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Title: The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. Volume 6 (of 6) - Mémoires d'outre-tombe
Author: Chateaubriand, François René, Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander
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. VI
"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY FREEMANTLE
AND CO. AT 217 PICCADILLY MDCCCCII
[Illustration: Chateaubriand's tomb.]
CONTENTS
VOLUME VI
BOOK V 1-40
Journal from Carlsbad to Paris--Cynthia--Eger--Wallenstein--Weissenstadt
--Berneck--Memories--Bayreuth--Voltaire--Hollfeld--The
church--The little girl with the basket--The inn-keeper and his
maid-servant--Bamberg--The female hunchback--Würzburg: its canons--A
drunkard--The swallow--The inn at Wiesenbach--A German and his wife--My
age and appearance--Heidelberg--Pilgrims--Ruins--Mannheim--The
Rhine—-The Palatinate--Aristocratic and plebeian armies--Convent
and castle--A lonely inn--Kaiserslautern--Saarbrück--Metz--Charles
X.'s Council in France--Ideas on Henry V.--My letter to Madame la
Dauphine--Letters from Madame la Duchesse de Berry
BOOK VI 41-76
Journal from Paris to Venice--The Jura--The Alps--Milan--Verona--The
roll-call of the dead--The Brenta--Incidental remarks--Venice--Venetian
architecture--Antonio--The Abbé Betio and M. Gamba--The rooms in the
Palace of the Doges--Prisons--Silvio Pellico's prison--The Frari--The
Academy of Fine Arts--Titian's _Assumption_--The metopes of the
Parthenon--Original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and
Raphael--The Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo--The Arsenal--Henry
IV.--A frigate leaving for America--The Cemetery of San Cristoforo--San
Michele di Murano--Murano--The woman and the child--Gondoliers--Bretons
and Venetians--Breakfast on the Riva degli Schiavoni--The tomb of
Mesdames at Trieste--Rousseau and Byron--Great geniuses inspired by
Venice--Old and new courtezans--Rousseau and Byron compared
BOOK VII 77-118
Arrival of Madame de Bauffremont in Venice--Catajo--The Duke of
Modena--Petrarch's Tomb at Arqua--The land of poets--Tasso--Arrival
of Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Mademoiselle Lebeschu--Count
Lucchesi-Palli--Discussion--Dinner--Bugeaud the gaoler--Madame de
Saint-Priest, M. de Saint-Priest--Madame de Podenas--Our band--I
refuse to go to Prague--I yield at a word--Padua--Tombs--Zanze's
manuscript--Unexpected news--The Governor of the Lombardo-Venetian
Kingdom--Letters from Madame to Charles X. and Henry V.--M. de
Montbel--My note to the Governor--I set out for Prague
BOOK VIII 119-145
Journal from Padua to Prague, from the 20th to the 26th of
September 1833--Conegliano--The translator of the _Dernier
Abencerrage_--Udine--Countess Samoyloff--M. de La Ferronays--A
priest--Carinthia--The Drave--A peasant lad--Forges--Breakfast
at the hamlet of St. Michael--The neck of the Tauern--A
cemetery--Atala: how changed--A sunrise--Salzburg--A military
review--Happiness of the peasants--Woknabrück--Reminiscences of
Plancoët--Night--German and Italian towns contrasted--Linx--The
Danube--Waldmünchen--Woods--Recollections of Combourg
and Lucile--Travellers--Prague--Madame de Gontaut--The
young Frenchmen--Madame la Dauphine--An excursion to
Butschirad--Butschirad--Charles X. asleep--Henry V.--Reception
of the young men--The ladder and the peasant-woman--Dinner at
Butschirad--Madame de Narbonne--Henry V.--A rubber--Charles X.--My
incredulity touching the declaration of majority--The newspapers--Scene
of the young men--Prague--I leave for France--I pass by Butschirad
at night--A meeting at Schlau--Carlsbad empty--Hollfeld--Bamberg--My
different St. Francis' Days--Trials of religion--France
BOOK IX 146-198
General politics of the moment--Louis-Philippe--M. Thiers--M. de La
Fayette--Armand Carrel--Of some women: the lady from Louisiana--Madame
Tastu--Madame Sand--M. de Talleyrand--Death of Charles X.
BOOK X 199-225
Conclusion--Historical antecedents from the Regency to 1793--The
Past--The old European order expiring--Inequality of fortunes--Danger
of the expansion of intellectual nature and material nature--The
downfall of the monarchies--The decline of society and the progress of
the individual--The future--The difficulty of understanding it--The
Christian idea is the future of the world--Recapitulation of my
life--Summary of the changes that have happened on the globe during my
life--End of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_
APPENDICES
I. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE OF THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY 229-235
II. UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE _MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE_ 236-247
III. THE LAST YEARS OF CHATEAUBRIAND 248-264
IV. THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE 265-266
INDEX 269-332
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. VI
CHATEAUBRIAND'S TOMB
THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY
THE DUC AND DUCHESSE D'ANGOULÊME
LOUIS PHILIPPE
ADOLPHE THIERS
THE VICOMTESSE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
THE
MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
VOLUME VI[1]
BOOK V
Journal from Carlsbad to
Paris--Cynthia--Eger--Wallenstein--Weisaenstadt--Berneck--Memories
--Bayreuth--Voltaire--Hollfeld--The church--The little girl with
the basket--The inn-keeper and his maid-servant--Bamberg--The
female hunchback--Würzburg: its canons--A drunkard--The
swallow--The inn at Wiesenbach--A German and his wife--My age and
appearance--Heidelberg--Pilgrims--Ruins--Mannheim--The Rhine--The
Palatinate--Aristocratic and plebeian armies--Convent and castle--A
lonely inn--Kaiserslautern--Saarbrück--Metz--Charles X.'s Council in
France--Ideas on Henry V.--My letter to Madame la Dauphine--Letters
from Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
1 _June_ 1833, _evening._
The journey from Carlsbad to Elbogen, along the Eger, is pleasant. The
castle of this little town is of the twelfth century and keeps sentry
on a rock, at the entrance to the gorge of a valley. The foot of the
rock, covered with trees, is contained within a bend of the Eger: hence
the name of the town and the castle, Elbogen, the Elbow.
The donjon was red with the last rays of the sun when I saw it from the
high-road. Above the mountains and woods hung the twisted column of
smoke of a foundry.
I started at half-past nine from the Zwoda stage. I followed the road
along which Vauvenargues passed in the retreat from Prague, the young
man to whom Voltaire, in the _Éloge funèbre des officiers morts en
1741_, addresses these words:
"Thou art no more, O sweet hope of my remaining days;
I have always beheld in thee the most unfortunate of men
and the most tranquil."
From inside my calash, I watched the stars rise.
Be not afraid, Cynthia,[2] it is but the whispering of the reeds bent
by our passage through their mobile forest. I have a dagger for jealous
men and blood for thee. Let not this tomb cause thee any alarm; it is
that of a woman once loved like thyself: Cecilia Metella lay here.
How wonderful is this night in the Roman Campagna! The moon rises
behind the Sabine Hill to contemplate the sea; she causes to stand
forth from the diaphanous darkness the ashen-blue summits of Albano,
the more distant, less deeply-graven lines of Soracte. The long canal
of the old aqueducts lets fall a few globules of its waters through the
mosses, columbines, gilliflowers, and joins the mountains to the city
walls. Planted one above the other, the aerial porticoes, cutting into
the sky, turn in mid-air the torrent of the ages and the course of the
brooks. The legislatrix of the world, Rome, seated on the stone of her
sepulchre, with her robe of centuries, projects the irregular outline
of her tall figure into the milky solitude.
Let us sit down: this pine-tree, like the goat-herd of the Abruzzi,
unfolds its parasol among ruins. The moon showers her snowy light upon
the Gothic crown of the tower of Metella's tomb and on the festoons of
marble that link the horns of the bucrania: a graceful pomp inviting us
to enjoy life, which speeds so soon.
Hark! The nymph Egeria is singing beside her fountain; the nightingale
warbles in the vine of the Hypogeum of the Scipios; the languid Syrian
breeze indolently wafts to us the fragrance of the wild tuberoses. The
palm-tree of the abandoned villa waves half-drowned in the amethyst and
azure of the Phosbean light. But thou, made pale by the reflections of
Diana's purity, thou, O Cynthia, art a thousand times more graceful
than that palm-tree. The shades of Delia, Lalage, Lydia, Lesbia,
resting on broken cornices, stammer mysterious words around thee. Thy
glances cross those of the stars and mingle with their rays.
[Sidenote: To Cynthia.]
But, Cynthia, nothing is real except the happiness which thou canst
enjoy. Those constellations which shine so brightly on thy head
harmonize with thy bliss only through the illusions of a beguiling
perspective. O young and fair Italian, time is ending! On those flowery
carpets thy companions have already passed.
A mist unfolds itself, rises and veils the eye of the night with a
silvery retina; the pelican cries and returns to the strand; the
woodcock alights in the horse-tails of the diamond-studded springs;
the bell resounds under the dome of St. Peter's; the nocturnal
plain-chant, the voice of the middle-ages, saddens the lonely monastery
of Santa-Croce; the monk chants Lauds upon his knees, on the calcined
columns of San Paolo; vestals prostrate themselves on the icy slab that
closes their crypts; the _pifferaro_ pipes his midnight lament before
the solitary Madonna, at the condemned gate of a catacomb. 'Tis the
hour of melancholy; religion awakens and love falls asleep!
Cynthia, thy voice is weakening: the refrain which the Neapolitan
fisherman taught thee in his swift-sailing bark, or the Venetian
oarsman in his gondola, dies away on thy lips. Yield to the exhaustion
of thy sleep; I will watch over thy repose. The darkness with which thy
lids cover thy eyes vies in suavity with that which drowsy, perfumed
Italy pours over thy brow. When the neighing of our horses is heard in
the Campagna, when the morning-star proclaims the dawn, the herd of
Frascati will come down with his goats and I shall not cease to soothe
thee with my whispered lullaby:
"A bundle of jasmin and narcissus, an alabaster Hebe but lately
emerging from the hollow way of an excavation, or fallen from the
frontal of a temple, lies on this bed of anemones: no, Muse, you
err. The jasmin, the alabaster Hebe is a Roman sorceress, born
sixteen months ago of May and the half of a spring, to the sound of
the lyre, at the rise of dawn, in a field of roses of Pæstum.
"Winds from the orange-trees of Palermo that blow over Circe's
isle; breezes that pass to Tasso's tomb, that caress the nymphs
and Cupids of the Farnese; you that play in the Vatican among
Raphael's Virgins, among the statues of the Muses; you that dip
your wings in the cascades of Tivoli; genii of the arts that live
on master-pieces and flutter with the memories, come: you alone do
I permit to inspire Cynthia's sleep.
"And you, majestic daughters of Pythagoras, Fates in your robes
of flax, inevitable sisters seated at the axle of the spheres,
turn the thread of Cynthia's destiny over golden spindles; make it
fall from your fingers and rise again to your hands with ineffable
harmony; immortal spinsters, open the gate of ivory to those dreams
which lie on a woman's breast without oppressing it! I will sing
thee, O canephor of the Roman solemnities, young Charite fed on
ambrosia in Venus' lap, smile sent from the East to glide over my
life, violet forgotten in Horace' garden...."
"Mein Herr, ten kreutzers vor de durnbike!"
A plague upon you with your "crutches!" I had changed my sky! I was
just in the right mood! The Muse will not return! That accursed Eger,
to which we are coming, is the cause of my unhappiness.
The nights are fatal at Eger. Schiller shows us Wallenstein, betrayed
by his accomplices, going to the window of a room in the fortress of
Eger:
Am Himmel ist geschäftige Bewegung,
Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht
Der Wolken Zug, die Mondeszichel wankt,
Und durch die Nacht zucht ungewisse Helle[3].
Wallenstein, on the point of being assassinated, expresses himself in
touching terms on the death of Max Piccolomini[4], beloved by Thekla[5]:
Die Blume ist hinweg aus meinem Leben
. . . . . . .
Denn er stand neben mir, wie meine Jugend,
Er machte mir das Wirkliche zum Traum[6].
Wallenstein retires to his place of rest:
Sieh, es ist Nacht geworden; auf dem Schloss
Ist's auch schon stille. Leucine, Kämmerling!
. . . . . . .
Ich denke einen langen Schlaf zu thun;
Denn dieser letzten Tage Qual war gross.
Sorgt, dass sie nicht zu zeitig mir erwecken[7].
The dagger of the murderers snatches Wallenstein from his dreams of
ambition, even as the voice of the turnpike-man put an end to my
dream of love. Both Schiller and Benjamin Constant, who gave proof of
a new talent by imitating the German tragic poet, have gone to join
Wallenstein, while I, at the gates of Eger, recall their treble fame.
[Sidenote: Bavaria.]
2 _June_ 1833.
I passed through Eger and, on Saturday the 1st of June, at day-break,
entered Bavaria: a tall red-haired girl, bare-foot and bare-headed,
came to open the turnpike to me, like Austria in person. The cold
lasted: the grass in the moats was covered with a white hoar-frost; wet
foxes came out of the oat-fields; grey, zig-zag, wide-spreading clouds
hung across in the sky like eagles' wings.
I arrived at Weissenstadt at nine o'clock in the morning; at the same
moment, a sort of gig was carrying away a young woman driving without a
hat; she looked very much like what she probably was: joy, love's short
fortune, then the hospital and the common grave. Strolling pleasure,
may Heaven not be too severe on your boards! There are so many actors
worse than yourself in this world!
Before entering the village, I passed through "_wastes_:" this word
was at the point of my pencil; it belonged to our old Frankish tongue:
it describes the aspect of a desolate country better than the word
"_lande_," which means earth. I still know the song which they used to
sing in the evening when crossing the waste-lands:
C'est le chevalier des Landes:
Malheureux chevalier!
Quand il fut dans la lande,
A ouï les sings sonner[8].
After Weissenstadt comes Berneck. On leaving Berneck, the road is lined
with poplar-trees, whose winding avenue filled me with an indescribable
sentiment of mingled pleasure and sadness. On ransacking my memory,
I found that they resembled the poplars with which the high-road was
formerly laid out at the entrance to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne on the Paris
side. Madame de Beaumont is no more; M. Joubert is no more; the poplars
are felled and, after the fourth fall of the Monarchy, I am passing at
the feet of the poplars at Berneck:
"Give me," says St. Augustine, "a man who loves, and he will
understand what I say."
Youth laughs at those disappointments; it is charming, happy: in vain
do you tell it that the time will come when it too will know a similar
bitterness; it thrusts you aside with its light wing and flies away in
search of pleasures: it is right, if it dies with them.
Here is Bayreuth, a reminiscence of another sort. This town stands in
the middle of a hollow plain of crops mixed with meadow-land: it has
wide streets, low houses, a weak population. In the time of Voltaire
and Frederic II., the Margravine of Bayreuth was famous; her death
inspired the bard of Ferney with the only ode in which he displayed any
lyrical talent:
Tu ne chanteras plus, solitaire Sylvandre,
Dans ce palais des arts, où les sons de ta voix
Contre les préjugés osaient se faire entendre,
Et de l'humanité faisaient parler les droits[9].
The poet here praises himself justly, were it not that there was no
one less solitary in the world than Voltaire-Sylvander. The poet adds,
addressing the Margravine:
Des tranquilles hauteurs de la philosophie,
Ta pitié contemplait, avec des yeux sereins,
Les fantômes changeants du songes de la vie,
Tant de rêves détruits, tant de projets si vains[10].
[Sidenote: Bayreuth.]
From the height of a palace, it is easy to look down with calm eyes
upon the poor devils who pass along the street; but those lines are
none the less mightily true.... Who could feel them better than myself?
I have seen so many phantoms defile through the dream of life! At
this very moment, have I not been looking on the three royal larvæ
in the Castle in Prague and on the daughter of Marie-Antoinette at
Carlsbad? In 1733, just a century ago, what was it occupied men's
minds? Had they the least idea of what is now? When Frederic was
married, in 1733, under the rough tutelage of his father, had he, in
_Mathew Laensberg_[11], seen M. de Tournon[12] Intendant of Bayreuth
and leaving his intendance for the "Prefectship" of Rome? In 1933, the
traveller passing through Franconia will ask of my shade if I could
have guessed the facts of which he will be a witness.
While I was breakfasting, I read some lessons which a German lady,
young and pretty, of course, was writing to a master's dictation:
"_Celui_ qu'il _est content, est riche. Vous et_ je _nous avons peu
d'argent; mais nous sommes_ content. _Nous sommes_ ainci _à mon
avis plus riches que tel qui a_ un _tonne d'or, et il est...._"
That is true, mademoiselle, you and _je_ have little money; you are
satisfied, as it seems, and you laugh at a ton of gold; but, if, by
chance, I were not satisfied, you must agree that, for me, a ton of
gold might be rather pleasant.
On leaving Bayreuth, one goes up. Slender pruned firs represented to
me the pillars of the mosque at Cairo or the Cathedral of Cordova,
but shrunk and blackened, like a landscape reproduced in the _camera
obscura._ The road runs on from hill to hill and valley to valley: the
hills wide, with a tuft of wood on their brows; the valleys narrow and
green, but badly watered. At the lowest point of these valleys, one
sees a hamlet marked by the _campanile_ of a little church. The whole
of Christian civilization was formed in this way: the missionary,
become a parish-priest, stopped; the Barbarians cantoned themselves
around him, like flocks gathering round the shepherd. In former days,
those remote habitations would have made me dream more than one kind of
dream; to-day, I dream not at all and am nowhere at ease.
Baptiste, suffering from over-fatigue, compelled me to stop at
Hollfeld. While supper was being made ready, I climbed the rock which
overlooks a part of the village. Upon that rock rises a square belfry;
swifts screamed as they swept round the roof and fronts of the turret.
That scene consisting of a few birds and an old tower had not repeated
itself since the days of my childhood at Combourg; my heart was quite
oppressed by it. I went down to the church on a hanging ground towards
the west; it was surrounded by its grave-yard abandoned by the new
deceased. The old dead only marked out their furrows there: a proof
that they had tilled their field. The setting sun, pale and drowned,
on the horizon, in a fir-plantation, lit up the lonely refuge where no
other man than I stood erect. When shall I be recumbent in my turn? We
are beings of nothingness and darkness; our impotency and our potency
are strongly characterized: we cannot, at will, procure for ourselves
either light or life; but nature, by giving us eye-lids and a hand, has
put night and death at our disposal.
Entering the church, whose door was half-open, I knelt down with the
intention of saying an _Our Father_ and _Hail Mary_ for the repose of
my mother's soul: a servitude of immortality laid upon Christian souls
in their mutual affection. Suddenly I thought I heard the shutter of a
confessional open; I fancied that Death, instead of a priest, was about
to appear at the penance grating. At that very moment, the bell-ringer
came to lock the door of the church: I had only time to leave.
[Sidenote: The little basket-carrier.]
Returning to the inn, I met a little basket-carrier: she had bare legs
and feet; her skirt was short, her bodice torn; she walked stooping and
with her arms crossed. Together we climbed a steep road; she turned her
sun-burnt face a little to my side; her pretty and dishevelled head
was glued against her basket. Her eyes were black; her mouth was half
open to facilitate her breathing; one saw that, under her burdened
shoulders, her young breast had as yet felt no other weight than the
spoils of the orchards. She tempted one to talk to her of roses:
"Ρόδα μ'εἴ ρηχας[13]."
I applied myself to casting the adolescent vintager's horoscope: will
she grow old at the wine-press, unknown and happy as the mother of a
family? Will she be carried off to the camps by a corporal? Will she
fall a prey to some Don Juan? The abducted village-girl loves her
ravisher as much with astonishment as with passion: he transports
her to a marble palace on the Straits of Messina, under a palm-tree
beside a spring, opposite the sea displaying its azure billows and Etna
belching flames.
I had reached this point in my story, when my companion, turning to
the left in a wide open space, went towards some lonely dwellings.
As she was about to disappear, she stopped, cast a last look at the
stranger, and then, bowing her head to pass, with her basket, under a
low door-way, entered a cottage, like a little shy cat gliding into a
barn among the sheaves. Let us go on to find in her prison Her Royal
Highness Madame la Duchesse de Berry:
Je la suivis, mais je pleurai
De ne pouvoir plus suivre qu'elle[14].
My host at Hollfeld is a curious man: he and his maid-servant are
inn-keepers with extreme reluctance; they abhor travellers. When they
espy a carriage from afar, they go to hide themselves, cursing those
vagabonds who have nothing to do but scour the high-roads, those idle
persons who disturb an honest publican and prevent him from drinking
the wine which he is obliged to sell to them. The old servant sees
that her master is being ruined, but she is waiting for a stroke of
Providence in his favour; like Sancho, she will say:
"Sir, accept this fine Kingdom of Micomicon which falls from heaven
into your hand."
Once the first movement of ill-humour is past, the couple, in the
interval between two bouts, put a good face on the matter. The
chamber-maid murders a trifle of French, squints for two and has an air
of saying to you:
"I have seen finer sparks than you in Napoleon's armies!"
She smelt of tobacco and brandy, like glory by the camp-fire; she ogled
me with a provoking and wicked glance: how sweet it is to be loved at
the very moment when one had given up all hopes of it! But, Javotte,
you come too late for my "broken and mortified temptations," as a
Frenchman of old said; my sentence is passed:
"Harmonious veteran, take thy rest," M. Lerminier[15] has said to me.
You see, fair and friendly stranger, I am forbidden to listen to your
song:
Vivandière du regiment,
_Javotte_ l'on me nomme,
Je vends, je donne, et bois gaîment
Mon vin et mon rogomme.
J'ai le pied leste et l'œil mutin,
Tin tin, tin tin, tin tin, tin tin,
R'lin lin tin[16].
There you have another reason why I withstand your seductions; you are
frivolous; you would betray me. Fly away then, Dame Javotte of Bavaria,
like your predecessor, Madame Isabeau[17].
2 _June_ 1833.
I have left Hollfeld, I am passing through Bamberg at night. All is
sleeping: I see only a tiny light whose feeble glimmer comes from the
back of a room to grow wan at a window. What is waking here: pleasure
or sorrow, love or death?
At Bamberg, in 1815, Berthier, Prince of Neufchâtel, fell from a
balcony into the street[18]: his master was about to fall from a
greater height.
_Sunday_ 2 _June._
At Dettelbach, reappearance of the vines. Four growths mark the limit
of four natures and four climates: the birch, the vine, the olive and
the palm, always going towards the sun.
[Sidenote: The Hunchback.]
After Dettelbach, two stages to Würzburg, and a female hunchback seated
behind my carriage; it was Terence's Andria: _Inopia.... egregia
forma.... ætate integra._[19] The postillion wanted to make her get
down; I objected, for two reasons: first, because I should have been
afraid lest that fairy should have thrown a spell over me; secondly,
because, having read in a biography of myself that I am a hunchback,
all female hunchbacks are my sisters. Who can satisfy himself that
he is not hunchbacked? Who will ever tell you that you are? If you
look at yourself in the glass, you cannot say at all; do we ever see
ourselves as we are? You will find a turn in your figure that suits you
to perfection. All hunchbacks are proud and happy; the advantages of
the hump are hallowed in song. At the entrance to a lane, my hunchback,
in her ragged finery, stepped majestically to the ground: carrying her
burden, like all mortals, Serpentina plunged into a corn-field and
disappeared among spikes taller than herself.
At mid-day, on the 2nd of June, I had reached the top of a hill from
which one descried Würzburg: the citadel on a height, the town below,
with its palace, its steeples and its turrets. The palace, although
thick-set, would be handsome even in Florence; in case of rain, the
Prince could give shelter to all his subjects in his mansion without
giving up his own apartments.
The Bishop of Würzburg was formerly the Sovereign Bishop: the
nomination was in the gift of the canons of the Chapter. After his
election, he passed, stripped to the waist, between his colleagues
drawn up in two rows, who scourged him. It was hoped that the princes,
offended at this manner of consecrating a royal back, would refrain
from presenting themselves as candidates. To-day this would be of no
avail: there is not a descendant of Charlemagne but would consent to be
whipped for three days on end to obtain the crown of Yvetot.
I have seen the Emperor of Austria's brother Duke of Würzburg[20]; he
used to sing very prettily at Fontainebleau, in the Galerie de François
Ier, at the concerts of the Empress Joséphine.
They kept Schwartz two hours at the passport-office. Left with my
unharnessed carriage in front of a church, I went in: I prayed with
the Christian crowd which represents the old society in the midst of
the new. A procession went out and marched round the church: why am I
not a monk on the walls of Rome? The times to which I belong would be
realized in me.
When the first seeds of religion budded in my soul, I opened out like
a virgin soil which, cleared of its brambles, bears its first harvest.
Came a dry and icy wind, and the soil was parched. The sky took pity
on it; it gave it its tepid dews; then the wind blew again. This
alternation of faith and doubt long made my life a mixture of despair
and unspeakable delights. O my good, sainted mother, pray Jesus Christ
for me: your son needs redeeming more than other men!
I left Würzburg at four o'clock and took the Mannheim Road. I entered
the Grand-duchy of Baden; I found a village in a merry mood; a drunkard
gave me his hand, shouting:
"Long live the Emperor!"
Everything that has happened since the fall of Napoleon is null and
void in Germany. The men who rose to snatch their national independence
from Bonaparte's ambition dream only of him, so greatly did he stir the
imagination of the nations, from the Bedouins in their tents to the
Teutons in their huts.
As I went towards France, the children became noisier in the hamlets,
the postillions drove faster, life sprang up once more.
[Sidenote: The Swallow.]
At Bischoffsheim, where I dined, a fair onlooker appeared at my state
banquet: a swallow, a real Procne, with a reddish breast, came to perch
at my open window, on the iron bar from which swung the sign of the
Golden Sun; then it warbled most sweetly, looking at me as though it
knew me and without showing the least alarm. I have never complained of
being awakened by the daughter of Pandion; I have never, like Anacreon,
called her a "chatterer;" I have always, on the contrary, hailed her
return with the song of the children of the isle of Rhodes:
"She comes, the swallow comes, bringing good seasons and a joyful
time! Open the window, do not despise the swallow[21]!"
"François," said my fellow-guest at Bischoffsheim, "my
great-great-grandmother used to live at Combourg, under the rafters
of the roof of your turret; you used to keep her company every year,
in autumn, in the reeds in the pond, when you went dreaming, of an
evening, with your sylph. She landed on your native rock, on the very
day when you embarked for America, and she followed your sail for some
time. My grandmother built her nest in Charlotte's window; eight years
after, she arrived at Jaffa with you: you have mentioned this in your
_Itinéraire?_[22] My mother, while twittering to the dawn, fell one day
into your room at the Foreign Office[23]; you opened the window for her.
My mother has had many children: I who am speaking to you am of her
last nest; I have met you before on the old Tivoli Road in the Roman
Campagna: do you remember? My feathers were so black and so glossy! You
looked at me sadly. Would you like us to fly away together?"
"Alas, my dear swallow, who know my story so well, you are extremely
kind; but I am a poor moulting bird, and my feathers will never come
back; I cannot, therefore, fly away with you. And you could not carry
me: I am too heavy with sorrows and years. And then, where should we
go? Spring and beautiful climates are no longer of my season. For you,
the air and love; for me, the ground and loneliness. You are going
away: may the dew cool your wings! May a hospitable yard offer to your
tired flight, when you are crossing the Ionian Sea! May a peaceful
October save you from shipwreck! Greet the olive-trees of Athens and
the palm-trees of Rosetta for me. If I am no more when the flowers
bring you back, I invite you to my funeral banquet: come at sunset to
snap up the gnats on the grass of my grave; like you, I love liberty
and I have lived on little[24]."
3 _and_ 4 _June_ 1833.
I set out myself by land, a few moments after the swallow had set sail.
The night was overcast; the moon hovered, weakened and wasted, among
the clouds; my eyes, half-asleep, closed as they looked at it; I felt
as though I were expiring in the mysterious light which illumines the
shadows: "I felt," says Manzoni, "I know not what peaceful depression,
the fore-runner of the last rest."
I stopped at Wiesenbach: a solitary inn, a narrow, cultivated valley
between two wooded hills. A German from Brunswick, a traveller like
myself, hearing my name pronounced, came running up to me. He pressed
my hand, spoke to me of my works; his wife, he told me, was learning
to read French in the _Génie du Christianisme._ He did not cease to
express surprise at my "youth:"
"But," he added, "that is the fault of my judgment; I ought to think
you, from your last works, as young as you look."
[Sidenote: My age and appearance.]
My life has been mixed up with so many events that, in my readers'
heads, I have the ancientness of those events themselves. I often speak
of my grey head; this is calculated vanity on my part, so that people
may exclaim, when they see me:
"Ah, he is not so old!"
A man is at ease with white hair: he can boast of it; to glory in
having black hair would be in bad taste: a fine matter for triumph, to
be as your mother made you! But to be as time, misfortune and wisdom
have dressed you, that is fine! My little artifice has succeeded
sometimes. Quite recently a priest asked to see me; he stood dumb at
the sight of me; at last recovering his speech, he cried:
"Ah, monsieur, so you will be able to fight a long time yet for the
faith!"
One day, as I was passing through Lyons, a lady wrote to me; she begged
me to give her daughter a seat in my carriage and take her to Paris.
The proposal struck me as singular; but, after all, having verified the
signature, I found my unknown correspondent to be a highly respectable
lady and I replied politely. The mother introduced her daughter to me,
a divinity of sixteen. No sooner had the mother set eyes upon me than
she blushed scarlet; her confidence forsook her:
"Forgive me," she stammered; "I am none the less filled with esteem....
But you understand the proprieties.... I made a mistake.... I am so
greatly surprised."
I insisted, looking at my promised companion, who seemed amused at the
discussion; I was lavish with protestations that I would take every
imaginable care of that beautiful young person; the mother humbled
herself with excuses and courtesies. The two ladies departed. I was
proud of having frightened them so much. For some hours I thought
myself made young again by the Dawn. The lady had fancied that the
author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ was a venerable Abbé de
Chateaubriand, a tall, dry, simple old man, constantly taking snuff
out of a huge tin snuff-box, who might very well be trusted to take an
innocent school-girl to the Sacred Heart.
They used to tell in Vienna, two or three lustres ago, that I lived
all alone in a certain valley called the Vallée-aux-Loups. My house
was built on an island; when people wanted to see me, they had to blow
a horn on the opposite bank of the river: a river at Châtenay! I then
looked out through a hole: if the company pleased me, a thing that
hardly ever happened, I came myself to fetch them in a little boat;
if not, not. In the evening, I pulled my boat on shore and nobody
was allowed to land on my island. In point of fact, I ought to have
lived in this way; this Viennese story has always charmed me: M. de
Metternich surely did not invent it; he is not sufficiently my friend
for that.
I do not know what the German traveller will have told his wife
about me, nor if he went out of his way to undeceive her as to my
decrepitude. I fear that I possess the drawbacks of black hair and
white hair both and that I am neither young enough nor staid enough.
For the rest, I was hardly in the mood for coquetry at Wiesenbach; a
melancholy wind blew under the doors and through the passages of the
inn: when the breeze blows, I am in love with nothing else.
From Wiesenbach to Heidelberg, one follows the course of the Necker,
cased by hills which carry forests on a bank of sand and red sulphate.
How many rivers I have seen flow! I met pilgrims from Walthüren:
they formed two parallel lines on either side of the high-road; the
carriages passed in the middle. The women walked bare-foot, beads in
hand, with a parcel of linen on their heads; the men bare-headed, also
carrying their beads in their hands. It was raining; in some places the
watery clouds crept along the sides of the hills. Boats loaded with
timber went down the river, others went up, under sail, or in tow. In
the broken places in the hills were hamlets standing among the fields,
in the midst of rich vegetable-gardens adorned with Bengal roses and
different flowering shrubs. Pilgrims, pray for my poor little King: he
is exiled, he is innocent; he is commencing his pilgrimage while you
are performing yours and I ending mine. If he is not to reign, it will
always be a certain glory to me to have fastened the wreck of so great
a fortune to my life-boat God alone sends the fair wind and opens the
harbour.
[Sidenote: Heidelberg.]
As one approaches Heidelberg, the bed of the Necker, strewn with rocks,
widens. One sees the wharf of the town and the town itself, which wears
a pleasant mien. The back-ground of the whole picture ends in a tall
earthly horizon: it seems to bar the stream.
A red-brick triumphal arch marks the entrance to Heidelberg. To the
left, on a hill, stand the ruins of a medieval castle. Apart from
their picturesque effect and some popular traditions, the remains of
the Gothic period interest only the nations whose work they are. Does
a Frenchman trouble his head about the lords Palatine, the princesses
Palatine, plump, white and blue-eyed though they may have been? One
forgets them for St. Geneviève of Brabant[25]. Those modern ruins have
nothing in common with modern nations, excepting their outward aspect
of Christianity and their feudal character.
It is different, leaving out the sun, with the monuments of Greece and
Italy; these belong to all nations: they commence their history; their
inscriptions are written in languages known to all civilized men. The
ruins even of renovated Italy possess a general interest, because they
are stamped with the seal of the arts and the arts come within the
public domain of society. A fresco by Domenichino[26] or Titian that
becomes obliterated, a palace by Michael Angelo or Palladio[27] that
crumbles throw the genius of all the centuries into mourning.
At Heidelberg, they show a tun of inordinate proportions, a drunkards'
Coliseum in ruins: at least no Christian has lost his life in that
amphitheatre of the Vespasians of the Rhine; his reason, yes: that is
no great loss.
At the outlet of Heidelberg, the hills to the right and left of the
Necker fall away, and one enters upon a plain. A winding embankment,
raised a few feet above the level of the corn-fields, is delineated
between two rows of cherry-trees harshly treated by the wind and of
walnut-trees "often by the wayfarers attacked[28]."
At the entrance to Mannheim, one drives through hop-vines, whose long,
dry props were as yet decorated to only one third of their height
by the climbing creeper. Julian the Apostate wrote a pretty epigram
against beer; the Abbé de La Bletterie[29] imitated it with some
elegance:
Tu n'es qu'un faux Bacchus ...
J'en atteste le véritable.
. . . . . . .
Que le Gaulois, pressé d'une soif éternelle
Au défaut de la grappe ait recours aux épis,
De Cérès qu'il vante le fils:
Vive le fils de Semèle[30].
A few orchards, some walks shaded by willow-trees of all sizes form a
verdant suburb to Mannheim. The houses in the town have often only one
storey above the ground-floor. The main street is wide and planted with
trees in the middle: one more down-fallen city. I do not like false
gold, and so I did not want any Mannheim gold; but I certainly have
"Toulouse gold[31]," to judge by the disasters of my life: yet who has
more than I respected the Temple of Apollo?
3 _and_ 4 _June_ 1833.
I crossed the Rhine at two o'clock in the afternoon. At the moment of
passing, a steam-boat came up stream. What would Cæsar have said if he
had met such a machine while he was building his bridge?
On the other side of the Rhine, opposite Mannheim, one finds Bavaria
again, as a result of the odious slashings and jobbings of the Treaties
of Paris, Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. Every one cut out his share with
scissors, without any regard for reason, humanity or justice, without
troubling about the slice of population that fell into a pair of royal
chops.
[Sidenote: The Palatinate.]
Driving through the Cisrhenan Palatinate, I reflected how this country
had once formed a department of France, how white Gaul was girt about
by the Rhine, the "blue sash" of Germany. Napoleon and the Republic
before him had realized the dream of several of our kings, above all
of Louis XIV. So long as we do not occupy our natural frontiers, there
will be war in Europe, because the interest of self-preservation drives
France to seize the boundaries necessary to her national independence.
Here we have planted trophies to claim back in due season.
The plain between the Rhine and the Monts Tonnerre looks sad; earth and
men seem to say that their fate is not settled, that they belong to
no people; they appear to be expecting new invasions, as it were new
river-floods. The Germans of Tacitus devastated great spaces on their
frontiers and left them empty between these and their enemies. Woe to
the border populations that till the battlefields on which the nations
are to meet!
As I approached ----, I saw a sad sight: a wood of young fir-trees,
five or six feet high, felled and bound into faggots, a forest mown
like grass. I have spoken of the cemetery of Lucerne, where the
children's burials throng on one side. I never felt more keenly the
need to end my wanderings, to die under the protection of a friendly
hand laid upon my heart to interrogate it, when they shall say:
"It has stopped beating."
From the edge of my tomb I would like to be able to cast back a glance
of satisfaction over my many years, just as a pontiff, on reaching the
sanctuary, blesses the long line of the priests who have served as his
retinue.
Louvois[32] burnt down the Palatinate; unfortunately it was Turenne's
hand that held the torch. The Revolution laid waste the same country,
the witness and victim by turns of our aristocratic and plebeian
struggles. It is enough to name the warriors to judge of the difference
of the times: on the one side, Condé, Turenne, Créqui[33], Luxembourg,
La Force[34], Villars[35]; on the other, Kellermann, Hoche, Pichegru,
Moreau. Let us deny none of our victories; military glories especially
have known only enemies of France and held only one opinion: on the
battle-field, honour and danger level all ranks. Our fathers called
the blood that flowed from a non-mortal wound "volatile blood:" a
phrase typical of the contempt for death natural to Frenchmen in every
century. Institutions can alter nothing in this national genius. The
soldiers who, after the death of Turenne[36], said, "Let the _Pie_
loose, we shall encamp where she stops," would have been quite as good
as Napoleon's grenadiers.
On the heights of Dunkheim, the first rampart of the Gauls on that
side, one discovers the seats of camps and military positions to-day
empty of soldiers: Burgundians, Franks, Goths, Huns, Suevi, so many
waves of the Barbarian deluge, have by turns assailed those heights.
Not far from Dunkheim, one sees the remains of a monastery. The monks
enclosed within that retreat had seen many armies passing round at
their feet; they had shown hospitality to many warriors; there some
crusader had ended his life, changed his helm for the frock; there were
passions which called for silence and rest before the last rest and the
last silence. Did they find what they sought? Those ruins will not tell.
After the remnants of the sanctuary of peace come the fragments of the
lair of war: the demolished bastions, mantlets, curtains, trunnions of
a fortress. Ramparts crumble even as cloisters. The castle was ambushed
in a rugged path to close it to the enemy: it did not keep time and
death from passing.
From Dunkheim to Frankenstein, the road pushes through a valley so
narrow that it will scarcely hold a carriage way; the trees descending
from two opposite slopes join and embrace in the ravine. I have
followed similar dales between Messenia and Arcadia, but for the good
road: Pan knew nothing about civil engineering. Flowering broom and a
jay carried me back to the recollection of Brittany; I remember the
pleasure which the cry of that bird gave me in the mountains of Judea.
My memory is a panorama; there the most varied sites and skies, with
their scorching sun or their foggy horizon, come to paint themselves on
the same canvas.
The inn at Frankenstein is placed in a meadow in the mountains, watered
by a stream. The postmaster speaks French; his young sister, or his
wife, or his daughter is charming. He complains of being a Bavarian; he
busies himself with the cultivation of forests; to me he represented an
American planter.
At Kaiserslautern, where I arrived at night as at Bamberg, I passed
through the region of dreams: what did all those sleeping inhabitants
see in their slumbers? If I had time, I would tell the story of their
visions. Nothing would have reminded me of earth, if two quails had
not called to one another from cage to cage. In the fields in Germany,
from Prague to Mannheim, one meets only carrion crows, sparrows and
larks; but the towns are full of nightingales, warblers, thrushes,
quails: plaintive prisoners, male and female, who greet you at the
bars of their gaol when you pass. The windows are decked with pinks,
mignonette, roses, jasmine. The northern nations have the tastes of
another clime; they love the arts and music: the Germans came to fetch
the vine in Italy; their sons would gladly repeat the invasion to
conquer birds and flowers in the same spots.
[Sidenote: Prussia.]
The change in the post-boy's jacket told me, on Tuesday the 4th of
June, at Saarbrück, that I was entering Prussia. I saw a squadron
of hussars ride past under the window of my inn; they looked very
spirited: I was as spirited as they; I would cheerfully have helped
to give those gentry a drubbing, even though a lively feeling of
respect makes me attached to the Prussian Royal Family, even though the
outbursts of the Prussians in Paris were but reprisals for Napoleon's
brutality in Berlin; but, if history has the time to enter into the
cold justice which connects consequences with their origins, the man
who witnesses living facts is carried away by those facts, without
going back to the past to seek the causes from which they sprang and
which excuse them. My country has done me great harm; but how gladly I
would offer up my blood for her! Oh, what strong heads, what consummate
politicians, above all, what good Frenchmen were those negociators of
the Treaties of 1815!
A few hours yet, and my native soil will once more quiver beneath my
steps. What shall I hear? Since three weeks I have known nothing of
what my friends have been saying and doing. Three weeks! A long space
of time for man whom one moment carries away, for empires which three
days suffice to overthrow! And my prisoner of Blaye: what has become
of her? Shall I be able to convey to her the answer which she is
awaiting? If ever the person of an ambassador should be sacred, it is
mine; my diplomatic career was consecrated near the Head of the Church;
it has been completely sanctified near an unfortunate monarch: I have
negociated a new family compact among the children of the Bearnese; I
have carried and brought back its deeds from prison to exile and from
exile to prison.
4 _and_ 5 _June._
As I passed the border which separates the territory of Saarbrück from
that of Forbach, France did not show herself to me in a brilliant
manner: first, a cripple seated in a wooden bowl; then, another man
who crawled on his hands and knees, dragging his legs after him like
two crooked tails or two dead snakes; next, appeared, in a cart, two
swarthy, wrinkled old women, the van-guard of the women of France. It
was enough to make one go back again to the Prussian Army.
But presently I found a handsome young soldier walking with a young
girl; the soldier was pushing the young girl's wheel-barrow before him
and she was carrying the trooper's pipe and sword. Further on, another
young girl holding the tail of a plough and an aged ploughman goading
the oxen; further on, an old man begging for a blind child; further on,
a cross. In a hamlet, a dozen children's heads, at the window of an
unfinished house, looked like a group of angels in a glory. Here is a
tiny girl of five or six, sitting on the threshold of a cottage-door,
with bare head, fair hair, a dirty face, pulling a little grimace
because of a cold wind blowing; with her two white shoulders peeping
from a torn frock, her arms crossed over her knees drawn up close to
her chest, looking at what was going on around her with the curiosity
of a bird, Raphael would have sketched her; as for me, I felt inclined
to steal her from her mother.
[Sidenote: France.]
At the entrance to Forbach, a troop of learned dogs appeared: the two
biggest harnessed to the costume-wagon; five or six others of different
tails, noses, sizes and colours followed the baggage, each with its
piece of bread in its mouth. Two grave instructors, one carrying a
big drum, the other carrying nothing, led the band. Go, my friends,
go round the world as I have done, in order to learn to know the
nations. You have your place in the world just as much as I; you are
quite as good as the dogs of my kind. Give a paw to Diane, to Mirza,
to Pax, with your hat on your ear, your sword by your side, your tail
sticking out like a trumpet between the skirts of your coat: dance for
a bone, or for a kick, as we men do; but do not go making the mistake
of jumping for the King!
Reader, bear with these arabesques; the hand that traced them will
never do you any other harm: it is withered. Remember, when you see
them, that they are only the freakish scrolls drawn by a painter on the
vault of his tomb.
At the custom-house, an elderly junior clerk made a pretense at
examining my calash. I had got a five-franc piece ready; he saw it in
my hand, but dared not take it, because of his superiors, who were
watching him. He took off his cap, on the pretext of searching me
better, laid it on the seat in front of me and said, in an under-tone:
"In my cap, please."
Oh, what a great phrase! It comprises the history of the human race;
how often have liberty, loyalty, friendship, devotion, love said:
"In my cap, please!"
I shall give that phrase to Béranger for the chorus of a song.
I was struck, on entering Metz, by something which I had not noticed
in 1821; the modern fortifications surround the Gothic fortifications:
Guise and Vauban[37] are two names that go well together.
Our years and our memories lie in regular and parallel strata at
different depths of our life, deposited by the waves of time that pass
over us in succession. It was from Metz, in 1792, that the column
issued which was engaged under the walls of Thionville with our little
corps of Emigrants. I am returning from my pilgrimage to the retreat of
the banished Prince whom I served in his first exile. I then gave him
a little of my blood; I have just been weeping with him: at my age, we
have little left but tears.
In 1821, M. de Tocqueville[38], my brother's brother-in-law, was
Prefect of the Moselle. The trees, no thicker than laths, which M. de
Tocqueville planted, in 1820, at the gates of Metz now give shade.
There is a scale to measure our days by; but man is not like wine,
he does not improve when reckoned by vintages. The ancients used to
steep roses in their Falernian; when an amphora of a hundred-year-old
consulate was uncorked, it perfumed the banquet. The clearest
intelligence might be mingled with old years, and no one would be
tempted to get tipsy with it.
I had not been a quarter of an hour in the inn at Metz, when behold
Baptiste coming in a great state of excitement: mysteriously he drew
from his pocket a white paper parcel, containing a seal; M. le Duc de
Bordeaux and Mademoiselle had charged him with that seal, telling him
to give it me "only on French soil." They had been very anxious the
whole night before my departure, fearing lest the jeweller would not
have time to finish the work.
The seal has three faces: on one is engraved an anchor; on the second,
the two words which Henry said to me at our first interview: "Yes,
always!" on the third, the date of my arrival in Prague. The brother
and sister begged me to wear the seal "for love of them." The mystery
of this present, the order given by the two exiled children to hand me
the token of their memory "only on French soil" filled my eyes with
tears. The seal shall never leave me; I shall wear it "for love of
Louise and Henry."
I would have liked to see, at Metz, the house of Fabert[39], the common
soldier who became a marshal of France and who received the collar of
the Orders, his nobility tracing its origin only to his sword.
The Barbarians our fathers, at Metz, butchered the Romans[40] surprised
in the midst of the debauchery of a feast; our soldiers have waltzed,
in the monastery of Alcobaça, with the skeleton of Iñez de Castro[41]:
sorrows and pleasures, crimes and follies, fourteen centuries separate
you and you are all alike completely past. The eternity commenced just
now is as old as the eternity dating from the first death, the murder
of Abel. Nevertheless, men, during their ephemeral appearance on this
globe, persuade themselves that they are leaving some trace behind
them: why, good Heaven, yes, every fly has its shadow!
I left Metz and passed through Verdun, where I was so unhappy and where
Carrel's lonely friend lives to-day[42]. I skirted the heights of
Valmy; I do not care to speak of it any more than of Jemmapes: I should
be afraid lest I should find a crown there.
Châlons reminded me of a great weakness of Bonaparte, who banished
beauty there[43]. Peace be with Châlons, which tells me that I still
have friends!
At Château-Thierry, I found my idol, La Fontaine. It was the hour of
the Angelus: Jean's wife was no longer there, and Jean had returned to
Madame de La Sablière[44].
As I grazed the wall of Meaux Cathedral, I repeated Bossuet's[45] own
words to him:
"Man reaches his tomb dragging behind him the long chain of his hopes
deceived."
[Sidenote: Back in Paris.]
In Paris, I passed the quarters in which I had lived with my sisters in
my youth; next, the Palace of Justice, commemorative of my trial; next,
the Prefecture of Police, which served me as a prison. I have returned
at last to my hospice, thus winding off the skein of my days. The frail
insect of the sheep-folds drops at the end of a silken thread to the
ground, where the foot of some ewe will soon crush it.
PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 6 _June_ 1833.
On alighting from my carriage and before going to bed, I wrote a letter
to Madame la Duchesse de Berry to give her an account of my mission.
My return had put the police into a flutter; the telegraph announced
it to the Prefect of Bordeaux and the commandant of the fortress of
Blaye: orders were given to redouble the measures of supervision; it
appears even that Madame was put on board before the day fixed for her
departure[46]. My letter missed Her Royal Highness by a few hours and
was taken to her in Italy.
If Madame had made no declaration; if even, after that declaration, she
had denied the consequences of it; much more if, on arriving in Sicily,
she had protested against the part which she had been compelled to
play in order to escape from her gaolers, France and Europe would have
believed her word, so greatly was Philip's Government under suspicion.
All the Judases would have suffered punishment for the spectacle which
they gave to the world in the smoking-room at Blaye. But Madame would
not consent to retain a political character by denying her marriage;
what one gains, by a lie, in reputation for cleverness one loses in
consideration: any former sincerity which you may have professed hardly
avails to defend you. When a man who enjoys public esteem demeans
himself, he is no longer sheltered within his name, but behind his
name. Madame, by her admission, escaped from the gloom of her prison:
the female eagle, like the male eagle, has need of liberty and sunlight.
M. le Duc de Blacas, in Prague, had announced to me the formation of a
council of which I was to be the head, with M. the Chancellor[47] and
M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg: I was going to become alone (still
according to M. le Duc) the Council of Charles X., absent on some
business. I was shown a plan: the machinery was very complicated; M.
de Blacas' work retained a few arrangements made by the Duchesse de
Berry, when she, on her side, had laid claim to organizing the State by
coming madly, but bravely, to place herself at the head of her Kingdom
_in partibus._ The ideas of that adventurous woman were not at all
lacking in good sense: she had divided France into four great military
governments, chosen the commanders, appointed the officers, embodied
the soldiers and, without troubling whether all her people had joined
the flag, she would herself have hastened to carry it; she did not
doubt but that she would find in the fields St. Martin's[48] cope or
the Oriflamme, Galaor[49] or Bayard. Blows of battle-axes and bullets
from fire-locks, retreats into the forests, perils in the homes of a
few faithful friends, caves, castles, cottages, escalades: all this
suited and delighted Madame. There is something eccentric, original and
captivating in her character that will make her live. The future will
take her as it pleases, in spite of correct persons and sober-minded
cowards.
[Sidenote: My plans for Henry V.]
I should have brought to the Bourbons, if they had sent for me, the
popularity which I enjoyed by my two-fold claim as a writer and a
statesman. I could have no doubt of that popularity, for I had received
the confidences of every shade of opinion. People had not confined
themselves to generalities; each had pointed out to me what he desired
in case of eventualities; many had confessed their genius to me and
rendered obvious to me the place for which they were eminently fitted.
Everybody, friends and enemies alike, sent me to be about the person of
the Duc de Bordeaux. By the different combinations of my opinions and
my fortunes, by the ravages of death, which had successively carried
away the men of my generation, I seemed to be the only one left for the
choice of the Royal Family.
I might feel tempted by the part awarded to me: there was something
calculated to flatter my vanity, as an unknown servant and rejected
by the Bourbons, in the idea of being the support of their House;
of holding out my hand to Philip Augustus, St. Louis, Charles V.,
Louis XII., Francis I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. in their tombs; of
protecting with my feeble renown the blood, the crown and the shades
of so many great men: I alone against faithless France and dishonoured
Europe.
But to arrive at that what should I have had to do? What the commonest
mind would have done: fawn upon the Court of Prague, overcome its
antipathies, conceal my ideas from it until I was in a position to
develop them.
And, certainly, those ideas went far: if I had been the young Prince's
governor, I should have striven to gain his confidence. If he had
recovered his crown, I should have advised him to wear it only to lay
it aside at the proper time. I would have liked to see the Capets
disappear in a manner worthy of their greatness. What a fine, what an
illustrious day that would have been when, after setting up religion,
perfecting the Constitution of the State, enlarging the rights of
citizens, breaking the last fetters of the press, emancipating the
commons, destroying monopoly, striking the balance between wages and
labour, consolidating property and restricting its abuses, reviving
industry, reducing taxation, re-establishing our honour among the
nations, extending our frontiers and thus securing our independence
against the foreigner; when, after accomplishing all these things, my
pupil would have said to the nation solemnly called together:
"Frenchmen, your education is finished with mine. My first ancestor,
Robert the Strong[50], died for you, and my father asked for mercy for
the man who took his life. My sires raised and formed France through
barbarism; now the march of events, the progress of civilization compel
you to dispense with a protector. I am descending the throne; I confirm
all the benefits of my fathers, while releasing you from your oaths to
the Monarchy."
Say if that end would not have surpassed all that is most wonderful in
that dynasty! Say if ever a magnificent enough temple could have been
raised to its memory! Compare that end with that which the decrepit
sons of Henry IV. would make, stubbornly pinning themselves to a throne
swamped by democracy, trying to preserve their power with the aid of
measures of police, measures of violence, methods of corruption, and
dragging on for a few short moments a degraded existence!
"Let them make my brother King," said the child Louis XIII., after the
death of Henry IV., "I do not want to be King."
Henry V. has no other brother than his people: let him make it King.
To arrive at this resolution, chimerical though it may seem, one would
have to feel the greatness of one's race, not because one was descended
from an old stock, but because one was the heir of men through whom
France became powerful, enlightened and civilized.
Now, as I have just said, the way to be called upon to set to work
on that plan would have been to wheedle the weaknesses of Prague, to
raise magpies with the child of the throne like Luynes[51], to flatter
Concini[52] like Richelieu. I had begun well at Carlsbad; a little
note of submission and gossip would have forwarded my business. To
bury myself alive in Prague was no easy matter, it is true; for not
only should I have had to overcome the repugnance of the Royal Family,
but the hatred of the foreigners as well. My ideas are odious to the
Cabinets; they know that I detest the Treaties of Vienna, that I would
make war at any price to give France the necessary frontiers and to
restore the balance of power in Europe.
However, by giving signs of repentance, by weeping, by expiating my
sins of national honour, by beating my breast, by admiring for my
penance the genius of the blockheads who govern the world, I might
perhaps have been able to crawl into the Baron de Damas' place; then,
suddenly standing erect, I should have flung away my crutches.
[Sidenote: Wherein I fail.]
But, alas, where is my ambition? Where is my faculty of dissimulation?
Where is my art of enduring constraint and boredom? Where is my
capacity for attaching importance to anything whatsoever? I took up
my pen two or three times, I began to draft two or three letters in
obedience to Madame la Dauphine, who had ordered me to write to her.
Soon, revolting against myself, I wrote at one dash and after my own
manner the letter which was to break my neck. I knew it quite well; I
weighed the results quite well: it matters little. And to-day, now that
the thing is done, I am delighted at having sent the whole business to
the devil and flung my "governorship " out of so wide a window. I shall
be told:
"Could you not have expressed the same truths by stating them less
crudely?"
Yes, yes, by diluting, beating about the bush, employing honeyed words,
bleating, quavering:
Son œil tout pénitent ne pleure qu'eau béniste[53].
I cannot do that.
Here is the letter, abridged, however, by almost half its length, which
will make the hair of our drawing-room diplomatists rise up in dismay:
the Duc de Choiseul was somewhat of my humour; therefore he spent the
end of his end at Chanteloup:
"PARIS, _Rue d'Enfer_, 30 _June_ 1833.
"MADAME,
"The most precious moments of my long career are those which Madame
la Dauphine permitted me to spend with her. It was in a humble
house at Carlsbad that a Princess who is the object of universal
veneration deigned to speak to me with confidence. Heaven has laid
at the bottom of her soul a treasure of magnanimity and religion
which the prodigality of misfortune has not been able to dry up. I
had before me the daughter of Louis XVI. exiled anew; that orphan
of the Temple whom the Martyr-King pressed to his heart before
going to gather the palm! God's name is the only name that one can
pronounce when one comes to plunge one's self in contemplation of
the impenetrable counsels of His Providence.
"Praise is suspicious, when it is addressed to prosperity: with
the Dauphiness, admiration knows no embarrassment. I have said it,
Madame: your sorrows have attained so great a height, that they have
become one of the glories of the Revolution. I shall therefore,
once in my life, have met destinies so superior, so much apart,
that I can tell them, without fear of offending them or of being
misunderstood, what I think of the future state of society. One can
discuss the fate of empires with you, who would, without regretting
them, see pass at the feet of your virtue all those earthly
kingdoms, many of which have already flowed away at the feet of
your House.
"The catastrophes of which you have been the most illustrious
witness and the sublimest victim, great though they appeared to
be, are, nevertheless, but the particular accidents of the general
transformation which is being operated in the human race; the
reign of Napoleon, which shook the world, is but a link in the
revolutionary chain. We must start from this truth to understand
the possibilities of a third Restoration and what means that
Restoration possesses of being included in the plan of social
changes. If it did not enter into it as an homogeneous element, it
would inevitably be rejected by an order of things contrary to its
nature.
"Therefore, Madame, if I told you that the Legitimacy had a chance
of returning through the aristocracy of the nobles and clergy, with
their privileges; through the Court, with its distinctions; through
the Royalty, with its attractions, I should be deceiving you. The
Legitimacy, in France, is no longer a sentiment; it is a principle
in so far as it guarantees property and interests, rights and
liberties; but if it remained proved that the Legitimacy would
not defend or was powerless to protect that property and those
interests, those rights and those liberties, it would cease to be
even a principle. When any one puts forward that the Legitimacy
will necessarily come about, that it cannot be dispensed with, that
it is enough to wait, for France to come crying mercy to it on her
knees, he is putting forward an illusion. The Restoration may never
return, or may last for but a moment, if the Legitimacy seeks its
strength where it does not exist.
[Sidenote: My letter to the Dauphiness.]
"Yes, Madame, I say it sorrowfully, Henry V. might remain a foreign
and banished Prince: a young and new ruin of an edifice already
fallen, but, in short, a ruin. We old servants of the Legitimacy
will soon have spent the small stock of years that is left to us;
we shall shortly be resting in our graves, asleep with our old
ideas, like the ancient knights with their ancient suits of armour
into which rust and time have eaten, suits of armour which no
longer shape themselves to the figure nor adapt themselves to the
usages of the living.
"All that was militating, in 1789, for the preservation of the
old order of things, religion, laws, manners, customs, property,
classes, privileges, corporations, no longer exists. A general
ferment has become manifest; Europe is hardly safer than
ourselves; no form of society is entirely destroyed, none entirely
established; all is worn or new, or decrepit or not yet rooted; all
has the weakness of old age or childhood. The kingdoms that have
sprung from the territorial limitations drawn by the last treaties
are of yesterday; love of country has lost its force, because the
country is an uncertain and fleeting thing to populations sold
by auction, dealt in like second-hand furniture, now allotted to
hostile populations, now handed over to unknown masters. Thus
dug up, furrowed, tilled, the soil is prepared to receive the
democratic seed which the Days of July have ripened.
"The kings think that, by keeping sentry around their thrones,
they will stop the movements of intelligence; they imagine that,
by giving a description of the principles, they will have them
seized at the frontiers; they are persuaded that, by multiplying
customs-officers, gendarmes, police-spies, military commissions,
they will prevent them from circulating. But those ideas do not
travel on foot: they are in the air, they fly, we breathe them. The
absolute governments, which are establishing telegraphs, railways,
steam-boats and trying, at the same time, to keep men's minds on
the level of the political dogmas of the fourteenth century, are
inconsistent; at once progressive and reactionary, they are lost
in the confusion resulting from a contradiction of theory and
practice. It is impossible to separate the industrial principle
from the principle of liberty; one must needs stifle both or admit
both. Wherever the French language is understood, ideas come with
the passports of the age.
"You see, Madame, how essential it is that the starting-point
should be carefully chosen. The child of hope under your guard,
innocence taking refuge under your virtues and misfortunes as under
a royal canopy: I know no more imposing spectacle; if there be a
chance of success for the Legitimacy, it is there in its entirety.
The France of the future will be able to bow, without descending,
before the glory of the past, to stand in emotion before that
great apparition in her history represented by the daughter of
Louis XVI. leading the last of the Henrys by the hand. As the
Queen-protectress of the young Prince, you will exercise over the
nation the influence of the immense memories mingled in your august
person. Who will not feel an unaccustomed confidence revive within
him when the orphan of the Temple watches over the education of the
orphan of St. Louis?
"It is to be desired, Madame, that this education, directed by men
whose names are popular in France, should in a certain measure
become public. Louis XIV., who otherwise justifies the pride of his
motto[54], did a great injury to his House by isolating the Sons of
France behind the barriers of an Oriental education.
"The young Prince appeared to me to be gifted with a quick
intelligence. He will have to complete his studies by travels
among the nations of the Old and even of the New Continent, so as
to become acquainted with politics and to be alarmed at neither
institutions nor doctrines. If he could serve as a soldier in some
far-off foreign war, one ought not to dread to expose him. He has a
resolute air; he seems to have in his heart the blood of his father
and of his mother; but, if he could ever experience anything but
the sense of glory in danger, let him abdicate: without courage, in
France, there is no crown.
"Madame, on seeing me extend into a long future the thought of the
education of Henry V., you will naturally suppose that I do not
think him destined to ascend the throne so soon. I will endeavour
impartially to deduct the opposite reasons for hopes and fears.
"The Restoration may take place to-day, to-morrow. There is
something so sudden, so inconstant observable in the French
character, that a change is always probable; it is always safe
to wager a hundred to one, in France, that any particular thing
will not last: it is at the moment when the Government appears
most firmly seated that it falls. We have seen the nation worship
Bonaparte and detest him, abandon him, take him back, abandon him
again, forget him in his exile, raise altars to him after his
death, and then relapse from its enthusiasm. That fickle nation,
which never loved liberty save by fits and starts, but which ever
dotes on equality; that multiform nation was fanatical under
Henry IV., factious under Louis XIII., grave under Louis XIV.,
revolutionary under Louis XVI., gloomy under the Republic, warlike
under Bonaparte, constitutional under the Restoration: to-day it is
prostituting its liberties to the so-called Republican Monarchy,
perpetually varying its nature in the spirit of its leaders. Its
changefulness has increased since it has thrown off the habits of
the home and the yoke of religion.
[Sidenote: On the prospects.]
"Therefore, a chance may bring about the fall of the Government of
the 9th of August; but a chance may be delayed: an abortive child
has been born to us, but France is a sturdy mother; she may, with
the milk of her breast, be able to correct the vices of a depraved
paternity.
"Although the present royalty does not seem as though it were
likely to live, I continue to fear that it may live beyond the
limit which one might assign to it. Since forty years, all
governments have perished in France by their own fault alone. Louis
XVI. could have saved his crown and his life twenty times over;
the Republic died only of the excesses of its furies; Bonaparte
was able to establish his dynasty, yet flung himself down from the
height of his glory; but for the Ordinances of July, the Legitimist
Throne would still be standing. The head of the present Government
will make none of those mistakes that kill; his power will never
commit suicide; all his cleverness is employed exclusively for his
preservation: he is too intelligent to die by an act of folly nor
has he enough in him to be guilty of the mistakes of genius or
the weaknesses of honour or virtue. He has felt that he might be
destroyed by war: he will not make war; it matters little to him,
whether France be degraded in the eyes of foreigners: publicists
will prove to him that disgrace is industry and ignominy credit.
"The sham Legitimacy wants all that the Legitimacy wants, with
the exception of the Royal Person: it wants order; it can obtain
that through 'arbitrariness' more easily than the Legitimacy. To
perpetrate acts of despotism with words of liberty and pretended
royalist institutions, that is all that it wants; each accomplished
fact brings forth a recent right which combats an ancient right,
each hour commences a legality. Time has two powers: with one hand
it overthrows, with the other it builds up. Lastly, time acts
upon men's minds by the mere fact that it progresses; they sever
violently from those in power, attack them, sulk with them; then
lassitude supervenes; success reconciles people to its cause: soon
none remains outside, save a few lofty souls, whose perseverance
confounds those who have failed.
"Madame, this long statement obliges me to make a few explanations
to Your Royal Highness.
"If I had not raised a free voice in the day of fortune, I should
not have felt the courage to speak the truth in the time of
misfortune. I did not go to Prague of my own accord; I would not
have ventured to trouble you with my presence; the dangers of
devotion do not lie about your august person, they lie in France:
that is where I have sought them. Since the Days of July, I have
never ceased to fight for the legitimist cause. I was the first
to proclaim the kingship of Henry V. A jury of Frenchmen, which
acquitted me, left my proclamation in force. I long for nothing but
rest, the need of my years; yet I did not hesitate to sacrifice
it when the decrees extended and renewed the proscription of the
Royal Family. Offers were made to me to attach me to the Government
of Louis-Philippe: I had not earned that proof of good-will; I
showed how incompatible it was with my nature by claiming my share
in my old King's adversity. Alas, I had not brought about that
adversity and I had tried to prevent it! I am not recalling these
circumstances to give myself an importance or create for myself a
merit which I do not possess; I have done no more than my duty; I
am only explaining my position, in order to excuse the independence
of my language. Madame will pardon the frankness of a man who
would joyfully accept a scaffold to restore to her a throne.
"When I appeared before Your Majesty at Carlsbad, I may say that I
had not the happiness to be known to you. You had scarcely done me
the honour to address a few words to me in my life. You were able
to see, in our solitary conversations, that I was not the man that
had perhaps been described to you, that the independence of my mind
did not take away from the moderation of my character and, above
all, did not break the chains of my admiration and respect for the
illustrious daughter of my Kings.
[Sidenote: Of the Legitimate Monarchy.]
"I again beseech Your Majesty to consider that the order of the
truths developed in this letter, or rather in this memorandum,
is what constitutes my strength, if I have any; it is that which
enables me to reach men of different parties and bring them back to
the royalist cause. If I had rejected the opinions of the age, I
should have had no hold upon my time. I am seeking to rally round
the ancient throne those modern ideas which, from being hostile,
become friendly in passing through my loyalty. If the liberal
opinions which abound ceased to be diverted to the profit of the
reconstructed Legitimate Monarchy, Monarchical Europe would perish.
It is a fight to the death between the two principles, monarchical
and republican, if they remain distinct and separate: the
consecration of a single edifice built up again out of the various
materials of two edifices would belong to you, Madame, to you who
have been admitted into the highest as into the most mysterious of
initiations, undeserved misfortune, to you who are marked at the
altar with the blood of the spotless victim, to you who, in the
contemplation attendant upon a saintly austerity, would open with a
pure and blessed hand the portals of the new temple.
"Your sagacity, Madame, and your superior reason will throw light
upon and correct all that may be doubtful or erroneous in my
opinions touching the present state of France.
"My emotion, as I end this letter, passes all that I can say.
"And so the palace of the sovereigns of Bohemia is the Louvre of
Charles X. and of his pious and royal son! And so Hradschin is
young Henry's Pau Castle! And you, Madame: in what Versailles
do you live? With what can your piety, your greatnesses, your
sufferings be compared, if not with those of the women of the
House of David who wept at the foot of the Cross? May Your Majesty
see the Royalty of St Louis rise radiant from the tomb! May I
exclaim, recalling the century which bears the name of your
glorious ancestor; for, Madame, nothing becomes you, nothing is
contemporaneous with you but what is great and sacred:
O jour heureux pour moi!
De quelle ardeur j'irais reconnaître mon roi[55]!
"I am, Madame, with the most profound respect,
"Your Majesty's most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
After writing this letter, I resumed the habits of my life: I found
my old priests again, the lonely corner in my garden, which seemed to
me much finer than Count Chotek's garden, my Boulevard d'Enfer, my
Cimetière de l'Ouest, my Memoirs reminding me of my past days and,
above all, the select little society of the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The
kindness of a serious friendship makes the thoughts abound; a few
moments of the commerce of the soul suffice for the needs of my nature;
I afterwards make up for this expenditure of intelligence by twenty-two
hours of inaction and sleep.
PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 25 _August_ 1833.
While I was beginning to breathe, I saw one morning the traveller enter
my house who had handed a packet from me to Madame la Duchesse de Berry
at Palermo; he brought me this reply from the Princess:
[Sidenote: Letter from Madame de Berry.]
"NAPLES, 10 _August_ 1833.
"I have written you a line, monsieur le vicomte, to acknowledge
the receipt of your letter, wishing to have a safe opportunity of
speaking to you of my gratitude for what you have seen and done
in Prague. It seems to me that they _let you see very little_,
but enough, however, to enable you to judge that, despite the
_methods_ employed, the result, in so far as our dear child is
concerned, is not what one might fear. I am very glad to receive
this assurance from you; but I hear from Paris that M. Barrande has
been sent away. What is to be done in this? How I long to be at my
post!
"As to the requests which I asked you to make (and which were not
quite welcomed), they have proved by their action that they were no
better informed than I: for I was not in any need of what I asked,
having in no way lost my rights.
"I am going to ask your advice to reply to the solicitations which
I receive from all sides. You will make such use of what follows
as, in your wisdom, you think proper. Royalist France, the people
devoted to Henry V. look to his mother, now at last free, to issue
a proclamation.
"I left at Blaye a few lines which must be known to-day; they
expect more from me; they want to know the sad story of my
detention during seven months in that impenetrable fortress. It
ought to be made known in its fullest details; let the cause be
seen, in this story, of all the tears and griefs that have broken
my heart. Men will learn from it the moral tortures which I have
been made to suffer. Justice must be done in it to them to whom
it belongs; but also it must reveal the atrocious measures taken
against a defenseless woman, defenseless because she was always
refused a council, by a Government having her kinsman at its head,
in order to tear from me a secret which, in any case, could not
concern politics and the discovery of which ought not to change my
situation if I was an object of dread to the French Government,
which had the power of guarding me, but not the right, without a
trial which I claimed more than once.
"But my kinsman, the husband of my aunt, the head of a family
which, in spite of the general and so justly wide-spread opinion
against it, I had allowed to hope for the hand of my daughter,
Louis-Philippe in short, thinking me to be with child and unmarried
(which would have decided any other family to open the doors of
my prison), had every form of moral torture inflicted on me to
force me to take steps by means of which he expected to be able to
establish his niece's dishonour. For the rest, if I am bound to
explain myself positively as to my declarations and their motives,
without entering into any details as to my private life, for which
I am accountable to no one, I will say in all truth that they were
torn from me by my vexations, my moral tortures and the hope of
recovering my liberty.
"The bearer will give you details and tell you of the forced
uncertainty as to the moment of my journey and its destination,
which interfered with my wish to avail myself of your obliging
offer by inviting you to join me before I went to Prague, as I
have great need of your advice. To-day it would be too late, as I
wish to be with my children as soon as possible. But, as nothing
is certain in this world and as I am used to disappointments, if
my arrival in Prague should, _against my wish_, be delayed, I rely
surely upon seeing you at the place where I shall be obliged to
stop and will write to you from there; if, on the contrary, I reach
my son as soon as I hope, you know better than I if you ought to
come there. I can only assure you of the pleasure it would give me
to see you at all times and places.
"MARIE CAROLINE."
NAPLES, 18 _August_ 1833.
"Our friend has not been able to start yet and I have received news
of what is happening in Prague which is not of a nature calculated
to diminish my longing to go there, but which also makes the need
of your advice more urgent. If, therefore, you are able to proceed
to Venice without delay, you will find me there, or else letters
left at the post-office telling you where you can join me. I shall
travel part of the journey with some people for whom I entertain
feelings of great friendship and gratitude: M.[56] and Madame
de Bauffremont[57]. We often speak of you; their devotion to
myself and to our Henry makes them long to see you arrive. M. de
Mesnard[58] shares that longing."
Madame de Berry refers in her letter to a little manifesto[59] which
was issued after she left Blaye and which was of no great value,
because it said neither yes nor no. The letter, on the other hand, is
curious as an historical document, since it reveals the feelings of
the Princess towards her kinsmen-gaolers and points to the sufferings
endured by her. Marie-Caroline's reflections are just; she expresses
them with spirit and pride. Again, one likes to see that courageous
and devoted mother, whether fettered or free, constantly occupied with
the interests of her son. There, at least in that heart, are youth
and life to be found. It cost me an effort once more to undertake a
long journey; but I was too much touched by the confidence of that
poor Princess to refuse to obey her wishes and to abandon her on the
high-road. M. Jauge came to the assistance of my poverty, as he had
done the first time.
I took the field again with a dozen volumes scattered around me.
Now, while I was peregrinating _da capo_ in the Prince de Bénévent's
calash, he was eating in London in the manger of his fifth master, in
expectation of the accident which will send him, perhaps, to sleep at
Westminster, among saints, kings and wise men: a burial to which his
religion, fidelity and virtues have justly entitled him.
[1] This book was written on the road from Carlsbad to Paris, from the
1st to the 5th of June 1833, and in Paris, in the Rue d'Enfer, from the
6th of June to the 25th of August 1833.--T.
[2] The author addresses an imaginary Cynthia. Cynthia was one of the
surnames of Diana, from Mount Cynthus, where she was born.--B.
[3] SCHILLER: _Wallenstein's Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.
[4] Max Piccolomini, son to Octavio Piccolomini, the famous Austrian
general.--T.
[5] Thekla, Wallenstein's daughter.--T.
[6] _Wallenstein: Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.--T.
[7] _Wallenstein's Tod_. Act V. Sc. v.--T.
[8]
"It is the knight of the Landes:
O unhappy knight!
Heard bells ring on every hand,
When crossing the waste at night."--T.
[9] VOLTAIRE: _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de
Bareith_, 141-144:
"Lonely Sylvander, thou shalt sing no more
In this Art's palace, where thy voice did ban,
Loudly, the firm-set prejudice of yore
And made the world talk of the rights of man."--T.
[10] _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de Bareith_, 91-94:
"From philosophie heights, free from all strife,
Thy pity contemplated, with calm eyes,
The changing phantoms of the dreams of life:
So many a dream or plan in ruin lies."--T.
[11] Mathew Laensberg (_fl._ 17th Century) was supposed to be the
author of the famous _Almanack de Liège_, called by his name and first
published in 1636, containing prognostications in the manner of the
modern _Zadkiel_ or _Old Moore._--T.
[12] The Comte de Toumon (_cf._ Vol. V., p. 258, n. 1) was appointed
Intendant of Bayreuth by Napoleon before being moved to Rome, as
Prefect, in 1809.--T.
[13] ARISTOPHANES.--_Author's Note._
[14] VOLTAIRE: _Stances à madame la marquise Du Châtelet_, 29-36:
"I followed her, but wept that now
I could not follow others as well."
The poet is able to continue the pursuit of friendship, but must
abandon that of love.--T.
[15] Jean Louis Eugène Lerminier (1803-1857), a liberal professor and
journalist. He had published, on the 15th of October 1832, an article
in the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_, entitled, _De l'Opinion légitimiste: M.
de Chateaubriand_, to which the author of the Memoirs alludes above.--B.
[16] BÉRANGER: _La Vivandière_, 1-7, not quite correctly quoted. In the
original, the _vivandière_ is called "Catin:" Chateaubriand substitutes
"Javotte," a favourite name for an inn-servant in France, and alters
the last lines so as to avoid the rhyme to "Catin" at the end. To
attempt a rough translation:
"I'm the vivandière so gay,
Javotte I'm called: that's handy;
I sell, I drink, I give away
My wine, my rum, my brandy.
I'm light of foot and I give a wink,
Chink chink, chink chink, chink chink, chink chink,
Clink, clink, chink."--T.
[17] Isabel, or Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (_d._ 1435),
married in 1385 to Charles VI. She obtained the Regency when the King
became demented in 1392, favoured the enemies of France and, in 1420,
concluded the Treaty of Troyes, which placed the crown on the head of
Henry V. of England.--T.
[18] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 91, n. 3. Berthier was watching a Russian
regiment pass under his windows, on its way to the French frontier,
when he was seized with a sudden fit of madness and jumped from the
balcony to the pavement below (1 June 1815).--T.
[19] _Andria_, Act. I. Sc. i. 44.45.--T.
[20] Ferdinand III. Archduke of Austria, Grand-duke of Tuscany, later
Grand-duke of Würzburg (1769-1824), brother of the Emperor Francis I.
He was Grand-duke of Tuscany from 1790, but lost his States in 1796.
In 1805, the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized and turned into a
grand-duchy, and the Archduke Ferdinand became its titulary. On the
fall of the Empire, Tuscany was restored to Austria and Ferdinand
reinstated. At the same time (1814), Würzburg was restored to
Bavaria.--B.
[21] These lines are a translation from the χελιδονίζειν, recorded by
Athenæus.--B.
[22] Chateaubriand writes, when describing his arrival at Jaffa, in the
_Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem_:
"The wind fell, at mid-day. The calm continued for the rest of that
day and was prolonged till the 29th [of September 1806]. We were
boarded by three new passengers: two wagtails and a swallow."
And then he refers again to the swallows at Combourg in his childhood
and to the swallows in America which, in their turn, reminded him of
the Combourg swallows.--B.
[23] In the _Congrès de Vérone_ (Vol. II., p. 389), Chateaubriand,
writing of his dismissal from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (6 June
1824), begins with these charming lines:
"On the 6th, in the morning, we were not sleeping; the dawn
murmured in the little garden; the birds twittered: we heard the
day break; a swallow fell down our chimney into our room; we opened
the window for it: if we could only have flown away with it!"--B.
[24] This reply to the swallow was written long before 1833. The
Comte de Marcellus relates, in _Chateaubriand et son temps_, how, in
the summer of 1822, he was walking with the Ambassador in Kensington
Gardens. Chateaubriand told him how, early that same morning, he had
imagined that he heard a swallow twittering outside his window. He
looked and saw a smoke and soot-blackened sparrow which might almost
be mistaken for a swallow; and he set himself to hold an imaginary
conversation with the swallow disguised as a sparrow. He handed
Marcellus a paper covered with the words which he had addressed to it
and which he had written down so soon as the light permitted. They
correspond literally with the above speech.
Marcellus goes on to say that he clapped his hands with delight at
reading this inspiration in the manner of the ancients, until, at the
end of the paper and as though at the end of his enthusiasm, he began
to smile:
"'What is it?' asked the poet, alarmed. 'Some slip?'
'Oh no,' I replied; 'only that "I live on little" troubles me,
although it suits the passage so admirably.'
"'Well?' asked M. de Chateaubriand, with a certain animation.
"'Why, have you so soon forgotten that the Duke of York is dining
with you to-night and that yesterday we drew up together, under the
dictation of our famous Montmirel, the fabric of the most splendid
banquet that ever perfumed the kitchens and honoured the annals of
diplomacy?'
"M. de Chateaubriand replied:
"'Ah, you are right; I did not think of that this morning.'"--B.
[25] St. Geneviève of Brabant (_fl._ 8th Century), the subject of a
number of romantic legends and adventures.--T.
[26] Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, a noted
Italian painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.
[27] Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), the celebrated Italian architect.--T.
[28] BOILEAU: _Épitres_, vi.--B.
[29] Jean Philippe René de La Bletterie (1696-1772), a priest of the
Oratory, a native of Brittany like Chateaubriand and author of an
_Histoire de l'empereur Julien l'Apostat_ (1735).--T.
[30] The following is John Duncombe's translation of Julian's Greek
Epigram on Barley-wine:
"Who, what art thou? Thy name, thy birth declare:
Thou art no Bacchus, I by Bacchus swear.
Jove's son alone I know, I know not thee;
Thou smell'st like goats, but sweet as nectar he.
In Gallia, thirsty Gallia, thou wert born,
Scanty of grapes, but prodigal of corn.
Bromus, not Bromius, styl'd, thy brows with corn,
As sprung from Ceres, not from Jove, adorn."
[31] The common phrase is, "That's Toulouse gold, which will cost him
dear:" a reference to the gold stolen by the Romans at Toulouse, which
brought ill-luck, according to the legend, to all who possessed it.--T.
[32] François Michel Letellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), the
organizer of the French standing army. Louvois was Minister of War
from 1666 to 1691; the Palatinate was burnt down in 1674 and again in
1689.--T.
[33] François de Bonne de Créqui, Maréchal Duc de Lesdiguières (_circa_
1687), one of the greatest French captains of the seventeenth century,
served gloriously under Louis XIV. in the campaigns of Flanders, Alsace
and Lorraine, from 1667 to 1678. He took Luxemburg in 1684.--T.
[34] Armand Maréchal de La Force (_circa_ 1586-1675) served with
distinction in the Italian and German Wars.--T.
[35] Louis Hector Maréchal Duc de Villars (1653-1734), Marlborough's
famous adversary.--T.
[36] Turenne was killed by a cannon-ball while reconnoitering at
Sasbach (27 July 1675). The _Pic_ was his favourite piebald charger.--T.
[37] François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, successfully defended Metz
against Charles V. from October 1552 to January 1553; Vauban laid the
new fortifications, outside the old, in the reign of Louis XIV.--T.
[38] The father of Alexis de Tocqueville.--_Author's Note. Cf._ Vol.
II., p. 295, n. 1.--T.
The Comte de Tocqueville administered the Department of the Moselle
from February 1817 to June 1823.--B.
[39] Abraham Maréchal Fabert (1599-1662), Governor of Sedan, son of
Abraham Fabert, the director of the ducal printing-works at Metz, was
the first commoner who became a marshal of France (1658).--T.
[40] Metz was plundered by the Vandals in 406.--T.
[41] Iñez de Castro (_d._ 1355), favourite and, later, wife of Peter of
Portugal, son of Alphonsus IV. The King had her murdered to prevent the
consequences of an unequal union. When Peter ascended the throne, as
Peter I., afterwards surnamed the Justiciary and the Cruel, he avenged
her death on her murderers by having their hearts torn out in his
presence at Santarem, in 1360. He caused Iñez to be exhumed and crowned
and showed her royal honours.--T.
[42] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 207, n. 1.--T.
[43] Madame Récamier was banished to Châlons in September 1811.--T.
[44] Madame de La Sablière (_fl._ 17th Century), wife of Antoine
Rambouillet de La Sablière, one of the ornaments of the seventeenth
century and immortalized by the hospitality which she accorded to La
Fontaine.--T.
[45] Bossuet was Bishop of Meaux.--T.
[46] The Duchesse de Berry embarked on the 9th of June 1833.--B.
[47] The Marquis de Pastoret.--B.
[48] St. Martin (_circa_ 316--_circa_ 397) Bishop of Tours (371). He is
honoured on the 11th of November.--T.
[49] The brother of Amadis of Gaul.--T.
[50] Robert Count of Paris (_d._ 866), surnamed the Strong, father
of Robert I. King of France and stock of the Capets, was killed at
Brissarthe, in Anjou, while giving battle to the Normans.--T.
[51] Charles d'Albert, Connétable Duc de Luynes (1578-1621), was a page
of Henry IV. He curried favour with the Dauphin by his skill in raising
speckled magpies. When the latter succeeded as Louis XIII., he loaded
Luynes with favours and dignities, gave him his duchy and created him
Constable of France. Luynes was on the verge of being disgraced, when
he died, of purples, on the 15th of December 1621.--T.
[52] Concino Concini, later Maréchal Marquis d'Ancre, Baron de Lussigny
(_d._ 1617), was a member of the Household of Marie de' Medici, wife
of Henry IV. After the King's death, he bought the Marquisate of Ancre
and was appointed Governor of Normandy and a marshal of France without
ever having drawn the sword. He was, at the same time, Prime Minister
of Louis XIII.; and he had Richelieu for his private secretary. The
Duc de Luynes contributed towards hastening his downfall and, at last,
the young King ordered his assassination, which took place in the
court-yard of the Louvre on the 14th of April 1617.--T.
[53] MATHURIN RÉGNIER: _Sat._ XIII.; _Macette_, 30:
"Her penitent eye sheds holy water and none other."--T.
[54] "_L'État c'est moi!_ The State is I!"--T.
[55] RACINE: _Athalie_, Act I. Sc. i.:
"O happy day for me!
How gladly would I go my King again to see!"--T.
[56] Théodore Demetrius Prince de Bauffremont-Courtenay (1793-1853).--T.
[57] Anne Laurence de Montmorency, Princesse de Bauffremont-Courtenay
(1802-1860), married to Théodore Prince de Bauffremont on the 6th of
September 1819.--T.
[58] Louis Charles Bonaventura Pierre Comte de Mesnard (1769-1842)
emigrated in 1791 and became attached to the person of the Duc
de Berry. The Duke, on his return to France, appointed him his
aide-de-camp and, in 1816, he was appointed First Equerry to the
Duchess, whom he had gone to Marseilles to meet. The Comte de Mesnard
was with the Duc de Berry at the moment of his assassination. He was
created a peer of France in 1823. In 1830, he accompanied the Duchesse
de Berry to England, returned with her to France in 1832, took part
in the attempted rising in the Vendée and was arrested with his royal
mistress at Nantes. He was tried and acquitted on the 15th of March
1833 and at once joined the Duchesse de Berry in Italy.--T.
[59] The following is the text of this little manifesto, which the
newspapers of the day did not dare to publish and which has remained
comparatively unknown:
"The mother of Henry V., I returned without other support than his
misfortunes and his good right to put an end to the calamities
which France is undergoing, by restoring lawful authority, order
and stability, pledges essential to the rest and peace of nations.
Treachery handed me over to our enemies. Kept a prisoner and long
oppressed by persons to whom I had shown nothing but kindness, I
have bewailed their ingratitude and suffered with resignation the
wrongs with which they have overwhelmed me; but I shall never cease
to protest against the usurpation of the rights of a child whom
justice, ties of blood, honour and faith obliged them to protect
and defend.
"I thank the people of France for the man? marks of attachment
which they have given me; my heart will never lose the remembrance
of it.
"I beg all those who have been persecuted for the sake of my
son and myself, those who have offered me advice of which I was
deprived, in spite of the sad situation to which I was reduced
and those who have protested, in France's name and mine, against
the sequestration and the moral sufferings which stifled my very
complaints, to receive the assurance that I shall never forget
their affection nor the pains which they have endured.
"The reproaches which some have dared to attribute to me as having
been uttered against friends of whose devotion I was too sure to
accuse their conduct have offended me to the quick: I indignantly
deny those insulting suppositions.
"Whatever may be the future which Providence has in store for my
son, to love France, to devote his cares and his life to repairing
her misfortunes, to hope that she may be happy, even if he were not
himself charged to make her happy: those will at all tunes be his
sentiments and his wishes, those will also always be mine.
"The French have never enjoyed real liberty except under the
protection of their lawful Sovereign: it will behove the heir of
the name and, I hope, the virtues of Henry the Great to continue
his reign and to realize all that he promised to France.
"MARIE-CAROLINE."
"Blaye Citadel, 7 June 1833."
--B.
BOOK VI[60]
Journal from Paris to Venice--The Jura--The Alps--Milan--Verona--The
roll-call of the dead--The Brenta--Incidental remarks--Venice--Venetian
architecture--Antonio--The Abbé Betio and M. Gamba--The rooms in the
Palace of the Doges--Prisons--Silvio Pellico's prison--The Frari--The
Academy of Fine Arts--Titian's _Assumption_--The metopes of the
Parthenon--Original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and
Raphael--The Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo--The Arsenal--Henry
IV.--A frigate leaving for America--The Cemetery of San Cristoforo--San
Michele di Murano--Murano--The woman and the child--Gondoliers--Bretons
and Venetians--Breakfast on the Riva degli Schiavoni--The tomb of
Mesdames at Trieste--Rousseau and Byron--Great geniuses inspired by
Venice--Old and new courtezans--Rousseau and Byron compared.
7 _to_ 10 _September, on the road._
I left Paris on the 3rd of September 1833, taking the Simplon Road
through Pontarlier.
Salins, lately burnt to the ground, had been built up again; I
preferred it with its Spanish tumble-down ugliness[61]. The Abbé
d'Olivet[62] was born on the banks of the Furieuse; Voltaire's first
master, who received his pupil at the Academy, had nothing in common
with the paternal stream.
The great storm which caused so many shipwrecks in the Channel assailed
me on the Jura. I arrived at night on the "wastes" of the Lévier stage.
The caravanserai built of wooden planks, brilliantly lighted and filled
with travellers taking shelter suggested not a little the keeping of a
witches' sabbath. I refused to stop; they brought the horses. When it
came to closing the lanterns of the calash, a great difficulty arose;
the hostess, an extremely pretty young witch, lent a hand, laughing.
She took care to hold her candle-end, protected by a glass tube, close
up to her face, so as to be seen.
At Pontarlier, my old host, a great Legitimist during his life-time,
was dead. I supped at the inn called the National: a good omen for the
newspaper of that name. Armand Carrel is the chief of those men who did
not lie during the Days of July.
The Castle of Joux defends the approaches to Pontarlier; it has seen
two men succeed one another in its donjons, both of whom the Revolution
will bear in memory: Mirabeau and Toussaint-Louverture[63], the black
Napoleon, imitated and killed by the white Napoleon.
"Toussaint," says Madame de Staël, "was brought to a French prison,
where he died in the most wretched manner. Perhaps Bonaparte does
not so much as remember this crime, because he has been less often
reproached with it than with the others."
The hurricane increased: I encountered its greatest violence between
Pontarlier and Orbe. It increased the size of the mountains, rang the
bells in the hamlets, drowned the roar of the torrents in that of the
thunder, and swept down howling upon my calash, like a heavy squall on
the sail of a ship. When low-lying lightning-flashes cracked across the
heaths, one saw flocks of sheep stand motionless, their heads hidden
between their fore-feet, presenting their tails tucked in and their
shaggy quarters to the showers of rain and hail beaten up by the wind.
The voice of the man calling the time from the summit of a mountain
belfry sounded like the cry of the last hour.
At Lausanne, all was smiling-again: I had often visited that town
before; I no longer know a soul there.
At Bex, while they were harnessing to my carriage the horses which had
perhaps drawn the bier of Madame de Custine, I stood leaning against
the door of the house where my hostess of Fervacques died. She had been
celebrated before the revolutionary tribunal for her long hair. In
Rome, I have seen beautiful fair hair taken from a tomb.
In the Rhone Valley, I met an almost naked little girl, dancing with
her goat; she asked for alms of a rich young man, well-dressed, who
was posting past with a laced courier in front and two footmen sitting
behind the glittering chariot. And you imagine that such a distribution
of property can exist? You think that it does not justify popular
risings?
Sion brings back to me an epoch in my life: after being secretary of
embassy in Rome, I was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Valais
by the First Consul[64].
At Brigg, I left the Jesuits struggling to raise up again what cannot
be raised up[65]: uselessly established at the foot of time, they are
crushed beneath its mass, like their monastery beneath the weight of
the mountains.
This was the tenth time of my crossing the Alps: I had told them
all that I had to tell them in the different years and different
circumstances of my life. Ever regretting what he has lost, ever rapt
in memories, ever marching towards the grave in tears and isolation:
that is man.
The images borrowed from mountain scenery have particularly sensible
relations with our fortunes: this one passes in silence, like the
outpouring of a spring; that one attaches a noise to his course, like
a torrent; that other flings away his existence, like a cataract that
appeals and disappears.
[Sidenote: The Simplon.]
The Simplon already wears an abandoned air, even as the life of
Napoleon; even as that life, it has nothing left but its glory: it
is too great a work to belong to the little States upon which it has
devolved. Genius has no family; its inheritance falls by right of
escheat to the common crowd, which nibbles at it and plants a cabbage
where a cedar grew.
The last time that I crossed the Simplon, I was going as Ambassador
to Rome; I fell; the herds whom I had left on the top of the mountain
are there yet: snows, clouds, tumble-down rocks, pine-forests and the
turmoil of waters incessantly encompass the hut threatened by the
avalanche. The most living person in those chalets is the goat. Why
die? I know. Why be born? I cannot tell. Still, admit that the foremost
sufferings, moral sufferings, the torments of the mind are wanting
among the dwellers in the region of the chamois and the eagles. When I
went to the Congress of Verona, in 1822, the station on the peak of the
Simplon was kept by a Frenchwoman: in the middle of a cold night and of
a squall of wind which prevented me from seeing her, she talked to me
of the Scala in Milan; she was expecting ribbons from Paris: her voice,
the only thing about that woman that I know, was very sweet through the
darkness and the gale.
The descent to Domo d'Ossola appeared to me more and more wonderful;
a certain play of light and shadow increased its magic. One was
caressed by a little breath which our old tongue called the _aure_: a
sort of early morning-breeze, bathed and scented with the dew. I once
more beheld the Lago Maggiore, on which I was so melancholy in 1828
and of which I caught sight from the Valley of Bellinzona in 1832.
At Sesto-Calende, Italy presented herself: a blind Paganini sang and
played the fiddle at the edge of the lake as I crossed the Ticino.
On entering Milan, I again saw the magnificent avenue of tulip-trees
of which no one speaks; the travellers apparently take them for
plane-trees. I protest against this silence, in memory of my savages:
it is surely the least that America can do, to give shade to Italy.
One might also plant magnolias at Genoa, mixed with palm-trees and
orange-trees. But who dreams of such a thing? Who thinks of beautifying
the earth? That care is left to God. The governments are occupied
with their fall, and men prefer a card-board tree on the stage of a
_fantoccini_ theatre to the magnolia-tree whose roses would scent the
cradle of Christopher Columbus.
In Milan, the annoyance about the passports is as stupid as it is
brutal. I did not pass through Verona without emotion; it was there
that my active political career had its real beginning. My mind thought
on what the world might have become if that career had not been
interrupted by a contemptible jealousy.
Verona, so lively in 1822, thanks to the presence of the sovereigns of
Europe, had, in 1833, returned to silence; the Congress had passed as
completely in its lonely streets as the Court of the Scaligers and the
Senate-house of the Romans. The arenas whose benches I had seen filled
with a hundred thousand spectators yawned deserted; the buildings which
I had admired under the illuminations embroidered on their architecture
wrapped themselves, grey and bare as they were, in an atmosphere of
rain.
[Sidenote: The roll-call of the dead.]
How many ambitions were stirring among the actors at Verona! How many
destinies of nations were examined, discussed and weighed! Let us call
the roll of those wooers of dreams; let us open the book of the Day of
Wrath: _Liber scriptus proferetur_[66]; monarchs, princes, ministers,
here is your ambassador, your colleague returned to his post: where are
you? Answer.
The Emperor of Russia, Alexander?
"Dead."
The Emperor of Austria, Francis I.[67]?
"Dead."
The King of France, Louis XVIII.?
"Dead."
The King of France, Charles X.[68]?
"Dead."
The King of England, George IV.?
"Dead."
The King of Naples, Ferdinand I.?
"Dead."
The Duke of Tuscany[69]?
"Dead."
Pope Pius VII.?
"Dead."
The King of Sardinia, Charles Felix[70]?
"Dead."
The Duc de Montmorency, French Foreign Minister?
"Dead."
Mr. Canning, English Foreign Minister?
"Dead."
M. de Bernstorff, Prussian Foreign Minister?
"Dead."
M. de Gentz, of the Austrian Chancery?
"Dead."
Cardinal Consalvi, Secretary of State to His Holiness?
"Dead."
M. de Serre, my colleague on the Congress[71]?
"Dead."
M. d'Aspremont, my secretary of embassy?
"Dead."
Count Neipperg, the husband of Napoleon's widow?
"Dead."
Countess Tolstoi?
"Dead."
Her tall young son?
"Dead."
My host in the Lorenzi Palace?
"Dead."
If so many men inscribed with me on the roll of the Congress have had
their names inserted in the obituary; if nations and royal dynasties
have perished; if Poland has succumbed; if Spain is again annihilated;
if I have been to Prague to enquire after the flying remnants of the
great House whose representative I was at Verona: what, then, are
earthly things? No one remembers the speeches which we made round the
table of Prince Metternich; but, O power of genius, no traveller will
ever hear the lark sing in the fields of Verona without recalling
Shakespeare! Each of us, by digging to different depths in his memory,
finds another layer of dead, other extinct sentiments, other illusions
which uselessly he suckled, like those of Herculaneum, at the breast of
Hope.
On leaving Verona, I was obliged to change my measure to compute the
time that was past; I was going back twenty-seven years, for I had
not made the journey from Verona to Venice since 1806. At Brescia, at
Vicenza, at Padua, I passed by the walls of Palladio, Scamozzi[72],
Franceschini, Nicholas of Pisa[73], Friar John.
The banks of the Brenta disappointed my hopes; they had remained more
smiling in my imagination: the dykes raised along the canal conceal
the marches too much. Several villas have been demolished; but a
few very elegant ones still remain. There, perhaps, lives Signor
Pococurante[74], whom the city ladies with their sonnets disgusted, to
whom the two pretty girls began to grow very indifferent, to whom music
grew tiresome after half an hour, who thought Homer mortally tedious,
who detested the pious. Æneas, the boy Ascanius, the silly King
Latinus, the ill-bred Amata and the insipid Lavinia, who saw nothing
extraordinary in Horace' journey to Brundusium and his account of
his bad dinner, who declared that he never read Tully and still less
Milton, that barbarian who spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil.
"'Alas!' said Candid softly to Martin, 'I am afraid this man holds
our German poets in great contempt[75].'"
In spite of my semi-disappointment and many gods in the little gardens,
I was charmed with the mulberry-trees, the orange-trees, the fig-trees
and the softness of the air, I who, such a short time before, was
travelling through the fir-groves of Germany and over the mountains of
the Czechs, where the sun looks ill.
[Sidenote: I arrive in Venice.]
I arrived on the 10th of September, at break of day, at Fusina, which
Philippe de Comines[76] and Montaigne call "Chaffousine." At half
past ten, I had landed in Venice. My first care was to send to the
post-office: there was nothing addressed to me direct, nor indirectly
to Paolo; of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, no news at all. I wrote to
Count Griffi, the Neapolitan Minister in Florence, to ask him to let me
know the movements of Her Royal Highness.
Having everything in order, I resolved patiently to await the Princess:
Satan sent me a temptation. I longed, at his diabolical suggestion, to
stay alone, for a fortnight, at the Hôtel de l'Europe, to the detriment
of the Legitimate Monarchy. I wished the august traveller bad roads,
without reflecting that my restoration of King Henry V. might be
delayed for half a month! Like Danton, I crave pardon for it of God and
men.
VENICE, HÔTEL DE L'EUROPE, 10 _September_ 1833.
Salve, Italuni Regina....
. . . . .
Nec tu semper eris[77].
O d'Italia dolente
Eterno lumine....
Venezia[78]!
In Venice, one can imagine one's self on the deck of a superb galley
lying at anchor, on the _Bucentaur_, where a feast is being given in
your honour and from whose side you see wonderful things all around.
My inn, the Hôtel de l'Europe, is situated at the entrance to the
Grand Canal, opposite the Dogana di Mare, the Giudecca and San Giorgio
Maggiore. When one goes up the Grand Canal, between its two rows of
palaces, so marked by their centuries, so varied in architectural
style, when one moves from the Piazza to the Piazzetta, when one
contemplates the basilica and its domes, the Palace of the Doges, the
Procuratie Nuove, the Zucca, the Torre dell' Orologio, the campanile
of St Mark's and the Column of the Lion, all mingled with the sails
and masts of the shipping, the movement of the crowd and the gondolas,
the azure of the sky and sea, the freaks of a dream or the frolics
of an Oriental imagination present nothing more fantastic. Sometimes
Cicéri[79] paints and collects upon a canvas, for the illusions of the
stage, monuments of all shapes, all times, all countries, all climates:
it is still Venice.
Those double-gilt edifices, so profusely embellished by Giorgione[80],
Titian, Paul Veronese[81], Tintoretto[82], Giovanni Bellini[83], Paris
Bordone[84], the two Palmas[85], are filled with bronzes, marbles,
granites, porphyries, precious antiques, rare manuscripts; their
internal magic is equal to their external magic; and when, in the bland
light that illumines them, one discovers the illustrious names and
noble memories attached to their vaults, one cries with Philippe de
Comines:
"'Tis the most triumphant city that ever I saw!"
[Sidenote: The glories of Venice.]
And yet it is no longer the Venice of the Minister of Louis XI.; the
Venice the Bride of the Adriatic and mistress of the seas; the Venice
that gave emperors to Constantinople, kings to Cyprus, princes to
Dalmatia, the Peloponnesus, Crete; the Venice that humiliated the
German Cæsars and received the Popes as suppliants at her inviolable
hearths; the Venice of whom monarchs esteemed it an honour to be the
citizens, to whom Petrarch[86], Pletho[87], Bessarion[88] bequeathed
the remnants of Greek and Latin literature saved from the shipwreck of
barbarism; the Venice, a republic in the midst of Feudal Europe, that
served as a buckler to Christianity; the Venice, the "setter-up of
lions," that trampled on the ramparts of Ptolemaïs[89], Ascalon[90],
Tyre[91] and overthrew the Crescent at Lepanto[92]; the Venice whose
doges were men of learning and whose merchants knights; the Venice
that laid low the Orient or bought its perfumes, that brought back
from Greece conquered turbans or recovered master-pieces; the Venice
that issued victorious from the ungrateful League of Cambrai; the
Venice that triumphed through her feasts, her courtezans and her arts,
as through her arms and her great men; the Venice that was at once
Corinth, Athens and Carthage, adorning her head with rostral crowns and
floral diadems.
It is no longer even the city through which I passed when I went to
visit the shores that had witnessed her glory; but, thanks to her
voluptuous breezes and agreeable waters, she retains a charm: it
is especially to declining countries that a beautiful climate is a
necessity. There is civilization enough in Venice to lend a niceness to
existence. The seduction of the sky prevents one from requiring greater
human dignity: an attractive virtue is exhaled from those vestiges of
greatness, those traces of the arts which surround one. The ruins of an
old state of society which produced such things as these, while giving
you a distaste for a new state of society, leave you no desire for a
future. You love to feel yourself die with all that is dying around
you; you have no other care than to adorn what remains of your life
as it is gradually laid aside. Nature, which causes young generations
to reappear amongst ruins as quickly as it covers those ruins with
flowers, keeps for the most enfeebled races the habit of the passions
and the enchantment of pleasure.
Venice never knew idolatry: she grew up Christian in the island where
she was reared, far from the brutality of Attila. The women descended
from the Scipios, the Pauli and the Eustochie escaped from Alaric's
violence in the Grotto of Bethlehem. Standing apart from all other
cities, the eldest daughter of ancient civilization without ever
having been dishonoured by conquest, Venice contains neither Roman
remains nor monuments of the Barbarians. Nor does one see there what
one sees in the north and west of Europe, in the midst of industrial
progress: I refer to those new structures, those whole streets built
in a hurry, in which the houses remain either unfinished or empty.
What could one build here? Wretched dens which would show the poverty
of conception of the sons after the magnificence of the genius of the
fathers; white-washed hovels which would not reach to the first storey
of the gigantic residences of the Foscaris and the Pesaros. When one
sees the trowel of mortar and the handful of plaster that have had
to be applied, for an urgent repair, against a marble capital, one
is shocked. Better the rotten planks boarding up Grecian or Moorish
windows, the rags hung out to dry on graceful balconies, than the
imprint of the mean hand of our century.
[Sidenote: The view from my windows.]
Why cannot I lock myself up in this town which harmonizes so well with
my destiny, in this city of poets, where Dante, Petrarch, Byron passed!
Why cannot I finish writing my Memoirs by the light of the sun that
falls upon these pages! At this moment the luminary is still burning my
Floridan savannahs and is setting here at the end of the Grand Canal.
I can no longer see it; but, through an opening in this wilderness
of palaces, its rays strike the ball of the Dogana, the lateen-sails
of the boats, the yards of the ships and the porch of the convent of
San Giorgio Maggiore. The tower of the monastery, changed into a rosy
column, is reflected in the waves; the white front of the church is
so brightly lighted that I can pick out the smallest details of the
chisel. The outlines of the shops of the Giudecca are painted with a
Titian light; the gondolas on the canal and the harbour are swimming in
the same light. Venice is there, seated on the shore, like a beautiful
woman about to die away with the day-light: the evening breeze lifts
up her balmy tresses; she dies saluted by all the graces and all the
smiles of nature.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
In Venice, in 1806, there was a young Signor Armani, the Italian
translator or a friend of the translator of the _Génie du
Christianisme._ His sister, as he said, was a nun: _monaca._ There was
also a Jew, on his way to the farce of Napoleon's Grand Sanhedrim[93],
who had his eyes on my purse; then M. Lagarde, the chief of the French
spies, who gave me dinner: my translator, his sister, the Jew of the
Sanhedrim are either dead or no longer live in Venice. At that time,
I was staying at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, near the Rialto; that
hotel has changed its position. Almost opposite my old inn is the
Palazzo Foscari, which is falling. Back, all that old lumber of my
life! I should go mad with ruins: let us speak of the present.
I have tried to depict the general effect of the architecture of
Venice; in order to receive an impression of the details, I have been
up and down and again up the Grand Canal, I have visited and revisited
the Piazza San Marco. It would need volumes to exhaust that subject.
Count Cicognara's[94] _Fabbriche più conspicue di Venezia_ supply the
features of the monuments; but the exposition is not clear. I will
content myself with noting down two or three of the most frequently
recurring arrangements.
From the capital of a Corinthian column is described a semicircle, the
point of which descends upon the capital of another Corinthian column:
exactly in the middle of those shafts rises a third, of the same
dimensions and the same order; from the capital of that central column
two epicycles spring to right and left, the ends of which also come
to lie upon the capitals of other columns. The result of this design
is that the arches, in crossing each other, give birth to ogives at
their point of intersection[95], so that a charming admixture is formed
of two architectural styles, the full Roman arch and the ogive of
Arab-Gothic or "Mediæval" origin; but it is certain that the latter
exists in the so-called Cyclopean monuments; I have seen very pure
specimens of it in the tombs of Argos[96].
The Ducal Palace presents twines reproduced in some other palaces,
particularly in the Palazzo Foscari: the columns support pointed
arches; those arches leave voids between them: between those voids the
architect has placed two roses. The rose depresses the extremity of the
two ellipses. Those roses, which meet at a point of their circumference
in the fore front of the building, become a kind of row of wheels upon
which the rest of the edifice is carried.
In every structure, the base is commonly broad; the monument diminishes
in thickness as it encroaches on the sky. The Ducal Palace is the exact
opposite of that natural scheme of architecture: the base, pierced by
light porticoes surmounted by a gallery of arabesques indented with
four-leaved open trefoils, supports an almost bare square mass: one
would say it was a fortress built upon pillars, or rather an inverted
building planted on its light coping with its thick root in the air.
Remarkable in the Venetian monuments are the architectural masks and
heads. In the Palazzo Pesaro, the entablature of the first storey,
of the Doric order, is decorated with heads of giants; the Ionic
order of the second storey is bound by heads of knights which stretch
horizontally from the wall, with their faces looking towards the
water: some are wrapped in a chin-piece, others have their visors
half-lowered; all wear helmets whose plumes bend round into ornaments
under the cornice. Lastly, on the third storey, of the Corinthian
order, we see heads of female statues with their hair differently
knotted.
[Sidenote: Venetian architecture.]
In St. Mark's, embossed with domes, encrusted with mosaics, loaded with
incoherent spoils of the East, I found myself at the same time in San
Vitale at Ravenna, in St. Sophia in Constantinople, in St. Saviour's in
Jerusalem and in those lesser churches of the Morea, Chios and Malta:
St. Mark's, a monument of Byzantine architecture, composite of victory
and conquest raised to the Cross, is a trophy, as is the whole of
Venice. The most remarkable effect of its architecture is its darkness
under a brilliant sky; but to-day, the loth of September, the deadened
light from the outside harmonized with the gloomy basilica. They were
completing the Forty Hours ordered to obtain fine weather. The fervour
of the faithful praying against rain was great: the Venetians look upon
a grey and watery sky as the plague.
Our prayers were granted: the evening became charming; at night I went
for a walk on the quay. The sea lay smooth; the stars mingled with
the scattered lights of the boats and ships anchored here and there.
The cafés were full, but one saw no _Pulcinelli_, Greeks nor Moors:
everything comes to an end. A Madonna, brightly illuminated at the
crossing of a bridge, attracted the crowd: young girls were devoutly
telling their beads on their knees; they made the Sign of the Cross
with their right hand and stopped the passers-by with their left.
Returning to my inn, I went to bed and to sleep to the singing of the
gondoliers stationed under my windows.
I have as my guide Antonio, the oldest and best-informed of the
_ciceroni_ of the place; he knows the palaces, statues and pictures by
heart
On the 11th of September, I paid a visit to the Abbé Betio and M.
Gamba[97], the keepers of the Library: they received me with extreme
politeness, although I had no letter of recommendation.
As one goes through the rooms of the Ducal Palace, one passes from
wonders to wonders. There the whole history of Venice unrolls itself,
painted by the greatest masters: their pictures have been described a
hundred times.
Among the antiques, I remarked, like everybody else, the group of
_Leda and the Swan_ and the _Ganymede_ ascribed to Praxiteles. The
Swan is prodigious in its embrace and its voluptuousness; Leda is too
compliant. The eagle of the _Ganymede_ is not a real eagle; it looks
the best-tempered beast in the world. Ganymede, charmed at being
carried off, is enchanting: he talks to the eagle, which talks to him.
Those antiques are placed at either end of the magnificent rooms of
the Library. I contemplated, with the sacred respect of the poet, a
manuscript of Dante's and gazed, with the greed of the traveller, upon
the map of the world of Fra Mauro[98] (1460). Africa, however, does not
appear to be traced upon it so correctly as they say. They ought, above
all, in Venice, to explore the archives: they would find invaluable
documents there.
From the painted and gilded halls, I passed to the prisons and the
dungeons; the same palace presents the microcosm of society, joy and
sorrow. The prisons are under the leads, the dungeons on the level of
the water of the canal and on two storeys. A thousand tales are told
of strangulations and secret beheadings[99]; by way of compensation we
hear that a prisoner left those dungeons fat, plump and rosy, after
eighteen years spent in captivity: he had lived like a toad inside a
rock. All honour to the human race! What a fine thing it is!
Plenty of philanthropic phrases stain the vaults and walls of the
underground cells, since the day when our Revolution, so adverse to
blood,
. . . . . . . dans cet affreux séjour
D'un coup de _hache_ a fait entrer le jour[100].
[Sidenote: The Venetian prisons.]
In France, the gaols were crammed with victims who were got rid of by
cutting their throats; but, in the prisons of Venice, they set free the
shades of men who had, perhaps, never been there. The gentle butchers
who sliced the throats of children and old men, the kind spectators who
assisted at the guillotining of women were melted at the progress of
humanity, so well proved by the opening of the Venetian dungeons. As
for me, I have a hard heart; I am not like those heroes of sensibility.
No old headless ghosts appeared before my eyes in the Palace of the
Doges; only it seemed to me that I saw in the cells of the aristocracy
what the Christians saw when they shattered the idols: nests of mice
escaping from the heads of the gods. That is what happens to every
power that is disembowelled and exposed to the light: it lets out the
vermin which we used to adore.
The Bridge of Sighs connects the Ducal Palace with the prisons of the
town; it is divided into two separate passages: through one of these,
the ordinary prisoners entered; through the other, the State prisoners
went before the tribunal of the Inquisitors or the Ten. This bridge
presents a graceful exterior, and the façade of the prison is admired:
beauty cannot be dispensed with in Venice, even for tyranny and
misfortune! Pigeons make their nests in the windows of the gaol; little
doves, all covered with down, flutter their wings and moan at the bars,
while waiting for their mother. In former days, innocent creatures used
to be cloistered almost on leaving the cradle; their parents never saw
them again except through the gratings of the parlour or the wicket of
the door.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
You can readily imagine that, in Venice, I necessarily thought of
Silvio Pellico[101]. M. Gamba had told me that the Abbé Betio was the
master of the Palace and that, by applying to him, I should be able to
make my researches. The excellent librarian, to whom I had recourse one
morning, took a big bunch of keys and led me, along several passages
and up various stair-cases, to the garrets of the author of _Le mie
Prigioni._
M. Silvio Pellico has made only one mistake; he has spoken of his gaol
as of one of those famous prison-cells high up in the air, marked by
their roofing _sotto i piombi._ Those prisons are, or rather were
five in number, in that portion of the Ducal Palace which adjoins the
Ponte della Paglia and the canal of the Bridge of Sighs. Pellico did
not dwell there; he was incarcerated at the other end of the Palace,
near the Ponte degli Canonici, in a building contiguous to the Palace,
which building had been transformed, in 1820, into a gaol for political
prisoners. However, he was also "under the leads," for a plate of that
metal formed the roofing of his hermitage.
The description which the prisoner gives of his first and second room
is exact to the last particular. Through the window of the first room,
one looks out on the roof of St. Mark's; one sees the well in the inner
yard of the Palace, a corner of the Piazza, the different steeples of
the town and, beyond the lagoons, on the horizon, mountains in the
direction of Padua. The second room is recognised by its big window and
by another smaller and higher window: it was through the big one that
Pellico used to perceive his companions in misfortune in a detached
building opposite and, on the left, above, the dear children who used
to talk to him from their mother's casement.
To-day all those chambers are deserted, for men remain nowhere, not
even in the prisons; the bars of the windows have been removed and the
walls and ceilings white-washed. The gentle and learned Abbé Betio,
living in this abandoned part of the Palace, is its peaceful and
solitary guardian.
[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico.]
The rooms which immortalize Pellico's captivity are lofty and airy;
they command a splendid view; they are the prison for a poet; there
would not be much to say about them, admitting the tyranny and
absurdity: but the death sentence for a speculative opinion! The
Moravian[102] dungeons! Ten years taken from life, youth and talent!
And the gnats, those nasty animals by which I myself am being eaten up
at the Hôtel de l'Europe, hardened though I be by the weather and the
mosquitoes of Florida! For the rest, I have often been worse lodged
than was Pellico in his belvedere in the Ducal Palace, notably in the
prefecture of the doges of the French Police, where I was obliged to
climb up on a table to enjoy the light.
The author of _Francesca da Rimini_ thought of Zanze in his gaol; I, in
mine, sang of a young girl whom I had just seen die. I was very anxious
to know what became of Pellico's little guardian. I have set persons to
make researches: if I find out anything, I will tell you.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
A gondola landed me at the Frari, where we French, accustomed as we
are to the Grecian or Gothic exteriors of our own churches, are not
much struck by those outsides of basilicas in brick, ungrateful and
common to the eye; but, in the inside, the harmony of the lines and
the disposition of the masses produce a simplicity and a calmness of
composition that enchant one.
The tombs in the Frari, placed in the lateral walls, decorate the
building without obstructing it The magnificence of the marbles blazes
forth on every side, charming foliage bears witness to the finish of
the old Venetian sculpture. On one of the squares of the pavement in
the nave are these words:
HERE LIES TITIAN, THE RIVAL OF ZEUXIS AND APELLES
This stone is opposite one of the painter's master-pieces. Canova
has his gorgeous sepulchre not far from Titian's flag-stone; this
sepulchre is the replica of the monument which he had conceived for
Titian himself and which he executed afterwards for the Archduchess
Maria Christina[103]. The remains of the sculptor of the _Hebe_ and the
_Magdalen_ are not all collected in this work: thus Canova inhabits the
representation of a tomb made by himself, not for himself, which tomb
is but his semi-cenotaph.
From the Frari, I proceeded to the Manfrini Gallery. The portrait
of Ariosto is speaking. Titian painted his mother, an old matron of
the people, squalid and ugly: the artist's pride shows itself in the
exaggeration of this woman's years and poverty.
At the Academy of Fine Arts, I hurried fast to the picture of the
_Assumption_, discovered by Cicognara[104]: ten large male figures at
the bottom of the picture; observe the man rapt in ecstasy on the left,
watching Mary. The Virgin, above this group, rises in the centre of a
semicircle of cherubs; there is a multitude of admirable faces in that
glory: a woman's head, on the right, at the point of the crescent, of
unspeakable beauty; two or three heavenly spirits flung horizontally
across the sky, in the bold, picturesque manner of Tintoretto. I am not
sure that a standing angel does not experience some feeling of a too
terrestrial love. The Virgin is largely proportioned; she is clad in
a red drapery; her blue scarf floats in the air; her eyes are raised
towards the Eternal Father, who appeared at the zenith. Four positive
colours, brown, green, red and blue, cover the picture: the aspect of
the whole is sombre, the character unideal, but of an incomparable
truth and natural vivacity. Nevertheless, I prefer the _Presentation of
the Virgin in the Temple_, by the same painter, which hangs in the same
room.
Facing the _Assumption_ and very cleverly lighted is Tintoretto's
_Miracle of St. Mark_, a vigorous scene which seems dug out of the
canvas with the chisel and mallet rather than the brush.
I went on to the plaster-casts from the metopes of the Parthenon; these
plasters had a three-fold interest for me: in Athens, I had seen the
voids left by the ravages committed by Lord Elgin[105] and, in London,
the kidnapped marbles of which I found the mouldings in Venice. The
roving destiny of those master-pieces was linked with mine, and yet
Phidias did not fashion my clay.
I was unable to tear myself away from the original drawings by Leonardo
da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael. Nothing is more interesting than
those sketches of genius abandoned alone to its studies and its whims:
it admits you to its intimacy; it initiates you into its secrets;
it informs you by what steps and by what efforts it has attained
perfection: one is enraptured at seeing how it was mistaken, how it
perceived its error and corrected it. Those pencil-strokes drawn on
the corner of a table on a wretched piece of paper retain a marvellous
richness and natural artlessness. When you reflect that Raphael's hand
has passed over those immortal scraps, you are angry with the glass
which prevents you from kissing those holy relics.
[Sidenote: Santi Giovanni e Paolo.]
I refreshed myself, after my admiration at the Academy of Fine Arts,
with an admiration of a different kind at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, even
as one rests one's mind by a change of reading. This church, whose
unknown architect followed in the foot-steps of Niccola Pisano, is rich
and spacious. The apse into which the high altar retires represents
a kind of erect shell; two other sanctuaries accompany this shell
laterally: they are tall and narrow, with many-centred vaultings, and
are separated from the apse by rabbeted channels.
The ashes of the Doges Mocenigo[106], Morosini[107], Vendramin[108]
and several other heads of the Republic[109] rest here. Here also is
the skin of Antonio Bragadino[110], the defender of Famagusta, to
whom Tertulliano expression may be applied: "a living skin." Those
illustrious remains inspire a great and painful sentiment: Venice
herself, the magnificent catafalco of her warlike magistrates, the
two-fold coffin of their ashes, is now no more than a living skin.
Stained-glass windows and red curtains, while veiling the light in
Santi Giovanni e Paolo, increase the religious effect. The numberless
columns brought from the East and from Greece have been planted in
the basilica, like avenues of exotic trees. A storm rose while I
was roaming in the church: when will the trumpets sound that shall
rouse all these dead? I said as much under Jerusalem, in the Valley
of Jehoshaphat. Returning to my hotel after those visits, I thanked
God for having transported me from the porkers of Waldmünchen to the
pictures of Venice.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
After my discovery of the prisons in which material Austria tries
to stifle Italian intellects, I went to the Arsenal. No monarchy,
however powerful it be or have been, has presented a similar nautical
compendium.
An immense space, enclosed by crenellated walls, contains four docks
for large ships, yards for building those ships, establishments for all
that concerns the military and merchant navy, from the rope-yard to the
gun-foundry, from the work-shop where they carve the oar of the gondola
to that where they square the keel of a seventy-four, from the rooms
devoted to the old armour captured in Constantinople, in Cyprus, in the
Morea, at Lepanto to the rooms in which modern armour is exhibited: the
whole mingled with galleries, columns, works of architecture raised and
designed by the chief masters.
In the naval arsenals of Spain, England, France, Holland, one sees only
that which is connected with the objects of those arsenals; in Venice,
the arts are allied to industry. The monument to Admiral Emo[111], by
Canova, awaits you beside the carcass of a ship; rows of guns meet your
eye through long porticoes: the two colossal lions from the Piræus
keep the gate of the dock from which a frigate is about to issue for a
world which Athens did not know and which was discovered by the genius
of modern Italy.
[Sidenote: The Arsenal.]
In spite of those fine remains of Neptune, the Arsenal no longer
recalls those lines of Dante:
In the Venetians' arsenal as boils
Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unsound vessels; for the inclement time
Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while
His bark one builds anew, another stops
The ribs of his that hath made many a voyage,
One hammers at the prow, one at the poop,
This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls,
The mizen one repairs, and main-sail rent[112].
All this animation is over: the emptiness of seven-eighths of the
arsenal, the extinct furnaces, the boilers gnawed with rust, the
rope-walks without wheels, the dock-yards without shipwrights bear
witness to the same death that has smitten the palaces. Instead of
the throng of carpenters, sail-makers, seamen, caulkers, ship's lads,
one sees a few galley-slaves dragging their fetters: two of them were
eating off the breech of a gun; at that iron table they could at least
dream of liberty.
When formerly those galley-slaves rowed on board the _Bucentaur_, they
wore a purple tunic thrown over their branded shoulders, to make them
look like kings cleaving the waves with gilded paddles; they gladdened
their toil with the clank of their chains, even as in Bengal, at the
Feast of the Durga, the nautch-girls, dressed in gold gauze, accompany
their dances with the sound of the rings with which their necks, arms
and legs are adorned. The Venetian convicts married the doge to the sea
and themselves renewed their indissoluble union with slavery.
Of those many fleets which bore the crusaders to the shores of
Palestine and forbade any foreign sail to be displayed to the winds
of the Adriatic, there remain a model of the _Bucentaur_, Napoleon's
cutter, a savages' canoe and some designs of ships drawn in chalk on
the black-board of the school of the Naval Guard.
A Frenchman coming from Prague to Venice and expecting the mother of
Henry V. must needs be touched at seeing the armour of Henry IV. in
the Venice Arsenal. The sword which the Bearnese wore at the Battle of
Ivry[113] used to be joined to that armour: that sword is no longer
there.
By a decree of the Grand Council of Venice, dated 3 April 1600:
"_Enrico di Borbone IV., re di Francia e di Navarra, con li
figluoli e discenditi suoi, sia annumerato tra il nobli di questio
nostro maggior consiglio._"
Charles X., Louis XIX. and Henry V., descendants of "Enrico di
Borbone," are therefore nobles of the Republic of Venice, which no
longer exists, even as they are Kings of France in Bohemia, even as
they are canons of St. John Lateran in Rome, and always by right of
Henry IV.; I have represented them in this last quality: they have lost
their president's cap and their amice, and I have lost my embassy. And
yet I was so well off in my stall in St. John Lateran! What a beautiful
church! What a beautiful sky! What admirable music! Those songs have
lasted longer than my grandeurs and those of my Canon-King.
My glory annoyed me greatly at the Arsenal; it shines on my
forehead unknown to myself: Field-marshal Pallucci, Admiral and
Commandant-General of the Navy, recognised me by my horns of fire. He
hastened up to me, himself showed me several curiosities and then,
excusing himself for his inability to accompany me any longer, because
of a council over which he had to preside, he placed me in the hands of
a superior officer.
We met the captain of the frigate which was on the point of sailing.
He accosted me without ceremony and said to me, with that sailor's
frankness which I like so much:
"Monsieur le vicomte"--as though he had known me all his life--"have
you any message for America?"
"No, captain: be sure to give her my compliments; it is long since I
saw her!"
I cannot see a vessel without dying of longing to go with her: if I
were free, the first ship sailing for the Indies would have a chance of
carrying me away. How I regretted not to have been able to accompany
Captain Parry[114] to the Arctic regions! My life is at its ease only
in the midst of the clouds and the seas: I always cherish the hope that
it will disappear under a sail. The weighty years which we heave into
the waves of time are not anchors: they do not delay our course.
[Sidenote: The Isola di San Cristoforo.]
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
In the Arsenal, I was not far from the Isola di San Cristoforo, which
serves to-day as a cemetery. This island used to contain a convent of
Capuchins; the convent has been pulled down and its site is nothing
more than a square enclosure. The tombs are not very many in number, or
at least they are not raised above the level and grassy ground. Against
the west wall are fixed five or six stone monuments; little black
wooden crosses, with a white date, are scattered about the enclosure:
that is how they now bury the Venetians whose forefathers rest in the
mausoleums of the Frari and Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Society, as it
grows larger, has humbled itself: democracy has overtaken death.
On the edge of the cemetery, on the east side, one sees the vaults of
the Schismatic Greeks and those of the Protestants; they are separated
from each other by a wall and again separated from the Catholic burials
by another wall: sad dissents whose memory is perpetuated in the asylum
where all quarrels end! Close by the Greek cemetery is another recess
which protects a hole into which the still-born children are thrown
to Limbo. Happy creatures! You have passed from the darkness of the
maternal womb into everlasting darkness, without going through the
light!
Near this hole lie bones dug into the ground like roots, as each new
grave is cleared: some, the older ones, are white and dry; others, more
recently disinterred, are yellow and damp. Lizards run about those
remains, glide in between the teeth, through the eyes and nostrils,
come out through the mouth and ears of the skulls, their houses or
nests. Three or four butterflies hovered over the mallow-flowers
entwined with those bones, an image of the soul under that sky which
resembles that under which the story of Psyche was invented. One skull
still had a few hairs of the same shade as my own. Poor old gondolier!
Did you at least steer your bark better than I have steered mine?
A common grave remains open in the enclosure; they had just lowered
a physician beside his old practice. His black coffin was covered
with earth only at the top and its naked side awaited the side of
another dead man to warm it Antonio had stuffed his wife in there, a
fortnight ago, and it was the defunct doctor who had dispatched her:
Antonio blessed a requiting and avenging God and bore his misfortune
patiently. The coffins of private individuals are taken to that dismal
dwelling-place in private gondolas, followed by a priest in another
gondola. As the gondolas look like hearses, they suit the ceremony. A
larger wherry, an "omnibus" of Cocytus, performs the service of the
hospitals. Thus we find renewed the Egyptian burials and the fables of
Charon and his ferry-boat.
In the cemetery beside Venice stands an octagonal chapel dedicated to
St. Christopher[115]. This saint, taking a child on his shoulders at
the ford of a river, found it heavy; now the child was the Son of Mary,
who holds the globe in His hand: the altar-picture represents this fair
adventure.
And I too have tried to carry a child-king, but I did not perceive that
he was sleeping in his cradle with ten centuries: a load too heavy for
my arms.
I observed in the chapel a wooden candle-stick: the taper was
extinguished; a holy-water font for blessing the burials; and a
little book: _Pars Ritualis Romani pro usu ad exsequianda corpora
defunctorum_; when we are already forgotten, Religion, our immortal and
never wearied kinswoman, mourns us and follows us: _exsequor fugam._ A
tinder-box contained a steel; God alone disposes of the spark of life.
Two quatrains written on common paper were fastened up on the inner
panels of two of the three doors of the building:
Quivi dell' uom le frali spoglie ascoce
Pallida morte, O passegier, t'addita, etc.
The only somewhat striking tomb in the cemetery was raised in advance
by a woman who subsequently delayed eighteen years in dying: the
inscription informs us of this circumstance; thus this woman for
eighteen years hoped in vain for her sepulchre. What sorrow nourished
this hope within her?
On a little black wooden cross appears this other inscription:
VIRGINIA ACERBI, ANNO 72, 1824.
MORTA NEL BACIO DEL SIGNORE.
The years are harsh to a fair Venetian woman.
[Sidenote: San Michele di Murano.]
Antonio said to me:
"When this cemetery is full, they will give it a rest and bury the dead
in the Isola di San Michele di Murano[116]."
The expression was a correct one: when the harvest is gathered, one
lets the soil lie fallow and ploughs other furrows elsewhere.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
We have been to see that other field awaiting the Great Husbandman.
San Michele di Murano is a smiling monastery with a graceful church,
porticoes and a white cloister. The windows of the convent give a view,
over the porticoes, of Venice and the lagoons; a garden filled with
flowers meets the turf whose compost is still being prepared under the
fresh-coloured skin of some young girl. This charming retreat is given
over to Franciscans; it would better suit nuns singing like the little
pupils of Rousseau's _Scuole_:
"How happy are they," says Manzoni, "who have taken the holy veil
before fixing their eyes on a man's face."
Give me, I entreat you, a cell here in which to finish my Memoirs.
Fra Paolo[117] is buried at the entrance to the church; that seeker
after noise must be very wroth at the silence that surrounds him.
Pellico, when sentenced to death, was lodged at San Michele before
being transported to the fortress of the Spielberg. The president of
the tribunal before which Pellico appeared takes the poet's place at
San Michele; he is buried in the cloister; he will not leave that
prison.
Not far from the tomb of the magistrate is that of a foreign woman
married at the age of twenty-two years, in the month of January; she
died in the month of February following. She did not want to go beyond
the honeymoon; her epitaph says:
CI REVEDREMO.
If it were true!
Back, that doubt; back, the thought that no anguish rends annihilation!
Atheist, when death buries its nails into your heart, who knows but
that, in the last moment of consciousness, before the destruction
of the _ego_, you will feel an atrocity of pain capable of filling
eternity, an immensity of suffering of which a human being can have no
idea in the circumscribed limits of time! Ah yes, _ci revedremo!_
I was too near the island and town of Murano not to visit the factories
whence came the mirrors in my mother's room at Combourg[118]. I did not
see those factories, which are now closed; but they spun out before my
eyes, like the thread of our frail lives, a slender cord of glass: it
was of that glass that the bead was made that hung from the nose of the
little Iroquois at the Falls of Niagara: the hand of a Venetian girl
had rounded off the ornament of a savage girl[119].
I met a finer sight than Mila. A woman was carrying a swaddled child;
the delicate complexion, the captivating glance of that Muranese are
idealized in my memory. She looked sad and preoccupied. Had I been
Lord Byron, this would have been a favourable opportunity for making
an experiment with seduction on poverty; a little money goes a long
way here. Then I should have played the desperate solitary beside
the waves, intoxicated with my success and my genius. Love seems a
different thing to me: I have lost sight of René since many a year; but
I doubt if he sought the secret of his pains in his pleasures.
Every day, after my excursions, I sent to the post, but there was
nothing there: Count Griffi did not reply from Florence; the public
papers permitted to exist in this land of independence would not
have dared to state that a traveller had alighted at the White Lion.
Venice, where the gazettes[120] were born, is reduced to reading the
placards which advertise on the same bill the opera of the day and the
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The Alduses[121] will not come
forth from their tombs to embrace, in my person, the defender of the
liberty of the press. I had therefore to wait Returning to my inn, I
dined and amused myself with the company of the gondoliers stationed,
as I have said, under my window at the entrance to the Grand Canal.
[Sidenote: The gondoliers.]
The gaiety of those sons of Nereus never forsakes them: clothed by
the sun, they are fed by the sea. They do not lie about idly like the
_lazzaroni_ in Naples: ever stirring, they are sailors who lack ships
and work, but who would still carry on the trade of the world and win
the Battle of Lepanto, if the days of Venetian liberty and glory were
not past.
At six o'clock in the morning, they come to their gondolas, fastened
to posts with their prows aground. Then they begin to scrape and wash
their _barchette_ at the _Traghetti_, just as dragoons curry, brush and
sponge their horses on picket. The ticklish sea-horse is restive and
refuses to stand still under the movements of its horseman, who draws
water in a wooden vessel and pours it over the sides and into the well
of the craft. He several times repeats the aspersion, taking care to
discard the water from the surface of the sea in order to obtain the
cleaner water below. Then he scrubs the oars, polishes the brasses
and the glass of the little black deck-house, dusts the cushions and
carpets and rubs up the iron head of the prow. The whole is not done
without a few words of humour or affection addressed, in the pretty
Venetian dialect, to the skittish or docile gondola.
When the gondola's toilet is completed, the gondolier proceeds to make
his own. He combs his hair, shakes out his jacket and his blue, red
or grey cap, washes his face, feet and hands. His wife, daughter or
mistress brings him a bowl containing a mess of vegetables, bread and
meat. Breakfast over, each gondolier awaits Fortune, singing: he has
her before his eyes, one foot in the air, holding out her scarf to the
wind and serving as a weather-cock, at the top of the monument of the
Dogana di Mare. Does she give the signal? The favoured gondolier, with
oar upraised, starts out at the back of his craft, even as Achilles
used to fly in former days, or as one of Franconi's[122] circus-riders
gallops to-day on the crupper of a fiery steed. The gondola, shaped
like a skate, glides over the water as over ice: "_Sia, stati! Sta
longo!_" that does for the whole day. Then night comes, and the _calle_
will see my gondolier singing and drinking with his _zitella_ the
half-sequin which I leave him, as I go off most certainly to replace
Henry V. on the throne.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
I was trying to find out, when I woke, why I liked Venice so much,
when I suddenly remembered that I was in Brittany: it was the force of
kindred that found utterance within me. Was there not, in Cæsar's
time, in Armorica, a country of the Veneti[123]: _civitas Venetorum,
civitas Venetica?_ Has not Strabo "said that they said" that the
Veneti[124] were the descendants of the Veneti of Gaul?
It has been contradictorily held that the fishermen of Morbihan were
a colony of the _pescatori_ of Palestrina: Venice, then, would be the
mother and not the daughter of Vannes[125]. One can reconcile this by
supposing, which for that matter is very probable, that Vannes and
Venice were mutually brought to bed of one another. I therefore look
upon the Venetians as Bretons; the gondoliers and I are cousins, sprung
from the horn of Gaul: _cornu Galliæ._[126]
[Sidenote: On the Riva degli Schiavoni.]
Delighted with this thought, I went to breakfast in a café on the
Riva degli Schiavoni. The bread was new, the tea scented, the cream
as in Brittany, the butter as in the Prévalais; for butter, thanks to
the progress of enlightenment, has improved everywhere: I have eaten
excellent butter at Granada. The bustle of a harbour always delights
me: barge-masters were picnicking; vendors of fruit and flowers offered
me lemons, grapes and nosegays; fishermen got ready their tartans;
naval cadets, stepping into a long-boat, went off to their lessons in
naval tactics on board the flag-ship; gondolas were taking passengers
to the Trieste steam-boat. Yet it was that same Trieste which was like
to have had me cut down on the steps of the Tuileries by Bonaparte,
as he threatened when, in 1807, I took it upon myself to write in the
_Mercure_:
"It was reserved for us to find at the back of the Adriatic the
tomb of two king's daughters[127] whose funeral oration we had
heard delivered in an attic in London. Ah, at least the grave
that holds those noble ladies will have once heard its silence
broken; the sound of a Frenchman's foot-steps will have made
two Frenchwomen start in their coffins! The respects of a poor
gentleman, at Versailles, would have been nothing to princesses;
the prayer of a Christian, on foreign soil, will perhaps have been
agreeable to saints."
Some few years, it seems to me, have passed, since I began to serve the
Bourbons: they have enlightened my fidelity, but they will not tire it
I am breakfasting on the Riva degli Schiavoni, while waiting for the
exile.
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
From the little table at which I sit, my eyes wander over all the
roads: a breeze from the offing cools the air; the tide is rising; a
three-master is coming in. The Lido on one side, the Doge's Palace on
the other, the lagoons in the middle: that is the picture. It is from
this port that so many glorious fleets set sail; old Dandolo sallied
forth in all the pomp of naval chivalry, of which Villehardouin[128],
who began our language and our Memoirs, has left us a description:
"And when the ships were laden with arms, and meats, and knights, and
sergeants, and the shields were arrayed all round in the form of a
frieze, and the banners waved, of which there were so many fair ones,
never did fairer fleets sail from any port."
The morning scene in Venice also puts me in mind of the story of
Captain Olivet and Zulietta, which was so well told:
"The gondola lay to, and I saw a dazzlingly beautiful young woman
step out, coquettishly dressed and very nimble. In three bounds
she was in the cabin and seated at my side, before I perceived
that a place had been laid for her. She was a brunette of twenty
years at the most, as charming as she was lively. She could speak
only Italian; her accent alone would have been enough to turn my
head. While eating and chatting, she fixed her eyes on me and then,
exclaiming, 'Holy Virgin! O my dear Brémond, how long it is since I
saw you!1 she threw herself into my arms, sealed her lips to mine
and pressed me almost to suffocation. Her large, black, Oriental
eyes darted shafts of fire into my heart; and although surprise
at first diverted my senses, my amorous feelings very rapidly
overcame me.... She told us that I was the image of M. de Brémond,
the director of the Tuscan custom-house; that she had been madly
in love with this M. de Brémond; that she was still madly in love
with him; that she had left him because she was a fool; that she
took me in his place; that she wanted to love me, since it suited
her; that, for the same reason, I must love her as long as it
suited her; and that, when she left me in the lurch, I must bear it
patiently as her dear Brémond had done. No sooner said than done....
"In the evening, we escorted her back to her apartments. While we
were talking, I noticed two pistols on her dressing-table.
"'Ah, ah!' said I, taking one up, 'here is a patch-box of a new
construction; may I ask what it is used for?'
"She said, with an ingenuous pride which made her still more
charming:
"'When I am complaisant to those whom I do not love, I make them
pay for the weariness they cause me: nothing can be fairer; but,
although I endure their caresses, I will not endure their insults,
and I shall not miss the first man who shall be wanting in respect
to me.'
'When I left her, I made an appointment for the next day. I did not
keep her waiting. I found her _in vestito di confidenza_, in a more
than wanton undress, which is known only in southern countries and
which I will not amuse myself with describing, although I remember
it too well.... I had no idea of the delights that awaited me.
I have spoken of Madame de Larnage, in the transports which the
recollection of her still sometimes awakens in me; but how old,
ugly, and cold she was, compared with my Zulietta! Do not attempt
to imagine the charms and graces of this bewitching girl; you would
be too far from the truth. The young virgins of the cloister are
not so fresh, the beauties of the harem are not so lively, the
houris of paradise are not so piquant.[129]"
This adventure ended with an eccentricity on the part of Rousseau and
Zulietta's phrase:
"_Lascia le donne e studia la matematica._"
[Sidenote: Zulietta, Margherita Cogni.]
Lord Byron also gave up his life to paid Venuses: he filled the
Mocenigo Palace with those Venetian beauties, who had " taken refuge,"
according to him, "under the _fazzioli._" Sometimes, perturbed by a
feeling of shame, he fled, and spent the night on the water in his
gondola. He had, as his favourite sultana, Margherita Cogni, surnamed,
from her husband's condition, the Fornarina[130]:
"Very dark, tall"--it is Lord Byron who speaks--"the Venetian face,
very fine black eyes. She was two-and-twenty years old....
"In the autumn, one day, going to the Lido... we were overtaken
by a heavy squall. . . . . . . ....On our return, after a tight
struggle, I found Margarita on the open steps of the Mocenigo
Palace, on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing
through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming,
drenched with rain, over her brows and breast. She was perfectly
exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about
her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing round her, and
the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted
from her chariot, or the sybil of the tempest that was rolling
around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except
ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me.... but
calling out to me, '_Ah! can' della Madonna, ne este il tempo per
andar' al' Lido!_--Ah! dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to
the Lido?' ran into the house," etc.
In these two stories of Rousseau and Byron, one feels the difference
in social position, character and education between the two men.
Through the charm of the style of the author of the _Confessions_ peeps
something vulgar, cynical, in bad form, in bad taste; the obscenity of
expression peculiar to that period still further spoils the picture.
Zulietta is superior to her lover in elevation of feeling and in
habitual elegance: it is almost a fine lady smitten with the puny
secretary of a paltry ambassador[131]. The same inferiority appears
again when Rousseau arranges to bring up, with his friend Carrio, at
their common expense, a little girl of eleven years whose favours, or
rather whose tears, they were to share.
Lord Byron bears himself differently: he shines forth with the manners
and the fatuousness of the aristocracy; a peer of Great Britain,
playing with the woman of the people whom he has seduced, he raises her
to himself by his caresses and the magic of his talent Byron arrived
in Venice rich and famous: Rousseau landed there poor and unknown;
everybody knows the palace that blabbed the errors of the noble heir of
the English commodore[132]: no _cicerone_ could point out to you the
house in which the plebeian son of the humble clock-maker of Geneva hid
his pleasures. Rousseau does not even speak of Venice; he seems to have
lived in it without seeing it: Byron has sung it admirably[133].
You have seen in these Memoirs what I have said of the relations
of imagination and destiny that seem to have existed between the
historian of _René_ and the poet of _Childe Harold._ Here I point to
another of those conjunctures so nattering to my pride. Does not the
dark-haired Fornarina of Lord Byron bear a certain family likeness to
the fair-haired Velléda of the _Martyrs_, her elder?
[Sidenote: Velléda.]
"'Hidden among the rocks, I waited some time, but nothing appeared.
Suddenly, my ear was struck by sounds which the wind carried to
me from the middle of the lake. I listened and distinguished the
accents of a human voice; at the same time I discovered a skiff
poised on the crest of a wave; it came down again, disappeared
between two billows, and then showed itself once more on the
summit of a heavy swell; it approached the shore. A woman was
steering; she sang as she struggled against the storm and seemed
to sport amidst the winds: one would have thought that they were
in her power, from the manner in which she seemed to defy them. I
saw her throw into the lake by turns, as a sacrifice, pieces of
linen, sheep's fleeces, cakes of wax and little gold and silver
grindstones.
"Soon she touched land, sprang on shore, fastened her bark to the
trunk of a willow and darted into the wood, leaning on the poplar
oar which she held in her hand. She passed quite close to me
without seeing me. Her figure was tall; a dark, short, sleeveless
tunic scarce served to veil her nudity. She carried a golden sickle
slung from a brass girdle and her head was encircled with an oaken
branch. The whiteness of her arms and complexion, her blue eyes,
her rosy lips, her long fair hair that waved dishevelled in the
air bespoke the daughter of the Gauls and contrasted, by their
gentleness, with her proud and fierce gait She sang words full of
terror in a melodious voice, and her uncovered breast rose and fell
like the foam of the waves[134].'"
I should blush to show myself between Byron and Jean-Jacques, without
knowing what place posterity will award me, if these Memoirs were to
appear during my life; but, when they see the light, I shall have gone
and for all time, like my illustrious predecessors, to a distant shore;
my shade will be delivered to the breath of opinion, vain and light
like the little that will remain of my ashes.
Rousseau and Byron had one feature in common in Venice: neither showed
any feeling for the arts. Rousseau, who had wonderful gifts for music,
does not seem to know that, near Zulietta, there existed pictures,
statues, monuments; and yet with what charm do those master-pieces mate
with love, whose object they divine and whose flame they increase! As
to Lord Byron, he "loathes the infernal din" of Rubens' colours, he
"spits upon" all the pictures of saints with which the churches are
glutted; he never met a picture or statue coming within a league of
his thought. He prefers to those deceitful arts the beauty of a few
mountains, a few seas, a few horses, a certain Morean lion and a tiger
which he saw supping in Exeter Change. Is there not a little prejudice
in all this?
Que d'affectation et de forfanterie[135]!
VENICE, _September_ 1833.
But what, then, is this town in which all the lofty intelligences have
arranged to meet? Some have visited it themselves; others have sent
their Muses there. Something would have been lacking to the immortality
of those talents, if they had not hung pictures on that temple of
voluptuousness and glory. Without again recalling the great poets of
Italy, the geniuses of the whole of Europe placed their creations
there: there breathed Shakespeare's Desdemona, very different from
Rousseau's Zulietta and Byron's Margherita, that chaste Venetian who
declares her love to Othello:
And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her[136].
There appeared Otway's[137] Belvidera, who says to Jaffeir:
Oh smile, as when our loves were in their spring.
. . . . . . . . .
Oh lead me to some desert wide and wild,
Barren as our misfortunes, where my soul
May have its vent, where I may tell aloud
To the high heavens, and every list'ning planet,
With what a boundless stock my bosom's fraught;
Where I may throw my eager arms about thee,
Give loose to love, with kisses kindling joy,
And let off all the fire that's in my heart[138].
Goethe, in our time, has celebrated Venice, and the gentle Marot[139],
who first made his voice heard at the awakening of the French Muses,
took refuge in Titian's native place. Montesquieu wrote:
"Although one had seen all the cities of the world, there might
still be a surprise in store for him in Venice[140]."
When, in too undraped a picture, the author of the _Lettres persanes_
depicts a Mussulman woman surrendered in Paradise to two "heavenly
men," does he not seem to have painted the courtezan of Rousseau's
_Confessions_ and her of Byron's Memoirs? Was not I, between my two
Floridans, like Anaïs between her two angels[141]? But the "painted
girls" and I were not immortal.
[Sidenote: And Corinne.]
Madame de Staël gives Venice over to the inspiration of Corinne: the
latter hears the sound of the cannon that announces "the obscure
sacrifice of a young girl[142] ...a solemn counsel, which a woman
resigned to her fate gives to those who still struggle with destiny."
...Corinne climbs to the top of the tower of St. Mark's, contemplates
the city and the waves, turns her eyes towards Greece "enveloped in
clouds;" at night she sees "nothing but the reflection of the lanterns
which light the gondolas:" they give her the idea of "spectres gliding
upon the water, guided by a little star[143]."
Oswald departs; Corinne darts out of the room to recall him: "The rain
then fell in torrents, a most violent wind arose;" Corinne descends to
the banks of the canal:
"The night was so dark that not a single bark was to be seen....
Corinne called to the gondoliers, who took her cries for those
of some wretch drowning in the tempest; nevertheless none dared
approach to offer assistance, so formidable were the waves of the
Grand Canal[144]."
There again you have Lord Byron's Margherita.
I find an unspeakable pleasure in meeting the masterpieces of those
great masters in the very place for which they were made. I breathe
freely in the midst of the immortal band, like a humble traveller
admitted to the hospitable hearth of a rich and beautiful family.
[60] This book was written on the road from Paris to Venice, between
the 7th and 10th of September 1833, and in Venice, from the 10th to the
15th of September 1833.--T.
[61] Salins suffered from a terrible conflagration in 1825. It was
rebuilt, with regular streets, by public subscription.--T.
[62] Pierre Joseph Thoulier, Abbé d'Olivet (1682-1768) was born at
Salins, on the Furieuse, a tributary of the Loire. He first joined the
Jesuits, where he was known as the Père Thoulier, but soon left the
Company, in order to follow a literary career. Meantime Voltaire had
been his pupil at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a member of
the French Academy in 1723; Voltaire in 1746. D'Olivet is the author
of an _Histoire de l'Académie française_, up to 1700, and of several
important grammatical works and translations, and he worked much on the
Dictionary of the French Academy.--T.
[63] Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Castle of Joux, at his father's
instance, in 1775; Toussaint-Louverture (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 191,
n. 3) died there on the 27th of April 1803, after a ten months'
confinement--T.
[64] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 246-250.--T.
[65] "When, on the 7th of August 1814, the Bull of _Sollicitudo
omnium ecclesiarum_, came to sanction the work of restoration of the
Company of Jesus, the primitive cantons of Switzerland did not remain
insensible to the joys of Catholicism. Ignace Brocard, Jacques Roh,
Gaspard Rothenflue and several of their fellow-countrymen enlisted
under the banner of the newly-reinstated Order. The Valais gave back to
the Jesuits their old college of Brigg." (CRÉTINEAU-JOLY, _Histoire du
Sunderbund_, Vol. I., p. 428.)--B.
[66] _Dies Iræ_, Stanza 5:
Liber seri plus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.--T.
[67] Francis I. lived till 1835.--T.
[68] Charles X. lived till 1836.--T.
[69] Ferdinand III. Grand-duke of Tuscany (1769-1824). _Vide supra_ p.
12, n. 1.--T.
[70] Charles Felix I. King of Sardinia (1765-1831) succeeded to the
throne on the abdication of his brother, Victor Emanuel I., in 1821,
the year before the Congress of Verona.--T.
[71] Pierre François Hercule Comte de Serre (1777-1822). He died as
Ambassador to Naples.--T.
[72] Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552-1616), the architect of many of the finest
buildings in North Italy.--T.
[73] Niccola Pisano (_circa_ 1206-1278), one of the greatest Italian
architects.--T.
[74] And not Signor Procurante, as the earlier editions of the Memoirs
have it.--T.
[75] VOLTAIRE: _Candide, ou l'Optimisme_, Part I., Chap. XXV.: _Candid
and Martin pay a Visit to Seignor Pococurante, a Noble Venetian._--T.
[76] Philippe de Comines (_circa_ 1445-1511), the statesman and
historian, author of the valuable _Cronique et hystoire faicte et
composée par messire Philippe de Comines._--T.
[77] JACOPO SANNAZARO.--_Author's Note._
[78] GABRIELLO CHIABRERA, _Canzoni eroiche_, III.: _Per Vittorio
Cappello, Generale de' Veneziani nella Morea_, 10-12.--T.
[79] Pierre Luc Charles Cicéri (1782-1868), a famous French
scene-painter, who executed numbers of stage-scenes for the Royal
Academy of Music, or grand Opera-house, in Paris.--B.
[80] Giorgio Barbarelli (_circa_ 1477-1511), known as Giorgione,
the great Venetian colourist and pupil of Giovanni Bellini (_vide
infra._)--T.
[81] Paolo Cagliari (1528-1588), of Verona, known as Paul Veronese, one
of the most celebrated painters of the Venetian School, went to Venice
in 1555 and remained there. He executed the decorations of the Library
of St. Mark in 1563 and the ceiling of the council-chamber in the
Palace of the Doges in 1577.--T.
[82] Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), called Tintoretto from the trade of
his father, a dyer, received his first important order in 1546, for the
decoration of Santa Maria dell' Orto. In 1560, he began to paint the
Scuola di San Rocco and the Doges' Palace and, in the same year, seems
to have taken Titian's place as Court painter to the Doges.--T.
[83] Giovanni Bellini (_post_1427-1516), the founder of the Venetian
School of painting and the greatest of the fifteenth-century artists.
Titian and Giorgione were both his pupils.--T.
[84] Paride Bordone (_circa_ 1500-1571), one of Titian's greatest
pupils.--T.
[85] Jacopo Palma the Elder( _circa_ 1480-1528) and Jacopo Palma the
Younger (_circa_ 1544-1628), uncle and nephew.--T.
[86] Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) settled in Venice and presented the
city with his library (1362).--T.
[87] George Gemistus Pletho (_b._ 1390), the celebrated Byzantine
Platonic philosopher and scholar.--T.
[88] Johannes Cardinal Bessarion (1395-1472), Archbishop of Nicæa
(1437), a cardinal (1439), Archbishop of Siponto and Bishop of Sabina
and Tusculum, and Patriarch of Constantinople (1463). Bessarion was a
disciple of Plethon and author of, among many other works of Platonic
philosophy, the famous _Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis_ (1469).--T.
[89] Or Acre: 1104.--T.
[90] 1176.--T.
[91] 1124.--T.
[92] 10 October 1571.--T.
[93] The so-called Grand Sanhedrim of 1806 was a council summoned
by Napoleon for the 20th of October of that year, consisting of
representatives of the chief synagogues of France, Italy and Europe.
The object of its deliberations was to point out to the Government
means of enabling the Jews to participate in the civil and political
rights of England, by modifying such of their habits and doctrines as
kept them isolated from their fellow-citizens. The sittings of the
Grand Sanhedrim, which consisted of 71 members, opened on the 9th of
February and ended on the 9th of March 1807. The most notable clause,
from Napoleon's point of view, in the solemn public declaration issued
on the latter date, is that dispensing Jews who are performing military
service from all religious observances that are irreconcilable with
such military service.--T.
[94] Leopoldo Conte Cicognara (1767-1834), a distinguished diplomatist
and antiquarian. He became President of the Academy of Fine Arts of
Venice in 1812. His principal work, the _Storia della Scultura_, was
published in 1813-1818.--T.
[95] It is clear to my eyes that the ogive, whose so-called mysterious
origin men go so far to seek, was born casually of the intersection
of two semicircular arches; therefore it is found everywhere. Later
architects have done no more than release it from the designs in which
it originally figured.--_Author's Note._
[96] See the previous note.--_Author's Note._
[97] Bartolommeo Gamba (1780-1841), a learned Italian bibliographer and
biographer. His chief work is the _Serie dell' Edizioni dei Testi di
Lingua Italiana_ (1812-1828).--T.
[98] Fra Mauro (_fl._ 15th Century), a monk of the Camaldule Order, who
drew his famous map of the world between 1457 and 1459.--T.
[99] Here for instance, is Charles Dickens' lurid description of the
_Pozzi_, or Prisons, which he pretends to see in a dream:
"I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below
another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite
dark. Each had a loophole in its massive wall, where, in the
old time, every day a torch was placed--I dreamed--to light the
prisoners within, for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering
of these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the
blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with the rusty
nail's point had outlived their agony and them, through many
generations.
"One cell I saw in which no man remained for more than
four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered
it. Hard by another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the
Confessor came--a monk brown-robed and hooded--ghastly in the day
and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison,
Hope's extinguisher and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the
spot where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was
strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door--low-browed
and stealthy--through which the lumpish sack was carried out into
a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a
net." (_Pictures from Italy: An Italian Dream._)--T.
[100]
. . . . . . "Into that hideous den,
With one blow of the axe, admitted light again."--T.
[101] Silvio Pellico (1788-1854) was imprisoned in Milan and Venice
from 1820 to 1822 and at the Spielberg, near Brünn, from 1822 to
1830. His _Mie Prigioni_ had only lately been published (1833)
and Chateaubriand was much struck with them. During his previous
journey to Italy, in a letter dated Basle, 17 May 1833, he wrote to
Madame Récamier:
"Here I am at Basle, safe and sound. You have seen that fine river
pass which is going, for a moment, to bring news of me to you in
France. Travelling always gives me back my strength, sentiment and
thought; I am very busy writing _a new prologue to a_ BOOK. I nave
read the whole of Pellico, cursorily. I am delighted with it; I
should like to write an account of that work, the saintliness of
which will prevent its success with our revolutionaries, who are
free after Fouché's fashion. Are you not enchanted with _Zanze
sotto i Piombi?_ And the little deaf-and-dumb person? And Schiller,
the old gaoler, and the religious conversations through the
window, and our poor Maroncelli? And that poor young wife of the
_sopr'intendente_, who dies so sweetly? And the return to beautiful
Italy?"--B.
[102] Bruno, near which the Spielberg stands, is the capital of
Moravia.--T.
[103] Maria Christina Josephs Johanna Antonia of Austria, Duchess of
Saxe-Teschen (1742-1798), married to Albert Duke of Saxe-Teschen in
1766. The Archduchess Maria Christina's monument, by Canova, is in the
church of the Augustines in Vienna.--T.
[104] Titian's _Assumption_, one of the most renowned of existing
pictures, was discovered by Count Cicognara in the church of the Frari,
for which it had been painted as an altar-piece. It was restored and
removed to the _Accademia di Belle Arti_, where it still hangs.--T.
[105] Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and eleventh Earl of
Kincardine (1766-1841) was British Envoy to Constantinople from 1799
to 1802. Between 1801 and 1803, he removed to England from Athens the
so-called Elgin marbles, comprising the bulk of the surviving plastic
decoration of the Parthenon, executed under the direction of Phidias
about 440 B.C. These stolen goods were purchased by the nation in 1816
and are now in the British Museum.--T.
[106] Tommaso Mocenigo, Doge from 1414 to 1423; Giovanni Mocenigo, Doge
from 1475 to 1485; and Luigi Mocenigo, Doge from 1570 to 1577, are all
buried in Santi Giovanni e Paolo.--T.
[107] Michele Morosini, Doge of Venice for a few months in 1382.--T.
[108] Andrea Vendramin, Doge of Venice (_d._ 1478), became Doge in
1476.--T.
[109] Seventeen doges in all are buried in Santi Giovanni e Paolo or
"Zanipolo," as the Venetians pronounce it.--B..
[110] Marco Antonio Bragadino (_d._ 1571), flayed alive by the Turks
after his valiant defense of Famagusta, in Cyprus.--T.
[111] Angelo Emo (1731-1792), the last of the Venetian admirals. He
bombarded Tunis and forced it to sign a truce with the Republic--T.
[112] Cary's DANTE: _Hell_, Canto XXI. 7-15.--T.
[113] Henry IV. defeated the Leaguers at Ivry-la-Bataille on the 14th
of March 1590.--T.
[114] Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855) started on his second polar
expedition in 1821 and his third in 1824. These two expeditions,
neither of which was specially successful, are referred to by
Chateaubriand on page 136 of Vol. I. of the Memoirs. A later
expedition, by way of Spitsbergen, was likewise unsuccessful. From 1823
to 1829, Parry was Acting Hydrographer to the Navy. In 1852, he was
made a rear-admiral and, in 1853, Governor of Greenwich Hospital.--T.
[115] St. Christopher (_fl._ 3rd Century) is said to have lived in
Syria and to have been of prodigious height and strength. As a penance
for having been a servant of the devil, he devoted himself to the
task of carrying pilgrims across a river where there was no bridge.
Christ came to the river one day in the form of a child and asked to be
carried over, but His weight grew heavier and heavier till His bearer
was nearly broken down in the midst of the stream. When they reached
the shore:
"Marvel not," said the Child, "for with Me thou hast borne the sins of
the world."
St. Christopher is usually represented as bearing the Infant Christ and
leaning upon a staff. He was martyred under the Emperor Decius _circa_
250. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Christopher on the 25th of
July.--T.
[116] The Isola di San Michele contains the modern burying-ground of
Venice.--T.
[117] Pietro Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), known as Fra Paola and surnamed
Servita, a noted Venetian historian, entered the Order of the Servites
in 1565. In 1570, he was made professor of philosophy in the Servite
Monastery in Venice. He was distinguished, in the controversy with Pope
Paul V. (1606-1607), as the champion of free thought. His chief work is
the _Istoria del Concilio di Trento_, published in London in 1619. Fra
Paolo was a member of the Council of Ten and consulting theologian to
the Venetian Republic.--T.
[118] _Cf._ VOL I., p. 76.--T.
[119] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 236.--T.
[120] The _gazetta_ was a Venetian coin, worth about three farthings,
the sum charged for a reading of the first Venetian newspaper, a
written sheet which appeared about the middle of the sixteenth century
during the war with Soliman II.--T.
[121] Aldus Manutius (_circa_ 1450-1515), the celebrated printer
and founder of the Aldine Press in Venice; his son, Paulus Manutius
(1511-1574); and the latter's son, Aldus Manutius the Younger
(1547-1597). All three were distinguished Classical scholars as well as
noted printers.--T.
[122] Antonio Franconi (1738-1836), a native of Venice, began life as a
tumbler and travelling physician. Afterwards he instituted bull-fights
in Lyons and, later, at Bordeaux; and, lastly, went into partnership,
in 1783, with Astley, the English circus-proprietor, who had opened
a theatrical riding-school in Paris, and founded the circus which he
called the Cirque Olympique and which obtained a prodigious success.--T.
[123] The Veneti were an ancient Celtic people living in Brittany, near
the coast of the Bay of Biscay. They were subdued by Cæsar, after a
severe maritime war, in 56 B.C.--T.
[124] A people dwelling near the head of the Adriatic, between the Po
and the Adige.--T.
[125] Vannes, or, in Breton, Gwened is the capital of the Department
of Morbihan and is the ancient Civitas Venetorum, the capital of the
Veneti.--T.
[126] _Cornu Galliæ_, Cornouailles, Cornwall.--T.
[127] Madame Adélaïde (1732-1800) and Madame Victoire (1733-1799),
daughters of Louis XV.--T.
[128] Geoffroi de Villehardouin (_circa_ 1160--_circa_ 1215),
the author of a famous chronicle: _Histoire de la conquête de
Constantinople, ou Chronique des empereurs Baudouin et Henri de
Constantinople._ Villehardouin's Chronicle is not only trustworthy
from an historical point of view, but is even more deserving for
its literary excellence, while being one of the oldest monuments of
original French prose. The Fourth Crusade, in which Villehardouin took
part, left Venice in October 1203.--T.
[129] ROUSSEAU: _Confessions_, Part I., Book VII.--T.
[130] The baker's wife.--T.
[131] M. de Montaigu.--T.
[132] Hon. John Byron (1723-1786), second son of William fourth Lord
Byron and grand-father of the poet, entered the Navy as a boy. In 1764,
he was promoted to commodore and commanded two vessels in a voyage of
exploration round the world; he returned in 1766, having accomplished
little beyond some curious observations on the Indians of Patagonia
and the discovery of some small islands in the Pacific Ocean. He was
Governor of Newfoundland from 1769 to 1772; became a vice-admiral
in 1778; and on the 6th of July 1779 fought an engagement with the
French fleet off Grenada, in the West Indies, the result of which was
doubtful.--T.
[133] _Cf._ BYRON, _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV.--T.
[134] CHATEAUBRIAND, _Les Martyrs_, Book IX.: _The Story of
Eudorus._--T.
[135] MOLIÈRE, _Tartufe_, Act III. Sc. ii.:
"What affectation and blind real is this!"--T.
[136] SHAKESPEARE: _Othello, the Moor of Venice_, Act I. Sc. iii.--T.
[137] Thomas Otway (1652-1685), the principal tragic poet of the
English classical school. The most famous of his tragedies, _Venice
Preserved_, from which the following quotation is taken, appeared in
1682.--T.
[138] OTWAY: _Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_, Act I. Sc.
i.--T.
[139] Clément Marot (1497-1544), the poet, when compelled to fly from
France on account of his scandalous life, took refuge in Béarn (1535),
then at the Court of Ferrara, where he was secretary to Renée of
France, and, finally, in Venice (1536).--T.
[140] MONTESQUIEU: _Lettres persanes._ Letter XXXI.: _Rhédi à Usbek, à
Paris._--T.
[141] The incident of Anals will be found in the _Lettres persanes._
Letter CXLI.: _Rica à Usbek à ***_--T.
[142] The cannon was fired when a nun took the veil.--T.
[143] _Corinne_: Book XV., Chaps, VII. and IX.--T.
[144] _Corinne_: Book XVI., Chap. III.--T.
BOOK VII[145]
Arrival of Madame de Bauffremont in Venice--Catajo--The Duke of
Modena--Petrarch's Tomb at Arqua--The land of poets--Tasso--Arrival
of Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Mademoiselle Lebeschu--Count
Lucchesi-Palli--Discussion--Dinner--Bugeaud the gaoler--Madame de
Saint-Priest, M. de Saint-Priest--Madame de Podenas--Our band--I
refuse to go to Prague--I yield at a word--Padua--Tombs--Zanze's
manuscript--Unexpected news--The Governor of the Lombardo-Venetian
Kingdom--Letters from Madame to Charles X. and Henry V.--M. de
Montbel--My note to the Governor--I set out for Prague.
_Between_ VENICE and FERRARA, 16 _to_ 17 _September_ 1833.
There was an immense interval between those dreamings and the truths to
which I returned when calling at the Princesse de Bauffremont's hotel;
I had to jump from 1806, with the memories of which year I had been
occupied, to 1833, the year in which I found myself in reality: Marco
Polo[146] fell from China into Venice, after an absence of exactly
twenty-seven years.
Madame de Bauffremont displays the name of Montmorency wonderfully in
her face and manner: she might very well, like that Charlotte, the
mother of the Grand Condé and the Duchesse de Longueville, have been
loved by Henry IV. The princess told me that Madame la Duchesse de
Berry had written me a letter from Pisa which I had not received: Her
Royal Highness was arriving at Ferrara, where she hoped to see me.
It cost me a pang to leave my retreat; I needed another week to
complete my survey: I especially regretted that I was not able to carry
through the adventure of Zanze[147]; but my time belonged to the mother
of Henry V., and, whenever I am following a certain road, there comes a
jolt that flings me into another path.
I departed, leaving my luggage at the Hôtel de l'Europe, counting on
returning with Madame. I found my calash at Fusina: they took it out of
an old coach-house, like a jewel from the Crown Wardrobe. I left the
bank which perhaps takes its name from the three-pronged fork of the
King of the Sea: _Fuscina._
On arriving at Padua, I said to the postillion:
"The Ferrara Road."
This road is charming, as far as Monselice: extremely graceful hills,
orchards of fig-trees, mulberry-trees and willows festooned with vines,
gay meadows, ruined castles. I passed the Catajo, all dressed out
with soldiers: the Abbé Lenglet[148], a very learned man otherwise,
mistook that manor-house for China. The Catajo does not belong to
Angelica[149], but to the Duke of Modena[150]. I ran plump up against
His Highness, who was deigning to go on foot along the high-road. This
Duke is the scion of the Princes invented by Machiavelli[151]: he has
the spirit not to recognise Louis-Philippe.
The village of Arqua shows Petrarch's tomb, sung, together with its
site, by Lord Byron[152]:
"Che fai, che pensi? che pur dietro guardi
Nel tempo, che tornar non pote omai,
Anima sconsolata?"
[Sidenote: The poet's country.]
All this country, within a diameter of forty leagues, is the
native soil of the writers and poets: Livy[153], Virgil[154],
Catullus[155], Ariosto[156], Guarini[157], the Strozzis[158], the
three Bentivoglios[159], Bembo[160], Bartoli[161], Bojardo[162],
Pindemonte[163], Varano[164], Monti[165] and a crowd of other
celebrated men owe their birth to this land of the Muses. Tasso himself
was of Bergamasque origin[166]. Of the later Italian poets, I have seen
only one of the two Pindemontes. I have known neither Cesarotti[167]
nor Monti; I should have been happy to meet Pellico and Manzoni, the
parting rays of Italian glory.
The Euganean Hills, which I crossed, were gilded by the gold of the
setting sun with an agreeable variety of shapes and a great purity of
outline: one of those hills resembled the chief pyramid of Sakkarah,
when it imprints itself at sunset on the Libyan horizon.
I continued my journey at night through Rovigo; a sheet of mist covered
the earth. I did not see the Po, except when crossing at Lagoscuro.
The carriage stopped; the postillion summoned the ferry-boat with his
bugle. The silence was complete; only, on the other side of the river,
the baying of a dog and the distant cascades, with their treble echo,
made answer to his horn: the proscenium of Tasso's Elysian empire,
which we were about to enter.
A ripple on the water, through the mist and the darkness, announced the
coming of the ferry-boat; it glided along the towing-rope fastened to
boats at anchor. I reached Ferrara between four and five o'clock, on
the morning of the 16th; I alighted at the Three Crowns Hotel: Madame
was expected there.
_Wednesday_ 17.
As Her Royal Highness had not arrived, I visited the church of San
Paolo: I saw nothing but tombs there; for the rest, not a soul, except
those of a few dead men and mine, which is hardly living. At the back
of the choir hung a picture by Guercino[168].
The cathedral is deceptive: you see a front and sides encrusted with
bas-reliefs representing sacred and profane subjects. Over this
exterior run other ornaments usually placed in the interior of Gothic
edifices, such as rudentures, Arab corbels, nimbused soffits, galleries
with small columns, pointed arches and trefoils, disposed in the
thickness of the walls. You enter, and you stand dumbfounded at the
sight of a new church with spherical vaults, with massive pillars.
Something of that incongruity exists in France, both physically and
morally: in our old castles, they are contriving modern closets, with
plenty of pigeon--holes, alcoves and clothes-presses. Break into the
souls of a good many of those men tabarded with historic names: what do
you find there? Backstair tendencies.
I was quite abashed at the sight of that cathedral: it seemed to have
been turned, like a gown worn inside out; a burgess' wife of the time
of Louis XV. cloaked as a castellan's lady of the twelfth century[169].
[Sidenote: Ferrara.]
Ferrara, formerly so much fretted by its women, its pleasures and its
poets, is almost uninhabited: in places where the streets are wide,
they are deserted and sheep could browse there. The dilapidated houses
do not gather fresh life, as at Venice, from the architecture, the
ships, the sea and the native gaiety of the place. Standing at the gate
of the so unfortunate Romagna, Ferrara, under the yoke of an Austrian
garrison[170], has something of the face of a persecuted victim: it
seems to wear everlasting mourning for Tasso; ready to fall, it is bent
like an old woman. As the only monument of the day, rises half from
the ground a criminal court, with unfinished prisons. Whom will they
send to those cells of recent construction? Young Italy. Those new
gaols, topped with cranes and bound with scaffoldings, like the palaces
in Dido's city, touch hands with the old cell of the singer of the
_Gerusalemme._
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
If there be a life that should make one despair of happiness for men
of talent, it is Tasso's. The beautiful sky upon which his eyes looked
when they opened to the light was a deceptive sky:
"My adversities," he says, "began with my life. Cruel fortune
snatched me from my mother's arms. I remember her kisses moist with
tears, her prayers which the winds have carried away. I was not
again to press my face to her face. With an uncertain step, like
Ascanius or young Camillus, I followed my wandering and outlawed
father. I grew up in poverty and exile."
Torquato Tasso lost Bernardo Tasso[171] at Ostiglia. Torquato has
killed Bernardo as a poet; he has made him live as a father.
Drawn from obscurity by the publication of _Rinaldo_[172], Tasso was
summoned to Ferrara. He made his first appearance there amid the
festivals on the occasion of the marriage of Alphonsus II. with the
Archduchess Barbara. He there met Leonora, Alphonsus' sister: love and
misfortune ended in giving his genius all its beauty.
"I saw," says the poet, describing, in _Aminta_[173], the first
Court of Ferrara, "I saw charming goddesses and nymphs, without
veils, without clouds: I felt the inspiration of a new virtue, of a
new divinity, and I sang of war and heroes."
Tasso read the stanzas of the _Gerusalemme_, as he composed them,
to Alphonsus' two sisters, Lucrezia and Leonora. He was sent to the
Cardinal Ippolito of Este[174], who was settled at the Court of France:
he pawned his clothes and furniture to take that journey, while the
cardinal whom he was honouring with his presence made Charles IX. the
gorgeous present of one hundred Barbary horses with their Arab riders
superbly dressed. Left at first in the stables, Tasso was afterwards
presented to the Poet-King, the friend of Ronsard. In a letter which
has been preserved for us, he judges the French harshly. He wrote a few
verses of his _Gerusalemme_ in an abbey of men in France with which
Cardinal Ippolito was endowed; this was Châlis, near Ermenonville,
where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was to dream and die: Dante also had passed
obscurely through Paris.
Tasso returned to Italy in 1571 and did not witness the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew[175]. He went straight to Rome and from there came back to
Ferrara. _Aminta_ was played with great success. Although he became
the rival of Ariosto, the author of _Rinaldo_ admired the author of
_Orlando_ to such a degree that he refused the homage of that poet's
nephew:
[Sidenote: Tasso at Ferrara.]
"This laurel which you offer me," he wrote, "the judgment of wise
men, of men of the world and my own judgment have laid on the head
of the man to whom you are bound by ties of blood. Prostrate before
his image, I give him the most honourable titles that affection and
respect are able to dictate to me. I will loudly proclaim him my
father, my lord and my master."
This modesty, so little known in our time, did not disarm jealousy.
Torquato beheld the feasts given by Venice to Henry III. returning from
Poland, when a manuscript of the _Gerusalemme_ was printed by stealth:
the minute criticism of the friends whose tastes he consulted alarmed
him. Perhaps he showed himself too sensitive; but perhaps he had built
the success of his love-affairs on his hopes of fame. He imagined
himself set about by pitfalls and treasons; he was obliged to defend
his life. His stay at Belriguardo, where Goethe evokes his shade,
failed to calm him. Says the great German poet, who makes the great
Italian poet speak:
Thus like the nightingale, conceal'd in shade,
From his love-laden breast he fills the air
And neighbouring thickets with melodious plaint:
His blissful sadness and his tuneful grief
Charm every ear, enrapture every heart[176].
. . . . . . . .
And what is more deserving to survive,
And silently to work for centuries,
Than the confession of a noble love
Confided modestly to gentle song[177]?
Says Goethe again, interpreting Leonora's sentiments:
How charming is it in the mind's clear depths
One's self to mirror . . . .
. . . . . . . .
To feel his presence, and with him to near,
With airy tread, the future's hidden realm!
Thus should old age and time their influence lose.
. . . . . . . .
All that is transient in his song survives;
Still art thou young, still happy, when the round
Of changeful time shall long have borne thee on[178].
The singer of Erminia conjures Leonora (still in the lines of the poet
of Germania) to banish him to one of her loneliest villas:
Oh, send me thither! There let me be yours!
And I will tend thy trees, construct the shed
That shields thy citrons from autumnal blasts,
Fencing them round with interwoven reeds!
Flowers of the fairest hues shall strike their roots,
And ev'ry path be trimm'd with nicest care[179].
The story of Tasso's loves was lost: Goethe found it again.
The sorrows of the Muses and the scruples of religion were beginning to
impair Tasso's reason. He was subjected to a temporary confinement. He
escaped almost naked: wandering in the mountains, he borrowed the rags
of a shepherd and, thus disguised, arrived at his sister Cornelia's.
The caresses of this sister and the charms of his native country
allayed his sufferings for a moment:
"I wanted," he said, " to retire to Sorrento, as to a peaceful
harbour: _quasi in porto di quiete._"
But he could not remain where he was born. A spell drew him to Ferrara:
love is the real mother-land! Coldly received by Duke Alphonsus, he
withdrew once more; he wandered through the little Courts of Mantua,
Urbino, Turin, singing to pay for the hospitality shown him. He said to
the Metauro, Raphael's native stream:
"Weak, but glorious child of the Apennines, I, a vagrant traveller,
come to seek safety and repose upon thy banks."
Armida had passed to Raphael's cradle; she was to preside over the
enchantments of the Farnesina.
Surprised by a storm in the neighbourhood of Vercelli, Tasso celebrated
the night which he had passed in a noble-man's house in the beautiful
dialogue known as the _Padre di famiglia._ At Turin, he was refused
admission at the gates, so wretched was his condition. Hearing that
Alphonsus[180] was about to contract a new marriage, he again took the
road for Ferrara. A divine spirit attached itself to the steps of this
god hidden under the garb of the shepherds of Admetus; he thought that
he saw and heard that spirit; one day, seated by the fire and seeing
the sun-light on the window:
"_Ecco ramico spirito_," he said, "_che cortesemente è venuto a
favellarmi._"
[Sidenote: Tasso in prison.]
And Torquato conversed with a sun-beam. He re-entered the fatal city
even as the bird flings itself into the jaws of the serpent that
fascinates it. Disowned and spurned by the courtiers, taunted by the
servants, he launched out into complaints, and Alphonsus ordered him to
be locked up in a mad-house in the Hospital of Sant' Anna.
Then the poet wrote to one of his friends:
"Bowed down under the weight of my misfortunes, I have renounced
all thoughts of glory; I should think myself lucky if I could
only quench the thirst with which I am devoured....The idea of
an unlimited captivity and my indignation at the ill-treatment to
which I am subjected increase my despair. The filthiness of my
beard, hair and clothes renders me an object of disgust to myself."
The prisoner implored the whole earth and even his pitiless persecutor;
he drew from his lyre accents which ought to have made the walls to
fall with which his wretchedness was girt about:
Piango il morir; non piango il morir solo,
Ma il modo . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Mi saria di conforto, aver la tomba,
Ch' altra mole innalzar credea co' carmi.
Lord Byron wrote a poem called the _Lament of Tasso_; but he cannot get
away from himself and substitutes himself everywhere for the persons
whom he sets before us; even as his genius lacks tenderness, his
"lament" is no more than an imprecation.
Tasso addressed the following petition to the Council of the Ancients
of Bergamo:
"Torquato Tasso, a Bergamasque not merely by origin, but by
affection, having first lost his father's inheritance and his
mother's dowry.... and (after the bondage of many years and the
fatigues of a very long period) having not yet lost, in the midst
of so much misery, the faith which he has in this city, ventures
to ask its assistance. Let it conjure the Duke of Ferrara, once
my benefactor and protector, to restore me to my country, my
family and myself. The unfortunate Tasso therefore beseeches Your
Lordships to send Monsignore Licino or some other to treat for my
deliverance. The memory of their kindness will not end until after
my life.
_"Di VV. SS. affezionatissimo servidore_,
"TORQUATO TASSO.
"PRIGIONE E INFERMO NEL OSPEDAL DI SANT' ANNA IN FERRERA."
Tasso was refused ink, pens, or paper. He had sung the "magnanimous
Alphonsus," and the magnanimous Alphonsus thrust into a madman's
cell him who had shed imperishable lustre on his ungrateful head.
In a most graceful sonnet, the prisoner beseeches a cat to lend him
the brightness of its eyes to replace the light of which he has been
deprived; a harmless raillery which proves the poet's gentleness and
the excess of his distress:
Fatemi luce a scriver queste carmi.
At night, Tasso imagined that he heard strange noises, the tolling of
funeral knells. Ghosts tormented him:
"I am worn out," he cried, "I succumb!"
Attacked by a serious illness, he thought that he saw the Virgin save
him by a miracle:
Egrio io languiva, e d'alto, sonno avvinto.
. . . . . . . .
Giacea con guancia di pallor dipinta,
Quando di luce incoronata . . .
Maria, pronta scendesti al mio dolore.
Montaigne visited Tasso reduced to this excess of adversity and showed
him no compassion. At the same time, Camoens was ending his life in an
alms-house in Lisbon: what consoled him, as he lay dying on a pallet?
The verses of the prisoner of Ferrara. The captive author of the
_Gerusalemme_, admiring the mendicant author of the _Lusiadas_, said to
Vasco de Gama:
Tant' oltre stende il glorioso volo
Che i tuoi spalmate legni andar men lungo.
Thus did the voice from the Eridanus resound on the banks of the Tagus;
thus did two illustrious sufferers of a like genius and a like destiny
congratulate each other across the seas, from hospital to hospital,
putting mankind to shame.
How many kings, great men and fools, drowned to-day in oblivion, but
believing themselves, towards the close of the sixteenth century,
persons worthy of remembrance, were ignorant of the very names of
Tasso and Camoens! In 1754, for the first time, was read "the name
of Washington, in the account of an obscure combat delivered in the
back-woods between a troop of French, English and savages[181]: which
clerk at Versailles, which purveyor to the Parc-aux-Cerfs, which man,
above all, of the Court or the Academy would have cared, at that time,
to change names with that American planter[182]?"
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
Envy hastened to spread its poison over open wounds. The Accademia
della Crusca declared that "the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ was a cold and
heavy compilation, obscure and unequal in style, full of ridiculous
lines and barbarous words, with no single beauty to redeem its
innumerable defects."
A fanatical love for Ariosto dictated that verdict. But the shout of
popular admiration drowned the academic blasphemies: it was no longer
possible for Duke Alphonsus to prolong the captivity of a man who
was guilty only of singing that captivity. The Pope[183] claimed the
deliverance from the honour of Italy.
[Sidenote: Tasso's release.]
Tasso was released from prison[184], but none the happier for it
Leonora was dead. He dragged himself from town to town with his
sorrows. At Loretto, ready to die with hunger, he was on the point,
says one of his biographers, "of taking up the hand that had built
Armida's palace."
In Naples, he experienced some of the sweet sentiment of country:
E donde
Partii fanciullo, or dopo tanti lustri
Torno . . . . . .
Canuto ed egro alle native sponde.
He preferred to sumptuous abodes a cell at the Convent of Montoliveto.
During a journey which he took to Rome, fever having laid hold of him,
a hospital was once more his refuge.
Returning from Rome and Florence to Naples, laying the blame of his
ills on his immortal poem, he rewrote it and spoilt it. He commenced
his cantos, _Delle sette Giornato del Monde Creato_, a subject treated
by Du Bartas[185]. Tasso makes Eve issue from Adam's bosom, while God:
. . . irrigò di placida quiete
Tutte le membra al sonnachioso ...
The poet weakens the biblical image, and, in the gentle creations of
his lyre, woman becomes no more than man's first dream. The sorrow of
leaving uncompleted a pious work which he regarded as an expiatory hymn
decided Tasso to condemn his profane songs to destruction.
Less respected by society than by the robbers, the poet received from
Marco Sciarra[186], the famous leader of _condottieri_, the offer of an
escort to take him to Rome[187]. He was presented at the Vatican, and
the Pope addressed him in these words:
"Torquato, you do honour to the crown that honoured those who wore it
before you."
Posterity has confirmed this eulogy. Tasso replied to the praises by
quoting this line from Seneca:
Magnifica verba mors prope admota excutit.
Attacked by an evil which he foresaw was to cure all the others, he
retired to the Convent of Sant' Onofrio, on the 1st of April 1595. He
climbed up to his last refuge during a tempest of wind and rain. The
monks received him at the gate where Domenichino's frescoes are fading
away to-day. He greeted the fathers:
"I come to die among you."
O hospitable cloisters, deserts of religion and poetry, you have lent
your solitude to outlawed Dante and to dying Tasso!
[Sidenote: Tasso's death.]
All succour was unavailing. On the seventh morning of the fever, the
Pope's[188] doctor declared to the patient that he had very little
hope. Tasso kissed him and thanked him for announcing such good news to
him. Next he looked up to the sky and, with an abundant outpouring of
the heart, gave thanks to God for His mercies.
His weakness increased; he wished to receive the Eucharist in the
church of the monastery: he dragged himself there leaning on the monks
and returned carried in their arms. When he was stretched once more
upon his couch, the prior asked him as to his last wishes.
"I have troubled very little about fortune's gifts during my life; I
care still less for them at my death. I have no will to make."
"Where will you have your burying-place?"
"In your church, if you will deign to do my remains so great an honour."
"Will you dictate your epitaph yourself?"
Thereupon, turning towards his confessor:
"Father, write: I return my soul to God, who gave it me, and my body
to the earth, whence it came. I bequeath to this monastery the sacred
image of my Redeemer."
He took in his hands a crucifix which the Pope had given him, and
pressed it to his lips.
Seven more days passed by. The tried Christian having solicited the
favour of the Holy Oils, Cardinal Cintio arrived, bringing the blessing
of the Sovereign Pontiff. The dying man displayed great joy at this:
"Here," said he, "is the crown which I came to Rome to seek; I hope to
triumph to-morrow with its aid."
Virgil sent to beg Augustus to fling the _Æneid_ into the fire;
Tasso entreated Cintio to burn the _Gerusalemme._ Thereafter, he
desired to be left alone with his crucifix.
The cardinal had not reached the door when his tears, till then
violently restrained, burst forth: the bell was tolled, and the monks,
chanting the prayers for the dead, wept and lamented in the cloisters.
At this sound, Torquato said to the charitable recluses, whom he seemed
to see wander around him like shadows:
"Friends, you think you are leaving me; I am only going before you."
Thenceforth, he held no converse except with his confessors and a few
fathers great in doctrine. When he was on the point of breathing his
last, they gathered this stanza from his lips, the fruit of his life's
experience:
"If death were not, there would be nothing upon earth more miserable
than man."
On the 25th of April 1595, about the middle of the day, the poet cried:
"_In manus tuas, Domine...._[189]"
The remainder of the verse was scarcely audible, as though it had been
uttered by a departing traveller.
The author of the _Henriade_ expires at the Hôtel de Villette, on a
quay of the Seine[190], and rejects the aid of the Church; the bard of
the _Gerusalemme_ dies a Christian at Sant' Onofrio: compare and see
what beauty faith lends to death.
All that is related of Tasso's posthumous triumph appears to me to be
open to suspicion. His ill-fortune was even more persistent than has
been supposed. He did not die at the hour indicated for his triumph: he
survived that projected triumph by twenty-five days. He did not lie to
his destiny: he was never crowned, not even after death; his remains
were not exposed at the Capitol in senator's robes amid the throng
and the tears of the people: he was buried, as he had ordered, in the
Church of Sant' Onofrio. The stone with which they covered him, again
according to his wish, bore neither date nor name; ten years later,
Manso, Marchese Della Villa[191], Tasso's last friend and Milton's host
composed the admirable epitaph:
HIC JACET TORQUATUS TASSUS
[Sidenote: Tasso's tomb.]
Manso succeeded only with difficulty in having it carved; for the
monks, who religiously observed testamentary wishes, objected to any
inscription: and yet, without the _Hic jacet_ or the words, _Torquati
Tassi ossa_, Tasso's ashes would have been lost in the hermitage on the
Janiculum, as Poussin's have been at San Lorenzo in Lucina.
Cardinal Cintio formed the plan of erecting a mausoleum to the singer
of the Holy Sepulchre; the plan was abortive. Cardinal Bevilacqua drew
up a pompous epitaph destined for the slab of another future mausoleum,
and the thing went no further. Two centuries later, the brother of
Napoleon thought about a monument at Sorrento: Joseph soon bartered
Tasso's cradle for the Cid's tomb.
Lastly, in our own days, a grand funeral decoration has been begun in
honour of the Italian Homer, once poor and wandering like the Greek
Homer: will the work be completed? As for me, I prefer to any marble
tumulus the little stone in the chapel of which I spoke as follows in
the _Itinéraire_:
"I looked[192] in a deserted church for the tomb of this last
painter[193], and I had some trouble in finding it: the same thing had
happened to me in Rome[194] with the tomb of Tasso. After all, the
ashes of a religious and unfortunate poet are not too ill-placed in a
hermitage. The singer of the _Gerusalemme_ seems to have taken refuge
in this unknown burying-place, as though to escape men's persecutions;
he fills the world with his fame and himself lies unrecognised under
the orange-tree[195] of Sant' Onofrio."
The Italian committee entrusted with the necrolithic[196] labours asked
me to collect for them in France and to distribute the indulgences of
the Muses to every faithful donor of a few mites towards the poet's
monument. July 1830 came: my fortune and credit began to look like
the fate of Tasso's ashes. Those ashes seem to possess a virtue that
rejects any display of opulence, repels any lustre, shrinks from any
honours: little men want big tombs, big men little ones.
The god who laughs at all my dreams, after hurling me from the
Janiculum with the old Conscript Fathers, has brought me back to Tasso
in another way. Here I am able to form a still better opinion of the
poet whose three daughters were born at Ferrara: Armida, Erminia and
Clorinda.
Where is the House of Este to-day? Who thinks of the Obizzos[197],
the Nicholases[198], the Hercules[199]? Whose name lingers in those
palaces? Leonora's. What do we look for at Ferrara? Alphonsus'
dwelling-house? No; Tasso's prison. Whither do men go in procession
from century to century? To the sepulchre of the persecutor? No; to the
cell of the persecuted.
Tasso, in these parts, obtains an even more memorable victory: he makes
us forget Ariosto; the stranger leaves the bones of the singer of
Orlando at the Museum and hastens in search of the cell of the singer
of Rinaldo at Sant' Anna. Seriousness befits the tomb: one abandons
the man who laughed for the man who cried. During life, happiness may
have its merit; after death, it loses its value: in the eyes of the
future, only unhappy existences are beautiful. To those martyrs of
intelligence, pitilessly immolated upon earth, their adversities are
reckoned to the increase of their glory; they sleep in the grave with
their immortal sufferings, like kings with their crowns. We vulgar
unfortunates are of too little account that our troubles should, among
posterity, become the ornament of our lives. Stripped though I be of
everything as I complete my course, my tomb will not be a temple,
but a cool place; Tasso's fate will not be mine; I shall deceive the
affectionate and harmonious predictions of friendship:
Le Tasse, errant de ville en ville,
Un jour, accablé de ses maux,
S'assit près du laurier fertile
Oui, sur la tombe de Virgile,
Étend toujours ses verts rameaux, etc.[200]
[Sidenote: A visit to Tasso's tomb.]
I lost no time in carrying my homage to that son of the Muses, so
nobly consoled by his brothers: as a rich ambassador, I had subscribed
towards his mausoleum in Rome; as a poor pilgrim in exile's train, I
went to kneel in his prison at Ferrara. I know that fairly well-founded
doubts are raised as to the identity of the spots; but, like all true
believers, I set history at defiance: that crypt, whatever men may
say, is the very place in which the _pazzo per amore_ lived for seven
whole years; one had necessarily to pass through those cloisters; one
came to that gaol where the daylight stole in through the iron bars of
an air-hole, where the low-hanging vault that freezes your head drips
saltpetrous water on a damp soil that petrifies your feet.
On the walls, outside the prison and all around the grating, one
reads the names of the worshippers of the god: the statue of Memnon,
quivering with harmony under the touch of dawn, was covered with the
declarations of the several witnesses of the prodigy. I did not daub my
_ex-voto_; I hid myself in the crowd, whose secret prayers must, by
reason of their very humility, be more acceptable to Heaven.
The buildings in which Tasso's prison is enclosed to-day belong to
a hospital open to every infirmity; they have been placed under the
protection of the Saints: _Sancto Torquato sacrum._ At some distance
from the blest cell is a dilapidated yard; in the middle of that
yard, the porter cultivates a garden-plot surrounded by a hedge of
mallows: the pale-green palissade was loaded with large and beautiful
flowers. I gathered one of those roses, the colour of royal mourning,
that seemed to me to be growing at the foot of a Calvary. Genius is a
Christ: denied, persecuted, scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified by
men and for men, it dies leaving them the light and rises again to be
worshipped.
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
I went out on the morning of the 18th and, on returning to the Three
Crowns, found the street blocked with people; the neighbours were
gaping at the windows. An escort of one hundred men of the Austrian and
Papal troops occupied the inn. The corps of officers of the garrison,
the magistrates of the town, the generals, the Pro-legate were awaiting
Madame, whose coming had been announced by a courier wearing the French
arms. The stair-case and drawing-rooms were decorated with flowers.
Never was finer reception arranged for an exile.
When the carriages came in sight, the drums beat a salute, the music
of the regiments burst forth, the soldiers presented arms. Madame, in
the midst of the throng, was put to it to descend from her calash, when
it drew up in front of the hotel; I had hastened up; she recognised me
among the crowd. She held out her hand to me across the established
authorities and the beggars who flung themselves upon her, and said:
"'My son is your King;' do help me to pass through."
I did not find her very much changed, though she was thinner; she had
something of a sprightly, little girl.
I walked in front of her; she gave her arm to M. de Lucchesi; Madame
de Podenas[201] followed her. We climbed the stairs and entered the
apartments between two rows of grenadiers, amid the clatter of arms,
the sound of trumpets, the cheers of the spectators. They took me for
the majordomo, they applied to me to be presented to the mother of
Henry V. My name was linked to those names in the minds of the crowd.
[Illustration: The Duchesse of Berry.]
[Sidenote: Arrival of Madame.]
You must know that Madame was received with the same tokens of respect
from Palermo to Ferrara, notwithstanding the Notes of Louis-Philippe's
envoys. M. de Broglie had had the audacity to ask the Pope to send away
the outlaw; Cardinal Bernetti replied:
"Rome has always been the asylum of fallen grandeurs. If the family
of Bonaparte, in its later days, found a refuge beside the Father
of the Faithful, with still greater reason must hospitality be
shown to the family of the Most Christian Kings."
I am no great believer in this dispatch, but I was keenly struck by one
contrast: in France, the Government lavishes insults upon a woman of
whom it is afraid; in Italy, they remember only the name, the courage
and the misfortunes of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
I was obliged to accept my improvised role of First Lord of the
Bed-chamber. The Princess was very funny: she wore a gown of greyish
cloth, fitting close to her figure; on her head, a sort of little
widow's cap or the biggin of a child or naughty school-girl. She
ran here, there and everywhere, like a giddy goose; rushed about
heedlessly, in the midst of the curious throng, with an air of
assurance, just as she had sped through the woods of the Vendée.
She looked at no one, recognised no one; I was obliged to catch her
disrespectfully by her dress, or to bar her road, saying:
"Madame, there is the Austrian Commandant, that officer. in white;
Madame, there is the commandant of the pontifical troops, that officer
in blue; Madame, there is the Pro-legate, that tall young priest in
black."
She stopped, spoke a few words in Italian or French, not too
appropriate, but roundly, frankly, prettily, so that their very
unpleasantness was not displeasing. It was a sort of manner resembling
nothing that one had ever known before. It made me feel almost ill at
ease, and yet I had no anxiety as to the effect produced by the little
woman who had escaped from the flames and gaol.
A comical piece of confusion followed. I must say one thing with
all modest reserve: the vain noise of my life grows in volume as
the real silence of that life increases. I am unable nowadays to
alight at an inn, either in France or abroad, without being at once
besieged. For old Italy, I am the defender of religion; for young
Italy, the defender of liberty; for the authorities I have the honour
of being _Sua Eccellenza_ GIA _Ambasciadore di Francia_ at Verona
and in Rome. Ladies, all doubtless of rare beauty, have lent the
language of Angelica and Aquilante il Nero to the Floridan Atala and
the Moor Aben-Hamet. I therefore see scholars arrive, old priests
with wide skull-caps, women, whom I thank for their translations and
their favours; next, _mendicanti_, too well-bred to believe that an
ex-ambassador is as poor a beggar as their lordships.
Now, my admirers had hurried to the Hôtel des Trois-Couronnes, together
with the crowd attracted by Madame la Duchesse de Berry: they got me
up into a corner of a window and began to address me in an harangue
the end of which they went off to recite to Marie-Caroline. In their
mental confusion, the two troops sometimes mixed up the patron and the
patroness: I was greeted as "Your Royal Highness," and Madame told me
that she had been complimented on the _Génie du Christianisme_; we
exchanged our mutual fames. The Princess was charmed at having written
a work in four volumes, and I was proud to have been taken for the
daughter of kings.
Suddenly, the Princess disappeared: she went off on foot, with Count
Lucchesi, to see Tasso's cell; she was a judge of prisons. The mother
of the banished orphan, of the child-heir of St. Louis, Marie-Caroline
leaving the Fortress of Blaye and seeking in the town of Renée of
France[202] only a poet's prison-cell is an unique thing in the history
of fortune and human glory. The venerables of Prague would have passed
through Ferrara a hundred times without taking such an idea into their
heads; but Madame de Berry is a Neapolitan and a country-woman of
Tasso, who said:
"_Ho desiderio di Napoli, come l'anime ben disposte del paradiso._"
It was when I was in opposition and disgrace; the Ordinances were
secretly simmering at the Palace and still joyously lying at the bottom
of men's hearts. One day, the Duchesse de Berry saw an engraving
representing the singer of the _Gerusalemme_ at the bars of his cell:
"I hope," she said, "that we shall soon see Chateaubriand like that."
Words of prosperity, of which we must take no more notice than of a
rash word spoken in drunkenness. I was to join Madame in Tasso's very
dungeon, after suffering in the prisons of the police on her behalf.
What loftiness of sentiment it showed in the noble Princess, how great
a mark of esteem she gave me, when she applied to me in the hour of her
misfortune, after the desire that she had expressed! If her first wish
appraised my talents too highly, her confidence was less mistaken as to
my character.
FERRARA, 18 _September_ 1833.
M. de Saint-Priest[203], Madame de Saint-Priest and M. A. Sala[204]
arrived. The latter had been an officer in the Royal Guards; he has
been substituted in my publishing arrangements for M. Delloye[205], a
major in the same guards.
Two hours after Madame's arrival, I saw Mademoiselle Lebeschu[206],
my fellow-Breton; she hastened to tell me of the hopes that they were
good enough to place in me. Mademoiselle Lebeschu figures in the
_Carlo-Alberto_ trial.
On returning from her poetic visit, the Duchesse de Berry sent for me:
I found her waiting for me with M. le Comte de Lucchesi and Madame de
Podenas.
Count Lucchesi-Palli is tall and dark: Madame calls him a Tancred on
the distaff side. His manners towards the Princess his wife are a
master-piece of propriety: neither humble nor arrogant; a respectful
mixture of the authority of the husband and the submission of the
subject.
Madame at once talked business with me; she thanked me for coming in
reply to her invitation; she told me that she was going to Prague, not
only to join her family, but to obtain her son's deed of majority: she
next declared that she was going to take me with her.
This declaration, for which I was not prepared, struck me with
consternation: to return to Prague! I put forward the objections that
suggested themselves to my mind.
If I went to Prague with Madame and she obtained her wish, the honours
of the victory would not belong wholly to the mother of Henry V., and
that would be a bad thing; if Charles X. persisted in refusing to grant
the deed of majority, I being present (and I was persuaded that he
would so persist), I should lose my credit. It seemed to me better,
therefore, that I should be kept as a sort of reserve force, in case
Madame should fail in her negociation.
[Sidenote: Her Liveliness.]
Her Royal Highness opposed these arguments: she maintained that
she would be able to put forth no strength in Prague, if I did not
accompany her; that I frightened her great relations; that she
consented to leave to me the glory of the victory and the honour of
linking my name with her son's accession.
M. and Madame de Saint-Priest entered in the middle of this discussion
and laid great stress on the Princess's view of the matter. I persisted
in my refusal. Dinner was announced.
Madame was very lively. She described to me, in the most amusing
fashion, her contests with General Bugeaud[207] at Blaye. Bugeaud used
to attack her on politics and lose his temper; Madame lost her temper
even more than he did his: they screamed like a pair of eagles and she
ended by turning him out of the room. Her Royal Highness kept back
certain details which she would perhaps have communicated to me if I
had remained with her. She gave Bugeaud no rest; she pulled him to
pieces finely:
"You know," she said, "that I asked for you four times? Bugeaud passed
on my demands to d'Argout[208]. D'Argout sent back word to Bugeaud that
he was a fool, that he ought to have refused your admission at once
and on the face of it: he has such good taste, that M. d'Argout."
Madame laid stress on the rhyme of those two words[209], with her
Italian accent.
Meanwhile the rumour of my refusal had spread among our faithful
friends and was beginning to alarm them. Mademoiselle Lebeschu came,
after dinner, to read me a lecture in my room; M. de Saint-Priest,
an intelligent and sensible man, first sent M. Sala to me, and then
replaced him and urged me in his turn: "they had sent M. de La
Ferronnays on to Hradschin, in order to remove the first difficulties.
M. de Montbel had arrived; he had been told to go to Rome to obtain a
copy of the marriage-contract, which was drawn up in due and proper
form and which was in Cardinal Zurla's keeping[210].
"Supposing," continued M. de Saint-Priest, "that Charles X. should
refuse his consent to the deed of majority, would it not be well if
Madame were to obtain a declaration from her son? What should be the
nature of that declaration?"
"A very short Note," I replied, "in which Henry would protest against
Philip's usurpation."
M. de Saint-Priest conveyed my words to Madame. My resistance
continued to occupy the minds of the Princess's environment Madame de
Saint-Priest, with her nobility of sentiment, appeared to entertain
the keenest regret. Madame de Podenas had not lost the habit of that
serene smile which shows her beautiful teeth: her calm was the more
perceptible in the midst of our agitation.
We were not unlike a strolling company of French actors playing at
Ferrara, by permission of the worshipful magistrates of the town,
in the _Fugitive Princess_ or the _Persecuted Mother._ The scene
represented, on the right, Tasso's prison; on the left, Ariosto's
house; at the back, the castle in which the feasts of Leonora and
Alphonsus took place. This royalty without a kingdom; those anxieties
of a Court contained in two wandering carriages and having the Hôtel
des Trois-Couronnes for its palace at night; those State councils held
in a room at an inn: all that completed the variety of the scenes of
my fortune. I put off my knight's helm in the wings and resumed my
straw hat; I travelled with the _de jure_ monarchy rolled up in my
portmanteau, while the _de facto_ monarchy flaunted its baubles at
the Tuileries. Voltaire calls upon all the royalties to spend their
carnival in Venice with Achmet III.[211]: Ivan[212] Emperor of All
the Russias, Charles Edward King of England, the two Kings of the
Polacks[213], Theodore[214] King of Corsica and four Serene Highnesses.
"'Sire, Your Majesty's post-chaise is at Padua, and the bark is
ready.'
"'Sire, Your Majesty may set off when you please.'
"'Troth, Sire, they will trust Your Majesty no longer, nor myself
neither; and we may both of us chance to be sent to gaol this very
night.'"
For myself, I will say with Candid[215]:
"Gentlemen, how came you all to be kings? I must confess that neither
my friend Martin here nor myself have any such titles."
It was eleven o'clock in the evening; I was hoping that I had won my
case and obtained my _exeat_ from Madame. I was very far out in my
reckoning! Madame does not so soon relinquish a wish; she had not
questioned me about France, because, preoccupied as she was with my
resistance to her plan, she was making that her business of the moment.
M. de Saint-Priest entered my room and brought me the rough draft of a
letter which Her Royal Highness proposed to write to Charles X.:
[Sidenote: Her persistency.]
"What!" I exclaimed, "Madame persists in her resolve? She wants me to
take that letter? But it would be impossible for me, even materially,
to cross Germany: my passport is only for Switzerland and Italy!"
"You will accompany us as far as the Austrian frontier," replied M. de
Saint-Priest; "Madame will take you in her carriage; after crossing
the frontier, you will return to your calash and you will arrive
thirty-six hours before us."
I hastened to the Princess; I renewed my insistence; the mother of
Henry V. said to me:
"Do not desert me."
This word put an end to the struggle; I yielded; Madame appeared
over-joyed[216]. Poor woman, she had wept so much! How could I have
held out against courage, adversity, fallen grandeur reduced to hide
themselves beneath my "protection!" Another Princess, Madame la
Dauphine, also had thanked me for my useless services: Carlsbad and
Ferrara were two places of banishment, under different suns, where I
had gathered the noblest honours of my life.
Madame set out pretty early in the morning, on the 19th, for Padua,
where she arranged to meet me; she was to stop at the Catajo, at the
Duke of Modena's. I had a hundred things to see at Ferrara: palaces,
pictures, manuscripts; I had to be content with Tasso's prison. I
started a few hours after Her Royal Highness. I arrived at Padua at
night. I sent Hyacinthe to Venice to fetch my luggage, as scanty as a
German student's, and I went to bed sadly at the Golden Star, which has
never been mine.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
On Friday 20 September, I spent a part of the morning in writing to
tell my friends of my change of destination. The persons of Madame's
suite arrived in succession.
Having nothing left to do, I went out with a _cicerone._ We visited the
two churches of Santa Giustina and San Antonio di Padova. The first,
the work of Jerome of Brescia, is most majestic: from below, in the
nave, you do not see a single one of the windows, which are pierced
very high above, so that the church is lighted without your knowing
whence the light comes. This church contains many good pictures by Paul
Veronese, Liberi[217], Palma[218] and others.
[Sidenote: Padua.]
San Antonio di Padova, known as _Il Santo_, presents a Grecianized
Gothic monument, a style peculiar to the old churches of Venetia. The
Cappella del Santo is by Giacomo Sansovino[219] and Francesco[220] his
son: one perceives it at once; the ornaments and the form are in the
same manner as the _loggetta_ in the steeple of St. Mark.
A _signora_, in a green gown and a straw hat covered with a veil, was
praying before the Cappella del Santo; a servant in livery was also
praying, behind her: I presumed that she was offering up her prayers
for the relief of some moral or physical ailment; I was not mistaken. I
saw her again in the street: she was a woman of about forty, pale and
thin, walking stiffly and with a look of suffering; I had guessed her
love or her paralysis. She had left the church with hope: during the
space of time while she was sending up her fervent orisons to Heaven,
did she not forget her pain, was she not really cured?
Il Santo abounds in mausoleums, among which Bembo's is famous. In the
cloisters stands the tomb of young d'Orbesan, who died in 1595:
Gallus eram, putavi, morior, opes una parentum!
D'Orbesan's French epitaph ends with a line which a great poet would
like to have written:
Car il n'est si beau jour qui n'amène sa nuit[221].
Charles Gui Patin[222] is buried in the cathedral: his wag of a
father[223] was no longer there to save him, he who had "treated a
gentleman of seven years old, who was bled thirteen times and cured in
a fortnight, as though by a miracle."
The ancients excelled in funeral inscriptions:
"Here lies Epictetus[224]," said his monumental pillar, "who was a
slave, disfigured, poor as Irus, yet a favourite of the gods."
Camoens, among the moderns, composed the most magnificent of epitaphs,
that of John III. of Portugal[225]:
"Who lies in this great sepulchre? What is he whom the illustrious
arms on this massive scutcheon indicate? Nothing! For that is what
all things come to.... May the earth lie as light on him now as he,
formerly, lay heavy on the Moor."
My Paduan _cicerone_ was a chatterbox, very different from my Antonio
of Venice: he spoke to me at every turn of "that great tyrant
Angelo[226];" in the streets, he told me the name of every shop and
every café; at Il Santo, he would absolutely show me the well-preserved
tongue of the preacher of the Adriatic[227]. Might not the tradition
of those sermons come from the songs which, in the middle-ages, the
fishermen, following the example of the Ancient Greeks, used to sing to
the fishes to charm them? A few of these pelagic ballads still remain
to us, in Anglo-Saxon.
Of Livy, no news; were he alive, I would gladly, like the inhabitant
of Gades, make the journey to Rome expressly to see him; I would
gladly, like Panormita[228], have sold my field to buy a few fragments
of the History of Rome, or, like Henry IV., promised a province for a
"Decade[229]." A mercer of Saumur did not go so far: having purchased a
manuscript of Livy's, by way of old papers, from the apothecary of the
convent of the Abbey of Fontevrault, he used it quite simply to make
drums for battledores.
[Sidenote: Pellico's "Zanze."]
When I returned to the Stella d'Oro, Hyacinthe was back from Venice.
I had charged him to call on Zanze to make my excuses for having gone
away without seeing her. He found the mother and daughter in a great
state of anger; she had just been reading _Mie Prigioni._ The mother
said that Silvio was a "villain:" he had allowed himself to write
that Brollo had pulled him, Pellico, by his leg when he, Pellico, had
climbed up on a table. The daughter exclaimed:
"Pellico is a slanderer, and an ungrateful one to boot. After the
services which I have done him, he now tries to dishonour me."
She threatened to have the work seized and to sue the author in the
law-courts; she had begun to write a refutation of the book: Zanze is
not only an artist, but a woman of letters.
Hyacinthe asked her to give me the unfinished refutation; she hesitated
and then handed him the manuscript: she was pale and tired from her
labours. The old gaoler's wife still claimed to sell her daughter's
embroidery and mosaic work. If ever I go back to Venice, I will
discharge my debt better to Madame Brollo than I did to Abou Gosch, the
chief of the Arabs in the mountains of Jerusalem: I had promised him a
bale of rice from Damietta and I never sent it.
Here is Zanze's commentary:
"La Veneziana maravigliandosi che contro di essa vi sieno
persona che abbia avutto ardire di scrivere pezze di un romanzo
formatto ed empitto di impie falsità, si lagna fortemente contro
l'auttore mentre potteva servirsi di altra persona onde dar sfogo
al suo talento, ma non prendersi spasso di una giovine onesta di
educazione e religione, e questa stimatta ed amatta e conosciutta a
fondo da tutti.
"Comme Silvio può dire che nella età ma di 13 anni (che talli
erano, alorguando lui dice di avermi conosciuta), comme può
dire che io fossi giornarieramente statta a visitarlo nella sua
abitazione? se io giuro di essere statta se non pochissime volte,
e sempre accompagnata o dal padre, o madre, o fratello? Comme può
egli dire che io le abba confidatto un amore, che io era sempre
alle mie scuolle, e che appena cominciavo a conoscere, anzi non
ancor poteva ne conosceva mondo, ma solo dedicatta alli doveri
di religione, a quelli di doverosa figlia, e sempre occupatta a
miei lavori, che questi erano il mio sollo piacere? Io giuro che
non ho mai parlatto con lui, ne di amore, ne di altra qualsiasi
cosa. Sollo se qualche volte io lo vedeva, lo quardava con ochio
di pietà, poichè il mio cuore era per ogni mio simille, pieno di
compazione; anzi io odiava il luogo che per sola combinazione mio
padre si ritrovava: perchè altro impiego lo aveva sempre occupatto;
ma dopo essere stato un bravo soldato, avendo bene servito la
repubblica e poi il suo sovrano, fù statto ammesso contro sua
volontà, non che di quella di sua famiglia, in quell' impiego.
Falsissimo è che io abbia mai preso una mano del sopradetto
Silvio, ne comme padre, ne comme frattello; prima, perchè abenchè
giovinetta e priva di esperienza, avevo abastanza avutta educazione
onde conoscere il mio dovere. Comme può egli dire di esser statto
de me abbraciatto, che io no avrei fatto questo con un fratello
nemeno; talli erano li scrupoli che aveva il mio cuore, stante
l'educazione avutta nelli conventi, ove il mio padre mi aveva
sempre mantenuta.
"Bensi vero sarà che lui a fondo mi conoscha più di quello che io
possa conoscer lui, mentre mi sentiva giornarieramente in compagnia
di miei fratelli, in una stanza a lui vicina; che questa era il
luogo ove dormiva e studiava li miei sopradetti fratelli, e comme
mi era lecitto di stare con loro? comme può egli dire che io
ciarlassi con lui degli affari di mia famiglia, che sfogava il mio
cuore contro il riguore di mia madre e benevolenza del padre, che
io non aveva motivo alcuno di lagnarmi di essa, ma fù da me sempre
ammatta?
"E comme può egli dire di avermi sgridatta avendogli portato un
cativo caffè? Che io non so se alcuna persona posia dire di aver
avutto ardire di sgridarmi: anzi di avermi per solla sua bontà
tutti stimata.
[Sidenote: Zanze's manuscript.]
"Mi formo mille maraviglie che un uomo di spirito e di tallenti
abbia ardire di vantarsi di simile cose ingiuste contro una giovine
onesta, onde farle perdere quella stima que tutti proffessa per
essa, non che l'amore di un rispetoso consorte, la sua pace e
tranquilità in mezzo il bracio di sua famiglia e figlia.
"Io mi trovo oltremodo sdegnatta contro questo auttore, per avermi
esposta in questo modo in un publico libro, di più di tanta
prendersi spaso del nominare ogni momento il mio nome.
"Ha pure avutto riguardo nel mettere il nome di Tremerello in
cambio di quello di Mandricardo; che tale era il nome del servo che
cosi bene le portava ambaciatte. E questo io potrei farle certo,
perchè sapeva quanto infedelle lui era ad interessato: che pur per
mangiare e bevere avrebe sacrificatto qualunque persona; lui era
un perfido contro tutti coloro che per sua disgrazia capitavano
poverie e non poteva mangiarlo quanto voleva; trattava questi
infelici pegio di bestie. Ma quando io vedeva, lo sgridava e lo
diceva a mio padre, non potendo il mio cuore vedere simili tratti
verso il suo simile. Lui ero buono sollamente con chi le donava
una buona mancia a bene le dava a mangiare: il ciclo le perdoni!
Ma avrà da render conto delle suo cattive opere verso suoi simili,
e per l'odio cho a me professava e per le coressioni che io le
faceva. Per tale cativo sogetto Silvio a avutto riguardo, e per
me che non meritava di essere esposta, non ha avutto il minimo
riguarde.
"Ma io ben saprò ricorere, ove mi verane fatta una vera giustizia,
mentre non intendo ne voglio esser, ne per bene ne malle, nominatta
in publico.
"Io sono felice in braccio a un marito che tanto mi amo, e eh'
è veramente e virtuosamente coriposto, ben cognoscendo il mio
sentimento, non che vedendo il mio operare: e dovrò a cagione di un
uomo che si è presso un punto sopra di me, onde dar forza alli suoi
mal fondati scritti, essendo questi posti in falso!
"Silvio perdonerà il mio furore; ma doveva lui bene aspetarselo
quando al chiaro is era dal suo operatto.
"Questa è la ricompensa di quanto ha fatto la mia famiglia,
avendolo trattato con quella umanità, che merita ogni creatura
cadutta in talli disgrazie, e non trattata come era li ordini!
"Io intanto faccio qualunque giuramento, che tutto quello che fù
detto a mio riguardo, dà falso. Forse Silvio sarà statto malie
informato di me; ma non può egli dire con verità talli cose non
essendo vere, ma sollo per avere un più forte motivo onde fondare
il suo romanzo.
"Vorei dire di più; ma le occupazioni di mia famiglia non mi
permette di perdere di più tempo. Sollo ringraziarò intanto il
Signor Silvio col suo operare e di avermi senza colpa veruna posto
in seno una continua inquietudine e forse una perpetua infelicità."
TRANSLATION
"The Venetian girl is astonished that some one should have had
the courage to write against her two scenes of a novel built up
and filled with impious falsehoods. She complains bitterly of the
author, who might have made use of another person to give scope
to his talent and not made a plaything of an honest young woman
of education and religion, known to all and universally loved and
esteemed.
"How can Silvio say that, at my age of 13 years (which was my
age at the time when he says that he knew me), how can he say
that I used to go daily to see him in his abode, when I swear
that I went there only a very few times and always accompanied
by my father, mother, or brother? How can he say that I confided
a love to him, when I was always at my classes, and when I had
hardly begun to know anything, and could know nothing of love or
the world, being devoted only to the duties of religion, to those
of a dutiful daughter, and occupied with my studies, which were
my only pleasures? I swear that I never spoke to him of love,
nor of anything else whatsoever. Only, if sometimes I saw him, I
looked upon him with eyes of pity, because my heart was full of
compassion for my fellow-creatures, and I hated the place in which
my father by ill-chance found himself: he had always occupied
another position; but, after being a brave soldier and well serving
the Republic and, afterwards, his Sovereign, he was given this
employment against his will and that of his family.
"It is most false (_falsissimo_) to say that I ever took the hand
of the aforesaid Silvio, either as a father's or a brother's;
first, because, although very young and without experience, I
had had enough education to know my duties. How can he say that
I kissed him, I who would not have done that even to a brother:
so great were the scruples imprinted in my heart by the education
which I had received in the convents, where my father had always
kept me?
[Sidenote: The manuscript translated.]
"Truly he must have known me more thoroughly than I could know him!
I remained daily in the company of my brothers in a room next to
his own, which was the place where my aforesaid brothers slept and
studied: now, since I was free to remain with them, how can he say
that I talked to him of the affairs of my family, that I relieved
my heart about my mother's severity and my father's kindness, when
I had no motive whatever to complain of the former, but always
loved her?
"And how can he say that he shouted at me for bringing him bad
coffee? I know of no one who can say that he dared to shout at me,
all having shown their esteem for me by their kindness alone.
"It is a thousand wonders to me that a man of spirit and talent
should have dared unjustly to boast of such things against an
honest girl, which might make her lose the esteem which all profess
for her, not to say the love of a respectable husband and her peace
and tranquillity in the arms of her family and her daughter.
"I am immeasurably indignant with this author for exposing me in
this way in a public book and for taking so great a liberty as to
mention my name every moment.
"And yet he took care to put the name of Tremerello in place of
that of Mandricardo, which is the name of him who so well carried
his messages. And this one I could have made known to him for
certain, because I knew how unfaithful he was to him and how much
interested: for the sake of eating and drinking, he would have
sacrificed any-body; he was perfidious towards all those who,
to their misfortune, came to him poor and were unable to make
him eat as much as he liked: he treated those unfortunates worse
than beasts. But, when I saw him, I reproached him and told my
father, my heart not being able to endure such treatment of my
fellow-creatures. He was good only to those who gave him _una
buona mancia_[230] and gave him plenty to eat: Heaven forgive
him! But he will have to account for his evil actions towards his
fellow-creatures and for the hatred which he bore me because of the
remonstrances which I made him. For so wicked a man Silvio showed
a regard, and for me, who did not deserve to be exposed, he did
not show the slightest regard.
"But I shall surely know where to go to find real justice, for I
will not, nor do I intend to be mentioned in public.
"I am happy in the arms of a husband who loves me so well and who
is truly and virtuously repaid, well-knowing not only my conduct
but my sentiments: and then, because of a man who thinks fit to
exploit me in the interest of his ill-founded writings, which are
full of falsehoods...!
"Silvio will forgive my anger: but he must surely have expected it
when I came clearly to realize his conduct towards me.
"This is the reward for all that my family has done, having treated
him with the humanity which every creature deserves that has fallen
into such misfortune, and not having treated him according to
orders.
"I however take oath that all that has been said in respect of me
is false. Perhaps Silvio was misinformed about me; but he cannot
say such things, which are untrue, in order to tell the truth, but
only to have a stronger motive on which to base his novel.
"I should like to say more; but the occupations of my family do
not permit me to waste more time. Only I thank Signor Silvio for
his work and for having punished me, who am innocent of guilt, by
filling my breast with constant disquiet and perhaps with perpetual
unhappiness."
This literal translation is far from rendering the feminine animation,
the foreign grace, the spirited simplicity of the text; the dialect
which Zanze employs exhales a raciness of the soil which it is
impossible to transfuse into another language. The _apologia_, with its
incorrect, nebulous, unfinished phrases, like the vague extremities of
a group by Albani[231]; the manuscript, with its defective or Venetian
spelling, is like a Greek woman's monument, but of those women of the
time when the Bishops of Thessaly[232] sang the loves of Theagenes and
Chariclea. I prefer the two pages of the little gaoler's daughter to
all the dialogues of the great Isotta[233], although she pleaded for
Eve against Adam as Zanze pleads for herself against Pellico. My fair
Provençal country-women of other days still more recall the daughter of
Venice by the idiom of those intermediary generations, among which the
language of the vanquished is not yet entirely dead and the language of
the victor not yet entirely formed.
[Sidenote: Zanze _v._ Pellico.]
Which is in the right: Pellico or Zanze? What is the matter in dispute?
A simple confidence, a doubtful kiss, which, in effect, was perhaps not
meant for him who received it. The angry bride refuses to recognise
herself in the delicious growing child pictured by the captive; but she
contests the fact with so much charm that she proves it while denying
it. The portrait of Zanze in the plaintiffs memorial is so like that
we find it again in the defendant's rejoinder: the same sentiment of
religion and humanity, the same reserve, the same note of mystery, the
same soft and tender unconstraint.
Zanze is full of power when she avers, with passionate candour, that
she would not have dared to kiss her own brother, much less M. Pellico.
Zanze's filial piety is extremely touching, when it transforms Brollo
into an old soldier of the Republic, reduced to the gaoler's state _per
sola combinazione._
Zanze is quite admirable when she makes this observation: Pellico
concealed the name of an unprincipled man and was not afraid to reveal
that of an innocent creature who showed compassion for the sufferings
of the prisoners.
Zanze is not enticed by the idea of being immortal in an immortal work;
that idea does not even occur to her mind: she is struck only by a
man's indiscretion; that man, if we are to believe the person offended,
sacrifices a woman's reputation to the sports of his talent without
giving a care to the harm that he may cause, thinking only of writing
a novel to benefit his reputation. A visible dread governs Zanze: will
not a prisoner's revelations rouse a husband's jealousy?
The outburst that ends the _apologia_ is pathetic and eloquent:
"I thank Signor Silvio for his work and for having punished me, who
am innocent of guilt, by filling my breast with constant disquiet
and perhaps with perpetual unhappiness: _una continua inquietudine
e forse una perpetua infelicità._"
On these last lines, written with a tired hand, the trace of a few
tears is visible. I, no party to the trial, wish to lose nothing. I
therefore hold that the Zanze of _Mie Prigioni_ is the Zanze according
to the Muses and that the Zanze of the _apologia_ is the Zanze
according to history. I wipe out the little defect of figure which
I thought that I had seen in the daughter of the old soldier of the
Republic; I was mistaken: the Angelica of Silvio's prison is shaped
like the stem of a rush, like the trunk of a palm-tree. I declare
to her that no person in my Memoirs pleases me so much as she, not
excepting my sylph. Between Pellico and Zanze herself, with the aid of
the manuscript of which I am the depositary, it will be a great wonder
if the _Veneziana_ does not go down to posterity! Yes, Zanze, you will
take your place among the shades of women that spring up around the
poet, when he dreams to the sound of his lyre. Those delicate shades,
orphans of an expired harmony and a vanished dream, remain alive
between earth and Heaven and inhabit at one time their two-fold country:
"Fair Paradise would not have its complete charms, if thou wert not
there," said a troubadour to his mistress absent through death.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
History has again come to strangle romance. I had hardly finished
reading Zanze's defense at the Stella d'Oro, when M. de Saint-Priest
entered my room, saying:
"Here's something new."
A letter from Her Royal Highness informed us that the Governor of the
Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom had presented himself at the Catajo and
announced to the Princess his inability to allow her to continue her
journey. Madame desired my immediate departure.
At that moment, an aide-de-camp of the Governor's knocked at my door
and asked me if it was convenient for me to receive his general. I
replied by at once repairing to the apartments of His Excellency, who
had alighted, like myself, at the Stella d'Oro.
[Sidenote: The Austrian Governor.]
The Governor was an excellent man:
"Imagine, monsieur le vicomte," he said, "that my orders against Madame
la Duchesse de Berry were dated 28 August. Her Royal Highness had
sent word to me that she had passports of a later date and a letter
from my Emperor[234]. And see, on the 17th of this month of September,
I receive an express in the middle of the night: a dispatch, dated
the 15th, from Vienna, charges me to carry out my first orders of the
28th of August and not to allow Madame la Duchesse de Berry to advance
beyond Udine or Trieste. See, my dear and illustrious viscount, what
a misfortune for me! To arrest a Princess whom I admire and respect,
if she refuses to comply with my Sovereign's wishes! For the Princess
did not give me a good reception: she told me that she would do what
she pleased. My dear viscount, if you could only prevail on Her Royal
Highness to remain in Venice, or at Trieste, pending new instructions
from my Court! I will endorse your passport for Prague; you can go
there at once, without meeting with the slightest obstacle, and arrange
all this; for certainly my Court has done nothing but yield to demands.
I beg of you to do me this service."
I was touched by the noble officer's candour. On comparing the date
of the 15th of September with that of my departure from Paris, on the
3rd of the same month, I was struck with an idea: my interview with
Madame and the coincidence of Henry V.'s majority might have alarmed
Philip's Government. A dispatch from M. le Duc de Broglie, handed in a
note from M. le Comte de Sainte-Aulaire[235], had perhaps decided the
Vienna chancery to renew the prohibition of the 28th of August. I may
be making a false conjecture and the fact which I suspect may not have
taken place; but two "men of quality," both peers of France of Louis
XVIII.'s creation, both violators of their oaths, were, after all,
quite worthy of being the instruments of so generous a policy against a
woman, the mother of their lawful King. Need we be astonished if France
to-day is more and more confirmed in the high opinion that she has of
the people of the Court of former times?
I was careful not to betray the depth of my thoughts. This persecution
had altered my frame of mind on the subject of the journey to Prague; I
was as desirous now of taking it alone in the interests of my Sovereign
as I had been opposed to doing so with her when the roads were open to
her. I dissimulated my real feelings and, wishing to keep the Governor
to his good intentions of giving me a passport, I increased his loyal
anxiety; I replied:
"Monsieur le gouverneur, you are suggesting a difficult thing to me.
You know Madame la Duchesse de Berry; she is not a woman to be led as
one pleases: if she has made up her mind, nothing will make her change
it. Who knows? Perhaps it suits her to be arrested by the Emperor of
Austria, her uncle[236], even as she was put in gaol by Louis-Philippe,
her uncle! The legitimate kings and the illegitimate kings will be
acting alike; Louis-Philippe will have dethroned the son of Henry IV.,
Francis II. will prevent the meeting of mother and son; M. le Prince de
Metternich will relieve M. le Général Bugeaud at his post: that will be
perfect!"
The Governor was beside himself:
"Ah, viscount, how right you are! That propaganda, why, it's
everywhere! That youth no longer pays any attention to us! Not even so
much in the Venetian States as in Lombardy and Piedmont!"
"And the Papal States!" I exclaimed. "And Naples! And Sicily! And the
banks of the Rhine! And the whole world!"
"Ah, ah, ah!" cried the Governor. "We can't remain like this, always
sword in hand, with an army under arms, without fighting. France
and England an example to our peoples! A Young Italy now, after the
_Carbonari!_ Young Italy! Who ever heard of such a thing?"
"Monsieur," I said, "I will make every effort to persuade Madame to
give you a few days; you must be so good as to grant me a passport:
that concession alone can prevent Her Royal Highness from following her
first resolve."
[Sidenote: The Deputy of Padua.]
"I will take it upon myself," said the reassured Governor, "to allow
Madame to pass through Venice on her way to Trieste; if she loiters a
little along the roads, she will reach the latter town at just the same
time as the orders which you are going to fetch, and we shall be saved.
The Deputy of Padua will give you your _visa_ for Prague, in exchange
for which you will leave a letter declaring Her Royal Highness' resolve
not to go beyond Trieste. What a time! What a time! I congratulate
myself upon being an old man, my dear and illustrious viscount, so
that I cannot see what is going to happen."
While insisting on the passport, I inwardly reproached myself for
perhaps somewhat abusing the Governor's perfect straightforwardness;
for he might be held more guilty for allowing me to go to Bohemia
than he would have been had he yielded to the Duchesse de Berry. My
sole dread was lest some sly-boots of the Italian Police should put
obstacles in the way of the _visa._ When the Deputy of Padua came
to me, I found that he had a secretarial mien, a clerkly bearing, a
prefect's air, like a man brought up in the French civil service.
This bureaucratic capacity made me tremble. As soon as he had assured
me that he had been a commissary in the Army of the Allies in the
Department of the Bouches-du-Rhône, my hope revived: I attacked my
enemy by taking straight aim at his self-respect I declared that the
discipline of the troops stationed in Provence had been remarked upon.
I knew nothing about it, but the Deputy, replying with an overflow of
admiration, hastened to finish my business: I had no sooner obtained my
_visa_ than I ceased to care.
PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
The Duchesse de Berry returned from the Catajo at nine o'clock in the
evening: she appeared very much excited; as for me, the more peaceful I
had been before, the more eager I now was for the fray: we were being
attacked, we must needs defend ourselves. I proposed to H.R.H., half in
jest, to take her in disguise to Prague and, between the "two of us,"
carry off Henry V. It was a question only of knowing where we should
deposit our plunder. Italy would not do, because of the weakness of her
Princes; the great absolute monarchies must be discarded for a thousand
reasons. There remained Holland and England: I preferred the former
because she had not only a constitutional government, but a clever King.
We postponed these extreme measures; we decided on the most reasonable,
which laid the burden of the affair on my shoulders. I was to set out
alone with a letter from Madame: I was to ask for the declaration of
majority; on receiving the reply of the great kinsmen, I was to send
a messenger to H.R.H., who would await my dispatch at Trieste. Madame
added to her letter for the old King a note for Henry: I was to give it
to the young Prince only according to circumstances. The superscription
of the note was by itself a protest against the mental reservations of
Prague. Here are the letter and the note:
"FERRARA, 19 _September_ 1833.
"MY DEAR FATHER,
"At a moment so decisive as the present for Henry's future, allow
me to address you with all confidence. I have not relied upon my
own judgment in so important a matter; I wished, on the contrary,
in this grave circumstance, to consult the men who had shown me the
most attachment and devotion. M. de Chateaubriand was naturally at
the head of these.
"He has confirmed what I had already heard, namely, that all the
Royalists in France look upon a deed setting forth Henry's rights
and majority as indispensable for the 29th of September. If loyal
M. ---- is with you at present, I draw for his evidence, which I
know to agree with what I am stating.
"M. de Chateaubriand will lay before the King his ideas on the
subject of this deed. He says rightly, so it seems to me, that
it should simply declare Henry's majority and not put forward a
manifesto: I think that you will approve of this view. In short,
my dear Father, I leave it to him to draw your attention and bring
about a decision on this essential point. I am much more occupied
with it, I assure you, than with what concerns myself, and my
Henry's interest, which is that of France, goes before my own. I
have proved to him, I think, that I was able to expose myself to
dangers for his sake and that I drew back before no sacrifice; he
will find me always the same.
"M. de Montbel handed me your letter on his arrival; I read it with
lively gratitude: to see you again, to set eyes once more on my
children will always be my fondest prayer. M. de Montbel will have
written to you that I had done all that you asked; I hope that you
have been satisfied with my eagerness to please you and to prove to
you my respect and my love. I now have only one longing, to be in
Prague for the 29th of September, and, although my health is very
much impaired, I hope to arrive. In any case, M. de Chateaubriand
will go before me. I beg the King to receive him with kindness and
to hear all that he will say to him from me.
"Believe, my dear Father, in all the sentiments, etc.
"_P.S._ PADUA, 20 _September. _ My letter was written, when I was
shown the order not to continue my journey: my surprise equals
my sorrow. I cannot believe that an order of this kind can have
emanated from the heart of the King; only my enemies can have
dictated it. What will France say? And how Philip will triumph! I
can but hasten the Vicomte de Chateaubriand's departure and charge
him to tell the King that which it would be too painful for me to
write to him at this moment."
(_Addressed_) "TO HIS MAJESTY HENRY V., MY DEAREST SON, PRAGUE
"PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
"I was about to arrive in Prague and embrace you, my dear Henry,
when an unexpected obstacle stopped me on the road.
"I am sending M. de Chateaubriand in my place to discuss your
business and mine. Have confidence, dear, in what he will tell you
from me and be sure to believe in my fond affection.
"I embrace you and your sister and I am
"Your affectionate mother and friend,
"CAROLINE."
[Sidenote: The Comte of Montbel.]
M. de Montbel fell from Rome upon Padua in the midst of our pother. The
little Court of Padua was cool with him; it blamed M. de Blacas for the
orders from Vienna M. de Montbel, a very moderate man, had no other
resource than to seek refuge with me, although he feared me; when I saw
that colleague of M. de Polignac's, I explained to myself how he had
written the History of the Duc de Reichstadt and admired the Archdukes,
all, without his perceiving it, at sixty leagues from Prague, the Duc
de Bordeaux's place of exile; if he, M. de Montbel[237], was suited to
throw the Monarchy of St. Louis and the monarchies of this base world
out of window, it was a little accident of which he had not thought.
I behaved graciously to the Comte de Montbel; I talked to him of the
Coliseum. He was returning to Vienna to place himself at the disposal
of the Prince de Metternich and to serve as an intermediary for the
correspondence of M. de Blacas.
At eleven o'clock, I wrote the Governor the letter agreed upon; I
respected Madame's dignity, made no engagements on her behalf and
reserved her power of action:
"PADUA, 20 _September_ 1833.
"MONSIEUR LE GOUVERNEUR,
"H.R.H. Madame la Duchesse de Berry is quite _willing, for the
moment_, to comply with the orders that have been sent you. Her
intention is to go to Venice and thence to Trieste; there she will
act on the information which I shall have the honour to address to
her and will take a final resolve.
"Pray accept my sincerest thanks and the assurance of the high
regard with which I am,
"Monsieur le gouverneur,
"Your most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
The Deputy, when he read this letter, was very much pleased with it.
Once Madame had left Venetian Lombardy, he and the Governor ceased to
be responsible; the Duchesse de Berry's doings at Trieste concerned
only the authorities of Istria or Friuli; each vied with the other to
rid himself of misfortune, as, in a certain game, every player hastens
to pass a little piece of paper on to his neighbour.
At ten o'clock, I took leave of the Princess. She placed her fate and
that of her son in my hands. She made me King of France after her
fashion. In a Belgian village, I once received four votes to raise me
to the throne occupied by Philip's son-in-law[238]. I said to Madame:
"I submit to Your Royal Highness' wishes, but I fear that I shall
deceive your hopes. I shall do no good in Prague."
She pushed me towards the door:
"Go, go, you can do everything."
I stepped into my carriage at eleven o'clock: it was a rainy night. It
seemed to me as though I were going back to Venice, for I followed the
Mestre Road: I felt more inclined to see Zanze again than Charles X.
[145] This book was written at Ferrara, between 16 and 18 September
1833, and at Padua, on the 20th of September.--T.
[146] Marco Polo (1254-1324) joined his father, Niccolo Polo, and his
uncle, Maffeo Polo, at Acre, in 1269. They set out for China in 1271
and, after a protracted stay, left for home, in 1292, and reached
Venice in 1295.--T.
[147] _Vide_ Zanze's manuscript, _infra._--T.
[148] Abbé Nicolas Lenglet-Dufresnoy (1674-1755), a man of very great
learning but no critical taste. He was several times sent to the
Bastille, under Louis XV., for the boldness of his writings, and died,
at last, of an accident, having fallen into the fire before which he
was reading. His chief works are _De l'usage des romans, avec une
bibliothèque des romans_ (1734), his _Histoire justifiée contre les
romans_ (1735), un _Histoire de la philosophie hermétique_ (1742) and a
_Traité sur des apparitions_ (1751). His _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc_ was
published in 1753, two years before his death.--T.
[149] A character in Bojardo's _Orlando Innamorato_ and Ariosto's
_Orlando Furioso_, and daughter of Galaphron King of Cathay (Catajo,
not Marco Polo's Cathay, as the Abbé Lenglet seems to have thought).--T.
[150] Francis IV. Duke of Modena (1799-1847) was the grandson of the
Empress Maria Theresa and nephew of Marie-Antoinette. The Congress of
Vienna, in 1815, reinstated him in his Duchy, of which his grandfather,
Hercules III., had been dispossessed by the French in 1797. He married
Mary Beatrice, daughter of King Victor Emanuel I. of Sardinia and
Heiress in Line of the Stuarts, who is known to Legitimists as Mary
III. Queen of England (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 251, n. 1). Francis IV.
was almost the only European potentate who refused to recognise the
sovereignty of Louis-Philippe. On the 14th of November 1846, his
daughter, Maria Theresa, married the Comte de Chambord (King Henry V.
of France).--T.
[151] Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), author of the _Principe_ and
other works of state-craft.--T.
[152] _Cf._ BYRON: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV., Stanzas
XXX-XXXIV.--T.
[153] Titus Livius (59 B.C.--17 A.C.), the historian, was born at
Padua,--T.
[154] Publius Virgilius Maro (70 B.C.--19 B.C.) was born at Urbino.--T.
[155] Caius Valerius Catullus (_circa_ 87 B.C.--_circa_ 54 B.C.) was
born at Verona.--T.
[156] Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was born at Reggio di Modena.--T.
[157] Giovanni Battista Guarini (1 537-1612), the noted diplomatist and
poet, author of the _Pastor fido_, was born at Ferrara.--T.
[158] Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1422-1501) and his son, Ercole Strozzi
(1471-1508), the Latin poets, were both born at Ferrara.--T.
[159] Ercole Bentivoglio (_circa_ 1512-1573), the poet and diplomatist,
was born at Bologna; Guido Cardinal Bentivoglio (1579-1644), Nuncio
to Flanders (1607) and France (1617) and author of _Della Guerra di
Flandra_ (1633-1639), Letters (1631) and Memoirs (1648), was born at
Ferrara, as was Cornelio Cardinal Bentivoglio, Archbishop of Carthage
(1668-1732), Nuncio to France and the author of some sonnets and a
translation of Statius' _Thebais._--T.
[160] Pietro Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), born in Venice, created a
cardinal in 1539 and Keeper of the Library of St. Mark. He was the
author of poems, letters, a History of Venice in Latin, and the
_Asolani_, a series of dialogues on the nature of love.--T.
[161] Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685), born at Ferrara, Rector of the
College of Jesuits in Rome, and author of an important _Istoria della
Compagnia di Gesù_ (1653-1675) and various physical treatises.--T.
[162] Matteo Maria Bojardo, Conte di Scandiano (_circa_ 1434-1494),
born at Reggio di Modena, author of _Orlando Innamorato_ (1495), of
which Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ is the continuation.--T.
[163] Ippolyto Pindemonte (1753-1828), the poet, and Giovanni
Pindemonte (1751-1812), his brother, the dramatist, were both born at
Verona.--T.
[164] Alfonso Marchese di Varano (1705-1788), the poet, was born at
Ferrara.--T.
[165] Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828), born at Fusignano, near Ravenna,
author of the _Bassevilliana_(1793), directed against the French
Revolution, and a number of other poems, tragedies and translations.
Monti was Historiographer to the Court of Italy under Napoleon and a
member of the Italian Institute.--T.
[166] Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was a native of Sorrento, but his
father, Bernardo Tasso, was a North Italian, having been born in Venice
in 1493.--T.
[167] Melchiore Cesarotti (1730-1808), born at Padua, a poet and
miscellaneous writer. His translation of Ossian (1763) is his finest
work, but he is also known for his _Saggio sulla Filosofia delle
Lingue_ (1785) and a number of prose and metrical translations besides
that mentioned.--T.
[168] Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), known as Guercino, or
the Squintling, from an accident which distorted his right eye in
babyhood: a well-known painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.
[169] Ferrara Cathedral was consecrated in 1136; the interior was
spoilt in the seventeenth century.--T.
[170] Ferrara was handed back to the Papal States in 1814, but the
Austrians retained the right to keep a garrison there.--T.
[171] Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569), Torquato Tasso's father, author of
the _Amadigi di Francia_ (Amadis of Gaul, 1560) and a quantity of other
poems, died at Ostiglia on the 14th of September 1569.--T.
[172] _Rinaldo_ was published in 1562, while Tasso was a youth of
eighteen studying law at Padua.--T.
[173] Produced at Ferrara in 1573.--T.
[174] Ippolito of Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, Archbishop of Milan, Lyons
and Narbonne (1509-1572), uncle of Alphonsus II. and a favourite of the
Court of France of that time.--T.
[175] 24 August 1572.--T.
[176] Anna Swanwick's GOETHE: _Torquato Tasso_, Act I. Sc. i.--T.
[177] _Ibid._, Act II. Sc. i.--T.
[178] _Ibid._, Act III. Sc. iii.--T.
[179] Anna Swanwick's GOETHE: _Torquato Tasso_, Act V. Sc. iv.--T.
[180] Alphonsus II. married three times: first, Lucrezia de' Medici;
secondly, Barbara of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I.;
thirdly, Margherita di Gonzaga, daughter of William Duke of Mantua.--T.
[181] George Washington, in command of the English and native troops,
defeated the French in the Battle of Great Meadows on the 28th of May
1754. He was subsequently besieged at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania
and, on the 4th of July 1754, surrendered to the French, who allowed
him and all his troops to march back to Virginia.--T.
[182] My _Études Historiques.--Author's Note._
[183] Sixtus V.--T.
[184] In July 1586, after a confinement of more than seven years.--T.
[185] Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544-1590), author of, among
other poems, the _Semaine, ou La Création en sept journées_, which was
published in 1579 and passed through thirty editions in a few years.
Writing of Du Bartas, Professor Saintsbury, in his _Short History of
French Literature and French Lyrics_, says:
"All that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first
rank was some faculty of self-criticism; of natural verve and
imagination as well as of erudition he had no lack, but in critical
faculty he seems to have been totally deficient. His beauties, rare
in kind and not small in amount, are alloyed with vast quantities
of dull absurdity."
Du Bartas' fellow-countrymen entertain a similar view, and Bouillet,
in his _Dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de géographie_, expresses
himself in almost the same words when he writes that "_ce poète avait
de la verve et de l'imagination, mais manquait de goût._"--T.
[186] Marco Sciarra (_fl._ 1592), a celebrated bandit chief, long
devastated the Papal States. Neither Sixtus V. nor Clement VIII. was
able to subdue him and his band; but he was so hotly pursued by the
latter Pope that he left the country and entered the service of the
Venetians, who employed him against the Uskoks, the piratical refugees
from the north-western provinces of Turkey. The Venetian Government
eventually caused Sciarra to be assassinated, upon the repeated demands
of Clement VIII. for his extradition.--T.
[187] Samuel Rogers introduces this incident into his description of
the "wild life, fearful and full of change," of the "mountain-robber:"
Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest;
When they that robb'd were men of better faith
Than kings or pontiffs; where such reverence
The poet drew among the woods and wilds,
A voice was heard, that never bade to spare,
Crying aloud, "Hence to the distant hills!
Tasso approaches; he, whose song beguiles
The day of half its hours; whose sorcery
Dazzles the sense, turning our forest glades
To lists that blaze with gorgeous armoury,
Our mountain-caves to regal palaces:
Hence, nor descend till he and his are gone.
Let him fear nothing!"
(ROGERS, _Italy: Banditti_, 5-17).--T.
[188] Ippolito Aldobrandini, Pope Clement VIII. (1536-1605), elected
Pope in 1592.--T.
[189] LUKE, XXIII., 46.--T.
[190] Now the Quai Voltaire.--T.
[191] Giovanni Battista Manso, Marchese Della Villa (1561-1645). Milton
was ambitious of his acquaintance, as the friend of Tasso, and was
introduced to him in Naples in 1638. To him Milton addressed his Latin
epistle, _Ad Mansum_; Tasso had addressed his dialogue on Friendship
to him and complimented him in the twentieth canto of the _Gerusalemme
Conquistata_, as the introduction to _Ad Mansum_ shows:
"Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marchio Villensi, vir ingenii laude, turn
literarum studio necnon et bellica virtute, apud Italos clarus in
primus est; ad quern Torquati Tassi Dialogus extat di Amicitia
scriptus; erat enim Tassi amicissimus; ab quo etiam inter Campanile
principes celebratur, in ilio poemate cui titulus 'Gerusalemme
Conquistata,' lib. 20.
Fra cavalier magnanimi, è cortesi
Risplende il Manso.
"Is auctorem Neapoli commorantem summa benevolentia prosecutus est,
multaque ei detulit humanitalis officia: ad hunc itaque hospes
ille, antequam ab ea urbe discederet, ut ne ingratum se ostenderet
hoc carmen misit."--T.
[192] In Venice, in 1806.--_Author's Note._
[193] Titian.--_Author's Note._
[194] In 1803.--_Author's Note._
[195] I was right in saying the orange-tree: it is an orange-tree
that stands in the convent-yard of Sant' Onofrio.--_Author's Note_
(Paris, 1840).
[196] This is one of several cases in which the author coins a
word: his expression, _nécrolithe_, is not known in the French
dictionaries.--T.
[197] Obizzo I. first Marquis of Este (_fl._ 1180); Obizzo II.
Marquis of Este and Lord of Ferrara and Verona (_d._ 1293) added
Modena and Reggio to his dominions.--T.
[198] Nicholas III. Marquis of Este (_d._ 1471) was the father of.
[199] Hercules I. first Duke of Ferrara (_d._ 1505), the father of
Alphonsus I.--T.
[200] FONTANES (_Cf._ Vol III., p. 10):
"Tasso, wandering from town to town,
One day, by his evils overcome,
Sat down by the sumptuous laurel-trees
Which spread out for ever to the breeze
Their green branches over Virgil's tomb," etc.--T.
[201] The Marquise de Podenas, _née_ de Nadaillac, was
lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Berry.--T.
[202] Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara (1510-1575), second
daughter of Louis XII., married, in 1528, Hercules II. Duke of
Ferrara, protected letters, science, art and Lutheranism, sheltered
Calvin, and had Clemont Marot as her secretary. She returned to
France in 1560, after the Duke's death, and settled at Montargis,
ostentatiously proclaiming her Protestantism.--T.
[203] Emmanuel Louis Marie Guignard, Vicomte de Saint-Priest,
Duque de Almazan (1789-1881), was taken to St. Petersburg by his
family during the Emigration and, in 1805, entered the Russian
Army, where he served until the fall of Napoleon. He was made a
colonel in 1814 and was taken prisoner; Napoleon's orders to have
him shot were intercepted by the Cossacks. Saint-Priest escaped,
served the cause of the Kings Government with ardour, endeavoured
to raise the populations of the South during the Hundred Days,
took ship eventually at Marseilles, was captured by a Tunisian
corsair and, after a few weeks' captivity, succeeded in reaching
Spain and returning to France at the Second Restoration. He
was then appointed a brigadier-general, a lord-in-waiting to
the Duc d'Angoulême and an inspector of infantry. In 1823, he
took part in the Spanish Expedition and earned his promotion to
lieutenant-general. He became Ambassador to Berlin in 1825 and to
Madrid in 1827. In August 1830, he sent in his resignation, and
Ferdinand VII. created him a grandee of Spain and Duque de Almazan.
Saint-Priest became one of the Duchesse de Berry's advisers, was
one of the principal organizers of the royalist attempt of 1822 and
sailed with the Princess in the _Carlo-Alberto._ He was arrested at
the moment of landing and indicted at the assizes at Montbrison.
Together with his co-accused, he was acquitted, on the 15th of
March 1833, and at once joined the Duchesse de Berry in Italy.
Under the Second Empire, Saint-Priest was one of the most zealous
and intelligent servants of the Comte de Chambord, who, in 1867,
wrote him a letter on the political situation that made a great
noise at the time.--B.
[204] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 101, n. 2.--T.
[205] Major H. D. Delloye had been dismissed the service in 1830
and had turned publisher. He very rightly published only royalist
works. In 1836, when Chateaubriand was in the greatest difficulties
for money, he was able to arrange a combination of a satisfactory
character for the interests and intentions of the illustrious
writer. The company formed by M. Delloye guaranteed M. and Madame
de Chateaubriand a respectable annuity, supplied them with the sums
required for their immediate necessities, and postponed to a remote
date the publication of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, the _Congrès
de Vérone_ and other works to which the author might be disposed to
devote his leisure.
On the 30th of June 1836, Chateaubriand addressed the following
letter to his honourable publisher:
"To Monsieur H. D. Delloye, retired lieutenant-colonel, Knight of
the Royal Order of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour.
"PARIS, 30 _June_ 1836.
"And so, monsieur, our business is fairly started: so soon as I
had finished the _Milton_, I resumed work on the Memoirs and I
have begun to have that portion copied which I am to deliver to
you in the early months of the coming year. I congratulate myself,
monsieur, on having met a gallant and loyal officer of the Royal
Guard who has brought to a conclusion a piece of business which,
but for him, might never have been finished. It is, therefore, to
you, monsieur, that I shall owe the repose of my life and, what is
more important to me, that of Madame de Chateaubriand. With God's
help, the rest will go of itself and I hope that neither you nor,
when the time comes, the Shareholders, will have reason to regret
becoming the owners of my Memoirs.
"Believe, monsieur, I beg, in my sincere devotion and accept the
assurance of my most distinguished consideration.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."--B.
[206] Mademoiselle Mathilde Lebeschu, a former woman of the
Bed-chamber to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, had accompanied the
Princess into exile and sailed with her, in the _Carlo-Alberto_, on
the 21st of April 1832. She was tried, together with the Vicomte de
Saint-Priest and M. Sala, and, with them, acquitted, at Montbrison,
on the 15th of March 1833.--B.
[207] Thomas Robert Bugeaud de La Piconnerie, Maréchal Duc d'Isly
(1784-1849) fought throughout the campaigns of the Empire, winning
his promotion from private to colonel on the battle-field. He
retired at the Restoration. He was recalled to active employment
in 1830, suppressed the Paris insurrections in 1832 and 1834 and,
in 1832, as Commandant of Blaye, was charged with the safe keeping
of the Duchesse de Berry. His behaviour on this occasion provoked
a challenge to a duel, in which he killed his adversary, a deputy
named Dulong, on the 27th of January 1834. In 1836, he was sent
to Algeria and defeated Abd-el-Kader, but made terms with him and
was severely criticized in consequence; he became Governor-general
in 1840 and, on the 14th of August 1844, defeated the troops of
Morocco at Isly, by which title he was forthwith created a duke,
having received his marshal's baton in the previous year. In 1847,
he resigned, but was placed in command of the troops in Paris
in 1848 and exerted himself, but without success, to suppress
the Revolution of February. The Prince-President Louis Napoleon
made him Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Alps, but he died
of cholera, on the 10th of June 1849, soon after taking up his
appointment.--T.
[208] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. III., n. 2.--T.
[209] "_Il est de bon_ goût, _ce M. d'Argout._"--T.
[210] _Cf._ Appendix I.: _The Morganatic Marriage of the Duchesse
de Berry._--T.
[211] Achmet III. Sultan of Turkey (1673-1736) succeeded on the
deposition of his brother Mustapha II. in 1703. He was deposed by
the janissaries in 1730 and assassinated, by poison, in 1736.--T.
[212] Ivan VI. Emperor of All the Russias(1740-1764) succeeded
his aunt, the Empress Anne, as an infant of three months, but was
deposed in the course of the following year by Elizabeth, the
laughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I. He was murdered in
prison at the age of twenty-three, under the reign of Catherine
II.--T.
[213] Frederic Augustus I. Elector of Saxony, later Augustus II.
King of Poland (1670-1733), surnamed the Strong, elected King
of Poland in 1697, deposed in 1704, and reinstated in 1709; and
Stanislaus I. Leczinski (1677-1766), elected King of Poland in
1704, crowned in 1705, obliged to leave Poland in 1709: he was
again a candidate in 1733, on the death of Augustus II., and
formally abdicated in 1735.--T.
[214] Theodore King of Corsica (_circa_ 1686-1756) was a German
adventurer, Theodor Baron von Neuhof. He aided the Corsicans
against the Republic of Genoa in 1735 to 1736; was proclaimed and
crowned King of Corsica in 1736; and was driven out by the Genoese
in 1738. An attempt made to recapture his power in 1743 failed.
Theodore withdrew to London, where his person was seized by his
creditors, and he was kept in prison for debt for seven years.--T.
[215] VOLTAIRE: _Candide, ou L'Optimisme_, Part I., Chap. XXVI.:
_Candid and Martin sup with six Strangers; and who they were._--T.
[216] Chateaubriand wrote the next day to Madame Récamier:
"_Thursday_ 19 _September_ 1833.
"All is changed. _They_ absolutely want me to go to the end of the
journey, where _they_ dare not arrive without me. All my resistance
was unavailing; I had to resign myself. So I am leaving. This will
prolong my absence another month. I am going to send Hyacinthe to
Paris; he will bring you a long letter and details. Nothing in my
life ever cost me a greater pang than this last sacrifice, unless
it be that attached to my resignation of Rome.--B.
]
[217] Pietro Liberi (1605-1687), born and died at Padua, a
religious and historical painter of the Venetian School.--T.
[218] Jacopo Palma the Younger (_circa_ 1544-1628), a painter
of the Venetian School, distinguished for the freshness of his
colouring.--T.
[219] Giacomo Tatti (1479-1570), known as Sansovino, a noted
Florentine sculptor and architect, held by some to be second, as
a sculptor, to Michael Angelo alone. Sansovino is the architect
of the Mint, the Library of St. Mark and the Palazzo Cornaro in
Venice.--T.
[220] Francesco Sansovino (1521-1586), son of the above, is better
known as a man of letters and grammarian than as an artist.--T.
[221] "For there's no day so fair but its night follows after."--T.
[222] Charles Patin (1633-1693) was a physician, like his father,
but was distinguished especially for his antiquarian knowledge.
He was sentenced to the galleys for distributing some copies of
a lewd libel which he had been charged to suppress and fled from
France. Eventually he settled in the Venetian States and, in 1677,
was appointed Professor of Medicine at Padua. Charles Patin left
several important numismatical works.--T.
[223] Gui Patin (1601-1672), the famous doctor and wit, earned
an extraordinary reputation by his caustic sallies and eccentric
habits. He was the author of a treatise on the _Conservation de la
santé_(1632) and of Letters published nearly fifty years after his
death. A collection of his _bons mots_ was published, under the
title of Patiniana, in 1703.--T.
[224] Epictetus (_fl._ 1st Century), of Hierapolis, the Stoic
philosopher, was born a slave. When his master, Epaphroditus, who
subsequently freed him, broke his leg for him, he was content to
observe:
"I told you you would break it"
Epictetus was driven from Rome, with the other philosophers, by
the Emperor Domitian; he returned later and won the esteem of the
Emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.--T.
[225] John III. King of Portugal (1502-1557) succeeded his father,
Emanuel I., in 1521. He established the Inquisition in 1526.--T.
[226] Angelo Malipieri, Podesta of Padua. Two years after the above
was written, Victor Hugo produced his tragedy of _Angelo_, of which
Malipieri is the hero, at the Théâtre-Français (28 April 1835).--B.
[227] St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), monk of the Order of
St. Francis and a native of Lisbon. He was wrecked on the coast
of Italy when on his way to Africa to convert the infidels. St.
Anthony is said one day to have preached to a school of fishes and
to have been heard with attention.--T.
[228] Antonio Beccadelli Panormita (1394-1471), of Palermo, a
distinguished man of letters of his day.--T.
[229] Livy, who was born and died at Padua, divided his History of
Rome into 425 books, of which only 35 have been preserved. These
books were contained in "Decades," or groups of ten books each. The
late Benjamin Jowett used to long for the recovery of the missing
books of Livy more than for that of any other lost specimens of
literature.--T.
[230] Good drink-money or "tips."--T.
[231] Francesco Albani (1578-1660), surnamed the "Painter of the
Graces" and the "Anacreon of Painting," the great painter of the
Bologna School.--T.
[232] Heliodonis Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly (_fl._ 4th Century),
was the author of the earliest Greek romance, the _Æthiopica,_
which relates the loves and adventures of Theagines and
Chariclea.--T.
[233] Isotta Nogarola (_d._ 1466), a great and learned lady of
Verona, famous for her beauty, her knowledge and her poetic talent.
She was the author of the _Dialogus quo utrum Adam vel Eva magis
peccaverit, quæstio satis nota, sed non adeo explicata, continetur_
(Florence: 1563).--T.
[234] Francis I. Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, the
Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, etc. (1768-1835).--T.
[235] The Comte de Sainte-Aulaire (_cf._ Vol. V., p. 161, n. 2)
had been appointed Ambassador to Vienna earlier in that same year
1833.--T.
[236] The Duchesse de Berry's mother was Clementina Queen of the
Two Sicilies, daughter of Leopold II. Emperor of Germany, and
sister of Francis I. Emperor of Austria.--T.
[237] _Cf._ Vol., V., p. 81, n. 5. The Comte de Montbel's _Notice
sur le Duc de Reichstadt_ had appeared in that year 1833. The Duke
had died at Schonbrünn, three miles from Vienna, the residence of
the Austrian Archdukes, on the 22nd of July; the distance is about
180 miles from Vienna to Prague, where Charles X. and his little
Court took up their residence.--T.
[238] Leopold I. King of the Belgians (1790-1865) was the youngest
son of Francis Duke of Saxe Saalfeld-Coburg when he was elected
to the Belgian Throne in 1831. He was married first, in 1816,
to Charlotte Princess Royal of England, who died in 1817. In
1832, Leopold married Louise Princesse d'Orléans, daughter of
Louis-Philippe.--T.
BOOK VIII[239]
Journal from Padua to Prague, from the 20th to the 26th of
September 1833--Conegliano--The translator of the _Dernier
Abencerrage_--Udine--Countess Samoyloff--M. de La Ferronays--A
priest--Carinthia--The Drave--A peasant lad--Forges--Breakfast
at the hamlet of St. Michael--The neck of the Tauern--A
cemetery--Atala: how changed--A sunrise--Salzburg--A military
review--Happiness of the peasants--Woknabrück--Reminiscences of
Plancoët--Night--German and Italian towns contrasted--Linx--The
Danube--Waldmünchen--Woods--Recollections of Combourg
and Lucile--Travellers--Prague--Madame de Gontaut--The
young Frenchmen--Madame la Dauphine--An excursion to
Butschirad--Butschirad--Charles X. asleep--Henry V.--Reception
of the young men--The ladder and the peasant-woman--Dinner at
Butschirad--Madame de Narbonne--Henry V.--A rubber--Charles X.--My
incredulity touching the declaration of majority--The newspapers--Scene
of the young men--Prague--I leave for France--I pass by Butschirad
at night--A meeting at Schlau--Carlsbad empty--Hollfeld--Bamberg--My
different St. Francis' Days--Trials of religion--France.
I was greatly distressed, when passing by Mestre, towards the end of
the night, not to be able to go down to the shore: perhaps a distant
beacon in the furthermost lagoons would have shown me the fairest
of the islands of the Old World, even as a tiny light revealed to
Christopher Columbus the first island of the New World[240]. It was at
Mestre that I landed from Venice, at the time of my first journey in
1806: _fugit ætas._
I breakfasted at Conegliano; I there received the compliments of
the friends of a lady who had translated the _Abencerrage_ and who
doubtless resembled Bianca:
"He saw a young woman come out, attired much after the fashion
of those Gothic queens sculptured on the monuments of our old
abbeys... a black mantilla was thrown over her head; with her left
hand she held the ends of this mantilla crossed and drawn up close
like a veil over her chin, so that nothing was seen of her whole
face but her large eyes and rosy mouth."
I pay my debt to the translator of my Spanish reveries by reproducing
her portrait here.
When I climbed back into my carriage, a priest harangued me on the
_Génie du Christianisme._ I was crossing the scene of the victories
which led Bonaparte to encroach upon our liberties.
Udine is a beautiful town: I noticed a portico copied from the Palace
of the Doges. I dined at the inn, in the room lately occupied by Madame
la Comtesse de Samoyloff; it was still quite full of her disorder. Is
that niece of the Princesse Bagration, "another injustice of years,"
still as pretty as she was in Rome, in 1829, when she used to sing so
wonderfully at my concerts? What breeze had blown that flower once
again under my feet? What wind impelled that cloud? O daughter of the
North, you enjoy life; make haste: harmonies that used to delight you
have already ceased; your days will not have the length of the arctic
day.
[Sidenote: My second journey to Prague.]
In the visitors'-book of the hotel I read the name of my noble friend,
the Comte de La Ferronnays, who was returning from Prague to Naples,
in the same way as I was going from Padua to Prague. The Comte de La
Ferronnays, who is my fellow-countryman in more than one respect, since
he is both a Breton and a Malouin, mingled his political destinies
with mine: he was Ambassador in St. Petersburg when I was Minister of
Foreign Affairs in Paris; he occupied this latter office, and I, in my
turn, became an ambassador under his direction. I was sent to Rome,
and resigned on the accession to power of the Polignac Ministry; La
Ferronnays succeeded to my embassy. He is M. de Blacas' brother-in-law,
and is as poor as the latter is rich; he resigned the peerage and the
diplomatic service at the time of the Revolution of July; every one
esteems him and no one hates him, because of the genuineness of his
character and the moderation of his mind. In his last negociation in
Prague, he allowed himself to be overreached by Charles X., who is
approaching the end of his days. Old people take pleasure in secret
practices, having nothing to show that is any good. Excepting my old
King, I would like every one to be drowned who is no longer young,
myself first of all, together with a dozen of my friends.
At Udine, I took the Villach Road; I was going towards Bohemia by way
of Salzburg and Linz. Before attacking the Alps, I heard bells pealing
and saw an illuminated _campanile_ in the plain. I had the postilion
questioned through the intermediary of a German from Strasburg, my
Italian _cicerone_ in Venice, whom Hyacinthe had brought me to act
as my Slav interpreter in Prague. The rejoicings about which I was
asking were taking place on the occasion of the promotion of a priest
to Holy Orders; he was to say his first Mass on the morrow. How often
will those bells, which to-day are proclaiming the indissoluble union
between a man and his God, summon that man to the sanctuary, and how
soon will those same bells ring out for his funeral?
22 _September._
I slept almost through the night, to the sound of the torrents, and
awoke at day-break, on the 22nd, among the mountains. The Carinthian
valleys are pleasant, but present no striking characteristics: the
peasants have no distinctive dress; a few women wear furs, like the
Hungarian women; others have white hoods set on the back of their
heads, or blue woollen caps with a padded edging, half way between the
Osmanli's turban and the bonze's skull-cap with the button at the top.
I changed horses at Villach. On leaving that stage, I followed a wide
valley on the banks of the Drave, a new acquaintance: by dint of
crossing rivers, I shall end by reaching my last shore. Lander[241]
has just discovered the mouth of the Niger; the daring traveller
surrendered his life to Eternity at the very moment when he taught us
that the mysterious African stream discharges its waters into the Ocean.
At nightfall, we were nearly stopped at the village of St. Paternion:
the carriage wanted greasing; a peasant screwed the nut of one of
the wheels in the wrong direction, with so much force that it was
impossible to remove it. All the clever people in the village, with the
blacksmith at their head, failed in their attempts. A boy of fourteen
or fifteen years of age left the band, returned with a pair of
pincers, thrust aside the workers, wound a brass wire round the bolt,
twisted it with his plyers and, bearing with his hand in the direction
of the screw, removed the nut without the slightest effort, amid
general cheering. Might not that child be a budding Archimedes? The
queen of an Esquimaux tribe, the same woman who drew for Captain Parry
a chart of the polar seas, used attentively to watch sailors welding
pieces of iron at the forge and outstripped all her race through her
genius.
During the night of the 22nd, I passed through a thick mass of
mountains; their confusion continued before me as far as Salzburg: and
yet those ramparts did not protect the Roman Empire. The author of the
_Essayes_, speaking of the Tyrol, says, with his ordinary vivacity of
imagination:
"It resembles a gown that we only see plaited up, but that, if it
were spread out, it would form a very large country[242]."
The mounts among which I wound were like a landslip from the upper
chains, which, covering a vast ground, had formed little Alps
presenting the different accidental features of the great ones.
Cascades rushed down from every side, leaping over beds of stones,
like the torrents in the Pyrenees. The road passed through gorges
hardly open to the gauge of the calash. In the neighbourhood of Gmünd,
hydraulic forges mixed the echo of their stamps with that of the
sluices; from their chimneys, columns of sparks escaped amid the night
and the dark forests of pine-trees. At each blow of the bellows on the
hearth-stone, the open roofs of the factory lit up suddenly, like the
dome of St. Peter's in Rome on a holiday.
In the Karch Range, they added three couple of oxen to our horses. Our
long team, on the torrent waters and in the flooded ravines, looked
liked a living bridge. The chain opposite the Tauern was draped in snow.
[Sidenote: St. Michael.]
On the 23rd, at nine o'clock in the morning, I stopped at the
pretty hamlet of St. Michael, at the bottom of a valley. Some tall,
good-looking Austrian girls served me with a very clean breakfast
in a little room whose two windows looked out over meadows and
the village-church. The grave-yard, which surrounded the church,
was separated from me only by a rustic yard. Wooden crosses, with
semicircular inscriptions and with holy-water fonts hanging from them,
rose above the grass of the old tombs: five graves as yet unturfed
proclaimed five new resting-places. Some of the graves, like the
borders of kitchen-gardens, were adorned with marigolds in full yellow
flower; wag-tails chased grass-hoppers in this garden of the dead. A
very old lame woman, leaning on a crutch, crossed the cemetery and
brought back a cross that had fallen down: perhaps the law permitted
her to pilfer that cross for her tomb; dead wood, in the forests,
belong to him who picks it up.
Là dorment dans l'oubli des poètes sans gloire,
Des orateurs sans voix, des héros sans victoire[243].
Would not the child of Prague sleep better here, without a crown, than
in the chamber in the Louvre where his father's body was laid in state?
My solitary breakfast, taken in the company of the satisfied travellers
lying under my window, would have been to my taste if I had not been
afflicted by too recent a death: I had heard the screams of the chicken
served at my banquet. Poor young bird! It had been so happy, five
minutes before my arrival! It was wandering among the grasses, the
vegetables and the flowers; it was running about among the troops of
goats come down from the mountain; to-night it would have gone to roost
with the sun, and it was still small enough to sleep under its mother's
wing.
When the calash was put to, I climbed in, surrounded by the women,
and the waiters of the inn accompanied me to the carriage-door; they
seemed glad to have seen me, although they did not know me and were
never to see me again: they gave me so many blessings! I do not tire
of this German cordiality. You never meet a peasant but takes off
his hat to you and wishes you a hundred good things: in France we
salute only death; insolence is accounted as liberty and equality;
there is no sympathy between man and man; to envy whoever travels a
little comfortably, to stand with one arm akimbo, ready to draw the
sword on any one who wears a new coat or a white shirt: those are the
characteristic signs of our national independence, always provided that
we spend our days in the antechambers accepting the rebuffs of some
upstart clodhopper. This does not take away from our high intelligence,
nor prevent us from triumphing with arms in hand; but manners cannot
be made _à priori_: for eight centuries we have been a great military
nation; fifty years have not been able to change us: we have not been
able to acquire a genuine love for liberty. So soon as we have a
moment's rest under a transitory government, the Old Monarchy shoots up
again on its stock, the old French spirit reappears: we are courtiers
and soldiers, nothing more.
23 _and_24 _September_ 1833.
The last range of mountains shutting in the Province of Salzburg
commands the arable region. The Tauern has glaciers; its table-land
resembles all the table-lands of the Alps, but more particularly that
of the Saint-Gotthard. On this table-land, crusted over with reddish,
frozen moss, stands a Calvary: an ever-ready consolation, an eternal
refuge for the unfortunate. Around that Calvary are buried the victims
who perish amid the snows.
What were the hopes of the travellers passing, like myself, through
this spot when the snow-storm surprised them? Who are they? Who has
wept for them? How do they rest there, so far from their kindred, their
country, hearing each winter the roar of the tempests whose breath
carried them off the earth? But they sleep at the foot of the Cross;
Christ, their sole companion, their only friend, nailed to the sacred
wood, leans towards them, is covered with the same hoar-frost that
whitens their graves: in the celestial regions, He will present them to
His Father and warm them in His breast.
The descent of the Tauern is long, bad and dangerous; I was delighted
with it: it reminds one, at one time by its cascades and its wooden
bridges, at another by the narrowness of its chasm, of the Valley of
the Pont-d'Espagne at Cauterets or the Domo d'Ossola slope of the
Simplon; but it is far from leading to Granada or Naples. We find no
gleaming lakes, no orange-trees at the bottom: it is unprofitable to
give one's self so much trouble to come to some potato-fields.
At the stage, half-way down the descent, I found myself among my family
in the room of the inn: the walls were hung with the Adventures of
Atala, in six prints. My daughter did not suspect that I should pass
that way, nor had I hoped to meet an object so dear to me on the brink
of a torrent called, I believe, the Dragon. Poor Atala! She had grown
very ugly, very old; she was greatly changed! She wore big feathers
on her head and a short, tight skirt round her hips, like the lady
savages of the Théâtre de la Gaîté. Vanity turns everything into money;
I carried my head high before my works in the depths of Carinthia like
Cardinal Mazarin before the pictures in his gallery. I felt inclined to
say to mine host:
"I made that!"
I had to separate from my first-born, although with less difficulty
than on the island in the Ohio.
As far as Werfen, nothing attracted my attention, unless it were the
manner in which they put the second crop of grass to dry: they drive
stakes of fifteen to twenty feet in height into the ground; they roll
the unbleached grass round those stakes, not too tightly: it dries
there and blackens. At a certain distance, those columns look just like
cypress-trees or like trophies planted in memory of the flowers mown
down in those dales.
[Sidenote: Salzburg.]
24 _September, Tuesday._
Germany was determined to revenge herself for my ill-humour against
her. In the Salzburg Plain, on the morning of the 24th, the sun
appeared to the east of the mountains which I had left behind me; some
rocky peaks on the west lit up with its first softest rays. Darkness
still hovered over the plain, half green, half tilled, whence rose a
smoke, like the steam of man's sweat. Salzburg Castle, raising the
summit of the hill that commands the town, encrusted the blue sky with
its white surface. With the ascending sun, there rose, from out of the
bosom of the cool exhalation of the dew, avenues, clusters of wood,
red-brick houses, cottages rough-plastered with gleaming white lime,
mediæval towers slashed and pierced, old champions of time, wounded
in the head and breast, left standing alone on the battle-field of the
centuries. The autumnal light of the scene had the violent tint of the
colchicums which blossom at this season of the year and with which the
meads along the banks of the Salza were strewn. Flights of crows left
the creepers and holes of the ruins and descended upon the fields;
their gleaming wings were glazed with rose in the reflection of the
dawn.
It was the Feast of St. Rupert[244], the Patron of Salzburg. The
peasant-women were going to market, decked out in the fashion of
their village: their fair hair and snowy foreheads were enclosed in a
sort of helmet of gold, well suited to women of Germania. When I had
passed through the town, which is clean and handsome, I saw two or
three thousand foot-soldiers in a field; they were being reviewed by a
general, accompanied by his staff. Those white lines cutting into the
green grass, the glitter of arms at sunrise formed a stately display
worthy of those peoples depicted or rather sung by Tacitus: Mars the
Teuton was offering a sacrifice to Aurora. What were my gondoliers
doing at that moment in Venice? They were sporting like swallows, after
the night was past, in the returning dawn and preparing to skim over
the surface of the water; next would come the joys of the night, loves
and barcarolles. Every nation has its lot: this one enjoys strength;
that one, pleasures: the Alps make the division.
From Salzburg to Linz, a fertile country-side; the horizon on the right
denticulated with mountains. Forests of pines and beeches, wild and
similar oases, are surrounded by a skilful and varied cultivation.
Herds of all kinds of cattle, hamlets, churches, oratories, crosses
furnish and enliven the landscape.
After we had passed the radius of the festival of St. Rupert (festivals
do not last long with men, nor do they go far), we found all the people
in the fields, busy with the autumnal sowing and the potato-harvest.
Those rustic populations were better clad, more polite, and appeared
happier than our own. Do not let us disturb the order, the peace, the
simple virtues which they enjoy, under the pretext of substituting for
them political boons which are neither conceived nor felt in the same
manner by all, whereas the whole of mankind understands the joys of the
home, family affection, the abundance of life, simplicity of heart and
religion.
The Frenchman, who is so much in love with women, is very well able to
dispense with them in a number of cares and works; the German cannot
live without his mate: he employs her and takes her with him wherever
he goes, to the battle-field as to the plough-field, to feasts and
funerals alike.
In Germany, the very animals partake of the temperate character of
their sober-minded masters. It is interesting, when travelling, to
observe the physiognomy of the brute beasts. We can judge beforehand
of the manners and passions of the inhabitants of a country by the
gentleness or wickedness, the tameness or wildness, the cheerfulness or
sadness of that living part of creation which God has subjected to our
sway.
[Sidenote: Woknabrück.]
An accident to the calash obliged me to stop at Woknabrück. As I roamed
about the inn, I came upon a back-door which let me out on a canal.
Beyond it lay meadows striped with pieces of brown holland. A river,
inflected under wooded hills, served as a belt for those meadows.
Something, I know not what, reminded me of the village of Plancoët,
where happiness had appeared to me in my childhood. O shades of my old
kinsfolk, I did not expect to find you on these shores! You are drawing
nearer to me, because I am drawing nearer to the grave, your shelter;
we are going to meet again there. My kind aunt, do you still sing your
ballad of the Sparrow-hawk and the Warbler[245] on the banks of Lethe?
Have you met the fickle Trémigon[246] among the dead, just as Dido saw
Æneas in the region of the shades?
The day was drawing to a close when I left Woknabrück; Sol transferred
me to his sister's hands: a double light of undefinable hue and
fluidity. Soon Luna reigned alone: she was inclined to renew our
conversation of the forests of Haselbach[247]; but I was not in the
mood for her. I preferred Venus, who rose at two o'clock on the morning
of the 25th; she was as beautiful as amid those dawns in which I used
to contemplate and invoke her on the seas of Greece.
Leaving many mysteries of woods, streams and valleys to the right and
left, I passed through Lambach, Wels and Neuban, quite new little
townships, with flat-roofed houses, as in Italy. In one of those
houses, they were making music; there were young women at the windows:
things were different in Maroboduus'[248] time.
In the towns of Germany, the streets are wide, drawn up in line like
the tents of a camp or the files of a battalion; the market-places
are spacious, the drill-grounds extensive: the people want sun, and
everything happens in public.
In the towns of Italy, the streets are narrow and winding, the
market-places small, the drill-grounds cramped: the people want shade,
and everything happens in secret.
At Linz, my passport was endorsed without difficulty.
24 _and_25 _September_ 1833.
I crossed the Danube at three o'clock in the morning: I had said to it
in the summer what I could no longer find to say to it in the autumn;
its waters were no longer the same and I was there at a different hour.
Far on my left, as I passed, lay my good village of Waldmünchen, with
its droves of pigs[249], Eumaus the shepherd[250] and the peasant-girl
who looked at me over her father's shoulder[251]. The dead man's grave
in the cemetery was filled up by now[252]; the deceased had been eaten
by some thousands of worms for having had the honour of being a man.
M. and Madame de Bauffremont, who had arrived at Linz, were a few hours
ahead of me; they themselves were preceded by some Royalists, bearing a
message of peace, who believed Madame to be travelling quietly behind
them: and I came after them all, like Discord, with news of war.
The Princesse de Bauffremont, _née_ de Montmorency[253], was going to
Butschirad[254] to congratulate the Kings of France, _née_ Bourbons:
what could be more natural?
On the 25th, at nightfall, I entered some woods. Carrion-crows flew
screaming through the air; their thick flights whirled above the trees
whose tops they were making ready to crown. Behold me returning to my
early youth: I saw once more the crows in the Mall at Combourg[255];
I imagined myself renewing my family life in the old castle[256]: O
memories, you pierce the heart like a sword! O Lucile[257], we are
parted by many years: now the crowd of my days has passed and, in
dispersing, allows me to see your image more clearly!
I reached Thabor at night: its square, surrounded by arcades, struck me
as immense; but the moonlight is deceptive.
On the morning of the 26th, a mist wrapped us in its boundless
solitude. At about ten o'clock, it seemed to me that I was passing
between two lakes. I was now only a few leagues from Prague.
[Sidenote: Prague.]
The fog lifted. The approaches by the Linz Road are livelier than by
the Ratisbon Road; the landscape is less insipid. One sees villages,
country-houses with woods and ponds. I met a woman with a resigned and
pious face, going bent under the weight of an enormous basket; two old
market-women with apples spread out for sale beside a ditch; a young
girl and a young man sitting on the grass, the man smoking, the girl
glad, spending the day beside her friend and the night in his arms;
children at a cottage-door playing with cats or driving geese to the
common; turkeys in coops going to Prague, like myself, for Henry V.'s
coming of age; next, a shepherd blowing his horn, while Hyacinthe,
Baptiste, the Venetian _cicerone_ and My Excellency jolted along in our
patched calash: such are the destinies of life. I would not give a doit
for the best of them.
Bohemia had nothing new to show me: my ideas were fixed on Prague.
PRAGUE, 29 _September_ 1833.
The second day after my arrival in Prague, I sent Hyacinthe to take a
letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, whom, according to my reckoning,
he ought to meet at Trieste. This letter informed the Princess that
"I had found the Royal Family leaving for Leoben; that some young
Frenchmen had arrived for the coming of age of Henry V. and that the
King was avoiding them; that I had seen Madame la Dauphine; that she
had bidden me to go at once to Butschirad, where Charles X. still was;
that I had not seen Mademoiselle, because she was a little unwell;
that I had been admitted to her room, where the shutters were closed,
and that she had held out to me her hot hand in the dark and asked me
to save them all; that I had gone to Butschirad, seen M. de Blacas
and talked with him about the declaration of the majority of Henry
V.; that I had been taken to the King's room and found him asleep
and that, after I had subsequently handed him Madame la Duchesse de
Berry's letter, he had appeared to me to be very much incensed against
my august client; that, otherwise, the short deed drawn up by me on the
subject of the coming of age had seemed to be to his liking."
My letter concluded with the following paragraph:
"And now, Madame, I must not conceal the fact from you that there
is a great deal amiss here. Our enemies would laugh if they saw us
contending for a kingship without a kingdom, a sceptre which is
merely the stick with which we assist our steps on the pilgrimage,
perhaps a long one, of our exile. All the drawbacks lie in your
son's education, and I see no prospect of its being changed. I am
returning to the midst of the poor whom Madame de Chateaubriand
provides for; there I shall always be at your orders. If ever you
become Henry's absolute mistress, if you continue to think that
that precious trust might safely be placed in my hands, I shall
be as happy as I shall be honoured to devote the rest of my life
to him; but I could not undertake so terrible a responsibility
except on the condition of remaining entirely free, subject to
your advice, in my selections and ideas and of being placed on an
independent soil, outside the circle of the absolute monarchies."
The letter enclosed the following copy of my draft for the declaration
of majority:
"We, Henry V., having attained the age at which the laws of the
Realm settle the majority of the Heir to the Throne, do ordain that
the first act of that majority shall be a solemn protest against
the usurpation of Louis-Philippe Duc d'Orléans. Wherefore, and by
the advice of Our Council, We have drawn up this present Act to
maintain Our rights and the rights of Frenchmen.
"Given on the thirtieth day of September in the Year of Our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three."
PRAGUE, 30 _September_ 1833.
My letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry described the general facts,
but did not enter into details.
When I saw Madame de Gontaut, surrounded by half-packed trunks and
open boxes, she threw herself on my neck and, sobbing:
"Save us!" she said. "Save us!"
"And what am I to save you from, madame? I have just arrived, I know
nothing about anything."
Hradschin was deserted; one would have thought that we were in the
midst of the Days of July and the flight from the Tuileries, as though
revolutions had become attached to the footsteps of the outlawed House.
[Sidenote: The young men from France.]
Young men were coming to congratulate Henry on the day of his attaining
his majority[258]; several were under penalty of death: some of them,
who had been wounded in the Vendée[259], almost all of them poor,
had been obliged to club together in order to enable them to go to
Prague and give voice to their loyalty. Forthwith an order closed
the frontiers of Bohemia to them. Those who succeeded in reaching
Butschirad were received only after making great efforts; etiquette
barred their way, even as Messieurs the lords of the Bed-chamber
defended the door of Charles X.'s closet at Saint-Cloud, while the
Revolution entered by the windows. The young men were told that the
King was going away, that he would not be in Prague on the 29th. The
horses were ordered, the Royal Family packed up bag and baggage.
When the travellers at last obtained leave to pronounce some hurried
compliments, they were listened to in fear and trembling. Not so much
as a glass of water was offered to the faithful little band; they
were not bidden to the table of the orphan whom they had come to seek
from so far away; they were driven to drink to the health of Henry V.
in a tap-house. Men fled before a handful of Vendeans, even as they
scattered before five score heroes of July.
And what was the pretext for this stampede? They were going to meet
the Duchesse de Berry, they were going to make an appointment with the
Princess on the high-road in order stealthily to show her her daughter
and her son. Was she not very guilty? She persisted in claiming an
empty title for Henry. And, in order to extricate themselves from the
simplest position, they displayed before the eyes of Austria and France
(always presuming France to notice such pin-points) a spectacle which
rendered the Legitimacy, already too much disparaged, the despair of
its friends and an object of calumny to its enemies.
Madame la Dauphine realized the disadvantages of the education of Henry
V., and her virtues ran over in tears, even as at night the skies fall
in dew. The brief audience which she granted me did not give her time
to speak of my letter of the 30th of June from Paris; she wore an air
of concern when she looked at me.
A means of safety seemed to lie hidden in the very rigours of
Providence: the orphan's expatriation separated him from that which
threatened to ruin him at the Tuileries; in the school of adversity,
he might have been brought up under the guidance of a few men of the
new social order, qualified to instruct him in the new theories of
kingship. Instead of adopting those masters of the moment, so far from
bettering Henry V.'s education, they made it more fatal by the intimacy
produced by the constricted family-life: during the winter evenings,
old men, stirring up the centuries by the fireside, taught the child
about days the light of which nothing will ever bring back; they
transformed the Chronicles of Saint-Denis[260] into nursery-tales for
his benefit: surely the two First Barons of the modern era, Liberty
and Equality, would know how to force Henry "Lackland" to grant a Great
Charter!
[Illustration: The Duc and the Duchesse d'Angoulême.]
[Sidenote: I go to Butschirad.]
The Dauphine had urged me to take the trip of Butschirad. Messieurs
Dufougerais[261] and Nugent[262] escorted me on my embassy to Charles
X. on the evening of my arrival in Prague. They were at the head of the
deputation of the young men and were going to complete the negotiations
which had been entered into on the subject of the presentation. The
former of the two, who had been implicated in my trial before the
Assize-court, had pleaded his case with great intelligence; the
second had just finished a term of imprisonment of eight months for a
royalist newspaper offense. The author of the _Génie du Christianisme_,
therefore, had the honour of going to wait on the Most Christian King
seated in a hired calash between the author of the _Mode_ and the
author of the _Revenant._
PRAGUE, 30 _September_ 1833.
Butschirad is a villa belonging to the Grand-duke of Tuscany at
about six leagues from Prague, on the road to Carlsbad. The Austrian
Princes have their ancestral possessions in their own country and are
merely owners for life on the other side of the Alps: they hold Italy
on lease. Butschirad is reached by a triple avenue of apple-trees.
The villa makes no show; with its out-houses, it looks like a fine
farm-house: it stands in the middle of a bare plain and the view
commands a hamlet with green trees and a tower. The inside of the house
is an Italian misconception, in the latitude of 50 degrees: large
living-rooms without stoves or chimneys. The apartments are enriched in
a melancholy fashion with the spoils of Holyrood. The palace of James
II., which Charles X. refurnished[263], has supplied Butschirad, by the
removal, with its carpets and chairs.
[Sidenote: Charles X. asleep.]
The King had a touch of fever and had gone to bed when I arrived at
Butschirad at eight o'clock in the evening, on the 28th. M. de Blacas
introduced me into Charles X.'s bed-room, as I wrote to the Duchesse de
Berry. A little lamp was burning on the mantel-piece; in the silence
of the darkness, I heard only the loud breathing of the thirty-fifth
successor of Hugh Capet. O my old King, your sleep was painful; time
and adversity, those heavy nightmares, were seated on your breast! A
young man might approach the bed of his young bride with less love than
I felt respect as I stepped with stealthy tread towards your lonely
couch. At least, I was not a bad dream like that which woke you to go
to see your son die! I inwardly addressed you with these words, which I
could not have uttered aloud without bursting into tears:
"May Heaven protect you against all ills to come! Sleep in peace during
these nights adjoining your last sleep! Long enough have your vigils
been vigils of sorrow. May this bed of exile lose its hardness while
awaiting the visit of God: He alone can make the foreign earth lie
light upon your bones!"
Yes, I would joyfully have given all my blood to make the Legitimacy
possible for France. I had imagined that it would be with the Old
Royalty as with the dry rod of Aaron: when taken away from the Temple
of Jerusalem, it was budded, and the buds swelling it had bloomed
blossoms, which, swelling the leaves, were formed into almonds, a
token of the renewal of the covenant. I do not study to stifle my
regrets, to keep back the tears with which I would like to wash out the
last trace of the royal sorrows. The impulses which I experience in
different directions with respect to the same persons bear witness to
the sincerity with which these Memoirs are written. In Charles X., the
man moves me to pity, the Sovereign offends me: I give way to these two
impressions as they succeed one another, without seeking to reconcile
them.
On the 28th of September, after Charles X. had received me in the
morning by his bed-side, Henry V. sent for me: I had not asked to see
him. I spoke a few serious words to him on his coming of age and on the
loyal Frenchmen whose ardour had led them to offer him a pair of golden
spurs.
For the rest, it was impossible to be better treated than I was. My
arrival had given alarm; they dreaded the report of my journey in
Paris. For me, therefore, every attention; all the rest were neglected.
My companions, scattered, dying of hunger and thirst, wandered about
the passages, the staircases, the court-yards of the _château_, amid
the scare of the occupiers and the preparations for their escape.
The Austrian guards wondered at these individuals in mustachios and
mufti; they suspected them of being French soldiers in disguise,
thinking of taking Bohemia by surprise.
During this storm without, Charles X. was saying to me indoors:
"I am busy correcting the act establishing my 'Government' in Paris.
You will have M. de Villèle as your colleague, as you asked, and the
Marquis de La Tour-Maubourg and the Chancellor[264]."
I thanked the King for his goodness, while wondering at the illusions
of this world. Society crumbles to pieces, monarchies come to an end,
the face of the earth is renewed, and Charles in Prague establishes a
"government" in France, after "taking the opinion" of his Council! Let
us not jeer overmuch: which of us but has his delusions? Which of us
but feeds his budding hopes? Which of us but has his "government _in
petto_," after "taking the opinion" of his passions? Raillery would ill
beseem me, the man of dreams. These Memoirs, which I scribble as I run,
are not they my "government," after "taking the opinion" of my vanity?
Do not I think that I can speak very seriously to the future, which is
as little at my disposal as France is at the orders of Charles X.?
Cardinal Latil, wishing to escape the hubbub, had gone to spend a
few days with the Duc de Rohan[265]. M. de Foresta[266] passed by
mysteriously with his portfolio under his his arm; Madame de Bouille
made me deep courtesies, like a party-person, with lowered eyes that
tried to see through their lids; M. La Villate was waiting to receive
his dismissal; there was no longer any question of M. Barrande, who
cherished the hope of being restored to favour and was living in a
corner in Prague.
[Sidenote: The Dauphin.]
I went to pay my court to the Dauphin. Our conversation was brief:
"How does Monseigneur find himself at Butschirad?"
"Getting oldish."
"We're all doing that, Monseigneur."
"How's your wife?"
"Monseigneur, she has the tooth-ache."
"Inflammation?"
"No, Monseigneur: age."
"You're dining with the King? We shall meet again."
And we parted.
PRAGUE, 28 and 29 _September._
I found myself free at three o'clock: they dined at six. Not
knowing what to do with myself, I went for a walk through avenues
of apple-trees worthy of Normandy. The fruit-crop from those mock
orange-trees in good years amounts to the value of eighteen thousand
francs. The calvilles are exported to England. They are not made into
cider, as the Bohemian beer-monopoly is opposed to it. According to
Tacitus, the Germans had words to express spring, summer and winter,
but none for autumn, of which they knew neither the name nor the gifts:
_nomen ac bona ignorantur._ Since Tacitus' time, a Pomona has come to
dwell among them.
Feeling very tired, I sat down on the steps of a ladder leaning against
the trunk of an apple-tree. I was there in the Œil-de-bœuf of
the _château_ of Butschirad or at the railing of the Council-chamber.
Looking at the roof which covered the three generations of my Kings, I
called to mind the complaint of the Arab Maoual:
"Here we saw vanish below the horizon the stars which we love to
see rise under the sky of our country."
Full of these melancholy ideas, I fell asleep. A gentle voice woke me.
A Bohemian peasant-woman came to gather apples; throwing forward her
breast and lifting her head, she made me a Slav bow with a queenly
smile: I thought I should fall from my roosting-place; I said to her in
French:
"You are very beautiful; I thank you!"
I saw from her look that she had understood me: apples always play a
part in my encounters with "Bohemians[267]." I climbed down from my
ladder like one of those condemned men of feudal times delivered by the
presence of a young woman. Thinking on Normandy, Dieppe, Fervacques,
the sea, I resumed my way to the Trianon of Charles X.'s old age.
We sat down to table, namely, the Prince and Princesse de Bauffremont,
the Duc and Duchesse de Narbonne, M. de Blacas, M. de Damas, M.
O'Heguerty, I, M. le Dauphin and Henry V.: I would rather have seen
the young men there than myself. Charles X. did not come in to dinner:
he was nursing himself, in order to be able to start on the morrow.
The banquet was noisy, thanks to the young Prince's prattle: he never
ceased talking of his ride on horseback, his horse, his horse's pranks
on the grass, his horse's snorting in the ploughed fields. This
conversation was most natural, and yet it grieved me; I liked our old
talk on travels and history better.
The King came and chatted to me. He complimented me again on the note
on the majority: it pleased him because it left the abdications on one
side as an accomplished thing, required no signature except Henry's
and revived no sores. According to Charles X., the declaration would
be sent from Vienna to M. de Pastoret before my return to France; I
bowed with an incredulous smile. His Majesty, after striking me on the
shoulder according to his custom, asked:
"Chateaubriand, where are you going now?"
"Quite foolishly to Paris, Sire."
"No, no, not foolishly," replied the King, seeking, with a sort of
uneasiness, to discover what was at the back of my thought
The newspapers were brought in; the Dauphin took possession of the
English journals; suddenly, amid profound silence, he translated aloud
the following passage from the _Times_:
"The Baron de--- is here; he is four feet high, seventy--five years
old and as brisk as though he were fifty."
And Monseigneur said nothing more.
The King retired; M. de Blacas said to me:
"You ought to come to Leoben with us."
The proposal was not seriously meant. Besides, I was not at all anxious
to be present at a family scene; I wished neither to divide relations
nor to meddle with dangerous reconciliations. When I half saw a chance
of becoming the favourite of one of the two powers, I shuddered; the
post did not seem fast enough to take me away from my possible honours.
I trembled before the shadow of fortune even as the Philistines
trembled before the shadow of Richard's horse.
On the next day, the 28th, I locked myself up at the Bath Hotel and
wrote my dispatch to Madame. That same evening, Hyacinthe set out with
the dispatch.
On the 29th, I went to see the Comte and Comtesse de Chotek; I found
them confounded by the uproar at the Court of Charles X. The Grand
Burgrave sent by means of expresses to recall the orders which were
delaying the young men at the frontiers. For the rest, those who were
to be seen in the streets of Prague had lost none of their national
characteristics: a Legitimist and a Republican, politics apart, are
the same man. What a noise they made, what joking, what merriment!
The travellers came to see me to tell me their adventures. M.---- had
visited Frankfort with a German guide, who delighted in the French;
M.---- asked him the reason; the guide answered:
"De Vrench gome to Frankfort; dey trink de vine und mague loff to de
breddy vifes of de cidicens. Cheneral Aucherau lay a dax of vorty-vun
millions on de Down of Frankfort."
Those are the reasons why the French were so much loved in Frankfort.
[Sidenote: Breakfast of the young men.]
A great breakfast was served at my inn; the rich paid the scot of the
poor. They drank champagne on the banks of the Moldau to the health of
Henry V., who was covering the roads with his grandfather, for fear
of hearing the toasts proposed to his crown. At eight o'clock, having
arranged my business, I drove off, hoping never to return to Bohemia in
my life.
It has been said that Charles X. had intended to retire to the altar:
he had precedents for such a plan in his family. Richer, monk of
Senones, and Geoffroy de Beaulieu, confessor to St. Louis, narrate that
that great man had thought of shutting himself up in a convent, when
his son should have reached an age to take his place on the throne.
Christine de Pisan[268] says of Charles V.:
"The wise King[269] had deliberated within himself that, if he
could live so long that his son was of age to wear the crown, he
would relinquish the Kingdom to him... and turn priest."
Such princes as these, if they had laid down the sceptre, would have
been missed as guardians to their sons; and still, by remaining kings,
did they make their successors worthy of them? What was Philip the
Bold[270] beside St. Louis? All Charles V.'s wisdom turned into madness
in his heir[271].
I passed at ten o'clock in the evening in front of Butschirad, in the
silent fields, brightly lit by the moon. I saw the huddled mass of
villa, hamlet and ruin inhabited by the Dauphin: the rest of the Royal
Family were travelling. Such profound isolation came upon me with a
shock; that man, as I have already told you, possessed virtues: he
was moderate in politics, he entertained few prejudices; he had only
a drop of the blood of St. Louis in his veins, but he had that; his
uprightness was unequalled, his word as inviolable as God's. Gifted
by nature with courage, he was undone at Rambouillet by his filial
piety. He showed himself brave and humane in Spain, and had the glory
of restoring a kingdom to his kinsman, but was not able to save his
own. Louis-Antoine, since the Days of July, thought of asking a shelter
in Andalusia: Ferdinand would doubtless have refused it to him. The
husband of Louis XVI.'s daughter was languishing in a village in
Bohemia; a dog whose voice I heard was the Prince's only guard: thus
Cerberus barks at the shades in the regions of death, silence and
darkness.
I was never able, in the course of my long life, to revisit my paternal
hearth; I was not able to settle down in Rome, where I so greatly
longed to die; the eight hundred leagues which I was now completing,
including my first journey to Bohemia, would have taken me to the most
beautiful sites in Greece, Italy and Spain. I have covered all this
distance and spent my last days to return to this cold, grey land: what
have I done to Heaven to deserve this?
I entered Prague on the 29th, at four o'clock in the evening.
I alighted at the Bath Hotel. I did not see the young Saxon
servant-girl[272]; she had gone back to Dresden to console the banished
pictures of Raphael with the songs of Italy.
[Sidenote: I leave Bohemia.]
29 _September to_ 6 _October_ 1833.
At Schlau, at midnight, a carriage was changing horses in front of the
post-office. Hearing French spoken, I put my head out of the calash and
said:
"Gentlemen, are you going to Prague? You will not find Charles X.
there; he has gone away with Henry V."
I mentioned my name.
"What, gone?" exclaimed several voices together. "Go ahead, postillion,
go ahead!"
My eight fellow-countrymen, after being stopped at Eger, had obtained
permission to continue their journey, but under the care of an officer
of police. It was curious, in 1833, to meet a convoy of servants of
the Throne and the Altar, dispatched by the French Legitimacy and
escorted by a policeman! In 1822, at Verona, I had seen cages full
of _Carbonari_ pass, accompanied by gendarmes. What is it that the
sovereigns want? Whom do they recognise as friends? Do they fear the
too-great crowds of their partisans? Instead of being touched by their
fidelity, they treat men devoted to their crowns as propagandists and
revolutionaries[273].
The post-master at Schlau had just invented the accordion[274]: he sold
me one; the whole night I played upon its bellows, the sound of which
carried away for me the memories of this world.
Carlsbad, through which I passed on the 30th of September, was
deserted, like an opera-house after the performance. I met at Eger the
extortioner who had made me tumble from the moon where I was spending
the month of June with a lady from the Roman Campagna[275].
At Hollfeld, no swifts[276], no little girl with her basket[277];
this saddened me. Such is my nature: I idealize real personages and
impersonate dreams, making matter and mind change places. A little girl
and a bird to-day swell the crowd of the beings of my creation with
whom my imagination is peopled, like those day-flies which sport in a
ray of the sun. Forgive me, I am speaking of myself: I notice it when
it is too late.
Here is Bamberg. Padua reminded me of Livy[278]; at Bamberg, Father
Horrion recovered the first portion of the third and of the thirtieth
books of the Roman historian. While I was supping in the birthplace
of Joachim Camerarius[279] and Clavius[280], the librarian of the
town came to greet me on account of my fame, the greatest in the
world, according to him, which warmed the marrow of my bones. Next,
a Bavarian general came running up. At the door of the inn, the crowd
surrounded me when I made for my carriage. A young woman had climbed
upon a mile-stone, as did the Sainte-Beuve to see the Duc de Guise go
by. She laughed:
"You are laughing at me?" I asked.
"No," she replied, in French, with a German accent, "it is because I am
so glad!"
[Sidenote: And return to France.]
From the 1st to the 4th of October, I saw again the places which I had
seen three months before. On the 4th, I reached the French frontier. To
me St. Francis' Day is, every year, a day for examining my conscience.
I turn my eyes upon the past; I ask myself where I was, what I was
doing on each previous anniversary. This year 1833 found me wandering,
a slave to my roving destinies. At the end of the road I saw a cross;
it stood in a cluster of trees which silently dropped a few dead leaves
upon the Man-God crucified. Twenty-seven years before, I spent St.
Francis' Day at the foot of the real Golgotha.
My Patron Saint also visited the Holy Sepulchre. Francis of
Assisi[281], the founder of the Mendicant Orders, by virtue of that
institution caused the Gospel to take a great step forward: a fact that
has not been sufficiently remarked upon. He achieved the introduction
of the people into religion; by clothing the poor in a monk's frock,
he forced the world to charity, raised the beggar in the eyes of the
rich and, in a Christian proletarian army, established the model of
that brotherhood of men which Christ had preached, a brotherhood which
will be the fulfilment of that political side of Christianity as yet
undeveloped, without which there will never be complete liberty and
justice upon earth.
My Patron extended this brotherly love to the very animals, over whom
he appeared to have reconquered by his innocence the empire which
man exercised over them before his fall; he spoke to them as if they
understood him; he gave them the name of "brothers" and "sisters." Near
Baveno, as he was passing, a multitude of birds gathered around him; he
greeted them and said:
"My winged brothers, love and praise God, for He hath clothed you with
feathers and given you the power to fly in the sky."
The birds of the Lake of Rieti followed him. He rejoiced when he met
flocks of sheep; he had a great compassion for them:
"Brothers," he said to them, "come to me."
Sometimes he would give his clothes in exchange for a sheep which was
being led to the butcher's; he remembered a very meek Lamb, _illius
mentor agni minissimi_, offered up for the salvation of mankind. A
grass-hopper lived on the bough of a fig-tree near his door at the
Portiuncula; he called it to him; it came to lie upon his hand and he
said to it:
"Sister grasshopper, sing God thy Creator."
He did the same by a nightingale and was beaten at the concerts by
a bird which he blessed and which flew away after its victory. He
was obliged to have the little wild animals which ran up to him and
sought shelter in his breast carried far away into the woods. When
he wished to pray in the morning, he ordered silence of the swallows
and they were dumb. A young man was going to Siena to sell some
turtle-doves; the servant of God begged him to give them to him, so
that doves, which, in the Scriptures, are the symbol of innocence and
candour, might not be killed. The saint carried them to his convent
at Ravacciano: he planted his stick at the door of the monastery; the
stick changed into a tall evergreen oak; the saint let the turtle-doves
go to it and commanded them to build their nest in its branches, which
they did for many years.
Francis dying wished to leave the world naked, as he had entered it;
he asked that his stripped body might be buried in the spot where the
criminals were executed, in imitation of Christ, whom he had taken for
his model. He dictated a will which was wholly spiritual, for he had
nothing to leave to his brethren except poverty and peace: a sainted
woman laid him in his tomb.
[Sidenote: Back in Paris.]
I received, from my Patron, poverty, the love of the small and humble,
compassion for animals; but my barren stick will not change into an
evergreen oak to protect them. I ought to think myself lucky to have
trodden French soil on my saint's-day; but have I a country? Have I
ever, in that country, enjoyed a moment of rest? On the 6th of October,
in the morning, I returned to my Infirmary. The gale of St. Francis was
still blowing. My trees, the budding refuges of the miseries collected
by my wife, bent before the anger of my Patron. In the evening, through
the branchy elms of my boulevard, I saw the hanging street-lamps shaken
to and fro, their half-extinguished lights flickering like the little
lamp of my life[282].
[239] This book was written on the road from Padua to Prague, from
20 to 26 September 1833, and on the road from Prague to Paris, from
26 September to 6 October.--T.
[240] Columbus first touched land in America at Guanahani, one of
the Bahama Islands, on the 12th of October 1492. The island is
called "Watling's Island" on the English maps: it is possible to
vulgarize most things; Christopher was content to christen it San
Salvador.--T.
[241] Richard Lemon Lander (1804-1834) made several journeys of
discovery in Africa, penetrated to the mouth of the Niger in 1831
and settled the question of its course and outlet. He returned to
the Nun mouth in 1833, when he was fired upon by the natives and
struck by a musket-ball in the thigh. He was removed to Fernando
Po, where he died in February 1834.--T.
[242] Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE: _A Journey into Italy._--T.
[243] Chateaubriand: _Tombeaux champêtres_, 52-53, imitated from
Gray's _Elegy written in a Country Church-yard. Cf._ 57-60:
"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."--T.
[244] Saint Rupert Bishop of Worms (_fl. circa_ 700), known as the
Apostle of the Bavarians from his missionary labours at Ratisbon,
Salzburg, etc.--T.
[245] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 21.--T.
[246] _Ibid._--T.
[247] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 354.--T.
[248] Maroboduus, or Marbod, King of the Marcomanni (_b._ 18 B.C.),
mentioned in Tacitus.--T.
[249] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 346.--T.
[250] _Ibid._, p. 347.--T.
[251] _Ibid._, p. 353.--T.
[252] _Ibid._, p. 350.--T.
[253] _Cf._ p. 38, n. 2, _supra._--T.
[254] During the summer and part of the autumn, the Royal Family used
to live at Butschirad, a lonely and gloomy residence, situated in a
dull and desolate country, about five hours' drive from Prague.--B.
[255] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 88.--T.
[256] _Ibid._, pp. 74 _et seq._--T.
[257] _Ibid._, pp. 81 _et seq._--T.
[258] By the old laws of the Monarchy, the majority of the Kings of
France was fixed at the commencement of their fourteenth year. The
memory of this law determined several hundreds of Frenchmen to go
together to visit the Elder Branch of the Bourbons, at fifteen hundred
miles from their country. This manifestation carried with it a certain
hostility to the new Dynasty. The Government of July, accordingly,
did not fail, naturally enough, when all is said and done, to put
some petty annoyances in the way of the travellers. It prevailed upon
the Austrian Government to turn a large number of them back at the
frontiers. In Frankfort and Munich, King Louis-Philippe's _chargés
d'affaires_ refused to give the necessary _visas_; several were
detained at Pilsen and Waldmünchen, _as_ also at Mayence and Eger.
Moreover, this little manifestation was looked upon almost as
unfavourably in Prague as in Paris. King Charles X. and his son, the
Dauphin, had abdicated at Rambouillet, and they had no thought of
withdrawing their respective abdications; only, in order to keep up
the moral absence of responsibility of the Duc de Bordeaux and also
to facilitate the relations between the exiles and the Cabinets,
particularly the Cabinet of Vienna, they wished to retain, while on
foreign soil, a title which seemed to them inseparable from that of
heads of the Bourbon Family. The journey of the young Frenchmen who
were coming to greet Henry of France on the day of his entering upon
his fourteenth year might upset those private arrangements of the
exiled Family. It was therefore not calculated to please the old King
and his son. Hence the little incidents which the author of the Memoirs
will presently describe to us.--B.
The Duc de Bordeaux was born on the 29th of September 1820, seven and
a half months after his father's assassination, and therefore attained
his majority, according to the laws of the French Monarchy, on the 29th
of September 1833--T.
[259] "Among the visitors to Prague were Vendeans whose wounds were not
yet closed and as many as eight persons who had been sentenced to death
in their absence and who had saved their heads by flight." (ALFRED
NETTEMENT: _Henri de France_, Vol. I, p. 264).--B.
[260] The _Chroniques de Saint-Denys_ or _Grandes chroniques de
France_ were chronicles compiled from the earliest times of the French
Monarchy by the Benedictines of Saint-Denis and kept in the treasury
of the abbey. The Abbot of Saint-Denis used to appoint a monk as
historiographer whose duty it was to follow the Court in order to
collect and write down events as they occurred. On the death of the
king, a history of his reign was drawn up from these notes, and this
history, after being submitted to the Chapter, was incorporated in the
_Grandes chroniques._ Suger, who became Abbot of Saint-Denis in 1122,
collected all the chronicles compiled from the commencement of the
Monarchy and himself wrote those of his own time. After the discovery
of printing, an abstract of the _Grandes chroniques_ was prepared and
published by Jean Chartier, the Benedictine, in 1476, under the title,
_Chroniques de France depuis les Troiens jusqu'à la mort de Charles
VII._, in 3 volumes 4to. They constitute the first French book known to
have been printed in Paris. These three volumes, which brought up the
History of France to 1461, were reprinted, with a continuation to 1513,
in 1514. A more recent edition appeared in Paris in 1836 to 1841, in 6
volumes 8vo.--T.
[261] Alfred Xavier Baron Dufougerais (1804-1874), a member of a
royalist family, was a barrister in Paris when, in 1828, he became
one of the proprietors and one of the editors of the _Quotidien._ In
April 1831, he bought the _Mode, revue du monde élégant_ from Émile
de Girardin, its founder, and turned it into a political organ. He
kept the fashion article and plates, so as to justify the title and
retain the advantages attaching to the speciality; but at the same
time the paper, in his hands, became a formidable weapon against the
Monarchy of July. Without being exactly a writer, Alfred Dufougerais
possessed the journalistic instinct to a high degree, and, under his
management, the _Mode_ soon took the leading place in the van-guard
of the royalist press. In September 1834, the state of his health
obliged him to transfer the ownership of his paper to other hands.
Alfred Dufougerais, who was gifted with a genuine talent for speaking,
preferred the contests of the bar to those of the press. He appeared in
all the leading newspaper trials and soon became standing counsel to
the royalist journals both in the provinces and in Paris. Among other
feats, he thrice obtained the acquittal of the _Indépendant de l'Ouest_
at Laval. In 1849, Dufougerais was elected by the Department of the
Vendée to the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the
Right until the _coup d'État_ of 2 December 1851, when he retired into
private life.--B.
[262] Charles Vicomte de Nugent, poet and prose-writer and a member of
the editorial staff of the _Revenant_ and the _Mode._--B.
[263] The modern apartments at Holyrood Palace were quite bare, when
they were lent to Charles X. in 1830, and almost uninhabitable. The
Wellington Administration, which made great difficulties about lending
the palace to the King and his family at all, did so only on the
express and almost barbarous condition that, "if there was a nail to be
knocked in, they would have to do it at their own expense." In short,
the unfortunate French exiles were allowed to arrive in Edinburgh,
during a Scotch winter, to take possession of a lodging in which the
very essentials of comfort were lacking, in which there was little
but the four walls of each room: and these, the Duchesse de Gontaut,
in 1831, informed M. P. J. Fallon, whose interesting little volume,
_Voyage à Holyrood pendant l'automne de_ 1831, is my authority, were,
in the case of Mademoiselle's apartment, so cold and damp that at first
they gave up the idea of occupying it. The state of the chimneys was
such that it was impossible to warm the rooms without being stifled
with smoke. M. Fallon gives a few details of the furniture supplied by
Charles X. The throne-room or picture-gallery was left empty, but for
a small table supporting an old lamp. The room before it was turned
into a chapel, in which Mass was said daily: Charles X. used to hear
Vespers at three o'clock on Sundays in the Catholic chapel next to the
Adelphi Theatre. The large drawing-room leading out of the throne-room
was fully but very simply furnished and contained a sofa with a back
about four feet high: the little Duc de Bordeaux used to amuse himself
by vaulting over it with one hand resting on the kick of it. The room
leading out of this drawing-room, on the left, was almost empty; it
contained a picture, by M. d'Hardivilliers, representing the landing
of Charles X. at Leith. Next to this was the closet of Charles X., a
large room completely furnished. The Dauphin and Dauphiness at first
occupied a little eight-roomed house at 34 Regent's Terrace, in the New
Town, at a rental of £80 a year, and did not move into Holyrood until
October 1831. M, Fallon adds a further anecdote typical of the timorous
policy of the Duke of Wellington's Ministry. So long as it remained in
power, no guard was placed at the palace gate. Later, when the duke
was succeeded by Earl Grey (November 1830), sentries were posted in
the entrance-hall and at the foot of the two towers. But they were
considered to be a guard of protection or convenience, not of honour,
and they received no orders to present arms when the members of the
Royal Family passed them.--T.
[264] The Marquis de Pastoret (_Cf._ Vol. V., p. 303, n. 2). He
succeeded Dambray in 1829 as Chancellor of France and, although he
resigned all his functions after the Revolution of July, he always
remained the "Chancellor" to Charles X. In 1834, he became tutor to the
children of the Duchesse de Berry, a charge to which he applied himself
with great devotion, in spite of his advanced years: he was born in
1756.--B.
[265] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 187, n. 4 and p. 188, n. 1.--T.
[266] Marie Joseph Marquis de Foresta (_d._ 1858) was prefect of
different departments, under the Restoration, and an honorary lord of
the Bed-chamber to the King. He had a cultured, nice and penetrating
mind and had given proof of his literary talents at an early age,
having dedicated to the Duchesse de Berry two charming and ingenious
volumes entitled, _Lettres sur la Sicile_ and published when he was
only twenty-two. He remained attached to the person of the Comte de
Chambord until his death (11 February 1858). The Marquise de Foresta
was the finished type of a Christian gentleman.--B.
[267] _Bohémiennes_: gipsy-women. _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 55, where
Chateaubriand, suffering from smallpox and starving, meets a
gipsy-woman who gives him an apple.--T.
[268] Christine de Pisan (1363-1415), born in Venice, came to the Court
of France with her father, Thomas de Pisan, who had been appointed
astrologer to Charles V. She married a Frenchman of good family, was
left a widow at an early age, and devoted herself to literature for
her consolation. She left ballads, lays, virelays, rondeaus and short
poems, such as the _Débat des deux amants_, the _Chemin de longue
étude_, etc., and a number of prose works, including the _Vision de
Christine de Pisan_ and the work from which the above quotation is
taken, entitled, the _Livre des faiets et bonnes mœurs de Charles V._
Some of her works were translated from the Romance language into French
and published separately, in Paris, in 1522, 1536, 1549 and later
years.--T.
[269] King Charles V. of France was surnamed the "Wise."--T.
[270] Philip III. King of France (1245-1285), surnamed the Bold,
succeeded St. Louis IX., in 1270. He was a gallant King and would have
cut a fine figure beside any other than his glorious father.--T.
[271] Charles VI. (1368-1422), surnamed the Well-Beloved, succeeded
his father in 1380 and lost his reason in 1392 (_Cf. supra_ p. 10, n.
3).--T.
[272] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 392.--T.
[273] I received from Périgueux, on the 14th of November, the following
letter, which, leaving the praises of myself on one side, states facts
as I have told them:
PÉRIGUEUX, 10 _November_ 1833.
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,
"I cannot resist the wish to tell you of my disappointment when
I was told, on Monday the 28th of October, that you were away. I
had called on you to have the honour of paying you my respects and
exchanging a few words with the man to whom I have devoted all my
admiration. Obliged as I was to leave Paris that same night, where
perhaps I shall not return again, it would have been very pleasant
for me to have seen you. When, in spite of my family's moderate
means, I undertook the journey to Prague, I had placed among the
Dumber of my hopes that of introducing myself to you. And yet,
monsieur le vicomte, I cannot say that I have not seen you: I was
one of the eight young men whom you met in the middle of the night
at Schlau, not far from Prague. We arrived after having, for five
mortal days, been the victims of the intrigue that has since been
revealed to us. That meeting, at that place and hour, has something
odd about it and will never be effaced from my memory, any more
than will the image of him to whom royalist France owes the most
useful services.
"Pray accept, etc.
"P. G. JULES DETERMES."--(_Author's Note_).
[274] The accordion appears to have been invented really by Damian, in
Vienna, in the year 1829.--T.
[275] _Cf. supra_, p. 4.--T.
[276] _Cf. supra_, p. 8.--T.
[277] _Cf. supra_, p. 8.--T.
[278] _Cf. supra_, p. 105.--T.
[279] Joachim Liebhard (1500-1574), known as Camerarius, because
several members of his family had been chamberlains, a native of
Bamberg, a learned scholar, a friend of Melanchthon. Camerarius was the
author of valuable Latin translations of many of the Greek classics,
published editions, with commentaries, of many of the Latin classics,
edited Melanchthon's Letters and left a Life of Melanchthon, Letters,
Fables, etc.
[280] Christopher Clavius (1537-1612), a native of Bamberg and a great
Jesuit mathematician, was sent to Rome, where Gregory XIII. employed
him on the reform of the Calendar.--T.
[281] Giovanni Francesco Bernardone (1182-1226), canonized by Pope
Gregory IX., in 1228, as St. Francis of Assisi, founded the Order of
the Franciscans, or Mendicant Friars, in 1208: their rule was confirmed
by Pope Honorius III. in 1223. St. Francis visited the Holy Land in
1219. In 1224, two years before his death, he received the Stigmata, on
the heights of Monte La Verna, on the morning of the 14th of September,
the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross.--T.
[282] The above page was written on the 6th of October 1833. Those
which follow were begun in 1837. In September 1836, Chateaubriand
wrote, at the Château de Maintenon, a chapter which was intended for
his Memoirs, but not included in the earlier editions. This short
chapter has been recovered by M. Biré and it will be found at the end
of this volume as Appendix II.: _Unpublished Fragments of the Mémoires
if Outre-tombe._--T.
BOOK IX[283]
General politics of the moment--Louis-Philippe--M. Thiers--M. de La
Fayette--Armand Carrel--Of some women: the lady from Louisiana--Madame
Tastu--Madame Sand--M. de Talleyrand--Death of Charles X.
When, passing from the politics of the Legitimacy to general politics,
I re-read what I wrote on those politics in the years 1831, 1832 and
1833, I find that my previsions were fairly correct
Louis-Philippe is a man of intelligence whose tongue is set in movement
by a torrent of commonplaces. He pleases Europe, which reproaches us
with not knowing his worth; England is glad to see that, like herself,
we have dethroned a king; the other sovereigns forsake the Legitimacy,
which they did not find obedient. Philip has lorded it over the men
who have come closer to him; he has made game of his ministers; he has
employed them, dismissed them, reemployed them, dismissed them afresh,
after compromising them, if anything can compromise one nowadays.
Philip's superiority is real, but it is only relative; place him in
a period when society still retains some life, and his mediocrity
shall come to the surface. Two passions spoil his good qualities:
his exclusive love for his children and his insatiable eagerness to
increase his fortune; on those two points his eyes will always be
dazzled.
Philip has not that feeling for the honour of France which the elder
Bourbons had; he has no occasion for honour: he fears nothing except
popular risings, even as the nearest relations of Louis XVI. feared it.
He is sheltered by his father's crime; the hatred of what is good does
not weigh heavy on him: he is an accomplice, not a victim.
Having realized the lassitude of the times and the vileness of men's
souls, Philip has made himself at home. Laws of intimidation have
come to suppress our liberties, as I foretold at the time of my
farewell speech in the House of Peers, and not a thing has stirred; the
Government has resorted to arbitrary measures; it has murdered people
in the Rue Transnonain, shot them down in Lyons, instituted numerous
newspaper prosecutions; it has arrested private citizens, has kept them
for months and years in prison without trial, and has been applauded
for doing so. The exhausted country, which no longer understands what
is happening, has suffered all. There is hardly a man whom it is not
possible to face with his own past. From year to year, from month
to month, we have written, said and done the exact opposite of what
we used to write, say and do. By dint of having cause for blushing,
we have ceased to blush; our inconsistencies escape our memory, so
numerous have they become. To have done with it, we adopt the course
of declaring that we have never changed, or that we have changed only
through the progressive transformation of our ideas and our enlightened
apprehension of the times. Events so rapid have aged us so speedily
that, when men remind us of our doings of a past period, it seems to us
that they are talking of some other man than ourselves: and besides, to
have changed is to have done what everybody does.
[Sidenote: Louis-Philippe.]
Philip did not think it necessary, as did the Restored Branch, to be
the master in every village in order to reign; he considered that it
was enough to hold sway in Paris: therefore, if ever he could turn the
Capital into a warlike town, with an annual roll of sixty thousand
pretorians, he would think himself safe. Europe would let him alone,
because he would persuade the sovereigns that he was acting with a
view to stifling the revolution in its old cradle, while leaving the
liberties, independence and honour of France as a pledge in the hands
of the foreigners. Philip is a policeman: Europe can spit in his
face; he wipes himself, gives thanks and shows his patent as a king.
Moreover, he is the only Prince whom the French would, at present, be
capable of supporting. The degradation of the elected Head constitutes
his strength; we momentarily find in his person enough to satisfy
our monarchical habits and our democratic leanings; we obey a power
which we believe ourselves to have the right to insult; that is all
the liberty that we require: on our knees as a nation, we slap our
master's face, re-establishing privilege at his feet, equality on his
cheek. Crafty and guileful, a Louis XI. of the age of philosophy, the
monarch of our choice dexterously steers his ship over a liquid mire.
The Elder Branch of the Bourbons is dried up, save one bud alone; the
Younger Branch is rotten. The Head inaugurated at the town-hall has
never thought of any one but himself: he sacrifices Frenchmen to what
he believes to be his security. When men argue about what would be
fitting for the greatness of the country, they forget the nature of the
Sovereign: he is persuaded that he would be undone by methods which
would be the saving of France; according to him, that which would give
life to the Royalty would be the death of the King. For the rest, none
has the right to despise him, for every one is on the same contemptible
level. But, whatever may be the prosperity that forms the object of
his dreams, in the last result, either he or his children will fail to
prosper, because he abandons the people, from whom he holds all. On the
other hand, the legitimate kings, abandoning the legitimate kings, will
fall: principles are not denied with impunity. Though the revolutions
may, for a moment, have been diverted from their course, they will none
the less come to swell the torrent which is under-mining the ancient
edifice: none has played his part, none shall be saved.
Since no power among us is inviolable, since the hereditary sceptre has
fallen four times within thirty-eight years, since the royal diadem
fastened by victory has twice slipped from the head of Napoleon, since
the Sovereignty of July has been incessantly attacked, we must conclude
from this that it is not the Republic which is impossible, but the
Monarchy.
France is under the dominion of an idea hostile to the throne: a diadem
of which men at first recognised the authority, which they next trod
under foot, then picked up, only to tread it under foot again, is
merely a useless temptation and a symbol of disorder. A master is set
over men who seem to call for him by their memories and who no longer
support him by their manners; he is set over generations which, having
lost the sense of moderation and social decency, know only how to
insult the royal person or to replace respect by servility.
Philip has within him the wherewithal to delay the march of destiny,
but not to stop it. The Democratic Party alone is progressing, because
it is advancing towards the world of the future. Those who refuse to
admit the general causes of destruction where monarchical principles
are concerned in vain look to be delivered from the present yoke by
a motion of the Chambers; the latter will never consent to reform,
because reform would be their death. The Opposition, on its side, which
has become an industrial Opposition, will never give the death-thrust
to the King of its own making, as it gave it to Charles X.: it makes
a disturbance in order to obtain places, it complains, it is peevish;
but, when it finds itself face to face with Philip, it draws back; for,
though it wishes to have the handling of affairs, it does not wish to
overthrow that which it has created nor that by which it lives. Two
fears stop it: the fear of the return of the Legitimacy, the fear of
the reign of the people; it clings to Philip, whom it does not love,
but whom it looks upon as a safeguard. Stuffed full of offices and
money, abdicating its own will, the Opposition obeys what it knows to
be fatal and goes to sleep in the mire, which is the down invented by
the industry of the age: it is not so pleasant as the other, but it is
cheaper.
[Sidenote: Philip's turpitude.]
All these things notwithstanding, a sovereignty of a few months, of a
few years, even, if you wish, will not change the irrevocable future.
There is hardly any one now but confesses the Legitimacy to have been
preferable to the Usurpation, in so far as security, liberty, property
were concerned, and also our relations with foreign Powers, for the
principle of our present Sovereignty is hostile to that of the European
sovereignties. Since he was pleased to receive the investiture of the
Throne at the good pleasure and with the certain knowledge of the
democracy, Philip missed his opportunity at the start: he ought to
have leapt on horseback and galloped to the Rhine; or rather, he ought
to have resisted a movement which was carrying him without conditions
towards a crown: more durable and more suitable institutions would have
arisen from that resistance.
It has been said that "M. le Duc d'Orléans could not have refused the
crown without plunging us into dreadful troubles:" this is the argument
of cowards, dupes and cheats. No doubt, conflicts would have ensued;
but they would have been swiftly followed by a return to law and order.
What has Philip done for the country after all? Would there have been
more blood shed by his refusing the sceptre than flowed because of the
acceptance of that same sceptre in Paris, Lyons, Antwerp, the Vendée,
without reckoning those streams of blood spilt, as a consequence of our
Elective Monarchy, in Poland, Italy, Portugal, Spain? Has Philip, in
compensation for these misfortunes, given us liberty? Has he given us
glory? He has spent his time in begging for his legitimation among the
potentates, in degrading France by making her the handmaid of England,
by giving her as a hostage; he has tried to make the age come to him,
to make it old with his House, not wishing to become young himself with
the age.
Why did he not marry his eldest son[284] to some fair commoner of his
country? That would have meant wedding France: those nuptials of the
people and the Royalty would have made the Kings repent; for those
Kings, who have already taken advantage of Philip's submissiveness,
will not be content with what they have obtained: the might of the
populace which appears through our Municipal Monarchy terrifies them.
The Potentate of the Barricades, to become completely agreeable to the
absolute potentates, ought above all to destroy the liberty of the
press and abolish our constitutional institutions. At the bottom of
his soul, he detests them as much as they, but he has to keep within
bounds. All this remissness offends the other sovereigns; the only way
to make them have patience is to sacrifice everything to them abroad:
in order to accustom us to becoming Philip's liegemen at home, we are
commencing by making ourselves the vassals of Europe.
I have said a hundred times and I repeat again, the old society is
dying. I am not easy-going enough, nor quack enough, nor sufficiently
deceived by my hopes to take the smallest interest in that which
exists. France, the ripest of the present nations, will probably be
the first to go. It is likely that the Elder Bourbons, to whom I shall
die attached, would not even to-day find a lasting shelter in the Old
Monarchy. Never have the successors of an immolated monarch worn his
torn mantle long after him: there is distrust on both sides; the prince
dares not rely upon the nation, the nation refuses to believe that
the reinstated family is capable of forgiving it. A scaffold raised
between a people and a king prevents them from seeing each other: there
are tombs that never close. Capet's head was so high that the little
executioners were obliged to strike it off to take its crown, even as
the Caribbees used to cut down the palm-tree in order to gather its
fruit. The stem of the Bourbons had propagated itself in the different
trunks which, bending down, took root and rose again as haughty shoots;
that family, after being the pride of the other royal Houses, seems to
have become their fatality.
[Illustration: Louis Philippe.]
[Sidenote: Prospects of the Usurpation.]
But would it be more reasonable to think that the descendants of Philip
would have more chances of reigning than the young heir of Henry IV.?
It is vain to contrive different combinations of political ideas: the
moral verities remain unchangeable. There are inevitable reactions,
instructive, magisterial, avenging. The Monarch who initiated us
into liberty, Louis XVI., was made to expiate in his own person the
despotism of Louis XIV. and the corruption of Louis XV.: and shall it
be said that Louis-Philippe, he or his line, shall not pay the debt of
the depravity, of the Regency? Was that debt not contracted anew by
"Égalité" at the scaffold of Louis XVI., and did Philip his son not
increase the paternal contract when, a faithless guardian, he dethroned
his ward? "Égalité" redeemed nothing by losing his life; the tears
shed with the last breath redeem nobody: they only wet the breast and
do not fall upon the conscience. If the Orleans Branch were able to
reign by the right of the vices and crimes of its ancestors, where,
then, would Providence be? Never would a more terrible temptation have
disquieted the good man. What deludes us is that we measure the designs
of Eternity by the scale of our short life. We pass away so quickly
that God's punishment cannot always fall within the short moment of our
existence: the punishment descends when the time comes; it no longer
finds the original culprit, but it finds his House, which leaves room
for action.
Rising up in the universal order of things, this reign of
Louis-Philippe's, however long it last, will never be anything but an
anomaly, a momentary breach of the permanent laws of justice: those
laws are violated in a restricted and relative sense; they are followed
in an unlimited and general sense. From an enormity that has received
the apparent consent of Heaven, we must draw a loftier conclusion: we
must deduce from it the Christian proof of the abolition of the Royalty
itself. It is this abolition, and not any individual chastisement,
that will become the expiation of the death of Louis XVI.; none will
be admitted to gird on the diadem, after that just man: as witness
Napoleon the Great and Charles X. the Pious. To render the crown
completely hateful, it will have been permitted to the son of the
regicide to stretch himself for a moment, as a false king, in the
blood-stained bed of the martyr.
For the rest, all these arguments, just though they be, will never
shake my loyalty to my young King: were none but myself to remain in
France, I shall always be proud to have been the last subject of him
who was to be the last king.
The Revolution of July has found its King: has it found its
representative? I have, at different times, described the men who,
from 1789 to this day, have appeared upon the scene. Those men were
more or less connected with the old race of mankind: we had a scale of
proportion to measure them by. We have now come to generations that
no longer belong to the past; studied under the microscope, they do
not seem capable of life, and yet they combine with elements in which
they move; they are able to breathe an air which we cannot breathe.
The future will perhaps discover formulas to calculate the laws of
existence of those beings; but the present has no means of appreciating
them.
Without, therefore, being able to explain the changed species, we
notice, here and there, a few individuals whom we are able to grasp,
because of their peculiar failings or distinctive qualities which make
them stand out from among the crowd. M. Thiers, for instance, is the
only man that the Revolution of July has produced. He has founded the
school that admires the Terror, a school to which he himself belongs.
If the men of the Terror, those deniers and denied of God, were such
great men, the authority of their judgment ought to carry weight; but
those men, reviling one another, declare that the party whose throats
they are cutting is a party of rascals. See what Madame Roland says
of Condorcet, what Barbaroux[285], the principal actor of the 10th
of August, thinks of Marat, what Camille Desmoulins writes against
Saint-Just[286] Are we to appreciate Danton according to Robespierre's
opinion, or Robespierre according to Danton's? When the Conventionals
have so poor a notion of one another, how can we, without failing in
the respect which we owe them, entertain an opinion different from
theirs?
With its material mind, Jacobinism does not perceive that the Terror
failed from not being capable of fulfilling the conditions of its
continuance. It was unable to achieve its aim, because it was unable
to cut off enough heads: it would have needed four or five hundred
thousand more; now time was wanting for those long massacres; nothing
remains but unfinished crimes whose fruit cannot be gathered, because
the last sun of the storm did not ripen it sufficiently.
[Sidenote: The French revolutionaries.]
The secret of the inconsistencies of the men of the day lies in the
privation of moral sense, the absence of any fixed principle and the
worship of force: whoever goes to the wall is guilty and without merit,
at least without that merit which assimilates with events. Behind
the liberal phrases of the devotees of the Terror, you must see only
what lies hidden there: the deification of success. Do not adore the
Convention except in the manner in which one adores a tyrant. When
the Convention is upset, go over with your baggage of liberties to
the Directory, then to Bonaparte, and that without having a suspicion
of your metamorphosis, without thinking that you have changed. Sworn
dramatist that you are, while looking upon the Girondins as poor
wretches because they have been "beaten," nevertheless draw a fantastic
picture of their death: they are beautiful young men marching, crowned
with flowers, to the sacrifice. The Girondins, a cowardly faction,
who spoke in favour of Louis XVI. and voted for his execution, did
wonderfully, it is true, on the scaffold; but who did not, in those
days, run full butt at death? The women were distinguished for their
heroism: the young girls of Verdun climbed the steps of the altar
like Iphigenia; the artisans, about whom we are prudently silent,
those plebeians of whom the Convention reaped so large a crop, braved
the steel of the executioner as resolutely as our grenadiers braved
the steel of the enemy. For one priest and one noble, the Convention
offered up thousands of workmen taken from the lowest classes of the
population[287]: this is what we always refuse to remember.
Does M. Thiers set store by his principles? Not in the least: he has
cried up massacre and he would preach humanity in quite as edifying
a manner; he gave himself out as a bigot for liberty, and he has
oppressed Lyons, shot people down in the Rue Transnonain, and upheld
the September Laws against all men: if he ever reads this, he will take
it for a panegyric.
Since he became President of the Council and Minister for Foreign
Affairs[288], M. Thiers is enraptured with the diplomatic intrigues
of the Talleyrand School; he runs the risk of being taken for a
buffoon-in-waiting, for lack of equilibrium, gravity and silence. One
can turn up one's nose at earnestness and greatness of soul: but it
does not do to say so, before one has brought the subjugated world to
take its seat at the orgies of Grand-Vaux[289].
For the rest, M. Thiers combines with inferior manners an instinct for
higher things; while the feudal survivors have become misers and turned
themselves into stewards of their own land, he, M. Thiers, a great lord
by second birth, travels like a new Atticus[290], purchases works of
art on the roads and revives the prodigality of the old aristocracy:
this is a distinction; but, if he sows as easily as he reaps, he ought
to be more cautious of the intimacy of his old habits: consideration is
one of the ingredients that go to make the public man.
[Sidenote: Adolphe Thiers.]
Stirred by his mercurial nature, M. Thiers has pretended that he was
going to kill, in Madrid, the anarchy which I had overthrown there in
1823: a project all the bolder inasmuch as M. Thiers was struggling
with the opinions of Louis-Philippe. He may suppose himself to be a
Bonaparte; he may think that his pen-cutter is but an elongation of the
Napoleonic sword; he may be persuaded that he is a great general, he
may dream of the conquest of Europe, by reason that he has constituted
himself its historian[291] and that he is very inconsiderately bringing
back the ashes of Napoleon[292]. I acquiesce in all these pretensions;
I will only say, as for Spain, that, when M. Thiers thought of invading
her, he was deceived in his calculations; he would have ruined his
King in 1836, and I saved mine in 1823. The essential thing, then,
is to do in the nick of time what one wants to do; there are two
forces, the force of men and the force of things: when these two are
in opposition to one another, nothing is accomplished. At the present
moment, Mirabeau would rouse nobody, even though his corruption would
do him no harm; for, just now, none is cried down because of his vices:
one is slandered only for his virtues. M. Thiers must make up his mind
to one of three courses: to declare himself the representative of the
republican future[293], or perch himself upon the counterfeit Monarchy
of July like a monkey on a camel's back, or revive the imperial order
of things. This last would be to M. Thiers's taste; but the Empire
without an emperor: is that possible? It is more natural to believe
that the author of the _Histoire de la Révolution_ will allow himself
to be absorbed by a vulgar ambition: he will want to remain in power
or return to it; in order to keep or recover his place, he will recant
anything that the moment or his own interest will seem to him to
require[294]; to strip one's self before the public, there is audacity:
but is M. Thiers young enough for his beauty to serve him as a veil?
Putting Deutz[295] and Judas on one side, I recognise in M. Thiers a
supple, prompt, shrewd and malleable mind, perhaps the heir to the
future, capable of comprehending everything, except the greatness that
comes from moral order. Free from jealousy, pettiness and prejudice, he
stands out against the tame and obscure background of the mediocrities
of the time. His excessive pride is not yet odious, because it does not
consist in despising others. M. Thiers possesses resources, variety,
fortunate gifts; he troubles little about differences of opinion,
bears no malice, is not afraid of compromising himself, does justice
to a man, not for his probity or for what he thinks, but for what he
is worth: which would not prevent him from having us all strangled, in
case of need. M. Thiers is not what he is able to be: years will modify
him, unless the elation of self-love should place obstacles in the way.
If his brain stands firm and he is not carried away by some headstrong
act, public life will reveal unheeded superior qualities in him. He
must soon rise or fall; the chances are that M. Thiers will either
become a great minister or remain a marplot.
[Sidenote: Lost opportunities.]
M. Thiers has already been wanting in resolution at a time when he
held the fate of the world in his hands: if he had given the order
to attack the English Fleet, with the superior force that we had in
the Mediterranean, our success was assured; the Turkish and Egyptian
Fleets, lying together in the harbour of Alexandria, would have come to
swell our fleet; a success obtained over England would have electrified
France. We should have at once found 150,000 men to enter Bavaria and
fling themselves upon some point in Italy, where nothing was prepared
in prevision of an attack. The whole world might once more have changed
its aspect. Would our aggression have been a just one? That is another
affair; but we could have asked Europe whether it had acted loyally
towards us in the treaties, or whether, abusing their victory, Russia
and Germany had enlarged their territory beyond measure, while France
had been reduced to her old clipped frontiers. Be this as it may, M.
Thiers did not dare play his last card; looking upon his life, he did
not think himself sufficiently supported, and yet it was because he
was staking nothing that he might have played for all. We have fallen
under the feet of Europe; such an opportunity to recover ourselves will
perhaps not occur for long.
[Illustration: M. Thiers.]
In the last result, M. Thiers, in order to save his system, has reduced
France to a space of fifteen leagues which he has made to bristle with
fortresses; we shall soon see if Europe is right in laughing at this
piece of child's play on the part of the great thinker.
And this is how, allowing my pen to run away with me, I have devoted
more pages to a man of uncertain future than I have given to persons
whose memory is assured. It is a misfortune to live too long; I
have come to a period of sterility in which France sees only lean
generations run: _Lupa carca nella sua magrezza._[296] These Memoirs
diminish in interest with the days that have supervened, diminish by
what they were able to borrow from the greatness of events: they will
end, I fear me, like the daughters of Achelous[297]. The Roman Empire,
so magnificently proclaimed by Livy, contracts and goes out dimly in
the accounts of Cassiodorus. You were more fortunate, O Thucydides
and Plutarch, Sallust and Tacitus, when you told of the parties that
divided Athens and Rome! You were certain, at least, of animating them,
not only with your genius, but also with the splendour of the Greek
and the gravity of the Latin language! What could we relate of our
expiring society, we Welshmen, in our jargon confined to narrow and
barbarous limits? If these later pages reproduced our parliamentary
tautology, those eternal definitions of our rights, our ministerial
prize-fights, would they, fifty years hence, be anything more than
the unintelligible columns of an old newspaper? Of a thousand and one
conjectures, would a single one prove to be true? Who would foresee
the strange leaps and bounds of the inconstancy of the French spirit?
Who could understand how its execrations and infatuations, its curses
and blessings become transformed without apparent reason? Who would
be able to guess and explain how, by turns, it adores and detests,
how it springs from a political system, how, with liberty on its lips
and bondage in its heart, it believes in one truth in the morning
and is persuaded of a contrary truth at night? Throw us a few grains
of dust: like Virgil's bees, we shall cease our conflict to fly away
elsewhither[298].
If, by chance, anything great should still be stirring here below, our
country will remain supine. The womb of a society that is becoming
discomposed is barren; the very crimes which it begets are still-born
crimes, smitten as they are with the barrenness of their origin. The
period upon which we are entering is the tow-path along which fatally
condemned generations will draw the old world towards a world unknown.
In this year 1834, M. de La Fayette has just died[299]. I think I must
have been unjust in speaking of him in former days; I think I must
have represented him as a sort of double-faced, double-famed ninny:
a hero on the other side of the Atlantic, a Giles on this side[300].
It has needed more than forty years to recognise in M. de La Fayette
qualities that had been persistently denied him. He expressed himself
in the Tribune with ease and in the tone of a well-bred man. His life
was unblemished; he was affable, obliging and generous. Under the
Empire, he behaved nobly and lived a life apart; under the Restoration,
he was less dignified: he stooped so far as to allow himself to be
called the "grand old man" of the auction-rooms of Carbonarism and
the ring-leader of petty conspiracies, glad as he was to escape from
justice at Belfort[301], like a vulgar adventurer. In the early stages
of the Revolution, he did not mix with the cut-throats; he fought them
by force of arms and tried to save Louis XVI.; but, though abhorring
the massacres, obliged though he were to fly from them, he found words
of praise for scenes in which some heads were carried at the ends of
pikes.
[Sidenote: La Fayette.]
M. de La Fayette became exalted because he lived: there is a reputation
which bursts forth spontaneously from talent and of which death
increases the splendour by arresting the talent in youth; there is
another sort of reputation which is the offspring of age, the backward
daughter of time: without being great of itself, it is great through
the revolutions in whose midst chance has placed it. The bearer of
that reputation, by the mere fact of his existence, is mixed up with
everything; his name becomes the sign or the banner of everything: M.
de La Fayette[302] will be the "National Guard" to the end of time.
By an extraordinary effect, the result of his actions was often in
contradiction with his thoughts: as a Royalist, he overthrew, in 1789,
a Royalty eight centuries old; as a Republican, he created, in 1830,
the Royalty of the Barricades: he went away giving Philip the crown
which he had taken from Louis XVI. Moulded as he was with events, when
the alluvium of our misfortunes shall have become consolidated, his
image will be found encrusted in the revolutionary dough.
The ovation which he received in the United States enhanced his fame to
a singular degree: a nation, rising to greet him, covered him with the
effulgence of its gratitude. Everett[303] apostrophized him as follows
in the peroration to the speech which he delivered in 1824:
"Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores!... Enjoy a triumph such
as never conqueror or monarch enjoyed.... The friend of your youth,
the more than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the soil he
redeemed. On the banks of his Potomac he lies in glory and peace. You
will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you
venerated as we did, you will not meet at its door.... But the grateful
children of America will bid you welcome, in his name. Welcome, thrice
welcome to our shores; and whithersoever throughout the limits of the
continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall
bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every
tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy:
"'Welcome, welcome, La Fayette[304]!'"
In the New World, M. de La Fayette contributed to the formation of a
new society; in the Old World, to the destruction of an old society:
liberty invokes him in Washington, anarchy in Paris.
M. de La Fayette had only one idea, and, unfortunately for him, it was
that of his century; the fixity of that idea constituted his empire: it
served him as a blinker, prevented him from looking to right or left
of him; he walked with a firm step along a single line; he marched on
without falling into precipices, not because he saw them, but because
he did not see them; blindness stood him in the stead of genius: all
that is fixed is fatal, and that which is fatal is powerful.
[Sidenote: La Fayette's funeral.]
I still see M. de La Fayette, at the head of the National Guard,
passing along the boulevards, in 1790, on his way to the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine; on the 22nd of May 1834, I saw him lying in his coffin,
following the same boulevards. In the funeral procession one remarked
a troop of Americans, each with a yellow flower in his button-hole. M.
de La Fayette had sent to the United States for a quantity of earth
sufficient to cover him in his grave; but his intentions were not
carried out[305]: when the fatal moment came, forgetting both his
political dreams and the romance of his life, he expressed the wish to
lie at Picpus beside his virtuous wife[306]: death restores order to
all things.
At Picpus are buried the victims of the Revolution[307] commenced by
M. de La Fayette; there stands a chapel where perpetual prayers are
said in honour of those victims. I accompanied M. le Duc Matthieu de
Montmorency to Picpus[308]; he had been M. de La Fayette's colleague in
the Constituent Assembly: on touching the bottom of the grave, the rope
turned that Christian's coffin on one side, as though he had raised
himself on his hip to say a last prayer.
I stood in the crowd, at the entrance to the Rue Grange-Batelière, when
M. de La Fayette's funeral passed by: at the top of the ascent to the
boulevard, the hearse stopped; I saw it, all gilded by a fleeting ray
of the sun, gleam above the helmets and arms: then the shadow returned,
and it disappeared from sight.
The multitude dispersed; sellers of "goodies" cried their
_oublies_[309], vendors of trifles hawked about paper mills, which
twirled round in the same wind whose breath had shaken the plumes of
the funeral car.
In the sitting of the Chamber of Deputies of the 20th of May 1834, the
President[310] spoke:
"General La Fayette's name," he said, "will remain famous in our
history.... While expressing to you the sentiments of condolence of
the Chamber, I join to these, sir and dear colleague[311], the private
assurance of my attachment."
After these words, the reporter of the sitting adds, in brackets, the
word, "(Laughter)."
That is what one of the most serious lives is reduced to. What remains
of the death of the greatest men? A grey mantle and a straw cross, as
on the corpse of the Duc de Guise, assassinated at Blois.
Within earshot of the public crier who was selling for a son, at the
gate of the Tuileries Palace, the news of the death of Napoleon, I
heard two quacks shouting the praises of their antidotes; and, in the
_Moniteur_ of the 21st of January 1793, I read the following words
below the account of the execution of Louis XVI.:
"Two hours after the execution, nothing remained to show that he
who had once been the head of the nation had just undergone the
punishment of criminals."
Following on those words came this notice:
"_Ambroise_, comic opera[312]."
The last actor in the drama played fifty years ago, M. de La Fayette
remained upon the scene; the last chorus of the Greek tragedy delivers
the moral of the play:
"Learn, O blind mortals, to turn your eyes upon the last day of life."
And I, a spectator seated in an empty play-house, amid deserted boxes
and extinguished lights, remain alone, of my time, before the lowered
curtain, alone with the silence and the night.
[Sidenote: Armand Carrel.]
Armand Carrel threatened Philip's future even as General La Fayette
beset his past You know how I came to be acquainted with M.
Carrel[313]; since 1832, I did not cease to keep up relations with him
until the day when I followed him to the Cemetery of Saint-Mandé.
Armand Carrel was melancholy; he began to fear that the French were
incapable of a rational feeling of liberty; he had a vague presentiment
of the shortness of his life: as though it were a thing upon which he
did not rely and to which he attached no value, he was always willing
to risk it on a cast of the die. If he had fallen in his duel with
young Laborie[314], about Henry V., his death would at least have had
a great cause and a great stage; probably his funeral would have been
honoured by a great display of bloodshed: he left us for a miserable
quarrel which was not worth a hair of his head.
He was suffering from one of his native attacks of gloom, when he
inserted an article on myself, in the _National_, to which I replied by
the following note:
"PARIS, 5 _May_ 1834.
"Your article, monsieur, is full of that exquisite feeling for
situations and proprieties which places you above all the political
writers of the day. I say nothing to you of your exceptional
talent; you know that I did it ample justice before I had the
honour of knowing you. I do not thank you for your praises: I like
to owe them to what I look upon now as an old friendship. You are
rising very high, monsieur; you are beginning to stand alone, like
all men made for a great fame: gradually the crowd, unable to
follow them, leaves them, and we see them the better because they
hold themselves aloof.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
I tried to console him by another letter, on the 31st of August, when
he was condemned for a newspaper offense. I received the following
reply from him; it shows forth the opinions of the man, his regrets and
his hopes:
TO MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
"MONSIEUR,
"Your letter of the 31st of August was handed to me only on my
arrival in Paris. I would come to thank you for it, at once, if
I were not obliged to devote the short time which can still be
left to me by the police, who are informed of my return, to a
few preparations for entering prison. Yes, monsieur, here am I
condemned by the bench to six months' imprisonment for a fanciful
offense and by virtue of an equally fanciful piece of legislation;
for the jury wittingly let me go unpunished upon the best-founded
charge, and that in spite of a defense which, so far from
extenuating my crime of telling the truth to the person of King
Louis-Philippe, had aggravated that crime by setting it up as an
established right for the whole of the opposition press. I am glad
that the difficulties of so bold a thesis, as times go, appeared to
you to be almost surmounted by the defense which you read and in
which it was so great an advantage to me to be able to invoke the
authority of the book in which, eighteen years ago, you instructed
your own party in the principles of constitutional responsibility.
"I often ask myself with a heavy heart what purpose will have
been served by writings such as yours, monsieur, such as those
of the most eminent men of the opinion to which I myself belong,
if, from this agreement between the highest intellects of the
country for the constant defense of the rights of discussion, there
did not at last result, for the bulk of French minds, a resolve
thenceforth to insist upon, under every form of government, to
exact from all victorious systems, whatever they may be, liberty
of thought, speech and writing, as the first condition of all
lawfully exercised authority. Is it not true, monsieur, that when,
under the last government, you asked for the most complete liberty
of discussion, it was not for the momentary service which your
political friends might derive from it in opposition to adversaries
who had forced their way into power by intrigue? There were some
who made use of the press in this way, as they have since proved;
but you, monsieur, asked for liberty of discussion as essential
to the public welfare, as the weapon and general protection of
all ideas, young or old; that is what earned for you, monsieur,
the gratitude and respect of opinions to which the Revolution of
July has opened the lists again. That is why our work is incident
on yours, and, when we quote your writings, we do so less from
admiration of the incomparable talent which produced them than
as aspiring to continue the same task at a great distance, young
soldiers as we are of a cause of which you are the most glorious
veteran.
"What you have wished for thirty years, monsieur, what I would
wish, if I be permitted to mention myself after you, is to secure
to the interests that divide our beautiful France a law of combat
that shall be more humane, more civilized, more brotherly, more
conclusive than civil war. When shall we succeed in bringing
ideas face to face, instead of parties, and lawful and avowable
interests, instead of disguises, egoism and cupidity? When shall
we see speech and persuasion cause those inevitable transactions
which the contest of parties and the shedding of blood also bring
to pass by exhaustion, but too late for the dead in both camps
and, too often, without profit for the wounded and survivors? As
you so sorrowfully say, monsieur, it seems that many lessons have
been wasted and that men no longer know in France what it costs to
take refuge in a despotism that promises silence and repose. We
must none the less continue to speak, write and print; resources
most unforeseen sometimes issue from constancy. And so, of all the
splendid examples which you, monsieur, have set, that which I have
most constantly before my eyes is expressed in one word: Persevere.
"Accept, monsieur, the sentiments of unalterable affection with
which I am glad to call myself
"Your most devoted servant,
"A. CARREL.
"PUTEAUX, near NEUILLY, 4 _October_ 1834."
[Sidenote: Armand Carrel in prison.]
M. Carrel was locked up at Sainte-Pélagie; I used to go to see him two
or three times a week: I found him standing behind his window-grating.
He reminded me of his neighbour, a young African lion in the Jardin
des Plantes: motionless at the bars of its cage, the son of the desert
turned its vague and sad look upon the objects outside; one could
see that he would not live. Then M. Carrel and I used to go down the
stairs; the servant of Henry V. walked with the enemy of the Kings in a
damp, dark, narrow yard, surrounded by high walls, like a well. There
were other Republicans also taking exercise in this yard: those young
and ardent Revolutionaries, with their mustachios, beards, long hairs,
Greek or German caps, pale faces, fierce looks, threatening aspect,
were like those pre-existent souls in Tartarus that had not yet reached
the light; they were preparing to break into life. Their dress acted
upon them as the uniform upon the soldier, as Nessus' blood-stained
shirt upon Hercules: they were an avenging world, which lay hidden
behind the society of the present and which made one shudder.
In the evening, they met in the room of their leader, Armand Carrel;
they spoke of what would have to be accomplished when they came into
power and of the necessity for bloodshed. Discussions arose on the
"great citizens of the Terror:" some, who were partisans of Marat, were
atheists and materialists; others, who admired Robespierre, adored that
new Christ. Had not St. Robespierre said, in his speech on the Supreme
Being, that belief in God "gives strength to defy misfortune" and that
"innocence on the scaffold made the tyrant turn pale in his triumphal
car?" The hocus-pocus of an executioner who talks meltingly of God,
misfortune, tyranny, scaffolds, in order to persuade men that he kills
only the guilty, and even then in consequence of virtue; the foresight
of evil-doers who, feeling the punishment draw nigh, pose in advance as
Socrates before the judge and try to frighten the blade by threatening
it with their innocence!
The stay at Sainte-Pélagie did M. Carrel harm: shut up with hot-heads,
he fought against their ideas, blamed them, defied them, nobly refusing
to illuminate his room on the 21st of January; but, at the same time,
he chafed at his sufferings, and his reason was disturbed by the
murderous sophistry that resounded in his ears.
The mothers, sisters and wives of those young men came to look after
them in the mornings and to do their rooms. One day, as I was passing
along the dark corridor which led to M. Carrel's room, I heard a
bewitching voice issue from a neighbouring den: a beautiful woman,
hatless, with her hair hanging loose, was sitting on the edge of a
pallet-bed, mending the tattered clothes of a kneeling prisoner, who
seemed less the captive of Philip than of the woman at whose feet he
was chained.
M. Carrel, delivered from his captivity, came, in his turn, to see me.
A few days before his fatal hour had struck, he came to bring me the
number of the _National_ in which he had taken the trouble to insert an
article on my _Essais sur la littérature anglaise_, in which article he
had, with too much praise, quoted the concluding pages of those Essays.
After his death, they gave me that article written entirely in his own
hand, and I keep it as a token of his friendship. "After his death:"
what words I have just written without noticing it!
[Sidenote: Armand Carrel's duel.]
Though forming a necessary supplement to laws which take no cognizance
of offenses against honour, the duel is a horrible thing, especially
when it destroys a life full of hopes and robs society of one of
those rare men who came only after the labour of a century, in the
concatenation of certain ideas and certain events. Carrel fell in the
wood that saw the Duc d'Enghien fall: the shade of the grandson of the
Great Condé served as a witness to the illustrious plebeian and took
him with it. That fatal wood has twice made me weep: at least I cannot
reproach myself for having, in those two catastrophes, failed in what I
owed to my sympathies and my grief.
M. Carrel, who, in his other meetings, had never dreamt of death,
thought of it before this one: he employed the night in writing his
last wishes, as though he had been warned of the result of the combat.
At eight o'clock in the morning, on the 22nd of July 1836, he went with
a quick, light step to those shadows where the roebuck gambols at that
hour.
Placed at the distance measured out, he moved swiftly forwards,
fired without turning sideways, as was his custom: it would seem as
though there were never enough danger for him. Wounded to the death
and supported in the arms of his friends, as he passed before his
adversary[315], who was himself wounded, he said to him:
"Are you in great pain, sir?"
Armand Carrel was as gentle as he was fearless.
On the 22nd, I heard of the accident too late; on the morning of the
23rd, I went to Saint-Mandé: M. Carrel's friends were most exceedingly
anxious. I wanted to go in, but the surgeon observed that my presence
might over-excite the patient and dissipate the faint glimmer of hope
that still remained. I went away in consternation. The next day, the
24th, when I was making ready to return to Saint-Mandé, Hyacinthe, whom
I had sent ahead of me, came to tell me that the unfortunate young man
had expired at half-past five, after suffering atrocious pain: life in
all its force had waged a desperate fight with death.
The funeral took place on Tuesday the 26th. M. Carrel's father and
brother had arrived from Rouen. I found them gathered in a little room
with three or four of the most intimate companions of the man whose
loss we were mourning. They embraced me and M. Carrel's father said to
me:
"Armand would have been a Christian like his father, his mother, his
brothers, his sisters; the hand of the clock had but a few hours to
travel over in order to reach the same point on its face."
I shall eternally regret that I was not able to see Carrel on his
death-bed: I should not have despaired, at the last moment, of making
the hand "travel over" the space beyond which it would have stopped at
the hour of the Christian.
Armand Carrel was not so irreligious as has been supposed; he had
doubts: when from fixed incredulity a man passes to indecision, he is
very near to arriving at certainty. A few days before his death, he
said:
"I would give the whole of this life to believe in the other."
When reporting the suicide of M. Sautelet[316], he wrote this powerful
passage:
"I have been able to carry my life, in thought, to that instant,
swift as lightning, in which the sight of objects, the power of
movement, speech and perception will escape me and the last forces
of my mind will gather to form the one idea, 'I am dying;' but of
the minute, the second that will immediately follow I have always
had an undefinable dread; my imagination has always refused to
guess at any part of it. The depths of hell are a thousand times
less terrible to measure than that universal uncertainty:
. . . . To die; to sleep;
To sleep! Perchance to dream[317]!
"I have seen in all men, whatever their strength of character
or belief, that same inability to go beyond their last earthly
impression. There we lose our heads, as though, on reaching that
boundary, we found ourselves suspended over a precipice of ten
thousand feet. We drive away that terrifying sight to go to fight
a duel, deliver an assault on a redoubt or face a stormy sea; we
even seem to sneer at life; we display a bold, contented, serene
countenance; but that is because our imagination reveals success
rather than death, because our minds are much less exercised upon
the dangers than upon the means of escaping them[318]."
[Sidenote: Armand Carrel's funeral.]
These words are remarkable in the mouth of a man fated to be killed in
a duel.
In 1800, when I returned to France, I did not know that a friend was
being born to me on the shore where I was landing[319]. In 1836, I
saw that friend lowered into the grave without those consolations of
religion of which I brought back the memory to my country in the first
year of the century.
I followed the coffin from the residence of the deceased to the place
of burial; I walked beside M. Carrel's father and gave my arm to M.
Arago: M. Arago has measured the Heaven which I have sung. On reaching
the gate of the little rural cemetery, the procession stopped; speeches
were delivered. The absence of the cross informed me that the emblem of
my affliction was to remain enclosed in the depths of my soul.
Six years before, during the Days of July, passing in front of the
colonnade of the Louvre, near an open grave, I met young men who
carried me back to the Luxembourg, when I was going to make my protest
in favour of a Royalty which they had just overthrown[320]; after six
years, I was returning, on the anniversaries of the July festivals,
to associate myself with the regrets of those young Republicans, even
as they had associated themselves with my fidelity. How strange is
destiny! Armand Carrel breathed his last in the house of an officer of
the Royal Guard[321] who did not take the oath to Philip; I, a Royalist
and a Christian, have had the honour of bearing a corner of the pall
which covered noble ashes, but which will not hide them.
Many kings, princes, ministers, men who thought themselves powerful,
have gone off before me: I have not condescended to raise my hat to
their coffin or devote a word to their memory. I have found more to
study and depict in the intermediary ranks of society than in those
which make men wear their livery; a gold-laced cloak is not worth the
morsel of flannel which the bullet drove into Carrel's body.
Carrel, who remembers you? The mediocrities and poltroons whom your
death delivered from your superiority and their fears and I, who was
not of your views. Who thinks of you? Who remembers you? I congratulate
you on having, at one step, finished a journey whose prolonged passage
becomes so disgusting and so lonely, on having brought the end of your
march within the range of a pistol, a distance which to you appeared
still too great and which you hastened to reduce to a sword's length.
I envy those who have departed before me: like Cæsar's soldiers at
Brundusium, from the top of the rocks on shore I cast my eyes upon the
main sea and gaze towards Epirus to look if I can see the ships which
have taken over the first legions come back to carry me across in my
turn.
After reading the above lines again, in 1839, I will add that, having,
in 1837, visited M. Carrel's grave, I found it much neglected, but
I saw a black wooden cross which the dead man's sister Nathalie had
planted near him. I paid Vaudran, the grave-digger, eighteen francs
that remained owing for trellis-work; I instructed him to tend the
grave, to sow grass on it and keep it adorned with flowers. At each
new season, I go to Saint-Mandé to discharge what is due and to make
sure that my intentions have been faithfully fulfilled[322].
As I am preparing to end my recollections and taking a last look round,
I perceive women whom I have involuntarily forgotten; like angels
grouped at the bottom of my picture, they stand leaning against the
frame to watch the end of my life.
In former days, I met women who were known or celebrated in different
ways. Women have changed their manner of being to-day: are they worth
more, are they worth less? It is only natural that I should incline
towards the past; but the past is surrounded by a mist through which
objects assume an agreeable and often deceptive complexion. My youth,
to which I can never go back again, produces the effect upon me of a
grandmother; I hardly remember it and I should be charmed to see it
once more.
[Sidenote: A Lady from Louisiana.]
A Louisianan lady came to see me from the Mississippi: I thought that
I was setting eyes upon the virgin of the last loves. Célestine wrote
me several letters: they might have been dated from the "Moon of the
Flowers;" she showed me fragments of Memoirs which she had composed in
the savannahs of Alabama. Some time after, Célestine wrote to me that
she was busy with a dress for her presentation at the Court of Philip:
I resumed my bear's skin. Célestine has changed into an alligator from
the water of the Floridas: may Heaven grant her peace and love, for as
long as those things last!
There are persons who, by thrusting themselves between you and the
past, prevent your memories from coming to your recollection; there
are others who become mingled from the first with what you have been.
Madame Tastu[323] produces this latter effect. She has a natural turn
of expression; she has left the Gallic jargon to those who believe that
they make themselves younger by disguising themselves in the cloaks of
our ancestors. Favorinus[324] said to a Roman who affected to talk the
language of the Twelve Tables[325]:
"You want to speak with the mother[326] of Evander."
Since I have touched upon antiquity, I will say a few words on the
women of its peoples and descend the ladder down to our own time. The
Greek women sometimes celebrated philosophy; more often they followed
another divinity: Sappho[327] has remained the immortal sibyl of
Cnidus; we know very little now of what Corinna[328] did after she had
conquered Pindar[329]. Aspasia taught Socrates to know Venus:
"Socrates, observe my lessons. Fill thyself with poetic enthusiasm:
by its potent charm thou shalt know how to win the object that thou
lovest; thou shalt enchain her to the sound of the lyre, by carrying
the finished image of thy passion through her ear to her heart."
The breath of the Muses, passing over the women of Rome without
inspiring them, came to quicken the nation of Clovis, still in its
cradle. The _langue d'Oyl_ had Marie de France[330]; the _langue d'Oc_
the Dame de Die[331], who, in her castle of Vaucluse, complained of a
cruel friend:
"I would know, my gentle and fair friend, why you treat me so fiercely
and so harshly:"
Per que vos m'etz tan fers, ni tan salvatges.
The middle-ages handed those ballads on to the Renascence. Loyse
Labé[332] said:
Oh! si j'étois en ce beau sein ravie
De celui-là pour lequel vais mourant[333]!
[Sidenote: Mediæval poetesses.]
Clémence de Bourges[334], surnamed the Oriental Pearl, who was buried
with her face uncovered and her head crowned with flowers because of
her beauty; the two Margarets[335] and Mary Stuart[336], all three
Queens, expressed ingenuous frailties in ingenuous language.
I had an aunt at about that period of our Parnassus: Madame Claude de
Chateaubriand; but I am more embarrassed with Madame Claude than with
Mademoiselle de Boistelleul. Madame Claude, disguising herself under
the name of the Lover, addresses her seventy sonnets to her mistress.
Reader, forgive my Aunt Claude's two-and-twenty years: _parcendum
teneris._ If my Aunt de Boistelleul was more discreet, she reckoned
fifteen lustres and a half when she was singing, and the traitor
Trémigon no longer appeared before her old Warbler's thought save as a
Sparrow-hawk[337].
When the language was settled, liberty of sentiment and thought
contracted. One remembers hardly any one, under Louis XIV., expect
Madame Deshoulières[338], by turns too much extolled and too much
depreciated. Elegy extended, through woman's sorrow, under the reign
of Louis XV. to the reign of Louis XVI., when the great elegies
of the people commence; the old school came to die with Madame de
Bourdic[339], who is but little known to-day, although she left a
remarkable Ode on Silence.
The new school has thrown its thoughts into another mould: Madame
Tastu walks in the midst of the modern choir of poetesses in prose
or verse, the Allarts[340], the Waldors[341], the Valmores[342], the
Ségalas[343], the Révoils[344], the Mercœurs[345], and so on, and
so on: _Castalidum turba._ Must we regret that, following the example
of the Aonides, she has not celebrated the passion which, according to
antiquity, smooths the brow of Cocytus and makes it smile at Orpheus'
sighing? At Madame Tastu's concerts, love recites only hymns borrowed
from foreign voices. This reminds me of what is related of Madame
Malibran[346]: when she wanted to tell of a bird whose name she had
forgotten, she used to imitate its song.
[Sidenote: Gorge Sand.]
George Sand[347], otherwise Madame Dudevant, having spoken of _René_
in the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_[348], I thanked her; she did not reply.
Some time after, she sent me _Lélia_: I did not reply. Soon a short
explanation took place between us:
"I venture to hope that you will forgive me for not having answered
the flattering letter which you were good enough to send me when
I spoke of _René_ in writing on _Obermann._ I did not know how to
thank you for all the kind expressions which you have used towards
my books.
"I have sent you _Lélia_, and I anxiously desire that it may
obtain the same protection from you. The fairest privilege of
an universally accepted glory like your own is to welcome and
encourage at their start those inexperienced writers for whom there
can be no lasting success without your patronage.
"Accept the assurance of my high admiration and believe me,
monsieur,
"One of your most faithful believers,
"GEORGE SAND."
At the end of October[349], Madame Sand gave me her new novel,
_Jacques_: I accepted the present.
"30 _October_ 1834.
"I hasten, madame, to offer you my sincere thanks. I am going to
read _Jacques_ in Fontainebleau Forest or at the sea-side. Were
I younger, I should be less brave; but my years will defend me
against solitude, without taking anything from the passionate
admiration which I profess for your talent and which I hide from
nobody. You have attached a new enchantment, madame, to that city
of dreams whence I set out, in former days, for Greece with a
whole world of illusions: returning to his starting-point, René
lately aired his memories and his regrets on the Lido, between
Childe-Harold, who had vanished, and Lelia about to appear.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
Madame Sand possesses a talent of the first order; her descriptions
have the truth of those of Rousseau in his _Rêveries_[350] and of
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in his _Études._[351] Her frank style is
tainted with none of the faults of the day. _Lélia_, though painful
to read and offering none of the delicious scenes of _Indiana_ and
_Valentine_, is nevertheless a master-piece of its kind: of the nature
of an orgy, it is without passion, but perturbing like passion; it
lacks soul, and yet it weighs upon the heart; the depravity of its
maxims, its insults thrown at rectitude of life could go no further
than they do; but over that abyss the author sends down her talent In
the Valley of Gomorrah, the dew falls at night upon the Dead Sea.
The works of Madame Sand, her novels, the poetry of matter, are born
of the time. In spite of her superiority, it is to be feared that the
author has, by the very nature of her works, narrowed the circle of her
readers. George Sand will never belong to every age. Of two men of
equal genius, of whom one preaches order, the other disorder, the first
will attract the greater number of admirers: the human race refuses
to accord unanimous applause to that which offends, morality, the
pillow on which the weak and the just sleep; we can hardly associate
with all the memories of our life books which caused our first blush,
books whose pages we did not learn by heart on leaving the cradle,
books which we have read only by stealth, which have not been our
acknowledged and cherished companions, which are connected with neither
the purity of our sentiments nor the integrity of our innocence.
Providence has confined successes that do not take their origin in good
within strait limits and has given universal glory as an encouragement
to virtue.
[Sidenote: Her particular talent.]
I am arguing here, I know, like a man whose restricted sight does not
embrace the immense "humanitarian" horizon, like a reactionary attached
to a ridiculous moral system, a decrepit moral system of olden time,
good at most for unenlightened minds, in the infancy of society. A
new Gospel is about to take birth forthwith, placed far above the
commonplaces of that conventional wisdom which arrests the progress
of mankind and the rehabilitation of that poor body of ours, so sadly
slandered by the soul. When the women will be running about the
streets, when it will be sufficient, in order to get married, to open a
window and summon God to the wedding as witness, priest and guest: then
all prudery will be destroyed; there will be nuptials everywhere and
we shall rise, like the doves, to nature's level. My criticism of the
taste of Madame Sand's works would, therefore, possess a certain value
only in the vulgar order of past things; wherefore I hope that she will
not be offended by it: the admiration which I profess for her must make
her excuse remarks which owe their origin to the infelicity of my age.
In former days, I should have been more carried away by the Muses;
those daughters of the olden sky were my fair mistresses: they keep me
company in the evening in the chimney-corner, but they soon leave me,
for I go to bed early, and they go to sit up by Madame Sand's fire-side.
No doubt Madame Sand will in this way prove her intellectual
omnipotence, and yet she will please less, because she will be less
original: she will believe herself to be increasing her power by
sounding the depths of those reveries under which she buries us vulgar
men, and she will be mistaken; for she stands far above that pit, that
watery hollow, that proud balderdash. While we have to put a rare, but
too flexible faculty on its guard against the follies of superiority,
we must also warn it that fantastic writings, intimate descriptions, to
employ the jargon of the day, are limited, that their source lies in
youth, that each moment of time dries up a few drops of it and that,
after a certain number of productions, we end with feeble repetitions.
Is it quite sure that Madame Sand will always find the same charm in
what she is writing to-day? Will not the merit and allurement of the
passions of twenty years depreciate in her mind, even as the works
of my early days have lost their value in mine? It is only the works
of the Ancient Muse that do not change, supported as they are by the
nobility of manners, the beauty of language and the majesty of those
sentiments bestowed upon the whole human race. The fourth book of the
_Æneid_ remains for ever exposed to the admiration of men, because
it is hung up in the sky. The fleet carrying the founder of the Roman
Empire; Dido, the foundress of Carthage, stabbing herself after
foretelling the coming of Hannibal:
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor[352];
Love causing the rivalry of Rome and Carthage to blaze forth from its
torch, setting fire to the funeral pile whose flame the flying Æneas
sees on the waves: these are very different from the walk of a dreamer
in a wood or the disappearance of a libertine who drowns himself in a
pond. Madame Sand will, I hope, link her talent with subjects worthy of
her genius.
Madame Sand can be converted only by the preaching of that missionary
with the bald forehead and the white beard whose name is Time. At
present, a less austere voice enchains the poet's captive ear. Now
I am convinced that Madame Sand's talent is in some way rooted in
corruption; she would become commonplace if she became timorous. The
case would be different if she had always remained within the sanctuary
unfrequented by men; her power of love, restrained and hidden under the
virginal fillet, would have drawn from her bosom those decent melodies
which suggest the woman and the angel. Be this as it may, boldness
of doctrine and voluptuousness of manners are a field which had not
yet been cleared by a daughter of Adam and which, delivered to female
cultivation, has produced a harvest of unknown flowers. Let us leave
Madame Sand to bring forth perilous marvels till the winter; she will
sing no more "when the cold winds blow:" meantime let us permit her,
less improvident than the grasshopper, to make a provision of glory for
the time when there shall be a dearth of pleasure. Musarion's mother
used to say to her:
"Thou wilt not always be sixteen.... Will Chæreas always remember
his oaths, his tears and his kisses[353]?"
For the rest, many women have been seduced and as it were carried
off by their young years: when the autumn days come, brought back to
the maternal hearth, they have added to their cithern the grave or
plaintive string on which religion or misfortune is expressed. Old age
is a nocturnal traveller: the earth is hidden to her and she no longer
discerns aught save the sky shining over her head.
[Sidenote: Her eccentricities.]
I have not seen Madame Sand dressed as a man or wearing the smock-frock
and the ferruled stick of the mountaineer; I have not seen her drink
of the bacchantes' cup or smoke, seated indolently on a sofa, like a
sultana: these are natural or affected singularities that would add
nothing, in my eyes, to her charm or her genius.
Is she more inspired when she sends a cloud from her mouth to mount
up around her hair? Did Lélia escape from her mother's brain through
a burning puff of smoke, even as Sin, according to Milton, issued
from the head of the beautiful, guilty archangel amid a whirl of
flame[354]? I do not know what happens in the Heavens; but, here below,
Néméade[355], Phila[356], Lais[357], the witty Gnathæna[358],
Phryne[359], the despair of Apelles'[360] pencil and Praxiteles'[361]
chisel, Lesena[362], who was loved by Harmodius[363], the two sisters
surnamed Aphyes, because they were slender and had large eyes, Dorica,
whose head-band and perfumed robe were dedicated in the temple of
Venus: all these enchantresses, in fine, knew none but the perfumes of
Araby. Madame Sand, it is true, has on her side the authority of the
Odalisks and the young Mexican girls who dance with a cigar between
their lips.
After a few superior women and so many charming women whom I have met,
after those daughters of the earth who said, like Madame Sand, with
Sappho, "Come, in our delicious banquets, O mother of Eros, to fill
our goblets with the nectar of the roses," what effect did the sight
of Madame Sand have on me? Placing myself alternately in the domain of
fiction and truth, I find the author of _Valentine_ making two very
different impressions upon me. In the domain of fiction: I will not
speak of that, for I must have ceased to understand its language. In
that of reality: as a man of a serious age, entertaining notions of
seemliness, attaching, as a Christian, the highest price to the timid
virtues of woman, I could not say how unhappy I was made at the sight
of so many fine qualities abandoned to those prodigal and fickle hours
which consume and fly.
PARIS, 1838.
In the spring of this year 1838, I busied myself with the _Congrès
de Vérone_[364], which I was obliged to publish by the terms of my
literary engagements: I have told you of it in its proper place in
these Memoirs.
A man has gone[365]: that guard of the aristocracy escorts to the rear
the mighty plebeians who have already departed. When M. de Talleyrand
first appeared in my political career, I said a few words about
him[366]. Now his whole existence has become known to me through his
last hour, to use the fine expression of one of the ancients.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand.]
I have had relations with M. de Talleyrand: as a man of honour, I have
been faithful to him, as the reader will have observed, especially
in the matter of the disagreement at Mons, when I most gratuitously
ruined myself for him[367]. I was too simple; I shared in anything
that happened to him of a disagreeable character; I pitied him when
Maubreuil slapped his face[368]. There was a time when he ran after
me in a coquettish manner; he wrote to me at Ghent, as you have read,
that I was a "strong man[369];" when I was staying in the Rue des
Capucines, he sent me, with perfect gallantry, a seal of the Foreign
Office, a talisman doubtless engraved under his constellation. It is,
perhaps, because I did not abuse his generosity that he became my enemy
without any provocation on my part, if it was not because of a few
successes which I obtained and which were not his handiwork. His tattle
ran through society and did not offend, for M. de Talleyrand could not
offend any one; but his intemperance of language has released me and,
since he permitted himself to judge me, he left me free to make use of
the same right in respect to him.
M. de Talleyrand's vanity duped him: he mistook the part which he
played for his genius; he thought himself a prophet, while deceiving
himself in all things; his authority had no value in matters concerning
the future; he was quite unable to see ahead: he saw only behind him.
Deprived of the strength of the outlook and light of conscience, he
discovered nothing like superior intelligence, he appreciated nothing
like uprightness. He made much of the accidents of fortune, when those
accidents, which he never foresaw, had taken place, but only for
himself personally. He knew nothing of that large ambition in which the
interests of public glory are wrapped as the most profitable treasure
for private interests. M. de Talleyrand, therefore, does not belong
to the class of beings calculated to become one of those fantastic
creatures to whom men's opinions, whether forced or deceived, are
constantly adding fanciful attributes. Nevertheless it is certain that
several sentiments, agreeing with one another for different reasons,
concur to form an imaginary Talleyrand.
In the first place, the kings, the Cabinets, the former Foreign
Ministers, the ambassadors who were once that man's dupes and who were
always incapable of fathoming him are anxious to prove that they bowed
only before a real superiority: they would have taken off their hats
to Bonaparte's scullion. Then again, the members of the old French
aristocracy who are connected with M. de Talleyrand are proud to
number in their ranks a man who had the kindness to assure them of his
greatness. Lastly, the Revolutionaries and the immoral generations,
while railing against names, have a sneaking fondness for the
aristocracy: those singular neophytes eagerly aspire to its baptism and
think that they will learn fine manners from it. The prince's double
apostasy at the same time charms another side of the young Democrats'
self-love: for they conclude from it that their cause is the right one
and that a noble and a priest are very contemptible persons.
Be it as it may with these obstacles to a true insight, M. de
Talleyrand is not of the height to create a lasting illusion; he has
not in him a great enough power of growth to turn lies into an increase
of stature. He has been seen too near; he will not live, because his
life is not connected with a national idea that survives him, nor with
a celebrated action, nor with a peerless talent, nor with a useful
discovery, nor with an epoch-making conception. Existence through
virtue is forbidden him; dangers did not so much as deign to honour his
days: he spent the Reign of Terror away from his country and returned
only when the forum had become transformed into an antechamber.
Diplomatic monuments go to prove Talleyrand's relative mediocrity:
you cannot quote a fact held in any esteem that belongs to him. Under
Bonaparte, no important negociation was his; when he was free to
act alone, he allowed occasions to escape him and spoilt what he
touched. It is well averred that he was the cause of the death of
the Duc d'Enghien; that stain of blood cannot be wiped out: so far
from over-drawing the minister when telling the story of the Prince's
murder, I spared him a great deal too much.
In his affirmations contrary to the truth, M. de Talleyrand displayed
terrible effrontery. I have not spoken, in the _Congrès de Vérone_, of
the speech which he read to the Chamber of Peers with reference to the
address on the Spanish War; that speech opened with these solemn words:
"It is sixteen years to-day since I was called upon by him who
was then governing the world to give him my opinion as to the
struggle to be engaged upon with the Spanish people, when I had
the misfortune to displease him by unveiling the future to him,
by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise in
a mass from an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was
reckless. My disgrace was the fruit of my sincerity. How strange
is the destiny that brings me back, after this long space of time,
to repeat with the Legitimate Sovereign the same efforts, the same
advice[370]!"
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's lies.]
There are lapses of memory or lies that are terrifying: you open your
ears, you rub your eyes, not knowing whether to believe that you are
waking or sleeping. When the retailer of those imperturbable assertions
descends the tribune and goes impassively to sit down in his seat,
you follow him with your eyes, hung up as you are between a kind of
dismay and a sort of admiration: you are not sure that that man has not
received from nature an authority so great that he has the power of
reconstructing or annihilating truth.
I did not reply; it seemed to me as though the shade of Bonaparte was
about to ask leave to speak and to repeat the terrible contradiction
which he had once given M. de Talleyrand. Witnesses of that scene were
sitting among the peers, among others M. le Comte de Montesquiou[371];
the virtuous Duc de Doudeauville[372] has described it to me: he had
it from the lips of the same M. de Montesquiou, his brother-in-law; M.
le Comte de Cessac[373], who was present at that scene, tells it to
whoever cares to listen to him: he thought that the great elector would
be arrested on leaving the Emperor's closet. Napoleon, in his rage,
apostrophizing his pallid minister, shouted:
"It suits you well to decry the Spanish War, you who advised me to
embark on it, you from whom I have a heap of letters in which you try
to prove to me that that war was as essential as it was politic[374]."
Those letters disappeared at the time of the abduction of the archives
in the Tuileries, in 1814[375].
M. de Talleyrand declared, in his speech, that he had had "the
misfortune to displease "Bonaparte" by unveiling the future to him,
by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise from
an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was reckless." Let
M. de Talleyrand console himself in his grave: he did not have that
misfortune; he must not add that calamity to all the afflictions of his
life.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's diplomatic errors.]
M. de Talleyrand's principal mistake as against the Legitimacy was that
he deterred Louis XVIII. from concluding the proposed marriage between
the Duc de Berry and a Russian Princess[376]; M. de Talleyrand's
unpardonable mistake as against France was that he consented to the
revolting Treaties of Vienna.
The result of M. de Talleyrand's negociations is that we are left
without frontiers: a battle lost at Metz or Coblentz would bring the
enemy's cavalry under the walls of Paris in a week. Under the Old
Monarchy, not only was France enclosed within a circle of fortresses,
but she was defended on the Rhine by the independent States of Germany.
It was necessary to invade the electorates or negociate with them in
order to reach us. On another frontier stood Switzerland, a neutral and
free country; she had no roads; no one would violate her territory.
The Pyrenees were impassable, guarded as they were by the Spanish
Bourbons. That is what M. de Talleyrand failed to understand; those are
the mistakes which will for ever condemn him as a politician: mistakes
which, in one day, deprived us of the work of Louis XIV. and the
victories of Napoleon.
It has been contended that his policy was superior to Napoleon's:
in the first place, we must well bear in mind that a man is purely
and simply a clerk, when he holds the portfolio of a conqueror who
every morning puts into it the bulletin of a victory that changes the
geography of States. When Napoleon had once become inebriated, he made
mistakes so enormous as to strike every eye: M. de Talleyrand probably
perceived them, like everybody else; but that points to no lynx-like
vision. He compromised himself in a strange fashion in the catastrophe
of the Duc d'Enghien; he was mistaken about the Spanish War of 1808,
although he tried, later, to disown his advice and take back his words.
However, an actor creates no illusion, if he is utterly unprovided
with means of fascinating the pit: therefore the prince's life was
a perpetual deception. Knowing what he lacked, he avoided, shunned
whosoever was able to know him: his constant study was not to allow
his measure to be taken; he withdrew into silence at seasonable
times; he concealed himself during the three dumb hours which he
devoted to whist. Men wondered that so great a capacity could descend
to the amusements of the vulgar: who knows if that capacity was not
partitioning empires while sorting the four knaves in his hand?
During those moments of juggling, he inwardly worded some effective
phrase, inspired by a pamphlet of the morning or a conversation of
the evening. If he took you on one side to render you illustrious by
his conversation, his chief manner of seduction was to load you with
praises, to call you the hope of the future, to prophesy brilliant
destinies for you, to give you a bill of exchange as a great man, drawn
upon himself and payable at sight; but, if he thought that your faith
in him was a little open to suspicion, if he perceived that you did not
sufficiently admire a few short sentences with pretensions of depth,
but with nothing behind them, he went away, lest he should allow the
end of his wit to come to the surface. He would have told a good story,
were it not that his jests fell upon an underling or a fool, at whose
cost he amused himself without danger, or upon a victim, attached to
his person, who formed a butt for his jokes. He was unable to keep up a
serious conversation: the third time that he opened his lips, his ideas
evaporated.
Old engravings of the "Abbé de Périgord" represent a very pretty man;
as he grew old, M. de Talleyrand's face had turned into a death's head:
his eyes were dull, so that one had a difficulty in reading them, which
served his purpose. As he had received a great deal of contempt, he had
soaked himself in it and placed it in the two hanging corners of his
mouth.
A great manner, which came from his birth, a strict observance of the
niceties, a cold and disdainful air contributed to keep up the illusion
that surrounded the Prince de Bénévent. His manners exercised an empire
over second-rate people and the men of the new society, to whom the
society of the old days was unknown. Formerly one met persons at every
turn whose ways resembled M. de Talleyrand's, and one took no notice
of them; but, almost alone in the field in the midst of democratic
customs, he appeared a phenomenon: in order to submit to the yoke of
his forms, it suited self-love to ascribe to the minister's wit the
ascendant exercised by his breeding.
When, occupying a considerable place, you find yourself mixed up with
prodigious revolutions, these give you a chance importance which the
common herd take for your personal merit: lost in Bonaparte's rays,
M. de Talleyrand shone, under the Restoration, with the brightness
borrowed from a fortune that was not his. The accidental position of
the Prince de Bénévent permitted him to attribute to himself the power
of overthrowing Napoleon and the honour of restoring Louis XVIII.:
have I myself, like all those gapers, not been foolish enough to fall
into that fable? When I was better informed, I came to know that M. de
Talleyrand was not a political Warwick: his arm lacked the strength
that lays low and raises thrones.
Impartial numskulls say:
"We agree, he was a very immoral man; but what ability!"
Alas, no! That hope must be lost too, so consoling for his enthusiasts,
so desirable in the interests of the prince's memory: the hope of
making M. de Talleyrand a demon. Beyond certain ordinary negociations,
at the bottom of which he had the cleverness to place his personal
interest in the first rank, there was nothing to be expected of M. de
Talleyrand.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's mediocrity.]
M. de Talleyrand kept up a few habits and a few maxims for the use of
the sycophants and worthless fellows of his intimate circle. His toilet
in public, copied after that of a minister in Vienna, was a triumph
of diplomacy. He boasted of never being in a hurry; he boasted that
time is our enemy and that we must kill it: by this he reckoned to be
occupied for only a few moments.
But, as, in the last result, M. de Talleyrand did not succeed in
transforming his idleness into a master-piece, it is probable that he
was mistaken in talking of the necessity of getting rid of time: we
triumph over time only by creating immortal things; with works that
have no future, with frivolous distractions, we do not kill it: we
waste it.
M. de Talleyrand entered into office[377] on the recommendation of
Madame de Staël, who obtained his appointment from Chénier. He was then
very destitute and he began to make his fortune five or six times over
again: by the million which he received from Portugal in the hope of a
signature of peace with the Directory, a peace which was never signed;
by the purchase of Belgian bonds on the Peace of Amiens, of which
he, M. de Talleyrand, knew before it was known to the public; by the
erection of the short-lived Kingdom of Etruria; by the secularization
of the ecclesiastical properties of Germany; by the jobbing of his
opinions at the Congress of Vienna. The prince went so far as to try
to make over some old papers in our archives to Austria; but this time
he was duped by M. de Metternich, who religiously returned him the
originals, after having copies taken of them.
Incapable of writing a single sentence unaided, M. de Talleyrand
made men work competently under him: when, by dint of erasions and
alterations, his secretary had succeeded in drafting his dispatches
to his liking, he copied them out with his own hand. I have heard him
read, from the Memoirs which he commenced, a few pleasing details
about his youth. As he varied in his tastes, detesting to-morrow what
he loved yesterday, if those Memoirs exist in their entirety, which I
doubt, and if he has preserved the opposite versions, it is probable
that his judgments on the same fact and especially on the same man
will contradict each other outrageously. I do not believe in the story
that the manuscripts have been deposited in England; the order which,
they pretend, has been given to publish them not before forty years
hence[378] seems to me a piece of posthumous jugglery.
Slothful and without attainments, with a frivolous nature and a
dissipated heart, the Prince de Bénévent gloried in that which ought
to have humbled his pride, in remaining standing after the fall of
empires. The minds of the first order which produce revolutions
disappear; the minds of the second order which profit by them survive.
Those persons of the morrow and of their wits preside at the march-past
of the generations; it is their business to endorse the passports, to
confirm the sentence: M. de Talleyrand was of that inferior species; he
signed events, he did not make them.
To survive governments, to remain when a power goes, to declare one's
self permanent, to boast of belonging only to the country, of being the
man of things and not the man of individuals: that is the fatuousness
of an uneasy egoism, which strives to hide its want of elevation under
lofty words. Nowadays we count many of those unruffled characters,
many of those citizens of the soil: still, if there is to be any
greatness in growing old like the hermit in the ruins of the Coliseum,
they must be guarded with a cross; M. de Talleyrand had trodden his
underfoot.
Our species is divided into two unequal parts: the men of death, loved
by death, a chosen band which is born again; the men of life, forgotten
by life, a multitude condemned to annihilation which is born no more.
The temporary existence of these latter consists of name, credit,
place, fortune; their fame, their authority, their power fade away with
their person: closed are their drawing-room and their coffin, closed
is their destiny. Thus befell M. de Talleyrand; his mummy, before
descending into its crypt, was shown for a moment in London[379], as
the representative of the corpse-like Royalty that reigns over us.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's depravity.]
M. de Talleyrand betrayed all governments and, I repeat, raised or
overthrew none. He had no real superiority, in the sincere acceptance
of those two words. A fry of trite prosperities, so common in
aristocratic life, does not take a man two feet beyond the grave.
The evil which is not worked with a terrible explosion, the evil
parsimoniously exerted by the slave for the master's benefit is no
more than turpitude. Vice, the pander of crime, enters into domestic
service. Suppose M. de Talleyrand a plebeian, poor, obscure, having,
besides his immorality, nothing save his incontestable drawing-room
wit: we should certainly never have heard speak of him. Take away
from M. de Talleyrand the debased great lord, the married priest, the
degraded bishop: what remains to him? His reputation and his successes
have depended on that treble depravity.
The comedy with which the prelate crowned his eighty-two years is a
pitiful thing: first, to give a proof of strength, he went to pronounce
at the Institute the common eulogy of a poor German dolt[380] whom he
did not care about. In spite of all the sights with which our eyes
have been glutted, people lined up to see the great man go out[381];
next, he came to die at home, like Diocletian, showing himself to the
universe. The crowd gaped at the last moments[382] of that prince
three parts rotten, with a gangrenous aperture in his side, his head
falling on his breast in spite of the bandage that supported it, he
disputing minute by minute his reconciliation with Heaven, his niece
playing beside him a part long prepared between a priest who was
imposed upon and a little girl who was deceived. Weary of resistance,
when his power of speech was about to leave him, he signed (or perhaps
he did not even sign) the disavowal of his early adhesion to the
Constitutional Church; but without giving any sign of repentance,
without fulfilling the Christian's last duties, without retracting
the immorality and scandal of his life. Never did pride appear so
contemptible, admiration so foolish, piety so greatly duped. Rome,
always prudent, did not make the retractation public, for a very good
reason.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's death.]
M. de Talleyrand failed to put in an appearance in answer to a
long-standing summons issued by the Judgment Seat on High; death sought
him on the part of God and has found him at last.
To analyze minutely a life as corrupted as that of M. de Lafayette
was healthy, one would have to face a distaste which I am incapable
of overcoming. Men of sores resemble prostitutes' carcasses: they
have been so much eaten away by the ulcers that they are of no use
to the dissecting-room. The French Revolution is one vast political
destruction, set in the midst of the old world; let us fear lest a much
more fatal destruction be established, let us fear a moral destruction
through the evil side of that Revolution. What would become of the
human race if a strenuous attempt were made to rehabilitate manners
justly stigmatized, to offer odious examples to our enthusiasm, to
show us the progress of the age, the establishment of liberty, the
profundity of genius in abject natures and atrocious actions? Not
daring to extol the evil under its own name, they sophisticate it:
beware of taking that brute for a spirit of darkness; it is an angel
of light! All ugliness is beautiful, every shame honourable, every
enormity sublime; every vice has its admiration awaiting it. We have
gone back to that material society of paganism in which every form
of depravity had its altars. Back, those cowardly, lying, criminal
praises, which pervert the public conscience, which debauch youth,
which discourage good people, which are an outrage against virtue and
the spitting of the Roman soldier in the face of Christ!
PARIS, 1839.
When I was in Prague, in 1833, Charles X. said to me:
"So that old Talleyrand is still alive?"
And Charles X. left this life two years before M. de Talleyrand; the
Monarch's private and Christian death forms a contrast with the public
death of the apostate bishop, dragged against his will to the feet of
the divine incorruptibility.
On the 3rd of October 1836, I wrote the following letter to Madame
la Duchesse de Berry, and I added a postscript to it on the 15th of
November of the same year:
"MADAME,
"M. Walsh[383] has handed me the letter with which you have been
good enough to honour me. I should be ready to obey Your Royal
Highness' wishes, if writing could do anything at present; but
public opinion has fallen into such a state of apathy that the
greatest events would hardly be able to stir it. You have permitted
me, Madame, to speak with an amount of frankness which only my
devotion could excuse: as Your Royal Highness knows, I have been
opposed to almost all that has been done; I ventured even not to
be in favour of your journey to Prague. Henry V. is now emerging
from childhood; he will soon enter the world with an education
that has taught him nothing of the age in which we live. Who will
be his guide, who will show him Courts and men? Who will make him
known and as it were appear, at a distance, to France? These are
important questions which will, probably and unfortunately, be
resolved in the same sense as all the others. Be this as it may,
the rest of my life belongs to my young King and his august mother.
My previsions of the future will never make me unfaithful to my
duty.
"Madame de Chateaubriand asks leave to lay her respects at Madame's
feet. I offer to Heaven all my prayers for the glory and prosperity
of the mother of Henry V. and I am, with profound respect,
"Madame,
"Your Royal Highness' most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
_"P.S._ This letter has been waiting for a month for a safe
opportunity of reaching Madame. This very day, I hear of the death
of Henry's august grandfather[384]. Will the sad news cause any
change in Your Royal Highness' destiny? Dare I beg Madame to permit
me to enter into all the sentiments of regret which she must feel,
and to offer the respectful tribute of my grief to Monsieur le
Dauphin and Madame la Dauphine?
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
"15 _November._"
[Sidenote: Death of Charles X.]
Charles X. is no more:
Soixante ans de malheurs out paré la victime[385]!
Thirty years of exile; death at seventy-nine in a foreign land! So that
none might doubt of the errand of misfortune with which Heaven had
entrusted that Prince, it was a plague that came to fetch him.
Charles X., at his last hour, recovered the calm, the equanimity which
sometimes failed him during his long career. When he learnt the danger
that threatened, he was content to say:
"I did not think that this illness would turn so short."
When Louis XVI. set out for the scaffold, the officer on duty refused
to receive the will of the condemned man because there was no time, and
he, the officer, had to take the King to execution; the King replied:
"That is so."
If Charles X., in other days of peril, had treated his life with the
same indifference, what wretchedness would he not have spared himself!
One can understand that the Bourbons cling to a religion which makes
them so noble at the moment of death; Louis IX., attached to his
posterity, sends them the saint's courage to await them beside the
coffin. That House knows wonderfully how to die: true, it has been
learning death for more than eight hundred years.
Charles X. went away persuaded that he had made no mistake: if he hoped
for the divine mercy, it was because of the sacrifice which he believed
that he had made of his crown to what he thought to be the duty of his
conscience and the welfare of his people; conviction is too rare not to
be valued. Charles X. was able to bear himself this witness that the
reign of his two brothers and his own were neither without liberty nor
without glory: under the Martyr King, the enfranchisement of America
and the emancipation of France; under Louis XVIII., representative
government given to our country, the Royalty restored in Spain, the
independence of Greece recovered at Navarino; under Charles X.,
Africa left to us in compensation for the territory lost through the
conquests of the Republic and the Empire: those are results which
remain established in our records, in spite of stupid jealousies and
vain enmities; those results will stand out more prominently as we
sink lower into the abasement of the Royalty of July. But it is to be
feared that those costly ornaments will be for the benefit of past days
only, like the garland of flowers on Homer's head discarded with great
respect by the Republic of Plato. The Legitimacy to-day seems to have
no intention of going further; it appears to be adopting its fall.
The death of Charles X. could be an effective event only by putting an
end to a deplorable contest for a sceptre and giving a new direction
to the education of Henry V.: now it is to be feared that the absent
crown will always be disputed, that the education will be finished
without having been virtually changed. Perhaps, by saving themselves
the trouble of taking sides, they will fall asleep in habits dear to
weakness, sweet to family-life, easy to lassitude, the result of long
sufferings. Misfortune perpetuated produces on the mind the same effect
as old age on the body: one can no longer move, one takes to one's
bed. Misfortune again resembles the executioner of the high decrees
of Heaven: it strips the condemned man, snatches the sceptre from the
king, the sword from the warrior; it takes the noble's dignity, the
soldier's heart, and sends them back degraded into the crowd.
On the other hand, one derives from extreme youth arguments in favour
of postponement: when one has much time to spend, one persuades one's
self that one can wait, that one has years to play with before events
happen:
"They will come to us," one cries, "without our going to any trouble;
all will ripen; the throne will come of itself; in twenty years,
prejudice will be wiped out."
This calculation might have some justness, if generations did not pass
away or did not become indifferent; but a certain thing may appear a
necessity at one time and not be even felt at another.
[Sidenote: Charles's predecessors.]
Alas, how swiftly things fade away! Where are the three brothers whom
I have seen reign in succession? Louis XVIII. is at Saint-Denis, with
the mutilated relics of Louis XVI.; Charles X. has just been laid, at
Gorlitz, in a coffin locked with three keys.
The remains of that King, falling from on high, startled his ancestors;
they turned in their sepulchres; drawing closer together, they said:
"Let us make room; here is the last of our number."
Bonaparte did not make so much noise on entering eternal life; the old
dead did not wake for the emperor of the new dead. They did not know
him.
The French Monarchy connects the Ancient World with the Modern World.
Augustulus[386] laid down the diadem in 476. Five years later, in 481,
the first dynasty of our kings, in the person of Clovis, was reigning
over the Gauls.
Charlemagne, when associating Louis the Débonnaire with himself on the
throne, said to him:
"Son dear to God, my years are hastening, even my old age escapes me;
the time of my death is drawing nigh. The land of the Franks beheld
my birth: Christ accorded me that honour. First among the Franks, I
have obtained the name of Cæsar and transferred to the Empire of the
Franks the Empire of the House of Romulus."
Under Hugh, with the Third Dynasty, the Elective Monarchy became
hereditary. Hereditary right gave birth to legitimacy, or permanence,
or duration.
The Christian Empire of the French must be placed between the baptismal
fonts of Clovis and the scaffold of Louis XVI. The same religion stood
at either barrier:
"Gentle Sicamber, bow thy neck, worship what thou hast burnt, burn what
thou hast worshipped," said the priest who administered the baptism of
water to Clovis.
"Son of St. Louis, rise up to Heaven," said the priest[387] who
assisted Louis XVI. at the baptism of blood.
If there were nothing in France save that old House of France built up
by time and of astounding majesty, we could make a finer show than all
the other nations in the matter of illustrious things. The Capets were
reigning when the other sovereigns of Europe were still subjects. The
vassals of our kings have become kings. Those sovereigns have handed
down to us, with their names, titles which posterity has accepted as
authentic: some are called Augustus[388], Saint[389], the Pious[390],
the Great[391], the Courteous[392], the Bold[393], the Wise[394],
the Victorious[395], the Well-beloved[396]; others the Father of the
People[397], the Father of Letters[398]:
"As it is writ in blame," says an old historian, "that all the good
Servian kings could easily go into a ring, the bad kings of France
could do so more easily, so small is their number."
Under the Royal Family, the darkness of the Barbarians was dispelled,
the language was formed; literature and arts produced their
master-pieces; our towns were beautified, our monuments raised, our
roads opened, our harbours constructed; our armies astonished Europe
and Asia and our fleets covered the two oceans.
Our pride waxes furious at the mere display of those magnificent
tapestries in the Louvre; shadows, shadowy embroideries shock us.
Unknown this morning, still more unknown this evening, we are none the
less persuaded that we efface all that went before us. And yet each
fleeting moment asks us, "Who art thou?" and we know not what to reply.
Charles X. replied: he went away with a whole era of the world; the
dust of a thousand generations is mingled with his; history salutes
him, the centuries kneel before his tomb; all have known his House; it
has never failed them: it is they who have been wanting towards that
House.
[Sidenote: The last of the Bourbons.]
O banished King, men have been able to outlaw you, but you shall not be
driven out by time: you are sleeping your hard sleep in a monastery,
on the last plank but yesterday destined for some Franciscan. No
heralds-at-arms at your obsequies: none save a troop of bleached and
hoary old times; no grandees to fling the emblems of their dignities
into the vault: they have done homage for them elsewhere. Mute ages are
seated beside your bier; a long procession of past days, with closed
eyes, silently mourns around your coffin.
By your side lie your heart and your intestines, snatched from your
breast and your loins, even as we lay beside a dead mother the abortive
fruit that has cost her her life. At each anniversary, O Most Christian
Monarch, O cenobite after death, some brother will recite to you the
prayers of the memorial service; you will attract to your eternal _Hic
Jacet_ none save your sons banished with you: for even at Trieste the
monument of Mesdames is empty; their sacred relics have returned to
their country and you have paid to exile, by your own exile, the debt
of those noble ladies.
Ah, why do they not to-day bring together so many dispersed remains,
even as they collect antiques unearthed from different excavations? The
Arc de Triomphe would carry Napoleon's sarcophagus as its crowning, or
the bronze column raise motionless victories over immortal remains.
And yet the stone carved by order of Sesostris hence-forward buries the
scaffold of Louis XVI. under the weight of the ages. The hour will come
when the obelisk of the desert shall find again, on the place of the
murders, the silence and solitude of Luxor.
[283] This book was written in Paris, in 1837 and 1838, and revised in
June 1847--T.
[284] Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Duc d'Orléans
(1810-1842) married, on the 30th of May 1837, the Princess Helen of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was killed, on the 13th of July, at Neuilly,
by leaping from his carriage, of which the horses had run away. His
widow, who was and remained a Lutheran, died in 1858.--T.
[285] Charles Jean Marie Barbaroux (1767-1794), a noted Girondin
orator and politician, belonged, like most of the participants in
the Revolution of 1789, to the middle-classes, and was a lawyer by
profession. He led the Marseillaise section in the attack on the
Tuileries, on the 10th of August 1792. He was sent, as a Girondin
deputy, to the Convention, where he appears to have been noted for the
beauty of his person no less than for his eloquence, and soon went to
loggerheads with Marat and Robespierre. In the trial of Louis XVI.,
he voted for the appeal to the nation. He was proscribed, on the 31st
of May 1793, as a Royalist and an enemy of the Republic: he sought
shelter in Calvados and took ship at Quimper for Bordeaux. Hardly had
he arrived there when he was arrested and well and duly guillotined, on
the 25th of July 1794 and in the twenty-eighth year of his age. Carlyle
says, wrongly, I believe, that he shot himself to escape arrest.--T.
[286] Antoine Saint-Just (1767-1794) has been only once mentioned in
the Memoirs (_Cf._ Vol. III., p. 196). He was born a few months after
Barbaroux, and died three days later. This "black-haired, mild-toned
youth," to quote Carlyle, was one of the most violent organizers of the
Terror. He became President of the Convention in February 1794 and took
charge of the reports against his colleagues Danton, Camille Desmoulins
and others, who were promptly sent to the scaffold. Almost alone he
defended Robespierre, was eventually involved in the same condemnation,
and was guillotined with him on the 28th of July. Saint-Just cultivated
the Muse: at the early age of twenty, he published _Organt_, a
licentious poem in twenty cantos (1789). He also left the _Esprit de la
Révolution_ (1791) and a number of Reports and Opinions delivered in
the Convention.--T.
[287] _Cf._, in Chateaubriand's preface to his _Études historiques_,
the table of the victims of the Terror, taken from the six volumes of
Prudhomme, the Republican. There were 18,923 men not of noble birth, of
different conditions; 2,231 wives of labourers or artisans; and 2,000
children guillotined, drowned and shot. In the Vendée, 15,000 women
were killed, and almost all of these were peasant-women. Terrible as
they are, these figures are very far below the reality.--B.
[288] Thiers was Premier and Foreign Minister from the 22nd of February
to the 25th of August 1836 and, for the second time, from the 1st of
March to the 28th of October 1840.--T.
[289] This is in allusion to an episode which occurred in 1834, of
which the country-house of a ministerial deputy was the scene and
M. Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, the hero. Dr. Bonnet de
Malherbe, in his _Notes inédites sur M. Thiers_ (1888, p. 73) refers to
it in the following words:
"One episode especially, the feast of Grand-Vaux, at the _château_
of the Comte Vigier, which the newspapers called the 'Orgy of
Grand-Vaux,' made a great stir at the time. M. Thiers, if the
chroniclers of the time are to be credited, played a part in it
which went far beyond the 'pranks' of the Marseilles school-boy,
and 'showed himself' in a 'posture' which was not exactly that of
which another minister spoke, with some emphasis, half a century
later. The _Quotidienne_ published a very spicy article in this
connection, nor was the _Charivari_ sparing in caricatures."--B.
[290] Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes (_circa_ 104--_circa_ 180),
a Greek rhetorician celebrated for his munificence. He erected many
public works at his own expense and restored several decayed towns in
various parts of Greece.--T.
[291] Thiers had published his _Histoire de la Révolution française_ in
1823 to 1827. The _Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire_ did not appear
till many years later (1845 to 1862).--T.
[292] The remains of Napoleon were brought back to France in 1840.--T.
[293] M. Thiers had said in the Tribune, under the Monarchy of July, in
the course of the discussion of the law against the associations:
"France abhors the Republic; speak of it to her, and she recoils in
affright; she knows that that form of government turns to blood or
imbecility."
In 1872, Henry Reeve met him in Paris and describes the conversation as
follows in his Journal:
"M. Thiers' conversation on the war, the Commune and the siege was
very interesting. He said to me:
"'_Certainement je suis pour la République! Sans la République
qu'est-ce que je serais, moi? Un bourgeois, Adolphe Thiers!_'
"He described the withdrawal of the troops from Paris, which was
his own act. Then the siege, which he claims to have directed, the
battery of _Mouton Tout_, adding:
"'_Nous avons enterré, en entrant à Paris, vingt mille cadavres!_'"
(JOHN KNOX LAUGHTON: _Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
Reeve_, Vol. II., p. 202).--B.
[294] At the same time that Chateaubriand was drawing this portrait of
M. Thiers, another seer, Balzac, wrote in the _Chronique de Paris_, on
the 12th of May 1836:
"M. Thiers has always wished for the same thing, he has never
had but one thought, one system, one aim; all his efforts have
been constantly directed towards it: he has always thought of M.
Thiers.... M. Thiers is a weather-cock which, in spite of its
incessant mobility, remains on the same building."--B.
[295] Simon Deutz was the converted Jew who betrayed the Duchesse de
Berry's hiding-place to Thiers in 1832 (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 156).--T.
[296] DANTE: _Hell_, Canto I., 50.--B.
[297] The Sirens, daughters of Achelous and Calliope, represented as
having the head, arms and bust of a young woman and the wings and lower
part of the body of a bird.--T.
[298] _Cf._ VIR., _Geor._, IV., 82-83, 86-87:
Ipsi per medias acies, insignibus alis,
Ingentes animos angusto in pectore versant.
. . . . . . . .
Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.--B.
[299] La Fayette died in Paris on the 19th of May 1834. He was already
suffering from indisposition, when he insisted on following, on foot,
the funeral of Dulong, the deputy killed in a duel by General Bugeaud.
He took to his bed on returning home and did not leave it again.--B.
[300] Rivarol, in the early days of the Revolution, had nicknamed
General La Payette "César-Gille."--B.
[301] La Fayette was mixed up in Caron's military conspiracy at Belfort
in 1821 (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 211, nn. 4-5).--T.
[302] Having failed to secure his re-election as a deputy in 1824, La
Fayette took advantage of this enforced rest to revisit America. He was
absent from France for fourteen months.--B.
[303] Edward Everett (1794-1865), a celebrated American statesman,
orator and author. He was professor of Greek at Harvard College from
1819 to 1825; editor of the _North American Review_ from 1820 to 1824;
Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1825 to 1835; Governor of
Massachusetts from 1836 to 1840; Minister to England from 1841 to 1845;
President of Harvard College from 1846 to 1849; Secretary of State
from 1852 to 1853; and Senator from Massachusetts from 1853 to 1854.
In 1860, he was the candidate for Vice-president of the Constitutional
Union Party. His _Orations and Speeches on various Occasions_ were
published in Boston, in 4 volumes, in 1850.--T.
[304] EVERETT: _An Oration pronounced at Cambridge before the Society
of Phi Beta Kappa, August_ 26, 1824 (Boston, Mass.: 1824).--T.
[305] I omit six lines of verse.--T.
[306] La Fayette was married to Mademoiselle de Noailles on the 11th of
April 1774; she died in 1807.--T.
[307] La Fayette's tomb is in one corner of the little Picpus Cemetery,
near the Avenue de Saint-Mandé. At the end of the Picpus Cemetery is
the _Cimetière des guillotinés_, where 1300 victims of the Revolution,
executed at the Barrière du Trône, are interred. These include André
Chénier, Lavoisier, General Beauharnais and many other bearers of noted
names.--T.
[308] The Duc de Montmorency-Laval died in 1826.--T.
[309] A sort of cakes.--T.
[310] M. Dupin the Elder.--B.
[311] Georges de La Fayette.--_Author's Note._
Georges Washington de La Fayette (1779-1849), La Fayette's only son and
a godson of Washington, sat in the Chamber of Deputies, on the Extreme
Left, from 1827 to 1849.--T.
[312] Chateaubriand is wrong. The notice of _Ambroise_, a comic opera
by Monvel and Nicolas Dalayrac occcurs in the _Gazette nationale, ou Le
Moniteur universel_ of the 22nd of January 1793! but the report of the
execution of Louis XVI. appears in the issue of the next day, Wednesday
23 January, two days after the tragedy took place. Immediately after
the report comes this paragraph:
"That excellent patriot, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, member of the
Convention, was assassinated on Sunday at a tavern-keeper's, in the
Palais _ci-devant_ Royal, by a former body-guard called Paris. The
details of the crime were communicated to the National Convention;
they will be found in the report of Monday's sitting."
This report of "Monday's sitting" appears in the following Thursday's
_Moniteur._--T.
[313] _Cf._ Vol. V., pp. 206.207.--T.
[314] At the time of the failure of the Duchesse de Berry's plans,
followed by her arrest and imprisonment, feelings of irritation and
regret reigned among the Royalists, of which several duels with members
of the opposite party were the direct consequence. At the end of
January 1833, Armand Carrel, after a certain article that appeared in
the _National_, accepted a personal provocation and, from a list of ten
names put before him, selected that of M. Roux-Laborie the Younger, who
was personally quite unknown to him. Swords were the chosen weapons;
the adversaries were both wounded: M. Roux-Laborie by two thrusts in
the arm and hand; Carrel by a thrust in the stomach, which put his life
in danger.--B.
[315] Émile de Girardin (1806-1881), the journalist and economist
(_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 21, n. 2). A duel was arranged between Girardin and
Armand Carrel in consequence of articles published in their respective
journals, the _Presse_ and the _National._ It was fought in the Bois de
Vincennes; the weapons chosen were pistols. The two adversaries were
placed at forty paces from one another, with powers each to walk ten
paces and to fire at will, a very much more dangerous method than the
firing at the word of command, at a fixed distance, which is generally
practised to-day. After each taking a few steps, the two adversaries
fired almost at the same time: Émile de Girardin was shot through the
thigh and Carrel was hit in the pit of the stomach. He succumbed to
acute peritonitis from the lesions caused by the bullet, which had torn
the intestines.--B.
[316] _Cf._ p. 83, _supra._--T.
[317] SHAKESPEARE: _Hamlet_, Act III., sc. i.--T.
[318] Carrel's article on Sautelet's suicide (_Cf._ Vol. V., p.
83.--T.) appeared in the _Revue de Paris_ of June 1830, under the title
of _Une Mort volontaire._--B.
[319] Armand Carrel was born, at Rouen, on the 8th of May 1800, the day
on which Chateaubriand set foot at Calais (_Cf._ Vol. II., p. 148, n.
1).-T.
[320] _Cf._ Vol. V., pp. 120-122.--T.
[321] The gravity of Carrel's wound did not allow of his being
conveyed to the house in which he lived, at No. 7, now No. 18,
Rue Grange-Batelière. He was accordingly taken to one of his old
school-fellows of the Military School, M. Adolphe Peyra, who was
spending the summer at his mother's house at Saint-Mandé. M. Peyra was
a retired officer in the Guards, who had himself fought many duels
and had kept up friendly relations with Carrel, although they were in
different camps: Peyra was an ardent Royalist.--B.
[322]
THE GRAVE-DIGGER'S RECEIPT.
"I have received from M. de Chateaubriand the sum of eighteen
francs that remained owing for the trellis-work which surrounds the
grave of M. Armand Carrel.
"SAINT-MANDÉ, 21 _June_ 1838.
"Paid: VAUDRAN."
"Received from M. de Chateaubriand the sum of twenty francs for
keeping up the grave of M. Carrel at Saint-Mandé.
"PARIS, 28 _September_ 1839.
"Paid: VAUDRAN."--B.
]
[323] Sabine Casimir Amable Voïart, Dame Tastu (1798-1885), author
of several volumes of verse: _Poésies_(1826), _Chroniques de
France_(1829), _Poésies nouvelles_ (1834), _Œuvres politiques_(1837).
She also published a large number of educational books. Some of her
poems, notably the _Ange gardien_, the _Dernier jour de l'année_ and
the _Feuilles de saule_ are happily inspired and deserve to live.--B.
[324] Favorinus (_d. circa_ 135), a skeptical philosopher, a native
of Arles, in Gaul, who taught rhetoric in Athens and in Rome under
Hadrian.--T.
[325] 451-450 B.C.--T.
[326] Carmenta, the Arcadian prophetess, mother of Evander by
Mercury.--T.
[327] Sappho (_b. circa_ 612 B.C.), the most famous of poetesses. She
was surnamed the Tenth Muse.--T.
[328] Corinna (_fl. circa_ 470 B.C.), the Greek poetess, surnamed the
Lyric Muse. She conquered Pindar in a trial of poetry and carried off
the palm before him no less than five times.--T.
[329] Pindar (_circa_ 520 B.C.--_circa_ 450 B.C.), the greatest of the
Greek lyric poets.--T.
[330] Marie de France (_fl._ 13th Century), author of a collection
of fables entitled _Ysopet_, narrative poems entitled _Laïs_ and a
Purgatory of St. Patrick. Her works were collected and published in
Paris in 1832.--T.
[331] Beatrix Comtesse de Die in her own right (_fl._ 12th Century),
author of a few Provençal poems.--T.
[332] _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 308, n. 6.--T.
[333] Loyse Labé, _Sonnets_, XIII., 1-2:
"Oh, if I were in that fair bosom rapt
Of him for whom I ever dying go!"--T.
[334] Clémence de Bourges was a young girl of Lyons, famous for her wit
and her beauty and a friend and admirer of Loyse Labé. She died early,
of a broken heart, and was given a magnificent funeral by the Lyonese.
The poets of the day called her the "Pearl of Damsels, a truly Oriental
pearl."--T.
[335] Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre (1492-1549), sister
of Francis I. and married, in 1526, to Henry II. d'Albret, King
of Navarre, is the author of the _Heptaméron des nouvelles de
très-illustre et très-excellente princesse Marguerite de Valois_
(1558-1559), the _Miroir de l'âme pêcheresse_ (1533), _Marguerites de
la Marguerite des princesses, très-illustre royne de Navarre_ (1547),
the _Miroir de Jésus-Christ crucifié_ (1556) and Letters, published
in the last century. The other Margaret is Margaret of France, Queen
of Navarre (1552-1615), sister of Henry III. and married, in 1572,
to Henry III. King of Navarre, later Henry IV. King of France, and
left her admirable Memoirs for the enjoyment of posterity, with some
Poems.--T.
[336] Mary Queen of Scots, France and (_de jure_) England (1542-1587).
The only extant specimens of Mary's poetry, in addition to the reputed
sonnets to Bothwell, are the verses on the death of her husband Francis
II., printed by Brantôme in his Memoirs; a sonnet to Elizabeth in Latin
and French; a _Méditation faite par la Reyne d'Escosse Douarière de
France, recueillie d'un Livre des Consolations Divines_; and a sonnet
written at Fotheringay, in the State Paper Office (_Cf._ the article in
the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Vol. XXXVI., p. 389).--T.
[337] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 21. I omit Madame Claude de Chateaubriand's
sixty-sixth sonnet, which is quoted by her nephew many times
removed.--T.
[338] Antoinette du Ligier de La Garde, Dame Deshoulières (1638-1694),
married, in 1651, to Guillaume de Lafon de Boisguérin, Seigneur
Deshoulières, enjoyed a great reputation under Louis XIV., when she was
surnamed the Tenth Muse and the French Calliope. She is now remembered
chiefly by her idyll of the _Moutons_, although her collected idylls,
odes, elegiacs and songs, to say nothing of two highly unsuccessful
tragedies, fill two, volumes 8vo.--T.
[339] Marie Anne Henriette Payan de L'Étang, Marquise d'Antremont,
later Baronne de Bourdic, later Madame Viot (1746-1802) was three times
married. She was already known for several pieces of verse inserted in
the _Almanach des Muses_ when, for a while, she acquired a real fame
through her _Ode au Silence_, which was long considered one of the
master-pieces of the eighteenth century.--B.
[340] Hortense Allan de Méritens (1801-1879) published, as her first
work, in 1821, a remarkable novel, the _Conjuration d'Amboise_,
which was succeeded by _Sextus, ou le Romain des Maremmes_, the
_Indienne, Settimia_ and others. In 1873 and 1874, she published,
under the pseudonym of "Madame Prudence de Saman" and the title of
the _Enchantements de Prudence_, a series of erotic confidences, or
romantic autobiography, in which she mixes up Chateaubriand, Lamennais,
Béranger and a score of others with her imaginary adventures.--B.
[341] Mélanie Villenave, Dame Waldor (1796-1871), author of some
volumes of poems, of which the principal, entitled _Poésies du cœur_,
had appeared in 1835. Her novels include _André le Vendéen_ (1843) and
the _Moulin en deuil_ (1849).--B.
[342] Marceline Josèphe Félicité Desbordes, Dame Desbordes-Valmore
(1786-1859) had appeared, with some success, at the Opéra-Comique,
when, in 1817, she married François Prosper Lanchantin, known as
Valmore, the actor, and left the stage. Her poetry is distinguished for
sweetness and pathos, without affectation. That published before the
time in which Chateaubriand is writing includes _Élégies et romances_
(1818), _Élégies et poésies nouvelles_ (1824) and the _Pleurs_ (1833).
_Pauvres fleurs_ appeared in 1839 and _Bouquets et prières_ in 1843.--T.
[343] Anaïs Ménard, Dame Ségalas (_b._ 1814), published the
_Algériennes_ in 1831, when only seventeen years of age. Next came
the _Oiseaux de passage_ (1836) and, later, _Enfantines: poésies à ma
fille_ (1844), the _Femme_ (1847) and _Nos bons Parisiens_ (1865).
To these must be added a number of novels and plays of various
descriptions. Madame Ségalas will, however, remain known mainly as the
author of the _Enfantines_, a collection of verse that has had no less
than ten editions.--B.
[344] Louise Révoil, Dame Colet (1815-1876), published her first
volume, _Fleurs du Midi_, accompanied by two kindly letters from
Chateaubriand, in 1836. From that year till the year of her death she
did not cease writing in prose and verse. The list of her works, which
include poems, novels, dramatic essays, travels and works on history
and politics, would exceed the space of these notes. She obtained the
prize for poetry at the French Academy four times between 1839 and
1854. For the rest, Madame Colet mixed romance with her life in such
proportions that it is best to keep silence upon both the lady and her
career.--B.
[345] Elisa Mercœur (1809-1835), the girl poet, died before the above
lines were written. The first edition of her _Poésies_ appeared in
1827, when Mademoiselle Mercœur was only eighteen years old. Her
Complete Works were published in 1843, in three volumes 8vo.--T.
[346] Maria Felicita Garcia, Dame Malibran, later Dame de Bériot
(1808-1836), one of the most famous opera-singers of the time, was the
daughter of Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, the Spanish singer and
composer. She made her first appearance in opera in London, on the 7th
of June 1825, when she took the place of Madame Pasta, who was ill.
She made a great sensation and was at once engaged for the rest of the
season. In 1826, she went to New York and there, in the middle of a
successful season, married Malibran, the French banker, who soon became
bankrupt. She left him in 1827, returned to France and appeared for
the first time in Paris, on the 12th of January 1828, in _Sémiramide._
Her success was prodigious and she continued to rouse unparalleled
enthusiasm in all the great cities of Europe. On the 30th of March
1836, Madame Malibran married Charles Auguste de Bériot, the Belgian
violinist; six months later, on the 23rd of September, she died, in
Manchester, from the effects of a fall from her horse, in London, a few
days earlier.--T.
[347] At this time (1833), George Sand had published only _Indiana_
(September 1832) and _Valentine_ (November 1832). _Lélia_ appeared in
September 1833, the _Secrétaire intime_ and _Jacques_ in 1834.--T.
[348] In an article on Étienne Pivert de Sénancour's _Obermann_, in the
_Revue des Deux-Mondes_ of 15 June 1833.--B.
[349] October 1834.--B.
[350] _Rêveries du promeneur solitaire_, published in 1782, four years
after Rousseau's death.--T.
[351] _Études de la nature_(1784).--T.
[352] _Æn._, IV. 625.--T.
[353] LUCIAN: _Dialogues of the Courtezans_, VII.--_Author's Note._
[354] _Cf._ MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, II., 752-760.
"All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee; dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth; till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess arm'd
Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seized
All the host of heaven; back they recoil'd afraid
At first, and cal I'd me Sin."--T.
[355] _Sic_, in all the editions.--T.
[356] Phila (_fl._ 370 B.C.), a celebrated Athenian courtezan and
mistress to Hyperides the Attic orator.--T.
[357] Lais (_d. circa_ 340 B.C.), a noted Corinthian courtezan, said
to have been advised to adopt her profession by Apelles. Demosthenes
was one of her many lovers; Diogenes another. She was assassinated in
Thessaly by a number of women jealous of their husbands' affections.--T.
[358] Gnathæna, a Greek poetess and courtezan, of an uncertain period.
Some of her witty sayings are recorded by Athenæus.--T.
[359] Phryne (_fl. circa_ 328 B.C.), a celebrated Athenian hetaira,
mistress to Praxiteles, one of whose many statues of her is known as
the _Cnidian Aphrodite_, while Apelles took her for his model for the
_Aphrodite Anadyomene._--T.
[360] Apelles (_fl. circa_ 332 B.C.), the famous Greek painter. His
_Aphrodite Anadyomene_ (_vide supra_) was originally painted for the
Temple of Æsculapius in Cos. It was afterwards bought by Augustus and
placed in the Temple of Cæsar in Rome.--T.
[361] Praxiteles (_circa_ 360 B.C.--_circa_ 280 B.C.), the greatest
Greek sculptor after Phidias. His _Aphrodite of Cnidus_ ranks as one of
the most admired statues of antiquity. A replica of this statue is now
in the Glyptothek in Munich.--T.
[362] Leæna (_fl._ 514 B.C.), the mistress of Harmodius and
Aristogiton, the Athenian patriots.--T.
[363] Harmodius (_d._ 514 B.C.), who, with Aristogiton, delivered
Athens from the tyranny of Hipparchus.--T.
[364] _Cf._, on the _Congrès de Vérone_, M. Biré's Appendix, Vol. IV.,
pp. 215-219.--T.
[365] Talleyrand died in Paris on the 17th of May 1838.--B.
[366] _Cf._ Vol. III., pp. 145 _et seq._--T.
[367] _Ibid._, pp. 171-175.--T.
[368] The Marquis de Maubreuil (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 86, n. 1), escaping
from police surveillance, went, on the 20th of January, to Saint-Denis,
during the celebration of the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.,
and there, in the midst of the solemnity, he struck Talleyrand in
the face and threw him to the ground. Maubreuil was charged with
the offense and received sentence; but the affair made a terrible
noise, of which Talleyrand's innumerable enemies did not fail to take
advantage.--B.
[369] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 147--T.
[370] Speech of the Prince de Talleyrand against the vote of one
hundred millions proposed for the cost of the Spanish War (March
1823).--B.
[371] Elisabeth Pierre Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1764-1834) was
President of the Legislative Body in 1810, 1811 and 1813. He was
created a count of the Empire in 1809 and, in the following year, was
appointed Great Chamberlain of France in Talleyrand's stead.--B.
[372] The Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 134,
n. 1) was a member of the Chamber of Peers from 1814 to 1831.--B.
[373] Jean Girard Lacuée, Comte de Cessac (1752-1841) was an
inspector-general of reviews under Napoleon (1806), a minister of State
(1806) and Minister of the Board of Military Administration. He was a
member of the French Academy.--B.
[374] The Comte Roederer, in his _Souvenirs_, describes a conversation
which he had with the Emperor, at the Élysée, on the 6th of March
1809. The subject of the conversation was King Joseph, who, in his
letters from Madrid to his wife and Napoleon, complained of his brother
and threatened to leave the Throne of Spain to go and grow his small
potatoes at Mortefontaine. Napoleon, in the course of this interview
with Roederer, walked to and fro, and became more and more excited as
he spoke of the contents of those letters:
"'He says that he wants to go to Mortefontaine, rather than stay
in a country bought by blood unjustly shed. And what is this
Mortefontaine? It is the price of the blood which I spilled in
Italy. Does he hold it from his father? Does he hold it from his
work? He holds it from me. Yes, I have spilt blood, but it is the
blood of my enemies, of the enemies of France. Does it become
him to use their language? Does he want to act like Talleyrand?
Talleyrand! I have covered him with honours, riches, diamonds. He
has employed all of that against me. He has betrayed me as much
as he could, on the first occasion that he had to do it in.... He
said, during my absence'--during the Spanish War--'that he had gone
on his knees to prevent the Spanish business; and he pestered me
for two years to undertake it! He maintained to me that I should
require only twenty thousand men; he gave me twenty memorandums
to prove it. He behaved in the same way in the affair of the Duc
d'Enghien; I knew nothing about him; it was Talleyrand who told me
about him.' The Emperor always pronounces it Taillerand. 'I did not
know where he was.' The Emperor stopped in front of me. 'It was he
who told me the place where he was and, after advising his death,
he bemoaned it with all his acquaintances.' The Emperor resumed
his walk and, in a calmer tone, after a short pause, continued, 'I
shall do him no harm; I am keeping him in all his offices; I even
have the same feelings for him that I used to have; but I have
taken from him the right to enter my closet at all times. He shall
never have a private conversation with me; he will no longer be
able to say that he has advised me or dissuaded me from one thing
or the other.'"
[375] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 281-282.--T.
[376] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 144.--T.
[377] Talleyrand was appointed Minister of External Relations, on the
16th of July 1797, in succession to Charles Delacroix, the father of
Eugène Delacroix the painter.--B.
[378] Yet Talleyrand's Memoirs were not published until 1891-1892. They
were disappointing when published.--T.
[379] After the Revolution of July, Talleyrand accepted the London
Embassy at the hands of the new Government (September 1830); he asked
to be recalled on the 13th of November 1834.--B.
[380] Charles Frédéric Comte Reinhard (1761-1838), a retired head
of a department at the Foreign Office and a native of Schöndorf, in
Wurtemberg.--B.
[381] Talleyrand read his _Éloge de Reinhard_ at the Institute on the
3rd of March 1838. The room was crowded. M. Mignet, the Perpetual
Secretary, went to meet him in the room adjoining the lecture-room. The
prince, who was then in his eighty-fifth year, was not able to climb
the stairs on foot; he was carried up by two men in livery. When he
entered the lecture-room, leaning on M. Mignet's arm and on his crutch,
the whole audience stood up. His speech was delivered in a very strong
voice and was frequently interrupted by applause. The reading took less
than half an hour in all, which constituted the whole performance. When
it was over, the enthusiasm knew no bounds:
"On his way out," says Sainte-Beuve (_Nouveaux Lundis_, Vol. I., p.
110), "the prince had to pass through a double row of foreheads which
bowed with redoubled reverence."--B.
[382] The Prince de Talleyrand died on the 17th of May 1838, at
thirty-five minutes past three in the afternoon; he was horn on the 2nd
of February 1754, and was consequently 84 years, 3 months and 15 days
old. He was assisted in his last illness by the Abbé Dupanloup, the
future Bishop of Orleans, who himself wrote the story of the prince's
last moments. On the morning of the 17th of May, M. de Talleyrand had
signed his retractation and a letter to the Pope; some hours later,
the Abbé Dupanloup arrived. Upon a word from the abbé, saying that
Monseigneur de Quélen, the Archbishop of Paris, would be happy to
give his life for him, he raised himself a little and said, in a very
distinct voice:
"Tell him that he can make a much better use of it."
"Prince," continued the abbé, "this morning you gave the Church a
great consolation; I now come, in the name of the Church, to offer
you the last consolations of faith, the last succour of religion.
You have been reconciled with the Catholic Church, which you had
offended; the moment is come to be reconciled with God by a new
confession and a sincere repentance for all the faults of your
life."
"Thereupon," in the words of the Abbé Dupanloup, "he made a
movement as though to come towards me; I went up to him, and,
at once grasping my two hands in his and pressing them with
extraordinary force and emotion, he did not leave go of them during
the whole time that his confession took to make; I had even to make
a great effort to release my hand from his, when the moment had
come to give him absolution. He received it with an humility, an
amount of feeling and faith that made me shed tears."
He also received Extreme Unction while fully conscious. Then the Abbé
Dupanloup, kneeling beside him, recited the Litany of the Saints. When
he came to the invocation of the martyrs and pronounced the name of St.
Maurice, M. de Talleyrand's patron-saint, the prince was seen to bow
his head and his glance to seek that of the Abbé Dupanloup, to prove to
him that he was joining in those prayers. At three o'clock, seeing the
last hour come, the Abbé Dupanloup began the Prayers for the Dying. The
sick man appeared to join in them so visibly that one of those present
remarked upon it:
"Monsieur l'abbé, see how he is praying!"
He was in fact seen, with eyes now open, now lowered, to follow with
evidences of perfect understanding all that was happening around him.
At last his strength suddenly failed him and his lips closed for ever.
The Abbé Dupanloup ends his narrative with these words:
"God sees the secrets of men's hearts; but I ask Him to give those
who thought that they might doubt M. de Talleyrand's sincerity, I
ask for them, at the hour of death, the same sentiments which I
beheld in M. de Talleyrand when dying, the memory of which will
never leave me."(_Cf._ LAGRANGE: _Vie de Monseigneur #/ Dupanloup_,
Vol. I., Chaps, XIV. and XV.)--B.
[383] Édouard Vicomte Walsh had, since the 25th of September 1835, had
the management of the _Mode_, the liveliest of the royalist papers,
published under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry.--B.
[384] Charles X. died at Goritz, on the 6th of November 1836, of an
attack of cholera, of which he had felt the first symptoms two days
before, on St. Charles's Day, the 4th of November. The doctor asked to
have the King's grandchildren taken away, because of the danger of the
illness, but the Duc de Bordeaux declared that no consideration would
prevent his following the impulse of his heart and Mademoiselle made
the same reply as her brother. The King kissed them fondly and laid his
hand upon their heads:
"May God protect you, my children!" he said. "Walk before Him in the
paths of justice.... Do not forget me.... Pray sometimes for me!"
The Cardinal de Latil and Doctor Bougon, who had already met by the Duc
de Berry's bed-side on the night of the 13th February 1820, met again,
on the night of the 6th of November 1836, by the bed-side of Charles X.
An altar had hurriedly been erected near the bed for the celebration
of Mass. It was said by the Bishop of Hermopolis, Monseigneur de
Frayssinous. At the end of the Mass, the King meditated an instant; he
prayed for France and blessed her; and, as the bishop exhorted him to
forgive, at that last moment, those who had done him so much harm:
"I have long forgiven them," he replied. "I forgive them again, at this
moment, with all my heart; may the Lord be merciful to them and me."
"At one o'clock in the morning, on the 6th of November, M. Bougon
announced that the King had but a few moments to live. All fell on
their knees; M. le Dauphin (the Duc d'Angoulême) had his head bowed
towards his father. Madame la Dauphine alone remained standing at the
King's feet, with her hands joined, and seemed to be presiding over
that scene of sorrow. At half past one, M. Bougon made a sign to the
Duc de Blacas, who leant towards the Dauphin and said a few words to
him in a low voice. Then the Prince respectfully closed his father's
eyes, and Madame la Dauphine's sobs, bursting forth suddenly amid the
silence of death that reigned in the room, announced that all was
over." (NETTEMENT: _Histoire de quinze ans d'exil_, Vol. II., pp. 96
_et seq._)--B.
[385] "Sixty years with misfortunes the victim have decked!"--T.
[386] Romulus Momyllus Augustus, the last Roman Emperor of the West,
nicknamed Augustulus because of his youth, was placed on the throne at
a very early age, in 475, but compelled to abdicate in the following
year by Odoacer King of the Heruli.--T.
[387] Henry Essex, Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont (1745-1807).--T.
[388] Philip II. Augustus (1165-1223), son of Louis VII., succeeded in
1180.--T.
[389] St. Louis IX. (1215-1270), son of Louis VIII., succeeded in
1226.--T.
[390] Robert II. (_circa_ 970-1031), son of Hugh Capet, succeeded in
996.--T.
[391] Henry IV. (1553-1610) succeeded Henry III. in 1569; and Louis
XIV. (1638-1715), son of Louis XIII., succeeded in 1643.--T.
[392] Charles VIII. (1470-1498), surnamed the Affable or the Courteous,
son of Louis XI., succeeded in 1483.--T.
[393] Philip III. (1245-1285), son of St. Louis IX., succeeded in
1270.--T.
[394] Charles V. (1337-1380), son of John II., succeeded in 1364.--T.
[395] Charles VII. (1403-1461), son of Charles VI., succeeded in
1422.--T.
[396] Charles VI. (1368-1422), son of Charles V., succeeded in 1380.--T.
[397] Louis XII. (1462-1515) succeeded his cousin Charles VIII. in
1498.--T.
[398] Francis I. (1494-1547) succeeded his cousin Louis XII. in
1515.--T.
BOOK X[399]
Conclusion--Historical antecedents from the Regency to 1793--The
Past--The old European order expiring--Inequality of fortunes--Danger
of the expansion of intellectual nature and material nature--The
downfall of the monarchies--The decline of society and the progress of
the individual--The future--The difficulty of understanding it--The
Christian idea is the future of the world--Recapitulation of my
life--Summary of the changes that have happened on the globe during my
life--End of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_.
25 _September_ 1841.
I began to write these Memoirs, at the Vallée-aux-Loups, on the 4th
of October 1811; I am about to finish reading and correcting them,
in Paris, on the 20th of September 1841: I have, therefore, for
thirty years, eleven months and twenty-one days[400], been secretly
holding the pen while writing my public books, in the midst of all
the revolutions and all the vicissitudes of my existence. My hand is
tired: may it not have weighed upon my ideas, which have never wavered
and which I feel to be as lively as when I started on my career! I had
the intention of adding a general conclusion to my thirty years' work:
I meant to say, as I have often mentioned, what the world was like
when I entered it, what it is like now that I am leaving it. But the
hour-glass is before me; I observe the hand which the sailors used to
think that they saw come forth from the waves at the hour of shipwreck:
that hand beckons to me to be brief; I will therefore reduce the scale
of the picture, without omitting anything essential.
Louis XIV. died[401]. The Duc d'Orléans was Regent during the
minority of Louis XV. A war with Spain broke out as the result
of Cellamare's[402] conspiracy: peace was restored by the fall of
Alberoni[403]. Louis XV. attained his majority on the 15th of February
1723. The Regent succumbed ten months later. He had communicated his
gangrene to France; he had seated Dubois[404] in Fénelon's pulpit and
raised Law[405] to power. The Duc de Bourbon[406] became Prime Minister
to Louis XV., and he had as his successor the Cardinal de Fleury[407],
whose genius lay in his years. In 1734, the war[408] broke out in
which my father was wounded outside Dantzig[409]. In 1745 was fought
the Battle of Fontenoy; one of the least warlike of our kings made us
triumph in the only great pitched battle that we have won over the
English: and the conqueror of the world has, at Waterloo, added one
more disaster to the disasters of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The
church at Waterloo is decorated with the names of the English officers
who fell in 1815; in the church at Fontenoy we find only a stone with
these words:
NEAR THIS SPOT LIES THE BODY OF MESSIRE PHILIPPE DE VITRY,
WHO, AGED 27 YEARS, WAS KILLED AT THE BATTLE OF
FONTENOY ON THE 11TH OF MAY 1715
No mark indicates the place of the action; but skeletons are taken from
the ground with bullets flattened into their skulls. The French carry
their victories written on their foreheads.
Later, the Comte de Gisors, son of the Maréchal de Belle-Isle[410] fell
at Crefeld[411]. With him died out the name and the direct descent of
Fouquet[412]. Things had passed from Mademoiselle de La Vallière to
Madame de Châteauroux. There is something sad in seeing names come to
their end, from century to century, from beauty to beauty, from glory
to glory.
[Sidenote: Historical antecedents.]
In the month of June 1745, the second Stuart Pretender had begun his
adventures: misfortunes on which I was brought up pending the time when
Henry V. should replace the English Pretender in exile.
The end of those wars was the harbinger of our disasters in our
colonies. La Bourdonnais[413] avenged the French flag in Asia; his
dissensions with Dupleix[414], after the capture of Madras, undid
all. The peace of 1748 suspended those misfortunes; hostilities broke
out again in 1755; they opened with the earthquake of Lisbon[415], in
which Racine's grandson perished. Under the pretext of a few plots of
land at issue on the frontier of Acadia, England, without declaring
war, seized upon three hundred of our merchant-ships; we lost Canada:
facts immense in their consequences, above which floats the death of
Wolfe and Montcalm. We were stripped of our possessions in Africa and
India, and Lord Clive[416] began the conquest of Bengal. Now, during
this time, the Jansenist quarrels were taking place: Damiens[417] had
struck at Louis XV.; Poland had been partitioned, the expulsion of the
Jesuits effected, the Court had descended to the Parc-aux-Cerfs. The
author of the Family Compact[418] retired to Chanteloup, while the
intellectual revolution was being completed under Voltaire. Maupeou's
Plenary Court[419] was installed: Louis XV. left the scaffold to the
favourite[420] who had degraded him, after sending Garat[421] and
Sanson to Louis XVI., one to read, the other to execute the sentence.
This last monarch had married, on the 16th of May 1770, the daughter of
Maria Theresa of Austria: we know what became of her. Next passed the
ministers: Machault, old Maurepas, Turgot the economist, Malesherbes,
with his ancient virtues and modern opinions, Saint-Germain[422], who
destroyed the King's Household and gave a baleful order; Calonne and
Necker lastly.
Louis XVI. recalled the parliaments, abolished forced labour, repealed
the power of inflicting torture before the verdict had been given,
restored Protestants to the enjoyment of civil rights and recognised
their marriages as legal. The American War of 1779, although impolitic
for France, the dupe, as always, of her generosity, was useful to the
human race; it restored throughout the world the esteem in which our
arms were held and the honour of our flag.
The Revolution sprang up, ready to give birth to the warlike generation
which eight centuries of heroism had laid in its womb. The personal
merits of Louis XVI. did not redeem the faults which his ancestors
had left to him to expiate; but the blows of Providence fall on the
evil, never on the man: God shortens virtue's days upon earth only to
lengthen them in Heaven. Under the star of 1793, the sources of the
great abyss were broken; all our glories of former days next united and
made their last explosion under Bonaparte: he sends them back to us in
his coffin.
[Sidenote: When I was born.]
I was born while these facts were being accomplished[423]. Two new
empires, Prussia[424] and Russia[425], preceded me by scarcely
half a century on the earth; Corsica became French at the moment
when I appeared[426]; I arrived in the world twenty days before
Bonaparte[427]. He brought me with him. I was about to enter the navy,
in 1783, when the fleet of Louis XVI. put in to Brest[428]: it carried
the birth certificate of a nation[429] that had been hatched under the
wings of France. My birth is connected with the birth of a man and a
people, pale reflection that I was of an immense light.
If we fix our eyes on the actual world, we see it, following the
movement communicated by a great revolution, shaken from the East to
China, which seemed closed for ever: so that our past subversions
would be nothing and the noise of Napoleon's fame be hardly audible
in the general topsy-turviness of the nations, even as he, Napoleon,
drowned all the noises of our ancient globe.
The Emperor left us in a condition of prophetic agitation. We, the
ripest and most advanced State, display numerous symptoms of decadence.
Just as a sick man in danger becomes preoccupied with what awaits him
in his grave, a nation which feels itself decaying grows restless as
to its future fate. Hence the political heresies which succeed one
another. The old European order is expiring; our present contests will
appear puerile struggles in the eyes of posterity. Nothing more exists;
authority of experience and age, birth or genius, talent or virtue:
all are denied; a few individuals clamber to the top of the ruins,
proclaim themselves giants and roll down to the bottom as pygmies. With
the exception of a score of men who will survive and who were destined
to hold the torch across the murky steppes upon which we are entering,
with the exception of those few men, a generation which bore within
it an abundant intelligence, acquired knowledge, germs of success of
all kinds has stifled these in a restlessness as unproductive as its
arrogance is barren. Nameless multitudes are agitated without knowing
why, like the popular associations of the middle-ages: famished flocks
which recognise no shepherd, which rush from the plain to the mountain
and from the mountain to the plain, disdaining the experience of the
herdsmen hardened to the wind and sun. In the life of that city, all
is transitory: religion and morals cease to be admitted, or else each
interprets them after his own fashion. Among things of an inferior
nature, even in power of conviction and existence, a man's renown
throbs for barely an hour, a book grows old in a day, writers kill
themselves to attract attention: one more vanity; no one hears even
their last breath.
From this predisposition of men's minds it results that we imagine no
other means of touching people than scenes of the scaffold and tainted
manners: we forget that the real tears are those which flow at the
bidding of a beautiful poem and with which as much admiration as sorrow
is blended; but at present, when talents feed upon the Regency and the
Terror, what need was there of subjects for our tongues destined so
soon to die? No more will fall from man's genius some of those thoughts
which become the patrimony of the universe.
That is what everybody says and what everybody deplores, and yet
illusions superabound, and the nearer a man is to his end the longer
he thinks that he will live. We see monarchs who imagine that they
are monarchs, ministers who believe that they are ministers, deputies
who take their speeches seriously, landlords who, possessing property
to-day, are persuaded that they will possess it to-night. Private
interests, personal ambitions hide the gravity of the moment from the
vulgar: notwithstanding the oscillations of the affairs of the day,
they are but a wrinkle on the surface of the deep; they do not decrease
the depth of the waters. Beside the paltry contingent lotteries,
the human race is playing the great game; the kings still hold the
cards and hold them for the nations: will the latter do better than
the monarchs? A side issue, which does not alter the principal fact.
What importance have children's amusements, shades gliding over the
whiteness of a shroud? The invasion of ideas has succeeded on the
invasion of the Barbarians; our actual decomposing civilization is
becoming lost in itself; the vessel that contains it has not poured
the liquid over into another vessel: it is the vessel that has been
shattered.
At what period will society disappear? What accidents will be able to
suspend its movements? In Rome, the reign of man was substituted for
the reign of law: they passed from the Republic to the Empire; our
revolution is being accomplished in a contrary sense; we are inclined
to pass from the Royalty to the Republic, or, not to specify any form,
to Democracy: this will not be effected without difficulty.
[Sidenote: Property.]
To touch upon only one point in a thousand: will property, for
instance, remain distributed as it is? The Royalty born at Rheims was
able to keep that property going by tempering its severity by the
diffusion of moral laws, even as it changed humanity into charity.
Given a political state of things in which individuals have so many
millions a year, while other individuals are dying of hunger: can that
state of things subsist, when religion is no longer there with its
hopes beyond this world to explain the sacrifice? There are children to
whom their mothers give suck at their withered breasts for want of a
mouthful of bread to feed their dying babes; there are families whose
members are reduced to huddle together at night, for want of blankets
to warm them. That man sees his many furrows ripen; this one will
possess only the six feet of earth lent to his tomb by his native land.
Now with how many ears of corn can six feet of earth supply a dead man?
As instruction comes down to those lower classes, the latter discover
the secret sore which gnaws at the irreligious social order. The too
great disproportion of conditions and fortunes was endurable so long as
it remained concealed; but, so soon as this disproportion was generally
perceived, it received its death-blow. Recompose the aristocratic
fictions, if you can; try to persuade the poor man, when he shall have
learnt to read correctly and ceased to believe, when he shall be as
well-informed as yourself, try to persuade him that he must submit to
every sort of privation, while his neighbour possesses superfluity a
thousand times told: as a last resource, you will have to kill him.
When steam shall be perfected, when, joined to the telegraph and
railways, it shall have caused distances to disappear, we shall see not
only merchandise travel, but also ideas, restored to the use of their
wings. When fiscal and commercial barriers shall have been abolished
between the various States, as they already are between the provinces
of the same State; when different countries entertaining daily
relations shall tend to promote the unity of the peoples: how will you
resuscitate the old manner of separation?
Society, on the other hand, is no less threatened by the spread of
intellect than it is by the development of brute nature: suppose labour
to be condemned to idleness by reason of the multiplication and variety
of machinery; admit that one only and general mercenary, matter,
replaces the mercenaries of the farm and the household: what will you
do with the unemployed human race? What will you do with passions that
are idle at the same time as, the intellect? The vigour of the body
is maintained by physical occupation; when labour ceases, strength
disappears; we shall become like those nations of Asia which fall a
prey to the first invader and which are unable to defend themselves
against a hand that bears the sword. Thus liberty is preserved only by
work, because work produces strength; withdraw the curse pronounced
against the sons of Adam, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat
bread[430]," and they will die in servitude. The divine curse therefore
enters into the mystery of our lot; man is less the slave of his sweat
than of his thought: that is how, after making the circuit of society,
after passing through the different civilizations, after supposing
unknown perfections, we find ourselves once more at the starting-point,
in the presence of the truths of Scripture.
[Sidenote: The Monarchy.]
At the time of our Monarchy of eight centuries, Europe had in France
the centre of its intelligence, its perpetuity, its repose; when
deprived of that Monarchy, Europe at once inclined towards democracy.
The human race, for good or ill, has become its own master; the
princes have enjoyed its property during its minority; now that the
nations have come of age, they contend that they have no more need of
guardians. From David to our time, the kings have been called: the
vocation of the peoples is commencing. The brief and small exceptions
of the Greek, Carthaginian, Roman Republics, with slaves, do not take
away the fact that, in antiquity, the monarchic state was the normal
state of the globe. The whole of modern society, since the banner of
the French kings has ceased to exist, is laying aside the monarchy.
God, to hasten the degradation of the royal power, has delivered the
sceptres in different countries to infirm kings, to little girls in
long-clothes[431] or in the white veils of their weddings[432]: those
are the toothless lions, the clawless lionesses, the sucking babes, the
marrying babes, whom grown men are to follow in this era of unbelief.
The boldest opinions are proclaimed in the face of the monarchs, who
pretend to feel safe behind the three-fold hedge of a suspected guard.
The flood of democracy is overtaking them; they climb from storey to
storey, from the ground-floor to the attic roof of their palace, whence
they will leap into the water through the dormer windows.
In the midst of this, observe a phenomenal contradiction: material
conditions are improving, intellectual progress increases, and the
nations, instead of profiting, are diminishing. Whence comes this
contradiction?
It is because we have lost in the moral order of things. There have
been crimes at all periods; but they were never committed in cold
blood, as they are nowadays, because of the loss of the religious
sentiment. At this hour, they no longer revolt us, they seem a
consequence of the march of time; if formerly we judged them in a
different manner, it was because we were not yet, as we dare to
assert, sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of man; we analyze
them at the present moment; we test them in the crucible, in order
to see what useful thing we can obtain from them, even as chemistry
finds ingredients in the sewers. The corruption of the mind, which is
very much more destructive than that of the senses, is accepted as a
necessary result; it no longer belongs to a few wayward individuals: it
has become public property.
Many men would feel humiliated if it were proved to them that they have
a soul, that beyond this life they will find another life; they would
think that they were wanting in firmness and strength and genius, if
they did not rise superior to the pusillanimity of our fathers; they
admit annihilation, or, if you like, doubt, as a disagreeable fact
perhaps, but as a truth which it is impossible to deny. Admire the
stultification of our pride!
That is how the decline of society and the increase of the individual
are explained. If the moral sense were developed in proportion to
the development of the intellect, there would be a counterpoise,
and humanity would grow up without danger; but the exact opposite
is happening: our perception of good and evil becomes dimmer as our
intellect becomes more enlightened; our conscience shrinks as our
ideas expand. Yes, society will perish: liberty, which could save the
world, will not make progress, for want of leaning on religion; order,
which could maintain the observance of rules, will not be solidly
established, because it is combated by the anarchy of men's ideas. The
purple, which used formerly to confer power, will henceforth serve as
a bed only for misfortune: none will be saved unless he be born on the
straw, like Christ. When the monarchs were disinterred at Saint-Denis,
at the moment when the trumpet sounded for the popular resurrection;
when, taken from their crumbling tombs, they lay awaiting plebeian
burial, the ragmen came to this Last Judgment of the centuries: they
looked with their lanterns into the eternal night; they rummaged among
the remains that had escaped the first pillage. Already the Kings were
there no more, but the Royalty was there still: they snatched it from
the womb of time and flung it into the rubbish-basket.
[Sidenote: Old and young Europe.]
So much for old Europe: it will never revive. Does young Europe offer
better prospects? The present world, the world without consecrated
authority, seems placed between two impossibilities, the impossibility
of the past and the impossibility of the future. And do not go to
think, as some imagine, that, if we are badly off at present, good will
come out of evil: human nature, when disordered at its source, does not
proceed with such correctness. For instance, the excesses of liberty
lead to despotism; but the excesses of tyranny lead only to tyranny;
the latter, in degrading us, makes us incapable of independence:
Tiberius did not cause Rome to go back to the Republic; he left only
Caligula to follow him.
To avoid explanations, we are satisfied to declare that the times may
have hidden in their womb a political constitution which we do not
perceive. Did the whole of antiquity, did the finest geniuses of that
antiquity conceive a society without slaves? Yet we see it existing.
We assert that, in this civilization as yet unborn, the human race
will grow greater; I have advanced this theory myself: is it not to
be feared, however, that the individual will grow less? We may become
industrious bees occupied in common with the manufacture of our honey.
In the _material_ world, men unite for purposes of labour; a multitude
attains sooner and by different roads the thing after which it strives;
masses of individuals will raise pyramids; by dint of study, each on
his own side, those individuals will light upon scientific discoveries
and explore every corner of physical creation. But are things the same
in the _moral_ world? It will be vain for a thousand brains to combine:
never will they compose the master-piece that issues from the head of a
Homer.
It has been said that a city whose members enjoy an equal division
of goods and education will present to the gaze of the Divinity a
spectacle surpassing the spectacle of the city of our fathers. The
madness of the moment tends to achieve the unity of peoples and to make
but one man of the whole race: well and good; but, in acquiring general
faculties, will not a whole series of private sentiments perish?
Good-bye to the delights of the home; good-bye to the charms of the
family: among all those beings, white, yellow and black, reputed as
your fellow-countrymen, you would not be able to throw yourself on a
brother's neck! Was there nothing in the life of old, nothing in that
limited space upon which you looked out from your ivy-framed casement?
Beyond your horizon, you suspected the existence of unknown lands of
which the bird of passage, the only traveller that you had seen in
autumn, scarce spoke to you. It was happiness to think that the hills
which surrounded you would not disappear from before your eyes; that
they contained your friendships and your loves; that the moaning of the
night around your dwelling would be the only sound to which you would
fall asleep; that never would your soul's solitude be disturbed; that
you would always meet there the thoughts that await you to resume their
familiar intercourse with you. You knew where you were born, you knew
where your tomb lay; as you entered the forest, you were able to say:
Beaux arbres qui m'avez vu naître,
Bientôt vous me verrez mourir[433]!
Man does not need to travel in order to grow greater: he carries
immensity with him. The accents that escape from your bosom are not
measured, they find an echo in thousands of souls: he who has not that
melody within himself will ask it in vain of the universe. Sit down
on the trunk of the tree felled in the depths of the wood: if in your
profound forgetfulness of self, in your immobility, in your silence you
do not find the infinite, it is useless for you to wander on the banks
of the Ganges.
What would an universal society be that should have no particular
country, that should not be French, nor English, nor German, nor
Spanish, nor Portuguese, nor Italian, nor Russian, nor Tartar, nor
Turkish, nor Persian, nor Indian, nor Chinese, nor American, or rather
that should be all these societies at once? What would be the outcome
for its manners, its science, its arts, its poetry? How would passions
be expressed felt at the same time in the manner of different peoples
in different climates? How would the language entertain that confusion
of needs and images produced by the various suns that should have cast
their light upon a common youth, manhood and old age? And what would
that language be? Would an universal idiom result from this fusion of
societies, or would there be a dialect of compromise, employed for
daily use, while each nation would talk its own language, or else would
the different languages be understood by all? Under what like rule,
under what one law would this society have its being? How would one
find one's place on an earth enlarged by the power of ubiquitousness
and narrowed by the petty proportions of a globe tainted on every hand?
There would be nothing for it but to apply to science for means to
change one's planet.
Are you weary of private ownership and do you wish to turn the
government into a sole proprietor, distributing to what will have
become a mendicant community a share commensurate with the merit of
each individual? Who shall judge of the merits? Who will have the
strength and the authority to compel the execution of your decrees? Who
will keep and make the most of that bank of living real estate?
[Sidenote: Socialism.]
Will you seek to bring about the association of labour? What will the
weak, the sick, the unintelligent bring to the community left burdened
with their unfitness?
Here is another contrivance: one might form, in place of wages, a
sort of limited company or partnership between manufacturers and
workmen, between mind and matter, to which the one would bring his
capital and his idea, the others their industry and their labour; the
eventual profits to be shared in common. That would be very good,
admitting complete perfection among men; very good, if you meet with
no quarrelling, avarice, nor envy: but, if a single partner protests,
the whole crumbles to the ground; divisions and law-suits begin. This
method, which seems a little more possible in theory, is quite as
impossible in practice.
Would you, having modified your opinion, seek to build a city in which
every man shall possess a roof, a fire, clothes and sufficient to eat?
When you have succeeded in endowing every citizen, the good and bad
qualities of each will disturb your division and make it an unjust one:
this one requires more to eat than that; that one is unable to work as
much as this: the economical and industrious will become rich men, the
spendthrifts, the idlers, the cripples will relapse into poverty; for
you cannot give all men the same temperament: natural inequalities will
reappear in spite of your efforts.
And do not think that we should allow ourselves to be tied by the
complicated legal precautions demanded by the organization of the
family, patrimonial rights, wardships, recaptions by heirs and
assigns, and so on, and so on. Marriage is notoriously an absurd
oppression: we abolish all that. If the son kills the father, it is not
the son, as is easily proved, who commits parricide but the father who,
by living, sacrifices the son. Do not therefore let us go confusing our
brains with the labyrinth of an edifice which we put down level with
the ground; it is unnecessary to linger over those crazy trifles of our
grandfathers.
This notwithstanding, there are some among the modern sectarians who,
half seeing the impossibility of their doctrines, mix with them, to
obtain sufferance for them, words of morality and religion; they think
that, pending better things, we might first be brought up to the ideal
mediocrity of the Americans; they close their eyes and are good enough
to forget that the Americans are landlords and ardent landlords, which
alters the question somewhat.
Others, still more obliging, who admit a sort of elegance of
civilization, would be content to transform us into "Constitutional"
Chinese, all but atheists, free and enlightened old men, sitting in
yellow robes for centuries in our flowery seed-plots, spending our
days in a state of comfort acquired to the multitude, having invented
everything, discovered everything, vegetating peacefully in the midst
of our accomplished progress and only going on board a railway-train,
like a bale of merchandise, in order to travel from Canton to the Great
Wall to chat about a marsh that wants draining or a canal that wants
cutting with some other manufacturer of the Celestial Empire. In either
supposition, American or Chinese, I shall be glad to have departed
before so great a felicity happened to me.
Lastly, one solution remains: it might be that, in consequence of the
complete degradation of the human character, the peoples would put up
with what they have; they would lose the love of independence, replaced
by the love of money, at the same time that the kings lost the love of
power, bartered for the love of the Civil List. Hence would result a
compromise between monarchs and subjects charmed to crawl promiscuously
in a bastard political order of things; they would display their
infirmities to one another at their ease, as in the old leper-hospitals
or in those mud-baths in which sick people soak nowadays to obtain
relief: one would dabble in a common mire like a peaceful reptile.
We misconstrue our times, however, when we desire, in the present
condition of society, to replace the pleasures of our intellectual
nature by the joys of our physical nature. The latter, we can
understand, were able to occupy the life of the old aristocratic
nations: masters of the world, they owned palaces, troops of slaves;
they absorbed whole regions of Africa in their private possessions. But
under what portico would you now air your paltry leisure? In what vast
and decorated baths would you shut up the perfumes, the flowers, the
flute-players, the courtezans of Ionia? One is not Heliogabalus[434]
for the asking. Where will you find the wealth indispensable to those
material delights? The soul is thrifty; but the body is extravagant.
[Sidenote: Communism.]
And now, a few words of a more serious character touching absolute
equality. That equality would bring back not only the servitude of
bodies, but the slavery of souls; it would be a question of nothing
less than destroying the moral and physical inequality of the
individual. Our will, administered under the general eye, would see
our faculties falling into disuse. The infinite, for instance, is part
of our nature: forbid our intellect, or even our passions to think
of endless blessings, and you reduce man to the life of the snail,
you transform him into a machine. For make no mistake: without the
possibility of attaining all, without the idea of living eternally,
you have nothingness everywhere; without individual property, none is
free; whosoever has no property cannot be independent; he becomes a
proletarian or a salaried servant, whether he live under the present
condition of separate ownerships or in the midst of a common ownership.
Common ownership would make society resemble one of those monasteries
at whose door stewards used to stand distributing bread. Hereditary and
inviolable property is our personal defense; property is nothing else
than liberty. Absolute equality, which presupposes complete submission
to that equality, would reproduce the harshest form of servitude; it
would turn the human individual into a beast of burden subjected to
the action which would constrain him and obliged to walk endlessly in
the same path.
While I was arguing thus, M. de Lamennais[435], behind the bolts of
his gaol, was attacking the same systems with his logical power, which
is enlightened by the brilliancy of the poet. A passage borrowed from
his pamphlet entitled, _Du Passé et de l'avenir du peuple_[436] will
complete my arguments; listen to him, it is he now who speaks:
"Of those who put before them this object of strict, absolute
equality, the most consistent, in order to establish it and
maintain it, agree upon the use of force, despotism, dictatorship,
under one form or another.
"The partisans of absolute equality are, at the out-set, compelled
to attack the natural inequalities, in order to extenuate and, if
possible, destroy them. Unable to affect the primary conditions of
organization and development, their work begins at the moment when
man is born or when the child leaves its mother's womb. The State
then seizes upon it: behold it the absolute master of the spiritual
as of the organic being. Mind and conscience, all depends upon
the State, all is subject to the State. No more family, no more
paternity, no more marriage henceforth; a male, a female, children
whom the State handles, with which it does as it pleases, morally,
physically: an universal servitude and so profound that nothing
escapes it, that it penetrates to the very soul.
"Where material things are concerned, equality can never be
established in ever so little a lasting manner by a simple
partition. If it be a question of land only, one can understand
that it can be divided into as many portions as there are
individuals; but, as the number of individuals varies perpetually,
it would also be necessary perpetually to vary that primitive
division. All individual property being abolished, there is no
lawful owner except the State. This mode of ownership, if it be
voluntary, is that of the monk bound down by his vows to poverty
as to obedience; if it be not voluntary, it is that of the slave,
where nothing modifies the harshness of his condition. All human
ties, sympathetic relations, mutual devotion, exchange of services,
free gift of self, all that constitutes the charm of life and its
greatness, all, all has disappeared, disappeared for ever.
"The methods hitherto proposed to solve the problem of the future
of the people end in the negation of all the indispensable
conditions of existence, destroy, either directly or by
implication, duty, right, the family and would produce, if they
could be applied to society, instead of the liberty in which all
real progress is summarized, only a servitude with which history,
however far we go back into the past, can offer nothing to compare."
There is nothing to be added to this logic.
[Sidenote: The Abbé de Lamennais.]
I do not go to see prisoners, like Tartuffe, to distribute alms to
them, but to enrich my intelligence by contact with men who are worth
more than I. If their opinions differ from mine, I am not afraid:
stubborn Christian that I am, all the fine geniuses in the world would
not shake my faith; I am sorry for them, and my charity protects
me against seduction. If I sin through excess, they sin through
deficiency; I understand what they understand, they do not understand
what I understand. In the same prison where I used to visit the noble
and unfortunate Carrel, I now visit the Abbé de Lamennais[437].
The Revolution of July has relegated to the darkness of a gaol the
remnant of the superior men of whom it can neither appraise the merit
nor endure the effulgency. In the last room as one goes up, under
a slooping roof which we can touch with our heads[438], we silly
believers in liberty, François[439] de Lamennais and François de
Chateaubriand, talk of serious things. Struggle as he please, his
ideas have remained in the religious mould; their form has remained
Christian, even when their substance is furthest removed from dogma:
his speech has retained the sound of Heaven.
A true believer professing heresy, the author of the _Essai sur
l'indifférence_[440] talks my language with ideas that are not my
ideas. If, after having embraced the popular evangelical teaching,
he had remained attached to the priesthood, he would have preserved
the authority which variations have destroyed. The parish priests,
the new members of the clergy (and the most distinguished among those
ecclesiastics) were going towards him; the bishops would have found
themselves involved in his cause if he had clung to the Gallican
liberties, while continuing to venerate the successor of St. Peter and
defending unity.
In France, the youth of the country would have gathered round the
missionary, in whom it found the ideas which it loves and the progress
to which it aspires; in Europe, the attentive dissenters would have
raised no obstacle; great Catholic nations, the Poles, the Irish,
the Spaniards, would have blessed the preacher who had risen up.
Rome herself would have ended by seeing that the new evangelist was
causing the dominion of the Church to take new birth and supplying
the oppressed Pontiff with the means of resisting the influence of
the absolute kings. What power of life! Intellect, religion, liberty
represented in a priest!
God did not wish it: the light suddenly failed him who was the
light; the guide, stealing away, left his flock in darkness. But my
fellow-countryman, though his public career has been interrupted,
will always have his private superiority left and his pre-eminence in
natural gifts. In the order of time, he ought to survive me; I summon
him to my death-bed to agitate our great conquests at those gates
through which there is no returning. I should like to see his genius
shed upon me the absolution which once his hand had the right to call
down upon my head. We were lulled at our birth by the same waves[441];
may my ardent faith and my sincere admiration be permitted to hope
that I shall meet my reconciled friend once more on the same shore of
eternal things[442].
On the upshot, my investigations lead me to conclude that the old
society is giving way beneath itself, that it is impossible for
whosoever is not a Christian to understand the future society pursuing
its career and satisfying at one time either the purely republican or
the moderate monarchical idea. In any hypothesis, you can derive the
improvements which you desire only from the Gospel.
At the bottom of the actual sectarians, what we find is always the
plagiarism, the parody of the Gospel, always the apostolic principle:
that principle has entered into us so deeply that we use it as though
it belongs to us; we presume it to be natural, even though it be not so
to us; it has come to us from our old faith, to take the latter two or
three steps in the ascending line above us. Many a man of independent
mind occupied with the perfecting of his fellows would never have
thought of it if the right of the peoples had not been laid down by the
Son of Man. Every act of philanthropy in which we indulge, every system
of which we dream in the interests of humanity, is but the Christian
idea turned over, changed in name and too often disfigured: it is
always the Word made Flesh[443]!
[Sidenote: The Christian idea.]
Do you say that the Christian idea is only the human idea in
progression? I agree; but open the different cosmogonies, and you
shall learn that a traditional Christianity preceded revealed
Christianity upon earth. If the Messiah "had not come" and if He "had
not spoken[444]," as He says of Himself, the idea would not have
been disengaged, the truths would have remained confused, such as
we see them in the writings of the ancients. However you interpret
it, therefore, it is from the Revealer, or from Christ that you hold
everything; it is from the Saviour, _Salvator_, from the Comforter,
_Paracletus_, that you must always start; it is from Him that you have
received the germs of civilization and philosophy.
You see, therefore, that I find no solution for the future except in
Christianity and in Catholic Christianity; the religion of the Word is
the manifestation of truth, even as the Creation is God made visible.
I do not pretend that a general renovation will absolutely take place,
for I admit that whole nations are vowed to destruction; I admit also
that the faith is drying up in certain countries: but, if a single
grain of it remain, if it fall upon a little earth, were it but in the
remnants of a vase, that grain will spring up and a second incarnation
of the Catholic spirit will revive society.
Christianity is the most philosophical and rational appreciation of God
and the Creation; it contains the three great laws of the universe,
divine law, moral law, political law: divine law, the unity of God in
three Persons; moral law, charity; political law, that is, liberty,
equality, fraternity.
The two first principles are fully developed; the third, political law,
has not received its complements, because it could not flourish so long
as the intelligent belief in the infinite being and universal morality
were not firmly established. Now Christianity had first to clear away
the absurdities and abominations with which idolatry and slavery had
encumbered the human race.
Enlightened persons cannot understand how a Catholic like myself can
persist in sitting in the shadow of what they call ruins; according to
those persons, it is a wager on my part, an obstinate determination.
But tell me, for pity's sake, where shall I find a family and a God in
the individual and philosophical society which you offer me? Tell me
that, and I follow you; if not, do not find it amiss that I lie down in
the tomb of Christ, the only shelter which you have left to me while
abandoning me.
No, I have made no wager with myself: I am sincere; see here what has
happened to me: of my plans, my studies, my experiments, all that has
remained to me is a complete disillusionment touching all the things
which this world pursues. My religious conviction, as it grew greater,
has swallowed up all my other convictions; there is no more believing
Christian and no more incredulous man here below than I. Far from
drawing near its end, the religion of the Deliverer has hardly entered
upon its political period: liberty, equality, fraternity. The Gospel,
the sentence of acquittal, has not yet been read to all; we have not
gone beyond the curses pronounced by Christ:
"Wo to you ... because you load men with burdens which they cannot
bear, and you yourselves touch not the packs with one of your
fingers[445]."
Christianity is stable in its dogma and mobile in its enlightenment;
its transformation involves the universal transformation. When it
has reached its highest point, the darkness will become completely
lightened; liberty, crucified on Calvary with the Messiah, will
descend from it with Him; it will hand to the nations that new
Testament written in its favour and hitherto trammelled in its clauses.
Governments will pass away, moral evil will disappear, rehabilitation
will proclaim the consummation of the centuries of death and oppression
born of the Fall.
When will that longed-for day arrive? When will society reconstruct
itself after the secret methods of the generating principle? None can
say; it is impossible to calculate the resistance of the passions.
[Sidenote: Christian liberty.]
More than once will death enervate races of men and shed silence upon
events even as snow falling during the night deadens the noise of the
traffic. Nations do not grow up so rapidly as the individuals of whom
they are composed, nor do they disappear so quickly. How long does it
not take to attain a single thing sought after! The death-agony of the
Lower Empire threatened to be endless; the Christian Era, already so
extensive, has not sufficed to abolish servitude. These calculations, I
know, do not suit the French temper; in our revolutions, we have never
admitted the element of time: that is why we are always wonder-struck
at results contrary to our impatience. Full of generous courage, young
men rush onwards; they make straight for a lofty region which they
see dimly and which they strive to reach: nothing could be worthier
of admiration; but they will wear out their lives in those efforts
and, coming to the end, after disappointment upon disappointment, they
will consign the weight of the years of deception to other deluded
generations, which will carry it on to the next tombs; and so on. The
time of the desert has returned; Christianity is beginning over again,
in the barrenness of the Thebaid, amid a formidable idolatry, the
idolatry of man for himself.
There are two kinds of consequences in history: one is immediate and
instantly known; the other distant and not seen at once. Those two
consequences are often contradictory: the first come from our short
wisdom, the others from long-continued wisdom. The providential event
appears after the human event. God rises behind men. Deny the Supreme
Counsel as much as you please; do not consent to its action; dispute
about words; call what the vulgar call Providence the force of things
or reason; but look at the end of an accomplished fact, and you shall
see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected of
it, when it was not first established on morals and justice.
If Heaven has not pronounced Its last decree; if there is to be a
future, a free and mighty future, that future is still far away, far
beyond the visible horizon: we can reach it only with the aid of that
Christian hope whose wings grow in proportion as all things seem to
betray it, that hope which is longer than time and more powerful than
misfortune.
Will the work inspired by my ashes and destined for my ashes be extant
after me? It is possible that my work may be bad; it is possible that
these Memoirs may fade into nothing on seeing the light: at least the
things which I have told myself will have served to beguile the tedium
of those last hours which no one wishes and which we know not how to
employ. At the end of life is a bitter age: nothing pleases, because
one is worthy of nothing; useful to none, a burden on all, near to our
last resting-place, we have but a step to take to reach it: what would
be the good of musing on a deserted shore? What pleasing shadows would
one see in the future? Fie upon the clouds that now hover over my head!
One idea comes back to me and troubles me: my conscience is not
reassured as to the innocence of my vigils; I dread my blindness and
man's complacency towards his faults. Is what I am writing really in
keeping with justice? Are morality and charity rigorously observed?
Have I had the right to speak of others? What would it avail me to
repent, if these Memoirs did any harm? O you unknown and hidden of the
earth, you whose life, pleasing to the altars, works miracles, all hail
to your secret virtues!
This or that poor man, destitute of knowledge, about whom none will
ever trouble, has, by the mere doctrine of his manners, exercised upon
his companions in suffering the divine influence which emanated from
the virtues of Christ. The greatest book on earth is not worth so much
as an unknown act of those nameless martyrs "whose blood Herod had
mingled with their sacrifices[446]."
You have seen me born; you have seen my childhood, my idolatry of my
singular creation in Combourg Castle, my presentation at Versailles,
my attendance, in Paris, at the first spectacle of the Revolution.
In the New World, I met Washington; I penetrated into the backwoods;
shipwreck brought me back to the coast of my Brittany. Came my
sufferings as a soldier, my wretchedness as an Emigrant. Returning
to France, I became the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._ In a
changed society, I counted and lost friends. Bonaparte stopped me and
flung himself, with the blood-stained body of the Duc d'Enghien, across
my path; I stopped myself in my turn and brought the great man from
his cradle, in Corsica, to his tomb, in St. Helena. I shared in the
Restoration and saw its end.
Thus I have known public and private life. I have four times crossed
the sea; I have followed the sun in the East, touched upon the ruins
of Memphis, Carthage, Sparta and Athens; I have prayed at the tomb of
St. Peter and worshipped on Golgotha. Poor and rich, powerful and weak,
happy and miserable, a man of action, a man of thought, I have placed
my hand in the century, my mind in the desert; effective existence has
shown itself to me in the midst of illusions, even as the land appears
to sailors in the midst of mists. If those facts spread over my dreams,
like the varnish that preserves fragile paintings, do not disappear,
they will mark the place through which my life passed.
[Sidenote: My several careers.]
In each of my three careers, I placed an important object before
myself: as a traveller, I aimed at discovering the polar world; as a
man of letters, I have striven to reconstruct religion from its ruins;
as a statesman, I have endeavoured to give the nations the system of
balanced monarchy, to restore France to her rank in Europe, to give
back to her the strength which the Treaties of Vienna had taken from
her; I have at least assisted in winning that one of our liberties
which is worth all the others: the liberty of the press. In the divine
order of things, religion and liberty; in the human order, honour and
glory (which are the human generation of religion and liberty): that is
what I have desired for my country.
Of the French authors of my own period, I may be said to be the only
one who resembles his works: a traveller, soldier, publicist, minister,
it is amid forests that I have sung the forests, aboard ship that I
have depicted the Ocean, in camp that I have spoken of arms, in exile
that I have learnt to know exile, in Courts, in affairs of State, in
Parliament that I have studied princes, politics and laws.
The orators of Greece and Rome played their part in the republic and
shared its fate; in Italy and Spain, at the end of the Middle Ages
and under the Renascence, the leading intellects in letters and the
arts took part in the social movement. How stormy and how fine were
the lives of Dante, of Tasso, of Camoens, of Ercilla, of Cervantes! In
France, of old, our songs and stories came to us from our pilgrimages
and battles; but, commencing from the reign of Louis XIV., our writers
have too often been men leading detached lives, and their talents have
perchance expressed the spirit, but not the deeds of their age.
I, as luck would have it, after camping in Iroquois shelters and
Arab tents, after wearing the cloak of the savage and the caftan of
the mameluke, have sat at the tables of kings only to relapse into
indigence. I have meddled with peace and war; I have signed treaties
and protocols; I have taken part in sieges, congresses and conclaves,
in the restoration and overturning of thrones; I have made history and
I could write it: and my solitary and silent life went on through the
tumult and uproar in the company of the daughters of my imagination,
Atala, Amélie, Bianca, Velléda, without speaking of what I might call
the realities of my days, if they had not themselves been the seduction
of chimeras. I am afraid lest I should have a soul of the nature of
that which an ancient philosopher called a sacred sickness[447].
I have found myself caught between two ages, as in the conflux of two
rivers, and I have plunged into their waters, turning regretfully from
the old bank upon which I was born, yet swimming hopefully towards an
unknown shore[448].
The whole of geography has changed since, according to the expression
of our old customs, I was able to look at the sky from my bed. If
I compare the two terrestrial globes, the one at the commencement,
the other at the end of my life, I no longer recognise them. A fifth
part of the world, Australia, has been discovered and populated[449];
French sails have recently caught sight of a sixth continent amid the
ice-fields of the Antarctic Pole[450], and the Parrys, Rosses and
Franklins have turned the coasts, on our own pole, that mark the
limits of North America; Africa has opened its mysterious solitudes; in
short, there is not a corner of our abode that is at present unknown.
We are attacking all the necks of land that separate the world; soon,
no doubt, we shall see ships pass through the Isthmus of Panama and,
perhaps, the Isthmus of Suez[451].
[Sidenote: The world of the future.]
History has made parallel discoveries in the depths of time; the
sacred languages have allowed us to read their lost vocabulary; on
the very granite-blocks of Mezraim, Champollion[452] has deciphered
those hieroglyphics which seemed to be a seal set upon the lips of
the desert that answered for their eternal discretion[453]. If new
revolutions have struck off the map Poland, Holland[454], Genoa and
Venice, other republics occupy a part of the shores of the Pacific and
Atlantic. In those countries, a perfected civilization would be able to
lend assistance to a vigorous nature: steam-boats would ascend those
rivers destined to become easy means of communication after having been
invincible obstacles; the banks of those rivers would become covered
with towns and villages, even as we have seen new American States
spring from the deserts of Kentucky. Through those forests once reputed
impenetrable would fly horseless chariots, transporting enormous
weights and thousands of travellers. Along those rivers, along those
roads, would descend, together with the trees for the construction of
the ships, the wealth of the mines which would serve to pay for them;
and the Isthmus of Panama would burst its barrier to give passage to
those ships from one sea to the other.
The shipping which borrows movement from fire is not restricted to the
navigation of rivers: it crosses the Ocean; distances are shortening:
no more currents, monsoons, contrary winds, blockades, close-ports.
It is a far cry from this romance of industry to the hamlet of
Plancoët[455]: in those days, the ladies used to play at old-time games
by their fireside; the peasant-women spun the hemp for their clothes;
the meagre resin-torch lit up the village evenings; chemistry had not
worked its wonders; machinery had not set all the waters and all the
irons in motion to weave the wools or embroider the silks; gas, left to
the fire-balls, did not yet supply the lighting for our theatres and
streets.
Those transformations are not confined to our abodes: obeying the
instinct of his immortality, man has sent his intellect on high;
at each step that he has taken in the firmament, he has recognised
miracles of the Unspeakable Power. That star, which seemed single to
our fathers, is double and treble to our eyes; suns interposed before
suns eclipse one another and lack space for their multitude. In the
centre of the Infinite, God sees passing around Him those magnificent
theories, proofs added to the proofs of the Supreme Being.
Let us picture, according to our enlarged knowledge, our paltry planet
swimming in an ocean whose waves are suns, in that milky way, the raw
matter of light, the molten metal of worlds which the hand of the
Creator will shape. The distance of certain stars is so prodigious that
their brightness will not be able to reach the eye that watches them
until those stars are extinct: the focus before the ray. How small is
man on the atom where he moves! But how great he is as an intellect!
He knows when the face of luminaries is to be overcast with shadow, at
what hour comets will return after thousands of years: he who lives but
an instant! Microscopic insect though he be, lying unperceived in a
fold of the robe of the sky, the globes cannot hide from him a single
one of their movements in the depth of space. What destinies will those
stars, new to us, shine upon? Is the revelation of those stars linked
with some new phase of humanity? You will know, O races yet to be born;
I do not know, and I am going.
Thanks to the exorbitancy of my years, my monument is finished. It is a
great relief to me; I felt some one urging me: the skipper of the bark
in which my seat is taken was warning me that I had but a moment left
to go on board. If I had been the master of Rome, I should say, like
Sulla, that I am ending my Memoirs on the very eve of my death; but I
should not conclude my story with those words with which he concludes
his:
"I have seen, in a dream, one of my children who showed me Metella,
his mother, and exhorted me to come to enjoy repose in the breast
of eternal happiness."
If I had been Sulla, glory could never have given me repose and
happiness.
[Sidenote: End of my Memoirs.]
New storms will arise; men seem to have a presentiment of calamities
that will surpass the afflictions with which we have been overwhelmed;
already they are thinking of binding up their old wounds again in order
to return to the field of battle. Still, I do not believe in the early
outbreak of misfortunes; peoples and kings alike are tired out; no
unforeseen catastrophe will fall upon France: what comes after me will
be only the effect of the general transformation. No doubt, there will
be painful stations; the world cannot change its aspect without causing
suffering. But, once more, there will be no separate revolutions;
it will be the great revolution approaching its end. The scenes of
to-morrow do not concern me; they call for other painters: it is your
turn, gentlemen!
As I write these last words, on the 16th of November 1841, my window,
which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Missions, is open: it
is six o'clock in the morning; I see the pale and spreading moon; it is
sinking over the spire of the Invalides scarce revealed by the first
gold ray from the East: one would say that the old world was ending
and the new commencing. I behold the reflections of a dawn of which I
shall not see the sun rise. It but remains for me to sit down by the
edge of my grave; and then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, to
Eternity.
[399] This book was written partly in 1834 and partly in 1841, from the
25th of September to the 16th of November.--T.
[400] Chateaubriand is a year out in his calculation; but, as has
been said before and as he himself has stated, he was an indifferent
arithmetician.--T.
[401] 1 September 1715.--T.
[402] Antonio Giudice, Duca di Giovenazza, Principe di Cellamare
(1657-1733), of Neapolitan birth, was Spanish Ambassador to the Court
of France in 1715. He became the soul of a conspiracy directed against
the Duc D'Orléans and having for its object the transfer of the Regency
to Philip V. King of Spain. But the plot was discovered and Cellamare
made to leave the Kingdom in 1718.--T.
[403] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 15, n. 5. Alberoni's fall occurred in 1719.--T.
[404] Guillaume Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Cambrai (1656-1723),
became Foreign Minister in 1717, was useful to the Regent in
discovering Cellamare's conspiracy and received the See of Cambrai, as
his reward, in 1718. He became Prime Minister in 1722. Dubois added to
the Court of the Regency such depravity as there was room for.--T.
[405] John Law (1671-1729), the Scotch financier, became French
Controller-general of Finance in May 1720. He was the inventor of a
marvellous "System," which collapsed in May of the same year, and Law
with it. He was driven from France and his estates confiscated.--T.
[406] Louis Henri Duc de Bourbon (1692-1740), known as M. le Duc, was
Prime Minister from 1723 to 1726, when Fleury obtained his banishment
to Chantilly.
[407] André Hercule Cardinal de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus (1653-1743),
was seventy-three years old, when he became Prime Minister, and
remained in power till his death, at the age of ninety.--T.
[408] The War of the Polish Succession.--B.
[409] 29 May 1734 (_Cf._ Vol. I., p. 13).--T.
[410] Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, Maréchal Duc de Belle-Isle
(1684-1761), father of the Comte de Gisors and grandson of Fouquet
(_vide infra_), created a marshal of France, after meritorious
services, in 1700. His finest feat of arms was his masterly retreat
from Prague in 1742. He was Minister for War from 1757 till his
death.--T.
[411] The French were defeated by the Brunswickers, at Crefeld, on the
23rd of June 1758.--T.
[412] Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle-Isle (1615-1680),
Superintendent of Finance from 1652 to 1661, is more celebrated
for the disgrace that followed on his administration than for that
administration itself. He was arrested and condemned for peculation in
1661 and imprisoned at Pignerol, in Piedmont, where he died in 1680,
after nineteen years' captivity. He retained many good friends during
his reverses of fortune, notably La Fontaine, who sang his sufferings,
and Madame de Sévigné.--T.
[413] La Bourdonnais (_Cf._ Vol. I., p. 26, n. 6) was Governor-General
of the Isles of France and Bourbon when, in 1743, he went to the
assistance of Dupleix, Governor of French India, who was threatened
by the English. La Bourdonnais laid siege to Madras and compelled it
to capitulate (1746). By the terms of the capitulation, Madras was to
be restored to the English on payment of a ransom. Dupleix quashed
this capitulation and a collision arose between him and La Bourdonnais
which was fatal to the latter. Furious at Dupleix's want of faith, La
Bourdonnais evacuated Madras and went back as a private individual to
the Isle of France, where he had been replaced in the command by the
instructions of the masterful Dupleix. He returned to France, in 1748,
to reply to the accusations levelled against him at the instance of
his persecutor, was imprisoned in the Bastille and remained there for
several years without receiving an opportunity of justifying himself.
At last, in 1752, his innocence was established and he released; but he
was a ruined man and he died in 1753 of a long and painful illness.--T.
[414] Joseph François Marquis Dupleix (1697-1764) was Governor of the
French East Indies from 1742 to 1754. In the war which ensued on his
breach of faith (_vide supra_), he displayed a courage and capacity
that went far to atone for the wrong he had undoubtedly committed. For
forty-two days, he defended Pondicherry against a formidable English
fleet and an army on land, and he added a great tract of country to the
French dominions. Puffed out by his successes, he ended by struggling
against the French East India Company itself, whose agent he was, when
it tried to oppose his enterprises. Ruined at last by all these wars,
he strove for a time to conceal the real state of things: the truth
became known, and he was recalled (1754). He spent the rest of his life
in bringing actions against the Company for sundry millions of francs
advanced to them and died in poverty and humiliation, in Paris, in
1764.--T.
[415] 1 November 1755.--T.
[416] Robert first Lord Clive of Plassey (1725-1774) started on his
first expedition against Bengal in 1756. He won the Battle of Plassey
on the 23rd of June 1757 and was Governor of Bengal from 1758 to 1760
and from 1765 to 1767. Clive committed suicide in London on the 22nd of
November 1774.--T.
[417] Robert François Damiens (1715-1757) made an unsuccessful attempt
on the life of King Louis XV. on the 5th of January 1757. He succeeded
in stabbing him. The punishment inflicted on Damiens was one of the
most serious known in history: his right hand was burnt in a slow fire;
his flesh was torn with pincers and burnt with melted lead; resin, wax
and oil were poured upon the wounds; and he was torn to pieces by four
horses.--T.
[418] The Family Compact was a treaty signed on the 15th of August 1761
between the Kings of France, Spain and the Two Sicilies and the Duke
of Parma, and so-called because all the contracting parties belonged
to the Bourbon Family. The object of this treaty, of which the Duc de
Choiseul was the chief author, was to counteract the superiority of the
British Navy by the union of the French, Spanish and Italian forces.--T.
[419] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 139, n. 1.--T.
[420] Madame Du Barry was guillotined on the 6th of December 1793--T.
[421] Dominique Joseph Garat (_Cf._ Vol. II., p. 106, n. 6) was sent,
as Minister of Justice under the Convention, on the 20th of January
1793, to notify Louis XVI.'s condemnation to him.--T.
[422] Claude Louis Comte de Saint-Germain (1707-1778) became Minister
for War to Louis XVI., in 1775, on the advice of Turgot. He effected
many useful reforms, especially in the King's Military Household, but
displeased the army by attempting to introduce the Austrian discipline
and corporal punishment. He resigned office in 1777 and died in the
course of the following year.--T.
[423] Chateaubriand was born on the 4th of September 1768.--T.
[424] Prussia declared herself a kingdom in 1701.--T.
[425] Russia underwent her greatest development under Peter the Great,
whose reign lasted from 1682 to 1725.--T.
[426] Corsica was annexed to France on the 15th of August 1768.--T.
[427] Napoleon I. was born on the 15th of August 1768.--T.
[428] _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. 68-69.--T.
[429] American Independence was recognised by Great Britain in 1783.--T.
[430] _Gen._, IV., 19.--T.
[431] Isabella II. Queen of Spain (_b._ 1830 and still living) was made
to usurp the throne, in 1833, on the death of Ferdinand VII., when a
child of three, by the machinations of her mother, Maria Christina
(_cf._ Vol. III., p. 221, n. 2 and Vol. V., p. 74, n. 4). Queen
Isabella was deposed and driven from Spain in 1868, since which time
she has resided in Paris.--T.
[432] Victoria Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (_cf._ Vol. IV., p.
47, n. 2) married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on the 10th of
February 1840, when in her twenty-first year.--T.
[433] GUILLAUME ANFRIE, ABBÉ DE CHAULIEU, _Les Louanges de la vie
champêtre, à Fontenay, en_ 1707, 71-72:
"O beautiful trees that presided
O'er my birth, you shall soon see me die!"--T.
[434] Varius Avitus Bassianus, known as Heliogabalus, Roman Emperor
(205-222) was proclaimed Emperor in 218 and gave himself up to the
most extravagant licentiousness. He was killed, in the eighteenth year
of his age, by his soldiers, whom his rapacity and debaucheries had
irritated.--T.
[435] Lamennais (_cf._ Vol. I., p. 27, n. 1) had been prosecuted for
one of his political writings, the _Pays et le Gouvernement_, and
sentenced, on the 26th of December 1840, to twelve months' imprisonment
and a tine of 2,000 francs.--B.
[436] Lamennais' pamphlet had just been published when Chateaubriand
was writing these last pages of the Memoirs in the autumn of 1841.--B.
[437] Lamennais was locked up at Sainte-Pélagie from January to
December 1841. He here composed his _Voix de prison_, an admirable
little volume containing, beside the furious rage of the pamphleteer,
pages of exquisite poetic feeling.--B.
[438] It is interesting in this connection to note that Lamennais was a
dwarf in stature and Chateaubriand himself only five feet four inches
high.--T.
[439] Lamennais' name was not François, but Félicité Robert.--T.
[440] 1817-1823.--T.
[441] Lamennais was born at Saint-Malo on the 19th of June 1782,
fourteen years after Chateaubriand.--T.
[442] Lamennais died in Paris on the 27th of February 1854, six years
after Chateaubriand. His funeral was held almost by stealth, on the 1st
of March. The hour of the funeral was accelerated by the authorities,
who were afraid of disturbances; six or eight persons followed the
hearse, from which the crowd was kept off by an armed force.
"The coffin," says M. Blaize, in his _Essai biographique sur M. F. de
La Mennais_, "was lowered into one of those long and hideous trenches
in which the common people are buried. When it was covered with earth,
the grave-digger asked:
"'Is there to be a cross?'"
M. Barbet answered:
"'No. M. de La Mennais said, "They must put nothing on my grave.'"
"Not a word was spoken over the tomb."--B.
[443] JOHN, I., 14.--T.
[444] JOHN, XV., 22.--T.
[445] LUKE, XI., 46.--T.
[446] _Cf._ LUKE, XIII., 1: "And there were present at that very time
some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood _Pilate_ had mingled
with their sacrifices." An earlier edition gives _Herodotus!_ I have
little doubt that the misquotation was a slip on the part of the
author's pen.--T.
[447] Epilepsy.--T.
[448] _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. XXI.-XXIV.: _The Author's Preface._--T.
[449] Australia was explored by Cook in 1770-1777. The first settlement
was at Port Jackson in 1788.--T.
[450] Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) visited the
Antarctic Ocean in the _Coquille_, in 1839. He was killed in the
burning of a railway train between Paris and Versailles on the 8th of
May 1842.--T.
[451] Ferdinand Vicomte de Lesseps (1805-1894) made his first
investigation of the Isthmus of Suez in 1849. The Canal was thrown open
for navigation in 1869. Work on the Panama Canal began in 1881.--T.
[452] Jean François Champollion (1791-1831) discovered the key to the
Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions in 1822, with the aid of the famous
Rosetta Stone.--T.
[453] M. Charles Lenormant, Champollion's learned travelling-companion,
has preserved the grammar of the obelisks which M. Ampère has gone to
study to-day on the ruins of Thebes and Memphis.--_Author's Note._
[454] _Sic_, in all the editions!--T.
[455] _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. 21-22.--T.
THE END.
APPENDICES
I. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE OF THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY
II. UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE _MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE_
III. THE LAST YEARS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
IV. THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE
APPENDIX I
(BY M. EDMOND BIRÉ)
THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE OF THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY
The Comte de La Ferronnays, in the course of his interviews with King
Charles X. at Hradschin Castle[456], brought himself to say:
"If Madame has not yet complied with Your Majesty's wish, if she has
hitherto refused to furnish the proof which is asked of her, it is
because her advisers in Paris, M. Hennequin[457] among others, have
frightened her as to the consequences that might ensue to her from the
publicity which it may perhaps be intended to give to her marriage.
She has been told that Your Majesty would not be satisfied until you
had the original instrument in your hands. Now Madame, I fear, will
never part with that document. But, if there were any other means of
obtaining the certainty which Your Majesty desires to have, if a man
honoured with all the King's confidence, such as M. de Montbel, for
instance, could, on his word of honour, vouch for the existence and the
perfect regularity of the marriage-deed, would the King then declare
himself satisfied?"
Since the Emigration, Charles X. had the habit of addressing M. de La
Ferronnays in the second person singular. He replied eagerly:
"Yes, certainly, I only ask to be convinced."
It was then arranged that M. de La Ferronnays and M. de Montbel should
go to Florence to the Duchesse de Berry. The Comte de La Ferronnays
continues his narrative in the following words:
"On returning to Prague, I found M. de Montbel's carriage standing
ready harnessed before my door. He was waiting for my return to set
out for Florence, where we were to join the Duchess. He purposed to
pass through Vienna, where he had to supply himself with certain
papers which he thought useful. I intended to go straight to
Tuscany. Nevertheless, in spite of all the haste that I made, I did
not arrive until twenty-four hours after him.
"I immediately called at his hotel; it was six o'clock in the
morning. Soon, Montbel joined me in a little sitting-room next to
his bed-room:
"'We have made an useless journey,' he said to me at once; 'I much
regret having undertaken it. I saw the Duchesse de Berry yesterday,
one hour after my arrival. I found her more excited, more irritated
against the King than ever. She is firmly decided to yield on no
point and to risk all the consequences of a rupture by arriving in
Prague, in spite of the measures taken to close the road to her.
All my arguments, all my entreaties were useless. She ended by
flying out against what she calls the partiality of my conduct. I
can do no more. As for you, she expects you with impatience. She
is persuaded that the letter which you are bringing her from the
Emperor will give her the liberty to continue her journey. That
letter, so different from what she expects, will increase her
irritation two-fold. You will have a painful scene and it appears
to me impossible that you should succeed in making her listen to
reason.'"
As the Duchesse de Berry was not to receive M. de La Ferronnays until
eleven o'clock, the latter, on leaving M. de Montbel, went to the Comte
de Saint-Priest. M. de Saint-Priest was the Princess's most authorized
adviser. The reception was perfect, but nevertheless wrapped up in
every imaginable kind of reserve.
"At bottom, the question remains the same," said M. de Saint-Priest.
"However affectionate the letter which M. de Montbel brought from
the King may be, it makes no alteration in the first demands, nor,
consequently, in the reasons which the Duchess has for rejecting them.
The mere fact," concluded M. de Saint-Priest, "of handing over the
marriage-deed, as Madame is asked to do, would be enough to deprive
her of her rights as a mother, a princess of the Blood and Regent She
refuses and will always refuse to hand it over."
This was brusquely broaching a question which M. de La Ferronnays
meant to discuss only with the Duchess herself. He therefore left M.
de Saint-Priest, not, however, without obtaining from him a promise of
complete neutrality.
"At the appointed hour," he continues, in his narrative, "I called
at the Poggio Imperiale, where Madame was staying. When I was
announced, she was alone, in a small drawing-room, with Count
Lucchesi, who at once withdrew.
"Her Royal Highness' first sentence was one of thanks. The
second was to ask me for the Emperor's letter. She read it with
ever-increasing excitement:
"'I see,' she at last said, angrily, 'that the party against me is
firmly united. This letter of the Emperor's is evidently dictated
by the King. They want to drive me to extremities. They want to be
able to say to France and to my children that there is no Duchesse
de Berry now, that there is only a foreigner entitled to neither
protection nor pity! They are erecting a pillory and they want me
to fasten myself to it.... They know me very little, if they think
me capable of so mean-spirited an act. They who employ such lofty
language to me have a false appreciation of their position and
mine. They do not know the strength which public opinion can give
me against them. They shall learn to know, for, as they want war, I
accept it. I shall have everything printed, everything published. I
shall prove that it is for me to impose conditions and not for me
to accept any. I shall force the King to respect my rights and at
last to give me back my children.'
"Madame la Duchesse de Berry's utterance was loud and short, her
gestures abrupt; and, but for her extreme agitation, I might have
thought that she was repeating a part which she had studied. I
expected this outburst; I was also prepared with the language which
I should have to hold; but I did not hurry to reply.
"Astonished at my silence:
"'But, after all,' she asked, 'don't you think that I am right?'
"'I shall dare to tell you everything, Madame, because my reasons
for being absolutely sincere will justify the harshness of my
words. All that Your Highness has just told me makes me fear that
you are ill-informed, ill-advised or ill-inspired. I have listened
to Madame with great attention and I am obliged to tell her that
she is mistaken as to the King's intentions, but that she is also
unfortunately mistaken as to her own position. The King, Madame,
does not believe in Your Highness' marriage. He does not believe
in it, because you refuse to give him the proof of it and because
your friends continue to protest against the reality of this
marriage. And yet it is important that the truth about this should
be known. Too much has been said about it, or not enough. M. le
Comte Lucchesi's presence about Your Highness is no longer to be
explained. As long as this remains so, I am not afraid to say that
the King, having his grand-children with him, cannot admit you into
the interior of his family. Right, justice and reason are on His
Majesty's side.'
"Here the Duchesse de Berry, whose agitation was extreme, was
unable to contain herself any longer and cried:
"'But, monsieur, I give you my word of honour that I am married.
The marriage-deed, which is perfectly regular, exists. It is
deposited in safe hands, and I shall certainly not take it from
them to place it in those of Charles X. and M. de Metternich.'
"'I beg Your Highness to observe that this is the first time
that you have deigned to speak to me with such confidence. One
declaration of this kind made to me in Naples with that accent
of truth would, I dare to think, have been enough to enable me
to fulfil in an entirely satisfactory manner the mission with
which Your Royal Highness was pleased to entrust me. But what
had I to oppose to the King's doubts? What could I tell him to
reassure his conscience? Nothing, Madame, for you had told me
nothing. My personal conviction could carry no weight Your friends,
moreover, reproached me with it. To admit that one believed in
Your Highness' marriage seemed to them almost an act of treachery.
I could therefore say nothing and I was obliged to leave the King
in the fulness of his doubts. Do not believe, Madame, that it is
to Charles X.'s interest to stigmatize the widow of his son and
the mother of his grandson. No, he shows himself only jealous of
your honour as a widow and a mother, believe me. The King may have
disapproved of a marriage contracted without his knowledge, he
may even have become irritated at it; but to-day he asks only to
set his conscience at rest and to shelter your honour. Your Royal
Highness speaks of the strength which public opinion will give you.
You seem to threaten the King and the Powers with your anger.
Alas, all those outbursts would only be new and great misfortunes.
It is very painful for me to be reduced to give utterance only to
cruel words. But it is necessary that Madame should at last know
the truth, so that she may resolve upon a necessary sacrifice.
No, Madame is no longer in a situation to dictate terms or impose
conditions: she still judges her position from the height of the
pedestal upon which public opinion for some time placed her. No
doubt, if Your Royal Highness had remained there; if, after the
admiration inspired by her sublime courage, constancy, devotion,
we had had to bemoan only her reverses and her captivity, not only
would Madame have lost none of her spell, but she would have left
Blaye even greater than when she entered it. She would not have had
to dictate conditions, for she would have found none but submissive
wills before her. But, unhappily for Madame and for France, the
declaration made in the month of February has completely and
cruelly changed all that. Believe, Madame, the voice of a friend
who will never be able to give you a greater proof of his devotion
than he is doing at this moment; or rather, listen only to your
reason. It will make you understand why and to what extent your
position is changed. You will admit how guilty is the want of
reflection of those who advise you to resort to resistance and even
threats. Everyone pities you, Madame, but no one is any longer
afraid of you. The struggle which you are being urged to maintain
is henceforth too unequal. Its prolongation can henceforth have
fatal consequences for you alone.'
"While speaking, I saw the unhappy Princess turn red, then pale;
tears poured down her cheeks, but she did not try to interrupt me.
I was able to fulfil my sad duty to the end. She then looked at me
with an indefinable expression of face:
"'If all that you have just told me is true, they are deceiving
me and I am very unhappy. What do you want me to do? Can I send
that original document which, before the courts, would be my
condemnation?'
"'No, Madame, I am the first to tell Your Highness that you must
in no case part with it. Only, the King's conscience desires to
be reassured; there is no other motive in his demand. If the King
could obtain the certainty of Your Highness' marriage, without
your parting with the original, without your even giving a copy of
it, should you see any danger, for yourself or your interests, in
satisfying Charles X.?'
"The Princess tried to guess my thought.
"'But what means can you contrive that would satisfy the King,
since he refuses to believe my word?'
"'The King does not believe it, because you have not given it him.'
"'But I tell you again that I am married. The deed is in Rome, in
the Pope's hands.'
"'Well then, Madame, if a man honoured by your confidence and the
King's, if M. de Montbel were to go to Rome, would you refuse to
allow the holder of your marriage-deed to give him cognizance of
it, or at least to certify its existence to him? I am certain
that M. de Montbel's declaration would be immediately followed by
the dispatch of the passports which Your Highness so impatiently
desires.'
"Madame la Duchesse de Berry, at last conquered, came up to me and
said, with a sad smile:
"'I see no harm in trying the method which you propose, but you
understand that I cannot decide alone. Count Lucchesi's consent is
as necessary as my own.'
"M. le Comte Lucchesi was in a neighbouring room, with Messieurs
de Montbel and de Saint-Priest; I called him in. Madame herself
repeated to him the proposal which I had just made. He did not
hesitate to accept.
"I then asked that the two other gentlemen might be brought in. We
all sat round a little table before which Madame la Duchesse de
Berry was herself seated and, at her bidding, I gave an account of
the explanation which I had just had with her. As I was finishing,
I addressed the Comte de Montbel:
"'And now, monsieur, it is for you alone, who know the King's mind
and who, so to speak, represent him here, to judge and declare if
the method which I propose will be able to satisfy His Majesty and
put an end to his opposition to Madame's journey to Prague.'
"'I give a formal undertaking to that effect,' cried M. de Montbel,
with deep emotion. I Madame, how great is the gratitude that we owe
you and how happy I shall be, if I can have contributed a little
towards a reconciliation for which I long with all my soul!'
"I proposed to M. de Montbel himself to draw up, then and there,
the rough draft of a letter to the Cardinal Vicar, which would then
be copied out and signed by Madame and by Count Lucchesi. A few
moments were enough to prepare this draft, which was approved of.
"It was arranged that the letter should be written during the day,
and Madame invited us to meet again there at noon the next day; she
added that M. de Montbel could then, set out for Rome and that she
herself would leave Florence two days later to go to Bologna, where
M. de Montbel would join her again.
"The next day, as arranged, we met, at the appointed time, at
the Poggio Imperiale. Her Highness received us with an air of
contentment which I, for my part, had not yet seen her display.
"'I have,' she said, 'done all that you asked. I hope that they
will be pleased at last.'
"At the same time, she showed us her letter to the Cardinal Vicar;
this letter agreed exactly with the copy as given by M. de Montbel.
Madame's signature and Count Lucchesi's were at foot, and the
signatures had been witnessed by the Grand-duke of Tuscany and his
minister, Fossombroni[458]. M. de Montbel set out the same evening
for Rome, and I left Florence two days later.
"At a stage at Viterbo, I met M. de Montbel, who had already
fulfilled his mission; he had stayed only half a day in Rome.
He had seen no one but the Cardinal Vicar, who, after taking
the Pope's instructions, had hastened not only to give him a
declaration in writing of Madame la Duchesse de Berry's marriage
to Count Lucchesi, but had shown him the deed itself, which was
perfectly regular. M. de Montbel had decided to travel without
stopping and was convinced of the definite success of his mission."
APPENDIX II
UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE _MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE_[459]
MAINTENON, _September_ 1836.
I resume my pen at the Château de Maintenon, through whose gardens I
stroll by the autumnal light: _peregrinæ gentis amænum hospitium._
When passing in front of the coasts of Greece, I used to ask myself
what had become of the four acres of the garden of Alcinous, shaded
with pomegranate-trees, apple-trees, fig-trees and adorned with two
fountains? Goodman Laertes' vegetable-garden in Ithaca no longer had
its two and twenty pear-trees when I was sailing before that island,
and they were not able to tell me if Zante was still the home of the
hyacinth. The pleasure-ground of Academus, in Athens, offered a few
stumps of olive-trees to my view, as did the Garden of Gethsemane at
Jerusalem. I have not wandered in the gardens of Babylon, but Plutarch
teaches us that they still existed in the time of Alexander. Carthage
presented to me the aspect of a park strewn with the vestiges of Dido's
palaces. At Granada, looking through the doorways of the Alhambra, I
could not take my eyes from the groves in which the romance of Spain
had placed the loves of the Zegris. From the top of David's house at
Jerusalem, the King-Prophet saw Bethsabee bathing in Urias' gardens; I
saw none pass there save a daughter of Eve, a poor Abigail, who will
never inspire me with the magnificent Penitential Psalms.
During the Conclave of 1828, I strolled in the Gardens of the Vatican.
An eagle, plucked of its feathers and imprisoned in a den, presented
the emblem of Pagan Rome overthrown; an emaciated rabbit was delivered
as a prey to the bird of the Capitol, which had devoured the world.
Monks have shown me, at Tusculum and Tibur, the waste fruit-groves of
Cicero and Horace. I have shot wild-duck in Pliny's Laurentinum; the
waves came to die at the foot of the wall of the dining-room, where,
through three windows, one descried as it were three seas: _quasi tria
maria._
In Rome herself, as I lay among the wild anemones of Bel Respiro,
between the pine-trees that formed a vault above my head, the Sabine
Range opened to the view in the distance; Albano enchanted my eyes
with its azure mountain, whose lofty denticulations were fringed with
gold by the last rays of the sun: a sight that became more admirable
still when I came to think that Virgil had contemplated it, as I was
doing, and that I was seeing it again, from the midst of the ruins of
the city of the Cæsars, across the vine-branch of the Tomb of the
Scipios[460].
If, from these Gardens of the Hesperides of poetry and history, I
descend to the gardens of our days, how many have I seen born and die?
Without speaking of the woods of Sceaux, Marly, Choisy, now razed to
the level of the corn-fields, without speaking of the thickets of
Versailles, which they purpose to restore to their festal condition!
I too have planted gardens; my little water-furrow, which served as a
passage for the winter rains, was in my eyes equal to the ponds of the
_Prædium rusticum._
Seen from the side of the park, the Château de Maintenon, surrounded by
moats filled from the waters of the Eure, presents on the left a square
tower of bluish stone, on the right a round tower of red brick. The
square tower is connected, by a block of buildings, with the surbased
archway which opens from the outer yard to the inner yard of the
castle. Above this, archway rises a mass of turrets from which starts
a building which is attached transversely to another block coming from
the round tower. These three lines of buildings contain a space closed
on three sides and open only on the park.
The seven or eight towers of different thickness, height and shape are
capped with priests' bonnets, which mix with a church-window, placed
outside, towards the village.
The façade of the castle on the village side is of the Renascence
period. The fancifulness of this style of architecture gives the
Château de Maintenon a special character, as who should say of a town
of olden time or a fortified abbey, with its spires and steeples,
grouped at hap-hazard.
To complete the medley of periods, there is a great aqueduct, the work
of Louis XIV.; one would think it a labour of the Cæsars. One goes
down from the drawing-room of the castle into the garden by a bridge,
lately put up, which partakes of the architecture of the Rialto. Thus
are Ancient Rome and the Italian Cinquecento associated with the French
sixteenth century. Memories of Bianca Capello[461] and de' Medici, of
the Duchesse d'Étampes[462] and Francis I. rise up through memories
of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon, while all this is swayed and
completed by the recent catastrophe of Charles X.
The castle was rebuilt by Jean Cottereau[463] Treasurer to Louis XII.
Marot, in his _Cimetière_, maintains that Cottereau was too honest a
man for a financier. One of Cottereau's daughters brought the Maintenon
domain into the d'Angennes family. In 1675, this domain was bought by
Françoise d'Aubigné, who became Madame de Maintenon. Maintenon reverted
to the Noailles family, in 1698, through the marriage of a niece[464]
of the wife of Louis XIV. with Adrien Maurice Duc de Noailles[465].
The park has something of the calm and gravity of the Great King. Near
the middle, the first tier of arcades of the aqueduct crosses the bed
of the Eure and connects the two hills on opposite sides of the valley,
so that at Maintenon a branch of the Eure would have flowed in the
air above the Eure. "In the air" is the word: for the first arcades,
as they exist, are eighty-four feet high and they were to have been
surmounted by two other tiers of arcades.
The Roman aqueducts are nothing beside the aqueducts of Maintenon;
they would all go under one of those arches. I know only the Aqueduct
of Segovia, in Spain, which recalls the massiveness and solidity of
this one; but it is shorter and lower[466]. If you picture to yourself
some thirty triumphal arches linked laterally one with the other and
more or less resembling the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in height and
width of opening, you will have an idea of the Maintenon Aqueduct; but
even then you must remember that what you see is only a third of the
perpendicular and of the perforation which would have been formed by
the treble gallery destined for the passage of the waters.
The fallen fragments of this aqueduct are compact blocks of rocks; they
are covered with trees around which hover crows fat as doves: they flit
to and fro under the curves of the aqueduct like little black fairies
performing fatidical dances under garlands.
At the sight of this monument, one is struck with the imposing
character with which Louis XIV. imprinted all his works. It is for ever
to be regretted that this gigantic conduit was not finished: the water
carried to Versailles would have fed the fountains there and created a
new marvel by making their waters play perpetually; from there it might
have been brought to the suburbs. It is a pity, no doubt, that the camp
formed for the works at Maintenon in 1686 caused the death of a large
number of soldiers[467]; it is a pity that many millions should have
been spent on an uncompleted undertaking. But, certainly, it is a still
greater pity that Louis XIV., driven by necessity, astounded at the
cries of economy which frustrate the loftiest schemes, should have lost
patience: otherwise, the greatest monument on earth would to-day have
belonged to France.
Say what we may, a nation's fame increases that nation's power, and
that is no vain thing. As for the millions, their value would have
been represented at high interest by an edifice as useful as it
was wonderful; as for the soldiers, they would have fallen as the
Roman legions fell in building their famous "roads," another kind of
battle-field, no less glorious for the country.
It was in this alley of old willow-trees, where I was strolling a
moment ago, that Racine, after the triumph of Pradon's[468] _Phèdre_,
sighed his last songs[469].
Madame de Maintenon, having attained the summit of greatness, wrote to
her brother[470]:
"I am done up, I would that I were dead."
She wrote to Madame de La Maisonfort:
"Do you not see that I am dying of melancholy.... I have been young
and pretty; I have tasted pleasure... and I protest to you that
every condition leaves a horrid void."
Madame de Maintenon exclaimed:
"What a torment to have to amuse a man who is no longer capable of
amusement!"
It has been reckoned as a crime against the daughter of a simple
nobleman[471], against the widow of Scarron[472], that she should speak
in this way of Louis XIV., who had raised her to his bed; but I see
in this the accent of a superior nature, which was above the exalted
fortune to which she had attained. Only I would have preferred that
Madame de Maintenon had not left the dying Louis XIV., especially after
hearing these grave and tender words:
"I regret only you; I have not made you happy, but I have always had
for you all the sentiments of esteem and friendship which you deserve:
the only thing that vexes me is to leave you[473]."
The last years of that Monarch were an expiation offered to the first.
Stripped of his prosperity and his family[474], he allowed his eyes
to roam from this window over that garden. He no doubt fixed them on
that water-conduit already abandoned since twenty years: great ruins
that they were, an image of the ruins of the Great King, they seemed to
foretell the exhaustion of his House and to await his great-grandson.
The time in which Le Nôtre[475] designed the gardens of Versailles for
Mademoiselle de La Vallière was past; the time was also past, more than
a century earlier, of Olivier de Serres[476], who said to Henry IV.,
when planning gardens for Gabrielle:
"We can cultivate sugar-canes, so that, coupled with the orange-tree
and its companions, the garden shall be perfectly ennobled and rendered
most magnificent."
In the absorption of those dreams which sometimes confer second sight,
Louis XIV. might have discerned his immediate successor hastening the
fall of the arches in the Eure Valley to take from them the materials
for the mean pavilions of his ignoble mistresses[477]. After Louis XV,
he might have seen yet another shadow kneel down, bow its head and lay
it silently on the pediment of the aqueduct, as though on a scaffold
raised in the sky. Lastly, who knows if, in one of those presentiments
attached to royal Houses, Louis XIV. might not, one night, in that
Château de Maintenon, have heard a knock at his door:
"Who goes there?"
"Charles X., your descendant."
Louis XIV. did not wake up to see Madame de Maintenon's corpse dragged
with a rope round its neck around Saint-Cyr.
MAINTENON, _September_ 1836.
My host[478] has described to me the half-a-night which Charles X.,
banished, spent at the Château de Maintenon. The Monarchy of the Capets
ended in a castle-scene of the middle-ages; the Kings of the past had
gone back into their centuries to die. As in the time of Cæsar,
"the gods announce a great change and revolution in affairs[479]."
The manuscript of one of M. le Duc de Noailles's nieces[480], which he
was good enough to show me, relates the incidents which that young lady
witnessed. He has permitted me to make the following extracts:
"My uncle, anticipating that the King was going to come to ask him
for shelter, gave orders to have the castle made ready.... We got
up to receive the King and, while awaiting his arrival, I went to
a window in the turret which comes before the billiard-room, to
watch what was happening in the court-yard. The night was calm and
clear, the half-veiled moon made every object visible in a pale,
sad light, and the silence, as yet, was disturbed only by the hoofs
of the horses of two regiments of cavalry defiling across the
bridge; after them, over the same bridge, defiled the artillery of
the Guard, with matches lighted. The dull sound of the guns, the
appearance of the black ammunition-wagons, the sight of the torches
amid the shadows of the night oppressed my heart terribly and
presented the image--alas, too true!--of the funeral procession of
the Monarchy.
"Soon, the horses and the first carriages arrived; next, M. le
Dauphin and Madame la Dauphine, Madame la Duchesse de Berry, M.
le Duc de Bordeaux and Mademoiselle; lastly, the King and all his
suite. As the King alighted from his carriage, he seemed extremely
dejected: his head had fallen on his chest; his features were
drawn and his face distorted with sorrow. This almost sepulchral
march of four hours, at a foot's pace[481] and in the midst of the
darkness, had also helped to depress his spirits; and, besides,
did not the crown weigh heavily enough, at that moment, on his
brow? He had some difficulty in ascending the stair-case. My uncle
showed him to his apartment, which had been that of Madame de
Maintenon; he remained there a few moments alone with his family,
after which each of the Princes withdrew to his own room. My uncle
and aunt[482] then went in to the King. He spoke to them with his
ordinary kindness, told them how wretched he was at not having
succeeded in rendering France happy, that that had always been his
dearest wish:
"'My one despair is,' he added, 'to see the state in which I am
leaving her; what is going to happen? The Duc d'Orléans himself
is not sure that his head will be on his shoulders a fortnight
hence. All Paris is there, on the road, marching against me; the
commissaries have assured me so. I did not trust their report
entirely; I called Maison, when they had gone out, and said to him,
"I ask you on your honour to tell me, on your word as a soldier, is
what they have told me true?" He answered, "They have told you only
half the truth[483].'"
"After the King had retired, we all returned to our rooms in
succession. I would not go to bed, and I went back to the window to
watch the sight that lay before my eyes. A foot-guard was standing
sentry at the little door of the grand stair-case, a body-guard
was posted on the outer balcony which leads from the square tower
to the part where the King was sleeping. In the first rays of the
dawn, that warlike figure was outlined in a picturesque manner
on the walls darkened by time and his steps resounded on those
time-worn stones, as did, perhaps, in former days, those of the
steel-clad gallants who had trodden them....
"At half past seven, I went to dress in my aunt's room and, at
nine o'clock, I went down, with Madame de Rivera, to M. le Duc
de Bordeaux's, where Mademoiselle came soon after. M. le Duc de
Bordeaux was amusing himself, with my aunt's children, in throwing
bread to the fish and tumbling with the others on mattresses spread
out in the room. Nothing was so heart-rending as the sight of those
children thus laughing at the misfortunes that struck them. At ten
o'clock, the King went to Mass in the castle chapel. It was in
that little chapel that the unfortunate Monarch made his sacrifice
to God and laid at His feet that brilliant crown which had been
so grievously snatched from him, with that admirable, but useless
virtue of resignation which is an hereditary heroism in his unhappy
family.
"It was, in fact, at Maintenon that Charles X. really ceased to
reign; it was there that he disbanded the Royal Guard and the
Swiss, keeping only the body-guards for his escort. From that
moment, he gave no more orders and in some measure constituted
himself a prisoner: the commissaries settled his road to Cherbourg.
"After Mass, the King went back for a moment to his room, and then
the sinister procession started off again, at half-past ten. The
departure was heart-breaking: every misfortune and the noblest
resignation were depicted on the face of Madame la Dauphine, so
long accustomed to sorrow. She spoke a few words to me; then,
stepping towards the guards who were drawn up in the court-yard,
she held out her hand to them; they flung themselves upon it,
shedding tears; her own eyes were full, and she uttered these
words, in a firm voice:
"'It is not my fault, my friends, it is not my fault.'
"M. le Dauphin embraced M. de Diesbach, who commanded the guards,
and mounted his horse. M. le Duc de Bordeaux and Mademoiselle each
climbed into a separate carriage. The King went last; he spoke for
some time to my uncle, in a manner full of kindness, and thanked
him for the hospitality which he had shown him; then he went up to
the troops and took leave of them with that accent of the heart
which belongs to him:
"'I hope,' he said, 'that we shall soon meet again.'
"A rural gendarme threw himself at his feet and kissed his
hand sobbing; he gave it to several others and, turning to the
foot-guard who was on sentry and who presented arms to him:
"'Come,' he said, 'I thank you, you have done your duty well. I am
pleased with you; but you must be very tired.'
"'Ah, Sire,' answered the old soldier, while great tears trickled
down upon his white mustachios, 'it's nothing to be tired: if only
we had been able to save Your Majesty!'
"A grenadier, at that moment, made his way through the crowd and
came up and stood in front of the King:
"'What do you want?' asked His Majesty.
"'Sire,' answered the soldier, raising his hand to his bear-skin,
'I wanted to look at you once more.'
"The King, deeply moved, threw himself into his carriage, and the
whole scene disappeared."
MAINTENON, _September_ 1836.
Calamities extend their effect by the fate of him who describes them:
this narrative is the work of Madame de Chalais-Périgord, _née_
Beauvilliers-Saint-Aignan. The Duc de Beauvilliers[484] was, under
Louis XIV., the governor of the Prince who was the stock of the
family outlawed to-day. The last daughter of Fénelon's friend came
unexpectedly upon the Duc de Bordeaux on his road and hastened to go to
tell her father that she had seen the last heir of the Duc de Bourgogne
pass. In the young princess, beauty, rank and fortune were combined;
she had first turned her thoughts to the world, in search of pleasure;
her hope, like the dove after the Deluge, finding the earth soiled,
flew back to the Ark of God.
When, in 1816, I passed this spot, on my way to write the eleventh book
of the first part of these Memoirs at Montboissier[485], Maintenon
Castle stood empty; Madame de Chalais was not yet born: since, she has
spread out and reckoned her whole life over twenty-six years of mine.
Thus have the shreds of my existence composed the spring-time of a
number of women who have fallen after their month of May. Montboissier
is now deserted and Maintenon inhabited: its new occupiers are my hosts.
M. le Duc de Noailles, who, if nothing stops him, will achieve a
brilliant career, was not of an age to vote when I was in the House
of Peers: I did not hear him deliver those speeches in which he has
pleaded, with the authority of arguments and the power of words, the
cause of France and of the royal misfortunes. His part in life began
when mine had finished: he took the oath to misfortune in a more useful
way than I.
Madame la Duchesse de Noailles is a niece of M. le Marquis de
Mortemart, my old colonel in the Navarre Regiment; she bears a sad and
gentle likeness to my sister Julie[486].
The rivalries of Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan have been
resolved by the marriage of M. le Duc de Noailles and Mademoiselle de
Mortemart[487]. At this present time, who troubles his brain about
a sovereign's heart? That heart has been chilled these hundred and
twenty years; and, in the decrial and vilification of monarchies, are
the attachments of a king, even though it were Louis XIV., events? What
can one measure by the huge scale of our modern revolutions that does
not contract to an imperceptible point? Do the new generations care
about the intrigues of Versailles, which is no longer anything but a
crypt? What matters to our transformed society the end of the enmities
of blood of some women once destined, in bowers or palaces, to lie on
beds of flowers or down?
And yet, around the general interests of history, would there not be
historical curiosities? If some Aulus Gellius, some Macrobius, some
Strabo, some Suidas, some Athenasus of the fifth or sixth century,
after describing to me the sack of Rome by Alaric, were, by chance, to
tell me what became of Berenice after Titus had repudiated her; if he
were to show me Antiochus returning to that Cæsarea, the "charming
spot where his heart" ...had adored her who loved another; if he were
to take me to a castle in the Lebanon inhabited by a descendant of the
Queen of Palestine, in spite of the destruction of the Eternal City and
the invasion of the Barbarians, it would still please me to come across
the memory of Berenice in the "desert East."
APPENDIX III
(BY M. EDMOND BIRÉ)
THE LAST YEARS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
On the 16th of November, at daybreak, Chateaubriand wrote the last
lines of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_:
"It but remains for me," he said, "to sit down by the edge of
my grave; and then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, to
Eternity."
He had lately entered on his seventy-fourth year, and he had still
seven years to live. Shortly after the Revolution in July, in April
1831, he had said, in the Preface to his _Études historiques_:
"I began my literary career with a work in which I contemplate
Christianity under its poetic and moral aspects; I end it with a
work in which I consider the same religion under its philosophical
and historical aspects. I began my political career with the
Restoration; I end it with the Restoration. It is not without a
secret satisfaction that I behold this consistency with myself. The
main lines of my existence have never wavered: if, like all men,
I have not always been alike in the details, let human frailty be
forgiven for it."
His last years will show him to us consistent with himself to the end.
In the first days of October 1843, he received a letter from the Comte
de Chambord, dated Magdeburg, 30 September, and concluding with these
words:
"I shall be in London in the first fortnight of November and I hope
most eagerly that it will be possible for you to join me there;
your presence with me will be of great use to me and will explain
better than anything could the object of my journey. I shall be
happy and proud to show by my side a man whose name is one of the
glories of France and who has represented her so nobly in the
country which I am about to visit.
"Come, then, monsieur le vicomte, and be sure to believe in all my
gratitude and in the pleasure which it will give me to express to
you, by word of mouth, the feelings of high esteem and attachment
of which I love to send you with this the renewed and most sincere
assurance."
Ill as he was and almost paralyzed with gout, the old man was moved to
tears by the young Prince's invitation:
"To such a letter as that," he said, "one answers by going in one's
coffin, if necessary."
He set out for England on the 22nd of November. The Prince was not to
arrive in London until a week later, the 29th. On the 30th, a large
number of French Royalists, with the Duc Jacques de Fitz-James[488] at
their head, came to Chateaubriand to pay him their respects and thank
him for coming. Suddenly the door opened and the Comte de Chambord
appeared, accompanied by Berryer and the Duc de Valmy[489]:
"Gentlemen," he said to the assembled company, "I heard that you were
all at M. de Chateaubriand's and I decided to come here to pay you a
visit... I am so happy to find myself surrounded by Frenchmen! I love
France, because France is the land of my birth, and, if I have ever
turned my thoughts towards the throne of my ancestors, it has been only
in the hope that it might be possible for me to serve my country in the
principles and sentiments which have been so gloriously proclaimed by
M. de Chateaubriand and which are honoured, in addition, by so many and
such noble defenders in your native land."
This scene moved Chateaubriand deeply. On the same day, he wrote to
Madame Récamier:
"I have just received the reward of my whole life: the Prince has
deigned to speak of me, in the midst of a crowd of Frenchmen,
with an effusiveness worthy of his youth. If I were able to tell
anything, I would tell you about this; but here I am crying like a
fool.
"Protect me with all your prayers."
The Comte de Chambord had had an apartment reserved for him in his own
house in Belgrave Square. Every morning, Chateaubriand would see the
descendant of Louis XIV. come into his room, sit down familiarly on his
bed and talk with him at length of the interest, liberties and future
of France. During the day, the Prince came to take him for a drive in
his carriage, so as to lose hardly an hour of his stay.
When Chateaubriand was on the eve of departure, Henry of France wrote
him the following letter:
"LONDON, 4 _December_ 1843.
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND,
"At the moment when I am about to have the grief of parting from
you, I wish once more to express to you all my gratitude for the
visit which you have come to pay me on foreign soil and to tell you
all the pleasure which I have felt at seeing you again and talking
with you of the great interests of the future. Finding myself as
I do in perfect community of opinion and feeling with yourself,
I am happy to see that the line of conduct which I have adopted
in exile and the position which I have taken up are, in every
respect, consonant with the advice which I wished to ask of your
long experience and of your judgment. I shall, therefore, walk with
still more confidence and firmness in the path which I have marked
out for myself.
"More fortunate than I, you are going to see our dear country
again; tell France of all the love that my heart contains for
her. I am glad to take as my interpreter that voice so dear to
France which has, at all times, so gloriously defended monarchical
principles and the national liberties.
"I renew, monsieur le vicomte, the assurance of my sincere
friendship.
"HENRY."
Chateaubriand replied to the Comte de Chambord:
"LONDON, 5 _December_ 1843.
"MONSEIGNEUR,
"The marks of your esteem would console me for every disgrace; but,
expressed as they are, I see in them more than kindness towards
myself: they discover another world; another universe opens up
before France.
"I greet with tears of joy the future which you proclaim. Shall
you, innocent of all, to whom there is nothing to object save that
you are descended from the House of St. Louis, be the only unhappy
one among the youth that turns its eyes towards you?
"You tell me that, more fortunate than you, I am going to see
France again: 'more fortunate than you!' That is the only reproach
which you found to address to your country. No, Prince, I can never
be happy so long as you lack happiness. I have not long to live,
and that is my consolation. I dare to ask you, after I am gone, to
keep the memory of your old servant.
"I am, with the most profound respect,
"Monseigneur,
"Your Royal Highness' most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
On his return to Paris, Chateaubriand put the finishing touches to the
work which was to close his literary career, the _Vie de Rancé._ He
added to his manuscript some pages on his pilgrimage to Belgrave Square
which were worthy of his talent and almost equal to the finest pages
of the Memoirs. After a description of the Château de Chambord, in
the neighbourhood of which the Abbé de Rancé[490] possessed a priory,
the great writer's thought harks back to the Prince whom he has been
visiting in London, and he continues in these words:
"That orphan has lately sent for me to London; I obeyed the close
writ of misfortune. Henry has given me hospitality in a land that
flies from under his feet. I have again seen that town which
witnessed my fleeting greatness and my interminable wretchedness,
those squares filled with fogs and silence, whence issued the
phantoms of my youth. How long a time already has passed between
the days when I dreamt of René at Kensington[491] and these last
hours! The old exile found himself called upon to show to the
orphan a town which my eyes can scarcely recognise.
"A refugee in England for eight years; next, Ambassador to London
and intimately acquainted with Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning and Mr.
Croker: what changes have I not seen in those spots, from George
IV.[492], who honoured me with his intercourse to Charlotte[493],
whom you will find in my Memoirs! What has become of my brothers
in banishment? ...On that soil, where we were not noticed, we
nevertheless had our merry-makings and, above all, our youth.
Growing girls commencing life in adversity brought the weekly fruit
of their toil, to revel in some dance or other of the country;
attachments were formed; we prayed in chapels which I have just
revisited and found unchanged. We wept aloud on the 21st of
January, and were much moved by a funeral oration pronounced by the
Emigrant curate of our village. We also strolled beside the Thames,
to see vessels laden with the world's riches enter the port, to
admire the country-houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost
the shelter of the paternal roof-tree! All those things constituted
true happiness[494]. Will you ever return, O happiness of my
misery? Ah, come back to life, companions of my exile, comrades
of my bed of straw: behold me returned! Let us go once more into
the little gardens of some despised tavern and drink a cup of bad
tea while we talk of our country[495]: but I see no one; I have
remained behind alone....
. . . . . . . . . . .
"I was not received, on my last visit to London, in a garret in
Holborn by one of my Emigrant cousins[496], but by the 'Heir of the
Ages.' That heir took a pleasure in showing me hospitality in the
places where I had so long awaited him. He hid himself behind me
like the sun behind ruins. The torn screen that sheltered me seemed
to me more magnificent than the wainscotings of Versailles. Henry
was my last sick-nurse: those are the perquisites of misfortune.
When the orphan entered, I tried to stand up; I had no other way of
showing my gratitude. At my age, we have only the impotence of life
left Henry has consecrated his wretchedness; stripped though he be,
he is not without authority: every morning, I saw an Englishwoman
pass before my window; she would stand still and burst into tears
so soon as she saw the young Bourbon: what king on his throne would
have had the power to make such tears as those flow! Those are the
unknown subjects conferred by misfortune."
The _Vie de Rancé_ appeared in the month of May 1844. Chateaubriand had
dedicated his work to the memory of the Abbé Sequin, an old priest,
his spiritual director, who had died the year before at the age of
ninety-five:
"I have written the story of the Abbé de Rancé in obedience to the
orders of the director of my life."
The work had only just appeared, when the Duc d'Angoulême died at
Goritz, on the 3rd of June 1844. The author of the _Congrès de Vérone_,
on this occasion, wrote the following letter, addressed to M. le
Vicomte de Baulny:
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,
"I have just read in the _France_ the letter which you were good
enough to communicate to me and which anticipated the sentiments so
nobly expressed in the _Gazette de France_ and the _Quotidienne._
I congratulate myself that my family has contracted with yours an
alliance which does me honour and which is dear to me. I would
myself have tried to raise my voice once more, if it deserved to be
heard; I would have said once again what I think of the liberator
of Spain, of the man who recalled to existence the last soldiers
of Napoleon. M. le Duc d'Angoulême loved and protected my nephew,
whose daughter has married your brother[497]. Christian, my second
nephew, also much loved by the august Prince, has gone to God. And
so all disappears for me! When I cast back my eyes, I see only
a woman who weeps; and what a woman! Marie-Thérèse over-towers
all ruins. And yet, this family which, for nine centuries, has
commanded the world would to-day scarce find an old servant to
raise to it, on the sea-shore, a funeral pile built out of the
remnants of a shipwreck! Marie-Thérèse buries her grief in the
bosom of God, in order that that sorrow may be everlasting. I have
said that that sorrow was one of the greatnesses of France; was I
wrong? In the wastes of Bohemia, I used to see, at night, at the
window of a tower, a solitary light which proclaimed the new exile
of the Duc d'Angoulême. Alas, that light has disappeared! The
virtuous Prince has gone to seek his true country in Heaven. There
revolutions will no longer strike him. He will stretch out his hand
to us to climb to him, and, under the protection of his stainless
life, we shall find grace with the Father of Mercies."
In the spring of 1845, Chateaubriand wanted to see "his young King"
again for the last time. He accordingly went to Venice, at the end of
May, and spent a few days with the Comte de Chambord. Seeing him set
out in the state of weakness to which his ailments reduced him, his
friends in Paris were very anxious about the journey. He bore it better
than had been expected. The Prince persuaded him to prolong his stay a
little:
"I was about to depart," he wrote, from Venice, in June 1845; "the
young Prince's embraces and prayers retain me. My days are his;
and, when he asks me only for a sacrifice of twenty-four hours,
what right have I to refuse him?"
If rejoicings in exile are rare, the Royal Family nevertheless knew
a few. On the 11th of November 1845 was celebrated, at Frohsdorf,
the marriage of H.R.H. Mademoiselle with the Hereditary Prince of
Lucca[498], like herself of a royal race, like herself sprung from the
House of Bourbon. This was that Princesse Louise, the sister of the Duc
de Bordeaux, whom Chateaubriand had seen in Prague in the month of May
1833 and of whom he had at that time drawn the following portrait:
"Mademoiselle somewhat recalls her father: she is fair-haired;
her blue eyes have a shrewd expression.... Her whole person is a
mixture of the child, the young girl and the young princess: she
looks up, lowers her eyes, smiles with an artless coquetry mingled
with art; one does not know if one ought to tell her fairy stories,
make her a declaration, or talk to her with respect as to a queen.
The Princesse Louise adds to the agreeable accomplishments a good
deal of information....[499]"
So soon as the marriage was announced, the Breton Royalists decided to
offer the Princess a gift, a product of local manufacture. They asked
Chateaubriand to take it to Frohsdorf and present it in their name.
"I owe," he said to their delegate, M. Thibault de La Guichardière, "I
owe Louise of France a wedding-visit; I shall be delighted to offer her
a fine specimen of the work of our Breton looms."
He wrote on this subject, on the 9th of September 1845, to his sister,
the Comtesse de Marigny[500], who was living at Dinan:
"I have received your letter, dear sister; it goes without saying
that I add my name to those of all the Bretons who wish to make
the Princess a present. You can therefore look upon me as a
subscriber for the sum which you think right to fix.... But be sure
to remember that I want to be mixed with the crowd and that I am
ambitious for no distinction but that of my eagerness and my zeal."
On the 15th of the same month, he wrote again to his sister:
"If I am specially charged, by a certain number of Bretons, to be
the bearer of their respects, that is all that I want I shall go
at my own expense. I know the young Princess; she will receive me
well, wherever she may be. I would rather that she were already
in Italy. If we are to believe the newspapers, she is already in
Venice; but the place does not matter.... You can put me down for
100 francs; once more, the amount makes no difference: it is enough
to know that I am commissioned to take a Breton subscription to
the daughter of the Duc de Berry; the choice is everything....
Your canton is more than I need to authorize me to go to Madame la
Princesse de Lucques, whose brother, moreover, has invited me to
go to present my compliments to him next spring."
Shortly before his death, Chateaubriand was anxious to give Henry of
France a last proof of his fidelity. By a disposition "outside his
will," a disposition specially recommended to his family, of which a
duplicate was forwarded to the Comte de Chambord, he gave the latter
his little collection of choice books, some of them "annotated," those
which he was "re-reading," he said, in order to serve for the Prince's
"leisure" and instruction.
Until the end, therefore, to use the very true expression of M. Charles
de Lacombe, "his royalist flame, kept alive by honour, did not cease to
burn, under an appearance of scepticism, in that disabused heart[501]."
And, in the same way, the Christian remained faithful. A whole
volume has been written recently on the _Sincérité religieuse de
Chateaubriand._[502] This was, perhaps, a good subject for a thesis;
it seems to me, however, that the demonstration did not require to be
made: one does not demonstrate evidence. For the rest, I have nothing
to speak of here except the last years of the author of the _Génie du
Christianisme_, those which go from 1841 to 1848.
In a letter to his friend Hyde de Neuville, on the 14th of June 1841,
Chateaubriand wrote:
"I admire you from the bottom of my heart; you interest yourself in
everything; I no longer interest myself in anything; my courage is
not used up; but it is overcome by disgust. I no longer think of
anything but of dying a Christian, and I hope that the good Père
Sequin, old though he be, will have strength enough to raise his
hand to cleanse me and send me to God[503]."
In the month of March 1842, speaking of the recent death of Théodore
Jouffroy[504], one of the professors of the Royal College of
Marseilles, M. Lafaye[505], said to his pupils:
"Jouffroy, the sceptic, sent for a confessor, and no one can give the
name of the confessor of the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._"
These words created some stir, and M. Lafaye, fearing lest he should be
dismissed, begged the Baron de Flotte[506], a friend and co-religionist
of Chateaubriand, to write to the latter asking him to intercede on
his behalf with M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction.
Chateaubriand replied:
"Thank God, monsieur, I neither have nor can have any credit with
the present Government. At the time when I possessed some political
power, I do not remember ever employing it except for the benefit
of persons who might be oppressed. M. Lafaye has not offended me
in the least; but, if he were molested on my account, I would ask
them to leave him in peace. I no longer occupy myself with what
goes on in society. My part is played, monsieur. I live far from
the world, and I shall be forgiven, I hope, because of my great
age, for having a confessor. It is M. l'Abbé Sequin, a priest at
Saint-Sulpice. When one has lived many days, one must needs accuse
one's self of many faults."
He rigorously observed the rules of the Church on fasting and
abstinence, often even, in his practice, going beyond the limits
prescribed by health. I make the following ex-tract from a letter which
Victor de Laprade[507] wrote me, on the 12th of August 1870:
"To those who are inclined to doubt the firmness of his Christian
faith, you can tell this detail, which was given me by a Protestant
lady who was for a long time his neighbour and who still lives
in the house in which he died at No. 120, Rue du Bac. Madame
Mohl[508] was very intimate with Madame de Chateaubriand, who did
not go out and saw hardly any one. The wife of that truly great
man used often to lament to her neighbour about the difficulty
which she had to prevent her husband from following with the most
scrupulous strictness the rules for Lent and the other seasons of
fasting and abstinence. Chateaubriand had at that time reached
the age at which the Church dispenses us from fasting, and his
health suffered greatly from these austerities. He practised them,
nevertheless, with his Breton stubbornness, and it needed all his
wife's entreaties to make him give way sometimes. This was not
done for the world nor for the sake of 'posing,' as one would say
nowadays. Madame de Chateaubriand and her confidant were the only
witnesses, and I am perhaps the only one to know of it to-day. Do
you, who are young, keep and hand down this recollection of the
author of the _Génie du Christianisme._
"I like indulging in this old man's gossip; but it is only thus
that traditions are preserved. I have known a whole vanished world.
There are hardly any people left who have seen Chateaubriand
close. There are only two of us now at the French Academy who have
seen Madame Récamier's _salon_: M. le Duc de Noailles and myself.
Outside the Academy, I know only Madame Lenormant and Madame Mohl
who have lived in that illustrious intimacy."
In his conversations, as in his letters, Victor de Laprade loved
to call up before my eyes those vanished days, those figures
now extinguished. He used frequently to describe to me M. de
Chateaubriand's punctual regularity. The great writer used to
arrive at Madame Récamier's every day at half-past two; they took
tea together and spent an hour in private chat. Then the door would
open for visitors; the worthy Ballanche came first; after him, a
wave of more or less numerous, more or less varied, more or less
animated comers and goers, amid whom was the group of persons
accustomed to see one another daily and, as Ballanche said, to
"gravitate towards the centre" of the Abbaye-aux-Bois[509].
While the author of _Antigone_ and _Orphèe_, lively, smiling,
often flung some light-hearted jest into the midst of the most
serious conversations and sometimes even tried to point a pun, the
author of _René_ usually stayed till six o'clock, but in an almost
absolute silence. Seated in one of the corners of the chimney,
opposite Madame Récamier, he leant upon his cane, listened to
everything with interest and sometimes replied by means of an
ironical and disheartened question.
Because he has, in many places in his Memoirs, spoken of the
strength of the democratic current, some have thought themselves
authorized to turn him into a deserter from Royalism, hailing in
the triumph of Democracy the realization of his supreme hopes.
This is just contrary to the truth. That France was going towards
Democracy he saw and proclaimed aloud; but, far from rejoicing in
this new revolution, or looking upon it in the light of a progress
for humanity or a happiness for France, he saw in Democracy the
worst of governments, _omnium deterrimum_, to use Bellarmine's
strong expression. One day, at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, Laprade,
who, at that time, was an ingenuous person, thought he might
confess before the great poet his juvenile faith in the future of
Democracy, of a Christian Democracy which would fulfil all the
promises of the Divine Law-giver. Chateaubriand received these
enthusiastic confidences with his melancholy smile; and then,
after saying that he believed the fall of the Throne of July to
be near at hand and the advent of Democracy to be inevitable, he
began to sketch in broad lines that future society which would be
the offspring of a democracy without religion or ideals. The more
he spoke, the more did the singer of _Psyché_ see his beautiful
illusions fade away. The New Jerusalem of which he had dreamt so
long crumbled to the noise of that great word, as the walls of
Jericho fell to the sound of the trumpet. Instead of the promised
land, a riotous arena, stained with blood by the struggle of
appetites and covetousness; and, at the furthermost point of the
horizon, at the end of the journey, rest in the stupidity of a
semi-Barbarism, of vast pastures in which human herds browzed
on thick grass, with lowered heads, without ever looking at the
sky[510].
On the subject of the dangers and disgraces which the democratic
system was preparing for France, he spoke the strongest and most
contemptuous words at every juncture. M. de Marcellus tells us how,
in 1844, on a day when they were taking a little stroll together in
his garden in the Rue du Bac, Chateaubriand said:
"The stream of the Monarchy disappeared in blood at the end of
the last century. We have been carried away by the currents of
Democracy, and have only a few times halted on the mud of the foul
places. But the torrent will submerge us and it is all up, in
France, with true political liberty and the dignity of man[511]."
On the 16th of August 1846, driving in the Champ de Mars, he was
trying to alight from his carriage, when his foot slipped and he
broke his collar-bone. This accident marked a new stage in his
physical decay; from that time, he no longer walked. When he came to
the Abbaye-aux-Bois, his footman and Madame Récamier's carried him
from his carriage to the door of the drawing-room; he was then put
into an arm-chair and rolled to the chimney-corner. This happened
in the presence of Madame Récamier only, and the visitors who were
admitted after tea found M. de Chateaubriand settled in his place;
but, when leaving, he had to be moved before the strangers present.
They pretended in vain to notice nothing; it was nevertheless a cruel
torture to the old man that his infirmities should be seen[512].
The hour was now near at which death was to close that _salon_ in the
Abbaye-aux-Bois on which the shades of night were already falling:
Majoresque cadunt celsis de montibus umbræ.
Madame de Chateaubriand was the first one struck. She softly fell
asleep in the Lord on the 9th of February 1847; Ballanche followed:
on the 12th of June 1847, he expired with the calmness of a sage
and the resignation of a saint, gentle towards death as he had
been towards life. Madame Récamier, who had not left her post by
his death-bed, thanks to the tears which she there shed ended by
compromising [Illustration: The Vicomtesse de Chateaubriand.]
her sight, which had been growing more and more weak. She was
threatened with complete blindness; it was then that Chateaubriand
offered to consummate his friendship by asking her to share his
name. She refused that honour and, in doing so, was prompted by the
noblest and nicest scruples.
He was to precede her to the grave[513]. In the month of June 1848,
at the very moment when the cannon of civil war was thundering in
the streets of the capital[514], he took to his bed never to rise
again. He was given the Last Sacraments on the 2nd of July. He
received the Viaticum "not only in full and perfect consciousness,
but also with a profound sense of faith and humility[515]."
The next day, he dictated the following lines to his nephew:
"I declare before God that I retract all that my writings may
contain that is contrary to faith, morals and, generally, to the
principles preservative of goodness.
"PARIS, 3 _July_1848.
"Signed for my uncle François de Chateaubriand, whose hand was
unable to sign, and in conformity with the wish which he expressed
to me.
"Geoffroy-Louis de CHATEAUBRIAND."
When this declaration was written, the dying man made them read it
out to him; next, he insisted on reading it with his own eyes and
then, calmly and with a peaceful mind, the author of the _Génie du
Christianisme_ awaited the hour at which he was to appear before
God. He drew his last breath on Tuesday the 4th of July. Only four
persons were present: his spiritual director, the Abbé Deguerry[516],
Rector of Saint-Eustache; his nephew; a sister of Charity; and Madame
Récamier[517].
In a letter to the _Journal des Débats_, the Abbé Deguerry, the future
martyr of the Commune, describes the great writer's last moments in
these words:
"PARIS, 4 _July_ 1848.
"SIR,
"France has lost one of her noblest children.
"M. de Chateaubriand died this morning at a quarter past eight. We
have gathered his last breath. He drew it in full consciousness.
So beautiful an intellect was bound to prevail over death and to
preserve a visible freedom in its embrace.
"The death of Madame de Chateaubriand, which happened last year,
struck M. de Chateaubriand so hard that he said to us at the time,
laying his hand upon his breast:
"'I have this moment felt life struck and withered at its source;
it is now but a question of a few months.'
"The death of M. Ballanche, which followed only too soon after, was
the last blow for his old and illustrious friend. Since then, M. de
Chateaubriand seemed no longer to be sinking, but rather rushing to
the grave.
"A few moments before his death, M. de Chateaubriand, who had
received the Last Sacraments on Sunday last, once more pressed his
lips to the cross with the emotion of a lively faith and a firm
confidence. One of the sayings that he repeated most frequently
during his last years was that the social problems that are
harassing the nations to-day can never be resolved without the
Gospel, without the spirit of Christ, whose doctrines and examples
have called down a curse upon selfishness, that canker of all
concord. Wherefore M. de Chateaubriand hailed Christ as the Saviour
of the World from the social point of view and he loved to call Him
his King as well as his God.
"A priest, a sister of Charity knelt at the foot of M. de
Chateaubriand's bed at the moment of his death. It was amid
prayers and tears of that nature that the author of the _Génie du
Christianisme_ was to deliver his soul into the hands of God.
"I have the honour to be, etc.
"DEGUERRY,
"Rector of Saint-Eustache[518]."
The Comte de Chambord, on the occasion of this death, wrote the
following letter:
"Your letter, monsieur, was the first to bring me the news of the
death of M. de Chateaubriand. I had in him a sincere friend, a
faithful counsellor, whose opinions I was happy to receive, whose
generous thoughts I was glad to search, in my exile. For several
months I had grieved at seeing that fine genius approach the end
of his career; this great loss is even more painful to me at the
present moment, when my heart has so much to weep for in the
sorrows of my country.
"How many misfortunes have I not to deplore! Those terrible
battles which have stained the capital with blood; the death of
so many honourable and distinguished men in the National Guard
and the Army; the martyrdom of the Archbishop of Paris[519]; the
wretchedness of the poor people; the ruin of our manufactures; the
alarms of all France! I pray to God to stay their course.
"May the spectacle of these calamities and the dread of the evils
that threaten the future not carry away men's minds from the great
principles of justice and public liberty which in these days, more
than ever, the friends of nations and kings ought to defend and
maintain.
"I renew, monsieur, the assurance of my very sincere and constant
affection.
"HENRY.
"15 _July_ 1848."
On Saturday, the 8th of July, a funeral service was celebrated in the
church of the Foreign Missions, in the Rue du Bac, quite close to the
house of the deceased; the body was next taken down into the vaults
of the chapel, to be removed, from there, to Saint-Malo. The solemn
obsequies took place in that town on the 18th of July. The Mass was
celebrated by the Rector of Combourg. At the Elevation, by a touching
inspiration, the musicians played the melody to which Chateaubriand
wrote his well-known lines:
Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance[520]!
After the Mass, the funeral procession took its way between the
ramparts and the sea towards the isle of the Grand-Bé. Two long rows
of surpliced priests wound along the beach. The flags of the national
guards who had come from the different towns of Brittany waved in
the wind; the helmets gleamed in the sun. The cannon thundered at
intervals. An innumerable crowd covered the ramparts of Saint-Malo,
which rise so formidably above the perpendicular rocks and the sea.
All the reefs, all the rocks bore human figures; boats dressed with
mourning flags were laden with spectators. At the foot of the Grand-Bé,
the coffin was shouldered by sailors and carried to the top, in the
midst of a squall that resembled a storm: a last caress which the Ocean
gave him who so much loved the noise of the waves and the winds. Then,
suddenly, there was a great calm, and the coffin was solemnly laid on
the rock which is to guard it for ever. The last prayers of the Church
were recited by the Rector of Saint-Malo and holy water sprinkled on
the bier.
Brittany and Religion gave the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_
a magnificent funeral. For half a century, he has slept, beside the
waves, in his granite sepulchre, under a stone surrounded by a little
Gothic iron railing and surmounted by a cross. For the rest, no
inscription, no name, no date. He had asked that this might be so, in
his letter of 1831 to the Mayor of Saint-Malo:
"The cross," he wrote, "will tell that the man resting at its feet
was a Christian; that will be enough for my memory."
APPENDIX IV
THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE
When, eighteen months ago, I wrote my Note to the first volume of this
version of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, I neglected to add to my list
of omissions from the original work three several items which I have
since felt justified in disregarding. My neglect must be ascribed to
the fact that, at that time, the last volume of M. Biré's edition was
not yet in my hands; and that these three items form the _Supplément à
mes Mémoires_ which occurs at the end of the work and which had escaped
my notice. The reader should, therefore, understand that, to the list
of omissions on pages XV and XVI of Vol. I., must be added:
6. Chateaubriand's Life of his sister Julie de Chateaubriand, Comtesse
de Farcy. This is extracted, for the most part, from the Abbé Carron's
_Vie des justes dans les plus hauts rangs de la Société_ and in no way
affects the interest of the Memoirs.
7. A very long letter addressed by the Comte de La Ferronnays, French
Minister to Russia, to the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Foreign Secretary,
on the 14th of May 1824 and treating of contemporary politics.
8. The Genealogy of the Family of Chateaubriand, which fills 122 pages
of the first edition and is not of sufficient general interest to be
included in this translation. I can, however, refer the curious to the
very full account of the Chateaubriand Family in M. René Kerviler's
_Essai d'une bio-bibliographie de Chateaubriand et de sa famille_
(Vannes: 1895).
M. Louis Cahen, of Paris, who read and collated the greater part of
the proofs of the first two volumes, died before those volumes were
published and before he could read the tribute which I paid to his
kindness. He was a man of leisure and of great intelligence, and he
made it a labour of love to compare the two versions sentence for
sentence and line for line. I wish also gratefully to acknowledge the
assistance which I have received in the translation of many technical
expressions from Mr. Oswald Barron, of the Society of Antiquaries;
from Mr. W. B. Campbell and Mr. C. H. Swanton of the English Bar; from
Mr. Edgar Jepson, the author of many delightful novels; from Mr. F.
Norreys Connell, who is as able a military expert as he is a diverting
story-writer; from "Snaffle," most accurate of sporting writers; and
from more than one of the Jesuit Fathers at Farm street. But I have not
consulted these gentlemen invariables; and, if any mistakes are found
to occur, those mistakes are mine, not theirs.
No book of reference that I have consulted has been of such constant
daily use to me as the _Century Cyclopædia of Names_, published in
this country by Mr. Unwin; this and my old Bouillet have reduced my
necessary visits to the British Museum to not more than two a month
during the two years and a half for which I have been engaged on
the translation. At the Museum, over and above the splendid French
biographical dictionaries and the ever-ready Larousse, I have found
the _Dictionary of National Biography_ of some service; but it did not
tell me who "Master Bernard" was, the "blind poet," to whom Henry VII.
gave "100 shillings" (_cf._ Vol. V, p. 351). This disappointed me; but
the dictionary sets no great store by the national poets: it has no
biography of Ernest Dowson. In the matter of the European journeys I
have found no gazetteer published so useful as Baedeker's admirable
Guides, which are always accurate and have not that bad modern fault of
too great conciseness which distinguishes so many of their rivals.
*
The reviewers of the first four volumes have done more than write
universally favourable notices: not only have they appraised at its
true worth what is, perhaps, the greatest prose work of, certainly,
the greatest prose writer of nineteenth-century France; but they have
spoken of the translation in generous terms of praise which I cannot
feel that I have deserved. But I thank them for their kindness and I
only wish that I could have earned it by devoting as long a time to the
translating of these Memoirs as Chateaubriand did to the writing of
them. That would have been thirty years: but I should have known scarce
a dull moment.
A. T. DE M.
CHELSEA, _June_ 1902.
[456] September 1833.--T.
[457] Antoine Louis Marie Hennequin (1786-1840) was a distinguished
member of the Paris Bar, who had made a great name for himself in
political cases and invariably placed his talent at the disposal of
the distressed Royalists. In 1830, he defended Peyronnet in his trial
before the Chamber of Peers and, in 1832, assisted the Duchesse de
Berry after her arrest.--T.
[458] Vittorio Fossombroni (1754-1844), Foreign Minister and Premier to
the Grand-duke Ferdinand. He continued in office until his death at the
advanced age of ninety years.--T.
[459] In the spring of 1832, when the cholera was raging most fiercely,
the Duc de Noailles was introduced to Madame Récamier. He was at
once adopted by her and M. de Chateaubriand. The latter prized very
highly the judgment and political feeling, the reason and the upright
character of the young peer of France, who had just made a brilliant
first speech in the tribune of the Upper House, and who, seventeen
years later, was to become his successor in the French Academy. In the
month of September 1836, Chateaubriand went to spend a few days with
M. de Noailles at the Château de Maintenon, and he wrote a chapter
which he intended to form part of his Memoirs. This chapter, however,
was not inserted there; the manuscript was given by the author to
Madame Récamier. Madame Lenormant has published it in Vol. II. of her
_Souvenirs et correspondence tirés des papiers de Madame Récamier_,
pp. 453 _et seq._, and it is reprinted here as forming a natural and
essential complement of the Memoirs.--B.
[460] I omit four lines of verse.--T.
[461] Bianca Capello, Grand-duchess of Tuscany (_circa_ 1548-1587), was
originally an Italian adventuress, the mistress of Francis de' Medici,
Grand-duke of Tuscany, whom she married, in 1578, when he became a
widower. She was recognised as Grand-duchess in 1579.
[462] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 120, n. 2.--T.
[463] _Cf._ Marot: _La Cimetière_; VIII.: _De Messire Jean Cotereau,
chevalier, seigneur de Maintenon_; IX.: _De luy mesmes_; and X.: _De
luy encores._--T.
[464] Mademoiselle d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon's niece and adopted
daughter, married the Duc de Noailles in 1698.--T.
[465] Adrien Maurice Maréchal Duc de Noailles (1678-1766), after
distinguishing himself in the Spanish War of Succession, was created
a grandee of Spain by Philip V. (1712) and a duke and peer of France
by Louis XIV, became President of the Board of Finance under the
Regency (1715) and did much to avert the disasters consequent upon
John Law's "System." He returned to military service in 1733, won
his marshal s baton at the Siege of Philippsburg and forced the the
Germans to evacuate Worms in 1734. In 1743 he was defeated by George
II. at Dettingen. In 1745, he was sent to Spain as Ambassador and,
later, became a member of the Home Administration. The Maréchal Duc de
Noailles is the ancestor of the two present branches of the Noailles
family, the Ducs de Noailles and the Ducs de Mouchy, Princes de
Poix.--T.
[466] The Aqueduct of Segovia, presumed to be of the time of Trajan,
forms a great bridge, 937 feet long, and consisting of 320 arches in
two tiers. The tallest arches, in the middle of the lower tier, are 102
feet high. It is built of large blocks of arches, somewhat rounded at
the edges and assembled without cement.--T.
[467] _Cf._ COMTESSE DE LA FAYETTE: _Mémoires de la cour de France pour
les années 1688 et 1689_; the opening pages:
"France was in a condition of perfect tranquillity; no arms were
known other than the implements necessary for removing the earth
and building. The troops were employed for these purposes, not
only with the intention of the Ancient Romans, which was only to
take them out of a state of idleness as injurious to themselves as
excessive work would be. But the object was also to make the River
Eure flow against its will, to make the fountains of Versailles
play continuously. They employed the troops on this prodigious
plan, so as to advance the King's pleasures by a few years, and
they did so at less expense and in less time than they had dared
hope.
"The quantity of sickness always caused by earth-work rendered the
troops in camp at Maintenon, where the chief part of the work lay,
incapable of performing any service. But this drawback did not seem
worthy of any attention in the midst of the tranquillity which we
were enjoying."--T.
[468] Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698), a tragic poet who has left a
reputation as a ridiculous, vain and jealous author. Nevertheless,
he achieved some success in his day and, when Racine produced his
_Phèdre_, his envious rivals brought out Pradon's tragedy of the same
name in opposition to the great poet's masterpiece (1677). A few days
sufficed to restore the two plays to their relative places in the
judgment of the public. Besides several other tragedies, Pradon wrote
a comedy directed against Racine and entitled the _Jugement d'Apollon
sur Phèdre_ and a pamphlet against Boileau entitled the _Triomphe de
Pradon_ (1684).--T.
[469] I omit ten lines quoted from Racine.--T.
[470] Charles d'Aubigné (1634-1703) answered his sister with a
blasphemous phrase. He married, in 1678, Mademoiselle Geneviève Piètre
and was the father of the Mademoiselle d'Aubigné who married the
Duc de Noailles in 1698, receiving the estates of Maintenon as her
marriage-portion.--T.
[471] Constant d'Aubigné (_d. circa_ 1645), second son of Théodore
Agrippa d'Aubigné, the Calvinist favourite of Henry IV.--T.
[472] Paul Scarron (1610-1660), the burlesque author, married
Mademoiselle d'Aubigné in 1652, when she was only seventeen years of
age. Louis XIV. gave her the domain of Maintenon in 1674 and erected it
into a marquisate for her.--T.
[473] The reproach which M. de Chateaubriand, following the example of
so many others, here levels against Madame de Maintenon has ceased to
bear upon the memory of that illustrious woman since the publication
of the Marquis de Dangeau's _Relation de la dernière maladie de Louis
XIV.--Note by Madame Lenormant._
[474] Louis Dauphin of France (1661-1711), known as the Great
Dauphin, and Louis Duc de Bourgogne (1682-1712), his son, who became
Dauphin, for one year, on his father's death, predeceased Louis XIV.,
their father and grandfather, who was succeeded, in 1715, by his
great-grandson, Louis XV.--T.
[475] André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the great French architect and
landscape-gardener, designed not only the gardens at Versailles and
most of the other French royal palaces, but laid out Kensington
Gardens, St. James's Park and Greenwich Park in England and a number of
the most celebrated gardens in Rome. Louis XIV. granted him letters of
nobility in 1675.--T.
[476] Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), known in France as the "Father
of Agriculture," was summoned to Paris by Henry IV. and introduced
various improvements into the royal domains. _Inter alia_, he imported
the silk-industry into France and planted fifteen thousand white
mulberry-trees in the Tuileries Gardens.--T.
[477] Louis XV. used part of the materials of the Maintenon Aqueduct
to construct a _château_ for Madame de Pompadour, which has since been
demolished.--T.
[478] Paul Duc de Noailles (1802-1885) took his scat in the Upper House
in 1827. In 1830, he took the oath to Louis-Philippe, but employed all
his oratorical power in favour of the alleviation of the laws against
the exiled Bourbons of the Elder Branch and kindred subjects. He
retired into private life after the Revolution of 1848. In 1849, he was
elected to the French Academy on the strength of some historical works
of no particular merit and of not the slightest originality. The Duc de
Noailles was Ambassador to St. Petersburg for two or three months from
May to July 1871.--T.
[479] Langhome's PLUTARCH: _Julius Cæsar._--T.
[480] Mademoiselle de Beauvilliers Saint-Aignan, later Princesse de
Chalais-Périgord (_vide infra_, p. 245).--T.
[481] The distance from Rambouillet to Maintenon is about 13 miles.--T.
[482] Alice de Rochechouart-Mortemart, Duchesse de Noailles
(1800-1887), married to the Duc de Noailles in 1823.--T.
[483] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 153.--T.
[484] Paul Duc de Beauvilliers (1648-1714), a soldier and statesman
of austere virtue, was, in 1685, appointed President of the Board of
Finance and governor to the Duc de Bourgogne, Louis XIV.'s grandson,
and his brothers, the Duc d'Anjou, afterwards Philip V. King of Spain,
and Charles Duc de Berry. Beauvilliers took Fénelon to assist him and
the two became very firm friends. He survived the death of the Duc de
Bourgogne by only two years.--T.
[485] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 71-72. The "books" are numbered differently
in the original edition of the Memoirs.--T.
[486] I omit five lines of verse from La Fontaine on Madame de
Montespan.--T.
[487] Madame de Montespan was a Mademoiselle de Rochechouart de
Mortemart (_Cf._ Vol. I., p. 103, n. 1).-T.
[488] Jacques Duc de FitzJames (1799-1846).--T.
[489] François Christophe Edmond Kellermann, Duc de Valmy (1802-1868),
grandson of Marshal Kellermann, first Duc de Valmy, shortly after the
Revolution of July became a fervent Legitimist. He resigned his seat
in the Chamber of Deputies, after his visit to Belgrave Square, and
was re-elected; but he retired from political life entirely in 1846.
Like the Duc de Noailles and the other Legitimists, Valmy was opposed
to Louis-Philippe's English Alliance and would have preferred an
alliance with Russia. Those who have read the Memoirs carefully will
entertain little doubt that these were also the views of Chateaubriand
himself.--T.
[490] Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé (1626-1700), the great
reformer of the Trappist Order. Chateaubriand's Life of Rancé appeared
in 1844.--T.
[491] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 189 and Vol. II., p. 72.--T.
[492] _Cf._ Vol. IV., Book IX.-T.
[493] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 86 _et seq._--T.
[494] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 187.--T.
[495] _Ibid._ pp. 188-189.--T.
[496] _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 69.--T.
[497] I find that Anne Louise de Chateaubriand, eldest daughter of
Geoffroy Louis Comte de Chateaubriand, became Baronne de Baudry (not
Baulny).--T.
[498] Later Charles III. Duke of Parma (1823-1854), assassinated on the
27th of March 1854, father to the present Duke. (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p.
224, n. 2.)--T.
[499] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 364.--T.
[500] Marie Anne Françoise de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Marigny
(1760-1860), who lived to the age of over a hundred years (_Cf._ Vol.
I., _passim_).--T.
[501] LACOMBE: _Vie de Berryer_, VOL. II., P. 401.--B.
[502] By the Abbé Georges Bertram, professor of the Catholic Institute
of Paris (Paris: 1899; one vol. 8vo).--B.
[503] _Mémoires et souvenirs du baron Hyde de Neuville_, VOL. III., P.
579.--B.
[504] Théodore Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842), a noted philosophical
writer, a professor at several institutions and librarian of the
University of Paris from 1838. He translated Dugal Stewart's _Outlines
of Moral Philosophy_ (1826) and the Complete Works of Thomas Reid
(1824-1836) and wrote a _Cours de droit naturel_ (1834-1842), a _Cours
d'esthétique_ (posthumous: 1843), _Mélanges philosophiques_ (1833) and
_Nouveaux mélanges_ (published after his death).-T.
[505] Pierre Benjamin Lafaye (1808-1867), a distinguished philologist,
was appointed professor of philosophy at the Royal College of
Marseilles in 1837 and, in 1849, was transferred to Aix. In 1858, he
published his _Dictionnaire des synonymes de la langue française_, the
finest work of this class that exists in any language.--T.
[506] Étienne Gaston Baron de Flotte (1805-1882), a poet and man of
letters of some merit and an ardent Catholic and Legitimist.--T.
[507] Pierre Marin Victor Richard de Laprade (1812-1885) had published
_Parfums de Madeleine_ (1839), the _Colère de Jésus_ (1840), _Psyché_,
(1841) and _Odes et poèmes_ (1844) before the date of Chateaubriand's
death. None of his poems were of great value; but he was elected to the
French Academy in 1858. He sat as a silent member (of the Right) of the
National Assembly from 1871 to 1873.--T.
[508] Madame Mohl was the wife of Julius von Mohl (1800-1876), the
German-French Orientalist, who had been appointed Professor of Persian
to the Collège de France in 1845.--T.
We read in Vol. II., p. 564, of the _Souvenirs et correspondance de
Madame Récamier_:
"An amiable, witty and kind-hearted Englishwoman, Madame Mohl,
lived on the floor above, in the same house and on the same
stair-case as M. de Chateaubriand."--B.
[509] MADAME LENORMANT: _Souvenirs et correspondance tirés des papiers
de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p. 543.--B.
[510] _Cf._ Victor de Laprade's article, _Académie de Lyon. Concours
pour l'éloge de Madame Récamier_, in the _Revue de Lyon_ for 1849, Vol.
I., p. 65.--B.
[511] _Chataubriand et son temps_, p. 290.--B.
[512] _Souvenirs et correspondance de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p.
554.--B.
[513] Madame Récamier died on the 11th of May 1849, in the
seventy-third year of her age.--T.
[514] "It was in the midst of the Days of June that the death occurred
of a man who, perhaps, of all men of our day best preserved the spirit
of the old races: M. de Chateaubriand, with whom I was connected by so
many family ties and childish recollections. He had long since fallen
into a sort of speechless stupor, which made one sometimes believe
that his intelligence was extinguished. Nevertheless, while in this
condition, he heard a rumour of the Revolution of February and desired
to be told what was happening. They informed him that Louis-Philippe's
Government had been overthrown. He said, 'Well done!' and nothing more.
Four months later, the din of the Days of June reached his ears, and
again he asked what that noise was. They answered that people were
fighting in Paris, and that it was the sound of cannon. Thereupon he
made vain efforts to rise, saying, 'I want to go to it,' and was then
silent, this time for ever; for he died the next day." (_Recollections
of Alexis de Tocqueville_, p. 230).--T.
[515] _Souvenirs et correspondance de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p.
563.--B.
[516] Abbé Gaspard Deguerry (1797-1871), Rector of Saint-Eustache from
1845 to 1849 and of the Madeleine to his death, in 1871, when he was
shot as a hostage under the Commune. A monument has since been erected
to the Abbé Deguerry in the crypt of the Madeleine.--T.
[517] It has often been said that Béranger was present at the death;
but this is not so.--B.
[518] _Journal des Débats_, 5 July 1848.--B.
[519] Denis Auguste Affre (1793-1848), Archbishop of Paris, was
appointed Co-adjutor of Strasburg, in 1839, and Archbishop of Paris, in
succession to Monseigneur de Quélen, in 1840. He was mortally wounded
during the Insurrection of 1848, while admonishing the insurgents, at
the barricades in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, on the 25th of June.
Monseigneur Affre died two days later, repeating Christ's words:
"The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.--T."
[520]
"I know no sweeter place on earth
Than the fair spot that gave me birth!"--T.
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