On the 16th of November, at daybreak, Chateaubriand wrote the last lines of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe:
"It but remains for me," he said, "to sit down by the edge of my grave; and then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, to Eternity."
He had lately entered on his seventy-fourth year, and he had still seven years to live. Shortly after the Revolution in July, in April 1831, he had said, in the Preface to his Études historiques:
"I began my literary career with a work in which I contemplate Christianity under its poetic and moral aspects; I end it with a work in which I consider the same religion under its philosophical and historical aspects. I began my political career with the Restoration; I end it with the Restoration. It is not without a secret satisfaction that I behold this consistency with myself. The main lines of my existence have never wavered: if, like all men, I have not always been alike in the details, let human frailty be forgiven for it."
His last years will show him to us consistent with himself to the end.
In the first days of October 1843, he received a letter from the Comte de Chambord, dated Magdeburg, 30 September, and concluding with these words:
"I shall be in London in the first fortnight of November and I hope most eagerly that it will be possible for you to join me there; your presence with me will be of great use to me and will explain better than anything could the object of my journey. I shall be happy and proud to show by my side a man whose name is one of the glories of France and who has represented her so nobly in the country which I am about to visit.
"Come, then, monsieur le vicomte, and be sure to believe in all my gratitude and in the pleasure which it will give me to express to you, by word of mouth, the feelings of high esteem and attachment of which I love to send you with this the renewed and most sincere assurance."
Ill as he was and almost paralyzed with gout, the old man was moved to tears by the young Prince's invitation:
"To such a letter as that," he said, "one answers by going in one's coffin, if necessary."
He set out for England on the 22nd of November. The Prince was not to arrive in London until a week later, the 29th. On the 30th, a large number of French Royalists, with the Duc Jacques de Fitz-James[488] at their head, came to Chateaubriand to pay him their respects and thank him for coming. Suddenly the door opened and the Comte de Chambord appeared, accompanied by Berryer and the Duc de Valmy[489]: