[174] Pierre Abailard, or Abélard (1079-1142), the hero of the Héloïse idyll, was a native of Pallet, near Nantes, in Brittany.—T.
[175] Cf. MILTON, Paradise Lost, XII., 646-647: "The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." —T.
[BOOK IV][176]
Berlin—Potsdam—Frederic the Great—My brother—My cousin Moreau—My sister, the Comtesse de Farcy—Julie a worldly woman—Dinner—Pommereul—Madame de Chastenay—Cambrai—The Navarre Regiment—La Martinière—Death of my father—My regrets—Would my father have appreciated me?—I return to Brittany—I stay with my eldest sister—My brother sends for me to Paris—First inspiration of the muse—My lonely life in Paris—I am presented at Versailles—I hunt with the King—Adventure with my mare Heureuse
It is a far cry from Combourg to Berlin, from a young dreamer to an old ambassador. In the foregoing pages I find these words: "In how many places have I already commenced to write these Memoirs, and in what place shall I finish them?" Nearly four years have passed between the date at which I wrote down the facts I have just related and that at which I resume these Memoirs. A thousand things have happened; a second man has shown himself in me, the politician: I care very little for him. I have defended the liberties of France, which alone can secure the duration of the lawful Throne. With the aid of the Conservateur[177], I have set M. de Villèle in power; I have seen the Duc de Berry die, and done honor to his memory[178]. In order to reconcile everybody, I have gone away; I have accepted the Berlin Embassy[179].
Yesterday I was at Potsdam, an ornate barrack, now void of soldiers: I studied the mock Julian in his mock Athens. At Sans-Souci, I was shown the table on which a great German monarch turned the maxims of the Encyclopædists into little French verses; the room occupied by Voltaire, decorated with carved monkeys and parrots; the mill which he who laid provinces waste made light of respecting; the tomb of the horse César and of the greyhounds Diane, Amourette, Biche, Superbe, and Pax. The royal infidel took pleasure in profaning even the religion of the tomb by raising mausoleums to his dogs; he had marked out a burying-place near them for himself, less from contempt of mankind than an ostentation of annihilation.
They showed me the New Palace, already falling to pieces. In the old palace of Potsdam, they preserve the tobacco-stains, the worn and soiled chairs, in a word, all the traces of the renegade Prince's uncleanliness. This place immortalizes at once the dirt of the cynic, the impudence of the atheist, the tyranny of the despot, and the glory of the soldier. One thing alone attracted my attention: the hands of a clock fixed at the moment of Frederic's death; I was deceived by the immobility of the picture: hours never stay their flight; it is not man that stops the career of time, it is time that stops the career of man. Besides, it matters little what part we have played in life; the brilliancy or obscurity of our doctrines, our riches or poverty, our joys or sorrows in no way influence the length of our days. Whether the hands of the clock move over a golden or wooden face, whether the face be large or small, and fill the bezel of a ring or the rose-window of a cathedral, the hour has but one duration.
In a vault of the Protestant church, immediately below the pulpit of the unfrocked schismatic, I saw the coffin of the crowned sophist. The coffin is of bronze; when you strike it, it resounds. The dragoon who slumbers in this brassy bed would not even be roused from sleep by the noise of his fame; he will awake only to the sound of the trumpet which shall summon him to his last battle-field, face to face with the Lord of Hosts.