Paris, April 1833.
The Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry has obtained for me an immense popularity in the Royalist Party. Deputations and letters have reached me from every quarter. I have received from the North and South of France declarations of adhesion covered with many thousands of signatures. All of these, referring to my pamphlet, demand the liberation of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Fifteen hundred young men of Paris have come to congratulate me, not without great excitement on the part of the police. I have received a cup in silver gilt, with this inscription:
To Chateaubriand from the loyal men of Villeneuve (Lot-et-Garonne)
A town in the South sent me some very good wine to fill this cup, but I do not drink. Lastly, Legitimist France has taken as its motto the words, "Madame, your son is my King!" and several newspapers have adopted them as an epigraph; they have been engraved on necklaces and rings. I am the first to have uttered, in the face of the Usurpation, a truth which no one dared to speak, and, strange to say, I believe less in the return of Henry V. than the most contemptible juste-milieu man or the most violent Republican.
For the rest, I do not understand the word usurpation in the narrow sense given to it by the Royalist Party; there would be many things to say about this word, as about that of legitimacy: but there really is usurpation, and usurpation of the worst kind, in the guardian who plunders his ward and proscribes the orphan. All those grand phrases, that "the country had to be saved," are so many pretexts furnished to ambition by an immoral policy. Truly, ought we not to regard the meanness of your usurpation as an effort of virtue on your part? Are you Brutus[495], by chance, sacrificing his sons to the greatness of Rome?
I have been able, in the course of my life, to compare literary renown and popularity. The former pleased me for a few hours, but that love of renown soon passed. As for popularity, it found me indifferent, because, in the Revolution, I have seen too much of men surrounded by those masses which, after raising them on the shield, flung them into the gutter. A democrat by nature, an aristocrat by habit, I would most gladly sacrifice my fortune and my life to the people, provided I need have little relation with the crowd. Anyhow, I was extremely sensible of the impulse of the young men of July who carried me in triumph to the Chamber of Peers, and this inasmuch as they did not carry me there to be their leader or because I thought as they did: they were only doing justice to an enemy; they recognised in me a man of honour and liberty: that generosity touched me. But this other popularity which I have lately acquired in my own party has caused me no emotion; there is an icy barrier between the Royalists and myself: we want the same King; with that exception, most of our wishes are opposed one to the other.
[407] This book was written in Paris, between the end of July and the 8th of August 1832; at Basle, Lucerne and Lugano, between August and October 1832; and again in Paris, between January and April 1833.—T.
[408] John Fraser Frisell (1772-1846), a member of a Scotch family, came to France at the age of eighteen to "see the Revolution," out of curiosity. He was arrested and imprisoned at Dijon under the Terror, and did not recover his liberty until the 18 Brumaire. The First Consul authorized Frisell, "as a savant," to reside on the Continent, at a time when all the English were under suspicion; and he remained almost permanently in France and Italy, to the great displeasure of his family. He wrote a great deal, but would consent to the publication of only one of his works, De la Constitution de l'Angleterre, which is remarkably well written in French. He made the acquaintance of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand under the Empire and remained most attached to them until his death, which shortly preceded that of his two old friends. Frisell died at Torquay, in Devonshire, in February 1846. Cf. an article by Mr. J. Fraser, entitled, Un ami de Chateaubriand, in the Correspondant of 25 September 1897.—B.
[409] There is a slight error here. Chateaubriand, as well as his friends Hyde de Neuville and Fitz-James, were arrested on the 16th of June. The details of his arrest are in the newspapers of the 17th, and Hyde de Neuville also gives the 16th as the date. Probably this date of the 20th, in the Mémoires de Outre-tombe, is a copyist's error, the more so inasmuch as, in the whole course of the Memoirs, Chateaubriand has made no other mistake in his dates.—B.