Death of Madame de Custine.
Madame de Staël had appeared at Lausanne with Madame Récamier. The whole Emigration, a whole finished world had stopped for some short moments in that sad and smiling town, a sort of false city of Granada. Madame de Duras has recalled its memory in her Memoirs, and the following note reached me there to tell me of the new loss which I was condemned to suffer:
"Bex, 13 July 1826.
"It is all over, monsieur, your friend[279] exists no more; she gave up her soul to God, without pain, at a quarter to eleven this morning. She was out driving as late as yesterday evening. Nothing announced her end to be so near; what am I saying? we did not think that her illness was to end in this way. M. de Custine[280], whose sorrow does not permit him to write to you himself, had been on one of the mountains around Bex only yesterday morning, to order mountain-milk to be sent down every morning for the dear sufferer.
"I am too much overcome with grief to be able to enter into longer details. We are getting ready to return to France with the precious remains of the best of mothers and friends. Enguerrand[281] will lie at rest between his two mothers.
"We shall pass through Lausanne, where M. de Custine will come to see you so soon as we arrive.
"Receive, monsieur, the assurance of the respectful attachment with which I am, etc.,
"Berstœcher[282]."
See above and below what I have had the happiness and the unhappiness to recall touching the memory of Madame de Custine.
Madame de Charrière's work, the Lettres écrites de Lausanne, well describes the scene which I had daily before my eyes, and the feelings of grandeur which it inspires:
"I am sitting alone," says the mother of Cécile, "opposite to a window which looks upon the lake. I am grateful to you, ye mountains, snow, and sun, for the pleasure which you afford me. Above all, I am grateful to Thee, Thou Author of all the things which I contemplate, for having created objects so lovely to the sight.... O ye amiable and affecting beauties of nature! My eyes are daily employed in contemplating you, and ye fill my heart with perpetual rapture[283]."
At Lausanne I commenced the Remarques on the first work of my life, the Essai sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes. From my windows I saw the rocks of Meillerie:
"Rousseau," I wrote in one of those Remarques, "is decidedly not above the authors of his time, except in some sixty letters of the Nouvelle Héloïse and in a few pages of his Rêveries and of his Confessions. There, placed in the real nature of his talent, he attains an eloquence of passion unknown before him. Voltaire and Montesquieu found models of style in the writers of the age of Louis XIV.; Rousseau, and even Buffon to some extent, in another manner, created a language which was unknown to the Grand Century[284]."
*
On my return to Paris, my life was occupied between my installation in the Rue d'Enfer, my renewed combats, in the House of Peers and in my pamphlets, against the different Bills opposed to the public liberties, my speeches and writings in favour of the Greeks, and my labours in connection with the complete edition of my Works. The Emperor of Russia died[285], and with him died the only royal friendship remaining to me. The Duc de Montmorency had become governor to the Duc de Bordeaux. He did not long enjoy that weighty honour: he expired on Good Friday 1826[286], in the Church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin; at the hour when Jesus expired on the Cross, he went with Christ's last sigh to God.