Letter from Madame.
"I was going to write to you, monsieur le vicomte, touching this 'Provisional Government' which I thought it my duty to form, when I did not know when nor even if I might return to France, and of which I am informed that you consented to form part. It did not exist in fact, because it never met, and some of the members came to an understanding only to communicate to me an opinion which I was not able to follow. I do not take it in the least unkindly of them. You judged in accordance with the report on my position and that of the country made to you by those who had reason to know better than I the effects of a fatal influence in which I was never willing to believe, and I am sure that, if M. de Ch. had been with me, his noble and generous heart would also have refused to do so. I rely therefore none the less on the good individual services and even the counsels of the persons who formed part of the Provisional Government and whose choice had been dictated to me by their enlightened zeal and their devotion to the Legitimacy in the person of Henry V. I see that it is your intention to leave France again: I should regret this greatly, if I could have you near me; but you have weapons which strike at a distance and I hope that you will not cease to fight for Henry V.
"Believe, monsieur le vicomte, in all my esteem and friendship.
"M. C. R."
With this note, Madame dispensed with my services and did not yield to the advice which I had ventured to give her in the note of which M. Berryer was the bearer; she even seemed a little hurt by it, although she admitted that a fatal influence had led her astray.
Thus restored to my liberty and released from all engagements, on this day, 7 August, having nothing left to do but go away, I wrote my letter to M. de Béranger, who had visited me in prison:
To M. de Béranger
"Paris, 7 August 1832.
"I wanted, monsieur, to go to say good-bye to you and thank you for your remembrance; time failed me and I was obliged to start without having the pleasure of seeing you and embracing you. I am ignorant as to my future: is there a clear future for anybody to-day? We are living not in a time of revolution, but of social transformation: now transformations are realized slowly, and the generations which find themselves placed in the period of metamorphosis perish obscure and miserable. If Europe, as might well be the case, has reached the age of decrepitude, it is another matter: it will produce nothing and will die out in an impotent anarchy of passions, morals and doctrines. In that event, monsieur, you will have sung over a tomb.
"I have fulfilled all my engagements, monsieur: I returned at the sound of your voice; I have defended what I came to defend; I have undergone the cholera; I am returning to the mountain. Do not break your lyre, as you threaten to do; I owe to it one of my most glorious titles to the memory of mankind. Continue to make France smile and weep: for it so happens, by a secret known to you alone, that, in your popular songs, the words are gay and the music plaintive.
"I recommend myself to your friendship and your muse.
"Chateaubriand."
I am to set out to-morrow. Madame de Chateaubriand will meet me at Lucerne.
I leave for Switzerland.
Basle, 12 August 1832.
Many men die without losing sight of their steeple: I cannot meet with the steeple which is to see me die. In quest of a refuge in which to finish my Memoirs, I am taking the road anew, dragging at my heels an enormous luggage of papers, diplomatic correspondence, confidential notes, letters from ministers and kings; it is history riding pillion with romance.
At Vesoul, I saw M. Augustin Thierry, living with his brother the prefect[434] When, formerly, in Paris, he sent me his Histoire de la conquête des Normands, I went to thank him. I found a young man in a room with half-closed shutters; he was almost blind; he tried to rise to receive me, but his legs no longer carried him and he fell into my arms. He blushed when I expressed to him my sincere admiration; it was then that he replied that his work was mine and that it was when reading the Battle of the Franks in the Martyrs that he had conceived a new idea of writing history[435]. When I took leave of him, he then made an effort to follow me and dragged himself to the door, leaning against the wall: I went out quite affected by so much talent and so much misfortune.