Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance[520]!
After the Mass, the funeral procession took its way between the ramparts and the sea towards the isle of the Grand-Bé. Two long rows of surpliced priests wound along the beach. The flags of the national guards who had come from the different towns of Brittany waved in the wind; the helmets gleamed in the sun. The cannon thundered at intervals. An innumerable crowd covered the ramparts of Saint-Malo, which rise so formidably above the perpendicular rocks and the sea. All the reefs, all the rocks bore human figures; boats dressed with mourning flags were laden with spectators. At the foot of the Grand-Bé, the coffin was shouldered by sailors and carried to the top, in the midst of a squall that resembled a storm: a last caress which the Ocean gave him who so much loved the noise of the waves and the winds. Then, suddenly, there was a great calm, and the coffin was solemnly laid on the rock which is to guard it for ever. The last prayers of the Church were recited by the Rector of Saint-Malo and holy water sprinkled on the bier.
Brittany and Religion gave the author of the Génie du Christianisme a magnificent funeral. For half a century, he has slept, beside the waves, in his granite sepulchre, under a stone surrounded by a little Gothic iron railing and surmounted by a cross. For the rest, no inscription, no name, no date. He had asked that this might be so, in his letter of 1831 to the Mayor of Saint-Malo:
"The cross," he wrote, "will tell that the man resting at its feet was a Christian; that will be enough for my memory."
[APPENDIX IV]
THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE
When, eighteen months ago, I wrote my Note to the first volume of this version of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe, I neglected to add to my list of omissions from the original work three several items which I have since felt justified in disregarding. My neglect must be ascribed to the fact that, at that time, the last volume of M. Biré's edition was not yet in my hands; and that these three items form the Supplément à mes Mémoires which occurs at the end of the work and which had escaped my notice. The reader should, therefore, understand that, to the list of omissions on pages XV and XVI of Vol. I., must be added:
6. Chateaubriand's Life of his sister Julie de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Farcy. This is extracted, for the most part, from the Abbé Carron's Vie des justes dans les plus hauts rangs de la Société and in no way affects the interest of the Memoirs.