My sisters took it into their heads to make me marry Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had become greatly attached to Lucile. The affair was managed without my knowledge. I had seen Mademoiselle de Lavigne three or four times at most; I recognised her at a distance on the "Furrow" by her pink pelisse, her white gown and her fair hair blown out by the wind, when I was on the beach abandoning myself to the caresses of my old mistress, the sea. I felt myself to possess none of the good qualities of a husband. All my illusions were alive, nothing was spent within me; the very energy of my existence had doubled through my travels. I was racked by the muse. Lucile liked Mademoiselle de Lavigne, and saw the independence of my fortune in this marriage:
"Have your way!" said I.
In me the public man is inflexible; the private man is at the mercy of whomsoever wishes to seize hold of him, and, to save myself an hour's wrangling, I would become a slave for a century.
The consent of the grandfather, the paternal uncle and the principal relatives was easily obtained: there remained to be overcome the objections of a maternal uncle, M. de Vauvert[10], a great democrat, who opposed the marriage of his niece with an aristocrat like myself, who was not one at all. We thought ourselves able to do without him, but my pious mother insisted that the religious marriage should be performed by a "non-juror" priest, which could only be done in secret. M. de Vauvert knew this, and let loose the law upon us, under pretext of rape and breach of the laws, and pleading the imaginary state of second childhood into which the grandfather, M. de Lavigne, had fallen. Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had become Madame de Chateaubriand, without my having held any communication with her, was taken away in the name of the law and put into the Convent of Victory at Saint-Malo, pending the decision of the courts.
There was no rape, breach of the laws, adventure, nor love in the whole matter; the wedding had only the bad side of a novel: truth. The case was tried and the court pronounced the marriage civilly valid. The members of both families being in agreement, M. de Vauvert abandoned the proceedings. The constitutional clergyman, lavishly feed, withdrew his protest against the first nuptial benediction, and Madame de Chateaubriand was released from the convent, where Lucile had imprisoned herself with her.
It was a new acquaintance that I had to make, and it brought me all that I could wish. I doubt whether a finer intelligence than my wife's has ever existed: she guesses the thought and the word about to spring to the brow or the lips of the person with whom she converses; to deceive her is impossible. Madame de Chateaubriand has an original and cultured mind, writes most cleverly, tells a story to perfection, and admires me without ever having read two lines of my works: she would dread to find ideas in them that differ from hers, or to discover that people are not sufficiently enthusiastic over my merit. Although a passionate judge, she is well-informed and a good judge.
Madame de Chateaubriand's defects, if she have any, proceed from the superabundance of her good qualities; my own very serious defects result from the sterility of mine. It is easy to possess resignation, patience, a general obligingness, equanimity of temper, when one interests himself in nothing, when one is wearied by everything, when one replies to good and bad fortune alike with a desperate and despairing "What does it matter?"
Madame de Chateaubriand is better than I, although less accessible in her intercourse with others. Have I been irreproachable in my relations with her? Have I offered my companion all the sentiments which she deserved and which were hers by right? Has she ever complained? What happiness has she tasted in reward for her consistent affection? She has shared my adversities; she has been plunged into the prisons of the Terror, the persecutions of the Empire, the disgraces of the Restoration; she has not known the joys of maternity to counterbalance her sufferings. Deprived of children, which she might perhaps have had in another union, and which she would have loved madly; having none of the honours and affections which surround the mother of a family and console a woman for the loss of her prime, she has travelled, sterile and solitary, towards old age. Often separated from me, disliking literature, to her the pride of bearing my name makes no amends. Timid and trembling for me alone, she is deprived, through her ever-renewed anxiety, of sleep and of the time to cure her ills: I am her chronic infirmity and the cause of her relapses. Can I compare an occasional impatience which she has shown me with the cares which I have caused her? Can I set my good qualities, such as they are, against her virtues, which support the poor, which have established the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse in the face of all obstacles? What are my labours beside the works of that Christian woman? When the two of us appear before God, it is I who shall be condemned.
Upon the whole, when I consider my nature with all its imperfections, is it certain that marriage has spoilt my destiny?
I should no doubt have had more leisure and repose; I should have been better received in certain circles and by certain of the great ones of this earth; yet in politics, though Madame de Chateaubriand may have crossed me, she never checked me, for here, as in matters affecting my honour, I judge only by my own feeling. Should I have produced a greater number of works if I had remained independent, and would those works have been any better? Have there not been circumstances, as shall be seen, in which, by marrying outside France, I should have ceased to write and disowned my country? If I had not married, would not my weakness have made me the prey of some worthless creature? Should not I have squandered and polluted my days like Lord Byron[11]? To-day, when I am sinking into old age, all my wildness would have passed; nothing would remain to me but emptiness and regrets: I should be an old bachelor, unesteemed, either deceived or undeceived, an old bird repeating my worn-out song to whosoever refused to listen to it. The full indulgence of my desires would not have added one string more to my lyre, nor one more earnest note to my voice. The constraint of my feelings, the mystery of my thoughts have perhaps increased the forcefulness of my accents, quickened my works with an internal fever, with a hidden flame, which would have spent itself in the free air of love. Held back by an indissoluble tie, I purchased at first, at the cost of a little bitterness, the sweets which I taste to-day. Of the ills of my existence I have preserved only the incurable part. I therefore owe an affectionate and eternal gratitude to my wife, whose attachment has been as touching as it has been profound and sincere. She has rendered my life more grave, more noble, more honourable, by always inspiring me with respect for duty, if not always with the strength to perform it.