[548] The Abbé Nicolas Silvestre Guillon (1760-1847) had been chaplain, reader, and librarian to the Princesse de Lamballe. He hid himself under the Terror and reappeared in 1801 to publish his Recherches sur le Concordat, which caused him to be confined in the Temple for four months. On returning from Rome he became Professor of Rhetoric at the new University. In 1810 he was appointed to the Faculty of Theology in Paris, and for thirty years professed sacred eloquence in that faculty, of which he ultimately became the dean. He became chaplain to the Orleans Family in 1818, and in 1831 Louis-Philippe named him for the See of Beauvais, which, owing to a technical misdemeanour, he was not allowed to accept. Having confessed his error, he was in the course of the next year installed as Bishop of Morocco in partibus.—T.
[549] Marie Thérèse Princesse de Lamballe, née Princesse de Savoie-Carignan (1749-1792), was murdered at the prison of the Force in September 1792.—T.
[550] Antoine François Philippe Dubois-Descours, Marquis de La Maisonfort (1778-1827), had returned from the Emigration at the commencement of the Consulate, and was arrested and confined in the island of Elba, whence he escaped to Rome. Under the Restoration, he sat for a time in Parliament and represented France as Minister Plenipotentiary at Florence.—B.
[551] Louis François Bertin (1766-1841), usually known as Bertin the Elder, to distinguish him from his brother Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux, together with whom he bought the Journal des Débats in 1799, and immeasurably improved the property. He was deprived of it in 1811, but revived the paper in 1814, and vigorously supported the Restoration until 1830, when he allied himself to Louis-Philippe and the new monarchy.—T.
[552] Pierre Joseph Briot (1771-1827) opposed Bonaparte in the Council of the Five Hundred, but nevertheless obtained his appointment as Government Commissary-General in Elba through the influence of Lucien Bonaparte. On Napoleon's coronation as Emperor, Briot went to Italy, and held various offices under Joseph and Joachim Murat, Kings of Naples. He refused to accept titles or decorations from either of these monarchs, which is probably the reason why Chateaubriand speaks of him as "the Republican" Briot.—B.
[553] The Princesse Pauline Borghèse (1780-1825), née Bonaparte, was Napoleon's second sister. She married General Leclerc in 1797, and shortly after his death married Prince Camille Borghèse (1803), from whom she soon separated, leaving Italy to reside at the Château de Neuilly. She enjoyed the title of Duchess of Guastalla from 1806 to 1814. In the latter year, she devoted herself wholly to Napoleon, accompanying him to Elba, and placing her diamonds at his disposal. In her later years, she became reconciled to her husband and lived with him at Florence. Pauline Borghèse was one of the most beautiful of women of her time. She sat to Canova for a nude Venus, and was doubtless in no way shy of "making her toilet" before Chateaubriand.—T.
[554] "I perish last and most wretched of all!"—T.
[555] "My days do not warrant the price of a sigh."—T.
[556] Madame de Sévigné's seat in Brittany.—B.
[557] This house stood near the Trinità-del-Monte, and was known by the name of the Villa Margherita.—B.