("That his muse, speaking French, talked in Latin and Greek").—T.
[262] Chateaubriand wrote this page in June 1821; Fontanes had died on the 17th of March previous.—B.
[263] Rosanbo was guillotined on 1 Floréal Year II. (20 April 1794).—B.
[264] These are the four leading magisterial or parliamentary families of France under the Old Order. The Lamoignons produced Guillaume de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris (1658-1677), himself the son of a chief justice; his sons Chrétien François de Lamoignon, a chief justice (1690) and Nicolas Lamoignon de Baville (1648-1724), Counsellor to the Parliament (1670), Master of Requests (1675), and lastly, Intendant of Languedoc; Guillaume de Lamoignon, Seigneur de Malesherbes, Chancellor of France (1750-1768), son of Chrétien François; his son, Chrétien Guillaume de Malesherbes (1721-1794), the famous minister and counsel for Louis XVI. at the King's trial; and Chrétien François Lamoignon (d. 1789), Chief Justice of the Parliament of Paris (1758) and Chancellor in 1787, great-grandson of the first Guillaume de Lamoignon. His son, Christian de Lamoignon, was created a peer of France, and died in 1827; in him the family of Lamoignon became extinct. The Molés held chief-justiceships from 1602 to the Revolution. The more remarkable members of the family were Édouard Molé (1558-1641), its founder, son of a counsellor to the Parliament, himself successively a counsellor, Procurator-General, and Chief Justice of the Parliament of Paris (1602); Matthieu Molé (1584-1656), his son, counsellor (1606), Procurator-General (1614), Chief Justice (1641) and Keeper of the Seals (1650); and more recently Matthieu Louis Molé (1781-1855), son of the President Molé de Champlatreux, Minister of Justice under Bonaparte (1813), who created him a count of the Empire, Minister of Marine (1815-1818) under the Restoration, when he became a peer of France, Foreign Minister (1830-1836), and Premier (1836-1839) under Louis Philippe. In 1840 he was elected a member of the French Academy. Of the Séguiers, Pierre Séguier (1504-1580) was an advocate, Advocate-General, and Chief Justice; his son, Antoine Séguier (1552-1626), was a counsellor to the Parliament, Advocate-General, and Ambassador of Henry IV. at Venice; Pierre Séguier (1588-1672), grandson of the first Pierre, was Intendant of Guyenne, Keeper of the Seals (1633), and Chancellor (1635); Antoine Louis Séguier (1726-1791) was Advocate-General to the Grand Council and subsequently to the Parliament (1755-1790) and a member of the French Academy (1757); and his son, Matthieu Séguier (d. 1848), was for many years a chief justice. Henri François d'Aguesseau (1688-1751) was the son of an intendant of Limousin, and was Chancellor of France from 1717 to 1718, 1720 to 1722, and 1737 to 1750.—T.
[265] Cf. inter alia, the character of the Présidente de Tourvel in Choderlos de Laclos' Liaisons dangereuses.—T.
[266] This must be a slip of the pen. Malesherbes had only two daughters: Marie Thérèse, born 1756, who married, in 1769, Louis Le Peletier, Seigneur de Rosanbo, and Françoise Pauline, born 1758, who married, in 1775, Charles Philippe Simon de Montboissier-Beaufort-Canillac, commanding the Orléans Regiment of Dragoons.—B.
[267] The President de Rosanbo's three daughters married the Comte de Chateaubriand, the author's brother, the Comte Lepelletier d'Aulnay, and the Comte de Tocqueville. The last was made a lord of the Bed-chamber and a peer of France by Charles X., and was the father of Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the Démocratie en Amérique.—B.
[268] Louis Le Peletier, Vicomte de Rosanbo (1777-1858) was created a peer of France on the same day as Chateaubriand, 17 August 1815, and together with the latter, retired from the Upper House in August 1830, refusing to take the oath to the usurper.—B.
[269] Navigated in recent years by Captain Franklin and Captain Parry.—(Author's Note Geneva, 1831).
[270] René Nicolas Maupeou (1714-1792) succeeded his father in 1768 as Chancellor of France. In 1771 he banished the Parliament of Paris and installed in its stead the King's Privy Council, which was derisively nicknamed the "Maupeou Parliament" by the public, and which continued in power until the death of Louis XV. in 1774, when the Parliament was restored and Maupeou banished in his turn.—T.