"May Condé sometimes at Chantilly read you;
And may Enghien be touched."—T.
[BOOK IV][649]
The year 1804—I move to the Rue de Miromesnil-Verneuil—Alexis de Tocqueville—Le Ménil—Mézy—Mérévil—Madame de Coislin—Journey to Vichy, in Auvergne, and to Mont Blanc—Return to Lyons—Excursion to the Grande Chartreuse—Death of Madame de Caud—The years 1805 and 1806—I return to Paris—I leave for the Levant—I embark in Constantinople on a ship carrying pilgrims for Syria—From Tunis to my return to France through Spain—Reflections on my voyage—Death of Julien.
Henceforth removed from active life, and nevertheless saved from Bonaparte's anger by the protection of Madame Bacciochi, I left my temporary lodging in the Rue de Beaune and went to live in the Rue de Miromesnil. The little house which I hired was occupied later by M. De Lally-Tolendal and Madame Denain, his "best-beloved," as they said in the days of Diane de Poitiers[650]. My garden abutted on a timber-yard, and near my window I had a tall poplar-tree, which M. de Lally-Tolendal, in order to breathe a less moist air, himself felled with his coarse hand, which to his eyes was transparent and fleshless: it was an illusion like any other. The pavement of the street at that time came to an end before my door; higher up, the street or road wound across a piece of waste-land called the Butte-aux-Lapins, or Rabbit Hill. The Butte-aux-Lapins, sprinkled with a few isolated houses, joined on the right the Jardin de Tivoli, whence I had set out with my brother for the emigration, and on the left the Parc de Monceaux. I strolled pretty often in that abandoned park, where the Revolution had commenced among the orgies of the Duc d'Orléans: this retreat had been embellished with marble nudities and mock ruins, a symbol of the light and vicious policy which was about to cover France with prostitutes and wreckage.
I busied myself with nothing: at the utmost I conversed in the park with some pine-trees, or talked of the Duc d'Enghien with three rooks at the edge of an artificial river hidden beneath a carpet of green moss. Deprived of my Alpine Legation and of my Roman friendships, even as I had been suddenly separated from my attachments in London, I did not know how to dispose of my imagination and my feelings; I sent them every evening after the sun, and its rays were unable to carry them over the seas. I returned indoors and tried to fall asleep to the sound of my poplar tree.
Nevertheless my resignation had increased my reputation; in France a little courage always looks well. Some of the members of Madame de Beaumont's former company introduced me to new country-houses.
The Tocqueville family.