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THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ

VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND

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

      "NOTRE SANG A TEINT
       LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"

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




CONTENTS

VOLUME V

BOOK XIII

The Roman Embassy continued--Letter to Madame Récamier--Dispatch
to M. le Comte Portalis--Conclaves--Dispatches to M. le
Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M.
le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Letter to
the Marchese Capponi--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to
M. le Duc de Blacas--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Monseigneur le Cardinal de
Clermont-Tonnerre--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame
Récamier--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Fête at the Villa
Medici for the Grand-duchess Helen--My relations and correspondence
with the Bonaparte Family--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Monte
Cavallo--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame
Récamier--Presumption--The French in Rome--Walks--My nephew Christian
de Chateaubriand--Letter to Madame Récamier--I return to Paris--My
plans--The King and his disposition--M. Portalis--M. de Martignac--I
leave for Rome--The Pyrenees--Adventures--The Polignac Ministry--My
consternation--I come back to Paris--Interview with M. de Polignac--I
resign my Roman Embassy

BOOK XIV

Sycophancy of the newspapers--M. de Polignac's first colleagues--The
Algerian Expedition--Opening of the Session of 1830--The Address--The
Chamber is dissolved--New Chamber--I leave for Dieppe--The
Ordinances of the 25th of July--I return to Paris--Reflexions on
the journey--Letter to Madame Récamier--The Revolution of July--M.
Baude, M. de Choiseul, M. de Sémonville, M. de Vitrolles, M. Laffitte,
and M. Thiers--I write to the King at Saint-Cloud--His verbal
answer--Aristocratic corps--Pillage of the house of the missionaries
in the Rue d'Enfer--The Chamber of Deputies--M. de Mortemart--A
walk through Paris--General Dubourg--Funeral ceremony--Under the
colonnade of the Louvre--The young men carry me back to the House of
Peers--Meeting of the Peers

BOOK XV

The Republicans--The Orleanist--M. Thiers is sent to
Neuilly--Convocation of peers at the Grand Refendary's--The letter
reaches me too late--Saint-Cloud--Scene between M. le Dauphin
and the Maréchal de Raguse--Neuilly--M. le Duc d'Orléans--The
Raincy--The Prince comes to Paris--A deputation from the Elective
Chamber offers M. le Duc d'Orléans the Lieutenant-generalship
of the Kingdom--He accepts--Efforts of the Republicans--M. le
Duc d'Orléans goes to the Hôtel de Ville--The Republicans at the
Palais-Royal--The King leaves Saint-Cloud--Madame la Dauphine arrives
at Trianon--The Diplomatic Body--Rambouillet--3 August: opening of
the Session--Letter from Charles X. to M. le Duc d'Orléans--The
mob sets out for Rambouillet--Flight of the King--Reflections--The
Palais-Royal--Conversations--Last political temptation--M. de
Sainte-Aulaire--Last gasp of the Republican Party--The day's work of
the 7th of August--Sitting of the House of Peers--My speech--I leave
the Palace of the Luxembourg, never to return--My resignations--Charles
X. takes ship at Cherbourg-What the Revolution of July will be--Close
of my political career

PART THE FOURTH

1830-1841

BOOK I

Introduction--Trial of the ministers-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois--Pillage
of the Archbishop's Palace--My pamphlet on the _Restauration et
la Monarchie élective_--_Études historiques_--Letters to Madame
Récamier--Geneva--Lord Byron--Ferney and Voltaire--Useless
journey to Paris--M. Armand Carrel--M. de Béranger--The Baude and
Briqueville proposition for the banishment of the Elder Branch of the
Bourbons--Letter to the author of the _Némésis_--Conspiracy of the Rue
des Prouvaires--Letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Epidemics--The
cholera--Madame La Duchesse de Berry's 12,000 francs--General
Lamarque's funeral--Madame La Duchesse de Berry lands in Provence and
arrives in the Vendée

BOOK II

My arrest--I am transferred from my thieves' cell to Mademoiselle
Gisquet's dressing-room--Achille de Harlay--The examining
magistrate, M. Desmortiers--My life at M. Gisquet's--I am set at
liberty--Letter to M. the Minister of Justice and his reply--I
receive an offer of my peer's pension from Charles X.--My reply--Note
from Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Letter to Béranger--I leave
Paris--Diary from Paris to Lugano--M. Augustin Thierry--The
road over the Saint-Gotthard--The Valley of Schöllenen--The
Devil's Bridge--The Saint-Gotthard--Description of Lugano--The
mountains--Excursions round about Lucerne--Clara Wendel--The peasants'
prayer--M. Alexandre Dumas--Madame de Colbert--Letter to M. de
Béranger--Zurich--Constance--Madame Récamier--Madame la Duchesse de
Saint-Leu--Madame de Saint-Leu after reading M. de Chateaubriand's
last letter--After reading a note signed "Hortense"--Arenenberg--I
return to Geneva--Coppet--The tomb of Madame de Staël--A walk--Letter
to Prince Louis Napoleon--Letters to the Minister of Justice, to the
President of the Council, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--I write my
memorial on the captivity of the Princess--Circular to the editors of
the newspapers--Extract from the _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la
duchesse de Berry_--My trial--Popularity

BOOK III

The Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse--Letter from Madame la Duchesse
de Berry from the Citadel of Blaye--Departure from Paris--M. de
Talleyrand's calash--Basle--Journal from Paris to Prague, from the 14th
to the 24th of May 1833, written in pencil in the carriage, in ink at
the inns--The banks of the Rhine--Falls of the Rhine--Mösskirch--A
storm--The Danube--Ulm--Blenheim--Louis XIV.--An Hercynian forest--The
Barbarians--Sources of the Danube--Ratisbon--Decrease in social
life as one goes farther from France--Religious feelings of the
Germans--Arrival at Waldmünchen--The Austrian custom-house--I am
refused admission into Bohemia--Stay at Waldmünchen--Letters to
Count Choteck--Anxiety--The Viaticum--The chapel--My room at the
inn--Description of Waldmünchen--Letter from Count Choteck--The
peasant-girl--I leave Waldmünchen and enter Bohemia--A pine
forest--Conversation with the moon--Pilsen--The high-roads of the
North-View of Prague

BOOK IV

The castle of the Kings of Bohemia--First interview with Charles
X.--Monsieur le Dauphin--The Children of France--The Duc and
Duchesse de Guiche--The triumvirate--Mademoiselle--Conversation
with the King--Dinner and evening at Hradschin--Visits--General
Skrzynecki--Dinner at Count Chotek's--Whit Sunday--The Duc de
Blacas--Casual observations--Tycho Brahe--Perdita: more casual
observations--Bohemia--Slav and neo-Latin literature--I take leave
of the King--Adieus--The children's letters to their mother--A
Jew--The Saxon servant-girl--What I am leaving in Prague--The Duc de
Bordeaux--Madame la Dauphine--Casual observations--Springs--Mineral
waters--Historical memories--The Teplitz Valley--Its flora--Last
conversation with the Dauphiness--My departure

APPENDIX

The Royal Ordinances of July 1830




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. V

Pope Pius VIII
Henry IX. (Cardinal of York)
Louise of Stolberg (Countess of Albany)
Guizot
The Princesse de Lieven
Charles X
Queen Hortense
Henry V. (Duc de Bordeaux)


[Illustration: Pope Pius VIII.]




THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND



VOLUME V




BOOK XIII[1]


The Roman Embassy continued--Letter to Madame Récamier--Dispatch
to M. le Comte Portalis--Conclaves--Dispatches to M. le
Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M.
le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Letter to
the Marchese Capponi--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to
M. le Duc de Blacas--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Monseigneur le Cardinal de
Clermont-Tonnerre--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame
Récamier--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Fête at the Villa
Medici for the Grand-duchess Helen--My relations and correspondence
with the Bonaparte Family--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Monte
Cavallo--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame
Récamier--Presumption--The French in Rome--Walks--My nephew Christian
de Chateaubriand--Letter to Madame Récamier--I return to Paris--My
plans--The King and his disposition--M. Portalis--M. de Martignac--I
leave for Rome--The Pyrenees--Adventures--The Polignac Ministry--My
consternation--I come back to Paris--Interview with M. de Polignac--I
resign my Roman Embassy.



ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

Before passing to important matters, I will recall a few facts.

On the decease of the Sovereign Pontiff, the government of the Roman
States falls into the hands of the three cardinals heads of the
respective orders, deacon, priest and bishop, and of the Cardinal
Camerlingo. The custom is for the ambassadors to go to compliment, in
a speech, the Congregation of Cardinals who meet before the opening of
the conclave at St. Peter's.

His Holiness' corpse, after first lying in state in the Sistine
Chapel, was carried on Friday last, the 13th of February, to the Chapel
of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Peter's; it remained there till Sunday
the 15th. Then it was laid in the monument which contained the ashes of
Pius VII., and the latter were lowered into the subterranean church.


    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

    "I have seen Leo XII. lying in state, with his face uncovered, on a
    paltry state bed, amid the master-pieces of Michael Angelo; I have
    attended the first funeral ceremony in the Church of St. Peter.
    A few old cardinal commissaries, no longer able to see, assured
    themselves with their trembling fingers that the Pope's coffin was
    well nailed down. By the light of the candles, mingling with the
    moon-light, the coffin was at last raised by a pulley and hung up
    in the shadows to be laid in the sarcophagus of Pius VII.[2]

    "They have just brought me the poor Pope's little cat; it is quite
    grey and very gentle, like its old master."

    [Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 17 February 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons
    with the telegraphic dispatch, and in my Dispatch No. 15, of the
    difficulties which I encountered in sending off my two couriers
    on the 10th of this month. These people have not got beyond the
    history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, as though the fact of the
    death of a pope becoming known an hour sooner or an hour later
    could cause an imperial army to enter Italy.

    "The obsequies of the Holy Father were concluded on Sunday the
    22nd, and the Conclave will open on Monday evening the 23rd, after
    attending the Mass of the Holy Ghost in the morning; they are
    already furnishing the cells in the Quirinal Palace.

    "I shall not speak to you, monsieur le comte, of the views of the
    Austrian Court or the wishes of the Cabinets of Naples, Madrid and
    Turin. M. le Duc le Laval, in his correspondence with me in 1823,
    has described the personal qualities of the cardinals, who are in
    part those of to-day. I refer you to No. 5 and its appendix, Nos.
    34, 55, 70 and 82. There are also in the boxes at the office some
    notes from another source. These portraits, pretty, often fanciful,
    are capable of providing amusement, but prove nothing. Three things
    no longer make popes: the intrigues of women, the devices of the
    ambassadors, the power of the Courts. Neither do they issue from
    the general interest of society, but from the particular interest
    of individuals and families, who seek places and money in the
    election of the Head of the Church.

    "There are immense things that could be effected nowadays by the
    Holy See: the union of the dissenting sects, the consolidation
    of European society, etc. A pope who would enter into the spirit
    of the age and place himself at the head of the enlightened
    generations might give fresh life to the Papacy; but these ideas
    are quite unable to make their way into the old heads of the
    Sacred College; the cardinals who have arrived at the end of life
    hand down to one another an elective royalty which soon dies with
    them: seated on the double ruins of Rome, the popes appear to be
    impressed only with the power of death.

    "Those cardinals elected Cardinal Della Genga[3], after the
    exclusion of Cardinal Severoli, because they thought that he
    was going to die; Della Genga taking it into his head to live,
    they detested him cordially for that piece of deceit. Leo XII.
    chose capable administrators from the convents; another cause
    for murmuring for the cardinals. But, on the other hand, this
    deceased Pope, while advancing the monks, wanted to see regularity
    established in the monasteries, so that no one was grateful to him
    for the boon. The arrest of the vagrant hermits, the compelling of
    the people to drink standing in the street in order to prevent the
    stabbing in the taverns, unfortunate changes in the collection of
    the taxes, abuses committed by some of the Holy Father's familiars,
    even the death of the Pope, occurring at a time which makes the
    theatres and tradesmen of Rome lose the profit arising from the
    follies of the Carnival, have caused the memory to be anathematized
    of a Prince worthy of the liveliest regret; at Cività-Vecchia they
    wanted to burn down the house of two men who were thought to be
    honoured with his favour.

    "Among many competitors, four are particularly designated: Cardinal
    Capellari[4], the head of the Propaganda, Cardinal Pacca[5],
    Cardinal Di Gregorio[6] and Cardinal Giustiniani[7].

    "Cardinal Capellari is a learned and capable man. They say that he
    will be rejected by the cardinals as being too young a monk and
    unacquainted with worldly affairs. He is an Austrian and said to
    be obstinate and ardent in his religious opinions. Nevertheless,
    it was he who, when consulted by Leo XII., saw nothing in the
    Orders in Council to warrant the complaint of our bishops; it was
    he also who drew up the concordat between the Court of Rome and
    the Netherlands and who was of opinion that canonical institution
    should be granted to the bishops of the Spanish republics: all this
    points to a reasonable, conciliatory and moderate spirit. I have
    these details from Cardinal Bernetti, with whom, on Friday the
    13th, I had one of the conversations which I announced to you in my
    Dispatch No. 15.

    "It is important to the Diplomatic Body, and especially to the
    French Ambassador, that the Secretary of State in Rome should be a
    man of ready intercourse and accustomed to the affairs of Europe.
    Cardinal Bernetti is the minister who suits us best in every
    respect; he has committed himself on our behalf with the _Zelanti_
    and the members of the lay congregations; we are bound to wish that
    he should be re-employed by the next Pope. I asked him with which
    of the four cardinals he would have most chance of returning to
    power. He answered:

    "'With Capellari.'

    "Cardinals Pacca and Di Gregorio are faithfully depicted in the
    appendix to No. 5 of the correspondence already mentioned; but
    Cardinal Pacca is very much enfeebled by age, and his memory, like
    that of the Senior Cardinal, La Somaglia[8], is beginning to fail
    him entirely.

    [Sidenote: Candidates for the Papacy.]

    "Cardinal Di Gregorio would be a suitable Pope. Although he ranks
    among the _Zelanti_, he is not without moderation; he thrusts back
    the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in
    France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal Di Gregorio is
    rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani[9], the
    executor of the high decrees of Austria. The cardinal is Legate at
    Bologna, he is over eighty and he is ill; there is therefore some
    chance of his not coming to Rome.

    "Lastly, Cardinal Giustiniani is the cardinal of the Roman
    nobility; Cardinal Odescalchi is his nephew, and he will probably
    receive a fairly good number of votes. But, on the other hand, he
    is poor and has poor relations; Rome would fear the demands of this
    indigence.

    "You are aware, monsieur le comte, of all the harm that Giustiniani
    did as Nuncio in Spain, and I am more aware of it than anyone else
    through the troubles which he caused me after the delivery of King
    Ferdinand. In the Bishopric of Imola, which the cardinal governs at
    present, he has shown himself no more moderate; he has revived the
    laws of St. Louis against blasphemers; he is not the pope of our
    period. Apart from that, he is a man of some learning, a hebraist,
    a hellenist, a mathematician, but better suited for the work of the
    study than for public business. I do not believe that he is backed
    by Austria.

    "After all, human foresight is often deceived; often a man changes
    on attaining power; the _zelante_ Cardinal Della Genga became the
    moderate Pope Leo XII. Perhaps, amid the four competitors, a pope
    will spring up, of whom no one is thinking at this moment. Cardinal
    Castiglioni[10], Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galleffi[11],
    Cardinal Arezzo[12], Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and
    venerable Dean of the Sacred College, La Somaglia, in spite of
    his semi-childishness, or rather because of it, are presenting
    themselves as candidates. The last has even some hope, because, as
    he is Bishop and Prince of Ostia, his exaltation would bring about
    alterations which would leave five great places free.

    "It is expected that the Conclave will be either very long or very
    short: there will be no systematic contests as at the time of the
    decease of Pius VII.; the 'conclavists' and 'anti-conclavists'
    have totally disappeared, which will make the election easier.
    But, on the other hand, there will be personal struggles between
    the candidates who assemble a certain number of votes, and, as it
    requires only one more than a third of the votes of the Conclave
    to give the _exclusive_, which must not be confounded with the
    right of _exclusion_[13], the balloting among the candidates may be
    prolonged.

    "Does France wish to exercise the right of _exclusion_ which
    she shares with Austria and Spain? Austria exercised it in the
    preceding conclave against Severoli, through the intermediary of
    Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise
    that right? Would it be against Cardinal Fesch, if by chance he
    were thought of, or against Cardinal Giustiniani? Would the latter
    be worth the trouble of striking with this _veto_, always a little
    odious, inasmuch as it trammels independence of election?

    "To which of the cardinals would His Majesty's Government wish
    to entrust the exercise of its right of exclusion? Does it wish
    the French Ambassador to appear armed with the secret of his
    Government, and as though ready to strike at the election of the
    Conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles X.? Lastly, has the
    Government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a
    cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, if all the cardinals
    of family, that is to say the Spanish, Neapolitan and even
    Piedmontese cardinals, would add their votes to those of the French
    cardinals, if one could form a party of the crowns, we should gain
    the day at the Conclave; but those coalitions are chimerical, and
    we have foes rather than friends in the cardinals of the different
    Courts.

    [Sidenote: Reasons against interference.]

    "It is asserted that the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of
    Milan will come to the Conclave. The Austrian Ambassador in Rome,
    Count Lützow, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character
    which the new Pope must have. Let us await the instructions of
    Vienna.

    "Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do
    nothing to-day to influence the election of the Sovereign Pontiff,
    and that we are all perfectly useless in Rome. For the rest, I can
    see no pressing interest in hastening or delaying (which, besides,
    is in nobody's power) the operations of the Conclave. Whether the
    non-Italian cardinals do or do not assist at this Conclave is of
    the very slightest interest to the result of the election. If one
    had millions to distribute, it might still be possible to make a
    pope: I see no other means, and that method is not in keeping with
    the customs of France.

    "In my confidential instructions to M. le Duc de Laval, on the 13th
    of September 1823, I said to him:

    "'We ask that a prelate should be placed on the Pontifical Throne
    who shall be distinguished for his piety and his virtues. We
    desire only that he should possess sufficient enlightenment and
    a sufficiently conciliatory spirit to enable him to judge the
    political position of governments and not to throw them, owing to
    useless exigencies, into inextricable difficulties as vexatious to
    the Church as to the Throne.... We want a moderate member of the
    Italian _zelante_ party, capable of being accepted by all parties.
    All that we ask of them in our interest is not to seek to profit by
    the divisions which may arise among our clergy in order to disturb
    our ecclesiastical affairs.'

    "In another confidential letter, written with reference to the
    illness of the new Pope Della Genga, on the 28th of January 1824, I
    again said to M. le Duc de Laval:

    "'What we are concerned in obtaining (supposing there should be a
    new conclave) is that the Pope should, through his inclinations,
    be independent of the other Powers, that his principles should be
    wise and moderate, and that he should be a friend of France.'

    "Am I, monsieur le comte, to-day, to follow as ambassador the
    spirit of those instructions which I gave as minister?

    "This dispatch contains all. I shall only have to keep the King
    succinctly informed of the operations of the Conclave and of the
    incidents that may arise; the only questions will be the counting
    of the votes and the variations of the suffrages.

    "The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Giustiniani,
    Odescalchi, Pedicini[14] and Bertalozzi[15].

    "The cardinals opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes
    and different circumstances, are Zurla[16], Di Gregorio, Bernetti,
    Capellari and Micara[17].

    "It is believed that, out of fifty-eight cardinals, only
    forty-eight or forty-nine will attend the Conclave. In that case
    thirty-three or thirty-four would effect the election.

    "The Spanish Minister, M. de Labrador, a solitary and secluded man,
    whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity,
    is greatly embarrassed by the part he is called upon to play. The
    instructions of his Court have foreseen nothing; he is writing in
    that sense to His Catholic Majesty's _chargé d'affaires_ at Lucca.

    "I have the honour to be, etc.


    "P.S.-They say that Cardinal Benvenuti has already twelve votes
    certain. If that choice succeeded, it would be a good one.
    Benvenuti knows Europe and has displayed capacity and moderation in
    different employments."

As the Conclave is about to open, I will rapidly trace the history
of that great law of election, which already counts eighteen hundred
years' duration. Where do the Popes come from? How have they been
elected from century to century?

At the moment when liberty, equality and the Republic were completely
expiring, about the time of Augustus, was born at Bethlehem the
universal Tribune of the peoples, the great Representative on earth of
equality, liberty and the Republic, Christ, who, after planting the
Cross to serve as a boundary to two worlds, after allowing Himself
to be nailed to that Cross, after dying on it, the Symbol, Victim
and Redeemer of human sufferings, handed down His power to His Chief
Apostle. From Adam to Jesus Christ, we have society with slaves, with
inequality of men among themselves; from Jesus Christ to our time, we
have society with equality of men among themselves, social equality of
man and woman, we have society without slaves, or, at least, without
the principle of slavery. The history of modern society commences at
the foot and on this side of the Cross.

[Sidenote: The early Popes.]

Peter[18] Bishop of Rome inaugurated the Papacy: tribune-dictators
successively elected by the people, and most part of the time chosen
from among the humblest classes of the people, the Popes held their
temporal power from the democratic order, from that new society of
brothers which Jesus of Nazareth had come to found, Jesus, the workman,
the maker of yokes and ploughs, born of a woman according to the flesh,
and yet God and Son of God, as His works prove.

The Popes had the mission to avenge and maintain the rights of man; the
heads of public opinion, all feeble though they were, they obtained the
strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea: for a soldier they
had but a plebeian, his head protected by a cowl, his hand armed with
a cross. The Papacy, marching at the head of civilization, progressed
towards the goal of society. Christian men, in all regions of the
globe, gave obedience to a priest whose name was hardly known to them,
because that priest was the personification of a fundamental truth;
he represented in Europe the political independence which was almost
everywhere destroyed; in the Gothic world he was the defender of the
popular liberties, as in the modern world he became the restorer of
science, letters and the arts. The people enrolled itself among his
troops in the habit of a mendicant friar.

The quarrel between the Empire and the priesthood is the struggle of
the two social principles of the middle ages, power and liberty. The
Popes, favouring the Guelphs, declared themselves for the governments
of the peoples; the Emperors, adopting the Ghibellines, urged the
government of the nobles: these were precisely the parts played by the
Athenians and Spartans in Greece. Therefore, when the Popes took side
with the kings, when they turned themselves into Ghibellines, they
lost their power, because they were disengaging themselves from their
natural principle, and, for an opposite and yet analogous reason, the
monks have seen their authority decrease, when political liberty has
returned directly to the peoples, because the peoples have no longer
needed to be replaced by the monks, their representatives.

Those thrones declared vacant and delivered to the first occupant in
the middle ages; those emperors who came on their knees to implore
a pontiff's forgiveness; those kingdoms laid under an interdict; an
entire nation deprived of worship by a magic word; those anathematized
sovereigns, abandoned not only by their subjects, but also by their
servants and kindred; those princes avoided like lepers, separated from
the mortal race while waiting to be cut off from the eternal race;
the food they had tasted, the objects they had touched passed through
the flames as things sullied: all this was but the forceful effect of
popular sovereignty delegated to and wielded by religion.

The oldest electoral law in the world is the law by virtue of which
the pontifical power has been handed down from St. Peter to the priest
who wears the tiara to-day: from that priest you go back from pope to
pope till you come to saints who touch Christ; at the first link of
the pontifical chain stands a God. The bishops were elected by the
general assembly of the faithful; from the time of Tertullian[19], the
Bishop of Rome was named the Bishop of Bishops. The clergy, forming
part of the people, concurred in the election. As passions exist
everywhere, as they debase the fairest institutions and the most
virtuous characters, in the measure that the papal power increased, it
attempted more, and human rivalries produced great disorders. In Pagan
Rome, similar troubles had broken out on the occasion of the election
of the Tribunes: of the two Gracchi, one[20] was flung into the Tiber,
the other[21] stabbed by a slave in a wood consecrated to the Furies.
The nomination of Pope Damasus[22], in 366, led to an affray attended
by bloodshed: one hundred and thirty-seven people succumbed in the
Sicinian Basilica, known to-day as Santa Maria Maggiore.

[Sidenote: History of their election.]

We find St. Gregory[23] elected Pope by the Clergy, the Senate and the
People of Rome. Any Christian could rise to the tiara: Leo IV.[24] was
promoted to the Sovereign Pontificate, on the 12th of April 847, to
defend Rome against the Saracens, and his ordination deferred until he
had given proofs of his courage. The same thing happened to the other
bishops: Simplicius[25] ascended the See of Bourges, layman though he
were. To this day (which is not generally known) the choice of the
Conclave might fall on a layman, even if he were married: his wife
would take the veil, and he would receive all the orders together with
the papacy.

The Greek and Latin Emperors tried to suppress the liberty of the
popular papal election; they sometimes usurped it, and often exacted
that the election should at least be confirmed by them: a capitulary of
Louis the Débonnaire[26] restores its primitive liberty to the election
of the bishops, which was accomplished according to a treaty of the
same time, by "the unanimous consent of the clergy and the people."

The dangers of an election proclaimed by the masses of the people or
dictated by the emperors made necessary certain changes in the law.
There existed, in Rome, priests and deacons known as "cardinals,"
whether because they served at the horns or corners of the altar, _ad
cornua altaris_, or that the word cardinal is derived from the Latin
word _cardo_, a hinge. Pope Nicholas II.[27], in a council held in Rome
in 1059, carried a resolution that the cardinals alone should elect the
popes and that the clergy and the people should ratify the election.
One hundred and twenty years later, the Lateran Council[28] took away
the ratification from the clergy and the people, and made the election
valid by a majority of two-thirds of the votes in the assembly of
cardinals.

But, as this canon of the Council fixed neither the duration nor the
form of this electoral college, it came about that discord was produced
among the electors, and there was no provision, in the new modification
of the law, to put an end to that discord. In 1268, after the death of
Clement IV.[29], the cardinals who had met at Viterbo were unable to
come to an agreement, and the Holy See remained vacant for two years.
The Podesta and the people were obliged to lock up the cardinals in
their palace, and even, it is said, to unroof that palace in order
to compel the electors to make a choice. At last Gregory X.[30] came
out of the ballot, and thereupon, to remedy this abuse in future,
established the Conclave, _cum clave_, with or under key; he regulated
the internal dispositions of the Conclave in much the same manner as
they exist to-day: separate cells, a common room for the balloting,
walled-up outer windows, from one of which the election is proclaimed,
by demolishing the plaster with which it is sealed, and so on. The
Council held at Lyons in 1274 confirms and improves these arrangements.
Nevertheless, one article of this rule has fallen into disuse: that in
which it was laid down that, if the choice of a pope were not made in
three days of confinement, during five days after those three days the
cardinals should have only one dish at their meals, and that, after
that, they should have only bread, wine and water until the Sovereign
Pontiff was elected.

To-day the duration of a conclave is no longer limited, nor are the
cardinals now punished in their diet, like naughty children. Their
dinner, placed in baskets, carried on barrows, is brought to them
from the outside, accompanied by lackeys in livery; a dapifer follows
the convoy, sword at side, and drawn by caparisoned horses in the
emblazoned coach of the cardinal recluse. On reaching the conclave
tower, the chickens are drawn, the pies examined, the oranges cut into
quarters, the corks of the bottles cut up, lest some paper should be
concealed inside. These old customs, some childish, others ridiculous,
have their drawbacks. If the dinner be sumptuous, the poor man starving
of hunger who sees it go by makes his comparison and murmurs. If it
be mean, by another infirmity of human nature, the pauper laughs at
it and despises the Roman purple. It would be a good thing to abolish
this usage, which is no longer in keeping with our present customs;
Christianity has gone back to its source; it has returned to the time
of the Lord's Supper and the love-feasts, and Christ alone should
to-day preside over those banquets.

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Conclaves.]

The intrigues of the conclaves are famous; some of them had baneful
results. During the Western Schism, different popes and anti-popes were
seen to curse and excommunicate one another from the top of the ruined
walls of Rome. The schism seemed on the point of extinction, when Pedro
de Luna[31] revived it, in 1394, through an intrigue of the conclave
at Avignon. Alexander VI.[32], in 1492, bought the votes of twenty-two
cardinals, who prostituted the tiara to him, leaving memories of
Lucrezia[33] behind him. Sixtus V. had no intrigue in the conclave
except with his crutches, and when he was Pope his genius no longer
had need of those supports. I have seen in a Roman villa a portrait of
Sixtus V.'s sister, a woman of the people, whom the terrible pontiff,
in all his plebeian pride, pleased himself by having painted:

"The first arms of our house," he said to this sister, "are rags[34]."

That was still the time at which some sovereigns dictated orders to the
Sacred College. Philip II. used to have notes passed into the conclave,
saying:

"_Su Magestad no quiere que N. sea Papa; quiere que N. to tenga._"

From that period, the intrigues of the conclave are scarcely more than
agitations without general results. Nevertheless, Du Perron[35] and
d'Ossat obtained the reconciliation of Henry IV. with the Holy See,
which was a great event. The _Ambassades_ of Du Perron are greatly
inferior to the Letters of d'Ossat. Before then, Du Bellay was at one
time on the point of preventing the schism of Henry VIII.[36] Having
obtained from that tyrant, before his separation from the Church, that
he should submit to the judgment of the Holy See, he arrived in Rome
at the moment when the condemnation of Henry VIII. was about to be
pronounced. He obtained a delay to send a man of trust to England; the
bad roads retarded the reply. The partisans of Charles V. caused the
sentence to be pronounced, and the bearer of the powers of Henry VIII.
arrived two days later. The delay of a message made England Protestant
and changed the political face of Europe. The destinies of the world
depend on no more potent causes: a too capacious goblet emptied at
Babylon caused Alexander to disappear.

Next comes to Rome, in the time of Olimpia[37], the Cardinal de Retz,
who, in the conclave held after the death of Innocent X.[38], enlisted
in the "flying squadron," the name given to ten independent cardinals;
they carried with them "Sacchetti," who was "only good to paint," in
order to pass Alexander VII.[39], _savio col silenzio_, who, as Pope,
showed himself to be nothing much.

[Illustration: Henry IX. (Cardinal of York)]

The Président de Brosses describes the death of Clement XII.[40], which
he witnessed, and saw the election of Benedict XIV.[41]--as I saw
Leo XII. the Pontiff lying dead on his abandoned bed: the Cardinal
Camerlingo had struck Clement XII. twice or thrice on the forehead,
according to the custom, with a little hammer, calling him by his name,
Lorenzo Corsini.

    "He made no reply," says de Brosses, and adds, "That is how your
    daughter comes to be dumb[42]."

And that is how at that time the most serious things were treated:
a dead pope at whose head one knocks as it were at the gate of
understanding, while calling on the deceased and voiceless man by his
name, could, it seems to me, have inspired a witness with something
else than raillery, even though it were borrowed from Molière. What
would the frivolous Dijon magistrate have said had Clement XII.
answered him from the depths of eternity:

"What do you want with me?"

[Sidenote: Cynicism of de Brosses.]

The Président de Brosses sends his friend the Abbé Courtois a list
of the cardinals of the Conclave, with a word on each of them to his
honour:

    "Guadagni[43], a bigot, a hypocrite, witless, tasteless, a poor
    monk.

    "Aquaviva of Aragon, a fine presence, although somewhat heavy in
    figure, as he is also in mind.

    "Ottoboni[44], no morals, no credit, debauched, ruined, a lover of
    the arts.

    "Alberoni[45], full of ardour, anxious, restless, despised, no
    morals, no decency, no consideration, no judgment: according to
    him, a cardinal is a ----- dressed in red."

The rest of the list is all of a piece; cynicism here takes the place
of wit.

A singular piece of buffoonery took place: de Brosses went to dine with
some Englishmen at the Porta San Pancrazio; they had a mock election of
a pope: a certain Sir Ashwood took off his wig and represented the dean
of the cardinals; they sang _Oremus_, and Cardinal Alberoni was elected
by the ballot of that orgy. The Protestant soldiers in the Constable de
Bourbon's army nominated Martin Luther pope in the Church of St. Peter.
Nowadays the English, who are at once the plague and the providence of
Rome, respect the Catholic Religion which has permitted them to build a
church outside the Porta del Popolo. The government and manners of the
day would no longer suffer such scandals.

So soon as a cardinal is imprisoned in the conclave, the first thing
he does is, with the aid of his servants, in the dark, to scratch at
the newly blocked-up walls until they have made a little hole. Through
this, during the night, they pass strings by means of which news is
sent and received between the inside and the outside. For the rest, the
Cardinal de Retz, whose opinion is above suspicion, after speaking of
the miseries of the conclave in which he took part, ends his story with
these fine words:

    "We lived there, always together, with the same mutual respect and
    the same civility that are observed in the closets of kings; with
    the same politeness that obtained at the Court of Henry III.; with
    the same familiarity that is seen in the colleges; with the same
    modesty that prevails in noviciates, and the same charity, at least
    in appearance, that might exist among brothers wholly united."

I am struck, in finishing this epitome of a vast history, by the
serious manner in which it commences and the almost burlesque manner in
which it ends: the greatness of the Son of God opens the scene which,
shrinking in proportion as the Catholic Religion moves farther from its
source, ends in the littleness of the son of Adam. We scarcely find
again the primitive loftiness of the Cross until we come to the decease
of the Sovereign Pontiff: that childless, friendless pope, whose corpse
lies neglected on its couch, shows that the man was reckoned as naught
in the head of the evangelical world. Honours are rendered to the Pope
as a temporal prince; as a man, his abandoned corpse is flung down at
the door of the church where of old the sinner did penance.

[Sidenote: Dispatches to Portalis.]

    DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I do not know whether the King will be pleased to send an
    extraordinary ambassador to Rome, or whether it will suit him to
    accredit me to the Sacred College. In the latter case, I have the
    honour to observe to you that I allowed M. le Duc de Laval, for his
    expenses for extraordinary service in a similar circumstance, in
    1823, a sum which amounted, as far as I can remember, to 40,000 or
    50,000 francs. The Austrian Ambassador, M. le Comte d'Apponyi[46],
    at first received from his Court a sum of 36,000 francs for the
    first requirements, a supplementary allowance of 7,200 francs per
    month over and above his ordinary salary during the sitting of the
    Conclave, and 10,000 francs for presents, chancery expenses, etc.
    I do not, monsieur le comte, pretend to compete in magnificence
    with His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador, as M. le Duc de Laval
    did; I shall hire no horses, carriages, nor liveries to dazzle the
    Roman mob; the King of France is a great enough lord to pay for the
    pomp of his ambassadors, if he wishes it: borrowed magnificence is
    wretched. I shall therefore go modestly to the Conclave with my
    ordinary footmen and in my ordinary carriages. It only remains for
    me to know whether the King will not think that, as long as the
    Conclave lasts, I shall be bound to keep up a display for which
    my ordinary salary will not be sufficient I ask nothing, I merely
    submit the question to your judgment and to the royal decision.

    "I have the honour to be, etc."


    "ROME, 19 _February_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I had the honour yesterday to be presented to the Sacred College
    and to deliver the little speech of which I sent you a copy in
    advance in my Dispatch No. 17, which left on Tuesday the 17th inst.
    by a special courier. I was listened to with the most auspicious
    marks of satisfaction, and the Senior Cardinal, the venerable Della
    Somaglia, replied to me in terms most affectionate towards the King
    and France.

    "Having informed you of everything in my last dispatch, I have
    absolutely nothing new to tell you to-day, unless it be that
    Cardinal Bussi[47] arrived yesterday from Benevento. Cardinals
    Albani, Macchi[48], and Oppizzoni are expected to-day.

    "The members of the Sacred College will lock themselves up in the
    Quirinal Palace on Monday evening the 23rd of this month. Ten days
    will then elapse to await the arrival of the foreign cardinals,
    after which the serious operations of the Conclave will commence,
    and, if they were to come to an understanding at once, the pope
    could be elected in the first week of Lent.

    "I am, monsieur le comte, awaiting the King's orders. I presume
    that you dispatched a courier to me after M. de Montebello's
    arrival in Paris. It is urgent that I should receive either the
    announcement of an extraordinary embassy, or my new credentials
    together with the instructions of the Government.

    "Are my five French cardinals coming? Politically speaking,
    their presence here is very little necessary. I have written to
    Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil[49] to offer him my services in
    case he should decide to come,

    "I have the honour to be, etc.

    "_P.S._ I enclose a copy of a letter which M. le Comte de Funchal
    has written to me. I have not replied to this ambassador in
    writing; I only went to talk to him."


    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, _Monday_ 23 _February_ 1829.

    "Yesterday the Pope's obsequies were finished. The pyramid of
    'paper' and the four candelabra were fine enough, because they
    were of immense proportions and reached up to the cornice of the
    church. The last _Dies iræ_ was admirable. It is composed by an
    unknown man, who belongs to the pope's chapel, and who seems to me
    to possess a very different sort of genius from Rossini's. To-day
    we pass from sorrow to joy; we sing the _Veni Creator_ for the
    opening of the Conclave; then we shall go every evening to see if
    the ballot-papers are burnt, if the smoke issues from a certain
    chimney: on the day on which there is no smoke, the pope will
    have been appointed, and I shall go to see you again; that is the
    whole business as it affects me. The King of England's speech is
    very insolent to France! What a deplorable expedition that Morean
    Expedition is! Are they beginning to see it? General Guilleminot
    wrote me a letter on the subject which made me laugh; he can only
    have written as he did because he presumed me to be a minister."

    [Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

    "25 _February._

    "Death is here; Torlonia went yesterday evening after two days'
    illness; I have seen him lying all painted on his death-bed, his
    sword at his side. He lent money on pledges, but on such pledges!
    On antiquities, on pictures huddled promiscuously in an old, dusty
    palace. That was different from the shop in which the Miser put
    away 'a Bologna lute, fitted with all its strings, or nearly... the
    skin of a lizard three feet long... and a four-foot bedstead with
    slips in Hungarian point[50].'

    "One sees nothing but dead people carried dressed-up through the
    streets; one of them passes regularly under my windows when we
    sit down to dinner. For the rest, everything proclaims the spring
    parting; people are beginning to disperse; they are leaving for
    Naples; they will come back a moment for Holy Week, and then
    separate for good. Next year there will be different travellers,
    different faces, a different society. There is something melancholy
    in this journey over ruins: the Romans are like the remains of
    their city; the world passes at their feet. I picture those persons
    going back to their families in the various countries of Europe,
    the young 'Misses' returning to the midst of their fogs. If, by
    chance, thirty years hence, one of them is brought back to Italy,
    who will remember to have seen her in the palaces whose masters
    shall be no more. St. Peter's and the Coliseum: that is all that
    she herself would recognise."

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "My first courier having reached Lyons, on the 14th of last month,
    at nine o'clock in the evening, you must have learned the news of
    the Pope's death, by telegraph, on the morning of the 15th. It
    is to-day the 3rd of March, and I am still without instructions
    and without an official reply. The newspapers have announced the
    departure of two or three cardinals. I had written to Paris to
    Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil to place the Embassy Palace at his
    disposal; I have just written to him again at different points on
    his road to renew my offers.

    "I am sorry to be obliged to tell you, monsieur le comte, that I
    notice some little intrigues here to keep the cardinals away from
    the Embassy, to lodge them where they might be placed more within
    reach of the influences which it is hoped to exercise over them.

    "As far as I am concerned, this is a matter of indifference to me.
    I shall show Their Eminences all the services which depend upon
    myself. If they question me touching things which it is well that
    they should know, I shall tell them what I can; if you transmit
    the King's orders for them to me, I will communicate these to
    them; but, if they were to arrive here in a spirit hostile to the
    views of His Majesty's Government, if it were perceived that they
    were not in agreement with the King's Ambassador, if they held a
    language contrary to mine, if they went so far as to give their
    votes in the Conclave to some exaggerated man, if even they were
    divided among themselves, nothing would be more fatal. It would
    be better for the King's service that I should instantly hand in
    my resignation rather than present this public spectacle of our
    discords. Austria and Spain have a line of conduct with reference
    to their clergy which leaves no opening for intrigue. No Austrian
    or Spanish priest, cardinal or bishop, can have any other agent or
    correspondent in Rome than the ambassador of his Court himself; the
    latter has the right to remove from Rome, at a moment's notice, any
    ecclesiastic of his nationality who may obstruct him.

    "I hope, monsieur le comte, that no division will take place, that
    Their Eminences the cardinals will have formal orders to submit to
    the instructions which I shall before long receive from you, and
    that I shall know which of them will be charged with the exercise
    of the exclusion, in case of need, and which heads that exclusion
    is to strike.

    "It is very necessary that we should be on our guard; the last
    ballots revealed the awakening of a party. This party, which gave
    twenty or twenty-one votes to Cardinals Della Marmora[51] and
    Pedicini, forms what is known here as the Sardinian faction. The
    other cardinals, alarmed, want all to give their suffrages to
    Oppizzoni, a man both firm and moderate. Although an Austrian,
    that is to say, a Milanese, he coped against Austria at Bologna.
    He would be an excellent choice. The votes of the French might,
    by settling on one candidate or another, decide the election.
    Rightly or wrongly, these cardinals are believed to be hostile to
    the present system of His Majesty's Government, and the Sardinian
    faction is reckoning on them.

    "I have the honour to be, etc[52]."

    [Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]


    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

    "I am quite surprised at your acquaintance with the story of my
    excavation; I did not remember having written you so well on that
    subject. I am, as you think, very busy: left without directions
    or instructions, I am obliged to take everything upon myself. I
    believe, however, that I can promise you a moderate and enlightened
    pope, if God only grant that he be made at the expiration of the
    interim of M. Portalis' ministry."


    "4 _March._

    "Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, I was on my knees alone in the Church of
    Santa Croce, which rests against the walls of Rome, near the Porta
    di Napoli. I heard the monotonous and lugubrious chanting of the
    monks within that solitude: I should have liked myself to be in a
    frock, singing among those ruins. What a spot to appease ambition
    and to contemplate the vanities of earth! While I am suffering,
    I hear that M. de La Ferronnays is getting better; he rides on
    horseback, and his convalescence is looked upon in the country as
    miraculous: God grant that it be so, and that he may resume work at
    the end of the interim. What a number of questions that would solve
    for me!"

    [Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "_Sunday_[53] 15 _March_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I have had the honour to inform you of the successive arrivals of
    their Eminences the French cardinals. Three of them, Messieurs de
    Latil, de La Fare[54] and de Croy[55] have done me the honour to
    be my guests. The first entered the Conclave on Thursday evening
    the 12th, with M. le Cardinal Isoard[56]; the two others locked
    themselves in on Friday evening the 13th.

    "I told them all I know; I gave them important notes on the
    minority and majority in the Conclave, and on the sentiments which
    animate the different parties. We agreed that they should support
    the candidates of whom I have already spoken to you, namely,
    Cardinals Capellari, Oppizzoni, Benvenuti, Zurla, Castiglioni
    and, lastly, Pacca and Di Gregorio; and that they should reject
    the cardinals of the Sardinian faction: Pedicini, Giustiniani,
    Galleffi, and Cristaldi[57].

    "I hope that this good intelligence between the ambassadors and
    cardinals will have the best effect: at least I shall have nothing
    with which to reproach myself if passions or interests intervene to
    deceive my hopes.

    "I have, monsieur le comte, discovered dangerous and contemptible
    intrigues carried on between Paris and Rome through the channel
    of Monsignor Lambruschini, the Nuncio[58]. It was no less a
    question than to cause to be read, in open conclave, a copy of
    some pretended secret instructions, divided into several clauses
    and given (so it was impudently asserted) to M. le Cardinal de
    Latil. The majority of the Conclave has pronounced strongly against
    these machinations; it wished the Nuncio to be instructed to break
    off all relations with those men of discord who, while troubling
    France, would end by making the Catholic Religion hateful to all.
    I am, monsieur le comte, making a collection of these authentic
    revelations, and I will send it to you after the election of the
    pope: that will be worth more than all the dispatches in the
    world. The King will learn to know who are his friends and who his
    enemies, and the Government will be able to rely on facts suited to
    guide its conduct

    "Your Dispatch No. 14 informs me of the encroachments which His
    Holiness' Nuncio endeavoured to renew in France in connection with
    the death of Leo XII. The same thing had happened before, when
    I was Foreign Minister, at the time of the death of Pius VII.:
    fortunately, we always have means of defending ourselves against
    those public attacks; it is much more difficult to escape the plots
    laid in the dark.

    "The conclavists who accompany our cardinals appeared to me to be
    reasonable men: the Abbé Coudrin[59] alone, whom you mentioned to
    me, is one of those cramped and narrow minds into which nothing
    can enter, one of those men who have mistaken their profession.
    As you are well aware, he is a monk, head of an order, and he even
    has bulls of institution: this is but little in agreement with our
    civil laws and our political institutions.

    "It may happen that the pope will be elected at the end of this
    week. But, if the French cardinals fail to make their presence
    felt at once, it will become impossible to assign a limit to the
    duration of the Conclave. New combinations would perhaps bring
    about an unexpected nomination: to have done with it, they might
    agree on some insignificant cardinal, such as Dandini[60].

    "In times gone by, monsieur le comte, I have found myself placed
    in difficult circumstances, whether as Ambassador to London, or as
    Minister during the Spanish War, or as a member of the House of
    Peers, or Leader of the Opposition; but nothing has given me so
    much anxiety and care as my present position in the midst of every
    kind of intrigue. I have to act upon an invisible body locked up in
    a prison, the approaches to which are strictly guarded. I have no
    money to give, no places to promise; the decaying passions of fifty
    old men give me no hold on them. I have to fight against stupidity
    in some, against ignorance of the times in others; fanaticism in
    these, craft and duplicity in those; in almost all, ambition,
    self-interest, political hatred: and I am separated by walls and
    mysteries from the assembly in which so many elements of division
    are fermenting. At each moment, the scene varies; every quarter of
    an hour, contradictory reports plunge me into fresh perplexities.
    I am not, monsieur le comte, telling you of these difficulties
    to show my importance, but rather to serve as my excuse in case
    the election should result in a pope contrary to what it seems
    to promise and to the nature of our wishes. At the time of the
    death of Pius VII., public opinion was not excited over religious
    questions: to-day, these questions have begun to play their part in
    politics, and never did the election of the Head of the Church fall
    at a less auspicious moment

    "I have the honour to be, etc."

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Récamier.]

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    ROME, 17 _March_ 1829.

    "The King of Bavaria[61] has called in mufti to see me. We spoke of
    you. This 'Greek' sovereign, though he wears a crown, seems to know
    what he has on his head, and to understand that you cannot nail the
    present to the past. He is to dine with me on Thursday, and wants
    no one there.

    "For the rest, behold us in the midst of great events: a pope to be
    made; what will he be like? Will Catholic Emancipation be passed?
    A new campaign in the East: on which side will victory be? Shall
    we profit by this position? Who will conduct our affairs? Is there
    a head capable of perceiving all that this contains for France
    and of profiting by it according to events? I am persuaded that
    they do not so much as think of it in Paris and that, what with
    the salons and the Chambers, pleasures and legislation, worldly
    joys and ministerial anxieties, they don't trouble about Europe or
    anything else. Only I myself, in my exile, have time to indulge in
    dreams and to look about me. Yesterday I went for a walk in a sort
    of gale on the old Tivoli Road. I came to the old Roman pavement,
    which is so well preserved that one would believe it had been newly
    laid. Yet Horace had trod the stones which I was treading: where is
    Horace?"

[Illustration: Louise of Stolberg (Countess of Albany)]

The Marquis Capponi[62] arrived from Florence, bringing me letters of
recommendation from ladies in Paris. I replied to one of these letters
on the 21st of March 1829:

    "I have received your letters: the services I am able to do are
    nothing, but I am entirely at your orders. I was already well
    acquainted with the Marquis Capponi's merits. I can tell you that
    he is still good-looking; he has weathered time. I did not answer
    your first letter, so full of enthusiasm for the sublime Mahmud
    and for 'disciplined' barbarism, for those slaves 'bastinadoed'
    into soldiers[63]. I can imagine that women are carried away with
    admiration for men who marry hundreds of them at a time, and that
    they take that for the progress of enlightenment and civilization;
    but, as for me, I cling to my poor Greeks; I desire their liberty
    as I do that of France. I also want frontiers which will cover
    Paris and ensure our independence; and it is not by means of the
    triple alliance of the pale of Constantinople, the _schlag_ of
    Vienna and the fisticuffs of London that you will obtain the bank
    of the Rhine. Many thanks for the fur-coat of honour which our
    glory might obtain from the invincible Commander of the Faithful,
    who has not yet sallied from the outskirts of his seraglio; I
    prefer that glory naked; she is a woman and beautiful: Phidias
    would certainly never have robed her in a Turkish dressing-gown."

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    ROME, 21 _March_ 1829.

    "Well, I am right and you are wrong! I went yesterday, between
    two ballots and while waiting for a pope, to Sant' Onofrio: and
    it is two _orange-trees_ that grow in the cloister, and not an
    evergreen oak. I am quite proud of this fidelity of my memory. I
    ran, almost with my eyes shut, to the little stone that covers your
    friend; I prefer it to the great monument they are going to raise
    to him. What a charming solitude! What an admirable view! What
    happiness to lie there between the frescoes of Domenichino[64] and
    Leonardo da Vinci! I wish I were there, I never felt so tempted.
    Did they let you enter the interior of the convent? Did you see,
    in a long corridor, that delicious, though half-obliterated, head
    of a Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci? Did you see in the library
    Tasso's mask, his withered laurel-wreath, a mirror which he used,
    his ink-stand, his pen and the letter written by his hand, pasted
    to a board that hangs below his bust? In this letter, in a small,
    scratched-out, but easily legible hand, he speaks of 'friendship'
    and the 'wind of fortune;' the latter scarcely ever blew for him,
    and the former often failed him.

    "No pope yet, we expect him hourly; but, if the choice has been
    delayed, if obstacles have arisen on every hand, it is not my
    fault: they ought to have listened to me a little more, and not
    acted in a sense exactly opposite to that which they seemed to
    decide upon. For the rest, it seems to me at present that every one
    wants to be at peace with me. The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre
    himself has just written to tell me that he claims my former
    kindness for him; and after all that he comes to stay with me
    resolved to vote for the most moderate pope.

    "You have read my second speech. Thank M. Kératry[65], who has
    spoken so obligingly of the first; I hope he will be still more
    pleased with the other. We shall both of us try to make liberty
    Christian, and we shall succeed. What do you say to the answer
    Cardinal Castiglioni made me? Have I been finely enough praised 'in
    open conclave'? You could not have done better in the days when you
    spoilt me."

    [Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

    "24 _March_ 1829.

    "If I were to believe the rumours of Rome, we should have a pope
    to-morrow; but I am in a moment of discouragement, and I refuse to
    believe in such happiness. You can understand that that happiness
    is not political happiness, the joy of a triumph, but the happiness
    of being free and seeing you again. When I speak to you so much
    about the Conclave, I am like the people who have a fixed idea and
    who believe that the whole world is interested in that idea. And
    yet, in Paris, who thinks of the Conclave, who troubles about a
    pope or my tribulations? French light-heartedness, the interests
    of the moment, the discussions in the Chambers, excited ambitions
    have very different things to do. When the Duc de Laval used also
    to write to me of his cares about the Conclave, preoccupied with
    the Spanish War as I was, I used to say, when I received his
    dispatches, 'Oh, good Heavens, I have something else to think
    of!' and M. Portalis is applying the _lex talionis_ to me to-day.
    Nevertheless, one may fairly say that things at that time were not
    what they are now: religious ideas were not mixed up with political
    ideas as they have since been throughout Europe; the quarrel did
    not lie there; the nomination could not, as it does now, disturb or
    pacify States.

    "Since the letter which informed me that M. de La Ferronnays' leave
    had been extended and that he had left for Rome, I have heard
    nothing: still, I believe that news true.

    "M. Thierry has written me a touching letter from Hyères; he tells
    me that he is dying, and still he wants a place in the Academy of
    Inscriptions and asks me to write for him. I am going to do so.
    My excavation continues to give me sarcophaguses; death can only
    yield what it possesses. The Poussin monument is getting on. It
    will be noble and large. You cannot imagine how the picture of the
    Arcadian Shepherds was made for a bas-relief, nor how well it suits
    sculpture."

    "28 _March._

    "M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre, who has been staying with
    me, enters the Conclave to-day; this is an age of marvels. I
    have with me the son of Marshal Lannes and the grandson of the
    Chancellor[66]; _Messieurs du Constitutionnel_ dine at my table
    beside _Messieurs de la Quotidienne._ That is the advantage of
    being sincere; let every one think what he pleases, provided I am
    allowed the same liberty; I only endeavour that my opinion shall
    have the majority, because I think it, and rightly, better than
    the others. I attribute to this sincerity the tendency of the most
    diverging opinions to gather round me. I exercise the right of
    sanctuary towards them: they cannot be seized beneath my roof."


    TO M. LE DUC DE BLACAS[67]

    "ROME, 24 _March_ 1829.

    "I am sorry, monsieur le duc, that a phrase in my letter should
    have been able to cause you any anxiety. I have no reason whatever
    to complain of a man of sense and intelligence[68], who told me
    nothing save diplomatic commonplaces. Do we ambassadors ever talk
    anything else? As to the cardinal of whom you do me the honour
    to speak, the French Government has not designated any one in
    particular; it has left the matter entirely as I reported it. Seven
    or eight moderate and peaceful cardinals, who seem to attract the
    wishes of all the Courts alike, are the candidates among whom we
    wish to see the votes fall. But, if we lay no claim to impose a
    choice upon the majority of the Conclave, we do with all our might
    and by every means repel two or three fanatical, intriguing, or
    incapable cardinals, whom the minority are supporting.

    "I have no other possible means of sending you this letter,
    monsieur le duc; I am therefore very simply posting it, because it
    contains nothing that you and I cannot confess aloud.

    "I have the honour to be, etc."

    [Sidenote: To Blacas and Récamier.]

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, 31 _March_ 1829.

    "M. de Montebello has arrived and has brought me your letter, with
    a letter from M. Bertin and from M. Villemain.

    "My excavations are doing well: I find plenty of empty
    sarcophaguses; I shall be able to choose one for myself, without my
    ashes being obliged to turn out those of the old dead men whom the
    wind has carried away. Depopulated sepulchres afford the spectacle
    of a resurrection, and yet they await only a more profound death.
    It is not life but annihilation which has made those tombs deserted.

    "To finish my little diary of the moment, I will tell you that the
    day before yesterday I climbed to the ball of St. Peter's during
    a storm. You cannot imagine the noise of the wind in mid-sky,
    around that cupola of Michael Angelo and above that temple of the
    Christians which crushes Ancient Rome."

    "31 _March, evening._

    "Victory! I have one of the Popes whom I had placed on my list: it
    is Castiglioni, the very cardinal whom I was supporting for the
    Papacy in 1823, when I was Minister, he who lately replied to me in
    the Conclave with 'many praises.' Castiglioni is a moderate man and
    devoted to France; it is a complete triumph. The Conclave, before
    separating, gave orders to write to the Nuncio in Paris, to tell
    him to express to the King the satisfaction of the Sacred College
    with my conduct. I have already dispatched the news to Paris by the
    telegraph. The Prefect of the Rhone is the intermediary of this
    aerial correspondence, and this prefect is M. de Brosses, son of
    that Comte de Brosses, the frivolous traveller to Rome, whom I have
    often quoted in the notes which I collect while writing to you. The
    courier who carries this letter to you carries my dispatch to M.
    Portalis.

    "I never have two consecutive days of good health now; this makes
    me furious, for I have no heart for anything in the midst of my
    sufferings. Still, I am awaiting with some impatience to hear the
    effect in Paris of the nomination of my Pope, what they will say,
    what they will do, what will become of me. The most certain thing
    is that my leave has been applied for. I have seen in the papers
    the great quarrel raised by the _Constitutionnel_ about my speech;
    it accuses the _Messager_ of not printing it, and we in Rome have
    _Messagers_ of the 22nd of March (the quarrel belongs to the 24th
    or 25th) containing the speech. Isn't it singular? It seems clear
    that there are _two_ editions, one for Rome and the other for
    Paris. Poor people! I am thinking of the mistake made by another
    paper; it assures its readers that the Conclave was very much
    dissatisfied with this speech: what can it have said when it read
    the praises given me by Cardinal Castiglioni, who has become Pope?

    "When shall I have done talking to you of all these trifles? When
    shall I busy myself only with finishing the Memoirs of my Life and
    my life also, as the last page of those Memoirs? I have great need
    of it; I am very weary, the weight of my days increases and makes
    itself felt on my head; I amuse myself by calling it 'rheumatism'
    but it is the kind that one cannot cure. One word only sustains me,
    when I again say:

    "'Soon.'"

    "3 _April._

    "I forgot to tell you that, as Cardinal Fesch behaved very well in
    the Conclave and voted with our cardinals, I took a resolution and
    invited him to dinner. He refused in a very tactful note."

    [Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 2 _April_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "Cardinal Albani has been appointed Secretary of State, as I had
    the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons by
    the mounted messenger dispatched on the evening of the 31st of
    March. The new minister is not pleasing to the Sardinian faction,
    nor to the majority of the Sacred College, nor even to Austria,
    because he is violent, an Anti-Jesuit, rude in his manner, and an
    Italian above everything. Rich and excessively avaricious, Cardinal
    Albani is mixed up in all sorts of enterprises and speculations. I
    went yesterday to pay him my first visit; the moment he saw me, he
    exclaimed:

    "'I am a pig!' He was, in fact, exceedingly dirty. 'You shall see
    that I am not an enemy.'

    "I am giving you his own words, monsieur le comte. I replied that I
    was very far from regarding him as an enemy.

    "'You people' he resumed, 'want water, not fire: don't I know
    your country? Haven't I lived in France?' He speaks French like a
    Frenchman. 'You will be satisfied, and your master too. How is the
    King? Good-morning. Let us go to St. Peter's!'

    "It was eight o'clock in the morning; I had already seen His
    Holiness, and all Rome was hastening to the ceremony of the
    Adoration.

    "Cardinal Albani is a man of intelligence, false by nature and
    frank by temperament; his violence foils his cunning; one can make
    use of him by flattering his pride and satisfying his avarice.

    "Pius VIII. is very learned, especially in matters of theology; he
    speaks French, but with less facility and grace than Leo XII. He is
    attacked on the right side with partial paralysis, and is subject
    to convulsive movements: the supreme power will cure him. He is to
    be crowned on Sunday next, Passion Sunday, the 5th of April.

    "Now, monsieur le comte, that the principal business which kept
    me in Rome is ended, I shall be infinitely obliged to you if you
    will obtain for me from His Majesty's kindness a leave of a few
    months. I shall not take it until after I have handed the Pope the
    letter in which the King will reply to that which Pius VIII. has
    written or is going to write to him to announce his elevation to
    the Chair of St Peter. Permit me to beg once more, on behalf of my
    two secretaries of Legation, M. Bellocq[69] and M. de Givré[70],
    the favours which I have asked of you for them.

    "The intrigues of Cardinal Albani in the Conclave, the partisans
    whom he had won, even among the majority, had made me fear some
    unexpected stroke to carry him to the Sovereign Pontificate. It
    seemed to me impossible to allow ourselves to be thus surprised
    and to permit the Austrian _chargé d'affaires_ to put on the tiara
    under the eyes of the French Ambassador. I therefore availed myself
    of the arrival of M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre to charge
    him against all eventualities with the letter enclosed, the terms
    of which I framed on my own responsibility. Fortunately he was not
    called upon to make use of this letter; he handed it back to me,
    and I have the honour to send it to you.

    "I have the honour to be, etc."


    TO HIS EMINENCE MONSEIGNEUR LE CARDINAL DE CLERMONT-TONNERRE

    "ROME, 28 _March_ 1829.

    "MONSEIGNEUR,

    "Unable to communicate with your colleagues, Messieurs the French
    cardinals, confined in the Monte Cavallo Palace; obliged to provide
    for every thing to the advantage of His Majesty's service, and
    in the interests of our country; knowing how often unexpected
    nominations have been made in the conclaves, I find myself, to my
    regret, in the disagreeable necessity of confiding to Your Eminence
    a power of eventual exclusion.

    "Although M. le Cardinal Albani appears to have no chance, he is
    none the less a man of capacity on whom, in case of a prolonged
    struggle, they might turn their eyes; but he is the cardinal
    charged at the Conclave with the instructions of Austria: M. le
    Comte de Lützow has already designated him in that quality in
    his speech. Now it is impossible to allow the elevation to the
    Sovereign Pontificate of a cardinal openly belonging to a crown,
    whether it be the Crown of France or any other.

    "Consequently, monseigneur, I charge you, by virtue of my full
    powers as His Most Christian Majesty's Ambassador, and taking all
    the responsibility upon myself alone, to give the exclusion to M.
    le Cardinal Albani, if, on the one hand, by a fortuitous juncture,
    or, on the other, by a secret combination, he should come to
    obtain the majority of the suffrages.

    "I am, etc., etc."

[Sidenote: The letter of exclusion.]

This letter of exclusion, entrusted to a cardinal by an ambassador who
is not formally authorized to that effect, is a piece of diplomatic
temerity: it is enough to send a shudder through all stay-at-home
statesmen, all the heads of departments, all the chief clerks, all
the copiers at the Foreign Office; but, as the Minister knew so
little about his business as not even to think of an eventual case of
exclusion, needs must that I should think of it for him. Suppose that
Albani had been made Pope by accident: what would have become of me? I
should have been ruined for ever as a politician.

I say this, not for myself, who care little for a politician's fame,
but for the future generation of writers who would be browbeaten
because of my accident and who would expiate my misfortune at the
cost of their career, even as the whipping-boy is punished when M. le
Dauphin commits a blunder. But neither should my daring foresight, in
taking the letter of exclusion upon myself, be too much admired: that
which appears enormous, when measured by the stunted scale of the old
diplomatic ideas, is really nothing at all, in the actual order of
society. I owed my audacity on the one hand to my insensibility to all
disgrace, on the other to my knowledge of contemporary opinion: the
world as it is to-day does not care two sous for the nomination of a
pope, the rivalries of crowns, or the internal intrigues of a conclave.


    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    _Confidential._

    "ROME, 2 _April_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I have the honour to-day to send you the important documents
    which I promised you. These are nothing less than the secret
    and official journal of the Conclave. It is translated, word
    for word, from the Italian original; I have only removed any
    part of it which might point too precisely to the sources whence
    I drew it. If the smallest atom of these perhaps unexampled
    revelations were to transpire, it would cost the fortune, the
    liberty and perhaps the lives of several persons. This would be
    the more deplorable inasmuch as we owe these revelations not to
    interest and corruption, but to confidence in French honour. This
    document, monsieur le comte, must therefore remain for ever secret
    after it has been read in the King's Council; for, in spite of
    the precautions which I have taken to keep names silent and to
    suppress direct references, it still says enough to compromise its
    authors. I have added a commentary, to facilitate its perusal. The
    Pontifical Government is in the habit of keeping a register on
    which its decisions, its acts and deeds are noted down day by day,
    and so to speak hour by hour: what an historical treasure, if one
    could delve into it, going back towards the earlier centuries of
    the Papacy! I have been given a momentary glimpse of it, for the
    present period. The King will see, through the documents which I
    am sending you, what has never been seen before, the inside of a
    Conclave; the most intimate sentiments of the Court of Rome will be
    known to him, and His Majesty's Ministers will not be walking in
    the dark.

    "The commentary which I have made of the journal dispensing me
    from any other reflection, it but remains for me to offer you the
    renewed assurance of the high regard with which I have the honour
    to be, etc., etc."

The Italian original of the precious document announced in this
confidential dispatch was burnt in Rome before my eyes; I have kept no
copy of the translation of this document which I sent to the Foreign
Office; I have only a copy of the "commentary" or "remarks" which
I added to that translation. But the same discretion which made me
charge the Minister to keep the document for ever secret obliges me
here to suppress my own remarks; for, however great the obscurity in
which those remarks are enveloped, in the absence of the document to
which they refer, that obscurity would still be daylight in Rome. Now
resentment is long in the Eternal City; it might happen that, fifty
years hence, it should fall upon some grand-nephew of the authors of
the mysterious confidence. I shall therefore content myself with giving
a general epitome of the contents of the commentary, while laying
stress on a few passages which bear a direct relation to the affairs of
France.

We see, first, how greatly the Court of Naples was deceiving M. de
Blacas, or else how much it was itself deceived; for, while it was
causing me to be told that the Neapolitan cardinals would vote with us,
they were joining the minority or the so-called Sardinian faction.

The minority of the cardinals imagined that the vote of the French
cardinals would influence _the form of our government._ How so?
Apparently by means of secret orders with which they were supposed to
be charged and by their votes in favour of a hot-headed pope.

[Sidenote: A secret document.]

The Nuncio Lambruschini declared to the Conclave that the Cardinal de
Latil had the King's secret; all the efforts of the faction tended
to create the belief that Charles X. and his Government were not in
agreement.

On the 13th of March, the Cardinal de Latil announced that he had
a declaration purely of conscience to make to the Conclave; he was
sent before four cardinal-bishops: the acts of that secret confession
remained in the keeping of the Grand Penitentiary. The other French
cardinals knew nothing of the subject-matter of this confession, and
Cardinal Albani sought in vain to find out: the fact is important and
curious.

The minority consisted of sixteen compact votes. The cardinals forming
this minority called themselves the "Fathers of the Cross;" they placed
a St. Andrew's cross on their doors as a sign that, having decided
on their choice, they did not want to communicate with any one. The
majority of the Conclave displayed reasonable sentiments and a firm
resolution in no way to mix in foreign politics.

The minutes drawn up by the protonotary of the Conclave are worthy of
remark. They conclude with these words:

"Pius VIII. determined to appoint Cardinal Albani Secretary of State,
in order also to satisfy the Cabinet of Vienna."

The Sovereign Pontiff divides the lots between the two crowns: he
declares himself the French Pope, and gives the secretaryship of State
to Austria.


    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, _Wednesday_ 8 _April_ 1829.

    "This day I have had the whole Conclave to dinner. Tomorrow I
    receive the Grand-duchess Helen. On Easter Tuesday, I give a ball
    for the closing of the session; and then I shall prepare to come
    to see you. You can judge of my anxiety: at the moment of writing
    to you, I have no news yet of my mounted courier announcing the
    death of the Pope, and yet the Pope is already crowned; Leo XII.
    is forgotten; I have begun again to transact affairs with the
    new Secretary of State, Albani; everything is going on as though
    nothing had happened, and I do not even know whether you in Paris
    know that there is a new Pontiff! How beautiful that ceremony of
    the papal benediction is! The Sabine Range on the horizon, then
    the deserted Roman Campagna, then Rome itself, then the Piazza San
    Pietro and the whole people falling on its knees under an old man's
    hand: the Pope is the only prince who blesses his subjects.

    "I had written so far when a courier arrived from Genoa bringing
    me a telegraphic dispatch from Paris to Toulon, which dispatch,
    replying to the one I had sent, informs me that, on the 4th of
    April, at eleven o'clock in the evening, they received in Paris my
    telegraphic dispatch from Rome to Toulon announcing the election of
    Cardinal Castiglioni, and that the King is greatly pleased.

    "The rapidity of these communications is prodigious; my courier
    left at eight o'clock in the evening on the 31st of March, and at
    eight o'clock in the evening on the 8th of April I received a reply
    from Paris."

    "11 _April_ 1829.

    "To-day is the 11th of April: in eight days we shall have Easter
    with us, in fifteen days my leave, and then to see you! Everything
    disappears before that hope; I am no more sad; I no longer think of
    ministers or politics. To-morrow we begin Holy Week. I shall think
    of all you have told me. Why are you not here to hear the beautiful
    songs of sorrow with me! We should go to walk in the deserts of the
    Roman Campagna, now covered with flowers and verdure. All the ruins
    seem to become young with the new year: I am of their number."

    [Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]

    _Wednesday in Holy Week_, 15 _April._

    "I have just left the Sistine Chapel, where I attended Tenebræ and
    heard the _Miserere_ sung. I remembered that you had talked to me
    of this ceremony, which touched me a hundred times as much because
    of that.

    "The daylight was failing; the shadows crept slowly across the
    frescoes of the chapel, and one distinguished but a few bold
    strokes of Michael Angelo's brush. The candles, extinguished one
    by one in turns, sent forth from their stifled flames a slender
    white smoke, a very natural image of life, which Scripture compares
    to a little smoke[71]. The cardinals were kneeling, the Pope
    prostrate before the same altar where a few days before I had
    seen his predecessor; the admirable prayer of penance and mercy,
    which succeeded the Lamentations of the prophet, rose at intervals
    in the silence of the night. One felt overwhelmed by the great
    mystery of a God dying that the sins of mankind might be wiped out.
    The Catholic Heiress was there on her seven hills with all her
    memories; but, instead of the powerful pontiffs, those cardinals
    who contended for precedence with monarchs, a poor old paralyzed
    Pope, without family or support, Princes of the Church, without
    splendour, announced the end of a power which has civilized the
    modern world. The master-pieces of the arts were disappearing with
    it, were fading away on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican, that
    half-abandoned palace. Inquisitive strangers, separated from the
    unity of the Church, assisted at the ceremony on their way and took
    the place of the community of the Faithful. The heart was seized
    with a two-fold sadness. Christian Rome, while commemorating the
    Agony of Jesus Christ, seemed to be celebrating her own, to be
    repeating for the new Jerusalem the words which Jeremias addressed
    to the old."

[Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "Things are developing here as I had the honour to foreshadow
    to you; the words and actions of the new Pope are in complete
    agreement with the pacificatory system followed by Leo XII.: Pius
    VIII. goes even further than his predecessor; he expresses himself
    with greater frankness on the Charter, of which he is not afraid to
    pronounce the word nor to advise the French to follow the spirit.
    The Nuncio, having again written about our business, has received
    a dry intimation to mind his own. All is being concluded for the
    Concordat with the Netherlands, and M. le Comte de Celles will
    complete his mission next month.

    "Cardinal Albani, finding himself in a difficult position, is
    obliged to pay for it: the protestations which he makes to me of
    his devotion to France annoy the Austrian Ambassador, who is unable
    to conceal his ill-humour. From the religious point of view we
    have nothing to fear from Cardinal Albani; himself troubled with
    very little religion, he will not feel the impulse to trouble us
    either with his own fanaticism or with the moderate opinions of his
    Sovereign.

    "As for the political point of view, Italy is not at this day to be
    juggled away through police intrigues and a cypher correspondence;
    to allow the Legations to be occupied or to place an Austrian
    garrison at Ancona on some pretext or other would mean stirring up
    Europe and declaring war against France: now we are no longer in
    1814, 1815, 1816 and 1817; a greedy and unjust ambition is not to
    be satisfied before our eyes with impunity. And so, that Cardinal
    Albani is in receipt of a pension from Prince Metternich; that
    he is a kinsman of the Duke of Modena[72], to whom he declares
    himself to be leaving his enormous fortune; that he is hatching
    a little plot with that Prince against the Heir to the Crown of
    Sardinia[73]: all that is true, all that would have been dangerous
    at the time when secret and absolute governments set soldiers
    dimly in movement behind the shelter of a dim dispatch; but, in
    these days, with public governments, with liberty of the press
    and of free speech, with the telegraph and general rapidity of
    communication, with knowledge of affairs spread through the several
    classes of society, we are protected against the conjuring tricks
    and artifices of the old diplomacy. At the same time it cannot be
    denied that there are drawbacks attached to an _Austrian chargé
    d'affaires_ in the position of Secretary of State in Rome; there
    are even certain notes (those for instance relating to the imperial
    power in Italy) which it would not be possible to place in Cardinal
    Albani's hands.

    "No one has yet been able to fathom the secret of an appointment
    which everybody dislikes, including even the Cabinet of Vienna.
    Has this to do with interests foreign to politics? They say that
    Cardinal Albani is at this moment offering to make the Holy Father
    an advance of 200,000 piastres of which the Roman Government stands
    in need; others pretend that this sum will be lent by an Austrian
    banker. Cardinal Macchi told me on Saturday last that His Holiness,
    not wishing to re-appoint Cardinal Bernetti and desirous,
    nevertheless, of giving him a big place, found no other means of
    arranging things than to make vacant the Bologna Legation. Wretched
    little difficulties often become the motives of the most important
    resolutions. If Cardinal Macchi's version is the true one, all that
    Pius VIII. is doing and saying for the _satisfaction_ of the Crowns
    of France and Austria would be only an apparent reason, by the aid
    of which he would seek to mask his own weakness in his own eyes.
    For the rest, no one believes that Albania ministry will last. So
    soon as he begins to enter into relations with the ambassadors,
    difficulties will spring up on every hand.

    [Sidenote: The position of Italy.]

    "As to the position of Italy, monsieur le comte, you must read with
    caution what will be written to you from Rome or elsewhere. It is,
    unhappily, but too true that the Government of the Two Sicilies has
    fallen into the last stage of contempt. The manner in which the
    Court lives in the midst of its guards, for ever trembling, for
    ever pursued by the phantoms of fear, presenting the sole spectacle
    of ruinous hunting-parties and gibbets, contributes more and more
    to debase royalty in this country. Yet they take for _conspiracies_
    what is only the general uneasiness, the product of the century,
    the struggle of the old society with the new, the contest between
    the decrepitude of the old institutions and the energy of the young
    generations: in fine, the comparison which everybody makes of
    that which is with that which might be. Let us not blind our eyes
    to this fact: the great spectacle of a powerful, free and happy
    France, that great spectacle which strikes the eyes of the nations
    which have remained or relapsed under the yoke, excites regrets
    or feeds hopes. The medley of representative governments and
    absolute governments cannot long continue; one or the other must go
    under, and politics must return to an even level, as in the time
    of Gothic Europe. The custom-house on a frontier can henceforth
    not separate liberty from slavery; a man can no longer be hung on
    this side of a brook for principles reputed sacred on the other
    side of that brook. It is in this sense, monsieur le comte, and
    in this sense alone, that there is any _conspiracy_ in Italy; it
    is in this sense too that Italy is _French._ On the day when she
    shall enter on the enjoyment of the rights which her intelligence
    perceives and which the progressive march of time is carrying to
    her, on that day she will be peaceful and purely Italian. It is not
    a few poor devils of _Carbonari_, stirred up by the manœuvres of
    the police and mercilessly hanged, that will rouse the country to
    revolt. Governments are given the falsest ideas of the true state
    of things; they are prevented from doing what they ought to do to
    ensure their safety by always having pointed out to them as the
    private conspiracies of a handful of Jacobins what is really the
    effect of a permanent and general cause.

    "This, monsieur le comte, is the real position of Italy. Each of
    her States, in addition to the common working of men's minds,
    is tortured with some local malady: Piedmont is delivered to a
    fanatical faction; the Milanese is being devoured by the Austrians;
    the domains of the Holy Father are being ruined by bad financial
    administration; the taxes amount to nearly fifty millions and do
    not leave the landlord one per cent, of his income; the customs
    bring in hardly anything; smuggling is general; the Prince of
    Modena has established shops in his Duchy (a place of immunity for
    all ancient abuses) for the sale of prohibited merchandise, which
    he passes at night into the Bologna Legation[74].

    "I have already, monsieur le comte, spoken to you of Naples, where
    the weakness of the government is saved only by the cowardice of
    the population.

    "It is this absence of military valour that will prolong the
    death-agony of Italy. Bonaparte did not have time to revive that
    valour in the land of Marius and Cæsar. The habits of an idle life
    and the charm of the climate contribute still more to deprive
    the Southern Italians of the desire to agitate for an improved
    condition. Antipathies arising from the territorial divisions add
    to the difficulties of an inside movement; but, if some impulse
    came from without, if some prince beyond the Alps granted a charter
    to his subjects, a revolution would take place, because all is
    ripe for such a revolution. Happier than we and instructed by our
    experience, the people would be sparing in the crimes and miseries
    with which we were lavish.

    "I have no doubt, monsieur le comte, that I shall soon receive the
    leave for which I asked you: I shall perhaps use it. At the moment,
    therefore, of leaving Italy, I have thought it my duty to place
    a few general hints before you, in order to fix the ideas of the
    King's Council and to warn it against reports inspired by narrow
    minds or blind passions.

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

    [Sidenote: Expensive visitors.]

    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "Messieurs the French cardinals are very eager to know what sum
    will be allowed them for their expenses and their stay in Rome:
    they have repeatedly asked me to write to you on the subject; I
    shall therefore be infinitely obliged to you if you will inform me
    as soon as possible of the King's decision.

    "As regards myself, monsieur le comte, when you were good enough
    to allow me an additional sum of thirty thousand francs, you were
    under the impression that none of the cardinals would stay with me.
    Now M. de Clermont-Tonnerre put up here with his suite, consisting
    of two conclavists, an ecclesiastical secretary, a lay secretary, a
    valet, two men-servants and a French cook, besides a Roman groom of
    the chambers, a master of ceremonies, three footmen, a coachman and
    all the Italian establishment which a cardinal is obliged to keep
    up here. The Archbishop of Toulouse, who is not able to walk[75],
    does not dine at my table; he requires two or three courses at
    different hours, and horses and carriages for his guests and
    friends. My reverend visitor will certainly not pay his expenditure
    here; he will go, and leave the bills to me; I shall have to pay
    not only the cook, the laundress, the livery-stable keeper, etc.,
    etc., but also the two surgeons who came to look at His Lordship's
    leg, the shoemaker who makes his white and purple slippers, and the
    tailor who has 'confectioned' the cloaks, cassocks, neck-bands, the
    whole outfit of the cardinal and his abbés.

    "If to this, monsieur le comte, you add my extraordinary expenses
    for costs of representation, which expenses have been increased
    by the presence of the Grand-duchess Helen, Prince Paul of
    Wurtemberg[76] and the King of Bavaria, you will no doubt find that
    the thirty thousand francs which you allowed me will have been
    much exceeded. The first year of an ambassador's establishment
    is a ruinous one, the grants allowed for that establishment being
    far below its needs. It requires a residence of almost three years
    for a diplomatic agent to find means to pay off the debts which
    he has begun by making and to keep his expenses on a level with
    his receipts. I know all the penury of the budget of the Foreign
    Office; if I had any fortune of my own, I would not trouble you:
    nothing is more disagreeable to me, I assure you, than these
    details of money into which a rigorous necessity compels me to
    enter, much against my will.

    "Accept, monsieur le comte, etc."

I had given balls and evening-parties in London and Paris, and,
although a child of a different desert, I had not passed too badly
through those new solitudes; but I had had no glimmer of the nature
of the entertainments in Rome: they have something of ancient poetry,
which places death by the side of pleasures. At the Villa Medicis,
where I received the Grand-duchess Helen, the gardens themselves are
an adornment, and the frame of the picture is magnificent: on one
side, the Villa Borghese, with Raphael's house; on the other the Villa
Monte-Maria, and the slopes edging the Tiber; below the spectator,
the whole of Rome, like an old, abandoned eagle's nest. Amid the
groves thronged, together with the descendants of the Paulas and
Corinnas, beauties come from Naples, Florence and Milan: the Princess
Helen seemed to be their queen. Boreas, suddenly descending from the
mountain, tore the banqueting-tent and fled with shreds of canvas
and garlands, as though to give us an image of all that time has
swept away on this shore. The Embassy staff were in consternation; I
felt an indescribable ironical gaiety at seeing a breath from heaven
carry off my gold of a day and my joys of an hour. The mischief was
promptly repaired. Instead of lunching on the terrace, we lunched in
the graceful palace: the harmony of the horns and oboes, spread by the
wind, had something of the murmur of my American forests. The groups
disporting amid the squalls, the women whose tortured veils beat their
hair and faces, the _saltarello_ which continued during the storm,
the _improvisatrice_ declaiming to the clouds, the balloon escaping
crooked-wise with the cypher of the Daughter of the North: all this
gave a new character to those sports in which the customary tempests of
my life seemed to take part.

What a fascination for any man who should not have counted his heap
of years, and who should have asked illusions of the world and the
storm! It is difficult indeed for me to remember my autumn when,
at my receptions, I see pass before me those women of spring-time
who penetrate among the flowers, the concerts and the lights of my
successive galleries: as who should sway swans swimming towards radiant
climes. To what _désennui_ are they going? Some seek what they already
love, others what they do not yet love. At the end of the road,
they will fall into those sepulchres, always open here, into those
ancient sarcophaguses which serve as basins to fountains hanging from
porticoes; they will go to swell so many light and charming ashes.
Those waves of beauties, diamonds, flowers and feathers roll to the
sound of Rossini's music, which is re-echoed and grows feebler from
orchestra to orchestra. Is that melody the sigh of the breeze to which
I listened in the savannahs of the Floridas, the moan which I heard in
the Temple of Erechtheus at Athens? Is it the distant wailing of the
north winds, which rocked me on the ocean? Could my sylph be hidden
beneath the form of some of these brilliant Italian women? No: my
hamadryad has remained united to the willow of the meadows where I used
to talk with her on the further side of the hedge at Combourg. I have
little in common with these frolics of the society which has attached
itself to my steps at the end of my race; and yet this fairy-scene
contains a certain intoxication that flies to my head: I get rid of it
only by going to cool my brow in the solitary square of St. Peter's or
in the deserted Coliseum. Then the puny sights of the earth are lost,
and I find nothing equal to the sudden change of scene but the old
melancholy of my early days.


[Sidenote: The exiled Bonapartes.]

I will now set forth here my relations, as Ambassador, with the
Bonaparte Family, in order to clear the Restoration of one of the
calumnies that are incessantly being thrown at its head.

France did not act alone in banishing the members of the Imperial
Family; she merely obeyed the hard necessity put upon her by the force
of arms; it was the Allies who provoked that banishment: diplomatic
conventions, formal treaties pronounce the exile of the Bonapartes,
lay down the very places they are to live at, forbid a minister or
ambassador to deliver a passport, by himself, to Napoleon's kinsmen;
the visa of the four other ministers or ambassadors of the four
other contracting Powers is exacted. To such a degree did the blood
of Napoleon frighten the Allies, even when it did not flow in his own
veins!

Thank God, I never submitted to those measures. In 1823, without
consulting anybody, in spite of the treaties, and on my own
responsibility as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I delivered a passport
to Madame la Comtesse de Survilliers[77], then in Brussels, to enable
her to come to Paris to nurse one of her kinsmen, who was ill. Twenty
times over I called for the repeal of those laws of persecution; twenty
times over I told Louis XVIII. that I should like to see the Duc de
Reichstadt captain of his Guards, and the statue of Napoleon put back
on the top of the column in the Place Vendôme. Both as minister and
ambassador, I rendered all the services in my power to the Bonaparte
Family. That was the broad view I took of the Legitimate Monarchy:
liberty can look glory in the face. As Ambassador to Rome, I authorized
my secretaries and attachés to appear in the palace of Madame la
Duchesse de Saint-Leu; I threw down the barrier raised between
Frenchmen who had all known adversity. I wrote to M. le Cardinal Fesch
to invite him to join the cardinals who were to meet at my house; I
expressed to him my sorrow at the political measures which it had been
thought necessary to take; I reminded him of the time when I had formed
part of his mission to the Holy See; and I begged my old ambassador to
honour with his presence the banquet of his old secretary of embassy. I
received the following reply, full of dignity, discretion and prudence:

[Sidenote: Fesch, Jerome Bonaparte.]

    "PALAZZO FALCONIERI, 4 _April_ 1829.

    "Cardinal Fesch greatly appreciates M. de Chateaubriand's obliging
    invitation, but his position on returning to Rome was such as to
    recommend him to forsake the world and lead a life quite apart
    from any society except that of his family. The circumstances that
    followed proved to him that this course was indispensable to his
    tranquillity; and, as the amenities of the moment are no safeguard
    against unpleasantness in the future, he is obliged not to change
    his mode of life. Cardinal Fesch begs M. de Chateaubriand to be
    convinced that nothing can equal his gratitude, and that it is
    with much regret that he will not wait upon His Excellency as
    frequently as he would have desired.

    'His very humble, etc.,

    "CARDINAL FESCH."

The phrase, "the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against
unpleasantness in the future," is an allusion to the threat uttered
by M. de Blacas, who had given orders for M. le Cardinal Fesch to be
flung down his stairs if he presented himself at the French Embassy:
M. de Blacas was too much inclined to forget that he had not always
been so great a lord. I who, in order to be what I have to be, in so
far as I can, in the present, am constantly recalling my past, have
acted differently with His Eminence the Archbishop of Lyons: the little
misunderstandings that existed between him and me in Rome oblige me
to adopt a tone of propriety the more respectful inasmuch as I, in my
turn, belong to the triumphant and he to the beaten party.

Prince Jerome, on his side, did me the honour to ask my intervention,
sending me a copy of a request which he was addressing to the Cardinal
Secretary of State; he says in his letter to me:

    "Exile is terrible enough, both in its principle and in its
    consequences, for that generous France which witnessed his birth
    [Prince Jerome's], that France which possesses all his affections
    and which he has served for twenty years, not to wish to aggravate
    his situation by permitting every government to abuse the delicacy
    of his position.

    "Prince Jérôme de Montfort, confiding in the loyalty of the French
    Government and in the character of its noble representative, does
    not hesitate to believe that justice will be done him.

    "He takes this opportunity, etc.

    "JÉRÔME."

In consequence of this request, I addressed a confidential note to the
Secretary of State, Cardinal Bernetti; it ends with these words:

    "The motives inferred by Prince Jérôme de Montfort appearing to
    the undersigned to be founded on justice and reason, he could
    not refuse the applicant the intervention of his good offices,
    persuaded as he is that the French Government will always regret
    to see the severity of the political laws aggravated by measures
    likely to give umbrage.

    "The undersigned would set an especial value upon obtaining, in
    this circumstance, the powerful interest of H. E. the Cardinal
    Secretary of State.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

At the same time I replied to Prince Jerome as follows:

    "ROME, 9 _May_ 1829.

    "The French Ambassador to the Holy See has received the copy of the
    note which Prince Jérôme de Montfort has done him the honour to
    send him. He hastens to thank him for the confidence which he has
    been good enough to show him; he will make it a duty to write to
    His Holiness' Secretary of State in support of His Highness' just
    claims.

    "The Vicomte de Chateaubriand, who has also been banished from his
    country, would be only too happy to be able to soften the fate of
    the Frenchmen who still find themselves placed under the blow of a
    political law. The exiled brother of Napoleon, addressing himself
    to an Emigrant formerly struck off the list of outlaws by Napoleon
    himself, is one of those freaks of fortune which must needs have
    the ruins of Rome for witnesses.

    "The Vicomte de Chateaubriand has the honour, etc."


    DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 4 _May_ 1829.

    "I have had the honour to inform you, in my letter of 30 April,
    acknowledging the receipt of your Dispatch No. 25, that the Pope
    received me in private audience on the 29th of April at mid-day.
    His Holiness appeared to me to be enjoying very good health. He
    made me sit beside him and kept me nearly an hour and a quarter.
    The Austrian Ambassador had had a public audience before me to hand
    over his new credentials.

    "On leaving the closet of His Holiness at the Vatican, I called on
    the Secretary of State, and, frankly broaching the question with
    him, said:

    "'Well, you see what our newspapers are making you out to be! You
    are "an Austrian, you hate France," you want to do her some bad
    turns: what am I to believe of all that?'

    "He shrugged his shoulders and replied:

    "'Your newspapers make me laugh; I cannot convince you by my words
    if you are not convinced already; but put me to the test and you
    shall see if I do not love France, if I do not do what you ask me
    in the name of your King!'

    "I believe, monsieur le comte, that Cardinal Albani is sincere. He
    is profoundly indifferent in religious matters; he is not a priest;
    he has even thought of giving up the purple and marrying; he does
    not like the Jesuits, who tire him with the noise they make; he
    is lazy, a glutton, a great lover of all kinds of pleasures; the
    weariness which bishops' charges and pastoral letters produce in
    him makes him extremely unfavourable to the cause of the authors of
    those charges and pastoral letters: that old man of eighty wants to
    die in peace and joyousness.

    "I have the honour, etc."

[Sidenote: Monte Cavallo.]

I often visit Monte Cavallo; there the solitude of the gardens is
increased by the solitude of the Roman Campagna, in search of which
one's eyes turn beyond Rome and up the right bank of the Tiber. The
gardeners are my friends; there are walks leading to the Panatteria, a
poor dairy-farm, aviary, or poultry-yard, the occupants of which are as
indigent and peaceful as the latter-day popes. Looking down from the
height of the terraces of the Quirinal enclosure, one sees a narrow
street in which women sit working at their windows on the different
storeys: some embroider, others paint, in the silence of this retired
quarter.

The cells of the cardinals of the last Conclave do not interest me at
all. When St. Peter's was built, when master-pieces were ordered of
Raphael, when at the same time the Kings came to kiss the Pontiffs
slipper, there was something worthy of attention in the Temporal
Papacy. I would gladly see the cell of a Gregory VII.[78], of a Sixtus
V., just as I would look for the lions' den in Babylon; but dark holes,
deserted by an obscure company of septuagenarians, represent to me only
those _columbaria_ of Ancient Rome, which are empty to-day of their
dust and from which a family of dead have fled.

I therefore pass rapidly by those cells, already half demolished, to
walk through the rooms of the palace: there everything speaks to me of
an event[79] for which one finds no precedent except by going back to
Sciarra Colonna[80], Nogaret[81] and Boniface VIII.[82]

My first and my last visit to Rome are connected by memories of Pius
VII., to whose story I have referred when speaking of Madame de
Beaumont and of Bonaparte. My two visits are two pendentives outlined
under the vault of my monument. My faithfulness to the memory of my
old friends must give confidence to the friends who remain to me: for
me nothing sinks into the tomb; all that I have known lives around me:
according to the Indian doctrine, death, when it smites us, does not
destroy us; it only makes us invisible.

    TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

    "ROME, 7 _May_ 1829.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "I have at last received, by Messieurs Desgranges and Franqueville,
    your Dispatch No. 25. This rude dispatch, made out by some ill-bred
    Foreign-Office clerk, is not what I had the right to expect after
    the services which I had had the honour to render the King during
    the Conclave; and above all they might have remembered a little
    whom they were addressing. Not an obliging word for M. Bellocq,
    who obtained such exceptional documents; nothing in reply to the
    request I made on his behalf; gratuitous comments on Cardinal
    Albania nomination, a nomination made in the Conclave which no
    one, therefore, could have foreseen or prevented, a nomination
    concerning which I have never ceased to send you explanations. In
    my Dispatch No. 34, which has doubtless now reached you, I again
    offer you a very simple method of getting rid of this cardinal, if
    he causes France such alarm, and that method will already be half
    carried out when you receive this letter: to-morrow I shall take
    leave of His Holiness; I shall hand over the Embassy to M. Bellocq,
    as _chargé d'affaires_, in accordance with the instructions in your
    Dispatch No. 24, and leave for Paris.

    "I have the honour to be, etc."

This last note is a rude one, and puts an abrupt close to my
correspondence with M. Portalis.

[Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "14 _May_ 1829.

    "My departure is fixed for the 16th. Letters from Vienna arriving
    this morning announce that M. de Laval has refused the Foreign
    Office; is it true? If he keeps to this refusal, what will happen?
    God knows. I hope that all will be decided before my arrival in
    Paris. It seems to me that we have become paralyzed and that we
    have nothing free except our tongues.

    "You think I shall come to an arrangement with M. de Laval; I doubt
    it. I am inclined to come to an arrangement with nobody. I was
    going to arrive in the most peaceful mood, and those people think
    fit to pick a quarrel with me. So long as I had a chance of office,
    they could not praise and flatter me enough in their dispatches;
    the day on which the place was taken, or thought to be taken, they
    drily inform me of M. de Laval's nomination in the rudest and at
    the same time the most stupid dispatch. But, before becoming so
    flat and insolent between one post and another, they ought to have
    reflected a little whom they were addressing, and M. Portalis will
    have learnt as much from a word which I have sent him lately in
    reply. It is possible that he merely signed without reading, just
    as Carnot signed hundreds of death-warrants on trust."

The friend of the great L'Hôpital[83], the Chancelier Olivier[84],
in his sixteenth-century language, which set politeness at defiance,
compares the French to monkeys which clamber to the tree-tops and never
cease climbing until they reach the top-most branch, where they show
what they ought to hide. All that has happened in France from 1789 to
our own time proves the correctness of the simile: every man, as he
ascends through life, becomes like the Chancellor's ape; he ends by
shamelessly exposing his infirmities to the passers-by. See, at the end
of my dispatches I am seized with a desire to boast: the great men who
swarm at this present time prove that a man is a dupe if he does not
himself proclaim his immortality.

Have you read, in the archives of the Foreign Office, the diplomatic
correspondence relating to the most important events at the period of
that correspondence?

"No."

At least you have read the printed correspondence: you know the
negociations of Du Bellay, of d'Ossat, of Du Perron, of the Président
Jeannin[85], the State Memoirs of Villeroi[86], the _Économies
royales_ of Sully[87]; you have seen the Memoirs of the Cardinal de
Richelieu[88], numbers of letters of Mazarin, the papers and documents
relating to the Treaty of Westphalia[89], to the Peace of Munster[90]?
You know Barillon's[91] Dispatches on English affairs; the negociations
on the Spanish Succession are not unfamiliar to you; the name of Madame
des Ursins has not escaped you; M. de Choiseul's[92] Family Compact
has come under your notice; you are not unacquainted with Ximenes[93],
Olivarez[94] and Pombal[95], Hugo Grotius on the liberty of the
seas[96], his letters to the two Oxenstierns[97], the Negociations of
the Grand Pensionary de Witt[98] with Peter Grotius[99], the second son
of Hugo; in fine, the collection of diplomatic treaties has perhaps
attracted your attention?

"No."

[Sidenote: My diplomatic dispatches.]

So you have read none of those sempiternal lucubrations? Well then,
read them; when you have done so, pass over my Spanish War, the success
of which troubles you, although it forms my chief claim to be classed
as a statesman; take my dispatches from Prussia, England and Rome,
place them beside the other dispatches which I have mentioned: and
then, with your hand on your conscience, tell me which have bored you
most; tell me if my work and the work of my predecessors are not quite
similar; if the grasp of small things and of "practical" matters is not
as manifest on my part as on that of the past ministers and defunct
ambassadors.

First of all, you will notice that I have an eye for everything;
that I occupy myself with Reshid Pasha[100] and M. de Blacas; that
I defend my privileges and rights as Ambassador to Rome against all
comers; that I am crafty, false (an eminent quality!) and cunning to
such an extent that, when M. de Funchal, in an equivocal position,
writes to me, I do not reply to him, but go to see him with astute
politeness, so that he is unable to show a line in my handwriting
and is nevertheless satisfied. There is not an imprudent word to be
criticized in my conversations with Cardinals Bernetti and Albani,
the two secretaries of State; nothing escapes me; I descend to the
pettiest details; I restore the accounts of the affairs of the French
in Rome in such a way that they still exist on the basis on which I
have placed them. With an eagle's glance, I perceive that the Treaty of
Trinità de' Monti, between the Holy See and the Ambassadors Laval and
Blacas, is irregular, and that neither party had the right to conclude
it. Mounting higher, and coming to the greater diplomacy, I take upon
myself to give the exclusion to a cardinal, because a minister of
foreign affairs has left me without instructions and exposes me to
seeing a creature of Austria elected Pope. I procure the secret journal
of the Conclave: a thing that no ambassador has ever been able to
obtain; day by day I send the list of names and votes. Nor do I neglect
Bonaparte's family: I do not despair, by means of good treatment, of
persuading Cardinal Fesch to send in his resignation as Archbishop of
Lyons. If a _Carbonaro_ stirs, I am informed of it and able to judge
how much truth there is in the conspiracy; if an abbé intrigues, I am
aware of it, and I baffle the plans that had been formed to separate
the French cardinals from the French Ambassador. Lastly, I discover
that a great secret has been deposited by the Cardinal de Latil in
the bosom of the Grand Penitentiary. Are you satisfied? Is that a man
who knows his trade? Very well, and now see: I dispatched all this
diplomatic business like the first ambassador that comes, without
its costing me an idea, in the same way as a booby of a Lower Norman
peasant knits his stockings while watching his sheep: my sheep were my
dreams.

Now here is another point of view: if you compare my official letters
with the official letters of my predecessors, you will see that mine
treat of general affairs as well as private affairs, that I am drawn
by the character of the ideas of my century into a loftier region of
the human mind. This may be observed more particularly in the dispatch
in which I speak to M. Portalis of the state of Italy, in which I set
forth the mistake of the cabinets which take for private conspiracies
that which is only the development of civilization. The _Memorandum on
the War in the East_ also exposes truths of a political order which
are out of the common. I have talked with two Popes of other things
than cabinet intrigues; I have obliged them to speak to me of religion,
liberty, the future destiny of the world. My speech delivered at the
door of the Conclave has the same character. I dared to tell old men to
go forward and place religion once again at the head of the march of
society.

[Sidenote: My political successes.]

Readers, wait for me to end my boasting so as next to come to the
object, in the manner of the philosopher Plato making a circuit round
his idea. I have become old Sidrac; age prolongs my weary road[101].
I continue: I shall be a long while yet. Several writers of our time
have a mania for disdaining their literary talent in order to follow
their political talent, which they value far above the former. Thank
God, I am governed by a contrary instinct: I make little of politics,
for the very reason that I have been lucky at the game. To succeed in
public life, it is not a question of acquiring qualities, but a matter
of losing them. I shamelessly admit my aptitude for practical things,
without cherishing the smallest illusion touching the obstacle within
myself which opposes my complete success. That obstacle has nothing
to do with the Muse; it arises from my indifference to everything.
With this defect, it is impossible to achieve anything completely, in
practical life.

Indifference, I admit, is one of the qualities of statesmen, but of
statesmen without conscience. They have to know how to look dry-eyed
upon any event, to swallow bitter pills like malmsey, and, where others
are concerned, to set at nought morality, justice, sufferings, provided
that, in the midst of revolutions, they know how to find their own
particular fortune. For, to those transcendent minds, the accident, be
it good or bad, is bound to bring something; it must pay at the rate
of a throne, a coffin, an oath, an outrage; the tariff is made out by
the Mionnets[102] of catastrophes and affronts: I am not an expert
in these numismatics. Unfortunately my indifference is a double one;
I grow no more excited about my person than about facts. Contempt for
the world came to St. Paul the Hermit[103] from his religious faith;
contempt for society comes to me from my political incredulity. This
incredulity would carry me high in a sphere of action, if, more careful
of my foolish self, I were able at the same time to humiliate it and to
clothe it. Do what I may, I remain a numskull of a decent man, naively
stupid and quite bare, unable either to cringe or to help myself.

D'Andilly[104], speaking of himself, seems to have described one side
of my character:

    "I have never had any ambition," he says, "because I had too much,
    being unable to endure the dependence which confines within such
    narrow limits the effects of the inclination which God gave me for
    great things, glorious to the State, and capable of procuring the
    happiness of peoples, without its being possible for me to consider
    my private interests in all that. I was fit only for a king who
    would have reigned by himself and who would have had no other
    desire than to render his glory immortal."

In that case, I was not fit for the kings of the day.

Now that I have led you by the hand through the most secret winding
ways of my merits, that I have made you feel all that is rare in
my dispatches, like one of my colleagues at the Institute who is
incessantly singing his own fame and teaching men to admire him, now I
will tell you what I am leading up to with my boasting: by showing what
they are able to do in public life, I wish to defend the men of letters
against the men of diplomacy, the counting-house and the offices.

The latter must not be allowed to take it into their heads to think
themselves above men the smallest of whom overtops them by a head: when
one knows so many things, like these practical gentlemen, one should
at least not display gross ignorance. You talk of "facts;" well then,
recognize "facts:" the majority of the great writers of antiquity, of
the middle ages, of Modern England have been great statesmen, when they
have deigned to descend to public life:

    "I did not wish to give them to understand," says Alfieri, refusing
    an embassy, "that their diplomacy and their dispatches seemed to
    me and certainly were for me less important than my tragedies or
    even those of others; but it is impossible to reclaim that kind of
    people: they cannot and must not be converted."

[Sidenote: Other literary diplomatists.]

Who in France was ever more literary than L'Hôpital[105], the
reversioner of Horace, than d'Ossat[106], that capable ambassador,
than Richelieu, that great head, who, not content with dictating
"controversial treaties," with writing "Memoirs," and "histories,"
constantly invented dramatic subjects, and rhymed with Mailleville
and Boisrobert[107], and gave birth, by the sweat of his brow, to the
Academy[108] and the _Grande Pastorale?_[109] Is it because he was a
bad writer that he was a great minister? But the question is not one
of the possession of more or less talent; it is one of the passion
for paper and ink: and M. de L'Empyrée[110] never showed more ardour
nor incurred greater expense than did the cardinal to snatch the palm
from Parnassus, seeing that the staging of his "tragi-comedy" of
_Mirame_ cost him two hundred thousand crowns! If, in one who is both
a political and a literary personage, the mediocrity of a poet caused
the superiority of the statesmen, one would have thence to conclude
that the weakness of the statesman would result from the strength of
the poet: yet did the literary genius destroy the political genius of
Solon[111], an elegist equal to Simonides[112]; of Pericles stealing
from the Muses the eloquence with which he subjugated the Athenians; of
Thucydides[113] and Demosthenes[114], who carried to so great a height
the glory of the writer and the orator, while devoting their days to
war and the public places? Did it destroy the genius of Xenophon[115],
who effected the retreat of the ten thousand while dreaming of the
_Cyropœdia_; of the two Scipios[116], one the friend of Lælius[117],
the other associated in the fame of Terence[118]; of Cicero[119], king
of letters, as he was the father of the country; of Cæsar[120], lastly,
author of works of grammar, astronomy, religion, literature, of Cæsar,
rival of Archilochus[121] in satire, of Sophocles[122] in tragedy,
of Demosthenes in eloquence, whose _Commentaries_ are the despair of
historians?

In spite of these examples and a thousand others, literary talent,
which is very eminently the first of all, because it excludes no other
faculty, will always in this country be an obstacle to political
success. Of what use, indeed, is a high intelligence? It serves no
purpose whatever. The block-heads of France, a special and wholly
national type, grant nothing to the Grotiuses, the Frederics,
the Bacons[123], the Thomas Mores[124], the Spensers[125], the
Falklands[126], the Clarendons[127], the Bolingbrokes[128], the Burkes
and the Cannings of France[129].

[Sidenote: Envy of the common herd.]

Never will our vanity recognise in a man even of genius aptitudes
and the faculty of doing common things as well as they are done by a
common mind. If you overpass the vulgar conception by a hairbreadth,
a thousand imbeciles exclaim, "You're losing yourself in the clouds,"
delighted as they feel at dwelling underneath, where they insist
upon thinking. Those poor envious people, by reason of their secret
misery, kick against merit; they compassionately dismiss Virgil,
Racine, Lamartine[130] to their verses. But, proud sirs, to what are
we to dismiss you? To oblivion, which awaits you at twenty steps from
your doors, while twenty verses of those poets will carry them to the
furthermost posterity.


The first invasion of Rome by the French, under the Directorate, was
infamous and accompanied by spoliation; the second, under the Empire,
was iniquitous: but once accomplished, order reigned.

The Republic demanded of Rome, for an armistice, twenty-two millions,
the occupation of the Citadel of Ancona, one hundred pictures and
statues, and one hundred manuscripts, to be selected by the French
commissaries. They especially wanted to have the busts of Brutus and
Marcus Aurelius: so many people in France called themselves Brutus in
those days, it was very simple that they should wish to possess the
pious image of their putative father; but Marcus Aurelius, whose father
was he? Attila, to go away from Rome, asked only a certain number of
pounds of pepper and silk: in our day, she for a moment redeemed her
liberty with pictures. Great artists, often neglected and unhappy, left
their master-pieces to serve as a ransom for the ungrateful cities that
slighted them.

The Frenchmen of the Empire had to repair the ravages which the
Frenchmen of the Republic had committed in Rome; they also owed an
expiation for the sack of Rome accomplished by an army led by a French
Prince[131]: it was befitting that Bonaparte should set order in the
ruins which another Bonaparte[132] had seen grow, and whose overthrow
he described. The plan adopted by the French Administration for the
excavation of the Forum was that which Raphael proposed to Leo X.:
it caused to rise from the earth the three columns of the Temple of
Jupiter Tonans; it laid bare the portico of the Temple of Concord;
it exposed the pavement of the Via Sacra; it did away with the new
buildings with which the Temple of Peace was encumbered; it removed
the soil which covered the steps of the Coliseum, cleared the interior
of the arena and brought to view seven or eight rooms in the Baths of
Titus[133].

Elsewhere, the Forum of Trajan[134] was explored, the Pantheon, the
Baths of Diocletian, the Temple of Patrician Modesty repaired. Funds
were put aside for the maintenance, outside Rome, of the Walls of
Falerii and the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella.

Repairing works were also undertaken for modern edifices: St. Paul's
Without the Walls, which no longer exists[135], had its roofing
repaired; St Agnes', San Martino ai Monti were protected against the
weather. A portion of the roof and the pavement of St. Peter's was
mended; lightning-conductors shielded the dome of Michael Angelo from
the lightning. The sites were marked out of two cemeteries in the east
and west of the city, and that on the east, near the Convent of San
Lorenzo, was finished.

[Sidenote: The French in Rome.]

The Quirinal arrayed its external poverty in the luxury of porphyry and
Roman marbles: designed as it was for the imperial palace, Bonaparte,
before taking up his residence there, wanted to remove all traces of
the abduction of the Pontiff, held captive at Fontainebleau. It was
proposed to pull down the part of the city lying between the Capitol
and Monte Cavallo, so that the triumpher might ride up to his Cæsarian
abode through an immense avenue; events caused these gigantic dreams to
fade away by destroying enormous realities.

Among the plans decided was that of building a series of quays, from
Ripetta to Ripa Grande: the foundations of those quays would have been
laid; the four blocks of houses between the Castle of Sant' Angelo
and the Piazza Rusticucci were partly bought up and would have been
demolished. A wide thoroughfare would thus have been opened on to the
Square of St. Peter's, which would have been seen from the foot of the
Castle of Sant' Angelo.

The French make walks wherever they go: at Cairo, I have seen a great
square which they had planted with palm-trees and surrounded with
cafés bearing names borrowed from the cafés of Paris; in Rome, my
fellow-countrymen created the Pincio; you reach it by a flight of
stairs. Going down this flight the other day, I saw a carriage pass in
which was seated a woman still possessed of a certain youth: with her
fair hair, the badly-outlined contour of her figure, the inelegance
of her beauty, I took her for a fat, white stranger from Westphalia;
it was Madame Guiccioli: nothing could go less well with the memory
of Lord Byron. What matter? The daughter of Ravenna (of whom, for the
rest, the poet was tired when he resolved to die) will none the less
go, conducted by the Muse, to take her place in the Elysian Fields,
adding one more to the divinities of the tomb.

The western portion of the Piazza del Popolo was to have been planted
in the space occupied by work-yards and shops; from the end of the open
place one would have seen the Capitol, the Vatican and St. Peter's
beyond the quays of the Tiber: in other words, Ancient and Modern Rome.

Lastly, a wood, created by the French, rises to-day to the east of the
Coliseum; one never meets anybody there: although it has shot up, it
has the look of a brush-wood growing at the foot of a tall ruin.

Pliny the Younger[136] wrote to Maximus:

    "Consider that you are sent to... Greece, where politeness,
    learning and even agriculture itself are supposed to have taken
    their first rise.... Revere the gods their founders, their ancient
    glory and even that very antiquity itself which, venerable in men,
    is sacred in States. Honour them therefore for their deeds of old
    renown, nay, their very legendary traditions. Grant to every one
    his full dignities, privileges, yes, and the indulgence of his very
    vanity. Remember it was from this nation we derived our laws; that
    she did not receive ours by conquest, but gave us hers by favour.
    Remember, it is Athens to which you go; it is Lacedæmon you govern;
    and to deprive such a people of the declining shadow, the remaining
    name of liberty would be cruel, inhuman, barbarous[137]."


When Pliny wrote those noble and touching words to Maximus, did he know
that he was drawing up instructions for peoples, then barbarian, that
would one day come to hold sway over the ruins of Rome?


I shall soon be leaving Rome, and I hope to return. I once more love
passionately this Rome so sad and so beautiful: I shall have a panorama
on the Capitol, where the Prussian Minister will give up to me the
little Caffarelli Palace; at Sant' Onofrio I have set up another
retreat. Pending my departure and my return, I never cease wandering in
the Campagna; there is no little road, running between two hedges, that
I do not know better than the Combourg lanes. From the top of the Monte
Mario and the surrounding hills, I discover the horizon of the sea in
the direction of Ostia; I take my rest under the light and crumbling
porticoes of the Villa Madama. In these architectural remains changed
into farms, I often find only a timid young girl, startled and agile
as her goats. When I go out by the Porta Pia, I walk to the Ponte
Lamentano over the Teverone; I admire, as I pass St Agnes', a Head of
Christ by Michael Angelo, which keeps watch over the almost abandoned
convent. The master-pieces of the great masters thus strewn through the
desert fill the soul with profound melancholy. It distresses me that
they should have collected the Roman pictures in a museum; I should
have much preferred to go along the slopes of the Janiculum, under
the fall of the Aqua Paola, across the solitary Via delle Fomaci, to
seek the _Transfiguration_ in the Recollect Monastery of San Pietro in
Montorio. When one looks at the place once occupied, on the high altar
of the church, by the ornament of Raphael's funeral, one's heart is
struck and saddened.

[Sidenote: Walks in Rome.]

Beyond the Ponte Lamentano, yellow pasture-lands stretch to the left
to the Tiber; the river which bathed the gardens of Horace here flows
unknown. Following the high road, you find the pavement of the ancient
Via Tiburtina. I there this year saw the first swallow arrive.

I herborize at the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella: the undulated mignonette
and the Apennine anemone make a pretty effect against the whiteness of
the ruin and the ground. Taking the Ostia Road, I go to St. Paul's,
lately fallen a prey to the flames; I sit down to rest on some calcined
porphyry and watch the workmen silently building up a new church; they
pointed out to me some columns already outlined as I descended the
Simplon: the whole history of Christianity in the West begins at St.
Paul's Without the Walls.

In France, when we build any bit of a house, we make a terrible noise
about it; numbers of machines, and multitude of men and cries: in
Italy, they undertake immense works almost without stirring. The Pope,
at this very moment, is rebuilding the fallen portion of the Coliseum;
half-a-dozen mason's labourers, without any scaffolding, are lifting up
the colossus under whose shoulders died a nation changed into workmen
slaves. Near Verona, I used often to stop to watch a village priest who
was building a huge steeple by himself; the glebe farmer acted as mason
under him.

I often go round the walls of Rome on foot; as I take this circular
walk, I read the history of the queen of the pagan and Christian
universe written in the diverse constructions, architectures and ages
of the walls.

Again, I go to discover some dilapidated villa within the walls of
Rome. I visit Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran with its obelisk,
Santa Croce di Girusalemme with its flowers: I listen to the singing;
I pray: I love to pray on my knees; in this way my heart is nearer the
dust and endless rest: I draw nigh to my tomb.

My excavations are only a variation of the same pleasures. From the
upland of some hill one perceives the dome of St. Peter's. What does
one pay the owner of the place where treasures lie buried? The value of
the grass destroyed by the excavation. Perhaps I shall give my clay to
the earth in exchange for the statue which it will give me: we shall
only be bartering a man's image for a man's image.

He has not seen Rome who has not walked through the streets of its
suburbs interspersed with empty spaces, with gardens full of ruins,
with enclosures planted with trees and vines, with cloisters where
rise palm-trees and cypresses, the first resembling Eastern women,
the second mourning nuns. Issuing from these ruins, one sees tall
Roman women, poor and handsome, going to buy fruits or to fetch water
from cascades of the aqueducts of the emperors and popes. To see the
native manners in their simplicity, I pretend to be in search of an
apartment to let; I knock at the door of a secluded house; they answer,
"_Favorisca_," and I enter. I find, in a bare room, either a workman
pursuing his trade, or a proud _zitella_, knitting her wool-work, a cat
upon her knees, watching me wander at random without rising from her
seat.

In bad weather, I take shelter in St. Peter's, or else lose myself in
the museums of the Vatican, with its eleven thousand rooms and its
eighteen thousand windows[138]. What solitudes of master-pieces! You
come there through a gallery the walls of which are encrusted with
epitaphs and ancient inscriptions: death seems to be born in Rome.

There are more tombs than dead in this city. I imagine that the
deceased, when they feel too warm in their marble resting-places, glide
into another that has remained empty, even as a sick man is moved from
one bed to another. One seems to hear the bodies pass, during the
night, from coffin to coffin.

The first time I saw Rome, it was the end of June: the hot season
increases the abandonment of the city; the visitors fly, the
inhabitants of the country remain indoors; you meet no one in the
streets during the daytime. The sun darts its rays upon the Coliseum,
where grasses hang motionless and nothing stirs save the lizards.
The earth is bare; the cloudless sky appears even more desert than
the earth. But soon the night brings the inhabitants out of their
palaces and the stars out of the firmament; earth and the heavens
become repeopled; Rome revives; that life silently recommencing in the
darkness, around the tombs, has the air of the life and movement of the
shades which redescend to Erebus at the approach of day.

[Sidenote: And in the Campagna.]

Yesterday I roamed by moonlight in the Campagna, between the Porta
Angelica and the Monte Mario. A nightingale was singing in a narrow
dale railed in with canes. I there, for the first time, found that
melodious sadness of which the ancient poets speak in connection with
the bird of spring. The long whistle which we all know, and which
precedes the brilliant flourishes of the winged musician, was not
piercing like that of our nightingales; it had a veiled sound like
the whistle of the bullfinch of our woods. All its notes were lowered
by a half tone; its burden was transposed from the major to the minor
key; it sang softly; it appeared to wish to charm the sleep of the
dead and not to wake them. Over this untilled common-land had passed
Horace' Lydia, Tibullus' Delia, Ovid's Corinna; only Virgil's Philomela
remained. That hymn of love was potent in that spot and at that hour;
it gave an indescribable longing for a second life: according to
Socrates, love is the desire to be born again by the agency of beauty;
it was this desire that a Greek girl inspired in a youth when she said
to him:

"If I had nothing left to me but the thread of my necklace of pearls, I
would share it with thee."

If I have the happiness to end my days here, I have arranged to have a
retreat at Sant' Onofrio adjoining the chamber where Tasso breathed his
last. In the spare moments of my embassy, I shall continue my Memoirs
at the window of the cell. In one of the most beautiful positions on
earth, among orange-trees and evergreen oaks, with all Rome under my
eyes, every morning, as I sit down to work, between the deathbed and
the tomb of the poet, I shall invoke the genius of glory and misfortune.


In the early days after my arrival in Rome, wandering in this way at
random, I met a school of young boys between the Baths of Titus and the
Coliseum. They were in charge of a master in a slouched hat, a torn and
draggle-tailed gown, resembling a poor brother of Christian Doctrine.
As I passed near him, I looked at him and thought he had a false air
of my nephew, Christian de Chateaubriand, but I dared not believe my
eyes. He looked at me in his turn, and without showing any surprise,
said:

"Uncle!"

I rushed at him, quite moved, and pressed him in my arms. With a
motion of the hand, he stopped his obedient and silent flock behind
him. Christian was at the same time pale and brown, worn away with
fever and burnt by the sun. He told me that he was prefect of studies
at the Jesuit College, then taking its holiday at Tivoli. He had
almost forgotten his language, and expressed himself with difficulty
in French, talking and teaching only in Italian. My eyes filled with
tears, as I looked at my brother's son, become a foreigner, clad in a
black, dusty, worn-out coat, a school-master in Rome, covering with an
old cenobite's hat the noble brow which so well became the helmet.

I had seen Christian born; a few days before my emigration, I assisted
at his baptism. His father, his grandfather, the Président de Rosanbo,
and his great-grandfather, M. de Malesherbes, were present. The last
stood sponsor for him and gave him his own name, Christian. The Church
of Saint-Laurent was deserted and already half devastated. The nurse
and I took the child from the priest's hands.

     Io piangendo ti presi, e in breve cesta
     Fuor ti portai[139].

The new-born child was taken back to his mother and laid upon her bed,
where that mother and its grandmother, Madame de Rosanbo, received it
with tears of joy. Two years later, the father, the grandfather, the
great-grand-father, the mother and the grandmother had perished on the
scaffold, and I, a witness at the christening, was wandering in exile.
These were the recollections which the sudden apparition of my nephew
caused to revive in my memory amid the ruins of Rome. Christian has
already passed one half of his life as an orphan; he has vowed the
other half to the altar: the ever-open home of the common Father of
mankind.

Christian had an ardent and jealous affection for Louis, his worthy
brother: when Louis married, Christian left for Italy; he knew the Duc
de Rohan-Chabot there and met Madame Récamier: like his uncle, he has
come back to live in Rome, he in a cloister, I in a palace. He entered
religion to restore to his brother a fortune of which he did not
consider himself the possessor under the new laws: and so Malesherbes
and Combourg now both belong to Louis.

[Sidenote: Christian de Chateaubriand.]

After our unexpected meeting at the foot of the Coliseum, Christian,
accompanied by a Jesuit brother, came to see me at the Embassy; his
bearing was sad, his aspect serious: in the old days he was always
laughing. I asked him if he was happy; he answered:

"I suffered long; now my sacrifice is made and I feel contented."

Christian inherited the iron character of his paternal grand-father,
M. de Chateaubriand, my father, and the moral virtues of his maternal
great-grandfather, M. de Malesherbes. His sentiments are locked up
within himself, although he shows them, without considering the
prejudices of the crowd, when his duties are concerned: as a dragoon
in the Guards, he would alight from his horse to go to the Communion
Table; his messmates did not laugh at him, for his valour and his
kindliness were their admiration. After he left the service, it was
discovered that he used secretly to assist a considerable number of
officers and soldiers; he still has pensioners in the Paris garrets,
and Louis discharges his brother's debts. One day, in France, I asked
Christian if he would ever marry:

"If I were to marry," he replied, "I should take one of my little
cousins, the poorest."

Christian spends his nights in prayer; he gives himself up to
austerities at which his superiors are alarmed: a sore which formed in
one of his legs came from his persistence in remaining on his knees for
hours on end; never did innocence indulge in so much repentance.

Christian is not a man of this century: he reminds me of those dukes
and counts of the Court of Charlemagne who, after warring against the
Saracens, founded convents on the desert sites of Gellone or Madavalle
and became monks there. I look upon him as a saint: I would willingly
invoke him. I am persuaded that his good works, added to those of
my mother and my sister Julie, would obtain grace for me before the
Sovereign Judge. I, too, have a leaning for the cloister; but, were my
hour to come, I would go and ask for a solitude of the Portioncula,
under the protection of my Patron Saint, called Francis because he
spoke French.

I want to trail my sandals alone; for nothing in the world would induce
me to have two heads in my frock.

                                      Upon that side
     Where it doth break its steepness most, arose
     A sun upon the world, as duly this
     From Ganges doth: therefore let none, who speak
     Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name
     Were lamely so deliver'd; but the East,
     To call things rightly, be it henceforth styled.
     A dame, to whom none openeth pleasure's gate
     More than to death, was, 'gainst his father's will,
     His stripling choice..........................
     ................................  She, bereaved
     Of her first husband, slighted and obscure,
     Thousand and hundred years and more, remain'd
     Without a single suitor till he came.
     Nor aught avail'd, that, with Amyclas, she
     Was found unmoved at rumour of his voice,
     Who shook the world: nor aught her constant boldness
     Whereby with Christ she mounted on the cross,
     When Mary stay'd beneath. But not to deal
     Thus closely with thee longer, take at large
     The lovers' titles--Poverty and Francis[140].

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "ROME, 16 _May_ 1829.

    "This letter will leave Rome a few hours after me and will reach
    Paris a few hours before me. It will close this correspondence
    which has not missed a single post and which must form a volume
    in your hands. I feel a mixture of joy and sadness which I cannot
    express to you; for three or four months I rather disliked Rome;
    now I have again taken to these noble ruins, to this solitude so
    profound, so peaceful, and yet so full of interest and remembrance.
    Perhaps, also, the unhoped-for success which I have obtained
    here has attached me to the place: I arrived in the midst of all
    the pre-possessions raised against me, and I have conquered all;
    people seem to regret me. What shall I find on returning to France?
    Noise instead of silence, excitement instead of repose, unreason,
    ambitions, contests of place and vanity. The political system which
    I have adopted is one which perhaps no one would care for and
    which, besides, I shall not be placed in a position to carry out I
    would still undertake to give a great glory to France, even as I
    contributed to obtaining a great liberty for her; but would they
    discard all their previous opinions to make room for me? Would they
    say to me, 'Be the master, act as you please at the peril of your
    head?' No; so far are they from using this language to me, that
    they would take anybody in preference to myself and admit me only
    after receiving the refusals of all the mediocrities of France.
    Even then they would think they were doing me a great favour by
    relegating me to an obscure corner. I am coming to fetch you;
    ambassador or not, I should like to die in Rome. In exchange for a
    small life, I should at least have a great burying-place until the
    day comes when I shall go to fill my cenotaph in the sand which
    beheld my birth. Adieu; I am already many leagues nearer to you."


[Sidenote: I return to France.]

It gave me great pleasure to see my friends again[141]: I dreamt only
of the happiness of taking them with me and ending my days in Rome. I
wrote to make still more sure of the little Caffarelli Palace, which I
contemplated hiring, on the Capitol and of the cell which I applied for
at Sant' Onofrio. I bought English horses and sent them to the fields
of Evander. I was already, in thought, taking leave of my country with
a joy that deserved to be punished. When one has travelled in his youth
and passed many years out of his country, one is accustomed to place
one's death anywhere: when crossing the seas of Greece, it seemed to
me that all those monuments which I perceived on the promontories were
hostelries in which my bed was prepared.

I went to pay my court to the King at Saint-Cloud: he asked me when I
was returning to Rome. He was persuaded that I had a good heart and a
bad head. The fact is that I was exactly the converse of what Charles
X. thought me: I had a very cool and a very good head, and a heart
which was but so-so towards seven-eighths of the human race.

I found the King very ill-disposed towards his Ministry: he caused it
to be attacked by certain royalist newspapers, or rather, when the
editors of those publications went to ask him if he did not think them
too hostile, he exclaimed:

"No, no, go on."

When M. de Martignac had made a speech:

"Well," asked Charles X., "have you heard the Pasta[142]?"

M. Hyde de Neuville's liberal opinions displeased him; he found more
complaisance in M. Portalis, the Federate, who bore cupidity stamped on
his face: it is to M. Portalis that France owes her misfortunes. When
I saw him at Passy, I perceived what I had in part guessed: the Keeper
of the Seals, while pretending to hold the Foreign Office ad interim,
was dying to keep it, although, in any event, he had provided himself
with the post of President of the Court of Appeal. The King, when the
question arose of the appointment of a Foreign Secretary, had said:

"I do not say that Chateaubriand shall not be my minister; but not for
the present."

The Prince de Laval had refused; M. de La Ferronnays was no longer
able to apply himself to regular work. In the hope that, weary of
resistance, the portfolio would remain in his hands, M. Portalis made
no effort to persuade the King.

Full of my coming delights in Rome, I abandoned myself to them without
too deeply sounding the future; it suited me well enough that M.
Portalis should keep the _ad interim_ under the shelter of which my
position remained what it was. Not for a moment did I imagine that M.
de Polignac might be invested with power: his limited, unpliable and
perfervid mind, his fatal and unpopular name, his stubbornness, his
religious opinions, exalted to the pitch of fanaticism, appeared to me
so many causes for his eternal exclusion. He had, it is true, suffered
for the King; but he had been amply rewarded for it by the friendship
of his master and by the proud London Embassy, which I had given him
under my ministry, in spite of M. de Villèle's opposition.

Of all the ministers in office whom I found in Paris, with the
exception of the excellent M. Hyde de Neuville, not one pleased me: I
felt them to possess a relentless capacity which left me uneasy as to
the duration of their empire. M. de Martignac, who was endowed with
an agreeable talent for speaking, had the sweet and worn-out voice of
a man to whom women have given something of their seduction and their
weakness! Pythagoras remembered having been a charming courtesan, named
Alcea. The former secretary of embassy to the Abbé Sieyès[143] had also
a restrained self-conceit, a calm and somewhat jealous mind. I had
sent him, in 1823, to Spain, in a high and independent position[144],
but he would have liked to be an ambassador. He was offended at not
receiving an employment which he thought due to his merit.

My likes or dislikes mattered little. The Chamber committed a mistake
in overturning a ministry which it ought to have preserved at all
costs. That moderate ministry served as a hand-rail to abysses; it
was easy to overthrow it, for it had nothing to support it, and the
King was hostile to it: a reason the more for not quarrelling with
those men, for giving them a majority by the aid of which they could
have remained in office and made room one day, without accident, for a
strong government. In France, people are unable to wait for anything;
they loathe all that has the appearance of power until they possess it
themselves. For the rest, M. de Martignac has nobly given the lie to
his weaknesses by courageously expending the rest of his life in the
defense of M. de Polignac.


My feet burned to leave Paris; I could not grow accustomed to the grey
and dismal sky of France, my father-land: what should I have thought
of the sky of Brittany, my mother-land, to speak Greek? But there, at
least, there are sea-breezes and calms: _tumidis albens fluctibus_[145]
or _venti posuere._[146] My orders were given to make certain necessary
changes and extensions in my house and garden in the Rue d'Enfer,
so that, at my death, when I bequeathed this house to Madame de
Chateaubriand's Infirmary, it might be more profitable. I intended this
property to form a retreat for a few sick artists and men of letters. I
looked up at the pale sun and said:

"I shall soon see you with a better face, and we shall not part again."

[Sidenote: I set out again for Rome.]

After taking leave of the King, and hoping to rid him of my presence
for ever, I climbed into my carriage. I was first going to the
Pyrenees, to take the waters of Cauterets; from there, passing through
Languedoc and Provence, I was to go to Nice, where I would join Madame
de Chateaubriand. We would drive along the Cornice together, arrive at
the Eternal City, which we would cross without stopping, and, after a
two months' stay in Naples, at Tasso's cradle, return to his tomb in
Rome. That moment is the only one in my life at which I was completely
happy, at which I longed for nothing more, at which my existence was
filled, at which I saw nothing to my last hour but a series of days of
rest. I was reaching the haven; I was entering under full sail like
Palinurus: _inopina quies._[147]

My whole journey to the Pyrenees was a series of dreams: I stopped when
I wished; I followed on my road the chronicles of the middle ages,
which I found everywhere; in Berry I saw those little leafy roads which
the author of _Valentine_[148] calls _traînes_ and which reminded me of
my Brittany. Richard Cœur-de-Lion[149] had been slain at Chalus, at the
foot of the tower:

"Mussulman child, hold thy peace! Here comes King Richard!"

At Limoges, I took off my hat from respect for Molière; at Périgueux,
the partridges in their earthenware tombs no longer sang with different
voices as in the time of Aristotle. I there met my old friend Clausel
de Coussergues; he carried a few pages of my life with him. At
Bergerac, I could have looked at Cyrano's[150] nose without being
obliged to fight that cadet of the Guards: I left him in his dust with
"those gods whom men has made and who have not made man."

At Auch, I admired the stalls sculptured after cartoons obtained
from Rome at the fine period of the arts. D'Ossat, my predecessor at
the Court of the Holy Father, was born near Auch[151]. The sun was
beginning to resemble that of Italy. At Tarbes, I should have liked
to lodge at the Star Inn, where Froissart[152] alighted with Messire
Espaing of Lyons, "valiant man and wise and fair knight," and where he
found "good hay, good oats and fair rivers."

As the Pyrenees rose up on the horizon, my heart beat: from the depth
of three and twenty years issued memories to which the perspective of
time gave added beauty; I was returning from Palestine and Spain, when
I caught sight of the summits of those mountains from the other side
of their chain. I agree with Madame de Motteville; I think that it
was in one of those castles of the Pyrenees that Urganda the Unknown
dwelt. The past is like a museum of antiquities; in it one visits the
hours that have elapsed; each one can recognise his own. One day,
walking about a deserted church, I heard footsteps dragging along the
flag-stones, like those of an old man in search of his tomb. I looked
round and saw nobody; it was I that had awakened myself.

[Sidenote: Romance at Cauterets.]

The happier I was at Cauterets, the greater pleasure did I take in
the melancholy of what was ended. The narrow and confined valley is
enlivened by a mountain torrent; beyond the town and the mineral
springs, it divides into two defiles, one of which, famous for its
sites, ends in the Pont d'Espagne and glaciers. I benefited by the
baths; I made long excursions alone, imagining myself on the steeps of
the Sabina. I made every effort to be sad, and could not succeed. I
wrote a few stanzas on the Pyrenees[153]; it was impossible for me to
finish my ode: I had draped my drum lugubriously to beat the troop of
the visions of my past nights; but ever, amid these visions recalled,
mingled some dreams of the moment, whose happy look foiled the air of
consternation of their older fellows.

One day as I was versifying I met a young woman seated beside the
torrent; she rose and walked straight towards me: she knew, by the
rumour of the hamlet, that I was at Cauterets. It appeared that the
stranger was an Occitanian[154] lady who had been writing to me for
two years without my having ever seen her: my mysterious anonymous
correspondent unveiled: _patuit Dea._

I went to pay a respectful visit to the naiad of the torrent. One
evening she saw me to the door as I was leaving, and wanted to go with
me; I was obliged to carry her indoors in my arms. I never felt so
ashamed; to inspire a sort of attachment at my age seemed to me really
ridiculous; the more I might have been flattered by this oddness, the
more humiliated was I, rightly taking it for a mockery. I would gladly
have hidden myself for shame among the bears, our neighbours. I was far
from saying to myself what Montaigne said:

"Love would restore me the vigilancy, sobriety, grace and care of my
person[155]."

My dear Michael, you say charming things, but, at our age, you see,
love does not restore us what you here suppose. There is but one thing
for us to do: to stand frankly aside. Instead, therefore, of returning
to "sound and wise studies, whereby I might procure more love," I have
allowed the fugitive impression of my Clémence Isaure to fade away; the
mountain breeze soon dissipated that caprice of a flower; the witty,
determined and charming stranger of sixteen was grateful to me for
doing her justice: she has married.


[Sidenote: The Polignac ministry.]

Rumours of ministerial changes had reached our fir-groves.
Well-informed persons went so far as to speak of the Prince de
Polignac; but I was quite incredulous. At last the newspapers came:
I opened them, and my eyes were struck by the official ordinance
confirming the rumours that had been spread[156]. I had experienced
many a change of fortune since I had come into the world, but I had
never received so great a shock. My destiny had once more extinguished
my dreams; and this breath of fate not only put out my illusions, but
carried away the Monarchy. This blow hurt me terribly; I had a moment
of despair, for my mind was made up at once: I felt that I must retire.
The post brought me a crowd of letters; all urged me to send in my
resignation. Even persons with whom I was hardly acquainted thought
themselves obliged to order my retirement.

I was shocked by this officious interest shown in my good fame. I thank
Heaven that I have never stood in need of counsels of honour; my life
has been one series of sacrifices, which have never been commanded
of me by any one; in matters of duty, I have a spontaneous mind. To
me, falls spell ruin, for I possess nothing save debts, debts which
I contract in places where I do not remain long enough to pay them;
in such a way that, every time that I retire from public life, I am
reduced to working as a bookseller's hireling. Some of those proud
obliging people, who preached honour and liberty to me through the post
and preached it even much more loudly when I arrived in Paris, handed
in their resignation as councillors of State; but some were rich,
and others took care not to resign the secondary places which they
held and which left them the means of existence. They acted like the
Protestants, who reject some of the dogmas of the Catholics and keep
others quite as difficult to believe in. There was no completeness in
those oblations, no full sincerity: men surrendered an income of ten
or fifteen thousand francs, it is true, but returned home opulent in
their patrimonies or, at least, provided with the daily bread which
they had prudently kept back. Where I was concerned, they made less
ceremony; for me they were filled with self-denial, they could never
strip themselves sufficiently of all that I possessed:

"Come, George Dandin, pluck up courage; zounds, son-in-law, do us
credit; off with your coat! Throw out of window two hundred thousand
livres a year, a place to your liking, a high and magnificent place,
the empire of the arts in Rome, the happiness of at last receiving the
reward of your long and laborious struggle. Such is our good pleasure.
At that price you will have our esteem. In the same way as we have
stripped ourselves of our cloaks, leaving a good flannel waistcoat
underneath, so you must throw off your velvet mantle, and remain naked.
There is perfect equality, an exact level of altar and sacrifice."

And, strange to relate, in this generous ardour to turn me out, the
men who intimated their wishes to me were neither my real friends nor
the joint sharers of my political opinions. I was to immolate myself
forthwith to Liberalism, to the doctrine which had continually attacked
me; I was to run the risk of shaking the Legitimist Throne in order
to deserve the praises of a few poltroons of enemies, who had not the
thorough courage to starve.

I was to find myself swamped by a long embassy; the entertainments
which I had given had ruined me; I had not paid the expenses of my
first establishment. But what broke my heart was the loss of what I
had promised myself in the way of happiness for the rest of my life.

I have not to reproach myself with bestowing upon anybody those
Catonian counsels which impoverish him who receives, not him who gives
them, fully convinced as I am that those counsels are of no use to the
man who does not feel them within himself. My resolve was fixed, as
I have said, from the first; it cost me nothing to take, but it was
painful to execute. When, at Lourdes, instead of turning south and
rolling towards Italy, I took the road for Pau[157], my eyes filled
with tears: I admit my weakness. What matter, if I none the less
accepted and held the challenge fortune sent me? I did not return
quickly, in order to let the days slip by. I slowly unwound the thread
of that road which I had wound up with such alacrity, but a few weeks
before.

The Prince de Polignac dreaded my resignation. He felt that, if I
retired, I should deprive him of Royalist votes in the Chambers and
jeopardize his ministry. The idea was suggested to him of sending
an express to me in the Pyrenees with orders from the King to go at
once to Rome, to receive the King[158] and Queen of Naples[159], who
were coming to marry their daughter[160] in Spain. I should have
been greatly perplexed had I received that order. Perhaps I should
have felt obliged to obey it, free to send in my resignation after
fulfilling it. But, once in Rome, what might have happened? I should
perhaps have been delayed; the fatal days[161] might have surprised me
at the Capitol. Perhaps, also, the indecision in which I might have
remained would have given M. de Polignac the parliamentary majority of
which he was but a few votes short. Then the Address would not have
been passed; the Ordinances resulting from that address would not have
seemed necessary to their baleful authors: _Diis aliter visum._


[Sidenote: I resign my Embassy.]

I found Madame de Chateaubriand quite resigned in Paris. Her head was
turned at the idea of being Ambassadress in Rome, and assuredly many a
woman's head would be turned for less; but, in great circumstances, my
wife has never hesitated to approve of what she thought calculated to
add consistency to my life and to enhance my name in the public esteem:
in this she has more merit than most women. She loves display, titles
and fortune; she detests poverty and a mean establishment; she despises
those susceptibilities, those excesses of loyalty and self-sacrifice
which she looks upon as thorough duperies for which nobody thanks
you; she would never have cried, "Long live the King _quand même_;"
but, where I am in question, everything changes: with a firm mind she
accepts my disgraces, while cursing them.

I had still to fast, to watch, to pray for the salvation of those who
took good care not to don the hair-cloth with which they hastened to
cover me. I was the sacred ass, the ass laden with the dry relics of
liberty, relics which they adored with great devotion, provided they
did not have the trouble of carrying them.

The day after my return to Paris, I went to M. de Polignac.

I had written him this letter on my arrival:

    "PARIS, 28 _August_ 1829.

    "PRINCE,

    "I have thought it more worthy of our old friendship, more becoming
    to the high mission with which I was honoured, and above all more
    respectful to the King to come myself to lay my resignation at his
    feet rather than send it hastily through the post. I ask a last
    service of you, to entreat His Majesty to consent to grant me an
    audience and hear the reasons that oblige me to give up the Roman
    Embassy. Believe me, prince, when I say that it costs me something,
    at the moment when you are coming into power, to abandon that
    diplomatic career which I had the happiness to open to you.

    "Pray accept the assurance of the sentiments which I have devoted
    to you and of the high regard with which I have the honour to be,
    prince,

    "Your most humble and most obedient servant,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

In reply to this letter, the following note was addressed to me from
the Foreign Office:

    "The Prince de Polignac has the honour to present his compliments
    to M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand and begs him to call at the
    Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely to-morrow,
    Sunday.

    "_Saturday_, 4 _o'clock._'

I at once replied with this note:

    PARIS, 29 _August_ 1829, _evening._

    "I have received a letter, prince, from your office inviting me to
    call at the Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely
    to-morrow, the 30th. As this letter does not give me the audience
    of the King which I begged you to ask for, I will wait until
    you have some official communication to make with regard to the
    resignation which I desire to lay at His Majesty's feet.

    "With a thousand regards,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

Thereupon M. de Polignac wrote to me as follows in his own hand:

    "I have received your little note, my dear viscount; I shall be
    charmed to see you at about ten o'clock to-morrow, if that time
    suits you.

    "I renew the assurance of my old and sincere attachment.

    "THE PRINCE OF POLIGNAC."

This note seemed to me to be of ill omen; its diplomatic reserve made
me fear a refusal on the King's part. I found the Prince de Polignac
in the large room which I knew so well. He ran up to me, squeezed my
hand with an effusion of the heart which I would have liked to think
sincere, and then, throwing one arm over my shoulder, made me walk with
him slowly up and down the room. He told me that he did not accept my
resignation; that the King did not accept it; that I must return to
Rome. Every time that he repeated this last phrase, he broke my heart:

"Why," he asked, "will you not be in public life with me, as with La
Ferronnays and Portalis? Am I not your friend? I will give you all
you want in Rome; in France you shall be more of the minister than
I, I shall take your advice. Your retirement would bring about new
divisions. You do not want to injure the Government? The King will be
very much incensed if you persist in wishing to retire. I beseech you,
dear viscount, not to commit that folly."

[Sidenote: I call on M. de Polignac.]

I replied that I was not committing a folly; that I was acting in the
full conviction of my reason; that his ministry was most unpopular;
that those prejudices might be unjust, but that, in fine, they
existed; that all France was persuaded that he would attack the public
liberties, and that it was impossible for me, their defender, to row in
the same boat with those who passed for the enemies of those liberties.
I was somewhat embarrassed in making this rejoinder, because, at
bottom, I had nothing immediate to object to in the new ministers; I
could attack them only in a future the existence of which they were
entitled to deny. M. de Polignac swore to me that he loved the Charter
as much as I did; but he loved it in his own way, he loved it too
closely. Unfortunately, the affection which one shows to a daughter
whom one has dishonoured is of little use to her.

The conversation was prolonged on the same lines for nearly an hour. M.
de Polignac concluded by telling me that, if I consented to take back
my resignation, the King would see me with pleasure and hear whatever I
wished to say to him against his ministry; but that, if I persisted in
my determination to resign, His Majesty thought that it would serve no
purpose to see me and that a conversation between him and myself could
be only an unpleasant thing.

I rejoined:

"Then, prince, look upon my resignation as given. I have never
retracted in my life, and, since it does not suit the King to see his
faithful subject, I do not insist."

After those words, I took my leave. I begged the prince to restore the
Roman Embassy to M. le Duc de Laval, if he still wished for it, and I
recommended the members of my legation to him. Then I took my way on
foot, along the Boulevard des Invalides, for my Infirmary, poor wounded
man that I was. M. de Polignac, when I left him, appeared to me to be
in that state of imperturbable confidence which made of him a mute
eminently fitted to strangle an empire.

My resignation as Ambassador to Rome having been sent in, I wrote to
the Sovereign Pontiff:

    "MOST HOLY FATHER,

    "As French Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1823, I had the happiness
    to be the interpreter of the wishes of the late King Louis XVIII.
    for the exaltation of Your Holiness to the Chair of St. Peter. As
    Ambassador of His Majesty Charles X. to the Court of Rome, I had
    the still greater happiness to see Your Beatitude raised to the
    Sovereign Pontificate, and to hear from your lips words that will
    always be the glory of my life. Now that I am ending the lofty
    mission which I had the honour to fulfil, I come to express to Your
    Holiness the very keen regrets with which I do not cease to be
    penetrated. It but remains for me, Most Holy Father, to lay at your
    sacred feet my sincere gratitude for your kindness, and to ask you
    for your apostolic blessing.

    "I am, with the greatest veneration and the most profound respect,

    "Your Holiness' most humble and most obedient servant,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

For several days I finished rending my bowels in my Utica; I wrote
letters to demolish the edifice which I had raised with so much love.
As, in the death of a man, it is the little details, the familiar
domestic actions that touch us, so, in the death of a dream, the little
realities which destroy it are the keenest. An eternal exile on the
ruins of Rome had been my idle fancy. Like Dante, I had arranged never
to return to my country.

These testamentary elucidations will not possess for the readers of
these Memoirs the same interest that they have for me. The old bird
falls from the branch where it has taken shelter; it quits life for
death. Dragged away by the current, it has but changed one stream for
the other.



[Footnote 1: This book was written in Rome, from February to May 1829,
and in Paris, from August to September 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 2: The following is the exact text of this letter, which
Chateaubriand modified somewhat for publication:

    "I have attended the first funeral ceremony for the Pope in the
    Church of St. Peter. It was a strange medley of indecency and
    grandeur. The strokes of the hammer nailing down a pope's coffin,
    some interrupted singing, the mingling of the light of the candles
    and the moon; lastly, the coffin raised by a pulley and hung in the
    shadows, to be laid across a door in the sarcophagus of Pius VII.,
    whose ashes made room for those of Leo XII.: can you picture all
    this, and the ideas to which the scene gave birth?"--B.]

[Footnote 3: Leo XII.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 4: Bartolommeo Alberto Mauro Cardinal Capellari, later Pope
Gregory XVI. (1765-1846), Abbot of the Camaldolian Monastery at Murano,
created a cardinal in 1825. He was elected Pope after the death of Pius
VIII. in 1831, when he took the name of Gregory XVI. He is the founder
of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great.--T.]

[Footnote 5: Bartolommeo Cardinal Pacca, Bishop of Velletri
(1756-1844), Cardinal Camerlingo to Pope Pius VII., created a cardinal
in 1801. Pacca became Prime Minister in 1808, drew up the bull of
excommunication hurled against Napoleon in 1809, and was arrested and
imprisoned with Pius VII. He returned to Rome with the Pope in 1814
and, in 1816, was instrumental in bringing about the restoration of the
Jesuits.--T.]

[Footnote 6: Emmanuele Cardinal Di Gregorio (1758-1839), created a
cardinal by Pius VII. in 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 7: Giaccomo Cardinal Giustiniani, Bishop of Imola
(1769-1843), created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 8: Giulio Maria Cardinal Della Somaglia (1744-1830), created
a cardinal in 1795, Bishop of Frascati (1814), and of Ostia and
Velletri (1820). He had been exiled with Pius VII., and imprisoned
for refusing to assist at Napoleon's wedding. As Dean of the Sacred
College, he presided at the Conclave in 1829. On his death he left all
his property to the Propaganda.--B.]

[Footnote 9: Giuseppe Cardinal Albani (1750-1834), created a cardinal
by Pius VII. in 1801, was made Legate at Bologna in 1814, and appointed
Secretary of State by Pius VIII. in 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 10: Francesco Xaviero Cardinal Castiglioni, Bishop of
Frascati, later Pope Pius VIII. (1761-1830). He was elected Pope on the
31st of March 1829, assumed the name of Pius VIII., and died on the
30th of November 1830, after a reign of twenty months only.--T.]

[Footnote 11: Pietro Francesco Cardinal Galleffi (1770-1837), created a
cardinal by Pius VII. in 1803.--B.]

[Footnote 12: Tommaso Cardinal Arezzo (1756-1833), created a cardinal
and Legate at Ferrara in 1815, and Vice-Chancellor of the Church in
1830.--T.]

[Footnote 13: There is no canonical provision which gives the Powers
the right to intervene in the operations of a conclave; but, as a
matter of fact, France, Spain and Austria have up to these latter times
exercised what was called the _exclusion_, in other words, each of them
has been able to mention to the conclave the name of a cardinal whose
election would have been displeasing to her. Without recognising any
right whatever, the Sacred College takes note of these indications,
considering that it would lead to difficulties for the Holy See if it
were to elect a pope in the face of the declared hostility of a great
Catholic Power. The _exclusive_ is very different, and belongs to the
members of the conclave; it results from the votes which are refused
to the candidate who would otherwise receive the majority required to
ensure validity of election.--B.]

[Footnote 14: Carlo Maria Cardinal Pedicini (1760-1843), created a
cardinal by Pius VII. in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 15: Francesco Cardinal Bertalozzi (1754-1830), created a
cardinal at the same time as Pedicini.--B.]

[Footnote 16: Placido Cardinal Zurla (1769-1834), created a cardinal at
the same time as the two former.--B.]

[Footnote 17: Luigi Cardinal Micara (1775-1847), created a cardinal by
Leo XII. in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 18: St. Peter, first Pope (_d._ 65 or 66), martyred in Rome
with St. Paul, with whom he is honoured on the 29th of June.--T.]

[Footnote 19: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (_circa_
150--_circa_ 230), the great ecclesiastical writer, and one of the most
famous Fathers of the Church.--T.]

[Footnote 20: Caius Sempronius Gracchus (_d._ 121 B.C.) was elected
Tribune of the People in 123, and re-elected in 122. He failed in his
election in 121, and was killed in a disturbance in the city and his
body thrown into the Tiber.--T.]

[Footnote 21: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (_circa_ 169 B.C.--133
B.C.), Caius' elder brother, was assassinated when on the point
of being elected Tribune of the People for the second year in
succession.--T.]

[Footnote 22: St. Damasus I. (_circa_ 306-384), a native of Portugal,
elected to the Papacy in 366. His election was contested by the Deacon
Ursinus, who was expelled by force of arms. St. Damasus is honoured on
the 11th of December.--T.]

[Footnote 23: St. Gregory I. (_circa_ 540-604), known as the Great,
was elected Pope in 590. He is commemorated on the 12th of March, the
anniversary of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 24: St. Leo IV. (_d._ 855), honoured 17 July, the anniversary
of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 25: St. Simplicius had followed a career of arms and married.
The See of Bourges was offered to him many times, and refused. He at
last accepted it, in 472, when elected by St. Sidonius Apollinaris, who
had been chosen arbitrator of the quarrels that had ensued at Bourges.
He is honoured on the 17th of June.--T.]

[Footnote 26: Louis I. Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of
France (778-840), known as the Débonnaire, son of the Emperor-King
Charlemagne, whom he succeeded in 814.--T.]

[Footnote 27: Gerard of Burgundy, later Pope Nicholas II. (_d._ 1061),
elected Pope in 1058.--T.]

[Footnote 28: The third Lateran Council, held under Pope Alexander III.
in 1179.--T.]

[Footnote 29: Guy de Foulques, or Fulcoldi, later Pope Clement IV.
(_d._ 1268), a native of Saint-Gilles in France, was first a soldier,
then a lawyer, then secretary to St. Louis IX. The death of his
wife led him to enter the Church. He became Bishop of Puy in 1256,
Archbishop of Narbonne in 1259, a cardinal in 1262, and was elected
Pope in 1265, while on a journey to England as Papal Legate.--T.]

[Footnote 30: Teobaldo di Visconti, later Pope Gregory X. (_d._ 1276),
elected Pope in 1271, after an interregnum of over two years.--T.]

[Footnote 31: Pedro de Luna (_d._ 1424), a native of Aragon, anti-pope,
under the style of Benedict XIII. He was elected by the French
cardinals, while the Italians chose Boniface IX., after the death of
the Anti-pope Clement VII. (1394).--T.]

[Footnote 32: Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI. (1431-1503),
created a cardinal in 1456, Archbishop of Valencia, in succession to
his uncle, Pope Calixtus III., and elected Pope in 1492. There is no
doubt that Borgia's election was due to bribery.--T.]

[Footnote 33: Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480-1519),
illegitimate daughter of Alexander VI. by Rosa Vanozza, married first
Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, in 1493. This marriage was annulled
by Alexander, who, in 1498, found a more ambitious match for her in
Alphonsus of Bisceglie, a natural son of Alphonsus II. of Naples.
Alphonsus having been murdered by her brother, Cesare Borgia, in 1500,
she married, in 1501, Alphonsus of Este, who subsequently succeeded to
the Duchy of Ferrara.--T.]

[Footnote 34: _Lambeaux_, rags; _lambels_, labels.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 35: Jacques Davy, Cardinal Duperron (1556-1618), Bishop of
Evreux, later Archbishop of Sens. Himself a convert from Calvinism,
Duperron was largely instrumental in converting Henry IV. to
Catholicism.--T.]

[Footnote 36: Henry VIII. King of England (1491-1547) procured the
title of Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X. in 1521, and severed
his connection with the Faith in 1534. His successors have since
continued heretical to the Faith of which they continue to style
themselves the Defenders.--T.]

[Footnote 37: Donna Olimpia Pamfili (1594-1656), _née_ Maldachini,
sister-in-law of Innocent X., under whose pontificate she wielded great
influence and amassed immense wealth. Alexander VII. ordered her to
retire to Orvieto, there to await the result of an inquiry into the
origin of her fortune (1655); but she died of the plague before the end
of the inquiry.--B.]

[Footnote 38: Giovanni Battista Pamfili, later Pope Innocent X.
(1572-1655), elected Pope in 1644.--T.]

[Footnote 39: Fabio Chigi, later Pope Alexander VII. (1599-1667),
elected Pope in 1655. It was during his pontificate that Christina
Queen of Sweden was converted to Catholicism.--T.]

[Footnote 40: Lorenzo Corsini, later Pope Clement XII. (1652-1740),
elected Pope in 1730.--T.]

[Footnote 41: Prospero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV.
(1675-1758), elected to the Papacy in 1740.--T.]

[Footnote 42: Letter to the Abbé Cortois de Quincey from Rome,
1740.--T.]

[Footnote 43: Bernardo Gaetano Cardinal Guadagni (1674--_post_ 1733),
Bishop of Arezzo (1724), and a nephew of Clement XII., who created him
a cardinal in 1731. Guadagni became Vicar-General of Rome in 1732.--T.]

[Footnote 44: Pietro Cardinal Ottoboni (1668-1740), nephew to Pope
Alexander VIII., and created a cardinal at the age of 22, in 1690.--T.]

[Footnote 45: Giulio Cardinal Alberoni (1664-1752) had been Prime
Minister of Spain (1715-1719), thanks to the influence of Elizabeth
Farnese, whose marriage to Philip V. he had brought about while in
Madrid as Resident of the Duke of Parma at the Spanish Court. He was
subsequently disgraced and imprisoned in a convent by order of Innocent
XIII.; but, in 1723, he was reinstated in his rights as a cardinal, and
remained in favour with the Court of Rome till his death in 1752.--T.]

[Footnote 46: Anton Rodolf Count Apponyi (1782-1852), Austrian
Ambassador successively to Florence, Rome, London and Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 47: Giovanni Battista Cardinal Bussi, created a cardinal by
Leo XII. in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 48: Vincento Cardinal Macchi (1770-1860), Archbishop of
Nisibis, appointed Nuncio to Switzerland, to Paris (1819), and a
cardinal (1826).--B.]

[Footnote 49: Jean Baptiste Marie Anne Antoine Cardinal Duc de Latil
(1761-1839) became chaplain to the Comte d'Artois in 1798, and returned
to France with him in 1814. He was appointed Bishop of Amycla _in
partibus_ in 1815, Bishop of Chartres in 1817, and a peer of France.
On the death of Louis XVIII., the new King created Latil a count, and
appointed him to the Archbishopric of Rheims. He crowned Charles X. in
1826, and received the cardinal's hat from Leo XII., the King adding
the title of duke. At the Revolution of July, the cardinal fled to
England, and later returned to France, where he resumed his see, but
not his seat in the House of Peers, as he refused to take the oath to
the usurping government--B.]

[Footnote 50: MOLIÈRE, L'_Avare_: Act II. sc. I.--T.]

[Footnote 51: Teresio Cardinal Ferrero Della Marmora (1757-1831),
created a cardinal in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 52: With the same pen with which he had just written this
dispatch to the Foreign Minister, on the same day, Chateaubriand wrote
M. de Marcellus, then Minister Plenipotentiary at Lucca, the following
letter, which is not exactly in the style of the chanceries:

    "ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

    "No news here. Empty and varying ballots. Rain, wind, rheumatism,
    and Torlonia buried sword at side, in a black coat and a laced
    hat. That is all. To-night, at my house, they sing at nine, sup
    at ten, and at midnight fast for tomorrow's ashes; with a little
    penetration, you can guess that I am writing to you on Shrove
    Tuesday. All this, Shrove Tuesday especially, makes me say with
    Potier, in the part of Werther:

    "'My friend, do you know what life is? A wood in which we catch our
    legs.'

    "If only mine could go a-hunting like yours! Good-bye. All this is
    not very serious for an ambassador to a conclave. I weep so often
    that, when laughter comes to me by chance, I let myself go.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."--B.]


[Footnote 53: And not Thursday, as the preceding editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 54: Anne Louis Henri Cardinal Duc de La Fare (1752-1829),
grand-nephew of the Cardinal de Bernis, became Bishop of Nancy in 1787,
Archbishop of Sens in 1817, a peer of France in 1822, and a cardinal in
1823.--B.]

[Footnote 55: Gustave Maximilien Juste Cardinal Prince de Croy
(1773-1844), was Canon of the Grand Chapter of Strasburg in 1789.
After the Emigration, he became Bishop of Strasburg in 1817, and Grand
Almoner of France in 1821, a cardinal in 1822, and Archbishop of Rouen
in 1824. He remained faithful to his legitimist principles in 1830, and
although, in 1840, he was obliged to assist at the baptism of the Comte
de Paris, he retired immediately after the ceremony.--B.]

[Footnote 56: Joachim Jean Xavier Cardinal Duc d'Isoard (1766-1839),
after taking part in several royalist plots, had been appointed
secretary to Cardinal Fesch in 1803. He was ordained priest in 1805,
created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1805, and Archbishop of Auch, a duke
and peer of France in 1829. The Revolution of July deprived him of his
peerage, but he retained his archdiocese.--B.]

[Footnote 57: Belisario Cardinal Cristaldi (1764-1831), created a
cardinal in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 58: Luigi Lambruschini (1776-1854), Archbishop of Genoa,
Grand Prior of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem, and Papal Nuncio
to Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 59: The Abbé Pierre (in religion, Marie Joseph) Coudrin
(1768-1837) accompanied the Prince de Croy, Cardinal-Archbishop
of Rouen, as his conclavist. He did not deserve Chateaubriand's
strictures. The Abbé Coudrin was a man of virtue and intelligence, a
founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and
of the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar,
known as the Congregation of the Picpus.--B.]

[Footnote 60: Ercole Cardinal Dandini (1759-1840), created a cardinal
in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 61: Louis I. King of Bavaria (1786-1868) ascended the throne
in 1825, in succession to his father, Maximilian I., the first King of
Bavaria. Louis was an ardent Philhellenist, and therefore acceptable
to Chateaubriand. He neglected no effort to turn Munich into a modern
Athens, and introduced an Aspasia into it in the shape of the dancer
Lola Montes, whom he created Countess von Lansfeld. Louis I. was driven
from his States in February 1848, and abdicated in the following month
in favour of his son Maximilian II.--B.]

[Footnote 62: Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gaspardo Marchese Capponi
(1792-1876), the Tuscan politician and historian, and author of,
among other important works, the _Storia della Republica di Firenze_
(1875).--B.]

[Footnote 63: Chateaubriand does not give the name of the correspondent
to whom he addressed this letter, but it is clearly the lady of whom he
spoke as "a furious Turcophile" in his letter to Madame Récamier of the
15th of January 1829 (_vide_ Vol. IV, p. 297).--B.]

[Footnote 64: Domenico Zampieri Domenichino (1581-1641), the noted
painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.]

[Footnote 65: Auguste Hilarion Comte de Kératry (1769-1859), one of
the editors of the _Courrier français_, and author of the _Dernier des
Beaumanoir_ (1824). He was made a peer of France by Louis-Philippe in
1837.--B.]

[Footnote 66: The Vicomte de Sesmaisons, third Secretary of Embassy,
son of Donatien Comte de Sesmaisons and grandson, through his
mother, of the Chancelier Dambray. The two first secretaries were
Messieurs Bellocq and Desmousseaux de Givré, who will be mentioned
later. Attached to the embassy were Messieurs de Montebello (the
son of Marshal Lannes, referred to above), Du Viviers, de Mesnard,
d'Haussonville, and Hyacinthe Pilorge, Chateaubriand's faithful
secretary.--B.]

[Footnote 67: Then Ambassador to Naples.--B.]

[Footnote 68: M. Fuscaldo.--_Author's Note._

The Conte Fuscaldo was Neapolitan Ambassador to Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 69: M. Bellocq was First Secretary of the Embassy.--B.]

[Footnote 70: M. Desmousseaux de Givré (_b._ 1794) had served under
Chateaubriand in London in 1822. He resigned on the accession of
the Polignac Ministry, and re-entered the Diplomatic Service after
1830. Desmousseaux de Givré sat in the Chamber of Deputies, as a
Conservative, from 1837 to 1848, and in the Legislative Assembly from
1849 to 1851, when he retired into private life.--B.]

[Footnote 71: _Wis._ II. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 72: Francis IV. Duke of Modena (1779-1847).]

[Footnote 73: Charles Albert King of Sardinia (1798-1849) ascended the
throne on the death of his kinsman, King Charles Felix, in 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 74: The Duke of Modena defended himself against this
accusation. _Cf._ MARCELLUS, _Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 363,
where the matter is explained.--B.]

[Footnote 75: The Cardinal-Archbishop of Toulouse had sprained a sinew
on alighting from his carriage after crossing the Arno. This accident
delayed him for several days at Siena, and caused him to be the last of
the French cardinals to enter the Conclave (MARCELLUS, _Chateaubriand
et son temps_, p. 358).--B.]

[Footnote 76: Prince Paul Charles Frederic Augustus of Wurtemberg
(1785-1852), son of Frederic I. King of Wurtemberg, brother of William
I. and father of the Grand-duchess Helen of Russia.--T.]

[Footnote 77: Wife of King Joseph, who had adopted the title of Comte
de Survilliers, as his brother Louis had taken the name of Duc de
Saint-Leu, and his brother Jerome that of Comte de Montfort.--B.]

[Footnote 78: Hildebrand, Pope St. Gregory VII. (_circa_ 1020-1085),
elected Pope in 1073, one of the greatest militant Popes. It was to St.
Gregory that the Emperor Henry IV. aid penance at Canossa in 1077.--T.]

[Footnote 79: The abduction of Pius VII. (5 July 1809).--T.]

[Footnote 80: Sciarra Colonna had been outlawed by Boniface VIII. and
was concerned with Nogaret in the attempt to carry off the Pontiff.--T.]

[Footnote 81: Guillaume de Nogaret (_d._ 1314), Chancellor to Philip
the Fair, by whose orders, in 1303, together with Sciarra Colonna, he
seized the person of Pope Boniface VIII. at Anagni and subjected him
to the most culpable violence. Boniface was shortly released by the
populace, and Nogaret besought the Pope's absolution.--T.]

[Footnote 82: Benedict Cajetan, Pope Boniface VIII. (_circa_
1228-1303), elected Pope in 1294, issued the bull _Clericis laicos_
against Philip the Fair in 1296 and in 1302, at a synod held in Rome,
promulgated the bull _Unam sanctam_, asserting the temporal as well
as the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. He died in Rome of a fever
induced by the ill-treatment which he had received while under arrest
at Anagni.--T.]

[Footnote 83: Michel de L'Hôpital (_circa_ 1505-1573), Superintendent
of the Royal Finances (1554-1560) and Chancellor of France (1560-1568)
under Francis II. and Charles IX.; a wise and tolerant French
statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 84: François Olivier (1493-1560), Chancellor of France
under Henry II. He was disgraced at the instance of Diane de Poitiers
and deprived of the Seals, but retained the title of Chancellor. He
withdrew to his estate of Montlhéri, where he was often visited by
L'Hôpital.--T.]

[Footnote 85: Pierre Président Jeannin (1540-1622), the son of a
tanner, became a disciple of Cujas, and rose gradually to be First
President of the Parliament of Paris. He was employed on important
negociations by Sully and, in 1609, signed the treaty which ensured
the independence of the United Provinces. After the death of Henry
IV., Marie de Medici appointed him Superintendent of Finance. His
_Négociations_ were published in 1656.--T.]

[Footnote 86: Nicolas de Neufville, Seigneur de Villeroi (1542-1617),
was employed by Catherine de Medici on two important negociations in
Italy, and was three times Secretary of State (1567-1588, 1594 and
1610-1614). His _Mémoires d'État_ were published in 1622.--T.]

[Footnote 87: _Mémoires des sages et royales économies d'État
domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henri le Grand_ (Paris:
1634).--T.]

[Footnote 88: _Histoire de la mère et du fils_ and _Histoire de
la régence_, published in a complete form as _Mémoires relatifs à
l'histoire de France_ in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 89: 1648.]

[Footnote 90: 24 October 1648.]

[Footnote 91: Nicolas Barillon was French Ambassador to England during
part of the reigns of Charles II. and James II. A very interesting
portion of his Correspondence with Louis XIV. on English Affairs was
published by Charles James Fox as an appendix to his _History of the
Early Part of the Reign of James II._ (London: 1808).--T.]

[Footnote 92: Étienne François Comte de Stainville, later Duc de
Choiseul et d'Amboise (1719-1785), Ambassador to Rome (1756), to Vienna
(1756), and Foreign Minister (1758); Minister for War (1761) and, in
addition, for the Navy (1763). After the death of Madame de Pompadour,
his disdain for the new Favourite, the Comtesse Du Barry, procured his
disgrace (1770). In 1761, he negociated the "Family Compact" between
the Bourbon Kings of France, Spain and the Two Sicilies against
England.--T.]

[Footnote 93: Francisco Cardinal Ximenes (1436-1517), Archbishop of
Toledo (1495), a cardinal (1507), and Inquisitor-General and Regent of
Spain (1516-1517).--T.]

[Footnote 94: Gasparo de Guzman, Conde de Olivarez (1587-1645), the
Spanish statesman; Prime Minister from 1621-1643.--T.]

[Footnote 95: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marques de Pombal
(1699-1782), the famous Portuguese statesman. He became Minister to
London (1739), to Vienna (1745), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1750) and
Premier (1756-1777).--T.]

[Footnote 96: _Mare liberum_ (1608).--T.]

[Footnote 97: Axel Count Oxenstiern (1583-1654), Chancellor of Sweden
from 1611 to 1654, and Benedikt Oxenstiern (1623-1702), his kinsman,
Chancellor under Charles XI. Christina Queen of Sweden, on Axel
Oxenstiem's recommendation, appointed Grotius her Ambassador to the
Court of France; he held that post from 1625-1645--T.]

[Footnote 98: Jan de Witt (1625-1672), Grand Pensionary of Holland from
1653-1672, when he was overthrown by the Orange Party and murdered,
with his brother Cornelis, by the mob at the Hague.--T.]

[Footnote 99: Pieter de Groot (1610-1680), known as Peter Grotius, son
of Hugo Grotius. Peter was Dutch Minister to the Courts of Denmark and
Sweden, and his correspondence in that capacity with Jan de Witt appear
in that statesman's _Negociations._ Peter Grotius was Ambassador to
France in 1669. He fled from Holland on the restoration of the House of
Orange, returned, and was afterwards arrested, tried and acquitted on a
charge of betraying State secrets (1676).--T.]

[Footnote 100: Mustapha Mehemed Reshid Pasha (1802-1858), Turkish
Minister of Foreign Affairs under Mahmud II. and Abdul-Medjid, and
Grand Vizier at the time of the Crimean War.--T.]

[Footnote 101: _Cf._ BOILEAU, _Le Lutrin_, Canto I.:

     Quand Sidrac, à qui l'âge allonge le chemin,
     Arrive dans la chambre, un bâton à la main....--B.



When Sidrac, for whom age prolongs his weary road,
His stick in his right hand, arrives at the abode....--T.]

[Footnote 102: Théodore Mionnet (1770-1842) was Assistant-keeper of the
Cabinet of Antiquities at the National Library of France. He devoted
thirty years of his life to compiling his _Description des médailles
grecques et romaines, avec leur degré de rareté et leur estimation_
(Paris: 1806-1837, 15 vols. 8vo), which is regarded as a standard work
among numismatists.--T.]

[Footnote 103: St. Paul (229-342), the first hermit, retired to the
Thebaid at the age of twenty-two, and lived there for over ninety
years. St. Paul the Hermit is honoured on the 7th of March. He is known
also as St. Paul the Simple.--T.]

[Footnote 104: Robert Arnauld, known as Arnauld d'Andilly ( 1589-1674),
son of Antoine Arnauld, known as the Great Arnauld, and father of Simon
Arnauld, Marquis de Pomponne. Amauld d'Andilly left Memoirs, published
in 1734, and a Journal, first published in 1857. The quotation is taken
from the former.--T.]

[Footnote 105: L'Hôpital's Complete Works were edited by Dufey in
1824-1825. He excelled in Latin verse.--T.]

[Footnote 106: I have already mentioned d'Ossat's famous Letters
addressed to Villeroi.--T.]

[Footnote 107: The Abbé François Le Metel, Sieur de Boisrobert
(1592-1662), a poet and favourite of the Cardinal de Richelieu, who
endowed him with a number of livings, nearly all of which he lost at
play. He was one of the founders of the French Academy and worked on
its Dictionary.--T.]

[Footnote 108: Richelieu created the French Academy in 1635.--T.]

[Footnote 109: Richelieu's literary remains include an enormous number
of religious works, dramas, Memoirs, correspondence and State papers.
Of these, the purely literary works are of no considerable value.--T.]

[Footnote 110: The name assumed by Damis in Piron's Comedy of
_Métromanie_ (Act I. Scene VIII. ).--B.]

[Footnote 111: Solon (_circa_ 638 B.C.--_circa_ 559 B.C.), the great
law-giver: "When he had carried his great reforms, elegy became the
voice of his calm joy" (JEBB, _Greek Literature_).-T.]

[Footnote 112: Simonides of Amorgos (_fl. circa_ 660 B.C.) "wrote the
_Archæology of Samos_ in two books of elegiacs, of which no trace now
remains" (MAHAFFY, _History of Classical Greek Literature_).-T.]

[Footnote 113: Thucydides (_circa_ 471 B.C.--_circa_ 401 B.C.), the
famous Greek commander and historian.--T.]

[Footnote 114: Demosthenes (385 B.C.--322 B.C.), the statesman and
greatest of Greek orators.--T.]

[Footnote 115: Xenophon (_circa_ 430 B.C.--post 357 B.C.), the
Greek general, historian, essayist and author of the romance of the
_Cyropœdia_, led the 10,000 Greeks to the Black Sea after the Battle of
Cunaxa and the murder of the Greek generals.--T.]

[Footnote 116: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major (_circa_
234 B.C.--_circa_ 183 B.C.), and his grandson by adoption, Publius
Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus Africanus Major, surnamed also Numantinus
(_circa_ 185 B.C.--129 B.C.). It was the latter who was the friend of
both Lælius and Terence, in some of whose comedies he is said to have
collaborated.--T.]

[Footnote 117: Caius Lælius, surnamed Sapiens (_fl. circa_ 140 B.C.),
the orator and philosopher, and the chief character in Cicero's _De
Amicitia._--T.]

[Footnote 118: Publius Terendus Afer (_circa_ 185 B.C.--_circa_ 159
B.C.), the celebrated Roman comic poet.--T.]

[Footnote 119: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C.--43 B.C.), the Roman
orator, philosopher and statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 120: Caius Julius Cæsar (100 B.C.--44 B.C.). Only the
_Commentaries_ are extant of his many writings.--T.]

[Footnote 121: Archilochus (_fl. circa_ 700 B.C.), the Greek lyric poet
of Paros, famous for his satiric iambic poetry.--T.]

[Footnote 122: Sophocles (495 B.C.--406 B.C.), one of the three great
tragic poets of Greece.--T.]

[Footnote 123: Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), later Lord Verulam
(1618), later Viscount St. Albans (1621), philosopher, jurist and
statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 124: Blessed Sir Thomas More (1470-1535), statesman and
author, beatified by Pope Leo XIII., 9 December 1886.--T.]

[Footnote 125: Edmund Spenser (_circa_ 1552-1599), the poet, went to
Ireland in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, was in 1581 made
clerk to the Irish Court of Chancery, and in 1588 clerk to the Council
of Munster. In his _View of the Stoic of Ireland_, written in 1596, but
not published till 1633, he advocates the most oppressive measures. His
unpopularity in Ireland was extreme.--T.]

[Footnote 126: Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (_circa_
1610-1643), politician and man of letters.--T.]

[Footnote 127: Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon (1608-1674),
statesman and historian.--T.]

[Footnote 128: Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751),
Secretary of State and writer.--T.]

[Footnote 129: I have contented myself with giving the dates of the
figures celebrated in politics and literature who are here mentioned
for the first time in the Memoirs. It is curious that Chateaubriand,
while insisting on his not very strong point, should have omitted the
name of Joseph Addison.--T.]

[Footnote 130: Alphonse Marie Louis Lamartine (1790-1869), the poet and
Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 131: Charles Duc de Bourbon, known as the Constable de
Bourbon (1490-1527), fell in the assault of Rome which ended in the
sack of the city (6 May 1527).--T.]

[Footnote 132: Giacomo Buonaparte, the first Bonaparte mentioned in
history, left a narrative of the _Sack of Rome_ in 1527, of which he
was an eye-witness. This document has been translated into French by
Charles Napoléon Louis Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon III.--B.]

[Footnote 133: Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, Roman Emperor
(40-81), the son of Vespasian, and the "Delight of Mankind." He
succeeded to the throne in June 79 and, in the twenty-seven months of
his reign, finished the Coliseum and built the Baths of Titus.--T.]

[Footnote 134: Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, Roman Emperor (53-117), surnamed
Dacicus and Parthicus, succeeded in 98. The forum constructed under him
is situated north of the Roman Forum.--T.]

[Footnote 135: St. Paul's Without the Walls, a fourth-century basilica,
was burnt down in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 136: Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus (62-113), known as Pliny
the Younger, to distinguish him from his uncle, Pliny the Elder. He is
the author of the Epistles and of a Eulogy of Trajan.--T.]

[Footnote 137: Melmoth's PLINY THE YOUNGER, Book I., Letter 24: To
Maximus.--T.]

[Footnote 138: JUSTUS LIPSIUS.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 139: TASSO, _Gerusalemme Liberata._--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 140: Cary's DANTE: _Paradise_, Canto XI., 46-56, 59-69.--T.]

[Footnote 141: Chateaubriand returned to Paris on the 28th of May 1829.
The subsequent pages, to the end of Book XIII., were written in Paris,
in the Rue d'Enfer, in August and September 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 142: Madame Giuditta Pasta (1798-1865), _née_ Negri, the
Italian-Jewish opera-singer, who was one of the leading sopranos in
Paris and Italy from 1819 until about 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 143: The Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Comte Sieyès (1748-1836), the
framer of constitutions, was Ambassador to Berlin in 1798-1799, a
member of the Directory 1799 and, provisionally, a Consul. Bonaparte
made him a senator and, later, a count of the Empire. He was exiled at
the Restoration, and lived in Brussels until the Revolution of 1830,
when he returned to Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 144: M. de Martignac was appointed head of the Duc
d'Angoulême's political council on the outbreak of the Spanish War, and
received the title of Civil Commissary to the Army in Spain.--B.]

[Footnote 145: OV., _Met._ XI.:

Quum mare sub noctem tumidis albescere cœpit
Fluctibus.--B.]

[Footnote 146: _Æn._ VII. 27.--B.]

[Footnote 147: _Æn._ V. 857.--B.]

[Footnote 148: Armandine Lucile Aurore Baronne Dudevant, known as
George Sand (1804-1876), _née_ Dupin. _Valentine_, her second novel,
was published in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 149: Richard I. King of England (1157-1199), surnamed
Cœur-de-Lion, was mortally wounded while besieging Chalus, near
Limoges, 6 April 1199.--T.]

[Footnote 150: Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (_circa_ 1620-1655) was
born at Bergerac Castle, and entered the regiment of Guards, where he
was distinguished by his enormous nose. _Post hoc vel propter hoc_, he
achieved fame as a duellist, which he exchanged later for that of a
man of letters, a career which he adopted after being twice severely
wounded in war.--T.]

[Footnote 151: The Cardinal d'Ossat was born at the Roque-en-Magnoac,
in the Diocese of Auch, on the 23rd of August 1536.--B.]

[Footnote 152: Jean Froissart (1337--_circa_ 1410), the chronicler.--T.]

[Footnote 153: I omit these verses.--T.]

[Footnote 154: Occitania, a name often given to Languedoc, and to the
whole Mediterranean coast, during the middle ages.--T.]

[Footnote 155: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III., Chap. V.: _Upon some
Verses of Virgil._--T.]

[Footnote 156: The _Moniteur_ of 9 August 1829 announced the formation
of a new ministry, composed as follows: the Prince de Polignac, Foreign
Affairs; M. de La Bourdonnaye, Interior; M. Courvoisier, Justice; M. de
Chabrol, Finance; General de Bourmont, War; Admiral de Rigny, Navy; M.
de Montbel, Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction. Admiral de
Rigny, a nephew of the Baron Louis, and a Liberal, had been appointed
without being consulted. He refused to take office, and the Baron
d'Haussez, Prefect of Bordeaux, was appointed Minister for the Navy in
his stead.--B.]

[Footnote 157: In the _Moniteur_ of 27 August 1829, I find:

    "We hear from Pau, 20 August:

    "'M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand arrived at Pau yesterday. The
    illustrious author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ visited part
    of the town, and long surveyed the castle of Henry IV. At nine
    o'clock, a serenade was given to the noble peer by the town band.
    A considerable crowd filled the court-yard of the Hôtel de France
    and the streets adjoining the Place Royale. A large number of
    citizens were admitted to the noble viscount's apartments. Among
    the pieces performed in this improvised serenade the delicious
    ballad, _Combien j'ai douce souvenance!_ from the _Dernier des
    Abencerrages_, attracted particular attention. M. de Chateaubriand
    yielded to the assiduity of which he was the object and showed
    himself at one of the windows. He was received with cheers, to
    which he replied in these words:

    "'"Gentlemen, I am extremely sensible to the honour which you have
    been pleased to do me; I will not own that I deserve it except for
    my love of my country. It is very natural that the town in which
    Henry IV. saw the light should have been pleased to remember my
    devotion to the descendants of that illustrious King."

    "'Renewed cheers were raised, after which the crowd dispersed
    peacefully. M. de Chateaubriand left at nine o'clock this morning
    for Paris."--B.]

[Footnote 158: Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies (1777-1830) married,
first, Clementina of Austria and, secondly,]

[Footnote 159: Maria Isabella of Spain, Queen of the Two Sicilies
(1789-1848), daughter of Charles IV. King of Spain.--T.]

[Footnote 160: Maria Christina of Naples, Queen of Spain (1806-1878),
married, in December 1829, as his fourth wife, to Ferdinand VII.
King of Spain. It was at her instance that Ferdinand, on the 29th of
March 1830, signed the Pragmatic Sanction abolishing the Salic Law in
Spain, thus illegally securing the Crown to her daughter Isabella and
excluding Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos (_de jure_ Charles V. King of
Spain), from the succession.--T.]

[Footnote 161: The Days of 27 to 29 July 1830, ending in the overthrow
of Charles X.--T.]




BOOK XIV[162]


Sycophancy of the newspapers--M. de Polignac's first colleagues--The
Algerian Expedition--Opening of the Session of 1830--The Address--The
Chamber is dissolved--New Chamber--I leave for Dieppe--The
Ordinances of the 25th of July--I return to Paris--Reflexions on
the journey--Letter to Madame Récamier--The Revolution of July--M.
Baude, M. de Choiseul, M. de Sémonville, M. de Vitrolles, M. Laffitte,
and M. Thiers--I write to the King at Saint-Cloud--His verbal
answer--Aristocratic corps--Pillage of the house of the missionaries
in the Rue d'Enfer--The Chamber of Deputies--M. de Mortemart--A
walk through Paris--General Dubourg--Funeral ceremony--Under the
colonnade of the Louvre--The young men carry me back to the House of
Peers--Meeting of the Peers.


When the swallows near the moment of their departure, there is one
that flies away first to announce the approaching passage of the rest:
mine were the first wings that preceded the last flight of Legitimacy.
Did the praises with which the newspapers loaded me charm me? Not in
the least. Some of my friends tried to console me by assuring me that
I was on the point of becoming Prime Minister; that this party stroke
so frankly played decided my future: they thought they saw in me an
ambition of which I did not possess the very germ. I do not understand
how any man who has lived but eight days with me can fail to have
perceived my total lack of that passion--a very lawful one, for that
matter--which enables one to push through a political career. I was
ever on the watch for the occasion to retire: if I was so devoted to
the Roman Embassy, that was just because it led to nothing and because
it was a retreat in a blind alley.

Lastly, at the bottom of my conscience I had a certain fear of having
already driven opposition too far; I was forcibly about to become its
bond, its centre and its object: I was frightened of it, and this fear
increased my regrets for the tranquil shelter I had lost.

Be this as it may, much incense was burnt before the wooden idol that
had climbed down from its altar. M. de Lamartine, a new and brilliant
light of France, wrote to me on the subject of his candidature for the
Academy[163], and ended his letter thus:

    "M. de La Noue, who has just been spending a few minutes with
    me, told me that he had left you occupying your noble leisure in
    raising a monument to France. Each of your voluntary and courageous
    disgraces will thus bring its tribute of esteem to your name and of
    glory to your country."

This noble letter from the author of the _Méditations poétiques_ was
followed by one from M. de Lacretelle[164]. He in his turn wrote:

    "What a moment they choose to outrage you, you the man of
    sacrifices, you the man to whom fine actions come as easily as fine
    works! Your resignation and the formation of the new Ministry had
    appeared to me, in advance, in the light of two connected events.
    You have accustomed us to acts of devotion, as Bonaparte accustomed
    us to victory; but he had many companions, whereas you have not
    many imitators."


Two very literary men, both writers of great merit, M. Abel
Rémusat[165] and M. Saint-Martin[166], alone at that time had the
weakness to rise up against me: they were attached to M. le Baron de
Damas. I can imagine that people are a little irritated by men who
despise places: that is one of those pieces of insolence that cannot be
endured.

M. Guizot himself deigned to visit me in my abode; he thought he might
overcome the immense distance which Nature had set between us; on
accosting me, he said these words full of all that he owed to himself:

"Monsieur, things are very different to-day!"

[Illustration: Guizot.]

In the year 1829, M. Guizot had need of me for his election; I
wrote to the electors of Lisieux, and they carried him[167]; M. de
Broglie[168] thanked me in the note that follows:

    "Permit me to thank you, monsieur, for the letter which you have
    been good enough to address to me. I have made the right use of it,
    and I am convinced that, in common with all that comes from you, it
    will bear fruit and salutary fruit. For my part, I am as grateful
    to you as though I myself were concerned, for there is no event
    with which I have more closely identified myself nor which arouses
    in me a keener interest."

The July days found M. Guizot a deputy, and the result was that I am
partly the cause of his political rise: sometimes Heaven hearkens to
the prayer of the humble.

[Sidenote: M de Polignac's colleagues.]

M. de Polignac's first colleagues were Messieurs de Bourmont[169], de
La Bourdonnaye, de Chabrol, de Courvoisier[170] and de Montbel[171].
On the 17th of June 1815, at Ghent, I had been waiting on the King,
when I met at the foot of the stairs a man in a frock-coat and muddy
boots who was going up to His Majesty. By his lively expression, his
finely-shaped nose, his beautiful, soft, adder-like eyes, I recognised
General Bourmont: he had deserted Bonaparte's army. The Comte de
Bourmont is a meritorious officer, skilful at extricating himself from
difficult situations, but one of those men who, when placed in the
front rank, see obstacles without being able to conquer them. They are
made to be led, not to lead. He is fortunate in his sons, and Algiers
will leave him a name.

The Comte de La Bourdonnaye, formerly my friend, is certainly the most
disagreeable personage that ever lived: he lets fly at you the instant
you approach him; he attacks the speakers in the Chamber, as he does
his neighbours in the country; he cavils over a word, just as he goes
to law about a ditch or a drain. On the very morning of the day on
which I was appointed Foreign Minister, he came to tell me that he was
breaking with me: I was a minister. I laughed and let my male termagant
go about his business: laughing himself, he looked like a thwarted
bat[172].

M. de Montbel, at first Minister of Public Instruction, replaced M.
de La Bourdonnaye at the Interior when the latter resigned, and M. de
Guernon-Ranville[173] followed M. de Montbel at the Ministry of Public
Instruction.

Men were preparing for war on both sides: the Ministerial Party
launched ironical pamphlets against the _Représentatif_; the Opposition
organized itself and spoke of refusing to pay taxes in the event
of a violation of the Charter. A public association, called the
Breton Association, was formed to resist the Administration: my
fellow-countrymen have often taken the lead in our later revolutions;
every Breton head has something in common with the winds that vex the
shores of our peninsula.

A newspaper[174] set up with the avowed object of overthrowing the Old
Dynasty came to excite men's minds. The handsome young bookseller,
Sautelet[175], pursued with suicidal mania, had several times felt the
longing to make his death useful to his party by some bold stroke; he
was charged with the business part of the republican sheet: Messieurs
Thiers[176], Mignet[177] and Carrel[178] were its editors. The patron
of the National, M. le Prince de Talleyrand, did not put a sou into the
cash-box; he was content to defile the paper's spirit by adding to the
common fund his quotum of treason and rottenness. On this occasion I
received the following note from M. Thiers:

[Sidenote: A note from M. Theirs.]

    "MONSIEUR,

    "Not knowing whether the service of a new paper will be performed
    with exactness, I send you the first number of the _National._ All
    my collaborators unite with me in begging you to consent to regard
    yourself, not as a subscriber, but as a gentle reader. If, in this
    first article, the object of great anxiety to me, I have succeeded
    in expressing opinions that meet with your approval, I shall feel
    reassured and certain of being in the right road.

    "Receive, monsieur, my homage.

    "A. THIERS."

I shall return to the editors of the _National_; I shall tell how
I have known them; but I must at once place M. Carrel on one side:
superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, he had the simplicity to
look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as
coming after writers whom he excelled; he upheld with his sword the
opinions which those penmen laid bare.

While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations
for the Algerian Expedition were being completed. General Bourmont,
the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that
expedition: was it his intention to escape responsibility for the _coup
d'État_ which he felt coming? That was likely enough, to judge from his
antecedents and his craftiness; but it was a misfortune for Charles
X. Had the general been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the
vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands
of M. de Polignac. Before striking the blow, presuming that he would
have agreed to it, M. de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the
whole of the Royal Guard in Paris; he would have got ready money and
the necessary provisions, so that the soldier should have wanted for
nothing.

Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from
the French ports lately so abandoned. The roads were covered with ships
which saluted the land as they moved away. Steamboats, a new discovery
of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to
the other, like sirens or the aides-de-camp of the admiral. The Dauphin
stood on shore, where all the population of the town and mountains
had gathered. After snatching his kinsman, the King of Spain, from
the hands of the revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which
Christianity was to be delivered: could he have believed night to be so
near at hand[179]?


[Sidenote: The Algerian expedition.]

The times were past in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk
the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III., not
yet King of Poland! Algiers was about to become our daughter and our
conquest, without anybody's permission, without England's daring to
prevent us from taking that "Emperor's Fort" which recalled Charles V.
and the change in his fortunes[180].

[Illustration: The Princesse de Lieven.]

It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French
spectators to greet, with Bossuet's greeting, the generous vessels,
ready to break the slave's chain with their prows; a victory increased
by the cry uttered by the Eagle of Meaux when he announced the future
success to the Great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb
for the dispersal of his dynasty:

    "Thou shalt yield, or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the
    spoils of Christianity. Thou saidst in thy heart of greed:

    "I hold the sea under my laws and the nations are my prey!'

    "The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt
    see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one
    hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty
    among its young. Already thou art releasing thy slaves. Louis has
    shattered the irons under which thou wert loading his subjects,
    who are born to be free under his glorious empire. The astonished
    pilots cry beforehand:

    "'Who is like unto Tyre? And yet she kept silence in the midst of
    the sea[181].'"

O splendid words, could you not retard the crumbling of the Throne?
Nations proceed towards their destinies; like certain of Dante's
shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune.

Those vessels, which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were
carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the
Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis
embarked when Death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from
imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost
their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are
banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark
as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey:

"It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee
now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the
breeze with five hundred sail."

Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon,
followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa? Did not
M. du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his
ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return
of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]? What came of that flight
executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop? Let us listen to M. de
Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton:

    "Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in
    front of those same shores over five hundred ships. Then, sixty
    thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field
    in Africa. To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging
    themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only
    retinue.... At the moment when the guard took up arms, according
    to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all
    conversation ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that
    I should have shown to the old King himself. I knelt within my
    heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly
    contemplating the symbol[185]."

The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March. In the Speech from the
Throne, the King was made to say:

    "If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government
    obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate,
    I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."

Charles X. uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually
timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites
himself with the sound of his own voice: the more forcible the words
were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it.

[Sidenote: The address of the Chamber.]

The Address in reply was drawn up by Messieurs Étienne[187] and Guizot.
It said:

    "Sire, the Charter consecrates, as a right, the intervention
    of the country in the discussion of its public interests. This
    intervention renders the permanent accord between the political
    views of the Government and the wishes of your people the
    indispensable condition of the regular march of public affairs.
    Sire, our loyalty, our devotion condemn us to tell you that this
    accord does not exist."

The Address was voted by a majority of 221 against 181. An amendment
was moved by M. de Lorgeril[188] to do away with the phrase relating to
the refusal of concurrence. This amendment obtained only 28 votes. If
the 221 had been able to foresee the result of their vote, the Address
would have been rejected by a huge majority. Why does Providence not
sometimes raise a corner of the veil that covers the future? It gives,
it is true, a presentiment to certain men; but they do not see clear
enough to make sure of their way, they fear to make a mistake, or, if
they venture upon predictions which are accomplished, no one believes
them. God does not push aside the cloud from the background in which
He acts; when He permits great evils to take place, it is because He
has great plans, plans extending over a general plane, unrolled in a
deep horizon beyond our view and beyond the reach of our short-lived
generations.

The King, in his Reply to the Address, declared that his resolution
was unchangeable, in other words, that he would not dismiss M. de
Polignac. The dissolution of the Chamber was resolved upon: Messieurs
de Peyronnet and de Chantelauze replaced Messieurs de Chabrol
and Courvoisier, who resigned; M. Capelle was appointed Minister
of Commerce. They had a score of men around them capable of being
ministers; they might have sent for M. de Villèle again; they might
have taken M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani. I had already
proposed the two latter to the King when, after the fall of M. de
Villèle, the Abbé Frayssinous was told to offer me the Ministry of
Public Instruction. But no; they held capable men in abhorrence. In
their fervour for nullity, they sought, as though to humiliate France,
for the smallest thing she had to put at her head. They had dug up M.
Guernon de Ranville, who, however, was the bravest of the unknown band,
and the Dauphin had besought M. de Chantelauze to save the Monarchy.

The decrees dissolving the Chamber summoned the district electoral
colleges for the 23rd of June 1830 and the departmental colleges for
the 3rd of July[189], only twenty-seven days before the death of the
Elder Branch.

The parties, all exceedingly excited, drove everything to extremes:
the Ultra-Royalists spoke of giving the Crown the dictatorship; the
Republicans dreamt of a republic under a directorate or convention. The
Tribune[190], the organ of the latter party, appeared, and went beyond
the National. The great majority of the country was still in favour of
the Legitimate Monarchy, but with concessions and enfranchisement from
Court influences; every ambition was aroused, every one hoped to become
a minister: storms hatch insects.

Those who wished to force Charles X. to become a constitutional
monarch thought they were right. They believed the Legitimacy to be
deep-rooted: they had forgotten the weakness of the man; the Royalty
might be driven, the King could not: it was the individual that ruined
us, not the institution.

The deputies of the new Chamber arrived in Paris: of the 221, 202 had
been re-elected; the Opposition numbered 270 votes: the Ministry 145;
the Crown Party was therefore lost. The natural result would have been
the resignation of the Ministry: Charles X. was stubbornly determined
to defy everything, and the _coup d'État_ was resolved upon.

[Sidenote: Dieppe and back to Paris.]

I left for Dieppe at four o'clock in the morning on the 26th of July,
the very day on which the Ordinances appeared. I was in fairly good
spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was
followed, at some distance, by a terrible storm. I supped and slept
at Rouen without learning anything, regretting that I was not able
to visit Saint-Ouen and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the
Museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome. I arrived at Dieppe the next
day, the 27th, at mid-day. I went to the hotel where M. le Comte de
Boissy[191], my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for
me. I dressed and went to call on Madame Récamier. She occupied an
apartment whose windows looked out on the sands. I spent a few hours
in talking and watching the waves. Suddenly Hyacinthe appeared; he
brought me a letter which M. de Boissy had received, telling with
great praises of the issue of the Ordinances. A moment later, my old
friend Ballanche entered; he had come straight from the diligence and
held the newspapers in his hand. I opened the _Moniteur_ and read the
official documents, without believing my eyes. One more government
which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame! I told
Hyacinthe to ask for horses, in order to set out for Paris again. I
climbed back into my carriage, at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in
anxiety. It is true that, for a month past, people had been murmuring
something about a _coup d'État_, but no one had taken any notice of the
rumour, which seemed absurd. Charles X. had lived on the illusions of
the Throne: a kind of mirage is formed around princes, and it imposes
upon them by displacing the object and making them see chimerical
landscapes in the sky.

I took away the _Moniteur_ with me. So soon as it was light, on the
28th, I read, re-read and commented on the Ordinances[192]. The
Report to the King which served as a preamble struck me in two ways:
the observations on the drawbacks of the press were just; but, at the
same time, the author of those observations[193] displayed a complete
ignorance of the actual state of society. No doubt ministers, to
whatever shade of opinion they have belonged, have, since 1814, been
harassed by the newspapers; no doubt the press tends to subdue the
Sovereignty, to force the Royalty and the Chambers to obey it; no
doubt, during the last days of the Restoration, the press, listening
only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests
and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian Expedition, enlarged
on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure; it
divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state
of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated
the point selected for the disembarkation. Would the Cardinal de
Richelieu and Bonaparte have brought Europe to the feet of France, if
the mystery of their negociations had been thus revealed in advance, or
the halting-places of their armies set forth?

All this is both true and hateful; but the remedy? The press is
an element till lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now
introduced into the world; it is speech in the shape of a thunder-bolt;
it is the electricity of society. How can you prevent its existence?
The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion.
You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with
the steam-engine. You must learn to use it while making it safe,
either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by
gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which
will henceforth govern humanity. One proof of the powerlessness of the
press in certain cases is derived from the very reproach which you
made against it in regard to the Algerian Expedition: you have taken
Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had
caused the war with Spain to be waged, in 1823, under the hottest fire
of that liberty.

But what is not to be endured in the Report of the ministers is that
shameless pretension, namely, that "the King has a power pre-existent
to the laws." What, then, is the meaning of constitutions? Why deceive
the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to
alter the order of established government? And yet the signatories of
the Report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly
quote Article XIV.[194] to which I had long been prophesying that "they
would confiscate the Charter;" they recall it, but only for memory, and
as a superfluity of right of which they had no need.

[Sidenote: The Ordinances of July.]

The first Ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the
press in all its parts; this is the quintessence of all that had been
elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the
police.

The second Ordinance reforms the law of election. Thus the two first
liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn
up by the roots: and that, not by an iniquitous and yet legal act,
emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by "ordinances," as in
the days of the King's will and pleasure. And five men, not lacking
common-sense, were, with unexampled levity, precipitating themselves,
their master, the Monarchy, France and Europe into a whirlpool. I did
not know what was happening in Paris. I was hoping that a resistance,
without overturning the throne, would have obliged the Crown to dismiss
the ministers and recall the Ordinances. In the event of the triumph
of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and
speak against those unconstitutional measures.

If the members of the Diplomatic Body exercised no direct influence
upon the Ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes; absolute
Europe abhorred our Charter. When the news of the Ordinances reached
Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in
their success, M. Ancillon exclaimed that Europe was saved, and M.
de Metternich displayed unspeakable delight. Soon, having learnt the
truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed: he
declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly
liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an
Austrian Constitution.

The nominations of councillors of State following upon the Ordinances
of July throw some light upon the persons who, in the ante-chambers,
gave their assistance to the Ordinances either with their advice or
their composition. You there see the names of the men most opposed
to the representative system. Was it in the King's own closet, under
the Monarch's eyes, that those fatal documents were drawn up? Was it
in M. de Polignac's closet? Was it in a meeting of ministers alone,
or assisted by a few anti-constitutional pudding-heads? Was it "under
seal," in some secret sitting of the "Ten," that those decrees were
minuted by virtue of which the Legitimate Monarchy was condemned to
be strangled on the "Bridge of Sighs?" Was the idea M. de Polignac's
alone? Perhaps history will never tell us.

On arriving at Gisors, I learnt that Paris had risen, and heard
alarming things said, which proved how seriously the Charter was
taken by people throughout France. At Pontoise, they had still more
recent, but confused and contradictory news. At Herblay, there were
no horses at the post-office. I waited nearly an hour. They advised
me to avoid Saint-Denis, because I should find barricades there. At
Courbevoie, the postillion had already left off his jacket with the
fleurs-de-lys on the buttons. They had fired that morning at a calash
which he was driving in Paris through the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
In consequence, he told me that he would not take me by that avenue,
but that he would make for the Barrière du Trocadéro, to the right of
the Barrière de l'Étoile. This barrier gives a view over Paris. I saw
the tricolour flag waving; I judged that it was a case not of a riot,
but of a revolution. I had a presentiment that my role was about to
change: that, having hurried back to defend the public liberties, I
should be obliged to defend the Royalty. Here and there, clouds of
white smoke rose among blocks of houses. I heard some cannon-shots and
musketry-fire mixed with the droning of the tocsin. It seemed to me
that I saw the fall of the old Louvre from the top of the waste upland
destined by Napoleon for the site of the palace of the King of Rome.
The spot of observation offered one of those philosophical consolations
which one ruin carries to another.

My carriage went down the hill. I crossed the Pont d'Iéna and drove up
the paved avenue skirting the Champ de Mars. All was solitary. I found
a picket of cavalry posted before the railings of the Military School;
the men looked sad and as though forgotten there. We took the Boulevard
des Invalides and the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. I met a few people
on foot who looked surprised to see a carriage driven post as at an
ordinary time. The Boulevard d'Enfer was obstructed by felled elm-trees.

In my street[195], my neighbours were glad to see me arrive: I seemed
to them a protection for the quarter. Madame de Chateaubriand was both
pleased and alarmed at my return.

[Sidenote: The revolution of July.]

On Thursday morning, the 29th of July, I wrote Madame Récamier, at
Dieppe, a letter prolonged by postscripts:

    "_Thursday morning_, 29 _July_ 1830.

    "I write to you without knowing whether my letter will reach you,
    for the post no longer goes out.

    "I entered Paris amid the booming of guns, the rattle of musketry,
    the clanging of the tocsin. This morning the tocsin is still
    sounding, but I no longer hear any firing; it seems that they are
    organizing themselves, and that resistance will continue until
    the Ordinances are repealed. There you see the immediate result
    (without speaking of the definite result) of the act of perjury the
    blame for which, at least in appearance, the ministers have allowed
    to fall upon the Crown!

    "The National Guard, the Polytechnic School, all have taken part
    in the business. I have seen no one yet. You can imagine in what a
    state I found Madame de Chateaubriand. People who, like her, have
    seen the 10th of August and the 2nd of September have remained
    under the impression of terror. One regiment, the 5th of the Line,
    has already gone over to the Charter. M. de Polignac is certainly
    most guilty; his want of capacity is a poor excuse; ambition for
    which one has not the talent is a crime. They say that the Court is
    at Saint-Cloud and ready to leave.

    "I do not speak to you of myself; my position is painful, but
    clear. I shall betray neither the King nor the Charter, neither
    the Legitimate Power nor liberty. I have therefore nothing to say
    or do, but to wait and weep for my country. God knows now what is
    going to happen in the provinces: already they are talking of an
    insurrection at Rouen. On the other side, the Congregation will arm
    the Chouans and the Vendée. On what small things do empires depend!
    An Ordinance and half-a-dozen stupid or unscrupulous ministers are
    enough to turn the most peaceful and flourishing country into the
    most disturbed and unhappy country."

    "The firing is recommencing. It appears they are attacking the
    Louvre, where the King's troops have entrenched themselves. The
    suburb in which I live is beginning to rise in insurrection. They
    speak of a provisional government with General Gérard[196], the Duc
    de Choiseul[197] and M. de La Fayette at its head.

    "This letter will probably not leave, Paris having been declared in
    a state of siege. Marshal Marmont is commanding in the King's name.
    He is said to be killed, but I do not believe it. Try not to alarm
    yourself unduly. May God protect you! We shall meet again!

    "_Friday._

    "This letter was written yesterday; it could not be sent. All is
    over: the popular victory is complete; the King yields on all
    points, but I fear they will not go far beyond the concessions made
    by the Crown. I wrote to His Majesty this morning. For the rest, I
    have a complete plan of sacrifices for the future which pleases me.
    We will talk of it when you are here.

    "I am going to post this letter myself and to stroll through Paris."

The Ordinances, dated 25 July, were published in the _Moniteur_ of
the 26th. Their secret had been so profoundly kept that neither the
Maréchal Duc de Raguse, who was major-general of the Guard on duty, nor
M. Mangin[198], the Prefect of Police, had been taken into confidence.
The Prefect of the Seine[199] heard of the Ordinances only through the
_Moniteur_: the same was the case with the Under-secretary of State
for War[200]; and this in spite of the fact that it was those several
officials who disposed of the different forces of the army. The Prince
de Polignac, who held M. de Bourmont's portfolio ad interim, concerned
himself so little with this trifling matter of the Ordinances that he
spent the day, on the 26th, presiding over an adjudication at the War
Office.

The King left on a hunting-party on the 26th, before the _Moniteur_ had
reached Saint-Cloud, and did not return from Rambouillet till midnight.

At last the Duc de Raguse received this note from M. de Polignac:

    "Your Excellency is aware of the extraordinary measures which the
    King, in his wisdom and in his love for his people, has thought it
    necessary to take for the maintenance of the rights of his crown
    and of public order. In these important circumstances, His Majesty
    relies on your zeal to ensure order and tranquillity throughout the
    extent of your command."


[Sidenote: Action of the press.]

This audacity displayed by the weakest men that ever lived against
the force that was about to pulverize an empire can be explained only
as being a sort of hallucination resulting from the counsels of a
wretched set which was no longer to be found at the hour of danger. The
newspaper-editors, after consulting Messieurs Dupin, Odilon Barrot,
Barthe[201] and Mérilhou[202], resolved to bring out their impressions
without authorization, in order to compel their seizure and to plead
the illegality of the Ordinances. They met at the office of the
_National_: M. Thiers drew up a protest which was signed by forty-four
editors[203] and which appeared, on the morning of the 27th, in the
_National_ and the _Temps._

In the evening, a few deputies met at M. de Laborde's[204]. They agreed
to meet again the next day at M. Casimir Périer's. There appeared, for
the first time, one of the three powers that were to occupy the scene:
the Monarchy was in the Chamber of Deputies, the Usurpation at the
Palais-Royal, the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville. Crowds gathered at
the Palais-Royal in the evening; stones were thrown at M. de Polignac's
carriage. The Duc de Raguse having seen the King at Saint-Cloud, on his
return from Rambouillet, the King asked him the news from Paris:

"The stocks have fallen."

"How much?" asked the Dauphin

"Three francs," answered the marshal.

"They will go up again," replied the Dauphin, and every one went away.


The day of the 27th began badly. The King invested the Duc de Raguse
with the command of Paris. This was relying on bad fortune. The marshal
came to instal himself at the Staff-office of the Guard on the Place du
Carrousel, at one o'clock. M. Mangin sent to seize the printing-presses
of the _National_; M. Carrel resisted; Messieurs Mignet and Thiers,
thinking the game lost, disappeared for two days: M. Thiers went to
hide in the Montmorency Valley with a Madame de Courchamp[205], a
relation of the two Messieurs Becquet[206], of whom one had worked on
the _National_, the other on the _Journal des Débats._

At the _Temps_, the matter assumed a more serious complexion: the real
hero of the journalists is incontestably M. Coste[207].

In 1823, M. Coste was managing the _Tablettes historiques_[208]: one
of his collaborators accusing him of having sold that paper, he fought
a duel and received a sword-thrust M. Coste was presented to me at the
Foreign Office; discussing the liberty of the press with him, I said:

"Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty; but how would
you have me defend it to Louis XVIII., when every day you attack
royalty and religion? I beg you, in your own interest and so as to
leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts which are
already three-parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought
to blush to attack. Let us make a bargain: do you cease falling foul
of a few feeble old men whom the Throne and the sanctuary are hardly
able to protect; in exchange I give you my own person. Attack me day
and night; say anything about me that you please: I shall never make a
complaint; I shall appreciate your legitimate and constitutional attack
on the minister, so long as you leave the King out of it."

M. Coste has retained a grateful memory of his interview with me.

[Sidenote: Parade of constitutionalism.]

A parade of constitutionalism took place at the office of the _Temps_
between M. Baude[209] and a commissary of police[210].

The Attorney-General[211] issued forty-four warrants against the
signatories to the protest of the journalists.

At two o'clock, the monarchical faction of the revolution met at M.
Périer's[212], as had been agreed upon the day before: they came to no
conclusion. The deputies adjourned to the morrow, the 28th, at M. Audry
de Puyravault's[213]. M. Casimir Périer, a man of order and wealth, did
not wish to fall into the hands of the people; he continued still to
cherish the hope of an arrangement with the Legitimate Royalty; he said
sharply to M. de Schonen[214]:

"You ruin us by departing from lawfulness; you make us give up a superb
position."

This spirit of lawfulness prevailed everywhere: it showed itself at
two opposite meetings, one at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's[215] the other
at General Gourgaud's. M. Périer belonged to that middle class which
had constituted itself the heir of the people and the soldier. He
had courage, stability of ideas: he flung himself bravely across the
revolutionary torrent to dam it; but his life was too much taken up
with his health and he was too careful of his fortune:

"What can you do with a man," said M. Decazes to me, "who is always
examining his tongue in a looking-glass?"

The mob increased in size and began to appear under arms. The officer
of the Gendarmerie came to inform the Maréchal de Raguse that he had
not enough men and that he feared lest he should be driven back: then
the marshal made his military dispositions.

It was half-past four in the evening of the 27th before orders reached
the barracks to take up arms. The Paris Gendarmerie, supported by a
few detachments of the Guard, tried to restore the traffic in the Rues
Richelieu and Saint-Honoré. One of these detachments was assailed, in
the Rue du Duc de Bordeaux[216], by a shower of stones. The leader
of the detachment refrained from firing, when a shot from the Hôtel
Royal, in the Rue des Pyramides, decided the question: it appeared that
a certain Mr. Folks, who lived at this hotel, had taken up his gun
and fired at the Guards from his window. The soldiers replied with a
volley at the house, and Mr. Folks fell dead with his two servants.
This is the way in which those English, who live safe and sheltered in
their island, go to carry revolutions to other nations; you find them
in the four corners of the world mixed up in quarrels with which they
have no concern: so long as they can sell a piece of calico, what care
they about plunging a nation into every kind of calamity? What right
had this Mr. Folks to shoot at French soldiers? Was it the British
Constitution that Charles X. had violated? If anything could stigmatize
the July fighting, it would be that it was begun by a bullet fired by
an Englishman[217].

[Sidenote: The first shot fired.]

The first fighting, which began the day's work of the 27th a little
before five o'clock in the evening, ceased at nightfall. The gunsmiths
and sword-cutlers gave up their arms to the mob; the street-lamps were
broken or remained unlighted; the tricolour flag was hoisted in the
darkness on the towers of Notre-Dame: the seizure of the guard-houses,
the capture of the arsenal and the powder-magazines, the disarming of
the fixed posts, all this was effected without opposition at daybreak
on the 28th, and all was finished at eight o'clock.

The democratic or proletarian party of the revolution, in blouses
or half-naked, was under arms: it was not sparing of its misery or
its rags. The mob, represented by electors whom it chose out of
different bands, had succeeded in having a meeting called at M.
Cadet-Gassicourt's.

The party of the Usurpation did not yet show itself: its head, hiding
outside Paris, did not know whether he should go to Saint-Cloud or to
the Palais-Royal. The middle-class or monarchical party, the deputies
deliberated and were unwilling to be drawn into the movement.

M. de Polignac went to Saint-Cloud and, at five o'clock in the morning,
on the 28th, made the King sign the Ordinance placing Paris in a stage
of siege.

On the 28th, the groups formed again in greater numbers; already the
cry of "Liberty for ever! Down with the Bourbons!" was mingled with
the cry of "The Charter for ever!" which was heard on every side. They
also shouted, "Long live the Emperor! Long live the Black Prince!" the
mysterious Prince of Darkness who appears to the popular imagination
in all revolutions. Memories and passions had come down upon the
crowd; they pulled down and burned the French arms; they hung them
to the ropes of the shattered street-lanterns; they tore the badges
with the _fleurs-de-lys_ from the guards of the diligences and the
postmen; the notaries removed their scutcheons, the bailiffs their
badges, the carriers their stamps, the Court purveyors their coats of
arms. Those who but lately had covered the Napoleonic eagles, painted
in oil-colours, with the _fleurs-de-lys_ of the Bourbons in distemper
needed only a sponge to wipe away their loyalty: nowadays one effaces
gratitude and empires with a few drops of water.

The Maréchal de Raguse wrote to the King that it was urgent that
methods of pacification should be taken and that the next day, the
29th, would be too late. A messenger had come from the Prefect of
Police to ask the marshal if it was true that Paris had been declared
in a state of siege: the marshal, who knew nothing about it, was
astonished; he hurried to the President of the Council; there[218]
he found the ministers assembled, and M. de Polignac handed him the
Ordinance. Because the man who had trodden the world under foot had
laid towns and provinces under martial law, Charles X. thought that he
could imitate him. The ministers told the marshal that they were coming
to establish themselves at the Head-quarters of the Guard.

No orders having arrived from Saint-Cloud, at nine o'clock in the
morning, on the 28th, when it was no longer time to hold everything,
but to recapture everything, the marshal ordered the troops, which
had already shown themselves in part on the preceding day, to leave
barracks. No precautions had been taken to send provisions to the
Carrousel, the head-quarters. The bakehouse, which they had forgotten
to have sufficiently guarded, was carried by the mob. M. le Duc de
Raguse, a man of intelligence and merit, a brave soldier, a clever but
unlucky general, proved for the thousandth time that military genius is
not enough to overcome civil troubles: the first-come police-officer
would have known better what was to be done than the marshal. Perhaps
also his intellect was paralyzed by his memories; he remained as though
stifled under the weight of the fatality of his name.

[Sidenote: The guards attacked.]

Under the command of the Comte de Saint-Chamans[219], the first column
of the Guard set out from the Madeleine to proceed along the boulevards
to the Bastille. No sooner had they started, than the platoon commanded
by M. Sala[220] was attacked; the royalist officer briskly repulsed
the assault. As they advanced, the posts of communication left behind
on the road, too weak and too far removed one from the other, were
cut by the people and separated by felled trees and barricades. An
affray took place, attended with bloodshed, at the Portes Saint-Denis
and Saint-Martin. Passing by the scene of the future exploits of
Fieschi[221], M. de Saint-Chamans encountered numerous groups of women
and men on the Place de la Bastille. He called upon them to disperse,
distributing some money among them; but the people persisted in firing
from the surrounding houses. He was obliged to renounce his intention
of reaching the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue Saint-Antoine and, after
crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz, returned to the Carrousel along the
south boulevards. Turenne, acting on behalf of the mother of the infant
Louis XIV., had been more fortunate before the Bastille, then not yet
demolished.

The column sent to occupy the Hôtel de Ville[222] followed the Quais
des Tuileries, du Louvre and de l'École, crossed the first half of
the Pont-Neuf, took the Quai de l'Horloge and the Marché-aux-Fleurs,
and reached the Place de Grève by the Pont Notre-Dame. Two platoons
of Guards effected a diversion by filing towards the new suspension
bridge. A battalion of the 15th Light Infantry supported the Guards,
and was to leave two platoons on the Marché-aux-Fleurs.

There was some fighting as they crossed the Seine on the Pont
Notre-Dame. The mob, headed by a drum, bravely faced the Guards. The
officer in command of the Royal Artillery explained to the mass of
people that they were exposing themselves uselessly and that, as they
had no guns, they would be shot down without the smallest chance of
succeeding. The rabble persisted; the guns were fired. The soldiers
streamed on to the quays and the Place de Grève, where two other
platoons of Guards arrived by the Pont d'Arcole. They had been obliged
to force their way through crowds of students from the Faubourg
Saint-Jacques. The Hôtel de Ville was occupied.

A barricade rose at the entrance to the Rue du Monton: a brigade of
Swiss carried the barricade; the rabble, rushing up from the adjacent
streets, recaptured its entrenchment with loud shouts. The barricade
remained finally in the hands of the Guards.

In all those poor and popular quarters, they fought spontaneously,
without after-thought: mocking, heedless, intrepid, French giddiness
had mounted to all heads; glory, to our nation, has the lightness of
champagne. The women at the windows encouraged the men in the streets;
notes were written promising the marshal's baton to the first colonel
who should go over to the people; clusters of men marched to the
sound of a violin. It was a medley of tragic and clownish scenes, of
mountebank and triumphant spectacles: one heard shouts of laughter and
oaths in the midst of musket-shots and the dull roar of the crowd,
across masses of smoke. With foraging-cap on head, bare-footed,
improvised carmen, supplied with permits from unknown leaders, drove
convoys of wounded through the combatants, who separated to let them
pass.

In the wealthy quarters reigned a different spirit. The National Guards
had resumed the uniforms of which they had been stripped, and assembled
in large numbers at the Mayor's Office of the 1st Ward to preserve
order. In these engagements, the Guards suffered more than the people,
because they were exposed to the fire of invisible enemies in the
houses. Others shall give the names of the drawing-room heroes who,
safely ambushed behind a shutter or chimney-pot, amused themselves
by shooting down the officers of the Guards whom they recognised. In
the streets, the animosity of the labourer and the soldier did not
go beyond striking the blow: once wounded, they mutually aided one
another. The mob saved several victims. Two officers, M. de Goyon and
M. Rivaux, after an heroic defense, owed their lives to the generosity
of the victors. Captain Kaumann of the Guards received a blow on the
head from an iron bar: dazed and with his eyes filled with blood, he
struck up with his sword the bayonets of his soldiers who were taking
aim at the workman.

[Sidenote: Chivalry on both sides.]

The Guard was full of Bonaparte's grenadiers. Several officers lost
their lives, among others Lieutenant Noirot, a man of extraordinary
valour, who in 1813 had received the cross of the Legion of Honour
from Prince Eugene for a feat of arms accomplished in one of the
redoubts at Caldiera. Colonel de Pleineselve, mortally wounded at the
Porte Saint-Martin, had been in the wars of the Empire in Holland, in
Spain, with the Grand Army and in the Imperial Guard. At the Battle
of Leipzig, he took the Austrian General Merfeld prisoner. Carried by
his soldiers to the Hôpital du Gros-Caillou, he refused to have his
wounds dressed until all the other wounded of July had been treated.
Dr. Larrey[223], whom he had met on other battle-fields, amputated
his leg at the thigh; it was too late to save him. Happy those noble
adversaries, who had seen so many cannon-balls pass over their heads,
if they did not fall before the bullet of one of those liberated
convicts whom justice has found again, since the day of victory, in
the ranks of the victors! Those galley-slaves were unable to pollute
the national republican triumph; they prejudiced only the royalty of
Louis-Philippe. Thus perished obscurely, in the streets of Paris, the
survivors of those famous soldiers who had escaped from the cannon of
the Moskowa, of Lutzen and Leipzig: we massacred under Charles X. those
heroes whom we had so greatly admired under Napoleon. They wanted but
one man: that man had disappeared at St. Helena.

At fall of night, a non-commissioned officer in disguise came to
bring orders to the troops at the Hôtel de Ville to fall back upon
the Tuileries. The retreat was made hazardous because of the wounded,
whom they did not wish to abandon, and of the artillery, which it was
difficult to convey across the barricades. Nevertheless it was effected
without accident. When the troops returned from the different quarters
of Paris, they thought that the King and Dauphin had come back also:
looking in vain for the White Flag on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, they
uttered the energetic language of the camps.

It is not true, as I have shown, that the Hôtel de Ville was captured
by the Guards from the people and recaptured from the Guards by the
people. When the Guards entered, they encountered no resistance, for
there was no one there: the Prefect himself had gone. This boasting
weakens and casts a doubt upon the real dangers. The Guards were
badly engaged in tortuous streets; the Line, at first by its show
of neutrality, and later by its defection, completed the harm which
plans fine in theory, but unfeasible in practice, had begun. The 50th
Regiment of the Line had arrived at the Hôtel de Ville during the
fighting; ready to drop with fatigue, they hastened to retire to the
inside of the Hôtel, and lent their exhausted comrades their unused and
useless cartridges.

The Swiss battalion which had been left on the Marché des Innocents was
released by another Swiss battalion: together they came out at the Quai
de l'École and stood in the Louvre.

For the rest, barricades are entrenchments in keeping with the Parisian
character; they are found in all our troubles, from Charles IX. to our
own times:

    "The people," says L'Éstoile, "seeing those forces disposed over
    the streets, began to be agitated and made barricades in the manner
    that all know: many Swiss were slain, who were buried in a ditch
    dug in the enclosure of Notre-Dame; the Duke of Guyse passing
    through the streets, all vied in crying loudly, 'Long live Guyse!'
    and quoth he, doffing his large hat:

    "'My friends, it is enough; gentlemen, it is too much; shout, "Long
    live the King!"'"

Why do our barricades, which led to such mighty results, gain so
little in the telling, while the barricades of 1588, which produced
nothing, are so interesting to read of? This is due to the difference
in centuries and persons: the sixteenth century carried all before it;
the nineteenth century has left all behind it: M. de Puyravault is not
quite the Balafré.


While this fighting was continuing, the civil and political revolution
followed the military revolution on parallel lines. The soldiers locked
up in the Abbaye were set at liberty; the debtors at Sainte-Pélagie
escaped and the political prisoners were released: a revolution is a
jubilee; it absolves from every crime, permitting greater crimes.

The Ministers sat in council at the Staff Office: they resolved to
arrest Messieurs Laffitte[224], La Fayette, Gérard, Marchais[225],
Salverte[226] and Audry de Puyravault as leaders of the movement;
the marshal gave the order for their arrest; but, when, later, they
appeared before him as delegates, he did not think it consistent with
his honour to put his order into execution.

[Sidenote: Meetings of peers and deputies.]

A gathering of the Monarchical Party, consisting of peers and deputies,
met at M. Guizot's: the Duc de Broglie was there, as were Messieurs
Thiers and Mignet, who had made their reappearance, and M. Carrel,
although he held different ideas. It was there that the name of the Duc
d'Orléans was first pronounced by the Usurpation Party. M. Thiers and
M. Mignet went to General Sébastiani to talk to him of the Prince. The
general replied in an evasive manner; the Duc d'Orléans, he asserted,
had never entertained such designs and had not authorized him to do
anything.

About mid-day, on the same day, the 28th, the general meeting of the
deputies took place at M. Audry de Puyravault's[227]. M. de La Fayette,
the leader of the Republican Party, had reached Paris on the 27th; M.
Laffitte, the leader of the Orleanist Party, had arrived on the 27th,
at night; he went to the Palais-Royal, where he found no one; he sent
to Neuilly: the King in embryo was not there.

At M. de Puyravault's, they discussed the proposal of a protest against
the Ordinances. This protest, which was of a more than moderate
character, left the great questions untouched.

M. Casimir Périer was in favour of hastening to the Duc de Raguse;
while the five deputies selected were preparing to leave, M. Arago[228]
was with the marshal: he had decided, on receipt of a note from Madame
de Boigne, to be before-hand with the delegates. He represented to
the marshal the necessity for putting an end to the troubles of the
Capital. M. de Raguse went to obtain intelligence at M. de Polignac's;
the latter, hearing of the hesitation among the troops, declared that,
if they went over to the people, they were to be fired on like the
insurgents. General de Tromelin[229] was present at the conversation
and flew into a passion with General d'Ambrugeac[230]. Then came the
deputation. M. Laffitte spoke:

"We come," he said, "to ask you to stop bloodshed. If the fighting
continues, it will carry with it not only the most frightful
calamities, but a real revolution."

The marshal confined himself to a question of military honour,
maintaining that it was the duty of the people first to cease fighting;
nevertheless he added this postscript to a letter which he was writing
to the King:

    "I think it is urgent that Your Majesty should avail yourself
    without delay of the overtures that have been made."

Colonel Komierowski, aide-de-camp to the Duc de Raguse, was shown into
the King's closet at Saint-Cloud, and handed him the letter; the King
said to him:

"I will read this letter."

The colonel withdrew and waited orders; seeing that they were not
forthcoming, he begged M. le Duc de Duras to go to the King to ask for
them. The duke replied that etiquette made it impossible for him to
enter the closet. At last M. Komierowski was sent for by the King and
told to enjoin the marshal "to hold out."

General Vincent on his side hurried down to Saint-Cloud; he forced the
door which was denied him, and told the King that all was lost:

"My dear fellow," replied Charles X., "you are a good general, but
these are things that you know nothing about."


The 29th saw new combatants enter the field: the pupils of the
Polytechnic School, who were in correspondence with one of their old
schoolfellows, M. Charras[231], broke bounds and sent four of their
number, Messieurs Lothon, Perthelin, Pinsonnière and Tourneaux to offer
their services to Messieurs Laffitte, Périer and La Fayette. These
young men, distinguished by their studies, had already made themselves
known to the Allies, when the latter appeared before Paris in 1814;
during the Three Days, they became the leaders of the people, who, with
perfect simplicity, placed them at their head. Some repaired to the
Place de l'Odéon, others to the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries.

[Sidenote: The King's obstinacy.]

The Order of the Day published on the morning of the 29th offended the
Guards: it announced that the King, wishing to give a proof of his
satisfaction to his brave servants, awarded them six weeks' pay; an
impropriety which the French soldier resented: it was placing him on a
level with the English, who refuse to march or who mutiny, if their pay
is in arrears.

During the night of the 28th, the people took up the street-pavement,
at each twenty yards' distance, and, at day-break the next morning,
there were four thousand barricades standing in Paris.

The Palais-Bourbon was guarded by the Line, the Louvre by two Swiss
battalions, the Rue de la Paix, the Place Vendôme and the Rue
Castiglione by the 5th and 53rd Regiments of the Line. About twelve
hundred infantrymen had arrived from Saint-Denis, Versailles and Rueil.

The military position was better: the troops were more concentrated,
and big empty spaces had to be crossed to reach them. General
Exelmans[232], who thought well of the dispositions, came at eleven
o'clock to place his courage and experience at the disposal of the
Maréchal de Raguse, while on his side General Pajol[233] presented
himself before the deputies to take command of the National Guard.

The ministers had the idea of summoning the King's Court to the
Tuileries, so completely out of touch were they with the movement
surrounding them! The marshal pressed the President of the Council
to withdraw the Ordinances. During the interview, M. de Polignac was
asked for; he went out, and returned with M. Bertier[234], son of the
first victim sacrificed in 1789. M. Bertier had been through Paris,
and declared that all was going well for the royal cause: what a fatal
thing are those families which have a right to vengeance, cast into the
tomb, as they were, in our early troubles and conjured up by our later
misfortunes! Those misfortunes were novelties no longer; since 1793,
Paris was accustomed to witness the passing of events and kings.

While all was going so well according to the Royalists, the defection
was announced of the 5th and 53rd of the Line, who were fraternizing
with the people.

[Sidenote: Butchery at the Louvre.]

The Duc de Raguse proposed a suspension of hostilities: it took
place at some points and was not carried out at others. The marshal
had sent for one of the two Swiss battalions posted at the Louvres.
They dispatched to him the battalion which lined the colonnade. The
Parisians, seeing the colonnade deserted, came up to the walls and
entered by the masked doors which lead from the Jardin de l'Infante
to the interior; they made for the windows and opened fire on the
battalion standing in the court-yard. Under the terror of the memory
of the 10th of August, the Swiss rushed from the Palace and hurled
themselves into their battalion, which was posted opposite the Parisian
outposts; here, however, the suspension of hostilities was being
observed. The mob, which from the Louvre had reached the gallery of
the Museum, began to fire from the midst of the master-pieces on the
Lancers drawn up in the Carrousel. The Parisian posts, carried away by
this example, broke off the suspension of hostilities. Flung headlong
under the Arc de Triomphe, the Swiss drove the Lancers to the porch of
the Pavillon de l'Horloge and debouched in confusion into the garden of
the Tuileries. Young Farcy[235] met his death in this scuffle: his name
is written up at the corner of the café where he fell; a beet-factory
stands at Thermopylae to-day. The Swiss had three or four men killed or
wounded: this small loss was changed into a frightful butchery.

The mob entered the Tuileries, with Messieurs Thomas[236], Bastide[237]
and Guinard[238], by the Pont-Royal gate. A tricolour flag was planted
on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, as in the time of Bonaparte, apparently
in remembrance of liberty. Furniture was broken up, pictures slashed
with sword-cuts; in a cupboard they found the King's hunting journal,
with particulars of his fine exploits against the partridges: an old
custom of the gamekeepers of the Monarchy. They put a corpse on the
empty throne, in the Throne Room: that would be a formidable thing, if
the French of to-day were not always playing at drama. The artillery
museum, at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, was pillaged, and the centuries passed
down the river, under the helmet of Godfrey of Bouillon and with the
lance of Francis I.

Then the Duc de Raguse left the Staff Office, leaving 120,000 francs
in bags behind him. He went through the Rue de Rivoli and entered the
Tuileries Gardens. He gave the order for the troops to retire, first to
the Champs Élysées, and next to the Étoile. It was believed that peace
was made, that the Dauphin was coming; some carriages from the Royal
Mews and a baggage-wagon were seen to cross the Place Louis XV.: it was
the ministers going after their works.

On arriving at the Étoile, Marmont received a letter: it informed him
that the King had given M. le Dauphin the command-in-chief of the
troops, and that he, the marshal, would serve under his orders.

A company of the 3rd Guards had been forgotten in the house of a hatter
in the Rue de Rohan; after a long resistance the house was carried.
Captain Meunier, wounded in three places, jumped from a third-floor
window, fell on a roof below, and was taken to the Hôpital du
Grand-Caillou: he has survived. The Caserne Babylone, attacked between
twelve and one in the day by three pupils of the Polytechnic School,
Vaneau, Lacroix and Ouvrier, was guarded only by a depot of Swiss
recruits numbering about a hundred men; Major Dufay, an officer of
French descent, was in command: he had served with us for thirty years;
he had been an actor in the great exploits of the Republic and the
Empire. He was called upon to surrender, refused all conditions, and
locked himself up in his barrack. Young Vaneau was killed. Some firemen
set fire to the barrack-door, which fell in pieces; at once Major Dufay
issued through this mouth of flame, followed by his highlanders, with
fixed bayonets. He fell, struck by the musket-shot of a neighbouring
publican: his death saved his Swiss recruits; they joined the different
corps to which they belonged.


M. le Duc de Mortemart[239] arrived at Saint-Cloud on Wednesday the
28th, at ten o'clock in the evening, to take up his service as Captain
of the Hundred Swiss: he was not able to speak to the King till the
next day. At eleven o'clock, on the 29th, he made a few efforts to
induce Charles X. to recall the Ordinances; the King said to him:

"I do not want to climb into the cart, like my brother; I will not go
back by a foot."

A few minutes later, he was to go back by a kingdom!

[Sidenote: Charles X. and his ministers.]

The ministers had arrived: Messieurs de Sémonville, d'Argout[240],
Vitrolles were there. M. de Sémonville related that he had had a long
conversation with the King; that he had not succeeded in shaking his
resolution until he made an appeal to his heart by speaking to him of
the dangers to which Madame la Dauphine was exposed. He said to him:
"To-morrow, at noon, there will be no King, no Dauphin, no Duc de
Bordeaux."

And the King replied:

"You will surely give me till one o'clock."

I do not believe a word of all this. Bragging is our national fault;
question a Frenchman and trust to his story: he will always have done
everything.

The ministers went in to the King after M. de Sémonville; the
Ordinances were revoked, the Ministry dissolved, M. de Mortemart
appointed President of the new Council.

In the Capital, the Republican Party had at last run some one to
earth. M. Baude, the man of the parade at the office of the _Temps_,
going through the streets, had found the Hôtel de Ville occupied by
only two men, M. Dubourg and M. Zimmer. He at once proclaimed himself
the emissary of a "Provisional Government" which was coming to instal
itself. He sent for the clerks of the Prefecture and ordered them
to set to work as though M. de Chabrol were present. In governments
which have become machines the weights are soon wound up again; every
one hastens to take possession of the deserted places: this one made
himself secretary-general, that other head of a division, a third took
the accounts, a fourth appointed himself to the staff and distributed
the places on the staff among his friends; there were some who went
so far as to send for their beds, so as not to leave the spot and to
be in a position to jump upon the first place that became vacant.
M. Dubourg, nicknamed "General" Dubourg, and M. Zimmer were styled
the heads of the "military" side of the "Provisional Government" M.
Baude represented the "civil" side of this unknown government, took
resolutions and issued proclamations. And yet placards had been seen
which came from the Republican Party and which were the production of
a different government, consisting of Messieurs de La Fayette, Gérard
and de Choiseul. It is difficult to explain the association of the last
name with the two others; besides, M. de Choiseul protested. This old
Liberal, who, emigrating and shipwrecked at Calais, to save his life
mimicked the stiffness of death[241], found no paternal home, on his
return to France, save a box at the Opera.

At three o'clock in the afternoon came a new element of confusion.
An Order of the Day summoned the deputies in Paris to the Hôtel de
Ville, there to confer on the measures to be taken. The mayors were
to be restored to their mayoralties; they were also to send one of
their deputy-mayors to the Hôtel de Ville, in order to make up a
"consultative commission" there. This Order was signed, "J. Baude, for
the Provisional Government" and "Colonel Zimmer, by order of General
Dubourg." This audacity on the part of three persons speaking in the
name of a government that existed only in so far as it had placarded
itself at the street-corners proves the rare intelligence of the
French in revolution: such men as these are evidently leaders destined
to sway other nations. What a misfortune that, in delivering us from a
similar anarchy, Bonaparte should have snatched from us our liberty!

[Sidenote: Meeting at M. Laffitte's.]

The deputies had again met at M. Laffitte's[242]. M. de La Fayette,
going back to 1789, declared that he would also go back to the command
of the National Guard. This met with applause, and he proceeded to
the Hôtel de Ville. The deputies nominated a "Municipal Commission"
consisting of five members, Messieurs Casimir Périer, Laffitte, de
Lobau[243], de Schonen and Audry de Puyravault. M. Odilon Barrot
was elected secretary to the Commission, which installed itself at
the Hôtel de Ville, as M. de La Fayette had done. All these sat
promiscuously, beside the Provisional Government of M. Dubourg. M.
Mauguin[244], sent as an emissary to the "Commission," remained with
it. The friend of Washington ordered the black flag which had been
hoisted by the ingenuity of M. Dubourg to be removed.

At half-past eight in the evening, M. de Sémonville, M. d'Argout
and M. de Vitrolles arrived from Saint-Cloud. They had hastened to
Paris immediately after hearing, at Saint-Cloud, of the repeal of the
Ordinances, the dismissal of the old ministers and the appointment of
M. de Mortemart to the Presidency of the Council. They appeared before
the Municipal Commission in the quality of mandatories of the King. M.
Mauguin asked the Grand Refendary if he had written powers; the Grand
Refendary replied that "he had not thought of it." The negociations of
the official commissaries went no further.

M. Laffitte, informed at the meeting at his house of what had taken
place at Saint-Cloud, signed a permit for M. de Mortemart, adding
that the deputies assembled at his house would wait for him until one
o'clock in the morning. As the noble duke did not appear, the deputies
went home.

M. Laffitte, left alone with M. Thiers, occupied himself with the Duc
d'Orléans and the necessary proclamations. Fifty years of revolution
in France had given the men of practice the facility for reorganizing
governments and the men of theory the habit of refurbishing charters
and preparing the cranes and cradles by which governments are hoisted
up or let down.


On this same day, the 29th, the day after my return to Paris, I was not
idle. My plan was fixed: I wanted to act, but only on an order, written
in the King's own hand, which would give me the necessary powers to
speak with the authorities of the moment; to meddle with everything and
do nothing did not suit me. That I had argued rightly is proved by the
affront received by Messieurs d'Argout, de Sémonville and de Vitrolles.

I therefore wrote to Charles X. at Saint-Cloud. M. de Givré undertook
to carry my letter. I begged the King to instruct me as to his wishes.
M. de Givré returned empty-handed. He had given my letter to M. le Duc
de Duras, who had given it to the King, who sent me word that he had
appointed M. de Mortemart his Prime Minister and asked me to arrange
with him. Where to find the noble duke? I looked for him in vain on the
evening of the 29th.

Rejected by Charles X., I turned my thoughts to the Chamber of Peers,
which was able, as a sovereign court, to evoke a trial and adjust the
difference. If it was not safe in Paris, it was at liberty to transfer
itself to some distance, even to the King's side, and from there to
pronounce a grand award. It had chances of success; there are always
chances of success in courage. After all, had it succumbed, it would
have undergone a defeat which would have been useful to the question of
principle. But should I have found twenty men in that Chamber prepared
to devote themselves? Of those twenty men, were there four who would
have agreed with me on public liberty?

Aristocratic assemblies enjoy a glorious reign when they are sovereign
and alone invested, _de jure et de facto_, with power: they offer the
strongest guarantees; but, in mixed forms of government, they lose
their value and become pitiful in times of great crisis. Weak against
the king, they do not prevent despotism; weak against the people,
they do not stop anarchy. In any public commotion, they redeem their
existence only at the price of perjury or slavery. Did the House of
Lords save Charles I.? Did it save Richard Cromwell[245], to whom it
had taken the oath? Did it save James II.? Will it save the Hanoverian
Princes to-day? Will it save itself? Those self-styled aristocratic
counter-weights only disturb the balance and will sooner or later be
flung out of the scale. An ancient and wealthy aristocracy, having
the habit of business, has only one means of retaining power when the
latter is escaping from it: that is, to cross over from the Capitol to
the Forum and place itself at the head of the new movement, unless it
think itself still strong enough to risk civil war.

While awaiting M. de Givré's return, I was pretty busy in defending
my quarter. The suburbs, the quarrymen of Montrouge came crowding
through the Barrière de l'Enfer. The latter resembled those quarrymen
of Montmartre who caused such great alarm to Mademoiselle de Mornay
when she was fleeing from the massacres of St. Bartholomew. As they
passed before the community-house of the Missionaries, in my street,
they entered it: a score of priests were obliged to take to flight; the
haunt of those fanatics was philosophically pillaged, their beds and
their books burnt in the street. This trifle has not been mentioned.
Was there any need to trouble about what the priesthood might have
lost? I gave hospitality to seven or eight fugitives; they remained
for several days hidden under my roof. I obtained passports for them
through the intermediary of my neighbour, M. Arago, and they went
elsewhere to preach the Word of God: _utilis populis fuga sanctorum._


[Sidenote: The Municipal Commission.]

The Municipal Commission, established at the Hôtel de Ville, appointed
the Baron Louis Provisional Commissary of Finance, M. Baude Minister
of the Interior, M. Mérilhou Minister of Justice, gave M. Chardel[246]
the Post Office, M. Marchal[247] the Telegraphs, M. Bavoux[248]
the Police, M. de Laborde the Prefecture of the Seine. Thus the
"voluntary" Provisional Government found itself destroyed in reality
by the promotion of M. Baude, who had created himself a member of that
government. The shops were opened again; the public services resumed
their course.

At the meeting at M. Laffitte's, it had been decided that the deputies
should assemble, at noon, at the palace of the Chamber: some thirty
or thirty-five met there, under the presidency of M. Laffitte.
M. Bérard[249] announced that he had met Messieurs d'Argout, de
Forbin-Janson[250] and de Mortemart on their way to M. Laffitte's,
thinking that they would find the deputies there; that he had invited
those gentlemen to follow him to the Chamber, but that M. le Duc
de Mortemart, overwhelmed with fatigue, had gone away to see M. de
Sémonville. M. de Mortemart, according to M. Bérard, said that he had a
signature in blank and that the King consented to everything.

In fact, M. de Mortemart brought five Ordinances: instead of
communicating them at once to the deputies, he was obliged by his
lassitude to go back to the Luxembourg. At mid-day he sent the
Ordinances to M. Sauvo[251]; the latter replied that he could not
publish them in the _Moniteur_ without the authorization of the Chamber
of Deputies or the Municipal Commission.

M. Bérard having told his story, as I have said, in the Chamber,
a discussion followed to decide whether they should receive M. de
Mortemart or not General Sébastiani insisted on the affirmative; M.
Mauguin declared that, if M. de Mortemart were present, he would ask
that he should be heard, but that events were urgent and that they
could not wait on M. de Mortemart's good pleasure.

Five commissaries were appointed, charged to go to confer with the
peers: these five commissaries were Messieurs Augustin Périer[252],
Sébastiani, Guizot, Benjamin Delessert[253], and Hyde de Neuville. But
soon the Comte de Sussy[254] was introduced into the Elective Chamber.
M. de Mortemart had charged him to present the Ordinances to the
deputies. Addressing the assembly, he said:

"In the Chancellor's absence, a few peers met at my house. M. le Duc de
Mortemart handed us this letter, addressed to M. le Général Gérard or
M. Casimir Périer. I beg leave to communicate its contents to you."

Here is the letter:

    "MONSIEUR,

    "After leaving Saint-Cloud during the night, I have in vain tried
    to meet you. Please tell me where I can see you. I beg you to
    give notice of the Ordinances which I have been carrying since
    yesterday."

[Sidenote: The Duc de Montemart.]

M. le Duc de Mortemart had left Saint-Cloud during the night; he had
had the Ordinances in his pocket for twelve or fifteen hours, "since
yesterday," to use his own expression; he had been unable to find
General Gérard or M. Casimir Périer: M. de Mortemart was very unlucky!
M. Bérard made the following observation on the letter that had been
read aloud:

"I cannot," he said, "refrain from calling attention here to a lack of
frankness: M. de Mortemart, who was proceeding to M. Laffitte's this
morning when I met him, formally told me that he would come here."

The five Ordinances were read. The first recalled the Ordinances of the
25th of July, the second summoned the Chambers for the 3rd of August,
the third appointed M. de Mortemart Foreign Minister and President of
the Council, the fourth called General Gérard to the War Office, the
fifth M. Casimir Périer to the Ministry of Finance. When I at last met
M. de Mortemart at the Grand Referendary's, he told me that he had
been obliged to stay at M. de Sémonville's, because, having returned
on foot from Saint-Cloud, he had had to go out of his way and enter
the Bois de Boulogne by a gap: his boot or his shoe had taken the skin
off his heel. It is to be regretted that, before producing the acts of
the Throne, M. de Mortemart did not try to see the influential men and
bring them round to the King's side. These acts falling suddenly in the
midst of the unforewarned deputies, no one dared to declare himself.
They drew down upon themselves this terrible reply from Benjamin
Constant:

"We know beforehand what the Chamber of Peers will say to us: it will
purely and simply accept the repeal of the Ordinances. As for myself, I
do not pronounce positively on the dynastic question; I will only say
that it would be too easy for a king to have his people shot down and
to avoid the consequences by saying afterwards, 'Everything is as it
was.'"

Would Benjamin Constant, who "did not pronounce positively on the
dynastic question," have ended his phrase in the same way if words
had been addressed to him earlier suited to his talents and his just
ambition? I sincerely pity a man of courage and honour like M. de
Mortemart, when I come to think that the Legitimate Monarchy was
perhaps overthrown because the minister charged with the royal powers
was unable to find two deputies in Paris and because, tired with doing
three leagues on foot, he barked his heel. The Ordinance nominating
M. de Mortemart to the St. Petersburg Embassy has taken the place
for him of the Ordinances of his old master. Ah, how could I refuse
Louis-Philippe's request that I should be his Minister of Foreign
Affairs or resume my beloved embassy in Rome? But alas, what should I
have done with my "beloved" on the bank of the Tiber? I should always
have believed that she blushed as she looked at me.


On the morning of the 30th, I received a note from the Grand
Referendary summoning me to the meeting of the Peers, at the
Luxembourg. I wanted first to learn some news. I went down the Rue
d'Enfer, the Place Saint-Michel and the Rue Dauphine. There was still a
little excitement around the broken barricades. I compared what I saw
with the great revolutionary movement of 1789, and the present struck
me as orderly and silent: the change of manners was visible.

At the Pont-Neuf, the statue of Henry IV., like an ensign of the
League, held a tricolour flag in its hand. Men of the people said, as
they looked at the bronze King:

"You would never have been such a fool, old man."

Groups had assembled on the Quai de l'École: I saw, in the distance, a
general accompanied by two aides-de-camp, all on horse-back. I went in
their direction. As I elbowed my way through the crowd, my eyes were on
the general: a tricolour sash across his coat, his hat cocked over the
back of his head, with one comer in front. He caught sight of me in his
turn, and cried:

"See! The viscount!"

[Sidenote: General Dubourg.]

And I, surprised, recognised Colonel or Captain Dubourg, my companion
at Ghent, who was going, during our return to Paris, to take the open
towns in the name of Louis XVIII., and who brought us, as I have
related, half a sheep for dinner in a dirty lodging at Arnouville[255].
This is the officer whom the newspapers had represented as an austere
soldier of the Republic, with grey mustachios, who had refused to serve
under the imperial tyranny and who was so poor that they had been
obliged to buy him a uniform of the days of Larevellière-Lepeaux[256]
at the rag-fair. Then I exclaimed:

"Why, it's you! What..."

He stretched out his arms to me, pressed my hand on Flanquine's neck; a
circle was formed around us:

"My dear fellow," said the military head of the Provisional Government,
pointing out the Louvre to me, "there were twelve hundred of them in
there: we gave them prunes in their hinder parts! And they ran, oh, how
they ran!"

M. Dubourg's aides-de-camp burst into loud roars of laughter; the
rabble laughed in unison, the general spurred his nag, which caracoled
like a broken-backed beast, followed by two other Rosinantes slipping
on the paving-stones as though ready to fall on their noses between
their riders' legs.

Thus, proudly borne away, did the Diomedes of the Hôtel de Ville, a
man, for the rest, of courage and wit, abandon me. I have seen men
who, taking all the scenes of 1830 for serious, blushed at this story,
because it somewhat counteracted their heroic credulity. I myself was
ashamed on seeing the comical side of the gravest revolutions and how
easy it is to trifle with the good faith of the people.

M. Louis Blanc, in the first volume of his excellent _Histoire de dix
ans_, published after what I have just written here, confirms my story:

    "A man," he says, "of middle height, with an energetic countenance,
    and wearing a general's uniform, was crossing the Marché des
    Innocents, followed by a great number of armed men. M. Évariste
    Dumoulin[257], editor of the _Constitutionnel_, had supplied
    this man with his uniform, obtained at an old-clothes shop; and
    the epaulets which he wore had been given him by Perlet[258], the
    actor: they came from the property-room of the Opéra-Comique.

    "'Who is that general?" was asked on every hand.

    "And when they who surrounded him answered, 'It is General
    Dubourg,' 'Long live General Dubourg!' cried the people, who had
    never heard the name before[259]."

A few paces further, a different sight awaited me: a ditch had been dug
before the colonnade of the Louvre; a priest, in surplice and stole,
was praying beside the ditch: they were laying dead bodies in it. I
took off my hat and made the sign of the cross. The silent crowd stood
respectfully watching the ceremony, which would have been nothing if
religion had not appeared in it. So many memories and reflections
presented themselves to my mind that I remained quite motionless.
Suddenly I felt myself being crowded round; a cry arose:

"Long live the defender of the liberty of the press!"

I had been recognised by my hair. Forthwith some young men caught hold
of me and said:

"Which way are you going? We are going to carry you."

I did not know what to answer; I begged to be excused; I struggled;
I entreated them to let me go. The time fixed for the meeting in the
House of Peers had not yet come. The young men kept on shouting:

"Which way are you going? Which way are you going?"

I replied at random:

"Well, to the Palais-Royal!"

Forthwith I was escorted there, amid cries of "The Charter for ever!
The liberty of the press for ever! Chateaubriand for ever!" In the Cour
des Fontaines, M. Barba[260], the bookseller, left his house and came
to embrace me.

We arrived at the Palais-Royal; I was plumped down in a café under the
wooden arcade. I was dying with heat. With clasped hands I reiterated
my request for remission of my glory: not a bit of it; the whole of
that youth refused to leave hold of me. In the crowd was a man in
a waistcoat-jacket with the sleeves turned up, with black hands, a
sinister face and gleaming eyes, such as I had seen so often at the
commencement of the Revolution: he continually tried to approach me,
and the young men always thrust him back. I learnt neither his name nor
what he wanted with me.

I had to make up my mind at last to say that I was going to the House
of Peers. We left the café; the cheers began afresh. In the court-yard
of the Louvre, different kinds of shouts were raised: some cried, "To
the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" others, "Long live the First Consul!"
and seemed to wish to make me the heir of Bonaparte the Republican.
Hyacinthe, who accompanied me, received his share of hand-shaking and
embraces. We crossed the Pont des Arts and took the Rue de Seine. The
people flocked on our passage; they crowded the windows. I suffered
under all these honours, for my arms were being torn from their
sockets. One of the young men who were pushing me from behind suddenly
slipped his head between my legs and lifted me on his shoulders. New
cheers; they shouted to the spectators in the street and at the windows:

"Hats off! Hurrah for the Charter!"

And I replied:

"Yes, gentlemen, hurrah for the Charter! But hurrah for the King!"

This cry was not taken up, but it provoked no anger. And that is how
the game was lost! All might still be arranged, but it was necessary
to present only popular men to the people: in revolutions, a name does
more than an army.

[Sidenote: I am carried to the Luxembourg.]

I besought my young friends to such good purpose that at last they put
me down. In the Rue de Seine, opposite M. Le Normant, my publisher, a
furniture-dealer offered an arm-chair to carry me in; I refused it and
arrived in the main court of the Luxembourg in the midst of my triumph.
My generous escort then left me, after shouting fresh cries of "The
Charter for ever! Chateaubriand for ever!"

I was touched by the sentiments of this noble youth: I had shouted,
"Long live the King!" in the midst of them all, quite as safely as
though I had been alone in my house; they knew my opinions; they
carried me themselves to the House of Peers, where they knew that I was
going to speak and remain loyal to my King: and yet it was the 30th of
July and we had just passed by the ditch where they were burying the
citizens killed by the bullets of the soldiers of Charles X.!


The noise which I left outside contrasted with the silence which
reigned in the entrance-hall of the Palace of the Luxembourg.
This silence increased in the gloomy gallery which precedes M. de
Sémonville's apartments. My presence embarrassed the twenty-five or
thirty peers who had gathered there: I hindered the sweet effusions of
fear, the tender consternation to which they were yielding. I there
at last saw M. de Mortemart. I told him that, in accordance with the
King's wishes, I was ready to act in agreement with him. He replied
that, as I have already stated, he had barked his heel on returning: he
disappeared again in the throng of the assembly. He apprized us of the
Ordinances which he had already communicated to the Deputies through
M. de Sussy. M. de Broglie declared that he had just been through
Paris; that we were living on a volcano; that the middle classes were
no longer able to restrain the workmen; that, if we merely pronounced
the name of Charles X., they would cut all our throats and demolish the
Luxembourg as they had demolished the Bastille:

"That's true, that's true!" muttered the prudent in a hollow voice,
shaking their heads[261].

M. de Caraman[262], who had been made a duke, apparently because he had
been M. de Metternich's lackey, maintained with great heat that it was
impossible to recognise the Ordinances:

"And why not, monsieur?" I asked.

This cold question iced his rapture.

[Sidenote: Meeting of the peers.]

The five commissaries from the Deputies arrived. M. le Général
Sébastiani led off with his customary phrase:

"Gentlemen, this is a serious business."

Next he sang the praises of M. le Duc de Mortemart's remarkable
moderation; he spoke of the dangers of Paris, pronounced a few words in
eulogy of H.R.H. Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans and concluded with the
impossibility of considering the Ordinances. I and M. Hyde de Neuville
were the only two who held the opposite opinion. I obtained leave to
speak:

"M. le Duc de Broglie has told us, gentlemen, that he has walked about
the streets and seen hostile dispositions on every hand. I, too, have
just been through Paris: three thousand young men escorted me to the
court-yard of this palace; you may have heard their cheers: are these
thirsting for your blood, who have thus greeted one of your colleagues?
They shouted:

"The Charter for ever!'

"I replied:

"'The King for ever!'

"They showed no anger, and came and brought me safe and sound into
your midst. Are those such threatening symptoms of public opinion?
Personally, I maintain that nothing is lost, that we can accept the
Ordinances. It is not a question of considering whether there be danger
or not, but of keeping the oaths which we have taken to the King, to
whom we owe our dignities, and many of us our fortune. His Majesty,
by withdrawing the Ordinances and changing his ministry, has done all
that he should; let us, in our turn, do our duty. What! In the whole
course of our lives there comes one single day in which we are obliged
to enter the lists, and shall we decline the combat? Let us give France
the example of honour and loyalty; let us save her from falling a prey
to anarchical combinations in which her peace, her true interests and
her liberties would be lost: danger vanishes when one dares to look it
in the face."

They made no reply; they hastened to close the meeting. There was
an impatience for perjury in that assembly, which was driven by an
intrepid fear; each one wished to save his rag of life, as though Time
were not waiting, on the morrow, to strip us of our old skins, for
which no sensible Jew would have given a groat.



[Footnote 162: This book was written in Paris in August and September
1830.--T.]

[Footnote 163: Lamartine was elected a member of the French Academy on
the 5th of November 1829, receiving nineteen votes against fourteen
given to General Philippe de Ségur.--B.]

[Footnote 164: Charles Jean Dominique de Lacretelle (1766-1855), member
of the French Academy, and author of the _Histoire de France pendant le
XVIIIe. siècle._--T.]

[Footnote 165: Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat (1788-1832), the distinguished
orientalist. He devoted the last years of his life to politics,
speaking and writing as an ardent adherent of the Legitimacy.--T.]

[Footnote 166: Antoine Jean Saint-Martin (1791-1832), also an eminent
orientalist and fervent Monarchist. He founded, in 1829, the absolutist
organ, the _Universel._--T.]

[Footnote 167: January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 168: Achille Charles Léonce Victor Duc de Broglie
(1785-1870), married in 1816 to Albertine, daughter of Madame de Staël.
He became a leading Orleanist statesman, was Minister of the Interior
and of Public Worship and Instruction (1830) and Minister of Foreign
Affairs (1832-1834 and 1834-1836), a peer of France, and a member of
the French Academy.--T.]

[Footnote 169: Louis Auguste Victor de Ghaisne, Comte de Bourmont
(1773-1846), had commanded the Chouans in the Vendée from 1794 to 1799,
and, in 1800, was imprisoned for complicity in the conspiracy resulting
in the Infernal Machine. He made his escape from Besançon and fled to
Lisbon, where he joined the French during their reverses and was taken
into favour by Napoleon in 1808. He served under Bonaparte in all his
subsequent campaigns. After the return from Elba he accepted a command
from the Emperor, but reverted to the King a few days before the
Battle of Waterloo. He was created a peer of France in 1823 and became
Minister for War in 1829. In 1830, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief
of the Algerian Expedition. After the Revolution of July, true to his
latent royalist sympathies, he fought for the Duchesse de Berry in the
Vendée and subsequently for Dom Miguel in Portugal, but always without
success. Eventually he abandoned politics and returned to France, where
he died at the Château de Bourmont in 1846.--T.]

[Footnote 170: Jean Joseph Antoine de Courvoisier (1775-1835).
He had emigrated and served in Condé's Army, and since 1818 was
Attorney-General to the Lyons Courts.--B.]

[Footnote 171: Guillaume Isidore Baron, Comte de Montbel (1787-1861),
escaped after the Revolution of July and fled to Austria. He was
sentenced by contumacy to perpetual imprisonment, and was not amnestied
until 1836, when he returned to France, keeping out of politics.
Montbel died at Frohsdorff while on a visit to the Comte de Chambord, 3
February 1861.--B.]

[Footnote 172: When M. de Polignac became President of the Council, on
the 17th of November 1829, M. de La Bourdonnaye sent in his resignation
as Minister of the Interior. One of his friends asked him the reason of
his resignation:

"They wanted to make me stake my head," was his reply. "I wanted to
hold the cards." (Villèle's Political Papers).--B.]

[Footnote 173: Martial Côme Annibal Perpétue Magloire Comte de
Guernon-Ranville (1787-1866), a distinguished lawyer. After the
Revolution of July, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and
confined at Ham, where he remained until the amnesty of 1836. He then
withdrew to the Château de Ranville, in Calvados, where he died in
November 1866.--B.]

[Footnote 174: The _National_, the first number of which was published
on the 3rd of January 1830. It was founded by Messieurs Thiers, Mignet
and Armand Carrel, each of whom was to have the management of the paper
for one year, commencing with M. Thiers.--B.]

[Footnote 175: Sautelet (_d._ 1830), the publisher, did in fact commit
suicide a few months after the founding of the _National._--B.]

[Footnote 176: Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) occupied Cabinet
positions from 1832 to 1836, and was Prime Minister from May to October
1840. His _Histoire du consulat et de l'empire_ was published from 1845
to 1862. He was a conspicuous member of the Constituent and Legislative
Assemblies from 1848 to 1851, and was arrested by Louis Napoleon at the
time of the _coup d'État._ In 1863, he was elected to the Legislative
Body, and led the opposition against the Imperial Government. On the
31st of August 1871, he was declared President of the French Republic
for a term of three years, but resigned on the 24th of May 1873. Thiers
had been a member of the French Academy since 1834.--T.]

[Footnote 177: Franços Auguste Marie Mignet (1796-1884), author of
the _Histoire de la révolution française de_ 1789 _à_ 1814 (1824) and
a number of other notable historical works. He was received into the
French Academy in 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 178: Nicolas Armand Carrel (1800-1836), an historian and
journalist, killed in a political duel on the 22nd of July 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 179: On the 5th of May 1830, the Duc d'Angoulême held a
review at Toulon of the fleet which was about to set sail for Algiers.
It consisted of 675 men-of-war and merchant-ships, including no less
than 11 battle-ships, 24 frigates and 70 war-ships of lesser strength.
This day represented Fortune's last smile upon the House of Bourbon,
which found France exhausted, impoverished, crushed beneath the weight
of unutterable disasters and was about to leave her free, prosperous
and powerful, with admirable finances and a superb fleet; which found
her vanquished, humiliated, trodden under foot by four hundred thousand
invaders and was about to bequeath to her the surest and fairest of
all conquests, accomplished under the eyes and despite the threats of
trembling England.--B.]

[Footnote 180: Charles V. lost a fleet and an army at Algiers in
1545.--T.]

[Footnote 181: Bossuet's funeral oration on the Empress Maria
Theresa.--T.]

[Footnote 182: Charles Lenormant (1802-1859), the French archæologist
and numismatist.--T.]

[Footnote 183: Jean Jacques Champollion Figeac (1778-1867), the noted
archæologist.--T.]

[Footnote 184: Auguste Théodore Hilaire Baron Barchou de Penhoen
(1801-1855), was a staff-captain in the Algerian Expedition, resigned
his commission in order not to serve the government of Louis-Philippe,
and devoted himself to literature and philosophy.--B.]

[Footnote 185: BARON BARCHOU DE PENHOEN: _Mémoires d'un officier
d'état-major_, p. 427.--_Authors Note._]

[Footnote 186: In his Speech from the Throne, Charles X. announced the
Algerian Expedition, declaring that the insult shown to the French
flag by a barbarous Power would not long remain unpunished, and that
a brilliant reparation was about to satisfy the honour of France. The
same evening, some friends, among whom was M. Villemain, had gathered
in Chateaubriand's drawing-room:

    "This," said Chateaubriand, "is one of the things that belong to
    the old French tradition, to the inheritance of St. Louis and
    Louis XIV.; this is what the Legitimate Royalty does. In the
    present crisis, with its wretched instruments, despite its fears,
    exaggerated, I grant you, it conceives a generous and Christian
    enterprise, one which I advised in 1816, one which it would have
    undertaken with me, if it had had the sense to keep me. Yes, this
    same Algiers which Bossuet shows us destroyed by our bomb-ketches,
    and which saved its harbour only by handing over its Christian
    slaves to us, may fall into our hands this summer. We shall do
    better than Lord Exmouth. Nothing will surprise me of French
    valour. Only, this delights me without reassuring me. Who knows the
    unfathomable depths of Providence? It is able with the same blow to
    lay low the conquered and the conqueror, to enlarge a kingdom and
    overthrow a dynasty."

(VILLEMAIN: _M. de Chateaubriand, sa vie, ses écrits, son influence
littéraire et politique sur son temps_).--B.]

[Footnote 187: Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), a dramatist and
publicist, appointed Censor in 1810, and a member of the French Academy
in 1811. The Bourbons excluded him from his public employment and even
from his seat in the Academy, to which he was not re-admitted until
1820, in which year he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1830
he was one of the signatories to the Address of the 221. Some years
later (1839), Louis-Philippe raised him to the peerage.--T.]

[Footnote 188: The Comte de Lorgeril (1778-1843) was elected in 1828 to
the seat vacated by M. de Corbière, who had been raised to the peerage.
Lorgeril lost his seat in 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 189: The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved on the 16th of
May. The departments which had only one electoral college were summoned
to vote on the 23rd of June; in the other departments, the district
colleges were to meet on the 3rd of July and the departmental colleges
on the 20th of July. The opening of the new Chamber was fixed for the
3rd of August.--B.]

[Footnote 190: The _Tribune des départements_, founded by Auguste and
Victornin Fabre. After 1830, this sheet became the most violent organ
of the Republican Opposition.--B.]

[Footnote 191: Hilaire Étienne Octave Rouillé, Comte, later (on the
death of his father in 1840) Marquis de Boissy (1798-1866). He was
created a peer of France in 1839, and for ten years was the _enfant
terrible_ of the Upper Chamber, harassing the Chancelier Pasquier
with his continual interruptions and irreverent sallies. In 1853, he
was made a senator, having meantime, in 1851, married the Contessa
Guiccioli, who was then herself nearly fifty and had been Byron's
"widow" for more than a quarter of a century.--B.]

[Footnote 192: For the full text of the Royal Ordinances of July, see
the Appendix at the end of this volume, p. 421.--T.]

[Footnote 193: The Report to the King had been drawn up by M. de
Chantelauze.--B.]

[Footnote 194: Article XIV. of the Charter ran thus:

    "The King is the Supreme Head of the State, commands the forces on
    sea and land, declares war, makes treaties of peace, alliance and
    commerce, appoints to all the offices of the public administration,
    and makes the rules and _ordinances necessary for the execution of
    the laws and the safety of the State._"--B.]


[Footnote 195: Chateaubriand was then living at 84, Rue d'Enfer.--B.]

[Footnote 196: Étienne Maurice Maréchal Comte Gérard (1773-1853) had
distinguished himself as a general in the Napoleonic campaigns. He
was Minister for War for a few months in 1830, and again in 1834. He
was made a marshal of France in 1830 and, in 1831 and 1832, directed
the Siege of Antwerp, valorously defended by General Chassé. Gérard
became Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour in 1836. He lost all
his offices in 1848; but, in 1853, a few months before his death, was
appointed a Senator by Napoleon III.--T.]

[Footnote 197: Claude Antoine Gabriel Duc de Choiseul-Stainville
(1760-1838), created a peer of France in 1814 and Governor of the
Louvre in 1820. Later, he became an aide-de-camp to Louis-Philippe.--B.]

[Footnote 198: Jean Henri Claude Mangin (1786-1835), a noted lawyer and
writer on jurisprudence, had been Prefect of Police since 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 199: The Comte de Chabrol-Volvic, brother of the Comte de
Chabrol-Croussol, who had been Minister of Finance in the Polignac
Cabinet until May 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 200: The Vicomte de Champagny.--B.]

[Footnote 201: Felix Barthe (1795-1863), in December 1830, succeeded
Mérilhou as Minister of Public Instruction in the Laffitte Cabinet. In
1831, he became Minister of Justice under Casimir Périer and continued
to hold the Seals until the fall of the Broglie Administration in 1834.
He was then created a peer of France and President of the _Cour des
Comptes._ Under the Second Empire, Barthe became a senator.--B.]

[Footnote 202: Joseph Mérilhou (1788-1856), Minister of Public
Instruction and Public Worship in 1830, and a peer of France in
1837.--B.]

[Footnote 203: The protest was drawn up by Thiers, Châtelain, and
Cauchois-Lemaire. Here are the names of the forty-four signatories:
Gauja, manager of the _National_; Thiers, Mignet, Chambolle, Peysse,
Albert Stapfer, Dubochet, Rolle, editors of the _National_; Châtelain,
Guyet, Moussette, Avenel, Alexis de Jussieu, J. F. Dupont, editors,
and V. de Lapelouse, manager of the _Courrier français_; Guizard,
Dejean, Charles de Rémusat, editors, and Pierre Leroux, manager of the
_Globe_; Anneé, Cauchois-Lemaire and Évariste Dumoulin, editors of the
_Constitutionnel_; Senty, Haussmann, Dussard, Chalas, A. Billard, J.
J. Baude, Busoni, Barboux, editors, and Coste, manager of the _Temps_;
Victor Bohain, Nestor Roqueplan, editors of the _Figaro_; Auguste
Fabre and Ader, editors of the _Tribune des départements_; Plagnol,
Levasseur and Fazy, editors of the _Révolution_; F. Larreguy, editor,
and Bert, manager of the _Journal du commerce_; Léon Pillet, manager of
the _Journal de Paris_; Vaillant, manager of the _Sylphe_; Sarrans the
Younger, manager of the _Courrier des électeurs._--B.]

[Footnote 204: There were fourteen of them: Messieurs Bavoux, Bérard,
Bernard, de Laborde, Chardel, Daunou, Jacques Lefebvre, Marchai,
Mauguin, Casimir Périer, Persil, de Schonen, Vassal and Villemain.--B.]

[Footnote 205: Madame de Courchamp was a sister of the Becquets.--B.]

[Footnote 206: Étienne Becquet (1800-1838), one of the editors of the
_Débats_, is the only one of the two brothers who has left a name.--B.]

[Footnote 207: Jacques Coste (1798-1859), after selling his paper,
the _Tablettes historiques_, remained the declared adversary of the
government of the Restoration. He founded the _Temps_ in 1829; it
lasted till 1842. The title was again taken by M. Xavier Durrieu in
1849, but this paper lasted only ten months, and lastly, in 1861, by M.
A. Nefftzer, who founded the _Temps_ which we know to-day.--B.]

[Footnote 208: The full title of this paper was _Tablettes historiques,
ou Répertoire de documents historiques, politiques, scientifiques et
littéraires, avec une Bibliographie raisonnée._ In 1824, after he had
been fined and sentenced to a year's imprisonment, M. Coste sold the
_Tablettes_ to M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld, who was at that time
pursuing his policy of buying up the Opposition papers with the funds
of the Civil List and sometimes with his own money. One of Coste's
collaborators, M. Rabbe, wrote a strong letter to M. Coste, which was
inserted in the _Courrier français_, and led to a duel between the two
writers.--B.]

[Footnote 209: Jean Jacques Baron Baude (_cf._ Vol. IV, p. 7, n. 2).
Baude was Prefect of Police from December 1830 to February 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 210: "Another commissary of police went to the _Temps_, where
he was encountered by M. Baude, attached to the journal. He summoned
the commissary to desist, declaring that he was committing an illegal
act; that the laws protected the journals and their presses, and that
no ordonnance could avail in contradiction to them. The commissary
of police, however staggered by the obstinacy of Baude, sent for a
locksmith to break open the door of the printing-office, and then break
the press. Apostrophized by Baude, and warned that they were committing
an illegal act, the smith refused to obey, till the special smith of
the police and the gaols arrived. Seven hours were spent in altercation
before the order of the commissary could be accomplished by a forcible
entrance, and rendering the presses incapable of being worked any
more." (EYRE CROWE: _History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles
X._).--T.]

[Footnote 211: M. Billot.--B.]

[Footnote 212: Casimir Périer lived at 27, Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg.--B.]

[Footnote 213: Pierre François Audry de Puyravault (1783-1852), an
important manufacturer of strong liberal opinions. He continued to
figure in the Opposition during the Orleanist reign.--T.]

[Footnote 214: Auguste Jean Marie Baron de Schonen (1782-1849). He
held high legal office under the Empire, the Restoration and the
Usurpation.--T.]

[Footnote 215: M. Cadet de Gassicourt the Younger (1789-1861) became
mayor of the 4th arrondissement, or ward, of Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 216: Changed soon after into Rue du 29 Juillet.--B.]

[Footnote 217: Alfred Nettement, in his _Histoire de la Restauration_,
gives a somewhat different version of this incident:

    "It was then six o'clock in the evening. The Royal Guard came to
    lend a necessary aid to the Gendarmerie and the Line, whose efforts
    remained powerless. Musket-shots replied to the hail of stones
    that fell upon the troop; they were fired by a detachment of the
    5th Regiment of the Line which entered the Rue Saint-Honoré from
    the Rue de Rivoli. This discharge cost the life of a young English
    student called Folks, who had taken refuge in the Hôtel Royal, at
    the corner of the Rue des Pyramides. He had had the imprudence
    to go to the window to watch the progress of the insurrectionary
    movement, and was struck by one of the first bullets."--B.]

[Footnote 218: The President of the Council occupied the building of
the Foreign Office, then situated at the comer of the Rue des Capucines
and the boulevards.--B.]

[Footnote 219: Alfred Armand Robert Comte de Saint-Chamans
(1781-1848).--B.]

[Footnote 220: Alexandre Sala, an officer in the 6th Infantry of the
Guard. He was with the Duchesse de Berry on the _Carlo-Alberto_ in
1832, was tried at Montbrison, and acquitted. In 1848, with Alfred
Nettement and Armand de Pontmartin, he founded the _Opinion publique_,
of which he was one of the chief editors until its suppression in
January 1852.--B.]

[Footnote 221: Joseph Marie Fieschi (1790-1836), a native of Corsica,
set up an infernal machine in a house on the Boulevard du Temple, and
discharged it as Louis-Philippe, accompanied by his staff, was passing
before the windows on the 28th of July 1835. Eighteen persons were
killed, including Marshal Mortier, Duc de Trévise, and 22 severely
wounded. Louis-Philippe escaped. Fieschi and his two accomplices, Pépin
and Morey, were executed on the 16th of February 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 222: This column was under the orders of General Talon, and
consisted of a battalion of the 3rd Regiment of the Guard, reinforced
by 150 Lancers, a Swiss battalion and two guns.--B.]

[Footnote 223: Jean Dominique Barron Larrey (1766-1842) was Napoleon's
famous surgeon in the Grand Army. But the surgeon who treated Colonel
de Pleine-Selve was his son, with whom Chateaubriand confuses
him, Félix Hyppolite Baron Larrey (_b._ 1808), who in 1830 was
assistant-surgeon at the hospital of the Royal Guards known as the
Hôpital du Gros-Caillou. He was appointed surgeon to Napoleon III. in
1853, and was Chief Surgeon to the Army of Italy in 1859 and to the
Army of the Rhine in 1870. Félix Baron Larrey sat in the Chamber of
Deputies from 1877 to 1881.--B.]

[Footnote 224: Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the banker. He was a
prominent member of the Opposition throughout the Restoration and the
Orleanist Usurpation. He was a capable financier and a generous and
charitable individual.--T.]

[Footnote 225: André Louis Augustin Marchais (1800-1857), a tried
and persistent conspirator. Under the Second Empire, in 1853, he was
arrested as a member of the secret society known as the Marianne, and
sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He was released long before
the expiration of this term, and left France for good. He died in
Constantinople.--B.]

[Footnote 226: Eusèbe Salverte (1771-1839), an ardent "patriot," and
author of some poems and a number of literary and political works.--T.]

[Footnote 227: At 40, Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.--B.]

[Footnote 228: Dominique François Jean Arago (1786-1853), the famous
astronomer and Director of the Observatory. He was a deputy from 1831
to 1848, a member of the Provisional Government in 1848, and a member
of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies from 1848 to 1849.--B.]

[Footnote 229: General Jacques Jean Marie François Boudin, Comte de
Tromelin (1771-1842), served in the Army of the Princes in 1792 and
took part in the Quiberon Expedition. Attached afterwards to the Royal
Army in Normandy, he was captured at Caen (1798), escaped, and went to
the East, where he took part, in the Turkish Army, in the Syrian and
Egyptian campaigns. He returned to France in 1802, was locked up in
the Abbaye at the time of the Pichegru and Cadoudal Affair, and came
out, at the end of six months, to enter the 112th Regiment of the Line
as a captain. He was made a brigadier-general after Leipzig and fought
valiantly at Waterloo. He obtained great successes in Spain, in 1823,
and was made a lieutenant-general. Tromelin played a courageous and
honourable part during the Days of July.--B.]

[Footnote 230: General Louis Alexandre Marie Valon de Boucheron, Comte
d'Ambrugeac (1771-1844), had been a colonel under the Empire, and
served, during the Hundred Days, in the Duc d'Angoulême's little army.
He was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII. in 1823, took the oath to
Louis Philippe in 1830, and remained a peer of France.--B.]

[Footnote 231: Jean Baptiste Adolphe Charras (1800-1865) had been
expelled from the Polytechnic School, three months before the
Days of July, for drinking the health of La Fayette and singing
the _Marseillaise_ at a students' banquet. In 1848, he became
Under-secretary for War. He was arrested at the _coup d'État_ in 1851
and taken to Brussels. He died at Basle in January 1865.--B.]

[Footnote 232: Isidore Maréchal Comte Exelmans (1775-1852), one of the
most brilliant cavalry generals of the First Empire, became a peer of
France under Louis-Philippe, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour
in 1849, and a marshal under Napoleon III.--B.]

[Footnote 233: General Pierre Claude Comte Pajol (1772-1844) was
married to Élise Oudinot, the Maréchal Duc de Reggio's eldest daughter.
He too was a fine cavalry leader and had distinguished himself in
all the Napoleonic campaigns. Napoleon created him a baron in 1809,
Louis XVIII. a count in 1814, and, on the return from Elba, he took
his troops over to Napoleon and was created a peer of France on the
2nd of June 1815, a dignity which he enjoyed for a fortnight. He left
the service and France, returning to Paris on the 29th of July 1830,
after an absence of fourteen years, to take over the command of the
insurrection. In 1831, he was once more created a peer of France, by
Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 234: Albert Anne Jules Bertier de Sauvigny, a lieutenant
in the 34th Foot. Two years later he was tried and acquitted for
persistently attempting to run down King Louis-Philippe in the street
while driving his gig.--B.]

[Footnote 235: Jean George Farcy (1800-1830), an old pupil of the
Polytechnic School. He had translated the recently-published third
volume of Dugald Stewart's _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human
Mind._ He was one of the first insurgents killed near the Louvre.--B.]

[Footnote 236: Jacques Leonard Clement Thomas (1809-1871)
remained an insurgent all his life. In May 1848, he was appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, but was dismissed, a few
weeks later, for insulting the Legion of Honour in the Chamber. At
the time of the _coup d'État_, in 1851, he made vain efforts to bring
about a rising in the Gironde, for which he had been elected deputy in
1848, and was exiled in consequence. He refused to accept the amnesty
in 1859, and did not return till after the 4th of September 1870.
During the siege, he was given the command of the National Guards of
the Seine; he sent in his resignation to General Trochu on the 14th of
February 1871, and retired into private life. On the 18th of March,
at the beginning of the insurrection, he was recognised and arrested
by some National Guards on the Place Pigalle, taken to the central
committee-rooms at Montmartre, and promptly shot.--B.]

[Footnote 237: Jules Bastide (1800-1870) was the first to plant the
tricolour flag on the Tuileries. After the Revolution of February, he
was Foreign Minister from 28 February to 20 December 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 238: Joseph Augustin Guinard (1799-1874) plotted equally
against the Restoration and the Government of July. In 1849, he
plotted against the Second Republic, was arrested and sentenced to
transportation for life. He was liberated in 1854 and lived thenceforth
in retirement--B.]

[Footnote 239: Casimir Louis Victurnien de Rochechouart, Prince de
Tonnay-Charente, Duc de Mortemart (1787-1875). He served under the
Empire, became a peer of France under the First Restoration, and
Colonel of the Hundred Swiss. During the Hundred Days, he followed the
King to Ghent and, after the return, was appointed Major-General of
the National Guard of Paris. The Duc de Mortemart was Ambassador to
St. Petersburg from 1828 to 1830. He continued to sit in the House of
Peers after the Revolution of July and, under the Second Empire, in
1852, accepted a seat in the Senate, while holding aloof from the new
Court.--B.]

[Footnote 240: Apollinaire Antoine Maurice Comte d'Argout (1782-1858)
was created a peer of France in 1819, and, like M. de Sémonville,
belonged to the Moderate Right. He was several times a minister from
1830 to 1836, holding successively the portfolios of the Navy, Commerce
and Public Works, the Interior and Finance. During these six years,
his very long nose was the constant butt of the draughtsmen on the
Caricature and Charivari, and eventually they drove him to take refuge
in the less prominent post of Governor of the Bank of France. The Comte
d'Argout died a senator of the Second Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 241: The Duc de Choiseul-Stainville was shipwrecked at Calais
in November 1795, arrested by the authorities, acquitted by the Court
Martial before which he was brought, and nevertheless kept in prison by
the Directorate and finally condemned to death. The 18 Brumaire saved
him.--B.]

[Footnote 242: In the Rue d'Artois, soon to be renamed Rue
Laffitte.--B.]

[Footnote 243: Georges Mouton, Maréchal Comte de Lobau (1770-1838), had
distinguished himself in the wars of Napoleon, who gave him his title.
He was taken prisoner after the Capitulation of Dresden, in 1813, and
taken to England, where he remained till 1814. He fought at Waterloo,
was exiled under the Restoration and returned to France in 1818. In
1828, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Lobau succeeded La
Fayette as Commandant of the National Guard in December 1830, and was
created a marshal in 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 244: François Mauguin (1785-1854), a famous advocate. He
became a member of the Municipal Commission, sat in the Dynastic Left
during the Usurpation and played a lesser part in public life in 1848
and the subsequent events.--T.]

[Footnote 245: Richard Cromwell (1626-1712), son of Oliver Cromwell,
succeeded his father as Lord Protector of England in September 1658 and
resigned in May 1659.--T.]

[Footnote 246: Casimir Marie Marcellin Pierre Célestin Chardel
(1777-1847) was a judge of the Seine Tribunal, in 1830, and a deputy
for Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 247: Pierre François Marchal (1785-1864) sat in opposition
throughout the duration of the Orleans Government.--B.]

[Footnote 248: Jacques François Nicolas Bavoux (1774-1848), a deputy
for Paris. He kept the Prefecture of Police for two days only and was
supplanted by M. Girod de l'Ain on the 1st of August.--B.]

[Footnote 249: Auguste Simon Louis Bérard (1783-1859), the Paris
banker.--B.]

[Footnote 250: Palamède de Forbin-Janson, brother-in-law to the Duc de
Mortemart.--B.]

[Footnote 251: François Sauvo (1772-1859), manager of the _Moniteur
universel_ from 1800 to 1840.--B.]

[Footnote 252: Augustin Charles Périer (1773-1833), brother of Casimir
Périer, had been a deputy since 1827. He was not re-elected in 1831,
and was created a peer of France in 1832.--B.]

[Footnote 253: Jules Paul Benjamin Baron Delessert (1773-1847), a
great manufacturer, was the first to make beetroot-sugar in France
and to introduce the idea of the savings-bank from England. Napoleon
made him a baron of the Empire. Delessert was a member of the Chamber
of Deputies from 1817 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1842, sitting with
the Constitutional Opposition during the Restoration and with the
Conservatives after 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 254: Jean Baptiste Henry Collin, Comte de Sussy (1776-1837),
had been a member of the House of Peers since 1827. He retained his
seat till his death, having sworn allegiance to the Government of
July.--B.]

[Footnote 255: _Cf._ Vol. III, p. 181.--T.]

[Footnote 256: Louis Marie La Revellière-Lepeaux (1753-1824), a
barrister-scientist, member of the Constituent Assembly and of
the Convention, and author of the _Propagande armée._ He resisted
the Terrorists in 1793, was, a very short while, a member of the
Directorate, but retired from politics for good and all in 1795.--T.]

[Footnote 257: Évariste Dumoulin (1776-1833), a well-known French
publicist, and one of the founders of the _Constitutionnel_ in
1815.--T.]

[Footnote 258: Adrien Perlet (1795-1850), an excellent comic actor.
Most of his successes were made at the Gymnase; he was not a member of
the Opéra-Comique.--T.]

[Footnote 259: On the 9th of January of this present year 1841, I
received a letter from M. Dubourg containing these "phrases:"

    "How I have longed to see you since our meeting on the Quai du
    Louvre! How often have I longed to pour out into your bosom
    the sorrows that racked my soul! What an unhappy thing it is
    passionately to love one's country, one's honour, one's glory, when
    one lives at such a time!....

    "Was I wrong, in 1830, to refuse to submit to what was being done?
    I saw clearly the odious future which was being prepared for
    France, I explained how nothing but evil could spring from such
    fraudulent political arrangements; but no one understood me."


On the 5th of July of this same year 1841, M. Dubourg wrote to me again
to send me the rough draft of a note which he addressed, in 1828, to
Messieurs de Martignac and de Caux to engage them to admit me to the
Council. I have therefore put forward nothing concerning M. Dubourg
which is not most scrupulously true.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1841).]

[Footnote 260: Gustave Barba (_b. circa_ 1805), the
publisher-bookseller.--T.]

[Footnote 261: It is right that I should set the Duc du Broglie's
version against that of Chateaubriand:

    "I really do not know," says the duke (_Souvenirs_, vol. III.),
    "if I spoke four words in a desultory conversation, in which we
    were animated by the same sentiments and preoccupied with the same
    object: but I am perfectly certain of this, that I never said that
    I had just been through Paris; that we were living on a volcano;
    that the employers were no longer able to restrain their workmen;
    that, if the King's name were thenceforth pronounced, they would
    cut the throat of whoever pronounced it; that we should all be
    massacred; that they would take the Luxembourg by assault as they
    had taken the Bastille in 1789. And as for the speech with which M.
    de Chateaubriand confounded that language, it is perhaps my fault,
    but I regret to say that I did not hear one word of it."--B.]

[Footnote 262: Victor Louis Charles de Riquet de Caraman, Duc de
Caraman (1762-1839), of the Netherlands family of Riquet de Caraman,
was created a French baron in 1813, a marquis and peer of France
in 1815, a count and peer of France in 1827, Duc de Caraman, _ad
personam_, in 1828, and an hereditary French duke in June 1830.--T.]




BOOK XV[263]


The Republicans--The Orleanist--M. Thiers is sent to
Neuilly--Convocation of peers at the Grand Refendary's--The letter
reaches me too late--Saint-Cloud--Scene between M. le Dauphin
and the Maréchal de Raguse--Neuilly--M. le Duc d'Orléans--The
Raincy--The Prince comes to Paris--A deputation from the Elective
Chamber offers M. le Duc d'Orléans the Lieutenant-generalship
of the Kingdom--He accepts--Efforts of the Republicans--M. le
Duc d'Orléans goes to the Hôtel de Ville--The Republicans at the
Palais-Royal--The King leaves Saint-Cloud--Madame la Dauphine arrives
at Trianon--The Diplomatic Body--Rambouillet--3 August: opening of
the Session--Letter from Charles X. to M. le Duc d'Orléans--The
mob sets out for Rambouillet--Flight of the King--Reflections--The
Palais-Royal--Conversations--Last political temptation--M. de
Sainte-Aulaire--Last gasp of the Republican Party--The day's work of
the 7th of August--Sitting of the House of Peers--My speech--I leave
the Palace of the Luxembourg, never to return--My resignations--Charles
X. takes ship at Cherbourg-What the Revolution of July will be--Close
of my political career.


The three parties were beginning to take shape and to act against one
another: the deputies who were in favour of a monarchy as represented
by the Elder Branch were the strongest, legally: they rallied to
themselves all that tended towards order; but, morally, they were
the weakest: they hesitated; they did not speak out: it was becoming
manifest, from the tergiversation of the Court, that they would fall
into the Usurpation rather than see themselves swallowed up by the
Republic.

The latter had a placard posted on the walls saying:

    "France is free. She grants the Provisional Government the right
    only of consulting her, until the time when she shall have
    expressed her will by new elections. No more Royalty. The executive
    power entrusted to a temporary President. Mediate or immediate
    co-operation of all the citizens in the election of Deputies.
    Liberty of worship."

This placard summed up the only just things in the republican opinion;
a new assembly of deputies would have decided if it was well or ill to
give way to that wish of "no more Royalty;" each would have pleaded his
cause, and the election of a government of whatever kind by a national
congress would have borne the character of legality.

On another republican poster of the same date, 30 July, one read in
large letters:

    "No more Bourbons.... All is won: greatness, repose, public
    prosperity, liberty."

Lastly appeared an address to Messieurs the members of the Municipal
Commission forming a provisional government; it demanded:

    "That no proclamation be issued naming a ruler, so long as the
    form itself of the government can not yet be decided; that the
    Provisional Government remain in power until the wish of the
    majority of Frenchmen be known, any other measure being ill-timed
    and culpable."

This address, emanating from the members of a commission appointed by
a large number of citizens of different wards in Paris, was signed
by Messieurs Chevalier[264], as chairman, Trélat[265], Teste[266],
Lepelletier, Guinard[267], Hingray[268], Cauchois-Lemaire[269], etc.

In this popular assembly, they proposed to offer the Presidency of
the Republic by acclamation to M. de La Fayette; they relied upon
the principles which the Chamber of Representatives of 1815 had
proclaimed, when separating. Various printers refused to publish these
proclamations, saying that they had been forbidden to do so by M. le
Duc de Broglie. The Republic was casting the throne of Charles X. to
the ground, and it feared the prohibitions of M. de Broglie, who had no
character of any kind.

[Sidenote: The Orleanist party.]

I have told you how, during the night between the 29th and 30th of
July, M. Laffitte, with M. Thiers and M. Mignet, had made every
preparation to draw the eyes of the public on M. le Duc d'Orléans. On
the 30th appeared proclamations and addresses, the fruit of this cabal,
with "Let us avoid the Republic" for their burden. Next came the feats
of arms of Jemmapes[270] and Valmy[271], and the people was assured
that M. le Duc d'Orléans was not a Capet, but a Valois[272].

And meanwhile M. Thiers, sent by M. Laffitte, was ambling towards
Neuilly with M. Scheffer[273]: H.R.H. was not there. Great wordy
contests between Mademoiselle d'Orléans[274] and M. Thiers: it was
agreed that they should write to M. le Duc d'Orléans to persuade him
to rally to the Revolution. M. Thiers himself wrote a note to the
Prince, and Madame Adélaïde promised to precede her family to Paris.
Orleanism had made progress and, on the evening, of that same day, the
question had been raised among the Deputies of conferring the powers of
Lieutenant-general on M. le Duc d'Orléans.

M. de Sussy, with the Saint-Cloud Ordinances, had met with an even more
indifferent reception at the Hôtel de Ville than in the Chamber of
Deputies. Armed with a "receipt" from M. de La Fayette, he returned to
M. de Mortemart, who exclaimed:

"You have done more than save my life; you have saved my honour."

The Municipal Commission issued a proclamation in which it declared
that "the crimes of his [Charles X.'s] power were ended," and that "the
people would have a government which should owe its origin to them [the
people]:" an ambiguous phrase which you were free to interpret as you
pleased. Messieurs Laffitte and Périer did not sign this document M.
de La Fayette, alarmed, a little late in the day, at the idea of the
Orleanist Royalty, sent M. Odilon Barrot to the Chamber of Deputies to
announce that the people, the authors of the Revolution of July, did
not mean to end it by a simple change of persons, and that the blood
that had been shed was well worth a few liberties. There was talk of
a proclamation of the Deputies to invite H.R.H. the Duc d'Orléans to
come to the Capital: after some communications with the Hôtel de Ville,
this plan of a proclamation was demolished. Nevertheless it led to the
formation of a sort of deputation of twelve members who were to go to
the Lord of Neuilly[275] to offer him that Lieutenant-generalship for
which they had not been able to make way in a proclamation.

In the evening, the Grand Refendary assembled the Peers in his
apartments[276]: his letter, through negligence or policy, reached me
too late. I hurried to hasten to the meeting; they opened the gate of
the Allée de l'Observatoire for me; I crossed the Luxembourg garden:
when I reached the palace, I found no one there. I made my way back
past the flower-beds, my eyes fixed on the moon. I regretted the seas
and the mountains above which she had appeared to me, the forests in
whose tops, herself vanishing in silence, she had seemed to repeat to
me the maxim of Epicurus[277]:

"Conceal thy life."


[Sidenote: Troops retire to Saint-Cloud.]

I have left the troops falling back upon Saint-Cloud, on the evening
of the 29th. The citizens of Chaillot and Passy attacked them, killing
a captain of Carabineers and two officers, and wounding some ten
soldiers. Captain Le Motha[278] of the Guards was struck by a bullet
fired by a child whom he had been pleased to spare. This captain had
given in his resignation at the time of the Ordinances; but, seeing
that they were fighting on the 27th, he returned to his regiment to
share the dangers of his comrades. Never, to the glory of France, was
there a finer battle waged in the parties opposed between liberty and
honour.

Children, always fearless because they know nothing of danger, played
a sad part in the work of the Three Days: sheltered behind their
weakness, they fired point-blank at officers who would have thought
themselves dishonoured in beating them back. Modern arms place
death at the disposal of the feeblest hand. Ugly, wizened little
monkeys, libertines before they have the power of being so, cruel and
perverse, these little heroes of the three days gave themselves up to
assassination with all the abandonment of innocence. Let us beware
lest, by imprudent praises, we give birth to the emulation of evil: the
children of Sparta used to go helot-hunting.

Monsieur le Dauphin received the soldiers at the gate of the village of
Boulogne, in the wood, and then returned to Saint-Cloud.

Saint-Cloud was guarded by the four companies of the Body-guards.
The battalion of the pupils of Saint-Cyr had arrived: in rivalry and
in contrast with the Polytechnic School, they had embraced the royal
cause. The attenuated troops, returning from a three days' battle,
by their wounds and dilapidated appearance caused only amazement
to the titled, gilded and well-fed flunkeys who dined at the royal
table. No one thought of cutting the telegraphic lines; couriers,
travellers, mail-coaches, diligences passed freely along the road, with
the tricolour flag, which urged the villages to revolt as it passed
through them. Seduction by means of money and women was commencing.
The proclamations of the Commune of Paris were hawked to and fro. The
King and Court still refused to be persuaded that they were in danger.
In order to prove that they despised the doings of a few mutinous
burgesses and that there was no revolution, they let everything go:
God's finger is seen in all this.

At nightfall, on the 30th of July, at nearly the same hour when the
commission of the Deputies left for Neuilly, an adjutant announced to
the troops that the Ordinances were repealed. The soldiers shouted,
"Long live the King!" and resumed their gaiety at the bivouac; but this
announcement made by the adjutant sent by the Duc de Raguse had not
been communicated to the Dauphin, who was a great lover of discipline
and flew into a rage. The King said to the marshal:

"The Dauphin is displeased; go and have your explanation with him."

The marshal did not find the Dauphin in his own apartments, and waited
for him in the billiard-room with the Duc de Guiche[279] and the Duc de
Ventadour, the Prince's aides-de-camp. The Dauphin entered: at sight
of the marshal, he flushed to his eyes, crossed his ante-chamber with
those singular long strides of his, reached his drawing-room and said
to the marshal:

"Come in!"

The door closed behind them: a great noise was heard; their voices were
raised more and more; the Duc de Ventadour grew anxious and opened the
door; the marshal came out, pursued by the Dauphin, who called him a
double traitor:

"Give up your sword! Give up your sword!" he cried and, flinging
himself upon him, tore his sword from him.

[Sidenote: Anger of the Dauphin.]

M. Delarue, the marshal's aide-de-camp, tried to throw himself between
him and the Dauphin, and was held back by M. de Montgascon. The Prince
endeavoured to break the marshal's sword and, in so doing, cut his
hands. He cried:

"Help, Guards! Seize him!"

The Body-guards rushed in; if the marshal had not made a movement of
the head, their bayonets would have struck him in the face. The Duc de
Raguse was placed under arrest in his room[280].

The King arranged this affair as best he could. It was the more
deplorable as neither of the actors inspired any great interest. When
the son[281] of the Balafré slew Saint-Pol[282], the marshal of the
League, men recognised in this sword-stroke the pride and blood of the
Guises; but, supposing even that Monsieur le Dauphin, a mightier lord
than a Prince of Lorraine, had cut down Marshal Marmont, what would
that have mattered? If the marshal had killed Monsieur le Dauphin, it
would only have been a little more singular. We should see Cæsar, the
descendant of Venus, and Brutus[283], the heir of Junius[284], pass
through the streets without looking at them. Nothing is great to-day,
because nothing is high.

That is, how at Saint-Cloud, the last hour of the Monarchy was spent;
that pale Monarchy, disfigured and blood-stained, resembled the
portrait which d'Urfé makes for us of a great personage dying:

    "His eyes were wan and sunk; his lower jaw, covered only with a
    little skin, seemed to have disappeared; his beard was bristling,
    his colour yellow, his glance slow, his breath bated. Already from
    his mouth issued no longer human words, but oracles."

M. le Duc d'Orléans had, throughout his life, entertained for the
throne the inclination that every high-born soul feels for power.
This inclination is modified according to the possessor's character:
impetuous and aspiring, or slack and fawning; imprudent, open, declared
in the former, circumspect, hidden, shamefaced in the latter: one, in
order to elevate himself, is capable of any crime; the other, in order
to rise, can descend to any meanness. M. le Duc d'Orléans belonged to
this latter class of ambitious men. Follow this Prince in his career:
he never says and never does anything completely; he always leaves a
door open for escape. During the Restoration, he flattered the Court
and encouraged liberal opinion; Neuilly became the meeting-place of
discontent and the discontented. They sighed, they pressed each other's
hands with eyes raised to Heaven, but they did not utter a word of
enough significance to be reported in high places. When a member of the
Opposition died, a carriage was sent to the funeral, but the carriage
was empty: the livery is admitted to every door and every grave-side.
If, at the time of my disgrace at Court, I found myself at the
Tuileries on M. le Duc d'Orléans' path, he went past, taking care to
bow to the right, in such a manner that, I being on the left, he turned
his shoulder to me. That would be remarked and would do good.

Was M. le Duc d'Orléans aware beforehand of the Ordinances of July? Was
he told of them by a person who held M. Ouvrard's secret? What did he
think of them? What were his hopes and fears? Did he conceive a plan?
Did he urge M. Laffitte to act as he did act, or did he let M. Laffitte
act as he pleased? To judge from Louis-Philippe's character, we must
presume that he took no resolve, and that his political timidity,
taking refuge in his falseness, awaited events as the spider awaits the
gnat which will be taken in its web. He allowed the moment to conspire;
he himself conspired only by his wishes, of which it is probable that
he was afraid.

[Sidenote: M. le Duc D'Orléans.]

There were two courses open to M. le Duc d'Orléans: the first, and the
more honourable, was to hasten to Saint-Cloud, to interpose himself
between Charles X. and the people, in order to save the crown of the
one and the liberty of the other; the second consisted in flinging
himself on the barricades, with the tricolour flag in his hand, and
placing himself at the head of the movement of the world. Philip had
to choose between the honest man and the great man: he preferred to
pilfer the crown from the King and liberty from the people. During the
confusion and misfortune of a fire, a pickpocket artfully purloins the
most valuable objects from the burning palace, without heeding the
cries of a child which the flames have surprised in its cradle.

The rich prey once seized, plenty of hounds were there for the
distribution of the quarry: then came all those old corruptions of
the preceding systems, those receivers of stolen goods, filthy,
half-crushed toads that have been walked upon a hundred times and that
live, all flattened out as they are. And yet those are the men of whom
one boasts, whose ability one exalts! Milton thought otherwise when he
wrote this passage in a sublime letter:

    "If ever God poured a strong love for moral beauty in a man's
    breast, he did so in mine. Wherever I meet a man despising the
    false esteem of the vulgar, daring to aspire, by his opinions, his
    language and his conduct, to the greatest excellence which the
    lofty wisdom of the ages has taught us, I become united to that man
    by a sort of necessary attachment. There is no power in Heaven or
    upon earth which can prevent me from contemplating with respect and
    fondness those who have attained the summit of dignity and virtue."

The blind Court of Charles X. never knew where it stood or with whom it
had to do: it might have ordered M. le Duc d'Orléans to Saint-Cloud,
and it is probable that, at the first moment, he would have obeyed;
it might have had him kidnapped at Neuilly, on the very day of the
Ordinances: it took neither course.

On receipt of advices which Madame de Bondy brought him, at Neuilly,
in the night of Tuesday the 27th, Louis-Philippe rose at three o'clock
in the morning and withdrew to a place known only to his family. He
had the double fear of being touched by the insurrection in Paris and
of being arrested by a captain of the Guards. He therefore went to the
Rainey, there in solitude to listen to the distant gun-shots of the
Battle of the Louvre, as I had listened under a tree to those of the
Battle of Waterloo. The feelings which doubtless stirred the Prince
must have had very little in common with those which oppressed me in
the plains of Ghent.

I have told you how, on the morning of the 30th of July, M.
Thiers failed to find the Duc d'Orléans at Neuilly; but Madame la
Duchesse d'Orléans[285] sent to fetch H.R.H.: the Comte Anatole de
Montesquiou[286] was charged with the message. On arriving at the
Rainey, M. de Montesquiou had all the difficulty in the world to decide
Louis-Philippe to return to Neuilly, there to await the deputation from
the Chamber of Deputies.

At last, persuaded by the Duchesse d'Orléans' lord-in-waiting,
Louis-Philippe stepped into his carriage. M. de Montesquiou started
in advance; at first he went pretty fast; but, when he looked back,
he saw H.R.H.'s calash stop and drive back again towards the Rainey.
M. de Montesquiou returned at full speed and entreated the future
majesty, who was hastening to conceal himself in the desert, like the
illustrious Christians who used to flee from the burdensome dignity of
the episcopate: the faithful servant obtained a last unhappy victory.

On the evening of the 30th, the deputation of twelve members of the
Chamber of Deputies, which was to offer the Lieutenant-generalship
of the Kingdom to the Prince, sent him a message to Neuilly.
Louis-Philippe received the message at the park gates, read it by
torch-light, and at once set out for Paris, accompanied by Messieurs
de Berthois[287], Haymès and Oudart. He wore a tricolour favour in his
button-hole: he was going to carry off an old crown from the Royal
Furniture Repository.


On his arrival at the Palais-Royal, M. le Duc d'Orléans sent his
compliments to M. de La Fayette.

The deputation of twelve members of the Chamber of Deputies appeared
at the Palais-Royal. They asked the Prince if he accepted the
Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom; he made an embarrassed reply:

"I have come amongst you to share your dangers.... I have need of
reflection. I must consult various persons. The dispositions of
Saint-Cloud are not at all hostile; the King's presence lays duties
upon me."

[Sidenote: Eating his words.]

Thus replied Louis-Philippe. He was made to eat his words, as he
expected: after withdrawing for half-an-hour, he reappeared, bearing
a proclamation by virtue of which he accepted the functions of
Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. The proclamation ended with this
declaration:

"The Charter will henceforward be a reality!"

The proclamation was taken to the Elective Chamber and received with
that fifty-year-old revolutionary enthusiasm: another proclamation was
issued in reply, drawn up by M. Guizot[288]. The deputies returned to
the Palais-Royal; the Prince became affected, accepted afresh, and
could not help bewailing the deplorable circumstances which forced him
to be Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.

Stunned by the blows that had been struck at it, the Republic tried
to defend itself; but its real head, General La Fayette, had almost
abandoned it. He delighted in the concert of adoration that reached
him from every side; he greedily inhaled the perfume of revolution; he
was enchanted at the idea that he was the arbiter of France, that he
was able, by stamping the earth with his foot, to cause a republic or
a monarchy to spring up, as he pleased; he loved to lull himself in
the uncertainty which pleases minds that dread conclusions, because an
instinct warns them that they cease to be anything when the facts are
accomplished.

The other republican leaders had ruined themselves in advance by their
several works: the praises of the Terror had reminded Frenchmen of 1793
and caused them to recoil. The re-establishment of the National Guard
at the same time killed the principle or the power of insurrection in
the combatants of July. M. de La Fayette did not perceive that, in
dreaming of the Republic, he had armed three millions of fighting men
against it.

[Sidenote: The D'Orléans pedigree.]

Be this as it may, ashamed of being duped so soon, the younger men made
some show of resistance. They replied by proclamations and posters
to the proclamations and posters of the Duc d'Orléans. He was told
that, if the deputies had so far lowered themselves as to beseech him
to accept the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom, the Chamber of
Deputies, elected under an aristocratic law, had no right to manifest
the will of the people. It was proved to Louis-Philippe that he was the
son of Louis Philippe Joseph; that Louis Philippe Joseph was the son
of Louis Philippe[289]; that Louis Philippe was the son of Louis[290],
who was the son of Philip II.[291] the Regent; that Philip II. was the
son of Philip I.[292] who was the brother of Louis XIV.: therefore
Louis-Philippe d'Orléans was a Bourbon and Capet, not a Valois. M.
Laffitte nevertheless continued to look upon him as belonging to the
dynasty of Charles IX. and Henry III., and said:

"Thiers knows all about it."

Later, the Lointier gathering[293] protested that the nation was in
arms to maintain its rights by force. The central committee of the 12th
Ward declared that the people had not been consulted on the method
of its Constitution, that the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of
Peers, holding their powers from Charles X., had fallen with him and
could not, in consequence, represent the nation; that the Provisional
Government must remain in permanence, under the presidency of La
Fayette, until a Constitution had been discussed and fixed as the
fundamental basis of government.

On the morning of the 30th, there was a question of proclaiming the
Republic. A few determined men threatened to kill the Municipal
Commission if it did not keep the power in its hands. Did they not
also blame the House of Peers? They were furious at its audacity. The
audacity of the House of Peers! Surely this must have been the last
outrage and the last injustice which it expected to receive at the
hands of public opinion!

A plan was formed: twenty of the most fiery young men were to lie in
wait in a little street running into the Quai de la Ferraille and fire
on Louis-Philippe when he went from the Palais-Royal to the Hôtel de
Ville. They were stopped and told that they would at the same time be
killing Laffitte, Pajol and Benjamin Constant. Lastly it was proposed
to kidnap the Duc d'Orléans and put him on board ship at Cherbourg: a
strange meeting, if Charles X. and Philip had come together again in
the same port, on the same vessel, one dispatched to a foreign shore by
the middle class, the other by the Republicans!


The Duc d'Orléans, having made up his mind to go to have his title
confirmed by the tribunes of the Hôtel de Ville, went down into the
court-yard of the Palais-Royal, surrounded by eighty-nine deputies
in caps, in round hats, in dress-coats, in frock-coats. The royal
candidate mounted a white horse; he was followed by Benjamin Constant,
tossed about in a chair by two Savoyards. Messieurs Méchin[294] and
Viennet[295], covered with dust and perspiration, walked between the
white horse of the future monarch and the barrow of the gouty deputy,
quarrelling with the two porters to make them keep the required
distance. A half-drunken drummer beat the drum at the head of the
procession. Four ushers served as lictors. The more zealous deputies
bellowed:

"Long live the Duc d'Orléans!"

[Sidenote: Philip at the Palais-Royal.]

Around the Palais-Royal these cries met with some response; but, as the
troop approached the Hôtel de Ville, the spectators became derisive
or silent. Philip threw himself about on his triumphal steed and
constantly took shelter beneath the buckler of M. Laffitte, from whom
he received a few patronizing words on the way. He smiled to General
Gérard, made signs of intelligence to M. Viennet and M. Méchin, and
begged the crown of the people with his hat adorned with a yard of
tricolour ribbon, putting out his hand to whosoever on his way was
willing to drop an alms into it. The strolling monarchy reached the
Place de Grève, where it was greeted with cries of "The Republic for
ever!"

When the royal electoral matter made its way inside the Hôtel de
Ville, the postulant was received with more threatening murmurs: a
few zealous servants who shouted his name were punched for their
pains. He entered the Throne Room; here were crowded the wounded and
fighters of the Three Days: a general shout of "No more Bourbons! Long
live La Fayette!" shook the rafters of the hall. The Prince appeared
embarrassed. M. Viennet, on behalf of M. Laffitte, read the declaration
of the Deputies; it was heard in profound silence. The Duc d'Orléans
spoke a few words of adhesion. Then M. Dubourg said roughly to Philip:

"You have taken serious engagements. If ever you fail to keep them,
we are the people to remind you of them." Whereupon the future King
replied, with great emotion:

"Sir, I am an honest man."

M. de La Fayette, seeing the growing uncertainty of the assembly,
suddenly took it in his head to abdicate the Presidency: he handed the
Duc d'Orléans a tricolour flag, stepped out on the balcony of the Hôtel
de Ville, and embraced the Prince before the eyes of the gaping crowd,
while the Duke waved the national flag. La Fayette's republican kiss
made a king: a curious outcome of the whole career of the "hero of the
Two Worlds!"

And then, rub-a-dub! the litter of Benjamin Constant and the white
horse of Louis-Philippe went home again, half hooted, half blessed,
from the political factory on the Grève to the Palais-Marchand.

    "That same day," says M. Louis Blanc, "and not far from the Hôtel
    de Ville, a wherry moored at the foot of the Morgue and surmounted
    by a black flag, received corpses which were lowered in barrows.
    These corpses were piled up in heaps and covered with straw; and
    the crowd, which had gathered along the parapets of the Seine,
    looked on in silence[296]."

Speaking of the States of the League and the making of a king,
Palma-Cayet[297] exclaims:

    "I pray you to picture to yourselves what answer could have made
    that little goodman Master Matthieu Delaunay and M. Boucher,
    curate of Saint-Benoît, and any other of that condition to one who
    should have told them that they must be employed to instal a king
    in France to their fancy?... True Frenchmen have always held in
    contempt that form of electing kings, which makes them masters and
    servants together."

Philip had not come to the end of his trials; he had many more hands
to shake, many more embraces to receive: he still had to blow very
many kisses, to bow very low to the passers-by, to humour the crowd
by coming many times on the balcony of the Tuileries to sing the
Marseillaise.

A certain number of Republicans had met, on the morning of the 31st,
at the office of the _National_: when they knew that the Duc d'Orléans
had been appointed Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, they wished
to know the opinions of the man destined to become King in spite of
them. They were taken to the Palais-Royal by M. Thiers: there were
Messieurs Bastide, Thomas, Joubert[298], Cavaignac[299], Marchais,
Degousée[300], and Guinard. The Prince at first said many fine things
to them about liberty:

"You are not King yet," retorted Bastide; "listen to the truth: soon
you will have no lack of flatterers."

"Your father," added Cavaignac, "was a regicide like mine; that
separates you a little from the others."

[Sidenote: Embraces La Fayette.]

Followed mutual congratulations on the regicide, accompanied
nevertheless by a judicious remark from Philip, to the effect that
there are things which we should remember in order not to imitate them.

Some Republicans who were not at the meeting at the _National_ entered.
M. Trélat said to Philip:

"The people is the master; your functions are provisional; the people
must express its wish: do you consult it, yes or no?"

M. Thiers interrupted this dangerous speech by tapping M. Thomas on the
shoulder and saying:

"Monseigneur, have we not a fine colonel here?"

"That is true," answered Louis-Philippe.

"What is he talking about?" they exclaimed. "Does he take us for a band
that has come to sell itself?"

And on every side rose contradictory phrases:

"It's a tower of Babel! And that's what they call a Citizen King! The
Republic? You had better govern with Republicans!"

And M. Thiers exclaiming:

"Here's a fine embassy I've undertaken!"

Then M. de La Fayette came down to the Palais-Royal: the citizen was
nearly stifled under the embraces of his King. The whole house was
ready to die.

Men in jackets were at the posts of honour, men in caps in the
drawing-rooms, men in smocks sat down to table with the Princes
and Princesses; in the council-chamber there were chairs, but no
arm-chairs; all spoke who would; Louis-Philippe, seated between M. de
La Fayette and M. Laffitte, their arms entwined round each other's
shoulders, beamed expansively with equality and happiness.

I would have liked to employ more gravity in my description of those
scenes which produced a great revolution, or, to speak more correctly,
of those scenes by which the transformation of the world will be
hastened: but I saw them; deputies who acted in them could not help
showing a certain confusion, when they told me how, on the 31st of
July, they went to forge--a king.

To Henry IV., before he became a Catholic, men raised objections which
did not degrade him and which were measured by the level of the Throne
itself: they told him that "St. Louis had been canonized, not at
Geneva, but in Rome; that, if the King were not a Catholic, he would
not hold the first place among the kings of Christendom; that it was
not seemly that the King should pray in one wise and his people in
another; that the King could not be crowned at Rheims, nor buried at
Saint-Denis, if he were not a Catholic."

What was the objection raised against Philip before his final election?
Men objected that he was not "patriot" enough.

To-day, when the Revolution is consummated, men take offense if one
dare remind them of what took place at the start; they fear to diminish
the solidity of the position they have taken up, and whosoever does
not find in the origin of the incipient fact the gravity of the
accomplished fact is a traducer.

When a dove descended to bring the Holy Oil to Clovis; when the
long-haired kings were raised upon a buckler; when St. Louis, in his
premature virtue, trembled at his coronation while pronouncing the
oath to employ his authority only for the glory of God and the welfare
of his people; when Henry IV., after his entry into Paris, went to
prostrate himself at Notre-Dame, and men saw, or thought they saw, on
his right, a beautiful child who defended him and who was taken to be
his guardian angel: I conceive that the diadem was a sacred thing;
the Oriflamme rested in the tabernacles of Heaven. But, now that a
sovereign, on a public square, with hair cut short and hands tied
behind his back, has lowered his head beneath the blade to the sound
of the drum; now that another sovereign, surrounded by the rabble, has
gone to beg votes for his "election," to the sound of the same drum,
on another public square: who keeps the smallest illusion touching
the crown? Who believes that that soiled and battered monarchy can
still impose upon the world? What man, feeling his heart beat ever so
little, would swallow power in that cup of shame and disgust which
Philip emptied at one draught without a qualm? European monarchy could
have continued its life, if in France they had preserved the parent
monarchy, the daughter of a saint and of a great man; but her seed has
been dispersed: nothing will be born of her again.


You have seen the Monarchy of the Grève march dusty and breathless
under the tricolour flag, in the midst of its insolent friends: see
now the Royalty of Rheims retire, with measured steps, in the midst of
its almoners and its guards, walking in accordance with the exactest
etiquette, hearing no word but words of respect, revered even by those
who detested it. The soldier, little though he esteemed it, died for
it; the White Flag, laid upon its bier before being folded away for
ever, said to the wind:

"Salute me: I was at Ivry; I saw Turenne die; the English knew me at
Fontenoy; I made liberty triumph under Washington; I have delivered
Greece, and I still wave from the walls of Algiers!"

[Sidenote: The Duc D'Angoulême.]

On the 31st, at daybreak, at the very hour when the Duc
d'Orléans, after arriving in Paris, was preparing to accept the
Lieutenant-generalship, the servants at Saint-Cloud came to the bivouac
on the Sèvres Bridge, saying that they were discharged and that the
King had left at half-past three in the morning. The soldiers became
excited, but grew calm again when the Dauphin appeared: he rode up on
horse-back, as though to carry them with him by one of those phrases
which lead the French to death or victory; he stopped in front of the
ranks, stammered a few sentences, turned short, and went back to the
Palace. It was not courage that failed him, but speech. The miserable
education of our Princes of the Elder Branch, since Louis XIV.,
rendered them incapable of supporting a contradiction, of expressing
themselves like everybody else, and of mixing with the rest of mankind.

Meanwhile, the heights of Sèvres and the terraces of Bellevue were
crowned with men of the people: a few musket-shots were exchanged. The
captain commanding the advance-guard on the Sèvres Bridge went over
to the enemy; he took a piece of cannon and a part of his soldiers
to the bands that had gathered on the Point-du-Jour Road. Then the
Parisians and the Guards agreed that no hostilities should take place
until the evacuation of Saint-Cloud and of Sèvres was effected. The
retiring movement began; the Swiss were hemmed in by the inhabitants
of Sèvres and flung away their arms, although they were almost at once
extricated by the Lancers, whose lieutenant-colonel was wounded. The
troops passed through Versailles, where the National Guard had been on
duty since the preceding day, with La Rochejacquelein's Grenadiers, the
first under the tricolour, the second with the white cockade. Madame
la Dauphine arrived from Vichy and joined the Royal Family at Trianon,
the favourite residence of Marie-Antoinette. At Trianon, M. de Polignac
took leave of his master.

It has been said that Madame la Dauphine was opposed to the Ordinances.
The only way to judge kings correctly is to consider them in their
essence: the plebeian will always be on the side of liberty; the
prince will always lean towards power. We must ascribe this to them as
neither a crime nor a merit: it is their nature. Madame la Dauphine
would probably have wished that the Ordinances had appeared at a more
opportune moment, after better precautions had been taken to ensure
their success; but in reality they pleased her and were bound to please
her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry was delighted with them. Those two
Princesses believed that the Royalty, once its own master, would be
free from the shackles which representative government fastens to the
sovereign's feet.


One is astonished, in the events of July, not to meet with the
Diplomatic Body, which was only too much consulted by the Court and
which interfered too much in our business.

There was twice a question of the foreign ambassadors in our last
troubles. A man was arrested at the barriers and the packet of which he
was the bearer sent to the Hôtel de Ville: it was a dispatch from M. de
Lœwenhielm[301] to the King of Sweden. M. Baude sent back the dispatch
unopened to the Swedish Legation. Lord Stuart's[302] correspondence
fell into the hands of the popular leaders and was similarly returned
without being opened, which did wonders in London. Lord Stuart, like
all his fellow-countrymen, adored disorder in foreign countries: with
him, diplomacy was police-duty, dispatches reports. He liked me well
enough when I was Foreign Minister, because I treated him without
ceremony and because my door was always open to him; he used to come to
me at all hours, in boots, dirty, with disordered dress, after visiting
the boulevards and the ladies, whom he paid badly and who called him
"Stuart."

I had conceived diplomacy on a new plan: having nothing to conceal,
I spoke aloud; I would have shown my dispatches to the first-comer,
because I had no project for the glory of France which I was not
determined to accomplish in spite of all opposition.

I have said a hundred times to Sir Charles Stuart, laughing, and I
meant what I said:

"Do not pick a quarrel with me: if you throw down the gauntlet to me,
I shall pick it up. France has never made war on you with a proper
understanding of your position; that is why you have beaten us: but
don't rely on this[303]."

[Sidenote: Lord Stuart de Rothesay.]

Lord Stuart, therefore, beheld our "troubles of July" with all that
good nature which rejoices over our misfortunes. But the members of
the Diplomatic Body hostile to the popular cause had more or less
urged Charles X. in the direction of the Ordinances; and yet, when
they appeared, the ambassadors did nothing to save the Sovereign. If
M. Pozzo di Borgo[304] showed some anxiety concerning a _coup d'État_,
this was on behalf of neither the King nor the people.

Two things are certain:

First, the Revolution attacked the treaties of the Quadruple Alliance:
the France of the Bourbons formed part of that alliance; the Bourbons
could not, therefore, be violently dispossessed without endangering the
new political right of Europe.

Secondly, in a monarchy, the foreign legations are not accredited to
the government, but to the monarch. The strict duty of those legations,
therefore, was to gather round Charles X. and to attend on him so long
as he remained on French soil.

Is it not singular that the only ambassador to whom this idea occurred
should have been the representative of Bernadotte, of a King who
did not belong to the old families of sovereigns? M. de Lœwenhielm
was on the point of bringing the Baron de Werther[305] over to his
opinion, when M. Pozzo di Borgo opposed a measure which his credentials
prescribed and honour demanded.

Had the Diplomatic Body gone to Saint-Cloud, Charles X.'s position
would have been different: the partisans of the Legitimacy in the
Elective Chamber would have gained a strength which they lacked at
first; the fear of a war would have alarmed the working class; the
idea of preserving peace by keeping Henry V.[306] would have drawn a
considerable mass of the population over to the royal infant's party.

M. Pozzo di Borgo stood aloof so as not to compromise his securities on
the Bourse or at his bankers', and especially not to expose his place.
He played at five per cent, on the corpse of the Capetian Legitimacy,
a corpse which will communicate death to the other living kings. He
will not fail, some time hence, to try, according to custom, to pass
off this irreparable fault, due to personal interest, as a profound
combination.

Ambassadors left too long at the same Court adopt the manners of the
country in which they reside. Charmed to live in the midst of honours,
no longer seeing things as they are, they are afraid of passing in
their dispatches a truth which might bring about a change in their
position. It is, in fact, a different thing to be Esterhazy[307],
Werther, Pozzo in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or to be Their
Excellencies the Ambassadors to the Court of France. It has been said
that M. Pozzo bore a grudge against Louis XVIII. and Charles X. in
the matter of the Blue Ribbon and the peerage. They were wrong not to
satisfy him; he had rendered services to the Bourbons, for hatred of
his fellow-countryman[308], Bonaparte. But if, at Ghent, he decided
the question of the throne, by provoking the sudden departure of Louis
XVIII. for Paris, he can now boast that, by preventing the Diplomatic
Body from doing its duty in the Days of July, he has helped to throw
from the head of Charles X. the crown which he assisted in placing on
the brow of his brother.

[Sidenote: The diplomatic body.]

I have long been of opinion that diplomatic bodies, born in centuries
subject to a different law of nations, are no longer in keeping with
the new society: public governments, easy communications bring about
that nowadays Cabinets are in a position to treat direct or simply
through the intermediary of their consular agents, whose number should
be increased and their condition improved: for, at this hour, Europe
is an industrial continent. Titled spies, with exorbitant pretensions,
who meddle with everything to give themselves an importance which they
cannot retain, serve only to disturb the Cabinets to which they are
accredited and to feed their masters with illusions. Charles X., on his
side, was wrong not to invite the Diplomatic Body to join his Court;
but what he saw seemed to him a dream: he went from one surprise to the
other. It was thus that he did not send for M. le Duc d'Orléans; for,
thinking himself in danger only from the side of the Republic, the risk
of an usurpation never entered his thoughts.


Charles X. set out in the evening for Rambouillet with the Princesses
and M. le Duc de Bordeaux. The new role played by M. le Duc d'Orléans
gave rise to the first ideas of abdication in the King's head. Monsieur
le Dauphin remained with the rear-guard, but did not mix with the
soldiers; at Trianon he ordered what remained of wine and food to be
distributed among them.

At a quarter past eight in the evening, the different corps set
forward. There the fidelity of the 5th Light Regiment expired. Instead
of following the movement, it returned to Paris: its colours were
brought to Charles X., who refused to accept them, as he had refused to
accept those of the 50th.

The brigades were all confused, the several arms intermingled; the
cavalry outpaced the infantry and halted separately. At midnight, on
the 31st of July, a stop was made at Trappes. The Dauphin slept at a
house at the back of the village.

The next morning, the 1st of August, he started for Rambouillet,
leaving the troops bivouacked at Trappes. These broke up camp at
eleven. A few soldiers who had gone to buy bread in the hamlets were
massacred.

On its arrival at Rambouillet, the army was cantoned round the Palace.

During the night of the 1st of August, three regiments of heavy
cavalry went back to their old garrisons. It is believed that General
Bordesoulle[309], commanding the heavy cavalry of the Guard, had made
his capitulation at Versailles. The 2nd Grenadiers also went off on
the morning of the 2nd, after sending in its colours to the King. The
Dauphin met these deserting Grenadiers; they formed in line to do
honour to the Prince, and continued their road. Strange mixture of
disloyalty and good manners! In this three days' revolution, no one
betrayed any passion; each acted according to the idea he had formed of
his rights or his duties: the rights conquered, the duties fulfilled,
no enmity and no affection remained. The one feared lest the rights
should carry him too far, the other lest the duties should exceed their
limits. Perhaps it has only once happened, and perhaps it will never
happen again, that a people stopped within reach of its victory, and
that soldiers who had defended a King, so long as he seemed to wish
to fight, returned their standards to him before abandoning him. The
Ordinances had released the people from its oath; the retreat, on the
field of battle, released the grenadier from his flag.


Charles X. retiring, the Republicans withdrawing, there was nothing to
prevent the Elected Monarchy from moving forward. The provinces, always
sheep-like and the slaves of Paris, at each movement of the telegraph
and at each tricolour flag perched on the top of a diligence, shouted,
"Long live Philip!" or, "The Revolution for ever!"

The opening of the session being fixed for the 3rd of August, the Peers
repaired to the Chamber of Deputies: I went there, for everything
was as yet provisional. There another act of melodrama was performed:
the throne remained empty, and the Anti-king sat down beside it, as
who should say the Lord Chancellor opening a session of the British
Parliament, in the Sovereign's absence.

Philip spoke of the painful necessity in which he had found himself
of accepting the Lieutenant-generalship to save us all, of the
revision of Article XIV. of the Charter, of the feeling for liberty
which he, Philip, bore in his heart and which he was about to pour
over us, together with peace over Europe: a hocus-pocus of speech and
constitution repeated at each phase of our history since the last
half-century. But attention grew very lively when the Prince made the
following declaration:

[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles X.]

    "Peers and deputies,

    "So soon as the two Chambers are constituted, I will communicate
    to you the act of abdication of His Majesty King Charles X. By the
    same act, Louis Antoine of France, the Dauphin, likewise renounces
    his rights. This act was placed in my hands at eleven o'clock last
    night, the 2nd of August. This morning I have ordered it to be
    deposited in the archives of the House of Peers and to be inserted
    in the official part of the _Moniteur_."

By a contemptible trick and a cowardly omission, the Duc d'Orléans
here suppressed the name of Henry V., in whose favour the two Kings
had abdicated. If, at that time, every Frenchman could have been
individually consulted, it is probable that the majority would have
pronounced in favour of Henry V.; even a section of the Republicans
would have accepted him, giving him La Fayette for a mentor. Had the
germ of the Legitimacy remained in France and the two old Kings gone
to end their days in Rome, none of the difficulties which surround an
usurpation and render it suspicious to the various parties would have
existed. The adoption of the Younger Branch of Bourbon was not only a
danger, it was a political solecism: New France is Republican; she does
not want a king, at least she does not want a king of the old dynasty.
A few years more, and we shall see what will become of our liberties
and what that peace will be which is to gladden the world. If we may
judge of the future conduct of the new personage elected by what we
know of his character, it is safe to presume that this Prince will
think that the only way to preserve his monarchy is by oppression at
home and grovelling abroad.

The real wrong done by Louis-Philippe is not that he accepted the
crown, an act of ambition of which there are thousands of examples and
which attacks only a political institution; his true crime is that he
was a faithless guardian, that he "robbed the child and the orphan," a
crime for which the Scriptures do not contain enough curses: now moral
justice (let who will call it fatality or Providence, I call it the
inevitable consequences of evil-doing) has never failed to punish the
infractions of moral law.

Philip, his government, all that order of impossible and contradictory
things will perish, within a period more or less delayed by fortuitous
circumstances, by complications of internal and external interests, by
the apathy and corruption of individuals, by the levity of men's minds,
the indifference and effacement of their characters; but, whatever the
duration of the present system may be, it will never be long enough for
the Orleans Branch to take deep root.

Charles X., apprized of the progress of the Revolution, possessing
nothing in his age or his character fitted to stem that progress,
thought that he was warding off the blow struck at his House by
abdicating together with his son, as Philip announced to the Deputies.
On the 1st of August he wrote a line approving of the opening of the
session and, counting on the sincere attachment of his cousin the Duc
d'Orléans, he in his turn appointed him Lieutenant-general of the
Kingdom. He went further on the 2nd, for he wanted nothing more than
to take ship, and he asked for commissaries to protect him as far as
Cherbourg. These apparitors were not at once received by the Military
Household. Bonaparte also had commissaries as guards: the first time
Russian, the second French; but he had not asked for them.

[Sidenote: Letter from Charles to Philip.]

Here is Charles X.'s letter:

    "RAMBOUILLET, 2 _August_ 1830.

    "COUSIN,

    "I am too deeply distressed at the evils with which my people are
    afflicted and threatened not to seek the means of removing them.
    I have therefore resolved to abdicate the crown in favour of my
    grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux.

    "The Dauphin, who shares my sentiments, also renounces his rights
    in favour of his nephew.

    "You will, therefore, in your capacity of Lieutenant-general of
    the Kingdom, cause the accession of Henry V. to the crown to be
    proclaimed. You will take all the other measures which concern
    you, for regulating the forms of government during the minority of
    the new King. I here confine myself to the communication of these
    arrangements, as the means of avoiding yet many more evils.

    "You will communicate my intentions to the Diplomatic Body, and
    you will take the earliest opportunity of making known to me the
    proclamation by which my grandson is recognised as King, under the
    title of Henry V.[310]...

    "I renew to you, cousin, the assurance of the sentiments with which
    I am

    "Your affectionate cousin,

    "CHARLES."

If M. le Duc d'Orléans had been capable of emotion or remorse, would
not this signature, "Your affectionate cousin," have struck him to the
heart? So little doubt had they at Rambouillet of the efficacy of the
abdications that the young Prince was being made ready for his journey:
his ægis, the tricolour cockade, was already fashioned by the hands
of the most zealous promoters of the Ordinances. Suppose that Madame
la Duchesse de Berry had suddenly set out with her son and appeared
in the Chamber of Deputies at the moment when M. le Duc d'Orléans was
delivering his opening speech, two chances remained: dangerous chances,
but, at least, the child removed to Heaven would not have dragged out
days of misery on foreign soil.

My counsels, my prayers, my cries were powerless; I asked in vain for
Marie-Caroline: the mother of Bayard, as he was preparing to quit the
paternal castle, "wept," says the _Loyal Serviteur_:

"The good gentle woman came out from the back of the tower, and sent
for her son, to whom she spake these words:

"'Pierre, my friend, be sweet and courteous, putting from you all
pride; be humble and serviceable to all men; be loyal in deeds and
words; be helpful to poor widows and orphans, and God will recompense
you....'

"Then the good ladye drew out of her sleeve a little purse in which
were only six crowns in gold and one in small silver, the which she
gave to her son."

The knight without fear and without reproach rode away with six golden
crowns in a little purse to become the bravest and most renowned
of captains. Henry, who perhaps has not six gold crowns, will have
very different combats to wage; he will have to fight misfortune,
a difficult champion to throw. Let us glorify the mothers who give
such tender and good lessons to their sons! Blessed, then, be you, my
mother, from whom I derive all that may have honoured and disciplined
my life!

Forgive me for all these recollections; but perhaps the tyranny of my
memory, by introducing the past into the present, takes from the latter
a part of its wretchedness.

The three commissaries deputed to Charles X. were Messieurs de Schonen,
Odilon Barrot and Marshal Maison. They were sent back by the military
posts, and started to return to Paris. A wave of the populace carried
them back to Rambouillet.


The rumour spread, on the evening of the 2nd, that Charles X. refused
to leave Rambouillet before his grand-son was recognised. A multitude
gathered in the Champs-Élysées on the morning of the 3rd, shouting:

"To Rambouillet! To Rambouillet! Not one of the Bourbons must escape
from it!"

There were rich men mixed among these groups, but, when the moment
came, they allowed the "rabble" to set out without them. General Pajol
placed himself at their head, taking Colonel Jacqueminot[311] as his
chief of staff. The returning commissaries, meeting the scouts of this
column, turned on their steps and were then admitted to Rambouillet.
The King questioned them on the strength of the insurgents and then,
withdrawing, sent for Maison, who owed him his fortune and his
marshal's baton:

"Maison, I ask you on your honour as a soldier, is what the
commissaries have told me the truth?"

The marshal replied:

"They have told you only half the truth."

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Rambouillet.]

There remained at Rambouillet, on the 3rd of August, 3500 men of the
Infantry of the Guard, and four regiments of Light Cavalry, forming
twenty squadrons and consisting of 2000 men. The Military Household,
Body-guards and so on amounted, horse and foot, to 1300 men: in all,
8800 men and seven batteries consisting of 42 pieces of artillery
with their teams. At ten o'clock at night, the signal was sounded to
saddle; the whole camp started for Maintenon, Charles X. and his Family
marching in the midst of the funeral column, which was scarce lighted
by the veiled moon.

And before whom were they retreating? Before a band almost unarmed,
arriving in omnibuses, in cabs, in traps from Versailles and
Saint-Cloud. General Pajol thought that he was quite lost when he was
obliged to place himself at the head of that multitude[312], which,
after all, did not amount to more than 15,000 men, with the adjunction
of the newly-arrived Rouennese. Half of this band remained on the
roads. A few exalted, valiant and generous young men, mingled with this
troop, would have sacrificed themselves; the rest would probably have
dispersed. In the fields of Rambouillet, in the flat open country, they
would have had to face the fire of the Line and of the Artillery; by
all appearances, a victory would have been won. Between the people's
victory in Paris and the King's victory at Rambouillet, negociations
would have been entered upon.

What! Among so many officers, was there not one with sufficient
resolution to seize the command in the name of Henry V.? For, after
all, Charles X. and the Dauphin were Kings no longer.

If they did not wish to fight, why did they not retire to Chartres?
There, they would have been out of the reach of the Paris populace.
Or, better still, to Tours, supported by the Legitimist provinces? Had
Charles X. remained in France, the greater part of the army would have
remained loyal. The camps at Boulogne and Lunéville were raised and
were marching to his aid. My nephew, the Comte Louis, was bringing his
regiment, the 4th Light Infantry, which left the ranks only on hearing
of the retreat from Rambouillet. M. de Chateaubriand was reduced to
escorting the Monarch on a pony to his place of embarkation. If,
repairing to some town, protected against a first surprise, Charles
X. had convoked the two Chambers, more than half of those Chambers
would have obeyed. Casimir Périer, General Sébastiani and a hundred
others had waited, had struggled against the tricolour cockade;
they dreaded the dangers of a popular revolution: what am I saying?
The Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, summoned by the King and not
seeing the battle won, would have stolen away from his partisans and
conformed to the royal injunction. The Diplomatic Body, which did not
do its duty, would have done it then by placing itself around the
Sovereign. The Republic, installed in Paris amidst all the disorders,
would not have lasted a month in the face of a regular constitutional
government, established elsewhere. Never has the game been lost with so
fine a hand, and, when a game is lost in this way, there is no revenge
possible: go talk of liberty to the citizens and of honour to the
soldiers after the Ordinances of July and the retreat from Saint-Cloud!

The time will perhaps come, when a new form of society will have taken
the place of the present social order, when war will appear a monstrous
absurdity, when its very principle will no longer be understood;
but we have not reached that stage yet. In armed quarrels, there
are philanthropists who distinguish between the species and who are
prepared to swoon away at the mere word of civil war:

"Fellow-countrymen killing one another! Brothers, fathers, sons, face
to face!"

All this is very sad, no doubt; and yet a nation has often been
regenerated and acquired new vigour in intestine discords. None has
ever perished by a civil war; many have disappeared in foreign wars.
See what Italy was, at the time of her divisions, and see what she
is now. It is a deplorable thing to be obliged to lay waste your
neighbour's property, to see your own home blooded by that same
neighbour; but, frankly, is it much more humane to slay a family of
German peasants whom you do not know, who have never had a discussion
with you of any kind, whom you rob, whom you kill without remorse,
whose wives and children you dishonour with a safe conscience, because
this is war? Whatever men may say, civil wars are less unjust, less
revolting and more natural than foreign wars, except when the latter
are undertaken to save the national independence. Civil wars are
based at least upon individual outrages, upon admitted and recognised
aversions; they are duels with seconds, in which the adversaries know
why they are wielding their swords. If the passions do not justify
the evil, they excuse it, they explain it, they give a reason for its
existence. How is foreign war justified? Generally, nations cut each
other's throats because a king is bored, because an ambitious man
wishes to rise, because a minister seeks to supplant a rival. The time
has come to do justice on those old common-places of sentimentalism,
better suited to poets than historians: Thucydides, Cæsar, Livy are
content to utter a word of sorrow and pass on.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on Civil war.]

Civil war, in spite of its calamities, has only one real danger: if
the contending factions have recourse to the foreigner, or if the
foreigner, profiting by the divisions of a people, attack it; such
a position might result in conquest. Great Britain, the Iberian
Peninsula, Constantinopolitan Greece, in our own days Poland offer
examples which we must not forget. Nevertheless, during the League,
the two parties calling Spaniards and English, Italians and Germans to
their aid, the latter counter-balanced each other and did not disturb
the equilibrium which the French in arms maintained among themselves.

Charles X. was wrong to employ bayonets in support of his Ordinances;
his ministers have no justification to offer, whether they were acting
in obedience or not, for having shed the blood of the people and the
soldiers, whom no hatred divided, in the same way as the theoretical
Terrorists would gladly reproduce the system of the Terror, when no
Terror exists. But Charles X. was also wrong not to accept war when,
after he had yielded on every point, it was brought to his door. He had
no right, after placing the diadem on the brow of his grandson, to say
to that new Joas:

"I have made you ascend the throne, to drag you into exile, so that,
wretched and banished, you may bear the weight of my years, my
proscription and my sceptre."

He was not right at the same moment to give Henry V. a crown and to
rob him of France. When they made him King, they had condemned him to
die on the soil in which lie mingled the dust of St. Louis and that of
Henry IV.

For the rest, after this ebullition of my blood, I return to my reason,
and I see in these things no more than the accomplishment of the
destinies of humanity. The Court, had it triumphed by force of arms,
would have destroyed the public liberties; they would none the less
have crushed it one day; but it would have retarded the development of
society for some years; all that had taken a wide view of the Monarchy
would have been persecuted by the re-established Congregation. In the
last result, events have followed the trend of civilization. God makes
men powerful according to His secret designs: He gives them faults
which undo them when they must be undone, because He does not wish that
qualities ill-applied by a false intelligence should oppose themselves
to the decrees of His Providence.


The retirement of the Royal Family reduced my part to myself. I no
longer thought of what I should be called upon to say in the House of
Peers. To write was impossible: if the attack had come from the enemies
of the Crown; if Charles X. had been overthrown by a conspiracy from
the outside, I should have taken up my pen and, if they had left me
independence of thought, I should have undertaken to rally an immense
party around the ruins of the throne; but the attack had come from
the Crown itself; the Ministers had violated both liberal principles;
they had made the Royalty commit perjury, not intentionally, no doubt,
but in fact; through this very act they had taken away my strength.
What could I put forward in favour of the Ordinances? How could I have
continued to extol the sincerity, the candour, the chivalry of the
Legitimate Monarchy? How could I have said that it was the strongest
guarantee of our interests, our laws and our independence? The champion
of the old Royalty, I had been stripped of my arms by that Royalty and
left naked to mine enemies.

I was therefore quite astonished when, reduced to this state of
weakness, I saw myself sought out by the new Royalty. Charles X. has
disdained my services; Philip made an effort to attach me to himself.
First, M. Arago spoke to me, in lofty and lively terms, on behalf
of Madame Adélaïde; next the Comte Anatole de Montesquiou came one
morning to Madame Récamier's and met me there. He told me that Madame
la Duchesse d'Orléans and M. le Duc d'Orléans would be delighted to see
me, if I would go to the Palais-Royal. They were at that time engaged
upon the declaration which was to transform the Lieutenant-generalship
of the Kingdom into the Royalty. Perhaps H.R.H. had thought it well to
try to weaken my opposition before. I pronounced myself. He may also
have thought that I looked upon myself as released by the flight of the
three Kings.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Orléans.]

These overtures of M. de Montesquiou's surprised me. However, I
did not reject them; for, without flattering myself with hopes of
success, I thought that I might utter some useful truths. I went to
the Palais-Royal with the lord-in-waiting to the future Queen. I was
admitted by the entrance leading out of the Rue de Valois, and found
Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and Madame Adélaïde in their private
apartments. I had had the honour of being presented to them before.
Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans made me sit down beside her, and said to
me, off-hand:

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, we are very unhappy! If all the parties
would only unite together, perhaps we might yet be saved! What do you
think of all this?"

"Madame," I replied, "nothing is easier: Charles X. and Monsieur le
Dauphin have abdicated; Henry is now the King; Monseigneur le Duc
d'Orléans is Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom: let him act as Regent
during the minority of Henry V., and all is settled."

"But, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, the people are very much excited; we
shall fall into anarchy!"

"Madame, may I venture to ask you what are the intentions of
Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans? Will he accept the crown, if it is
offered to him?"

The two Princesses hesitated to answer. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans
replied, after a momentary pause:

"Think, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, of the misfortunes that may happen.
All honest men must combine to save us from the Republic. In Rome you
might render us such great services, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, or even
here, if you do not care to leave France again!"

"Madame is aware of my devotion to the young King and his mother?"

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, they have treated you so well!"

"Your Royal Highness would not have me give the lie to my whole life."

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you do not know my niece[313]: she is
so frivolous!... Poor Caroline!... I am going to send for M. le Duc
d'Orléans: he will persuade you better than I can."

The Princess gave instructions, and Louis-Philippe arrived after a
quarter of an hour. He was badly-dressed and looked extremely tired. I
rose, and the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom accosted me with:

"Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans must have told you how unhappy we are."

And forthwith he spun me an idyll on the happiness which he enjoyed
in the country, on the peaceful life, so much to his liking, which he
spent in the midst of his children. I seized the moment of a pause
between two strophes to speak in my turn and respectfully to repeat, in
almost the same words, what I had said to the two Princesses.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "that is what I should like! How happy I should
be to be the guardian and the upholder of that child! I think just as
you do, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: to accept the Duc de Bordeaux would
certainly be the best thing to do. I fear only that events will prove
more than a match for us."

"More than a match for us, Monseigneur? Are you not invested with full
powers? Let us go to join Henry V.; summon the Chambers and the army to
your side, outside Paris. The mere noise of your departure will cause
all this effervescence to subside, and men will seek a shelter under
your enlightened and protective power."

While speaking, I watched Philip. My advice put him ill at ease; I read
on his face his desire to be King:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said, without looking at me, "the thing
is more difficult than you think; it won't go like that. You do not
know the danger in which we stand. A furious band might indulge in
the most violent excesses against the Chambers, and we have no one to
defend us." This phrase which M. le Duc d'Orléans let fall pleased me,
because it supplied me with a peremptory retort:

[Sidenote: My conversation with the Duke.]

"I can conceive that difficulty, Monseigneur, but there is a sure means
of removing it. If you do not think that you can join Henry V., as I
was suggesting, you can adopt another course. The session is about to
open: whatever proposal the Deputies may make first, declare that the
present Chamber does not possess the necessary powers (which is the
sheer truth) to dispose of the form of government; say that France
must be consulted and a new assembly elected with powers _ad hoc_
to decide so important a question. Your Royal Highness will then be
placing yourself in the most popular position; the Republican Party,
which at this moment constitutes your danger, will extol you to the
skies. In the two months that will elapse before the meeting of the new
legislature, you will organize the National Guard; all your friends and
the friends of the young King will work for you in the provinces. Then
let the Deputies come, let the cause which I am defending be publicly
pleaded in the tribune. This cause, secretly favoured by yourself, will
obtain an immense majority of votes. The moment of anarchy will have
passed, and you will have nothing more to fear from the violence of the
Republicans. I do not even see that you will have much difficulty in
winning General La Fayette and M. Laffitte to your side. What a fine
part for you to play, Monseigneur! You can reign for fifteen years in
the name of your ward; in fifteen years, the age of rest will have
set in for all of us; you will have had the glory, unique in history,
of being able to ascend the throne and of leaving it to the lawful
heir; at the same time, you will have brought up that child in the
enlightenment of the century and you will have made him capable of
reigning over France: one of your daughters might one day wield the
sceptre with him."

Philip cast his looks vaguely above his head:

"Excuse me, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said; "I left an important
deputation to come to talk with you, and I must go back to it. Madame
la Duchesse d'Orléans will have told you how happy I should be to do
what you might wish; but, believe me, it is I alone who am holding back
a threatening crowd. If the Royalist Party is not massacred, it owes
its life to my efforts."

"Monseigneur," I replied to this statement, so unexpected and so far
removed from the subject of our conversation, "I have seen massacres:
men who have gone through the Revolution are seasoned. Old soldiers
do not allow themselves to be frightened by objects that terrify
conscripts."

H.R.H. withdrew, and I went to join my friends:

"Well?" they exclaimed.

"Well, he wants to be King."

"And Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans?"

"She wants to be Queen."

"What did they say to you?"

"One spoke to me of pastorals, the other of the dangers threatening
France and of 'poor Caroline's' frivolity; both were good enough to
convey to me that I might be of use to them, and neither of them looked
me in the face."


Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans wished to see me once more. M. le Duc
d'Orléans did not come to take part in this conversation. Madame la
Duchesse d'Orléans explained herself more clearly on the favours with
which Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans proposed to honour me. She was good
enough to remind me of what she called my power over public opinion, of
the sacrifices which I had made, of the aversion which Charles X. and
his family had always shown me, in spite of my services. She told me
that, if I wished to go back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H.R.H.
would be most pleased to reinstate me in that office; but that perhaps
I would prefer to return to Rome, and that she (Madame la Duchesse
d'Orléans) would see me take this last course with an extreme pleasure,
in the interests of our holy religion.

"Madame," I replied at once, with a certain animation, "I see that
Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans' mind is made up, that he has weighed the
consequences, that he foresees the years of misery and of various
dangers which he will have to pass; I have therefore no more to say.
I have not come here to show any lack of respect to the blood of the
Bourbons; I owe, besides, nothing but gratitude to Madame's kindness.
Leaving on one side, therefore, the main objections, the reasons drawn
from principles and events, I beseech Your Royal Highness to consent to
listen to what regards myself. You have been good enough to speak to
me of what you call my power over public opinion. Well, if this power
is real, it is founded only on public esteem; and I should lose this
esteem the moment I changed my flag. Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans would
think he was gaining support, whereas he would have in his service only
a wretched phrase-maker, a perjurer to whose voice none would hearken,
a renegade at whom every one would have the right to fling mud and
to spit in his face. To the wavering words which he would stammer in
favour of Louis-Philippe, they would oppose whole volumes which he had
published in favour of the fallen family. Was it not I, Madame, who
wrote the pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, the articles on the
_Arrivée de Louis XVIII. à Compiègne_, the _Rapport dans le conseil du
roi à Gand_, the _Histoire de la vie et de la mort de M. le duc de
Berry?_ I doubt if I have written a single page in which the name of my
ancient kings does not appear in some connection and in which it is not
surrounded with protestations of my love and fidelity: a matter which
bears a character of individual attachment the more remarkable inasmuch
as Madame knows that I do not believe in kings. At the mere thought of
a desertion, the blushes rise to my face; I would go the next day to
throw myself into the Seine. I entreat Madame to excuse the animation
of my words; I am penetrated with your kindness; I will keep it in
profound and grateful remembrance, but you would not wish to dishonour
me: pity me, Madame, pity me!"

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle D'Orléans.]

I had remained standing and, bowing, I withdrew. Mademoiselle d'Orléans
had not uttered a word. She rose and, as she left the room, said to me:

"I do not pity you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I do not pity you!"

I was astonished at these few words and at the emphasis with which they
were spoken.

That was my last political temptation; I might have thought myself
a just man according to St. Hilary[314], who declares that men are
exposed to the attempts of the devil in proportion to their godliness:
_Victoria ei est magis, exacta de sanctis._ My refusals were those of
a dupe: where is the public that shall judge them? Could I not have
taken my place among the men, virtuous sons of the land, who serve the
"country" before all things? Unfortunately, I am not a creature of
the present and I am not willing to capitulate with fortune. I have
nothing in common with Cicero; but his frailty is no excuse: posterity
has declined to forgive one great man his moment of weakness for
another great man; what would my poor life have been, losing its only
possession, its integrity, for Louis-Philippe d'Orléans?

On the evening of the day on which I had this last conversation at the
Palais-Royal, I met M. de Sainte-Aulaire[315] at Madame Récamier's. I
did not amuse myself by asking him his secret, but he asked me mine. He
had just arrived from the country full of the events of which he had
read:

"Ah," he cried, "how glad I am to see you! Here's a fine business! I
hope that all of us, at the Luxembourg, will do our duty. It would be a
curious thing for the Peers to dispose of the crown of Henry IV.! I am
quite sure that you will not leave me alone in the tribune."

As my mind was made up, I was very calm; my reply appeared cold to M.
de Sainte-Aulaire's ardour. He went away, saw his friends and left me
alone in the tribune: long live your light-hearted and frivolous men of
intelligence!


The Republican Party was still struggling under the feet of the friends
who had betrayed it. On the 6th of August, a deputation of twenty
members appointed by the central committee of the twelve wards of Paris
appeared in the Chamber of Deputies to present an address of which
General Thiard[316] and M. Duris-Dufresne[317] eased the well-meaning
deputation. It was said in this address that "the nation could not
recognise as a constitutional power either an elective Chamber
appointed during the existence and under the influence of the royalty
which it has overthrown or an aristocratic Chamber, the institution of
which is in direct opposition to the principles that have caused it,
the nation, to take up arms; that the central committee of the twelve
wards, having granted, as a revolutionary necessity, only a _de facto_
and very provisional power to the present Chamber of Deputies to
discuss any measure of urgency, now calls with all its wishes for the
free and popular election of mandatories who shall really represent the
needs of the people; that the primary assemblies alone can bring about
that result. If it were otherwise, the nation would render null and
void all that might tend to impede it in the exercise of its rights."


All this was pure reason; but the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom was
aspiring to the crown, and the fearful and ambitious were in a hurry
to give it to him. The plebeians of to-day wanted a revolution and did
not know how to make it; the Jacobins, whom they have taken for their
models, would have flung the men of the Palais-Royal and the praters
of the two Chambers into the water. M. de La Fayette was reduced to
impotent wishes: pleased at having caused the revival of the National
Guard, he allowed himself to be tossed like an old swaddling-band by
Philip, whose wet-nurse he imagined himself to be; he grew torpid with
this felicity. The old general was no more than liberty fallen asleep,
as the Republic of 1793 was no more than a death's-head.

The truth is that a truncated Chamber, with no special mandate, had no
right whatever to dispose of the crown: it was a Convention expressly
called together, formed of the House of Lords and a newly-elected
House of Commons, that disposed of the throne of James II. It is also
certain that that rump of the Chamber of Deputies, those 221, imbued
under Charles X. with the traditions of the hereditary monarchy,
brought no disposition fitted to the elective monarchy; they stopped
it at its commencement, and forced it to go back to principles of
quasi-legitimism. They who forged the sword of the new royalty
introduced into the blade a straw which sooner or later will cause it
to spring.


[Sidenote: The seventh of August.]

The 7th of August is a memorable day for me; it is the day on which
I had the happiness of ending my political career as I had begun it:
a happiness rare enough to-day to give reason for rejoicing in it.
The declaration of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the vacancy of
the throne had been brought to the Chamber of Peers. I went to take
my seat, which, was in the highest row of arm-chairs, facing the
President. The Peers seemed to me at once busy and depressed. If some
bore on their foreheads the pride of their approaching disloyalty,
others bore the shame of a remorse to which they lacked the courage to
listen. I said to myself, as I watched this sad assembly:

"What! Are they who received the favours of Charles X. in his
prosperity going to desert him in his ill-fortune? Will they whose
special mission it was to defend the Hereditary Throne, those men of
the Court who lived in the King's intimacy, will they betray him?
They kept watch at his door at Saint-Cloud; they embraced him at
Rambouillet; he clasped their hands in a last farewell: are they going
to raise against him those hands, still warm with that last pressure?
Is this Chamber, which for fifteen years has resounded with their
protestations of devotion, about to hear their perjury? And yet it was
for them that Charles X. ruined himself; it was they who drove him
towards the Ordinances: they stamped for joy when these appeared and
when they thought that they had won in that moment of silence which
precedes the fall of the thunder."

These ideas rolled confusedly and sorrowfully through my mind. The
peerage had become the triple receptacle of the corruptions of the
old Monarchy, the Republic and the Empire. As for the Republicans of
1793, now transformed into senators, and the generals of Bonaparte,
I expected of them only what they have always done: they deposed the
extraordinary man to whom they owed all, they were going to depose the
King who had confirmed them in the benefits and honours with which
their first master had loaded them. Let the wind turn, and they will
depose the usurper to whom they were preparing to throw the crown.

I ascended the tribune. A deep silence fell: the faces of the peers
seemed embarrassed; they all turned sidewards in their arm-chairs and
looked down at the floor. With the exception of a few peers who had
resolved to retire like myself, none dared to raise his eyes to the
level of the tribune.

[Sidenote: My last speech in the Peers.]

I reproduce my speech because it sums up my life and forms my principal
title to the esteem of posterity:

    "Gentlemen!

    "The declaration which has been brought to this Chamber is to
    me much less complicated than it appears to those of my noble
    colleagues who profess an opinion different from mine. There is
    one fact in this declaration which appears to me to govern all
    the others, or rather to destroy them. Were we under a regular
    order of things, I should doubtless carefully examine the various
    changes which it is proposed to make in the Charter. Many of these
    changes have been proposed by myself. I am surprised only that
    the reactionary measure regarding the peers created by Charles X.
    should have been proposed to this Chamber. I shall not be suspected
    of any fondness for the system by which these 'batches' were
    created; and you know that, when threatened with them, I combated
    the very menace: but to make ourselves the judges of our colleagues
    and to erase whom we please from the list of the peerage, whenever
    we find ourselves the stronger party, would seem to me to savour
    of proscription. Do they want to destroy the peerage? Be it so: it
    better becomes us to surrender our existence than to beg for our
    lives.

    "I reproach myself already for the few words I have uttered on a
    point which, important as it is, becomes insignificant when merged
    in the great proposition before us. France is without a guide; and
    I am now to consider what must be added to or cut away from the
    masts of a vessel which has lost its rudder! I lay aside, then,
    whatever is of a secondary interest in the declaration of the
    Elective Chamber; and, fixing on the single enunciated fact of
    the vacancy of the throne, whether true or pretended, I advance
    directly to my object.

    "But a previous question ought first to be attended to: if the
    throne be vacant, we are free to choose the future form of our
    government.

    "Before offering the crown to any individual whatever, it is well
    to ascertain under what political system the social body is to be
    constituted. Are we to establish a republic or a new monarchy?

    "Does a republic or a new monarchy offer sufficient guarantees to
    France of strength, durability and repose?

    "A republic would first of all have the recollections of the
    republic itself to contend with. Those recollections are far from
    being effaced. The time is not yet forgotten when Death made
    his frightful progress among us, with Liberty and Equality for
    supporters. If you were plunged again into anarchy, how would you
    reanimate the Hercules on his rock who alone was able to stifle the
    monster? In the course of a thousand years, your posterity may see
    another Napoleon. As for you, you must not expect it.

    "Next, in the present state of our manners and of our relations
    with surrounding governments, the idea of a republic seems to me
    to be untenable. The first difficulty would be to bring the people
    of France to an unanimous vote on the subject. What right has
    the population of Paris to compel the population of Marseilles
    or any other town to adopt the forms of a republic? Is there to
    be but one republic, or are we to have twenty or thirty? And
    are they to be federative or independent? Let us suppose these
    obstacles to be removed. Let us suppose that there is to be but
    one republic: can you imagine for a moment, with the habitual
    familiarity of our manners, that a president, however grave,
    however talented and however respectable he may be, could remain
    for a year at the head of the government, without being tempted
    to retire from it? Ill-protected by the laws and unsupported by
    previous recollections, insulted and vilified, morning, noon
    and night, by secret rivals and by the agents of faction, he
    would not inspire the confidence which property and commerce
    require; he would possess neither becoming dignity, in treating
    with foreign governments, nor the power which is indispensable
    to the maintenance of internal tranquillity. If he resorted to
    revolutionary measures, the republic would become odious; all
    Europe would become disturbed and would avail itself of our
    divisions, first, to foment them and, afterwards, to interfere in
    the quarrel; and we should again be involved in an interminable
    struggle. A representative republic is, no doubt, to be the future
    condition of the world; but its time has not yet come.

    "I proceed to the question of a monarchy.

    "A king named by the Chambers, or elected by the people, whatever
    may be done, will always be a novelty. Now I take it for granted
    that liberty is sought for, especially the liberty of the press,
    by which and for which the people have obtained so brilliant
    a triumph. Well, every new monarchy will, sooner or later, be
    compelled to gag this liberty. Could Napoleon himself admit
    of it? The offspring of our misfortunes and the slave of our
    glory, the liberty of the press can exist, in security, only
    under a government whose roots are deeply seated. A monarchy,
    the illegitimate offspring of one bloody night, must always have
    something to fear from the independent expression of public
    opinion. While this man proclaims republican opinions, and that
    some other system, is it not to be feared that laws of exception
    must soon be resorted to, in spite of the anathema against the
    censorship which has been added to Article VIII. of the Charter?

    [Sidenote: My speech continued.]

    "What, then, O friends of regulated liberty, have you gained by the
    change which is now proposed to you? You must sink, of necessity,
    either into a republic or into a system of legal slavery. The
    monarch will be surrounded and overwhelmed by factions, or the
    monarchy itself swept away by a torrent of democratical enactments.

    "In the first intoxication of success, we suppose that everything
    is easy; we hope to satisfy every exigency, every interest,
    every humour; we flatter ourselves that every one will lay aside
    his personal views and vanities; we believe that the superior
    intelligence and the wisdom of the government will surmount
    innumerable difficulties; but, at the end of a few months, we find
    that all our theories have been belied by practice.

    "I present to you, gentlemen, only a few of the inconveniences
    attaching to the formation of a republic or of a new monarchy. If
    either have its perils, there remained a third course, and one
    which well deserved a moment's consideration.

    "The crown has been trampled on by horrible ministers, who have
    supported, by murder, their violation of the law; they have trifled
    with oaths made to Heaven and with laws sworn to on earth.

    "Foreigners, who have twice entered Paris without resistance,
    learn the true cause of your success: you presented yourselves
    in the name of legal authority. If you were to fly to-day to the
    assistance of tyranny, do you think that the gates of the capital,
    of the civilized world, would open as readily before you? The
    French nation has grown, since your departure, under the influence
    of constitutional laws; our children of fourteen are giants; our
    conscripts at Algiers, our schoolboys in Paris have shown you that
    they are the sons of the conquerors of! Austerlitz, Marengo and
    Jena: but sons strengthened by all that liberty adds to glory.

    "Never was a defense more just and more heroic than that of the
    people of Paris. They did not rise against the law: so long as the
    social compact was respected, the people remained peaceable; they
    bore insults, provocations and threats, without complaining; their
    property and their blood were the price they owed for the Charter:
    both have been lavished in abundance.

    "But when, after a system of falsehood pursued to the last moment,
    slavery was suddenly proclaimed; when the conspiracy of folly and
    hypocrisy burst forth unawares; when the panic of the palace,
    organized by eunuchs, was prepared as a substitute for the terror
    of the republic and the iron yoke of the empire, then it was
    that the people armed themselves with their courage and their
    intelligence. It was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe
    freely amid the smoke of gunpowder and that it required more than
    'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not
    have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three
    last suns that have shone over France. A great crime was committed;
    it produced the violent explosion of a powerful principle: was it
    necessary, on account of this crime and the moral and political
    triumph that resulted from it, to overthrow the established order
    of things? Let us examine.

    "Charles X. and his son have forfeited, or abdicated, the throne,
    understand it which way you will; but the throne is not vacant:
    after them came a child, whose innocence ought not to be condemned.

    "What blood now rises against him? Will you venture to say that
    it is that of his father? This orphan, educated in the schools of
    his country, in the love of a constitutional government and with
    the ideas of the age, would have become a king well suited to our
    future wants. The guardian of his youth should have been made
    to swear to the declaration on which you are about to vote; on
    attaining his majority, the young Monarch would have renewed his
    oath. In the meantime, the present King, the actual King would have
    been M. le Duc d'Orléans, the regent of the kingdom, a Prince who
    has lived among the people and who knows, that a monarchy, to-day
    can only exist by consent and reason. This natural arrangement, as
    it appears to me, would have united the means of reconciliation
    and would perhaps have saved France those agitations which are the
    consequence of all violent changes in a State.

    "To say that this child, when separated from his masters, would
    not have had time to forget their very names, before arriving
    at manhood; to say that he would remain infatuated with certain
    hereditary dogmas, after a long course of popular education, after
    the terrible lesson which, in two nights, has hurled two kings from
    the throne, is, at least, not very reasonable.

    "It is not from a feeling of sentimental devotion, nor from a
    nurse-like affection, transmitted from the swaddling-clothes of
    Henry IV. to the cradle of the young Henry, that I plead a cause
    where everything would again turn against me anew if it triumphed.
    I am not aiming at romance, or chivalry, or martyrdom; I do not
    believe in the right divine of royalty; but I do believe in the
    power of facts and of revolutions. I do not even invoke the
    Charter: I take my ideas from a higher source; I draw them from the
    sphere of philosophy of the period at which my life terminates: I
    propose the Duke of Bordeaux merely as a necessity of a purer kind
    than that which is now in question.

    [Sidenote: My speech continued.]

    "I know that, by passing over this child, it is intended to
    establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people: an
    absurdity of the old school, which proves that our veteran
    Democrats have advanced no further in political knowledge than our
    superannuated Royalists. There is no absolute sovereignty anywhere;
    liberty does not flow from political right, as was supposed in the
    eighteenth century; it is derived from natural right, so that it
    exists under all forms of government; and a monarchy may be free,
    nay, much more free than a republic: but this is neither the time
    nor the place to deliver a political lecture.

    "I shall content myself with observing that, when the people
    dispose of thrones, they often dispose also of their own liberty; I
    shall remark that the principle of an hereditary monarchy, however
    absurd it may at first appear, has been recognised, in practice, as
    preferable to that of an elective monarchy. The reasons for this
    are so obvious that I need not enlarge upon them. You choose one
    king to-day: who shall hinder you from choosing another to-morrow?
    The law, you say. The law? And it is you who make it!

    "There is still a simpler mode of treating the question: it is
    to say, we repudiate the Elder Branch of the Bourbons. And why?
    Because we are victorious; we have triumphed in a just and holy
    cause; we use a double right of conquest.

    "Very well: you proclaim the sovereignty of might. The take good
    care of this might; for if, in a few months, escapes from you, you
    will be in a bad position to complain. Such is human nature! The
    most enlightened and the purest minds do not always rise above
    success. Those minds were the first to invoke right in opposition
    to violence; they supported that right with all the superiority
    of their talent; and, at the very moment when the truth of what
    they said has been demonstrated by the most abominable abuse of
    force and by its signal overthrow, the conquerors recur to those
    arms they have broken! They will find them to be dangerous weapons,
    which will wound their own hands without serving their cause.

    "I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to
    bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner
    which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff
    that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it.
    Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw
    from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The
    idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of
    religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at
    this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to
    reconcile order with liberty.

    "Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the
    country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me
    to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so
    often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power
    except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also
    my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said
    and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches
    if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time,
    they are on the road to exile.

    "Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed
    a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar
    and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate
    and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon
    you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him
    for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom
    you have ruined! Instigators of _coups d'État_, preachers of
    constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire
    from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the
    faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of
    your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose
    projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be
    driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now
    as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural
    that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will
    protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.

    "In thus frankly expressing my sentiments in this tribune, I have
    no idea that I am performing an act of heroism. Those times are
    past when opinions were expressed at personal hazard: if such were
    now the case, I should speak a hundred times louder. The best
    buckler is a breast that does not fear to show itself uncovered
    to the enemy. No, gentlemen, we need neither fear a people whose
    reason is equal to its courage, nor that generous rising generation
    which I admire, with which I sympathize with all the faculties of
    my soul, and to which, as to my country, I wish honour, glory and
    liberty.

    "Far from me, above all things, be the thought of sowing seeds of
    discord in France, and that has been my motive for excluding from
    my speech every accent of passion. If I could convince myself that
    a child should be left in the happy ranks of obscurity in order to
    procure the peace of thirty-three millions of men, I should have
    regarded every word as criminal which was not consistent with the
    needs of the time: but I am not so convinced. Had I the disposal
    of a crown, I would willingly lay it at the feet of M. le Duc
    d'Orléans. But all that I see vacant is, not a throne, but a tomb
    at Saint-Denis.

    "Whatever destiny may await M. the Lieutenant-general of the
    Kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he promotes my country's
    welfare. I only ask to retain my liberty of conscience and the
    right of going to die where I shall find independence and repose.

    "I vote against the declaration."

I was fairly calm when I began my speech, but gradually I was overcome
with emotion. When I came to this passage: "Useless Cassandra, how
often have I wearied the Throne and the country with my disregarded
warnings," my voice became troubled, and I was obliged to put my
handkerchief to my eyes to keep back tears of love and bitterness.
Indignation restored my power of speech in the paragraph that follows:

"Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and
stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master
who loaded, you with his gifts and whom you have ruined!"

[Sidenote: Its effect on the Peers.]

I turned my glances upon the benches to which I addressed those words.
Several peers seemed crushed; they sank down in their arm-chairs till
I could no longer see them behind their colleagues seated motionless
before them. This speech made some noise: all parties were hurt in it,
but all remained silent, because, by the side of great truths, I had
placed a great sacrifice. I came down from the tribune; I left the
Chamber, went to the cloak-room, took off my peer's coat, my sword, my
feathered hat; I unfastened from the last the white cockade and placed
it in the little pocket on the left-hand side of the black frock-coat
which I put on and buttoned across my heart. My servant carried away
the cast-off clothes of the peerage, and I, shaking the dust from my
feet, quitted that palace of treachery, which I shall never enter again
in my life.

On the 10th and 12th of August, I completed my self-divestment and sent
in the different resignations that follow:

    "PARIS, 10 _August_ 1830.

    "MONSIEUR LE PRÉSIDENT DE LA CHAMBRE DES PAIRS[319],

    "Being unable to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe
    d'Orléans as King of the French, I find myself seized with a legal
    incapacity which prevents me from attending the sittings of the
    Hereditary Chamber. One mark of the kindness of King Louis XVIII.
    and of the royal munificence remains to me: a peer's pension of
    twelve thousand francs, which was given me to keep up, if not
    brilliantly, at least independently of immediate needs, the high
    position to which I was called. It would not be right that I should
    retain a favour attached to the exercise of functions which I am
    not able to fulfil. I therefore have the honour to resign into your
    hands my pension as a peer."


    "Paris, 12 _August_ 1830.

    "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DES FINANCES[320],

    "There remains to me, from the kindness of Louis XVII I. and the
    national munificence, a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs,
    transformed into an annuity inscribed on the ledger of the public
    debt and transmissible only to the first direct generation of the
    annuitant. Not being able to take the oath to Monseigneur le Duc
    d'Orléans as King of the French, it would not be right that I
    should continue to receive a pension attached to functions which I
    no longer exercise.

    "I therefore write to resign it into your hands: it will have
    ceased to accrue to me on the day (10 August) when I wrote to M.
    the President of the Chamber of Peers that it would be impossible
    for me to take the oath required.

    "I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."


    "PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.


    [Sidenote: I resign pension and place.]

    "MONSIEUR LE GRAND RÉFÉRENDAIRE[321],

    "I have the honour to send you a copy of the two letters which I
    have addressed, one to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers,
    the other to M. the Minister of Finance. You will there see that I
    renounce my peer's pension and that consequently my attorney will
    have to receive of this pension only the sum due to the 10th of
    August, the day on which I declared my refusal to take the oath.

    "I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."


    "PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

    "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE[322],

    "I have the honour to send you my resignation as Minister of State.

    "I am, with high regard,

    "Monsieur le ministre de la justice,

    "Your most humble and most obedient servant."

I remained as naked as a little St. John; but I had long been
accustomed to live on wild honey, and I did not fear that the daughter
of Herodias would have a longing for my grey head.

My gold-lace, tassels, bullioned fringe and epaulettes, sold to a Jew
and melted down by him, brought me in seven hundred francs, the net
produce of all my grandeurs.

And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards
his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three
commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the
curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road.
In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some
others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered
that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau
to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so
many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country,
the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our
diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised
and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and
his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a
corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V.
and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens
and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and
people stood at their windows to see it pass.

Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the
vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was
indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of
provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter
"on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the
monarchy."

The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission
to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:

    "In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and
    absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him
    tribute, etc."

It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes.
Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so
fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States,
is already no more than an exile in his capital.

This indifference of the country for Charles X. points to something
more than lassitude: we are bound to behold in it the progress of
democratic ideas and the assimilation of ranks. At an earlier period,
the fall of a king of France would have been an enormous event: time
has lowered the monarch from the height on which he was placed, has
brought him nearer to us, has diminished the space which separated him
from the class of the people. If men felt little surprise at meeting
the son of St. Louis on the high-road like everybody else, this was due
not to a spirit of hatred or system, but quite simply to the sense of
social levelling which has penetrated men's minds and which has acted
upon the masses without their knowing it.

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Cherbourg.]

A curse, Cherbourg, upon thy ill-omened precincts! It was near
Cherbourg that the wind of anger threw Edward III. to ravage our
country[323]; it was not far from Cherbourg that the wind of an
enemy's victory shattered Tourville's fleet[324]; it was at Cherbourg
that the wind of a deceptive prosperity drove Louis XVI. toward his
scaffold[325]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind from I know not what
shore carried away our last Princes. The coast of Great Britain, on
which William the Conqueror[326] landed, witnessed the disembarkation
of Charles the Tenth without lance or pennon: he went to Holyrood to
find the memories of his youth[327] hung upon the walls of the Stuart
palace like old engravings made yellow by time.


I have depicted the Three Days as they unrolled themselves before my
eyes: hence a certain contemporary colour, true at the passing moment,
false after the moment has passed, is diffused over my picture. There
is no revolution so prodigious but, described from minute to minute,
will find itself reduced to the slightest proportions. Events issue
from the womb of things, even as men from the womb of their mothers,
accompanied by the infirmities of nature. Misery and greatness are
twin sisters: they are born together; but where the confinement is a
vigorous one, misery at a certain period dies, and greatness alone
survives. To judge impartially of the truth that is to remain, we must
therefore place ourselves at the point of view from which posterity
will contemplate the accomplished fact.

Getting away from the meannesses of character and action of which I had
been a witness, taking only what will remain of the Days of July, I
said with justice in my speech in the Chamber of Peers:

"The people having armed themselves with their courage and their
intelligence, it was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe
freely amidst the smoke of gunpowder, and that it required rather more
than 'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not
have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three last
suns that have shone over France."

In fact, the people properly so-called were brave and generous on the
day of the 28th. The Guards had lost more than 300 men killed and
wounded; they did ample justice to the poor classes, who alone fought
on that day and among whom were mingled men who were foul-minded,
but who were unable to dishonour them. The pupils of the Polytechnic
School, who left their school too late on the 28th to take part in the
fighting, were placed by the people at their head on the 29th with
admirable simplicity and ingenuousness.

Champions who had been absent from the strife sustained by the people
came to join their ranks on the 29th, when the greatest danger was
past; others, likewise victors, first joined the conquering side on the
30th and 31st.

On the side of the troops, things were very much the same; only the
soldiers and officers were engaged: the staff, which had once deserted
Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, kept to the heights of Saint-Cloud,
watching from which side the wind blew the smoke of the powder. They
pressed on each other's heels at Charles X.'s levee; not a soul was
present at his couchee.

The moderation of the plebeian classes equalled their courage; order
resulted suddenly from confusion. One must have seen the half-naked
workmen, posted on sentry at the gate of the public gardens, preventing
other ragged workmen from passing, to form an idea of the power of duty
which had seized upon the men who remained the masters. They could
have paid themselves the price of their blood and allowed themselves
to be tempted by their wretchedness. One did not, as on the 10th of
August 1792, see the Swiss massacred in their flight. All opinions were
respected; never, with a few exceptions, was victory less abused. The
victors carried the wounded Guards through the crowd, crying:

"Respect brave men!"

If a soldier came to die, they said:

"Peace to the dead!"

The fifteen years of the Restoration, under a constitutional
government, had given rise among us to that spirit of humanity,
lawfulness and justice which twenty-five years of the revolutionary and
warlike spirit had been unable to produce. The law of force introduced
into our manners seemed to have become the common law.

The consequences of the Revolution of July will be memorable. This
Revolution has pronounced a decree against all thrones: to-day, kings
will be able to reign only by force of arms; a sure means for a moment,
but incapable of enduring: the time of successive janissaries is ended.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the Three Days.]

Neither Tacitus nor Thucydides could give us a good description of the
events of the Three Days; it would need Bossuet to explain to us the
events in the order of Providence: a genius that saw all, but without
overstepping the limits set to its reason and its splendour, like the
sun which moves between two dazzling boundaries and which the Orientals
call the "Slave of God."

Let us not seek so near at hand the motive powers of a movement placed
so far away; the mediocrity of mankind, mad terrors, inexplicable
disagreements, hatreds, ambitions, the presumption of some, the
prejudice of others, secret conspiracies, buying and selling, well or
ill-advised measures, courage or the absence of courage: all these
things are the accidents, not the causes, of the event. When people say
that they no longer wanted the Bourbons, that these had become hateful
because they were supposed to have been forced upon France by the
foreigner, this lofty disgust explains nothing satisfactorily.

The movement of July has not to do with politics properly so-called:
it has to do with the social revolution which is never idle. By the
concatenation of this general revolution, the 28th of July 1830 is
only the inevitable sequel of the 21st of January 1793. The work
of our first deliberative assemblies had been suspended; it had
not been finished. In the course of twenty years, the French had
accustomed themselves, like the English under Cromwell, to be governed
by other masters than their old sovereigns. The fall of Charles X.
is the consequence of the decapitation of Louis XVI., even as the
dethronement of James II. is the consequence of the murder of Charles
I. The Revolution seemed to die away in the glory of Bonaparte and in
the liberties of Louis XVIII., but its germ was not destroyed: lodged
at the bottom of our manners, it developed when the faults of the
Restoration gave it fresh heat, and soon it burst forth.

The counsels of Providence are revealed in the anti-monarchical changes
that are taking place. That superficial minds should see merely a
scuffle in the Revolution of the Three Days is quite simple; but
reflective men know that an enormous step forward has been taken:
the principle of the sovereignty of the people has been substituted
for the principle of the royal sovereignty, the hereditary monarchy
changed into an elective monarchy. The 21st of January taught that one
could dispose of a king's head; the 29th of July has shown that one
can dispose of a crown. Now, any truth, good or bad, which manifests
itself, remains the acquisition of the crowd. A change ceases to
be unheard of, or extraordinary; it no longer presents itself to
the mind or the conscience as impious, when it results from an idea
that has become popular. The Franks used to exercise the sovereignty
collectively; next they delegated it to a few chiefs; then those
chiefs confided it to one alone; then this sole chief usurped it for
the benefit of his family. Now men are going back from the hereditary
royalty to the elective royalty, and from the elective royalty they
will glide into the republic. That is the history of society; these are
the stages by which the government comes from the people and returns to
it.

Let us, then, not believe that the work of July is a superfetation of a
day; let us not imagine that Legitimacy is going to come incontinently
to re-establish succession by right of primogeniture: let us neither
try to persuade ourselves that July will suddenly die a natural death.
No doubt, the Orleans Branch will not take root: it is not to produce
that result that so much blood, calamity and genius has been expended
during the last half-century! But July, if it do not bring about the
final destruction of France with the ruin of all her liberties, will
bear its natural fruit: that fruit is democracy. The fruit will perhaps
be bitter and blood-red; but the Monarchy is an outlandish graft, which
will not take on a republican stem.

And so let us not confound the improvised King with the Revolution from
which he sprang by chance: the latter, such as we see it, is acting in
contradiction with its principles; it seems to have been born without
the power to live, because it is punished with a throne: but let it
only drag on a few years, this Revolution, and what will have come and
gone will change the data that remain to be known. Grown-up men die, or
no longer see things as they used to see them; adolescents attain the
age of reason; new generations recruit corrupt generations; the linen
soaked in the sores of a hospital, when met by a great stream, soils
only the water that flows below those corruptions: down stream and up
stream, the current keeps or resumes its limpidity.

[Sidenote: The monarchy of July.]

July, free in its origin, produced only a fettered monarchy; but
the time will come when, rid of its crown, it will undergo the
transformations which are the law of existences; then it will live in
an atmosphere befitting its nature.

The errors of the Republican Party, the illusions of the Legitimist
Party are both deplorable and go beyond democracy and royalty: the
first thinks that violence is the only means of success; the second
thinks that the past is the only harbour of safety. Now, there is a
moral law which rules society, a general legitimacy which dominates the
particular legitimacy. This great law and this great legitimacy are the
enjoyment of the natural rights of man, ruled by his duties; for it is
the duty that creates the right, and not the right that creates the
duty; the passions and the vices relegate us to the class of slaves.
The general legitimacy would have had no obstacle to overcome, if it
had kept, as belonging to the same principle, the particular legitimacy.

For the rest, one observation will suffice to make us understand the
prodigious and majestic might of the family of our old sovereigns; I
have already said it and can not repeat it too often: all the royalties
will die with the French Royalty.

In fact, the monarchical idea is wanting at the very moment when the
monarch is wanting; we find nothing left around us but the democratic
idea. My young King will carry away in his arms the monarchy of the
world. It is a good ending.


When I was writing all this on what the Revolution of 1830 might be in
the future, I had a difficulty in defending myself against an instinct
which spoke to me in contradiction to my argument. I took this instinct
for the impulse of my dislike of the troubles of 1830; I distrusted
myself and, perhaps, in my too loyal impartiality, I exaggerated the
future which the Three Days might bring forth. Well, ten years have
passed since the fall of Charles X.: has July sat down? We are now at
the commencement of December 1840: to what a depth has France sunk!
If I could find any pleasure in the humiliation of a government of
French origin, I should experience a sort of pride in re-reading, in
the _Congrès de Vérone_, my correspondence with Mr. Canning: certainly
it differs from that which has just been communicated to the Chamber
of Deputies. Whose is the fault? Is it that of the elected Prince? Is
it that of the incapacity of his ministers? Is it that of the nation
itself, whose character and genius seem to be exhausted? Our ideas
are progressive; but do our manners support them? It would not be
surprising if a people which has existed fourteen centuries and which
has ended that long career with an explosion of miracles should have
come to an end. If you read these Memoirs to their conclusion, you will
see that, while doing justice to all that has seemed fine to me in
the various epochs of our history, I am of opinion that, in the last
result, the old society is coming to an end[328].


Here ends my political career. This career ought also to close my
Memoirs, since nothing is left for me but to sum up the experiences of
my course. Three catastrophes have marked the three preceding parts
of my life: I saw Louis XVI. die during my career as a traveller and
a soldier; at the end of my political career, Bonaparte disappeared;
Charles X., in falling, closed my political career.

I have fixed the period of a revolution in literature, and, in the same
way, in politics, I have formulated the principles of representative
government: my diplomatic correspondence is worth quite as much, I
think, as my literary compositions. It is possible that both are worth
nothing at all, but it is certain that they are of equal value.

In France, in the tribune of the House of Peers and in my writings,
I exercised so great an influence that I first placed M. de Villèle
in office and that, later, he was forced to retire in the face of my
opposition, after he had made himself my enemy. All this is proved by
what you have read.

The great event of my political career is the Spanish War. It was for
me, in this career, what the _Génie du Christianisme_ had been in my
literary career. My destiny picked me out to entrust me with the
mighty venture which, under the Restoration, might have set in regular
order the world's progress towards the future. It took me out of my
dreams, and transformed me into a leader of facts. It set me down to
play at a table at which were seated, as my adversaries, the two first
ministers of the day, Prince Metternich and Mr. Canning: I won the
game against both of them. All the serious minds which the Cabinets at
that time numbered agreed that they had met a statesman in me[329].
Bonaparte had foreseen it before them, in spite of my books. I am
entitled therefore, without boasting, to believe that the politician in
me equalled the writer; but I attach no value to political renown: that
is why I have allowed myself to speak of it.

[Sidenote: End of my political career.]

If, at the time of the Peninsular Enterprise, I had not been flung
aside by deluded men, the course of our destinies would have changed:
France would have resumed her frontiers, the equilibrium of Europe
would have been re-established; the Restoration, becoming glorious,
might have lived a long time yet, and my diplomatic work would also
have marked a stage in our history. Between my two lives, there is only
a difference of result. My literary career, completely accomplished,
has produced all that it had to produce, because it depended on myself
alone. My political career was suddenly stopped in the midst of its
successes, because it depended on others.

Nevertheless, I admit that my politics were applicable only to the
Restoration. When a transformation takes place in principles, societies
and men, what was good yesterday becomes antiquated and lapsed to-day.
With regard to Spain, the relations between the Royal Families having
ceased, owing to the abolition of the Salic Law, there is no longer a
question of creating impenetrable frontiers beyond the Pyrenees; we
must accept the field of battle which Austria and England may one day
open up to us there; we must take things at the point to which they
have come and abandon, not without regret, a firm but reasonable line
of conduct, the certain benefits of which were, it is true, long-dated.
I feel conscious of having served the Legitimacy as it should be
served. I saw the future as clearly as I see it now; only I wished to
reach it by a less dangerous road, so that the Legitimacy, which was
essential to our constitutional instruction, might not stumble in a
precipitous course. To-day, my plans are no longer realizable: Russia
is going to turn elsewhere. If, as things now are, I were to enter the
Peninsula, whose spirit has had time to change, it would be with other
thoughts: I should occupy myself only with the alliance of the nations,
suspicious, jealous, passionate, uncertain and variable though it be,
and should not dream of relations between the kings. I should say to
France:

"You have left the beaten track for the path of precipices: very
well, explore its wonders and its perils. Come to us, innovations,
enterprises, discoveries! Come, and let arms, if necessary, favour you!
Where is there anything new? In the East? Let us march there! Where
can we direct our courage and our intelligence? Let us hasten thither!
Let us place ourselves at the head of the great rising of the human
race; let us not allow ourselves to be outstripped; let the French name
go before the others on this crusade, as of old it did to the Tomb of
Christ!"

Yes, if I were admitted to my country's councils, I would try to be
of use to it in the dangerous principles which it has adopted: to
restrain it at present, would mean to condemn it to a base death. I
should not be satisfied with speeches: adding works to faith, I should
prepare soldiers and millions, I should build ships, like Noe, to make
prevision for the deluge, and, if I were asked why, I should answer:

"Because such is France's good pleasure."

My dispatches would warn the Cabinets of Europe that nothing shall stir
on the globe without our intervention; that, if the world's shreds are
to be distributed, the lion's share shall fall to us. We should cease
humbly to ask our neighbours for leave to exist; the heart of France
would beat freely, no hand would dare to lay itself upon that heart to
count its throbbings; and, since we are seeking new suns, I should dart
towards their splendour and no longer await the natural rise of dawn.

God grant that these industrial interests, in which we are to find a
prosperity of a new kind, may deceive nobody, that they may prove as
fruitful, as civilizing as the moral interests whence the old society
issued! Time will teach us whether they be not the barren dreams of
those sterile intellects which lack the faculty of rising above the
material world.

[Sidenote: With the Legitimacy.]

Although my part finishes with the Legitimacy, all my wishes are for
France, whatever be the powers which her improvident whim may lead her
to obey. As for myself, I ask for nothing more; I would wish only not
too long to outlive the ruins which lie crumbling at my feet. But
one's years are like the Alps: scarce has one surmounted the first,
before others rise before one. Alas, those last and higher mountains
are uninhabited, arid and topped with snow!



[Footnote 263: This book was written in Paris, in August and September
1830, and revised in December 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 264: Michel Chevalier (1806-1879), who later achieved
distinction as the promoter of the Treaty of Commerce between France
and England.--T.]

[Footnote 265: Ulysse Trélat (_b._ 1795), a well-known mad-doctor and
politician. He was Minister of Public Works for six weeks in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 266: Jean Baptiste Teste (1780-1852), a famous lawyer, went
to Belgium after the Second Restoration and became attorney-general
to King William I. of the Netherlands. He returned to France at the
outbreak of the Revolution and filled several ministerial offices
during the reign of Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 267: Augustin Guinard has already been mentioned as being
among the first to enter the Tuileries on the 29th of July (_supra_, p.
109).--T.]

[Footnote 268: Charles Hingray (1797-1870), a bookseller and
politician, and a consistent Radical.--T.]

[Footnote 269: Louis François Auguste Cauchois-Lemaire (1789-1861),
a French publicist, founder of the _Nain jaune_ (1814) and author of
an _Histoire de la révolution de Juillet_ (1841). He continued his
opposition to the Monarchy after the Revolution of July.--T.]

[Footnote 270: The Battle of Jemmapes (6 November 1792), in which
Dumouriez defeated the Austrians under the Duke of Saxe-Teschen.
Louis-Philippe, then Duc de Chartres, was present at the battle as a
lieutenant-general, and is said to have decided the victory, which led
to the occupation of Belgium.--T.]

[Footnote 271: The Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), in which
the French under Kellermann, acting under the orders of Dumouriez,
repulsed the Prussians, led by the Duke of Brunswick. In this battle,
which produced an immense moral effect, the Duc de Chartres also
distinguished himself.--T.]

[Footnote 272: Here the _Souvenirs_ of the Duc de Broglie agree with
the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._ M. de Broglie says:

    "Posted up on M. Laffitte's own door, on the Bourse, and in all the
    public places, one read a placard worded as follows:

    "'Charles X. cannot return to Paris: he has shed the blood of the
    people.

    "'The Republic would expose us to horrible divisions; it would
    embroil us with Europe.

    "'The Duc d'Orléans is a Prince devoted to the cause of the
    Revolution.

    "'The Duc d'Orléans has never fought against us.

    "'The Duc d'Orléans was at Jemmapes.

    "'The Duc d'Orléans has worn the national colours, the Duc
    d'Orléans alone can wear them still.

    "'The Duc d'Orléans has declared himself: he accepts the Charter as
    we have always desired and understood it.

    "'He will hold his crown at the hands of the French People.'


    "This last phrase was immediately modified as follows on a second
    placard:

    "'The Duc d'Orléans makes no declaration: he awaits our will; let
    us proclaim that will: he will accept the Charter as we have always
    desired and understood it.'"

The Duc de Broglie adds:

    "Whence did these placards proceed? We know to-day that they were
    the work of Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, and that Paulin the
    bookseller, strong in the support of his friends, gave attention to
    the printing and the posting. Was M. Laffitte in the secret? There
    is reason to presume so."(_Souvenirs du feu Duc de Broglie_,
    vol. III.)--B.]

[Footnote 273: Ary Scheffer (1785-1858), the Dutch painter. He
was appointed painting-master to the Orleans children, in 1821,
and remained on a very intimate footing with the Orleans Family
throughout.--T.]

[Footnote 274: Madame Adélaïde (1777-1847), younger sister of
Louis-Philippe. She exercised a great ascendant over that Monarch's
mind, was his adviser during the whole of his reign, and her death
plunged him into a state of dejection which facilitated the Revolution
of 1848. She accumulated a large fortune, which she bequeathed to her
nephews.--T.]

[Footnote 275: The Duc d'Orléans occupied a royal residence at Neuilly
which was demolished in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 276: The Marquis de Sémonville, as Grand Referendary, had a
set of official apartments at the Luxembourg.--T.]

[Footnote 277: Epicurus (342 B.C.--270 B.C.), the Greek
philosopher.--T.]

[Footnote 278: Captain Le Motha is the original of the officer
immortalized by Alfred de Vigny in the last and admirable episode of
his _Servitude et grandeur militaires_, entitled, _La Vie et la mort du
capitaine Renaud._--B.]

[Footnote 279: Antoine Louis Marie de Gramont, Duc de Guiche
(1755-1836), emigrated to England during the Revolution and, as
"Captain Gramont," served in the 10th Hussars. He returned to France
with the Duc d'Angoulême as first aide-de-camp, and was created a peer
of France in June 1814. He took the oath of allegiance to the new
Government after the Revolution of July, and remained a peer till his
death.--B.]

[Footnote 280: M. de Guernon-Rainville, who was at Saint-Cloud at that
time, thus describes this deplorable scene in his Journal:

    "The Prince and the marshal were alone in the green drawing-room at
    Saint-Cloud; the explanations of the Duc de Raguse did not satisfy
    the Dauphin, who exclaimed:

    "'Do you mean to betray us too?'

    "At these words, the marshal laid his hand on the hilt of his
    sword. The Prince saw the movement, rushed forwards and, trying
    to snatch the sword from its scabbard, wounded his hand slightly;
    then, flinging the sword on the floor, he seized the marshal by
    the collar, threw him on a sofa, and called to the guards who were
    in the next room. At that moment, the officer on duty, hearing the
    noise, opened the door of the drawing-room; the Prince ordered him
    to place the marshal under arrest in his room.

    "The King, hearing of this strange scene, reproached the Dauphin
    for it, and asked him to become reconciled with the marshal, who
    was at once sent for. He made some excuse to the Prince, who
    answered:

    "'I myself have been in the wrong; but your sword has drawn my
    blood, so we are quits....'

    "And he offered him his hand."--B.]

[Footnote 281: Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1571-1640), son of
Henri I. Duc de Guise, the second duke who bore the surname of the
Balafré.--T.]

[Footnote 282: Antoine Montbreton, Maréchal de Saint-Pol (_circa_
1550-1593), one of the heads of the League, was assassinated by the
Duc de Guise at Rheims, where he had gone to maintain order among the
Spanish garrison.--T.]

[Footnote 283: Marcus Junius Brutus (85 B.C.--42 B.C.), one of Cæsar's
assassins.--T.]

[Footnote 284: Lucius Junius Brutus, Roman Consul in 509 B.C., after
bringing about the expulsion of the Tarquins.--T.]

[Footnote 285: Marie-Amélie Duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen of the
French (1782-1866), daughter of Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies,
and married to the Duc d'Orléans in 1809.--T.]

[Footnote 286: Ambroise Anatole Augustin Comte, later Marquis de
Montesquiou-Fézensac (1788-1878), entered the service as a private in
1806, became a colonel and aide-de-camp to the Emperor in 1814 and, in
1816, aide-de-camp to the Duc d'Orléans. In 1823, he was appointed a
lord-in-waiting to the Duchess. He was promoted to brigadier-general in
1831, was a deputy from 1834 to 1841 and, in 1841, was created a peer
of France, and a grandee of Spain and a marquis in 1847.--B.]

[Footnote 287: Auguste Marie Baron de Berthois (1787-1870) had served
in all the campaigns from 1809 to 1814. He became aide-de-camp to the
Duc d'Orléans under the Restoration, and was with him throughout the
Days of July. He was promoted to colonel, in 1831, and, later, to
brigadier-general. Berthois sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1832 to
1848.--B.]

[Footnote 288: I give below the text of the two proclamations issued by
the Duc d'Orléans and the Chamber of Deputies respectively:

    "Inhabitants of Paris!

    "The Deputies of France at this moment assembled in Paris have
    expressed to me the desire that I should repair to this capital to
    exercise the functions of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.

    "I have not hesitated to come and share your dangers, to place
    myself in the midst of your heroic population, and to exert all
    my efforts to preserve you from the calamities of civil war and
    anarchy.

    "On returning to the City of Paris, I wear with pride those
    glorious colours which you have resumed and which I myself long
    wore.

    "The Chambers are going to assemble; they will consider of the
    means of securing the reign of the laws and the maintenance of the
    rights of the nation.

    "The Charter will henceforward be a reality.

    "LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS."

    "Frenchmen!

    "France is free. Absolute power raised its standard: the heroic
    population of Paris has overthrown it. Paris, attacked, has made
    the sacred cause triumph, by means which had triumphed in vain in
    the elections. A power which usurped our rights and disturbed our
    repose threatened at once both liberty and order. We return to the
    possession of order and liberty. There is no more fear for acquired
    rights, no further barrier between us and the rights which we still
    require. A government which may, without delay, secure to us these
    advantages is now the first want of our country. Frenchmen, those
    of your Deputies who are already in Paris have assembled and, till
    the Chambers can regularly intervene, they have invited a Frenchman
    who has never fought but for France--the Duc d'Orléans--to exercise
    the functions of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. This is, in
    their opinion, the surest means promptly to accomplish, by peace,
    the success of the most legitimate defense.

    "The Duc d'Orléans is devoted to the national and constitutional
    cause. He has always defended its interests and professed its
    principles. He will respect our rights, for he will derive his own
    from us. We shall secure to ourselves, by laws, all the guarantees
    necessary to strong and durable liberty:

    "The re-establishment of the National Guard, with the intervention
    of the National Guards in the choice of their officers;

    "The intervention of the citizens in the formation of the
    departmental and municipal administrations;

    "The jury for the transgressions of the press; the legally
    organized responsibility of the ministers and of the secondary
    agents of the administration;

    "The situation and rank of the military legally secured; and

    "The re-election of deputies in the place of those appointed
    to public offices. Such guarantees will, at length, give to
    our institutions, in concert with the head of the state, the
    developments of which they have need.

    "Frenchmen, the Duc d'Orléans himself has already spoken, and his
    language is that which is suitable to a free country:

    "'The Chambers,' he says, 'are going to assemble; they will
    consider of means to insure the reign of the laws, and the
    maintenance of the rights of the nation.

    "'The Charter will henceforward be a reality.'"--T.]


[Footnote 289: Louis Philippe, fourth Duc d'Orléans (1725-1785),
married, in 1743, to the Princesse Louise de Conti, who died in 1759.
In 1773, he married Madame de Montesson, secretly, as his second wife,
and passed the last years of his life at Bagnolet in protecting men of
letters and artists.--T.]

[Footnote 290: Louis, third Duc d'Orléans (1703-1752), the only quite
respectable head of the House of Orléans. He led a life distinguished
for its erudition and piety: so much so that he was at one time,
although on insufficient grounds, suspected of Jansenism. Louis was
married, in 1724, to the Princess Augusta of Baden, who died two years
later.--T.]

[Footnote 291: Philip II., second Duc d'Orléans (1674-1723), nephew
to Louis XIV. and married in 1692, to his legitimatized daughter,
Mademoiselle de Blois, was Regent of France during the minority of
Louis XV. ( 1715-1723). The Regent was one of the greatest statesmen
that France has seen: his private life was scandalous.--T.]

[Footnote 292: Philip I., first Duc d'Orléans of the second creation
(1640-1701), married first, in 1661, to his cousin, the Princess
Henrietta of England, who died in 1670, daughter of King Charles I.;
secondly, in 1671, to the Princess Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria,
who died in 1722. It will be seen that, as the descendants of Henry
IV., who was the grandfather of Philip I. of Orleans, the Orleans
Princes were a younger branch of the House of Bourbon, and that the
"Valois" pretensions were utter nonsense. The exact relationship of
Louis-Philippe to Charles X. was that of a sixth cousin. The Orleans
Princes were Princes of the Blood, but not of France, and were Serene
Highnesses down to Louis-Philippe, who was created a Royal Highness by
Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 293: Consisting of a certain number of Republicans who met,
musket in hand at a restaurant kept by one Lointier. The principal
members of this gathering, including Trélat, Guinard, Charles Teste,
Bastide, Poubelle, Charles Hingray, Chevalier and Hubert formed the
first rank of the enemies of the Monarchy of July.--B.]

[Footnote 294: Alexandre Edme Baron Méchin (1772-1849), one of the
bitterest speakers in the Liberal Opposition during the Restoration.
The Government of July made him Prefect of the Nord and a councillor of
State.--B.]

[Footnote 295: Jean Pons Guillaume Viennet (1777-1868), a deputy from
1820 to 1837, a peer of France from 1839 to 1848, and a member of the
French Academy (1830). He was an indefatigable rhymester; he became
the butt of the press, thanks to his ultra-classical and (after 1830)
ultra-conservative ideas, and retorted with infinite wit, giving
the papers a Roland for their Oliver throughout the duration of the
Monarchy of July, from 1830 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 296: BLANC: _Histoire de dix ans_, Vol. I.--B.]

[Footnote 297: Pierre Victoire Palma-Cayet (1525-1610), author of the
_Chronologie novennaire_, the _Chronologie septennaire_, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 298: This Joubert was the man who, with his friend Dugied,
introduced the _Carbonari_ into France. They were both implicated in
the so-called Military Conspiracy of the Bazaar, in 1820, and took
refuge in Naples. In 1822, Joubert was one of the principal agents of
the Belfort Plot. He succeeded in escaping for the second time, to
Spain, where he fought against the French and was taken prisoner at
the battle of Llers. As he had been twice wounded, he was taken to the
Perpignan Hospital, whence Dugied, by means of bribery, procured his
escape. He reached Belgium, where he remained till 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 299: Eléonore Louis Godefroy Cavaignac (1801-1845), son of
the Conventional, Jean Baptiste Cavaignac, and elder brother to General
Eugène Cavaignac. For fifteen years he remained a formidable adversary
of the Monarchy of July, fighting it with every weapon and on every
ground, in the streets, in the press, in the law-courts, in prison and
in exile. He died in harness on the 5th of May 1845.--B.]

[Footnote 300: Marie Anne Joseph Degousée (1795-1862) conspired under
the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe, and fought at the barricades
in February 1848. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly and
supported General Cavaignac's candidature for the Presidency. He failed
to secure re-election to the Legislative Assembly and withdrew into
private life, resuming his work as a civil engineer.--B.]

[Footnote 301: Gustav Karl Frederik Count Lœwenhielm (1771-1856), the
Swedish Minister Plenipotentiary, had been in Paris since 1818.--B.]

[Footnote 302: Sir Charles Stuart, the British Ambassador, had been
raised to the peerage as Lord Stuart de Rothesay in 1828. He was
Ambassador to the Court of France from 1815 to 1824 and from 1828 to
1830.--T.]

[Footnote 303: This is very nearly what I wrote to Mr. Canning in 1823
(_Cf._ the _Congrès de Vérone_).--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 304: Russian Ambassador from 1814 to 1835. Pozzo was devoted
to Paris, and returned there after his retirement from the London
Embassy and diplomatic life in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 305: Wilhelm Baron von Werther (_d._ 1859), Prussian
Minister to Paris from 1824 to 1837 and Prussian Minister of Foreign
Affairs from 1837 to 1841. He was the father of Karl Anton Philipp
Baron von Werther, who was Ambassador of Prussia and the North
German Confederation to Paris from October 1869 until the rupture of
diplomatic relations in July 1870.--B.]

[Footnote 306: Henry V. King of France and Navarre (1820-1883), son
of the Duc de Berry, was, to the time of his _de jure_ accession, in
August 1830, known as Henri Charles Ferdinand Marie Dieudonné d'Artois,
Duc de Bordeaux. Later, he assumed the title of Comte de Chambord, by
which he was known till his death. He married, in 1846, Maria Teresa
Gaetana, daughter of Francis IV. Duke of Modena. Queen Marie-Thérèse
died in 1886.--T.]

[Footnote 307: The context would lead the reader to think that Prince
Esterhazy was Ambassador to Paris at the time of the Revolution of
July. This is not so. The Austrian Ambassador to Paris in 1830 was
Count Apponyi.--B.]

[Footnote 308: Pozzo di Borgo was a native of Ajaccio in Corsica. The
Blue Ribbon mentioned above was the ribbon of the Order of the Holy
Ghost.--T.]

[Footnote 309: Étienne Tardif de Pommeroux, Comte de Bordesoulle
(1771-1837), took part in all the wars of the Revolution and the
Empire, and rallied to the Bourbons in 1814, accompanying Louis XVIII.
to Ghent. He distinguished himself greatly in the Spanish War of 1823
and, on his return, was raised to the peerage. He took the oath of
allegiance to Louis-Philippe's Government, and remained a member of the
House of Peers till his death.--B.]

[Footnote 310: The sentences here omitted by Chateaubriand ran as
follows:

    "I charge Lieutenant-general the Vicomte de Foissac-Latour with
    this letter to you. He has orders to consult with you as to the
    arrangements to be made in favour of those persons who have
    accompanied me, as well as those which may be suitable for myself
    and the rest of my family.

    "We shall afterwards regulate the other measures which may become
    necessary in consequence of the change of reign."--T.]

[Footnote 311: Jean François Jacqueminot, later Vicomte de Ham
(1787-1865), a colonel of the Empire, and a deputy at the time of
the Revolution of July. Louis-Philippe appointed him to various high
commands in the National Guard and created him a viscount.--B.]

[Footnote 312: "General Pajol told me, shortly before his death, that,
in the course of his long military career, he had never thought himself
so near defeat." (MARCELLUS: _Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 302).--B.]

[Footnote 313: The Duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen of the French, was
the sister, the Duchesse de Berry the daughter of Francis I. King of
the Two Sicilies.--T.]

[Footnote 314: Saint Hilary Bishop of Poitiers (_d._ 368), honoured on
the 14th of January. His chief works are _De Trinitate, De Synodis_ and
commentaries.--T.]

[Footnote 315: Louis Clair Comte de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire
(1778-1854), brother-in-law to M. Decazes. He sat in the Chamber of
Deputies from 1815 to 1829, when, on the death of his father, he
entered the Chamber of Peers. He was away from Paris at the time of the
Revolution of July, hurried back to Paris, and, after some hesitation,
adhered to the new Government and received the Roman Embassy, followed,
in 1833, by the Embassy in Vienna and, lastly, by that in London,
which he occupied from 1841 to 1847. He was the author of a remarkable
Histoire de la Fronde (1827) and, in 1841, was elected a member of the
French Academy.--B.]

[Footnote 316: Auxonne Marie Théodose Comte de Thiard de Bissy
(1772-1852) was the son of Claude VIII. de Thiard, Comte de Bissy,
Lieutenant-general of the King's Armies, Governor of the Town and
Castle of Auxonne, Governor of the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries, in
Paris, and one of the forty of the French Academy; and nephew of the
Comte de Thiard, the King's Commandant in Brittany in 1789, guillotined
in 1794, who has been more than once mentioned in Vol. I. of the
Memoirs. Auxonne Marie Théodose emigrated in 1791 and served in Condé's
Army until 1799. Under the Empire, after being employed by Napoleon in
his armies and in diplomacy, he was disgraced, in 1807, and lived in
retirement until 1814. He was a representative during the Hundred Days
and a deputy from 1820 to 1834 and from 1837 to 1848. Ex-Emigrant and
born at the Tuileries though he were, he always sat with the Extreme
Left, both under the Restoration and the Government of July.--B.]

[Footnote 317: François Duris-Dufresne (1769-1837) was also an
ex-officer. After forming part of the Legislative Body from the Year
XII. to 1809, he entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1827 and voted with
the Left. He adhered to the Revolution of July and the usurpation of
Louis-Philippe; but events soon drove him into the Dynastic Opposition.
From 1831 to 1834, he sat with the Extreme Left.--B.]

[Footnote 318: Some editions have "peerage" instead of "country."--T.]

[Footnote 319: The Baron Pasquier had been President of the House of
Peers since the 4th of August.--B.]

[Footnote 320: The Baron Louis was Minister of Finance.--B.]

[Footnote 321: The Marquis de Sémonville continued Grand Refendary.--B.]

[Footnote 322: Dupont de l'Eure (1767-1855) had been President of
the Imperial Court at Rouen. He became Minister of Justice after the
Revolution of 1830, but soon went over to the Opposition, where he
won an enormous popularity. In 1848, he was elected, by acclamation,
President of the Provisional Government, a position which, owing to his
great age, he held only nominally.--T.]

[Footnote 323: Edward III. landed near Cherbourg in 1346, besieged the
city and laid waste the surrounding country.--T.]

[Footnote 324: Anne Hilarion de Contentin, Comte de Tourville
(1642-1701), was defeated off the Hogue in 1692 by the combined Dutch
and English fleets; his own fleet was destroyed.--T.]

[Footnote 325: The famous dyke of Cherbourg, which turned that harbour
into a first-class port, was built under Louis XVI.--T.]

[Footnote 326: William I. King of England (1027-1087), surnamed the
Conqueror, landed at Pevensey on the 28th of September 1066; Charles X.
landed, on the 17th of August 1830, at Spithead.--T.]

[Footnote 327: Holyrood Palace had been the residence of Charles X.
during the First Emigration.--T.]

[Footnote 328: Paris, 3 December 1840.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 329: _Cf._ the letters and dispatches of the different
Courts, quoted in the _Congrès de Vérone_; consult also the _Ambassade
de Rome.--Author's Note._]




PART THE FOURTH

1830-1841

BOOK I[330]

Introduction--Trial of the ministers-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois--Pillage
of the Archbishop's Palace--My pamphlet on the _Restauration et
la Monarchie élective_--_Études historiques_--Letters to Madame
Récamier--Geneva--Lord Byron--Ferney and Voltaire--Useless
journey to Paris--M. Armand Carrel--M. de Béranger--The Baude and
Briqueville proposition for the banishment of the Elder Branch of the
Bourbons--Letter to the author of the _Némésis_--Conspiracy of the Rue
des Prouvaires--Letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Epidemics--The
cholera--Madame La Duchesse de Berry's 12,000 francs--General
Lamarque's funeral--Madame La Duchesse de Berry lands in Provence and
arrives in the Vendée.


INFIRMERIE DE MARIE-THÉRÈSE.

PARIS, _October_ 1830.

Out of the turmoil of the Three Days, I am quite surprised to find
myself opening the fourth part of this work amid a profound calm; it
seems to me that I have doubled the Cape of Storms and penetrated into
a region of peace and silence. If I had died on the 7th of August of
this year, the last words of my speech in the House of Peers would have
been the last lines of my history; my catastrophe, being that of a past
of twelve centuries, would have augmented my memory. My drama would
have ended magnificently.

But I did not fall under the blow, I was not struck to the ground.
Pierre de L'Estoile wrote this page of his Journal on the day following
the assassination of Henry IV.:

    "And here I end with the life of my King the second register of
    my melancholic pastimes and my vain and curious researches, both
    public and private, interrupted often since the past month by
    the watches of the sad and irksome nights which I have suffered,
    similarly this last, for the death of my King.

    "I had proposed to close my ephemerides with this register; but so
    many new and curious occurrences have presented themselves through
    this signal mutation, that I pass to another which also will go
    before God pleases: and I doubt 'twill not be very long."

L'Estoile saw the death of the first Bourbon; I have just seen the fall
of the last: ought I not to "close here the register of my melancholic
pastimes and of my vain and curious researches?" Perhaps; "but so many
new and curious researches have presented themselves through this
signal mutation, that I pass to another register."

Like L'Estoile, I lament the adversities of the Dynasty of St. Louis;
nevertheless, I am obliged to admit, there mingles with my sorrow a
certain inward satisfaction: I reproach myself with it, but I cannot
prevent it; this satisfaction is that of the slave delivered from his
chains. When I abandoned the career of a soldier and a traveller, I
felt a certain sadness; now I feel joy, freed convict that I am of
the galleys of the world and the Court Faithful to my principles and
my oaths, I have betrayed neither liberty nor the King, I carry away
neither wealth nor honours; I go as poor as I came. Happy to end a
career which was hateful to me, I lovingly return to repose.

Blessed be thou, O my native and dear independence, soul of my life!
Come, bring me my Memoirs, that _alter ego_ whose confidant, idol
and muse you are. The hours of leisure are fit for story-telling: a
shipwrecked mariner, I shall continue to relate my shipwreck to the
fishermen on shore. Returning to my primitive instincts, I become a
free man and a traveller once again; I end my course as I began it. The
closing circle of my days brings me back to the starting-point. On the
road which I once took as a careless conscript, I am going to travel
as an experienced veteran, with my furlough in my shako, the stripes
of time upon my arm, a knapsack full of years upon my back. Who knows?
Perhaps I shall, stage by stage, recover the reveries of my youth. I
shall call many dreams to my help, to defend me against that horde of
truths which are begotten in old days even as dragons hide themselves
in ruins. It will depend but on myself to knot together again the two
ends of my existence, to blend far-distant periods, to mingle illusions
of different ages, since the Prince whom I met in exile on leaving my
paternal home I now meet in banishment on my way to my last abode.


I rapidly wrote the little introduction to this part of my Memoirs in
the month of October of last year[331]; but I was unable to continue
this labour, because I had another on my hands: this was the work[332]
which concluded the edition of my Complete Works. From this work again
I was diverted, first, by the trial of the ministers and, next, by the
sack of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.

[Sidenote: Trial of the ministers.]

The trial of the ministers[333] and the flurry in Paris made no great
impression on me: after the trial of Louis XVI. and the revolutionary
insurrections, all is small in the matter of trials and insurrections.
The ministers, when coming from Vincennes to the Luxembourg and
returning to Vincennes while sentence was being passed, went through
the Rue d'Enfer: I could hear the wheels of their carriage from the
back of my retreat. How many events have passed before my door!

The defenders of those men did not rise to the level of their task.
None took a high enough view of the matter: the advocate predominated
too greatly in the speeches. If my friend the Prince de Polignac had
chosen me for his second, with what an eye should I have looked upon
those perjurers setting themselves up for judges of a perjurer!

"What!" I should have said to them. "It is you who dare to be my
client's judges; it is you who, all sullied with your oaths, dare to
impute it as a crime to him that he ruined his master when he thought
he was serving him: you, the instigators; you who urged him to issue
the Ordinances! Change places with him whom you claim the right to
judge: he who was accused becomes the accuser. If we have deserved to
be struck, it is not by you; if we are guilty, it is not towards you,
but towards the people: they are waiting for us in the yard of your
palace, and we shall take our heads to them."

After the trial of the ministers, came the scandal of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois[334]. The Royalists, full of excellent
qualities, but sometimes stupid and often aggravating, never
calculating the range of their measures, always thinking that they
would restore the Legitimacy by affecting a colour in their cravats
or a flower in their button-holes, occasioned deplorable scenes. It
was evident that the Revolutionary Party would profit by the service
held in commemoration of the Duc de Berry to make a noise. Now, the
Legitimists were not strong enough to oppose this, and the Government
was not settled enough to maintain order; and so the church was
pillaged. A Voltairean and progressive apothecary[335] triumphed
fearlessly over a steeple of the year 1300 and a cross already
overthrown by other Barbarians at the end of the ninth century.

Consequently upon the exploits of these enlightened pharmaceutics
come the devastation of the Archbishop's Palace, the profanation of
the sacred things, and the processions copied from those of Lyons.
The executioner and the victims were lacking; but there were plenty
of buffoons, masks and diverse carnival delights. The burlesque
sacrilegious procession marched on one side of the Seine, while the
National Guard, pretending to hasten in aid, defiled on the other. The
river separated order and anarchy. It is stated that a man of talent
was there as an onlooker and that he said, on seeing the chasubles and
books floating on the Seine:

"What a pity they did not throw the Archbishop in!"

A profound utterance, for indeed a drowned archbishop must be a
pleasant sight; that makes liberty and enlightenment take so great a
step forward! We old witnesses of old deeds are obliged to tell you
that you see here but pale and wretched copies. You still possess the
revolutionary instinct, but you no longer have its energy; you can be
criminal only in imagination; you would like to do evil, but your
heart lacks courage and your arm strength; you would like to see fresh
massacres, but you would no longer set to work to commit them. If you
want the Revolution of July to be great and to remain great, do not
let M. Cadet de Gassicourt be its real hero and "Mayeux" its ideal
personage[336].

[Sidenote: My new pamphlet.]

    PARIS, _end of March_ 1831.

    I was out of my reckoning when, after the Days of July were over,
    I thought that I was entering a region of peace. The fall of the
    three Sovereigns had obliged me to explain myself in the House of
    Peers. The proscription of those Kings forbade me to remain dumb.
    On the other hand, Philip's newspapers were asking me why I refused
    to serve a revolution which consecrated the principles which I
    had defended and diffused. I had needs to speak on behalf of the
    general truths and to explain my personal conduct. An extract from
    a little pamphlet which will be forgotten, _De la Restauration et
    de la Monarchie élective_[337], will continue the thread of my
    narrative and that of the history of my times:


    "Despoiled of the present, possessing but an uncertain future
    beyond the tomb, I feel a need that my memory should not be injured
    by my silence. I must not hold my peace touching a Restoration in
    which I have taken so much part, which is being daily outraged
    and which is at length being proscribed before my eyes.... In the
    middle-ages, at times of calamity, men used to take a religious and
    lock him in a tower, where he fasted on bread and water for the
    salvation of the world. I am not unlike this twelfth-century monk:
    through the dormer-window of my expiatory jail, I have preached my
    last sermon to the passers-by..."

Here is the epitome of that sermon:

    "As I predicted in my last speech in the tribune of the Peers, the
    Monarchy of July is in an absolute condition of glory or of laws
    of exception; it lives by the press, and the press is killing it;
    devoid of glory, it will be devoured by liberty; if it attack that
    liberty, it will perish. It would be a fine thing if, after driving
    out three Kings with barricades, on behalf of the liberty of the
    press, we were to be seen erecting new barricades against that
    liberty! And yet, what is to be done? Will the redoubled action
    of the tribunals and the laws suffice to restrain the writers? A
    new government is a child that can walk only in leading-strings.
    Are we to put back the nation into swaddling-clothes? Will that
    terrible nursling, which has sucked blood in the arms of victory
    at so many bivouacs, not burst its bandages? There was but one old
    stock, deeply rooted in the past, which could have withstood with
    impunity the gales blowing from the liberty of the press. . . .
    . . . . . . . . "To listen to the declamations of the moment, it
    seems that the exiles of Edinburgh are the poorest fellows living
    and that they are nowhere missed. The present, to-day, lacks
    nothing but the past: a small thing! As though the centuries did
    not make use of each other as pedestals, and as though the last
    comer could support itself in mid-air!... It is useless for our
    vanity to take offense at memories, to erase the fleurs-de-lys, to
    proscribe names and persons: that family, the heir of a thousand
    years, has left an immense void by its withdrawal; one feels it
    everywhere. Those individuals, so paltry in our eyes, have shaken
    Europe in their fall. To however small a degree events produce
    their natural effects and bring about their rigorous consequences,
    Charles X., in abdicating, will have made all those Gothic kings,
    the grand vassals of the past under the suzerainty of the Capets,
    abdicate with him. . . . . . . . . . . . "We are marching towards a
    general revolution. If the transformation which is being effected
    follows its inclination and meets with no obstacles, if popular
    reason continues its progressive development, if the education
    of the middle classes suffers no interruption, the nations will
    become levelled in a uniform liberty; if that transformation is
    stayed, the nations will become levelled in a uniform despotism.
    This despotism will not last long, because of the advanced age of
    intelligence, but it will be harsh, and a long social dissolution
    will follow it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Sidenote: Extracts from my pamphlet.]

    "Preoccupied as I am with these ideas, it is clear why I was;
    bound, as an individual, to remain true to what seemed to me; the
    best safeguard of the public liberties, the least perilous road by
    which to attain the complement of those liberties.

    "It is not that I have the pretension to be a tearful preacher
    of sentimental politics, an eternal repeater of white plumes and
    commonplaces à la Henry IV. Casting my eyes over the space that
    separates the tower of the Temple from the palace in Edinburgh,
    I should doubtless find as many calamities heaped up as there
    are centuries accumulated on a noble race. A woman of sorrow,
    above all, has been loaded with the heaviest burden, as being the
    strongest; there is not a heart but breaks at the thought of her:
    her sufferings have risen so high that they have become one of the
    grandeurs of the Revolution. But, when all is said and done, no
    one is obliged to be king: Providence sends particular afflictions
    to whom it pleases, always brief ones, because life is short;
    and those afflictions are not counted in the general destinies
    of the peoples. . . . . . . . . . . . . "Even if the proposition
    which for ever banishes the deposed Family from French territory
    be a corollary of the deposition of that Family, that corollary
    carries no conviction for me.... I should in vain seek my place in
    the several categories of persons who have become attached to the
    actual order of things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "There are
    men who, after taking the oath to the Republic One and Indivisible,
    to the Directory of five persons, to the Consulate of three, to the
    Empire of one alone, to the First Restoration, to the Additional
    Act to the Constitutions of the Empire, to the Second Restoration,
    have something left to swear to Louis-Philippe: I am not so rich.

    "There are men who flung their word on the Place de Grève, in July,
    like those Roman goat-herds who play at odd or even among ruins.
    Those men... treat as a fool and simpleton whosoever does not
    reduce politics to a question of private interests: I am a fool and
    a simpleton.

    "There are timorous people who would have much preferred not to
    swear, but who saw themselves being butchered, together with their
    grand-parents, their grandchildren, and all the landlords, if they
    had not trembled out their oaths: this is a physical effect which I
    have not yet experienced; I shall wait for the infirmity and, if it
    comes to me, I shall consider.

    "There! are great lords of the Empire linked to their pensions by
    sacred and indissoluble bonds, whatever be the hand they fall from:
    a pension is in their eyes a sacrament; it stamps a character, like
    orders or marriage; no pensioned head can ever cease to be so:
    pensions being charged to the Treasury, they remain charged to the
    same Treasury. As for me, I have the habit of divorce from Fortune:
    I am too old for her and abandon her, lest she should leave me.

    "There are high barons of the Throne and the Altar who have not
    betrayed the Ordinances: no! But the insufficiency of the means
    employed to carry out the Ordinances has excited their spleen:
    indignant to find shortcomings in despotism, they have gone to
    seek another antechamber. It is impossible for me to share their
    indignation and their abode.

    "There are men of conscience who are perjurers only to be
    perjurers; who, while yielding to force, are none the less for
    the right: they weep over that poor Charles X., whom they first
    dragged to his ruin by their advice and then put to death by their
    oaths; but, if ever he or his House revive, they will be very
    thunder-bolts of legitimacy. As for me, I have always been devoted
    to death, and I am the funeral procession of the Old Monarchy, like
    the poor man's dog.

    "Lastly, there are trusty knights who have dispensations from
    honour and permits of disloyalty in their pocket: I have none.

    "I was the man of the _possible_ Restoration, of the Restoration
    accompanied by every kind of liberty. That Restoration took me for
    an enemy; it is ruined: I must undergo its fate. Shall I go to
    attach the few years that remain to me to a new fortune, like the
    hems of dresses which women drag from court to court for all the
    world to tread upon? At the head of the young generations, I should
    be suspect; following them, is not my place. I am fully aware that
    none of my faculties has aged; I understand my century better than
    ever; I penetrate more boldly into the future than anybody; but
    necessity has pronounced its decree; to end his life opportunely is
    a necessary condition for the public man."

[Sidenote: The _Études historiques._]

Lastly, the _Études historiques_[338] have just appeared; I will quote
the Introduction, which is a real page of my Memoirs, and contains my
history at the very moment at which I am writing:

    INTRODUCTION

    "Remember, so as not to lose sight of the pace of the world, that
    at that time[339]... there were citizens engaged, like myself, in
    ransacking the archives of the past amid the ruins of the present,
    in writing the annals of the old revolutions to the uproar of the
    new revolutions; they and I taking as our table, in the crumbling
    edifice, the stone that had fallen at our feet, while awaiting that
    which was to crush our heads" (_Études historiques_).

    "I would not, for the sake of the days that remain for me to live,
    begin again the eighteen months that have just elapsed. None will
    ever have an idea of the violence which I have done on myself; I
    have been forced to abstract my mind, for ten, twelve and fifteen
    hours a day, from what was passing around me, in order childishly
    to abandon myself to the composition of a work of which no one
    will read a line. Who would peruse four stout volumes, when it is
    already so difficult to read the _feuilleton_ of a newspaper? I
    was writing ancient history, and modern history was knocking at my
    door; in vain I cried, 'Wait, I am coming to you:' it passed on,
    to the sound of the cannon, carrying with it three generations of
    kings.

    "And how marvellously the times agree with the very nature of
    these _Études!_ Men are overthrowing the Cross and persecuting the
    priests, and the Cross and the priests occur on every page of my
    narrative; they are banishing the Capets, and I am publishing a
    history in which the Capets occupy eight centuries. The longest and
    the last work of my life, that which has cost me most research,
    care and years, that in which I have perhaps stirred up most ideas
    and facts, appears at a time when it can find no readers; it is as
    though I flung it into a pit, where it will sink down under the
    mass of the rubbish that will follow it. When a society is being
    composed and decomposed, when the existence of each and all is at
    stake, when one is not sure of a future of an hour's duration, who
    cares what his neighbour does, says, or thinks? Men have something
    else to trouble their heads about than Nero, Constantine, Julian,
    the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Fathers of the Church, the Goths,
    the Huns, the Vandals, the Franks, Clovis, Charlemagne, Hugh Capet
    and Henry IV.; they have something else to think of than the
    shipwreck of the old world at a time when we are all involved in
    the shipwreck of the new world! Does it not argue a sort of dotage,
    a kind of feeble-mindedness, to busy one's self with literature at
    such a time? That is true; but this dotage has nothing to do with
    my brain, it comes from the antecedents of my spiteful fortune. If
    I had not made so many sacrifices to the liberties of my country, I
    should not have been obliged to contract engagements which are now
    being fulfilled under circumstances doubly deplorable to myself.
    No author has ever been put to such a proof; thank God, it is
    nearly at an end: I have nothing left to do but to sit on ruins and
    despise that life which I scorned in my youth.

    "After these very natural complaints, which have involuntarily
    escaped me, one thought comes to console me: I began my literary
    career with a work in which I considered Christianity in its
    poetic and moral aspects; I end it with a work in which I regard
    the same religion in its philosophical and historical aspects: I
    began my political career under the Restoration, I end it with the
    Restoration. It is not without a secret satisfaction that I observe
    this consistency with myself."

    PARIS, _May_ 1831.

    I have not abandoned the resolution which I conceived at the moment
    of the catastrophe of July. I have been considering the ways and
    means of living abroad: difficult ways and means, because I have
    nothing; the purchaser of my works has all but made me a bankrupt,
    and my debts prevent me from finding anyone willing to lend me
    money.

    [Sidenote: I leave for Geneva.]

    Be this as it may, I shall go to Geneva[340] with the sum that
    has accrued to me from the sale of my last pamphlet[341]. I am
    leaving a procuration to sell the house in which I write this page
    for the sake of the order of dates. If I find a customer for my
    bed, I can find another bed outside France. In these uncertainties
    and movements, it will be impossible for me, until I am settled
    somewhere, to resume the sequence of my Memoirs at the place where
    I interrupted them[342]. I shall continue, therefore, to write down
    the things of the actual moment of my life; I shall communicate
    these things by means of the letters which I may happen to write
    on the road or during my different stoppages; I shall afterwards
    join the intermediary facts by a "journal" which will fill up the
    intervals between the dates of those letters.

[Sidenote: I leave for Geneva.]

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER[343]

    "LYONS, _Wednesday_ 18 _May_ 1831.

    "Here I am, too far away from you. I have never made so sad a
    journey: wonderful weather, nature all arrayed, the nightingale
    singing, a starry night; and all this for whom? I shall indeed have
    to return to where you are, unless you be willing to come to my
    aid[344]."

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "LYONS, _Friday_ 20 _May._

    "I spent the day, yesterday, in wandering beside the Rhone; I
    contemplated the town where you were born, the hill upon which rose
    the convent where you were chosen as the fairest: an expectation
    which you did not disappoint; and you are not here, and years have
    elapsed, and you have since been exiled to your birth-place, and
    Madame de Staël is no more, and I am leaving France! One singular
    personage[345] belonging to those old days has appeared before
    me: I send you his note, because of its unexpectedness and its
    surprise. This personage, whom I had never seen, is planting pines
    in the mountains of Lyonnais. It is a long cry from there to the
    Rue Feydeau and the _Maison à vendre_: what different parts men
    play on earth!

    "Hyacinthe has told me of the regrets and the newspaper articles:
    I am not worth all that You know that I sincerely think so for
    twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four; the twenty-fourth is
    dedicated to vanity, which, however, is of slight duration and soon
    passes. I wanted to see nobody here; M. Thiers, who was on his way
    to the South, forced my door."

    NOTE ENCLOSED IN THE ABOVE LETTER

    "A neighbour, your fellow-countryman, who has no other claim upon
    you than a profound admiration for your glorious talent and your
    admirable character, would like to have the honour of seeing
    you and offering you the homage of his respect. This next-door
    neighbour at your hotel, this fellow-countryman is called

    "ELLEVIOU."

    TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

    "LYONS, _Sunday_ 22 _May._

    "We leave to-morrow for Geneva, when I shall find more memories of
    you. Shall I ever see France again, after I have once crossed the
    frontier? Yes, if you will, that is to say, if you remain there.
    I do not wish for the events which might offer me another chance
    of returning; I shall never allow the misfortunes of my country
    to enter among the number of my hopes. I shall write to you on
    Tuesday, the 24th, from Geneva. When shall I again see your little
    hand-writing, the younger sister of mine[346]?"

    [Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

    "GENEVA, _Tuesday_ 24 _May._

    "We arrived here yesterday and are looking at houses. We shall
    probably make shift with a little summer-house on the edge of the
    lake. I cannot tell you how sad I feel as I busy myself with these
    arrangements. Again another future! Again to begin anew a life
    which I thought I had ended! I mean to write you a long letter
    when I am a little at rest: I dread that rest, for then I shall be
    contemplating without distraction those dim years upon which I am
    entering with a heart so much oppressed."


    9 _June_ 1831.

    "You know that a 'reformed' sect has been established in the midst
    of the Protestants. One of the new pastors of the new church has
    been to see me and has written me two letters worthy of the first
    Apostles. He wants to convert me to his faith, and I want to turn
    him into a 'Papist.' We argue as though living in Calvin's[347]
    day, but loving each other in Christian brotherhood and without
    burning one another. I do not despair of his salvation; he is quite
    shaken by my arguments in favour of the Popes. You cannot conceive
    the pitch of exaltation to which he has risen, and his candour
    is admirable. If you come to me, accompanied by my old friend
    Ballanche, we shall do wonders. In one of the Geneva newspapers,
    a Protestant controversial book is advertised, and the authors
    are urged to 'stand firm' because 'the author of the _Génie du
    Christianisme_ is close at hand.'

    "There is a certain consolation in finding a little free people,
    administered by the most distinguished men, among which religious
    ideas form the basis of liberty and the chief occupation of life.

    "I lunched at M. de Constant's[348], beside Madame Necker[349],
    who is unfortunately deaf, but a woman of rare qualities and the
    greatest distinction: we spoke only of yourself. I had received
    your letter and I told M. de Sismondi the amiable things you had
    said for his benefit. You see I am taking your lessons.

    "Lastly, here are some verses. You are my 'star' and I am waiting
    for you to go to that enchanted island.

    "Delphine[350] married: O Muses! I have told you in my last letter
    why I could write neither on the peerage nor on the war: I should
    be attacking a contemptible body to which I have belonged and
    preaching honour to those who no longer possess it.

    "It needs a sailor to read the verses and understand them. I put
    myself in M. Lenormant's hands. Your intelligence will suffice
    for the last three stanzas, and the key to the riddle is at the
    foot[351]."


    "GENEVA, 18 _June_ 1831.

    "You have received all my letters. I am constantly expecting a
    few words from you; I can see that there will be nothing for me,
    but still I am always surprised when the post brings me only
    newspapers. Not a soul writes to me, except yourself; not a soul
    remembers me, except yourself, and that is a great charm. I love
    your solitary letter, which does not arrive as it used to arrive in
    the days of my magnificence, in the midst of packets of dispatches
    and of all those letters of attachment, admiration and meanness
    which vanish with fortune. After your little letters, I shall
    see your fair self, if I do not go to join you. You shall be my
    testamentary executrix; you shall sell my poor retreat; the price
    will enable you to travel towards the sun. At this moment, the
    weather is admirable: as I write to you I can see Mont Blanc in
    its splendour; from the top of Mont Blanc one sees the Apennines:
    it seems to me as though I have but three steps to take to arrive
    in Rome, where we shall go, for all will get settled in France.

    "Our glorious country lacked but one thing in order to have passed
    through every form of wretchedness: to have a government of
    cowards; she has it now, and her youth is about to be swallowed up
    in doctrine, literature and debauch, according to the particular
    character of the individual. The chapter of accidents remains;
    but, when a man drags along life's road, as I do, the most likely
    accident is the end of the journey.

    "I do no work, I can do nothing more: I am bored; it is my nature,
    and I am like a fish in water: nevertheless, if the water were a
    little less deep, perhaps I should be better pleased in it"

[Sidenote: Geneva.]


JOURNAL FROM THE 12TH OF JULY TO THE 1ST OF SEPTEMBER 1831

THE PÂQUIS, NEAR GENEVA.

I am settled at the Pâquis[352] with Madame de Chateaubriand; I have
made the acquaintance of M. Rigaud, Chief Syndic of Geneva: above
his house, by the edge of the lake, going up the Lausanne Road, you
find the villa of two clerks of M. de Lapanouze[353], who have spent
1,500,000 francs in building it and laying out their gardens. When I
pass on foot before their dwelling-house, I wonder at Providence, which
has placed witnesses of the Restoration at Geneva in them and in me.
What a fool I am! What a fool! The Sieur de Lapanouze went through
royalism and misery with me: see to what his clerks have risen for
having favoured the Conversion of the Funds, which I had the simplicity
to oppose and by virtue of which I was turned out Here are the
gentlemen: they drive up in an elegant tilbury, hat on ear, and I am
obliged to step into a ditch lest the wheel should carry off a skirt
of my old frock-coat. And yet I have been a peer of France, a minister,
an ambassador, and in a cardboard box I have all the principal Orders
of Christendom, including the Holy Ghost and the Golden Fleece. If the
clerks of the Sieur César de Lapanouze, now millionaires, cared to buy
my box of ribbons for their wives, they would do me a lively pleasure.

Nevertheless all is not roses for the Messieurs B---: they are not yet
Genevese nobles, that is to say, they have not yet reached the second
generation; their mother still lives in the lower part of the town and
has not risen to the Saint-Pierre quarter, the Faubourg Saint-Germain
of Geneva; but, with God's help, nobility will follow on money.

It was in 1805 that I saw Geneva for the first time. If two thousand
years had elapsed between the dates of my two journeys, would they be
further separated from each other than they are? Geneva belonged to
France; Bonaparte was shining in all his glory, Madame de Staël in all
hers; there was no more question of the Bourbons than if they had never
existed. And Bonaparte, and Madame de Staël, and the Bourbons: what has
become of them? And I, I am still there!

M. de Constant, a cousin of Benjamin Constant, and Mademoiselle de
Constant, an old maid full of wit, virtue and talent, live in their
cottage of "Souterre" on the bank of the Rhone; they are overlooked
by another country-house, which was formerly M. de Constant's: he
sold it to the Princesse Belgiojoso[354], a Milanese exile, whom I
saw pass like a flower through the fête which I gave in Rome for the
Grand-duchess Helen.

During my boating excursions, an old oarsman tells me of the deeds of
Lord Byron, whose house we see standing on the Savoyard side of the
lake. The noble peer would wait for a tempest to rise before setting
sail; from the deck of his felucca, he leapt into the waves and swam
in the midst of the gale to land at the feudal prisons of Bonivard: he
was always the actor and the poet. I am not so eccentric: I also love
the storms; but my loves with them are secret, and I do not confide
them to the boatmen.

I have discovered, behind Ferney[355], a narrow valley, in which runs
a tiny stream some seven or eight inches deep; this rivulet waters
the roots of a few willows, hides itself here and there under patches
of water-cress and shakes rushes on whose tips perch blue-winged
dragon-flies. Did the man of trumpets ever see this refuge of silence
right up against his resounding house? No, without a doubt: well, the
water is there; it still flows; I do not know its name; perhaps it has
none: Voltaire's days are spent; only his fame still makes a little
noise in a little corner of our little world, even as that streamlet
can be heard at a dozen paces from its banks.

Men differ from one another: I am charmed with this deserted
water-furrow; within sight of the Alps, the palm-leaf of a fern which
I gather delights me; the murmuring of a ripple over pebbles makes
me quite happy; an imperceptible insect, seen only by myself, which
plunges into the moss, as into a vast solitude, occupies my gaze and
makes me dream. These are intimate trifles, unknown to the fine genius
who, disguised as Orosmane[356], played his tragedies, wrote to the
princes of the earth and forced Europe to come to admire him in the
hamlet of Ferney. But were not those trifles too? The transitions of
the world are not equal to the passing of those waters; and, as for
kings, I prefer my ant.

[Sidenote: Memoires of Voltaire.]

One thing always astonishes me, when I think of Voltaire: although
gifted with a superior, rational, enlightened mind, he remained
completely foreign to Christianity; he never saw what every one
sees: that the institution of the Gospel, to consider only the human
aspect of it, is the greatest revolution that ever took place on
earth. It is true to say that, in the age of Voltaire, this idea had
come into the head of nobody. The theologians defended Christianity
as an accomplished fact, as a verity based upon laws emanating from
spiritual and temporal authority; the philosophers attacked it as an
abuse springing from priests and kings: they went no further. I have
no doubt that, if one could suddenly have presented the other side
of the question to Voltaire, his quick and lucid intelligence would
have been struck with it: one blushes to think of the mean and limited
manner in which he treated a subject which embraces nothing less than
the transformation of peoples, the introduction of morality, a new
principle of society, another law of nations, another order of ideas,
the total change of humanity. Unfortunately, the great writer who ruins
himself in spreading baleful ideas drags many minds of lesser capacity
with him in his fall: he is like those old Eastern despots on whose
tombs men immolated slaves.

There, to Ferney, which no one visits now, to that Ferney around which
I come to roam alone, how many celebrated personages at one time
hastened! They sleep, gathered together for all time at the bottom of
Voltaire's letters, their hypogæan Temple: the breath of one century
grows weaker by degrees and dies away in the eternal silence, as one
begins to hear the respiration of a new century.


THE PÂQUIS, NEAR GENEVA, 15 _September_ 1831.

O gold, which I have so long despised and which I cannot love whatever
I may do, I am nevertheless forced to admit thy merit: the source of
liberty, thou arrangest a thousand things in our existence, in which
all is difficult without thee! Excepting glory, what is there that
thou canst not procure? With thee, one is handsome, young, adored; one
enjoys consideration, honours, qualities, virtues. You tell me that
with gold one has but the appearance of all that: what matter, if I
believe what is false to be true? Deceive me well, and I will release
you from the rest: is life other than a lie? When one has no money,
one is dependent upon everything and everybody. Two creatures who do
not suit one another could go each his own way; well, for want of a
few pistoles, they must remain face to face, sulking, fuming, souring,
bored to extinction, devouring each other's souls and the whites of
their eyes, furiously sacrificing to one another their tastes, their
inclinations, their natural methods of life: poverty presses them
close together, and, in those beggars' bonds, instead of embracing,
they bite each other, but not in the way in which Flora bit Pompey.
Without money, there is no means of escape; one cannot go in search of
another sun, and, with a proud soul, one wears chains without ceasing.
O happy Jews, dealers in crucifixes, who to-day govern Christendom, who
decide peace or war, who eat pig after selling old hats, who are the
favourites of kings and beauties, ugly and dirty though you be: ah, if
you would but change skins with me! If I could at least creep into your
iron chests, to rob you of that which you have stolen from young men
under age, I should be the happiest man in the world!

True, I might have a means of existence: I could apply to the monarchs;
as I have lost all for the sake of their crown, it would be only fair
that they should feed me. But this idea, which ought to occur to them,
does not; and to me it occurs still less. Rather than sit at the
banquets of kings, I should even prefer once more to begin the regimen
which I kept in the old days, in London, with my poor friend Hingant.
However, the happy times of garrets are past: not that I was not most
comfortable there, but I should be ill at ease, I should take up too
much room with the flounces of my reputation; I should no longer be
there with my one shirt and the slender figure of an unknown person
who has not dined. My cousin de La Boüétardais is there no more to
play the violin on my truckle-bed in his red robes as a counsellor to
the Parliament of Brittany, and to keep himself warm at night, covered
with a chair by way of counterpane; Peltier is there no more to give us
dinner with King Christophe's money; and, above all, the witch is there
no more, Youth, who, with a smile, changes penury into a treasure, who
brings you her younger sister, Hope, for a mistress: the latter also
as deceptive as her elder, though she still returns when the other has
fled for ever.

I had forgotten the distress of my first emigration and imagined that
it was enough to leave France in order peacefully to preserve one's
honour in exile: the larks fall ready roasted into the mouths only of
those who reap the harvest, not of those who have sown it If I alone
were concerned, I should do marvellously well in an alms-house: but
Madame de Chateaubriand? And so I have no sooner become settled than,
as I cast my eyes upon the future, anxiety seizes hold of me.

[Sidenote: The value of money.]

They wrote to me from Paris that there was no means of selling my house
in the Rue d'Enfer save at a price which was not sufficient to pay off
the mortgages with which that hermitage is loaded; that something might
nevertheless be arranged if I were there. Acting on this communication,
I have taken a useless journey to Paris, for I found neither goodwill
nor a purchaser; but I saw the Abbaye-aux-Bois again and a few of my
new friends. On the eve of my return here, I dined at the Café de Paris
with Messieurs Arago, Pouqueville[357], Carrel and Béranger, all more
or less dissatisfied and deceived by "the best of republics."


THE PÂQUIS, NEAR GENEVA, 26 _September_ 1831.

My _Études historiques_ brought me into relations with M. Carrel, even
as they made me acquainted with Messieurs Thiers and Mignet. I had
copied into the Preface of those Studies a fairly long passage from the
_Guerre de Catalogne_[358], by M. Carrel, and especially the following:

    "Things, in their continual and fatal transformations, do not
    always carry every intelligence with them; they do not master every
    character with equal facility; they do not take the same care
    of all interests: this is what we must understand and make some
    allowance for the protests raised on behalf of the past. When a
    particular period is finished, the mould is shattered, and it is
    enough for Providence that it can not be made over again; but of
    the fragments left upon the ground, there are occasionally some
    that are beautiful to look upon."

After these fine lines, I myself added this summary:

    "The man who was able to write those words has reasons for sympathy
    with those who have faith in Providence, who respect the religion
    of the past and who also have their eyes fixed upon fragments."

M. Carrel came to thank me. He represented both the courage and the
talent of the _National_, on which he worked with Messieurs Thiers and
Mignet. M. Carrel belongs to a pious and royalist family of Rouen:
the blind Legitimacy, which rarely distinguished merit, misjudged M.
Carrel. Proud and alive to his worth, he had resort to dangerous
opinions, in which one finds a compensation for the sacrifices one lays
upon one's self: there happened to him what happens to all characters
fit for great movements. When unforeseen circumstances oblige them
to restrict themselves within a narrow circle, they consume their
super-abundant faculties in efforts which go beyond the opinions and
events of the day. Before revolutions, superior men die unknown: their
public has not yet come; after revolutions, superior men die neglected:
their public has disappeared.

M. Carrel is not happy: there is nothing more material than his ideas,
nothing more romantic than his life. After being a republican volunteer
in Spain, in 1823, being captured on the battle-field, condemned to
death by the French authorities, and escaping a thousand dangers, he
finds love mingled with the pleasures of his private existence. He
has to protect a passion[359] which is the mainstay of his existence;
and this large-hearted man, ever ready to face a sword's point by
day-light, sets wicket-gates before him, and the shades of night: he
walks in the silent fields with a beloved woman at that first dawn at
which the reveille used to call him to the attack of the enemy's tents.

I leave M. Armand Carrel in order to write a few words on our famous
song-writer. You will find my story too short, reader, but I have a
claim on your indulgence: his name and his songs must be engraved on
your memory.


M. de Béranger is not, like M. Carrel, obliged to conceal his
love-affairs. After singing the praises of liberty and the popular
virtues, while defying the gaols of the kings, he puts his _amours_
into a couplet, and behold Lisette immortalized.

[Sidenote: A flying visit to Paris.]

Near the Barrière des Martyrs, below Montmartre, you see the Rue de la
Tour-d'Auvergne. In this half-built, half-paved street, in a little
house hiding behind a little garden and calculated upon the modesty of
present-day fortunes, you will find the illustrious song-writer. A bald
head, a somewhat rustic, but keen and voluptuous air announce the poet.
I love to rest my eyes on that plebeian countenance, after looking at
so many royal faces; I compare those so greatly different types: on
the monarchical brows one sees something of an exalted nature, but
blighted, impotent, effaced; on the democratic brows appears a common
physical nature, but one recognises a lofty intellectual nature: the
monarchical brow has lost a crown; the popular brow awaits one.

One day I asked Béranger (I beg him to forgive me for becoming as
familiar as his fame), I asked him to show me some of his unknown works:

"Do you know," he said, "that I began by being your disciple? I was mad
on the _Génie du Christianisme_, and I wrote Christian idylls: scenes
in the life of a country priest, pictures of religious worship in the
villages and in the midst of the harvest."

M. Augustin Thierry has told me that the Battle of the Franks in the
_Martyrs_ suggested to him a new manner of writing history: nothing
has flattered me more than to find my memory occupying a place at
the commencement of the talent of the historian Thierry and the poet
Béranger.

Our song-writer has the several qualities upon which Voltaire insists
for the ballad:

    "To succeed well in these little works," says the author of so many
    graceful poems, "one needs refinement and sentiment of intellect,
    to have harmony in one's head, not to lower one's self over much,
    and to know how not to be too long."

Béranger has many muses, all of them charming; and, when those muses
are women, he loves them all. When they betray him, he does not turn to
elegiacs; and nevertheless there is a feeling of sadness at the bottom
of his gaiety: his is a serious face that smiles; it is philosophy
saying its prayers.

My friendship for Béranger earned me many expressions of astonishment
on the part of what was called my party. An old knight of St. Louis,
personally unknown to me, wrote to me from his distant turret:

"Rejoice, sir, at being praised by one who has slapped the face of your
King and your God."

Well said, my gallant nobleman! You are a poet too.

[Sidenote: Béranger.]

At the end of a dinner at the Café de Paris which I gave to Messieurs
de Béranger and Armand Carrel before my departure for Switzerland, M.
Béranger sang us his admirable printed song:

     Chateaubriand, pourquoi fuir ta patrie,
     Fuir son amour, notre encens et nos soins[360]?

In it occurred this stanza on the Bourbons:

     Et tu voudras t'attacher à leur chute!
     Connais donc mieux leur folle vanité:
     Au rang des maux qu'au ciel même elle impute,
     Leur cœur ingrat met ta fidélité[361].

To this song, which belongs to the history of my time, I replied from
Switzerland by a letter which is printed at the head of my pamphlet on
the Briqueville[362] Motion. I said to M. de Béranger:

    "From the place whence I wrote to you, monsieur, I can see the
    country-house where Lord Byron lived and the roofs of Madame de
    Staël's château. Where is the bard of Childe-Harold? Where is the
    author of Corinne? My too long life is like those Roman roads
    bordered with funeral monuments[363]."

I returned to Geneva; I next took Madame de Chateaubriand to Paris and
brought back the manuscript directed against the Briqueville Motion
for the banishment of the Bourbons, a motion which was taken into
consideration in the sitting of the Deputies of the 17th of September
of this year 1831: some attach their lives to success, others to
misfortune.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of November_ 1831.

Returning to Paris on the 11th of October, I published my pamphlet at
the end of the same month; it is entitled, _De la nouvelle proposition
relative au banissement de Charles X. et de sa famille, ou suite de mon
dernier écrit: De la Restauration et de la Monarchie élective._

When these posthumous Memoirs appear, will the daily polemics, the
events of which men are enamoured at this present hour of my life,
the adversaries against whom I am fighting, will even the act of
banishment of Charles X. and his Family count for anything? There you
have the drawback of all diaries: you find in them ardent discussions
of subjects that have become indifferent; the reader sees pass, like
shadows, a host of persons whose very names he does not remember:
silent supernumeraries, who fill the back of the stage. Yet it is
in these dryasdust portions of the chronicles that one gathers the
observations and facts of the history of mankind and men.

I placed first at the commencement of the pamphlet the decree brought
forward successively by Messieurs Baude and Briqueville. After
examining the five courses that lay open after the Revolution of July,
I said:

    "The worst of the periods through which we have passed seems to
    be that in which we are, because anarchy reigns in men's reasons,
    morals and intellects. The existence of nations is longer than that
    of individuals: a paralytic man often remains stretched on his
    couch for many years before disappearing; an infirm nation lies
    long on its bed before expiring. What the new Royalty needed was
    buoyancy, youth, intrepidity, to turn its back upon the past, to
    march with France to meet the future.

    "All this it neglects: it appeared before us reduced and
    debilitated by the doctors who were physicking it. It arrived
    piteous, empty-handed, having nothing to give, everything to
    receive, playing the poor thing, begging everybody's pardon, and
    yet snappish, declaiming against the Legitimacy and aping the
    Legitimacy, against republicanism and trembling before it. This
    abdominous 'system' beholds enemies only in two forms of opposition
    which it threatens. To support itself it has built itself a phalanx
    of re-enlisted veterans: if they bore as many stripes as they have
    taken oaths, their sleeves would be more motley than the livery of
    the Montmorencys.

    "I doubt whether liberty will long be content with this stew-pot
    of a domestic monarchy. The Franks placed liberty in a camp; in
    their descendants it has retained the taste and love of its first
    cradle; like the old Royalty, it wants to be raised on the shield
    and its deputies are soldiers."

[Illustration: Charles X.]

From this general argument I pass on to the details of the system
followed in our foreign relations. The immense mistake of the Congress
of Vienna is that it placed a military nation like France in a
condition of forced hostility with the neighbouring peoples. I point to
all that the foreigners have gained in territory and power, all that
we could have taken back in July. A mighty lesson! A striking proof of
the vanity of military glory and of the work of conquerors! If one were
to draw up a list of the Princes who have increased the possessions of
France, Bonaparte would not figure on it; but Charles X. would occupy a
remarkable place!

[Sidenote: Yet another pamphlet.]

Passing from argument to argument, I come to Louis-Philippe:

    "Louis-Philippe is King," I say; "he wields the sceptre of the
    child whose immediate heir he is, of the ward whom Charles X.
    placed in the hands of the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom as
    into those of a tried guardian, a faithful trustee, a generous
    protector. In that Palace of the Tuileries, instead of an innocent
    couch, free from insomnia, free from remorse, free from ghosts,
    what has the Prince found? An empty throne presented to him by a
    headless spectre bearing, in its blood-stained hand, the head of
    another spectre....

    "Must we, to finish the business, put a handle to Louvel's blade
    in the shape of a law, in order to strike a last blow at the
    proscribed Family? If it were driven to these shores by the
    tempest; if Henry, too young as yet, had not attained the years
    requisite for the scaffold, well then, do you, the masters, give
    him a dispensation of age to die!"

After speaking to the French Government, I turn to Holyrood and add:

    "Dare I, in conclusion, take the respectful liberty of addressing
    a few words to the men of exile? They have returned to sorrow as
    into their mother's womb: misfortune, a seduction from which it is
    difficult for me to defend myself, seems to me to be always in the
    right; I fear to offend its sacred authority and the majesty which
    it adds to insulted grandeurs, which henceforth have none but me to
    flatter them. But I will overcome my weakness, I will strive to
    voice words which, in a day of ill-fortune, might give grounds for
    hope to my country.

    "The education of a prince should be analogous to the form of
    government and the manners of his native land. Now, there are
    in France neither chivalry nor knights, neither soldiers of the
    Oriflamme nor nobles barbed in steel, ready to march behind the
    White Flag. There is a people which is no longer the people of
    other days, a people which, changed by the centuries, has lost
    the old habits and the ancient manners of our fathers. Whether we
    deplore the social transformations that have arisen or glorify
    them, we must take the nation as it is, facts as they are, enter
    into the spirit of our time, in order to exercise an action over
    that spirit.

    "All is in God's hand, except the past, which, once fallen from
    that hand, does not return to it.

    "The moment will doubtless arrive when the orphan will leave that
    palace of the Stuarts, the ill-omened refuge which seems to spread
    the shadow of its fatality over his youth: the last-born of the
    Bearnese must mix with children of his own age, attend the public
    schools, learn all that is known to-day. Let him become the most
    enlightened young man of his time; let him be acquainted with the
    knowledge of the period; let him add to the virtues of a Christian
    of the age of St. Louis the sagacity of a Christian of our age.
    Let travel be his instructor in manners and laws; let him cross
    the seas, compare institutions and governments, free peoples and
    enthralled peoples; let him, if he find the occasion while abroad,
    expose himself, as a simple soldier, to the dangers of war, for
    none is fit to reign over Frenchmen who has not heard the hiss of
    the cannon-ball. Then you will have done for him all that, humanly
    speaking, you can do. But, above all, beware of fostering him in
    ideas of invincible right: far from flattering him with the thought
    of reascending the throne of his fathers, prepare him never to
    reascend it; bring him up to be a man, not to be a king: those are
    his best chances.

    "Enough: whatever God's counsel may provide, there will remain to
    the candidate of my fond and pious loyalty a majesty of the ages
    which men cannot take from him. A thousand years attached to his
    young head will always deck him with a pomp exceeding that of all
    monarchs. If, in a private condition, he bear bravely this diadem
    of days, of memory and of glory, if his hand raise without effort
    this sceptre of time which his ancestors have bequeathed to him,
    what empire will he be able to regret?"

[Sidenote: The Comte de Briqueville.]

M. le Comte de Briqueville, whose motion I thus contested, printed some
reflections on my pamphlet; he sent them to me with the following note:

    "MONSIEUR,

    "I have yielded to the need, to the duty, to publish the
    reflections brought to my mind by your eloquent words on my motion.
    I obey a feeling no less sincere when I deplore that I should
    find myself in opposition to you, monsieur, who add to the power
    of genius so many claims to public consideration. The country is
    in danger, and from that moment I cease to believe in a serious
    dissension between us: this France of ours invites us to unite to
    save her; assist her with your genius; we shall work, we shall
    assist her with our strong arms. On that field, monsieur, is it not
    true that we shall not be long in coming to an understanding? You
    shall be the Tyrtæus[364] of a people of which we are the soldiers,
    and it will be with the greatest happiness that I shall then
    proclaim myself the most ardent of your political adherents, as I
    am already the sincerest of your admirers.

    "Your most humble and obedient servant,

    "The Comte Armand de BRIQUEVILLE.

    "PARIS, 15 _November_ 1831."

I was not slow in answering, and I broke a second still-born lance
against the champion:

    "PARIS, 15 _November_ 1831.

    "MONSIEUR,

    "Your letter is worthy of a gentleman: forgive me for using this
    old word, which becomes your name, your courage, your love of
    France. Like you, I detest the foreign yoke: if the question were
    that of defending my country, I should not ask to wear the lyre
    of the poet, but the sword of the veteran, in the ranks of your
    soldiers.

    "I have not yet read your reflections, monsieur; but, if the state
    of politics led you to withdraw the motion which has so strangely
    saddened me, how happy I should be to find myself by your side,
    with no obstacle between us, on the field of liberty, of honour, of
    the glory of our country!

    "I have the honour to be, monsieur, with the most distinguished
    regard,

    "Your most humble and most obedient servant,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

PARIS, INFIRMERIE DE MARIE-THÉRÈSE, RUE D'ENFER,

_December_ 1831.

A poet[365], mingling the proscriptions of the Muses with those of the
laws, attacked the widow and the orphan in a vigorous improvisation.
As these verses were by a writer of talent, they acquired a sort of
authority which forbade me to let them pass in silence; I faced about
to meet another enemy[366].

The reader would not understand my reply if he did not read the poet's
lampoon; I invite you, therefore to cast your eyes over those verses:
they are very fine and are to be found everywhere. My reply has not
been published: it appears for the first time in these Memoirs.
Wretched contentions in which revolutions end! See to what a struggle
we come, the feeble successors of those men who, arms in hand, treated
great questions of glory and liberty by shaking the universe! Pygmies
to-day utter their little cry among the tombs of the giants buried
beneath the mountains which they have overturned upon themselves.

    "PARIS, _Wednesday evening_, 9 _November_ 1831.

    "SIR,

    "I received this morning the last number of _Némésis_ which you
    have done me the honour to send me. To protect myself against the
    seduction of those praises awarded with so much brilliancy, grace
    and charm, I need to recall the obstacles that exist between us.
    We live in two worlds apart; our hopes and fears are not the same;
    you burn what I adore, and I burn what you adore. You, sir, have
    grown up amid a crowd of abortions of July; but, even as all the
    influence which you attribute to my prose will not, according to
    you, raise up a fallen House, so, according to me, will all the
    might of your poetry fail to abase that noble House. Can it be that
    both you and I are thus placed in two impossible positions?

    "You are young, sir, like the future which you dream of and which
    will trick you; I am old, like time, which I dream of and which
    escapes me. If you were to come to sit by my fireside, you
    obligingly say, you would reproduce my features with your graver:
    I should strive to make you a Christian and a Royalist. Since your
    lyre, at the first chord of its harmony, sang my Martyrs and my
    Pilgrimage, why should not you complete the course? Enter the holy
    place; time has stripped me only of my hair, as it strips a tree of
    its leaves in winter, but the sap remains in my heart: my hand is
    still firm enough to hold the torch which would guide your steps
    under the vaults of the sanctuary.

    [Sidenote: Letter to Barthélemy.]

    "You declare, sir, that it would need a people of poets to
    understand my contradictions of 'extinct kingdoms and young
    republics:' is it likely that you too have not celebrated liberty
    and yet found some magnificent words for the tyrants who oppressed
    it? You quote the Du Barrys, the Montespans, the Fontanges, the La
    Vallières: you recall royal weaknesses; but did those weaknesses
    cost France what the debauches of Danton and Camille Desmoulins
    cost her? The morals of those plebeian Catalines were reflected
    even in their speech: they borrowed their metaphors from the
    piggeries of infamous persons and prostitutes. Did the frailties
    of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. send the fathers and husbands to the
    gallows, after dishonouring the daughters and wives? Did his
    blood-baths do more to render chaste a revolutionary's lewdness
    than did her milk-baths to render virginal a Poppæa's pollution?
    If Robespierre's hucksters had retailed to the people of Paris
    the blood from Danton's bathing-tub, as Nero's slaves sold to the
    inhabitants of Rome the milk from his courtesan's _thermæ_, do
    you think that any virtue would have been found in the rinsings of
    the obscene headsmen of the Terror?

    "The swiftness and the height of the flight of your muse have
    deceived you, sir: the sun, which laughs at all misery, must have
    struck the garments of a widow; they must have seemed 'gilded' to
    you: I have seen those garments, they were of mourning; they knew
    nothing of pleasure; the child, in the entrails which bore him, was
    rocked only to the sound of tears; if he had 'danced nine months in
    his mother's womb,' as you say, he would then have known joy only
    before being born, between conception and delivery, between the
    assassination and the proscription! 'The pallor of fearsome omen'
    which you remarked on Henry's face is the result of his father's
    blood-letting, and not of a ball of two hundred and seventy nights.
    The old curse was kept up for the daughter of Henry IV.: _In dolore
    paries filios._ I know none save the Goddess of Reason whose
    confinements, hastened by adultery, took place amid the dances of
    Death. From her public flanks fell unclean reptiles which, at that
    very instant, began to jig in the ring with the knitting-women
    around the scaffold, to the sound of the rise and fall of the
    knife, the refrain of that devils' dance.

    "Ah sir, I entreat you, in the name of your rare talent, cease to
    reward crime and to punish misfortune by the sentences improvised
    by your muse; do not condemn the first to Heaven, the second to
    Hell. If, while remaining attached to the cause of liberty and
    enlightenment, you were to afford an asylum to religion, humanity,
    innocence, you would see another sort of Nemesis appear before
    you in your waking hours, one worthy of all the earth's homage.
    And, while waiting to pour over virtue, better than I know how,
    'the whole ocean of your fresh ideas,' continue, in the spirit of
    vengeance which you have adopted, to drag our turpitude to the
    _gemoniæ_; overthrow the false monuments of a revolution which
    has not built the temple fit for its cult; turn up their ruins with
    the plough-share of your satire; sow salt in that field to make it
    barren, so that no new vileness can shoot there. I recommend above
    all, sir, to your attention, that Government which has fallen so
    low that it trembles before the pride of the obedience, the victory
    of the defeats, and the glory of the humiliations of the country.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of March_ 1832.

Those travels and those contests came to an end for me in the year
1831; at the beginning of the year 1832, a new annoyance.

The Paris Revolution had left on the streets of Paris a host of Swiss,
of Body-guards, of men of all conditions kept by the Court, who were
now starving and whom certain monarchical dunderheads, young and
foolish under their grey hairs, thought of enlisting for a surprise.

In this formidable plot there was no lack of serious, pale, lean,
diaphanous, bent persons, with noble faces, eyes still bright, white
heads; that past suggested honour resuscitated, coming to try, with
its shadowy hands, to restore the Family which it had been unable to
maintain with its living hands. Often men on crutches pretend to prop
crumbling monarchies; but, at this period of society, the restoration
of a mediæval monument has become impossible, because the genius which
quickened that architecture is dead: what we take for Gothic is merely
antiquated.

On the other hand, the heroes of July, whom the _juste-milieu_ had
swindled out of the Republic, desired nothing more than to come to
an understanding with the Carlists to revenge themselves on a common
enemy, remaining free to cut each other's throats after the victory.
M. Thiers having extolled the system of 1793 as the work of liberty,
victory and genius, young imaginations became kindled at the flame of
a conflagration of which they saw only the distant reverberation; they
have got no further than the poetry of the Terror: a mad and hideous
parody which sets back the hour of liberty. This is to disregard at
once time, history and humanity; it is to oblige the world to recoil
under the whip of the convict-keeper in order to escape those fanatics
of the scaffold.

Money was needed to feed all those malcontents, dismissed heroes of
July, or servants out of place: people clubbed together. Carlist and
republican cabals were held in every comer of Paris, and the police,
informed of all that went on, sent its spies from club to garret to
preach equality and liberty. I was told of these proceedings, which
I opposed. The two parties wanted to declare me their leader at the
assured moment of triumph: a Republican club asked me if I would accept
the Presidency of the Republic; I answered:

"Yes, most certainly; but after M. de La Fayette."

[Sidenote: The Marquis de La Fayette.]

This was thought modest and proper. General La Fayette used sometimes
to come to Madame Récamier's; I used to make fun of his "best of
republics;" I asked him if he would not have done better to proclaim
Henry V. and to be the real President of France during the minority of
the royal infant. He agreed and took the jest in good part, for he was
a well-bred man. Each time we met, he would say:

"Ah, you are going to pick your quarrel again!"

I used to make him admit that no one had been more caught than himself
by his good friend Philip.

In the midst of this excitement and these extravagant plottings,
arrived a man in disguise. He landed at my door with a tow wig on his
pate and a pair of green spectacles on his nose, hiding his eyes,
which could see quite well without spectacles. He had his pockets
stuffed with bills of exchange, which he displayed; and, suddenly
aware that I wanted to sell my house and settle my affairs, he offered
me his services. I could not help laughing at this gentleman (a man,
otherwise, of intelligence and resource) who thought himself obliged to
buy me for the Legitimacy. When his offers became too pressing, he saw
on my lips a certain scornfulness which obliged him to beat a retreat,
and he wrote to my secretary this little note, which I have kept:

    "SIR,

    "Yesterday evening I had the honour to see M. le Vicomte de
    Chateaubriand, who received me with his customary kindness;
    nevertheless, I seem to have perceived that he no longer showed his
    usual geniality. Tell me, I beg of you, what can have caused me
    to lose his confidence, which I valued more highly than anything
    else. If he has been told 'stories' about me, I am not afraid to
    expose my conduct to the light of day, and I am prepared to reply
    to anything that he may have been told: he knows too well the
    spitefulness of intriguing people to condemn me unheard. There are
    timid persons too who make others so; but we must hope that the day
    will come when we shall see people who are really devoted. Well,
    he told me that it was of no use for me to meddle in his business;
    I am sorry for that, because I flatter myself that it would have
    been arranged according to his wishes. I have little doubt as to
    the person who has wrought this change in him; if I had been less
    discreet at the time, this person would not have been in a position
    to injure me with your excellent 'patron.' However, I am none
    the less devoted to him, as you may assure him once more with my
    respectful homage. I venture to hope that a day will come when he
    will be able to know me and to judge of me.

    "Pray accept, sir, etc."

Hyacinthe answered this note with the following reply at my dictation:

    "My patron has nothing whatever in particular against the person
    who has written to me; but he wishes to live outside everything,
    and does not wish to accept any service."

Shortly afterwards, the catastrophe came.

[Sidenote: A Royalist conspiracy.]

Do you know the Rue des Prouvaires[367], a narrow, dirty, populous
street, near Saint-Eustache and the markets? It was there that the
famous supper of the Third Restoration was held. The guests were armed
with pistols, daggers and keys; after drinking, they were to make their
way into the gallery of the Louvre and, passing at midnight through
a double row of master-pieces, go to strike the usurping monster in
the midst of a fête. The conception was a romantic one: the sixteenth
century had returned; one might have believed one's self in the times
of the Borgias, the Florentine Medicis and the Parisian Medicis: only
the men were different.

On the 1st of February, at nine o'clock in the evening, I was going to
bed, when a zealous man and the individual of the bills of exchange
forced my door in the Rue d'Enfer to tell me that all was ready, that
in two hours Louis-Philippe would have disappeared; they came to
enquire if they might declare me the principal chief of the Provisional
Government and if I would consent to take the reins of the Provisional
Government, in the name of Henry V., with a council of Regency. They
admitted that the thing was dangerous, but said that I should reap all
the greater glory, and that, as I was acceptable to all parties, I was
the only man in France in a position to play such a part.

This was pressing me very hard: two hours to decide upon my crown! Two
hours in which to sharpen the big mameluke's sabre which I had bought
in Cairo in 1806! However, I felt no embarrassment and I said to them:

"Gentlemen, you know that I have never approved of your enterprise,
which seems to me a mad one. If I were disposed to meddle in it, I
would have shared your dangers and would not have waited for your
victory to accept the prize of your risks. You know that I have a
serious love of liberty, and it is clear to me, to judge by the
leaders of all this business, that they do not want liberty and that,
if they remained masters of the field of battle, they would begin by
establishing the reign of arbitrariness. They would have no one, they
would have me least of all, to support them in these plans; their
success would bring about complete anarchy, and other countries,
profiting by our discords, would come to dismember France. I cannot
therefore enter into all this. I admire your devotion, but mine is not
of the same character. I am going to bed; I advise you to do the same;
and I am very much afraid that I shall hear to-morrow morning of the
misfortune of your friends."

The supper took place; the proprietor of the tavern, who had prepared
it only with the authorization of the police, knew what he was about.
The police-spies, at table, touched glasses to the health of Henry V.
with the best of them; the officers arrived, seized the guests, and
once more upset the cup of the Legitimate Royalty. The Renaud of the
royalist adventurers was a cobbler in the Rue de Seine[368], a hero of
July, who had fought valiantly during the Three Days and who seriously
wounded one of Louis-Philippe's policemen, even as he had killed
soldiers of the Guard to drive out Henry V. and the two old Kings.

During this business, I had received a note from Madame la Duchesse de
Berry appointing me a "member of a secret government," which she was
establishing in her quality as Regent of France. I took advantage of
this occasion to write the following letter to the Princess[369]:

[Sidenote: My letter.]

    "MADAME,

    "I have received with the deepest gratitude the mark of confidence
    and esteem with which you have consented to honour me; it lays upon
    my loyalty the duty of doubling my zeal, while not refraining from
    placing before the eyes of Your Royal Highness what appears to me
    to be the truth.

    "I will speak first of the so-called conspiracies, the rumour of
    which will perhaps have reached Your Royal Highness. It is asserted
    that these have been concocted or provoked by the police. Leaving
    the fact on one side, and without insisting upon the intrinsically
    reprehensible nature of conspiracies, be they true or false, I
    will content myself with observing that our national character is
    at once too light and too frank to succeed in such tasks. And so,
    during the last forty years, this sort of guilty enterprise has
    invariably failed. Nothing is more common than to hear a Frenchman
    publicly boast of being in a plot: he tells the whole details of
    it, without forgetting the day, place and hour, to some spy whom
    he takes for a brother; he says aloud, or rather exclaims to the
    passers-by:

    "'We have forty thousand men all told, we have sixty thousand
    cartridges, in such a street, number so-and-so, the corner-house.'

    "And then our Cataline goes off to dance and laugh.

    "Secret societies have a long range only because they proceed
    by revolutions and not by conspiracies; they aim at changing
    doctrines, ideas and manners, before changing men and things;
    their progress is slow, but their results certain. Publicity of
    thought will destroy the influence of secret societies; it is
    public opinion which will now effect in France that which occult
    congregations accomplish among unemancipated nations.

    "The departments in the West and South, which they seem to wish to
    drive to extremities by means of arbitrary measures and violence,
    retain the spirit of loyalty for which our old manners were
    distinguished; but that half of France will never conspire, in the
    narrow sense of the word: it forms a sort of camp standing at ease
    under arms. Admirable as a reserve force of the Legitimacy, it
    would be insufficient as an advance-guard and would never assume
    the offensive successfully. Civilization has made too much progress
    to allow of the outburst of one of those intestine wars, leading to
    great results, which were the outlet and the scourge of centuries
    at once more Christian and less enlightened than our own.

    "What exists in France is not a monarchy; it is a republic: one,
    truly, of the worst quality. This republic is plastroned with a
    royalty which receives the blows and prevents them from striking on
    the Government itself.

    "Besides, if the Legitimacy is a considerable force, the right
    of election is also a preponderating power, even when it is only
    fictitious, especially in this country where men live only on
    vanity: the French passion for equality is flattered by the right
    of election.

    "Louis-Philippe's Government abandons itself to a double excess of
    arbitrariness and obsequiousness which the Government of Charles X.
    had never dreamt of. This excess is endured; and why? Because the
    people more easily endure the tyranny of a government which they
    have created than the lawful strictness of the institutions which
    are not their work.

    "Forty years of storms have shattered the strongest souls: apathy
    is great, egoism almost general; men shrivel up to escape danger,
    to keep what they possess, to make shift to live in peace. After a
    revolution, there remain also cankered men who communicate their
    contamination to everything even as, after a battle, there remain
    corpses which pollute the air. If, by a mere wish, Henry V. could
    be transported to the Tuileries without trouble, without a shock,
    without compromising the slightest interest, we should be very near
    a restoration; but, in order to effect it, if one had to spend as
    much as one sleepless night, the chances would decrease.

    "The results of the Days of July have not turned to the profit of
    the people, nor to the honour of the army, nor to the advantage of
    literature, art, commerce or industry. The State has fallen a prey
    to the professional ministerialists and to the class which sees the
    country in its stew-pot, public affairs in its domestic economy.
    It is difficult, Madame, for you at your distance to know what is
    here called the _juste-milieu_: Your Royal Highness must imagine
    a complete absence of elevation of soul, of nobility of heart, of
    dignity of character; you must picture to yourself people swelled
    up with their importance, bewitched with their employs, doting on
    their money, determined to die for their pensions: nothing will
    part them from those; it is a question of life or death to them;
    they are wedded to them as were the Gauls to their swords, the
    knights to the Oriflamme, the Huguenots to the white plume of Henry
    IV., the soldiers of Napoleon to the tricolour; they will die only
    when they are exhausted of oaths to every form of government,
    after shedding the last drop of those oaths on their last place.
    These eunuchs of the sham Legitimacy dogmatize about independence
    while having the citizens bludgeoned in the streets and the
    writers crowded into prison; they strike up songs of triumph
    while evacuating Belgium at the bidding of an English minister
    and, soon after, Ancona by order of an Austrian corporal. Between
    the threshold of Sainte-Pélagie and the doors of the Cabinets of
    Europe, they strut all puffed out with liberty and soiled with
    glory.

    [Sidenote: To the Duchesse de Berry.]

    "What I have said concerning the temper of the French must not
    discourage Your Royal Highness; but I wish that the road that leads
    to the throne of Henry V. were better known.

    "You know my way of thinking as regards the education of my young
    King: my opinions are expressed at the end of the pamphlet which I
    have laid at Your Royal Highness' feet; I could only repeat myself.
    Let Henry V. be brought up for his century, with and by the men
    of his century: my whole system is summed up in those two words.
    Let him, above all, be brought up not to be King. He may reign
    tomorrow, he may reign only in ten years, he may never reign: for,
    if the Legitimacy has the different chances of returning which I
    will presently set out, nevertheless the present edifice might
    crumble to pieces without the formers rising from its ruins. You
    have a firm enough soul, Madame, to be able, without allowing
    yourself to be cast down, to suppose a judgment of God which would
    thrust back your illustrious House into the popular sources, even
    as you have a large enough heart to cherish just hopes without
    allowing them to intoxicate you. I must now place this other side
    of the picture before you.

    "Your Royal Highness can defy, can dare everything at your age;
    you have more years left to run than have elapsed since the
    commencement of the Revolution. Now, what have these latter years
    not seen? When the Republic, the Empire, the Legitimacy have
    passed, shall the amphibious thing known as the _juste-milieu_
    not pass? What! Was it to arrive at the wretchedness of the men
    and things of the present moment that we have gone through and
    expended so many crimes, so much misfortune, talent, liberty and
    glory? What! Europe overturned, thrones tumbling one over the
    other, generations hurled into the common ditch with the steel in
    their breasts, the world labouring for half a century, and all this
    to bring forth the sham Legitimacy? One could conceive a great
    republic emerging from this social cataclysm: it would at least
    be fitted to inherit the conquests of the Revolution, that is,
    political liberty, liberty and publicity of thought, the levelling
    of ranks, the admission to all offices, the equality of all before
    the law, popular election and sovereignty. But how can we suppose
    a troop of sordid mediocrities, saved from shipwreck, to be able
    to employ those principles? To what a proportion have they not
    already reduced them! They detest them, they hanker only after laws
    of exception; they would like to catch all those liberties in the
    crown which they have forged, as in a trap; after which they would
    fiddle-faddle sanctimoniously with canals, railways, a mish-mash
    of arts, literary arrangements: a world of machinery, loquacity
    and self-sufficiency denominated 'a model society.' Woe to any
    superiority, to any man of genius ambitious of preferment, of glory
    and pleasure, of sacrifice and renown, aspiring to the triumph of
    the tribune, the lyre or arms, who should rise up some day in that
    universe of boredom!

    "There is but one chance, Madame, for the sham Legitimacy to
    continue to vegetate: that is, if the actual state of society were
    the natural state of that very society at the period in which we
    live. If the people, grown old, found itself in sympathy with its
    decrepit government; if there were a harmony of infirmity and
    weakness between the governors and the governed, then, Madame,
    all would be over for Your Royal Highness and for the rest of the
    French. But, if we have not come to the age of national dotage
    and if the immediate Republic be impossible, then the Legitimacy
    seems called to be born again. Live your youth, Madame, and you
    shall have the royal tatters of the poor thing known as the
    Monarchy of July. Say to your enemies what your ancestress, Queen
    Blanche[370], said to hers during the minority of St. Louis:

    "'No matter; I can wait.'

    "Life's beautiful hours have been given you in compensation for
    your sufferings, and the future will give you as many occasions of
    happiness as the present has robbed you of days.

    "The first reason which militates in your favour, Madame, is the
    justice of your cause and the innocence of your son. All the
    eventualities are not against the good right."

[Sidenote: On the prospects.]

After setting forth in detail the reasons for hope which I hardly
entertained, but which I endeavoured to amplify in order to console the
Princess, I continued:

"There, Madame, you see the precarious state of the
sham Legitimacy at home; abroad its position is no more
assured. If Louis-Philippe's Government had felt that the
Revolution of July cancelled the earlier transactions, that
a new national constitution entailed a new political right
and changed social interests; if it had shown judgment and
courage at the outset of its career, it could, without firing a
single cartridge, have endowed France with the frontier
which has been taken from her, so keen was the assent of
the peoples, so great the stupefaction of the kings. The
sham Legitimacy would have paid ready money for its
crown with an increase of territory and would have entrenched
itself behind that bulwark. Instead of profiting
by its republican element to go fast, it has been afraid of
its own principles; it has dragged itself on its belly; it
has abandoned the nations which have risen for it and
through it; it has turned them from the clients that they
were into adversaries; it has extinguished warlike enthusiasm;
it has changed into a pusillanimous wish for peace an
enlightened desire to restore the balance of power between
ourselves and the neighbouring States, or at least to claim
from those States, enlarged out of all proportion, the shreds
tom from our old country. Thanks to his faint-heartedness
and lack of genius, Louis-Philippe has recognised treaties
which are not connatural with the Revolution, treaties with
which it cannot live and which the foreigners themselves
have violated.

"The _juste-milieu_ has left the foreign Cabinets time to
recover themselves and to form their armies. And, as the
existence of a democratic monarchy is incompatible with
the existence of the continental monarchies, a state of hostilities
might issue from this incompatibility in spite of
protocols, financial embarrassments, mutual fears, prolonged
armistices, gracious dispatches and demonstrations of friendship.
If our _bourgeois_ Royalty has resigned itself to accept
insult?, if men dream of peace, still the state of things may
become such as to necessitate war.

"But whether war shatter the sham Legitimacy or not, I
know, Madame, that you will never fix your hopes in the
foreigner; you would rather that Henry V. should never
reign than see him triumph under the patronage of an
European coalition: you place your hopes in yourself and
in your son. In whatever manner we might argue about
the Ordinances, they could never affect Henry V.; innocent
of all, he has the election of the ages and his native misfortunes
in his favour. If unhappiness touches us in the solitude
of a tomb, it moves us still more when it keeps watch beside
a cradle: for then it is no longer the memory of a thing that
is past, of a being who is miserable but who has ceased to
suffer; it is a painful reality; it saddens an age which
ought to know only joy; it threatens a whole life which has
done nothing to deserve its rigours.

"For you, Madame, your adversities provide a powerful
authority. Bathed in your husband's blood, you have carried
in your womb the son whom politics named "the child of
Europe" and religion "the child of miracle." What influence
do you not exercise over public opinion when you are seen
to be keeping unaided, for the exiled orphan, the heavy
crown which Charles X. shook from his whitened head
and from whose weight two other brows escaped, sufficiently
laden with sorrow to permit them to reject this new
burden! Your image presents itself to our memory with
those feminine graces which seem to occupy their natural
place, when seated on the throne. The people entertain no
prejudice against you; they pity your sorrows, they admire
your courage; they remember your days of mourning; they
are grateful to you for mingling later in their pleasures, for
sharing their tastes and their festivals; they find a charm in
the vivacity of this foreign Frenchwoman, who has come
from a land endeared to our glory by the days of Fornovo[371],
of Marignano[372], of Areola[373] and of Marengo[374]. The Muses
regret their protectress, born under that fair sky of Italy
which inspired her with the love of the arts and which
turned a daughter of Henry IV. into a daughter of Francis I.

"France, since the Revolution, has often changed leaders,
and has not yet seen a woman at the helm of the State.
God wills, perhaps, that the reins of this unmanageable
people, which slipped from the devouring hands of the
Convention, broke in the victorious hands of Bonaparte,
and were taken up in vain by Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,
should be fastened again by a young Princess, who would
know how to make them at once less fragile and less light."

[Sidenote: On the legitimacy.]

Lastly reminding Madame that she had been good enough to think of me as
a member of the secret government, I concluded my letter as follows:

    "In Lisbon there stands a magnificent monument on which one reads
    this epitaph:

HERE LIES BASCO FUGUERA AGAINST HIS WILL.

    My mausoleum shall be a modest one, and I shall not rest there
    unwillingly.

    "You know, Madame, the order of ideas in which I perceive the
    possibility of a restoration: the other combinations would be
    beyond the range of my mind; I should confess my insufficiency. It
    would be overtly, by proclaiming myself the man of your consent,
    of your confidence, that I should find some strength; but I should
    feel no aptitude to act as a nocturnal minister plenipotentiary,
    a _chargé d'affaires_ to the darkness. If Your Royal Highness
    were patently to appoint me your ambassador to the people of 'New
    France' I should inscribe in large letters over my door:

LEGATION OF OLD FRANCE.

    Things would happen as God pleased; but I would have nothing to do
    with secret devotions; I know how to be guilty of loyalty only in
    _flagrante delicto._

    "Madame, without refusing Your Royal Highness the services which
    you have the right to command of me, I entreat you to allow the
    plan which I have formed of ending my days in retirement. My ideas
    cannot be acceptable to the persons who enjoy the confidence of the
    noble exiles of Holyrood: once misfortune were past, the natural
    antipathy to my principles and person would revive with prosperity.
    I have beheld the rejection of the plans which I had put forward
    for the greatness of my country, to give France frontiers within
    which she could exist safe from invasion, to remove from her
    the disgrace of the Treaties of Vienna and Paris. I have heard
    myself treated as a renegade, when I was defending religion; as a
    revolutionary, when I was striving to establish the throne on the
    basis of the public liberties. I should find the same obstacles
    increased by the hatred which the faithful of the Court, the town
    and the country would have conceived from the lesson inflicted
    upon them by my conduct on the day of trial. I have too little
    ambition, too great a longing for repose to make my attachment a
    burden to the Crown and to thrust upon it my importunate presence.
    I have done my duty without thinking for a moment that it gave me a
    right to the favour of an august Family: happy in being permitted
    to embrace its adversity, I see nothing higher than that honour;
    it will find no more zealous servant than myself; but it will
    find those who are younger and abler. I do not believe myself a
    necessary man, and I think that there are no necessary men left at
    this day: useless henceforth, I am going to retire into solitude
    to busy myself with the past. I hope, Madame, still to live long
    enough to add to the history of the Restoration the glorious page
    which your future destinies promise to France.

    "I am, Madame,

    "with the most profound respect,

    "Your Royal Highness' most humble and most "obedient servant,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

The letter was obliged to await a safe messenger; time went on, and I
added the following postscript to my dispatch:

[Sidenote: The cholera.]

    "PARIS, 12 _April_, 1832.

    "MADAME,

    "All things grow old early in France; each day opens out new
    chances for politics and commences a series of events. We now have
    M. Périer's illness[375] and the plague sent by God. I have sent
    to M. the Prefect of the Seine the sum of 12,000 francs which the
    outlawed daughter of St. Louis and Henry IV. has destined for the
    relief of the unfortunate: a worthy use of her noble indigence!
    I shall strive, Madame, to be the faithful interpreter of your
    sentiments. I have never in my life received a mission with which I
    felt myself more honoured.

    "I am, with the most profound respect, etc."

Before speaking of the affair of the 12,000 francs for the
cholera-stricken sufferers mentioned in the above postscript, I must
speak of the cholera. I had not met with the plague during my journey
in the East: it came to visit me at home; the fortune which I had run
after awaited me seated at my door.


At the time of the plague of Athens, in the year 431 before our era,
already twenty-two great plagues had ravaged the world. The Athenians
imagined that their wells had been poisoned: a popular fancy renewed
in all contagions. Thucydides has left us a description of the Attic
scourge which has been copied, among the ancients, by Lucretius,
Virgil, Ovid, Lucan[376]; among the moderns, by Boccaccio[377] and
Manzoni. It is a remarkable thing that, when writing of the plague of
Athens, Thucydides does not say a word of Hippocrates[378], in the
same way as he does not name Socrates in connection with Alcibiades.
This pestilence first attacked the head, descended to the stomach,
thence to the bowels, lastly to the legs; if it went out by the feet,
after passing through the whole body, like a long serpent, the patient
recovered. Hippocrates called it the "divine evil" and Thucydides the
"sacred fire:" they both regarded it as the fire of the heavenly wrath.

One of the most dreadful plagues was that of Constantinople, in the
fifth century, under the reign of Justinian: Christianity had already
modified the imagination of the peoples and given a new character to a
calamity, even as it had changed poetry; the sick seemed to see ghosts
hover around them and to hear threatening voices.

The black plague of the fourteenth century, known by the name of the
Black Death, took rise in China: it was imagined that it moved rapidly
in the shape of a fiery vapour, while spreading a noxious smell. It
carried off four-fifths of the inhabitants of Europe.

In 1575, descended upon Milan the contagion which immortalized the
charity of St Charles Borromeo. Fifty-four years later, in 1629,
that unfortunate city was again exposed to the calamities of which
Manzoni[379] has made a painting far superior to the celebrated picture
by Boccaccio.

In 1660, the scourge was renewed in Europe and, in those two
pestilences of 1629 and 1660, were reproduced the same symptoms of
delirium as in the plague of Constantinople.

    "Marseilles," says M. Lemontey[380], "was in 1720 concluding the
    festivals which had signalized the passage of Mademoiselle de
    Valois[381], married to the Duke of Modena[382]. Beside the galleys
    still decorated with garlands and filled with musicians lay some
    vessels which brought from the ports of Syria the most terrible
    calamity."

The fatal ship of which M. Lemontey speaks, having exhibited a clean
bill, was for a moment admitted to pratique. That moment was enough to
poison the air: a storm increased the evil, and the plague spread to
the crash of thunder.

The gates of the city and the windows of the houses were closed. In the
midst of the general silence, sometimes a window was heard to open and
a corpse to fall. The walls streamed with its cankered blood, and dogs
without a master waited below to devour it. In one quarter, all of
whose inhabitants had died, they had been walled up at home, as though
to prevent death from leaving the house. From these avenues of great
family-tombs, one came to open places in which the pavement was covered
with sick and dying persons stretched on mattresses and abandoned
without aid. Carcases lay half rotten with old clothes mixed with mud;
other corpses stood upright against the walls, in the attitude in which
they had expired.

All had fled, even the doctors; the bishop, M. de Belsunce[383], wrote:

    "They ought to abolish the doctors, or at least to give us abler
    and less timorous ones. I have had great difficulty in having one
    hundred and fifty half-rotten corpses, which were lying around my
    house, removed."

[Sidenote: Earlier plagues.]

One day, the galley-slaves hesitated to fulfil their funeral functions:
the apostle climbed into one of the tumbrils, sat down on a heap of
corpses and ordered the convicts to proceed; death and virtue went
off to the cemetery, drawn by vice and crime filled with dread and
admiration. On the Esplanade de la Tourette, beside the sea, bodies had
been lying for three weeks; and these, exposed to the sun and melted by
its rays, offered merely an infected lake to the sight On this surface
of liquefied flesh, only the worms imparted some movement to crushed,
vague forms which might possess human shape.

When the contagion began to relax, M. de Belsunce, at the head of
his clergy, repaired to the church of the _Accoules_; mounting on an
esplanade commanding a view of Marseilles, the harbours and the sea, he
gave the benediction, even as the Pope, in Rome, blesses the city and
the world: what braver and purer hand could there be to bring down the
blessings of Heaven upon so many misfortunes?

It was thus that the plague devastated Marseilles and, five years
after these calamities, the following inscription was placed upon the
frontage of the Town Hall, resembling the pompous epitaphs which we
read on a sepulchre:

     MASSILIA PHOCENSIUM FILIA, ROMÆ SOROR, CARTHAGINIS TERROR,
                         ATHENARUM ÆMULA.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _May_ 1832.

The cholera, starting from the delta of the Ganges in 1817, has spread
over a space measuring 2,200 leagues from north to south and 3,500
leagues from east to west; it has wasted 1,400 towns and mowed down
40,000,000 inhabitants. We have a chart tracing the conqueror's march.
It has taken fifteen years to come from India to Paris: this means
going as fast as Bonaparte; the latter occupied almost the same number
of years in passing from Cadiz to Moscow, and he caused the death of
only two or three millions of men.

What is the cholera? Is it a mortal wind? Is it insects which we
swallow and which devour us? What is this great black death armed with
its scythe which, crossing mountains and seas, has come, like one of
those terrible pagodas worshipped on the shores of the Ganges, to crush
us under its chariot-wheels on the banks of the Seine? If this scourge
had fallen in the midst of us in a religious age, if it had spread amid
the poetry of manners and of popular beliefs, it would have left a
striking picture behind it. Imagine a pall waving by way of a flag from
the top of the towers of Notre-Dame; the cannon firing single shots
at intervals to warn the imprudent traveller to turn back; a cordon
of troops surrounding the city and allowing none to enter or leave;
the churches filled with a growing multitude; the priests, by day and
night, chanting the prayers of a perpetual agony; the Viaticum carried
from house to house with bell and candle; the church-bells incessantly
tolling the funeral knell; the monks, crucifix in hand, in the open
places, summoning the people to repentance, preaching the wrath and
judgment of God, made manifest by the corpses already blackened by
Hell's fires.

Then the closed shops; the pontiff, surrounded by his clergy, going,
with each rector at the head of his parish, to fetch the shrine of
St. Geneviève; the sacred relics carried round the town, preceded by
the long procession of the different religious orders, brotherhoods,
corporations, congregations of penitents, associations of veiled women,
scholars of the University, ministers of the alms-houses, soldiers
marching without arms or with pikes reversed; the Miserere chanted by
the priests mingling with the hymns of girls and children: all, at
certain signals, prostrating themselves in silence and rising to utter
fresh complaints.

There was none of all this with us: the cholera came to us in an
age of philanthropy, of incredulity, of newspapers, of material
administration[384]. This scourge devoid of imagination came upon no
old cloisters, nor monks, nor cellars, nor Gothic tombs: like the
Terror of 1793, it stalked abroad with a mocking air, in the light of
day, in a quite new world, accompanied by its bulletin, which recited
the remedies that had been employed against it, the number of victims
that it had made, how matters stood, the hopes that were entertained
of seeing it come to an end, the precautions that had to be taken to
ensure one's self against it, what one should eat, how one ought to
dress. And every one continued to attend to his business, and the
theatres were filled. I have seen drunkards at the barrier, seated
outside the pot-house door, drinking, at a little wooden table, and
saying, as they raised their glasses:

"Here's your health, Morbus!"

[Sidenote: The visitation of 1832.]

Morbus, out of gratitude, came running up, and they fell dead under the
table. The children played at cholera, calling it "Nicholas Morbus"
and "Morbus the Rascal." And yet the cholera had its terrible side:
the brilliant sunshine, the indifference of the crowd, the ordinary
course of life, which was continued everywhere, gave a new character
and a different sort of frightfulness to those days of pestilence.
You felt uncomfortable in every limb; you were parched by a cold, dry
north wind; the atmosphere had a certain metallic flavour which hurt
the throat. In the Rue du Cherche-Midi, wagons of the artillery-depot
were used to cart away the dead bodies. In the Rue de Sèvres, which was
completely devastated, especially on one side, the hearses came and
went from door to door; there were not enough of them to satisfy the
demand; a voice would shout from the window:

"Here, hearse, this way!"

The driver answered that he was full up and could not attend to
everybody. One of my friends, M. Pouqueville, on his way to dine at my
house on Easter Sunday, was stopped at the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse
by a succession of biers, nearly all of which were carried by bearers.
He saw, in this procession, the coffin of a young girl, on which was
laid a wreath of white roses. A smell of chlorine spread a tainted
atmosphere in the wake of this floral ambulance.

On the Place de la Bourse, where processions of workmen used to meet,
singing the Parisienne, one often saw funerals pass by towards the
Montmartre Cemetery as late as eleven o'clock at night, by the light
of pitch torches. The Pont-Neuf was blocked with litters laden with
patients for the hospitals or dead who had expired on the road. The
toll ceased for some days on the Pont des Arts. The booths disappeared
and, as the north-east wind was blowing, all the stall-holders and
all the shopkeepers on the quays closed their doors. One met tilted
conveyances preceded by a "crow," or mute, with a registrar of births,
deaths and marriages walking in front, dressed in mourning, and
carrying a list in his hand. There was a dearth of these tabellions, or
registrars; they had to send for more from Saint-Germain, the Villette,
Saint-Cloud. For the rest, the hearses were piled up with five or six
coffins, kept in place with ropes. Omnibuses and hackney-coaches were
employed for the same purpose: it was not uncommon to see a cab adorned
with a dead body stretched across the apron. A few of the dead were
laid out in the churches: a priest sprinkled holy water over those
collected faithful of Eternity.

In Athens, the people believed that the wells near the Piræus had been
poisoned; in Paris, the tradesmen were accused of poisoning their wine,
spirits, sugar-plums and provisions. Several individuals had their
clothes torn from their backs, were dragged in the gutter, flung into
the Seine. The authorities were to blame for these stupid or guilty
opinions.

How did the scourge, like an electric spark, pass from London to Paris?
It cannot be explained. This fantastic death often fixes on a spot of
the ground, on a house, and leaves the neighbourhood of that infested
spot untouched; then it retraces its steps and picks up what it has
forgotten. One night, I felt myself attacked: I was seized with a
shivering, together with cramp in my legs; I did not want to ring, for
fear of frightening Madame de Chateaubriand. I got up; I heaped all I
could find in my room on the bed, got back under the blankets, and a
copious perspiration pulled me through. But I remained shattered, and
it was in this condition of discomfort that I was obliged to write my
pamphlet on the 12,000 francs of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

[Sidenote: The 12,000 francs of Madame.]

I should not have been too sorry to go, carried off under the arm
of the eldest son of Vishnu, whose distant glance killed Bonaparte
upon his rock at the entrance to the Indian Sea. If all mankind,
stricken with this general contagion, came to die, what would happen?
Nothing: the world, depopulated, would continue its solitary course,
without need of any other astronomer to count its steps than Him who
has measured them from all eternity; it would present no change to
the eyes of the inhabitants of the other planets; they would see it
fulfilling its accustomed functions; upon its surface, our little
works, our cities, our monuments would be replaced by forests restored
to the sovereignty of the lions; no void would manifest itself in
the universe. And nevertheless there would be lacking that human
intelligence which knows the stars and rises to a knowledge of their
Author. What art thou then, O immensity of the works of God, in which,
if the genius of man, which is equal to the whole of nature, came to
disappear, it would be no more missed than the smallest atom withdrawn
from Creation?


PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _May_ 1832.

Madame de Berry has her chamber council in Paris, as Charles X. has
his: paltry sums were collected in her name to succour the poorer of
the Royalists. I proposed to distribute among the cholera patients
a sum of twelve thousand francs on behalf of the mother of Henry
V. We wrote to Massa, and not only did the Princess approve of the
disposition of the funds, but she would have liked us to apportion
a more considerable sum: her approval arrived on the day on which I
sent the money to the mayors' offices. Thus, everything is strictly
true in my explanations concerning the gift of the exile. On the
14th of April, I sent the whole sum to the Prefect of the Seine to
be distributed among the indigent class of the cholera-stricken
population of Paris. M. de Bondy was not at the Hôtel de Ville when
my letter was taken there. The Secretary-general opened my missive,
and did not consider himself authorized to receive the money. Three
days elapsed; M. de Bondy replied at last that he could not accept
the twelve thousand francs, because people would see in it, beneath
an apparent benevolence, "a political combination against which the
entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal[385]." Then
my secretary went to the twelve mayors' offices. Of five mayors
who were present, four accepted the gift of a thousand francs; one
refused it. Of the seven mayors who were absent, five kept silence;
two refused[386]. I was forthwith besieged by an army of paupers:
benevolent and charitable societies, workmen of all kinds, women
and children. Polish and Italian exiles, men of letters, artists,
soldiers, all wrote, all demanded a share in the bounty. If I had
had a million, it would have been distributed in a few hours. M. de
Bondy was wrong in saying that "the entire population of Paris would
protest by its refusal:" the population of Paris will always take money
from everybody. The scared attitude of the Government was enough to
make one die of laughing: one would have thought that this perfidious
legitimist money was going to stir up the cholera patients, to excite
an insurrection among the men dying in the hospitals to march to the
assault of the Tuileries, with coffins rolling, with tolling of funeral
knells, with winding-sheet unfurled under the command of Death. My
correspondence with the mayors was prolonged through the complication
of the refusal of the Prefect of Paris. Some of them wrote to me to
send me back my money or to ask for the return of their receipts for
the gifts of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. I sent these back loyally,
and I handed the following receipt to the office of the Mayor of the
12th Ward:

[Sidenote: Attitude of the Mayors.]

    "I have received from the Mayor's office of the 12th Ward the sum
    of one thousand francs which it had at first accepted and which it
    has returned to me by order of M. the Prefect of the Seine.

    PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832."

The Mayor of the 9th Ward, M. Cronier, was braver: he kept the thousand
francs and was dismissed. I wrote him this note:


    "29 _April_ 1832.

    "SIR,

    "I hear with keen sorrow of the disgrace of which Madame la
    Duchesse de Berry's benevolence has in your case been the cause or
    the pretext. You will have, for your consolation, the esteem of the
    public, the sense of your independence, and the happiness of having
    sacrificed yourself to the cause of the unfortunate.

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

The Mayor of the 4th Ward is a very different man: M. Cadet de
Gassicourt, a poet-apothecary composing little verses, writing in his
time, in the time of liberty and the Empire, an agreeable classical
declaration against my romantic prose and that of Madame de Staël[387].
M. Cadet de Gassicourt is the hero who took the cross of the front of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois by assault, and who, in a proclamation on
the cholera, gave us to understand that possibly those wicked Carlists
were the wine-poisoners to whom the people had already done ample
justice[388]. And so the illustrious champion wrote me the following
letter:

    "PARIS, 18 _April_ 1832.

    "SIR,

    "I was not at the Mayor's office when the person sent by you
    called: this will explain to you the delay in my reply.

    "M. the Prefect of the Seine, when declining to accept the money
    which you undertook to offer him, seems to me to have traced the
    line of conduct which the members of the Municipal Council must
    follow. I shall imitate M. the Prefect's example the more readily
    inasmuch as I think that I know and as I share the sentiments which
    must have prompted his refusal.

    "I will refer only in passing to the title of 4 Royal Highness'
    given with some affectation to the person whose mouth-piece you
    constitute yourself: the daughter-in-law of Charles X. is no more
    a 'Royal Highness' in France than her father-in-law is King[389]!
    But, Sir, there is no one who is not morally convinced that this
    lady is very actively at work and that she is spending sums of
    money very much more considerable than that of which she has
    entrusted the employment to yourself to stir up trouble in our
    country and bring about civil war. The alms which she pretends
    to make are but a means for drawing upon herself and her party
    an attention and a kindly feeling which her intentions are far
    from justifying. You will therefore not think it extraordinary
    that a magistrate, firmly attached to the constitutional royalty
    of Louis-Philippe, should refuse a relief which comes from such
    a source and should look to true citizens for purer bounties
    addressed sincerely to humanity and the country.

    "I am, Sir, with a very distinguished regard, etc.

    "F. CADET DE GASSICOURT."

[Sidenote: Cadet de Gassicourt.]

This is a very proud revolt on the part of M. Cadet de Gassicourt
against "this lady" and her "father-in-law:" what a progress in
enlightenment and philosophy! What indomitable independence! Messieurs
Fleurant and Purgon dared not look people in the face except upon their
knees[390]; he, M. Cadet, says, with the Cid:

"Then we rise up!"

His liberty is the more courageous inasmuch as that "father-in-law"
(in other words, the descendant of St. Louis) is an outlaw. M. de
Gassicourt is above all that: he despises equally the nobility of time
and of misfortune. With the same contempt for aristocratic prejudices,
he takes away my "de" and assumes it for himself, as though it were
a conquest snatched from the petty gentry. But could there not have
been some ancient historic quarrels between the House of Cadet and the
House of Capet? Henry IV., the ancestor of that "father-in-law" who is
no more King than that "lady" is a Royal Highness, was one day passing
through the Forest of Saint-Germain: eight lords were lying in ambush
there to kill the Bearnese; they were taken.

    "One of those gallants," says L'Estoile, "was an apothecary who
    asked to speak with the King, of whom His Majesty having enquired
    of what condition he was, he answered that he was an apothecary.

    "'What!' said the King. 'Is it the habit to perform the condition
    of an apothecary here? Do you lie in wait for the wayfarers to...?'"

Henry IV. was a soldier, modesty troubled him but little, and he ran
away from a word no more than from the enemy.

I suspect M. de Gassicourt, because of his ill-humour towards the
descendant of Henry IV., of being himself the descendant of the
apothecary-Leaguer. The Mayor of the 4th Ward had doubtless written to
me in the hope that I would engage him in mortal combat; but I do not
care to engage M. Cadet in anything: I hope that he will forgive me for
leaving him this little token of my remembrance.

Since the days when the great revolutions and the great
revolutionaries passed before my eyes, everything had shrivelled
greatly. The men who caused the fall of an oak, replanted when too old
to take root, applied to me; they asked me for a portion of the widow's
mite to buy bread: the letter from the Committee of the _décorés de
Juillet_, or "Knights of July," is a document worth noting for the
instruction of posterity.

    "PARIS, 20 _April_ 1832.

    "Please address your reply to M. Gibert-Arnaud, "Manager and
    Secretary to the Committee, "3, Rue Saint-Nicaise.

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "The members of our Committee approach you with confidence to ask
    you kindly to honour them with a gift in favour of the Knights
    of July. Any benevolence shown to these unhappy fathers of
    families, at this time of plague and misery, inspires the sincerest
    gratitude. We venture to hope that you will consent to allow your
    illustrious name to figure beside those of General Bertrand,
    General Exelmans, General Lamarque, General La Fayette, and several
    ambassadors, peers of France and deputies.

    "We beg you to honour us with a word in reply, and if, contrary to
    our expectation, our request should meet with a refusal, be good
    enough to return us the present letter.

    "With the gentlest sentiments, we beg you, monsieur le vicomte, to
    accept the homage of our respectful salutations.

    "The active members of the Constitutive Committee of the Knights of
    July:

    "FAURE, Visiting Member. "CYPRIEN DESMARAIS, Special Commissary.
    "GIBERT-ARNAUD, Manager and Secretary. "TOUREL, Assistant Member."

I was too wise not to take the advantage which the Revolution of July
here gave me over itself. By distinguishing between persons, one would
create helots among the unfortunate, who, because of certain political
opinions, might never obtain relief. I lost no time in sending a
hundred francs to these gentlemen, with this note:

    "PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832.

    "GENTLEMEN,

    "I am infinitely grateful to you for applying to me to come to the
    assistance of some unhappy fathers of families. I hasten to send
    you the sum of one hundred francs: I regret that I am not able to
    offer you a more considerable gift.

    "I have the honour, etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

The following receipt was sent to me by return:

[Sidenote: The knights of July.]

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "I have the honour to thank you and to acknowledge the receipt
    of the sum of one hundred francs devoted by your kindness to the
    succour of the unfortunates of July.

    "Greetings and respects.

    "GIBERT-ARNAUD,

    "Manager and Secretary to the Committee.

    "23 _April._"

And so Madame la Duchesse de Berry gave charity to those who had driven
her from the country. The transactions show things in their true light.
How can one believe in any reality in a country where no one looks
after the invalids of his party, where the heroes of yesterday are the
destitute persons of to-day, where a little gold makes the multitude
hurry to one like pigeons in a farm-yard flocking to the hand that
flings grain to them.

Four thousand francs of my twelve remained. I addressed myself to
religion; Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris[391] wrote me this noble
letter:

    "PARIS, 26 _April_ 1832.

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "Charity is catholic like faith, foreign to men's passions,
    independent of their movements: one of its chief distinguishing
    characteristics is that, as St. Paul says, it worketh no evil[392]:
    _non cogitat malum._ It blesses the hand that gives and the hand
    that receives, without attributing to the generous benefactor any
    other motive than that of doing good and without asking of the
    indigent poor any other condition than that of need. It accepts
    with deep and feeling gratitude the gift which the august widow
    has charged you to confide to it to be employed for the relief
    of our unfortunate brothers, the victims of the plague which is
    devastating the Capital.

    "It will distribute with the most scrupulous fidelity the four
    thousand francs which you have handed me on her behalf, and for
    which my letter is a new receipt; but I shall have the honour to
    send you an account of the distribution when the intentions of the
    benefactress have been fulfilled.

    "Be so good, monsieur le vicomte, as to present to Madame la
    Duchesse de Berry the thanks of a pastor and a father who daily
    offers his life to God for his sheep and his children and who calls
    on every side for help capable of levelling their wretchedness.
    Her royal heart has already doubtless found within itself its
    reward for the sacrifice which she has devoted to our misfortunes:
    religion ensures to her, moreover, the effect of the divine
    promises set forth in the book of the Beatitudes for those who are
    'merciful[393].'

    "The money has been divided without delay among the rectors of the
    twelve principal parishes of Paris, to whom I have addressed the
    letter of which I enclose a copy.

    "Receive, monsieur le vicomte, the assurance, etc.

    "HYACINTHE, Archbishop of Paris."

One is always amazed to realize in how high a degree religion
suits even style and gives an immediate gravity and seemliness to
commonplaces. This forms a contrast with the heap of anonymous letters
which have become mixed with the letters I have quoted. The spelling
of these anonymous letters is fairly correct, the hand-writing neat:
they are, properly speaking, "literary," like the Revolution of July.
They display scribbling jealousies, hatreds, vanities, safe in the
inviolability of a cowardice which, refraining to show its face, cannot
be made visible by a blow. Here are some samples:

    "Will you let us know, you old _républiquinquiste_, the day on
    which you would like to grease your moccasins? It will be easy for
    us to procure you some Chouan's fat, and, should you want some of
    your friends' blood to write their history in, there is no lack of
    it in the Paris mud, its element.

    "You old brigand, ask your rascally and worthy friend Fitz-James
    if he liked the stone which he received in his feudal part Pack of
    scoundrels that you are, we'll pull your guts from your stomachs,"
    etc., etc.

In another missive, I find a very well-drawn gallows, with these words:

    "Go down on your knees to a priest and make an act of contrition,
    for we want your old head to put an end to your treacheries."

For the rest, the cholera still continues: the answer which I might
address to a known or unknown adversary would perhaps reach him when
he was lying on his threshold. If, on the contrary, he were destined
to live, where would his reply find me? Perhaps in that resting-place
of which no one can be frightened to-day, especially we men who have
lengthened out our years between the Terror and the Plague, the first
and last horizons of our lives. A truce: let the coffins pass.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 10 _June_ 1832.

General Lamarque's[394] funeral has brought about two days of bloodshed
and the victory of the sham Legitimacy over the Republican Party[395].
This incomplete and divided party has made an heroic resistance.

[Sidenote: Paris in state of siege.]

Paris has been declared in a state of siege[396]: this is the
censorship on the largest possible scale, a censorship in the manner
of the Convention, with this difference, that a military commission
takes the place of the Revolutionary Tribunal. They are shooting, in
June 1832, the men who achieved the victory in July 1830: that same
Polytechnic School, that same artillery of the National Guard are
being sacrificed; they conquered the power for those who are crushing,
disowning and disbanding them. The Republicans are certainly wrong to
have cried up measures of anarchy and disorder: but why did you not
employ such noble arms on our frontiers? They would have delivered
us from the ignominious yoke of the foreigner. Generous, if exalted
heads would not have remained to ferment in Paris, to blaze up against
the humiliation of our foreign policy and the bad faith of the new
Royalty. You have been pitiless, you who, without sharing the dangers
of the Three Days, have gathered their fruit. Go now with the mothers
to identify the corpses of those knights of July from whom you hold
places, riches and honours. Young men, you do not all obtain the
same lot on the same shore! You have a tomb under the colonnade of
the Louvre and a place in the Morgue: some for snatching, others for
bestowing a crown. Your names, who knows them, you sacrifices and
for-ever-unknown victims of a memorable revolution? Is the blood known
that cements the monuments which men admire? The workmen who built
the Great Pyramid for the corpse of an unglorious king[397], sleep
forgotten in the sand near the needy root that served to feed them
during their labours.


PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832.

Madame la Duchesse de Berry[398] no sooner sanctioned the measure of
the 12,000 francs than she took ship for her famous adventure. The
rising of Marseilles failed; there remained but to try the West; but
the Vendean glory is a thing apart: it will live in our annals; in
any case, seven-eighths of France has chosen a different glory, the
object of jealousy or antipathy; the Vendée is an Oriflamme venerated
and admired in the treasure of Saint-Denis, under which youth and the
future will henceforth gather no longer.

[Sidenote: Madame lands in France.]

Madame, when she landed, like Bonaparte, on the coast of Provence,
did not see the White Flag fly from steeple to steeple: deceived in
her expectation, she found herself almost alone on shore with M. de
Bourmont. The marshal wanted to make her recross the frontier at once;
she asked to have the night to think it over; she slept well among the
rocks to the sound of the sea; in the morning, on waking, she found a
noble dream in her thoughts:

"Since I am on French soil, I will not leave it; let us set out for the
Vendée."

M. de ----[399], informed by a faithful man, took her in his carriage
as his wife, crossed the whole of France with her, and has put her down
at -----[400]. She has remained some time in a country-house without
being recognised by anybody, except the curate of the place. The
Maréchal de Bourmont is to join her in the Vendée by another road.

Informed of all this in Paris, it was easy for us to foresee the
result. The enterprise has a further drawback for the Royalist Cause:
it will discover the weakness of that cause and dispel illusions. If
Madame had not gone to the Vendée, France would always have believed
that in the West there was a royalist camp standing at ease, as I
called it.

But however, there remained still one means of saving Madame and
casting a new veil over the truth: the Princess should have left again
at once; arriving at her own risk and peril, like a brave general who
comes to review his army, to moderate its impatience and its ardour,
she would have declared that she had hastened to tell her soldiers that
the moment for action was not yet favourable, that she would return to
place herself at their head when the occasion should summon her. Madame
would at least have once shown a Bourbon to the Vendeans: the shades of
the Cathelineaus, the d'Elbées, the Bonchamps, the La Rochejacqueleins,
the Charettes would have rejoiced.

Our committee met: while we were discoursing, there came from Nantes
a captain, who told us the place where the heroine is staying. The
captain is a good-looking young man, brave as a sailor, eccentric as
a Breton. He disapproved of the enterprise; he thought it mad; but he
said:

"Madame is not going away: it is a question of dying, and that is all;
and then, gentlemen of the council, have Walter Scott hanged, for he is
the real culprit!"

I thought that we ought to write what we felt to the Princess. M.
Berryer[401], who was preparing to go to defend a case at Quimper[402],
generously offered to take the letter and to see Madame if he could.
When it became necessary to draw up the note, no one thought of writing
it: I undertook to do so[403].

Our messenger set out, and we awaited events. I soon received, by post,
the following note, which had not been sealed and which had doubtless
come under the eyes of the authorities:

[Sidenote: Letter from Berryer.]


    "ANGOULÊME, 7 _June._

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "I had received and forwarded your letter of Friday last, when,
    on Sunday, the Prefect of the Loire-Inférieure[404] sent word
    requiring me to leave the town of Nantes[405]. I was on my way
    and at the gates of Angoulême; I have just been taken before the
    Prefect, who has notified me of an order from M. de Montalivet[406]
    by which I am to be taken back to Nantes under an escort of
    gendarmes. Since my departure from Nantes, the Department of
    the Loire-Inférieure has been placed under martial law, and, by
    this entirely illegal transfer, I am made subject to the laws of
    exception. I am writing to the Minister to ask him to have me taken
    to Paris; he will receive my letter by the same post. The object
    of my journey to Nantes seems to have been utterly misinterpreted.
    Decide therefore whether, in the light of your prudence, you will
    think it right to mention the matter to the Minister. I apologize
    for addressing this request to you; but I have no one to whom to
    apply but yourself.

    "Pray believe, monsieur le vicomte, in my old and sincere
    attachment, and in my profound respect.

    "Your most devoted servant,

    "BERRYER the Younger."

    "_P.S._--There is not a moment to lose if you are willing to see
    the Minister. I am going to Tours, where his new orders will still
    find me on Sunday; he can dispatch them either by telegraph or
    express."

I informed M. Berryer, in the following reply, of the decision to which
I came:

    "PARIS, 10 _June_ 1832.

    "I received your letter, monsieur, dated Angoulême, the 7th
    instant. It was too late for me to see M. the Minister of the
    Interior, as you wished; but I wrote to him at once, sending him
    your own letter enclosed in mine. I hope that the mistake which
    occasioned your arrest will soon be admitted and that you will be
    restored to liberty and to your friends, among whom I beg you to
    number myself.

    "A thousand hearty compliments, with the renewed assurance of my
    sincere and entire devotion.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

Here is my letter to the Minister of the Interior:

    "PARIS, 9 _June_ 1832.

    "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE L'INTÉRIEUR,

    "I have this moment received the enclosed letter. As I should
    probably not be able to see you as quickly as M. Berryer wishes,
    I have decided to send you his letter. His complaint appears to
    me to be justified: he will be innocent in Paris as at Nantes and
    at Nantes as in Paris; this is a thing which the authorities must
    admit and, by righting M. Berryer's complaint, they will avoid
    giving a retroactive effect to the law. I venture to hope all,
    monsieur le comte, from your impartiality.

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

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."



[Footnote 330: This book was written in Paris and Geneva, from October
1830 to June 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 331: This and the following pages were written in March and
April 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 332: The _Études historiques._--B.]

[Footnote 333: The trial of the ministers before the Court of Peers
commenced on the 15th and ended on the 21st of December 1830. The
verdict condemned the Prince de Polignac to perpetual imprisonment
on the continental territory of the Kingdom, declared him to have
forfeited his titles, rank and Orders, declared him besides to be
civilly dead and subject to all the other effects of the penalty
of transportation. Messieurs de Peyronnet, de Chantelauze and de
Guernon-Ranville were condemned to imprisonment for life.--B.]

[Footnote 334: The sack of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the pillage
of the Archbishop's Palace took place on the 14th and 15th of February
1831.--B.

The Duc de Berry was murdered on the 13th of February 1820--T.]

[Footnote 335: Félix Cadet de Gassicourt the Younger (1789-1861),
chemist and druggist and Mayor of the 4th Ward of Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 336: "Mayeux," the hunchbacked type of the political
versatility of the French nation, was an invention of the caricaturists
and the comic papers of the year 1831. According to them, Messidor
Napoleon Louis Charles Philippe Mayeux, born on the 14th of July 1789,
while his father was engaged in taking the Bastille, had taken various
Christian names according to the different forms of government which
he had in turn espoused or repudiated. He had not been much heard of
before 1830, but the sun of July had at last brought him into the light
of day. For twelve months, Paris saw, talked, thought, swore, above
all, by none save Mayeux. He was in turns a Republican, a Bonapartist,
a juste-milieu man: everything, in short, except a Carlist; for he was
faithful to his resentment against a mounted Grenadier of the Royal
Guard who had failed to see him behind a curb-post and had laughed at
him when he said:

"Take care, soldier; there's a man in front of you."

Mayeux was a National Guard: that caused his death. One day he was
struck off the roll for being guilty of making his brother _bisets_
laugh while under arms. He died of grief and shame a few weeks later:
on the 23rd of December 1821, to be exact (_Cf._ the chapter on
_Mayeux_ in BAZIN: _L'Époque sans nom_).--B.]

[Footnote 337: Chateaubriand's pamphlet appeared on the 24th of March
1831.--B.]

[Footnote 338: _Études et discours historiques sur la chute de l'Empire
romain, la naissance et le progrès du Christianisme et l'invasion des
Barbares; suivis d'une Analyse raisonnée de l'histoire de France_
(Paris: 4 vols. 8vo). The _Études historiques_ were published on the
4th of April 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 339: The fall of the Roman Empire.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 340: Chateaubriand left for Switzerland on the 16th of May
1831; he arrived at Geneva on the 23rd of May.--B.]

[Footnote 341: _De la Restauration et de la Monarchie
élective.--Author's Note._]

[Footnote 342: This refers to my literary and to my political career,
which had been left behind: the voids have since been filled by what I
have lately written in the last two years, 1838 and 1839.--_Author's
Note_ (Paris, 1839).]

[Footnote 343: Hyacinthe has the habit of copying, almost in spite of
my wishes, the letters which I write and receive, because he maintains
that he has observed that I am often attacked by persons who once wrote
to me in terms of endless admiration and applied to me with requests
for services. When this happens, he rummages in bundles known to
him alone and, comparing the insulting article with the encomiastic
epistle, says to me:

    "You see, monsieur, that I acted well!"

    I do not agree with him at all: I attach not the smallest belief
    nor the least importance to the opinion of men; I take them for
    what they are and esteem them for what they are worth. As far
    as I am concerned, I will never contrast for their benefit what
    they have said of me in public with what they have said to me
    in private; but this amuses Hyacinthe. I had kept no copy of my
    letters to Madame Récamier; she has had the kindness to lend them
    to me. #/ --_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 344: This letter and those which follow are exactly true to
the originals:

    "The letters," says Madame Lenormant, "which M. de Chateaubriand
    wrote to Madame Récamier during his stay in Switzerland, have been
    printed in the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._ We have collated them with
    the originals and, this time, have found them to be reproduced
    with scrupulous fidelity" (_Souvenirs et Correspondance tirés des
    papiers de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II.).--B. ]

[Footnote 345: Elleviou (1772-1842) was this "singular personage," as
the enclosure shows. Elleviou was a famous singer, during the Consulate
and the Empire, at the Théâtre Feydeau. The _Maison à vendre_, words
by Alexandre Duval, music by Dalayrac, was one of the pieces in which
he made most success. He retired from the stage in 1813 and devoted
himself to agriculture in the neighbourhood of Lyons. Elleviou was,
like Chateaubriand, a Breton: he was born at Rennes, where his father
was a surgeon.--B.]

[Footnote 346: It was easy for Madame Récamier's hand-writing to
be smaller than that of Chateaubriand, who wrote in characters
half-an-inch in height, and as though the alphabet contained only
capital letters.--B.]

[Footnote 347: Jean Chauvin, Cauvin, or Caulvin (1509-1564), generally
known as John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, fled from France to
Geneva in 1536, was banished in 1538, returned in 1541, and lived
there till the day of his death. He founded the Academy of Geneva in
1559.--T.]

[Footnote 348: A cousin of Benjamin Constant.--B.]

[Footnote 349: Albertine Adrienne Necker de Saussure (1766-1841),
daughter to Horace Bénédicte de Saussure, the naturalist, and cousin
to Madame de Staël. Madame Necker was the author of the _Éducation
progressive, ou Étude du cours de la vie_, which was crowned by the
French Academy in 1839.--B.]

[Footnote 350: Delphine Gay, later Madame Émile de Girardin
(1804-1855), daughter of Madame Sophie Gay, and married to Émile de
Girardin in 1831. She was the author of a number of comedies, novels
and poems, and of _Lettres parisiennes_, contributed to the _Presse_
from 1836 to 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 351: I omit this poem of nine stanzas, entitled the
_Naufragé._--T.]

[Footnote 352: The Pâquis are a quarter of Geneva stretching along the
right bank of the lake from the Rue du Mont-Blanc to near the Lausanne
road.--B.]

[Footnote 353: Alexandre César Comte de Lapanouze (1764-1836) was a
captain in the Navy at the time of the Revolution, resigned, and found
himself completely ruined. Under the Second Restoration, he founded a
banking-house in Paris which soon became one of the most important in
the Capital. He was a deputy from 1822 to 1827, supported the Villèle
Administration and, in 1827, was created a peer of France. Lapanouze
retired from politics after the events of July and withdrew to his
estate of Tiregant in Gascony.--B.]

[Footnote 354: Cristina Principessa Belgiojoso (1808-1871), _née_
Trivulzio. She settled in early life in Paris, where she was noted
for her wit and beauty and the independence of her opinions and her
life. She became the friend of many celebrated writers, particularly
of Alfred de Musset. In 1848, she flung herself with ardour into the
revolutionary movement, hastened to Milan, which had risen in revolt,
and furnished a battalion of volunteers at her own cost. She was the
author of a number of works of travel and history, and, according
to Balzac, was the original of the Duchesse de San-Severino in de
Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme.--B.]

[Footnote 355: Ferney is a village about four miles from Geneva, in
which Voltaire resided from 1758 to 1778.--T.]

[Footnote 356: _Cf._ VOLTAIRE: _Zaïre_, in which tragedy Orosmane is
the name of the Sultan of Jerusalem.--T.]

[Footnote 357: François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville (1770-1838),
a noted French traveller and historian, author of a _Voyage en Morée et
à Constantinople_ (1805), a _Voyage en Grèce_ (1820-1822), an _Histoire
de la régénération de la Grèce_ (1825) and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 358: Armand Carrel had published in the _Revue française_
(March and May 1828) some remarkable articles on Spain and the war of
1823, describing the Minan and Catalonian Campaigns and the adventures
of the Liberal Foreign Legion.--B.]

[Footnote 359: The passion to which Chateaubriand alludes perhaps
changed the course of Carrel's life. Shortly after the Revolution of
July, on the 29th of August 1830, he was appointed Prefect of the
Cantal. He refused, not because he was a Republican at that date, but
because his connection with a married woman, from whom he was not
willing to separate, made it impossible for him to accept any public
function in the country.--B.]

[Footnote 360: _A. M. de Chateaubriand_, 1-2:

     "Chateaubriand, why flee from thy land,
     Flee from its love, from our incense and care?"--T.]


[Footnote 361: _Ibid._, 45-48:

    "And in their fall thou wouldst wish to take part!
    Learn their mad vanity better to know:
    Thy faithfulness is by their thankless heart
    Set 'midst the ills which to Heaven they owe."--T.]


[Footnote 362: Armand François Bon Claude Comte de Briqueville
(1785-1844) was a member of an old family of Norman nobles. His father
was shot by the Republicans on the 29th of May 1796. His mother, who
was one of the first women of the great world to make use of the new
divorce-law, caused her son to be given a republican education. He
served with distinction under the Empire and, as Colonel of the 25th
Dragoons, took part in the victory of Ligny. He was terribly wounded on
returning to Paris after Waterloo. During the Restoration, the Comte de
Briqueville was mixed up with several Bonapartist plots and, in 1827,
was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He approved of the Revolution
of July and, on the 14th of September 1031, introduced a motion for the
banishment of Charles X. and his family. The Comte de Briqueville, when
the Duchesse de Berry was arrested, hastened to demand that she should
be brought to trial; and he remained true to his hatred of the Bourbons
to the last.--B.]

[Footnote 363: Chateaubriand's Letter to M. de Béranger, printed at
the commencement of the pamphlet on the Briqueville Motion, was dated
24 September 1831. The pamphlet was published on the 31st of October
1831.--B.]

[Footnote 364: Tyrtæus (_fl. circa_ 684 B.C.), the Spartan elegiac
poet.--T.]

[Footnote 365: Auguste Marseille Barthélemy (1796-1867), the satirical
poet and prose-writer, kept up a wager from March 1831 to April 1832,
to publish a political satire weekly of several hundred verses and
irreproachable form. They commenced in the thirty-first number of the
_Némésis._ Finer talents were never prostituted to a baser cause.--B.]

[Footnote 366: M. Barthélemy has since gone over to the juste-milieu,
not without an amount of imprecation on the part of many people who
rallied only a little later.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1837).]

[Footnote 367: The Conspiracy of the Rue des Prouvaires was not devoid
of serious features. They were about three thousand in number. They
lacked neither money nor courage. They had accomplices even among the
palace servants; they were in possession of five keys opening the
gates of the Tuileries Gardens, and admission to the Louvre had been
promised them. A great ball was to take place at Court on the night
of the 1st of February 1832. The conspirators chose that night to put
their plot into execution. It was agreed that some should gather in
detachments at different points in the Capital, thence to set out, at
a preconcerted signal, and march towards the Palace; while others,
gliding along the shade of the little streets which lead to the Louvre,
were to make their way into the picture-gallery, burst through into the
ball-room and, thanks to the disorder caused by this unexpected attack,
seize hold of the Royal Family. "Crackers," or a kind of small bombs,
would have been flung into the midst of the carriages waiting to take
up at the doors of the Palace; _chevalets_, or pieces of wood fitted
with iron spikes, would have been scattered under the hoofs of the
horses; and, lastly, they thought themselves justified in hoping that
fireworks would be placed in the theatre in such a way as to augment
the confusion by setting fire to the wood-work.

The chief conspirators were to meet, at eleven o'clock in the evening,
armed, at a tavern-keeper's at No. 12 in the Rue des Prouvaires. They
had assembled there, to the number of one hundred, when suddenly the
street filled with municipal guards and police-officers, who, in spite
of the resistance of the ringleaders and their followers, were able to
effect their arrest.

The trial opened before the Assize Court of the Seine on the 5th of
July 1832. The accused were sixty-six in number, including eleven who
were not in custody, and the pleadings occupied no less than eighteen
sittings. Sentence was delivered on the 25th of July. Six of the
accused were condemned to transportation; twelve to five years', four
to two years', and five to one year's imprisonment. The remainder
were acquitted. Among those sentenced to imprisonment was M. Piégard
Sainte-Croix, an ardent Royalist, whose daughter, a "Carlist" like her
father, subsequently married the celebrated socialist writer, Pierre
Joseph Proudhon.--B.]

[Footnote 368: Louis Poncelet, alias Chevalier (_d._ 1805), a
shoemaker, was the real leader of the plot, and gave proof throughout
of rare qualities of intelligence, energy and audacity. At the trial,
he was noted, above all the others, for the loyalty of his replies and
for his skill in refraining from compromising his accomplices, while
indifferent to his own danger. He was sentenced to transportation.--B.]

[Footnote 369: I kept back some passages of this long letter to insert
them in my _Explications sur mes_ 12,000 _francs_ and, later, in my
_Mémoire sur la captivité de Madame la Duchesse de Berry.--Author's
Note._]

[Footnote 370: Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), widow
of Louis VIII. and mother of St. Louis IX. She acted as Regent from
1226-1236, during her son's minority, and again from 1248 to 1252,
during his absence on a crusade to the Holy Land.--T.]

[Footnote 371: At Fornovo, the French under Charles VIII. defeated the
Italians on the 6th of July 1495.--T.]

[Footnote 372: At Marignano, Francis I. gained a victory over the Swiss
on the 13th and 14th of September 1515.--T.]

[Footnote 373: The French under Bonaparte, Masséna and Augereau
defeated the Austrians at Areola on the 15th, 16th and 17th of November
1796.--T.]

[Footnote 374: 14 June 1800, when the French defeated the Austrians and
finished the campaign in Northern Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 375: Casimir Périer, the Premier, died of consumption on the
16th of May 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 376: Marcus Annæus Lucanus, known as Lucan (39-65), the
author of the _Pharsalia_ etc.--T.]

[Footnote 377: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the author of the
_Decamerone_, the hundred stones supposed to be told by a society of
seven ladies and three gentlemen to shut out the horrors of the great
plague of Florence in 1348.--T.]

[Footnote 378: Hippocrates (_circa_ 460 B.C.--_circa_ 377 B.C.), the
famous Greek physician. "His alleged study of the great plague at
Athens is not corroborated by a comparison with Thucydides' account"
(MAHAFFY: _History of Classical Greek Literature_).--T.]

[Footnote 379: In his _Promessi Sposi._--T.]

[Footnote 380: Pierre Édouard Lemontey (1762-1826), elected a member
of the French Academy in 1817, author of an _Essai sur l'établissement
monarchique de Louis XIV._ and of the _Histoire de la régence_, from
which latter work, published after his death, the above extract is
quoted.--T.]

[Footnote 381: Charlotte Mademoiselle de Valois (1700-1761), daughter
of the Regent Philippe II. Duc d'Orléans, and married in 1720 to ...]

[Footnote 382: Francis III. Duke of Modena (1698-1780).--T.]

[Footnote 383: Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castel Moron
(1671-1755), a Jesuit father promoted to the See of Marseilles in 1709.
He behaved with the greatest heroism during the plague which devastated
the town in 1720 and 1721; and afterwards persistently refused
promotion to a more important see.--T.]

[Footnote 384: After ravaging Asia and then Russia, Poland, Bohemia,
Galicia, Austria, the cholera, passing over Western Europe, swooped
down upon England. It declared itself on the 12th of February 1832 in
London, whence it was not to disappear until the first week in May. On
the 15th of March, it was noted at Calais. It struck its first victim
in Paris, in the Rue Mazarine, on the 26th of March. The epidemic
did not come to an end before the 30th of September, having lasted
189 days, during which the number of deaths from cholera amounted
to 18,406. The population of Paris at that time was only 645,698
souls: the death-rate from cholera alone, therefore, was over 23 per
1,000.--B.]

[Footnote 385: M. de Bondy's letter ran as follows:

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "I regret that I cannot accept, in the name of the City of Paris,
    the 12,000 francs which you have done me the honour to send me. In
    the origin of the funds which you offer, people would see, beneath
    an apparent benevolence, a political combination against which the
    entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal.

    "I am, etc.

    "The Comte de BONDY,

    "Prefect of the Seine."--B.]

[Footnote 386: The _Constitutionnel_ announced that M. Berger, the
Mayor of the 2nd Ward, had proposed to the Princess' envoy, "a former
aide-de-camp of the Duc de Berry," to give the thousand francs offered
in the Duchess' name "to the widow of a combatant of July, the mother
of three children, to whom this relief would be very useful." The envoy
whom the _Constitutionnel_ thus transformed into an aide-de-camp of
the Duc de Berry was none other than the worthy Hyacinthe Pilorge,
Chateaubriand's secretary. Pilorge at once wrote to the _Quotidienne_:

    "PARIS, 20 _April_ 1832.

    "SIR,

    "M. de Chateaubriand, although suffering from illness, is at this
    moment occupied in writing a general reply with reference to
    the gift of Madame la Duchesse de Berry; this reply will appear
    shortly. Meantime, I owe it to the interests of truth to say
    that M. the Mayor of the 2nd Ward did not present the widow of a
    combatant of July to me and did not propose that I should give
    her the thousand francs; he merely refused them: that is all.
    M. de Chateaubriand instructs me to add that if the _widow_ of
    the _Constitutionnel_ will be good enough to call on him, he is
    prepared to give her a share in the bounty of the _mother_ of the
    Duc de Bordeaux. You see, Sir, that I have not the honour of having
    been an aide-de-camp of M. le Duc de Berry and that I am only the
    poor and faithful secretary of a man as poor and as faithful as
    myself.

    "Pray accept, Sir, the assurance of my most distinguished regard,

    "HYACINTHE PILORGE."--B.]

[Footnote 387: Chateaubriand has confused the two Cadets de Gassicourt,
father and son. Cadet de Gassicourt the Elder (1760-1831) wrote
short verses and published two little pamphlets directed against
Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël: _Saint-Géran, au la Nouvelle
langue française_ (1807) and the _Suite de Saint-Géran, ou Itinéraire
de Lutèce au Mont-Valérien_ (1811). His son, F. Cadet de Gassicourt
(1789-1861), was Mayor of the 4th Ward and the individual referred to
above.--B.]

[Footnote 388: This proclamation of Cadet de Gassicourt's was posted
on the walls of Paris on the 4th of April 1832. Couched in hateful and
ridiculous terms, it practically called upon the populace to murder
the Carlists, "those ancient tyrants, who are capable of adopting
all methods and who do not blush to have a horrible plague as their
auxiliary!"--B.]

[Footnote 389: This was a piece of ignorant clap-trap. As the daughter
of Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies, the Duchesse de Berry was
entitled to be styled "Royal Highness" in France or anywhere else.--T.]

[Footnote 390: Referring to the traditional attitude of the
surgeon-apothecary.--T.]

[Footnote 391: Monseigneur de Quélen. (_Cf._ Vol. IV, p. III, n.
I.)--T.]

[Footnote 392: _Rom._ XIII. 10.--T.]

[Footnote 393: _Cf._ MATT. v. 7.--T.]

[Footnote 394: Maximilien Comte Lamarque (1770-1832) took a
distinguished part in all the campaigns of the Revolution and the
Empire. He sat as a deputy throughout the Restoration on the side of
the Opposition. General Lamarque died of cholera on the 1st of June
1832.--T.]

[Footnote 395: General Lamarque's funeral took place on the 5th of
June 1832. The members of the secret societies, the schools, the
men condemned for political offenses, the artillery of the National
Guard, the foreign refugees had arranged to meet there. At a signal
given by means of a red flag, the Republicans disarmed fixed posts,
threw up barricades, pillaged the Arsenal and the shops, but were
unable to draw over the workmen or the National Guard. General Lobeau,
at the head of serious forces, swept the main thoroughfares and
confined the insurrection between the Marché des Innocents and the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine. By the morning of the 6th, it was reduced to
impotence and abandoned by its own leaders. The day was none the less
slaughterous, especially at the Cloître Saint-Merry and in the Rue des
Arris.--B.]

[Footnote 396: By Royal Ordinance dated 6th June 1832.--B.]

[Footnote 397: Cheops, or Khufu, King of Egypt of the 4th Dynasty.--T.]

[Footnote 398: On the 24th of April 1832 the Duchesse de Berry left
Massa on board a Sardinian steam-boat, the _Carlo-Alberto_, which she
had chartered. She called at Nice, put out to sea again, and arrived
in Marseilles waters on the 28th. She was accompanied by the Maréchal
de Bourmont, the Comte de Kergorlay, the Vicomte, later Comte de
Saint-Priest, Messieurs Emmanuel de Brissac, de Mesnard, Alexandre
Sala, Édouard Led'huy, the Vicomte de Kergorlay, Charles and Adolphe
de Bourmont, Alexis Sabatier, Ferrari, supercargo, and Mademoiselle
Mathilde Lebeschu. She disembarked at night, in a heavy sea, at one of
the most dangerous points of the coast. Concealed in the house of a
game-keeper, M. Maurel, she awaited the result of the movement planned
in Marseilles. At four o'clock in the afternoon on the 30th, Messieurs
de Bonrecueil, de Bermond, de Lachaud and de Candoles, who had escaped
from the town, arrived carrying this note:

    "The movement has failed; you must leave France."--B.]

[Footnote 399: M. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont. He had furnished
himself with a passport for himself, his wife and a man-servant: the
Princess played the part of Madame de Villeneuve. The servant was the
Comte, later Duc, de Lorges.--B.]

[Footnote 400: After spending nine days, from the 7th to the 16th of
May, at the Château de Plassac, a few leagues from Blaye, with M. le
Marquis de Dampierre, the Duchesse de Berry arrived, on the 17th, at
the Château de la Preuille, near Montaigu, in the Vendée. The owner was
Colonel de Nacquart.--B.]

[Footnote 401: Pierre Antoine Berryer (1790-1868), known as Berryer the
Younger, to distinguish him from his father, Pierre Nicolas Berryer
(1757-1841), himself a most distinguished advocate and the defender of
Moreau and Ney. Berryer the Younger, after M. Chateaubriand's death,
became the most eloquent supporter of the Legitimist Cause and leader
of the party in France.--T.]

[Footnote 402: It was not at Quimper, but at Vannes, that Berryer
was to go to defend a case, that of Commandant Guillemot, accused of
Chouanism and brought before the Morbihan Assize Court on that count.
Commandant Guillemot's trial was fixed for the 12th of June.--B.]

[Footnote 403: The text of Chateaubriand's note to the Duchesse de
Berry ran as follows:

    "The persons in whom an honourable confidence has been placed
    cannot refrain from expressing their regret at the counsels
    in consequence of which the present crisis has arisen. Those
    counsels were given by men who were doubtless filled with zeal,
    but who are acquainted with neither the actual state of things
    nor the disposition of men's minds. It is a mistake to believe in
    the possibility of a movement within Paris. One would not find
    twelve hundred men, unmixed with police agents, who, for a few
    crown-pieces, would make a noise in the streets and who would
    then have to fight the National Guard and a faithful garrison.
    One is mistaken about the Vendée as one was mistaken about the
    South. That land of devotion and of sacrifices is afflicted with
    a numerous army, aided by the population of the towns, which are
    almost all anti-legitimist. A rising of peasants would hereafter
    lead only to the looting of the country-side and the consolidation
    of the present Government by an easy triumph. We think that, if
    the mother of Henry V. were in France, she ought to leave without
    delay, after ordering all her leaders to remain quiet. In this way,
    instead of coming to organize civil war, she would have come to
    command peace; she would have had the double glory of achieving an
    act of great courage and preventing the shedding of French blood.
    The wise friends of the Legitimacy, who were never warned of what
    it was proposed to do, who were never consulted on the hazardous
    steps which it was proposed to take, and who learnt the facts only
    after they had been accomplished, throw the responsibility of those
    facts upon those who advised them and carried them through. They
    can neither merit honour nor incur blame in the chances of either
    fortune."--B.]

[Footnote 404: The Comte de Saint-Aignan.--B.]

[Footnote 405: Berryer was to leave not only the town of Nantes, but
France, and to go to the waters of Aix-en-Savoie, according to the
following itinerary endorsed on his passport: Bourbon-Vendée, Luçon,
the Rochelle, Rochefort, Saintes, Angoulême, Clermont, Montbrison, the
Puy, Lyons and Pont-de-Beau voisin.--B.]

[Footnote 406: The Comte de Montalivet was Minister of the
Interior.--B.]




BOOK II[407]


My arrest--I am transferred from my thieves' cell to Mademoiselle
Gisquet's dressing-room--Achille de Harlay--The examining
magistrate, M. Desmortiers--My life at M. Gisquet's--I am set at
liberty--Letter to M. the Minister of Justice and his reply--I
receive an offer of my peer's pension from Charles X.--My reply--Note
from Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Letter to Béranger--I leave
Paris--Diary from Paris to Lugano--M. Augustin Thierry--The
road over the Saint-Gotthard--The Valley of Schöllenen--The
Devil's Bridge--The Saint-Gotthard--Description of Lugano--The
mountains--Excursions round about Lucerne--Clara Wendel--The peasants'
prayer--M. Alexandre Dumas--Madame de Colbert--Letter to M. de
Béranger--Zurich--Constance--Madame Récamier--Madame la Duchesse de
Saint-Leu--Madame de Saint-Leu after reading M. de Chateaubriand's
last letter--After reading a note signed "Hortense"--Arenenberg--I
return to Geneva--Coppet--The tomb of Madame de Staël--A walk--Letter
to Prince Louis Napoleon--Letters to the Minister of Justice, to the
President of the Council, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--I write my
memorial on the captivity of the Princess--Circular to the editors of
the newspapers--Extract from the _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la
duchesse de Berry_--My trial--Popularity.


PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832.

One of my old friends, Mr. Frisell[408], an Englishman, had just lost,
at Passy, his only daughter, aged seventeen years. I had gone, on the
19th of June, to the funeral of poor Eliza, whose portrait the pretty
Madame Delessert was completing when Death put the finishing touch to
it. Returning to my solitude in the Rue d'Enfer, I had hardly gone to
bed, full of the melancholy thoughts that arise from the association
of youth, beauty and the grave, when, at four o'clock in the morning,
on the 20th of June[409], Baptiste, who had long been in my service,
entered my room, came up to the bed and said:

"Sir, the court-yard is full of men who have placed themselves at all
the doors, after compelling Desbrosses to open the carriage-entrance;
and there are three gentlemen asking to speak to you."

As he finished these words, the "gentlemen" entered, and the chief of
them, very politely approaching my bed, told me that he had an order to
arrest me and take me to the Prefecture of Police. I asked him if the
sun had risen, as the law demanded, and if he was the bearer of a legal
warrant; he did not answer for the sun, but he showed me the following
judicial notice:

    "Copy

    "PREFECTURE OF POLICE

    "In the King's name.

    "We, counsellor of State, Prefect of Police[410],

    "In view of information in our possession,

    "By virtue of Article X. of the Code of Criminal Instruction,

    "Call upon the commissary or, if he be prevented, another to repair
    to the house of M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, or elsewhere
    if need be, he being accused of plotting against the safety of
    the State, in order there to seek for and seize all papers,
    correspondence and writings containing provocations to crimes and
    offenses against the public peace or liable to examination, as well
    as any seditious objects or arms which may be in his possession."

While I perused the declaration of the great "plotting against the
safety of the State," of which I, poor I was accused, the captain of
the police-spies said to his subordinates:

"Gentlemen, do your duty!"

The duty of those gentlemen consisted in opening every cupboard,
fumbling in every pocket, seizing all papers, letters and documents,
reading the same, where possible, and discovering all arms, as appears
from the warrant aforesaid.

[Sidenote: I am arrested.]

After reading over the document, addressing the worthy leader of those
thieves of men and liberties:

"You know, sir," I said, "that I do not recognise your Government and
that I protest against the violence which you are doing me; but, as I
am not the stronger and as I have no wish to come to blows with you, I
will get up and accompany you: pray take the trouble to be seated."

I dressed and, without taking anything with me, said to the venerable
commissary:

"Sir, I am at your orders: are we going on foot?"

"No, sir, I took care to bring you a coach."

"You are very good, sir; let us start; but allow me to go to take leave
of Madame de Chateaubriand. Will you permit me to enter my wife's room
alone?"

"Sir, I will go with you to the door and wait for you."

"Very well, sir," and we went down.

Everywhere, on my road, I found sentries; a picket had been posted even
on the boulevard, outside a little gate which opens at the bottom of my
garden. I said to the leader:

"Those precautions were very useless; I have not the smallest wish to
run away from you and escape."

The gentlemen had turned my papers topsy-turvy, but taken nothing.
My big mameluke's sabre caught their attention; they whispered among
themselves and ended by leaving the weapon under a heap of dusty
folios, in the midst of which it lay beside a yellow-wood crucifix
which I had brought from the Holy Land.

This dumb-show would almost have made me inclined to laugh, but I was
cruelly distressed for Madame de Chateaubriand. Every one who knows
her knows also the affection which she bears me, her ready alarm, the
quickness of her imagination and the pitiful state of her health: this
descent of the police and my removal might do her a terrible harm.
She had already heard some noise and I found her sitting up in bed,
listening quite terrified, as I entered her room at so unusual an hour.

"Ah, dear God!" she exclaimed. "Are you ill? Ah, dear God! What is
happening? What is happening?"

And she was seized with a fit of trembling. I kissed her, with
difficulty kept back my tears, and said:

"It is nothing; they have sent for me to make a statement as a witness
in a matter that has to do with a newspaper trial. It will all be over
in a few hours and I shall come back to breakfast with you."

The police-spy had remained standing at the open door; he saw this
scene and I said to him, as I returned to place myself in his hands:

"You see, sir, the effect of your somewhat matutinal visit."

I crossed the court-yard with my bumbailiffs; three of them got into
the coach with me, the rest of the squad accompanied the capture on
foot and we reached the yard of the Prefecture of Police unmolested.

The gaoler who was to put me under lock and key was not up: they woke
him by tapping at his wicket and he went to prepare my lodging. While
he was busy with this work, I walked up and down the yard with the
Sieur Léotaud, who was guarding me. He chatted and said to me, in a
friendly way, for he was very civil:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I have the great honour of remembering you; I
have often presented arms to you, when you were a minister and used to
come to the King's: I used to serve in the Body-guards. But what would
you have one do? One has a wife and children; one must live!"

"You are right, Monsieur Léotaud; how much does this pay you?"

"Ah, monsieur le vicomte, that depends on our captures .... The
perquisites are sometimes good and sometimes poor, just as in war."

During my walk, I saw the spies return in different disguises like
maskers on Ash Wednesday coming down from the Courtille: they came to
report on the doings of the night. Some were dressed as vendors of
green-stuff, as street-hawkers, as charcoal-sellers, as market-porters,
as old-clothes'-men, as rag-men, as organ-grinders; others wore
wigs under which appeared hair of a different colour; others had
false beards, whiskers and mustachios; others dragged their legs
like respectable invalids and wore a dazzling red ribbon at their
button-holes. They disappeared into a small yard and soon returned in
other clothes, without mustachios, without beards, without whiskers,
without wigs, without baskets, without wooden legs, without arms worn
in a sling: all these birds of day-break of the police flew away and
vanished as the light increased.

My lodging was ready, the gaoler came to tell us, and M. Léotaud, hat
in hand, led me to the door of my honest dwelling, saying, as he left
me in the hands of the gaoler and his assistants:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I am your humble servant; I trust to have the
pleasure of meeting you again."

[Sidenote: And taken to prison.]

The entrance-door closed behind me. Preceded by the gaoler, who carried
his keys, and went before his two men, who followed me to prevent me
from turning tail, I went up a narrow stair-case till I came to the
second floor. A little dark passage led to a door: the turnkey opened
it; I followed him into my box. He asked me if I wanted anything: I
answered that I would have breakfast in an hour. He told me that there
were a coffee-house and a tavern which supplied prisoners with all that
they wanted for their money. I bagged my keeper to send me some tea
and, if possible, some hot and cold water and towels. I gave him twenty
francs in advance: he withdrew respectfully, promising to return.

Left alone, I inspected my den: its length was a little greater than
its width, and its height was perhaps some seven or eight feet. The
walls, stained and bare, were scribbled over with the prose and verse
of my predecessors, and especially with the scrawl of a woman who
said much that was insulting about the _juste-milieu._[411] A pallet,
with dirty sheets, took up half of my cell; a plank, supported by two
brackets fastened against the wall, two feet above the pallet, served
as a cupboard for the prisoners' linen, boots and shoes: a chair and a
sordid article composed the rest of the furniture.

My faithful keeper brought me the towels and jugs of water that I
had asked for; I besought him to take away from the bed the dirty
sheets and the yellow woollen blanket, to remove the pail, which was
choking me, and to sweep out my den after first sprinkling it All
the works of the _juste-milieu_ having been carried off, I shaved; I
poured the water from my jug over myself, I changed my linen: Madame
de Chateaubriand had sent me a little parcel; I set out all my things
on the plank over my bed as though I were in the cabin of a ship.
When this was done, my breakfast arrived, and I took my tea on my
well-washed table, which I covered with a clean napkin. Soon they came
to fetch the utensils of my matutinal feast and I was left alone, duly
locked in.

My cell was lighted only by a grated window which opened very high up;
I placed my table under this window and climbed on the table to breathe
and to enjoy the light Through the bars of my thieves' cell, I saw only
a yard, or rather a dark and narrow passage, with gloomy buildings
with bats fluttering around them. I heard the clanking of keys and
chains, the noise of policemen and spies, the foot-steps of soldiers,
the movement of arms, the shouting, the laughter, the licentious songs
of the prisoners, my neighbours, the yells of Benoît[412], condemned
to death for the murder of his mother and his obscene friend. I caught
these words uttered by Benoît between his confused exclamations of fear
and repentance:

"Ah, my mother, my poor mother!"

I was seeing the under side of society, the sores of humanity, the
hideous machines by which this world is moved.

I thank the men of letters, those great partisans of the liberty of
the press, who formerly had taken me for their leader and fought under
my orders: but for them, I should have left this life without knowing
what prison was, and I should have missed this ordeal. I recognise in
this delicate attention the genius, the goodness, the generosity, the
honour, the courage of the placed penmen. But, after all, what was this
short trial? Tasso spent years in a dungeon; and shall I complain? No;
I have not the mad pride to measure my vexation of a few hours with the
prolonged sacrifices of the immortal victims whose names history has
preserved.

Moreover, I was not at all unhappy; the genius of my past grandeurs
and of my thirty-year-old "glory" did not appear to me; but my Muse
of former days, very poor, very unknown, came all radiant to kiss me
through my window: she was charmed with my lodging and quite inspired;
she found me again as she had seen me in my wretchedness in London,
when the first visions of René were wafting in my head. What were
we going to compose, the solitary of Mount Pindus and I? A song, in
imitation of that poor poet Lovelace[413], who, in the gaols of the
English Commons, sang King Charles I., his master? No; the voice of
a prisoner would have seemed to me to be of ill-omen for my little
King Henry V.: it is from the foot of the altar that hymns should be
addressed to misfortune. I did not therefore sing the crown fallen from
an innocent brow; I contented myself with telling of another crown,
white also, laid on a young girl's bier: I remembered Eliza Frisell,
whom I had seen buried the day before in the cemetery at Passy. I began
a few elegiac verses of a Latin epitaph; but suddenly I was in doubt
as to the quantity of a word: I quickly sprang from the table on which
I was perched, leaning against the bars of the window, and ran to the
door, on which I rained blows with my fist. The neighbouring dens rang
out; the gaoler came up in dismay, followed by two gendarmes; he opened
my wicket, and I cried, as Santeuil[414] would have done:

"A _Gradus!_ A _Gradus!_"

[Sidenote: My life in prison.]

The gaoler opened his eyes, the gendarmes thought that I was revealing
the name of one of my accomplices; they were quite ready to handcuff
me; I explained; I gave them money to buy the book, and they went off
to ask the astonished police for a _Gradus._

While they were attending to my commission, I clambered up on my table
again and, changing my ideas on that tripod, set myself to compose
strophes on the death of Eliza; but, when I was in the midst of my
inspiration, at about three o'clock, behold tipstaffs entering my
cell and bodily apprehending me on the banks of Permessus: they took
me to the examining magistrate, who sat drawing out instruments in a
gloomy office, opposite my prison, on the other side of the yard. The
magistrate, a fatuous and pompous young limb of the law, put the usual
questions to me as to my surname, Christian names, age and place of
residence. I refused to answer or sign anything whatever, declining to
recognise the political authority of a government which was able to
point neither to the ancient hereditary right nor the election of the
people, since France had not been consulted and no national congress
summoned. I was taken back to my mouse-trap.

At six o'clock, they brought me my dinner, and I continued to turn
and turn over in my head the lines of my stanzas, at the same time
improvising an air which I thought charming. Madame de Chateaubriand
sent me a mattress, a bolster, sheets, a cotton blanket, candles and
the books which I read at night. I arranged my room, and still humming:

     Il descend le cercueil et les roses sans taches[415],

I found my ballad of the Young Girl and the Young Flower finished[416].

I began to undress; a sound of voices was heard; my door opened; and
M. the Prefect of Police, accompanied by M. Nay,[417] appeared. He
made a thousand apologies for the prolongation of my detention in
custody at the police-station; he informed me that my friends, the Duc
de Fitz-James and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, had been arrested like
myself and that the Prefect's Offices were so full that they did not
know where to put the persons who had to be examined by the justiciary.

"But," he added, "you shall come to me, monsieur le vicomte, and choose
in my apartment whatever suits you best."

I thanked him and begged him to leave me in my hole; I was already
quite charmed with it, like a monk with his cell. M. the Prefect
declined my entreaties and I had to forsake my nest I saw again the
rooms which I had not visited since the day when Bonaparte's Prefect
of Police had sent for me to invite me to leave Paris. M. Gisquet
and Madame Gisquet opened all their rooms for me, begging me to pick
the one which I would like to sleep in. M. Nay offered to give up
his to me. I was confused at so much politeness; I accepted a lonely
little room which looked out on the garden and which was used, I
think, by Mademoiselle Gisquet as a dressing-room; I was allowed to
have my servant with me: he slept on a mattress outside my door, at
the entrance of a narrow stair-case leading down to Madame Gisquet's
large apartment Another stair-case led to the garden; but this one
was forbidden me and, every evening, a sentry was placed at the foot
against the railing which separates the garden from the quay. Madame
Gisquet is the kindest woman in the world and Mademoiselle Gisquet is
very pretty and an exceedingly good musician. I have every reason to be
satisfied with the care shown me by my hosts; they seemed anxious to
atone for the twelve hours of my first confinement.

[Sidenote: The Disquiet family.]

The day after my installation in Mademoiselle Gisquet's dressing-room,
I rose quite pleased, as I remembered Anacreon's song on the toilet
of a young Greek girl; I put my head to the window: I perceived a
small, very green garden and a great wall concealed behind japanned
varnish; to the right, at the back of the garden, offices in which
one caught glimpses of agreeable police-clerks, like beautiful nymphs
amid lilac-bushes; to the left, the quay along the Seine, the river
and a corner of old Paris, in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arcs. The
sound of Mademoiselle Gisquet's piano reached me with the voices of the
police-spies calling for head-clerks to receive their reports.

How everything changes in this world! That little romantic English
garden of the police was a ragged and queer-shaped strip of the French
garden, with its closely-trimmed elms, of the mansion of the First
President of Paris. This old garden, in 1580, occupied the site of that
block of houses which stops the view to the north and west, and it
stretched to the bank of the Seine. It was there that, after the day of
the barricades, the Duc de Guise came to visit Achille de Harlay:

    "He found the First President, who was walking in his garden, who
    was so little astonished at his coming, that he did not so much
    as deign to turn his head nor discontinue the walk which he had
    commenced, which having finished, and being at the end of his
    alley, he turned, and, in turning, he saw the Duc de Guise, who
    came to him; then that grave magistrate, raising his voice, said to
    him:

    "'It is a great pity that the varlet should drive out the master;
    for the rest, my soul is God's, my heart the King's and my body is
    in the hands of the wicked: let them do with it what they please.'"

    The Achille de Harlay who walks in that garden to-day is M.
    Vidocq[418], and the Duc de Guise is Coco Lacour; we have changed
    great men for great principles. How free we are now! How free was
    I especially at my window, watching that good gendarme standing
    sentry at the foot of my staircase and prepared to shoot me flying,
    if I had sprouted wings! There was no nightingale in my garden, but
    there were plenty of frisky, shameless, quarrelsome sparrows, which
    are to be found everywhere, in the country, in town, in palaces,
    in prisons, and which perch as gaily on the instrument of death
    as on a rose-bush: to one that can fly away, what matter earthly
    sufferings?

Madame de Chateaubriand obtained permission to see me. She had spent
thirteen months, under the Terror, in the Rennes prisons, with my
two sisters Lucile and Julie; her imagination, remaining under the
impression, can no longer endure the idea of a prison. My poor wife had
a violent attack of hysterics, on entering the Prefect's Offices, and
this was an obligation the more which I owed to the _juste-milieu._ On
the second day of my detention, the examining magistrate, the Sieur
Desmortiers[419], arrived, accompanied by his clerk.

M. Guizot had obtained the appointment as attorney-general to the Royal
Court at Rennes of one M. Hello[420], a writer and, consequently, an
envious and irritable man, like all who spoil paper in a triumphing
party.

M. Guizot's creature, finding my name and those of M. le Duc de
Fitz-James and M. Hyde de Neuville mixed up in the proceedings that
were being conducted against M. Berryer at Nantes, wrote to the
Minister of Justice that, if he were the master, he would not fail to
have us arrested and included in the trial, both as accomplices and
as witnesses for the prosecution. M. de Montalivet had thought it his
duty to yield to the advice of M. Hello: there was a time when M. de
Montalivet used to come to me to ask my opinion and my ideas relating
to the elections and the liberty of the press. The Restoration,
which made M. de Montalivet a peer, was unable to make him a man of
intelligence, and that is no doubt why it makes him "feel sick" to-day.

[Sidenote: The examining magistrate.]

So M. Desmortiers, the examining magistrate, entered my room; a mawkish
air was spread like a layer of honey over a contracted and violent face:

     Je m'appelle Loyal, natif de Normandie,
     Et suis huissier à verge, en dépit de l'envie[421].

M. Desmortiers formerly belonged to the Congregation[422]: a great
communicant, a great Legitimist, a great partisan of the Ordinances,
since become a furious juste-milieu man. I begged this animal to take a
seat with all the politeness of the Old Order; I drew up an arm-chair
for him; I put a little table, a pen and ink before his clerk; I sat
down opposite M. Desmortiers and, in a mild voice, he read out to me
the little accusations which, duly proved, would have tenderly got my
head cut off: after which, he passed to his examination.

I declared again that, not recognising the existing political order,
I had no answers to make; that I should sign nothing; that all these
judicial proceedings were superfluous; that they might spare themselves
the trouble and pass on; that, for the rest, I should always be charmed
to have the honour of receiving M. Desmortiers.

I saw that this manner of acting was throwing the sainted man into a
fury; that, having once shared my opinions, he thought my conduct a
satire on his own. With this resentment was mingled the pride of a
magistrate who believed himself wounded in his functions. He tried to
argue with me; I was quite unable to make him grasp the difference
that exists between the social order and the political order of things.
I submitted, I told him, to the former, because it belongs to natural
law: I obeyed the civil, military and financial laws, the laws of
police and of public order; but I owed obedience to the political
law only in so far as that law emanated from the royal authority
consecrated by the ages or sprang from the sovereignty of the people.
I was not silly enough, or false enough to believe that the people had
been convoked, consulted, and that the established political order
was the result of a national decree. If they prosecuted me for theft,
murder, arson, or other social crimes or misdemeanours, I should reply
to justice; but, when they instituted a political trial against me, I
had nothing to reply to an authority which had no legal power and, in
consequence, nothing to ask me.

A fortnight passed in this way. M. Desmortiers, whose fury I had heard
of (a fury which he endeavoured to communicate to the judges), used to
approach me with his sugary air, saying:

"Won't you tell me your illustrious name?"

In the course of one of the examinations, he read me a letter from
Charles X. to the Duc de Fitz-James, containing a phrase complimentary
to myself.

"Well, sir," I said, "what is the meaning of that letter? It is a
matter of common knowledge that I have remained faithful to my old
King, that I have not taken the oath to Philip. As for the rest, I am
deeply touched by my exiled Sovereign's letter. In the time of his
prosperity, he never said anything of that kind to me, and this phrase
repays me for all my services."


Madame Récamier, to whom so many prisoners have owed consolation and
deliverance, had herself brought to my new retreat. M. de Béranger came
down from Passy to tell me in song, under the reign of his friends,
what used to happen in the gaols in the time of my friends: he was no
longer able to fling the Restoration in my face. My fat old friend
M. Bertin came to administer the ministerial sacraments to me; an
enthusiastic woman came hurrying from Beauvais in order to "admire" my
glory; M. Villemain performed an act of courage; M. Dubois[423], M.
Ampère[424], M. Lenormant[425], my generous and learned young friends,
did not forget me; the Republicans' lawyer, M. Ch. Ledru[426], never
left me: in the hope of a trial, he magnified the affair, and he would
have given up all his fees for the honour of defending me.

[Sidenote: Visits from my friends.]

M. Gisquet, as I have told you, had offered me the run of his rooms,
but I did not abuse his permission. Only, one evening I went down to
hear Mademoiselle Gisquet play the piano. I sat between M. Gisquet and
his wife. M. Gisquet scolded his daughter and maintained that she had
executed her sonata less well than usual. This little concert which
my host offered me in the bosom of his family, with myself for sole
audience, was exceedingly singular. While the most pastoral scene was
taking place in the intimacy of the home, policemen were bringing me
colleagues from the outside with blows of musket-butts and loaded
sticks; and yet what peace and harmony reigned in the very heart of the
police!

I had the good fortune to obtain for M. Ch. Philipon[427] the grant of
a favour exactly similar to that which I enjoyed, the favour of the
gaol: sentenced, because of his talent, to some months' imprisonment,
he spent them in an asylum at Chaillot; he was called to Paris as a
witness in a law-suit, and availed himself of the opportunity not to
return to his lodging; but he repented of it: in the place where he lay
concealed, he was no longer able to see, in comfort, a child whom he
loved. Regretting his prison and not knowing how to enter it again, he
wrote me the following letter to ask me to arrange this matter with my
host:

    "SIR,

    "You are a prisoner and you would understand me even if you were
    not Chateaubriand.... I also am a prisoner, a voluntary prisoner
    since the proclamation of martial law, at the house of a friend,
    a poor artist like myself. I wanted to escape from the justice of
    the courts-martial with which I was threatened by the seizure of my
    newspaper on the 9th of this month. But, in order to hide myself, I
    have had to deprive myself of the kisses of a child whom I idolize,
    an adopted daughter, five years old, my happiness and my joy. This
    privation is a torture which I could not endure any longer: it is
    death to me! I am going to give myself up and they will put me into
    Sainte-Pélagie, where I shall see my poor child only rarely, if
    they allow it at all, and at fixed hours, where I shall tremble for
    her health and where I shall die of anxiety, if I do not see her
    every day.

    "I appeal to you, sir, to you a Legitimist I a whole-hearted
    Republican, to you a grave and parliamentary man I a caricaturist
    and a partisan of the bitterest political personalities, to you
    to whom I am quite unknown and who are a prisoner like myself, to
    persuade M. the Prefect of Police to allow me to return to the
    asylum to which I had been transferred. I pledge my word of honour
    to appear before justice whenever I shall be called upon to do so
    and I undertake not to flee _from any tribunal whatever_ if they
    will leave me with my poor child.

    "You will believe me, sir, when I speak of honour and when I swear
    not to run away, and I am persuaded that you will plead for me,
    even though profound politicians may see in this a new proof of
    alliance between the Legitimists and the Republicans, all men whose
    opinions agree so well.

    "If to such a guest, to such an advocate, they refused what I ask,
    I should know that I have nothing more to hope for and I should see
    myself parted for _nine months_ from my poor Emma.

    "In any case, sir, whatever may be the result of your generous
    intervention, my gratitude will be none the less eternal, for I
    shall never doubt the urgent solicitations which your heart will
    suggest to you.

    "Accept, sir, the expression of the sincerest admiration and
    believe me

    "Your most humble and most devoted servant,

    "CH. PHILIPON, "Proprietor of the _Caricature_ (newspaper),
    sentenced to thirteen months' imprisonment."

    "PARIS, 21 _June_ 1832.

[Sidenote: Letters from Philipon.]

I obtained the favour which M. Philipon asked: he thanked me in a note
which proves, not the greatness of the service, which was limited to
having my client guarded at Chaillot by a gendarme, but that secret joy
of the passions which can be well understood only by those who have
really felt it:

    "SIR,

    "I am leaving for Chaillot with my dear child.

    "I wanted to thank you, but I feel that words are too cold to
    express the gratitude which I feel; I was right to think, sir, that
    your heart would suggest eloquent entreaties to you. I am sure that
    I am not deceived when I believe that it will tell you that I am
    not ungrateful and that it will depict to you better than I could
    the confusion of happiness into which your kindness has thrown me.

    "Accept, sir, I beg, my most sincere thanks and deign to believe me
    the most affectionate of your servants.

    "CHARLES PHILIPON."

To this singular mark of my credit, I will add this strange proof of
my "fame:" a young Clerk[428] in M. Gisquet's offices addressed to me
some very beautiful verses[429], which were handed to me by M. Gisquet
himself; for, after all, we must be fair: if a government of literary
men attacked me ignobly, the Muses defended me nobly; M. Villemain
pronounced in my favour courageously, and, in the _Journal des Débats_
itself, my fat friend Bertin protested, under his own signature,
against my arrest.

Mademoiselle Noemi, which I presume must be Mademoiselle Gisquet's
Christian name, used often to walk alone in the little garden, with a
book in her hand. She would cast a stealthy glance towards my window.
How sweet it would have been to be released from my irons, like
Cervantes, by my master's daughter! While I was assuming a romantic
air, handsome young M. Nay came to dispel my dream. I saw him talking
with Mademoiselle Gisquet with that air which does not deceive us
creators of sylphs. I tumbled down from my clouds, shut my window and
abandoned the idea of growing my mustachios, bleached by the wind of
adversity.

After fifteen days, an order of non-suit restored me to liberty, on
the 30th of June, to the great happiness of Madame de Chateaubriand,
who would have died, I believe, if my detention had been prolonged.
She came to fetch me in a coach; I filled it with my little luggage
as nimbly as I had formerly left the ministry, and I returned to the
Rue d'Enfer with "that inexpressible finish which misfortune gives to
virtue."

If history were to hand M. Gisquet down to posterity, perhaps he would
arrive there in a rather bad plight; I want what I have just written to
serve him here as a counter-poise to a hostile renown. I have nothing
but praise for his attentions and his obligingness; doubtless, if I had
been condemned, he would not have allowed me to escape; but, in short,
he and his family treated me with a decency, a good taste, a feeling
for my position, for what I was and for what I had been, which were
not displayed by a literary Administration and by men of law who were
the more brutal inasmuch as they were acting against the weak and had
nothing to fear.

Of all the governments that have arisen in France during the last forty
years, Philip's is the only one that threw me into the highwayman's
cell; it laid its hand upon my head, upon my head respected even by an
incensed conqueror: Napoleon raised his arm, but did not strike me. And
why this anger? I will tell you: I dare to raise a protest in favour
of right against might in a country in which I have asked for liberty
under the Empire, for glory under the Restoration; in a country where,
solitary that I am, I reckon not by brothers, sisters, children, joys,
pleasures, but by tombstones. The last political changes have separated
me from the rest of my friends: some have gone towards fortune and,
all battered with their dishonour, pass by my poverty; others have
abandoned their homes exposed to insults. The generations so greatly
smitten with independence have sold themselves: from those generations,
common in their conduct, intolerable in their pride, mediocre or mad
in their writings, I expect nothing but scorn and I return it to them;
they have not the wherewithal to understand me: they know nothing of
loyalty to the sworn oath, love for generous institutions, respect for
one's own opinions, contempt for success and gold, the felicity of
sacrifice, the worship of what is weak and unhappy.

After the order of non-suit, one duty remained to me to perform. The
offense with which I had been charged was connected with that for which
M. Berryer was awaiting trial at Nantes. I was unable to explain my
position to the examining magistrate, because I did not recognise the
competency of the tribunal. To repair the harm which my silence might
have done to M. Berryer, I wrote to M. the Minister of Justice[430] the
letter which you will find below and which I made public through the
medium of the newspapers:

[Sidenote: Letter to M. Barthe.]

    "PARIS, 3 _July_ 1832.

    "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE,

    "Permit me to perform with reference to yourself, in the interest
    of a man too long deprived of liberty, a duty prompted by
    conscience and honour.

    "M. Berryer the Younger, when questioned by the examining
    magistrate at Nantes, on the 18th of last month, replied that 'he
    had seen Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he had, with the respect
    due to her rank, her courage and her misfortunes, submitted to her
    his personal opinion and that of honourable friends on the actual
    situation of France and on the consequences of Her Royal Highness'
    presence in the West.'

    "M. Berryer, developing this wide subject with his accustomed
    talent, summed it up thus:

    "'No foreign or civil war, supposing it to be crowned with success,
    can either subdue or rally opinions.'

    "Questioned as to the honourable friends of whom he had spoken, M.
    Berryer nobly said that, 'grave men having manifested to him an
    opinion on the present circumstances agreeing with his own, he had
    thought that he ought to strengthen his opinion with the authority
    of theirs; but that he would not give their names without their
    consent.'

    "I, monsieur le ministre de la justice, am one of those men
    consulted by M. Berryer. Not only did I approve of his opinion,
    but I drew up a note in the sense of that very opinion. It was to
    be handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry in the event that that
    Princess should really be on French soil, which I did not believe.
    As this first note was not signed, I wrote a second, which I signed
    and in which I still more earnestly entreated the intrepid mother
    of the grandson of Henry IV. to leave a country which has been torn
    by so many discords.

    "This declaration was due from me to M. Berryer. The real culprit,
    if culprit there be, is I. This declaration will serve, I hope, for
    the prompt deliverance of the prisoner of Nantes; it will allow
    the guilt to rest upon my head alone of a fact, no doubt very
    innocent, of which, however, in the final result, I accept all the
    consequences.

    "I have the honour to be, etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND. "RUE D'ENFER SAINT MICHEL, No. 84.


    "I wrote on the 9th of last month to M. le Comte de Montalivet
    on a matter relating to M. Berryer, but M. the Minister of the
    Interior did not think it incumbent upon him even to inform me that
    he had received my letter: as it is very important to me to know
    what becomes of that which I have the honour to write to-day to M.
    the Minister of Justice, I shall be infinitely obliged to him if
    he will instruct his office to send me an acknowledgment of its
    receipt.

    "CH."

The reply of M. the Minister of Justice was not long in coming; here it
is:

    "PARIS, 3 _July._


    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "As the letter which you have addressed to me contains information
    which may enlighten justice, I am forwarding it without delay
    to the King's Attorney to the Nantes Court[431], so that it may
    be added to the documents in the proceedings pending against M.
    Berryer.

    "I am, with respect, etc.,

    "BARTHE, "Keeper of the Seals."

By this reply, M. Barthe graciously reserved to himself the right to
institute a new prosecution against me. I remember the proud disdain
of the great men of the juste-milieu when I allowed a glimpse to
pass of the possibility of any violence exercised upon my person or
my writings. What! Good Heavens! Why deck myself with an imaginary
danger? Who troubled about my opinion? Who thought of touching a hair
of my head? Trusty and well-beloved friends of the stew-pan, dauntless
heroes of peace at any price, you have nevertheless had your Terror
of the counting-house and the police, your martial law in Paris, your
thousand press trials, your military commissions to condemn the author
of the Cancans[432] to death; you nevertheless flung me into your
gaols: the punishment applicable to my "crime" was nothing less than
capital punishment With what pleasure would I yield you my head, if,
thrown into the scales of justice, it made them lean on the side of the
honour, the glory and the liberty of my country!

[Sidenote: I prepare to depart.]

I was more than ever determined to resume my exile; Madame de
Chateaubriand, terrified at my adventure, would already have wished
to be very far away; the only question was to seek the spot where we
should pitch our tents. The great difficulty was to find some money
with which to live on foreign soil and pay a debt which was drawing
down upon me threats of law-suits and distress.

The first year of an embassy always ruins the ambassador: that is what
happened to me in Rome. I resigned on the succession of the Polignac
Ministry, and I went away adding to my ordinary afflictions sixty
thousand francs of borrowed money. I had applied to all the royalist
purses; none was opened to me: I was advised to ask Laffitte. M.
Laffitte advanced me ten thousand francs, which I at once gave to
the more pressing creditors. I recovered the sum on the proceeds of
my pamphlets and repaid it to him with gratitude; but there still
remained some thirty thousand francs to be paid, over and above my
old debts, for I have some that have grown a beard, so aged are they:
unfortunately that beard is a golden beard which has to be cut upon my
chin once a year.

M. le Duc de Lévis, on his return from a journey to Scotland, had told
me, on behalf of Charles X., that that Prince wished to continue to pay
me my peer's pension: I thought it my duty to refuse the offer. The
Duc de Lévis returned to the charge when he saw me, on leaving prison,
in the most cruel difficulties, finding nothing left of my house and
garden in the Rue d'Enfer, and harassed by a swarm of creditors. I had
already sold my plate. The Duc de Lévis brought me twenty thousand
francs, nobly saying that these were not the two years' peerage pension
which the King admitted owing me and that my debts in Rome were simply
a debt of the Crown. This sum set me free; I accepted it as a temporary
loan and wrote the King the following letter[433]:

    "SIRE,

    "In the midst of the calamities with which it has pleased God to
    hallow your life, you have not forgotten those who suffer at the
    foot of the throne of St. Louis. You deigned to send word to me,
    some months ago, of your generous intention to continue the peer's
    pension which I renounced when refusing to take the oath to the
    unlawful power; I thought that Your Majesty had servants poorer
    than I and worthier of your bounty. But the last writings which I
    have published have cost me damages and brought prosecutions down
    upon me; I have in vain tried to sell the little that I possess. I
    find myself obliged to accept, not the annual pension which Your
    Majesty proposed to allow me out of your royal poverty, but a
    provisional succour to free me from the difficulties which prevent
    me from reaching a refuge where I can live by my work. Sire, I must
    needs be very unhappy to make myself a burden, even for a moment,
    on a crown which I have supported with all my efforts and which I
    shall continue to serve for the rest of my life.

    "I am, with the most profound respect, etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

My nephew, the Comte Louis de Chateaubriand, on his side lent me a
similar sum of twenty thousand francs. Thus rid of material obstacles,
I made my preparations for my second departure. But a reason based upon
honour stopped me: Madame la Duchesse de Berry was on French soil; what
would become of her, and was I not bound to remain on the spot where
her dangers might summon me? A note from the Princess, which reached me
from the depths of the Vendée, set me completely free:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame.]

    "I was going to write to you, monsieur le vicomte, touching this
    'Provisional Government' which I thought it my duty to form, when
    I did not know when nor even if I might return to France, and of
    which I am informed that you consented to form part. It did not
    exist in fact, because it never met, and some of the members came
    to an understanding only to communicate to me an opinion which I
    was not able to follow. I do not take it in the least unkindly of
    them. You judged in accordance with the report on my position and
    that of the country made to you by those who had reason to know
    better than I the effects of a _fatal influence_ in which I was
    never willing to believe, and I am sure that, if M. de Ch. had been
    with me, his noble and generous heart would also have refused to do
    so. I rely therefore none the less on the good individual services
    and even the counsels of the persons who formed part of the
    Provisional Government and whose choice had been dictated to me by
    their enlightened zeal and their devotion to the Legitimacy in the
    person of Henry V. I see that it is your intention to leave France
    again: I should regret this greatly, if I could have you near me;
    but you have weapons which strike at a distance and I hope that you
    will not cease to fight for Henry V.

    "Believe, monsieur le vicomte, in all my esteem and friendship.

    "M. C. R."

With this note, Madame dispensed with my services and did not yield to
the advice which I had ventured to give her in the note of which M.
Berryer was the bearer; she even seemed a little hurt by it, although
she admitted that a _fatal influence_ had led her astray.

Thus restored to my liberty and released from all engagements, on this
day, 7 August, having nothing left to do but go away, I wrote my
letter to M. de Béranger, who had visited me in prison:

    TO M. DE BÉRANGER

    "PARIS, 7 August 1832.

    "I wanted, monsieur, to go to say good-bye to you and thank you for
    your remembrance; time failed me and I was obliged to start without
    having the pleasure of seeing you and embracing you. I am ignorant
    as to my future: is there a clear future for anybody to-day? We are
    living not in a time of revolution, but of social transformation:
    now transformations are realized slowly, and the generations which
    find themselves placed in the period of metamorphosis perish
    obscure and miserable. If Europe, as might well be the case,
    has reached the age of decrepitude, it is another matter: it
    will produce nothing and will die out in an impotent anarchy of
    passions, morals and doctrines. In that event, monsieur, you will
    have sung over a tomb.

    "I have fulfilled all my engagements, monsieur: I returned at
    the sound of your voice; I have defended what I came to defend;
    I have undergone the cholera; I am returning to the mountain. Do
    not break your lyre, as you threaten to do; I owe to it one of my
    most glorious titles to the memory of mankind. Continue to make
    France smile and weep: for it so happens, by a secret known to you
    alone, that, in your popular songs, the words are gay and the music
    plaintive.

    "I recommend myself to your friendship and your muse.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

I am to set out to-morrow. Madame de Chateaubriand will meet me at
Lucerne.

[Sidenote: I leave for Switzerland.]

BASLE, 12 _August_ 1832.

Many men die without losing sight of their steeple: I cannot meet with
the steeple which is to see me die. In quest of a refuge in which to
finish my Memoirs, I am taking the road anew, dragging at my heels an
enormous luggage of papers, diplomatic correspondence, confidential
notes, letters from ministers and kings; it is history riding pillion
with romance.

At Vesoul, I saw M. Augustin Thierry, living with his brother the
prefect[434] When, formerly, in Paris, he sent me his _Histoire de la
conquête des Normands_, I went to thank him. I found a young man in a
room with half-closed shutters; he was almost blind; he tried to rise
to receive me, but his legs no longer carried him and he fell into my
arms. He blushed when I expressed to him my sincere admiration; it
was then that he replied that his work was mine and that it was when
reading the Battle of the Franks in the _Martyrs_ that he had conceived
a new idea of writing history[435]. When I took leave of him, he then
made an effort to follow me and dragged himself to the door, leaning
against the wall: I went out quite affected by so much talent and so
much misfortune.

At Vesoul, after a long banishment, appeared Charles X.[436], now
setting sail for the new exile which will be for him the last.

I passed the frontier without accident with all my rubbish: let us
see if, on the other side of the Alps, I may not enjoy the liberty of
Switzerland and the sun of Italy, the needs of my opinions and my years.

At the entrance to Basle, I met an old Swiss, a custom-house officer;
he made me undergo "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" my
luggage was taken down into a cellar; they set in movement something
or other which made the same sound as a stocking-frame; there rose a
vinegary fume; and, thus purified from the contagion of France, I was
released by my good Swiss.

I have said, in the _Itinéraire_, speaking of the storks of Athens:

    "From the height of their nests, which revolutions cannot reach,
    they have seen the race of mortals change beneath them: while
    impious generations have risen on the tombs of the religious
    generations, the young stork has always nourished its old father."

I find again at Basle the storks nest which I left there six years
ago; but the hospital in whose roof the stork of Basle has built its
nest is not the Parthenon, the sun of the Rhine is not the sun of
the Cephissus, the Council is not the Areopagus, Erasmus[437] is not
Pericles; nevertheless, the Rhine, the Black Forest, Roman and Germanic
Basle are something. Louis XIV. extended France to the gates of that
city and three hostile monarchs[438] passed through it, in 1813, to
come to sleep in the bed of Louis the Great, defended by Napoleon in
vain. Let us go to see Holbein's[439] _Dance of Death_; it will tell us
a tale of human vanities.

The _Dance of Death_ (always presuming that it was not even then a real
painting) took place in Paris, in 1424, in the Cimetière des Innocents:
it came to us from England. The performance of this spectacle was
recorded in pictures: these were exhibited in the cemeteries of
Dresden, Lübeck, Minden, of the Chaise-Dieu, Strasburg and Blois in
France; and Holbein's pencil immortalized these joys of the tomb at
Basle.

These dances of death of the great artist have in their turn been
carried away by death, which does not spare its own follies: there
remain at Basle, of Holbein's labour, only six pieces sawn from the
stones of the cloisters and lodged in the library of the University. A
coloured drawing has preserved the harmony of the work.

Those grotesque figures on a terrible back-ground partake of the genius
of Shakespeare, a genius blended of comedy and tragedy. The persons
bear a lively expression: rich and poor, old and young, men and women,
popes, cardinals, priests, emperors, kings, queens, princes, dukes,
nobles, magistrates, warriors, all struggle and argue with Death; not
one accepts it with a good grace.

Death is infinitely various, but always clownish, like life, which is
only a serious piece of buffoonery. This Death of the satirical painter
goes one leg short, like the wooden-legged beggar whom it accosts; it
plays the mandoline behind its back-bone, like the musician whom it
drags away. It is not always bald: tufts of fair, brown, or grey hair
flutter on the skeleton's neck and make it more frightful by making it
nearly alive. In one of the cartoons, Death has almost hair, it is
almost young, like a young man, and it carries off a young girl who
is looking at herself in a glass. Death has in its wallet the tricks
of a crafty schoolboy: with a pair of scissors, it cuts the string of
a dog which leads a blind man, and the blind man is at two steps from
an open pit; elsewhere, Death, in a short mantle, accosts one of its
victims with the gestures of a Pasquin. Holbein may have taken the idea
of this formidable gaiety in nature itself: enter a reliquary, all the
death's-heads seem to grin, because they uncover their teeth; that is
laughter. What are they grinning at? At death or at life?

[Sidenote: Basle.]

I liked the cathedral at Basle and especially the ancient cloisters. As
I passed through the latter, filled with funeral inscriptions, I read
the names of some Reformers. Protestantism chooses its place and takes
its time badly when it sets itself in Catholic monuments; one sees less
what it has reformed than what it has destroyed. Those dry pedants
who thought that they would re-make a primitive Christianity within
an old Christianity which had created society for fifteen centuries
were unable to raise a single monument. To what would that monument
have responded? What connection would it have had with the manners of
the day? Men were not made like Luther[440] and Calvin in the time of
Luther and Calvin; they were made like Leo X.[441] with the genius of
Raphael, or like St. Louis with the Gothic genius; the few believed in
nothing, the many believed in everything. And so Protestantism has as
its temples only school-rooms, or as churches only the cathedrals which
it has devastated: it has there established its nudity. Jesus Christ
and His apostles, no doubt, did tot resemble the Greeks and Romans of
their age, but they did not come to _reform_ an old creed; they came to
_establish_ a new religion, to replace the gods by a God.


LUCERNE, 14 _August_ 1832.

The road from Basle to Lucerne through Aargau presents a series of
valleys, some of which resemble the Valley of Argelès, minus the
Spanish sky of the Pyrenees. At Lucerne, the mountains, differently
grouped, shelved, profiled, coloured, end, as they withdraw one behind
the other and sink away into the perspective, in the snows bordering on
the Saint-Gotthard. If one suppressed the Righi and Mount Pilatus and
kept only the hills, with their surfaces of grass and rabbit-warrens,
which run down directly to the Lake of the Four Cantons, one would
reproduce an Italian lake.

The arcades of the cloister of the cemetery surrounding the cathedral
are like boxes from which this spectacle can be enjoyed. The monuments
of this cemetery have for standards small iron crosses bearing a gilt
Christ. In the rays of the sun, these are so many points of light
escaping from the tombs; from space to space, there are holy-water
fonts in which soaks a twig with which one can bless mourned ashes. I
wept none there in particular, but I sprinkled the lustral dew upon
the silent community of the Christians and unfortunates, my brothers.
One epitaph said to me, "_Hodie mihi, cras tibi_;" another, "_Fuit
homo_;" a third, "_Siste, viator; abi, viator._" And I await to-morrow;
and I shall have been a man; and a traveller I stop; and a traveller
I go away. Leaning against one of the arcades of the cloister, I long
contemplated the theatre of the adventures of William Tell and his
companions: the theatre of Helvetian liberty so well sung and described
by Schiller and Johann von Müller[442]. My eyes sought in the vast
picture for the presence of the most illustrious dead and my feet trod
on the most unknown ashes.

When I saw the Alps again, four or five years ago, I asked myself what
I had come to seek there: what, then, shall I say to-day? What shall I
say to-morrow and again tomorrow? Woe to me who cannot grow old and who
am always growing old!


LUCERNE, 15 _August_ 1832.

The Capuchins went this morning, according to the custom on the Feast
of the Assumption, to bless the mountains. Those monks profess the
religion under whose protection Swiss independence was born: that
independence still endures. What will become of our modern liberty, all
accursed by the blessing of the philosophers and the hangmen? It is not
forty years old and it has been sold and sold again, bishoped and dealt
in at every street-corner. There is more liberty in the frock of a
Capuchin blessing the Alps than in all the frippery of the legislators
of the Republic, the Empire, the Restoration and the Usurpation of July.

[Sidenote: Lucerne.]

A French traveller in Switzerland is touched and saddened; our history,
for the misfortune of those regions, is too closely connected with
their history; the blood of Helvetia has been shed for us and by us; we
wasted the hut of William Tell with fire and sword; we engaged in our
civil wars the peasant warrior who guarded the throne of our kings. The
genius of Thorwaldsen has fixed the memory of the 10th of August at the
gate of Lucerne. The Helvetian Lion lies dying, pierced by an arrow,
and covering with its drooping head and one of its paws the escutcheon
of France, of which we see only one of the fleurs-de-lys. The chapel
consecrated to the victims, the clump of green trees which accompanies
the bas-relief sculptured in the rock, the soldier escaped from the
massacre of the 10th of August who shows the monument to strangers, the
note from Louis XVI. ordering the Swiss to lay down their arms, the
frontal presented by Madame la Dauphine to the expiatory chapel, upon
which that perfect model of sorrow has embroidered the image of the
immolated Lamb of God!... By what counsel does Providence, after the
last fall of the throne of the Bourbons, send me to seek a refuge near
this monument? At least, I can look upon it without blushing, I can lay
my feeble but not perjured hand upon the shield of France, even as the
lion covers it with its mighty claws, now distended in death.

Well, a member of the Diet has proposed to destroy this monument!
What does Switzerland demand? Liberty? She has enjoyed it for four
centuries. Equality? She has it. The republic? It is her form of
government. The lightening of taxes? She pays hardly any. What does she
want then? She wants to change, it is the law of beings. When a people,
transformed by time, is no longer able to remain what it has been, the
first symptom of its malady is a hatred of the past and of the virtues
of its fathers.

I returned from the monument to the 10th of August by the great covered
bridge, a kind of wooden gallery hung over the lake. Two hundred and
thirty-eight triangular pictures, set between the rafters of the roof,
adorn this gallery. They are popular annals in which the Swiss, as he
passed, used to learn the story of his religion and his liberty.

I have seen the tame moor-fowl; I prefer the wild moor-fowl of the pond
at Combourg.

In the town, I was struck by the sound of a choir of voices; it issued
from a Lady-chapel. I entered that chapel and thought myself carried
back to the days of my childhood. In front of four devoutly-decked
altars, women were reciting the rosary and the litanies with the
priest. It was like the evening-prayer by the sea-shore in my poor
Brittany, and I was on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne! Thus did a man
knot together the two ends of my life, the better to make me feel all
that had been lost in the chain of my years.


ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, 16 _August_ 1832, _noon._

Alps, lower your crests, I am no longer worthy of you: young, I should
be solitary; old, I am merely isolated. I would certainly depict
nature again; but for whom? Who would care for my pictures? What arms,
other than those of time, would, in reward, embrace my "genius," with
its stripped forehead? Who would repeat my songs? What Muse should I
inspire with any? Under the vault of my years, as under that of the
snowy heights which surround me, no ray of sun will come to warm me.
What a pity to drag across those heights tired footsteps which no one
would care to follow! What a misfortune not to find myself free to
wander anew until at the end of my life!

_Two o'clock._

My bark has stopped at the landing-stage of a house on the right bank
of the lake, before entering the Bay of Uri. I climbed up to the
orchard of that inn and came to sit under two walnut-trees which give
shelter to a stable. Before me, a little to the right, on the opposite
bank of the lake, the village of Schwyz unfolds itself among orchards
and the inclined planes of those pastures called "Alps" in this part;
it is surmounted by a rock broken into a semi-circle, the two points of
which, the _Mythen_ and the _Haken_, the Mitre and the Hook, owe their
names to their shapes. This horned capital rests upon turfy slopes, as
the crown of the rude Helvetian independence rests on the head of a
nation of shepherds. The silence around me is interrupted only by the
tinkling of the bells of two heifers left in the neighbouring stable;
they seem to ring out to me the glory of the pastoral liberty which
Schwyz has given, with its name, to a whole people: a little canton
in the neighbourhood of Naples, called "Italia," has in the same way,
but with less sacred rights, communicated its name to the land of the
Romans.

_Three o'clock._

We are starting; we are entering the Bay or Lake of Uri. The mountains
grow taller and darker. There is the grass-grown ridge of the Grütli
and the three fountains at which Fürst, Arnold von Melchthal and
Stauffacher[443] swore to deliver their country; there, at the foot
of the Achsenberg, is the chapel that marks the place at which Tell,
jumping from Gessler's[444] bark, pushed it back with his foot to the
midst of the billows.

[Sidenote: On the Lake of Lucerne.]

But did Tell and his companions ever exist? Might they not be only
persons of the North, born in the songs of the Scalds, whose heroic
traditions are to be found on the shores of Sweden? Are the Swiss
to-day what they were at the time when they won their independence?
Those bear-paths see cal-ashes roll along where Tell and his companions
used to bound, bow in hand, from peak to peak: am I myself a traveller
in harmony with these regions?

A storm comes luckily to assail me. We are landing in a creek, at a few
paces from Tell's chapel: it is always the same God that raises the
winds and the same confidence in that God that reassures men. As in
former days, when crossing the Ocean, the lakes of America, the seas
of Greece, of Syria, I am writing on drenched paper. The clouds, the
waves, the rolling of the thunder blend better with the ancient liberty
of the Alps than the voice of that effeminate and degenerate nature
which my century has placed in my bosom despite myself.


ALTDORF.

I have disembarked at Flüelen and reached Altdorf, where the absence
of horses will keep me one night at the foot of the Bannberg. Here,
William Tell shot the apple from his son's head: the bow-shot was of
the length that separates those two fountains. Let us believe, in spite
of the fact that the same story was told by Saxo Grammaticus[445], as
quoted first by myself in my _Essai sur les révolutions_[446]; let us
have faith in religion and liberty, the two great things about man:
glory and power are brilliant, not great.

To-morrow, from the top of the Saint-Gotthard, I shall greet once again
that Italy which I have greeted from the summit of the Simplon and the
Mont-Cenis. But of what avail is that last look cast upon the regions
of the South and the Dawn? The pine-tree of the glaciers cannot descend
among the orange-trees which it sees below it in the flowery valleys!


_Ten o'clock in the evening._

The storm is beginning again; the lightning-flashes twist around the
rocks; the echoes swell and prolong the sound of the thunder; the
roaring of the Schœchen and the Reuss welcome the bard of Armorica.
It is long since I found myself alone and free; nothing in the room
in which I am locked: two beds for a waking traveller who has neither
loves to put to sleep, nor dreams to dream. Those mountains, that
storm, this night are treasures lost for me. What life, nevertheless, I
feel in the depths of my soul! Never, when the most ardent blood flowed
from my heart into my veins, did I speak the language of the passions
with such energy as I might do at this moment. It seems to me as though
I saw my sylph of the Combourg woods issue from the flanks of the
Saint-Gotthard. Hast thou come to see me again, O charming phantom of
my youth? Hast thou pity for me? Thou seest, I am changed only in face:
ever chimerical, devoured by a causeless and unfed fire. I am leaving
the world, and I was entering it when I created thee in a moment of
ecstasy and delirium. This is the hour at which I invoked thee in my
tower. I can still open my Window to let thee in. If thou art not
satisfied with the charms which I lavished upon thee, I will make thee
a hundred times more seductive; my palette is not exhausted; I have
seen more beauties and I know how to paint better than I did. Come to
sit upon my knees; do not be afraid of my hair, stroke it with thy
fairy or shadowy fingers: it will turn brown again under thy kisses.
This head, which these falling hairs do not make wiser, is quite as
mad as it was when I gave thee being, eldest daughter of my illusion,
sweet fruit of my mysterious loves with my first solitude! Come, we
will once more mount the clouds together; we will go with the lightning
to plough, illumine, set fire to the precipices by which I shall pass
to-morrow. Come! Carry me away as in former days, but do not carry me
back again.

A knock at my door: it is not thou, it is the guide! The horses have
arrived, we must start. Of this dream all that remains is the rain, the
wind and I, an endless dream, an eternal storm.

17 _August_ 1832 (AMSTEG).

From Altdorf to here, a valley between mountains close together, as
one sees everywhere; the noisy Reuss in the middle. At the Hart Inn,
a little German student, who has come from the Rhone glaciers and who
said to me:

"You gome vrom Altdorf this morning? You go vast!"

He thought I was on foot, like himself; then, seeing my _char-à-bancs_:

"Oh! Horses! Dat's tifferent!"

If the student were willing to "swap" his young legs for my
_char-à-bancs_ and my even worse car of glory, with what pleasure would
I take his stick, his grey blouse and his blonde beard! I should go
to the Rhone glaciers; I should talk the language of Schiller to my
mistress; and I should ponder deeply on Teutonic liberty: he would
go his way old as time, bored as one dead, undeceived by experience,
having fastened round his neck, like a bell, a fame by which he would
be more wearied after a quarter of an hour than by the din of the
Reuss. The exchange will not take place: good bargains are not for my
use. My scholar is going; he said to me, taking off and putting back
his Teuton cap, with a little nod of the head:

"_Permis!_"

One more shadow vanished. The scholar does not know my name; he will
have met me and will never know it: I am delighted with this idea; I
yearn for obscurity with more eagerness than formerly I longed for
light; the latter worries me either as making my miseries visible or as
showing me objects which I can no longer enjoy: I am in a hurry to pass
the torch to my neighbour.

Three little boys are drawing the cross-bow: William Tell and Gessler
are everywhere. Free peoples retain the remembrance of the foundations
of their independence. Ask a poor little boy in France if he has ever
thrown the hatchet in memory of King Hlodwigh or Khlodwig or Clovis!

The new Saint-Gotthard road, on leaving Amsteg, goes to and fro in a
zig-zag for two leagues, now joining the Reuss, now quitting it when
the fissure of the torrent grows wider. On the perpendicular reliefs of
the landscape, slopes flat or tufted with beech-clumps, peaks shooting
into the sky, domes topped with ice, summits bald or retaining a few
stripes of snow, like locks of white hair; in the valley, bridges,
posts made of blackened planks, walnut-trees and fruit-trees which
gain in luxury of branches and leaves what they lose in succulence of
fruits. The Alpine nature forces those trees to become wild again;
the sap breaks through in spite of the grafting: a vigorous character
bursts the bonds of civilization.

A little higher, on the right margin of the Reuss, the scene changes:
the stream flows with cascades in a pebbly rut, under a double and
triple avenue of pines; this is like the valley of Pont d'Espagne at
Cauterets. On the skirts of the mountain, the larch-trees grow on the
sharp edges of the rock; holding fast by their roots, they resist the
shock of the tempests.

The road and a few potato-patches alone bear witness to man's presence
in this spot: he must eat and he must walk; that sums up his history.
The herds, consigned to the pasture-lands in the loftier regions, do
not appear in sight; birds, none; eagles, no question of them: the
great eagle fell into the ocean when crossing to St. Helena; there is
no flight so high or so strong but falters in the immensity of the
skies. The royal eaglet has just died.[447] Other eaglets of July 1830
were announced to us; apparently they have come down from their eyry
to nestle with the feather-legged pigeons. They will never carry off
chamois in their talons: weakened by the domestic light, their blinking
glance will never contemplate from the summit of the Saint-Gotthard the
free and dazzling sun of France's glory.


After crossing the Pfaffensprung Bridge and passing round the pap of
the village of Wasen, one again takes the right bank of the Reuss; at
either extremity, cascades gleam white among the sods, spread like
green tapestries on the travellers' passage. Through a defile, one
perceives the Ranz glacier, which joins the Furka glaciers.

At last, one makes one's way into the Valley of Schöllenen, where the
first ascent of the Saint-Gotthard commences. This valley is a notch
two thousand feet in depth, cut out of a solid block of granite. The
faces of the block form gigantic overhanging walls. The mountains no
longer present aught save their flanks and their ardent and reddened
crests. The Reuss thunders down its vertical bed, lined with stones.
The ruin of a tower bears witness to a former time, even as nature here
points to unremembered ages. Supported in the air by walls along the
granite masses, the road, an immobile torrent, winds parallel to the
mobile torrent of the Reuss. Here and there, stone-work vaults form
a shelter for the traveller against the avalanche; one turns for yet
a few more paces in a sort of tortuous gallery, and suddenly, at one
of the volutes of the shell, finds one's self face to face with the
Devil's Bridge.

[Sidenote: The Devil's Bridge.]

This bridge to-day intersects the arch of the new bridge, which is
higher, built behind it and overlooks it; the old bridge thus debased
no longer resembles anything but a short two-storeyed aqueduct. The new
bridge, when one comes from Switzerland, conceals the cascade at the
back. To enjoy the rain-bows and the leaping of the cascade, one must
stand upon the bridge; but, when one has seen the Falls of Niagara, no
water-fall remains. My memory is constantly contrasting my journeys
with my journeys, mountains with mountains, rivers with rivers, forests
with forests, and my life destroys my life. The same thing happens to
me with respect to societies and men.

The modern roads, which the Simplon has taught us to make and which the
Simplon effaces, have not the picturesque effect of the old roads. The
latter, bolder and more natural, avoided no difficulty; they scarcely
deviated from the course of the torrents; they rose and descended with
the ground, surmounted the rocks, plunged into the precipices, passed
under the avalanches, taking nothing away from the pleasure of the
imagination and the joy of danger. The old Saint-Gotthard Road, for
instance, was adventurous in quite a different way from the present
road. The Devil's Bridge deserved its reputation, when, on approaching
it, one saw the cascade of the Reuss above, and when it marked out
an obscure arch, or rather a narrow path, through the gleaming spray
of the fall. Then, at the end of the bridge, the road ascended
perpendicularly to reach the chapel of which we still see the ruin. At
least, the inhabitants of Uri have had the pious thought of building
another chapel at the cascade.

Lastly, it was not men like ourselves who crossed the Alps in former
days: it was hordes of Barbarians or Roman legions; caravans of
merchants, knights, _condottieri_, freebooters, pilgrims, prelates,
monks. Strange adventures were related. Who built the Devil's Bridge?
Who flung the Devil's Rock into the Wasen Thal? Here and there rose
castle-keeps, crosses, oratories, monasteries, hermitages, preserving
the memory of an invasion, a meeting, a miracle, or a misfortune. Each
mountain tribe kept its language, its dress, its manners, its customs.
It is true, one did not find, in a desert, an excellent inn; one drank
no champagne there; one read no newspapers; but, if there were more
robbers on the Saint-Gotthard, there were less cheats in society. What
a fine thing is civilization! I leave that "pearl" to the "handsome
first lapidary."

Suwaroff[448] and his soldiers were the last travellers in this defile,
at the end of which they met Masséna.

After passing out from the Devil's Bridge and the Urner Loch tunnel,
one reaches the Urseren Thai, closed by redans like the stone benches
of an arena. The Reuss flows peacefully in the midst of the verdure;
the contrast is striking: it is thus that society seems tranquil after
and before revolutions; men and empires slumber at two steps from the
abyss into which they are about to fall.

At the village of Hospital commences the second ascent, leading to the
summit of the Saint-Gotthard, which is overrun by masses of granite.
Those voluminous, swollen, broken masses, festooned at their tops with
a few garlands of snow, resemble the fixed and frothy waves of an ocean
of stone upon which man has left the undulation of his road.

     Au pied du mont Adule, entre mille roseaux,
     Le Rhin, tranquille et fier du progrès de ses eaux,
     Appuyé d'une main sur son urne penchante,
     Dormait au bruit flatteur de son onde naissante[449].

[Sidenote: The Saint-Gotthard.]

Very fine lines, but inspired by the marble rivers of Versailles.
The Rhine does not spring from a bed of reeds: it rises from a
bed of hoar-frost; its urn, or rather its urns are of ice; its
origin is congenerous with those peoples of the North of which it
became the adopted stream and the martial girdle. The Rhine, born
of the Saint-Gotthard in the Grisons, sheds its waters into the
sea of Holland, Norway and England; the Rhone, also a child of the
Saint-Gotthard, bears its tribute to the Neptune of Spain, Italy and
Greece: sterile snows form the reservoirs of the fecundity of the
ancient world and the modern world.

Two pools, on the Saint-Gotthard table-land, give birth, one to the
Ticino, the other to the Reuss. The source of the Reuss is lower than
the source of the Ticino, so that, by digging a canal of a few hundred
paces, one would throw the Ticino into the Reuss. If one were to repeat
this work in the case of the principal tributaries of those streams,
one would produce strange metamorphoses in the regions at the foot of
the Alps. A mountaineer can afford himself the pleasure of suppressing
a river, of fertilizing or sterilizing a country: there is something to
take down the pride of power.

It is a marvellous thing to see the Reuss and the Ticino bid each other
an eternal farewell and take their opposite ways down the two sides of
the Saint-Gotthard: their cradles touch; their destinies are separate:
they go to seek different lands and different suns; but their mothers,
always united, do not cease, from the height of solitude, to feed their
disunited children.

There was formerly, on the Saint-Gotthard, a hospice served by
Capuchins; now one sees only the ruins of it; there remains of religion
but a cross of worm-eaten wood with its Christ: God remains when men
withdraw.

On the Saint-Gotthard upland, a desert in mid-sky, one world ends and
another commences: the German names are replaced by Italian names. I
take leave of my companion, the Reuss, which had brought me, as I went
up, from the Lake of Lucerne, to go down to the Lake of Lugano with my
new guide, the Ticino.

The Saint-Gotthard is hewn perpendicularly on the Italian side; the
road which plunges into the Val Tremola does credit to the engineer
obliged to trace it in the narrowest gorge. Seen from above, this
road is like a ribbon folded and folded again; seen from below, the
walls supporting the embankments give the impression of the works of a
fortress, or resemble those dykes which are built one above the other
to resist the invasion of the waters. Sometimes, also, the double row
of mile-stones planted regularly on both sides of the road suggests
a column of soldiers descending the Alps once more to invade unhappy
Italy.

_Saturday_, 18 _August_ 1832 (LUGANO).

During the night I passed Airolo, Bellinzona and the Val Levantina:
I did not see the ground, I only heard the torrents. In the sky, the
stars rose among the cupolas and needles of the mountains. The moon
was not at first above the horizon, but her dawn spread before her
by degrees, like those "glories" with which the fourteenth-century
painters used to surround the head of the Virgin: she appeared at last,
scooped out and reduced to a quarter of her disc, on the denticulated
top of the Furca; the tips of her crescent were like wings, one would
have said of a white dove escaping from its nest in the rocks: by
her light, enfeebled and rendered more mysterious, the hollowed-out
luminary revealed to my eyes the Lago Maggiore at the end of the Val
Levantina. Twice I had seen that lake, once when proceeding to the
Congress of Verona, and again when going on my embassy to Rome. I
then contemplated it in the sun, on the high-way of prosperity; now I
caught a glimpse of it at night, from the opposite bank, on the road
of misfortune. Between my journeys, separated by only a few years, a
monarchy fourteen centuries old had passed away.

It is not that I bear those political revolutions the smallest grudge;
by restoring me to liberty, they have restored me to my own nature. I
have still pith enough to reproduce the first fruit of my dreams, fire
enough to renew my connexion with the imaginary creature of my desires.
The time and the world which I have traversed have been for me but a
double solitude in which I have kept myself such as Heaven made me. Why
should I complain of the swiftness of the days, since I lived in one
hour as much as those who spend years in living?

[Sidenote: Lugano.]

Lugano is a little town of Italian aspect: porticoes as at Bologna,
people keeping house in the streets as at Naples, Renascence
architecture, roofs without cornices, long and narrow windows, bare
or adorned with a pediment and pierced up to the architrave. The town
leans against a vine-grown hill-side commanded by two superposed
mountain plains, one covered with pastures, the other with forests:
the lake lies at its feet.

On the topmost summit of a mountain to the east of Lugano, exists a
hamlet whose women, tall and fair-skinned, have the reputation of the
Circassians. The eve of my arrival was the festival of that hamlet;
people had gone on a pilgrimage to beauty: that tribe is doubtless some
remains of a race of northern Barbarians preserved unmixed above the
populations of the plain.

I have been taken to the different houses that had been mentioned to me
as likely to suit me: I found one of them charming, but the rent was
much too high.

To see the lake better, I took a boat. One of my two boatmen spoke a
Franco-Italian jargon interlarded with English. He told me the names of
the mountains and of the villages on the mountains: the San Salvator,
from the summit of which one discovers the dome of Milan Cathedral;
Castagnola, with its olive-trees, of which the visitors put little
twigs in their button-holes; Gandria, the boundary of the Canton of
Ticino on the lake; the San Giorgio, crowned with its hermitage: each
of those places had its history.

Austria, who takes all and gives nothing, retains at the foot of
Monte Caprino a village enclosed in the Ticino territory. Facing
this again, on the other side, at the foot of the San Salvator, she
possesses a sort of promontory on which stands a chapel; but she has
graciously lent this promontory to the Luganese to execute their
criminals upon and erect their gallows. Some day she will use this
"high jurisdiction," exercised by her permission upon her territory, as
a proof of her suzerainty over Lugano. Nowadays the condemned are no
longer subjected to the penalty of the rope: their heads are chopped
off; Paris has supplied the instrument, Vienna the scene of execution:
presents worthy of two great monarchies.

These images were pursuing me when, on the azure water, to the breath
of the breeze scented by the amber of the pines, there came to pass the
boats of a brotherhood which flung bouquets of flowers into the lake to
the sound of horns and hautboys. Swallows sported around my sail. Among
those travellers, shall I not recognise those which I met one evening
as I wandered along the ancient Tibur Road and by the house of Horace?
The Lydia of the poet was not then with those swallows of the plain of
Tibur; but I knew that, at that very moment, another young woman was
furtively taking a rose laid in the abandoned garden of a villa of
Raphael's century, seeking naught but a flower on the ruins of Rome.

The mountains which surround the Lake of Lugano, scarce joining their
bases except on the level of the lake, resemble islands separated
by narrow channels; they reminded me of the grace, the form and
the verdure of the archipelago of the Azores. Was I then going to
consummate the exile of my last days under those smiling porticoes
where the Princesse de Belgiojoso allowed a few days to slip by of the
exile of her youth? Was I then to finish my Memoirs at the entrance
to that classic and historic land where Virgil and Tasso sang, where
so many revolutions have been accomplished? Was I to recall my Breton
destiny at the sight of those Ausonian mountains? If their curtain
were to be raised, it would lay bare to me the plains of Lombardy;
beyond that, Rome; beyond that, Naples, Sicily, Greece, Syria, Egypt,
Carthage: distant shores which I have measured, I who do not possess
the extent of ground which I press under the soles of my feet! But yet,
to die here, to end here? Is it not what I want, what I am looking for?
I cannot tell.


LUCERNE, 20, 21 _and_ 22 _August_ 1832.

I left Lugano without sleeping there; I have re-crossed the
Saint-Gotthard, I have seen again what I had seen: I have found nothing
to correct in my sketch. At Altdorf, everything was changed since
twenty-four hours ago: no more storm, no more apparition in my lonely
room. I came to spend the night in the inn at Flüelen, having twice
covered the road the ends of which come out upon two lakes and are held
by two nations joined by the same political bond and separate in every
other respect I crossed the Lake of Lucerne; it had lost a portion of
its merit in my eyes: it is to the Lake of Lugano what the ruins of
Rome are to the ruins of Athens, the fields of Sicily to the gardens of
Armida.

For the rest, it is vain for me to exert myself to attain the Alpine
exaltation of the mountain authors: I waste my pains.

Physically, that virgin and balmy air, which is supposed to revive my
strength, rarefy my blood, clear my tired head, give me an insatiable
hunger, a dreamless sleep, produces none of those effects for me. I
breathe no better, my blood circulates no faster, my head is no less
heavy under the sky of the Alps than in Paris. I have as much appetite
in the Champs-Élysées, as on the Montanvers, I sleep as well in the Rue
Saint-Dominique as on the Mont Saint-Gotthard, and, if I have dreams in
the delicious plain of Montrouge, the fault lies with the sleep.

Morally, in vain do I scale the rocks: my mind becomes no loftier for
it, my soul no purer; I carry with me the cares of earth and the weight
of human turpitudes. The calm of the sublunary region of a marmot is
not communicated to my awakened senses. Poor wretch that I am, across
the mists that roll at my feet I always perceive the full-blown face
of the world. A thousand fathoms climbed into space change nothing in
my view of the sky; God appears no greater to me from the top of a
mountain than from the bottom of a valley. If, to become a robust man,
a saint, a towering genius, it were merely a question of searing over
the clouds, why do so many sick men, miscreants and fools not take the
trouble to clamber up the Simplon? Surely they must be very obstinately
bent upon their infirmities.

[Sidenote: A plague upon mountains!]

The landscape is created only by the sun; it is the light that makes
the landscape. A Carthaginian shore, a heath on the edge of Sorrento,
a border of dried canes in the Roman Campagna are more magnificent,
when lit up by the rays of the setting sun or the dawn, than all the
Alps on this side of the Gauls. Those holes which they call valleys,
where one sees nothing at full noon-day; those high fixed screens
dubbed mountains; those soiled torrents which bellow with the cows on
their banks; those violet-coloured faces, those goitrous necks, those
dropsical bellies: a plague upon them!

If the mountains of our climes can justify the panegyrics of their
admirers, it is only when they are wrapped in the night of which they
thicken the chaos: the effect of their angles, their protuberances,
their sweeping lines, their immense projected shadows is heightened by
moonlight. The stars carve and engrave them on the sky in pyramids,
cones, obelisks, in an architecture of alabaster, now casting over them
a gauzy veil and harmonizing them with uncertain tints, faintly washed
with blue; now sculpturing them one by one and separating them by
lines of great precision. Every valley, every reduct, with its lakes,
its rocks, its forests, becomes a temple of silence and solitude.
In winter, the mountains offer us the image of the polar zones; in
autumn, under a rainy sky, in their different shades of darkness, they
resemble grey, black, bistre lithographs: the tempests also suit them,
as do the vapours, half mists, half clouds, which roll at their feet or
hang suspended at their flanks.

But are the mountains not favourable to meditations, to independence,
to poetry? Do fine deep solitudes, mingled with sea, receive nothing
from the soul, add nothing to its delights? Does a sublime nature
not render us more susceptible to passion, and does passion not
make us better understand a sublime nature? Is an intimate love not
increased by the vague love of all the beauties of the senses and the
intelligence which surround it, even as similar principles attract and
blend with one another? Does not the feeling of the infinite, entering
through a vast spectacle into a limited feeling, grow and spread to the
boundaries at which commences an eternity of life?

I admit all this; but let us well understand one another: it is not
the mountains that exist such as we think that we see them then; it is
the mountains as the passions, the talents and the muses have drawn
their lines, coloured their skies, their snows, their peaks, their
declivities, their irised cascades, their "soft" atmosphere, their
light and tender shadows: the landscape is on Claude Lorrain's palette,
not on the Campo Vaccino. Make me to love, and you shall see that
a solitary apple-tree, weather-beaten, flung crooked-wise amid the
wheat-fields of the Beauce; the flower of an arrow-head in a marsh;
a little water-course in a road; a scrap of moss, a fern, a tuft of
maiden-hair fern on the side of a rock; a moist, smoky sky; a tomtit
in a vicarage garden; a swallow, flying low, on a rainy day, under the
thatch of a barn or along a cloister; even a bat taking the place of
the swallow around a country steeple, fluttering on its gauzy wings in
the last gloaming of the twilight: all these little things, attached to
a few memories, will become enchanted by the mystery of my happiness or
the sadness of my regrets. On the upshot, it is the youth of life, it
is the persons that make fine sites. The ice-floes of Baffin's Bay can
be smiling, with company after one's heart: the banks of the Ohio and
the Ganges mournful, in the absence of all affection. A poet has said:

     La patrie est aux lieux où l'âme est enchantée[450].

It is the same with beauty.

Here is too much about mountains: I love them as great solitudes; I
love them as the frame, the border and the distance of a fine picture;
I love them as the rampart and refuge of liberty; I love them as
adding something infinite to the passions of the soul: equitably and
reasonably, that is all the good to be said of them. If I am not to
settle down on the other side of the Alps, my journey across the
Saint-Gotthard will remain a disconnected fact, an optical view in the
midst of the pictures of my Memoirs: I will put out the lamp and Lugano
will relapse into darkness.

[Sidenote: Lucerne cathedral.]

Scarce arrived at Lucerne, I quickly hastened once more to the
cathedral, the _Hofkirche_, built on the site of a chapel dedicated to
St. Nicholas[451], the patron saint of sailors: this primitive chapel
served also as a beacon, for, during the night, it was seen lighted
up in a supernatural manner. It was Irish missionaries that preached
the Gospel in the almost desert country of Lucerne; they brought it
the liberty which their unhappy mother-land has not enjoyed. When I
returned to the cathedral, a man was digging a grave; in the church,
they were finishing a service around a bier, and a young woman was
having a child's cap blessed at an altar: she placed it, with a visible
expression of joy, in a basket which she carried on her arm, and went
away laden with her treasure. The next day, I found the grave in the
cemetery closed up, a vessel of holy water placed on the fresh earth,
and some fennel-seed sprinkled for the little birds: already they were
alone, beside that corpse of a night.

I took some walks in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, in magnificent
pine-woods. The bees, whose hives are placed above the farm-doors,
under the shelter of the overhanging roofs, live with the peasants.
I saw the famous Clara Wendel[452] go to Mass behind her companions
in captivity, in her prison dress. She is very common; I found in her
the look of all those brutes in France who are present at so many
murders, without for that reason being more distinguished than a fierce
beast, in spite of all that the theory of crime and the admiration of
slaughter would attribute to them. A simple foot-soldier, armed with a
carbine, here takes the convicts to perform their day's work and brings
them back to the prison.

This evening, I prolonged my walk along the Reuss, to a chapel built
on the road: one goes up to it by a little Italian portico. From this
portico, I saw a priest praying alone on his knees inside the oratory,
while, on the top of the mountains, I saw the last gleams of the
setting sun. On returning to Lucerne, I heard women saying the rosary
in the cottages; the voices of children made the responses to the
maternal adoration. I stopped, I listened through the twining vines to
those words addressed to God from within a hut. The comely and graceful
young girl who waits on me at the Golden Eagle also most regularly says
her _Angelus_ as she draws the curtains of the windows in my room. When
I come in, I give her a few flowers which I have gathered; she says to
me, gently patting her breast with her hand:

"_Per me?_"

I answer:

"For you."

There our conversation ends.


LUCERNE, 26 _August_ 1832.

Madame de Chateaubriand has not yet arrived: I shall take a trip
to Constance. M. A. Dumas[453] is here; I had already seen him at
David's, while he was being modelled by the great sculptor. Madame de
Colbert[454], with her daughter Madame de Brancas, is also passing
through Lucerne[455]. It was at Madame de Colbert's, in Beauce, that,
nearly twenty years ago, I wrote, in these Memoirs, the story of my
youth at Combourg[456]. The places seem to travel with me: they are as
mobile, as fleeting as my life.

The mail-post brings me a very fine letter from M. de Béranger, in
reply to that which I wrote to him on leaving Paris: this letter has
already been printed as a note, with a letter from M. Carrel, in the
Congrès de Vérone[457].

[Sidenote: Constance.]

GENEVA, _September_ 1832.

Going from Lucerne to Constance, one passes through Zurich and
Winterthur. Nothing pleased me at Zurich, except the memory of
Lavater[458] and Gessner[459], the trees of an esplanade overlooking
the lakes, the course of the Limmat, an old crow and an old elm; I
prefer this to all Zurich's historic past, with due deference even to
the Battle of Zurich. Napoleon and his captains, passing from victory
to victory, brought the Russians to Paris.

Winterthur is a new and industrial little market-town, or rather one
long clean street. Constance has an air of belonging to nobody; it is
open to all the world. I entered it, on the 27th of August, without
seeing a custom-house officer or a soldier and without being asked for
my passport.

Madame Récamier had arrived, three days earlier[460], to pay a visit to
the Queen of Holland. I was waiting for Madame de Chateaubriand, who
was coming to join me at Lucerne. I proposed to weigh whether it would
not be preferable to settle first in Swabia, remaining free to go down
into Italy later.

In the decayed town of Constance, the inn was very gay; they were
making preparations for a wedding. The day after my arrival, Madame
Récamier wanted to escape the rejoicings of our hosts: we took a boat
on the lake and, crossing the sheet of water from which the Rhine
flows to become a river, we reached the strand of a park. Setting foot
on land, we passed through a hedge of willows, on the other side of
which we found a sanded walk winding among thickets of shrubs, groups
of trees and grassy lawns. A summer-house stood in the middle of the
gardens and an elegant villa leant against a forest of old trees. I
noticed on the grass some meadow-saffron, always melancholy for me
because of the reminiscences of my various and numerous autumns. We
strolled at random and then sat down on a bench at the edge of the
water. From the summer-house in the grove rose harmonies of harp and
horn which ceased when, charmed and surprised, we began to listen: it
was a scene from a fairy-tale. The harmonies did not recommence and I
read to Madame Récamier my description of the Saint-Gotthard; she asked
me to write something on her tablets, already half-filled with details
of the death of J. J. Rousseau. Below these last words of the author of
the _Héloïse_: "Wife, open the window, that I may see the sun again," I
wrote these words in pencil:

    "What I wanted on the Lake of Lucerne, I have found on the Lake of
    Constance: the charm and intelligence of beauty. I do not want to
    die like Rousseau; I want to see the sun for long, if I am to end
    my life near you. Let my days expire at your feet, like those waves
    whose murmur you love.--28 _August_ 1832."

The blue of the lake kept watch behind the foliage; on the southern
horizon, gathered the summits of the Grisons Alps; a breeze passing to
and fro across the willows harmonized with the rise and fall of the
billows: we saw no one; we did not know where we were.


As we returned to Constance, we saw Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu
and her son Louis Napoleon[461]: they came up to Madame Récamier. I
had not known the Queen of Holland under the Empire; I knew that she
had shown herself generous at the time of my resignation on the death
of the Duc d'Enghien and when I tried to save my cousin Armand; under
the Restoration, when Ambassador in Rome, I had had only relations
of politeness with Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu; unable to go to
her myself, I had left the secretaries and attachés free to pay their
court to her, and I had invited Cardinal Fesch to a diplomatic dinner
of cardinals. Since the last fall of the Restoration, chance had made
me exchange a few letters with Queen Hortense and Prince Louis. These
letters are a rather singular monument of faded grandeurs; here they
are:

[Sidenote: Letter from Queen Hortense.]

    MADAME DE SAINT-LEU, AFTER READING THE LAST LETTER OF M. DE
    CHATEAUBRIAND

    "ARENENBERG, 15 _October_ 1831.

    "M. de Chateaubriand has too much genius not to have understood
    the whole extent of the Emperor Napoleons. But his so brilliant
    imagination required more than admiration: memories of youth, an
    illustrious fortune attracted his heart; he devoted his person
    and talent to them and, like the poet who lends to everything the
    sentiment which animates him, he clothed what he loved with the
    features which were to kindle his enthusiasm. Ingratitude did not
    discourage him, for misfortune was always there to draw it to him;
    nevertheless his wit, his reason, his truly French sentiments make
    him the antagonist of his party in spite of himself. He loves,
    of the olden times, only honour, which makes men faithful, and
    religion, which makes men good; the glory of his country, which
    makes its strength; liberty of conscience and opinion, which gives
    a noble impulse to the faculties of men; the aristocracy of merit,
    which opens up a career to every intelligence: these constitute
    his domain more than any others. He is therefore a Liberal, a
    Napoleonist and even a Republican rather than a Royalist And
    therefore new France, its new lights would know how to appreciate
    him, whereas he will never be understood by those whom he has set
    so near to the Divinity in his heart; and, if there be now naught
    left for him but to sing unhappiness, were it the most interesting,
    high misfortunes have become so common in this age of ours that his
    brilliant imagination, without any real object or motive, will die
    out for want of nutriment sufficiently lofty to inspire his fine
    talent.

    "HORTENSE."

    AFTER READING A NOTE SIGNED, "HORTENSE"

    "M. de Chateaubriand is exceedingly flattered and in the highest
    degree grateful for the sentiments of good-will so gracefully
    expressed in the first part of the note; in the second there lurks
    the seductiveness of a woman and a queen which might carry with it
    a self-love less sophisticated than M. de Chateaubriand's.

    "There are certainly to-day plenty of occasions of infidelity among
    such high and numerous misfortunes; but, at the age to which M. de
    Chateaubriand has attained, reverses which reckon but few years
    would scorn his homage: needs therefore must he remain attached to
    his old unhappiness, however much he might be tempted by younger
    adversities.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND.

    PARIS, 6 _November_ 1831."

    PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

    "ARENENBERG, 4 _May_ 1832.

    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "I have just read your last pamphlet. How happy the Bourbons are
    to be supported by a genius such as yours! You raise a cause with
    the same arms that have served to lay it low; you find words that
    send a thrill through every French heart. All that is national
    finds an echo in your soul; thus, when you speak of the great man
    who rendered France illustrious during twenty years, the loftiness
    of the subject inspires you, your genius embraces it entirely,
    and then your mind, naturally pouring itself out, surrounds the
    greatest glory with the greatest thoughts.

    "I too, monsieur le vicomte, grow enthusiastic on behalf of all
    that contributes to the honour of my country; that is why, giving
    vent to my impulse, I venture to express to you the sympathy which
    I feel for one who displays so much patriotism and so much love of
    liberty. But, permit me to tell you, you are the only formidable
    defender of the Old Monarchy; you would make it national, if one
    could believe that it would think as you do; and so, to give it any
    worth, it is not enough to declare yourself on its side, but rather
    to prove that it is on yours.

    "However, monsieur le vicomte, if we differ in opinions, at least
    we are agreed in the wishes which we form for France's happiness.

    "Pray accept, etc., etc.

    "LOUIS-NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE."

[Illustration: Queen Hortense.]

[Sidenote: And Louis Napoleon.]

    THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE SAINT-LEU (PRINCE
    LOUIS NAPOLEON)

    "PARIS, 19 _May_ 1832.

    "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

    "It is never easy to reply to praises; but, when he who awards them
    with as much wit as propriety is moreover in a social condition
    to which peerless memories are attached, then the difficulty is
    doubled. At least, Monsieur, we meet in a common sympathy; you with
    your youth, as I with my old days, desire the honour of France. It
    needed no more for either of us, to die of confusion or laughter,
    than to see the juste-milieu blockaded in Ancona[462] by the
    soldiers of the Pope. Ah, Monsieur, where is your uncle? To others
    than yourself I should say:

    "'Where is the guardian of kings and the master of Europe?'

    "In defending the cause of the Legitimacy, I entertain no
    illusions; but I think that every man who cares for public esteem
    must remain faithful to his oaths: Lord Falkland, a friend of
    liberty and an enemy of the Court, got himself killed at Newbury in
    the army of Charles I. You shall live, Monsieur le Comte, to see
    your country free and happy; you are passing through ruins among
    which I shall remain, because I myself form part of those ruins.

    "I had for a moment entertained the flattering hope of laying
    the tribute of my respect, this summer, at the feet of Madame la
    Duchesse de Saint-Leu: fortune, accustomed to baffle my plans, has
    deceived me once again. I should have been happy to thank you by
    word of mouth for your obliging letter; we should have spoken of a
    great glory and of France's future, two things, Monsieur le Comte,
    which touch you nearly.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."


Have the Bourbons ever written letters to me similar to those which I
have just produced? Did they ever entertain the idea that I rose above
this versifier or that pamphleteering politician?

When, as a little boy, I used to wander, the companion of the herdsmen,
over the heaths of Combourg, could I have believed that a time would
come at which I should walk between the two highest powers on earth,
powers now overthrown, giving my arm on one side to the family of St.
Louis, on the other to that of Napoleon: hostile magnificences which
alike lean, in the misfortune which brings them together, on the feeble
and faithful man, the man scorned by the Legitimacy?

Madame Récamier went to fix herself at Wolfsberg, a country-house
occupied by M. Parquin[463], near Arenenberg, where Madame la Duchesse
de Saint-Leu was living; I stayed two days at Constance. I saw all that
there was to see: the market containing the public granary christened
the "Hall of the Council," the so-called statue of Huss[464], the
square in which Jerome of Prague[465] and John Huss were, they say,
burnt; in fine, all the ordinary abominations of history and society.

The Rhine, issuing from the lake, announces itself very much like
a king: nevertheless it was not able to defend Constance, which
was, if I am not mistaken, sacked by Attila[466], besieged by the
Hungarians[467], the Swedes[468], and twice taken by the French[469].

Constance is the Saint-Germain of Germany: the old people of the old
society have retired to it. When I knocked at a door to look for rooms
for Madame de Chateaubriand, I came upon some canoness, a girl past
her minority; some prince of an ancient house, an elector on half-pay:
which went very well with the abandoned steeples and the deserted
convents of the city. Condé's Army fought gloriously under the walls
of Constance and seems to have left its ambulance there. I had the
misfortune to meet a veteran Emigrant; he did me the honour to have
known me in former times; he had more days than hairs; his words were
endless; he was unable to contain himself and allowed his years to run.


[Sidenote: Diner at Arenenberg.]

On the 29th of August, I went to dine at Arenenberg.

Arenenberg stands on a sort of promontory in a chain of steep hills.
The Queen of Holland, whom the sword had made and whom the sword had
unmade, built the _château_, or, if you prefer, the summer-house of
Arenenberg. From it, one enjoys an extensive, but melancholy view. This
view commands the Lower Lake of Constance, which is only an expansion
of the Rhine over swamped fields. On the other side of the lake, one
sees gloomy woods, remains of the Black Forest, a few white birds
fluttering under a grey sky and driven by an icy wind. There, after
having sat on a throne, after being outrageously slandered, Queen
Hortense came to perch upon a rock; below is the isle of the lake on
which, they say, the tomb of Charles the Fat[470] was discovered and on
which, at present, canaries are dying which ask in vain for the sun of
their native islands. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was better off in
Rome; nevertheless, she has not descended in proportion to her birth
and her early life: on the contrary, she has risen; her abasement is
only relative to an accident of her fortune; this is not one of those
descents like that of Madame la Dauphine, who has fallen from all the
height of the centuries.

The companions, male and female, of Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu
were her son, Madame Salvage[471], Madame-----. By way of visitors,
there were Madame Récamier, M. Vieillard[472] and myself. Madame la
Duchesse de Saint-Leu acquitted herself very well in her difficult
position as a queen and a Demoiselle de Beauharnais.

After dinner, Madame de Saint-Leu sat down to her piano with M.
Cottreau[473], a tall young painter in mustachios, a straw hat, a
blouse, a turned-down shirt-collar, an eccentric costume, who hunted,
painted, sang, laughed, in a witty and noisy fashion.

Prince Louis occupies a summer-house standing apart, where I saw arms,
topographical and strategical charts; industries which made one, as
though by accident, think of the blood of the Conqueror without naming
him: Prince Louis is a studious and well-informed young man, full of
honour and naturally grave.

Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu read me a few fragments of her Memoirs:
she showed me a cabinet filled with relics of Napoleon. I asked myself
why this wardrobe left me cold; why that little hat, that sash, that
uniform worn at such and such a battle found me so indifferent: I
was much more perturbed when writing of the death of Napoleon at St.
Helena. The reason of this is that Napoleon is our contemporary; we
have all seen him and known him: he lives in our memory; but the hero
is still too close to his glory. A thousand years hence, it will be a
different thing: it is only the centuries that have lent a perfume to
Alexander's sweat; let us wait: of a conqueror one should show only the
sword.

I returned to Wolfsberg with Madame Récamier and set out at night: the
weather was dark and rainy; the wind whistled through the trees and the
wood-owl hooted: a real Germanian scene.

Madame de Chateaubriand soon arrived at Lucerne: the dampness of
the town frightened her and, as Lugano was too dear, we decided to
come to Geneva. We took our route over Sempach: the lake preserves
the memory of a battle[474] which ensured the enfranchisement of the
Swiss, at a time when the nations on this side of the Alps had lost
their liberties. Beyond Sempach, we passed before the Abbey of St.
Urban's, crumbling like all the monuments of Christianity. It stands
in a melancholy spot, on the skirt of a heath which leads to a wood:
if I had been free and alone, I would have asked the monks for a hole
in their walls, there to finish my Memoirs beside an owl; then I
should have gone to end my days in doing nothing under the beautiful
do-nothing sun of Naples or Palermo: but beautiful countries and
spring-time have become insults, disasters and regrets.

On reaching Berne, we were told that there was a great revolution in
progress in the city; I looked in vain: the streets were deserted,
silence reigned, the terrible revolution was realized without a word,
to the peaceful smoke of a pipe in the corner of some coffee-house.

Madame Récamier was not long in joining us at Geneva.

[Sidenote: A visit to Coppet.]


GENEVA, _end of September_ 1832.

I have begun to take up my work again seriously: I write in the morning
and walk in the evening. Yesterday, I went to pay a visit to Coppet.
The house was shut up; they opened the doors for me; I wandered through
the deserted rooms. The companion of my pilgrimage recognised all the
places, where she still seemed to see her friend, seated at her piano,
or coming in, or going out, or talking on the terrace alongside of
the gallery; Madame Récamier has seen again the room which she used
to occupy; days gone by have come up again before her; it was like a
rehearsal of the scene which I described in _René_:

    "I passed through the sonorous apartments where nothing was heard
    but the sound of my footsteps.... Everywhere the rooms were without
    hangings and the spider spun its web in the abandoned couches....
    How sweet, but how rapid are the moments which brothers and sisters
    pass in their youthful years, gathered under the wing of their
    old parents! Man's family is but of a day; God's breath disperses
    it like a bubble. The son has scarce time to know the father, the
    father the son, the brother the sister, the sister the brother! The
    oak sees its acorns shoot up around itself: it is not thus with the
    children of men!"

I also remembered what I said, in these Memoirs, of my last visit
to Combourg, before leaving for America. Two different worlds, but
connected by a common sympathy, occupied Madame Récamier and myself.
Alas, each of us carries within himself one of those isolated worlds;
for where are the persons who have lived long enough together not to
have separate memories?

From the _château_, we entered the park; the early autumn began to
redden and to loosen a few leaves; the wind fell by degrees and let
one hear a stream that turns a mill. After following the alleys along
which she had been accustomed to walk with Madame de Staël, Madame
Récamier wanted to greet her ashes. At some distance from the park
stands a coppice mingled with taller trees and surrounded by a damp and
dilapidated wall. This coppice resembles those clusters of trees in the
midst of plains which sportsmen call "covers:" it is there that death
has driven its prey and shut up its victims.

A burial-place had been built beforehand in that wood to receive M.
Necker, Madame Necker and Madame de Staël: when the last of these
arrived at the trysting-place, they walled-up the door of the crypt.
The child of Auguste de Staël remained outside, and Auguste himself,
who died before his child, was laid under a stone, at his relations'
feet. On the stone are carved these words taken from Scripture:

WHY SEEK YOU THE LIVING WITH THE DEAD[475]?

I did not go into the wood; Madame Récamier alone obtained permission
to enter it. Remaining seated on a bench before the surrounding wall,
I turned my back on France, and fixed my eyes, now on the summit of
Mont Blanc, now on the Lake of Geneva: the golden clouds covered the
horizon behind the dark line of the Jura; it was as though a halo of
glory were rising above a long coffin. On the other side of the lake, I
saw Lord Byron's[476] house, the ridge of which was touched by a ray of
the setting sun. Rousseau was no more there to admire that spectacle,
and Voltaire, who had also disappeared, had never cared about it. It
was at the foot of the tomb of Madame de Staël that so many illustrious
absentees on the same shore presented themselves to my recollection:
they seemed to come to seek the shade their equal to fly away into the
sky with her and escort her during the night At that moment, Madame
Récamier, pale and in tears, came out from the funeral grove herself
like a shadow. If ever I have felt at one time the vanity and the
verity of glory and life, it was at the entrance of that silent, dark,
unknown wood, where she sleeps who had so much lustre and fame, and
when seeing what it is to be truly loved.

[Sidenote: With Madame Récamier.]

That same evening, the day after my devotions to the dead of Coppet,
tired of the edge of the lake, I went, still with Madame Récamier, in
search of less frequented walks. We discovered, going down the Rhone,
a narrow gorge through which the stream flows bubbling under several
mills, between rocky cliffs intersected by meadows. One of these
meadows stretches at the foot of a hill on which a house is planted
amid a cluster of elms.

We several times climbed and descended, talking the while, this narrow
strip of grass which separates the boisterous stream from the silent
hillock: how many persons are there whom one can weary with what
one has been and carry back with one on the track of one's days? We
spoke of those days, always painful and always regretted, in which
the passions form the happiness and the martyrdom of youth. Now I am
writing this page at midnight, while all is at rest around me, and
through my window I see a few stars glimmering over the Alps.

Madame Récamier is going to leave us: she will return in the spring,
and I shall spend the winter in evoking my vanished hours, in summoning
them one by one before the tribunal of my reason. I do not know if I
shall be very impartial nor if the judge will not be too indulgent
towards. the culprit I shall spend next summer in the land of Jean
Jacques. God grant that I may not catch the dreamer's malady. And then,
when autumn shall have returned, we shall go to Italy: "_Italian!_"
that is my eternal refrain.


GENEVA, _October_ 1832.

Prince Louis Napoleon having given me his pamphlet entitled, _Rêveries
politiques_, I wrote him this letter:

    "PRINCE,

    "I have read attentively the little pamphlet which you were so good
    as to entrust to me. I have jotted down, as you wished, a few
    reflections, springing naturally from yours, which I had already
    submitted to your judgment. You know, Prince, that my young King
    is in Scotland, that, so long as he lives, there can be no other
    King of France for me than he; but, if God, in his impenetrable
    counsels, had rejected the House of St. Louis, if the habits of our
    country did not render the republican state possible, there is no
    name which goes better with the glory of France than yours.

    "I am, etc., etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."


PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _January_ 1833.

I had dreamt much of that approaching future which I had made for
myself and which I thought so near. At night-fall, I used to go
wandering in the windings of the Arve, in the direction of Salève. One
evening, I saw M. Berryer enter; he was returning from Lausanne and
told me of the arrest of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[477]; he did not
know any details. My plans for repose were once more upset. When the
mother of Henry V. believed in her success, she discharged me; her
misfortune destroyed her last note and recalled me to her defense. I
started on the spot from Geneva, after writing to the ministers. On
arriving in my Rue d'Enfer, I addressed the following circular letter
to the editors of the newspapers:

    "SIR,

    "I arrived in Paris on the 17th of this month and wrote, on the
    18th, to M. the Minister of Justice[478] to ask if the letter which
    I had had the honour to send him from Geneva, on the 12th, for
    Madame la Duchesse de Berry had reached him and if he had had the
    goodness to forward it to Madame.

    "I begged M. the Keeper of the Seals at the same time to give me
    the necessary authorization to go to the Princess at Blaye.

    "M. the Keeper of the Seals was so good as to reply, on the 19th,
    that he had handed my letters to the President of the Council[479]
    and that I must apply to the latter. I wrote, consequently, on
    the 20th, to M. the Minister for War. To-day, the 22nd, I receive
    his answer of the 21st: he 'regrets to be under the necessity of
    informing me that the Government does not consider it expedient to
    grant my request.' This decision has put an end to my applications
    to the authorities.

    "I have never, sir, pretended to think myself capable of defending
    unaided the cause of misfortune and of France. My plan, if I had
    been permitted to reach the feet of the august prisoner, was to
    propose to her, in this emergency, the formation of a council of
    men more enlightened than myself. In addition to the honourable and
    distinguished persons that have already come forward, I would have
    taken the liberty to suggest to Madame's choice M. le Marquis de
    Pastoret[480], M. Lainé, M. de Villèle, etc., etc.

    "Now, sir, that I am officially turned away, I return to my right
    as a private individual. My _Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de
    M. le Duc de Berry_, wrapped in the hair of the widow to-day a
    captive, lie near the heart which Louvel made to resemble even more
    that of Henry IV. I have not forgotten that signal honour, of which
    the present moment asks me for a reckoning and makes me feel all
    the responsibility.

    "I am, sir, etc., etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

[Sidenote: My circular to the press.]

While I was writing this circular letter to the newspapers, I found
means to have the following note handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry:

    "PARIS, 23 _November_ 1832.

    "MADAME,

    "I had the honour to address to you from Geneva an earlier letter
    dated the 12th of this month. This letter, in which I begged you
    to do me the honour to choose me as one of your defenders, has been
    printed in the newspapers[481].

    "Your Royal Highness' cause may be taken up by all those who,
    without being authorized to do so, might have useful truths to
    make known; but, if Madame wishes that it be carried on in her own
    name, it is not one man, but a council of men, of politicians and
    lawyers, that must be charged with this high affair. In that case,
    I would ask that Madame would consent to assign to me as coadjutors
    (with the persons whom she would have already selected) M. le Comte
    de Pastoret, M. Hyde de Neuville, M. de Villèle, M. Lainé, M.
    Royer-Collard, M. Pardessus[482], M. Mandaroux-Vertamy[483], M. de
    Vaufreland.

    "I had also thought, Madame, that one might summon to this council
    a few men of great talent and of an opinion contrary to ours; but
    perhaps it would be to place them in a false position, to oblige
    them to make a sacrifice of honour and principle to which lofty
    minds and upright consciences do not readily lend themselves.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

An old disciplined soldier, I was therefore hastening up to take my
place in the ranks and to march under my captains: reduced by the will
of the authorities to a duel, I accepted it I had scarcely expected to
come, from the tomb of the husband, to fight by the tomb of the widow.

Supposing that I were bound to remain alone, that I had misunderstood
what suits France, I was none the less in the path of honour. Nor is
it of little use for men that a man should immolate himself to his
conscience; it is good that some one should consent to ruin himself to
remain steadfast to principles of which he is convinced and which have
to do with what is noble in our nature: those dupes are the necessary
contestants of the brutal fact, the victims charged to utter the veto
of the oppressed against the triumph of might. We praise the Poles: is
their devotion other than a sacrifice? It has saved nothing; it could
save nothing: even in the minds of my opponents, will that devotion be
barren of results for the human race?

I prefer a family before my country, they say: no, I prefer fidelity
to my oaths before perjury, the moral world before material society;
that is all: in so far as the family is concerned, I devote myself to
it because it was essentially beneficial to France; I confound its
posterity with that of the country and, when I deplore the misfortunes
of the one, I deplore the disasters of the other: beaten, I have
prescribed duties to myself, even as the victors have laid interests
upon themselves. I am trying to withdraw from the world with my
self-respect; in solitude we have to be careful whom we choose for our
companion.


[Sidenote: On the arrest of Madame.]

In France, the land of vanity, so soon as an occasion offers for making
a fuss, a crowd of people seize it: some act from good-heartedness,
others from their consciousness of their own merits. I therefore had
many competitors; they begged, as I had done, of Madame la Duchesse de
Berry, the honour to defend her. At least, my presumption in offering
myself to the Princess as a champion was a little justified by former
services; though I did not fling the sword of Brennus[484] into the
scale, at least I put my name there: however unimportant that may be,
it had already gained some victories for the Monarchy. I opened my
_Mémoire sur la captivité de Madame la duchesse de Berry_[485] with a
consideration by which I am forcibly struck; I have often reprinted
it, and it is probable that I shall reprint it again:

    "We never cease," I said, "to be astonished at events; ever
    we imagine that we have come to the last; ever the revolution
    recommences. Those who, since forty years, are marching to reach
    the goal, repine; they thought they were sitting for a few hours by
    the edge of their tomb: vain hope! Time strikes those travellers
    gasping for breath, and forces them to move onward. How many times,
    since they have been on the road, has the Old Monarchy fallen at
    their feet! Scarce escaped from those successive crumblings, they
    are obliged once more to pass over its rubbish and its dust. Which
    century will see the end of the movement?...

    "Providence has willed that the transient generations destined for
    unremembered days should be small, in order that the damage might
    not be great. And so we see that everything proves abortive, that
    everything is inconsistent, that no one is like himself or embraces
    his whole destiny, that no event produces what it contained and
    what it ought to produce. The superior men of the age which is
    expiring are dying away; will they have successors? The ruins of
    Palmyra end in sands."

Passing from this general observation to particular facts, I show, in
my reasoning, that they might deal with Madame la Duchesse de Berry by
arbitrary measures, regarding her as a prisoner of police, of war, of
State, or asking the Chambers to pass a bill of attainder; that they
might bring her within the competence of the laws by applying to her
the Briqueville Law of Exception or the common law of the Code; that
they might regard her person as inviolable and sacred. The ministers
maintained the first opinion, the men of July the second, the Royalists
the third.

I go through the several suppositions: I prove that, if Madame la
Duchesse de Berry made a descent upon France, she had been drawn
thither only because she heard men's opinions asking for a different
present, calling for a different future.

False to its popular extraction, the revolution proceeding from the
Days of July repudiated glory and courted shame. Except in a few
hearts worthy of giving it an asylum, liberty, become the object of
the derision of those who made it their rallying-cry, that liberty
which buffoons bandy about with kicks, that liberty strangled after
dishonour by the tourniquet of the laws of exception will, through its
destruction, transform the Revolution of 1830 into a cynical fraud.

Thereupon, and to deliver us all, Madame la Duchesse de Berry arrived.
Fortune betrayed her; a Jew sold her; a minister bought her[486]. If
they are not willing to proceed against her by police measures, the
only alternative is to indict her at the assizes. I suppose this to
have been done, and I bring on the stage the Princess's defending
counsel; then, after making the defending counsel speak, I address the
counsel for the prosecution:

[Sidenote: My pamphlet.]

    "Advocate.... stand up....

    "Establish learnedly that Caroline Ferdinande of Sicily, Widow de
    Berry, niece of the late Marie-Antoinette of Austria, Widow Capet,
    is guilty of opposition to a man, the reputed uncle and guardian of
    an orphan called Henry, which uncle and guardian is said, according
    to the calumnious allegation of the prisoner, unlawfully to detain
    the crown of a ward, which ward impudently pretends to have been
    King from the day of the abdication of the ex-King Charles X. and
    the ex-Dauphin till the day of the election of the King of the
    French....

    "In support of your argument, let the judges first call up
    Louis-Philippe as evidence for or against the prisoner, unless
    he prefer to excuse himself as a kinsman. Next, let the judges
    confront the prisoner and the descendant of the Great Traitor; let
    the Iscariot into whom Satan had entered[487] say how many pieces
    of silver he received for the bargain.

    ... Then it will be proved, by those who have examined the spot,
    that the prisoner for six hours suffered the Gehenna of fire in
    a space too narrow for her, in which four people could hardly
    breathe, which caused the tortured person contumeliously to say
    that they 'were making war upon her as though she were a St.
    Laurence[488]. Now, Caroline Ferdinande being pressed by her
    accomplices against the red-hot slab, her clothes twice caught
    fire, and, at each blow of the gendarmes on the outside of the
    fiery furnace, the shock was communicated to the prisoner's heart,
    causing her to vomit blood.

    "Next, in the presence of the image of Christ, they will lay on the
    desk, as a piece of direct evidence, the burnt garments: for there
    must always be lots cast upon garments in these Judas bargains."


Madame la Duchesse de Berry was set at liberty by an arbitrary act
of the authorities, after they thought that they had dishonoured
her. The picture which I drew of the proceedings made Philip see the
invidiousness of a public trial and determined him to grant a pardon
to which he believed that he had attached a punishment: the pagans,
under Severus[489], used to throw to the lions a newly-delivered young
Christian woman. My pamphlet, of which only some phrases survive, had
its important historical result.

I am melted again, as I copy out the apostrophe which ends my work; it
is, I admit, a foolish waste of tears:

    "Illustrious captive of Blaye, Madame! May your heroic presence in
    a land which knows something of heroism lead France to repeat to
    you what my political independence has won for me the right to say:

    "'Madame, your son is my King!'

    "If Providence inflict yet a few hours upon me, shall I behold
    your triumphs, after having had the honour of embracing your
    adversities? Shall I receive that guerdon of my faith? At the
    moment when you return happy, I would joyfully go to end in
    retirement the days commenced in exile. Alas, I am disconsolate to
    be able to do nothing for your present destinies! My words die away
    in mere waste around the walls of your prison: the noise of the
    winds, of the waves and of men, at the foot of the lonely fortress,
    will not even allow the last accents of a faithful voice to ascend
    to where you are."

PARIS, _March_ 1833.

Some newspapers, having repeated the phrase, "Madame, your son is my
King!" were indicted in the courts for a press offense; I found myself
involved in the proceedings. This time, I could not take exception to
the competency of the judges; I had to try to save by my presence the
men attacked for my sake; my honour was at stake and I had to answer
for my works.

Moreover, the day before my summons before the court, the _Moniteur_
had given the declaration of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[490]; if I
had stayed away, they would have thought that the Royalist Party was
retreating, that it was abandoning misfortune and blushing for the
Princess whose heroism it had celebrated.

There was no lack of timid counsellors who said to me:

"Do not put in an appearance; you will be too much embarrassed with
your phrase, 'Madame, your son is my King!'"

"I shall shout it louder than ever," I replied.

I went to the very court where the revolutionary tribunal had formerly
been installed, where Marie-Antoinette had appeared, where my brother
had been condemned. The Revolution of July has ordered the removal of
the crucifix whose presence, while consoling innocence, caused the
judge to tremble.

[Sidenote: My trial in Paris.]

My appearance before the judges had a fortunate effect; it
counterbalanced for a moment the effect of the declaration in the
_Moniteur_ and maintained the mother of Henry V. in the rank in which
her courageous adventure had placed her: men hesitated, when they saw
that the Royalist Party dared to face the event and did not consider
itself beaten.

I did not want a counsel, but M. Ledru, who had attached himself
to me at the time of my imprisonment, wished to speak: he grew
disconcerted and gave me great uneasiness. M. Berryer, who represented
the _Quotidienne_, indirectly took up my defense. At the end of
the proceedings, I called the jury the "universal peerage," which
contributed not a little towards the acquittal of all of us[491].

Nothing remarkable occurred to signalize this trial in the terrible
chamber that had resounded with the voices of Fouquier-Tinville and
Danton; there was nothing amusing in it, except the arguments of M.
Persil[492]: wishing to prove my guilt, he quoted this phrase from my
pamphlet, "It is difficult to crush what flattens itself underfoot,"
and, exclaiming, "Do you feel, gentlemen, all the scorn comprised
in that paragraph, 'It is difficult to crush what flattens itself
underfoot'?" he made the movement of a man who crushes something under
his feet He resumed his speech triumphantly: the laughter of the
audience was renewed. The worthy man perceived neither the delight of
the audience at his unlucky phrase nor the perfectly absurd figure
which he cut while stamping his feet, in his black robes, as though he
were dancing, at the same time that his face was pale with inspiration
and his eyes haggard with eloquence.

When the jury returned and pronounced their verdict of "not guilty,"
applause broke out and I was surrounded by young men who had put on
barristers' robes to get in: M. Carrel was there.

The crowd increased as I went out; there was a scuffle in the
court-yard of the palace between my escort and the police. At last, I
succeeded, with great difficulty, in reaching home in the midst of the
crowd which followed my cab shouting:

"Long live Chateaubriand[493]!"

[Sidenote: I am acquitted.]

At any other time, this acquittal would have been very significant;
to declare that it was not guilty to say to the Duchesse de Berry,
"Madame, your son is my King!" was to condemn the Revolution of July;
but to-day this verdict means nothing, because there is no opinion nor
duration in anything. In four and twenty hours, everything is changed:
I should be condemned to-morrow for the fact on which I was acquitted
to-day.

I have been to leave my card on the jurymen and notably on M.
Chevet[494], one of the members of the "universal peerage." It was
easier for that worthy citizen to find a conscientious verdict in my
favour than it would have been for me to find in my pocket the money
necessary to add to the happiness of my acquittal the pleasure of
eating a good dinner at my judge's establishment: M. Chevet arbitrated
with more equity on the Legitimacy, the Usurpation and the author of
the _Génie du Christianisme_ than many publicists and censors.


PARIS, _April_ 1833.

The _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry_
has obtained for me an immense popularity in the Royalist Party.
Deputations and letters have reached me from every quarter. I have
received from the North and South of France declarations of adhesion
covered with many thousands of signatures. All of these, referring to
my pamphlet, demand the liberation of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
Fifteen hundred young men of Paris have come to congratulate me, not
without great excitement on the part of the police. I have received a
cup in silver gilt, with this inscription:

TO CHATEAUBRIAND FROM THE LOYAL MEN OF VILLENEUVE (LOT-ET-GARONNE)

A town in the South sent me some very good wine to fill this cup, but
I do not drink. Lastly, Legitimist France has taken as its motto the
words, "Madame, your son is my King!" and several newspapers have
adopted them as an epigraph; they have been engraved on necklaces
and rings. I am the first to have uttered, in the face of the
Usurpation, a truth which no one dared to speak, and, strange to say,
I believe less in the return of Henry V. than the most contemptible
_juste-milieu_ man or the most violent Republican.

For the rest, I do not understand the word usurpation in the narrow
sense given to it by the Royalist Party; there would be many things
to say about this word, as about that of legitimacy: but there really
is usurpation, and usurpation of the worst kind, in the guardian who
plunders his ward and proscribes the orphan. All those grand phrases,
that "the country had to be saved," are so many pretexts furnished
to ambition by an immoral policy. Truly, ought we not to regard the
meanness of your usurpation as an effort of virtue on your part? Are
you Brutus[495], by chance, sacrificing his sons to the greatness of
Rome?

I have been able, in the course of my life, to compare literary renown
and popularity. The former pleased me for a few hours, but that love
of renown soon passed. As for popularity, it found me indifferent,
because, in the Revolution, I have seen too much of men surrounded by
those masses which, after raising them on the shield, flung them into
the gutter. A democrat by nature, an aristocrat by habit, I would most
gladly sacrifice my fortune and my life to the people, provided I need
have little relation with the crowd. Anyhow, I was extremely sensible
of the impulse of the young men of July who carried me in triumph to
the Chamber of Peers, and this inasmuch as they did not carry me there
to be their leader or because I thought as they did: they were only
doing justice to an enemy; they recognised in me a man of honour and
liberty: that generosity touched me. But this other popularity which I
have lately acquired in my own party has caused me no emotion; there is
an icy barrier between the Royalists and myself: we want the same King;
with that exception, most of our wishes are opposed one to the other.



[Footnote 407: This book was written in Paris, between the end of July
and the 8th of August 1832; at Basle, Lucerne and Lugano, between
August and October 1832; and again in Paris, between January and April
1833.--T.]

[Footnote 408: John Fraser Frisell (1772-1846), a member of a Scotch
family, came to France at the age of eighteen to "see the Revolution,"
out of curiosity. He was arrested and imprisoned at Dijon under the
Terror, and did not recover his liberty until the 18 Brumaire. The
First Consul authorized Frisell, "as a savant," to reside on the
Continent, at a time when all the English were under suspicion; and
he remained almost permanently in France and Italy, to the great
displeasure of his family. He wrote a great deal, but would consent
to the publication of only one of his works, _De la Constitution de
l'Angleterre_, which is remarkably well written in French. He made the
acquaintance of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand under the Empire and
remained most attached to them until his death, which shortly preceded
that of his two old friends. Frisell died at Torquay, in Devonshire, in
February 1846. _Cf._ an article by Mr. J. Fraser, entitled, _Un ami de
Chateaubriand_, in the _Correspondant_ of 25 September 1897.--B.]

[Footnote 409: There is a slight error here. Chateaubriand, as well
as his friends Hyde de Neuville and Fitz-James, were arrested on the
16th of June. The details of his arrest are in the newspapers of the
17th, and Hyde de Neuville also gives the 16th as the date. Probably
this date of the 20th, in the _Mémoires de Outre-tombe_, is a copyist's
error, the more so inasmuch as, in the whole course of the Memoirs,
Chateaubriand has made no other mistake in his dates.--B.]

[Footnote 410: M. Henri Joseph Gisquet.--B.]

[Footnote 411: The _juste-milieu_ was the political system of
government which consisted in conciliating all opinions. Louis-Philippe
used it (after Montesquieu and others) in replying to a deputation from
the town of Gaillac, on the 29th of January, in these words:

"As for our home policy, we shall strive to keep to a _juste milieu._"

The phrase was very soon turned into one of general derision.--T.]

[Footnote 412: Frédéric Benoît (1813-1832), aged 19, the son of a
magistrate at Vouxiers, had been sentenced to death on the eve of
Chateaubriand's arrest, 15 June 1832. He had killed his mother, on the
night of the 8th of November 1829, and his friend Alexandre Formage, a
youth of 17, on the 21st of July 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 413: Richard Lovelace (1618-1658), the Cavalier poet, was
imprisoned by the Commons in 1642, subsequently released on £20,000
bail, was abroad from 1646 to 1648 in the French service, taking part
in the Siege of Dunkirk, and was again incarcerated on his return to
England. He was released once more towards the close of 1649 and spent
the remainder of his life in want. His best-known prison poems include
his _To Althea from Prison_ and the lines commencing:

     Stone walls do not a prison make
        Nor iron bars a cage.--T.]


[Footnote 414: Jean Baptiste Santeuil (1630-1697), a modern Latin poet,
almost as celebrated for his gaiety and eccentricities as for his
undoubted poetic talent.--T.]

[Footnote 415: "The coffin sinks down and the unspotted roses."--T.]

[Footnote 416: I omit a poem of sixteen lines, entitled, _Jeune fille
et jeune fleur_, on the death of Eliza Frisell.--T.]

[Footnote 417: M. Nay was engaged to M. Gisquet's daughter.--T.]

[Footnote 418: François Eugène Vidocq (1775-1857) was in early life
a soldier and a thief and was several times imprisoned. He became
connected with the Paris police as a detective in 1809 and resigned, as
chief of the detective force, in 1825. In 1832, he started a private
detective establishment, which was soon dosed by the Government. He was
the reputed author of a famous set of Memoirs and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 419: Louis Henri Desmortiers had been appointed a counsellor
to the Paris Courts by the Restoration; the Revolution of 1830 made
him King's Attorney to the Tribunal of First Instance of the Seine.
These functions he preserved during the greater part of the reign of
Louis-Philippe; and he was therefore not an examining magistrate in
1832. The examining magistrate charged in the affair of Messieurs de
Chateaubriand, Hyde de Neuville and de Fitz-James was M. Poultier, who
"fulfilled his painful duty towards the accused with as much delicacy
as consideration" (_Mémoires du baron Hyde de Neuville_, vol. III. p.
496).--B.]

[Footnote 420: Charles Guillaume Hello (1787-1850). He had been
appointed attorney-general at Rennes in 1830. He was the author of
_Philosophie de l'histoire de France_ and other works, and was the
father of M. Ernest Hello (1828-1885), author of _L'Homme, Paroles
de Dieu_, etc., which gave him an eminent rank among the writers and
thinkers of his time.--B.]

[Footnote 421:

     "My name is Loyal, sirs, I come from Normandy,
      And am a tipstaff, in despite of jealousy."--T.]


[Footnote 422: This is one of the very few errors of fact that occur in
the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, nor is it a very serious one. M. Geoffroy
de Grandmaison, in his fine work on the _Congrégation_ (pp. 389 et
seq.), publishes the complete list of its members: M. Desmortiers' name
does not appear upon it.--B.

The Congregation was an association of laymen, formed, under the
auspices of the Jesuits, to practise, under their direction, works of
charity and piety.--T.]

[Footnote 423: Paul François Dubois (1793-1874) had founded the
_Globe_, in 1824, with Pierre Leroux. He sat as Deputy for Nantes from
1831 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 424: Jean Jacques Ampère (1800-1864), son of the celebrated
physicist and a member of the French Academy. His fidelity to
Chateaubriand was the more meritorious inasmuch as he had conceived,
from his youth, an ardent passion for Madame Récamier which time was
unable to allay.--B.]

[Footnote 425: Charles Lenormant (1802-1859) had married, in 1826,
Mademoiselle Amélie Cyvoct, niece to Madame Récamier.--B.]

[Footnote 426: Charles Ledru, a young advocate gifted with a real
talent, was soon eclipsed by another republican advocate of the same
surname, Auguste Ledru. The latter, wishing to avoid the confusion
that would certainly have been established between himself and Charles
Ledru, added the name of his maternal great-grandmother to his own, and
became known as Ledru-Rollin.--B.]

[Footnote 427: Charles Philipon (1800-1862), the brilliant draughtsman,
founder of the _Caricature_ (1831), the _Charivari_ (1834) and, after
1848, the _Journal amusant_, the _Musée français_ and the _Petit
journal pour rire._ It was during one of his many trials that Philipon
invented and drew the "pear" which was thenceforth to become the symbol
of the head of Louis-Philippe. The next day, the walls of Paris were
covered with it.--T.]

[Footnote 428: He signs his verses, "J. Chopin, _employé au
cabinet._"--T.]

[Footnote 429: I omit these twenty lines.--T.]

[Footnote 430: Félix Barthe (1795-1863), after being linked with the
Carbonari and taking an active part in the Revolution of July, entered
M. Laffitte's dislocated ministry on the 27th of December 1830, to
replace the Minister of Public Instruction, M. Mérilhou. On the 12th
of March 1831, in the new Casimir-Périer Cabinet, he exchanged the
portfolio of Public Instruction for that of Justice. He kept the Seals
until the 4th of April 1834, when he fell with the Broglie Ministry. He
was then made a peer of France and President of the Audit Office. The
Second Empire made him a senator.--B.]

[Footnote 431: M. Demangeat.--B.]

[Footnote 432: Pierre Clément Bérard (1798--_circa_ 1890). During the
Hundred Days, being then seventeen years of age, he had enlisted in the
corps of Royal Volunteers of the Paris School of Law and accompanied
King Louis XVIII. to Ghent. In 1831 and 1832, he published a little
weekly pamphlet, the _Cancans_, whose title varied with every number:
_Cancans parisiens, Cancans accusateurs, Cancans courtisans, Cancans
inflexibles, Cancans saisis, Cancans prisonniers_, etc. Each issue
ended with a song. It was, as it were, a resurrection, after 1830, of
the _Actes des Apôtres_ of Rivarol, Champeenetz and their friends,
with the same violence and also the same pluck and spirit. Only, the
Cancans were edited, not by a company of wits, but by M. Bérard alone:
true, he was as witty as any four or forty. Seizures and prosecutions
rained upon the Cancans and their author, who was at last condemned to
fourteen years' imprisonment and a fine of thirteen thousand francs.
Fortunately, he succeeded in escaping to Holland, thus exchanging
prison for exile. In 1833, he published _Mon Voyage à Prague_ and then
went to Rome, where the Legitimists had founded a bank in which Bérard
accepted a clerkship. He was not again to leave the Eternal City,
where he died, not very many years ago, an impenitent Royalist. His
_Souvenirs sur Sainte-Pélagie en_ 1832 appeared in 1886.--B.]

[Footnote 433: The reader will see in my account of my first journey
to Prague my conversation with Charles X. on the subject of this
loan.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1834). _Cf._ Vol. I, pp. 369-370.--T.]

[Footnote 434: Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry (1797-1873). In 1810, he
was tutor to Talleyrand's grand-nephews and, in 1828, published his
_Histoire des Gaulois_, with great success. After the Days of July, he
was appointed Prefect of the Haute-Saône. Later he filled more than
one judicial office, under the Usurpation and the Second Empire, and
was made a senator in 1860. He continued throughout to produce his
historical works.--B.]

[Footnote 435: _Cf._ AUGUSTIN THIERRY, _Récits des temps mérovingiens_:
Preface.--B.]

[Footnote 436: The Comte d'Artois entered France by Vesoul, in February
1814, and from there, on the 27th of February, dated his Proclamation
to the French.--B.]

[Footnote 437: Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1538), the great Dutch scholar
and satirist, settled at Basle in 1521 and died there on the 12th of
July 1528.--T.]

[Footnote 438: The Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of
Prussia.--B.]

[Footnote 439: Hans Holbein the Younger (_circa_ 1497-1543) lived in
Basle from 1515 to 1523 and from 1528 to 1532. The _Dance of Death_ at
Basle, if really Holbein, was painted in the earlier period.--T.]

[Footnote 440: Martin Luther (1483-1546), founder of the heretical sect
called after his name.--T.]

[Footnote 441: Giovanni de' Medici, Pope Leo X. (1475-1521), elected
Pope in 1513. It was during his Papacy, in the year 1517, that
the Reformation began with Luther's protest against the sale of
indulgences.--T.]

[Footnote 442: Johann von Müller (1752-1809), a noted Swiss historian,
author of the _Geschichte der Schweizer_, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 443: Walther Fürst, Arnold von Melchthal and Werner
Stauffacher were the three companions of William Tell, perhaps less
legendary than he, who, according to tradition, liberated their country
in the fourteenth century. The date of the oath on the Grütli, or
Rütli, is 8 November 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 444: Hermann Gessler, the imperial magistrate in Uri and
Schwyz, said to have been shot by Tell in 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 445: Saxo Grammaticus (_fl._ 13th century), the Danish
historian, whose chronicles contain the stories of William Tell, Hamlet
and other oral traditions, myths and legends.--T.]

[Footnote 446: _Cf._ CHATEAUBRIAND, _Essai sur les révolutions_: the
chapter entitled, _La Suisse pauvre et vertueuse_, in which the author
describes as "very doubtful" the story of Tell and the apple.--B.]

[Footnote 447: The Duc de Reichstadt had died on the 22nd of July 1832,
a month earlier than the date of Chateaubriand's journey.--T.]

[Footnote 448: Alexander Count Suwaroff (1729-1800), after defeating
the French at Cassano, the Trebbia and Novi, in April, June and August
1799, was himself defeated by Masséna, who had already beaten one
Russian army at Zurich (25-26 September 1799). Suwaroff was recalled in
disgrace and died in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 449:

     "At Mount Adula's foot, amid a thousand reeds,
      The still Rhine, proud of how his great stream speeds,
      Slept with one hand upon his tilted urn,
      To the grateful music of the just-born burn."--T.]


[Footnote 450:

      "One's country's to be found where'er the soul's enchanted."--T.]


[Footnote 451: St. Nicholas Bishop of Myra (_d. circa_ 342), the patron
saint of sailors, thieves, virgins and children. The Church honours St.
Nicholas on the 6th of December.--T.]

[Footnote 452: Clara Wendel was one of a company of vagabonds arrested,
in 1825, for the murder, on the 15th September 1816, of Xavier Keller,
a State councillor of Lucerne, the cause of whose death had for many
years been a mystery. Revelations made by the band showed that Xavier
Keller had been the victim of a political crime, the instigators of
which were two official persons of Lucerne. Five individuals, including
a brother and sister of Clara Wendel, had been guilty of committing
this crime. The trial excited an European interest and ended in a
number of condemnations. Clara Wendel was sentenced to imprisonment for
life and served her sentence in the prison at Lucerne.--B.]

[Footnote 453: On the 5th of June 1832, Alexandre Dumas had followed
the funeral of General Lamarque in the uniform of an artillery-man; it
was rumoured that he had distributed arms at the Porte Saint-Martin.
On the 9th of June, a newspaper announced that the author had been
arrested with arms in his hands and that he had been shot on the
morning of the 6th. An aide-de-camp of the King's hurried to his house,
found him in perfect health and informed him that the question of his
arrest had been seriously discussed. He was advised to go to spend a
month or two abroad, in order that he might be forgotten. He put his
dramatic affairs in order, obtained some money from Harel (no easy
matter) and, on the 21st of July 1832, left for Switzerland, furnished
with a regular passport. He returned to Paris at the commencement of
October. His _Impressions de Voyage_, the publication of which began
in 1833, have remained the best of his works. In the third volume, he
tells of his visit to the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_, in a
chapter entitled, _Les Poules de M. de Chateaubriand._--B.]

[Footnote 454: _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 72, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 455: Both ladies are no more.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 456: _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. 71-72.--T.]

[Footnote 457: Béranger's letter is dated 19 August 1832; Armand
Carrel's 4 October 1834. They were both printed at the end of the
second volume of the _Congrès de Vérone._--B.]

[Footnote 458: Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), the Swiss poet and
theologian and founder of the so-called science of physiognomy, was
born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 459: Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), the poet, landscape-painter
and engraver was also born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 460: Madame Récamier had been very much alarmed by the
cholera, which had made many victims around her, in the Rue de Sèvres,
and had decided, in the month of August, to leave Paris and travel in
Switzerland. In spite of her real courage, and although she had often
been known to be prodigal and fearless in her attendance on persons
attacked by infectious complaints, she had an invincible and almost
superstitious terror of cholera. Was it a presentiment? She died of
cholera on the 11th of May 1849.--B.]

[Footnote 461: Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Comte de
Saint-Leu, later Prince President of the French Republic, later
Napoleon III. Emperor of the French (1808-1873), third son of Hortense
de Beauhamais and, putatively, of Louis King of Holland, younger
brother of Napoleon I.--T.]

[Footnote 462: Ancona, in the Papal States, was held by the French from
1831 to 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 463: Charles Parquin, an ex-officer of the Imperial Army,
had known Prince Louis since 1822. In 1824, he bought the estate of
Wolfsberg, situated near Arenenberg, and married Mademoiselle Cochelet,
who was a maid-of-honour of Queen Hortense and who had been brought
up with the Queen, when the latter was Mademoiselle de Beauhamais, at
Madame Campan's. Major Parquin took a most active part in the Strasburg
enterprise, 30 October 1836. He was arrested by the Prince's side,
tried and acquitted (6 January 1837).--B.]

[Footnote 464: John Huss (1369-1415), the Bohemian reformer and
Wyclifite, was cited before the Council of Constance, in Baden, and
burned at the stake as a heretic on the 6th of July 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 465: Jerome of Prague (_circa_ 1365-1416) was a
fellow-countryman, associate and follower of Huss. He was burned at
Constance on the 30th of May 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 466: Constance was sacked by the Huns in the fifth
century.--T.]

[Footnote 467: In the early part of the tenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 468: 30 August to 5 October 1633.--T.]

[Footnote 469: In 1796 and 1799.--T.]

[Footnote 470: Charles III. Emperor of the Romans and II. King of
France (839-888), surnamed the Fat, died and was buried at the Abbey of
Reichenau, in the Lake of Constance, one year after his deposition.--T.]

[Footnote 471: _Cf._ Vol. IV, p. 287, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 472: Narcisse Vieillard (1791-1857) had been through the
Campaigns of Russia (1812), Germany (1813) and France (1814). Queen
Hortense selected him as tutor for her eldest son, Charles Napoleon
Louis Bonaparte, and afterwards for the latter's brother, the future
Napoleon III. He sat as a deputy or as a representative of the people
from 1842 to 1846 and from 1848 to 1851; assisted in preparing and
carrying out the _coup d'État_ of the 2nd of December 1851 and was
appointed a senator in January 1852. His republicanism, however,
marched abreast with his Bonapartism, and he voted against the
restoration of the Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 473: Cottreau was a friend of Prince Louis Napoleon's and
lived permanently at Arenenberg. He accompanied the Prince on a visit
to England.--B.]

[Footnote 474: The Swiss defeated the Imperials at the Battle of
Sempach, on the Lake of Sempach, on the 9th of July 1386, thus securing
Swiss independence.--T.]

[Footnote 475: LUKE, XXIV., 5.--T.]

[Footnote 476: Byron abandoned England for good on the 25th of April
1816 and, in the summer of that year, spent some months at Diodati,
near Geneva. It was here that he wrote the third canto of _Childe
Harold_, the _Prisoner of Chillon_ and _Manfred_, the third act of
which, however, he subsequently rewrote.--T.]

[Footnote 477: The Duchesse de Berry was arrested at Nantes on the 7th
of November 1832. On the 12th, Berryer walked into Chateaubriand's
study at Geneva and told him the news, without being able to give him
any details. Chateaubriand at once left for Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 478: Félix Barthe.--T.]

[Footnote 479: Marshal Soult combined the offices of President of the
Council and Minister for War.--T.]

[Footnote 480: Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre Marquis de Pastoret
(1756-1840) filled various legal offices under Louis XVI. and was
Minister of Justice and the Interior for a short while. He emigrated
during the Terror and returned to France in 1795. After being elected
to the Council of the Five Hundred, he was again obliged to flee, and
remained in Switzerland till 1800. He obtained a professorial chair
at the College of France in 1804 and became a senator in 1809. Under
the Restoration, he received a peerage, was appointed President of the
House of Peers in 1820, a minister of State in 1826 and Chancellor
of France in 1829. In 1834, he was chosen to be tutor to the Duc de
Bordeaux. Pastoret was the author of several important works, including
a fine _Histoire générale de la législation des peuples_, and was a
member of the French Academy and of the Academies of Inscriptions and
of Moral Science.--T.]

[Footnote 481: The text of the letter of the 12th November ran as
follows:

    "MADAME,

    "You will think me very daring to come to importune you at such
    a moment to beg you to grant me a favour, the last ambition of
    my life: I desire ardently to be chosen by you as one of your
    defenders. I have no personal claim to the high favour which I
    solicit of your new grandeurs; but I dare to ask it in memory of a
    Prince of whom you deigned to name me the historian, and I hope for
    it again as the price of the blood of my family. My brother had the
    honour to die with his illustrious grandfather, M. de Malesherbes,
    on the same day, at the same hour, for the same cause and on the
    same scaffold.

    "I am, etc.

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."]

[Footnote 482: Jean Marie Pardessus (1772-1853), a meritorious jurist
and historian. He was a member of the various legislative assemblies
from 1806 to 1830 and occupied different professorial and legal
offices, which he relinquished after the Usurpation, devoting the
remainder of his life to his historical and critical writings on
law.--T.]

[Footnote 483: M. Mandaroux-Vertamy was one of Chateaubriand's
executors.--T.]

[Footnote 484: Brennus, the leader of the Senonian Gauls who overran
Italy and captured Rome, about 390 B.C., laid siege to the Capitol for
six months, until bought off by the garrison with 1,000 pounds of gold.
According to a later legend, when the gold was being weighed, a Roman
tribune remonstrated against the use of false weights by the Gauls.
Brennus threw his sword into the scale with the famous exclamation, _Væ
victis!_--T.]

[Footnote 485: This pamphlet was published on the 29th of December
1832.--B.]

[Footnote 486: The Duchesse de Berry was betrayed by Simon Deutz, a
converted Jew, to Thiers, for a sum variously named as 500,000 and
100,000 francs. She was discovered in hiding, with her confidants,
behind the movable slab or plate of a chimney, in which a fire had been
lighted by the gendarmes.--T.]

[Footnote 487: LUKE, XXII., 3.--T.]

[Footnote 488: St. Laurence (_d._ 258) was martyred by being roasted
alive in an iron chair or on a gridiron in Rome. The Church honours him
on the 10th of August.--T.]

[Footnote 489: Lucius Septimus Severus, Roman Emperor (146-211). He
became Emperor in 193; his persecution of the Christians was decreed in
201. Severus died in Britain, at York.--T.]

[Footnote 490: This is the text of the declaration, which was inserted
in the _Moniteur_ of the 26th of February 1833:

    "Driven by circumstances and by the measures ordered by the
    Government, although I had the gravest reasons to keep my marriage
    secret, I think it my duty to myself, as well as to my children, to
    declare that I was secretly married during my residence in Italy.

    "MARIE-CAROLINE.

    "At the CITADEL OF BLAYE, 22 _February_ 1833."--B.]

[Footnote 491: Chateaubriand appeared before the Assize Court of the
Seine on the 27th of February 1833. With him were prosecuted the
editors of the _Quotidienne_, the _Gazette de France_, the _Revenant_,
the _Écho français_, the _Mode_, the _Courrier de l'Europe_ and a young
student, M. Victor Thomas, who had, on the 4th of January, acted as
spokesman for 1,200 young men who had gone to make a display of their
enthusiasm to Chateaubriand and who had repeated with him:

"Madame, your son is my King!"

All were acquitted after an admirable speech for the defense by M.
Berryer, who appeared for the _Quotidienne_ and the _Gazette de
France._ Maître Charles Ledru appeared for the defense of the _Écho
français_ and, incidentally and, as it seems, somewhat unfortunately,
for Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 492: Jean Charles Persil (1785-1870) was a deputy from 1830
to 1839, a peer of France from 1839 to 1848 and a Councillor of State
under the Second Empire. Immediately after the Revolution of July, he
was appointed Attorney-general to the Royal Court of Paris. His zeal
in prosecuting the republican and legitimist papers alike won him a
formidable unpopularity.--B.]

[Footnote 493: M. de Falloux, who had made his way into court in
a barrister's robes, describes the scene in his Memoirs. When the
presiding judge had announced the acquittal of all the defendants, the
crowd pressed around Berryer and Chateaubriand. The latter was obliged
to cling to M. de Falloux' arm so as not to be thrown down.

"I don't like fuss!" he kept saying. "I don't like fuss! Take me
quickly to my carriage!"

But on the steps the cheers were redoubled:

"Long live Chateaubriand! The liberty of the press for ever!"

They wanted to unharness the horses and yoke themselves to the carriage:

"Don't!" he entreated. "It's very far, it's very far, you can't do it!"

At last the driver succeeded in clearing a way, and set out at a
gallop. (_Cf._ FALLOUX, _Mémoires d'un royaliste_, vol. I. p. 60.)--B.]

[Footnote 494: The famous restaurateur in the Palais-Royal. Alas, at
the moment of writing this note, Chevet's has just put out its fires
and closed its doors!--B.]

[Footnote 495: Lucius Junius Brutus, Roman Consul (_fl._. 509 B.C.),
condemned his own sons, Titus and Tiberius, to death, for conspiring to
restore Tarquin.--T.]




BOOK III[496]


The Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse--Letter from Madame la Duchesse
de Berry from the Citadel of Blaye--Departure from Paris--M. de
Talleyrand's calash--Basle--Journal from Paris to Prague, from the 14th
to the 24th of May 1833, written in pencil in the carriage, in ink at
the inns--The banks of the Rhine--Falls of the Rhine--Mösskirch--A
storm--The Danube--Ulm--Blenheim--Louis XIV.--An Hercynian forest--The
Barbarians--Sources of the Danube--Ratisbon--Decrease in social
life as one goes farther from France--Religious feelings of the
Germans--Arrival at Waldmünchen--The Austrian custom-house--I am
refused admission into Bohemia--Stay at Waldmünchen--Letters to
Count Choteck--Anxiety--The Viaticum--The chapel--My room at the
inn--Description of Waldmünchen--Letter from Count Choteck--The
peasant-girl--I leave Waldmünchen and enter Bohemia--A pine
forest--Conversation with the moon--Pilsen--The high-roads of the
North-View of Prague.


PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 9 _May_ 1833.

I have brought the sequence of the most recent facts up to this day;
shall I at last be able to resume my work? This work consists of the
different portions of these Memoirs which are not yet finished, and
I shall have some difficulty in applying myself to them again _ex
abrupto_, for my head is filled with the things of the moment; I am
not in the mood suited for gathering my past in the calm where it is
sleeping, agitated though it was when in the state of life. I have
taken up my pen to write; what on and what about I know not.

On glancing through the journal in which, for the last six months, I
have kept a record of what I do and of what happens to me, I see that
most of the pages are dated from the Rue d'Enfer.

The small house which I occupy near the barrier may be worth sixty
thousand francs or so; but, at the time of the rise in the price of
ground, I bought it much dearer and I have never been able to pay
for it: it was a question of saving the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse,
founded by the care of Madame de Chateaubriand and adjoining the house;
a company of builders was proposing to establish a café and _montagnes
russes_[497] in the aforesaid house, a noise which does not go very
well with the death-agony.

Am I not glad of my sacrifices? Certainly: one is always glad to
succour the unfortunate; I would willingly share the little I possess
with those in need; but I do not know that this disposition amounts
to virtue in my case. My goodness is like that of a condemned man who
is lavish of that for which he will have no use in an hour's time. In
London, the convict whom they are about to hang sells his skin for
drink: I do not sell mine, I give it to the grave-diggers.

Once the house was bought, the best that I could do was to live in it;
I have arranged it as it is. From the windows of the drawing-room one
sees first what the English call a "pleasure-ground," a proscenium
consisting of a lawn and some blocks of shrubs. Beyond this enclosure,
on the other side of wall, the height of a man's breast, surmounted by
a white, lozenged fence, is a field of mixed cultivation, reserved for
the provender of the cattle of the Infirmary. Beyond this field comes
another piece of ground separated from the field by another breast-high
wall in green open-work, interlaced with viburnums and Bengal roses;
these marches of my State embrace a clump of trees, a meadow and an
alley of poplars. This nook is extremely solitary; it does not smile to
me like Horace' nook: "_angulus ridet._[498]" On the contrary, I have
sometimes shed tears there. The proverb says that "youth must have its
fling." The decline of life also has some freaks to overlook:

     Les pleurs et la pitié,
     Sorte d'amour ayant ses charmes[499].

My trees are of a thousand kinds. I have planted twenty-three cedars of
Lebanon and two druid oaks: they make game of their short-lived master,
_brevem dominum._ A mall, a double avenue of chesnuts, leads from the
upper to the lower garden; the ground slopes rapidly along the field
between.

I did not choose these trees, as at the Vallée aux Loups, in memory of
the spots which I have visited: he who takes pleasure in recollection
cherishes hopes. But, when one has no children, nor youth, nor
country, what attachment can one bear to trees whose foliage,
flowers, fruits are no longer the mysterious numerals employed in the
calculation of the periods of illusion. In vain people say to me, "You
are growing younger:" do they think that they will make me take my
wisdom-teeth for my milk-teeth? And even the latter have been given me
only to eat a bitter loaf under the Royalty of the 7th of August. For
the rest, my trees are not much interested to know whether they serve
as a calendar for my pleasures or as a death-certificate of my years;
they increase daily, from the day that I decrease: they wed those of
the grounds of the Foundling Hospital and the Boulevard d'Enfer which
surround me. I do not see a single house; I should be less separated
from the world at two hundred leagues from Paris. I hear the bleating
of the goats which feed the abandoned orphans. Ah, if I had been, like
these, in the arms of St. Vincent de Paul[500]! Born of a frailty,
obscure and unknown as they are, I should to-day be some nameless
workman, having no concern with men, nor knowing either why or how I
entered life or how and why I was to quit it.

[Sidenote: Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse.]

By pulling down a wall, I have placed myself in communication with
the Infirmerie de Marie Thérèse; I find myself at the same time in
a monastery, a farm, an orchard and a park. In the morning, I wake
to the sound of the _Angelus_; I hear from my bed the singing of the
priests in the chapel; I see from my window a Calvary which stands
between a walnut-tree and an elder-tree: cows, chickens, pigeons and
bees; sisters of Charity in black taminy gowns and white dimity caps,
convalescent women, old ecclesiastics go roaming among the lilacs,
azaleas, calycanthuses and rhododendrons of the flower-garden, among
the rose-trees, gooseberry-bushes, strawberry-plants and vegetables of
the kitchen-garden. Some of my octogenarian vicars were exiled with me:
after mingling my poverty with theirs on the lawns of Kensington, I
have offered the grass-plots of my hospice to their failing foot-steps;
they there drag their pious old age like the folds of the veil of the
sanctuary.

I have as a companion a fat red-gray cat with black cross stripes,
born at the Vatican in the Raphael Gallery: Leo XII. brought it up in a
skirt of his robe, where I used to watch it with envy, when the Pontiff
gave me my audiences as Ambassador. On the death of the successor of
St. Peter, I inherited the cat without a master, as I have told in
writing of my Roman Embassy. They called it Micetto, surnamed the
Pope's Cat. In this capacity it enjoys an extreme consideration among
pious souls. I strive to make it forget exile, the Sistine Chapel and
the sun of Michael Angelo's dome, on which it used to take its walks
far removed from earth.

My house and the different buildings of the Infirmary, with their
chapel and the Gothic sacristy, present the appearance of a colony
or hamlet. On ceremonial days, religion hiding under my roof, the
Old Monarchy in my alms-house form up in marching order. Processions
composed of all our valetudinarians, preceded by the young girls of
the neighbourhood, pass under the trees, singing, with the Blessed
Sacrament, the cross and the banner. Madame de Chateaubriand follows
them, beads in hand, proud of the flock which is the object of her
solicitude. The blackbirds whistle, the red-breasts warble, the
nightingales compete against the hymns. I am carried back to the
Rogations, of which I have described the rustic pomp[501]; from the
theory of Christianity, I have passed to its practice.

My home faces west. In the evening, the tree-tops lighted from behind
imprint their black, serrate outlines on the horizon. My youth returns
at that hour; it revives those lapsed days which time has reduced
to the unsubstantiality of phantoms. When the constellations pierce
through their blue arch, I remember that splendid firmament which
I admired from the bosom of the American forests or the lap of the
Ocean. The night is more favourable than the day to the traveller's
reminiscences: it hides from his eyes the landscapes that would
remind him of the regions which he inhabits; it shows him only the
luminaries, which look the same under the different latitudes of the
same hemisphere. Then he recognises those stars which he contemplated
in such a country, at such a time; the thoughts which he entertained,
the feelings which he underwent in the different portions of the world
shoot up and fix themselves at the same point in the sky.

[Sidenote: Life at the Infirmary.]

We hear speak of the world, in the Infirmary, only at the two public
collections and a little on Sundays: on those days, our hospice
changes into a kind of parish-church. The Sister Superior pretends
that beautiful ladies come to Mass in the hope of seeing me; skilful
manager that she is, she lays their curiosity under contribution: by
promising to show me to them, she attracts them to the laboratory; once
she has entrapped them, she forces sweet-stuff on them, willy-nilly,
in exchange for money. She makes me serve at the sale of the chocolate
manufactured for the profit of her patients, even as La Martinière took
me into partnership for the trade in the gooseberry-syrup which he used
to quaff to the success of his love-affairs[502]. The sainted woman
also steals stumps of quills from Madame de Chateaubriand's ink-stand;
she trades in them among the thorough-bred Royalists, declaring that
with those precious stumps were written the "superb _Mémoire sur la
captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry._"

A few good pictures of the Spanish and Italian Schools, a Virgin by
Guérin, the _St. Theresa_, the last master-piece of the painter of
_Corinne_[503], make us attached to the arts. As for history, we shall
soon have at the hospice a sister of the Marquis de Favras and a
daughter of Madame Roland: the Monarchy and the Republic have set me to
expiate their ingratitude and to feed their invalids.

All are anxious to be received at Marie-Thérèse. The poor women who
are obliged to leave when they have recovered their health take up
their lodgings near the Infirmary, in the hope of falling ill again
and returning to it. Nothing smacks of the hospital: the Jewess, the
Protestant, the Catholic, the foreigner, the Frenchwoman receive the
cares of a delicate charity disguising itself as an affectionate
relationship; each afflicted woman seems to have found her mother. I
have seen a Spaniard, beautiful as Dorothea the "Pearl of Seville,"
die at sixteen of consumption, in the common dormitory, congratulating
herself upon her happiness, looking as she smiled, with great, black,
half-dimmed eyes, a pale and emaciated face, at Madame la Dauphine,
who asked after her and assured her that she would soon be well. She
expired that same evening, far from the Mosque of Cordova and the banks
of the Guadalquivir, her native stream:

"'What are you?'

"'A Spaniard.'

"'A Spaniard and here[504]!'"


We have many widows of knights of the Holy Ghost among our frequenters;
they bring with them the only thing that remains to them, the portraits
of their husbands in the uniform of a captain of foot: a white coat
with rose-pink or sky-blue facings, with their hair dressed _à l'oiseau
royal._ They are put in the lumber-room. I cannot look at the regiment
of them without laughing: if the Old Monarchy had survived, I should
to-day be adding to the number of those portraits, I should be acting
as the solace of my grand-nephews in some deserted gallery:

"That's your great-uncle François, the captain in the Navarre Regiment:
he was a very witty man! He wrote the riddle in the _Mercure_ beginning
with the words, 'Cut off my head,' and the fugitive poem, in the
_Almanach des Muses_, called the _Cri du cœur._"

When I am tired of my gardens, the plain of Montrouge takes their
place. I have seen that plain change: what have I not seen change!
Twenty-five years ago, I used to pass by the Barrière du Maine when
going to Méréville, to the Marais, to the Vallée aux Loups; to the
right and left of the road one saw only mills, the wheels of the
cranes at the stone-pits and the nursery-garden of Cels, Rousseau's
old friend. Desnoyers built his rooms of a "hundred covers" for the
soldiers of the Imperial Guard, who came to clink glasses between each
battle won, each kingdom overthrown. A few public-houses stood round
the mills, from the Barrière du Maine to the Barrière du Montparnasse.
Higher up were the _Moulin janséniste_ and Lauzun's pleasure-house, by
way of a contrast. Near the public-houses, acacias were planted, the
poor man's shade, even as seltzer-water is the beggar's champagne. A
travelling theatre fixed the migratory population of the public-house
balls; a village was formed with a paved street, song-writers and
gendarmes, the Amphions and Cecropses of the police.

While the living were settling down, the dead were claiming their
place. A cemetery was fenced in, not without opposition on the part of
the drunkards, in an enclosure containing a ruined mill, like the "Tour
des Abois:" there death brings every day the corn which it has gleaned;
a mere wall separates it from the dancing, the music, the nightly
uproar; the sounds of a moment, the marriages of an hour separate them
from infinite silence, endless night and eternal nuptials.

I often stroll through this cemetery younger than myself, in which the
worms that gnaw the dead are not yet dead; I read the epitaphs: how
many women between sixteen and thirty years old have become the prey of
the tomb! Happy they to have lived only in their youth! The Duchesse
de Gèvres, the last drop of the blood of Du Guesclin, a skeleton of
another age, dozes in the midst of the plebeian sleepers.

In this new exile, I already have old friends: M. Lemoine lies there;
he was secretary to M. de Montmorin and was bequeathed to me by Madame
de Beaumont. He used to bring me almost every evening, when I was in
Paris, the simple conversation which I like so much, when it is joined
to goodness of heart and singleness of character. My sick and wearied
mind finds relaxation in a healthy and restful mind. I left the ashes
of M. Lemoine's noble patroness on the banks of the Tiber.

[Sidenote: My daily walks.]

The boulevards which encompass the Infirmary share my walks with the
cemetery; I no longer dream there: having no future, I have no dreams
left. A stranger to the new generations, I appear to them a dusty and
very bare wallet-bearer; scarce am I covered now with a rag of docked
days at which time gnaws, even as the herald-at-arms used to cut the
jacket of an inglorious knight. I am glad to stand aside. I like to
be at a musket-shot's distance from the barrier, on the edge of a
high-road and always ready to set out. From the foot of the mile-stone,
I watch the mail pass: my image and life's.

When I was in Rome, in 1828, I formed a plan to build, in Paris, at
the end of my hermitage, a green-house and a gardener's cottage, all
to be paid for out of the savings of my embassy and the fragments of
antiquities found in my excavations at Torre Vergata. M. de Polignac
assumed office; I sacrificed to the liberties of my country a place
which charmed me; relapsed into poverty, good-bye to my green-house:
_fortuna vitrea est._

The evil habit of paper and ink brings about that one cannot prevent
one's self from scribbling. I have taken up my pen, not knowing what
I was going to write, and have scrawled this description, at least a
third too long: if I have time, I will cut it down.

I must ask pardon of my friends for the bitterness of some of my
thoughts. I can laugh only with my lips; I have the spleen, a physical
melancholy, a real complaint; whoever has read these Memoirs has seen
what my lot has been. I was not a swimmer's stroke from my mother's
breast before the torments had assailed me. I have wandered from
ship-wreck to shipwreck; I feel a curse upon my life, a burden too
heavy for that hut of reeds. Let not those whom I love, therefore,
think themselves denied; let them excuse me, let them allow my fever to
pass: between those attacks, my heart is wholly theirs.


I had written thus much on these loose pages, flung pell-mell on my
table and blown about by the wind that entered through my open windows,
when they handed me the following letter and Note from Madame la
Duchesse de Berry. Come, let us return once more to the second part of
my double life, the practical part:

    "BLAYE CITADEL, 7 _May_ 1833.

    "I am painfully annoyed at the refusal of the Government to allow
    you to come to me, after the two requests which I have made. Of
    all the numberless vexations which I have had to undergo, this is
    certainly the most painful. I had so many things to tell you, so
    much advice to ask of you! Since I must relinquish the thought of
    seeing you, I will at least try, by the only means left to me, to
    send you the commission which I intended to give you and which you
    will accomplish: for I rely without reserve on your devotion to my
    son. I charge you therefore, monsieur, specially to go to Prague
    and tell my kinsfolk that, if I refused until the 22nd of February
    to declare my secret marriage, my design was the better to serve
    my son's cause and to prove that a mother, a Bourbon, was not
    afraid to endanger her life. I proposed to make my marriage known
    only when my son came of age; but the threats of the Government,
    the moral tortures, driven to the utmost degree, decided me to
    make my declaration. In the ignorance in which I am left as to the
    period at which my liberty will be restored to me, after so many
    frustrated hopes, the time has come to give to my family and to
    the whole of Europe an explanation which shall prevent injurious
    suppositions. I would have liked to be able to give it earlier;
    but absolute sequestration and unsurmountable difficulties in
    communicating with the outside have prevented me until now. You
    will tell my family that I was married in Italy to Count Hector
    Lucchesi-Palli, of the Princes of Campo-Franco.

    "I ask you, O Monsieur de Chateaubriand, to convey to my dear
    children the expression of all my affection for them. Be sure to
    tell Henry that I rely more than ever on all his efforts to become
    daily worthier of the love and admiration of Frenchmen. Tell Louise
    how happy I should be to embrace her and that her letters have been
    my only consolation. Lay my homage at the King's feet and give my
    affectionate regards to my brother and my kind sister. I ask you
    to report to me, wherever I may be, the wishes of my children and
    my family. Shut up within the walls of Blaye, I find a comfort in
    having such an interpreter as Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand;
    he can reckon on my attachment for all time.

    "MARIE-CAROLINE."

    [Sidenote: Letters from Madame.]

    NOTE

    "I have felt a great satisfaction at the agreement that reigns
    between you and M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg[505], as I attach
    a great value to this in the interest of my son.

    "You can show Madame la Dauphine the letter which I am writing to
    you. Assure my sister that, so soon as I have recovered my liberty,
    I shall think nothing more urgent than to send her all the papers
    relating to political affairs. My great wish would have been to
    proceed to Prague so soon as I was free; but the sufferings of all
    kinds that I have undergone have so greatly destroyed my health
    that I shall be obliged to stop some time in Italy so as to recover
    a little and not to frighten my poor children too much by the
    change in me. Study my son's character: his good qualities, his
    inclinations, even his faults; you will tell the King, Madame la
    Dauphine and myself what there is to correct, to change, to make
    perfect, and you will let France know what she has to expect from
    her young King.

    "Through my different relations with the Emperor of Russia, I
    know that he has on several occasions very favourably received
    propositions for a marriage between my son and the Princess
    Olga[506]. M. de Choulot will give you the most precise information
    touching the persons who are at present at Prague.

    "Desiring to remain French above all, I ask you to obtain leave
    from the King for me to keep my title of Princess and my name. The
    mother[507] of the King of Sardinia[508] continues to call herself
    Princess of Carignan in spite of her marriage with M. de Montléart,
    to whom she has given the title of prince. Marie-Louise Duchess
    of Parma kept her title of Empress, when she married Count von
    Neipperg, and remained the guardian of her son: her other children
    are called Neipperg.

    "I beg you to set out as promptly as possible for Prague, as I
    desire more eagerly than I can tell you that you should arrive in
    time for my family to learn all these details only through you.

    "I wish the fact of your departure to be as little known as
    possible, or at least that no one will be aware that you are the
    bearer of a letter from me, so as not to reveal my only means of
    correspondence, which is so precious, although very rare. M. le
    Comte Lucchesi[509], my husband, is descended from one of the
    four oldest families in Sicily, the only ones that remain of
    the twelve companions of Tancred. This family has always been
    noted for the noblest devotion to the cause of its kings. The
    Prince de Campo-Franco, Lucchesi's father, was First Lord of the
    Bed-chamber to my father[510]. The present King of Naples[511],
    having an entire confidence in him, has placed him with his young
    brother[512], the Viceroy of Sicily. I do not speak to you of his
    feelings; they agree with ours in every respect.

    [Sidenote: My mission to Prague.]

    "Convinced as I am that the only way to be understood by the
    French is always to address to them the language of honour and to
    make them look towards glory, I have had the thought of marking
    the commencement of my son's reign by joining Belgium to France.
    Count Lucchesi was charged by me to make the first overtures in
    this matter to the King of Holland[513] and the Prince of Orange;
    and he was of great aid in obtaining a good hearing for them. I
    was not so fortunate as to conclude this treaty, the object of all
    my wishes; but I believe that there are still chances of success:
    before leaving the Vendée, I gave M. le Maréchal de Bourmont powers
    to continue this affair; no one is more capable than he to carry
    it to a successful issue, because of the esteem which he enjoys in
    Holland.

    "M. C.

    "BLAYE, 7 _May_ 1833.

    "As I am not certain of being able to write to the Marquis de
    Latour-Maubourg, try to see him before your departure. You can
    tell him whatever you think fit, but in the most absolute secrecy.
    Arrange with him as to the direction to be given to the newspapers."

I was moved at reading these documents. The daughter of so many kings,
that woman fallen from so high a station, after closing her ear to
my counsels had the noble courage to apply to me, to forgive me for
foreseeing the failure of her enterprise: her confidence went to my
heart and honoured me. Madame de Berry had judged me rightly; the very
nature of that enterprise which made her lose all did not alienate
me. To play for a throne, glory, the future and destiny is no vulgar
thing: the world understands that a princess can be an heroic mother.
But what must be consigned to execration, what is unexampled in history
is the immodest torture inflicted on a weak woman, alone, cut off from
assistance, overwhelmed by all the forces of a government conspiring
against her, as though it were a question of conquering a formidable
Power. Parents themselves abandoning their daughter to the laughter of
the lackeys, holding her by her four limbs so that she may be delivered
in public, calling the authorities from their comer, the gaolers,
spies, passers-by, to see the child brought forth from their prisoner's
womb, even as though they had called France to witness the birth of
her King! And what prisoner? The grand-daughter of Henry IV.! And what
mother? The mother of the orphan whose throne they were occupying! Do
the hulks contain a family so low-born as to conceive the thought of
branding one of its children with so great an ignominy? Would it not
have been nobler to kill Madame la Duchesse de Berry rather than submit
her to the most tyrannous humiliation? Whatever indulgence was shown in
this business belongs to the century, whatever infamy to the Government

Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letter and Note are remarkable in more
than one place: the portion relating to the incorporation of Belgium
and the marriage of Henry V. shows a head capable of serious things;
the portion concerning the Family in Prague is touching. The Princess
fears that she will be obliged to stop in Italy, "so as to recover a
little and not to frighten her poor children too much by the change in
her." What can be sadder and more sorrowful! She adds:

    "I ask you, O Monsieur de Chateaubriand, to convey to my dear
    children the expression of all my affection," etc.

O Madame la Duchesse de Berry, what can I do for you, I a weak creature
already half broken-down? But how to refuse anything to such words as
these:

    "Shut up within the walls of Blaye, I find a comfort in having such
    an interpreter as Monsieur de Chateaubriand; he can reckon on my
    attachment for all time."

Yes: I will set out on the last and greatest of my embassies; I shall
go on the part of the prisoner of Blaye to find the prisoner of the
Temple[514]; I shall negociate a new family compact, take the kisses of
a captive mother to her exiled children and present letters in which
courage and misfortune accredit me to innocence and virtue.


A letter for Madame la Dauphine and a note for the two children were
added to the letter addressed to me.

There were left to me, of my past grandeurs, a brougham in which I had
once shone at the Court of George IV. and a travelling-calash, built in
former days for the use of the Prince de Talleyrand. I had the latter
repaired, in order to make it capable of going against nature; for, by
origin and habit, it is disinclined to run after fallen kings. On the
14th of May, the anniversary of the murder of Henry IV., at half-past
eight in the evening, I set out in search of Henry V., child, orphan
and outlaw.

I was not without anxiety as to my passport: taken out at the Foreign
Office, it bore no description, and it was dated eleven months back;
it had been delivered for Switzerland and Italy and had already served
to enable me to leave France and return; different visas witnessed
these several circumstances. I did not care either to have it renewed
or to ask for a fresh one. The police of every country would have,
been warned, every telegraph set in motion; at every custom-house they
would have searched my trunks, my carriage, my person. If my papers had
been seized, what a pretext for persecution, what domiciliary visits,
what arrests! What a prolongation of the royal captivity! For it would
have been proved that the Princess had secret means of correspondence
outside. It was therefore impossible for me to call attention to my
departure by asking for a passport: I placed my trust in my star.

[Sidenote: I leave for Prague.]

Avoiding the too much beaten road of Frankfort and that of Strasburg,
which runs under the line of telegraphs, I took the Basle Road with
Hyacinthe Pilorge, my secretary, used to all my fortunes, and Baptiste,
my _valet de chambre_ when I was "My Lord," and once more plain _valet_
on the downfall of My Lordship[515]: we get in and out of the carriage
together. My cook, the famous Montmirel, retired when I left the
ministry, declaring that he would not return "to office" till I did.
It had been wisely decided, by the Introducer of Ambassadors under the
Restoration, that any ambassador who died re-entered "private life:"
Baptiste had re-entered domestic service.

When we reached Altkirch, the frontier stage, a gendarme appeared and
asked for my passport. On seeing my name, he told me that he had served
in the Spanish Campaign, in 1823, under my nephew Christian, a captain
in the Dragoons of the Guard. Between Altkirch and Saint-Louis, I met
a rector and his parishioners; they were making a procession against
the cock-chafers, nasty insects much multiplied since the Days of July.
At Saint-Louis, the officers of the custom-house, who knew me, let me
pass. I arrived gaily at the gate of Basle, where I was met by the old
Swiss drum-major who, in the previous month of August, had inflicted on
me "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" but the cholera was
over and I put up at the Three Kings, on the banks of the Rhine; it was
ten o'clock on the morning of the 17th of May.

The landlord procured me a travelling footman called Schwartz, a native
of Basle, to act as my interpreter in Bohemia. He spoke German just as
my good Joseph, the Milanese tinman, spoke Greek, in Messenia, when
enquiring for the ruins of Sparta.

On the same day, the 17th of May, at six o'clock in the evening, I
moved out of port. As I stepped into the calash, I was amazed to see
the Altkirch gendarme among the crowd; I did not know if he had not
been sent after me: he had simply escorted the mail from France. I gave
him some money to drink to the health of his old captain.

A school-boy came up to me and threw a paper to me with the
inscription, "To the Virgil of the Nineteenth Century;" it contained
this passage, altered from the _Æneid_:

     Macte animo, generose puer[516].

And the postillion whipped up the horses and I drove off quite proud
of my high renown at Basle, quite astonished at being Virgil, quite
charmed to be called a child: "_generose puer._"


[Sidenote: The Rhine.]

I crossed the bridge, leaving the burgesses and peasants at war in the
midst of their Republic[517] and fulfilling in their own fashion the
part which they are called upon to play in the general transformation
of society. I went up the right bank of the Rhine and contemplated with
a certain sadness the high hills of the Canton of Basle. The exile
which I had come to seek last year in the Alps seemed to me a happier
life's ending, a gentler lot than the affairs of empire in which I had
re-engaged. Did I cherish the smallest hope for Madame la Duchesse de
Berry or her son? No; and I was, moreover, convinced that, in spite
of my recent services, I should find no friends in Prague. One who
has taken the oath to Louis-Philippe and who nevertheless praises the
fatal Ordinances must be more acceptable to Charles X. than I, who have
never forsworn myself. It is too much for a king that one should twice
have been in the right: flattering treachery is preferred to austere
devotion. I went, therefore, going to Prague even as the Sicilian
soldier who was hung in Paris at the time of the League went to the
gallows; the confessor of the Neapolitans tried to put heart into him
by saying on the way:

"_Allegramente! Allegramente!_"

Thus sped my thoughts while the horses were drawing me onwards;
but, when I thought of the misfortunes of the mother of Henry V., I
reproached myself for my regrets.

The banks of the Rhine flying along my carriage diverted me pleasantly:
when one looks at a landscape out of a window, even though he be
dreaming of other things, a reflection of the picture which he has
under his eyes nevertheless enters into his mind. We drove through
meadows decked with the flowers of May; the green was fresh in the
woods, orchards and hedges. Horses, donkeys and cows, pigs, dogs and
sheep, hens and pigeons, geese and turkeys were in the fields with
their masters. The Rhine, that warlike stream, seemed pleased in the
midst of that pastoral scene, like an old soldier quartered, on his
march, on husbandmen.

The next morning, the 18th of May, before reaching Schaffhausen, I was
driven to the Falls of the Rhine; I stole a few moments from the fall
of kingdoms to improve myself at its image. I should have done well for
myself to end my days in the castle overlooking the chasm. I placed at
Niagara the dream of Atala, not yet realized; I met at Tivoli another
dream, already passed away upon earth: who knows if, in the keep
standing over the Falls of the Rhine, I should not have found a fairer
vision which, but now wandering on its banks, would have consoled me
for all the shades that I had lost!

From Schaffhausen I continued my road towards Ulm. The country presents
tilled basins, in which detached and wooded hillocks bathe their feet.
In those woods, which were then being cultivated for sale, the eye saw
oaks, some felled, others left standing: the first stripped of their
bark where they lay, their trunks and branches white and bare, like
the skeleton of a strange beast; the second bearing the fresh green of
spring on their hirsute and dark, moss-grown limbs: they combined what
is never found in man, the two-fold beauty of old age and youth.

In the fir-plantations of the plain, uprootings had left empty spaces;
the land had been turned into meadows. Those circuses of grass in the
middle of the slate-grey forests have something severe and smiling and
recall the prairies of the New World. The cottages retain the Swiss
character; the hamlets and inns are distinguished by that appetizing
cleanliness unknown in our country.

Stopping for dinner, between six and seven o'clock, at Mösskirch, I sat
musing at the window of my inn: herds were drinking at a fountain, a
heifer leapt and frolicked like a roe-deer. Wherever men are kind to
their beasts, they are lively and love man. In Germany and England,
the horses are not beaten, they are not ill-treated with words: they
back towards the pole of themselves; they start and stop at the least
sound of the voice, at the smallest movement of the bridle-rein. Of all
nations, the French are the most inhumane: do you see our postillions
harnessing their horses? They drive them into the shafts with kicks
of their boots in the flanks, with blows of their whip-handles on
the head, breaking their mouths with the bit to make them go back,
accompanying the whole with oaths, shouts and insults at the poor
brute. Beasts of burden are compelled to draw or carry loads which are
beyond their strength and, to oblige them to go on, the drivers cut up
their hides with twists of the thong. The fierceness of the Gauls is
with us still: it is only hidden under the silk of our stockings and
neckcloths.

I was not alone in gaping; the women were doing as much at all the
windows of their houses. I have often asked myself, when passing
through unknown hamlets:

"Would you live here?"

I have always answered:

"Why not?"

Who, in the mad hours of youth, has not said with Pierre Vidal[518],
the troubadour:

     Don n'ai mais d'un pauc cordo
     Que Na Raymbauda me do,
     Quel reys Richartz ab Peitieus
     Ni ab Tors ni ab Angieus[519].

[Sidenote: Mösskirch.]

There is matter for dreams everywhere; pleasures and pains belong to
all places: those women of Mösskirch who looked at the sky or at my
posting-chariot, who looked at me or who looked at nothing, had not
they joys and sorrows, interests of the heart, of fortune, of family,
even as we have in Paris? I should have made great progress in the
history of my neighbours, if dinner had not been poetically announced
to the crash of a thunder-clap: that was much ado about little.


19 _May_ 1833.

At ten o'clock at night, I got into the carriage again; I fell asleep
to the patter of the rain on the hood of the calash. The sound of my
postillion's little horn aroused me. I heard the murmur of a river
which I could not see. We had stopped at the gate of a town; the
gate opened; my passport and luggage were examined: we were entering
the vast empire of His Wurtemberg Majesty. I greeted in memory the
Grand-duchess Helen, the graceful and delicate flower now confined in
the hot-houses of the Volga. On only one single day did I conceive the
value of high rank and fortune: it was when I gave the fête to the
young Russian Princess in the gardens of the Villa Medici. I felt how
the magic of the sky, the charm of the spot, the spell of beauty and
power can inebriate one; I imagined myself both Torquato Tasso, and
Alphonsus of Este[520]: I was worth more than the Prince, less than the
poet; Helen was more beautiful than Leonora[521]. The representative
of the heir of Francis I. and Louis XIV., I had the dream of a king of
France.

They did not search me: I had nothing against the rights of sovereigns,
I who recognised those of a young Monarch which the sovereigns
themselves failed to recognise. The vulgarity, the modernity of the
custom-house and the passport formed a contrast with the storm, the
Gothic gate, the sound of the horn and the noise of the torrent.

Instead of the lady of the castle whom I was prepared to deliver from
oppression, I found, on leaving the town, an old, simple fellow; he
asked me for _seechs Kreutzer_, raising his left hand, which held a
lantern, to the level of his grey head, putting out his right hand to
Schwartz on the box and opening his mouth like the gills of a hooked
pike: Baptiste, wet and sick as he was, could not hold himself for
laughing.

And what was this torrent over which I had just passed. I asked the
postillion, who cried:

"Donau!"

The Danube! One more famous river crossed by me unknowingly, even as
I had descended into the bed of the oleanders of the Eurotas without
knowing it! What has it availed me to drink of the waters of the
Mississippi, the Eridanus, the Tiber, the Cephissus, the Hermus, the
Jordan, the Nile, the Guadalquivir, the Tagus, the Ebro, the Rhine,
the Spree, the Seine and a hundred other obscure or celebrated rivers?
Unknown, they have not given me their peace; illustrious, they have not
communicated to me their glory: they will be able to say only that they
have seen me pass as their banks see their waves pass.

[Sidenote: Ulm.]

I arrived at Ulm fairly early on Sunday the 19th of May, after
travelling through the scene of the battles of Moreau and Bonaparte.
Hyacinthe, who is a member of the Legion of Honour, was wearing the
ribbon: this decoration obtained for us an incredible amount of
consideration. I, wearing in my button-hole only a little flower,
according to my custom, passed, until they heard my name, for a
mysterious being: my Mamelukes at Cairo used to insist, whether I would
or no, that I was a general of Napoleon disguised as a literary man;
they would not give in and every quarter of an hour expected to see me
put away Egypt in the sash of my caftan. And yet it is among nations
whose villages we have burnt and whose harvests we have laid waste that
those sentiments exist. I rejoiced in this glory; but, if we had done
nothing but good to Germany, should we be as greatly regretted there? O
inexplicable human nature!

The evils of war are forgotten; we have left on the soil of our
conquests the spark of life. That inert mass set in movement continues
to ferment because its intelligence is commencing. When travelling
nowadays, we see the nations watching, knapsack on back: ready to
start, they seem to be waiting for us in order to place us at the head
of the column. A Frenchman is always taken for the aide-de-camp who
brings the order to march.

Ulm is a clean little town, with no particular character; its
dismantled ramparts have been converted into kitchen-gardens or walks,
which happens to all ramparts. Their fortune has something in common
with that of the military: the soldier bears arms in his youth; when
invalided, he becomes a gardener.

I went to see the cathedral, a Gothic fabric with a tall spire. The
aisles are divided into two narrow vaults, supported by a single row of
pillars, so that the interior of the edifice partakes at one time of
the character of the cathedral and the basilica. The pulpit has for a
canopy a graceful steeple ending in a point, like a mitre; the inside
of this steeple consists of a newel around which winds a helicoid vault
in stone filigree-work. Symmetrical spikes, piercing the outside, seem
destined to carry candles; these used to light up this tiara when the
bishop preached on feast-days. Instead of priests officiating, I saw
little birds hopping in that granite foliage; they were celebrating the
Word that gave them a voice and wings on the fifth day of the Creation.

The nave was deserted; in the apse of the church, two separate groups
of boys and girls were receiving religious instruction.

The Reformation, as I have already said, makes a mistake when it shows
itself in the Catholic monuments upon which it has encroached; it
cuts a mean and shameful figure there. Those tall porches call for a
numerous clergy, the pomp of the celebrations, the chants, pictures,
ornaments, silk veils, draperies, laces, gold, silver, lamps, flowers
and incense of the altars. Protestantism may say as much as it pleases
that it has returned to Primitive Christianity; the Gothic churches
reply that it has denied its fathers: the Christians who were the
architects of its wonders were other than the children of Luther and
Calvin.

19 _May_ 1833.

I had left Ulm at noon, on the 19th. At Dillingen, the horses were
wanting. I stayed an hour in the High Street, having as a recreation
the sight of a stork's nest, planted on a chimney as though on a
minaret at Athens; a number of sparrows had insolently made their nests
in the bed of the peaceful "queen with the long neck." Below the stork,
a lady, living on the first floor, looked at the passers-by in the
shade of a half-raised blind; below the lady was a wooden saint in a
niche. The saint will be thrown down to the pavement, the woman from
her window into the grave: and the stork? It will fly away: thus will
end the three storeys.

Between Dillingen and Donauwörth, you cross the battle-field of
Blenheim. The footsteps of the armies of Moreau over the same ground
have not obliterated those of the armies of Louis XIV.; the defeat of
the great King prevails in the country-side over the successes of the
great Emperor.

The postillion who drove me belonged to Blenheim; on coming up to his
village, he blew the horn: perhaps he was announcing his passage to the
peasant-girl whom he loved; she leapt for joy in the midst of the same
fields where twenty-seven French battalions and twelve squadrons of
cavalry were taken prisoner, where the Navarre Regiment, whose uniform
I have had the honour to wear, buried its standards to the mournful
sound of the trumpets: those are the commonplaces of the succession of
the ages. In 1793, the Republic carried off from the church at Blenheim
the colours taken from the Monarchy in 1704: it avenged the Kingdom and
slew the King; it cut off Louis XVI.'s head, but it allowed only France
to tear the White Flag to pieces.

Nothing better conveys the greatness of Louis XIV. than to find
his memory at the bottom of the ravines dug by the torrent of the
Napoleonic victories. That monarch's conquests left our country the
frontiers that still guard it[522]. The Brienne scholar, to whom
the Legitimacy gave a sword, for a moment enclosed Europe in his
ante-chamber; but it escaped: the grandson of Henry IV. laid that same
Europe at the feet of France; and it remained there. This does not
mean that I am comparing Napoleon and Louis XIV.: men of different
destinies, they belong to dissimilar centuries, to different nations;
one completed an era, the other began a world. One can say of Napoleon
what Montaigne says of Cæsar:

"I excuse Victorie in that shee could not well give him over[523]."

[Sidenote: Blenheim.]

The unworthy tapestries at Blenheim Palace, which I saw with Peltier,
show the Maréchal de Tallart[524] taking off his hat to the Duke of
Marlborough[525], who stands in a swaggering attitude. Tallart none
the less remained the favourite of the old lion; a prisoner in London,
he conquered, in the mind of Queen Anne[526], the Marlborough who had
beaten him at Blenheim, and he died a member of the French Academy:

"He was," says Saint-Simon, "a man of middling height
with somewhat jealous eyes, full of fire and spirit, but with
an incessant demon of restlessness in him, owing to his
ambition."

I am writing history in my calash: why not? Cæsar wrote plenty in his
litter: he won the battles of which he wrote; I did not lose those of
which I speak.

From Dillingen to Donauwörth stretches a rich plain of unequal level in
which the corn-fields intermingle with the meadows: one goes closer to
or further from the Danube according to the windings of the road and
the bends of the river. At that height, the waters of the Danube are
still yellow, like those of the Tiber.

Scarce have you left the village before you see another; those villages
are clean and smiling: often the walls of the houses have frescoes. A
certain Italian character becomes manifest as one goes towards Austria;
the inhabitant of the Danube is no longer the _Peasant of the Danube_:

     Son menton nourrissait une barbe touffue;
            Toute sa personne velue
     Représentait un ours, mais un ours mal léché[527].

But the sky of Italy is lacking here: the sun is low and pale; those
close-sown market-towns are not the little cities of the Romagna, which
brood upon the master-pieces of the arts hidden underneath them: you
scratch the ground, and that tillage makes some marvel of the antique
chisel shoot up like a blade of corn.

At Donauwörth, I regretted to have arrived too late to enjoy a fine
view of the Danube. On Monday the 20th, the same appearance of the
landscape; yet the soil becomes less good and the peasants seem poorer.
One begins again to see the pine-woods of the hills. The Hercynian
forest used to project as far as this: the trees of which Pliny left us
a singular description were felled by generations now buried with the
secular oaks.

When Trajan threw a bridge over the Danube, Italy heard, for the first
time, that name so fatal to the world of antiquity, the name of the
Goths. The road was opened up to myriads of savages who marched to the
Sack of Rome. The Huns and their Attila built their wooden palaces
opposite the Coliseum, on the bank of the stream which was the rival
of the Rhine and, like the latter, the enemy of the Tiber. The hordes
of Alaric crossed the Danube, in 376, to overthrow the civilized Greek
Empire, at the same spot where the Russians traversed it, in 1828, with
the design of overthrowing the Barbaric Empire seated on the ruins of
Greece. Could Trajan have guessed that a civilization of a new kind
would one day be established on the other side of the Alps, on the
borders of the stream which he had almost discovered? Born in the
Black Forest, the Danube goes to die in the Black Sea. Where does its
chief source lie? In the court-yard of a German baron, who employs the
naiad to wash his linen. A geographer having taken it into his head
to deny the fact, the noble owner brought an action against him. It
was decided by a judicial verdict that the source of the Danube was
in the court-yard of the said baron and could not be elsewhere. How
many centuries were needed to arrive from the errors of Ptolemy[528]
at this important discovery! Tacitus makes the Danube descend from
Mount Abnoba: _Montis Abnobæ._ But the Hermondurian, Cheruscan,
Marcomannian, Quadian barons, who are the authorities upon whom the
Roman historian relies, are not so cautious as my German baron. Eudorus
did not know so much, when I made him travel to the mouths of the
Ister, where the Euxine, according to Racine, was to carry Mithridates
in "two days[529]:"

    "Having passed the Ister near its mouth.... I discovered a stone
    tomb on which grew a laurel. I pulled out the grasses which covered
    some Latin characters, and soon I succeeded in reading this first
    verse of the elegies of an unfortunate poet:

     "'My book, you will go to Rome, and you will go to Rome
          without me.'"[530]

[Sidenote: The Danube.]

The Danube, on losing its solitude, saw recurring on its banks the
evils inseparable from society: plagues, famines, destructive fires,
sacks of towns, wars and those divisions incessantly springing up from
human passions and errors[531].


After Donauwörth, one comes to Burkheim and Neuberg. At breakfast,
at Ingolstadt, they served me with roe-buck: it is a great pity to
eat that charming beast. I have always been horrified at reading the
account of the inaugural banquet of George Neville, Archbishop of
York[532], in 1466: they roasted four hundred swans singing in chorus
their funeral hymn! There is also a question at that repast of four
hundred bitterns[533]: I can well believe it!

Regensburg, which we call Ratisbon, presents an agreeable view to one
approaching it from Donauwörth. Two o'clock was striking, on the 21st,
when I pulled up before the post-office. While they were putting the
horses to, which always takes long in Germany, I entered a neighbouring
church, called the Old Chapel, and painted white and gilded like new.
Eight old black priests, with white hair, were singing vespers. I had
once prayed, in a chapel at Tivoli, for a man who was himself praying
by my side[534]; in one of the pits at Carthage, I had offered up
my vows to St. Louis, who died not far from Utica and who was more
philosophical than Cato, more sincere than Hannibal, more pious than
Æneas: in the chapel at Ratisbon, I had a thought of recommending to
Heaven the young King whom I had come to seek; but I feared the wrath
of God too much to ask for a crown: I besought the dispenser of all
mercies to grant the orphan happiness and to give him a disdain for
power.

I hurried from the Old Chapel to the cathedral. It is smaller than that
of Ulm, but more religious and handsomer in style. Its stained-glass
windows wrap it in the darkness appropriate to contemplation. The white
chapel was better suited to my wishes for the innocence of Henry; the
sombre basilica made me feel quite moved for my old King Charles.

I cared little for the house in which they used to elect the Emperors
of old: which proves at least that there were elective sovereigns,
even sovereigns who were judged. The eighteenth clause in Charlemagne's
will says:

    "If any of our grandsons, born or to be born, be accused, we order
    that their heads be not shaved, their eyes not put out, their limbs
    not cut off, nor they condemned to death without fair argument and
    enquiry."

One emperor of Germany, I know not which, on being deposed, asked only
for the sovereignty of a vineyard for which he had an affection.

[Sidenote: Rastibon.]

At Ratisbon, in former days the factory of sovereigns, they used to
coin emperors, often of inferior standard; this industry has died away:
one of Bonaparte's battles and the Prince Primate, the insipid courtier
of our universal Gendarme, have failed to resuscitate the dying city.
The Regensburghers, dressed and slovenly like the people of Paris, have
no particular physiognomy. The town, in the absence of a sufficient
number of inhabitants, is dull; grass and thistles are laying siege
to its suburbs: soon they will have hoisted their plumes and their
lances on its turrets. Kepler[535], who made the earth turn, as did
Copernicus[536], sleeps for ever at Ratisbon.

We left by the bridge on the Prague Road, a greatly extolled and very
ugly bridge. On quitting the basin of the Danube, one climbs steep
inclines: Kirn, the first stage, is perched on a rough slope from the
top of which, through watery mists, I discerned dead hills and pale
valleys. The facial aspect of the peasants changes; the children,
yellow and bloated, have a sickly look. From Kirn to Waldmünchen, the
poverty of the landscape increases: one sees few more hamlets; only
huts made of pine logs, plastered with mud, as on the more barren necks
of the Alps.

France is the heart of Europe; as one goes further from it, social life
decreases: a man might judge the distance at which he is from Paris by
the greater or lesser languor of the country to which he is retiring.
In Spain and Italy, the diminution in movement and the progress of
death are less noticeable: in the former country, a new people, a new
world, Christian Arabs occupy your attention; in the latter, the charms
of climate and art, the enchantment of love and ruins leave you no time
for depression. But, in England, despite the perfection of physical
society, in Germany, despite the morality of the inhabitants, one feels
one's self die. In Austria and Prussia, the military yoke weighs upon
your ideas, even as the sunless sky weighs upon your head; something, I
know not what, admonishes you that you cannot write, speak, nor think
with independence; that you must lop off from your existence the whole
of the nobler portion, leaving man's chief faculty to lie idle within
you, as a useless gift of God. No arts, no beauties of nature come to
beguile your hours and there is nothing left to you but to plunge into
gross debauchery or into those speculative truths in which the Germans
indulge. For a Frenchman, at least for me, this manner of existence
is impossible; without dignity, I fail to understand life, which is
difficult to understand even with all the seductions of liberty, glory
and youth.

However, one thing charms me in the German people: its religious
sentiment. If I were not too tired, I would leave the inn at Nittenau,
where I am pencilling this diary; I would go to the evening prayer with
those men, women and children whom a church calls with the sound of its
bell. That crowd, seeing me on my knees in its midst, would welcome me
by virtue of the unity of a common faith. When will the day come when
Philosophers in their temple shall bless a Philosopher newly-arrived
by the post, and offer up a like prayer with that stranger to a God
respecting whom all Philosophers are in disagreement? The rosary of the
parish-priest is safer: I stand by that.


21 _May._

Waldmünchen, where I arrived on Tuesday morning, the 21st of May, is
the last Bavarian village on this side of Bohemia. I was congratulating
myself on being able promptly to fulfil my mission; I was only fifty
leagues from Prague. I plunged into water cold as ice, I made my toilet
at a spring, like an ambassador preparing for a triumphal entry; I set
out and, half a league from Waldmünchen, full of confidence I accosted
the Austrian custom-house. A lowered toll-gate barred the road; I got
down with Hyacinthe, his red ribbon blazing. A young custom-house
officer, armed with a musket, took us to the ground-floor of a
house, into a vaulted room. There, sitting at his desk, as though in
court, was an old and fat chief of German customs, with red hair, red
mustachios, thick eye-brows, sloping over two greenish, half-opened
eyes, and a spiteful look: a mixture of the Viennese police-spy and the
Bohemian smuggler.

[Sidenote: Delayed at the Customs.]

He took our passports without uttering a word; the young official
timidly handed me a chair, while the chief, before whom he seemed to
tremble, examined the passports. I did not sit down, but went to look
at some pistols hanging on the wall and a carbine leaning against a
corner of the room: it reminded me of the musket with which the aga of
the Isthmus of Corinth fired on the Greek peasant. After five minutes'
silence, the Austrian barked out two or three words which my Baslese
translated thus:

"You can't pass."

What! I couldn't pass; and why? The explanation began:

"Your description is not on the passport."

"My passport is a Foreign-Office passport"

"Your passport is an old one."

"It is not a year old; it is legally valid."

"It has not been endorsed at the Austrian Embassy in Paris."

"You are mistaken: it has."

"It has not the blank stamp on it."

"An omission on the part of the embassy; you can see, besides, that
it has the _visa_ of the other foreign legations. I have just passed
through the Canton of Basle, the Grand-duchy of Baden, the Kingdom of
Wurtemberg, the whole of Bavaria, and I have not met with the smallest
difficulty. I had merely to declare my name, and my passport was not
even opened."

"Have you a public character?"

"I have been a minister in France and His Most Christian Majesty's
Ambassador to Berlin, London and Rome. I am known personally to your
Sovereign and to Prince Metternich."

"You can't pass."

"Shall I leave you a security? Will you give me a guard who will be
responsible for me?"

"You can't pass."

"If I send an express to the Bohemian Government?"

"As you please."

I lost my patience; I began to wish the custom-house officer at the
devil. As ambassador of a king on his throne, I should not have minded
a few hours wasted; but as ambassador of a Princess in irons, I thought
myself faithless to misfortune, a traitor to my captive Sovereign.

The man was writing: the Baslese did not translate my monologue, but
there are certain French words which our soldiers have taught Austria
and which she has not forgotten. I said to the interpreter:

"Explain to him that I am going to Prague to offer my devotion to the
King of France."

The custom-house officer, without interrupting his writing, answered:

"Charles X. is not King of France for Austria."

I retorted:

"He is for me."

These words flung back to the Cerberus seemed to make some impression
on him; he eyed me up and down. I thought that his long annotation
might, in the last result, be a favourable _visa._ He scrawled
something on Hyacinthe's passport as well and returned the whole to
the interpreter. It appeared that the _visa_ was an explanation of the
reasons which did not permit him to allow me to continue my road, so
that not only was it impossible for me to go to Prague, but my passport
was stamped as bad for the other places to which I might repair. I
climbed back into the calash and said to the postillion:

"Waldmünchen."

My return did not surprise the landlord of the inn. He spoke a little
French; he told me that a similar thing had happened before: foreigners
had been obliged to stop at Waldmünchen and to send their passports to
Munich to be endorsed at the Austrian Legation. My host, a very worthy
man, was the postmaster of the village and undertook to forward to the
Grand Burgrave of Bohemia[537] the letter of which the following is a
copy:

[Sidenote: Letter to Count Von Chotek.]

    WALDMÜNCHEN, 21 _May_ 1833.

    "MONSIEUR LE GOUVERNEUR,

    "Having the honour to be known personally to His Majesty the
    Emperor of Austria and to M. le Prince de Metternich, I thought
    that I could travel in the Austrian State with a passport which,
    being not yet one year old, was still legally valid and which had
    been endorsed by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris for Switzerland
    and Italy. As a matter of fact, monsieur le comte, I have travelled
    through Germany and my name has been sufficient to allow me to
    pass. Only this morning, the gentleman at the head of the Austrian
    custom-house at Haselbach did not think himself authorized to be
    equally accommodating and this for the reasons set forth in his
    _visa_ on my passport, enclosed, and on that of M. Pilorge, my
    secretary. He has compelled me, to my great regret, to retrace
    my steps to Waldmünchen, where I await your orders. I venture to
    hope, monsieur le comte, that you will be good enough to remove the
    little difficulty which stops me, by sending me, by the express
    which I have the honour of dispatching to you, the necessary
    permission to go to Prague and thence to Vienna.

    "I am, monsieur le gouverneur, with high regard,

    "Your most humble and most obedient servant,

    "CHATEAUBRIAND."

    "Pray pardon, monsieur le comte, the liberty which I am taking of
    enclosing an open note for M. le Duc de Blacas."

Some little pride appears in this letter: I was hurt; I was as
much humiliated as Cicero, when, on his return in triumph from his
government of Asia, his friends asked him if he came from Baiæ or from
his house at Tusculum. What! My name, which flew from pole to pole,
had not reached the ears of a custom-house officer in the mountains at
Haselbach! A thing which seems all the more cruel when one thinks of my
successes at Basle. In Bavaria, I had been addressed as "My Lord" or
"Your Excellency;" a Bavarian officer, at Waldmünchen, said aloud, in
the inn, that my name required no _visa_ from an Austrian ambassador.
Those were great consolations, I admit; but, after all, a sad truth
remained: the world contained a man who had never heard speak of me.

Who knows, however, if the Haselbach customs-officer did not know me a
little! The police of all countries are so affectionately related! A
politician who neither admires nor approves of the Treaties of Vienna,
a Frenchman who loves the honour and liberty of France, who remains
faithful to the fallen power, might well be on the index in Vienna.
What a noble revenge to deal with M. de Chateaubriand as with one of
those bagmen so suspicious to the spies! What a sweet satisfaction to
treat as a vagabond whose papers are not in order an envoy charged to
carry traitor-wise to a banished child the adieus of his captive mother!

The express left Waldmünchen on the 21st, at eleven o'clock in the
morning; I calculated that it could be back on the second day, the
23rd, between twelve and four; but my imagination was at work: what
was to be the fate of my message? If the Governor was a strong man and
a man of the world, he would send me the permit; if he was a timid
and unintelligent man, he would reply that my request did not come
within his powers, he would hasten to refer it to Vienna. This little
incident might at the same time please and displease Prince Metternich.
I knew how he feared the newspapers; I had seen him at Verona leave the
most important business and lock himself up distractedly with M. de
Gentz[538] to draft out an article in reply to the _Constitutionnel_
and the _Débats._ How many days would elapse before the Imperial
Minister's orders were transmitted?

On the other hand, would M. de Blacas[539] be glad to see me at Prague?
Would not M. de Damas[540] think that I had come to dethrone him?
Would M. le Cardinal de Latil[541] be quite free from anxiety? Would
not the triumvirate turn my mishap to account to have the doors closed
against me instead of opened to me? Nothing easier: a word in the
Governor's ear, a word of which I should never know! In what a state
of anxiety would my friends be in Paris! When the adventure was noised
abroad, what would not the newspapers make of it! What wild statements
would they not indulge in!

[Sidenote: Waldmünchen.]

And, if the Grand Burgrave did not think fit to reply to me, if he
were away, if no one dared act in his absence, what would become of
me without a passport? Where could I be sure of being recognised? At
Munich? In Vienna? What postmaster would give me horses? I should be
practically a prisoner at Waldmünchen.

Those are the cares that passed through my brain. I thought besides
of my remoteness from what was dear to me: I have too short a time to
live to waste that little. Horace said, "_Carpe diem_:" a counsel of
pleasure at twenty, of reason at my age.

Tired of "ruminating on every case in my head," I heard the noise of a
crowd outside; my inn stood on the village square. I looked through the
window and saw a priest carrying the Last Sacraments to a dying man.
What mattered to that dying man the affairs of kings, of their servants
and of the world? Every one left his work and started to follow the
priest; young women, old women, children, mothers with their babies
in their arms repeated the prayer for the dying. On reaching the sick
man's door, the priest gave the benediction with the Holy Viaticum.
The by-standers knelt down and made the Sign of the Cross with lowered
heads. The pass-port to Eternity will not be disowned by Him who
distributes bread and opens the hostel to the traveller.


Although I had not been to bed for seven days, I was unable to stay
indoors; it was only a little past one: leaving the village on the
Ratisbon side, I caught sight of a white chapel, on the right, in the
middle of a corn-field; I went in that direction. The door was locked;
through a sloping window one saw an altar with a cross. The date of the
erection of that sanctuary, 1830, was inscribed on the architrave: a
monarchy was being overthrown in Paris while a chapel was being erected
at Waldmünchen. The three banished generations were to come to live in
a place of exile within fifty leagues of the new shelter raised to the
King crucified. Millions of events are realized at one and the same
time: what does a black man sleeping under a palm-tree on the bank of
the Niger care for the white man who falls at the same moment under
the dagger on the shore of the Tiber? What does he who weeps in Asia
care for him who laughs in Europe? What did the mason who built this
chapel, the Bavarian priest who exalted that Christ in 1830 care for
the demolisher of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the feller of the crosses
in 1830? Events count only for those who suffer through them or benefit
by them; they are nothing to those who have not heard of them, who are
not touched by them. A certain race of herdsmen, in the Abruzzi, has
witnessed, without descending from its mountain, the passage of the
Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Romans, the Goths, the generations of the
middle-ages and the men of the present age. That race has not mingled
with the successive dwellers in the valley, and religion alone has
mounted up to it.

Returning to the inn, I flung myself on two chairs, in the hope of
sleeping; but in vain: the movement of my imagination was stronger
than my lassitude. I repeated the contents of my express over and over
again: dinner did not affect the matter. I went to bed amid the lowing
of the herds returning from the fields. At ten o'clock, a new noise:
the watchman sang the hour; fifty dogs barked, after which they went to
their kennels as though the watchman had ordered them to be silent: I
recognised German discipline.

Civilization has made progress in Germany since my journey to Berlin:
the beds are now almost long enough for a man of ordinary stature;
but the top sheet is still sewn to the blanket and the bottom sheet,
which is too narrow, ends by twisting and curling up in such a way
as to make you very uncomfortable; and, since I am in the country of
Auguste Lafontaine[542], I will imitate his genius: I want to inform
the latest posterity of what existed in my time in the room of my inn
at Waldmünchen. Know then, grand-nephews, that that room was like an
Italian room, with bare, white-washed walls, without any wood-work or
hangings, a wide coloured band or skirting at the bottom, a ceiling
with a circle of three fillets, a cornice painted with blue roses with
a garland of chocolate-coloured laurel-leaves and, above the cornice,
on the wall, foliage painted in red on an American-green ground. Here
and there, little French and English engravings, in frames. Two windows
with white cotton curtains. Between the windows, a looking-glass. In
the middle of the room, a table for at least twelve people, covered
with an oil-cloth with a raised ground, stamped with roses and
different flowers. Six chairs upholstered in red tartan. A chest of
drawers, three bedsteads round the room; in a corner, near the door,
a stove in black glazed earthen-ware, of which the sides show the
Bavarian arms in relief; it is topped with a receiver shaped like a
Gothic crown. The door is furnished with a complicated iron mechanism
capable of closing the gates of a gaol and baffling the picklocks of
thieves or lovers. I describe, for the benefit of travellers, the
excellent room in which I am writing this inventory, which competes
with the Miser's[543]; I recommend it to future Legitimists who may
be stopped by the red-headed wild-goat of Haselbach. This page of my
Memoirs will give pleasure to the modern literary school.

[Sidenote: My room at the Inn.]

After counting, by the light of the night-lamp, the astragals of the
ceiling and looking at the engravings of the _Young Milanese_, the
_Beautiful Greeks_, the _Young Frenchwoman_, the _Young Russian_, the
late King of Bavaria[544], the late Queen of Bavaria[545], who is
like a lady whom I know and whose name I cannot possibly remember, I
snatched a few minutes' sleep. I rose from bed at 7 o'clock on the
22nd. A bath took away the rest of my fatigue and I was interested only
in my village, like Captain Cook discovering an islet in the Pacific
Ocean.

Waldmünchen is built on the slope of a hill; it is not unlike a
dilapidated village in the Papal States: a few house-fronts painted
in fresco, an archway at either end of the main street, no ostensible
shops, a dry well in the square, a frightful pavement of large flags
mixed with small pebbles, of the kind which one no longer sees except
in "the neighbourhood of Quimper-Corentin."

The people, whose appearance is rustic, wear no special dress. The
women go with their heads bare or wrapped in a handkerchief in the
manner of the Paris milk-maids; their skirts are short; they walk with
Bare legs and feet, as do the children. The men are dressed, some like
the men of the people in our towns, some like our old peasants. Heaven
be praised, they have only hats, and the filthy cotton caps of our
burgesses are unknown to them.

Every day, _ut mos_, there is a performance at Waldmünchen and I used
to assist at it in the front row. At six o'clock in the morning, an
old shepherd, tall and lean, goes through the village, stopping at
different places; he blows a straight horn, six feet long, which one
would take at a distance for a speaking-trumpet or a sheep-hook. He
first produces three metallic and rather harmonious notes from it; then
he sounds the quick tune of a sort of gallop or _ranz des vaches_,
imitating the lowing of oxen and the grunting of pigs. The fanfare ends
with a long, rising _falsetto_ note.

Suddenly from every gate debouch cows, heifers, calves, bulls;
bellowing, they flood the village-square; they climb up or descend
from all the circumjacent streets and, forming into columns, take
the accustomed road to the pasturage. Follows the prancing squadron
of swine, which look like wild boars and grunt The sheep and lambs,
disposed as a rearguard, form the third part of the concert with their
bleating; the geese compose the reserve: in a quarter of an hour all
are out of sight

At seven o'clock in the evening, the horn is heard again; it is the
herds returning. The order of the march is changed: the pigs form the
van-guard, with the same music as before; a few, detached as scouts,
run at hap-hazard or stop at every corner. The sheep defile; the cows,
with their sons, daughters and husbands, bring up the rear; the geese
waddle on the flanks. All these animals reach their own homes again,
none mistakes its gate; but there are Cossacks that go marauding,
madcaps that play about and refuse to go in, young bulls that persist
in remaining with a mate which does not belong to their manger. Then
come the women and children with their little switches; they compel
the stragglers to rejoin the main body and the rebellious recruits
to submit to the rules. I delighted in this performance, just as,
formerly, Henry IV., at Chauny, used to be amused by the cow-keeper
called "Tout-le-Monde," who collected his herds to the sound of the
trumpet

[Sidenote: A study in Cattle.]

Many years ago, staying at the Château de Fervacques, in Normandy, at
Madame de Custine's, I occupied the bed-room of Henry IV.: my bed was
enormous; the Bearnese had slept in it with some Florette or other: I
gained royalism there, for I did not have it by nature. Moats filled
with water surround the castle. The view from my window spread over
meadows edged by the little River Fervacques. In those meadows I
perceived, one morning, an elegant sow of extraordinary whiteness; it
looked as though it might be the mother of Prince Marcassin. It lay at
the foot of a willow, on the cool grass, in the dew: a young boar-pig
gathered a little fine, serrate moss with its ivory tusks and came to
lay it on the sleeper; it repeated this operation so many times that
the white wild-sow was entirely hidden: one saw only its black feet
stick out from under the downy verdure in which it was buried.

Be this told to the glory of an ill-famed beast of which I should
blush to have spoken at too great length, if Homer had not sung it I
perceive, in fact, that this part of my Memoirs is nothing less than
an Odyssey: Waldmünchen is Ithaca; the shepherd is the faithful Eumæus
with his swine; I am the son of Laertes, returning after wandering on
land and sea. I should, perhaps, have done better to intoxicate myself
with the nectar of Evanthes, to eat the flower of the moly-plant, to
linger in the land of the Lotus-eaters, to remain with Circe, or to
obey the song of the Syrens saying:

"Approach, come to us!"


22 _May_ 1833.

If I were twenty years old, I should seek some adventures at
Waldmünchen, as a means of shortening the hours; but, at my age, we
have no silk ladders left, save in our memory, and we no longer scale
walls except with the shadows. Formerly, I was very intimate with my
body; I used to advise it to live wisely, in order to show itself quite
lively and quite jolly in forty years' time. It laughed at the sermons
of my soul, persisted in making merry and would not have given two
doits to be one day what is called "a well-preserved man:"

"Out upon you!" it used to say. "What have I to gain by being niggardly
with my spring, in order to enjoy life's days when there will be none
left to care to share them with me?" And it steeped itself over head
and ears in happiness.

I am obliged, therefore, to accept it as it now is: I took it for
a walk, on the 22nd, to the south-east of the village. We followed
through the marshes a little water-current which put some works in
motion. They manufacture linen at Waldmünchen; breadths of linen were
unrolled on the fields; young girls whose business it was to damp them
ran bare-foot on the white strips, preceded by the water that spouted
from their watering-pots, just as gardeners would water a border of
flowers. Along the stream I thought of my friends, I was touched by
their memory; then I asked what they must be saying of me in Paris:

"Has he arrived? Has he seen the Royal Family? Will he come back soon?"

And I was deliberating as to whether I would not send Hyacinthe to
fetch some fresh butter and brown bread, in order to eat cress at the
edge of a spring under a tuft of alder-shoots. My life was no more
ambitious than that: why has Fortune fastened the skirt of my doublet
to her wheel with the hem of the mantle of our Kings?

Returning to the village, I passed near the church: two outer
sanctuaries prop up the wall; one of these shows St. Peter ad Vincula,
with a poor-box for the prisoners: I dropped in a few kreutzers
in memory of the Pellico's[546] prison and of my own cell at the
Prefecture of Police. The other sanctuary showed the scene in the
Garden of Olives: a scene so touching and so sublime that it is not
destroyed even here by the grotesqueness of the figures.

I hurried through my dinner and hastened to the evening prayer for
which I heard them ringing. As I turned the corner of the narrow street
in which the church stands, a vista opened out over some distant hills:
a little light still lingered on the horizon, and that dying light
came from the side of France. A profound feeling gripped my heart
When shall my pilgrimage be over? I passed through Germanic territory
very miserably, when I was returning from the Army of the Princes,
very triumphantly when, as Ambassador of Louis XVIII., I was going
to Berlin: after so many and such different years, I was penetrating
stealthily into the depths of that same Germany to seek the King of
France banished anew.

[Sidenote: An evening service.]

I entered the church: it was quite dark; not even a lighted lamp.
Through the blackness, I recognised the sanctuary, standing in a Gothic
recess, only through its thicker gloom. The walls, the altars, the
pillars seemed to me laden with ornaments and pictures veiled in crape;
the nave was occupied by close-set parallel benches.

An old woman was reciting aloud, in German, the _Our Father_ of the
rosary; women, young and old, whom I could not see, replied with
the _Hail Marys._ The old woman spoke her words well, her voice was
clear, her accent grave and pathetic; she was two benches away from
me; her head bent slightly in the dusk each time she uttered the
word Christo in some prayer which she added to the _Our Father._ The
rosary was followed by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin: the _Ora pro
nobis_, chanted in German by the invisible worshippers, sounded in
my ear like a repetition of the word "hope:" "_espérance, espérance,
espérance!_[547]" We left the church promiscuously; I went to sleep
with Hope: it was long since I had clasped her in my arms; but she does
not grow older and one always loves her, despite her infidelities.

According to Tacitus, the Germans believe the night to be older than
the day: _nox ducere diem videtur._ Yet I have reckoned young nights
and sempiternal days. The poets tell us also that Sleep is the brother
of Death: I do not know; but Old Age is certainly its nearest relation.


23 _May_ 1833.

On the morning of the 23rd, Heaven mingled some sweetness with my
pains: Baptiste told me that the most eminent man of the place, the
brewer, had three daughters and owned my works, set out in a row
among his beer-jugs. When I went out, this gentleman and two of his
daughters watched me go by: what was the third young lady doing? In
former days, a letter had come to me from Peru, written with her own
hand by a lady, a cousin of the sun, who admired _Atala_; but to be
known at Waldmünchen, under the very nose of the wolf of Haselbach,
was a thousand times more glorious: it was true that this occurred in
Bavaria, at a league from Austria, the curse of my renown. Do you know
what would have happened if my trip to Bohemia had been taken out of
my own head alone: but why should I have wanted to go to Bohemia for
myself only? Once I had been stopped at the frontier, I should have
gone back to Paris. There was a man who contemplated a voyage to Pekin;
one of his friends met him on the Pont Royal in Paris:

"Why, I thought you were in China!"

"I have come back: those Chinamen put difficulties in my way at Canton,
so I left them in the lurch."

While Baptiste was telling me of my triumphs, the passing-bell of a
funeral called me to my window. The priest went by, preceded by the
cross; men and women crowded after, the men in cloaks, the women in
black gowns and mob-caps. The corpse, taken up at the third door
from mine, was carried to the grave-yard: half-an-hour later, the
procession-goers returned, _minus_ the procession. Two young women held
their handkerchiefs to their eyes, one of the two uttered loud cries:
they were mourning their father; the deceased was the man who had
received the Viaticum on the day of my arrival.

If my Memoirs reach Waldmünchen, when I myself am no more, the family
in mourning to-day will find the date of its sorrow past. Perhaps, as
he lay on his bed, the dying man heard the noise of my carriage: it is
the only noise of me that he will have heard upon earth.

After the crowd had dispersed, I took the road which I had seen the
funeral take in the direction of the winter sunrise. I found first a
fish-pond of stagnant water, beside which a stream flowed rapidly, like
life beside the tomb. Crosses on the other side of a rising ground
showed me the position of the cemetery. I crossed a sunk road and made
my way, through a gap in the wall, into the consecrated ground.

Clay furrows represented the bodies under the soil; here and there
stood crosses: they marked outlets through which the travellers had
entered the new world, even as beacons at the mouth of a river indicate
the passages open to ships. A poor old man was digging the grave of a
child: alone, perspiring and bare-headed, he did not sing, he did not
jest like the clowns in Hamlet. Further away was another grave, near
which one saw a stool, a lever and a rope for the descent into Eternity.

I went straight up to this grave, which seemed to say:

"Here is a fine opportunity!"

At the bottom of the hole lay the recent coffin, covered with a few
shovelfuls of white dust, while awaiting the rest. A piece of linen
was gleaming upon the grass: the dead took care of their shroud. Far
from his country, the Christian has it always in his power suddenly
to waft himself there; he has but to visit man's last resting-place
around the churches: the cemetery is the family field and religion the
universal mother-land.

It was noon when I returned; by every calculation, the express could
not be back before three o'clock; nevertheless every stamping of horses
made me run to the window: as the hour approached, I grew convinced
that the permit would not come.

To destroy the time, I asked for my bill; I set myself to reckon up the
chickens I had eaten: a greater than I did not disdain this trouble.
Henry Tudor, seventh of the name, in whom ended the Wars of the Roses,
red and white, even as I am going to unite the white and the tricolour
cockades, Henry VII.[548] initialled one after the other the pages of a
little account-book which I have seen:

    "To a woman for three apples, 12 pence; for discovering three
    hares, 6 shillings 8 pence; to Master Bernard, the blind poet,
    100 shillings [this was better than Homer]; to a little man at
    Shaftesbury, 20 shillings."

We have many little men to-day, but they cost more than twenty
shillings.

[Sidenote: Country road to Waldmünchen.]

At three o'clock, the hour at which the express might be back, I went
with Hyacinthe along the road to Haselbach. It was a windy day, the
sky was strewn with clouds that passed across the sun, casting their
shadows over the fields and fir-groves. We were preceded by a herd of
cattle from the village, which raised, as it went, the noble dust of
the army of the Grand-duke of Quirocia, to which the Knight of the
Mancha so valiantly gave battle[549]. A Calvary rose at the top of one
of the ascents of the road; from there one discerned a long ribbon of
the high-way. Seated in a ravine, I questioned Hyacinthe:

"Sister Anne, seest thou no one coming?"

Some village carts seen from afar made our hearts beat; as they
approached, they proved to be empty, like everything that bears dreams.
I had to return home and dine very sadly. A plank offered after the
shipwreck: the diligence was to pass at six o'clock; might it not bring
the Governor's reply? Six o'clock struck: no diligence. At a quarter
past six, Baptiste entered the room:

"The ordinary post from Prague has just arrived; there is nothing for
Monsieur."

The last ray of hope was extinguished.


Scarcely had Baptiste left my room, when Schwartz appeared, waving a
big letter, with a big seal, in the air and shouting:

"Here is de bermid!"

I threw myself upon the dispatch; I tore open the envelope: it
contained, together with a letter from the Governor, the permit and a
note from M. de Blacas. Here is M. le Comte de Chotek's letter:

    "PRAGUE, 23 _May_ 1833.


    "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

    "I much regret that, at your entrance into Bohemia, you should have
    met with difficulties and a delay in your journey. But, in view
    of the very severe orders prevailing on our frontiers regarding
    all the travellers who come from France, orders which you yourself
    must think very natural in the circumstances, I cannot but approve
    of the conduct of the head of the customs at Haselbach. In spite
    of the quite European celebrity of your name, you must be so good
    as to excuse this official, who has not the honour to know you
    personally, if he had doubts as to the identity of your person,
    the more so as your passport was endorsed only for Lombardy, and
    not for all the Austrian States. As to your plan for travelling
    to Vienna, I am writing about it to-day to Prince Metternich and
    will hasten to communicate his reply to you immediately after your
    arrival in Prague.

    "I have the honour to send you herewith the reply of M. le Duc de
    Blacas and I beg you to be good enough to accept the assurance of
    the high regard with which I have the honour to be, etc.

    "The Comte de CHOTEK."

This reply was polite and proper: the Government could not abandon the
inferior authority, which had, after all, done its duty. I had myself,
in Paris, foreseen the cavilling of which my old passport might become
the cause. As for Vienna, I had referred to it with a political object,
in order to set M. le Comte de Chotek's mind at rest and show him that
I was not trying to avoid the Prince de Metternich.

[Sidenote: I receive my permit.]

At eight o'clock in the evening, on Thursday the 23rd of May[550],
I drove off. Who would believe it: I left Waldmünchen with a sort
of regret! I had already grown used to my hosts; my hosts had grown
accustomed to me. I knew all the faces at the windows and doors;
when I walked out, they used to welcome me with a kindly air. The
neighbourhood came running up to witness the departure of my calash, as
dilapidated as was the monarchy of Hugh Capet. The men took off their
hats, the women gave me a little nod of congratulation. My adventure
was the subject of the village gossip; every one took my part: the
Bavarians and the Austrians detest one another; the first were proud at
having allowed me to pass.

I had often noticed, standing on the threshold of her cottage, a young
Waldmünchen girl with a face like a Virgin in Raphael's first manner.
Her father, with the peasant's civil bearing, used to take off his
broad-brimmed felt hat to the ground to me and give me a greeting in
German which I returned cordially in French: standing behind him, his
daughter used to blush as she looked at me over the old man's shoulder.
I caught sight of my virgin again, but she was alone. I waved good-bye
to her with my hand; she remained motionless; she seemed astonished; I
tried to imagine I know not what vague regrets in her thought: I left
her like a wild flower which one has seen in a ditch by the road-side
and which has scented one's way. I passed the flocks of Eumæus; he
uncovered his head grown grey in the service of the sheep. He had
finished his day's work; he was returning to sleep with his ewes, while
Ulysses went to continue his wanderings.

I had said to myself, before receiving the permit:

"If I get it, I shall crush my persecutor."

On arriving at Haselbach, it happened to me, as to George Dandin,
that my accursed good-nature was too much for me[551]; I had no heart
for the triumph. Like a real poltroon, I cowered in a comer of the
carriage, and Schwartz showed the order from the Governor; I should
have suffered too much from the customs-officer's confusion. He, on
his side, did not appear and did not even have my trunk searched. Peace
be with him! Let him pardon me for the insults which I addressed to
him, but which, owing to a remnant of spite, I will not erase from my
Memoirs.

As one leaves Bavaria on that side, a vast black forest of pine-trees
serves as a porch to Bohemia. Mists hovered in the valleys, the
light was fading and the sky, towards the west, was the colour of
peach-blossoms; the horizons fell till they almost touched the earth.
Light is lacking at that latitude and, with light, life; all is dim,
wintry, pale; winter seems to charge summer to keep the hoar-frost for
it until its speedy return. A small piece of the moon, which shone
faintly, pleased me; all was not lost, since I found a face that I
knew. It seemed to say to me:

"What? Are you there? Do you remember how I saw you in other forests?
Do you remember the pretty things you used to say to me when you were
young? Really, you used to talk very nicely about me. Why are you so
silent now? Where are you going alone and so late? Will you never end
recommencing your career?"

O moon, you are right; but, if I did speak of your charms, you know
the services which you used to do me: you used to light my steps, at
the time when I wandered with my phantom of love; to-day, my head is
silvered like your face, and you are surprised to find me solitary!
And you scorn me! Yet I have spent whole nights wrapped in your veils:
dare you deny our meetings on the lawns and by the sea-side? How often
have you looked upon my eyes passionately fixed on yours! Ungrateful
and mocking planet, you ask me where I am going so late: it is hard to
be reproached with the continuation of my journeys. Ah, if I travel
as much as you, I do not grow young again as you do, you who return
monthly into the brilliant circle of your cradle! I reckon no new
moons: my abatement has no limit other than my complete disappearance
and, when I go out, I shall not rekindle my torch as you do yours.

I travelled all night; I passed through Teinitz, Stankau and Staab. In
the morning of the 24th, I went on to Pilsen, the "beautiful barrack,"
Homeric style. The town is stamped with that air of melancholy which
prevails in this country. At Pilsen, Wallenstein[552] hoped to seize a
sceptre: I too was in quest of a crown, but not for myself.

The country is cut and slashed with heights called Bohemian mountains:
paps whose tip is marked by pine-trees and whose swelling outlined by
the green of the harvests.

[Sidenote: And leave Bavaria.]

The villages are scarce. A few fortresses, hungering for prisoners,
roost on the rocks like old vultures. Between Zditz and Beraun, the
mountains on the right become bald. One goes through a village: the
roads are spacious, the posts well equipped; all points to a monarchy
that imitates Old France.

Johann the Blind[553], under Philip of Valois[554], the ambassadors of
George[555], under Louis XI.: by what forest paths did they pass? Of
what use are the modern roads of Germany? They will remain deserted,
for there is no history, art nor climate to call foreigners to their
lonely causeways. For purposes of commerce it is unnecessary that the
public thoroughfares should be so wide and so costly to keep in repair:
the richest trade in the world, that of India and Persia, is conducted
on the backs of mules, asses and horses, by narrow paths, hardly traced
over the mountain-chains or sandy zones. The present high-roads, in
unfrequented countries, will serve only for war, as vomitories for the
use of the new Barbarians who, issuing from the North with the immense
bustle of fire-arms, will come to flood regions favoured by intellect
and the sun.

At Beraun passes the little river of the same name, rather spiteful,
like all curs. In 1748, it rose to the level marked on the walls of
the post-house. After Beraun, gorges twist round a few hills and
spread out at the entrance to an upland. From this upland the road
plunges into a valley with vague lines, the lap of which is occupied
by a hamlet. There commences a long ascent which leads to Duschnik,
the posting-station and the last stage. Soon, descending towards an
opposite eminence, at the top of which stands a cross, one discerns
Prague, on both banks of the Moldau. It is in that town that the sons
of St. Louis are ending a life of exile, that the heir of their House
is beginning a life of proscription, while his mother languishes in
a fortress on the soil from which he has been driven. Frenchmen, you
have sent the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, her to whom
your fathers opened the gates of the Temple, to Prague: you have not
cared to keep among you that unique monument of greatness and virtue!
O my old King, you whom I love to call my master, because you have
fallen! O young lad, whom I was the first to proclaim King, what am I
to say to you? How shall I dare to appear in your presence, I who am
not banished, I who am free to return to France, free to return my last
breath to the air which fired my breast when I breathed for the first
time, I whose bones may rest in their native land. Captive of Blaye, I
am going to see your son!



[Footnote 496: This book was written, first, in Paris, on the 9th of
May 1833 and the following days, and then, from the 14th to the 24th of
May, on the road from Paris to Prague.--T.]

[Footnote 497: An erection of a similar character to the modern
switchback railway.--T.]

[Footnote 498: HOR.: _Od._ II, vi. 14.--T.]

[Footnote 499: LA FONTAINE:

"Pity and tears,
A sort of love not without charm."--T.]


[Footnote 500: St. Vincent of Paul (1576-1660) founded the Congregation
of Lazarists, or Mission Priests, in 1625, the Institution of Sisters
of Charity in 1634, and the Foundling Hospital in Paris in 1648. Still
later, he founded, in 1653, the Hospice of the Name of Jesus and, two
years later, the general hospital for the poor of Paris. St. Vincent
was canonized in 1737 and is honoured on the 19th of July.--T.]

[Footnote 501: _Cf._ the _Génie du Christianisme_, Part IV. Book I.
Chap. 8: _Des Rogations._--T.]

[Footnote 502: _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 106.--T.]

[Footnote 503: Gérard.--T.]

[Footnote 504: LOPE DE VEGA.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 505: Marie Victor Nicolas de Fay, Marquis de Latour-Maubourg
(1768-1850), was an officer in the Body-guard under Louis XVI. He
emigrated in 1792, returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, served
under Bonaparte in Egypt, Germany, Spain and Russia, and lost a leg
and thigh at Leipzig (16 October 1813). He was created a baron of
the Empire in 1808 and a count of the Empire in 1814. In the same
year, the Restoration created him a peer of France. He received a
marquisate in 1817 and was sent to London as Ambassador. In 1819, he
was appointed Minister for War and, in 1821, Governor of the Invalides.
Latour-Maubourg resigned his offices and his peerage after the
Revolution of 1830 and joined the Bourbons in exile. He was appointed
Governor to the Duc de Bordeaux (Henry V.) in 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 506: Olga Nicolaiëvna Grand duchess of Russia, later Queen of
Wurtemberg (1822-1892), married in 1846 to Charles Frederic Alexander
Prince Royal, later Charles I. King of Wurtemberg.--T.]

[Footnote 507: Maria Christina Albertina Carlotta of Saxe-Courlande,
Princess of Savoy-Carignan (1779-1851), married, first, Charles Emanuel
Ferdinand Prince of Savoy-Carignan, by whom she became the mother of
Prince Charles Albert, later King of Sardinia (_vide infra_). The
Prince of Carignan died in 1800 and his widow married the Prince de
Montléart.--T.]

[Footnote 508: Charles Albert King of Sardinia (1798-1849) succeeded
on the death, without male issue, of his cousin King Charles Felix,
in 1831. He abdicated, immediately after losing the Battle of Novara
against the Austrians (23 March 1849), in favour of his son Victor
Emanuel II. Charles Albert died, a few months after, at Oporto (28 July
1849).--T.]

[Footnote 509: Ettore Conte di Lucchesi-Palli (1805-1864) is described
by some genealogists as Marchese di Lucchesi-Palli di Campo Franco e
Pignatelli, Duca Della Gracia. He married the Duchesse de Berry in 1831
and had several children by her.--T.]

[Footnote 510: Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies (1777-1830).--T.]

[Footnote 511: Ferdinand II. King of the Two Sicilies (1810-1859),
half-brother to the Duchesse de Berry, had succeeded his father at the
death of the latter on the 8th of November 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 512: Charles Ferdinand Prince of Capua (1811-1862).--T.]

[Footnote 513: William I. King of the Netherlands had united Belgium
and Holland under his sceptre since 1815. But, after the Insurrection
of Brussels on the 25th August 1830, the Belgian Congress had voted
the deposal of the House of Orange-Nassau. On the 21st of July 1831,
Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected and proclaimed King of
the Belgians. William I. continued to hold the Citadel of Antwerp,
refused to recognise the new kingdom and persisted in his resistance
even after the Siege of Antwerp and the capitulation of the citadel
(23 December 1832). On the date when the Duchesse de Berry wrote her
Note (7 May 1833), he had not yet yielded. It was only on the 21st of
May that he signed a convention for the suspension of hostilities and
the resumption of navigation on the Scheldt and the Meuse. He did not
definitely agree to the separation of Holland and Belgium until five
years later, in 1838. He abdicated in 1840, was succeeded by his son,
William II., the Prince of Orange mentioned above, and died suddenly,
in Berlin, on the 12th of December 1843, in his seventy-first year.--T.]

[Footnote 514: Queen Marie-Thérèse (the Dauphine-Duchesse
d'Angoulême).--T.]

[Footnote 515: The prefix of "My Lord" and "His Lordship," _Monseigneur
et sa seigneurie_, were borne by those nobles only who were peers of
France. Chateaubriand resigned his peerage, in 1830, by refusing to
take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 516: The verse in the _Æneid_ (IX. 641) is as follows:

     Macte nova virtute, puer! sic itur ad astra.

It was Statius who, slightly modifying Virgil's verse, said (_Th._ VII.
280):

     Macte animo, generose puer! sic itur ad astra.

_Cf._ Vol. I, p. 56.--T.]

[Footnote 517: Serious troubles had lately broken out in the Canton
of Basle between the peasants of the country and the burgesses of the
town. The former claimed the right of a separate constitution and
administration, as the conditions of joint government offered them by
the town did not seem fair to them. Before long, the dispute came to an
armed quarrel, attended with some bloodshed.--B.]

[Footnote 518: Pierre Vidal (_d._ 1229), the Provençal troubadour, who
accompanied Richard Cœur-de-Lion to Cyprus in 1190.--T.]

[Footnote 519:

    "Richer I with ribbon owed
     To the favour of Raimbaude
     Than King Richard with Poitiers
     And with Tours and with Angiers."--T.]


[Footnote 520: Alphonsus II. of Este, Duke of Ferrara and Modena
(1533-1597), the patron and persecutor of Tasso and brother of Leonora
of Este (_vide infra_).--T.]

[Footnote 521: Leonora of Este (_d._ 1581), sister of Alphonsus II.
Tasso went mad for love of her in 1577.--T.]

[Footnote 522: They were lost to France by the second Napoleon in
1870.--T.]

[Footnote 523: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke II. Chap. 33: _The Historie of
Spurina._--T.]

[Footnote 524: Camille d'Hostun, Maréchal Duc de Tallart (1652-1728),
defeated the Imperials at Speyer, in 1703, and was beaten by
Marlborough and Prince Eugene at Blenheim, or Hochstadt, in 1704. He
was taken prisoner and carried to England, where he was kept captive
for eight years. During his stay in London, where he had before been
Ambassador, he intrigued to bring about Marlborough's disgrace. On his
return to France, he was created a duke and peer and, later, a member
of the Council of Regency. He became a minister of State under Louis
XV. and was a member of the Academy of Science, but not of the French
Academy, as Chateaubriand says in error.--B.]

[Footnote 525: John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722),
Captain-general of the English Forces from 1702 to 1711.--T.]

[Footnote 526: Anne Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1655-1714),
long under the influence of Marlborough and his wife. This influence
did, in fact, come to an end in 1711, the year before Tallart's
release.--T.]

[Footnote 527: LA FONTAINE, _Le Paysan du Danube_:

    "Upon his chin there grew a bushy beard;
            His person shaggy and weird
     Resembled a bear, but an unlicked bear at that."--T.]


[Footnote 528: Claudius Ptolemæus, known as Ptolemy (_fl._. 150), the
famous Alexandrian astronomer, geographer and mathematician:

    "Ptolemy believed that the sun, planets and stars revolved round
    the earth. His error in calculating the circumference of the globe
    warranted Columbus in supposing that the distance from the western
    coast of Europe to the eastern coast of Asia was about one-third
    less than it actually is; and thus encouraged the enterprise which
    led to the discovery of America" (JEBB: _Greek Literature_, Part
    III. Chap. II.: _From Augustus to Justinian_).--T]

[Footnote 529: RACINE, _Mithridate_, Act III. sc. i.:

     Doutez-vous que l'Euxin ne me porte en deux jours
     Aux lieux où le Danube y vient finir son cours.

    "Do you doubt that the Euxine will take me in two days
     To the spot where the Danube its last tribute pays."--T.


"We are told that, on hearing these verses from _Mithridate_, an old
soldier, who had waged war in those countries, exclaimed aloud:

"'Yes, certainly, I doubt it.'

"He was quite right." (LA HARPE: _Cours de Littérature_, Part II. Book
i. Chap. 3.)-B.]

[Footnote 530: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Martyrs_, Book VII.--T.]

[Footnote 531: I omit a stanza of eight lines quoted from
Régnier-Desmarais.--T.]

[Footnote 532: George Neville, Archbishop of York (_circa_ 1433-1476),
a younger brother of Warwick the King-maker. He was Lord Chancellor
from 1460 to 1467 and became Archbishop of York in 1465.--T.]

[Footnote 533: There is a play upon words here which I cannot render:
_butor_, in French means a bittern and also a booby, a block-head, a
dolt.--T.]

[Footnote 534: _Cf._ the _Lettre à M. de Fontanes._--B.]

[Footnote 535: Johann Kepler (1571-1630), the German astronomer,
inventor of the laws of planetary motion known as Kepler's Laws and
author of _De Motibus Stella Martis_ (1609).--T.]

[Footnote 536: Copernicus (1473-1543), the founder of modern Astronomy
and author of _De Orbium Cœlestium Revolutionibus_ (1543).--T.]

[Footnote 537: Karl Count von Chotek (1783-1868) was appointed Governor
of the Tyrol in 1819, Court Chancellor in 1825 and Grand Burgrave of
Bohemia in 1826; he retained this post until 1843.--T.

The Marquis de Villeneuve speaks of Count von Chotek as follows, in his
Memoirs on Charles X. in exile:

    "His title of Grand Burgrave corresponds in its functions with
    those of our prefects, with less additional burdens and less
    diversity in the matter of details. But his prefecture was a
    whole kingdom. He ruled four millions of inhabitants. Although
    he possessed an immense fortune, he occupied a modest house. His
    political opinions bore a strong impress of Liberalism."--B.]

[Footnote 538: Friedrich von Gentz (1764-1832), a German publicist and
diplomatist (_Cf._ Vol. III. p. 79, n. 1), first in the Prussian and,
later, in the Austrian service, was Chief secretary at the Congresses
of Vienna (1814-1815), Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Carlsbad and Vienna
(1819), Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821) and Verona (1822).--T.]

[Footnote 539: The Duc de Blacas d'Aulps (_cf._ Vol. III. p. 100, n. 1)
had followed King Charles X. into exile and exercised a preponderating
influence over the little Court in Prague. He died in Prague on the
17th of November 1839.--B.]

[Footnote 540: Anne Hyacinthe Maxence Baron de Damas (1785-1862) was
only six years old when he emigrated from France with his family. At
the age of ten, he was entered as a cadet in the artillery-school in
St. Petersburg; he served with distinction in the Russian Army and was
a brigadier-general in 1813. At the First Restoration, he was attached
to the Duc d'Angoulême as a lord of the Bed-chamber and aide-de-camp.
Louis XVIII. made him a lieutenant-general in 1815. In the Spanish
Campaign of 1823, at the head of a division, he handled his troops so
well that, at Llers and Llado (15 and 16 September), he captured a
whole column of the enemy. In reward for his services, the Baron de
Damas was created a peer of France, on the 9th of October 1823, and
appointed Minister for War on the 19th of the same month. One year
later, he succeeded Chateaubriand at the Foreign Office; and, in 1828,
he found himself involved in the fall of the Villèle Cabinet. In 1827,
after the death of the Duc de Rivière, he became Governor to the Duc
de Bordeaux, followed his pupil into exile, and retained his functions
till 1833. In 1834, he retired to his estate of Hautefort and devoted
the remainder of his life to passionate well-doing.--B.]

[Footnote 541: The Cardinal de Latil (_cf._ p. 18, n. 3, _supra_) was
First Chaplain to Charles X., followed his master into exile, and did
not return to France until 1836, after the King's death. He himself
died in 1839, in the same year as the Duc de Blacas.--B.]

[Footnote 542: August Heinrich Julius Lafontaine (1759-1831), author
of a number of novels of a domestic character which attained a great
popularity.--T.]

[Footnote 543: _Cf._ MOLIÈRE: L'_Avare_, Act II. sc. i.--T.]

[Footnote 544: Maximilian I. King of Bavaria (1756-1825).--T.]

[Footnote 545: Maria Wilhelmina Augusta of Hesse-Dannstadt, Queen of
Bavaria (1765-1796), is, I presume, the Queen referred to: Maximilian's
second consort, Frederica Carolina Wilhelmina of Baden (1776-1841) did
not die till eight years later.--T.]

[Footnote 546: Silvio Pellico (1788-1854), an Italian poet and
prose-writer, arrested as a _Carbonaro_ in 1820 and imprisoned for two
years in Milan and Venice. In 1822, he was condemned to death, but his
sentence was commuted and he was kept as a prisoner, from 1822 to 1830,
at the Spielberg, near Brünn. Pellico's chief works are his tragedies,
_Francesca da Rimini_ and _Laodamia_, and his autobiographical work,
_Le mie Prigioni_ (1833), which achieved an immense popularity
throughout Europe.--T.]

[Footnote 547: The two last syllables of the German _Bitte für uns!_
and the French _espérance_ form a rough rhyme.--T.]

[Footnote 548: Henry VII. King of England (1457-1509) united the Houses
of Lancaster (in his own person) and York (in that of his wife, Queen
Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.). He was noted for his avarice.--T.]

[Footnote 549: _Cf._ CERVANTES: _El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la
Mancha_, Part I. Chap. 18.--T.]

[Footnote 550: And not Thursday the 24th, as the earlier editions have
it.--B.]

[Footnote 551: _Cf._ MOLIÈRE: _George Dandin_, Act. III. sc. 10.--T.]

[Footnote 552: Albrecht Eusebius von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland,
Mecklemburg and Sagan (1583-1634), the famous Austrian general. There
is little or no doubt that he was contemplating treachery and intending
to make himself independent in Bohemia, when he was outlawed by the
Emperor Ferdinand II., in January 1634. He was on the point of going
over to the Swedes, who were then on the borders of Bohemia, when he
was assassinated, at Eger, on the 25th of February 1634.--T.]

[Footnote 553: John King of Bohemia (_circa_ 1296-1346), surnamed the
Blind, King of Bohemia, of the House of Luxemburg, from 1310 to 1346.
He was killed at the Battle of Crécy, 26 August 1346.--T.]

[Footnote 554: Philip VI. King of France (1293-1350), the first King of
the House of Valois. He ascended the throne in 1328 and in his reign
(1338) began the Hundred Years' War with England.--T.]

[Footnote 555: George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia (1420-1471), was
elected King in 1458. He subsequently joined the Hussite sect and, in
1466, commenced a persecution of the Catholics, with the result that he
was dethroned in 1468.--T.]




BOOK IV[556]


The castle of the Kings of Bohemia--First interview with Charles
X.--Monsieur le Dauphin--The Children of France--The Duc and
Duchesse de Guiche--The triumvirate--Mademoiselle--Conversation
with the King--Dinner and evening at Hradschin--Visits--General
Skrzynecki--Dinner at Count Chotek's--Whit Sunday--The Duc de
Blacas--Casual observations--Tycho Brahe--Perdita: more casual
observations--Bohemia--Slav and neo-Latin literature--I take leave
of the King--Adieus--The children's letters to their mother--A
Jew--The Saxon servant-girl--What I am leaving in Prague--The Duc de
Bordeaux--Madame la Dauphine--Casual observations--Springs--Mineral
waters--Historical memories--The Teplitz Valley--Its flora--Last
conversation with the Dauphiness--My departure.


I entered Prague on the 24th of May, at seven o'clock in the evening,
and alighted at the Bath Hotel, in the old town built on the left bank
of the Moldau. I wrote a note to M. le Duc de Blacas to inform him of
my arrival and received the following reply:

    "If you are not too tired, monsieur le vicomte, the King will be
    charmed to receive you this evening, at a quarter to ten; but, if
    you wish to rest, His Majesty would see you with great pleasure
    to-morrow morning, at half-past eleven.

    "Pray accept my sincere compliments.

    "_Friday_ 24 _May_ seven o'clock.

    "BLACAS D'AULPS."

I did not feel that I ought to avail myself of the alternative offered
to me: I set out at half-past nine; a man belonging to the inn, who
knew a few words of French, led the way for me. I climbed up silent,
gloomy streets, without street-lamps, to the foot of the tall hill
which is crowned by the immense castle of the Kings of Bohemia. The
building outlined its black mass against the sky; no light issued from
its windows: there was there something akin to the solitude, the site
and the grandeur of the Vatican, or of the Temple of Jerusalem, seen
from the Valley of Jehoshaphat. One heard nothing but the sound of my
footsteps and my guide's. I was obliged to stop at intervals on the
landings of the steps that formed the roadway, so steep was the incline.

As I climbed, I discovered the town below me. The links of history,
the fate of men, the destruction of empires, the designs of Providence
presented themselves to my recollection, identified themselves with the
memory of my own destiny: after exploring dead ruins, I was summoned to
the spectacle of living ruins.

When we had reached the platform on which Hradschin[557] is built, we
passed through an infantry post whose guard-room was near the outer
wicket-gate. Through this wicket-gate we entered a square court-yard,
surrounded by uniform and deserted buildings. On the ground-floor, on
the right, we threaded a long corridor lighted at wide intervals by
glass lanterns hung on the wall on either side, as in a convent or
barracks. At the end of this corridor was a stair-case, at whose foot
two sentries marched up and down.

As I was climbing the second flight, I met M. de Blacas, who was coming
down. I entered the apartments of Charles X. with him; there two more
grenadiers were standing sentry. This foreign guard, those white
uniforms at the door of the King of France made a painful impression on
me: the idea of a prison came to me, rather than a palace.

We passed through three pitch-dark and almost unfurnished rooms: I felt
as though I were wandering once more through the terrible monastery
of the Escorial. M. de Blacas left me in the third room to inform the
King, with the same etiquette as at the Tuileries. He came back to
fetch me, showed me into His Majesty's closet and withdrew.

Charles X. came up to me, held out his hand to me cordially and said:

"Good-evening, good-evening, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: I am delighted
to see you. I expected you. You ought not to have come this evening,
for you must be very tired. Don't stand; let us sit down. How is your
wife?"

[Sidenote at Hradschin.]

Nothing breaks one's heart so much as simplicity of speech in the high
positions of society and the great catastrophes of life. I began to
cry like a child; I found a difficulty in stifling the sound of my
sobs with my handkerchief. All the bold things which I had resolved
to say, all the vain and relentless philosophy with which I intended
to arm my conversation failed me. Should I become the pedagogue of
misfortune! Should I dare to remonstrate with my King, my white-haired
King, my King outlawed, exiled, ready to lay his mortal remains on
foreign soil! My old Sovereign again took my hand on seeing the trouble
of that "relentless enemy," that "opponent" of the Ordinances of July.
His eyes were moist; he made me sit beside a little wooden table, on
which stood two candles; he sat down by the same table, leaning his
good ear towards me to hear me better, thus apprizing me of his years,
which came to mingle their common misfortunes with the extraordinary
calamities of his life.

It was impossible for me to recover my voice at the sight, in the
residence of the Emperors of Austria, of the sixty-eighth King of
France, bent under the weight of those reigns and of seventy-six
years: of those years, twenty-four had been spent in exile, five on
a tottering throne; the Monarch was ending his last days in a last
exile, with the grandson whose father had been assassinated and whose
mother was a prisoner. Charles X. to break this silence, addressed
a few questions to me. Thereupon I briefly explained the object of
my journey: I said that I was the bearer of a letter from Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, addressed to Madame la Dauphine, in which the
prisoner of Blaye confided the care of her children to the prisoner of
the Temple, as to one practised in misfortune. I added that I also had
a letter for the children. The King replied:

"Do not give it to them: they know only a part of what has happened to
their mother; you must hand me that letter. However, we will talk of
all that at two o'clock tomorrow: go to bed now. You shall see my son
and the children at eleven o'clock and you will dine with us."

The King rose, wished me good-night and retired.

I went out; I joined M. de Blacas in the entrance-room; the guide was
waiting for me on the stair-case. I returned to my inn, descending the
streets on their slippery pavements in as short a time as I had taken
long to climb them.

PRAGUE, 25 _May_ 1833.

The next day, the 25th of May, I received a visit from M. le Comte
de Cossé, staying at my inn. He told me of the disagreements at the
Castle relative to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. At half-past
ten, I went up to Hradschin; the Duc de Guiche[558] took me in to M.
le Dauphin. I found him grown old and thin; he was dressed in a shabby
blue coat, buttoned up to the chin; it was too wide for him and looked
as though it had been bought at a rag-fair: the poor Prince excited a
great pity in me.

M. le Dauphin has personal courage; his obedience to Charles X. alone
prevented him from proving himself at Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet
what he proved himself at Chiclana: his bashfulness has increased in
consequence. He finds it difficult to bear the sight of a new face. He
often says to the Duc de Guiche:

"Why are you here? I have no need of any one. There is no mouse-hole
small enough to hide me."

He has said also, repeatedly:

"Don't talk about me; don't trouble about me; I am nobody; I don't want
to be anybody. I have twenty thousand francs a year; it is more than I
need. I have to think only of saving my soul and making a good end."

Again he has said:

"If my nephew had need of me, I would serve him with my sword; but I
signed my abdication, against my own feeling, out of obedience to my
father: I shall not renew it; I shall sign nothing more; let them
leave me in peace, word is enough: I never lie."

[Sidenote: The Dauphin (Louis XIX.)]

And that is true: his mouth has never uttered a lie. He reads much; he
has considerable attainments, even in languages; his correspondence
with M. de Villèle during the Spanish War has its value, and his
correspondence with Madame la Dauphine, which was intercepted and
inserted in the _Moniteur_, makes one love him. His probity is
incorruptible; his religion is profound; his filial piety rises to the
height of virtue; but an unconquerable shyness deprives him of the full
use of his faculties.

To put him at his ease, I avoided entering upon politics with him and
only enquired after his father's health: this is a subject on which
he is inexhaustible. The difference in climate between Edinburgh and
Prague, the King's prolonged attacks of gout, the waters of Teplitz
which the King was going to take, the good which they would do him:
there you have the purport of our conversation. M. le Dauphin watches
over Charles X. as over a child; he kisses his hand when he goes up to
him, asks how he has slept, picks up his pocket-handkerchief, speaks
loud so as to make himself heard by him, prevents him from eating what
might disagree with him, makes him put on or leave off an over-coat
according to the state of the weather, takes him out walking and brings
him back again. I was careful to speak to him of nothing else. Of the
Days of July, of the fall of an empire, of the future of the Monarchy,
not a word.

"It is eleven o'clock," he said: "you are going to see the children; we
shall meet again at dinner."

I was taken to the apartment of the Governor; the doors opened:
I saw the Baron de Damas with his pupil, Madame de Gontaut with
Mademoiselle[559], M. Barrande[560], M. La Villate[561] and a few other
devoted servants; all were standing. The young Prince, scared, looked
at me sideways, looked at his governor as though to ask him what he
was to do, how to act in this danger, or as though to obtain permission
to speak to me. Mademoiselle smiled with a half-smile and a timid and
independent air; she seemed to be paying attention to her brother's
movements and gestures. Madame de Gontaut looked proud of the education
which she had given her pupils. After bowing to the two children, I
went up to the orphan and said:

"Will Henry V. allow me to lay the homage of my respect at his feet?
When he has ascended his throne, perhaps he will remember that I had
the honour to say to his illustrious mother, 'Madame, your son is my
King!' So I was the first to proclaim Henry V. King of France, and a
French jury, by acquitting me, allowed my proclamation to stand good.
God save the King!"

The child, flurried at hearing himself greeted as King, at hearing me
speak of his mother, of whom no one spoke to him now, recoiled and took
refuge between the Baron de Damas' knees, uttering a few emphatic but
almost whispered words. I said to M. de Damas:

"Monsieur le baron, my words seem to surprise the King. I see that he
knows nothing of his courageous mother and that he is ignorant of what
his servants have sometimes had the happiness to do for the cause of
the Legitimate Royalty.'

The governor replied:

"Monseigneur is taught what loyal subjects like yourself, monsieur le
vicomte...."

He did not finish his sentence.

M. de Damas hastened to state that the moment for study had arrived.
He invited me to the riding-lesson at four o'clock.

I went to pay a visit to Madame la Duchesse de Guiche, who lived at
some distance in another part of the Castle; it took nearly ten minutes
to go to her through corridor after corridor. When Ambassador in
London, I had given a little fête in honour of Madame de Guiche, then
in all the brilliancy of her youth and followed by a host of adorers;
in Prague, I found her changed, but the expression of her face pleased
me more. Her head was dressed in a way that suited her delightfully:
her hair, plaited in little tresses, like that of an odalisk or a
Sabine medal, was festooned in ringlets on either side of her forehead.
The Duchesse and Duc de Guiche represented in Prague beauty chained to
adversity.

Madame de Guiche had heard of what I had said to the Duc de Bordeaux.
She told me that they wanted to send away M. Barrande; that there was
a talk of calling in some Jesuits[562]; that M. de Damas had postponed
but not abandoned his plans.

[Sidenote: The triumvirate.]

A triumvirate existed, composed of the Duc de Blacas, the Baron de
Damas and the Cardinal de Latil: this triumvirate tended to take
possession of the coming reign by isolating the young King and
bringing him up in principles and under men antipathetic to France.
The remainder of the inhabitants of the Castle caballed against the
triumvirate; the children themselves headed the opposition. The
opposition, however, had different shades: the Gontaut party was not
quite the same as the Guiche party; the Marquise de Bouillé, a deserter
from the Berry party, took sides with the Abbé Moligny[563]. Madame
la Dauphine, placed at the head of the impartials, was not exactly
favourable to the Young France party, represented by M. Barrande; but,
as she spoilt the Duc de Bordeaux, she often leant towards his side and
stood by him against his governor. Madame d'Agoult[564], devoted body
and soul to the triumvirate, had no credit with the Dauphiness other
than that which she enjoyed thanks to her presence and importunity.

After paying my respects to Madame de Guiche, I went to Madame de
Gontaut's. She was expecting me with the Princesse Louise.

Mademoiselle somewhat recalls her father: she is fair-haired; her
blue eyes have a shrewd expression; she is short for her age and is
not so full-grown as her portraits represent her. Her whole person is
a mixture of the child, the young girl and the young princess: she
looks up, lowers her eyes, smiles with an artless coquetry mingled
with art; one does not know if one ought to tell her fairy-stories,
make her a declaration, or talk to her with respect as to a queen. The
Princesse Louise adds to the agreeable accomplishments a good deal of
information: she speaks English and is beginning to know German well;
she even has a little foreign accent, and exile is already marking
itself in her language.

Madame de Gontaut presented me to my little King's sister; innocent
fugitives, they were like two gazelles hiding among ruins. Mademoiselle
Vachon, the under-governess, an excellent and distinguished spinster,
arrived. We sat down and Madame de Gontaut said to me:

"We can speak, Mademoiselle knows all; she deplores with us what we
see."

Mademoiselle said to me at once:

"Oh, Henry was very silly this morning; he was frightened. Grand-papa
said to us, 'Guess whom you will see to-morrow: it's one of the
powers of the earth!' We said, 'Well, it's the Emperor.' 'No,' said
Grand-papa. We tried again; we could not guess. He said, 'It's the
Vicomte de Chateaubriand.' I hit myself on the forehead for not
guessing.'

The Princess struck her forehead, blushing like a rose, smiling wittily
through her moist and gentle eyes; I was dying with the respectful
longing to kiss her little white hand. She continued:

"You did not hear what Henry said when you asked him to remember you?
He said, 'Oh yes, always,' but he said it so low! He was afraid of you
and afraid of his governor. I was making signs to him: did you see? You
will be more pleased this evening; he will speak: wait!"

This solicitude of the young Princess on her brother's behalf was
charming; I was almost committing a crime of lezemajesty. Mademoiselle
remarked it, and this gave her a bearing of conquest that was
captivating in its grace. I put her mind at rest as to the impression
which Henry had made upon me.

"I was very glad," she said, "to hear you speak of Mamma before M. de
Damas. Will she soon have left prison?"

My readers know that I had a letter from Madame la Duchesse de Berry
for the children: I did not tell them of it, because they did not know
of the details subsequent to the captivity. The King had asked me for
this letter; I considered that I was not at liberty to give it to him
and that I ought to take it to Madame la Dauphine, to whom I was sent
and who was then taking the waters at Carlsbad.

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle.]

Madame de Gontaut repeated what M. de Cossé and Madame de Guiche had
already told me. Mademoiselle groaned with childish seriousness. Her
governess having spoken of M. Barrande's discharge and the probable
arrival of a Jesuit, the Princesse Louise crossed her hands and said,
with a sigh:

"That would be very unpopular!"

I could not help laughing; Mademoiselle began to laugh also, still
blushing.

A few moments remained before my audience of the King. I got into my
calash and went to call on the Grand Burgrave, Count Chotek. He lived
in a country-house half a league from the town, on the side of the
Castle. I found him at home and thanked him for his letter. He invited
me to dinner for Monday the 27th of May.


On returning to the Castle at two o'clock, I was introduced to the
King's presence, as on the preceding day, by M. de Blacas. Charles X.
received me with his customary kindness and with that elegant ease
of manner which the years render more perceptible in him. He made
me sit again at the little table. Here is a detailed account of our
conversation:

"Sire, Madame la Duchesse de Berry commanded me to come to see you
and to hand a letter to Madame la Dauphine. I do not know what the
letter contains, although it is open; it is written in invisible ink,
as is the letter for the children. But in my two letters of credence,
one intended to be shown, the other of a confidential character,
Marie-Caroline explains to me what is in her mind. During her
captivity, she commits her children, as I told Your Majesty yesterday,
to the special protection of Madame la Dauphine. Madame la Duchesse
de Berry charges me besides to report to her on the education of
Henry V., whom they here call the Duc de Bordeaux. Lastly, Madame la
Duchesse de Berry declares that she has contracted a secret marriage
with Count Hector Lucchesi-Palli, a member of an illustrious family.
These secret marriages of princesses, for which there are many
precedents, do not deprive them of their rights. Madame la Duchesse de
Berry asks to preserve her rank as a French princess, the Regency and
the guardianship. When she is free, she proposes to come to Prague to
embrace her children and lay her respects at Your Majesty's feet."

The King answered with severity. I made the best reply that I could out
of a recrimination:

"I beg Your Majesty to pardon me, but it seems to me that you have been
prejudiced; M. de Blacas is no doubt an enemy of my august client."

Charles X. interrupted me:

"No; but she has treated him badly, because he prevented her from
committing follies, from embarking on mad enterprises."

"It is not given to everybody," I said, "to commit follies of that
kind: Henry IV. fought like Madame la Duchesse de Berry and, like her,
he was not always sufficiently strong. Sire," I continued, "you do
not wish Madame de Berry to be a princess of France: she will be so
in spite of you; the whole world will always call her the Duchesse de
Berry, the heroic mother of Henry V.; her dauntless courage and her
sufferings overtower everything; you cannot, like the Duc d'Orléans,
wish to brand at one blow the children and the mother: is it so
difficult for you, then, to forgive a woman's glory?"

"Well, _monsieur l'ambassadeur_," said the King, with good-natured
emphasis, "let Madame la Duchesse de Berry go to Palermo; let her there
live with M. Lucchesi as husband and wife, in sight of all the world;
then her children shall be told that their mother is married; she shall
come to embrace them."

I felt that I had pushed the matter far enough; the principal points
were three-fourths obtained: the preservation of the title and the
admission to Prague at a more or less distant period; feeling surer of
completing my task with Madame la Dauphine, I changed the conversation.
Obstinate minds jib at persistency; one spoils everything, with such
minds, when one tries to carry everything by main force.

I passed to the Prince's education in the interest of the future: on
this subject I was not clearly understood. Religion has made a solitary
of Charles X.; his ideas are cloistered. I slipped in a few words on
the capacity of M. Barrande and the want of capacity of M. de Damas.
The King said:

[Sidenote: Conversations with Charles X.]

"M. Barrande is a man of attainments, but he takes too much upon
himself; he was chosen to teach the Duc de Bordeaux the exact sciences,
but he teaches everything: history, geography, Latin. I have sent for
the Abbé MacCarthy[565], to share M. Barrande's labours; he will be
here soon."

These words made me shudder, for the new tutor could evidently be only
a Jesuit replacing a Jesuit. The fact that, in the present state of
society in France, the mere idea of attaching a disciple of Loyola to
the person of Henry V. had entered into the head of Charles X. was
enough to make one despair of the House. When I had recovered from my
astonishment, I asked:

"Is not the King afraid of the effect upon public opinion of a tutor
taken from the ranks of a famous, but calumniated society?"

The King exclaimed:

"Pooh! Are they still at the Jesuits?"

I spoke to the King of the elections and the desire of the Royalists to
know his wishes. The King replied:

"I cannot say to a man, 'Take an oath against your conscience.' Those
who think that they ought to take it are doubtless acting with good
intentions. I have no prejudice, my dear friend, against men; their
past lives matter little, when they are sincerely anxious to serve
France and the Legitimacy. The Republicans wrote to me in Edinburgh:
I accepted, as concerns them personally, all that they asked of me;
but they wanted to impose conditions of government upon me: I rejected
them. I will never yield on matters of principle; I want to leave my
grandson a more solid throne than mine was. Are the French happier
and freer to-day than they were with me? Do they pay less taxes?
What a milch-cow France is! If I had allowed myself to do a quarter
of the things that M. le Duc d'Orléans has done, what outcries, what
curses! They plotted against me, they have owned it: I wanted to defend
myself...."

The King stopped, as though embarrassed by the number of his thoughts
and by the fear of saying something that might hurt me.

All this was well and good; but what did Charles X. understand by
"principles?" Had he accounted for the cause of the real or imaginary
conspiracies hatched against his government? After a moment of silence,
he resumed:

"How are your friends the Bertins? They have no reason to complain of
me, as you know: they are very severe upon a banished man who has done
them no harm, at least as far as I know. But, my dear fellow, I bear no
one ill-will; let everybody behave as he thinks right."

This sweetness of temperament, this Christian meekness on the part of
an expelled and slandered King brought tears to my eyes. I tried to say
a few words about Louis-Philippe:

"Ah!" said the King. "M. le Duc d'Orléans... he judged.. . What do you
expect?... Men are like that."

Not a bitter word, not a reproach, not a complaint could escape from
the mouth of the thrice-banished old man. And yet French hands had cut
off his brother's head and pierced his son's heart; to such an extent
have those hands been mindful and implacable towards him!

I praised the King with all my heart and in a voice broken with
emotion. I asked him if it was not part of his intention to put a stop
to all that secret correspondence, to dismiss all those commissaries
who, for forty years, have been deceiving the Legitimacy. The King
assured me that he was resolved to put an end to that impotent
mischief; he had already, he said, named a few serious persons,
including myself, to compose a sort of council, in France, competent to
keep him informed of the truth. M. de Blacas would explain all that. I
begged Charles X. to assemble his servants and hear me; he referred me
to M. de Blacas.

I called the King's attention to the time of the majority of Henry V.;
I spoke to him of a declaration as a necessary thing to be made. The
King, who, inwardly, would have nothing to say to this declaration,
invited me to draft the model for him. I replied, respectfully, but
firmly, that I would never formulate a declaration at the foot of which
my name should not appear below the King's. My reason was that I did
not wish to have put to my account the eventual changes introduced into
any deed by Prince Metternich and M. de Blacas.

I pointed out to the King that he was too far from Paris, that one
would have time to make two or three revolutions before he was informed
of it in Prague. The King replied that the Emperor had left him free to
choose his place of residence in all the Austrian States, the Kingdom
of Lombardy excepted.

[Sidenote: The King's poverty.]

"But," added His Majesty, "the towns in Austria that one can live in
are all at more or less the same distance from France; in Prague,
I am lodged for nothing, and my position obliges me to make that
calculation."

A noble calculation for a Prince who had, for five years, enjoyed a
civil list of twenty millions, without counting the royal residences;
for a Prince who had left to France the Colony of Algiers and the
ancient patrimony of the Bourbons, valued at twenty-five to thirty
millions per annum!

"Sire, your loyal subjects have often thought that your royal indigence
might have some needs; they are ready to club together, each according
to his means, in order to make you independent of foreigners."

"I believe, my dear Chateaubriand," said the King, laughing, "that you
are not much richer than myself. How have you paid for your journey?"

I said:

"Sire, it would have been impossible for me to come to you, if Madame
la Duchesse de Berry had not instructed her banker, M. Jauge, to pay me
six thousand francs."

"That's very little!" exclaimed the King. "Do you want any more?"

"No, Sire; I ought even, by careful management, to be able to return
something to the poor prisoner; but I am not good at bargaining."

"You were a magnificent lord in Rome."

"I always conscientiously squandered what the King gave me; I did not
have two sous left."

"You know that I still have your peer's salary at your disposal: you
refused it."

"No, Sire, because you have more unfortunate servants than myself. You
helped me out of my difficulty for the twenty thousand francs of debts
that remained over from my Roman embassy, after the ten thousand which
I borrowed from your great friend M. Laffitte."

"I owed them to you," said the King. "It did not even amount to
what you sacrificed in salary when sending in your resignation as
ambassador, which, by the way, hurt me not a little."

"However that may be, Sire, whether it was due to me or not, Your
Majesty, by coming to my assistance, did me a service at the time and I
will pay you back your money when I can; but not at present, for I am
as poor as a rat. My house in the Rue d'Enfer is not paid for. I live
promiscuously with Madame de Chateaubriand's poor, while waiting for
the lodging which I have already visited, for Your Majesty's sake, at
M. Gisquet's. When I pass through a town, I first enquire if there is
an alms-house; if there is, I sleep peacefully: 'board and lodging, who
asks for more?'"

"Oh, it won't end like that. How much would you want, Chateaubriand, to
be rich?"

"Sire, you would be wasting your time; if you gave me four millions
this morning, I should not have a farthing to-night."

The King shook my shoulder with his hand:

"Capital! But what the devil do you throw away your money on?"

"Faith, Sire, I don't know, for I have no tastes and no expenses: it's
incomprehensible! I am such a fool that, when I went to the Foreign
Office, I would not take the twenty-five thousand francs allowed for
the expenses of installation and that, when leaving, I scorned to
purloin the secret-service money! You are talking to me of my fortune
to avoid talking to me of your own."

"That is true," said the King. "Here is my confession in my turn:
by spending my capital in equal portions from year to year, I have
calculated that, at my age, I can live till my last day without
needing anybody. If I found myself in distress, I should prefer, as
you suggest, to apply to Frenchmen rather than foreigners. They have
offered to raise loans for me, among others one of thirty millions
which would have been subscribed in Holland; but I knew that that loan,
when quoted on the principal exchanges in Europe, would send down the
French funds; this prevented me from adopting that plan: nothing that
would affect the public fortune in France could suit me."

A sentiment worthy of a king!

[Illustration: Henry V. (Duc de Bordeaux)]

In this conversation, the reader will have remarked the generous
character, the gentle manners and the good sense of Charles X. It would
have been a curious sight for a philosopher to see the subject and the
King questioning each other as to their fortunes and making mutual
confidences as to their poverty inside a castle borrowed from the
Sovereigns of Bohemia!

[Sidenote: Henry V.]

PRAGUE, 25 _and_ 26 _May_ 1833.

At the end of this conference, I attended Henry's riding-lesson. He
rode two horses, the first without stirrups, the horse being led, the
second with stirrups, performing volts without his holding the reins,
with a stick passed between his back and arms. The child is daring and
nothing less than elegant in his white trousers, his short coat, his
little ruff and his cap. M. O'Heguerty the Elder, the teaching equerry,
shouted:

"What's that leg doing? It's like a stick! Let your leg go! Good!
Awful! What's the matter with you to-day?" and so on.

The lesson over, the young page-King pulled up on horse-back in the
middle of the riding-school, took off his cap, suddenly, to salute me
in the gallery where I was standing with the Baron de Damas and some
French people, and sprang from his horse as nimbly and gracefully as
the Little Jehan de Saintré[566].

Henry is slender, agile, well-built; he is fair; he has blue eyes with
a trait in the left eye which reminds one of his mother's look. His
movements are sudden; he accosts you frankly; he is curious and asks
questions; he has none of the pedantry which the newspapers ascribe
to him; he is a genuine little boy, like any little boy of twelve. I
complimented him on his good appearance on horse-back:

"You have seen nothing," he said; "you ought to see me on my black
horse; he's as vicious as a demon: he kicks, he throws me; I get up
again, we jump the gate. The other day, he hit himself; he's got a leg
as thick as that. Isn't the last horse I was riding a pretty one? But I
was not in form."

Henry at present detests the Baron de Damas, whose appearance,
character and ideas are repellent to him. He frequently loses his
temper with him. In consequence of these rages, the Prince must needs
be punished; he is sometimes condemned to stay in bed: a stupid
punishment. Next comes an Abbé Moligny, who confesses the rebel and
tries to frighten him out of his wits. The obstinate one will not
listen and refuses to eat Then Madame la Dauphine decides in favour of
Henry, who eats and laughs at the baron. The education proceeds in this
vicious circle.

What M. le Duc de Bordeaux ought to have is a light hand which would
lead him without making him feel the bit, a governor who should be his
friend rather than his master.

If the family of St. Louis were, like that of the Stuarts, a kind of
private family expelled by a revolution, confined within an island,
the destiny of the Bourbons would, in a short time, be foreign to the
new generations. Our old royal power is more than that; it represents
the Old Royalty: the political, moral and religious past of the people
is born of that power and grouped around it. The fate of a House so
closely intertwined with the social order that was, so nearly allied
to the social order that is, can never be indifferent to mankind. But,
destined though that House be to live, the condition of the individuals
composing it, with whom a hostile fate had not made a truce, would be
deplorable. In perpetual misfortune, those individuals would march
forgotten on a parallel line along the glorious memory of their family.

There is nothing sadder than the existence of fallen kings; their
days are no more than a tissue of realities and fictions; remaining
sovereigns by their own fire-sides, among their people and their
memories, they have no sooner crossed the threshold of their house
than they find the ironical truth at their door: James II. or Edward
VII.[567], Charles X. or Louis XIX. behind closed doors become, with
opened doors, James or Edward, Charles or Louis, without numerals, like
the labourers their neighbours; they suffer the two-fold drawbacks
of Court life and private life: the flatterers, the favourites, the
intrigues, the ambitions of the one; the affronts, the distress, the
gossiping of the other: it is a continual masquerade of menials and
ministers, changing clothes. The mood sours in this situation, hopes
weaken, regrets increase; one recalls the past; one recriminates;
one exchanges reproaches which are the more bitter inasmuch as the
utterance ceases to be confined within the good taste of a high origin
and the proprieties of a superior fortune: one becomes vulgar through
vulgar sufferings; the cares of a lost throne degenerate into domestic
worries: Popes Clement XIV.[568] and Pius VI.[569] were never able to
restore peace in the Pretender's Household. Those discrowned aliens
remain under supervision in the middle of the world, repelled by the
princes as infected with adversity, suspected by the peoples as smitten
with power.


[Sidenote: Dinner at Hradschin.]

I went to dress: I had been informed that I might keep on my frock and
my boots; but misfortune is too high in station to be approached with
familiarity. I reached the Castle at a quarter to six; the dinner was
laid in one of the entrance-rooms. I found the Cardinal de Latil in the
drawing-room. I had not met him since he had dined with me in Rome, at
the Embassy Palace, at the time of the meeting of the conclave after
the death of Leo XII. What a change of destiny for me and for the world
between those two dates!

He was still the hedge-priest with the plump belly, the pointed nose,
the pale face, just as I had seen him in the Chamber of Peers with an
ivory paper-knife in his hand. People asserted that he had no influence
and that he was put in a comer and received more kicks than half-pence:
perhaps; but there are different sorts of credit: the cardinal's is
none the less sure because it is secret; he derives this credit from
the long years spent beside the King and from his priestly character.
The Abbé de Latil has been an intimate confidant; the remembrance
of Madame de Polastron[570] hangs about the confessor's surplice:
the charm of the last human frailties and the sweetness of the first
religious sentiments are prolonged as memories in the old Monarch's
heart.

There arrived in succession M. de Blacas, M. A. de Damas[571], the
baron's brother, M. O'Heguerty the Elder, M. and Madame de Cossé.
At six o'clock precisely, the King appeared, followed by his son;
we hurried in to dinner. The King put me on his right; he had M. le
Dauphin on his left; M. de Blacas sat down opposite the King, between
the cardinal and Madame de Cossé: the other guests were placed at
random. The children dine with their grand-father on Sundays only; this
is to deprive one's self of the only happiness that remains in exile:
family life and intimacy.

It was a fish-dinner and none too good at that. The King extolled to me
the merits of a fish from the Moldau which possessed none at all. Four
or five footmen in black roamed like lay-brothers about the refectory;
there was no house-steward. Every one helped himself and offered to
help others from the dish before him.

The King ate well, asked to be served and himself served what he was
asked for. He was in a good humour; the fear which he had had of me
was past. The conversation turned within a circle of commonplaces, on
the Bohemian climate, the health of Madame la Dauphine, my journey,
the Whit Sunday ceremonies which were to take place to-morrow; not a
word of politics. M. le Dauphin, after sitting with his nose deep in
his plate, would sometimes emerge from his silence and, addressing the
Cardinal de Latil, said:

"Prince of the Church, the gospel of this morning was according to St.
Matthew, was it not?"

"No, Monseigneur, according to St. Mark."

"What, St. Mark?"

A great dispute followed between St. Mark and St. Matthew, and the
cardinal was beaten.

Dinner lasted nearly an hour; the King rose, and we followed him to the
drawing-room. The newspapers lay on a table; we all sat down and began
to read then and there as if in a café.

[Sidenote: The royal children.]

The children came in, the Duc de Bordeaux escorted by his governor,
Mademoiselle by her governess. They ran up to kiss their grandfather
and then rushed to me; we ensconced ourselves in the embrasure of a
window overlooking the town and commanding a splendid view. I renewed
my compliments on the riding-lesson. Mademoiselle hastened to tell me
again what her brother had already told me, that I had seen nothing;
that one could not form an opinion while the black horse was lame.
Madame de Gontaut came to sit near us, M. de Damas a little further
away, giving an ear, in an amusing state of anxiety, as though I were
going to eat his pupil or drop a few words on the liberty of the press
or the glory of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. I would have laughed at
the fears with which I inspired him, if I had been able to laugh at a
poor man after M. de Polignac. Suddenly Henry said to me:

"Have you ever seen a constrictor?"

"A boa-constrictor, Monseigneur means: there are none either in Egypt
or at Tunis, the only places in Africa at which I have touched; but I
have seen many snakes in America."

"Oh yes," said the Princesse Louise, "the rattle-snake, in the _Génie
du Christianisme._"

I bowed to thank Mademoiselle.

"But you have seen plenty of other snakes?" asked Henry. "Are they very
vicious?"

"Some of them, Monseigneur, are exceedingly dangerous; others have no
venom and one makes them dance."

The two children came close up to me with delight, keeping their four
beautiful eyes fixed on mine.

"And then there is the glass-snake," I said; "he is splendid to look at
and does you no harm; he is as transparent and brittle as glass: you
break him as soon as you touch him."

"Can't the pieces come together again?" asked the Prince.

"No, no, dear," Mademoiselle answered for me.

"You went to the Falls of Niagara?" Henry resumed.

"They roar terribly, don't they? Can you go down in a boat?"

"Monseigneur, one American amused himself by sending a great barge
down; another American, they say, himself jumped into the cataract: he
was not destroyed the first time; he tried again and was killed at the
second attempt."

The two children lifted up their hands and said:

"Oh!"

Madame de Gontaut joined in the conversation:

"M. de Chateaubriand has been to Egypt and Jerusalem."

Mademoiselle clapped her hands and came still closer to me:

"M. de Chateaubriand," she said, "do tell my brother about the Pyramids
and Our Lord's Sepulchre."

I told them a story as best I could of the Pyramids, the Holy
Sepulchre, the Jordan, the Holy Land. The children were marvellously
attentive: Mademoiselle took her pretty face in her two hands, with
her elbows almost resting on my knees, and Henry, perched on a high
arm-chair, swung his legs to and fro.

After that fine talk about serpents, cataracts, pyramids and the Holy
Sepulchre, Mademoiselle said:

"Will you put me a question in history?"

"How, in history?"

"Yes, ask me about a year, the least important year in the whole
history of France, except the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
which we have not yet begun."

"Oh, I," exclaimed Henry, "I prefer a famous year: ask me something
about a famous year!"

He was not so sure of his facts as his sister.

I began by obeying the Princess and said:

"Well, then! Will Mademoiselle tell me what happened and who was
reigning, in France, in 1001?"

And the brother and sister began to try, Henry pulling at his
fore-lock, Mademoiselle shading her face with her two hands, a familiar
trick with her, as though she were playing at hide-and-seek, and then
she suddenly reveals her young and merry countenance, her smiling
mouth, her limpid look. She was the first to say:

"Robert[572] was reigning, Gregory V.[573] was Pope, Basil II.[574]
Emperor of the East..."

"And Otto III.[575] Emperor of the West," cried Henry, hurrying so
as not to remain behind his sister, and added, "Veremund II.[576] in
Spain."

Mademoiselle, interrupting him, said:

"Ethelred[577] in England."

"No, no," said her brother, "it was Edmund Ironside[578]."

[Sidenote: Questions in History.]

Mademoiselle was right; Henry was a few years out in favour of
Ironside, who had fascinated him; but it was none the less prodigious.

"And my famous year?" asked Henry, in a half-vexed tone.

"That's true, Monseigneur: what happened in the year 1593?"

"Pooh!" exclaimed the young Prince. "The abjuration of Henry IV.[579]"

Mademoiselle turned red at not having been able to answer first.

Eight o'clock struck: the Baron de Damas' voice cut short our
conversation, just as when the hammer of the clock, striking ten, used
to arrest my father's steps in the great hall at Combourg.

Dear children, the old crusader has told you his adventures
in Palestine, but not by the fire-side in the Castle of Queen
Blanche[580]! To find you, he came knocking with his palmer's staff and
his dusty sandals at the foreigner's icy threshold. Blondel[581] has
sung in vain at the foot of the tower of the Dukes of Austria[582]:
his voice could not open the road to the mother-land for you. Young
outlaws, the traveller to distant lands has concealed a part of his
story from you: he has not told you that, a poet and prophet, he
dragged through the forests of Florida and on the mountains of Judea
as much despair, sadness and passion as you have hope, gladness and
innocence; that there was a day when, like Julian, he threw his blood
at Heaven, blood of which God, in His mercy, has preserved a few drops
for him so that he may redeem those which he gave up to the god of
curses.

The Prince, taken away by his governor, invited me to his
history-lesson, fixed for next Monday, at eleven o'clock in the
morning. Madame de Gontaut withdrew with Mademoiselle. Then began a
scene of another kind: the future Royalty, in the person of a child,
had just drawn me into its games; and now the past Royalty, in the
person of an old man, made me assist at its diversions. A rubber of
whist, lighted by two candles in the corner of a dark room, began
between the King and the Dauphin and the Duc de Blacas and the Cardinal
de Latil. I was the only onlooker, with O'Heguerty, the equerry.
Through the windows, whose shutters were not closed, the twilight
came to mingle its pallor with that of the candles: the Monarchy was
dying out between those two expiring lights. Profound silence reigned,
but for the shuffling of the cards and a few exclamations from the
King, who was angry. Cards were renewed after the Latins in order to
solace the adversity of Charles VI.[583]: but there is no Ogier[584]
nor Lahire[585] nowadays to give his name, under Charles X., to those
distractions of misfortune.

When the cards were over, the King wished me good-night I went through
the deserted and gloomy rooms through which I had passed on the
previous evening, the same stairs, the same court-yards, the same
guards, and, descending the slope of the hill, I returned to my inn,
after losing my way in the streets and the dark. Charles X. remained
shut up in the black mass which I had just left: nothing can equal the
sadness of his forlornness and of his years.


PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had great need of my bed; but the Baron Capelle[586], newly-arrived
from Holland, was lodged in a room next to mine and came hurrying to me.

When the torrent falls from on high, the abyss which it hollows out and
in which it is swallowed up fixes one's gaze and leaves one dumb; but I
have neither patience nor pity to waste on the ministers whose feeble
hands let the crown of St. Louis fall into the whirl-pool, as though
the waves would carry it back! Those of his ministers who claim to have
opposed the Ordinances are the most guilty; those who say that they
were the most moderate are the least innocent: if they saw so clearly,
why did they not resign?

"They did not want to abandon the King; Monsieur le Dauphin treated
them as cowards."

A poor evasion; they were unable to tear themselves from their
portfolios. Whatever they may say, there is nothing else at the bottom
of that immense catastrophe. And what a fine composure after the event.
One[587] is scribbling about the history of England, after bringing
the history of France to so pretty a plight; the other[588] laments
the life and death of the Duc de Reichstadt, after sending the Duc de
Bordeaux to Prague.

I knew M. Capelle: it is only fair to remember that he had remained
poor; his pretensions did not exceed his value; he would very readily
have said, with Lucian:

"If you come to listen to me in the hope of smelling amber and hearing
the song of the swan, I call the gods to witness that I have never
spoken of myself in terms so magnificent."

At the present day, modesty is a rare quality and the only wrong that
M. Capelle did was to allow himself to be appointed a minister.

[Sidenote: The Baron de Damas.]

I received a visit from M. le Baron de Damas: the virtues of that brave
officer had flown to his head; a religious congestion was puzzling
his brain. There are some associations which are fatal: the Duc de
Rivière[589], when dying, recommended M. de Damas as Governor to
the Duc de Bordeaux; the Prince de Polignac was a member of that set
Incapacity is a form of freemasonry which has its lodges in every
country; that secret society has oubliettes of which it opens the plugs
and in which it causes States to disappear.

The domestic condition came so naturally to the Court that M. de Damas,
when choosing M. La Villatte, would never grant him any title other
than that of First Groom of the Bed-chamber to Monseigneur le Duc de
Bordeaux. I took a liking at first sight to this grey-mustachioed
soldier, whose business it was, like a faithful dog, to bark round his
sheep. He belonged to those loyal "grenade-throwers" whom the terrible
Maréchal de Montluc[590] used to esteem, saying:

"They have no back-shop in them."

M. La Villatte will be dismissed because of his sincerity, not because
of his bluntness: one can put up with barrack-room bluntness; often
adulation in camp imparts an air of independence to flattery. But, with
the brave old soldier of whom I am speaking, it was all frankness; he
would have taken off his mustachios with honour to himself, if he had
borrowed 30,000 piastres on them like João de Castro[591]. His crabbed
face was only the expression of liberty; he merely informed one, by his
appearance, that he was ready. Before taking the field with their army,
the Florentines used to warn the enemy of their intention by the sound
of the bell Martinella.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had intended to hear Mass at the Cathedral, within the castle
precincts, but, being detained by visitors, I had time only to go to
what was formerly the Jesuit Church. They were singing to an organ
accompaniment A woman near me had a voice which made me look round at
her. At the communion, she covered her face with her two hands and did
not approach the Holy Table.

Alas, I have already explored many churches in the four quarters
of the globe, without being able to lay aside, even at the Tomb of
the Saviour, the rough hair-cloth of my thoughts! I have depicted
Aben-Hamet wandering in the Christian mosque at Cordova:

"He caught a glimpse, at the foot of a pillar, of a motionless figure
which he took, at first sight, for a statue on a tomb-stone."


The original of that knight of whom Aben-Hamet caught sight was a
religious whom I had met in the church of the Escorial and whom I had
envied his faith. Who knows, however, the storms deep down in that
contemplative soul or what entreaty ascended towards the "holy and
innocent pontiff?" I had been admiring, in the unfrequented sacristy
of the Escorial, one of Murillo's most beautiful Virgins; I was with a
woman: it was she who first showed me the monk deaf to the sound of the
passions that passed through the formidable silence of the sanctuary
around him.

After Mass in Prague, I sent for a calash; I took the road laid out
along the old fortifications by which carriages drive up to the Castle.
They were busy marking out gardens on the ramparts: the euphony of
a forest will take the place here of the noise of the Battle of
Prague[592]; the whole will be very handsome in forty years or so: God
grant that Henry V. may not stay here long enough to enjoy the shade of
a leaf as yet unborn[593]!

Having to dine at the Governor's to-morrow, I thought that it would be
polite to go to call on Madame la Comtesse de Chotek: I should have
thought her amiable and pretty, even if she had not quoted passages
from writings to me from memory.

[Sidenote: General Skrzynecki.]

I went to Madame de Guiche's evening, where I met General
Skrzynecki[594] and his wife. He told me the story of the Polish
Insurrection and the Battle of Ostrolenka. When I rose to go, the
general asked me to permit him to press my "venerable hand" and to
embrace the "patriarch of the liberty of the press;" his wife wished to
embrace in me the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: the Monarchy
accepted with all its heart the fraternal kiss of the Republic. I felt
an honest man's satisfaction: I was glad to rouse noble sympathies, on
different scores, in two foreign hearts; to be pressed, in turn, to the
breast of husband and wife, through liberty and religion.

On Monday the 27th, in the morning, the "Opposition" came to tell me
that I could not see the young Prince: M. de Damas had tired his pupil
by dragging him from church to church to the Stations of the Jubilee.
This weariness served as a pretext for a holiday and was made to
justify a trip to the country: they wanted to hide the child from me. I
spent the morning in visiting the town. At five o'clock, I went to dine
at Count Chotek's.


The house belonging to Count Chotek was built by his father[595],
who was also Grand Burgrave of Bohemia, and presents externally the
form of a Gothic chapel: nothing is original nowadays, everything is
copied. The drawing-room gives a view over the gardens; they slope
down into a valley: the light is always dull, the soil greyish, as in
those many-cornered recesses of the mountains of the North, where gaunt
nature wears the hair-shirt.

The table was laid under the trees in the "pleasure-ground[596]." We
dined without our hats: my head, which so many storms have insulted by
carrying off my hair, was sensitive to the breath of the wind. While
I strove to keep my mind on my dinner, I could not help watching the
birds and clouds that flew over the banquet: passengers embarked on the
breezes and having secret relations with my destinies; travellers, the
objects of my envy, whose aerial course my eyes cannot follow without a
sort of emotion. I was more at home with those parasites wandering in
the sky than with the guests seated near me on the earth: happy those
anchorites who had a raven for _dapifer!_

I cannot speak to you of Prague society, because I met it only at that
dinner. There was a woman present who was very much in the fashion in
Vienna and very witty, I was told; she seemed to me an acrimonious and
foolish person, although she still had a certain youthfulness, like
those trees which keep in summer the dried clusters of the flower which
they have borne in spring.

[Sidenote: Society in Prague.]

I know, therefore, of the manners of this country only those of the
sixteenth century, as told by Bassompierre[597]: he loved Anna Esther,
eighteen years of age and six months a widow. He spent five days and
six nights in disguise and hidden in a room with his mistress. He
played tennis in Hradschin with Wallenstein. Being neither Wallenstein
nor Bassompierre, I laid claim to neither empire nor love. The modern
Esthers ask for Assueruses who are able, disguised though they be, to
get rid of their dominoes at night: one does not lay aside the mask of
the years.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

After the dinner was over, at seven o'clock, I waited on the King; I
there met the same persons as before, excepting M. le Duc de Bordeaux,
who was said to be ailing from his Stations on the Sunday. The King was
half reclining on a sofa, and Mademoiselle sitting on a chair right up
against the knees of Charles X., who was stroking his grand-daughter's
arm and telling her stories. The young Princess listened attentively:
when I appeared, she looked at me with the smile of a reasonable person
who should say:

"I must do something to amuse my grand-papa."

"Chateaubriand," exclaimed the King, "I did not see you yesterday!"

"Sire, I was told too late that Your Majesty had done me the honour to
name me for your dinner-party: also, it was Whit Sunday, a day on which
I am not allowed to see Your Majesty."

"How is that?" asked the King.

"Sire, it was on Whit Sunday, nine years ago, that, when I came to pay
my Court to you, they forbade me your door."

Charles X. seemed touched:

"They won't drive you away from the Castle of Prague."

"No, Sire, for I do not see those good servants here who showed me out
on the day of prosperity."

The whist-playing began and the day came to an end. After the rubber, I
returned the Duc de Blacas' visit:

"The King," he said, "has told me that we were to have a talk."

I replied that, as the King had not thought it expedient to summon his
Council, before which I could have set forth my ideas regarding the
future of France and the majority of the Duc de Bordeaux, I had nothing
more to say.

"His Majesty has no council," rejoined the Duc de Blacas with a
tremulous laugh and a self-satisfied look in his eyes; "he has no one
but me, absolutely no one."

The Grand-master of the Wardrobe has the highest opinion of himself: a
French complaint. To hear him speak, he does everything, he is equal to
everything: he married the Duchesse de Berry; he does what he pleases
with the Kings; he leads Metternich by the nose; he has Nesselrode[598]
under his thumb; he reigns in Italy; he has carved his name on an
obelisk in Rome; he has the keys of the conclaves in his pocket; the
three last Popes owe their elevation to him; he knows public opinion
so well, he measures his ambition so well by his strength that, when
accompanying Madame la Duchesse de Berry, he had himself given a
diploma appointing him Head of the Council of Regency, Prime Minister
and Minister of Foreign Affairs! And that is how those poor people
understand France and the times.

Nevertheless, M. de Blacas is the most intelligent and the most
moderate of the band. In conversation he is reasonable; he always
agrees with you:

"Is that what you think? It is just what I was saying yesterday. We
have absolutely the same ideas!"

He bemoans his slavery; he is tired of business, he would like to live
in an unknown corner of the earth, to die there in peace, far from the
world. As to his influence with Charles X., don't speak of it to him;
they think that he sways Charles X.: they are wrong! He can do nothing
with the King! The King refuses a thing in the morning; at night he
grants the same thing, and nobody knows why he has changed his mind,
and so on. When M. de Blacas tells you these tales, he is telling
the truth, because he never thwarts the King; but he is not sincere,
because he inspires Charles X. only with those wishes which are in
accordance with that Prince's inclinations.

[Sidenote: The Duc de Blacas.]

For the rest, M. de Blacas possesses courage and honour; he is not
without generosity; he is devoted and faithful. By rubbing himself
against the high aristocracy and acquiring wealth, he has caught the
ways of both. He is very well-born; he comes of a poor, but ancient
house, known in poetry and arms[599]. His stiff and formal manners,
his assurance, his strictness in matters of etiquette preserve for his
masters an air of nobility which one loses too easily in misfortune: at
least, in the Museum in Prague, the inflexibility of a suit of armour
holds erect a body which would fall without it M. de Blacas does not
lack a certain energy; he dispatches ordinary affairs quickly; he
is orderly and methodical. A fairly enlightened connoisseur in some
branches of archaeology, a lover of the arts without imagination and
an icy libertine, he does not grow excited even over his passions;
his coolness would be a statesmanlike quality if his coolness were
other than his confidence in his genius, and his genius betrays him:
one feels in him the abortive great lord, even as one feels it in his
fellow-countryman, La Valette, Duc d'Épernon[600].

Either there will or there will not be a restoration: if there is a
restoration, M. de Blacas will come back with places and honours;
if there is no restoration, the fortune of the Grand-master of the
Wardrobe is almost all invested out of France; Charles X. and Louis
XIX. will be dead; he, M. de Blacas, will be very old: his children
will remain the companions of the exiled Prince, illustrious foreigners
at foreign Courts. Praise God for all things!

Thus the Revolution, which exalted and ruined Bonaparte, will have
enriched M. de Blacas: that makes amends. M. de Blacas, with his long,
impassive, colourless face, is the Monarchy's undertaker-in-ordinary:
he buried it at Hartwell, he buried it at Ghent, he buried it again
in Edinburgh and he will bury it again in Prague or elsewhere, always
attending to the remains of the high and mighty defunct, like those
peasants on the coasts who pick up the wreckage which the sea casts up
on its shores.


PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

On Monday the 28th of May, as the history lesson at which I was to have
been present at eleven o'clock did not take place, I found myself free
to go through, or, rather, to revisit the town which I had already
seen and seen again in coming and going. I do not know why I had
imagined that Prague was nestled in a gap of mountains that threw their
black shadow over a huddled kettleful of houses. Prague is a bright
city, in which twenty-five or thirty graceful towers and steeples
rise up to the sky; its architecture reminds one of a town of the
Renascence. The long sway of the Emperors over the Cisalpine countries
filled Germany with artists from those countries; the Austrian villages
are villages of Lombardy, Tuscany or the Venetian main-land: one would
think one's self under the roof of an Italian peasant, if, in the
farm-houses, with their great bare rooms, a stove did not take the
place of the sun.

The view enjoyed from the windows of the Castle is agreeable: on
one side, you see the orchards of a cool valley, with green slopes,
enclosed by the denticulated walls of the town, which run down to the
Moldau, almost as the walls of Rome run from the Vatican down to the
Tiber; on the other side, you perceive the city, cut in two by the
river, which is beautified by an island set up stream and embraces
another island down stream, after leaving the northern suburb. The
Moldau flows into the Elbe. A boat might have taken me on board at the
bridge of Prague and landed me at the Pont-Royal in Paris. I am not the
work of the ages and kings; I have neither the weight nor the duration
of the obelisk[601] which the Nile is now sending to the Seine; the
girdle of the Vestal of the Tiber would be strong enough to tow my
galley.

The Moldau Bridge, which was first built in wood, in 795, by Mnata,
has been rebuilt, at different times, in stone. While I was taking the
measure of this bridge, Charles X. was walking on the pavement; he
carried an umbrella; his son accompanied him like a paid _cicerone._ I
had said, in the _Conservateur_, that "men would go to the window to
see the Monarchy pass:" I saw it pass on the bridge of Prague.

In the constructions of which Hradschin is composed one sees historic
halls, museums hung with the restored portraits and the furbished arms
of the Dukes and Kings of Bohemia. Not far from the shapeless masses,
there stands detached against the sky a pretty building decked with
one of the graceful porticoes of the Cinquecento: this architecture
has the drawback of being out of harmony with the climate. If at least
one could, during the Bohemian winter, put those Italian palaces in
the hot-house, with the palm-trees? I was always preoccupied with the
thought of the cold which they must feel at night.

[Sidenote: History of Prague.]

Prague, often besieged, taken and re-taken, is known to us, in a
military respect, by the battle called after it and by the retreat
in which Vauvenargues[602] took part. The bulwarks of the town are
demolished. The moat of the Castle, on the side of the high plane,
forms a deep and narrow groove, now planted with poplars. At the
time of the Thirty Years' War, this moat was filled with water. The
Protestants, having penetrated into the Castle, on the 23rd of May
1618, threw two Catholic lords, together with the Secretary of State,
out of window: the three divers saved their lives. The Secretary, like
a well-bred man, begged a thousand pardons of one of the lords for his
rudeness in falling on his head. In this present month of May 1833, we
are no longer so polite: I am not sure what I should say in a similar
case, although I have been a secretary of State myself.

Tycho Brahe died in Prague[603]: would you, for all his knowledge, have
a false nose in wax or silver as he did? Tycho consoled himself in
Bohemia, like Charles X., by contemplating the heavens; the astronomer
admired the work, the King adores the Workman. The star which appeared
in 1572 (and died out in 1574) and which passed successively from
dazzling white to the red yellow of Mars and the leaden white of Saturn
presented to Tycho's observations the spectacle of the conflagration
of a world. What is the revolution whose breath blew the brother of
Louis XVI. to the tomb of the Danish Newton beside the destruction of a
globe, accomplished in less than two years?

General Moreau came to Prague to concert with the Emperor of Russia a
restoration which he, Moreau, did not live to see.

If Prague were by the sea-side, nothing would be more charming; and
Shakespeare, striking Bohemia with his wand turns it into a shipping
country:

"Thou art perfect then," says Antigonus to a Mariner in the _Winter's
Tale_:

     Thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon
     The deserts of Bohemia?

Antigonus lands, charged to abandon a little girl, to whom he addresses
these words:

                           Blossom, speed thee well!
     .     .    .     .     .     .    .    .     .
     .     .   The storm begins
     .     .    .     .     .     .    .    .     .
     .     .    .     .      Thou art like to have
     A lullaby too rough[604].

Does not Shakespeare seem to have told in advance the story of the
Princesse Louise, that young "blossom," that new Perdita transported to
the deserts of Bohemia?

PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

Confusion, blood, catastrophes compose the history of Bohemia; her
dukes and kings, in the midst of civil wars and foreign wars, fight
with their subjects or come to logger-heads with the Dukes and Kings of
Silesia, Saxony, Poland, Moravia, Hungary, Austria and Bavaria.

During the reign of Wenceslaus VI.[605], who spitted his cook for
roasting a hare badly, arose John Huss, who, having studied at Oxford,
brought back the doctrine of Wyclif[606]. The Protestants, who were
looking for ancestors everywhere without being able to find any, report
that, from the top of his funeral pile, John sang and prophesied the
coming of Luther:

    "The world filled with acidity," says Bossuet, "gave birth to
    Luther and Calvin, who canton Christendom."

From the Christian and pagan struggles, the precocious heresies of
Bohemia, the importation of foreign interests and foreign manners,
resulted a state of confusion favourable to lying. Bohemia passed as
the native land of the sorcerers.

Some old poems, discovered, in 1817, by M. Hanka[607], the Librarian of
the Prague Museum, in the archives of the church at Königinhof, have
become famous. A young man whom I have pleasure in naming, the son of
an illustrious scholar, M. Ampère, has made known the spirit of those
lays. Czelakovsky[608] has spread popular songs in the Slav idiom.

The Poles think the Bohemian dialect effeminate: it is the quarrel of
the Doric and Ionic. The Lower Breton of Vannes treats the Lower Breton
of Tréguier as a barbarian. Slav as well as Magyar lends itself to the
translation of all languages: my poor _Atala_ has been rigged out in a
robe of Hungarian point-lace; she also wears an Armenian dolman and an
Arab veil.

[Sidenote: Bohemian literature.]

There is another literature that has flourished in Bohemia: the modern
Latin literature. The prince of this literature, Bohuslas Hassenstein,
Baron Lobkowitz[609], born in 1462, took ship, in 1490, in Venice and
visited Greece, Syria, Arabia and Egypt Lobkowitz preceded me in those
celebrated places by three hundred and sixteen years and, like Lord
Byron, sang his pilgrimage. With what a difference in mind, heart,
thoughts, manners have we, at an interval of over three centuries,
meditated on the same ruins and under the same sun: Lobkowitz, the
Bohemian; Byron, the Englishman; and I, the child of France!

At the time of Lobkowitz' voyage, wonderful monuments, since
overthrown, were standing. It must have been an astonishing spectacle,
that of barbarism in all its strength, holding civilization on the
ground under its feet, the janissaries of Mahomet II.[610] drunk with
opium, victories and women, scimitar in hand, their foreheads girt
with the blood-stained turban, drawn up in line for the assault on the
rubbish of Egypt and Greece: and I have seen the same barbarism, among
the same ruins, struggling under the feet of civilization.

As I surveyed the town and suburbs of Prague, the things which I have
just told came to apply themselves on my memory like transfers on a
canvas. But, in whatever corner I happened to be, I saw Hradschin and
the King of France leaning on the windows of that castle, like a ghost
over-towering all those shades.


PRAGUE, 29 _May_ 1833.

Having finished my review of Prague, I went, on the 29th of May, to
dine at the Castle, at six o'clock. The King was in high spirits. When
we left the table, sitting down on the sofa in the drawing-room, he
said:

"Chateaubriand, do you know that the _National_ which arrived this
morning declares that I had the right to issue my Ordinances?"

"Sire," I replied, "Your Majesty is making innuendoes against me."

The King, undecided, hesitated; then, taking his resolution:

"I have something on my mind: you dealt me devilish hard measure in the
first part of your speech in the House of Peers." And at once the King,
without giving me the time to answer, cried, "Oh, the end, the end!...
The empty grave at Saint-Denis.... That was admirable! That was very
fine, very fine! Do not let us talk of it any more. I did not want to
keep that... it's done with, it's done with." And he excused himself
for venturing to risk those few words. I kissed the royal hand with
pious respect.

"Let me tell you," Charles X. resumed: "perhaps I was wrong not to
defend myself at Rambouillet; I still had great resources... but I did
not want blood to flow for me; I retired."

I did not combat this noble excuse; I replied:

"Sire, Bonaparte retired twice like Your Majesty, in order not to
prolong the ills of France."

I thus put the weakness of my old King under the shelter of Napoleon's
glory.

The children arrived and we went up to them. The King spoke of
Mademoiselle's age:

"What, you little doll," he exclaimed, "are you fourteen already?"

"Oh, when I'm fifteen!" said Mademoiselle.

"Well, what will you do then?"

Mademoiselle stopped short.

Charles X. was telling something:

"I don't remember that," said the Duc de Bordeaux.

"I should think not," said the King; "it happened on the very day when
you were born."

"Oh," replied Henry, "so it's very long ago!"

Mademoiselle, leaning her head a little on one shoulder, lifting her
face towards her brother, while casting a glance aslant at me, said,
with an ironical little look:

"Is it so very long, then, since you were born?"

The children retired; I took leave of the orphan: I was to start
during the night I said good-bye to him in French, English and German.
How many languages will Henry learn in which to tell his wandering
miseries, to ask for bread and a shelter from the stranger?

When the rubber began, I took His Majesty's orders:

"You will see Madame la Dauphine at Carlsbad," said Charles X. "A good
journey, my dear Chateaubriand. We shall read about you in the papers."

I went from door to door to pay my last respects to the inhabitants of
the Castle. I saw the young Princess again at Madame de Gontaut's; she
gave me a letter for her mother at the foot of which were a few lines
from Henry.

[Sidenote: I take leave of my Kings.]

I was to have left at five o'clock, on the morning of the 30th; Count
Chotek had had the goodness to order horses along the road: a jobbing
transaction detained me till noon. I was the bearer of a letter of
credit for 2000 francs payable in Prague; I had called upon a fat
little monkey of a Jew who uttered cries of admiration when he saw me.
He summoned his wife to his aid; she ran, or, rather, rolled up to
my feet; she sat down opposite me, quite short, fat and black, with
two arms like fins, staring at me with her round eyes: if the Messiah
had come in by the window, this Rachel would not have appeared more
delighted; I thought myself threatened with an "Hallelujah." The broker
offered me his fortune, letters of credit for the whole extent of the
Israelitish dispersion; he added that he would send me my 2000 francs
to my hotel.

The money was not paid on the evening of the 29th; on the 30th, in
the morning, when the horses were already put to, came a clerk with a
parcel of bills, paper of different sources, which loses more or less
on change and which is not current outside the Austrian States. My
account was made out on a bill which said, in discharge, "good money."
I was astounded:

"What good is this to me?" I asked the clerk. "How am I to pay the
posting and my hotel-bills with this paper?"

The clerk ran off in search of explanations. Another clerk came and
made me endless calculations. I sent back the second clerk; a third
brought me cash in the form of Brabant crowns. I set out, thenceforth
on my guard against the affection with which I might inspire the
daughters of Jerusalem.

My calash was surrounded, under the gate-way, by the people of the
hotel, among whom squeezed a pretty Saxon servant-girl, who used to run
off to a piano every time she could snatch a moment between two rings
at the bell: just ask Léonarde of Limousin, or Fanchon of Picardy to
sing or play _Tanti palpiti_ to you on the piano, or _Moses' Prayer!_


PRAGUE AND ON THE ROAD, 29 _and_ 30 _May_ 1833.

I had come to Prague with the greatest apprehension. I had said to
myself:

"To ruin us, it is often enough for God to place our own destinies
in our hands; God works miracles in men's favour, but He leaves the
conduct of these to them; but for which it would be He that would
govern in person: now men make the fruits of those miracles abortive.
Crime is not always punished in this world; mistakes always. Crime is
part of the infinite and general nature of men; Heaven alone knows
the depth of it and sometimes reserves its punishment to Itself. The
mistakes of a limited and accidental nature come within the scope of
the narrow justice of the earth: that is why it would be possible for
the last mistakes of the Monarchy to be rigorously punished by men."

I had said to myself also:

"Royal families have been seen to fall into irreparable errors, by
becoming infatuated with a false idea of their own nature: at one
time they look upon themselves as divine and exceptional families,
at another as mortal and private families; they set themselves above
the common law or within that law, as the case may require. When they
violate political constitutions, they cry that they have the right to
do so, that they are the fount of the law, that they cannot be judged
by ordinary rules. When they want to make a domestic mistake, to give
a dangerous education, for instance, to the Heir to the Throne, they
reply to the protests made:

"'A private person can act towards his children as he pleases, and we
cannot!'"

[Sidenote: Reflections on the road.]

Well no, you cannot: you are neither a divine family, nor a private
family; you are a public family; you belong to society. The mistakes
made by royalty do not affect royalty alone; they are detrimental to
the whole nation: a king trips and goes away; but does a nation go
away? Does it suffer no hurt? Are not those victims of their honour
who have remained attached to the absent Royalty interrupted in their
careers, persecuted in the persons of their kin, trammelled in their
liberty, threatened in their lives? Once more, the Royalty is not a
private possession, it is a public property, held in joint tenancy,
and third parties are involved in the fortune of the Throne. I feared
that, in the confusion inseparable from misfortune, the Royalty had not
perceived these truths and had done nothing to come back to them at the
expedient time.

On the other hand, while recognising the immense advantages of the
Salic Law, I did not conceal from myself the fact that the duration of
a House has some serious draw-backs for both nations and kings: for the
nations, because it blends their destiny too closely with that of the
kings; for the kings, because permanent power intoxicates them; they
lose earthly notions: all that is not a part of their altars, prostrate
prayers, humble vows, profound abasement, is impiousness. Misfortune
teaches them nothing: adversity is but a coarse plebeian who fails to
show them respect, and catastrophes are, for them, but so many displays
of insolence.

I had fortunately deceived myself: I did not find Charles X. in those
high errors which take their rise at the pinnacle of society; I found
him only in the common illusions of an unexpected accident, which are
more easily explained. Everything serves to console the self-esteem of
the brother of Louis XVIII.; he sees the political world falling into
decay, and, with some justice, he attributes this decay to his epoch,
not to himself: did not Louis XVI. perish? Did not the Republic fall?
Was not Bonaparte compelled twice to forsake the scene of his glory
and did he not go to die a captive on a rock? Are not the thrones of
Europe threatened? What, then, could he, Charles X., do more than those
overthrown powers? He wanted to defend himself against his enemies;
he was warned of the danger by his police and by public symptoms: he
took the initiative; he attacked so as not to be attacked. Did not
the heroes of the three riots admit that they were conspiring, that
they had been playing a part for fifteen years? Well then, Charles
thought that it was his duty to make an effort; he tried to save the
French Legitimacy and, with it, the European Legitimacy: he gave battle
and lost; he sacrificed himself to save the monarchies; that is all:
Napoleon had his Waterloo, Charles X. his Days of July.

This is the light in which things present themselves to the unfortunate
Monarch; he remains immutable, leaning upon events which wedge in
and fasten down his mind. By dint of his immovability, he achieves a
certain greatness: a man of imagination, he listens to you, he does not
get angry with your ideas, he appears to enter into them and does not
enter into them at all. There are certain general axioms which a man
puts in front of himself like gabions; taking up his position behind
that shelter, he takes shots from there at intellects which march ahead.

The mistake of many is to persuade themselves, according to events
repeated in history, that mankind is always in its primitive place;
they confound passions and ideas: the first are the same in every
century, the second change in successive ages. If the material effects
of certain actions are alike at different periods, the causes which
have produced them vary.

Charles X. looks upon himself as a principle and, in fact, there are
men who, by dint of living with fixed ideas, alike from generation
to generation, are no longer more than so many monuments. Certain
individuals, through the lapse of time and their own preponderance,
become "things transformed into persons;" those individuals perish when
those things come to perish: Brutus and Cato were the Roman Republic
incarnate; they could not survive it, any more than the heart can beat
when the blood ceases to flow.

In former days, I drew this portrait of Charles X.:

    "You have seen him for ten years, that loyal subject, that
    respectful brother, that tender father, so greatly afflicted in one
    of his sons, so greatly consoled by the other! You know him, this
    Bourbon who was the first to come after our misfortunes, a worthy
    herald of Old France, to throw himself between you and Europe, with
    a branch of lilies in his hand! Your eyes are fixed with love and
    gladness on this Prince who, in the fulness of age, has preserved
    the charm and the noble elegance of youth and who now, adorned
    with the diadem, is still 'but one Frenchman the more in the midst
    of you!' You repeat with emotion so many happy phrases escaped from
    this new Monarch, who derives from the loyalty of his heart the
    grace of speaking well!

    "Where is that one among us who would not trust him with his
    life, his fortune, his honour? That man, whom we would all wish
    to have as our friend, we have to-day as our King. Ah, let us try
    to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May the crown lie
    light upon the whitened head of that Christian Knight! Pious as
    Louis XII.[611], courteous as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may
    he be happy with all the happiness which he has lacked during so
    many long years! May the throne, on which so many monarchs have
    encountered storms, be to him a place of rest[612]!"

Elsewhere I have again celebrated the same Prince: the model has only
grown older, but one recognises it in the youthful touches of the
portrait; age withers us by taking from us a certain truth of poetry
which gives colour and bloom to our faces and yet one loves, in spite
of one's self, the face which has faded at the same time as our own
features. I have sung hymns to the House of Henry IV.; I would begin
them again with all my heart, while combating anew the mistakes of the
Legitimacy and bringing down upon myself anew its disgraces, if it were
destined to rise again. The reason of this is that the Constitutional
Legitimate Royalty has always appeared to me the gentlest and safest
road to entire liberty. I believed and I should still believe that
I was playing the part of a good citizen even when exaggerating the
advantages of that royalty, in order to give it, if so much should
depend on me, the duration necessary for the accomplishment of the
gradual transformation of society and manners.

[Sidenote: Memoires of Charles X.]

I am doing a service to the memory of Charles X. by opposing the
pure and simple truth to what will be said of him in the future. The
hostility of parties will represent him as a man faithless to his
oaths and the violator of the public liberties: he is nothing of the
sort. He acted in good faith in attacking the Charter; he did not, nor
did he need to think himself forsworn; he had the firm intention of
restoring the Charter after he had "saved" it, in his own way and as he
understood it.

Charles X. is what I have described him to be: mild, although subject
to anger, kind and affectionate to his intimates, lovable, easy-going,
free from malice, having all the knightly qualities, devotion,
nobleness, an elegant courtesy, mixed, however, with weakness, which
does not exclude passive courage and the glory of a fine death;
incapable of carrying out to the end a good or bad resolution; built
up of the prejudices of his century and his rank; in ordinary times,
a proper king; in extraordinary times, a man of perdition, not of
misfortune.


As for the Duc de Bordeaux, they would like, at Hradschin, to make
of him a King ever on horse-back, ever flourishing his sword. It is
necessary, no doubt, that he should be brave; but it is a mistake to
imagine that in these times the right of conquest will be recognised,
that it would be enough to be Henry IV. to reascend the throne. Without
courage, one cannot reign; but one no longer reigns with courage alone:
Bonaparte has killed the authority of victory.

An extraordinary part might be conceived by Henry V.; I will suppose
that, at the age of twenty, he feels his position and says to himself:

"I can no longer remain inactive; I have the duties of my Blood to
fulfil towards the past; but am I then obliged to trouble France
because of myself alone? Must I weigh upon centuries yet to come with
all the weight of the centuries that are done with? Let us solve the
question; let us inspire with regrets those who unjustly outlawed me in
my childhood; let us show them what I could be. It but depends on me to
devote myself to my country by consecrating anew, whatever be the issue
of the contest, the principle of the hereditary monarchies."

Then the son of St. Louis would land in France with a double idea of
glory and sacrifice; he would descend upon it with the firm resolve to
remain there with a crown upon his head or a bullet in his heart: in
the latter case, his inheritance would go to Philip. The triumphant
life or the sublime death of Henry V. would restore the Legitimacy,
stripped only of that which the century no longer understands and which
no longer suits the times. For the rest, supposing the sacrifice of my
young Prince made, he would not have made it for me: after the death
of Henry V. without children, I should never recognise a monarch in
France!

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the elder branch.]

I have abandoned myself to these dreams, but what I suppose in relation
to the resolution to be taken by Henry is impossible: by arguing in
this wise, I placed myself, in thought, in an order of things above us,
an order which would be natural at a time of elevation and magnanimity,
but which would to-day look like the exaltation of romance; it is as
though I were to speak at the present time in favour of going back to
the Crusades, whereas we have become common-place in the sad reality
of a deteriorated human nature. Such is the disposition of men's souls
that Henry V. would encounter invincible obstacles in the apathy of
France within and in the royalties without. He will therefore have
to submit, to consent to await events, unless indeed he decided on a
part which men would not fail to brand as that of an adventurer. He
will have to enter into the sequence of ordinary facts and see the
difficulties which surround him, without, however, allowing them to
overwhelm him.

The Bourbons held good after the Empire, because they were succeeding
an arbitrary government: can one see Henry transported from Prague to
the Louvre after men have grown used to the most complete liberty?
The French nation does not, at bottom, love that liberty; but it
adores equality: it admits absolutism only for and through itself and
its vanity commands it to obey only what it imposes upon itself. The
Charter made a vain attempt to cause two nations which had become
foreign to one another to live under the same law: Ancient France
and Modern France; how would you make the two Frances understand one
another, now that prejudices have increased? You would never appease
men's minds by placing incontestable truths under their eyes.

To listen to passion or ignorance, the Bourbons are the authors of all
our misfortunes; to reinstate the Elder Branch would mean to restore
the domination of the castles; the Bourbons are the abettors and
accomplices of those oppressive treaties of which, with good reason, I
never ceased to complain: and yet nothing could be more absurd than all
those accusations, in which both dates are forgotten and facts grossly
distorted. The Restoration exercised no influence in diplomatic acts
except at the time of the first invasion. It is admitted that men did
not want that Restoration, because they were treating with Bonaparte at
Châtillon, and that, had he pleased, he could have remained Emperor
of the French. When his genius proved obstinate, for want of anything
better, they took the Bourbons, who were on the spot Monsieur, as
Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, then took a certain part in the
transactions of the day; we have seen, in the life of Alexander, what
the Treaty of Paris of 1814 left to us.

In 1815, there was no longer any question of the Bourbons; they had
nothing to do with the predatory contracts of the second invasion:
those contracts were the result of the escape from Elba. In Vienna, the
Allies declared that they were only uniting against one man; that they
did not intend to impose any sort of master nor any kind of government
upon France. Alexander even suggested to the Congress another King than
Louis XVIII. If the latter had not, by coming to seat himself in the
Tuileries, hastened to snatch his throne, he would never have reigned.
The treaties of 1815 were abominable for the very reason that men
refused to hearken to the voice of the Legitimacy, and it was in order
to destroy those same treaties that I wanted to rebuild our power in
Spain.

The only moment at which we again find the spirit of the Restoration is
at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle; the Allies had agreed to take from
us our northern and eastern provinces: M. de Richelieu intervened. The
Tsar, touched by our misfortune and influenced by his leanings towards
fairness, handed to M. le Duc de Richelieu the map of France on which
the fatal line had been drawn. I have, with my own eyes, seen that map
of Styx in the hands of Madame de Montcalm, the sister of the noble
negociator[613].

With France occupied as she was, our fortified towns garrisoned by
foreign troops, could we have resisted? Once deprived of our military
departments, how long should we have groaned under conquest? If we
had had a sovereign of a new family, a prince at second-hand, he
would never have been respected. Among the Allies, some bowed before
the illusion of a great House, others thought that, under a worn-out
authority, the Kingdom would lose its energy and cease to be an object
of anxiety: Cobbett[614] himself agrees to this in his Letter. It is
therefore a monstrous piece of ingratitude to refuse to see that, if we
are still Old Gaul, we owe it to the blood which we have cursed most
loudly. That blood which, since eight centuries, had flowed in the very
veins of France, that blood which made her what she is saved her once
more. Why persist in eternally denying the facts? They took advantage
of victory against us, even as we had taken advantage of it against
Europe. Our soldiers had gone to Russia; they brought after them, upon
their footsteps, the soldiers who had fled before them. After action,
reaction: that is the law. That makes no difference to the glory of
Bonaparte, an isolated glory which remains complete; that makes no
difference to our national glory, all covered as it is with the dust of
Europe, whose towers have been swept by our flags. It was unnecessary,
in a moment of but too justifiable spite, to go in search of any cause
for our misfortunes other than the real cause. So far from their being
that cause, had we not had the Bourbons in our reverses, we should have
been portioned out.

Appreciate now the calumnies of which the Restoration has been made
the object: examine the archives of the Foreign Office, and you shall
be convinced of the independence of the language held to the Powers
under the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. Our sovereigns had
the sentiment of the national dignity; they were kings above all to
the foreigner, who never frankly wanted the re-establishment and who
witnessed the resurrection of the Elder Monarchy with regret. The
diplomatic language of France at the time of which I am speaking is, it
must be said, peculiar to the aristocracy; the democracy, full of broad
and prolific virtues, is nevertheless arrogant when it governs: capable
of incomparable munificence when there is a need for immense devotion,
it splits on the rock of details; it is rarely elevated, especially in
prolonged misfortunes. Part of the hatred of the Courts of England
and Austria for the Legitimacy is due to the firmness of the Bourbon
Cabinet.

Instead of throwing down that Legitimacy, it would have been better
policy to shore up its ruins; sheltered inside it, one would have
erected the new edifice, as one builds a ship that is to brave the
deep under a covered dock hewn out of the rock: in this way English
liberty took its form in the breast of the Norman law. It was wrong to
repudiate the monarchic phantom: that centenarian of the middle-ages,
like Dandolo[615], "had fine eyes in his head; and, if it could not
see out of them," was an old man who could guide the young Crusaders
and who, adorned with his white hair, still vigorously printed his
ineffaceable footsteps in the snow.

It is conceivable that, in our prolonged fears, we should be blinded
by prejudice and vain and ridiculous shame; but distant posterity will
not fail to see that, historically speaking, the Restoration was one of
the happiest phases of our revolutionary cycle. Parties whose heat is
not extinguished may cry, "We were free under the Empire, slaves under
the Monarchy of the Charter!" but future generations, going beyond this
mock praise, which would be ludicrous if it were not a sophism, will
say that the recalled Bourbons prevented the dismemberment of France,
that they laid the foundations of representative government among us,
that they brought prosperity to our finances, discharged debts which
they had not contracted, and religiously paid the pension even of
Robespierre's sister. Lastly, to make good our lost colonies, they left
us, in Africa, one of the richest provinces of the Roman Empire.

Three things remain standing to the credit of the restored Legitimacy:
it entered Cadiz; at Navarino it gave Greece her independence; it
freed Christianity by seizing Algiers: enterprises in which Bonaparte,
Russia, Charles V. and Europe had failed. Show me a Power of a few days
(and a Power so much disputed) which has accomplished such things as
these.

I believe, with my hand on my heart, that I have exaggerated nothing
and set forth nothing but facts in what I have just said of the
Legitimacy. It is certain that the Bourbons neither would nor could
have restored a castle monarchy or cantoned themselves in a tribe of
nobles and priests; it is certain that they were not brought back by
the Allies; they were the accident, not the cause of our disasters: the
cause is evidently due to Napoleon. But it is certain also that the
return of the Third Dynasty unfortunately coincided with the success
of the foreign arms. The Cossacks appeared in Paris at the moment when
Louis XVIII. returned there: hence, for France humiliated, for private
interests, for all excited passions, the Restoration and the invasion
are two identical things; the Bourbons have become the victims of a
confusion of facts, of a calumny changed, like so many others, into a
truth-lie. Alas, it is difficult to escape those calamities produced by
nature and the times: fight them as we may, right does not always carry
victory with it. The Psylli, a nation of Ancient Africa, had taken up
arms against the South wind; a whirlwind arose and swallowed up those
brave men:

    "The Nasamonians," says Herodotus, "seized upon their abandoned
    country."

[Sidenote: The death of Henry IV.]

When speaking of the last calamity of the Bourbons, I am reminded of
their commencement: an indescribable omen of their grave made itself
heard in their cradle. Henry IV. no sooner saw himself master of Paris
than he was seized with a fatal presentiment. The repeated attempts
at assassination, without alarming his courage, had an influence on
his natural gaiety. In the procession of the Holy Ghost, on the 5th of
January, he appeared clad in black, wearing a plaister on his upper
lip, on the wound which Jean Châtel[616] had given him when aiming at
his heart. He wore a gloomy visage; Madame de Balagni asking him the
reason:

"How," he said, "could I be pleased to see a people so ungrateful that,
while I have done and am still doing daily what I can for it and for
whose safety I would sacrifice a thousand lives, if God had given me
so many, it daily prepares new attempts on me, for, since I am here, I
hear speak of naught else?"

Meantime the people cried:

"Long live the King!"

"Sire," said one of the Court lords, "see how all your people rejoices
to see you."

Henry, shaking his head:

"What a people it is. If my greatest enemy were here where I am and it
saw him pass, it would do for him as much as for me and would shout
still louder."

A Leaguer, seeing the King huddled at the back of his carriage, said:

"There he is already at the cart's tail."

Does it not seem to you as though that Leaguer were speaking of Louis
XVI. going from the Temple to the scaffold?

On Friday the 14th of May 1610, returning from the Feuillants with
Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise, the King said to them:

"You do not know me now, none of you, and when you have lost me, you
will then know what I was worth and the difference between me and other
men."

"My God, Sire," answered Bassompierre, "will you never have done
troubling us by telling us that you will soon die?"

And then the marshal recounts to Henry his glory, his prosperity, his
good health which was prolonging his youth.

"My friend," said the King, "I must leave all that."

Ravaillac was at the gate of the Louvre.

Bassompierre withdrew and did not see the King again except in his
closet:

"He was stretched out," he says, "on his bed; and M. de Vic[617],
sitting on the same bed as he, had laid his cross of the Order on his
mouth and reminded him of God. M. le Grand on arriving knelt down
between the bed and the wall and held one of his hands which he kissed,
and I had flung myself at his feet which I held clasped, weeping
bitterly."


That is Bassompierre's story.

Pursued by these sad memories, it seemed to me that, in the long halls
of Hradschin, I had seen the last Bourbons pass "sad and melancholy,"
like the first Bourbon in the gallery of the Louvre; I had come to kiss
the feet of the Royalty after its death. Whether it die for ever or
be resuscitated, it will have my last oaths: the day after its final
disappearance, the Republic will commence for me. In the case that the
Fates, who are to edit my Memoirs, do not publish them forthwith, you
will know, when they appear, when you have read all, weighed all, how
far I was mistaken in my regrets and in my conjectures. Respecting
misfortune, respecting that which I have served and will continue to
serve at the cost of the repose of my last days, I am writing my words,
true or deluded, on my falling hours, dry and light leaves which the
breath of Eternity will soon have blown away.

Supposing the high dynasties to be nearing their limit, omitting,
however, the possibilities of the future and the lively hopes that
spring incessantly at the bottom of men's hearts, would it not be
better that they should make an end worthy of their greatness and
withdraw with the centuries into the night of the past? To prolong
one's days beyond a dazzling illustriousness is good for nothing; the
world tires of you and your fame; it is angry with you for being still
there: Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon have disappeared in accordance with
the rules of fame. To die beautiful, one must die young; do not make
the children of spring say:

"What, is that the genius, the person, the dynasty that the world
applauded, for a hair of whose head, a smile, a glance one would have
thrown away one's life!"

How sad it is see old Louis XIV. find no one near him, to talk to him
of his century, except the old Duc de Villeroi! It was a last victory
of the Great Condé to have met Bossuet by his grave-side: the orator
revived the mute waters of Chantilly; out of the old man's childhood
he kneaded again the young man's adolescence; he made brown again the
hair on the forehead of the victor of Rocroi while bidding an undying
farewell to his white hairs. You who love glory, look to your tomb; lie
down comfortably in it; try to cut a good figure in it, for you will
remain there.


[Sidenote: My journey to Carlsbad.]

The road from Prague to Carlsbad stretches out through the tedious
plains which the Thirty Years' War stained with blood. As I cross those
battle-fields at night, I humble myself before the God of Armies, who
bears the sky on His arm like a buckler. One can see at some distance
the wooded hillocks at whose foot the waters lie. The wits among the
doctors at Carlsbad compare the road to Æsculapius' snake which came
down the hill to drink of Hygieia's cup.

On the top of the tower of the town, the _Stadtthurm_, a tower mitred
with a steeple, watchmen blow the horn, so soon as they perceive a
traveller. I was greeted by the joyous sound like a dying man, and
every one in the valley began to say with delight:

"Here's a gouty man, here's an hypochondriac, here's a myopic subject!"

Alas, I was better than all that: I was an incurable!

At seven o'clock, on the morning on the 31st, I was installed at
the Golden Shield, an inn kept for the benefit of Count Bolzona, a
very high-born ruined man. In the same hotel were staying the Comte
and Madame la Comtesse de Cossé, who had gone before me, and my
fellow-countryman General de Trogoff[618], formerly Governor of the
Château de Saint-Cloud, born long ago at Landivisiau, within the rays
of the moon of Landerneau, and, squat of figure though he be, a captain
of Austrian Grenadiers in Prague during the Revolution. He had just
been to see his banished lord, the successor of St. Clodoald[619],
a monk in his time at Saint-Cloud. Trogoff, after his pilgrimage,
was returning to Lower Brittany. He was taking with him an Hungarian
nightingale and a Bohemian nightingale which prevented everybody in the
hotel from sleeping, so loudly did they complain of Tereus' cruelty.
Trogoff used to cram them with grated bullock's heart, without being
able to get the better of their sorrow.

     Et mœstis late loca questibus implet[620].

Trogoff and I embraced like two Bretons. The general, short and square
like a Celt of Cornouailles, has a certain shrewdness under an air of
candour and an amusing way of telling a story. Madame la Dauphine was
inclined to like him and, as he knows German, she used to walk with
him. On hearing of my arrival from Madame de Cossé, she sent to me to
propose that I should go to see her at half-past nine or at twelve: I
was with her at twelve.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Angoulême.]

She occupied a house standing by itself, at the end of the village,
on the right bank of the Tepl, the little river which rushes from the
mountain and flows through Carlsbad from one end to the other. As I
climbed the stairs to the Princess' apartment, I felt perturbed: I was
going, almost for the first time, to see that perfect model of human
suffering, that Antigone of Christendom. I had not talked for ten
minutes with Madame la Dauphine in my life; she had addressed scarcely
two or three words to me during the rapid course of her prosperity;
she had always shown herself at a loss in my presence. Though I had
never written or spoken of her except in terms of profound admiration,
Madame la Dauphine was necessarily bound to entertain towards me the
prejudices of that antechamber gang in whose midst she lived: the Royal
Family used to vegetate isolated in that citadel of stupidity and envy
to which the young generations laid siege, without being able to force
their way in.

A man-servant opened the door to me; I saw Madame la Dauphine seated,
at the further end of a drawing-room, on a sofa between two windows,
embroidering a piece of tapestry-work. I entered feeling so agitated
that I did not know whether I should be able to reach the Princess. She
raised her head, which she had kept lowered right against her work, as
though herself to hide her emotion, and, addressing me, said:

"I am glad to see you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand; the King wrote to me
that you were coming. You travelled at night? You must be tired."

I respectfully handed her Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letters; she
took them, laid them on the table beside her and said:

"Sit down, sit down."

Then she began her embroidery again, with a quick, mechanical and
convulsive movement.

I did not speak; Madame la Dauphine kept silence: I could hear the
pricking of the needle and the drawing of the wool as the Princess
passed it smartly through the canvas, on which I saw some tears fall.
The illustrious victim of misfortune wiped them from her eyes with the
back of her hand and, without raising her head, said:

"How is my sister? She is very unhappy, very unhappy. I am very sorry
for her, I am very sorry for her."

These brief and repeated phrases failed to open a conversation for
which neither of the two interlocutors could find the necessary
expressions. The redness of the Dauphine's eyes, caused by the habit of
tears, gave her a beauty which made her look like the Spasimo Virgin.

"Madame," I replied at last, "Madame la Duchesse de Berry is very
unhappy, without a doubt; she has charged me to come to place her
children under your protection during her captivity. It is a great
relief to think that Henry V. finds a second mother in Your Majesty."

Pascal was right to connect the greatness and wretchedness of man:
who would have believed that Madame la Dauphine attached any value,
to those titles of Queen, of Majesty, which were so natural to her
and of which she had known the vanity? Well, the word Majesty was,
nevertheless, a magic word; it beamed upon the Princess's forehead,
from which, for a moment, it removed the clouds: they soon returned to
place themselves there like a diadem.

"Oh no, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," said the Princess, looking at
me and ceasing her work, "I am not Queen."

"You are, Madame, you are, by the laws of the realm: Monseigneur le
Dauphin was able to abdicate only because he was King. France looks
upon you as her Queen, and you will be the mother of Henry V."

The Dauphiness discussed no longer: this little weakness, by making her
a woman again, veiled the glamour of so many different greatnesses,
gave them a sort of charm and brought them into closer connexion with
the human condition.

I read out my credentials, in which Madame la Duchesse de Berry
declared her marriage to me, ordered me to go to Prague, asked to be
allowed to keep her title as a French Princess and placed her children
in her sister's care.

The Princess resumed her embroidery; when I finished reading, she said
to me:

"Madame la Duchesse de Berry does well to rely on me; that's quite
right, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, quite right: I am very sorry for my
sister-in-law, you must tell her so."

This persistency on the part of Madame la Dauphine in saying that she
was sorry for Madame la Duchesse de Berry, without going further,
showed me how little sympathy there was, at bottom, between those
two souls. It also seemed to me as though an involuntary impulse had
stirred the saint's heart. A rivalry in misfortune! Nevertheless, the
daughter of Marie-Antoinette had nothing to fear in this struggle; the
palm would have remained hers.

"If Madame," I resumed, "would like to read the letter which Madame
la Duchesse de Berry sends her and that which she addresses to her
children, she will perhaps find some new explanations there. I hope
that Madame will give me a letter to take back to Blaye."

[Sidenote: A question of invisible ink.]

The letters were written in invisible ink.

"I don't understand this at all," said the Princess. "What are we to
do?"

I suggested the expedient of a chafing-dish with a few sticks of white
wood; Madame pulled the bell, the rope of which hung down behind the
sofa. A footman came, took the order and set up the apparatus on the
landing, at the door of the drawing-room. Madame rose and we went to
the chafing-dish. We put it on a little table standing against the
stair-rail. I took one of the two letters and held it parallel to the
flame. Madame la Dauphine watched me, and smiled because I did not
succeed. She said:

"Give it to me, give it to me, let me try my hand."

She passed the letter over the flame; Madame la Duchesse de Berry's
large, round hand-writing appeared: the same operation was performed
for the second letter. I congratulated Madame on her success. It was a
strange scene: the daughter of Louis XVI. deciphering with me, at the
top of a stair-case at Carlsbad, the mysterious characters which the
captive of Blaye was sending to the captive of the Temple!

We went back to our seats in the drawing-room. The Dauphiness read
the letter which was addressed to her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry
thanked her sister for the concern she had shown in her misfortune,
recommended her children to her, and specially placed her son under
the guardianship of his aunt's virtues. The letter to the children
consisted of a few loving words. The Duchesse de Berry invited Henry to
make himself worthy of France.

Madame la Dauphine said to me:

"My sister does me justice, I have been very much concerned at her
troubles. She must have suffered much, suffered much. You must tell
her that I will look after M. le Duc de Bordeaux. I am very fond of
him. How did you find him? His health is good, is it not? He is strong,
although a little nervous."

I spent two hours in private conversation with Madame, an honour rarely
granted: she seemed satisfied. Having never known anything about me
except from hostile reports, she no doubt believed me to be a violent
man, puffed up with my own merits; she was pleased with me for having a
human aspect and being a good fellow. She said to me, cordially:

"I am going out walking: I am keeping to the regimen of the waters; we
shall dine at three: you must come, if you do not want to go to bed. I
want to see you, so long as it does not tire you."

I do not know to what I owed my success; but certainly the ice was
broken, the prejudice wiped out; that glance which had been fixed, in
the Temple, on the eyes of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, had rested
kindly upon a poor servant. At the same time, though I had succeeded
in putting the Dauphiness at her ease, I felt myself exceedingly
constrained: the fear of passing a certain level took from me that
faculty for every-day intercourse which I had with Charles X. Whether
it was that I did not possess the secret of drawing what was sublime
from the soul of Madame; whether it was that my feeling of respect
closed the road to the intercommunication of thought, I felt a
distressing sterility which came from within myself.

At three o'clock, I was back at Madame la Dauphine's. I there met
Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy and her daughter, Madame d'Agoult,
Messieurs O'Heguerty the Younger and de Trogoff, who had the honour
of dining with the Princess. Countess Esterhazy, once a beautiful
woman, is still good-looking: she had been intimate with M. le Duc de
Blacas in Rome. They say that she meddles in politics and tells M. le
Prince de Metternich all that she hears. When, on leaving the Temple,
Madame was sent to Vienna, she met Countess Esterhazy, who became her
companion. I noticed that she listened attentively to what I said; she
had the simplicity, the next morning, to tell me that she had spent
the night in writing. She was preparing to leave for Prague; a secret
interview was arranged at a spot agreed upon with M. de Blacas; from
there she was going to Vienna. Old attachments made young again by
espionage! What a business and what pleasures! Mademoiselle Esterhazy
is not pretty: she looks witty and mischievous.

The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, a devotee to-day, is an important person of
the class which one finds in all princesses' closets. She has pushed on
her family as much as she could, by applying to everybody, especially
to myself: I have had the satisfaction of placing her nephews; she had
as many as the late Arch-chancellor Cambacérès.

[Sidenote: I dine with the Dauphiness.]

The dinner was so bad and so scanty that I rose dying of hunger; it
was served in Madame la Dauphine's own drawing-room, for she had no
dining-room. After the meal, the table was cleared; Madame went back
to sit on the sofa, took up her work again and we formed a circle
round. Trogoff told stories; Madame likes them. She interests herself
particularly in women. The Duchesse de Guiche was mentioned:

"Her tresses do not suit her," said the Dauphiness, to my great
surprise.

From her sofa, Madame saw through the window what was happening
outside: she named the ladies and gentlemen walking. Came two little
horses, with two grooms dressed in the Scotch fashion; Madame ceased
working, looked long and said:

"It is Madame-----[I forget the name] going into the mountains with her
children."

Marie-Thérèse curious, knowing the habits of the neighbourhood, the
Princess of thrones and scaffolds descending from the heights of her
life to the level of other women, interested me singularly; I watched
her with a sort of philosophic tenderness.

At five o'clock, the Dauphiness went out driving; at seven, I was back
for the evening gathering. The same arrangement: Madame on the sofa,
the guests of the dinner and five or six young and old water-drinkers
enlarged the circle. The Dauphiness made touching, but visible
efforts to be gracious; she addressed a word to every one. She spoke
to me several times, making a point of calling me by my name to make
me known; but she became absent-minded again after each sentence.
Her needle multiplied its movements, her face drew nearer to her
embroidery; I saw the Princess's profile and was struck by a sinister
resemblance: Madame has begun to look like her father; when I saw her
head lowered under the blade of sorrow, I thought that I saw Louis
XVI.'s head awaiting the fall of the blade. At half-past eight, the
evening ended; I went to bed overcome by sleep and lassitude.

On Friday the 31st of May[621], I was up at five o'clock; at six, I
went to the Mühlenbad: the men and women water-drinkers crowded round
the spring, walked under the gallery of wooden pillars, or in the
garden next to the gallery. Madame la Dauphine arrived, dressed in a
shabby grey silk gown; she wore a thread-bare shawl on her shoulders
and an old hat on her head. She looked as though she had mended her
clothes, as her mother did at the Conciergerie. M. O'Heguerty, her
equerry, gave her his arm. She mixed with the crowd and handed her
cup to the women who draw the water from the spring. No one paid any
attention to Madame la Comtesse de Marnes[622]. Maria Theresa, her
grandmother, in 1762, built the house known as the Mühlenbad: she also
presented Carlsbad with the bells which were to call her grand-daughter
to the foot of the Cross.

Madame having entered the garden, I went up to her: she seemed
surprised at this courtier-like flattery. I had seldom risen so early
for royal personages, except, perhaps, on the 13th of February 1820,
when I went to look for the Duc de Berry at the Opera. The Princess
allowed me to take five or six turns round the garden by her side,
talked kindly and told me that she would receive me at two o'clock
and give me a letter. I left her, out of discretion; I breakfasted
hurriedly and spent the time remaining to me in visiting the valley.

[Sidenote: Carlsbad.]

CARLSBAD, 1 _June_ 1833.

As a Frenchman, I found none but painful memories at Carlsbad. The town
takes its name from Charles IV.[623] King of Bohemia, who came here to
be cured of three wounds received at Crécy, while fighting beside his
father John. Lobkowitz pretends that John was killed by a Scotchman, a
circumstance not known to the historians:

     Sed cum Gallorum fines et arnica tuetur
     Arva, Caledonia cuspide fossus obit.

Cannot the poet have written _Caledonia_ for the sake of the quantity?
In 1346, Edward was at war with Robert Bruce[624], and the Scotch were
Philip's[625] allies.

The death of the blind John of Bohemia, at Crécy, is one of the most
heroic and touching adventures of chivalry. John wanted to go to the
assistance of his son Charles; he said to his companions:

"My lords, you are my friends; I call upon you to lead me so far
forwards that I may strike a blow with my sword."

    "They replied that gladly would they do so.... The King of Bohemia
    went so far forwards that he struck a blow with his sword, indeed
    more than four, and combated most vigorously, and so did they of
    his company; and so much forward they pushed against the English
    that all remained there and were on the morrow found on the field
    around their lord, and all the horses tied together."

Few people know that John of Bohemia was buried at Montargis, in the
church of the Dominicans, and that on his tomb one used to read this
remnant of an obliterated inscription:

    "He died at the head of his attendants, together recommending them
    to God the Father. Pray to God for that sweet King."

May this remembrance of a Frenchman expiate the ingratitude of France,
when, in the days of our new calamities, we appalled Heaven by our
sacrilege and cast out of his tomb a Prince who died for us in the days
of our old misfortunes!

At Carlsbad, the chronicles relate that, Charles IV., the son of King
John, having gone out hunting, one of his hounds, darting after a deer,
fell from the top of a hill into a bason of boiling water. Its howls
caused the huntsmen to hurry in its direction and the source of the
Sprudel was discovered. A hog which scalded itself in the waters of
Teplitz showed them to the herdsmen.

Such are the traditions of Germania. I have been to Corinth: the
ruins of the temple of the courtesans were dispersed over the ashes of
Glycera; but the fountain of Pyrene, which sprang from the tears of
a nymph, still flowed among the oleanders through which Pegasus flew
in the times of the Muses. The waters of a port without ships bathed
fallen columns whose capitals lay steeped in the sea, like heads of
drowned girls stretched upon the sands; the myrtle had grown in their
hair and replaced the acanthus leaves: there you have the traditions of
Greece.

Carlsbad numbers eight springs: the most celebrated is the Sprudel,
discovered by the stag-hound. This spring issues from the ground
between the church and the Tepl with a hollow sound and a white steam;
it leaps up with irregular bounds to a height of six or seven feet. The
hot-springs of Iceland are superior to the Sprudel, but none goes to
seek health in the deserts of the Hecla, where life expires; where the
summer's day, issuing from the day, knows neither sunset nor sunrise;
where the winter's night, born again of the night, is without dawn or
twilight.

The water of the Sprudel boils eggs and serves to wash plates and
dishes; this fine phenomenon has entered the service of the Carlsbad
housewives: an image of genius which degrades itself by lending its
power to vile works[626].

Carlsbad is the meeting-place in ordinary of sovereigns: they ought
surely to get cured there of the crown for themselves and for us.

A daily list is published of the visitors to the Sprudel: on the
old rolls we find the names of the poets and the most enlightened
men of letters of the North: Gurowsky[627], Dunker, Weisse[628],
Herder[629], Goethe; I should have liked to meet with that of Schiller,
my favourite. In the sheet of the day, among obscure arrivals, one
observes the name of the "Comtesse de Marnes:" it is only printed in
small capitals.

In 1830, at the very moment of the fall of the Royal Family at
Saint-Cloud, the widow and daughters of Christophe were taking the
waters at Carlsbad. Their Haytian Majesties have retired to Tuscany,
near the Neapolitan Majesties. King Christophe's youngest daughter,
very well-educated and exceedingly pretty, has died at Pisa: her ebon
beauty rests free under the porticoes of the Campo Santo, far from the
cane-fields and mangrove-trees beneath whose shade she was born a slave.

In 1826, an Englishwoman from Calcutta was seen at Carlsbad, passing
from the banian fig-tree to the Bohemian olive-tree, from the sun of
the Ganges to the sun of the Tepl; she died away like a ray from the
Indian sky lost in the cold and the darkness. The sight of cemeteries,
in places consecrated to health, is a melancholy one: there young women
sleep, strangers to one another; on their tombs are carved the number
of their days and the place of their birth: one seems to be going
through a hot-house in which flowers are cultivated of every climate,
whose names are written on a label at the foot of the flowers.

The native law has anticipated the requirements of exotic death:
foreseeing the decease of the travellers far from their country, it
permits the exhumations beforehand. I might, then, have slept half a
score of years in the Cemetery of St. Andrew and nothing would have
hindered the testamentary dispositions of these Memoirs. If Madame
la Dauphine were to expire here, would the French laws permit the
return of her ashes? That would be a controversial point between the
Sorbonizers of doctrine and the casuists of proscription.

The Carlsbad waters are stated to be good for the liver and bad for the
teeth. I know nothing about the liver, but there are many toothless
people at Carlsbad; perhaps the years are responsible for this, rather
than the waters: time is an arrant liar and a great tooth-drawer.

Does it not seem to you as though I were recommencing the _Chef-d'œuvre
d'un inconnu[630]?_ One word leads me to another; I go from Iceland to
India:

     Voilà les Apennins et voici le Caucase[631].

[Sidenote: The Teplitz Valley.]

And nevertheless I have not yet left the Teplitz Valley.

To obtain a view of the whole of the Valley of the Tepl, I climbed a
hill, through a wood of pine-trees: the perpendicular columns of these
trees formed an acute angle with the slanting rays of the sun; some had
their tops, two thirds, one half, a quarter of their trunks where the
others had their feet.

I shall always love the woods: the flora of Carlsbad, whose breath
seemed to have embroidered the grass under my footsteps, seemed
charming to me; I met again the fingered sedge, the common night-shade,
the small loose-strife, the perforated St. John's wort, the hardy
lily-of-the-valley, the white willow: sweet subjects of my early
anthologies.

See my youth coming to hang its reminiscences on the stalks of those
plants which I recognised in passing. Do you remember my botanical
studies among the Seminoles, my cenotheras, my nymphæas, with which I
decked my Floridans, the garlands of clematis with which they entwined
the tortoise, our sleep on the island by the lake-side, the shower
of roses from the magnolia-tree that fell upon our heads? I dare not
calculate the age which my fickle "painted girl" would have reached by
now; what should I gather on her brow to-day? The wrinkles that lie
on my own. She is no doubt sleeping for ever beneath the roots of a
cypress-grove of Alabama; and I, who bear in my memory those distant,
unknown recollections, I am alive! I am in Bohemia, not with Atala and
Céluta, but near Madame la Dauphine, who is going to give me a letter
for Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

At one o'clock, I was at Madame la Dauphine's orders.

"You wish to leave to-day, Monsieur de Chateaubriand?"

"If Your Majesty will permit me. I shall try to find Madame de Berry in
France; otherwise I should be obliged to make the journey to Sicily,
and Her Royal Highness would be kept too long waiting for the answer
which she expects."

"Here is a note for her. I took care not to mention your name, so as
not to compromise you if anything happened. Read it."

I took the note; it was written entirely in Madame la Dauphine's hand:
I have taken an exact copy of it.

    "CARLSBAD, 31 _May_ 1833.

    "It was a genuine pleasure for me, my dear sister, at last to hear
    from you direct I pity you with all my soul. Reckon always on my
    constant concern for you and especially for your dear children, who
    will be more precious to me than ever. My existence, as long as it
    endures, shall be consecrated to them. I have not yet been able to
    execute your commissions as regards our family, my health having
    required that I should come here to take the waters. But I shall
    discharge it immediately on my return to them; they and I, believe
    me, will never have any but the same sentiments on everything.

    "Farewell, my dear sister: I pity you from the bottom of my heart
    and embrace you fondly.

    "M. T."

I was struck by the reserve of this note: a few vague expressions
of attachment but poorly covered the dryness of its substance.
I respectfully said as much, and again pleaded the cause of the
unfortunate prisoner. Madame answered that the King would give his
decision. She promised me to interest herself on behalf of her sister;
but there was no cordiality either in the voice or tone of the
Dauphiness: one perceived rather a restrained irritation. The game
seemed to me lost as far as my client's person was concerned. I fell
back upon Henry V. I thought that I owed to the Princess the sincerity
which I had always employed, at my risk and peril, to enlighten
the Bourbons; I spoke to her, frankly and without flattery, of the
education of M. le Duc de Bordeaux:

[Sidenote: I talk to the Dauphiness.]

"I know that Madame has read in a kindly spirit the pamphlet at the end
of which I expressed a few ideas relating to the education of Henry V.
I fear lest the child's surroundings should injure his cause: Messieurs
de Damas, de Blacas and Latil are not popular."

Madame agreed with this; she even quite threw over M. de Damas, while
saying two or three words in honour of his courage, his probity and his
religion.

"In the month of September, Henry V. will be of age: does not Madame
think that it would be a good thing to establish a council around
him to which one would summon men upon whom France looks with less
prejudice?"

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, by multiplying counsellors one multiplies
opinions: and then, whom would you propose to the King's choice?"

"M. de Villèle."

Madame, who was embroidering, stopped her needle, looked at me in
surprise and surprised me, in my turn, by giving a pretty judicious
criticism of the mind and character of M. de Villèle. She regarded him
only as an able administrator.

"Madame is too severe," said I to her: "M. de Villèle is a man of
method, of accounts, of moderation, of composure, of infinite resource;
if he had not had the ambition to fill the first place, he would have
been a man to keep everlastingly in the King's Council: he will never
be replaced. His presence with Henry V. would have the best effect."

"I thought that you did not like M. de Villèle?"

"I should despise myself if, after the fall of the throne, I continued
to cherish a sentiment of some petty rivalry. Our royalist divisions
have already done too much harm; I forswear them with all my heart and
am ready to beg pardon of those who have offended me. I entreat Your
Majesty to believe that this is neither a display of false generosity
nor a stone laid by way of prevision of a future fortune. What could
I ask of Charles X. in exile? If the Restoration were to come about,
should I not be at the bottom of my grave?"

Madame looked at me with kindness; she had the goodness to praise me in
these simple words:

"That is very well said, Monsieur de Chateaubriand."

She seemed to be still surprised to find a Chateaubriand so different
from the one who had been described to her.

"There is another person, Madame," I resumed, "whom one might send
for: my noble friend M. Lainé. There were three of us in France who
ought never to take the oath to Philip: myself, M. Lainé and M.
Royer-Collard. Outside the government and in different positions, we
should have formed a triumvirate of some value. M. Lainé took the oath
from weakness, M. Royer-Collard from pride: the first will die of it;
the second will live by it, because he lives by all that he does, being
incapable of doing anything that is not admirable."

"Were you pleased with Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux?"

"I thought him charming. They say that Your Majesty spoils him a
little."

"Oh no, no. Were you satisfied with his health?"

"He seemed to me to be wonderfully well; he looks delicate and a little
pale."

"He often has a nice colour; but he is nervous. Monsieur le Dauphin
is very much esteemed in the army, is he not? Very much esteemed? They
remember him, do they not?"

This abrupt question, which had no connection with what we had
just been saying, revealed to me a secret wound which the days of
Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet had left in the heart of the Dauphiness.
She brought up her husband's name in order to reassure herself:
I hastened to anticipate the thought of the Princess and wife; I
declared, and with truth, that the army had never forgotten the
impartiality, the virtues, the courage of its Commander-in-Chief.

Seeing that the hour for walking had come:

"Your Majesty has no more orders to give me? I am afraid of being
troublesome."

"Tell your friends of the love I bear to France; let them well
understand that I am a Frenchwoman. I charge you particularly to say
that; you will do me a pleasure in saying it: I regret France much, I
regret France very much."

"Ah, Madame, what has that France not done to you? How can you, who
have suffered so much, continue to feel 'home-sick?'"

"No, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, do not forget it, be sure to tell
them all that I am a Frenchwoman, that I am a Frenchwoman."

Madame left me; I was obliged to stop on the stair-case before going
out; I would not have dared to show myself in the street; my tears
still moisten my eyelids as I retrace this scene.

On returning to my inn, I resumed my travelling-dress. While the
carriage was being got ready, Trogoff let his tongue run on; he told me
again and again that Madame la Dauphine was very pleased with me, that
she made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction, that she spoke of it
to anyone who was willing to listen to her.

"It's an immense thing, this journey of yours!" shouted Trogoff, trying
to drown the voices of his two nightingales. "You will see some results
from it!"

I did not believe in any result.

I was right. They were expecting M. le Duc de Bordeaux that same
evening. Although everybody knew of his arrival, they had made a
mystery of it to me. I was careful not to show that I was informed of
the secret.

[Sidenote: And take my leave.]

At six o'clock in the evening, I was rolling towards Paris. Whatever
may be the greatness of misfortune in Prague, the pettiness of the
life of princes reduced to itself is difficult to swallow; to drink the
last drop of it, one must have burnt one's palate and intoxicated one's
self with a glowing faith.

Alas, a new Symmachus, I bewail the abandonment of the altars; I raise
my hands towards the Capitol; I invoke the majesty of Rome! But if the
god should have turned into wood and Rome fail to come to life again in
its dust?



[Footnote 556: This book was written in Prague, from the 24th to the
30th of May 1833, and at Carlsbad, on the 1st of June.--T.]

[Footnote 557: When Charles X. arrived in England, in August 1830, he
accepted the hospitality of a Catholic Jacobite family, the Welds,
which thus paid the Bourbons the debt of Stuarts. The head of that
family, Cardinal Weld, offered the King of France the use of Lulworth
Castle, in Dorsetshire, not far from the little town of Wareham. After
a stay of two months at Lulworth, the Royal Family went to live at
Holyrood Palace, in Edinburgh, where they remained for two years. On
the 25th of October 1832, Charles X. arrived in Prague, at the Castle
of Hradschin, which the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., had put at his
disposal until he was able to find a private residence. Here Charles X.
spent three years and a half. In the month of May 1836, he hired from
Count Coronini his property of Graffenberg, situated at one end of the
town of Gorlitz, on a rising ground which overlooks it.--B.]

[Footnote 558: The notes on p. 78, Vol. IV., and p. 130 _supra_,
by M. Biré, give a brief biography, not, as stated, of this Duc de
Guiche, later Duc de Gramont, but of his father, the Duc de Gramont.
M. Biré himself corrects this error by giving the following details
of the Duc de Guiche with whom we have to do. He emigrated with his
parents when only three weeks of age. He served in Portugal and Spain
under Wellington. After the Battle of Vittoria (June 1813), he made
his way into France, established relations with the Royalists of the
South and was sent by them to Louis XVIII., in England, to ask him to
send a prince of the Blood to place himself at the head of a movement
which was being organized. He succeeded in his mission and returned to
Bordeaux, followed in a few days by the Duc d'Angoulême. Until that
time he had been known as the Comte de Gramont. By order of Louis
XVIII., he assumed, on his return to France, the name and rank of Duc
de Guiche, which had formerly been borne by the eldest sons of the
family. Under the Restoration, the Duc de Guiche became First Equerry
to the Duc d'Angoulême, served under him in the South during the
Hundred Days and, later, in 1823, in Spain. In 1830, he accompanied the
Royal Family from Rambouillet to Cherbourg, whence he was sent back to
Paris to put the Duc d'Angoulême's personal affairs in order. Having
completed this business, he went, with all his family, to join the
Prince in Edinburgh, and afterwards accompanied him to Prague. The Duc
de Guiche returned to France in 1833 and, on the death of his father,
in August 1836, succeeded to the name and rank of Duc de Gramont.--T.]

[Footnote 559: Louise Princess of France (1819-1864), married, in 1845,
to Charles III. Duke of Parma, and Regent of Parma during the minority
of the present Duke from the date of his father's murder, in 1854,
until his own deposition in 1859.--T.]

[Footnote 560: M. Barrande was the Duc de Bordeaux's principal
professor. Without having the title of tutor, he held all the branches
of the education in his hands, which enabled him to give a valuable
impulse to the Prince's studies. M. Barrande, at that time, was between
thirty and thirty-five years of age; he was a man of the younger
generation, a distinguished pupil of the Polytechnic School and had
a firm and severe character. He retired at the end of 1833, when the
Baron de Damas ceased to fulfil the functions of Governor.--B.]

[Footnote 561: M. de La Villate (_b._ 1776) had served in the Royal
Grenadiers of the Guard during the Restoration. He was a brave and
loyal officer, and the Duc de Bordeaux took a great liking to him at
an early age. M. de La Villate took no part in the Prince's education
properly so-called, as he did not instruct him in any branch of
knowledge; but he exercised a real influence upon his character and
instilled into him a love of the rough, plain truth. The young Prince
loved him for his loyalty, his soldierly frankness and his white
hairs. It was not age that had turned his head white. He was eighteen
years old, in 1794, when his father was flung into prison. Young La
Villate was resolved to make every effort to save him and succeeded in
obtaining admittance to him. After a long struggle, persuaded by his
tears and his persistency, the prisoner consented to change clothes
with his son and to leave in his stead, relying upon a remnant of
humanity in his gaolers which would prevent them, who shrank from
scarcely any crime, from committing the additional crime of taking
vengeance upon this act of filial devotion. A reprieve was, in fact,
granted; and young La Villate was restored to his family on the 9
Thermidor. But the painful emotions of that terrible night, during
which he had struggled against his father's refusal, had turned his
hair white in a few hours and given him that silver crown at the age of
eighteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 562: In 1833, after the retirement of M. Barrande, two
Jesuits, the Pères Étienne Deplace and Julien Druilhet, were sent for
to Prague and attached to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. They
remained only three months in Prague and were replaced by the Bishop of
Hermopolis, M. de Frayssinous, who directed the Prince's education from
1833 to 1838.--B.]

[Footnote 563: The Abbé de Moligny was the young Duc de Bordeaux's
confessor.--B.]

[Footnote 564: The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, the Dauphiness' habitual
companion.--B.]

[Footnote 565: The Abbé Nicolas de MacCarthy (1769-1833) was a native
of Dublin, whose father settled in France soon after the child's birth.
Although destined for the priesthood before the Revolution, MacCarthy
was not ordained until 1814, when he became a member of the Company of
Jesus. His talent won him a quick reputation and, in 1819, he preached
the Advent sermons at the Tuileries with extraordinary success. He was
gifted with an impassioned and penetrating eloquence and shone more
particularly by his improvisation. The Père MacCarthy's action added
greatly to the value of his sermons. Many of the preachers of the time
set themselves to imitate him and went so far as to adopt in the pulpit
the peculiar attitude which he himself was obliged to assume through
an infirmity contracted in the service of the poor. This was called
preaching à la MacCarthy. One severe winter's day he had carried a
heavy load of wood up to the garret of a poor friendless woman. The
burden was beyond his strength and brought about a weakness of the
loins from which he suffered until his death, which occurred on the
3rd of May 1833, a few weeks before Chateaubriand's conversation with
Charles X. MacCarthy's Sermons, published in 1834, are remarkable for
their style, their logic and their rhetorical swing.--B.]

[Footnote 566: _Cf._ ANTOINE DE LA SALLE, _Hystoire et plaisante
chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des
Belles-Cousines, sans autre nom nommer._--T.]

[Footnote 567: It is curious, in the present year 1902, to read of this
style, adopted only, I believe, by Chateaubriand. It is, of course,
wrong: Prince Charles Edward, after his father's death, was always
known to his adherents as Charles III. There was no reason, such as
prevailed with His present Majesty, to induce the Prince to style
himself Edward VII.--T.]

[Footnote 568: Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV.
(1705-1774), was elected Pope in 1758. Prince Charles Edward succeeded
James III. as _de jure_ King of England in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 569: Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope Pius VI. (1717-1799), was
elected Pope in 1775, succession to Clement XIV. He survived Charles
III. by eleven years.--T.]

[Footnote 570: Marie Louise Françoise de Lussan d'Esparbès, Vicomtesse
de Polastron (1764-1804), was married to the Vicomte de Polastron,
Madame de Polignac's brother, in December 1780. Her connection with the
Comte d'Artois commenced before the Revolution and was continued during
the Emigration. She died of a slow fever, in Brompton Grove, after
confessing to the Abbé de Latil and imploring the Comte d'Artois, on
her death-bed, to swear that she should be his last mistress, his last
love on earth, that he should thenceforth love none other than God. The
Prince swore and kept his word.--T.]

[Footnote 571: Alfred Charles François Gabriel Comte de Damas
(1794-1840), a knight of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour and an
honorary lord of the Bed-chamber to Charles X.--B.]

[Footnote 572: Robert II. (sometimes called Robert I.) King of France
(971-1031), surnamed the Pious, son of Hugh Capet, whom he succeeded in
996.--T.]

[Footnote 573: Bruno of Carinthia, Pope Gregory V. (_d._ 999) was
elected Pope in 996. Mademoiselle was two years out: the Pope reigning
in 1001 was his successor, Silvester II., who died in 1003.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Basil II. Emperor of the East (_circa_ 958-1025) became
Byzantine Emperor in 976.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Otto III. Emperor of the West (980-1002), surnamed the
Wonder of the World, succeeded as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in
983, and assumed the reins of government in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 576: Veremund II. King of Leon and Asturias died in 999; he
was succeeded by Alphonsus V., who reigned till 1027. In this case
Henry V. was two years out.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Ethelred II. King of England (968-1016), surnamed the
Unready, succeeded to the throne in 979.--T.]

[Footnote 578: Edmund II. King of England (_circa_ 989-1016), surnamed
Ironside, son of Ethelred the Unready, whom he succeeded in 1016,
himself dying in the same year.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Henry IV. abjured Calvinism in 1593, in order to secure
his recognition as King of France.--T.]

[Footnote 580: In the royal domain of Chantilly.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Blondel (_fl._ 12th Century), the French troubadour,
said to have found Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in the castle in which the
King was confined, by singing under his tower a song which the two had
composed.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Leopold I. or V. Duke of Austria (1157-1194) took
Richard prisoner in Austria, in December 1192, and kept him in the
Castle of Dürrenstein until March 1193, when the King was transferred
to the Emperor Henry VI.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Charles VI. King of France (1368-1422) succeeded to
the throne in 1380, but became deranged in 1392, four years after he
had assumed the government. Cards are generally supposed to have been
invented about this time to amuse the unfortunate King: "they were
invented," I have heard it said, "to amuse a fool and they have amused
fools ever since."--T.]

[Footnote 584: Oger, or Ogier, or Outcaire, or Adalgarius (_fl._ 9th
Century), the Danish paladin of Charlemagne, gives his name, in the
French pack of playing-cards, to the Knave of Spades.--T.]

[Footnote 585: Étienne de Vignoles, known as Lahire (_circa_
1390-1443), the valiant captain of Charles VII., has the Knave of
Hearts called after him on French cards.--T.]

[Footnote 586: _Cf._ Vol. III. p. 129, n. 4. The Baron Capelle was
Minister of Commerce in the last Cabinet under Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Charles Le Mercher de Longpré, Baron d'Haussez
(1778-1854), Minister of Marine in the Polignac Cabinet, fled from
France in 1830 and went to England, where he wrote his Grande Bretagne
en 1833, the work referred to. Subsequently he travelled in Holland,
Germany and Italy, describing his journey in the _Voyage d'un exilé_
(1835) and in Alpes et Danube (1837). He returned to France in
consequence of the political amnesty decreed in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 588: The Comte de Montbel (_cf._ p. 81, n. 5, _supra_), who
was Minister of the Interior and, later, Minister of Finance in the
Polignac Cabinet, published, in 1833, a _Notice sur la vie du duc de
Reichstadt._--B.]

[Footnote 589: _Cf._ Vol. IV. p. 138, n. 4.--T.]

[Footnote 590: The "Royalist Butcher." _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 109, n. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 591: João de Castro (1500-1548) was Portuguese Governor of
India, in 1545, and won several signal victories over the natives.
He was as upright as he was brave; he died poor and was buried at
the expense of the public. He is said to have offered to pledge his
mustachios in exchange for a loan from the merchants of Goa; but the
merchants were satisfied with his word.--T.]

[Footnote 592: "This is the famed Battle of Prag; fought May 6th,
1757; which sounded through all the world, and used to deafen us in
drawing-rooms within man's memory." (CARLYLE, _History of Friedrich II.
of Prussia, called Frederick the Great_, Book XVIII., Chap, II.)-T.]

[Footnote 593: The Comte de Chambord was destined to spend over fifty
years more in Austria: he died at Frohsdorf, about thirty miles from
Vienna, on the 24th of August 1883.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Jan Sigismund Boncza Skrzynecki (1786-1860) served
in the Polish contingent in aid of Napoleon; joined in the Polish
Insurrection in 1830; served with distinction at Grochow, on the 25th
of February 1831, and was appointed commander-in-chief on the next day.
He defeated the Russians at Warwe and Dembe in March and at Iganie on
the 8th of April; but his nominal victory at Ostrolenka (26 May 1831)
was tantamount to a defeat, owing to his subsequent inaction, and he
was superseded in August. He fled to Bohemia and lived in Prague until
Leopold I. placed him in command of the Belgian Army. In 1839, the
representations of Russia, Austria and Prussia compelled him to lay
down this command. General Skrzynecki continued to live in Brussels
until 1859, when he obtained leave to settle in Cracovia. He died in
the month of January of the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 595: Johann Rudolf Count von Chotkowa and Wognin (1748-1824)
was Grand Burgrave of Bohemia from 1802 to 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 596: _Anglicè_, in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 597: _Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre_, Vol. I. p. 326
_et seq._--B.]

[Footnote 598: Karl Robert Count Nesselrode (1780-1862), the famous
Russian statesman, was Minister of Foreign Affairs almost continuously
from 1813 to 1856.--T.]

[Footnote 599: Blacas d'Aulps the troubadour died in 1229; Blacas
d'Aulps the "Great Warrior," one of the most gallant knights at the
Court of Provence, in 1235.--T.]

[Footnote 600: _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 202, n. 5. Blacas d'Aulps and
d'Épernon were both natives of the South of France.--T.]

[Footnote 601: The Obelisk of Luxor was brought from Egypt in 1831 and
set up in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, in 1836. It weighs 240
tons.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Luc de Clapier, Marquis de Vauvenargues ( 1715-1747),
the French moralist, author of the _Introduction à la connaissance de
l'esprit humain_, took part in the retreat from Prague (December 1742)
as a captain of foot. His health suffered, and he was obliged to resign
his commission soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the celebrated Danish
astronomer, entered the service of the Emperor Rudolph II. and settled
in Prague in 1599. The constellation which Tycho discovered in 1572 was
Cassiopeia, in which appeared a temporary star brighter than Venus at
its brightest.--T.]

[Footnote 604: Shakespeare: _Winter's Tale_, Act III. sc. iii. 1-2, 45,
48, 53-54.--T.]

[Footnote 605: Wenceslaus VI. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany
(1361-1419), surnamed the Drunkard, was the son of the Emperor Charles
IV. He was elected King of the Romans in 1376 and succeeded to the
German and Bohemian Thrones in 1378. His cruelties made him so odious
that his Bohemian nobles imprisoned him in 1394 and, in 1400, he was
solemnly deposed from the Throne of Germany. He renounced his right
to the Imperial Crown in 1410, but continued to reign as King of
Bohemia.--T.]

[Footnote 606: John Wyclif (_circa_ 1324-1384) became Master of Balliol
in 1360. Huss began spreading his doctrines in Prague in 1398.--T.]

[Footnote 607: Vaclav Hanka (1791-1861), an eminent Bohemian
philologist and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 608: Frantisek Ladislav Czelakovsky (1799-1852), the poet
and philologist. He published his collection of Slav folk-songs in
1822-1827.--T.]

[Footnote 609: Boguslav Lobkowitz, Baron von Hassenstein (1462-1510),
the author of a number of odes, elegies and letters in Latin, of which
a German translation was published, in Prague, in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Mahomet II. Sultan of Turkey (_circa_ 1430-1481),
surnamed the Conqueror, or the Great. He besieged and captured
Constantinople in 1453; and conquered the Morea, Servia, Bosnia and
Albania and made the Crimea a dependency of Turkey in 1457.--T.]

[Footnote 611: Louis XII. King of France (1462-1515), surnamed the
Father of the People.--T.]

[Footnote 612: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Le Roi est mort! Vive le roi!_
(1824).--B.]

[Footnote 613: It was not at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, as Chateaubriand
says in error, that the Allies called for the dismemberment of France,
but three years earlier, during the discussion of the Treaties of 1815.
It was then that the Emperor Alexander gave the Duc de Richelieu this
"map of Styx," as an incontestable proof of the concessions obtained by
the latter. On this map, our new frontier is marked out by a line drawn
in blue, which takes away from France a portion of the Departments of
the Isère, with Fort Barraux; of the Ain, with Belley, Gex and the
Fort de l'Écluse; of the Jura, with Saint-Claude; of the Doubs, with
the Fort de Tour, Pontarlier, Saint-Hippolyte and Montbéliard; the
whole of the Haut-Rhin; the whole of the Bas-Rhin; the whole of the
Moselle; a part of the Meuse, including Montmédy; the Ardennes, with
Sedan, Mérières and Rocroy; the whole Department of the Nord, excepting
Cambrai and Douai. The fact that this blue line was not put through and
France not wiped out from the political map of Europe we owe entirely
to Louis XVIII. and the Duc de Richelieu.--B.]

[Footnote 614: William Cobbett (1762-1835), the peasant essayist and
politician. The letter referred to is his _Letter to Monsieur de
Chateaubriand on his speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, on the
25th February_, 1823, _relative to the war proposed to be undertaken by
France against the Revolutionists of Spain_, dated Kensington, 5 March
1823.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice (_circa_ 1108-1205),
became Doge in 1192. He went as Ambassador to the Byzantine Court in
1173 and was blinded by order of the Emperor Manuel I.--T.]

[Footnote 616: Jean Châtel (1577-1594), in December 1594, stabbed Henry
IV. on the lip, while the King was stooping to lift up two officers who
were kneeling to him. Châtel was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris
to be quartered.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Dominique de Vic, Viscount d'Ermenonville (_d._ 1610),
one of the most faithful servants of Henry IV. Passing, after the
King's death, through the Rue de la Ferronnerie, in which Henry had
been assassinated, he was seized with a grief so keen that he died of
it the next day.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Joachim Simon Comte de Trogoff (1763-1840) was born at
the Château de Penlan, in Brittany. He entered the service in 1779
and fought in the War of American Independence. After the Emigration,
he joined the Austrian service, where he remained till 1814, when
the Restoration made him a brigadier-general and the Comte d'Artois
admitted him to his intimacy. When Charles X. became King, he appointed
Trogoff to the Governorship of Saint-Cloud. In 1830, at the time of the
halt at Rambouillet, Trogoff acted as governor of the palace and wanted
to fight, but was not permitted. He accompanied the King to the ship
which was to take him to England and, having accomplished this duty,
withdrew to the Château de Keruroret, near Saint-Pol, which he never
left except to go to visit his old master in exile.--B.]

[Footnote 619: St. Clodoald, or Cloud (_d._ 560), was the son of
Clodomir King of Orleans and the grandson of Clovis King of the Franks.
After the death of his father and the murder of his two elder brothers,
in 533, he devoted himself to a monastic life and lived in a retreat
near Paris which was subsequently called after him. St. Cloud is
honoured on the 7th of September.--T.]

[Footnote 620: VIR., _Georg._ IV. 515.--B.]

[Footnote 621: And not Friday the 1st of June, as the earlier editions
have it.--B.]

[Footnote 622: The Duc d'Angoulême had taken the name of Comte de
Marnes in exile,--T.]

[Footnote 623: Charles IV. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany
(1316-1378) succeeded his father as King of Bohemia on the death of
the latter at Crécy, in 1346, and was crowned Emperor in the following
year.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Robert I. Bruce, King of Scotland (1274-1329), died
seventeen years before the Battle of Crécy; but his son, David II.
Bruce (1324-1371), invaded England in 1346, was defeated and captured
at Neville's Cross (17 October 1346) and kept in captivity till
1357.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Philip VI. King of France (1293-1350), the first king of
the House of Valois, was defeated by Edward III. at Crécy on the 26th
of August 1346.--T.]

[Footnote 626: I omit a quotation from Alexandre Dumas' translation in
verse of Lobkowitz' Latin Ode to the Sprudel.--T.]

[Footnote 627: Gurowsky (_b._ 1800), the Polish poet.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Christian Hermann Weisse (1801 -1866), author of the
_System der Ästhetik_ (1830) and other philosophical works.--T.]

[Footnote 629: Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), the German
critic and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 630: The _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu, poème heureusement
découvert et mis au jour par le docteur Mathanasius_ is an amusing
satire by Hyacinthe Cordonnier (1684-1746), known as Thémiseuil de
Saint-Hyacinthe, published in 1714, in the midst of the "quarrel of
the ancients and moderns." Its success was maintained throughout the
eighteenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 631: LA FONTAINE, _Le Rat et l'huître_:

    "Here stand the Apennines and here the Caucasus."

_Cf._ JOHNSON: "Survey mankind from China to Peru."--T.]


END OF VOL. V.




APPENDIX

THE ROYAL ORDINANCES OF JULY 1830

"CHARLES, etc.

"To all to whom these presents shall come, health.

"On the report of our Council of Ministers, We have ordained and do
ordain as follows:

"Art I. The liberty of the periodical press is suspended.

"II. The regulations of Articles I., II. and IX., of the First Section
of the Law of the 21st of October 1814 are again put in force; in
consequence of which no journal, or periodical, or semi-periodical
writing, established, or about to be established, without distinction
of the matters therein treated, shall appear in Paris or in the
Departments, except by the virtue of an authority first obtained from
Us by the authors and printer respectively. This authority shall be
renewed every three months. It may also be revoked.

"III. The authority shall be provisionally granted and provisionally
withdrawn by the Prefects from journals and periodicals, or
semi-periodical works, published, or about to be published, in the
Departments.

"IV. Journals and writings published in contravention of Article II.,
shall be immediately seized. The presses and types used in the printing
of them shall be placed in a public depository under seal, or rendered
unfit for use.

"V. No writing of less than twenty printed pages shall appear, except
with the authority of Our Minister the Secretary of State for the
Interior in Paris, and of the Prefects in the Departments. Every
writing of more than twenty printed pages, which shall not constitute
one single work, must also be published under authority only. Writings
published without authority shall be immediately seized; the presses
and types used in printing them shall be placed in a public depository
under seal, or rendered unfit for use.

"VI. Minutes relating to legal process and minutes of scientific
and literary societies must be previously authorized, if they treat
in whole or in part of political matters, in which case the measures
prescribed by Article V. shall be applicable.

"VII. Every regulation contrary to the present shall be without effect.

"VIII. The execution of the present Ordinance shall take place in
conformity with Article IV. of the Ordinance of 27 November 1816 and of
that which is prescribed by the Ordinance of 18 January 1817.

"IX. Our Secretaries of State are charged with the execution of this
Ordinance.

"Given at the Palace of Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year
of Grace 1830 and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

   (Countersigned) "Prince de POLIGNAC, President.
                   "CHANTELAUZE, Keeper of the Seals.
                   "Baron d'HAUSSEZ, Minister of Marine.
                   "MONTBEL, Minister of Finance.
                   "Comte de GUERNON-RANVILLE,
                        Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs.
                   "Baron CAPELLE, Secretary of State for
                        Public Works."

"CHARLES,

"To all to whom these presents shall come, etc.

"Having considered Article L. of the Constitutional Charter; being
informed of the manœuvres which have been practised in various parts
of Our Kingdom, to deceive and mislead the electors during the late
operations of the electoral colleges; having heard our Council, We have
ordained and do ordain as follows:

"Art. I. The Chamber of Deputies of departments is dissolved.

"II. Our Minister the Secretary of State of the Interior is charged
with the execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830
and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

(Countersigned) "Comte de Peyronnet, Peer of France, Secretary of State
for the Interior."

"CHARLES,

"To all who shall see these presents, health.

"Having resolved to prevent the return of the manœuvres which have
exercised a pernicious influence on the late operations of the
Electoral Colleges and wishing, in consequence, to reform, according to
the principles of the Constitutional Charter, the rules of election,
of which experience has shown the inconvenience, We have recognised
the necessity of using the right which belongs to Us to provide, by
acts emanating from Ourselves, for the safety of the State and for the
suppression of every enterprise injurious to the dignity of Our Crown.
For these reasons, having heard Our council, We have ordained and do
ordain:

"Art I. Conformably with Articles XV., XXXVI. and XXX. of the
Constitutional Charter, the Chamber of Deputies shall consist only of
Deputies of Departments.

"II. The electoral rate and the rate of eligibility shall consist
exclusively of the sums for which the elector and the candidate shall
be inscribed individually, as holders of real or personal property in
the roll of the land-tax, or of personal taxes.

"III. Each Department shall have the number of Deputies allotted to it
by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional Charter.

"IV. The Deputies shall be elected, and the Chamber renewed, in the
form and for the time fixed by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional
Charter.

"V. The Electoral Colleges shall be divided into Colleges of
Arrondissement and Colleges of Departments, except the case of those
Electoral Colleges of Departments to which only one Deputy is allotted.

"VI. The Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements shall consist of all the
electors whose political domicile is established in the Arrondissement
The Electoral Colleges of Departments shall consist of a fourth part of
the most highly taxed of the electors of Departments.

"VII. The present limits of the Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements
are retained.

"VIII. Every Electoral College of Arrondissement shall elect a number
of candidates equal to the number of Departmental Deputies.

"IX. The College of Arrondissement shall be divided into as many
Sections as candidates. Each Division shall be in proportion to the
number of Sections and to the total number of electors, having regard
as much as possible to the convenience of place and neighbourhood.

"X. The Sections of the Electoral College of Arrondissement may
assemble in different places.

"XI. Each Section of the Electoral College of Arrondissement shall
choose a candidate and proceed separately.

"XII. The Presidents of the Sections of the Electoral College of
Arrondissement shall be nominated by the Prefects from among the
electors of the Arrondissement.

"XIII. The College of Department shall choose the Deputies; half the
Deputies of Departments shall be chosen from the general list of
candidates proposed by the Colleges of Arrondissements; nevertheless,
if the number of Deputies of the Department is uneven, the division
shall be made without impeachment of the right reserved by the College
of Department.

"XIV. In cases where, by the effect of omissions, or of void or
double nominations, the list of candidates proposed by the College of
Arrondissement shall be incomplete, if the list is reduced below half
the number required, the College of the Department shall choose another
Deputy not in the list; if the list is reduced below a fourth, the
College of the Department may elect the whole of the Deputies of the
Department.

"XV. The Prefects, the Sub-prefects and the General Officers commanding
Military Divisions and Departments are not to be elected in the
Departments where they exercise their functions.

"XVI. The list of electors shall be settled by the Prefect in the
Council of Prefecture. It shall be posted up five days before the
assembling of the Colleges.

"XVII. Claims regarding the power of voting which have not been
authorized by the Prefects shall be decided by the Chamber of Deputies,
at the same time that it shall decide upon the validity of the
operations of the Colleges.

"XVIII. In the Electoral Colleges of Departments, the two oldest
electors and the two electors who pay the most taxes shall execute
the duty of scrutators. The same disposition shall be observed in the
Sections of the College of Arrondissement, composed, at most, of only
fifty electors. In the other Sections, the functions of scrutators
shall be executed by the oldest and the richest of the electors. The
secretary of the College or Section shall be nominated by the President
and the scrutators.

"XIX. No person shall be admitted into the College, or Section of
College, if he is not inscribed in the list of electors who compose it.
This list will be delivered to the President and will remain posted up
in the place of the sitting of the College, during the period of its
proceedings.

"XX. All discussion and deliberation whatever are forbidden in the
bosom of the Electoral Colleges.

"XXI. The police of the College belongs to the President No armed
force, without his order, can be placed near the hall of its sittings.
The Military Commandant shall be bound to obey his requisitions.

"XXII. The nominations shall be made in the Colleges and Sections of
Colleges, by the absolute majority of the votes given. Nevertheless,
if the nominations are not finished after two rounds of scrutiny, the
bureau shall determine the list of persons who shall have obtained the
greatest number of suffrages at the second round. It shall contain a
number of names double that of the nominations which remain to be made.
At the third round, no suffrages can be given except to the persons
inscribed on that list; and the nominations shall be made by a relative
majority.

"XXIII. The electors shall vote by bulletins; every bulletin shall
contain as many names as there are nominations to be made.

"XXIV. The electors shall write their vote on the bureau, or cause it
to be written by one of the scrutators.

"XXV. The name, qualification and domicile of each elector who shall
deposit his bulletin shall be inscribed by the secretary on a list
destined to establish the number of the voters.

"XXVI. Every scrutiny shall remain open for six hours, and the result
shall be declared during the sitting.

"XXVII. There shall be drawn up a _procès verbal_ for each sitting.
This _procès verbal_, or minute, shall be signed by all the members of
the bureau.

"XXVIII. Conformably with Article XLVI. of the Constitutional Charter,
no amendment can be made upon any Law in the Chamber, unless it has
been proposed and consented to by Us and unless it has been discussed
in the bureau.

"XXIX. All regulations contrary to the present Ordinance shall remain
without effect.

"XXX. Our Ministers, the Secretaries of State, are charged with the
execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830
and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES." (Countersigned by all the Ministers.)