We passed out through the Barrière Saint-Martin. At dawn, I saw crows coming down peacefully from the elms on the high-road where they had spent the night, to take their first meal in the fields, without troubling their heads about Louis XVIII. and Napoleon: they were not obliged to leave their country and, thanks to their wings, they were able to laugh at the bad road along which I was being jolted. Old friends of Combourg, we were more alike in the old days when, at break of day, we used to breakfast on mulberries from the brambles in the thickets of Brittany!
The roadway was broken up, the weather rainy, Madame de Chateaubriand poorly: she looked every moment through the little window at the back of the carnage to see if we were not being pursued. We slept at Amiens, where Du Cange[256] was born; next at Arras, the birth-place of Robespierre[257]: there I was recognised. When we sent for horses, on the morning of the 22nd, the postmaster said that they had been engaged for a general who was taking to Lille the news of "the triumphal entry of the Emperor-King into Paris;" Madame de Chateaubriand was dying of fright, not for herself, but for me. I ran to the post-office and removed the difficulty with money.
On arriving under the ramparts of Lille, at two in the morning of the 23rd, we found the gates closed; the orders were not to open them to any one whomsoever. They could not, or would not, tell us if the King had entered the town. I induced the postillion for a few louis to make for the other side of the place, outside the glacis, and to drive us to Tournay; in 1792, I had covered the same road on foot, during the night, with my brother. On arriving at Tournay, I learnt that Louis XVIII. had certainly entered Lille with Marshal Mortier, and that he meant to defend himself there. I despatched a courier to M. de Blacas, asking him to send me a permit to be received into the place. My courier returned with a permit from the commandant, but not a word from M. de Blacas. Leaving Madame de Chateaubriand at Tournay, I was getting into the carriage again to go to Lille, when the Prince de Condé arrived. We learnt through him that the King had gone and that Marshal Mortier had had him accompanied to the frontier. From these explanations it became clear that Louis XVIII. was no longer at Lille when my letter arrived there.
The Duc d'Orléans followed close after the Prince de Condé. Under an apparent dissatisfaction, he was glad, at bottom, to find himself out of the hurly-burly; the ambiguousness of his declaration and of his behaviour bore the stamp of his character. As to the old Prince de Condé, the Emigration was his household god. He had no fear of Monsieur de Bonaparte, not he; he fought if they liked or went away if they liked: things were a little muddled in his brain; he was none too clear as to whether he should stop at Rocroi to give battle there or go to dine at the White Hart. He struck his tents a few hours before us, telling me to recommend the coffee at the inn to the members of his Household whom he had left behind him. He did not know that I had sent in my resignation on the death of his grandson; he was not very sure that he had had a grandson; he only felt a certain increase of glory in his name, which might come from some Condé whom he had forgotten.
Do you remember my first passing through Tournay with my brother, at the time of my first emigration? Do you remember, in that connection, the man transformed into a donkey, the girl from whose ears grew corn-spikes, the rain of ravens that set everything on fire[258]? In 1815, indeed, we ourselves were a rain of ravens; but we set nothing on fire. Alas, I was no longer with my unfortunate brother! Between 1792 and 1815, the Republic and the Empire had passed: what revolutions had also been accomplished in my life! Time had ravaged me like the rest. And you, the young generations of the moment, let twenty-three years come, and then tell me in my tomb what has become of your loves and your illusions of to-day.
The two brothers Bertin had arrived at Tournay: M. Bertin de Vaux[259] returned from there to Paris; the other Bertin, Bertin the Elder, was my friend. You know through these Memoirs what it was that attached me to him.
I follow the King to Ghent.
From Tournay we went to Brussels: there I found no Baron de Breteuil, nor Rivarol, nor all those young aides-de-camp who had become dead or old, which is the same thing. No news of the barber who had given me shelter. I did not take up the musket, but the pen; from a soldier I had become a paper-stainer. I was looking for Louis XVIII.; he was at Ghent, where he had been taken by Messieurs de Blacas and de Duras[260]: their first intention had been to ship the King to England. If the King had consented to this plan, he would never have reascended the throne.
Having gone into a lodging-house to look at an apartment, I perceived the Duc de Richelieu smoking, half-outstretched on a sofa, at the back of a dark room. He spoke to me of the Princes in the most brutal manner, declaring that he was going to Russia and that he would not hear another word about those people. Madame la Duchesse de Duras, on arriving in Brussels, had the sorrow to lose her niece there.
I loathe the Brabant capital; it has never served me except as a passage to my exiles; it has always brought sorrow upon myself or my friends.