[18] Cf. Vol. III., p. 91, n. 3. Berthier was watching a Russian regiment pass under his windows, on its way to the French frontier, when he was seized with a sudden fit of madness and jumped from the balcony to the pavement below (1 June 1815).—T.
[19] Andria, Act. I. Sc. i. 44.45.—T.
[20] Ferdinand III. Archduke of Austria, Grand-duke of Tuscany, later Grand-duke of Würzburg (1769-1824), brother of the Emperor Francis I. He was Grand-duke of Tuscany from 1790, but lost his States in 1796. In 1805, the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized and turned into a grand-duchy, and the Archduke Ferdinand became its titulary. On the fall of the Empire, Tuscany was restored to Austria and Ferdinand reinstated. At the same time (1814), Würzburg was restored to Bavaria.—B.
[21] These lines are a translation from the χελιδονίζειν, recorded by Athenæus.—B.
[22] Chateaubriand writes, when describing his arrival at Jaffa, in the Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem:
"The wind fell, at mid-day. The calm continued for the rest of that day and was prolonged till the 29th [of September 1806]. We were boarded by three new passengers: two wagtails and a swallow."
And then he refers again to the swallows at Combourg in his childhood and to the swallows in America which, in their turn, reminded him of the Combourg swallows.—B.
[23] In the Congrès de Vérone (Vol. II., p. 389), Chateaubriand, writing of his dismissal from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (6 June 1824), begins with these charming lines:
"On the 6th, in the morning, we were not sleeping; the dawn murmured in the little garden; the birds twittered: we heard the day break; a swallow fell down our chimney into our room; we opened the window for it: if we could only have flown away with it!"—B.
[24] This reply to the swallow was written long before 1833. The Comte de Marcellus relates, in Chateaubriand et son temps, how, in the summer of 1822, he was walking with the Ambassador in Kensington Gardens. Chateaubriand told him how, early that same morning, he had imagined that he heard a swallow twittering outside his window. He looked and saw a smoke and soot-blackened sparrow which might almost be mistaken for a swallow; and he set himself to hold an imaginary conversation with the swallow disguised as a sparrow. He handed Marcellus a paper covered with the words which he had addressed to it and which he had written down so soon as the light permitted. They correspond literally with the above speech.