The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 4 (of 6) - Being a Translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos of the

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Title: The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 4 (of 6) - Being a Translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos of the - Mémoires d'outre-tombe 4
Author: Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander, Chateaubriand, François René
Language: English
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THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ

VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND

BEING A TRANSLATION BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
OF THE MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES. In 6 Volumes. Vol. IV

"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY FREEMANTLE
AND CO. AT 217 PICCADILLY MDCCCCII

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV

BOOK VII 1-30

Changes in the world--The years 1815 and 1816--I am made a peer of
France--My first appearance in the tribune--Various speeches--The
_Monarchie selon la Charte_--Louis XVIII.--M. Decazes--I am struck
off the list of ministers of State--I sell my books and my Valley--My
speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818--The Piet meetings--The
_Conservateur_--Concerning the morality of material interests and that
of duty--The year 1820--Death of the Duc de Berry--Birth of the Duc de
Bordeaux--The market-women of Bordeaux--I cause M. de Villèle and M.
de Corbière to take office for the first time--My letter to the Duc
de Richelieu--Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply--Notes from
M. de Polignac--Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier--I am
appointed Ambassador to Berlin--I leave for that embassy

BOOK VIII 31-63

The year 1821--The Berlin, Embassy--I arrive in Berlin--M.
Ancillon--The Royal Family--Celebrations for the marriage of the
Grand-duke Nicholas--Berlin society--Count von Humboldt--Herr von
Chamisso--Ministers and ambassadors--The Princess William--The
Opera--A musical meeting--My first dispatches--M. de Bonnay--The
Park--The Duchess of Cumberland--Commencement of a Memorandum on
Germany--Charlottenburg--Interval between the Berlin Embassy and
the London Embassy--Baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux--Letter to M.
Pasquier--Letter from M. de Bernstoff--Letter from M. Ancillon--Last
letter from the Duchess of Cumberland--M. de Villèle, Minister of
Finance--I am appointed Ambassador to London

BOOK IX 64-112

The year 1822--My first dispatches from London--Conversation with
George IV. on M. Decazes--The noble character of our diplomacy under
the Legitimacy--A parliamentary sitting--English society--Continuation
of the dispatches--Resumption of parliamentary labours--A ball
for the Irish--Duel between the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of
Buckingham--Dinner at Royal Lodge--The Marchioness Conyngham
and her secret--Portraits of the ministers--Continuation of my
dispatches--Parleys on the Congress of Verona--Letter to M. de
Montmorency; his reply foreshadowing a refusal--A more favourable
letter from M. de Villèle--I write to Madame de Duras--Death of
Lord Londonderry--Another letter to M. de Montmorency--Trip to
Hartwell--Note from M. de Villèle announcing my nomination to the
Congress--The end of old England--Charlotte--Reflexions--I leave
London--The years 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827--Deliverance of the King
of Spain--My dismissal--The Opposition follows me--Last diplomatic
notes--Neuchâtel, in Switzerland--Death of Louis XVIII.--Coronation of
Charles X.--Reception of the knights of the Orders

BOOK X 113-146

I collect my former adversaries around myself--My public
charges--Extract from my polemics after my fall--Visit to
Lausanne--Return to Paris--The Jesuits--Letter from M. de Montlosier
and my reply--Continuation of my polemics--Letter from General
Sébastiani--Death of General Foy--The Law of Justice and Love--Letter
from M. Étienne--Letter from M. Benjamin Constant--I attain the
highest pitch of my political importance--Article on the King's
saint's-day--Withdrawal of the law on the police of the press--Paris
illuminated--Note from M. Michaud--M. de Villèle's irritation--Charles
X. proposes to review the National Guard on the Champ de Mars--I write
to him: my letter--The review--The National Guard disbanded--The
Elective Chamber is dissolved--The new Chamber--Refusals to
co-operate--Fall of the Villèle Ministry--I contribute towards forming
the new ministry and accept the Roman Embassy--Examination of a reproach

BOOK XI 147-219

Madame Récamier--Childhood of Madame Récamier described by M. Benjamin
Constant--Letter to Madame Récamier from Lucien Bonaparte--Continuation
of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier's journey to England--Madame de Staël's first journey to
Germany--Madame Récamier in Paris--Plans of the generals--Portrait
of Bernadotte--Trial of Moreau--Letters from Moreau and Masséna to
Madame Récamier--Death of M. Necker--Return of Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier at Coppet--Prince Augustus of Prussia--Madame de Staël's
second journey to Germany--The Château de Chaumont--Letter from
Madame de Staël to Bonaparte--Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de
Montmorency exiled--Madame Récamier at Châlons--Madame Récamier at
Lyons--Madame de Chevreuse--Spanish prisoners--Madame Récamier in
Rome--Albano-Canova: his letters--The Albano fisherman--Madame Récamier
in Naples--The Duc de Rohan-Chabot--King Murat: his letters--Madame
Récamier returns to France--Letter from Madame de Genlis--Letters from
Benjamin Constant--Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return
from Elba--Madame de Krüdener--The Duke of Wellington--I meet Madame
Récamier again--Death of Madame de Staël--The Abbaye-aux-Bois

BOOK XII 220-304

My Embassy to Rome--Three kinds of materials-Diary of the road--Letters
to Madame Récamier--Leo XII. and the Cardinals--The ambassadors--The
old artists and the new artists--Old Roman society--Present manners
of Rome--Town and country--Letter to M. Villemain--Letter to Madame
Récamier--Explanation concerning the memorandum I am about to
quote--Letter to M. le Comte de La Feironnays--Memorandum on Eastern
Affairs--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to M. Thierry--Dispatch to
M. le Comte de La Ferronnays--More letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch
to M. le Comte Portalis--Death of Leo XII.--Dispatch to M. le Comte
Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. IV

George IV
The Duc Decazes
The Duc de Berry
Frederica Queen of Hanover
The Duc de Richelieu
The Marquess of Londonderry
Madame Récamier
Pope Leo XII

[Illustration: GEORGE IV.]

THE

MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND

VOLUME IV

BOOK VII[1]

To fall back from Bonaparte and the Empire to that which followed them
is to fall from reality into nothingness, from the summit of a mountain
into a gulf. Did not everything finish with Napoleon? Ought I to have
spoken of anything else? What person can possess any interest beside
him? Of whom and of what can there be any question after such a man?
Dante alone had the right to associate himself with the great poets
whom he meets in the regions of another life. How can one speak of
Louis XVIII. in the stead of the Emperor? I blush when I think that, at
the present moment, I have to cant about a crowd of petty creatures, of
whom I myself am one, dubious and nocturnal beings that we were on a
stage from which the great sun had disappeared.

The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled up. Their members had become
bent and shrunk; the soul was lacking to the new universe so soon as
Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded from view from the moment
when they were no longer illuminated by the light which had given them
colour and relief. At the commencement of these Memoirs, I had only
myself to speak of: well, there is always a sort of paramountcy in
man's individual solitude. Later, I was surrounded by miracles: those
miracles kept up my voice; but at this present moment there is no more
conquest of Egypt, no more Battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena, no
more retreat from Russia, no more invasion of France, capture of Paris,
return from Elba, Battle of Waterloo, funeral at St. Helena: what
remains? Portraits to which only the genius of Molière could lend the
gravity of comedy!

While expressing myself upon our worthlessness, I taxed my conscience
home: I asked myself whether I did not purposely incorporate myself
with the nullity of these times, in order to acquire the right to
condemn the others, persuaded though I were _in petto_ that my name
would be read in the midst of all these obliterations. No, I am
convinced that we shall all fade out: first, because we have not in
us the wherewithal to live; secondly, because the age in which we are
commencing or ending our days has itself not the wherewithal to make
us live. Generations mutilated, exhausted, disdainful, faithless,
consecrated to the annihilation which they love, are unable to bestow
immortality; they have no power to create a renown; if you were to nail
your ear to their mouth, you would hear nothing: no sound issues from
the heart of the dead.

One thing strikes me, however: the little world to which I am now
coming was superior to the world which succeeded it in 1830; we were
giants in comparison with the society of maggots that has engendered
itself.

The Restoration offers at least one point in which we can find
importance: after the dignity of one man, that man having passed, there
was born again the dignity of mankind. If despotism has been replaced
by liberty, if we understand anything of independence, if we have lost
the habit of grovelling, if the rights of human nature are no longer
disregarded, we owe these things to the Restoration. Wherefore also I
threw myself into the fray in order, as far as I could, to revive the
species when the individual had come to an end.

Come, let us pursue our task! Let us descend, with a groan, to myself
and my colleagues. You have seen me amid my dreams; you are about to
see me in my realities: if the interest decreases, if I fall, reader,
be just, make allowance for my subject!

[Sidenote: I am made a peer of France.]

After the second return of the King and the final disappearance of
Bonaparte, the Ministry being in the hands of M. le Duc d'Otrante and
M. le Prince de Talleyrand, I was appointed president of the electoral
college of the Department of the Loiret. The elections of 1815 gave
the King the _Chambre introuvable._[2] I was carrying all the votes
at Orleans, when I received the Order which called me to the House
of Peers[3]. My active career had hardly commenced, when it suddenly
changed its course: what would it have been if I had been sent to the
Elective Chamber? It is fairly probable that that career would, in
the event of my success, have ended in the Ministry of the Interior,
instead of taking me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My habits and
manners were more in touch with the peerage, and, although the latter
became hostile to me from the first moment, by reason of my Liberal
opinions, it is nevertheless certain that my doctrines concerning the
liberty of the press and against the vassalage to foreigners gave the
Noble Chamber the popularity which it enjoyed so long as it suffered my
opinions.

I received, at my entrance, the only honour which my colleagues ever
did me during my fifteen years' residence in their midst: I was
appointed one of the four secretaries for the session of 1816. Lord
Byron met with no more favour when he appeared in the House of Lords,
and he left it for good: I ought to have returned to my deserts.

My first appearance in the tribune was to make a speech on the
irremovability of the judges[4]: I applauded the principle, but
censured its immediate application. At the Revolution of 1830, the
members of the Left who were most devoted to that revolution wished to
suspend the irremovability for a time.

On the 22nd of February 1816, the Duc de Richelieu brought us the
autograph will of the Queen. I ascended the tribune, and said:

"He who has preserved for us the will of Marie-Antoinette[5] had bought
the property of Montboisier: himself one of Louis XVI.'s judges, he
raised in that property a monument to the memory of the defender of
Louis XVI., and himself engraved on that monument an epitaph in French
verse in praise of M. de Malesherbes. This astonishing impartiality
shows that all is misplaced in the moral world."

On the 12th of March 1816, the question of the ecclesiastical
pensions[6] was discussed:

"You would," I said, "refuse an allowance to the poor vicar who
devotes the remainder of his days to the altar, and you would accord
pensions to Joseph Lebon[7], who struck off so many heads; to François
Chabot[8], who asked for a law against the Emigrants of so simple a
character that a child might lead them to the guillotine; to Jacques
Roux[9], who, refusing at the Temple to receive Louis XVI.'s will,
replied to the unfortunate monarch:

"'My only business is to take you to your death.'"

A bill had been introduced into the Hereditary Chamber relating to the
elections. I declared myself in favour of the integral renewal of the
Chamber of Deputies. It was not until 1824, being then a minister, that
I passed it into law.

It was also in this first speech on the law governing elections, in
1816[10], that I said, in reply to an opponent:

"I will not refer to what has been said about Europe watching our
discussions. Speaking for myself, gentlemen, I doubtless owe to the
French blood that flows in my veins the impatience which I experience
when, in order to influence my vote, people talk to me of opinions
existing outside my country; and, if civilized Europe tried to impose
the Charter on me, I should go to live in Constantinople."

[Sidenote: The Chamber of Peers.]

On the 9th of April 1816, I introduced a motion to the Chamber relating
to the Barbary Powers. The house decided that there was cause for its
discussion. I was already thinking of combating slavery, before I
obtained that favourable decision from the Peers, which was the first
political intervention of a great Power on behalf of the Greeks:

"I have seen the ruins of Carthage," I said to my colleagues; "I have
met among those ruins the successors of the unhappy Christians for
whose deliverance St. Louis sacrificed his life. Philosophy can take
its share of the glory attached to the success of my motion and boast
of having obtained in an age of light that for which religion strove in
vain in an age of darkness."

I found myself in an assembly in which my words, for three-fourths of
the time, turned against myself. One can move a popular chamber; an
aristocratic chamber is deaf. With no gallery, speaking in private
before old men, dried-up remains of the old Monarchy, of the Revolution
and of the Empire, anything that rose above the most commonplace seemed
madness. One day, the front row of arm-chairs, quite close to the
tribune, was filled with venerable peers, one more deaf than the other,
their heads bent forward, and holding to their ears a trumpet with the
mouth turned towards the tribune. I sent them to sleep, which is very
natural. One of them dropped his ear-trumpet; his neighbour, awakened
by the fall, wanted politely to pick up his colleague's trumpet; he
fell down. The worst of it was that I began to laugh, although I was
just then speaking pathetically on some subject of humanity, I forget
what.

The speakers who succeeded in that Chamber were those who spoke
without ideas, in a level and monotonous tone, or who found terms of
sensibility only in order to melt with pity for the poor ministers. M.
de Lally-Tolendal thundered in favour of the public liberties: he made
the vaults of our solitude resound with the praises of three or four
English Lord Chancellors, his ancestors, he said. When his panegyric
of the liberty of the press was finished, came a "but" based upon
"circumstances," which "but" left our honour safe, under the useful
supervision of the censorship.

The Restoration gave an impulse to men's minds; it set free the thought
suppressed by Bonaparte: the intellect, like a caryatic figure relieved
of the entablature that bent its brow, lifted up its head. The Empire
had struck France with dumbness; liberty restored touched her and gave
her back speech: oratorical talents existed which took up matters where
the Mirabeaus and Cazalès had left them, and the Revolution continued
its course.

My labours were not limited to the tribune, so new to me. Appalled at
the systems which men were embracing and at France's ignorance of the
principles of representative government, I wrote and had printed the
_Monarchie selon la Charte._ This publication marked one of the great
epochs of my political life: it made me take rank among the publicists;
it served to determine opinion on the nature of our government. The
English papers praised the work to the skies; among us, the Abbé
Morellet even could not recover from the transformation of my style and
the dogmatic precision of the truths.

The _Monarchie selon la Charte_ is a constitutional catechism: from
it have been taken the greater part of the propositions which are put
forward as new to-day. Thus the principle that "the King reigns but
does not govern" is found fully set forth in Chapters IV., V., VI. and
VII. on the Royal Prerogative.

The constitutional principles having been laid down in the first part
of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, I examine in the second the systems
of the three ministries which till then had followed upon one another,
from 1814 to 1816; in this part are brought together predictions
too well verified since and expositions of doctrines at that time
unperceived. These words appear in Chapter XXVI., in the Second Part:

"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a
revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change
of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the
order of right of succession to the Crown."

As I was finishing my work, appeared the ordinance of the 5th of
September 1816[11]: this measure dispersed the few Royalists assembled
to reconstruct the Legitimate Monarchy. I hastened to write the
_Postscript_, which caused an explosion of anger on the part of M. le
Duc de Richelieu and of Louis XVIII.'s favourite, M. Decazes.

[Sidenote: Seizure of my pamphlet.]

The _Postscript_ added, I ran to M. Le Normant, my publisher's. On
arriving, I found constables and a police-commissary making out
instruments. They had seized parcels and affixed seals. I had not
defied Bonaparte to be intimidated by M. Decazes: I objected to the
seizure; I declared that, as a free Frenchman and a peer of France, I
would yield only to force. The force arrived and I withdrew. I went
on the 18th of September to Messieurs Louis-Marthe Mesnier and his
colleague, notaries-royal; I protested in their office and called upon
them to register my statement of the fact of the apprehension of my
work, wishing to ensure the rights of French citizens by means of this
protest M. Baudé[12] followed my example in 1830.

I next found myself engaged in a rather long correspondence with M.
the Chancellor, M. the Minister of Police and M. the Attorney-General
Bellart[13], until the 9th of November, on which day the Chancellor
informed me of the order made in my favour by the Court of First
Instance, which placed me in possession of my seized work. In one of
his letters, M. the Chancellor told me that he had been distressed to
see the dissatisfaction which the King had publicly expressed with my
work. This dissatisfaction arose from the chapter in which I stood
up against the establishment of a minister of General Police in a
constitutional country.

In my account of the journey to Ghent, you have seen Louis XVIII.'s
value as a descendant of Hugh Capet; in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort:
vive le roi!_[14] I have told the Prince's real qualities. But man is
not a simple unit: why are there so few faithful portraits? Because the
model is made to pose at such or such a period of his life; ten years
later the portrait is no longer like.

Louis XVIII. did not see far the objects before or around him; all
seemed fair or foul to him according to the way he looked at it.
Smitten with his century, it is to be feared that "the most Christian
King" regarded religion only as an elixir fit for the amalgam of drugs
of which royalty is composed. The licentious imagination which he had
received from his grandfather[15] might have inspired some distrust of
his enterprises; but he knew himself and, when he spoke in a positive
manner, he boasted (well knowing it), while laughing at himself. I
spoke to him one day of the need of a new marriage for M. le Duc de
Bourbon, in order to bring back the race of the Condés to life. He
strongly approved of that idea, although he cared very little about the
sad resurrection; but in this connection he spoke to me of the Comte
d'Artois, and said:

"My brother might marry again without changing anything in the
succession to the throne: he would only make cadets. As for me,
I should only make elders; I do not want to disinherit M. le Duc
d'Angoulême."

And he drew himself up with a capable and bantering air; but I had no
intention of denying the King any power.

Selfish and unprejudiced, Louis XVIII. desired his peace of mind at any
price: he supported his ministers so long as they held the majority; he
dismissed them so soon as the majority was shaken and his tranquillity
liable to be upset: he did not hesitate to fall back when, to obtain
the victory, he ought to have taken a step forward. His greatness was
patience: he did not go towards events; events came to him.

Without being cruel, the King was not humane; tragic catastrophes
neither astonished nor touched him; he was satisfied with saying to the
Duc de Berry, who apologized for having had the misfortune to disturb
the King's sleep by his death:

"I have finished my night."

Nevertheless, this quiet man would fly into horrible rages when
annoyed; and also, this cold, unfeeling Prince had attachments which
resembled passions: thus there succeeded each other in his intimacy the
Comte d'Avaray, M. de Blacas, M. Decazes[16]; Madame de Balbi[17],
Madame de Cayla[18]. All these beloved persons were favourites;
unfortunately they have a great deal too many letters in their hands.

Louis XVIII. appeared to us in all the profundity of historic
tradition; he showed himself with the favouritism of the ancient
royalties. Does the heart of our isolated monarchs contain a void which
they fill with the first object they light upon? Is it sympathy, the
affinity of a nature analogous to their own? Is it a friendship which
drops down to them from Heaven to console their greatnesses? Is it a
leaning for a slave who gives himself body and soul, before whom one
conceals nothing, a slave who becomes a garment, a plaything, a fixed
idea bound up with all the feelings, all the tastes, all the whims
of him whom it has subdued and whom it holds under the empire of an
invincible fascination? The viler and closer a favourite has been,
the less easily is he to be dismissed, because he is in possession of
secrets which would put one to the blush if they were divulged: the
chosen one derives a dual force from his own baseness and his master's
weaknesses.

When the favourite happens to be a great man, like the besetting
Richelieu[19] or the undismissable Mazarin[20], the nations, while
detesting him, profit by his glory or his power; they only change a
wretched king _de jure_ for an illustrious king _de facto._

[Sidenote: The Duc Decazes.]

So soon as M. Decazes was made a minister, the carriages blocked
the Quai Malaquais in the evenings to set down in the new-comer's
drawing-room all that was noblest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The
Frenchman may do what he pleases, he will never be anything but a
courtier, no matter of whom, provided it be a power of the day.

Soon there was formed, on behalf of the new favourite, a formidable
coalition of stupidities. In democratic society, prate about liberties,
declare that you see the progress of the human race and the future of
things, adding to your speeches a few Crosses of the Legion of Honour,
and you are sure of your place; in aristocratic society, play whist,
utter commonplaces and carefully-prepared witticisms with a grave and
profound air, and the fortune of your genius is assured.

Born a fellow-countryman of Murat[21], but of Murat without a kingdom,
M. Decazes had come to us from the mother of Napoleon[22]. He was
familiar, obliging, never insolent; he wished me well; I do not know
why, I did not care: thence came the commencement of my disgraces. That
was to teach me that one must never fail in respect to a favourite. The
King loaded him with kindnesses and credit, and subsequently married
him to a very well-born person, daughter to M. de Sainte-Aulaire[23].
It is true that M. Decazes served royalty too well; it was he who
unearthed Marshal Ney in the mountains of Auvergne, where he had hidden
himself.

Faithful to the inspirations of his throne, Louis XVIII. said of M.
Decazes:

"I shall raise him up so high that the greatest lords will be envious
of him."

This phrase, borrowed from another king, was a mere anachronism: to
raise up others, one must be sure of not descending; now, at the time
when Louis XVIII. arrived, what were monarchs? If they could still make
a man's fortune, they could no longer make his greatness; they had
become merely their favourites' bankers.

[Illustration: Duc Decazes.]

Madame Princeteau[24], M. Decazes' sister, was an agreeable, modest and
excellent person; the King had fallen in love with her prospectively.
M. Decazes, the father, whom I saw in the throne-room in full dress,
sword at side, hat under his arm, made no success, however.

At last, the death of M. le Duc de Berry increased the ill-will on both
sides and brought about the favourite's fall. I have said that "his
feet slipped in the blood[25]," which does not mean, Heaven forbid!
that he was guilty of the murder, but that he fell in the reddened pool
that formed under Louvel's knife.

I had resisted the seizure of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ to
enlighten misled royalty and to uphold the liberty of thought and of
the press; I had frankly embraced our institutions, and I remained
loyal to them.

These broils over, I remained bleeding from the wounds inflicted on
me at the appearance of my pamphlet. I did not take possession of
my political career without bearing the scars of the blows which I
received on entering upon that career: I felt ill at ease in it, I was
unable to breathe.

[Sidenote: I am deprived of my place.]

Shortly afterwards, an Order[26] countersigned "Richelieu" struck me
off the list of ministers of State, and I was deprived of a place
till then reputed irremovable; it had been given me at Ghent, and the
pension attached to that place was withdrawn from me: the hand which
had taken Fouché struck me.

I have had the honour to be thrice stripped for the Legitimacy: first,
for following the sons of St. Louis into exile; the second time, for
writing in favour of the principles of the Monarchy, as "granted;" the
third, for keeping silence on a baleful law at the moment when I had
just caused the triumph of our arms. The Spanish Campaign had given
back soldiers to the White Flag, and, if I had been kept in power, I
should have carried back our frontiers to the banks of the Rhine.

My nature made me quite indifferent to the loss of my salary; I came
off with going on foot again and, on rainy days, driving to the Chamber
of Peers in a hackney-coach. In my popular conveyance, under the
protection of the rabble that surged around me, I re-entered into the
rights of the proletariat of which I formed part: from my lofty chariot
I looked down upon the train of kings.

I was obliged to sell my books; M. Merlin put them up to auction at
the Salle Sylvestre in the Rue des Bons-Enfants[27]. I kept only
a little Greek Homer, whose margins were covered with attempts at
translation and remarks in my handwriting. Soon it became necessary to
take energetic measures; I asked M. the Minister of the Interior for
leave to raffle my country-house. The lottery was opened at the office
of M. Denis, notary. There were ninety tickets at 1000 francs each:
the numbers were not taken up by the Royalists; the Dowager Madame la
Duchesse d'Orléans[28] took three numbers; my friend, M. Lainé, the
Minister of the Interior, who had countersigned the Order of the 5th of
September and consented in the Council to the striking off of my name,
took a fourth ticket under a false name. The money was returned to the
subscribers; M. Lainé, however, refused to withdraw his 1000 francs; he
left it with the notary for the poor.

Not long after, my Vallée-aux-Loups was sold, as they sell the
furniture of the poor, on the Place du Châtelet. I suffered much by
this sale; I had become attached to my trees, planted and, so to speak,
full-grown in my memories. The reserve was 50,000 francs; it was
covered by M. le Vicomte de Montmorency[29], who alone dared to bid one
hundred francs higher: the Vallée was knocked down to him[30]. He has
since inhabited my retreat. It is not a good thing to meddle with my
fortunes: that man of virtue is no more.

After the publication of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ and at the
opening of the new session in the month of November 1816, I continued
my contests. In the House of Peers, in the sitting of the 23rd of that
month, I moved a proposition to the effect that the King be humbly
begged to order an investigation into the proceedings at the last
elections. The corruption and violence of the Ministry during those
elections were flagrant.

In giving my opinion on the Bill relating to Supply (21 March 1817),
I spoke against Clause II. of that Bill: it had to do with the State
forests which they proposed to appropriate for the Sinking Fund, in
order afterwards to sell one hundred and fifty thousand hectares. These
forests consisted of three kinds of properties: the ancient domains of
the Crown, a few commanderies of the Order of Malta, and the remainder
of the goods of the Church. I do not know why, even to-day, I find a
sad interest in my words; they bear some resemblance to my Memoirs:

"With all due deference to those who have administered only during our
troubles, it is not the material security but the ethics of a people
that constitute the public credit. Will the new owners make good the
titles of their new property? To deprive them there will be quoted
to them instances of inheritances of nine centuries taken away from
their former possessors. Instead of those inalienable patrimonies in
which the same family outlived the race of the oaks, you will have
unfixed properties in which the reeds will scarcely have time to
spring up and die before they change masters. The homes will cease to
be the guardians of domestic morality; they will lose their venerable
authority; rights-of-way open to all comers, they will no longer be
hallowed by the grandfather's chair and the cradle of the new-born
child.

"Peers of France, it is your cause that I am pleading here, not mine: I
am speaking to you in the interests of your children; I shall have no
concern with posterity; I have no sons; I have lost my father's fields,
and a few trees which I have planted will soon cease to be mine."

[Sidenote: The Comte de Villèle.]

Because of the resemblance of opinions, then very keen, an intimacy had
been established between the minorities of the two Chambers. France
was learning representative government. As I had been foolish enough
to take it literally and make a real passion of it, to my prejudice, I
supported those who took it up, without troubling my head as to whether
their opposition was not prompted by human motives rather than by a
pure love like that which I felt for the Charter: not that I was a
simpleton, but I idolized my lady-love and would have gone through fire
to carry her off in my arms. It was during this constitutional attack
that I came to know M. de Villèle[31], in 1816. He was calmer; he
overcame his ardour; he, too, aimed at conquering liberty, but he laid
siege to it according to rule. He opened the trenches methodically: I,
who wanted to carry the place by assault, advanced to the escalade, and
often found myself flung back into the ditch.

I met M. de Villèle first at the Duchesse de Lévis'. He became the
leader of the Royalist Opposition in the Elective Chamber, as I was
in the Hereditary Chamber. He had as a friend his colleague M. de
Corbière[32]. The latter never left his side, and people used to speak
of "Villèle and Corbière" as they speak of "Orestes and Pylades" or
"Euryalus and Nisus."

To enter into fastidious details about persons whose names one will
not know to-morrow would be an idiotic vanity. Obscure and tedious
commotions, which one considers of immense interest and which interest
nobody, bygone intrigues, which have decided no important event, should
be left to those devoutly happy persons who imagine themselves to be,
or to have been, the object of the world's attention.

Nevertheless, there were proud moments in which my contentions with
M. de Villèle seemed to me personally like the dissensions of Sulla
and Marius, of Cæsar and Pompey. Together with the other members
of the Opposition, we went pretty often to spend the evening in
deliberation at M. Piet's[33], in the Rue Thérèse. We arrived looking
extremely ugly, and sat down round a room lighted by a flaring lamp.
In this legislative fog, we talked of the Bill introduced, of the
motion to be made, of the friend to be pushed into the secretaryship,
the questorship, the different committees. We were not unlike the
assemblies of the early Christians, as depicted by the enemies of the
Faith: we broached the worst news; we said that things were going to
turn, that Rome would be troubled by divisions, that our armies would
be routed.

M. de Villèle listened, summed up, and drew no conclusions; he was a
great aid in business: a prudent mariner, he never put to sea in a
storm and, though he would cleverly enter a known harbour, he would
never have discovered the New World. I often observed, in the matter
of our discussions concerning the sale of the goods of the clergy,
that the best Christians among us were the most eager in defense of
the constitutional doctrines. Religion is the well-spring of liberty:
in Rome, the _flamen dialis_ wore only a hollow ring on his finger,
because a solid ring had something of a chain; in his clothing and on
his head-dress the pontiff of Jupiter was forbidden to suffer a single
knot.

After the sitting, M. de Villèle would go away, accompanied by M.
de Corbière. I studied many personalities, I learnt many things, I
occupied myself with many interests at those meetings: finance, which
I always understood, the army, justice, administration initiated me
into their several elements. I left those conferences somewhat more
of a statesman and somewhat more persuaded of the poverty of all that
knowledge. Throughout the night, between sleeping and waking, I saw the
different attitudes of the bald heads, the different expressions of the
faces of those untidy and ungainly Solons. It was all very venerable,
truly; but I preferred the swallow which woke me in my youth and the
Muses who filled my dreams: the rays of the dawn which, striking
a swan, made the shadows of those white birds fall upon a golden
billow; the rising sun which appeared to me in Syria in the stem of a
palm-tree, like the phoenix' nest, pleased me more.

I felt that my fighting in the tribune, in a closed Chamber, and in the
midst of an assembly which was unfavourable to me, remained useless
to victory, and that I required another weapon. The censorship being
established over the periodical daily newspapers, I could fulfil my
object only by means of a free, semi-daily paper, with the aid of which
I would at once attack the system of the Ministers and the opinions
of the Extreme Left printed in the _Minerve_ by M. Étienne[34]. I was
staying at Noisiel with Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, in the summer of
1818, when my publisher, M. Le Normant, came to see me. I told him
of the idea which I had in mind; he caught fire, offered to run all
risks and undertook all expenses. I spoke to my friends, Messieurs de
Bonald[35] and de La Mennais[36], and asked them if they would take
part: they agreed, and the paper was not long in appearing under the
title of the _Conservateur._[37]

The revolution worked by this paper was unexampled: in France, it
changed the majority in the Chambers; abroad, it converted the spirit
of the Cabinets.

In this way the Royalists owed to me the advantage of issuing from
the state of nullity into which they had fallen with peoples and
kings. I put the pen into the hands of France's greatest families.
I decked out the Montmorencys and the Lévises as journalists; I
called out the arriere-ban; I made feudality march to the aid of the
liberty of the press. I had got together the most brilliant men of the
Royalist party, Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière, de Vitrolles[38],
de Castelbajac[39], etc. I could not help blessing Providence every
time that I spread the red robe of a prince of the Church over the
_Conservateur_ by way of a cover, and that I had the pleasure to read
an article signed in full: "The Cardinal de La Luzerne[40]." But it
came to pass that, after I had led my knights on the constitutional
crusade, so soon as they had conquered power by the deliverance of
liberty, so soon as they had become Princes of Edessa, of Antioch, of
Damascus, they locked themselves up in their new States with Eleanor of
Aquitaine[41], and left me out in the cold at the foot of Jerusalem,
where the infidels had recaptured the Holy Sepulchre.

[Sidenote: The _Conservator._]

My polemical warfare began in the _Conservateur_ and lasted from 1818
to 1820, that is to say, until the re-establishment of the censorship,
for which the death of the Duc de Berry was the pretext. During this
first period of my polemics, I upset the old Ministry and placed M. de
Villèle in power.

After 1824, when I again took up my pen in pamphlets and in the
_Journal des Débats_, the positions were changed. And yet, what did
those futile trifles matter to me, who had never believed in the time
in which I lived, to me, who belonged to the past, to me, who had no
faith in kings, no conviction with regard to the peoples, to me, who
have never troubled about anything, except dreams, and then only on
condition that they lasted but a night!

The first article in the _Conservateur_[42] describes the position of
things at the moment when I entered the lists. During the two years
for which the paper lasted, I had successively to treat of accidents
of the day and to examine interests of importance. I had occasion to
criticize the dastardliness of that "private correspondence" which the
Paris police was publishing in London. This "private correspondence"
might calumniate, but could not dishonour: that which is base has not
the power of debasing; honour alone is able to inflict dishonour.

"Anonymous calumniators," I said, "have the courage to say who you are;
a little shame is soon over; add your names to your articles: it will
be only one contemptible word the more."

I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that
ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.

Finally, under date 5 December 1818, the _Conservateur_ contained a
serious article on the morality of interests and on that of duty: it
was this article, which made a stir, that gave birth to the phrase of
"moral interests" and "material interests," first put forward by me,
and subsequently adopted by everybody. Here it is, much abridged; it
rises above the compass of a newspaper, and it is one of my works to
which my reason attaches some value. It has not aged, because the ideas
which it contains are of all time:

"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of
interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this
morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the
ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the
people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a
quarter of a century.

"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with
that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but
seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and
specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for
truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its
false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles
reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.

"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we
were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into
guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the
corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in
pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the
tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all
the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous
to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared
in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals
that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all.
The women of the people came and worked at their knitting
round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the
scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation
of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position
of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of
'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That
balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown.
They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich:
die;' and he died. Antonelle[43] wrote that no count had
been found against certain prisoners, but that he had
condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which,
notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society
is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by
killing him as guilty.

"Consequently, those hideous times are times of great acts of
self-devotion. Then women went heroically to the scaffold;
fathers gave themselves up for their sons, sons for their
fathers; unexpected assistance was introduced into the
prisons, and the priest who was being hunted consoled the
victim by the side of the executioner who failed to recognise
him.

[Sidenote: On moral interests.]

"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the corruption
of morals rather than of doctrines; license prevailed. Men
were hurled into pleasures as they had been heaped up in
the prisons; they forced the present to advance joys on the
future, in the fear of seeing a revival of the past. Every
man, not having yet had time to create himself a home, lived
in the street, on the public walks, in the public rooms.
Familiarized with the scaffolds, and already half cut off
from the world, they did not think it worth the trouble to go
indoors. There was question only of arts, balls, fashions;
people changed their ornaments and clothes as readily as they
would have stripped themselves of their lives.

"Under Bonaparte the seduction commenced again, but it was a
seduction that carried its own remedy: Bonaparte seduced by
means of the spell of glory, and all that is great carries a
principle of legislation within itself. He conceived that it
was useful to allow the doctrine of all peoples to be taught,
the morality of all times, the religion of eternity.

"I should not be surprised to hear some one reply:

"'To base society upon a _duty_, is to build it on a fiction;
to place it in an _interest_, is to establish it in a
reality.'

"Now it is precisely _duty_ which is a fact and _interest_
a fiction. _Duty_, which takes its source in the Godhead,
descends first into the family, where it establishes a real
affinity between the father and the children; from there,
passing into society and dividing into two branches, in the
political order it rules the relations of the king and the
subject; in the moral order it establishes the tie of service
and protection, of benefits and gratitude.

"Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives to
human society the only lasting existence that the latter can
have.

"Interest, on the contrary, is a fiction when it is taken as
people take it to-day, in its physical and rigorous sense,
since it is no longer in the evening what it was in the
morning; since it changes its nature at each moment; since,
founded on fortune, it has fortune's fickleness.

"By the morality of interest, every citizen is at enmity
with the laws and the government, because in society it is
always the great number that suffers. People do not fight for
abstract ideas of order, of place, of the mother-land; or,
if they fight for them, it is because they attach ideas of
_sacrifice_ to them; then they emerge from the morality of
interest to enter into that of duty: so true is it that the
existence of society is not to be found outside that sacred
limit.

"He who does his duty gains esteem; he who yields to his
interest is but little esteemed: it was very like the century
to draw a principle of government from a source of contempt!
Bring up politicians to think only of what affects them, and
you shall see how they will dress out the State; by that
means you will have only corrupt and hungry ministers, like
those mutilated slaves who governed the Lower Empire and who
sold all, remembering that they themselves had been sold.

"Mark this: interests are powerful only so long as they
prosper; when times are harsh, they become enfeebled. Duties,
on the contrary, are never so energetic as when they are
painful to fulfil. When times are good, they grow lax. I like
a principle of government which grows great in misfortune:
that greatly resembles virtue.

"What can be absurder than to cry to the people:

"'Do not be devoted! Have no enthusiasm! Think only of your
interests!'

"It is as though one were to say to them:

"'Do not come to our assistance, abandon us if such be your
interest.'

"With this profound policy, when the hour of devotion shall
have come, each one will shut his door, go to the window, and
watch the Monarchy pass[44]."

Such was this article on the morality of interest and the morality of
duty.

On the 3rd of December 1819, I again mounted the tribune of the Chamber
of Peers: I raised my voice against the bad Frenchmen who were able to
give us as a motive for tranquillity the watchfulness of the European
armies:

"Had we need of guardians? Were they still going to talk of
circumstances? Were we again, by means of diplomatic notes, to receive
certificates of good conduct? And should we not only have changed a
garrison of Cossacks for a garrison of ambassadors?"

From that time forward, I spoke of the foreigners as I have since
spoken of them in the Spanish War; I was thinking of our delivery at a
moment when even the Liberals contended with me. Men opposed in opinion
make a deal of noise to attain silence! Let a few years arrive, and the
actors will descend from the stage and the audience no longer be there
to hiss or applaud them.

[Sidenote: Murder of the Duc de Berry.]

I had gone to bed, on the evening of the 13th of February, when the
Marquis de Vibraye[45] came in to me to tell me of the assassination
of the Duc du Berry. In his haste, he did not tell me the place where
the event had occurred. I dressed hurriedly and stepped into M. de
Vibraye's carriage. I was surprised to see the coachman take the Rue
de Richelieu, and still more astonished when he stopped at the Opera:
the crowd about the approaches was immense. We went up, between two
lines of soldiers, through the side-door on the left, and, as we were
in our peers' coats, we were allowed to pass. We came to a sort of
little ante-room: the space was obstructed with all the people of
the palace. I pushed my way as far as the door of a box and found
myself face to face with M. le Duc d'Orléans. I was struck with an
ill-disguised expression of jubilation in his eyes, across the contrite
countenance which he assumed: he saw the throne nearer at hand. My
glance embarrassed him: he left the spot and turned his back to me.
Around me, they were telling the details of the crime, the man's name,
the conjectures of the different participants in the arrest; they were
excited, busy: men love anything theatrical, especially death, when
it is the death of one of the great. Each person who came out of the
blood-stained laboratory was asked for news. They heard General A. de
Girardin[46] relate how, having been left for dead on the battle-field,
he had nevertheless recovered from his wounds; this one was hoping
and consoling himself, that other was repining. Soon contemplation
overcame the crowd, a silence fell; from the inside of the box came a
dull sound: I held my ear laid to the door; I distinguished a rattle;
the sound ceased: the Royal Family had received the last breath of a
grandson of Louis XIV.! I entered at once.

Let the reader picture to himself an empty playhouse, after the
catastrophe of a tragedy: the curtain raised, the orchestra deserted,
the lights extinguished, the machinery motionless, the scenery fixed
and smoke-blackened, the actors, the singers, the dancers vanished
through the trap-doors and secret passages!

I have, in a separate work, given the life and death of M. le Duc de
Berry. My reflections made at that time are still true to-day:

"A son of St. Louis, the last scion of the Elder Branch,
escapes the crosses of a long banishment and returns to
his country; he begins to taste happiness; he indulges the
hope of seeing himself revive, of at the same time seeing
the monarchy revive in the children that God promises him:
suddenly he is struck down in the midst of his hopes, almost
in the arms of his wife. He is going to die, and he is not
full of years! Might he not accuse Heaven, ask It why It
treats him with such severity? Ah, how pardonable it would
have been in him to complain of his destiny! For, after all,
what harm did he do? He lived familiarly among us in perfect
simplicity, mingled in our pleasures and assuaged our pains;
already six of his relations have perished: why murder him
also, why seek out him, innocent, him so far from the throne,
twenty-seven years after the death of Louis XVI.? Let us
learn to know better the heart of a Bourbon! That heart, all
pierced by the dagger, was not able to find a single murmur
against us: not one regret for life, not one bitter word was
uttered by the Prince. A husband, son, father and brother, a
prey to every anguish of the mind, to every suffering of the
body, he does not cease to ask pardon for 'the man,' whom he
does not even call his assassin! The most impetuous becomes
suddenly the gentlest character. It is a man attached to
existence by every tie of the heart, it is a prince in the
flower of his youth, it is the heir to the fairest kingdom on
earth that is dying: and you would think that it was a poor
wretch who loses nothing here below."

[Illustration: Duc de Berry.]

The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such
as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something
of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that
Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a
plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members
of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by
one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single
thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act
was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the
whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre
has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material
enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime.
We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the
accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry
to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at.

On the 18th of February 1820, the _Conservateur_[47] paid the tribute
of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article
concluded with this verse of Racine's:

Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!

Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!

[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministry.]

M. Decazes fell. The censorship followed and, notwithstanding
the assassination of the Duc de Berry, I voted against it. The
_Conservateur_ refusing to be soiled by it, that paper came to an end
with the following apostrophe to the Duc de Berry:

"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious
scion of so many kings, before descending into your last
resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a
work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes
told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were
not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write
at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the
sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours
with the end of your life[49]."

M. le Duc de Bordeaux saw the light on the 29th of September 1820.
The new-born was called "the child of Europe[50]" and "the child of
miracle[51]," while waiting to become the child of exile.

Some time before the Princess' confinement, three market-women of
Bordeaux, in the name of all the ladies their companions, had a cradle
made, and chose me to present them, their cradle and themselves, to
Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Mesdames Dasté, Duranton and Aniche
came to see me. I hastened to ask the gentlemen in attendance for a
ceremonial audience. Suddenly, M. de Sèze thought that this honour was
his by right: it was said that I should never succeed at Court. I was
not yet reconciled with the Ministry, and I did not seem worthy of the
office of introducer of my humble ambassadresses. I got out of this
great negociation, as usual, by paying their expenses.

All this became an affair of State; the pother found its way into
the papers. The Bordeaux ladies were aware of this, and wrote me the
following letter on the subject:

"BORDEAUX, 24 _October_ 1820.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"We owe you our thanks for the kindness which you have had
to lay our joy and our respects at the feet of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry: this time at least you will not have been
prevented from being our interpreter. We heard with the
greatest concern of the stir which M. le Comte de Sèze has
made in the newspapers, and, if we have kept silence, it
is because we feared to give you pain. Still, monsieur le
vicomte, none is better able than yourself to do homage to
truth and to undeceive M. de Sèze as to our real intentions
in our choice of an introducer to Her Royal Highness. We make
you the offer to state all that has passed in a newspaper of
your own choosing; and, as no one has the right to choose a
guide for us, and as we had been pleased to think until the
last moment that you would be that guide, what we shall state
in this respect will necessarily silence all tongues.

"That is what we have determined upon, monsieur le vicomte;
but we thought it our duty to do nothing without your
consent. Rely upon it that we will most gladly publish the
handsome way in which you behaved towards everybody in the
matter of our presentation. If we are the cause of the
mischief, we are quite ready to redress it.

"We are, and always shall be,

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Your most humble and most respectful servants,

"Wives DASTÉ, DURANTON, ANICHE."

[Sidenote: the new Ministry.]

I replied to these generous ladies, who were so unlike the great ladies:

"I thank you, my dear ladies, for the offer you make me to
publish in a newspaper all that has happened with regard to
M. de Sèze. You are excellent Royalists, and I also am a good
Royalist: we must remember before all that M. de Sèze is an
honourable man, and that he has been the defender of our
King. That fine action is not wiped out by a little movement
of vanity. So let us keep silence: I am content with your
good accounts of me to your friends. I have already thanked
you for your excellent fruits: Madame de Chateaubriand and I
eat your chesnuts every day and talk of you.

"Now permit your host to embrace you. My wife sends you a
thousand messages, and I remain

"Your servant and friend,

"CHATEAUBRIAND.

"Paris, 2 November 1820."

But who thinks of these futile discussions to-day? The joys and
feasts of the christening are far behind us. When Henry was born, on
Michaelmas Day, did not people say that the archangel was going to
trample the dragon under foot? It is to be feared, on the contrary,
that the flaming sword was drawn from its scabbard only to drive out
the innocent from the earthly paradise and to guard its gates against
him.

However, the events which were becoming complicated determined nothing
yet. The assassination of M. le Duc de Berry had brought about the fall
of M. Decazes[52], which was not effected without heart-breakings. M.
le Duc de Richelieu would not consent to afflict his aged master, save
on a promise from M. Molé[53] to give M. Decazes a mission abroad. He
set out for the Embassy in London, where I was to replace him[54].
Nothing was finished. M. de Villèle remained in seclusion with his
fatality, M. de Corbière. I on my side offered a great obstacle.
Madame de Montcalm[55] never ceased urging me towards quiet: I was
much inclined for it, sincerely wishing only to retire from public
life, which encroached upon me and for which I entertained a sovereign
contempt. M. de Villèle, although more supple, was not at that time
easy to deal with.

There are two ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the
other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de
Villèle's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable
to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this
manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow
a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this
dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through
their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This
conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for
that reason that there are so few statesmen.

M. de Villèle had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the
ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to
gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes
he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases
allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable
nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering
public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It
seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without
portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That
would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly
to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of
the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make
himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a
minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry
is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has worn the
embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find
him again sooner or later.

Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no
longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing
to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King
would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that,
if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered
that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready
to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings
having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not,
however, accept exile, unless M. de Villèle accepted his entrance into
the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lainé with my two
friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the
master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that
it was I who made M. de Villèle's first ministry and who drove the
Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.

[Sidenote: Under the Duc de Richelieu.]

I found an invincible obstinacy in M. Lainé's character. M. de Corbière
did not want to become a mere member of the Council; I flattered him
with the hope of also obtaining the Public Instruction. M. de Villèle,
giving way only with repugnance to my desires, at first raised a
thousand objections; his good wits and his ambition at last decided
him to set forward: everything was arranged. Here are the irrefutable
proofs of what I have just related; wearisome documents of those little
facts which have justly passed into oblivion, but useful to my own
history:

"20 _December_[56], _half-past three._

"To M. LE DUC DE RICHELIEU

"I have had the honour to call on you, monsieur le duc, to
report on the state of things: all is going admirably. I have
seen the two friends: Villèle at last consents to enter the
Council as minister secretary of State, without portfolio,
if Corbière consents to enter on the same terms, with the
Directorship of Public Instruction. Corbière, on his side,
is willing to enter on those conditions, provided Villèle
approves. And so there are no difficulties left Complete your
work, monsieur le duc; see the two friends; and, when you
have heard what I am writing to you from their own mouths,
you will restore to France her internal peace, even as you
have given her peace with the foreigners.

"Permit me to submit one more idea to you: would you think it
very inconvenient to make over to Villèle the directorship
vacant through the retirement of M. de Barante[57]? He
would then be placed in a more equal position with his
friend. Still, he told me positively that he would consent
to enter the Council without portfolio, if Corbière had the
Public Instruction. I say this only as a means the more of
completely satisfying the Royalists and of ensuring for
yourself an immense and steady majority.

"I will lastly have the honour of pointing out to you that
the great royalist meeting takes place to-morrow evening at
Piet's, and that it would be very useful if the two friends
could to-morrow evening say something which would calm any
effervescence and prevent any division.

"As I, monsieur le duc, am outside all this movement, you
will, I hope, see in my assiduity no more than the loyalty of
a man who desires his country's good and your successes.

"Pray accept, monsieur le duc, the assurance of my high
regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

"_Wednesday._

"I have just written to Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière,
monsieur, and I have asked them to call on me this evening,
for one must not lose a moment in so useful a piece of
work. I thank you for having pushed on the business so
rapidly; I hope that we shall come to a happy conclusion. Be
persuaded, monsieur, of the pleasure I feel at owing you this
obligation, and receive the assurance of my high regard.

"RICHELIEU."

"Permit me, monsieur le duc, to congratulate you on the
happy issue of this great business, and to applaud myself
for having had some part in it. It is very desirable that
the Orders should appear to-morrow; they will put a stop to
all opposition. I can be of use to the two friends in this
respect.

"I have the honour, monsieur le Duc, to renew to you the
assurance of my high regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

"_Friday._

"I have received with extreme pleasure the note which M. le
Vicomte de Chateaubriand has done me the honour to write to
me. I believe that he will have no cause to regret having
trusted to the King's goodness, and, if he will permit me to
add, to the desire which I have to contribute to whatever may
be agreeable to him. I beg him to receive the assurance of my
high regard.

"RICHELIEU."

[Sidenote: Ministerial negociations.]

"_Thursday._

"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the
business was settled at eleven o'clock yesterday evening, and
that all is arranged on the terms agreed between yourself and
the Duc de Richelieu. Your intervention has been most useful
to us; let thanks be given you for this preliminary step
towards an improvement which must henceforth be looked upon
as probable.

"Ever yours for life,

"J. DE POLIGNAC[58]."

"PARIS, _Wednesday, 20th December,

"Half-past eleven at night._

"I have just called on you, noble viscount, but you had
retired: I have come from Villèle, who himself returned late
from the conference which you prepared for him and told him
of. He asked me, as your nearest neighbour, to let you know
that Corbière also wished to tell you, on his side, that the
affair which you really conducted and managed during the day
is definitely settled in the simplest and shortest manner:
he without portfolio, his friend with the Instruction. He
seemed to think that one might have waited a little longer
and obtained better conditions; but it was not seemly to
gainsay an interpreter and negociator like yourself. It is
you really who have opened the entrance to this new career
to them: they reckon on you to make it smooth for them.
Do you, on your side, during the short time that we shall
still have the advantage of keeping you among us, speak to
your more spirited friends to second, or at least not to
oppose the plans for union. Good-night. I once more make
you my compliment on the promptness with which you conduct
negociations. You must settle Germany in the same way, so as
to return sooner to the midst of your friends. I personally
am delighted to see your position so much simplified.

"I renew all my sentiments to you.

"M. DE MONTMORENCY."

"I enclose, monsieur, a request addressed by one of the
King's Body-guards to the King of Prussia: it has been handed
to me and recommended by a field-officer of the Guards. I beg
you, therefore, to take it with you and to make use of it if,
when you have felt your ground a little in Berlin[59], you
think that it is of a nature to obtain some success.

"I have great pleasure in taking this occasion to
congratulate myself as well as you on this morning's
_Moniteur_[60], and to thank you for the part which you have
taken in this fortunate issue, which, I hope, will have the
happiest influence on the affairs of our France.

"Pray receive the assurance of my high regard and of my
sincere attachment.

"PASQUIER."

This series of notes is sufficient evidence that I am not boasting;
it would bore me too much to be the fly on the coach; the pole or the
coachman's nose are not places where I have ever had any ambition
to sit: whether the coach reaches the top or rolls to the bottom
matters little to me. Accustomed to live hidden in my own recesses, or
momentarily in the wide life of the centuries, I had no taste for the
mysteries of the ante-chamber. I do not enter readily into circulation
like a piece of current money; to escape, I withdraw myself nearer
to God: a fixed idea that comes from Heaven isolates you and kills
everything around you.

[Footnote 1: This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised 22
February 1845.--T.]

[Footnote 2: "On an occurrence when the chamber, or a deputation of it,
brought to Louis XVIII. some extravagant expression of its loyalty and
love of kings, the monarch observed, no one can now tell whether in
sincerity or irony, that such a chamber was _introuvable_, apparently
impossible to find or replace. The epithet was too good to be lost;
and the Chamber of 1815 was known to its contemporaries, and will be
remembered in French history, as the _Chambre introuvable_" (EYRE
CROWE, _History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X._).--T.]

[Footnote 3: The Order nominating the Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the
Chamber of Peers is dated 17 August 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 4: 19 December 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 5: Edme Bonaventure Courtois (1756-1816), member of
the Convention for the Department of the Aube. He took charge of
Robespierre's papers, including the will of Marie-Antoinette, after the
9 Thermidor, and published a notable report on them in January 1795.
All the papers in Courtois' possession were seized by the police in
January 1816.--T.]

[Footnote 6: Enjoyed by the priests who had taken wives.--B.]

[Footnote 7: Joseph Lebon (1769-1795), was curate of Neuville, near
Arras, when the Revolution broke out. In 1792, he was sent to the
Convention, where he signalled himself by his violence. In 1793, he was
sent to the Pas-de-Calais as commissary of the Convention, established
the Reign of Terror at Arras, and instituted a tribunal which caused
thousands of heads to fall in a few months. Lebon was accused by the
inhabitants of Cambrai, after the 9 Thermidor, and guillotined on the
9th of October 1795.--T.]

[Footnote 8: François Chabot (1759-1794) was a Capuchin friar at Rhodez
at the outbreak of the Revolution. He was successively elected to the
Legislative Assembly and the Convention, voted for all the violent
and bloody measures taken at that time, and became a leading member
of the Club des Jacobins. Chabot was guillotined at the instance of
Robespierre on the 5th of April 1794---T.]

[Footnote 9: Jacques Roux (_d._ 1794), was, in 1789, a priest of the
Parish Church of St. Nicholas, and dubbed himself Preacher to the
Sans-Culottes. He was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal
on the 15th of January 1794, and committed suicide with a knife on
hearing the sentence pronounced.--T.]

[Footnote 10: 3 April 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 11: This ordinance, published in the _Moniteur_ of the 7th of
September, dissolved the Chamber of 1815, which Louis XVIII. himself
had called the Undiscoverable Chamber.--B.]

[Footnote 12: Jean Jacques Baron Baudé (1792-1862). In his quality as
editor of the _Temps_, he signed the protest of the journalists against
the ordinances of July 1830, and had his protest registered before
notaries. Baudé was Prefect of Police from 26 December 1830 to 25
February 1831, and allowed the mob to sack the Archbishop's Palace and
the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. He also sat in the Chamber of
Deputies, where we shall meet him again.--B.]

[Footnote 13: Nicolas François Bellart (1761-1826) had distinguished
himself by defending a large number of the victims of the Revolution.
He was appointed Attorney-General by the Restoration, and was principal
counsel for the prosecution in the trial of Marshal Ney.--T.]

[Footnote 14: Paris: Le Normant the Elder, 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 15: Louis XV. was the most licentious king that ever sat on
the throne of France.--T.]

[Footnote 16: Élie Duc Decazes (1780-1860), Prefect of Police (July
1815), Minister of the General Police (September 1815), peer of France,
with the title of count (September 1816), Minister of the Interior
(1818), and President of the Council (1819). In 1820, he left office
to take up the Embassy in London, with the title of duke, and retained
it till 1822. In 1834, he succeeded the Marquis de Sémonville as Grand
Referendary of the Chamber of Peers.--B.]

[Footnote 17: Anne Jacoby Comtesse de Balbi (_circa_ 1758-1842), _née_
de Caumont La Force, lady-in-waiting to the Comtesse de Provence,
later Joséphine Queen of France (1780), a favourite of the Comte de
Provence, later Louis XVIII., until the Comte d'Avaray supplanted her
at Coblentz.--T.]

[Footnote 18: Zoé Victoire Comtesse de Cayla (1785-1852), _née_ Talon
du Boullay-Thierry, favourite to Louis XVIII. from 1819 till the King's
death in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 19: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duc de Richelieu
(1585-1642), governed France without interruption from 1623 to
1642.--T.]

[Footnote 20: Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) succeeded Richelieu as
Prime Minister, remaining in power, with two short intervals, until the
day of his death. Each of the two cardinals, therefore, governed France
for nineteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 21: Murat was born near Cahors, the Duc Decazes near
Libourne, both in Gascony.--T.]

[Footnote 22: M. Decazes had been private secretary to Madame Mère
under the Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 23: M. Decazes had married, in 1805, a daughter of the
Comte Muraire, First President of the Court of Appeal. She died
in the following year. In August 1818, he married Mademoiselle de
Sainte-Aulaire, grand-daughter, through her mother, of the last
reigning Prince of Nassau-Saarbrück. In consideration of this marriage,
the King of Denmark gave him the title of duke, with the domain of
Glücksbjerg.--B.]

[Footnote 24: Marie Princeteau (1787-1879), _née_ Decazes, sister to
the Duc Decazes, and for some time favourite of Louis XVIII. For an
obvious reason, she, Madame de Balbi and Madame de Cayla are better
described as the King's favourites than as his mistresses.--T.]

[Footnote 25: In an article in the _Conservateur_, dated 3 March 1820
(vol. VI., p. 476).--B.]

[Footnote 26: 20 September 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 27: Chateaubriand's library was sold on the 29th of April
1817 and the following days.--B.]

[Footnote 28: Louise Marie Adélaide Duchesse d'Orléans (1753-1821),
daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, married to Égalité in 1769, divorced
in 1792.--T.]

[Footnote 29: Matthieu Jean Félicité Vicomte, later Duc de
Montmorency-Laval (1767-1826), Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1821 to
1822, a member of the French Academy (1825), and tutor to the Duc de
Bordeaux (1825).--T.]

[Footnote 30: The Vallée-aux-Loups is now the property of M.
le Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, whose mother was a
Montmorency-Laval.--B.]

[Footnote 31: Jean Baptiste Guillaume Marie Anne Séraphin Joseph Comte
de Villèle (1773-1854) placed himself at the head of the Royalist
Opposition in 1816. In 1820, after the fall of the Duc Decazes, he
entered the Ministry without a portfolio and, in 1821, became Minister
of Finance. In 1822, he was made President of the Council, with the
title of count. He remained in power until 1828, when he made way for
M. de Martignac, and was raised to the peerage. The Comte de Villèle
retired into private life after the Revolution of July.--T.]

[Footnote 32: Jacques Joseph Guillaume François Pierre Comte de
Corbière (1766-1853) attached his political fortunes entirely to
those of Villèle. They were both ministers together: Corbière of the
Interior, Villèle of Finance; Louis XVIII. made them both counts,
and Charles X. peers of France, on the same day. Both retired to the
country after the Revolution of 1830, and they died within a few months
of one another.--B.]

[Footnote 33: Jean Pierre Piet-Tardiveau (1763-1848), member of the
Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1819 and from 1820 to 1828. He
entertained the ultra-Conservative party for many years at No. 8, Rue
Thérèse, where he lived.--B.]

[Footnote 34: Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), dramatic author,
publicist and politician. He became a member of the French Academy in
1811. Under the Empire, he had been the head of the literary division
of the newspaper police; whereas, under the Restoration, he became an
ardent "Liberal," attacking the Bourbons in the _Minerve française_
and the _Constitutionnel._ Étienne was a member of the Chamber of
Deputies from 1820 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1830. Louis-Philippe
raised him to the peerage in 1839. The _Minerve française_, founded
in 1818, nine months before the _Conservateur_, appeared once a week,
but on uncertain days: in this way, not being an absolutely periodical
publication, it escaped the censorship.--B.]

[Footnote 35: Louis Gabriel Ambroise Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840),
member of the French Academy (1816) and a peer of France (1823), which
latter dignity he resigned in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 36: Abbé Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), a
distinguished Royalist writer, was converted to the democratic cause
after 1830, when he attacked not only the Monarchy but the Church,
which had condemned one of his writings. He played a small part in
politics in 1848, but died forgotten and was, at his own wish, buried
without religious rites.--T.]

[Footnote 37: The _Conservateur_ first appeared in October 1818 and
lasted until March 1820, appearing in numbers of three printed sheets
on irregular days, like the _Minerve._ It was, therefore, not a daily
paper, and both Royalists and Liberals in this way succeeded in
avoiding the censorship, which affected only periodicals.--B.]

[Footnote 38: Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles
(1774-1854). Napoleon made him a baron in 1812. He became connected
with Talleyrand and the Duc de Dalberg, tried to organize a rising in
the South during the Hundred Days, and was arrested and imprisoned.
He was elected to the Chamber in 1815, and in 1816 became one of the
active agents of the personal policy of the Comte d'Artois. The latter,
as Charles X., appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence
(December 1827) and a peer of France (January 1828). The fall of the
Elder Branch restored him to private life, although he was momentarily
compromised in the Duchesse de Berry's rising in the Vendée (1832), and
imprisoned for a few days.--B.]

[Footnote 39: Marie Barthélemy Vicomte de Castelbajac (1776-1868),
an enthusiastic Royalist, sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1819
to 1827, in which latter year he was raised to the peerage. M. de
Castelbajac withdrew completely from public life after the Revolution
of July.--B.]

[Footnote 40: César Guillaume Cardinal de La Luzerne (1738-1821),
Bishop of Langres from 1770 to 1789, created a cardinal in 1817.--T.]

[Footnote 41: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and later of
England (_circa_ 1122-1203), was married at the age of fifteen to Louis
VII. King of France, whom she accompanied to the Holy Land in 1147.
Here she distinguished herself by the levity of her conduct, so much so
that, in 1152, Louis obtained a divorce and Eleanor, two years later,
married Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, soon to become
Henry II. King of England. The second marriage was no happier than the
first.--T.]

[Footnote 42: _Réflexions sur l'état intérieur de la France_ (22
October 1818): _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 113.--B.]

[Footnote 43: A _ci-devant_ marquis and ex-deputy in the Legislative
Assembly. He sat as a juror in the Revolutionary Tribunal during the
trials of the Queen and of the Girondins.--B.]

[Footnote 44: _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 466.--B.]

[Footnote 45: Anne Victor Denis Hubault, Marquis de Vibraye
(1766-1843), was a cavalry officer at the time of the Revolution,
emigrated in 1791, and returned in 1814, when he became a colonel and
aide-de-camp to Monsieur, later Charles X. He was created a peer on the
17th of August 1815, on the same day as Chateaubriand; was promoted to
major-general in 1823; and left the Upper Chamber at the Revolution of
1830, so as not to take the oath to the new Sovereign.--B.]

[Footnote 46: Alexandre Comte de Girardin (1776-1885) served with
distinction under Napoleon and was by Louis XVIII. appointed Master
of the Hounds, an office which he retained till 1830. M. Émile
de Girardin, the celebrated editor of the _Presse_, through whom
the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_ were originally published, was his
illegitimate son.--B.]

[Footnote 47: _Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 382. The article is by
Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 48: "From the blood of our kings but a small drop
escaping."--_Athalie_, act I., sc. 1.--T.]

[Footnote 49: Chateaubriand's article, dated 3 March 1820: the
_Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 471.--B.]

[Footnote 50: By the Papal Nuncio, in his congratulatory address,
pronounced in the name of the Diplomatic Body.--B.]

[Footnote 51: By Lamartine, in his ode, the _Naissance du duc de
Bordeaux._--B.]

[Footnote 52: M. Decazes resigned on the 17th of February. The
_Moniteur_ of the 21st of February published three Orders, signed on
the preceding day: the first accepting M. Decazes' resignation, the
second appointing M. le Duc de Richelieu President of the Council, and
the third conferring upon M. Decazes the title of duke and of minister
of State.--B.]

[Footnote 53: This is a clerical error. The Minister of Foreign Affairs
in February 1820 was M. Pasquier. M. Molé, under the Restoration, held
only the office of Minister of Marine, and that at an earlier date,
from 1817 to 1818.--B.]

[Footnote 54: The Duc Decazes was appointed Ambassador to England on
the 20th of February 1820. He held that position until the 9th of
January 1822.--B.]

[Footnote 55: Sister to the Duc de Richelieu, and a very close friend
of Chateaubriand's.--B.]

[Footnote 56: 20 December 1820.--B.]

[Footnote 57: Prosper Brugière, Baron de Barante (1782-1866), had sent
in his resignation as Director-general of Indirect Taxation, a post
which at that time carried a salary of one hundred thousand francs.--B.]

[Footnote 58: Prince Jules de Polignac (1780-1847) had been made a peer
of France in 1816, but long refused to take the oath to the Charter,
which he considered injurious to the interests of religion and the
Monarchy, and did not consent to take his seat until the Pope had
raised his scruples. He was for some time Ambassador in London, and, in
August 1829, became Premier of the ill-fated Ministry which, in 1830,
brought about the downfall of the Royal House of France.--T.]

[Footnote 59: Chateaubriand had been appointed Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin (_Moniteur_, 30th
November 1820).--B.]

[Footnote 60: Announcing the appointment of M. de Corbière and M. de
Villèle as members of the Council.--B.]

BOOK VIII[61]

I left France, leaving my friends in possession of an authority which
I had purchased for them at the cost of my absence: I was a little
Lycurgus[62]. What was good in it was that the first trial which I
had made of my political strength restored me my liberty; I was going
to enjoy abroad that liberty within the power. At the bottom of this
liberty, personally new to me, I saw I know not what confused romances
in the midst of realities: was there nothing in Courts? Were not they
solitudes of another kind? Perhaps they were Elysian fields with their
shades.

I left Paris on the 1st of January 1821: the Seine was frozen, and for
the first time I was racing along the roads with the comforts of money.
I was gradually recovering from my contempt for riches; I was beginning
to feel that it was not unpleasant to roll in a good carriage, to be
well served, not to have to trouble about anything, and to be preceded
by an enormous Warsaw courier, who was always famished and who, in
default of the Tsars, would have devoured Poland unaided. But I soon
got used to my good fortune; I had the presentiment that it would not
last long and that I should soon be made to go on foot again, as was
right and proper. Before I reached my destination, all that remained
to me of the journey was my primitive taste for travel itself, the
taste for independence, the satisfaction of having broken the bonds of
society.

You shall see, when I am returning from Prague in 1833, what I say
of my old memories of the Rhine: I was obliged, because of the ice,
to ascend its banks and to cross it above Mayence. I troubled myself
little with "Moguntia," its archbishop, its three or four sieges, and
the invention of printing, through which however I reigned. Frankfort,
the city of the Jews, delayed me only for one of their transactions: to
change some money.

The road was sad: the highway was snowy and hoar-frost covered the
branches of the pine-trees. I caught sight of Jena in the distance,
with the worms of its double battle[63]. I passed through Erfurt and
Weimar: at Erfurt, the Emperor was wanting; at Weimar dwelt Goethe[64],
whom I had admired so much, and whom I admire much less. The singer of
matter lived, and his old dust still adhered around his genius. I might
have seen Goethe and did not see him; he leaves a gap in the procession
of the celebrated persons who have defiled before my eyes.

Luther's[65] tomb at Wittenberg did not tempt me: Protestantism in
religion is only an illogical heresy, in politics only an abortive
revolution. After eating, while crossing the Elbe, a little black loaf
kneaded in tobacco-smoke, I should have wanted to drink out of Luther's
big glass, which is preserved as a relic. From there, passing through
Potsdam and crossing the Spree, a river of ink along which crawl barges
guarded by a white dog, I arrived in Berlin. There lived, as I have
said, "the mock Julian in his mock Athens." I sought in vain the sun of
Mount Hymettus. I wrote in Berlin the fourth book of these Memoirs. You
have found in it the description of that city, my trip to Potsdam, my
memories of the Great Frederic, of his horse, of his greyhounds and of
Voltaire.

Alighting on the 11th of January at an inn, I next went to live Unter
den Linden, in the house which M. le Marquis de Bonnay had left, and
which belonged to Madame la Duchesse de Dino: I was there received by
Messieurs de Caux, de Flavigny[66] and de Gussy, the secretaries of
legation.

[Sidenote: Ambassador to Prussia.]

On the 17th of January, I had the honour of presenting to the King[67]
M. le Marquis de Bonnay's letter of recall and my own credentials. The
King, lodged in an ordinary house, had two sentries at his door for all
distinction: entered who would; one spoke to him "if he was at home."
This simplicity of the German sovereigns tends to make the name and
prerogatives of the great less felt by the small. Frederic William went
every day, at the same hour, in an open cariole which he drove himself,
in a cap and a grey cloak, to smoke his cigar in the Park. I used often
to meet him and we continued our drive, each in his own direction. When
he entered Berlin again, the sentry at the Brandenburg Gate shouted at
the top of his voice; the guard took up arms and turned out; the King
passed and all was over.

On the same day I paid my court to the Prince Royal[68] and the Princes
his brothers[69], very lively young officers. I saw the Grand-duke
Nicholas[70] and the Grand-duchess[71], newly married, who were being
feasted. I also saw the Duke[72] and Duchess of Cumberland[73], Prince
William[74], the King's brother, Prince Augustus of Prussia[75], for
a long time our prisoner: he had wished to marry Madame Récamier; he
owned the admirable portrait which Gérard[76] painted of her and which
she had exchanged with the Prince for the picture of Corinna.

I hastened to find M. Ancillon[77]. We were mutually acquainted through
our works. I had met him in Paris with the Prince Royal, his pupil; he
was in charge of the Foreign Office in Berlin, ad interim, during the
absence of Count von Bernstorff[78]. His was a very touching life: his
wife had lost her sight; all the doors in his house were left open; the
poor blind woman wandered from room to room, among flowers, and sat
down at hap-hazard, like a caged nightingale: she sang well, and died
early.

M. Ancillon, like many illustrious Prussians, was of French origin:
as a Protestant minister, he had at first held very Liberal opinions;
little by little he cooled. When I met him again in Rome, in 1828, he
had gone back to moderate monarchy, and he retrograded to absolute
monarchy. With an enlightened love of generous sentiments, he combined
a hatred and fear of the revolutionaries; it was this hatred that drove
him towards despotism, in order to ask for shelter there. Will they who
still extol 1793 and admire its crimes never understand to how great an
extent the horror with which one is seized for those crimes acts as an
obstacle to the establishment of liberty?

[Sidenote: A fête at Court.]

There was a fête at Court, and with that commenced for me honours of
which I was very unworthy. Jean Bart[79], to go to Versailles, put
on a coat of cloth-of-gold lined with cloth-of-silver, which made him
very uncomfortable. The Grand-duchess, now Empress of Russia, and the
Duchess of Cumberland chose my arm in a polonaise: my worldly romances
were beginning. The air of the march was a kind of medley, composed of
various pieces, among which, to my great satisfaction, I recognised the
song of King Dagobert[80]: that encouraged me and came to the rescue
of my timidity. These fêtes were repeated; one of them in particular
took place in the King's Great Palace. Not caring to undertake the
description on my own account, I give it as chronicled in the Berlin
_Morgenblatt_ by the Baroness von Hohenhausen[81]:

BERLIN, 22 _March_ 1821 (_Morgenblatt_ No. 70).

"One of the notable persons present at this entertainment
was the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, the French Minister, and
however great the splendour of the spectacle that unfolded
before their eyes, the fair Berlinese still kept a glance
for the author of _Atala_, that superb and melancholy novel,
in which the most ardent love succumbs in the fight against
religion. The death of Atala and Chactas' hour of happiness,
during a storm in the ancient forests of America, depicted in
Miltonian colours, will remain ever engraved in the memory
of all the readers of the novel. M. de Chateaubriand wrote
_Atala_ in his youth, painfully tried by his exile from
his country: hence the profound melancholy and the burning
passion which breathe throughout the work. At present this
consummate statesman has devoted his pen solely to politics.
His last work, the _Vie et la mort du duc de Berry_, is
written quite in the tone employed by the panegyrists of
Louis XIV.

"M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender,
stature. His oval countenance has an expression of reverence
and melancholy. He has black hair and eyes: the latter
glow with the fire of his mind, which is pronounced in his
features."

But I have white hair: so forgive the Baroness von Hohenhausen for
having sketched me in my good days, although already she grants me
years. The portrait, besides, is very handsome; but I owe it to my
sincerity to say that it is not like.

The house Unter den Linden was much too large for me, cold and
dilapidated: I occupied only a small part of it. Among my colleagues,
the ministers and ambassadors, the only one worthy of note was M.
d'Alopeus[82]. I have since met his wife and daughter[83] in Rome with
the Grand-duchess Helen[84]: if the latter had been in Berlin instead
of the Grand-duchess Nicholas, her sister-in-law, I should have been
better pleased.

M. d'Alopeus, my colleague, had a gentle mania for believing himself to
be adored. He was persecuted by the passions which he inspired:

"Upon my word," he used to say, "I don't know what there is about me;
wherever I go the women follow me. Madame d'Alopeus became obstinately
attached to me."

He would have been an excellent Saint-Simonian. Private society has
its own aspect, like public society: in the former, it is always
attachments formed and broken off, family affairs, deaths, births,
private sorrows and pleasures; the whole varied in appearance according
to the centuries. In the other, it is always change of ministers,
battles lost or won, negociations with Courts, kings who disappear, or
kingdoms that fall.

Under Frederic II.[85] Elector of Brandenburg, surnamed "Iron-tooth";
under Joachim II.[86], poisoned by the Jew Lippold[87]; under John
Sigismund[88], who added the Duchy of Prussia to his Electorate; under
George William[89], "the Irresolute," who, losing his fortresses,
allowed Gustavus Adolphus[90] to chat with the ladies of the Court
and said, "What is to be done? They have guns;" under the Great
Elector[91], who found nothing in his States but "heaps of ashes,
which prevented the grass from growing[92]," who gave audience to the
Ambassador of Tartary, "whose interpreter had a wooden nose and slit
ears;" under his son, the first King of Prussia[93], who, startled out
of his sleep by his wife, took the fever with fright and died of it:
under all these reigns, the different Memoirs display only a repetition
of the same adventures in private life.

[Sidenote: The House of Hohenzollern.]

Frederic William I.[94], father of the great Frederic, a stern and
eccentric man, was brought up by Madame de Rocoules, the refugee: he
loved a young woman who was unable to soften him; his drawing-room
was a smoking-room. He nominated the buffoon Gundling[95] President
of the Royal Academy of Berlin; he shut up his son in the Citadel of
Custrin, and Quatt had his head chopped off before the young Prince's
eyes: that was the private life of that time. Frederic the Great,
having ascended the throne, had an intrigue with an Italian dancer,
the Barbarini, the only woman he ever approached: he contented himself
on his wedding-night with playing the flute under the window of the
Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick[96] when he married her. Frederic had
a taste for music and a mania for verses. The intrigues and epigrams
of the two poets, Frederic and Voltaire[97], disturbed Madame de
Pompadour[98], the Abbé de Bernis[99] and Louis XV.[100] The Margravine
of Bayreuth[101] was mixed up in all this with love, such as a poet
might feel. Literary parties at the King's; next, dogs on unclean
arm-chairs; next, concerts before statues of Antinous; next, great
dinner-parties; next, a quantity of philosophy; next, the liberty of
the press and blows with the stick; next, a lobster or an eel-pie,
which put an end to the days of an old great man who wanted to live:
these are the things with which private society occupied itself in that
time of letters and battles. And, notwithstanding, Frederic renovated
Germany, established a counterpoise to Austria, and altered all
Germany's relations and all her political interests.

In the later reigns, we find the Marble Palace, Frau Rietz[102], with
her son, Alexander Count von der Marck, the Baroness von Stoltzenberg,
mistress to the Margrave Schwed, and formerly an actress; Prince
Henry[103] and his suspicious friends, Fräulein Voss, Frau Rietz's
rival; an intrigue at a masked ball between a young Frenchman and the
wife of a Prussian general; lastly Madame de F------, whose adventure
we can read in the _Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin_[104]: who
knows all those names? Who will remember ours? To-day, in the Prussian
capital, octogenarians scarcely preserve the memory of that past
generation.

[Sidenote: Berlin society.]

The habits of Berlin society suited me: people "went to
evening-parties" between five and six; all was over by nine, and I used
to go to bed just as though I had not been an ambassador. Sleep devours
existence, which is a good thing:

"The hours are short and life is long," says Fénelon.

Herr Wilhelm von Humboldt[105], brother of my illustrious friend
the Baron Alexander, was in Berlin: I had known him as minister in
Rome; suspected by the Government because of his opinions, he led a
retired life; to kill time, he learnt all the languages and even all
the dialects of the world. He reproduced the peoples, the ancient
inhabitants of a soil, by means of the geographical denominations of
the country. One of his daughters talked ancient and modern Greek with
equal ease; if one had happened on a good day, one might have chatted
at table in Sanskrit.

Adelbert von Chamisso[106] lived in the Botanical Gardens, some way
from Berlin. I visited him in that solitude, where the plants froze in
the hot-houses. He was tall, with rather agreeable features. I felt an
attraction towards that exile, a traveller like myself: he had seen the
Polar seas to which I had hoped to penetrate. An Emigrant like myself,
he had been brought up in Berlin as a royal page. Adelberg, travelling
through Switzerland, stopped for a moment at Coppet. He took part in
an excursion on the lake, where he was in danger of being drowned. He
wrote that same day:

"I clearly see that I must seek my safety on the high seas."

Herr von Chamisso had been appointed professor at Napoléonville by M.
de Fontanes; later Greek professor at Strasburg; he rejected the offer
in these noble words:

"The first condition for working at the instruction of youth is
independence; though I admire Bonaparte's genius, it is not to my
taste."

In the same way he refused the advantages offered to him by the
Restoration:

"I have done nothing for the Bourbons," he said, "and I cannot accept
the price of the services and the blood of my fathers. In this age,
every man must provide for his own existence."

In Herr von Chamisso's family this note is preserved, written in the
Temple, in the hand of Louis XVI.:

"I recommend M. de Chamisso, one of my faithful servants, to
my brothers."

The Martyr King had hidden the little note in his bosom to have it
handed to his first page, Chamisso[107], Adelbert's uncle[108].

Herr von Chamisso embarked on the ship equipped by Count
Romanzoff[109], and, in company with Captain Kotzebue[110], discovered
the strait to the east of Behring's Straits and gave his name to one of
the islands from which Cook had caught sight of the American coast. In
Kamchatka he picked up a portrait of Madame Récamier on porcelain and
a copy of his little tale, _Peter Schlemihl_, translated into Dutch.
Adelbert's hero, Peter Schlemihl, sold his shadow to the devil: I would
rather have sold him my body.

I remember Chamisso as I do the imperceptible breeze that lightly
swayed the stalks of the heather through which I passed when returning
to Berlin.

Following a rule of Frederic II., the Princes and Princesses of the
Blood in Berlin do not see the diplomatic body; but, thanks to the
carnival, to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with the Princess
Frederica of Prussia, sister to the late Queen[111], thanks also to a
certain relaxation of etiquette which they permitted themselves, it was
said, because of my person, I had occasion to be oftener with the Royal
Family than my colleagues. As from time to time I visited the Great
Palace, I there met the Princess William[112]: she liked taking me
over the apartments. I never saw a sadder expression than hers: in the
uninhabited rooms at the back of the palace, on the Spree, she showed
me a chamber haunted on certain days by a white lady, and, pressing
herself against me with a certain terror, she looked like that white
lady herself. On the other hand, the Duchess of Cumberland told me that
she and her sister the Queen of Prussia, when both still very young,
had heard their mother[113], who had recently died, talk to them from
under her closed curtains.

[Sidenote: Frederic William III.]

The King, into whose presence I came as I finished my sight-seeing,
took me to his oratories: he called my attention to the crucifixes
and pictures, and ascribed the honour of those innovations to me,
because, said he, having read in the _Génie du christianisme_ that the
Protestants had stripped their cult too bare, he had thought my remark
just: he had not yet reached the excess of his Lutheran fanaticism.

In the evening, at the Opera, I had a box next to the Royal Box,
situated facing the stage. I talked with the Princesses; the King went
out between the acts; I met him in the corridor: he would look round to
see that no one was near us and that we could not be overheard; then
he would confess to me, in a whisper, his detestation of Rossini[114]
and his love of Gluck[115]. He branched out into lamentations on the
decadence of art, and, above all, on those gargling notes destructive
of dramatic singing: he confided to me that he dared say this only to
me, because of the people who surrounded him. If he saw any one coming,
he hurried back into his box.

I saw a performance of Schiller's[116] Joan of Arc; the Cathedral of
Rheims was perfectly copied. The King, who was seriously religious,
with difficulty endured the representation of Catholic worship on the
stage. Signor Spontini[117], composer of the _Vestal_, was manager of
the Opera. Madame Spontini, daughter of M. Érard[118], was pleasant,
but she seemed to atone for the volubility of the language of women
by her own slowness in speaking: any word divided into syllables died
away on her lips; if she had tried to say to you, "I love you," a
Frenchman's love would have had time to fly between the commencement
and the end of those three words. She was unable to finish my name, and
she did not come to the end without a certain grace.

A public musical assembly took place two or three times in the week.
In the evening, on returning from their work, little work-women, their
baskets on their arms, journeymen artisans, carrying the tools of their
trades, crowded promiscuously into a hall; on entering, they were given
a written sheet of music and they joined in the general chorus with
astonishing precision. It was something surprising to hear those two or
three hundred blended voices. When the piece was finished, each resumed
his homeward road. We are very far from this feeling for harmony, a
powerful means of civilization; it has introduced into the cottage of
the German peasants an education which our rustics lack: wherever there
is a piano, there is no more grossness.

About the 13th of January, I opened the series of my dispatches with
the Minister of Foreign Affairs. My mind easily accommodates itself
to this kind of work: why not? Did not Dante[119], Ariosto[120] and
Milton[121] succeed as well in politics as in poetry? No doubt I am
not Dante, nor Ariosto, nor Milton; nevertheless, Europe and France
have seen by the _Congrès de Vérone_ what I could do.

My predecessor in Berlin treated me, in 1816, as he treated M. de
Lameth[122] in his little verses at the commencement of the Revolution.
When one is so amiable, he should not leave minute-books behind him,
nor have the orderliness of a clerk when he has not the capacity of a
diplomatist. It happens, in the times in which we live, that a gust
of wind sends into your place the man against whom you rose up; and,
as the ambassador's duty is first to make himself acquainted with the
archives of the embassy, behold him coming upon the notes in which he
is dealt with in masterly fashion. What would you have? Those profound
minds, which worked for the success of the good cause, could not think
of everything.

[Sidenote: Minute-book revelations.]

EXTRACTS FROM THE MINUTE-BOOK OF M. DE BONNAY

No. 64. "22 _November_ 1816.

"All Europe has taken cognizance and approved of the words
which the King addressed to the newly-formed bureau of the
Chamber of Peers. I have been asked if it was possible that
men devoted to the King, that persons attached to his person
and holding places in his Household or in those of our
Princes had indeed been able to give their votes to put M. de
Chateaubriand into the secretaryship. My reply was that, as
the balloting was secret, no one could know how individual
votes went.

"'Ah,' exclaimed a leading man, 'if the King could be assured
of it, I hope that the access to the Tuileries would be
forthwith closed to those faithless servants.'

"I thought it my duty to make no answer, and I made no
answer."

"15 _October_ 1815.

. . . . . . . . . .

"It will be the same, monsieur le duc, with the measures
of the 5th and of the 20th of September: both meet with
nothing but approval in Europe. But what is astonishing is
to see that very pure and very worthy Royalists continue
to be smitten with M. de Chateaubriand, notwithstanding the
publication of a book which lays down the principle that the
King of France, by virtue of the Charter, is no longer more
than a moral entity, essentially null, and without a will
of his own. If any other than he had put forward a similar
maxim, the same men, not without apparent reason, would have
qualified him as a Jacobin."

There you have me finely put in my place. For the rest, it is a good
lesson; that brings down our pride, by teaching us what will become of
us when we are gone.

From the dispatches of M. de Bonnay and those of some other ambassadors
belonging to the Old Order, it appears to me that the dispatches
treated less of diplomatic affairs than of anecdotes relating to
persons in society and at Court; they reduced themselves to a journal,
encomiastic like Dangeau's[123], or satirical like Tallemant's[124].
And Louis XVIII. and Charles X. much preferred the amusing letters of
my colleagues to my serious correspondence. I could have laughed and
jested like my predecessors, but the time was past in which scandalous
adventures and petty intrigues were connected with public business.
What good would have resulted for my country from a portrait of M. de
Hardenberg[125], a handsome old man, white as a swan, deaf as a post,
going to Rome without permission, amusing himself with too many things,
believing in all sorts of dreams, given over in the last resort to
magnetism in the hands of Dr. Koreff[126], whom I used to meet on
horseback, trotting in sequestered neighbourhoods between the devil,
medicine and the Muses?

This contempt for a frivolous correspondence makes me say to M.
Pasquier in my letter of the 13th of February 1821, No. 13:

"I have not spoken to you, monsieur le baron, according to
custom, of the receptions, the balls, the spectacles, etc.; I
have not drawn little portraits nor composed useless satires
for you; I have tried to lift diplomacy out of mere gossip.
The reign of the commonplace will return when the time of the
extraordinary has passed: meanwhile, one should describe only
that which is destined to live and attack only that which
threatens."

[Sidenote: Berlin in Winter.]

Berlin has left me a lasting memory, because the nature of the
recreations which I found there carried me back to the days of my
childhood and my youth; only, very real princesses filled the part
of my Sylphide. Old rooks, my eternal friends, used to come to perch
on the lime-trees before my window; I threw food to them: when they
had caught too large a piece of bread, they threw it up again with
inconceivable dexterity to catch a smaller one, in such a way that they
were able to take another a little larger, and so on up to the chief
piece, which, held at the point of their beak, kept it open, without
permitting any of the increasing layers of bread to fall. His meal
over, the bird would sing after his fashion: _cantus cornicum ut secla
vetusta._ I wandered in the desert spaces of frozen Berlin, but I did
not hear beautiful voices of young girls issue from its walls, as from
the old walls of Rome. Instead of white-bearded Capuchins dragging
their sandals among flowers, I met soldiers making snow-balls.

One day, on turning the corner of the wall of circumvallation,
Hyacinthe[127] and I found ourselves face to face with so cutting an
east wind that we were obliged to run across country to regain town,
half-dead. We passed through enclosed grounds, and all the watch-dogs
flew at our legs, pursuing us. That day, the thermometer went down to
22 degrees below freezing-point. One or two sentries at Potsdam were
frozen to death.

On the further side of the park was an old abandoned pheasantry: the
Prussian princes do not go shooting. I crossed a little wooden bridge
over a canal leading out of the Spree and found myself among the
pine-wood columns which form the portico of the pheasantry. A fox,
which reminded one of those in the mall at Combourg, came out of a hole
contrived in the wall of the preserve, passed the time of day, and
retreated into his coppice.

What is known as the Park, in Berlin, is a wood of oaks, birches,
beeches, limes and alders. It lies outside the Charlottenburg Gate, and
is crossed by the high-road leading to that royal residence. To the
right of the Park is an exercise-ground; to the left are booths.

Inside the Park, which was not at that time intersected with regular
walks, one saw meadows, uncultivated spots, and beech-wood benches, on
which Young Germany not long ago had carved hearts pierced by daggers:
under these stabbed hearts one read the name of "Sand[128]." Flights of
crows, taking up their dwelling in the trees at the approach of spring,
were beginning to chatter. Living nature was reviving before vegetable
nature, and quite black frogs were being gobbled up by ducks in the
ponds which here and there had thawed: those were the nightingales
which "opened the spring-time in the woods" of Berlin. However, the
Park was not without pretty animals: squirrels scrambled along the
branches or darted along the ground, sporting their tails as a flag.
When I came near the merry-making, the actors climbed the trunks of
the oaks, stopped in a fork, and snarled at me as I passed below. Few
strollers frequented the forest, the uneven soil of which was lined and
cut by canals. Sometimes I would meet a gouty old officer who, quite
warm and lively, would say to me, speaking of the pale ray of the sun
under which I was shivering with cold:

"That's scorching!"

From time to time, I came across the Duke of Cumberland, on horseback
and almost blind, pulling up in front of an alder-tree, against
which he had ridden and knocked his nose. Some six-horsed carriages
would pass: in them were the Austrian Ambassadress or the Princess
von Radziwill and her daughter, fifteen years of age, charming as
one of those clouds with maidens' faces that surround Ossian's
moon. The Duchess of Cumberland nearly always took the same walk as
myself: at one time, she was returning from a cottage where she had
been relieving a poor woman of Spandau; at another, she stopped and
graciously told me that she had wanted to meet me: an amiable daughter
of the thrones alighting from her car, like the Goddess of Night, to
roam in the forest! I also saw her in her own house: she would repeat
that she wished to entrust me with her son, that little "George[129],"
since grown into the Prince whom his cousin Victoria[130] would, they
say, have liked to place by her side on the throne of England.

[Sidenote: The Duchess of Cumberland.]

The Princess Frederica has since dragged out her days on the banks
of the Thames, in those gardens at Kew which formerly saw me wander
between my two acolytes, illusion and poverty. After my departure from
Berlin, she honoured me with a correspondence; in it she describes,
from hour to hour, the life of an inhabitant of those heaths where
Voltaire passed, where Frederic died, where that Mirabeau hid himself
who was to commence the Revolution of which I was the victim. One's
attention is captivated on seeing the links by which so many men are
connected who have never seen each other.

Here are some extracts from the correspondence opened with me by H.R.H.
the Duchess of Cumberland:

"19 _April_[131], _Thursday._

"This morning, on waking, I was handed the _last_ evidence of
your remembrance; later, I passed before your house. I saw
the windows open as usual, everything was in the same place,
except yourself! I cannot tell you what this made me feel! I
now no longer know where to find you; each moment carries you
farther away; the only fixed point is the 26th, the day on
which you count on arriving, and the memory which I retain of
you.

"God grant that you may find everything changed for the
better, both for yourself and for the general good!
Accustomed as I am to sacrifices, I shall know also how
to bear that of not seeing you again, if it is for your
happiness and that of France."

"22.

"Since Thursday, I have passed in front of your house every
day on my way to church; I prayed hard for you there. Your
windows are constantly open, that touches me: who pays you
that attention to follow your tastes and instructions, in
spite of your absence? It occurs to me sometimes that you
have not gone away; that business detains you, or that you
want to keep off intruders, so as to finish it at your ease.
Do not believe that that would mean a reproach: it is the
only way; but, if that be so, pray tell me, in confidence."

"23.

"It is so prodigiously warm to-day, even in church, that I
cannot take my walk at the usual time: that is all the same
to me now. The dear little wood has no charm left for me,
everybody bores me there! This sudden change from cold to
heat is common in the North; the inhabitants, with their
moderation of character and sentiments, do not resemble the
climate."

"24.

"Nature has grown much more beautiful; all the leaves have
come out since your departure: I should have liked them to
come two days earlier, so that you might have carried away in
your memory a more smiling picture of your stay here."

"Berlin, 12 May 1821.

"Thank God, here is a letter from you at last! I knew quite
well that you could not write to me earlier; but in spite of
the calculations which my reason made for me, three weeks,
or rather twenty-three days, are very long for friendship in
privation, and to remain without news is like the saddest
exile: still, memory and hope remained to me."

"15 May.

"It is not from my stirrup, like the Grand Turk, but still
from my bed that I write to you; but this retreat has given
me all the time to reflect on the new dietary which you
propose to make Henry V. observe. I like it much; the roast
lion can only do him great good; only I advise you to make
him begin with the heart. You will have to make your other
pupil[132] eat lamb, lest he should play the deuce too much.
It is absolutely necessary that this plan of education should
be realized and that George and Henry V. should become good
friends and good allies."

[Illustration: Frederica Queen of Hanover.]

[Sidenote: Letters from the Duchess.]

H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland continued to write to me from the
waters at Ems, next from the waters at Schwalbach, and afterwards from
Berlin, where she returned on the 22nd of September in the year 1821.
She wrote to me from Ems:

"The Coronation in England will happen without me; I am
grieved that the King[133] should have fixed on the saddest
day of my life to have himself crowned: the day on which I
lost that adored sister[134]. The death of Bonaparte[135]
has also made me think of the sufferings which he made him
endure."

"BERLIN, 22 _September._

"I have already revisited those long, solitary walks.
How much obliged I shall be to you if you send me, as
you promised, the verses which you have written for
Charlottenburg! I also again took the road leading to the
house in the wood where you were kind enough to help me in
relieving the poor woman of Spandau; how good you are to
remember that name! Everything reminds me of happy times. It
is not new to regret happiness.

"As I was about to send off this letter, I hear that the King
has been detained at sea by the storms and probably driven on
to the Irish coast; he had not arrived in London on the 14th;
but you will know of his return before we do.

"The poor Princess William to-day received the sad news
of the death of her mother, the Dowager Landgravine of
Hesse-Homburg. You see how I am telling you of all that
concerns our family; Heaven grant that you may have better
news to give me!" were having

Does it not seem as if the sister of the beautiful Queen of Prussia is
speaking to me of "our family" even as though she the kindness to talk
to me of my grandmother, my aunt and my humble relations at Plancouët?
Did the Royal Family of France ever honour me with a smile similar to
that of this foreign Royal Family, which nevertheless hardly knew me
and which owed me nothing? I suppress a number of other affectionate
letters: there is about them something suffering and restrained,
resigned and noble, intimate and exalted; they serve as a counterpoise
to what I have said that was perhaps too severe of the Sovereign
Houses. A thousand years earlier, and the Princess Frederica, being a
daughter of Charlemagne, would have carried off Eginhard[136] at night
on her shoulders, lest he should leave traces in the snow.

I have just re-read this book in 1840: I cannot help being struck with
this continual romance of my life. What a series of missed destinies!
Had I returned to England with little George, the possible heir to that
crown, I should have seen the new dream fade away which could have made
me change my country, in the same way as, if I had not been married, I
should have remained, on the first occasion, in the land of Shakespeare
and Milton. The young Duke of Cumberland, who has lost his sight, did
not marry his cousin the Queen of England. The Duchess of Cumberland
has become Queen of Hanover: where is she? Is she happy? Where am I?
Thank God, in a few days I shall no longer have to turn my eyes over my
past life, nor to put these questions to myself. But it is impossible
for me not to pray Heaven to shed its favours over the last years of
the Princess Frederica[137].

I had been sent to Berlin with the olive-branch, and because my
presence brought trouble into the administration; but, knowing the
inconstancy of fortune, and feeling that my political part was not
played out, I watched events: I did not wish to abandon my friends. I
soon perceived that the reconciliation between the Royalist Party and
the Ministerial Party was not sincere; distrust and prejudice remained;
they did not do what they had promised me: they were beginning to
attack me. The entrance into the Council of Messieurs de Villèle
and de Corbière had excited the jealousy of the Extreme Right; it no
longer marched under the banner of the first, and he, whose ambition
was impatient, was beginning to grow weary. We exchanged some letters.
M. de Villèle regretted having entered the Council: he was wrong;
the proof that I had seen right was that, before a year passed,
he had become Minister of Finance and M. de Corbière obtained the
Interior[138].

[Sidenote: Letter to the Baron Pasquier.]

I also had an explanation with M. le Baron Pasquier; I wrote to him, on
the 10th of February 1821:

"I hear from Paris, monsieur le baron, by the post which
arrived this morning, 9 February, that it was found amiss
that I should have written from Mayence to the Prince von
Hardenberg, or even that I should have sent him a messenger.
I have not written to M. de Hardenberg, and still less have
I sent him a messenger. I desire, monsieur le baron, to be
spared chicanery. When my services are no longer agreeable,
let me be told so roundly: I could not be done a greater
pleasure. I neither asked nor wished for the mission with
which I have been charged; it was neither by taste nor choice
that I accepted an honourable exile, but for the sake of
peace. If the Royalists have rallied to the Ministry, the
Ministry is aware that I had the good fortune to contribute
to that union. I should have some right to complain. What
has been done for the Royalists since my departure? I do** not
cease to write on their behalf: am I listened to? Monsieur le
baron, I have, thank God, other things to do in life than to
attend balls. My country claims me, my wife is ill and needs
my care, my friends want their guide again. I am either above
or below an embassy, or even a ministry of State. You cannot
lack men abler than myself to conduct diplomatic business;
so it would be unnecessary to seek pretexts to chicane with
me. I shall understand with half a word; and you will find me
willing to return to my obscurity."

All this was sincere: that facility for cutting everything and
regretting nothing would have given me great strength, if I had had any
ambition.

My diplomatic correspondence with M. Pasquier went on; continuing to
occupy myself with the affair of Naples[139], I said:

No. 15. "20 _February_ 1821.

"Austria is doing a service to the monarchies by destroying
the Jacobin edifice in the Two Sicilies; but she would
ruin those same monarchies if the result of a salutary and
necessary expedition were to be the conquest of a province
or the oppression of a people. Naples must be freed from
demagogic independence, and monarchical liberty established
there; irons must be broken, not chains brought there. But
Austria does not desire a constitution in Naples: what will
she place there? Men? Where are they? It wants only one
Liberal priest and two hundred soldiers for the troubles to
begin all over again.

"It is after the voluntary or forced occupation that you must
intervene to establish in Naples a constitutional government,
under which all social liberties will be respected."

I always preserved a preponderance of opinion in France which obliged
me to look at home affairs. I ventured to submit the following plan to
my minister:

"Frankly adopt constitutional government.

"Bring in a bill for septennial elections, without aiming at
retaining a portion of the present Chamber, which would be
suspicious, or keeping the whole, which would be dangerous.

"Give up the laws of exception, a source of arbitrariness, an
eternal subject of quarrels and calumnies.

"Free the communes from ministerial despotism."

In my despatch of the 3rd of March, No. 18, I reverted to Spain; I said:

"It may be possible that Spain will soon change her monarchy
into a republic: her Constitution must bear its fruit. The
King[140] will either fly or be killed or dethroned; he is
not strong enough to master the revolution. It is possible
again that this same Spain might exist for some time in a
popular state, if she were to form herself into federal
republics, an aggregation for which she is better suited
than any other country by the variety of her kingdoms, her
manners, her laws and even her language."

The Naples affair returns three or four times more. On the 6th of
March, No. 19, I observe:

"That the Legitimacy has not been able to take deep root in
a State which has so often changed masters and whose habits
have been upset by so many revolutions. Affections have not
had time to be born, manners to receive the uniform imprint
of centuries and institutions. In the Neapolitan nation are
many corrupt or wild men who have no mutual connection, and
who are attached to the Crown only by feeble bonds: royalty
is too near the _lazzarone_ and too far removed from the
Calabrian to be respected. The French had too many military
virtues to establish democratic liberty; the Neapolitans will
not have sufficient"

[Sidenote: Official dispatches.]

Lastly, I said a few words about Portugal and again about Spain.

The rumour was being spread that John VI.[141] had embarked at Rio de
Janeiro for Lisbon. It was a frolic of fortune worthy of our time that
a king of Portugal should fly to an European revolution to seek shelter
against an American revolution, and pass at the foot of the rock on
which was confined the conqueror who had formerly compelled him to take
refuge in the New World.

"All is to be feared from Spain," I said, on the 17th of March, No. 21;
"the revolution in the Peninsula will go through its periods, unless
an arm arises capable of stopping it; but where is that arm? That is
always the question."

That arm I had the good fortune to find in 1823: it was the arm of
France.

I am pleased, in this passage from my dispatch of the 10th of April,
No. 26, to find again my jealous antipathy to the Allies and my
preoccupation for the dignity of France; I said, writing of Piedmont:

"I do not at all dread the prolongation of the troubles in
Piedmont[142] in its immediate results; but it may produce
a distant evil by justifying the military intervention of
Austria and Russia. The Russian Army is still moving, and has
received no counter-order.

"See if, in that case, it would not be for the dignity and
security of France to occupy Savoy with twenty-five thousand
men during the whole time that Russia and Austria would
occupy Piedmont. I am persuaded that that act of vigour and
of high policy, while flattering French _amour-propre_,
would, for that reason alone, be very popular and do infinite
honour to the ministers. Ten thousand men of the Royal Guard
and a selection from the rest of our troops would easily make
you up an army of twenty-five thousand excellent and trusty
soldiers: the white cockade will be secured as soon as it has
faced the enemy.

"I know, monsieur le baron, that we must avoid wounding
French _amour-propre_ and that the domination of the Russians
and Austrians in Italy may revolt our military pride; but we
have an easy means of contenting it, that is, to occupy Savoy
ourselves. The Royalists will be charmed and the Liberals
can only applaud when they see us take up an attitude worthy
of our strength. We should at the same time have the good
fortune to crush a demagogic revolution and the honour of
restoring the preponderance of our arms. It would show a
poor acquaintance with the French spirit to be afraid of
collecting twenty-five thousand men to march into a foreign
country and to cut an equal figure with the Russians and
Austrians as a military power. I would answer for the event
with my head. We have been able to remain neutral in the
Neapolitan affair; can we afford to do so, for our safety and
for our glory, in the Piedmontese troubles?"

Here my whole system lies disclosed: I was a Frenchman; I had
a bold policy long before the Spanish War, and I foresaw the
responsibility which my very successes, if I obtained any,
would cause to weigh upon my head.

[Sidenote: A recollection of Mirabeau.]

All that I am recalling here can doubtless interest nobody;
but that is the drawback of Memoirs: when they have no
historical facts to relate, they tell you only about the
author's person and weary your life out with it. Let us
abandon these forgotten shadows! I prefer to remind you that
Mirabeau, then unknown, was, in 1786, fulfilling in Berlin an
unsuspected mission[143], and that he was obliged to train a
pigeon to announce to the King of France the last breath of
the terrible Frederic.

"I was thrown into some perplexity," says Mirabeau. "That the
city gates would be shut was certain; it was even possible
that the drawbridges of the island of Potsdam would be raised
the moment death should take place, and should this happen
my uncertainty would continue as long as it should please
the new King. On the first supposition, how send off a
courier? There were no means of scaling the ramparts or the
palisadoes, without being exposed to a fray, for there are
sentinels at every forty paces behind the palisadoes, and
at every fifty behind the wall. What was to be done?... Had
I been ambassador, the certain symptoms of mortality would
have determined me to have sent off an express before death.
For what addition was the word death? How was I to act in my
present situation? It certainly was most important to serve,
and not merely to appear to have served....

"I still had great reason to be diffident of the activity of
our embassy. How did I act? I sent a man, on whom I could
depend, with a strong and swift horse to a farm four miles
from Berlin, from the master of which I had some days before
received two pairs of pigeons, an experiment on the flight of
which had been made; so that, unless the bridges of the isle
of Potsdam were raised, I acted with certainty....

"After considering, I did not find we were rich enough to
throw a hundred guineas away; I therefore renounced all my
fine projects, which had cost me some thought, some trouble,
and some louis; and I let fly my pigeons to my man with
the word 'Return.' Have I done well or ill? Of this I am
ignorant; but I had no express orders, and sometimes works of
supererogation gain but little applause."

The ambassadors were charged, during their residence abroad,
to draw up a memorandum on the condition of the peoples and
the governments to which they were accredited. This series of
memoranda might be useful to the historian. To-day the same
injunctions are issued, but scarcely one diplomatic agent
complies with it. I had too little time in my embassies to
finish off long studies; nevertheless, I made drafts for
them; my patience for work was not entirely unfruitful. I
find this commencement of a sketch of my investigations on
Germany:

"After the fall of Napoleon, the introduction of the
representative governments into the Germanic Confederation
reawakened in Germany those first ideas of innovation which
the Revolution had originally called forth there. They
fomented for some time with great violence: the youth of
the country had been called to its defense by a promise of
liberty; this promise had been greedily received by scholars
who found in their masters the inclination which science has
shown, in this century, to second liberal theories. Under
the sky of Germany, this love of liberty becomes a sort of
sombre and mysterious fanaticism, which is propagated by
means of secret societies. Sand came to strike terror into
Europe. That man, for the rest, who revealed the existence
of a powerful sect, was no more than a vulgar enthusiast; he
deceived himself and took a common mind for a transcendental
mind: his crime went to waste itself upon a writer whose
genius could not aspire to empire and had not enough of the
conqueror and the king to merit a dagger-thrust.

[Sidenote: Memorandum on Germany.]

"A sort of tribunal of political inquisition and the
suppression of the liberty of the press have stopped this
movement of men's minds; but it must not be believed that
they have broken its main-spring. Germany, like Italy,
to-day desires political unity, and with this idea, which
will remain dormant for a greater or lesser length of time
according to events and men, one can always be sure, by
arousing it, to stir the Germanic peoples. The princes or
ministers who may appear in the ranks of the Confederation
of the German States will hasten or delay the revolution in
this country, but they will not prevent the human race from
developing: every century has its dynasty. To-day there is
no one left in Germany, nor even in Europe: we have passed
from the giants to the dwarfs and fallen from the immense
into the narrow and limited. Bavaria, by means of the bureaus
formed by M. de Montgelas[144], still pushes on towards
new ideas, although she has receded in the race, while the
Landgraviate of Hesse would not even admit that there was
a revolution in Europe. The Prince[145] who has just died
wanted his soldiers, who had formerly been soldiers of Jerome
Bonaparte[146], to wear powder and pig-tails: he mistook old
fashions for old manners, forgetting that one can copy the
first, but that one can never restore the second."

In Berlin and in the North, the monuments are fortresses; the
sight of them alone oppresses the heart. If you see these
places in populous and fertile countries, they give rise to
the idea of a legitimate defense; the women and children,
sitting and playing at some distance from the sentries, form
a rather agreeable contrast; but a fortress on heaths, in
a desert, only recalls human anger: against whom are those
ramparts raised, if not against poverty and independence? You
have to be myself to find a pleasure in prowling at the foot
of those bastions, in hearing the wind whistle through those
trenches, in seeing those breastworks raised in prevision
of enemies who perhaps will never appear. Those military
labyrinths, those guns mute in face of one another on salient
and gazoned angles, those stone watch-towers, where you see
nobody and whence no eye observes you, are of an incredible
grimness. If, in the dual solitude of nature and war, you
come across a daisy sheltered under the redan of a glacis,
that floral amenity relieves you. When, in the castles in
Italy, I saw goats suspended to the ruins and the goat-girl
sitting under a parasol pine; when, on the mediæval walls
with which Jerusalem is surrounded, my eyes plunged into the
Valley of Cedron upon some Arab women climbing up steeps
among pebble-stones, the sight was a sad one doubtless, but
history was there, and the silence of the present allowed the
sounds of the past to be heard all the more clearly.

I had asked for leave of absence on the occasion of the
baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux. Being granted this leave,
I prepared to start: Voltaire, in a letter to his niece,
says that he sees the Spree flow, that the Spree empties
itself into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and that
the sea receives the Seine; he thus came down to Paris.
Before leaving Berlin, I went to pay a last visit to
Charlottenburg; it was not Windsor, nor Aranjuez, nor
Caserta, nor Fontainebleau[147]: the villa, supported by a
hamlet, is surrounded by an English park, of small extent,
from which waste land can be seen outside. The Queen of
Prussia here enjoys a peace which Bonaparte's memory will
no longer be able to disturb. What an uproar the conqueror
made, in the old days, in this refuge of silence, when he
arrived there with his flourishing trumpets and his legions
blooded at Jena! It was from Berlin, after wiping the kingdom
of Frederic the Great from the map, that he announced the
continental blockade and prepared the Moscow campaign in his
mind; his words had already carried death to the heart of an
accomplished sovereign: she now sleeps at Charlottenburg,
in a monumental vault; a statue, a fine portrait in marble,
represents her. I wrote some verses on the tomb for which the
Duchess of Cumberland asked me[148].

I arrived in Paris[149] at the time of the celebration for
the baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux. The cradle of the
descendant of Louis XIV., of which I had had the honour to
pay the carriage[150], has disappeared like that of the King
of Rome. In a time different from the present, Louvel's
outrage would have ensured the sceptre to Henry V.; but crime
no longer constitutes a right, except for the man who commits
it.

[Sidenote: Baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux.]

After the baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux[151], I was at
last reinstated in my ministry of State: M. de Richelieu had
taken it from me, M. de Richelieu restored it to me; the
reparation gave me no more pleasure than the wrong had given
me offense.

While I was looking forward to returning to see my crows, the
cards were being shuffled: M. de Villèle resigned[152]. Loyal
to my friendship and my political principles, I thought it
my duty to retire into private life with him. I wrote to M.
Pasquier:

"PARIS, 30 _July_ 1821.

"MONSIEUR LE BARON,

"When you were good enough to invite me to call on you, on
the 14th of this month, it was to tell me that my presence
was necessary in Berlin. I had the honour to reply that,
as Messieurs de Corbière and de Villèle appeared to be
retiring from office, it was my duty to follow them. In the
practice of representative government, it is the usage that
men of the same opinion should share the same fortune. What
usage demands, monsieur le baron, honour commands of me,
since it is a question, not of a favour, but of a disgrace.
In consequence, I now repeat to you in writing the offer
which I made to you verbally of my resignation as Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin. I hope, monsieur le
baron, that you will kindly lay it at the King's feet. I
entreat His Majesty to accept its motives and to believe in
my profound and respectful gratitude for the kindness with
which he has deigned to honour me.

"I have the honour to be, etc.,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

I announced to M. le Comte de Bernstorff the event which was breaking
off our diplomatic relations; he wrote in reply:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"Although I ought long to have expected the intelligence
which you have been good enough to send me, I am none the
less painfully affected by it. I know and respect the motives
which, in this delicate circumstance, have determined your
resolutions; but, while adding new claims to those which have
in this country won for you an universal esteem, they also
add to the regrets which are here felt at the certainty of a
loss long dreaded and for ever irreparable. These sentiments
are keenly shared by the King and the Royal Family, and I
am only awaiting the moment of your recall to tell you so
officially.

"Bear me kindly in your remembrance, I pray you, and accept
the renewed expression of my inviolable devotion and of the
high regard with which I have the honour to be, etc., etc.

"BERNSTORFF."

"BERLIN, 25 _August_ 1821.

I had hastened to express my friendship and my regrets to M. Ancillon:
his very beautiful reply (leaving my praises on one side) deserves to
be recorded here:

"BERLIN, 22 _September_ 1821.

"And so, monsieur and illustrious friend, you are irrevocably
lost to us? I foresaw this misfortune, and yet it has
affected me as though it had been unexpected. We deserved
to keep you and to possess you, because at least we had the
feeble merit of feeling, recognizing, admiring all your
superiority. To tell you that the King, the Princes, the
Court and the Town regret you is to sound their praises
rather than yours; to tell you that I rejoice in these
regrets, that I am proud of them for the sake of my country
and that I acutely share them would be to fall far short of
the truth and to give you a very imperfect idea of what I
feel. Permit me to believe that you know me well enough to
read my heart. If that heart accuses you, my mind not only
absolves you, but more, does homage to your noble proceeding
and to the principles which dictated it. You owed France a
great lesson and a fine example; you have given her both by
refusing to serve a ministry which is unable to judge its
situation and which has not the mental courage necessary to
extricate itself from it. In a representative monarchy, the
ministers and those whom they employ in the first places
must form an homogeneous whole, all the parts of which are
jointly and severally responsible one to the other. There,
less than anywhere else, should a man separate himself from
his friends; he maintains himself and rises with them, he
descends and falls in the same way. You have proved the
truth of this maxim to France by resigning with Messieurs
de Villèle and Corbière. You have taught her at the same
time that fortune does not enter into consideration where
principles are concerned; and certainly, if yours had not had
reason, conscience and the experience of all the centuries
on their side, the sacrifice which they dictate to a man
like yourself would be sufficient to establish a powerful
presumption in their favour in the eyes of all who know
anything of dignity.

"I impatiently await the result of the coming elections to
draw the horoscope of France. They will decide her future.

"Farewell, my illustrious friend; sometimes, from the heights
on which you dwell, shed a few drops of dew on a heart which
will cease to admire and love you only when it ceases to beat.

"ANCILLON."

[Sidenote: I resign the Berlin embassy.]

Mindful of France's welfare, without occupying myself further with
myself or my friends, I at that period submitted the following note to
Monsieur:

"If the King did me the honour to consult me, this is what I
should propose for the good of his service and the repose of
France.

"The Left Centre of the Elective Chamber is gratified at the
nomination of M. Royer-Collard[153]: still, I should think
peace more assured, if they brought into the Council a man of
merit taken from that side and chosen from among the members
of the Chamber of Peers or the Chamber of Deputies.

"To place in addition in the Council a deputy from the side
of the Independent Right.

"To complete the distribution of offices in that spirit.

"As to things:

"To bring forward at a suitable time a complete law on the
liberty of the press, said law to abolish constructional
prosecutions and the optional censorship; to prepare a
communal law; to complete the Septennial Act, carrying the
eligible age to thirty years; in one word, to proceed,
Charter in hand, courageously to defend religion against
impiety, but at the same time to protect it against
fanaticism and the indiscretions of a zeal that do it great
harm.

"As to foreign affairs, three things must guide the King's
ministers: the honour, the independence and the interest of
France.

"New France is wholly Royalist; she may become wholly
Revolutionary: let them follow the institutions, and I would
answer with my head for a future of many centuries; let them
violate or molest those institutions, and I would not answer
for a future of a few months.

"I and my friends are ready to support with all our strength
an administration formed on the bases as suggested above.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

A voice in which the woman prevailed over the princess came to give
consolation to what was only the affliction of a life incessantly
varying. The handwriting of H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland was so
greatly altered that I had some difficulty in recognising it. The
letter bore the date of the 28th of September 1821: it is the last
which I received from that royal hand[154]. Alas, the other noble
friends who at that time supported me in Paris have quitted this earth!
Shall I, then, remain with such stubbornness here below that none of
the persons to whom I have attached myself can survive me? Happy they
on whom age has the effect of wine and who lose their memory when they
have had their fill of days!

The resignations of Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière were not long
in bringing about the dissolution of the Cabinet and the return of my
friends to the Council, as I had foreseen: M. le Vicomte de Montmorency
was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. de Villèle Minister of
Finance, M. de Corbière Minister of the Interior[155]. I had played too
great a part in recent political movements and exercised too great an
influence on public opinion to be left on one side. It was resolved
that I should replace M. le Duc Decazes at the London Embassy. Louis
XVIII. always consented to send me away. I went to thank him; he spoke
to me of his favourite with a constancy of attachment rare in kings; he
"begged" me to remove from the mind of George IV. the prejudice which
that sovereign had conceived against M. Decazes, and myself to forget
the differences which had existed between me and the former Minister of
Police. That monarch, from whom so many misfortunes had been unable to
draw a tear, was moved by a few sufferings which may have afflicted the
man whom he had honoured with his friendship.

[Sidenote: And am sent to London.]

My nomination reawoke my memories: Charlotte returned to my thoughts;
my youth, my emigration appeared before me, with their sorrows and
their joys. Human weakness also made it a pleasure to me to reappear,
well-known and powerful, there where I had been unknown and powerless.
Madame de Chateaubriand, fearing the sea, dared not cross the Channel,
and I set out alone. The secretaries of the Embassy had gone before me.

[Footnote 61: This book was written in 1839 and revised in December
1846.--T.]

[Footnote 62: Lycurgus (_circa_ 880 B.C.), the Spartan legislator,
after making his fellow-citizens swear to make no changes in his laws
during his absence, set out on a long journey, but never returned.--T.]

[Footnote 63: The Battle of Jena, won by Napoleon, and of Auerstädt, a
few miles distant, won by Davout on the same day, 14 October 1806.--T.]

[Footnote 64: Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) lived eleven years
longer, dying at Weimar at the age of 83.--T.]

[Footnote 65: Martin Luther (1483-1546). His monument at Wittenberg was
erected in this year, 1821, of which Chateaubriand speaks. Until then,
his tomb was shown in the church of the University.--T.]

[Footnote 66: Maurice Adolphe Charles Vicomte de Flavigny (1799-1873).
He became secretary to the Prince de Polignac, accepted the Monarchy of
July, and was raised to the peerage on the 25th of December 1841. After
the _coup d'État_, he rallied to the government of Louis Napoleon, and
sat as a member of the Legislative Body from 1852 to 1863, after which
date he was not re-elected, owing to his support of the Temporal Power
of the Pope.--B.]

[Footnote 67: Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840).--T.]

[Footnote 68: Prince Frederic William, later Frederic William IV. King
of Prussia (1795-1861) succeeded his father in 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 69: Prince William, later William I. King of Prussia and
German Emperor (1797-1888), Prince Charles (1801-1883) and Prince
Albert (1809-1872) of Prussia.--T.]

[Footnote 70: Grand-duke Nicholas, later Nicholas I. Tsar of Russia
(1796-1855), had married the Princess Charlotte of Prussia in July
1817, so that the wedding was not exactly recent. Nicholas was the
third son of the Tsar Paul I., and succeeded Alexander I. in 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 71: Princess Charlotte of Prussia, later Tsarina Alexandra
Feodorowna of Russia (1798-1860), daughter of Frederic William III.--T.]

[Footnote 72: Ernest Augustus Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, later
Ernest I. King of Hanover (1771-1851), fifth son of George III. King of
Great Britain, Ireland, and Hanover, succeeded on the death of William
IV. in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 73: Frederica Caroline Sophia Alexandrina Duchess of
Cumberland, later Queen of Hanover (1778-1841), daughter of Charles II.
Grand-duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was married first (1793) to Prince
Louis of Prussia, who died in 1796, secondly (1799) to Prince Frederic
William of Solmo-Braunfels, who divorced her and who died in 1814, and
thirdly (1815) to the Duke of Cumberland.--T.]

[Footnote 74: Prince Frederic William Charles of Prussia
(1783-1851).--T.]

[Footnote 75: Prince Augustus of Prussia (1779-1843), son of Prince
Ferdinand and nephew of Frederic the Great, was taken prisoner at the
Battle of Saalfeld, at which his brother, Prince Louis Ferdinand, was
killed.--B.]

[Footnote 76: François Pascal Simon Baron Gerard (1770-1837). His
portrait of Madame Récamier is Gérard's master-piece. His _Corinne
improvisant au cap Misène_, referred to above, is also one of his
best-known paintings.--T.]

[Footnote 77: Jean Pierre Frédéric Ancillon (1766-1837), a famous
statesman and historian, of Huguenot descent, was, in 1791, appointed
Professor of History at the Military Academy in Berlin. Soon after,
he became pastor of the French Reformed Church in that city. In 1803,
he published his _Tableau des révolutions du système politique de
l'Europe_, which secured his admission to the Berlin Academy. In 1836,
he became tutor to the Crown-prince, with whom he visited Paris in
1814. On his return, he entered official life and, in 1831, became
Prussian Foreign Secretary.--T.]

[Footnote 78: Christian Günther Count von Bernstorff (1769-1835),
Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs.--T.]

[Footnote 79: Jean Bart (1650-1702), a famous French sailor. After
serving some time in the Dutch Navy, he returned to France, when war
broke out with Holland, and equipped a privateer, with which he did
great damage to the enemy. Louis XIV. thereupon gave him a commission
in the Navy, then generally granted only to nobles, and, in 1691, made
him a vice-admiral. In that year, Bart burnt over eighty English ships
outside Dunkirk, and made a descent upon Newcastle, returning with an
enormous booty. He fought continuously against the Dutch and English
until the Peace of Rijswijk, in 1697. Louis XIV. ennobled him and sent
for him to Court: his rough and awkward manners and brusque frankness
of speech aroused the mirth of the courtiers, and the King himself more
than once went out of his way to defend him.--T.]

[Footnote 80:

"Le bon roi Dagobert
Portrait sa culotte à l'envers," etc.:

"Our good King Dagobert
Wore his breeches front to rear," etc.--T.

]

[Footnote 81: Elise Philippine Amalie Baroness von Hohenhausen
(1789-1857), _née_ von Ochs, a woman of letters well-known in her day,
and a regular contributor to the _Morgenblatt._--T.]

[Footnote 82: Count David d'Alopeus (1769-1831), after being Russian
Minister first to the Court of Sweden, and later to that of Wurtemberg,
in 1813 became Commissary-General to the Allied Armies. His wife, who
accompanied him to head-quarters, made herself noted for her beauty
and the charms of her mind. In 1815, the Count d'Alopeus was Governor
of Lorraine for Russia. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Minister
Plenipotentiary to Berlin, where he continued till his death in
1831.--B.]

[Footnote 83: Mademoiselle Alexandrine d'Alopeus married Albert de
La Ferronnays, a son of the Comte de La Ferronnays, Chateaubriand's
friend.--B.]

[Footnote 84: Princess Frederica Charlotte Mary of Wurtemberg, later
Grand-duchess Helen Paulowna of Russia (1807-1873), daughter of
Prince Paul of Wurtemberg, and married, in 1824, to the Grand-duke
Michael Paulovitch, brother to the Tsar Alexander and the Grand-duke
Nicholas.--B.]

[Footnote 85: Frederic II. Elector of Brandenburg (1413-1471), surnamed
"Iron-tooth," on account of his strength; abdicated in 1469.--T.]

[Footnote 86: Joachim II. Elector of Brandenburg (1505-1571), the
first Lutheran Elector of Brandenburg. He died on the 3rd of January
1571, said to have been poisoned by Lippold, a Jew at the Court of
Brandenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 87: Lippold (_d._ 1571), Master of the Mint, was tortured
and executed for the death of Joachim II., although the case was never
proved against him.--T.]

[Footnote 88: John Sigismund Elector of Brandenburg (1572-1619)
added the Duchy of Prussia to his States, through his marriage with
Anne, eldest daughter of Albert Duke of Prussia, and heiress to the
Duchy.--T.]

[Footnote 89: George William Elector of Brandenburg (1595-1640),
surnamed "the Irresolute." The anecdote is taken from Frederic the
Great's Memoirs of Brandenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 90: Gustavus II. Adolphus King of Sweden (1594-1632).--T.]

[Footnote 91: Frederic William Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1648),
surnamed the Great Elector, in whom began the power of this House.--T.]

[Footnote 92: A quotation from Frederick the Great's Memoirs of
Brandenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 93: Frederic III. Elector of Brandenburg, later Frederic I.
King of Prussia (1657-1713). In 1701, the Emperor Leopold, whom he
had assisted against the Turks, raised his Duchy of Prussia into a
kingdom.--T.]

[Footnote 94: Frederic William I. King of Prussia (1688-1740), son of
Frederic I.--T.]

[Footnote 95: Johann Paul Gundling (1673-1731), an historiographer of
some merit, was the butt of the Court of Frederic I., owing to his
absurdities. He left a Life of Frederic I. and an excellent description
of Brandenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 96: Elizabeth Queen of Prussia (1715-1797), married to
Frederic the Great in 1733--T.]

[Footnote 97: François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) lived at
Berlin in the intimacy of Frederic the Great from 1750 to 1753.--T.]

[Footnote 98: Jeanne Antoinette Lenormand d'Étioles, Marquise de
Pompadour (1722-1764), _née_ Poisson, mistress to Louis XV. from 1744
to her death, and practical ruler of France during that period.--T.]

[Footnote 99: François Joachim Abbé, later Cardinal de Pierres de
Bernis (1715-1794), wielded considerable power during the time of his
favour with Madame de Pompadour.--T.]

[Footnote 100: Louis XV. King of France (1710-1774), great-grandson of
Louis XIV. and grandfather of Louis XVI. It was during his reign that
the Prussian Alliance was abandoned for the Austrian Alliance, destined
to be so disastrous to France.--T.]

[Footnote 101: Sophia Wilhelmina Margravine of Bayreuth (1709-1758),
sister to Frederic the Great and married, in 1731, to the future
Margrave of Bayreuth. Her Memoirs and Correspondence with her brother
are well-known.--T.]

[Footnote 102: Wilhelmina Rietz, Countess von Lichtenau (1754-1820),
_née_ Enke, daughter of a musician of the Prussian Chapel Royal.
At sixteen, she became the mistress of the Crown Prince, nephew of
Frederic II., who married her to one of his footmen, called Rietz, and
who became king in 1786 as Frederic William II., when he gave her the
title of Countess von Lichtenau.--B.]

[Footnote 103: Prince Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), brother to Frederic
the Great, and one of the latter's most distinguished generals. He went
to live in France in 1788, intending to spend the rest of his days
there; but the Revolution compelled him to return to Germany, and he
died at Rheinsberg at the age of seventy-six.--T.]

[Footnote 104: MIRABEAU, _Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin, ou
Correspondance d'un voyageur français du 5 juillet 1786 au 19 janvier
1787_ (Alençon, 1789).--T.]

[Footnote 105: Karl Wilhelm Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), a
distinguished Prussian diplomatist and author of a number of extremely
erudite philological works.--T.]

[Footnote 106: Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamisso de Boncourt
(1781-1835), known as Adelbert von Chamisso, a noted German writer
and naturalist, of French birth. His parents had taken him to Germany
during the Emigration, and he subsequently made Prussia his adopted
country. The best known of Chamisso's multifarious works, most of which
are in German, is the world-famed _Peter Schlemihl_, the story of the
shadowless man.--T.]

[Footnote 107: Chamisso's two elder brothers (not his uncles),
Hippolyte and Charles, were with Louis XVI. on the 10th of August 1792.
Charles was wounded, while defending the King, and was saved by a man
of the people. Shortly afterwards, he received a sword that had been
worn by the unfortunate monarch, with a note thus worded:

"I commend to my brothers M. de Chamisso, one of my faithful
servants; he has often exposed his life for me.

"LOUIS."--T. ]

[Footnote 108: I here omit a quotation of some thirty-two lines of
verse of Chamisso's.--T.]

[Footnote 109: Nikolai Count Romanzoff (1754-1826), Russian Chancellor
previous to 1812, and a considerable patron of science.--T.]

[Footnote 110: Captain Otto von Kotzebue (1787-1846) of the Russian
Navy, son of Kotzebue the German writer, discovered the Kotzebue
Straits, on the north-east coast of America, in 1816. The expedition
lasted three years, from 1815 to 1818.--T.]

[Footnote 111: Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia Queen of Prussia
(1776-1810), daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, married to
the Hereditary Prince of Prussia, later King Frederic William III., in
1793.--T.]

[Footnote 112: Princess William of Prussia (1785-1846), formerly
Princess Amelia Marianne of Hesse-Homburg, sister-in-law to the
King.--B.]

[Footnote 113: Caroline, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, formerly
Princess Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt.--T.]

[Footnote 114: Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868) had produced some
twenty operas prior to 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 115: Christopher Gluck (1712-1787), the great classical
operatic composer.--T.]

[Footnote 116: Johann Friedrich Christopher Schiller (1759-1805). His
tragedy of _Joan of Arc_, or, rather, the _Jungfrau von Orleans_,
appeared in 1802.--T.]

[Footnote 117: Gaspardo Spontini (1778-1851), a native of the Papal
States, made his first great success with the _Vestal_ in 1807, at
which time he was musical director to the Empress Joséphine. In 1810,
he became manager of the Théâtre Italien in Paris and, in 1820, manager
of the Berlin Opera. On the death of Frederic William, in 1842, he
returned to Paris, where he had been elected a member of the Academy of
Fine Arts in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 118: Sébastian Érard (1752-1831), the famous pianoforte
manufacturer. He was born at Strasburg, went to Paris in 1768 and,
after a stay of some years in London, settled finally in Paris in 1812.
Érard perfected the modern piano, organ and harp.--T.]

[Footnote 119: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) fulfilled a number of
political missions before 1300, when he was made a Florentine
magistrate.--T.]

[Footnote 120: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) spent his life between
poetry and public affairs. In 1512, he was sent on a mission from the
Duke of Ferrara to Pope Julius II.; in 1521, he was sent to suppress
the bands of brigands infesting one of the provinces, and so on.--T.]

[Footnote 121: John Milton (1608-1674) was secretary-interpreter for
the Latin tongue to the Privy Council under the Commonwealth and,
subsequently, private secretary to the Protector Cromwell.--T.]

[Footnote 122: Charles de Lameth had made himself ridiculous in 1790,
in his capacity as a member of the Committee of Inspection of the
Constituent Assembly, by leading a nocturnal expedition against the
convent of the Nuns of the Annunciation at Pontoise, in order to look
for M. de Barentin, brother of the Abbess. The Marquis de Bonnay,
Chateaubriand's predecessor in Berlin, wrote on this occasion an
heroi-comical poem of the wittiest description, entitled the _Prise des
Annonciades._--B.]

[Footnote 123: Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau (1638-1720),
a great favourite with Louis XIV., thanks originally to his skill at
cards. He accompanied the king as aide-de-camp in all his campaigns.
Dangeau had a great reputation for wit and learning, and, although he
had published nothing, was admitted a member of the French Academy in
1668. He left manuscript Memoirs from which extracts were published by
Voltaire (1770), Madame de Genlis (1817) and Lemontey (1818); but the
whole, entitled _Journal de la cour de Louis XIV._, first appeared in
1858.--T.]

[Footnote 124: Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (_circa_ 1619--_circa_ 1700)
left Memoirs which were first published by M. Monmerqué in 1834, under
the title of _Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux_, forming a crowd of
curious and cynical anecdotes.--T.]

[Footnote 125: Karl August Prince von Hardenberg (1750-1822), born
in Hanover, entered the Prussian service in 1790, and became Foreign
Minister in 1806, and State Chancellor in 1810. He signed the Treaty
of Paris in 1814, in which year the King of Prussia made him a prince,
and took part as plenipotentiary in all the important congresses of the
time.]

[Footnote 126: David Friedrich Koreff (1783-1851), a famous German
doctor, for some time secretary to Prince von Hardenberg.--B.]

[Footnote 127: Hyacinthe Pilorge, Chateaubriand's secretary.--B.]

[Footnote 128: Karl Ludwig Sand (1795-1819), a student of the
University of Jena, who had assassinated August von Kotzebue, the
famous writer, on the 23rd of March 1819, at Mannheim. Kotzebue was
regarded as the tool of absolutism by Young Germany. He was the father
of the Captain Otto von Kotzebue mentioned above in connection with
Chamisso.--B.]

[Footnote 129: Prince George of Cumberland, late George V. King of
Hanover (1819-1878), succeeded to the throne of Hanover in 1851. In
1866, his kingdom was annexed by Prussia. King George, who was totally
blind, married, in 1843, the Princess Mary of Saxe-Altenburg. Her
Majesty is still living (1902) at Gmunden, in Upper Austria.--T.]

[Footnote 130: Victoria Queen of Great Britain and Ireland,
Empress of India (1819-1901), the last sovereign of the house of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, succeeded to the throne in 1837 and, in 1840,
married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who died in 1861.--T.]

[Footnote 131: 19 April 1821. Chateaubriand had gone to Paris to attend
the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux.--B.]

[Footnote 132: George.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 133: George IV. King of Great Britain and Ireland (1762-1830)
was crowned on the 19th of July 1821. Queen Louise of Prussia died on
the 19th of July 1810.--B.]

[Footnote 134: The Queen of Prussia.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 135: Napoleon died on the 5th of March 1821.--T.]

[Footnote 136: Eginhard (_d. circa_ 839), secretary to Charlemagne:
the reference is to his more or less legendary adventures with
Charlemagne's daughter Emma, whose hand Eginhard is supposed to have
obtained. The family of the Counts of Erbach claim to be descended from
Emma and Eginhard.--T.]

[Footnote 137: Queen Frederica of Hanover died in July 1841;
Chateaubriand lived until the 4th of July 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 138: 14 December 1822.--B.]

[Footnote 139: A military revolution had broken out in Naples on the
2nd of July 1820. The army had been won over by the Carbonari, a vast
secret society which covered a large part of Italy with its network.
General Pepe had obliged Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies to
proclaim a constitution modelled on that which the Revolutionaries had
lately established in Spain. The Austrians entered Naples on the 23rd
of March 1821. The principal actors in the movement took refuge on
foreign ships. The Parliament broke up, and the supreme council of the
Carbonari pronounced its own dissolution. Ferdinand I., who had been
forced to leave his capital on the 10th of December 1820, entered it
again on the 15th of May 1821.--B.]

[Footnote 140: Ferdinand VII. King of Spain (1784-1833) had been
compelled to grant a Constitution to his subjects in 1820, but revoked
it, with the material aid of the King of France, in 1823. It was owing
to Ferdinand's unconstitutional repeal of the Salic Law, without the
consent of the Cortes, that the present Alphonsist Branch occupies
the throne of Spain, to the prejudice of the Legitimist, or Carlist,
Branch, and as the result of a long series of bloody civil wars.--T.]

[Footnote 141: John VI. King of Portugal and Brazil (1767-1826) was
proclaimed Regent of Portugal in 1792, when his mother, Mary I., became
insane. In 1807, attacked by the French, he withdrew with the Royal
Family to the Colony of Brazil, which he raised to a kingdom. In 1816,
on the death of his mother, he was proclaimed King of Portugal, but
did not return to Europe until 1821. On his arrival, he found himself
obliged to accept a Constitution, which he abolished two years later.
Meanwhile, Brazil had declared her independence (1822) and proclaimed
John's son, Peter I. (IV. of Portugal), Emperor. Civil wars, curiously
similar in their origin to those in Spain, broke out in Portugal soon
after his death, in 1826.--T.]

[Footnote 142: Troubles broke out in Piedmont so soon as the Neapolitan
revolution had died away. On the 10th of March, the garrison at
Alessandria mutinied. Turin, Pinerolo and Ivrea followed suit. On the
13th, King Victor Emmanuel I. abdicated in favour of his brother,
Charles Felix. In the absence of the latter he gave the regency
to Charles Albert, the King's cousin, who promptly proclaimed the
constitution of the Spanish Cortes, but, at the end of a few days (21
March), he was obliged to fall back before the Austrian intervention.
The conspirators of Alessandria and the Italian "federates" were
dispersed at Novara, and the victorious army entered Turin on the 10th
of April. Victor Emmanuel maintained his abdication and Charles Felix
restored the old government.--B.]

[Footnote 143: He gave bold advice which was disregarded at
Versailles.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 144: Max Jose Garnerin, Count von Montgelas (1759-1838), the
favourite minister of Maximilian I. King of Bavaria, under whom he held
successively pretty well all the great departments of State.--T.]

[Footnote 145: William IX. Landgrave, later William I. Elector of
Hesse-Cassel (1743-1821), a field-marshal in the Prussian service,
reigning Count of Hanau (1764) and Landgrave of Hesse (1785). He
entered into the coalition against France in 1792, went through the
campaign of 1793, and concluded a treaty of peace with the Republic in
1795. In 1803, he changed his title of Landgrave for that of Elector,
but after the battle of Jena (1806) he was deprived of his sovereignty,
which he did not recover till 1813. He died in 1821. The Landgraviate
of Hesse-Cassel was absorbed into Prussia in 1866.--T.]

[Footnote 146: Jerome Bonaparte became King of Westphalia, a State
specially created for him, with Cassel as its capital, in 1807.--T.]

[Footnote 147: The Palace of Charlottenburg was built by Sophia
Charlotte, wife of Frederic I. King of Prussia, in 1706. Windsor Castle
was built by the Norman sovereigns from William I. to Edward III.; the
palace at Aranjuez was begun under Philip II., from designs by Juan de
Herrera; the palace at Caserta was built, in 1752, by Charles IV. King
of the Two Sicilies, and III. of Spain: the castle is very old; the
Palace of Fontainebleau, in 999, by Robert II. King of France: it was
successively enlarged and embellished by Francis I., Henry II., Henry
IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon I. and Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 148: I omit these lines.--T.]

[Footnote 149: "Paris, 28 April. M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand,
Minister Plenipotentiary of France in Berlin, arrived in Paris on the
day before yesterday" (_Moniteur_, 29 April 1821).--B.]

[Footnote 150: _Vide_ the incident of the Bordeaux market-women, _supra_,
p. 24.--T.]

[Footnote 151: The baptism took place at Notre Dame on the 1st of May
1821. Chateaubriand was restored to the list of ministers of State,
Messieurs de Blacas and de Montesquieu were created dukes and numerous
promotions were made in the several Orders.--B.]

[Footnote 152: Villèle and Corbière resigned on the 27th of July 1821,
on the question of the censorship.--B.]

[Footnote 153: Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1763-1845), politician and
philosopher, was President of the Commission of Public Instruction
in 1816, resigned this office in 1820, when the Ultra-Royalist Party
had won the day, opposed the reactionary measures in the Chamber of
Deputies and, in 1828, became President of the Chamber. Royer-Collard
held no office after 1830. He was elected a member of the French
Academy in 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 154: The Princess Frederica, Queen of Hanover, has just
succumbed after a long illness: death is always present in the "Note"
at the end of my text!--_Author's Note_ (Paris, July 1841).]

[Footnote 155: The other ministers were: the Duc de Bellune, War; M. de
Clermont-Tonnerre, Navy; M. de Peyronnet, Justice; M. de Lauriston, the
Royal Household.--B.]

BOOK IX[156]

It was in London, in 1822, that I wrote, without intermission, the
longest part of these Memoirs, including my travels in America, my
return to France, my marriage, my passing through Paris, my emigration
to Germany with my brother, my residence and misfortunes in England
between 1793 and 1800. There is found the description of old England,
and, as I retraced all this at the time of my embassy (1822), the
changes that had come over the manners and persons of the time between
1793 and the end of the century struck me: I was naturally led to
compare what I saw in 1822 with what I had seen during the seven years
of my exile across the Channel.

In this way were told, by anticipation, things which I should now have
to place under the proper date of my diplomatic mission. I spoke to you
of my emotion, of the feelings recalled to me by the sight of those
spots dear to my memory; but perhaps you have not read that part of my
book? You have done well. It is enough that I should now tell you of
the place in which the gaps that will be found in the present story of
my embassy in London are filled up. You see me, therefore, writing in
1839, among the dead of 1822 and the dead that went before in 1793.

In London, in the month of April 1822, I was within fifty leagues
of Lady Sutton. I strolled in Kensington Gardens with my recent
impressions and the early past of my young years: a confusion of times
which produces in me a confusion of memories; life which burns out
mingles, like the fire of Corinth, the molten brass of the statues of
the Muses and Love, of the tripods and the tombs.

[Sidenote: The Marquess of Londonderry.]

The parliamentary holidays were still proceeding when I alighted at my
house in Portland Place. The Under-secretary of State, Mr. Planta[157],
invited me, on behalf of the Marquess of Londonderry, to go to dine
at North Cray, the noble lord's country-place. This villa, with a
large tree before the windows on the garden side, looked out over some
meadows; a little underwood growing on hillocks distinguished this site
from the ordinary English sites. Lady Londonderry[158] was much in
vogue in her quality as a marchioness and as wife of the Prime Minister.

My dispatch of the 12th of April, No. 4, relates my first interview
with Lord Londonderry; it touches on the affairs with which I had to
occupy myself:

"LONDON, 12 _April_ 1822.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE[159],

"I went two days ago, on Wednesday the 10th instant, to North
Cray. I shall now have the honour of giving you an account of
my conversation with the Marquess of Londonderry. It lasted
for an hour and a half before dinner, and we resumed it
later, but less at our ease, because we were no longer alone.

"Lord Londonderry first asked for news of the King's health,
with a persistency which manifestly revealed a political
interest; when I had reassured him on this point, he passed
to the Ministry:

"'It is consolidating itself,' he said.

"I replied:

"'It has never been shaken and, as it belongs to one opinion,
it will remain the master so long as that opinion prevails in
the Chambers.'

"This brought us to speak of the elections: he seemed struck
by what I said of the advantage of a summer session to
restore order in the financial year; he had not till then
well understood the state of the question.

"The war between Russia and Turkey next became the subject
of conversation. Lord Londonderry, when speaking of soldiers
and armies, appeared to me to be of the opinion of our late
ministry as to the danger there might be for us in getting
together large bodies of troops; I opposed this idea, I
maintained that there was nothing to be feared in leading the
French soldier into battle; that he would never be unfaithful
in the sight of the enemy's flag; that our army has lately
been increased; that it could be trebled to-morrow, if that
were necessary, without the smallest inconvenience; that, in
truth, a few non-commissioned officers might shout, 'Long
live the Charter!' in a garrison, but that our grenadiers
would always shout, 'Long live the King!' on the battle-field.

"I do not know whether these greater politics made Lord
Londonderry forget the treaty of the negroes; he did not
say a word about it to me. Changing the subject, he spoke
of the message in which the President of the United States
invites Congress to recognise the independence of the Spanish
Colonies:

"'Commercial interests,' I said to him, 'may derive some
advantage from it, but I doubt whether political interests
will find the same profit in it; there are already enough
political ideas in the world. To increase the mass of
those ideas is to compromise more and more the fate of the
monarchies in Europe.'

"Lord Londonderry abounded in my sense and spoke these
remarkable words to me:

"'As for us (the English), we are not at all disposed to
recognise those revolutionary governments.'

"Was he sincere?

"I have had, monsieur le vicomte, to report to you, word
for word, an important conversation. However, we must not
hide from ourselves the fact that England will sooner or
later recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies;
public opinion and the impulse of her trade will drive her
to it. She has already, during the last three years, gone to
considerable expense to establish secret relations with the
revolted provinces north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.

"Upon the whole, monsieur le vicomte, I have found in
the Marquess of Londonderry a man of sense, of perhaps
somewhat doubtful frankness; a man still steeped in the
old ministerial system; a man accustomed to a submissive
diplomacy and surprised, without being offended, at language
more worthy of France; a man, in short, who could not refrain
from a sort of astonishment while talking with one of those
Royalists who, since seven years, have been represented to
him as madmen or imbeciles.

"I have the honour, etc."

With these general affairs were mingled, as in all embassies, private
transactions. I had to occupy myself with the petitions of M. le Duc
de Fitz-James[160], with the lawsuit of the ship _Eliza Ann_, with the
depredations of the Jersey fishermen on the Granville oyster-banks,
etc., etc. I regretted to be obliged to set aside a little pigeon-hole
in my brain for the papers of the claimants. When one ransacks one's
memory, it is hard to come across Messieurs Usquin, Coppinger, Deliège
and Piffre. But, in a few years, shall we be better known than those
gentlemen? A certain M. Bonnet having died in America, all the Bonnets
in France wrote to me to claim his succession; those tormentors write
to me still! Yet it ought to be time to leave me in peace. It is all
very well for me to reply that, the little accident of the fall of the
Throne having occurred, I no longer occupy myself with this world: they
hold out and want their inheritance at all costs.

[Sidenote: The Eastern question.]

As to the East, it was in contemplation to recall the different
ambassadors from Constantinople. I foresaw that England would not
follow the movement of the Continental Alliance, and I informed M. de
Montmorency of this. The rupture which had been feared between Russia
and the Porte did not happen: Alexander's moderation delayed the event.
In this connection, I made a great expenditure of going and coming,
of sagacity and argument; I wrote a multitude of dispatches, which
have gone to must in our archives with the reports of events that
never occurred. I at least have this advantage over my colleagues,
that I attach no importance to my labours; I saw them, without a care,
swallowed up in oblivion with all the lost ideas of mankind.

Parliament resumed its sittings on the 17th of April; the King returned
on the 18th, and I was presented to him on the 19th. I gave an account
of this presentation in my dispatch of the 19th; it ended thus:

"H. B. M., thanks to his close and varied conversation, did
not give me an opening to tell him something with which the
King had specially charged me; but the favourable and early
occasion of a new audience is about to present itself."

This "something" with which the King had specially charged me related
to M. le Duc Decazes. Later, I executed my orders: I told George
IV. that Louis XVIII. was distressed at the coldness with which the
Ambassador of His Most Christian Majesty had been received. George IV.
replied:

"Listen, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I will confess to you: M. Decazes'
mission was not to my liking; it was acting a little cavalierly towards
me. My friendship for the King of France alone made me put up with a
favourite who had no other merit than his master's attachment. Louis
XVIII. reckoned greatly on my good-will, and he was right; but I could
not carry indulgence so far as to treat M. Decazes with a distinction
at which England would have taken offense. However, tell your King that
I am touched by what he ordered you to represent to me, and that I
shall always be happy to prove my real attachment for him."

Emboldened by these words, I laid before George IV. all that came to
my mind in favour of M. Decazes. He answered, half in English, half in
French:

"_À merveille!_ You are a true gentleman!"

When I returned to Paris, I gave Louis XVIII. an account of this
conversation: he seemed grateful to me. George IV. had spoken to me
like a well-bred but easy-going prince; he was free from bitterness
because he thought of other things. Nevertheless it did not do to
trifle with him beyond moderation. One of his table-fellows[161] had
wagered that he would ask George IV. to ring the bell, and that George
IV. would obey. George IV. did in fact ring the bell and said to the
gentleman-in-waiting:

"Show this gentleman the door."

The idea of restoring strength and brilliancy to our arms continued to
dominate me. I wrote to M. de Montmorency, on the 13th of April:

"I have had an idea, monsieur le vicomte, which I submit to
your judgment. Would you think it amiss that, in the form of
a conversation with Prince Esterhazy[162], I should give him
to understand that, if Austria required to withdraw a part of
her troops, we could replace them in Piedmont? A few rumours
spread as to an intended muster of our troops in Dauphiné
would give me a favourable pretext. I proposed to the former
ministry to garrison Savoy at the time of the revolt in June
1821[163]. He rejected that measure and I think that, in so
doing, he made a capital mistake. I persist in thinking that
the presence of some French troops in Italy would produce a
great effect on public opinion and that the King's Government
would derive much glory from it."

[Sidenote: Our bold diplomacy.]

Proofs superabound of the noble character of our diplomacy during the
Restoration. What does this matter to parties? Have I not read this
very morning, in a newspaper of the Left, that the Alliance forced us
to act as its policeman and to make war on Spain, when the _Congrès
de Vérone_ is there, when diplomatic documents show in an irrefutable
manner that all Europe, with the exception of Russia, objected to the
war; that not only did it object to it, but that England openly opposed
it; and that Austria secretly thwarted us by most ignoble measures?
This will not prevent them from lying afresh to-morrow; they will not
even take the trouble to examine the question, to read that of which
they speak "knowingly" without having read it! Every lie repeated
becomes a truth: one cannot have too great a contempt for human
opinions.

Lord John Russell[164], on the 25th of April, introduced a motion
in the House of Commons on the state of the national representation
in Parliament: Mr. Canning opposed it. The latter, in his turn,
introduced a Bill to repeal a portion of the Act depriving Catholic
peers of their right of sitting and voting in the House. I was present
at these sittings on the woolsack[165], where the Speaker had made me
sit. Mr. Canning was present, in 1822, at the sitting of the House
of Lords which rejected his Bill; he was hurt at a phrase of the old
Chancellor's[166]: the latter, speaking of the author of the Bill,
exclaimed scornfully:

"They say he is leaving for India: ah, let him go, this fine gentleman,
let him go, and a good journey to him!"

Mr. Canning said to me as we went out:

"I'll catch him yet."

Lord Holland spoke very well, without, however, recalling Mr. Fox. He
used to spin round, so that he often presented his back to the House
and addressed his remarks to the walls. The peers cried, "Hear, hear!"
No one was offended by this eccentricity.

In England, every one expresses himself as he can; petty pleading is
unknown; there is no resemblance in the voice or in the delivery of the
speakers. The members listen patiently; they are not offended when the
speaker has no facility; let him splutter, let him hem and haw, let
him seek his words, they find that he has made "a fine speech" if he
has uttered a few phrases of good sense. This variety of men who have
remained what nature made them ends by being agreeable; it breaks the
monotony. It is true that there are only a small number of lords and
members of the House of Commons who get up to speak. We, always placed
upon a stage, hold forth and gesticulate like a solemn puppet-show. It
was a useful study to me to pass from the secret and silent monarchy
of Berlin to the public and noisy monarchy of London: one could derive
some instruction from the contrast between two nations at the two ends
of the ladder.

The arrival of the King, the re-opening of Parliament, the commencement
of the Season blended duty, business and pleasure: one could meet the
ministers only at Court, at balls, or in Parliament. To celebrate His
Majesty's birthday, I dined with Lord Londonderry; I dined on the Lord
Mayor's[167] galley, which went up to Richmond: I prefer the miniature
_Bucentaur_ in the arsenal at Venice, which no longer bears more than
the memory of the Doges and a Virgilian name. In the old days, as an
Emigrant, lean and half-naked, I had amused myself, without being
Scipio, by throwing stones into the water along that bank now hugged by
the Lord Mayor's plump and well-lined barge.

[Sidenote: Diners.]

I also dined in the East End of the town with Mr. Rothschild[168] of
London, of the younger branch of Salomon[169]: where did I not dine?
The roast-beef equalled that of the Tower of London in stateliness;
the fish were so long that one could not see their tails; ladies, whom
I met there and nowhere else, sang like Abigail. I quaffed tokay not
far from the place which had seen me toss off water by the pitcherful
and almost die of hunger; reclining against the silk-squabbed back of
my well-padded carriage, I saw that same Westminster where I had spent
a night locked in the Abbey, and around which I had strolled, covered
with mud, with Hingant and Fontanes. My house, the rent of which cost
me twelve hundred pounds a year, was opposite the garret inhabited by
my cousin de La Boüétardais what time, in a red robe, he used to play
the guitar on a borrowed truckle-bed to which I had offered shelter
beside my own.

There was no longer a question of those Emigrant hops at which we
used to dance to the tune of the violin of a counsellor to the Breton
Parliament; it was Almack's, conducted by Collinet, that provided
my delight: a public ball under the patronage of the great ladies
of the West End. There the old and the young dandies met. Among the
old, shone the victor of Waterloo, who aired his glory like a snare
for women stretched across the quadrilles; at the head of the young,
stood out Lord Clanwilliam[170], said to be the son of the Duke of
Richmond[171]. He did wonderful things: he galloped out to Richmond
and returned to Almack's after twice falling from his horse. He had a
certain manner of utterance, after the fashion of Alcibiades, which was
thought enchanting. The fashions in words, the affectations of language
and pronunciation changing, as they do, in almost every parliamentary
session in high society in London, an honest man is wonder-struck at
no longer knowing English, which he believed himself to know perfectly
six months before. In 1822, the duty of the man of fashion was, at the
first glance, to present an unhappy and ailing figure; he was expected
to have something neglected about his person: long nails; beard worn
neither full nor shaved, but seeming to have sprouted at a given moment
by surprise, through forgetfulness, amid the preoccupations of despair;
a waving lock of hair; a profound, sublime, wandering and fatal glance;
lips contracted in scorn of the human race; a heart bored, Byronian,
drowned in the disgust and mystery of existence.

To-day it is no longer so: the dandy must have a conquering,
thoughtless, insolent air; he must attend to his dress, wear mustachios
or a beard cut round like Queen Elizabeth's ruff or the radiant disk
of the sun; he reveals the lofty independence of his character by
keeping his hat on his head, by lolling on the sofa, stretching out his
boots before the noses of the ladies seated in admiration on chairs
before him; he rides with a cane which he carries like a wax-taper,
indifferent to the horse which chances to be between his legs. His
health must be perfect and his soul always at the height of five or
six felicities. A few Radical dandies, those most advanced towards the
future, possess a pipe.

But, no doubt, all these things are changed in the very time which I am
taking to describe them. They say that the dandy of the present moment
must no longer know if he exists, if the world is there, if there are
women, and if he ought to salute his neighbour. Is it not curious to
find the original of the dandy under Henry III.?

"Those pretty minions," says the author of the _Isle des
Hermaphrodites_[172], "wore their hair longish, curled and curled
again, showing above their little velvet caps, like the women, and
their shirt-ruffs of linen all around, starched and half-a-foot wide,
in such fashion that, to see their heads above their ruffs, it seemed
as though it was the head of Saint John in a dish." They leave to go
to Henry III.'s chamber, "swinging their body, their heads and their
legs so that I thought at every turn that they must needs fall at full
length.... They found that manner of walking finer than any other."

[Sidenote: London society.]

All the English are mad by nature or by fashion.

Lord Clanwilliam passed quickly: I met him again at Verona; he became
British Minister in Berlin after me. For a moment we followed the same
road, although we did not walk with the same step.

Nothing in London succeeded like insolence, as witness d'Orsay[173]
the brother of the Duchesse de Guiche[174]: he had taken to galloping
in Hyde Park, leaping turnpike gates, gambling, treating the dandies
without ceremony; he had an unequalled success and, to crown the whole,
he ended by carrying off an entire family, father, mother and children.

The ladies most in fashion pleased me little; there was one, however,
who was charming, Lady Gwydyr: she resembled a Frenchwoman in her tone
and manners. Lady Jersey still maintained her position as a beauty.
I met the Opposition at her house. Lady Conyngham belonged to the
Opposition, and the King himself kept a secret liking for his old
friends. Among the patronesses of Almack's, one marked the Russian
Ambassadress[175].

The Countess de Lieven had had some rather ridiculous affairs
with Madame d'Osmond[176] and George IV. As she was audacious and
was considered to be in favour at Court, she had become extremely
fashionable. She was thought to have wit, because her husband was
supposed to have none, which was not true: M. de Lieven[177] was much
superior to Madame. Madame de Lieven, with sharp and unprepossessing
features, is a commonplace, wearisome, arid woman, who has only one
style of conversation: vulgar politics; for the rest, she knows nothing
and she hides the dearth of her ideas under the abundance of her words.
When she finds herself with people of merit, her sterility is silent;
she invests her nullity with a superior air of boredom, as though she
had the right to be bored; having fallen through the effect of time,
and being unable to keep from meddling with something, the dowager of
the Congress has come from Verona to give, in Paris[178], with the
permission of the magistrates of St. Petersburg, a representation
of the diplomatic puerilities of former days. She keeps up private
correspondences and has shown herself a specialist in unhappy
marriages. Our novices have rushed to her rooms to learn to know the
fine world and the art of secrets; they entrust her with theirs, which,
spread abroad by Madame de Lieven, change into underhand tittle-tattle.
The ministers, and those who aspire to become so, are quite proud to be
protected by a lady who has had the honour to see M. de Metternich at
the hours in which the great man, to refresh himself after the weight
of business, amused himself by unravelling silk. Ridicule awaited
Madame de Lieven in Paris. A serious doctrinaire[179] has fallen at
Omphale's feet: "Love, 'twas thou lost Troy."

The day was thus distributed in London: at six o'clock in the morning,
one hastened to a party of pleasure, consisting of a breakfast in
the country; one returned to lunch in London; one changed one's
dress to walk in Bond Street or Hyde Park; one dressed again to dine
at half-past seven; one dressed again for the Opera; at midnight,
one dressed once more for an evening party or rout. What a life of
enchantment! I should a hundred times have preferred the galleys.
The supreme height of fashion was to be unable to make one's way
into the small rooms of a private ball, to remain on the stair-case
blocked by the crowd, and to find one's self nose to nose with the
Duke of Somerset[180]; a state of beatitude to which I once attained.
The English of the new breed are infinitely more frivolous than we;
their heads are turned for a "show:" if the Paris executioner were
to go to London, all England would run after him. Did not Marshal
Soult enrapture the ladies[181], like Blücher, whose mustachios they
kissed? Our marshal, who is not Antipater[182], nor Antigonus[183],
nor Seleucus[184], nor Antiochus[185], nor Ptolemy[186], nor any
of the captain-kings of Alexander, is a distinguished soldier, who
pillaged Spain while getting beaten, and with whom Capuchins redeemed
their lives with pictures. But it is true that, in March 1814, he
published a furious proclamation against Bonaparte, whom he received
in triumph a few days later: he has since done his Easter duty at
Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin. They show his old boots in London for a shilling.

[Sidenote: English frivolity.]

All reputations are quickly made on the banks of the Thames and
as quickly lost. In 1822, I found that great city immersed in the
recollection of Bonaparte; the people had passed from the vilification
of "Nick" to a stupid enthusiasm. Memoirs of Bonaparte swarmed; his
bust adorned every chimney-piece; his engravings shone in the windows
of all the picture-dealers; his colossal statue, by Canova[187],
decorated the Duke of Wellington's stair-case. Could they not have
consecrated another sanctuary to Mars enchained? This deification seems
rather the work of the vanity of a door-porter than of the honour of
a warrior. General, you did not defeat Napoleon at Waterloo: you only
forced the last link of a destiny already shattered.

After my official presentation to George IV., I saw him several
times. The recognition of the Spanish Colonies by England was pretty
well decided upon; at least it seemed as though the ships of those
independent States were to be received under their own flag in the
ports of the British Empire. My dispatch of the 7th of May reports
a conversation which I had had with Lord Londonderry, and the ideas
of that minister. This dispatch, important for the affairs of that
time, would be almost without interest for the reader of to-day. Two
things had to be distinguished in the position of the Spanish Colonies
with regard to England and France: commercial interests and political
interests. I entered into the details of those interests:

"The more I see of the Marquess of Londonderry," I wrote
to M. de Montmorency, "the subtler I find him. He is a man
full of resource, who never says what he means; one would
sometimes be tempted to think him a simple, easy man. In his
voice, his laugh, his look, he has something of M. Pozzo di
Borgo. He does not exactly inspire one with confidence."

The dispatch concludes thus:

"If Europe is obliged to recognise the _de facto_ governments
in America, its whole policy must tend to bring monarchies
to life in the New World, instead of these revolutionary
republics which will send us their principles together with
the products of their soil.

"In reading this dispatch, monsieur le vicomte, you
will doubtless, like myself, experience a movement of
satisfaction. It is already a great step forward in politics
to have forced England to wish to associate herself with us
in interests on which she would not have deigned to consult
us six months ago. I congratulate myself as a good Frenchman
on all that tends to put back our country in the high rank
which she should occupy among foreign nations."

[Illustration: Duc de Richelieu.]

This letter was the basis of all my ideas and of all the negociations
on colonial affairs with which I occupied myself during the Spanish
War, almost a year before that war broke out.

On the 17th of May, I went to Covent Garden, in the Duke of York's[188]
box. The King appeared. This sovereign, once detested, was greeted
with acclamations such as he would not, in other days, have received
from the monks, the inhabitants of that former convent. On the 26th,
the Duke of York came to dinner at the Embassy: George IV. was greatly
tempted to do me the same honour, but he feared the diplomatic
jealousies of my colleagues.

[Sidenote: Death of the Duc de Richelieu.]

The Vicomte de Montmorency refused to enter into negociations on the
Spanish Colonies with the Cabinet of St. James. On the 19th of May, I
heard of the almost sudden death of M. le Duc de Richelieu[189]. That
honest man had patiently borne his first retirement from office; but,
when business came to be taken from him for too long a time, he failed
because he had not a double life to replace that which he had lost. The
great name of Richelieu has been handed down to our time only by women.

The revolutions continued in America. I wrote to M. de Montmorency:

No. 26.

"LONDON, 28 _May_ 1822.

"Peru has just adopted a monarchical Constitution. European
policy should employ every care to obtain a similar result
in the case of the colonies which declare themselves
independent. The United States are singularly afraid of the
establishment of an empire in Mexico. If ever the whole of
the New World is Republican, the monarchies of the Old World
will perish."

There was much spoken of the distress of the Irish peasants, and
society danced in order to console them. A great full-dress ball at the
Opera occupied sensitive souls. The King, meeting me in a corridor,
asked me what I was doing there and, taking me by the arm, he led me
to his box.

The English pit, in my days of exile, was noisy and coarse; sailors
drank ale in the pit, ate oranges, apostrophized the boxes. I found
myself one evening next to a sailor who had entered the theatre drunk;
he asked me where he was; I told him:

"At Covent Garden."

"Pretty garden, indeed!" he exclaimed, seized, like Homer's gods, with
inextinguishable laughter.

Invited lately to an evening-party at Lord Lansdowne's[190], I was
presented by His Majesty to a severe-looking lady, seventy-three years
old: she was dressed in crape, wore a black veil like a diadem on her
white hair, and resembled a queen who had abdicated her throne. She
greeted me in a solemn voice with three mangled sentences from the
_Génie du Christianisme_; then she said to me, with no less solemnity:

"I am Mrs Siddons[191]."

If she had said to me, "I am Lady Macbeth," I should have believed her.
I had seen her formerly on the stage in all the strength of her talent.
One has but to live to find again those wrecks of one century cast by
the billows of time upon the shore of another century.

My French visitors in London were M. le Duc[192] and Madame la Duchesse
de Guiche[193], of whom I will talk to you at Prague; M. le Marquis
de Custine, whom I had seen as a child at Fervacques; and Madame la
Vicomtesse de Noailles[194], as agreeable, witty and gracious as though
she were still wandering, at fourteen years of age, in the beautiful
gardens of Méréville.

People were weary of pleasure; the ambassadors were longing to go on
leave; Prince Esterhazy was preparing to set out for Vienna: he hoped
to be summoned to the Congress, for already they were speaking of a
congress. M. Rothschild[195] was returning to France after concluding
with his brother the Russian loan of twenty-three million roubles.
The Duke of Bedford[196] had fought a duel with the huge Duke of
Buckingham[197], at the bottom of a pit, in Hyde Park; an insulting
song against the King of France, sent over from Paris and printed
in the London papers, amused the Radical English mob, which laughed
without knowing at what.

I left, on the 6th of June, for Royal Lodge, where the King had gone.
He had invited me to dine and sleep.

[Sidenote: George IV.]

I saw George IV. again on the 12th, 13th and 14th, at His Majesty's
levee, drawing-room and ball. On the 24th, I gave a fête to the
Prince[198] and Princess[199] of Denmark: the Duke of York had invited
himself to it.

In earlier times, the kindness with which the Marchioness Conyngham
treated me would have been an important thing: she told me that the
idea of His Britannic Majesty's visit to the Continent was not quite
abandoned. I religiously kept this great secret locked in my bosom.
What important dispatches would have been written on this word of a
favourite in the time of Mesdames de Verneuil[200], de Maintenon[201],
des Ursins[202], de Pompadour! For the rest I should have heated
myself unduly to obtain any information out of the Court in London: in
vain do you speak, they do not listen to you.

Lord Londonderry especially was impassive: he embarrassed you at once
by his sincerity as a minister and his reserve as a man. He explained
his policy frankly, with the iciest air, and kept a profound silence as
to facts. He wore an air of indifference to what he said, even as to
what he did not say; one could not tell what one was to believe of what
he showed or concealed. He would not have budged if you had "caught him
in the ear with a sausage," as Saint-Simon says.

Lord Londonderry had a sort of Irish eloquence which often aroused
the laughter of the House of Lords and the gaiety of the public; his
blunders were celebrated, but he also sometimes attained flashes of
eloquence which carried away the crowd, as, for instance, his words
relating to the Battle of Waterloo, which I have recalled.

Lord Harrowby[203] was President of the Council; he spoke correctly,
lucidly, and as one acquainted with the facts. It would be considered
unbecoming in London for a president of the ministers to express
himself prolixly or rhetorically. He was, moreover, a perfect
gentleman for manner. One day, at the Pâquis, at Geneva, an Englishman
was announced: Lord Harrowby entered; I recognised him only with
difficulty: he had lost his old King; mine was exiled. It was the last
time that the England of my time of grandeur appeared before me.

I have mentioned Sir Robert Peel[204] and Lord Westmorland[205] in the
_Congrès de Vérone._

I do not know if Lord Bathurst[206] was descended from or related to
that Earl Bathurst[207] of whom Sterne wrote:

"This nobleman ... is a prodigy; for at eighty-five he has all the wit
and promptness of a man of thirty. A disposition to be pleased, and a
power to please others beyond whatever I knew[208]."

Lord Bathurst, the minister of whom I am telling you, was well-informed
and well-bred; he kept up the tradition of the old French manners of
good company. He had three or four daughters who ran, or rather who
flew like sea-swallows, along the waves, white, tall, and slender. What
has become of them[209]? Did they fall into the Tiber with the young
Englishwoman of their name?

[Sidenote: The Earl of Liverpool.]

Lord Liverpool[210] was not, like Lord Londonderry, the principal
minister; but he was the most influential and the most respected
minister. He enjoyed that reputation of a religious man and a good man
which does so much for him who possesses it; one comes to such a man
with the confidence which one has for a father; no action seems good
if it is not approved by that godly person, invested with an authority
far superior to that of talent. Lord Liverpool was the son of Charles
Jenkinson, Baron Hawkesbury, Earl of Liverpool[211], the favourite
of Lord Bute[212]. Almost all the English statesmen have begun with
the literary career, with pieces of poetry more or less good, or with
articles, generally excellent, inserted in the reviews. A portrait
remains of this first Earl of Liverpool when he was private secretary
to Lord Bute; his family is greatly distressed by it: this vanity,
puerile at all times, is doubtless much more so to-day; but we must
not forget that our most ardent revolutionaries took their hatred of
society from natural disgraces or social inferiorities.

It is possible that Lord Liverpool, who was inclined towards reforms,
and to whom Mr. Canning owed his last ministry, was influenced,
despite the rigour of his religious principles, by some dislike of
recollections. At the time when I knew Lord Liverpool, he had almost
reached a Puritan illumination. Habitually he lived alone with an old
sister, some miles out of London. He spoke little; his countenance
was melancholy; he often bent an ear and seemed to be listening to
something sad: one would have said that he was hearing his years fall,
like the drops of a winter's rain upon the pavement. For the rest, he
had no passions and he lived according to God.

Mr. Croker[213], Secretary to the Admiralty, famous as a speaker and as
a writer, belonged, like Mr. Canning, to the school of Mr. Pitt; but he
was more sophisticated than the latter. He occupied, at Whitehall, one
of those gloomy apartments from which Charles I. had passed through a
window to walk on the same level to the scaffold. One is astonished, in
London, on entering the habitations where sit the directors of those
establishments whose weight makes itself felt to the ends of the earth.
A few men in black frock-coats sitting at a bare table: that is all you
see; yet those are the directors of the British Navy, or the members of
that company of merchants, the successors of the Mogul emperors, who
number two-hundred millions of subjects in India.

Mr. Croker came to visit me, two years ago, at the Infirmerie de
Marie-Thérèse. He pointed out to me the similarity of our opinions and
of our destinies. Events separate us from the world; politics make
solitaries, even as religion makes anchorites. When man dwells in the
desert, he finds within himself some distant image of the Infinite
Being who, living alone in immensity, sees the revolutions of the
worlds accomplish themselves.

In the course of the months of June and July, the affairs of Spain
began seriously to occupy the Cabinet of London. Lord Londonderry and
the majority of the ambassadors displayed a ludicrous anxiety and
almost dread in talking of these affairs. The Ministry feared lest,
in case of a rupture, we should get the better of the Spaniards; the
ministers of the other Powers trembled lest we should be beaten: they
still saw our army taking the tricolour cockade.

[Sidenote: Dispatch on Spanish affairs.]

In my dispatch of the 28th of June, No. 35, the dispositions of England
are faithfully stated:

No. 35.

"LONDON, 28 _June_ 1822.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"It has been more difficult for me to tell you what Lord
Londonderry thinks, relative to Spain, than it will be easy
for me to penetrate the secret of the instructions given to
Sir W. A'Court[214]; however, I will leave nothing undone
to procure you the information for which you ask me in
your last dispatch, No. 18. If I have correctly estimated
the policy of the English Cabinet and the character of
Lord Londonderry, I am persuaded that Sir W. A'Court has
taken with him scarcely anything in writing. They will have
charged him verbally to observe the parties without mixing
in their quarrels. The Cabinet of St. James does not love
the Cortes, but it despises Ferdinand. It will certainly do
nothing for the Royalists. Besides, it will be enough that
our influence should be exercised in favour of one opinion
for the English influence to support the other. Our reviving
prosperity inspires a lively jealousy. It is true that there
is here, among the statesmen, a certain vague fear of the
revolutionary passions which are agitating Spain; but this
fear is silent in the presence of private interests: so much
so that if, on the one hand, Great Britain could exclude our
wares from the Peninsula and if, on the other, she could
recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies, she
would easily resign herself to events and console herself
for the misfortunes which might overwhelm the Continental
monarchies anew. The same principle that prevents England
from withdrawing her ambassador from Constantinople makes her
send an ambassador to Madrid: she severs herself from the
common destinies and attends only to what she may be able to
make out of the revolutions of the empires.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

Reverting to the news from Spain in my dispatch of the 16th of July,
No. 40, I said to M. de Montmorency:

No. 40.

"LONDON, 16 _July_ 1822.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"The English newspapers, copying from the French newspapers,
this morning give news from Madrid up to and including the
8th. I never expected better from the King of Spain, and
I was not surprised. If that unhappy Prince is doomed to
perish, the manner of the catastrophe is not a matter of
indifference to the rest of the world: the dagger would
lay low only the Monarch, the scaffold might kill the
Monarchy. Already the judgments on Charles I. and Louis
XVI. are a great deal too much: Heaven preserve us from a
third judgment which would appear to establish, through the
authority of crimes, a sort of right of peoples and a body of
jurisprudence against the kings! We can now expect anything:
a declaration of war on the part of the Spanish Government
is one of the chances which the French Government must have
foreseen. In any case, we shall soon be obliged to put an end
to the sanitary cordon, for, once the month of September is
past and the plague not reappearing at Barcelona, it would
be a real mockery still to speak of a _sanitary cordon_; we
should therefore quite frankly confess to an _army_ and give
the reason which obliges us to maintain that army. Would
not that be equivalent to a declaration of war against the
Cortes? On the other hand, shall we break up the sanitary
cordon? That act of weakness would compromise the safety of
France, disgrace the ministry and revive the hopes of the
revolutionary faction in our midst.

"I have the honour to be, etc., etc., etc."

Since the Congress of Vienna and of Aix-la-Chapelle, the princes of
Europe had their heads turned with congresses: it was there that one
amused one's self and divided a few peoples. Scarcely was the Congress,
commenced at Laibach and continued at Troppau, ended, when they thought
of convoking another in Vienna, at Ferrara, or at Verona; Spanish
affairs offered the occasion to hasten the moment. Each Court had
already marked out its ambassador.

In London, I saw every one preparing to leave for Verona: as my head
was full of Spanish affairs and as I was dreaming of a plan for the
honour of France, I thought I could be of some use to the new congress
by making myself known in a respect which was not thought of. I had
written to M. de Montmorency on the 24th of May; but I met with no
favour. The minister's long reply is evasive, embarrassed, entangled;
a marked aversion to me is ill-disguised under expressions of
friendliness; it ends with this paragraph:

"Since I am in a confidential mood, noble viscount, I wish
to tell you what I would not insert in an official dispatch,
but what has been urged upon me by some personal observations
and also by some opinions from persons who know the ground
well upon which you are placed. Has it not already occurred
to you that one must be mindful, with the English Ministry,
of certain effects of jealousy and temper which it is always
ready to conceive at direct marks of favour with the King
and of credit in society? You must tell me if you have not
happened to observe some traces of this."

Through whom had the complaints of my "credit" with the King and in
"society" (meaning, I suppose, with the Marchioness Conyngham) reached
the Vicomte de Montmorency? I do not know.

[Sidenote: Letter from M. de Villèle.]

Foreseeing, through this private dispatch, that my game was lost with
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I addressed myself to M. de Villèle,
then my friend, who did not lean much towards his colleague. In his
letter of the 5th of May 1822, he at first replied with a favourable
word:

"PARIS, 5 _May_ 1822.

"I thank you," he said, "for all that you have done for us in
London; the determination of the Court there on the subject
of the Spanish Colonies can have no influence on ours; the
position is very different; we must above all avoid being
prevented by a war with Spain from acting elsewhere, as we
must, if affairs in the East brought about new political
combinations in Europe.

"We will not allow the French Government to be disgraced
through a failure to participate in the events which may
result from the present situation of the world; others may
intervene with more advantage, none with more courage or
loyalty.

"People are greatly mistaken, I think, both as to the real
means of our country and as to the power which the King's
Government is still able to exercise within the forms which
it has laid down for itself; they offer more resources than
appears to be believed, and I hope that, when the time comes,
we shall know how to prove it.

"You will help us, my dear friend, in these great
circumstances, if they offer themselves. We know it and rely
upon it; the honour will be for all, and it is not a question
at present of that partition which will be made according to
the services rendered; let us all vie in zeal as to who shall
render the most signal services.

"I do not know, indeed, if this will turn to a congress; but,
in any case, I shall not forget what you have told me.

"JH. DE VILLÈLE."

At this first word of good understanding, I brought pressure on the
Minister of Finance through Madame la Duchesse de Duras; she had
already lent me the support of her friendship against the forgetfulness
of the Court in 1814. She soon received this note from M. de Villèle:

"All that we were saying is said; all that lies in my heart
and in my mind to do for the public good and for my friend is
done and shall be done, be certain of it. I have no need to
be preached to nor to be converted, as I said before; I act
on conviction and sentiment.

"Receive, madame, the homage of my affectionate respect."

My last dispatch, dated 9 August, informed M. de Montmorency that Lord
Londonderry would leave for Vienna between the 15th and 20th. The swift
and mighty contradiction of mortal projects was given me; I thought
that I had to speak to the Most Christian King's Council of human
affairs only, whereas I had to report to it on the affairs of God:

[Sidenote: Death of Lord Londonberry.]

"LONDON, 12 _August_ 1822, _four o'clock in the afternoon.

"Dispatch transmitted to Paris by the Calais telegraph._

"The Marquess of Londonderry died suddenly this morning,
12th, at nine o'clock in the morning, at his country-house at
North Cray."

[Illustration: Marquess of Londonderry.]

No. 49.

"LONDON, 13 _August_ 1822.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"If the weather has put no obstacle in the way of my
telegraphic dispatch, and if no accident has arrived to my
special messenger, sent off at four o'clock, I hope that you
have been the first on the Continent to receive the news of
the sudden death of Lord Londonderry.

"This death was extremely tragic. The noble marquess was in
London on Friday; he felt his head a little troubled; he had
himself bled between the shoulders. After which he left for
North Cray, where the Marchioness of Londonderry had been
settled since a month. Fever broke out on Saturday the 10th
and Sunday the 11th; but it seemed to subside in the night
from Sunday to Monday, and on Monday morning the 12th the
patient seemed so well that his wife, who was nursing him,
thought she might leave him for a moment. Lord Londonderry,
whose head was wandering, finding himself alone, got up, went
into another room, seized a razor and, at the first attempt,
cut his jugular vein. He fell bathed in his blood, at the
feet of a doctor who was coming to his assistance.

"They are keeping back this deplorable accident as much as
possible, but it has come to the knowledge of the public in a
distorted shape and has given rise to all sorts of rumours.

"Why should Lord Londonderry have attempted his life? He
had neither passions nor misfortunes; he was established
more firmly than ever in his place. He was preparing to
leave on Thursday next. He was making a pleasure-trip of a
business journey. He was to be back on the 15th of October
for shooting-parties, arranged beforehand, to which he
had invited me. Providence ordained otherwise, and Lord
Londonderry has followed the Duc de Richelieu."

Here are some details which did not enter into my dispatches.

On his return to London, George IV. told me that Lord Londonderry had
gone to show him the scheme of instructions which he had drawn up for
himself and which he was to follow at the Congress. George IV. took up
the manuscript, the better to weigh its terms, and began to read it
aloud. He noticed that Lord Londonderry was not listening to him and
that he was turning his eyes round the ceiling of the closet:

"What's the matter, my lord?" asked the King.

"It's that insufferable John[215], sir, who is at the door; he will not
go away, though I am always telling him."

The King, astonished, folded up the manuscript and said:

"You are ill, my lord; go home; get yourself bled."

Lord Londonderry went out and went to buy the pen-knife with which he
cut his throat.

On the 15th, I continued my reports to M. de Montmorency:

"Messengers have been sent in every direction, to the
watering-places, to the sea-side, to the country-houses,
to fetch the absent ministers. At the time of the accident
none of them were in London. They are expected to-day or
to-morrow; they will hold a Council, but they cannot decide
anything, for in the last result the King will appoint
their new colleague, and the King is in Edinburgh. It is
unlikely that His Britannic Majesty will hasten to make a
choice in the midst of the celebrations. The death of the
Marquess of Londonderry is a serious matter for England:
he was not loved, but he was feared; the Radicals hated
him, but they were afraid of him. Singularly courageous, he
overawed the Opposition, which did not dare to insult him too
much in Parliament or in the newspapers. His imperturbable
coolness, his profound indifference for men and things,
his instinct for despotism and his secret contempt for
constitutional liberties made him a minister well-fitted to
contend successfully with the tendencies of the century. His
defects became good qualities at a time when exaggeration and
democracy threaten the world.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"LONDON, 15 _August_ 1822.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"Further intelligence confirms what I had the honour to tell
you touching the death of the Marquess of Londonderry, in my
ordinary dispatch of the day before yesterday, No. 49. Only,
the fatal instrument with which the unfortunate minister
cut his jugular vein was a pen-knife, and not a razor as I
told you. The coroner's report, which you will read in the
newspapers, will inform you fully. This inquest held on the
corpse of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, as though on
the body of a murderer, adds something still more terrible to
this event

"You are doubtless now aware, monsieur le vicomte, that Lord
Londonderry had shown proofs of mental alienation some days
before his suicide and that the King himself had noticed it.
A slight circumstance to which I had paid no attention, but
which returned to my memory after the catastrophe, deserves
to be told. I had gone to see the Marquess of Londonderry,
some twelve or fifteen days ago. Contrary to his custom and
to the custom of the country, he received me familiarly
in his dressing-room. He was about to shave himself and,
laughing a sardonic laugh, he spoke to me in praise of the
English razors. I complimented him on the approaching closing
of the session:

"'Yes,' said he, 'either that must come to an end, or I must.'

"I have the honour to be, etc."

[Sidenote: Details of the suicide.]

All that the English Radicals and the French Liberals have told
concerning the death of Lord Londonderry, namely, that he killed
himself through political despair, feeling that the principles
opposed to his own were going to triumph, is a pure fable invented by
the imagination of some, the party spirit and silliness of others.
Lord Londonderry was not the man to repent of having sinned against
humanity, for which he cared very little, nor against the enlightenment
of the age, for which he had a profound contempt: madness had come into
the Castlereagh family through the women.

It was decided that the Duke of Wellington, accompanied by Lord
Clanwilliam, should take Lord Londonderry's place at the Congress. The
official instructions were reduced to this: to forget Italy entirely,
not to mix at all in the affairs of Spain, to negociate, where those of
the East were concerned, by maintaining peace without increasing the
influence of Russia. The chances continued in favour of Mr. Canning,
and the business of the Foreign Office was entrusted _ad interim_ to
Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary.

I attended Lord Londonderry's funeral at Westminster on the 20th of
August. The Duke of Wellington appeared moved; Lord Liverpool was
obliged to cover his face with his hat to hide his tears. One heard a
few cries of insult and joy outside, as the body entered the Abbey.
Were Colbert[216] and Louis XIV.[217] more respected? The living can
teach nothing to the dead; the dead, on the contrary, instruct the
living.

THE VICOMTE DE MONTMORENCY TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

"PARIS, 17 _August._

"Although there are no very important dispatches to entrust
to your faithful Hyacinthe, I wish nevertheless to send him
back, according to your own desire, noble viscount, and to
that which he has expressed to me, on behalf of Madame de
Chateaubriand, to see him return to you soon. I will make
use of this to send you a few words of a more confidential
character on the profound impression made upon us here, as in
London, by the terrible death of the Marquess of Londonderry,
and also, by the same occasion, on a matter to which you seem
to attach a very exaggerated and very exclusive interest.
The Council of the King has taken advantage of it and has
fixed for these days, immediately after the closing, which
took place this morning, the discussion of the principal
directions to be settled, the instructions to be given, and
also the persons to be selected: the first question is to
know if these will be one or several. You have somewhere, I
seem to think, expressed astonishment that we could think
of------, not to put you before him, you know very well
that he cannot be on the same line for us. If, after the
most mature examination, we did not think it possible to
avail ourselves of the good-will which you have very frankly
shown us in this respect, it would doubtless require, in
order to decide us, grave motives which I would communicate
to you with the same frankness: the postponement is rather
favourable to your desire, in this sense, that it would
be most inconvenient, both for you and for us, that you
should leave London within the next few weeks and before
the ministerial decision which continues to occupy all the
Cabinets. This strikes everybody so much that some friends
said to me the other day:

"'If M. de Chateaubriand had come at once to Paris, it would
have been rather annoying for him to be obliged to leave
again for London.'

"We therefore expect to make this important nomination on
the return from Edinburgh. The Chevalier Stuart[218] said
yesterday that surely the Duke of Wellington would go to
the Congress; it is important that we should know this at
the earliest possible moment. M. Hyde de Neuville arrived
yesterday in good health. I was delighted to see him. I renew
to you, noble viscount, all my inviolable sentiments.

"MONTMORENCY."

This new letter from M. de Montmorency, mingled with some ironical
phrases, fully confirmed my impression that he did not want me at the
Congress.

I gave a dinner on St. Louis' Day[219], in honour of Louis XVIII., and
I went to visit Hartwell in remembrance of the King's exile; I was
fulfilling a duty rather than enjoying a pleasure. Royal misfortunes
are so common nowadays that one feels but little interest in spots that
have not been inhabited by genius or virtue. All that I saw in the sad
little park at Hartwell was the daughter of Louis XVI.

[Sidenote: Plenipotentiary at Verona.]

At last, I suddenly received from M. de Villèle an unexpected note
which gave the lie to my previsions and put an end to my uncertainties:

"27 _August_ 1822.

"MY DEAR CHATEAUBRIAND,

"It has just been decided that, so soon as the proprieties
relating to the King's return to London permit you, you will
be authorized to come to Paris, thence to proceed to Vienna
or Verona, as one of the three plenipotentiaries charged to
represent France at the Congress. The two others will be
Messieurs de Caraman[220] and de La Ferronnays; which does
not prevent M. le Vicomte de Montmorency from leaving the
day after to-morrow for Vienna, in order to assist at the
conferences which may take place in that city before the
Congress. He is to return to Paris when the sovereigns leave
for Verona.

"This for yourself alone. I am glad that this matter has
taken the turn which you desire. Cordially and entirely
yours."

Upon this note, I prepared to leave.

The thunder-bolt which incessantly falls at my feet followed me
everywhere. With Lord Londonderry died old England, which had struggled
on till then in the midst of growing innovations. Supervened Mr.
Canning: self-love carried him so far as to talk the language of the
propagandist from his place in Parliament After him appeared the
Duke of Wellington, a Conservative who came to pull down: when the
sentence of societies is pronounced, the hand which was to build
knows only how to demolish. Lord Grey[221], O'Connell[222], all those
labourers at ruins were working successively at the overthrow of the
old institutions. Parliamentary reform, Irish emancipation, all things
excellent in themselves, became, thanks to the insalubrity of the time,
causes of destruction. Fear increased the evils: if men had not been so
greatly terrified at the threats, they would have been able to resist
with a certain success.

What need had England to consent to our last troubles? Shut up in her
island and in her national enmities, she was sheltered. What need had
the Cabinet of St. James to dread the separation of Ireland? Ireland is
only England's long-boat: cut the painter, and the long-boat, separated
from the big ship, will go to wreck amid the waves. Lord Liverpool
himself had sad forebodings. I dined with him one day: after dinner,
we talked at a window overlooking the Thames; down the river we saw
a portion of the City, of which the fog and smoke enlarged the bulk.
I praised to my host the solidity of the English Monarchy, kept in
balance by the even swing of liberty and power. The venerable peer,
raising and stretching out his arm, pointed to the City and said:

"What sense of solidity can there be with these enormous towns? A
serious insurrection in London, and all is lost."

It seems to me as though I were finishing a journey in England like
that which I made, in earlier days, on the ruins of Athens, of
Jerusalem, of Memphis and Carthage. Summoning to my presence the
centuries of Albion, passing from renown to renown, seeing them
swallowed up by turns, I feel a sort of painful giddiness. What has
become of those brilliant and riotous days in which lived Shakespeare
and Milton, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Cromwell and William[223],
Pitt and Burke? All that is finished; superiorities and mediocrities,
hatreds and loves, bliss and wretchedness, oppressors and oppressed,
executioners and victims, kings and people, all sleep in the same
silence and the same dust. But what nullities we are, if it is thus
with the most living part of the human kind, with the genius which
lingers like a shadow of olden time in the present generation, but
which no longer lives in itself and which does not know that it ever
existed!

[Sidenote: Changes in England.]

How many times has England, in the space of a few hundred years, been
destroyed? Through how many revolutions has she not passed to come
to the brink of a greater, a more deep-laid revolution, which will
envelop posterity! I have seen those famous British parliaments in all
their mightiness: what will become of them? I have seen England in her
ancient manners and in her ancient prosperity: everywhere the little
lonely church with its steeple, Gray's country churchyard, everywhere
narrow and gravelled roads, valleys filled with cows, heaths spotted
with sheep, parks, country-houses, towns; few large forests, few birds,
the sea-breeze. It was not those plains of Andalusia, where I found the
old Christians and the young loves among the voluptuous remains of the
palace of the Moors in the midst of the aloes and palm-trees:

Quid dignum memorare tuis, Hispania, terris
Vox humana valet?

There was not that Roman Campagna, whose irresistible charm is
incessantly calling after me; those waves and that sun were not
the waves and the sun that bathe and light the promontory on which
Plato[224] taught his disciples, that Sunium where I heard the cricket
sing, in vain asking Minerva for the hearth of the priests of her
temple; but after all, such as she was, this England, surrounded by her
ships, covered with her herds and professing the cult of her great men,
was charming and redoubtable.

To-day her valleys are darkened by the smoke of forges and workshops,
her roads changed into iron ways; and along those roads, in lieu of
Milton and Shakespeare, move wandering boilers. Already the nurseries
of knowledge, Oxford and Cambridge, are assuming a deserted aspect:
their colleges and their Gothic chapels, half-abandoned, distress the
eye; in their cloisters, near the sepulchral stones of the middle ages,
lie, forgotten, the marble annals of the ancient peoples of Greece:
ruins guarding ruins.

By these monuments, around which the void was beginning to form, I
left that part of my spring days which I had re-found; I parted a
second time with my youth, on the same shore where I had abandoned it
formerly: Charlotte had suddenly reappeared like that luminary, the
delight of the shades, which, delayed by the flight of the months,
should rise in the middle of the night. If you are not too weary, read
in these Memoirs of the effect which the sudden vision of that woman
produced upon me in 1822. When she had distinguished me before, I did
not know those other Englishwomen who came to flock round me in my
hour of power and renown: their homage was as fickle as my fortune.
To-day, after sixteen new years have passed away since my embassy in
London, after so many new destructions, my eyes are carried back to
the daughter of the land of Desdemona and Juliet: she counts now in my
memory only from the day on which her unexpected presence rekindled the
torch of my recollections. A new Epimenides[225], awakened after a long
sleep, I fix my gaze upon a beacon so much the brighter in that the
others are extinguished along the shore; one alone excepted will shine
long after me.

I did not finish telling all that concerns Charlotte in the preceding
pages of these Memoirs: she came with a part of her family to see
me in France, when I was a minister, in 1823. Through one of those
inexplicable miseries of mankind, preoccupied as I was with a war on
which depended the fate of the French Monarchy, something must no doubt
have been lacking in my voice, for Charlotte, returning to England,
left me a letter in which she shows herself hurt at the coldness of my
reception. I have dared neither to write to her nor to send back to her
some literary fragments which she had restored to me and which I had
promised to return to her augmented. If it were true that she had had a
genuine reason to complain, I would fling into the fire all that I have
told of my first sojourn across the sea.

Often the thought has come to me to go to solve my doubts; but could
I return to England, I, who am weak enough not to dare to visit the
paternal rock on which I have marked out my tomb? I am afraid nowadays
of my sensations: time, removing my young years, has made me like those
soldiers whose limbs have been left on the battle-field; my blood,
having a less long road to travel, rushes into my heart with so rapid a
flow that that old organ of my joys and sorrows throbs as though ready
to burst. The wish to burn all that concerns Charlotte, although she is
treated with religious respect, is mingled in my mind with the longing
to destroy these Memoirs: if they still belonged to me, or if I could
buy them back, I should succumb to the temptation. I have so great
a distaste for everything, so great a contempt for the present and
for the immediate future, so firm a conviction that men, henceforth,
taken all together as a public (and that for several centuries), will
be pitiable, that I blush to consume my last moments in the relating
of past things, in the depicting of a finished world, of which the
language and the name will no more be understood.

[Sidenote: Memories of Lady Sutton.]

Man is as much deceived by the success of his wishes as by their
disappointment: I had desired, contrary to my natural instinct, to go
to the Congress; taking advantage of a prejudice of M. de Villèle's,
I had induced him to force M. de Montmorency's hand. Well, my real
inclination was not for that which I had obtained; I should doubtless
have felt some spite, if I had been compelled to remain in England; but
soon the idea of going to see Lady Sutton, of making a journey through
the three kingdoms would have mastered the impulse of a superadded
ambition which is not inherent in my nature. God ordained differently,
and I left for Verona: thence the change in my life, thence my
ministry, the Spanish War, my triumph, my fall, soon followed by that
of the Monarchy.

One of the two handsome children on whose behalf Charlotte had asked me
to interest myself, in 1822, has just been to see me in Paris: he is
now Captain Sutton; he is married to a charming young wife, and he has
told me that his mother has been very ill and has lately spent a winter
in London.

I embarked at Dover on the 8th of September 1822, at the same port
from which, twenty-two years earlier, "M. La Sagne of Neuchâtel" had
set sail. Between that first departure to the moment of writing,
thirty-nine years have elapsed. When a man looks upon or listens to his
past life, he seems to perceive on a deserted sea the track of a vessel
that has disappeared; he seems to hear the tolling of a bell of which
the old tower is not in sight.

Here, in the order of dates, comes the place of the _Congrès de
Vérone_[226], which I have published in two volumes apart. Should any
one, by chance, feel a wish to read it, he can find it everywhere.
My Spanish War, the great political event of my life, was a gigantic
undertaking. The Legitimacy was for the first time about to burn
powder under the White Flag, to fire its first gun-shot after those
gun-shots of the Empire which will be audible to the utmost posterity.
To bestride Spain with one step, to succeed on the same soil where
formerly a conqueror's arms had encountered reverses, to do in six
months what he was unable to do in seven years: who could have laid
claim to that prodigy? That is, however, what I did; but by how many
curses has not my head been smitten at the gaming-table at which the
Restoration had seated me! I had before me a France hostile to the
Bourbons, and two great foreign ministers, Prince von Metternich and
Mr. Canning. Not a day passed but I received letters prophesying a
catastrophe, for the war with Spain was not at all popular, either
in France or in Europe. Indeed, some time after my successes in the
Peninsula, my fall was not long in arriving.

In our ardour, after the receipt of the telegraphic dispatch announcing
the deliverance of the King of Spain, we ministers hastened to the
Palace. There I had a presentiment of my fall; I received a bucketful
of cold water over my ears which brought me back to my habitual
humility. The King and Monsieur did not notice us. Madame la Duchesse
d'Angoulême, distracted by her husband's triumph, had eyes for nobody.
That immortal victim wrote a letter on Ferdinand's deliverance ending
in this exclamation, sublime in the mouth of a daughter of Louis XVI.:

"So it is proved that one can save an unfortunate king!"

On the Sunday, I returned, before the meeting of the council, to pay
my court to the Royal Family; the august Princess spoke an obliging
sentence to each of my colleagues: to me she did not address a word. I
did not, certainly, deserve such an honour. The silence of the orphan
of the Temple can never be ungrateful: Heaven has a right to the
worship of the earth and owes nothing to any one.

I then lingered on till Whitsuntide; still, my friends were not without
anxiety; they often said to me:

[Sidenote: Dismissed from office.]

"You will be dismissed to-morrow."

"This minute, if they like," I used to reply.

On Whitsunday, the 6th of June 1824, I had found my way to the first
drawing-rooms of Monsieur: an usher came to tell me that I was being
asked for. It was Hyacinthe, my secretary. He told me, when he saw me,
that I was no longer in office. I opened the packet which he handed me;
I found in it this note from M. de Villèle:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"In obedience to the King's orders, I am at once
communicating to Your Excellency a decree which His Majesty
has just issued.

"The Sieur Comte de Villèle, President of our Council of
Ministers, is charged _ad interim_ with the business of the
Foreign Office, _vice_ the Sieur Vicomte de Chateaubriand."

This decree was written in the hand of M. de Rainneville[227], who is
good enough still to be embarrassed at it in my presence. Why, gracious
Heaven! Do I know M. de Rainneville? Have I ever given him a thought?
I meet him pretty often. Has he ever perceived that I knew that the
decree by which I was struck off the list of ministers was written in
his hand?

And yet, what had I done? Where did my intrigues or my ambition lie?
Had I desired M. de Villèle's place, when going alone and in secret
to walk in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne? It was that strange
life that ruined me. I had the simplicity to remain as Heaven had
made me and, because I longed for nothing, they thought that I wanted
everything. To-day I can very well imagine that my life apart was a
great mistake. What! You do not want to be anything? Go away! We do not
choose that a man should despise what we worship, nor that he should
think himself entitled to insult the mediocrity of our life.

The difficulties of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty followed me
to my lodging in the Rue de l'Université: on the day of my dismissal, I
had invitations sent out for a huge dinner-party at the Foreign Office;
I had to send excuses to my guests and to pack three great courses,
prepared for forty persons, into my little kitchen for two people.
Montmirel and his assistants set to work and, cramming saucepans,
frying-pans and stewpans into every corner, he put his warmed-up
master-piece under shelter. An old friend came to share the marooned
sailor's first meal. The Town and the Court came hastening up, for
there was but one voice on the outrageousness of my dismissal after
the service which I had just rendered; they were convinced that my
disgrace would not last long; they gave themselves airs of independence
in consoling a misfortune of a few days, at the end of which they would
profitably remind the unlucky man returned to power that they had not
abandoned him.

They were mistaken; they wasted their courage; they had reckoned on
my lack of spirit, on my whining, on my toad-eating ambition, on my
eagerness to plead guilty, to wait standing on those who had driven me
out: they ill knew me. I retired without even claiming the salary which
was due to me, without receiving a favour or a groat from the Court; I
closed my door to whosoever had betrayed me; I refused the condoling
crowd, and I took up arms. Then all dispersed; universal condemnation
burst forth, and my game, which had at first seemed fine to the
drawing-rooms and ante-chambers, appeared horrible.

Should I not have done better, after my discharge, to be silent? Had
not the brutality of the proceeding brought back the public to me?
M. de Villèle has repeatedly said that the letter of dismissal was
delayed; by this accident it had the misfortune to be handed to me
only at the Palace. Perhaps this was so; but, when we play, we must
calculate the chances of the game; we must, above all, not write to a
friend of any worth a letter which we should be ashamed to address to
a guilty footman whom we would put out of doors without ceremony or
remorse. The irritation of the Villèle party against myself was the
greater inasmuch as they wished to appropriate my work to themselves
and as I had displayed ability in matters of which I had been supposed
to know nothing.

No doubt, with silence and moderation, as they said, I should have been
lauded by the race who live in perpetual adoration of the portfolio;
by doing penance for my innocence, I should have prepared my return to
the Council. It would have been more in the common course of things;
but that was taking me for the man I am not; that was suspecting me of
a desire to recapture the helm of the State, the wish to make my way:
a desire and a wish which would not occur to me in a hundred thousand
years.

The idea which I had of representative government led me to enter the
Opposition: the systematic Opposition seems to me the only one suited
to that form of government; the Opposition known as "conscientious"
is impotent. Conscience can decide a moral fact, it is no judge of
an intellectual fact. It is absolutely necessary to place one's self
under a leader, an appraiser of good laws and bad. If this be not so,
then your deputy takes his stupidity for his conscience and votes
accordingly. The so-called "conscientious Opposition" consists in
fluctuating between the parties, in champing the bit, in even voting,
should the case require, for the Ministry, in appearing magnanimous
although fretting: an Opposition of mutinous imbecilities among the
soldiers, of ambitious capitulations among the chiefs. So long as
England was sane, she never had other than a systematic Opposition:
a man came in and went out with his friends; on leaving office, he
took his place on the bench of the assailants. As he was considered to
have resigned because he did not wish to accept a system, that system,
being retained by the Crown, must necessarily be combated. Now as men
represent only principles, the systematic Opposition aimed only at
carrying _principles_ when it attacked _men._

[Sidenote: Effects of my fall.]

My fall made a great noise: those who displayed the most satisfaction
censured its form. I have since learnt that M. de Villèle hesitated; M.
de Corbière decided the question:

"If he enters the Council by one door," he is reported to have said, "I
go out by the other[228]."

I was allowed to go out: it was quite simple that they should prefer M.
de Corbière to me. I bear him no ill-will: I was troubling him, he had
me turned out; he did well.

The day after my dismissal and the following days, the _Journal des
Débats_ contained these words, which do such honour to the Messieurs
Bertin:

"This is the second time that M. de Chateaubriand stands the
test of a solemn dismissal.

"He was dismissed as a minister of State, in 1816, for
having attacked in his immortal work on the _Monarchie selon
la Charte_, the famous decree of the 5th of September,
pronouncing the dissolution of the _Chambre introuvable_ of
1815. Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière were then simple
deputies, leaders of the Royalist Opposition, and it was for
taking up their defense that M. de Chateaubriand became the
victim of the ministerial anger.

"Now, in 1824, M. de Chateaubriand is again dismissed, and it
is Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière, since become ministers,
who sacrifice him. Singular thing! In 1816, he was punished
for speaking; in 1824, they punish him for holding his
tongue: his crime is that he kept silence in the discussion
on the law for reducing the rate of interest. Not every
disgrace is a misfortune; public opinion, the supreme judge,
will tell us in which class to place M. de Chateaubriand; it
will tell us also to whom this day's decree shall have proved
the more fatal, to the victor or the vanquished.

"Who would have said, at the commencement of the session,
that we should thus spoil the results of the Spanish
Enterprise? What did we want this year? Nothing except the
Septennial Act (but, the complete Act) and the Budget. The
affairs of Spain, of the East, of the Americas, conducted as
they were, prudently and silently, would have been cleared
up; the fairest future lay before us; they wanted to gather
green fruit; it did not fall, and they imagined that they
could remedy precipitation by violence.

"Anger and envy are evil counsellors; it is not by means of
the passions and by proceeding with jerks and starts that
States are governed.

"_P.S._--The Septennial Act has been passed this evening
in the Chamber of Deputies. One may say that M. de
Chateaubriand's doctrines triumph after he has left the
Ministry. This Act, which he had long ago conceived as the
complement of our institutions, will, together with the
Spanish War, for ever mark his passing in public life. It
is very keenly regretted that M. de Corbière should, on
Saturday, have snatched the opportunity of speaking from him
who was then his illustrious colleague. The Chamber of Peers
would at least have heard the swan's song.

"As for ourselves, it is with the liveliest regret that we
enter again upon a career of combats which we hoped that we
had, thanks to the union of the Royalists, abandoned for
ever; but honour, political loyalty, the good of France do
not permit us to hesitate as to the course which we should
take."

The signal for the reaction was thus given. M. de Villèle
was not too much alarmed by it at first; he did not know the
strength of men's opinions. Many years were necessary to
overthrow him, but he fell at last.

[Sidenote: Comments in the _Débuts._]

I received from the President of the Council a letter which
settled everything and which proved, to my great simplicity,
that I had taken nothing of that which makes a man respected
and respectable:

"PARIS, 16 _June_ 1824.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have hastened to lay before His Majesty the Order by which
you are granted a full and entire discharge for the sums
which you have received from the Royal Treasury, for secret
expenses, during the whole time of your ministry.

"The King has approved of all the provisions of this Order,
which I have the honour to forward you herewith in the
original.

"Accept, monsieur le vicomte, etc."

My friends and I expedited a prompt correspondence:

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE MARQUIS DE TALARU[229]

"PARIS, 9 _June_ 1824.

"I am no longer minister, my dear friend; they contend that
you are. When I obtained the Madrid Embassy for you, I said
to several persons who still remember it:

"'I have appointed my successor.'

"I am anxious to have been a prophet. M. de Villèle is
holding the portfolio _ad interim._

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE RAYNEVAL[230]

"PARIS, 16 _June_ 1824.

"I have finished, monsieur; I hope that you have still plenty
before you. I have endeavoured that you should have no reason
to complain of me.

"It is possible that I may retire to Neuchâtel, in
Switzerland; should that happen, ask His Prussian Majesty
beforehand for his protection and favours for me; present
my respects to Count Bernstorff, my kind regards to M.
Ancillon, and my compliments to all your secretaries[231].
You, monsieur, I beg to believe in my devotion and in my most
sincere attachment.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE MARQUIS DE CARAMAN[232]

"PARIS, 22 _June_ 1824.

"I have received, monsieur le marquis, your letters of
the 11th of this month. Others than I will tell you the
road which you will henceforth have to follow; if it is
conformable to what you have heard, it will carry you far.
It is probable that my dismissal will give M. de Metternich
great pleasure, for a fortnight or so.

"Receive, monsieur le marquis, my adieus and the renewed
assurance of my devotion and of my high regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE BARON HYDE DE
NEUVILLE[233]

"PARIS, 22 _June_ 1824.

"You will doubtless have heard of my dismissal. It remains
for me only to tell you how happy I have been to have with
you the relations that have now been broken off. Continue,
monsieur and old friend, to render services to your country,
but do not reckon too much on gratitude, nor believe that
your successes will be a reason for maintaining you in the
post where you are doing yourself so much honour.

"I wish you, monsieur, all the happiness that you deserve,
and I embrace you.

"_P.S._--I have this minute received your letter of the 5th
of this month, in which you inform me of M. de Mérona's[234]
arrival. I thank you for your good friendship; be sure that I
have looked for nothing else in your letters.

"CHATEAUBRIAND[235]."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE SERRE[236]

"PARIS, 23 _June_ 1824.

"My dismissal, monsieur le comte, will have proved to you
my inability to serve you; it but remains for me to express
the wish to see you where your talents call you. I am
retiring, happy to have contributed towards restoring to
France her military and political independence, and to have
introduced septenniality into her electoral system; it is not
what I wanted it to be; the change of age was a necessary
consequence of it; but at last the principle is laid down;
time will do the rest, if, however, it do not undo it. I
venture to flatter myself, monsieur le comte, that you have
had no cause to complain of our relations; and I shall always
congratulate myself on having met in business a man of your
merit.

"Receive, with my adieus, etc.,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS[237]

"PARIS, 24 _June_ 1824.

"Should you by chance still be in St. Petersburg, monsieur
le comte, I will not end our correspondence without telling
you of all the esteem and all the friendship with which you
have inspired me: keep well; be happier than I, and believe
that you will find me again in any circumstance of life. I am
writing a line to the Emperor.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

The reply to this farewell reached me in the early days of August. M.
de La Ferronnays had accepted the functions of ambassador under my
ministry; later, I, in my turn, became ambassador under the ministry
of M. de La Ferronnays: neither of us thought himself to be rising
or descending. Fellow-countrymen and friends, we mutually did each
other justice. M. de La Ferronnays endured the harshest trials without
complaining; he remained loyal to his sufferings and to his noble
poverty. After my fall, he acted on my behalf at St. Petersburg, as
I would have acted on his. An honest man is always sure of being
understood by an honest man. I am happy to produce this touching
evidence of the courage, the loyalty and the elevation of soul of M. de
La Ferronnays. At the moment when I received this note, it was a very
superior compensation to me for the capricious and hackneyed favours of
fortune. It is only here, for the first time, that I think it right to
violate the secrecy which friendship recommended to me.

[Sidenote: Letter from La Ferronays.]

THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

"ST. PETERSBURG, 24 _July_ 1824.

"The Russian mail of the day before yesterday brought me
your little letter of the 16th; it will be for me one of the
most precious of all those which I have had the happiness
to receive from you; I am keeping it as a title in which I
glory, and I have the firm hope and the intimate conviction
that soon I shall be able to present it to you in less
melancholy circumstances. I shall imitate, monsieur le
vicomte, the example which you set me, and I shall permit
myself no reflection upon an event which has, in so abrupt
and unexpected a manner, broken off the relations which the
service established between you and myself; the very nature
of those relations, the confidence with which you honoured
me, lastly, considerations of a much graver kind, because
they are not exclusively personal, will explain to you
sufficiently the motives and all the extent of my regrets.
What has just occurred still remains entirely inexplicable to
me; I am absolutely ignorant of the reasons, but I see the
effects; they were so easy, so natural to foresee, that I am
astonished that people were so little afraid to set them at
naught. I am too well acquainted, however, with the nobility
of the sentiments which animate you and with the purity of
your patriotism, not to be very sure that you will approve
of the conduct which I have thought right to follow in this
circumstance; it was required of me by my duty, by my love
for my country and even by the interest of your glory; and
you are too good a Frenchman to accept, in the position in
which you find yourself, the protection and the support of
foreigners. You have won for ever the confidence and esteem
of Europe; but it is France whom you serve, and you belong
to her alone. She may be unjust; but neither you nor your
real friends will ever suffer your cause to be made less pure
or less fine by entrusting its defense to foreign voices. I
have, therefore, silenced every kind of private feeling or
consideration in the presence of the general interest; I have
forestalled measures, the first effect of which would have
been to arouse dangerous divisions among us and to violate
the dignity of the Throne. This is the last service which I
have rendered here before my departure; you alone, monsieur
le vicomte, shall know of it; the confidence was due to you,
and I know the nobility of your character too well not to
feel very sure that you will keep my secret and that you will
consider my conduct, in this circumstance, consonant with the
sentiments which you have the right to exact from those whom
you honour with your friendship and your esteem.

"Adieu, monsieur le vicomte: if the relations which I have
had the good fortune to have with you have been able to give
you a correct idea of my character, you must know that it
is not changes of position that can alter my sentiments,
nor will you ever doubt the attachment and devotion of one
who, in the actual circumstances, considers himself the most
fortunate of men to be placed by public opinion among the
number of your friends.

"LA FERRONAYS."

"Messieurs de Fontenay[238] and de Pontcarré[239] are keenly
alive to the value of the remembrance in which you are good
enough to bear them: witnesses, like myself, of the increase
of consideration which France had gained since your entrance
into the ministry, it is quite simple that they should share
my sentiments and my regrets."

I began the contest of my new opposition immediately after my fall;
but it was interrupted by the death of Louis XVIII.[240] and was not
actively resumed until after the coronation of Charles X.[241] In the
month of July, I joined Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel; she had
gone there to wait for me, and had hired a cottage beside the lake.
The chain of the Alps unfolded itself north and south to a great
distance before us; we had our backs to the Jura, whose flanks, black
with pine-trees, rose perpendicularly over our heads. The lake was
deserted; a wooden gallery served me as an exercise-ground. I thought
of _Milord Maréchal._[242] When I climbed to the top of the Jura, I saw
the Lake of Bienne, to whose breezes and waters Jean Jacques Rousseau
owes one of his happiest inspirations. Madame de Chateaubriand went
to visit Fribourg and a country-house which they had described to us
as charming, and which she found icy-cold, although it was called the
_Petite Provence._ A lean black cat, half wild, which caught little
fish by dipping its paw into a large pail filled with water from the
lake, was my only distraction. A quiet old woman, who was always
knitting, prepared our banquet in an _huguenote._[243] had not lost the
habit of the collation of the country-mouse.

Neuchâtel had had its good days; it had belonged to the Duchesse de
Longueville[244]; Jean Jacques Rousseau had walked in an Armenian
dress on its mountains, and Madame de Charrière[245], so daintily
observed by M. de Sainte-Beuve[246], had described its society in the
_Lettres Neuchâteloises_; but Juliane, Mademoiselle de La Prise, Henri
Meyer[247] were no longer there; I saw only poor Fauche-Borel[248], of
the old Emigration; he threw himself soon after from his window. The
kept gardens of M. de Pourtalès[249] charmed me no more than did an
English rockery raised by man's hands in a neighbouring vineyard facing
the Jura. Berthier, last Prince of Neuchâtel, in the name of Bonaparte,
was forgotten, in spite of his little Simplon of the Val-de-Travers,
and although he smashed his skull in the same way as Fauche-Borel.

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

The King's illness called me back to Paris. The King died on the 16th
of September, scarcely four months after my dismissal. My pamphlet,
entitled _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ in which I hailed the new
Sovereign, performed for Charles X. what my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et
des Bourbons_ had performed for Louis XVIII. I went to fetch Madame de
Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel, and we came to Paris to live in the Rue
du Regard. Charles X. made his reign popular at its commencement by
abolishing the censorship; the coronation took place in the spring of
1825. "Already the bees were beginning to hum, the birds to warble, and
the lambs to gambol on the green."

Among my papers I find the following pages written at Rheims:

"RHEIMS, 26 _May_ 1825.

"The King arrives the day after to-morrow; he will be crowned
on Sunday the 29th; I shall see him place on his head a
crown of which no one thought, in 1814, when I raised my
voice. I have contributed to opening the doors of France to
him; I have given him defenders, by bringing the Spanish War
to a satisfactory issue; I have caused the Charter to be
adopted, and I have succeeded in finding an army, the only
two things with which the King can reign at home and abroad:
what part is reserved for me at the coronation? That of an
outlaw. I come as one of the crowd to receive a ribbon,
distributed broadcast, which I do not even hold from Charles
X. The people whom I have served and placed turn their backs
on me. The King will hold my hands in his, he will see me at
his feet, when I take my oath, without being moved, even as
he sees me without interest recommencing my poverty. Does
that make a difference to me? No. Freed from the obligation
of going to the Tuileries, I am compensated for everything by
independence.

"I am writing this page of my Memoirs in the room in which I
am forgotten amid all the noise. I have this morning visited
Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated with stained paper.
I shall not have had a clear idea of this latter edifice,
except from the decorations of Schiller's _Joan of Arc_, as
played before me in Berlin: operatic machinery has shown me,
on the banks of the Spree, what operatic machinery hides from
me, on the banks of the Vesle; for the rest, I have taken my
diversion among the old dynasties, from Clovis[250], with
his Franks and his pigeon descending from Heaven, to Charles
VII.[251], with Joan of Arc[252]."

Je suis venu de mon pays
Pas plus haut qu'une botte,
Avecque mi, avecque mi,
Avecque ma marmotte[253].

"'A sou-piece, sir, if you please!'

[Sidenote: At Rheims.]

That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at Rheims, sang
to me returning from my walk.

"'And what have you come here for?' I asked him.

"'I have come to the coronation, sir.'

"'With your marmot?'

"'Yes, sir, with-a _mi_, with-a _mi_, with-a my marmot,' he
replied, dancing and turning.

"'Well, that's like me, my boy.'

"That was not correct: I had come to the coronation without a
marmot, and a marmot is a great resource; I had nothing in my
box but some old dream or other which no passer-by would have
paid a sou-piece to see climb up a stick.

"Louis XVII. and Louis XVIII. were not crowned; Charles X.'s
coronation comes immediately after Louis XVI.'s. Charles X.
was present at his brother's coronation; he represented the
Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. Under what happy
auspices did not Louis XVI. ascend the throne? How popular
was he on succeeding Louis XV.! And yet, what did he come to?
The present coronation will be, not a coronation, but the
representation of a coronation: we shall see Marshal Moncey,
an actor in the coronation of Napoleon; that marshal, who
formerly celebrated in his army the death of the tyrant Louis
XVI., we shall now see brandishing the royal sword at Rheims,
in the quality of Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine.
Who could be taken in by that parade? I would have wished no
pomp to-day: the King on horseback, the church bare, adorned
only with its old vaults and its old tombs; the two Chambers
present, the oath of fidelity to the Charter pronounced aloud
on the Gospels. There you would have the renewal of the
Monarchy; they might have recommenced it with liberty and
religion: unfortunately they had little love for liberty; if
still they had, at least, had the taste for glory!

Ah! que diront là-bas, sons les tombes poudreuses,
De tant de vaillants rois les ombres généreuses?
Que diront Pharamond, Clodion et Clovis,
Nos Pepins, nos Martels, nos Charles, nos Louis,
Qui de leur propre sang, à tous périls de guerre,
Ont acquis à leurs fils une si belle terre[254]?

"Lastly, has not the new coronation, to which the Pope
came to anoint a man as great as the chief of the Second
Dynasty[255], in changing the heads, destroyed the effect of
the ancient ceremony of our history? The people has been led
to believe that a pious rite dedicated no one to the throne,
or rendered indifferent the choice of the forehead to which
the holy oil was applied. The supernumeraries of Notre-Dame
de Paris, figuring likewise in the Cathedral of Rheims, will
be nothing more than the necessary characters in a scene that
has become vulgar: the advantage will remain with Napoleon,
who sends his walking gentlemen to Charles X. The figure of
the Emperor dominates everything henceforward. It stands at
the bottom of events and ideas: the pages of these lower days
to which we have come shrivel up under the glance of his
eagles."

"RHEIMS, _Saturday, eve of the Coronation._[256]

"I have seen the King's entry; I have seen pass the gilt
coaches of the monarch who but lately had not a horse to
ride; I have seen those carriages roll by filled with
courtiers who were not able to defend their master. This
herd went to the church to sing the _Te Deum_, and I went
to look at a Roman ruin and to walk by myself in a wood of
elm-trees called the 'Wood of Love.' I heard from afar the
jubilation of the bells, I contemplated the towers of the
Cathedral, secular witnesses of that ceremony which is always
the same and yet so different through history, the times,
ideas, manners, usages and customs. The Monarchy perished,
and the Cathedral was for some years turned into a stable.
Does Charles X., who sees it again to-day, remember that he
saw Louis XVI. anointed in the same place where he is to
be anointed in his turn? Will he believe that a coronation
yields protection against misfortune? There is no longer a
hand virtuous enough to heal the king's evil, no longer a
sacred phial salutary enough to render kings inviolable."

I hurriedly wrote what has just been read on the half-blank pages of a
pamphlet entitled, _Le Sacre; par Barnage de Reims, avocat_, and on a
printed letter of the Grand Referendary, M. de Sémonville[257], saying:

"The Grand Referendary has the honour to inform His Lordship,
Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, that places in the
chancel of Rheims Cathedral are intended and reserved for
those of Messieurs the Peers who wish to be present to-morrow
at His Majesty's consecration and coronation, at the ceremony
of the reception of the Chief and Sovereign Grand Master of
the Orders of the Holy Ghost and of St. Michael and of the
reception of Messieurs the Knights and Commanders."

Charles X. nevertheless had intended to conciliate me. The Archbishop
of Paris[258] spoke to him at Rheims of the men in the Opposition; the
King said:

"Those who will have nothing to do with me, I leave alone."

The Archbishop rejoined:

"But, Sire, M. de Chateaubriand?"

"Oh, him I regret!"

[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles X.]

The Archbishop asked the King if he might tell me so; the King
hesitated, took two or three turns in the room, and replied, "Well,
yes, tell him," and the Archbishop forgot to speak to me about it.

At the ceremony of the knights of the Orders, I was kneeling at the
King's feet at the moment when M. de Villèle was taking his oath.
I exchanged two or three words of politeness with my companion in
knighthood[259], with regard to a feather that had come loose from my
hat. We left the Sovereign's knees, and all was done. The King, finding
a difficulty in removing his gloves to take my hands in his, had said
to me, laughing:

"A gloved cat catches no mice."

It was thought that he had spoken to me at length, and the rumour
was spread of my return to favour. It is probable that Charles X.,
thinking that the Archbishop had told me of his good-will towards me,
expected a word of thanks from me and was offended at my silence.

Thus have I assisted at the last coronation of the successors of
Clovis; I had occasioned it by the pages in which I had asked for the
coronation and depicted it in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort: vive
le roi!_ Not that I had the least faith in the ceremony; but, as
everything was lacking to the Legitimacy, it was necessary, to sustain
it, to make use of everything, for better or for worse. I recalled
Adalbéron's[260] definition: "The coronation of a King of France is, a
public interest, not a private matter;" I quoted the admirable prayer
set apart for the coronation:

"O God, who by Thy virtues counselled Thy peoples, give to this Thy
servant the spirit of Thy wisdom! Let to all men born be in these
days equity and justice: to friends succour, to enemies hinderance,
to the afflicted consolation, to the lofty correction, to the rich
instruction, to the needy pity, to pilgrims hospitality, to poor
subjects peace and safety in the mother-land! Let him learn to command
himself, moderately to govern each one according to his state, so that,
O Lord, he may give to all the people an example of life pleasing to
Thee!"

Before reproducing in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ this
prayer preserved by Du Tillet[261], I had exclaimed:

"Let us humbly beseech Charles X. to imitate his ancestors:
thirty-two sovereigns of the Third Dynasty have received the
royal unction."

All my duties being fulfilled, I left Rheims, and was able to say, like
Joan of Arc:

"My mission is ended."

[Footnote 156: This book was written in 1839 and revised in December
1846.--T.]

[Footnote 157: Joseph Planta (1787-1847) was secretary to Lord
Londonderry for many years. From 1827 to 1830, he was one of the joint
secretaries of the Treasury and, in 1834, was made a Privy Councillor.
He sat as M. P. for Hastings, almost without interruption, from 1827 to
1844.--T.]

[Footnote 158: Amelia Anne Marchioness of Londonderry (1772-1829),
_née_ Hobart, daughter and co-heiress of John Hobart, second Earl
of Buckinghamshire, and married to the Marquess of Londonderry in
1794.--T.]

[Footnote 159: The Vicomte Mathieu de Montmorency, Minister of Foreign
Affairs.--B.]

[Footnote 160: Édouard Duc de Fitz-James (1776-1838), descended from
James II. through the Duke of Berwick. He was created a peer of
France in 1814, and sent in his resignation when the bill was passed
suppressing the heredity of the peerage (28th December 1831). From 1835
till his death, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, as a member of the
Right, and distinguished himself by the eloquence of his speeches.--B.]

[Footnote 161: George Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), known as Beau
Brummell. The story, as generally told, runs that the Prince Regent
ordered "Mr. Brummell's carriage."--T.]

[Footnote 162: Prince Paul Anton von Esterhazy von Galantha
(1786-1866), Austrian Minister to Dresden (1810), Ambassador to Rome
(1814) and to London from 1815 to 1818 and 1830 to 1848. He was
Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs for a short time in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 163: See one of my dispatches from Berlin.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 164: Lord John Russell, later first Earl Russell (1792-1878).
The terms of his motion were "that the present state of representation
of the people in parliament requires the most serious consideration
of the House." The motion was lost by a majority of 105. Lord John
Russell introduced his Reform Bill in 1831, and was Home Secretary
(1835-1839), Secretary for War and the Colonies (1839-1841), Prime
Minister (1846-1852), Foreign Secretary and later President of the
Council (1852-1855), Colonial Secretary (1855), Foreign Secretary
(1859-1865), and again Prime Minister (1865-1866). He was created an
earl in 1861.--T.]

[Footnote 165: Chateaubriand appears here to confuse the Houses of
Lords and Commons; probably, in any case, his memory betrays him.--T.]

[Footnote 166: John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), called to
the Bar in 1776, King's Counsel in 1783, Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas in 1793, a peer in 1799, Lord Chancellor from 1801 to 1827. Eldon
was a violent Tory and vehemently opposed to the Catholic Emancipation
Bill.--T.]

[Footnote 167: Christopher Magnay, Lord Mayor of London from 1821
to 1822, would appear to have been Chateaubriand's host on this
occasion.--T.]

[Footnote 168: Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1777-1836), head of
all the Rothschild houses, with the exception of that at Frankfort. The
dinner in question, Lord Rothschild informs me, must have taken place
at the business-house in New Court, St. Swithin's Lane, where, on a
foreign post night (Tuesdays and Fridays), it was Baron Rothschild's
custom to remain in the city until midnight and frequently to give
dinner-parties.--T.]

[Footnote 169: Baron Salomon Mayer de Rothschild (1774-1855), head of
the Vienna branch of the house of Rothschild. He and his four brothers,
Anselm, Nathan, Charles and James, were created barons of the Austrian
Empire in 1822.--T.]

[Footnote 170: Richard Charles Francis Meade, third Earl of Clanwilliam
(1795-1879), son of Richard Meade, second Earl of Clanwilliam,
and Caroline, daughter of Joseph Count Thun. Lord Clanwilliam was
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1822, British Ambassador to
Berlin (1823-1828) and a Grand Cross of Hanover.--T.]

[Footnote 171: Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond (1734 or
1735-1806), Ambassador to Paris (1765), Principal Secretary of State
(1766), Master-general of the Ordnance (1782) and a knight of the
Garter.--T.]

[Footnote 172: A famous political and allegorical satire of the reign
of Henry III., attributed to Thomas Artus, Sire d'Embly. It was
published without date of place or time, but was reprinted in the
fourth volume of the _Journal de Henri III._ (1744).--T.]

[Footnote 173: Gillion Gaspard Alfred de Grimaud, Comte d'Orsay
(1801-1852), long a leader of society in London and Paris, and noted
for his intimacy with the Countess of Blessington. In 1827, he married
Lady Harriet Gardiner, daughter of Lord Blessington by his first wife.
She soon left him, and Lady Blessington, who was then a widow, took
up her abode with him at Gore House. D'Orsay became bankrupt in 1849
and, to escape arrest, fled, on the 1st of April, to Paris, where Lady
Blessington followed him in a fortnight. She died, suddenly, about a
month after.--T.]

[Footnote 174: Anna Duchesse de Guiche (1803-1882), _née_ de Grimaud
d'Orsay.--T.]

[Footnote 175: Dorothea Christophorowna Countess, later Princess de
Lieven (1785-1855), _née_ von Blenkendorf. She was much sought after
by the statesmen of her time: Castlereagh, Canning, Metternich were
her friends; Lord Grey wrote to her every morning from his bed. She
has been said to have had an intrigue with George IV. In Paris, where
she settled after her husband's death, she became the Egeria of M.
Guizot.--B.]

[Footnote 176: Éléonore Marquise d'Osmond, _née_ Dillon, wife of René
Eustache Marquis d'Osmond, who was French Ambassador to London from
1814 to 1819.--T.]

[Footnote 177: General Christopher Andreiëvitch Count, later Prince de
Lieven (_d._ 1839), Minister Plenipotentiary to Berlin (1810-1812), and
Ambassador to London (1812-1834), Governor to the Tsarevitch, later
Tsar Alexander II. (1834-1839).--T.]

[Footnote 178: Madame de Lieven migrated to Paris after the death of
her husband in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 179: Guizot made it a rule of his life to call daily on
Madame de Lieven in Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 180: Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset
(1775-1855).--T.]

[Footnote 181: Louis-Philippe appointed Marshal Soult, on the 23rd of
April 1838, Ambassador Extraordinary to England for the coronation
of Queen Victoria. The population of London accorded the marshal an
enthusiastic reception, and he was lionized wherever he went. The
coronation of Victoria took place on the 20th of June 1838.--B.]

[Footnote 182: Antipater (_d._ 319 B.C.), a Macedonian general, acted
as Viceroy of Macedon and Greece during Alexander's absence, governed
for some time after Alexander's death, defeated the Athenians at
Cranon, and had just been appointed regent during the minority of
Alexander's children when he himself died.--T.]

[Footnote 183: Antigonus (_circa_ 382 B.C.--301 B.C.), surnamed
Cyclops, another of Alexander's captains, who shared the latter's
empire after his death, and for six years called himself King of Asia,
until overthrown and slain at the Battle of Ipsus.--T.]

[Footnote 184: Seleucus I. Nicator(354 B.C.--281 B.C.), one of
Alexander's best officers, proclaimed King of Syria, and finally of
Macedon, Thrace and Asia Minor. He was killed by Ptolemy II. Ceraunus
in 281 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 185: Antiochus I. King of Syria (_circa_ 323 B.C.--261 B.C.),
surnamed Soter, son of Seleucus Nicator, whom he succeeded.--T.]

[Footnote 186: Ptolemy I. King of Egypt (_d._ 283 B.C.), also surnamed
Soter, another of Alexander's officers, received Egypt as his share of
the Macedonian Empire and assumed the title of King in 308 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 187: Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the Italian sculptor, long
protected by Napoleon.--T.]

[Footnote 188: Frederick Duke of York, titular Bishop of Osnaburg
(1763-1827), second son, and one of the most scandalous, of George
III.--T.]

[Footnote 189: On quitting office, the Duc de Richelieu had intended
to make a journey to Vienna and Odessa in the spring of 1822. Before
leaving, he went to spend some time at the Château de Courteille, with
his wife and mother-in-law. There he was taken ill; and hastened back
to Paris, where he had scarcely arrived when he was attacked by a
congestion of the brain. He died on the 17th of May 1822, at the age of
fifty-five years and eight months.--B.]

[Footnote 190: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Marquess of Lansdowne
(1780-1863), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1806-1807), Home Secretary
(1827-1828), Lord President of the Council (1830-1834 and 1846-1852), a
member of the Cabinet (1852-1858), and a knight of the Garter.--T.]

[Footnote 191: Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), _née_ Kemble, the famous
actress, was 67, not 73, years of age in 1822. She made her first
appearance in 1782, her last in 1812. Lady Macbeth was her greatest
part.--T.]

[Footnote 192: Antoine Louis Marie de Gramont, Duc de Guiche
(1755-1836), had served in the Bodyguard, as Captain Gramont, before
the Revolution. On the Restoration, he was created a peer of France.
The Duc de Guiche consented to take the oath to the Government of July
and remained in the Upper Chamber till his death.--B.]

[Footnote 193: Madame la Duchesse de Guiche was a daughter of the
Duchesse de Polignac.--B.]

[Footnote 194: Charlotte Marie Antoinette Léontine Vicomtesse de
Noailles (1791-1851), _née_ de Noailles-Mouchy, married, in 1809, to
her cousin Alfred Louis Dominique Vincent de Paule Vicomte de Noailles,
who was killed at the Battle of the Beresina in 1812.--B.]

[Footnote 195: James de Rothschild (1792-1868), youngest son of Mayer
Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, and created a baron of the Austrian
Empire in 1822.--T.]

[Footnote 196: John Russell, sixth Duke of Bedford (1766-1839),
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1806-1807), and a knight of the Garter
(1830).--T.]

[Footnote 197: Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, first
Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (1776-1839), created a knight of the
Garter (1820) and a duke (1822) by George IV.--T.]

[Footnote 198: Christian Prince, later Christian VIII. King of Denmark
and, _de jure_, of Norway (1786-1848), succeeded to the throne
of Denmark on the death of his cousin, Frederic VI., in 1839. In
1814, when Norway was ceded to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, he was
proclaimed King of the former country, with the title of Christian
I., by the Norwegians, who refused to accept the union with Sweden
(May 1814). Unable to maintain his position against the Swedes, he
relinquished the crown (October 1814). His son, Frederic VII., was the
last Danish Sovereign of the House of Oldenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 199: Caroline Amelia Princess, later Queen of
Denmark (1796-1881), daughter of Frederic Christian Duke of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.--T.]

[Footnote 200: Cathérine Henriette Marquise de Verneuil (1583-1633),
_née_ de Balzac d'Entragues, mistress to Henry IV. King of France,
after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrées.--T.]

[Footnote 201: Françoise Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), _née_
d'Aubigné, mistress to Louis XIV., to whom she was married in 1684 or
1685.--T.]

[Footnote 202: Anne Marie Princesse des Ursins (_circa_
1643-1722), _née_ de La Trémoïlle, married first to the Prince de
Talleyrand-Chalais, secondly to the Duca di Bracciano-Orsini, or des
Ursins, for many years the influential favourite of Philip V. King of
Spain and his first Queen.--T.]

[Footnote 203: Dudley Ryder, first Earl of Harrowby (1762-1847),
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1804) and Lord President of the
Council (1812-1827).--T.]

[Footnote 204: Sir Robert Peel, second Baronet (1788-1850),
Under-secretary for the Colonies (1810), Chief Secretary for Ireland
(1812), Home Secretary (1828), First Lord of the Treasury and Prime
Minister (1834-1835 and 1841-1846). Peel died on the 2nd of July 1850,
through a fall from his horse while riding in Hyde Park.--T.]

[Footnote 205: John Fane, tenth Earl of Westmorland (1759-1841),
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1790-1795), Master of the Horse
(1795-1798), Lord Privy Seal (1798-1827) and a knight of the Garter
(1793).--T.]

[Footnote 206: Henry Bathurst, third Earl Bathurst (1762-1834),
President of the Board of Trade (1807-1812), Secretary for War and the
Colonies (1812-1827), President of the Council (1828-1830) and a knight
of the Garter (1817).--T.]

[Footnote 207: Allen Bathurst, first Earl Bathurst (1684-1775), the
friend of Pope, Swift, Prior, Congreve and Sterne, and grandfather to
the third Earl Bathurst.--T.]

[Footnote 208: STERNE, _Letters from Yorick to Eliza_, Letter III.--T.]

[Footnote 209: Lord Bathurst had two daughters, Lady Louisa Georgiana
Bathurst, who died unmarried in 1874, and Lady Emily Charlotte
Bathurst, who married in 1825 Major-General the Hon. Sir Frederick
Cavendish Ponsonby, K.C.B., and died in 1877.--T.]

[Footnote 210: Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool
(1770-1828), Foreign Secretary (1801-1804), Home Secretary (1804-1806
and 1807), Secretary for War (1809), Prime Minister (1812-1827), and a
knight of the Garter (1814).--T.]

[Footnote 211: Charles Jenkinson, first Earl of Liverpool (1727-1808),
Secretary for War (1778), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
(1786-1802), Earl of Liverpool and Baron Hawkesbury (1796).--T.]

[Footnote 212: John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713-1792), Secretary
of State (1761), Prime Minister (1761-1762), a knight of the Garter,
and an exceedingly unpopular minister.--T.]

[Footnote 213: John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) was Secretary to the
Admiralty from 1808 to 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 214: Sir William A'Court, second Baronet, later first Lord
Heytesbury (1779-1860), Envoy Extraordinary to the Barbary States
(1813), to Naples (1814), to Spain (1822), Ambassador to Portugal
(1824), and to Russia (1828-1832). He was created Baron Heytesbury
in 1828, and served as Viceroy of Ireland (1844-1846) and, later, as
Governor of the Isle of Wight.--T.]

[Footnote 215: A jockey, or groom.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 216: Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), Comptroller-general
of Finance under Louis XIV., increased the prosperity of France in
a brilliant manner. At the same time he amassed a private fortune,
amounting to some ten millions of francs, and, at his death, the
populace, seeing in this fortune a proof of depredation, insulted his
coffin.--T.]

[Footnote 217: I can find no record of any insult being offered at the
funeral of Louis XIV. The obsequies of Louis XV., on the other hand,
were certainly disturbed by riotous conduct on the part of the mob.--T.]

[Footnote 218: Sir Charles Stuart, later first Lord Stuart de Rothesay
(1779-1845), Envoy to Portugal (1810), where he was created Count
of Machico and Marquis of Angra, Minister at the Hague (1815-1816),
Ambassador to Paris (1815-1830), raised to the peerage (1828), and
Ambassador to St. Petersburg (1841-1845).--T.]

[Footnote 219: 25 August.--T.]

[Footnote 220: Victor Louis Charles de Riquet de Caraman, Marquis,
later Duc de Caraman (1762-1839), created a peer of France in 1815 and
appointed Ambassador to Vienna in 1816. In 1830, he rallied to the
government that issued from the Revolution of July.--B.]

[Footnote 221: Charles Grey, second Earl Grey (1764-1845), First Lord
of the Admiralty (1806), Foreign Secretary (1806-1807), First Lord
of the Admiralty and Prime Minister (1830-1834), and a knight of the
Garter. Lord Grey passed the first Reform Bill in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 222: Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), leader of the agitation
in favour of Catholic emancipation (passed 1829), was elected to
Parliament as member for Clare in 1828. He became leader of the Repeal
Movement in 1840. It is interesting here to note that M. Biré speaks of
Daniel O'Connell as an "admirable orator, an ardent patriot, a fervent
Catholic: the Irish Liberator will be remembered as one of the greatest
figures of this century."--T.]

[Footnote 223: William III., Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of
England (1650-1702).--T.]

[Footnote 224: Plato (429 or 430 B.C.--347 or 348 B.C.) often
discoursed to his disciples on Cape Sunium, now Cape Colonna, which
forms the south-eastern extremity of the Attic Peninsula. Minerva had a
temple there, of which nineteen columns are still standing.--T.]

[Footnote 225: Epimenides (596 B.C.--538 B.C.), a pious Cretan,
fabulously said to have slept for fifty years in a cave, to have lived
three hundred years, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 226: _Congrès de Vérone, Guerre d'Espagne, Négociations,
Colonies espagnoles._ Paris: Delloye, 1838. Two volumes, 8vo.--B.]

[Footnote 227: Alphonse Valentin Vaysse, Comte de Rainneville
(1798-1864), was in 1824 chief of a department at the Ministry of
Finance and one of M. de Villèle's ablest assistants. He sat in the
Chamber of Deputies from 1846 to 1848, and retired from political life
at the Revolution of February.--B.]

[Footnote 228: The phrase here reported by Chateaubriand was used, not
by M. de Corbière, but by the Baron de Damas, Minister for War. _Cf._
the _Mémoires du Comte de Villèle._--B.]

[Footnote 229: Major-General Louis Justin Marie Marquis de Talaru
(1769-1850), Ambassador to Madrid, in 1824, and a peer of France.--B.]

[Footnote 230: François Joseph Maximilien Gérard Comte de Rayneval
(1778-1836), Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to
Berlin, in 1824, and, subsequently, Ambassador to Vienna and, under
Louis-Philippe, to Madrid.--T.]

[Footnote 231: Chevalier de Bourgoing, First Secretary, and M. Adolphe
Billecocq, Second Secretary of Legation in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 232: Ambassador to Vienna in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 233: Ambassador to Lisbon in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 234: French Secretary of Legation at the Hague in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 235: One year later, on the 3rd of July 1825, Hyde de
Neuville, in his turn, informed his friend Chateaubriand that his
embassy had been taken from him:

"My noble friend,

"You announced to me your departure from the ministry. I, in
my turn, inform you that I am no longer ambassador.

"They strike me because I have followed you. So much the
better, that will rivet our bonds of friendship; praise God
and bless the King!

"_The King can do wrong._

"Entirely yours,

"HYDE DE NEUVILLE."

He received the following reply:

"Bravo, my dear friend; let them blame men like you, and they
will not go far. I cannot offer you, in quarterly payments,
the five thousand francs which you had placed at my disposal;
but I have still a few china plates at your service, and if
you want them we will sell them.

"Poor France!

"Yours more than ever,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."--B. ]

[Footnote 236: Ambassador to Naples in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 237: Ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 238: The Chevalier de Fontenay, First Secretary of Embassy in
St. Petersburg in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 239: The Vicomte de Pontcarré, Third Secretary of Embassy in
St. Petersburg in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 240: 16 September 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 241: 29 May 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 242: George Keith, tenth Earl Marischal (_circa_ 1693-1778),
was sentenced to death for taking up arms for the Chevalier in 1715,
took refuge in Spain, whence he commanded the Spanish expedition, was
defeated at Glenshiel in 1719, and again fled to Prussia. Frederic II.
appointed him Ambassador to Paris in 1751, and Governor of Neuchâtel
in 1752. Here, in 1762, he gave his protection to Rousseau. He is
generally known on the continent as Milord Maréchal.--T.]

[Footnote 243: "An earthenware cooking-pot, without feet, in which meat
is noiselessly cooked, over a stove, the French Huguenots being said to
have taken this precaution to avoid scandal on days when flesh-meat was
forbidden" (Littré).--B.]

[Footnote 244: The County of Neuchâtel passed in 1707, on the death of
Marie Duchesse de Nemours, the last of the Longuevilles, to Frederic I.
King of Prussia, to whom it was guaranteed by the Peace of Utrecht in
1713. In 1806, Napoleon seized it and erected it into a principality
for Marshal Berthier; in 1815, it returned to Prussia, while remaining
a Swiss canton. Neuchâtel declared its independence in 1848; this
independence was recognised by Prussia in 1857.--T.]

[Footnote 245: Isabelle Agnès de Sainte-Hyacinthe de Charrière
(1745-1805), _née_ van Tuyll, author, under the pseudonym of the Abbé
de La Tour, of the _Lettres Neuchâteloises_ (1784), _Caliste, ou
Lettres écrites de Lausanne_ (1786), etc.--T.]

[Footnote 246: Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), the eminent
French critic. His appreciation of Madame de Charrière occurs in his
_Portraits de femmes_, published in 1844.--T.]

[Footnote 247: Characters in the _Lettres Neuchâteloises._--B.]

[Footnote 248: Louis Fauche-Borel (1762-1829), a Neuchâtel printer and
Royalist agent. He devoted himself to the cause of the Bourbons and was
repeatedly imprisoned under the Directorate and Consulate. He met with
nothing but ingratitude from the Restoration and returned to Neuchâtel,
where he lived in penury and at last put an end to his life in the
manner stated by Chateaubriand.--T.]

[Footnote 249: Louis Comte de Pourtalès (1773-1848), Governor of
Neuchâtel.--B.]

[Footnote 250: Clovis King of the Franks (465-511), founder of the
French Monarchy, embraced Christianity and was baptised and crowned at
Rheims at the hands of St. Remy, in 496.--T.]

[Footnote 251: Charles VII. King of France (1403-1461), surnamed the
Victorious, defeated the English with the aid of Joan of Arc in 1429,
and was crowned at Rheims in the same year.--T.]

[Footnote 252: Joan of Arc (1410-1431) was present at the coronation of
Charles VII. on the 17th of July 1429. She was subsequently captured by
the English and burned by them at the stake, on the 30th of May 1431,
at Rouen.--T.]

[Footnote 253:

"I have come from my country
No taller than a boot,
With-a _mi_, with-a _mi_,
With-a my marmot."--T.

]

[Footnote 254:

"Ah, what will they say from the dust of the grave.
The generous spirits of sovereigns brave?
What will Pharamond say, Clodion and Clovis,
Our Pepins, our Martels, our Charleses and Louis,
Who by blood and by peril, a warrior band,
Have acquired for their sons such a beautiful land?"--T.

]

[Footnote 255: Pepin King of the Franks (_d._ 768), surnamed the Short,
founder of the Second or Carlovingian Dynasty.--T.]

[Footnote 256: 28 May 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 257: Charles Louis Huguet, Marquis de Sémonville (1754-1839),
had been sent to Constantinople as Ambassador by the Republic,
was arrested by the Austrian Government on his way to his embassy
(1793) and was, in 1795, exchanged, together with other members of
the Convention, against the daughter of Louis XVI. He declared for
Bonaparte and was employed by him; and, in 1814, was appointed Grand
Referendary by Louis XVIII. Sémonville retained the functions under
Charles X. and also under Louis-Philippe, resigning them in 1834, when
he had completed his eightieth year.--T.]

[Footnote 258: Hyacinthe de Quélen, Archbishop of Paris (1778-1839), a
member of the French Academy, had received his see in 1821. Monseigneur
de Quélen was a man of saintly and charitable life, refused to
acknowledge the Government of July, and suffered through the furious
riot of 1831, when the Archbishop's Palace was wrecked.--T.]

[Footnote 259: Chateaubriand was a Knight Commander of the Holy Ghost
and a Knight Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour; Villèle a Knight
Commander of the Holy Ghost and a Knight Grand Cross of St. Louis.--T.]

[Footnote 260: Adalbéron, Archbishop of Rheims (_d._ 988) and
Chancellor of France under Lothair and Louis V., officiated at the
coronation of Hugh Capet, in 987, and was raised by him to the position
of Lord High Chancellor.--T.]

[Footnote 261: Jean Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux (_d._ 1570), author of
the _Chronicon de regibus Francorum_ (1545).--T.]

BOOK X[262]

Paris had seen its last festivals: the period of indulgence,
reconciliation and favours was past; the sad truth alone remained
before us.

When, in 1820, the censorship put an end to the _Conservateur_, I
scarcely expected, four years later, to recommence the same polemics
under another form and through the medium of another press. The men
who fought by my side in the _Conservateur_, like myself, demanded
the restoration of the liberty of the press and the pen; they were
in opposition like myself, in disgrace like myself, and they called
themselves my friends. On attaining power in 1820, through my labours
even more than their own, they turned against the liberty of the
press: the persecuted became persecutors; they ceased to be and to
call themselves my friends; they maintained that the license of the
press had begun only on the 6th of June 1824, the day of my dismissal
from office; their memory was short: had they re-read the opinions
which they pronounced, the articles which they wrote against another
ministry and in favour of the liberty of the press, they would have
been obliged to acknowledge that they, at least in 1818 or 1819, were
the submanagers of license.

On the other hand, my former adversaries were drawing closer to me.
I tried to connect the partisans of independence with the Legitimate
Royalty, with more success than when I rallied the servants of the
throne and the altar to the Charter. My public had changed. I was
obliged to warn the Government of the dangers of absolutism, after
having cautioned it against popular enthusiasm. Accustomed as I was to
respect my readers, I did not give them a line which I had not written
with all the care of which I was capable: many of those opuscules of
a day have cost me more pains, in proportion, than the longest works
that have come from my pen. My life was incredibly full. Honour and
my country recalled me to the battle-field. I had reached an age at
which men have need of rest; but, if I had judged my years by the
ever-increasing hatred with which oppression and meanness inspired me,
I might have believed myself restored to youth.

I collected a society of writers around me to give uniformity to my
combats. Among them were peers, deputies, magistrates, young authors
commencing their career. To my house came Messieurs de Montalivet[263],
Salvandy[264], Duvergier de Hauranne[265], many others who were my
pupils and who retail to-day, as new things under the Representative
Monarchy, things which I taught them and which occur on every page of
my writings. M. de Montalivet has become Minister of the Interior and
a favourite of Philip's; men who care to follow the variations of a
destiny will find this note rather curious:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have the honour to send you the statement of the mistakes
which I found in the table of judgments of the Royal Court
that has been communicated to you. I have verified them
again, and I think I may answer for the correctness of the
list enclosed.

"Pray, monsieur le vicomte, accept the homage of the profound
respect with which I have the honour to be,

"Your very devoted colleague and sincere admirer,

"MONTALIVET."

This did not prevent my "respectful colleague and sincere admirer," M.
le Comte de Montalivet, in his day so great a partisan of the liberty
of the press, from making me, as an abettor of that liberty, enter M.
Gisquet's[266] prison.

An abstract of my new war of polemics, which lasted five years but
ended by triumphing, will prove the strength of ideas against facts
even when supported by the power. I was thrown on the 6th of June 1824;
on the 21st, I had descended into the arena; I remained there till the
18th of December 1826[267]: I entered alone, stripped and bare, and I
emerged victorious. I am making history here in making an extract from
the arguments which I employed.

[Sidenote: My polemical warfare.]

"We have had the courage and the honour to wage a dangerous
war in presence of the liberty of the press, and it was
the first time that this noble spectacle was given to the
monarchy. We soon repented of our honesty. We had set the
newspapers at naught when they could injure only the success
of our soldiers and our captains; it became necessary to
reduce them to servitude when they dared to speak of the
clerks and ministers....

"If those who administer the State seem completely ignorant
of the genius of France in serious matters, they are no less
foreign to it in those graceful and ornamental matters which
are mingled with and beautify the life of civilized nations.

"The bounties which the Legitimate Government lavishes upon
the arts surpass the aids awarded to them by the Usurping
Government; but how are they dispensed? Vowed by nature and
taste to oblivion, the distributors of those bounties seem
to have an antipathy to renown; so invincible is their
obscurity that, when they approach lights, they make them
turn pale; one would say that they pour money on the arts to
extinguish them, as on our liberties to stifle them...[268]

"If even the narrow mechanism within which France is pinched
resembled those finished models which one examines through
the magnifying-glass in the collector's cabinet, the delicacy
of that curiosity might interest one for a moment; but not at
all: it is a small thing badly constructed.

"We have said that the system followed nowadays by the
administration offends against the genius of France: we
will try to prove that it also disregards the spirit of our
institutions.

"The Monarchy has been restored in France without effort,
because it has the strength of our whole history, because the
crown is worn by a family which has almost seen the nation
born, which has formed it, civilized it, which has given it
all its liberties, which has made it immortal; but time has
reduced that monarchy to its realities. The age of fictions
in politics is past: one can no longer have a government of
adoration, of cult and of mystery; each one knows his rights;
nothing is possible without the limits of reason; and,
down to favour, the last illusion of absolute monarchies,
everything is weighed, everything valued to-day.

"Let us make no mistake; a new era is commencing for the
nations; will it be a happier one? Providence knows. As for
us, it is given to us only to prepare ourselves for the
exigencies of the future. Let us not imagine that we can go
back: our only safety lies in the Charter.

"The Constitutional Monarchy was not born among us of a
written system, even though it has a printed Code; it is the
daughter of time and of events, like the Old Monarchy of our
fathers.

"Why should not liberty maintain herself in the edifice
raised by despotism and filled with its traces? Victory,
still so to speak decked with the three colours, has taken
refuge in the tent of the Duc d'Angoulême; the Legitimacy
inhabits the Louvre, even though the eagles be still seen
there.

"In a constitutional monarchy, the public liberties are
respected; they are considered as the safeguard of the
Sovereign, the people and the laws.

"We understand representative government otherwise. A company
is being formed (they say even two rival companies, for
competition is needful) to corrupt the newspapers with
bribes of money. They are not afraid to maintain scandalous
prosecutions against proprietors who have refused to sell
themselves; they would like to force them to be stigmatized
by the sentence of the tribunals. This trade being repugnant
to men of honour, they enlist, to support a Royalist
ministry, libellers who have persecuted the Royal Family
with their calumnies. They recruit all who served in the
former police and in the imperial ante-chamber, even as our
neighbours, when they wish to procure sailors, send the
press-gang into the taverns and disorderly houses. Those
convict-crews of free writers are embarked on five or six
bought newspapers, and what they say is called 'public
opinion' at the Ministers[269]'."

There, very greatly abridged, and still perhaps at too great length, is
a specimen of my polemical warfare in my pamphlets and in the _Journal
des Débats_: in it will be found all the principles that are being
proclaimed to-day.

[Sidenote: I refuse my pension.]

When I was turned out of the ministry, my pension as a minister of
State was not restored to me; I did not claim it; but M. de Villèle,
upon an observation of the King's, thought of sending me a new warrant
for that pension through M. de Peyronnet[270]. I refused it. Either I
was entitled to my former pension, or else I was not entitled to it: in
the first case I had no need for a new warrant; in the second, I did
not wish to become the pensioner of the President of the Council.

The Hellenes threw off the yoke: a Greek Committee was formed in
Paris, of which I was a member. The committee came together at M.
Ternaux'[271] on the Place des Victoires. The members used to arrive
one after the other at the meeting-place. M. le Général Sébastiani
declared, when he had sat down, that it was a "big affair;" he made it
a long one: this displeased our practical chairman, M. Ternaux, who
would certainly have made a shawl for Aspasia, but who would not have
wasted his time with her. The committee suffered from the dispatches
of M. Fabvier; he scolded us roundly; he held us responsible for
whatever did not go according to his views, us, who had not won the
Battle of Marathon. I devoted myself to the liberty of Greece: it
seemed to me that I was fulfilling a duty towards a mother. I wrote a
_Note_; I addressed myself to the successors of the Tsar of Russia, as
I had addressed myself to him at Verona. The _Note_ was printed and
subsequently reprinted at the head of the _Itinéraire._

I laboured to the same purpose in the House of Peers, to set a
political body going. The following note from M. Molé shows the
obstacles which I encountered and the circuitous methods which I was
obliged to employ:

"You will find us all at the opening to-morrow, ready to fly
in your footsteps: I shall write to Lainé if I do not see
him. He must be allowed only to expect a few sentences about
the Greeks; but take care that you are not kept strictly
within the limits of all amendments, and that, relying on
the rules, they do not refuse to hear you. Perhaps they will
tell you to lay your motion on the table: you might then do
so subsidiarily and after having said all that you have to
say. Pasquier has been rather unwell, and I fear that he will
not be on his legs by to-morrow. As for the ballot, we shall
have it. What is worth more than all this is the arrangement
which you have made with your publishers. It is a fine thing
to recover by one's talent all that which the injustice and
ingratitude of men have taken from us.

"Yours while life lasts,

"MOLÉ."

Greece has become free from the yoke of Islamism; but, instead of a
federal republic, as I wished, a Bavarian monarchy[272] has been set
up at Athens. Now, as kings have no memory, I, who had in some small
way served the cause of the Greeks, have not heard speak of them since,
except in Homer. Greece delivered has not said, "Thank you" to me. She
is as ignorant of my name and more so than on the day when I wept on
her ruins when crossing her deserts.

Hellas, not yet royal, had been more grateful. Among a few children
whom the committee brought up was young Canaris: his father[273], a
worthy descendant of the sailors of Mycale[274], wrote him a note which
the child translated into French on the blank space at foot. Here is
the translation:

"MY DEAR CHILD,

"None of the Greeks has had the same good fortune as
yourself: that of being selected by the benevolent society
which interests itself in us to learn the duties of man. I
gave you birth; but these commendable persons will give you
an education which really makes a man. Be very docile to
these new fathers, if you wish to give comfort to him who
gave you the light. Farewell.

"Your father,

"C. CANARIS."

"NAUPLIA, 5 _September_ 1825.

[Sidenote: The Greek Committee.]

I have kept the dual text as the reward of the Greek Committee.

Republican Greece had testified her particular regret when I left the
ministry. Madame Récamier wrote to me from Naples, on the 29th of
October 1824:

"I have received a letter from Greece which has made a long
round before reaching me. In it I find some lines on yourself
which I want you to see; here they are:

"'The decree of the 6th of June has come to our ears; it
has produced the liveliest sensation on our leaders. Their
best-founded hopes lying in the generosity of France, they
are anxiously asking themselves what the removal may forebode
of a man whose character promised them a support.'

"If I am not mistaken, this testimony ought to please you. I
enclose the letter: the first page concerned only myself."

Soon you will read the life of Madame Récamier: you will know how sweet
it was to me to receive a remembrance of the land of the Muses through
a woman who would have adorned it.

As for the note from M. Molé, given above, it alludes to the bargain
which I had made relating to the publication of my Complete Works.
This arrangement ought, in fact, to have ensured the peace of my life;
it nevertheless turned badly for me, although it was profitable to
the publishers to whom M. Ladvocat, after his bankruptcy, left my
Works[275]. In point of Plutus or Pluto (the mythologists confound the
two), I am like Alcestes: I always see the fatal bark; like William
Pitt, and that is my excuse, I am a spendthrift, a _panier percé_: but
I do not myself make the hole in the basket.

At the conclusion of the General Preface to my Works, 1826, vol. I., I
address France in these words:

"O France, 'my dear country and my first love,' one of thy
sons, at the end of his career, is collecting beneath thy
eyes the claims which he may have to thy good-will. If he can
do no more for thee, thou canst do all for him, by declaring
that his attachment for thy religion, for thy King, for thy
liberties has been pleasing to thee. Fair and illustrious
mother-land, I would have desired a little glory only to
augment thine own."

Madame de Chateaubriand, being ill, made a journey in the South of
France, derived no benefit from it, and returned to Lyons, where
Dr. Prunelle[276] condemned her. I went to join her; I took her to
Lausanne, where she proved M. Prunelle in the wrong. At Lausanne
I stayed in turn with M. de Sivry and with Madame de Cottens, a
warm-hearted, witty and unhappy woman. I saw Madame de Montolieu[277]:
she was living in retirement on a high hill; she died in the illusions
of romance, like Madame de Genlis, her contemporary. Gibbon[278] had
composed his History of the Roman Empire:

"It was ... as I sat musing among the ruins of the Capitol,"
he writes at Lausanne, on the 27th of June 1787, "while the
barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of
Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the
city first started to my mind."

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Custine.]

Madame de Staël had appeared at Lausanne with Madame Récamier. The
whole Emigration, a whole finished world had stopped for some short
moments in that sad and smiling town, a sort of false city of Granada.
Madame de Duras has recalled its memory in her Memoirs, and the
following note reached me there to tell me of the new loss which I was
condemned to suffer:

"BEX, 13 _July_ 1826.

"It is all over, monsieur, your friend[279] exists no more;
she gave up her soul to God, without pain, at a quarter to
eleven this morning. She was out driving as late as yesterday
evening. Nothing announced her end to be so near; what am I
saying? we did not think that her illness was to end in this
way. M. de Custine[280], whose sorrow does not permit him to
write to you himself, had been on one of the mountains around
Bex only yesterday morning, to order mountain-milk to be sent
down every morning for the dear sufferer.

"I am too much overcome with grief to be able to enter into
longer details. We are getting ready to return to France with
the precious remains of the best of mothers and friends.
Enguerrand[281] will lie at rest between his two mothers.

"We shall pass through Lausanne, where M. de Custine will
come to see you so soon as we arrive.

"Receive, monsieur, the assurance of the respectful
attachment with which I am, etc.,

"BERSTŒCHER[282]."

See above and below what I have had the happiness and the unhappiness
to recall touching the memory of Madame de Custine.

Madame de Charrière's work, the _Lettres écrites de Lausanne_, well
describes the scene which I had daily before my eyes, and the feelings
of grandeur which it inspires:

"I am sitting alone," says the mother of Cécile, "opposite to
a window which looks upon the lake. I am grateful to you, ye
mountains, snow, and sun, for the pleasure which you afford
me. Above all, I am grateful to Thee, Thou Author of all the
things which I contemplate, for having created objects so
lovely to the sight.... O ye amiable and affecting beauties
of nature! My eyes are daily employed in contemplating you,
and ye fill my heart with perpetual rapture[283]."

At Lausanne I commenced the _Remarques_ on the first work of my life,
the _Essai sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes._ From my windows
I saw the rocks of Meillerie:

"Rousseau," I wrote in one of those _Remarques_, "is
decidedly not above the authors of his time, except in some
sixty letters of the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ and in a few pages of
his _Rêveries_ and of his _Confessions._ There, placed in the
real nature of his talent, he attains an eloquence of passion
unknown before him. Voltaire and Montesquieu found models
of style in the writers of the age of Louis XIV.; Rousseau,
and even Buffon to some extent, in another manner, created a
language which was unknown to the Grand Century[284]."

On my return to Paris, my life was occupied between my installation in
the Rue d'Enfer, my renewed combats, in the House of Peers and in my
pamphlets, against the different Bills opposed to the public liberties,
my speeches and writings in favour of the Greeks, and my labours in
connection with the complete edition of my Works. The Emperor of Russia
died[285], and with him died the only royal friendship remaining to
me. The Duc de Montmorency had become governor to the Duc de Bordeaux.
He did not long enjoy that weighty honour: he expired on Good Friday
1826[286], in the Church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin; at the hour when
Jesus expired on the Cross, he went with Christ's last sigh to God.

The attack against the Jesuits had begun; one heard the trite and
threadbare accusations against that famous Order, in which, it must be
admitted, reigns something disquieting, for a mysterious cloud always
covers the affairs of the Jesuits.

[Sidenote: Letter from M. de Montlosier.]

With regard to the Jesuits, I received the following letter from M.
de Montlosier, and I sent him the reply which will be read after the
letter:

Forsake not an old friend, for the new will not be like to
him.--ECCLES[287].

"My dear friend, these words are not only of a high
antiquity, they are not only of a high wisdom; for the
Christian they are sacred. In addressing you, I invoke all
the authority that they possess. Never among old friends,
never among good citizens, has the need for drawing together
been greater. To dose up the ranks, to close up all the bonds
between us, to excite with emulation all our wishes, all
our efforts, all our sentiments is a duty commanded by the
eminently deplorable state of king and country. In addressing
these words to you, I know that they will be received by a
heart which has been rent by ingratitude and injustice; and
yet I still address them to you with confidence, certain as
I am that they will make their way through all the clouds.
In this delicate point, I do not know, my dear friend, if
you will be pleased with me; but, in the midst of your
tribulations, if perchance I have heard you accused, I have
not made it my business to defend you: I have not even
listened. I have said to myself, 'And if it were so?' I do
not know that Alcibiades did not display a little too much
humour when he put out of his own house the rhetorician who
could not show him the works of Homer. I do not know that
Hannibal did not display a little too much violence when
he threw from his seat the senator who was talking against
his opinion. If I were allowed to tell my way of thinking
of Achilles, perhaps I should not approve of his leaving
the army of the Greeks for some chit of a girl who had been
carried off from him. After that, it is enough to pronounce
the names of Alcibiades, Hannibal and Achilles to put an end
to all contention. It is the same to-day with the _iracundus,
inexorabilis_ Chateaubriand. When one has pronounced his
name, all is said and done. With that name, when I say to
myself, 'He is complaining,' I feel my affection moved; when
I say to myself, 'France is indebted to him,' I feel myself
penetrated with respect. Yes, my friend, France is indebted
to you. She must be indebted to you still further; she has
recovered from you her love for the religion of her fathers:
this benefit must be preserved to her; and for that, she must
be preserved from the mistakes of her priests, those priests
themselves preserved from the fatal declivity on which they
have placed themselves.

"My dear friend, you and I, for long years, have not ceased
fighting. It remains to us to preserve the King and the State
from ecclesiastical, self-styled religious preponderance.
In the old situations, the evil with its roots lay within
ourselves: we could circumvent and master them. To-day the
branches which cover us within have their roots without.
Doctrines covered with the blood of Louis XVI. and Charles I.
have consented to leave their place to doctrines stained with
the blood of Henry IV. and Henry III. Neither you nor I will
surely suffer this state of things; it is to unite with you,
it is to receive your approval for my encouragement, it is to
offer you as a soldier my heart and my arms, that I write to
you.

"It is with these sentiments of admiration for yourself and
of a true devotion, that I implore you with affection and
also with respect.

"COMTE DE MONTLOSIER.

"RANDANNE, 28 _November_ 1825."

[Sidenote: My reply to M. de Montlosier.]

"PARIS, 3 _December_ 1825.

"Your letter, my dear old friend, is very serious, and yet it
has made me laugh where I am concerned. Alcibiades, Hannibal,
Achilles! You do not say all that to me seriously. As to the
chit of a girl of the son of Peleus, if it is my portfolio
that is in question, I protest to you that I did not love the
faithless one for three days, and that I did not regret her
for a quarter of an hour. My resentment is another matter.
M. de Villèle, to whom I was sincerely, heartily attached,
has not only been lacking towards the duties of friendship,
towards the public marks of affection which I gave him,
towards the sacrifices which I had made for him, but even in
the simplest matters of conduct.

"The King had no further need of my services: nothing more
natural than to remove me from his counsels; but manner is
everything to an honest man and, as I had not stolen the
King's watch from his mantel-piece, I ought not to have been
_turned out_ as I was. I had made the Spanish War alone and
kept Europe in peace during that dangerous period; by that
single fact I had given an army to the Legitimacy and, of
all the ministers of the Restoration, I was the only one
thrust out of my office without any mark of remembrance
from the Crown, as though I had betrayed the Sovereign and
the country. M. de Villèle thought that I would accept that
treatment, and he has made a mistake. I have been a sincere
friend, I shall remain an irreconcilable enemy. I was
unluckily born; the injuries people do me never heal.

"But this is too much about myself: let us speak of
something more important. I fear lest I should not come to
an understanding with you on serious objects, and that would
distress me greatly! I want the Charter, the whole Charter,
the public liberties to their full extent. Do you want them?

"I want religion, like yourself; like you, I hate the
Congregation and those societies of hypocrites who transform
my servants into spies and who seek nothing at the altar but
power. But I think that the clergy, rid of those parasites,
may very well enter into a constitutional system and even
become the stay of our new institutions. Do you not wish
too much to separate it from the political order? Here I am
giving you a proof of my extreme impartiality. The clergy,
which, I venture to say, owes me so much, does not love me
at all, has never defended me nor rendered me any service.
But what matter? It is a question of being just and of seeing
what is good for religion and the monarchy.

"I did not, old friend, doubt your courage; you will, I am
convinced, do all that will appear to you to be useful, and
your talent answers for your triumph. I shall expect to hear
from you again, and I embrace my faithful companion in exile
with all my heart.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

I resumed my controversies. Every day I had skirmishes and van-guard
actions with the soldiers of the ministerial hangers-on; they did not
always fight with clean weapons. In the two first centuries of Rome,
they punished the horse-soldiers who rode badly to the charge, whether
because they were too stout or not brave enough, by condemning them to
undergo a bleeding: I made the chastisement my affair.

"The universe is changing around us," I said: "new peoples
are appearing upon the world's scene, ancient peoples are
rising again in the midst of ruins; astonishing discoveries
proclaim an approaching revolution in the arts of peace
and war: religion, politics, manners, all is assuming a
different character. Do we take notice of that movement? Are
we marching with society? Are we following the course of the
time? Are we preparing to keep our place in a transmuted or
growing civilization? No: the men who rule us are as foreign
to the state of things in Europe as though they belonged to
the people lately discovered in the interior of Africa. What
do they know then? The stock-exchange: and even that they
know badly. Are we condemned to bear the burden of obscurity
to punish us for having undergone the yoke of glory[288]?"

The transaction relating to San Domingo furnished me with the occasion
to develop some points of our public right, of which no one was
thinking.

Coming to high considerations and announcing the transformation of
the world, I replied to opponents who had said to me, "What! we might
be Republicans some day? Senseless chatter! Who dreams of a republic
nowadays?" etc. etc.:

"Attached by reason to the monarchical order of things,"
I rejoined, "I regard constitutional monarchy as the best
possible government at this epoch of society.

"But, if they want to reduce everything to personal
interests, if they suppose that, for myself, I think I might
have everything to fear in a Republican State, they are
mistaken.

"Would it treat me worse than the Monarchy has treated me?
Twice or three times have I been stripped bare for or by the
Monarchy: did the Empire, which would have done everything
for me had I been willing, disown me more rudely? I abhor
servitude; liberty pleases my natural independence; I prefer
that liberty in the monarchical order, but I can conceive it
in the popular order of things. Who has less to fear from the
future than I? I have that which no revolution can take from
me: without place, honours, or fortune, any government which
would not be stupid enough to disdain public opinion would
be obliged to reckon me for something. Popular governments,
above all, are composed of individual existences and make for
themselves a general value out of the particular value of
every citizen. I shall always be certain of the esteem of the
public, because I shall never do anything to lose it, and I
should perhaps find more justice among my enemies than among
my pretended friends.

"Therefore, on computation, I should have no fear of
republics, as I should have no antipathy to liberty; I am not
a king; I await no crown; it is not my own cause that I plead.

"I have said under another ministry, and speaking of that
ministry, that one morning we should go to the window to see
the Monarchy pass.

"I say to the actual ministers:

"'If you continue to do as you are doing, the whole
revolution might, within a given time, reduce itself to
_a new edition of the Charter in which they would content
themselves with changing only two or three words._[289]"

I have underlined these last phrases to attract the reader's eyes
to that striking prediction. Even to-day, when opinions are in full
flight, when every man utters at random all that passes through his
brain, those Republican ideas expressed by a Royalist during the
Restoration still sound daring. In point of the future, the pretended
progressive minds have no initiative in anything.

My last articles stirred up even M. de La Fayette, who, by way of
compliment, had a bay-leaf handed to me. The effect of my opinions, to
the great surprise of those who had not believed in them, made itself
felt from the book-sellers, who came to me in a deputation, to the
parliament-men at first least allied to me in politics. The letter
given below in proof of what I am putting forward will cause a certain
surprise because of its signature. Attention should be given only to
the significance of the letter, to the change which had occurred in
the ideas and position of the writer and the recipient: as to its
composition, I am "Bossuet" and "Montesquieu," that goes without
saying; that is the daily bread of us authors, just as ministers are
always Sully and Colbert.

[Sidenote: Letter from General Sébastiani.]

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"Permit me to participate in the universal admiration: I have
too long entertained this sentiment to resist the need of
expressing it to you.

"You unite the loftiness of Bossuet with the profundity of
Montesquieu: you have revived their pen and their genius.
Your articles are a great education to any statesman.

"In the new method of warfare which you have created, you
recall the mighty hand of him who, in other fights, also
filled the world with his glory. May your successes prove
more enduring: they interest the country and humanity.

"All who, like myself, profess the principles of
constitutional monarchy, are proud to find in you their
noblest interpreter.

"Accept, monsieur le vicomte, a renewed assurance of my high
regard.

"HORACE SÉBASTIANI.

"SUNDAY, 30 _October._"

Thus fell at my feet friends, enemies, adversaries, in the moment of
victory. All the pusillanimous and ambitious spirits who had believed
me lost began to see me come forth beaming from the whirlwinds of dust
in the lists: it was my second Spanish War; I was triumphing over all
parties at home as I had triumphed over France's enemies abroad. I
had had to discharge my duty in person, in the same way as, with my
dispatches, I had paralyzed and rendered useless the dispatches of M.
de Metternich and Mr. Canning.

General Foy[290] and the deputy Manuel[291] died and deprived the
Opposition of the Left of its best speakers. M. de Serre[292] and
Camille Jordan[293] also sank into the tomb. Even in my arm-chair at
the Academy, I was obliged to defend the liberty of the press against
the tearful supplications of M. de Lally-Tolendal[294]. The law on
the police of the press, which was called the "Law of Justice and
Love[295]," owed its fall chiefly to my attacks. My _Opinion_ on this
bill is a work of historical curiosity; I received compliments on it;
among them occur two names which it is strange to recall:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I appreciate the thanks which you are kind enough to address
to me. You call obligingness what I regarded as a debt which
I was glad to pay to the eloquent writer. All true friends
of letters participate in your triumph and are bound to
regard themselves as jointly and severally interested in your
success. At all times and places, I shall contribute to it
with all my might, if it be possible that you have need of
efforts so feeble as mine.

"In our enlightened century, genius is the only power that
remains above the blows of disgrace; it falls to you,
monsieur, to furnish a living proof of this to those who
rejoice at it as well as to those who have the misfortune to
deplore it.

"I have the honour to be, with the most distinguished regard,
your, etc. etc.,

"ÉTIENNE.

"PARIS, 5 _April_ 1826."

[Sidenote: Letter from Benjamin Constant.]

"I have delayed very long, monsieur, in thanking you for
your admirable speech. An inflammation of the eyes, my work
for the Chamber and, still more, the terrible scenes in that
Chamber shall serve as my excuse. You know, besides, how my
mind and soul participate in all that you say and sympathize
with all the good that you are trying to do to our unhappy
country. I am glad to add my feeble efforts to your powerful
influence; and the frenzy of a ministry which plagues France
and would like to degrade it, while disquieting me as to
its approaching results, gives me the consoling assurance
that such a state of things cannot last long. You will
have powerfully contributed to put an end to it; and, if I
deserve some day that my name be placed far after yours in
the struggle which we must maintain against so much folly and
crime, I shall consider myself amply rewarded.

"Accept, monsieur, the homage of a sincere admiration, of a
profound esteem and of the highest regard.

"BENJAMIN CONSTANT.

"PARIS, 21 _May_ 1827."

It was at the time of which I am speaking that I attained the highest
pitch of my political importance. Through the Spanish War, I had
swayed Europe; but a violent opposition was fighting against me in
France. After my fall, I became, at home, the acknowledged ruler of
public opinion. Those who had accused me of committing an irreparable
fault in resuming my pen were obliged to recognise that I had formed
for myself an empire mightier than the first. Young France had come
over in its entirety to my side and has not left me since. In several
of the industrial classes, the workmen were at my orders, and I could
no longer take a step in the streets without being surrounded. Whence
came this popularity? From the fact that I knew the real spirit of
France. I had set out for the combat with one newspaper, and I had
become the master of all the rest. My daring came to me from my
indifference: as it would have been all one to me had I failed, I
advanced towards success without troubling lest I fell on the way. All
that remains to me is this satisfaction with myself; for what matters
to anybody, to-day, a past popularity which has rightly been effaced
from the memory of all?

The King's saint's-day[296] having arrived, I took occasion of it to
blaze forth a loyalty which my Liberal opinions have never impaired. I
published this article:

"Another royal truce!

"Peace to-day to the ministers!

"Glory, honour, long happiness and long life to Charles X.!
It is St. Charles's Day!

"It is we above all, the old companions in exile of our
Monarch, who should be asked to tell the history of Charles X.

"You others, Frenchmen who have not been forced to leave your
country, you who received one Frenchman the more only to
escape imperial despotism and the foreign yoke, inhabitants
of the great and good town who have seen only the happy
Prince: when you crowded round him, on the 12th of April
1814; when, weeping with emotion, you touched consecrated
hands; when, on a brow ennobled by age and misfortune, you
found again all the graces of youth, as one sees beauty
through a veil, you perceived only virtue triumphant, and you
led the son of kings to the royal couch of his fathers.

"But we, we have seen him sleep on the bare ground, like
ourselves homeless, like ourselves outlawed and despoiled.
Well, the goodness which charms you was the same; he wore
misfortune as he wears the crown to-day, without finding the
burden too heavy, with that Christian mildness which tempered
the vividness of his misfortune as it softens the vividness
of his prosperity.

"To the bounties of Charles X. must be added all the bounties
with which his ancestors loaded us; the feast of a Most
Christian King is for the French a feast of gratitude:
let us therefore give way to the transports of grateful
acknowledgment with which it should inspire us. Let us allow
nothing to enter our souls that can for a moment render our
joy less pure! Woe to the men...! We were about to violate
the truce! God save the King[297]!"

[Sidenote: Article in praise of Charles X.]

My eyes have filled with tears while copying this page of my
controversy, and I have not the courage to continue making extracts
from it. O my King, you whom I had seen on foreign soil, I have
seen you again on that same soil where you were about to die! When
I was fighting for you so eagerly, to snatch you from hands which
were beginning to undo you, judge, by the words which I have just
transcribed, if I was your enemy or, rather, the fondest and sincerest
of your servants! Alas, I speak to you, and you no longer hear me!

The Bill relating to the police of the press having been withdrawn,
Paris was illuminated at night. I was struck by the public
manifestation, an evil prognostication for the Monarchy: the opposition
had passed into the people, and the people, by its character,
transforms the opposition into a revolution.

The hatred of M. de Villèle went on increasing; the Royalists, as at
the time of the _Conservateur_, had become Constitutionalists again, at
the back of me. M. Michaud[298] wrote to me:

"MY HONORABLE MASTER,

"I had the announcement of your work on the censorship
printed yesterday, but the paragraph, consisting of
two lines, was struck out by messieurs the censors. M.
Capefigue[299] will explain to you why we have not left
blanks or dots.

"If God does not come to our aid, all is lost; the Royalty
is like unhappy Jerusalem in the hands of the Turks: its
children can hardly approach it; to what a cause have we then
sacrificed ourselves!

"MICHAUD."

The Opposition had at last communicated irascibility to the cold
temperament of M. de Villèle and rendered despotic the malevolent
spirit of M. de Corbière. The latter had removed the Duc de
Liancourt[300] from seventeen unpaid offices. The Duc de Liancourt was
not a saint, but he was a benevolent man, upon whom philanthropy had
bestowed the title of venerable; by the softening influence of Time,
old Revolutionaries no longer move except with an epithet, like the
gods in Homer: it is always the respectable M. This, it is always the
inflexible Citizen That, who, like Achilles, has never eaten broth
(ἃ-χὺλος). On the occasion of the scandal that happened at M. de
Liancourt's funeral, M. de Sémonville[301] said to us, in the Chamber
of Peers:

"Be easy, my lords, such a thing shall never happen again; I will
myself conduct you to your last resting-place."

The King, in the month of April 1827, proposed to review the National
Guard on the Champ de Mars[302]. Two days before this fatal review,
prompted by my zeal, and asking no better than to lay down my arms,
I addressed a letter to Charles X., which was handed to him by M. de
Blacas, who acknowledged its receipt by this note:

"I did not lose a single moment, monsieur le vicomte, in
handing the King the letter which you did me the honour to
send me for His Majesty and, if he deigns to entrust me with
a reply, I shall show no less alacrity in forwarding it to
you.

"Receive, monsieur le vicomte, my most sincere compliments.

"BLACAS D'AULPS.

"27 _April_, 1 P.M."

[Sidenote: My letter to the King.]

TO THE KING

"SIRE,

"Permit a loyal subject, whom moments of agitation will
always find at the foot of the throne, to confide to Your
Majesty a few reflections which he thinks useful both to the
glory of the Crown and the happiness and safety of the King.

"Sire, it is but too true, there is danger within the State,
but it is also certain that this danger is nothing if the
very principles of government be not thwarted.

"A great secret has been revealed to me, Sire: your ministers
have had the misfortune to teach France that the people,
which was said no longer to _exist_, is still quite alive.
Paris, during twice twenty-four hours, has evaded authority.
The same scenes are being repeated throughout France: the
factions will not forget this attempt.

"But popular assemblages, so dangerous under absolute
monarchies, because they take place in presence of the
Sovereign himself, mean little under the representative
monarchy, because they come into contact only with ministers
or laws. Between the monarch and the subjects is fixed a
barrier that stops everything: the two Chambers and the
public institutions. Outside these movements, the King always
finds his authority and his sacred Person sheltered.

"But, Sire, there is one condition indispensable to the
general safety, and that is to act in the spirit of the
institutions: a resistance on the part of your Council to
that spirit would make popular movements as dangerous under
the representatative monarchy as they are under the absolute
monarchy.

"I pass from theory to application:

"Your Majesty is about to appear at the review: you will be
received as you should; but it is possible that, amid the
cries of 'God Save the King!' you will hear other cries which
will express the public opinion of the ministers.

"Furthermore, Sire, it is false to say, as they do, that
there is a Republican faction at present; but it is true
that there are some partisans of an illegitimate monarchy:
now the latter are too clever not to avail themselves of the
opportunity and mingle their voices, on the 29th, with that
of France to impose upon the public.

"What will the King do? Will he yield his ministers to the
popular clamour? That would be to kill the power. Will the
King keep his ministers? Those ministers will make all the
unpopularity that pursues them fall upon the head of their
august master. I am well aware that the King would have the
courage to burden himself with a personal sorrow to avoid
harm befalling the Monarchy; but it is possible, by the
simplest means, to avoid these calamities; permit me, Sire,
to tell it to you: it is possible by remaining within the
spirit of our institutions; the ministers have lost their
majority in the House of Peers and in the nation, the natural
consequences of that critical position is their resignation.
How, with a sense of their duty, could they persist, by
remaining in power, in compromising the Crown? By laying
their resignation at the feet of your Majesty they will calm
everything, they will end everything; it is no longer the
King who yields, it is the ministers who resign in accordance
with all the usages and all the principles of representative
government The King can afterwards take back those among them
whom he will think fit to retain: there are two whom public
opinion honours, M. le Duc de Doudeauville[303] and M. le
Comte de Chabrol[304].

"The review would in this way lose its disadvantages and
be no more than an unmixed triumph. The Session will end
peaceably amid blessings showered on the King's head.

"Sire, to dare to write you this letter, I must be very
firmly persuaded of the necessity for taking a resolution;
a very imperious sense of duty must have prompted me. The
ministers are my enemies; I am theirs; I forgive them as a
Christian; but I shall never forgive them as a man; in this
position, I should never have spoken to the King of their
retiring, if the safety of the Monarchy were not at stake.

"I am, etc.,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de Berry were insulted on
going to the review; the King was generally well received; but one or
two companies of the 6th Legion cried:

"Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits!" Charles X. was
offended, and replied:

"I came to receive homage, and not a lesson."

He often had noble words in his mouth which were not always supported
by vigorous action: his spirit was bold, his character timid. On
returning to the Palace, Charles X. said to Marshal Oudinot[305]:

"The effect as a whole was satisfactory. There were a few marplots, but
the bulk of the National Guard is good: express my satisfaction to it."

M. de Villèle arrived. On their way back, some of the legions had
passed by the Ministry of Finance and shouted:

"Down with Villèle!"

[Sidenote: The National Guard.]

Irritated by all the previous attacks, the minister was no longer proof
against the impulses of a cold anger; he proposed to the Council to
disband the National Guard. He was supported by Messieurs de Corbière,
de Peyronnet, de Damas[306] and de Clermont-Tonnerre[307] and opposed
by M. de Chabrol[308], the Bishop of Hermopolis[309] and the Duc de
Doudeauville[310]. A royal decree pronounced the disbanding, the most
baleful blow struck at the Monarchy before the last blow of the days of
July: if, at that moment, the National Guard had not been dissolved,
the barricades would not have gone forward. M. le Duc de Doudeauville
sent in his resignation; he wrote the King a letter giving his motives
and foretelling the future, which everybody, for the rest, foresaw.

The Government began to be afraid; the newspapers were redoubling in
audacity and a plan of censorship was put forward against them, from
habit; there was even talk of a La Bourdonnaye[311] Ministry, in which
M. de Polignac would have figured. I had had the misfortune to appoint
M. de Polignac Ambassador to London, in spite of what M. de Villèle
said to me: on this occasion he saw more clearly and further than I.
On entering the ministry, I had hastened to do something agreeable
to Monsieur. The President of the Council had contrived to reconcile
the two brothers, in view of an approaching change of reign: he was
successful in that; I, taking it into my head for once in my life to
try to be shrewd, was stupid. Had M. Polignac not been an ambassador,
he would not have become Minister for Foreign Affairs.

M. de Villèle, beset on one side by the Royalist Liberal Opposition,
plagued on the other by the requirements of the bishops, misled by
the prefects consulted, who were themselves misled[312], determined
to dissolve the Electoral Chamber, despite the three hundred who
remained faithful to him. The dissolution was preceded by the revival
of the censorship[313]. I attacked more vigorously than ever[314]; the
different sections of the Opposition joined hands; the elections of
the small colleges all went against the ministry[315]; in Paris, the
Left triumphed; seven colleges returned M. Royer-Collard[316], and the
two colleges before which M. de Peyronnet[317], a minister, presented
himself rejected him. Paris illuminated again; there were scenes of
bloodshed; barricades were thrown up[318], and the troops sent to
establish order were obliged to fire: thus the way was prepared for
the last and fatal days. In the meantime, the news arrived of the
Battle of Navarino[319], a success in which I could claim my share. The
great misfortunes of the Restoration have been announced by victories;
they had difficulty in detaching themselves from the heirs of Louis the
Great.

[Sidenote: The Chambers.]

The Chamber of Peers enjoyed the public favour, thanks to its
resistance to the oppressive laws; but it did not know how to defend
itself: it allowed itself to be gorged with batches[320] against which
I was almost the only one to protest. I prophesied to it that those
nominations would vitiate its principle and cause it, in the long run,
to lose all its strength in public opinion: was I mistaken? Those
batches, introduced with the object of breaking up a majority, have not
only destroyed the aristocracy in France, but have become the means
which will be employed against the English aristocracy; the latter will
be stifled under a multitudinous fabrication of togas and will end by
losing its hereditary right, even as the distorted peerage has lost it
in France.

The new Chamber, on its arrival, pronounced its famous refusal of
co-operation. M. de Villèle, reduced to extremities, thought of
dismissing part of his colleagues and negociated with Messieurs
Laffitte[321] and Casimir Périer[322]. The two leaders of the
Opposition of the Left lent an ear; the plot was discovered; M.
Laffitte did not dare to take a resolution; the President's hour
struck and the portfolio fell from his hands[323]. I had cried out
aloud on withdrawing from office; M. de Villèle lay down: he had a
feeble desire to remain in the Chamber of Deputies; that was what he
ought to have made up his mind to, but he had neither a sufficiently
profound acquaintance with representative government nor a sufficiently
great authority on outside opinion to play a part of that sort: the
new ministers demanded his banishment to the Chamber of Peers and he
accepted it. I was consulted as to some substitutes for the cabinet and
I invited them to take M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani: my
words were wasted.

M. de Chabrol, charged with the construction of the new ministry, put
me at the head of the list: I was indignantly struck out by Charles
X. M. Portalis[324], the most miserable character that ever was,
a Federate during the Hundred Days, grovelling at the feet of the
Legitimacy, of which he spoke as the most ardent Royalist would have
blushed to speak, to-day lavish of his hackneyed adulation to Philip,
received the Seals. At the War Office, M. de Caux[325] replaced M.
de Clermont-Tonnerre. M. le Comte Roy[326], the skilful artisan of
his immense fortune, was given Finance. The Comte de La Ferronnays,
my friend, had the Foreign Office. M. de Martignac[327], entered the
Ministry of the Interior; the King soon conceived a hatred for him.
Charles X. obeyed his tastes rather than his principles: he disliked M.
de Martignac because of his love of pleasure, yet he favoured Messieurs
de Corbière and de Villèle, neither of whom went to Mass.

M. de Chabrol and the Bishop of Hermopolis remained temporarily in the
ministry. The bishop, before retiring, came to see me; he asked me if I
would replace him as Minister of Public Instruction:

"Take M. Royer-Collard," said I to him, "I have no desire to be a
minister; but if the King wished absolutely to recall me to the
Council, I would come back only through the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, in reparation of the affront which I received. And I can have
no claim on that office, which is very well placed in the hands of my
noble friend."

After the death of M. Mathieu de Montmorency, M. de Rivière[328] had
become governor to the Duc de Bordeaux; from that time he worked for
the overthrow of M. de Villèle, for the devout Court Party had risen
against the Minister of Finance. M. de Rivière met me by appointment
in the Rue de Taranne, at M. de Marcellus', to make the same useless
proposal to me which the Abbé de Frayssinous made later. M. de Rivière
died, and M. le Baron de Damas succeeded him about the person of the
Duc de Bordeaux. The question remained therefore to find successors to
M. de Chabrol and M. the Bishop of Hermopolis. The Abbé Feutrier[329],
Bishop of Beauvais, was installed at the Ministry of Public Worship,
which was separated from the Public Instruction, the latter falling to
M. de Vatimesnil[330]. Remained the Ministry of Marine: it was offered
to me; I declined it. M. le Comte Roy asked me to tell him some one
who would be acceptable to me and whom I would select, in my shade
of opinion. I mentioned M. Hyde de Neuville. The tutor of the Duc de
Bordeaux had also to be found; the Comte Roy spoke of it to me: M. de
Chéverus[331] at once occurred to my mind. The Minister of Finance
hastened to Charles X.; the King said to him:

"I have no objection: Hyde for the Navy; but why cannot Chateaubriand
take that office himself? As for M. de Chéverus, it would be an
excellent choice; I am sorry not to have thought of it; two hours
earlier, and the thing would have been done: tell Chateaubriand so; but
M. Tharin[332] is appointed."

M. Roy came to inform me of the success of his negociation; he added:

"The King wishes you to accept an embassy; if you like, you shall go to
Rome."

[Sidenote: Ambassador to Rome.]

That word "Rome" had a magic effect upon me; I felt the temptation
to which the anchorites were exposed in the desert. Charles X., in
accepting for the Navy the friend whom I had suggested, was making
the first advances; I could no longer refuse what he expected of me:
I therefore consented once more to go away. This time, at least, the
place of exile attracted me: _Pontificum veneranda sedes, sacrum
solium._ I felt myself seized with the desire to settle for good, with
the longing to disappear (even with some calculated idea of fame) in
the city of funerals, at the very moment of my triumph. I should no
longer have raised my voice, unless like Pliny's prophetic bird, to say
_Ave_ every morning to the Capitol and the dawn. It may be that it was
useful to my country to get rid of me: by the weight which I feel to
myself, I can guess the burden which I must be to others. Minds of some
power which prey upon themselves and turn upon themselves are tiring.
Dante places tortured souls, in the Inferno, on a bed of fire. M. le
Duc de Laval, whom I was going to replace in Rome, was appointed to the
Embassy in Vienna.

Before changing my subject, I beg leave to retrace my steps and relieve
myself of a burden. I did not enter without suffering into the details
of my long difference with M. de Villèle. I have been accused of
contributing to the fall of the Legitimist Monarchy; it is right that I
should examine that reproach.

The events which happened under the ministry of which I formed part
have an importance which binds it to the common fortune of France:
there is no Frenchman but his lot has been affected by the good which
I may have done, the ill which I have undergone. Through whimsical
and inexplicable affinities, through secret relations which sometimes
entwine lofty and vulgar destinies, the Bourbons prospered so long as
they deigned to listen to me, although I am far from believing, with
the poet, that "my eloquence gave alms to the Royalty[333]." So soon
as it was thought right to break the reed that grew at the foot of the
throne, the crown leant over, soon to fall: often, by plucking a blade
of grass, one causes a great ruin to crumble into dust.

These incontestable facts you may explain as you will; if they give
to my political career a relative value which it does not possess of
itself, I shall get no vainer, I feel no evil joy at the chance which
connects my short-lived name with the events of the centuries. Whatever
the variety of the accidents of my adventurous course, wherever names
and facts may have led me, the last horizon of the picture is always
threatening and sad.

Juga cœpta moveri
Silvarum, visæque canes ululare per umbram[334].

But, if the scene has changed in a deplorable manner, I must, they say,
accuse only myself: to avenge what appeared to me an injury, I divided
everything, and this division in the last result produced the overthrow
of the Throne. Let us see.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Villèle.]

M. de Villèle has declared that it was impossible to govern either with
me or without me. With me, there he was wrong; without me, at the time
when M. de Villèle said that, he was saying the truth, for the most
varied opinions made up a majority for me.

M. the President of the Council has never known me. I was sincerely
attached to him; I had made him enter his first ministry, as is proved
by M. le Duc de Richelieu's note of thanks and the other notes which I
have quoted. I had sent in my resignation as Plenipotentiary to Berlin
when M. de Villèle retired. They persuaded him that, on his second
entrance into office, I desired his place. I had no such desire. I do
not belong to the fearless race, deaf to the voice of devotion and
reason. The truth is that I have no ambition; that is precisely the
passion which I lack, because I have another that governs me. When I
asked M. de Villèle to take some important dispatch to the King, to
save me the trouble of going to the Palace, in order to leave me at
leisure to visit a Gothic chapel in the Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, he
might have felt assured against my ambition, if he had judged better of
my puerile candour or of the loftiness of my disdain.

Nothing attracts me in practical life, except, perhaps, the Foreign
Office. I was not insensible to the idea that the country would owe to
me its liberty at home, its independence abroad. Far from seeking to
overthrow M. de Villèle, I had said to the King:

"Sire, M. de Villèle is a most enlightened President; Your Majesty
must keep him for evermore at the head of your Councils."

M. de Villèle did not notice it: my mind might lean towards domination,
but it was subject to my character; I found pleasure in my obedience,
because it rid me of my will. My capital fault is weariness, distaste
for everything, perpetual doubt. Had a sovereign been found who,
understanding me, had kept me at work by force, he would perhaps have
turned me to some account: but Heaven rarely causes to be born together
the man who will and the man who can. When all is said and done, is
there a thing to-day for which one would take the trouble to get out of
bed? We fall asleep to the sound of the kingdoms which fall during the
night and which are swept up each morning before our door.

Besides, since M. de Villèle parted from me, politics had become
deranged: the ultraism against which the wisdom of the President of
the Council still struggled had gone beyond him. The annoyance which
he experienced at the hands of opinion at home and of the movement
of opinion abroad rendered him irritable: hence the fettering of
the press, the suppression of the National Guard of Paris, and so
forth. Was I to allow the Monarchy to perish, in order to acquire the
reputation of an hypocritical moderation on the look-out? I believed
myself most sincerely to be fulfilling a duty in fighting at the head
of the Opposition, paying too much attention to the peril which I
beheld on one side, not enough struck with the contrary danger. When M.
de Villèle was overthrown, I was consulted on the nomination of a new
ministry. If they had, as I suggested, taken M. Casimir Périer, General
Sébastiani and M. Royer-Collard, things might have held out. I would
not accept the department of the Navy and I made them give it to my
friend M. Hyde de Neuville; I also twice refused the Ministry of Public
Instruction; never would I have entered the Council unless I were the
master. I went to Rome to seek my other self among the ruins, for there
are in my person two distinct beings, having no communication one with
the other.

I will, however, make a loyal admission: my excessive resentment does
not justify me according to the rule and the time-honoured word of
virtue; but my whole life serves as my excuse.

An officer in the Navarre Regiment, I had returned from the forests
of America to join the fleeing Legitimacy, to fight in its ranks
against my own judgment, all without conviction, from sheer soldierly
duty. I remained eight years on foreign soil, overwhelmed with every
wretchedness.

This generous tribute paid, I returned to France in 1800. Bonaparte
sought me out and placed me; on the death of the Duc d'Enghien, I
devoted myself once more to the memory of the Bourbons. My words on
the tomb of Mesdames at Trieste revived the wrath of the dispenser
of empires; he threatened to have me cut down on the steps of the
Tuileries. The pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_ was worth to
Louis XVIII., on his own confession, as much as a hundred thousand men.

With the aid of the popularity which I then enjoyed,
anti-Constitutional France understood the institutions of the
Legitimate Royalty. During the Hundred Days, the Monarchy saw me by
its side in its second exile. Lastly, through the Spanish War, I had
contributed to the suppression of the conspiracies, to the union of
opinions under one and the same cockade, and to the restoring of its
range to our cannon. The rest of my plans are well known: to extend our
frontiers, to give new crowns in the New World to the family of St.
Louis.

[Sidenote: My difference with him.]

This long perseverance in the same sentiments perhaps merited some
consideration. Sensitive to affront, I did not find it possible also to
put on one side what I might be worth, to forget entirely that I was
the restorer of religion, the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._

My agitation necessarily increased still further at the thought that
a paltry quarrel made our country miss an opportunity of greatness
which it would not find again. Had they said to me, "Your plans will be
followed; what you have taken in hand will be carried out without you,"
I should have forgotten all for France. Unfortunately, I had the belief
that my ideas would not be adopted; the event has proved it.

I was, perhaps, in error, but I was persuaded that M. le Comte de
Villèle did not understand the society which he ruled; I am convinced
that the solid qualities of that able minister were inadequate at the
hour of his ministry: he had come too early under the Restoration.
Financial operations, commercial companies, the industrial movement,
canals, steamboats, railways, high-roads, a material society which
has no passion save that of peace, which dreams only of the comforts
of life, which wants to make of the future only a perpetual to-day:
in this order of things, M. de Villèle would have been king. M. de
Villèle wanted a time which could not be his and, from honour, he
will have nothing to do with a time which belongs to him. Under the
Restoration, all the faculties of the mind were alive; all parties
dreamt of realities or illusions; all, advancing or receding, came
into tumultuous collision; none purposed to remain where he was; to
no earnest mind did the Constitutional Legitimacy seem to be the last
word of the Republic or the Monarchy. We felt stirring in the ground
under our feet armies or revolutions which came to offer themselves
for extraordinary destinies. M. de Villèle was quite alive to this
movement; he saw the wings grow which, sprouting from the nation's
shoulders, were about to restore it to its element, to the air, to
space, immense and light as it is. M. de Villèle wished to keep this
nation to the ground, to fasten it down, but he never had the strength
for it. I, on the other hand, wished to occupy the French with glory,
to fasten them up above, to endeavour to lead them to reality through
dreams: that is what they love.

It would be better to be more humble, more prostrate, more Christian.
Unfortunately I am subject to err; I have not the evangelic perfection:
if a man struck me on the cheek, I should not turn to him the other
also.

Had I conjectured the result, I should certainly have refrained; the
majority which voted the phrase of refusal to co-operate would not have
voted it, if they had foreseen the consequence of their vote. None
seriously desired a catastrophe, except a few men apart. There was
at first only a riot, and the Legitimacy alone transformed it into a
revolution: when the moment had come, it lacked the intelligence, the
prudence, the resolution that could still save it. After all, it is a
monarchy fallen; many more will fall: I owed it only my fidelity; it
will have that ever.

Devoted to the early adversities of the Monarchy, I have consecrated
myself to its final misfortunes: ill-fortune will always have for me a
second. I have given back all, places, pensions, honours; and, in order
that I might have nothing more to ask of anybody, I have pledged my
coffin. O stern and rigid judges, virtuous and infallible Royalists,
who mixed an oath with your riches as you mix salt with the meats of
your banquets to preserve them, have a little indulgence in respect
of my past bitternesses; I am expiating them to-day after my fashion,
which is not yours. Do you think that, at the evening hour, at the hour
at which the toiler seeks repose, he does not feel the weight of life,
when that weight is cast back upon his shoulders? And yet, I need not
have borne the burden. I saw Philip in his palace, from the 1st to the
6th of August 1830, as I shall tell when the time comes; it but lay
with me to hearken to generous words.

Later, if I had been able to repent of doing right, it was still
possible for me to retract the first impulse of my conscience. M.
Benjamin Constant, the man so powerful then, wrote to me on the 20th of
September[335]:

"I would much rather write to you of yourself than of myself,
the thing would have more importance. I should like to be
able to speak to you of the loss which you are causing all
France to sustain by withdrawing yourself from her destinies,
you who have exercised so noble and wholesome an influence
upon her. But it would be indiscreet of me to treat personal
questions in this way, and I am bound, while groaning like
every Frenchman, to respect your scruples."

My duties not yet seeming to me to be consummated, I have defended
the widow and the orphan, I have undergone the trial and the prison
which Bonaparte, even in his greatest angers, spared me. I stand forth
between my resignation on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and my cry on
behalf of the plundered child; I rest upon a prince shot dead and a
prince in banishment; they sustain my old arms entwined in their feeble
arms: O Royalists, are you so well attended?

[Sidenote: My sacrifices.]

But, the more I have tied down my life with the bonds of devotion
and honour, the more have I changed my liberty of action for
independence of thought; that thought has resumed its nature. Now,
outside everything, I appraise governments at their worth. Can one
believe in the kings of the future? Is one to believe in the peoples
of the present? The wise and disconsolate man of this century without
conviction finds a wretched repose only in political atheism. Let
the young generations lull themselves with hopes: before hitting the
mark, they will wait long years; the ages are proceeding towards the
general levelling, but they do not hasten their speed at the call of
our desires. Time is a sort of eternity adapted to mortal things; it
counts the races and their sorrows for nothing in the works which it
accomplishes.

It follows from what you have just read that, if what I advised had
been done, if petty longings had not placed their own satisfaction
before the interests of France; if those in power had shown a clearer
appreciation of relative capacities; if the foreign Cabinets had,
like Alexander, deemed that the safety of the French Monarchy lay in
Liberal institutions; if those Cabinets had not maintained the restored
authority in defiance of the principles of the Charter, the Legitimacy
would still be occupying the throne. Ah, what is past is past! It is
useless to turn back, to resume the place which we have quitted; we
find nothing of that which we left there: men, ideas, circumstances,
all have faded away.

[Footnote 262: This book was written in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 263: Marthe Camille Bachasson, Comte de Montalivet
(1801-1880), inherited the title of peer on the death of his father
and his elder brother (22 January and 12 October 1823), but was
not admitted to take his seat in the Upper Chamber until 12 May
1826, because of his age. He became, from the first, a defender of
constitutional ideas; published in 1827 a pamphlet entitled, _Un jeune
pair de France aux Français de son age_; held several offices, from
1830 to 1839; and was Intendant General of the Civil List from 1839 to
1848. In 1879, M. de Montalivet was elected a perpetual senator.--B.]

[Footnote 264: Narcisse Achille Comte de Salvandy (1795-1856), one of
the principal writers on the _Journal des Débats_, and author of a
large number of political pamphlets published between 1824 and 1827.
In 1835, he was elected a member of the French Academy. The Comte
de Salvandy was twice Minister of Public Instruction (1837-1839 and
1845-1848).--B.]

[Footnote 265: Prosper Léon Duvergier de Hauranne (1798-1881), author
of the _Histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en France_ ( 1857-1872).
He was imprisoned by Louis-Napoleon, in 1851, and banished for a short
period. Duvergier became a member of the French Academy in 1870.]

[Footnote 266: Henri Joseph Gisquet (1792-1866) was Prefect of
Police from 1831 to 1836, and it was under his administration that
Chateaubriand was sent to jail, in 1832, as we shall see later.
Gisquet's name was subsequently mixed up in more than one scandal,
notably that of the inferior muskets supplied, in 1831, by the firm
of Périer, in which Gisquet, as well as Casimir Périer, had been a
partner. In 1838, he was mulcted in a fine and dismissed from the
Council of State for bribery and corruption, in which his family and
his mistress were concerned with him.--B.]

[Footnote 267: 21 June 1826 and 18 December 1826 are the dates of
Chateaubriand's first and last article in the _Journal des Débats._--B.]

[Footnote 268: Article of 28 June 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 269: Article of 5 July 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 270: Charles Ignace Comte de Peyronnet (1778-1854), Minister
of Justice from 1821 to 1828, and Minister of the Interior in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 271: Louis Guillaume Baron Ternaux (1765-1833), a famous
manufacturer of Cashmere shawls. He was created a baron in 1819.--T.]

[Footnote 272: The first King of modern Greece was Otto, second son of
Louis I. King of Bavaria. Otto was elected in 1832, declared of age in
1835, and deposed in 1862. In 1863, the Greeks elected William, second
son of Christian IX. King of Denmark, as their sovereign, with the
title of George I. King of the Hellenes.--T.]

[Footnote 273: Constantine Canaris (1790-1877), the famous Greek
admiral and politician, distinguished himself in the Greek War of
Independence (1821-1825), and was several times Minister of Marine and
President of the Cabinet.--T.]

[Footnote 274: The Greeks defeated the Persian naval forces near Mycale
in 479 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 275: Chateaubriand had sold the copyright of his Complete
Works to Ladvocat for seven hundred thousand francs. The writer gave
almost all the money which he received of this sum to the Hospice de
Marie-Thérèse, which Madame de Chateaubriand was founding. Ladvocat's
failure caused him to lose nearly all that he had reserved to "ensure
the peace of his life."--B.]

[Footnote 276: Clément François Victor Gabriel Prunelle (1777-1853), a
distinguished French physician, settled in Lyons and, in 1830, became
mayor of that city.--T.]

[Footnote 277: Jeanne Isabelle Pauline Baronne de Montolieu (1751-1832)
married, first, M. de Crouzas and, secondly, the Baron de Montolieu.
She is the author of _Caroline de Litchfield_ (1786), of the _Robinson
suisse_, or _Swiss Robinson Crusoe_(1813), and of a number of
translations from the German and English, notably Undine and St. Clair
of the Isles.--T.]

[Footnote 278: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of the _History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._ At Lausanne, he was for a time
engaged to marry Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod, who subsequently married
M. Necker and became the mother of Madame de Staël.--T.]

[Footnote 279: The Marquise de Custine.--B.]

[Footnote 280: Astolphe de Custine, son of the marchioness.--B.]

[Footnote 281: Louis Philippe Enguerrand de Custine (1823-1826), only
son of Astolphe de Custine and his wife, _née_ de Saint-Simon de
Courtomer. The child, who died at the age of three years, is buried
in the chapel of the Château de Fervacques between his mother and
grandmother.--B.]

[Footnote 282: M. Berstœcher was Astolphe de Custine's old tutor.--B.]

[Footnote 283: _Letters written from Lausanne_: Letter XVI.--T.]

[Footnote 284: Pp. 120-123 of the new edition of the _Essai_, published
in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 285: The Tsar Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of
December 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 286: 24 March 1826.--T.]

[Footnote 287: _Ecclesiasticus_, IX. 14.]

[Footnote 288: Article of 8 August 1825 on the Conversion of the
Funds.--B.]

[Footnote 289: Article of 24 October 1825 on the Farewell Speech of the
President of the United States to General de La Fayette.--B.]

[Footnote 290: General Maximilien Sébastien Foy (1775-1825), after
rendering brilliant service in the army, was elected to the Chamber of
Deputies in 1819 and displayed an unsuspected oratorical talent as a
defender of constitutional principles. He died, suddenly, on the 28th
of November 1825. An immense concourse of citizens followed his body
to the grave, and a public subscription set on foot for the endowment
of his children reached the surprisingly large sum of nearly a million
francs.--T.]

[Footnote 291: Manuel died on the 20th of August 1827. His funeral also
was accompanied by vast crowds, numbering over 100,000 persons.--T.]

[Footnote 292: M. de Serre died on the 21st of July 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 293: Camille Jordan (1771-1821), a zealous member of the
Opposition in the Chamber of Deputies and author of a number of
literary and philosophical works. His death occurred on the 19th of May
1821.--T.]

[Footnote 294: On the 11th of January 1827, Charles Lacretelle proposed
to his colleagues of the Academy to draw up a petition to the King
against the suggested Press Law. M. de Lally-Tolendal opposed the
motion, and asked why they should make a request which was bound to
remain unsuccessful. Chateaubriand replied that conscience is not
determined by the more or less probable chances of a useful result.
Eighteen of the twenty-nine Academicians present voted in favour of the
proposed petition. The King refused to receive the petition, and the
Academy decided not to publish it (MESNARD, _Histoire de l'Académie
française_).--B.]

[Footnote 295: An article in the _Moniteur_ of 5 January 1827 described
the Bill as a "law of justice and love," which words were promptly
turned into a nickname of hatred and ridicule for the Bill.--B.]

[Footnote 296: St. Charles's Day, 4 November.--T.]

[Footnote 297: Article of 3 November 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 298: Joseph Michaud was, in 1827, manager of the
_Quotidienne._--B.]

[Footnote 299: Jean Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue (1802-1872), a
noted French historian and publicist, author of over a hundred volumes
treating of the history of France. He was, in 1827, a leading member of
the staff of the _Quotidienne._--B.]

[Footnote 300: General François Alexandre Frédéric Duc de La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827) and a peer of France, had been a
member of the Constituent Assembly of 1789. He was at the head of a
number of charitable institutions, founder of the first savings-bank in
France and other benevolent schemes, and extremely popular. He died on
the 27th of March 1827, and his funeral coincided with the agitation
produced by the Press Law and was marked by painful incidents. The
pupils of the Châlons School of Arts and Crafts wanted themselves to
carry the coffin, in spite of the prohibition of the police, and a
scuffle ensued between the students and the soldiers of the military
escort to which, as a general officer, the duke was entitled. In
the midst of the riot, the coffin fell into the mud, and the peer's
insignia, which lay upon it, were trodden under foot.--B.]

[Footnote 301: The Grand Referendary de Sémonville was 73 years of age
in 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 302: The review took place on the 29th of April 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 303: Ambroise Polycarpe de La Rochefoucauld, Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (1765-1841), created a peer of France
(1814), Postmaster-general (1822) and Minister of the King's Household
(1824). After his resignation, in 1827, the Duc de Doudeauville
occupied himself exclusively with philanthropical works.--T.]

[Footnote 304: André Jean Comte de Chabrol de Crouzol (1771-1836),
Intendant-general of the Illyrian Provinces (1810), Prefect of the
Rhône (1814), Under-secretary of the Interior (1817), a peer of France
and Minister of Marine (1824), Minister of Finance (1829-1830). Chabrol
was a consistent adherent of the Elder Branch from 1814 onwards.--T.]

[Footnote 305: Nicolas Charles Oudinot, Maréchal Duc de Reggio
(1767-1847), one of Napoleon's bravest generals, rallied to the
Restoration and was created a peer of France in 1814. He remained
loyal during the Hundred Days and, under the Second Restoration,
became Major-general of the Royal Guard (September 1815) and
Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard (October 1815). Louis-Philippe
made him Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour (1839) and Governor
of the Invalides (1842).--T.]

[Footnote 306: The Comte de Corbière was Minister of the Interior, the
Comte de Peyronnet Keeper of the Seals and Minister of Justice, the
Baron de Damas Minister of Foreign Affairs.--T.]

[Footnote 307: General Aimé Marie Gaspard Marquis, later Duc de
Clermont-Tonnerre (1779-1865), Minister of War.--T.]

[Footnote 308: The Comte de Chabrol de Crouzol was Minister of
Marine.--T.]

[Footnote 309: Denis Comte de Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis
(1765-1841), Minister of Worship and Public Instruction.--T.]

[Footnote 310: The Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville was Minister of
the Royal Household.--T.]

[Footnote 311: François Régis Comte de La Bourdonnaye (1767-1839) was a
member of the Extreme Right of the Chamber of Deputies. He was Minister
of the Interior for a few months, in 1829, in the Polignac Ministry
and, in January 1830, was raised to the peerage, six months before the
revolution which put an end to his political career.--B.]

[Footnote 312: Chateaubriand is here himself misled and unconsciously
calumniates the poor prefects. M. de Villèle, better informed than he,
wrote on the 8th of August 1827:

"The prefects are alarmed at the mere idea of a general
election. They say that, if it were held this year, the
result would be detestable."--B. ]

[Footnote 313: The censorship was revived by an ordinance dated 24 June
1827 and countersigned by Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière and de
Peyronnet.--B.]

[Footnote 314: _Cf. Du Rétablissement de la censure par l'ordonnance du
24 juin 1827._ Paris: Ladvocat, 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 315: The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved on the 5th of
November 1827. The elections took place on the 17th and 24th.--B.]

[Footnote 316: Royer-Collard was elected at Vitry, Châlons, Paris,
Lyons, Neufchâteau, Melun and Béziers.--B.]

[Footnote 317: M. de Peyronnet was rejected at Bourges and at
Bordeaux.--B.]

[Footnote 318: 19 November 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 319: 20 October 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 320: An ordinance creating seventy-six new peers was issued
simultaneously with that dissolving the Chamber of Deputies.--B.]

[Footnote 321: Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the banker and statesman,
Governor of the Bank of France (1814), Minister of Finance and Premier
(1830-1831).--T.]

[Footnote 322: Casimir Périer (1777-1832) was elected President of
the Chamber of Deputies, after the Revolution of 1830, and succeeded
Laffitte as Prime Minister in 1831. He was the grandfather of M. Jean
Paul Pierre Casimir-Périer, who was President of the French Republic
from June 1894 to January 1895.--T.]

[Footnote 323: M. de Villèle resigned office on the 2nd of December
1827.]

[Footnote 324: Joseph Marie Comte Portalis (1778-1858), a count of
the Empire (1810), peer of France (1819), Keeper of the Seals (1828),
Minister of Foreign Affairs (1829), First President of the Court of
Appeal (1829-1852).--B.]

[Footnote 325: Lieutenant-general Louis Victor Vicomte de Caux
(1775-_circa_ 1845), raised to the peerage by Louis-Philippe in
1832.--T.]

[Footnote 326: Antoine Comte Roy (1764-1847) was three times Minister
of Finance (1818, 1819-1821 and 1828-1829). In 1798, the Duc de
Bouillon made over the greater part of his property to M. Roy, in
return for an annuity of 300,000 francs; the duke died a few months
later, and M. Roy found himself one of the richest landed proprietors
in France.--B.]

[Footnote 327: Jean Baptiste Silvère Gaye, Vicomte de Martignac
(1776-1832), the well-meaning but unfortunate minister. He defended the
Prince de Polignac on his trial in 1831 and died within the following
year.--T.]

[Footnote 328: Charles François Riffardeau, Duc de Rivière (1763-1828).
As a personal friend of the Comte d'Artois and his aide-de-camp during
the Emigration, he was implicated in the trial of Georges Cadoudal,
in 1804, and sentenced to death. The Empress Joséphine's intervention
caused this penalty to be commuted, and he was imprisoned for four
years in the fortress of Joux and subsequently transported. Louis
XVIII. made him a peer of France and Ambassador to Constantinople.
Charles X. created him an hereditary duke (1825) and, in 1826, made him
governor to the Duc de Bordeaux. In 1822, the Duc de Rivière presented
Louis XVIII. with the Venus of Milo, which he had discovered during his
embassy to the Sultan.--B.]

[Footnote 329: François Jean Hyacinthe Comte Feutrier (1785-1830),
Bishop of Beauvais since 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 330: Antoine François Henri Lefebvre de Vatimesnil
(1789-1860) played a prominent part later in the struggle for religious
liberty and the liberty of the press.--B.]

[Footnote 331: Jean Louis Anne Madeleine Lefébure, Comte de Chéverus
(1768-1836), Bishop of Boston in Massachusetts (1808), Bishop of
Montauban ( 1823), Archbishop of Bordeaux (1826), a peer of France
(1826) and a cardinal (1836). He refused a peerage at the hands of the
Government of July.--B.]

[Footnote 332: Claude Marie Paul Tharin (1787-1843), Bishop of
Strasburg (1823), resigned his see on receiving his appointment as
tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux in 1826. He quitted the Court before the
end of the Restoration and lived in profound retirement throughout the
Orleanist Usurpation.--T.]

[Footnote 333: BÉRANGER, _À M. de Chateaubriand_ (September 1831),
37-40:

Son éloquence à ces rois fit l'aumône:
Prodigue fée, en ses enchantements,
Plus elle voit de rouille à leur vieux trône,
Plus elle y sème et fleurs et diamants.--T.

]

[Footnote 334: _Æneid_, VI, 256-257.--B.]

[Footnote 335: 20 September 1830.--B.]

BOOK XI[336]

We pass to the embassy to Rome, to Italy, the dream of my life. Before
continuing my story, I must speak of a woman of whom we shall not lose
sight again till the end of these Memoirs. A correspondence is about to
open between us from Rome to Paris: it is necessary, therefore, to know
to whom I am writing, how and at what period I became acquainted with
Madame Récamier.

She met, in the different ranks of society, persons, more or less
celebrated, engaged upon the stage of the world: all offered her their
worship. Her beauty mingles its ideal existence with the material facts
of our history: a placid light illuminating a stormy picture.

Let us resume once more the consideration of times gone by; let us
endeavour, by the light of my setting sun, to trace a portrait on the
sky where my night, which approaches, will soon spread its shadows.

A letter published in the _Mercure_ after my return to France, in 1800,
had attracted the attention of Madame de Staël. I was not yet struck
off the list of Emigrants; _Atala_ drew me from my obscurity. Madame
Bacciocchi (Élisa Bonaparte), at the request of M. de Fontanes, applied
for and obtained my erasure. Madame de Staël had interested herself in
this matter: I went to thank her. I cannot remember if it was Christian
de Lamoignon or the author of _Corinne_[337] who introduced me to
Madame Récamier, her friend; the latter was then living at her house
in the Rue du Mont-Blanc. On emerging from my woods and the obscurity
of my life, I was still quite timid; I scarce dared lift my eyes to a
woman surrounded by adorers.

One morning, about a month later, I was at Madame de Staël's; she had
received me at her toilet; she let Mademoiselle Olive dress her, while
she talked, twisting a little green branch between her fingers. Entered
suddenly Madame Récamier, dressed in a white gown; she sat down in
the middle of a sofa covered in blue silk. Madame de Staël, remaining
standing, continued her very animated conversation, and talked
eloquently; I hardly answered, my eyes fixed on Madame Récamier. I had
never imagined anything like her, and was more than ever discouraged:
my admiration changed into ill-humour against my person. Madame
Récamier went out, and I did not see her again till twelve years later.

Twelve years! What adverse power thus cuts and fritters away our
days, squandering them ironically on all the indifferences called
attachments, on all the miseries styled felicities! Then, by a further
derision, when it has blighted and spent the most precious part, it
brings you back to the starting-point of your career. And how does it
bring you back? With your mind possessed with the foreign ideas, the
importunate phantoms, the deluded or incomplete feelings of a world
which has left you no happiness. Those ideas, those phantoms, those
feelings place themselves between you and the bliss which you might
still enjoy. You return with your heart sick with regret, afflicted by
those errors of youth so painful to the memory in the modesty of years.
That is how I returned, after having been to Rome, to Syria, after
seeing an empire go by, after becoming the man of noise, after ceasing
to be the man of silence. What had Madame Récamier done? What had been
her life?

I have not known the greater portion of the existence at once brilliant
and retired of which I am about to talk to you: I am obliged,
therefore, to betake myself to authorities other than mine; but they
shall be unexceptionable. First, Madame Récamier has described to me
facts which she has witnessed and communicated to me valuable letters.
She has written, on what she has seen, notes of which she has permitted
me to consult the text and, too rarely, to quote it. Next, Madame de
Staël in her correspondence, Benjamin Constant in his recollections,
some printed, the others in manuscript, M. Ballanche in a notice on our
common friend, Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès in her sketches, Madame
de Genlis in hers have furnished abundant materials for my narrative:
I have only knotted all these fine names together, filling up the gaps
with my own statement, when some links of the chain of events were
overlooked or broken.

Montaigne says that men go gaping after future things[338]: I have the
passion for gaping after past things. All is pleasure, particularly
when we turn our eyes to the early years of those we love; we spin out
a cherished life; we extend the affection which we feel over days which
we never knew and which we revive; we adorn that which was with that
which is; we recompose youthfulness.

[Sidenote: Madame Récamier.]

At Lyons, I have seen the Jardin des Plantes laid down on the ruins of
the ancient amphitheatre and in the gardens of the old Abbaye de la
Déserte, now pulled down; the Rhone and the Saône flow at its feet;
far away rises the highest mountain in Europe, the first mile-post
of Italy, with its white board above the clouds. Madame Récamier was
placed in this abbey; she there passed her childhood behind a grill
which opened upon the outer church only at the elevation of the Mass.
Then one saw young girls bowing down in the inner chapel of the
convent. The saint's-day of the abbess was the principal festival of
the community; the prettiest boarder paid the customary compliment:
her dress was arranged, her hair plaited, her head veiled and crowned
by the hands of her playmates; and all this in silence, for the hour
of rising was one of those which were called "grand silence" in the
monasteries. It goes without saying that Juliette[339] had the honours
of the day. Her father and mother, having settled in Paris, sent to
fetch their child. From some rough drafts written by Madame Récamier, I
gather this note:

"On the eve of the day on which my aunt was to come to fetch
me, I was taken to the room of Madame the Abbess to receive
her blessing. The next day, bathed in tears, I went out
through the door, which I did not remember seeing opened to
admit me, found myself in a carriage with my aunt, and we
drove off for Paris.

"I leave with regret a time so calm and so pure to enter upon
that of excitement. It often comes back to me as in a vague,
sweet dream, with its clouds of incense, its numberless
ceremonies, its processions in the gardens, its singing and
its flowers."

Those hours which have left a pious desert now rest in another
religious solitude, without having lost anything of their freshness and
their harmony.

Benjamin Constant, the wittiest man after Voltaire, strives to give
an idea of Madame Récamier's early youth: he has drawn from the model
whose features he aimed at tracing a grace which was not natural to him.

"Among the women of our time," he says, "whom advantages of
feature, mind, or character have rendered famous, there is
one whom I wish to depict. Her beauty made her admired at
first; her soul next made itself known, and her soul appeared
even superior to her beauty. The habit of society supplied
her mind with the means to display itself, and her mind
remained below neither her beauty nor her soul.

"At the age of barely fifteen[340], married to a man[341]
who, occupied by an immense amount of business, could not
guide her extreme youthfulness, Madame Récamier found herself
left almost entirely to herself in a country which was still
in a state of chaos.

"Several women of the same period have filled Europe with
their diverse fames. The majority have paid tribute to their
century, some through indelicate loves, others by guilty
condescensions towards the successive tyrannies.

"She whom I am describing emerged radiant and pure from
that atmosphere which blighted all that it did not corrupt.
Childhood was at first a safeguard for her, thanks to the
Author of this beautiful work, who made everything turn to
her advantage. Far removed from the world, in a solitude
beautified by the arts, she formed for herself a gentle
occupation out of all those attractive and poetic studies
which remain the charm of another age.

"Often also, surrounded by young companions, she indulged
with them in clamorous sports. Slender and light of foot,
she outstripped them in the race; she covered with a bandage
her eyes which were one day to penetrate every soul. Her
glance, to-day so expressive and so profound, which seems to
us to reveal mysteries unknown to herself, sparkled then only
with a lively and playful gaiety. Her beautiful hair, which
cannot become undone without filling us with perturbation,
then fell, without danger to any, over her white shoulders.
Laughter loud and long often interrupted her childish
conversation; but already one could perceive in her that nice
and quick observation which seizes upon the ridiculous, that
gentle malice which is amused by it without ever wounding,
and particularly that exquisite sentiment of eloquence,
purity and good taste, a real inborn nobility, the titles to
which are stamped upon privileged beings.

[Illustration: madame Récamier.]

[Sidenote: Her girlhood.]

"The great world of that time was too uncongenial to her
nature that she should not prefer retirement. She was
never seen in the houses open to all comers, the only
meeting-places possible when every closed company was
suspected; where all classes rushed, because there they could
talk and say nothing, meet and not be compromised; where ill
manners took the place of wit and disorder of gaiety. She was
never seen at the Court of the Directory, where the power
was at once terrible and familiar, inspiring dread without
escaping contempt.

"However, Madame Récamier sometimes issued from her retreat
to go to the play or to the public walks and, in those places
frequented by all, her rare appearances were real events.
Every other object of those vast assemblies was forgotten,
and all flung themselves in her way. The man fortunate
enough to escort her had to overcome admiration as it were
an obstacle; his steps were at every moment delayed by the
onlookers crowding around her; she delighted in this success
with the gaiety of a child and the shyness of a young girl;
but her graceful dignity, which in her home distinguished
her from her young friends, abroad restrained the exuberant
throng. It was as though she reigned by her mere presence
over her companions and the public. Thus passed the first
years of Madame Récamier's marriage, between poetical
occupations, childish sports at home, and short and brilliant
appearances in the world."

Interrupting the narrative of the author of _Adolphe_[342], I will say
that, in this society following upon the Terror, everybody feared to
have the air of possessing a home. People met in the public places,
especially in the Pavillon de Hanovre[343]: when I saw that pavilion,
it was deserted like the hall of a yesterday's feast, or like a stage
from which the actors had descended for ever. There were wont to come
together young women escaped from prison, whom André Chénier had made
to say:

Je ne veux point mourir encore[344].

Madame Récamier had met Danton on his road to execution and, soon
after, she saw some of the fair victims snatched from men who had
themselves become victims of their own fury.

I come back to my guide Benjamin Constant:

"Madame Récamier's mind had need of another food. The
instinct for the beautiful caused her to delight beforehand,
without knowing them, in men distinguished by a reputation
for talent and genius.

"M. de La Harpe was one of the first to appreciate this woman
who was destined one day to group around herself all the
celebrities of her age. He had met her in her childhood, he
saw her again married, and the conversation of this young
person of sixteen years possessed a thousand attractions
for a man whom his excessive self-esteem and the habit of
intercourse with the most intelligent men in France rendered
extremely difficult and hard to please.

"M. de La Harpe divested himself, in the presence of Madame
Récamier, of most of the defects which made commerce with
him laborious and almost insupportable. He took pleasure in
acting as her guide: he admired the swiftness with which
her mind made good her want of experience and grasped all
that he revealed to her concerning the world and mankind.
It was at the time of the famous conversion which so many
people have qualified as hypocrisy. I have always regarded
that conversion as sincere. The sentiment of religion is an
inherent faculty in man; it is absurd to pretend that fraud
and falsehood have created that faculty. Nothing is put
into the human soul except what nature has put there. The
persecutions, the abuses of authority in favour of certain
dogmas can delude us personally and revolt us against what we
should feel if it were not imposed upon us; but, so soon as
the external causes have ceased, we return to our primitive
tendency: when there is no more courage in resisting, we
no longer applaud ourselves for our resistance. Now, the
Revolution having taken this merit from unbelief, the men
whom vanity alone had rendered unbelieving were able to
become religious in good faith.

"M. de La Harpe was of that number; but he retained his
intolerant character and that bitterness of disposition which
made him conceive new hatreds without abjuring the old ones.
All those thorns of his devotion disappeared, however, when
he was with Madame Récamier."

[Sidenote: M. de La Harpe.]

Here are a few fragments of the letters from M. de La Harpe to Madame
Récamier of which Benjamin Constant speaks:

"SATURDAY, 28 _September._

"What, madame, you carry your kindness so far as to wish to
honour a poor outlaw like myself with a visit! This time I
might say, like the ancient patriarchs, whom I resemble so
little otherwise, that 'an angel has come into my house.' I
well know that you like to do works of mercy; but, as things
go nowadays, all good is difficult, and this like the rest.
I must inform you, to my great regret, that to come alone
is first of all impossible, for many reasons: among others
that, with your youth and your face, the splendour of which
will follow you everywhere, you could not travel without a
waiting-maid, to whom prudence forbids me to confide the
secret of my retreat, which is not mine alone. You would
therefore have only one means of carrying out your generous
resolution, which would be to take counsel with Madame de
Clermont, who would bring you one day to her little sylvan
castle, and from there it would be very easy for you to
come with her. You are both made to appreciate and love one
another.... I am writing many verses at this moment. In
writing them, I often reflect that I shall one day be able
to read them to the fair and charming Juliet, whose mind is
as penetrating as her glance, and her taste as pure as her
soul. I would also willingly send you the fragment of Adonis
which you like, although it has become a little profane for
me; but I would want a promise that it shall not leave your
hands....

"Farewell, madame; I indulge with you in ideas which anyone
but yourself would think very extraordinary addressed to a
person of sixteen years; but I know that your sixteen years
are only in your face[345]."

"SATURDAY[346].

"It is long indeed, madame, since I had the pleasure of
talking with you, and, if you be sure, as you must be,
that this is one of my privations, you will make me no
reproaches....

"You have read in my soul; you have seen there that I wore
in it the mourning for the public misfortunes and for my own
faults, and I could not but feel that this sad disposition
formed too strong a contrast with all the brilliancy that
encompasses your age and your charms. I even fear lest it
should sometimes have made itself felt in the few moments
which I have been permitted to spend with you, and I entreat
your indulgence therefore. But now, madame, when Providence
seems to show us a better future very near at hand, to whom
could I better than to yourself confide the joy which I
derive from hopes so sweet and, to my belief, so near? Who
will fill a greater place than you in the private pleasures
which will be mingled with the public joy? I shall then be
more susceptible and less unworthy of the delights of your
charming company, and how happy I shall deem myself still
to count for something in it! If you deign to attach the
same value to the fruit of my labour, you shall always be
the first to whom I shall hasten to present it. Then no
more contradictions nor obstacles; you shall always find me
at your orders, and none, I hope, will be able to blame me
for this preference. I shall say, 'Here is she who, at the
age of illusions and with all the brilliant advantages that
can excuse them, has known all the nobility and delicacy of
proceedings of the purest friendship and, in the midst of
every homage, has remembered an outlaw!' I shall say, 'Here
is she whose youth and grace I have seen grow amid a general
corruption which was never able to overtake them, she whose
reason at sixteen years has often put mine to shame!' and I
am sure that none will be tempted to contradict me."

The sadness of events, of age and of religion, hidden under a melting
expression, present in these letters a singular admixture of thought
and style. Let us return once more to Benjamin Constant's narrative:

"We come to the time when Madame Récamier saw herself for the
first time the object of a strong and regular passion. Till
then she had received unanimous worship from all who had met
her, but her manner of life nowhere offered centres of union
where one could be sure of finding her. She never received
at home and she had not yet formed a society where one could
penetrate every day to see her and try to please her.

[Sidenote: Lucien Bonaparte.]

"In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to live at the
Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league from Paris. A man
since celebrated through different sorts of pretensions, and
even more celebrated through the advantages which he has
refused than through the successes which he has won, Lucien
Bonaparte, obtained an introduction to her.

"He had not, till then, aspired to any save facile conquests
and, to obtain these, had studied only the romancing methods
which his want of knowledge of the world represented to him
as infallible. It is possible that he was enticed at first
by the idea of captivating the loveliest woman of his time.
Young, the leader of a party in the Council of the Five
Hundred, the brother of the first general of the age, he was
gratified at uniting the triumphs of a statesman and the
successes of a lover in his person.

"He conceived the idea of having recourse to a fiction to
declare his love to Madame Récamier; he imagined a letter
from Romeo to Juliet, and sent it as a work of his to her who
bore the same name."

Here is this letter from Lucien, known to Benjamin Constant; in the
midst of the revolutions which have stirred the world of reality, it is
racy to see a Bonaparte plunge into the world of fictions:

LETTER FROM ROMEO TO JULIET by the author of the _Tribu
indienne_[347]

"VENICE, 29 _July._

"Romeo writes to you, Juliet: if you refuse to read me, you
will be crueller than our parents whose long strife has at
last been appeased; no doubt that horrid strife will not
revive. ... A few days since, I knew you only by repute. I
had sometimes seen you in the temples and at feasts; I knew
you were the most beautiful; a thousand lips repeated your
praises, and your charms had struck but not dazzled me....
Why has peace delivered me to your empire? Peace! It reigns
in our families, but trouble reigns in my heart....

"Recall to yourself the day when I was first presented
to you. We were celebrating at a large banquet the
reconciliation of our fathers. I had come from the Senate,
where the troubles raised against the Republic had created a
lively impression.... You arrived; then all flocked round:

"'How lovely she is!' they cried....

"The throng in the evening filled the gardens of Bedmar.
Importunate people, who are everywhere, took possession
of me. This time I had neither patience with them nor
affability: they kept me from you!... I wished to account for
the emotion that was overcoming me. I knew love and wished
to master it.... I was carried away, and with you left the
festive spot.

"I have seen you since: love has seemed to smile upon me.
One day, seated at the water's edge, motionless and pensive,
you were stripping a rose of its leaves; alone with you,
I spoke.... I heard a sigh... vain illusion! Recovering
from my mistake, I saw indifference with its placid brow
seated between us two.... The passion which masters me found
utterance in my discourse, and yours bore the amiable and
cruel impress of childhood and pleasantry.

"Each day I would wish to see you, as though the dart were
not fixed deep enough in my heart. The moments at which I see
you are very rare, and those young Venetians who surround you
and talk insipid gallantry to you are hateful to me. How is
it possible to talk to Juliet as to other women!

"I have wanted to write to you; you will know me, you will
no longer refuse to believe me; my soul is ill at ease; it
thirsts for sentiment. If love has not stirred yours; if
Romeo in your eyes is but an ordinary man, oh, I conjure you
by the bonds which you have laid upon me, be severe with me
from kindness; do not smile to me again, do not speak to me
again, thrust me far from you. Tell me to go away and, if I
can execute that rigorous order, remember at least that Romeo
will ever love you; that none has ever reigned over him as
Juliet has; and that he can no longer cease to live for her,
at least in remembrance."

For a sober-minded man, all this is rather laughable: the Bonapartes
used to live on theatres, novels and verses; is the life of Napoleon
himself aught else than a poem?

[Sidenote: Lucien's passion.]

Benjamin Constant continues, while commenting upon this letter:

"The style of this letter is evidently imitated from all the
novels that have depicted the passions, from _Werther_ to the
_Nouvelle Héloïse._ Madame Récamier easily discovered, from
several circumstances of detail, that she herself was the
object of the declaration offered as though simply for her
perusal. She was not sufficiently accustomed to the language
of love to be warned by experience that everything in the
expressions was, perhaps, not sincere; but a true and sure
instinct warned her; she replied with simplicity and even
gaiety, and showed much more indifference than disquietude or
fear. It needed no more for Lucien really to experience the
passion which he had at first somewhat exaggerated.

"Lucien's letters grew truer, more eloquent, in proportion
as he grew more impassioned; certainly they always show the
ambition for ornamentation, the desire to attitudinize; he
cannot go to sleep without 'flinging himself into the arms of
Morpheus.' In the midst of his despair, he describes himself
as surrendered to the great occupations which surround him;
he is astonished that a man like him sheds tears; but, in all
this alloy of declamation and phrases, there is nevertheless
eloquence, sensibility and grief. At last, in a letter full
of passion in which he wrote to Madame Récamier, 'I cannot
hate you, but I can kill myself,' he suddenly makes a general
reflection: 'I am forgetting that love is not snatched, but
won,' and then adds, 'After receiving your note, I received
many of a diplomatic character; I learnt some news of which
public rumour has no doubt informed you. Congratulations
surround, deafen me... people talk to me of what is not you!
'Then another exclamation:

"'How weak is nature compared to love!'

"And yet this news which found Lucien unconcerned was an
immense piece of news: Bonaparte's disembarkation on his
return from Egypt.

"A new destiny had landed with its promises and its threats;
the 18 Brumaire was not more than three weeks distant.

"Barely escaped from the dangers of that day, which will
always fill so great a place in history, Lucien wrote to
Madame Récamier:

"'I have seen your image!... You will have had my last
thought!'...

"Madame Récamier contracted a friendship, which became daily
more intimate and which still endures, with a woman who was
illustrious in a very different way from that in which M. de
La Harpe was famous.

"M. Necker, having been struck off the list of Emigrants,
charged Madame de Staël, his daughter, to sell a house which
he had. Madame Récamier bought it, and this was an occasion
for her to see Madame de Staël[348].

"The sight of this celebrated woman at first filled her with
excessive timidity. The face of Madame de Staël has been
very widely discussed. But a proud glance, a sweet smile,
an habitual expression of kindliness, the absence of any
minute affectation and of any embarrassing reserve, caressing
words, praises somewhat direct but seeming to escape from
enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety of enthusiasm surprise,
attract and conciliate almost all who approach her. I know
no woman, nor even any man, who is more convinced of her
own vast superiority to all the world and who makes this
conviction bear less hard upon others.

"Nothing could be more engaging than the conversations of
Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. The quickness of the
one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the quickness of
the other in grasping and perceiving them; that masculine
and powerful mind which disclosed all, that delicate and
subtle mind which understood all; those revelations made by a
trained genius to a youthful intelligence worthy to receive
them: all this formed a union which it is impossible to
describe without having had the happiness to witness it one's
self.

"The friendship of Madame Récamier for Madame de Staël was
strengthened by a sentiment which they both entertained:
filial love. Madame Récamier was fondly attached to her
mother, a woman of rare merit, whose health was already
giving rise to fears and whose loss her daughter has never
since ceased to regret. Madame de Staël had vowed a worship
to her father which his death has rendered but the more
exalted. Always overpowering in her manner of expressing
herself, she becomes still more so, above all, when speaking
of him. Her earnest voice, her eyes ready to grow wet with
tears, the sincerity of her enthusiasm moved the soul of even
those who did not share her opinion of that celebrated man.
Ridicule has frequently been cast on the praises which she
has awarded him in her writings; but, when you have heard her
on that subject, it is not possible to make it an object of
mockery, for nothing that is true is ridiculous."

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël.]

The letters of Corinne to her friend Madame Récamier began at the
period here recalled by Benjamin Constant: they have a charm which is
almost akin to love; I will set forth a few:

"COPPET, 9 _September._

"Do you recollect, fair Juliet, a person whom you loaded
with marks of interest last winter and who is bold enough to
invite you to do twice as much in the winter to come? How
do you govern the empire of beauty? One awards it you with
pleasure, that empire, because you are eminently good, and it
seems natural that so gentle a soul should have a charming
face to express it. Of all your admirers you know that I
prefer Adrien de Montmorency[349]. I have received letters
from him, remarkable for wit and grace, and I believe in the
solidity of his affections, notwithstanding the charm of his
manners. For the rest, that word 'solidity' suits me, who
claim to play but a very secondary part in his heart. But
you, who are the heroine of every sentiment, are exposed to
the great events out of which tragedies and novels are made.
Mine[350] is progressing at the foot of the Alps. I hope you
will read it with interest. I like this occupation. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Amid all those successes, what you are and what you will
remain is an angel of purity and beauty, and you will have
the worship of the devout as well as of the worldly....
Have you seen the author of _Atala_ again? Are you still at
Clichy? In short, I ask for details of yourself. I love to
know what you are doing, to represent to myself the places in
which you dwell. Is not all a picture in the memories which
one retains of you? I add to this natural enthusiasm for your
rare advantages a great inclination for your company. Pray
accept kindly all that I offer you, and promise me that we
shall meet often in the coming winter."

"COPPET, 30 _April._

"Do you know, fair Juliet, that my friends have been
flattering me somewhat with the notion that you might come
here? Could you not give me that great pleasure? It is some
time since happiness spoilt me, and your arrival would be a
return of luck and would give me hopes for all that I desire.
Adrien and Mathieu say they will come. If you came with them,
a month's stay here would serve to show you our splendid
nature. My father says that you ought to choose Coppet for
your residence and that we should make our excursions from
there. My father is very eager in his desire to see you. You
know what they said of Homer:

"Par la voix des vieillards tu louais la beauté[351].

"And independently of that beauty you are charming."

During the short Peace of Amiens[352], Madame Récamier took a journey
to London with her mother. She had letters of introduction from the
old Duc de Guignes, who had been Ambassador to England thirty years
before. He had kept up a correspondence with the most brilliant women
of the time: the Duchess of Devonshire[353], Lady Melbourne[354], the
Marchioness of Salisbury[355], the Margravine of Anspach, with whom he
had been in love. His embassy was still celebrated, his memory green
among those respectable ladies.

[Sidenote: Madame Récamier in London.]

Such is the power of novelty in England that, on the morning after
her arrival, the newspapers were full of the foreign beauty. Madame
Récamier received visits from nearly all the persons to whom she had
sent letters. Among these persons, the most remarkable was the Duchess
of Devonshire, then between forty-five and fifty years of age. She was
still in vogue and beautiful, although she had lost one eye, which
she concealed behind a lock of her hair. The first time that Madame
Récamier appeared in public, it was in her company. The duchess took
her to the Opera in her box, in which were the Prince of Wales, the Duc
d'Orléans and his brothers the Duc de Montpensier[356] and the Comte
de Beaujolais[357]: the first two were to become kings; one was on
the verge of the throne, the other was still separated from it by an
abyss[358].

Eyes and opera-glasses were turned on the duchess' box. The Prince
of Wales said to Madame Récamier that, if she did not want to be
suffocated, she must leave before the end of the performance.
Scarcely was she on her feet, before the doors of the boxes opened
precipitously; she escaped nothing, and was carried by the tide of the
crowd to her carriage.

The next day, Madame Récamier went to Kensington Gardens, accompanied
by the Marquess of Douglas, later Duke of Hamilton[359], who has since
received Charles X. at Holyrood[360], and by his sister the Duchess
of Somerset[361]. The crowd flung itself on the fair foreigner's
footsteps. This effect was repeated each time she showed herself in
public; the newspapers resounded with her name; her portrait, engraved
by Bartolozzi[362], was spread broadcast through England. The author
of Antigone, M. Ballanche, adds that ships carried it as far as the
isles of Greece: beauty returned to the spots where its image had been
invented. We have a sketch of Madame Récamier by David, a full-length
portrait by Gérard, a bust by Canova. The portrait is Gérard's
master-piece; but it does not please me, because I recognise the
model's features in it without recognising the expression.

On the eve of Madame Récamier's departure, the Prince of Wales and the
Duchess of Devonshire asked leave to call on her and to bring with them
some persons of their society. Music was performed. Together with the
Chevalier Marin, the first harper of the time, she played variations on
a theme by Mozart. This evening was mentioned in the public press as
a concert which the beautiful foreigner had given, on leaving, to the
Prince of Wales.

The next day, she set sail for the Hague and took three days to make
a crossing of sixteen hours. She has told me that, during those days
dashed with storms, she read the _Génie du Christianisme_ straight
through; I was "revealed" to her, to use her kind expression: I
recognise in this the good-will which the winds and the sea have always
had for me.

Near the Hague, she visited the country-house of the Prince of Orange.
The Prince, having made her promise to go to see that residence, wrote
her several letters in which he speaks of his reverses and of his hope
to conquer them: William I. has, in fact, become a monarch[363]; at
that time one intrigued to become king as nowadays to become a deputy,
and those candidates for the sovereignty used to throng round the feet
of Madame Récamier as though she had crowns in her gift.

The following note from Bernadotte, who reigns to-day over Sweden[364],
ended Madame Récamier's journey to England: . . . . . . . . . .

"The English papers, while calming my apprehensions for
your health, have informed me of the dangers to which you
have been exposed. I at first blamed the people of London
for their too great assiduity, but, I confess to you, I
soon excused them, for I am an interested party when it is
necessary to justify persons who become indiscreet in order
to admire the charms of your celestial countenance.

"Amid the lustre which surrounds you and which you deserve by
such manifold rights, deign sometimes to remember that the
being most devoted to you in nature is

"BERNADOTTE."

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël's exil.]

Madame de Staël, threatened with exile, attempted to settle down at
Maffliers, a country-place eight leagues from Paris. She accepted the
proposal made to her by Madame Récamier, on her return from England, to
spend a few days with her at Saint-Brice; afterwards she went back to
her first refuge. She relates what happened then, in the _Dix années
d'exil_:

"I was at table," she says, "with three of my friends in a
room from which one saw the high road and the entrance-door.
It was at the end of September[365], at four o'clock: a man
in grey, on horseback, stopped and rang; I was sure of my
fate; he asked for me; I received him in the garden. As I
went towards him, I was struck by the scent of the flowers
and the beauty of the sun. The sensations that come to us
through the combinations of society are so different from
those of nature! The man told me that he was the commandant
of the Versailles Gendarmery.... He showed me a letter,
signed by Bonaparte, which contained the order to remove me
to forty leagues from Paris, with an injunction to make me
leave within twenty-four hours, while treating me, however,
with all the consideration due to a woman whose name was
known.... I replied to the officer of gendarmes that to set
out within twenty-four hours might suit conscripts, but not
a woman and children. Consequently I proposed that he should
accompany me to Paris, where I had need of three days to make
the necessary arrangements for my journey. I therefore got
into my carriage with my children and this officer, who had
been selected as being the most literary of the gendarmes. In
fact, he paid me compliments on my writings.

"'You see, monsieur,' I said to him, 'what comes of being an
intellectual woman. I beg you, dissuade the members of your
family from it, if you have occasion to do so.'

"I tried to rouse myself with pride, but I felt the clutching
at my heart.

"I stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier's. I there
found General Junot[366], who, out of devotion for her,
promised to go the next day to speak to the First Consul. He
did so in fact with the greatest warmth....

"On the eve of the last day given me, Joseph Bonaparte made
yet one attempt....

"I was obliged to await the answer in an inn at two leagues
from Paris, not daring to return to my own home in town. A
day passed without the answer reaching me. Not wishing to
attract attention by remaining longer at the inn where I was,
I made the circuit of the walls of Paris to go to look for
another, also at two leagues from Paris, but on a different
road. This wandering life, at four steps from my friends and
my home, caused me a grief which I cannot recall without
shuddering[367]."

Madame de Staël, instead of returning to Coppet, set out on her first
journey to Germany. At that time she wrote me the letter on the death
of Madame de Beaumont which I quoted when writing of my first journey
to Rome.

Madame Récamier gathered round her in Paris all that was most
distinguished in the oppressed parties and in the opinions which had
not yielded to victory. One saw there the lights of the old Monarchy
and the new Empire: the Montmorencys, the Sabrans[368], the Lamoignons,
Generals Masséna, Moreau and Bernadotte; one destined for exile,
another for the throne. Illustrious foreigners also visited there: the
Prince of Orange, the Prince of Bavaria[369], the brother[370] of the
Queen of Prussia surrounded her, just as in London the Prince of Wales
was proud to carry her shawl. So irresistible was the attraction that
Eugène de Beauharnais[371] and the Emperor's very ministers went to
these assemblies. Bonaparte could not suffer success, even when it was
a woman's. He used to say:

"Since how long has the Council been held at Madame Récamier's?"

[Sidenote: General Bernadotte.]

I now return to Benjamin Constant:

"For a long time, Bonaparte, who had seized upon the
government, had been progressing towards tyranny. The most
opposite parties became incensed against him and, while
the bulk of the citizens were still allowing themselves to
be enervated by the tranquillity which was promised them,
the Republicans and the Royalists desired an inversion. M.
de Montmorency belonged to the latter by his birth, his
connections and his opinions. Madame Récamier cared for
politics only through her generous interest in the vanquished
of all parties. The independence of her character made her
averse to the Court of Napoleon, of which she had refused to
form part M. de Montmorency conceived the idea of confiding
his hopes to her, painted the restoration of the Bourbons
to her in colours calculated to arouse her enthusiasm,
and charged her to bring together two men at that time of
importance in France, Moreau and Bernadotte, to see if they
could unite against Bonaparte. She was intimately acquainted
with Bernadotte, who has since become Prince Royal of Sweden.
Something chivalrous in his appearance, something noble in
his manners, something very subtle in his intelligence,
something declamatory in his conversation make him a
remarkable man. Courageous in battle, bold in speech, but
timid in actions which are not military, irresolute in all
his designs, he has one thing which makes him very seductive
at first sight, but which, at the same time, places an
obstacle to any combination of plans with him, and that is a
habit of haranguing, a relic of his revolutionary education
which does not leave him. He sometimes has movements of real
eloquence; he knows it, he loves this kind of success and,
when he has entered upon the development of some general idea
connected with what he has heard in the clubs or the rostrum,
he loses sight of all that occupies him and is no longer
anything but an impassioned orator. That is what he appeared
in France during the early years of the reign of Bonaparte,
whom he always hated and by whom he was suspected, and that
again is what he has shown himself in these later days, amid
the disorder of Europe, of which, nevertheless, we owe the
liberation to him, because he reassured the foreigners by
showing them a Frenchman ready to march against the tyrant of
France and knowing how to say only such things as could have
an influence for his nation's good.

"Anything that offers a woman the means of exercising power
is always agreeable to her. Moreover, in the idea of rousing
against the despotism of Bonaparte men important through
their dignities and their glory there was something generous
and noble which was bound to tempt Madame Récamier. She
therefore lent herself to M. de Montmorency's wishes. She
often threw Bernadotte and Moreau together at her house.
Moreau wavered, Bernadotte spouted. Madame Récamier took
Moreau's indecisive speeches for a commencement of resolution
and Bernadotte's harangues as a signal for the overthrow of
tyranny. The two generals, on their side, were enraptured
to see their discontent pampered by so much beauty, wit and
grace. There was, in fact, something romantic and poetic in
that young and bewitching woman who talked to them of the
liberty of their country. Bernadotte never ceased repeating
to Madame Récamier that she was made to electrify the world
and create fanatics."

While noting the delicacy of this portraiture by Benjamin Constant,
it must be said that Madame Récamier would never have entered into
political interests but for the irritation which she felt at the
banishment of Madame de Staël. The future King of Sweden had a list
of the generals who still held with the party of independence, but
Moreau's name was not on it; it was the only one fit to be opposed
to Napoleon's, only Bernadotte did not know what manner of man the
Bonaparte was whose power he was attacking.

Madame Moreau[372] gave a ball: all Europe was there, excepting France,
which was represented only by the Republican Opposition. In the course
of this entertainment, General Bernadotte led Madame Récamier to a
little drawing-room where only the sound of the music followed them to
remind them where they were. Moreau passed into this drawing-room;
Bernadotte said to him, after long explanations:

"You have a popular name; you are the only one of us who can put
himself forward with the support of the people; see what you can do,
what we can do under your leader-ship."

Moreau repeated what he had often said before, that "he felt the danger
with which liberty was threatened, that they must watch Bonaparte, but
that he feared civil war."

This conversation was prolonged and became animated; Bernadotte lost
his temper, and said to General Moreau: "You do not dare to take up the
cause of liberty; well, then, Bonaparte will make sport of liberty and
you. It will perish in spite of our efforts and, as for you, you will
be involved in its ruin without having fought."

Prophetic words!

Madame Récamier's mother was intimately acquainted with Madame Hulot,
the mother of Madame Moreau, and Madame Récamier had contracted with
the latter one of those childish friendships which it is a pleasure to
continue in after life.

[Sidenote: The trial of General Moreau.]

During General Moreau's trial, Madame Récamier spent all her time
with Madame Moreau. The latter told her friend that her husband
complained that he had not yet seen her among the public which filled
the court and the bench. Madame Récamier arranged to be present at
the sitting on the day after this conversation. One of the judges, M.
Brillat-Savarin[373], undertook to pass her in through a private door
which opened on to the amphitheatre of the court. She raised her veil,
on entering, and cast a glance over the rows of prisoners in order to
find Moreau. He recognised her, rose and bowed. All eyes were turned in
her direction; she hastened to descend the steps of the amphitheatre
to reach the place intended for her. The prisoners were forty-seven
in number; they filled the benches placed opposite the judges of the
court. Each prisoner was placed between two gendarmes: the soldiers
treated General Moreau with deference and respect.

Messieurs de Polignac and de Rivière attracted attention, but
especially Georges Cadoudal. Pichegru, whose name will remain
associated with that of Moreau, was missing from his side, or, rather,
one seemed to see his shadow there, for it was known that he was also
missing from prison[374].

There was no more question of Republicans: it was Royalist loyalty
fighting against the new power; nevertheless, this cause of the
Legitimacy and of its high-born partisans had, as its leader, a man of
the people, Georges Cadoudal. One saw him there, with the thought that
that so pious and so fearless head was about to fall on the scaffold,
that he, Cadoudal, alone, perhaps, would not be saved, for he would
do nothing to be saved. He defended only his friends; as for what
concerned him in particular, he told all. Bonaparte was not so generous
as people supposed: eleven persons devoted to Georges perished with
him[375].

Moreau did not speak. At the end of the sitting, the judge who had
brought Madame Récamier came to take her away. She crossed the bar
at the opposite side to that by which she had entered, and passed by
the bench of the prisoners. Moreau came down, followed by his two
gendarmes; he was separated from her only by a hand-rail. He addressed
a few words to her, which, in her startled condition, she did not hear;
she tried to reply, her voice broke.

To-day, when the times are changed and when Bonaparte's name alone
seems to fill them, we do not conceive how small a hold his power as
yet had. On the night preceding the sentence, during which the court
sat, all Paris was on foot. Floods of people went towards the Palace of
Justice. Georges wanted no mercy; he replied to them who wished to ask
it for him:

"Do you promise me a finer occasion of death?"

Moreau, condemned to transportation, set out for Cadiz, whence he was
to cross to America. Madame Moreau went to join him. Madame Récamier
was with her at her departure. She saw her kiss her son in his cradle
and saw her turn back again to kiss him a second time; she took her to
her carriage, and received her last farewell.

[Sidenote: Letter from General Moreau.]

General Moreau wrote the following letter from Cadiz to his generous
friend:

"CHICLANA (near Cadiz), 12 _October_ 1804.

"MADAME,

"You will, no doubt, be pleased to hear news of two fugitives
in whom you have shown so much interest. After going through
all sorts of fatigues, by land and sea, we were hoping to
rest at Cadiz, when the yellow fever, which in some way may
be compared to the ills we had recently undergone, came to
besiege us in that town.

"Although my wife's confinement obliged us to remain there
for more than a month during the sickness, we were lucky
enough to escape infection; only one of our servants caught
it.

"At last we are at Chiclana, a very pretty village at a few
leagues from Cadiz, enjoying good health, and my wife quite
convalescent, after giving me a very healthy daughter.

"She is persuaded that you take as great an interest in this
event as in all that has happened to us, and she asks me to
acquaint you with it and to send you her kind remembrances.

"I say nothing of the kind of life which we lead: it is
excessively tedious and monotonous, but at least we breathe
at liberty, although in the land of the Inquisition.

"I beg you, madame, to receive the assurance of my respectful
attachment, and to believe me ever

"Your most humble and most obedient servant,

"V. MOREAU."

This letter is dated from Chiclana, a spot which, together with glory,
seemed to promise an assured reign to M. le Duc d'Angoulême: and yet
he appeared on that coast only with as fatal a result as Moreau, who
has been believed devoted to the Bourbons. Moreau, in the depths of
his soul, was devoted to liberty; when he had the misfortune to join
the Coalition, the question in his eyes was solely that of contending
against the despotism of Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. said to M. de
Montmorency, who was deploring the death of Moreau as a great loss to
the Crown:

"Not so great: Moreau was a Republican."

The general returned to Europe only to find the cannon-ball on which
his name was engraved by the finger of God.

Moreau recalls to my mind another illustrious captain, Masséna. The
latter was going to the Army of Italy; he asked Madame Récamier for a
white ribbon from the trimming of her dress. One day she received this
note in Masséna's hand:

"The charming ribbon given him by Madame Récamier was worn by
General Masséna in the battles and the blockade of Genoa: it
never left the general and constantly promoted his victory."

The old manners peep out through the new manners of which they form the
ground-work. The gallantry of the knight of gentle birth appeared again
in the plebeian soldier: the memory of the tournaments and crusades lay
hidden in the feats of arms with which modern France has crowned her
ancient victories. Cisher, the companion of Charlemagne, did not deck
himself in the fight with his lady's colours:

"He carried," says the Monk of Saint-Gall[376], "seven, eight, or even
nine enemies strung on his lance."

Cisher went before and Masséna came after chivalry.

Madame de Staël in Berlin heard of her father's illness; she hurried
back, but M. Necker was dead[377] before she reached Switzerland.

At that time happened M. Récamier's ruin[378]; Madame de Staël was
soon informed of this unfortunate event. She at once wrote to Madame
Récamier, her friend:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame de Staël.]

"GENEVA, 17 _November._[379]

"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the shocking
news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does not
permit me to be with you, to press you to my heart! You have
lost all that has to do with the ease and comfort of life;
but, if it were possible to be more loved, more interesting
than you are, that is what would have happened to you. I am
going to write to M. Récamier, whom I pity and respect. But,
tell me, would it be a dream to hope to see you here this
winter? If you were willing, three months spent here, in a
narrow circle where you would be passionately cared for:
but in Paris also you inspire that feeling. At any rate, I
will come to see you at Lyons, or anywhere outside my 'forty
leagues,' to embrace you, to tell you that I have felt more
tenderness for you than for any woman I have ever known. I
can say nothing to you by way of consolation, unless it be
that you will be loved and valued more than ever and that
the admirable features of your generosity and benevolence
will be known, in spite of yourself, through this misfortune,
as they never would have been without it. Certainly, to
compare your situation with what it was, you have lost; but
if it were possible for me to envy what I love, I would give
all that I am to be you. A beauty unmatched in Europe, a
stainless reputation, a proud and generous character, what a
fortune of happiness that remains in this sad life through
which we go so naked! Dear Juliet, let our friendship draw
closer; let it consist not only of generous services, which
have all come from you, but of a sustained correspondence, a
reciprocal desire to confide our thoughts in one another, a
life together. Dear Juliet, you shall make me come back to
Paris, for you are still an all-powerful person, and we shall
see each other every day; and, as you are younger than I, you
shall close my eyes, and my children shall be your friends.
My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear
Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your
fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no
longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has
made herself loved thus.

"Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de
Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you.
Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows.
Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends
threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear
angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...."

Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest: she left
society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for
the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche
has said, "fortune withdrew alone."

Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of
Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on
his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate
and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath
the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of
empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the
poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to
both.

Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a
divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains
in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he
made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the
feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship
which united Corinne and Juliet.

The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it
happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of
youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly
to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them.

Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince
Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She
was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy
apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her
white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and
her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the
instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on
either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble
sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What
was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She
had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and
distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame
Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais:

[Sidenote: Prince Augustus of Prussia.]

"The Prince entered the drawing-room, with Madame de Staël
showing him the way. Suddenly the door half opened, and
Athenais advanced. By the elegance of her figure, by the
dazzling brilliancy of her features, the Prince could not
fail to recognise her, but he had formed a quite different
idea of her: he had represented this woman to himself as
famous for her beauty, as proud of her successes, with an
assumed bearing and the kind of confidence which that sort
of celebrity only too often gives; and he saw a timid young
person step forward with embarrassment and blush as she
appeared. The sweetest sentiment mingled with his surprise.

"After dinner, they did not go out, because of the excessive
heat; they went down into the gallery to make music until the
time came to take the air. After a few brilliant chords and
harmonious sounds of entrancing sweetness, Athenais sang to
her own accompaniment on the harp. The Prince listened to her
with rapture and, when she had finished, looked at her with
inexpressible commotion, exclaiming:

"'And such talents!'"

Madame de Staël, in her maturity, loved Madame Récamier: Madame de
Genlis, in her decrepitude, found back for her the accents of her
youth; the author of _Mademoiselle de Clermont_[382] lays the scene of
her novel[383] at Coppet, with the author of _Corinne_, a rival whom
she detested: that was one wonder. Another wonder is to see me writing
these details. I am turning over letters which remind me of times in
which I lived solitary and unknown. There was happiness without me on
the shores of Coppet, which I have not seen since without a certain
movement of envy. The things which have escaped me on earth, which
have fled from me, which I regret, would kill me, were I not so near
my tomb; but, at this short distance from eternal oblivion, truths and
dreams are equally vain: at the end of one's life, all is time lost.

Madame de Staël set out a second time for Germany[384]. Here begins
again a series of letters to Madame Récamier, perhaps even more
charming than the first.

There is nothing in Madame de Staël's printed works which approaches
this naturalness, this eloquence, in which imagination lends its
expression to the feelings. The virtue of Madame Récamier's friendship
must have been great, since it was able to make a woman of genius
produce what was hidden and, as yet, unrevealed in her talent. We
divine, moreover, in the sad accent of Madame de Staël a secret
displeasure, of which the beauty would naturally be the confidant, she
who could never receive like wounds.

Madame de Staël, having returned to France, came, in the spring of
1810[385], to live at the Château de Chaumont[386], on the banks of the
Loire, at forty leagues from Paris, the distance fixed by the radius of
her banishment. Madame Récamier joined her at that country-house.

Madame de Staël was at that time supervising the impression of her work
on Germany; when it was on the point of publication, she sent it to
Bonaparte with this letter:

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël to Napoleon.]

"SIRE,

"I take the liberty of presenting to Your Majesty my work on
Germany. If you deign to read it, it seems to me that you
will find in it proof of a mind capable of some reflection
and ripened by time. Sire, it is twelve years since I
saw Your Majesty and since I was exiled. Twelve years of
misfortune modify all characters, and destiny teaches
resignation to those who suffer. Prepared to put to sea, I
beseech Your Majesty to grant me half-an-hour's conversation.
I believe that I have things to tell you which may interest
you, and it is on that score that I beseech you to grant
me the favour of speaking to you before my departure. I
will allow myself only one thing in this letter, which is
an explanation of the motives which oblige me to leave the
Continent, if I do not obtain permission from Your Majesty to
live at a country-place near enough to Paris for my children
to stay there. Your Majesty's disgrace casts so great a
disfavour in Europe upon the persons who are its object,
that I cannot take a step without encountering its effects.
Some fear to compromise themselves by seeing me, others
think themselves Romans when triumphing over that fear.
The simplest social relations become services which a proud
mind cannot put up with. Among my friends are some who have
allied themselves to my lot with admirable generosity; but
I have seen the most intimate sentiments shattered against
the necessity to live with me in solitude, and I have spent
my life during the past eight years between the dread of not
obtaining sacrifices and the sorrow of being the object of
them. It is perhaps ridiculous thus to enter into details of
one's impressions with the sovereign of the world; but that
which gave you the world, Sire, is a sovereign genius. And,
in respect of observation of the human heart, Your Majesty's
comprehension embraces the greatest and the most delicate
springs. My sons have no career, my daughter is thirteen
years of age; in a few years it will be necessary to settle
her: it would be selfish to compel her to live in the insipid
residences to which I am condemned. I shall therefore have
to part from her, alas! This life is unendurable, and I know
no remedy for it on the Continent. What city can I choose in
which Your Majesty's disgrace does not place an invincible
obstacle to both the settling of my children and my personal
repose? Your Majesty is not yourself, perhaps, aware of the
fear which most of the authorities of every country entertain
of exiles, and in this connection I should have things to
tell you which surely exceed what you may have ordered. Your
Majesty has been told that I regretted Paris because of the
Museum and Talma: this is an agreeable jest upon exile, in
other words upon the misfortune which Cicero and Bolingbroke
have declared to be the most insupportable of all; but, if I
were to love the master-pieces of art which France owes to
Your Majesty's conquests, if I were to love those beautiful
tragedies, the images of heroism: would it be for you, Sire,
to blame me for it? Is not the happiness of each individual
compounded of the nature of his faculties? And, if Heaven has
given me talents, have I not the imagination which renders
the enjoyment of the arts and the mind necessary? So many
people ask of Your Majesty real advantages of every kind!
Why should I blush to ask of you friendship, poetry, music,
pictures, all that ideal existence which I can enjoy without
swerving from the submission which I owe to the Monarch of
France?"

This unpublished letter was worth preserving[387]. Madame de Staël
was not, as has been contended, a blind and implacable enemy. She was
listened to no more than I, when I also saw myself obliged to write to
Bonaparte to ask him for the life of my cousin Armand. Alexander and
Cæsar would have been touched by this letter so lofty in tone, written
by so famous a woman; but the confidence of the merit which judges
itself the equal of the supreme dominion, that sort of familiarity of
the intellect which places itself on the level of the master of Europe
to treat with him as from crown to crown appeared to Bonaparte but
the arrogance of a disordered self-esteem. He thought himself set at
defiance by all that had any independent greatness; to him baseness
seemed fidelity, pride revolt: he did not know that true talent
recognises no Napoleons save in genius, that it has its right of entry
into the palaces as into the temples, because it is immortal.

Madame de Staël left Chaumont and returned to Coppet[388]; Madame
Récamier again hastened to go to her; M. Mathieu de Montmorency also
remained devoted to her. Both were punished for it; they were smitten
with the very penalty which they had gone to console: the forty
leagues' distance from Paris was inflicted on them[389].

Madame Récamier retired to Châlons-sur-Marne[390] influenced in her
selection by its propinquity to Montmirail[391], where Messieurs de La
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville resided.

A thousand details of Bonaparte's oppression have become lost in the
general tyranny: the persecuted persons dreaded to see their friends
for fear of compromising them; their friends dared not visit them, for
fear of drawing down upon them some increase of severity. The unhappy
outlaw, becoming as one infected with the plague, lived sequestered
from the human race, in quarantine in the despot's hatred. You were
well received so long as your independence of opinion was unknown; so
soon as it became known, every one drew back; there remained around you
none save authorities spying on your connections, your feelings, your
correspondence, your proceedings: such were those times of honour and
liberty.

Madame de Staël's letters reveal the sufferings of that period, in
which talents were at each moment threatened with a dungeon, in which
one busied one's self only with the means of escaping, in which one
aspired to flight as to a deliverance: when liberty has disappeared
there remains a country, but no more mother-land.

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël's marriage.]

When writing to her friend that she did not wish to see her, from
apprehension of the evil which she might bring upon her, Madame de
Staël did not say all: she was secretly married to M. de Rocca[392],
whence resulted a complication of difficulties by which the imperial
police profited. Madame Récamier, from whom Madame de Staël thought it
right to conceal her new cares, was astonished, with good reason, at
the stubbornness which she displayed in forbidding her the entry of her
place at Coppet: though wounded by the resistance of Madame de Staël,
for whom she had already sacrificed herself, she persisted in her
resolve to join her.

All the letters which ought to have restrained Madame Récamier only
served to confirm her in her intention; she started and, at Dijon,
received this fatal note:

"I bid you adieu, dear angel of my life, with all the
tenderness of my soul. I recommend Auguste[393] to you:
let him see you and then let him see me again. You are a
celestial creature. If I had lived in your company, I should
have been too happy: fate carries me away. Adieu[394]."

Madame de Staël was to meet Juliet again only to die. Her note struck
the traveller with a thunder-bolt: to fly suddenly, to depart before
pressing in her arms her who was hastening to fling herself into her
adversity, was not that a cruel resolution on Madame de Staël's part?
It appeared to Madame Récamier that friendship might have been less
"carried away by fate."

Madame de Staël went in search of England by way of Germany and Sweden:
the power of Napoleon was a second sea separating Albion from Europe,
even as the Ocean separates her from the world.

Auguste, Madame de Staël's son, had lost his brother killed by a
sword-thrust in a duel[395]; he married and had a son: this son, a few
months old, followed him into the tomb. With Auguste de Staël the male
posterity of an illustrious woman died out, for it does not revive in
the honourable, but unknown name of Rocca.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Chevreuse.]

Madame Récamier, left alone and full of regret, first sought a
refuge in her native town of Lyons[396]: there she met Madame de
Chevreuse[397], another exile. Madame de Chevreuse had been forced
by the Emperor and, afterwards, by her own family to enter the new
society. You would scarce find an historic name which did not consent
to lose its honour rather than a single forest. Once engaged at the
Tuileries, Madame de Chevreuse thought she would be able to hold
sway in a Court newly-issued from the camps: that Court, it is true,
sought to acquaint itself with the airs of olden times, in the hope of
covering its recent origin; but the plebeian manner was still too rough
to receive lessons from aristocratic impertinence. In a revolution
which endures and which has taken its last step, as for instance in
Rome, the Patricians, a century after the fall of the Republic, could
resign themselves to being no more than the Senate of the Emperors;
the past had nought wherewith to reproach the Emperors of the present,
since that past was finished; every existence was branded with a
like stigma. But in France the nobles who converted themselves into
chamberlains were in too great a hurry; the new-born Empire disappeared
before them, and they found themselves face to face with the old
Monarchy raised to life again.

Madame de Chevreuse, attacked by a disease of the chest, begged and was
refused the favour of ending her days in Paris; we do not expire when
and where we please: Napoleon, who made so many dead, would never have
done with them if he had left them the choice of their tomb.

Madame Récamier succeeded in forgetting her own sorrows only by
interesting herself in those of others; through the charitable
connivance of a sister of Mercy, she secretly visited the Spanish
prisoners in Lyons. One of them, brave and handsome, a Christian like
the Cid, was passing away to God: seated on his straw, he played the
guitar; his sword had betrayed his hand. So soon as he caught sight of
his benefactress, he sang her ballads of his country, having no other
means to thank her. His enfeebled voice and the confused sounds of
the instrument were lost in the silence of the prison. The soldier's
comrades, half wrapped in their torn cloaks, their black locks hanging
over their bronzed and emaciated faces, raised eyes, proud of their
Castilian blood, moist with gratitude, on the exile who recalled to
them a mother, a sister, a sweetheart, and who bore the yoke of the
same tyranny.

The Spaniard died. He could say with Zarviska, the young and valorous
Polish poet:

"An unknown hand shall close my eyes; the tolling of a
foreign bell shall announce my death, and voices which are
not those of my country shall pray for me."

Mathieu de Montmorency came to Lyons to visit Madame Récamier. She then
knew M. Camille Jordan and M. Ballanche, both worthy to swell the train
of friendships attached to her noble life.

Madame Récamier was too proud to solicit her recall. Fouché had long
and to no purpose urged her to adorn the Court of the Emperor: the
details of these palace negociations can be read in the writings of
the time. Madame Récamier retired to Italy[398]; M. de Montmorency
accompanied her as far as Chambéry. She crossed the rest of the Alps
with no other travelling-companion than a little niece of seven, to-day
Madame Lenormant[399].

Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of
the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the
palace of Francis I.

Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city
of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in
Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in
the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a
different point in Europe.

Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay
silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of
centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek
statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff
of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in
deserted Rome.

[Sidenote: Antonio Canova.]

Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she
passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one
of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened
upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees,
one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred
by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and
a pleasant voice, the barcarolle, _O pescator dell'onda_; Madame
Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the
Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the
type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had
of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic
orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them
was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that
simple and gentle Canova!

More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no
longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns
who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The
noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was
deserted like the Coliseum.

I have read the eloquent letters which the most illustrious woman
of our past days wrote to her friend; read the same feelings of
tenderness, expressed with the most charming artlessness, in the
language of Petrarch[402], by the first sculptor of modern times. I
will not be guilty of the sacrilege of trying to translate them:

"_Domenico, mattina._

"Dio eterno? siamo vivi, o siamo morti? lo voglio esser
vivo, almeno per scriveri; si, lo vuole il mio cuore, anzi
mi comanda assolutamente di farlo. Oh! se'l conoscete bene
a fondo questo povero cuor mio, quanto, quanto mai ve ne
persuadereste! Ma per disgrazia mia pare ch'egli sia alquanto
all'oscuro per voi. Pazienza! Ditemi almeno come state di
saluto, se di più non volete dire; benchè mi abbiate promesso
di scrivere a di scrivermi dolce. Io davvero che avrei voluto
vedervi personalmente in questi giorni, ma non vi poteva
essere alcuna via di poterlo fare; anzi su di questo vi dirò
a voce delle cose curiose. Convenie dunque che mi contenti, a
forza, di vidervi in spirito. In questo modo sempre mi siete
presente, sempre vi veggo, sempre vi parlo, vi dico tante,
tante cose, ma tutte, tutte al vento, tutte! Pazienza anche
di questo! gran fatto che la cosa abbia d'andare sempre in
questo modo! voglio intanto però che siate certa, certissima
che l'anima mia vi ama molto più assai di quello che mai
possiate credere ed imaginare."

Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another
victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her
compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman, accused of holding
intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and
sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger
who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man.
She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's
despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come
to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was
the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the
punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.

Nevertheless, Madame Récamier, although persuaded of the uselessness
of her application, did not hesitate. She sent for her carriage and
stepped into it, without the hope which she left to the condemned man.
She drove through the Campagna infested with brigands, reached Rome,
and failed to find the Director of Police. She waited two hours at
the Palazzo Fiano, counting the minutes of a life of which the last
was approaching. When M. de Norvins arrived, she explained to him the
object of her journey. He replied that the sentence was pronounced and
that he had not the necessary power to suspend it.

[Sidenote: The Albano fisherman.]

Madame Récamier set out again heart-broken; the prisoner had ceased
to live when she approached Albano. The inhabitants were awaiting the
Frenchwoman on the road; so soon as they discovered her, they hastened
up to her. The priest who had attended the culprit brought her his last
vows: he thanked _la dama_, whom he had not ceased to seek with his
eyes while going to the place of execution; he begged her to pray for
him: for a Christian has not done with everything and is not beyond
fear when he is no more. Madame Récamier was led by the ecclesiastic to
the church, where the crowd of handsome Albano peasant-women followed
her. The fisherman had been shot at the hour at which the sun rose upon
the bark, now unguided, which he had been accustomed to steer over the
seas and upon the shores which he had been accustomed to survey.

To become disgusted with conquerors, one must have known all the ills
they cause, one must have been a witness to the indifference with
which men sacrifice to them the most inoffensive creatures in a corner
of the globe in which they have never set foot. Of what consequence to
Bonaparte's successes were the days of a poor net-maker in the Papal
States? Undoubtedly, he never knew that that paltry fisherman existed;
amid the clatter of his struggle with kings, he did not so much as know
the name of his plebeian victim.

The world perceives in Napoleon naught save victories; the tears with
which the triumphal columns are cemented do not fall from his eyes. And
I, I think that, out of those despised sufferings, those calamities of
the small and the lowly, are formed, in the councils of Providence, the
secret causes which hurl the ruler from his pinnacle. When instances
of injustice accumulate in such a way as to bear down the weight of
fortune, the scale descends. There is blood which is dumb and blood
which cries out: the blood of the battle-field is drunk in silence by
the earth; peaceable blood when shed spurts with a moan towards Heaven;
God receives it and avenges it. Bonaparte slew the Albano fisherman; a
few months later[403], he was banished among the fishermen of Elba, and
he died among those of St. Helena.

Did my vague memory, scarce outlined in Madame Récamier's thoughts,
appear to her amid the plains of the Tiber and the Anio? I had already
passed through those melancholy wastes; I had left a tomb there
honoured by Juliet's friends. When M. de Montmorin's daughter[404]
died, in 1803, Madame de Staël and M. Necker wrote me letters of
regret; you have seen those letters. Thus I received at Rome, almost
before I knew Madame Récamier, letters dated from Coppet; it was the
first sign of an affinity of destiny. Madame Récamier has also told me
that my Letter of 1804 to M. de Fontanes served her as a guide in 1814,
and that she often read and re-read the following passage:

"Whosoever has no tie left in life should come to live in
Rome. There he will find for company a land which will feed
his reflections and occupy his heart, and walks which will
always say something to him. The stone which he treads under
foot will speak to him; the dust which the wind raises
beneath his steps will contain some human greatness. If he
is unhappy, if he has mingled the ashes of those whom he
loved with so many illustrious ashes, with what charm will
he not pass from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the last
resting-place of a virtuous friend!... If he is a Christian,
ah! how can he then tear himself away from that land which
has become his country, from that land which has witnessed
the birth of a second empire, holier in its cradle, greater
in its might than that which preceded it, from that land
where the friends whom we have lost, sleeping with the
martyrs in the catacombs, under the eye of the Father of the
Faithful, appear as though they ought to be the first to
awake in their dust and seem to be nearer to the skies?"

But, in 1814, I was only a vulgar cicerone to Madame Récamier, the
common property of all travellers; more fortunate in 1823, I had ceased
to be a stranger to her and we were able to talk together of the Roman
ruins.

In Naples, where Madame Récamier went in the autumn[405], the
occupations of solitude ceased. Scarce had she alighted at her inn,
when King Joachim's ministers came hastening up. Murat, forgetting the
hand which had changed his whip[406] into a sceptre, was ready to join
the Coalition. Bonaparte had planted his sword in the middle of Europe,
as the Gauls planted their blade in the middle of the _mallus_[407];
around Napoleon's sword were drawn up in a circle kingdoms which he
distributed to his family. Caroline[408] had received that of Naples.
Madame Murat was not so elegant an antique cameo as the Princess
Borghese; but she had more expression and more wit than her sister. In
the firmness of her character one recognised the blood of Napoleon.
If the diadem had not been for her an ornament for a woman's head, it
would still have been the emblem of a queen's power.

[Sidenote: Queen Caroline Murat.]

Caroline received Madame Récamier with an alacrity which was the more
affectionate that the oppression of tyranny made itself felt as far as
Portici. Nevertheless, the city which possesses Virgil's[409] tomb
and Tasso's[410] cradle, the city in which Horace[411], Livy[412],
Boccaccio[413] and Sannazaro[414] lived, in which Durante[415] and
Cimarosa[416] were born, had been beautified by its new master. Order
had been restored; the _lazzaroni_ no longer played at ball with
human heads to amuse Admiral Nelson[417] and Lady Hamilton[418].
The excavations at Pompeii had been extended; a road wound over the
Posilipo[419], into whose flanks I had penetrated, in 1803[420], to go
to ask at Liternum[421] for Scipio's retreat. Those new royalties of
a military dynasty had brought back life to regions in which before
them the moribund languor of an old race of kings had made itself
manifest. Robert Guiscard[422], William Iron-arm[423], Roger[424] and
Tancred[425] seemed to have returned, minus the chivalry.

Madame Récamier was in Naples in February 1814; where was I then? In
my Vallée-aux-Loups, commencing the story of my life. I was concerning
myself with the sports of my childhood to the sound of the foreign
soldier's footsteps. The woman whose name was to close these Memoirs
was strolling on the _marine_ of Baja. Had I not a presentiment of the
good which was one day to come to me from that quarter, when I was
depicting the Parthenopian seduction in the _Martyrs_:

"Every morning, so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under
a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with
its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the
blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the
islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape
of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.

"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less
fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades
of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to
find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce
gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before
that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts,
desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious
air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that
divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with
an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament
like a pure spirit....

"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards
us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to
float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with
flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of
that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where
Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days....
Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their
extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious
fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432]
was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of
the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the
rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the
streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the
senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....

"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of
the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory,
we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If
some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves
brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby.
Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum
in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they
sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded
me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the
fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be
watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."

Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc
de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest,
the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was
devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a
light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal.

[Sidenote: The Duc de Rohan.]

The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted
little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied
dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron,
had all a martyr's elegance. He used to preach at dusk, in sombre
oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or
three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in
mezzotint, like a picture[436].

We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names
rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from
a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service,
we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed
to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was
changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same
sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value;
the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady:

"As a matter of fact, there are only yourselves that know how to serve."

Religion and death have passed the sponge over a few weaknesses, very
pardonable after all, of the Cardinal de Rohan. A Christian priest, he
consummated his sacrifice at Besançon, succouring the unhappy, feeding
the poor, clothing the orphan, and wearing out in good works his life,
the course of which was naturally shortened by deplorable ill-health.

Reader, if you grow impatient at these quotations, these accounts,
reflect, first, that perhaps you have not read my works and, next, that
I can no longer hear you; I am sleeping in the ground on which you
tread; if you be angry with me, stamp on the ground, you will insult
only my bones. Reflect, moreover, that my writings form an essential
part of that existence whose leaves I am unfolding. Ah, why had not
my pictures of Naples a background of truth! Why was not the daughter
of the Rhone[437] the real woman of my imaginary delights? But no; if
I was Augustine, Jerome, Eudorus, I was all these alone; my days went
before the days of the friend of Corinne in Italy. How happy should
I have been could I have spread my whole life under her feet like a
carpet of flowers! My life is rough and its unevenness hurts. May my
dying hours at least reflect the tenderness and charm with which she
has filled them upon her who was beloved by all and of whom none had
ever to complain!

[Sidenote: Murat, King of Naples.]

Murat, King of Naples, born 25 March 1767, at the Bastide, near Cahors,
was sent to Toulouse for his studies. He took a dislike to letters,
enlisted in the Ardennes Chasseurs, deserted, and ran away to Paris.
Admitted into Louis XVI.'s Constitutional Guard, he received, after
the disbanding of that guard, a cornetcy in the 12th Regiment of
Mounted Chasseurs. On the death of Robespierre, he was dismissed as a
Terrorist[438]; the same thing happened to Bonaparte, and both soldiers
were left without resources. Murat was restored to favour on the 13
Vendémiaire, and became aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He served under him
in the early Italian campaigns, took the Valtellina and added it to the
Cisalpine Republic[439]; he took part in the Egyptian Expedition and
distinguished himself at the Battle of Abukir[440]. Returning to France
with his master, he was ordered to turn out the Council of the Five
Hundred[441]. Bonaparte gave him his sister Caroline in marriage[442].
Murat commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Marengo[443]. He was
Governor of Paris at the time of the death of the Duc d'Enghien and
bemoaned in secret a murder which he had not the courage to condemn
aloud.

Brother-in-law to Napoleon, and a marshal of the Empire[444], Murat
entered Vienna in 1805[445]; he contributed to the victories of
Austerlitz[446], Jena[447], Eylau[448], and Friedland[449], became
Grand-duke of Berg[450], and invaded Spain in 1808.

Napoleon recalled him and gave him the Crown of Naples. Proclaimed
King of the Two Sicilies on the 1st of August 1808, he pleased the
Neapolitans through his magnificence, his theatrical dress, his
cavalcades and his entertainments.

Summoned in his capacity as a grand vassal of the Empire to the
invasion of Russia, he reappeared in all the battles and found himself
charged with the command of the retreat from Smolensk to Wilna[451].
After manifesting his discontent, he left the army, following
Bonaparte's example, and went to warm himself in the sun of Naples, as
did his captain at the fireside of the Tuileries. Those men of triumph
could never accustom themselves to reverses. Then began his connexion
with Austria. He appeared once more in the camps of Germany in 1813,
returned to Naples after the loss of the Battle of Leipzig[452],
and resumed his Austro-British negociations. Before entering into a
complete alliance, Murat wrote Napoleon a letter which I have heard
read by M. de Mosbourg[453]: he told his brother-in-law in this letter
that he had found the Peninsula in a very agitated condition, that
the Italians were demanding their national independence and that, if
this were not restored to them, it was to be feared that they should
join the European Coalition and thus increase the dangers of France.
He besought Napoleon to make peace, as the only means of preserving so
powerful and fine an empire. He added that, if Bonaparte refused to
listen to him, he, Murat, abandoned at the further end of Italy, would
find himself compelled to leave his kingdom or embrace the interests
of Italian liberty. This very reasonable letter was left for several
months unanswered; Napoleon was, therefore, not able to reproach Murat
justly with having betrayed him.

Murat, obliged to make a quick choice, signed a treaty with the Court
of Vienna on the 11th of January 1814; he bound himself to furnish
the Allies with a corps of thirty thousand men. As the price of his
defection, he was guaranteed his Kingdom of Naples, and his right of
conquest over the Papal Marches. Madame Murat revealed this important
transaction to Madame Récamier. At the moment when he was about to
declare himself openly, Murat, very much excited, met Madame Récamier
at Caroline's, and asked her what she thought of the decision which he
had to take; he begged her to weigh well the interests of the people
whose sovereign he had become. Madame Récamier said to him:

"You are a Frenchman and you must remain faithful to the French."

Murat's face became distorted; he rejoined:

"So I am a traitor? What can I do? It is too late!"

He threw open a window and pointed to an English fleet entering under
full sail.

Vesuvius was in a state of eruption and throwing out flames. Two hours
later, Murat was on horseback at the head of his guards; the crowd
surrounded him, shouting, "Long live King Joachim!" He had forgotten
all; he seemed drunk with delight. The next day, a great performance at
the Teatro di San-Carlo; the King and Queen were received with frantic
acclamations unknown to people on this side of the Alps. The Envoy of
Francis II. was also applauded; the box of Napoleon's Minister was
empty; Murat appeared troubled at this, as though he had seen the ghost
of France at the back of that box.

[Sidenote: Fall of Murat.]

Murat's army, set in motion on the 16th of February 1814, forced Prince
Eugene to fall back upon the Adige. Napoleon, who had at first obtained
unhoped for successes in Champagne, wrote to his sister Caroline
some letters which were captured by the Allies and their contents
communicated to the English Parliament by Lord Castlereagh. He said to
her:

"Your husband is very brave on the battle-field, but he is
weaker than a woman or a monk when he does not see the enemy
before him. He has no moral courage. He has been afraid, and
he would not risk to lose in one instant what he can hold
only through me and with me."

In another letter, addressed to Murat himself, Napoleon said to his
brother-in-law:

"I presume that you are not one of those who think that the
lion is dead; if that was your calculation, it would be
erroneous.... You have done me all the harm you could since
your departure from Wilna. The title of King has turned your
head; if you wish to keep it, behave yourself."

Murat did not pursue the Viceroy to the Adige; he hesitated between
the Allies and the French, according to the chances which Bonaparte
seemed to be winning or losing.

In the fields of Brienne, where Napoleon was educated by the old
Monarchy, he gave, in the latter's honour, the last and most admirable
of his blood-stained tourneys[454]. Favoured by the Carbonari, Joachim
at one time wished to declare himself the liberator of Italy, at
another hoped to divide her between himself and Bonaparte become
victorious. One morning, a courier brought to Naples the news of the
entry of the Russians into Paris. Madame Murat was still in bed and
Madame Récamier was talking with her, seated at her pillow; an enormous
pile of letters and newspapers was laid upon the bed. Among the latter
was my pamphlet, _De Bonaparte and des Bourbons._ The Queen exclaimed:

"Ah, here is a work by M. de Chateaubriand; we will read it together."

And she went on opening her letters.

Madame Récamier took the pamphlet and, after casting her eyes over it
at random, placed it back on the bed and said to the Queen:

"Madame, you shall read it alone, I am obliged to return home."

Napoleon was relegated to Elba; the Allies, with rare cleverness, had
placed him on the coast of Italy. Murat learnt that they were trying
at the Congress of Vienna to despoil him of the States which he had
nevertheless bought so dear; he came to a secret understanding with his
brother-in-law, who had become his neighbour. One is always surprised
that the Napoleons should have relations: who knows the name of
Arrhidæus[455], the brother of Alexander? In the course of the year
1814, the King and Queen of Naples gave an entertainment at Pompeii;
an excavation was conducted to the sound of music: the ruins which
Caroline and Joachim had dug up did not apprize them of their own ruin;
on the last borders of prosperity we hear but the last strains of the
dream that passes away.

At the time of the Peace of Paris, Murat formed part of the Alliance,
the Milanese having been handed back to Austria: the Neapolitans
retired within the Roman Legations. Murat, perplexed, having changed
his interest, sallied forth from the Legations and marched with forty
thousand men towards Upper Italy to make a diversion in favour of
Napoleon[456]. At Parma, he refused the conditions which the affrighted
Austrians offered him once more: to each of us comes a critical moment;
ill chosen or well, it decides our future. The Baron de Frimont[457]
forced back Murat's troops, took the offensive and drove them before
him fighting to Macerata[458]. The Neapolitans left the ranks; their
King and general returned to Naples[459], accompanied by four lancers.
He went to his wife and said:

"Madame, I have not been able to die."

The next day, a boat took him in the direction of the island of Ischia;
he joined at sea a smack carrying a few officers of his staff, and set
sail with them for France.

[Sidenote: Murat's flight.]

Madame Murat, left behind alone, displayed admirable presence of mind.
The Austrians were on the point of appearing: in the passing from one
authority to another, an interval of anarchy might have been filled
with disorders. The Regent did not precipitate her retreat; she allowed
the German soldier to occupy the town and had her galleries lighted up
at night. The people, seeing the lights from the outside, thinking that
the Queen was still there, remained quiet. Meantime Caroline left by a
secret stair-case and went on board ship. Seated on the poop, she saw
gleaming on the bank the illuminated, but deserted palace from which
she was departing, an image of the dazzling dream which she had had
during her sleep in the realm of the fairies.

Caroline met the frigate which was bringing Ferdinand[460] back. The
ship of the fugitive Queen fired a salute, the ship of the recalled
King did not return it: Prosperity does not recognise her sister
Adversity. Thus do illusions, faded for the one, begin anew for the
other; thus do the fickle destinies of humanity pass each other in the
winds and on the billows: smiling or baleful, one and the same abyss
bears them or engulfs them.

Murat was achieving his career elsewhere. On the 25th of May 1815,
at ten o'clock at night, he landed in the Golfe Juan, where his
brother-in-law had landed. Fortune made Joachim play the parody of
Napoleon. The latter did not believe in the strength of misfortune,
nor in the succour which it brings to great minds: he forbade the
dethroned King the approach to Paris; he consigned to the lazar-house
this man stricken with the plague of the conquered; he shut him up in
a country-house called _Plaisance_, near Toulon. He would have done
better to show less dread of a contagion with which he had himself been
seized: who knows what a soldier like Murat might have altered in the
Battle of Waterloo?

The King of Naples, in his trouble, wrote to Fouché on the 19th of June
1815:

"I shall reply to those who accuse me of commencing
hostilities too soon that it was done at the Emperor's
formal demand and that, for three months, he did not cease
to reassure me as to his sentiments by accrediting ministers
to me and writing to me that he relied on me and would
never abandon me. It is only when people saw that I had
lost, together with the throne, the means of continuing the
powerful diversion which had lasted three months that they
tried to mislead public opinion by insinuating that I acted
on my own behalf and without the Emperor's knowledge."

There existed a generous and beautiful woman; when she arrived in
Paris, Madame Récamier received her and would not abandon her in times
of misfortune. Among the papers which she has left behind were found
two letters from Murat written in the month of June 1819; they are
useful to the study of history:

[Sidenote: Letters from Murat.]

6 _June_ 1815.

"I have lost the fairest existence for France's sake; I have
fought for the Emperor; it is for his cause that my wife and
my children are in captivity. The country is in danger, I
offer my services; they put off accepting them. I know not
if I am free or a prisoner. I must needs be involved in the
Emperor's ruin if he falls, and they deprive me of the means
of serving him and serving my own cause. I ask their reasons;
they reply obscurely and I am unable clearly to establish
my position. At one time I cannot go to Paris, where my
presence would injure the Emperor, and I must not join the
army, where my presence would too much attract the attention
of the soldiers. What am I to do? Wait: that is what they
reply. On the other hand, I am told that I am not forgiven
for having abandoned the Emperor last year, whereas letters
from Paris said, when I was recently fighting for France,
'_Every one here is delighted with the King._' The Emperor
wrote to me, _I rely on you, do you rely on me, I shall never
abandon you._' King Joseph wrote to me, '_The Emperor orders
me to write to you to move rapidly upon the Alps._' And
when, on arriving, I display generous sentiments and offer
to fight for France, I am sent into the Alps. Not a word of
consolation is addressed to one who never did him any other
wrong than to rely too greatly on generous sentiments which
he never entertained for me.

"My friend, I come to ask you to inform me of the opinion
of France and the army regarding me. A man must know how to
endure all and my courage will make me rise superior to every
misfortune. All is lost save honour; I have lost the throne,
but I have preserved all my glory; I have been abandoned
by my soldiers, who were victorious in every fight, but I
have never been beaten. The desertion of twenty thousand men
placed me at the mercy of my enemies; a fisher's bark saved
me from captivity, and a merchant ship cast me in three days
on the coasts of France."

"Near TOULON, 18 _June_ 1815.

"I have just received your letter. I cannot describe to
you the different sensations which it made me experience.
I have been able for a moment to forget my misfortunes. I
am occupied only with my friend, whose noble and generous
soul comes to console me and show me its sorrow. Reassure
yourself: all is lost, but honour remains; my glory will
survive all my misfortunes, and my courage will be able to
make me rise superior to all the rigours of my destiny: have
no fear on that score. I have lost my throne and family
unmoved; but ingratitude has revolted me. I have lost all for
France, for her Emperor, by his order, and to-day he makes
it a crime in me to have done so. He refuses me permission
to fight and revenge myself, and I am not free to choose my
own retreat: can you conceive all my unhappiness? What can I
do? What decision can I take? I am a Frenchman and a father:
as a Frenchman, I must serve my country; as a father, I must
go to share my children's lot: honour lays upon me the duty
of fighting and nature tells me that I must belong to my
children. Which am I to obey? Cannot I satisfy both? Shall I
be allowed to listen to either? Already the Emperor refuses
me armies; and will Austria grant me the means to go to join
my children? Shall I ask them of her, I who have never been
willing to treat with her ministers? There is my situation:
give me advice. I shall await your reply, the Duc d'Otrante's
and Lucien's, before taking a determination. Consult opinion
well as to what it is thought right for me to do, for I am
free in the choice of my retreat; they are returning to the
past and making it a crime in me to have, by order, lost my
throne, when my family is languishing in captivity. Advise
me; listen to the voice of honour, to that of nature, and,
as an impartial judge, have the courage to write to me what
I am to do. I shall await your reply on the road between
Marseilles and Lyons."

Putting aside the personal vanities and the illusions which issue from
the throne, even from a throne on which one has been seated but for a
moment, these letters show us the idea which Murat entertained of his
brother-in-law.

Bonaparte lost the Empire a second time; Murat was a shelterless
vagrant on the same sands which have since beheld the roamings of the
Duchesse de Berry. Some smugglers consented, on the 22nd of August
1815, to put him and three others across to Corsica. A tempest greeted
him: the felucca which plies between Bastia and Toulon took him on
board. Scarce had he left his shore-boat, when she split. Landing
at Bastia on the 25th of August, he hastened to hide himself in the
village of Vescovato, at old Colonna-Ceccaldi's[461]. Two hundred
officers joined him with General Franceschetti[462]. He marched on
Ajaccio: Bonaparte's maternal town alone still cared for her son; of
all his Empire, Napoleon owned only his cradle. The garrison of the
citadel saluted Murat and wished to proclaim him King of Corsica: he
refused; he thought only the sceptre of the Two Sicilies equal to his
greatness. His aide-de-camp Macirone[463] brought him from Paris the
decision of Austria, by virtue of which he was to give up the title of
King and retire at will to Bohemia or Moldavia:

"It is too late," replied Joachim; "my dear Macirone, the die is cast."

On the 28th of September, Murat sailed for Italy; seven bottoms were
laden with his two hundred and fifty followers: he had scorned to have
for his kingdom the narrow mother-land of the immense man; full of
hope, led away by the example of a fortune higher than his own, he set
out from the island whence Napoleon had issued to take possession of
the world: it is not the same spots, but similar geniuses, that produce
the same destinies.

A storm dispersed the flotilla; Murat was cast ashore, on the 8th
of October, in the Gulf of Santa Eufemia, almost at the moment when
Bonaparte was approaching the Rock of St. Helena[464].

Of his seven praams, only two were left to him, including his own.
Landing with some thirty men, he tried to stir up the population of the
coast; the inhabitants fired on his band. The two praams stood out to
sea; Murat was betrayed. He ran to a stranded boat, tried to float it;
the boat would not move. Surrounded and captured, Murat, insulted by
the same mob that once used to shout itself hoarse with "Long live King
Joachim!" was taken to Pizzo Castle. Upon him and his companions were
seized insensate proclamations: they showed with what dreams men delude
themselves to their last hour.

Unruffled in his prison, Murat said:

"I shall have only my Kingdom of Naples; my cousin Ferdinand will keep
the second Sicily."

[Sidenote: Death of Murat.]

And at that moment a military commission was condemning Murat to
death. When he heard his sentence, his firmness deserted him for a few
instants; he shed tears and exclaimed:

"I am Joachim King of the Two Sicilies!"

He forgot that Louis XVI. had been King of France, the Duc d'Enghien
grandson of the Grand Condé, and Napoleon arbiter of Europe: Death
reckons as nothing what we may have been.

A priest is always a priest, say and do what we will; he comes and
restores its failing strength to an intrepid heart. On the 13th of
October 1815, Murat, after writing to his wife, was taken to a room in
Pizzo Castle, renewing in his romantic person the brilliant or tragic
adventures of the middle ages. Twelve soldiers, who perhaps had served
under him, awaited him, drawn up in two lines. Murat saw them load
their muskets, refused to let his eyes be bandaged, and himself, as an
experienced captain, chose the post where the bullets could best hit
him.

When aim had been taken at him, at the moment of the fire, he said:

"Men, spare the face; aim at my heart!"

He fell, holding in his hands the portraits of his wife and of his
children: those portraits used before to adorn the hilt of his
sword[465]. It was but one affair the more which the gallant man had
settled with life.

The different manners of death of Napoleon and Murat preserve the
characters of their lives.

Murat, so magnificent, was buried without state at Pizzo, in one of
those Christian churches in whose charitable bosom all ashes are
mercifully received.

Madame Récamier, returning to France, passed through Rome at the moment
when the Pope returned[466]. In another portion of these Memoirs, you
accompanied Pius VII., set at liberty at Fontainebleau, to the gates of
St Peter's[467]. Joachim, still alive, was about to disappear, and Pius
VII. was reappearing. Behind them, Napoleon was struck; the conqueror's
hand let the King fall and raised the Pontiff.

[Sidenote: Pope Pius VII.]

Pius VII. was received with shouts which shook the ruins of the city
of ruins. The horses were taken from his carriage and the crowd drew
him to the steps of the Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw
nothing, heard nothing; rapt in mind, his thought was far from the
earth; only his hand rose over the people from the tender habit of
blessing. He entered the basilica to the sound of trumpets, to the
singing of the _Te Deum_, to the acclamations of the Swiss of the
religion of William Tell. The thuribles wafted perfumes to him which he
did not inhale; he would not be carried on the _sedia gestatoria_ under
the shadow of the canopy and the palms; he walked like a shipwrecked
man fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Succour, and charged by Christ
with a mission which was to renew the face of the earth. He was clad
in a white robe; his hair, which had remained black in spite of
misfortune and years, formed a contrast with the anchorite's pallor.
On arriving at the Tomb of the Apostles, he prostrated himself: he
remained, without movement and as though dead, plunged in the depths of
the counsels of Providence. The emotion was profound; Protestants who
witnessed the scene wept scalding tears.

What a subject for meditation! An infirm, decrepit priest,
strengthless, defenseless, taken from the Quirinal, carried captive
to the heart of Gaul; a martyr, who awaited naught save his tomb,
delivered from the hands of Napoleon, who pressed the globe, resuming
the empire of an indestructible world, when the walls of a prison
beyond the seas were being prepared for that formidable gaoler of the
nations and the kings!

Pius VII. outlived the Emperor; he saw the master-pieces, the faithful
friends which had accompanied him in his exile, brought back to the
Vatican. On his return from persecution, the septuagenarian Pontiff,
prostrate beneath the cupola of St. Peter's, displayed at the same time
all the weakness of man and the grandeur of God.

On descending the Savoy Alps, Madame Récamier, at Pont-de-Beauvoisin,
found the White Flag and the white cockade. The Corpus Christi
processions, passing through the villages, seemed to have come back
with the Most Christian King. In Lyons, the traveller arrived in the
midst of a Restoration festival. The enthusiasm was unfeigned. At
the head of the rejoicings stood Alexis de Noailles[468] and Colonel
Clary, Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law. All that is told to-day of
the coldness and gloom with which the Legitimacy was received at the
First Restoration is a shameless falsehood. Joy was general in the
different sections of opinion, even among the Conventionals, even among
the Imperialists, excepting the soldiers: their noble pride suffered
from those reverses. Nowadays, when the weight of military government
is no longer felt, when vanities are aroused, it is necessary to deny
the facts, because they do not accord with the theories of the moment.
It suits the purpose of a system that the nation should have received
the Bourbons with abhorrence and that the Restoration should have been
a time of oppression and misery. This leads to melancholy reflections
on human nature. If the Bourbons had the inclination and the strength
to oppress, they might have looked forward to a long retention of the
throne. Bonaparte's violence and injustice, dangerous to his power
though they appeared, in reality served him: men are appalled by
iniquities, but manufacture a great idea out of them; they are disposed
to regard as a superior being one who places himself above the laws.

Madame de Staël, who arrived in Paris before Madame Récamier, had
written to her several times; only the following note reached her:

"PARIS, 20 _May_ 1814.

"I am ashamed to be in Paris without you, dear angel of my
life: tell me your plans. Would you like me to go before you
to Coppet, where I am going to stay for four months? After
so many sufferings, my sweetest prospect is yourself, and
my heart is for ever devoted to you. One word as to your
departure and arrival. I await that note to know what I shall
do. I am writing to you to Rome, Naples, etc."

[Sidenote: Madame de Genlis.]

Madame de Genlis, who had never had any relations with Madame Récamier,
was eager to become better acquainted with her. I find a passage
expressing a wish which, had it been realized, would have spared the
reader my story:

"11 _October._

"Here, madame, is the book which I had the honour to promise
you. I have marked the things which I should like you to
read....

"Come, madame, to tell me your story 'in these words,' as
they do in the novels. Then I will afterwards ask you to
write it in the form of recollections, which will be full of
interest, because, in your earliest youth, you were cast,
with a bewitching face and a mind full of shrewdness and
penetration, into the midst of those whirlpools of errors
and follies; because you have seen everything; and because,
having preserved, during those stormy times, your religious
sentiment, a pure soul, a stainless life, an impressionable
and loyal heart, possessing neither envy nor hateful
passions, you will depict everything in the truest colours.
You are one of the phenomena of these days, and certainly the
most amiable.

"You shall show me your 'Recollections;' my old experience
will offer some advice, and you will write a useful and
delightful work. Do not come and answer, 'I am not capable,'
etc., etc. I will permit you no commonplaces; they are
unworthy of your intelligence. You can cast back your eyes
over the past without remorse: this is, at all times, the
fairest of our privileges; in the days in which we live,
it is an inestimable one. Avail yourself of it for the
instruction of the young person[469] whom you are bringing
up; it will be the greatest boon you can show her.

"Adieu, madame, permit me to tell you that I love you and
that I embrace you with all my heart."

Now that Madame Récamier has returned to Paris[470], I will go back for
some time to my first guides. The Queen of Naples, uneasy about the
resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, wrote to Madame Récamier to find
her a man who would be capable of handling her interests in Vienna.
Madame Récamier applied to Benjamin Constant and asked him to draw up a
memorandum. This circumstance had the most unfortunate influence upon
the author of the memorandum; a stormy sentiment was the result of
an interview. Under the empire of this sentiment, Benjamin Constant,
already a violent Anti-Bonapartist, as is manifest in the _Esprit
de conquête_[471], allowed opinions to overflow the course of which
was soon changed by events. Thence arose a reputation for political
fickleness baleful to statesmen.

Madame Récamier, while admiring Bonaparte, had remained true to her
hatred against the oppressor of our liberties and the enemy of Madame
de Staël. As for what concerned herself, she did not give it a thought
and she made light of her exile. The letters which Benjamin Constant
wrote to her at this time will serve as a study, if not of the human
heart, at least of the human head: there we see all that could be
made of a passion by an ironical and romantic, serious and poetical
intelligence. Rousseau is not more genuine, but he mingles with his
imaginary loves a sincere melancholy and a real reverie.

Meanwhile, Bonaparte had landed at Cannes; the perturbation due to his
approach was beginning to make itself felt. Benjamin Constant wrote
Madame Récamier this note:

"Forgive me if I avail myself of circumstances to trouble
you; but the opportunity is too favourable. My fate will be
decided in four or five days surely; for, though you used
to like not to think so, in order to have to show me less
interest, I am certainly, with Marmont, Chateaubriand and
Lainé, one of the four most compromised men in France. It
is, therefore, certain that, if we do not triumph, I shall
in a week be either an outlaw or a fugitive, or in a cell or
shot. Grant me then, during the two or three days which will
precede the battle, as much of your time and as many of your
hours as you can. If I die, you will be glad to have done me
this kindness and you would be sorry to have afflicted me. My
feeling for you is my life; one sign of indifference hurts me
more than, four days hence, my sentence of death could do.
And, when I feel that danger is a means of obtaining a sign
of interest from you, I derive from it nothing but joy.

"Were you pleased with my article, and have you heard what
people say of it?"

Benjamin Constant was right, he was as much compromised as I: attached
to Bernadotte, he had served against Napoleon; he had published his
work _De l'esprit de conquête_, in which he handled the "tyrant"
more roughly than I handled him in my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des
Bourbons._ He crowned his perils by talking in the newspapers.

On the 19th of March, at the moment when Bonaparte was at the gates of
the Capital, he had the firmness to affix his signature to an article
in the _Journal des Débats_ ending with this phrase:

"I shall not, like a wretched turn-coat, go creeping from one power
to the other, covering infamy with sophisms and stammering out profane
words to redeem a shameful life."

Benjamin Constant wrote to her who inspired him with these noble
sentiments:

"I am glad that my article has appeared; at least none can
now doubt my sincerity. Here is a note which some one wrote
to me after reading it: if I were to receive a similar one
from somebody else, I should be gay upon the scaffold."

Madame Récamier always reproached herself for having unintentionally
exercised so great an influence over an honourable destiny. Nothing,
in fact, is more distressing than to inspire those fickle characters
with those energetic resolutions which they are incapable of keeping.
On the 20th of March, Benjamin Constant belied his article of the 19th.
After driving a little distance away from town, he returned to Paris
and allowed himself to be caught by Bonaparte's seductions. Appointed a
State councillor[472], he obliterated his generous pages by working at
the draft of the Additional Act.

From that time forward, he bore a secret wound at his heart; he no
longer with assurance broached the thought of posterity; his spoilt and
saddened life contributed in no small degree to his death. God preserve
us from triumphing over the miseries from which the loftiest natures
are not exempt! Heaven does not give us talents without attaching
infirmities to them: expiations offered to foolishness and envy. The
weaknesses of a superior man are the black victims which antiquity
sacrificed to the infernal gods, and still they never allow themselves
to be disarmed.

[Sidenote: Madame de Krüdener.]

Madame Récamier spent the Hundred Days in France, where Queen Hortense
invited her to stay; the Queen of Naples, on the other hand, offered
her an asylum in Italy. The Hundred Days passed. Madame de Krüdener
accompanied the Allies, who arrived once more in Paris. She had fallen
from novel-writing into mysticism; she wielded a great empire over the
mind of the Tsar of Russia.

Madame de Krüdener lodged in a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
The garden of this house extended as far as the Champs-Élysées.
Alexander used to arrive _incognito_ by a gate of the garden, and
politico-religious conversations would end with fervent prayers. Madame
de Krüdener invited me to one of these celestial incantations: I, the
man of every illusion, have a hatred of unreason, a loathing for the
nebulous and a scorn for hocus-pocus; we are none of us perfect. The
scene bored me; the more I tried to pray, the more I felt the dryness
of my soul. I could find nothing to say to God, and the devil incited
me to laugh. I had liked Madame de Krüdener better when, surrounded
with flowers and still inhabiting this paltry earth, she was writing
_Valérie._ Only, I used to consider that my old friend M. Michaud, so
oddly mixed up in this idyll, had not enough of the shepherd about
him, notwithstanding his name. Madame de Krüdener, become a seraph,
strove to surround herself with angels; the proof is contained in this
charming note from Benjamin Constant to Madame Récamier:

"_Thursday._

"I am a little embarrassed in fulfilling a commission which
Madame de Krüdener has just given me. She entreats you to
come looking as little beautiful as you can. She says that
you dazzle everybody and that, for that reason, all minds are
troubled and all attention becomes impossible. You cannot
lay aside your charmingness; but do not enhance it. I could
add many things about your beauty on this occasion, but I
have not the courage. One can be ingenious on the charm
which pleases, but not on that which kills. I shall see you
presently; you have told me five o'clock, but you will not
come in till six, and I shall not be able to say a word to
you. I shall try, however, to be amiable for this once again."

Did not the Duke of Wellington also lay claim to the honour of
attracting a glance from Juliet? One of his notes, which I transcribe,
is curious only because of the signature:

"PARIS, 13 _January._

"I confess, madame, that I do not much regret that business
will prevent me from calling on you after dinner, because,
every time I see you, I leave you more impressed with your
charms and less disposed to give my attention to _politics!!!_

"I will call on you to-morrow on my return from the Abbé
Sicard's, in case you should be in, and in spite of the
effect which those dangerous visits produce on me.

"Your most faithful servant,

"WELLINGTON."

On his return from Waterloo, entering Madame Récamier's drawing-room,
the Duke of Wellington exclaimed:

"I have beaten him soundly!"

In a French heart, his success would have made him lose the victory,
had he ever been able to lay claim to it.

[Sidenote: End of Madame de Staël.]

It was at a sad time for the glory of France that I met Madame Récamier
again; it was at the time of the death of Madame de Staël. Returning
to Paris after the Hundred Days, the author of Delphine had fallen ill
again; I had met her at her house and at Madame la Duchesse de Duras'.
Gradually, her condition growing worse, she was obliged to keep her
bed. One morning, I went to her in the Rue Royale; the shutters of her
windows were two-thirds closed; the bed, pushed towards the wall at the
back of the room, left only a space on the left; the curtains, drawn
back on metal rods, formed two columns at the head of the bed. Madame
de Staël, half sitting up, was propped up by pillows. I approached
and, when my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the darkness, I
distinguished the patient. A burning fever fired her cheeks. Her bright
glance met me in the dimness, and she said to me:

"Good morning, my dear Francis[473]. I suffer, but that does not
prevent me from loving you."

She held out her hand, which I pressed and kissed. As I raised my head,
I saw on the opposite side of the bed, against the wall, something
which rose up white and thin: it was M. de Rocca, with an emaciated
countenance, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes and a sallow complexion;
he was dying. I had never seen him, and I never saw him again. He did
not open his mouth; he bowed as he passed before me; the sound of his
footsteps was inaudible: he went away like a shadow. Stopping for a
moment at the door, "the vaporous idol twitching its fingers" turned
back towards the bed to wave adieu to Madame de Staël. Those two ghosts
looking at one another in silence, one erect and pale, the other seated
and coloured with a blood ready to flow down again and to congeal at
the heart, made one shudder.

A few days afterwards, Madame de Staël changed her lodging. She invited
me to dine with her, in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins: I went; she was
not in the drawing-room and was unable even to come in to dinner;
but she did not know that the fatal hour was so nigh. We sat down to
table. I found myself sitting by Madame Récamier. It was twelve years
since I had met her, and then I had seen her for but a moment. I did
not look at her, she did not look at me: we did not exchange a word.
When, towards the end of dinner, she timidly addressed a few words to
me on Madame de Staël's illness, I turned my head a little and raised
my eyes. I should fear to profane to-day through the mouth of my years
a sentiment which preserves all its youth in my memory and whose charm
increases as life withdraws. I separate my old days to discover behind
those days celestial apparitions, to hear from the bottom of the abyss
the harmonies of a happier region.

Madame de Staël died[474]. The last note which she wrote to Madame de
Duras was traced in big crazy letters, like a child's. It contained an
affectionate word for "Francis." The talent which expires impresses one
more painfully than the individual who dies: it is a general desolation
that strikes society; every one at the same moment suffers the same
loss.

With Madame de Staël disappeared a considerable portion of the time in
which I had lived: many of those breaches which the fall of a superior
intelligence forms in a century never close up again. Her death made on
me a particular impression, with which was mingled a sort of mysterious
astonishment: it was at that illustrious woman's that I had first met
Madame Récamier and, after long days of separation, Madame de Staël
brought together again two travelling persons who had become almost
strangers to one another: she left them, at a funeral banquet, her
memory and the example of her immortal attachment.

I went to see Madame Récamier in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and,
afterwards, in the Rue d'Anjou. When one has rejoined his destiny, he
believes himself never to have left it: life, according to the opinion
of Pythagoras, is only a reminiscence. Who does not, in the course
of his days, recollect some little circumstances indifferent to all,
except to him who recalls them? Belonging to the house in the Rue
d'Anjou was a garden; in that garden, a bower of lime-trees, between
whose leaves I saw a moonbeam when I waited for Madame Récamier: does
it not seem to me as though that beam were mine and as though, if I
went to look for it in the same place, I should find it? I scarce
remember the sun which I have seen shine on many fore-heads.

[Sidenote: The Abbaye-aux-Bois.]

It was at that time that I was obliged to sell the Vallée-aux-Loups,
which Madame Récamier had hired, in half shares with M. de Montmorency.
More and more tried by fortune, Madame Récamier soon retired to the
Abbaye-aux-Bois[475]. The Duchesse d'Abrantès speaks as follows of that
abode:

"The Abbaye-aux-Bois, with all its dependencies, its
beautiful gardens, its extensive cloisters, in which played
young girls of all ages, with careless looks and frolicsome
words, was known only as a saintly abode to which a family
could safely entrust its hope; even then, it was known only
to the mothers who had an interest beyond its high walls.
But, once Sister Marie had closed the little gate surmounted
by an attic, the boundary of the saintly domain, one crossed
the great court-yard which separates the convent from the
street, not only as neutral, but as foreign ground.

"To-day this is no longer so: the name of the Abbaye-aux-Bois
has become popular; its renown is general and familiar to all
classes. The woman who goes there for the first time and says
to her footmen, 'To the Abbaye-aux-Bois' is sure not to be
asked by them in which direction they have to drive....

"Whence did it, in so short a time, derive so positive a
renown, so wide-spread an illustriousness? Do you see two
little windows, right up at the top, in the lofts, there,
above the large windows of the great stair-case? That is one
of the small rooms of the house. Well, nevertheless, the fame
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois took birth within its confines, came
down from there, and became popular. And how could it but
become popular, when all classes of society knew that, in
that little room, dwelt a being who led a life disinherited
of all joy and who, nevertheless, found words of consolation
for every sorrow, magic words to alleviate every pain,
succour for every misfortune?

"When, from the recesses of his prison, Coudert[476] caught a
glimpse of the scaffold, whose pity was it that he invoked?
'Go to Madame Récamier,' he said to his brother[477] 'tell
her that I am innocent before God... she will understand
that evidence...' and Coudert was saved. Madame Récamier
joined in her generous action a man gifted with both talent
and kindness: M. Ballanche seconded her endeavours, and the
scaffold devoured one victim the less.

"It might almost be described as a marvel offered to the
study of the human mind, that little cell in which a woman
of more than European reputation came to seek repose and a
decent asylum. The world is generally inclined to forget
those who no longer invite it to their banquets; it did not
forget her who, formerly, in the midst of her joys, lent an
even more willing ear to a complaint than to the accents of
pleasure. Not only was the little room on the third floor
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the constant object of the errands
of Madame Récamier's friends, but, as though a fairy's
magic wand had relieved the steepness of the ascent, the
same strangers who used to ask as a favour to be admitted
to the elegant mansion on the Chaussée d'Antin continued
to beg the same boon. For them it was a sight really as
remarkable as any rarity in Paris to see, within a space of
ten feet by twenty, all opinions united under one banner,
marching in peace and almost hand in hand. The Vicomte de
Chateaubriand told Benjamin Constant of the unknown marvels
of America. Mathieu de Montmorency, with the urbanity
personal to himself, the chivalrous politeness of all that
bears his name, was as respectfully attentive to Madame
Bernadotte[478], who was about to reign in Sweden, as he
would have been to the sister[479] of Adelaide of Savoy[480],
daughter of Humbert the White-handed[481], that widow of
Louis the Fat[482] who married one of his ancestors[483]. And
the man of the feudal times had not a single bitter word for
the man of our days of liberty.

[Sidenote: Society at the Abbaye.]

"Seated side by side on the same divan, the duchess of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain became polite to the duchess of the
Empire; nothing seemed to shock in that unique room. When I
saw Madame Récamier again in that room, I had just returned
to Paris, after a long absence. I had a service to ask of
her, and went to her with confidence. I well knew, through
common friends, to how great a measure of strength her
courage had risen, but I myself lacked it when I saw her
there, under the loft, as peaceful and calm as in the gilded
drawing-rooms of the Rue du Mont-Blanc.

"'What!' said I to myself. 'Nothing but sufferings!'

"And my moist eye fixed itself upon her with an expression
which she must have understood. Alas, my memories passed
back over the years and recaptured the past! Ever beaten by
the storm, that woman, whom fame had placed at the very top
of the wreath of flowers of the age, had, for the last ten
years, seen her life surrounded by sorrows, the shock of
which was striking repeated blows at her heart and killing
her!...

"When, guided by old memories and a constant attraction, I
selected the Abbaye-aux-Bois as my refuge, the little room
on the third storey was no longer inhabited by her whom I
should have gone to seek there; Madame Récamier at that time
occupied a more spacious apartment. It was there that I saw
her again. Death had thinned the ranks of the combatants
around her, and, of all those political champions, M. de
Chateaubriand was almost the only one among her friends
who had survived. But for him too the hour struck of hope
deceived and royal ingratitude. He was wise; he bade farewell
to those false pretenses of happiness, and relinquished the
uncertain power of the tribune to grasp one more practical.

"You have already seen that, in this drawing-room at the
Abbaye-aux-Bois, there was question of other interests
besides literary interests, and that those who suffer may
turn towards it a look full of hope, Constantly occupied as
I have, for some months, been with all that relates to the
family of the Emperor, I have found a few documents which do
not seem to be devoid of interest at this moment.

"The Queen of Spain[484] found herself under an absolute
necessity to return to France. She wrote to Madame Récamier
to beg her to interest herself in the request which she was
making to be allowed to come to Paris. M. de Chateaubriand
was at that time in office, and the Queen of Spain, knowing
the loyalty of his character, had every confidence in
the success of her appeal. Nevertheless, the thing was
difficult, because there was a law which affected all that
unhappy family, even in its most virtuous members. But M. de
Chateaubriand had in him that feeling of a noble pity for
misfortune, which later made him write those touching words:

Sur le compte des grands je ne suis pas suspect:
Leurs malheurs seulement attirent mon respect.
Je hais ce Pharaon, que l'éclat environne;
Mais s'il tombe, à l'instant j'honore sa couronne;
Il devient, à mes yeux, roi par l'adversité;
Des pleurs je reconnais l'auguste autorité:
Courtisan du malheur, etc., etc.[485]

"M. de Chateaubriand lent an ear to the interests of a person
in distress; he examined his duty, which did not lay upon him
the fear of dreading a weak woman, and, two days after the
request was made, he wrote to Madame Récamier that Madame
Joseph Bonaparte might return to France, asking where she
was, in order that he might send her, through M. Durand de
Moreuil, then our Minister to Brussels[486], permission to
come to France under the name of the Comtesse de Villeneuve.
He wrote at the same time to M. de Fagel[487].

"I have related this fact with so much the more pleasure as
it honours both her who asked and the minister who obliged
her: the one through her noble confidence, the other through
his noble humanity[488]."

Madame d'Abrantès praises my conduct far too highly: it was not worth
even the trouble of remark; but, as she does not tell all there is to
tell about the Abbaye-aux-Bois, I will supply what she has forgotten or
omitted.

[Sidenote: Captain Roger.]

Captain Roger[489], another Coudert, had been condemned to death.
Madame Récamier had joined me in her pious work of saving him. Benjamin
Constant had also interceded on behalf of this companion of Caron's,
and had given the condemned man's brother the following letter for
Madame Récamier:

"I could not forgive myself, madame, for always importuning
you, but it is not my fault if there are incessant
condemnations to death. This letter will be delivered to
you by the brother of the unhappy Roger, sentenced with
Caron[490]. The story is very hateful and very well-known.
The name alone will acquaint M. de Chateaubriand with the
matter. He is fortunate enough to be at the same time the
first talent in the Ministry and the only minister under whom
no blood has been spilt. I say no more; I leave the rest to
your heart. It is very sad to have to write to you almost
exclusively on distressful matters; but you forgive me, I
know, and I am sure that you will add one more unfortunate to
the long list of those whom you have saved.

"A thousand fond respects.

"B. CONSTANT.

"PARIS, 1 _March_ 1823."

When Captain Roger was set at liberty, he hastened to express his
gratitude to his benefactress. One evening, after dinner, I was at
Madame Récamier's as usual; suddenly appeared this officer. He said to
us, in a southern accent:

"But for your intercession, my head would have rolled on the scaffold."

We were stupefied, for we had forgotten our merits; he shouted, red as
a turkey-cock:

"You don't remember?... You don't remember?..." In vain we made
a thousand excuses for our lack of memory; he went off, striking
the spurs of his boots together again and again, as furious at our
forgetting our good action as though he had had to reproach us with his
death.

About this time, Talma asked Madame Récamier to allow him to meet
me at her rooms in order to consult me on some verses in Ducis'
_Othello_, which he was not allowed to speak as they stood. Leaving my
dispatches, I hastened to keep the appointment; I spent the evening
with the modern Roscius recasting the unlucky lines. He proposed an
alteration to me, I proposed another to him; we vied with each other
in rhyming; we withdrew to the window-recess or to a corner to turn
and re-turn a hemistich. We had much difficulty in agreeing as to the
sense and the rhythm. It would have been rather curious to see me, the
minister of Louis XVIII., and Talma, the king of the stage, forgetting
what we might be, emulating each other in enthusiasm, and sending the
censorship and all the grandeurs of the world to the deuce. But, if
Richelieu had his dramas performed while letting Gustavus Adolphus[491]
loose on Europe, could not I, a humble secretary of State, busy myself
with the tragedies of others while seeking the independence of France
in Madrid?

[Sidenote: Sweet hours at the Abbaye.]

Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès, whose coffin I have saluted in the
church at Chaillot, has described only the _inhabited_ abode of Madame
Récamier; I will tell of the _solitary_ refuge. A dark corridor
separated two small rooms. I maintained that this vestibule was lit
up with a gentle light. The bed-room was furnished with a library,
a harp, a piano, a portrait of Madame de Staël and a view of Coppet
by moonlight; pots of flowers adorned the window-sills. When, quite
breathless with clambering up three flights of stairs, I entered the
cell at the fall of evening, I was enraptured. The outlook from the
windows was over the garden of the Abbaye, in the green clumps of which
the nuns moved to and fro and school-girls ran hither and thither.
The top of an acacia-tree rose to the level of the eye. Sharp-pointed
steeples pierced the sky, and on the horizon appeared the hills of
Sèvres. The expiring sun gilded the picture and entered through the
open windows. Madame Récamier sat at her piano; the Angelus tolled:
the sound of the bell which seemed "to weep the dying day, _pianger
il giorno che si muore_[492]," mingled with the last accents of the
Invocation of the Night in Steibelt's[493] _Romeo and Juliet._ A few
birds came to nestle in the raised outer blinds; I joined the silence
and solitude from afar, above the noise and tumult of a great city.

God, by giving me those hours of peace, indemnified me for my hours of
trouble; I foresaw the coming rest which my faith believes in and my
hope invokes. Agitated as I was elsewhere with political occupations,
or disgusted with the ingratitude of Courts, peacefulness of heart
awaited me in the recesses of that retreat, like the coolness of the
woods when one leaves a scorching plain. I recovered my calm beside a
woman who spread serenity around her; and yet that serenity was not
in any way too even, for it passed through deep affections. Alas, the
men whom I used to meet at Madame Récamier's, Mathieu de Montmorency,
Camille Jordan, Benjamin Constant, the Duc de Laval, have gone to
join Hingant, Joubert, Fontanes, others who were absent from another
absent company. Amid those successive friendships have risen young
friends, the vernal offshoots of an old forest in which the felling
is everlasting. I beg them, I beg M. Ampère, who will read this when
I am gone, I ask them all to keep me in their memory: I make over to
them the thread of the life the end of which Lachesis is spinning out
on my distaff. My inseparable road-fellow, M. Ballanche, has found
himself alone at the commencement and at the end of my career; he has
witnessed my friendships broken by time as I have witnessed his carried
away by the Rhone: rivers always undermine their banks.

The misfortune of my friends has often weighed heavily on me, and I
have never shrunk from the sacred burden: the moment of reward has
arrived; a serious attachment deigns to help me to support that which
the multitude of the bad days adds to their weight. As I draw near my
end, it seems to me that all that has been dear to me has been dear
to me in Madame Récamier, and that she was the hidden source of my
affections. My memories of diverse ages, those of my dreams as well as
those of my realities, have become moulded, blended, confounded into
a compound of charms and sweet sufferings of which she has become the
visible embodiment She regulates my sentiments, in the same way as
Heaven has set happiness, order and peace into my duties.

I have followed the fair wanderer along the path which she has trodden
so lightly; soon I shall go before her to a new country. As she passes
in the midst of these Memoirs, in the windings of the basilica which I
hasten to complete, she may come upon the chapel which here I dedicate
to her; it will perhaps please her to rest in it: I have placed her
image there.

[Footnote 336: This book was written in Paris in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 337: MADAME DE STAËL, _Corinne, ou l'Italie_ (Paris,
1807).--T.]

[Footnote 338: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I., chap. III.: _Our
affections are transported beyond our selves._--T.]

[Footnote 339: Madame Récamier, before her marriage, was Jeanne
Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard. Of all her baptismal names, only
Julie remained, transformed into Juliette. Her father, Jean Bernard,
was a notary at Lyons; in 1784, he was appointed a receiver of finance
in Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 340: And not thirteen, as the earlier editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 341: Jacques Rose Récamier (1751-1830), the Paris banker. The
marriage took place on the 24th of April 1793.--T.]

[Footnote 342: Benjamin Constant, _Adolphe: anecdote trouvée dans les
papiers d'un inconnu_ (Paris, 1816).--T.]

[Footnote 343: At the corner of the Boulevard de la Madeleine and the
Rue Louis-le-Grand: the last remnant of the Hôtel de Richelieu, which
was almost wholly destroyed during the Revolution. The Pavillon de
Hanovre served as a public ball-room.--T.]

[Footnote 344: ANDRÉ CHÉNIER, _La Jeune captive_ (Paris, 1795):

"I do not wish to die so soon."--T.

]

[Footnote 345: This letter is dated, "From my retreat at Corbeil,
Saturday, 28 September 1797." La Harpe was proscribed after the 18
Fructidor, and found a shelter at Corbeil, where Madame Récamier paid
him one visit.--B.]

[Footnote 346: This letter has no further date, but must have been
written a few days after the 18 Brumaire.--B.]

[Footnote 347: LUCIEN BONAPARTE, _La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et
Stellina_ (Paris, 1799).]

[Footnote 348: Like the Duc de Laval, another admirer of Madame
Récamier, Benjamin Constant disliked dates. His work on Madame
Récamier does not contain one. At the end of 1798, Madame de Staël was
charged by her father to sell the house which he owned in the Rue du
Mont-Blanc, now No. 7, Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. M. Récamier had long
had business-relations with M. Necker, whose banker he was, as well
as his daughter's; he bought the house. The deed of sale is dated 25
Vendémiaire Year VII. (16 October 1798).--B.]

[Footnote 349: Later the Duc de Laval-Montmorency, whom Chateaubriand
was to replace in Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 350: Madame de Staël's novel of _Delphine_, which appeared in
the autumn of 1802.--B.]

[Footnote 351: "By the voice of the old thou didst praise beauty's
charms."--T.]

[Footnote 352: Peace was concluded at Amiens between Great Britain and
Ireland on the one side, and France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic
on the 27th of March 1802, and lasted till the 18th of May 1803, when
Great Britain resumed hostilities.--T.]

[Footnote 353: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806), _née_
Spencer, wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and famous for her wit,
beauty and social and political influence.--T.]

[Footnote 354: Elizabeth Viscountess Melbourne (1753-1818), _née_
Milbanke, married in 1769 to Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne.
The rise of her family was due to her brilliant qualities.--T.]

[Footnote 355: Emily Mary Marchioness of Salisbury (1751-1835),
daughter of Wills Hill, first Marquess of Downshire, and married to
James Cecil, seventh Earl, later first Marquess of Salisbury, in 1773.
Lady Salisbury perished in the fire that burnt down the west wing of
Hatfield House in November 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 356: Antoine Philippe Duc de Montpensier (1775-1807) died in
England of a malady of the chest.--T.]

[Footnote 357: Louis Comte de Beaujolais (1779-1808) died in Malta.--T.]

[Footnote 358: George IV. was appointed Regent of the United Kingdom
in 1811, and came to the throne on the 29th of January 1820;
Louis-Philippe usurped the throne of France on the 9th of August
1830.--T.]

[Footnote 359: Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas, later
(1819) tenth Duke of Hamilton and seventh of Brandon (_d._ 1852), had
been Ambassador to St. Petersburg and was, at this time (1802), M.P.
for Lanarkshire.--T.]

[Footnote 360: Charles X. came to Holyrood in 1830. The Dukes of
Hamilton are Hereditary Keepers of Holyrood Palace.--T.]

[Footnote 361: Charlotte Duchess of Somerset, _née_ Douglas-Hamilton,
married, in 1800, to the eleventh Duke of Somerset.--T.]

[Footnote 362: Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1813), the famous Italian
engraver, lived in London from 1764 to 1802, when he removed to Lisbon
to take charge of the National Academy in that capital.--T.]

[Footnote 363: William I. was proclaimed first King of the Netherlands
on the 16th of March 1815. He abdicated on the 7th of October 1840,
one year after the above lines were written and three years before his
death.--T.]

[Footnote 364: Bernadotte became King of Sweden, as Charles XIV., in
1818.--T.]

[Footnote 365: September 1803.--B.]

[Footnote 366: Andoche Junot, Maréchal Duc d'Abrantès (1771-1813).--T.]

[Footnote 367: MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil_, Part I., chap.
XI.--B.]

[Footnote 368: Elzéar Louis Marie Comte de Sabran (1774-1846), a firm
friend of Madame de Staël's, and his mother, who married the Chevalier
de Boufflers as her second husband.--T.]

[Footnote 369: Louis Prince, later Louis I. King of Bavaria (1786-1868)
succeeded his father, Maximilian I., in 1825, and abdicated in
1848.--T.]

[Footnote 370: Prince Charles Frederic Augustus of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
(1785-1837).--T.]

[Footnote 371: Eugène de Beauharnais, later Duc de Leuchtenberg and
Prince d'Eichstädt (1781-1824), son of Joséphine, by her first husband,
and appointed Viceroy of Italy in 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 372: Madame Moreau, _née_ Hulot, was a Creole and a friend of
Joséphine de Beauharnais. After the death of Moreau, Alexander I. gave
her a donation of 500,000 roubles and a pension of 30,000 roubles per
annum.--T.]

[Footnote 373: Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), author of the
_Physiologie du goût_, had been appointed a judge of the Court of
Appeal by the Consulate in 1800.--B.]

[Footnote 374: Pichegru committed suicide, or was assassinated, in
prison, on the 5th of April 1804.--T.]

[Footnote 375: The execution of Georges Cadoudal and his eleven
companions took place on the 25th of July 1804, at eleven o'clock in
the morning, on the Place de Grève. The evening before, the gaol-keeper
at Bicêtre had entered Cadoudal's cell and brought him a petition for
mercy ready for signature. Georges cast a glance at the paper, and saw
that it was addressed "To His Majesty the Emperor." He refused to see
any more. Turning to his companions:

"Comrades," he said, "let us say our prayers."

On the morning of the execution, Captain Laborde said to someone who
asked him for news of the criminal:

"He has slept more peacefully than I."

On arriving at the Place de Grève, the Abbé de Keravenant made him say
the Angelic Salutation: "Hail Mary, full of grace... Holy Mary, Mother
of God, pray for us sinners now..."

Here Georges stopped.

"Continue," said the priest,"... and at the hour of our death."

"To what purpose?" asked Georges. "Is not now the hour of our death?"

Cadoudal insisted upon dying first, lest his comrades should imagine
that he could survive them.--B.]

[Footnote 376: The Monk of Saint-Gall (_circa_ 884) is the anonymous
author of the half-genuine, half-fabulous _Gestes de Charlemagne._--T.]

[Footnote 377: M. Necker died at Coppet on the 9th of April 1804.--B.]

[Footnote 378: M. Récamier's ruin happened two years after the death
of M. Necker, in the autumn of 1806. It was produced chiefly through
the political and financial condition of Spain, by which M. Récamier's
banking-house was seriously embarrassed. He asked the Bank of France
for a loan of a million francs, which would have saved him; the loan
was refused, and the crash came. Madame Récamier sold her jewellery to
the last piece; the plate was sold; the house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc
was bought by M. Mosselmann. So great was the confidence and esteem
of the creditors for M. Récamier that they entrusted him with the
liquidation of his own estate.--B.]

[Footnote 379: 17 November 1806.--B.]

[Footnote 380: Madame Récamier lost her mother on the 20th January
of 1807. Her first six months of mourning were spent in profound
seclusion; in the middle of the summer of 1807, she consented, at
Madame de Staël's entreaties, to go to Coppet.--B.]

[Footnote 381: Prince Augustus was taken prisoner, not at Eylau, but
at the Battle of Saalfeld (10 October 1806). The young Prince was
only twenty-four years of age; he was five years younger than Madame
Récamier.--B.]

[Footnote 382: MADAME DE GENLIS**, _Mademoiselle de Clermont_ (Paris,
1802).--T.]

[Footnote 383: _Athénaïs, ou le Château de Coppet en 1807_ was
published in 1832, two years after the Comtesse de Genlis' death. It
was written when she was over eighty years of age.--T.]

[Footnote 384: In the autumn of 1807.--B.]

[Footnote 385: And not 1812, as the previous editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 386: Now the property of the Prince Amédée de Broglie.--B.]

[Footnote 387: Chateaubriand does not give the date of this letter,
which must have been written in September 1810. Madame de Staël tells,
in her _Dix années d'exil_ (Part II., chap, i.), how she corrected the
last proof of l'_Allemagne_ on the 23rd of September 1810, and how she
made a list of one hundred persons to whom she wished to send copies in
different parts of France and Europe.--B.]

[Footnote 388: October 1810. The three volumes of l'_Allemagne_ were
hardly printed, when the Duc de Rovigo, the Minister of Police, sent
his agents to destroy the ten thousand copies that had been struck off,
and served an order on the author to leave France within three days.
Having read in the newspapers that some American ships had arrived in
the Channel ports, Madame de Staël decided to make use of a passport
which she had for America, hoping that it would be possible for her to
land in England. She required a few days, in any case, to prepare for
the voyage, and she was obliged to apply to the Minister of Police for
those few days. In a letter dated 3 October 1810, Rovigo allowed her
eight days and said:

"It appears to me that the air of this country does not suit
you, and we are not yet reduced to looking for models in the
peoples which you admire. Your last work is un-French; I
myself stopped the printing.... I am instructing M. Corbigny
[the Prefect of Loir-et-Cher] to attend to the execution of
the order which I have given him, when the delay which I am
granting you has expired."

The letter of the Minister of Police ends with this postscript:

"I have my reasons, madame, for mentioning to you the ports
of Lorient, the Rochelle, Bordeaux and Rochefort as the only
ports at which you can embark. I request you to let me know
which you select."

The Channel ports were forbidden to Madame de Staël, in order to
prevent her from going to England. So soon as Coppet became the sole
alternative to America, she determined to go back to Coppet, where she
arrived in the latter half of October 1810.--B.]

[Footnote 389: The order of banishment was issued against Madame
Récamier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency in September 1811.--B.]

[Footnote 390: On arriving at Châlons, she first put up at the inn of
the Pomme d'Or, which she soon left to take a small apartment in the
Rue du Cloître.--B.]

[Footnote 391: The Château de Montmirail, the magnificent habitation of
the La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauvilles, in the Department of the Marne.--B.]

[Footnote 392: M. de Rocca (1784-1818), a young officer eighteen years
Madame de Staël's junior. He survived her one year only.--T.]

[Footnote 393: Auguste Louis de Staël Holstein ( 1790-1827), Madame de
Staël's eldest son.--B.]

[Footnote 394: This note, of which Chateaubriand does not give the
date, was written when Madame de Staël was on the point of setting
out from Switzerland for Germany. She left Coppet on the 23rd of May
1812.--B.]

[Footnote 395: Madame de Staël's youngest son was killed in a duel, in
1813.--B.]

[Footnote 396: Madame Récamier left Châlons in June 1812, to go
to Lyons to stay with Madame Delphin-Récamier, a sister of her
husband's.--B.]

[Footnote 397: The Duchesse de Chevreuse, _née_ Norbonne-Pelet, married
to the Duc de Chevreuse, son to the Duc de Luynes. Her father-in-law
was compelled to accept a senatorship, in 1803, and she obliged, in
1806, to consent to become one of the Empress Joséphine's ladies. Two
years later, when the Spanish Royal Family were arrested, the Emperor
wished to place the Duchesse de Chevreuse with the captive Queen; the
duchess replied that she could be a prisoner, but would never be a
gaoler. This proud answer procured her exile, which eventually resulted
in her death.--B.]

[Footnote 398: In the spring of 1813.--B.]

[Footnote 399: Amélie Lenormant, adopted daughter of Madame Récamier,
and married to M. Charles Lenormant.--T.]

[Footnote 400: Jacques Marquet de Montbreton, Baron de Norvins
(1769-1854), author of a now forgotten History of Napoleon (1827).--B.]

[Footnote 401: Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the famous Italian
sculptor and artificer in gold and silver. _Cf._ his Autobiography,
one of the most famous of Italian classics, circulated in MS. until it
was first printed in 1730, translated into German by Goethe and into
English by, _inter alios_, the late John Addington Symonds.--T.]

[Footnote 402: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), one of the chief names
in Tuscan literature.--T.]

[Footnote 403: The Albano fisherman was shot in September 1813; one
month later, in October of the same year, Napoleon lost his Empire on
the plains of Leipzig.--B.]

[Footnote 404: Madame de Beaumont.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 405: Madame Récamier went to Naples at the beginning of
December 1813.--B.]

[Footnote 406: Murat, the son of an inn-keeper, had commenced life as a
postilion.--T.]

[Footnote 407: The Gauls planted a bare sword to mark the centre of the
_Mallus_, or council. The _mallus_ survives in our modern word mall, a
space bordered with trees.--B.]

[Footnote 408: Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1782-1839), sister of
Napoleon Bonaparte, and married to Joachim Murat in 1800.--T.]

[Footnote 409: Publius Virgilius Maro (B.C. 70--B.C. 19), died at
Brundisium in Calabria, and was buried at Parthenope (Naples). Virgil's
tomb bears an inscription composed by himself in his last moments:--

_Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc_
_Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces_.--T.

]

[Footnote 410: Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was born at Sorrento.--T.]

[Footnote 411: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (B.C. 65-B.C. 8).--T.]

[Footnote 412: Titus Livius (B.C. 50--A.D. 17).--T.]

[Footnote 413: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the author of the
Decameron, lived at Naples from about 1330 to about 1341.--T.]

[Footnote 414: Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), the Italian and Latin
poet, was born and died at Naples.--T.]

[Footnote 415: Francesco Durante (1684-1755), the religious composer,
born at Naples 15 March 1684, director of the Conservatory of Santa
Maria di Loreto at Naples.--T.]

[Footnote 416: Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), composer of _Il
Matrimonio segreto_, born at Aversa, near Naples, 17 December 1749.--T.]

[Footnote 417: Admiral Horatio Nelson, first Viscount Nelson
(1758-1805), retired to Naples after the Battle of the Nile, in
1798, and remained there till 1800, when, on the expiration of Sir
William Hamilton's embassy, he returned to England and received his
peerage.--T.]

[Footnote 418: Emma Lady Hamilton (_circa_ 1761-1815), _née_ Hart,
originally a servant-girl of great personal beauty and loose character,
became mistress of, among many others, Charles Greville and Sir
William Hamilton, whom she married on the death of his first wife and
joined at Naples, where he was Envoy from 176410 1800, and finally of
Nelson. Lady Hamilton played a great part at the Court of Naples as the
intimate friend of Queen Maria Carolina. She died in distress.--T.]

[Footnote 419: The Posilipo contains the famous grotto, at the entrance
of which Virgil's tomb stands, and is pierced by a subterranean road to
Pozzuoli.--T.]

[Footnote 420: The correct date of Chateaubriand's excursion to
Liternum is January 1804.--B.]

[Footnote 421: Scipio Africanus died and was buried at Liternum, now
Torre di Patria, fourteen miles from Naples.--T.]

[Footnote 422: Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria (_circa_
1015-1085), son of Tancred de Hauteville, succeeded his brother
Humphrey as Count of Apulia in 1057, and became Duke of Apulia in
1059.--T.]

[Footnote 423: William I., first Norman Count of Apulia (_d._ 1046),
surnamed Iron-arm, eldest son of Tancred de Hauteville.--T.]

[Footnote 424: Roger II. Count of Sicily, later Roger I. first King of
the Two Sicilies (1093-1154), son of Roger I. Count of Sicily, twelfth
son of Tancred de Hauteville. Roger became Duke of Apulia on the death
of his cousin, William II. in 1127, and assumed the title of King of
the Two Sicilies in 1130.--T.]

[Footnote 425: Tancred Prince of Galilee, later of Edessa (_d._ 1112),
nephew of Robert Guiscard, and one of the most brilliant heroes of the
first Crusade and of Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata._--T.]

[Footnote 426: Salerno.--T.]

[Footnote 427: Capri.--T.]

[Footnote 428: Ischia.--T.]

[Footnote 429: Procida.---T.]

[Footnote 430: Miseno.--T.]

[Footnote 431: Baja.--T.]

[Footnote 432: Naples.--T.]

[Footnote 433: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Les Martyrs_: Book V., the story of
Eudorus.]

[Footnote 434: General Adam Adalbert Count von Neipperg (1775-1829) was
sent by Francis II., in July 1814, to escort Marie-Louise. He won the
Empress' favours, accompanied her, in 1816, to Parma, where she made
him Master of her Household and married him morganatically, in 1822,
after the death of Napoleon. Their eldest son, the present Prince von
Montenuovo (Neipperg = Neuberg = Montenuovo), was born on the 9th of
August 1821.--T.]

[Footnote 435: Louis François Auguste Prince de Léon, Cardinal Duc de
Rohan-Chabot (1788-1833), Archbishop of Besançon, was brought up in
England, where his family were living in emigration. He returned to
France, in 1809, with his wife, _née_ de Sérent, and became a Court
chamberlain under Napoleon, and an officer in the Red Musketeers
under Louis XVIII. The Duchesse de Rohan-Chabot was burnt to death
in 1815, and her husband renounced the world, took orders and became
successively Grand-vicar of Paris, Archbishop of Auch, Archbishop of
Besançon (1829) and a cardinal (1830). He left France at the Revolution
of July, but returned to his diocese in 1832, on the outbreak of the
cholera, caught the infection, and died of it.--T.]

[Footnote 436: Madame Lenormant drew the following portrait of M. de
Rohan-Chabot in 1813:

"He was in all the flower of his youth and had, in spite
of a shade of somewhat pronounced fatuousness, the most
charming, the most delicate, I would almost say the most
virginal face imaginable. M. de Chabot's appearance was one
of perfect elegance: his beautiful hair was curled with great
art and taste; he made an extreme study of his dress; he
was pale; his voice was very sweet. His manners were most
distinguished, but haughty. He was not clever, but, although
generally ill-informed, he had the gift of languages; he
grasped quickly and almost musically not the genius of a
language, but its accent."--B. ]

[Footnote 437: Madame Récamier was a native of Lyons on the Rhone.--T.]

[Footnote 438: After the death of the "People's Friend," Murat, by
simply changing one letter, transformed his name into that of Marat.
So proud was he of his invention that, in a letter which he wrote on
the 18th of November 1793, urging the execution of a "Moderantist," he
appended his new signature, "MARAT," no less than four times (MASSON,
_Napoléon et sa famille_, Vol. I. p. 311).--B.]

[Footnote 439: 1797.--T.]

[Footnote 440: 25 July 1799.--T.]

[Footnote 441: 10 November 1799.--T.]

[Footnote 442: 20 January 1800.--B.]

[Footnote 443: 14 June 1800.--T.]

[Footnote 444: 1804.--T.]

[Footnote 445: 13 November 1805.--B.]

[Footnote 446: 2 December 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 447: 14 October 1806.--T.]

[Footnote 448: 8 February 1807.--T.]

[Footnote 449: 14 June 1807.--T.]

[Footnote 450: 15 March 1806.--B.]

[Footnote 451: August 1812.--T.]

[Footnote 452: 16-19 October 1813.--T.]

[Footnote 453: Jean Michel Laurent Agar Comte de Mosbourg (1771-1844),
a schoolfellow of Murat, who made him Minister of Finance in his
Principality of Berg, married him to one of his nieces and gave him the
title and endowment of the County of Mosbourg. In 1808, he accompanied
the new King to Naples, where, as at Düsseldorf, he became Minister of
Finance, a post which he retained through almost the whole reign. He
entered the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830 and was raised to the
peerage in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 454: 29 January 1814.--B.]

[Footnote 455: Arrhidæus (_d._ 317 B.C.), an illegitimate son of
Philip King of Macedon, and half-brother to Alexander. He was made
King of Macedon till Roxana, who was pregnant by Alexander, brought
into the world a legitimate male successor. Arrhidæus was seven
years in possession of the sovereign power, and was put to death by
Olympias.--T.]

[Footnote 456: 28 March 1815.--T.]

[Footnote 457: Lieutenant Field-marshal Johann Maria Baron, later Count
von Frimont, Prince of Antrodocco (1759-1831), a native of Belgium, had
served in the French army, emigrated in 1791, and entered the Austrian
service. Ferdinand I. created Frimont Prince of Antrodocco, and granted
him a donation of 220,000 ducats. In 1825, the Emperor of Austria
created him a count and made him Governor of Lombardy and, in 1831, the
year of his death, Frimont became President of the Austrian Council of
War.--T.]

[Footnote 458: 3 May 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 459: 19 May 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 460: Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies and IV. of Naples
(1751-1825) reigned in Naples from 1759 to 1806 and from 1815 to 1825,
and in Sicily from 1759 to 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 461: Collonna-Ceccaldi was Mayor of Vescovato and
father-in-law to General Franceschetti.--T.]

[Footnote 462: General Dominique César Franceschetti (1776-1835)
was severely wounded, when fighting by Murat's side in the Pizzo
Expedition, and taken prisoner. He was afterwards amnestied by King
Ferdinand I.--T.]

[Footnote 463: Colonel Francis Maceroni, or de Macirone (1787-1846),
was born near Manchester, of a family of Roman origin, and was sent
to Naples to complete his education. Here he was kept a prisoner of
war, as a British subject, from 1806 till the advent of Murat in 1808.
The new King took him into favour, made him his aide-de-camp and
employed him in his negociations with England. After Murat's departure
from Corsica, Maceroni returned to France, where he was arrested
and not released before the British Ambassador had made repeated
representations on his behalf. He fought as a soldier of fortune in the
South American Wars of Independence (1817) and in Spain (1823). His
later years were spent in invention, notably of the famous Maceroni
steam-carriage.--T.]

[Footnote 464: Napoleon set foot on St. Helena on the 15th of October
1815.--B.]

[Footnote 465: The portraits consisted of an engraved cornelian seal
with his wife's likeness and a miniature of the features of his four
children.--T.]

[Footnote 466: Pius VII. made his solemn entry into Rome on the 25th of
May 1814.--B.]

[Footnote 467: This description occurs in that portion of the Memoirs,
devoted to the life of Napoleon, which has been omitted.--T.]

[Footnote 468: Alexis Louis Joseph Comte de Noailles (1783-1835)
had been imprisoned, in 1809, for spreading Pius VII.'s Bull of
Excommunication against the authors and accomplices of the usurpation
of the Papal States. In May 1814, the Comte de Noailles was Royal
Commissary in Lyons.--B.]

[Footnote 469: Madame Charles Lenormant (_vide supra_ p. 180, n.
2).--T.]

[Footnote 470: She arrived in Paris on the 1st of June 1814.--B.]

[Footnote 471: _L'Esprit de conquête et d'usurpation dans ses rapports
avec la civilisation européenne_ was published, early in 1814, in
Germany, where Benjamin Constant then was; he returned to France with
the Bourbons.--B.]

[Footnote 472: The appointment is announced in the _Journal de
l'Empire_ of the 6th of April 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 473: In English in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 474: 14 July 1817.--T.]

[Footnote 475: In 1819, Madame Récamier retired to the Abbaye-aux-Bois,
where she occupied a small and incommodious apartment on the third
storey, with a stone flooring and a stair-case of the most awkward
description, which did not prevent its being climbed daily by the
greatest ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and by all the leading
lights of Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 476: He was implicated in the Bories Affair.--_Author's Note._

Charles Coudert, a quarter-master of cavalry, was not implicated in
the Bories Affair, but in a military conspiracy against the Government
which broke out, in December 1821, at Saumur. Of the eleven accused,
eight were acquitted, and Coudert and two others condemned to death, in
February 1822. Madame Récamier employed her credit on his behalf and,
on the 18th of April, Coudert's sentence was commuted to one of five
years' imprisonment.--B.]

[Footnote 477: Eugène Coudert, Charles Coudert's elder brother.--B.]

[Footnote 478: Eugénie Bernardine Désirée Clary, later Désirée Queen
of Sweden (1781-1860), _née_ Clary, married Bernadotte in 1798, after
having been engaged to Napoleon Bonaparte.--T.]

[Footnote 479: Agnès Dame de Bourbon, second daughter of Humbert II.
Count of Savoy, and married to Archambad VII. Sire de Bourbon, who died
in 1171.--T.]

[Footnote 480: Adelaide of Savoy, Queen of France (_d._ 1154), daughter
of Humbert II., not of Humbert the White-handed, married, in 1114, to
Louis the Fat, King of France, and, four years after his death, which
occurred in 1137, to the Constable de Montmorency.--T.]

[Footnote 481: Humbert I., first Count of Savoy (_circa_ 985--_circa_
1048), surnamed the White-handed.--T.]

[Footnote 482: Louis VI. King of France (1078-1137), surnamed the
Fat.--T.]

[Footnote 483: Mathieu I. Seigneur de Montmorency (_d._ 1160),
appointed Constable of France in 1130. He married, first, Aline,
illegitimate daughter of Henry I. King of England, and, secondly, Queen
Adelaide of France.--T.]

[Footnote 484: Julia Queen of Naples, later of Spain (1777-1845), was
Marie Julie Clary, sister to Madame Bernadette, and was married to
Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.--T.]

[Footnote 485: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Moïse_, Act III. sc. IV.-B.

"Where the great are concerned, I am nowise suspect:
Their misfortunes alone win from me my respect.
I hate this King Pharaoh, while glory's his own;
Let him fall: on the instant I honour his crown:
By reason of grief he is king in my eyes;
I bow down before tears as great magistracies;
Misfortune's sad courtier, etc."--T.

]

[Footnote 486: The ex-Queen of Spain was then living in Brussels under
the name of Comtesse de Survilliers.--T.]

[Footnote 487: Lieutenant-General Robert Baron Fagel (1771-1856),
Netherlands Envoy to the several Courts of France from 1814 to
1854.--T.]

[Footnote 488: DUCHESSE D'ABRANTÈS, _Histoire des Salons de Paris.
Tableaux et portraits du grande monde, sous Louis XVI., le Directoire,
le Consulat et l'Empire, la Restauration et le règne de Louis-Philippe
Ier,_ Vol. VII.--B.]

[Footnote 489: Ex-Lieutenant (not Captain) Roger had taken part with
Caron in the Colmar plot. He was condemned to death on the 23rd of
February 1823. The penalty was commuted to one of twenty years' penal
servitude. He was sent to the convict prison at Toulon and obtained a
full pardon at the end of two years.--B.]

[Footnote 490: Lieutenant-Colonel Augustin Joseph Caron (1774-1822),
the ringleader of the plot, was sentenced to death, in September 1822,
and executed before the Court of Cassation had rejected his appeal.--T.]

[Footnote 491: Gustavus II. Adolphus King of Sweden (1594-1632), the
great antagonist of Austria, at that time France's foremost rival.--T.]

[Footnote 492: _Purg._, Canto VIII., 6.--T.]

[Footnote 493: Daniel Steibelt (1765-1823), a Prussian pianist and
composer, came to Paris in 1790. His _Romeo and Juliet_ was performed
at the Théâtre de l'Opera-Comique National on the 10th of September
1793, in the midst of the Terror.--B.]

APPENDIX TO BOOK XI

(By M. EDMOND BIRÉ)

THE CONGRESS OF VERONA AND THE SPANISH WAR

The Memoirs present a voluntary and compulsory gap. Nothing is
said of the twenty months (October 1822 to June 1824) during which
Chateaubriand was, first, French Ambassador at the Congress of Verona
and, later, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris; nothing of the
Spanish War, which was nevertheless his work. Certainly he had no
intention of placing in the shade the very events to which the honour
of his name as a statesman is attached. He wished, on the contrary,
to speak of them at his ease. Of all the various periods of his life,
it is this which assumed the greatest development under his pen: a
development so great that this narrative at first formed four volumes,
reduced later to two, under circumstances which I will presently
relate. Those two volumes in reality form an integral portion of the
Mémoires d'Outre-tombe. That they do not figure there is due to the
fact that the author feared, by giving them a place in his Memoirs, to
disturb the fine ordering of his book, in which the proportions are
so well preserved, in which all the parts of the work harmonize among
themselves with an art so perfect. For this reason, and also in order
publicly to revenge the Restoration for the calumnies of which it was
then the daily object, he decided, in 1838, to publish as a separate
work all that he had written on the Congress of Verona and the Spanish
War.

His manuscript, as I have just said, formed four volumes. This meant
eighty thousand francs (twenty thousand francs per volume) which fell
due to him, under the terms of his contract with the syndicate which
possessed the right of publishing his future works. The four volumes
were almost printed, when M. de Marcellus and M. de La Ferronnays,
alarmed at seeing certain diplomatic documents brought to light
which were destined, according to them, to remain secret, entreated
Chateaubriand to sacrifice, here, there and everywhere, documents
which, nevertheless, possessed the liveliest interest He consented to
most of the curtailments asked for, and gave his friends such liberal
measure that the original four volumes became reduced to two actual
volumes.

"Well," said Chateaubriand to M. de Marcellus, when the sacrifice was
consummated, "the two of you cost me forty thousand francs."

"Be it so," rejoined M. de Marcellus; "rather forty thousand francs
than regrets when it is too late."

And Chateaubriand replied:

"The thing is done now; I have respected your scruples and La
Ferronnays'; I have struck out a great deal to please you. But neither
of you has placed himself sufficiently, in thought, outside his century
and public affairs. To judge of an effect of tone, we should place
ourselves at a distance. It is by saying all that one distinguishes
one's self from the herd of buttoned-up and over-scrupulous statesmen.
I have conceived diplomacy on a new plan; I speak out. You are wrong
to dread my revelations; they could only do you credit. I tell you:
you will do later, La Ferronnays or you, when you think the danger
lessened, and for the same reasons, what you are preventing me from
doing now. As far as I am concerned, I give you my authorization
beforehand[494]."

Since Chateaubriand was induced to leave out of his Memoirs the Spanish
War, which was "the great political event of his life," it is fitting
that I should here remind the reader, if only in a few words, that
this war was an act of high and great politics and not, as the enemies
of the Restoration have repeated to satiety, an act of "servitude and
subjection to the Northern Cabinets."

When M. de Montmorency, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, went to
the Congress of Verona, he was the bearer of positive instructions
containing these very words:

"France being the sole Power which is to act with her troops, she will
be the sole judge of that necessity. The plenipotentiaries must not
consent that the Congress should lay down the conduct of France with
regard to Spain."

[Sidenote: Appendix to Book XI.]

Led away by the generosity and elevation of his sentiments, which
sometimes assumed a tinge of mysticism, to embrace a policy in which
the private initiative of each nation should disappear before the
decisions taken in common by a sort of directorate of the Great Powers
charged to secure the universal prevalence of the interests of justice
and humanity, the loyal and chivalrous Mathieu de Montmorency had been
induced to demand that Russia, Austria, Prussia and France should
address a final notice to Spain, after which the ambassadors were to
be recalled. M. de Villèle declared himself against this collective
action, in the council of ministers held at the Tuileries on the 25th
of January 1822. He claimed the right of France to intervene alone.
Louis XVIII. sided with his opinion, and declared that "France occupied
a special position towards Spain; that for her to recall her ambassador
was either too much or too little;" then he added:

"Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees, I will not allow them to be set up
again; he placed my House on the Throne of Spain, I shall not allow
it to fall from it; my Ambassador must not leave Madrid before the
day when a hundred thousand Frenchmen are pushing forward to take his
place."

To speak in this way was to separate the action of France from that of
the other Powers; M. Duvergier de Hauranne does not hesitate to admit
this[495]. It was to disown M. de Montmorency; he forthwith resigned
his office. He had wished to make the Spanish question an European
question; with Chateaubriand, his successor, it became a French
question. At this the head of the British Cabinet, Mr. Canning[496],
displayed a profound irritation. The hostility of England did not stop
the Government of Louis XVIII.:

"Keep up a high tone with the English ministers," wrote
Chateaubriand, on the 16th of January 1823, to M. de
Marcellus, France's representative in London.

"Say and repeat to Mr. Canning," he wrote again in a dispatch
dated 28th January, "that we are as anxious for peace as he,
and that England can obtain it before the opening of the
campaign, if she will hold the same language as ourselves and
demand the liberty of the King. But be sure to add that our
decision is taken, and that _nothing will make us go back._"

And on the 13th of March 1823:

"Mr. Canning is angry with me for not yielding to his threats
and casting France at the knees of England. He cannot go to
war, he has not so much as one half a plausible reason for
doing so, he feels this, and he is piqued at having gone so
far. But _war or no war, France will do what she must do, or
I shall cease to be minister..._"

And, in a postscript:

"Give parties, and _answer Mr. Canning firmly._"

On the 17th of April:

"England feels that _this war is giving us back our influence
and restoring us to our place in Europe_; she must needs be
irritated and ill-disposed. Mr. Canning's self-esteem is
compromised: hence his violence and his ill-humour.... I
recommend you henceforth to show yourself cold and reserved
with Mr. Canning.... Be polite, but talk little; and let him
see, by your manner, _that the French Government knows its
strength and defends its dignity._[497]"

The deeds were on a level with the words. Chateaubriand's policy had
been able and firm: a prosperous and well-managed war crowned it. Read
in what terms Benjamin Constant and General Foy, although speaking in
the name of the Opposition, judged the Spanish War:

"So far from contesting what our honourable colleague has
said on past events, I wish to recognise with him that the
whole of that memorable expedition has been full of glory
for our army, and I will add that this glory is so much
the finer in that it does not consist solely of military
successes. French generosity, inspiring even our private
soldiers, has always worked and sometimes happily succeeded
in making humanity prevail over vengeance, pity over fury,
and in protecting the disarmed enemy against the auxiliary
embittered by long reverses."

Thus did Benjamin Constant express himself in the tribune of the
Chamber of Deputies, on the 28th of June 1824. In the same sitting,
General Foy added these words:

[Sidenote: Appendix to Book XI.]

"The swiftness of the operations in Spain and the plenitude of the
military success have deceived the expectations of those who were
opposed to the war and surpassed the hopes of those who wished for it."

All truly liberal minds have agreed to recognise that the Spanish
War was not only politic, but legitimate and, above all, national.
While strengthening the Government at home, it restored to France her
liberty of action abroad. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle had freed
our territory. The Congress of Verona and the campaign which followed
emancipated our policy. We once more became a great nation.

M. Guizot was, in 1823, one of the opponents of the expedition; this
did not prevent him, when he had himself passed through public life,
from writing in his Memoirs:

"As a bold stroke of dynastic and party politics, the
Spanish War succeeded fully. The sinister forebodings of
its adversaries were belied and the hopes of its supporters
surpassed. Put to the test together, the loyalty of the army
and the powerlessness of the conspirators seeking refuge
abroad were made manifest at the same time. The expedition
was an easy one, although not without glory. The Duc
d'Angoulême covered himself with credit. The prosperity and
tranquillity of France suffered from it in no way[498]."

Lastly, Sir Robert Peel, in a conversation with M. de Marcellus, thus
summed up the results of the campaign:

"Providence is on your side, you were right.... You have won a real
influence on the Continent: a loyal army; flourishing finances; an
heir to the Crown who has acquired as much glory by his courage as his
moderation[499]."

[Footnote 494: COMTE DE MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration en
1822 et 1823_, p. 49--B.]

[Footnote 495: DUVERGIER DE HAURANNE, _Histoire du gouvernement
parlementaire en France_, Vol. VII. p. 218.--B.]

[Footnote 496: Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister, Canning Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 497: MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration_, pp. 123, 128,
169, 201.--B.]

[Footnote 498: GUIZOT, _Mémoires_, Vol. I. p. 258.--B.]

[Footnote 499: MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration_, p. 274.--B.]

BOOK XII[500]

The preceding book, which I have just written in 1839, joins this
book of my Roman Embassy, written in 1828 and 1829, ten years ago. My
Memoirs, as Memoirs, have gained by the story of Madame Récamier's
life: other persons have been brought upon the scene; we have seen
Naples under Murat, Rome under Bonaparte, the Pope set free, returning
to St. Peter's; unpublished letters of Madame de Staël, Benjamin
Constant, Canova, La Harpe, Madame de Genlis, Lucien Bonaparte,
Moreau, Bernadotte, Murat are preserved; the narrative of Benjamin
Constant shows him in a new light. I have introduced the reader to a
little "out-of-the-way canton" of the Empire, while that Empire was
accomplishing its universal movement; I now find myself brought to my
Roman Embassy. The distraction of a fresh subject will have been a
relief from myself: all has been to the reader's advantage.

For this book of my Roman Embassy there has been no lack of materials;
they are of three kinds:

The first contain the story of my innermost sentiments and of my
private life, as related in the letters addressed to Madame Récamier.

The second set forth my public life: those are my dispatches.

The third are a medley of historical details concerning the popes,
old Roman society, the changes that have taken place from century to
century in that society, and so on.

Among these investigations are thoughts and descriptions, the fruit
of my rambles. All this has been written in the space of seven months,
the time of the duration of my embassy, in the midst of festivities or
serious occupations[501]. Nevertheless, my health was impaired. I could
not lift up my eyes without feeling dizziness; to admire the sky, I
was obliged to place it around me by climbing to the top of a palace
or a hill. But I cured the lassitude of the body by means of mental
application: the exercise of my thought renewed my physical vigour;
what would kill another man gives me life.

[Sidenote: My journey to Rome.]

In revising all this, I have been struck with one thing. On my arrival
in the Eternal City, I feel a certain dislike and, for a moment, I
believe that everything has changed; little by little, the fever of
the ruins overtakes me and I end, like a thousand other travellers, by
adoring that which left me cold at first. Nostalgia is the regret of
one's native country; on the banks of the Tiber we also suffer from
"home-sickness," but it produces an opposite effect to its customary
effect: we are seized with the love of solitudes and the distaste for
our own country. I had already felt this "sickness" at the time of my
first visit, and I was able to say:

Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ[502].

You know how, when the Martignac Ministry was formed, the mere name
of Italy had dispelled what remained of my repugnance; but I am never
sure of my disposition in matters of joy: no sooner had I set out with
Madame Chateaubriand than my natural melancholy joined me on the way.
You shall convince yourselves of this by my diary of the road:

"LAUSANNE, 22 _September_ 1828.

"I left Paris on the 14th of this month; I spent the 16th at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne: what memories! Joubert is gone; the
deserted Château de Passy[503] has changed masters; I have
been told, 'Be thou the cricket of the nights: _Esto cicada
noctium._'"

"ARONA, 25 _September_.

"Arriving at Lausanne on the 22nd, I followed the road along
which disappeared two other women who wished me well and who,
in the order of nature, should have survived me. One, Madame
la Marquise de Custine, came to die at Bex; the other, Madame
la Duchesse de Duras, was hastening, not a year ago, to the
Simplon, flying before the face of death which overtook her
at Nice[504]."

"_Noble Clara_, digne et constante amie,
Ton souvenir ne vit plus en ces lieux;
De ce tombeau l'on détourne les yeux;
Ton nom s'efface et le monde t'oublie[505]!

"The last letter which I received from Madame de Duras brings
home to us the bitterness of that last drop of life which we
shall all have to drain:

"'NICE, 14 _November_ 1828.

"'I have sent you an _asclepias carnata_; it is a laurel
creeper which grows in the open air, is not afraid of
the cold, and has a red flower like the camélia, with
an excellent smell; plant it under the windows of the
Benedictine's Library.

"'I will tell you my news in a word: it is always the same
thing; I droop on my sofa all day, that is to say, all the
time that I am not driving or walking out, which I cannot do
for more than half-an-hour a day. I dream of the past: my
life has been so agitated, so varied, that I cannot say that
I am violently bored: if I could only do some needle-work or
rug-work, I should not feel unhappy. My present life is so
far removed from my past life that it seems to me as though I
were reading Memoirs or watching a play[506].'

"And so I have returned to Italy deprived of my friends, as I
left it five and twenty years ago. But, at that first time, I
was able to repair my losses; to-day, who would wish to take
part in a few remaining old days? No one cares to live in a
ruin.

"At the village of the Simplon itself, I saw the first smile
of a happy dawn. The rocks, whose base stretched out black at
my feet, gleamed with rose-colour at the mountain-top, struck
by the rays of the sun. To issue from darkness, it is enough
to rise towards Heaven.

"If Italy had already lost some of its brilliancy for me at
the time of my journey to Verona in 1822, in this year, 1828,
it appeared to me still more discoloured; I have measured the
progress of time. Leaning on the balcony of the inn at Arona,
I gazed at the banks of the Lago Maggiore, blazoned with the
gold of the setting sun and edged with azure. Nothing was
more agreeable than this landscape, which the Castle edged
with its battlements. This sight afforded me neither pleasure
nor sentiment. The years of spring-time wed their hopes to
what they see; a young man goes a-roaming with what he loves,
or with the memories of his absent happiness. If he have no
bond, he seeks one; he flatters himself at each step that he
will find something; thoughts of felicity haunt him: this
disposition of his soul is reflected upon surrounding objects.

"However, I notice the littleness of present society less
when I find myself alone. Left to the solitude in which
Bonaparte has left the world, I scarcely hear the feeble
generations which pass and mewl on the edge of the desert."

"BOLOGNA, 22 _September_ 1828.

"In Milan, in less than a quarter of an hour, I counted
seventeen hunchbacks passing under the window of my inn. The
German flogging has deformed young Italy.

"I saw St. Charles Borromeo[507] in his sepulchre, after
touching his birthplace at Arona. He reckoned two hundred and
forty-four years of death. He was not beautiful.

[Sidenote: An earthquake.]

"At Borgo San Donnino, Madame de Chateaubriand came running
into my room in the middle of the night: she had seen her
clothes and her straw hat fall off the chairs over which they
were hung. She had concluded from this that we were in an
inn haunted by ghosts or inhabited by robbers. I had noticed
no shock as I lay in bed; nevertheless it was the case that
an earthquake had been felt in the Apennines: that which
overturns cities is able to throw down a woman's clothes.
I said as much to Madame de Chateaubriand; I also told her
that, in Spain, in the Vega del Xenil, I had passed without
accident through a village which had been turned upside
down the day before by a subterranean concussion. These
lofty consolations did not have the smallest success, and we
hastened to leave this cave of murderers.

"The continuation of my journey has displayed to me on every
hand the flight of men and the inconstancy of fortune. At
Parma, I found the portrait of Napoleon's widow that daughter
of the Cæsars is now the wife of Count Neipperg; that
mother of the conqueror's son has presented that son with
brothers[508]: she allows the debts which she piles up to be
guaranteed by a little Bourbon[509] who lives at Lucca and
who, if it is expedient, is to inherit the Duchy of Parma.

"Bologna appears to me less deserted than at the time of my
first journey. I have been received here with the honours
with which ambassadors are pestered. I have visited a fine
cemetery: I never forget the dead; they are our family.

"I have never so much admired the Carraccis[510] as in the
new gallery at Bologna. It seemed to me as though I were
seeing Raphael's St. Cecilia for the first time, so much more
divine is it here than at the Louvre, under our sooty sky."

"RAVENNA, 1 _October_ 1828.

"In the Romagna, a country which I did not know, a multitude
of towns, with their houses coated with marble lime, are
perched on the tops of different little mountains, like
coveys of white pigeons. Each of those towns possesses a few
master-pieces of modern art or a few monuments of antiquity.
This canton of Italy contains the whole of Roman history: the
traveller should go through it with his Livy, Tacitus and
Suetonius in his hand.

[Sidenote: Dante's tomb.]

"I passed through Imola, the bishopric of Pius VII.[511], and
Faenza. At Forli I went out of my road to visit Dante's tomb
at Ravenna. As I approached the monument, I was seized with
that thrill of admiration which a great renown gives, when
the master of that renown has been unfortunate. Alfieri, who
bore on his forehead _il pallor della morta e la speranza_,
flung himself prone upon that marble and addressed to it his
sonnet, _O gran Padre Alighier!_ Standing before the tomb, I
applied to myself this verse from the _Purgatorio_:

Frate,
Lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui[512].

"Beatrice[513] appeared to me; I saw her as she was when she
inspired her poet with the longing _di sospirare e di morir
di pianto_[514]:

My plaintive song, take now thy mournful way,
And find the dames and damosels, to whom
Thy sisters, joyful-gay,
Were wont to bear the light of sunny gladness,
And thou, distressful daughter of my sadness,
Go thou and dwell with them in cheerless gloom[515]!

"And yet the creator of a new world of poetry forgot Beatrice
when she had left the earth! He only found her again, to
adore her in his genius, when he was undeceived. Beatrice
reproaches him with it, when she is preparing to show
Paradise to her lover:

"'These looks,' she says to the powers of Paradise,

These looks sometimes upheld him; for I show'd
My youthful eyes, and led him by their light
In upright walking. Soon as I had reach'd
The threshold of my second age, and changed
My mortal for immortal; then he left me,
And gave himself to others[516].

"Dante refused to return to his country at the price of a
pardon. He replied to one of his kinsmen:

"'If there is no other way of returning to Florence than
that which is opened to me, I shall not return there. I can
everywhere contemplate the stars and sun.'"

Dante refused the Florentines his days and Ravenna refused them his
ashes, even though Michael Angelo, the resuscitated genius of the poet,
was resolving to decorate the funeral monument of him who had learnt
_come l'uom s'eterna._[517]

"The painter of the Last Judgment, the sculptor of the Moses,
the architect of the dome of St. Peter's, the engineer of the
Old Bastion at Florence, the poet of the sonnets addressed to
Dante joined his fellow-townsmen and supported the petition
which they presented to Leo X. with these words:

"'_Io Michel Agnolo, scultore, il medesimo a Vostra Santità
supplico, offerendomi al divin poeta fare la sepoltura sua
condecente e in loco onorevole in quest a città._'

"Michael Angelo, whose chisel was disappointed in its hope,
had recourse to his pencil to raise another mausoleum to that
other himself. He drew the principal subjects of the _Divina
Commedia_ on the margins of a folio copy of the works of the
great poet; a vessel which bore this two-fold monument from
Leghorn to Civita Vecchia suffered shipwreck.

"I returned much moved and feeling something of that
commotion, mingled with a divine terror, which I experienced
at Jerusalem when my _cicerone_ proposed to take me to Lord
Byron's house. Ah, what were Childe Harold and the Signora
Guiccioli[518] to me in presence of Dante and Beatrice!
Misfortune and the centuries are still lacking to Childe
Harold; let him await the future. Byron was badly inspired in
his _Prophecy of Dante._

[Sidenote: At Ravenna.]

"I have found Constantinople again at San Vitale[519]
and San Apollinare[520]. Honorius[521] and his hen
were indifferent to me; I prefer Placidia[522] and her
adventures, the memory of which came back to me in the
basilica of St. John the Baptist: they form the romance of
the Barbarians. Theodoric[523] remains great, even though
he put Boethius[524] to death. Those Goths were a superior
race; Amalasontha[525], banished to an island in the Lake
of Bolsena, strove, with her minister Cassiodorus[526], to
save what remained of Roman civilization. The Exarchs[527]
brought to Ravenna the decadence of their empire. Ravenna
was Lombard under Astolf[528]; the Carlovingians restored
it to Rome. It became subject to its archbishop; then it
changed from a republic into a tyranny; finally, after having
been Guelph or Ghibelline, after having formed part of the
Venetian States, it returned to the Church[529] under Pope
Julius II.[530] and lives to-day only through the name of
Dante.

"This city, which Rome bore in her advanced age, had, from
its birth, something of the old age of its mother. Upon the
whole, I should not mind living here; I should like to go to
the French Column, raised in memory of the Battle of Ravenna.
There were the Cardinal de Medici[531] and Ariosto[532],
Bayard[533] and Lautrec, brother to the Comtesse de
Chateaubriand. There the handsome Gaston de Foix[534] was
killed at the age of twenty-four.

"'Notwithstanding all the artillery fired by the Spaniards,'
says the _Loyal Serviteur_, 'the French marched on; never
since God created Heaven and earth was a crueller nor fiercer
assault between French and Spaniards. They rested in front
of one another to recover their breath; then, lowering their
visors, began again worse than ever, crying "France!" and
"Spain!'"

"Of all those warriors there remained but a few knights who
then, become freed-men of glory, put on the frock.

"One saw also in some cabin a young girl who, in turning her
spindle, caught her dainty fingers in the hemp; she was not
accustomed to that life: she was a Trivulzis. When, through
her half-open door, she saw two billows join each other on
the bosom of the waters, she felt her sadness increase: that
woman had been beloved by a great king. She continued to
go slowly, by a lonely way, from her cabin to an abandoned
church and from the church to her cabin.

"The old forest through which I passed was composed of
solitary pines: they resembled the masts of galleys settled
in the sand. The sun was near its setting when I left
Ravenna; I heard the distant sound of a bell tolling: it was
summoning the faithful to prayer."

[Sidenote: Ancona.]

"ANCONA, 3 and 4 _October._

"Returning to Forli, I left it once again without having
seen on its crumbling ramparts the place where the Duchess
Caterina Sforza[535] declared to her enemies, who were
preparing to murder her only son, that she could still be
a mother. Pius VII., born at Cesena, was a monk in the
admirable convent of Madonna del Monte.

"Near Savignano, I passed across the ravine of a little
torrent: when I was told that I had crossed the Rubicon, it
seemed to me as though a curtain was raised and that I saw
the land of Cæsar's time. My own Rubicon is life: it is long
since I cleared its first bank.

"At Rimini, I met neither Francesca nor the other shade, her
companion, ‘ who seemed so light before the wind:'

E paion si al vento esser leggieri[536].

"Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia have brought me to Ancona
over roads and bridges left by the Augustuses. In Ancona they
are to-day keeping the Pope's[537] birthday; I hear the music
from Trajan's[538] triumphal arch: a double sovereignty of
the Eternal City."

"LORETTO, 5 and 6 _October._

"We have come to sleep at Loretto. The territory offers a
perfectly-preserved specimen of the Roman _colonia._ The
peasant farmers of Our Lady are in easy circumstances and
seem happy; the peasant-women, handsome and gay, wear a
flower in their hair. The Prelate Governor gave us his
hospitality. From the top of the steeple and the summit of
some of the eminences of the city one enjoys smiling vistas
over the plains, Ancona and the sea. In the evening we had a
storm. I took pleasure in watching the _valentia muralis_ and
the fumitory beloved by the goats bow before the wind on the
old walls. I walked under the double galleries erected after
Bramante's[539] designs. Those pavements will be beaten by
the autumn rains, those blades of grass will shiver at the
breath of the Adriatic long after I shall have passed away.

"At midnight, I had retired to a bed eight feet square,
hallowed by Bonaparte; a night-light hardly illumined the
darkness of my room; suddenly, a little door opened, and I
saw a man enter mysteriously, bringing with him a veiled
woman. I raised myself on my elbow and looked at them; he
approached my bed and lost no time, bowing down to the
ground, in offering me a thousand excuses for thus disturbing
the rest of His Excellency the Ambassador: but he was a
widower; he was a poor steward; he wished to marry his
_ragazza_, here present: unfortunately he fell somewhat short
of the dowry. He lifted up the orphan's veil: she was pale,
very pretty, and kept her eyes lowered with becoming modesty.
This family man looked as though he wanted to go away and
leave the affianced bride with me to finish her story. In
this urgent danger, I did not ask the obliging and unhappy
man, as the good knight asked the mother of the young girl
of Grenoble, if she was a maid; very much flurried, I took
some pieces of gold off the table by my bed and gave them,
to do credit to the King my master, to the _zitella_, 'whose
eyes were not swollen by dint of weeping.' She kissed my hand
with infinite gratitude. I did not utter a word, and, upon
my falling back on my immense couch, as though I wanted to
sleep, the vision of St. Anthony disappeared. I thanked my
patron saint, St. Francis, whose feast it was; I remained in
the darkness, half smiling, half regretting, and rapt in a
profound admiration of my virtues.

[Sidenote: Loretto.]

"It was thus, however, that I 'scattered gold,' that I was an
ambassador, entertained in pomp and state by the Governor of
Loretto, in the same town where Tasso was lodged in a sorry
den and where, for want of a little money, he was unable
to continue his journey. He payed his debt to Our Lady of
Loretto by his _canzone_:

Ecco fra le tempeste e i fieri venti.

"Madame de Chateaubriand made amends for my transient fortune
by climbing the steps of the Santa Chiesa[540] on her knees.
After my victory of the night, I had a better right than the
King of Saxony to deposit my wedding-coat in the Treasury of
Loretto; but I shall never forgive myself, a puny child of
the Muses, for having been so powerful and so happy in the
spot where the singer of Jerusalem had been so weak and so
miserable! Torquato, do not take me in this unusual moment
of my inconstant prosperity; riches are not my habit; see me
on my way to Namur, in my attic in London, in my infirmary
in Paris, in order to find in me some distant resemblance to
thyself!

"I have not, like Montaigne, left my portrait in silver
at Our Lady of Loretto, nor that of my daughter, _Leonora
Montana, filia unica_[541]; I have never desired to survive
myself; but still, a daughter, and one who should bear the
name of Leonora!"

"SPOLETO.

"After leaving Loretto, passing Macerata, leaving
Tolentino[542], which marks a step of Bonaparte and recalls
a treaty, I climbed the last redans of the Apennines. The
mountain table-land is moist and cultivated as a hop-garden.
To the left were the seas of Greece, to the right those of
Iberia; I could be pressed by the breath of the breezes which
I had inhaled at Athens and Granada. We descended towards
Umbria, winding down the curves of the leafless gorges, where
live suspended in clusters of woods the descendants of the
mountaineers who furnished the Romans with soldiers after the
Battle of Trasimenus[543].

"Foligno used to possess a Virgin by Raphael which is to-day
in the Vatican. 'Vene' occupies a charming position at the
source of the Clitumnus. Poussin[544] has reproduced that
warm, suave site; Byron has sung it coldly[545].

"Spoleto gave birth to the present Pope[546]. According to
my courier Giorgini, Leo XII. has placed the galley-slaves
in that town to do honour to his birthplace. Spoleto dared
to resist Hannibal[547]. It displays several works of Lippi
the Elder[548] who, nurtured in the cloister, a slave in
Barbary, a kind of Cervantes[549] among painters, died at
over sixty years of age of the poison administered to him by
the relations of Lucrezia[550], whom he was believed to have
seduced."

"CIVITA CASTELLANA.

"At Monte Lupo, Count Potoçki[551] buried himself in charming
_laurœ_; but did not the thoughts of Rome follow him there?
Did he not believe himself transported there amid 'choirs of
young girls?' And I too, like St. Jerome[552], 'have in my
time spent day and night in uttering cries, in beating my
breast, until God gave me back my peace.' _Plango me non esse
quod fuerim._

"After passing the hermitage of Monte Lupo, we began to wind
round the Somma. I had already taken that road on my first
journey from Florence to Rome over Perugia, when accompanying
a dying woman....

"By the nature of the light and a sort of vivacity of the
landscape, I should have believed myself on one of the ridges
of the Alleghany Mountains, were it not that a tall aqueduct,
surmounted by a narrow bridge[553], recalled to me a Roman
work to which the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto had put their
hands: the Americans have not yet come to those monuments
which follow upon liberty. I climbed the Somma on foot,
walking beside Clitumnian oxen which dragged Her Excellency
the Ambassadress to her triumph. A young goat-girl, as thin,
light of foot and pretty as her kid, followed me with her
little brother in that opulent country-side, asking me for
_carità_: I gave it her in memory of Madame de Beaumont, whom
these spots have forgotten.

Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day[554].

[Sidenote: Civita Castellana.]

"I saw Terni again and its cascades. A champaign planted with
olive-trees brought me to Narni; then, after passing through
Otricoli, we arrived and stopped at sad Civita Castellana. I
should much like to go to Santa Maria di Faleri to see a city
of which nothing is left but its skin, the walls; inside, it
was empty: _misère humaine à Dieu ramène._[555] Let us wait
till my grandeurs are past, and I shall return to seek out
the city of the Faliscans. Soon, from Nero's Tomb, I shall be
showing my wife the cross of St. Peter's which commands the
city of the Cæsars."

You have glanced through my diary of the road, you shall now read my
letters to Madame Récamier, interspersed, as I announced, with pages
of history. Alongside of these, you will find my dispatches. Here will
appear distinctly the two men that exist in me.

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 11 _October_ 1828.

"I have crossed this beautiful country, filled with your
memory; it consoled me, without being able to take from me
the sadness of all the other memories that I encountered
at every step. I have seen again that Adriatic Sea which I
crossed more than twenty years ago, in what a disposition of
soul! At Terni, I had stopped with a poor expiring woman.
Finally I entered Rome. Its monuments, as I feared, appeared
less perfect to me after those of Athens. My memory of the
places, astonishing and cruel at once, had not allowed me to
forget a single stone....

"I have seen no one yet, except the Secretary of State,
Cardinal Bernetti[556]. To have somebody to talk to, I went
to call on Guérin[557] yesterday, at sunset: he seemed
delighted with my visit. We opened a window upon Rome and
admired the horizon. It was the only thing that had remained,
for me, such as I had seen it; either my eyes or the objects
had changed, perhaps both[558]."

[Sidenote: Leo XII.]

The first moments of my sojourn in Rome were employed in official
visits. His Holiness received me in private audience; public audiences
are not customary and cost too dear. Leo XII., a prince of tall stature
and of an air at once serene and melancholy, is dressed in a plain
white cassock; he maintains no pomp, and keeps to a poor room, almost
unfurnished. He eats scarcely anything; he lives, with his cat, on a
little _polenta._ He knows that he is very ill and sees himself waste
away with a resignation that partakes of Christian joy: he would
be quite willing, like Benedict XIV., to keep his coffin under his
bed. When I come to the door of the Pope's apartments, I am taken by
a priest through dark passages to the refuge or sanctuary of His
Holiness. He does not allow himself the time to dress, for fear of
keeping me waiting; he rises, comes towards me, will never allow me to
touch the ground with my knee to kiss the hem of his robe instead of
his slipper, and leads me by the hand to the seat placed on the right
of his own poor arm-chair. We sit down and talk.

[Illustration: Pope Leo XII.]

On Monday I go at seven o'clock in the morning to the Secretary of
State, Bernetti, a man of affairs and pleasure. He has an intimacy
with the Princess Doria; he knows his century, and has accepted the
cardinal's hat only in self-defense. He has refused to enter the
Church, is a sub-deacon only by patent, and by giving back his hat can
get married to-morrow. He believes in revolutions, and goes so far as
to think that, if he lives long enough, he has a chance of seeing the
fall of the temporal power of the Papacy.

The cardinals are divided into three factions:

The first consists of those who try to march with the times; among
these are Benvenuti[559] and Oppizoni[560]. Benvenuti has become famous
through his extirpation of brigandage and his mission to Ravenna
after Cardinal Rivarola[561]; Oppizoni, Archbishop of Bologna, has
conciliated the various shades of opinion in this industrial and
literary town so difficult to govern.

The second faction is formed of the _zelanti_, who try to go backwards:
one of their leaders is Cardinal Odescalchi[562].

Lastly, the third faction comprises the immovable men, old men who will
not or cannot go either forwards or backwards: among these old ones is
Cardinal Vidoni[563], a kind of gendarme of the Treaty of Tolentino:
tall and fat, with a red face, and a skull-cap worn on one side. When
you tell him that he has a chance of the Papacy, he replies, "_Lo santo
Spirito sarebber dunque ubriaco!_" He plants trees at Ponte-Mole, where
Constantine made the world Christian. I see those trees when I leave
Rome by the Porta del Popolo to return by the Porta Angelica. The
moment he catches sight of me at a distance, the cardinal shouts, "_Ah!
ah! Signor Ambasciadore di Francia!_" and then flies out against the
men who plant his pines. He does not follow the cardinalist etiquette;
he goes out accompanied by a single footman in a carriage to his fancy:
people forgive him everything, content to call him Madama Vidoni[564].

My ambassadorial colleagues are Count Lützow, the Austrian Ambassador,
a polished man; his wife sings well, always the same air, and is always
talking of her "little children;" the learned Baron Bunsen[565], the
Prussian Minister, and friend of Niebuhr[566] the historian (I am
in treaty with him to have the lease of his palace on the Capitol
cancelled in my favour); Prince Gagarin, the Russian Minister, exiled
among the past grandeurs of Rome by reason of banished loves: if he was
preferred by the beautiful Madame Narischkine[567], who for a moment
inhabited my hermitage at Aulnay, there must be some charm in his bad
temper; we prevail rather through our defects than our good qualities.

M. de Labrador[568], the Spanish Ambassador, a faithful man, talks
little, walks about alone, thinks a great deal, or does not think at
all, I cannot make out which.

Old Count Fuscaldo represents Naples as winter represents spring.
He has a great cardboard placard on which he studies, through his
spectacles, not the rose-fields of Pæstum, but the names of
suspicious foreigners to whose passports he must not put his visa. I
envy him his palace (the Farnese), an admirable unfinished structure,
crowned by Michael Angelo, painted by Annibale Carracci, aided by his
brother Agostino, and sheltering under its portico the sarcophagus
of Cæcilia Metella, who has lost nothing by the change of mausoleum.
Fuscaldo, ragged in mind and body, is said to have a mistress.

The Comte de Celles[569], Ambassador of the King of the Netherlands,
was married to Mademoiselle de Valence[570], who is now dead. He has
had two daughters by her, who are consequently great-grand-daughters
of Madame de Genlis. M. de Celles has remained a prefect because he
used to be one; his character is that medley of the gossip, the petty
tyrant, the recruiting sergeant and the steward which one never loves.
If you meet a man who, instead of acres, yards and feet, talks to
you of hectares, metres and decimetres, you have laid your hand on a
prefect.

[Sidenote: My ambassadorial colleagues.]

M. de Funchal, the semi-acknowledged Ambassador of Portugal, is a
little, fat man, excitable, grimacing, green as a Brazil monkey and
yellow as a Lisbon orange: he sings his negress, however, this modern
Camoëns. A great lover of music, he keeps a sort of Paganini[571] in
his pay while awaiting the restoration of his King[572].

Here and there I have caught glimpses of little sly-boots of ministers
of various little States, very much scandalized to see how cheaply I
hold my embassy: their buttoned-up, solemn and silent importance walks
close-legged and with short steps: it looks ready to burst with secrets
which it does not know.

As ambassador in England in 1822[573], sought out the places and men
that I had formerly known in London in 1793; as Ambassador to the Holy
See in 1828, I hastened to visit the palaces and ruins, to ask after
the persons whom I had seen in Rome in 1803: of the palaces and ruins I
have found many there; of the persons, few.

The Palazzo Lancellotti, formerly let to Cardinal Fesch, is now
occupied by its real owners, Prince Lancellotti[573] and the Princess
Lancellotti[574], daughter of Prince Massimo[575]. The house in which
Madame de Beaumont lived, on the Piazza d'Espagna, has disappeared. As
to Madame de Beaumont, she has remained in her last asylum and I have
prayed with Pope Leo XII. at her tomb.

Canova has also taken leave of the world[576]. I twice visited him in
his studio in 1803; he received me mallet in hand. He showed me, with
the simplest and gentlest air, his enormous statue of Bonaparte and
his Hercules and Lichas: he was anxious to persuade you that he was
able to achieve energy of form; but even then his chisel refused to dig
deep into anatomy; the nymph lingered in the flesh in spite of him, and
Hebe reappeared in the wrinkles of his old men. I have met the first
sculptor of my time upon my road; he has fallen from his scaffold, as
Goujon[577] fell from the scaffold at the Louvre: death is always there
to continue the eternal St. Bartholomew and to lay us low with its
darts.

But there is one still alive, to my great delight, and that is my old
Boquet, the oldest of the French painters in Rome. Twice had he tried
to leave his beloved _campagne_; he has gone as far as Genoa; his
heart has failed him, and he has returned to his adopted home. I have
cockered him up at the Embassy, as well as his son, for whom he has the
tenderness of a mother. I have begun our old walks over again with him;
I notice his old age only by the slowness of his steps; I feel a sort
of emotion when I mimic a little child and measure my strides by his.
We have neither of us much longer before us to see the Tiber flow.

[Sidenote: The Roman artists.]

The great artists, at their great period, led a very different life
from that which they lead now: attached to the ceilings of the Vatican,
to the walls of St. Peter's, to the partitions of the Farnese, they
worked at their master-pieces suspended with them in mid-air.
Raphael walked surrounded by his pupils, escorted by cardinals and
princes, like a senator of Ancient Rome, preceded and followed by
his clients. Charles V. sat thrice to Titian[578]. He picked up his
brush, and yielded the right to him when walking, even as Francis
I. attended Leonardo da Vinci[579] on his death-bed. Titian went in
triumph to Rome; the immense Buonarotti received him there: at the
age of ninety-nine, at Venice, Titian still held with a firm hand his
century-old brush, the conqueror of the centuries.

The Grand-duke of Tuscany[580] secretly disinterred Michael Angelo,
who had died in Rome after laying, at the age of eighty-eight, the
coping-stone of the cupola of St. Peter's. Florence, with a magnificent
funeral, expiated on the ashes of its great painter the neglect which
it had shown to the ashes of Dante, its great poet.

Velasquez[581] twice visited Italy, and Italy twice rose to greet him.
The precursor of Murillo[582] resumed the road to Spain laden with the
fruits of that Ausonian Hesperia, which had fallen into his hands: he
carried away a picture by each of the twelve most celebrated painters
of that time.

Those famous artists spent their days in adventures and feasting; they
defended towns and castles; they built churches, palaces and ramparts;
they gave and received mighty sword-thrusts, seduced women, took refuge
in the cloisters, were absolved by the popes and saved by the princes.
In an orgy described by Benvenuto Cellini we see the names figure of
Michael Angelo and of Giulio Romano[583].

To-day the scene has greatly changed; the artists in Rome live poor
and in retirement. Perhaps this life contains a poetry which is as
good as the first. A society of German painters[584] has set itself
to carry painting back to Perugino[585], in order to restore to it its
Christian inspiration. Those young neophytes of St. Luke[586] maintain
that Raphael, in his second manner, became a pagan and that his talent
degenerated. Be it so; let us be pagans like the Raphaelite Virgins;
let our talent degenerate and grow enfeebled as in the picture of the
_Transfiguration!_ This creditable error of the new sacred school is
none the less an error; it would follow that the stiffness and bad
drawing of the forms would be a proof of intuitive vision, whereas that
expression of faith which we observe in the works of the painters who
precede the Renascence comes from the fact, not that the figures are
posed squarely and motionless as sphinxes but that painting believed
as did its century. It is the thought, not the painting, of the
century that is religious; so true is this, that the Spanish School
is eminently pious in its expression, notwithstanding that it has the
grace and movement of the painting subsequent to the Renascence. Whence
does this come? From the fact that _the Spaniards are Christians._

I go to see the artists separately at work; the pupil sculptor lives
in some grotto, under the evergreen oaks of the Villa Medici, where he
finishes his marble child giving a serpent to drink out of a shell. The
painter inhabits a dilapidated house in some deserted spot; I find him
alone, taking through his open window some view of the Roman Campagna.
M. Schnetz's[587] _Brigand's Wife_ has become the mother asking of
the Madonna the cure of her son. Léopold Robert[588], returning from
Naples, passed through Rome recently, bringing with him the enchanted
scenes of that lovely clime, which he has simply stuck on to his canvas.

[Sidenote: Guérin, Horace Vernet, Quecq.]

Guérin has retired, like a sick dove, to the top of a pavilion of the
Villa Medici. He listens, with his head under his wing, to the sound of
the wind from the Tiber; when he wakes up, he makes a pen-drawing of
the Death of Priam.

Horace Vernet[589] is struggling to change his manner: will he succeed?
The snake which he twines round his neck, the dress which he affects,
the cigar which he smokes, the masks and foils with which he surrounds
himself remind one too much of the bivouac.

Who has ever heard speak of my friend M. Quecq[590], the successor
of Julius III.[591] in the cabin of Michael Angelo, Vignola[592] and
Taddeo Zuccaro[593]? And yet he painted the _Death of Vitellius_ none
too badly, in his nymphic grotto seized under distress. The waste
garden-plots are haunted by a crafty animal which M. Quecq occupies
himself in hunting: it is a fox, the great-grandson of Reynard the Fox,
first of the name, and nephew of Ysengrin the Wolf.

Pinelli[594], between two fits of drunkenness, has promised me twelve
scenes of dances, gambling and robbers. It is a pity that he starves
the big dog which lies at his door. Thorwaldsen[595] and Camuccini[596]
are the two princes of the poor artists of Rome.

Sometimes those scattered artists meet and go together, on foot, to
Subiaco. On the road, they scrawl grotesque figures on the walls of the
inn at Tivoli. One day, perhaps, some Michael Angelo will be recognised
by the charcoal drawing which he will have made on a work of Raphael's.

I would like to have been born an artist: the solitude, the
independence, the sunshine amid ruins and master-pieces would suit me.
I have no wants; a piece of bread, a pitcher of the _Aqua Felice_ would
content me. My life has been wretchedly caught in the thickets on my
road; how happy should I have been, had I been the free bird that sings
and builds its nest in those thickets!

Nicolas Poussin bought, out of his wife's dowry, a house on the Pincian
Hill, opposite another _casino_ which had belonged to Claude Gelée,
surnamed Lorraine[597]. My other fellow-countryman, Claude, also died
in the lap of the Queen of the World[598]. If Poussin reproduces the
Roman Campagna, even when the scene of his landscapes is set elsewhere,
Claude Lorraine reproduces the skies of Rome, even when he paints ships
and a sunset at sea.

Why was I not the contemporary of certain privileged creatures to whom
I feel attracted in the different centuries? But I should have had to
rise from the dead too often. Poussin and Claude Lorraine have trodden
the Capitol; kings have come there and not been worth so much as they.
De Brosses[599] there met the English Pretender[600]; I found there, in
1803, the abdicated King of Sardinia and to-day, in 1828, I see there
Napoleon's brother, the King of Westphalia. Rome in her decline offers
an asylum to the fallen powers; her ruins are a place of sanctuary for
persecuted glory and unfortunate talents.

If I had painted Roman society, a quarter of a century ago, as I
have just painted the Roman Campagna, I should be obliged to retouch
my portrait; it would no longer be like. Every generation lasts
thirty-three years, the life of Christ (Christ is the type of all
things); every generation in our western world changes its outward
aspect. Man is placed in a picture whose frame is invariable, but
whose figures move. Rabelais[601] was in this city, in 1536, with the
Cardinal du Bellay[602]; he performed the functions of house-steward to
His Eminence; he "carved and handed."

Rabelais, changed into "Friar John of the Funnels," is not of the
opinion of Montaigne, who heard scarce any bells in Rome and "fewer
than in the most insignificant town in France[603];" Rabelais, on
the contrary, hears many in the "Ringing Island" (Rome): "some of us
doubted that it was the Dodonian Kettle[604]."

[Sidenote: Old-time visitors to Rome.]

Four and forty years after Rabelais, Montaigne found the banks of the
Tiber planted, and he observed that, on the 16th of March, there were
roses and artichokes in Rome. The churches were bare, without statues
of saints, without pictures, less ornate and less beautiful than the
French churches. Montaigne was accustomed to "the cloudy vastitie and
gloomy canopies of our churches[605];" he speaks several times of St.
Peter's without describing it, insensible or indifferent as he appears
to be to the arts. In the presence of so many master-pieces, no name
offers itself to Montaigne's recollection; his memory does not speak to
him of Raphael nor of Michael Angelo, not yet sixteen years dead.

For the rest, ideas on the arts, on the philosophic influence of the
geniuses which have magnified or protected them, were not yet born.
Time does for men what space does for monuments; we judge both one and
the other correctly only at a distance and from the point of view of
perspective; viewed from too near, we do not see them; from too far, we
no longer see them.

The author of the _Essayes_ looked in Rome only for Ancient Rome:

"The buildings in this bastard Rome, which the moderns were
raising upon, or appending to, the glorious structures of
the antique world, though they sufficed enough to excite the
admiration of the present age, yet seemed to him to bear a
close resemblance to those nests which the rooks and the
swallows construct upon the roofs and walls of the churches
in France, which the Huguenots have demolished[606]."

What sort of idea had Montaigne of Ancient Rome, if he regarded St.
Peter's as a swallow's nest, hung on to the walls of the Coliseum?

The new Roman citizen by an "authenticke bull" of the year 1581
A.D.[607] had remarked that the Roman ladies wore no masks, as they did
in France; they appeared in public resplendent with pearls and precious
stones, but "they had the waist exceedingly loose, which gives them all
the appearance of being with child." The men were dressed in black,
and although they were "dukes, marquisses, counts," they "are somewhat
mean-looking[608]."

It is not singular that St. Jerome remarks the gait of the Roman women,
which gives them the appearance of being with child: _solutis genibus
fractus incessus?_

Almost every day, when I go out through the Porta Angelica, I see
a mean house not far from the Tiber with a smoky French sign-board
representing a bear; it was there that Michael Lord of Montaigne landed
on arriving at Rome, not far from the hospital which served as an
asylum to that poor madman[609], "one most fitted under the ayre of
true ancient poesie," whom Montaigne saw "in so piteous a plight" at
Ferrara, and "rather spited than pitied him[610]."

It was a memorable event when the seventeenth century deputed its
greatest Protestant poet and its most serious genius to visit great
Catholic Rome in 1638. Leaning against the Cross, holding the Old and
New Testaments in her hands, with the guilty generations driven from
Eden behind her and the redeemed generations descended from the Garden
of Olives before her, she said to the heretic born of yesterday:

"What do you want of your old mother?"

Leonora[611], the Roman, bewitched Milton[612]. Has it ever been
remarked that Leonora appears once again in the Memoirs of Madame de
Motteville[613], at the concerts of Cardinal Mazarin[614]?

[Sidenote: Milton, the Abbé Arnold.]

The order of dates brings the Abbé Arnauld[615] to Rome after Milton.
This abbé, who had borne arms, relates an anecdote which is curious
on account of the name of one of its persons, while, at the same
time, it brings before us the manners of the courtesans. The "hero of
the fable," the Duc de Guise[616], grandson of the Balafré, going in
search of his Naples adventure, passed through Rome, in 1647: he there
knew Nina Barcarola. Maison-Blanche, secretary to M. Deshayes[617],
Ambassador to Constantinople, took it into his head to become the rival
of the Duc de Guise. It was a bad business for him; they substituted
(it was at night, in an unlighted room) a hideous old hag for Nina:

"If the laughter was great on one side," says Arnauld, "the
confusion on the other side was as great, as may well be
imagined. The Adonis, extricating himself with difficulty
from his divinity's embraces, ran quite naked out of the
house, as though the devil were at his heels."

The Cardinal de Retz tells us nothing on the subject of Roman manners.
I prefer "little" Coulanges[618] and his two journeys of 1656 and
1689: he celebrates those "vineyards" and "gardens" whose mere names
possess a charm. When I walk to the Porta Pia, I meet almost all the
persons named by Coulanges: those persons? No: their grandsons and
grand-daughters!

Madame de Sévigné receives verses from Coulanges; she replies to him
from the Château des Rochers in my poor Brittany, at ten leagues from
Combourg:

"What a sad date after yours, my amiable cousin! It suits a
solitary like myself, and that of Rome suits you, whose star
is a wandering one. How gently has fortune treated you, as
you say, even though it have fastened a quarrel on you!!!"

Between Coulanges' first journey to Rome, in 1656, and his second
journey, in 1689, thirty-three years elapsed: I reckon only twenty-five
years wasted between my first journey to Rome, in 1803, and my second
journey, in 1828. If I had known Madame de Sévigné, I should have cured
her of the grief of growing old.

Spon[619], Misson[620], Dumont[621], Addison[622] successively follow
Coulanges. Spon, with Wheler, his companion, acted as my guide over the
ruins of Athens.

[Sidenote: Dumont, Addison, Labat.]

It is curious to read in Dumont how the master-pieces which we
admire were disposed at the time of his journey in 1690: one saw
at the Belvedere the statues of the Nile and the Tiber[623], the
Antinous[624], the Cleopatra, the Laocoon[625] and the supposed torso
of Hercules[626]. Dumont places in the gardens of the Vatican "the
bronze peacocks which once adorned the tomb of Scipio Africanus."

Addison travels as a "scholar[627]," his trip is summed up in classical
quotations tinged with English recollections; when passing through
Paris, he presented his poems to M. Boileau[628].

Père Labat[629] follows the author of Cato: a singular man, this
Parisian monk of the Order of Preaching Friars. A missionary to the
Antilles, a filibuster, an able mathematician, architect and soldier, a
brave gunner levelling the cannon like a grenadier, a learned critic,
who had restored the Dieppois to the possession of their original
discovery in Africa[630], he had a mind inclined to raillery and a
character to liberty. I know of no traveller who gives clearer and
more exact ideas concerning the Pontifical Government. Labat walks the
streets, goes to the processions, meddles in everything and laughs at
nearly everything.

The Preaching Friar relates how the Capuchins, at Cadiz, gave him
sheets to his bed which had been quite new since ten years, and how
he saw a St. Joseph dressed in the Spanish fashion, sword at side,
hat under its arm, powdered hair, and spectacles on nose. In Rome he
attends a mass:

"Never," he says, "have I seen so many mutilated musicians
together, nor so numerous a symphony. Those who were judges
said that there was nothing so fine. I said as much, to make
believe that I was a judge too; but, if I had not had the
honour to form one of the train of the officiating priest, I
should have left the ceremony, which lasted at least three
good hours, which seemed to me quite six."

The more I come down to the time at which I write, the more do the
usages of Rome begin to resemble the usages of to-day. In the time of
De Brosses, the Roman women wore false hair; the custom proceeded from
far back; Propertius asks his "life" why she delights in adorning her
hair:

Quid juvat ornato precedere, vita, capillo[631]?

The Gallic women, our mothers, supplied the hair of the Severinas,
Piscas, Faustinas, Sabinas. Velleda says to Eudorus, speaking of her
hair:

"'Tis my diadem, and I have kept it for thee[632]."

A head of hair was not the greatest conquest of the Romans, but it
was one of the most lasting: we often take from the tombs of women
the whole of that ornament, which has resisted the scissors of the
daughters of the night, and we look in vain for the comely brow which
it adorned. The perfumed tresses, the object of the idolatry of the
lightest of the passions, have outlived empires; death, which shatters
all chains, has been unable to break that net. To-day the Italians wear
their own hair, which the women of the people plait with coquettish
grace.

De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and
writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute
about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed
of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another
princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's
glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more[633]! Had she lived in the days of
Raphael, he would have represented her in the form of one of those
Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace,
and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model.
How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I
made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam!

[Sidenote: De Brosses, King James III.]

De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we
see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor
mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in
London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses
obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.:

"Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder[634]
is about twenty years old, the younger[635] fifteen. I have
heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder
is worth by far the more and is better loved in private;
that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels
his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from
it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was
told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of
Gaeta[636], at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of
Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to
fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up:

"'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have
to go to fetch it myself one day.'"

De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he
will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his
gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany,
lost his father[637]; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern[638]
and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited London in
1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation
of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the
crowd:

"The man who is the object of all this pomp is he whom I envy least?"

The Pretender's was not a happy union; the Countess of Albany separated
from him and fixed her residence in Rome: it was there that another
traveller, Bonstetten[639], met her; the Bernese gentleman, in his old
age, gave me to understand, at Geneva, that he had letters written in
the first youth of the Countess of Albany[640].

Alfieri saw the wife of the Pretender at Florence, and fell in love
with her for life:

"Twelve years afterwards," he says, "at the moment I am
writing, and at an age when the illusions of the passions
have ceased to operate, I feel that I become daily more
attached to her, in proportion as time destroys the
brilliancy of her fleeting beauty, the only charm which she
owes not to herself. Whenever I reflect on her virtues, my
soul is elevated, improved and tranquillized, and I dare to
affirm that the feelings of her mind, which I have uniformly
endeavoured to fortify and confirm, are not dissimilar to my
own[641]."

I have met Madame d'Albany at Florence; age had apparently produced
in her an effect contrary to that which it generally produces: time
ennobles the countenance and, when it belongs to an old race, imprints
some trace of that race on the brow which it has marked; the Countess
of Albany was thick-set, with expressionless features and a common air.
If the women in Rubens' pictures were to grow old, they would be like
Madame d'Albany at the age at which I met her. I am sorry that that
heart, "fortified and confirmed" by Alfieri, should have had need of
another support[642]. I will here recall a passage from my Letter on
Rome to M. de Fontanes:

"Do you know that I only once saw Count Alfieri in my life,
and could you guess how? I saw him laid in his bier: I was
told that he had hardly altered; his physiognomy appeared to
me to be noble and grave; death doubtless gave it an added
severity; the coffin was a little too short, and they bent
the dead man's head upon his breast, which caused him to make
a terrible movement."

Nothing is so sad as, at the end of our days, to read what we have
written in our youth: all that was in the present is now in the past.

[Sidenote: King Henry IX.]

I saw for a moment in Rome, in 1803, the Cardinal of York, Henry IX.,
that last of the Stuarts[643], then seventy-nine years of age. He had
had the weakness to accept a pension from George III.: the widow of
Charles I.[644] had in vain begged one from Cromwell. Thus the House of
Stuart took one hundred and nineteen years to die out after losing the
throne which it never recovered. Three pretenders have handed on to
one another in exile the shadow of a crown; they had intelligence and
courage: what did they lack? The hand of God.

Besides, the Stuarts consoled themselves at the sight of Rome; they
were but one slight accident the more in those vast fragments, a small
shattered column raised in the midst of a great burial-ground of ruins.
Their House, in disappearing from the world, enjoyed yet this further
comfort: it saw the fall of old Europe; the fatality clinging to the
Stuarts dragged other kings with them to the dust, among whom was Louis
XVI., whose grandfather had refused an asylum to the descendant of
Charles I.[645], and Charles X. has died in exile at the age of the
Cardinal of York, and his son and his grandson are wanderers on the
face of the earth!

Lalande's[646] Journey in Italy, in 1765 and 1766, remains the best and
the most exact as regards the Rome of the arts and of antiquities:

"I like to read the historians and poets," he says, "but one
could not read them with more pleasure than when treading the
soil which bore them, climbing the hills they describe, and
watching the flow of the rivers they have sung."

That is not so bad for an astronomer who used to eat spiders.

Duclos[647], who is almost as lean and dry as Lalande, makes this
shrewd observation:

"The plays of the different nations give a fairly correct
image of their manners. Harlequin, the valet and the
principal character in the Italian comedies, is always
represented with a great desire for eating, which comes
from an habitual need. Our own comedy valets are commonly
drunkards, which may imply debauchery, but not penury."

The declamatory admiration of Dupaty[648] offers no compensation
for the aridity of Duclos and Lalande; still it makes one feel the
presence of Rome; one feels by reflex that eloquence of descriptive
style is born under the breath of Rousseau, _spiraculum vitæ._ Dupaty
approaches the new school which was soon to substitute sentimentality,
obscurity and mannerism for the truthfulness, clarity and naturalness
of Voltaire. Nevertheless, across his affected jargon, Dupaty observes
correctly; he explains the patience of the people of Rome through the
age of their successive pontiffs:

"A pope," he says, "is always to them a dying king[649]."

Dupaty sees night approach at the Villa Borghese:

"There remains but one ray of day... it is expiring on the
brow of that Venus[650]."

Would the poets of our day say better? He takes leave of Tivoli:

"Adieu, thou valley!... I am a stranger; I do not inhabit
your beautiful Italy; I shall never behold you more: but
perhaps my children, some at least of my children, will come
to visit you one day; appear but as charming in their eyes as
you have to their father[651]."

"Some of the children" of the scholar and poet have visited Rome, and
they could have seen the last ray of sunlight expire on the brow of the
Venus Genitrix of Dupaty[652].

[Sidenote: Dupaty, Goethe.]

Scarce had Dupaty left Rome when Goethe came to take his place[653].
Did the president of the Parliament of Bordeaux ever hear speak of
Goethe? And nevertheless the name of Goethe lives on this earth whence
that of Dupaty has vanished. It is not that I love the mighty genius
of Germany; I have little sympathy for the poet of matter: I feel
Schiller, I understand Goethe. There may be great beauties in the
enthusiasm which Goethe experiences in Rome for Jupiter: excellent
critics think so; but I prefer the God of the Cross to the God of
Olympus. I look in vain for the author of _Werther_ along the banks of
the Tiber; I find him only in this phrase:

"My present life is as it were a dream of youth; we shall see
if I am fated to enjoy it, or to recognise that this too is
vain, as so many others have been."

When Napoleon's eagle allowed Rome to escape from its claws, she fell
back into the bosom of her peaceful pastors: then Byron appeared at the
crumbling walls of the Cæsars[654]; he flung his distressed imagination
over so many ruins, like a mourning cloak. Rome, thou hadst a name, he
gave thee another; that name will cling to thee; he called thee:

"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago[655]."

After that last storm of poetry, Byron was not long in dying[656]. I
might have seen Byron at Geneva, and I did not see him; I might have
seen Goethe at Weimar, and I did not see him; but I saw Madame de Staël
die, who, disdaining to live beyond her youth, passed swiftly to the
Capitol with Corinne: imperishable names, illustrious ashes, which
have associated themselves with the name and the ashes of the Eternal
City[657].

Thus have the changes in manners and persons proceeded from century to
century in Italy; but the great transformation has been worked, above
all, by our two occupations of Rome.

The "Roman Republic," established under the influence of the
Directorate, ridiculous as it was with its two "consuls" and its
"lictors" (scurvy _facchini_ taken from the populace), for all that,
made excellent innovations in the civil laws: it was from the
prefectures, invented by that "Roman Republic," that Bonaparte borrowed
the institution of his own prefects.

[Sidenote: The "Roman Republic."]

We brought to Rome the germ of an administration which had no
existence; Rome, become the chief town of the Department of the Tiber,
was superlatively well ruled. Its mortgage system it owes to us. The
suppression of the convents, the sale of ecclesiastical property
sanctioned by Pius VII. have diminished the faith in the permanence of
the consecration of religious things. The famous _Index_, which still
makes a little noise on our side of the Alps, makes none at all in
Rome: for a few _bajocchi_ you obtain permission to read the forbidden
work with a safe conscience. The _Index_ is one of those works which
remain as evidences of the old times in the midst of the new. In the
Republics of Rome and Athens, were not the titles of "King," the names
of the great families adhering to the Monarchy respectfully preserved?
It is only the French who foolishly take offense at their tombs and
their annals, who hurl down the crosses, devastate the churches, out of
grudge against the clergy of the Year of Grace 1000 or 1100. There is
nothing more puerile or more stupid than those reminiscent outrages;
nothing which would tend more to the belief that we are incapable of
anything serious whatsoever, that the true principles of liberty will
for ever remain unknown to us. Far from despising the past, we ought,
as all nations do, to treat it as a venerable greybeard, who sits by
our fireside telling what he has seen: what harm can he do us? He
instructs and amuses us with his stories, his ideas, his language, his
manners, his habits of former days; but he is without strength, and
his hands are weak and trembling. Can it be that we are afraid of that
contemporary of our fathers, who would already be with them in the
tomb, if he could die, and who has no authority, save that of their
dust?

The French, passing through Rome, left their principles there: that is
what always happens when the conquest is accomplished by a people more
advanced in civilization than the people which undergoes that conquest,
as witness the Greeks in Asia under Alexander, as witness the French
in Europe under Napoleon. Bonaparte, when snatching sons from their
mothers, when forcing the Italian nobility to leave its palaces and
bear arms, was hastening the transformation of the national spirit.

As to the physiognomy of Roman society, on days of concerts or
balls one might have thought himself in Paris. The Altieris[658],
the Palestrinas[659], the Zagarolos[660], the Del Dragos[661], the
Lantes[662], the Lozzanos would not have felt strangers in the
drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: still, some of those women
wear a certain frightened air which has, I believe, to do with the
climate. The charming Falconieri, for instance, always stands near a
door, ready to fly to the Monte Mario if you look at her: the Villa
Millini[663] belongs to her; a novel placed in that abandoned lodge,
under the cypress trees, in view of the sea, would have its value.

But, whatever the changes in manners and persons, from century to
century, in Italy may be, we observe a habit of greatness there which
we paltry barbarians cannot approach. There still remains Roman blood
in Rome and the traditions of the masters of the world. When one sees
foreigners crammed into small new houses at the Porta del Popolo, or
lodged in palaces which they have divided into boxes and pierced with
chimneys, it is as though one saw rats scratching at the feet of the
monuments of Apollodorus[664] and Michael Angelo and gnawing holes into
the pyramids.

To-day, the Roman nobles, ruined by the Revolution, immure themselves
within their palaces, live parsimoniously and have become their own
stewards. When you have the good fortune, which happens very rarely,
to be received by them in the evening, you pass through vast halls,
unfurnished and scarcely lighted, along which antique statues stand out
white against the thick shadow, like phantoms or exhumed corpses. At
the end of those halls, the ragged footman who leads the way ushers you
into a sort of gynecæum: around a table are seated three or four, old
or young, ill-dressed women, plying their needles at fancy-work, by the
light of a lamp, and exchanging a few words with a father, a brother,
a husband recumbent in the dim background on tattered arm-chairs.
Nevertheless, there is something, I know not what, fine, sovereign,
appertaining to high breeding, in this assemblage entrenched behind its
master-pieces and giving a first impression of a witches' Sabbath. The
species of the _cicisbei_ is extinct, although a few shawl-bearing and
footwarmer-carrying abbés survive; here and there, a cardinal still
fixes himself in a woman's house like a sofa.

Nepotism and pontifical scandals are no longer possible, just as kings
can no longer keep titular and honoured mistresses. Nowadays, when
politics and the tragic adventures of love have ceased to fill the
lives of the great ladies of Rome, how do they spend their time in the
interior of their homes? It would be interesting to get to the bottom
of these new manners; if I stay in Rome, I shall make it my business to
do so.

I visited Tivoli in 1803; at that time I said, in a narrative which was
printed then:

"This spot is suited to reflection and day-dreams; I go back
into my past life; I feel the burden of the present; I seek
to penetrate the future; where shall I be, what shall I be
doing and what shall I be _twenty years hence_?"

Twenty years! It seemed a century to me; I thought myself certain of
inhabiting my tomb before that century had lapsed. And it is not I that
have passed away, but the master of the world and his empire that have
sped!

Almost all the ancient and modern travellers saw in the Roman Campagna
only what they call "its horror and its nudity." Montaigne himself, who
assuredly was not lacking in imagination, says:

"Far away on the left lay the Apennines; the aspect of the
foreground was exceedingly unpleasant to the eye, hilly, with
every here and there deep marshes... the country ...open,
barren, and altogether destitute of trees, and almost equally
so of houses[665]."

The Protestant Milton casts upon the Roman Campagna a look as dry and
barren as his faith. Lalande and the Président De Brosses are as blind
as Milton. Only in M. de Bonstetten's _Voyage sur la scène des six
derniers livres de l'Énéide_, published at Geneva in 1804, one year
after my Letter to M. de Fontanes (printed in the _Mercure_ at the end
of the year 1803), do we find any true sensations of that admirable
solitude, and even they are mingled with objurgations:

"What a pleasure to read Virgil under the sky of Æneas
and, so to speak, in the presence of the gods of Homer!" says
M. de Bonstetten. "What a profound solitude in these deserts
in which we behold only the sea, ruined woods, trees, great
meadows, and not one inhabitant! In a vast extent of country,
I saw but a single house, and that house was near me, on the
summit of a hill. I went to it, it had no door; I climbed a
stair-case, I entered a sort of chamber, a bird of prey had
built its nest there....

"I stood some time at the window of that abandoned house. I
saw at my feet that declivity, so rich and so magnificent in
Pliny's day, now uncultivated."

Since my description of the Roman Campagna, they have passed from
disparagement to enthusiasm. The English and French travellers who have
followed me have marked all their steps from the Storta to Rome by
ecstasies. M. de Tournon[666], in his _Études statistiques_, enters the
road of admiration which I had the happiness to open:

"The Roman Campagna," he says, "unfolds more distinctly,
at each step, the serious beauty of its immense lines,
its numerous plains and its fine frame of mountains. Its
monotonous grandeur impresses and elevates the thought."

I have no need to mention M. Simond[667], whose journey reads like a
wager, so much does he amuse himself by looking at Rome upside down. I
was at Geneva when he died almost suddenly. A farmer, he had just cut
his hay and gaily reaped his first grain, when he went to join his mown
grass and his gathered harvest.

We have a few letters of the great landscape painters; Poussin and
Claude Lorraine do not say a word about the Roman Campagna. But,
if their pen is silent, their brush speaks; the _Agro Romano_ was a
mysterious source of beauty, at which they drew, while hiding it by a
sort of avarice of genius and as it were in fear, lest it should be
profaned by the vulgar. Strange that it should be French eyes that best
saw the light of Italy.

[Sidenote: Vandalism in the Campagna.]

I have read again my Letter to M. de Fontanes on Rome, written five
and twenty years ago, and I confess that I have found it so exact
that it would be impossible for me to take away or add a word to it.
A foreign company has come this winter (1829) to propose to clear the
Roman Campagna: ah, gentlemen, spare us your cottages and your English
gardens on the Janiculum! If ever they were to disfigure the waste
lands against which the ploughshare of Cincinnatus struck, on which
all the grasses bend before the breath of the centuries, I should
fly Rome, never to set foot in it again. Go to drag your improved
ploughs elsewhere; here the earth grows and must grow only tombs. The
cardinals have closed their ears to the calculations of the commercial
adventurers hastening to demolish the ruins of Tusculum, which they
mistake for the castles of aristocrats: they would have made lime with
the marble of the sarcophagus of Æmilius Paulus, even as they have
made water-shoots with the lead of the coffins of our ancestors. The
Sacred College clings to the past; besides, it has been proved, to
the great confusion of the economists, that the Roman Campagna paid
the owners five per cent, as pasture-land and that it would not yield
more than one and a half in corn. It is not through idleness, but
through practical interest, that the cultivator of the plains gives the
preference to _pastorizia_ over _maggesi._ The produce of an acre in
the Roman territory is almost equal to the produce of the same measure
in the best French departments: to convince one's self of that, one has
but to read the work of Monsignore Nicolaï[668].

I have told you that, at first, I had a sense of weariness, at the
commencement of my second journey to Rome, and that I ended by
recovering under the influence of the ruins and the sun. I was still
under my first impression when, on the 3rd of November 1828, I wrote to
M. Villemain:

"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman
solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I
was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than
my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as
they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find
consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all
these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as
a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past,
I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that
lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left,
I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used
to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo
my honours, overcome by the _sirocco_ and stabbed by the
_tramontane._ There you have all my life, save only a tomb
which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great
attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid
them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left
young have become old, and the ruins have become young again:
what would you have one do here?

"Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to
my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled
all my engagements towards my country and my friends. Once
you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I
shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon
carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to
bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public
liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must
now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to
my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I
have been admirably received, I have found a government full
of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy;
but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than
the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it
is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one
will find there.

"I thank you for being so good as to speak to me of your
labours. You will write a work which will be worthy of you
and increase your reputation[669]. If you have any researches
to make here, have the kindness to tell me of them: a rummage
in the Vatican might furnish you with treasures. Alas, I saw
but too much of that poor M. Thierry[670]! I assure you that
I am haunted by his memory: so young, so full of love for his
work, and to go! And, as always happens with real merit, his
mind was improving and reason, with him, taking the place
of system: I still hope for a miracle. I have written on
his behalf; I have not even had an answer. I have been more
fortunate for you, and a letter from M. de Martignac gives me
to hope at last that justice, although tardy and incomplete,
will be done you. I no longer live, monsieur, except for my
friends; you must permit me to include yourself in the number
of those who are still left to me.

"I remain, monsieur, with as much sincerity as admiration,

"Your most devoted servant[671],

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

[Sidenote: Augustin Thierry.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Saturday_, 8 _November_ 1832.

"M. de La Ferronnays informs me of the surrender of
Varna[672], which I knew. I believe that I once told you that
the whole question seemed to me to lie in the fall of that
place, and that the Grand Turk would not dream of peace until
the Russians had done what they did not do in their earlier
wars. Our newspapers have been wretchedly Turcophile these
last times. How can they ever have been able to forget the
noble cause of Greece and to fall into admiration before the
barbarians who spread slavery and pestilence over the country
of great men and the fairest portion of Europe? That is what
we are, we French: a trifle of personal discontent makes us
forget our principles and the most generous sentiments. The
Turks, when beaten, will perhaps arouse some pity in me; the
Turks victorious would fill me with horror.

"So my friend M. de La Ferronnays remains in power. I flatter
myself that my determination to follow him has got rid of
the competitors for his office. But, after all, I shall have
to leave this; I now long only to return to my solitude and
to quit the career of politics. I thirst for independence in
my last years. New generations have arisen, they will find
the public liberty established for which I have fought so
hard: let them then lay hold of, but let them not misuse my
inheritance, and let me go to die in peace near you.

"I went two days ago to walk in the grounds of the Villa
Panfili: what a beautiful solitude!"

"ROME, _Saturday_, 15 _November._

"There has been a first ball at Torlonia's[673]. I met all
the English on earth there; I thought myself still Ambassador
in London. The Englishwomen appear to me to be _figurantes_
who are engaged to dance in the winter in Paris, Milan,
Rome, Naples, and who return to London in the spring, when
their engagements have expired. The hoppings on the ruins of
the Capitol, the uniform manners which 'great' society puts
on everywhere are very strange things: if even I had the
resource of escape into the deserts of Rome!

"What is really deplorable here, what clashes with the nature
of the place is that multitude of insipid Englishwomen and
frivolous dandies who, holding each other linked by the arm,
as the bats do by the wing, parade their eccentricity, their
boredom and their insolence at your receptions, and make
themselves at home in your house as at an inn. This vagrant
and swaggering Great Britain makes for your seats at public
solemnities, and boxes with you to turn you out of them: all
day long it hastily swallows pictures and ruins and, in the
evening, it comes to swallow cakes and ices at your parties,
feeling that it confers a great honour upon you in doing so.
I do not know how an ambassador can endure those unmannerly
guests, nor why he does not show them his door."

[Sidenote: My Memorandum on the East.]

I have spoken in the _Congrès de Vérone_ of the existence of my
Memorandum on Eastern Affairs. When I sent it, in 1828, to M. le Comte
de La Ferronnays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the world was
not what it is: in France, the Legitimacy existed; in Russia, Poland
had not perished; Spain was still Bourbon; England had not yet the
honour of protecting us. Many things, therefore, have become old in
this Memorandum: to-day, my foreign policy would, in many respects,
be different; twelve years have altered diplomatic relations, but
the basis of the truths has remained the same. I have inserted
this Memorandum in its entirety in order once more to revenge the
Restoration for the absurd reproaches which continue to be obstinately
addressed to it, in spite of the evidence of facts. The Restoration,
so soon as it had chosen its ministers from among its friends, never
ceased to occupy itself with the independence and honour of France:
it protested against the Treaties of Vienna; it demanded protective
frontiers, not for the vain-glory of pushing itself to the banks of
the Rhine, but to ensure its safety; it laughed when they talked to it
of the equilibrium of Europe, an equilibrium so unjustly broken where
it was concerned: that was why it first wished to cover itself on the
south, because it had pleased the others to disarm it on the north. At
Navarino, it recovered a navy and the liberty of Greece; the Eastern
Question did not take it unawares.

I have kept three opinions on the East from the time at which I wrote
that Memorandum:

First, if Turkey in Europe is to be broken up, we must have a share
in that distribution in the shape of an increase of territory on our
frontiers and the ownership of some military point in the Archipelago.
To compare the partition of Turkey with the partition of Poland is an
absurdity.

Secondly, to regard Turkey, as it was during the reign of Francis I.,
as a useful power to our policy, is to do away with three centuries of
history.

Thirdly, to pretend to civilize Turkey by giving her steamboats and
railways, by disciplining her armies, by teaching her to work her
fleets, is not to extend civilization to the East, but to introduce
barbarism into the West. Ibrahims to come would be able to carry back
the future to the time of Charles the Hammer or to the time of the
Siege of Vienna, when Europe was saved by that heroic Poland on whom
weighs the ingratitude of kings.

I must remark that I was the only one, with Benjamin Constant, to point
out the improvidence of the Christian governments: a people whose
social order is based upon slavery and polygamy is a people that must
be sent back to the steppes of the Mongols.

In the last result, Turkey in Europe, become a vassal of Russia by
virtue of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi[674], no longer exists:
if the question is to be decided at once, which I doubt, it would
perhaps be better that an independent empire should have its seat
in Constantinople and form Greece into a whole. Is that possible? I
do not know. As for Mehemet Ali[675], the relentless tax-gatherer
and custom-house officer, Egypt, in so far as French interests are
concerned, is better guarded by him than she would be by the English.

But here am I exerting myself to demonstrate the honour of the
Restoration: why, who troubles himself about what it has done, who,
above all, will trouble himself about it some years hence? It would be
as well worth my while to become excited over the interests of Tyre and
Ecbatana: that past world is gone, never to return. After Alexander,
the Roman power commenced; after Cæsar, Christianity changed the world;
after Charlemagne, the feudal night gave birth to a new society; after
Napoleon, nothing: we see no empire come, nor religion, nor barbarians.
Civilization has risen to its highest level, but it is a material
civilization, an unfruitful civilization, which can produce nothing,
since life can be given only by moral means; we can arrive at the
creation of peoples only by the roads of Heaven: railways will lead us
only more swiftly to the abyss.

You now have the prolegomena which seemed to me necessary for the
understanding of the Memorandum which follows, and which is also to be
found at the Foreign Office.

[Sidenote: To M. de La Ferronnays.]

LETTER TO M. LE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS

"ROME, 30 _November_ 1828.

"In your private letter of the 10th of November, my noble
friend, you said:

"'I send you a brief summary of our political situation,
and you will be kind enough to let me, in return, have your
ideas, which are always so useful to know in matters of this
sort.'

"Your friendship, noble count, judges me too indulgently; I
do not in the least believe that I shall be enlightening you
by sending you the Memorandum annexed: I merely obey you."

MEMORANDUM

PART I.

"At the distance at which I am placed from the theatre of
events, and in my almost total ignorance of the state of
negociations, I can scarcely reason fitly. Nevertheless, as I
have long had a definite system touching the foreign policy
of France, as I was, so to speak, the first to call for the
emancipation of Greece, I readily, noble count, submit my
ideas to your judgment.

"There was as yet no question of the Treaty of the 6th of
July[676], when I published my Note on Greece[677]. That
Note contained the germ of the treaty: I proposed to the
five Great Powers of Europe to address a collective dispatch
to the Divan imperatively to demand the cessation of all
hostility between the Porte and the Hellenes. In case of
refusal, the five Powers were to declare that they recognised
the independence of the Greek Government and that they would
receive the representatives of that Government.

"This Note was read by the several Cabinets. The position
which I had occupied as Minister for Foreign Affairs lent
some importance to my opinion: what is singular is that
Prince Metternich showed himself less opposed to my Note than
Mr. Canning.

"The latter, with whom I had had fairly intimate relations,
was an orator rather than a great politician, a man of
talent rather than a statesman. He entertained a certain
jealousy of success in general, and especially of that of
France. When the Parliamentary Opposition either wounded
or exalted his self-esteem, he flung himself into false
measures, he launched out into sarcasm or boasting. It was
thus that, after the Spanish War, he rejected the demand for
intervention, which I had extracted with so much difficulty
from the Cabinet of Madrid, for the settlement of affairs
across the Atlantic: the secret reason was that he had
not himself made that demand, and he refused to see that,
even according to his system (always presuming that he had
one), England, represented in a general congress, would in
no way be bound by the acts of that congress, and would
always remain free to act separately. It was thus again that
Mr. Canning moved troops into Portugal, not to defend a
Charter at which he was the first to laugh, but because the
Opposition reproached him with the presence of our soldiers
in Spain and he wanted to be able to say that the British
Army was occupying Lisbon as the French Army occupied Cadiz.
Lastly, it was thus that he signed the Treaty of the 6th of
July against his private opinion, against the opinion of his
country, which was unfavourable to the cause of the Greeks.
If he agreed to that treaty, it was solely because he was
afraid of seeing us take the initiative in the question with
Russia and gain the glory of a generous resolution alone.
That minister, who, after all, will leave a great reputation,
also thought that he was hindering Russia's movements by this
very treaty; nevertheless, it was clear that the text of the
instrument in no way tied down the Emperor Nicholas and in no
way obliged him to waive a war of his own with Turkey.

"The Treaty of the 6th of July is a crude document
hurriedly drafted, devoid of all foresight and teeming with
contradictory provisions.

"In my Note on Greece, I presupposed the adhesion of the five
Great Powers; as Austria and Prussia have kept aloof, their
neutrality leaves them free, according to events, to declare
for or against either of the belligerent parties.

"There is no longer any question of going back to the past,
we must take things as they are. All that the governments
are obliged to do is to make the most of the facts when they
are accomplished. Let us therefore examine those facts.

"We are occupying the Morea[678], the towns on that peninsula
have fallen into our hands. So much for what concerns
ourselves.

"Varna is taken, Varna becomes an outpost at seventy hours'
march from Constantinople. The Dardanelles are blockaded;
the Russians will, in the course of the winter, seize
Silistria[679] and some other fortresses; numbers of recruits
will arrive. In the early days of spring, all will move for
a decisive campaign; in Asia, General Paskevitch[680] has
invaded three pashalics, he commands the sources of the
Euphrates and threatens the road to Erzeroum. So much for
what concerns Russia.

"Would the Emperor Nicholas have done better to undertake a
winter campaign in Europe? I think so, if it were possible.
By marching on Constantinople, he would have cut the Gordian
knot and put an end to all diplomatic intrigue; people
embrace the side of success; the way to secure allies is to
be victorious.

"As for Turkey, it has been made clear to me that she would
have declared war on us if Russia had failed before Varna.
Will she have the good sense to-day to open up negociations
with England and France, if only to rid herself of both?
Austria would gladly advise her to adopt that course; but
it is difficult to foresee the conduct of a race of men who
have not European ideas. At the same time cunning as slaves
and haughty as tyrants, with them anger is never tempered
by anything save fear. Sultan Mahmud II.[681] appears, in
some respects, to be a superior prince to the last sultans;
he has, above all, political courage; but has he personal
courage? He is content to hold reviews in the suburbs of his
capital, and he lets himself be entreated by the magnates not
to go even so far as Adrianople. The mob of Constantinople
would be better held in check by triumphs than by the
presence of its master.

"Let us, however, admit that the Divan consents to a
parley on the basis of the Treaty of the 6th of July. The
negociation would be a very intricate one; even if one had
only to fix the limits of Greece, there would be no end to
it. Where shall those limits be placed on the Continent? How
many islands shall be restored to liberty? Shall Samos, which
has so gallantly defended its independence, be abandoned? Let
us look further, suppose the conference to be established:
will it paralyze the armies of the Emperor Nicholas? While
the plenipotentiaries of the Turks and of the three Allied
Powers are treating in the Archipelago, every step of the
invading forces in Bulgaria will change the state of the
question. If the Russians were repulsed, the Turks would
break up the conference; if the Russians arrived at the gates
of Constantinople, there would be a fine question of the
independence of the Morea! The Hellenes would need neither
protectors nor negociators.

"Therefore, to persuade the Divan to apply itself to the
Treaty of the 6th of July is to postpone the difficulty, not
to solve it. The coincidence of the emancipation of Greece
and the signing of peace between the Turks and Russians is,
in my opinion, necessary to extricate the Cabinets of Europe
from their present embarrassment.

"What conditions will the Emperor Nicholas lay down for peace?

"In his manifesto, he declares that he waives conquests, but
he speaks of indemnities for the cost of the war: that is
vague and may lead to much.

"Will the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, pretending to regularize
the Treaties of Akerman[682] and Jassy[683] demand (1) the
complete independence of the two principalities; (2) liberty
of commerce in the Black Sea, not only for Russia, but the
other nations; (3) the repayment of the sums expended in this
last campaign?

"Innumerable difficulties present themselves against the
conclusion of a peace on these bases.

"If Russia desires to give the principalities sovereigns of
her choosing, Austria will look upon Moldavia and Wallachia
as two Russian provinces and will oppose this political
transaction.

"Will Moldavia and Wallachia fall under the sway of a prince
who shall be independent of any Great Power, or of a prince
installed under the protectorate of several sovereigns?

"In that case, Nicholas would prefer the hospodars appointed
by Mahmud, for the principalities, continuing to be Turkish,
would remain vulnerable to the Russian armies.

[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: part I.]

"Liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, the opening of that
sea to all the fleets of Europe and America would shake the
power of the Porte to its foundations. To grant the right of
passage of warships under Constantinople is, with reference
to the geography of the Ottoman Empire, as though one were to
recognise the right of foreign armies to cross France at all
times along the walls of Paris.

"Lastly, where would Turkey find the money to pay the costs
of the campaign? The so-called treasure of the Sultans is
an antiquated fable. The provinces conquered beyond the
Caucasus might, it is true, be ceded as security for the sum
demanded: of the two Russian armies, one, in Europe, appears
to me to be entrusted with the interests of Nicholas' honour;
the other, in Asia, with his pecuniary interests. But, if
Nicholas did not consider himself bound by the declarations
of his manifesto, would England with an indifferent eye see
the Muscovite soldier advancing along the road to India? Was
she not alarmed already in 1827, when he took one more step
forward in the Persian Empire?

"If the double difficulty arising from the carrying into
effect of the treaty and from the pertinence of the
conditions of a peace between Turkey and Russia were
to render useless the efforts made to overcome so many
obstacles; if a second campaign were to open in the spring,
would the powers of Europe take sides in the quarrel? What
part ought France to play? This is what I propose to examine
in the second part of this Note."

PART II.

"Austria and England have interests in common, they are
naturally allied through their foreign policy, whatever
otherwise may be the different forms of their governments and
the opposite maxims that regulate their home policy. Both
are hostile to and jealous of Russia, both desire to check
the progress of that Power; they will perhaps unite in an
extreme case, but they feel that, if Russia does not allow
herself to be overawed, she can defy that union, which is
more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"Austria has nothing to ask from England; the latter, on
her side, is of no use to Austria except to supply her with
money. Now, England, crushed under the weight of her debt,
has no money left to lend to anybody. Austria, if abandoned
to her own resources, would not, in the present state of her
finances, be able to set large armies in motion, especially
as she is obliged to watch over Italy and to stand on her
guard on the frontiers of Poland and Prussia. The present
position of the Russian troops would permit them to enter
Vienna earlier than Constantinople.

"What can the English do against Russia? Close the Baltic,
cease buying hemp and timber in the markets of the North,
destroy Admiral van Heiden's[684] fleet in the Mediterranean,
throw a few engineers and a few soldiers into Constantinople,
stock that capital with food-stuffs and munitions of war,
penetrate into the Black Sea, blockade the ports of the
Crimea, deprive the Russian troops in the field of the
assistance of their commercial and naval fleets?

"Suppose all this to be accomplished (which, to begin with,
could not be done without considerable expenditure, for
which there would be neither compensation nor guarantee),
Nicholas would still have his huge land force. An attack on
the part of Austria and England against the Cross on behalf
of the Crescent would increase the popularity in Russia of
what is already a national and religious war. Wars of this
nature are waged without money, it is they which, by force
of public opinion, hurl nations one upon the other. If the
popes begin to evangelize in St. Petersburg, as the ulemas
are mohammedanizing in Constantinople, they will find more
soldiers than they want; they would stand a greater chance of
success than their adversaries in this appeal to the passions
and beliefs of men. Invasions which descend from north to
south are much more rapid and much more irresistible than
those which climb from south to north: the propensity of the
populations inclines them to flow towards beautiful climates.

[Sidenote: Memorandum.]

"Would Prussia remain an indifferent spectatress of this
great struggle, if Austria and England declared for Turkey?
There is no reason to think so.

"There exists, no doubt, in the Cabinet of Berlin a party
which hates and fears the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; but this
party, which, moreover, is beginning to grow old, finds an
obstacle in the anti-Austrian party, and especially in the
domestic affections.

"Family ties, generally weak among sovereigns, are very
strong in the Prussian Family: King Frederic William III.
fondly loves his daughter, the present Empress of Russia,
and he likes to think that his grandson[685] will ascend
the throne of Peter the Great[686]; Princes Frederic,
William, Charles, Henry Albert are also greatly attached
to their sister Alexandra; the Hereditary Prince Royal saw
no objection recently to declaring in Rome that he was a
'Turk-eater.'

"By thus analyzing the interests, we perceive that France
is in an admirable political position: she can become the
arbitress of that great contest; she can, at her pleasure,
maintain neutrality, or declare for a side, according to
the time and circumstances. If she were ever obliged to go
to that extremity, if her counsels were not heard, if the
nobility and moderation of her conduct did not secure for her
the peace which she desires for herself and for others, then,
in the necessity in which she would find herself of taking
up arms, all her interests would incline her to the side of
Russia.

"If an alliance were formed between Austria and England
against Russia, what benefit would France derive from her
adhesion to that alliance?

"Would England lend ships to France?

"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in
Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if
necessary, the naval forces of Russia.

"Would England furnish us with subsidies?

"England has no money; France has more than she, and
the French have no need to be in the pay of the British
Parliament.

"Would England assist us with soldiers and arms?

"France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers.

"Would England assure us an increase of insular or
continental territory?

"Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on
Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents
on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's
Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to
attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our
assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled?

"Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against
foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England,
besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations
cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice
monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she
proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the
same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she
sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused
a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be
seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights
of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she
is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to
the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her
ports.

"Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects
of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go
in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not
on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a
hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or
Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect
the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople
to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire
grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on
the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human
affairs succeeds.

[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: Part II.]

"Let us admit, nevertheless, that, against all likelihood,
our efforts were crowned with complete success in this
unnatural Triple Alliance, let us suppose that Prussia
remained neutral during all this strife, as well as the
Netherlands, and that, free to move our forces abroad, we
were not obliged to fight within sixty leagues of Paris:
well, what advantage should we derive from our crusade for
the deliverance of the tomb of Mahomet? Knights of the
Turks, we should return from the Levant with a fur-lined
coat-of-honour; we should have the glory of having thrown
away a thousand million francs and two hundred thousand men
to calm the terrors of Austria, to satisfy the jealousies
of England, to keep up in the fairest portion of the world
the plague and barbarism attached to the Ottoman Empire.
Austria would perhaps have enlarged her States on the
side of Wallachia and Moldavia, and England would perhaps
have obtained some commercial privileges from the Porte,
privileges of little interest to us if we shared in them,
as we have neither so large a number of merchant ships as
the English, nor so many manufactured goods to spread in
the Levant. We should be completely duped by this Triple
Alliance, which might fail in its object and which, if it
achieved it, would achieve it only at our expense.

"But, if England has no direct means of being of use to us,
could she not at least act upon the Cabinet of Vienna and
engage Austrians a compensation for the sacrifices we should
make for her, to allow us to recover our old departments on
the left bank of the Rhine?

"No: Austria and England will always oppose any such
concession; Russia alone can make it to us, as we shall see
hereafter. Austria detests and fears us, even more than she
hates and dreads Russia; as a choice of evils, she would
prefer to see the latter Power expand on the side of Bulgaria
rather than France on the side of Bavaria.

"But would the independence of Europe be threatened if the
Tsars made Constantinople the capital of their Empire?

"It is necessary to explain what is understood by the
independence of Europe: do we mean to say that, all
equilibrium being shattered, Russia, after making the
conquest of Turkey in Europe, would seize Austria, subjugate
Germany and Prussia, and end by subjecting France?

"First, any empire which expands without measure loses some
of its strength; it almost always becomes divided; soon we
should see two or three Russias hostile one to the other.

"Next, does the equilibrium of Europe exist for France since
the last treaties?

"England has retained almost all the conquests which she has
made in the colonies of three quarters of the globe during
the War of the Revolution; in Europe she has gained Malta and
the Ionian Islands; even her Electorate of Hanover she has
inflated into a kingdom and enlarged by a few baronies.

"Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland,
some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy.
She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that
province has not devolved upon France, and it has become
a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against
ourselves.

"Prussia has enlarged herself by the Duchy or Palatinate of
Posen, a fragment of Saxony and the chief circles of the
Rhine; her advance-post is on our own territory, at ten days'
march from our capital.

"Russia has recovered Finland and settled down on the banks
of the Vistula.

"And what have we gained in all these partitions? We have
been despoiled of our colonies; not even our old soil has
been respected: Landau detached from France, Hüningen
demolished leave a breach of more than fifty leagues in our
frontiers; the little State of Sardinia has not blushed to
clothe herself in a few shreds stolen from the Empire of
Napoleon and the Kingdom of Louis the Great.

"In this position, what interest have we to safeguard Austria
and England against the victories of Russia? If the latter
were to extend towards the East and alarm the Cabinet of
Vienna, should we be in any danger? Have we received so much
consideration that we should be so sensible to the anxieties
of our enemies? England and Austria have always been and will
always be France's natural adversaries; we should see them
cheerfully join forces with Russia to-morrow, if it were a
question of fighting us and plundering us.

"Let us not forget that, while we should be taking up arms
for the so-called safety of Europe, imperilled by the
supposed ambition of Nicholas, it would probably happen that
Austria, less chivalrous and more rapacious than we, would
listen to the proposals of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; an
abrupt and sudden change of policy costs her little. With the
consent of Russia, she would seize Bosnia and Servia, leaving
to us the satisfaction of exerting ourselves for Mahmud.

"France is already in a state of semi-hostility with the
Turks; she alone has already spent many millions and
endangered twenty thousand soldiers in the cause of Greece.
England would lose only a few words by betraying the
principles of the Treaty of the 6th of July; France would
lose honour, men and money. Our expedition would no longer be
other than a real political miscarriage.

[Sidenote: Memorandum.]

"But, if we do not unite with Austria and England, will
the Emperor Nicholas then go to Constantinople? Will the
equilibrium of Europe then be shattered?

"Let us, to repeat once again, leave these feigned or
genuine fears to England and Austria. That the former should
fear to see Russia seize upon the trade of the Levant and
become a naval Power matters little to us. Is it, then, so
necessary that Great Britain should remain in possession of
the monopoly of the seas, that we should spill French blood
to preserve the sceptre of the ocean for the destroyer of
our colonies, our fleets and our commerce? Is the Legitimate
Dynasty to move armies in order to protect the House which
coalesces with the illegitimacy and which is, perhaps,
reserving for times of discord the means which it believes
itself to possess to disturb France? A fine equilibrium for
us is that of Europe, when all the Powers, as I have already
shown, have increased their own bulk and, with one accord,
diminished the weight of France! Let them return within their
old boundaries, as we have done; then we shall fly to the aid
of their independence, if that independence be threatened.
They made no scruples to join hands with Russia, in order to
dismember us and incorporate the fruit of our victories; let
them then suffer us to-day to draw closer the bonds formed
between us and that same Russia, in order to recover suitable
boundaries and restore the real balance of Europe!

"Besides, if the Emperor Nicholas were desirous and able to
go to sign a peace in Constantinople, would the destruction
of the Ottoman Empire be the strict consequence of that fact?
Peace has been signed under arms in Vienna, in Berlin, in
Paris; almost all the capitals of Europe have been taken in
these latter days: have Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain
perished? Twice have the Cossacks and the Pandoors come to
camp in the court-yard of the Louvre; the Kingdom of Henry
IV. has been under military occupation during three years;
and yet we should be quite touched to see the Cossacks in
possession of the Seraglio, and we should show for the
honour of barbarism the susceptibility which we did not
display for the honour of civilization and for our own
country! Let the pride of the Porte be humbled, and then
perhaps it will be obliged to recognise some of the rights of
humanity which it outrages!

"I have now made evident whither I am tending and the
consequence which I am preparing to deduce from all the
foregoing. Here is this consequence:

"If the belligerent Powers cannot come to an arrangement
during the winter, if the rest of Europe think itself bound
in the spring to intervene in the quarrel, if different
alliances be propounded, if France be absolutely obliged to
choose between those alliances, if events force her to emerge
from her neutrality, all her interests must needs determine
her to unite by preference with Russia: a combination which
is all the safer inasmuch as it would be easy, with the offer
of certain advantages, to make Prussia enter into it.

"There is a sympathy between Russia and France; the latter
has almost civilized the former in the upper classes of
society; she has given her her language and her manners.
Placed at the two extremities of Europe, France and Russia
have no contiguous frontiers; they have no battle-field on
which they can meet, they have no commercial rivalry, and the
natural enemies of Russia, the English and Austrians, are
also the natural enemies of France. In time of peace, let the
Cabinet of the Tuileries remain allied with the Cabinet of
St. Petersburg, and nothing can stir in Europe. In time of
war, the union of the two Cabinets will dictate laws to the
world.

"I have shown sufficiently that the alliance of France with
England and Austria against Russia is a dupe's alliance,
in which we should find only loss of blood and treasure.
The Russian Alliance, on the contrary, would enable us to
obtain establishments in the Archipelago and to push back our
frontier to the banks of the Rhine. We can hold this language
to Nicholas:

"'Your enemies are making overtures to us; we prefer peace to
war, we prefer to preserve neutrality. But, however, if you
cannot adjust your differences with Turkey except by arms,
if you are determined to go to Constantinople, enter into an
equitable partition of Turkey in Europe with the Christian
Powers. Those of the Powers which are not so situated as to
be able to enlarge their territory towards the East will
receive compensation elsewhere. As for us, we wish to have
the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Cologne. Those are
our just claims. It is to Russia's interest (your brother
Alexander has said so) that France should be strong. If you
consent to this arrangement and the other Powers refuse,
we will not suffer them to intervene in your dispute with
Turkey. If they attack you in spite of our remonstrances, we
will fight them with you, always on the conditions which we
have just expressed.'

[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs.]

"That is what we can say to Nicholas. Never will Austria,
never will England give us the Rhine boundary as the price of
our alliance with them: and yet it is there that France must,
sooner or later, place her frontiers, both for her honour and
her safety.

"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success
and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means
of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and
Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare
themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds,
forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all
Italy to action.

"As for hostilities with England, if they were ever to
commence, we should have either to throw twenty-five thousand
more men into the Morea, or promptly recall our troops and
our fleet. Give up squadron formation, disperse your ships
singly over all the seas, give orders that all prizes are
to be sunk after the crews have been removed, multiply your
letters of marque in the ports of the four quarters of the
globe, and soon Great Britain, forced by the bankruptcies and
outcries of her trade, will sue for the restoration of peace.
Did we not see her, in 1814, capitulate before the Navy of
the United States, notwithstanding that this consists to-day
of only nine frigates and eleven ships?

"Considered in the two-fold respect of the general interests
of society and of our own interests, the war of Russia
against the Porte should give us no umbrage. On the principle
of the higher civilization, the human race can only gain
by the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: it is a thousand
times better for the nations that the Cross should hold
sway in Constantinople than the Crescent. All the elements
of morality and of political society are at the root of
Christianity, all the germs of social destruction are in
the religion of Mahomet. They say that the present Sultan
has taken steps towards civilization: is this because he
has tried, with the assistance of a few French renegades,
of a few English and Austrian officers, to submit his
irregular hordes to regular exercises? And since when has the
mechanical apprenticeship of arms constituted civilization?
It is an enormous mistake, it is almost a crime, to have
initiated the Turks into the science of our tactics; we must
baptize the soldiers whom we discipline, unless we wish
purposely to educate destroyers of society.

"The want of foresight is great: Austria, which applauds
herself for organizing the Ottoman Armies, would be the
first to bear the penalty of her joy; if the Turks beat the
Russians they would be all the more capable of measuring
their strength with the Imperials their neighbours. This
time, Vienna would not escape the Grand Vizier. Would the
rest of Europe, which thinks it has nothing to fear from the
Porte, be in greater safety? Passionate and short-sighted
men want Turkey to be a regular military Power, to enter
into the common right of peace and war of civilized nations,
all in order to maintain some balance or other, of which
the mere word, void of sense, dispenses those men from
having any idea: what would be the consequences were those
wishes realized? Whenever it pleased the Sultan, under any
pretext, to attack a Christian government, a well-manœuvred
Constantinopolitan fleet, augmented by the fleet of the Pasha
of Egypt and the naval contingent of the Barbary Powers,
would declare the coasts of Spain or Italy in a state of
blockade and land fifty thousand men at Carthagena or Naples.
You do not wish to plant the Cross on St. Sophia: continue to
discipline the hordes of Turks, Albanians, Negroes and Arabs,
and, in less than twenty years, perhaps, the Crescent will
gleam on the dome of St. Peter's. Will you then summon Europe
to a crusade against infidels armed with the plague, slavery
and the Koran? It will be too late.

"The general interests of society would therefore benefit by
the success of the arms of the Emperor Nicholas.

"As to France's own interests, I have proved sufficiently
that these lie in an alliance with Russia, and that they may
be singularly favoured by the very war which that Power is
to-day waging in the East."

[Sidenote: Summary.]

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND REFLECTIONS

"To sum up:

"1. If Turkey were to consent to treat on the basis of the
treaty of the 6th of July, nothing would yet be decided,
since peace has not been made between Turkey and Russia; the
chances of the war in the Balkan Passes would at every moment
change the _data_ and the position of the plenipotentiaries
occupied with the emancipation of Greece.

"2. The probable conditions of peace between the Emperor
Nicholas and Sultan Mahmud are open to the greatest
objections.

"3. Russia can defy the union of England and Austria, a union
more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"4. It is probable that Prussia would join hands with the
Emperor Nicholas, the son-in-law of Frederic William III.,
rather than with the Emperor's enemies.

"5. France would have everything to lose and nothing to gain
by allying herself with England and Austria against Russia.

"6. The independence of Europe would not be at all threatened
by Russia's conquests in the East. It is tolerably absurd,
it is to ignore every obstacle, to imagine the Russians
hastening from the Bosphorus to lay their yoke upon Germany
and France: every empire weakens itself by extension. As
to the balance of power, this has long been shattered for
France; she has lost her colonies, she has shrunk back within
her old boundaries, while England, Prussia, Russia and
Austria have prodigiously enlarged theirs.

"7. If France were obliged to emerge from her neutrality, to
take up arms for one side or the other, the general interests
of civilization, as well as the particular interests of our
country, must make us enter by preference into the Russian
Alliance. By this means we could obtain the course of the
Rhine as our frontier, and colonies in the Archipelago,
advantages which the Cabinets of St. James and Vienna will
never grant us.

"That is the summary of this Note. I have been able to
reason only hypothetically; I do not know what England,
Austria and Russia are proposing, or have proposed, at the
moment of writing; there may be a piece of information or a
dispatch which reduces the truths here set forth to useless
generalities: that is the drawback of distances and of
conjectural politics. Nevertheless, it remains certain that
France holds a strong position and that the Government is
so placed as to be able to make the very utmost of events,
if it thoroughly realizes what it requires, if it allows no
one to intimidate it, if to firmness of language it adds
vigour in action. We have a revered King, an Heir to the
Throne who, with three hundred thousand men, would increase,
on the banks of the Rhine, the glory which he has reaped in
Spain; our Morean Expedition is making us play a part filled
with honour; our political institutions are excellent; our
finances are in a state of prosperity unequalled in Europe:
with that one can walk with one's head raised. What a fine
country is that which possesses genius, courage, men and
money!

"For the rest, I do not pretend to have said everything, to
have foreseen everything; I have not the presumption to put
forward my system as the best; I know that there is something
mysterious, something indiscernible, in human affairs. If
it be true that one can fairly well prophesy the last and
general results of a revolution, it is no less true that
one deceives one's self as to the details, that particular
events are often modified in an unexpected manner and that,
while seeing the end, one reaches it by roads whose very
existence one did not suspect. It is certain, for instance,
that the Turks will be driven from Europe; but when and how?
Will the war now waging deliver the civilized world from
that scourge? Are the obstacles to peace to which I have
pointed insurmountable? Yes, if we confine ourselves to
analogous arguments; no, if we bring into our calculations
circumstances foreign to those which have occasioned the
resort to arms.

"Scarcely anything to-day resembles what it has been; outside
religion and morality, the majority of truths have altered,
if not in their essence, at least in their relations to men
and things. D'Ossat[687] survives as an able negociator;
Grotius[688] as a publicist of genius; Pufendorf[689] as a
judicious mind; but we could not apply the rules of their
diplomacy to our times, nor go back, in political law,
to the Treaty of Westphalia[690]. Nowadays, the peoples
take a part in their affairs, conducted formerly by the
governments alone. Those peoples no longer feel things as
they used to feel them; they are no longer affected by
the same events; they no longer see objects from the same
point of view; reason has made progress with them at the
cost of imagination; facts carry the day over exaltation
and passionate determinations; a certain reason prevails on
every hand. On most of the thrones and in the majority of
the Cabinets of Europe are seated men weary of revolutions,
surfeited with war and opposed to any spirit of adventure;
those are causes of hope for peaceful arrangements. Also it
is possible that nations may have internal troubles which
would dispose them towards conciliatory measures.

[Sidenote: Conclusions.]

"The death of the Dowager Empress of Russia[691] may develop
seeds of disturbance which were not wholly stifled. This
Princess took little part in foreign politics, but she was a
link between her sons; she is supposed to have exercised a
great influence over the transactions which gave the crown to
the Emperor Nicholas[692]. Nevertheless, it must be confessed
that, if Nicholas began again to be afraid, this would be a
reason the more for him to push on his soldiers from their
native soil and to seek safety in victory.

"England, independently of her debt, which hampers her
movements, is embarrassed with affairs in Ireland. Whether
Catholic Emancipation pass through Parliament or not, it will
be an immense event. King George's health is breaking down,
that of his immediate successor is no better; if the accident
foreseen were to happen soon, there would be a new parliament
summoned, perhaps a change of ministers, and capable men are
rare in England to-day; a long regency might perhaps come.
In this precarious and critical position, it is possible
that England sincerely desires peace and that she is afraid
to throw herself into the chances of a great war, in the
midst of which she might find herself surprised by internal
catastrophes.

"Lastly, to come to ourselves, in spite of our genuine
and incontrovertible prosperity, although we could make a
glorious appearance on a field of battle, if called to it:
are we quite prepared to figure on one? Are our fortresses in
a state of repair? Have we the stores necessary for a large
army? Is that army even on a complete peace footing? If we
were suddenly aroused by a declaration of war from England,
Prussia and the Netherlands, could we make an effective
opposition against a third invasion? The Napoleonic wars have
divulged a fatal secret: that it is possible to reach Paris
in a few days after a successful engagement; that Paris does
not defend itself; that this same Paris is much too near the
frontier. The capital of France will not be safe until we
possess the left bank of the Rhine. We may therefore require
some time to prepare ourselves.

"Add to all this that the vices and virtues of the
sovereigns, their moral strength and weakness, their
character, their passions, their very habits are causes
of acts and of facts which defy calculation and which
enter into no political formula: the most petty influence
sometimes decides the greatest event in a sense opposed to
the likelihood of things; a slave can cause a peace to be
signed in Constantinople which all Europe, coalesced or on
its knees, would not obtain.

"If, then, one of those reasons, placed outside the limits
of human foresight, should, in the course of this winter,
produce demands for negociations, ought they to be rejected,
if they did not agree with the principles of this Note? No,
doubtless: to gain time is a great thing, when one is not
ready. One can know what would be best and be content with
what is least bad; political truths, above all, are relative;
the absolute, in matters of State, has grave disadvantages.
It would be a good thing for the human race that the Turks
should be thrown into the Bosphorus; but we are not charged
with the expedition, and the hour of Mohammedanism has
perhaps not struck: hatred must be enlightened in order
not to commit follies. Nothing, therefore, should prevent
France from entering into negociations, while taking care to
reconcile them as far as possible with the spirit in which
this Note is drawn up. It is for the men at the helm of
empires to steer them according to the winds and avoid the
foul places.

"Certainly, if the powerful Sovereign of the North consented
to reduce the terms of peace to the fulfilment of the
Treaty of Akerman and the emancipation of Greece, it would
be possible to make the Porte listen to reason; but what
likelihood is there that Russia will confine herself to
terms which she might have obtained without firing a gun?
How could she abandon claims so loudly and so publicly
expressed? One means alone, if there be one, would present
itself: to propose a general congress at which the Emperor
Nicholas would yield, or appear to yield, to the wishes of
Christian Europe. A means of success with men is to save
their self-esteem, to supply them with a reason to withdraw
their word and issue from a bad plight with honour.

[Sidenote: And reflections.]

"The greatest obstacle to this plan of a congress would
come from the unexpected success of the Ottoman arms during
the winter. If, owing to the rigour of the season, the
want of provisions, the insufficiency of the troops, or
any other cause, the Russians were obliged to abandon the
Siege of Silistria, if Varna, which, however, is hardly
probable, were to fall again into the hands of the Turks,
the Emperor Nicholas would find himself in a position which
would no longer permit him to listen to any proposal, under
the penalty of descending to the lowest rank of monarchs:
then the war would continue and we should come back to the
eventualities inferred in this Note. If Russia lost her rank
as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality,
Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now,
the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar
of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than
that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the
Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable
prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long
enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the
intention to do so. Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave
the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with
its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation
of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran?

"While Austria, at last terrified by those false
calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on
frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear,
a new military insurrection, a possible result of the
humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break
out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set
fire to the north of Germany. That is what the men do not
perceive who, in politics, confine themselves to vulgar
terrors and commonplaces. Petty dispatches, petty intrigues
are the barriers which Austria designs to oppose to an
all--threatening movement. If France and England adopted a
course worthy of themselves, if they notified the Porte that,
in case the Sultan should close his ears to all proposals of
peace, he would find them on the battle-field in the spring,
that resolution would soon have put an end to the anxiety of
Europe."

The existence of this Memorandum, having transpired in the diplomatic
world, attracted to me a certain consideration which I did not decline,
but which I did not either aspire to. I do not too clearly see what
there was to surprise the "practical" men. My Spanish War was a very
"practical" thing. The incessant work of the general revolution
operating in the old society, while bringing about among ourselves
the fall of the Legitimacy, has upset calculations subordinate to the
permanence of facts as they existed in 1828.

Do you wish to convince yourselves of the enormous difference of merit
and glory between a great writer and a great politician? My works as
a diplomatist have been hallowed by what is recognised as the supreme
ability, _success._ And, still, whosoever may at any time read this
Memorandum will no doubt skip it close-legged, and I should do as much
in the reader's place[693]. Well, suppose that, instead of this little
diplomatic master-piece, we were to find in this writing some episode
after the manner of Homer or Virgil, if Heaven had granted me their
genius: do you think we should be tempted to skip the loves of Dido at
Carthage or the tears of Priam in Achilles' tent?

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Wednesday_, 10 _December_ 1828.

"I have been to the Tiberine Academy, of which I have the
honour to be a member. I have heard very witty speeches and
very fine verses. What an amount of wasted intelligence!
To-night I have my great _ricevimento_; I am terrified of it
as I write to you."

[Sidenote: A reception at the Embassy.]

"11 _December._

"The great _ricevimento_ passed off admirably. Madame de
Chateaubriand is delighted, because we had all the cardinals
on the face of the earth. All Europe in Rome was there with
Rome. Since I am condemned for some days to this business, I
prefer to do it as well as another ambassador. The enemies
dislike any kind of success, even the most miserable, and it
is punishing them to succeed in a field where they believe
themselves unequalled. Next Saturday, I transform myself into
a canon of St. John Lateran, and on Sunday I give a dinner
to my colleagues. An assembly more to my taste is that which
takes place this evening: I dine at Guérin's with all the
artists and we shall settle _your_ monument to Poussin. A
young pupil full of talent, M. Desprez[694], will make the
bas-relief, taken from a picture by the great painter, and
M. Lemoyne[695] will make the bust. We must have only French
hands here.

"To complete my History of Rome, Madame de Castries has
arrived. She again is one of those little girls who have sat
on my knee, like Césarine (Madame de Barante)[696]. The poor
woman is very much changed; her eyes filled with tears when I
reminded her of her childhood at Lormois. It seems to me that
the new arrival is no longer under the spell of enchantment.
What an isolation! And for whom? I tell you, the best thing
for me to do is to go to see you again as soon as possible.
If my _Moses_[697] comes down safely from the mountain, I
will borrow one of his rays, to reappear before your eyes
quite brilliant and youthful."

"_Saturday_, 13.

"My dinner at the Academy went off admirably. The young men
were pleased: it was the first time an ambassador had dined
'with them.' I announced the Poussin Monument to them; it was
as though I were already honouring their ashes."

_Thursday_, 18 _December_ 1828.

"Instead of wasting my time and yours in telling you the
doings of my life, I prefer to send them to you all written
down in the Roman newspaper. Here are another twelve months
that have fallen on my head. When shall I have rest? When
shall I cease to waste on the high-roads the days that were
given me to make a better use of? I have spent with my eyes
shut while I was rich; I thought the treasure inexhaustible.
Now, when I see how it has diminished and how little time is
left to me to lay at your feet, I feel a pain at my heart.
But is there not a long existence after that on earth? A
poor, humble Christian, I tremble before Michael Angelo's
_Last Judgment_; I know not where I shall go, but, wherever
you are not, I shall be very unhappy. I have a hundred times
acquainted you with my plans and my future. Ruins, health,
the loss of all illusion, all say to me, 'Go away, retire,
have done.' I find nothing at the end of my day's journey
but you. You wished me to mark my stay in Rome, it is done:
Poussin's tomb will remain. It will bear this inscription:

F. A. DE CH. TO NICOLAS POUSSIN,

FOR THE GLORY OF ART AND THE HONOUR OF FRANCE[698].

"What more have I to do here now? Nothing, especially after
subscribing your name for the sum of one hundred ducats to
the monument of the man whom you say you love best 'after
myself:' Tasso."

"ROME, _Saturday_, 3 _January_ 1829.

"I am recommencing my good wishes for the New Year: may
Heaven grant you health and a long life! Do not forget me; I
have hopes, for, indeed, you remember M. de Montmorency and
Madame de Staël: your memory is as good as your heart. I was
saying yesterday to Madame Salvage[699] that I knew nothing
in the world so beautiful as yourself or better.

[Sidenote: An hour with Leo XII.]

"I spent an hour yesterday with the Pope. We spoke of
everything, including the loftiest and gravest topics. He is
a very distinguished and enlightened man and a Prince full
of dignity. The adventures of my political life needed only
that I should be in relations with a sovereign pontiff; that
completes my career.

"Would you like to know exactly what I do? I rise at
half-past five, I breakfast at seven o'clock; at eight
o'clock, I go back to my study, I write to you, or do some
business, when there is any to do (the detail-work in
connection with the French establishments and the French poor
is pretty considerable); at mid-day, I go to wander for two
or three hours among the ruins, or to St. Peter's, or to the
Vatican. Sometimes I pay a necessary visit before or after my
walk; at five o'clock, I come home; I dress for the evening;
I dine at six o'clock; at half-past seven, I go to a party
with Madame de Chateaubriand, or I receive a few people at
home. At eleven, I go to bed, or else I go back once more to
the _campagna_, in spite of the robbers and the _malaria._
What do I do there? Nothing: I listen to the silence and
watch my shadow passing from portico to portico along the
moonlit aqueducts.

"The Romans are so accustomed to my 'methodical' life that
they reckon the hours by me. They must be quick about it; I
shall soon have been round the clock."

"ROME, _Thursday_, 8 _January_ 1828.

"I am very unhappy; the finest weather in the world has
changed into rain, so that I am no longer able to take my
walks. And yet that is the only pleasant moment of my day.
I used to go thinking of you to these deserted _campagne_;
they linked the past and the future in my sentiments, for
formerly I used to take the same walks. Once or twice a week,
I go to the place where the English girl was drowned: who
now remembers that poor young woman, Miss Bathurst[700]? Her
fellow-countrymen and women gallop along the river-side
without thinking of her. The Tiber, which has seen many other
things, does not trouble about her at all. Besides, its
waters have been renewed: they are as pale and still as when
they passed over that creature full of hope, beauty and life.

"I have fallen into a very lofty strain without knowing it.
Forgive a poor hare imprisoned and steeped in his form. I
must tell you a little story of my last 'Tuesday.' There was
an immense crowd at the Embassy; I was standing with my back
against a marble table, bowing to the people arriving and
leaving. An Englishwoman, of whom I knew neither the name nor
the appearance, came up to me, looked me straight in the face
and said, with the famous accent:

"'Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you are very unhappy!'

"Astonished at this apostrophe and at this manner of entering
into conversation, I asked her what she meant. She replied:

"'I mean to say that I pity you.'

"So saying, she linked her arm into that of another
Englishwoman, was lost in the crowd, and I did not see her
again during the rest of the evening. That eccentric stranger
was neither young nor pretty: I feel grateful to her,
nevertheless, for her mysterious words.

"Your newspapers continue to say the same things about me. I
don't know what has possessed them. I ought to believe myself
as forgotten as I wish to be.

"I am writing to M. Thierry by this post. He is at Hyères and
very ill. Not a word of reply from M. de La Bouillerie[701]."

TO M. THIERRY[702]

"ROME, 8 _January_ 1829.

"I was much touched, monsieur, to receive the new edition of
your Letters, with a line which proves that you have thought
of me. If that line had been in your own hand, I should have
hoped for the sake of my country that your eyes would reopen
to the studies which your talent turns to such wonderful
account. I am greedily reading, or rather re-reading, this
too short work. I am making dog's ears to every page, in
order the better to mark the passages upon which I wish to
rely. I shall quote you very frequently, monsieur, in the
work which I have been so many years preparing, on the two
first dynasties. I shall shelter my ideas and my researches
behind your authority; I shall often adopt your reforms in
nomenclature; lastly, I shall have the good fortune to be
almost invariably of your opinion, while departing, much
despite of myself, no doubt, from the system put forth by
M. Guizot; but I cannot, in common with that illustrious
writer, overthrow the most authentic monuments, turn all the
Franks into 'nobles' and 'free-men,' and all the Roman-Gauls
into 'slaves of the Franks.' The Salic Law and the Ripuarian
Law have a multitude of articles based on the difference of
condition among the Franks:

"'_St quis ingenuus ingenuum ripuarium extra solum
vendiderit, etc., etc._'

[Sidenote: Letter to Augustin Thierry.]

"You know, monsieur, how eagerly I wished for you in Rome.
We should have sat down on some ruins: there you would have
taught me history; I, an old disciple, would have listened
to my young master with the sole regret that I no longer had
enough years before me to profit by his lessons:

Tel est le sort de l'homme: il s'instruit avec l'âge.
Mais que sert être sage,
Quand le terme est si près[703]?

"Those lines are from an unpublished ode, written by a man
who is no more, by my good and old friend, Fontanes. Thus,
monsieur, does everything remind me, among the remains of
Rome, of all that I have lost, of the short time that still
remains to me and of the brevity of those hopes which seemed
so long to me in former days: _spem longam._

"Believe, monsieur, that no one admires you more, or is more
devoted to you than your servant."

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS

"ROME, 12 _January_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I saw the Pope on the 2nd of this month; he was good enough
to keep me with him in private audience for an hour and a
half. I must report to you the conversation which I had with
His Holiness.

"We first spoke of France. The Pope began with the most
sincere praise of the King.

"'At no time,' he said, 'has the Royal Family of France
displayed so complete a harmony of good qualities and
virtues. Now calm has been restored among the clergy; the
bishops have made their submission.'

"'That submission,' I replied, 'is, in part, due to the
sagacity and moderation of Your Holiness.'

"'I advised what seemed reasonable to me to be done,'
answered the Pope. 'There were no spiritual matters involved
in the ordinances[704]; the bishops would have done better to
leave their first letter unwritten; but, after saying, "_Non
possutnus_," it was difficult for them to withdraw. They
tried to display as little contradiction as possible between
their actions and their language at the moment of their
adhesion: we must forgive them for it. They are pious men,
firmly attached to the King and the Monarchy; they have their
weaknesses in common with all men.'

"All this, monsieur le comte, was said in very clear and
excellent French.

"After thanking the Holy Father for the confidence which he
showed me, I spoke to him in terms of consideration of the
Cardinal Secretary of State:

"'I chose him,' he said, 'because he has travelled, because
he knows the general affairs of Europe and because he seemed
to me to possess the sort of capacity which his post demands.
He has written, with respect to your two ordinances, only
what I thought and what I recommended him to write.'

"'Might I venture to give Your Holiness,' I resumed, 'my
opinion of the religious situation in France?'

"'You will be doing me a great pleasure,' replied the Pope.

"I suppress a few compliments which His Holiness was good
enough to address to me.

"'I think then, Most Holy Father, that the mischief arose
in the first place from a mistake of the clergy: instead of
supporting the new institutions, or at least keeping silence
respecting those institutions, they allowed words of blame,
to say no more, to escape in their charges and sermons.
Irreligious persons, who were at a loss with what to reproach
saintly ministers, seized upon those words and made a weapon
of them; they cried that Catholicism was incompatible with
the establishment of public liberty, that it was war to the
death between the Charter and the priests. By holding the
opposite conduct, our ecclesiastics would have obtained all
they wanted from the nation. There is a great ground-work of
religion in France and a visible inclination to forget our
old misfortunes at the foot of the altars; but also there is
a real attachment to the institutions introduced by the sons
of St. Louis. It would be impossible to calculate the measure
of power to which the clergy might have attained, if they had
shown themselves at the same time friends to the King and
the Charter. I have never ceased to preach this policy in my
writings and in my speeches; but the passions of the moment
refused me a hearing and took me for an enemy.'

"The Pope had listened to me with the greatest attention.

"'I enter into your ideas,' he said, after a moment's
pause. 'Jesus Christ made no pronouncement as to the
form of governments. "Render to Cæsar the things that
are Cæsar's[705]" means only, "Obey the established
authorities." The Catholic religion has prospered in the
midst of republics as in the bosom of monarchies; it has made
immense progress in the United States; it reigns alone in
Spanish America.'

"These words are very remarkable, monsieur le comte, at the
very moment when the Court of Rome is strongly inclining to
establish the bishops nominated by Bolivar[706].

"The Pope resumed:

"'You see how great is the influx of Protestant strangers
to Rome: their presence does good to the country; but it is
also good in another respect: the English come here with
strange notions regarding the Pope and the Papacy, the
fanaticism of the clergy, the slavery of the people in this
country; they have not stayed here two months before they
are quite changed. They see that I am only a bishop like any
other bishop, that the Roman clergy are neither ignorant nor
persecuting, and that my subjects are not beasts of burden!'

"Encouraged by this sort of effusion of the heart, and
seeking to widen the scope of the conversation, I said to the
Sovereign Pontiff:

"'Does not Your Holiness think that the moment is
favourable for the recomposition of Catholic unity, for
the reconciliation of the dissenting sects, by some slight
concessions of discipline? The prejudices against the Court
of Rome are vanishing in every quarter and, in a century
which was still ardent, the work of reunion had already been
attempted by Leibnitz[707] and Bossuet.'

"'This is a great matter,' said the Pope; 'but I must await
the moment fixed by Providence. I agree that the prejudices
are vanishing; the division of the sects in Germany has
brought about the lassitude of those sects. In Saxony, where
I resided for three years, I was the first to establish a
foundling hospital and to obtain that this hospital should
be served by Catholics. A general outcry arose against me at
the time among the Protestants; to-day those same Protestants
are the first to praise and endow the institution. The number
of Catholics is increasing in Great Britain; it is true that
they include many foreigners.'

"The Pope pausing for a moment, I took occasion to introduce
the question of the Irish Catholics:

"'If the emancipation takes place,' I said, 'the Catholic
religion will increase still more in Great Britain.'

[Sidenote: Pope Leo XII. on Ireland.]

"'That is true on one side,' replied His Holiness, 'but
on the other there are disadvantages. The Irish Catholics
are very ardent and very incautious. Has not O'Connell, in
other respects a man of merit, gone so far as to say that
a concordat had been proposed between the Holy See and the
British Government? There is not a word of truth in this
assertion; I cannot contradict it publicly; and it has given
me great pain. And so, for the union of the dissenters, it
is necessary that things should be ripe and that God Himself
should complete His work. The popes can only wait.'

"This was not my opinion, monsieur le comte; but my business
was to inform the King of the Holy Father's opinion on so
serious a subject, not to combat it.

"'What will your newspapers say?' asked the Pope, with a sort
of gaiety. 'They talk a great deal! Those of the Netherlands
still more; but I am told that, in your country, nobody
thinks of their articles an hour after they have read them.'

"'That is absolutely true, Most Holy Father: you see how
the _Gazette de France_ deals with me,'--for I know that
His Holiness reads all our newspapers, not excepting the
_Courrier_--'and still the Sovereign Pontiff treats me with
extreme kindness; I have reason to believe, therefore, that
the _Gazette_ does not make a great impression on him.'--The
Pope laughed and shook his head.--'Well, Most Holy Father,
there are others like Your Holiness; when the paper tells
the truth, the good it says remains; if it lies, it is as
though it had said nothing at all. The Pope must expect some
speeches during this session: the Extreme Right will maintain
that M. le Cardinal Bernetti is not a priest and that his
letters on the ordinances are not articles of faith; the
Extreme Left will declare that we need not have taken our
orders from Rome. The majority will commend the deference of
the Privy Council and will loudly praise the spirit of peace
and wisdom of Your Holiness.'

"This little explanation appeared to charm the Holy Father,
who was pleased to meet with some one acquainted with the
workings of our constitutional machine. Finally, monsieur le
comte, thinking that the King and his Council would like to
know the views of the Pope on the present state of affairs
in the East, I repeated some news out of the papers, not
being authorized to communicate to the Holy See the positive
facts of which you informed me in your dispatch of the 18th
December touching the recall of our expedition to the Morea.

"The Pope did not hesitate to reply; he appeared to me to
be alarmed at the imprudence of instructing the Turks in
military discipline. I give his own words:

"'If the Turks are already capable of resisting Russia, what
will their power be when they have obtained a glorious peace?
Who will prevent them, after four or five years spent in rest
and in perfecting their new tactics, from hurling themselves
upon Italy?'

"I will confess, monsieur le comte, that, when I recognised
these ideas and these anxieties in the mind of the Sovereign
most exposed to the effects of the consequence of the
enormous error that has been committed, I congratulated
myself on having displayed to you in fuller detail, in
my Note on Eastern Affairs, the same ideas and the same
anxieties.

"'Nothing,' added the Pope, 'except a firm resolution on the
part of the Allied Powers, can put an end to a misfortune
which threatens the future. France and England are still
in time to stop everything; but, if a new campaign open,
it can set Europe on fire, and then it will be too late to
extinguish it.'

"'That reflection is the more just,' I answered, 'seeing
that, if Europe were to become divided, which God forbid, the
presence of fifty thousand Frenchmen would stir up the whole
question again.'

"The Pope made no reply; only it appeared to me that the
idea of seeing the French in Italy filled him with no sort
of fear. Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court
of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments
and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the
Austrian yoke into a confederation against France.

"This, monsieur le comte, is a summary of my long
conversation with His Holiness. I do not know that any one
has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner
sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince
who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on
subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle
of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary
between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to
see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the
impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and
in no way sought to deceive.

"The leanings and wishes of the Pope are evidently towards
France: when he assumed the Keys of St. Peter, he belonged
to the faction of the _zelanti_; to-day he has sought his
strength in moderation: that is what the habit of power
always teaches. For this reason he is not beloved by the
faction of cardinals which he has quitted. Finding no man
of talent in the secular clergy, he has chosen his chief
advisers among the regular clergy; hence it comes that the
monks are on his side, while the prelates and the simple
priests make a sort of opposition to him. The latter, when I
arrived in Rome, all had their minds more or less infected
with the lies of our congregation; they are now infinitely
more reasonable; they all, generally speaking, blame the
rising in arms of our clergy. It is curious to remark that
the Jesuits have as many enemies here as in France: they have
as their special adversaries the other religious and the
heads of Orders. They had formed a plan by means of which
they would have seized upon the public instruction in Rome to
the exclusion of the others: the Dominicans have foiled that
plan. The Pope is not very popular, because he administers
well. His little army consists of old soldiers of Bonaparte,
who have a very military bearing and keep excellent order on
the high-roads. If material Rome has lost in picturesqueness,
it has gained in cleanliness and healthiness. His Holiness
plants trees and arrests hermits and beggars: another subject
of complaint for the populace. Leo XII. is a great worker;
he sleeps little and eats scarcely at all. Only one taste
remains to him of his youth, that of sport, an exercise
necessary to his health, which, for that matter, seems
to be improving. He has a few shots with a fowling-piece
in the vast enclosure of the Gardens of the Vatican. The
_zelanti_ find it very difficult to forgive him this innocent
diversion. The Pope is reproached with the weakness and
inconstancy of his affections.

"The radical vice of the political constitution of this
country is easily seized upon: it is old men who appoint as
sovereign an old man like themselves. This old man, when
he becomes the master, in his turn appoints old men as
cardinals. Turning in this vicious circle, the enervated
supreme power is in this way always at the edge of the tomb.
The prince never occupies the throne for a long enough
period to execute the plans of improvement which he may
have conceived. A pope ought to have sufficient resolution
suddenly to promote a number of young cardinals, in such
a way as to ensure at the next election the majority of a
young pope. But the rules of Sixtus V.[708], which give the
hat to palace employments, the empire of custom and habit,
the interests of the people, who receive gratifications at
each change of the tiara, the individual ambition of the
cardinals, who wish for short reigns in order to multiply
their chances of the papacy, these and a thousand other
obstacles too long to narrate are opposed to the rejuvenation
of the Sacred College.

"The conclusion of this dispatch, monsieur le comte, is that,
in the present condition of affairs, the King can reckon
entirely on the Court of Rome.

"Cautious as I am in my manner of seeing and feeling, if I
have anything with which to reproach myself in the report
which I have the honour to send you, it is that I have
weakened rather than exaggerated the expression of His
Holiness' words. My memory is very safe; I wrote down the
conversation on leaving the Vatican and my private secretary
has simply copied it word for word from my minutes. The
latter, rapidly jotted down, were hardly legible to myself.
You would never have been able to decipher them[709].

"I have the honour to be, etc."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Tuesday_, 13 _January_ 1829.

"Yesterday evening, at eight o'clock, I wrote you the letter
which M. Du Viviers[710] is bringing you; this morning, on
waking, I am writing to you again by the ordinary post, which
leaves at noon. You know the poor ladies of Saint-Denis:
they have been much neglected since the arrival of the great
ladies of the Trinità-del-Monte; without being the enemy of
the latter, I have taken the side of the former with Madame
de Ch. For the last month, the ladies of Saint-Denis have
been wishing to give a fête in honour of 'M. the Ambassador'
and 'Madame the Ambassadress:' it took place yesterday at
mid-day. Imagine a theatre arranged in a sort of sacristy
with a platform giving on to the church; as actors, a dozen
young girls from eight years to fourteen, who played the
_Machabées._ They had themselves made their helmets and
cloaks. They spoke their French lines with an enthusiasm
and an Italian accent which were the funniest things in the
world; they stamped their feet at energetic moments: there
was a niece of Pius VII., a daughter of Thorwaldsen, and
another daughter of Chauvin[711] the painter. They were
incredibly pretty in their paper finery. The one who played
the High Priest had a great black beard which delighted
her but pricked her, and which she was constantly obliged
to put right with a little thirteen-year-old white hand.
As spectators, ourselves, a few mothers, the nuns, Madame
Salvage, two or three priests and a further score of little
school-girls, all in white, with veils. We had had cakes
and ices brought from the Embassy. They played the piano
between the acts. Imagine the hopes and joys which, must have
preceded this fête at the convent, and the memories which
will follow it! The whole ended with _Vivat in æternum_, sung
by three nuns in the church."

"ROME, _January_ 1829.

"Yours again! Last night we had wind and rain as in France:
I imagined them beating against your little window; I found
myself transported to your little room, I saw your harp,
your piano, your birds; you played me my favourite air, or
Shakspeare's: and I was in Rome, far away from you! Four
hundred leagues and the Alps separate us!

[Sidenote: Amateur theatricals.]

"I have received a letter from that witty lady who used
sometimes to come to see me at the Foreign Office; you can
judge how well she courts me: she is a furious Turcophile;
Mahmud is a great man, who is in advance of his nation!

"This Rome, in whose midst I live, ought to teach me to
despise politics. Here liberty and tyranny have both
perished: I see the huddled ruins of the Roman Republic and
the Empire of Tiberius; what is all this to-day blended
in the same dust? Does not the Capuchin who sweeps that
dust with his gown as he goes by seem to make the vanity
of so many vanities even more perceptible? Nevertheless, I
come back, in spite of myself, to the destinies of my poor
country. I would wish it religion, glory and liberty, without
thinking of my powerlessness to deck it with that triple
crown."

"ROME, _Thursday_, 5 _February_ 1829.

"Torre Vergata is a domain of monks situated at about a
league from Nero's Tomb, on the left as you come from Rome,
in the most beautiful and deserted spot: there is an immense
number of ruins level with the ground covered with grass
and thistle. I began an excavation there two days ago, on
Tuesday, just after I had written to you. I was accompanied
by Hyacinthe and by Visconti[712], who is directing the
excavation. The weather was the loveliest in the world. A
dozen men armed with spades and pickaxes, digging up tombs
and ruins of houses and palaces amid profound solitude,
offered a spectacle worthy of you. I uttered but one wish:
that you might be there. I would gladly consent to live with
you in a tent amid those ruins.

"I myself put my hand to the work; I discovered fragments of
marble: the clues are excellent and I hope to find something
to compensate me for the money wasted in this lottery of the
dead; already I have a block of Greek marble large enough
to make Poussin's bust. This excavation will become the
object of my walks; I shall go and sit everyday in the midst
of these remains. To which century, to which men did they
belong? We are perhaps removing the most illustrious dust
without knowing it. Perhaps an inscription will come to throw
light upon some historic fact, to destroy some error, to
establish some truth. And then, when I have gone away with my
twelve half-naked peasants, all will fall back into oblivion
and silence. Do you picture to yourself all the passions,
all the interests which once bestirred themselves in these
abandoned spots? There were masters and slaves, happy people
and unhappy, beautiful persons who were beloved and ambitious
people who wanted to be ministers. There remain a few birds
and I, for but a very short time longer; soon we shall fly
away. Tell me, do you think it worth while to be one of the
members of the council of a little king of the Gauls, for me,
an Armorican barbarian, a traveller among savages of a world
unknown to the Romans and ambassador to the priests whom
they used to throw to the lions? When I called to Leonidas
at Lacedæmon, he did not answer: the sound of my footsteps
at Torre Vergata will have roused nobody. And when I, in my
turn, am in my grave, I shall not hear even the sound of your
voice. I must therefore hurry to come closer to you and to
put an end to all these idle fancies of the life of men.
There is nothing good save retirement, nothing true save an
attachment like yours."

"ROME, 7 _February_ 1829.

"I have received a long letter from General Guilleminot[713];
he gives me a lamentable account of what he suffered during
his journeys on the coasts of Greece: and yet Guilleminot
was an ambassador; he had large ships and an army under his
orders. To go, after our soldiers have left, to a country
in which not a house nor a corn-field remains, among a few
scattered men, driven by poverty to become brigands, is an
impossible project for a woman[714].

[Sidenote: My excavations.]

"I shall go to my excavation this morning: yesterday we found
the skeleton of a Gothic soldier and the arm of a female
statue. It was as though one had come upon the destroyer
together with the ruin he had made; we have great hopes of
finding the statue this morning. If the architectural remains
which I am uncovering are worth the trouble, I shall not
break them up to sell the bricks, as is usually done: I shall
leave them standing, and they will bear my name. They belong
to the time of Domitian. We have an inscription which shows
this: it is the good time of the Roman arts."

DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, _Monday_, 9 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"His Holiness had a sudden attack this morning of the
disorder to which he is subject; his life is in the most
imminent danger. The order has been given to close all the
theatres. I have just left the Cardinal Secretary of State,
who is himself ill and who despairs of the Pope's life. The
loss of this enlightened and modern Sovereign Pontiff would,
at the present moment, be a real calamity for Christianity
and especially for France. I thought it important, monsieur
le comte, that His Majesty's Government should be warned
of this probable event, so that it may be enabled to take
such measures beforehand as it shall consider necessary.
Consequently, I have dispatched a mounted courier to Lyons.
This courier carries a letter which I am writing to Monsieur
the Prefect of the Rhône, with a telegraphic dispatch which
he will forward to you, and another letter which I am asking
him to send you by express. If we have the misfortune to lose
His Holiness, a fresh courier will bring you all the details
to Paris.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"_Eight o'clock in the evening._

"The congregation of Cardinals already assembled has
forbidden the Cardinal Secretary of State to give permits
for post-horses. My courier will not be able to leave until
after the departure of the courier of the Sacred College,
in case of the Pope's death. I have tried to send a man
to carry my dispatches to the Tuscan frontier. The bad
roads and the absence of livery-horses have made this plan
impracticable. Obliged to wait in Rome, which has become a
kind of closed prison, I still hope that the news will reach
you by telegraph a few hours before it is known to the other
governments beyond the Alps. It might nevertheless happen
that the courier sent to the Nuncio, who will necessarily
leave before mine, will himself, when passing through Lyons,
give you the news by telegraph."

[Sidenote: Death of Leo XII.]

"_Tuesday_, 10 _February, nine o'clock in the morning._

"_The Pope is dead_; my courier is leaving. In a few hours he
will be followed by M. le Comte de Montebello[715], attaché
to the Embassy."

ROME, 10 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

I dispatched to Lyons, about two hours ago, the special
mounted courier who will forward to you the unexpected
and deplorable news of the death of His Holiness. Now I
am sending off M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the
Embassy, to convey to you some necessary details.

"The Pope died of the hemorrhoidal affection to which he
was subject. The blood being extravasated into the bladder
occasioned a retention, which an attempt was made to relieve
by means of a sound. His Holiness is believed to have been
wounded in the course of the operation. In any case, after
four days' suffering, Leo XII. expired this morning at nine
o'clock, as I came to the Vatican, where an agent of the
Embassy had passed the night. The letter sent by my first
courier informs you, monsieur le comte, of my useless efforts
to obtain a permit for post-horses before the Pope's death.

"Yesterday I called on the Cardinal Secretary of State, who
was still very ill with a violent attack of gout; I had a
rather long conversation with him on the consequences of
the misfortune with which we were threatened. I lamented
the death of a Prince whose moderate sentiments and whose
knowledge of European affairs were so useful to the repose of
Christianity.

"'It is not only a great misfortune for France,' answered the
Secretary of State, 'but a greater misfortune for the Roman
States than you imagine. Discontent and poverty are great
in our provinces and, if the cardinals think fit to adopt a
different system from that of Leo XII., they will find their
work cut out for them. As for myself, my functions cease with
the death of the Pope and I have nothing to reproach myself
with.'

"This morning I again saw Cardinal Bernetti, who has, in
fact, laid down his functions as Secretary of State: he
spoke to me to the same effect as on the preceding day. I
asked him to let me meet him before he secluded himself in
the Conclave. We agreed that we should talk of electing
a sovereign pontiff who should continue the system of
moderation of Leo XII. I shall have the honour to communicate
to you all the information that I may gather.

"It is probable that the death of the Pope and the fall
of Cardinal Bernetti will delight the enemies of the
ordinances[716], they will proclaim this unhappy event a
punishment from Heaven. It is easy already to read that
thought on certain French faces in Rome.

"I regret the Pope for more than one reason; I had had the
good fortune to gain his confidence: the prejudices which had
been carefully instilled into his mind against me, before my
arrival, had become dispelled and he did me the honour, on
all occasions, to bear witness, publicly and aloud, to the
esteem in which he was good enough to hold me.

"Now, monsieur le comte, permit me to enter into the
explanation of a few facts.

"I was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the death
of Pius VII. You will find in the boxes at the Office, if you
think it advisable to look into the matter, the continuous
account of my relations with M. le Duc de Laval. The custom
is, on the death of a Pope, to send an extraordinary
ambassador, or to accredit the resident ambassador through
new letters to the Sacred College. The latter is the course
which I proposed to His late Majesty, Louis XVIII., to
follow. The King will do what he thinks best for his service.
Four French cardinals came to Rome for the election of Leo
XII. France to-day numbers five; a number of votes certainly
not to be despised in the Conclave. I shall, monsieur le
comte, await the King's orders. M. de Montebello, who is
instructed to hand you this dispatch, will remain at your
disposal.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 10 _February_ 1829, _eleven d clock at night._

"I wished to write you a long letter; but the dispatch, which
I was obliged to write with my own hand, and the fatigue of
these last days have exhausted me.

"I regret the Pope; I had obtained his confidence. I am now
charged with an important mission; it is impossible for me to
know what the result will be, or what influence it will have
over my destiny.

[Sidenote: Conclave arrangements.]

"The conclaves generally last two months, which will at least
leave me free for Easter. I will soon talk to you thoroughly
of all that.

"Picture to yourself that they found that poor Pope, on
Thursday last, before he fell ill, writing his epitaph. They
tried to divert him from such sad thoughts:

"'No, no,' he said; 'it will be over in a few days.'"

"ROME, _Thursday_, 12 _February_ 1829.

"I read your newspapers. They often give me pain. I see in
the Globe that Monsieur le Comte Portalis is, according to
that journal, my declared enemy. Why? Do I ask his place? He
is taking too much pains; I do not so much as think of him.
I wish him all possible prosperity; but yet, if it were true
that he wanted war, he would find me there. People seem to
me to be talking nonsense about everything, both about the
immortal Mahmud and the evacuation of the Morea.

"In the most probable event, this evacuation will put back
Greece under the yoke of the Turks, with the loss to us of
our honour and forty millions. There is a prodigious amount
of wit in France, but we lack judgment and common-sense; two
phrases make us drunk, we are led with words, and what is
worse is that we are always ready to disparage our friends
and exalt our enemies. Besides, is it not curious that they
should make the King, in his Speech[717], use my own language
on 'the agreement of the public liberties and the Royalty,'
and that they should have found such fault with me for using
that language? And the men who make the Crown speak thus were
once the warmest partizans of the censorship! For the rest,
I am going to see the election of the Head of Christianity;
this spectacle is the last great spectacle that I shall
witness in my life[718]; it will close my career.

"Now that pleasures have ceased in Rome, business is
commencing. I shall be obliged, on the one hand, to write
of all that happens to the Government and, on the other, to
fulfil the duties of my new position. I must compliment the
Sacred College and attend the funeral of the Holy Father,
to whom I had become attached because he was but little
loved, and the more so in that, fearing that I should find
an enemy in him, I found a friend who, from the chair of St.
Peter, formally gave the lie to my 'Christian' calumniators.
Then the French cardinals are going to come down upon me. I
have written to make representations at least touching the
Archbishop of Toulouse[719].

"In the midst of all this stir, the Poussin monument is being
executed; the excavation is successful; I have found three
fine heads, a draped female torso, a funeral inscription by a
brother to a young sister, which touched me.

"Talking of inscriptions, I told you that the poor Pope had
made his on the day before that on which he was taken ill,
predicting that he was soon going to die. He has left a
writing in which he recommends his indigent family to the
Roman Government: only those who have loved much have such
great virtues."

[Footnote 500: This book was written in Rome in 1828 and 1829, and
revised in February 1845.--T.]

[Footnote 501: In re-reading those manuscripts, I have merely added
a few passages from works published subsequently to the date of my
embassy to Rome.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 502: Æn., IV. 23.--B.]

[Footnote 503: Formerly the residence of the Comtesse de Beaumont.--T.]

[Footnote 504: Madame de Duras died at Nice in January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 505:

"Great-hearted Clara, noble, faithful friend,
Thy memory is no longer in the land;
Thy very grave by men's cold eyes is bann'd;
The world forgets thee, and thy name doth end."--T.

]

[Footnote 506: All the foregoing, from the words "which overtook her
at Nice," was added afterwards to Chateaubriand's diary of the road.
Manifestly he could not insert in his journal, on the 25th of September
1828, a note from the Duchesse de Duras written on the 14th of November
1828; nor could he speak of the death of Madame de Duras and of her
tomb, seeing that she died only in 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 507: St. Charles Cardinal Count Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan
(1538-1584), was born at Arona on the Lago Maggiore, where a colossal
statue, 70 feet high, was erected to his memory in 1697. St. Charles is
buried in Milan Cathedral. He was canonized in 1610 and is honoured on
the 4th of November.--T.]

[Footnote 508: If Chateaubriand did not see Marie-Louise in 1828, when
passing through Parma, he had dined with her, some years before, at
Verona, where she had gone to see her father, during the sitting of the
Congress.

"We at first," he writes, "refused an invitation from the Archduchess
of Parma. She insisted, and we went. We found her very gay; the
universe having made it its business to remember Napoleon, she no
longer had the trouble of thinking of him. She spoke a few careless
words, and as it were casually, about the King of Rome: she was
pregnant. Her Court had a certain air of dilapidation and decay,
excepting M. de Neipperg, a man of good manners. There was nothing
out of the common except ourselves dining at Marie-Louise's table and
the bracelets, made out of the stone of Juliet's sarcophagus, worn by
Napoleon's widow. As we crossed the Po, at Piacenza, a single bark,
newly painted, carrying a sort of imperial ensign, attracted our eyes.
Two or three dragoons, in shell-jackets and forage-caps, were watering
their horses; we were entering the States of Marie-Louise; that was
all that remained of the power of the man who clove the rocks of the
Simplon, planted his banners on the capitals of Europe, and raised
Italy which had lain prostrate for so many centuries."

When speaking to Marie-Louise, Chateaubriand told her that he had met
her soldiers at Piacenza, but that that little troop was nothing beside
the great imperial armies of former days. She answered drily:

"I never think of that now." (_Congrès de Vérone_, Vol. I. p. 69.)--B.]

[Footnote 509: Charles Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Lucca, later Charles
II. Duke of Parma (1799-1883), son of Maria Louisa of Spain, ex-Queen
of Etruria, and heir, by the terms of an arrangement concluded in
Paris in 1817, to the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza on the death of
Marie-Louise. This occurred in 1847, when Charles became Duke of Parma;
but he abdicated, in March 1849, in favour of his son, Charles III.,
who was assassinated in 1854. Charles III. was succeeded by his son,
the present Duke Robert I., then a child of six years of age, who was
dethroned in 1860, and his duchy annexed to Sardinia by Victor Emmanuel
II.--B.]

[Footnote 510: Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619), the founder of the
Bolognese School, and his two cousins and pupils, Agostino Carracci
(1558-1602) and his brother Annibale Carracci (1560-1609).--T.]

[Footnote 511: Pius VII. became Bishop of Tivoli in 1780, Bishop of
Imola and a cardinal in 1785, and Pope in 1800.--T.]

[Footnote 512: _Purgatorio_, Canto XVI. 65-66.--B.]

[Footnote 513: Beatrice de' Bardi (1266-1290), _née_ Portinari,
celebrated by Dante in his _Vita Nuova_ and _Divina Commedia._--T.]

[Footnote 514: DANTE, _Vita Nuova_, Canto III. 78.--T.]

[Footnote 515: Theodore Martin's DANTE, _Vita Nuova_, Canto III., the
closing stanza.--T.]

[Footnote 516: Cary's DANTE: _Purgatory_, XXX. 23-28.--T.]

[Footnote 517:

"Quando nel mondo ad ora adora
M'insegnavate come l'uom s'eterna."

_Inferno_, Canto XV. 84-85.--B.]

[Footnote 518: Teresa Contessa Guiccioli, later Marquise de Boissy
(1801-1873), _née_ Gamba. She lived with Lord Byron between 1819 and
1823. She married Hilaire Étienne Octave Rouillé, Marquis de Boissy, in
1851.--T.]

[Footnote 519: The octagonal basilica of San Vitale does, in fact,
recall Constantinople, because it was built, under Justinian, in
imitation of St. Sophia. Charlemagne caused it to be copied for the
Church of Aix-la-Chapelle.--B.]

[Footnote 520: The Church of San Apollinare, erected under Theodoric at
the commencement of the sixth century, also presents the Byzantine type
in all its oriental brilliancy. The twenty-four columns of Greek marble
which divide the church into three aisles were brought to Ravenna from
Constantinople.--T.]

[Footnote 521: Honorius Flavius Emperor of the West (384-423). His love
for a hen called Roma forms an anecdote related by Procopius.--B.]

[Footnote 522: Galla Placidia (_circa_ 388-450 or 451), daughter of
Theodosius the Great, sister of Honorius and mother of Valentinian
III. Her adventures indeed form the strangest of romances. Born at
Constantinople, she was taken prisoner at the siege of Rome by Alaric
and carried off in captivity. Atawulf, Alaric's brother-in-law,
became smitten with her and married her. After his death, she married
Constantius, one of Honorius' generals, who soon assumed the title of
Constantius III. After being first the slave and then the Queen of the
Visigoths, she governed the Western Empire in the name of her infant
son. Her tomb is at Ravenna.--B.]

[Footnote 523: Theodoric the Great (_circa_ 454-526), King of the
Ostrogoths and, after 493, sole ruler of Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 524: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (_circa_ 475--_circa_
524), a Roman philosopher, author of _De Consolatione Philosophiæ._
He was put to death by Theodoric, without trial, on the charge of
treason and magic.--T.]

[Footnote 525: Amalasontha (498-535), daughter of Theodoric the
Great, and Regent during the minority of her son Athalric King of the
Ostrogoths (526). Athalric died in 534, and Amalasontha divided the
authority with her cousin Theodatus, whom she married, and who ordered
her to be strangled in 535.--T.]

[Footnote 526: Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (_circa_ 468--_circa_ 560),
a wise administrative officer under Odoacer, Theodoric and Amalasontha.
He retired to a monastery in Calabria in 538, where he wrote his
History of the Goths and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 527: The Exarchate of Ravenna was instituted in 568, after
the conquest of the Ostrogothic Kingdom by the Byzantines. It at first
comprised all Italy, but was soon confined to the district round
Ravenna and, in 755, was taken from the Lombards by Pepin the Short,
and granted to Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 528: Astolf King of the Lombards (_d._ 756). His conquest of
the Exarchate of Ravenna (752) was wrested from him by Pepin the Short
in 755.--T.]

[Footnote 529: Ravenna finally passed to the Papal States in 1509.--T.]

[Footnote 530: Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julius II. (1443-1513),
elected to the Papacy in 1503.--T.]

[Footnote 531: Giovanni Cardinal de' Medici, later Pope Leo X.
(1475-1521), was created a cardinal at the age of thirteen, fought for
Pope Julius II. at Ravenna, in 1512, where he was taken prisoner, and
was elected successor to Julius on his death in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 532: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), the celebrated Italian
poet and author of _Orlando Furioso._--T.]

[Footnote 533: Pierre du Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard (1476-1524), the
_Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche._--T.]

[Footnote 534: Gaston de Foix, Maréchal Duc de Nemours (1489-1512),
defeated the Papal and Spanish forces at the celebrated Battle of
Ravenna, on the 11th of April 1512, but was killed while pursuing the
beaten enemy.--T.]

[Footnote 535: Caterina Sforza (_d._ 1460), natural daughter of
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and widow of Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola and
Forli, sustained a siege at Forli against Cæsar Borgia, and was
captured in the breach with her son Ottaviano. Louis XII. caused her to
be set at liberty. She had taken a Medici for her second husband, and
died at Florence.--T.]

[Footnote 536: _Inferno_, Canto VII. 75.--B.]

[Footnote 537: Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), elected
to the Papacy in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 538: Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, Roman Emperor (_circa_ 53-117),
succeeded the Emperor Nerva in 98. The Arch of Trajan was erected
at Ancona in 112; it is of white marble, stands at the end of the
break-water, and is perhaps the best-proportioned of all the Roman
triumphal arches.--T.]

[Footnote 539: Donato d'Agnolo Bramante (1444-1514), the celebrated
Italian architect and predecessor of Michael Angelo.--T.]

[Footnote 540: The Chiesa della Santa Casa, which contains the famous
pilgrimage shrine of the veritable House of Our Lady, transported by
angels from Nazareth and miraculously set down in Italy on the 10th of
December 1294.--T.]

[Footnote 541: Léonore de Montaigne, later Vicomtesse de Gamaches. The
reference occurs in Montaigne's _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 542: The Treaty of Tolentino was signed on the 19th of
February 1797, between General Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII.--T.]

[Footnote 543: The Battle of Lake Trasimenus (217 B.C.) at which
Hannibal routed the Romans. Fifteen thousand of the latter were killed
or driven into the lake and drowned; six thousand were taken prisoners;
and ten thousand saved themselves by dispersion and flight.--T.]

[Footnote 544: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the French historical and
landscape painter.--T.]

[Footnote 545: _Cf._ LORD BYRON, _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto
IV., stanzas 66 _et seq._--T.]

[Footnote 546: Leo XII. was born at Genga, near Spoleto, in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 547: Spoleto repulsed the victorious enemy after the Battle
of Trasimenus in 217 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 548: Fra Filippo Lippi (_circa_ 1402-1469) was placed by his
aunt in a Carmelite convent. He left it when about twenty and, during
an excursion at sea, was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. He
purchased his liberty by drawing a full-length portrait of his master
in charcoal on a white wall. He died at Spoleto, said to have been
poisoned, on the 9th of October 1469.--T.]

[Footnote 549: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), the author
of _Don Quixote de la Mancha_, was captured on returning to Spain,
four years after the Battle of Lepanto, in 1575, and passed five years
in captivity in Algiers. He was ransomed by his family and religious
charity in 1580.--T.]

[Footnote 550: Lucrezia Buti sat to Filippo Lippi for the Madonna at
Prato, where he was painting an altar-piece for the nuns of Santa
Margherita. He became enamoured of her, and finally ran off with
her.--T.]

[Footnote 551: Jan Count Potoçki (1761-1815), the Polish traveller,
archæologist and historian. He committed suicide on the 2nd of
December 1815.--T.]

[Footnote 552: St. Jerome (_circa_ 331-420), a father of the Church,
honoured on the 30th of September, the anniversary of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 553: The bridge of Spoleto is the highest in Europe.--T.]

[Footnote 554: GRAY, _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_,
51-54.--T.]

[Footnote 555: "Man's misery leads him back to God."--T.]

[Footnote 556: Tommaso Cardinal Bernetti (1779-1852), created a
cardinal in 1727, and Secretary of State from 1828 to 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 557: Pierre Narcisse Baron Guérin (1774-1833), a French
historical painter and pupil of Regnault. He gained the Prix de Rome in
1797, became an academician in 1815 and, in 1816, returned to Rome as
director of the French Academy in that city.--T.]

[Footnote 558: Chateaubriand here gives only the commencement of his
letter of 11th October. The other letters to Madame Récamier contained
in the present book have all been more or less modified by the author,
who sometimes curtails and sometimes adds to the original text. Madame
Lenormant, in the second volume of her _Souvenir de Madame Récamier_,
has reprinted the great writer's letters in their entirety, after the
originals in her possession.--B.]

[Footnote 559: Giacomo Antonio Cardinal Benvenuti (1665-1838), created
a cardinal in 1826 and Legate _a letere_ of the Marches in 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 560: Carlo Cardinal Oppizoni (1769-1855), Archbishop of
Bologna (1802) and a cardinal (1804).--B.]

[Footnote 561: Agostino Cardinal Rivarola (1758-1842) had been Governor
of Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 562: Carlo Cardinal Odescalchi (1786-1841), created a
cardinal in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 563: Pietro Cardinal Vidoni (1759-1830).--T.]

[Footnote 564: When I left Rome, he bought my calash and did me the
honour to die in it on his way to Ponte-Mole.--_Author's Note_ (Paris,
1836).]

[Footnote 565: Christian Karl Josias Baron von Bunsen (1791-1860), a
distinguished scholar and diplomatist. He was successively secretary
of Legation, _Chargé d'affaires_ and Minister to Rome (1818-1838),
Minister to Switzerland (1839-1841) and Minister to London (1841-1854),
and published a number of erudite historical works in the German
language.--T.]

[Footnote 566: Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1774-1831), a celebrated German
historian, philologist and critic, was born at Copenhagen and was in
the Danish Civil Service until 1806, when he entered that of Prussia.
He was Prussian Minister to Rome from 1816 to 1823, with Bunsen as his
secretary of Legation. Niebuhr's _Römische Geschichte_ (1811-1832)
revolutionized the study of Roman history.--T.]

[Footnote 567: Maria Antonovna Narischkine, wife of Alexander
Narischkine, a graceful and poetic Russian beauty, much admired by
Alexander I.--B.]

[Footnote 568: Pedro Gomez Kavelo, Marques de Labrador (1775-1850),
Spanish Minister to Florence in 1808, when the troubles burst out
at home by which Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. were dethroned. He
followed his Princes to France and shared their exile until 1814. He
was sent as Plenipotentiary to the Congress of Vienna and subsequently
received the Naples Embassy, followed by the Rome Embassy.--B.]

[Footnote 569: Antoine Philippe Fiacre Ghislain Visscher, Comte de
Celles (1779-1841), a native of Brussels, took sides with the French
at the annexation of his country in 1795, became a town councillor
of Brussels in 1800, fought for the French at Austerlitz, was made
Prefect of the Loire Inférieure in 1806, a count in 1811, and Prefect
of the Zuyder Zee in 1811. From 1811 to 1813, he oppressed the Dutch in
Napoleon's name. After the formation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,
Celles withdrew from public life until 1821, when he was elected to the
Second Chamber of the States-General. He was appointed Ambassador to
Rome in 1826, and held that post until 1829. He supported the Belgian
Revolution of 1830; but, in 1832, removed to Paris, where he took out
letters of naturalization.--T.]

[Footnote 570: The Comtesse de Celles, _née_ de Valence, daughter of
General Comte and the Comtesse de Valence, of whom the latter was the
daughter of Madame de Genlis.--B.]

[Footnote 571: Nicola Paganini (1782-1840), the great violinist of
those days.--T.]

[Footnote 572: Michael (Dom Miguel) I., King of Portugal (1802-1866),
had been declared King on the 30th of June 1828. His struggle against
his niece, Mary II. (Donna Maria de Gloria), failed, however, and he
was compelled to quit Portugal by the Convention of Evora Monte, 26 May
1834, and, by the law of 29 May following, he was deprived of his title
of Infant of Portugal, and he and his descendants were declared to have
forfeited all rights as Portuguese citizens. He was succeeded by his
son, Michael (Dom Miguel) II., the present _de jure_ King of Portugal
(MARQUIS DE RUVIGNY AND RAINEVAL, _The Legitimist Kalendar for 1895_,
p. 33).--T.]

[Footnote 573: Ottavio Principe Lancellotti married Prince Massimo's
daughter in 1818.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Giuseppina Principessa Lancelotti (_b._ 1799), _née_
Massimo d'Arsoli.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Camillo Massimihano Massimo, Principe d'Arsoli (_d._
1840).--T.]

[Footnote 576: Canova died at Venice on the 13th of October 1822.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Jean Goujon (_circa_ 1515-1572), a celebrated sculptor
of the French Renascence period. He was a Calvinist, and is supposed to
have been shot on his scaffold in the court-yard of the Louvre during
the massacre of St. Bartholomew (23-24 August 1652).--T.]

[Footnote 578: Tiziano Vicelli (1477-1576), known as Titian. He was
first called to Bologna by Charles V. in 1532; in 1547 he was summoned
to Augsburg; and the Emperor's favour lasted until his death, and was
followed by that of Philip II.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) went to France in 1516 by
invitation of Francis I., and died there, at the Château de Cloux, near
Amboise, on the 2nd of May 1519.--T.]

[Footnote 580: Cosmo I. de' Medici, the Great, first Grand-duke of
Tuscany (1519-1574). Michael Angelo was a native of Caprese, near
Florence, and is buried in the Santa Croce in the Tuscan capital.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velasquez (1599-1660) visited
Italy in 1629 and again in 1649.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617-1683), Velasquez'
pupil.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Giulio di Pietro di Filippo de' Giannuzzi (1492-1546),
known as Giulio Romano, a painter and architect, one of Raphael's
principal pupils.--T.]

[Footnote 584: This school was founded by Friedrich Johann Overbeck
(1789-1869), who visited Rome in 1810 and there formed a Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, became converted to Catholicism, in 1813, and devoted
himself to painting, and encouraging painting, after the method of
Perugino. The leading members of this New-old Raphaelite or Nazarene
School were Philipp Veit (1793-1877), Wilhelm Friedrich von Schadow
(1789-1862), Karl Eggers (1787-1863), Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
(1794-1872), Joseph Führich (1800-1876), Eduard Steinle (1810-1886)
and Peter Cornelius (1783-1867), perhaps the most noteworthy of this
company of remarkable artists (_cf._ RICHARD MUTHER, _History of Modern
Painting_, Vol. I. chap. VI.: _The Nazarenes_).--T.]

[Footnote 585: Pietro Vannucci (1446-1524), known as Perugino, from
Perugia, his birth-place, a famous painter of the Umbrian School and
the master of Raphael.--T.]

[Footnote 586: St. Luke the Evangelist is the patron saint of artists.
The Church honours him on the 18th of October.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Jean Victor Schnetz (1787-1870), a native of Paris.
The reference is to his best-known picture, the _Vow to the Madonna._
Schnetz became Director of the French School in Rome in 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 588: Louis Leopold Robert (1794-1835), a well-known French
painter of Neapolitan landscapes. After 1830, he was sent for to
Florence to give lessons to the Princess Charlotte Bonaparte, daughter
of King Joseph, and wife, soon to become widow, of her cousin, Charles
Napoleon Louis, second son of the ex-King of Holland. He became
violently enamoured of her, and his hopeless passion drove him to
commit suicide, at Venice, on the 20th of March 1835.--B.]

[Footnote 589: Émile Jean Horace Vernet (1789-1863), Director of
the French School in Rome from 1827 to 1839. He painted mostly
battle-pictures up to 1836; after that year, his works represented
mainly scenes of Arab life.--T.]

[Footnote 590: Jacques Édouard Quecq (1796-1873). His _Death of
Vitellius_ was exhibited in Rome in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 591: Gianmaria de' Medici, or del Monte, or Giocchi, Pope
Julius III. (1487-1555). Pope in 1550.--T.]

[Footnote 592: Giacomo Barrocchio, or Barozzi (1507-1573), known
as Vignola, after his birth-place, a noted Italian architect, who
succeeded Michael Angelo as architect of St. Peter's.--T.]

[Footnote 593: Taddeo Zuccaro (1529-1566), the painter.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Bartolomeo Pinelli, a celebrated Roman engraver. His
works include a _Raccolta di cinquante costumi pittoreschi incisi
all'acqua forte_ (1809) and a _Nuova raccolta di cinquante costumi
pittoreschi incisi all'acqua forte_ (1815), 100 folio plates in all. It
was doubtless out of this collection that he promised "twelve scenes"
to Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 595: Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen or Thorwaldsen (1770-1844),
the famous Danish sculptor. He lived in Rome from 1797 to 1838 and from
1841 to 1843.--T.]

[Footnote 596: Vicenzo Camuccini (1775-1844), an Italian historical
painter, Inspector-general of the Papal Museums and Keeper of the
Vatican Collections.--B.]

[Footnote 597: Claude Gelée (1600-1682), known as Lorraine, after his
native province. The house which he inhabited in Rome still stands at
the angle of the Vie Sistina and Gregoriana. He lived in Rome from 1619
to 1625 and from 1627 to his death.--T.]

[Footnote 598: Poussin and Claude Lorraine both died in Rome: the
former on the 19th of November 1665, the latter on the 21st of November
1682. Claude Lorraine was buried in the Church of Trinità-del-Monte,
and an inscription was placed on his tomb by his nephews. We shall see
later that Chateaubriand erected a monument to Nicolas Poussin in the
Church of San-Lorenzo-in-Lucina.--B.]

[Footnote 599: Charles Président de Brosses (1709-1777), author of the
_Lettres historiques et critiques écrites d'Italie_, visited Rome in
1739 and there met King James III., known also as the Pretender, Prince
James Edward, Chevalier de Saint Georges.--B.]

[Footnote 600: Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, _de jure_ James
III. King of England (1688-1766), retired to Rome soon after the
unsuccessful rising of 1715 and spent the last fifty years of his life
there.--T.]

[Footnote 601: François Rabelais (1595-1533), Curé of Meudon and author
of _Gargantua and Pantagruel_, from the latter of which the extracts
are taken.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Jean Cardinal du Bellay (1492-1560), Bishop of Bayonne
(1526), Archbishop of Paris (1533), and a cardinal (1535). He is noted
as a man of letters and the patron of Rabelais.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 604: Urquhart and Motteux' RABELAIS, _Pantagruel_, Book V.
chap. I.: _How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island and of the
noise that we heard._--T.]

[Footnote 605: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke II. chap. XII.: _An Apologie
of Raymond Sebond._--T.]

[Footnote 606: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 607: _Cf._ Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. IX.: _Of
Vanitie._ "Amongst her vaine favours I have none doth so much please my
fond self-pleasing conceit as an authenticke bull, charter or patent of
denizenship or borgeouship of Rome, which at my last being there, was
granted me by the whole Senate of that citie--garish and trimly adorned
with goodly seales, and written in faire golden letters--bestowed upon
me with all gracious and free liberalitie."--T.]

[Footnote 608: Hazlitt's** MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 609: Torquato Tasso.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Florio's MONTAIGNE: Booke II. chap. XII.: _An Apologie
of Raymond Sebond._--T.]

[Footnote 611: Leonora Baroni (1611-1670), esteemed by her
contemporaries one of the finest singers of the world. Milton heard her
at Cardinal Barberini's concerts. She married, in 1640, Giulio Cesare
Castellani, who died in 1662.--T.]

[Footnote 612: _Cf._ MILTON, _Epigrammatum: Liber VI. Ad Leonoram
Romæ canentem_; VII. _Ad Eandem_; VIII. _Ad Eandem._ Milton has left
no written account of his journey to Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 613: Françoise Dame de Motteville (_circa_ 1621-1689), _née_
Bertaud, married in 1639 to Nicolas Langlois, Sieur de Motteville, who
died two years later. She is the author of the _Mémoires pour servir
à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche_, first published in 1723, in which
Leonora Baroni is mentioned.--T.]

[Footnote 614: Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), Prime Minister of
France after the death of Richelieu.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Antoine Arnauld (1616-1698), author of some agreeable
Memoirs.--B.]

[Footnote 616: Henri II. de Lorraine, fifth Duc de Guise (1614-1664), a
famous general and adventurer. He took part in the Neapolitan rebellion
of 1647, defeated the Spanish troops and placed himself at the head of
the government. But his exploits in gallantry turned the nobles against
him; they opened the gates of the town to the enemy, and the duke was
captured and kept a prisoner in Spain until 1652. In 1654, he was
appointed Grand Chamberlain of France.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Louis Deshayes, Baron de Courmenin (_d._ 1632), had been
charged with various missions by Louis XIII. to the Levant, Denmark,
Persia and Muscovy. He entered into a conspiracy against the Cardinal
de Richelieu and was beheaded, at Béziers, in 1632.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Philippe Emmanuel Marquis de Coulanges (_circa_
1631-1716), first cousin to Madame de Sévigné, whose letters to him are
printed at the end of his Memoirs, first published in 1820.--T.]

[Footnote 619: Jacques Spon (1647-1685), a French Protestant physician
and antiquary, visited Italy, Greece and the Levant, about 1675, and
left a record of his travels, besides other works. He left France at
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and died soon after at
Vevey.--T.]

[Footnote 620: François Maximilien Misson (_d._ 1722), another
Protestant writer, took refuge in England, in 1685, and there had
charge of the education of a young nobleman with whom he had been
travelling in Germany and Italy. His _Nouveau voyage en Italie_
(1691-1698) is on the _Index._ A later edition (1722) is enriched with
notes by Addison.--T.]

[Footnote 621: Jean Dumont, Baron von Carlskron (_circa_ 1660-1726), a
distinguished publicist, travelled all over Europe. The work from which
the following quotation is taken is his _Voyages en France, en Italie,
en Allemagne, à Malte et en Turquie_ (1699). The Emperor of Germany
made him his historiographer and a baron.--T.]

[Footnote 622: Joseph Addison (1672-1719) prepared himself for the
diplomatic service by travel and study on the Continent (1699-1703).
His works included a _Letter from Italy_ in verse, written as he was
crossing the Alps in 1701 and published in 1703, and _Remarks on
several Parts of Italy_ (1705). His tragedy of _Cato_ was also written
in Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 623: Now in the Louvre in Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Now in the Vatican.--T.]

[Footnote 626: Now in the Atrio Quadrato, leading out of the Belvedere
Gallery.--T.]

[Footnote 627: _Anglicè_ in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711), the famous French
poet and academician (1684).--T.]

[Footnote 629: Jean Baptiste Labat (1663-1738), a Dominican friar, was
sent by his Order to Martinique, in 1693, and remained stationed in the
Antilles till 1705. He visited Rome in 1706. His many works include a
_Voyage en Espagne et en Italie_ (1730).--T.]

[Footnote 630: The coast of Senegambia was visited, in the fourteenth
century, by Dieppe and Rouen merchants, who established markets
there.--T.]

[Footnote 631: PROP. I. ii.; _Ad Cynthiam_, I.--T.]

[Footnote 632: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Martyrs_, Book X.--T.]

[Footnote 633: Pauline Borghese died on the 9th of June 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 634: Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, Prince of
Wales, later Charles III., _de jure_ King of England (1720-1788), known
as the Young Pretender or the Young Chevalier.--T.]

[Footnote 635: Henry Benedict Maria Clement Cardinal Duke of York,
later Henry IX., _de jure_ King of England (1725-1807), created a
cardinal in 1747.--T.]

[Footnote 636: 1734---T.]

[Footnote 637: Prince Charles returned to Rome after the failure of the
rising of 1745; his father died in 1788.--T.]

[Footnote 638: Louise Marie Caroline of Stolberg-Gedern, _de jure_
Louise Queen of England (1753-1824), known as the Countess of Albany
after Charles's death, when she secretly married the poet Alfieri, in
whom she had long inspired a lively passion. Alfieri died in 1803,
and Louise is said to have contracted a second _liaison_ and a third
marriage with François Xavier Pascal Fabre, the French historical
painter.--T.]

[Footnote 639: Charles Victor de Bonstetten (1745-1822), a celebrated
Swiss philosophical writer.--T.]

[Footnote 640: The Countess of Albany was nineteen years of age when
she married Prince Charles in 1772.--T.]

[Footnote 641: _Memoirs of Victor Alfieri_, Vol. II., chap. V.: _I
become at length susceptible of a sincere and durable attachment._--T.]

[Footnote 642: Xavier Fabre, _supra._--T.]

[Footnote 643: Henry IX. was the last of the Stuarts in the male line.
At his death the "_hereditary right_ to these realms passed to (IV.)
Charles Emmanuel, sometime (1796 to 1802) King of Sardinia, he being
son and heir of Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia (1773 to 1796),
who was son and heir of Charles Emmanuel III., King of Sardinia (1730
to 1773), who was son and heir of Victor Amadeus (_of Savoy_), King
of Sardinia, by Anna Maria, the only child (that left issue) of her
mother, Henrietta Anne, first wife of Philip (_of Bourbon_), Duke of
Orleans, the said Henrietta being the only child whose issue then
(1807) remained of Charles I., King of England. This Charles Emmanuel
was by _hereditary right_ KING CHARLES IV. OF ENGLAND (1807 to 1819),
and died _s.p._ October 6, 1819, being succeeded by his brother (V.)
Victor Emmanuel I., sometime (1802 to 1821) King of Sardinia, who by
hereditary right was KING VICTOR I. OF ENGLAND (1819 to 1824). He died
without male issue January 10, 1824 (the Kingdom of Sardinia having
previously devolved on his distant cousin and heir male), and was
succeeded as to the hereditary right to these realms by (VI.) Mary
Beatrice, his eldest daughter and heir of line, wife of Francis IV.,
Duke of Modena, which Lady, according to such right, was QUEEN MARY
II. OF ENGLAND (1824 to 1840). On her death, September 15, 1840 (VII.)
Francis, her son and heir, afterwards (1846) Duke of Modena, became,
according to such right, KING FRANCIS I. OF ENGLAND (1840 to 1875).
He died _s.p._ November 20, 1875, and was succeeded in such right,
by (VIII.) Maria Theresa, his niece and heiress, daughter and sole
heir of his only brother, Ferdinand Charles Victor of Modena. This
Lady, who was born July 2, 1849, and who married, February 20, 1868,
Louis, Prince of Bavaria, became by such hereditary right QUEEN MARY
III. OF ENGLAND in 1875, being thus 8th titular (_jure hereditario_)
sovereign, just as QUEEN VICTORIA is the 8th actual (_de facto et de
lege_) sovereign since the Revolution of 1688."--(Note to the _Seize
Quartiers of the Kings and Queens of England_, by G. E. C.--_i.e._ G.
E. COKAYNE, Clarenceux King-of-Arms. _The Genealogist_, N.S., Vol.
VIII., p. 46.) Those, and they are practically the whole number of the
modern Legitimists, who reckon Mary Queen of Scots as Mary II. Queen of
England speak of the Princess Louis of Bavaria as Mary IV. _de jure_
Queen of England.--T.]

[Footnote 644: Henrietta Maria of France, Queen of England (1609-1669),
married to King Charles I. in 1625. She finally left England for France
in 1644, five years before the King's death.--T.]

[Footnote 645: Louis XV. ordered Prince Charles Edward to leave France
after the failure of the Forty-five.--T.]

[Footnote 646: Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande (1732-1807), a
distinguished but eccentric astronomer. The singularity of his taste
displayed itself in the consumption of spiders and caterpillars;
that of his opinions in his love for proclaiming himself an atheist.
Lalande's _Voyage dun Français en Italie_ was published in 1769.--T.]

[Footnote 647: Duclos (_see_ Vol. I., p. 74, n. 1) visited Italy in
1766 and wrote his _Considérations sur l'Italie_, which were not
published till 1791, nineteen years after his death.--B.]

[Footnote 648: Charles Marguerite Jean Baptiste Mercier Dupaty
(1746-1788), an eminent French jurist, a president of the Parliament
of Bordeaux and author of _Réflexions historiques sur les lois
criminelles: Lettres sur l'Italie in 1785_ (1788), a superficial,
turgid, but not unsuccessful work, promptly placed on the _Index._--T.]

[Footnote 649: DUPATY, _Travels through Italy_, Letter 79.--T.]

[Footnote 650: _Ibid._, Letter 87.--T.]

[Footnote 651: _Ibid._, Letter 55.--T.]

[Footnote 652: Charles Dupaty (1771-1825), the president's eldest son,
studied in Rome and became a sculptor of merit. His Venus Genitrix is
one of his best-known works.--B.]

[Footnote 653: Goethe visited Italy in 1786.--T]

[Footnote 654: Byron visited Rome in 1817.--T.]

[Footnote 655: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV. stanza 79.--T.]

[Footnote 656: The fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ was published in
1818; Byron died at Missolonghi in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 657: I invite the perusal of two articles by M. Jean
Jacques Ampère in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 1st and 15th of
July 1835, entitled, _Portraits de Rome à différents ages._ Those
curious documents will complete a picture of which I here give only a
sketch.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1837).]

[Footnote 658: Vittoria Principessa Altieri (1799-1840), _née_
Boncompagni-Ludovisi degli Principi di Piombino.--T.]

[Footnote 659: The Principessa Barberini-Colonna di Palestrina.--T.]

[Footnote 660: Margherita Principessa Rospigliosi, Duchessa di Zagarolo
(1786-1864), _née_ Gioeni-Colonna.--T.]

[Footnote 661: Teresa Principessa Del Drago (1801-1858), _née_
Massimo.--T.]

[Footnote 662: Maria Duchessa di Lante Monfeltrio delle Rovere
(1799-1840), _née_ Colonna.--T.]

[Footnote 663: Not Mellini, as the earlier editions have it. It was at
the Villa Millini that General Alexandre Berthier, the future Prince of
Neuchâtel, on the 11th of February 1798, received the lawyers, bankers
and artists who were to constitute the new Roman Republic.--B.]

[Footnote 664: Apollodorus (117-138), the architect who designed the
Forum and Column of Trajan.--T.]

[Footnote 665: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 666: Philippe Camille Marcelin Comte de Tournon (1778-1833),
Prefect of Rome under the Empire (1809-1814), a peer of France under
the Restoration (1824) and author of _Études statistiques sur Rome et
les États romains_ (1831).--T.]

[Footnote 667: Louis Simond (1767-1831), author of a _Voyage d'un
Français en Angleterre_ (1810-1811), _Voyage en Italie et en Sicilie_
(1827-1828), etc. Simond ended by settling at Geneva and being
naturalized a Swiss.--T.]

[Footnote 668: _Cf._ Monsignore NICOLA MARIA NICOLAÏ, _Memorie, leggi
ed osservazioni sulle campagne e sull' annona di Roma_ (Rome, 1803), at
that time accepted as the leading authority on economic matters.--B.]

[Footnote 669: Villemain was then preparing his History of Gregory
VII., a work which was celebrated before its appearance and fell into
oblivion so soon as it had appeared, which was not until 1873, three
years after the author's death.--B.]

[Footnote 670: Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), a noted
French historian. In 1826, he became completely broken down in health,
and was left blind and paralyzed. The remainder of his work was done
through the medium of secretaries. With their help he published
his _Dix ans d'études historiques_ (1834), his _Récits des temps
mérovingiens_ (1840), and an _Essai sur l'histoire de la formation et
du progrès du tiers-état_ ( 1853). His famous _Histoire de la conquête
de l'Angleterre par les Normands_ had been published in 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 671: Thanks to God, M. Thierry has been restored to life and
has resumed his fine and important work with renewed strength; he works
at night, but like the chrysalis:

La nymphe s'enferme avec joie
Dans ce tombeau d'or et de soie
Qui la dérobe à tous les yeux.

--_Author's Note._

"The nymph herself doth gladly hide
That tomb of gold and silk inside
Which conceals her from every eye."--T.

]

[Footnote 672: The Russians took Varna on the 11th of October 1828.--B.]

[Footnote 673: Giovanni Torlonia, Duca di Bracciano (_d._ 1829), the
famous Roman banker, created Duca di Bracciano and a Roman prince, in
1809, by Pope Pius VII.--T.]

[Footnote 674: The Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi was signed between Russia
and Turkey on the 8th of June 1833 and was a treaty of defensive
and offensive alliance concluded for eight years. A secret clause
eventually closed the Dardanelles to the European Powers, while
leaving both that passage and the Bosphorus open to Russia and Russia
alone.--B.]

[Footnote 675: Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt (_circa_ 1769-1849),
appointed Governor of Egypt in 1805, massacred the Mamelukes in 1811;
conquered Nubia, Sennaar, and Kordofan (1820-1822); assisted the Turks
in the War of Greek Independence (1827); conquered Syria (1831-1832);
defeated Turkey (1839); and was obliged to give up Syria in 1841. From
then until 1847, when he lost his reason, he devoted himself to the
improvement of his vice-realm.--T.]

[Footnote 676: The Treaty of London, signed on the 6th of July 1827, by
which England, France and Russia agreed to compel Turkey and Greece to
accept their mediation with a view to restoring peace in the East. The
offer of mediation was rejected by Turkey, with the result that armed
intervention ensued.--T.]

[Footnote 677: The _Note sur la Grèce_ appeared in 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 678: The victory of Navarino (20 October 1827) had not
succeeded in delivering Greece from the Ottoman yoke. On the 27th of
August 1828, twelve French regiments, commanded by General Maison, were
landed on the Morea. Within a few weeks, the French had driven the
Turkish garrisons from the towns and strongholds of the peninsula. The
Morea and the Cyclades were placed under the general protection of the
Powers and General Maison, promoted to Marshal, returned to France,
leaving two brigades to aid the Greeks in organizing the government of
their territory.--B.]

[Footnote 679: The Russians captured Silistria in 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 680: General Ivan Paskevitch, later Field-marshal Prince
of Warsaw (1782-1856), captured Kars in 1828 and Erzeroum in 1829;
as Commander-in-Chief in Poland, he took Warsaw, in 1831, and became
Governor of Poland, executing the Organic Statute.--T.]

[Footnote 681: Mahmud II. Sultan of Turkey (1785-1839), brother to
Mustapha IV., whom he succeeded.--T.]

[Footnote 682: By the Convention of Akerman, concluded on the 6th of
October 1826, Russia obtained the right of navigating the Black Sea and
various agreements were entered into regarding Moldavia, Wallachia and
Servia. The non-fulfilment of this treaty by Turkey led to the War of
1828-1829 now under discussion.--T.]

[Footnote 683: By the Treaty of Jassy (1792), the frontiers of Russia
were extended to the Dniester.--T.]

[Footnote 684: Vice-Admiral Lodewijk Sigismund Vincent Gustaaf Count
van Heiden, G.C.B. (1772-1850), entered the Dutch Navy as a boy, was
promoted to lieutenant in 1789 and, in 1795, took the Stadtholder
William V. to England in a fishing-smack. He was tried and imprisoned
and, on recovering his liberty, entered the Russian service, where he
was promoted to rear-admiral in 1817, to vice-admiral in 1827, after
the Battle of Navarino, in which he took a brilliant part, and to
full admiral in 1850. He received the Grand Cross of the Bath after
Navarino, as well as the Orders of St. Louis of France and St. George
of Russia.--T.]

[Footnote 685: Alexander II. Tsar of all the Russias (1818-1881),
succeeded in 1855, assassinated 13 March 1881.--T.]

[Footnote 686: Peter I., the Great, Tsar of Russia (1672-1725).--T.]

[Footnote 687: Arnaud Cardinal d'Ossat (1536-1604), Bishop of Rennes,
later of Bayeux, Ambassador to Rome from Henry III. and Henry IV. He
obtained the papal absolution for Henry IV. and received the cardinal's
hat and the See of Bayeux as his reward (1599). His Letters (1624) are
regarded as a classic among diplomatists.--T.]

[Footnote 688: Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Grotius, the famous
Dutch jurist and founder of the science of international law. His
principal work. _De Jure belli et pacis_, was published in 1625.--T.]

[Footnote 689: Samuel Baron von Pufendorf (1632-1692), a noted German
jurist and publicist. His _De Jure naturæ et gentium_ was published
in 1672.--T.]

[Footnote 690: The Treaties of Munster and Osnabrück, culminating in
the general Peace signed at Munster on the 24th of October 1648, which
ended the Thirty Years' War.--T.]

[Footnote 691: Maria (Sophia) Feodorowna of Wurtemberg-Mümpelgard,
Empress of Russia (1759-1828), widow of Paul I. and mother of Alexander
I. and Nicholas I. She died in the night of 4-5 November 1828.--B.]

[Footnote 692: Nicholas, the third son of Paul I., succeeded his
brother Alexander in 1825, the second son, Constantine, having
renounced his right of succession. The first year of his reign was
marked by a military revolt which was immediately suppressed.--T.]

[Footnote 693: I am inclined here to echo a footnote by M. Edmond Biré,
who says:

"The readers, I hope, will not skip a line of this
Memorandum, a master-piece of logic and patriotism and, which
is no detriment, a master-piece of style. Chateaubriand has
written no pages that do him more honour."

]

[Footnote 694: Louis Desprez (_b._ 1799), a young sculptor, had won
the Prix de Rome in 1826. The bas-relief which he carved for Poussin's
tomb, copying the Arcadian Shepherds, is one of his finest works.--T.]

[Footnote 695: Paul Lemoyne (1784--_circa_ 1860), known as
Lemoyne-Saint-Paul, a French sculptor of some merit.--T.]

[Footnote 696: The Baronne de Barante, was a daughter of General César
Ange de Houdetot, grand-daughter of Madame de Houdetot, Rousseau's
friend, and married to Aimable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, Baron de
Barante, author of the _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne._--B.]

[Footnote 697: Chateaubriand's tragedy of _Moïse_ was first published
in his Complete Works (1826-1831), and has never been performed.--T.]

[Footnote 698: The costly monument to Nicolas Poussin, in the Church
of San Lorenzo-in-Lucina, was erected entirely at Chateaubriand's
expense and was not fully completed until 1831, when Chateaubriand had
again renounced all titles and emoluments and was once more penniless.
It took him four years, from 1831 to 1834, to clear his debt to the
artist, who was not much richer than himself.--B.]

[Footnote 699: Madame Salvage de Faverolles, daughter of M. Dumorey,
the French Consul at Cività-Vecchia, and a devoted friend to Madame
Récamier. Subsequently, she attached herself to the Duchesse de
Saint-Leu (Queen Hortense of Holland), with whom she lived till her
death, and acted as her testamentary executrix.--B.]

[Footnote 700: This incident, to which Chateaubriand has already
referred when speaking of Earl Bathurst, took place in March 1824. Miss
Bathurst while riding in the Tiber Woods with a numerous and brilliant
company of friends, was thrown into the river by a false step of her
horse and drowned. She was seventeen years of age and remarkably
pretty.--B.]

[Footnote 701: François Marie Pierre Roullet, Baron de La Bouillerie
(1764-1833), a peer of France and Steward of the Royal Household.--B.]

[Footnote 702: AUGUSTIN THIERRY, _Lettres sur l'histoire de France,
pour servir d'introduction à l'étude de cette histoire._ They had
appeared in the _Courrier français_, in 1820, and were first collected
and published in book form in 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 703:

"Such is the lot of man: his learning grows with age.
But what use to be sage,
When the end is So near?"--T.

]

[Footnote 704: The ordinances, or Orders in Council, of the 16th
of June 1828. The first declared that the establishments known as
secondary ecclesiastical schools and hitherto managed by persons
belonging to an unauthorized religious congregation should be subjected
to the control of the University of France. The second limited the
number of pupils who could be admitted into the seminaries to twenty
thousand and generally restricted the liberty of the seminaries,
especially in the matter of the conferring of degrees.--B.]

[Footnote 705: MATT. XXII. 17.--T.]

[Footnote 706: Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), the "Liberator of South
America." He became Dictator of Venezuela in 1817, united Venezuela
and New Granada into the Republic of Colombia and became its president
in 1819, added Ecuador to Colombia in 1822, was made Dictator of Peru
in 1823 and Protector of the new Republic of Bolivia in 1825. Peru
declared against him, in 1826, and Bolivia soon followed; and, although
he remained President of the three countries forming Colombia until his
death, the republic created by him fell to pieces soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 707: Gottfried Wilhelm Baron von Leibnitz (1646-1716), the
universal genius, laboured first with Pellisson and Bossuet in an
endeavour to reunite the Catholic and Protestant religions; having
failed in this enterprise, he set himself to reconcile at least the
several Protestant sects, but met with as little success. Leibnitz
prompted the foundation and was made Perpetual President of the Berlin
Academy.--T.]

[Footnote 708: Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V. (1521-1590), elected Pope
in 1585, fixed the number of cardinals at seventy and reorganized the
whole public administration of the Papal States.--T.]

[Footnote 709: Shortly after the date of this letter, M. de La
Ferronnays, who was ill, started for Italy and left the Foreign Office
_ad interim_ in charge of M. Portalis.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 710: M. Du Viviers was one of the attachés to the Embassy.
He took with him to Paris the letter to Madame Récamier and also the
report of Chateaubriand's conversation with the Pope--B.]

[Footnote 711: Pierre Chauvin, the French landscape painter, lived in
Rome from 1809 to 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 712: Cavaliere Filippo Aureliano Visconti (1754-1831),
President of the Roman Academy of Arts.--B.]

[Footnote 713: General Armand Charles Comte Guilleminot (1774-1840)
served under Dumouriez and Pichegru, later under Moreau, became
a general in 1808, and a general of division in 1813. Under the
Restoration, he became director-general of the military depots (1816)
and, in 1823, drew up the plan of campaign of the Spanish War and
accompanied the Duc d'Angoulême as chief of staff. At the end of the
war, he was created a peer of France and, in 1824, sent as ambassador
to Constantinople, where he remained till 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 714: Madame Lenormant.--_Author's Note._

An expedition to the Morea from the point of view of science and art
had been organized by the French Government. M. Charles Lenormant was
to take part in it, and his wife, Madame Récamier's niece and adopted
daughter, was proposing to accompany him.--B.]

[Footnote 715: Napoléon Auguste Comte, later Duc de Montebello
(1801-1874), son of Marshal Lannes. He had been created a peer of
France in 1827, but did not take his seat in the Upper House until
after the Revolution of July. In 1836, he became French Ambassador to
Switzerland and, in 1838, Ambassador to Naples. He was subsequently
Minister of Marine (1847-1848), a senator (1864) and Ambassador to St.
Petersburg (1858-1866).--B.]

[Footnote 716: This again refers to the ordinances of the 16th of June
1828.--B.]

[Footnote 717: At the opening of the Chambers, 27 January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 718: I was mistaken.--_Author's Note_ (1837).]

[Footnote 719: The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre, who was on bad
terms with the King's Government. He had protested loudly against the
ordinance of the 16th of June 1828, touching the minor seminaries,
concluding his letter to Monseigneur Feutrier, the Minister of Public
Worship, with these words:

"My lord, the motto of my family, which it received from
Calixtus II., in 1120, is: _Etiamsi omnes, ego non._ It is
also that of my conscience.

"I have the honour to be, with the respectful consideration
due to the King's minister,

"† A. J. CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF TOULOUSE."

In consequence of this letter, the King ordered the prelate to be
prohibited from appearing at Court.]

END OF VOL. IV.

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