[27] The Abbé Roch Ambroise Cucurron Sicard (1742-1822), the great teacher and benefactor of the deaf and dumb, and a fervent Royalist.—T.
[28] Hortense Queen of Holland (1783-1837), daughter of the Empress Joséphine by her first husband, Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, and wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. She retired to Switzerland after the Restoration, with the title of Duchesse de Saint-Leu.—T.
[29] Chateaubriand says nothing of the time which elapsed between April 1809 and January 1811. These twenty months, in fact, were marked by no political or literary event that in any way affected him.—B.
[30] The Itinéraire appeared in the month of March 1811.—B.
[31] Louis François Cardinal Duc de Bausset, Bishop of Alais (1748-1824), was appointed to the see of Alais in 1784. He was dispossessed and imprisoned under the Terror. On the return of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France in 1815, a cardinal in 1817, and a duke in the same year. He had published his successful Histoire de Fénelon in 1808; his Histoire de Bossuet, which was less well received, appeared in 1814.—T.
[32] Marie Joseph de Chénier (1764-1811).—T.
[33] A contemporary, M. Auguis, thus describes the cavalier manner in which Chateaubriand paid his visits (he quotes from the unpublished Diary of Ferdinand Denis, author of Scènes de la nature sous les tropiques and of André le voyageur):
"When Chateaubriand went to pay his French-Academy visits, he called upon his future colleagues on horseback. To the famous and powerful he paid a complete visit; to the small fry he sent in his card, without alighting from his mettlesome steed. When they came to discuss the election, M. —— voted for the horse of his new colleague, saying that, in all conscience, it was the former alone that had paid him a visit."—B.
[34] Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Hugo Grotius, the celebrated Dutch jurist and writer on international law, author of De Jure belli et pacis (1624), by which the system of international law was created, etc., etc., and for some years Ambassador of Christina Queen of Sweden to France.—T.
[35] The election took place on Wednesday 20 February 1811, forty days after Marie Joseph Chenier's death. Only twenty-five members were present, and Chateaubriand was elected almost unanimously.—B.