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.]