The year 1811 was one of the most remarkable in my literary career[29]. I published the Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem[30], I accepted M. de Chénier's place at the Institute, and I began to write the Memoirs which I am now finishing.
The Itinéraire.
The success of the Itinéraire was as complete as that of the Martyrs had been disputed. There is no scribbler, however inconsiderable, but receives letters of congratulation on the appearance of his farrago. Among the new compliments which were addressed to me, I do not feel at liberty to suppress the letter of a man of virtue and merit who has produced two works of recognised authority, leaving hardly anything to be said on Bossuet and Fénelon. The Bishop of Alais, Cardinal de Bausset[31], is the biographer of those two great prelates. He goes beyond all praise with reference to me: that is the accepted usage in writing to an author, and does not count; but the cardinal at least shows the general opinion of the moment on the Itinéraire: he foresees, with respect to Carthage, the objections of which my geographical feeling might be the object; in any case, that feeling has prevailed, and I have set Dido's ports in their places. My readers will be interested to recognise in this letter the diction of a select society, a style rendered grave and sweet by politeness, religion and manner: an excellence of tone from which we are so far removed to-day.
"Villemoisson, by Lonjumeau (Seine-et-Oise),
"25 March 1811.
"You should, Sir, have received, and you have received, the just tribute of the public gratitude and satisfaction; but I can assure you that not one of your readers has enjoyed your interesting work with a truer sentiment than myself. You are the first and only traveller who has had no need of the aid of engraving and drawing to place before the eyes of his readers the places and monuments which recall fine memories and great images. Your soul has felt all, your imagination depicted all, and the reader feels with your soul and sees with your eyes.
"I could convey to you but very feebly the impression which I received from the very first pages, when skirting in your company the coast of Corfu, and when witnessing the landing of all those 'eternal' men whom opposite destinies have successively driven thither. A few lines have sufficed you to engrave the traces of their footsteps for all time; they will always be found in your Itinéraire, which will preserve them more faithfully than so many marbles which have been incapable of keeping the great names confided to them.
"I now know the monuments of Athens in the way in which one likes to know them. I had already seen them in beautiful engravings, I had admired them, but I had not felt them. One too often forgets that, if architects need exact descriptions, measurements and proportions, men need to recognise the mind and the genius which have conceived the idea of those great monuments.
"You have restored to the Pyramids that noble and profound intention which frivolous declaimers had not even perceived.
"How thankful I am to you, Sir, for delivering to the just execration of all time that stupid and ferocious people which, since twelve hundred years, has afflicted the fairest countries of the earth! One smiles with you at the hope of seeing it return to the desert whence it came.
"You have inspired me with a passing feeling of indulgence for the Arabs, for the sake of the fine comparison which you have drawn between them and the savages of North America.
"Providence seems to have led you to Jerusalem to assist at the last representation of the first scene of Christianity. If it be no longer granted to the eyes of men to behold that Tomb, 'the only one which will have nothing to give up on the Last Day,' Christians will always find it again in the Gospels, and meditative and sensitive minds in the pictures which you have drawn.
"The critics will not fail to reproach you with the men and incidents with which you have covered the ruins of Carthage and which you could not have seen, since they no longer exist. But I implore you, Sir, confine yourself to asking them if they themselves would not have been very sorry not to find them in those engaging pictures.
"You have the right, Sir, to enjoy a form of glory which belongs to you exclusively by a sort of creation; but there is an enjoyment still more satisfying to a character like yours, that is, to have endowed the creations of your genius with the nobility of your soul and the elevation of your sentiments. It is this which, at all times, will ensure to your name and memory the esteem, the admiration and the respect of all friends of religion, virtue and honour.
"It is on this score that I beg you, Sir, to accept the homage of all my sentiments.
"L. F. de Bausset, ex-Bishop of Alais."
M. de Chénier[32] died on the 10th of January 1811. My friends had the fatal idea of pressing me to take his place in the Institute. They urged that, exposed as I was to the hostilities of the head of the Government, to the suspicions and annoyances of the police, it was necessary that I should enter a body then powerful through its fame and through the men composing it; that, sheltered behind that buckler, I should be able to work in peace.
I had an invincible repugnance to occupying a place, even outside the Government; I had too clear a recollection of what the first had cost me. Chénier's inheritance seemed fraught with peril; I should not be able to say all, save by exposing myself; I did not wish to pass over regicide in silence, although Cambacérès was the second person in the State; I was determined to make my demands heard in favour of liberty and to raise my voice against tyranny; I wanted to have my say on the horrors of 1793, to express my regrets for the fallen family of our kings, to bemoan the misfortunes of those who had remained faithful to them. My friends replied that I was deceiving myself; that a few praises of the head of the Government, obligatory in the academical speech, praises of which, in one respect, I thought Bonaparte worthy, would make him swallow all the truths I might wish to utter; and that I should at the same time enjoy the honour of having maintained my opinions and the happiness of putting an end to the terrors of Madame de Chateaubriand. By dint of their besetting me, I yielded, weary of resistance: but I assured them that they were mistaken; that Bonaparte would not be taken in by common-places on his son, his wife and his glory; that he would feel the lesson but the more keenly for them; that he would recognise the man who resigned on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the writer of the article that caused the suppression of the Mercure; that, lastly, instead of ensuring my repose, I should revive the persecutions directed against me. They were soon obliged to recognise the truth of my words: true it is that they had not foreseen the audacity of my speech.
I went to pay the customary visits to the members of the Academy[33]. Madame de Vintimille took me to the Abbé Morellet. We found him sitting in an arm-chair before his fire; he had fallen asleep, and the Itinéraire, which he was reading, had dropped from his hands. Waking with a start at the sound of my name announced by his man-servant, he raised his head and exclaimed:
"There are passages so long, so long!"
I told him, laughing, that I saw that, and that I would abridge the new edition. He was a good-natured man and promised me his vote, in spite of Atala. When, later, the Monarchie selon la Charte appeared, he could not recover from his astonishment that such a political work should have the singer of "the daughter of the Floridas" for its author. Had Grotius[34] not written the tragedy of Adam and Eve and Montesquieu the Temple de Guide? True, I was neither Grotius nor Montesquieu.