693).—T.
[82] Salvianus (circa 390-484), author of the treatises, De Gubernatione Dei, Adversus Avaritiam, and some letters—T.
[83] Henry IV. defeated the Leaguers at Ivry in 1590.—T.
[84] Words and music by the Marquise de Travanet, née de Bombelles, lady to Madame Élisabeth.—B.
[85] Lope Felix de Vega Carpia (1562-1635), the fertile Spanish poet, author of the Arcadia and some 2000 plays and an endless number of poems of every description.—T.
[86] Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), Secretary of State to Charles I. Although at first favouring the rebellion, he joined the King's side and died fighting for Charles at Newbury.—T.
[87] Christian Augustus Prince of Waldeck (1744-1798), fought for Austria against the Turks and against the French, lost an arm at the siege of Thionville, took part in the attack on the lines of Weissemberg, replaced Mack, and went to Portugal, where he died.—T.
[88] Louis Félix Baron de Wimpfen (1744-1814), a Royalist brigadier in the Revolutionary service. He defended Thionville for fifty-five days, until he was relieved by the victory of Valmy. He concealed himself during the Terror. The Consulate restored him to his rank as general of division, and Napoleon appointed him inspector of studs, and created him a baron in 1809.—B.
[89] Louis II. Prince de Condé (1621-1686), known as the Grand Condé, captured Thionville in 1643, after first causing the Spaniards to raise the siege of Rocroi, and signally defeating them on the 19th of May.—T.
[90] Manassès de Pas, Marquis de Feuquières (1590-1639), besieged Thionville in 1639, but was defeated by the garrison, and himself wounded and taken prisoner. He died of his wounds a few months later.—T.
[91] The Chevalier de La Baronnais was one of the numerous sons of François Pierre Collas, Seigneur de La Baronnais, married in 1750 to Renée de Kergu. Chateaubriand is not quite accurate as to the proportions of his family. There were twenty children in all, twelve sons and eight daughters.—B.
[92] Joseph Henri Bouchard d'Esparbès, Maréchal Marquis d'Aubeterre (1714-1788), after fulfilling several important embassies, was appointed Commandant of Brittany in 1775.—T.
[93] St. John the Silent (454-circa 589), so called from his love of silence and retirement. At the age of twenty-eight he was consecrated Bishop of Colonus, near Athens, but resigned his see in nine years, and withdrew to the Monastery of St. Sabar in Jerusalem. His feast falls on the 13th of May.—T.
[94] St. Dominic Loricatus (d. 1060) spent his life in the Apennines, wearing a coat of mail, which he laid aside only to scourge himself. He is honoured on the 14th of October.—T.
[95] St. James Intercisus (d. 421). Born in Persia, he at first abjured Christianity in obedience to a decree of King Yezdedjerd I.; but, repenting of his apostasy, he resumed the faith, and was condemned to be cut to pieces while living, a martyrdom which he heroically endured on the 27th of November 421. His feast is celebrated on the anniversary of that day.—T.
[96] St. Paul the Simple (229-342) retired at the age of twenty-two to the Thebaïde Desert, where he became a disciple of St. Anthony and lived for ninety-one years. He is honoured on the 7th of March.—T.
[97] St. Basil the Hermit (d. circa 640), a native of Limousin, spent forty years wrestling with the Evil One in a retreat which he had built for himself in the neighbourhood of Verzy, in Champagne. His feast falls on the 26th of November.—T.
[98] Philip Augustus defeated the Emperor Otho IV. and his allies at Bouvines, 27 August 1214.—T.
[99] St. Germanus of Auxerre, Bishop of Auxerre (380-448), was Governor of the province of Auxerre for the Emperor of the West, when he was ordained priest by Amador, the bishop of the diocese, whom he succeeded after the latter's death in 418. He visited England in 428 and 446 to preach against the Pelagian heresy. He is honoured on the 26th of July.—T.
[100] Hugues Métel (1080-1157), a twelfth-century ecclesiastical writer. The allusion is to an apologue entitled, D'un loup qui se fit hermite, which stands at the head of the poems.—B.
[101] François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1519-1563), one of the greatest French captains, and leader of the Catholic army. He was assassinated at the siege of Orléans by a Huguenot nobleman called Poltrot de Méré.—T.
[102] Pietro Strozzi (1550-1558), a marshal in the French service, and commander-in-chief of the army of Pope Paul IV.—T.
[103] Julius Majorianus, known as the Emperor Majorian (d. 461) defeated Theodoric II., King of the Visigoths, in Gaul, and was about to attack Genseric, King of the Vandals, in Africa, when he was deposed and put to death by Ricimer, who had raised him to power.—T.
[104] Sidonius Apollinaris.—Author's Note.
[105] John II., King of France (1319-1364), known as John the Good, taken prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by Edward the Black Prince (1356). Peace was concluded in 1360, and John returned to France, leaving his son as a hostage. The latter escaped, and King John voluntarily returned to London and surrendered, saying that "if good faith was banished from the earth, it should find an asylum in the hearts of kings." He died shortly after his arrival in London (8 April 1364).—T.
[106] François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Comte de Clerfayt (1733-1798), created, in 1795, a field-marshal in the Austrian Army. He was a native of Brussels, at that time the capital of the Austrian Netherlands, and was a very fine general. Not the least of his feats was his masterly retreat after the Battle of Jemmapes (6 November 1792). In 1795, he defeated three French army corps in succession, and relieved Mayence, which was besieged by one of them.—T.
[107] François Prudent Malo Ferron de La Sigonnière (1768-1815).—B.
[108] Cf. Odyssey, IV. 606.—T.
[109] Ausonius, Eidyllia, CCCXXXIV. 21, Ausonii Mosella.—T.
[110] Now known as the cemetery of Père Lachaise.—T.
[111] The Abbé André Morellet (1727-1819), a Member of the Academy, and at one time a leading member of Madame Geoffrin's circle. His attacks on Chateaubriand are mentioned later, when Chateaubriand speaks of the publication of Atala.—T.
[112] Field-Marshal Franz Baron von Mercy (d. 1645), one of the great generals of the seventeenth century. He took service under the Elector of Bavaria, and distinguished himself in the German wars against France. In 1645 he defeated Turenne at Mariendal, but was himself beaten by Condé in the plains of Nördlingen (7 August 1645), and received a wound of which he died the next day.—T.
[113] Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), the famous French engineer. Longwy was one of the many fortifications constructed by Vauban along the German frontier. He was created a marshal in 1703 by Louis XIV., who in 1693 had founded the order of St. Louis at Vauban's instance.—T.
[114] Honoré Jean Riouffe (1764-1813), created a baron of the Empire in 1810; author of the Mémoires d'un détenu, pour servir à l'histoire de la tyrannie de Robespierre, from which the above quotation is taken.—B.
[115] St. Gregory of Tours (circa 540—circa 594), Bishop of Tours, and author of a History of the Franks extending from 417 to 591.—T.
[116] Theodebert I., King of Metz or Austrasia (d. 548).—T.
[117] Philippe Laurent Pons (1759-1844), known as Pons de Verdun, was, before the Revolution, a regular contributor to the Almanach des Muses. He was sent to the Convention by the Meuse and voted for the death of the King. As a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he rallied to the cause of Bonaparte, and became advocate-general to the Court of Appeal under the Empire.—B.
[118] Artus de Bonchamp (1769-1793), mortally wounded outside Cholet (17 October 1793).—T.
[119] Alberte Barbe d'Ercecourt, Dame de Saint-Balmon (1608-1660), took up arms during her husband's absence in the Thirty Years' War, and defended her house against the marauders.—B.
[120] Amadis of Gaul, hero of the famous prose romance written in the fourteenth century by different authors, partly in Spanish, partly in French.—T.
[121] A loathsome form of vermin.—T.
[122] Jean La Balue (1421-1491) became a bishop, Almoner to King Louis XI., Intendant of Finance, and was for many years virtual Prime Minister of France. He abolished the Pragmatic Sanction (1461), and was created a cardinal by Pope Pius II. Subsequently he corresponded with the King's enemies and (1469) was imprisoned by Louis XI. in an iron cage, from which he was released only upon the King's death, eleven years later. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII. sent La Balue to France as legate in latere; but he was so badly received that he was obliged to return to Rome.—T.
[123] Claude de Saumaise (1588-1658), known as Salmasius, or the Prince of Commentators.—T.
[124] Charles Ferdinand Duc de Berry (1778-1820), second son of the Comte d'Artois, later Charles X., and father of the Duc de Bordeaux, known later as Comte de Chambord and Henry V. The Duc de Berry was assassinated by Louvel on leaving the Opera House in Paris, 6 February 1820.—T.
[125] Mémoires, lettres, et pièces authentiques touchant la vie et la mort de S. A. R. Ch. F. d'Artois, fils de France, Duc de Berry, II. viii.—B.
[126] La Fontaine's Fables, book VII., fab. 16: The Cat, the Weasel, and the Young Rabbit, 7—9.—T.
[127] Cephalus of Thessaly, husband of Procris, and beloved by Aurora because of his surpassing beauty.—T.
[128] Jean Cazotte (1720-1792), the facile Royalist poet, author of the Veillée de la Bonne femme; ou, le Réveil d'Enguerrand, which opens with the lines quoted.—T.
[129] "Right in the middle of the Ardennes
Stands a fine castle atop of a rock."—T.
[130] François de La Noue (1531-1591), nicknamed Bras-de-Fer, Iron Arm, a famous Calvinist captain. Fighting at the head of the army of the States-General against Spain, he was captured (1578) and kept prisoner for five years in the fortresses of Limburg and Charlemont. He was killed at the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, where he was sent by Henry IV.—T.
[131] Cazotte, La Veillée de la Bonne femme, supra.—T.
[132] Orlando's famous steed.—T.
[133] Most of the scenes in As You Like It are laid in the Forest of Arden.—T.
[134] Charles Joseph Prince de Ligne (1735-1844), a Flemish general in the Austrian service, famous for his wit, his personal graces, and his military talent. Francis II. created him a field-marshal in 1808.—T.
[135] "When he was in the town,
Brussels town in Brabant."—T.
[136] Dante, Inferno, XXXVII. 127.—T.
[137] Antoninus Pius, Emperor of Rome (86-161), author or originator of the Itinerarium Provinciarum.—T.
[138] Robert II., Duke of Normandy (circa 1056-1134), nicknamed Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror. He was defeated by his brother, Henry I., at Tinchebray (1106), and imprisoned at Cardiff Castle until his death in 1134.—T.
[139] St. Helerius, hermit and martyr, patron saint of Jersey. His head was cut off by pirates. His feast falls on the 16th of July.—T.
[140] William I., the Conqueror, King of England (1027-1087), is generally called William the Bastard by French writers. He was the illegitimate son of Robert I. the Devil, Duke of Normandy, and Arlotta, a washerwoman of Falaise.—T.
[141] Voltaire, L'Henriade:
"Then, far removed from Court, to this obscure retreat,
I come to mourn the blows with which my creed has met." —T.
[142] Armand Louis de Chateaubriand married in Guernsey, 14 September 1795, Mademoiselle Jeanne le Brun, of Jersey; the young couple settled in Jersey, where were born Jeanne (16 June 1796) and Frédéric (11 November 1799).—B.
[143] Philippe d'Auvergne, Prince de Bouillon (1754-1816), born in Jersey, was the son of Charles d'Auvergne, a poor lieutenant in the British Navy, and had been adopted by the Duc Godefroy de Bouillon, who saw his race threatened with extinction. Philippe d'Auvergne devoted himself whole-heartedly to the cause of his new fellow-countrymen in their difficulties with the English governors of the island. His career was one of inconceivable adventures, and his end, which occurred in London, was mysterious.—B.
[144] François Marie Anne Joseph Hingant de La Tiemblais (1761-1827). No less than twenty-two members of his family suffered as victims of their religious and political faith. He furnished Chateaubriand with many of the materials for the Génie du Christianisme, and himself published some valuable literary and scientific works and an interesting novel (1826), entitled Le Capucin, anecdote historique.—B.
[145] Lamba Doria defeated Andrea Dandola, the Venetian admiral, before the island of Curzola, off the coast of Dalmatia, in 1298.—T.
[BOOK VIII][146]
The Literary Fund—My garret in Holborn—Decline in health—Visit to the doctors—Emigrants in London—Peltier—Literary labours—My friendship with Hingant—Our excursions—A night in Westminster Abbey—Distress—Unexpected succour—Lodging overlooking a cemetery—New companions in misfortune—Our pleasures—My cousin de La Boüétardais—A sumptuous rout—I come to the end of my forty crowns—Renewed distress—Table d'hôte—Bishops-Dinner at the London Tavern—The Camden Manuscripts—My work in the country—Death of my brother—Misfortunes of my family—Two Frances—Letters from Hingant—Charlotte—I return to London—An extraordinary meeting—A defect in my character—The Essai historique sur les révolutions—Its effect—Letter from Lemierre, nephew to the poet—Fontanes—Cléry.
A society has been formed in London for the assistance of men of letters, both English and foreign. This society invited me to its annual meeting[147]; I made it my duty to attend and to present my subscription[148]. H.R.H. the Duke of York[149] occupied the chair; on his right were the Duke of Somerset[150] and Lords Torrington[151] and Bolton[152]; I myself sat on his left. I met my friend Mr. Canning[153] there. The poet, orator, and illustrious minister made a speech in which occurred the following passage, which did me too great honour, and which was reported in the newspapers:
"Although the person of my noble friend, the Ambassador of France, is as yet but little known here, his character and writings are well known to all Europe. He began his career by expounding the principles of Christianity, and continued it by defending those of monarchy; and now he comes amongst us to unite the two countries by the common bonds of monarchical principles and Christian virtues[154]."
*
The literary fund.
It is many years since Mr. Canning, the man of letters, improved himself by the political lessons of Mr. Pitt[155]; it is almost the same number of years since I began obscurely to write in that same English capital. Both of us have attained high station and are now members of a society devoted to the relief of unfortunate authors. Is it the affinity of our grandeurs or the relation of our sufferings that brought us together in this place? What should the Governor of the East Indies and the French Ambassador be doing at the banquet of the afflicted muses? It was rather George Canning and François de Chateaubriand who sat down to it, in remembrance of their former adversity and perhaps of their former happiness: they drank to the memory of Homer singing his verses for a morsel of bread.
If the Literary Fund had existed when I arrived in London from Southampton on the 21st of May 1793, it would perhaps have paid a doctor's visit to the garret in Holborn in which my cousin de La Boüétardais[156], son of my uncle de Bedée, harboured me. It had been hoped that the change of air would do marvels towards restoring to me the strength essential to a soldier's life; but my health, instead of recovering, declined. My chest became involved; I was thin and pale, I coughed frequently, I breathed with difficulty; I had attacks of perspiration and I spat blood. My friends, who were as poor as I, dragged me from doctor to doctor. These Hippocrates kept the band of beggars waiting at their door, and then told me, for the price of one guinea, that I must bear my complaint patiently, adding:
"That's all, my dear sir."
Dr. Goodwyn[157], famous for his experiments relating to drowning people, made on his own person by his own prescriptions, was more generous: he assisted me with his advice gratis; but he said to me, with the harshness which he employed towards himself, that I might "last" a few months, perhaps one or two years, provided I gave up all fatigue.
"Do not look forward to a long career:" that was the substance of his consultations.
The certainty of my approaching end thus acquired, while increasing the natural gloom of my imagination, gave me an incredible peace of mind. This inner disposition explains a passage of the note placed at the head of the Essai historique[158], as well as the following passage from the Essai itself:
"Smitten as I am with an illness which leaves me little hope, I behold objects with a tranquil eye; the calm atmosphere of the tomb is perceptible to the traveller who is but a few days' march removed from it[159]."
The bitterness of the reflections spread over the Essai will therefore arouse no astonishment: I wrote that work while lying under sentence of death, between the verdict and the execution. A writer who believed himself to be drawing near his end, amid the destitution of his exile, could scarcely cast a smiling glance upon the world.
But how to spend the days of grace that had been granted me? I might have lived or died promptly by my sword: I was forbidden to use it. What remained? A pen? It was neither known nor proved, and I was ignorant of its power. Would my innate taste for letters, the poems of my childhood, the sketches of my travels suffice to attract the public attention? The idea of writing a work on the comparative Revolutions had occurred to me; I turned it over in my mind as a subject more suited to the interests of the day; but who would undertake the printing of a manuscript with none to extol its merits, and who would support me during the composition of that manuscript? Even if I had but a few days to spend on earth, I must nevertheless have some means of support for those few days. My thirty louis, already seriously curtailed, could not go very far, and, in addition to my own distress, I had to support the general distress of the Emigration. My companions in London all had occupations: some had embarked in the coal trade, others with their wives made straw hats, others again taught the French which they did not know. They were all merry. The fault of our nation, its frivolity, had at that moment changed into virtue. They laughed in Fortune's face: that thieving wench was quite abashed at carrying off something which she was not asked to restore.
*
Peltier.
Peltier, author of the Domine salvum fac regem[160] and principal editor of the Actes des Apôtres, continued his Parisian enterprise in London. He was not precisely vicious: but he was devoured by a vermin of small faults of which it was impossible to purify him; he was a rake, a good-for-nothing, earned a great deal of money and spent it as lavishly, was at the same time the adherent of the Legitimacy and the ambassador of the black King Christophe[161] to George III., diplomatic correspondent of M. le Comte de "Limonade," and drank up in champagne the salary which was paid him in sugar[162]. This sort of M. Violet playing the grand airs of the Revolution on a pocket violin came to see me, and offered his services as a Breton. I spoke to him of my plan of the Essai; he loudly approved of it:
Peltier
"It will be superb!" he exclaimed, and offered me a room in the house of his printer, Baylis, who would print the work piece by piece as I wrote it.
Deboffe the bookseller should have the sale of it; he, Peltier, would trumpet it in his paper, the Ambigu, while one might obtain a footing in the London Courrier français, the editorship of which was soon to be transferred to M. de Montlosier[163]. Peltier never entertained a doubt: he spoke of getting me the Cross of St. Louis for my siege of Thionville. My Gil Blas, tall, lean, lanky, with powdered hair and a bald forehead, always shouting and joking, put his round hat on one ear, took me by the arm, and carried me off to Baylis the printer, where, without any ceremony, he hired a room for me at a guinea a month.
I was face to face with my golden future; but how to bridge over the present? Peltier obtained translations from the Latin and the English for me; I worked at translating by day, and at night at the Essai historique, into which I introduced a portion of my travels and my day-dreams. Baylis supplied me with the books, and I laid out a few shillings to ill purpose on the purchase of old volumes displayed on the bookstalls.
Hingant, whom I had met on the Jersey packet, had become intimate with me. He cultivated literature, he was well informed, and he wrote novels in secret and read me pages of them. He had a lodging not far from Baylis, at the end of a street leading into Holborn. I breakfasted with him every morning at ten o'clock; we talked about politics and above all about my work. I told him how much I had built of my nocturnal edifice, the Essai; then I reverted to my labour of the daytime, the translations. We met for dinner, at a shilling a head, in a public-house; thence we made for the fields. Often also we walked alone, for we were both of us fond of musing.
I would then direct my steps towards Kensington or Westminster. Kensington pleased me; I wandered about its solitary part, while the part adjacent to Hyde Park became filled with a brilliant multitude. The contrast between my penury and the display of wealth, between my destitution and the crowd, was pleasant to me. I watched the young Englishwomen pass in the distance with that sense of desirous confusion which my sylph had formerly caused me to feel when, after decking her with all my extravagances, I scarce dared lift my eyes upon my handiwork. Death, which I thought that I was approaching, added a mystery to this vision of a world from which I had almost departed. Did ever a look rest upon the foreigner seated at the foot of a fir-tree? Did some fair woman divine the invisible presence of René?
A night in Westminster Abbey.
At Westminster I found a different pastime: in that labyrinth of tombs I thought of mine ready to open. The bust of an unknown man like myself would never find a place amid those illustrious effigies! Then appeared the sepulchres of the monarchs: Cromwell[164] was there no longer, and Charles I.[165] was not there. The ashes of a traitor, Robert of Artois[166], lay beneath the flagstones which I trod with my loyal steps. The fate of Charles I. had just been extended to Louis XVI.; the steel was reaping its daily harvest in France, and the graves of my kindred were already dug.
The singing of the choir and the conversation of the visitors interrupted my reflections. I was not able often to repeat my visits, for I was obliged to give to the guardians of those who lived no more the shilling which was necessary to me to live. But then I would turn round and round outside the abbey with the rooks, or stop to gaze at the steeples, twins of unequal height, which the setting sun stained red with its fiery light against the black hangings of the smoke of the City.
One day, however, it happened that, wishing towards evening to contemplate the interior of the basilica, I became lost in admiration of its spirited and capricious architecture. Dominated by the sentiment of the "dowdy vastitie of our churches[167]," I wandered with slow footsteps and became benighted: the doors were closed. I tried to find an outlet; I called the usher, I knocked against the doors: all the noise I made, spread and spun out in the silence, was lost; I had to resign myself to sleeping among the dead.
After hesitating in my choice of a resting-place I stopped near Lord Chatham's[168] mausoleum, at the foot of the rood and of the double stair of Henry the Seventh's and the Knights' Chapel. At the entrance to those stairs, to those aisles enclosed with railings, a sarcophagus built into the wall, opposite to a marble figure of death armed with its scythe, offered me its shelter. The fold of a winding-sheet, also of marble, served me for a niche: following the example of Charles V.[169], I inured myself to my burial. I was in the best seats for seeing the world as it is. What a mass of greatnesses were confined beneath those vaults! What remains of them? Afflictions are no less vain than felicities: the hapless Jane Grey[170] is not different from the blithe Alice of Salisbury[171] save that the skeleton is less horrible because it has no head; her body is beautified by her punishment and by the absence of that which constituted its beauty. The tournaments of the victor of Crecy[172], the sports of the Field of the Cloth of Gold of Henry VIII.[173] will not be renewed in that theatre of funereal spectacles. Bacon[174], Newton[175], Milton[176] are interred as deeply, have passed away as completely, as their more obscure contemporaries. Should I, an exile, a vagabond, a pauper, consent to be no longer the petty, forgotten, sorrowful thing that I am in order to have been one of those famous, mighty, pleasure-sated dead? Ah, life is not all that! If from the shores of this world we cannot distinctly discern matters divine, let us not be astonished: time is a veil set between ourselves and God, even as our eyelids are interposed between our eyes and the light.
Reflections and release.
Crouching under my marble sheet, I descended from these lofty thoughts to the simple impressions of the place and moment. My anxiety mingled with pleasure was analogous to that which I used to experience in winter in my turret at Combourg, as I listened to the wind: a breeze and a shadow possess a kindred nature. Little by little I grew accustomed to the darkness and distinguished the figures placed over the tombs. I looked up at the vaults of this English Saint-Denis, whence one might say that the years that have been and the issues of the past hung down like Gothic lamps: the entire edifice was as it were a monolithic temple of ages turned to stone.
I had counted ten o'clock, eleven o'clock by the abbey clock: the hammer rising and falling upon the bell-metal was the only living creature in those regions beside myself. Outside, the sound of a carriage, the voice of the watchman: that was all; those distant sounds of earth reached me as though from one world to another. The fog from the Thames and the smoke of coal crept into the basilica, and spread a denser dusk around.
At last a twilight spread out in a corner filled with the dimmest shadows: with fixed gaze I watched the progressive growth of the light; did it emanate from the two sons[177] of Edward IV., assassinated by their uncle? The great tragedian says:
"O thus," quoth Dighton, "lay the gentle babes,"—
"Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girdling one another
Within their alabaster innocent arms:
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which, in their summer beauty, kiss'd each other[178]."
God did not send me those two sad and charming souls; but the light phantom of a scarcely adolescent woman appeared carrying a light sheltered in a sheet of paper twisted shell-wise: it was the little bell-ringer. I heard the sound of a kiss, and the bell tolled the break of day. The ringer was quite terrified when I went out with her through the gate of the cloisters. I told her of my adventure; she said she had come to do duty for her father, who was sick: we did not speak of the kiss.
*
I amused Hingant with the story of my adventure, and we made a plan to lock ourselves in at Westminster; but our distress summoned us to the dead in a less poetic manner.
My funds were becoming exhausted: Baylis and Deboffe had ventured, against a written promise of reimbursement in case of non-sale, to commence the printing of the Essai; there their generosity ended, and very naturally; I was even astonished at their boldness. The translations fell off; Peltier, a man of pleasure, grew weary of his prolonged obligingness. He would willingly have given me what he had, if he had not preferred to squander it; but to go looking here and there for work, to do patient acts of kindness, was beyond him. Hingant also saw his treasure diminishing; we were reduced to sixty francs between us. We cut down our rations, as on a vessel when the passage is prolonged. Instead of a shilling apiece, we spent only sixpence on our dinner. With our morning tea we reduced the bread by one half, and suppressed the butter. This abstinence vexed my friend's nerves. His wits went wool-gathering; he would prick his ears and seem to be listening to some one; he would burst out laughing in reply, or shed tears. Hingant believed in magnetism, and had disordered his brain with Swedenborg's[179] rubbish. He told me in the morning that he had heard noises during the night; if I denied his fancies he grew angry. The anxiety which he caused me prevented me from feeling my own sufferings.
These were great, nevertheless: that rigorous diet, combined with the work, chafed my diseased chest; I began to find a difficulty in walking, and yet I spent my days and a part of my nights out of doors, so as not to betray my distress. When we came to our last shilling, my friend and I agreed to keep it in order to make a pretense of breakfasting. We arranged that we should buy a penny roll; that we should have the hot water and the tea-pot brought up as usual; that we should not put in any tea; that we should not eat the bread, but that we should drink the hot water with a few little morsels of sugar left at the bottom of the bowl.
Five days passed in this fashion. I was devoured with hunger; I burned with fever; sleep had deserted me; I sucked pieces of linen which I soaked in water; I chewed grass and paper. When I passed the bakers' shops, the torment I endured was horrible. One rough winter's night, I stood for two hours outside a shop where they sold dried fruits and smoked meats, swallowing all I saw with my eyes: I could have eaten not only the provisions, but the boxes and baskets in which they were packed.
On the morning of the fifth day, dropping from inanition, I dragged myself to Hingant's; I knocked at the door: it was closed. I called out; Hingant was some time without answering: at last he rose and opened the door. He laughed with a bewildered air; his frock-coat was buttoned; he sat down at the tea-table.
"Our breakfast is coming," he said in a strange voice.
I thought I saw some stains of blood on his shirt; I suddenly unbuttoned his coat: he had given himself a wound with a penknife, two inches deep, in his left breast. I called out for help. The maid-servant went to fetch a surgeon. The wound was dangerous.
This new misfortune obliged me to take a resolution. Hingant, who was a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany, had refused to take the salary which the English Government allowed the French magistrates, in the same way that I had declined the shilling a day doled out to the Emigrants: I wrote to M. de Barentin[180] and disclosed my friend's position to him. Hingant's relations hurried to his assistance and took him away to the country. At that very moment my uncle de Bedée forwarded me forty crowns, a touching offering from my persecuted family. I seemed to see all the gold of Peru before my eyes: the mite of the French prisoners supported the exiled Frenchman.
Destitution.
My destitution had impeded my work. As I delivered no more manuscript, the printing was suspended. Deprived of Hingant's company, I did not keep on my room at Baylis' at a guinea per month; I paid the quarter that was due and went away. Below the needy Emigrants who had served as my first protectors in London were others who were even more necessitous. There are degrees among the poor as among the rich; one can go from the man who in winter keeps himself warm with his dog down to him who shivers in his torn rags. My friends found me a room more suited to my diminishing fortune: one is not always at the height of prosperity! They installed me in the neighbourhood of Marylebone Street, in a garret whose dormer window overlooked a cemetery: every night the watchman's rattle told me of the proximity of body-snatchers. I had the consolation to hear that Hingant was out of danger.
Friends came to see me in my work-room. To judge from our independence and our poverty, we might have been taken for painters on the ruins of Rome; we were artists in wretchedness on the ruins of France. My face served as a model, my bed as a seat for my pupils. The bed consisted of a mattress and a blanket. I had no sheets; when it was cold my coat and a chair, added to my blanket, kept me warm. I was too weak to make my bed; it remained turned down as God had left it.
My cousin de La Boüétardais, turned out of a low Irish lodging for not paying his rent, although he had put his violin in pawn, came to ask me for a shelter against the constable: a vicar from Lower Brittany lent him a trestle-bed. La Boüétardais, like Hingant, had been a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany; he did not possess a handkerchief to tie round his head; but he had deserted with bag and baggage, that is to say, he had brought away his square cap and his red robe, and he slept under the purple by my side. Jocular, a good musician with a fine voice, on nights when we could not sleep he would sit up quite naked on his trestles, put on his square cap, and sing ballads, accompanying himself on a guitar with only three strings. One night when the poor fellow was in this way humming Scendi propizia from Metastasio's[181] Hymn to Venus, he was struck by a draught; he twisted his mouth, and he died of it, but not at once, for I rubbed his cheek heartily. We held counsel in our elevated room, argued on politics, and discussed the gossip of the Emigration. In the evening, we went to our aunts and cousins to dance, after the dresses had been trimmed with ribbons and the hats made up.
They who read this portion of my Memoirs are not aware that I have interrupted them twice: once to offer a great dinner to the Duke of York, brother of the King of England; and once to give a rout on the anniversary of the entry of the King of France into Paris, on the 8th of July. That rout cost me forty thousand francs. Peers and peeresses of the British Empire, ambassadors, distinguished foreigners filled my gorgeously-decorated rooms. My tables gleamed with the glitter of London crystal and the gold of Sèvres porcelain. The most delicate dainties, wines and flowers abounded. Portland Place was blocked with splendid carriages. Collinet and the band from Almack's enraptured the fashionable melancholy of the dandies and the dreamy elegance of the pensively-dancing ladies. The Opposition and the Ministerial majority had struck a truce: Mrs. Canning[182] talked to Lord Londonderry, Lady Jersey to the Duke of Wellington. Monsieur, who this year sent me his compliments on the sumptuousness of my entertainments in 1822, did not know in 1793 that, not far from him, lived a future minister who, while awaiting the advent of his greatness, fasted over a cemetery for his sin of loyalty. I congratulate myself to-day on having experienced shipwreck, gone through war, and shared the sufferings of the humblest classes of society, as I applaud myself for meeting with injustice and calumny in times of prosperity. I have profited by these lessons: life, without the ills that make it serious, is a child's bauble.
*
I was the man with the forty crowns; but since fortunes had not yet been levelled, nor the price of commodities reduced, there was nothing to serve as a counterpoise to my rapidly diminishing purse. I could not reckon on further help from my family, exposed in Brittany to the double scourge of the Chouans[183] and the Terror. I saw nothing before me but the workhouse or the Thames.
A contrast.
Some of the Emigrants' servants, whom their masters could no longer feed, had turned into eating-house keepers in order to feed their masters. God knows the merry meals that were made at these ordinaries! God knows, too, what politics were talked there! All the victories of the Republic were turned into defeats, and, if by chance one entertained a doubt as to an immediate restoration, he was declared a Jacobin. Two old bishops, who looked like live corpses, were walking one morning in St James's Park:
"Monseigneur," said one, "do you think we shall be in France by June?"
"Why, monseigneur," replied the other, after ripe reflection, "I see nothing against it."
Peltier, the man of resource, unearthed me, or rather unnested me, in my eyry. He had read in a Yarmouth newspaper that a society of antiquarians was going to produce a history of the County of Suffolk, and that they wanted a Frenchman able to decipher some French twelfth-century manuscripts from the Camden[184] Collection. The parson at Beccles was at the head of the undertaking; he was the man to whom to apply.
"That will just suit you," said Peltier; "go down there, decipher that old waste-paper, go on sending copy for the Essai to Baylis; I'll make the wretch go on with his printing; and you will come back to London with two hundred guineas in your pocket, your work done, and go ahead!" I tried to stammer out some objections:
"What the deuce!" cried my man. "Do you want to stay in this palace, where I'm catching cold already? If Rivarol, Champcenetz, Mirabeau-Tonneau and I had gone about pursing up our mouths, a fine business we should have made of the Actes des Apôtres! Do you know that that story of Hingant is making the devil of a to-do? So you both wanted to let yourself die of hunger, did you? Ha, ha, ha! Pouf!.... Ha, ha!"
Peltier, doubled in two, was holding his knees with laughter. He had just received a hundred subscriptions to his paper from the colonies; he had been paid for them, and jingled his guineas in his pocket. He dragged me by main force, together with the apoplectic La Boüétardais and two tattered Emigrants who were at hand, to dine at the London Tavern. He made us drink port and eat roast beef and plum-pudding till we were ready to burst.
"Monsieur le comte," he asked my cousin, "what makes you carry your potato-trap askew like that?"
La Boüétardais, half shocked, half pleased, explained the thing as best he could; he described how he had been suddenly seized while singing the words, "O bella Venere!" My poor paralytic looked so dead, so benumbed, so shabby, as he stammered out his "bella Venere" that Peltier fell back, roaring with laughter, and almost upset the table by striking it with his two feet underneath.
I go to Beccles.
Upon reflection, the advice of my fellow-countryman, a real character out of my other fellow-countryman, Le Sage[185], did not appear to me so bad. After three days spent in making inquiries and in obtaining some clothes from Peltier's tailor, I set out for Beccles with some money lent me by Deboffe, on the understanding that I was going on with the Essai. I changed my name, which no Englishman was able to pronounce, for that of Combourg, which had been borne by my brother, and which reminded me of the sorrows and pleasures of my early youth. I alighted at the inn, and handed the minister of the place a letter from Deboffe, who was greatly esteemed in the English book-world. The letter recommended me as a scholar of the first rank. I was very well received, saw all the gentlemen of the district, and met two officers of our Royal Navy who were giving French lessons in the neighbourhood.
*
My strength improved; my trips on horseback restored my health a little. England, viewed thus in detail, was melancholy, but charming; it was the same thing, the same outlook wherever I went. M. de Combourg was invited to every party. I owed to study the first alleviation of my lot. Cicero was right to recommend the commerce of letters in the troubles of life. The women were delighted to meet a Frenchman to talk French with.
The misfortunes of my family, which I learnt from the newspapers, and which made me known by my real name (for I was unable to conceal my grief), increased the interest which my acquaintances took in me. The public journals announced the death of M. de Malesherbes; of his daughter, Madame la Présidente de Rosanbo; of his granddaughter, Madame de Chateaubriand; and of his grandson-in-law, the Comte de Chateaubriand, my brother, all immolated together, on the same day, at the same hour, on the same scaffold[186]. M. de Malesherbes was an object of admiration and veneration among the English; my family connection with the defender of Louis XVI. added to the kindness of my hosts.
My uncle de Bedée informed me of the persecutions endured by the rest of my relations. My old and incomparable mother had been flung into a cart with other victims and carried from the depths of Brittany to the gaols of Paris, in order to share the lot of the son whom she had loved so well. My wife and my sister Lucile were awaiting their sentence in the dungeons at Rennes; there had been a question of imprisoning them at Combourg Castle, which had become a State fortress: their innocence was accused of the crime of my emigration. What were our sorrows on foreign soil compared with those of the French who had remained at home? And yet, what unhappiness, amid the sufferings of exile, to know that our very exile was made the pretext for the persecution of our kin.
Two years ago my sister-in-law's wedding ring was picked up in the kennel of the Rue Cassette; it was brought to me, broken; the two hoops of the ring had come apart and hung linked together; the names were clearly legible engraved inside. How had the ring come to be found there? When and where had it been lost? Had the victim, imprisoned at the Luxembourg, passed by the Rue Cassette on her way to execution? Had she dropped the ring from the tumbril? Had the ring been torn from her finger after the execution? I was shocked at the sight of this symbol, which, both by its broken condition and its inscription, reminded me of a destiny so cruel. Something fatal and mysterious was attached to this ring, which my sister-in-law seemed to send me from among the dead, in memory of herself and my brother. I have given it to her son[187]: may it not bring him ill-luck!
Cher orphelin, image de ta mère,
Au ciel pour toi, je demande, ici-bas,
Les jours heureux retranchés à ton père
Et les enfants que ton oncle n'a pas[188].
This halting stanza and two or three others are the only present I was able to make my nephew on his marriage.
Execution of my brother.
Another relic remains to me of these misfortunes. The following is a letter which M. de Contencin wrote to me when, in turning over the city records, he found the order of the revolutionary tribunal which sent my brother and his family to the scaffold:
"Monsieur le vicomte,
"There is a sort of cruelty in awaking in a mind that has suffered much the memory of the ills which have affected it most painfully. This consideration made me hesitate some time before offering for your acceptance a very pathetic document, upon which I alighted in the course of my historical researches. It is a death-certificate, signed before the decease by a man who always displayed himself as implacable as death itself, whenever he found illustriousness and virtue united in the same person.
"I hope, monsieur le vicomte, that you will not take it too ill of me if I add to your family records a document which recalls such cruel memories. I presumed that it would have an interest for you, since it had a value in my eyes, and I at once thought of offering it to you. If I am not guilty of an indiscretion, I shall be doubly gratified, as this proceeding gives me the opportunity to express to you the feelings of profound respect and sincere admiration with which you have long inspired me, and with I am, monsieur le vicomte,
"your most humble, obedient servant,
"A. de Contencin.
"Prefecture of the Seine,
"Paris, 28 March 1835."
I replied to the above letter as follows:
"I had had the Sainte-Chapelle searched, monsieur, for the documents concerning the trial of my unfortunate brother and his wife, but the 'order' which you have been good enough to send me was not to be found. This order and so many others, with their erasures and their mangled names, have doubtless been presented to Fouquier before the tribunal of God; he will have been compelled to acknowledge his signature. Those are the times which people regret, and on which they write volumes filled with admiration! For the rest, I envy my brother: he, at least, has since many a long year quitted this sad world. I thank you infinitely, monsieur, for the esteem which you have shown me in your beautiful and noble letter, and I beg you to accept the assurance of the very distinguished consideration with which I have the honour to be, etc."
This death order is, above all, remarkable for the proof which it affords of the levity with which the murders were committed: names are wrongly spelt, others are effaced. These defects of form, which would have been enough to stay the simplest sentence, did not stop the headsmen; all they cared for was the exact hour of death: "at five o'clock precisely." Here is the authentic document, I copy it faithfully:
"Executor of Criminal Judgments,
"REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.
"The executor of criminal judgments will not fail to go to the house of justice of the Conciergerie, there to execute the judgment which condemns Mousset, d'Esprémenil, Chapelier, Thouret, Hell, Lamoignon Malsherbes, the woman Lepelletier Rosambo, Chateau Brian, and his wife [proper name effaced and illegible], the widow Duchatelet, the wife of Grammont, formerly duke, the woman Rochechuart [Rochechouart], and Parmentier;—14, to the penalty of death. The execution will take place to-day, at five o'clock precisely, on the Place de la Révolution in this city.
"H. Q. Fouquier,
"Public Prosecutor."Given at the Tribunal, 3 Floréal, Year II. of the French Republic.
"Two conveyances."
The 9 Thermidor saved my mother's days; but she was forgotten at the Conciergerie. The conventional commissary found her:
"What are you doing here, citizeness?" he asked. "Who are you? Why do you stay here?"
My mother replied that, having lost her son, she had not inquired what was going on, and that it was indifferent to her whether she died in prison or elsewhere.
"But perhaps you have other children?" said the commissary.
Release of my mother.
My mother mentioned my wife and sisters detained in custody at Rennes. An order was sent to place them at liberty, and my mother was compelled to leave the prison.
In the histories of the Revolution, the writers have omitted to set the picture of outer France by the side of the picture of inner France, to depict that great colony of exiles, changing its industry and its sorrows in accordance with the diversity of climate and the difference in national manners.
Outside France, everything operated by individuals: changes of condition, obscure afflictions, noiseless and unrewarded sacrifices; and, in this variety of individuals of every rank, age and sex, one fixed idea was preserved: that of Old France travelling with her prejudices and her faithful sons, as formerly the Church of God had wandered over the earth with her virtues and her martyrs.
Inside France, everything operated in the mass: Barère announcing murders and conquests, civil wars and foreign wars; the gigantic combats of the Vendée and on the banks of the Rhine; thrones toppling to the sound of the march of our armies; our fleets swallowed up by the waves; the people disinterring the monarchs at Saint-Denis and flinging the dust of the dead kings into the eyes of the living kings to blind them; New France, glorying in her new-found liberties, proud even of her crimes, steadfast on her own soil, while extending her frontiers, doubly armed with the headsman's blade and the soldier's sword.
In the midst of my family sorrows I received some letters from my friend Hingant, to reassure me as to his fate: letters very remarkable in themselves; he wrote to me in September 1795:
"Your letter of the 23rd of August is full of the most touching feeling. I showed it to a few people, whose eyes filled with tears on reading it. I was almost tempted to say what Diderot said on the day when J. J. Rousseau came and cried in his prison at Vincennes:
"'See how my friends love me.'
"My illness, as a matter of fact, was only one of those nervous fevers which cause great suffering, and for which time and patience are the best remedies. During the fever I read extracts from the Phædo and Timæus, and I said with Cato:
"'It must be so, Plato; thou reason'st well[189]!'
"I had formed an idea of my journey as one might form an idea of a voyage to India. I imagined that I should see many new objects in the 'spirit world,' as Swedenborg calls it, and above all that I should be free from the fatigue and dangers of the journey."
*
Eight miles from Beccles, in a little town called Bungay, lived an English clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Ives[190], a great Hellenist and mathematician. He had a wife who was still young, with a charming appearance, mind and manners, and an only daughter, fifteen years of age. I was introduced to this household, and was better received there than anywhere else. We took our wine in the old English fashion, and sat two hours at table after the ladies had left. Mr. Ives, who had been to America, liked to tell of his travels, to hear the story of my own, to talk of Newton and Homer. His daughter, who had become learned in order to please her father, was an excellent musician, and sang as Madame Pasta[191] sings to-day. She reappeared in time to pour out tea, and charmed away the old parson's infectious drowsiness. Leaning against the end of the piano, I listened to Miss Ives in silence.
When the music was over, the young lady questioned me about France, about literature; asked me to set her plans of studies; she wished particularly to know the Italian authors, and begged me to give her some notes on the Divina Commedia and the Gerusalemme. Gradually I began to experience a timid charm that issued from the soul: I had decked the Floridans, I should not have ventured to pick up Miss Ives's glove; I grew confused when I tried to translate a passage from Tasso. I was more at my ease with that chaster and more masculine genius, Dante.
Charlotte Ives's age and my own were suited. Into friendships formed in the midst of one's career, there enters a certain melancholy; when two people do not meet at the very outset, the memories of the person beloved are not mingled with that portion of our days in which we breathed without knowing her: those days, which belong to another society, are painful to the memory, and as though curtailed from our existence. When there is a disproportion of age, the drawbacks increase: the older of the two commenced life before the younger was born; the younger is destined to remain alone in his turn: one has walked in a solitude this side of a cradle, the other will cross a solitude that side of a tomb; the past was a desert for the first, the future will be a desert for the second. It is difficult to be in love in all the conditions that produce happiness: youth, beauty, seasonable time, harmony of hearts, tastes, character, graces, and years.
Having had a fall from my horse, I stayed some time with Mr. Ives. It was winter; the dreams of my life began to flee before reality. Miss Ives became more reserved; she ceased to bring me flowers; she would no longer sing.
Charlotte Ives.
If I could have been told that I should pass the rest of my life unknown in the bosom of this retiring family, I should have died of pleasure: love needs but permanency to become at once an Eden before the fall and an Hosanna without end. Contrive that beauty lasts, that youth remains, that the heart can never weary, and you reproduce Heaven. Love is so surely the sovereign felicity that it is pursued by the phantom of perpetuity; it will consent to pronounce only irrevocable vows; in the absence of joys, it seeks to make endless its sorrows; a fallen angel, it still speaks the language it spoke in the incorruptible abode; its hope is that it may never cease; in its twofold nature and its twofold illusion here below, it strives to perpetuate itself by immortal thoughts and never-failing generations.
I beheld with dismay the moment approach when I should be obliged to go. On the eve of the day announced for my departure, our dinner was a gloomy one. To my great surprise, Mr. Ives withdrew at dessert, taking his daughter with him, and I remained alone with Mrs. Ives: she was extremely embarrassed. I thought she was going to reproach me with an inclination which she might have discovered, although I had never mentioned it. She looked at me, lowered her eyes, blushed; herself bewitching in her confusion, there was no sentiment which she might not by right have claimed for herself. At last, overcoming with an effort the obstacle which had prevented her from speaking:
"Sir," she said in English, "you behold my confusion: I do not know if Charlotte pleases you, but it is impossible to deceive a mother's eyes; my daughter has certainly conceived an attachment for you. Mr. Ives and I have consulted together: you suit us in every respect; we believe you will make our daughter happy. You no longer possess a country; you have lost your relations; your property is sold: what is there to take you back to France? Until you inherit what we have, you will live with us."
Of all the sorrows that I had undergone, this was the sorest and greatest. I threw myself at Mrs. Ives's feet; I covered her hands with my kisses and my tears. She thought I was weeping with happiness, and herself began to sob for joy. She stretched out her arm to pull the bell-rope; she called her husband and daughter:
"Stop!" I cried. "I am a married man!"
She fell back fainting.
I went out and, without returning to my room, left the house on foot I reached Beccles and took the mail for London, after writing a letter to Mrs. Ives of which I regret that I did not keep a copy.
I have retained the sweetest, the tenderest, the most grateful recollection of that event. Before I made my name, Mr. Ives's family was the only one that bore me good-will and welcomed me with genuine affection. Poor, unknown, proscribed, with neither beauty nor attraction, I was offered an assured future, a country, a charming wife to take me out of my loneliness, a mother almost as beautiful to fill the place of my old mother, a father full of information, loving and cultivating literature, to replace the father of whom Heaven had bereaved me: what did I bring to set off against all that? No illusion could possibly enter into the choice they made of me; there was no doubt that I was loved. Since that time, I have met with but one attachment sufficiently lofty to inspire me with the same confidence. As to any interest of which I may subsequently have been the object, I have never been able to make out whether outward causes, a noisy fame, official finery, the glamour of a high literary or political position were not the covering which attracted the attentions shown to me.
For the rest, if I had married Charlotte Ives, my part on earth would have been changed: buried in an English county, I should have become a sporting gentleman; not a single line would have fallen from my pen; I should even have forgotten my language, for I wrote in English, and my ideas were beginning to take shape in English in my head. Would my country have lost much by my disappearance? If I could put on one side that which has consoled me, I would say that I should already have numbered days of calm, instead of the troubled days that have fallen to my share. The Empire, the Restoration, the divisions and quarrels of France: what would all that have mattered to me? I should not each morning have to palliate faults, to contend with errors. Is it certain that I possess a real talent, and that that talent is worth the sacrifice of my whole life? Shall I outlast my tomb? If I do go beyond it, in the transformation which is now being brought about, in a changed world occupied with very different things, will there be a public to hear me? Shall I not be a man of the past, unintelligible to the new generations? Will not my ideas, my opinions, my very style seem tedious and antiquated to a scornful posterity? Will my shade be able to say, as the shade of Virgil said to Dante:
"Poeta fui e cantai: I was a poet and I sang?"[192]
*
I return to London.
I returned to London, but found no repose: I had fled from my fate as a miscreant from his crime. How painful it must have been to a family so worthy of my homage, of my respect, of my gratitude, to receive a sort of refusal from the unknown man whom they had welcomed, to whom they had offered a new home with a simplicity, an absence of suspicion, of precaution, almost patriarchal in character! I imagined Charlotte's grief, the just reproaches with which I was liable and deserved to be covered: for, after all, I had taken pleasure in yielding to an inclination of which I knew the insuperable unlawfulness. Had I, in fact, made a vain attempt at seduction, without taking into account the heinousness of my conduct? But whether I stopped, as I did, in order to remain an honest man, or overcame all obstacles in order to surrender to an inclination stigmatized beforehand through my conduct, I could only have plunged the object of that seduction into sorrow or regret.
From these bitter reflections I abandoned myself to other thoughts no less filled with bitterness: I cursed my marriage, which, according to the false perception of a mind at that time very sick, had thrown me out of my course and was robbing me of happiness. I did not reflect that, on account of the ailing temperament to which I was subject, and the romantic notions of liberty which I cherished, a marriage with Miss Ives would have been as painful to me as a more independent union.
One thing within me remained pure and charming, although profoundly sad: the image of Charlotte; that image ended by prevailing over my revolts against my fate. I was tempted a hundred times to return to Bungay, not to appear before the troubled family, but to hide by the road-side to see Charlotte pass, to follow her to the temple where we had the same God, if not the same altar, in common, to offer that woman, through the medium of Heaven, the inexpressible ardour of my vows, to pronounce, at least in thought, the prayer from the nuptial benediction which I might have heard from a clergyman's lips in that temple:
"O God,... look mercifully upon this thy handmaid. ... now to be joined in wedlock.... May it be to her a yoke of love and peace.... May she be fruitful in offspring ... that they may both see their children's children unto the third and fourth generation, and arrive at a desired old age[193]."
Wavering between resolve and resolve, I wrote Charlotte long letters which I tore up. A few unimportant notes which I had received from her served me as a talisman; attached to my steps by my thought, Charlotte, gracious and compassionate, followed me along the paths of my sylph, purifying them as she went. She absorbed my faculties; she was the centre through which my intelligence made its way, in the same way as the blood passes through the heart; she disgusted me with all else, for I made of her a perpetual object of comparison to her advantage. A real and unhappy passion is a poisoned leaven which remains at the bottom of the soul, and which would poison the bread of the angels.
The spots by which I had wandered, the hours and words which I had exchanged with Charlotte, were engraved on my memory: I saw the smile of the wife who had been destined for me; I respectfully touched her black tresses; I pressed her shapely arms to my breast, like a chain which I might have worn round my neck. No sooner was I in some sequestered spot than Charlotte, with her white hands, came to sit by my side. I divined her presence, as at night one inhales the perfume of unseen flowers.
I had lost Hingant's company, and my walks, more solitary than before, left me full liberty to carry with me the image of Charlotte. There was not a common, a road, a church, within thirty miles of London, that I did not visit. The most deserted places, a field of nettles, a ditch planted with thistles, all that was neglected by men, became favourite spots for me, and in those spots Byron already drew breath. Leaning my head upon my hand, I contemplated the scorned sites; when their painful impression affected me too greatly, the memory of Charlotte came to enchant me: I was then like the pilgrim who, on reaching a solitude within view of the rocks of Mount Sinai, heard the nightingale sing.
In London, my habits aroused surprise. I looked at nobody, I never replied, I did not know what was said to me: my old associates suspected me of madness.
*
What happened at Bungay after my departure? What became of that family to which I had brought joy and mourning?
You will have remembered that I am at present Ambassador to the Court of George IV., and that I am writing in London, in 1822, of what happened to me in London in 1795.
Some matters of business obliged me, a week ago, to interrupt the narrative which I resume to-day. During this interval, my man came and told me one morning, between twelve and one o'clock, that a carriage had stopped at my door and that an English lady was asking to see me. As I have made it a rule, in my public position, to deny myself to nobody, I ordered the lady to be shown up.
Lady Sutton.
I was in my study, when Lady Sutton was announced; I saw a lady in mourning enter the room, accompanied by two handsome boys also in mourning: one might have been sixteen, the other fourteen years of age. I went towards the stranger; her perturbation was such that she could hardly walk. She said to me, in faltering accents:
"My lord, do you remember me?"
Yes, I remembered Miss Ives! The years which had passed over her head had left only their spring-time behind. I took her by the hand, I made her sit down, and I sat down by her side. I could not speak; my eyes were full of tears; I gazed at her in silence through those tears; I felt how deeply I had loved her by what I was now experiencing. At last I was able to say, in my turn:
"And you, madam, do you remember me?"
She raised her eyes, which till then she had kept lowered, and for sole reply gave me a smiling and melancholy glance, like a long remembrance. Her hand still lay between mine. Charlotte said to me:
"I am in mourning for my mother; my father has been dead many years. These are my children."
At these words, she drew away her hand and sank back into her chair, covering her eyes with her handkerchief. Soon she resumed:
"My lord, I am now speaking to you in the language which I practised with you at Bungay. I am ashamed: excuse me. My children are the sons of Admiral Sutton[194], whom I married three years after your departure from England. But I am not sufficiently self-possessed to-day to tell you the details. Permit me to come again."
I asked her for her address, and gave her my arm to take her to her carriage. She trembled, and I pressed her hand to my heart.
I called on Lady Sutton the next day; I found her alone. Then there began between us a long series of those "Do you remember?" questions which cause a whole life-time to revive. At each "Do you remember?" we looked at one another; we sought to discover in each other's faces those traces of time which so cruelly mark the distance from the starting-point and the length of the road traversed. I said to Charlotte:
"How did your mother tell you?"
Charlotte blushed, and hastily interrupted me:
"I have come to London to ask you to interest yourself on behalf of Admiral Sutton's children. The eldest would like to go to Bombay. Mr. Canning, who has been appointed Governor-General of India, is your friend; he might consent to take my son with him. I should be very grateful to you, and I should like to owe to you the happiness of my first child."
She laid a stress on these last words.
"Ah, madam," I replied, "of what do you remind me? What a subversion of destinies! You, who received a poor exile at your father's hospitable board; you, who did not scorn his sufferings; you, who perhaps thought of raising him to a glorious and unhoped-for rank: it is you who now ask his protection in your own country! I will see Mr. Canning; your son, however much it costs me to give him that name, your son shall go to India, if it only depends on me. But tell me, madam, how does my new position affect you? In what light do you look upon me at present? That word, 'my lord,' which you employ seems very harsh to me."
Charlotte replied:
"I don't think you changed, not even aged. When I spoke of you to my parents during your absence, I always gave you the title of 'my lord;' it seemed to me that you had a right to bear it: were you not to me the same as a husband, 'my lord and master'."
Sentimental memories.
That graceful woman reminded me of Milton's Eve, as she uttered these words: she was not born in the womb of another woman; her beauty bore the imprint of the divine hand that had moulded it.
I went to Mr. Canning and to Lord Londonderry; they made as many difficulties about a small place as would have been made in France, but they promised, as people promise at Court. I gave Lady Sutton an account of the measures I had taken. I saw her three times more: at my fourth visit, she told me she was returning to Bungay. This last interview was a sad one. Charlotte talked to me once more of the past, of our secret life, of our reading, our walks, our music, the flowers of yester-year, the hopes of bygone days.
"When I knew you," she said, "no one spoke your name; now, who has not heard it? Do you know that I have a work and several letters in your handwriting? Here they are." And she handed me a packet. "Do not be offended if I prefer to keep nothing of yours." She began to weep. "Farewell, farewell," she said. "Think of my son. I shall not see you again, for you will not come to see me at Bungay."
"I will," I cried; "I shall come to bring you your son's appointment."
She shook her head with an air of doubt, and withdrew. On returning to the Embassy, I locked myself in and opened the packet. It contained only a few unimportant notes from myself and a scheme of studies, with remarks on the English and Italian poets. I had hoped to find a letter from Charlotte: there was none; but, in the margins of the manuscript, I perceived some notes in English, French, and Italian: the age of the ink and the youthfulness of the hand in which they were written showed that it was long since they had been inscribed upon those margins.
That is the story of my relations with Miss Ives. As I finish telling it, it seems to me as though I were losing a second Charlotte in the same island in which I lost the first. But between that which I feel at this moment and that which I felt at the hours whose tenderness I have recalled lies the whole space of innocence: passions have interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. I could no longer bring to an artless woman the candour of desire, the sweet ignorance of a love that did not surpass the limits of a dream. I was writing then on the wave of sadness; I am now no longer tossed on the wave of life. Well, if I had pressed in my arms, as a wife and a mother, her who was destined for me as a virgin and a bride, it would have been with a sort of rage, to blight, to fill with sorrow, to crush out of existence those seven-and-twenty years which had been given to another after having been offered to me.
I must look upon the sentiment which I have just recalled as the first of that kind which entered my heart; it was nevertheless in no way sympathetic with my stormy nature: the latter would have corrupted it and made me incapable of long enjoying such sacred delectations. It was then that, embittered as I was by misfortunes, already a pilgrim from beyond the seas, having begun my solitary travels, it was then that I became obsessed by the mad ideas depicted in the mystery of René, which turned me into the most tormented being on the face of the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by causing a few rays of true light to penetrate to the depths of my soul, at first dissipated a cloud of phantoms: my dæmon, like an evil genius, plunged back into the abyss, and awaited the effects of time in order to renew her apparitions.
*
My relations with Deboffe in connection with the Essai sur les révolutions had never been completely interrupted, and it was important for me to resume them in London at the earliest possible moment to support my material existence. But whence had my last misfortune arisen? From my obstinate bent for silence. In order to understand this it is necessary to enter into my character.
At no time of my life have I been able to overcome the spirit of reticence and of mental solitude which prevents me from talking of my private affairs.
My reserved nature.
No one can state without lying that I have told what most people tell in a moment of pain, pleasure, or vanity. A name, a confession of any seriousness never issues, or issues but rarely, from my lips. I never talk to casual people of my interests, my plans, my work, my ideas, my attachments, my joys, my sorrows, being persuaded of the profound weariness which one causes to others by talking of one's self. Sincere and truthful though I be, I am lacking in openness of heart: my soul incessantly tends to close up; I do not tell anything wholly, and I have never allowed my complete life to transpire, except in these Memoirs. If I try to begin a story, I am suddenly terrified at the idea of its length; after four words, the sound of my voice becomes unendurable to me, and I am silent. As I believe in nothing except religion, I distrust everything: malevolence and disparagement are the two distinctive qualities of the French mind; derision and calumny, the certain result of a confidence.
But what have I gained by my reserved nature? To become, because I was impenetrable, a fantastic something, having no relation with my real being? My very friends are mistaken in me, when they think that they are making me better known and when they adorn me with the illusions of their love for me. All the small intellects of the ante-chambers, the public offices, the newspapers, the cafés have assigned ambition to me, whereas I have none at all. Cold and dry in matters of everyday life, I have nothing of the enthusiast or the sentimentalist: my clear and swift perception quickly pierces men and facts, and strips them of all importance. Far from carrying me away, from idealizing apposite truths, my imagination disparages the loftiest events and baffles even myself; I see the petty and ridiculous side of things first of all; great geniuses and great things scarcely exist in my eyes. While I show myself polite, encomiastic and full of admiration for the self-conceited minds which proclaim themselves superior intelligences, my secret contempt laughs at all those faces intoxicated with incense, and covers them with Callot[195] masks. In politics, the warmth of my opinions has never exceeded the length of my speech or my pamphlet. In the inner and theoretical life, I am the man of all the dreams; in the outer and practical life, I am the man of realities. Adventurous and orderly, passionate and methodical, I am the most chimerical and the most positive, the most ardent and the most icy being that ever existed, a whimsical androgynus, formed out of the different blood of my mother and my father.
The portraits, utterly without resemblance, that have been made of me, are due in the main to the reticence of my speech. The crowd is too thoughtless, too inattentive, to see individuals as they are. Whenever, by chance, I have endeavoured to rectify some of these false judgments in my prefaces, I have not been believed. In the ultimate result, all things being indifferent to me, I have not insisted; an "as you please" has always rid me of the irksomeness of persuading anyone or of seeking to establish a truth. I return to my spiritual tribunal, like a hare to its form: there I resume my contemplation of the moving leaf or the bending blade of grass.
I do not make a virtue of my guardedness, which is as invincible as it is involuntary: although it is not deceitful, it has the appearance of being so; it is not in harmony with natures happier, more amiable, more facile, more candid, more ample, more communicative than mine. It has often injured me in matters of sentiment and business, because I have never been able to endure explanations, reconciliations brought about by protests and elucidations, lamentations and tears, verbiage and reproaches, details and apologies.
In the case of the Ives family, this obstinate silence of mine concerning myself proved extremely fatal to me. A score of times Charlotte's mother had inquired into my family and given me the opportunity of speaking openly. Not foreseeing whither my silence would lead me, I contented myself, as usual, with replying in short, vague sentences. Had I not been the victim of that odious mental perversity, all misunderstanding would have become impossible, and I should not have appeared to wish to deceive the most generous hospitality; the truth, as I told it at the last moment, did not excuse me: genuine harm had none the less been done.
I resumed my work in the midst of my grief and of the just reproaches with which I covered myself. I even took pleasure in this work, for it struck me that, by achieving renown, I should be giving the Ives family less cause to repent the interest which they had shown me. Charlotte, with whom I thus sought to be reconciled through my glory, presided over my studies. Her image was seated before me while I wrote. When I raised my eyes from the paper, I lifted them upon the adored image, as though the original were in fact there. The inhabitants of Ceylon one morning saw the luminary of day rise in extraordinary splendour; its orb opened out, and from it issued a dazzling being, who said to the Cingalese:
"I have come to reign over you."
Charlotte, issuing from a ray of light, reigned over me.
Let us leave these memories; memories grow old and dim like hopes. My life is about to change, to speed under other skies, in other valleys. First love of my youth, you flee with all your charms! I have just seen Charlotte again, it is true; but after how many years did I see her again? Sweet glimpse of the past, pale rose of the twilight which borders the night, long after the sun has set!
*
The Essai Historique.
Life has often been represented (by me first of all) as a mountain which we climb on one side and descend on the other: it would be as true to compare it to an Alp, to the bare, ice-crowned summit which has no reverse. Following up this figure, the traveller always climbs upwards and never down; he then sees more clearly the space which he has covered, the paths which he has not taken, although by doing so he could have risen by a gentler slope: he looks down with sorrow and regret upon the point where he commenced to stray. Thus I must mark at the publication of the Essai historique the first step which led me out of the peaceful road. I finished the first part of the great work which I had planned; I wrote the last word between the idea of death (I had fallen ill again) and a vanished dream: In somnis venit imago conjugis.[196] The Essai, printed by Baylis, was published by Deboffe in 1797[197]. This date marks one of the turning-points in my life. There are moments at which our destiny, whether because it yields to society, or obeys the laws of nature, or begins to make us what we shall have to remain, suddenly turns aside from its first line, like a river which changes its course with a sudden bend.
The Essai offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist, a publicist, and a politician. To say that I hoped, in so far at least as I am capable of hoping, to make a great success with the work, goes without saying: we authors, petty prodigies of a prodigious era, make a claim to keep up intelligence with future races; but we do not, I firmly believe, know where posterity lives, and we put the wrong address. When we grow numb in our graves, death will freeze our words, written or sung, so hard that they will not melt like the "frozen words" of Rabelais.
The Essai was to be a sort of historical encyclopædia. The only volume published is in itself a fairly wide inquiry; I had the sequel in manuscript; then came, beside the researches and annotations of the annalist, the lays and roundelays of the poet, the Natchez, and so on. I am hardly able to understand to-day how I could give myself up to such extensive studies amid an active wandering life, subject to so many reverses. My obstinacy in working explains this fertility: in my young days I often wrote for twelve or fifteen hours without leaving the table at which I sat, scratching out and recommencing the same page ten times over. Age has not caused me to lose any part of this faculty of application: to this day my diplomatic correspondence, which in no way interrupts my literary composition, is entirely from my own hand.
The Essai made a stir among the Emigration: it was opposed to the opinions of my companions in misfortune; in the different social positions which I have occupied, my independence has nearly always offended the men with whom I went. I have by turns been the leader of different armies of which the soldiers did not belong to my side: I have led the Old Royalists to the conquest of the public liberties, and especially of the liberty of the press, which they detested; I have rallied the Liberals, in the name of that same liberty, to the standard of the Bourbons, whom they hold in abhorrence. As it happened, Emigrant opinion attached itself to my person through self-love: the English reviews having spoken of me with praise, the commendation was reflected over the whole body of the "faithful."
I had sent copies of the Essai to La Harpe, Ginguené, and de Sales. Lemierre[198], nephew of the poet of the same name[199], and translator of Gray's Poems, wrote to me from Paris, on the 15th of July 1797, that my Essai had had the greatest success. One thing is certain, that, if the Essai became for a moment known, it was almost immediately forgotten: a sudden shadow swallowed up the first ray of my glory.
Mrs. O'Larry.
As I had become almost a personage, the upper Emigration began to seek me out in London. I made my way from street to street; I first left Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, and advanced as far as the Hampstead Road. Here I stopped for some months at the house of Mrs. O'Larry, an Irish widow, the mother of a very pretty daughter of fourteen, and tenderly devoted to cats. Linked by this common passion, we had the misfortune to lose two beautiful kittens, white all over, like two ermines, with black tips to their tails.
Mrs. O'Larry was visited by old ladies of the neighbourhood with whom I was obliged to drink tea in the old-fashioned style. Madame de Staël has depicted this scene in Corinne at Lady Edgermond's:
"'My dear, do you think the water has boiled long enough to pour it on the tea?'
"'My dear, I think it is a little too early[200].'"
There also came to these evenings a tall and beautiful young Irishwoman, called Mary Neale, in the charge of her guardian. She noticed a wound lurking in my gaze, for she said to me:
"You carry your heart in a sling."
I carried my heart anyhow.
Mrs. O'Larry left for Dublin; then, moving once more from the neighbourhood of the colony of the poor Emigration of the east, I arrived, from lodging to lodging, in the quarter of the rich Emigration of the west, among the bishops, the Court families, and the West Indian planters. Peltier had come back to me: he had got married as a joke; he was the same boaster as always, lavishly obliging, and frequenting his neighbours' pockets rather than their society. I made several new acquaintances, particularly in the society in which I had family connections: Christian de Lamoignon[201], who had been seriously wounded in the leg in the engagement at Quiberon, and who is now my colleague in the House of Lords, became my friend. He presented me to Mrs. Lindsay, who was attached to Auguste de Lamoignon[202], his brother: the Président Guillaume[203] was not installed in this fashion at Basville, in the midst of Boileau[204], Madame de Sévigné, and Bourdaloue[205].
Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of character: the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the fireside of the last of the Ninons[206]. The old monarchy was going under, with all its abuses and all its graces. It will be dug up one day, like those skeletons of queens, decked with necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings, which they exhume in Etruria. At Mrs. Lindsay's I met M. Malouet[207] and Madame du Belloy, a woman worthy of affection, the Comte de Montlosier and the Chevalier de Panat[208]. The last had a well-earned reputation for wit, dirtiness, and gluttony; he belonged to that audience of men of taste who used formerly to sit with folded arms in the presence of French society: idlers whose mission was to look on at everything and criticize everything; they exercised the functions which the newspapers fulfill to-day, without the same bitterness, but also without attaining their great popular influence.
The Comte de Montlosier.
Montlosier continued to ride cock-horse on his famous phrase of the "wooden cross," a phrase somewhat smoothed down by me, when I revived it, but true at bottom. On leaving France he went to Coblentz: he was badly received by the Princes, had a quarrel, fought a duel at night on the bank of the Rhine, and was run through. Being unable to move and quite unable to see, he asked the seconds if the point of the sword was sticking out behind:
"Only three inches," said they, feeling him.
"Then it's nothing," replied Montlosier. "Sir, withdraw your weapon."
Thus badly received for his royalism, Montlosier went to England, and took refuge in literature, the great almshouse of the Emigrants, in which I had a pallet next to his. He obtained the editorship of the Courrier français.[209] In addition to his newspaper, he wrote physico-politico-philosophical works: in one of these works he proved that blue is the colour of life, because our veins turn blue after death, life coming to the surface of the body in order to evaporate and return to the blue sky; as I am very fond of blue, I was quite charmed.
Feudally liberal, aristocratic and democratic, with a motley mind, made up of shreds and patches, Montlosier is delivered, with difficulty, of incongruous ideas; but, once he has succeeded in extricating them from their after-birth, they are sometimes fine, above all energetic: an anti-clerical as a noble, a Christian through sophistry and as a lover of the olden times, he would, in the days of paganism, have been an eager partisan of freedom in theory and of slavery in practice, and would have had the slave thrown to the lampreys in the name of the liberty of the human race. Wrong-headed, cavilling, stiff-necked, and hirsute, the ex-deputy of the nobles of Riom nevertheless indulges in condescendences to the powers that be; he knows how to look after his interests, but he does not suffer others to perceive this, and he shelters his weaknesses as a man beneath his honour as a gentleman. I do not wish to speak ill of my "smoky Auvernat," with his novels of the Mont-d'Or and his polemics of the Plaine; I like his heteroclitous person. His long and obscure setting forth and twisting of ideas, with parentheses, clearings of the throat, and tremulous "oh, ohs," bore me (I abominate the tenebrous, the involved, the vaporous, the laborious); but, on the other hand, I am amused by this naturalist of volcanoes, this abortive Pascal, this mountain orator who holds forth in the tribune as his little fellow-countrymen sing in the chimney-tops[210]; I love this gazetteer of peat-bogs and castle-keeps, this Liberal explaining the Charter through a Gothic window, this shepherd-lord half married to his milkmaid, himself sowing his barley in the snow, in his little pebbly field; I shall always thank him for dedicating to me, in his chalet in the Puy-de-Dôme, an old black rock taken from a cemetery of the Gauls discovered by himself.
The Abbé Delille, another fellow-countryman of Sidonius Apollinarius, of the Chancelier de l'Hospital, of La Fayette, of Thomas, of Chamfort[211], had also come to settle in London, after being driven from the Continent by the inundation of the Republican victories. The Emigration was proud to number him in its ranks: he sang our misfortunes, a reason the more for loving his muse. He did a great deal of work; he could not help himself, for Madame Delille locked him up and did not release him until he had earned his day's keep by writing a certain number of verses. I called on him one day, and was kept waiting; then he appeared with very red cheeks: it is said that Madame Delille used to box his ears; I know nothing about it; I only say what I saw.
Who has not heard the Abbé Delille recite his verses? He told a very good story: his ugly, irregular features, lit up by his imagination, went admirably with his affected delivery, with the character of his talent, and with his clerical profession. The Abbé Delille's masterpiece is his translation of the Georgics, with the exception of the sentimental pieces; but it is as though you were reading Racine translated into the language of Louis XV.
The Abbé Delille.
The literature of the eighteenth century, saving a few fine talents which dominate it, standing as it does between the classical literature of the seventeenth century and the romantic literature of the nineteenth, without lacking naturalness lacks nature; given up wholly to arrangements of words, it was neither sufficiently original as a new school, nor sufficiently pure as an ancient school. The Abbé Delille was the poet of the modern country-houses, in the same way as the troubadours were the poets of the old castles; the verses of the one and the ballads of the other point the difference which existed between aristocracy in its prime and aristocracy in its decrepitude: the abbé describes the pleasures of reading and chess in the manor-houses in which the troubadours sang of tourneys and crusades.
The distinguished persons of our Church militant were at that time in England: the Abbé Carron, who wrote the life of my sister Julie; the Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon[212], a stern and narrow-minded prelate, who contributed more and more to estrange M. le Comte d'Artois from his country; the Archbishop of Aix[213], slandered perhaps because of his success in society; another learned and pious bishop, but so avaricious that, had he had the misfortune to lose his soul, he would never have bought it back. Nearly all misers are men of wit: I must be a great fool.
Among the Frenchwomen in the West End was Madame de Boigne[214], amiable, witty, filled with talent, extremely pretty, and the youngest of them all; she has since, together with her father, the Marquis d'Osmond[215], represented the Court of France in England much better than my unsociability has done. She is writing now, and her talents will reproduce admirably all that she has seen[216].
Mesdames de Caumont[217], de Gontaut[218], and du Cluzel also inhabited the quarter of the exiled felicities, if at least I am mistaking Madame de Caumont and Madame du Cluzel, both of whom I had seen for a moment in Brussels. What is quite certain is that Madame la Duchesse de Duras[219] was in London at that time: I was not to know her till ten years later. How often in one's life one passes by that which would constitute its charm, even as the navigator cuts through the waters of a heaven-favoured land which he has only missed by one horizon and one day's sail! I am writing this on the banks of the Thames, and to-day a letter will go by post to tell Madame de Duras, on the banks of the Seine, that I have come across my first memory of her.
*
From time to time the Revolution sent us Emigrants of new kinds and opinions; different layers of exiles were formed: the earth contains beds of sand or clay left behind by the waves of the Deluge. One of those waves brought me a man whose loss I mourn to-day, a man who was my guide in literature, and whose friendship was both one of the honours and one of the consolations of my life.
You have read, in an earlier book of these Memoirs, that I had known M. de Fontanes in 1789: it was in Berlin, last year, that I learnt the news of his death. He was born at Niort of a noble Protestant family: his father had had the misfortune to kill his brother-in-law in a duel. Young Fontanes, brought up by a brother of great merit, came to Paris. He saw Voltaire[220] die, and that great representative of the eighteenth century inspired his first verses: his poetic attempts attracted the notice of La Harpe. He undertook some work for the stage, and became intimate with a charming actress, Mademoiselle Desgarcins. Living near the Odéon, wandering around the Chartreuse he celebrated its solitude. He had made a friend destined to become mine, M. Joubert[221]. When the Revolution occurred, the poet became entangled with one of those stationary parties which always remain torn by the progressive party which pulls them forwards and the retrograde party which draws them back. The monarchists attached M. de Fontanes to the staff of the Modérateur. When the bad days began, he took refuge at Lyons, where he married. His wife was confined of a son: during the siege of the town, which the revolutionaries had called "Commune-Affranchie[222]," in the same way as Louis XI., when banishing the citizens, had called Arras "Ville-Franchise[223]," Madame de Fontanes was obliged to move her nursling's cradle in order to place it within shelter from the bombs. Returning to Paris after the 9 Thermidor, M. de Fontanes established the Mémorial[224] with M. de La Harpe and the Abbé de Vauxelles[225]. He was proscribed on the 18 Fructidor, and England became his haven of refuge.
The Marquis de Fontanes.
M. de Fontanes, together with Chénier, was the last writer of the classic school in the elder line: his prose and verse resemble each other and have a similar merit. His thoughts and images have a melancholy unknown to the century of Louis XIV., which knew only the austere and holy sadness of religious eloquence. That melancholy is mingled with the works of the chanter of the Jours des Morts, as it were the imprint of the period in which he lived: it fixes the date of his coming; it shows that he was born after Rousseau, while connected by taste with Fénelon. If the writings of M. de Fontanes were reduced to two very small volumes, one of prose, the other of verse, it would be the most graceful funeral monument that could be raised upon the tomb of the classic school[226].
Among the papers which my friend left are several cantoes of his poem of the Grèce Sauvée, books of odes, scattered poems, and so on. He would not have published any more himself: for that critic, so acute, so enlightened, so impartial when not blinded by his political opinions, had a horrible dread of criticism. He was superlatively unjust to Madame de Staël. An envious article by Garat[227] on the Forêt de Navarre almost stopped him short at the outset of his political career. Fontanes, so soon as he appeared, killed the affected school of Dorat[228], but he was unable to restore the classic school, which was hastening to its end together with the language of Racine[229].
If one thing in the world was likely to be antipathetic to M. de Fontanes, it was my manner of writing. With me began the so-called romantic school, a revolution in French literature: nevertheless, my friend, instead of revolting against my barbarism, became enamoured of it. I could see a great wonderment on his face when I read to him fragments of the Natchez, Atala and René; he was unable to bring those productions within the scope of the common rules of criticism, but he felt that he was entering into a new world; he saw a new form of nature; he understood a language which he could not speak. He gave me excellent advice; I owe to him such correctness of style as I possess; he taught me to respect the reader's ear; he prevented me from falling into the extravagance of invention and the ruggedness of execution of my disciples.
It was a great joy to me to see him again in London, received with open arms by the Emigration; they asked him for cantoes from the Grèce Sauvée; they crowded to hear him. He came to live near me; we became inseparable. We were present together at a scene worthy of those days of misfortune: Cléry[230], who had lately landed, read us his Memoirs in manuscript. Imagine the emotion of an audience of exiles, listening to the valet of Louis XVI. telling, as an eye-witness, of the sufferings and death of the prisoner of the Temple! The Directory, alarmed by Cléry's Memoirs, published an interpolated edition, in which it made the author talk like a lackey and Louis XVI. like a street-porter: this is, perhaps, one of the dirtiest of all the instances of revolutionary turpitude.
Emigrant society.
M. du Theil[231], who had charge of the affairs of M. le Comte d'Artois in London, had hastened to seek out Fontanes; the latter asked me to take him to the agent of the Princes. We found him surrounded by all the defenders of the Throne and the Altar who were idling about Piccadilly, by a crowd of spies and sharpers who had escaped from Paris under various names and disguises, and by a swarm of adventurers, Belgians, Germans, Irishmen, dealers in the Counter-revolution. In a corner of the crowd was a man of thirty or thirty-two, at whom nobody looked, and who himself seemed interested only in an engraving of the Death of General Wolfe. Struck by his appearance, I asked who he was: one of my neighbours answered:
"It's nobody; it's a Vendean peasant who has brought a letter from his leaders."
This man, who was "nobody," had seen the deaths of Cathelineau[232], the first general of the Vendée and a peasant like himself; Bonchamps, in whom Bayard had come to life again; Lescure[233], armed with a hair-cloth which was not bullet-proof; d'Elbée[234], shot in an armchair, his wounds not permitting him to embrace death standing; La Rochejacquelein[235], whose body was ordered to be "verified" in order to reassure the Convention in the midst of its victories. That man, who was "nobody," had assisted at two hundred captures and recaptures of towns, villages, and redoubts, at seven hundred skirmishes, and seventeen pitched battles; he had fought against three hundred thousand regular troops and six or seven hundred thousand recruits and national guards; he had assisted in taking one hundred guns and fifty thousand muskets; he had passed through the "infernal columns," companies of incendiaries commanded by Conventional; he had been in the midst of the ocean of fire which, three several times, rolled its waves over the woods of the Vendée; lastly, he had seen three hundred thousand Hercules of the plough, the associates of his work, die, and one hundred square leagues of fertile country change into a desert of ashes.
The two Frances met upon this soil levelled by them. All that remained in blood and memory of the France of the Crusades fought against the new blood and hopes of the France of the Revolution. The conqueror recognised the greatness of the conquered. Turreau[236], the Republican general, declared that "the Vendeans would take their place in history in the first rank of soldier peoples." Another general wrote to Merlin de Thionville[237]:
"Troops which have beaten such Frenchmen as those may well hope to beat all other nations."
The legions of Probus[238], in their song, said as much of our fathers. Bonaparte called the combats of the Vendée "combats of giants."
A Vendean peasant.
In the crowd in the parlour, I was the only one to look with admiration and respect upon the representative of those ancient "Jacques[239]," who, while breaking the yoke of their lords, repelled the foreign invasion under Charles V.[240]: I seemed to see a child of the Commons of the time of Charles VII.[241], who, with the small provincial nobility, foot by foot, furrow by furrow, reconquered the soil of France. He wore the indifferent air of the savage; his look was grey and inflexible as steel rod; his lower lip trembled over his clenched teeth; his hair hung down from his head like a mass of torpid snakes, ready, however, to dart erect again; his arms, hanging by his sides, gave nervous jerks to a pair of huge fists slashed with sword-cuts: one would have taken him for a sawyer. His physiognomy expressed a homely, rustic nature, employed, by force of manners, in the service of interests and ideas contrary to that nature; the native fidelity of the vassal, the Christian's simple faith were mingled with the rough plebeian independence accustomed to value itself and to take the law into its own hands. The feeling of liberty in him seemed to be merely the consciousness of the strength of his hand and the intrepidity of his heart. He spoke no more than a lion; he scratched himself like a lion, yawned like a lion, sat on his flank like a bored lion, and seemed to dream of blood and forests.
What men, in every party, were the French of that time, and what a race are we to-day! But the Republicans had their principle in themselves, in the midst of themselves, while the principle of the Royalists was outside France. The Vendeans sent deputations to the exiles; the giants sent to ask leaders of the pigmies. The rude messenger upon whom I gazed had seized the Revolution by the throat and cried:
"Enter; pass behind me; she will not hurt you; she shall not move; I have got hold of her!"
No one was willing to pass: then Jacques Bonhomme let go the Revolution, and Charette[242] broke his sword.
*
While I was making these reflections on this tiller of the soil, as I had made others of a different kind at the sight of Mirabeau and Danton, Fontanes obtained a private audience of him whom he pleasantly called "the controller-general of finance:" he came out of it greatly satisfied, for M. du Theil had promised to encourage the publication of my works, and Fontanes thought only of me. It was impossible to be a better man than he: timid where he himself was concerned, he became all courage in matters of friendship; he proved this to me at the time of my resignation on the occasion of the death of the Duc d'Enghien[243]. In conversation, he burst into ludicrous fits of literary rage. In politics, he reasoned falsely: the crimes of the Convention had inspired him with a horror of liberty. He detested the newspapers, the band of false philosophers, the whole science of ideas, and he communicated that hatred to Bonaparte, when he became connected with the master of Europe.
We went for walks in the country; we stopped under some of those spreading elm-trees scattered about the fields. Leaning against the trunk of these elms, my friend told me of his early journey to England before the Revolution, and of the verses he then addressed to two young ladies who had grown old in the shadow of the towers of Westminster: towers which he found standing as he had left them, while at their base lay buried the illusions and the hours of his youth.
We often dined at some solitary tavern in Chelsea, on the Thames, where we talked of Milton and Shakespeare: they had seen what we saw; they had sat, like ourselves, on the bank of that stream, a foreign stream to us, the national stream to them. We returned to London, at night, by the faltering rays of the stars, drowned one after the other in the fog of the city. We reached our lodging, guided by uncertain glimmers which scarcely showed us the road across the coal smoke hovering red around every lamp: thus speeds the poet's life.
We saw London in detail; as an old exile, I acted as cicerone to the new recruits of banishment which the Revolution demanded, young or old: there is no legal age for misfortune. In the course of one of these excursions, we were surprised by a rain-storm, mingled with thunder, and obliged to take shelter in the passage of a mean house, of which the door had been left open by accident. There we met the Duc de Bourbon[244]: I saw for the first time, at this Chantilly[245], a prince who was not yet the Last of the Condés.
The Duc of Bourbon.
The Duc de Bourbon, Fontanes and I, all three outlaws, seeking a shelter from the same storm, on foreign soil, under a poor man's roof! Fata viam invenient.
Fontanes was recalled to France. He embraced me, expressing wishes for a speedy meeting. On arriving in Germany, he wrote me the following letter:
"28 July 1798.
"If you have experienced any regrets at my departure from London, I swear to you that mine have been no less real. You are the second person in whom, in the course of my life, I have found an imagination and a heart corresponding to my own. I shall never forget the consolation you brought me in exile and in a foreign land. My fondest and most constant thoughts, since I have left you, have turned upon the Natchez. What you have read to me, especially of recent days, is admirable and will not leave my memory. But the charm of the poetic ideas which you left in my mind disappeared for a moment on my arrival in Germany.
"The most hideous news from France followed on that which I showed you on leaving you. I spent five or six days in the cruellest perplexity. I even feared for persecutions directed against my family. My fears are now greatly diminished. The evil has even been very slight; they threaten rather than strike, and it is not those of my 'date' whom they wish to see exterminated. The last post has brought me assurances of peace and good-will. I can continue my journey, and shall set out early next month. I shall live near the Forest of Saint-Germain, among my family, Greece, and my books: why can I not also say the Natchez! The unexpected storm which has just taken place in Paris was due, I am certain, to the follies of the agents and leaders you know of. I have a clear proof of this in my hands. Convinced as I am of this, I am writing to Great Pulteney Street[246] with all possible politeness, but also with all the caution which prudence demands. I wish to escape all correspondence in the coming month, and I leave the greatest doubt upon the steps which I am going to take and the residence which I intend to select.
"For the rest, I am again speaking of you in the accents of friendship, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that the hopes of future usefulness which they may place in me may revive the favourable dispositions which they showed me in this matter, and which are so certainly due to your person and your great talents. Work, work, my dear friend, and become illustrious. You have it in your power: the future is in your hands. I hope that the word so often given by the 'controller-general of finance' has been at least in part redeemed. That part consoles me, for I cannot bear the thought of a fine work delayed for the sake of a little assistance. Write to me; let our hearts be in communication, let our muses remain ever friends. Do not doubt but that, when I am able to move about freely in my country, I shall prepare a hive and flowers for you beside my own. My attachment is unalterable. I shall be alone so long as I am not with you. Talk to me of your work. I want to gladden you in conclusion: I wrote half of a new canto on the banks of the Elbe, and I am better pleased with it than with all the rest.
"Farewell, I embrace you tenderly, and am your friend.
"Fontanes."
Fontanes tells me that he wrote verses on changing the spot of his banishment. One can never take everything from the poet: he takes his lyre with him. Leave the swan his wings; each evening unknown streams will re-echo the melodious plaints which he would rather have sung to Eurotas.
"The future is in your hands": did Fontanes speak truly? Am I to congratulate myself on his prophecy? Alas! That promised future is already past: shall I have another?
*
Death of Fontanes.
This first and affectionate letter from the first friend whom I had in my life, the friend who walked by my side for twenty-three years from the date of that letter, reminds me painfully of my gradual isolation. Fontanes is no more; a profound sorrow, the tragic death of a son, cast him into an untimely grave. Almost all the persons of whom I have spoken in these Memoirs have disappeared; I am keeping an obituary register. A few years more and I, doomed to catalogue the dead, shall leave none to write my name in the book of the departed.
But if it must be that I remain alone, if not one being who has loved me is to stay by me to lead me to my last resting-place, I have less need than another of a guide: I have inquired the road, I have studied the places through which I should have to pass; I wished to see what happens at the last moment. Often, by the side of a pit into which a coffin was being lowered with ropes, I have heard the death-rattle of those ropes; next, I have caught the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on the coffin: at each new spadeful the hollow sound decreased; the earth, as it filled up the vault, gradually drove the eternal silence to the surface of the grave.
Fontanes, you wrote to me, "Let our muses remain ever friends:" you have not written to me in vain.
[146] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in December 1846.—T.
[147] The anniversary dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern, 21 May 1822.—T.
[148] The amount of M. de Chateaubriand's donation was £20.—T.
[149] Field-Marshal Frederick Duke of York and Albany, Bishop of Osnaburg, K.G. (1763-1827), second son of George III., and Commander-in-Chief of the army. A military commander of no capacity; four defeats stand to his debit: Hondschoote (8th September 1793), Turcoing (1794), Alxmaar (1799), Castricum (1799), not to mention the scandals in connection with Mrs. Clarke and the sale of commissions in the army.—T.
[150] Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset, K.G. (1775-1855).—T.
[151] Vice-Admiral George Byng, sixth Viscount Torrington (1768-1831).—T.
[152] William Powlett Orde-Powlett, second Lord Bolton (1782-1850).—T.
[153] George Canning (1770-1827), appointed Viceroy of India, but did not take up the appointment. He became Premier in 1827.—T.
[154] Times, 22nd May 1822. Chateaubriand had asked Canning to return thanks on his behalf for the toast of "the illustrious foreign personages who honoured the society with their company." These were Chateaubriand and the Tripolitan Ambassador, who also "returned thanks through the medium of another gentleman."—T.
[155] Canning entered Parliament as a member of Pitt's party in 1793, and joined his ministry as Under-Secretary of State in 1796. Pitt used to speak of Canning and Arthur Wellesley as "the boys."—T.
[156] Marie Joseph Annibal de Bedée, Comte de La Boüétardais (1758-1809). He emigrated in 1790, after the death of his wife, never returned to France, and died in London, 6 January 1809.—B.
[157] Dr. Edmund Goodwyn (1756-1829), author of Dissertatio Medica de morte Submersorum (1786), and of a translation of the same work in English (1788). He is supposed to have been the original of Thackeray's Dr. Goodenough.—T.
[158] "For the rest, my health, disturbed by much travel and many cares, vigils and studies, is so deplorable that I fear I shall be unable to fulfil forthwith my promise concerning the other volumes of the Essai historique."—B.
[159] Essai historique sur les révolutions, Book I. part i., Introduction.—B.
[160] One of Peltier's first pamphlets, published October 1789, and denouncing the Duc d'Orléans and Mirabeau as the principal authors of the day's work of the 5th and 6th of October.—B.
[161] Henri Christophe (1767-1820), King of Haiti under the title of Henry I. He led the negro insurrection in 1790, caused himself to be proclaimed President in 1806, assumed the title of Emperor in 1811, and reigned until 1820, when he committed suicide to escape being put to death by his subjects.—T.
[162] Peltier was paid his salary as Haitian Minister by shipments of sugar and coffee, the sale of which brought him in some eight thousand pounds a year. One of his epigrams against Louis XVIII., who received him coldly after the Restoration, happening to be applicable to Christophe, the supplies were stopped together with his ministerial powers, and he died a poor man.—B.
[163] François Dominique Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier (1755-1838). He came to London after going through the campaign of the Princes, and became editor, not of the Courrier français, but of the Courrier de Londres, which had been founded by the Abbé de Calonne.—B.
[164] Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was buried in Westminster, but dug up at the Restoration, hanged at Tyburn, and buried under the gallows.—T.
[165] The remains of King Charles I. are buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.—T.
[166] Robert, Count of Artois ( 1287-1343), endeavoured to recover from his brother-in-law, Philip VI. of France, the county of Artois, which had been taken from him in a former reign. He was sentenced to perpetual banishment, but had before this fled from the kingdom and began plotting against the King of France. Philip pursued him from county to county, causing the various princes to refuse him refuge, until he fled to England, where he was welcomed by Edward III. (1333). In 1336 Philip proclaimed Robert of Artois a traitor and an enemy of France, and forbade all his vassals of whatever rank, in or out of France, to receive or aid him on penalty of confiscation of their fiefs. Edward accepted the insult as addressed to himself, prepared for war, proclaimed himself King of France in 1337, and invaded France in 1339, thus commencing the Hundred Years' War.—T.
[167] Florio's Montaigne, Booke II. Chap. xii.: An Apologie of Raymond Sebond.—T.
[168] William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-1778). His monument by Bacon stands in the North Transept near the entrance to the chapels which lead to the Chapel of Henry VII. and the Knights of the Bath.—T.
[169] Charles V., Emperor of Germany (1500-1558), abdicated in 1556 and retired to the neighbourhood of the Monastery of San Yuste in Estremadura. One month before his death (which occurred on the 21st of September 1558) he was seized with a fancy for going through the ceremonies of his own funeral, and, attired in a monk's dress, he joined in the chants of the community around an empty coffin placed in the convent chapel.—T.
[170] Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) was buried after her execution, together with her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London.—T.
[171] Catharine, not Alice, Countess of Salisbury (d. circa 1350), née Grandison, wife of William de Montacute, first Earl of Salisbury, and heroine of the spurious Garter story, was buried in her husband's foundation at Bisham.—T.
[172] Edward III., King of England (1312-1377), is buried in the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor.—T.
[173] Henry VIII., King of England (1491-1547), is buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.—T.
[174] Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, first Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626), is buried in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans.—T.
[175] Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is buried in the North Aisle of Westminster Abbey. His monument is by Rysbrack.—T.
[176] John Milton (1608-1674) has a monumental bust by Rysbrack in Poets' Corner. He is buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate.—T.
[177] Edward V. King of England (1471-1483) and Richard Duke of York (1474-1483), smothered in the Tower of London by order of their uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. Some bones, presumed to be theirs, were found in the White Tower or Keep and removed to Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, where they now lie.—T.
[178] Shakespeare, Life and Death of King Richard III., Act IV. sc. 3.—T.
[179] Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the mystic theosophist. His doctrines made a certain amount of way in England, and he died in London.—T.
[180] Charles Louis François de Barentin (1738-1819). He had opened the States-General, as Keeper of the Seals, in 1789. He emigrated after Mirabeau had denounced him, on the 15th of July, as an enemy of the people.—B.
[181] Pietro Bonaventure Trapassi (1698-1782), known as Metastasio, one of the most graceful and charming of the Italian dramatic poets. He settled in Vienna in 1730, by invitation of the Emperor Charles VI., who gave him the title of Poeta Cesareo, and there wrote a multitude of lyrical tragedies, operas, oratorios, and poems of all kinds.—T.
[182] Mrs. Canning, née Joan Scott, a sister to the Duchess of Portland, married to Mr. Canning 8 July 1800.—T.
[183] The insurrectionary Royalists in Brittany had adopted this name from their rallying-cry, which imitated the note of the chat-huant, or screech-owl. Their marauding excursions were somewhat indiscriminate, and their presence not always welcome even to the loyal inhabitants.—T.
[184] William Camden (1551-1623), the famous antiquary, first head-master of Westminster School and later Clarencieux King-at-Arms. He has been surnamed the Strabo and the Pausanias of England.—T.
[185] Alain René Le Sage (1668-1747), author of the Aventures de Gil Blas, to whom Peltier has already been compared by Chateaubriand. Le Sage was born at Sarzeau, in Brittany: hence Chateaubriand speaks of him as his "fellow-countryman."—T.
[186] 22 April 1794.—B.
[187] The Comte Louis de Chateaubriand (1790-1873) followed a military career. In 1823 King Louis XVIII. created him heir-presumptive to his uncle's peerage. In 1830 he resigned his commission at the same time that his uncle withdrew from the House of Peers. In 1870, when eighty years of age, he refused to leave Paris, and inscribed his name on the register of the defenders of the besieged capital. He died at the Château de Malesherbes, 14 October 1873.—B.
[188] "Dear orphan, of thy mother the close type,
Of Heaven above I ask for thee below
The happy days snatched from thy sire ere ripe,
The children whom your uncle may not know."—T.
[189] Addison, Cato, Act V. sc. I.—T.
[190] Rev. John Clement Ives (d. 1812) was incumbent of Ilketshall St. Margaret, near Bungay, and of Great Holland in Essex.—T.
[191] Giuditta Pasta (1798-1865), née Negri, a famous Italian operatic singer of Jewish birth. Her celebrity commenced in 1822, the year in which Chateaubriand is writing, and lasted until 1835, when she retired into private life.—T.
[192] Inferno, I.—B.
[193] Order of Marriage according to the Catholic ritual.—T.
[194] Admiral Sir John Sutton was gazetted an Admiral of the Blue on the 12th of August 1819. I have no certainty that either Ives or Sutton (spelt Sulton in the original) are the real names of the individuals of whom Chateaubriand speaks, although I have succeeded in establishing that there was a clergyman of the name of Ives residing at Bungay in 1795, and an Admiral Sir John Sutton on the Navy List in 1822.—T.
[195] Jacques Callot (1593-1635), a painter, engraver, and etcher of the first order; his works amount to nearly 1600 pieces, and include an array of immensely powerful grotesque subjects, in which he caricatures the vices and absurdities of mankind.—T.
[196] Vir., ‚Æn., I. 357.—B.
[197] Chateaubriand began to write the Essai in 1794; the work was printed in London in 1796, and published in the beginning of 1797. It formed one volume, large 8vo, of 681 pages, without counting prefaces, tables of contents, etc. The full title ran: Essai historique, politique et moral sur les Révolutions anciennes et modernes, considérées dans leur rapports avec la Révolution françaises. Dédié à tous les partis. With this epigraph: Experti invicem sumus ego et fortuna.—Tacite. And at the foot of the title-page: A Londres: Se trouve chez J. Deboffe, Gerrard-Street; J. Debrett, Piccadilly; Mme. Lowes, Pall-Mall; A. Dulau et Co., Wardour-Street; Bodsey, Broad-Street; et J.-F. Fauche, à Hambourg. The author's name did not appear in the first edition.—B.
[198] Auguste Jacques Lemierre (circa 1760-1815). He also translated Thomson's Castle of Indolence and some German works. He died in hospital, under a false name, of a disease arising from his excesses.—T.
[199] Antoine Marin Lemierre (1723-1793), the author of two didactic poems and several tragedies, some of which achieved great success. His versification is considered incorrect and harsh, but some of his poems contain passages of great beauty.—T.
[200] Corinne, XIV. i.—B.
[201] Anne Pierre Christian Vicomte de Lamoignon (1770-1827), third son of Chrétien François de Lamoignon, Marquis de Basville. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France in 1815. He never wholly recovered from his wound.—B.
[202] René Chrétien Auguste Marquis de Lamoignon (1765-1845), Christian's elder brother, made a peer of France by Louis-Philippe in 1832.—B.
[203] Guillaume I. de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris, and founder of the Lamoignon-de Basville-de Malesherbes family.—T.
[204] Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), surnamed Despréaux, the distinguished poet and critic, and friend of Lamoignon.—T.
[205] Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), the eminent Jesuit preacher.—T.
[206] Ninon de Lenclos (1616-1706) was a lady of loose morals and decent manners who retained her charms and her lovers to her dying day. Her salon was frequented by the ladies of Louis XIV.'s Court and the whole society of the time, and she was a distinguished protectress of the contemporary men of letters.—T.
[207] Pierre Victor Baron Malouet (1740-1814), Intendant of the Navy before the Revolution and Commissary-General of the Navy under Napoleon. Louis XVIII. appointed him Minister of the Navy in 1814, but he died shortly after his nomination.—T.
[208] The Chevalier de Panat (1762-1834) was a naval officer of distinction. He became a rear-admiral and Secretary-General to the Admiralty in 1814. He neglected his person to such an extent that Rivarol said of him that he would stain mud.—T.
[209] Or rather, the Courrier de Londres, as explained above.—B.
[210] The Auvergnat lads in Paris were employed as chimney-sweeps.—T.
[211] The Comte de Montlosier and the Abbé Delille were both born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne; Sidonius Apollinarius (430-489) was born near Lyons, and became Bishop of Clermont; Michel de l'Hôpital (1505-1573), Chancellor of France, was born near Aigueperse in Auvergne; La Fayette was born in the same province, as were Thomas and Chamfort.—T.
[212] Jean François de La Marche, Comte de Léon (1729-1805), Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon. The bishopric was suppressed in 1790 and was not restored.—T.
[213] Jean-de-Dieu Raymond de Boisgelin de Cicé (1732-1804), Archbishop of Aix, and a member of the French Academy. After the Concordat he became Archbishop of Tours and a cardinal.—T.
[214] Madame de Boigne was the wife of Bénoît, Comte de Boigne (1741-1831), who had seen service in India under one of the native princes, and returned laden with colossal riches.—B.
[215] The Marquis d'Osmond (1751-1838) was French Minister at the Hague at the outbreak of the Revolution. In 1791 he was appointed Ambassador in St. Petersburg, but resigned before going out, and emigrated. He filled several diplomatic posts under the Empire, was Minister at Turin under the First Restoration, and in 1815 was created a peer of France and Ambassador to England, where he remained until January 1819.—B.
[216] The Comtesse de Boigne wrote some novels, of which the chief was Une Passion dans le grand monde. They were published after her death under the Second Empire, none of them attaining the smallest success.—B.
[217] Marie Constance de Caumont La Force (1774-1823), née de Lamoignon, wife of François Philibert Bertrand Nompar de Caumont, Marquis de La Force.—B.
[218] The Duchesse de Gontaut, née de Montault Navailles, married the Vicomte de Gontaut-Biron in London in 1794. She became Governess of the Children of France under the Restoration after the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux, and Louis XVIII. gave her the rank and title of duchess.—B.
[219] Claire Duchesse de Duras (1777-1828), née Lechat de Kersaint, the friend of Madame de Staël, and author of two novels, Ottrika and Édouard, which attained a great success.—T.
[220] François Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire. He was refused burial in Paris, and his remains were interred in the abbey at Scellières and removed to the Panthéon, where they still lie, in 1791.—T.
[221] Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), author of the Pensées, published in 1838, thanks to the care of Chateaubriand.—T.
[222] 1793—The town was nearly destroyed, its 200,000 inhabitants almost decimated by the commissaries of the Convention, and its name changed as stated.—T.
[223] 1477.—T.
[224] The Mémorial historique, politique et littéraire ran from 20 May to 4 September 1797. It is full of articles of the rarest merit, especially those by La Harpe, which are masterpieces.—B.
[225] Jacques Bourlet, Abbé de Vauxelles (1734-1802).—T.
[226] It has been raised by the filial piety of Madame Christine de Fontanes. M. Sainte-Beuve has adorned the frontal of the monument with his ingenious notice.—Author's Note (Paris, 1839).
[227] Dominique Joseph Garat (1749-1833), Minister of Justice under the Revolution in succession to Danton, Minister of the Interior in succession to Roland, and a writer of merit. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1806, but excluded at the Restoration.—T.
[228] Claude Joseph Dorat (1734-1780), an artificial, fastidious, and somewhat monotonous follower of Voltaire.—T.
[229] I omit a reference to Fontanes' Anniversaire de sa naissance and a quotation from that ode.—T.
[230] Jean Baptiste Cléry (1759-1809), the King's valet. His Memoirs were published in London, in 1799; with the title. Journal de ce qui s'est passé à la Tour du Temple pendant la captivité de Louis XVI., roi de France, and printed the same year in France. In order to destroy the interest attached to this publication, the Directory caused a spurious edition to be disseminated, entitled Mémoires de M. Cléry sur la détention de Louis XVI., and filled with matter calculated to injure the memory of the unhappy Sovereign and the Royal Family. Cléry protested against this with indignation so soon as it reached his ears, his protest appearing in July 1801 in the Spectateur du Nord, published in Hamburg.—B.
[231] Jean François du Theil (circa 1760-1822) emigrated in 1790, returned to France in 1792, during the captivity of Louis XVI., and exposed himself to the greatest dangers in order to communicate with the King. After escaping arrest, almost by a miracle, inside the Temple itself, he returned to Germany, where he joined the Comte d'Artois. He and the Duc d'Harcourt were together charged with the affairs of the Comte d'Artois and the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) in connection with the British Government.—B.
[232] Jacques Cathelineau (1758-1793), a weaver by trade and Commander-in-Chief of the Vendéan Army. He was mortally wounded in the assault upon Nantes (29 June 1793).—T.
[233] Louis Marie Marquis de Lescure (1766-1793), a brilliant Vendéan general, killed at the Tremblaye (3 November 1793).—T.
[234] Gigot d'Elbée (1752-1794), nicknamed General Providence, from his habit of relying on Providence for victory. He succeeded Cathelineau as general-in-chief, but was a far from capable commander. He was wounded at Chollet, and captured and shot on the island of Noirmoutiers.—T.
[235] Henri du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejacquelein (1773-1794) succeeded Lescure and repeatedly defeated the troops of the Republic. He was killed at the fight of Nouaillé, near Chollet, 4 March 1794.—T.
[236] Louis Marie Baron Turreau de Garambouville (1756-1816), Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the West (1793). He was French Ambassador to the United States from 1804 to 1810.—T.
[237] Merlin de Thionville (1762-1833), the Conventional, so called to distinguish him from Merlin de Douay, the jurisconsult.—T.
[238] Marcus Aurelius Probus, Emperor of Rome (circa 232-282), conquered and pacified Gaul, restoring the vineyards destroyed by order of Domitian.—T.
[239] The "Jacquerie" was a faction which ravaged France during the captivity of King John in England (1358). It consisted of peasants who had revolted against their feudal lords, and was led by a certain Guillaume Caillet, nicknamed "Jacques Bonhomme," after whom the "Jacques" called themselves.—T.
[240] Charles V., King of France (1337-1380), known as Charles the Wise, son and successor of John II. He successfully resisted the English invasion under Edward III., and recovered a large portion of the country, leaving Bordeaux, Calais, Cherbourg, Bayonne, and several fortresses in the hands of the English at his death.—T.
[241] Charles VII., King of France (1403-1461), surnamed Charles the Victorious, with the assistance of Joan of Arc, drove the English out of all France, with the sole exception of Calais.—T.
[242] François Athanase Charette de La Contrie (1763-1796) was at the head of the Poitou peasants in the rising of the Vendée and joined forces with Cathelineau. Discords broke out between the Royalist chiefs, and Charette left the army with his division and fought alone, capturing the Republican camp at Saint-Christophe, near Challans, in 1794. In 1796, Hoche utterly destroyed his small force, and Charette himself was taken prisoner and shot at Nantes.—T.
[243] Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-Condé, Duc d'Enghien (1772-1804), son of the Duc de Bourbon and grandson of the Prince de Condé. He was arrested on neutral territory and shot, after a mock trial, at Vincennes, by order of Napoleon (21 March 1804). Chateaubriand resigned his diplomatic appointment, as will appear, immediately after learning the news of this crime.—T.
[244] The Duc de Bourbon, father of the Duc d'Enghien, became "the Last of the Condés" on the latter's death.—T.
[245] Chantilly was the seat of the Condé family: the Duc de Bourbon left it on his death (1830) to the Duc d'Aumale, who bequeathed it to the French Nation.—T.
[246] The street in which M. du Theil lived.—Author's Note.
[BOOK IX][247]
Death of my mother—I return to religion—The Génie du Christianisme—Letter from the Chevalier de Panat—My uncle, M. de Bedée: his eldest daughter—English literature—Decline of the old school—Historians—Poets—Publicists—Shakespeare—Old novels—New novels—Richardson—Sir Walter Scott—New poetry—Beattie—Lord Byron—England from Richmond to Greenwich—A trip with Peltier—Blenheim—Stowe—Hampton Court—Oxford—Eton College—Private manners—Political manners—Fox—Pitt—Burke—George III.—Return of the emigrants to France—The Prussian Minister gives me a false passport in the name of La Sagne, a resident of Neuchâtel in Switzerland—Death of Lord Londonderry—End of my career as a soldier and traveller—I land at Calais.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua facta loquentem?
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior,
Aspiciam posthac? At certe semper amabo[248].
I have just taken leave of a friend, I am about to take leave of a mother: one has constantly to repeat the verses which Catullus addressed to his brother. In our vale of tears, as in Hell, there is a strange, eternal wailing, which forms the accompaniment or the prevailing note of human lamentations; it is heard unceasingly, and it would continue when all other created sorrows had come to be silent.
A letter from Julie, which I received soon after that from Fontanes, confirmed my sad remark on my gradual isolation: Fontanes urged me to "work, to become illustrious;" my sister begged me to "give up writing:" one put glory before me, the other oblivion. This train of thought is described in the story of Madame de Farcy; she had grown to hate literature, because she regarded it as one of the temptations of her life.
"Saint-Servan, 1 July 1798.
"Dear, we have just lost the best of mothers: I grieve to inform you of this fatal blow. When you cease to be the object of our solicitude, we shall have ceased to live. If you knew how many tears your errors had caused our venerable mother to shed; how deplorable they appear to all who think and profess not only piety, but reason: if you knew this, perhaps it would help to open your eyes, to induce you to give up writing; and if Heaven, moved by our prayers, permitted us to meet again, you would find in the midst of us all the happiness one is allowed on earth; you would give us that happiness, for there is none for us so long as you are not with us and we have cause to be anxious as to your fate."
Ah, why did I not follow my sister's advice? Why did I continue to write? Had my age remained without my writings, would anything have been changed in the events and spirit of that age?
And so I had lost my mother; and so I had distressed the last hour of her life! While she was drawing her last breath far from her last son, and praying for him, what was I doing in London? Perhaps I was strolling in the cool morning air at the moment when the sweat of death covered my mother's forehead without having my hand to wipe it away!
The Génie du Christianisme.
The filial affection which I preserved for Madame de Chateaubriand was deep. My childhood and youth were intimately linked with the memory of my mother. The idea that I had poisoned the old days of the woman who bore me in her womb filled me with despair: I flung copies of the Essai into the fire with horror, as the instrument of my crime; had it been possible for me to destroy the whole work, I should have done so without hesitation. I did not recover from my distress until the thought occurred to me of expiating my first work by means of a religious work: this was the origin of the Génie du Christianisme.
*
"My mother," I said, in the first preface to that work, "after being flung, at the age of seventy-two years, into dungeons where she saw part of her children die, expired at last on a pallet to which her misfortunes had reduced her. The recollection of my errors cast a great bitterness over her last days; when dying, she charged one of my sisters to call me back to the religion in which I was brought up. My sister acquainted me with my mother's last wish. When the letter reached me across the sea, my sister herself was no more; she too had died from the effects of her imprisonment. Those two voices from the tomb, that death which acted as death's interpreter impressed me. I became a Christian. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural enlightenment: my conviction came from the heart; I wept and I believed."
*
I exaggerated my fault: the Essai was not an impious book, but a book of doubt, of sorrow. Through the darkness of that book glides a ray of the Christian light that shone upon my cradle. It needed no great effort to return from the scepticism of the Essai to the certainty of the Génie du Christianisme.
*
When, after receiving the sad news of Madame de Chateaubriand's death, I resolved suddenly to change my course, the title of Génie du Christianisme, which I found on the spot, inspired me: I set to work; I toiled with the ardour of a son building a mausoleum to his mother. My materials were since long collected and rough-hewn by my previous studies. I knew the works of the Fathers better than they are known in our times; I had even studied them in order to oppugn them, and having entered upon that road with bad intentions, instead of leaving it as a victor, I left it vanquished.
As to history properly so-called, I had occupied myself with it specially in composing the Essai sur les Révolutions. The Camden originals which I had lately examined had made me familiar with the manners and institutions of the Middle Ages. Lastly, my terrible manuscript of the Natchez, in 2393 pages folio, contained all that I needed for the Génie du Christianisme in the way of descriptions of nature; I was able to draw largely upon that source, as I had done for the Essai.
I wrote the first part of the Génie du Christianisme. Messrs. Dulau[249], who had become the booksellers of the French emigrant clergy, undertook the publication. The first sheets of the first volume were printed. The work thus begun in London in 1799 was completed only in Paris in 1802: see the different prefaces to the Génie du Christianisme. I was devoured by a sort of fever during the whole time of writing: no one will ever know what it means to carry at the same time in one's brain, in one's blood, and in one's soul, Atala and René, and to combine with the painful child-birth of those fiery twins the labour of conception attending the other parts of the Génie du Christianisme. The memory of Charlotte penetrated and warmed all that, and to give me the finishing stroke, the first longing for fame inflamed my exalted imagination.
This longing came to me from filial affection: I wanted a great renown, so that it might rise till it reached my mother's dwelling-place, and that the angels might carry her my solemn expiation.
As one study leads to another, I could not occupy myself with my French scholia without taking note of the literature and men of the country in which I lived: I was drawn into these fresh researches. My days and nights were spent in reading, in writing, in taking lessons in Hebrew from a learned priest, the Abbé Capelan, in consulting libraries and men of attainments, in roaming about the fields with my everlasting reveries, in paying and receiving visits. If such things exist as retroactive and symptomatic effects of future events, I might have foreseen the bustle and uproar created by the book which was to make my name from the seething of my mind and the throbbing of my inner muse.
Reading aloud to others my first rough drafts helped to enlighten me. Reading aloud is an excellent form of instruction, when one does not take the necessary compliments for gospel. Provided an author be in earnest, he will soon feel, through the impression which he instinctively receives from the others, which are the weak places in his work, and especially whether that work is too long or too short, whether he keeps, does not reach, or exceeds the right dimensions.
A letter from Panat.
I have discovered a letter from the Chevalier de Panat on the readings from a work at that time so unknown. The letter is charming: the dirty chevalier's positive and scoffing spirit did not seem susceptible of thus rubbing itself with poetry. I have no hesitation in giving this letter, a document of my history, although it is stained from end to end with my praises, as though the sly author had taken pleasure in emptying his ink-pot over his epistle:
"Monday.
"Heavens, what an interesting reading I owed to your extreme kindness this morning! Our religion had numbered among its defenders great geniuses, illustrious Fathers of the Church: those athletes had wielded with vigour all the arms of reasoning; incredulity was vanquished; but that was not enough: it was still necessary to show all the charms of that admirable religion; it was necessary to show how suited it is to the human heart and what magnificent pictures it offers to the imagination. It is no longer a theologian in the school, it is the great painter and the man sensitive to impressions who open up a new horizon for themselves. Your work was wanted, and you were called upon to write it. Nature has eminently endowed you with the great qualities which this work requires: you belong to another age....
"Ah, if the truths of sentiment rank first in the order of nature, none will have proved better than yourself those of our religion; you will have confounded the unbelievers at the gate of the Temple and introduced delicate minds and sensible hearts into the sanctuaries. You bring back to me those ancient philosophers who gave their lessons with their heads crowned with flowers, their hands filled with sweet perfumes. This is a very feeble image of your suave, pure and classic mind.
"I congratulate myself daily on the happy circumstance which made me acquainted with you; I can never forget that it was Fontanes who did me that kindness; I shall love him for it the more, and my heart will never separate two names whom the same glory is bound to unite, if Providence re-opens to us the doors of our native land.
"Chev. de Panat."
The Abbé Delille also heard some fragments of the Génie du Christianisme read. He seemed surprised, and did me the honour, soon after, to put into verse the prose which had pleased him. He naturalized my wild American flowers in his various French gardens, and put my somewhat hot wine to cool in the frigid water from his clear spring.
The unfinished edition of the Génie du Christianisme, commenced in London, was a little different, in the order of the contents, from the edition published in France. The consular censure, which soon became imperial, showed itself very touchy on the subject of kings: their persons, their honour and their virtue were dear to it beforehand. Already Fouché's police saw the white pigeon, the symbol of Bonaparte's candour and revolutionary innocence, descend from Heaven with the sacred phial. The true believers who had taken part in the Republican processions of Lyons compelled me to cut out a chapter entitled the Rois athées, and to distribute paragraphs from it here and there in the body of the work.
*
Before continuing these literary investigations I must interrupt them for a moment to take leave of my uncle de Bedée; alas, that means taking leave of the first joy of my life: freno non remorante dies[250]! See the old sepulchres in the old crypts: themselves overcome by age, decrepit and without memory, having lost their epitaphs, they have forgotten the very names of those whose ashes they contain.
I had written to my uncle on the subject of my mother's death: he replied with a long letter containing some touching words of regret; but three-quarters of his double folio sheet were devoted to my genealogy. He begged me above all, when I should return to France, to look up the title-deeds of the "Bedée quartering," entrusted to my brother. And so, to this venerable Emigrant, exile, ruin, the destruction of his kin, the sacrifice of Louis XVI. alike failed to make the fact of the Revolution clear to him; nothing had happened, nothing come to pass; he had gone no farther than the States of Brittany and the Assembly of the Nobles. This fixity of ideas in man is very striking in the midst and as it were in presence of the alteration of his body, the flight of his years, the loss of his relations and friends.
Death of my uncle de Bedée.
On his return from the Emigration, my uncle de Bedée went to live at Dinan, where he died, six leagues from Monchoix, without having seen it again. My cousin Caroline[251], the oldest of my three cousins, still lives. She has remained an old maid in spite of the formal requests for her hand made in her former youth. She writes me letters, badly spelt, in which she addresses me in the second person singular, calls me "chevalier," and talks to me of our good time: in illo tempore. She was endowed with a pair of fine dark eyes and a comely figure; she danced like the Camargo[252], and she seems to recollect that I bore a fierce passion for her in secret. I reply in the same tone, laying aside, in imitation of her, my years, my honours and my reputation:
"Yes, dear Caroline, your chevalier," etc.
It must be some six or seven lustres since we met: Heaven be praised for it, for God alone knows, if we came to embracing, what kind of figure we should cut in each other's eyes!
Sweet, patriarchal, innocent, creditable family friendship, your age is past! We no longer cling to the soil by a multitude of blossoms, sprouts and roots; we are born and die singly nowadays. The living are in haste to fling the deceased to Eternity, and to be rid of his corpse. Of his friends, some go and await the coffin at the church, grumbling the while at being put out and disturbed in their habits; others carry their devotion so far as to follow the funeral to the cemetery: the grave once filled up, all recollection is obliterated. You will never return, O days of religion and affection, in which the son died in the same house, in the same arm-chair, by the same fireside where died his father and his grandfather before him, surrounded, as they had been, by weeping children and grandchildren, upon whom fell the last paternal blessing!
Farewell, my beloved uncle! Farewell, family of my mother, which are disappearing like the other portion of my family! Farewell, my cousin of days long past, who love me still as you loved me when we listened together to our kind aunt de Boistelleul's ballad of the Sparrow-hawk, or when you assisted at my release from my nurse's vow at the Abbey of Nazareth! If you survive me, accept the share of gratitude and affection which I here bequeath to you. Attach no belief to the false smile outlined on my lips in speaking of you: my eyes, I assure you, are full of tears.
*
My studies correlative to the Génie du Christianisme had gradually, as I have said, led me to make a more thorough examination of English literature. When I took refuge in England in 1793, it became necessary for me to redress most of the judgments which I had drawn from the criticisms. As regards the historians, Hume[253] was reputed a Tory and reactionary writer: he was accused, as was Gibbon, of over-loading the English language with gallicisms; people preferred his continuer, Smollett[254]. Gibbon[255], a philosopher during his lifetime, became a Christian on his death-bed, and in that capacity was duly convicted of being a sorry individual. Robertson[256] was still spoken of, because he was dry.
English literature.
Where the poets were concerned, the "elegant extracts" served as a place of banishment for a few pieces by Dryden[257]; people refused to forgive Pope[258] for his verse, although they visited his house at Twickenham and cut chips from the weeping-willow planted by him and withered like his fame.
Blair[259] was looked upon as a tedious critic with a French style; he was placed far below Johnson[260]. As to the old Spectator[261], it was relegated to the lumber-room.
English political works have little interest for us. The economic treatises are less stinted in their scope: their calculations on the wealth of nations, the employment of capital, the balance of trade, are applicable in part to the different European societies. Burke[262] emerged from the national political individuality: by declaring himself opposed to the French Revolution, he dragged his country into the long road of hostilities which ended in the plains of Waterloo.
However, great figures remained. One met with Milton and Shakespeare on every hand. Did Montmorency[263], Byron[264], Sully[265], by turns French Ambassadors to the Courts of Elizabeth[266] and James I.[267], ever hear speak of a merry-andrew who acted in his own and other writers' farces? Did they ever pronounce the name, so outlandish in French, of Shakespeare? Did they suspect that there was here a glory before which their honours, pomps and ranks would become as nothing? Well, the comedian who undertook the part of the Ghost in Hamlet was the great spectre, the shade of the Middle Ages which rose over the world like the evening star, at the moment when the Middle Ages were at last descending among the dead: giant centuries which Dante[268] opened and Shakespeare closed.
In the Memorials of Whitelock[269], the contemporary of the singer of Paradise Lost, we read of "one Mr. Milton, a blind man, parliamentary secretary for Latin despatches."
Molière[270], the "stage-player," performed his Pourceaugnac in the same way that Shakespeare, the "buffoon," clowned his Falstaff.
Those veiled travellers, who come from time to time to sit at our board, are treated by us as ordinary guests; we remain unaware of their nature until the day of their disappearance. On leaving the earth, they become transfigured, and say to us, as the angel from heaven said to Tobias:
"I am one of the seven who stand before the Lord[271]."
But, though misunderstood by men on their passage, those divinities do not fail to recognise one another. Milton asks:
What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones[272]?
Michael Angelo[273], envying Dante's lot and genius, exclaims:
Pur fuss'io tal...
Per l'aspro esilio suo con sua virtute
Darci del mondo più felice stato.
Tasso celebrates Camoëns, as yet almost unknown, and acts as his "Fame." Is there anything more admirable than the society of illustrious people revealing themselves, one to the other, by means of signs, greeting one another and communing with each other in a language understood by themselves alone?
Shakespeare.
Was Shakespeare lame, like Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott[274], and the Prayers, the daughters of Jupiter? If he was so in fact, the "Boy" of Stratford, far from being ashamed of his infirmity, as was Childe Harold, is not afraid to remind one of his mistresses of it:
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite[275].
Shakespeare must have had many loves, if we were to count one for each sonnet. The creator of Desdemona and Juliet grew old without ceasing to be in love. Was the unknown woman to whom he addresses his charming verses proud and happy to be the object of Shakespeare's Sonnets? It may be doubted: glory is to an old man what diamonds are to an old woman; they adorn, but cannot make her beautiful. Says the English tragic poet to his mistress:
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
. . . . . .
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay[276].
Shakespeare loved, but believed no more in love than he believed in other things: a woman to him was a bird, a zephyr, a flower, a thing that charms and passes. Through his indifference to, or ignorance of, his fame, through his condition, which set him without the pale of society and of a position to which he could not hope to attain, he seemed to have taken life as a light, unoccupied hour, a swift and gentle leisure.
Shakespeare, in his youth, met old monks driven from their cloister, who had seen Henry VIII., his reforms, his destructions of monasteries, his "fools," his wives, his mistresses, his headsmen. When the poet departed from life, Charles I. was sixteen years of age. Thus, with one hand, Shakespeare was able to touch the whitened heads once threatened by the sword of the second of the Tudors and, with the other, the brown head of the second of the Stuarts, destined to be laid low by the axe of the Parliamentarians. Leaning upon those tragic brows, the great tragedian sank into the tomb; he filled the interval of the days in which he lived with his ghosts, his blind kings, his ambitious men punished, his unfortunate women, so as to join together, through analogous fictions, the realities of the past and of the future.
Shakespeare is of the number of the five or six writers who have sufficed for the needs and nutriment of thought: those parent geniuses seem to have brought forth and suckled all the others. Homer impregnated antiquity: ‚Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Horace, Virgil are his sons. Dante engendered Modern Italy, from Petrarch to Tasso. Rabelais created French literature: Montaigne, La Fontaine, Molière descend from him. England is all Shakespeare, and in these later days he has lent his language to Byron, his dialogue to Walter Scott.
Men often disown these supreme masters; they rebel against them; they reckon up their faults: they accuse them of tediousness, of length, of extravagance, of bad taste, what time they plunder them and deck themselves in their spoils; but they struggle in vain against their yoke. Everything wears their colours; they have left their traces everywhere; they invent words and names which go to swell the general vocabulary of the nations; their expressions become proverbs, their fictitious characters change into real characters, with heirs and a lineage. They open out horizons whence burst forth sheaves of light; they sow ideas, the germs of a thousand others; they supply all the arts with imaginations, subjects, styles: their works are the mines or the bowels of the human mind.
These geniuses occupy the first rank; their vastness, their variety, their fruitfulness, their originality cause them to be accepted from the very first as laws, models, moulds, types of the various forms of intellect, even as there are four or five races of men issuing from one single stock, of which the others are only branches. Let us take care how we insult the disorders into which these mighty beings sometimes fall: let us not imitate Ham, the accursed; let us not laugh if we see the sole and solitary mariner of the deep lying naked and asleep, in the shadow of the Ark resting upon the mountains of Armenia. Let us respect that diluvial navigator, who recommenced the Creation after the flood-gates of Heaven were shut up: let us, as pious children, blessed by our father, modestly cover him with our cloak.
Shakespeare, in his lifetime, never thought of living after his life: what signifies to him to-day my hymn of admiration? Admitting every supposition, reasoning from the truths or falsehoods with which the human mind is penetrated or imbued, what cares Shakespeare for a renown of which the sound cannot rise to where he is? A Christian? In the midst of eternal bliss, does he think of the nothingness of the world? A deist? Freed from the shades of matter, lost in the splendours of God, does he cast down a look upon the grain of sand over which he passed? An atheist? He sleeps the sleep without breathing or awakening which we call death. Nothing therefore is vainer than glory beyond the tomb, unless it have kept friendship alive, unless it have been useful to virtue, helpful to misfortune, unless it be granted to us to rejoice in Heaven in a consoling, generous, liberating idea left behind by us upon earth.
*
Samuel Richardson.
Novels, at the end of the last century, had been included in the general proscription. Richardson[277] slept forgotten: his fellow-countrymen discovered in his style traces of the inferior society in which he had spent his life. Fielding[278] maintained his success; Sterne[279], the purveyor of eccentricity, was out of date. The Vicar of Wakefield was still read[280].
If Richardson has no style, a question of which we foreigners are unable to judge, he will not live, because one lives only by style. It is vain to rebel against this truth: the best-composed work, adorned with life-like portraits, filled with a thousand other perfections, is still-born if the style be wanting. Style, and there are a thousand kinds, is not learnt; it is the gift of Heaven, it is talent. But, if Richardson has only been forsaken because of certain homely turns of expression, insufferable to an elegant society, he may revive: the revolution which is being worked, in lowering the aristocracy and raising the middle classes, will render less apparent, or cause entirely to disappear, the traces of homespun habits and of an inferior language.
From Clarissa and Tom Jones sprang the two principal branches of the family of modern English novels: the novels of family pictures and domestic dramas, and the novels of adventure and pictures of general society. After Richardson, the manners of the West End invaded the domain of fiction: the novels became filled with country-houses, lords and ladies, scenes at the waters, adventures at the races, the ball, the opera, Ranelagh, with a never-ending chit-chat and tittle-tattle. The scene was rapidly changed to Italy; the lovers crossed the Alps amid terrible dangers and sorrows of the soul calculated to move lions: "the lion shed tears!" A jargon of good company was adopted.
Of the thousands of novels which have flooded England since the last fifty years, two have kept their places: Caleb Williams[281] and the Monk. I did not see Godwin during my stay in London; but I twice met Lewis[282]. He was a young member of the House of Commons, very pleasant, with the air and manners of a Frenchman. The works of Ann Radcliffe[283] are of a class apart Those of Mrs. Barbauld[284], Miss Edgeworth[285], Miss Burney[286], etc., have a chance of living.
*
"There should," says Montaigne, "be some correction appointed by the laws against foolish and unprofitable writers, as there is against vagabonds and loiterers; so should both my selfe and a hundred others of our people be banished.... Scribbling seemeth to be a symptome or passion of an irregular and licentious age[287]."
*
Sir Walter Scott.
But these different schools of sedentary novelists, of novelists travelling by diligence or calash, of novelists of lakes and mountains, ruins and ghosts, of novelists of cities and drawing-rooms, have come to be lost in the new school of Walter Scott, even as poetry has precipitated itself in the steps of Lord Byron. The illustrious painter of Scotland started his career in literature during my exile in London with his translation of Goethe's Berlichingen.[288] He continued to make himself known by poetry, and ultimately the bent of his genius led him towards the novel. He seems to me to have created a false manner: the romancer set himself to write historical romances, and the historian romantic histories. If, in reading Walter Scott, I am sometimes obliged to skip interminable conversations, the fault is doubtless mine; but one of Walter Scott's great merits, in my eyes, is that he can be placed in the hands of everybody. It requires greater efforts of talent to interest while keeping within the limits of decency than to please when exceeding all bounds; it is less easy to rule the heart than to disturb it.
Burke kept the politics of England in the past. Walter Scott drove back the English to the Middle Ages; all that they wrote, manufactured, built, became Gothic: books, furniture, houses, churches, country-seats. But the barons of Magna Charta are to-day the fashionables of Bond Street, a frivolous race camping in the ancient manor-houses while awaiting the arrival of the new generations which are preparing to drive them out.
*
At the same time that the novel was passing into the "romantic" stage, poetry was undergoing a similar transformation. Cowper[289] abandoned the French in order to revive the national school; Burns[290] commenced the same revolution in Scotland. After them came the restorers of the ballads. Several of those poets of 1792 to 1800 belonged to what was called the "Lake school," a name which survived, because the romantic poets lived on the shores of the Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes, which they sometimes sang.
Thomas Moore[291], Campbell[292], Rogers[293], Crabbe[294], Wordsworth[295], Southey[296], Hunt[297], Knowles[298], Lord Holland[299], Canning[300], Croker[301] are still living to do honour to English literature; but one must be of English birth to appreciate the full merit of an intimate class of composition which appeals specially to men born on the soil.
None is a competent judge, in living literature, of other than works written in his own tongue. It is in vain that you believe yourself thoroughly acquainted with a foreign idiom: you lack the nurse's milk, together with the first words which she teaches you at her breast and in your swaddling-clothes; certain accents belong to the mother country alone. The English and Germans have the strangest notions concerning our men of letters: they worship what we despise, and despise what we worship; they do not understand Racine nor La Fontaine, nor even Molière completely. It is ludicrous to know who are considered our great writers in London, Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, Munich, Leipzig, Göttingen, Cologne, to know what is read there with avidity and what not at all.
When an author's merit lies especially in his diction, no foreigner will ever understand that merit. The more intimate, individual, rational a talent is, the more do its mysteries escape the mind which is not, so to speak, that talent's fellow-countryman. We admire the Greeks and Romans on trust; our admiration comes to us by tradition, and the Greeks and Romans are not there to laugh at our barbarian judgments. Which of us has an idea of the harmony of the prose of Demosthenes and Cicero, of the cadence of the verses of Alcæus and Horace, as they were caught by a Greek or Latin ear? Men maintain that real beauties are of all times, all countries: yes, beauties of feeling and of thought; not beauties of style. Style is not cosmopolitan like thought: it has a native land, a sky, a sun of its own.
Burns, Mason[302], Cowper died during my emigration, before 1800 and in 1800: they ended the century; I commenced it. Darwin[303] and Beattie[304] died two years after my return from exile.
James Beattie.
Beattie had announced the new era of the lyre. The Minstrel, or the Progress of Genius is the picture of the first effects of the muse upon a young bard who is as yet unaware of the inspiration with which he is tossed. Now the future poet goes and sits by the sea-shore during a tempest; again he leaves the village sports to listen in some lonely spot to the distant sound of the pipes. Beattie has run through the entire series of reveries and melancholy ideas of which a hundred other poets have believed themselves the discoverers. Beattie proposed to continue his poem; he did, in fact, write the second canto: Edwin one evening hears a grave voice ascend from the bottom of the valley; it is the voice of a solitary who, after tasting the illusions of the world, has buried himself in that retreat, there to collect his soul and to sing the marvels of the Creator. This hermit instructs the young minstrel and reveals to him the secret of his genius. Beattie was destined to shed tears; the death of his son broke his paternal heart: like Ossian, after the loss of his son Oscar, he hung his harp on the branches of an oak. Perhaps Beattie's son was the young minstrel whom a father had sung and whose footsteps he no longer saw on the mountain.
*
Lord Byron's verses contain striking imitations of the Minstrel. At the time of my exile in England, Lord Byron was living at Harrow School, in a village ten miles from London. He was a child, I was young and as unknown as he; he had been brought up on the heaths of Scotland, by the sea-side, as I in the marshes of Brittany, by the sea-side; he first loved the Bible and Ossian, as I loved them; he sang the memories of his childhood in Newstead Abbey, as I sang mine in Combourg Castle:
When I roved a young Highlander o'er the dark heath.
And climb'd thy steep summit, O Morven of snow!
To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath,
Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below[305].
In my wanderings in the neighbourhood of London, when I was so unhappy, I passed through the village of Harrow a score of times, without suspecting the genius it contained. I have sat in the churchyard at the foot of the elm beneath which, in 1807, Lord Byron wrote these verses, at the time when I was returning from Palestine:
Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod.
. . . . . . . .
When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast,
And calm its cares and passions into rest,
. . . . . . . .
. . . . here my heart might lie;
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose,
. . . . . . . .
Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved;
. . . . . . . .
Deplored by those in early days allied,
And unremembered by the world beside[306].
And I shall say: Hail, ancient elm, at whose foot the child Byron indulged in the fancies of his age, while I was dreaming of René beneath thy shade, the same shade beneath which later, in his turn, the poet came to dream of Childe Harold! Byron asked of the churchyard, which witnessed the first sports of his life, an unknown grave: a useless prayer, which fame will not grant. Nevertheless, Byron is no longer what he has been; I had come across him in all directions living at Venice: at the end of a few years, in the same town where I had met with his name on every hand, I found him everywhere eclipsed and unknown. The echoes of the Lido no longer repeat his name and, if you ask after him of the Venetians, they no longer know of whom you speak. Lord Byron is entirely dead for them; they no longer hear the neighing of his horse: it is the same thing in London, where his memory is fading. That is what we become.
If I have passed by Harrow without knowing that the child Byron was drawing breath there, Englishmen have passed by Combourg without suspecting that a little vagabond, brought up in those woods, would leave any trace. Arthur Young[307], the traveller, when passing through Combourg, wrote:
"To Combourg [from Pontorson] the country has a savage aspect; husbandry has not much further advanced, at least in skill, than among the Hurons, which appears incredible amidst inclosures; the people almost as wild as their country, and their town of Combourg one of the most brutal filthy places that can be seen; mud houses, no windows, and a pavement so broken as to impede all passengers, but ease none-yet here is a chateau, and inhabited; who is this Mons. de Chateaubriand, the owner, that has nerves strung for a residence amidst such filth and poverty? Below this hideous heap of wretchedness is a fine lake, surrounded by well-wooded inclosures[308]."
That M. de Chateaubriand was my father; the residence which seemed so hideous to the ill-humoured agriculturist is none the less a fine and stately home, sombre and grave though it may be. As for me, a feeble ivy-shoot commencing to climb at the foot of those fierce towers, would Mr. Young have noticed me, he who was interested only in inspecting our harvests?
Lord Byron.
Give me leave to add to the above pages, written in England in 1822, the following written in 1824 and 1840: they will complete the portion relating to Lord Byron; this portion will be more particularly perfected when the reader has perused what I shall have to say of the great poet on passing to Venice.
There may perhaps be some interest in the future in remarking the coincidence of the two leaders of the new French and English schools having a common fund of nearly parallel ideas and destinies, if not of morals: one a peer of England, the other a peer of France; both Eastern travellers, not infrequently near each other, yet never seeing one another: only, the life of the English poet has been connected with events less great than mine.
Lord Byron visited the ruins of Greece after me: in Childe Harold he seems to embellish with his own pigments the descriptions in the Itinéraire. At the commencement of my pilgrimage I gave the Sire de Joinville's farewell to his castle: Byron bids a similar farewell to his Gothic home.
In the Martyrs, Eudore sets out from Messenia to go to Rome:
"Our voyage was long," he says; "... we saw all those promontories marked by temples or tombstones.... My young companions had heard speak of nought save the metamorphoses of Jupiter, and they understood nothing of the remains they saw before them; I myself had already sat, with the prophet, on the ruins of devastated cities, and Babylon taught me to know Corinth[309]."
The English poet is like the French prose-writer, following the letter of Sulpicius to Cicero[310]: a coincidence so perfect is a singularly proud one for me, because I anticipated the immortal singer on the shore where we gathered the same memories and celebrated the same ruins.
I have again the honour of being connected with Lord Byron in our descriptions of Rome: the Martyrs and my Lettre sur la campagne romaine possess, for me, the inestimable advantage of having divined the aspirations of a fine genius.
The early translators, commentators and admirers of Lord Byron were careful not to point out that some pages of my works might have lingered for a moment in the memory of the painter of Childe Harold; they would have thought that they were depreciating his genius. Now that the enthusiasm has grown a little calmer this honour is not so consistently refused to me. Our immortal song-writer[311], in the last volume of his Chansons, says:
"In one of the foregoing stanzas I speak of the 'lyres' which France owes to M. de Chateaubriand. I do not fear that that verse will be contradicted by the new poetic school, which, born beneath the eagle's wings, has often and rightly prided itself on that origin. The influence of the author of the Génie du Christianisme has also made itself felt abroad, and it would perhaps be just to recognise that the singer of Childe Harold belongs to the family of René."
In an excellent article on Lord Byron, M. Villemain[312] re-echoes M. de Béranger's remark:
"Some incomparable pages in René" he says, "had, it is true, exhausted that poetic character. I do not know whether Byron imitated them or revived them with his genius."
Literary affinity.
What I have just said as to the affinity of imagination and destiny between the chronicles of René and the singer of Childe Harold does not detract in the smallest degree from the fame of the immortal bard. What harm can my pedestrian and luteless muse do to the muse of the Dee[313], furnished with a lyre and wings? Lord Byron will live whether, a child of his century like myself, he gave utterance, like myself and like Goethe before us, to its passion and misfortune, or whether my circumnavigation and the lantern of my Gallic bark showed the vessel of Albion the track across unexplored waters.
Besides, two minds of an analogous nature may easily have similar conceptions without being reproached with slavishly following the same road. It is permitted to take advantage of ideas and images expressed in a foreign language, in order with them to enrich one's own: that has occurred in all ages and at all times. I recognise without hesitation that, in my early youth, Ossian[314], Werther[315], the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire[316] and the Études de la nature[317] may have allied themselves to my ideas; but I have hidden or dissimulated none of the pleasure caused me by works in which I delighted.
If it were true that René entered to some extent into the groundwork of the one person represented under different names in Childe-Harold, Conrad, Lara, Manfred, the Giaour; if, by chance, Lord Byron had made me live in his own life, would he then have had the weakness never to mention me[318]? Was I then one of those fathers whom men deny when they have attained to power? Can Lord Byron have been completely ignorant of me when he quotes almost all the French authors who are his contemporaries? Did he never hear speak of me, when the English papers, like the French papers, have resounded a score of times in his hearing with controversies on my works, when the New Times drew a parallel between the author of the Génie du Christianisme and the author of Childe-Harold?
No intelligence, however favoured it be, but has its susceptibilities, its distrusts: one wishes to keep the sceptre, fears to share it, resents comparisons. In the same way, another superior talent has avoided the mention of my name in a work on Literature[319]. Thank God, rating myself at my just value, I have never aimed at empire; since I believe in nothing except the religious truth, of which liberty is a form, I have no more faith in myself than in any other thing here below. But I have never felt a need to be silent, where I have admired; that is why I proclaim my enthusiasm for Madame de Staël and Lord Byron. What is sweeter than admiration? It is love in Heaven, affection raised to a cult; we feel ourselves thrilled with gratitude for the divinity which extends the bases of our faculties, opens out new views to our souls, gives us a happiness so great and so pure, with no admixture of fear or envy.
For the rest, the little cavil which I have raised in these Memoirs against the greatest poet whom England has possessed since Milton proves only one thing: the high value which I would have attached to the recollection of his muse.
The real Byron.
Lord Byron started a deplorable school: I presume he has been as much distressed at the Childe-Harolds to whom he gave birth as I am at the Renés who rave around me.
The life of Lord Byron is the object of much investigation and calumny: young men have taken magic words seriously; women have felt disposed to allow themselves affrightedly to be seduced by that "monster," to console that solitary and unhappy Satan. Who knows? He had perhaps not found the woman he sought, a woman fair enough, a heart as big as his own. Byron, according to the phantasmagorial opinion, is the old serpent of seduction and corruption, because he sees the corruption of the human race; he is a fatal and suffering genius, placed between the mysteries of matter and mind, who is unable to solve the enigma of the universe, who looks upon life as a frightful and causeless irony, as a perverse smile of evil; he is the son of despair, who despises and denies, who, bearing an incurable wound within himself, seeks his revenge by leading through voluptuousness to sorrow all who approach him; he is a man who has not passed through the age of innocence, who has never had the advantage of being rejected and cursed by God: a man who, issuing reprobate from nature's womb, is the damned soul of nihility.
This is the Byron of heated imaginations: it is by no means, to my mind, the Byron of truth. Two different men are united in Lord Byron, as in the majority of men: the man of nature and the man of system. The poet, perceiving the part which the public made him play, accepted it and began to curse the world which at first he had only viewed dreamily: this progress can be traced in the chronological order of his works. His genius, far from having the extent attributed to it, is fairly reserved; his poetic thought is no more than a moan, a plaint, an imprecation; in that quality it is admirable: one must not ask the lyre what it thinks, but what it sings. His mind is sarcastic and diversified, but of an exciting nature and a baneful influence: the writer had read Voltaire to good purpose, and imitates him.
Gifted with every advantage, Lord Byron had little with which to reproach his birth; the very accident which made him unhappy and which allied his superiority to the infirmity of mankind ought not to have vexed him, since it did not prevent him from being loved. The immortal singer knew from his own case the truth of Zeno's maxim: "The voice is the flower of beauty."
A deplorable thing is the rapidity with which, nowadays, reputations pass away. At the end of a few years-what am I saying?—of a few months, the infatuation disappears and disparagement follows upon it. Already Lord Byron's glory is seen to pale; his genius is better understood by ourselves; he will have altars longer in France than in England. Since Childe-Harold excels mainly in the depicting of sentiments peculiar to the individual, the English, who prefer sentiments common to all, will end by disowning the poet whose cry is so deep and so sad. Let them look to it: if they shatter the image of the man who has brought them to life again, what will they have left?
*
When, during my sojourn in London, in 1822, I wrote my opinion of Lord Byron, he had no more than two years to live upon earth: he died in 1824, at the moment when disenchantment and disgust were about to commence for him. I preceded him in life; he preceded me in death; he was called before his turn: my number was higher than his, and yet his was drawn first. Childe-Harold should have remained; the world could lose me without noticing my disappearance. On continuing my road through life, I met Madame Guiccioli[320] in Rome, Lady Byron[321] in Paris. Frailty and virtue thus appeared to me: the former had perhaps too many realities, the latter too few dreams.
*
Now, after having talked to you of the English writers, at the period when England served me as an asylum, it but remains for me to tell you of England herself at that period, of her appearance, her sites, her country-seats, her private and political manners.
The whole of England may be seen in the space of four leagues, from Richmond, above London, down to Greenwich and below.
Below London lies industrial and commercial England, with her docks, her warehouses, her custom-houses, her arsenals, her breweries, her factories, her foundries, her ships; the latter, at each high tide, ascend the Thames in three divisions: first, the smallest; then, the middle-sized; lastly, the great vessels which graze with their sails the columns of the Old Sailors' Hospital and the windows of the tavern where the visitors dine.
Above London lies agricultural and pastoral England, with her meadows, her flocks and herds, her country-houses, her parks, whose shrubs and lawns are bathed twice a day by the rising waters of the Thames. Between these two opposite points, Richmond and Greenwich, London blends all the characteristics of this two-fold England: the aristocracy in the West End, the democracy in the East; the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey are landmarks between which is laid the whole history of Great Britain.
Richmond.
I passed a portion of the summer of 1799 at Richmond with Christian de Lamoignon, occupying myself with the Génie du Christianisme. I went on the Thames in a rowing-boat, or walked in Richmond Park. I could have wished that Richmond by London had been the Richmond of the treaty Honor Richemundiæ, for then I should have found myself in my own country, and for this reason: William the Bastard made a grant to Alan[322] Duke of Brittany, his son-in-law, of 442 English feudal estates, which since formed the County of Richmond[323]: the Dukes of Brittany, Alan's successors, enfeoffed these domains to Breton knights, cadets of the families of Rohan, Tinténiac, Chateaubriand, Goyon, Montboucher. But, in spite of my inclinations, I must look in Yorkshire for the County of Richmond, raised to a duchy by Charles II.[324] in favour of a bastard[325]: the Richmond on the Thames is the Old Sheen of Edward III. There, in 1377, died Edward III., that famous King robbed by his mistress, Alice Perrers[326], who was not the same as the Alice or Catharine of Salisbury of the early days of the life of the victor of Crecy: you should only love at the age when you can be loved. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth also died at Richmond: where does one not die? Henry VIII. took pleasure in this residence. The English historians are greatly embarrassed by that abominable man: on the one hand, they are unable to conceal the tyranny and servitude to which the Parliament was subjected; on the other hand, if they too heartily anathematized the Head of the Reformation, they would condemn themselves in condemning him:
Plus l'oppresseur est vil, plus l'esclave est infâme[327].
In Richmond Park is shown the mound which served Henry VIII. as an observatory from which to spy for the news of the execution of Anne Boleyn[328]. Henry leapt for joy when the signal shot up from the Tower of London. What delight! The steel had cut through the slender neck, and covered with blood the beautiful tresses to which the poet-King had fastened his fatal kisses.
In the deserted park at Richmond I awaited no murderous signal, I would not even have wished the slightest harm to any who might have betrayed me. I strolled among the peaceful deer: accustomed to run before a pack of hounds, they stopped when they were tired; they were carried back, very gay and quite amused with this game, in a cart filled with straw. I went at Kew to see the kangaroos, ridiculous animals, the exact opposite to the giraffe: these innocent four-footed grass hoppers peopled Australia better than the old Duke of Queensberry's[329] prostitutes peopled the lanes of Richmond. The Thames bathed the lawn of a cottage half-hidden beneath a cedar of Lebanon and amidst weeping-willows: a newly married couple had come to spend the honeymoon in that paradise.
One evening, as I was strolling over the swards of Twickenham, Peltier appeared, holding his handkerchief to his mouth:
"What an everlasting deuce of a fog!" he cried, so soon as he was within earshot. "How the devil can you remain here? I have made out my list: Stowe, Blenheim, Hampton Court, Oxford; with your dreamy ways, you might live with John Bull in vitam æternam and not see a thing!"
A journey with Peltier.
I asked in vain to be excused, I had to go. In the carriage, Peltier enumerated his hopes to me; he had relays of them; no sooner had one croaked beneath him than he straddled another, and on he would go, a leg on either side, to his journey's end. One of his hopes, the robustest, eventually led him to Bonaparte, whom he took by the coat-collar: Napoleon had the simplicity to hit back[330]. Peltier took Sir James Mackintosh[331] as his second; he was condemned by the courts, and made a new fortune (which he incontinently ran through) by selling the documents relating to his trial.
Blenheim[332] was distasteful to me; I suffered so much the more from an ancient reverse of my country in that I had had to endure the insult of a recent affront: a boat going up the Thames caught sight of me on the bank; seeing a Frenchman, the oarsmen gave cheers; the news had just been received of the naval battle of Aboukir: these successes of the foreigner, which might open the gates of France to me, were hateful to me. Nelson[333], whom I had often met in Hyde Park, wrapped his victories in Lady Hamilton's[334] shawl at Naples, while the lazzaroni played at ball with human heads. The admiral died gloriously at Trafalgar[335], and his mistress wretchedly at Calais, after losing beauty, youth and fortune. And I, taunted on the Thames with the victory of Aboukir, have seen the palm-trees of Libya edging the calm and deserted sea which was reddened with the blood of my fellow-countrymen.
Stowe Park[336] is famous for its ornamental buildings: I prefer its shades. The cicerone of the place showed us, in a gloomy ravine, the copy of a temple of which I was to admire the original in the dazzling valley of the Cephisus. Beautiful pictures of the Italian school pined in the darkness of some uninhabited rooms, whose shutters were kept closed: poor Raphael, imprisoned in a castle of the ancient Britons, far from the skies of the Farnesina[337]!
At Hampton Court was preserved the collection of portraits of the mistresses of Charles II.: you see how that Prince took things on emerging from a revolution which cut off his father's head, and which was to drive out his House.
At Slough we saw Herschel[338], with his learned sister[339] and his great forty-foot telescope; he was looking for new planets: this made Peltier laugh, who kept to the seven old ones.
We stopped for two days at Oxford. I took pleasure in this republic of Alfred the Great[340]; it represented the privileged liberties and the manners of the literary institutions of the Middle Ages. We hurried through the twenty colleges, the libraries, the pictures, the museum, the botanic garden. I turned over with extreme pleasure, among the manuscripts of Worcester College, a life of the Black Prince, written in French verse by the Prince's herald-at-arms.
Oxford, without resembling them, recalled to my memory the modest Colleges of Dol, Rennes and Dinan. I had translated Gray's[341] Elegy written in a Country Church-yard:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day[342],
which is imitated from Dante's
Squilla di lontano
Che paja'l giorno pianger che si musre[343].
*
Oxford.
Peltier had hastened to trumpet my translation in his paper. At sight of Oxford I remembered the same poet's Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College:
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow,
. . . . . .
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
Say, Father Thames,...
. . . . . .
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed
Or urge the flying ball?
Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day[344].
Who has not experienced the feelings and regrets here expressed with all the sweetness of the muse? Who has not softened at the recollection of the games, the studies, the loves of his early years? But can they be revived? The pleasures of youth reproduced by the memory are ruins seen by torchlight.
*
Separated from the Continent by a long war, the English at the end of the last century preserved their national manners and character. There was still but one people, in whose name the sovereign power was wielded by an aristocratic government; only two great friendly classes existed, bound by a common interest: the patrons and the dependents. That jealous class called the bourgeoisie in France, which is beginning to arise in England, was then not known: nothing came between the rich land-owners and the men occupied with their trades. Everything had not yet become machinery in the manufacturing professions, folly in the privileged classes. Along the same pavements where one now sees dirty faces and men in surtouts, passed little girls in white cloaks, with straw-hats fastened under the chin with a ribbon, a basket on their arm, containing fruit or a book; all kept their eyes lowered, all blushed when one looked at them:
"Britain," says Shakespeare, is "in a great pool, a swan's nest[345]."
Surtouts without coats beneath were so little worn in London in 1793 that a woman who was weeping bitterly over the death of Louis XVI. said to me:
"But, my dear sir, is it true that the poor King was dressed in a surtout when they cut off his head?"
The "gentlemen farmers" had not yet sold their patrimony in order to come and live in London; in the House of Commons they still formed the independent fraction which, acting in opposition to the Ministry, kept up ideas of liberty, order and property. They hunted the fox or shot pheasants in autumn, ate fat geese at Christmas, shouted "Hurrah" for roast beef, grumbled at the present, praised the past, cursed Pitt and the war, which sent up the price of port, and went to bed drunk to begin the same life over again next day. They were firmly convinced that the glory of Great Britain would never fade so long as they sang God save the King, maintained the rotten boroughs, kept the game laws in vigour, and sent hares and partridges to market by stealth under the name of "lions" and "ostriches."
The Anglican clergy was learned, hospitable, and generous; it had received the French clergy with true Christian charity. The University of Oxford printed at its own cost and distributed gratis among the curés a New Testament, according to the Latin Vulgate, with the imprint, "In usum cleri Gallicani in Anglia exulantis." As to the life of the English upper classes, I, a poor exile, saw nothing of it but the outside. On the occasion of receptions at Court or at the Princess of Wales's[346], ladies went by seated sideways in Sedan chairs; their great hoop-petticoats protruded through the door of the chair like altar-hangings. They themselves, on those altars of their waists, resembled madonnas or pagodas. Those fine ladies were the daughters whose mothers the Duc de Guiche and the Duc de Lauzun had adored; those daughters are, in 1822, the mothers and grandmothers of the little girls who now come to my house to dance in short frocks to the sound of Collinet's clarinet, swift generations of flowers.
William Pitt.
English statesmen.
The England of 1688 was, at the end of the last century, at the apogee of its glory. As a poor emigrant in London, from 1793 to 1800, I heard Pitt, Fox[347], Sheridan[348], Wilberforce[349], Grenville[350], Whitbread[351], Lauderdale[352], Erskine[353]; as a magnificent ambassador in London to-day, in 1822, I could not say how far I am impressed when, instead of the great orators whom I used to admire, I see those get up who were their seconds at the time of my first visit, the pupils in the place of the masters. General ideas have penetrated into that particular society. But the enlightened aristocracy placed at the head of this country since one hundred and forty years will have shown to the world one of the finest and greatest societies that have done honour to mankind since the Roman patricians. Perhaps some old family, seated in the depths of its county, will recognise the society which I have depicted and regret the time whose loss I here deplore.
In 1792[354] Mr. Burke parted from Mr. Fox. The question at issue was the French Revolution, which Mr. Burke attacked and Mr. Fox defended. Never had the two orators, who till then had been friends, displayed such eloquence. The whole House was moved, and Mr. Fox's eyes were filled with tears when Mr. Burke concluded his speech with these words:
"The right honourable gentleman in the speech he has just made has treated me in every sentence with uncommon harshness ... by declaring a censure upon my whole life, conduct, and opinions. Notwithstanding this great and serious, though on my part unmerited, attack.... I shall not be dismayed; I am not yet afraid to state my sentiments in this House or anywhere else.... I will tell all the world that the Constitution is in danger.... It certainly is indiscretion at any period, but especially at my time of life, to provoke enemies, or to give my friends occasion to desert me; yet if my firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution places me in such a dilemma, I will risk all; and as public duty and public prudence teach me, with my last words exclaim, 'Fly from the French Constitution!'"
Mr. Fox having said that there was "no loss of friends," Mr. Burke exclaimed:
"Yes, there is a loss of friends! I know the price of my conduct; I have done my duty at the price of my friend; our friendship is at an end.... I warn the two right honourable gentlemen who are the great rivals in this House, that whether they hereafter move in the political atmosphere as two flaming meteors, or walk together like brethren hand in hand, to preserve and cherish the British Constitution, to guard against innovation, and to save it from the danger of these new theories[355]."
A memorable time in the world's history!
Edmund Burke.
Mr. Burke, whom I knew towards the close of his life, crushed by the death of his only son, had founded a school for the benefit of the children of the poor Emigrants. I went to see what he called his "nursery." He was amused at the vivacity of the foreign race which was growing up under his paternal genius. Looking at the careless little exiles hopping, he said to me:
"Our boys could not do that."
And his eyes filled with tears. He thought of his son who had set out for a longer exile.
William Pitt.
Pitt, Fox, and Burke are no more, and the British Constitution has undergone the influence of the "new theories." One must have witnessed the gravity of the parliamentary debates of that time, one must have heard those orators whose prophetic voices seemed to announce a coming revolution, to form an idea of the scene which I am recalling. Liberty, confined within the limits of order, seemed to struggle, at Westminster under the influence of anarchical liberty, which spoke from the still blood-stained rostrum of the Convention.
Mr. Pitt was tall and thin, and wore a sad and mocking look. His utterance was cold, his intonation monotonous, his gestures imperceptible; nevertheless, the lucidity and fluency of his thought, the logic of his arguments, suddenly lighted with flashes of eloquence, raised his talent to something out of the common. I used often to see Mr. Pitt, when he went from his house on foot across St. James's Park, to wait upon the King. George III.[356], on his side, arrived from Windsor after drinking beer out of a pewter pot with the neighbouring farmers; he drove through the ugly court-yards of his ugly palace in a dowdy carriage followed by a few Horse-guards. That was the master of the Kings of Europe, as five or six City merchants are the masters of India. Mr. Pitt, in a black coat, a steel-hilted sword at his side, his hat under his arm, climbed the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. On his way he found only three or four unemployed Emigrants: casting a scornful look in their direction, he went on, with his nose in the air, and his pale face.
The great financier maintained no order in his own affairs, had no regular hours for his meals or his sleep. Over head and ears in debt, he paid nobody, and could not bring himself to add up a bill. A footman kept house for him. Badly dressed, with no pleasures, no passions, greedy only for power, he scorned honours, and refused to be more than plain William Pitt.
Lord Liverpool, in the month of June last, 1822, took me to dine at his country-place: when we were crossing Putney Heath, he showed me the little house in which died, a poor man, the son of Lord Chatham, the statesman who had taken Europe into his pay and with his own hand distributed all the millions in the world[357].
George III. survived Mr. Pitt, but he had lost his reason and his sight. Every session, at the opening of Parliament, the ministers read to the silent and moved Houses the bulletin of the King's health. One day I had gone to visit Windsor: a few shillings persuaded an obliging door-keeper to hide me so that I might see the King. The monarch, white-haired and blind, appeared, wandering like King Lear through his palace and groping with his hands along the walls of the apartments. He sat down to a piano, of which he knew the position, and played some portions of a sonata by Handel[358]: a fine ending for Old England!
I began to turn my eyes towards my native land. A great revolution had been operated. Bonaparte had become First Consul and was restoring order by means of despotism; many exiles were returning; the upper Emigration, especially, hastened to go and collect the remnants of its fortune: loyalty was dying at the head, while its heart still beat in the breasts of a few half-naked country-gentlemen. Mrs. Lindsay had left; she wrote to Messrs, de Lamoignon to return; she also invited Madame d'Aguesseau[359], sister of Messrs, de Lamoignon, to cross the Channel. Fontaines wrote to me to finish the printing of the Génie du Christianisme in Paris. While remembering my country, I felt no desire to see it again; gods more powerful than the paternal lares kept me back; I had neither goods nor refuge in France; my motherland had become to me a bosom of stone, a breast without milk: I should not find my mother there, nor my brother, nor my sister Julie. Lucile still lived, but she had married M. de Caud and no longer bore my name; my young "widow" knew me only through a union of a few months, through misfortune and through an absence of eight years.
George III.
Had I been left to myself, I do not know that I should have had the strength to leave; but I saw my little circle dissolving; Madame d'Aguesseau proposed to take me to Paris: I let myself go. The Prussian Minister procured me a passport in the name of La Sagne, an inhabitant of Neuchâtel. Messrs. Dulau stopped the printing of the Génie du Christianisme, and gave me the sheets that had been set up. I separated the sketches of Atala and René from the Natchez; the remainder of the manuscript I locked into a trunk, of which I entrusted the deposit to my hosts in London, and I set out for Dover with Madame d'Aguesseau: Mrs. Lindsay was awaiting us at Calais.
I return to France.
It was thus that I quitted England in 1800; my heart was differently occupied from the manner in which it is at the time of writing, in 1822. I brought back from the land of exile only dreams and regrets; to-day my head is filled with scenes of ambition, of politics, of grandeurs and Courts, so ill suited to my nature. How many events are heaped up in my present existence! Pass, men, pass; my turn will come. I have unrolled only one-third of my days before your eyes; if the sufferings which I have borne have weighed upon my vernal serenity, now, entering upon a more fruitful age, the germ of René is about to develop, and bitterness of another kind will be blended with my narrative! What shall I not have to tell in speaking of my country; of her revolutions, of which I have already shown the fore-ground; of the Empire and of the gigantic man whom I have seen fall; of the Restoration in which I played so great a part, that Restoration glorious to-day, in 1822, although nevertheless I am able to see it only through I know not what ill-omened mist?
I end this book, which touches the spring of 1800. Arriving at the close of my first career, I see opening before me the writer's career; from a private individual I am about to become a public man; I leave the virginal and silent retreat of solitude to enter the dusty and noisy cross-roads of the world; broad day is about to light up my dreamy life, light to penetrate my kingdom of shadows. I cast a melting glance upon those books which contain my unremembered hours; I seem to be bidding a last farewell to the paternal house; I take leave of the thoughts and illusions of my youth as of sisters, of loving women, whom I leave by the family hearth and whom I shall see no more.
We took four hours to cross from Dover to Calais. I stole into my country under the shelter of a foreign name: doubly hidden beneath the obscurity of the Swiss La Sagne and my own, I entered France with the century[360].
[247] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in February 1845.—T.
[248] Cat. lxv. 9-11.—T.
[249] M. A. Dulau was a Frenchman, and had been a Benedictine at Sorèze College. He emigrated and opened a shop in Wardour Street, London.—B.
[250] OV., Fasti, VI. 772.—T.
[251] Charlotte Suzanne Marie de Bedée (1762-1849), whom Chateaubriand called Caroline, survived him, and died at Dinan on the 28th of April 1849.—B.
[252] Marie Anne Cuppi (1710-1770), known as the Camargo, and a famous dancer, was born in Brussels of a reputed noble Spanish family. She made her first appearance at the Opera in Pans in 1734, and continued to dance there until 1751, when she retired from her profession. Voltaire addressed a piece of verse to her.—T.
[253] David Hume (1711-1776). His History of England, published from 1754 to 1761, goes down to 1688, whence it is continued by Smollett.—T.
[254] Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771). That portion of his complete History of England which embraces the period from the Revolution to the death of George II. is generally treated as carrying on Hume's History, and is printed as a continuation of that work.—T.
[255] Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.—T.
[256] William Robertson (1721-1793), a "moderate" historian, author of a History of Scotland, a History of Charles V., and a History of America.—T.
[257] John Dryden (1631-1700), Poet-Laureate.—T.
[258] Alexander Pope (1688-1744). His house at Twickenham stood on the site of the modern Pope's Villa, now the property of Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P. The willow became rotten and was cut down.—T.
[259] The Rev. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), Professor of Rhetoric at Edinburgh University, and author of the Lectures on Rhetoric and a collection of famous Sermons.—T.
[260] Dr. Samuel Johnson ( 1709-1783), author of the Dictionary and the Lives of the English Poets.—T.
[261] Addison and Steele's Spectator ran for nearly two years, from January 1711 to December 1712.—T.
[262] Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the great statesman. His Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared in 1790.—T.
[263] François Duc de Montmorency (circa 1530-1579) was Ambassador to England in 1572, when Shakespeare was still a child.—T.
[264] Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron (circa 1562-1602), was Ambassador from Henry IV. to Elizabeth at the close of the sixteenth century. He was beheaded, 31 July 1602, at the Bastille, for conspiring against the King.—T.
[265] Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1560-1641), Henry IV.'s great minister.—T.
[266] Elizabeth, Queen of England (1533-1603), reigned from 1558 to 1603, and the plays produced by Shakespeare during her reign include Love's Labours Lost, the Comedy of Errors, King Henry VI., the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Midsummer Alight's Dream, the Life and Death of King Richard III., Romeo and Juliet, the Life and Death of King Richard II., King John, the Merchant of Venice, King Henry IV., King Henry V., the Taming of the Shrew, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, Julius Cæsar, All's Well that Ends Well, and Hamlet Prince of Denmark.—T.
[267] James I. King of England and VI. of Scotland (1566-1625). In his reign were produced Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, the Moor of Venice, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, the Tempest, the Winters Tale, and King Henry VIII.—T.
[268] Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) flourished exactly three centuries before Shakespeare.—T.
[269] Bulstrode Whitelock (1605-1675), a prominent member of the Long Parliament, and author of the Memorials of the English Affairs, in which mention is made of the fact that the Swedish Ambassador complains, in 1656, of the delay caused in the translation of certain articles into Latin through their being entrusted to a blind man.—T.
[270] Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), known as Molière, played the principal part in his own comedies. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, one of the most farcical of these, was produced in 1669.—T.
[271] Tob. xiii. 15.—T.
[272] An Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet William Shakespeare, 1-2.—T.
[273] Michael Angelo Buonarotti (1474-1563) left a number of slight poems in addition to his vast works of sculpture, painting, and architecture.—T.
[274] Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) lost the use of his right leg when eighteen months old.—T.
[275] Sonnets, xxxvii. 3.—T.
[276] Sonnets, lxxi. I, 5-12.—T.
[277] Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), the voluminous author of Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and the History of Sir Charles Grandison. Clarissa Harlowe was published in 1748.—T.
[278] Henry Fielding (1707-1754), author of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones (1749), etc.—T.
[279] Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), author of Tristram Shandy (1759-1767), etc.—T.
[280] Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield had appeared in 1766.—T.
[281] Godwin's Caleb Williams was published in 1794.—T.
[282] Matthew Gregory Lewis (1773-1818), familiarly known as Monk Lewis from the Monk, his principal novel, published in 1795.—T.
[283] Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), née Ward, author of the Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)—T.
[284] Mrs. Anna Lætitia Barbauld (1743-1825), née Aiken, author of Evenings at Horne, etc.—T.
[285] Maria Edgeworth (1766-1849), author of Moral Tales, Castle Rackrent, Tales of Fashionable Life, etc., etc.—T.
[286] Madame Fanny d'Arblay (1752-1840), née Burney, author of Evelina (1778), Cecilia, and an interesting Diary and Letters.—T.
[287] Florio's Montaigne, Booke III. chap. IX.: Of Vanitie.—T.
[288] Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) published his tragedy of Goetz von Berlichingen in 1773; Sir Walter Scott's translation appeared in 1799.—T.
[289] William Cowper (1731-1800), author of the Task.—T.
[290] Robert Burns (1759-1796), the Ayrshire ploughman-poet.—T.
[291] Thomas Moore (1779-1852), the popular Irish poet, had published his translation of Anacreon at the time of which Chateaubriand writes. His Irish Melodies began to appear in 1807, and Lalla Rookh was published in 1817.—T.
[292] Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) had published his Pleasures of Hope in 1799.—T.
[293] Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), the banker-poet, was known at this time by the Pleasures of Memory, published in 1792.—T.
[294] George Crabbe (1754-1832) had published the Library and the Village.—T.
[295] William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Poet-Laureate (1843). The Lyrical Ballads, composed with Coleridge, whom Chateaubriand omits to mention, were published in 1798.—T.
[296] Robert Southey (1774-1843), Poet-Laureate (1813). Wat Tyler and Joan of Arc both appeared before the close of the eighteenth century.—T.
[297] James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) had not begun to write at this time.—T.
[298] James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), author of the Hunchback and other once much admired plays.—T.
[299] Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773-1840), Lord Privy Seal in the ministry of his nephew Charles James Fox (1806), and author of some translations from the Spanish poets.—T.
[300] Canning was the author of a number of satirical poems, many of which appeared in the Anti-Jacobin.—T.
[301] John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1829, and one of the founders of the Quarterly Review (1809) and of the Athenæum Club (1824). He published occasional poems on British victories, such as Trafalgar and Talavera.—T.
[302] William Mason (1724-1797), a minor poet, author of the English Garden and of two tragedies, Elfrida and Caractacus.—T.
[303] Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, and author of the Botanic Garden and the Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life.—T.
[304] James Beattie (1735-1803). The Minstrel appeared in 1774 to 1777.—T.
[305] Hours of Idleness, "When I roved a young Highlander," 1-4.—T.
[306] Hours of Idleness, "Lines written beneath the Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow," 1-4, 17-18, 24-25, 30, 33-34—T.
[307] Arthur Young (1741-1820), a famous writer on agriculture, and Secretary to the Board of Agriculture on its establishment in 1793.—T.
[308] Arthur Young, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789. The author passed by Combourg Castle on the 1st of September 1788.—T.
[309] Martyrs, book IV.—T.
[310] Ad Familiares, IV. 5: "In my return out of Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I amused myself with contemplating the circumjacent countries. Behind me lay ‚Ægina, before me Megara; on my right I saw Piræus, and on my left Corinth. These cities, once so flourishing and magnificent, now presented nothing to my view but a sad spectacle of desolation" (Melmoth's translation).—T.
[311] Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780-1857), the national French song-writer. The extract quoted occurs in the notes to Béranger's song, À M. de Chateaubriand (September 1831), which is quoted in a later volume.—T.
[312] Abel François Villemain (1790-1870), perpetual secretary of the French Academy from 1835, and author of the notice of Lord Byron in the Biographie universelle, from which the above sentences are quoted.—T.
[313] Byron spent his childhood at Aberdeen.—T.
[314] Macpherson's Ossian was published in 1760.—T.
[315] Goethe's Sorrows of Werther appeared in 1774.—T.
[316] Rousseau's posthumous work, published in 1782.—T.
[317] By Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1784).—T.
[318] Chateaubriand cannot have read the Age of Bronze: it is true that this poem was written in 1823, at Genoa, a year later than the earlier portion of these remarks. In Stanza XVI. of the Age of Bronze, or Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis, treating of the Congress of Verona (1822), occur the following lines:
There Metternich, power's foremost parasite,
Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight;
There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs;
And subtle Greeks intrigue for stupid Tartars.
And Byron appends the following note:
"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, who has not forgotten the author in the minister, receives a handsome compliment at Verona from a literary sovereign: 'Ah! Monsieur C., are you related to that Chateaubriand who-who-who has written something?' (écrit quelque chose!). It is said that the author of Atala repented him for a moment of his legitimacy."—T.
[319] De la Littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec l'état moral et politique des nations, by Madame de Staël. As this book appeared in 1800, before Atala and the Génie du Christianisme, Madame de Staël may well be excused for not mentioning Chateaubriand's name in it.—B.
[320] Teresa Contessa Guiccioli (1799-1873), née Gamba, who became famous by her liaison with Lord Byron. In 1831, widowed of both her husband and Lord Byron, she married the Marquis de Boissy, who had been an attache to Chateaubriand's embassy in Rome. The Countess Guiccioli published her Recollections of Lord Byron in 1863.—B.
[321] Anne Isabella Lady Byron (1792-1860), née Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke-Noel, and heiress of her mother, Judith Noel, Viscountess Wentworth. She married Lord Byron on the 2nd of January 1815, and left him in January 1816, soon after the birth of their daughter Augusta Ada.—T.
[322] Alan IV. Duke of Brittany (d. 1112), known as Alan Rufus, son-in-law and nephew of William the Conqueror, was created Earl of Richmond and founded the borough of Richmond or Rich Mount.—T.
[323] See Domesday Book.—Author's Note.
[324] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) created the Duchy of Richmond in favour of...
[325] Charles Lennox, first Duke of Richmond (peerage of England) and Lennox (peerage of Scotland) in 1675. He was the illegitimate son of the King and of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and Duchesse d'Aubigny. This last title of Aubigny was re-confirmed to the fifth duke by King Louis XVIII. in 1816.—T.
[326] Alice Perrers (d. 1400), married later to William de Windsor, became Edward III.'s mistress in 1366. She stole the rings from off his fingers when he was dying.—T.
[327] La Harpe, Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi martyr:
"The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."—T.
[328] Queen Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), second wife of Henry VIII., executed on Tower Hill for adultery.—T.
[329] William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, K.T. (1724-1810), known as "Old Q.," the notorious veteran debauchee.—T.
[330] Peltier attacked Bonaparte in the Ambigu, which he published in London at the end of 1802. The First Consul, then at peace with England, asked for his expulsion, or at least his indictment before a British jury. Peltier was brought before the Court of King's Bench, was brilliantly defended by Sir James Mackintosh, and was sentenced to pay a trifling fine (21 February 1803).—B.
[331] Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) abandoned medicine for the law. He received an Indian judgeship in 1804, and in 1811 returned to England, entering Parliament in 1812. He was the author of some masterly writings, including the famous Dissertation on Ethics in the Encyclopædia Britannica.—T.
[332] Blenheim was founded in 1704 and bestowed by Parliament on John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his military and diplomatic services. It was named after the signal victory at Blenheim over the French and Bavarian troops (2 August 1704).—T.
[333] Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson (1758-1805) destroyed the French fleet in the battle known indifferently as the Battle of Aboukir or the Nile (1 August 1798). For this he was created Baron Nelson by the King of England and Duke of Bronte by the King of Naples.—T.
[334] Emma Lady Hamilton (1763-1815), née Lyon or Hart, the beautiful mistress of Charles Greville and of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, foster-brother to George IV., and Minister at Naples from 1764 to 1800. Sir William Hamilton married Emma Hart in 1791. Her intimacy with Nelson began in 1793, and their daughter Horatia was born in 1801.—T.
[335] 21 October 1805.—T.
[336] At that time the residence of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.—T.
[337] The Farnesina Palace, in Rome, where Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) died.—T.
[338] Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), the famous astronomer, had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.—T.
[339] Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), Sir William's sister, assisted him in recording his observations.—T.
[340] King Alfred (849-901), known as the Great, is said to have founded the University of Oxford in 872.—T.
[341] Thomas Gray (1716-1771).—T.
[342] Elegy, I.—T.
[343] Purgatorio, viii. 5.—B.
[344] Ode, 11-15, 18-21, 28-30, 51-55.—T.
[345] Cymbeline, iii. 4.—T.
[346] Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821) married the Prince of Wales, afterwards King George IV., in 1795. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated by mutual consent in 1796, after the birth of Princess Charlotte.—T.
[347] Charles James Fox (1749-1806) entered Parliament for Midhurst in 1768; held office under North, but left him and joined Burke in his opposition to the American War; was Foreign Secretary in the Rockingham Ministry; joined North's short-lived Coalition Ministry of 1783; and during the next fourteen years distinguished himself as the great and eloquent opponent of Pitt's Government. On Pitt's death, in 1806, he again came into office as Foreign Secretary, but himself died shortly after.—T.
[348] Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751-1816) had produced all his plays and was owner of Drury Lane Theatre when he entered Parliament in 1780 under Fox's patronage. In 1782 he became Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Rockingham's Ministry. His two most famous speeches were those impeaching Warren Hastings in 1787 and supporting the French Revolution in 1794.—T.
[349] William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the antagonist of the slave-trade, entered Parliament as Member for Hull in 1780. He first introduced his Abolition Bill in 1789; it was passed by the House of Commons in 1801 and by the House of Lords in 1807.—T.
[350] William Wyndham, first Lord Grenville (1759-1834), entered Parliament in 1782. In 1789 he was Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1790 Pitt made him Home Secretary and a peer; in 1791 he was Foreign Secretary, and Premier from 1806 to 1807.—T.
[351] Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815) entered Parliament in 1790 as Member for Bedford, and attached himself to Fox, to the maintenance of peace, and to the cause of the Princess of Wales. He cut his throat on the 6th of July 1815.—T.
[352] James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale, K.T. (1759-1839), entered the House of Commons in 1780 for Newport, and supported Fox. In 1789 he succeeded to the Scottish peerage and was elected a representative peer in 1790, and in 1806 created a peer of Great Britain and Ireland. He veered from Whig to Tory over the Queen Caroline question, and received the Thistle in reward.—T.
[353] Thomas first Lord Erskine (1750-1823) was Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales (1783), Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1802), and in 1806 became Lord Chancellor and a peer.—T.
[354] This should be 1791. Vide note infra.—T.
[355] 21 April 1791, in the course of an excursion on the French Revolution during the debate on the Quebec Government Bill.—T.
[356] George III., King of England (1738-1820). His frequent fits of insanity began in 1810.—T.
[357] Pitt died at his house at Putney on the 23rd of January 1806.—T.
[358] George Frederick Handel (1684-1759), a German musician who attained and still maintains great vogue in England.—T.
[359] Marie Catherine Marouise d'Aguesseau (1759-1849), née de Lamoignon, married to the Marquis d'Aguesseau, who became a senator of the Empire (1805) and a peer of the Restoration (1814).—B.
[360] 8 May 1800.—B.