The Marquis de Fontanes.
M. de Fontanes, together with Chénier, was the last writer of the classic school in the elder line: his prose and verse resemble each other and have a similar merit. His thoughts and images have a melancholy unknown to the century of Louis XIV., which knew only the austere and holy sadness of religious eloquence. That melancholy is mingled with the works of the chanter of the Jours des Morts, as it were the imprint of the period in which he lived: it fixes the date of his coming; it shows that he was born after Rousseau, while connected by taste with Fénelon. If the writings of M. de Fontanes were reduced to two very small volumes, one of prose, the other of verse, it would be the most graceful funeral monument that could be raised upon the tomb of the classic school[226].
Among the papers which my friend left are several cantoes of his poem of the Grèce Sauvée, books of odes, scattered poems, and so on. He would not have published any more himself: for that critic, so acute, so enlightened, so impartial when not blinded by his political opinions, had a horrible dread of criticism. He was superlatively unjust to Madame de Staël. An envious article by Garat[227] on the Forêt de Navarre almost stopped him short at the outset of his political career. Fontanes, so soon as he appeared, killed the affected school of Dorat[228], but he was unable to restore the classic school, which was hastening to its end together with the language of Racine[229].
If one thing in the world was likely to be antipathetic to M. de Fontanes, it was my manner of writing. With me began the so-called romantic school, a revolution in French literature: nevertheless, my friend, instead of revolting against my barbarism, became enamoured of it. I could see a great wonderment on his face when I read to him fragments of the Natchez, Atala and René; he was unable to bring those productions within the scope of the common rules of criticism, but he felt that he was entering into a new world; he saw a new form of nature; he understood a language which he could not speak. He gave me excellent advice; I owe to him such correctness of style as I possess; he taught me to respect the reader's ear; he prevented me from falling into the extravagance of invention and the ruggedness of execution of my disciples.
It was a great joy to me to see him again in London, received with open arms by the Emigration; they asked him for cantoes from the Grèce Sauvée; they crowded to hear him. He came to live near me; we became inseparable. We were present together at a scene worthy of those days of misfortune: Cléry[230], who had lately landed, read us his Memoirs in manuscript. Imagine the emotion of an audience of exiles, listening to the valet of Louis XVI. telling, as an eye-witness, of the sufferings and death of the prisoner of the Temple! The Directory, alarmed by Cléry's Memoirs, published an interpolated edition, in which it made the author talk like a lackey and Louis XVI. like a street-porter: this is, perhaps, one of the dirtiest of all the instances of revolutionary turpitude.
Emigrant society.
M. du Theil[231], who had charge of the affairs of M. le Comte d'Artois in London, had hastened to seek out Fontanes; the latter asked me to take him to the agent of the Princes. We found him surrounded by all the defenders of the Throne and the Altar who were idling about Piccadilly, by a crowd of spies and sharpers who had escaped from Paris under various names and disguises, and by a swarm of adventurers, Belgians, Germans, Irishmen, dealers in the Counter-revolution. In a corner of the crowd was a man of thirty or thirty-two, at whom nobody looked, and who himself seemed interested only in an engraving of the Death of General Wolfe. Struck by his appearance, I asked who he was: one of my neighbours answered:
"It's nobody; it's a Vendean peasant who has brought a letter from his leaders."
This man, who was "nobody," had seen the deaths of Cathelineau[232], the first general of the Vendée and a peasant like himself; Bonchamps, in whom Bayard had come to life again; Lescure[233], armed with a hair-cloth which was not bullet-proof; d'Elbée[234], shot in an armchair, his wounds not permitting him to embrace death standing; La Rochejacquelein[235], whose body was ordered to be "verified" in order to reassure the Convention in the midst of its victories. That man, who was "nobody," had assisted at two hundred captures and recaptures of towns, villages, and redoubts, at seven hundred skirmishes, and seventeen pitched battles; he had fought against three hundred thousand regular troops and six or seven hundred thousand recruits and national guards; he had assisted in taking one hundred guns and fifty thousand muskets; he had passed through the "infernal columns," companies of incendiaries commanded by Conventional; he had been in the midst of the ocean of fire which, three several times, rolled its waves over the woods of the Vendée; lastly, he had seen three hundred thousand Hercules of the plough, the associates of his work, die, and one hundred square leagues of fertile country change into a desert of ashes.
The two Frances met upon this soil levelled by them. All that remained in blood and memory of the France of the Crusades fought against the new blood and hopes of the France of the Revolution. The conqueror recognised the greatness of the conquered. Turreau[236], the Republican general, declared that "the Vendeans would take their place in history in the first rank of soldier peoples." Another general wrote to Merlin de Thionville[237]: