[502] Æn., IV. 23.—B.
[503] Formerly the residence of the Comtesse de Beaumont.—T.
[504] Madame de Duras died at Nice in January 1829.—B.
[505] "Great-hearted Clara, noble, faithful friend,
Thy memory is no longer in the land;
Thy very grave by men's cold eyes is bann'd;
The world forgets thee, and thy name doth end."—T.
[506] All the foregoing, from the words "which overtook her at Nice," was added afterwards to Chateaubriand's diary of the road. Manifestly he could not insert in his journal, on the 25th of September 1828, a note from the Duchesse de Duras written on the 14th of November 1828; nor could he speak of the death of Madame de Duras and of her tomb, seeing that she died only in 1829.—B.
[507] St. Charles Cardinal Count Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan (1538-1584), was born at Arona on the Lago Maggiore, where a colossal statue, 70 feet high, was erected to his memory in 1697. St. Charles is buried in Milan Cathedral. He was canonized in 1610 and is honoured on the 4th of November.—T.
[508] If Chateaubriand did not see Marie-Louise in 1828, when passing through Parma, he had dined with her, some years before, at Verona, where she had gone to see her father, during the sitting of the Congress.
"We at first," he writes, "refused an invitation from the Archduchess of Parma. She insisted, and we went. We found her very gay; the universe having made it its business to remember Napoleon, she no longer had the trouble of thinking of him. She spoke a few careless words, and as it were casually, about the King of Rome: she was pregnant. Her Court had a certain air of dilapidation and decay, excepting M. de Neipperg, a man of good manners. There was nothing out of the common except ourselves dining at Marie-Louise's table and the bracelets, made out of the stone of Juliet's sarcophagus, worn by Napoleon's widow. As we crossed the Po, at Piacenza, a single bark, newly painted, carrying a sort of imperial ensign, attracted our eyes. Two or three dragoons, in shell-jackets and forage-caps, were watering their horses; we were entering the States of Marie-Louise; that was all that remained of the power of the man who clove the rocks of the Simplon, planted his banners on the capitals of Europe, and raised Italy which had lain prostrate for so many centuries."
When speaking to Marie-Louise, Chateaubriand told her that he had met her soldiers at Piacenza, but that that little troop was nothing beside the great imperial armies of former days. She answered drily:
"I never think of that now." (Congrès de Vérone, Vol. I. p. 69.)—B.