How did the scourge, like an electric spark, pass from London to Paris?

It cannot be explained. This fantastic death often fixes on a spot of

the ground, on a house, and leaves the neighbourhood of that infested

spot untouched; then it retraces its steps and picks up what it has

forgotten. One night, I felt myself attacked: I was seized with a

shivering, together with cramp in my legs; I did not want to ring, for

fear of frightening Madame de Chateaubriand. I got up; I heaped all I

could find in my room on the bed, got back under the blankets, and a

copious perspiration pulled me through. But I remained shattered, and

it was in this condition of discomfort that I was obliged to write my

pamphlet on the 12,000 francs of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

[Sidenote: The 12,000 francs of Madame.]

I should not have been too sorry to go, carried off under the arm

of the eldest son of Vishnu, whose distant glance killed Bonaparte

upon his rock at the entrance to the Indian Sea. If all mankind,

stricken with this general contagion, came to die, what would happen?

Nothing: the world, depopulated, would continue its solitary course,

without need of any other astronomer to count its steps than Him who

has measured them from all eternity; it would present no change to

the eyes of the inhabitants of the other planets; they would see it

fulfilling its accustomed functions; upon its surface, our little

works, our cities, our monuments would be replaced by forests restored

to the sovereignty of the lions; no void would manifest itself in

the universe. And nevertheless there would be lacking that human

intelligence which knows the stars and rises to a knowledge of their

Author. What art thou then, O immensity of the works of God, in which,

if the genius of man, which is equal to the whole of nature, came to

disappear, it would be no more missed than the smallest atom withdrawn

from Creation?

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _May_ 1832.

Madame de Berry has her chamber council in Paris, as Charles X. has

his: paltry sums were collected in her name to succour the poorer of

the Royalists. I proposed to distribute among the cholera patients

a sum of twelve thousand francs on behalf of the mother of Henry

V. We wrote to Massa, and not only did the Princess approve of the

disposition of the funds, but she would have liked us to apportion

a more considerable sum: her approval arrived on the day on which I

sent the money to the mayors' offices. Thus, everything is strictly

true in my explanations concerning the gift of the exile. On the

14th of April, I sent the whole sum to the Prefect of the Seine to

be distributed among the indigent class of the cholera-stricken

population of Paris. M. de Bondy was not at the Hôtel de Ville when

my letter was taken there. The Secretary-general opened my missive,

and did not consider himself authorized to receive the money. Three

days elapsed; M. de Bondy replied at last that he could not accept

the twelve thousand francs, because people would see in it, beneath

an apparent benevolence, "a political combination against which the

entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal[385]." Then

my secretary went to the twelve mayors' offices. Of five mayors

who were present, four accepted the gift of a thousand francs; one

refused it. Of the seven mayors who were absent, five kept silence;

two refused[386]. I was forthwith besieged by an army of paupers:

benevolent and charitable societies, workmen of all kinds, women

and children. Polish and Italian exiles, men of letters, artists,

soldiers, all wrote, all demanded a share in the bounty. If I had

had a million, it would have been distributed in a few hours. M. de

Bondy was wrong in saying that "the entire population of Paris would

protest by its refusal:" the population of Paris will always take money

from everybody. The scared attitude of the Government was enough to

make one die of laughing: one would have thought that this perfidious

legitimist money was going to stir up the cholera patients, to excite

an insurrection among the men dying in the hospitals to march to the

assault of the Tuileries, with coffins rolling, with tolling of funeral

knells, with winding-sheet unfurled under the command of Death. My

correspondence with the mayors was prolonged through the complication

of the refusal of the Prefect of Paris. Some of them wrote to me to

send me back my money or to ask for the return of their receipts for

the gifts of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. I sent these back loyally,

and I handed the following receipt to the office of the Mayor of the

12th Ward:

[Sidenote: Attitude of the Mayors.]

"I have received from the Mayor's office of the 12th Ward the sum

of one thousand francs which it had at first accepted and which it

has returned to me by order of M. the Prefect of the Seine.

PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832."

The Mayor of the 9th Ward, M. Cronier, was braver: he kept the thousand

francs and was dismissed. I wrote him this note:

"29 _April_ 1832.

"SIR,

"I hear with keen sorrow of the disgrace of which Madame la

Duchesse de Berry's benevolence has in your case been the cause or

the pretext. You will have, for your consolation, the esteem of the

public, the sense of your independence, and the happiness of having

sacrificed yourself to the cause of the unfortunate.

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

The Mayor of the 4th Ward is a very different man: M. Cadet de

Gassicourt, a poet-apothecary composing little verses, writing in his

time, in the time of liberty and the Empire, an agreeable classical

declaration against my romantic prose and that of Madame de Staël[387].

M. Cadet de Gassicourt is the hero who took the cross of the front of

Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois by assault, and who, in a proclamation on

the cholera, gave us to understand that possibly those wicked Carlists

were the wine-poisoners to whom the people had already done ample

justice[388]. And so the illustrious champion wrote me the following

letter:

"PARIS, 18 _April_ 1832.

"SIR,

"I was not at the Mayor's office when the person sent by you

called: this will explain to you the delay in my reply.

"M. the Prefect of the Seine, when declining to accept the money

which you undertook to offer him, seems to me to have traced the

line of conduct which the members of the Municipal Council must

follow. I shall imitate M. the Prefect's example the more readily

inasmuch as I think that I know and as I share the sentiments which

must have prompted his refusal.

"I will refer only in passing to the title of 4 Royal Highness'

given with some affectation to the person whose mouth-piece you

constitute yourself: the daughter-in-law of Charles X. is no more

a 'Royal Highness' in France than her father-in-law is King[389]!

But, Sir, there is no one who is not morally convinced that this

lady is very actively at work and that she is spending sums of

money very much more considerable than that of which she has

entrusted the employment to yourself to stir up trouble in our

country and bring about civil war. The alms which she pretends

to make are but a means for drawing upon herself and her party

an attention and a kindly feeling which her intentions are far

from justifying. You will therefore not think it extraordinary

that a magistrate, firmly attached to the constitutional royalty

of Louis-Philippe, should refuse a relief which comes from such

a source and should look to true citizens for purer bounties

addressed sincerely to humanity and the country.

"I am, Sir, with a very distinguished regard, etc.

"F. CADET DE GASSICOURT."

[Sidenote: Cadet de Gassicourt.]

This is a very proud revolt on the part of M. Cadet de Gassicourt

against "this lady" and her "father-in-law:" what a progress in

enlightenment and philosophy! What indomitable independence! Messieurs

Fleurant and Purgon dared not look people in the face except upon their

knees[390]; he, M. Cadet, says, with the Cid:

"Then we rise up!"

His liberty is the more courageous inasmuch as that "father-in-law"

(in other words, the descendant of St. Louis) is an outlaw. M. de

Gassicourt is above all that: he despises equally the nobility of time

and of misfortune. With the same contempt for aristocratic prejudices,

he takes away my "de" and assumes it for himself, as though it were

a conquest snatched from the petty gentry. But could there not have

been some ancient historic quarrels between the House of Cadet and the

House of Capet? Henry IV., the ancestor of that "father-in-law" who is

no more King than that "lady" is a Royal Highness, was one day passing

through the Forest of Saint-Germain: eight lords were lying in ambush

there to kill the Bearnese; they were taken.

"One of those gallants," says L'Estoile, "was an apothecary who

asked to speak with the King, of whom His Majesty having enquired

of what condition he was, he answered that he was an apothecary.

"'What!' said the King. 'Is it the habit to perform the condition

of an apothecary here? Do you lie in wait for the wayfarers to...?'"

Henry IV. was a soldier, modesty troubled him but little, and he ran

away from a word no more than from the enemy.

I suspect M. de Gassicourt, because of his ill-humour towards the

descendant of Henry IV., of being himself the descendant of the

apothecary-Leaguer. The Mayor of the 4th Ward had doubtless written to

me in the hope that I would engage him in mortal combat; but I do not

care to engage M. Cadet in anything: I hope that he will forgive me for

leaving him this little token of my remembrance.

Since the days when the great revolutions and the great

revolutionaries passed before my eyes, everything had shrivelled

greatly. The men who caused the fall of an oak, replanted when too old

to take root, applied to me; they asked me for a portion of the widow's

mite to buy bread: the letter from the Committee of the _décorés de

Juillet_, or "Knights of July," is a document worth noting for the

instruction of posterity.

"PARIS, 20 _April_ 1832.

"Please address your reply to M. Gibert-Arnaud, "Manager and

Secretary to the Committee, "3, Rue Saint-Nicaise.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"The members of our Committee approach you with confidence to ask

you kindly to honour them with a gift in favour of the Knights

of July. Any benevolence shown to these unhappy fathers of

families, at this time of plague and misery, inspires the sincerest

gratitude. We venture to hope that you will consent to allow your

illustrious name to figure beside those of General Bertrand,

General Exelmans, General Lamarque, General La Fayette, and several

ambassadors, peers of France and deputies.

"We beg you to honour us with a word in reply, and if, contrary to

our expectation, our request should meet with a refusal, be good

enough to return us the present letter.

"With the gentlest sentiments, we beg you, monsieur le vicomte, to

accept the homage of our respectful salutations.

"The active members of the Constitutive Committee of the Knights of

July:

"FAURE, Visiting Member. "CYPRIEN DESMARAIS, Special Commissary.

"GIBERT-ARNAUD, Manager and Secretary. "TOUREL, Assistant Member."

I was too wise not to take the advantage which the Revolution of July

here gave me over itself. By distinguishing between persons, one would

create helots among the unfortunate, who, because of certain political

opinions, might never obtain relief. I lost no time in sending a

hundred francs to these gentlemen, with this note:

"PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832.

"GENTLEMEN,

"I am infinitely grateful to you for applying to me to come to the

assistance of some unhappy fathers of families. I hasten to send

you the sum of one hundred francs: I regret that I am not able to

offer you a more considerable gift.

"I have the honour, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

The following receipt was sent to me by return:

[Sidenote: The knights of July.]

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have the honour to thank you and to acknowledge the receipt

of the sum of one hundred francs devoted by your kindness to the

succour of the unfortunates of July.

"Greetings and respects.

"GIBERT-ARNAUD,

"Manager and Secretary to the Committee.

"23 _April._"

And so Madame la Duchesse de Berry gave charity to those who had driven

her from the country. The transactions show things in their true light.

How can one believe in any reality in a country where no one looks

after the invalids of his party, where the heroes of yesterday are the

destitute persons of to-day, where a little gold makes the multitude

hurry to one like pigeons in a farm-yard flocking to the hand that

flings grain to them.

Four thousand francs of my twelve remained. I addressed myself to

religion; Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris[391] wrote me this noble

letter:

"PARIS, 26 _April_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"Charity is catholic like faith, foreign to men's passions,

independent of their movements: one of its chief distinguishing

characteristics is that, as St. Paul says, it worketh no evil[392]:

_non cogitat malum._ It blesses the hand that gives and the hand

that receives, without attributing to the generous benefactor any

other motive than that of doing good and without asking of the

indigent poor any other condition than that of need. It accepts

with deep and feeling gratitude the gift which the august widow

has charged you to confide to it to be employed for the relief

of our unfortunate brothers, the victims of the plague which is

devastating the Capital.

"It will distribute with the most scrupulous fidelity the four

thousand francs which you have handed me on her behalf, and for

which my letter is a new receipt; but I shall have the honour to

send you an account of the distribution when the intentions of the

benefactress have been fulfilled.

"Be so good, monsieur le vicomte, as to present to Madame la

Duchesse de Berry the thanks of a pastor and a father who daily

offers his life to God for his sheep and his children and who calls

on every side for help capable of levelling their wretchedness.

Her royal heart has already doubtless found within itself its

reward for the sacrifice which she has devoted to our misfortunes:

religion ensures to her, moreover, the effect of the divine

promises set forth in the book of the Beatitudes for those who are

'merciful[393].'

"The money has been divided without delay among the rectors of the

twelve principal parishes of Paris, to whom I have addressed the

letter of which I enclose a copy.

"Receive, monsieur le vicomte, the assurance, etc.

"HYACINTHE, Archbishop of Paris."

One is always amazed to realize in how high a degree religion

suits even style and gives an immediate gravity and seemliness to

commonplaces. This forms a contrast with the heap of anonymous letters

which have become mixed with the letters I have quoted. The spelling

of these anonymous letters is fairly correct, the hand-writing neat:

they are, properly speaking, "literary," like the Revolution of July.

They display scribbling jealousies, hatreds, vanities, safe in the

inviolability of a cowardice which, refraining to show its face, cannot

be made visible by a blow. Here are some samples:

"Will you let us know, you old _républiquinquiste_, the day on

which you would like to grease your moccasins? It will be easy for

us to procure you some Chouan's fat, and, should you want some of

your friends' blood to write their history in, there is no lack of

it in the Paris mud, its element.

"You old brigand, ask your rascally and worthy friend Fitz-James

if he liked the stone which he received in his feudal part Pack of

scoundrels that you are, we'll pull your guts from your stomachs,"

etc., etc.

In another missive, I find a very well-drawn gallows, with these words:

"Go down on your knees to a priest and make an act of contrition,

for we want your old head to put an end to your treacheries."

For the rest, the cholera still continues: the answer which I might

address to a known or unknown adversary would perhaps reach him when

he was lying on his threshold. If, on the contrary, he were destined

to live, where would his reply find me? Perhaps in that resting-place

of which no one can be frightened to-day, especially we men who have

lengthened out our years between the Terror and the Plague, the first

and last horizons of our lives. A truce: let the coffins pass.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 10 _June_ 1832.

General Lamarque's[394] funeral has brought about two days of bloodshed

and the victory of the sham Legitimacy over the Republican Party[395].

This incomplete and divided party has made an heroic resistance.

[Sidenote: Paris in state of siege.]

Paris has been declared in a state of siege[396]: this is the

censorship on the largest possible scale, a censorship in the manner

of the Convention, with this difference, that a military commission

takes the place of the Revolutionary Tribunal. They are shooting, in

June 1832, the men who achieved the victory in July 1830: that same

Polytechnic School, that same artillery of the National Guard are

being sacrificed; they conquered the power for those who are crushing,

disowning and disbanding them. The Republicans are certainly wrong to

have cried up measures of anarchy and disorder: but why did you not

employ such noble arms on our frontiers? They would have delivered

us from the ignominious yoke of the foreigner. Generous, if exalted

heads would not have remained to ferment in Paris, to blaze up against

the humiliation of our foreign policy and the bad faith of the new

Royalty. You have been pitiless, you who, without sharing the dangers

of the Three Days, have gathered their fruit. Go now with the mothers

to identify the corpses of those knights of July from whom you hold

places, riches and honours. Young men, you do not all obtain the

same lot on the same shore! You have a tomb under the colonnade of

the Louvre and a place in the Morgue: some for snatching, others for

bestowing a crown. Your names, who knows them, you sacrifices and

for-ever-unknown victims of a memorable revolution? Is the blood known

that cements the monuments which men admire? The workmen who built

the Great Pyramid for the corpse of an unglorious king[397], sleep

forgotten in the sand near the needy root that served to feed them

during their labours.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832.

Madame la Duchesse de Berry[398] no sooner sanctioned the measure of

the 12,000 francs than she took ship for her famous adventure. The

rising of Marseilles failed; there remained but to try the West; but

the Vendean glory is a thing apart: it will live in our annals; in

any case, seven-eighths of France has chosen a different glory, the

object of jealousy or antipathy; the Vendée is an Oriflamme venerated

and admired in the treasure of Saint-Denis, under which youth and the

future will henceforth gather no longer.

[Sidenote: Madame lands in France.]

Madame, when she landed, like Bonaparte, on the coast of Provence,

did not see the White Flag fly from steeple to steeple: deceived in

her expectation, she found herself almost alone on shore with M. de

Bourmont. The marshal wanted to make her recross the frontier at once;

she asked to have the night to think it over; she slept well among the

rocks to the sound of the sea; in the morning, on waking, she found a

noble dream in her thoughts:

"Since I am on French soil, I will not leave it; let us set out for the

Vendée."

M. de ----[399], informed by a faithful man, took her in his carriage

as his wife, crossed the whole of France with her, and has put her down

at -----[400]. She has remained some time in a country-house without

being recognised by anybody, except the curate of the place. The

Maréchal de Bourmont is to join her in the Vendée by another road.

Informed of all this in Paris, it was easy for us to foresee the

result. The enterprise has a further drawback for the Royalist Cause:

it will discover the weakness of that cause and dispel illusions. If

Madame had not gone to the Vendée, France would always have believed

that in the West there was a royalist camp standing at ease, as I

called it.

But however, there remained still one means of saving Madame and

casting a new veil over the truth: the Princess should have left again

at once; arriving at her own risk and peril, like a brave general who

comes to review his army, to moderate its impatience and its ardour,

she would have declared that she had hastened to tell her soldiers that

the moment for action was not yet favourable, that she would return to

place herself at their head when the occasion should summon her. Madame

would at least have once shown a Bourbon to the Vendeans: the shades of

the Cathelineaus, the d'Elbées, the Bonchamps, the La Rochejacqueleins,

the Charettes would have rejoiced.

Our committee met: while we were discoursing, there came from Nantes

a captain, who told us the place where the heroine is staying. The

captain is a good-looking young man, brave as a sailor, eccentric as

a Breton. He disapproved of the enterprise; he thought it mad; but he

said:

"Madame is not going away: it is a question of dying, and that is all;

and then, gentlemen of the council, have Walter Scott hanged, for he is

the real culprit!"

I thought that we ought to write what we felt to the Princess. M.

Berryer[401], who was preparing to go to defend a case at Quimper[402],

generously offered to take the letter and to see Madame if he could.

When it became necessary to draw up the note, no one thought of writing

it: I undertook to do so[403].

Our messenger set out, and we awaited events. I soon received, by post,

the following note, which had not been sealed and which had doubtless

come under the eyes of the authorities:

[Sidenote: Letter from Berryer.]

"ANGOULÊME, 7 _June._

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I had received and forwarded your letter of Friday last, when,

on Sunday, the Prefect of the Loire-Inférieure[404] sent word

requiring me to leave the town of Nantes[405]. I was on my way

and at the gates of Angoulême; I have just been taken before the

Prefect, who has notified me of an order from M. de Montalivet[406]

by which I am to be taken back to Nantes under an escort of

gendarmes. Since my departure from Nantes, the Department of

the Loire-Inférieure has been placed under martial law, and, by

this entirely illegal transfer, I am made subject to the laws of

exception. I am writing to the Minister to ask him to have me taken

to Paris; he will receive my letter by the same post. The object

of my journey to Nantes seems to have been utterly misinterpreted.

Decide therefore whether, in the light of your prudence, you will

think it right to mention the matter to the Minister. I apologize

for addressing this request to you; but I have no one to whom to

apply but yourself.

"Pray believe, monsieur le vicomte, in my old and sincere

attachment, and in my profound respect.

"Your most devoted servant,

"BERRYER the Younger."

"_P.S._--There is not a moment to lose if you are willing to see

the Minister. I am going to Tours, where his new orders will still

find me on Sunday; he can dispatch them either by telegraph or

express."

I informed M. Berryer, in the following reply, of the decision to which

I came:

"PARIS, 10 _June_ 1832.

"I received your letter, monsieur, dated Angoulême, the 7th

instant. It was too late for me to see M. the Minister of the

Interior, as you wished; but I wrote to him at once, sending him

your own letter enclosed in mine. I hope that the mistake which

occasioned your arrest will soon be admitted and that you will be

restored to liberty and to your friends, among whom I beg you to

number myself.

"A thousand hearty compliments, with the renewed assurance of my

sincere and entire devotion.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

Here is my letter to the Minister of the Interior:

"PARIS, 9 _June_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE L'INTÉRIEUR,

"I have this moment received the enclosed letter. As I should

probably not be able to see you as quickly as M. Berryer wishes,

I have decided to send you his letter. His complaint appears to

me to be justified: he will be innocent in Paris as at Nantes and

at Nantes as in Paris; this is a thing which the authorities must

admit and, by righting M. Berryer's complaint, they will avoid

giving a retroactive effect to the law. I venture to hope all,

monsieur le comte, from your impartiality.

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

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

[Footnote 330: This book was written in Paris and Geneva, from October

1830 to June 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 331: This and the following pages were written in March and

April 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 332: The _Études historiques._--B.]

[Footnote 333: The trial of the ministers before the Court of Peers

commenced on the 15th and ended on the 21st of December 1830. The

verdict condemned the Prince de Polignac to perpetual imprisonment

on the continental territory of the Kingdom, declared him to have

forfeited his titles, rank and Orders, declared him besides to be

civilly dead and subject to all the other effects of the penalty

of transportation. Messieurs de Peyronnet, de Chantelauze and de

Guernon-Ranville were condemned to imprisonment for life.--B.]

[Footnote 334: The sack of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the pillage

of the Archbishop's Palace took place on the 14th and 15th of February

1831.--B.

The Duc de Berry was murdered on the 13th of February 1820--T.]

[Footnote 335: Félix Cadet de Gassicourt the Younger (1789-1861),

chemist and druggist and Mayor of the 4th Ward of Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 336: "Mayeux," the hunchbacked type of the political

versatility of the French nation, was an invention of the caricaturists

and the comic papers of the year 1831. According to them, Messidor

Napoleon Louis Charles Philippe Mayeux, born on the 14th of July 1789,

while his father was engaged in taking the Bastille, had taken various

Christian names according to the different forms of government which

he had in turn espoused or repudiated. He had not been much heard of

before 1830, but the sun of July had at last brought him into the light

of day. For twelve months, Paris saw, talked, thought, swore, above

all, by none save Mayeux. He was in turns a Republican, a Bonapartist,

a juste-milieu man: everything, in short, except a Carlist; for he was

faithful to his resentment against a mounted Grenadier of the Royal

Guard who had failed to see him behind a curb-post and had laughed at

him when he said:

"Take care, soldier; there's a man in front of you."

Mayeux was a National Guard: that caused his death. One day he was

struck off the roll for being guilty of making his brother _bisets_

laugh while under arms. He died of grief and shame a few weeks later:

on the 23rd of December 1821, to be exact (_Cf._ the chapter on

_Mayeux_ in BAZIN: _L'Époque sans nom_).--B.]

[Footnote 337: Chateaubriand's pamphlet appeared on the 24th of March

1831.--B.]

[Footnote 338: _Études et discours historiques sur la chute de l'Empire

romain, la naissance et le progrès du Christianisme et l'invasion des

Barbares; suivis d'une Analyse raisonnée de l'histoire de France_

(Paris: 4 vols. 8vo). The _Études historiques_ were published on the

4th of April 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 339: The fall of the Roman Empire.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 340: Chateaubriand left for Switzerland on the 16th of May

1831; he arrived at Geneva on the 23rd of May.--B.]

[Footnote 341: _De la Restauration et de la Monarchie

élective.--Author's Note._]

[Footnote 342: This refers to my literary and to my political career,

which had been left behind: the voids have since been filled by what I

have lately written in the last two years, 1838 and 1839.--_Author's

Note_ (Paris, 1839).]

[Footnote 343: Hyacinthe has the habit of copying, almost in spite of

my wishes, the letters which I write and receive, because he maintains

that he has observed that I am often attacked by persons who once wrote

to me in terms of endless admiration and applied to me with requests

for services. When this happens, he rummages in bundles known to

him alone and, comparing the insulting article with the encomiastic

epistle, says to me:

"You see, monsieur, that I acted well!"

I do not agree with him at all: I attach not the smallest belief

nor the least importance to the opinion of men; I take them for

what they are and esteem them for what they are worth. As far

as I am concerned, I will never contrast for their benefit what

they have said of me in public with what they have said to me

in private; but this amuses Hyacinthe. I had kept no copy of my

letters to Madame Récamier; she has had the kindness to lend them

to me. #/ --_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 344: This letter and those which follow are exactly true to

the originals:

"The letters," says Madame Lenormant, "which M. de Chateaubriand

wrote to Madame Récamier during his stay in Switzerland, have been

printed in the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._ We have collated them with

the originals and, this time, have found them to be reproduced

with scrupulous fidelity" (_Souvenirs et Correspondance tirés des

papiers de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II.).--B. ]

[Footnote 345: Elleviou (1772-1842) was this "singular personage," as

the enclosure shows. Elleviou was a famous singer, during the Consulate

and the Empire, at the Théâtre Feydeau. The _Maison à vendre_, words

by Alexandre Duval, music by Dalayrac, was one of the pieces in which

he made most success. He retired from the stage in 1813 and devoted

himself to agriculture in the neighbourhood of Lyons. Elleviou was,

like Chateaubriand, a Breton: he was born at Rennes, where his father

was a surgeon.--B.]

[Footnote 346: It was easy for Madame Récamier's hand-writing to

be smaller than that of Chateaubriand, who wrote in characters

half-an-inch in height, and as though the alphabet contained only

capital letters.--B.]

[Footnote 347: Jean Chauvin, Cauvin, or Caulvin (1509-1564), generally

known as John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, fled from France to

Geneva in 1536, was banished in 1538, returned in 1541, and lived

there till the day of his death. He founded the Academy of Geneva in

1559.--T.]

[Footnote 348: A cousin of Benjamin Constant.--B.]

[Footnote 349: Albertine Adrienne Necker de Saussure (1766-1841),

daughter to Horace Bénédicte de Saussure, the naturalist, and cousin

to Madame de Staël. Madame Necker was the author of the _Éducation

progressive, ou Étude du cours de la vie_, which was crowned by the

French Academy in 1839.--B.]

[Footnote 350: Delphine Gay, later Madame Émile de Girardin

(1804-1855), daughter of Madame Sophie Gay, and married to Émile de

Girardin in 1831. She was the author of a number of comedies, novels

and poems, and of _Lettres parisiennes_, contributed to the _Presse_

from 1836 to 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 351: I omit this poem of nine stanzas, entitled the

_Naufragé._--T.]

[Footnote 352: The Pâquis are a quarter of Geneva stretching along the

right bank of the lake from the Rue du Mont-Blanc to near the Lausanne

road.--B.]

[Footnote 353: Alexandre César Comte de Lapanouze (1764-1836) was a

captain in the Navy at the time of the Revolution, resigned, and found

himself completely ruined. Under the Second Restoration, he founded a

banking-house in Paris which soon became one of the most important in

the Capital. He was a deputy from 1822 to 1827, supported the Villèle

Administration and, in 1827, was created a peer of France. Lapanouze

retired from politics after the events of July and withdrew to his

estate of Tiregant in Gascony.--B.]

[Footnote 354: Cristina Principessa Belgiojoso (1808-1871), _née_

Trivulzio. She settled in early life in Paris, where she was noted

for her wit and beauty and the independence of her opinions and her

life. She became the friend of many celebrated writers, particularly

of Alfred de Musset. In 1848, she flung herself with ardour into the

revolutionary movement, hastened to Milan, which had risen in revolt,

and furnished a battalion of volunteers at her own cost. She was the

author of a number of works of travel and history, and, according

to Balzac, was the original of the Duchesse de San-Severino in de

Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme.--B.]

[Footnote 355: Ferney is a village about four miles from Geneva, in

which Voltaire resided from 1758 to 1778.--T.]

[Footnote 356: _Cf._ VOLTAIRE: _Zaïre_, in which tragedy Orosmane is

the name of the Sultan of Jerusalem.--T.]

[Footnote 357: François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville (1770-1838),

a noted French traveller and historian, author of a _Voyage en Morée et

à Constantinople_ (1805), a _Voyage en Grèce_ (1820-1822), an _Histoire

de la régénération de la Grèce_ (1825) and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 358: Armand Carrel had published in the _Revue française_

(March and May 1828) some remarkable articles on Spain and the war of

1823, describing the Minan and Catalonian Campaigns and the adventures

of the Liberal Foreign Legion.--B.]

[Footnote 359: The passion to which Chateaubriand alludes perhaps

changed the course of Carrel's life. Shortly after the Revolution of

July, on the 29th of August 1830, he was appointed Prefect of the

Cantal. He refused, not because he was a Republican at that date, but

because his connection with a married woman, from whom he was not

willing to separate, made it impossible for him to accept any public

function in the country.--B.]

[Footnote 360: _A. M. de Chateaubriand_, 1-2:

"Chateaubriand, why flee from thy land,

Flee from its love, from our incense and care?"--T.]

[Footnote 361: _Ibid._, 45-48:

"And in their fall thou wouldst wish to take part!

Learn their mad vanity better to know:

Thy faithfulness is by their thankless heart

Set 'midst the ills which to Heaven they owe."--T.]

[Footnote 362: Armand François Bon Claude Comte de Briqueville

(1785-1844) was a member of an old family of Norman nobles. His father

was shot by the Republicans on the 29th of May 1796. His mother, who

was one of the first women of the great world to make use of the new

divorce-law, caused her son to be given a republican education. He

served with distinction under the Empire and, as Colonel of the 25th

Dragoons, took part in the victory of Ligny. He was terribly wounded on

returning to Paris after Waterloo. During the Restoration, the Comte de

Briqueville was mixed up with several Bonapartist plots and, in 1827,

was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He approved of the Revolution

of July and, on the 14th of September 1031, introduced a motion for the

banishment of Charles X. and his family. The Comte de Briqueville, when

the Duchesse de Berry was arrested, hastened to demand that she should

be brought to trial; and he remained true to his hatred of the Bourbons

to the last.--B.]

[Footnote 363: Chateaubriand's Letter to M. de Béranger, printed at

the commencement of the pamphlet on the Briqueville Motion, was dated

24 September 1831. The pamphlet was published on the 31st of October

1831.--B.]

[Footnote 364: Tyrtæus (_fl. circa_ 684 B.C.), the Spartan elegiac

poet.--T.]

[Footnote 365: Auguste Marseille Barthélemy (1796-1867), the satirical

poet and prose-writer, kept up a wager from March 1831 to April 1832,

to publish a political satire weekly of several hundred verses and

irreproachable form. They commenced in the thirty-first number of the

_Némésis._ Finer talents were never prostituted to a baser cause.--B.]

[Footnote 366: M. Barthélemy has since gone over to the juste-milieu,

not without an amount of imprecation on the part of many people who

rallied only a little later.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1837).]

[Footnote 367: The Conspiracy of the Rue des Prouvaires was not devoid

of serious features. They were about three thousand in number. They

lacked neither money nor courage. They had accomplices even among the

palace servants; they were in possession of five keys opening the

gates of the Tuileries Gardens, and admission to the Louvre had been

promised them. A great ball was to take place at Court on the night

of the 1st of February 1832. The conspirators chose that night to put

their plot into execution. It was agreed that some should gather in

detachments at different points in the Capital, thence to set out, at

a preconcerted signal, and march towards the Palace; while others,

gliding along the shade of the little streets which lead to the Louvre,

were to make their way into the picture-gallery, burst through into the

ball-room and, thanks to the disorder caused by this unexpected attack,

seize hold of the Royal Family. "Crackers," or a kind of small bombs,

would have been flung into the midst of the carriages waiting to take

up at the doors of the Palace; _chevalets_, or pieces of wood fitted

with iron spikes, would have been scattered under the hoofs of the

horses; and, lastly, they thought themselves justified in hoping that

fireworks would be placed in the theatre in such a way as to augment

the confusion by setting fire to the wood-work.

The chief conspirators were to meet, at eleven o'clock in the evening,

armed, at a tavern-keeper's at No. 12 in the Rue des Prouvaires. They

had assembled there, to the number of one hundred, when suddenly the

street filled with municipal guards and police-officers, who, in spite

of the resistance of the ringleaders and their followers, were able to

effect their arrest.

The trial opened before the Assize Court of the Seine on the 5th of

July 1832. The accused were sixty-six in number, including eleven who

were not in custody, and the pleadings occupied no less than eighteen

sittings. Sentence was delivered on the 25th of July. Six of the

accused were condemned to transportation; twelve to five years', four

to two years', and five to one year's imprisonment. The remainder

were acquitted. Among those sentenced to imprisonment was M. Piégard

Sainte-Croix, an ardent Royalist, whose daughter, a "Carlist" like her

father, subsequently married the celebrated socialist writer, Pierre

Joseph Proudhon.--B.]

[Footnote 368: Louis Poncelet, alias Chevalier (_d._ 1805), a

shoemaker, was the real leader of the plot, and gave proof throughout

of rare qualities of intelligence, energy and audacity. At the trial,

he was noted, above all the others, for the loyalty of his replies and

for his skill in refraining from compromising his accomplices, while

indifferent to his own danger. He was sentenced to transportation.--B.]

[Footnote 369: I kept back some passages of this long letter to insert

them in my _Explications sur mes_ 12,000 _francs_ and, later, in my

_Mémoire sur la captivité de Madame la Duchesse de Berry.--Author's

Note._]

[Footnote 370: Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), widow

of Louis VIII. and mother of St. Louis IX. She acted as Regent from

1226-1236, during her son's minority, and again from 1248 to 1252,

during his absence on a crusade to the Holy Land.--T.]

[Footnote 371: At Fornovo, the French under Charles VIII. defeated the

Italians on the 6th of July 1495.--T.]

[Footnote 372: At Marignano, Francis I. gained a victory over the Swiss

on the 13th and 14th of September 1515.--T.]

[Footnote 373: The French under Bonaparte, Masséna and Augereau

defeated the Austrians at Areola on the 15th, 16th and 17th of November

1796.--T.]

[Footnote 374: 14 June 1800, when the French defeated the Austrians and

finished the campaign in Northern Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 375: Casimir Périer, the Premier, died of consumption on the

16th of May 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 376: Marcus Annæus Lucanus, known as Lucan (39-65), the

author of the _Pharsalia_ etc.--T.]

[Footnote 377: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the author of the

_Decamerone_, the hundred stones supposed to be told by a society of

seven ladies and three gentlemen to shut out the horrors of the great

plague of Florence in 1348.--T.]

[Footnote 378: Hippocrates (_circa_ 460 B.C.--_circa_ 377 B.C.), the

famous Greek physician. "His alleged study of the great plague at

Athens is not corroborated by a comparison with Thucydides' account"

(MAHAFFY: _History of Classical Greek Literature_).--T.]

[Footnote 379: In his _Promessi Sposi._--T.]

[Footnote 380: Pierre Édouard Lemontey (1762-1826), elected a member

of the French Academy in 1817, author of an _Essai sur l'établissement

monarchique de Louis XIV._ and of the _Histoire de la régence_, from

which latter work, published after his death, the above extract is

quoted.--T.]

[Footnote 381: Charlotte Mademoiselle de Valois (1700-1761), daughter

of the Regent Philippe II. Duc d'Orléans, and married in 1720 to ...]

[Footnote 382: Francis III. Duke of Modena (1698-1780).--T.]

[Footnote 383: Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castel Moron

(1671-1755), a Jesuit father promoted to the See of Marseilles in 1709.

He behaved with the greatest heroism during the plague which devastated

the town in 1720 and 1721; and afterwards persistently refused

promotion to a more important see.--T.]

[Footnote 384: After ravaging Asia and then Russia, Poland, Bohemia,

Galicia, Austria, the cholera, passing over Western Europe, swooped

down upon England. It declared itself on the 12th of February 1832 in

London, whence it was not to disappear until the first week in May. On

the 15th of March, it was noted at Calais. It struck its first victim

in Paris, in the Rue Mazarine, on the 26th of March. The epidemic

did not come to an end before the 30th of September, having lasted

189 days, during which the number of deaths from cholera amounted

to 18,406. The population of Paris at that time was only 645,698

souls: the death-rate from cholera alone, therefore, was over 23 per

1,000.--B.]

[Footnote 385: M. de Bondy's letter ran as follows:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I regret that I cannot accept, in the name of the City of Paris,

the 12,000 francs which you have done me the honour to send me. In

the origin of the funds which you offer, people would see, beneath

an apparent benevolence, a political combination against which the

entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal.

"I am, etc.

"The Comte de BONDY,

"Prefect of the Seine."--B.]

[Footnote 386: The _Constitutionnel_ announced that M. Berger, the

Mayor of the 2nd Ward, had proposed to the Princess' envoy, "a former

aide-de-camp of the Duc de Berry," to give the thousand francs offered

in the Duchess' name "to the widow of a combatant of July, the mother

of three children, to whom this relief would be very useful." The envoy

whom the _Constitutionnel_ thus transformed into an aide-de-camp of

the Duc de Berry was none other than the worthy Hyacinthe Pilorge,

Chateaubriand's secretary. Pilorge at once wrote to the _Quotidienne_:

"PARIS, 20 _April_ 1832.

"SIR,

"M. de Chateaubriand, although suffering from illness, is at this

moment occupied in writing a general reply with reference to

the gift of Madame la Duchesse de Berry; this reply will appear

shortly. Meantime, I owe it to the interests of truth to say

that M. the Mayor of the 2nd Ward did not present the widow of a

combatant of July to me and did not propose that I should give

her the thousand francs; he merely refused them: that is all.

M. de Chateaubriand instructs me to add that if the _widow_ of

the _Constitutionnel_ will be good enough to call on him, he is

prepared to give her a share in the bounty of the _mother_ of the

Duc de Bordeaux. You see, Sir, that I have not the honour of having

been an aide-de-camp of M. le Duc de Berry and that I am only the

poor and faithful secretary of a man as poor and as faithful as

myself.

"Pray accept, Sir, the assurance of my most distinguished regard,

"HYACINTHE PILORGE."--B.]

[Footnote 387: Chateaubriand has confused the two Cadets de Gassicourt,

father and son. Cadet de Gassicourt the Elder (1760-1831) wrote

short verses and published two little pamphlets directed against

Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël: _Saint-Géran, au la Nouvelle

langue française_ (1807) and the _Suite de Saint-Géran, ou Itinéraire

de Lutèce au Mont-Valérien_ (1811). His son, F. Cadet de Gassicourt

(1789-1861), was Mayor of the 4th Ward and the individual referred to

above.--B.]

[Footnote 388: This proclamation of Cadet de Gassicourt's was posted

on the walls of Paris on the 4th of April 1832. Couched in hateful and

ridiculous terms, it practically called upon the populace to murder

the Carlists, "those ancient tyrants, who are capable of adopting

all methods and who do not blush to have a horrible plague as their

auxiliary!"--B.]

[Footnote 389: This was a piece of ignorant clap-trap. As the daughter

of Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies, the Duchesse de Berry was

entitled to be styled "Royal Highness" in France or anywhere else.--T.]

[Footnote 390: Referring to the traditional attitude of the

surgeon-apothecary.--T.]

[Footnote 391: Monseigneur de Quélen. (_Cf._ Vol. IV, p. III, n.

I.)--T.]

[Footnote 392: _Rom._ XIII. 10.--T.]

[Footnote 393: _Cf._ MATT. v. 7.--T.]

[Footnote 394: Maximilien Comte Lamarque (1770-1832) took a

distinguished part in all the campaigns of the Revolution and the

Empire. He sat as a deputy throughout the Restoration on the side of

the Opposition. General Lamarque died of cholera on the 1st of June

1832.--T.]

[Footnote 395: General Lamarque's funeral took place on the 5th of

June 1832. The members of the secret societies, the schools, the

men condemned for political offenses, the artillery of the National

Guard, the foreign refugees had arranged to meet there. At a signal

given by means of a red flag, the Republicans disarmed fixed posts,

threw up barricades, pillaged the Arsenal and the shops, but were

unable to draw over the workmen or the National Guard. General Lobeau,

at the head of serious forces, swept the main thoroughfares and

confined the insurrection between the Marché des Innocents and the

Faubourg Saint-Antoine. By the morning of the 6th, it was reduced to

impotence and abandoned by its own leaders. The day was none the less

slaughterous, especially at the Cloître Saint-Merry and in the Rue des

Arris.--B.]

[Footnote 396: By Royal Ordinance dated 6th June 1832.--B.]

[Footnote 397: Cheops, or Khufu, King of Egypt of the 4th Dynasty.--T.]

[Footnote 398: On the 24th of April 1832 the Duchesse de Berry left

Massa on board a Sardinian steam-boat, the _Carlo-Alberto_, which she

had chartered. She called at Nice, put out to sea again, and arrived

in Marseilles waters on the 28th. She was accompanied by the Maréchal

de Bourmont, the Comte de Kergorlay, the Vicomte, later Comte de

Saint-Priest, Messieurs Emmanuel de Brissac, de Mesnard, Alexandre

Sala, Édouard Led'huy, the Vicomte de Kergorlay, Charles and Adolphe

de Bourmont, Alexis Sabatier, Ferrari, supercargo, and Mademoiselle

Mathilde Lebeschu. She disembarked at night, in a heavy sea, at one of

the most dangerous points of the coast. Concealed in the house of a

game-keeper, M. Maurel, she awaited the result of the movement planned

in Marseilles. At four o'clock in the afternoon on the 30th, Messieurs

de Bonrecueil, de Bermond, de Lachaud and de Candoles, who had escaped

from the town, arrived carrying this note:

"The movement has failed; you must leave France."--B.]

[Footnote 399: M. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont. He had furnished

himself with a passport for himself, his wife and a man-servant: the

Princess played the part of Madame de Villeneuve. The servant was the

Comte, later Duc, de Lorges.--B.]

[Footnote 400: After spending nine days, from the 7th to the 16th of

May, at the Château de Plassac, a few leagues from Blaye, with M. le

Marquis de Dampierre, the Duchesse de Berry arrived, on the 17th, at

the Château de la Preuille, near Montaigu, in the Vendée. The owner was

Colonel de Nacquart.--B.]

[Footnote 401: Pierre Antoine Berryer (1790-1868), known as Berryer the

Younger, to distinguish him from his father, Pierre Nicolas Berryer

(1757-1841), himself a most distinguished advocate and the defender of

Moreau and Ney. Berryer the Younger, after M. Chateaubriand's death,

became the most eloquent supporter of the Legitimist Cause and leader

of the party in France.--T.]

[Footnote 402: It was not at Quimper, but at Vannes, that Berryer

was to go to defend a case, that of Commandant Guillemot, accused of

Chouanism and brought before the Morbihan Assize Court on that count.

Commandant Guillemot's trial was fixed for the 12th of June.--B.]

[Footnote 403: The text of Chateaubriand's note to the Duchesse de

Berry ran as follows:

"The persons in whom an honourable confidence has been placed

cannot refrain from expressing their regret at the counsels

in consequence of which the present crisis has arisen. Those

counsels were given by men who were doubtless filled with zeal,

but who are acquainted with neither the actual state of things

nor the disposition of men's minds. It is a mistake to believe in

the possibility of a movement within Paris. One would not find

twelve hundred men, unmixed with police agents, who, for a few

crown-pieces, would make a noise in the streets and who would

then have to fight the National Guard and a faithful garrison.

One is mistaken about the Vendée as one was mistaken about the

South. That land of devotion and of sacrifices is afflicted with

a numerous army, aided by the population of the towns, which are

almost all anti-legitimist. A rising of peasants would hereafter

lead only to the looting of the country-side and the consolidation

of the present Government by an easy triumph. We think that, if

the mother of Henry V. were in France, she ought to leave without

delay, after ordering all her leaders to remain quiet. In this way,

instead of coming to organize civil war, she would have come to

command peace; she would have had the double glory of achieving an

act of great courage and preventing the shedding of French blood.

The wise friends of the Legitimacy, who were never warned of what

it was proposed to do, who were never consulted on the hazardous

steps which it was proposed to take, and who learnt the facts only

after they had been accomplished, throw the responsibility of those

facts upon those who advised them and carried them through. They

can neither merit honour nor incur blame in the chances of either

fortune."--B.]

[Footnote 404: The Comte de Saint-Aignan.--B.]

[Footnote 405: Berryer was to leave not only the town of Nantes, but

France, and to go to the waters of Aix-en-Savoie, according to the

following itinerary endorsed on his passport: Bourbon-Vendée, Luçon,

the Rochelle, Rochefort, Saintes, Angoulême, Clermont, Montbrison, the

Puy, Lyons and Pont-de-Beau voisin.--B.]

[Footnote 406: The Comte de Montalivet was Minister of the

Interior.--B.]

BOOK II[407]

My arrest--I am transferred from my thieves' cell to Mademoiselle

Gisquet's dressing-room--Achille de Harlay--The examining

magistrate, M. Desmortiers--My life at M. Gisquet's--I am set at

liberty--Letter to M. the Minister of Justice and his reply--I

receive an offer of my peer's pension from Charles X.--My reply--Note

from Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Letter to Béranger--I leave

Paris--Diary from Paris to Lugano--M. Augustin Thierry--The

road over the Saint-Gotthard--The Valley of Schöllenen--The

Devil's Bridge--The Saint-Gotthard--Description of Lugano--The

mountains--Excursions round about Lucerne--Clara Wendel--The peasants'

prayer--M. Alexandre Dumas--Madame de Colbert--Letter to M. de

Béranger--Zurich--Constance--Madame Récamier--Madame la Duchesse de

Saint-Leu--Madame de Saint-Leu after reading M. de Chateaubriand's

last letter--After reading a note signed "Hortense"--Arenenberg--I

return to Geneva--Coppet--The tomb of Madame de Staël--A walk--Letter

to Prince Louis Napoleon--Letters to the Minister of Justice, to the

President of the Council, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--I write my

memorial on the captivity of the Princess--Circular to the editors of

the newspapers--Extract from the _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la

duchesse de Berry_--My trial--Popularity.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832.

One of my old friends, Mr. Frisell[408], an Englishman, had just lost,

at Passy, his only daughter, aged seventeen years. I had gone, on the

19th of June, to the funeral of poor Eliza, whose portrait the pretty

Madame Delessert was completing when Death put the finishing touch to

it. Returning to my solitude in the Rue d'Enfer, I had hardly gone to

bed, full of the melancholy thoughts that arise from the association

of youth, beauty and the grave, when, at four o'clock in the morning,

on the 20th of June[409], Baptiste, who had long been in my service,

entered my room, came up to the bed and said:

"Sir, the court-yard is full of men who have placed themselves at all

the doors, after compelling Desbrosses to open the carriage-entrance;

and there are three gentlemen asking to speak to you."

As he finished these words, the "gentlemen" entered, and the chief of

them, very politely approaching my bed, told me that he had an order to

arrest me and take me to the Prefecture of Police. I asked him if the

sun had risen, as the law demanded, and if he was the bearer of a legal

warrant; he did not answer for the sun, but he showed me the following

judicial notice:

"Copy

"PREFECTURE OF POLICE

"In the King's name.

"We, counsellor of State, Prefect of Police[410],

"In view of information in our possession,

"By virtue of Article X. of the Code of Criminal Instruction,

"Call upon the commissary or, if he be prevented, another to repair

to the house of M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, or elsewhere

if need be, he being accused of plotting against the safety of

the State, in order there to seek for and seize all papers,

correspondence and writings containing provocations to crimes and

offenses against the public peace or liable to examination, as well

as any seditious objects or arms which may be in his possession."

While I perused the declaration of the great "plotting against the

safety of the State," of which I, poor I was accused, the captain of

the police-spies said to his subordinates:

"Gentlemen, do your duty!"

The duty of those gentlemen consisted in opening every cupboard,

fumbling in every pocket, seizing all papers, letters and documents,

reading the same, where possible, and discovering all arms, as appears

from the warrant aforesaid.

[Sidenote: I am arrested.]

After reading over the document, addressing the worthy leader of those

thieves of men and liberties:

"You know, sir," I said, "that I do not recognise your Government and

that I protest against the violence which you are doing me; but, as I

am not the stronger and as I have no wish to come to blows with you, I

will get up and accompany you: pray take the trouble to be seated."

I dressed and, without taking anything with me, said to the venerable

commissary:

"Sir, I am at your orders: are we going on foot?"

"No, sir, I took care to bring you a coach."

"You are very good, sir; let us start; but allow me to go to take leave

of Madame de Chateaubriand. Will you permit me to enter my wife's room

alone?"

"Sir, I will go with you to the door and wait for you."

"Very well, sir," and we went down.

Everywhere, on my road, I found sentries; a picket had been posted even

on the boulevard, outside a little gate which opens at the bottom of my

garden. I said to the leader:

"Those precautions were very useless; I have not the smallest wish to

run away from you and escape."

The gentlemen had turned my papers topsy-turvy, but taken nothing.

My big mameluke's sabre caught their attention; they whispered among

themselves and ended by leaving the weapon under a heap of dusty

folios, in the midst of which it lay beside a yellow-wood crucifix

which I had brought from the Holy Land.

This dumb-show would almost have made me inclined to laugh, but I was

cruelly distressed for Madame de Chateaubriand. Every one who knows

her knows also the affection which she bears me, her ready alarm, the

quickness of her imagination and the pitiful state of her health: this

descent of the police and my removal might do her a terrible harm.

She had already heard some noise and I found her sitting up in bed,

listening quite terrified, as I entered her room at so unusual an hour.

"Ah, dear God!" she exclaimed. "Are you ill? Ah, dear God! What is

happening? What is happening?"

And she was seized with a fit of trembling. I kissed her, with

difficulty kept back my tears, and said:

"It is nothing; they have sent for me to make a statement as a witness

in a matter that has to do with a newspaper trial. It will all be over

in a few hours and I shall come back to breakfast with you."

The police-spy had remained standing at the open door; he saw this

scene and I said to him, as I returned to place myself in his hands:

"You see, sir, the effect of your somewhat matutinal visit."

I crossed the court-yard with my bumbailiffs; three of them got into

the coach with me, the rest of the squad accompanied the capture on

foot and we reached the yard of the Prefecture of Police unmolested.

The gaoler who was to put me under lock and key was not up: they woke

him by tapping at his wicket and he went to prepare my lodging. While

he was busy with this work, I walked up and down the yard with the

Sieur Léotaud, who was guarding me. He chatted and said to me, in a

friendly way, for he was very civil:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I have the great honour of remembering you; I

have often presented arms to you, when you were a minister and used to

come to the King's: I used to serve in the Body-guards. But what would

you have one do? One has a wife and children; one must live!"

"You are right, Monsieur Léotaud; how much does this pay you?"

"Ah, monsieur le vicomte, that depends on our captures .... The

perquisites are sometimes good and sometimes poor, just as in war."

During my walk, I saw the spies return in different disguises like

maskers on Ash Wednesday coming down from the Courtille: they came to

report on the doings of the night. Some were dressed as vendors of

green-stuff, as street-hawkers, as charcoal-sellers, as market-porters,

as old-clothes'-men, as rag-men, as organ-grinders; others wore

wigs under which appeared hair of a different colour; others had

false beards, whiskers and mustachios; others dragged their legs

like respectable invalids and wore a dazzling red ribbon at their

button-holes. They disappeared into a small yard and soon returned in

other clothes, without mustachios, without beards, without whiskers,

without wigs, without baskets, without wooden legs, without arms worn

in a sling: all these birds of day-break of the police flew away and

vanished as the light increased.

My lodging was ready, the gaoler came to tell us, and M. Léotaud, hat

in hand, led me to the door of my honest dwelling, saying, as he left

me in the hands of the gaoler and his assistants:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I am your humble servant; I trust to have the

pleasure of meeting you again."

[Sidenote: And taken to prison.]

The entrance-door closed behind me. Preceded by the gaoler, who carried

his keys, and went before his two men, who followed me to prevent me

from turning tail, I went up a narrow stair-case till I came to the

second floor. A little dark passage led to a door: the turnkey opened

it; I followed him into my box. He asked me if I wanted anything: I

answered that I would have breakfast in an hour. He told me that there

were a coffee-house and a tavern which supplied prisoners with all that

they wanted for their money. I bagged my keeper to send me some tea

and, if possible, some hot and cold water and towels. I gave him twenty

francs in advance: he withdrew respectfully, promising to return.

Left alone, I inspected my den: its length was a little greater than

its width, and its height was perhaps some seven or eight feet. The

walls, stained and bare, were scribbled over with the prose and verse

of my predecessors, and especially with the scrawl of a woman who

said much that was insulting about the _juste-milieu._[411] A pallet,

with dirty sheets, took up half of my cell; a plank, supported by two

brackets fastened against the wall, two feet above the pallet, served

as a cupboard for the prisoners' linen, boots and shoes: a chair and a

sordid article composed the rest of the furniture.

My faithful keeper brought me the towels and jugs of water that I

had asked for; I besought him to take away from the bed the dirty

sheets and the yellow woollen blanket, to remove the pail, which was

choking me, and to sweep out my den after first sprinkling it All

the works of the _juste-milieu_ having been carried off, I shaved; I

poured the water from my jug over myself, I changed my linen: Madame

de Chateaubriand had sent me a little parcel; I set out all my things

on the plank over my bed as though I were in the cabin of a ship.

When this was done, my breakfast arrived, and I took my tea on my

well-washed table, which I covered with a clean napkin. Soon they came

to fetch the utensils of my matutinal feast and I was left alone, duly

locked in.

My cell was lighted only by a grated window which opened very high up;

I placed my table under this window and climbed on the table to breathe

and to enjoy the light Through the bars of my thieves' cell, I saw only

a yard, or rather a dark and narrow passage, with gloomy buildings

with bats fluttering around them. I heard the clanking of keys and

chains, the noise of policemen and spies, the foot-steps of soldiers,

the movement of arms, the shouting, the laughter, the licentious songs

of the prisoners, my neighbours, the yells of Benoît[412], condemned

to death for the murder of his mother and his obscene friend. I caught

these words uttered by Benoît between his confused exclamations of fear

and repentance:

"Ah, my mother, my poor mother!"

I was seeing the under side of society, the sores of humanity, the

hideous machines by which this world is moved.

I thank the men of letters, those great partisans of the liberty of

the press, who formerly had taken me for their leader and fought under

my orders: but for them, I should have left this life without knowing

what prison was, and I should have missed this ordeal. I recognise in

this delicate attention the genius, the goodness, the generosity, the

honour, the courage of the placed penmen. But, after all, what was this

short trial? Tasso spent years in a dungeon; and shall I complain? No;

I have not the mad pride to measure my vexation of a few hours with the

prolonged sacrifices of the immortal victims whose names history has

preserved.

Moreover, I was not at all unhappy; the genius of my past grandeurs

and of my thirty-year-old "glory" did not appear to me; but my Muse

of former days, very poor, very unknown, came all radiant to kiss me

through my window: she was charmed with my lodging and quite inspired;

she found me again as she had seen me in my wretchedness in London,

when the first visions of René were wafting in my head. What were

we going to compose, the solitary of Mount Pindus and I? A song, in

imitation of that poor poet Lovelace[413], who, in the gaols of the

English Commons, sang King Charles I., his master? No; the voice of

a prisoner would have seemed to me to be of ill-omen for my little

King Henry V.: it is from the foot of the altar that hymns should be

addressed to misfortune. I did not therefore sing the crown fallen from

an innocent brow; I contented myself with telling of another crown,

white also, laid on a young girl's bier: I remembered Eliza Frisell,

whom I had seen buried the day before in the cemetery at Passy. I began

a few elegiac verses of a Latin epitaph; but suddenly I was in doubt

as to the quantity of a word: I quickly sprang from the table on which

I was perched, leaning against the bars of the window, and ran to the

door, on which I rained blows with my fist. The neighbouring dens rang

out; the gaoler came up in dismay, followed by two gendarmes; he opened

my wicket, and I cried, as Santeuil[414] would have done:

"A _Gradus!_ A _Gradus!_"

[Sidenote: My life in prison.]

The gaoler opened his eyes, the gendarmes thought that I was revealing

the name of one of my accomplices; they were quite ready to handcuff

me; I explained; I gave them money to buy the book, and they went off

to ask the astonished police for a _Gradus._

While they were attending to my commission, I clambered up on my table

again and, changing my ideas on that tripod, set myself to compose

strophes on the death of Eliza; but, when I was in the midst of my

inspiration, at about three o'clock, behold tipstaffs entering my

cell and bodily apprehending me on the banks of Permessus: they took

me to the examining magistrate, who sat drawing out instruments in a

gloomy office, opposite my prison, on the other side of the yard. The

magistrate, a fatuous and pompous young limb of the law, put the usual

questions to me as to my surname, Christian names, age and place of

residence. I refused to answer or sign anything whatever, declining to

recognise the political authority of a government which was able to

point neither to the ancient hereditary right nor the election of the

people, since France had not been consulted and no national congress

summoned. I was taken back to my mouse-trap.

At six o'clock, they brought me my dinner, and I continued to turn

and turn over in my head the lines of my stanzas, at the same time

improvising an air which I thought charming. Madame de Chateaubriand

sent me a mattress, a bolster, sheets, a cotton blanket, candles and

the books which I read at night. I arranged my room, and still humming:

Il descend le cercueil et les roses sans taches[415],

I found my ballad of the Young Girl and the Young Flower finished[416].

I began to undress; a sound of voices was heard; my door opened; and

M. the Prefect of Police, accompanied by M. Nay,[417] appeared. He

made a thousand apologies for the prolongation of my detention in

custody at the police-station; he informed me that my friends, the Duc

de Fitz-James and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, had been arrested like

myself and that the Prefect's Offices were so full that they did not

know where to put the persons who had to be examined by the justiciary.

"But," he added, "you shall come to me, monsieur le vicomte, and choose

in my apartment whatever suits you best."

I thanked him and begged him to leave me in my hole; I was already

quite charmed with it, like a monk with his cell. M. the Prefect

declined my entreaties and I had to forsake my nest I saw again the

rooms which I had not visited since the day when Bonaparte's Prefect

of Police had sent for me to invite me to leave Paris. M. Gisquet

and Madame Gisquet opened all their rooms for me, begging me to pick

the one which I would like to sleep in. M. Nay offered to give up

his to me. I was confused at so much politeness; I accepted a lonely

little room which looked out on the garden and which was used, I

think, by Mademoiselle Gisquet as a dressing-room; I was allowed to

have my servant with me: he slept on a mattress outside my door, at

the entrance of a narrow stair-case leading down to Madame Gisquet's

large apartment Another stair-case led to the garden; but this one

was forbidden me and, every evening, a sentry was placed at the foot

against the railing which separates the garden from the quay. Madame

Gisquet is the kindest woman in the world and Mademoiselle Gisquet is

very pretty and an exceedingly good musician. I have every reason to be

satisfied with the care shown me by my hosts; they seemed anxious to

atone for the twelve hours of my first confinement.

[Sidenote: The Disquiet family.]

The day after my installation in Mademoiselle Gisquet's dressing-room,

I rose quite pleased, as I remembered Anacreon's song on the toilet

of a young Greek girl; I put my head to the window: I perceived a

small, very green garden and a great wall concealed behind japanned

varnish; to the right, at the back of the garden, offices in which

one caught glimpses of agreeable police-clerks, like beautiful nymphs

amid lilac-bushes; to the left, the quay along the Seine, the river

and a corner of old Paris, in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arcs. The

sound of Mademoiselle Gisquet's piano reached me with the voices of the

police-spies calling for head-clerks to receive their reports.

How everything changes in this world! That little romantic English

garden of the police was a ragged and queer-shaped strip of the French

garden, with its closely-trimmed elms, of the mansion of the First

President of Paris. This old garden, in 1580, occupied the site of that

block of houses which stops the view to the north and west, and it

stretched to the bank of the Seine. It was there that, after the day of

the barricades, the Duc de Guise came to visit Achille de Harlay:

"He found the First President, who was walking in his garden, who

was so little astonished at his coming, that he did not so much

as deign to turn his head nor discontinue the walk which he had

commenced, which having finished, and being at the end of his

alley, he turned, and, in turning, he saw the Duc de Guise, who

came to him; then that grave magistrate, raising his voice, said to

him:

"'It is a great pity that the varlet should drive out the master;

for the rest, my soul is God's, my heart the King's and my body is

in the hands of the wicked: let them do with it what they please.'"

The Achille de Harlay who walks in that garden to-day is M.

Vidocq[418], and the Duc de Guise is Coco Lacour; we have changed

great men for great principles. How free we are now! How free was

I especially at my window, watching that good gendarme standing

sentry at the foot of my staircase and prepared to shoot me flying,

if I had sprouted wings! There was no nightingale in my garden, but

there were plenty of frisky, shameless, quarrelsome sparrows, which

are to be found everywhere, in the country, in town, in palaces,

in prisons, and which perch as gaily on the instrument of death

as on a rose-bush: to one that can fly away, what matter earthly

sufferings?

Madame de Chateaubriand obtained permission to see me. She had spent

thirteen months, under the Terror, in the Rennes prisons, with my

two sisters Lucile and Julie; her imagination, remaining under the

impression, can no longer endure the idea of a prison. My poor wife had

a violent attack of hysterics, on entering the Prefect's Offices, and

this was an obligation the more which I owed to the _juste-milieu._ On

the second day of my detention, the examining magistrate, the Sieur

Desmortiers[419], arrived, accompanied by his clerk.

M. Guizot had obtained the appointment as attorney-general to the Royal

Court at Rennes of one M. Hello[420], a writer and, consequently, an

envious and irritable man, like all who spoil paper in a triumphing

party.

M. Guizot's creature, finding my name and those of M. le Duc de

Fitz-James and M. Hyde de Neuville mixed up in the proceedings that

were being conducted against M. Berryer at Nantes, wrote to the

Minister of Justice that, if he were the master, he would not fail to

have us arrested and included in the trial, both as accomplices and

as witnesses for the prosecution. M. de Montalivet had thought it his

duty to yield to the advice of M. Hello: there was a time when M. de

Montalivet used to come to me to ask my opinion and my ideas relating

to the elections and the liberty of the press. The Restoration,

which made M. de Montalivet a peer, was unable to make him a man of

intelligence, and that is no doubt why it makes him "feel sick" to-day.

[Sidenote: The examining magistrate.]

So M. Desmortiers, the examining magistrate, entered my room; a mawkish

air was spread like a layer of honey over a contracted and violent face:

Je m'appelle Loyal, natif de Normandie,

Et suis huissier à verge, en dépit de l'envie[421].

M. Desmortiers formerly belonged to the Congregation[422]: a great

communicant, a great Legitimist, a great partisan of the Ordinances,

since become a furious juste-milieu man. I begged this animal to take a

seat with all the politeness of the Old Order; I drew up an arm-chair

for him; I put a little table, a pen and ink before his clerk; I sat

down opposite M. Desmortiers and, in a mild voice, he read out to me

the little accusations which, duly proved, would have tenderly got my

head cut off: after which, he passed to his examination.

I declared again that, not recognising the existing political order,

I had no answers to make; that I should sign nothing; that all these

judicial proceedings were superfluous; that they might spare themselves

the trouble and pass on; that, for the rest, I should always be charmed

to have the honour of receiving M. Desmortiers.

I saw that this manner of acting was throwing the sainted man into a

fury; that, having once shared my opinions, he thought my conduct a

satire on his own. With this resentment was mingled the pride of a

magistrate who believed himself wounded in his functions. He tried to

argue with me; I was quite unable to make him grasp the difference

that exists between the social order and the political order of things.

I submitted, I told him, to the former, because it belongs to natural

law: I obeyed the civil, military and financial laws, the laws of

police and of public order; but I owed obedience to the political

law only in so far as that law emanated from the royal authority

consecrated by the ages or sprang from the sovereignty of the people.

I was not silly enough, or false enough to believe that the people had

been convoked, consulted, and that the established political order

was the result of a national decree. If they prosecuted me for theft,

murder, arson, or other social crimes or misdemeanours, I should reply

to justice; but, when they instituted a political trial against me, I

had nothing to reply to an authority which had no legal power and, in

consequence, nothing to ask me.

A fortnight passed in this way. M. Desmortiers, whose fury I had heard

of (a fury which he endeavoured to communicate to the judges), used to

approach me with his sugary air, saying:

"Won't you tell me your illustrious name?"

In the course of one of the examinations, he read me a letter from

Charles X. to the Duc de Fitz-James, containing a phrase complimentary

to myself.

"Well, sir," I said, "what is the meaning of that letter? It is a

matter of common knowledge that I have remained faithful to my old

King, that I have not taken the oath to Philip. As for the rest, I am

deeply touched by my exiled Sovereign's letter. In the time of his

prosperity, he never said anything of that kind to me, and this phrase

repays me for all my services."

Madame Récamier, to whom so many prisoners have owed consolation and

deliverance, had herself brought to my new retreat. M. de Béranger came

down from Passy to tell me in song, under the reign of his friends,

what used to happen in the gaols in the time of my friends: he was no

longer able to fling the Restoration in my face. My fat old friend

M. Bertin came to administer the ministerial sacraments to me; an

enthusiastic woman came hurrying from Beauvais in order to "admire" my

glory; M. Villemain performed an act of courage; M. Dubois[423], M.

Ampère[424], M. Lenormant[425], my generous and learned young friends,

did not forget me; the Republicans' lawyer, M. Ch. Ledru[426], never

left me: in the hope of a trial, he magnified the affair, and he would

have given up all his fees for the honour of defending me.

[Sidenote: Visits from my friends.]

M. Gisquet, as I have told you, had offered me the run of his rooms,

but I did not abuse his permission. Only, one evening I went down to

hear Mademoiselle Gisquet play the piano. I sat between M. Gisquet and

his wife. M. Gisquet scolded his daughter and maintained that she had

executed her sonata less well than usual. This little concert which

my host offered me in the bosom of his family, with myself for sole

audience, was exceedingly singular. While the most pastoral scene was

taking place in the intimacy of the home, policemen were bringing me

colleagues from the outside with blows of musket-butts and loaded

sticks; and yet what peace and harmony reigned in the very heart of the

police!

I had the good fortune to obtain for M. Ch. Philipon[427] the grant of

a favour exactly similar to that which I enjoyed, the favour of the

gaol: sentenced, because of his talent, to some months' imprisonment,

he spent them in an asylum at Chaillot; he was called to Paris as a

witness in a law-suit, and availed himself of the opportunity not to

return to his lodging; but he repented of it: in the place where he lay

concealed, he was no longer able to see, in comfort, a child whom he

loved. Regretting his prison and not knowing how to enter it again, he

wrote me the following letter to ask me to arrange this matter with my

host:

"SIR,

"You are a prisoner and you would understand me even if you were

not Chateaubriand.... I also am a prisoner, a voluntary prisoner

since the proclamation of martial law, at the house of a friend,

a poor artist like myself. I wanted to escape from the justice of

the courts-martial with which I was threatened by the seizure of my

newspaper on the 9th of this month. But, in order to hide myself, I

have had to deprive myself of the kisses of a child whom I idolize,

an adopted daughter, five years old, my happiness and my joy. This

privation is a torture which I could not endure any longer: it is

death to me! I am going to give myself up and they will put me into

Sainte-Pélagie, where I shall see my poor child only rarely, if

they allow it at all, and at fixed hours, where I shall tremble for

her health and where I shall die of anxiety, if I do not see her

every day.

"I appeal to you, sir, to you a Legitimist I a whole-hearted

Republican, to you a grave and parliamentary man I a caricaturist

and a partisan of the bitterest political personalities, to you

to whom I am quite unknown and who are a prisoner like myself, to

persuade M. the Prefect of Police to allow me to return to the

asylum to which I had been transferred. I pledge my word of honour

to appear before justice whenever I shall be called upon to do so

and I undertake not to flee _from any tribunal whatever_ if they

will leave me with my poor child.

"You will believe me, sir, when I speak of honour and when I swear

not to run away, and I am persuaded that you will plead for me,

even though profound politicians may see in this a new proof of

alliance between the Legitimists and the Republicans, all men whose

opinions agree so well.

"If to such a guest, to such an advocate, they refused what I ask,

I should know that I have nothing more to hope for and I should see

myself parted for _nine months_ from my poor Emma.

"In any case, sir, whatever may be the result of your generous

intervention, my gratitude will be none the less eternal, for I

shall never doubt the urgent solicitations which your heart will

suggest to you.

"Accept, sir, the expression of the sincerest admiration and

believe me

"Your most humble and most devoted servant,

"CH. PHILIPON, "Proprietor of the _Caricature_ (newspaper),

sentenced to thirteen months' imprisonment."

"PARIS, 21 _June_ 1832.

[Sidenote: Letters from Philipon.]

I obtained the favour which M. Philipon asked: he thanked me in a note

which proves, not the greatness of the service, which was limited to

having my client guarded at Chaillot by a gendarme, but that secret joy

of the passions which can be well understood only by those who have

really felt it:

"SIR,

"I am leaving for Chaillot with my dear child.

"I wanted to thank you, but I feel that words are too cold to

express the gratitude which I feel; I was right to think, sir, that

your heart would suggest eloquent entreaties to you. I am sure that

I am not deceived when I believe that it will tell you that I am

not ungrateful and that it will depict to you better than I could

the confusion of happiness into which your kindness has thrown me.

"Accept, sir, I beg, my most sincere thanks and deign to believe me

the most affectionate of your servants.

"CHARLES PHILIPON."

To this singular mark of my credit, I will add this strange proof of

my "fame:" a young Clerk[428] in M. Gisquet's offices addressed to me

some very beautiful verses[429], which were handed to me by M. Gisquet

himself; for, after all, we must be fair: if a government of literary

men attacked me ignobly, the Muses defended me nobly; M. Villemain

pronounced in my favour courageously, and, in the _Journal des Débats_

itself, my fat friend Bertin protested, under his own signature,

against my arrest.

Mademoiselle Noemi, which I presume must be Mademoiselle Gisquet's

Christian name, used often to walk alone in the little garden, with a

book in her hand. She would cast a stealthy glance towards my window.

How sweet it would have been to be released from my irons, like

Cervantes, by my master's daughter! While I was assuming a romantic

air, handsome young M. Nay came to dispel my dream. I saw him talking

with Mademoiselle Gisquet with that air which does not deceive us

creators of sylphs. I tumbled down from my clouds, shut my window and

abandoned the idea of growing my mustachios, bleached by the wind of

adversity.

After fifteen days, an order of non-suit restored me to liberty, on

the 30th of June, to the great happiness of Madame de Chateaubriand,

who would have died, I believe, if my detention had been prolonged.

She came to fetch me in a coach; I filled it with my little luggage

as nimbly as I had formerly left the ministry, and I returned to the

Rue d'Enfer with "that inexpressible finish which misfortune gives to

virtue."

If history were to hand M. Gisquet down to posterity, perhaps he would

arrive there in a rather bad plight; I want what I have just written to

serve him here as a counter-poise to a hostile renown. I have nothing

but praise for his attentions and his obligingness; doubtless, if I had

been condemned, he would not have allowed me to escape; but, in short,

he and his family treated me with a decency, a good taste, a feeling

for my position, for what I was and for what I had been, which were

not displayed by a literary Administration and by men of law who were

the more brutal inasmuch as they were acting against the weak and had

nothing to fear.

Of all the governments that have arisen in France during the last forty

years, Philip's is the only one that threw me into the highwayman's

cell; it laid its hand upon my head, upon my head respected even by an

incensed conqueror: Napoleon raised his arm, but did not strike me. And

why this anger? I will tell you: I dare to raise a protest in favour

of right against might in a country in which I have asked for liberty

under the Empire, for glory under the Restoration; in a country where,

solitary that I am, I reckon not by brothers, sisters, children, joys,

pleasures, but by tombstones. The last political changes have separated

me from the rest of my friends: some have gone towards fortune and,

all battered with their dishonour, pass by my poverty; others have

abandoned their homes exposed to insults. The generations so greatly

smitten with independence have sold themselves: from those generations,

common in their conduct, intolerable in their pride, mediocre or mad

in their writings, I expect nothing but scorn and I return it to them;

they have not the wherewithal to understand me: they know nothing of

loyalty to the sworn oath, love for generous institutions, respect for

one's own opinions, contempt for success and gold, the felicity of

sacrifice, the worship of what is weak and unhappy.

After the order of non-suit, one duty remained to me to perform. The

offense with which I had been charged was connected with that for which

M. Berryer was awaiting trial at Nantes. I was unable to explain my

position to the examining magistrate, because I did not recognise the

competency of the tribunal. To repair the harm which my silence might

have done to M. Berryer, I wrote to M. the Minister of Justice[430] the

letter which you will find below and which I made public through the

medium of the newspapers:

[Sidenote: Letter to M. Barthe.]

"PARIS, 3 _July_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE,

"Permit me to perform with reference to yourself, in the interest

of a man too long deprived of liberty, a duty prompted by

conscience and honour.

"M. Berryer the Younger, when questioned by the examining

magistrate at Nantes, on the 18th of last month, replied that 'he

had seen Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he had, with the respect

due to her rank, her courage and her misfortunes, submitted to her

his personal opinion and that of honourable friends on the actual

situation of France and on the consequences of Her Royal Highness'

presence in the West.'

"M. Berryer, developing this wide subject with his accustomed

talent, summed it up thus:

"'No foreign or civil war, supposing it to be crowned with success,

can either subdue or rally opinions.'

"Questioned as to the honourable friends of whom he had spoken, M.

Berryer nobly said that, 'grave men having manifested to him an

opinion on the present circumstances agreeing with his own, he had

thought that he ought to strengthen his opinion with the authority

of theirs; but that he would not give their names without their

consent.'

"I, monsieur le ministre de la justice, am one of those men

consulted by M. Berryer. Not only did I approve of his opinion,

but I drew up a note in the sense of that very opinion. It was to

be handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry in the event that that

Princess should really be on French soil, which I did not believe.

As this first note was not signed, I wrote a second, which I signed

and in which I still more earnestly entreated the intrepid mother

of the grandson of Henry IV. to leave a country which has been torn

by so many discords.

"This declaration was due from me to M. Berryer. The real culprit,

if culprit there be, is I. This declaration will serve, I hope, for

the prompt deliverance of the prisoner of Nantes; it will allow

the guilt to rest upon my head alone of a fact, no doubt very

innocent, of which, however, in the final result, I accept all the

consequences.

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND. "RUE D'ENFER SAINT MICHEL, No. 84.

"I wrote on the 9th of last month to M. le Comte de Montalivet

on a matter relating to M. Berryer, but M. the Minister of the

Interior did not think it incumbent upon him even to inform me that

he had received my letter: as it is very important to me to know

what becomes of that which I have the honour to write to-day to M.

the Minister of Justice, I shall be infinitely obliged to him if

he will instruct his office to send me an acknowledgment of its

receipt.

"CH."

The reply of M. the Minister of Justice was not long in coming; here it

is:

"PARIS, 3 _July._

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"As the letter which you have addressed to me contains information

which may enlighten justice, I am forwarding it without delay

to the King's Attorney to the Nantes Court[431], so that it may

be added to the documents in the proceedings pending against M.

Berryer.

"I am, with respect, etc.,

"BARTHE, "Keeper of the Seals."

By this reply, M. Barthe graciously reserved to himself the right to

institute a new prosecution against me. I remember the proud disdain

of the great men of the juste-milieu when I allowed a glimpse to

pass of the possibility of any violence exercised upon my person or

my writings. What! Good Heavens! Why deck myself with an imaginary

danger? Who troubled about my opinion? Who thought of touching a hair

of my head? Trusty and well-beloved friends of the stew-pan, dauntless

heroes of peace at any price, you have nevertheless had your Terror

of the counting-house and the police, your martial law in Paris, your

thousand press trials, your military commissions to condemn the author

of the Cancans[432] to death; you nevertheless flung me into your

gaols: the punishment applicable to my "crime" was nothing less than

capital punishment With what pleasure would I yield you my head, if,

thrown into the scales of justice, it made them lean on the side of the

honour, the glory and the liberty of my country!

[Sidenote: I prepare to depart.]

I was more than ever determined to resume my exile; Madame de

Chateaubriand, terrified at my adventure, would already have wished

to be very far away; the only question was to seek the spot where we

should pitch our tents. The great difficulty was to find some money

with which to live on foreign soil and pay a debt which was drawing

down upon me threats of law-suits and distress.

The first year of an embassy always ruins the ambassador: that is what

happened to me in Rome. I resigned on the succession of the Polignac

Ministry, and I went away adding to my ordinary afflictions sixty

thousand francs of borrowed money. I had applied to all the royalist

purses; none was opened to me: I was advised to ask Laffitte. M.

Laffitte advanced me ten thousand francs, which I at once gave to

the more pressing creditors. I recovered the sum on the proceeds of

my pamphlets and repaid it to him with gratitude; but there still

remained some thirty thousand francs to be paid, over and above my

old debts, for I have some that have grown a beard, so aged are they:

unfortunately that beard is a golden beard which has to be cut upon my

chin once a year.

M. le Duc de Lévis, on his return from a journey to Scotland, had told

me, on behalf of Charles X., that that Prince wished to continue to pay

me my peer's pension: I thought it my duty to refuse the offer. The

Duc de Lévis returned to the charge when he saw me, on leaving prison,

in the most cruel difficulties, finding nothing left of my house and

garden in the Rue d'Enfer, and harassed by a swarm of creditors. I had

already sold my plate. The Duc de Lévis brought me twenty thousand

francs, nobly saying that these were not the two years' peerage pension

which the King admitted owing me and that my debts in Rome were simply

a debt of the Crown. This sum set me free; I accepted it as a temporary

loan and wrote the King the following letter[433]:

"SIRE,

"In the midst of the calamities with which it has pleased God to

hallow your life, you have not forgotten those who suffer at the

foot of the throne of St. Louis. You deigned to send word to me,

some months ago, of your generous intention to continue the peer's

pension which I renounced when refusing to take the oath to the

unlawful power; I thought that Your Majesty had servants poorer

than I and worthier of your bounty. But the last writings which I

have published have cost me damages and brought prosecutions down

upon me; I have in vain tried to sell the little that I possess. I

find myself obliged to accept, not the annual pension which Your

Majesty proposed to allow me out of your royal poverty, but a

provisional succour to free me from the difficulties which prevent

me from reaching a refuge where I can live by my work. Sire, I must

needs be very unhappy to make myself a burden, even for a moment,

on a crown which I have supported with all my efforts and which I

shall continue to serve for the rest of my life.

"I am, with the most profound respect, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

My nephew, the Comte Louis de Chateaubriand, on his side lent me a

similar sum of twenty thousand francs. Thus rid of material obstacles,

I made my preparations for my second departure. But a reason based upon

honour stopped me: Madame la Duchesse de Berry was on French soil; what

would become of her, and was I not bound to remain on the spot where

her dangers might summon me? A note from the Princess, which reached me

from the depths of the Vendée, set me completely free:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame.]

"I was going to write to you, monsieur le vicomte, touching this

'Provisional Government' which I thought it my duty to form, when

I did not know when nor even if I might return to France, and of

which I am informed that you consented to form part. It did not

exist in fact, because it never met, and some of the members came

to an understanding only to communicate to me an opinion which I

was not able to follow. I do not take it in the least unkindly of

them. You judged in accordance with the report on my position and

that of the country made to you by those who had reason to know

better than I the effects of a _fatal influence_ in which I was

never willing to believe, and I am sure that, if M. de Ch. had been

with me, his noble and generous heart would also have refused to do

so. I rely therefore none the less on the good individual services

and even the counsels of the persons who formed part of the

Provisional Government and whose choice had been dictated to me by

their enlightened zeal and their devotion to the Legitimacy in the

person of Henry V. I see that it is your intention to leave France

again: I should regret this greatly, if I could have you near me;

but you have weapons which strike at a distance and I hope that you

will not cease to fight for Henry V.

"Believe, monsieur le vicomte, in all my esteem and friendship.

"M. C. R."

With this note, Madame dispensed with my services and did not yield to

the advice which I had ventured to give her in the note of which M.

Berryer was the bearer; she even seemed a little hurt by it, although

she admitted that a _fatal influence_ had led her astray.

Thus restored to my liberty and released from all engagements, on this

day, 7 August, having nothing left to do but go away, I wrote my

letter to M. de Béranger, who had visited me in prison:

TO M. DE BÉRANGER

"PARIS, 7 August 1832.

"I wanted, monsieur, to go to say good-bye to you and thank you for

your remembrance; time failed me and I was obliged to start without

having the pleasure of seeing you and embracing you. I am ignorant

as to my future: is there a clear future for anybody to-day? We are

living not in a time of revolution, but of social transformation:

now transformations are realized slowly, and the generations which

find themselves placed in the period of metamorphosis perish

obscure and miserable. If Europe, as might well be the case,

has reached the age of decrepitude, it is another matter: it

will produce nothing and will die out in an impotent anarchy of

passions, morals and doctrines. In that event, monsieur, you will

have sung over a tomb.

"I have fulfilled all my engagements, monsieur: I returned at

the sound of your voice; I have defended what I came to defend;

I have undergone the cholera; I am returning to the mountain. Do

not break your lyre, as you threaten to do; I owe to it one of my

most glorious titles to the memory of mankind. Continue to make

France smile and weep: for it so happens, by a secret known to you

alone, that, in your popular songs, the words are gay and the music

plaintive.

"I recommend myself to your friendship and your muse.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

I am to set out to-morrow. Madame de Chateaubriand will meet me at

Lucerne.

[Sidenote: I leave for Switzerland.]

BASLE, 12 _August_ 1832.

Many men die without losing sight of their steeple: I cannot meet with

the steeple which is to see me die. In quest of a refuge in which to

finish my Memoirs, I am taking the road anew, dragging at my heels an

enormous luggage of papers, diplomatic correspondence, confidential

notes, letters from ministers and kings; it is history riding pillion

with romance.

At Vesoul, I saw M. Augustin Thierry, living with his brother the

prefect[434] When, formerly, in Paris, he sent me his _Histoire de la

conquête des Normands_, I went to thank him. I found a young man in a

room with half-closed shutters; he was almost blind; he tried to rise

to receive me, but his legs no longer carried him and he fell into my

arms. He blushed when I expressed to him my sincere admiration; it

was then that he replied that his work was mine and that it was when

reading the Battle of the Franks in the _Martyrs_ that he had conceived

a new idea of writing history[435]. When I took leave of him, he then

made an effort to follow me and dragged himself to the door, leaning

against the wall: I went out quite affected by so much talent and so

much misfortune.

At Vesoul, after a long banishment, appeared Charles X.[436], now

setting sail for the new exile which will be for him the last.

I passed the frontier without accident with all my rubbish: let us

see if, on the other side of the Alps, I may not enjoy the liberty of

Switzerland and the sun of Italy, the needs of my opinions and my years.

At the entrance to Basle, I met an old Swiss, a custom-house officer;

he made me undergo "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" my

luggage was taken down into a cellar; they set in movement something

or other which made the same sound as a stocking-frame; there rose a

vinegary fume; and, thus purified from the contagion of France, I was

released by my good Swiss.

I have said, in the _Itinéraire_, speaking of the storks of Athens:

"From the height of their nests, which revolutions cannot reach,

they have seen the race of mortals change beneath them: while

impious generations have risen on the tombs of the religious

generations, the young stork has always nourished its old father."

I find again at Basle the storks nest which I left there six years

ago; but the hospital in whose roof the stork of Basle has built its

nest is not the Parthenon, the sun of the Rhine is not the sun of

the Cephissus, the Council is not the Areopagus, Erasmus[437] is not

Pericles; nevertheless, the Rhine, the Black Forest, Roman and Germanic

Basle are something. Louis XIV. extended France to the gates of that

city and three hostile monarchs[438] passed through it, in 1813, to

come to sleep in the bed of Louis the Great, defended by Napoleon in

vain. Let us go to see Holbein's[439] _Dance of Death_; it will tell us

a tale of human vanities.

The _Dance of Death_ (always presuming that it was not even then a real

painting) took place in Paris, in 1424, in the Cimetière des Innocents:

it came to us from England. The performance of this spectacle was

recorded in pictures: these were exhibited in the cemeteries of

Dresden, Lübeck, Minden, of the Chaise-Dieu, Strasburg and Blois in

France; and Holbein's pencil immortalized these joys of the tomb at

Basle.

These dances of death of the great artist have in their turn been

carried away by death, which does not spare its own follies: there

remain at Basle, of Holbein's labour, only six pieces sawn from the

stones of the cloisters and lodged in the library of the University. A

coloured drawing has preserved the harmony of the work.

Those grotesque figures on a terrible back-ground partake of the genius

of Shakespeare, a genius blended of comedy and tragedy. The persons

bear a lively expression: rich and poor, old and young, men and women,

popes, cardinals, priests, emperors, kings, queens, princes, dukes,

nobles, magistrates, warriors, all struggle and argue with Death; not

one accepts it with a good grace.

Death is infinitely various, but always clownish, like life, which is

only a serious piece of buffoonery. This Death of the satirical painter

goes one leg short, like the wooden-legged beggar whom it accosts; it

plays the mandoline behind its back-bone, like the musician whom it

drags away. It is not always bald: tufts of fair, brown, or grey hair

flutter on the skeleton's neck and make it more frightful by making it

nearly alive. In one of the cartoons, Death has almost hair, it is

almost young, like a young man, and it carries off a young girl who

is looking at herself in a glass. Death has in its wallet the tricks

of a crafty schoolboy: with a pair of scissors, it cuts the string of

a dog which leads a blind man, and the blind man is at two steps from

an open pit; elsewhere, Death, in a short mantle, accosts one of its

victims with the gestures of a Pasquin. Holbein may have taken the idea

of this formidable gaiety in nature itself: enter a reliquary, all the

death's-heads seem to grin, because they uncover their teeth; that is

laughter. What are they grinning at? At death or at life?

[Sidenote: Basle.]

I liked the cathedral at Basle and especially the ancient cloisters. As

I passed through the latter, filled with funeral inscriptions, I read

the names of some Reformers. Protestantism chooses its place and takes

its time badly when it sets itself in Catholic monuments; one sees less

what it has reformed than what it has destroyed. Those dry pedants

who thought that they would re-make a primitive Christianity within

an old Christianity which had created society for fifteen centuries

were unable to raise a single monument. To what would that monument

have responded? What connection would it have had with the manners of

the day? Men were not made like Luther[440] and Calvin in the time of

Luther and Calvin; they were made like Leo X.[441] with the genius of

Raphael, or like St. Louis with the Gothic genius; the few believed in

nothing, the many believed in everything. And so Protestantism has as

its temples only school-rooms, or as churches only the cathedrals which

it has devastated: it has there established its nudity. Jesus Christ

and His apostles, no doubt, did tot resemble the Greeks and Romans of

their age, but they did not come to _reform_ an old creed; they came to

_establish_ a new religion, to replace the gods by a God.

LUCERNE, 14 _August_ 1832.

The road from Basle to Lucerne through Aargau presents a series of

valleys, some of which resemble the Valley of Argelès, minus the

Spanish sky of the Pyrenees. At Lucerne, the mountains, differently

grouped, shelved, profiled, coloured, end, as they withdraw one behind

the other and sink away into the perspective, in the snows bordering on

the Saint-Gotthard. If one suppressed the Righi and Mount Pilatus and

kept only the hills, with their surfaces of grass and rabbit-warrens,

which run down directly to the Lake of the Four Cantons, one would

reproduce an Italian lake.

The arcades of the cloister of the cemetery surrounding the cathedral

are like boxes from which this spectacle can be enjoyed. The monuments

of this cemetery have for standards small iron crosses bearing a gilt

Christ. In the rays of the sun, these are so many points of light

escaping from the tombs; from space to space, there are holy-water

fonts in which soaks a twig with which one can bless mourned ashes. I

wept none there in particular, but I sprinkled the lustral dew upon

the silent community of the Christians and unfortunates, my brothers.

One epitaph said to me, "_Hodie mihi, cras tibi_;" another, "_Fuit

homo_;" a third, "_Siste, viator; abi, viator._" And I await to-morrow;

and I shall have been a man; and a traveller I stop; and a traveller

I go away. Leaning against one of the arcades of the cloister, I long

contemplated the theatre of the adventures of William Tell and his

companions: the theatre of Helvetian liberty so well sung and described

by Schiller and Johann von Müller[442]. My eyes sought in the vast

picture for the presence of the most illustrious dead and my feet trod

on the most unknown ashes.

When I saw the Alps again, four or five years ago, I asked myself what

I had come to seek there: what, then, shall I say to-day? What shall I

say to-morrow and again tomorrow? Woe to me who cannot grow old and who

am always growing old!

LUCERNE, 15 _August_ 1832.

The Capuchins went this morning, according to the custom on the Feast

of the Assumption, to bless the mountains. Those monks profess the

religion under whose protection Swiss independence was born: that

independence still endures. What will become of our modern liberty, all

accursed by the blessing of the philosophers and the hangmen? It is not

forty years old and it has been sold and sold again, bishoped and dealt

in at every street-corner. There is more liberty in the frock of a

Capuchin blessing the Alps than in all the frippery of the legislators

of the Republic, the Empire, the Restoration and the Usurpation of July.

[Sidenote: Lucerne.]

A French traveller in Switzerland is touched and saddened; our history,

for the misfortune of those regions, is too closely connected with

their history; the blood of Helvetia has been shed for us and by us; we

wasted the hut of William Tell with fire and sword; we engaged in our

civil wars the peasant warrior who guarded the throne of our kings. The

genius of Thorwaldsen has fixed the memory of the 10th of August at the

gate of Lucerne. The Helvetian Lion lies dying, pierced by an arrow,

and covering with its drooping head and one of its paws the escutcheon

of France, of which we see only one of the fleurs-de-lys. The chapel

consecrated to the victims, the clump of green trees which accompanies

the bas-relief sculptured in the rock, the soldier escaped from the

massacre of the 10th of August who shows the monument to strangers, the

note from Louis XVI. ordering the Swiss to lay down their arms, the

frontal presented by Madame la Dauphine to the expiatory chapel, upon

which that perfect model of sorrow has embroidered the image of the

immolated Lamb of God!... By what counsel does Providence, after the

last fall of the throne of the Bourbons, send me to seek a refuge near

this monument? At least, I can look upon it without blushing, I can lay

my feeble but not perjured hand upon the shield of France, even as the

lion covers it with its mighty claws, now distended in death.

Well, a member of the Diet has proposed to destroy this monument!

What does Switzerland demand? Liberty? She has enjoyed it for four

centuries. Equality? She has it. The republic? It is her form of

government. The lightening of taxes? She pays hardly any. What does she

want then? She wants to change, it is the law of beings. When a people,

transformed by time, is no longer able to remain what it has been, the

first symptom of its malady is a hatred of the past and of the virtues

of its fathers.

I returned from the monument to the 10th of August by the great covered

bridge, a kind of wooden gallery hung over the lake. Two hundred and

thirty-eight triangular pictures, set between the rafters of the roof,

adorn this gallery. They are popular annals in which the Swiss, as he

passed, used to learn the story of his religion and his liberty.

I have seen the tame moor-fowl; I prefer the wild moor-fowl of the pond

at Combourg.

In the town, I was struck by the sound of a choir of voices; it issued

from a Lady-chapel. I entered that chapel and thought myself carried

back to the days of my childhood. In front of four devoutly-decked

altars, women were reciting the rosary and the litanies with the

priest. It was like the evening-prayer by the sea-shore in my poor

Brittany, and I was on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne! Thus did a man

knot together the two ends of my life, the better to make me feel all

that had been lost in the chain of my years.

ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, 16 _August_ 1832, _noon._

Alps, lower your crests, I am no longer worthy of you: young, I should

be solitary; old, I am merely isolated. I would certainly depict

nature again; but for whom? Who would care for my pictures? What arms,

other than those of time, would, in reward, embrace my "genius," with

its stripped forehead? Who would repeat my songs? What Muse should I

inspire with any? Under the vault of my years, as under that of the

snowy heights which surround me, no ray of sun will come to warm me.

What a pity to drag across those heights tired footsteps which no one

would care to follow! What a misfortune not to find myself free to

wander anew until at the end of my life!

_Two o'clock._

My bark has stopped at the landing-stage of a house on the right bank

of the lake, before entering the Bay of Uri. I climbed up to the

orchard of that inn and came to sit under two walnut-trees which give

shelter to a stable. Before me, a little to the right, on the opposite

bank of the lake, the village of Schwyz unfolds itself among orchards

and the inclined planes of those pastures called "Alps" in this part;

it is surmounted by a rock broken into a semi-circle, the two points of

which, the _Mythen_ and the _Haken_, the Mitre and the Hook, owe their

names to their shapes. This horned capital rests upon turfy slopes, as

the crown of the rude Helvetian independence rests on the head of a

nation of shepherds. The silence around me is interrupted only by the

tinkling of the bells of two heifers left in the neighbouring stable;

they seem to ring out to me the glory of the pastoral liberty which

Schwyz has given, with its name, to a whole people: a little canton

in the neighbourhood of Naples, called "Italia," has in the same way,

but with less sacred rights, communicated its name to the land of the

Romans.

_Three o'clock._

We are starting; we are entering the Bay or Lake of Uri. The mountains

grow taller and darker. There is the grass-grown ridge of the Grütli

and the three fountains at which Fürst, Arnold von Melchthal and

Stauffacher[443] swore to deliver their country; there, at the foot

of the Achsenberg, is the chapel that marks the place at which Tell,

jumping from Gessler's[444] bark, pushed it back with his foot to the

midst of the billows.

[Sidenote: On the Lake of Lucerne.]

But did Tell and his companions ever exist? Might they not be only

persons of the North, born in the songs of the Scalds, whose heroic

traditions are to be found on the shores of Sweden? Are the Swiss

to-day what they were at the time when they won their independence?

Those bear-paths see cal-ashes roll along where Tell and his companions

used to bound, bow in hand, from peak to peak: am I myself a traveller

in harmony with these regions?

A storm comes luckily to assail me. We are landing in a creek, at a few

paces from Tell's chapel: it is always the same God that raises the

winds and the same confidence in that God that reassures men. As in

former days, when crossing the Ocean, the lakes of America, the seas

of Greece, of Syria, I am writing on drenched paper. The clouds, the

waves, the rolling of the thunder blend better with the ancient liberty

of the Alps than the voice of that effeminate and degenerate nature

which my century has placed in my bosom despite myself.

ALTDORF.

I have disembarked at Flüelen and reached Altdorf, where the absence

of horses will keep me one night at the foot of the Bannberg. Here,

William Tell shot the apple from his son's head: the bow-shot was of

the length that separates those two fountains. Let us believe, in spite

of the fact that the same story was told by Saxo Grammaticus[445], as

quoted first by myself in my _Essai sur les révolutions_[446]; let us

have faith in religion and liberty, the two great things about man:

glory and power are brilliant, not great.

To-morrow, from the top of the Saint-Gotthard, I shall greet once again

that Italy which I have greeted from the summit of the Simplon and the

Mont-Cenis. But of what avail is that last look cast upon the regions

of the South and the Dawn? The pine-tree of the glaciers cannot descend

among the orange-trees which it sees below it in the flowery valleys!

_Ten o'clock in the evening._

The storm is beginning again; the lightning-flashes twist around the

rocks; the echoes swell and prolong the sound of the thunder; the

roaring of the Schœchen and the Reuss welcome the bard of Armorica.

It is long since I found myself alone and free; nothing in the room

in which I am locked: two beds for a waking traveller who has neither

loves to put to sleep, nor dreams to dream. Those mountains, that

storm, this night are treasures lost for me. What life, nevertheless, I

feel in the depths of my soul! Never, when the most ardent blood flowed

from my heart into my veins, did I speak the language of the passions

with such energy as I might do at this moment. It seems to me as though

I saw my sylph of the Combourg woods issue from the flanks of the

Saint-Gotthard. Hast thou come to see me again, O charming phantom of

my youth? Hast thou pity for me? Thou seest, I am changed only in face:

ever chimerical, devoured by a causeless and unfed fire. I am leaving

the world, and I was entering it when I created thee in a moment of

ecstasy and delirium. This is the hour at which I invoked thee in my

tower. I can still open my Window to let thee in. If thou art not

satisfied with the charms which I lavished upon thee, I will make thee

a hundred times more seductive; my palette is not exhausted; I have

seen more beauties and I know how to paint better than I did. Come to

sit upon my knees; do not be afraid of my hair, stroke it with thy

fairy or shadowy fingers: it will turn brown again under thy kisses.

This head, which these falling hairs do not make wiser, is quite as

mad as it was when I gave thee being, eldest daughter of my illusion,

sweet fruit of my mysterious loves with my first solitude! Come, we

will once more mount the clouds together; we will go with the lightning

to plough, illumine, set fire to the precipices by which I shall pass

to-morrow. Come! Carry me away as in former days, but do not carry me

back again.

A knock at my door: it is not thou, it is the guide! The horses have

arrived, we must start. Of this dream all that remains is the rain, the

wind and I, an endless dream, an eternal storm.

17 _August_ 1832 (AMSTEG).

From Altdorf to here, a valley between mountains close together, as

one sees everywhere; the noisy Reuss in the middle. At the Hart Inn,

a little German student, who has come from the Rhone glaciers and who

said to me:

"You gome vrom Altdorf this morning? You go vast!"

He thought I was on foot, like himself; then, seeing my _char-à-bancs_:

"Oh! Horses! Dat's tifferent!"

If the student were willing to "swap" his young legs for my

_char-à-bancs_ and my even worse car of glory, with what pleasure would

I take his stick, his grey blouse and his blonde beard! I should go

to the Rhone glaciers; I should talk the language of Schiller to my

mistress; and I should ponder deeply on Teutonic liberty: he would

go his way old as time, bored as one dead, undeceived by experience,

having fastened round his neck, like a bell, a fame by which he would

be more wearied after a quarter of an hour than by the din of the

Reuss. The exchange will not take place: good bargains are not for my

use. My scholar is going; he said to me, taking off and putting back

his Teuton cap, with a little nod of the head:

"_Permis!_"

One more shadow vanished. The scholar does not know my name; he will

have met me and will never know it: I am delighted with this idea; I

yearn for obscurity with more eagerness than formerly I longed for

light; the latter worries me either as making my miseries visible or as

showing me objects which I can no longer enjoy: I am in a hurry to pass

the torch to my neighbour.

Three little boys are drawing the cross-bow: William Tell and Gessler

are everywhere. Free peoples retain the remembrance of the foundations

of their independence. Ask a poor little boy in France if he has ever

thrown the hatchet in memory of King Hlodwigh or Khlodwig or Clovis!

The new Saint-Gotthard road, on leaving Amsteg, goes to and fro in a

zig-zag for two leagues, now joining the Reuss, now quitting it when

the fissure of the torrent grows wider. On the perpendicular reliefs of

the landscape, slopes flat or tufted with beech-clumps, peaks shooting

into the sky, domes topped with ice, summits bald or retaining a few

stripes of snow, like locks of white hair; in the valley, bridges,

posts made of blackened planks, walnut-trees and fruit-trees which

gain in luxury of branches and leaves what they lose in succulence of

fruits. The Alpine nature forces those trees to become wild again;

the sap breaks through in spite of the grafting: a vigorous character

bursts the bonds of civilization.

A little higher, on the right margin of the Reuss, the scene changes:

the stream flows with cascades in a pebbly rut, under a double and

triple avenue of pines; this is like the valley of Pont d'Espagne at

Cauterets. On the skirts of the mountain, the larch-trees grow on the

sharp edges of the rock; holding fast by their roots, they resist the

shock of the tempests.

The road and a few potato-patches alone bear witness to man's presence

in this spot: he must eat and he must walk; that sums up his history.

The herds, consigned to the pasture-lands in the loftier regions, do

not appear in sight; birds, none; eagles, no question of them: the

great eagle fell into the ocean when crossing to St. Helena; there is

no flight so high or so strong but falters in the immensity of the

skies. The royal eaglet has just died.[447] Other eaglets of July 1830

were announced to us; apparently they have come down from their eyry

to nestle with the feather-legged pigeons. They will never carry off

chamois in their talons: weakened by the domestic light, their blinking

glance will never contemplate from the summit of the Saint-Gotthard the

free and dazzling sun of France's glory.

After crossing the Pfaffensprung Bridge and passing round the pap of

the village of Wasen, one again takes the right bank of the Reuss; at

either extremity, cascades gleam white among the sods, spread like

green tapestries on the travellers' passage. Through a defile, one

perceives the Ranz glacier, which joins the Furka glaciers.

At last, one makes one's way into the Valley of Schöllenen, where the

first ascent of the Saint-Gotthard commences. This valley is a notch

two thousand feet in depth, cut out of a solid block of granite. The

faces of the block form gigantic overhanging walls. The mountains no

longer present aught save their flanks and their ardent and reddened

crests. The Reuss thunders down its vertical bed, lined with stones.

The ruin of a tower bears witness to a former time, even as nature here

points to unremembered ages. Supported in the air by walls along the

granite masses, the road, an immobile torrent, winds parallel to the

mobile torrent of the Reuss. Here and there, stone-work vaults form

a shelter for the traveller against the avalanche; one turns for yet

a few more paces in a sort of tortuous gallery, and suddenly, at one

of the volutes of the shell, finds one's self face to face with the

Devil's Bridge.