*

Death of Louis XVIII.

The King's illness called me back to Paris. The King died on the 16th of September, scarcely four months after my dismissal. My pamphlet, entitled Le Roi est mort: vive le roi! in which I hailed the new Sovereign, performed for Charles X. what my pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons had performed for Louis XVIII. I went to fetch Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel, and we came to Paris to live in the Rue du Regard. Charles X. made his reign popular at its commencement by abolishing the censorship; the coronation took place in the spring of 1825. "Already the bees were beginning to hum, the birds to warble, and the lambs to gambol on the green."

Among my papers I find the following pages written at Rheims:

"Rheims, 26 May 1825.

"The King arrives the day after to-morrow; he will be crowned on Sunday the 29th; I shall see him place on his head a crown of which no one thought, in 1814, when I raised my voice. I have contributed to opening the doors of France to him; I have given him defenders, by bringing the Spanish War to a satisfactory issue; I have caused the Charter to be adopted, and I have succeeded in finding an army, the only two things with which the King can reign at home and abroad: what part is reserved for me at the coronation? That of an outlaw. I come as one of the crowd to receive a ribbon, distributed broadcast, which I do not even hold from Charles X. The people whom I have served and placed turn their backs on me. The King will hold my hands in his, he will see me at his feet, when I take my oath, without being moved, even as he sees me without interest recommencing my poverty. Does that make a difference to me? No. Freed from the obligation of going to the Tuileries, I am compensated for everything by independence.

"I am writing this page of my Memoirs in the room in which I am forgotten amid all the noise. I have this morning visited Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated with stained paper. I shall not have had a clear idea of this latter edifice, except from the decorations of Schiller's Joan of Arc, as played before me in Berlin: operatic machinery has shown me, on the banks of the Spree, what operatic machinery hides from me, on the banks of the Vesle; for the rest, I have taken my diversion among the old dynasties, from Clovis[250], with his Franks and his pigeon descending from Heaven, to Charles VII.[251], with Joan of Arc[252]."

Je suis venu de mon pays
Pas plus haut qu'une botte,
Avecque mi, avecque mi,
Avecque ma marmotte[253].

"'A sou-piece, sir, if you please!'

At Rheims.

That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at Rheims, sang to me returning from my walk.

"'And what have you come here for?' I asked him.

"'I have come to the coronation, sir.'

"'With your marmot?'

"'Yes, sir, with-a mi, with-a mi, with-a my marmot,' he replied, dancing and turning.

"'Well, that's like me, my boy.'

"That was not correct: I had come to the coronation without a marmot, and a marmot is a great resource; I had nothing in my box but some old dream or other which no passer-by would have paid a sou-piece to see climb up a stick.

"Louis XVII. and Louis XVIII. were not crowned; Charles X.'s coronation comes immediately after Louis XVI.'s. Charles X. was present at his brother's coronation; he represented the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. Under what happy auspices did not Louis XVI. ascend the throne? How popular was he on succeeding Louis XV.! And yet, what did he come to? The present coronation will be, not a coronation, but the representation of a coronation: we shall see Marshal Moncey, an actor in the coronation of Napoleon; that marshal, who formerly celebrated in his army the death of the tyrant Louis XVI., we shall now see brandishing the royal sword at Rheims, in the quality of Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine. Who could be taken in by that parade? I would have wished no pomp to-day: the King on horseback, the church bare, adorned only with its old vaults and its old tombs; the two Chambers present, the oath of fidelity to the Charter pronounced aloud on the Gospels. There you would have the renewal of the Monarchy; they might have recommenced it with liberty and religion: unfortunately they had little love for liberty; if still they had, at least, had the taste for glory!

Ah! que diront là-bas, sons les tombes poudreuses,
De tant de vaillants rois les ombres généreuses?
Que diront Pharamond, Clodion et Clovis,
Nos Pepins, nos Martels, nos Charles, nos Louis,
Qui de leur propre sang, à tous périls de guerre,
Ont acquis à leurs fils une si belle terre[254]?

"Lastly, has not the new coronation, to which the Pope came to anoint a man as great as the chief of the Second Dynasty[255], in changing the heads, destroyed the effect of the ancient ceremony of our history? The people has been led to believe that a pious rite dedicated no one to the throne, or rendered indifferent the choice of the forehead to which the holy oil was applied. The supernumeraries of Notre-Dame de Paris, figuring likewise in the Cathedral of Rheims, will be nothing more than the necessary characters in a scene that has become vulgar: the advantage will remain with Napoleon, who sends his walking gentlemen to Charles X. The figure of the Emperor dominates everything henceforward. It stands at the bottom of events and ideas: the pages of these lower days to which we have come shrivel up under the glance of his eagles."

"Rheims, Saturday, eve of the Coronation.[256]

"I have seen the King's entry; I have seen pass the gilt coaches of the monarch who but lately had not a horse to ride; I have seen those carriages roll by filled with courtiers who were not able to defend their master. This herd went to the church to sing the Te Deum, and I went to look at a Roman ruin and to walk by myself in a wood of elm-trees called the 'Wood of Love.' I heard from afar the jubilation of the bells, I contemplated the towers of the Cathedral, secular witnesses of that ceremony which is always the same and yet so different through history, the times, ideas, manners, usages and customs. The Monarchy perished, and the Cathedral was for some years turned into a stable. Does Charles X., who sees it again to-day, remember that he saw Louis XVI. anointed in the same place where he is to be anointed in his turn? Will he believe that a coronation yields protection against misfortune? There is no longer a hand virtuous enough to heal the king's evil, no longer a sacred phial salutary enough to render kings inviolable."

I hurriedly wrote what has just been read on the half-blank pages of a pamphlet entitled, Le Sacre; par Barnage de Reims, avocat, and on a printed letter of the Grand Referendary, M. de Sémonville[257], saying:

"The Grand Referendary has the honour to inform His Lordship, Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, that places in the chancel of Rheims Cathedral are intended and reserved for those of Messieurs the Peers who wish to be present to-morrow at His Majesty's consecration and coronation, at the ceremony of the reception of the Chief and Sovereign Grand Master of the Orders of the Holy Ghost and of St. Michael and of the reception of Messieurs the Knights and Commanders."

Charles X. nevertheless had intended to conciliate me. The Archbishop of Paris[258] spoke to him at Rheims of the men in the Opposition; the King said: