"I admire you from the bottom of my heart; you interest yourself in everything; I no longer interest myself in anything; my courage is not used up; but it is overcome by disgust. I no longer think of anything but of dying a Christian, and I hope that the good Père Sequin, old though he be, will have strength enough to raise his hand to cleanse me and send me to God[503]."
In the month of March 1842, speaking of the recent death of Théodore Jouffroy[504], one of the professors of the Royal College of Marseilles, M. Lafaye[505], said to his pupils:
"Jouffroy, the sceptic, sent for a confessor, and no one can give the name of the confessor of the author of the Génie du Christianisme."
These words created some stir, and M. Lafaye, fearing lest he should be dismissed, begged the Baron de Flotte[506], a friend and co-religionist of Chateaubriand, to write to the latter asking him to intercede on his behalf with M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction. Chateaubriand replied:
"Thank God, monsieur, I neither have nor can have any credit with the present Government. At the time when I possessed some political power, I do not remember ever employing it except for the benefit of persons who might be oppressed. M. Lafaye has not offended me in the least; but, if he were molested on my account, I would ask them to leave him in peace. I no longer occupy myself with what goes on in society. My part is played, monsieur. I live far from the world, and I shall be forgiven, I hope, because of my great age, for having a confessor. It is M. l'Abbé Sequin, a priest at Saint-Sulpice. When one has lived many days, one must needs accuse one's self of many faults."
He rigorously observed the rules of the Church on fasting and abstinence, often even, in his practice, going beyond the limits prescribed by health. I make the following ex-tract from a letter which Victor de Laprade[507] wrote me, on the 12th of August 1870:
"To those who are inclined to doubt the firmness of his Christian faith, you can tell this detail, which was given me by a Protestant lady who was for a long time his neighbour and who still lives in the house in which he died at No. 120, Rue du Bac. Madame Mohl[508] was very intimate with Madame de Chateaubriand, who did not go out and saw hardly any one. The wife of that truly great man used often to lament to her neighbour about the difficulty which she had to prevent her husband from following with the most scrupulous strictness the rules for Lent and the other seasons of fasting and abstinence. Chateaubriand had at that time reached the age at which the Church dispenses us from fasting, and his health suffered greatly from these austerities. He practised them, nevertheless, with his Breton stubbornness, and it needed all his wife's entreaties to make him give way sometimes. This was not done for the world nor for the sake of 'posing,' as one would say nowadays. Madame de Chateaubriand and her confidant were the only witnesses, and I am perhaps the only one to know of it to-day. Do you, who are young, keep and hand down this recollection of the author of the Génie du Christianisme.
"I like indulging in this old man's gossip; but it is only thus that traditions are preserved. I have known a whole vanished world. There are hardly any people left who have seen Chateaubriand close. There are only two of us now at the French Academy who have seen Madame Récamier's salon: M. le Duc de Noailles and myself. Outside the Academy, I know only Madame Lenormant and Madame Mohl who have lived in that illustrious intimacy."
In his conversations, as in his letters, Victor de Laprade loved to call up before my eyes those vanished days, those figures now extinguished. He used frequently to describe to me M. de Chateaubriand's punctual regularity. The great writer used to arrive at Madame Récamier's every day at half-past two; they took tea together and spent an hour in private chat. Then the door would open for visitors; the worthy Ballanche came first; after him, a wave of more or less numerous, more or less varied, more or less animated comers and goers, amid whom was the group of persons accustomed to see one another daily and, as Ballanche said, to "gravitate towards the centre" of the Abbaye-aux-Bois[509].
While the author of Antigone and Orphèe, lively, smiling, often flung some light-hearted jest into the midst of the most serious conversations and sometimes even tried to point a pun, the author of René usually stayed till six o'clock, but in an almost absolute silence. Seated in one of the corners of the chimney, opposite Madame Récamier, he leant upon his cane, listened to everything with interest and sometimes replied by means of an ironical and disheartened question.
Because he has, in many places in his Memoirs, spoken of the strength of the democratic current, some have thought themselves authorized to turn him into a deserter from Royalism, hailing in the triumph of Democracy the realization of his supreme hopes. This is just contrary to the truth. That France was going towards Democracy he saw and proclaimed aloud; but, far from rejoicing in this new revolution, or looking upon it in the light of a progress for humanity or a happiness for France, he saw in Democracy the worst of governments, omnium deterrimum, to use Bellarmine's strong expression. One day, at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, Laprade, who, at that time, was an ingenuous person, thought he might confess before the great poet his juvenile faith in the future of Democracy, of a Christian Democracy which would fulfil all the promises of the Divine Law-giver. Chateaubriand received these enthusiastic confidences with his melancholy smile; and then, after saying that he believed the fall of the Throne of July to be near at hand and the advent of Democracy to be inevitable, he began to sketch in broad lines that future society which would be the offspring of a democracy without religion or ideals. The more he spoke, the more did the singer of Psyché see his beautiful illusions fade away. The New Jerusalem of which he had dreamt so long crumbled to the noise of that great word, as the walls of Jericho fell to the sound of the trumpet. Instead of the promised land, a riotous arena, stained with blood by the struggle of appetites and covetousness; and, at the furthermost point of the horizon, at the end of the journey, rest in the stupidity of a semi-Barbarism, of vast pastures in which human herds browzed on thick grass, with lowered heads, without ever looking at the sky[510].