Sicut nubes ... quasi naves ... velut umbra.—Job.[2]
As it is not possible for me to foresee the moment of my end; as at my age the days accorded to man are but days of grace, or rather of reprieve, I propose to make an explanation.
On the 4th of September next I shall have completed my seventy-eighth year: it is high time that I should quit a world which is quitting me and which I do not regret.
The Memoirs prefaced by these lines follow, in their divisions, the natural divisions of my several careers.
The sad necessity which has always held me by the throat has obliged me to sell my Memoirs. None can know what I have suffered by being compelled thus to hypothecate my tomb; but I owed this last sacrifice to my vows and to the consistency of my conduct. With an almost pusillanimous attachment, I looked upon these Memoirs as confidants from whom I would not care to part; my intention was to leave them to Madame de Chateaubriand; she would have published them at will, or suppressed them, as I would have desired more than ever today.
Ah, if, before quitting the earth, I could have found some one rich enough, confiding enough, to buy up the shares of the "Syndicate," and one who would not, like the Syndicate, be under the necessity of sending the work to press so soon as my knell had sounded! Some of the shareholders are my friends; several of them are obliging persons who have sought to assist me; nevertheless the shares have perhaps been sold, they will have been transferred to third parties with whom I am not acquainted, and with whom family interests must take the first place; to the latter it is natural that the prolongation of my days should mean to them, if not an annoyance, at least an actual loss. Lastly, if I were still the owner of these Memoirs, I would either keep them in manuscript or delay their appearance for fifty years.
These Memoirs have been put together at different dates and in different countries. Hence the necessary prologues, which depict the environments upon which I cast my eyes, the thoughts which occupied me at the time when I resume the thread of my narrative. The changeful circumstances of my life have in this way entered one into the other: it has happened that, in moments of prosperity, I have had to tell of times of penury; in days of tribulation, to retrace my days of happiness. My youth penetrating into my old age, the gravity of my years of experience casting a shadow over my lighter years, the rays of my sun, from its rise to its setting, intercrossing and commingling: all these have produced in my recital a sort of confusion, or, if you will, a sort of indefinable unity; my cradle bears the mark of my tomb, my tomb of my cradle; my hardships become pleasures, my pleasures sorrows, and I no longer know, as I finish reading these Memoirs, whether they proceed from a dark or a hoary head.
I cannot tell if this medley, to which I can apply no remedy, will please or displease; it is the fruit of the inconstancy of my fate; often the tempests have left me no writing-table save the rock that has caused my shipwreck.
I have been urged to publish portions of these Memoirs during my life; I prefer to speak from the depths of my grave: my narrative will then be accompanied by those voices which are in a measure consecrated, because they issue from the tomb. If I have suffered enough in this world to become a happy Shade in the next, a ray escaping from the Elysian Fields will cast a protecting light over my last pictures. Life does not suit me; perhaps death will become me better.
These Memoirs have been the object of my predilection. St. Bonaventure obtained from Heaven permission to continue his after death; I hope for no such favour, but I would wish to rise at the ghostly hour at least to correct the proofs. However, when Eternity shall with its two hands have stopped my ears, in the dusty family of the deaf, I shall hear nobody.