Spanish manners leave the impress of their character: the buildings of Ghent retraced for me those of Granada, less the sky of the Vega. A large town almost bereft of inhabitants, deserted streets, canals as deserted as the streets.... twenty-six islands formed by those canals, which were not the canals of Venice, a huge piece of ordnance of the middle ages: that is what replaced at Ghent the city of the Zegris[290], the Duero and the Xenil[291] the Generalife and the Alhambra; old dreams of mine, shall I ever see you more?
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The Duchesse de Lévis.
Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, who had taken ship on the Gironde, came to us by way of England with General Donnadieu[292] and M. Desèze[293], of whom the latter had crossed the ocean wearing his blue ribbon across his waistcoat. The Duc and Duchesse de Lévis[294] followed in the Princess' suite: they had flung themselves into the diligence and escaped from Paris by the Bordeaux road. Their fellow-travellers talked politics:
"That scoundrel of a Chateaubriand," said one of them, "is no such fool! He had his carriage waiting packed in his court-yard for three days: the bird has flown. They would have made short work of him, if Napoleon had caught him!"
Madame la Duchesse de Lévis was a very handsome, very kind woman, and as calm as Madame la Duchesse de Duras was restless. She never left Madame de Chateaubriand's side; she was our assiduous companion at Ghent. No one has diffused more quietude in my life, a thing of which I have great need. The least troubled moments of my existence are those which I spent at Noisiel, in the house of that woman whose words and sentiments entered into your soul only to restore its serenity. I recall with regret those moments passed under the great chestnut-trees of Noisiel! With a soothed spirit, a convalescent heart, I used to look upon the ruins of Chelles Abbey and the little lights of the boats loitering among the willows on the Marne.
The remembrance of Madame de Lévis is for me that of a silent autumn evening. She passed away in a few hours; she mingled with death as with the source of all rest I saw her sink noiselessly into her grave in the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise; she is laid above M. de Fontanes, and the latter sleeps beside his son Saint-Marcellin, killed in a duel. Thus, bowing before the monument of Madame de Lévis, have I come into contact with two other sepulchres: man cannot awaken one sorrow without reawakening another; during the night, the different flowers which open only in the shade expand.
To Madame de Lévis' affectionate kindness for me was added the friendship of M. le Duc de Lévis, the father: I may now reckon only by generations. M. de Lévis wrote well; he had a versatile and fertile imagination which betrayed his noble race, as it had already displayed itself in his blood shed on the beach at Quiberon.
Nor was that to be the end of all: it was the impulse of a friendship which passed on to the second generation. M. le Duc de Lévis, the son[295], attached at present to M. le Comte de Chambord, has drawn near to me; my hereditary affection will fail him no more than will my fidelity to his august master. The new and charming Duchesse de Lévis[296], his wife, joins to the great name of d'Aubusson the brightest qualities of heart and mind: life is worth something, when the graces borrow unwearied wings from history!
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