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Title: The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. volume 3 (of 6) Author: vicomte de François-René Chateaubriand Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos Release date: May 29, 2017 [eBook #54807] Language: English Credits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodriguez & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust. *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND. VOLUME 3 (OF 6) *** Produced by Laura Natal Rodriguez & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust. 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. III "NOTRE SANG A TEINT LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE" LONDON: PUBLISHED BY FREEMANTLE AND CO. AT 217 PICCADILLY MDCCCCII CONTENTS VOLUME III BOOK V The years 1807, 1808, 1809 and 1810--Article in the Mercure of July 1807--I purchase the Vallée-aux-Loups and retire to it--The _Martyrs_--Armand de Chateaubriand--The years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814--Publication of the _Itinéraire_--Letter from the Cardinal de Bausset--Death of Chénier--I become a member of the Institute--The affair of my speech--The decennial prizes--The _Essai sur les Révolutions_--The _Natchez._ PART THE THIRD 1814-1830 BOOKS I AND II The last days of the Empire BOOK III Entry of the Allies into Paris--Bonaparte at Fontainebleau--The Regency at Blois--Publication of my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_--The Senate issues the decree of dethronement--The house in the Rue Saint-Florentin--M. de Talleyrand--Addresses of the Provisional Government--Constitution proposed by the Senate--Arrival of the Comte d'Artois--Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau--Napoleon's itinerary to the island of Elba--Louis XVIII. at Compiègne--His entry into Paris--The Old Guard--An irreparable mistake--The Declaration of Saint-Ouen--Treaty of Paris--The Charter--Departure of the Allies--First year of the Restoration--First ministry--I publish my _Réflexions Politiques_--Madame la Duchesse de Duras--I am appointed Ambassador to Sweden--Exhumation of the remains of Louis XVI.--The first 21st of January at Saint-Denis BOOK IV Napoleon at Elba--Commencement of the Hundred Days--The return from Elba--Torpor of the Legitimacy--Article by Benjamin Constant--Order of the day of Marshal Soult--A royal session--Petition of the School of Law to the Chamber of Deputies--Plan for the defense of Paris--Flight of the King--I leave with Madame de Chateaubriand--Confusion on the road--The Duc d'Orléans and the Prince de Condé--Tournai--Brussels--Memories--The Duc de Richelieu--The King summons me to join him at Ghent--The Hundred Days at Ghent--Continuation of the Hundred Days at Ghent--Affairs in Vienna BOOK V The Hundred Days in Paris--Effect of the passage of the Legitimacy in France--Bonaparte's astonishment--He is obliged to capitulate to ideas which he thought smothered--His new system--Three enormous gamblers remain--Illusions of the Liberals--Clubs and Federates--Juggling away of the Republic: the Additional Act--Convocation of the Chamber of Representatives--A useless Champ de Mai--Cares and bitterness of Bonaparte--Resolution in Vienna--Movement in Paris--What we were doing at Ghent--M. de Blacas--The Battle of Waterloo--Confusion at Ghent--What the Battle of Waterloo was--Return of the Emperor--Reappearance of La Fayette--Renewed abdication of Bonaparte--Stormy scenes in the House of Peers--Threatening portents for the Second Restoration--The departure from Ghent--Arrival at Mons--I miss the first opportunity of fortune in my political career--M. de Talleyrand at Mons--His scene with the King--I stupidly interest myself on M. de Talleyrand's behalf--Mons to Gonesse--With M. le Comte Beugnot I oppose Fouché's nomination as minister: my reasons--The Duke of Wellington gains the day--Arnouville--Saint-Denis--Last conversation with the King BOOK VI Bonaparte at the Malmaison--General abandonment--Departure from the Malmaison--Rambouillet--Rochefort--Bonaparte takes refuge on the English fleet--He writes to the Prince Regent--Bonaparte on the _Bellerophon_--Torbay--Act confining Bonaparte in St Helena--He passes over to the Northumberland and sets sail--Judgment on Bonaparte--Character of Bonaparte--Has Bonaparte left us in renown what he has lost us in strength?--Futility of the truths set forth above--The Island of St. Helena--Bonaparte crosses the Atlantic--Napoleon lands at St. Helena--His establishment at Longwood--Precautions--Life at Longwood--Visits--Manzoni--Illness of Bonaparte--Ossian--Reveries of Napoleon in sight of the sea--Projects of evasion--Last occupation of Bonaparte--He lies down to rise no more--He dictates his will--Napoleon's religious sentiments--The chaplain Vignale--Napoleon's speech to Antomarchi, his doctor--He receives the last sacraments--He expires--His funeral--Destruction of the Napoleonic world--My last relations with Bonaparte--St. Helena after the death of Napoleon--Exhumation of Bonaparte--My visit to Cannes LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Louis XVIII Charles X. (as Comte D'artois) La Fayette Talleyrand Fouché, Duc d'Otrante Pius VII [Illustration: Louis XVIII.] THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND VOLUME III BOOK V[1] The years 1807, 1808, 1809 and 1810--Article in the Mercure of July 1807--I purchase the Vallée-aux-Loups and retire to it--The _Martyrs_--Armand de Chateaubriand--The years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814--Publication of the _Itinéraire_--Letter from the Cardinal de Bausset--Death of Chénier--I become a member of the Institute--The affair of my speech--The decennial prizes--The _Essai sur les Révolutions_--The _Natchez._ Madame de Chateaubriand had been very ill during my travels; her friends had often given her up for lost. In some notes which M. de Clausel has written for his children, and which he has been good enough to permit me to look through, I find this passage: "M. de Chateaubriand left on his journey to Jerusalem in the month of July 1806: during his absence I went every day to Madame de Chateaubriand. Our traveller did me the kindness to write me a letter of several pages from Constantinople, which you will find in the drawer in our library at Coussergues. During the winter of 1806 to 1807, we knew that M. de Chateaubriand was at sea, on his way back to Europe; one day I had gone for a walk in the garden of the Tuileries with M. de Fontanes, in a terrible west wind; we had taken shelter on the terrace by the water-side. M. de Fontanes said to me: "Perhaps, at this minute, a blast of this horrible storm will wreck his ship.' "We learnt since that this presentiment was very nearly realized. I make a note of this to express the lively friendship; the interest in M. de Chateaubriand's literary fame, which was to increase by this voyage; the noble, the deep and rare sentiments which animated M. de Fontanes, an excellent man whom I, too, have to thank for great services, and whom I urge you to remember in your prayers to God." If I were destined to live, and if I could cause to live in my works all the persons who are dear to me, how gladly would I take with me all my friends! Full of hope, I brought home my handful of gleanings my period of repose did not last long. By a series of arrangements, I had become the sole proprietor of the _Mercure._[2] Towards the end of June 1807, M. Alexandre de Laborde published his _Journey in Spain_; in July I wrote the article in the _Mercure_ from which I have quoted certain passages when speaking of the death of the Duc d'Enghien: "When in the silence of abjection," etc. Bonaparte's successes, far from subduing me, had revolted me; I had gathered fresh energy in my opinions and in the storms. I did not in vain carry a face bronzed by the sun, nor had I exposed myself to the wrath of the heavens to tremble with darkened brow before a man's anger. If Napoleon had done with the kings, he had not done with me. My article, falling in the midst of his successes and of his wonders, stirred France: copies in manuscript were distributed broadcast; several subscribers to the _Mercure_ cut out the article and had it bound separately; it was read in the drawing-rooms and hawked about from house to house. One must have lived at that time to form an idea of the effect produced by a voice resounding alone amid the silence of the world. The noble sentiments thrust down at the bottom of men's hearts revived. Napoleon flew out: one is less irritated by reason of the offense received than by reason of the idea one has formed of one's self. What! To despise his very glory; to brave for a second time the man at whose feet the universe lay prostrate! "Does Chateaubriand think that I am an idiot, that I don't understand him! I will have him cut down on the Steps of the Tuileries!" He gave the order to suppress the _Mercure_ and to arrest me. My property perished; my person escaped by a miracle: Bonaparte had to occupy himself with the world; he forgot me, but I remained under the burden of the threat. My position was a deplorable one: when I felt bound to act according to the inspiration of my sense of honour, I found myself burdened with my personal responsibility and with the trouble which I caused my wife. Her courage was great, but she suffered none the less for it, and those storms successively called down upon my head disturbed her life. She had suffered so much for me during the Revolution; it was natural that she should long for a little rest. The more so in that Madame de Chateaubriand admired Bonaparte unreservedly; she had no illusions as to the Legitimacy: she never ceased predicting what would happen to me on the return of the Bourbons. * [Sidenote: The Vallée-aux-Loups.] The first book of these Memoirs is dated from the Vallée-aux-Loups, on the 4th of October 1811: I there give a description of the little retreat which I bought to hide me at that time[3]. Leaving our apartment at Madame de Coislin's, we went first to live in the Rue des Saints-Perès, in the Hôtel de Lavalette, which took its name from the master and mistress[4] of the hotel. M. de Lavalette was thick-set, wore a plum-coloured coat, and carried a gold-headed cane: he became my man of business, if I have ever had any business. He had been an officer of the buttery to the King, and what I did not eat up[5] he drank. At the end of November, seeing that the repairs to my cottage were not progressing, I determined to go and superintend them. We arrived at the Vallée in the evening. We did not take the ordinary road, but went in through the gate at the foot of the garden. The soil of the drives, soaked through with rain, prevented the horses from going; the carriage upset. A plaster bust of Homer, placed beside Madame de Chateaubriand, dashed through the window and broke its neck: a bad omen for the _Martyrs_, at which I was then working. The house, full of workmen laughing, singing, and hammering, was warmed by blazing shavings and lighted by candle-ends; it looked like a hermitage illuminated at night by pilgrims, in the woods. Delighted to find two rooms made fairly comfortable, in one of which supper had been laid, we sat down to table. The next morning, awakened by the sound of the hammers and the songs of the husbandmen, I saw the sun rise with less anxiety than the master of the Tuileries. I was in an endless enchantment; without being Madame de Sévigné, I went, provided with a pair of wooden clogs, to plant my trees in the mud, to pass up and down the same walks, to look again and again at every smallest corner, to hide wherever there was a tuft of brushwood, saying to myself that this would be my park in the future: for then the future was not lacking. When striving, to-day, by force of memory to re-open the closed horizon, I no longer find the same, but I meet with others. I lose myself in my vanished thoughts; the illusions into which I fall are perhaps as fair as their predecessors; only they are no longer so young: what I used to see in the splendour of the south, I now perceive by the light of the sunset. If, nevertheless, I could cease to be harassed by dreams! Bayard, summoned to surrender a place, replied: "Wait till I have made a bridge of dead bodies, to pass over with my garrison." I fear that, to go out, I shall need to pass over the bodies of my fancies. My trees, being as yet small, did not gather the sounds of the autumn winds; but, in spring, the breezes which inhaled the breath of the flowers of the neighbouring fields retained it and poured it over my valley. I made some additions to my cottage; I improved the appearance of its brick walls with a portico supported by two black marble columns and two white marble caryatides: I remembered that I had been to Athens. My plan was to add a tower to the end of my pavilion; meantime I made counterfeit battlements on the wall separating me from the road: I thus anticipated the mediæval mania which is stupefying us at present. The Vallée-aux-Loups is the only thing that I regret of all that I have lost; it is written that nothing shall remain to me. After the loss of my Valley, I planted the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse[6], which also I have lately left. I defy fate now to fix me to the smallest morsel of earth; henceforth I shall have for a garden only those avenues, honoured with such fine names, around the Invalides, along which I stroll with my one-armed or limping colleagues. Not far from those walks, Madame de Beaumont's cypress lifts its head; in those deserted spaces, the great and frivolous Duchesse de Châtillon once leant upon my arm. Now I give my arm only to time: it is very heavy! I worked with delight at my Memoirs, and the _Martyrs_ made progress; I had already read some books to M. de Fontanes. I had settled down in the midst of my memories as in a large library; I consulted this and then that, and next closed the register with a sigh, for I perceived that the light, in penetrating into it, destroyed its mystery. Light up the days of life, and they will no longer be what they are. In the month of July, I fell ill and was obliged to return to Paris. The doctors rendered the illness dangerous. In the time of Hippocrates, there was a dearth of dead in the lower regions, says the epigram: thanks to our modern Hippocrates, there is an abundance to-day. This was perhaps the only moment at which, when near death, I felt a desire to live. When I felt myself lapsing into faintness, which often happened, I used to say to Madame de Chateaubriand: "Do not be alarmed; I shall come to." I lost consciousness, but with great inward impatience, for I clung to God knows what. I also passionately longed to complete what I believed and still believe to be my most correct work. I was paying the price of the fatigue which I had undergone during my journey to the Levant. [Sidenote: Bonaparte and my portrait.] Girodet[7] had put the finishing touches to my portrait. He made me dark, as I then was; but he put all his genius into the work. M. Denon[8] received the master-piece for the Salon[9]; like a noble-hearted courtier, he prudently put it out of sight. When Bonaparte took his view of the gallery, after examining the pictures, he asked: "Where is the portrait of Chateaubriand?" He knew that it must be there: they were obliged to bring the outlaw from his hiding-place. Bonaparte, whose fit of generosity had evaporated, said, on inspecting the portrait: "He looks like a conspirator coming down the chimney." One day, on returning alone to the Vallée, I was told by Benjamin, the gardener, that a fat strange gentleman had come and asked for me; that, finding me out, he had said he would wait for me; that he had had an omelette made for him; and that, afterwards, he had flung himself on my bed. I went upstairs, entered my room, and saw something enormous asleep; shaking that mass, I cried: "Hi! Hi! Who are you?" The mass gave a start and sat up. Its head was covered with a woollen cap; it wore a smock and trousers of spotted wool, all in one piece; its face was smeared with snuff, and its tongue hung out. It was my cousin Moreau! I had not seen him since the camp at Thionville. He was back from Russia and wanted to enter the excise. My old _cicerone_ in Paris went to die at Nantes. Thus disappeared one of the early characters of these Memoirs. I hope that, stretched on a couch of daffodils, he still talks of my verses to Madame de Chastenay, if that agreeable shade has descended to the Elysian Fields. * [Sidenote: The _Martyrs._] The _Martyrs_ appeared in the spring of 1809. It was a conscientious piece of work. I had consulted critics of taste and knowledge: Messieurs de Fontanes, Bertin, Boissonade[10], Malte-Brun[11]; and I had accepted their judgment. Hundreds and hundreds of times I had written, unwritten and rewritten the same page. Of all my writings, this is the most noted for the correctness of the language. I had made no mistake in the scheme of the book: at present, when my ideas have become general, no one denies that the struggles of two religions, one ending, the other commencing, afford one of the richest, most fruitful and most dramatic subjects for the Muses. I thought, therefore, that I might venture to cherish some all too foolish hopes; but I was forgetting the success of my first book: in this country you must never reckon on two close successes; one destroys the other. If you have some sort of talent for prose, beware of showing any for poetry; if you are distinguished in literature, lay no claim to politics: such is the French spirit and its poverty. The self-loves alarmed, the jealousies surprised by an author's good fortune at the outset combine and lie in wait for the poet's second publication, to take a signal vengeance: Tous, la main dans l'encre, jurent de se venger[12]. I must pay for the silly admiration which I had obtained by trickery at the time of the appearance of the _Génie du Christianisme_; I must be made to restore what I had stolen! Alas, they need not have taken such pains to rob me of that which I myself did not think that I deserved! If I had delivered Christian Rome, I asked only for an obsidional crown[13], a plait of grass culled in the Eternal City. The executioner of the justice of the vanities was M. Hoffmann[14], to whom may God grant peace! The _Journal des Débats_ was no longer free; its proprietors had no power in it, and the censors registered my condemnation in its pages. M. Hoffmann, however, forgave the Battle of the Franks and some other pieces in the work; but, if he thought Cymodocée attractive, he was too excellent a Catholic not to grow indignant at the profane conjunction of the truths of Christianity and the fables of mythology. Velléda did not save me. It was imputed to me as a crime that I had changed Tacitus' German druidess into a Gallic woman, as though I had wanted to borrow anything beyond an harmonious name! And behold, we see the Christians of France, to whom I had rendered such great services by setting up their altars again, stupidly taking it into their heads to be scandalized on the gospel word of M. Hoffmann! The title of the _Martyrs_ had misled them: they expected to read a martyrology, and the tiger who tore only a daughter of Homer to pieces seemed to them a sacrilege. The real martyrdom of Pope Pius VII., whom Bonaparte had brought as a prisoner to Paris, did not scandalize them, but they were quite roused by my un-Christian fictions, as they called them. And it was M. the Bishop of Chartres[15] who undertook to punish the horrible impieties of the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._ Alas, he must realize that to-day his zeal is wanted for very different contests! M. the Bishop of Chartres is the brother of my excellent friend M. de Clausel, a very great Christian, who did not allow himself to be carried away by so sublime a virtue as the critic, his brother. I thought it my duty to reply to my censors, as I had done in the matter of the _Génie du Christianisme_. Montesquieu[16], with his defense of the _Esprit des lois_, encouraged me. I was wrong. Authors who are attacked might say the finest things in the world, and yet excite merely the smiles of impartial minds and the ridicule of the crowd. They place themselves on a bad ground: the defensive position is antipathetic to the French character. When, in reply to objections, I pointed out that, in stigmatizing this or that passage, they had attacked some fine relic of antiquity, beaten on the facts, they extricated themselves by next saying that the _Martyrs_ was a mere "patchwork." When I justified the simultaneous presence of the two religions by the authority of the Fathers of the Church themselves, the reply was that, at the period in which I placed the action of the _Martyrs_, paganism no longer existed among great minds. I believed in good faith that the work had fallen flat; the violence of the attack had shaken my conviction as an author. Some of my friends consoled me; they maintained that the proscription was unjustified, that sooner or later the public would pronounce another verdict: M. de Fontanes especially was firm; I was no Racine, but he might be a Boileau, and he never ceased saying to me: "They'll come back to it." His persuasion in this regard was so deep-rooted that it inspired him with some charming stanzas: Le Tasse, errant de ville en ville, etc.[17], without fear of compromising his taste or the authority of his judgment. The _Martyrs_ has, in fact, retrieved itself, has obtained the honour of four consecutive editions, and has even enjoyed particular favour with men of letters: appreciation has been shown me of a work which bears evidence of serious study, of some pains towards style, of a great reverence for language and taste. [Sidenote: Its reception.] Criticism of the subject-matter was promptly abandoned. To say that I had mixed profane with sacred things, because I had depicted two cults which existed side by side and which had each its beliefs, its altars, its priests, its ceremonies, was equivalent to saying that I ought to have renounced history. For whom did the martyrs die? For Jesus Christ. To whom were they immolated? To the gods of the Empire. Therefore there were two religions. The philosophical question, namely, whether, under Diocletian[18], the Greeks and Romans believed in the gods of Homer, and whether public worship had undergone any changes, was a question that did not concern me as a poet; as an _historian_, I might have had many things to say. All this no longer matters. The _Martyrs_ has lived, contrary to my first expectation, and I have had to occupy myself only with the care of revising its text. The fault of the _Martyrs_ has to do with the wonderful "directness" which, owing to what remained of my classical prejudices, I had unadvisedly employed. Startled at my own innovations, I thought it impossible to dispense with a "Heaven" and a "Hell." Yet the good and bad angels sufficed to carry on the action, without delivering it to worn-out machinery. If the Battle of the Franks, Velléda, Jérôme, Augustin, Eudore, Cymodocée; if all these, and the descriptions of Naples and Greece, are unable to obtain pardon for the _Martyrs_, Hell and Heaven will not save it. One of the passages which most pleased M. de Fontanes was the following: "Cymodocée sat down at the window of the prison and, resting her head, adorned with the martyr's veil, on her hand, sighed forth these harmonious words: "'Cleave the calm and dazzling sea, O swift vessels of Ausonia; release the sail, O slaves of Neptune, to the amorous breath of the winds, and bend over the agile oars. Bring me back to the care of my husband and my father, on the happy shores of the Pamisus! Fly, O birds of Lybia, whose supple necks so gracefully bend, fly to the summit of Ithomus and say that the daughter of Homer shall see again the laurels of Messenia! When shall I see once more my bed of ivory, the light of day so dear to mortals, the meadows studded with flowers which a clear water bathes, which modesty adorns with her breath[19]!'" The _Génie du Christianisme_ will remain my great work, because it produced, or decided, a revolution and commenced the new era of the literary age. The case is different with the _Martyrs_: it came after the revolution had been worked, and was only a superabundant proof of my doctrines; my style was no longer a new thing, and, except in the episode of Velléda and the picture of the manners of the Franks, my poem even feels the influence of the places which it has frequented: in it the classical dominates the romantic. Lastly, the circumstances no longer existed which contributed to the success of the _Génie du Christianisme_; the Government, far from being favourable to me, had become hostile. The _Martyrs_ meant to me a redoubling of persecution: the frequent allusions in the portrait of Galerius[20] and in the picture of the Court of Diocletian could not fail to arouse the attention of the imperial police, the more so inasmuch as the English translator, who had no reason to observe any circumspection, and who cared not at all whether he compromised me or not, had called attention to the allusions in his preface. The publication of the _Martyrs_ was coincident with a fatal occurrence. This did not disarm the aristarchs, thanks to the ardour with which we are animated for the powers that be; they felt that a literary criticism which tended to diminish the interest attached to my name might be agreeable to Bonaparte. The latter, like the millionaire bankers who give splendid banquets and charge their customers postage, did not disdain small profits. * Armand de Chateaubriand, whom you have seen as the companion of my childhood, who appeared before you again in the Princes' Army with the deaf and dumb Libba, had remained in England. He married in Jersey[21], and was charged with the correspondence of the Princes. Setting sail on the 25th of September 1808, he was landed, at eleven o'clock in the same evening, on the coast of Brittany, near Saint-Cast. The boat's crew consisted of eleven men; two only were Frenchmen: Roussel and Quintal. [Sidenote: Armand de Chateaubriand.] Armand proceeded to the house of M. Delaunay-Boisé-Lucas the Elder, who lived in the village of Saint-Gast, where the English had once been driven back to their ships: his host advised him to go back[22]; but the boat had already taken its homeward course to Jersey. Armand, having come to an arrangement with M. Boisé-Lucas' son, handed him the despatches with which he had been entrusted by M. Henry-Larivière[23], the Princes' agent. "I went to the coast on the 29th of September," he says, in answer to an interrogatory, "and waited there two nights, without seeing my boat. As the moon was very bright, I withdrew, and returned on the 14th or 15th of the month. I remained till the 24th of the said month. I spent every night in the rocks, but to no purpose; my boat did not come, and by day I went to the Boisé-Lucas'. The same boat, with the same crew, to which Roussel and Quintal belonged, was to come to fetch me. With regard to the precautions taken with Boisé-Lucas the Elder, there were none besides those which I have already enumerated." The dauntless Armand, landed at a few steps from his paternal fields, as though on the inhospitable coast of Taurida, in vain turned his eyes over the billows, by the light of the moon, in search of the bark which could have saved him. In former days, after I had already left Combourg, with the intention of going to India, I had cast my mournful gaze over the same billows. From the rocks of Saint-Cast where Armand lay, from the cape of the Varde where I had sat, a few leagues of the sea, over which our eyes have wandered in opposite directions, have witnessed the cares and divided the destinies of two men joined by ties of name and blood. It was also in the midst of the same waves that I met Gesril for the last time. Often, in my dreams, I see Gesril and Armand washing the wound in their foreheads in the deep, while, reddened to my very feet, stretches the sea with which we used to play in our childhood[24]. Armand succeeded in embarking in a boat purchased at Saint-Malo, but, driven back by the north-west wind, he was again obliged to put back. At last, on the 6th of January, assisted by a sailor called Jean Brien, he launched a little stranded boat, and got hold of another which was afloat. He thus describes his voyage, which bears an affinity to my star and my adventures, in his examination on the 18th of March: "From nine o'clock in the evening, when we started, till two o'clock in the morning, the weather favoured us. Judging then that we were not far from the rocks called the 'Mainquiers,' we lay-to on our anchor, intending to wait for daylight; but, the wind having freshened, and fearing that it would grow still stronger, we continued our course. A few minutes later, the sea became very heavy and, our compass having been broken by a wave, we remained uncertain as to the course we were taking. The first land that came into sight on the 7th (it might then be mid-day), was the coast of Normandy, which obliged us to tack about, and we again returned and lay-to near the rocks called 'Écreho,' situated between the coast of Normandy and Jersey. Strong and contrary winds obliged us to remain in that position the whole of the rest of that day and of the next, the 8th. On the morning of the 9th, as soon as it was light, I said to Despagne that it appeared to me that the wind had decreased, seeing that our boat was not working much, and to look which way the wind was blowing. He told me that he no longer saw the rocks near which we had dropped the anchor. I then decided that we were drifting, and that we had lost our anchor. The violence of the storm left us no alternative but to make for the coast. As we saw no land, I did not know at what distance we were from it. It was then that I flung my papers into the sea, having taken the precaution to fasten a stone to them. We then scudded before the wind and made the coast, at about nine o'clock in the morning, at Bretteville-sur-Ay, in Normandy. "We were received on the coast by the customs officers, who took me out of my boat almost dead; my feet and legs were frozen. We were both lodged with the lieutenant of the brigade of Bretteville. Two days later, Despagne was taken to the prison at Coutances, and I have not seen him since that day. A few days after, I myself was transferred to the gaol at that town; the next day, I was taken by the quarter-master to Saint-Lô, and remained for eight days with the said quarter-master. I appeared once before M. the Prefect of the department, and, on the 26th of January, I left with the captain and quarter-master of the gendarmes to be taken to Paris, where I arrived on the 28th. They took me to the office of M. Desmarets at the ministry of the general police, and from there to the prison of the Grande-Force." Armand had the wind, the waves and the imperial police against him; Bonaparte was in connivance with the storms. The gods made a very great expenditure of wrath against a paltry existence. The packet flung into the sea was cast back by it on the beach of Notre-Dame-d'Alloue, near Valognes. The papers contained in this packet served as documents for the conviction: there were thirty-two of them. Quintal, returning to the sands of Brittany with his boat to fetch Armand, had also, through an obstinate fatality, been shipwrecked in Norman waters a few days before my cousin. The crew of Quintal's boat had spoken; the Prefect of Saint-Lô had learnt that M. de Chateaubriand was the leader of the Princes' enterprises. When he heard that a cutter manned with only two men had run ashore, he had no doubt that Armand was one of the two shipwrecked men, for all the fishermen spoke of him as the most fearless man at sea that had ever been known. [Sidenote: Arrest of Armand.] On the 20th of January 1809, the Prefect of the Manche reported Armand's arrest to the general police. His letter commences: "My conjectures have been completely verified: Chateaubriand is arrested; it was he who landed on the coast at Bretteville and who had taken the name of 'John Fall.' "Uneasy at finding that, in spite of the very precise orders which I had given, John Fall did not arrive at Saint-Lô, I instructed Quarter-master Mauduit of the gendarmes, a trustworthy and extremely active man, to go to fetch this John Fall, wherever he might be, and bring him before me, in whatever condition he was. He found him at Coutances, at the moment when they were arranging to transfer him to the hospital, to treat him for his legs, which were frozen. "Fall appeared before me to-day. I had had Lelièvre put in a separate room, from which he could see John Fall arrive without being observed. When Lelièvre saw him come up a flight of steps placed near this apartment, he cried, striking his hands together and changing colour: "'It's Chateaubriand! However did they catch him?' "Lelièvre was in no way forewarned. This exclamation was drawn from him by surprise. He asked me afterwards not to say that he had mentioned Chateaubriand's name, because he would be lost. "I did not let John Fall see that I knew who he was." Armand, carried to Paris and lodged at the Force, underwent a secret interrogation at the military gaol of the Abbaye. General Hulin, who was now Military Commander of Paris, appointed Bertrand, a captain in the first demi-brigade of veterans, judge-advocate of the military commission instructed, by a decree of the 25th of February, to inquire into Armand's case. The persons implicated were M. de Goyon[25], who had been sent by Armand to Brest, and M. de Boisé-Lucas the Younger, charged to hand letters from Henry-Larivière to Messieurs Laya[26] and Sicard[27] in Paris. In a letter of the 13th of March, addressed to Fouché, Armand said: "Let the Emperor deign to restore to liberty men now languishing in prison for having shown me too much interest. Whatever happens, let their liberty be restored to all of them alike. I recommend my unfortunate family to the Emperor's generosity." These mistakes of a man with human bowels addressing himself to an hyena are painful to see. Bonaparte, besides, was not the lion of Florence: he did not give up the child on observing the tears of the mother. I had written to ask Fouché for an audience; he granted me one, and assured me, with all the self-possession of revolutionary frivolity, "that he had seen Armand, that I could be easy: that Armand had told him that he would die well, and that in fact he wore a very resolute air." Had I proposed to Fouché that he should die, would he have preserved that deliberate tone and that superb indifference with regard to himself? I applied to Madame de Rémusat, begging her to remit to the Empress a letter containing a request for justice, or for mercy, to the Emperor. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu[28] told me, at Arenberg, of the fate of my letter: Joséphine gave it to the Emperor; he seemed to hesitate, on reading it; and then, coming upon some words which offended him, he impatiently flung it into the fire. I had forgotten that one should show pride only on one's own behalf. [Sidenote: His execution.] M. de Goyon, condemned with Armand, underwent his sentence. Yet Madame la Baronne-Duchesse de Montmorency had been induced to interest herself in his favour: she was the daughter of Madame de Matignon, with whom the Goyons were allied. A Montmorency in service ought to have obtained anything, if the prostitution of a name were enough to win over an old monarchy to a new power. Madame de Goyon, though unable to save her husband, saved young Boisé-Lucas. Everything combined towards this misfortune, which struck only unknown persons; one would have thought that the downfall of a world was in question: storms upon the waves, ambushes on land, Bonaparte, the sea, the murderers of Louis XVI., and perhaps some "passion," the mysterious soul of mundane catastrophes. People have not even perceived all these things; it all struck me alone and lived in my memory only. What mattered to Napoleon the insects crushed by his hand upon his diadem? On the day of execution, I wished to accompany my comrade on his last battle-field; I found no carriage, and hastened on foot to the Plaine de Grenelle. I arrived, all perspiring, a second too late: Armand had been shot against the surrounding wall of Paris. His skull was fractured; a butcher's dog was licking up his blood and his brains. I followed the cart which took the bodies of Armand and his two companions, plebeian and noble, Quintal and Goyon, to the Vaugirard Cemetery, where I had buried M. de La Harpe. I saw my cousin for the last time without being able to recognise him: the lead had disfigured him, he had no face left; I could not remark the ravages of years in it, nor even see death within its shapeless and bleeding orb; he remained young in my memory as at the time of the Siege of Thionville. He was shot on Good Friday: the crucifix appears to me at the extremity of all my misfortunes. When I walk on the rampart of the Plaine de Grenelle, I stop to look at the imprint of the firing, still marked upon the wall. If Bonaparte's bullets had left no other traces, he would no longer be spoken of. Strange concatenation of destinies! General Hulin, the Military Commander of Paris, appointed the commission which ordered Armand's brains to be blown out; he had, in former days, been appointed president of the commission which shattered the head of the Duc d'Enghien. Ought he not to have abstained, after his first misfortune, from all connection with courts-martial? And I have spoken of the death of the descendant of the Great Condé, without reminding General Hulin of the part which he played in the execution of the humble soldier, my kinsman. No doubt I, in my turn, had received from Heaven my commission to judge the judges of the tribunal of Vincennes. * The year 1811 was one of the most remarkable in my literary career[29]. I published the _Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem_[30], I accepted M. de Chénier's place at the Institute, and I began to write the Memoirs which I am now finishing. [Sidenote: The _Itinéraire._] The success of the _Itinéraire_ was as complete as that of the _Martyrs_ had been disputed. There is no scribbler, however inconsiderable, but receives letters of congratulation on the appearance of his _farrago._ Among the new compliments which were addressed to me, I do not feel at liberty to suppress the letter of a man of virtue and merit who has produced two works of recognised authority, leaving hardly anything to be said on Bossuet and Fénelon. The Bishop of Alais, Cardinal de Bausset[31], is the biographer of those two great prelates. He goes beyond all praise with reference to me: that is the accepted usage in writing to an author, and does not count; but the cardinal at least shows the general opinion of the moment on the _Itinéraire_: he foresees, with respect to Carthage, the objections of which my geographical feeling might be the object; in any case, that feeling has prevailed, and I have set Dido's ports in their places. My readers will be interested to recognise in this letter the diction of a select society, a style rendered grave and sweet by politeness, religion and manner: an excellence of tone from which we are so far removed to-day. "VILLEMOISSON, BY LONJUMEAU (SEINE-ET-OISE), "25 _March_ 1811. "You should, Sir, have received, and you have received, the just tribute of the public gratitude and satisfaction; but I can assure you that not one of your readers has enjoyed your interesting work with a truer sentiment than myself. You are the first and only traveller who has had no need of the aid of engraving and drawing to place before the eyes of his readers the places and monuments which recall fine memories and great images. Your soul has felt all, your imagination depicted all, and the reader feels with your soul and sees with your eyes. "I could convey to you but very feebly the impression which I received from the very first pages, when skirting in your company the coast of Corfu, and when witnessing the landing of all those 'eternal' men whom opposite destinies have successively driven thither. A few lines have sufficed you to engrave the traces of their footsteps for all time; they will always be found in your _Itinéraire_, which will preserve them more faithfully than so many marbles which have been incapable of keeping the great names confided to them. "I now know the monuments of Athens in the way in which one likes to know them. I had already seen them in beautiful engravings, I had admired them, but I had not felt them. One too often forgets that, if architects need exact descriptions, measurements and proportions, men need to recognise the mind and the genius which have conceived the idea of those great monuments. "You have restored to the Pyramids that noble and profound intention which frivolous declaimers had not even perceived. "How thankful I am to you, Sir, for delivering to the just execration of all time that stupid and ferocious people which, since twelve hundred years, has afflicted the fairest countries of the earth! One smiles with you at the hope of seeing it return to the desert whence it came. "You have inspired me with a passing feeling of indulgence for the Arabs, for the sake of the fine comparison which you have drawn between them and the savages of North America. "Providence seems to have led you to Jerusalem to assist at the last representation of the first scene of Christianity. If it be no longer granted to the eyes of men to behold that Tomb, 'the only one which will have nothing to give up on the Last Day,' Christians will always find it again in the Gospels, and meditative and sensitive minds in the pictures which you have drawn. "The critics will not fail to reproach you with the men and incidents with which you have covered the ruins of Carthage and which you could not have seen, since they no longer exist. But I implore you, Sir, confine yourself to asking them if they themselves would not have been very sorry not to find them in those engaging pictures. "You have the right, Sir, to enjoy a form of glory which belongs to you exclusively by a sort of creation; but there is an enjoyment still more satisfying to a character like yours, that is, to have endowed the creations of your genius with the nobility of your soul and the elevation of your sentiments. It is this which, at all times, will ensure to your name and memory the esteem, the admiration and the respect of all friends of religion, virtue and honour. "It is on this score that I beg you, Sir, to accept the homage of all my sentiments. "L. F. DE BAUSSET, _ex-Bishop of Alais._" M. de Chénier[32] died on the 10th of January 1811. My friends had the fatal idea of pressing me to take his place in the Institute. They urged that, exposed as I was to the hostilities of the head of the Government, to the suspicions and annoyances of the police, it was necessary that I should enter a body then powerful through its fame and through the men composing it; that, sheltered behind that buckler, I should be able to work in peace. I had an invincible repugnance to occupying a place, even outside the Government; I had too clear a recollection of what the first had cost me. Chénier's inheritance seemed fraught with peril; I should not be able to say all, save by exposing myself; I did not wish to pass over regicide in silence, although Cambacérès was the second person in the State; I was determined to make my demands heard in favour of liberty and to raise my voice against tyranny; I wanted to have my say on the horrors of 1793, to express my regrets for the fallen family of our kings, to bemoan the misfortunes of those who had remained faithful to them. My friends replied that I was deceiving myself; that a few praises of the head of the Government, obligatory in the academical speech, praises of which, in one respect, I thought Bonaparte worthy, would make him swallow all the truths I might wish to utter; and that I should at the same time enjoy the honour of having maintained my opinions and the happiness of putting an end to the terrors of Madame de Chateaubriand. By dint of their besetting me, I yielded, weary of resistance: but I assured them that they were mistaken; that Bonaparte would not be taken in by common-places on his son, his wife and his glory; that he would feel the lesson but the more keenly for them; that he would recognise the man who resigned on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the writer of the article that caused the suppression of the _Mercure_; that, lastly, instead of ensuring my repose, I should revive the persecutions directed against me. They were soon obliged to recognise the truth of my words: true it is that they had not foreseen the audacity of my speech. I went to pay the customary visits to the members of the Academy[33]. Madame de Vintimille took me to the Abbé Morellet. We found him sitting in an arm-chair before his fire; he had fallen asleep, and the _Itinéraire_, which he was reading, had dropped from his hands. Waking with a start at the sound of my name announced by his man-servant, he raised his head and exclaimed: "There are passages so long, so long!" I told him, laughing, that I saw that, and that I would abridge the new edition. He was a good-natured man and promised me his vote, in spite of _Atala._ When, later, the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ appeared, he could not recover from his astonishment that such a political work should have the singer of "the daughter of the Floridas" for its author. Had Grotius[34] not written the tragedy of _Adam and Eve_ and Montesquieu the _Temple de Guide?_ True, I was neither Grotius nor Montesquieu. The election took place; I was elected by ballot with a fairly large majority[35]. I at once set to work on my speech; I wrote and rewrote it a score of times, never feeling satisfied with myself: at one time, wishing to make it possible for me to read, I thought it too strong; at another, my anger returning, I thought it too weak. I did not know how to measure out the dose of academic praise. If, in spite of my antipathy for Napoleon, I had tried to render the admiration which I felt for the public portion of his life, I should have gone far beyond the peroration. Milton, whom I quote at the commencement of the speech, furnished me with a model; in his _Second defense of the People of England_, he made a pompous eulogy of Cromwell: "Not only the actions of our kings," he says, "but the fabled exploits of our heroes, are overcome by your achievements. Reflect, then, frequently (how dear alike the trust, and the parent from you have received it!) that to your hands your country has commended and confided her freedom: that what she lately expected from her choicest representatives she now expects, now hopes, from you alone. O reverence this high expectation, this hope of your country relying exclusively upon yourself! Reverence the glances and the gashes of those brave men who have so nobly struggled for liberty under your auspices, as well as the shades of those who perished in the conflict! Reverence, finally, yourself, and suffer not that liberty, for the attainment of which you have endured so many hardships and encountered so many perils, to sustain any violation from your own hands, or any encroachment from those of others. Without our freedom, in fact, you cannot yourself be free: for it is justly ordained by nature that he who invades the liberty of others shall in the very outset lose his own, and be the first to feel the servitude which he has induced[36]." Johnson quoted only the praises given to the Protector[37], in order to place the Republican in contradiction with himself; the fine passage which I have just translated contains its own qualification of those praises. Johnson's criticism is forgotten, Milton's defense has remained: all that belongs to the strife of parties and the passions of the moment dies like them and with them. [Sidenote: I am elected.] When my speech was ready, I was sent for to read it to the committee appointed to hear it: it was rejected by the committee, with the exception of two or three members[38]. It was a sight to see the terror of the bold Republicans who listened to me and who were alarmed by the independence of my opinions; they shuddered with indignation and fright at the mere word of liberty. M. Daru[39] took the speech to Saint-Cloud. Bonaparte declared that, if it had been delivered, he would have closed the doors of the Institute and flung me into a subterranean dungeon for the rest of my life. I received the following note from M. Daru: "SAINT-CLOUD, 28 _April_ 1811. "I have the honour to inform Monsieur de Chateaubriand that, when he has the time or occasion to come to Saint-Cloud, I shall be able to return to him the speech which he was good enough to entrust to me. I take this opportunity to repeat to him the assurance of the high consideration with which I have the honour to salute him. "DARU." I went to Saint-Cloud. M. Daru returned me the manuscript, crossed out in places, and scored _ab irato_ with parentheses and pencil marks by Bonaparte: the lion's claw had been dug in everywhere, and I experienced a sort of pleasure of irritation in imagining that I felt it in my side. M. Daru did not conceal Napoleon's anger from me; but he told me, that, if I kept the peroration, with the exception of a few words, and changed almost the whole of the rest, I should be received with great applause. The speech had been copied out at the palace; some passages had been suppressed and others interpolated. Not long after, it appeared in the provinces printed in that fashion. This speech is one of the best proofs of the independence of my opinions and the consistency of my principles. M. Suard, who was free and firm, said that, if it had been read in the open Academy, it would have brought down the rafters of the hall with applause. Can you, indeed, imagine the warm praises of liberty uttered in the midst of the servility of the Empire? I had kept the scored manuscript with religious care; ill-fortune willed that, when I left the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse, it was burnt with a heap of papers. Nevertheless the readers of these Memoirs shall not be deprived of it: one of my colleagues had the generosity to take a copy of it; here it is: [Sidenote: My inaugural speech.] "When Milton published _Paradise Lost_, not a voice was raised in the three kingdoms of Great Britain to praise a work which, in spite of its numerous defects, remains nevertheless one of the noblest monuments of the human mind. The English Homer died forgotten, and his contemporaries left to futurity the task of immortalizing the singer of Eden. Have we here one of the great instances of literary injustice of which examples are presented by nearly every century? No, gentlemen; the English, but recently escaped from the Civil Wars, were unable to bring themselves to celebrate the memory of a man who was remarked for the ardour of his opinions in a time of calamity. What shall we reserve, they asked, for the tomb of the citizen who devotes himself to the safety of his country, if we lavish honours upon the ashes of him who, at most, is entitled to claim our generous indulgence? Posterity will do justice to Milton's memory, but we owe a lesson to our sons: we must teach them, by our silence, that talents are a baleful gift when allied with the passions, and that it is better to condemn one's self to obscurity than to achieve celebrity through one's country's misfortunes. "Shall I, gentlemen, imitate this memorable example, or shall I speak to you of the person and works of M. Chénier? To reconcile your usages and my opinions, I feel it my duty to adopt a middle course between absolute silence and a thorough consideration. But, whatever the words I may utter, no rancour will poison this address. Should you find in me the frankness of my fellow-countryman Duclos[40], I hope also to prove to you that I possess the same loyalty. "Doubtless it would have been curious to see what a man in my position, holding my principles and my opinions, could have to say of the man whose place I occupy to-day. It would be interesting to examine the influence of revolutions upon literature, to show how systems can mislead talent and direct it into fallacious ways which seem to lead to fame and only end in oblivion. If Milton, despite his political aberrations, has left works which posterity admires, it is because Milton, without repenting his errors, withdrew from; a society which was withdrawing from him, to seek in religion the assuagement of his ills and the source of his glory. Deprived of the light of heaven, he created for himself a new earth, a new sun, and quitted, so to speak, a world where he had seen nought save misery and crime; he set in the bowers of Eden that primitive innocence, that blessed felicity which reigned beneath the tents of Jacob and Rachel; and he placed in the lower regions the torments, passions and remorse of the men whose furies he had shared. "Unfortunately, the works of M. Chénier, though they show the germ of a remarkable talent, glow with neither that antique simplicity nor that sublime majesty. The author was distinguished for an eminently classical mind. None better understood the principles of ancient and modern literature; the stage, eloquence, history, criticism, satire: he embraced all these; but his writings bear the impress of the disastrous days that witnessed his birth. Too often dictated by the spirit of party, they have been applauded by factions. Shall I, in discussing my predecessor's works, separate what has already passed away, like our discords, and what will perhaps survive, like our glory? Here we find the interests of society and the interests of literature confounded. I cannot forget the first sufficiently to occupy myself solely with the second; wherefore, gentlemen, I am obliged either to keep silence or to raise political questions. "There are persons who would make of literature an abstract thing and isolate it in the midst of human affairs. Such persons will say to me, 'Why keep silence? Treat M. Chénier's works only from the literary point of view.' That is to say, gentlemen, that I must abuse your patience and my own by repeating commonplaces which you can find anywhere and which you know better than I. Manners change with the times: heirs to a long series of peaceful years, our forerunners were able to indulge in purely academic discussions which were even less a proof of their talent than of their happiness. But we, who remain the victims of a great shipwreck, no longer have what is needed to relish so perfect a calm. Our ideas, our minds have taken a different direction. The man has in us taken the place of the academician: by divesting literature of all its futility, we now behold it only in the light of our mighty memories and of the experience of our adversity. What! After a revolution which has caused us, in a few years, to live through the events of many centuries, shall the writer be forbidden all lofty considerations, shall he be denied the right to examine the serious side of objects? Shall he spend a trivial life occupied with grammatical quibbles, rules of taste, petty literary judgments? Shall he grow old, bound in the swaddling-clothes of his cradle? Shall he not show, at the end of his days, a brow furrowed by his long labours, by his grave reflections, and often by those manly sufferings which add to the greatness of mankind? What important cares, then, will have whitened his hair? The miserable sorrows of self-love and the puerile sports of the mind. "Surely, gentlemen, that would be treating ourselves with a very strange contempt! Speaking for myself, I cannot thus belittle myself, nor reduce myself to the condition of childhood at the age of strength and reason. I cannot confine myself within the narrow circle which they would trace around the writer. For instance, gentlemen, if I wished to pass a eulogy on the man of letters, on the man of the Court who presides over this meeting[41], do you believe that I would content myself with praising in him the light and ingenious French wit which he received from his mother[42], and of which he displays to us the last model? No, assuredly: I should wish to make glow once more in all its brilliancy the noble name which he bears. I should mention the Duc de Boufflers[43] who forced the Austrians to raise the blockade of Genoa. I should speak of the marshal, his father[44], of the governor who held the ramparts of Lille against the enemies of France, and who, by that memorable defense, consoled a great king's unhappy old age. It was of that companion of Turenne that Madame de Maintenon said: "'In him the heart was the last to die.' [Sidenote: My speech continued.] "Lastly, I should go back to that Louis de Boufflers[45], called the Robust, who displayed in combat the vigour and valour of Hercules. Thus, at the two extremities of this family, I should find force and grace, the knight and the troubadour. They say that the French are sons of Hector: I would rather believe that they descend from Achilles, for like that hero they wield both the lyre and the sword. "If I wished, gentlemen, to talk to you of the celebrated poet[46] who sang the charms of nature in such brilliant tones, do you think that I would confine myself to pointing out to you the admirable flexibility of a talent which succeeded in rendering with equal distinction the regular beauties of Virgil and the less correct beauties of Milton? No: I would also show you the poet refusing to part from his unfortunate countrymen, accompanying them with his lyre to foreign shores, singing their sorrows to console them; an illustrious exile among that crowd of banished men whose number I increased. It is true that his age and his infirmities, his talents and his glory had not protected him against persecution in his own country. Men tried to make him purchase peace with verses unworthy of his muse, and his muse could sing only the redoubtable immortality of crime and the reassuring immortality of virtue: "Rassurez-vous, vous êtes immortels[47]! "If, again, I wished to speak to you of a friend very dear to my heart[48], one of those friends who, according to Cicero, render prosperity more brilliant and adversity less irksome, I should extol the refinement and purity of his taste, the exquisite elegance of his prose, the beauty, the strength, the harmony of his verses, which, while formed after the great models, are nevertheless distinguished by their original character. I should extol that superior talent which has never known the feelings of envy, that talent made happy by every success other than its own, that talent which, for ten years, has felt all that has happened to me of an honourable nature with the deep and simple joy known only to the most generous characters and the liveliest friendship. But I should not omit my friend's political side. I should depict him at the head of one of the principal bodies of the State, delivering those speeches which are master-pieces of propriety, moderation and exaltedness. I should represent him sacrificing the gentle commerce of the Muses to occupations which would no doubt be without charm, if one did not abandon one's self to them in the hope of forming children capable of one day following the example of their fathers and avoiding their errors. "In speaking of the men of talent of whom this meeting is composed, I could not therefore prevent myself from considering them from the point of view of morality and society. One is distinguished among you by a refined, delicate and sagacious wit, by an urbanity nowadays so rare, and by the most honourable constancy in his moderate opinions[49]. Another, under the ice of age, found the warmth of youth wherewith to plead the cause of the unfortunate[50]. A third[51], an elegant historian and agreeable poet, becomes more venerable and more dear to us by the memory of a father[52] and a son[53], both mutilated in the service of the country. Yet another, by restoring their hearing to the deaf, their speech to the dumb, recalls to us the miracles of the Gospels, to the cult of which he has devoted himself[54]. Are there not, gentlemen, among you some witnesses of your former triumphs who can tell the worthy heir[55] of the Chancelier d'Aguesseau[56] how his grandsire's name was once applauded in this assembly? I pass to the favourite nurselings of the nine Sisters, and I see the venerable author of Œdipe[57] retired in his solitude and Sophocles forgetting at Colonos the glory that calls him back to Athens. How greatly must we cherish the other sons of Melpomene who have interested us in the misfortunes of our fathers! Every French heart has throbbed anew at the presentiment of the death of Henry IV[58]. The tragic muse has re-established the honour of those gallant knights dastardly betrayed by history, and nobly revenged by one of our modern Euripides[59]. [Sidenote: My speech continued.] "Coming to the successors of Anacreon, I would pause at the amiable man[60] who, similar to the veteran of Teos[61], still re-tells, after fifteen lustra, those love-songs which one begins to write at fifteen years. I would also, gentlemen, go to seek your renown on the stormy seas which were formerly guarded by the giant Adamastor[62], and which became appeased by the charming names of Éléonore[63] and Virginie[64]. _Tibi rident æquora._ "Alas, too many of the talents in our midst have been wandering and restless! Has poetry not sung in harmonious verse of the art of Neptune[65], that so fatal art which transported it to distant shores? And has not French eloquence, after defending the altar and the State, withdrawn, as though into its source, to the land where St. Ambrose[66] first saw the light[67]? Why can I not here place all the members of this assembly in a picture the colours of which have not been embellished by flattery! For, if it be true that envy sometimes obscures the estimable qualities of men of letters, it is still more true that this class of men is distinguished by lofty sentiments, by disinterested virtues, by the hatred of oppression, devotion to friendship, and fidelity to misfortune. It is thus, gentlemen, that I love to consider a subject from all its aspects, and that I love especially to give a serious character to literature by applying it to the most exalted subjects of morality, philosophy and history. With this independence of mind, I must needs abstain from touching upon works which it is impossible to examine without irritating the passions. Were I to speak of the tragedy of _Charles IX_, could I refrain from avenging the memory of the Cardinal de Lorraine and discussing the strange lesson there given to Kings? _Caius Gracchus, Calas, Henri VIII, Fénelon_[68] would in many respects present sent to me a distortion of history upon which to rest the same doctrines. When I read the satires, I there find immolated men occupying places in the first ranks of this assembly; nevertheless, written as they are in a pure, elegant and easy style, they agreeably recall the school of Voltaire, and I should take the more pleasure in praising them inasmuch as my own name has not escaped the author's malice[69]. But let us leave on one side works which would give rise only to painful recriminations: I will not disturb the memory of a writer who was your colleague and who still numbers friends and admirers among you; he will owe to religion, which appeared to him so contemptible in the writings of those who defend it, the peace which I wish to his tomb. But even here, gentlemen, shall I not have the misfortune to strike upon a rock? For, in offering to M. Chénier this tribute of respect which is due to all the dead, I fear to meet beneath my steps ashes very differently illustrious. If ungenerous interpretations would impute this involuntary emotion to me as a crime, I should take refuge at the foot of those expiatory altars which a powerful monarch erects to the manes of outraged dynasties. Ah, how much happier would it have been for M. Chénier not to have taken part in those public calamities which at last fell back upon his head! He has known, like myself, what it means to lose in the storms a fondly cherished brother[70]. What would our unhappy brothers have said, had God summoned them on the same day before His tribunal? If they had met at the hour of death, before mingling their blood they would doubtless have cried to us, 'Cease your intestine wars, return to thoughts of love and peace; death strikes all parties alike, and your cruel divisions cost us our youth and our life.' That would have been their fraternal cry. [Sidenote: My speech continued.] "If my predecessor could hear these words, which now console only his shade, he would appreciate the tribute which I am here paying to his brother, for he was by nature generous: it was even this generosity of character which drew him into new ideas, very seductive no doubt, since they promised to restore to us the virtues of Fabricius[71]. But, soon deceived in his hopes, he found his mood becoming embittered, his talent changing its nature. Removed from the poet's solitude into the midst of factions, how could he have abandoned himself to those sentiments which make the charm of life? Happy had he seen no sky save the sky of Greece under which he was born[72], had he set eyes upon no ruins save those of Sparta and Athens! I should perhaps have met him in his mother's beautiful country, and we would have sworn mutual friendship on the banks of the Permessus; or else, since he was to return to his paternal fields, why did he not follow me to the deserts upon which I was flung by our tempests! The silence of the forests would have calmed that troubled soul, and the huts of the savages would perhaps have reconciled him to the palaces of kings. Vain wish! M. Chénier remained upon the stage of our excitements and our sorrows. Attacked while still in his youth by a mortal malady, you have seen him, gentlemen, droop slowly towards the tomb and leave for ever.... I have not been told of his last moments. "None of us, who have lived through the troubles and excitements, shall escape the eyes of history. Who can flatter himself that he shall be found stainless in a time of frenzy when none has the entire use of his reason? Let us then be full of indulgence for others; let us excuse that of which we cannot approve. Such is human weakness, that talent, genius, virtue itself are sometimes able to overstep the limits of duty. M. Chénier worshipped liberty: can we ascribe it to him as a crime? The knights themselves, were they to issue from their tombs, would follow the light of our century. We should see that illustrious alliance formed between honour and liberty, as under the reign of the Valois, upon our monuments. Gothic battlements crowned with infinite grace the orders borrowed from the Greeks. Is not liberty the greatest of benefits and the first of man's needs? It kindles genius, it elevates the heart, it is as necessary to the friend of the Muses as the air he breathes. The arts are, to a certain point, able to live in dependence, because they make use of a language apart, which is not understood by the crowd; but letters, which speak an universal language, pine and perish in irons. How shall one compose pages worthy of the future, if one must forbid one's self, in writing, every magnanimous sentiment, every great and powerful thought? Liberty is so naturally the friend of science and literature, that she takes refuge with them when she is banished from the midst of the peoples; and it is we, gentlemen, whom she charges to write her annals and to revenge her on her enemies, to hand down her name and her cult to posterity for all time. To prevent any mistake in the interpretation of my thought, I declare that I am here speaking only of the liberty which is born of order and gives birth to laws, and not of that liberty which is the daughter of license and the mother of slavery. The wrong of the author of Charles IX did not, therefore, lie in offering his incense to the former of these divinities, but in believing that the rights which she gives us are incompatible with a monarchical form of government. A Frenchman displays in his opinions that independence which other nations show in their laws. Liberty is for him a sentiment rather than a principle, and he is a citizen by instinct and a subject by choice. If the writer whose loss you are mourning had made this reflection, he would not have embraced in one and the same love the liberty that creates and the liberty that destroys. [Sidenote: My speech concluded.] "Gentlemen, I have finished the task which the customs of the Academy have laid upon me. On the point of ending this speech, I am struck with an idea which saddens me: it is not long since M. Chénier pronounced upon my writings some findings which he was preparing to publish; and to-day it is I who am judging my judge. I say, in all the sincerity of my heart, that I would rather continue exposed to the satire of an enemy, and live peacefully in solitude, than bring home to you, by my presence in your midst, the rapid succession of men upon earth, the sudden apparition of that death which overthrows our projects and our hopes, which snatches us away at a stroke, and which sometimes hands over our memory to men entirely opposed to us in sentiment and principle. This platform is a sort of battle-field in which talents come by turns to shine and die. What diverse geniuses has it not seen pass! Corneille, Racine, Boileau, La Bruyère[73], Bossuet, Fénelon, Voltaire, Buffon[74], Montesquieu.... Who would not be afraid, gentlemen, to think that he is about to form a link in the chain of that illustrious lineage? Overcome by the weight of those immortal names, and unable to make myself recognised through my talents as the lawful heir, I will at least try to prove my descent by my sentiments. "When my turn shall have come to yield my place to the orator who is to speak on my tomb, he may treat my works severely, but he will be obliged to say that I loved my mother-land passionately, that I would have endured a thousand ills rather than cost my country a single tear, that I would without hesitation have made the sacrifice of my days to those noble sentiments which alone give value to life and dignity to death. "But what a moment have I chosen, gentlemen, to speak to you of mourning and obsequies! Are we not surrounded by scenes of festivity? A solitary traveller, I was meditating a few days since on the ruin of the destroyed empires: and now I see a new empire arise. Scarce have I quitted the graves in which the buried nations sleep, and I perceive a cradle laden with the destinies of the future. The acclamations of the soldier resound on every hand. Cæsar mounts to the Capitol; the nations tell of marvels, of monuments upraised, cities beautified, the frontiers of the country bathed by those distant seas which bore the ships of Scipio, and by those remote waters which Germanicus did not see. "While the triumpher advances surrounded by his legions, what shall the tranquil children of the Muses do? They will go before the car to add the olive-branch of peace to the palms of victory, to mingle with the warlike recitals the touching images which caused Æmilius Paulus[75] to weep over the misfortunes of Perseus[76]. "And you, daughter of the Cæsars[77], come forth from your palace with your young son[78] in your arms; come, to add mercy to greatness; come, to soften victory and to temper the glitter of arms by the gentle majesty of a queen and a mother." In the manuscript which was handed back to me, the commencement of the speech, which relates to the opinions of Milton, was struck out from one end to the other by Bonaparte's hand. A part of my protest against the isolation from affairs of State, in which it was desired to keep literature, was also stigmatized with the pencil. The eulogy of the Abbé Delille, which recalled the Emigration and the fidelity of the poet to the misfortunes of the Royal Family and to the sufferings of his companions in exile, was placed between brackets; the eulogy of M. de Fontanes had a cross set against it. Almost all that I said of M. Chénier, of his brother, of my own, of the expiatory altars which were being prepared at Saint-Denis was slashed with pencil marks. The paragraph commencing with the words, "M. Chénier worshipped liberty," etc., had a double longitudinal line drawn through it. Nevertheless, the agents of the Empire, when publishing the speech, kept this paragraph pretty correctly. All was not ended when they had handed me back my speech; they wanted to force me to write a second. I declared that I stood by the first, and that I would write no other. The committee then declared to me that I should not be received into the Academy. Gracious, generous and courageous persons, unknown to myself, interested themselves in me. Mrs. Lindsay, who at the time of my return to France, in 1800, had brought me from Calais to Paris, talked to Madame Gay[79]; the latter addressed herself to Madame Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, who asked the Duc de Rovigo to leave me alone. The women of that time interposed their beauty between power and misfortune. [Sidenote: Bonaparte's comments.] All this perturbation was prolonged, by the decennial prizes, until the year 1812. Bonaparte, who was persecuting me, sent to the Academy to ask, in the matter of those prizes, why they had not put the _Génie du Christianisme_ on their list. The Academy explained; several of my colleagues wrote their unfavourable judgment of my work. I might have said what a Greek poet said to a bird: "Daughter of Attica, nurtured on honey, thou who singest so well, thou snatchest a grasshopper, a fine songstress like thyself, and carriest her for food to thy young ones. Both of you have wings, both inhabit these regions, both celebrate the birth of spring: wilt thou not restore to her her liberty? It is not just that a songstress should die by the beak of one of her fellows[80]." This mixture of anger against and attraction for me displayed by Bonaparte is constant and strange: but now he threatens, and suddenly he asks the Institute why it has not mentioned me on the occasion of the decennial prizes. He goes further, he declares to Fontanes that, since the Institute does not think me worthy to compete for the prizes, he will give me one, that he will appoint me superintendent-general of all the libraries of France: a superintendence with the salary attached to a first-class embassy. Bonaparte's original idea of employing me in a diplomatic career did not leave him: he would not admit, for a reason well known to himself, that I had ceased to form part of the Ministry of External Relations. And yet, in spite of this proposed munificence, his Prefect of Police invited me, some time later[81], to remove myself from Paris, and I went to continue my Memoirs at Dieppe. Bonaparte stooped to play the part of a teasing school-boy; he disinterred the _Essai sur les Révolutions_ and delighted in the war which he brought down upon me on this subject. A certain M. Damaze de Raymond constituted himself my champion[82]: I went to thank him in the Rue Vivienne. He had a death's-head on his mantel-piece among his knick-knacks; some time later he was killed in a duel[83], and his charming features went to join the frightful face that seemed to call to him. Everyone fought in those days: one of the police-spies charged with the arrest of Georges received a bullet in the head from him. To cut short my powerful adversary's unfair attack, I applied to that M. de Pommereul of whom I spoke to you at the time of my first arrival in Paris: he had become director-general of the State printing works and of the department of books. I asked him for leave to reprint the _Essai_ in its entirety. My correspondence and the result of that correspondence can be seen in the preface to the 1826 edition of the _Essai sur les Révolutions_, vol. II. of the Complete Works. Moreover, the Imperial Government was exceedingly right to refuse its assent to the reprinting of the work in its entirety: the _Essai_ was not, having regard both to the liberties and to the Legitimate Monarchy, a book which should be published while despotism and usurpation held sway. The police gave itself airs of impartiality by allowing something to be said in my favour, and it laughed while preventing me from doing the only thing capable of defending me. On the return of Louis XVIII., the _Essai_ was exhumed anew: as, in the time of the Empire, they had wished to make use of it against me in a political respect, so, in the days of the Restoration, they tried to plead it against me in a religious respect. I have made so complete an apology for my errors in the notes to the new edition of the _Essai historique_, that there is nothing left wherewith to reproach me. Posterity will come and will pronounce on both book and commentary, if such old trash is still able to interest it. I venture to hope that it will judge the _Essai_ as my grey head has judged it; for, as one advances in life, one assumes the equity of the future towards which one approaches. The book and the notes place me before the eyes of men such as I was at the commencement of my career and such as I am at the close of that career. [Sidenote: The _Essai_ reprinted.] Moreover, this work which I have treated with pitiless rigour offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist and a future politician. The pith of the work is overflowing, the boldness of the opinions urged as far as it will go. It must needs be admitted that, in the various roads upon which I have embarked, I have never been guided by prejudice, that I have never been blind in whatsoever cause, that no interest has led me on, that the sides which I have taken have always been those of my choice. In the _Essai_, my independence in matters of religion and politics is complete; I examine everything: a _Republican_, I serve the Monarchy; a _philosopher_, I honour religion. These are not contradictions: they are forced consequences of the uncertainty of theory and the certainty of practice among men. My mind, constructed to believe in nothing, not even in myself, constructed to despise everything, splendours and miseries, peoples and kings, has nevertheless been dominated by an instinct of reason which commanded it to submit to all that is recognised as fine: religion, justice, humanity, equality, liberty, glory. That which people to-day dream concerning the future, that which the present generation imagines itself to have discovered concerning a society yet to be born, founded upon principles quite different from those of the old society, is announced positively in the _Essai._ I have anticipated by thirty years those who call themselves the proclaimers of an unknown world. My acts have belonged to the ancient city, my thoughts to the new; the former to my duty, the latter to my nature. The _Essai_ was not an impious book; it was a book of doubt and sorrow. I have already said so[84]. For the rest, I have had to exaggerate my fault to myself, and to redeem with ideas of order so many passionate ideas strewn over my works. I fear lest, at the commencement of my career, I may have done harm to youth; I owe it a reparation, and at least I owe it other lessons. Let it learn that one can struggle successfully with a troubled nature; I have seen moral beauty, the divine beauty, superior to every earthly dream: it needs but a little courage to reach it and keep to it. In order to finish what I have to say touching my literary career, I must mention the work which commenced it, and which remained in manuscript until the year in which I inserted it in my Complete Works. At the beginning of the _Natchez_, the preface described how the work was recovered in England, thanks to the trouble and the obliging research of Messieurs de Thuisy. A manuscript from which I have been able to extract _Atala, René_, and several descriptions included in the _Génie du Christianisme_, is not absolutely barren. This first manuscript was written in one piece, without sections; all the subjects were confused in it: journeys, natural history, the dramatic portion, etc.; but, besides this manuscript, composed in one stroke, there existed another, divided into books. In this second work, I had not only proceeded to the separation of the matter, but I had also changed the character of the composition, by altering it from the romantic to the idyllic. A young man who promiscuously heaps up his ideas, his inventions, his studies, die results of his reading, is bound to produce chaos; but also in this chaos there is a certain fecundity which belongs to the potency of his age. To me happened that which has perhaps happened to no other author: I read again, after a lapse of thirty years, a manuscript which I had totally forgotten. I had one danger to fear. In repassing the brush over the picture, I might wipe out the colours; a surer but less rapid hand ran the risk, while obliterating some incorrect features, of causing the liveliest touches of youth to disappear: it was necessary to preserve the independence and, so to speak, the passion of the composition; the foam must be left on the bit of the youthful courser. If in the _Natchez_ there are things which I would hazard only in trembling to-day, there are also things which I would no longer write, especially René's letter in the second volume. It is in my first manner, and reproduces all René. I do not know that the Renés who followed in my steps can have said anything more nearly approaching folly. [Sidenote: The _Natchez._] The _Natchez_ opens with an invocation to the desert and to the star of the night, the supreme divinities of my youth: "In the shade of the American forests I will sing airs of solitude such as mortal ears have not yet heard; I will relate your adversities, O Natchez, O nation of Louisiana, of whom naught save the memories remain! Should the misfortunes of an obscure dweller in the woods have less claim upon our tears than those of other men? And are the mausoleums of the kings in our temples more touching than the tomb of an Indian under his native oak? "And thou, torch of meditation, star of the night, be for me the star of Pindus! Go before my steps across the unknown regions of the New World, to reveal to me by thy light the enchanting secrets of those deserts!" My two natures lie mingled in this singular work, particularly in the primitive original. In it are found political incidents and romantic intrigues; but, across the narrative, there is heard, throughout, a voice that sings and that seems to come from an unknown region. * From 1812 to 1814, but two years are wanting to end the Empire[85], and those two years, of which we have seen something by anticipation, were employed by me in researches into French history, and in the writing of some books of these Memoirs; but I did not print anything more. My life of poetry and erudition was really closed by the publication of my three great works, the _Génie du Christianisme_, the _Martyrs_ and the _Itinéraire._ My political writings began with the Restoration; with those writings also began my active political existence. Here, therefore, ends my literary career properly so-called; carried away by the flood of years, I had omitted it; not until this year, 1839, have I recalled the bygone times of 1800 to 1814. This literary career, as you have been free to convince yourselves, was no less disturbed than my career as a traveller and a soldier; there were also labours, encounters, and blood in the arena; all was not Muses and Castalian spring. My political career was even stormier. Perhaps some remains may mark the spot where stood my gardens of Academus. The _Génie du Christianisme_ commences the religious revolution against the philosophism of the eighteenth century. I was at the same time preparing the revolution which threatens our language, for there can be no renewal of ideas without an accompanying renewal of style. Will there be other forms of art, at present unknown, when I am gone? Will it be possible to start from our studies of to-day in order to make progress, as we ourselves have taken a step forward by starting from past studies? Are there limits which one could not overstep, because one would then run against the nature of things? Do not those limits lie in the division of the modern languages, in the decay of those same languages, in human vanity such as modern society has made it? Languages do not follow the movement of civilization until they are on the point of attaining the period of their perfection; having reached this zenith, they remain stationary for a moment, and then descend, without being able to ascend again. [Sidenote: Youth and age.] Now, the story which I am finishing joins the first books of my political life, written previously at different dates. I feel a little more courage on returning to the finished portions of my edifice. When I resumed my work, I trembled lest the old son of Cœlus should see the golden trowel of the builder of Troy turn into a trowel of lead. And yet it seems to me that my memory, when bidden to pour me out my recollections, has not failed me too greatly. Have you felt the ice of winter to a great extent in my narrative? Do you find an enormous difference between the extinct ashes which I have striven to revive and the living persons whom I have shown you in telling you of my early youth? My years are my secretaries: when one of them comes to die, he passes the pen to his younger brother, and I continue to dictate. As they are of one family, they write very nearly the same hand. [1] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised in June 1847.--T. [2] Chateaubriand bought it from M. de Fontanes for 20,000 francs.--B. [3] Chateaubriand bought the Vallée-aux-Loups in August 1807, for the sum of 30,000 francs.--B. [4] Madame de Lavalette was the widow of the Marquis de Béville.--B. [5] _Manger_, to eat; also, to run through, to squander.--T. [6] The Infirmary, situated at No. 86, Rue d'Enfer (now 92, Rue Denfert-Rochereau), was founded by M. and Madame de Chateaubriand at a considerable cost. Madame de Chateaubriand was buried beneath the altar of the chapel.--B. [7] Anne Louis Girodet Trioson, originally Girodet de Roussy (1767-1824), a pupil of David, and not only a fine painter, but also a poet of some merit.--T. [8] Dominique Vivant Baron Denon (1747-1825), Director-General of Museums under the Empire.--T. [9] Chateaubriand's portrait was exhibited in the Salon of 1808.--B. [10] Jean François Boissonade (1774-1857), a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and a distinguished and indefatigable Hellenist.--T. [11] Conrad Malte-Brun (1775-1826), the eminent Danish geographer.--T. [12] "Each, his hand in _th' ink-pot_, swears to be revenged."--T. [13] The crown of grass granted to a general who raised the siege of a beleaguered place.--T. [14] François Bénoît Hoffmann (1760-1828), author of several comic operas, and a successful writer in the _Journal des Débats._--T. [15] Claude Hippolyte Clausel de Montais (1769-1857) became Bishop of Chartres in 1824. He was the first to engage, in March 1841, in the struggle of the bishops in favour of liberty of instruction, which led to the law of 25 March 1850. Thanks to his writings during this contest, Monseigneur Clausel de Montais is one of the most imposing figures in the nineteenth-century episcopate.--B. [16] Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755). In the _Esprit des lois_ (1748) he treats religion respectfully, but the book was condemned for its deistic tendency.--T. [17] "Tasso wandering from town to town," etc.--T. [18] Caius Valerius Jovius Aurelius Diocletianus, Roman Emperor (245-313), in 303 commenced a persecution of the Christians which lasted for ten years, or eight years after his abdication in 305.--T. [19] _Martyrs_, XXIII.--B. [20] Caius Galerius Valerius Maximianus, Roman Emperor (_d._ 311), adopted son and son-in-law of Diocletian, and associated with the latter in his persecution of the Christians.--T. [21] Armand de Chateaubriand married in Jersey, in 1795, Jeanne Le Brun d'Anneville, who died in the island in 1857.--B. [22] The English attempted a descent on Saint-Cast in 1758 and were defeated by the Duc d'Aiguillon.--T. [23] Pierre François Joachim Henry-Larivière (1761-1838) worked ardently for the restoration of the Monarchy from the date of his proscription by the Convention, of which he was a member, in 1797. Louis XVIII. made him Advocate-General and a councillor of the Court of Appeal. He refused to take the oath to Louis-Philippe on the latter's usurpation in 1830.--B. [24] The original documents of Armand's trial have been sent me by an unknown and generous hand.--_Author's Note._ [25] M. de Goyon-Vaurouault.--B. [26] Jean Louis Laya (1761-1833), author of some poetical plays and of the _Ami des lois_, a stirring protest against the murder of Louis XVI. He was flung into prison, where he remained until the 9 Thermidor. Under the Empire, he became a professor at the Lycée Napoléon and eventually obtained the chair of poetry at the Faculté des Lettres.--T. [27] The Abbé Roch Ambroise Cucurron Sicard (1742-1822), the great teacher and benefactor of the deaf and dumb, and a fervent Royalist.--T. [28] Hortense Queen of Holland (1783-1837), daughter of the Empress Joséphine by her first husband, Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, and wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. She retired to Switzerland after the Restoration, with the title of Duchesse de Saint-Leu.--T. [29] Chateaubriand says nothing of the time which elapsed between April 1809 and January 1811. These twenty months, in fact, were marked by no political or literary event that in any way affected him.--B. [30] The _Itinéraire_ appeared in the month of March 1811.--B. [31] Louis François Cardinal Duc de Bausset, Bishop of Alais (1748-1824), was appointed to the see of Alais in 1784. He was dispossessed and imprisoned under the Terror. On the return of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France in 1815, a cardinal in 1817, and a duke in the same year. He had published his successful _Histoire de Fénelon_ in 1808; his _Histoire de Bossuet_, which was less well received, appeared in 1814.--T. [32] Marie Joseph de Chénier (1764-1811).--T. [33] A contemporary, M. Auguis, thus describes the cavalier manner in which Chateaubriand paid his visits (he quotes from the unpublished Diary of Ferdinand Denis, author of _Scènes de la nature sous les tropiques_ and of _André le voyageur_): "When Chateaubriand went to pay his French-Academy visits, he called upon his future colleagues on horseback. To the famous and powerful he paid a complete visit; to the small fry he sent in his card, without alighting from his mettlesome steed. When they came to discuss the election, M. ---- voted for the horse of his new colleague, saying that, in all conscience, it was the former alone that had paid him a visit."--B. [34] Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Hugo Grotius, the celebrated Dutch jurist and writer on international law, author of _De Jure belli et pacis_ (1624), by which the system of international law was created, etc., etc., and for some years Ambassador of Christina Queen of Sweden to France.--T. [35] The election took place on Wednesday 20 February 1811, forty days after Marie Joseph Chenier's death. Only twenty-five members were present, and Chateaubriand was elected almost unanimously.--B. [36] MILTON, _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio secunda_: Archdeacon Wrangham's translation.--T. [37] Cf. JOHNSON, _Lives of the English Poets: Milton_, in which the poet is very roughly handled.--T. [38] The committee consisted of Messieurs François de Neufchâteau, Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély, Lacretelle the Elder, Laujon and Legouvé.--B. [39] Pierre Antoine Noël Brunot, Comte Daru (1760-1829), a moderate revolutionary, had been imprisoned under the Terror. He was sent to Berlin as Minister Plenipotentiary in 1806 and entered the Institute in the same year. In 1811, he became Secretary of State, in which capacity he opposed the Russian War. He was created a peer by the Restoration. His works include a metrical translation of the Works of Horace (1804), a History of the Republic of Venice (1819), a History of Brittany (1826), etc.--T. [40] Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772), author of the _Considération des mœurs_, etc., was a native of Dinan, in Brittany, and was noted for the independence of his opinions. Louis XV. pronounced the _Considération_ to be "the work of an honest man."--T. [41] Stanislas Chevalier de Boufflers (1737-1815) became a member of the Academy in 1788, on his return from the Governorship of Senegal. He is best known for his light erotic verse.--T. [42] The Marquise de Boufflers, _née_ de Beauvais-Craon, a beautiful and witty woman who had done the honours of the Court of King Stanislaus.--T. [43] Joseph Marie Duc de Boufflers (1706-1747) relieved Genoa, besieged by the Imperial forces and by the King of Sardinia, in 1747, and died there in the same year of the small-pox.--T. [44] Louis François Maréchal Duc de Boufflers (1644-1711), a pupil of Condé and the Turennes, became famous through his defense of Lille in 1708, for which service he was created a duke and a peer. He also conducted the retreat and saved the French Army after the defeat of Malplaquet in 1709.--T. [45] Louis de Boufflers (1534-1553), a guidon to the Duc d'Enghien, and noted for his superhuman feats of strength and agility. He was killed, at the age of nineteen, at the siege of Pont-sur-Yonne.--T. [46] The Abbé Delille.--B. [47] "Be reassured, immortality's yours:" a line from Delille's _Dithyrambe sur l'immortalité de l'âme_, written during the Terror.--T. [48] M. de Fontanes.--B. [49] M. Suard.--B. [50] The Abbé Morellet, who, in 1795, had published two eloquent appeals in favour of the victims of the Revolution, the _Cri des familles_ and the _Cause des pères._--B. [51] Lieutenant-General Louis Philippe Comte de Ségur (1753-1830), a very intelligent writer. After going through the American War with Lafayette, he was sent as Ambassador to Russia, while still a very young man, returned to France on the outbreak of the Revolution, lived on his pen and was admitted to the Academy. Napoleon made him his Grand-Master of Ceremonies and a senator; under the Restoration, he was created a peer of France.--T. [52] Philippe Henri Maréchal Marquis de Ségur (1724-1801) was badly wounded at the battle of Klosterkamp, in 1760.-T. [53] Philippe Paul Comte de Ségur, author of the _Campagne de Russie_, was riddled with bullets at the Battle of Sommo-Sierra (1808), and refused to cease fighting until he swooned in the arms of his grenadiers.--B. [54] The Abbé Sicard.--B. [55] Henri Cardin Jean Baptiste Comte d'Aguesseau (1746-1826).--B. [56] Henri François d'Aguesseau (1668-1751), thrice Chancellor of France.--T. [57] Jean Francois Ducis (1733-1816), the tragic poet, author of _Œdipe chez Admète_, imitated from Sophocles and Euripides, and of imitations of many of Shakespeare's tragedies. His only original play was _Abufar, ou La Famille arabe_, which obtained a great success. He received Voltaire's seat in the Academy in 1778. Ducis refused the many advantages offered him by Bonaparte, preferring to live in poor and honourable retirement.--T. [58] Gabriel Marie Jean Baptiste Legouvé (1764-1812), the poet, author of the _Mort d'Abel_, the _Mort d'Henri IV_ and other tragedies, and of some didactic poetry which is better than the plays.--T. [59] François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761-1836), author of the tragedy of the _Templiers_, entered the Academy in 1807 and became its perpetual secretary in 1817.--T. [60] Pierre Laujon (1727-1811), author of some comic operas and of a collection of sportive verse entitled _À-propos de société_ (1771). He had been secretary to the Prince de Condé.--T. [61] Anacreon was born at Teos.--T. [62] Cf. CAMOËNS, _Luciad_, where Adamastor is represented as the giant spirit of storms, warning Vasco de Gama off the Cape of Storms, now the Cape of Good Hope.--T. [63] The Chevalier de Parny, author of _Éléonore_, was born in the Île Bourbon.--T. [64] Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of _Paul et Virginie_, lived three years in the Mauritius.--T. [65] Joseph Alphonse Esménard (1770-1811) accompanied General Leclerc to San Domingo, and on his return wrote his poem of the _Navigation._ Napoleon made him Theatrical Censor. In 1810, he entered the Institute. He was exiled, in 1811, for writing against the Emperor Alexander, returned to France after three months, and was immediately killed by a fall from his carriage.--T. [66] St. Ambrose (_circa_ 340-397), one of the Fathers of the Church, was Governor of Liguria when he was elected bishop by the people, although himself but recently converted to Christianity and as yet unbaptized. He was ordained priest and consecrated Bishop of Milan within a few days (374). St. Ambrose is honoured on the 7th of December.--T. [67] Jean Siffrein Cardinal Maury (1746-1817) had been appointed to the See of Montefiascone by Pope Pius VI. in 1794. In 1810, Napoleon had nominated him Archbishop of Paris, a fact which Chateaubriand purposely disregards.--B. [68] Chénier's tragedy of _Charles IX_ was produced in 1789, _Henri VIII_ and the _Mort de Calas_ in 1791, _Gracchus_ in 1792, _Fénelon_ in 1793.--T. [69] A reference to an attack in Chénier's satire entitled the _Nouveaux Saints_, which commences thus: Ah! vous parlez du diable? il est bien poétique, Dit le dévot Chactas, ce sauvage érotique. --B. [70] André de Chénier, guillotined in 1794.--T. [71] Caius Fabricius Luscinus (_fl._ 282 B.C.), the type of the ancient Roman virtue.--T. [72] Marie Joseph Chénier was born in Constantinople in 1764.--T. [73] Jean de La Bruyère (1644-1696), author of the _Caractères._--T. [74] Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), the great naturalist.--T. [75] Lucius Æmilius Paulus Macedonicus (228-160 B.C.), elected Consul in 182 and 168, defeated Perseus in 167 B.C., and subdued Macedonia.--T. [76] Perseus, the last King of Macedon (_d._ 167 B.C.), adorned his conqueror's triumph and allowed himself to die of starvation in his prison in Rome.--T. [77] Marie-Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of the Emperor Francis I., had been married to Napoleon on the 1st of April 1810.--T. [78] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duc de Reichstadt (1811-1832), created King of Rome on his birth (20 March).--T. [79] Marie Françoise Sophie Gay (1776-1852), _née_ Nichault de Lavalette, author of _Léonie de Montbreuse, Anatolie_, the _Salons célèbres_ and other successful and distinguished works, and mother of Madame Émile de Girardin.--T. [80] An epigram from the Anthology. The bird to which the Greek poet addressed it is the nightingale, "too great a friend of the author's," as M. de Marcellus very neatly observes, "for him to dare to call it by its name when about to speak ill of it."--B. [81] 4 September 1812.--B. [82] In a pamphlet entitled, _Réponse aux attaques dirigées contre M. de Chateaubriand._--B. [83] Damaze de Raymond died on the 27th of February 1813, in a duel resulting from a quarrel at the gaming-table.--B. [84] _Cf._ Vol. II. p. 116.--T. [85] Except in so far as concerns the incidents of his literary life, Chateaubriand's Memoirs give us hardly any details on the two years elapsing between 1812 and 1814. They were spent between the Vallée-aux-Loups and an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli which M. and Madame de Chateaubriand had hired from M. Alexandre de Laborde.--B. PART THE THIRD 1814-1830 BOOKS I AND II The last days of the Empire Youth is a charming thing: it sets out at life's commencement crowned with flowers, as did the Athenian fleet going to conquer Sicily and the delightful plains of Enna. The prayer is offered aloud by the priest of Neptune, libations are made from goblets of gold, the crowd lining the coast unites its invocations to those of the pilot, the pæan is sung while the sail is unfurled to the rays and to the breath of dawn. Alcibiades[86], arrayed in purple and beautiful as Love, is noticeable on the triremes, proud of the seven chariots which he has launched on the Olympian race-course. But, scarce is the isle of Alcinous[87] passed, when the illusion vanishes: Alcibiades, banished, goes to grow old far away from his country and to die pierced with arrows on Timandra's bosom. The companions of his early hopes, enslaved at Syracuse, have nothing to alleviate the weight of their chains but a few verses of Euripides. You have seen my youth quitting the shore: it had not the beauty of the pupil of Pericles[88], educated upon the knees of Aspasia[89] but it had the same morning hours--and longings and dreams, God knows! I have described those dreams to you: to-day, returning to land after many an exile, I have nothing more to tell you but truths sad as my age. If at times I still sound the chords of the lyre, these are the last harmonies of the poet seeking to cure himself of the wounds caused by the arrows of time, or to console himself for the slavery of years. You know how changeable was my life during my condition as a traveller and a soldier; you know of my literary existence from 1800 to 1813, the year in which you left me at the Vallée-aux-Loups, which still belonged to me when my political career opened. We are about to enter into that career: before penetrating into it, I must needs revert to the general facts which I have overlooked while occupying myself solely with my works and my personal adventures. Those facts are of Napoleon's making. Let us therefore pass to him; let us speak of the huge edifice which was being built outside my dreams. I now turn historian without ceasing to be an autobiographer; a public interest is about to support my private confidences; my own smaller recitals will group themselves around my narrative. When the war of the Revolution broke out, the kings did not understand it; they saw a revolt where they ought to have seen the changing of the nations, the end and the commencement of a world: they flattered themselves that for them there was a question only of enlarging their States with a few provinces taken from France; they believed in bygone military tactics, in bygone diplomatic treaties, in cabinet negociations: and conscripts were about to set Frederic's grenadiers to flight; monarchs were about to come to sue for peace in the ante-rooms of a few obscure demagogues; and awful revolutionary opinion was about to unravel the intrigues of old Europe upon the scaffolds. That old Europe thought it was fighting only France; it did not perceive that a new age was marching upon it. Bonaparte, in the course of his ever-increasing successes, seemed called upon to change the royal dynasties, to make his own the oldest of them all. He had made Kings of the Electors of Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Saxony; he had given the crown of Naples to Murat, that of Spain to Joseph, that of Holland to Louis, that of Westphalia to Jerome; his sister, Élisa Bacciochi, was Princess of Lucca; he, on his own account, was Emperor of the French, King of Italy, in which kingdom were included Venice, Tuscany, Parma and Piacenza; Piedmont was united to France; he had consented to allow one of his captains, Bernadotte[90], to reign in Sweden; by the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine he exercised the rights of the House of Austria over Germany; he had declared himself the mediator of the Helvetian Confederation; he had laid Prussia low; without possessing a bark, he had declared the British Isles in a state of blockade. England, in spite of her fleets, was on the point of not having a port in Europe in which to discharge a bale of merchandise or post a letter. [Sidenote: Napoleon's position in 1813.] The Papal States formed part of the French Empire; the Tiber was a French department. In the streets of Paris, one saw cardinals, half-prisoners, who, putting their heads through the window of their cab, asked: "Is this where the King of ---- lives?" "No," replied the porter to whom the question was put, "it's higher up." Austria had redeemed herself only by handing over her daughter: the "raider" of the South[91] demanded Honoria[92] from Valentinian[93], with half of the provinces of the Empire. How had those miracles been worked? What qualities were possessed by the man who gave birth to them? What qualities did he lack for their achievement? I will trace the immense fortune of Bonaparte, who, notwithstanding, passed so quickly that his days fill but a short period of the time covered by these Memoirs. Fastidious productions of genealogies, cold disquisitions upon facts, insipid verifications of dates are the burdens and servitudes of the writer.[94] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the Second Book of these Memoirs you have read (I had then returned from my first exile to Dieppe): "I have been permitted to return to my valley. The soil trembles beneath the steps of the foreign soldier: I am writing, like the last of the Romans, to the sound of the Barbarian invasion. By day I compose pages as agitated as the events of the day; at night, while the rolling of the distant cannon dies away in my solitary woods, I return to the silence of the years that sleep in the grave and to the peace of my youngest memories." * Those agitated pages which I composed by day were notes relating to the events of the moment which, when collected, formed my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._ I had so high an opinion of the genius of Napoleon and the gallantry of our soldiers that an invasion by the foreigner which should be successful in its ultimate result could not enter into my head; but I thought that this invasion, by making France realize the danger to which Napoleon's ambition had brought her, would lead to a movement from within and that the enfranchisement of the French would be worked by their own hands. It was with this idea that I was writing my notes, so that, if our political assemblies should stay the march of the Allies and resolve to sever from a great man who had become a scourge, they should know to whom to resort; the shelter seemed to me to lie in the authority, modified in accordance with the times, under which our ancestors had lived during eight centuries: when, in a storm, one finds nothing within reach but an old edifice, all in ruins though it be, one retires to it. In the winter of 1813 to 1814, I took an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the first gate of the garden of the Tuileries, before which I had heard the death of the Duc d'Enghien cried. As yet there was nothing to be seen in that street except the arcades built by the Government and a few houses rising here and there with their lateral denticulation of projecting stones. It needed nothing less than the spectacle of the calamities weighing on France to maintain the aversion which Napoleon inspired and at the same time to protect one's self against the admiration which he caused to revive so soon as he acted: he was the proudest genius of action that ever existed; his first campaign in Italy and his last campaign in France (I am not speaking of Waterloo) are his two finest campaigns: he was Condé in the first, Turenne in the second, a great warrior in the former, a great man in the latter; but they differed in their results: by the one he gained the Empire, by the other he lost it. His last hours of power, all uprooted, all barefoot as they were, could not be drawn from him, like a lion's tooth, save by the efforts of the arms of Europe. The name of Napoleon was still so formidable that the hostile armies crossed the Rhine in terror; they unceasingly looked behind them, in order well to assure themselves that their retreat would be possible; masters of Paris, they trembled yet. Alexander[95], casting his eyes towards Russia while entering France, congratulated the persons who were able to go away, and wrote his anxieties and regrets to his mother[96]. [Sidenote: His campaign in France.] Napoleon beat the Russians at Saint-Dizier[97], the Prussians and Russians at Brienne[98], as though to do honour to the fields in which he had been brought up. He routed the Army of Silesia at Montmirail[99] and Champaubert[100] and a portion of the main army at Montereau[101]. He made head everywhere; went and returned on his steps; repelled the columns by which he was surrounded. The Allies proposed an armistice; Bonaparte tore up the proffered preliminaries and exclaimed: "I am nearer to Vienna than the Emperor of Austria is to Paris!" Russia, Austria, Prussia and England, for their mutual consolation, concluded a new treaty of alliance at Chaumont[102]; but in reality they were alarmed at Bonaparte's resistance and were thinking of retreat. At Lyons an army[103] was forming on the Austrian flank; Marshal Soult was checking the English; the Congress of Châtillon[104], which was not dissolved until the 18th of March, was still negociating. Bonaparte drove Blücher[105] from the heights of Craonne[106]. The main allied army had triumphed on the 26th of February, at Bar-sur-Aube, thanks only to superiority in numbers. Bonaparte, multiplying himself, had recovered Troyes[107], which the Allies reoccupied[108]. From Craonne he had moved upon Rheims[109]. "To-night," he said, "I shall go to take my father-in-law at Troyes." On the 20th of March, an affair took place near Arcis-sur-Aube[110]. Amid a rolling fire of artillery, a shell having fallen in front of a square of the guards, the square appeared to make a slight movement: Bonaparte dashed towards the projectile, the fuse of which was smoking, and made his horse sniff at it; the shell burst, and the Emperor came safe and sound from the midst of the shattered bolt. The battle was to recommence the following day, but Bonaparte, yielding to the inspiration of genius, an inspiration which was none the less fatal, retired in order to bear upon the rear of the confederate troops, separate them from their stores, and swell his own army with the garrisons of the frontier places. The foreigners were preparing to fall back upon the Rhine, when Alexander, by one of these Heaven-inspired impulses which change a whole world, took the resolve to march upon Paris, the road to which was becoming free[111]. Napoleon thought he would draw the mass of the enemy after him, and he was followed, by only ten thousand men of the cavalry, whom he believed to be the advance-guard of the main troops, whereas they masked the real movement of the Prussians and Muscovites. He dispersed those ten thousand horse at Saint-Dizier and Vitry, and then perceived that the great allied army was not behind them: that army, which was flinging itself upon the capital, had before it only Marshals Marmont[112] and Mortier[113], with about twelve thousand conscripts. [Sidenote: He retires to Fontainebleau.] Napoleon hurriedly made for Fontainebleau[114]: there a sainted victim[115], retiring, had left the requiter and the avenger. Two things in history always go side by side: let a man enter upon a path of injustice, and he at the same time opens for himself a path of perdition in which, at a given distance, the first road will converge into the second. * Men's minds were greatly agitated: the hope of at all costs seeing brought to a close a cruel war which, since twenty years, had been weighing down upon France sated with misfortune and glory, this hope carried the day, among the masses, over the feeling of nationality. Each one thought of the part he would have to take in the approaching catastrophe. Every evening my friends came to talk at Madame de Chateaubriand's, to tell and comment upon the events of the day. Messieurs de Fontanes, de Clausel, Joubert gathered with the crowd of those transient friends whom events bring and events withdraw. Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, beautiful, peaceable and devoted, whom we shall meet again at Ghent, kept Madame de Chateaubriand faithful company. Madame la Duchesse de Duras was also in Paris, and I often went to see Madame la Marquise de Montcalm[116], sister to the Duc de Richelieu[117]. I continued to be persuaded, despite the near approach of the battle-fields, that the Allies would not enter Paris and that a national insurrection would put an end to our fears. The obsession of this idea prevented me from feeling the presence of the foreign armies as keenly as I might have done: but I could not keep myself from reflecting upon the calamities to which we had subjected Europe, when I saw Europe bring them back to us. I never ceased working at my pamphlet; I was preparing it as a remedy when the moment of anarchy should come to burst forth. It is not thus that we write nowadays, when we live at our ease, with only a war of broadsheets to fear: at night, I turned the key in my lock; I placed my papers under my pillow, with two loaded revolvers on my table: I slept between these two muses. My text was in duplicate: I had written it in the form of a pamphlet, which it retained, and in the shape of a speech, differing in some respects from the pamphlet; I thought that, when France rose, they might assemble at the Hôtel de Ville, and I had prepared myself on two topics. Madame de Chateaubriand wrote a few notes at various periods of our common life; among those notes I find the following paragraph: "M. de Chateaubriand was writing his pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._ If that pamphlet had been seized, the result was not doubtful: the sentence was the scaffold. Nevertheless the author displayed incredible negligence in concealing it. Often he would go out and leave it on the table; his prudence never went beyond placing it under his pillow, which he used to do before his valet, a very honest fellow, but liable to temptation. As for me, I was in a mortal fright: and, so soon as M. de Chateaubriand had gone out, I used to take the manuscript and place it about my person. One day, while crossing the Tuileries, I noticed that I no longer had it, and, being sure that I had felt it on leaving the house, I had no doubt that I had lost it on the way. Already I saw the fatal work in the hands of the police and M. de Chateaubriand arrested: I fell unconscious in the middle of the garden; some kind people assisted me, and afterwards took me home, which was not far off. What torture when, on climbing the stairs, I hovered between a fear which was almost a certainty and a slight hope that I had forgotten to take the pamphlet! As I approached my husband's bedroom, I felt myself fainting once more; I went in at last; nothing on the table; I went up to the bed; I first felt the pillow, I perceived nothing; I lifted it up, and saw the roll of papers! My heart beats whenever I think of it. I have never experienced such a moment of joy in my life. Certainly, I can truthfully say that it would not have been so great had I seen myself released at the foot of the scaffold; for, after all, it was some one dearer to me than myself whom I saw released from it." How unhappy should I be if I could have caused a moment of trouble to Madame de Chateaubriand! I had nevertheless been obliged to entrust a printer[118] with my secret: he had consented to risk the business; according to the news of the hour, he used to return the half-composed proofs to me, or come to fetch them back, as the sound of the cannon approached or drew farther from Paris: I played pitch-and-toss with my life, in this way, for nearly a fortnight. [Sidenote: War at the gates of Paris.] The circle was drawing closer around the capital: at every moment we heard of some progress on the part of the enemy. Russian prisoners and French wounded entered promiscuously through the barriers, drawn in carts: some, half-dead, fell beneath the wheels, which they stained with their blood. Conscripts called up from the interior crossed the capital in a long file on their way to the armies. At night, one heard trains of artillery pass along the outer boulevards, and one did not know whether the distant detonations announced the decisive victory or the final defeat. The war at last came and fixed itself outside the barriers of Paris. From the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, one could see the head of the Russian columns appear, like the first undulations of the tide of the sea upon a beach. I felt what a Roman must have experienced when, from the ridge of the Capitol, he beheld the soldiers of Alaric[119] and the old city of the Latins at his feet, as I beheld the Russian soldiers and, at my feet, the old city of the Gauls. Farewell, then, paternal gods, hearths which preserved the traditions of the country, roofs beneath which had breathed both Virginia[120], sacrificed by her father to modesty and liberty, and Héloïse, consecrated by love to letters and religion. Paris had not since centuries seen the smoke of an enemy's camp, and it was Bonaparte who, from triumph to triumph, brought the Thebans within sight of the women of Sparta. Paris was the bourn from which he had started to conquer the earth: he returned to it leaving behind him the huge conflagration of his useless conquests. The people rushed to the Jardin des Plantes, which, in olden times, the fortified Abbey of St. Victor might have been able to protect: the small world of swans and plantain-trees, to which our power had promised an eternal peace, was perturbed. From the summit of the labyrinth, looking over the great cedar, over the public granaries which Bonaparte had not had time to complete, beyond the site of the Bastille and the keep of Vincennes (spots which told the tale of our successive history), the crowd watched the infantry-fire in the combat of Belleville. Montmartre was carried: the cannon-balls fell as far as the Boulevard du Temple. A few companies of the National Guard made a sortie and lost three hundred men in the fields around the tomb of the "martyrs." Never did military France, in the midst of her reverses, shine with a brighter glory; the last heroes were the one hundred and fifty lads of the Polytechnic School, transformed into gunners in the redoubts on the Vincennes Road. Surrounded by the enemy, they refused to surrender; they had to be tom from their pieces: the Russian grenadier seized them, blackened with gun-powder and covered with wounds; while they struggled in his arms, he lifted those young French palm-branches in the air with cries of victory and admiration and restored them all bleeding to their mothers. During that time Cambacérès was fleeing with Marie-Louise, the King of Rome and the Regency. The following proclamation was read on the walls: "KING JOSEPH[121], LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF THE EMPEROR, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL GUARD. "CITIZENS OF PARIS, "The Council of Regency has provided for the safety of the Empress and the King of Rome: I remain with you. Let us arm ourselves to defend this town, its monuments, its riches, our wives, our children, all that is dear to us. Let this vast city become a camp for a short while, and let the enemy meet with his disgrace under its walls, which he hopes to surmount in triumph." Rostopschin[122] did not pretend to defend Moscow; he burnt it down. Joseph announced that he would never leave the Parisians, and privately decamped, leaving his courage placarded at the street-corners. [Sidenote: M. de Talleyrand.] M. de Talleyrand made one of the Regency appointed by Napoleon. Since the day on which the Bishop of Autun, under the Empire, ceased to be Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had dreamt of but one thing, the disappearance of Bonaparte followed by the regency of Marie-Louise, a regency of which he, the Prince de Bénévent, would have been the head. Bonaparte, in appointing him a member of a provisional regency in 1814, seemed to have favoured his secret wishes. The Napoleonic death had not occurred; there remained for M. de Talleyrand but to hobble at the feet of the colossus whom he was unable to overthrow, and to turn the moment to account on his own behalf: the genius of that man of bargains and compromises lay in contriving. The position presented difficulties: to remain in the capital was the obvious course; but, if Bonaparte returned, the prince, separated from the fugitive Regency, the prince, lagging behind, ran the risk of being shot: on the other hand, how to abandon Paris at the moment when the Allies might be entering it? Would it not be to forego the profits of success, to betray that morrow of events for which M. de Talleyrand was made? So far from leaning towards the Bourbons, he feared them by reason of his various apostacies. However, since there was some sort of chance for them, M. de Vitrolles[123], with the assent of the married prelate, had stealthily repaired to the Congress of Châtillon, as the unavowed whisperer of the Legitimacy. Having taken this precaution, the prince, in order to get clear of his difficulties in Paris, had recourse to one of those tricks of which he was a past master. M. de Laborie, who, soon after, became confidential secretary to the Provisional Government under M. Dupont de Nemours[124], went to M. de Laborde, who was attached to the National Guard, and revealed the fact of M. de Talleyrand's departure: "He is preparing," said he, "to follow the Regency; it will perhaps appear necessary to you to arrest him, in order to be in a position to negociate with the Allies if need be." The comedy was played to perfection. The prince's carriages were ostentatiously got ready; he started at broad noon-day, on the 30th of March: on reaching the Barrière d'Enfer, he was inexorably sent back home, in spite of his protestations. In case of a miraculous return, the proofs were there showing that the ex-minister had tried to join Marie-Louise and that the armed force had prevented his passage. Meantime, on the advent of the Allies, the Comte Alexandre de Laborde and M. Tourton, superior officers of the National Guard, had been sent to the Generalissimo, Prince von Schwarzenberg[125], who had been one of Bonaparte's generals during the Russian campaign. The Generalissimo's proclamation was made known in Paris on the evening of the 30th of March. It said: "For twenty years Europe has been inundated with blood and tears: the attempts made to put an end to all these sufferings have been useless, because the very principle of the government by which you are oppressed contains an insurmountable obstacle to peace. Parisians, you know the situation in which your country is placed: the preservation and the tranquillity of your city will be the object of the cares of the Allies. It is with these sentiments that Europe, in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!" What a magnificent acknowledgment of France's greatness: "Europe, in arms before your walls, addresses herself to you!" [Sidenote: Capitulation of Paris.] We, who had respected nothing, were respected by those whose towns we had ravaged and who, in their turn, had become the stronger. We appeared as a sacred nation in their eyes; our lands were to them as a field of Elis upon which, by order of the gods, no battalion dared trample. If, notwithstanding, Paris had thought fit to offer a resistance, very easily made, of four-and-twenty hours, the results would have been changed; but nobody, except the soldiers intoxicated with fire and glory, wanted any more of Bonaparte, and, dreading lest they should keep him, the people hastened to open the gates. Paris capitulated on the 31st of March: the military capitulation is signed, in the names of Marshals Mortier; and Marmont, by Colonels Denys[126] and Fabvier[127]; the civil capitulation was made in the names of the mayors of Paris. The Municipal and Departmental Council sent a deputation to the Russian head-quarters to arrange the several clauses: my companion in exile, Christian de Lamoignon, was one of the delegates. Alexander said to them: "Your Emperor, who was my ally, came into the very heart of my States to bring with him evils of which the traces will long remain: a just defense has brought me here. I am far from wishing to return to France the wrongs which she has done me. I am just, and I know that the French: are not to blame. The French are my friends, and I wish to prove to them that I have come to return good for evil. Napoleon is my only enemy. I promise my special protection to the city of Paris; I shall protect and preserve all public institutions; I shall let only picked troops remain there; I shall preserve your National Guard, which is composed of the pick of your citizens. It is for yourselves to ensure your happiness in the future; you must give yourselves a government which will procure your repose and that of Europe. It is for you to express your wish: you will always find me ready to second your efforts." These words were punctually fulfilled: the joy of victory surmounted every other interest in the eyes of the Allies. What must have been Alexander's feelings when he caught sight of the domes of the buildings of that town where no foreigner had ever entered except to admire us, to revel in the marvels of our civilization and our intelligence; of that inviolable city, defended by its great men during twelve Centuries; of that glorious capital which Louis XIV. seemed still to protect with his shade and Bonaparte with his return! [86] Alcibiades (450-404 B.C.) started on his ill-fated expedition to Sicily in 416 B.C.--T. [87] Alcinous King of the Phæacians, who welcomed Ulysses in the island of Corcyra.--T. [88] Pericles (_circa_ 494-429 B.C.) was Alcibiades' uncle and instructor.--T. [89] Aspasia had married Pericles after having been his mistress.--T. [90] Charles XIV. King of Sweden (1764-1844), as General Bernadotte, was adopted by Charles XIII., abjured Catholicism, fought against France in 1813, and succeeded in 1818.--T. [91] Attila, King of the Huns (_d._ 453). He claimed half the Western Empire as the betrothed husband of Honoria.--T. [92] Justa Grata Honoria (_b. circa_ 418), a Roman princess, daughter of Constantius III., Emperor of the West. She was disgraced and kept guarded because of her intrigue with Eugenius, and is said to have sent to Attila to claim her as his bride.--T. [93] Valentinian III. (419-455), Honoria's brother. The losses of his reign included Africa (to the Vandals), Britain, and large parts of Gaul and Spain.--T. [94] Here I omit Chateaubriand's long history of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, extending over two books of these Memoirs. The publishers propose to issue it as a supplementary volume when the publication of the Memoirs proper has been completed.--T. [95] Alexander I. Paulowitch, Emperor of Russia (1777-1825).--T. [96] The Dowager-Empress Maria Sophia Dorothea Augusta (1759-1828), widow of Paul I., and daughter of Frederic Eugene Duke of Wurtemberg-Mümpelgard.--T. [97] 27 January 1814.--T. [98] 29 January 1814. Napoleon had been educated at the military school at Brienne.--T. [99] 10 February 1814.--T. [100] 11 February.--T. [101] 18 February.--T. [102] 1 March 1814.--B. [103] Under the command of Marshal Augereau, Duc de Castiglione.--B. [104] The Congress of Châtillon, between the four allied Powers and France, had opened on the 5th of February 1814. France was represented by the Duc de Vicence; Austria by Count von Stadion; Prussia by Baron von Humboldt; Russia by Count Razumowsky; England by Sir Charles Stuart, with Lord Cathcart and the Earl of Aberdeen.--T. [105] Field-Marshal Gebhart Lebrecht von Blücher, Prince of Wahlstadt (1743-1819), who played a prominent part in command of the Prussian forces in the Waterloo campaign.--T. [106] 7 March 1814.--T. [107] 27 February.--T. [108] 4 March.--T. [109] Napoleon drove a Russian corps out of Rheims on the 13th of March 1814.--T. [110] The Battle of Arcis-Sur-Aube lasted two days (20 and 21 March). It was the last battle which Napoleon delivered in person in this campaign. He had to abandon the field to the enemy; but the two days were none the less most glorious for the French soldiers and their leader. Napoleon's 20,000 men had resisted a mass which rose successively from 40,000 to 90,000.--B. [111] I have heard General Pozzo tell that it was he who persuaded the Emperor Alexander to march forward.--_Author's Note._ The resolution to march on Paris was taken on the 24th of March, at Sommepuis.--B. [112] Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, Maréchal Duc de Raguse (1774-1852), one of Napoleon's most distinguished commanders. Under the Restoration, he became a peer of France and Major-General of the Royal Guard, and he clung to the Elder Line after the usurpation of the Duc d'Orléans. Marmont was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Science in 1816.--T. [113] Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, Maréchal Duc de Trévise (1768-1835), played a prominent part in the Republic and the Empire. He was created a peer of France under the First Restoration, but rallied to Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was deprived of his peerage in 1815, on refusing to try Marshal Ney. He sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1816 to 1819, when his peerage was restored to him; accepted the office of Minister for War under the Usurpation; and was killed, in July 1835, by Fieschi's infernal machine, while riding by the side of Louis-Philippe.--T. [114] He arrived at Fontainebleau in the night of the 30th of March. The Capitulation of Paris was signed at two o'clock on the morning of the 31st.--B. [115] Pope Pius VII., who had been released from his captivity at Fontainebleau early in the year.--T. [116] The Marquise de Montcalm was the half-sister of the Duc de Richelieu. Their father, the Duc de Fronsac, had married twice, first, Mademoiselle d'Hautefort, by whom he had a son, the future minister of the Restoration; secondly, Mademoiselle de Gallifet, by whom he had two daughters, Armande and Simplicie, who became Marquise de Montcalm and Marquise de Jumilhac respectively.--B. [117] Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1766-1822), emigrated in 1789 and served with distinction in the Russian Army. He returned to France in 1814 and in the following year was appointed President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He used his great influence with the Emperor of Russia in order to reduce the period of the foreign occupation, at the end of which, in 1818, he retired from office, the Chambers voting him a reward of 50,000 francs a year, the whole of which he devoted to the endowment of a hospital at Bordeaux. In 1820, he was again appointed Prime Minister, after the assassination of the Duc de Berry, and set himself to repress the spirit of independence and discontent which was being displayed. His consequent loss of popularity caused him to resign in 1821, and he died a few months later, in 1822, universally esteemed.--T. [118] M. Mame, the founder of the great Tours publishing-house.--T. [119] Alaric I. King of the Visigoths (382-412) besieged Rome three times in 409 and 410, and took the city by assault in the latter year.--T. [120] Virginia was killed by her father, Virginius, in 449 B.C., to save her from the lust of Appius Claudius, one of the Decemvirs of Rome. The people rose after this event, which led to the abolition of the Decemvirate.--T. [121] Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), Napoleon's elder brother, was King of Naples from 1806 to 1808, and King of Spain from 1808 to 1813. After Waterloo, he took refuge in the United States, where he lived for eleven years as Comte de Survilliers, returning to Europe in 1826, when he resided successively in England and Italy until his death in 1844.--T. [122] General Feodor Count Rostopschin (1765-1826) was Governor of Moscow in 1812 at the time of the French invasion, when he set fire to the town in order to deprive the enemy of all resources.--T. [123] Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles (1774-1854), had fought in the Army of Condé, but was created a baron of the Empire in 1812. He took up the cause of the Bourbons in 1814, and was imprisoned by Bonaparte during the Hundred Days. Under the Second Restoration, he became principal agent of the personal policy of Monsieur (the Comte d'Artois). He was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence in 1827 and created a peer in 1830. The fall of the Elder Branch drove him back into private life.--B. [124] Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), author of a number of works on economy, politics, physiology, natural history and general physics, had remained loyal to Louis XVI. under the Revolution, and fled to America during the Terror. He returned to France under the Consulate. In 1814, he was appointed Secretary to the Provisional Government; but, after the return of Napoleon, he went back to America, where he died two years later. Dupont de Nemours was one of the original members of the Institute.--T. [125] Karl Philipp Field-Marshal Prince von Schwarzenberg (1771-1819), the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, had distinguished himself at Hohenlinden in 1800 and during the campaign of 1805. He negotiated the marriage between Napoleon and Marie-Louise, and commanded the Austrian auxiliaries in the French campaign against Russia.--T. [126] Charles Marie Denys, Comte de Damrémont (1783-1837). He espoused the King's cause in 1814. In 1830, he was given a brigade in the Algerian Expedition, was created a peer of France in 1830, and Governor of the French North-African Possessions in 1837, but was killed on the 13th of October of the same year at the taking of Constantine.--T. [127] Charles Nicolas Baron Fabvier (1782-1855). General Fabvier got himself into trouble in 1820, and was obliged to leave France. In 1823 he offered his services to the Greeks in their War of Independence, and defended the Acropolis of Athens in 1826. He returned to France in 1830, on the outbreak of the Revolution. Louis-Philippe made him a lieutenant-general and a peer (1845). In 1848 he was sent as Ambassador of the Republic to Constantinople, and later to Denmark. He retired into private life after the _coup d'État_ of 1851.--T. BOOK III Entry of the Allies into Paris--Bonaparte at Fontainebleau--The Regency at Blois--Publication of my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_--The Senate issues the decree of dethronement--The house in the Rue Saint-Florentin--M. de Talleyrand--Addresses of the Provisional Government--Constitution proposed by the Senate--Arrival of the Comte d'Artois--Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau--Napoleon's itinerary to the island of Elba--Louis XVIII. at Compiègne--His entry into Paris--The Old Guard--An irreparable mistake--The Declaration of Saint-Ouen--Treaty of Paris--The Charter--Departure of the Allies--First year of the Restoration--First ministry--I publish my _Réflexions Politiques_-Madame la Duchesse de Duras--I am appointed Ambassador to Sweden--Exhumation of the remains of Louis XVI.--The first 21st of January at Saint-Denis. God had pronounced one of those words by which the silence of eternity is at rare intervals interrupted. Then, in the midst of the present generation, rose the hammer that struck the hour which Paris had only once heard sound: on the 25th of December 496, Rheims announced the baptism of Clovis, and the gates of Lutetia opened to the Franks; on the 30th of March 1814, after the baptism of blood of Louis XVI., the old hammer, which had so long remained motionless, rose once more in the belfry of the ancient monarchy: a second stroke resounded, the Tartars penetrated into Paris. In the interval of thirteen hundred and eighteen years, the foreigner had insulted the walls of the capital of our empire without ever being able to enter it, except when he glided in, summoned by our own divisions. The Normans besieged the city of the _Parisii_; the _Parisii_ gave flight to the hawks which they carried on their wrists; Odo[128], child of Paris and future King, "_rex futurus_," Abbon[129] says, drove back the pirates of the North: the Parisians let fly their eagles in 1814; the Allies entered the Louvre. Bonaparte had waged an unjust war against Alexander, his admirer, who had begged on his knees for peace; Bonaparte had ordered the carnage of the Moskowa; he had forced the Russians themselves to bum Moscow; Bonaparte had plundered Berlin, humiliated its King, insulted its Queen[130]: what reprisals were we, then, to expect? You shall see. I had wandered in the Floridas round unknown monuments, devastated of old by conquerors of whom no trace remains, and I was saved for the sight of the Caucasian hordes encamped in the court-yard of the Louvre. In those events of history which, according to Montaigne, "are but weake testimonies of our worth and capacity[131]," my tongue cleaves to my palate: _adhæret lingua mea faucibus meis._[132] The Allied Army entered Paris on the 31st of March 1814, at mid-day, ten days only after the anniversary of the death of the Duc d'Enghien, 21 March 1804. Was it worth Bonaparte's while to commit an action of such long remembrance for a reign which was to last so short a time? The Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia rode at the head of their troops. I saw them defile along the boulevards. Feeling stupefied and dumfoundered within myself, as though my name as a Frenchman had been tom from me to substitute for it the name by which I was thenceforth to be known in the mines of Siberia, I felt, at the same time, my exasperation increase against the man whose glory had reduced us to that disgrace. Nevertheless, this first invasion of the Allies has remained unparalleled in the annals of the world: order, peace and moderation reigned on every hand; the shops were re-opened; Russian guardsmen, six feet tall, were piloted through the streets by little French rogues who made fun of them, as of jumping-jacks and carnival maskers. The conquered might be taken for the conquerors; the latter, trembling at their successes, looked as though they were excusing themselves. The National Guard alone garrisoned the interior of Paris, with the exception of the houses in which the foreign Kings and Princes were lodged[133]. On the 31st of March 1814, countless armies were occupying France; a few months later all those troops passed back across our frontiers, without firing a musket-shot, without shedding a drop of blood after the return of the Bourbons. Old France found herself enlarged on some of her frontiers; the ships and stores of Antwerp were divided with her; three hundred thousand prisoners, scattered over the countries where victory or defeat had left them, were restored to her. After five and twenty years of fighting, the clash of arms ceased from one end of Europe to the other. Alexander departed, leaving us the master-pieces which we had conquered and the liberty lodged in the Charter, a liberty which we owed as much to his enlightenment as to his influence. The head of two supreme authorities, twice an autocrat by the sword and by religion, he alone, of all the sovereigns of Europe, had understood that, at the age of civilization which France had attained, she could be governed only by virtue of a free constitution. In our very natural hostility to the foreigners, we have confused the invasion of 1814 and that of 1815, which were in no sense alike. [Sidenote: The Emperor Alexander.] Alexander looked upon himself merely as an instrument of Providence, and took no credit to himself. When Madame de Staël complimented him upon the happiness which his subjects, lacking a constitution, enjoyed of being governed by him, he made his well-known reply: "I am only a 'fortunate accident.'" A young man in the streets of Paris expressed to him his admiration at the affability with which he received the least of the citizens; he replied: "For what else are sovereigns made?" He refused to inhabit the Tuileries, remembering that Bonaparte had taken his ease in the palaces of Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. Looking at the statue of Napoleon on the column in the Place Vendôme, he said: "If I were so high up, I should be afraid of becoming giddy." As he was going over the Palace of the Tuileries, they showed him the Salon de la Paix: "Of what use," he asked, laughing, "was this room to Bonaparte?" On the day of Louis XVIII.'s entry into Paris, Alexander hid himself behind a window, wearing no mark of distinction, to watch the procession as it passed. Alexander sometimes had elegantly affectionate manners. Visiting a mad-house, he asked a woman if there were many women "mad through love": "Not at present," replied she; "but it is to be feared that the number has increased since the moment of Your Majesty's entry into Paris." One of Napoleon's great dignitaries said to the Tsar: "Your arrival has long been expected and wished for, Sire." "I should have come sooner," he replied; "you must blame only French valour for my delay." It is certain that, when crossing the Rhine, he had regretted that he was not able to retire in peace to the midst of his family. At the Hôtel des Invalides, he found the maimed soldiers who had defeated him at Austerlitz: they were silent and gloomy; one heard nothing save the noise of their wooden legs in their deserted yard and their denuded church. Alexander was touched by this noise of brave men: he ordered that twelve Russian guns should be given back to them. A proposal was made to him to change the name of the Pont d'Austerlitz: "No," he said, "it is enough for me to have crossed the bridge with my army." Alexander had something calm and sad about him. He went about Paris, on horse-back or on foot, without a suite and without affectation. He appeared astonished at his triumph; his almost melting gaze wandered over a population whom he seemed to regard as superior to himself: one would have said that he thought himself a Barbarian among us, even as a Roman felt shame-faced in Athens. Perhaps, also, he reflected that these same Frenchmen had appeared in his fired capital; that his soldiers, in their turn, were masters of Paris, in which he might have been able to find again some of those now extinguished torches by which Moscow was freed and consumed. This destiny, these changing fortunes, this common misery of peoples and of kings were bound to make a profound impression upon a mind so religious as his. * What was the victor of the Borodino doing? So soon as he had heard of Alexander's resolution, he had sent orders to Major Maillard de Lescourt of the Artillery to blow up the Grenelle powder-magazine: Rostopschin had set fire to Moscow, but he had first sent away the inhabitants. From Fontainebleau, to which he had returned, Napoleon marched to Villejuif; thence he threw a glance over Paris: foreign soldiers were guarding its gates; the conqueror remembered the days in which his grenadiers kept watch on the ramparts of Berlin, Moscow, and Vienna. Events destroy other events; how poor a thing to-day appears to us the grief of Henry IV. learning of the death of Gabrielle at Villejuif, and returning to Fontainebleau! Bonaparte also returned to that solitude; he was awaited there only by the memory of his august prisoner: the captive of peace[134] had gone from the palace in order to leave it free for the captive of war, so swiftly does "misfortune" fill up its "places." [Sidenote: Flight of the Empire.] The Regency had retired to Blois. Bonaparte had given orders for the Empress and the King of Rome to leave Paris, saying that he would rather see them at the bottom of the Seine than led back in triumph to Vienna; but, at the same time, he had enjoined Joseph to remain in the capital. His brother's retreat made him furious, and he accused the ex-King of Spain of ruining all. The ministers, the members of the Regency, Napoleon's brothers, his wife and his son arrived in disorder at Blois, swept away in the downfall; military waggons, baggage-vans, carriages, everything was there; the King's own coaches were there and were dragged through the mud of the Beauce to Chambord, the only morsel of France left to the heir of Louis XIV. Some of the ministers did not stop here, but proceeded as far as Brittany to hide themselves, while Cambacérès lolled in a sedan-chair in the steep streets of Blois. Various rumours were current: there was talk of two camps and of a general requisition. During several days, they were ignorant of what was happening in Paris; the uncertainty did not cease until the arrival of a waggoner whose pass was signed "Sacken[135]." Soon the Russian General Schouvaloff[136] alighted at the Auberge de la Galère: he was suddenly besieged by the grandees, and entreated to obtain a visa for their stampede. However, before leaving Blois, all drew upon the funds of the Regency for their travelling-expenses and their arrears of salary; they held their passports in one hand and their money in the other, taking care at the same time to send in their adhesion to the Provisional Government, for they did not lose their heads. Madame Mère[137] and her brother, Cardinal Fesch[138], left for Rome. Prince Esterhazy[139] came on behalf of Francis II. to fetch Marie-Louise and her son. Joseph and Jerome[140] withdrew to Switzerland, after vainly trying to compel the Empress to attach herself to their fate. Marie-Louise hastened to join her father: indifferently attached to Bonaparte, she found means to console herself and rejoiced at being delivered from the double tyranny of a husband and a master. When, in the following year, Bonaparte revisited that confusion of flight on the Bourbons, the latter, but lately rescued from their long tribulations, had not enjoyed fourteen years of unequalled prosperity in which to accustom themselves to the comforts of the throne. * However, Napoleon was not yet dethroned; more than forty thousand of the best soldiers in the world were around him; he was able to retire behind the Loire; the French armies which had arrived from Spain were growling in the South; the military population might bubble over and distribute its lava; even among the foreign leaders, there was still a question of Napoleon or his son reigning over France: for two days, Alexander hesitated. M. de Talleyrand, as I have said, secretly leant towards the policy which tended to crown the King of Rome, for he dreaded the Bourbons; if he did not then accept entirely the plan of the Regency of Marie-Louise, it was because, since Napoleon had not perished, he, the Prince de Bénévent, feared that he would not be able to retain the mastery during a minority threatened by the existence of a restless, erratic, enterprising man, still in the vigour of his age[141]. [Sidenote: _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._] It was in those critical days that I threw down my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_[142] to turn the scale: its result is well known. I flung myself headlong into the fray to serve as a shield to liberty reviving against tyranny still subsisting, with its strength increased threefold by despair. I spoke in the name of the Legitimacy, in order to add to my words the authority of positive affairs. I taught France what the old Royal Family was; I told her how many members of that Family existed, what their names were, and their character: it was as though I had drawn up a fist of the children of the Emperor of China, to so great an extent had the Republic and the Empire encroached upon the present and relegated the Bourbons to the past. Louis XVIII. declared, as I have already often mentioned, that my pamphlet was of greater profit to him than an army of one hundred thousand men; he might have added that it was a certificate of existence to him. I assisted in giving him the crown a second time by the fortunate issue of the Spanish War. From the commencement of my political career, I became popular with the crowd; but, from that time also, I failed to make my way with powerful men. All who had been slaves under Bonaparte abhorred me; on the other side, I was an object of suspicion to all who wished to place France in a state of vassalage. At the first moment, among the sovereigns, I had none on my side except Bonaparte himself. He looked through my pamphlet at Fontainebleau: the Duc de Bassano[143] had brought it to him; he discussed it impartially, saying: "This is true; that is not true. I have nothing to reproach Chateaubriand with: he resisted me when I was in power; but those scoundrels, so and so!" and he named them. My admiration for Bonaparte was always great and sincere, even at the time when I was attacking Napoleon with the greatest eagerness. Posterity is not so fair in its judgments as has been held; there are passions, infatuations, errors of distance even as there are passions and errors of proximity. When posterity admires without reserve, it is scandalized that the contemporaries of the man admired should not have had the same idea of that man as itself. This can be explained, however: the things which offended one in that person are past; his infirmities have died with him; all that remains of him is his imperishable life; but the evil which he caused is none the less real: evil in itself and in its essence, and especially for those who endured it. It is the style of the day to magnify Bonaparte's victories: the sufferers have disappeared; we no longer hear the imprecations, the cries of pain and distress of the victims; we no longer see France exhausted, with only women to till her soil; we no longer see parents arrested as a pledge for their sons, the inhabitants of the villages made jointly and severally responsible for the penalties applicable to a rebellious recruit; we no longer see those conscription placards posted at the street-corners, the passers-by gathered before those enormous lists of dead, seeking in consternation the names of their children, their brothers, their friends, their neighbours. We forget that the whole population bewailed the triumphs; we forget that the slightest allusion against Bonaparte on the stage which had escaped the censors was hailed with rapture; we forget that the people, the Court, the generals, the ministers, Napoleon's relations were weary of his oppressions and his conquests, weary of that game always being won and always being played, of that existence brought into question each morning anew, thanks to the impossibility of repose. The reality of our sufferings is demonstrated by the catastrophe itself: if France had been infatuated with Bonaparte, would she twice have abandoned him, abruptly, completely, without making one last effort to keep him? If France owed all to Bonaparte: glory, liberty, order, prosperity, industry, commerce, manufactures, monuments, literature, fine arts; if, before his time, the nation had done nothing itself; if the Republic, destitute of genius and courage, had neither defended nor enlarged the territory: then France must have been very ungrateful, very cowardly, to allow Napoleon to fall into the hands of his enemies, or, at least, not to protest against the captivity of so great a benefactor? [Sidenote: Feeling against Napoleon.] This reproach, which might justly be made against us, is not made against us, however: and why? Because it is evident that, at the moment of his fall, France did not desire to defend Napoleon; in our bitter mortification, we beheld in him only the author and the contemner of our wretchedness. The Allies did not defeat us: we ourselves, choosing between two scourges, renounced shedding our blood, which had ceased to flow for our liberties. The Republic had been very cruel, doubtless, but every one hoped that it would pass, that sooner or later we should recover our rights, while retaining the preservatory conquests which it had given us on the Alps and the Rhine. All the victories which it gained were won in our name; with the Republic, there was no question save of France; it was always France that had triumphed, that had conquered; it was our soldiers who had done all and for whom triumphal or funeral feasts were organized; the generals, and some were very great, obtained an honourable but modest place in the public memory: such were Marceau[144], Moreau, Hoche[145], Joubert[146]; the two last seemed destined to replace Bonaparte, who, in the dawn of his glory, suddenly crossed the path of General Hoche and, by his jealousy, rendered illustrious that warlike pacificator who died unexpectedly after his triumphs of Altkirchen, Neuwied and Kleinnister. Under the Empire, we disappeared; we were no longer mentioned, everything belonged to Bonaparte: "_I_ have ordered, _I_ have conquered, _I_ have spoken; _my_ eagles, _my_ crown, _my_ family, _my_ subjects." What happened, however, in those two positions, at the same time similar and opposite? We did not abandon the Republic in its reverses; it killed us, but it honoured us; we had not the disgrace of being the property of a man; thanks to our efforts, it was never invaded; the Russians, defeated beyond the mountains, met with their end at Zurich[147]. As for Bonaparte, he, despite his enormous acquisitions, succumbed, not because he was conquered, but because France would have no more of him. How great a lesson! May it ever make us remember that there is cause of death in all that offends the dignity of man. Independent minds of every shade and opinion were employing uniform language at the time of the publication of my pamphlet. La Fayette, Camille Jordan[148], Ducis, Lemercier[149], Lanjuinais[150], Madame de Staël, Chénier, Benjamin Constant, Le Brun[151] thought and wrote as I did[152]. God, in His patient eternity, brings justice sooner or later: at moments when Heaven seems to slumber, it is always a fine thing that the disapproval of an honest man should keep watch and remain as a curb upon the absolute power. France will not disown the noble souls which protested against her servitude, when all lay prostrate, when there were so many advantages in so lying, so many favours to receive in return for flattery, so many persecutions to undergo in return for sincerity. Honour then to the La Fayettes, the de Staëls, the Benjamin Constants, the Camille Jordans, the Ducis, the Lemerciers, the Lanjuinais, the Chéniers, who, standing erect amidst the grovelling crowd of peoples and of kings, dared to despise victory and protest against tyranny! * [Sidenote: Napoleon deposed.] On the 2nd of April, the Senators, to whom we owe one clause only of the Charter of 1814, the contemptible clause preserving their pensions, decreed the deposition of Bonaparte. If this decree, which emancipated France but brought infamy upon those who issued it, offers an affront to the human race, at the same time it teaches posterity the price of grandeurs and fortune, when these have disdained to take their stand upon bases of morality, justice and liberty. DECREE OF THE CONSERVATIVE SENATE. "The Conservative Senate, taking into consideration that in a constitutional monarchy the monarch exists only by virtue of the constitution or the social compact; "That Napoleon Bonaparte, for some time maintaining a firm and prudent government, had given the nation cause to reckon, in the future, upon acts of wisdom and justice; but that subsequently he destroyed the compact which united him to the French people, notably by levying imports and establishing taxes, otherwise than by virtue of the law, against the express tenor of the oath which he took on his accession to the throne, in conformity with Clause 53 of the Constitutions of the 28 Floréal Year XII.; "That he was guilty of this attempt upon the rights of the people at the very time when he had without necessity adjourned the Legislative Body, and caused a report made by that body, whose title and whose relation to the national representation he contested, to be suppressed as criminal; "That he undertook a series of wars in violation of Clause 50 of the Act settling the Constitution of the Year VIII., which lays down that any declaration of war shall be proposed, discussed, decreed and promulgated like the laws; "That he has unconstitutionally issued several decrees bearing the penalty of death, namely, the two decrees of the 5th of March last, tending to cause a war to be considered as national which was undertaken only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition; "That he has violated the laws of the Constitution by his decrees concerning the State prisons; "That he has annihilated the responsibility of the ministers, put down all the powers and destroyed the independence of the courts of jurisdiction; "Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press, established and perpetuated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts, with false maxims, with doctrines favourable to despotism and with outrages against foreign governments; "That acts and reports, passed by the Senate, have undergone alterations when made public; "Taking into consideration that, instead of reigning with a sole view to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people, according to the terms of his oath, Napoleon has completed the misfortunes of the country by his refusal to treat on conditions which the national interest obliged him to accept and which did not compromise the honour of France; by his abuse of all the means entrusted to him in men and money; by his abandonment of the wounded without aid, medical requisites, or supplies; by various measures which resulted in the ruin of the towns, the depopulation of the rural districts, famine and infectious disease; "Taking into consideration that, owing to all these causes, the Imperial Government established by the Senatus-Consultum of the 28 Floréal Year XII., or 18 May 1804, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest desires of all Frenchmen call into being an order of things of which the first result would be the restoration of general peace, and which would also mark the epoch of a solemn reconciliation between all the States of the great family of Europe, the Senate declares and decrees as follows: Napoleon deposed from the throne; hereditary right abolished in his family; the French people and the army released from their oath of fidelity to him." The Roman Senate was less harsh when it declared Nero a public enemy: history is but a repetition of the same facts applied to varying men and times. Can one picture to one's self the Emperor reading this official document at Fontainebleau? What must he have thought of what he had done, and of the men whom he had summoned to be his accomplices in his oppression of our liberties? When I published my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, could I have expected to see it amplified and converted into a decree of deposition by the Senate? What prevented those legislators, in the days of prosperity, from discovering the evils of which they reproached Bonaparte with being the author, from perceiving that the Constitution had been violated? What zeal suddenly seized these mutes for "the liberty of the press"? How did they, who had overwhelmed Napoleon with adulation upon his return from each of his wars, now come to find that he had undertaken those wars "only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition"? How did they, who had flung him so many conscripts to devour, suddenly melt at the thought of the wounded soldiers "abandoned without aid, medical requisites, or supplies"? There are times at which contempt should be but frugally dispensed, because of the large number of those in need of it: I pity them for this moment, because they will need it again during and after the Hundred Days. [Sidenote: By the Decree of the Senate.] When I ask what Napoleon at Fontainebleau thought of the acts of the Senate, his answer was made: an Order of the Day of 5 April 1814, not published officially, but printed in different newspapers outside the capital, thanked the army for its fidelity, adding: "The Senate has allowed itself to dispose of the government of France; it has forgotten that it owes to the Emperor the power which it is now abusing; that it was he who saved one part of its members from the storms of the Revolution, drew the other from obscurity and protected it against the hatred of the nation. The Senate relies upon the clauses of the Constitution to overthrow it; it is not ashamed to utter reproaches against the Emperor, without remarking that, in its capacity as the first body of the State, it took part in all the events. The Senate is not ashamed to speak of the libels published against the foreign governments: it forgets that these were drawn up in its midst. So long as fortune remained faithful to their Sovereign, these men remained faithful, and no complaint was heard of the abuses of power. If the Emperor had despised men, as he has been reproached with doing, then the world would recognise to-day that he has had reasons which justified his contempt." This was a homage rendered by Bonaparte himself to the liberty of the press: he must have believed that there was some good in it, since it offered him a last shelter and a last aid. And I, who am struggling with time, I, who am striving to make it give an account of what it has seen, I, who am writing this so long after the events that are past, under the reign of Philip, the counterfeit heir of so great an inheritance, what am I in the hands of that time, that great devourer of the centuries which I thought fixed, of that time which makes me whirl with itself through space? * Alexander had taken up his residence at M. de Talleyrand's[153]. I was not present at the cabals: you can read about them in the narratives of the Abbé de Pradt[154] and of the various intriguers who handled in their dirty and paltry paws the fate of one of the greatest men in history and the destiny of the world. I counted for nothing in politics, outside the masses; there was no plotting understrapper but enjoyed far more right and favour in the ante-chambers than I: a coming figure in the possible Restoration, I waited beneath the windows, in the street. Through the machinations of the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin, the Conservative Senate appointed a Provisional Government composed of General Beurnonville[155], Senator Jaucourt[156], the Duc de Dalberg[157], the Abbé de Montesquiou[158] and Dupont de Nemours[159]; the Prince de Bénévent helped himself to the presidency. [Sidenote: The provisional government.] On meeting this name for the first time, I ought to speak of the personage who took a remarkable part in the affairs of that time; but I reserve his portrait for the end of my Memoirs. The intrigue which kept M. de Talleyrand in Paris, at the time of the entry of the Allies, was the cause of his successes at the commencement of the Restoration. The Emperor of Russia knew him from having seen him at Tilsit[160]. In the absence of the French authorities, Alexander took up his quarters in the Hôtel de l'Infantado[161], which the owner hastened to offer him. From that time forth, M. de Talleyrand passed for the arbiter of the world; his apartments became the centre of the negociations. Composing the Provisional Government to his own liking, he there placed the partners of his rubber: the Abbé de Montesquiou figured in it only as an advertisement of the Legitimacy. To the Bishop of Autun's sterility were confided the first labours of the Restoration: he infected that Restoration with barrenness, and communicated to it a germ of blight and death. * The first acts of the Provisional Government, placed under the dictatorship of its chairman, were proclamations addressed to the soldiers and to the people: "Soldiers," they said to the former, "France has shattered the yoke under which she and you had been groaning for so many years. See all that you have suffered at the hands of tyranny. Soldiers, the time has come to put an end to the ills of the country. You are her noblest children; you cannot belong to him who has ravaged her, who tried to make your name hated by all the nations, who might perhaps have compromised your glory, were it possible for a man WHO IS NOT EVEN A FRENCHMAN ever to impair the honour of our arms and the generosity of our soldiers[162]." And so, in the eyes of his most servile slaves, he who had won so many victories was no longer "even a Frenchman"! When, in the days of the League, Du Bourg surrendered the Bastille to Henry IV., he refused to doff the black scarf and to take the money which was offered him for the surrender of the stronghold. Urged to recognise the King, he replied that "he was no doubt a very good Prince, but that he had pledged his faith to M. de Mayenne[163]; that, moreover, Brissac[164] was a traitor, and that, to prove it to him, he would fight him between four pikes, in the King's presence, and would eat the heart out of his body." A difference of times and men! [Sidenote: Its first acts.] On the 4th of April, appeared a new address of the Provisional Government to the People of France; it said: "On emerging from your civil discords, you chose as your leader a man who appeared upon the world's stage endowed with the characteristics of greatness. On the ruins of anarchy he founded only despotism; he ought at least out of gratitude to have _become a Frenchman_ like yourselves: he has never been one. Without aim or object, he has never ceased to undertake unjust wars, like an adventurer seeking fame. Perhaps he is still dreaming of his gigantic designs, even while unequalled reverses are inflicting such striking punishment upon the pride and abuse of victory. He has not known how to reign either in the national interest or even in the interest of his own despotism. He has destroyed all that he wished to create, and re-created all that he wished to destroy. He believed in force alone; to-day force overwhelms him: a just retribution for an insensate ambition." Incontestable truths and well-earned curses; but who was it that uttered those curses? What became of my poor little pamphlet, squeezed in between those virulent addresses? Did it not disappear entirely? On the same day, the 4th of April, the Provisional Government proscribed the signs and emblems of the Imperial Government: if the Arc de Triomphe had existed, it would have been pulled down. Mailhe[165], who was the first to vote for the death of Louis XVI., Cambacérès, who was the first to greet Napoleon by the title of Emperor, eagerly recognised the acts of the Provisional Government. On the 6th, the Senate drafted a constitution: it rested nearly on the bases of the future Charter; the Senate was preserved as an Upper Chamber; the senatorial dignity was declared permanent and hereditary; to the title to their property was attached the endowment of the senatorships; the Constitution made those titles and properties transmissible to the descendants of the holder: fortunately, those ignoble hereditary rights bore the Fates within themselves, as the ancients used to say. The sordid effrontery of those senators, who, in the midst of the invasion of their country, did not for a moment lose sight of themselves, strikes one even in the immensity of public events. Would it not have been more convenient for the Bourbons, on attaining power, to adopt the established government, a dumb Legislative Body, a secret and servile Senate, a fettered press? On reflexion, one finds the thing to be impossible: the natural liberties, righting themselves in the absence of the arm that bent them, would have resumed their vertical line under the weakness of the compression. If the legitimate Princes had disbanded Bonaparte's army, as they ought to have done (this was Napoleon's opinion in the island of Elba), and if, at the same time, they had retained the Imperial Government, to break the instrument of glory in order to keep only the instrument of tyranny would have been too much: the Charter was the ransom of Louis XVIII. * On the 12th of April, the Comte d'Artois arrived in the quality of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. Three or four hundred men went on horseback to meet him: I was one of the band. He charmed one with his kindly grace, different from the manners of the Empire. The French recognised with pleasure in his person their old manners, their old politeness and their old language; the crowd pressed round him, a consoling apparition of the past, a twofold protection as he was against the conquering foreigner and against the still threatening Bonaparte. Alas, the Prince was setting his foot again on French soil only to see his son assassinated there and to go back to die in the land of exile whence he was returning: there are men round whose necks life has been flung like a chain! [Illustration: Charles X. (as Comte D'Artois.)] I had been presented to the King's brother; he had been given my pamphlet to read, otherwise he would not have known my name: he remembered to have seen me neither at the Court of Louis XVI. nor at the Camp of Thionville, and he had doubtless never heard speak of the _Génie du Christianisme._ That was very simple. When one has suffered much and long, he remembers only himself: personal misfortune is a somewhat cold, yet exacting companion; it possesses you; it leaves no room for any other feeling, never quits you, seizes hold of your knees and your couch. [Sidenote: Napoleon's abdication.] The day before the entry of the Comte d'Artois, Napoleon, after some useless negociations with Alexander through the intermediary of M. de Caulaincourt, had published his act of abdication: "The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, true to his oath, declares that he renounces for himself and his heirs the throne of France and Italy, because there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to make to the interests of the French." To these sensational words the Emperor did not delay, by his return, to give a no less sensational contradiction: he needed only the time to go to Elba. He remained at Fontainebleau till the 20th of April. The 20th of April having arrived, Napoleon went down the double flight of steps leading to the peristyle of the deserted palace of the monarchy of the Capets. A few grenadiers, the remnants of the soldiers who conquered Europe, drew up in line in the great court-yard, as though on their last field of battle; they were surrounded by those old trees, the mutilated companions of Francis I. and Henry IV. Bonaparte addressed the last witnesses of his fights in these words: "Generals, officers, non-commissioned officers and men of my Old Guard, I take my leave of you: for twenty years I have been satisfied with you; I have always found you on the road of glory. "The Allied Powers have armed all Europe against me, a part of the army has betrayed its duty, and France herself has desired other destinies. "With you and the brave men who have remained faithful to me, I could have kept up civil war for three years; but France would have been unhappy, which was contrary to the end which I proposed to myself. "Be faithful to the new King whom France has chosen; do not abandon our dear country, too long unhappy! Love her always, love her well, that dear country! "Do not pity my lot; I shall always be happy when I know you to be so. "I could have died; nothing would have been easier to me; but I shall never cease to follow the path of honour. I have yet to write what we have done. "I cannot embrace you all; but I will embrace your general.... Come, general!" He pressed General Petit[166] in his arms. "Bring me the eagle!" He kissed it. "Dear eagle! May these kisses resound in the heart of all brave men!... Farewell, my lads!... My good wishes will always accompany you; keep me in remembrance." These words spoken, Napoleon raised his tent, which covered the world. * Bonaparte had applied to the Allies for commissaries, so that he might be protected by them on his journey to the island which the sovereigns granted him as his absolute property and as an installment on the future. Count Schouvaloff was appointed for Russia, General Roller[167] for Austria, Colonel Campbell[168] for England, and Count Waldburg-Truchsess[169] for Prussia: the latter wrote the _Itinerary of Napoleon from Fontainebleau to Elba._ This pamphlet and the Abbé de Pradt's on the Polish Embassy are the two reports by which Napoleon was most pained. No doubt he then regretted the time of his liberal censorship, when he had poor Palm[170], the German bookseller, shot for distributing, at Nuremberg, Herr von Gentz's[171] work, _Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung._ Nuremberg, at the time of the publication of this work, was still a free city, and did not belong to France: ought not Palm to have been able to foresee that conquest? Count Waldburg begins by relating several conversations that took place at Fontainebleau previous to the departure. He states that Bonaparte awarded the greatest praise to Lord Wellington[172] and inquired as to his character and habits. He excused himself for not having made peace at Prague, Dresden and Frankfort; he agreed that he had been wrong, but that at that time he had had other views. "I was no usurper," he added, "because I accepted the crown only in compliance with the unanimous wish of the whole nation, whereas Louis XVIII. has usurped it, being called to the throne only by a vile Senate, more than ten of whose members voted for the death of Louis XVI." [Sidenote: He leaves for Elba.] Count Waldburg pursues his narrative as follows: "The Emperor started, with his four carriages, about twelve o'clock on the 21st, not till after he had held a long conversation with General Roller, which he commenced with these words: "'Well, you heard my speech to the Old Guard yesterday; it pleased you, and you have seen the effect it produced. That is the way to speak and act with them, and if Louis XVIII. does not follow this example, he will never make anything of the French soldier.'... "From the spot where the French troops ceased, the cries of 'Long live the Emperor!' also had an end. Already in Moulins we saw the white cockades, and the inhabitants saluted us with 'Long live the Allies!' In Lyons, which we passed through at about eleven o'clock at night, a few people collected who received the Emperor with 'Long live Napoleon!' As he had expressed a wish to be escorted by an English frigate to the island of Elba, Colonel Campbell left us at Lyons for the purpose of procuring one either from Toulon or Marseilles. "About mid-day on the 24th, on this side Valence, Napoleon met Marshal Augereau[173]. Both alighted from their carriages. The Emperor saluted the marshal, embraced him, and took off his hat to him. Augereau returned none of these civilities. The Emperor, as he asked him, 'Where are you off to? Are you going to the Court?' took the marshal by the arm and led him forwards. Augereau replied, his present journey extended only to Lyons. They walked together for a quarter of a league on the road towards Valence, and, according to authentic information, the Emperor reproached the marshal for his proclamation. Among other things he observed: "'Your proclamation is very silly; why those insults against myself? All you need have said was, "The Nation having pronounced its wish in favour of a new sovereign, the duty of the Army is to conform to it. God save the King! Long live Louis XVIII.!'" "Augereau, who now likewise thou'd him, reproached him, on the other hand, with his insatiate love of conquest, to which he had sacrificed the happiness of France. At length, tired of the discourse, the Emperor turned suddenly towards the marshal, embraced him, again took off his hat to him, and got into the carriage. Augereau, who stood with his hands behind him, did not move his cap from his head, and as Napoleon was already in the carriage, drew one hand forwards in order to wave, with a mien bordering on contempt, a kind of farewell.... "On the 25th, as we arrived at Orange, we were received with 'Long live the King! Long live Louis XVIII.!' "On the same morning, close to Avignon, where the relays of horses awaited us, the Emperor found a crowd assembled, whose tumultuous cries saluted him with 'Long live the King! Long live the Allies! Down with Nicolas! Down with the tyrant, the scoundrel, the wretched beggar!' and still coarser abuse. In compliance with our instructions, we did everything in our power to lighten the evil, but could only partially effect it.... The people ... likewise conceived that we should not deny them the liberty of venting their indignation against the man who had made them so unhappy, and even had the intention of rendering them still more miserable.... In Orgon, the next place where we changed horses, the conduct of the populace was most outrageous. Exactly on the spot where the horses were taken out, a gallows was erected, on which a figure in French uniform, sprinkled with blood, was suspended. On its breast it bore a paper with this inscription: [Sidenote: Napoleon insulted.] "'Sooner or later this will be the Tyrant's fate.' "The rabble pressed around his carriage, and elevated themselves on both sides in order to look and cast in their abuse. The Emperor pressed into a corner behind General Bertrand[174], and looked pale and disfigured; but at length, through our assistance, he was happily brought off. "Count Schouwaloff harangued the people from the side of Buonaparte's carriage. "'Are you not ashamed,' said he, 'to insult an unfortunate who has not the means of defending himself? His situation is sufficiently humiliating for one who, expecting to give laws to the world, now finds himself at the mercy of your generosity. Leave him to himself; behold him: you see contempt is the only weapon you ought to employ against this man, who is no longer dangerous. It would be unworthy of the French nation to take any other vengeance.' "The crowd applauded this harangue, and Buonaparte, seeing the effect it produced, made signs of approbation to Count Schouwaloff, and afterwards thanked him for the service he had rendered him. "When he had proceeded about a quarter of a league from Orgon he changed his dress in his carriage, put on a plain blue great-coat and a round hat with a white cockade, mounted a post-horse, and rode on before as a courier. As it was some time ere we overtook him, we were perfectly ignorant of his being no longer in the carriage and in Saint Cannat, where the horses were again changed. We still believed him to be in the greatest danger, for the people attempted to break open the doors, which, however, were fortunately locked. Had they succeeded, they would certainly have destroyed General Bertrand, who sat there alone.... Characteristic is the prayer with which some of the women assailed me: "'For the love of God, deliver him up as a pillage to us! He has so well deserved it, both from you and us, that nothing can be more just than our request!' "Having overtaken the Emperor's carriage about half a league on the other side of Orgon, it shortly afterwards entered into a miserable public-house, lying on the roadside, called the Calade. We followed it, and here first learnt Buonaparte's disguise, who in this attire had arrived here, accompanied by one courier only. His suite, from the generals to the scullions, were decorated with white cockades, which he appeared previously to have provided himself with. His valet-de-chambre, who came to meet us, begged we would conduct ourselves towards the Emperor as if he were Colonel Campbell, for whom on his arrival he had given himself out. We entered and found in a kind of chamber this former ruler of the world buried in thought, sitting with his head supported by his hand. I did not immediately recognise him, and walked towards him. He started up as he heard somebody approaching, and pointed to his countenance bedewed with tears. He made a sign that I might not discover him, requested me to sit down beside him, and as long as the landlady was in the room, conversed on indifferent subjects. As soon, however, as she was gone out he resumed his former position. We left him alone; he sent, however, to request we would pass backwards and forwards, to prevent any suspicion of his being there. We informed him it was known Colonel Campbell had passed through here the day before on his way to Toulon; on which he determined upon assuming the name of Lord Burghersh. Here we dined, but as the dinner had not been prepared by his own cooks, he had not courage to partake of it, for fear of being poisoned. He felt ashamed, however, at seeing us all eat, both with good appetites and good conscience, and therefore helped himself from every dish, but without swallowing the least morsel. He spat everything out upon his plate or behind his chair. A little bread and a bottle of wine taken from his carriage, and which he divided with us, constituted his whole repast. In other respects he was conversible and extremely friendly towards us. Whenever the landlady, who waited upon us at table, left the room, and he perceived we were alone, he repeated to us his apprehensions for his life, and assured us the French Government had indisputably determined to destroy or arrest him here. A thousand plans passed through his brain how he might escape, and what arrangements ought to be made to deceive the people of Aix, whom he had learnt awaited him by thousands at the post-house. The most eligible plan in his estimation would be to go back again to Lyons, and from thence strike into another road by way of Italy to the island of Elba. This, however, we should on no account have allowed, and we therefore endeavoured to persuade him to proceed either directly to Toulon, or by way of Digne to Fréjus. We assured him that, without our knowledge, it was impossible the French Government would entertain such insidious intentions against him, and although the people allowed themselves the greatest improprieties, they would never charge themselves with a crime of the nature he feared. In order to inform us better, and to convince us the inhabitants of that part of the country meditated his destruction, he related to us what had happened to him as he arrived here alone. The landlady, who did not recognise him, asked him: "'Well, have you met Buonaparte?' "He replied in the negative. "'I am curious,' she answered, 'to see how he will save himself. I do believe the people will murder him: and it must be confessed he has well deserved it, the scoundrel! Tell me, are they going to put him on board ship for his island?' "'Yes, of course.' "'They will drown him, I hope?' "'Oh, no doubt,' returned the Emperor. 'And so you see,' he added, turning towards us, 'the danger I am exposed to.' [Sidenote: His fears and apprehensions.] "And now again, with all his apprehensions and indecision, he renewed his solicitations of counsel. He even begged us to look around and see if we could not anywhere discover a private door through which he might slip out, or if the window, whose shutters upon entering he had half-closed at the bottom, was too high for him to jump out in case of need. On examination I found the window was provided with an iron trellis-work on the outside, and threw him into evident consternation as I communicated to him the discovery. At the least noise he started up in terror, and changed colour. After dinner we left him alone, and as we went in and out found him frequently weeping.... "As... General Schouwaloff's Adjutant had... announced that the major part of the populace assembled on the road were dispersed, the Emperor towards midnight determined on proceeding. For greater precaution, however, another disguise was assumed. General Schouwaloff's Adjutant was obliged to put on the blue great-coat and round hat in which the Emperor had reached the inn, that in case of necessity he might be regarded, insulted, or even murdered for him. "Napoleon, who now pretended to be an Austrian colonel, dressed himself in the uniform of General Roller, with the Order of Theresa, wore my camp cap, and cast over his shoulders General Schouwaloff's mantle. After the Allies had thus equipped him, the carriages drove up, and we were obliged to march them through the other rooms of the inn in a certain order, which had been previously tried in our own chamber. The procession was headed by General Drouot[175]; then came, as Emperor, General Schouwaloff's Adjutant; upon this General-Roller, the Emperor, General Schouwaloff, and lastly, myself, to whom the honour of forming the rear-guard was assigned. The remainder of the Imperial suite united themselves with us as we passed by, and thus we walked through the gaping multitude, who vainly endeavoured to distinguish their Tyrant amongst us. Schouwaloff's Adjutant (Major Olewieff) placed himself in Napoleon's carriage, and the latter sat beside General Roller in his calash.... "Still, however, the Emperor was constantly in alarm. He not only remained in General Roller's calash, but even begged he would allow the servant to smoke who sat before, and asked the General himself if he could sing, in order that he might dissipate, through such familiar conduct, any suspicion in the places where we stopped, that the Emperor sat with him in the carriage. As the General could not sing, Napoleon begged him to whistle, and with this singular music we made our entry into every place; whilst the Emperor, fumigated with the incense of the tobacco-pipe, pressed himself into the corner of the calash, and pretended to be fast asleep.... "At Saint-Maximin he breakfasted with us, and having learnt that the sub-prefect of Aix was there, he ordered him into his presence, and received him with these words: "'You ought to blush to see me in an Austrian uniform, which I have been obliged to assume to protect myself against the insults of the Provençals. I came among you in full confidence, whilst I might have brought with me six thousand of my guard, and I find nothing but a band of maniacs who put my life in danger. The Provençals are a disgraceful race; they committed every kind of crime and enormity during the Revolution, and are quite ready to begin over again: but when it is a question of fighting bravely, then they are cowards. Provence has never supplied me with a single regiment with which I could be satisfied. But to-morrow they will be as much against Louis XVIII. as to-day they appear to be against me,' etc.... [Sidenote: His protests.] "To us he again spoke of Louis XVIII., and said he would never effect anything with the French nation if he treated them with too much forbearance. He would, from necessity, be obliged to lay large imposts upon them, and hence cause himself to be immediately hated. He likewise told us that 'eighteen years before, he had marched through this place with some thousand men to liberate two Royalists who were to have been executed for wearing the white cockade. In spite, however, of the fury of the populace with which he had to contend, he fortunately saved them, and to-day, he continued, would that man be murdered by this same populace, who should refuse to wear a white cockade,--so contradictory and vacillating are they in everything they do.' "Having learnt that two squadrons of Austrian hussars were stationed at Luc, an order was sent at his request to the commanders to await our arrival there, in order to escort the Emperor to Fréjus[176]." Here ends Count Waldburg's narrative: those accounts are painful to read. What! Were the commissaries unable to afford better protection to him for whom they had the honour to be responsible? Who were they, to affect these airs of superiority with such a man? Bonaparte truly said that, if he had wished, he might have travelled accompanied by a portion of his guard. It is evident that men were indifferent to his fate; they enjoyed his degradation; they gladly acquiesced in the marks of indignity which the victim demanded for his safety: it is so sweet to hold beneath one's feet the destiny of him who walked over the highest heads, to avenge pride with insult! Therefore the commissaries do not expend a word, not even a word of philosophic sensibility, on such a change of fortune, to remind man of his nothingness and of the greatness of the judgments of God! In the ranks of the Allies, Napoleon had had numerous adulators: he who has gone on his knees before brute force is not entitled to triumph over misfortune. Prussia, I admit, had need of an effort of virtue to forget what she had suffered, herself, her King and her Queen; but that effort should have been made. Alas! Bonaparte had taken pity on nothing; all hearts had cooled towards him. The moment in which he showed himself most cruel was at Jaffa[177]; the smallest, on the way to Elba: in the first case, military necessity served as his excuse; in the second, the harshness of the foreign commissaries changes the course of the reader's feelings and lessens his own abasement. The Provisional Government of France does not itself seem to me quite without reproach: I reject the calumnies of Maubreuil[178]; nevertheless, amid the terror with which Napoleon still inspired his former servants, a fortuitous catastrophe might have presented itself in their eyes in the light only of a misfortune. One would gladly doubt the truth of the facts reported by Count Waldburg-Truchsess, but General Koller, in a _Sequel to Waldburgs Itinerary_, has confirmed a part of his colleague's narrative; General Schouvaloff, on his part, has certified, in conversation with myself, the exactness of the facts: his measured words said more than Waldburg's expansive recital. Lastly, Fabry's[179] _Itinéraire_ is composed of authentic French documents furnished by eye-witnesses. [Sidenote: His humiliation.] Now that I have done justice on the commissaries and the Allies, is it really the conqueror of the world whom one sees in Waldburg's _Itinerary?_ The hero reduced to disguises and tears, weeping under a post-boy's jacket in the corner of a back-room at an inn! Was it thus that Marius bore himself on the ruins of Carthage, that Hannibal died in Bithynia, Cæsar in the Senate? How did Pompey disguise himself? By covering his head with his toga! He who had donned the purple taking shelter beneath the white cockade, uttering the cry of safety: "God save the King!"--that King, one of whose heirs he had had shot! The master of the nations encouraging the commissaries in the humiliations which they heaped upon him in order the better to hide him, delighted to have General Koller whistling before him and a coachman smoking in his face, compelling General Schouwaloff's aide-de-camp to enact the part of the Emperor, while he, Bonaparte, wore the dress of an Austrian colonel and wrapped himself in the cloak of a Russian general. He must have loved life cruelly: those immortals cannot consent to die. Moreau said of Bonaparte: "His chief characteristics are falsehood and the love of life: let me beat him, and I should see him at my feet begging me for mercy." Moreau thought thus, being unable to grasp Bonaparte's nature; he fell into the same error as Lord Byron. At least, at St. Helena, Napoleon, dignified by the Muses, although petty in his quarrels with the English Governor, had to support only the weight of his own immensity. In France, the evil which he had done appeared to him personified by the widows and orphans, and constrained him to tremble before the hands of a few women. This is too true; but Bonaparte should not be judged by the rules applied to great geniuses, because he was lacking in magnanimity. There are men who have the faculty of rising, and who have not the faculty of descending. Napoleon possessed both faculties: like the rebellious angel, he was able to contract his incommensurable stature, so as to enclose it within a measured space; his ductility furnished him with means of safety and regeneration: with him, all was not finished when he seemed to have finished. Changing his manners and costume at will, as perfect in comedy as in tragedy, this actor knew how to appear natural in the slave's tunic as in the king's mantle, in the part of Attalus or in the part of Cæsar. Another moment and you shall see, from the depth of his degradation, the dwarf raising his Briarean head; Asmodeus will come forth in a huge column of smoke from the flask into which he had compressed himself. Napoleon valued life for what it brought him; he had the instinct of that which yet remained to him to paint; he did not wish his canvas to fail him before he had completed his pictures. [Sidenote: Scott's _Life of Napoleon._] Writing of Napoleon's fears, Sir Walter Scott[180], less unfair than the commissaries, frankly remarks that the unkindness of the people made much impression on Bonaparte, that he even shed tears, that he showed more fear of assassination than seemed consistent with his approved courage; "but," he adds, "it must be recollected that the danger was of a new and particularly horrible description, and calculated to appall many to whom the terrors of a field of battle were familiar. The bravest soldier might shudder at a death like that of the de Witts." Napoleon was made to undergo this revolutionary anguish in the same places where he commenced his career with the Terror. The Prussian General, once interrupting his recital, thought himself obliged to reveal a disorder which the Emperor did not conceal: Count Waldburg may have confused what he saw with the sufferings which M. de Ségur[181] witnessed in the Russian campaign, when Bonaparte, compelled to alight from his horse, leant his head against the guns. Among the number of the infirmities of illustrious warriors, true history reckons only the dagger which pierced the heart of Henry IV., or the ball which killed Turenne. After describing Bonaparte's arrival at Fréjus, Sir Walter Scott, rid of the great scenes, joyfully falls back upon his talent; he "goes his way gossiping," as Madame de Sévigné says; he chats of Napoleon's passage to Elba, of the seduction exercised by Napoleon over the English sailors, excepting Hinton[182], who could not hear the praises given to the Emperor without muttering the word "humbug." When Napoleon left the ship, Hinton wished "His Honour" good health and better luck the next time. Napoleon typified all the littlenesses and all the greatnesses of mankind. * While Bonaparte, known to the universe, was escaping amid curses from France, Louis XVIII., everywhere forgotten, was leaving London under a canopy of white banners and crowns. Napoleon, on landing in the island of Elba, found back his strength there. Louis XVIII., on landing at Calais[183], might have seen Louvel[184]; he met General Maison[185], commissioned, sixteen years after, to put Charles X. on board at Cherbourg. Charles X., apparently to render him worthy of his future mission, later gave M. Maison the baton of a marshal of France, even as a knight, before fighting, conferred knighthood upon the man of lower rank with whom he deigned to measure swords. I dreaded the effect of Louis XVIII.'s appearance. I hastened to go ahead of him to the residence whence Joan of Arc[186] fell into the hands of the English and where I was shown a volume struck by one of the cannon-balls hurled against Bonaparte. What would people think at the sight of the royal invalid replacing the horseman who might have said with Attila: "The grass no longer grows wherever my horse has passed." With no mission or taste for it, I undertook (I was clearly under a spell) a somewhat difficult task, that of describing the arrival at Compiègne, of causing the son of St. Louis to be seen as I idealized him by the aid of the Muses. I expressed myself thus: "The King's coach was preceded by the generals and the marshals of France who had gone to meet his Majesty. There were no more cries of 'God save the King!' but confused clamours amid which one distinguished only accents of tender emotion and joy. The King wore a blue coat, marked only by a star and a pair of epaulettes; his legs were encased in wide gaiters of red velvet, edged with a narrow gold braid. Seated in his arm-chair, with his old-fashioned gaiters, holding his cane between his knees, he suggests Louis XIV.[187] at fifty years of age.... Marshals Macdonald[188], Ney[189], Moncey[190], Sérurier[191], Brune[192], the Prince de Neuchâtel[193], all the generals, all the persons present alike received the most affectionate words from the King. So great in France is the power of the legitimate Sovereign, the magic attached to the name of the King. A man arrives alone from exile, despoiled of everything, without a following, guards, or riches; he has nothing to give, almost nothing to promise. He alights from his carriage, leaning on the arm of a young woman; he shows himself to captains who have never seen him, to grenadiers who hardly know his name. Who is that man? Tis the King! Every one falls at his feet[194]!" [Sidenote: Return of Louis XVIII.] What I said above of the warriors, with the object which I was proposing to attain, was true as regards the leaders; but I lied with respect to the soldiers. I have present in my memory, as though I saw it still, the spectacle which I witnessed when Louis XVIII., entering Paris on the 3rd of May, went to visit Notre-Dame: they had wished to spare the King the sight of the foreign troops; a regiment of the old foot-guards kept the line from the Pont-Neuf to Notre-Dame, along the Quai des Orfèvres. I do not believe that human faces ever wore so threatening and so terrible an expression. Those grenadiers, covered with wounds, the conquerors of Europe, who had seen so many thousands of cannon-balls pass over their heads, who smelt of fire and powder; those same men, robbed of their captain, were forced to salute an old king, disabled by time, not war, watched as they were by an army of Russians, Austrians and Prussians, in Napoleon's invaded capital. Some, moving the skin of their foreheads, brought down their great bear-skin busbies over their eyes, as though to keep them from seeing; others lowered the corners of their mouth in angry scorn; others again showed their teeth through their mustachios, like tigers. When they presented arms, it was with a furious movement, and the sound of those arms made one tremble. Never, we must admit, have men been put to so great a test and suffered so dire a torment. If, at that moment, they had been summoned to vengeance, it would have been necessary to exterminate them to the last, or they would have swallowed the earth. At the end of the line was a young hussar, on horse-back; he held a drawn sword, and made it leap and as it were dance with a convulsive movement of anger. His face was pale; his eyes rolled in their sockets; he opened and shut his mouth by turns, clashing his teeth together, and stifling cries of which one heard only the first sound. He caught sight of a Russian officer: the look which he darted at him cannot be described. When the King's carriage passed before him, he made his horse spring, and certainly he had the temptation to fling himself upon the King. The Restoration committed an irreparable mistake at its outset: it ought to have disbanded the army, while retaining the marshals, generals, military governors and officers in their pensions, honours and rank; the soldiers would afterwards have successively returned into the reconstituted army, as they have since done into the Royal Guard: the Legitimate Monarchy would not then have had against it, from the first, those soldiers of the Empire, organized, divided into brigades, denominated as they had been in the days of their victories, unceasingly talking together of the time that was past, nourishing regrets and feelings hostile to their new master. The miserable resurrection of the Maison Rouge[195], that mixture of soldiers of the old Monarchy and fighting men of the new Empire, augmented the evil: to believe that veterans distinguished on a thousand battle-fields would not be offended at seeing young men, very brave no doubt, but for the most part new to the calling of arms, wearing symbols of high military rank without having earned them, was to betray a want of knowledge of human nature. [Sidenote: Declaration of Saint-Ouen.] Alexander had been to visit Louis XVIII. during the stay which the latter made at Compiègne. Louis XVIII. offended him by his haughtiness: this interview led to the Declaration of Saint-Ouen of the 2nd of May. The King said in this that he had resolved to give, as the basis of the Constitution which he proposed to award to his people, the following guarantees: representative government divided into two bodies, taxes freely granted, public and individual liberty, liberty of the press, liberty of public worship, sacred inviolability of property, irrevocability of the sale of national goods, irremovable judges and an independent judicial bench, every Frenchman admissible to every employment, etc., etc. This declaration, although it was in keeping with Louis XVIII.'s intelligence, nevertheless pertained neither to him nor to his advisers; it was simply the time which was issuing from its rest: its wings had been folded, its soaring suspended since 1792; it was now resuming its flight, or its course. The excesses of the Terror, the despotism of Bonaparte had caused ideas to turn back again; but, so soon as the obstacles that had been opposed to them were destroyed, they flowed into the bed which they were at the at same time to follow and to dig. Matters were taken up at the point at which they had been stopped; all that had passed was as though it had not happened: the human race, thrust back to the commencement of the Revolution, had only lost forty years[196] of its life; well, what is forty years in the general life of society? That gap disappears when the cut fragments of time have been joined together. The Treaty of Paris, between the Allies and France, was concluded on the 30th of May 1814. It was agreed that, within two months, all the Powers engaged on either side in the present war should send plenipotentiaries to Vienna to settle the final arrangements in a general congress. On the 4th of June, Louis XVIII. appeared in royal session in a collective assembly of the Legislative Body and a fraction of the Senate. He delivered a noble speech: old, by-gone, worn-out, these wearisome details now serve only as an historic thread. To the greater part of the nation, the Charter possessed the drawback of being "granted:" this most useless word stirred up the burning question of royal or popular sovereignty. Louis XVIII. also dated his boon from the nineteenth year of his reign, considering that of Bonaparte as null and void, in the same way as Charles II[197]. had taken a clean leap over Cromwell's head: it was a kind of insult to the sovereigns, who had all recognised Napoleon and who were at that very moment in Paris. That obsolete language and those pretensions of the ancient monarchies added nothing to the lawfulness of the right and were mere puerile anachronisms[198]. That apart, the Charter, replacing despotism, bringing us legal liberty, was calculated to satisfy conscientious men. Nevertheless, the Royalists, who gained so many advantages by it, who, issuing from their village, or their paltry fireside, or the obscure posts on which they had lived under the Empire, were called to a lofty and public existence, received the boon only in a grudging spirit; the Liberals, who had accommodated themselves whole-heartedly to the tyranny of Bonaparte, thought the Charter a regular slave-code. We have returned to the time of Babel, but we no longer work at a common monument of confusion: each builds his tower to his own height, according to his strength and stature. For the rest, if the Charter appeared defective, it was because the Revolution had not run its course; the principles of equality and democracy lay at the bottom of men's minds and worked in a contrary direction to the monarchical order. The Allied Princes lost no time in leaving Paris. Alexander, when going away, had a religious sacrifice celebrated on the Place de la Concorde[199]. An altar was erected where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood. Seven Muscovite priests performed the service, and the foreign troops defiled before the altar. The _Te Deum_ was sung to one of the beautiful airs of the old Greek music. The soldiers and the sovereigns bent their knee to the ground to receive the benediction. The thoughts of the French were carried back to 1793 and 1794, when the oxen refused to go over pavements which the smell of blood made hateful to them. What hand had led to the expiatory festival those men of all countries, those sons of the ancient barbarian invasions, those Tartars, some of whom dwelt in sheep-skin tents beneath the Great Wall of China? Those are spectacles which the feeble generations that will follow my century shall no longer see. [Sidenote: The first Restoration.] In the first year of the Restoration, I assisted at the third transformation of society: I had seen the old Monarchy turn into the Constitutional Monarchy, and the latter into the Republic; I had seen the Republic change into military despotism; I had seen military despotism turn back into a free Monarchy, the new ideas and the new generations return to the old principles and the old men. The marshals of the Empire become marshals of France; with the uniforms of Napoleon's Guard were mingled the uniforms of the bodyguards and the Maison Rouge, cut precisely after the old patterns; the old Duc d'Havré[200], with his powdered wig and his black cane, ambled along with shaking head, as Captain of the Body-guards, near Marshal Victor[201], limping in the Bonaparte style; the Duc de Mouchy[202], who had never seen a shot fired, went in to Mass near Marshal Oudinot[203], riddled with wounds; the Palace of the Tuileries, so proper and soldierly under Napoleon, became filled, instead of the smell of powder, with the odours of the breakfasts which ascended on every side: under messieurs the lords of the Bed-chamber, with messieurs the officers of the Mouth and the Wardrobe, everything resumed an air of domesticity. In the streets, one saw decrepit Emigrants wearing the airs and clothes of former days, most respectable men no doubt, but appearing as outlandish among the modern crowd as did the Republican captains among the soldiers of Napoleon. The ladies of the Imperial Court introduced the dowagers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and taught them "their way about" the palace. There arrived deputations from Bordeaux, adorned with armlets; parish captains from the Vendée, wearing La Rochejacquelein hats. These different persons retained the expression of the feelings, thoughts, habits, manners familiar to them. Liberty, which lay at the root of that period, made things exist together which, at first sight, appeared as though they ought not to exist; but one had difficulty in recognising that liberty, because it wore the colours of the Ancient Monarchy and of the Imperial Despotism. Everyone, too, was badly acquainted with the language of the Constitution: the Royalists made glaring errors when talking Charter; the Imperialists were still less well-informed; the Conventionals, who had become, in turn, counts, barons, senators of Napoleon and peers of Louis XVIII., lapsed at one time into the Republican dialect which they had almost forgotten, at another into the Absolutist idiom which they had learned thoroughly. Lieutenant-generals had been promoted to game-keepers. Aides-de-camp of the last military tyrant were heard to prate of the inviolable liberty of the peoples, and regicides to sustain the sacred dogma of the Legitimacy. These metamorphoses would be hateful, if they did not in part belong to the flexibility of the French genius. The people of Athens governed itself; orators appealed to its passions in the public places; the sovereign crowd was composed of sculptors, painters, artizans, "who are wont to be spectators of speeches and hearers of deeds[204]," as Thucydides says. But when, good or bad, the decree had been delivered, who issued to execute it from amid that incoherent and inexpert mass? Socrates, Phocion, Pericles, Alcibiades. * Is it the Royalists who are "to blame for the Restoration," as is urged to-day? Not in the least: it was as though one should say that thirty millions of men had stood aghast, while a handful of Legitimists accomplished a detested restoration, against the wish of all, by waving a few handkerchiefs and putting a ribbon of their wives' in their hats! The vast majority of Frenchmen was, it is true, full of joy; but that majority was not a _Legitimist_ one in the limited sense of the word, applicable only to the rigid partisans of the old Monarchy. The majority was a mass composed of every shade of opinion, happy at being delivered, and violently incensed against the man whom it accused of all its misfortunes: hence the success of my pamphlet. How many avowed aristocrats were numbered among those who proclaimed the King's name? Messieurs Mathieu and Adrien de Montmorency; the Messieurs de Polignac, escaped from their jail; M. Alexis de Noailles; M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld. Did those seven or eight men, whom the people neither recognised nor followed, lay down the law to a whole nation? Madame de Montcalm had sent me a bag containing twelve hundred francs to distribute among the pure Legitimist race: I sent it back to her, not having succeeded in placing a crown-piece. An ignominious cord was fastened round the neck of the statue which surmounted the column in the Place Vendôme; there were so few Royalists to raise a hubbub around glory and to pull at the rope that the authorities themselves, Bonapartists all, had to lower their master's image with the aid of a scaffold; the colossus was forced to bow his head: he fell at the feet of the sovereigns of Europe, who had so often lain prostrate before him. It was the men of the Republic and of the Empire who enthusiastically greeted the Restoration. The conduct and ingratitude of the persons raised by the Revolution were abominable towards him whom they affect to-day to regret and admire. [Sidenote: Its supporters.] Imperialists and Liberals, it is you into whose hands the power fell, you who knelt down before the sons of Henry IV. It was quite natural that the Royalists should be happy to recover their Princes and to see the end of the reign of him whom they regarded as an usurper; but you, the creatures of that usurper, surpassed the feelings of the Royalists in exaggeration. The ministers, the high dignitaries vied with each other in taking the oath to the Legitimacy; all the civil and judicial authorities crowded on each other's heels to swear hatred against the proscribed new dynasty and love to the ancient race whom they had a hundred and a hundred times condemned. Who drew up those proclamations, those adulatory addresses, so insulting to Napoleon, with which France was flooded? The Royalists? No: the ministers, the generals, the authorities chosen and maintained in office by Bonaparte. Where was the jobbing of the Restoration done? At the Royalists'? No: at M. de Talleyrand's. With whom? With M. de Pradt, almoner to "the God Mars" and mitred mountebank. Where and with whom did the Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom dine on his arrival? At the Royalists' and with Royalists? No: at the Bishop of Autun's, with M. de Caulaincourt. Where were entertainments given to "the infamous foreign princes?" At the country-houses of the Royalists? No: at Malmaison, at the Empress Joséphine's. To whom did Napoleon's dearest friends, Berthier, for instance, carry their ardent devotion? To the Legitimacy. Who spent their existences with the Emperor Alexander, with that brutal Tartar? The classes of the Institute, the scholars, the men of letters, the philosophers, philanthropists, theophilanthropists and others; they returned enchanted, laden with praises and snuff-boxes. As for us poor devils of Legitimists, we were admitted nowhere; we went for nothing. Sometimes we were told, in the streets, to go home to bed; sometimes we were recommended not to shout "God Save the King!" too loud, others having undertaken that responsibility. So far from compelling anyone to be a Legitimist, those in power declared that nobody would be obliged to change his conduct or his language, that the Bishop of Autun would be no more compelled to say Mass under the Royalty than he had been compelled to attend it under the Empire. I saw no lady of the castle-keep, no Joan of Arc proclaim the rightful sovereign with falcon on wrist or lance in hand; but Madame de Talleyrand[205], whom Bonaparte had fastened to her husband like a sign-board, drove through the streets in a calash, singing hymns on the pious Family of the Bourbons. A few sheets fluttering from the windows of the familiars of the Imperial Court made the good Cossacks believe that there were as many lilies in the hearts of the converted Bonapartists as white rags at their casements. It is wonderful how far contagion will go in France, and a man would cry, "Off with my head!" if he heard his neighbour cry the same. The Imperialists went so far as to enter our houses and make us Bourbonists put out, by way of spotless flags, such white remnants as our presses contained. This happened at my house; but Madame de Chateaubriand would have none of it, and valiantly defended her muslins. * [Sidenote: The Restoration ministry.] The Legislative Body, transformed into a Chamber of Deputies, and the House of Peers, composed of 154 members, appointed for life, and including over 60 senators, formed the two first Legislative Chambers. M. de Talleyrand, installed at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, left for the Congress of Vienna, the opening of which was fixed for the 3rd of November, in execution of Clause 32 of the Treaty of the 30th of May; M. de Jaucourt held the portfolio during an interim which lasted until the Battle of Waterloo. The Abbé de Montesquiou became Minister of the Interior, having M. Guizot[206] as his secretary-general; M. Malouet[207] entered the Admiralty: he died, and was succeeded by M. Beugnot[208]; General Dupont[209] obtained the War Office; he was replaced by Marshal Soult[210], who distinguished himself through the erection of the funeral monument at Quiberon; the Duc de Blacas[211] was Minister of the Royal Household; M. Anglès[212], Prefect of Police; Councillor Dambray[213], Minister of Justice; the Abbé Louis[214], Minister of Finance. On the 21st of October, the Abbé de Montesquiou introduced the first law on the subject of the press; it submitted every writing of less than twenty pages of print to the censorship: M. Guizot worked out this first law of liberty. Carnot[215] addressed a letter to the King; he admitted that the Bourbons "had been joyfully received;" but, taking no account of the shortness of the time, nor of all that the Charter granted, he gave haughty lessons together with risky advice: all this is worth nothing when one has to accept the rank of minister and the title of count of the Empire; it is not becoming to show one's self proud towards a weak and liberal Prince when one has been submissive towards a violent and despotic Prince, when, a worn-out machine of the Terror, one has found one's self unequal to the calculation of the proportions of Napoleonic warfare. I sent to the press, in reply, my _Réflexions politiques_[216]; they contain the substance of the _Monarchie selon la Charte._ M. Lainé[217], the President of the Chamber of Deputies, spoke of this work to the King with praise. The King always seemed charmed with the services which I had the happiness to render him; Heaven seemed to have thrown over my shoulders the mantle of herald of the Legitimacy: but the greater the success of the work, the less did its author please His Majesty. The _Réflexions politiques_ divulged my Constitutional doctrines: the Court received an impression from them which my fidelity to the Bourbons has been unable to wipe out. Louis XVIII. used to say to his intimates: "Beware of ever admitting a poet into your affairs: he will ruin all. Those people are good for nothing." [Sidenote: The Duchesse de Duras.] A powerful and lively friendship at that time filled my heart: the Duchesse de Duras[218] had imaginative powers, and even some of the facial expression of Madame de Staël: she has given a proof of her talent as an author in _Ourika._ On her return from the Emigration, she led a secluded life, for many years, in her Château d'Ussé, on the banks of the Loire, and I first heard speak of her in the beautiful gardens at Méréville, after having passed near her in London without meeting her. She came to Paris for the education of her charming daughters, Félicie[219] and Clara[220]. Relations of family, province, literary and political opinion opened the door of her company to me. Her warmth of soul, her nobility of character, her loftiness of mind, her generosity of sentiment made her a superior woman. At the commencement of the Restoration, she took me under her protection; for, in spite of all that I had done for the Legitimate Monarchy and the services which Louis XVIII. confessed that he had received from me, I had been placed so far on one side that I was thinking of retiring to Switzerland. Perhaps I should have done well: in those solitudes which Napoleon had intended for me as his ambassador to the mountains, might I not have been happier than in the Palace of the Tuileries? When I entered those halls on the return of the Legitimacy, they made upon me an impression almost as painful as on the day when I saw Bonaparte there prepared to kill the Duc d'Enghien. Madame de Duras spoke of me to M. de Blacas. He replied that I was quite free to go I where I would. Madame de Duras was so tempestuous, so courageous on behalf of her friends, that a vacant embassy was dug up, the Embassy to Sweden. Louis XVIII., already wearied of my noise, was happy to make a present of me to his good brother, King Bernadotte. Did the latter imagine that I was being sent to Stockholm to dethrone him? By the Lord, ye princes of the earth, I dethrone nobody; keep your crowns, if you can, and above all do not give them to me, for I "will none of them." Madame de Duras, an excellent woman, who allowed me to call her my sister, and whom I had the happiness of seeing in Paris during many years, went to Nice to die[221]: one more wound re-opened. The Duchesse de Duras saw much of Madame de Staël. I cannot conceive how I did not come across Madame Récamier[222], who had returned from Italy to France; I should have greeted the succour which came in aid of my life. Already I no longer belonged to those mornings which console themselves; I was on the verge of those evening hours which stand in need of consolation. * On the 30th of December of the year 1814, the Legislative Chambers were prorogued to the 1st of May 1815, as though they had been convoked for the assembly of Bonaparte's _champ-de-mai._ On the 18th of January, the remains were exhumed of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. I was present at this exhumation in the cemetery[223] in which Fontaine[224] and Percier[225] have since, at the pious call of Madame la Dauphine, and in imitation of a sepulchral church at Rimini, raised what is perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris. This cloister, formed of a concatenation of tombs, strikes the imagination and fills it with sadness. I have spoken, in Book IV. of these Memoirs, of the exhumations of 1815[226]. In the midst of the bones, I recognised the Queen's head by the smile which that head had given me at Versailles. [Sidenote: The 21st of January.] On the 21st of January, was laid the first stone of the ground-work of the statue which was to be erected on the Place Louis XV., and which was never erected. I wrote the funeral splendour of the 21st of January; I said: "The monks who came with the Oriflamme[227] to meet the shrine of St. Louis will not receive the descendant of the Sainted King. In the subterraneous abodes where dwelt those annihilated kings and princes, Louis XVI. will lie alone!... How is it that so many dead have risen? Why is Saint-Denis deserted? Let us rather ask why its roof has been restored, why its altar is left standing. What hand has reconstructed the vault of those caverns and prepared those empty tombs? The hand of that same man who was seated on the throne of the Bourbons[228]! O Providence, he thought that he was preparing sepulchres for his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis XVI.[229]!" I long wished that the image of Louis XVI. might be set up on the spot where the martyr shed his blood: I should no longer be of that opinion. The Bourbons must be praised for thinking of Louis XVI. at the first moment of their return. They were bound to touch their foreheads with his ashes, before placing his crown on their heads. Now I think that they ought not to have gone further. It was not in Paris, as in London, a committee which tried the monarch: it was the whole Convention; thence the annual reproach which a repeated funeral ceremony seemed to make to the nation, apparently represented by a complete assembly. Every people has fixed anniversaries for the celebration of its triumphs, its disorders, or its misfortunes, for all have, in an equal measure, desired to keep up the memory of one and the other: we have had solemnities for the barricades, songs for St. Bartholomew's Night, feasts for the death of Capet; but is it not remarkable that the law is powerless to create days of remembrance, whereas religion has made the obscurest saint live on from age to age? If the fasts and prayers instituted for the sacrifice of Charles I. still survive[230], it is because, in England, the State unites religious to political supremacy and because, by virtue of that supremacy, the 30th of January 1649 has become a _feria._ In France things go differently: Rome alone has the right to command in religion; thenceforth, of what value is an order published by a prince, a decree promulgated by a political assembly, if another prince, another assembly have the right to expunge them? I therefore think to-day that the symbol of a feast which may be abolished, or the evidence of a tragic catastrophe not consecrated by religion, is not fitly placed on the road of the crowd carelessly and heedlessly pursuing its pleasures. At the time in which we live, it is to be feared lest a monument raised with the object of impressing horror of popular excesses might prompt the longing to imitate them: evil tempts more than good; when wishing to perpetuate the sorrow, one often perpetuates only the example. The centuries do not adopt the bequests of mourning: they have present cause enough for weeping, without undertaking to shed hereditary tears as well. [Sidenote: Reflections at Saint-Denis.] On beholding the catafalque leaving the Cemetière de Desclozeaux[230b], laden with the remains of the Queen and King, I felt a strong emotion; I followed it with my eyes with a fatal presentiment. At last Louis XVI. resumed his couch at Saint-Denis; Louis XVIII., on his side, slept at the Louvre. The two brothers were together commencing a new era of legitimate kings and sceptres: vain restoration of the throne and the tomb, of which time has already swept away the dual dust. Since I have spoken of those funeral ceremonies, which were so often repeated, I will tell you of the incubus with which I used to be oppressed when, after the ceremony, I walked in the evening in the half-undraped basilica: that I dreamt of the vanity of human greatness among those devasted tombs follows as the vulgar moral issuing from the spectacle itself; but the workings of my mind did not stop at that: I penetrated into the very nature of man. Is all emptiness and absence in the region of the sepulchres? Is there nothing in that nothingness? Are there no existences of nihility, no thoughts of dust? Have those bones no modes of life with which we are unacquainted? Who knows of the passions, the pleasures, the embraces of those dead? Are the things which they have dreamt, thought, expected like themselves idealities, engulfed pell-mell with themselves? Dreams, futures, joys, sorrows, liberties and slaveries, powers and weaknesses, crimes and virtues, honours and infamies, riches and miseries, talents, geniuses, intelligences, glories, illusions, loves: are you but perceptions of a moment, perceptions that pass with the destruction of the skulls in which they take birth, with the extinction of the bosom in which once beat a heart? In your eternal silence, O tombs, if tombs you be, is nought heard but a mocking and eternal laughter? Is that laughter the God, the sole derisive reality, which will survive the imposture of this universe? Let us close our eyes; let us fill up life's despairing abyss with those great and mysterious words of the martyr: "I am a Christian!" [128] Odo King of France (_d._ 898), the first king of the Capet Dynasty.--T. [129] Abbon (_d._ 923), nicknamed the Crooked, author of a Latin poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans. [130] Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia Queen of Prussia (1776-1810), the beautiful wife of Frederic William III., and daughter of the Duke of Mecklemburg-Strelitz. Napoleon was said to be enamoured of Louisa of Prussia.--T. [131] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. VIII.--T. [132] _Ps._ XXI. 16. In the Vulgate: _Et lingua mea adhasit faucibus meis._--B. [133] The Emperor Alexander had expressed a wish to say, not at the Tuileries, but at the Élysée; he remained there only a few hours, and accepted the offer of the Prince of Talleyrand, who hastened to place at his disposal his house in the Rue Saint-Florentin.--B. [134] Pope Pius VII.--T. [135] Fabian Wilhelm Prince von der Osten-Sacken (1752-1837) had fought in all the campaigns against Turkey, Poland and France, and been taken prisoner by Masséna at Zurich. Alexander appointed him Governor of Paris in 1814.--T. [136] Paul Count Schouvaloff (_circa_ 1775-1823), a distinguished Russian general, the same who later escorted Napoleon to Fréjus.--T. [137] Madame Charles Bonaparte (1750-1836), _née_ Ramolino, Napoleon's mother. When Bonaparte assumed the title of Emperor, he bestowed upon his mother that of Madame Mère and Imperial Highness.--T. [138] Cardinal Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was Madame Mère's half-brother.--T. [139] Nikolaus Field-Marshal Prince Esterhazy von Galantha (1765-1833), the Hungarian magnate who, in 1797, had organized an army in Hungary to repel the French invasion.--T. [140] Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (1784-1860), Napoleon's youngest and most worthless brother, distinguished for little save his personal courage. From Jerome the present Bonapartist pretenders are descended. He had married a daughter of the King of Wurtemberg, who, after Waterloo, gave him the title of Comte de Montfort. He returned to France in 1848, and prepared the way for the election to the Presidency of his nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, afterwards Napoleon III. Jerome, who resumed his royal title under the Second Empire, was successively appointed Governor of the Invalides (1848), a marshal of France (1850), and President of the Senate (1851).--T. [141] _Cf._ my description of the Hundred Days at Ghent, _infra,_ and the portrait of M. de Talleyrand given at the end of these Memoirs.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1839). [142] The full title of Chateaubriand's work was _De Bonaparte, des Bourbons et de la nécessité de se rallier à nos princes légitimes pour le bonheur de la France et celui de l'Europe._ Extracts from the famous pamphlet were published in the _Journal des Débats_ on the 4th of April 1814, and the work itself was placed on sale the next day, Wednesday the 5th of April.--B. [143] Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839), was the editor of the bulletins of the National Assembly in 1789, and thus laid the foundations of the _Moniteur universel._ In 1792, he was sent as Ambassador to Naples, was captured by the Austrians on the road, and was kept in confinement until 1795, when he was exchanged for the daughter of Louis XVI. Bonaparte appointed Maret Secretary-General to the Consuls and later, in 1804, made him Secretary of State. In this capacity Maret accompanied Napoleon on all his campaigns, drawing up most of the instructions and bulletins. He was in 1811 created Duc de Bassano, and was appointed Foreign Minister and Minister of War in 1813. He was exiled in 1815, not returning to France until 1820. The Duc de Bassano was a minister of Louis-Philippe for the space of one week only (10 to 18 November 1834). To Napoleon he had been an invaluable and indefatigable servant.--T. [144] François Séverin Desgraviers-Marceau (1769-1796) enlisted at the age of sixteen, became a captain in the Vendée in 1793 and, in the same year, when only twenty-four years old, was, upon Kléber's recommendation, appointed General-in-Chief of the Western Army. On the 12th of December, he won the bloody battle of Mans over the Vendeans. In 1794, he was employed as a general of division in the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and contributed to the victory of Fleurus. In 1796, he protected the retreat of Jourdan's Army, and had several times repelled the enemy when he fell mortally wounded near Altkirchen, at the age of twenty-seven years. Marceau was noted for his humanity and disinterestedness, as much as for his courage and strategic talent His native city of Chartres erected a monument to him in 1850.--T. [145] Lazare Hoche (1768-1797) received the command of the Army of the Moselle at the age of twenty-five. In 1793-94, he cleared the Austrians out of Alsace. He was thrown into prison for a short time, at the instance of Pichegru, over whose head he had been promoted, but recovered his liberty on the 9 Thermidor, and was placed at the head of the Army of the Vendée. He defeated the Emigrants at Quiberon and succeeded in pacifying the whole district. In 1796, he commanded the army which was intended to effect a landing in Ireland, but was driven back by storms. He was next, in February 1797, placed in command of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, consisting of 80,000 men, and defeated the Austrians in three engagements, but died, in September, of a complaint of the bowels. Hoche has a statue at Versailles, where he was born.--T. [146] Barthélemy Cathérine Joubert (1769-1799) served with great distinction in Italy, as second to Bonaparte, in 1795 and 1796; in 1798, he himself commanded the Army of Italy and at first obtained great successes. On the 15th of August 1799, however, he was unexpectedly attacked by the Russians at Novi, saw his army routed, and was mortally wounded while attempting to effect a rally. The Directory were considering whether they should place Joubert in the supreme power, when his death occurred.--T. [147] Masséna routed the Russians at Zurich on the 26th of August 1799.--T. [148] Camille Jordan (1771-1821), a moderate French citizen of liberal opinions, and author of some wise and temperate works.--T. [149] Louis Jean Népomucène Lemercier (1771-1840), a notable playwright and a member of the French Academy.--T. [150] Jean Denis Comte Lanjuinais (1753-1827), a moderate member of the Convention, of which, after escaping from arrest, he was made President in 1795. In 1800, he was made a senator, and, although he voted against the life consulship, he was later created a count of the Empire. In 1814, he voted for the deposition of Napoleon and was made a peer by Louis XVIII.--T. [151] Charles François Lebrun, Duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), the third of the three Consuls. Under the Empire, Bonaparte created him Duc de Plaisance, High Treasurer, and Administrator-General of Holland. He gave in his adhesion to the recall of the Bourbons in 1814, and was created a peer under the Restoration.--T. [152] Here I omit quotations from Marie Joseph de Chénier, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Béranger, Courier, Victor Hugo, Sheridan and Lord Byron.--T. [153] M. de Talleyrand occupied the house which forms the corner of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue Saint-Florentin. After the death of the Prince de Talleyrand, it was taken by the Princesse de Lieven. It is now the property of M. Alphonse de Rothschild.--B. [154] The Abbé Dominique Dufour de Pradt (1759-1837), was Grand Vicar at Rouen on the outbreak of the Revolution. He emigrated in 1791, returned in 1801, and became successively almoner to the Emperor, a baron, Bishop of Poitiers and Archbishop of Mechlin. In 1812, he was sent as Ambassador to Warsaw, but acquitted himself very badly in this capacity, and was deprived of his almoner-ship and sent back to his diocese. He thereupon became a violent enemy of Napoleon, and was one of the first to declare against him when the Allies entered Paris. Nevertheless, he was coldly received by the Bourbons and obliged to resign his archbishopric, receiving a pension of 12,000 francs by way of indemnity. He wrote a mass of occasional matter, including a History of his Polish Embassy. The publication referred to above is his _Récit historique sur la restauration de la royauté en France le 31 mars_ 1814.--T. [155] Pierre de Ruel, Maréchal Marquis de Beurnonville (1752-1821), had served in the Republican armies, was made Minister of War in 1792, but was captured by Dumouriez and delivered to the Austrians: he was one of the French officers exchanged in 1795 for Louis XVI.'s daughter, who became Duchesse d'Angoulême. Under the Consulate and Empire, he was sent as Ambassador to Berlin and Madrid. He became a senator in 1805, a count of the Empire in 1808. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France in 1814, a marshal of France in 1816, gave him his marquisate in 1817 and the Order of the Holy Ghost in 1820.--T. [156] Arnail François Marquis de Jaucourt (1757-1852) was a colonel in the royal service at the age of twenty-five. Under the Revolution, he pronounced for the Constitutional Monarchy and was obliged to emigrate. Napoleon made him a senator in 1803, First Chamberlain to King Joseph in 1804, a count in 1808; and Jaucourt remained faithful until the flight of Joseph and Marie-Louise, when he consented to join the Provisional Government. Louis XVIII. made him a minister of State and a peer of France; but he held office for only short periods, devoting himself mainly to the interests of Protestantism, a form of worship to which he belonged.--T. [157] Emmerich Joseph Wolfgang Heribert Duc de Dalberg (1773-1833) left the service of the Grand-duke of Baden for that of Napoleon and was naturalized a Frenchman. He was created a duke of the Empire in 1810 and, for the rest, clung to the fortunes of Talleyrand.--T. [158] François Xavier Marc Antoine Abbé Duc de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1757-1832) had followed the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) to England after the Revolution. He returned to France after the 9 Thermidor to serve the interests of the Bourbons, but was exiled by Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. made him his Minister of the Interior (1814-1815), and he was for some time at the head of affairs. After the Second Restoration, he was created a peer of France (1815), a count (1817) and a duke (1821) but took no further part in politics. In 1816, he was admitted to the French Academy, although he had no literary qualifications. He died in retirement and poor.--T. [159] Dupont de Nemours (_vide_ note, _supra_, p. 56) was Secretary to the Provisional Government, rather than a member of it.--B. [160] The Treaty of Tilsit, between Russia and Prussia on the one hand and France on the other, took place in 1807.--T. [161] At the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin belonged to the Duc de Fitz-James, who sold it, in 1787, to the Duchesse de l'Infantado. Hence the name of Hôtel de l'Infantado by which it was generally designated under the Empire and in the early years of the Restoration.--B. [162] Adresse du Gouvernement provisoire aux armées françaises (2 April 1814).--B. [163] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1544-1611), brother to the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, on whose death he proclaimed himself the Head of the League and Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and made war upon Henry III. and the King of Navarre (Henry IV.), but was defeated by the latter at Arques and Ivry. He kept up his resistance after the death of Henry III., and proclaimed a phantom king in the person of the Cardinal de Bourbon. On the death of that Prince, in 1590, he convoked the States-General in the hope of securing his own election, but failed, ended by submitting and, in 1596, made his peace with Henry IV., who made him Governor of the Isle of France.--T. [164] Charles Comte, later Duc de Cossé-Brissac was appointed Governor of Paris by the Duc de Mayenne in 1594. A few months later, he surrendered the capital to Henry IV., who made him a marshal.--T. [165] Jean Baptiste Mailhe (1754-1834), member of the Convention for the Haute-Garonne. As the result of the drawing which took place among the departments, he was the first called upon to vote in the trial of the King. In 1814, he sent an address to the Senate to congratulate it on pronouncing the deposition of Napoleon.--B. [166] Baron Petit (1772-1856) had been Brigadier-General of the Imperial Guard since the 23rd of June 1813. The day after the leave-taking at Fontainebleau, he swore allegiance to Louis XVIII., who made him a knight of St. Louis; but he fought at Cambronne's side at Waterloo, and protected the flight of the Emperor. Louis-Philippe created him a peer of France in 1837, and made him Commander of the Invalides. Napoleon III. appointed him a Senator in 1852.--T. [167] Franz Baron von Koller (1767-1826), Adjutant-General to Prince von Schwarzenberg, and an Austrian general of the first merit.--T. [168] Colonel, later General Sir Neil Campbell (1776-1827). Colonel Campbell stayed in Elba at Napoleon's request, and it was during one of his absences in Italy that Napoleon escaped, Campbell's supposed residence having put the English naval captains off their guard.--T. [169] Friedrich Ludwig Count Truchsess von Waldburg (1776-1844), author of the _Reise von Fontainebleau nach Fréjus_ (1815), from which the following extracts are taken.--T. [170] Johann Philipp Palm (1766-1806), the victim of this judicial murder. A book was published at Nuremberg, in 1814, by the unfortunate publisher's family, giving a full and touching account of his trial and execution.--T. [171] Friedrich von Gentz (1764-1832), a noted German publicist, author of the Prussian manifesto against France in 1806, the Austrian manifestoes of 1809 and 1813, the protocols of the Conferences of Vienna (1814) and Paris (1815), and of several remarkable political works.--T. [172] Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), did not receive his duchy until the 11th of May 1814. The earlier steps are: Baron Douro and Viscount Wellington (4 September 1809), Earl of Wellington (28 February 1812), and Marquess of Wellington (3 October 1812).--T. [173] Paul François Charles Augereau, Maréchal Duc de Castiglione (1757-1816), a brilliant, dashing and courageous soldier. He was one of the first to recognise the Bourbons.--T. [174] Henri Gratien Comte Bertrand (1773-1844), Napoleon's intimate and confidant, accompanied him to Elba and St. Helena, and never left his side until his death. He had been sentenced to death by contumacy in 1816. On his return from St. Helena, in 1821, Louis XVIII. remitted his penalty and restored him to his rank. In 1840, he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena and, with him, brought back the remains of Napoleon to France. He is buried at the Invalides by the Emperor's side.--T. [175] Comte Drouot (1774-1847), the great artillery general. Napoleon made him Governor of Elba. He returned to France with the Emperor at Waterloo, and fought with extraordinary gallantry. He was proscribed by Louis XVIII. and tried by court-martial, but acquitted. He ended his days in retirement, and lost his sight some years before his death. Napoleon left him 100,000 francs in his will.--T. [176] TRUCHSESS-WALDBURG, _A Narrative of Napoleon Buonaparte's Journey from Fontainebleau to Fréjus in April 1814_ (London: John Murray, 1816).--T. [177] In 1799, after the capture of Jaffa, Bonaparte had the garrison murdered in cold blood, as well as some thousands of prisoners of whom he had a difficulty in disposing.--T [178] According to several historians, the Marquis de Maubreuil was a needy adventurer, as destitute of scruples as of money, who is supposed to have been charged by Talleyrand, in April 1814, to assassinate Napoleon. Dupont, the Minister for War, Anglès, the Minister for Police, and Bourrienne, the Postmaster-General, the commanders of the Russian and Austrian troops, the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria himself are said to have approved of the mission entrusted to Maubreuil. All this is an abominable calumny. The royalist zeal of which Maubreuil had given signs, after the entry of the Allies into Paris, had earned for him the good graces of M. Laborie, the assistant-secretary to the Provisional Government; but his protector, failing to procure him a post, he invented a stroke of the boldest character. Under the pretext that he was going in search of a portion of the Crown diamonds, which had been removed from Paris and were not to be found, on the 21st of April, at the village of Fossard, near Montereau, he waylaid the Queen of Westphalia, who was returning to Germany, and seized eleven cases containing the Queen's jewelry and diamonds and 80,000 francs in gold. When the news of this great stroke reached Paris, the Sovereigns, and the Emperor Alexander in particular, displayed the liveliest annoyance and demanded the punishment of the culprits. Maubreuil, meantime, had returned to Paris, on the night of the 23rd of April; he carried to the Tuileries the cases which he had taken, one of them, according to him, having been broken and its contents scattered on the road. At the same time, he handed over four sacks, containing gold, he said. The next day, when the cases were opened by the locksmith who had made the keys, they were found to be almost empty; the sacks contained silver pieces of twenty sous, instead of gold pieces of twenty francs. The police, before long, had proofs that the broken case, which was just that which had contained the most precious objects, had been opened at Versailles, in a room at an inn, by Maubreuil and his accomplice, a certain Dasies. Moreover, in one of the apartments occupied by Maubreuil in Paris--he had three or four--they found on the bed a magnificent diamond which had belonged to the Queen of Westphalia. The evidences of the theft were incontestable. Maubreuil put a bold face upon it. He declared that he had left Paris with the mission to assassinate the Emperor; that this mission had been given him by M. de Talleyrand; that, in spite of the horror with which it inspired him, he had accepted it for fear lest it should be given to another. "He had," he continued, "arranged everything to deceive the criminal intentions of those who had employed him, and he had sought, by bringing them a treasure and contenting their greed, to appease their dissatisfaction." This could not stand proof; but, in the then circumstances, those lies might have produced the most deplorable and baleful effects among the public, particularly the soldiers. The Government thought it the wisest course to hurry nothing, to keep the accused in prison, and to await aid and counsel from time and the progress of events. _Cf._ the _Souvenirs du comte de Semallé_ and Vol. II. of the _Mémoires du chancelier Pasquier._--B. [179] Jean Baptiste Germain Fabry (1780-1821), author of the _Itinéraire de Buonaparte de Doulevent à Fréjus_ (1821) and of numerous publications, written with talent and animated with a profoundly religious and royalist spirit.--B. [180] Sir Walter Scott, Bart (1771-1832). The above extract is taken from his _Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (1827), chap, lxxxi.--T. [181] Philippe Paul Comte de Ségur (1786-1873), author of the _Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée en 1812_ (1824), from which the above incident is quoted.--T. [182] Hinton was boatswain on board the _Undaunted_, which conveyed Napoleon to Elba.--T. [183] Louis XVIII. landed at Calais on the 24th of April 1814. He had left France on the 22nd of June 1791.--B. [184] Louis Pierre Louvel (1753-1820), the assassin of the Duc de Berry (13 February 1820). He declared in one of his interrogatories that, on the first day of the Restoration, he had sworn to exterminate all the Bourbons and that, in April 1814, he had gone on foot from Metz to Calais with the object of stabbing Louis XVIII.--T. [185] Nicolas Joseph Maréchal Comte Maison (1771-1840) rallied to the new Government and was made Governor of Paris and a peer of France (1814). He refused to accept any post from Napoleon on the return of the latter from Elba, and in 1817 was created a marquis. He commanded the Morean Expedition in 1828, and was made a marshal of France in the following year. Maison was one of the commissaries appointed to accompany Charles X. to Cherbourg in 1830. Under Louis-Philippe he was Ambassador to Vienna (1831-1833), to St. Petersburg (1833-1835), and Minister of War (1835-1836).--T. [186] Joan of Arc (1410-1430) was captured by the English on the 24th of May 1430, on attempting a sortie from Compiègne, besieged by the English and Burgundians. Louis XVIII. arrived at Compiègne on the 29th of April 1814.--T. [187] Louis XIV. (1638-1715) was the direct ancestor of Louis XVIII. in the fifth generation (great-great-great-grandfather).--T. [188] Étienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, Maréchal Duc de Tarente (1765-1840), a fine soldier, of Irish descent. He was made a peer of France, after Napoleon's abdication, and Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour, a dignity which he retained until 1831.--T. [189] Michel Ney, Maréchal Duc d'Elchingen, Prince de la Moskowa (1769-1815), was, at the end of the next year, sentenced to be shot for his treachery to the King, the sentence being executed on the 7th of December 1815.--T. [190] Bon Adrien Jeannot Moncey, Maréchal Duc de Conégliano (1754-1842), was imprisoned for three months in 1815 at Ham for refusing to try Marshal Ney, and excluded from the House of Peers, to which he was not readmitted until 1819. In 1823 he was given a command in Spain in the war of French intervention. He ended his life as Governor of the Invalides, where he received the remains of Napoleon.--T. [191] Jean Marie Philippe Maréchal Comte Sérurier (1742-1819) was Governor of the Invalides, in 1814, and burnt the flags captured from the enemy in the court-yard to save them from being restored to the Allies. Louis made him a peer of France and Grand Cross of St. Louis, but he resigned all his functions in December 1815.--T. [192] Marshal Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (1763-1815) rejoined Napoleon on his return from Elba, and was killed by the Royalist mob at Avignon shortly after the Battle of Waterloo.--T. [193] Alexandre Berthier, Maréchal Prince de Wagram, Prince de Neuchâtel (1753-1815), committed suicide on the return of Napoleon, from the balcony of his mother-in-law, the Duke of Birkenfeld's palace at Bamberg, during a fit of fever (1 June 1815).--T. [194] _Cf. Compiègne, avril_ 1814 (Paris: Le Normant, 1814).--B. [195] The musketeers of the King's Military Household, so called because of their red uniform.--B. [196] The manuscript of the Memoirs says forty years. Is this simply a _lapsus calami_, or did Chateaubriand, who, it is true, was an indifferent calculator, really reckon forty years between 1792 and 1814?--B. [197] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) dated his reign from 1649, the year of the execution of Charles I., and not from 1660, the year of his restoration.--T. [198] In spite of what Chateaubriand says, it is only just to recognise that Louis XVIII. had given proof of a truly royal dignity in not consenting to accept the crown at the hands of the senators, and in proclaiming that he held it in his own right. The Comte de Lille, the exile of Hartwell, had, in fact, no other title to occupy the throne than as the descendant of Louis XIV., the brother of Louis XVI., and the successor of Louis XVII.--B. [199] Chateaubriand here commits a slight error of date. The Emperor Alexander left Paris on the 2nd of June 1814. It was not then, nor on the eve of his departure, that he had a religious service celebrated on the Place Louis XV. This ceremony had taken place almost immediately after the entry of the Allies, before either the Comte d'Artois or Louis XVIII. had arrived in Paris, on Sunday the 10th of April. On that day, the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia and Prince von Schwarzenberg, representing the Emperor of Austria, reviewed their respective troops, drawn up in line, to the number of 80,000 men, from the Boulevard de l'Arsenal to the Boulevard de la Madeleine. At one o'clock, a mass was said on the Place Louis XV. by a bishop and six priests of the Greek rite. A _Te Deum_ was sung to thank God for giving peace to France and the world. The Allied troops defiled before the altar, which was surrounded by the National Guard of Paris, under the orders of its commandant, General Dessolle.--B. [200] Joseph Anne Auguste Maximilien de Croy, Duc d'Havré (1744-1839). He was a brigadier-general, in 1789, when elected a deputy to the States-General by the nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham. In 1814, Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, a lieutenant-general and a captain of the Body-guards. He was then seventy years of age.--B. [201] Victor Perrin, Maréchal Duc de Bellune (1766-1841), known as Marshal Victor, had been seriously wounded in the campaign of 1814. He remained faithful to Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days, and was created a peer of France in 1815. He was Minister for War for a few days under the Bourbons.--T. [202] Philippe Louis Marie Antoine de Noailles, Prince de Poix, Duc de Mouchy (1752-1819). His career resembled that of the Duc d'Havré in every particular. He was sent to the States-General in 1789 by the nobles of the bailiwick of Amiens and Ham, and was created a peer, a lieutenant-general and a captain of the Body-guards in 1814.--B. [203] Nicolas Charles Oudinot, Maréchal Duc de Reggio (1767-1847), one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals, was wounded no less than thirty-two times. Under the Restoration, to which he continued faithful in 1815, he became a peer of France, Major-General of the Royal Guard and Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of Paris. Louis-Philippe appointed Oudinot Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour (1839) and Governor of the Invalides (1842).--T. [204] THUC. III. 38.--T. [205] Madame de Talleyrand-Périgord, _née_ Worley, was born at Pondichéry, where her father was harbour-master. At sixteen years of age, she married a Swiss, Mr. Grant, who lived with her successively at Chandernagor and Calcutta; she allowed herself to be eloped with and carried to Europe. After numerous adventures, she became Talleyrand's mistress under the Directory and lived with him publicly. The First Consul ordered his minister to marry her, which was done, after Talleyrand had received a brief from the Court of Rome releasing him from his vows, and after Mr. Grant, then in Paris, had agreed to a divorce, in consideration of a large sum of money and a good place... at the Cape of Good Hope. The marriage of the ex-Bishop of Autun was, for that matter, a purely civil one. When the Restoration came, he settled a pension of 60,000 francs on his wife, on condition that she went to live in England.--B. [206] François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) became Minister of the Interior in 1830, under Louis-Philippe, was French Ambassador to England for a few months in 1840, and Prime Minister from 1840 to 1848.--T. [207] Pierre Victor Baron Malouet (1740-1814) served in the Admiralty all his life: under Louis XVI.; as Commissary-general of Marine under Bonaparte; and as Minister of Marine under the Restoration.--T. [208] Jacques Claude Comte Beugnot (1761-1835) had, under the Empire, been Prefect of Rouen, a councillor of State, Minister of Finance to King Jerome, and Prefect of Lille. Louis XVIII. made him Minister of Marine in December 1814. He accompanied the King to Ghent and, on the return, became Postmaster-general. He was made a peer of France in 1730.--B. [209] Pierre Antoine Comte Dupont de L'Étang (1765-1840), had been one of the most brilliant generals of the Empire, but was cashiered for his capitulation at Baylen (1808), and kept in prison until 1814. He remained only a few months at the War Office. In 1836, Dupont published a translation in verse of the Odes of Horace and, in 1839, the _Art de la guerre_, a poem in ten cantos.--T. [210] Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Maréchal Duc de Dalmatie (1769-1852), Napoleon's greatest tactician. He became Major-general of Napoleon's army during the Hundred Days, and was exiled by the Bourbons at the Second Restoration; returned to France in 1819, and was raised to the peerage, in 1827, by Charles X. But, in 1830, he devoted himself to Louis-Philippe; became Minister of War and President of the Council; reorganized the French Army in 1832; represented France at the coronation of Victoria in 1838, and received a veritable ovation in England. In 1839 and again in 1840, Soult resumed the office of Minister of War, together with the Presidency of the Council; but was obliged by the state of his health to resign, in 1847, and received the quite exceptional title of Marshal-General, which only Turenne, Villars and Saxe had borne before him.--T. [211] Pierre Louis Casimir Duc de Blacas d'Aulps (1770-1839) accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, was created a peer under the Second Restoration, and Ambassador to Naples and later to Rome. In 1823, he was reappointed to Naples, where he remained till 1830, when he followed the Bourbons into exile, dying at Prague in 1839.--T. [212] Jules Jean Baptiste Comte Anglès (1778-1828). He again became Prefect of Police in 1818, and retained that post until 1821.--B. [213] Charles Dambray (1760-1829) was made Chancellor, Minister of Justice and President of the Chamber in 1814. He took refuge in England during the Hundred Days, and resumed the presidency of the Chamber on his return.--T. [214] Joseph Dominique Baron Louis (1755-1837) had taken orders and assisted as deacon to the Bishop of Autun at the Feast of the Federation in 1790. He emigrated, nevertheless, and employed his exile in studying the financial system of England. He was several times Minister of Finance: in 1814, 1816, 1818 and 1831.--T. [215] Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823), the famous "Organizer of Victory." He became Minister of the Interior during the Hundred Days, and was exiled during the Second Restoration, retiring first to Warsaw and next to Magdeburg, where he died. He was the author of several works, including the _Mémoire adressé au roi en juillet 1814_, the letter in question.--T. [216] _Réflexions politiques sur quelques écrits du jour et sur les intérêts de tous les Français_ (December 1814). This is one of Chateaubriand's finest writings.--B. [217] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein, Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835), became Minister of the Interior in 1816, a member of the French Academy in the same year, and a viscount and peer of France in 1823.--T. [218] Claire Duchesse de Duras (1777-1829), _née_ de Coëtnempren de Kersaint, married in 1797, in England, Amédée Bretagne Malo de Durfort, who, three years later, on the death of his father, became Duc de Duras. On the return of the Bourbons, the Duc de Duras was made a peer of France and First Lord of the Bed-chamber. The duchess at that time had one of the most popular salons in Paris. She wrote several little novels: _Édouard, Ourika, Frère Ange, Olivier_, and the _Mémoires de Sophie_, of which the two first were published in 1820 and 1824 respectively; the other three are still in manuscript. Towards the end of her life, the Duchesse de Duras wrote some eminently Christian pages, which were published, ten years after her death, in 1839, under the title of _Réflexions et prières inédites._--B. [219] Claire Louise Augustine Félicité Magloire de Durfort (_b._ 1798), known as Félicie, married, first (1813), Charles Léopold Henri de La Trémoille, Prince de Talmont (_d._ 1815), and, secondly (1819), Brigadier-general Auguste du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejacquelein.--B. [220] Claire Henriette Philippine Benjamine de Durfort (1799-1863), known as Clara, married (1819) Henri Louis Comte de Chastellux, created Duc de Rauzan on the occasion of his marriage.--B. [221] In January 1829.--B. [222] Madame Julie Récamier (1777-1849), _née_ Bernard, of whom much will be read in the sequel, was very intimate with Madame de Staël, and had been banished from Paris by Napoleon for the frequency of her visits to Madame de Staël at Coppet.--T. [223] The old Cemetière de la Madeleine, at No. 48, Rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré.--B. [224] Pierre François Fontaine (1762-1865), an eminent modern French architect and member of the Academy of Arts, who, together with Percier, _quem vide infra_, constructed the Expiatory Chapel at the corner of the Rue d'Anjou and the Boulevard Haussmann, mentioned below, and a number of other public works, including the great staircase at the Louvre, the restorations at Versailles, etc.--T [225] Charles Percier (1764-1840), member of the Institute, and Fontaine's friend and collaborator.--T. [226] _Vide_ Vol. I. p. 157.--T. [227] The Oriflamme, which, under the Capets, became the standard of France, was originally the private banner of the Abbey of Saint-Denis.--T. [228] The tombs of the Kings at Saint-Denis were opened in 1793, by order of the Convention (6 August), and restored, together with the church, by Napoleon, in 1806.--T. [229] Chateaubriand: _Le Vingt-et-un janvier_ (Paris: Le Normant, 1815).--B. [230] The service in memory of the martyrdom of King Charles I. was struck out of the Prayer-book in the year 1859.--T. [230b] M. Descloseaux (not Ducluzeau, as the previous editions of the Memoirs have it) was a faithful Royalist, who had become the proprietor of the old Cemetière de la Madeleine to save the remains of the King and Queen from profanation.--B. BOOK IV Napoleon at Elba--Commencement of the Hundred Days--The return from Elba--Torpor of the Legitimacy--Article by Benjamin Constant--Order of the day of Marshal Soult--A royal session--Petition of the School of Law to the Chamber of Deputies--Plan for the defense of Paris--Flight of the King--I leave with Madame de Chateaubriand--Confusion on the road--The Duc d'Orléans and the Prince de Condé--Tournai--Brussels--Memories--The Duc de Richelieu--The King summons me to join him at Ghent--The Hundred Days at Ghent--Continuation of the Hundred Days at Ghent--Affairs in Vienna. Bonaparte had refused to embark in a French ship, setting value at that time only on the English Navy, because it was victorious; he had forgotten his hatred, the calumnies, the outrages with which he had overwhelmed perfidious Albion; he saw none now worthy of his admiration save the triumphant party, and it was the _Undaunted_ that conveyed him to the harbour of his first exile. He was not without anxiety as to the manner in which he would be received. Would the French garrison hand over to him the territory which it was guarding? Of the Italian islanders, some wished to call in the English, others to remain free of all masters; the Tricolour and the White Flag waved on near headlands. All was arranged nevertheless. When it became known that Bonaparte was bringing millions with him, opinions generously decided to receive "the august victim." The civil and religious authorities were brought round to the same conviction. Joseph Philip Arrighi, the Vicar-General, issued a charge: "Divine Providence," said the pious injunction, "has decreed that in future we shall be the subjects of Napoleon the Great. The island of Elba, raised to so sublime an honour, receives the Lord's Anointed in its bosom. We order that a solemn _Te Deum_ be sung by way of thanksgiving," etc. [Sidenote: Napoleon in Elba.] The Emperor had written to General Dalesme[231], commanding the French garrison, that he must make known to the people of Elba that "he had selected" their island for his residence in consideration of the gentleness of their manners and of their climate. He set foot on land at Porto-Ferrajo[232], amid the dual salute of the English frigate which had brought him and the batteries on shore. Thence he was taken under the parish canopy to the church, where the _Te Deum_ was sung. The beadle, the master of ceremonies, was a short, fat man, who was unable to join his hands across his person. Napoleon was next conducted to the mayor's, where his lodging was prepared. They unfurled the new Imperial Standard, a white ground intersected by a red stripe strewn with three gold bees. Three violins and two basses followed him with scrapings of delight The throne, hastily erected in the public ball-room, was decorated with gilt paper and pieces of scarlet cloth. The actor's side of the prisoner's nature accommodated itself to these displays: Napoleon made a serious business of trifles, even as he used to amuse his Court with little old-time games inside his palace at the Tuileries, going out afterwards to kill men by way of pastime. He formed his Household: it consisted of four chamberlains, three orderly-officers, and two harbingers of the palace. He stated that he would receive the ladies twice a-week, at eight o'clock in the evening. He gave a ball. He took possession, for his own residence, of the pavilion intended for the engineers. Bonaparte was constantly meeting in his life the two sources from which it had issued: democracy and the royal power; his strength was derived from the citizen masses, his rank from his genius; and therefore you see him pass without effort from the market-square to the throne, from the kings and queens who crowded round him at Erfurt[233] to the bakers and oilmen who danced in his barn at Porto-Ferrajo. He had something of the people among princes, and of the prince among the people. At five o'clock in the morning, in silk stockings and buckled shoes, he presided over his masons in the island of Elba. Established in his Empire, inexhaustible in iron since the days of Virgil, Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis[234], Bonaparte had not forgotten the outrages to which he had lately been subjected; he had not renounced his intention of tearing off his winding-sheet; but it suited him to seem buried, only to make some appearance of a phantom around his monument. That is why he was eager, as though thinking of nothing else, to go down into his quarries of specular iron and adamant; one would have taken him for the ex-inspector of Mines of his former States. He repented of having once appropriated the revenue of the forges of "Ilva" to the Legion of Honour: 500,000 francs now seemed to him worth more than a blood-bathed cross on the breast of his grenadiers. "What was I thinking of?" he said. "But I have issued many stupid decrees of that nature." He made a commercial treaty with Leghorn and proposed to make another with Genoa. At all hazards, he began to make five or six furlongs of high-road and designed the sites of four large towns, just as Dido laid out the boundaries of Carthage. A philosopher who had seen too much of human greatness, he declared that he intended thenceforth to live like a justice of the peace in an English county: and notwithstanding, on climbing a height which overlooks Porto-Ferrajo, these words escaped him at the sight of the sea which flowed up on every side at the foot of the cliffs: "The devil! It must be owned that my island is very small!" He had visited his domain within a few hours; he wished to join to it a rock called Pianosa. "Europe will accuse me," he said, laughing, "of already having made a conquest." The Allied Powers made merry over the fact that they had in derision left him four hundred soldiers: he needed no more to bring them all back to the flag. Napoleon's presence on the coast of Italy, which had witnessed the commencement of his glory and which retains his memory, agitated everybody. Murat was his neighbour; his friends, strangers secretly or publicly landed at his retreat; his mother and his sister, the Princess Pauline, visited him; they expected soon to see Marie-Louise and her son arriving. A woman[235] did in fact appear, with a child[236]; she was received with great mystery, and went to live in a secluded villa in the most remote corner of the island: on the shores of Ogygia, Calypso spoke of her love to Ulysses, who, instead of listening to her, thought of how to defend himself against the suitors. After a two days' repose, the Swan of the North put out to sea again, to land among the myrtles of Baja, carrying away her little one in her white yawl. [Sidenote: Madame Walewska.] If we had been less trustful, it would have been easy for us to perceive an approaching catastrophe. Bonaparte was too near his cradle and his conquests: his funeral island should have been more distant and surrounded by more waves. It is inexplicable how the Allies had come to think of banishing Napoleon to the rocks where he was to serve his apprenticeship in exile: was it possible to believe that at the sight of the Apennines, that when smelling the powder of the fields of Montenotte, Areola and Marengo, that on discovering Venice, Rome and Naples, his three fair slaves, his heart would not be seized with irresistible temptations? Had they forgotten that he had stirred up the earth and that he had admirers and debtors everywhere, all of whom were his accomplices? His ambition was deceived, not extinguished; misfortune and revenge rekindled its flames: when the Prince of Darkness from the verge of the created universe looked upon man and the world, he resolved to destroy them. Before bursting forth, the terrible captive restrained himself for some weeks. In the huge public bank at faro which he was holding, his genius negociated a fortune or a kingdom. The Fouchés, the Guzmans d'Alfarache swarmed. The great actor had long made his police the home of melodrama and had reserved the upper stage for himself; he amused himself with the vulgar victims who disappeared through the trap-doors of his theatre. Bonapartism, in the first year of the Restoration, passed on from simple desire to action in the measure as its hopes increased and as it became better acquainted with the weak character of the Bourbons. When the intrigue had been hatched without, it was hatched within, and the conspiracy became flagrant. Under the able administration of M. Ferrand[237], M. de Lavallette[238] undertook the correspondence: the mails of the Monarchy carried the despatches of the Empire. Concealment was abandoned; the caricatures foretold a desired return: one saw eagles entering by the windows of the Palace of the Tuileries, through the doors of which issued a flock of turkeys; the _Nain jaune_[239] or _vert_ spoke of "_plumes de cane._" Warnings came from every side, and were disbelieved. The Swiss Government had gone out of its way to no purpose to inform His Majesty's Government of the intrigues of Joseph Bonaparte, who had retreated to the Pays de Vaud. A woman arriving from Elba gave the most circumstantial details of what was happening at Porto-Ferrajo, and the police sent her to prison. People held for certain that Napoleon would not venture any attempt before the dissolution of the Congress and that, in any case, his views would turn upon Italy. Others, still better advised, prayed that the "Little Corporal," the "Ogre," the "Prisoner," might land on the French coast; that would be too great a stroke of luck; they would settle him at one blow! M. Pozzo di Borgo[240] declared at Vienna that the delinquent would be strung up to the nearest tree. Were it possible to have certain papers, one would there find the proof that, as early as 1814, a military conspiracy was contrived and went side by side with the political conspiracy which the Prince de Talleyrand was conducting at Vienna, at Fouché's instigation. Napoleon's friends wrote to him that, if he did not hasten his return, he would find his place taken at the Tuileries by the Duc d'Orléans[241]: they imagine that this revelation served to hurry the Emperor's return. I am convinced of the existence of these plottings, but I also believe that the determinative cause which decided Bonaparte was simply the nature of his genius. [Sidenote: Bonapartist intrigues.] The conspiracy of Drouet d'Erlon[242] and Lefebvre-Desnoëttes had broken out. A few days before those generals rose in arms, I was dining with M. le Maréchal Soult, who had been appointed Minister of War on the 3rd of December 1814: a simpleton was describing Louis XVIII.'s time of exile at Hartwell; the marshal listened; to each detail he answered with the words: "That's historical." They used to bring His Majesty's slippers: "That's historical!" On days of abstinence the King used to take three new-laid eggs before commencing his dinner: "That's historical!" This reply struck me. When a government is not solidly established, every man whose conscience goes for nothing becomes, according to the greater or lesser amount of energy in his character, a quarter, or a half, or three-quarters of a conspirator; he awaits the decision of fortune: more traitors are made by events than by opinions. Suddenly the telegraph announced to Napoleon's braves and to the doubters that the man had landed[243]: Monsieur[244] hurried to Lyons, with the Duc d'Orléans and Marshal Macdonald, and returned forthwith. Marshal Soult, denounced in the Chamber of Deputies, gave up his office on the 11th of March to the Duc de Feltre[245]. Bonaparte found facing him, as Minister of War of Louis XVIII. in 1815, the general who had been his last Minister of War in 1814. The boldness of the enterprise was unprecedented. From the political point of view, this enterprise might be regarded as the irremissible crime and capital fault of Napoleon. He knew that the Princes still assembled at the Congress, that Europe still under arms would not suffer him to be reinstated; his judgment must have warned him that a success, if he obtained one, would be only for a day: he was offering up to his passion for reappearing on the scene the repose of a people which had lavished its blood and its treasures upon him; he was laying open to dismemberment the country from which he derived all that he had been in the past and all that he will be in the future. In this fantastic conception lay a ferocious egoism and a terrible absence of gratitude and generosity towards France. All this is true according to practical reason, for a man with a heart rather than brains; but, for beings of Napoleon's nature, there exists a reason of another sort; those creatures of lofty renown have ways of their own: comets describe curves which evade calculation; they belong to nothing, they seem good for nothing; if a globe finds itself on their passage, they shatter it and return into the abysses of the sky; their laws are known to God alone. Extraordinary individuals are monuments of human intelligence; they are not its rule. Bonaparte, therefore, was persuaded to his enterprise less by the false reports of his friends than by the needs of his genius: he took up the cross by virtue of the faith that was in him. To a great man, to be born is not everything: he must die. Was Elba an end for Napoleon? Could he accept the sovereignty of a vegetable-patch, like Diocletian[246] at Salona? If he had waited till later, would he have had more chances of success, at a time when his memory would have aroused less emotion, when his old soldiers would have left the army, when new social positions would have been adopted? Well, then, he committed a fool-hardy act against the world: at the commencement he must have believed that he had not deceived himself as to the spell of his power. [Sidenote: The return from Elba.] One night, that of the 25th of February, at the end of a ball of which the Princess Borghese was doing the honours, he made his escape with victory, long his comrade and accomplice; he crossed a sea covered with our fleets, met two frigates, a ship of 74 guns and the man-of-war brig _Zéphyr_, which spoke and questioned him; he himself replied to the captain's questions; the sea and the waves saluted him, and he pursued his course. The deck of the _Inconstant_, his little ship, served him as a room for exercise and as a writing-closet; he dictated amid the winds and had copies made, on that shifting table, of three proclamations to the army and to France; some feluccas, carrying his companions in adventure, flew the white flag strewn with stars around his admiral bark. On the 1st of March, at three o'clock in the morning, he struck the coast of France between Cannes and Antibes, in the Golfe Jouan; he landed, strolled along the _riviera_, gathered violets, and bivouacked in a plantation of olive-trees. The dumfoundered population retired. He avoided Antibes and threw himself into the mountains of Grasse, passing through Sernon, Barrème, Digne and Gap. At Sisteron, twenty men could have stopped him, and he found nobody. He went on, meeting no obstacle among those inhabitants who, a few months earlier, had wished to cut his throat. Whenever a few soldiers entered the void which formed around his gigantic shadow, they were invincibly drawn on by the attraction of his eagles. His fascinated enemies sought him and did not see him; he hid himself in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun to avoid the sight of the dazzled hunters. Enveloped in a fiery cyclone, the bloody phantoms of Areola, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Eylau, the Moskowa, Lützen, Bautzen formed his retinue with a million of dead. From the midst of this column of fire and smoke, there issued, at the entrance to the towns, a few trumpet-blasts mingled with the signals of the tricoloured _labarum_: and the gates of the town fell. When Napoleon crossed the Niemen, at the head of four-hundred thousand foot and a hundred thousand horse, to blow up the palace of the Tsars in Moscow, he was less astonished than when, breaking his ban and flinging his irons in the faces of the kings, he came alone, from Cannes to Paris, to sleep peacefully at the Tuileries. Beside the prodigy of the invasion of one man must be placed another which was the consequence of the first: the Legitimacy was seized with a fainting-fit; the failure of the heart of the State attacked the members and rendered France motionless. For twenty days, Bonaparte marched on by stages; his eagles flew from steeple to steeple and, along a road of two hundred leagues the Government, masters of everything, disposing of money and men, found neither the time nor the means to cut a bridge, to throw down a tree, so as to delay, at least by an hour, the progress of a man to whom the populations offered no opposition, but whom also they did not follow. This torpor on the part of the Government seemed the more deplorable inasmuch as public opinion in Paris was greatly excited; it would have countenanced anything, despite the defection of Marshal Ney. Benjamin Constant wrote in the newspapers: "After visiting our country with every plague, he left the soil of France. Who would not have thought that he was leaving it for ever? Suddenly he appears, and again promises Frenchmen liberty, victory and peace. The author of the most tyrannical Constitution that ever ruled France, he speaks to-day of liberty! But it was he who, during fourteen years, undermined and destroyed liberty. He had not the excuse of memory, the habit of power; he was not born in the purple. It was his fellow-citizens whom he enslaved, his equals whom he loaded with chains. He had not inherited power; he desired and meditated tyranny: what liberty is he able to promise? Are we not a thousand times more free than under his empire? He promises victory, and three times he forsook his troops, in Egypt, in Spain and in Russia, abandoning his companions in arms to the triple agony of cold, destitution and despair. He brought upon France the humiliation of invasion; he lost the conquests which we had made before him. He promises peace, and his name alone is a signal for war. The nation unhappy enough to serve him would again become the object of European hatred; his triumph would be the commencement of a combat to the death against the civilized world.... He has therefore nothing to claim, nor to offer. Whom could he convince, or whom seduce? War at home, war abroad: those are the gifts which he brings us." [Sidenote: Soult's order of the day.] Marshal Soult's Order of the Day, dated 8 March 1815, repeats very nearly the ideas of Benjamin Constant, with an effusion of loyalty: "SOLDIERS, "The man who lately, before the eyes of Europe, abdicated the power which he had usurped, and which he had so fatally abused, has landed on French soil, which he was never to see again. "What does he want? Civil war. What does he seek? Traitors. Where will he find them? Shall it be among those soldiers whom he has so often deceived and sacrificed by misleading their valour? Shall it be in the heart of those families which the mere sound of his name still fills with terror? "Bonaparte despises us enough to believe us capable of abandoning a lawful and dearly-beloved Sovereign to share the fate of a man who is no longer more than an adventurer. He believes this, the madman, and his last act of insanity reveals him to us as he is! "Soldiers, the French Army is the bravest army in Europe; it will also be the most faithful. "Let us rally round the banner of the lilies, at the voice of the father of the people, the worthy heir of the virtues of Henry the Great. He himself has traced for you the duties which you have to fulfil. He places at your head that Prince, the model of French knighthood, who, by his happy return to our country, has already once driven out the usurper, and who to-day, by his presence among us, will destroy his sole and last hope." Louis XVIII. appeared on the 16th of March in the Chamber of Deputies; the destinies of France and of the world were at stake. When His Majesty entered, the deputies and the strangers in the galleries uncovered and rose; cheers shook the walls of the house. Louis XVIII. slowly mounted the steps of his throne; the Princes, the marshals and the captains of the guards ranged themselves on either side of the King. The cheers ceased; none spoke: in that interval of silence, one seemed to hear the distant footsteps of Napoleon. His Majesty, seated, cast his eyes over the assembly, and in a firm voice delivered this speech: [Sidenote: The King's speech.] "GENTLEMEN, "At this critical moment, when the public enemy has penetrated into a part of my kingdom and threatens the liberty of all the remainder, I come into your midst to knit yet more closely the ties which, uniting you to myself, constitute the strength of the State; I come, by addressing you, to make manifest my feelings and my wishes to the whole of France. "I have seen my country again; I have reconciled it with foreign Powers, who will, you may be sure, be faithful to the treaties which have restored peace to us; I have laboured for the good of my people; I have received, I continue daily to receive the most touching marks of its love; could I, at sixty years of age, better end my career than by dying in its defense? "I fear nothing, therefore, for myself; but I fear for France: he who comes to kindle among us the torches of civil war brings with him also the scourge of foreign war; he comes to put back our country under his iron yoke; he comes, lastly, to destroy the Constitutional Charter which I have given you, that Charter which will be my proudest title in the eyes of posterity, that Charter which all Frenchmen cherish and which I here swear to maintain: let us then rally round it." The King was still speaking, when a fog spread darkness through the house; eyes were turned towards the ceiling to ascertain the cause of that sudden gloom. When the King-Lawgiver ceased to speak, the cries of "Long live the King!" were renewed, amid tears. "The assembly," the _Moniteur_ truly says, "electrified by the King's sublime words, stood up, its hands stretched towards the throne. One heard only the words: 'Long live the King! We will die for the King! The King in life and death!' repeated with an enthusiasm which will be shared by every French heart" It was, in fact, a pathetic sight: an old, infirm King who, in reward for the murder of his family and twenty-three years of exile, had brought France peace, liberty, forgiveness of all outrages and all misfortunes; this patriarch of sovereigns coming to declare to the deputies of the nation that, at his age, after seeing his country again, he could not better end his career than by dying in defense of his people! The Princes swore fidelity to the Charter; those tardy oaths were closed with that of the Prince de Condé and with the adhesion of the father of the Duc d'Enghien. This heroic race on the verge of extinction, this race of the patrician sword seeking behind liberty a shield against a younger, longer and more cruel plebeian sword offered, by reason of a multitude of memories, a spectacle that was extremely sad. When Louis XVIII.'s speech became known outside, it aroused unspeakable enthusiasm. Paris was wholly Royalist, and remained so during the Hundred Days. The women in particular were Bourbonists. The youth of to-day worships the memory of Bonaparte, because it is humiliated by the part which the present Government makes France play in Europe; the youth of 1814 hailed the Restoration, because the latter had thrown down despotism and set up liberty. In the ranks of the Royal Volunteers were included M. Odilon Barrot[247], a large number of pupils of the School of Medicine and the whole of the School of Law[248]; the last, on the 13th of March, addressed this petition to the Chamber of Deputies: "GENTLEMEN, "We offer our services to our King and country; the whole School of Law asks to go to the front. We will abandon neither our King nor our Constitution. Faithful to French honour, we ask you for arms. The feeling of love which we bear to Louis XVIII. is answerable to you for the constancy of our devotion. We want no more irons, we want liberty. We have it, and they come to snatch it from us. We will defend it to the death. Long live the King! Long live the Constitution!" In this energetic, natural and sincere language, one feels the generosity of youth and the love of liberty. They who come to tell us to-day that the Restoration was received by France with dislike and sorrow are ambitious men who are playing a game, or new-comers who have never known Bonaparte's oppression, or old imperialized revolutionary liars who, after applauding the return of the Bourbons with the rest, now, according to their habit, insult the fallen and return to their instincts of murder, police and servitude. * The King's Speech had filled me with hope. Conferences were held at the house of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, M. Lainé. I there met M. de La Fayette: I had never seen him except at a distance, at another period, under the Constituent Assembly. The proposals were various and for the most part weak, as happens in peril: some wished the King to leave Paris and fall back upon the Havre; others spoke of moving him to the Vendée; one stammered out unfinished sentences; another said that we must wait and see what was coming: what was coming was very visible, for all that. I expressed a very different opinion: oddly enough, M. de La Fayette supported it, and warmly[249]. M. Lainé and Marshal Marmont were also of my opinion. I said: [Illustration: La Fayette.] [Sidenote: My advice to the government.] "Let the King keep his word; let him stay in his capital. The National Guard is on our side. Let us make sure of Vincennes. We have the arms and the money; with the money we shall overcome weakness and cupidity. If the King leaves Paris, Paris will admit Bonaparte; Bonaparte master of Paris is master of France. The army has not gone over to the enemy as a whole; several regiments, many generals and officers have not yet betrayed their oaths: if we hold firm, they will remain faithful. Let us disperse the Royal Family, let us keep only the King. Let Monsieur go to the Havre, the Duc de Berry[250] to Lille, the Duc de Bourbon to the Vendée, the Duc d'Orléans to Metz; Madame la Duchesse and M. le Duc d'Angoulême[251] are already in the South. Our different points of resistance will prevent Bonaparte from concentrating his forces. Let us barricade ourselves in Paris. Already the national guards of the neighbouring departments are coming to our aid. Amid this movement, our old Monarch, protected by the will of Louis XVI., will remain peacefully seated on his throne at the Tuileries, with the Charter in his hand; the diplomatic body will range itself round him; the two Chambers will meet in the two wings of the Palace; the King's Household will encamp in the Carrousel and in the Tuileries Gardens. We shall line the quays and the water-terrace with guns: let Bonaparte attack us in this position; let him carry our barricades one by one; let him bombard Paris, if he please and if he have mortars; let him make himself odious to the whole population, and we shall see the result of his enterprise! Let us resist for but three days, and victory is ours. The King, defending himself in his palace, will arouse universal enthusiasm. Lastly, if he must die, let him die worthy of his rank; let Napoleon's last exploit be to cut an old man's throat. Louis XVIII., in sacrificing his life, will win the only battle he will have fought; he will win it for the benefit of the freedom of the human race." Thus I spoke: one is never entitled to say that all is lost so long as one has attempted nothing. What could have been finer than an old son of St. Louis overthrowing, with Frenchmen, in a few moments, a man whom all the confederate kings of Europe had taken so many years to lay low? This resolution, desperate in appearance, was very reasonable at bottom and offered not the smallest danger. I shall always remain convinced that, had Bonaparte found Paris hostile and the King present, he would not have tried to force them. Without artillery, provisions, or money, he had with him only troops collected at random, still wavering, astonished at their sudden change of cockade, at their oaths taken headlong on the roads: they would promptly have become divided. A few hours' delay and Napoleon was lost; it but needed a little heart. Already, even, we could rely on a portion of the army; the two Swiss regiments were keeping their faith: did not Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr make the Orleans garrison resume the white cockade two days after Bonaparte's entry into Paris? From Marseilles to Bordeaux, all recognised the King's authority during the whole month of March: at Bordeaux, the troops were hesitating; they would have remained with Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, if the news had come that the King was at the Tuileries and that Paris was being defended. The provincial towns would have imitated Paris. The loth Regiment of the line fought very well under the Duc d'Angoulême; Masséna was proving himself crafty and uncertain; at Lille, the garrison responded to Marshal Mortier's stirring proclamation. If all those proofs of a possible fidelity took place in spite of a flight, what would they not have been in the case of a resistance? Had my plan been adopted, the foreigners would not have ravaged France afresh; our Princes would not have returned with the hostile armies; the Legitimacy would have been saved through itself. One thing alone would have to be feared after success: the too great confidence of the Royalty in its strength, and, consequently, attempts upon the rights of the nation. Why did I arrive at a period in which I was so ill-placed? Why have I been a Royalist against my instinct, at a time when a miserable race of courtiers was unable either to hear or to understand me? Why was I flung into that troop of mediocrities, who took me for a raver when I spoke of courage, for a revolutionary when I spoke of liberty? A fine question of defense, indeed! The King had no fear, and my plan rather pleased him through a certain "Louis-Quatorzian" grandeur; but other faces had lengthened. They packed up the Crown diamonds (formerly purchased out of the privy-purse of the Sovereigns), leaving thirty-three million crowns in the treasury and forty-two millions in securities. Those sixty-five millions were the produce of taxation: why was it not returned to the people, rather than left to tyranny! A dual procession passed up and down the stair-cases of the Pavillon de Flore; people were asking what they were to do: no answer. They applied to the captain of the guards; they questioned the chaplains, the precentors, the almoners: nothing. Vain talk, vain retailing of news. I saw young men weep with rage when uselessly asking for orders and arms; I saw women faint with anger and contempt. Access to the King was impossible; etiquette closed the door. [Sidenote: A Royal order: "Hunt him down."] The great measure decreed against Bonaparte was an order to "hunt him down[252]:" Louis XVIII., with no legs, "hunting down" the conqueror who bestrode the earth! This form of the ancient laws, renewed for the occasion, is enough to show the compass of mind of the statesmen of that period. "To hunt down" in 1815! "Hunt down!" And "hunt" whom? "Hunt" a wolf? "Hunt" a brigand chieftain? "Hunt" a felon lord? No: "hunt" Napoleon, who had "hunted down" kings, who had seized and branded them for all time on the shoulder with his indelible "N"! From this order, when considered more closely, sprang a political truth which no one saw: the Legitimate House, estranged from the nation for three-and-twenty years, had remained at the day and place at which the Revolution had caught it, whereas the nation had progressed in point of time and space. Hence the impossibility of understanding and meeting one another; religion, ideas, interests, language, earth and heaven, all were different for the people and for the King, because they were separated by a quarter of a century equivalent to centuries. But if the order "to hunt down" appears strange, owing to the preservation of the old idiom of the law, had Bonaparte originally the intention of acting better, although employing a newer language? Papers of M. d'Hauterive[253], catalogued by M. Artaud[254], prove that it cost great difficulty to prevent Napoleon from having the Duc d'Angoulême shot, in spite of the official document in the _Moniteur_, a show document which remains to us: he thought it wrong of the Prince to have defended himself. And yet the fugitive from Elba, when leaving Fontainebleau, had recommended the soldiers to be "faithful to the monarch" whom France had chosen. Bonaparte's family had been respected; Queen Hortense had accepted from Louis XVIII. the title of Duchesse de Saint-Leu; Murat, who still reigned in Naples, saw his kingdom sold by M. de Talleyrand only during the Congress of Vienna. This period, in which all are lacking in frankness, oppresses the heart: every one threw out a profession of faith as it were a foot-bridge to cross the difficulty of the day, free to change his direction, the difficulty once passed; youth alone was sincere, because it was near its cradle. Bonaparte solemnly declared that he renounced the crown; he departed, and returned after nine months. Benjamin Constant printed his vehement protest against the tyrant, and he changed in twenty-four hours. It will be seen later, in another book of these Memoirs, who inspired him with the noble impulse to which the fickleness of his nature did not permit him to remain faithful. Marshal Soult excited the troops against their old leader; a few days later he was roaring with laughter at his own proclamation in Napoleon's closet at the Tuileries, and became Major-general of the army at Waterloo; Marshal Ney kissed the King's hands, swore to bring him Bonaparte locked up in an iron cage, and handed over to the latter all the corps under his command. And the King of France, alas? He declared that, at the age of sixty years, he could not better end his career than by dying in defense of his people ... and fled to Ghent! At sight of this incapacity for truth in men's feelings, at the want of harmony between their words and their deeds, one feels seized with disgust for the human kind. Louis XVIII., on the 16th of March, was declaring his intention of dying in the midst of France; had he kept his word, the Legitimacy might have lasted another century; nature herself seemed to have taken from the old King the power of retreating by chaining him about with wholesome infirmities; but the future destinies of the human race would have been trammelled by the accomplishment of the resolution of the author of the Charter. Bonaparte hastened to the assistance of the future; that Christ of the power for evil took the new man sick of the palsy by the hand, and said to him: "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk[255]." * It was evident that a scamper was being contemplated: for fear of being detained, they did not even warn those who, like myself, would have been shot within an hour after Napoleon's entry into Paris. I met the Duc de Richelieu in the Champs-Élysées: "They are deceiving us," he said; "I am keeping watch here, for I do not propose to await the Emperor at the Tuileries all by myself." [Sidenote: Flight of Louis XVIII.] On the evening of the 19th, Madame de Chateaubriand had sent a servant to the Carrousel, with instructions not to return until he had the certainty of the flight of the King. At midnight, as the man had not come in, I went to my room. I had just gone to bed, when M. Clausel de Coussergues entered. He told us that His Majesty had left and had gone in the direction of Lille. He brought me this news on the part of the Chancellor, who, knowing me to be in danger, was violating secrecy on my behalf and sent me twelve thousand francs recoverable on my salary as Minister to Sweden. I was obstinately bent on remaining, not wishing to leave Paris until I should be physically certain of the royal removal. The servant who had been sent to reconnoitre returned: he had seen the Court carriages go by. Madame de Chateaubriand pushed me into her carriage, at four o'clock in the morning on the 20th of March. I was in such a fit of fury that I knew neither where I was going nor what I was doing. We passed out through the Barrière Saint-Martin. At dawn, I saw crows coming down peacefully from the elms on the high-road where they had spent the night, to take their first meal in the fields, without troubling their heads about Louis XVIII. and Napoleon: they were not obliged to leave their country and, thanks to their wings, they were able to laugh at the bad road along which I was being jolted. Old friends of Combourg, we were more alike in the old days when, at break of day, we used to breakfast on mulberries from the brambles in the thickets of Brittany! The roadway was broken up, the weather rainy, Madame de Chateaubriand poorly: she looked every moment through the little window at the back of the carnage to see if we were not being pursued. We slept at Amiens, where Du Cange[256] was born; next at Arras, the birth-place of Robespierre[257]: there I was recognised. When we sent for horses, on the morning of the 22nd, the postmaster said that they had been engaged for a general who was taking to Lille the news of "the triumphal entry of the Emperor-King into Paris;" Madame de Chateaubriand was dying of fright, not for herself, but for me. I ran to the post-office and removed the difficulty with money. On arriving under the ramparts of Lille, at two in the morning of the 23rd, we found the gates closed; the orders were not to open them to any one whomsoever. They could not, or would not, tell us if the King had entered the town. I induced the postillion for a few louis to make for the other side of the place, outside the glacis, and to drive us to Tournay; in 1792, I had covered the same road on foot, during the night, with my brother. On arriving at Tournay, I learnt that Louis XVIII. had certainly entered Lille with Marshal Mortier, and that he meant to defend himself there. I despatched a courier to M. de Blacas, asking him to send me a permit to be received into the place. My courier returned with a permit from the commandant, but not a word from M. de Blacas. Leaving Madame de Chateaubriand at Tournay, I was getting into the carriage again to go to Lille, when the Prince de Condé arrived. We learnt through him that the King had gone and that Marshal Mortier had had him accompanied to the frontier. From these explanations it became clear that Louis XVIII. was no longer at Lille when my letter arrived there. The Duc d'Orléans followed close after the Prince de Condé. Under an apparent dissatisfaction, he was glad, at bottom, to find himself out of the hurly-burly; the ambiguousness of his declaration and of his behaviour bore the stamp of his character. As to the old Prince de Condé, the Emigration was his household god. He had no fear of Monsieur de Bonaparte, not he; he fought if they liked or went away if they liked: things were a little muddled in his brain; he was none too clear as to whether he should stop at Rocroi to give battle there or go to dine at the White Hart. He struck his tents a few hours before us, telling me to recommend the coffee at the inn to the members of his Household whom he had left behind him. He did not know that I had sent in my resignation on the death of his grandson; he was not very sure that he had had a grandson; he only felt a certain increase of glory in his name, which might come from some Condé whom he had forgotten. Do you remember my first passing through Tournay with my brother, at the time of my first emigration? Do you remember, in that connection, the man transformed into a donkey, the girl from whose ears grew corn-spikes, the rain of ravens that set everything on fire[258]? In 1815, indeed, we ourselves were a rain of ravens; but we set nothing on fire. Alas, I was no longer with my unfortunate brother! Between 1792 and 1815, the Republic and the Empire had passed: what revolutions had also been accomplished in my life! Time had ravaged me like the rest. And you, the young generations of the moment, let twenty-three years come, and then tell me in my tomb what has become of your loves and your illusions of to-day. The two brothers Bertin had arrived at Tournay: M. Bertin de Vaux[259] returned from there to Paris; the other Bertin, Bertin the Elder, was my friend. You know through these Memoirs what it was that attached me to him. [Sidenote: I follow the King to Ghent.] From Tournay we went to Brussels: there I found no Baron de Breteuil, nor Rivarol, nor all those young aides-de-camp who had become dead or old, which is the same thing. No news of the barber who had given me shelter. I did not take up the musket, but the pen; from a soldier I had become a paper-stainer. I was looking for Louis XVIII.; he was at Ghent, where he had been taken by Messieurs de Blacas and de Duras[260]: their first intention had been to ship the King to England. If the King had consented to this plan, he would never have reascended the throne. Having gone into a lodging-house to look at an apartment, I perceived the Duc de Richelieu smoking, half-outstretched on a sofa, at the back of a dark room. He spoke to me of the Princes in the most brutal manner, declaring that he was going to Russia and that he would not hear another word about those people. Madame la Duchesse de Duras, on arriving in Brussels, had the sorrow to lose her niece there. I loathe the Brabant capital; it has never served me except as a passage to my exiles; it has always brought sorrow upon myself or my friends. An order of the King summoned me to Ghent. The Royal Volunteers and the Duc de Berry's little army had been disbanded at Béthune, in the middle of the mud and of the accidents of a military breaking-up: touching farewells had been exchanged. Two hundred men of the King's Household remained and were quartered at Alost; my two nephews, Louis and Christian de Chateaubriand, formed part of that corps. I had been given a billet of which I did not avail myself; a baroness whose name I have forgotten came to see Madame de Chateaubriand at the inn and offered us an apartment in her house: she implored us with so good a grace! "You must pay no attention," she said, "to anything my husband says: his head is a little... you understand? My daughter also is a trifle eccentric; she has terrible moments, poor child! But the rest of the time she is as gentle as a lamb. Alas, it is not she who causes me the greatest trouble, but my son Louis, the youngest of my children: without God's help, he will be worse than his father!" Madame de Chateaubriand politely refused to go and live with such rational people. The King, well-lodged, having his service and his guards, formed his council. The empire of that great monarch consisted of a house in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which house was situated in a town which, although the birthplace of Charles V.[261], had been the chief town of a prefecture of Bonaparte's: those names comprise between them a goodly number of centuries and events. [Sidenote: And join his Ministry.] The Abbé de Montesquiou being in London, Louis XVIII. appointed me Minister of the Interior _ad interim._[262] My correspondence with the "departments" did not give me much to do; I easily kept up my correspondence with the prefects, sub-prefects, mayors and deputy-mayors of our good towns, on the inner side of our frontiers; I did not repair the roads much, and I let the steeples tumble down; my budget hardly enriched me; I had no secret funds; only, by a crying abuse, I was a "pluralist:" I was still His Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Sweden, who, like his fellow-townsman Henry IV.[263], reigned by right of conquest, if not by right of birth. We discoursed round a table covered with a green cloth in the King's closet. M. de Lally-Tolendal, who was, I think, Minister of Public Instruction, delivered speeches even more voluminous and more inflated than his cheeks: he quoted his illustrious ancestors the Kings of Ireland and muddled up his father's[264] trial with those of Charles I. and Louis XVI. He refreshed himself in the evening, after the tears, the sweat and the words which he had shed at the council, with a lady who had come all the way from Paris out of enthusiasm for his genius; he virtuously strove to cure her, but his eloquence betrayed his virtue and drove the dart more deeply. Madame la Duchesse de Duras had come to join M. le Duc de Duras among the exiles. I will speak no more ill of misfortune, because I have spent three months with that admirable woman, talking of all that upright minds and hearts can find in a conformity of tastes, ideas, principles and feelings. Madame de Duras was ambitious for me: she alone saw at once what I might be worth in political life; she always deplored the envy and short-sightedness which kept me removed from the King's counsels; but she even much more deplored the obstacles which my character placed in the way of my fortune: she scolded me, she wanted to correct me of my indifference, my candour, my ingenuousness, and to make me adopt habits of courtierism which she herself could not endure. Nothing, perhaps, leads to greater attachment and gratitude than to feel one's self under the patronage of a superior friendship which, by virtue of its ascendancy over society, passes off your defects as good qualities, your imperfections as an attraction. A man protects you through his worth, a woman through your worth: that is why, of those two empires, one is so hateful, the other so sweet. Since I have lost that great-hearted person, gifted with a soul so noble, with an intelligence which combined something of the strength of the thought of Madame de Staël with the grace of the talent of Madame de La Fayette[265], I have never ceased, while mourning her, to reproach myself with any unevenness of temper with which I may sometimes have wounded hearts that were devoted to me. Let us keep a close watch upon our character! Let us remember that, with a profound attachment, we can nevertheless poison days which we would buy back again at the price of all our blood. When our friends have sunk into the grave, what means have we to repair our trespasses? Our useless regrets, our vain repentings, are those a remedy for the pain that we have given them? They would have preferred one smile from us during their life than all our tears after their death. The charming Clara[266] was at Ghent with her mother. We two made up bad couplets to the air of the _Tyrolienne._ I have held many pretty little girls on my knees who are young grandmothers to-day. When you have left a woman, married in your presence at sixteen years of age, if you return sixteen years later, you find her of the same age still: "Ah, madame, you have not put on a day!" No doubt: but it is the daughter to whom you are saying so, the daughter whom you will also lead up to the altar. But you, a sad witness to both hymens, you treasure up the sixteen years which you received at each union: a wedding-present which will hasten your own marriage with a white-haired lady, rather thin. [Sidenote: Marshal Victor.] Marshal Victor had come to join us, at Ghent, with an admirable simplicity: he asked for nothing, never teased the King with his assiduity; one scarcely saw him; I do not know whether he ever had the honour and the favour of being invited on a single occasion to His Majesty's dinner-party. I have met Marshal Victor since; I have been his colleague in office, and I have always perceived the same excellent nature. In Paris, in 1823, M. le Dauphin was very harsh to that honest soldier: it was very good of this Duc de Bellune to repay such easy ingratitude with such modest devotion[267]! Candour carries me away and touches me, even when, on certain occasions, it attains the final expression of its ingenuousness. For instance, the marshal told me of his wife's[268] death in the language of a soldier, and he made me weep: he pronounced coarse words so quickly, and changed them so chastely, that one might even have written them. M. de Vaublanc[269] and M. Capelle[270] joined us. The former used to say that he had some of everything in his portfolio. Do you want some Montesquieu? Here you are. Some Bossuet? Here it is! In proportion as the game seemed about to take a different turn, more travellers arrived. The Abbé Louis and M. le Comte Beugnot alighted at the inn where I was lodging. Madame de Chateaubriand was suffering from terrible fits of choking, and I was sitting up with her. The two new-comers installed themselves in a room separated from my wife's only by a thin partition; it was impossible not to hear, unless by stopping one's ears: between eleven and twelve at night the new arrivals raised their voices. The Abbé Louis, who spoke like a wolf and in jerks, was saying to M. Beugnot: "You, a minister? You'll never be one again! You have committed one stupidity after the other!" I could not clearly hear M. le Comte Beugnot's answer, but he spoke of thirty-three millions left behind in the Royal Treasury. The abbé, apparently in anger, pushed a chair, which fell down. Through the uproar I caught these words: "The Duc d'Angoulême? He'll have to buy his national property at the gates of Paris. I shall sell what remains of the State forests. I shall cut down everything. The elms on the highroads, the Bois de Boulogne, the Champs-Élysées: what's the use of all that, eh?" Brutality formed M. Louis' principal merit; his talent lay in a stupid love of material interests. If the Minister of Finance drew the forests after him, he had doubtless a different secret from that of Orpheus, who "made the woods go after him with his fail; fiddling." In the slang of the time, M. Louis was known as a "special" man; his speciality of finance had led him to accumulate the tax-payers' money in the Treasury in order to let it be taken by Bonaparte. Napoleon had had no use for this special man, who was in no sense an unique man, and who was at the most good enough for the Directory. The Abbé Louis had gone to Ghent to claim his office; he was in very good favour with M. de Talleyrand, with whom he had solemnly officiated at the first federation in the Champ de Mars: the bishop was the celebrant, the Abbé Louis the deacon, and the Abbé Desrenaudes[271] the sub-deacon. M. de Talleyrand, recollecting this admirable profanation, used to say to the Baron Louis: "Abbé, you were very fine as the deacon in the Champ de Mars!" We endured this shame under the great tyranny of Bonaparte: ought we to have endured it later? The "Most Christian" King had screened himself from any reproach of bigotry: he owned in his Council a married bishop, M. de Talleyrand; a priest living in concubinage, M. Louis; a non-practising abbé, M. de Montesquiou. The last-named, a man as feverish as a consumptive, gifted with a certain glibness of speech, had a narrow and disparaging mind, a malignant heart, a sour character. One day, when I had made a speech at the Luxembourg on behalf of the liberty of the press, the descendant of Clovis, passing in front of me, who went back only to the Breton Mormoran, caught me a great blow with his knee in my thigh, which was not in good taste; I gave him one back, which was not polite: we played at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and the Coadjutor[272]. The Abbé de Montesquiou humorously called M. de Lally-Tolendal "an English beast." [Sidenote: The fish dinners at Ghent.] In the rivers at Ghent they catch a very dainty white fish: we used, _tutti quanti_, to go to eat this good fish in a suburban road-side inn, while waiting for the battles and the end of empires. M. Laborie never failed us at our meetings: I had first met him at Savigny when, fleeing from Bonaparte, he came in at Madame de Beaumont's by one window and made his way out by another. Indefatigable at work, renewing his errands as often as his bills, as fond of doing services as others are of receiving them, he has been calumniated: calumny is not the impeachment of the calumniated, but the excuse of the calumniator. I have seen men grow tired of the promises in which M. Laborie was so rich; but why? Illusions are like torture: they always help to pass an hour or two[273]. I have often led by the head, with a golden bridle, old hacks of memory unable to stand on their legs, which I took for young and frisky hopes. I also met M. Mounier[274] at the white-fish dinners, a sensible and upright man. M. Guizot deigned to honour us with his presence[275]. A _Moniteur_[276] had been started at Ghent: my report to the King of the 12th of May[277], inserted in that journal, proves that my feelings on the liberty of the press and on foreign domination have at all times been the same. I can quote the following passages to-day; they in no way belie my life: "SIRE, "You were preparing to crown the institutions of which you had laid the foundation-stone.... You had fixed a period for the commencement of the hereditary peerage; the ministry would have gained greater unity; the ministers I would have become members of the two Chambers, according to the true spirit of the Charter; a law would have been brought in to allow the election of a member of the Chamber of Deputies before the age of forty, so that citizens might have had a real political career. It was proposed to discuss a penal code for press offenses, after the adoption of which law the press would have been entirely free, for that freedom is inseparable from all representative government.... "Sire, and this is the occasion solemnly to protest it: all your ministers, all the members of your Council, are inviolably attached to the principles of a wise liberty; they derive from you that love of laws, of order and of justice without which there can be no happiness for a people. Sire, let us be permitted to say that we are ready to shed the last drop of our blood for you, to follow you to the ends of the earth, to share with you the tribulations which it will please the Almighty to send you, because we believe before God that you will maintain the Constitution which you have given to your people, and that the sincerest wish of your royal heart is the liberty of Frenchmen. Had it been otherwise, Sire, we would all have died at your feet in defense of your sacred person; but we would have been only your soldiers, we would have ceased to be your councillors and your ministers.... "Sire, at this moment we share your royal sadness; there is not one of your councillors and ministers who would not give up his life to prevent the invasion of France. You, Sire, are a Frenchman, we are Frenchmen! Alive to the honour of our country, proud of the glory of our arms, admirers of the courage of our soldiers, we would be willing, in the midst of your battalions, to shed the last drop of our blood to bring them back to their duty or to share lawful triumphs with them. We can only look with the deepest sorrow upon the ills that are ready to break over our country." Thus, at Ghent, did I propose to add to the Charter that which it still lacked, while displaying my sorrow at the new invasion which was threatening France: nevertheless, I was only an exile whose wishes were in contradiction with the facts which could again open the gates of my country to me. Those pages were written in the States of the allied sovereigns, among kings and Emigrants who detested the liberty of the press, in the midst of armies marching to conquest of whom we were, so to speak, the prisoners: these circumstances perhaps add some strength to the feelings which I venture to express. [Sidenote: The _Rapport au Roi._] My report on reaching Paris made a great noise; it was reprinted by M. Le Normant the Younger, who risked his life upon this occasion, and for whom I had all the difficulty in the world to obtain a barren warrant of printer to the King. Bonaparte acted, or allowed others to act, in a manner unworthy of him: on the occasion of my report, they did what the Directory had done on the appearance of Cléry's Memoirs; they falsified fragments of it: I was made to propose to Louis XVIII. stupid ideas for the revival of feudal rights, for the tithes of the clergy, for the recovery of the national property, as though the printing of the original piece in the _Moniteur de Gand_ at a fixed and known date, did not confound the imposture. The pseudonymous writer entrusted with the production of an insincere pamphlet was a soldier fairly high up in rank: he was dismissed after the Hundred Days; his dismissal was ascribed to his conduct towards me; he sent his friends to me; they begged me to intervene, lest a man of merit should lose his sole means of existence: I wrote to the Minister of War and obtained a retiring-pension for this officer[278]. He is dead: his wife has remained attached to Madame de Chateaubriand by a feeling of gratitude to which I was far from having any claim. Certain proceedings are too highly prized; the most ordinary persons are susceptible to such feelings of generosity. A name for virtue is cheaply acquired: the superior mind is not that which pardons, but that which has no need of pardon. I do not know where Bonaparte, at St. Helena, discovered that I had "rendered essential services at Ghent:" if he judged the part I played too favourably, at least there lay behind his opinion an appreciation of my political value. * I avoided at Ghent, as far as I could, intrigues, which were opposed to my character and contemptible in my eyes; for, at bottom, I perceived in our paltry catastrophe the catastrophe of society. My refuge against the idlers and rogues was the Enclos du Béguinage. I used to walk round that little world of veiled or tuckered women, consecrated to different Christian works: a calm region, placed like the African quicksands on the edge of the tempests. There no incongruity shocked my ideas, for the sentiment of religion is so lofty that it is never irrelevant to the gravest revolutions: the solitaries of the Thebaid and the Barbarians, destroyers of the Roman world, are in no way discordant facts or mutually exclusive existences. I was graciously received in the close as the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: wherever I go, among Christians, the curates flock round me; next come the mothers bringing me their children: the latter recite to me my chapter on the First Communion. Then appear unhappy persons who tell me of the good I have had the happiness to do them. My passage through a Catholic town is announced like that of a missionary or a physician. I am touched by this dual reputation: it is the only agreeable memory of myself that I retain; I dislike myself in all the rest of my personality and my reputation. I was pretty often invited to festive dinners in the family of M. and Madame d'Ops, a venerable father and mother surrounded by some thirty children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At M. Coppens', a banquet which I was obliged to accept was prolonged from one in the afternoon to eight in the evening. I counted nine courses: they began with the preserves and finished with the cutlets. The French alone know how to dine methodically, just as they alone know how to compose a book. [Sidenote: Diversions at Ghent.] My "ministry" kept me at Ghent; Madame de Chateaubriand, less busy, went to see Ostend, where I had embarked for Jersey in 1792. I had travelled, a dying exile, down the same canals along whose banks I now walked, still an exile, but in perfect health: there has always been something fabulous in my career! The miseries and joys of my first emigration revived in my thoughts; I saw England again, my companions in misfortune, and Charlotte, whom I was to meet once more. There is no one like myself to create a real society by calling up shadows; it goes so far that the life of my memories absorbs the feeling of my real life. Even persons with whom I have never occupied myself, if they come to die, invade my memory: one would say that none can become my companion if he has not passed through the tomb, which leads me to think that I am a dead man. Where others find an eternal separation, I find an eternal union; when one of my friends departs this earth, it is as though he had come to make my home his own; he never leaves me again. According as the present world retires, the past world returns to me. If the actual generations scorn the generations that have grown old, they waste their disdain where I am concerned: I am not even aware of their existence. My Golden Fleece had not yet reached Bruges[279], Madame de Chateaubriand did not bring it to me. At Bruges, in 1426, "there was a man whose name was John[280]," who invented or perfected the art of painting in oils: let us be grateful to John of Bruges[281]; but for the propagation of his method, Raphael's master-pieces would be obliterated to-day. Where did the Flemish painters steal the light with which they illumined their pictures? What ray from Greece strayed to Batavia's shore? After her journey to Ostend, Madame de Chateaubriand took a trip to Antwerp. There she saw, in a cemetery, plaster souls in purgatory, smeared all over with fire and black. At Louvain, she recruited a stammerer, a learned professor, who came expressly to Ghent to gaze upon a man so out of the ordinary as my wife's husband. He said to me, "Illus... ttt... rr...;" his speech fell short of his admiration, and I asked him to dinner. When the hellenist had drunk some curaçao, his tongue became loosened. We got upon the merits of Thucydides, whom the wine made us find clear as water. By dint of keeping up with my guest, I ended, I believe, by talking Dutch; at least, I no longer understood what I was saying. Madame de Chateaubriand spent a bad night at the inn at Antwerp: a young Englishwoman, recently confined, lay dying; during two hours she made her groans heard; then her voice weakened, and her last moan, which the stranger's ear could scarcely catch, was lost in an eternal silence. The cries of this traveller, solitary and forsaken, might be taken as a prelude to the thousand voices of death about to rise at Waterloo. The customary solitude of Ghent was rendered more striking by the foreign crowd which was then enlivening it and which was soon to disperse. Belgian and English recruits were learning their drill on the squares and under the trees of the public walks; gunners, contractors, dragoons were landing trains of artillery, herds of oxen, horses which struggled in the air while they were being let down in straps; canteen-women came on shore carrying the sacks, the children, the muskets of their husbands: all these were going, without knowing why and without having the smallest interest in it, to the great _rendez-vous_ of destruction which Bonaparte had given them. One saw politicians gesticulating along a canal, near a motionless angler, Emigrants trotting from the King's to "Monsieur's," from "Monsieur's" to the King's. The Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, in a green coat and a round hat, with an old novel under his arm, walked to the Council to amend the Charter; the Duc de Lévis[282] went to pay his court in a pair of old loose shoes, which dropped from his feet, because, brave man and new Achilles that he was, he had been wounded in the heel. He was very witty, as can be judged by the selection from his Reflexions. The Duke of Wellington used to come occasionally to hold a review. Louis XVIII. went out every afternoon in a coach and six, with his First Lord of the Bed-chamber and his guards, to drive round Ghent, just as though he had been in Paris. If he met the Duke of Wellington on his road, he would give him a little patronizing nod in passing. [Sidenote: The dignity of Louis XVIII.] Louis XVIII. never lost sight of the pre-eminence of his cradle; he was a king everywhere, as God is God everywhere, in a manger or in a temple, on an altar of gold or of clay. Never did his misfortune wring the smallest concession from him; his loftiness increased in the ratio of his depression; his diadem was his name; he seemed to say, "Kill me, you will not kill the centuries inscribed upon my brow." If they had scraped his arms off the Louvre, it signified little to him: were they not engraved on the globe? Had commissioners been sent to scratch them off in every corner of the universe? Had they been erased in India, at Pondichéry; in America, at Lima and Mexico; in the East, at Antioch, Jerusalem, Acre, Cairo, Constantinople, Rhodes, in the Morea; in the West, on the walls of Rome, on the ceilings of Caserta and the Escurial, on the arches of the halls of Ratisbon and Westminster, in the escutcheon of all the kings? Had they been torn from the needle of the compass, where they seemed to proclaim the reign of the lilies to the several regions of the earth? The fixed idea of the grandeur, the antiquity, the dignity, the majesty of his House gave Louis XVIII. a real empire. One felt its dominion: even Bonaparte's generals confessed it; they stood more intimidated before that impotent old man than before the terrible master who had commanded them in a hundred battles. In Paris, when Louis XVIII. accorded to the triumphing monarchs the honour of dining at his table, he passed without ceremony before those princes whose soldiers were camping in the court-yard of the Louvre; he treated them like vassals who had only done their duty in bringing men-at-arms to their liege-lord. In Europe there is but one monarchy, that of France; the destiny of the other monarchies is bound up in the fate of that one. All the Royal Houses are of yesterday beside the House of Hugh Capet[283], and almost all are its daughters. Our old royal power was the old royalty of the world: from the banishment of the Capets will date the era of the expulsion of the kings. The more impolitic that haughtiness on the part of the descendant of St. Louis (it became fatal to his heirs), the more pleasing was it to the national pride: the French rejoiced at seeing sovereigns who, when conquered, had borne the chains of a man, bear, as conquerors, the yoke of a dynasty. The unshaken faith of Louis XVIII. in his blood is the real might that restored his sceptre; it was that faith which twice let fall upon his head a crown for which Europe certainly did not believe, did not pretend that she was exhausting her populations and her treasures. The soldier-less exile was to be found at the issue of all the battles which he had not delivered. Louis XVIII. was the Legitimacy incarnate; it ceased to be visible when he disappeared. * At Ghent, I took walks by myself, as I do wherever I go. The barges gliding along narrow canals, obliged to cross ten or twelve leagues of pasture-land to reach the sea, appeared to be sailing over the grass; they reminded me of the canoes of the savages in the wild-oat marshes of Missouri. Standing at the edge of the water, while they were dipping lengths of brown holland, I let my eyes wander over the steeples of the town; its history appeared to me on the clouds in the sky: the citizens of Ghent revolting against Henri de Châtillon, the French governor; the wife[284] of Edward III.[285] bringing forth John of Gaunt[286], the stock of the House of Lancaster; the popular reign of van Artevelde[287]: "Good people, who moves you? Why are you so incensed against me? In what can I have angered you?" "You must die!" cried the people: it is what Time cries to all of us. Later, I saw the Dukes of Burgundy; the Spaniards came. Then the pacification, the sieges and the captures of Ghent. When I had done musing among the centuries, the sound of a little bugle or a Scotch bagpipe would rouse me. I saw living soldiers hastening to join the buried battalions of Batavia: ever destructions, powers overthrown; and, at last, a few faded shadows and some names that had passed. Sea-board Flanders was one of the first cantonments of the companions of Clodion[288] and Clovis. Ghent, Bruges and the surrounding country furnished nearly a tenth of the grenadiers of the Old Guard: that terrible army was in part drawn from the cradle of our fathers, and came in its turn to be exterminated beside that cradle. Did the Lys[289] give its flower to the arms of our Kings? Spanish manners leave the impress of their character: the buildings of Ghent retraced for me those of Granada, less the sky of the Vega. A large town almost bereft of inhabitants, deserted streets, canals as deserted as the streets.... twenty-six islands formed by those canals, which were not the canals of Venice, a huge piece of ordnance of the middle ages: that is what replaced at Ghent the city of the Zegris[290], the Duero and the Xenil[291] the Generalife and the Alhambra; old dreams of mine, shall I ever see you more? * [Sidenote: The Duchesse de Lévis.] Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, who had taken ship on the Gironde, came to us by way of England with General Donnadieu[292] and M. Desèze[293], of whom the latter had crossed the ocean wearing his blue ribbon across his waistcoat. The Duc and Duchesse de Lévis[294] followed in the Princess' suite: they had flung themselves into the diligence and escaped from Paris by the Bordeaux road. Their fellow-travellers talked politics: "That scoundrel of a Chateaubriand," said one of them, "is no such fool! He had his carriage waiting packed in his court-yard for three days: the bird has flown. They would have made short work of him, if Napoleon had caught him!" Madame la Duchesse de Lévis was a very handsome, very kind woman, and as calm as Madame la Duchesse de Duras was restless. She never left Madame de Chateaubriand's side; she was our assiduous companion at Ghent. No one has diffused more quietude in my life, a thing of which I have great need. The least troubled moments of my existence are those which I spent at Noisiel, in the house of that woman whose words and sentiments entered into your soul only to restore its serenity. I recall with regret those moments passed under the great chestnut-trees of Noisiel! With a soothed spirit, a convalescent heart, I used to look upon the ruins of Chelles Abbey and the little lights of the boats loitering among the willows on the Marne. The remembrance of Madame de Lévis is for me that of a silent autumn evening. She passed away in a few hours; she mingled with death as with the source of all rest I saw her sink noiselessly into her grave in the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise; she is laid above M. de Fontanes, and the latter sleeps beside his son Saint-Marcellin, killed in a duel. Thus, bowing before the monument of Madame de Lévis, have I come into contact with two other sepulchres: man cannot awaken one sorrow without reawakening another; during the night, the different flowers which open only in the shade expand. To Madame de Lévis' affectionate kindness for me was added the friendship of M. le Duc de Lévis, the father: I may now reckon only by generations. M. de Lévis wrote well; he had a versatile and fertile imagination which betrayed his noble race, as it had already displayed itself in his blood shed on the beach at Quiberon. Nor was that to be the end of all: it was the impulse of a friendship which passed on to the second generation. M. le Duc de Lévis, the son[295], attached at present to M. le Comte de Chambord, has drawn near to me; my hereditary affection will fail him no more than will my fidelity to his august master. The new and charming Duchesse de Lévis[296], his wife, joins to the great name of d'Aubusson the brightest qualities of heart and mind: life is worth something, when the graces borrow unwearied wings from history! * The Pavillon Marsan[297] existed at Ghent as in Paris. Every day brought Monsieur news from France which was the offspring of self-interest or imagination. [Sidenote: Fouché, Duc D'Otrante.] M. Gaillard[298], an ex-Oratorian, a counsel in the royal courts, an intimate friend of Fouché's, alighted in our midst; he made himself known, and was brought into touch with M. Capelle. When I waited upon Monsieur, which was rarely, those around him used to talk to me in covert words, and with many sighs, of "a man who (it must be admitted) was behaving admirably: he was impeding all the Emperor's operations; he was defending the Faubourg Saint-Germain, etc., etc." The faithful Marshal Soult was also the object of Monsieur's predilection and, after Fouché, the most loyal man in France. One day a carriage stopped at the door of my inn, and I saw Madame la Baronne de Vitrolles step out of it: she had arrived bearing powers from the Duc d'Otrante. She took away with her a note, written in Monsieur's hand, in which the Prince declared that he would retain an eternal gratitude to him who saved M. de Vitrolles. Fouché wanted no more; armed with this note, he was sure of his future in case of a restoration. Thenceforward, there was no question at Ghent save of the immense obligations due to the excellent M. Fouché de Nantes[299], save of the impossibility of returning to France otherwise than by that just man's good pleasure: the difficulty was how to make the King relish this new redeemer of the Monarchy. After the Hundred Days, Madame de Custine compelled me to meet Fouché at dinner at her house. I had seen him once, five years before, in connection with the condemnation of my poor Cousin Armand. The ex-minister knew that I had opposed his nomination at Roye, at Gonesse, at Arnouville; and, as he suspected me of being powerful, he wished to make his peace with me. The death of Louis XVI. was the best thing about him: regicide was his innocence. A prater, like all the revolutionaries, beating the air with empty phrases, he retailed a heap of commonplaces stuffed with "destiny," with "necessity," with "the right of things," mingling with this philosophic nonsense further nonsense on the march and progress of society, and shameless maxims in favour of the strong as against the weak; and he was free in his use of impudent avowals on the justice of success, the little worth of a head which falls, the equity of that which prospers, the iniquity of that which suffers, affecting to speak of the most horrid disasters with airy indifference, as though he were a genius above all such fooleries. Not a choice idea escaped him, not a remarkable thought, on any subject whatsoever. I went away shrugging my shoulders at crime. M. Fouché never forgave me my dryness and the small effect he produced on me. He had thought he would fascinate me by causing the blade of the fatal instrument to rise and fall before my eyes, like a glory of Mount Sinai; he had imagined that I would look up, as to a colossus, to the ranter who, speaking of the soil of Lyons, had said: "That soil shall be overturned; on the ruins of that proud and rebellious city shall rise scattered cottages which the friends of liberty will hasten to come and inhabit.... We shall have the energetic courage to walk through the vast tombs of the conspirators.... Their blood-stained corpses, hurled into the Rhône, give on both banks and at its mouth the impression of terror and the image of the omnipotence of the people. . . . . . . . "We shall celebrate the victory of Toulon; we shall this evening send two hundred and fifty rebels under the lead of the thunder." Those horrible trimmings did not impose upon me: because M. "de Nantes" had diluted republican crimes with imperial mire; because the _sans-culotte_, transformed into a duke, had wrapped the cord of the lantern in the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, he appeared neither the abler nor the greater for it in my eyes. The Jacobins detest men who make no account of their atrocities and who despise their murders; their pride is provoked, like that of authors whose talent one disputes. * [Sidenote: His underhand negotiations.] At the same time that Fouché was sending M. Gaillard to Ghent to negociate with the brother of Louis XVI., his agents at Bâle were parleying with those of Prince Metternich[300] on the subject of Napoleon II., and M. de Saint-Léon, dispatched by this same Fouché, was arriving in Vienna to treat of the crown as a "possibility" for M. le Duc d'Orléans. The friends of the Duc d'Otrante could rely upon him no more than his enemies: on the return of the legitimate Princes, he maintained his old colleague, M. Thibaudeau[301], on the list of exiles, while M. de Talleyrand struck this or that outlaw off the list, or added that other to the catalogue, according to his whim. Had not the Faubourg Saint-Germain reason indeed to believe in M. Fouché? M. de Saint-Léon carried three notes to Vienna, of which one was addressed to M. de Talleyrand: the Duc d'Otrante proposed that the ambassador of Louis XVIII. should push the son of Égalité on to the throne, if he saw his way! What probity in those negociations! How fortunate they were to have to do with such honest persons! Yet we have admired, censed, blessed those highway robbers; we have paid court to them; we have called them _monseigneur!_ That explains the world as it stands. M. de Montrond came in addition, after M. de Saint-Léon. M. le Duc d'Orléans did not conspire in fact but by consent; he let the revolutionary affinities intrigue: a sweet society! In this dark lane, the plenipotentiary of the King of France lent an ear to Fouché's overtures. Speaking of M. de Talleyrand's detention at the Barrière d'Enfer, I said what had, till then, been M. de Talleyrand's fixed idea as to the regency of Marie-Louise: he was obliged by the emergency to embrace the eventuality of the Bourbons; but he was always ill at ease: it seemed to him that, under the heirs of St. Louis, a married bishop would never be sure of his place. The idea of substituting the Younger Branch for the Elder Branch pleased him, therefore, so much so the more in that he had had former relations with the Palais Royal. Taking that side, without however exposing himself entirely, he hazarded a few words of Fouché's project to Alexander. The Tsar had ceased to interest himself in Louis XVIII.: the latter had hurt him, in Paris, by his affectation of superiority of race; he had hurt him again by refusing to consent to the marriage of the Duc de Berry with a sister of the Emperor; the Princess was rejected for three reasons: she was a schismatic; she was not of an old enough stock; she came of a family of madmen: these reasons were not put forward upright but aslant, and, when seen through, gave Alexander treble offense. As a last subject of complaint against the old sovereign of exile, the Tsar brought up the projected alliance between England, France and Austria. For the rest, it seemed as though the succession were open; all the world claimed to succeed to the estate of the sons of Louis XIV.: Benjamin Constantin the name of Madame Murat[302], was pleading the rights which Napoleon's sister believed herself to possess over the Kingdom of Naples; Bernadotte was casting a distant glance upon Versailles, apparently because the King of Sweden came from Pau. La Besnardière[303], head of a department at the Foreign Office, went over to M. de Caulaincourt; he drew up a hurried report on "the complaints and rejoinders of France" to the Legitimacy. After this kick had been let fly, M. de Talleyrand found means of communicating the report to Alexander: discontented and fickle, the Autocrat was struck with La Besnardière's pamphlet. Suddenly, in the middle of the Congress, the Tsar asked, to the general stupefaction, if it would not be a matter for deliberation to examine in how far M. le Duc d'Orléans might suit France and Europe as King. This is perhaps one of the most surprising things in those extraordinary times, and perhaps it is still more extraordinary that it has been so little discussed[304]. Lord Clancarty[305] made the Russian proposal fall through; His Lordship declared that he had no powers to treat so grave a question: "As for myself," he said, "giving my opinion as a private individual, I think that to put M. le Duc d'Orléans on the throne of France would be to replace a military usurpation by a family usurpation, which is more dangerous to the sovereigns than any other usurpation." [Sidenote: At the Congress of Vienna.] The members of the Congress went to dinner, using the sceptre of St. Louis as a rush with which to mark the folio at which they had left off in their protocols. Upon the obstacles encountered by the Tsar, M. de Talleyrand faced about: foreseeing that the stroke would resound, he sent a report to Louis XVIII. (in a despatch which I have seen and which was numbered 25 or 27) of this strange session of the Congress[306]; he thought himself obliged to inform His Majesty of so exorbitant a proceeding, because this news, said he, would not long delay in reaching the King's ears: a singular ingenuousness for M. le Prince de Talleyrand. There had been a question of a declaration on the part of the Alliance, in order to make it quite clear to the world that there was no quarrel except with Napoleon, that there was no pretension to impose upon France either an obligatory form of government or a sovereign who should not be of her own choice. This latter part of the declaration was suppressed, but it was positively announced in the official journal of Frankfort. England, in her negociations with the Cabinets, always employs that Liberal language, which is only a precaution against the parliamentary tribune. We see that the Allies were troubling themselves no more about the re-establishment of the Legitimacy at the Second than at the First Restoration: the event alone did all. What mattered it to such short-sighted sovereigns whether the mother of European monarchies had her throat cut? Would that prevent them from giving entertainments and keeping guards? The monarchs are so solidly seated to-day, the globe in one hand, the sword in the other! M. de Talleyrand, whose interests were at that time in Vienna, feared lest the English, whose opinion was no longer so favourable to him, should begin the military game before all the armies were drawn up in line, and lest the Cabinet of St. James should thus acquire the predominance: that is why he wished to induce the King to re-enter by the south-eastern provinces, in order that he might find himself under the protection of the Austrian Empire and Cabinet. The Duke of Wellington had given a precise order not to commence hostilities; it was Napoleon who wanted the Battle of Waterloo: the destinies of such a nature are not to be arrested. Those historic facts, the most curious in the world, have remained generally unknown; in the same way, also, a confused opinion has been formed of the Treaties of Vienna relating to France: they have been thought the iniquitous work of a troop of victorious sovereigns, implacably bent upon our ruin; unfortunately, if they are harsh, they have been envenomed by a French hand: when M. de Talleyrand is not conspiring, he is trafficking. Prussia desired to have Saxony, which will sooner or later be her prey; France ought to have countenanced this wish, for, Saxony obtaining an indemnification within the sphere of the Rhine, Landau would have remained to us with our surrounding territories; Coblentz and other fortresses would have passed to a small friendly State, which, placed between ourselves and Prussia, prevented any point of contact; the keys of France would not have been handed over to the shade of Frederic. For three millions which Saxony paid him, M. de Talleyrand opposed the combinations of the Cabinet of Berlin; but, in order to obtain the assent of Alexander to the existence of Old Saxony, our Ambassador was obliged to abandon Poland to the Tsar, notwithstanding that the other Powers desired that a Poland of some kind should restrict the freedom of the Muscovite's movements in the North. The Bourbons of Naples redeemed themselves, like the sovereign of Dresden, with money[307]. M. de Talleyrand claimed that he was entitled to a subvention, in exchange for his Duchy of Benevento: he was selling his livery on leaving his master. When France was losing so much, could not M. de. Talleyrand also have lost something? Benevento, moreover, did not belong to the High Chamberlain: by virtue of the revival of the ancient treaties, that principality was a dependency of the States of the Church. [Illustration: Talleyrand.] [Sidenote: A letter from Talleyrand.] Such were the diplomatic transactions which were being completed in Vienna while we were stopping at Ghent. In this latter residence, I received the following letter from M. de Talleyrand: "VIENNA, 4 _April._ "I learnt, monsieur, with much pleasure that you were at Ghent, for circumstances require that the King should be surrounded with strong and independent men. "You will certainly have thought that it was useful to refute, by means of strenuously-reasoned publications, the whole of the new doctrine which they are trying to establish in the official documents now appearing in France. "It would be useful if something could appear of which the object would be to establish that the Declaration of the 31st of March, made in Paris by the Allies, that the Act of Deposition, that the Act of Abdication, that the Treaty of the 11th of April, which resulted from them, are so many preliminary, indispensable and absolute conditions of the Treaty of the 30th of May; that is to say that, without those previous conditions, the treaty would not have been made. This admitted, the man who violates the said conditions or seconds their violation breaks the peace which that treaty established. It is, therefore, he and his accomplices who are declaring war against Europe. "An argument taken in this sense would do good abroad as well as at home; only it must be well done, so make it your business. "Accept, monsieur, the homage of my sincere attachment and of my high regard. "TALLEYRAND. "I hope to have the honour of seeing you at the end of the month." Our Minister in Vienna was faithful to his hatred of the great chimera escaped from the shades: he dreaded a blow from its wing. This letter shows, for the rest, all that M. de Talleyrand was capable of doing when he wrote alone: he had the kindness to teach me the "movement," leaving the "graces" to me. It was a question indeed of a few diplomatic phrases on the deposition, on the abdication, on the Treaty of the 11th of April and of the 30th of May, to stop Napoleon! I was very grateful for the instructions given me by virtue of my patent as "a strong man," but I did not follow them: an ambassador _in petto_ I was not at that moment meddling with foreign affairs; I busied myself only with my Ministry of the Interior _ad interim._ But what was taking place in Paris? [231] Jean Baptiste Baron Dalesme (1763-1832) was a brigadier-general under Napoleon, sat in the Legislative Body as Deputy for the Haute-Vienne from 1802 to 1809, and was created a baron of the Empire in 1810. He rallied to the Restoration, which made him a lieutenant-general in October 1814. He was Governor of Elba during the Hundred Days, and left the service on the Second Restoration. He was reinstated in 1830, and died Governor of the Invalides.--B. [232] 4 May 1814.--B. [233] At the celebrated Congress of Erfurt, held in 1808, were present the Emperors Alexander and Napoleon and almost all the sovereigns of Germany. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria were the only crowned heads not invited to it.--T. [234] Æneid, X. 174.--B. [235] Marie Countess Walewice-Walewska (circa 1787-1817), _née_ Laczinska, married, first (_circa_ 1804), to Anastasius Colonna, Count Walewice-Walewski, who died in 1814, at the age of eighty-four; secondly, to General Philippe Antoine Comte d'Omano. She visited Napoleon at Elba on the 1st of September 1814, accompanied by a child of four or five years of age. She stayed about fifty hours; during this time the Emperor received no one, not even Madame Mère, who was then in Elba, at Marciana. But, after those fifty hours, Madame Walewska went to Longone to embark for the Continent in a gale so severe that the very sailors feared for her safety. She refused to listen to all representations. The Emperor sent an officer to delay her departure; but she was already out at sea, and Napoleon knew no peace of mind until he had received from the Countess Walewska herself news of her safe arrival. (_Cf._ PONS DE L'HÉRAULT, _Souvenirs et anecdotes de l'île d'Elbe_).--T. [236] Alexandre Florian Joseph de Colonna, Comte, later Duc de Walewski (1810-1868), the reputed illegitimate son of Napoleon I., Minister of Foreign Affairs and, later, President of the Legislative Body under Napoleon III.--T. [237] Antoine Francois Claude Comte Ferrand (1758-1825) was Postmaster-general. In 1816, he was created a peer of France and became a member of the French Academy. His best-known literary work is the Esprit de l'histoire in four volumes (1802), which has been many times reprinted.--T. [238] Antoine Marie Chamans, Comte de Lavallette (1769-1830), was married to a Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, a niece of the Empress Joséphine. He had been Postmaster-general in 1814; lost that office on the return of the Bourbons, and resumed it, in 1816, on the flight of the Princes. He was tried for seconding the return of Bonaparte and sentenced to death, but made his escape from prison by the aid of his wife. Three English officers, Messrs. Hutchinson, Wilson and Bruce, assisted him across the frontier, and he took refuge in Bavaria. Lavallette was permitted to return to France in 1820, when he retired into private life.--T. [239] The _Nain jaune_ was a satirical Bonapartist journal, inspired by the circle of the ex-Queen Hortense, which adopted a guise of extreme Royalism. The number for the 28th of February 1815 contains a letter from a correspondent who says: "I have worn out ten goose-quills in writing to you, without receiving a reply; perhaps I shall be luckier if I try a duck-quill" (_plume de cane_). On the next day, the 1st of March, Napoleon landed at Cannes on his return from Elba.--B. [240] Carlo Andrea Count Pozzo di Borgo (1764-1842), a native of Corsica, entered the Russian diplomatic service and took part in all the congresses of the Holy Alliance. Pozzo acted as Russian Ambassador to France from 1814 to 1835, and to England from 1835 to 1839. He spent his last years in Paris.--T. [241] Louis-Philippe Duc d'Orléans (1773-1850), afterwards "King of the French," and son (some say a changeling) of Louis Philippe Joseph Duc d'Orléans (Philippe Égalité).--T. [242] General Drouet d'Erlon (1765-1844) was placed in command of the 1st Army Corps during the Hundred Days. He was condemned to death by contumacy in 1816, fled to Prussia, and returned to France in 1825, but did not resume service till 1830. In 1834, he was appointed Governor-General of Algeria, but was recalled in 1835 for not displaying sufficient vigour against Abd-el-Kader; nevertheless Drouet was made a marshal in 1843. The military conspiracy in which he engaged with General Lefebvre-Desnoëttes and Lallemand was of a semi-Imperialist, semi-Revolutionary character, and broke out on the 9th of March 1815, but was immediately suppressed.--T. [243] Marshal Masséna, on the evening of the 3rd of March, sent to the Minister of War, from Marseilles, the dispatch announcing Bonaparte's landing at the Golfe Jouan. In 1815, the aerial telegraph stopped at Lyons. The message was therefore carried by a courier as far as Lyons, and did not reach Paris until mid-day on the 5th of March. Impressed by the gravity of the news, M. Chappe, the Director-General of Telegraphs (brother of the inventor), took upon himself to take the message to M. de Vitrolles, in the King's closet, instead of transmitting it to Marshal Soult. Vitrolles handed the despatch, sealed as it was, to Louis XVIII., who read it several times over and threw it on the table, saying with the greatest calm: "It is to say that Bonaparte has landed on the coast of Provence. This letter must be taken to the Minister of War. He will see what is to be done." The Government kept the news secret for two days, and it was only on the 7th of March that it was officially announced in the _Moniteur._--B. [244] The Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, became "Monsieur" on the latter's accession.--T. [245] Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke, Maréchal Comte d'Hunebourg, Duc de Feltre (1765-1818), descended from an Irish family, had been one of Napoleon's generals, and Minister of War from 1807. After rallying to the Bourbons, he managed the War Office at a time of the greatest difficulty, and was created a marshal of France after the Second Restoration, in 1816. The Duc de Feltre retired in 1817, a year before his death.--T. [246] Caius Valerius Jovius Aulerius Diocletianus (245-313), Roman Emperor, was born at Dioclea, near Salona. Diocletian's mind became weakened in 304, and in 305 he abdicated and retired to Salona, where he cultivated his garden with his own hands.--T. [247] Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot (1791-1873) became a prominent leader of the Opposition under Louis-Philippe, and was Prime Minister and Minister of Justice in 1848 to 1849.--T. [248] The battalion of the pupils of the School of Law was formed on the 14th of March 1815; its effective force amounted to 1200 men. After being drilled at Vincennes, the Volunteers, to the number of about 700, joined the Body-guards at Beauvais on Easter Sunday, the 26th of March; they crossed the frontier and were cantoned at Ypres. On the 30th of July, the battalion returned to Paris, amid the cheers of an immense multitude which had come out to greet it. The professors of the school, prevented by their age from leaving France, at least refused to wait upon Napoleon, and it was only at the express invitation of the Minister of the Interior that they went so far as to send an address in which they expressed their gratitude at seeing the Emperor renounce all spirit of conquest.--B. [249] M. de La Fayette, in some Memoirs published since his death and valuable for their facts, confirms the singular conjunction of his opinion and mine on the occasion of Bonaparte's return. M. de La Fayette was a sincere lover of honour and liberty.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840). [250] Charles Ferdinand Duc de Berry (1778-1820), second son of the Comte d'Artois, assassinated by the fanatic Louvel on leaving the Opera, 13 February 1820.--T. [251] Louis Antoine Duc d'Angoulême (1775-1844), eldest son of the Comte d'Artois, was Dauphin of France during the reign of the latter as Charles X. He abdicated his right to the throne immediately after his father, and was thus for only a few minutes King of France, with the title of Louis XIX. He was succeeded by his nephew, the Duc de Bordeaux (the Comte de Chambord), as Henry V. The Duc d'Angoulême died at Goritz, where he lived under the style of Comte de Marnes. He possessed many solid qualities and conciliatory intentions, without being gifted with any hyper-eminent faculties.--T. [252] A Royal order of the 6th of March, declaring Bonaparte a traitor and rebel, and enjoining all soldiers, national guards, or private citizens "to hunt him down" (_de lui courir sus_), appears in the _Moniteur_ of the 7th of March.--B. [253] Alexandre Maurice Blanc de La Nautte, Comte d'Hauterive (1754-1830), commenced life as a professor in the Oratorian College at Tours (1779), accompanied the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier on his embassy to Constantinople (1784), became French _Chargé d'affaires_ in Moldavia (1785), and Consul in New York (1792). In America he grew intimate with Talleyrand, who made him head of a department at the Foreign Office so soon as he obtained his ministry, and later had him appointed Keeper of the Archives (1807).--T. [254] Alfred Frédéric Chevalier Artaud de Montor (1772-1849), after a long diplomatic career, wrote or edited a large number of historical works, including the _Vie et travaux du comte d'Hauterive_, published at a later date than that at which Chateaubriand wrote the above lines.--T. [255] MARK ii. II.--T. [256] Charles Du Fresne, Seigneur Du Cange (1610-1688), the noted historian and philologist, born at Amiens, 18 December 1610.--T. [257] Robespierre was born at Arras on the 6th of May 1758.--T. [258] _Cf._ Vol. II. p. 30.--T. [259] Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux (1771-1842), younger brother of Louis François Bertin, known as Bertin the Elder, assisted him in founding the _Journal des Débats_ (1799), and in editing that paper, while directing a banking-house which he had established in 1801. Bertin de Vaux was sent as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1830 and raised to the peerage in 1832.--T. [260] Amédée Bretagne Malo de Durfort, Duc de Duras (1771-1838), First Lord of the Bed-chamber to the King. He accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent and returned with him. He had been created a Peer of France in 1814. After the Revolution of 1830, he retired into private life.--B. [261] Charles V. Emperor of Germany, King of Spain and of the Two Sicilies (1500-1558), born at Ghent, son of the Archduke Philip of Austria and of Joan, heiress of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. He was proclaimed King of Spain in 1516, during his mother's life-time, and elected to the Empire three years later. Charles V. abdicated in 1556, two years before his death.--T. [262] The other ministers were: M. Louis, Finance; the Duc de Feltre, War; M. Beugnot, Navy; M. Dambray, Chancellor of France; M. de Jaucourt, Foreign Affairs _ad interim_, the Prince de Talleyrand being in Vienna. M. de Blacas was Minister of the King's Household. M. de Lally-Tolendal was _ad interim_ Minister of Public Instruction.--B. [263] Bernadotte and Henry IV. were both born at Pau.--T. [264] Thomas Arthur Comte de Lally, Baron Tolendal in Ireland (1702-1766), after contributing to the victory of Fontenoy (1745), was in 1756 appointed Governor of the French possessions in India and drove the English from the Coromandel Coast. He failed, however, before Madras, was himself besieged in Pondichéry, and obliged to surrender with a garrison of 700 men: he had resisted for several months against an army of 22,000 men and a fleet of 14 ships (1761). Nevertheless, he was accused of betraying the King's interests, sent to the Bastille and, after eighteen months' imprisonment and an informal trial, sentenced to death. He was executed on the 9th of May 1766. Voltaire published an eloquent _factum_ in the condemned man's favour and, in 1778, Louis XVI., at the instance of Lally's son, the Marquis de Lally-Tolendal mentioned above, had the iniquitous verdict revised. The sentence was unanimously quashed by a new set of judges, and Lally's memory entirely rehabilitated.--T. [265] Marie Madeleine Comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693), _née_ Pioche de La Vergne, daughter of the Governor of the Havre, and the intimate friend of La Rochefoucauld. She made a name in letters by her novels, _Zaïde_ the _Princesse de Clèves_, etc., and also wrote an _Histoire et Henriette d'Angleterre._--T. [266] Madame La Duchesse de Rauzan.--_Author's Note._ [267] The Duc de Bellune remained absolutely faithful to the Elder Branch after the usurpation of 1830.--T. [268] Julie Maréchale Duchesse de Bellune, _née_ Vosch van Avesaat, married to the Maréchal Duc de Bellune in 1801. He had previously divorced his first wife, _née_ Muguet, to whom he had been married in 1791.--T. [269] Vincent Marie Viennot, Comte de Vaublanc (1756-1845), an eager supporter of the Royalist cause and Minister of the Interior from September 1815 to May 1816. He published some political works, a few indifferent tragedies and an epic poem, the _Dernier des Césars_ (1836).--T. [270] Guillaume Antoine Bénoît Baron Capelle (1775-1843) held various prefectures under Napoleon and Louis XVIII., and was created a baron of the Empire by the former. In May 1830, he became Minister of Public Works in M. de Polignac's Cabinet and, as a signatory of the Ordinances of July, was condemned by contumacy to perpetual imprisonment. He returned to France in 1836, after the amnesty.--B. [271] The Abbé Martial Borye Desrenaudes (1755-1825), not d'Ernaud as the preceding editions of the Memoirs have it, was grand-vicar to the Bishop of Autun at the time of the Revolution. He had a remarkable talent as a writer, and was of the greatest use to Talleyrand as a literary assistant. After the 18 Brumaire, Desrenaudes became a member of the Tribunate, and later a councillor of the University and Imperial Censor. He retained his censorship under the Restoration.--B. [272] Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679), was in 1643 appointed Coadjutor to his uncle, Henri de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, before himself succeeding to the archbishopric.--T. [273] _Cf._ RACINE, _Les Plaideurs_, Act III. sc. IV.--T. [274] Claude Philibert Édouard Baron Mounier (1784-1843), son of Joseph Mounier, the celebrated Constituent. Under the Empire, he had been Superintendent of the Crown Lands, in which post he was confirmed by Louis XVIII., and he continued to hold various political and administrative offices. He was created a peer of France in 1819.--B. [275] Louis XVIII. himself was a great epicure of this fish, and sometimes allowed himself to be taken to this inn, which was called the Halter. (Cf. ROMBERG, _Louis XVIII. à Gand._)--B. [276] Early in April, under the management of the two Bertins. Upon the objection of the Netherlands Government, which saw difficulties in the way of the co-existence of two _Moniteurs_ in the kingdom, the original title was changed to the _Journal universel_, which continued to be the official organ of Louis XVIII.--B. [277] _Rapport sur l'état de la France, fait au roi dans son conseil_, May 1815.--B. [278] A certain M. Bail, an inspector of reviews. Chateaubriand's letter to the Duc de Feltre is dated "Paris, 22 August 1826," and runs: "A Monsieur Bail, inspector of reviews, wrote a pamphlet against me. He says that he has lost his place for this act. May I venture, monsieur le duc, to hope from your indulgence that you will be so good as to restore him to your kindness? The King's person was respected in the pamphlet. Pray forget, monsieur le maréchal, all that concerns only myself.--B." [279] The Order of the Golden Fleece was instituted at Bruges, in 1429, by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.--T. [280] JOHN i. 6.--T. [281] Jan van Eyck (_circa_ 1380-1450) was born at Maaseyk near Maastricht, but settled at Bruges, with his brother Hubert, at an early age. He is usually known as Jean de Bruges in France.--T. [282] Gaston Pierre Marc Duc de Levis (1764-1830) had been wounded at Quiberon in 1795. Between 1808 and 1814 he published his _Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets_, the _Suite des quatre Facardins_, imitated from Hamilton's Tales, _Voyage de Khani, ou Nouvelles lettres chinoises, Souvenirs et Portraits_, and L'_Angleterre au commencement du XIXe siècle._ He became a peer of France in 1814, a privy councillor in 1815 and a member of the French Academy in 1816.--B. [283] Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris (_d._ 996), was proclaimed King of France in 987 on the death of Louis V., the last of the Second or Carlovingian Dynasty, thus founding the Third or Capetian Dynasty of Kings of France. The House of Capet proper reigned from 987 to 1328; its two branches, the Houses of Valois and Bourbon from 1328 to 1589 and 1589 to 1830 respectively. The usurpation of Louis-Philippe gives a reign of 18 years (1830 to 1848) to the House of Orleans, or Younger Branch of Bourbon.--T. [284] Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England (_circa_ 1314-1369).--T. [285] Edward III. King of England (1212-1377).--T. [286] John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1349-1399), fourth son of Edward III. and father of Henry IV., who founded the House of Lancaster after procuring the murder of Richard II., by usurping the throne to the prejudice of the descendants of Lionel Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III.--T. [287] Jacob van Artevelde (_d._ 1345) headed a revolt of his fellow-citizens against the Count of Flanders (1336) and became for some time absolute master of Flanders. Finding himself, however, on the point of being reduced, he proposed to offer the sovereignty to Edward the Black Prince, but failed in his project, and was murdered by the populace of Ghent in 1345.--T. [288] Clodion (_d. circa_ 448) is accepted as the second King of France (Merovingian Dynasty).--T. [289] The Lys, or Lily, rises a little below Béthune and flows into the Scheldt at Ghent.--B. [290] A Moorish tribe which had a violent quarrel with the Abencerrages.--T. [291] Granada stands near the junction of the Rivers Duero and Xenil.--T. [292] Gabriel Vicomte Donnadieu (1777-1849), an inveterate enemy of Napoleon and later of Louis-Philippe, and a fervent, although somewhat discredited Royalist.--T. [293] Raymond Comte Desèze (1748-1828), the famous advocate. He distinguished himself early in his career by his defense of the daughters of Helvétius. In 1789 he obtained the acquittal of the Baron de Bésenval, accused of high treason; and he assisted Malesherbes and Tronchet in their defense of King Louis XVI. before the Convention. Desèze had been made a knight of the Holy Ghost by Louis XVI., which explains the allusion to the blue ribbon. Louis XVIII. made him President of the Court of Appeal and a peer of France in 1815, and a count in 1817. Desèze was, in 1816, elected a member of the French Academy.--T. [294] Pauline Louise Françoise de Paule Duchesse de Lévis (_d._ 1819), _née_ Charpentier d'Ennery, married to the Duc de Lévis in 1785.--B. [295] Gaston François Christophe Victor Duc de Ventadour and de Lévis (1794-1863), became aide-de-camp to the Duc d'Angoulême in 1814, and took part in the Spanish War of 1823 and the expedition to Morocco in 1828. He succeeded his father in the peerage in 1830, but refused to sit after the Revolution of July and followed the Royal Family into exile. He was for many years one of the Comte de Chambord's chief councillors, and died at Venice in 1863.--B. [296] Marie Cathérine Amanda Duchesse de Lévis (1798-1854), daughter of Pierre Raymond Hector d'Aubusson, Comte de La Feuillade, and married to the Duc de Lévis in 1821.--B. [297] The Pavillon Marsan formed the corner of the Tuileries bounded by the garden and the Rue de Rivoli, and was occupied under Louis XVIII. by the Comte d'Artois.--T. At Ghent, the Comte d'Artois had his Pavillon Marsan in the Hôtel des Pays Bas, where he was lodged with his suite and his carriages and paid 1000 francs a day. Louis XVIII. lived in the house which the Comte d'Hane de Steenhuyse had placed at his disposal.-B. [298] Gaillard had been Fouché's secretary.--B. [299] The Duc d'Otrante was born at the Martinière, near Nantes.--T. [300] Clemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar Prince von Metternich-Winneburg (1773-1859), the great Austrian statesman, was at this time presiding over the Congress of Vienna.--T. [301] Auguste Clair Thibaudeau (1765-1854) had voted for the death of the King in the Convention, and became one of the most ardent servants of Napoleon, who made him a councillor of State, a prefect, and a count of the Empire (31 December 1809). He was exiled in 1815 and did not return to France until after the Revolution of July. Napoleon III. made him a senator and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. Thibaudeau left a large number of historical works.--B. [302] Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1782-1839), _née_ Bonaparte, married to Murat in 1800.--T. [303] Jean Baptiste de Gouy, Comte de La Besnardière (_d._ 1843), had been employed at the Foreign Office since 1795, where he had become the intimate fellow-worker of Talleyrand, who liked both him and his work. He accompanied the prince to the Congress of Vienna; on his return, the King made him a count and director of Public Works. He retired into private life in 1819.--B. [304] A recently-published pamphlet entitled _Lettres de l'Étranger_, written apparently by an able and well-informed diplomatist, points to this strange Russian negociation in Vienna.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840). [305] Richard Le Poer Trench, second Earl of Clancarty, later Marquis of Heusden in the Netherlands (1767-1837), British Plenipotentiary to the Congress of Vienna, and later Ambassador to the Netherlands (1816-1822).--T. [306] It is stated that, in 1830, M. de Talleyrand had his private correspondence with Louis XVIII. removed from the Archives of the Crown, even as he had had removed from the Archives of the Empire all that he, M. de Talleyrand, had written respecting the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the affairs of Spain.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840). [307] Talleyrand was paid six million francs by the Neapolitan Bourbons for favouring their restoration. (_Cf._ SAINTE-BEUVE, _Nouveaux Lundis_, vol. XII.).--B. BOOK V The Hundred Days in Paris--Effect of the passage of the Legitimacy in France--Bonaparte's astonishment--He is obliged to capitulate to ideas which he thought smothered--His new system--Three enormous gamblers remain--Illusions of the Liberals--Clubs and Federates--Juggling away of the Republic: the Additional Act--Convocation of the Chamber of Representatives--A useless Champ de Mai--Cares and bitterness of Bonaparte--Resolution in Vienna--Movement in Paris--What we were doing at Ghent--M. de Blacas--The Battle of Waterloo--Confusion at Ghent--What the Battle of Waterloo was--Return of the Emperor--Reappearance of La Fayette--Renewed abdication of Bonaparte--Stormy scenes in the House of Peers--Threatening portents for the Second Restoration--The departure from Ghent--Arrival at Mons--I miss the first opportunity of fortune in my political career--M. de Talleyrand at Mons--His scene with the King--I stupidly interest myself on M. de Talleyrand's behalf--Mons to Gonesse--With M. le Comte Beugnot I oppose Fouché's nomination as minister: my reasons--The Duke of Wellington gains the day--Arnouville--Saint-Denis--Last conversation with the King. I show you the wrong side of events which history does not display: history exhibits only the right side. Memoirs have the advantage of presenting both surfaces of the texture: in this respect they depict the whole complexion of humanity better, by exposing, as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, low and exalted scenes. There is everywhere a cottage beside a palace, a man who weeps beside a man who laughs, a ragman carrying his basket beside a king losing his throne: what was the fall of Darius[308] to the slave present at the Battle of Arbela? Ghent, then, was only a tiring-room behind the slips of the spectacle opened in Paris. Some famous personages still remained in Europe. I had, in 1800, commenced my career with Alexander and Napoleon; why had I not followed those leading actors, my contemporaries, on the great stage? Why only at Ghent? Because Heaven casts you where it wills. From the "little Hundred Days" at Ghent let us pass to the "great Hundred Days" in Paris. I have told you the reasons which ought to have stopped Bonaparte in Elba and the urgent reasons, or rather the necessity drawn from his nature, which compelled him to issue from exile. But the march from Cannes to Paris exhausted all that remained of the old man. In Paris, the talisman was shattered. The few moments for which the reign of lawfulness had reappeared had sufficed to render impossible the re-establishment of arbitrariness. Despotism muzzles the masses and enfranchises individuals, within a certain limit; anarchy lets loose the masses and enslaves individual independence. Hence, despotism resembles liberty, when it follows after anarchy; it remains what it really is when it replaces liberty: Bonaparte, a liberator after the Constitution of the Directory, was an oppressor after the Charter. He felt this so well that he thought himself obliged to go further than Louis XVIII. and to return to the sources of national sovereignty. He, who had trodden the people under foot as its master, was reduced to create himself anew a tribune of the people, to court the favour of the suburbs, to parody the revolutionary infancy, to lisp an old language of liberty which forced his lips into a grimace, while each syllable angered his sword. His destiny as a power was, in fact, so well accomplished that the genius of Napoleon was no longer recognised during the Hundred Days. That genius was the genius of success and order, not that of defeat and liberty: now he could do nothing through victory, which had betrayed him, nothing for order, since it existed without him. In his astonishment he said: "To what a condition have the Bourbons reduced France for me, in a few months! It will take me years to restore her." It was not the work of the Legitimacy which the conqueror saw, but the work of the Charter; he had left France dumb and prostrate, he found her erect and speaking: in the ingenuousness of his absolute mind, he took liberty for disorder. And yet Bonaparte was obliged to capitulate with the ideas which he was unable to conquer at first sight. In the absence of any real popularity, workmen hired at forty sous a head came, at the end of their day's work, to howl, "Long live the Emperor!" in the Carrousel. That was called "going to the crying." Proclamations at first announced marvels of forgetting and forgiving; individuals were declared free, the nation free, the press free; nothing was wanted but the peace, independence and happiness of the people; the whole imperial system was changed; the golden age was about to return. In order to conform practice with theory, France was divided into seven great police sections; the seven lieutenants were invested with the same powers which were enjoyed under the Consulate and the Empire by the directors-general: it is well-known what those protectors of individual liberty were at Lyons, Bordeaux, Milan, Florence, Lisbon, Hamburg, Amsterdam. Over these lieutenants, in a hierarchy "more and more favourable to liberty," Bonaparte placed commissaries-extraordinary, after the fashion of the representatives of the people under the Convention. [Sidenote: The hundred days.] The police, directed by Fouché, informed the world, by means of solemn proclamations, that it would thenceforward serve only to spread philosophy, that it would act only in accordance with virtuous principles. Bonaparte re-established, by decree, the National Guard of the Kingdom, the mere name of which used formerly to make his head swim. He found himself compelled to annul the divorce pronounced under the Empire between despotism and demagogy and to favour their renewed alliance: from this hymen was to spring, on the Champ de Mai, a liberty wearing the red cap and the turban on its head, the mameluke's sabre in its belt and the revolutionary axe in its hand, a liberty surrounded by the shades of those thousands of victims sacrificed on the scaffolds or in the burning campaigns of Spain and the icy deserts of Russia. Before success, the mamelukes were Jacobins; after success, the Jacobins were to become mamelukes: Sparta was for the moment of danger, Constantinople for that of triumph. Bonaparte would, indeed, have liked to recover possession for himself alone, but that was impossible for him; he found men prepared to dispute it with him: first, the earnest Republicans, delivered from the chains of despotism and the laws of the Monarchy, desired to retain an independence which is, perhaps, but a noble error; next, the madmen of the old faction of the Mountain: these latter, humiliated at having been nothing more under the Empire than the police-spies of a despot, seemed resolved to resume on their own account that liberty of doing everything of which, during fifteen years, they had yielded the privilege to a master. But not the Republicans, nor the Revolutionaries, nor the satellites of Bonaparte were strong enough to establish their separate power, or mutually to subjugate each other. Threatened from without by an invasion, pursued from within by public opinion, they understood that, if they became divided, they were lost: in order to escape the danger, they adjourned their quarrel; some brought their systems and illusions to the common defense, others their terror and perversity. None was in earnest in this compact; each, once the crisis passed, resolved to turn it to his profit; all sought beforehand to make sure of the results of victory. In that awful _trente-et-un_ three enormous gamblers kept the bank by turns: liberty, anarchy and despotism, all three cheating and striving to win a game which was lost for all. Full of that thought, they did not proceed rigorously against a forlorn hope which was urging on revolutionary measures: federates had been formed in the _faubourgs_ and federations were being organized under stem oaths in Brittany, Anjou, Lyonnais and Burgundy; the _Marseillaise_ and the _Carmagnole_ were heard sung; a club, established in Paris, corresponded with other clubs in the provinces; the resurrection of the _Journal des Patriotes_ was announced. But on that side what confidence were the resuscitated of 1793 able to inspire? Was it not known how they explained liberty, equality, the rights of man? Were they more moral, more wise, more sincere, after their enormities than before? Was it because they had tainted themselves with all the vices that they had become capable of all the virtues? One cannot abdicate crime as easily as a crown: the brow once girt with the hideous circlet retains ineffaceable marks from its contact. The idea of reducing an ambitious man of genius from the rank of Emperor to that of Generalissimo or President of the Republic was a chimera: the red cap which they had fixed on the head of his busts during the Hundred Days would only have foreboded to Bonaparte the resumption of the diadem, were it given to the athletes who race through the world to run the same course twice. Still, some Liberals of the better sort promised themselves the victory: mistaken men, like Benjamin Constant, dolts, like M. Simonde-Sismondi[309], spoke of placing the Prince of Canino[310] at the Ministry of the Interior, Lieutenant-general Comte Carnot at the War Office, the Comte Merlin[311] at the Ministry of Justice. In appearance despondent, Bonaparte made no opposition to democratic movements which, in the last result, supplied his army with conscripts. He allowed himself to be attacked in pamphlets; caricatures repeated "Elba" to him as parrots cried "Péronne" to Louis XI[312]. They preached liberty and equality to the man escaped from prison, addressing him in the second person singular; he listened to these remonstrances with an air of compunction. Suddenly, bursting the shackles in which they had pretended to bind him, he proclaimed, by his own authority, not a plebeian Constitution, but an aristocratic Constitution, an "Additional Act" to the Constitutions of the Empire[313]. [Sidenote: The "Additional Act."] The contemplated Republic was changed by this adroit piece of juggling into the old Imperial Government, rejuvenated with feudality. The "Additional Act" lost Bonaparte the Republican Party and made malcontents in almost all the other parties. License reigned in Paris, anarchy in the provinces; the civil and military authorities contended with each other; here men threatened to burn the manors and murder the priests; there they hoisted the White Flag and shouted, "Long live the King!" Finding himself attacked, Bonaparte retreated; he withdrew the nomination of the mayors of communes from his commissaries-extraordinary and restored that nomination to the people. Alarmed at the multiplicity of negative votes against the "Additional Act," he abandoned his _de facto_ dictatorship and convened the Chamber of Representatives by virtue of that Act which was not yet accepted. Blundering from rock to rock, he was scarcely delivered from one danger before stumbling against another: the sovereign of a day, how was he to establish an hereditary peerage which the spirit of equality repelled? How to govern the two Chambers? Would they yield a passive obedience? What would be the relations of the Chambers with the proposed assembly of the Champ de Mai, which had no real object, since the "Additional Act" was brought into operation before the suffrages had been counted? Would that assembly, consisting of thirty thousand electors, not believe itself to be the representatives of the nation? This Champ de Mai, so pompously announced and celebrated on the 1st of June, resolved itself into a simple march-past of troops and a distribution of colours before a despised altar. Napoleon, surrounded by his brothers, the State dignitaries, the marshals, the civil and judicial bodies, proclaimed the sovereignty of the people in which he did not believe. The citizens had imagined that they themselves would frame a Constitution on that solemn day, the peaceful middle class expected that then would be declared Napoleon's abdication in favour of his son, an abdication concocted at Bâle between the agents of Fouché and of Prince Metternich: and there was nothing but a ridiculous political trap! The "Additional Act," for the rest, stood forth as an act of homage to the Legitimacy; save for a few differences, and, in particular, excluding "the abolition of confiscation," it was the Charter. * Those sudden changes, that confounding of all things, announced the last struggles of despotism. Nevertheless, the Emperor could not receive the death-stroke from within, for the power which was combating him was as debilitated as himself; the revolutionary Titan, whom Napoleon had floored of old, had not recovered his native energy; the two giants were now aiming useless blows at one another; it was nothing more than the contest of two shadows. To these general impossibilities were added, for Bonaparte, domestic tribulations and palace cares; he announced to France the return of the Empress and the King of Rome, and neither one nor the other came back. Speaking of the Queen of Holland, who, thanks to Louis XVIII., had become Duchesse de Saint-Leu, he said: "When one has accepted the prosperity of a family, one must embrace its adversity." Joseph, who had hastened from Switzerland, only asked him for money; Lucien alarmed him through his Liberal connections; Murat, after first conspiring against his brother-in-law, had been in too great a hurry, on returning to him, to attack the Austrians: stripped of the Kingdom of Naples, a runaway of ill-omen, he was awaiting, under arrest, near Marseilles, the catastrophe which I will describe to you later[314]. [Sidenote: Twofold traitors.] And then, was the Emperor able to trust his former partisans and his self-styled friends? Had they not infamously abandoned him at the moment of his fall? That Senate which formerly crawled at his feet, now ensconced in the peerage, had it not decreed its benefactor's deposition? Could he believe those men, when they came and said to him: "The interests of France are inseparable from your own. If fortune betrays your efforts, reverses, Sire, would not impair our perseverance and would redouble our attachment to your person." Your perseverance! Your attachment redoubled by misfortune! You said this on the 11th of June 1815: what had you said on the 2nd of April 1814? What will you say a few weeks later, on the 19th of July 1815? The Ministry of the Imperial Police was in correspondence, as you have seen, with Ghent, Vienna and Bâle; the marshals to whom Bonaparte was compelled to give the command of his soldiers had but now taken the oath to Louis XVIII.; they had issued the most violent proclamations against him, Bonaparte[315]: since that time, it is true, they had re-espoused their sultan; but, if he had been arrested at Grenoble, what would they have done with him? Is it enough to break an oath to restore its whole strength to another violated oath? Are two perjuries equivalent to one fidelity? A few days more, and those swearers of the Champ de Mai will carry back their devotion to Louis XVIII. in the halls of the Tuileries; they will approach the sacred table of the God of Peace, in order to have themselves appointed ministers at the banquets of war[316]; heralds-at-arms and brandishers of the royal insignia at the coronation of Bonaparte, they will fulfil the same functions at the coronation of Charles X.[317]; then, as the commissaries of another power[318], they will lead that King a prisoner to Cherbourg, scarce finding a little corner free in their consciences to hang up in it the badge of their new oath. It is hard to be born in times of improbity, in those days when two men talking together study how to keep back words from their tongue, for fear of offending each other and of mutually making one another blush. Those who had not been able to tie themselves to Napoleon by his glory, who had not been able to adhere from gratitude to the benefactor from whom they had received their riches, their honours and their very names, were they likely to sacrifice themselves now to his needy hopes? Would they link themselves to a precarious and reincipient fortune, the ingrates whom a fortune consolidated by unexampled successes and by a possession of sixteen years of victories had failed to fix? So many chrysalides who, between two spring-times, had put off and put on, shed and resumed the skin of the Legitimist and the Revolutionary, of the Napoleonist and the Bourbonist; so many words given and broken; so many crosses moved from the knight's breast to the horse's tail and from the horse's tail to the knight's breast; so many doughty warriors changing their banners and strewing the lists with their pledges of perjured faith; so many noble dames, the attendants by turns of Marie-Louise and Marie-Caroline[319], were calculated to leave in the depths of Napoleon's heart naught but distrust, horror and contempt; that great man grown old stood alone among all those traitors, men and fortune, on a tottering earth, under a hostile sky, in front of his accomplished destiny and the judgment of God. * Napoleon had found no faithful friends, but the phantoms of his past glory; these escorted him, as I have told you, from the spot at which he landed to the capital of France. But the eagles which had "flown from steeple to steeple" from Cannes to Paris alighted wearily upon the chimneys of the Tuileries, able to go no further. Napoleon did not hurl himself at the head of the roused populace upon Belgium, before an Anglo-Prussian army had assembled there: he stopped; he tried to negociate with Europe and humbly to maintain the treaties of the Legitimacy. The Congress of Vienna urged against M. le Duc de Vicence the abdication of the 11th of April 1814: by that abdication, Bonaparte "recognised that he was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe" and consequently "renounced, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy." Now, since he had come to restore his power, he was manifestly violating the Treaty of Paris and placing himself again in the political situation anterior to the 31st of March 1814: therefore it was he, Bonaparte, who was declaring war against Europe, and not Europe against Bonaparte. These logical quibbles of diplomatic attorneys, as I remarked in connection with M. de Talleyrand's letter, were worth what they might be before the battle. [Sidenote: Napoleon's last campaign.] The news of Bonaparte's landing at Cannes had reached Vienna on the 6th of March, in the middle of an entertainment at which was represented the assembly of the divinities of Olympus and Parnassus. Alexander had just received the proposal for an alliance between France, Austria and England; he hesitated a moment between the two pieces of intelligence, and then said: "The question is not of myself, but of the safety of the world." And an estafette carried orders to St. Petersburg to dispatch the Guards. The withdrawing armies stopped short; their long line faced about, and eight hundred thousand enemies turned their eyes towards France. Bonaparte prepared for war; he was expected in new Catalaunian Fields[320]: God had summoned him to the battle which was to put an end to the reign of battles. The heat of the wings of the renown of Marengo and Austerlitz had sufficed to hatch armies in that France which is one great nest of soldiers. Bonaparte had restored to his legions their epithets of "invincible," "terrible" and "incomparable;" seven armies resumed the titles of Armies of the Pyrenees, of the Alps, of the Jura, the Moselle, the Rhine: great memories which served as a frame for supposed troops, for expected triumphs. A real army was mustered in Paris and at Laon: one hundred and fifty mounted batteries, ten thousand picked soldiers entered into the guards; eighteen thousand sailors distinguished at Lützen and Bautzen; thirty thousand veterans, officers and non-commissioned officers, in garrison in the fortified towns; seven departments in the North and East ready to rise in a body; one hundred and eighty thousand men of the National Guard mobilized; volunteer corps in Lorraine, Alsace and Franche-Comté; federates offering their pikes and their strength; Paris turning out three thousand muskets a day: those were the Emperor's resources. Perhaps he might yet once more have overturned the world, had he been able to resolve, while liberating the country, to summon the foreign nations to independence. The moment was propitious: the kings, after promising their subjects constitutional government, had shamefully gone from their word. But liberty was distasteful to Napoleon, since he had drunk of the cup of power; he preferred to be vanquished with soldiers rather than to vanquish with peoples. The army corps which he successively sent towards the Netherlands amounted to seventy thousand men. * We Emigrants, in the city of Charles V., were like the women of that city: seated behind their windows, they watch the soldiers, in a little slanting mirror, passing down the street. Louis XVIII. was there in a corner, completely forgotten: scarcely did he from time to time receive a note from the Prince de Talleyrand returning from Vienna, a few lines from the members of the diplomatic body resident about the Duke of Wellington as commissaries, Messieurs Pozzo di Borgo, de Vincent[321], etc., etc. They had plenty to do besides thinking of us! A man unacquainted with politics would never have believed that an impotent hidden on the banks of the Lys would be flung back upon the throne by the collision of thousands of soldiers ready to cut each other's throats: soldiers of whom he was neither the King nor the general, who were not thinking of him, who knew of neither his name nor his existence. Of two such close spots as Ghent and Waterloo, never did one appear so dim, the other so dazzling: the Legitimacy lay in the store-house, like an old broken waggon. We knew that Bonaparte's troops were approaching; to cover us we had only two little companies under the orders of the Duc de Berry, a Prince whose blood could not avail us, for it was already demanded elsewhere. One thousand horse, detached from the French army, would have carried us off in a few hours. The fortifications of Ghent were demolished; the enceinte which remained would have been the more easily carried in that the Belgian population was not in our favour. The scene which I had witnessed at the Tuileries was repeated: His Majesty's carriages were secretly got ready; the horses were ordered. We faithful ministers would have splashed after by God's grace. Monsieur left for Brussels, charged to watch the movements from near at hand. M. de Blacas had become anxious and melancholy; I, poor man, consoled him. People in Vienna were not favourably disposed to him; M. de Talleyrand laughed at him; the Royalists accused him of being the cause of Napoleon's return. Thus, whatever happened, no further honoured exile for him in England, no further possibility of first places in France: I was his only support. I used to meet him pretty often in the Horse-market, where he trotted about alone; harnessing myself to his side, I fell in with "his sad thought." This man whom I have defended at Ghent and in England, whom I defended in France after the Hundred Days and even in the preface to the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, has always been adverse to me: that would be nothing, if he had not been an evil for the Monarchy. I do not repent my past simplicity; but I am bound, in these Memoirs, to rectify the surprises sprung upon my judgment and my good heart. * [Sidenote: Excitement at Ghent.] On the 18th of June 1815, I left Ghent at noon by the Brussels gate; I was going to finish my walk alone on the high-road. I had taken Cæsar's _Commentaries_ with me, and I strolled slowly along, immersed in my reading. I was more than a league from the town, when I thought I heard a dull rumbling: I stopped, looked up at the sky, which was fairly laden with clouds, taking counsel with myself whether I should continue to walk on, or go back towards Ghent for fear of a storm. I listened; I heard nothing more save the cry of a moor-hen in the rushes and the sound of a village-clock. I pursued my way: I had not taken thirty steps before the rumbling began again, now short, now long and at irregular intervals; sometimes it was perceptible only through a trembling of the air, which communicated itself to the ground over those immense plains, so distant was it. Those detonations, less extensive, less undulating, less connected than those of thunder, gave rise in my mind to the idea of a battle. I found myself in front of a poplar planted at the corner of a hop-field. I crossed the road and leant erect against the trunk of the tree, my face turned in the direction of Brussels. A southerly wind springing up carried to me more distinctly the sound of artillery. That great battle, nameless as yet, of which I listened to the echoes at the foot of a poplar, and of which a village clock had just rung out the unknown funerals, was the Battle of Waterloo! A silent and solitary hearer of the formidable judgment of the destinies, I should have been less moved if I had found myself in the fray: the peril, the fire, the press of Death would have left me no time for meditation; but, alone under a tree, in the fields of Ghent, like the shepherd of the flocks which passed around me, I was overwhelmed by the weight of my reflexions: what was that battle? Was it decisive? Was Napoleon there in person? Were lots being cast upon the world, as upon Christ's vesture? In the event of success or reverse for one side or the other, what would be the consequence for the nations: liberty or slavery? But what blood was flowing! Was not each sound that reached my ear the last sigh of a Frenchman? Was it a new Crécy, a new Poitiers, a new Agincourt, in which France's most implacable enemies were about to revel? If they triumphed, was not our glory lost? If Napoleon won the day, what became of our liberty? Although a success on Napoleon's side opened up to me an eternal exile, the mother-land at that moment gained the mastery in my heart; my prayers were for the oppressor of France, if, while saving our honour, he was to snatch us from foreign domination. Was Wellington triumphing? Then the Legitimacy would re-enter Paris behind those red uniforms which had just renewed their die in the blood of the French! Then the royalty would have as state-carriages at its coronation the ambulance-waggons filled with our maimed grenadiers! What manner of restoration would it be, accomplished under such auspices?... That is but a very small portion of the ideas that tormented me. Each gun-shot gave me a shock and doubled the beating of my heart. At a few leagues from an immense catastrophe, I did not see it, I could not touch the huge funeral monument growing minute by minute at Waterloo, even as from the shore of Bulak, on the bank of the Nile, I had vainly stretched out my hands towards the Pyramids. No traveller appeared; a few women in the fields, peacefully weeding rows of vegetables, did not seem to hear the noise to which I was listening. But see, a courier came riding up: I left the foot of my tree and placed myself in the middle of the road; I stopped the courier and questioned him. He belonged to the Duc de Berry and came from Alost: "Bonaparte entered Brussels yesterday (17 June), after a sanguinary combat. The battle was to have recommenced to-day (18 June). They think the Allies have suffered a decisive defeat, and the order is given to retreat." The courier continued his road. I followed him, hastening my steps: I was passed by the carriage of a merchant who was fleeing post with his family; he confirmed the courier's story. [Sidenote: Confusion at Ghent.] All was in confusion when I returned to Ghent: they were closing the gates of the city; only the wickets remained half-open; ill-armed civilians and a few soldiers in depot were keeping sentry. I went to the King's. Monsieur had just arrived by a circuitous route: he had left Brussels upon the false news that Bonaparte was about to enter it and that a first lost battle left no hope of winning a second. They were saying that, as the Prussians had not formed their lines, the English had been crushed. At these bulletins, the stampede became general: the possessors of some resources left; I, who am accustomed never to have anything, was always ready and prepared. I wanted to let Madame de Chateaubriand move out before me; she was a great Bonapartist, but did not like cannon-shots: she refused to leave me. In the evening, council at His Majesty's: we heard Monsieur's reports over again, as well as the _on dits_ picked up at the military commandant's or at the Baron d'Eckstein's[322]. The waggon to contain the Crown diamonds was put to: I had no need of a waggon to remove my treasure. I put the black-silk handkerchief in which I wrap my head at night into my flaccid minister-of-the-interior's portfolio, and placed myself at the Sovereign's disposal, with that important document of the affairs of the Legitimacy. I was richer in my first emigration, when my knapsack did duty as my pillow and served as a swaddling-band for _Atala_: but, in 1815, _Atala_ was a big gawky little girl of thirteen or fourteen, who was going about alone in the world and who, to her father's honour, had got herself too much talked about. On the 19th of June, at one o'clock in the morning, a letter from M. Pozzo, brought to the King by express, reestablished the truth of the facts. Bonaparte had never entered Brussels; he had decidedly lost the Battle of Waterloo. Leaving Paris on the 12th of June, he joined his army on the 14th. On the 15th, he forced the enemy's lines on the Sambre. On the 16th, he beat the Prussians in those plains of Fleurus[323] where victory seems to be always faithful to the French. The villages of Ligny and Saint-Amand were carried. At Quatre-Bras, a further success: the Duke of Brunswick[324] remained among the dead. Blücher[325], in full retreat, fell back upon a reserve of thirty thousand men under the orders of General Bülow[326]; the Duke of Wellington, with the English and Dutch, set his back against Brussels. On the morning of the 18th, before the first gun had been fired, the Duke of Wellington declared that he would be able to hold out until three o'clock; but that, at that time, if the Prussians did not come into sight, he would necessarily be destroyed: driven back upon Planchenois and Brussels, he was shut out from all retreat. He had been surprised by Napoleon, his strategic position was detestable; he had accepted it and had not chosen it. The French, at first, on the left wing of the enemy, took the heights commanding the Château d'Hougoumont as far as the farms of the Haye-Sainte and Papelotte; on the right wing, they attacked the village of Mont Saint-Jean; the farm of the Haye-Sainte was carried in the centre by Prince Jerome. But the Prussian reserves appeared in the direction of Saint-Lambert at six o'clock in the evening: a new and furious attack was delivered upon the village of the Haye-Sainte; Blücher arrived with fresh troops and cut off the squares of the Imperial Guard from the rest of our forces. Around this immortal phalanx, the torrent of fugitives carried all with it among waves of dust, fiery smoke and grape-shot, in darkness ploughed with congreve-rockets, amid the roar of three hundred pieces of artillery and the headlong gallop of five-and-twenty thousand horses: it was as it were the summary of all the battles of the Empire. Twice the French shouted, "Victory!" and twice their shouts were stifled under the pressure of the enemy's columns. The fire from our lines died out; the cartridges were exhausted; some wounded grenadiers, amid thirty thousand slain and a hundred thousand blood-stained cannon-balls, cooled and conglomerated at their feet, remained erect, leaning on their muskets, with broken bayonets and empty barrels. Not far from them, the man of battles listened, with a fixed stare, to the last cannon-shot he was to hear in his life. In that field of carnage, his brother Jerome was still fighting with his expiring battalions overwhelmed by numbers; but his courage was unable to retrieve the victory. [Sidenote: The battle of Waterloo.] The number of killed on the side of the Allies was estimated at eighteen thousand men, on the side of the French at twenty-five thousand; twelve hundred British officers had perished; almost all the Duke of Wellington's aides-de-camp were killed or wounded; there was not a family in England but went into mourning. The Prince of Orange[327] was hit by a bullet in the shoulder; the Baron de Vincent, the Austrian Ambassador, was shot through the hand. The English were beholden for the success to the Irish and to the Highland Brigade, whom our cavalry charges were unable to break. General Grouchy's[328] corps, not having advanced, was not present in the action. The two armies crossed steel and fire with a valour and desperation inspired by a national enmity of ten centuries. Lord Castlereagh, giving an account of the battle in the House of Lords[329], said: "The British and French soldiers, after the action, washed their blood-stained hands in the same stream, and from opposite banks congratulated each other on their courage." Wellington had always been baleful to Bonaparte, or rather the rival genius to France, the English genius, barred the road to victory. To-day, the Prussians lay claim to the honour of this decisive battle, as against the English; but in war it is not the action accomplished but the name that makes the triumpher: it was not Bonaparte who won the real Battle of Jena[330]. The blunders of the French were important: they made mistakes as to friendly or hostile bodies; they occupied the position of Quatre-Bras too late; Marshal Grouchy, whose instructions were to hold the Prussians in check with his thirty-six thousand men, allowed them to pass without seeing them: hence the reproaches which our generals cast at one another. Bonaparte attacked in front, according to his custom, instead of turning the English, and, with a master's presumption, occupied himself in cutting off the retreat of an enemy who was not beaten. Many falsehoods and some rather curious truths have been retailed concerning this catastrophe. The phrase, "The Guard dies but does not surrender," is an invention which no one dares now to defend. It appears to be certain that, at the commencement of the action, Soult made some strategic observations to the Emperor, and that Napoleon replied, drily: "Because Wellington defeated you, you persist in thinking him a great general." At the end of the fighting, M. de Turenne[331] urged Bonaparte to retire, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy: Bonaparte, emerging from his thoughts as from a dream, at first flew into a passion; then, suddenly, in the midst of his rage, he flung himself upon his horse and fled. * On the 19th of June, a salute of a hundred guns at the Invalides announced the successes of Ligny, Charleroi and Quatre-Bras; they were celebrating victories that had died the day before at Waterloo. The first messenger to bring to Paris the news of this defeat, one of the greatest in history in its results, was Napoleon himself. He re-entered the barriers on the night of the 21st: as who should say returning from his shades to inform his friends that he was no more. He stayed at the Élysée-Bourbon; when he arrived from Elba, he had stayed at the Tuileries: those refuges, instinctively chosen, revealed the change in his destiny. [Sidenote: Flight of Napoleon.] Fallen in a noble fight abroad, Napoleon had, in Paris, to endure the assaults of the advocates who wished to exploit his misfortunes: he regretted that he had not dissolved the Chamber before his departure for the army; he often also repented that he had not had Fouché and Talleyrand shot. But it is certain that Bonaparte, after Waterloo, forbade himself any kind of violence, whether because he obeyed the natural calm of his temperament, or because he was daunted by fate; he no longer said, as before his first abdication: "They shall see what the death of a great man is." The time for that spirited language was past. Opposed as he was to liberty, he thought of breaking up the Chamber of Representatives, presided over by Lanjuinais, who from a citizen became a senator, from a senator a peer, who since became a citizen again, and who from a citizen was about again to become a peer. General La Fayette, deputy, read from the tribune a motion declaring "the Chamber in permanent session, any attempt to dissolve it a crime of high treason, whosoever should be guilty of it a traitor to the country and to be tried as such" (21 June 1815). The general's speech began with these words: "Gentlemen, now when, for the first time since many years, I raise a voice which the old friends of liberty will still recognise, I feel called upon to speak to you of the danger of the country. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This is the time to rally round the Tricolour Flag, the flag of '89, the flag of liberty, equality and public order." The anachronism of this speech caused a momentary illusion; people thought they saw the Revolution, personified by La Fayette, rise from the tomb and stand pale and wrinkled in the tribune. But those motions of order, revived after Mirabeau, were now no more than worn-out weapons taken from an old arsenal. If La Fayette nobly united the end and the commencement of his life, it was not in his power to weld together the two ends of the broken chain of time. Benjamin Constant waited on the Emperor at the Élysée-Bourbon; he found him in his garden. The crowd was filling the Avenue de Marigny and shouting, "Long live the Emperor!" a touching cry coming from the popular heart: it was addressed to the vanquished! Bonaparte said to Benjamin Constant: "What duty do these owe me? I found them and left them poor." This is perhaps the only speech that came from his heart, if, nevertheless, the deputy's emotion did not deceive his hearing. Bonaparte, foreseeing the event, anticipated the summons they were preparing to serve on him. He abdicated so as not to be compelled to abdicate. "My political life is ended," he said; "I declare my son Emperor of the French, under the name of Napoleon II." A useless disposition, like that of Charles X. in favour of Henry V.: one gives crowns only when one possesses them, and men upset the will of adversity. Moreover, the Emperor was no more sincere on descending the throne a second time than he had been in his first retirement; when the French commissaries went to inform the Duke of Wellington that Napoleon had abdicated, he replied: "I knew that a year ago." The Chamber of Representatives, after some debates in which Manuel[332] addressed the House, accepted its Sovereign's new abdication, but vaguely and without appointing a Regency. An Executive Commission was created[333]: the Duc d'Otrante presided over it; three ministers, a councillor of State and a general of the Emperor's composed it, and stripped their master once more: these were Fouché, Caulaincourt, Carnot, Quinette[334] and Grenier[335]. During these transactions, Bonaparte was turning over his ideas in his head: "I have no army left," he said; "I have nothing but fugitives. The majority of the Chamber of Deputies are good; I have only La Fayette, Lanjuinais and a few others against me. If the nation rises, the enemy will be crushed; if, instead of rising, they quarrel, all will be lost. The nation has not sent deputies to overthrow me, but to support me. I am not afraid of them, whatever they may do; I shall always be the idol of the people and the army: if I were to say a word, they would be beaten to death. But if we quarrel, instead of acting in concert, we shall meet with the fate of the Lower Empire." [Sidenote: His second abdication.] A deputation from the Chamber of Representatives having come to congratulate him on his new abdication, he replied: "I thank you: I wish that my abdication may bring happiness to France; but I am not hopeful." He repented soon after, when he heard that the Chamber of Representatives had appointed a Commission of Government composed of five members. He said to the ministers: "I have not abdicated in favour of a new Directory; I have abdicated in favour of my son: if they do not proclaim him, my abdication is null and void. It is not by appearing before the Allies with hang-dog looks and bent knee that the Chambers will force them to recognise the national independence." He complained that La Fayette, Sébastian[336], Pontécoulant[337], Benjamin Constant had conspired against him, that, besides, the Chambers had not enough energy. He said that he alone could repair all, but that the leaders would never consent, that they would rather be swallowed up in the abyss than unite with him, Napoleon, to close it. On the 27th of June, at the Malmaison, he wrote this sublime letter: "In abdicating the power, I did not renounce the citizen's noblest right, the right of defending my country. In these grave circumstances, I offer my services as a general, regarding myself still as the first soldier of the mother-land." The Duc de Bassano having represented to him that the Chambers would not be for him: "Then I see," he said, "one must always give in. That infamous Fouché is deceiving you: only Caulaincourt and Carnot are worth anything; but what can they do, with a traitor, Fouché, and two simpletons, Quinette and Grenier, and two Chambers which do not know what they want? You all believe, like fools, in the fine promises of the foreigners; you believe they will set the pot boiling, and that they will give you a prince of their making, do you not? You are wrong[338]." Plenipotentiaries were sent to the Allies. On the 29th of June, Napoleon demanded two frigates, stationed at Rochefort, to take him out of France. Meanwhile he had retired to the Malmaison. The debates in the House of Peers were lively. Long an enemy of Bonaparte, Carnot, who signed the order for the massacres of Avignon without having time to read it, had found time during the Hundred Days to immolate his republicanism to the title of count. On the 22nd of June, he had read, in the Luxembourg, a letter from the Minister of War containing an exaggerated report on the military resources of France. Ney, newly arrived, was unable to hear this report unangered. Napoleon, in his bulletins, had spoken of the marshal with ill-disguised dissatisfaction, and Gourgaud accused Ney of being the chief cause of the loss of the Battle of Waterloo. Ney rose and said: "The report is untrue, untrue in every respect: Grouchy can have only twenty to twenty-five thousand men under his orders, at the most. There is not a single soldier of the Guard left to be rallied: I commanded it; I saw it slaughtered bodily before leaving the battle-field. The enemy is at Nivelle with eighty thousand men; he can be in Paris in six days: you have no other means of saving the country than to open negociations." [Sidenote: Debates in the peers.] The Aide-de-camp Flahaut[339] endeavoured to support the report of the Minister of War. Ney replied, with fresh vehemence: "I repeat, you have no other way of safety except negociation. You must recall the Bourbons. As for myself, I shall retire to the United States." At these words, Lavallette and Carnot overwhelmed the marshal with reproaches; Ney replied, with disdain: "I am not one of those men to whom their own interest is everything. What have I to gain by the return of Louis XVIII.? To be shot for the crime of desertion. But I owe the truth to my country." In the sitting of the Peers of the 23rd, General Drouot, recalling this scene, said: "I heard with regret what was said yesterday to disparage the glory of our arms, to exaggerate our disasters and disparage our resources. My astonishment was so much the greater because those speeches were delivered by a distinguished general who, through his great valour and his military attainments, has so often deserved the gratitude of the nation." In the sitting of the 22nd, a second storm had burst out at the heel of the first: the question was Bonaparte's abdication; Lucien was insisting that his nephew should be recognized as Emperor. M. de Pontécoulant interrupted the speaker, and asked by what right Lucien, a foreigner and a Roman prince, permitted himself to give a sovereign to France: "How," he added, "can we recognise a child living in a foreign country?" At this question, La Bédoyère[340], speaking excitedly from his seat: "I have heard voices around the throne of the fortunate sovereign; they withdraw from it to-day when he is unfortunate. There are people who do not want to recognise Napoleon II., because they want to receive the law from the foreigner, to whom they give the name of Allies.... Napoleon's abdication is indivisible. If you refuse to recognise his son, he must remain sword in hand, surrounded by Frenchmen who have shed their blood for him and who are still all covered with wounds.... He will be abandoned by base generals who have already betrayed him.... But if you declare that every Frenchman who deserts his flag shall be covered with infamy, his house razed to the ground, his family outlawed, then there will be no more traitors, no more intrigues such as have occasioned the late catastrophes, some of whose authors are perhaps sitting among us." The House rose in an uproar: "Order! Order! Order!" they bellowed, feeling the thrust. "Young man, you forget yourself!" cried Masséna[341]. "Do you think you are still in the guard-room?" asked Lameth. All the portents of the Second Restoration were threatening: Bonaparte had returned at the head of four hundred Frenchmen, Louis XVIII. was returning behind four hundred thousand foreigners; he passed near the bloody pool of Waterloo to go to Saint-Denis as though to his funeral. It was while the Legitimacy was thus advancing that the interpellations of the House of Peers resounded; they contained something, I know not what, of those terrible revolutionary scenes of the great days of our troubles, when the dagger was passed round on the bench from hand to hand among the victims. A few soldiers whose baleful fascination had brought about the ruin of France, by producing the second foreign invasion, struggled on the threshold of the palace; their prophetic despair, their gestures, their words from the tomb, seemed to announce a treble death: death to themselves, death to the man whom they had blessed, death to the man whom they had proscribed. * While Bonaparte was retiring to the Malmaison with the finished Empire, we were leaving Ghent with the recommencing Monarchy. Pozzo, who knew how little question of the Legitimacy there was in high places, hastened to write to Louis XVIII. to set out and arrive in good time, if he wished to reign before the place was taken: it was to that note that Louis XVIII. owed his crown in 1815. At Mons, I missed the first occasion of fortune in my political career; I was my own obstacle, and I found myself incessantly in my way. This time my "good qualities" played me the ill turn which my faults might have done me. [Sidenote: Talleyrand again.] M. de Talleyrand, in all the pride of a negociation which had enriched him, claimed that he had rendered the greatest services to the Legitimacy, and was returning as the master. Astonished that they had not already followed, for the return to Paris, the road which he had traced out, he was much more dissatisfied to find M. de Blacas still with the King. He looked upon M. de Blacas as the scourge of the Monarchy; but this was not the real motive of his aversion: he beheld in M. de Blacas the favourite, and consequently the rival; he also feared Monsieur, and had flown into a passion when, a fortnight earlier, Monsieur had made him an offer of his hotel on the Lys. To ask for M. de Blacas' removal was most natural; to demand it was too reminiscent of Bonaparte. M. de Talleyrand drove into Mons at six o'clock in the evening, accompanied by the Abbé Louis: M. de Ricé, M. de Jaucourt and a few other boon companions flew to him. Full of an ill-humour such as he had never yet displayed, the ill-humour of a king who believes his authority to have been slighted, he refused at first to go to Louis XVIII., replying to those who urged him to do so with his ostentatious phrase: "I am never in a hurry; it will be time enough tomorrow." I went to see him; he tried upon me all those wheedling tricks with which he used to seduce small ambitious men and important nincompoops. He took me by the arm, leant upon me while he spoke to me: familiarities denoting high favour and calculated to turn my head, although with me they were quite lost; I did not even understand. I invited him to come to the King's, where I was going. Louis XVIII. was in one of his great sorrows: it was a question of parting with M. de Blacas; the latter could not return to France; opinion had risen against him. Although I had had reason to complain of the favourite in Paris, I had displayed no resentment towards him at Ghent. The King had been pleased with my conduct; in his emotion he treated me marvellously well. M. de Talleyrand's remarks had already been repeated to him: "He boasts," he said to me, "of having a second time put back the crown on my head, and he threatens to go back again to Germany: what do you think of that, Monsieur de Chateaubriand?" I replied: "Your Majesty must have been misinformed; M. de Talleyrand is only tired. If the King consents, I will return to see the minister." The King appeared gratified; what he liked least was worries; he longed for his repose, even at the expense of his affections. M. de Talleyrand, in the midst of his flatterers, was more arrogant than ever. I represented to him that, at so critical a moment, he could not dream of going away. Pozzo preached at him in the same sense: although he had not the slightest inclination for him, he liked, at that moment, to see him at the head of affairs, as an old acquaintance; besides, he believed him to be in favour with the Tsar. I made no headway on M. de Talleyrand's mind, the prince's familiars fought against me; even M. Mounier thought that M. de Talleyrand ought to retire. The Abbé Louis, who snapped at everybody, said to me, shaking his jaw three times: "If I were the prince, I should not remain a quarter of an hour at Mons." I answered: "Monsieur l'abbé, you and I can go where we please, no one will notice us; it is different with M. de Talleyrand." I insisted again and said to the prince: "Do you know that the King is continuing his journey?" M. de Talleyrand appeared surprised, and then said to me, loftily, as did the Balafré to those who wished to put him on his guard against the designs of Henry III.: "He will not dare!" I returned to the King's, where I found M. de Blacas. I told His Majesty, to excuse his minister, that he was ill, but that he would most certainly have the honour of paying his court to the King the next day. "As he pleases," replied Louis XVIII.: "I leave at three o'clock;" and then he added these words, in an affectionate tone: "I am going to part with M. de Blacas; the place will be vacant, Monsieur de Chateaubriand." [Sidenote: The great man snubbed.] It was the Royal Household laid at my feet A wary politician would have ceased to trouble his head about M. de Talleyrand and would have had the horses put to his carriage to follow or precede the King: I remained stupidly at my inn. M. de Talleyrand, unable to persuade himself that the King would go, had gone to bed: at three o'clock they woke him to tell him that the King was starting; he could not believe his ears: "Tricked! Betrayed!" he cried. They got him out of bed, and there he was, for the first time in his life, in the street at three o'clock in the morning, leaning on M. de Ricé's arm. He reached the King's house; the two leaders of the team had already half their bodies through the gate-way. The people motioned to the postillion to pull up; the King asked what was the matter; they cried: "Sire, it is M. de Talleyrand." "He's asleep," said Louis XVIII. "He is here, Sire." "Come on!" replied the King. The horses moved backward with the carriage; the door was opened, the King got down and dragged himself back to his apartment, followed by the limping minister. There M. de Talleyrand began an angry explanation. His Majesty listened to him, and answered: "Prince de Bénévent, so you're leaving us? The waters will do you good: you must send us your news." The King left the prince open-mouthed, had himself taken back to his berlin, and drove away. M. de Talleyrand was foaming with rage; Louis XVIII.'s composure had staggered him: he, M. de Talleyrand, who prided himself so greatly on his composure, to be beaten on his own ground, given the slip, on a square at Mons, like the most insignificant of men: he could not get over it! He remained dumb, watched the coach moving off, and then, seizing the Duc de Lévis by a button of his spencer: "Go, monsieur le duc, go and say how I am treated! I have put back the crown on the King's head"--he was always harking back to that crown--"and I am going back to Germany to begin the new Emigration." M. de Lévis, listening absent-mindedly, lifting himself on his toes, said: "Prince, I am going; the King must have at least one great lord with him." M. de Lévis flung himself into a hired cariole which was conveying the Chancellor of France: the two grandees of the Capetian Monarchy were going, side by side, to catch it up, sharing expenses, in a Merovingian _benna._ I had asked M. de Duras to endeavour to effect a reconciliation, and to send me the first news of it: "What!" said M. de Duras. "You are remaining behind, after what the King said to you?" M. de Blacas, when leaving Mons in his turn, thanked me for the interest I had shown him. I went back and found M. de Talleyrand embarrassed; he was now regretting that he had not followed my advice and that, like a wrong-headed subaltern, he had refused to go to the King in the evening; he feared that arrangements would be made without him, that he would not be able to participate in the political power and to profit by the financial jobbing which was preparing. I told him that, although I differed from his opinion, I remained none the less attached to him, as an ambassador to his minister; that, besides, I had friends with the King, and that I hoped soon to hear something good. M. de Talleyrand was all tenderness; he leant upon my shoulder: certainly, at that moment, he thought me a very great man. It was not long before I received a note from M. de Duras; he wrote to me from Cambrai that the affair was arranged and that M. de Talleyrand would receive orders to start: this time the prince did not fail to obey. What devil was prompting me? I had not followed the King, who had, so to speak, offered or rather given me the ministry of his Household and who was offended at my obstinacy in remaining at Mons: I was breaking my neck on behalf of M. de Talleyrand whom I hardly knew, whom I did not esteem, whom I did not admire; for M. de Talleyrand who was about to enter into combinations quite different from mine, who lived in an atmosphere of corruption in which I could not breathe! [Sidenote: I neglect fortune.] It was from Mons itself, amid all his worries, that the Prince de Bénévent sent M. de Perray to Naples to receive the millions of one of his Viennese bargains. M. de Blacas was at the same time travelling with the Naples Embassy in his pocket, and some other millions which the generous exile of Ghent had given him at Mons. I had kept on good terms with M. de Blacas, precisely because everybody detested him; I had incurred M. de Talleyrand's friendship for my fidelity to a whim of his mood; Louis XVIII. had positively called me about his person, and I preferred the baseness of a faithless man to the King's favour: it was only too just that I should receive the reward of my stupidity, that I should be abandoned by all for having tried to serve all. I returned to France without the wherewithal to pay my journey, while treasures poured down upon those in disgrace: I deserved that correction. It is very well to fence one's way as a poor knight when the whole world is cased in gold; but still one must not make enormous mistakes: had I remained with the King, the combination of the Talleyrand and Fouché Ministry would have become almost impossible; had the Restoration commenced with a moral and honourable ministry, all the combinations of the future might have been different. My carelessness of my own person deceived me as to the importance of facts: the majority of men have the fault of reckoning themselves too high; I have the fault of not reckoning myself high enough: I wrapped myself in my habitual disdain of my fortune; I ought to have seen that the fortune of France was at that moment linked with that of my small destinies: such entanglements are very common in history. * Leaving Mons at last, I arrived at Cateau-Cambrésis; M. de Talleyrand joined me there: we seemed as though we had come to remake the treaty of peace of 1559 between Henry II. of France[342] and Philip II. of Spain[343]. At Cambrai it appeared that the Marquis de La Suze, a quarter-master of the time of Fénelon, had disposed of the billets of Madame de Lévis, Madame de Chateaubriand and myself. We remained in the street, in the midst of the bon-fires, of the crowd circulating around us, and of the inhabitants crying, "Long live the King!" A student, hearing that I was there, took us to his mother's house. The friends of the different monarchies of France were beginning to make their appearance; they were not coming to Cambrai for the league against Venice[344], but to combine against the new Constitutions; they were hastening to lay at the King's feet their successive loyalties and their hatred of the Charter: a passport which they considered necessary with Monsieur; I and two or three reasonable Gileses already smelt of Jacobinism. On the 28th of June, appeared the Declaration of Cambrai. In it the King said: "I wish to remove from my person only those men whose reputation is a subject of grief to France and of dismay to Europe." Now behold, the name of Fouché was pronounced with gratitude by the Pavillon Marsan! The King laughed at his brother's new passion, and said: "He has not received it by divine inspiration." I have already told you that, when passing through Cambrai after the Hundred Days, I vainly sought my lodging of the time of the Navarre Regiment and the coffee-house which I frequented with La Martinière: all had vanished with my youth. From Cambrai, we went to sleep at Roye: the mistress of the inn took Madame de Chateaubriand for Madame la Dauphine; she was carried in triumph to a large room in which stood a table laid for thirty persons: the room, lighted by wax-candles, tallow-candles and a great fire, was stifling. The hostess did not wish to receive payment, and said: "I look askance at myself for not having got myself guillotined for our kings." Last spark of a fire which had animated the French for so many centuries. General Lamothe, brother-in-law to M. Laborie, came, despatched by the authorities of the capital, to tell us that it would be impossible for us to appear in Paris without the tricolour cockade. M. de La Fayette and other commissaries, very ill received, for the rest, by the Allies, went fawning from one staff-office to the other, begging from the foreigners for a master of some sort for France: any king, at the Cossack's own option, would do excellently, provided that he did not descend from St. Louis and Louis XIV. [Sidenote: The journey to Paris.] At Roye we held a council: M. de Talleyrand had a pair of hacks put to his carriage and went to the King's. His equipage took up the width of the square, from the minister's inn to the Kings door. He stepped out of his car with a memorandum, which he read to us: he considered the course we should have to follow on our arrival; he ventured a few words on the necessity of admitting all, without distinction, to the distribution of places; he hinted that we might extend our generosity as far as the judges of Louis XVI. His Majesty coloured and, striking the two arms of his chair, with both hands, cried: "Never!" A "never" of twenty-four hours! At Senlis we called at a canon's: his servant-maid received us like dogs; as to the canon, who was not St. Regulus[345], the patron saint of the town, he would not so much as look at us. His maid had orders to show us no other service than to buy us something to eat, for our own money: the _Génie du Christianisme_ availed me nothing. Yet Senlis ought to have been of good omen to us, since it was in that town that Henry IV. escaped from the hands of his gaolers in 1576: "I have no regret," exclaimed the King who was Montaigne's fellow-countryman, as he made his escape, "save for two things which I have left in Paris: the Mass and my wife." From Senlis we went to the birth-place of Philip Augustus, otherwise Gonesse. On approaching the village we saw two persons coming towards us: it was Marshal Macdonald and my faithful friend Hyde de Neuville[346]. They stopped our carriage and asked us where M. de Talleyrand was; they made no difficulties about telling me that they were looking for him in order to inform the King that His Majesty must not think of passing the gates before he had taken Fouché as his minister. Anxiety came over me, for, in spite of the manner in which Louis XVIII. had pronounced himself at Roye, I did not feel greatly reassured. I questioned the marshal: "What, monsieur le maréchal!" I asked. "Is it certain that we cannot return except on such harsh conditions?" "Faith, monsieur le vicomte," replied the marshal, "I am not quite convinced of it." The King stopped two hours at Gonesse. I left Madame de Chateaubriand in her carriage in the middle of the highroad, and went to the council at the mayor's offices. There a measure was brought under deliberation upon which depended the future fate of the monarchy. The discussion began: I, alone with M. Beugnot, maintained that in no case ought Louis XVIII. to admit M. Fouché to his counsels. The King listened: I saw that he would have liked to keep his word given at Roye; but he was absorbed by Monsieur and driven by the Duke of Wellington. [Sidenote: Fouché.] In a chapter of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, I have recapitulated the reasons upon which I laid stress at Gonesse. I was excited; the spoken word has a strength which becomes weaker in the written word: "Wherever an open tribune exists," I said, in this chapter, "no one liable to be exposed to reproaches of a certain kind can be placed at the head of the government There are certain speeches, certain phrases, which would oblige such a minister to resign on leaving the Chamber. This impossibility resulting from the free principle of representative government was not felt at a time when all illusions united to place a famous man in office, notwithstanding the too well-founded repugnance of the Crown. The rise of that man was bound to produce one of these two things: either the abolition of the Charter or the fall of the ministry at the opening of the session. Can one picture the minister to whom I refer listening in the Chamber of Deputies to the discussion concerning the 21st of January, liable every moment to be apostrophized by some deputy from Lyons, and always threatened with the terrible _Tu es ille vir!_ Men of that kind cannot be employed ostensibly, except with the mutes of the seraglio of Bajazet or the mutes of the Legislative Body of Bonaparte. What will become of the minister if a deputy, ascending the tribune with a _Moniteur_ in his hand, reads the report of the Convention of the 9th of August 1795; if he demands the expulsion of Fouché, as unworthy by virtue of that report which 'ejected him, Fouché'--I am quoting literally--'as a thief and a terrorist, whose atrocious and criminal conduct conferred dishonour and opprobrium upon any assembly whatever of which he became a member[347]?'" Those are the things which have been forgotten! After all, supposing they had had the misfortune to think that a man of that kind could ever be useful: they ought to have kept him behind the scenes, consulted his deplorable experience; but to do violence to the Crown and to public opinion, in a barefaced manner to summon such a minister as that to affairs, a man whom Bonaparte, at that very moment, treated as infamous: was that not to declare that they disclaimed liberty and virtue? Is a crown worth so great a sacrifice? It left them powerless to remove anybody: whom could they exclude, after accepting Fouché? Parties acted without thinking of the form of government which they had adopted; every one spoke of the Constitution, of liberty, of equality, of the right of peoples, and no one wanted them; fashionable verbiage: one asked, without thinking, for news of the Charter, hoping all the time that it would soon die the death. Liberals and Royalists leant towards absolute government, modified by our habits: such is the temper and trend of France. Material interests prevailed: they did not want, they said, to disown what had been done during the Revolution; each was burdened with his own life and claimed the right to load his neighbour with it: evil, they asserted, had become an element in public life which must thenceforth combine with the governments and enter as a vital principle into society. My crotchet, relative to a Charter set in motion by religious and moral action, was the cause of the ill-will which certain parties have borne me: for the Royalists, I was too much attached to liberty; for the Revolutionaries, I had too great a scorn for crimes. Had I not been there, to my great detriment, to make myself the school-master of constitutionalism, the Ultras and the Jacobins would from the earliest days have put the Charter into the pocket of their fleury dress-coats or their carmagnoles _à la Cassius._ M. de Talleyrand had no liking for M. Fouché; M. Fouché detested and, strangest of all, despised M. de Talleyrand: it was difficult to achieve that success. M. de Talleyrand, who at first would have been pleased not to be coupled to M. Fouché, feeling that the latter was inevitable, consented to the proposal; he did not perceive that, with the Charter (especially when he was united with the man of the Lyons grape-shot), he was hardly more possible than Fouché. Promptly what I had declared was verified: they obtained no profit from the admission of the Duc d'Otrante, they obtained nothing but opprobrium; the approaching shadow of the Chambers was enough to cause the disappearance of ministers too much exposed to the plain-speaking of the tribune. My opposition was of no avail: according to the custom of weak characters, the King closed the sitting without deciding anything; the Order in Council was to be settled at the Château d'Arnouville. No council, strictly speaking, was held at this last residence: only the intimates and those associated with the secret were assembled. M. de Talleyrand, having distanced us, entered into intelligence with his friends. The Duke of Wellington arrived: I saw him drive past in a calash; the plumes of his hat waved in the air; he had come to confer with M. Fouché and M. de Talleyrand upon France, as a twofold present which the Battle of Waterloo was making to our country. When it was represented to him that the regicide of M. le Duc d'Otrante was perhaps a drawback, he replied: "That's a trifle!" An Irish Protestant, an English general unacquainted with our manners and our history, a mind seeing in the French year 1793 only the English precedent of the year 1649 was charged to shape our destinies! Bonaparte's ambition had reduced us to this state of wretchedness. I rambled by myself in the gardens which the Comptroller-general Machault[348] left, at the age of ninety-three years, to go and die at the Madelonnettes; for Death, in his great review, passed none over then. I was no longer sent for; the familiarities of a common misfortune had ceased between the Sovereign and the subject: the King was getting ready to return to his palace, I to my retreat. The vacuum forms anew round monarchs so soon as they recover their power. I have rarely passed, without making serious reflexions, through the silent and uninhabited rooms of the Tuileries which led me to the King's closet: for me, deserts of another kind, infinite solitudes in which the very worlds vanished before God, the only real Being. Bread was scarce at Arnouville; but for an officer named Dubourg[349], who was hurrying away from Ghent like ourselves, we should have fasted. M. Dubourg went marauding; he brought us back half a sheep to the house of the mayor, who had run away. If the servant of the mayor, a Heroine of Beauvais left alone, had had any arms, she would have received us like Jeanne Hachette[350]. [Sidenote: Saint-Denis.] We proceeded to Saint-Denis: along both sides of the road-way stretched the bivouacs of the Prussians and English; in the distance, the eye met the spires of the abbey: into its foundations Dagobert[351] threw his jewels, in its vaults the successive dynasties buried their kings and their great men; four months since, we had laid the bones of Louis XVI. there to replace the other dust. When I returned from my first exile in 1800, I had crossed this same plain of Saint-Denis: then only Napoleon's soldiers were encamped there; Frenchmen still took the place of the old bands of the Constable de Montmorency[352]. A baker harboured us. In the evening, at nine o'clock, I went to pay my court to the King. His Majesty was lodged in the abbey buildings: they had all the difficulty in the world to prevent the little girls of the Legion of Honour[353] from crying, "Long live Napoleon!" I first entered the church: a piece of wall adjoining the cloister had fallen; the old abbey church was lit only by a lamp. I said my prayer at the entrance to the vault where I had seen Louis XVI. lowered: full of dread as to the future, I do not know that I ever felt my heart drowned in a more profound and more religious melancholy. Next I went to His Majesty's: shown into one of the rooms which preceded the King's, I found no one there; I sat down in a corner and waited. Suddenly, a door opened: silently vice entered leaning on the arm of crime, M. de Talleyrand walking supported by M. Fouché; the infernal vision passed slowly before me, penetrated into the King's closet, and vanished. Fouché was coming to swear fealty and homage to his lord; the trusty regicide on his knees laid the hands which caused the head to fall of Louis XVI. between the hands of the brother of the Royal Martyr; the apostate bishop was surety for the oath. On the next day, the Faubourg Saint-Germain arrived; everything concerned itself with the nomination, already obtained, of Fouché: religion as well as impiety, virtue as well as vice, the Royalist as well as the Revolutionary, the foreigner as well as the Frenchman; on every hand the cry was heard: "No safety for the King without Fouché; no salvation for France without Fouché: he alone has saved the country, he alone can complete his work." [Illustration: Fouché, Duc D'Otrante.] The old Duchesse de Duras was one of the noble dames who joined most eagerly in the pæan; the Bailli de Crussol[354], a survivor of Malta, chimed in: he declared that, if his head was still on his shoulders, it was because M. Fouché had permitted it. The timorous ones had stood in such terror of Bonaparte that they had taken the butcher of Lyons for a Titus[355]. During more than three months, the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain looked upon me as a miscreant, because I disapproved of the nomination of their ministers. Poor people, they had prostrated themselves at the feet of the "upstarts;" they none the less made a great noise about their nobility, their hatred of the Revolutionaries, their unshaken fidelity, the inflexibility of their principles: and they adored Fouché. Fouché had seen the incompatibility of his ministerial existence with the game of the Representative Monarchy: as he could not amalgamate with the elements of a legal government, he endeavoured to make the political elements homogeneous to his own nature. He had created a factitious terror: inventing imaginary dangers, he made pretensions to oblige the Crown to recognise Bonaparte's two Chambers and to receive the Declaration of Rights which had been hurriedly completed; a few words even were murmured as to the necessity of exiling Monsieur and his sons: to isolate the King would have been the masterpiece. [Sidenote: State of Paris.] People continued to be gulled: in vain the National Guard climbed over the walls of Paris and came to protest its devotion; it was asserted that this guard was ill-disposed. The faction had had the gates closed in order to prevent the population, which had remained Royalist during the Hundred Days, from hurrying up, and it was said that this population was threatening to butcher Louis XVIII. on his way. The blindness was marvellous, for the French Army was falling back upon the Loire, one hundred and fifty thousand allies occupied the outposts of the capital, and they continued to pretend that the King was not strong enough to penetrate into a city where not a soldier remained, where none was left but civilians, quite capable of restraining a handful of federates, if these had taken it into their heads to stir. Unfortunately, the King, through a series of fatal coincidences, seemed to be the leader of the English and Prussians; he thought himself surrounded with liberators, and he was accompanied by enemies; he appeared environed by an escort of honour, and this escort was in reality only the gendarmes taking him out of his kingdom: he was merely crossing Paris in the company of the foreigners whose memory would one day serve as a pretext for the banishment of his House. The Provisional Government formed after the abdication of Bonaparte was dissolved by means of a kind of indictment of the Crown: a stepping-stone upon which it was hoped one day to build a new revolution. At the First Restoration, I was of opinion that the tricolour cockade should be kept: it was resplendent in all its glory; the white cockade was forgotten; by retaining colours warranted by so many triumphs, men were not preparing a rallying-token for a coming revolution. Not to adopt the white cockade would have been wise; to abandon it after it had been worn by Bonaparte's own Grenadiers was an act of cowardice: one cannot pass with impunity under the Caudine Forks; that which dishonours is fatal: a slap in the face does you no harm physically, and yet it kills you. Before leaving Saint-Denis, I was received by the King and had the following conversation with him: "Well?" said Louis XVIII., opening the dialogue with this exclamation. "Well, Sire, you are taking the Duc d'Otrante?" "I needs had to: from my brother down to the Bailli de Crussol (and the latter is not suspect), every one said that we could not do otherwise. What do you think?" "Sire, the thing is done: I beg your Majesty's permission to say nothing." "No, no, speak: you know how I resisted since Ghent." "Sire, I only obey your orders; pardon my loyalty: I think the Monarchy is finished." The King kept silence; I was beginning to tremble at my boldness, when His Majesty resumed: "Well, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I am of your opinion." This conversation concludes my story of the Hundred Days. [308] Darius III., the last King of Persia (_d._ 331 B.C.), defeated by Alexander at Arbela and assassinated by Bessus Satrap of Bactriana in his flight.--T. [309] Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), the Swiss Calvinist historian and economist, author of, among many other voluminous works, the _Histoire des Français_, in 29 volumes, an erudite but prejudiced compilation.--T. [310] Lucien Bonaparte.--T. [311] Philippe Antoine Comte Merlin (1754-1838), known as Merlin de Douay, to distinguish him from Merlin de Thionville, a jurisconsult of the highest eminence and the lowest principles. He had sat in the Constituent Assembly and the Convention, held office under the Directory and the Empire, gave in his adhesion to the First Restoration, accepted office again from Napoleon in 1814, and was exiled in 1815 as a regicide who had held functions during the Hundred Days. He retired to Brussels, returning to France after the Usurpation of 1830.--T. [312] Louis XI. King of France (1423-1479) was held as a prisoner at Péronne by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1468, and compelled to sign the treaty known by the name of that town.--T. [313] The "Additional Act" was published in the _Moniteur_ of 23 April 1815.--B. [314] Murat had placed himself at the Emperor's disposal on landing at Cannes. Napoleon, dreading the contagion of ill-fortune, did not reply to the dethroned King, and had him forbidden the access to Paris by Fouché.--B. [315] _Vide_ the proclamation by Marshal Soult, _supra.--Author's Note._ [316] An allusion to Marshal Soult.--B. [317] Marshal Moncey carried the constable's sword at the coronation of Charles X.; Marshals Soult, Mortier and Jourdan the sceptre, the hand of justice and the crown respectively.--B. [318] Louis-Philippe.--T. [319] Marie Caroline Ferdinande Louise Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870), daughter of Ferdinand I. King of Naples, and married to the Duc de Berry in 1816. She followed Charles X. into exile after the Revolution of 1830, and in 1832 made a descent, first upon Marseilles and secondly upon the Vendée, where she tried in vain to effect a general rising. She sought refuge at Nantes, where she lay hidden for five months, until sold to the police of M. Thiers by a Jewish convert called Deutz, and imprisoned at Blaze. Here, in 1833, she gave birth to a child, the offspring of her secret marriage with the Comte Lucchesi-Palli. She was shortly afterwards released, and spent the remainder of her days in retirement.--T. [320] The term applied to the vast plain near Châlons-sur-Marne where Attila's immense army was destroyed, in 451, by the combined forces of the Franks, Burgundians and Goths.--T. [321] The Baron de Vincent, Austrian Ambassador to the Court of France.--B. [322] Ferdinand Baron d'Eckstein (1790-1861) was a native of Denmark, of Jewish parentage. He became a Catholic in 1806, fought as a volunteer in the French ranks in 1813, and on the fall of the Empire entered the Dutch service and was appointed Governor of Ghent, where he gained the favour of Louis XVIII. He followed the King to France, and was made a baron and given various offices in succession. He spent the last thirty years of his life writing in favour of religion in his own paper, the _Catholique_, and others.--B. [323] On the 1st of July 1690, the Duc de Luxembourg defeated the Prince of Waldeck at Fleurus; on the 26th of June 1794, General Jourdan defeated the Imperials under Coburg; and, on the 16th of June 1815, Napoleon routed Blücher. This last battle is more generally known as that of Ligny.--T. [324] Frederic William Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1771-1815), son of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg mortally wounded at Auerstädt in 1806.--T. [325] Field-Marshal Gebhardt Leberecht von Blücher, Count and Prince Blücher von Wahlstadt (1742-1819).--T. [326] Friedrich Wilhelm von Billow, Count von Dennewitz (1765-1816).--T. [327] William I. King of the Netherlands (1772-1843), then Prince of Orange and Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands, commanding an army-corps at Waterloo. His son, William Prince of Orange (1792-1848), later King William II. of the Netherlands, was also present at the battle and also wounded.--T. [328] Emmanuel Maréchal Marquis de Grouchy (1766-1847) received his marshal's baton during the Hundred Days. The Restoration refused to recognise the general's new dignity, which was not confirmed to him until 1831. The Marquis de Grouchy was made a peer by Louis-Philippe in 1832.--T. [329] Lord Castlereagh was leader of the House of Commons. He moved the vote of thanks to the Duke of Wellington, giving an account of the Battle of Waterloo, on the 23rd of June 1815.--T. [330] Of the two battles that took place on the 14th of October 1806, the more important was that of Auerstädt, where Marshal Davout had on his hands the greater part of the Prussian Army, commanded by the King of Prussia in person and the Duke of Brunswick; at Jena, Napoleon, with superior forces, had to do with the weaker portion of the enemy's army. Davout had 60,000 men in front of him and Napoleon only 40,000. The Emperor, in his 5th Bulletin, completely inverted the state of things. While reducing the numbers of the army which Davout had to fight against from sixty to forty thousand, he raised those to which he himself was opposed from forty to eighty thousand, making of the Battle of Auerstädt only a very secondary episode in the Battle of Jena, whereas it was really a capital and decisive event. It was thus that the admirable victory of Auerstädt came to be effaced and eclipsed by that of Jena.--B. [331] Henri Amédée Mercure Comte de Turenne (1776-1852) was an officer in the King's Regiment, when the Revolution broke out. He refused to emigrate and wished to continue his military service, but was imprisoned as a suspect under the Terror and not released until the 9 Thermidor, when he served in the Army of the Western Pyrenees. The decree of 1794 against the nobles obliged him to leave the army; he remained in private life until the proclamation of the Empire, when he was one of the first to rally to the new power. He held various offices in Napoleon's Civil and Military Households, and was created a count of the Empire in 1813. Turenne was present at Napoleon's leave-taking at Fontainebleau, but failed to obtain leave to accompany the Emperor to Elba. Louis XVIII. made him a knight of St. Louis and a sub-lieutenant in the Grey Musketeers. Under the Hundred Days, he resumed his service with Napoleon, who made him a peer, and fought at Ligny and Waterloo, where he made desperate efforts against the English Guards. The Second Restoration deprived him of his titles and functions, but received him into favour in 1829. Turenne, however, sided with the Monarchy of July, and was again created a peer of France by Louis-Philippe. He was smitten with blindness a few years later, and ended his days in retirement--B. [332] Jacques Antoine Manuel (1775-1827), a noted orator and advocate. He opposed the monarchy throughout the Restoration, and in 1823 was expelled by force from the Chamber of Deputies. Manuel was not re-elected. He remained a popular hero, and his body was followed to the grave by over 100,000 persons.--T. [333] 22 June 1815.--B. [334] Nicolas Marie Baron Quinette (1762-1821) had been a member of the Convention voting for the death of the King, and Minister of the Interior to Napoleon (1799), who made him a baron of the Empire. In 1814, he adhered to the Restoration, and was created a peer of France, but returned to the Emperor during the Hundred Days, and at the Second Restoration was banished as a relapsed regicide.--T. [335] General Paul Comte Grenier (1768-1827) served with distinction in the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. He was vice-president of the Chamber in 1815 and, under the Second Restoration, sat as a deputy from 1813 to 1822.--B. [336] General Horace François Bastien Comte Sébastiani de La Porta (1775-1851), one of Napoleon's most intrepid cavalry generals. He accepted the Restoration in 1814, but returned to Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and was left without employment under the Second Restoration. He sat as a Corsican deputy from 1816 to 1824 and 1826 to 1830, sitting in the Extreme Left and maintaining an active opposition to the Government Under Louis-Philippe, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1830 to 1833, and subsequently Ambassador to Naples (1834) and London (1835-1840). On his return from the latter embassy he was created a marshal. His last years were clouded over by the assassination of his daughter, the Duchesse de Praslin, by her husband (17 August 1847).--T. [337] Louis Gustave Le Doulcet, Comte de Pontécoulant (1764-1853), had, as a member of the Convention, resisted the excesses of 1793 and was outlawed and fled to Zurich. He returned after the Terror and filled various military and diplomatic offices under Napoleon, who created him a count (1808). Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France, and for over thirty years he took a prominent part in the work of the House of Peers.--T. [338] _Vide_ the Works of Napoleon, vol. I., the last pages.--_Author's Note._ [339] Auguste Charles Joseph Comte de Flahaut de La Billarderie (1785-1870), a peer of the Hundred Days, a peer of France from 1831 to 1848, a senator of the Second Empire, Ambassador to London from 1860 to 1862, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour from 1861 to 1870. Flahaut was a general of division in 1813, at the age of twenty-eight. He died on the 1st of September 1870, on the day of the disaster of Sedan, and did not behold the fall of the dynasty to which he was attached by intimate and secret affections. The Duc de Moray, natural brother to Napoleon III., was his son.--B. [340] Charles Angélique François Huchet, Comte de La Bédoyère (1786-1815), served with distinction under Napoleon and became a colonel at the age of 26. After the first abdication, his family obtained for him the Cross of St. Louis and the command of the 7th Regiment of the Line. Nevertheless he was the first colonel to join Napoleon with his regiment after the return from Elba. The Emperor made him a general and raised him to the peerage (2 June 1815). After the second abdication, La Bédoyère was arrested, tried by court-martial for treason, and shot (19 August 1815) in the twenty-ninth year of his age.--T. [341] André Masséna, Maréchal Prince d'Essling, Duc de Rivoli (1758-1817), one of Napoleon's earlier and greatest generals, of Italian Jewish origin. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France in December 1814.--T. [342] Henry II. King of France (1518-1559) signed the famous "Unhappy Peace" of Cateau-Cambrésis after the Battle of Saint-Quentin, a peace by which France lost a large portion of her conquests.--T. [343] Philip II. King of Spain, England, Naples and Sicily (1527-1598).--T. [344] The League of Cambrai was formed in 1508 by the Emperor Maximilian I., King Louis XII. of France, King Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain and Pope Julius II. against the Republic of Venice.--T. [345] St Regulus, first Bishop of Senlis (_fl._ 1300), honoured on the 30th of March.--T. [346] Jean Guillaume Baron Hyde de Neuville (1776-1857) was an agent of the Emigrant Princes before he was seventeen years of age, and served their cause throughout. He was French Minister to the United States (1816), later to Portugal, later Minister of Marine (1828). In 1830, Hyde de Neuville refused to accept the Government of Louis-Philippe and defended the cause of the Duc de Bordeaux in the Lower Chamber, almost unaided.--T. [347] Sitting of the Convention on the 22 Thermidor Year III. (9 August 1795) _Moniteur_, (14 August 1795).--B. [348] Jean Baptiste Machault d'Arnouville (1701-1794) was appointed Comptroller-general of Finance under Louis XV. in 1745. In 1750, he became Keeper of the Seals, while retaining his Comptroller-generalship; but he was disgraced in 1754, owing to the efforts of the clergy, whose privileges he had attacked, and the intrigues of Madame de Pompadour. Machault retired to his property at Arnouville, where he lived for forty years, until, in 1794, he was flung into the Madelonnettes prison, as a suspect, where he died.--T. [349] We shall meet with my friend General Dubourg again in the Days of July.--_Author's Note._ Frédéric Dubourg-Butler (1778-1850) fought in the Royalist Army in the Vendée, in the Republican Army under Bernadotte, in the Russian Army in 1812. He returned to France after the fell of the Empire. In 1815, as an officer on the staff of the Duc de Feltre, Minister of War, he followed the King to Ghent, and received the command of the Artois Regiment, but almost immediately fell into disgrace. He disappeared for fifteen years, and sprang up, on the 29th of July 1830, at the Hôtel de Ville, improvised himself into a general, and for a moment played the part of head of the "military section of the Provisional Government," whereupon he disappeared afresh. We do not find him again until the 24th of February 1848, when the new Provisional Government awarded him the retiring pension of a brigadier-general. This pension was no doubt very irregularly paid, for in 1850 the poor devil put an end to the romance of his life by swallowing an over-dose of opium.--B. [350] Jeanne Hachette (_b. circa_ 1454) of Beauvais defended that place in 1472, at the head of a regiment of women, against the Burgundians under Charles the Bold. Her real name is uncertain: historians vary between Fouquet, Fourquet and Lainé; she was called Hachette after the axe which she bore during the siege.--T. [351] Dagobert I. King of France (602-638) founded the Abbey of Saint-Denis in 632.--T. [352] Anne Maréchal Connétable de Montmorency (1493-1567) was slain at the Battle of Saint-Denis, in which he defeated the Protestants.--T. [353] An imperial educational establishment for the daughters of members of the Legion of Honour had been founded in the buildings of the old abbey in 1809.--T. [354] Alexandre Charles Emmanuel Bailli de Crussol (1743-1815). Louis XVIII. had created him a peer of France in 1814.--T. [355] Titus Flavius Savinus Vespasianus, Roman Emperor (40-81), "the delight of the human race."--T. BOOK VI Bonaparte at the Malmaison--General abandonment--Departure from the Malmaison--Rambouillet--Rochefort--Bonaparte takes refuge on the English fleet--He writes to the Prince Regent--Bonaparte on the _Bellerophon_--Torbay--Act confining Bonaparte in St Helena--He passes over to the Northumberland and sets sail--Judgment on Bonaparte--Character of Bonaparte--Has Bonaparte left us in renown what he has lost us in strength?--Futility of the truths set forth above--The Island of St. Helena--Bonaparte crosses the Atlantic--Napoleon lands at St. Helena--His establishment at Longwood--Precautions--Life at Longwood--Visits--Manzoni--Illness of Bonaparte--Ossian--Reveries of Napoleon in sight of the sea--Projects of evasion--Last occupation of Bonaparte--He lies down to rise no more--He dictates his will--Napoleon's religious sentiments--The chaplain Vignale--Napoleon's speech to Antomarchi, his doctor--He receives the last sacraments--He expires--His funeral--Destruction of the Napoleonic world--My last relations with Bonaparte--St. Helena after the death of Napoleon--Exhumation of Bonaparte--My visit to Cannes. If a man were unexpectedly transported from life's most clamorous scenes to the silent shores of the Arctic Ocean, he would feel what I feel beside the tomb of Napoleon, for we find ourselves suddenly standing by the edge of that tomb. Leaving Paris on the 25th of June, Napoleon awaited at the Malmaison the moment of his departure from France. I return to him: coming back to past days, anticipating future times, I shall not leave him again until after his death. The Malmaison, where the Emperor rested, was empty. Joséphine was dead[356]; Bonaparte found himself alone in that retreat. There he had commenced his fortune; there he had been happy; there he had become intoxicated with the incense of the world; there, from the heart of his tomb, issued orders that shook the world. In those gardens where formerly the feet of the crowd raked up the sanded walks, the grass and brambles grew green; I had ascertained this when walking there. Already, for want of tending, the exotic trees were pining away; on the canals the black Australian swans no longer floated; the cage no longer held the tropical birds prisoners: they had flown away to await their host in their own country. Bonaparte might, however, have found a subject of consolation by turning his eyes upon his early days: fallen kings are afflicted above all because, looking upwards from their fall, they see only a splendid inheritance and the pomps of their cradle: but what did Napoleon discern prior to his prosperity? The manger of his birth in a Corsican village. Higher-minded, when flinging off the purple mantle, he would have proudly resumed the goat-herd's sayon; but men do not place themselves back at their origin when it was humble; it seems that an unjust Heaven deprives them of their patrimony when, in fate's lottery, they do naught but lose what they have won; and nevertheless Napoleon's greatness arises from the fact that he had started from himself: none of his blood had gone before him and prepared his power. At the sight of those abandoned gardens, of those untenanted apartments, of those galleries faded by the routs, of those rooms in which song and music had ceased, Napoleon was able to go over his career: he was able to ask himself whether, with a little more moderation, he might not have preserved his delights. Foreigners, enemies, were not banishing him now; he was not departing as a _quasi_ victor, leaving the nations in admiration of his passage, after the prodigious campaign of 1814: he was retiring beaten. Frenchmen, friends, were demanding his immediate abdication, urging his departure, refusing even to have him as a general, sending him messenger after messenger, to oblige him to quit the soil over which he had shed as much glory as scourges. Added to this harsh lesson, came other warnings: the Prussians were prowling around the neighbourhood of the Malmaison; Blücher, full of wine, staggering, ordered them to seize, to "hang" the conqueror who had "put his foot on the neck of Kings." The rapidity of the fortunes, the vulgarity of the manners, the promptness of the elevation and degradation of the personages of to-day will, I fear, take away a part of the nobility of history: Rome and Greece did not speak of "hanging" Alexander and Cæsar. The scenes which had taken place in 1814 were renewed in 1815, but with something more offensive, because the ingrates were stimulated by fear; it was necessary to get rid of Napoleon quickly: the Allies were arriving; Alexander was not there, at first, to temper the triumph and curb the insolence of fortune; Paris was no more adorned with its lustral inviolability; a first invasion had profaned the sanctuary; it was no longer God's anger that fell upon us, it was the contempt of Heaven: the human thunder-bolt was spent. All the cowardly characters had acquired a new degree of malignity through the Hundred Days; affecting to raise themselves, through love of the country, above personal attachments, they exclaimed that it was really too criminal of Bonaparte to have violated the treaties of 1814. But were not the true culprits those who had countenanced his designs? Suppose that, in 1815, instead of getting new armies for him, after forsaking him once only to forsake him again, they had said to him, when he came to sleep at the Tuileries: "You have been deceived by your genius, opinion is no longer with you; take pity on France. Retire after this last visit to the country; go and live in the land of Washington. Who knows that the Bourbons will not make mistakes? Who knows that, one day, France will not turn her eyes towards you, when, in the school of liberty, you shall have learnt to respect the laws? You will then return, not as a ravisher swooping on his prey, but as a great citizen, the pacificator of his country!" They did not hold that language to them: they humoured the passions of their returned leader; they contributed to blinding him, sure as they were of benefiting by either his victory or his defeat. The soldier alone died for Napoleon, with admirable sincerity; the rest was but a grazing herd, growing fat to right and left. If, at least, the viziers of the despoiled caliph had been satisfied to turn their backs on him! But no: they reaped profit from his last moments; they overwhelmed him with their sordid demands; all wanted to make money out of his poverty. [Sidenote: Abandonment of Napoleon.] Never was a more complete abandonment; Bonaparte had given cause for it: he was insensible to the troubles of others; the world paid him with indifference for indifference. Like most despots, he was on good terms with his domestics; at bottom he cared for nobody: a solitary man, he sufficed unto himself; misfortune did nothing except to restore him to the desert which was his life. When I gather up my memories, when I recollect having seen Washington in his little house at Philadelphia and Bonaparte in his palaces, it seems to me that Washington, retiring to his field in Virginia, cannot have experienced the searchings of conscience of Bonaparte awaiting exile in his gardens at the Malmaison. Nothing was altered in the life of the first; he relapsed into his modest habits; he had not raised himself above the happiness of the husbandman whom he had freed: all was subverted in the life of the second. * Napoleon left the Malmaison[357] accompanied by Generals Bertrand, Rovigo and Beker[358], the latter in the quality of inspector or commissary. On the way, he was seized with a wish to stop at Rambouillet. He left it to take ship at Rochefort, as did Charles X. to take ship at Cherbourg; Rambouillet, the inglorious retreat where all that was greatest in men or dynasties was eclipsed: the fatal spot where Francis I. died; where Henry III., escaping from the barricades, slept booted and spurred in passing; where Louis XVI. left his shadow[359]! How happy would Louis, Napoleon and Charles have been, had they been only the humble keepers of the herds of Rambouillet! On arriving at Rochefort[360], Napoleon hesitated: the Executive Commission were sending imperative orders: "The garrisons of Rochefort and the Rochelle," said the dispatches, "must use main force to make Napoleon take ship.... Employ force... make him go... his services cannot be accepted." Napoleon's services could not be accepted! And had you not accepted his bounties and his chains? Napoleon did not go away; he was driven out: and by whom? Bonaparte had believed only in fortune; he banned misfortune _ab igne et aquâ_; he had acquitted the ungrateful in advance: a just retaliation made him appear before his own system. When success, ceasing to animate his person, became incarnate in another individual, the disciples abandoned the master for the school. I, who believe in the legitimacy of benefits and the sovereignty of misfortune, had I served Bonaparte, I would not have left him; I would have proved to him, by my fidelity, the falseness of his political principles; sharing his disgrace, I would have remained by his side as a living contradiction of his barren doctrines and of the worthlessness of the right of prosperity. Frigates had been waiting for him in the Rochefort road-stead stead since the first of July: hopes which never die, memories inseparable from a last farewell kept him back. How he must have regretted the days of his childhood, when his clear eyes had not yet known the first rain-drops! He left time for the English fleet to approach. He was still able to embark on two luggers which were to join a Danish ship at sea (this was the course which his brother Joseph took); but decision failed him when he looked at the coast of France. He felt an aversion for a republic; the liberty and equality of the United States were repugnant to him. He inclined towards asking shelter of the English: "What disadvantage do you see in that course?" he asked of those whom he consulted. "The disadvantage of dishonouring yourself," answered a naval officer; "you must not fall, even dead, into the hands of the English. They will have you stuffed and show you at a shilling a head." * [Sidenote: The letter to the Regent.] Notwithstanding these observations, the Emperor resolved to give himself up to his conquerors. On the 13th of July, when Louis XVIII. had already been five days in Paris, Napoleon sent the captain[361] of the English ship _Bellerophon_ the following letter for the Prince Regent: "ROYAL HIGHNESS, "A victim to the factions which distract my country and to the enmity of the greatest powers in Europe, I have terminated my political career, and I come, like Themistocles[362], to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws; which I claim from Your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most constant and the most generous of my enemies. "ROCHEFORT, 13 _July_ 1815." If Bonaparte had not, during twenty years, overwhelmed with outrages the British people, its government, its King, and the heir of that King, one might find a certain propriety of tone in this letter; but how had this "Royal Highness," so long despised, so long insulted by Napoleon, suddenly become "the most powerful, the most constant and the most generous" of enemies by the mere fact that he was victorious? Napoleon could not be persuaded of what he was saying; and that which is not true is not eloquent. The phrase setting forth the fact of a fallen greatness addressing itself to an enemy is fine; the well-worn instance of Themistocles is superfluous. The step taken by Napoleon shows something worse than a lack of sincerity; it shows neglect of France: the Emperor busied himself only with his individual catastrophe; when the fall came, we no longer counted for anything in his eyes. Without reflecting that, by giving the preference to England over America, his choice became an outrage to the mourning of the country, he begged a shelter of the government which, for twenty years, had kept Europe in its pay against ourselves, of the government whose commissary with the Russian Army, General Wilson[363], urged Kutuzoff[364], in the retreat from Moscow, to exterminate us completely: the English, successful in the final battle, were encamped in the Bois de Boulogne. Go then, O Themistocles, to seat yourself quietly by the British hearth, while the soil has not yet finished drinking in the French blood shed for you at Waterloo! What part would the fugitive, feasted may-be, have played on the banks of the Thames, in the face of France invaded, of Wellington become dictator at the Louvre? Napoleon's high fortunes served him better: the English, allowing themselves to be carried towards a narrow and spiteful policy, missed their final triumph; instead of undoing their supplicant by admitting him to their fortresses or their banquets, they rendered more brilliant for posterity the crown which they believed they had snatched from him. He grew greater in his captivity through the enormous affright of the Powers; the Ocean enchained him in vain: Europe in arms camped on the shore, her eyes fixed upon the sea. * On the 15th of July, the _Épervier_ conveyed Bonaparte to the _Bellerophon._ The French craft was so small that, from the deck of the English ship, they did not see the giant on the waves. The Emperor, accosting Captain Maitland, said to him: "I come to place myself under the protection of the laws of England" Once at least the contemner of the laws confessed their authority. The fleet set sail for Torbay: a multitude of shipping cruised around the _Bellerophon_; the same eagerness was shown at Plymouth. On the 30th of July, Lord Keith[365] handed the applicant the Act confining him at St. Helena. "It is worse than Tamerlane's[366] cage," said Napoleon. [Sidenote: Ordered to St. Helena.] This violation of the Law of Nations and of the respect due to hospitality was revolting. If you see the light on board of any ship, provided it be _under sail_, you are _English born_; by virtue of the old London customs, the _waves_ are considered _soil of Albion._ And an English ship was not an inviolable altar for a supplicant, it did not place the great man who embraced the poop of the _Bellerophon_ under the protection of the British trident! Bonaparte protested; he argued about laws, talked of treachery and perfidy, appealed to the future: did that become him? Had he not laughed at justice? Had he not, in his might, trampled under foot the sacred things whose guarantee he now invoked? Had he not carried off Toussaint-Louverture[367] and the King of Spain[368]? Had he not had English travellers arrested who happened to be in France at the time of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, and kept them prisoners for years? Allowable therefore to mercantile England to imitate what he had done himself, and to use ignoble reprisals; but they might have acted differently. With Napoleon, the size of the heart did not correspond with the width of the head: his quarrels with the English are deplorable; they revolt Lord Byron. How could he condescend to honour his gaolers with a word? One suffers at seeing him stoop to wordy conflicts with Lord Keith at Torbay, with Sir Hudson Lowe[369] at St. Helena, publish statements because they break faith with him, cavil about a title, about a little more, or a little less, gold or honours. Bonaparte, reduced to himself, was reduced to his glory, and that ought to suffice him: he had nothing to ask of men; he did not treat adversity despotically enough; one would have pardoned him for making of misfortune his last slave. I find nothing remarkable in his protest against the violation of hospitality, save the date and signature of that protest: "On board the _Bellerophon_, at sea. "NAPOLEON." There are harmonies of immensity. From the _Bellerophon_ Bonaparte crossed on to the Northumberland. Two frigates laden with the future garrison of St. Helena escorted him. Some of the officers of that garrison had fought at Waterloo. They permitted that explorer of the globe to keep with him M. and Madame Bertrand, Messieurs de Montholon[370], Gourgaud and de Las Cases[371], voluntary and generous passengers on the submerged plank. By one clause in the captain's instructions, "Bonaparte must be disarmed:" Napoleon alone, a prisoner on board ship, in the midst of the Ocean, "disarmed[372]!" What a magnificent terror of his power! But what a lesson from Heaven to men who abuse the sword! The stupid Admiralty treated the great convict of the human race as a Botany-Bay felon: did the Black Prince "disarm" King John? The squadron weighed anchor. Since the bark which carried Cæsar, no ship had been laden with so great a destiny. Bonaparte was approaching that sea of miracles upon which the Arab of Mount Sinai had seen him pass. The last French land that Napoleon discerned was Cape la Hogue[373]: another trophy of the English. The Emperor had been mistaken in the interest of his memory, when he wished to remain in Europe; he would soon have been only a vulgar or faded prisoner: his old rôle was ended. But, beyond that rôle, a new position revivified him with a new renown. No man of universal fame has had an end similar to Napoleon's. He was not, as after his first fall, proclaimed autocrat of a few quarries of iron and marble, the first to furnish him with a sword, the second with a statue; an eagle, he was given a rock on the point of which he remained in the sun-light till his death, in full view of the whole world. * At the moment when Bonaparte is quitting Europe, in which he is giving up his life to go in search of the destinies of his death, it is well to examine this man of two existences, to depict the false and the true Napoleon: they blend and form a whole from the mixture of their reality and their falsehood. [Sidenote: Napoleon as statesman.] From the conjunction of these remarks it results that Bonaparte was a poet in action, an immense genius in war, an indefatigable, able and intelligent spirit in administration, a laborious and rational legislator. That is why he has so great a hold on the imagination of peoples and so much authority over the judgment of practical men. But, as a politician, he will always appear deficient in the eyes of statesmen. This observation, which has escaped the majority of his panegyrists, will, I am convinced, become the definite opinion that will survive concerning him; it will explain the contrast between his prodigious actions and their pitiful results. At St. Helena, he himself severely condemned his political conduct on two points: the Spanish War and the Russian War; he might have extended his confession to other delinquencies. His enthusiasts will perhaps not maintain that, when blaming himself, he was mistaken in himself. Let us recapitulate: Bonaparte acted contrary to all prudence, not to speak again of the hatefulness of the action, in killing the Duc d'Enghien: he attached a weight to his life. Notwithstanding the puerile apologists, this death, as we have seen, was the secret leaven of the discords that subsequently burst out between Alexander and Napoleon, as also between Prussia and France. The attempt upon Spain was completely improper: the Peninsula was the Emperor's; he could turn it to the most advantageous account: instead of that, he turned it into a school for the English soldiers and into the cause of his own destruction through the rising of a people. The detention of the Pope and the annexation of the States of the Church to France were but the caprice of tyranny through which he lost the advantage of passing for the restorer of religion. Bonaparte did not stop, as he should have done, when he had married the daughter of the Cæsars: Russia and England were crying mercy to him. He did not revive Poland, when the safety of Europe depended on the restoration of that kingdom. Madness having once set in, he went on from Smolensk[374]; everything told him that he must not go further at his first step, that his first Northern Campaign was finished, and that the second, as he himself felt, would make him master of the Empire of the Tsars. [Illustration: Pope Pius VII.] He was able neither to compute the days nor to foresee the effect of the climatic changes, which every one at Moscow computed and foresaw. See above what I have said of the Continental Blockade and the Confederation of the Rhine[375]: the first, a gigantic conception, but a questionable act; the second, an important work, but spoilt in the execution by the camp instinct and the fiscal spirit Napoleon inherited the old French monarchy as the centuries and an uninterrupted succession of great men had made it, as the majesty of Louis XIV. and the alliances of Louis XV. had left it, as the Republic had enlarged it. He seated himself on that magnificent pedestal, stretched out his arms, laid hold of the peoples, and gathered them around him; but he lost Europe with as much suddenness as he had taken it; he twice brought the Allies to Paris, notwithstanding the marvels of his military intelligence. He had the world under his feet, and all he got from it was a prison for himself, exile for his family, the loss of all his conquests and of a portion of the old French soil. [Sidenote: Where Napoleon failed.] Here is history proved by facts and deniable by none. Whence arose the faults which I have just pointed out, followed by so quick and so fatal a catastrophe? They arose from Bonaparte's imperfectness as a politician. In his alliances, he enchained the governments only with concessions of territory, of which he soon altered the boundaries, constantly displaying the reservation to take back what he had given, ever making the oppressor felt; in his invasions, he reorganized nothing, Italy excepted. Instead of stopping at every step to raise up again, under another shape, what he had overthrown, he did not discontinue his movement of progression among ruins: he went so fast that he scarce had the time to breathe where he passed through. If, by a sort of Treaty of Westphalia, he had settled and assured the existence of the States in Germany, in Prussia, in Poland, at his first retrograde march he would have leant his back against contented populations and have found shelters. But his poetic edifice of victories, lacking a base and suspended in mid-air only by his genius, fell when his genius came to retire. The Macedonian founded empires in his course: Bonaparte, in his course, knew only how to destroy them; his sole aim was to be, in his own person, the master of the globe, without troubling his head about the means of preserving it. Men have tried to make of Bonaparte a perfect being, a type of sentiment, of delicacy, of morality and of justice, a writer like Cæsar and Thucydides, an orator and an historian like Demosthenes and Tacitus. Napoleon's public speeches, his phrases in the tent or the council-chamber are so much the less inspired with the breath of prophecy in that what they foretell by way of catastrophes has not been accomplished, while the Isaias of the sword has himself disappeared: writings on the wall which pursue States, without catching and destroying them, remain puerile, instead of being sublime. Bonaparte was truly Destiny during sixteen years: Destiny is mute, and Bonaparte ought to have been so. Bonaparte was not Cæsar; his education was neither learned nor select; half a foreigner, he was ignorant of the first words of our language: what mattered, after all, that his speech was faulty? He gave the pass-word to the universe. His bulletins have the eloquence of victory. Sometimes, in the intoxication of success, they made a show of drafting them on a drum-head; from amid the most mournful accents arose fatal bursts of laughter. I have read with attention all that Bonaparte has written: the early manuscripts of his childhood, his novels; next, his letters to Buttafuoco, the _Souper de Beaucaire_, his private letters to Joséphine; the five volumes of his speeches, his orders and his bulletins, his dispatches left unpublished and spoilt by the editing in M. de Talleyrand's offices. I know something of these matters; I have found scarcely any thoughts resembling the great islander's nature, except in a scrap of autograph left behind at Elba: "My heart denies itself to common joys as to ordinary pain." "Not having given myself life, I shall not rob myself of it, so long as it will have me." "My evil genius appeared to me and foretold my end, which I found at Leipzig." "I have laid the terrible spirit of innovation which was overrunning the world." That most certainly is genuine Bonaparte. If the bulletins, the dispatches, the allocutions, the proclamations of Bonaparte are distinguished for energy, this energy did not belong to him in his own right: it was of his time, it came from the revolutionary inspiration which grew weaker in Bonaparte, because he marched counter to that inspiration. Danton said: "The metal is boiling over; if you do not watch the furnace, you will all be scalded." Saint-Just said: "Dare!" That word contains the whole policy of our Revolution; they who make revolutions by halves only dig a grave. Do Bonaparte's bulletins rise above that pride of speech? [Sidenote: Napoleon as writer.] As for the numerous volumes published under the title of _Mémoires de Sainte-Hélène, Napoléon dans l'exil._, etc., those documents, gathered from Bonaparte's mouth or dictated by him to different persons, contain a few fine passages on actions of war, a few remarkable appreciations of certain men; but, in the upshot, Napoleon is occupied only in making his apology, in justifying his past, in basing on commonplace ideas accomplished events and things of which he had never dreamt during the course of those events. In this compilation, in which _pros_ and _cons_ succeed one another, in which every opinion finds a favourable authority and a peremptory refutation, it is difficult to separate that which belongs to Napoleon from that which belongs to his secretaries. It is probable that he had a different version for each of them, in order that readers might choose according to their taste and, in the future, create for themselves Napoleons to their liking. He dictated his history as he wished to leave it; he was an author writing articles on his own work. Nothing therefore could be more absurd than to go into ecstasies over chronicles by different hands which are not, like Cæsar's _Commentaries_, a short work, springing from a great head, written by a superior writer; and yet those brief commentaries, Asinius Pollio[376] thought, were neither faithful nor exact. The _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ is good, allowing liberally for the candour and simplicity of the admiration. One of the things that contributed most to render Napoleon hateful during his life was his inclination for debasing everything: in a fired city, he would couple decrees on the re-establishing of a few comedians with fiats which suppressed monarchs; a parody of the omnipotence of God, who rules the lot of the world and of an ant. With the fall of empires he mingled insults to women; he delighted in the humiliation of what he had overthrown; he calumniated and wounded particularly all that had dared to resist him. His arrogance was equal to his luck; the more he lowered others the greater he believed himself to appear. Jealous of his generals, he accused them of his own mistakes, for, as for himself, he was infallible. Despising all merits, he reproached them harshly with their errors. He would never have said, after the disaster of Ramillies, as Louis XIV.[377] said to the Maréchal de Villeroi[378]: "Monsieur le maréchal, at our age one is not lucky." A touching magnanimity of which Napoleon knew nothing. The century of Louis XIV. was made by Louis the Great: Bonaparte made his century. The history of the Empire, changed by false traditions, will be yet further falsified by the state of society during the imperial Epoch. Any revolution written in the presence of the liberty of the press can allow the eye to probe to the bottom of facts, because each one reports them as he has seen them: the reign of Cromwell is known, because it was customary to say to the Protector what one thought of his acts and his person. In France, even under the Revolution, despite the inexorable censorship of the executioner, the truth came out; the triumphing faction was not always the same; it soon succumbed, and the faction which succeeded it taught you what its predecessor had hidden from you: there was liberty from one scaffold to the other, between the cutting off of two heads. But when Bonaparte seized upon the power, when thought was gagged, when one heard nothing but the voice of a despotism which spoke only to praise itself and allowed only itself to be spoken of, truth disappeared. The would-be authentic documents of that time are tainted; nothing was published, books or newspapers, save by the master's order: Bonaparte saw to the articles in the _Moniteur_; his prefects sent back from the various departments the recitals, the congratulations, the felicitations, in the form in which the Paris authorities had dictated and forwarded them, in which form they expressed a conventional public opinion, quite different from the real opinion. Write history from such documents as those! In proof of your impartial studies, quote the authentic sources to which you have gone: you will only be quoting a lie in support of a lie. If it were possible to call this universal imposture into question, if men who have not seen the days of the Empire were to insist upon regarding as sincere all that they come upon in printed documents, or even all that they might dig up in certain boxes at the public offices, it would be enough to appeal to an unexceptionable witness, to the "Conservative" Senate; there, in the decree which I have quoted above, you have seen its own words: * "Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press has been constantly submitted to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts and false maxims; that acts and reports, passed by the Senate, have undergone alterations when made public, etc." Is there any reply possible to this declaration? The life of Bonaparte was an incontestable truth, which imposture had taken upon itself to write. * [Sidenote: Pride and affectation.] A monstrous pride and an incessant affectation spoil Napoleon's character. At the time of his dominion, what need had he to exaggerate his stature, when the God of Armies had furnished him with the war chariot "whose wheels are living"? He took after the Italian blood; his nature was complex: great men, a very small family upon earth, unhappily find only themselves to imitate them. At once a model and a copy, a real personage and an actor representing that personage, Napoleon was his own mime; he would not have believed himself a hero, if he had not dressed himself up in a hero's costume. This curious weakness gives something false and equivocal to his astonishing realities: one is afraid of taking the king of kings for Roscius, or Roscius for the king of kings. Napoleon's qualities are so much adulterated in the gazettes, the pamphlets, the poems and even in the songs overrun with imperialism, that those qualities are completely unrecognisable. All the touching things ascribed to Bonaparte in the _ana_ about the "prisoners," the "dead," the "soldiers," are idle trash to which the actions of his life give the lie. The _Grand-mère_ of my illustrious friend Béranger is only an admirable ballad: Bonaparte had nothing of the good fellow about him. Dominion personified, he was hard; that coldness formed the antidote to his fiery imagination; he found in himself no word, he found only a deed, and a deed ready to chafe at the smallest independence: a gnat that flew without his orders was a rebellious insect in his eyes. It was not enough to lie to the ears, it was necessary to lie to the eyes: here, in an engraving, we see Bonaparte taking off his hat to the Austrian wounded; there, we have a little _tourlourou_[379] who prevents the Emperor from passing; further on, Napoleon touches the plague-stricken of Jaffa, and he never touched them; he crosses Mount St. Bernard on a spirited horse amid a whirl of snow-flakes, and it was the finest weather in the world. Are they not now trying to transform the Emperor into a Roman of the early days of the Aventine, into a missionary of liberty, into a citizen who instituted slavery only for love of the opposite virtue? Draw your conclusions from two features of the great founder of equality: he ordered his brother Jerome's marriage with Miss Patterson[380] to be annulled, because the brother of Napoleon could ally himself only with the blood of Princes; later, after returning from the isle of Elba, he invested the new "democratic" constitution with a peerage and crowned it with the "Additional Act." That Bonaparte, following up the successes of the Revolution, everywhere disseminated principles of independence; that his victories helped to relax the bonds between the peoples and the kings, and snatched those peoples from the power of the old customs and the ancient ideas; that, in this sense, he contributed to the social enfranchisement: these are facts which I do not pretend to contest; but that, of his own will, he laboured scientifically for the political and civil deliverance of the nations; that he established the narrowest despotism with the idea of giving to Europe and to France in particular the widest Constitution; that he was only a tribune disguised as a tyrant: all this is a supposition which I cannot possibly adopt. Bonaparte, like the race of princes, desired nothing and sought nothing save power, attaining it, however, through liberty, because he made his first appearance on the world's stage in 1793. The Revolution, which was Napoleon's wet-nurse, did not long delay in appearing to him as an enemy; he never ceased beating her. The Emperor, for the rest, knew evil very well, when the evil did not come directly from the Emperor; for he was not destitute of moral sense. The sophism put forward concerning Bonaparte's love for liberty proves only one thing, the abuse which can be made of reason; nowadays it lends itself to everything. Is it not established that the Terror was a time of humanity? In fact, were they not demanding the abolition of the death-penalty while they were killing everybody? Have not great civilizers, as they are "called," always immolated men, and is it not therefore, as far as has been "proved," that Robespierre was the continuer of Jesus Christ? [Sidenote: Napoleon's popularity.] The Emperor meddled with everything; his intelligence never rested; he had a sort of perpetual agitation of ideas. In the impetuousness of his nature, instead of a free and continuous train, he advanced by leaps and bounds, he flung himself upon the universe and shook it; he would have none of it, of that universe, if he was obliged to wait for it: an incomprehensible being, who found the secret of debasing his most towering actions by despising them, and who raised his least elevated actions to his own level. Impatient of will, patient of character, incomplete and as though unfinished, Napoleon had gaps in his genius: his understanding resembled the sky of that other hemisphere under which he was to go to die, the sky whose stars are separated by empty spaces. One asks one's self by what spell Bonaparte, so aristocratic, so hostile to the people, came to achieve the popularity which he enjoyed: for that forger of yokes has most certainly remained popular with a nation whose pretension was to raise altars to independence and equality; here is the solution of the enigma: Daily experience makes us recognise that the French are instinctively drawn towards power; they do not love liberty; equality alone is their idol. Now equality and despotism have secret connections. In those two respects, Napoleon had his fount in the hearts of the French, militarily inclined towards dominion, democratically enamoured of the level. Once on the throne, he made the people sit down beside him: a proletarian king, he humbled the kings and nobles in his ante-chambers; he levelled the ranks, not by lowering but by raising them: the descending level would have charmed the plebeian envy more, the ascending level was more flattering to its pride. French vanity was puffed up also by the superiority which Bonaparte gave us over the rest of Europe; another cause of Napoleon's popularity has to do with the affliction of his last days. After his death, as men became better acquainted with what he had suffered at St. Helena, they began to be moved; they forgot his tyranny to remember that, after conquering our enemies, after subsequently drawing them into France, he had defended us against them; we imagine that he might save us to-day from the disgrace into which we have sunk: his fame was recalled to us by his misfortune; his glory profited by his adversity. Lastly, the marvels of his arms have bewitched the young, while teaching us to worship brute force. His unexampled fortune has left to the overweening conceit of every ambition the hope of arriving at the point which he attained. And yet this man, so popular through the roller which he had passed over France, was the mortal enemy of equality and the greatest organizer of aristocracy within democracy. I cannot acquiesce in the false praises with which men have insulted Bonaparte, while trying to justify everything in his conduct; I cannot surrender my reason nor go into ecstasies before that which arouses my horror or my pity. If I have succeeded in conveying what I have felt, there will remain of my portrait one of the leading figures in history; but I have adopted no part of the fantastic creature composed of lies: lies which I saw born, lies which, taken at first for what they were, passed in time to the state of truth through the infatuation and the imbecile credulity of mankind. I refuse to be a gull and to fall into a fit with admiration. I strive to paint persons conscientiously, without taking from them what they have, without giving them what they have not. If success were esteemed as innocence; if, debauching even posterity, it loaded it with its chains; if, a future slave, begotten by a slavish past, that suborned posterity became the accomplice of whosoever should have triumphed: where would be the right, where would be the reward of sacrifices? Good and evil becoming only relative qualities, all morality would be blotted out from human actions. That is the difficulty which is caused to the impartial writer by a brilliant renown; he keeps it on one side as much as he can, in order to lay bare the truth; but the glory returns like a golden haze and instantly covers the picture. * In order not to admit the diminution of territory and power which we owe to Bonaparte, the present generation consoles itself by imagining that he has given back to us in illustriousness what he has taken from us in strength: "Are we not from this time forward," it asks, "famed in the four quarters of the earth? Is not a Frenchman feared, remarked, sought out, known on every shore?" But were we placed between those two conditions: either immortality without power, or power without immortality? Alexander made the Greek name known to the universe; none the less he left them four empires in Asia; the language and civilization of the Hellenes extended from the Nile to Babylon and from Babylon to the Indus. At his death, his ancestral Kingdom of Macedon, far from being diminished, had increased a hundred-fold in force. Bonaparte made us known on every shore; commanded by him, the French threw Europe so low at their feet that France still prevails by her name, and that the Arc de l'Étoile can rise up without appearing a puerile trophy; but, before our reverses, that monument would have stood as a witness, instead of being only a record. And yet, had not Dumouriez, with raw recruits, given the foreigner his first lessons[381], Jourdan won the Battle of Fleurus[382], Pichegru conquered Belgium and Holland[383], Hoche crossed the Rhine[384], Masséna triumphed at Zurich[385], Moreau at Hohenlinden[386]: all exploits most difficult to obtain and preliminary to others? Bonaparte made a corporate whole of these scattered successes; he continued them, he caused those victories to shine forth: but without those first wonders, would he have obtained the last? He was raised above all things only when reason with him was executing the inspirations of the poet. [Sidenote A true appreciation.] Our sovereign's illustriousness cost us merely two or three hundred thousand men a year; we paid for it with merely three millions of our soldiers; our fellow-citizens bought it merely at the cost of their sufferings and their liberties during fifteen years: can such trifles count? Are the generations that have come after us not resplendent? So much the worse for those who have disappeared! The calamities under the Republic served for the safety of all; our misfortunes under the Empire did much more: they deified Bonaparte! That is enough for us. That is not enough for me: I will not stoop so low as to hide my nation behind Bonaparte; he did not make France: France made him. No talent, no superiority will ever bring me to consent to the power which can, with one word, deprive me of my independence, my home, my friends: if I do not say of my fortune and my honour, it is because one's fortune does not appear to me to be worth the trouble of defending it; as for honour, it escapes tyranny: it is the soul of the martyrs; bonds encompass and do not enchain it; it pierces the vault of prisons and carries the whole man away with it. The wrong which true philosophy will never forgive Bonaparte is that he accustomed society to passive obedience, thrust back humanity towards the times of moral degradation, and perhaps corrupted characters in such a way that it would be impossible to say when men's hearts will begin to throb with generous sentiments. The weakness in which we are plunged as regards Europe, our actual abasement are the result of the Napoleonic slavery: all that remains to us is the faculty to bear the yoke. Bonaparte unsettled even the future: 'twould not surprise me if, in the discomfort of our impotence, we were seen to grow smaller, to barricade ourselves against Europe instead of going to seek it out, to give up our freedom within to deliver ourselves from an illusory terror without, to lose ourselves in ignoble provident cares, contrary to our genius and to the fourteen centuries which compose our national manners. The despotism which Bonaparte left in the air will descend upon us in the shape of fortresses. The fashion nowadays is to greet liberty with a sardonic smile, to look upon it as a piece of old lumber, fallen into disuse with honour. I am not in the fashion: I think that there is nothing in the world without liberty; it gives a price to life; were I to remain the last to defend it, I would never cease to proclaim its rights. To attack Napoleon in the name of things that are past, to assail him with ideas that are dead is to prepare fresh triumphs for him. He is to be fought only with something greater than himself, liberty: he was guilty towards it and consequently towards the human race. * Vain words! Better than any do I feel their uselessness. Henceforth any observation, however moderate it may be, is reputed profane: it needs courage to dare brave the cries of the vulgar, not to be afraid of being treated as a narrow intelligence, incapable of understanding and feeling the genius of Napoleon, for the sole reason that, in the midst of the lively and real admiration which one professes for him, one is nevertheless not able to worship all his imperfections. The world belongs to Bonaparte: that of which the ravisher was unable to complete the conquest, his fame usurps; living he missed the world, dead he possesses it. It is vain for you to protest: the generations pass by without listening to you. Antiquity makes the son of Priam say to the shade: "Judge not Hector from his little tomb; the _Iliad_, Homer, the Greeks in flight, see there my sepulchre: I am buried under all those great deeds." [Sidenote: The Napoleonic legend.] Bonaparte is no longer the real Bonaparte, but a legendary figure put together from the vagaries of the poet, the talk of the soldier and the tales of the people; it is the Charlemagne and the Alexander of the idylls of the middle ages that we behold to-day. That fantastic hero will remain the real personage; the other portraits will disappear. Bonaparte is so strongly connected with absolute dominion that, after undergoing the despotism of his person, we have to undergo the despotism of his memory. This latter despotism is more overbearing than the former; for, though men fought against Napoleon when he was on the throne, there is an universal agreement to accept the irons which he flings to us now that he is dead. He is an obstacle to future events: how could a power issuing from the camps establish itself after him? Has he not killed all military glory by surpassing it? How could a free government come into being, when he has corrupted the principles of all liberty in men's hearts? No legitimate power is now able to drive the usurping spectre from the mind of man: the soldier and the citizen, the Republican and the Monarchist, the rich and the poor alike place busts and portraits of Napoleon in their homes, in their palaces or in their cottages; the former conquered are in agreement with the former conquerors; one cannot take a step in Italy without coming across him; one cannot enter Germany without meeting him, for in that country the young generation which rejected him is past. Generally, the centuries sit down before the portrait of a great man, they finish it by means of a long and successive work. This time, the human race has declined to wait: perhaps it was in too great a hurry to stump a crayon drawing. It is time to place the completed side of the idol in juxtaposition with the defective side. Bonaparte is not great through his words, his speeches, his writings, through the love of liberty which he never possessed and which he never pretended to establish; he is great in that he created a regular and powerful government, a code of laws adopted in different countries, courts of law, schools, a strong, active, intelligent administration, which still lasts us; he is great in that he revived, enlightened and governed Italy superlatively well; he is great in that, in France, he restored order from the midst of chaos, in that he built up the altars, in that he reduced furious demagogues, vainglorious scholars, anarchical men of letters, Voltairean atheists, open-air orators, cut-throats of the prisons and streets, starvelings of the tribune, the clubs and the scaffolds, in that he reduced them to serve under him; he is great in that he curbed an anarchical mob; he is great in that he put an end to the familiarities of a common fortune, in that he forced soldiers, his equals, and captains, his chiefs or his rivals, to bend before his will; he is great above all in that he was born of himself alone, in that he was able, with no other authority than that of his genius, able, he, to make himself obeyed by thirty-six million subjects, at a time when no illusion surrounds the thrones; he is great in that he overthrew all the kings his opponents, in that he defeated all the armies, whatever the difference in their discipline and valour, in that he taught his name to savage as well as to civilized peoples, in that he surpassed all the conquerors who preceded him, in that he filled ten years with prodigies so great that we have difficulty to-day in understanding them. The famous offender in triumphal matter is no more; the few men who still understand noble sentiments can do justice to glory without fearing it, but without repenting of having proclaimed what that glory had that was baleful, without recognising the destroyer of independences as the father of emancipations: Napoleon does not need that one should ascribe merits to him; he was richly enough endowed at his birth. Now, therefore, that, severed from his time, his history is ended and his idyll commencing, let us go to see him die: let us leave Europe; let us follow him beneath the sky of his apotheosis! The hissing of the seas where his ships have struck sail will point out to us the spot of his disappearance: "At the extremity of our hemisphere," says Tacitus, "is heard the sound made by the dipping sun: _sonum insuper immergentis audiri._" * João de Nova[387], a Portuguese navigator, had lost his bearings in the waters separating Africa and America. In 1502, on the 18th of August, the feast of St. Helen[388], mother of the first Christian Emperor[389], he came upon an island at the 16th degree of latitude and 11th of longitude; he landed and gave it the name of the day upon which it was discovered. After frequenting the island for some years, the Portuguese relinquished it; the Dutch established themselves there, and subsequently abandoned it for the Cape of Good Hope; the British East Indian Company seized it; the Dutch retook it in 1672; the British occupied it anew and settled there. [Sidenote: St. Helena.] When João de Nova landed at St. Helena, the interior of the uninhabited country was mere forest land. Fernando Lopez, a Portuguese renegado, transported to that oasis, stocked it with cows, goats, hens, guinea-fowls and birds from the four corners of the earth. On to the island were taken successively, as on to the deck of the Ark, animals of the whole creation. Five hundred whites, fifteen hundred negroes, mingled with mulattoes, Javanese and Chinese, compose the population of the island. Jamestown is its town and its harbour. Before the English were masters of the Cape of Good Hope, the Company's fleets, returning from India, put in at Jamestown. The sailors spread their slop-goods at the foot of the cabbage-trees: the mute and solitary forest changed once a year into a noisy and populous market. The climate of the island is healthy but rainy: that dungeon of Neptune, which is only seven or eight leagues in circumference, attracts the ocean vapours. The equatorial sun drives away every breathing thing at noon-day, forces the very gnats into silence and rest, obliges men and beasts to hide themselves. The billows are illumined at night by what is called "the phosphorescent light," a light produced by myriads of insects whose loves, electrified by the storms, kindle upon the surface of the deep the illuminations of an universal wedding. The shadow of the island, dark and motionless, reposes amid a moving plain of diamonds. The spectacle of the heavens is similarly magnificent, according to my learned and famous friend, M. de Humboldt[390]: "We feel," he says, "an indescribable sensation when, on approaching the Equator, and particularly when passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see these stars, which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink and finally disappear.... One feels that he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship or the phosphorescent Clouds of Magellan arise on the horizon.... "We saw distinctly," he continues, "for the first time the Southern Cross only on the night of the 4th of July, in the sixteenth degree of latitude.... "I recalled the sublime passage of Dante, which the most celebrated commentators have applied to that constellation: "Io mi volsi a man destra, etc.[391]" "Among the Portuguese and Spaniards, a religious feeling attaches them to a constellation whose form reminds them of that sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New World." * The poets of France and of Lusitania have placed elegiac scenes on the shores of Melinda and the neighbouring isles. It is a far cry from those fictitious sorrows to the real torments of Napoleon under the stars foretold by the singer of Beatrice and in those seas of Eleonora and Virginia. Did the great men of Rome, banished to the isles of Greece, concern themselves with the charms of those shores and the divinities of Crete and Naxos? That which enraptured Vasco de Gama and Camoëns could not move Bonaparte: prone on the poop of the vessel, he did not perceive that above his head glittered unknown constellations whose rays met his eyes for the first time. What cared he for those stars which he had never seen from his bivouacs, which had not shone upon his empire? And yet no star was wanting to his destiny: one half of the firmament lighted up his cradle; the other was reserved for the pomp of his tomb. The sea which Napoleon was crossing was not the friendly sea which carried him from the harbours of Corsica, from the sands of Abukir, from the rocks of Elba, to the shores of Provence; it was that hostile ocean which, after enclosing him in Germany, France, Portugal and Spain, opened out before his course only to close up again behind him. Probably, when he saw the waves urge on his ship, the trade-winds drive it ever further with a constant blast, he did not make the reflections upon his catastrophe with which it inspires me: each man feels his life in his own manner; he who affords a great spectacle to the world is less touched and less instructed than the spectator. Occupied with the past as though it could be reborn, hoping still in his memories, Bonaparte scarce perceived that he was crossing the line, nor asked what hand traced the circles in which the globes are compelled to imprison their eternal progress. On the 15th of August, the wandering colony kept St. Napoleon's Day[392] on board the vessel which was taking Napoleon to his last halting-place. On the 15th of October, the _Northumberland_ was abreast of St. Helena. The passenger mounted on deck: he had a difficulty in discovering an imperceptible black speck in the bluish immensity; he took a spy-glass: he surveyed that particle of earth as he might formerly have surveyed a fortress in the middle of a lake. He saw the market-town of St. James enchased in scarped rocks; not a wrinkle in that barren face but a gun hung from it: they seemed to wish to receive the captive according to his genius. [Sidenote: Arrival at St. Helena.] On the 16th of October 1815, Bonaparte touched the rock, his mausoleum, even as, on the 12th of October 1492, Christopher Columbus touched the New World, his monument: "There," says Walter Scott, "at the entrance to the Indian Ocean, Bonaparte was deprived of the means of making a second _avatar_ or incarnation on earth." Before being moved to the residence of Longwood, Bonaparte occupied a hut at Briars, near Balcomb's Cottage. On the 9th of December, Longwood, hurriedly enlarged by the carpenters of the English fleet, received its guest. The house, situated on a mountain upland, consisted of a drawing-room, a dining-room, a library, a study and a bed-room. It was not much: those who inhabited the tower of the Temple and the donjon of Vincennes were still worse lodged; true, one paid them the attention of shortening their stay. General Gourgaud, M. and Madame de Montholon with their children, M. de Las Cases and his son camped out provisionally in tents; M. and Madame Bertrand installed themselves at Hut's Gate, a cottage placed on the boundary of the grounds of Longwood. Bonaparte had a stretch of sand, twelve miles long, as his exercise-ground; sentries surrounded that space and look-out men were posted on the highest peaks. The lion could extend his walks further, but in that case he had to consent to allow himself to be watched by an English _bestiarius._ Two camps defended the excommunicated enclosure: at night, the circle of the sentries was drawn in round Longwood. At nine o'clock, Napoleon, confined, could no longer go out; the patrols went the round; horsemen on vedette, foot-soldiers placed here and there kept watch in the creeks and in the ravines which ran down to the sea. Two armed brigs cruised, one to leeward, the other to wind-ward of the island. What precautions to guard one man in the midst of the seas! After sunset, no boat could put to sea; the fishing-boats were numbered, and at night they remained in harbour under the responsibility of a lieutenant in the Navy. The Sovereign Generalissimo who had summoned the world to his stirrup was called upon to appear twice a day before a military collar. Bonaparte did not submit to that call; when, by good luck, he was able to avoid the sight of the officer on duty, that officer would not have dared to say where and how he had seen him of whom it was more difficult to establish the absence than to prove the presence to the universe. Sir George Cockburn[393], the author of those severe regulations, was replaced by Sir Hudson Lowe. Then began the bickerings about which all the Memoirs have told us. If one were to believe those Memoirs, the new Governor must have been of the family of the enormous spiders of St. Helena and the reptile of those woods in which snakes are unknown. England was lacking in elevation, Napoleon in dignity. To put an end to his requirements of etiquette, Bonaparte sometimes seemed determined to conceal himself behind an assumed name, like a monarch travelling in a foreign country; he had the touching idea of taking the name of one of his aides-de-camp, killed at the Battle of Areola[394]. France, Austria, Russia appointed commissaries to the residence of St. Helena[395]: the captive was accustomed to receive the ambassadors of the two latter Powers; the Legitimacy, which had not recognised Napoleon as Emperor, would have acted more nobly by not recognising Napoleon as a prisoner. [Sidenote: Life at Longwood.] A large wooden house, constructed in London, was sent to St Helena; but Napoleon did not feel well enough to inhabit it. His life at Longwood was regulated in this way: he rose at uncertain hours; M. Marchand, his valet, read to him when he was in bed; after rising, in the morning, he dictated to Generals Montholon and Gourgaud and to the son of M. de Las Cases. He breakfasted at ten o'clock, rode on horseback or drove until about three, returned indoors at six and went to bed at eleven. He affected to dress as he is painted in his portrait by Isabey[396]: in the morning, he wrapped himself in a caftan and wound a Madras handkerchief round his head. St. Helena lies between the two Poles. The navigators who pass from one spot to the other salute this first station where the land refreshes eyes wearied with the spectacle of the Ocean and offers fruits and the coolness of sweet water to mouths chafed with salt. The presence of Bonaparte changed this isle of promise into a plague-stricken rock: foreign ships no longer touched there; so soon as they were signalled at twenty leagues' distance, a cruiser went to challenge them and charged them to keep off: none were allowed into port, except in case of stormy weather, but the ships of the British Navy alone. Some of the English travellers who had lately admired or who were on their way to see the marvels of the Ganges visited another marvel on their road: India, accustomed to conquerors, had one chained at her gates. Napoleon allowed these visits with reluctance. He consented to receive Lord Amherst[397] on the latter's return from his Chinese embassy. Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm[398] he liked: "Does your Government mean," he asked him one day, "to detain me upon this rock until my death's day?" The admiral replied that he feared so. "Then the term of my life will soon arrive." "I hope not, _monsieur_; I hope that you will survive to record your great actions; they are so numerous that the task will ensure you a term of long life." Napoleon did not take offense at this simple appellation of _monsieur_; he revealed himself at that moment through his real greatness. Fortunately for himself, he never wrote his life; he would have lessened it: men of that nature must leave their Memoirs to be told by the unknown voice which belongs to nobody and which issues from the nations and the centuries. To us every-day people alone is it permitted to talk of ourselves, because nobody would talk of us. Captain Basil Hall[399] called at Longwood; Bonaparte remembered having seen the captain's father at Brienne: "Your father," he said, "was the first Englishman that I ever saw; and I have recollected him all my life on that account." He talked with the captain about the recent discovery of the island of Loo-Choo: "The inhabitants have no arms," said the captain. "No arms!" exclaimed Bonaparte. "That is to say no guns: they have muskets?" "Not even muskets." "Well, then, spears, or at least, bows and arrows?" "Neither one nor other." "Nor daggers?" "No, none." "But, without arms, how can one fight?" Captain Hall illustrated their ignorance with respect to all the world, by saying they knew nothing of France and England, and never had even heard of His Majesty. Bonaparte smiled in a way which struck the captain: the more serious the countenance, the more beautiful the smile. Those different travellers remarked that not the least trace of colour appeared in Bonaparte's cheeks: his head resembled a marble bust whose whiteness had been slightly yellowed by time. Not the smallest trace of a wrinkle was discernible on his brow, nor an approach to a furrow on any part of his countenance; his mind seemed at ease. This apparent calm gave rise to the belief that the flame of his genius had taken flight. His manner of speaking was slow; his expression was benignant and almost kindly; sometimes he would dart forth dazzling glances, but that state soon passed: his eyes became veiled and sad. [Sidenote: Napoleon at St. Helena.] Ah, other travellers known to Napoleon had, in former days, appeared upon those shores! After the explosion of the infernal machine[400], a senatus-consultus of the 4th of January 1801 decreed, without trial, by a simple police-order, the exile beyond-seas of one hundred and thirty Republicans: put on board the frigate _Chiffonne_ and the corvette _Flèche_, they were taken to the Seychelle Islands and dispersed shortly afterwards in the archipelago of the Comores, between Africa and Madagascar: they nearly all died there. Two of the men transported, Lefranc and Saunois, having succeeded in escaping on board an American ship, touched at St. Helena in 1803: there, twelve years later, Providence was to imprison their great oppressor. The too-famous General Rossignol[401], their companion in misfortune, a quarter of an hour before uttering his last breath, exclaimed: "I die harassed by the most horrible pains; but I should die content if I could hear that the tyrant of my country was enduring the same sufferings[402]!" Thus did freedom's imprecations await him who betrayed her, even in the other hemisphere. Italy, roused from her long sleep by Napoleon, turned her eyes towards the illustrious offspring who wished to restore her to her glory, and with whom she had re-fallen beneath the yoke. The sons of the Muses, the noblest and most grateful of men, when they are not the vilest and most unthankful, looked on St. Helena. The last poet of the land of Virgil sang the last warrior of the land of Cæsar: Tutto ei provò, la gloria Maggior dopo il periglio, La fuga e la vittoria, La reggia e il triste esiglio: Due volte nella polvere, Due volte sull'altar. Ei si nomo: due secoli, L'un contro l'altro armato, Sommessi a lui si volsero, Come aspettando il fato; Ei fè silenzio, ed arbitro S'assise in mezzo a lor. "He felt all," says Manzoni[403], "the greatest glory after peril, flight and victory, royalty and sad banishment: twice in the dust, twice on the altar. "He stated his name: two centuries, one against the other armed, turned towards him, as though awaiting their fate; he was silent and seated himself as arbiter between them." * Bonaparte was approaching his end; devoured by an internal wound envenomed by sorrow, he had borne that wound in the thick of prosperity: it was the only legacy which he had received from his father; the rest came to him from God's munificence. Already he reckoned six years of exile; he had needed less time to conquer Europe. He remained almost always indoors, and read Ossian in Cesarotti's[404] Italian translation. Everything saddened him under a sky beneath which life seemed shorter, the sun remaining three days less in that hemisphere than in ours. When Bonaparte went out, he passed along rugged paths lined with aloes and sweet-scented broom. He walked among gum-trees with sparse flowers, which the generous winds made lean to the same side, or hid himself in the thick mists which rolled low. He was seen seated at the feet of Diana's Peak, Flag Staff, or Leader Hill, gazing on the sea through the gaps in the mountains. Before him, the Ocean unfolded itself, which on the one side bathes the coasts of Africa, on the other the American shores, and which goes, like a marginless stream, to lose itself in the southern seas. No civilized land nearer than the Cape of Storms. Who shall tell the thoughts of that Prometheus torn alive by death, when, his hand pressed to his smarting breast, he turned his gaze over the billows! Christ was led into a high mountain whence he saw the kingdoms of the world; but for Christ it was written to the tempter of mankind: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God[405]." [Sidenote: Napoleon's sufferings.] Bonaparte, forgetting a thought of his which I have quoted ("not having given myself life, I shall not rob myself of it"), spoke of killing himself; he also did not remember his "order of the day" with regard to the suicide of one of his soldiers. He believed sufficiently in the attachment of his companions in captivity to hope that they would consent to suffocate themselves with him in the smoke from a brazier: the illusion was great. Such are the intoxications of a long domination; but, in the case of Napoleon's impatiences, we must consider only the degree of suffering to which he had attained. M. de Las Cases, having written to Lucien on a piece of white silk, in contravention of the regulations, received the order to leave St. Helena[406]: his absence increased the void around the exile. On the 18th of March 1817, Lord Holland[407], in the House of Lords, made a motion on the subject of the complaints forwarded to England by General Montholon: "It will not be considered by posterity," he said, "whether Bonaparte has been justly punished for his crimes, but whether Great Britain has acted in that generous manner which becomes a great country." Lord Bathurst[408] opposed the motion. Cardinal Fesch sent two priests[409] from Italy to his nephew. The Princess Borghese begged the favour of being allowed to join her brother: "No," said Napoleon, "I would not have her witness the degrading state to which I am reduced and the insults to which I am subjected." That beloved sister, _germana Jovis_, did not cross the seas: she died in the regions where Napoleon had left his reputation. Schemes of abduction were formed: a Colonel Latapie, at the head of a band of American adventurers, designed a descent on St. Helena. Johnson[410], a resolute smuggler, meditated an attempt to carry off Bonaparte by means of a submarine vessel. Young lords entered into these plans; people plotted to break the chains of the oppressor: they would have left the liberator of the human race to die in irons without a thought Bonaparte hoped for his delivery from the political movements of Europe. If he had lived till 1830, perhaps he would have returned to us; but what would he have done among us? He would have seemed infirm and out of date in the midst of the new ideas. Formerly his tyranny appeared liberty to our slavery; now his greatness would appear despotism to our littleness. At the present period, everything is decrepit in a day; who lives too long dies alive. As we advance in life, we leave three or four images of ourselves, different one from the other: we see them next in the haze of the past, like portraits of our different ages. Bonaparte, in his feebleness, no longer occupied himself except like a child: he amused himself by digging a little basin in his garden; he put a few fish into it: the mastick employed in cementing the basin contained copperas, and the fish died. Bonaparte said: "Everything I love, everything that belongs to me is immediately smitten." About the end of February 1821, Napoleon was obliged to take to his bed and did not rise again. "How low am I fallen!" he murmured. "I stirred the world, and I cannot raise my eyelid." He did not believe in medicine and objected to a consultation of Antomarchi[411] with the Jamestown doctors. Nevertheless, he admitted Dr. Arnott beside his death-bed. He dictated his will from the 13th to the 27th of April; on the 28th, he ordered his heart to be sent to Marie-Louise; he forbade any English surgeon to lay a hand upon him after his decease. Persuaded that he was succumbing to the malady by which his father had been attacked, he requested that the report of the autopsy should be transmitted to the Duc de Reichstadt: the paternal direction has become useless; Napoleon II. has joined Napoleon I. [Sidenote: Napoleon's death-bed.] At this last hour, the religious sentiment with which Bonaparte was always imbued awoke. Thibaudeau, in his _Mémoires sur le Consulat_, tells us, with reference to the restoration of public worship, that the First Consul said to him: "'On Sunday last, in the midst of the silence of nature, I was walking in these gardens[412]; the sound of the bell of Ruel suddenly came and struck my ear and renewed all the impressions of my youth; I was moved, so powerful is the force of early habit, and said to myself: "'If it is thus for me, what effect must similar memories not produce on simple and credulous men? Let your philosophers reply to that!'"... "And, raising his hands to the sky: "'Who is He that made all that?'" In 1797, by his Proclamation of Macerata, Bonaparte authorized the residence of the French refugee priests in the Papal States, forbade them to be molested, ordered the convents to support them, and allotted them a salary in money. His variations in Egypt, his rages against the Church, of which he was the restorer, show that an instinct of spirituality predominated in the very midst of his errors; for his lapses and his irritations are not of a philosophical nature and bear the impress of the religious character. Bonaparte, when giving Vignale the details of the funeral lights by which he wished his remains to be surrounded, thought he saw signs that his instructions were displeasing to Antomarchi; he entered into an explanation with the doctor and said to him: "You are above those weaknesses: but how can it be helped? I am neither a philosopher nor a doctor; I believe in God; I am of my father's religion. We cannot all be atheists.... Are you able not to believe in God? For, after all, everything proclaims His existence, and the greatest geniuses have believed it.... You are a doctor.... Those people only tackle matter: they never believe anything." You strong minds of the day, give up your admiration for Napoleon; you have nothing to do with that poor man: did he not imagine that a comet had come to fetch him, as it had carried off Cæsar of old? Moreover, he "believed in God;" he "was of his father's religion;" he was not a "philosopher;" he was not an "atheist;" he had not, like you, given battle to the Almighty, although he had defeated a good many kings; he found that "everything proclaimed the existence" of the Supreme Being; he declared that "the greatest geniuses had believed in that existence," and he wished to believe as his fathers did. Lastly, O monstrous thing, this foremost man of modern times, this man of all the centuries, was a Christian in the nineteenth century! His will begins with this clause: "I DIE IN THE APOSTOLIC AND ROMAN RELIGION, IN THE BOSOM OF WHICH I WAS BORN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS AGO." In the third paragraph of the will of Louis XVI., we read: "I DIE IN THE UNION OF OUR HOLY MOTHER THE CATHOLIC, APOSTOLIC AND ROMAN CHURCH." The Revolution has given us many a lesson; but is there any one of them to be compared with this? Napoleon and Louis XVI. making the same profession of faith! Would you know the value of the Cross? Seek through the whole world for what best suits virtue in misfortune or the man of genius dying. [Sidenote: Death of Napoleon.] On the 3rd of May, Napoleon was administered the sacrament of Extreme Unction and received the Blessed Viaticum. The silence of the bed-chamber was interrupted only by the death-sob, mingled with the regular sound of the pendulum of a clock: the shadow, before stopping on the dial, did a few more rounds; the luminary that outlined it had a difficulty in dying out. On the 4th, the tempest of Cromwell's death-pangs arose: almost all the trees at Longwood were uprooted. At last, on the 5th, at eleven minutes to six in the evening, amid the wind, the rain and the crash of the waves, Bonaparte gave up to God the mightiest breath of life that ever quickened human clay. The last words caught upon the conqueror's lips were, "_Tête... armée_," or "_Tête d'armée._" His thoughts were still wandering in the midst of combats. When he closed his eyes for ever, his sword, dead with him, was laid by his side, a crucifix rested on his breast: the symbol of peace, applied to the heart of Napoleon, calmed the throbbing of that heart even as a ray from Heaven makes the wave to fall. * Bonaparte first desired to be interred in the Cathedral of Ajaccio; then, by a codicil dated 16 April 1821, he bequeathed his bones to France: Heaven had served him better; his real mausoleum is the rock on which he expired: turn back to my story of the death of the Duc d'Enghien. Napoleon, foreseeing the opposition of the British Government to his last wishes, eventually made choice of a burying-place in St. Helena. In a narrow valley known as Slane's or Geranium Valley, now Tomb Valley, rises a fountain; Napoleon's Chinese servants, faithful as Camoëns' Javanese, used to fill their pitchers there: weeping willows overhang the spring; green grass, studded with tchampas, grows all around: "The tchampas, despite its brilliancy and its perfume, is not a flower that one seeks after, because it flourishes on the tombs," say the Sanskrit poems. In the declivities of the bare rocks, bitter lemon-trees thrive ill, with cocoanut-trees, larches and cone-trees of which men collect the gum which sticks to the beards of the goats. Napoleon, booted, spurred, dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the Guard, decorated with the Legion of Honour, was laid in state on his little iron bedstead; upon that visage which was never astonished the soul, as it fled, had left a sublime stupor. The planishers and joiners soldered and nailed Bonaparte into a four-fold coffin of mahogany, of lead, of mahogany again, and of tin: they seemed to fear that he would never be imprisoned enough. The cloak which the erstwhile victor had worn at the vast funeral of Marengo served as a pall to the coffin. Napoleon delighted in the willows of the spring; he asked for peace of the Slane Valley even as banished Dante asked for peace of the Convent of Corvo. In gratitude for the transient repose which he tasted there during the last days of his life, he appointed that valley as the shelter of his eternal rest. Speaking of the source, he said: "If God were willing that I should recover, I would raise a monument in the spot where it springs." That monument was his tomb. In Plutarch's time, in a place consecrated to the nymphs on the banks of the Strymon, one still saw a stone bench on which Alexander had sat The obsequies were held on the 28th of May. The weather was fine: four horses, led by grooms on foot, drew the hearse; four-and-twenty English grenadiers, carrying no arms, surrounded it; Napoleon's horse followed. The garrison of the island lined the precipices of the road. Three squadrons of dragoons went before the procession; the 20th Regiment of Infantry, the marines, the St. Helena Volunteers, the Royal Artillery, with fifteen pieces of cannon, brought up the rear. Bands of musicians, stationed at distances on the rocks, exchanged mournful tunes. On reaching a pass, the hearse stopped; the twenty-four unarmed grenadiers lifted up the corpse and had the honour of carrying it on their shoulders to the burying-place. Three volleys of artillery saluted the remains of Napoleon at the moment when he sank into the earth: all the noise which he had made on that earth did not penetrate six feet beneath it. A stone which was to have been employed in the building of a new house for the exile was lowered upon his coffin, as it were the trap-door of his last cell. They recited the verses from Psalm 87: "I am poor, and in labours from my youth: and being exalted have been humbled and troubled. "Thy wrath hath come upon me.... [413]" The flag-ship fired minute-guns. This warlike harmony, lost in the immensity of the Ocean, made response to the _Requiescat in pace._ The Emperor, buried by his victors of Waterloo, had heard the last cannon-shot of that battle; he did not hear the last detonation with which England disturbed and honoured his sleep at St. Helena. All withdrew, holding in their hands a branch of willow, as though returning from the Feast of Palms. Lord Byron thought that the dictator of kings had abdicated his renown with his blade, that he was going to die forgotten. The poet ought to have known that Napoleon's destiny was a muse, like all high destinies. That muse was able to change an abortive issue into a catastrophe which revived its hero. The solitude of Napoleon's exile and tomb has spread over a brilliant memory a spell of a different kind. Alexander did not die under the eyes of Greece; he disappeared in the proud perspectives of Babylon. Bonaparte has not died under the eyes of France; he has vanished in the gorgeous horizons of the torrid zone. He sleeps like a hermit or like a pariah in a valley, at the end of a deserted pathway. The magnitude of the silence which presses upon him equals the vastness of the noise that once surrounded him. The nations are absent, their crowd has withdrawn; the tropic bird "harnessed," says Buffon, "to the chariot of the sun," precipitates itself from the orb of light; where does it rest to-day? It rests upon ashes whose weight tilted the globe. "They all put crowns upon themselves after his death ... and evils were multiplied in the earth[414]." [Sidenote: Influence of Napoleon.] This summing up of the Machabees on Alexander seems made for Napoleon: "They have put crowns _upon themselves_, and evils have been multiplied in the earth." Scarce twenty years have passed since Bonaparte's death, and already the French Monarchy and the Spanish Monarchy[415] are no more. The map of the world has changed; we have had to learn a new geography: parted from their lawful sovereigns, nations have been flung to sovereigns taken at haphazard; famous actors have stepped down from the stage to which nameless actors have climbed; the eagles have taken flight from the crest of the tall pine, fallen into the sea, while frail shell-fish have fastened on to the sides of the still protecting trunk. As, in the final result, all runs to its end, "the terrible spirit of novelty which was passing over the world," as the Emperor said, to which he had opposed the cross-bar of his genius, resumes its course; the conqueror's institutions decay; he will be the last of the great individual existences; nothing henceforth will predominate in low and levelled societies; the shade of Napoleon will tower alone at the extremity of the destroyed old world, like the phantom of the deluge at the edge of its abyss: a distant posterity will discern that shade across the gulf into which unknown centuries will fall, until the appointed day of the social re-birth. * Since it is my own life which I am writing while busying myself with others, great and small, I am obliged to mix this life with men and things, when it happens to be recalled. Did I, in one flight, without ever stopping, pass through the memory of the transported one who, in his ocean prison, awaited the execution of God's decree? No. The peace which Napoleon had not concluded with the kings his gaolers he had made with me: I was a son of the sea like himself; my nativity was one of the rock like his. I flatter myself to have known Napoleon better than they who saw him oftener and approached him more closely. Napoleon at St. Helena, ceasing to have occasion to maintain his anger with me, had abandoned his hostility; I, becoming more just in my turn, wrote the following article in the _Conservateur_: "The nations have called Bonaparte a scourge; but the scourges of God retain something of the eternity and grandeur of the divine wrath whence they emanate: 'Ye dry bones ... I will send spirit into you, and you shall live[416].' Born in an island to go and die in an island, on the boundaries of three continents; cast in the midst of the seas in which Camoëns seemed to foretell him by placing there the genius of the tempests, Bonaparte cannot stir on his rock but we are apprized of it by a concussion; a step of the new Adamastor at the other Pole makes itself felt at this. If Napoleon, escaping from the hands of his gaolers, were to retire to the United States, his looks fixed upon the Ocean would be enough to disturb the nations of the Old World; his mere presence on the American shore of the Atlantic would oblige Europe to camp on the opposite shore[417]." This article reached Bonaparte at St. Helena; a hand which he thought hostile poured the last balsam on his wounds; he said to M. de Montholon: "If, in 1814 and 1815, the royal confidence had not been placed in men whose souls were enervated by circumstances too strong for them, or who, renegades to their country, saw safety and glory for their master's throne only in the yoke of the Holy Alliance; if the Duc de Richelieu, whose ambition it was to deliver his country from the presence of the foreign bayonets, if Chateaubriand, who had just rendered such eminent services at Ghent, had had the direction of affairs, France would have issued powerful and dreaded from those two great national crises. Chateaubriand has been gifted by nature with the Promethean fire: his works witness it. His style is not that of Racine, it is that of the prophet. If ever he arrives at the helm of State, it is possible that Chateaubriand may go astray: so many others have found their ruin there! But what is certain is that all that is great and national must be fitting to his genius, and that he would have indignantly rejected the ignominious acts of the then administration[418]." [Sidenote: Napoleon's verdict on myself.] Such were my last relations with Bonaparte. Why should I not admit that that opinion "tickles my heart's proud weakness"? Many little men to whom I have rendered great services have not judged me so favourably as the giant whose might I had dared to attack. * While the Napoleonic world was becoming obliterated, I inquired into the places where Napoleon himself had passed from view. The tomb at St. Helena has already worn out one of the willows his contemporaries: the decrepit and fallen tree is daily mutilated by the pilgrims. The sepulchre is surrounded by a cast-iron grating; three flag-stones are laid cross-wise over the grave; a few irises grow at the head and feet; the spring of the valley still flows in the spot where prodigious days dried up. Travellers brought by the tempest think it the proper thing to chronicle their obscurity on the brilliant sepulchre. An old woman has established herself close by, and lives on the shadow of a memory; a pensioner stands sentry in a sentry-box. The old Longwood, at two hundred steps from the new, is abandoned. Across an enclosure filled with dung, one arrives at a stable; it used to serve Bonaparte as a bed-room. A negro shows you a sort of passage occupied by a hand-mill and says: "Here he died." The room in which Napoleon first saw the light was probably neither larger nor more luxurious. At the new Longwood, Plantation House, inhabited by the Governor, one sees the Duke of Wellington in portraiture and the pictures of his battles. A glass-doored cupboard contains a piece of the tree near which the English general stood at Waterloo; this relic is placed between an olive-branch gathered in the Garden of Olives and some ornaments worn by South-Sea savages: a curious association on the part of the abusers of the waves. It is useless for the victor here to try to substitute himself for the vanquished, under the protection of a branch from the Holy Land and the memory of Cook; it is enough that, at St. Helena, one finds solitude, the Ocean and Napoleon. If one were to search into the history of the transformation of the shores made illustrious by tombs, cradles, palaces, what variety of things and destinies would one not see, since such strange metamorphoses are worked even in the obscure dwellings to which our puny lives are attached! In what hut was Clovis born? In what chariot did Attila see the light? What torrent covers Alaric's burying-place? What jackal stands where stood Alexander's coffin of gold or crystal? How many times have those ashes changed their place? And all those mausoleums in Egypt and India: to whom do they belong? God alone knows the cause of those changes linked with the mystery of the future: for men there are truths hidden in the depths of time; they manifest themselves only with the help of the ages, even as there are stars so far removed from the earth that their light has not yet reached us. * But while I was writing this, time has progressed: it has produced an event which would partake of greatness, if events did not nowadays tumble into the mud. We have asked in London to have Bonaparte's remains restored; the request has been entertained: what does England care for old bones? She will make us as many presents of that sort as we like. Napoleon's remains have come back to us at the moment of our humiliation; they might have undergone the right of search; but the foreigner showed himself compliant: he gave a pass to the ashes. The translation of Napoleon's relics is an offense against fame. No burial in Paris will ever be as good as Slane Valley: who would wish to see Pompey elsewhere than in the furrow of sand thrown up by a poor freedman, assisted by an old legionary? What shall we do with those magnificent relics in the midst of our miseries? Will the hardest granite represent the perpetuity of Bonaparte's works? If even we possessed a Michael Angelo to carve the funeral statue?--How would one fashion the monument? To little men mausoleums, to great men a stone and a name. If, at least, they had suspended the coffin on the coping of the Arc de Triomphe, if the nations had seen their master from afar borne on the shoulders of his victories? Was not Trajan's urn in Rome set at the top of his column? Napoleon, among us, will be lost in the mob of those tatterdemalions of dead who steal away in silence. God grant that he may not be exposed to the vicissitudes of our political changes, protected though he may be by Louis XIV., Vauban and Turenne! Beware of those violations of tombs so common in our country! Let a certain side of the Revolution triumph, and the conqueror's dust may go to join the dusts which our passions have scattered: men will forget the vanquisher of the nations to remember only the oppressor of their liberties. The bones of Napoleon will not reproduce his genius: they will teach his despotism to second-rate soldiers. [Sidenote: Napoleon's home-coming.] Be this as it may, a frigate was supplied to a son[419] of Louis-Philippe: a name dear to our ancient naval victories protected it on the waves. Sailing from Toulon, where Bonaparte had embarked in his might for the conquest of Egypt, the new Argo came to St. Helena to claim what no longer existed. The sepulchre, with its silence, continued to rise motionless in Slane or Geranium Valley. Of the two weeping willows, one had fallen; Lady Dallas, the wife of a governor of the island, had planted, to replace the decayed tree, eighteen young willows and four-and-thirty cypresses; the spring, still there, flowed as when Napoleon drank its water. During a whole night, under the direction of an English captain named Alexander, the men worked at opening the monument. The four coffins fitted one within the other, the mahogany coffin, the lead coffin, the second mahogany or West-Indian wood coffin, and the tin coffin, were discovered intact. They proceeded to the inspection of those mummified moulds in a tent, in the centre of a circle of officers, some of whom had known Bonaparte. "When the last coffin was opened," says the Abbé Coquereau[420], "our looks plunged in. They met a whitish mass which covered the whole length of the body. Dr. Gaillard, touching it, distinguished a white satin cushion which lined the inside of the upper plank of the coffin: it had become unfastened and lay about the remains like a winding-sheet.... "The whole body seemed as though covered with a light foam; one would have said that we were looking at it through a transparent cloud. It was certainly his head: a pillow raised it slightly; his wide forehead, his eyes, the sockets of which were outlined beneath the eye-lids, still fringed with a few lashes; his cheeks were swollen, his nose alone had suffered, his mouth, half-open, displayed three teeth of great whiteness; on his chin the mark of the beard was perfectly clear; his two hands especially seemed to belong to some one who still breathed, so quick were they in tone and colouring; one of them, the left hand, was raised a little higher than the right; his nails had grown after death: they were long and white; one of his boots had come unsewn and let through four of his toes of a dull white." * What was it that struck the disinterrers? The inanity of earthly things? Man's vanity? No, the beauty of the dead man; his nails only had lengthened, to tear, I presume, what remained of liberty in the world. His feet, restored to humility, no longer rested on crown cushions; they lay bare in their dust. The son of Condé also was dressed in the moat at Vincennes; yet Napoleon, so well preserved, had been reduced to exactly those "three teeth" which the bullets had left in the jaw of the Duc d'Enghien. The eclipsed star of St. Helena has reappeared to the great joy of the peoples: the world has seen Napoleon again; Napoleon has not seen the world again. The conqueror's vagrant ashes have been looked down upon by the same stars that guided him to his exile: Bonaparte passed through the tomb, as he passed through everything, without stopping. Landed at the Havre, the corpse arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, a canopy beneath which the sun shows its face on certain days of the year. From that arch to the Invalides, one saw nothing but wooden columns, plaster busts, a statue of the Great Condé (a hideous pulp which ran), deal obelisks commemorative of the victor's indestructible life. A sharp cold made the generals drop around the funeral car, as in the retreat from Moscow. Nothing was beautiful, except the mourning barge which had carried Napoleon in silence on the Seine, and a crucifix. Robbed of his catafalque of rocks, Napoleon has come to be buried in the dirt of Paris. Instead of ships which used to salute the new Hercules, consumed upon Mount Œta, the washerwomen of Vaugirard will roam around him with pensioners unknown to the Grande Armée. By way of prelude to this feebleness, little men were able to imagine nothing better than an open-air wax-work show. After a few days' rain, nothing remained of these decorations but squalid odds and ends. Whatever we may do, the real sepulchre of the triumpher will always be seen in the midst of the seas: the body is with us, the life immortal at St. Helena. Napoleon has closed the era of the past: he made war too great for it to return in a manner to interest mankind. He slammed the doors of the Temple of Janus violently after him; and behind those doors he heaped up piles of dead bodies, to prevent them from ever opening again. * [Sidenote: A visit to the Golfe Juan.] In Europe I have been to visit the parts where Bonaparte landed after breaking his ban at Elba. I alighted at the inn at Cannes[421] at the very moment when the guns were firing in commemoration of the 29th of July[422]: one of the results of the Emperor's incursion, doubtless unforeseen by him. Night had fallen when I arrived at the Golfe Juan; I got down at a lonely house alongside the high-road. Jacquemin, potter and inn-keeper, the owner of the house, led me to the sea. We went by sunk roads between olive-trees under which Bonaparte had bivouacked: Jacquemin himself had received him and guided me. To the left of the cross-path stood a sort of covered shed: Napoleon, invading France alone, had deposited the luggage with which he had landed in that shed. On reaching the beach, I saw a calm sea wrinkled by not the slightest breath; the surge, thin as gauze, unrolled itself over the sand noiselessly and foamlessly. An astonishing sky, all resplendent with constellations, crowned my head. The crescent of the moon soon sank and hid itself behind a mountain. In the gulf lay only one bark at anchor, and two boats: to the left appeared the Antibes light-house, to the right the Lérins Isles; before me, the main sea opened out to the South in the direction of Rome, to which Bonaparte had first sent me. The Lérins Isles, now called the Sainte-Marguerite Isles, of old received a few Christians fleeing before the Barbarians. St. Honoratus[423], coming from Hungary, landed on one of those rocks: he climbed a palm-tree, made the sign of the Cross, and all the serpents died, that is to say, paganism disappeared and the new civilization was born in the West. Fourteen hundred years later, Bonaparte came to end that civilization in the parts in which the saint had commenced it. The last solitary of those hermitages was the Man in the Iron Mask, if the Iron Mask is a reality. From the silence of the Golfe Juan, from the peace of the islands of the anchorites of old, issued the noise of Waterloo, which crossed the Atlantic to die out at St Helena. [Sidenote: In praise of indifference.] One can imagine what I felt, between the memories of two societies, between a world extinct and a world ready to become extinct, at night, on that deserted sea-board. I left the beach in a sort of religious consternation, leaving the billows to pass and pass again, without obliterating them, over the traces of Napoleon's last step but one. At the end of each great epoch of time, one hears some voice, doleful with regrets of the past, sound the curfew: thus moaned they who saw vanish Charlemagne, St. Louis, Francis I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. What could I not say, in my turn, eye-witness that I am of two or three lapsed worlds? When one has met, as I have, Washington and Bonaparte, what remains there to look at behind the plough of the American Cincinnatus and the tomb at St Helena? Why have I survived the age and the men to whom I belonged by the date of my birth? Why did I not fall with my contemporaries, the last of an exhausted race? Why have I remained alone to seek their bones in the dust and darkness of a full catacomb? I am disheartened at lasting. Ah, if only I possessed the indifference of one of those old long-shore Arabs whom I met in Africa! Seated cross-legged on a little rope mat, their head wrapped in their burnoose, they while away their last hours in following with their eyes, in the azure of the sky, the beautiful flamingo flying along the ruins of Carthage; lulled by the murmuring of the waves, they half forget their existence and, in a low voice, sing a song of the sea: they are going to die. [356] The Empress Joséphine died at the Malmaison on the 29th of May 1814.--B. [357] 29 June 1815.--B. [358] Nicolas Léonard Comte Beker (1770-1840), a general of division, count of the Empire, and grand officer of the Legion of Honour. He fell out of favour with Napoleon, and was sent in disgrace to Belle-Isle-en-Mer, where he remained in command till 1814. He was a member of the Chamber of Representatives during the Hundred Days. Louis XVIII. raised him to the peerage in 1819.--B. [359] Louis XVI. purchased Rambouillet from the Penthièvre Family in 1778.--T. [360] 3 July 1815.--B. [361] Captain, later Admiral Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland (1779-1839).--T. [362] Themistocles (_circa_ 535 B.C.--470 B.C.) took refuge, when exiled from Athens, first with Admetes King of the Molossians, and secondly with Artaxerxes I. King of Persia, who showed him a magnificent hospitality, but wished to make him bear arms against Greece. Themistocles took poison to avoid being forced to obey.--T. [363] General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson (1777-1849) accompanied the Russian army in the campaign of 1812 and took a prominent part in the fighting. He was appointed Governor of Gibraltar in 1842. Wilson was one of the three Englishmen instrumental in the escape of the Comte de Lavallette from Paris in 1816.--T. [364] Mikhail Kutuzoff, Field-marshal Prince of Smolensk (1745-1813), commanded the Russian forces at Borodino and Smolensk in 1812.--T. [365] Admiral George Keith Elphinstone, Viscount Keith (1746-1823), Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet, was at Plymouth when the news reached him of Bonaparte's surrender, and was, throughout, the intermediary between the Government and Napoleon relative to his being sent to St. Helena.--T. [366] Tamerlane Khan of Tartary (1336-1405), the famous Oriental warrior.--T. [367] Dominique Francois Toussaint-Louverture (1743-1803), a coloured native of San Domingo, assisted the French to drive out the Spaniards and English and to repress a rising of mulattoes, and was successively appointed general of brigade, general of division, and finally Commander-in-Chief of the armies of San Domingo. But, in 1800, he proclaimed himself President for life. He refused to recognise General Leclerc, sent out to restore French authority (1802), but found himself obliged to capitulate, and was arrested as a conspirator, transported to France, and imprisoned in the fort of Joux, where he died.--T. [368] Charles IV. King of Spain (1748-1819) was sent as a prisoner, by Napoleon, to Compiègne and to Marseilles.--T. [369] Colonel Sir Hudson Lowe (1770-1844), Napoleon's keeper at St. Helena. He was promoted on his return, in 1823, and richly rewarded for his services, but lost the greater portion of his fortune in speculation.--T. [370] Charles Tristan Comte de Montholon (1782-1853) remained with Bonaparte until his death. He published his _Mémoires pour servir_ in collaboration with General Gourgaud, and, in 1840, took part in Louis-Napoleon's expedition to Boulogne, subsequently sharing his imprisonment at Ham.--T. [371] Marie Joseph Emmanuel Auguste Dieudonné Comte de Las Cases (1766-1842) was expelled by Lowe from St. Helena in 1816 and sent to the Cape of Good Hope; later he was sent to Europe and detained as a prisoner. He was permitted to return to France after the death of Napoleon, and published his famous _Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène_ in 1822-23.--T. [372] Napoleon was not disarmed. According to M. Thiers, "as he was crossing from the _Bellerophon_ to the _Northumberland_, Admiral Keith, with visible pain and in the most respectful tone, addressed these words to the Emperor: "'General, England commands me to ask for your sword.' "To these words Napoleon replied with a look which showed to what extremities it would be necessary to stoop to disarm him. Lord Keith did not insist, and Napoleon kept his glorious sword." This scene is pure fiction; it is even contradicted by the Comte de Las Cases in his _Mémorial_, where he says: "I asked if it would be really possible that they should go so far as to take the Emperor's sword from him. The admiral replied that they would respect it, but that Napoleon would be the only one, and that all the rest would be disarmed." Napoleon therefore kept his sword, and his companions recovered theirs on their arrival at St. Helena.--B. [373] The combined Dutch and English fleets defeated the French fleet off Cape la Hogue on the 29th of May 1692.--T. [374] The French gained a bloody victory over the Russians at Smolensk in 1812.--T. [375] These references, occurring in Books II. and III., form part of the portion excised from the Memoirs for separate publication.--T. [376] Caius Asinius Pollio (B.C. 77--A.D. 3): _cf._ the Letters to Cicero.--T. [377] Louis XIV. King of France (1638-1715) was 68 years of age at the date of the Battle of Ramillies.--T. [378] François de Neufville, Maréchal Duc de Villeroi (1643-1730), was defeated at Ramillies by the Duke of Marlborough in 1706.--T. [379] As who, in these days, should say "Tommy."--T. [380] Elizabeth Patterson (1785-1879) married Jerome Bonaparte, at Philadelphia, in 1803. He divorced her, in 1807, at Napoleon's bidding, in order to marry the Princess Catherine of Wurtemberg.--T. [381] Dumouriez defeated the Austrians at Jemappes on the 6th of October 1792.--T. [382] 27 Tune 1794.--T. [383] April to November 1794.--T. [384] February 1797.--T. [385] 25 and 26 September 1799.--T. [386] 3 December 1800.--T. [387] João de Nova (_fl._ 1500) was a Spanish navigator in Portuguese service. He had discovered the island of Concepcion in the previous year.--T. [388] St. Helen (_d._ 328), first wife of Constantius I. Chlorus and mother of Constantine. Her husband repudiated her when he was created Emperor, to marry the daughter of Maximian. When Constantine became Emperor, he gave his mother the title of Empress, and she embraced Christianity with her son. St. Helen visited Jerusalem in 325, built a church on Mount Calvary, and discovered the remains of the True Cross in 326.--T. [389] Constantine I. the Great (274-337) became Emperor in 306 and embraced Christianity in 312.--T. [390] Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the Prussian explorer, author of several geographical works including the _Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent_ (Paris, 1799 _et seq._), from which the above extract is taken.--T. [391] Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente All'astro polo, e vidi quattro stelle Non viste mai fuor ch'alla prima gente. (_Il Purgatorio_, I. 22-24).--B. [392] St Napoleon (_fl._ 13th century), of Rome, canonized by Pope Pius VII. to be honoured on the 15th of August, the date of Napoleon Bonaparte's birthday in 1769.--T. [393] Admiral Sir George Cockburn (1772-1853) conveyed Bonaparte to St. Helena on board the _Northumberland_ and remained at St. Helena as Governor from October 1815 to the summer of 1816.--T. [394] M. Muiron (_d._ 1796).--B. [395] The French commissary was the Marquis de Montchenu; the Austrian, Baron von Stürmer; the Russian, the Comte de Balmaine.--B. [396] Jean Baptiste Isabey (1764-1855), a pupil of David, and a famous miniature painter. He was successively appointed first painter to the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, Court Painter to the Emperor and, later, to King Louis XVIII., Organizer of Court Festivities, and Assistant Keeper of the Royal Museums (1827). Isabey painted the portraits in miniature of all the principal persons in Europe, from Napoleon to Alexander.--T. [397] William Pitt second Lord, later first Earl Amherst (1773-1857) was sent, in 1816, as Ambassador to China, where he met with but small success. Lord Amherst was appointed Governor-General of India in 1823.--T. [398] Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm (1768-1838), Commander-in-Chief of the St. Helena Station in 1816 and 1817.--T. [399] Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844), author of a number of volumes of Voyages, the best-known of which was published in 1815, after his return from St. Helena, entitled, _An Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the great Loo-Choo Islands._--B. [400] The explosion, directed against Bonaparte while First Consul, took place on the 24th of December 1800, in the Rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris, a few moments after the Consul had passed by. Eight persons were killed and twenty-eight grievously wounded.--T. [401] Jean Antoine Rossignol (1759-1802), a famous and shifty demagogue, had been General Commanding-in-Chief in the Vendée of the army known as that of the Côtes de La Rochelle. He displayed the grossest incapacity and was guilty of the greatest atrocities. He had been constantly imprisoned by various governments or parties, and, after the explosion of the infernal machine, was transported to the Island of Anjuan or Johanna, in the Comores, where he died on the 28th of April 1802.--T. [402] _Cf._ VICTOR BARRUCAND, _La Vie véritable de Jean Rossignol_ (Paris, 1896).--B. [403] Alessandro Conte Manzoni (1784-1873), the Italian poet, from whose ode, _Il Cinque Maggio_, the above lines are taken.--T. [404] Melchiore Cesarotti (1730-1808), professor of Greek and Hebrew at the University of Padua, had received many kindnesses at Napoleon's hands. He published valuable translations in Italian of Ossian, Demosthenes and Homer, in addition to several original works on literature and philosophy.--T. [405] LU. IV, 5-12.--T. [406] 27 November 1816.--B. [407] Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773-1840), nephew and follower of Charles James Fox, and noted for his generous conduct towards France.--T. [408] Henry third Earl Bathurst (1762-1834), Secretary for War and the Colonies in Lord Liverpool's Ministry.--T. [409] The Abbé Buonavita and the Abbé Vignale. They arrived at St. Helena on the 20th of September 1819.--B. [410] Thomas Johnson (1772-1839), alternately a smuggler and a pilot to the Royal Navy, twice broke jail and ended as the recipient of a pension of £100 a year.--T. [411] Francesco Antomarchi (1780-1830), a native of Corsica, was a professor of anatomy at Florence, when Cardinal Fesch selected him to go to St. Helena to attend Napoleon, from whose side Dr. O'Meara had been removed. He arrived in the same ship as the Abbés Buonavita and Vignale and remained with the Emperor till his death.--B. [412] At the Malmaison.--_Author's Note._ [413] _Ps._ LXXXVII. 16, 17.--T. [414] _Machab._ I. 10.--T. [415] On the death of Ferdinand VII., in 1833, the crown was usurped on behalf of Isabella II., to the prejudice of Charles V., the _de jure_ King, with the Dowager Queen Christina as Regent. The latter was forced, in 1840, to abdicate the Regency in favour of General Espartero, the revolutionary leader, who remained in power until 1843.--T. [416] EZE. 37, 4-5.--T. [417] _Conservateur_, 17 November 1818 (vol. I. p. 333).--B. [418] MONTHOLON: _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon_, vol. IV. p. 243.--_Author's Note._ [419] François Ferdinand Philippe Louis Marie Prince de Joinville (1818-1900), fourth son of Louis Philippe, commanded the frigate _Belle-Poule_ sent to convey Napoleon's remains to France in 1840.--T. [420] The Abbé Félix Coquereau (1808-1866) was chaplain of the frigate _Belle-Poule_, and author of _Souvenirs de Sainte-Hélène_ from which the above quotation is taken. In 1850, Louis Napoleon appointed him Chaplain-in-Chief to the fleet.--B. [421] Chateaubriand visited Cannes and the Golfe Juan in the month of July 1838.--B. [422] The 29th of July 1830 was the date of the abdication of Charles X., the last reigning sovereign of the Elder Branch of the House of Bourbon.--T. [423] St. Honoratus, Bishop of Arles (_d._ 429) founded the monastery of Lerins, _circa_ 400. He is honoured on the 16th of January.--T. END OF VOL. III. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND. VOLUME 3 (OF 6) *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. 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