This was the last time the name of the Comte de La Garde appeared in print. A short time afterwards his wandering life came to an end in Paris, which during the latter years of his life he inhabited alternately with Angers. He had adopted as his motto: ‘My life is a battle’; he could have added, ‘and a never-ending journey’; for his constitutional restlessness prevented him from settling permanently, no matter where. He never married. The few documents he left behind, including some momentoes, represented the whole of his property, and went to his cousin, M. de La Garde, Marquis de Chambonas.
In addition to the afore-mentioned works and the present one, Recollections of the Congress of Vienna, which originally appeared in Paris in 1820 (?), M. de la Garde was the author of the following: Une traduction de Dmitry Donskoy (Moscow, 1811); Coup d’œil sur le Royaume de Pologne (Varsovie, 1818); Coup d’œil sur Alexander-Bad (Bavière, 1819); Laure Bourg: roman dédié au Roi de Bavière (Munich, 1820); Les Monuments grecs de la Sicile (Munich, 1820); Traduction des Mélodies de Thomas Moore (Londres, 1826); Voyage dans quelques parties de l’Europe (Londres, 1828); Brighton, Voyage en Angleterre, (1830); Tableau de Bruxelles (prose et vers), dédié à la Reine; Projet pour la formation d’une Colonie belge à la Nouvelle Zélande, etc.
In all those works, and notably in the most important, namely: Brighton, and Souvenirs du Congrès de Vienne, M. de La Garde shows himself to be endowed with the faculty of observation and with tact. Unfortunately his matchless kindliness prevents his criticisms from departing from the laudatory gamut.
We must not look in these Recollections for important revelations concerning the diplomatic conferences which engaged the attention of the whole of Europe in 1815; we shall only meet with delightful anecdotes and portraits of grandes dames and illustrious personages. There will be many silhouettes of figures that have been forgotten since, but which, while they belonged to this world, were worthy of notice. To appreciate them we should bring to the perusal of this volume the quality which presided at its composition: namely, the kindliness of an observant man of the world.
Since their appearance in 1820, these Recollections had been absolutely forgotten. It seemed to us and to M. le Marquis de Chambonas La Garde, to whom we owe the principal facts of this notice, that the chapters were worthy of being resuscitated. Though we have omitted from these Recollections some dissertations more or less obsolete, which would be of no interest to-day, we have throughout respected the style and the ideas of the author; only adding to his narrative the necessary notes on the principal personages of the action.
FLEURY.