Have the Bourbons ever written letters to me similar to those which I have just produced? Did they ever entertain the idea that I rose above this versifier or that pamphleteering politician?
When, as a little boy, I used to wander, the companion of the herdsmen, over the heaths of Combourg, could I have believed that a time would come at which I should walk between the two highest powers on earth, powers now overthrown, giving my arm on one side to the family of St. Louis, on the other to that of Napoleon: hostile magnificences which alike lean, in the misfortune which brings them together, on the feeble and faithful man, the man scorned by the Legitimacy?
Madame Récamier went to fix herself at Wolfsberg, a country-house occupied by M. Parquin[463], near Arenenberg, where Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was living; I stayed two days at Constance. I saw all that there was to see: the market containing the public granary christened the "Hall of the Council," the so-called statue of Huss[464], the square in which Jerome of Prague[465] and John Huss were, they say, burnt; in fine, all the ordinary abominations of history and society.
The Rhine, issuing from the lake, announces itself very much like a king: nevertheless it was not able to defend Constance, which was, if I am not mistaken, sacked by Attila[466], besieged by the Hungarians[467], the Swedes[468], and twice taken by the French[469].
Constance is the Saint-Germain of Germany: the old people of the old society have retired to it. When I knocked at a door to look for rooms for Madame de Chateaubriand, I came upon some canoness, a girl past her minority; some prince of an ancient house, an elector on half-pay: which went very well with the abandoned steeples and the deserted convents of the city. Condé's Army fought gloriously under the walls of Constance and seems to have left its ambulance there. I had the misfortune to meet a veteran Emigrant; he did me the honour to have known me in former times; he had more days than hairs; his words were endless; he was unable to contain himself and allowed his years to run.
*
Diner at Arenenberg.
On the 29th of August, I went to dine at Arenenberg.
Arenenberg stands on a sort of promontory in a chain of steep hills. The Queen of Holland, whom the sword had made and whom the sword had unmade, built the château, or, if you prefer, the summer-house of Arenenberg. From it, one enjoys an extensive, but melancholy view. This view commands the Lower Lake of Constance, which is only an expansion of the Rhine over swamped fields. On the other side of the lake, one sees gloomy woods, remains of the Black Forest, a few white birds fluttering under a grey sky and driven by an icy wind. There, after having sat on a throne, after being outrageously slandered, Queen Hortense came to perch upon a rock; below is the isle of the lake on which, they say, the tomb of Charles the Fat[470] was discovered and on which, at present, canaries are dying which ask in vain for the sun of their native islands. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was better off in Rome; nevertheless, she has not descended in proportion to her birth and her early life: on the contrary, she has risen; her abasement is only relative to an accident of her fortune; this is not one of those descents like that of Madame la Dauphine, who has fallen from all the height of the centuries.