This first and affectionate letter from the first friend whom I had in my life, the friend who walked by my side for twenty-three years from the date of that letter, reminds me painfully of my gradual isolation. Fontanes is no more; a profound sorrow, the tragic death of a son, cast him into an untimely grave. Almost all the persons of whom I have spoken in these Memoirs have disappeared; I am keeping an obituary register. A few years more and I, doomed to catalogue the dead, shall leave none to write my name in the book of the departed.
But if it must be that I remain alone, if not one being who has loved me is to stay by me to lead me to my last resting-place, I have less need than another of a guide: I have inquired the road, I have studied the places through which I should have to pass; I wished to see what happens at the last moment. Often, by the side of a pit into which a coffin was being lowered with ropes, I have heard the death-rattle of those ropes; next, I have caught the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on the coffin: at each new spadeful the hollow sound decreased; the earth, as it filled up the vault, gradually drove the eternal silence to the surface of the grave.
Fontanes, you wrote to me, "Let our muses remain ever friends:" you have not written to me in vain.
[146] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in December 1846.—T.
[147] The anniversary dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern, 21 May 1822.—T.
[148] The amount of M. de Chateaubriand's donation was £20.—T.
[149] Field-Marshal Frederick Duke of York and Albany, Bishop of Osnaburg, K.G. (1763-1827), second son of George III., and Commander-in-Chief of the army. A military commander of no capacity; four defeats stand to his debit: Hondschoote (8th September 1793), Turcoing (1794), Alxmaar (1799), Castricum (1799), not to mention the scandals in connection with Mrs. Clarke and the sale of commissions in the army.—T.
[150] Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset, K.G. (1775-1855).—T.