O great and merciful God, Thou hast not cast us upon earth for unworthy troubles and a miserable happiness! Our inevitable disenchantment admonishes us that our destinies are more sublime. Whatever may have been our errors, if we have preserved a serious spirit and thought of Thee in the midst of our weaknesses, we shall, whenever Thy goodness sets us free, be carried to that region where attachments endure for ever!
*
It was not long before I received the punishment of my literary vanity, the most detestable of all, if not the most foolish: I had thought that I should be able to relish in petto the satisfaction of being a sublime genius, not by wearing, as they do to-day, a beard and an eccentric coat, but by remaining dressed like decent people, distinguished only by superiority. Useless hope! My pride was to be chastened; the correction was administered by the political persons whom I was obliged to know: celebrity is a benefice with the cure of souls.
M. de Fontanes was acquainted with Madame Bacciochi[391]; he introduced me to Bonaparte's sister, and soon after to the First Consul's brother Lucien[392]. The latter had a country-place near Senlis le Plessis, where I was coerced to go and dine; the château had once belonged to the Cardinal de Bernis[393]. Lucien had in his garden the tomb of his first wife[394], a lady half German and half Spanish, and the memory of the poet-cardinal. The nutrient nymph of a stream dug with the spade was a mule which drew water from a well: that was the commencement of all the rivers which Bonaparte was to cause to flow in his Empire. Efforts were being made to have my name struck off the lists; I was already called, and called myself aloud, Chateaubriand, forgetting that I ought to call myself Lassagne. Emigrants came to see me: among others, Messrs, de Bonald[395] and de Chênedollé[396]. Christian de Lamoignon, my companion in exile in London, took me to Madame Récamier: the curtain fell suddenly between her and me.
The Comtesse de Beaumont.
The person who filled the largest place in my existence, on my return from the Emigration, was Madame la Comtesse de Beaumont[397]. She lived during a part of the year at the Château de Passy, near Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, which M. Joubert inhabited during the summer. Madame de Beaumont returned to Paris, and expressed a wish to meet me.
So that my life might be one long chain of regrets, Providence willed it that the first person who received me kindly at the outset of my public career should also be the first to disappear. Madame de Beaumont opens the funeral procession of those women who have passed away before me. My most distant memories rest upon ashes, and they have continued to fall from grave to grave: like the Indian pundit, I recite the prayers for the dead until the flowers of my chaplet are faded.
Madame de Beaumont was the daughter of Armand Marc de Saint-Hérem, Comte de Montmorin, French Ambassador in Madrid, commandant in Brittany, member of the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and Foreign Minister under Louis XVI., by whom he was much liked: he perished on the scaffold, where he was followed by a portion of his family[398].
Madame de Beaumont was ill rather than well-favoured, and very like her portrait by Madame Lebrun[399]. Her face was thin and pale; her eyes were almond-shaped and would have perhaps been too brilliant, if an extraordinary suavity of expression had not half extinguished her glances and caused them to shine languidly, as a ray of light becomes mellowed by passing through crystal water. Her character had a sort of rigidity and impatience, which arose from the strength of her feelings and from the inward suffering which she experienced. Endowed with loftiness of soul and great courage, she was born for the world, from which her spirit had withdrawn through choice and unhappiness; but when a friendly voice evoked that secluded intelligence, it came and spoke to you in words from Heaven. Madame de Beaumont's extreme weakness made her slow of expression, and this slowness was touching. I knew this afflicted woman only at the moment of her flight; she was already stricken with death, and I devoted myself to her sufferings. I had taken a lodging in the Rue Saint-Honoré, at the Hôtel d'Étampes, near the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. In this latter street, Madame de Beaumont occupied an apartment looking out upon the gardens of the Ministry of Justice. I called to see her every evening, with her friends and mine, M. Joubert, M. de Fontanes, M. de Bonald, M. Molé[400], M. Pasquier[401], M. de Chênedollé, men who have filled a place in literature and public life.