[Sidenote: The Devil's Bridge.]

This bridge to-day intersects the arch of the new bridge, which is

higher, built behind it and overlooks it; the old bridge thus debased

no longer resembles anything but a short two-storeyed aqueduct. The new

bridge, when one comes from Switzerland, conceals the cascade at the

back. To enjoy the rain-bows and the leaping of the cascade, one must

stand upon the bridge; but, when one has seen the Falls of Niagara, no

water-fall remains. My memory is constantly contrasting my journeys

with my journeys, mountains with mountains, rivers with rivers, forests

with forests, and my life destroys my life. The same thing happens to

me with respect to societies and men.

The modern roads, which the Simplon has taught us to make and which the

Simplon effaces, have not the picturesque effect of the old roads. The

latter, bolder and more natural, avoided no difficulty; they scarcely

deviated from the course of the torrents; they rose and descended with

the ground, surmounted the rocks, plunged into the precipices, passed

under the avalanches, taking nothing away from the pleasure of the

imagination and the joy of danger. The old Saint-Gotthard Road, for

instance, was adventurous in quite a different way from the present

road. The Devil's Bridge deserved its reputation, when, on approaching

it, one saw the cascade of the Reuss above, and when it marked out

an obscure arch, or rather a narrow path, through the gleaming spray

of the fall. Then, at the end of the bridge, the road ascended

perpendicularly to reach the chapel of which we still see the ruin. At

least, the inhabitants of Uri have had the pious thought of building

another chapel at the cascade.

Lastly, it was not men like ourselves who crossed the Alps in former

days: it was hordes of Barbarians or Roman legions; caravans of

merchants, knights, _condottieri_, freebooters, pilgrims, prelates,

monks. Strange adventures were related. Who built the Devil's Bridge?

Who flung the Devil's Rock into the Wasen Thal? Here and there rose

castle-keeps, crosses, oratories, monasteries, hermitages, preserving

the memory of an invasion, a meeting, a miracle, or a misfortune. Each

mountain tribe kept its language, its dress, its manners, its customs.

It is true, one did not find, in a desert, an excellent inn; one drank

no champagne there; one read no newspapers; but, if there were more

robbers on the Saint-Gotthard, there were less cheats in society. What

a fine thing is civilization! I leave that "pearl" to the "handsome

first lapidary."

Suwaroff[448] and his soldiers were the last travellers in this defile,

at the end of which they met Masséna.

After passing out from the Devil's Bridge and the Urner Loch tunnel,

one reaches the Urseren Thai, closed by redans like the stone benches

of an arena. The Reuss flows peacefully in the midst of the verdure;

the contrast is striking: it is thus that society seems tranquil after

and before revolutions; men and empires slumber at two steps from the

abyss into which they are about to fall.

At the village of Hospital commences the second ascent, leading to the

summit of the Saint-Gotthard, which is overrun by masses of granite.

Those voluminous, swollen, broken masses, festooned at their tops with

a few garlands of snow, resemble the fixed and frothy waves of an ocean

of stone upon which man has left the undulation of his road.

Au pied du mont Adule, entre mille roseaux,

Le Rhin, tranquille et fier du progrès de ses eaux,

Appuyé d'une main sur son urne penchante,

Dormait au bruit flatteur de son onde naissante[449].

[Sidenote: The Saint-Gotthard.]

Very fine lines, but inspired by the marble rivers of Versailles.

The Rhine does not spring from a bed of reeds: it rises from a

bed of hoar-frost; its urn, or rather its urns are of ice; its

origin is congenerous with those peoples of the North of which it

became the adopted stream and the martial girdle. The Rhine, born

of the Saint-Gotthard in the Grisons, sheds its waters into the

sea of Holland, Norway and England; the Rhone, also a child of the

Saint-Gotthard, bears its tribute to the Neptune of Spain, Italy and

Greece: sterile snows form the reservoirs of the fecundity of the

ancient world and the modern world.

Two pools, on the Saint-Gotthard table-land, give birth, one to the

Ticino, the other to the Reuss. The source of the Reuss is lower than

the source of the Ticino, so that, by digging a canal of a few hundred

paces, one would throw the Ticino into the Reuss. If one were to repeat

this work in the case of the principal tributaries of those streams,

one would produce strange metamorphoses in the regions at the foot of

the Alps. A mountaineer can afford himself the pleasure of suppressing

a river, of fertilizing or sterilizing a country: there is something to

take down the pride of power.

It is a marvellous thing to see the Reuss and the Ticino bid each other

an eternal farewell and take their opposite ways down the two sides of

the Saint-Gotthard: their cradles touch; their destinies are separate:

they go to seek different lands and different suns; but their mothers,

always united, do not cease, from the height of solitude, to feed their

disunited children.

There was formerly, on the Saint-Gotthard, a hospice served by

Capuchins; now one sees only the ruins of it; there remains of religion

but a cross of worm-eaten wood with its Christ: God remains when men

withdraw.

On the Saint-Gotthard upland, a desert in mid-sky, one world ends and

another commences: the German names are replaced by Italian names. I

take leave of my companion, the Reuss, which had brought me, as I went

up, from the Lake of Lucerne, to go down to the Lake of Lugano with my

new guide, the Ticino.

The Saint-Gotthard is hewn perpendicularly on the Italian side; the

road which plunges into the Val Tremola does credit to the engineer

obliged to trace it in the narrowest gorge. Seen from above, this

road is like a ribbon folded and folded again; seen from below, the

walls supporting the embankments give the impression of the works of a

fortress, or resemble those dykes which are built one above the other

to resist the invasion of the waters. Sometimes, also, the double row

of mile-stones planted regularly on both sides of the road suggests

a column of soldiers descending the Alps once more to invade unhappy

Italy.

_Saturday_, 18 _August_ 1832 (LUGANO).

During the night I passed Airolo, Bellinzona and the Val Levantina:

I did not see the ground, I only heard the torrents. In the sky, the

stars rose among the cupolas and needles of the mountains. The moon

was not at first above the horizon, but her dawn spread before her

by degrees, like those "glories" with which the fourteenth-century

painters used to surround the head of the Virgin: she appeared at last,

scooped out and reduced to a quarter of her disc, on the denticulated

top of the Furca; the tips of her crescent were like wings, one would

have said of a white dove escaping from its nest in the rocks: by

her light, enfeebled and rendered more mysterious, the hollowed-out

luminary revealed to my eyes the Lago Maggiore at the end of the Val

Levantina. Twice I had seen that lake, once when proceeding to the

Congress of Verona, and again when going on my embassy to Rome. I

then contemplated it in the sun, on the high-way of prosperity; now I

caught a glimpse of it at night, from the opposite bank, on the road

of misfortune. Between my journeys, separated by only a few years, a

monarchy fourteen centuries old had passed away.

It is not that I bear those political revolutions the smallest grudge;

by restoring me to liberty, they have restored me to my own nature. I

have still pith enough to reproduce the first fruit of my dreams, fire

enough to renew my connexion with the imaginary creature of my desires.

The time and the world which I have traversed have been for me but a

double solitude in which I have kept myself such as Heaven made me. Why

should I complain of the swiftness of the days, since I lived in one

hour as much as those who spend years in living?

[Sidenote: Lugano.]

Lugano is a little town of Italian aspect: porticoes as at Bologna,

people keeping house in the streets as at Naples, Renascence

architecture, roofs without cornices, long and narrow windows, bare

or adorned with a pediment and pierced up to the architrave. The town

leans against a vine-grown hill-side commanded by two superposed

mountain plains, one covered with pastures, the other with forests:

the lake lies at its feet.

On the topmost summit of a mountain to the east of Lugano, exists a

hamlet whose women, tall and fair-skinned, have the reputation of the

Circassians. The eve of my arrival was the festival of that hamlet;

people had gone on a pilgrimage to beauty: that tribe is doubtless some

remains of a race of northern Barbarians preserved unmixed above the

populations of the plain.

I have been taken to the different houses that had been mentioned to me

as likely to suit me: I found one of them charming, but the rent was

much too high.

To see the lake better, I took a boat. One of my two boatmen spoke a

Franco-Italian jargon interlarded with English. He told me the names of

the mountains and of the villages on the mountains: the San Salvator,

from the summit of which one discovers the dome of Milan Cathedral;

Castagnola, with its olive-trees, of which the visitors put little

twigs in their button-holes; Gandria, the boundary of the Canton of

Ticino on the lake; the San Giorgio, crowned with its hermitage: each

of those places had its history.

Austria, who takes all and gives nothing, retains at the foot of

Monte Caprino a village enclosed in the Ticino territory. Facing

this again, on the other side, at the foot of the San Salvator, she

possesses a sort of promontory on which stands a chapel; but she has

graciously lent this promontory to the Luganese to execute their

criminals upon and erect their gallows. Some day she will use this

"high jurisdiction," exercised by her permission upon her territory, as

a proof of her suzerainty over Lugano. Nowadays the condemned are no

longer subjected to the penalty of the rope: their heads are chopped

off; Paris has supplied the instrument, Vienna the scene of execution:

presents worthy of two great monarchies.

These images were pursuing me when, on the azure water, to the breath

of the breeze scented by the amber of the pines, there came to pass the

boats of a brotherhood which flung bouquets of flowers into the lake to

the sound of horns and hautboys. Swallows sported around my sail. Among

those travellers, shall I not recognise those which I met one evening

as I wandered along the ancient Tibur Road and by the house of Horace?

The Lydia of the poet was not then with those swallows of the plain of

Tibur; but I knew that, at that very moment, another young woman was

furtively taking a rose laid in the abandoned garden of a villa of

Raphael's century, seeking naught but a flower on the ruins of Rome.

The mountains which surround the Lake of Lugano, scarce joining their

bases except on the level of the lake, resemble islands separated

by narrow channels; they reminded me of the grace, the form and

the verdure of the archipelago of the Azores. Was I then going to

consummate the exile of my last days under those smiling porticoes

where the Princesse de Belgiojoso allowed a few days to slip by of the

exile of her youth? Was I then to finish my Memoirs at the entrance

to that classic and historic land where Virgil and Tasso sang, where

so many revolutions have been accomplished? Was I to recall my Breton

destiny at the sight of those Ausonian mountains? If their curtain

were to be raised, it would lay bare to me the plains of Lombardy;

beyond that, Rome; beyond that, Naples, Sicily, Greece, Syria, Egypt,

Carthage: distant shores which I have measured, I who do not possess

the extent of ground which I press under the soles of my feet! But yet,

to die here, to end here? Is it not what I want, what I am looking for?

I cannot tell.

LUCERNE, 20, 21 _and_ 22 _August_ 1832.

I left Lugano without sleeping there; I have re-crossed the

Saint-Gotthard, I have seen again what I had seen: I have found nothing

to correct in my sketch. At Altdorf, everything was changed since

twenty-four hours ago: no more storm, no more apparition in my lonely

room. I came to spend the night in the inn at Flüelen, having twice

covered the road the ends of which come out upon two lakes and are held

by two nations joined by the same political bond and separate in every

other respect I crossed the Lake of Lucerne; it had lost a portion of

its merit in my eyes: it is to the Lake of Lugano what the ruins of

Rome are to the ruins of Athens, the fields of Sicily to the gardens of

Armida.

For the rest, it is vain for me to exert myself to attain the Alpine

exaltation of the mountain authors: I waste my pains.

Physically, that virgin and balmy air, which is supposed to revive my

strength, rarefy my blood, clear my tired head, give me an insatiable

hunger, a dreamless sleep, produces none of those effects for me. I

breathe no better, my blood circulates no faster, my head is no less

heavy under the sky of the Alps than in Paris. I have as much appetite

in the Champs-Élysées, as on the Montanvers, I sleep as well in the Rue

Saint-Dominique as on the Mont Saint-Gotthard, and, if I have dreams in

the delicious plain of Montrouge, the fault lies with the sleep.

Morally, in vain do I scale the rocks: my mind becomes no loftier for

it, my soul no purer; I carry with me the cares of earth and the weight

of human turpitudes. The calm of the sublunary region of a marmot is

not communicated to my awakened senses. Poor wretch that I am, across

the mists that roll at my feet I always perceive the full-blown face

of the world. A thousand fathoms climbed into space change nothing in

my view of the sky; God appears no greater to me from the top of a

mountain than from the bottom of a valley. If, to become a robust man,

a saint, a towering genius, it were merely a question of searing over

the clouds, why do so many sick men, miscreants and fools not take the

trouble to clamber up the Simplon? Surely they must be very obstinately

bent upon their infirmities.

[Sidenote: A plague upon mountains!]

The landscape is created only by the sun; it is the light that makes

the landscape. A Carthaginian shore, a heath on the edge of Sorrento,

a border of dried canes in the Roman Campagna are more magnificent,

when lit up by the rays of the setting sun or the dawn, than all the

Alps on this side of the Gauls. Those holes which they call valleys,

where one sees nothing at full noon-day; those high fixed screens

dubbed mountains; those soiled torrents which bellow with the cows on

their banks; those violet-coloured faces, those goitrous necks, those

dropsical bellies: a plague upon them!

If the mountains of our climes can justify the panegyrics of their

admirers, it is only when they are wrapped in the night of which they

thicken the chaos: the effect of their angles, their protuberances,

their sweeping lines, their immense projected shadows is heightened by

moonlight. The stars carve and engrave them on the sky in pyramids,

cones, obelisks, in an architecture of alabaster, now casting over them

a gauzy veil and harmonizing them with uncertain tints, faintly washed

with blue; now sculpturing them one by one and separating them by

lines of great precision. Every valley, every reduct, with its lakes,

its rocks, its forests, becomes a temple of silence and solitude.

In winter, the mountains offer us the image of the polar zones; in

autumn, under a rainy sky, in their different shades of darkness, they

resemble grey, black, bistre lithographs: the tempests also suit them,

as do the vapours, half mists, half clouds, which roll at their feet or

hang suspended at their flanks.

But are the mountains not favourable to meditations, to independence,

to poetry? Do fine deep solitudes, mingled with sea, receive nothing

from the soul, add nothing to its delights? Does a sublime nature

not render us more susceptible to passion, and does passion not

make us better understand a sublime nature? Is an intimate love not

increased by the vague love of all the beauties of the senses and the

intelligence which surround it, even as similar principles attract and

blend with one another? Does not the feeling of the infinite, entering

through a vast spectacle into a limited feeling, grow and spread to the

boundaries at which commences an eternity of life?

I admit all this; but let us well understand one another: it is not

the mountains that exist such as we think that we see them then; it is

the mountains as the passions, the talents and the muses have drawn

their lines, coloured their skies, their snows, their peaks, their

declivities, their irised cascades, their "soft" atmosphere, their

light and tender shadows: the landscape is on Claude Lorrain's palette,

not on the Campo Vaccino. Make me to love, and you shall see that

a solitary apple-tree, weather-beaten, flung crooked-wise amid the

wheat-fields of the Beauce; the flower of an arrow-head in a marsh;

a little water-course in a road; a scrap of moss, a fern, a tuft of

maiden-hair fern on the side of a rock; a moist, smoky sky; a tomtit

in a vicarage garden; a swallow, flying low, on a rainy day, under the

thatch of a barn or along a cloister; even a bat taking the place of

the swallow around a country steeple, fluttering on its gauzy wings in

the last gloaming of the twilight: all these little things, attached to

a few memories, will become enchanted by the mystery of my happiness or

the sadness of my regrets. On the upshot, it is the youth of life, it

is the persons that make fine sites. The ice-floes of Baffin's Bay can

be smiling, with company after one's heart: the banks of the Ohio and

the Ganges mournful, in the absence of all affection. A poet has said:

La patrie est aux lieux où l'âme est enchantée[450].

It is the same with beauty.

Here is too much about mountains: I love them as great solitudes; I

love them as the frame, the border and the distance of a fine picture;

I love them as the rampart and refuge of liberty; I love them as

adding something infinite to the passions of the soul: equitably and

reasonably, that is all the good to be said of them. If I am not to

settle down on the other side of the Alps, my journey across the

Saint-Gotthard will remain a disconnected fact, an optical view in the

midst of the pictures of my Memoirs: I will put out the lamp and Lugano

will relapse into darkness.

[Sidenote: Lucerne cathedral.]

Scarce arrived at Lucerne, I quickly hastened once more to the

cathedral, the _Hofkirche_, built on the site of a chapel dedicated to

St. Nicholas[451], the patron saint of sailors: this primitive chapel

served also as a beacon, for, during the night, it was seen lighted

up in a supernatural manner. It was Irish missionaries that preached

the Gospel in the almost desert country of Lucerne; they brought it

the liberty which their unhappy mother-land has not enjoyed. When I

returned to the cathedral, a man was digging a grave; in the church,

they were finishing a service around a bier, and a young woman was

having a child's cap blessed at an altar: she placed it, with a visible

expression of joy, in a basket which she carried on her arm, and went

away laden with her treasure. The next day, I found the grave in the

cemetery closed up, a vessel of holy water placed on the fresh earth,

and some fennel-seed sprinkled for the little birds: already they were

alone, beside that corpse of a night.

I took some walks in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, in magnificent

pine-woods. The bees, whose hives are placed above the farm-doors,

under the shelter of the overhanging roofs, live with the peasants.

I saw the famous Clara Wendel[452] go to Mass behind her companions

in captivity, in her prison dress. She is very common; I found in her

the look of all those brutes in France who are present at so many

murders, without for that reason being more distinguished than a fierce

beast, in spite of all that the theory of crime and the admiration of

slaughter would attribute to them. A simple foot-soldier, armed with a

carbine, here takes the convicts to perform their day's work and brings

them back to the prison.

This evening, I prolonged my walk along the Reuss, to a chapel built

on the road: one goes up to it by a little Italian portico. From this

portico, I saw a priest praying alone on his knees inside the oratory,

while, on the top of the mountains, I saw the last gleams of the

setting sun. On returning to Lucerne, I heard women saying the rosary

in the cottages; the voices of children made the responses to the

maternal adoration. I stopped, I listened through the twining vines to

those words addressed to God from within a hut. The comely and graceful

young girl who waits on me at the Golden Eagle also most regularly says

her _Angelus_ as she draws the curtains of the windows in my room. When

I come in, I give her a few flowers which I have gathered; she says to

me, gently patting her breast with her hand:

"_Per me?_"

I answer:

"For you."

There our conversation ends.

LUCERNE, 26 _August_ 1832.

Madame de Chateaubriand has not yet arrived: I shall take a trip

to Constance. M. A. Dumas[453] is here; I had already seen him at

David's, while he was being modelled by the great sculptor. Madame de

Colbert[454], with her daughter Madame de Brancas, is also passing

through Lucerne[455]. It was at Madame de Colbert's, in Beauce, that,

nearly twenty years ago, I wrote, in these Memoirs, the story of my

youth at Combourg[456]. The places seem to travel with me: they are as

mobile, as fleeting as my life.

The mail-post brings me a very fine letter from M. de Béranger, in

reply to that which I wrote to him on leaving Paris: this letter has

already been printed as a note, with a letter from M. Carrel, in the

Congrès de Vérone[457].

[Sidenote: Constance.]

GENEVA, _September_ 1832.

Going from Lucerne to Constance, one passes through Zurich and

Winterthur. Nothing pleased me at Zurich, except the memory of

Lavater[458] and Gessner[459], the trees of an esplanade overlooking

the lakes, the course of the Limmat, an old crow and an old elm; I

prefer this to all Zurich's historic past, with due deference even to

the Battle of Zurich. Napoleon and his captains, passing from victory

to victory, brought the Russians to Paris.

Winterthur is a new and industrial little market-town, or rather one

long clean street. Constance has an air of belonging to nobody; it is

open to all the world. I entered it, on the 27th of August, without

seeing a custom-house officer or a soldier and without being asked for

my passport.

Madame Récamier had arrived, three days earlier[460], to pay a visit to

the Queen of Holland. I was waiting for Madame de Chateaubriand, who

was coming to join me at Lucerne. I proposed to weigh whether it would

not be preferable to settle first in Swabia, remaining free to go down

into Italy later.

In the decayed town of Constance, the inn was very gay; they were

making preparations for a wedding. The day after my arrival, Madame

Récamier wanted to escape the rejoicings of our hosts: we took a boat

on the lake and, crossing the sheet of water from which the Rhine

flows to become a river, we reached the strand of a park. Setting foot

on land, we passed through a hedge of willows, on the other side of

which we found a sanded walk winding among thickets of shrubs, groups

of trees and grassy lawns. A summer-house stood in the middle of the

gardens and an elegant villa leant against a forest of old trees. I

noticed on the grass some meadow-saffron, always melancholy for me

because of the reminiscences of my various and numerous autumns. We

strolled at random and then sat down on a bench at the edge of the

water. From the summer-house in the grove rose harmonies of harp and

horn which ceased when, charmed and surprised, we began to listen: it

was a scene from a fairy-tale. The harmonies did not recommence and I

read to Madame Récamier my description of the Saint-Gotthard; she asked

me to write something on her tablets, already half-filled with details

of the death of J. J. Rousseau. Below these last words of the author of

the _Héloïse_: "Wife, open the window, that I may see the sun again," I

wrote these words in pencil:

"What I wanted on the Lake of Lucerne, I have found on the Lake of

Constance: the charm and intelligence of beauty. I do not want to

die like Rousseau; I want to see the sun for long, if I am to end

my life near you. Let my days expire at your feet, like those waves

whose murmur you love.--28 _August_ 1832."

The blue of the lake kept watch behind the foliage; on the southern

horizon, gathered the summits of the Grisons Alps; a breeze passing to

and fro across the willows harmonized with the rise and fall of the

billows: we saw no one; we did not know where we were.

As we returned to Constance, we saw Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu

and her son Louis Napoleon[461]: they came up to Madame Récamier. I

had not known the Queen of Holland under the Empire; I knew that she

had shown herself generous at the time of my resignation on the death

of the Duc d'Enghien and when I tried to save my cousin Armand; under

the Restoration, when Ambassador in Rome, I had had only relations

of politeness with Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu; unable to go to

her myself, I had left the secretaries and attachés free to pay their

court to her, and I had invited Cardinal Fesch to a diplomatic dinner

of cardinals. Since the last fall of the Restoration, chance had made

me exchange a few letters with Queen Hortense and Prince Louis. These

letters are a rather singular monument of faded grandeurs; here they

are:

[Sidenote: Letter from Queen Hortense.]

MADAME DE SAINT-LEU, AFTER READING THE LAST LETTER OF M. DE

CHATEAUBRIAND

"ARENENBERG, 15 _October_ 1831.

"M. de Chateaubriand has too much genius not to have understood

the whole extent of the Emperor Napoleons. But his so brilliant

imagination required more than admiration: memories of youth, an

illustrious fortune attracted his heart; he devoted his person

and talent to them and, like the poet who lends to everything the

sentiment which animates him, he clothed what he loved with the

features which were to kindle his enthusiasm. Ingratitude did not

discourage him, for misfortune was always there to draw it to him;

nevertheless his wit, his reason, his truly French sentiments make

him the antagonist of his party in spite of himself. He loves,

of the olden times, only honour, which makes men faithful, and

religion, which makes men good; the glory of his country, which

makes its strength; liberty of conscience and opinion, which gives

a noble impulse to the faculties of men; the aristocracy of merit,

which opens up a career to every intelligence: these constitute

his domain more than any others. He is therefore a Liberal, a

Napoleonist and even a Republican rather than a Royalist And

therefore new France, its new lights would know how to appreciate

him, whereas he will never be understood by those whom he has set

so near to the Divinity in his heart; and, if there be now naught

left for him but to sing unhappiness, were it the most interesting,

high misfortunes have become so common in this age of ours that his

brilliant imagination, without any real object or motive, will die

out for want of nutriment sufficiently lofty to inspire his fine

talent.

"HORTENSE."

AFTER READING A NOTE SIGNED, "HORTENSE"

"M. de Chateaubriand is exceedingly flattered and in the highest

degree grateful for the sentiments of good-will so gracefully

expressed in the first part of the note; in the second there lurks

the seductiveness of a woman and a queen which might carry with it

a self-love less sophisticated than M. de Chateaubriand's.

"There are certainly to-day plenty of occasions of infidelity among

such high and numerous misfortunes; but, at the age to which M. de

Chateaubriand has attained, reverses which reckon but few years

would scorn his homage: needs therefore must he remain attached to

his old unhappiness, however much he might be tempted by younger

adversities.

"CHATEAUBRIAND.

PARIS, 6 _November_ 1831."

PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

"ARENENBERG, 4 _May_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have just read your last pamphlet. How happy the Bourbons are

to be supported by a genius such as yours! You raise a cause with

the same arms that have served to lay it low; you find words that

send a thrill through every French heart. All that is national

finds an echo in your soul; thus, when you speak of the great man

who rendered France illustrious during twenty years, the loftiness

of the subject inspires you, your genius embraces it entirely,

and then your mind, naturally pouring itself out, surrounds the

greatest glory with the greatest thoughts.

"I too, monsieur le vicomte, grow enthusiastic on behalf of all

that contributes to the honour of my country; that is why, giving

vent to my impulse, I venture to express to you the sympathy which

I feel for one who displays so much patriotism and so much love of

liberty. But, permit me to tell you, you are the only formidable

defender of the Old Monarchy; you would make it national, if one

could believe that it would think as you do; and so, to give it any

worth, it is not enough to declare yourself on its side, but rather

to prove that it is on yours.

"However, monsieur le vicomte, if we differ in opinions, at least

we are agreed in the wishes which we form for France's happiness.

"Pray accept, etc., etc.

"LOUIS-NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE."

[Illustration: Queen Hortense.]

[Sidenote: And Louis Napoleon.]

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE SAINT-LEU (PRINCE

LOUIS NAPOLEON)

"PARIS, 19 _May_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"It is never easy to reply to praises; but, when he who awards them

with as much wit as propriety is moreover in a social condition

to which peerless memories are attached, then the difficulty is

doubled. At least, Monsieur, we meet in a common sympathy; you with

your youth, as I with my old days, desire the honour of France. It

needed no more for either of us, to die of confusion or laughter,

than to see the juste-milieu blockaded in Ancona[462] by the

soldiers of the Pope. Ah, Monsieur, where is your uncle? To others

than yourself I should say:

"'Where is the guardian of kings and the master of Europe?'

"In defending the cause of the Legitimacy, I entertain no

illusions; but I think that every man who cares for public esteem

must remain faithful to his oaths: Lord Falkland, a friend of

liberty and an enemy of the Court, got himself killed at Newbury in

the army of Charles I. You shall live, Monsieur le Comte, to see

your country free and happy; you are passing through ruins among

which I shall remain, because I myself form part of those ruins.

"I had for a moment entertained the flattering hope of laying

the tribute of my respect, this summer, at the feet of Madame la

Duchesse de Saint-Leu: fortune, accustomed to baffle my plans, has

deceived me once again. I should have been happy to thank you by

word of mouth for your obliging letter; we should have spoken of a

great glory and of France's future, two things, Monsieur le Comte,

which touch you nearly.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

Have the Bourbons ever written letters to me similar to those which I

have just produced? Did they ever entertain the idea that I rose above

this versifier or that pamphleteering politician?

When, as a little boy, I used to wander, the companion of the herdsmen,

over the heaths of Combourg, could I have believed that a time would

come at which I should walk between the two highest powers on earth,

powers now overthrown, giving my arm on one side to the family of St.

Louis, on the other to that of Napoleon: hostile magnificences which

alike lean, in the misfortune which brings them together, on the feeble

and faithful man, the man scorned by the Legitimacy?

Madame Récamier went to fix herself at Wolfsberg, a country-house

occupied by M. Parquin[463], near Arenenberg, where Madame la Duchesse

de Saint-Leu was living; I stayed two days at Constance. I saw all that

there was to see: the market containing the public granary christened

the "Hall of the Council," the so-called statue of Huss[464], the

square in which Jerome of Prague[465] and John Huss were, they say,

burnt; in fine, all the ordinary abominations of history and society.

The Rhine, issuing from the lake, announces itself very much like

a king: nevertheless it was not able to defend Constance, which

was, if I am not mistaken, sacked by Attila[466], besieged by the

Hungarians[467], the Swedes[468], and twice taken by the French[469].

Constance is the Saint-Germain of Germany: the old people of the old

society have retired to it. When I knocked at a door to look for rooms

for Madame de Chateaubriand, I came upon some canoness, a girl past

her minority; some prince of an ancient house, an elector on half-pay:

which went very well with the abandoned steeples and the deserted

convents of the city. Condé's Army fought gloriously under the walls

of Constance and seems to have left its ambulance there. I had the

misfortune to meet a veteran Emigrant; he did me the honour to have

known me in former times; he had more days than hairs; his words were

endless; he was unable to contain himself and allowed his years to run.

[Sidenote: Diner at Arenenberg.]

On the 29th of August, I went to dine at Arenenberg.

Arenenberg stands on a sort of promontory in a chain of steep hills.

The Queen of Holland, whom the sword had made and whom the sword had

unmade, built the _château_, or, if you prefer, the summer-house of

Arenenberg. From it, one enjoys an extensive, but melancholy view. This

view commands the Lower Lake of Constance, which is only an expansion

of the Rhine over swamped fields. On the other side of the lake, one

sees gloomy woods, remains of the Black Forest, a few white birds

fluttering under a grey sky and driven by an icy wind. There, after

having sat on a throne, after being outrageously slandered, Queen

Hortense came to perch upon a rock; below is the isle of the lake on

which, they say, the tomb of Charles the Fat[470] was discovered and on

which, at present, canaries are dying which ask in vain for the sun of

their native islands. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was better off in

Rome; nevertheless, she has not descended in proportion to her birth

and her early life: on the contrary, she has risen; her abasement is

only relative to an accident of her fortune; this is not one of those

descents like that of Madame la Dauphine, who has fallen from all the

height of the centuries.

The companions, male and female, of Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu

were her son, Madame Salvage[471], Madame-----. By way of visitors,

there were Madame Récamier, M. Vieillard[472] and myself. Madame la

Duchesse de Saint-Leu acquitted herself very well in her difficult

position as a queen and a Demoiselle de Beauharnais.

After dinner, Madame de Saint-Leu sat down to her piano with M.

Cottreau[473], a tall young painter in mustachios, a straw hat, a

blouse, a turned-down shirt-collar, an eccentric costume, who hunted,

painted, sang, laughed, in a witty and noisy fashion.

Prince Louis occupies a summer-house standing apart, where I saw arms,

topographical and strategical charts; industries which made one, as

though by accident, think of the blood of the Conqueror without naming

him: Prince Louis is a studious and well-informed young man, full of

honour and naturally grave.

Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu read me a few fragments of her Memoirs:

she showed me a cabinet filled with relics of Napoleon. I asked myself

why this wardrobe left me cold; why that little hat, that sash, that

uniform worn at such and such a battle found me so indifferent: I

was much more perturbed when writing of the death of Napoleon at St.

Helena. The reason of this is that Napoleon is our contemporary; we

have all seen him and known him: he lives in our memory; but the hero

is still too close to his glory. A thousand years hence, it will be a

different thing: it is only the centuries that have lent a perfume to

Alexander's sweat; let us wait: of a conqueror one should show only the

sword.

I returned to Wolfsberg with Madame Récamier and set out at night: the

weather was dark and rainy; the wind whistled through the trees and the

wood-owl hooted: a real Germanian scene.

Madame de Chateaubriand soon arrived at Lucerne: the dampness of

the town frightened her and, as Lugano was too dear, we decided to

come to Geneva. We took our route over Sempach: the lake preserves

the memory of a battle[474] which ensured the enfranchisement of the

Swiss, at a time when the nations on this side of the Alps had lost

their liberties. Beyond Sempach, we passed before the Abbey of St.

Urban's, crumbling like all the monuments of Christianity. It stands

in a melancholy spot, on the skirt of a heath which leads to a wood:

if I had been free and alone, I would have asked the monks for a hole

in their walls, there to finish my Memoirs beside an owl; then I

should have gone to end my days in doing nothing under the beautiful

do-nothing sun of Naples or Palermo: but beautiful countries and

spring-time have become insults, disasters and regrets.

On reaching Berne, we were told that there was a great revolution in

progress in the city; I looked in vain: the streets were deserted,

silence reigned, the terrible revolution was realized without a word,

to the peaceful smoke of a pipe in the corner of some coffee-house.

Madame Récamier was not long in joining us at Geneva.

[Sidenote: A visit to Coppet.]

GENEVA, _end of September_ 1832.

I have begun to take up my work again seriously: I write in the morning

and walk in the evening. Yesterday, I went to pay a visit to Coppet.

The house was shut up; they opened the doors for me; I wandered through

the deserted rooms. The companion of my pilgrimage recognised all the

places, where she still seemed to see her friend, seated at her piano,

or coming in, or going out, or talking on the terrace alongside of

the gallery; Madame Récamier has seen again the room which she used

to occupy; days gone by have come up again before her; it was like a

rehearsal of the scene which I described in _René_:

"I passed through the sonorous apartments where nothing was heard

but the sound of my footsteps.... Everywhere the rooms were without

hangings and the spider spun its web in the abandoned couches....

How sweet, but how rapid are the moments which brothers and sisters

pass in their youthful years, gathered under the wing of their

old parents! Man's family is but of a day; God's breath disperses

it like a bubble. The son has scarce time to know the father, the

father the son, the brother the sister, the sister the brother! The

oak sees its acorns shoot up around itself: it is not thus with the

children of men!"

I also remembered what I said, in these Memoirs, of my last visit

to Combourg, before leaving for America. Two different worlds, but

connected by a common sympathy, occupied Madame Récamier and myself.

Alas, each of us carries within himself one of those isolated worlds;

for where are the persons who have lived long enough together not to

have separate memories?

From the _château_, we entered the park; the early autumn began to

redden and to loosen a few leaves; the wind fell by degrees and let

one hear a stream that turns a mill. After following the alleys along

which she had been accustomed to walk with Madame de Staël, Madame

Récamier wanted to greet her ashes. At some distance from the park

stands a coppice mingled with taller trees and surrounded by a damp and

dilapidated wall. This coppice resembles those clusters of trees in the

midst of plains which sportsmen call "covers:" it is there that death

has driven its prey and shut up its victims.

A burial-place had been built beforehand in that wood to receive M.

Necker, Madame Necker and Madame de Staël: when the last of these

arrived at the trysting-place, they walled-up the door of the crypt.

The child of Auguste de Staël remained outside, and Auguste himself,

who died before his child, was laid under a stone, at his relations'

feet. On the stone are carved these words taken from Scripture:

WHY SEEK YOU THE LIVING WITH THE DEAD[475]?

I did not go into the wood; Madame Récamier alone obtained permission

to enter it. Remaining seated on a bench before the surrounding wall,

I turned my back on France, and fixed my eyes, now on the summit of

Mont Blanc, now on the Lake of Geneva: the golden clouds covered the

horizon behind the dark line of the Jura; it was as though a halo of

glory were rising above a long coffin. On the other side of the lake, I

saw Lord Byron's[476] house, the ridge of which was touched by a ray of

the setting sun. Rousseau was no more there to admire that spectacle,

and Voltaire, who had also disappeared, had never cared about it. It

was at the foot of the tomb of Madame de Staël that so many illustrious

absentees on the same shore presented themselves to my recollection:

they seemed to come to seek the shade their equal to fly away into the

sky with her and escort her during the night At that moment, Madame

Récamier, pale and in tears, came out from the funeral grove herself

like a shadow. If ever I have felt at one time the vanity and the

verity of glory and life, it was at the entrance of that silent, dark,

unknown wood, where she sleeps who had so much lustre and fame, and

when seeing what it is to be truly loved.

[Sidenote: With Madame Récamier.]

That same evening, the day after my devotions to the dead of Coppet,

tired of the edge of the lake, I went, still with Madame Récamier, in

search of less frequented walks. We discovered, going down the Rhone,

a narrow gorge through which the stream flows bubbling under several

mills, between rocky cliffs intersected by meadows. One of these

meadows stretches at the foot of a hill on which a house is planted

amid a cluster of elms.

We several times climbed and descended, talking the while, this narrow

strip of grass which separates the boisterous stream from the silent

hillock: how many persons are there whom one can weary with what

one has been and carry back with one on the track of one's days? We

spoke of those days, always painful and always regretted, in which

the passions form the happiness and the martyrdom of youth. Now I am

writing this page at midnight, while all is at rest around me, and

through my window I see a few stars glimmering over the Alps.

Madame Récamier is going to leave us: she will return in the spring,

and I shall spend the winter in evoking my vanished hours, in summoning

them one by one before the tribunal of my reason. I do not know if I

shall be very impartial nor if the judge will not be too indulgent

towards. the culprit I shall spend next summer in the land of Jean

Jacques. God grant that I may not catch the dreamer's malady. And then,

when autumn shall have returned, we shall go to Italy: "_Italian!_"

that is my eternal refrain.

GENEVA, _October_ 1832.

Prince Louis Napoleon having given me his pamphlet entitled, _Rêveries

politiques_, I wrote him this letter:

"PRINCE,

"I have read attentively the little pamphlet which you were so good

as to entrust to me. I have jotted down, as you wished, a few

reflections, springing naturally from yours, which I had already

submitted to your judgment. You know, Prince, that my young King

is in Scotland, that, so long as he lives, there can be no other

King of France for me than he; but, if God, in his impenetrable

counsels, had rejected the House of St. Louis, if the habits of our

country did not render the republican state possible, there is no

name which goes better with the glory of France than yours.

"I am, etc., etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _January_ 1833.

I had dreamt much of that approaching future which I had made for

myself and which I thought so near. At night-fall, I used to go

wandering in the windings of the Arve, in the direction of Salève. One

evening, I saw M. Berryer enter; he was returning from Lausanne and

told me of the arrest of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[477]; he did not

know any details. My plans for repose were once more upset. When the

mother of Henry V. believed in her success, she discharged me; her

misfortune destroyed her last note and recalled me to her defense. I

started on the spot from Geneva, after writing to the ministers. On

arriving in my Rue d'Enfer, I addressed the following circular letter

to the editors of the newspapers:

"SIR,

"I arrived in Paris on the 17th of this month and wrote, on the

18th, to M. the Minister of Justice[478] to ask if the letter which

I had had the honour to send him from Geneva, on the 12th, for

Madame la Duchesse de Berry had reached him and if he had had the

goodness to forward it to Madame.

"I begged M. the Keeper of the Seals at the same time to give me

the necessary authorization to go to the Princess at Blaye.

"M. the Keeper of the Seals was so good as to reply, on the 19th,

that he had handed my letters to the President of the Council[479]

and that I must apply to the latter. I wrote, consequently, on

the 20th, to M. the Minister for War. To-day, the 22nd, I receive

his answer of the 21st: he 'regrets to be under the necessity of

informing me that the Government does not consider it expedient to

grant my request.' This decision has put an end to my applications

to the authorities.

"I have never, sir, pretended to think myself capable of defending

unaided the cause of misfortune and of France. My plan, if I had

been permitted to reach the feet of the august prisoner, was to

propose to her, in this emergency, the formation of a council of

men more enlightened than myself. In addition to the honourable and

distinguished persons that have already come forward, I would have

taken the liberty to suggest to Madame's choice M. le Marquis de

Pastoret[480], M. Lainé, M. de Villèle, etc., etc.

"Now, sir, that I am officially turned away, I return to my right

as a private individual. My _Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de

M. le Duc de Berry_, wrapped in the hair of the widow to-day a

captive, lie near the heart which Louvel made to resemble even more

that of Henry IV. I have not forgotten that signal honour, of which

the present moment asks me for a reckoning and makes me feel all

the responsibility.

"I am, sir, etc., etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

[Sidenote: My circular to the press.]

While I was writing this circular letter to the newspapers, I found

means to have the following note handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry:

"PARIS, 23 _November_ 1832.

"MADAME,

"I had the honour to address to you from Geneva an earlier letter

dated the 12th of this month. This letter, in which I begged you

to do me the honour to choose me as one of your defenders, has been

printed in the newspapers[481].

"Your Royal Highness' cause may be taken up by all those who,

without being authorized to do so, might have useful truths to

make known; but, if Madame wishes that it be carried on in her own

name, it is not one man, but a council of men, of politicians and

lawyers, that must be charged with this high affair. In that case,

I would ask that Madame would consent to assign to me as coadjutors

(with the persons whom she would have already selected) M. le Comte

de Pastoret, M. Hyde de Neuville, M. de Villèle, M. Lainé, M.

Royer-Collard, M. Pardessus[482], M. Mandaroux-Vertamy[483], M. de

Vaufreland.

"I had also thought, Madame, that one might summon to this council

a few men of great talent and of an opinion contrary to ours; but

perhaps it would be to place them in a false position, to oblige

them to make a sacrifice of honour and principle to which lofty

minds and upright consciences do not readily lend themselves.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

An old disciplined soldier, I was therefore hastening up to take my

place in the ranks and to march under my captains: reduced by the will

of the authorities to a duel, I accepted it I had scarcely expected to

come, from the tomb of the husband, to fight by the tomb of the widow.

Supposing that I were bound to remain alone, that I had misunderstood

what suits France, I was none the less in the path of honour. Nor is

it of little use for men that a man should immolate himself to his

conscience; it is good that some one should consent to ruin himself to

remain steadfast to principles of which he is convinced and which have

to do with what is noble in our nature: those dupes are the necessary

contestants of the brutal fact, the victims charged to utter the veto

of the oppressed against the triumph of might. We praise the Poles: is

their devotion other than a sacrifice? It has saved nothing; it could

save nothing: even in the minds of my opponents, will that devotion be

barren of results for the human race?

I prefer a family before my country, they say: no, I prefer fidelity

to my oaths before perjury, the moral world before material society;

that is all: in so far as the family is concerned, I devote myself to

it because it was essentially beneficial to France; I confound its

posterity with that of the country and, when I deplore the misfortunes

of the one, I deplore the disasters of the other: beaten, I have

prescribed duties to myself, even as the victors have laid interests

upon themselves. I am trying to withdraw from the world with my

self-respect; in solitude we have to be careful whom we choose for our

companion.

[Sidenote: On the arrest of Madame.]

In France, the land of vanity, so soon as an occasion offers for making

a fuss, a crowd of people seize it: some act from good-heartedness,

others from their consciousness of their own merits. I therefore had

many competitors; they begged, as I had done, of Madame la Duchesse de

Berry, the honour to defend her. At least, my presumption in offering

myself to the Princess as a champion was a little justified by former

services; though I did not fling the sword of Brennus[484] into the

scale, at least I put my name there: however unimportant that may be,

it had already gained some victories for the Monarchy. I opened my

_Mémoire sur la captivité de Madame la duchesse de Berry_[485] with a

consideration by which I am forcibly struck; I have often reprinted

it, and it is probable that I shall reprint it again:

"We never cease," I said, "to be astonished at events; ever

we imagine that we have come to the last; ever the revolution

recommences. Those who, since forty years, are marching to reach

the goal, repine; they thought they were sitting for a few hours by

the edge of their tomb: vain hope! Time strikes those travellers

gasping for breath, and forces them to move onward. How many times,

since they have been on the road, has the Old Monarchy fallen at

their feet! Scarce escaped from those successive crumblings, they

are obliged once more to pass over its rubbish and its dust. Which

century will see the end of the movement?...

"Providence has willed that the transient generations destined for

unremembered days should be small, in order that the damage might

not be great. And so we see that everything proves abortive, that

everything is inconsistent, that no one is like himself or embraces

his whole destiny, that no event produces what it contained and

what it ought to produce. The superior men of the age which is

expiring are dying away; will they have successors? The ruins of

Palmyra end in sands."

Passing from this general observation to particular facts, I show, in

my reasoning, that they might deal with Madame la Duchesse de Berry by

arbitrary measures, regarding her as a prisoner of police, of war, of

State, or asking the Chambers to pass a bill of attainder; that they

might bring her within the competence of the laws by applying to her

the Briqueville Law of Exception or the common law of the Code; that

they might regard her person as inviolable and sacred. The ministers

maintained the first opinion, the men of July the second, the Royalists

the third.

I go through the several suppositions: I prove that, if Madame la

Duchesse de Berry made a descent upon France, she had been drawn

thither only because she heard men's opinions asking for a different

present, calling for a different future.

False to its popular extraction, the revolution proceeding from the

Days of July repudiated glory and courted shame. Except in a few

hearts worthy of giving it an asylum, liberty, become the object of

the derision of those who made it their rallying-cry, that liberty

which buffoons bandy about with kicks, that liberty strangled after

dishonour by the tourniquet of the laws of exception will, through its

destruction, transform the Revolution of 1830 into a cynical fraud.

Thereupon, and to deliver us all, Madame la Duchesse de Berry arrived.

Fortune betrayed her; a Jew sold her; a minister bought her[486]. If

they are not willing to proceed against her by police measures, the

only alternative is to indict her at the assizes. I suppose this to

have been done, and I bring on the stage the Princess's defending

counsel; then, after making the defending counsel speak, I address the

counsel for the prosecution:

[Sidenote: My pamphlet.]

"Advocate.... stand up....

"Establish learnedly that Caroline Ferdinande of Sicily, Widow de

Berry, niece of the late Marie-Antoinette of Austria, Widow Capet,

is guilty of opposition to a man, the reputed uncle and guardian of

an orphan called Henry, which uncle and guardian is said, according

to the calumnious allegation of the prisoner, unlawfully to detain

the crown of a ward, which ward impudently pretends to have been

King from the day of the abdication of the ex-King Charles X. and

the ex-Dauphin till the day of the election of the King of the

French....

"In support of your argument, let the judges first call up

Louis-Philippe as evidence for or against the prisoner, unless

he prefer to excuse himself as a kinsman. Next, let the judges

confront the prisoner and the descendant of the Great Traitor; let

the Iscariot into whom Satan had entered[487] say how many pieces

of silver he received for the bargain.

... Then it will be proved, by those who have examined the spot,

that the prisoner for six hours suffered the Gehenna of fire in

a space too narrow for her, in which four people could hardly

breathe, which caused the tortured person contumeliously to say

that they 'were making war upon her as though she were a St.

Laurence[488]. Now, Caroline Ferdinande being pressed by her

accomplices against the red-hot slab, her clothes twice caught

fire, and, at each blow of the gendarmes on the outside of the

fiery furnace, the shock was communicated to the prisoner's heart,

causing her to vomit blood.

"Next, in the presence of the image of Christ, they will lay on the

desk, as a piece of direct evidence, the burnt garments: for there

must always be lots cast upon garments in these Judas bargains."

Madame la Duchesse de Berry was set at liberty by an arbitrary act

of the authorities, after they thought that they had dishonoured

her. The picture which I drew of the proceedings made Philip see the

invidiousness of a public trial and determined him to grant a pardon

to which he believed that he had attached a punishment: the pagans,

under Severus[489], used to throw to the lions a newly-delivered young

Christian woman. My pamphlet, of which only some phrases survive, had

its important historical result.

I am melted again, as I copy out the apostrophe which ends my work; it

is, I admit, a foolish waste of tears:

"Illustrious captive of Blaye, Madame! May your heroic presence in

a land which knows something of heroism lead France to repeat to

you what my political independence has won for me the right to say:

"'Madame, your son is my King!'

"If Providence inflict yet a few hours upon me, shall I behold

your triumphs, after having had the honour of embracing your

adversities? Shall I receive that guerdon of my faith? At the

moment when you return happy, I would joyfully go to end in

retirement the days commenced in exile. Alas, I am disconsolate to

be able to do nothing for your present destinies! My words die away

in mere waste around the walls of your prison: the noise of the

winds, of the waves and of men, at the foot of the lonely fortress,

will not even allow the last accents of a faithful voice to ascend

to where you are."

PARIS, _March_ 1833.

Some newspapers, having repeated the phrase, "Madame, your son is my

King!" were indicted in the courts for a press offense; I found myself

involved in the proceedings. This time, I could not take exception to

the competency of the judges; I had to try to save by my presence the

men attacked for my sake; my honour was at stake and I had to answer

for my works.

Moreover, the day before my summons before the court, the _Moniteur_

had given the declaration of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[490]; if I

had stayed away, they would have thought that the Royalist Party was

retreating, that it was abandoning misfortune and blushing for the

Princess whose heroism it had celebrated.

There was no lack of timid counsellors who said to me:

"Do not put in an appearance; you will be too much embarrassed with

your phrase, 'Madame, your son is my King!'"

"I shall shout it louder than ever," I replied.

I went to the very court where the revolutionary tribunal had formerly

been installed, where Marie-Antoinette had appeared, where my brother

had been condemned. The Revolution of July has ordered the removal of

the crucifix whose presence, while consoling innocence, caused the

judge to tremble.

[Sidenote: My trial in Paris.]

My appearance before the judges had a fortunate effect; it

counterbalanced for a moment the effect of the declaration in the

_Moniteur_ and maintained the mother of Henry V. in the rank in which

her courageous adventure had placed her: men hesitated, when they saw

that the Royalist Party dared to face the event and did not consider

itself beaten.

I did not want a counsel, but M. Ledru, who had attached himself

to me at the time of my imprisonment, wished to speak: he grew

disconcerted and gave me great uneasiness. M. Berryer, who represented

the _Quotidienne_, indirectly took up my defense. At the end of

the proceedings, I called the jury the "universal peerage," which

contributed not a little towards the acquittal of all of us[491].

Nothing remarkable occurred to signalize this trial in the terrible

chamber that had resounded with the voices of Fouquier-Tinville and

Danton; there was nothing amusing in it, except the arguments of M.

Persil[492]: wishing to prove my guilt, he quoted this phrase from my

pamphlet, "It is difficult to crush what flattens itself underfoot,"

and, exclaiming, "Do you feel, gentlemen, all the scorn comprised

in that paragraph, 'It is difficult to crush what flattens itself

underfoot'?" he made the movement of a man who crushes something under

his feet He resumed his speech triumphantly: the laughter of the

audience was renewed. The worthy man perceived neither the delight of

the audience at his unlucky phrase nor the perfectly absurd figure

which he cut while stamping his feet, in his black robes, as though he

were dancing, at the same time that his face was pale with inspiration

and his eyes haggard with eloquence.

When the jury returned and pronounced their verdict of "not guilty,"

applause broke out and I was surrounded by young men who had put on

barristers' robes to get in: M. Carrel was there.

The crowd increased as I went out; there was a scuffle in the

court-yard of the palace between my escort and the police. At last, I

succeeded, with great difficulty, in reaching home in the midst of the

crowd which followed my cab shouting:

"Long live Chateaubriand[493]!"

[Sidenote: I am acquitted.]

At any other time, this acquittal would have been very significant;

to declare that it was not guilty to say to the Duchesse de Berry,

"Madame, your son is my King!" was to condemn the Revolution of July;

but to-day this verdict means nothing, because there is no opinion nor

duration in anything. In four and twenty hours, everything is changed:

I should be condemned to-morrow for the fact on which I was acquitted

to-day.

I have been to leave my card on the jurymen and notably on M.

Chevet[494], one of the members of the "universal peerage." It was

easier for that worthy citizen to find a conscientious verdict in my

favour than it would have been for me to find in my pocket the money

necessary to add to the happiness of my acquittal the pleasure of

eating a good dinner at my judge's establishment: M. Chevet arbitrated

with more equity on the Legitimacy, the Usurpation and the author of

the _Génie du Christianisme_ than many publicists and censors.

PARIS, _April_ 1833.

The _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry_

has obtained for me an immense popularity in the Royalist Party.

Deputations and letters have reached me from every quarter. I have

received from the North and South of France declarations of adhesion

covered with many thousands of signatures. All of these, referring to

my pamphlet, demand the liberation of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

Fifteen hundred young men of Paris have come to congratulate me, not

without great excitement on the part of the police. I have received a

cup in silver gilt, with this inscription:

TO CHATEAUBRIAND FROM THE LOYAL MEN OF VILLENEUVE (LOT-ET-GARONNE)

A town in the South sent me some very good wine to fill this cup, but

I do not drink. Lastly, Legitimist France has taken as its motto the

words, "Madame, your son is my King!" and several newspapers have

adopted them as an epigraph; they have been engraved on necklaces

and rings. I am the first to have uttered, in the face of the

Usurpation, a truth which no one dared to speak, and, strange to say,

I believe less in the return of Henry V. than the most contemptible

_juste-milieu_ man or the most violent Republican.

For the rest, I do not understand the word usurpation in the narrow

sense given to it by the Royalist Party; there would be many things

to say about this word, as about that of legitimacy: but there really

is usurpation, and usurpation of the worst kind, in the guardian who

plunders his ward and proscribes the orphan. All those grand phrases,

that "the country had to be saved," are so many pretexts furnished

to ambition by an immoral policy. Truly, ought we not to regard the

meanness of your usurpation as an effort of virtue on your part? Are

you Brutus[495], by chance, sacrificing his sons to the greatness of

Rome?

I have been able, in the course of my life, to compare literary renown

and popularity. The former pleased me for a few hours, but that love

of renown soon passed. As for popularity, it found me indifferent,

because, in the Revolution, I have seen too much of men surrounded by

those masses which, after raising them on the shield, flung them into

the gutter. A democrat by nature, an aristocrat by habit, I would most

gladly sacrifice my fortune and my life to the people, provided I need

have little relation with the crowd. Anyhow, I was extremely sensible

of the impulse of the young men of July who carried me in triumph to

the Chamber of Peers, and this inasmuch as they did not carry me there

to be their leader or because I thought as they did: they were only

doing justice to an enemy; they recognised in me a man of honour and

liberty: that generosity touched me. But this other popularity which I

have lately acquired in my own party has caused me no emotion; there is

an icy barrier between the Royalists and myself: we want the same King;

with that exception, most of our wishes are opposed one to the other.

[Footnote 407: This book was written in Paris, between the end of July

and the 8th of August 1832; at Basle, Lucerne and Lugano, between

August and October 1832; and again in Paris, between January and April

1833.--T.]

[Footnote 408: John Fraser Frisell (1772-1846), a member of a Scotch

family, came to France at the age of eighteen to "see the Revolution,"

out of curiosity. He was arrested and imprisoned at Dijon under the

Terror, and did not recover his liberty until the 18 Brumaire. The

First Consul authorized Frisell, "as a savant," to reside on the

Continent, at a time when all the English were under suspicion; and

he remained almost permanently in France and Italy, to the great

displeasure of his family. He wrote a great deal, but would consent

to the publication of only one of his works, _De la Constitution de

l'Angleterre_, which is remarkably well written in French. He made the

acquaintance of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand under the Empire and

remained most attached to them until his death, which shortly preceded

that of his two old friends. Frisell died at Torquay, in Devonshire, in

February 1846. _Cf._ an article by Mr. J. Fraser, entitled, _Un ami de

Chateaubriand_, in the _Correspondant_ of 25 September 1897.--B.]

[Footnote 409: There is a slight error here. Chateaubriand, as well

as his friends Hyde de Neuville and Fitz-James, were arrested on the

16th of June. The details of his arrest are in the newspapers of the

17th, and Hyde de Neuville also gives the 16th as the date. Probably

this date of the 20th, in the _Mémoires de Outre-tombe_, is a copyist's

error, the more so inasmuch as, in the whole course of the Memoirs,

Chateaubriand has made no other mistake in his dates.--B.]

[Footnote 410: M. Henri Joseph Gisquet.--B.]

[Footnote 411: The _juste-milieu_ was the political system of

government which consisted in conciliating all opinions. Louis-Philippe

used it (after Montesquieu and others) in replying to a deputation from

the town of Gaillac, on the 29th of January, in these words:

"As for our home policy, we shall strive to keep to a _juste milieu._"

The phrase was very soon turned into one of general derision.--T.]

[Footnote 412: Frédéric Benoît (1813-1832), aged 19, the son of a

magistrate at Vouxiers, had been sentenced to death on the eve of

Chateaubriand's arrest, 15 June 1832. He had killed his mother, on the

night of the 8th of November 1829, and his friend Alexandre Formage, a

youth of 17, on the 21st of July 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 413: Richard Lovelace (1618-1658), the Cavalier poet, was

imprisoned by the Commons in 1642, subsequently released on £20,000

bail, was abroad from 1646 to 1648 in the French service, taking part

in the Siege of Dunkirk, and was again incarcerated on his return to

England. He was released once more towards the close of 1649 and spent

the remainder of his life in want. His best-known prison poems include

his _To Althea from Prison_ and the lines commencing:

Stone walls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage.--T.]

[Footnote 414: Jean Baptiste Santeuil (1630-1697), a modern Latin poet,

almost as celebrated for his gaiety and eccentricities as for his

undoubted poetic talent.--T.]

[Footnote 415: "The coffin sinks down and the unspotted roses."--T.]

[Footnote 416: I omit a poem of sixteen lines, entitled, _Jeune fille

et jeune fleur_, on the death of Eliza Frisell.--T.]

[Footnote 417: M. Nay was engaged to M. Gisquet's daughter.--T.]

[Footnote 418: François Eugène Vidocq (1775-1857) was in early life

a soldier and a thief and was several times imprisoned. He became

connected with the Paris police as a detective in 1809 and resigned, as

chief of the detective force, in 1825. In 1832, he started a private

detective establishment, which was soon dosed by the Government. He was

the reputed author of a famous set of Memoirs and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 419: Louis Henri Desmortiers had been appointed a counsellor

to the Paris Courts by the Restoration; the Revolution of 1830 made

him King's Attorney to the Tribunal of First Instance of the Seine.

These functions he preserved during the greater part of the reign of

Louis-Philippe; and he was therefore not an examining magistrate in

1832. The examining magistrate charged in the affair of Messieurs de

Chateaubriand, Hyde de Neuville and de Fitz-James was M. Poultier, who

"fulfilled his painful duty towards the accused with as much delicacy

as consideration" (_Mémoires du baron Hyde de Neuville_, vol. III. p.

496).--B.]

[Footnote 420: Charles Guillaume Hello (1787-1850). He had been

appointed attorney-general at Rennes in 1830. He was the author of

_Philosophie de l'histoire de France_ and other works, and was the

father of M. Ernest Hello (1828-1885), author of _L'Homme, Paroles

de Dieu_, etc., which gave him an eminent rank among the writers and

thinkers of his time.--B.]

[Footnote 421:

"My name is Loyal, sirs, I come from Normandy,

And am a tipstaff, in despite of jealousy."--T.]

[Footnote 422: This is one of the very few errors of fact that occur in

the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, nor is it a very serious one. M. Geoffroy

de Grandmaison, in his fine work on the _Congrégation_ (pp. 389 et

seq.), publishes the complete list of its members: M. Desmortiers' name

does not appear upon it.--B.

The Congregation was an association of laymen, formed, under the

auspices of the Jesuits, to practise, under their direction, works of

charity and piety.--T.]

[Footnote 423: Paul François Dubois (1793-1874) had founded the

_Globe_, in 1824, with Pierre Leroux. He sat as Deputy for Nantes from

1831 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 424: Jean Jacques Ampère (1800-1864), son of the celebrated

physicist and a member of the French Academy. His fidelity to

Chateaubriand was the more meritorious inasmuch as he had conceived,

from his youth, an ardent passion for Madame Récamier which time was

unable to allay.--B.]

[Footnote 425: Charles Lenormant (1802-1859) had married, in 1826,

Mademoiselle Amélie Cyvoct, niece to Madame Récamier.--B.]

[Footnote 426: Charles Ledru, a young advocate gifted with a real

talent, was soon eclipsed by another republican advocate of the same

surname, Auguste Ledru. The latter, wishing to avoid the confusion

that would certainly have been established between himself and Charles

Ledru, added the name of his maternal great-grandmother to his own, and

became known as Ledru-Rollin.--B.]

[Footnote 427: Charles Philipon (1800-1862), the brilliant draughtsman,

founder of the _Caricature_ (1831), the _Charivari_ (1834) and, after

1848, the _Journal amusant_, the _Musée français_ and the _Petit

journal pour rire._ It was during one of his many trials that Philipon

invented and drew the "pear" which was thenceforth to become the symbol

of the head of Louis-Philippe. The next day, the walls of Paris were

covered with it.--T.]

[Footnote 428: He signs his verses, "J. Chopin, _employé au

cabinet._"--T.]

[Footnote 429: I omit these twenty lines.--T.]

[Footnote 430: Félix Barthe (1795-1863), after being linked with the

Carbonari and taking an active part in the Revolution of July, entered

M. Laffitte's dislocated ministry on the 27th of December 1830, to

replace the Minister of Public Instruction, M. Mérilhou. On the 12th

of March 1831, in the new Casimir-Périer Cabinet, he exchanged the

portfolio of Public Instruction for that of Justice. He kept the Seals

until the 4th of April 1834, when he fell with the Broglie Ministry. He

was then made a peer of France and President of the Audit Office. The

Second Empire made him a senator.--B.]

[Footnote 431: M. Demangeat.--B.]

[Footnote 432: Pierre Clément Bérard (1798--_circa_ 1890). During the

Hundred Days, being then seventeen years of age, he had enlisted in the

corps of Royal Volunteers of the Paris School of Law and accompanied

King Louis XVIII. to Ghent. In 1831 and 1832, he published a little

weekly pamphlet, the _Cancans_, whose title varied with every number:

_Cancans parisiens, Cancans accusateurs, Cancans courtisans, Cancans

inflexibles, Cancans saisis, Cancans prisonniers_, etc. Each issue

ended with a song. It was, as it were, a resurrection, after 1830, of

the _Actes des Apôtres_ of Rivarol, Champeenetz and their friends,

with the same violence and also the same pluck and spirit. Only, the

Cancans were edited, not by a company of wits, but by M. Bérard alone:

true, he was as witty as any four or forty. Seizures and prosecutions

rained upon the Cancans and their author, who was at last condemned to

fourteen years' imprisonment and a fine of thirteen thousand francs.

Fortunately, he succeeded in escaping to Holland, thus exchanging

prison for exile. In 1833, he published _Mon Voyage à Prague_ and then

went to Rome, where the Legitimists had founded a bank in which Bérard

accepted a clerkship. He was not again to leave the Eternal City,

where he died, not very many years ago, an impenitent Royalist. His

_Souvenirs sur Sainte-Pélagie en_ 1832 appeared in 1886.--B.]

[Footnote 433: The reader will see in my account of my first journey

to Prague my conversation with Charles X. on the subject of this

loan.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1834). _Cf._ Vol. I, pp. 369-370.--T.]

[Footnote 434: Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry (1797-1873). In 1810, he

was tutor to Talleyrand's grand-nephews and, in 1828, published his

_Histoire des Gaulois_, with great success. After the Days of July, he

was appointed Prefect of the Haute-Saône. Later he filled more than

one judicial office, under the Usurpation and the Second Empire, and

was made a senator in 1860. He continued throughout to produce his

historical works.--B.]

[Footnote 435: _Cf._ AUGUSTIN THIERRY, _Récits des temps mérovingiens_:

Preface.--B.]

[Footnote 436: The Comte d'Artois entered France by Vesoul, in February

1814, and from there, on the 27th of February, dated his Proclamation

to the French.--B.]

[Footnote 437: Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1538), the great Dutch scholar

and satirist, settled at Basle in 1521 and died there on the 12th of

July 1528.--T.]

[Footnote 438: The Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of

Prussia.--B.]

[Footnote 439: Hans Holbein the Younger (_circa_ 1497-1543) lived in

Basle from 1515 to 1523 and from 1528 to 1532. The _Dance of Death_ at

Basle, if really Holbein, was painted in the earlier period.--T.]

[Footnote 440: Martin Luther (1483-1546), founder of the heretical sect

called after his name.--T.]

[Footnote 441: Giovanni de' Medici, Pope Leo X. (1475-1521), elected

Pope in 1513. It was during his Papacy, in the year 1517, that

the Reformation began with Luther's protest against the sale of

indulgences.--T.]

[Footnote 442: Johann von Müller (1752-1809), a noted Swiss historian,

author of the _Geschichte der Schweizer_, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 443: Walther Fürst, Arnold von Melchthal and Werner

Stauffacher were the three companions of William Tell, perhaps less

legendary than he, who, according to tradition, liberated their country

in the fourteenth century. The date of the oath on the Grütli, or

Rütli, is 8 November 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 444: Hermann Gessler, the imperial magistrate in Uri and

Schwyz, said to have been shot by Tell in 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 445: Saxo Grammaticus (_fl._ 13th century), the Danish

historian, whose chronicles contain the stories of William Tell, Hamlet

and other oral traditions, myths and legends.--T.]

[Footnote 446: _Cf._ CHATEAUBRIAND, _Essai sur les révolutions_: the

chapter entitled, _La Suisse pauvre et vertueuse_, in which the author

describes as "very doubtful" the story of Tell and the apple.--B.]

[Footnote 447: The Duc de Reichstadt had died on the 22nd of July 1832,

a month earlier than the date of Chateaubriand's journey.--T.]

[Footnote 448: Alexander Count Suwaroff (1729-1800), after defeating

the French at Cassano, the Trebbia and Novi, in April, June and August

1799, was himself defeated by Masséna, who had already beaten one

Russian army at Zurich (25-26 September 1799). Suwaroff was recalled in

disgrace and died in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 449:

"At Mount Adula's foot, amid a thousand reeds,

The still Rhine, proud of how his great stream speeds,

Slept with one hand upon his tilted urn,

To the grateful music of the just-born burn."--T.]

[Footnote 450:

"One's country's to be found where'er the soul's enchanted."--T.]

[Footnote 451: St. Nicholas Bishop of Myra (_d. circa_ 342), the patron

saint of sailors, thieves, virgins and children. The Church honours St.

Nicholas on the 6th of December.--T.]

[Footnote 452: Clara Wendel was one of a company of vagabonds arrested,

in 1825, for the murder, on the 15th September 1816, of Xavier Keller,

a State councillor of Lucerne, the cause of whose death had for many

years been a mystery. Revelations made by the band showed that Xavier

Keller had been the victim of a political crime, the instigators of

which were two official persons of Lucerne. Five individuals, including

a brother and sister of Clara Wendel, had been guilty of committing

this crime. The trial excited an European interest and ended in a

number of condemnations. Clara Wendel was sentenced to imprisonment for

life and served her sentence in the prison at Lucerne.--B.]

[Footnote 453: On the 5th of June 1832, Alexandre Dumas had followed

the funeral of General Lamarque in the uniform of an artillery-man; it

was rumoured that he had distributed arms at the Porte Saint-Martin.

On the 9th of June, a newspaper announced that the author had been

arrested with arms in his hands and that he had been shot on the

morning of the 6th. An aide-de-camp of the King's hurried to his house,

found him in perfect health and informed him that the question of his

arrest had been seriously discussed. He was advised to go to spend a

month or two abroad, in order that he might be forgotten. He put his

dramatic affairs in order, obtained some money from Harel (no easy

matter) and, on the 21st of July 1832, left for Switzerland, furnished

with a regular passport. He returned to Paris at the commencement of

October. His _Impressions de Voyage_, the publication of which began

in 1833, have remained the best of his works. In the third volume, he

tells of his visit to the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_, in a

chapter entitled, _Les Poules de M. de Chateaubriand._--B.]

[Footnote 454: _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 72, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 455: Both ladies are no more.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 456: _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. 71-72.--T.]

[Footnote 457: Béranger's letter is dated 19 August 1832; Armand

Carrel's 4 October 1834. They were both printed at the end of the

second volume of the _Congrès de Vérone._--B.]

[Footnote 458: Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), the Swiss poet and

theologian and founder of the so-called science of physiognomy, was

born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 459: Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), the poet, landscape-painter

and engraver was also born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 460: Madame Récamier had been very much alarmed by the

cholera, which had made many victims around her, in the Rue de Sèvres,

and had decided, in the month of August, to leave Paris and travel in

Switzerland. In spite of her real courage, and although she had often

been known to be prodigal and fearless in her attendance on persons

attacked by infectious complaints, she had an invincible and almost

superstitious terror of cholera. Was it a presentiment? She died of

cholera on the 11th of May 1849.--B.]

[Footnote 461: Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Comte de

Saint-Leu, later Prince President of the French Republic, later

Napoleon III. Emperor of the French (1808-1873), third son of Hortense

de Beauhamais and, putatively, of Louis King of Holland, younger

brother of Napoleon I.--T.]

[Footnote 462: Ancona, in the Papal States, was held by the French from

1831 to 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 463: Charles Parquin, an ex-officer of the Imperial Army,

had known Prince Louis since 1822. In 1824, he bought the estate of

Wolfsberg, situated near Arenenberg, and married Mademoiselle Cochelet,

who was a maid-of-honour of Queen Hortense and who had been brought

up with the Queen, when the latter was Mademoiselle de Beauhamais, at

Madame Campan's. Major Parquin took a most active part in the Strasburg

enterprise, 30 October 1836. He was arrested by the Prince's side,

tried and acquitted (6 January 1837).--B.]

[Footnote 464: John Huss (1369-1415), the Bohemian reformer and

Wyclifite, was cited before the Council of Constance, in Baden, and

burned at the stake as a heretic on the 6th of July 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 465: Jerome of Prague (_circa_ 1365-1416) was a

fellow-countryman, associate and follower of Huss. He was burned at

Constance on the 30th of May 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 466: Constance was sacked by the Huns in the fifth

century.--T.]

[Footnote 467: In the early part of the tenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 468: 30 August to 5 October 1633.--T.]

[Footnote 469: In 1796 and 1799.--T.]

[Footnote 470: Charles III. Emperor of the Romans and II. King of

France (839-888), surnamed the Fat, died and was buried at the Abbey of

Reichenau, in the Lake of Constance, one year after his deposition.--T.]

[Footnote 471: _Cf._ Vol. IV, p. 287, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 472: Narcisse Vieillard (1791-1857) had been through the

Campaigns of Russia (1812), Germany (1813) and France (1814). Queen

Hortense selected him as tutor for her eldest son, Charles Napoleon

Louis Bonaparte, and afterwards for the latter's brother, the future

Napoleon III. He sat as a deputy or as a representative of the people

from 1842 to 1846 and from 1848 to 1851; assisted in preparing and

carrying out the _coup d'État_ of the 2nd of December 1851 and was

appointed a senator in January 1852. His republicanism, however,

marched abreast with his Bonapartism, and he voted against the

restoration of the Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 473: Cottreau was a friend of Prince Louis Napoleon's and

lived permanently at Arenenberg. He accompanied the Prince on a visit

to England.--B.]

[Footnote 474: The Swiss defeated the Imperials at the Battle of

Sempach, on the Lake of Sempach, on the 9th of July 1386, thus securing

Swiss independence.--T.]

[Footnote 475: LUKE, XXIV., 5.--T.]

[Footnote 476: Byron abandoned England for good on the 25th of April

1816 and, in the summer of that year, spent some months at Diodati,

near Geneva. It was here that he wrote the third canto of _Childe

Harold_, the _Prisoner of Chillon_ and _Manfred_, the third act of

which, however, he subsequently rewrote.--T.]

[Footnote 477: The Duchesse de Berry was arrested at Nantes on the 7th

of November 1832. On the 12th, Berryer walked into Chateaubriand's

study at Geneva and told him the news, without being able to give him

any details. Chateaubriand at once left for Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 478: Félix Barthe.--T.]

[Footnote 479: Marshal Soult combined the offices of President of the

Council and Minister for War.--T.]

[Footnote 480: Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre Marquis de Pastoret

(1756-1840) filled various legal offices under Louis XVI. and was

Minister of Justice and the Interior for a short while. He emigrated

during the Terror and returned to France in 1795. After being elected

to the Council of the Five Hundred, he was again obliged to flee, and

remained in Switzerland till 1800. He obtained a professorial chair

at the College of France in 1804 and became a senator in 1809. Under

the Restoration, he received a peerage, was appointed President of the

House of Peers in 1820, a minister of State in 1826 and Chancellor

of France in 1829. In 1834, he was chosen to be tutor to the Duc de

Bordeaux. Pastoret was the author of several important works, including

a fine _Histoire générale de la législation des peuples_, and was a

member of the French Academy and of the Academies of Inscriptions and

of Moral Science.--T.]

[Footnote 481: The text of the letter of the 12th November ran as

follows:

"MADAME,

"You will think me very daring to come to importune you at such

a moment to beg you to grant me a favour, the last ambition of

my life: I desire ardently to be chosen by you as one of your

defenders. I have no personal claim to the high favour which I

solicit of your new grandeurs; but I dare to ask it in memory of a

Prince of whom you deigned to name me the historian, and I hope for

it again as the price of the blood of my family. My brother had the

honour to die with his illustrious grandfather, M. de Malesherbes,

on the same day, at the same hour, for the same cause and on the

same scaffold.

"I am, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."]

[Footnote 482: Jean Marie Pardessus (1772-1853), a meritorious jurist

and historian. He was a member of the various legislative assemblies

from 1806 to 1830 and occupied different professorial and legal

offices, which he relinquished after the Usurpation, devoting the

remainder of his life to his historical and critical writings on

law.--T.]

[Footnote 483: M. Mandaroux-Vertamy was one of Chateaubriand's

executors.--T.]

[Footnote 484: Brennus, the leader of the Senonian Gauls who overran

Italy and captured Rome, about 390 B.C., laid siege to the Capitol for

six months, until bought off by the garrison with 1,000 pounds of gold.

According to a later legend, when the gold was being weighed, a Roman

tribune remonstrated against the use of false weights by the Gauls.

Brennus threw his sword into the scale with the famous exclamation, _Væ

victis!_--T.]

[Footnote 485: This pamphlet was published on the 29th of December

1832.--B.]

[Footnote 486: The Duchesse de Berry was betrayed by Simon Deutz, a

converted Jew, to Thiers, for a sum variously named as 500,000 and

100,000 francs. She was discovered in hiding, with her confidants,

behind the movable slab or plate of a chimney, in which a fire had been

lighted by the gendarmes.--T.]

[Footnote 487: LUKE, XXII., 3.--T.]

[Footnote 488: St. Laurence (_d._ 258) was martyred by being roasted

alive in an iron chair or on a gridiron in Rome. The Church honours him

on the 10th of August.--T.]

[Footnote 489: Lucius Septimus Severus, Roman Emperor (146-211). He

became Emperor in 193; his persecution of the Christians was decreed in

201. Severus died in Britain, at York.--T.]

[Footnote 490: This is the text of the declaration, which was inserted

in the _Moniteur_ of the 26th of February 1833:

"Driven by circumstances and by the measures ordered by the

Government, although I had the gravest reasons to keep my marriage

secret, I think it my duty to myself, as well as to my children, to

declare that I was secretly married during my residence in Italy.

"MARIE-CAROLINE.

"At the CITADEL OF BLAYE, 22 _February_ 1833."--B.]

[Footnote 491: Chateaubriand appeared before the Assize Court of the

Seine on the 27th of February 1833. With him were prosecuted the

editors of the _Quotidienne_, the _Gazette de France_, the _Revenant_,

the _Écho français_, the _Mode_, the _Courrier de l'Europe_ and a young

student, M. Victor Thomas, who had, on the 4th of January, acted as

spokesman for 1,200 young men who had gone to make a display of their

enthusiasm to Chateaubriand and who had repeated with him:

"Madame, your son is my King!"

All were acquitted after an admirable speech for the defense by M.

Berryer, who appeared for the _Quotidienne_ and the _Gazette de

France._ Maître Charles Ledru appeared for the defense of the _Écho

français_ and, incidentally and, as it seems, somewhat unfortunately,

for Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 492: Jean Charles Persil (1785-1870) was a deputy from 1830

to 1839, a peer of France from 1839 to 1848 and a Councillor of State

under the Second Empire. Immediately after the Revolution of July, he

was appointed Attorney-general to the Royal Court of Paris. His zeal

in prosecuting the republican and legitimist papers alike won him a

formidable unpopularity.--B.]

[Footnote 493: M. de Falloux, who had made his way into court in

a barrister's robes, describes the scene in his Memoirs. When the

presiding judge had announced the acquittal of all the defendants, the

crowd pressed around Berryer and Chateaubriand. The latter was obliged

to cling to M. de Falloux' arm so as not to be thrown down.

"I don't like fuss!" he kept saying. "I don't like fuss! Take me

quickly to my carriage!"

But on the steps the cheers were redoubled:

"Long live Chateaubriand! The liberty of the press for ever!"

They wanted to unharness the horses and yoke themselves to the carriage:

"Don't!" he entreated. "It's very far, it's very far, you can't do it!"

At last the driver succeeded in clearing a way, and set out at a

gallop. (_Cf._ FALLOUX, _Mémoires d'un royaliste_, vol. I. p. 60.)--B.]

[Footnote 494: The famous restaurateur in the Palais-Royal. Alas, at

the moment of writing this note, Chevet's has just put out its fires

and closed its doors!--B.]

[Footnote 495: Lucius Junius Brutus, Roman Consul (_fl._. 509 B.C.),

condemned his own sons, Titus and Tiberius, to death, for conspiring to

restore Tarquin.--T.]

BOOK III[496]

The Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse--Letter from Madame la Duchesse

de Berry from the Citadel of Blaye--Departure from Paris--M. de

Talleyrand's calash--Basle--Journal from Paris to Prague, from the 14th

to the 24th of May 1833, written in pencil in the carriage, in ink at

the inns--The banks of the Rhine--Falls of the Rhine--Mösskirch--A

storm--The Danube--Ulm--Blenheim--Louis XIV.--An Hercynian forest--The

Barbarians--Sources of the Danube--Ratisbon--Decrease in social

life as one goes farther from France--Religious feelings of the

Germans--Arrival at Waldmünchen--The Austrian custom-house--I am

refused admission into Bohemia--Stay at Waldmünchen--Letters to

Count Choteck--Anxiety--The Viaticum--The chapel--My room at the

inn--Description of Waldmünchen--Letter from Count Choteck--The

peasant-girl--I leave Waldmünchen and enter Bohemia--A pine

forest--Conversation with the moon--Pilsen--The high-roads of the

North-View of Prague.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 9 _May_ 1833.

I have brought the sequence of the most recent facts up to this day;

shall I at last be able to resume my work? This work consists of the

different portions of these Memoirs which are not yet finished, and

I shall have some difficulty in applying myself to them again _ex

abrupto_, for my head is filled with the things of the moment; I am

not in the mood suited for gathering my past in the calm where it is

sleeping, agitated though it was when in the state of life. I have

taken up my pen to write; what on and what about I know not.

On glancing through the journal in which, for the last six months, I

have kept a record of what I do and of what happens to me, I see that

most of the pages are dated from the Rue d'Enfer.

The small house which I occupy near the barrier may be worth sixty

thousand francs or so; but, at the time of the rise in the price of

ground, I bought it much dearer and I have never been able to pay

for it: it was a question of saving the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse,

founded by the care of Madame de Chateaubriand and adjoining the house;

a company of builders was proposing to establish a café and _montagnes

russes_[497] in the aforesaid house, a noise which does not go very

well with the death-agony.

Am I not glad of my sacrifices? Certainly: one is always glad to

succour the unfortunate; I would willingly share the little I possess

with those in need; but I do not know that this disposition amounts

to virtue in my case. My goodness is like that of a condemned man who

is lavish of that for which he will have no use in an hour's time. In

London, the convict whom they are about to hang sells his skin for

drink: I do not sell mine, I give it to the grave-diggers.

Once the house was bought, the best that I could do was to live in it;

I have arranged it as it is. From the windows of the drawing-room one

sees first what the English call a "pleasure-ground," a proscenium

consisting of a lawn and some blocks of shrubs. Beyond this enclosure,

on the other side of wall, the height of a man's breast, surmounted by

a white, lozenged fence, is a field of mixed cultivation, reserved for

the provender of the cattle of the Infirmary. Beyond this field comes

another piece of ground separated from the field by another breast-high

wall in green open-work, interlaced with viburnums and Bengal roses;

these marches of my State embrace a clump of trees, a meadow and an

alley of poplars. This nook is extremely solitary; it does not smile to

me like Horace' nook: "_angulus ridet._[498]" On the contrary, I have

sometimes shed tears there. The proverb says that "youth must have its

fling." The decline of life also has some freaks to overlook:

Les pleurs et la pitié,

Sorte d'amour ayant ses charmes[499].

My trees are of a thousand kinds. I have planted twenty-three cedars of

Lebanon and two druid oaks: they make game of their short-lived master,

_brevem dominum._ A mall, a double avenue of chesnuts, leads from the

upper to the lower garden; the ground slopes rapidly along the field

between.

I did not choose these trees, as at the Vallée aux Loups, in memory of

the spots which I have visited: he who takes pleasure in recollection

cherishes hopes. But, when one has no children, nor youth, nor

country, what attachment can one bear to trees whose foliage,

flowers, fruits are no longer the mysterious numerals employed in the

calculation of the periods of illusion. In vain people say to me, "You

are growing younger:" do they think that they will make me take my

wisdom-teeth for my milk-teeth? And even the latter have been given me

only to eat a bitter loaf under the Royalty of the 7th of August. For

the rest, my trees are not much interested to know whether they serve

as a calendar for my pleasures or as a death-certificate of my years;

they increase daily, from the day that I decrease: they wed those of

the grounds of the Foundling Hospital and the Boulevard d'Enfer which

surround me. I do not see a single house; I should be less separated

from the world at two hundred leagues from Paris. I hear the bleating

of the goats which feed the abandoned orphans. Ah, if I had been, like

these, in the arms of St. Vincent de Paul[500]! Born of a frailty,

obscure and unknown as they are, I should to-day be some nameless

workman, having no concern with men, nor knowing either why or how I

entered life or how and why I was to quit it.

[Sidenote: Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse.]

By pulling down a wall, I have placed myself in communication with

the Infirmerie de Marie Thérèse; I find myself at the same time in

a monastery, a farm, an orchard and a park. In the morning, I wake

to the sound of the _Angelus_; I hear from my bed the singing of the

priests in the chapel; I see from my window a Calvary which stands

between a walnut-tree and an elder-tree: cows, chickens, pigeons and

bees; sisters of Charity in black taminy gowns and white dimity caps,

convalescent women, old ecclesiastics go roaming among the lilacs,

azaleas, calycanthuses and rhododendrons of the flower-garden, among

the rose-trees, gooseberry-bushes, strawberry-plants and vegetables of

the kitchen-garden. Some of my octogenarian vicars were exiled with me:

after mingling my poverty with theirs on the lawns of Kensington, I

have offered the grass-plots of my hospice to their failing foot-steps;

they there drag their pious old age like the folds of the veil of the

sanctuary.

I have as a companion a fat red-gray cat with black cross stripes,

born at the Vatican in the Raphael Gallery: Leo XII. brought it up in a

skirt of his robe, where I used to watch it with envy, when the Pontiff

gave me my audiences as Ambassador. On the death of the successor of

St. Peter, I inherited the cat without a master, as I have told in

writing of my Roman Embassy. They called it Micetto, surnamed the

Pope's Cat. In this capacity it enjoys an extreme consideration among

pious souls. I strive to make it forget exile, the Sistine Chapel and

the sun of Michael Angelo's dome, on which it used to take its walks

far removed from earth.

My house and the different buildings of the Infirmary, with their

chapel and the Gothic sacristy, present the appearance of a colony

or hamlet. On ceremonial days, religion hiding under my roof, the

Old Monarchy in my alms-house form up in marching order. Processions

composed of all our valetudinarians, preceded by the young girls of

the neighbourhood, pass under the trees, singing, with the Blessed

Sacrament, the cross and the banner. Madame de Chateaubriand follows

them, beads in hand, proud of the flock which is the object of her

solicitude. The blackbirds whistle, the red-breasts warble, the

nightingales compete against the hymns. I am carried back to the

Rogations, of which I have described the rustic pomp[501]; from the

theory of Christianity, I have passed to its practice.

My home faces west. In the evening, the tree-tops lighted from behind

imprint their black, serrate outlines on the horizon. My youth returns

at that hour; it revives those lapsed days which time has reduced

to the unsubstantiality of phantoms. When the constellations pierce

through their blue arch, I remember that splendid firmament which

I admired from the bosom of the American forests or the lap of the

Ocean. The night is more favourable than the day to the traveller's

reminiscences: it hides from his eyes the landscapes that would

remind him of the regions which he inhabits; it shows him only the

luminaries, which look the same under the different latitudes of the

same hemisphere. Then he recognises those stars which he contemplated

in such a country, at such a time; the thoughts which he entertained,

the feelings which he underwent in the different portions of the world

shoot up and fix themselves at the same point in the sky.

[Sidenote: Life at the Infirmary.]

We hear speak of the world, in the Infirmary, only at the two public

collections and a little on Sundays: on those days, our hospice

changes into a kind of parish-church. The Sister Superior pretends

that beautiful ladies come to Mass in the hope of seeing me; skilful

manager that she is, she lays their curiosity under contribution: by

promising to show me to them, she attracts them to the laboratory; once

she has entrapped them, she forces sweet-stuff on them, willy-nilly,

in exchange for money. She makes me serve at the sale of the chocolate

manufactured for the profit of her patients, even as La Martinière took

me into partnership for the trade in the gooseberry-syrup which he used

to quaff to the success of his love-affairs[502]. The sainted woman

also steals stumps of quills from Madame de Chateaubriand's ink-stand;

she trades in them among the thorough-bred Royalists, declaring that

with those precious stumps were written the "superb _Mémoire sur la

captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry._"

A few good pictures of the Spanish and Italian Schools, a Virgin by

Guérin, the _St. Theresa_, the last master-piece of the painter of

_Corinne_[503], make us attached to the arts. As for history, we shall

soon have at the hospice a sister of the Marquis de Favras and a

daughter of Madame Roland: the Monarchy and the Republic have set me to

expiate their ingratitude and to feed their invalids.

All are anxious to be received at Marie-Thérèse. The poor women who

are obliged to leave when they have recovered their health take up

their lodgings near the Infirmary, in the hope of falling ill again

and returning to it. Nothing smacks of the hospital: the Jewess, the

Protestant, the Catholic, the foreigner, the Frenchwoman receive the

cares of a delicate charity disguising itself as an affectionate

relationship; each afflicted woman seems to have found her mother. I

have seen a Spaniard, beautiful as Dorothea the "Pearl of Seville,"

die at sixteen of consumption, in the common dormitory, congratulating

herself upon her happiness, looking as she smiled, with great, black,

half-dimmed eyes, a pale and emaciated face, at Madame la Dauphine,

who asked after her and assured her that she would soon be well. She

expired that same evening, far from the Mosque of Cordova and the banks

of the Guadalquivir, her native stream:

"'What are you?'

"'A Spaniard.'

"'A Spaniard and here[504]!'"

We have many widows of knights of the Holy Ghost among our frequenters;

they bring with them the only thing that remains to them, the portraits

of their husbands in the uniform of a captain of foot: a white coat

with rose-pink or sky-blue facings, with their hair dressed _à l'oiseau

royal._ They are put in the lumber-room. I cannot look at the regiment

of them without laughing: if the Old Monarchy had survived, I should

to-day be adding to the number of those portraits, I should be acting

as the solace of my grand-nephews in some deserted gallery:

"That's your great-uncle François, the captain in the Navarre Regiment:

he was a very witty man! He wrote the riddle in the _Mercure_ beginning

with the words, 'Cut off my head,' and the fugitive poem, in the

_Almanach des Muses_, called the _Cri du cœur._"

When I am tired of my gardens, the plain of Montrouge takes their

place. I have seen that plain change: what have I not seen change!

Twenty-five years ago, I used to pass by the Barrière du Maine when

going to Méréville, to the Marais, to the Vallée aux Loups; to the

right and left of the road one saw only mills, the wheels of the

cranes at the stone-pits and the nursery-garden of Cels, Rousseau's

old friend. Desnoyers built his rooms of a "hundred covers" for the

soldiers of the Imperial Guard, who came to clink glasses between each

battle won, each kingdom overthrown. A few public-houses stood round

the mills, from the Barrière du Maine to the Barrière du Montparnasse.

Higher up were the _Moulin janséniste_ and Lauzun's pleasure-house, by

way of a contrast. Near the public-houses, acacias were planted, the

poor man's shade, even as seltzer-water is the beggar's champagne. A

travelling theatre fixed the migratory population of the public-house

balls; a village was formed with a paved street, song-writers and

gendarmes, the Amphions and Cecropses of the police.

While the living were settling down, the dead were claiming their

place. A cemetery was fenced in, not without opposition on the part of

the drunkards, in an enclosure containing a ruined mill, like the "Tour

des Abois:" there death brings every day the corn which it has gleaned;

a mere wall separates it from the dancing, the music, the nightly

uproar; the sounds of a moment, the marriages of an hour separate them

from infinite silence, endless night and eternal nuptials.

I often stroll through this cemetery younger than myself, in which the

worms that gnaw the dead are not yet dead; I read the epitaphs: how

many women between sixteen and thirty years old have become the prey of

the tomb! Happy they to have lived only in their youth! The Duchesse

de Gèvres, the last drop of the blood of Du Guesclin, a skeleton of

another age, dozes in the midst of the plebeian sleepers.

In this new exile, I already have old friends: M. Lemoine lies there;

he was secretary to M. de Montmorin and was bequeathed to me by Madame

de Beaumont. He used to bring me almost every evening, when I was in

Paris, the simple conversation which I like so much, when it is joined

to goodness of heart and singleness of character. My sick and wearied

mind finds relaxation in a healthy and restful mind. I left the ashes

of M. Lemoine's noble patroness on the banks of the Tiber.

[Sidenote: My daily walks.]

The boulevards which encompass the Infirmary share my walks with the

cemetery; I no longer dream there: having no future, I have no dreams

left. A stranger to the new generations, I appear to them a dusty and

very bare wallet-bearer; scarce am I covered now with a rag of docked

days at which time gnaws, even as the herald-at-arms used to cut the

jacket of an inglorious knight. I am glad to stand aside. I like to

be at a musket-shot's distance from the barrier, on the edge of a

high-road and always ready to set out. From the foot of the mile-stone,

I watch the mail pass: my image and life's.

When I was in Rome, in 1828, I formed a plan to build, in Paris, at

the end of my hermitage, a green-house and a gardener's cottage, all

to be paid for out of the savings of my embassy and the fragments of

antiquities found in my excavations at Torre Vergata. M. de Polignac

assumed office; I sacrificed to the liberties of my country a place

which charmed me; relapsed into poverty, good-bye to my green-house:

_fortuna vitrea est._

The evil habit of paper and ink brings about that one cannot prevent

one's self from scribbling. I have taken up my pen, not knowing what

I was going to write, and have scrawled this description, at least a

third too long: if I have time, I will cut it down.

I must ask pardon of my friends for the bitterness of some of my

thoughts. I can laugh only with my lips; I have the spleen, a physical

melancholy, a real complaint; whoever has read these Memoirs has seen

what my lot has been. I was not a swimmer's stroke from my mother's

breast before the torments had assailed me. I have wandered from

ship-wreck to shipwreck; I feel a curse upon my life, a burden too

heavy for that hut of reeds. Let not those whom I love, therefore,

think themselves denied; let them excuse me, let them allow my fever to

pass: between those attacks, my heart is wholly theirs.

I had written thus much on these loose pages, flung pell-mell on my

table and blown about by the wind that entered through my open windows,

when they handed me the following letter and Note from Madame la

Duchesse de Berry. Come, let us return once more to the second part of

my double life, the practical part:

"BLAYE CITADEL, 7 _May_ 1833.

"I am painfully annoyed at the refusal of the Government to allow

you to come to me, after the two requests which I have made. Of

all the numberless vexations which I have had to undergo, this is

certainly the most painful. I had so many things to tell you, so

much advice to ask of you! Since I must relinquish the thought of

seeing you, I will at least try, by the only means left to me, to

send you the commission which I intended to give you and which you

will accomplish: for I rely without reserve on your devotion to my

son. I charge you therefore, monsieur, specially to go to Prague

and tell my kinsfolk that, if I refused until the 22nd of February

to declare my secret marriage, my design was the better to serve

my son's cause and to prove that a mother, a Bourbon, was not

afraid to endanger her life. I proposed to make my marriage known

only when my son came of age; but the threats of the Government,

the moral tortures, driven to the utmost degree, decided me to

make my declaration. In the ignorance in which I am left as to the

period at which my liberty will be restored to me, after so many

frustrated hopes, the time has come to give to my family and to

the whole of Europe an explanation which shall prevent injurious

suppositions. I would have liked to be able to give it earlier;

but absolute sequestration and unsurmountable difficulties in

communicating with the outside have prevented me until now. You

will tell my family that I was married in Italy to Count Hector

Lucchesi-Palli, of the Princes of Campo-Franco.

"I ask you, O Monsieur de Chateaubriand, to convey to my dear

children the expression of all my affection for them. Be sure to

tell Henry that I rely more than ever on all his efforts to become

daily worthier of the love and admiration of Frenchmen. Tell Louise

how happy I should be to embrace her and that her letters have been

my only consolation. Lay my homage at the King's feet and give my

affectionate regards to my brother and my kind sister. I ask you

to report to me, wherever I may be, the wishes of my children and

my family. Shut up within the walls of Blaye, I find a comfort in

having such an interpreter as Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand;

he can reckon on my attachment for all time.

"MARIE-CAROLINE."

[Sidenote: Letters from Madame.]

NOTE

"I have felt a great satisfaction at the agreement that reigns

between you and M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg[505], as I attach

a great value to this in the interest of my son.

"You can show Madame la Dauphine the letter which I am writing to

you. Assure my sister that, so soon as I have recovered my liberty,

I shall think nothing more urgent than to send her all the papers

relating to political affairs. My great wish would have been to

proceed to Prague so soon as I was free; but the sufferings of all

kinds that I have undergone have so greatly destroyed my health

that I shall be obliged to stop some time in Italy so as to recover

a little and not to frighten my poor children too much by the

change in me. Study my son's character: his good qualities, his

inclinations, even his faults; you will tell the King, Madame la

Dauphine and myself what there is to correct, to change, to make

perfect, and you will let France know what she has to expect from

her young King.

"Through my different relations with the Emperor of Russia, I

know that he has on several occasions very favourably received

propositions for a marriage between my son and the Princess

Olga[506]. M. de Choulot will give you the most precise information

touching the persons who are at present at Prague.

"Desiring to remain French above all, I ask you to obtain leave

from the King for me to keep my title of Princess and my name. The

mother[507] of the King of Sardinia[508] continues to call herself

Princess of Carignan in spite of her marriage with M. de Montléart,

to whom she has given the title of prince. Marie-Louise Duchess

of Parma kept her title of Empress, when she married Count von

Neipperg, and remained the guardian of her son: her other children

are called Neipperg.

"I beg you to set out as promptly as possible for Prague, as I

desire more eagerly than I can tell you that you should arrive in

time for my family to learn all these details only through you.

"I wish the fact of your departure to be as little known as

possible, or at least that no one will be aware that you are the

bearer of a letter from me, so as not to reveal my only means of

correspondence, which is so precious, although very rare. M. le

Comte Lucchesi[509], my husband, is descended from one of the

four oldest families in Sicily, the only ones that remain of

the twelve companions of Tancred. This family has always been

noted for the noblest devotion to the cause of its kings. The

Prince de Campo-Franco, Lucchesi's father, was First Lord of the

Bed-chamber to my father[510]. The present King of Naples[511],

having an entire confidence in him, has placed him with his young

brother[512], the Viceroy of Sicily. I do not speak to you of his

feelings; they agree with ours in every respect.

[Sidenote: My mission to Prague.]

"Convinced as I am that the only way to be understood by the

French is always to address to them the language of honour and to

make them look towards glory, I have had the thought of marking

the commencement of my son's reign by joining Belgium to France.

Count Lucchesi was charged by me to make the first overtures in

this matter to the King of Holland[513] and the Prince of Orange;

and he was of great aid in obtaining a good hearing for them. I

was not so fortunate as to conclude this treaty, the object of all

my wishes; but I believe that there are still chances of success:

before leaving the Vendée, I gave M. le Maréchal de Bourmont powers

to continue this affair; no one is more capable than he to carry

it to a successful issue, because of the esteem which he enjoys in

Holland.

"M. C.

"BLAYE, 7 _May_ 1833.

"As I am not certain of being able to write to the Marquis de

Latour-Maubourg, try to see him before your departure. You can

tell him whatever you think fit, but in the most absolute secrecy.

Arrange with him as to the direction to be given to the newspapers."

I was moved at reading these documents. The daughter of so many kings,

that woman fallen from so high a station, after closing her ear to

my counsels had the noble courage to apply to me, to forgive me for

foreseeing the failure of her enterprise: her confidence went to my

heart and honoured me. Madame de Berry had judged me rightly; the very

nature of that enterprise which made her lose all did not alienate

me. To play for a throne, glory, the future and destiny is no vulgar

thing: the world understands that a princess can be an heroic mother.

But what must be consigned to execration, what is unexampled in history

is the immodest torture inflicted on a weak woman, alone, cut off from

assistance, overwhelmed by all the forces of a government conspiring

against her, as though it were a question of conquering a formidable

Power. Parents themselves abandoning their daughter to the laughter of

the lackeys, holding her by her four limbs so that she may be delivered

in public, calling the authorities from their comer, the gaolers,

spies, passers-by, to see the child brought forth from their prisoner's

womb, even as though they had called France to witness the birth of

her King! And what prisoner? The grand-daughter of Henry IV.! And what

mother? The mother of the orphan whose throne they were occupying! Do

the hulks contain a family so low-born as to conceive the thought of

branding one of its children with so great an ignominy? Would it not

have been nobler to kill Madame la Duchesse de Berry rather than submit

her to the most tyrannous humiliation? Whatever indulgence was shown in

this business belongs to the century, whatever infamy to the Government

Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letter and Note are remarkable in more

than one place: the portion relating to the incorporation of Belgium

and the marriage of Henry V. shows a head capable of serious things;

the portion concerning the Family in Prague is touching. The Princess

fears that she will be obliged to stop in Italy, "so as to recover a

little and not to frighten her poor children too much by the change in

her." What can be sadder and more sorrowful! She adds:

"I ask you, O Monsieur de Chateaubriand, to convey to my dear

children the expression of all my affection," etc.

O Madame la Duchesse de Berry, what can I do for you, I a weak creature

already half broken-down? But how to refuse anything to such words as

these:

"Shut up within the walls of Blaye, I find a comfort in having such

an interpreter as Monsieur de Chateaubriand; he can reckon on my

attachment for all time."

Yes: I will set out on the last and greatest of my embassies; I shall

go on the part of the prisoner of Blaye to find the prisoner of the

Temple[514]; I shall negociate a new family compact, take the kisses of

a captive mother to her exiled children and present letters in which

courage and misfortune accredit me to innocence and virtue.

A letter for Madame la Dauphine and a note for the two children were

added to the letter addressed to me.

There were left to me, of my past grandeurs, a brougham in which I had

once shone at the Court of George IV. and a travelling-calash, built in

former days for the use of the Prince de Talleyrand. I had the latter

repaired, in order to make it capable of going against nature; for, by

origin and habit, it is disinclined to run after fallen kings. On the

14th of May, the anniversary of the murder of Henry IV., at half-past

eight in the evening, I set out in search of Henry V., child, orphan

and outlaw.

I was not without anxiety as to my passport: taken out at the Foreign

Office, it bore no description, and it was dated eleven months back;

it had been delivered for Switzerland and Italy and had already served

to enable me to leave France and return; different visas witnessed

these several circumstances. I did not care either to have it renewed

or to ask for a fresh one. The police of every country would have,

been warned, every telegraph set in motion; at every custom-house they

would have searched my trunks, my carriage, my person. If my papers had

been seized, what a pretext for persecution, what domiciliary visits,

what arrests! What a prolongation of the royal captivity! For it would

have been proved that the Princess had secret means of correspondence

outside. It was therefore impossible for me to call attention to my

departure by asking for a passport: I placed my trust in my star.

[Sidenote: I leave for Prague.]

Avoiding the too much beaten road of Frankfort and that of Strasburg,

which runs under the line of telegraphs, I took the Basle Road with

Hyacinthe Pilorge, my secretary, used to all my fortunes, and Baptiste,

my _valet de chambre_ when I was "My Lord," and once more plain _valet_

on the downfall of My Lordship[515]: we get in and out of the carriage

together. My cook, the famous Montmirel, retired when I left the

ministry, declaring that he would not return "to office" till I did.

It had been wisely decided, by the Introducer of Ambassadors under the

Restoration, that any ambassador who died re-entered "private life:"

Baptiste had re-entered domestic service.

When we reached Altkirch, the frontier stage, a gendarme appeared and

asked for my passport. On seeing my name, he told me that he had served

in the Spanish Campaign, in 1823, under my nephew Christian, a captain

in the Dragoons of the Guard. Between Altkirch and Saint-Louis, I met

a rector and his parishioners; they were making a procession against

the cock-chafers, nasty insects much multiplied since the Days of July.

At Saint-Louis, the officers of the custom-house, who knew me, let me

pass. I arrived gaily at the gate of Basle, where I was met by the old

Swiss drum-major who, in the previous month of August, had inflicted on

me "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" but the cholera was

over and I put up at the Three Kings, on the banks of the Rhine; it was

ten o'clock on the morning of the 17th of May.

The landlord procured me a travelling footman called Schwartz, a native

of Basle, to act as my interpreter in Bohemia. He spoke German just as

my good Joseph, the Milanese tinman, spoke Greek, in Messenia, when

enquiring for the ruins of Sparta.

On the same day, the 17th of May, at six o'clock in the evening, I

moved out of port. As I stepped into the calash, I was amazed to see

the Altkirch gendarme among the crowd; I did not know if he had not

been sent after me: he had simply escorted the mail from France. I gave

him some money to drink to the health of his old captain.

A school-boy came up to me and threw a paper to me with the

inscription, "To the Virgil of the Nineteenth Century;" it contained

this passage, altered from the _Æneid_:

Macte animo, generose puer[516].

And the postillion whipped up the horses and I drove off quite proud

of my high renown at Basle, quite astonished at being Virgil, quite

charmed to be called a child: "_generose puer._"

[Sidenote: The Rhine.]

I crossed the bridge, leaving the burgesses and peasants at war in the

midst of their Republic[517] and fulfilling in their own fashion the

part which they are called upon to play in the general transformation

of society. I went up the right bank of the Rhine and contemplated with

a certain sadness the high hills of the Canton of Basle. The exile

which I had come to seek last year in the Alps seemed to me a happier

life's ending, a gentler lot than the affairs of empire in which I had

re-engaged. Did I cherish the smallest hope for Madame la Duchesse de

Berry or her son? No; and I was, moreover, convinced that, in spite

of my recent services, I should find no friends in Prague. One who

has taken the oath to Louis-Philippe and who nevertheless praises the

fatal Ordinances must be more acceptable to Charles X. than I, who have

never forsworn myself. It is too much for a king that one should twice

have been in the right: flattering treachery is preferred to austere

devotion. I went, therefore, going to Prague even as the Sicilian

soldier who was hung in Paris at the time of the League went to the

gallows; the confessor of the Neapolitans tried to put heart into him

by saying on the way:

"_Allegramente! Allegramente!_"

Thus sped my thoughts while the horses were drawing me onwards;

but, when I thought of the misfortunes of the mother of Henry V., I

reproached myself for my regrets.

The banks of the Rhine flying along my carriage diverted me pleasantly:

when one looks at a landscape out of a window, even though he be

dreaming of other things, a reflection of the picture which he has

under his eyes nevertheless enters into his mind. We drove through

meadows decked with the flowers of May; the green was fresh in the

woods, orchards and hedges. Horses, donkeys and cows, pigs, dogs and

sheep, hens and pigeons, geese and turkeys were in the fields with

their masters. The Rhine, that warlike stream, seemed pleased in the

midst of that pastoral scene, like an old soldier quartered, on his

march, on husbandmen.

The next morning, the 18th of May, before reaching Schaffhausen, I was

driven to the Falls of the Rhine; I stole a few moments from the fall

of kingdoms to improve myself at its image. I should have done well for

myself to end my days in the castle overlooking the chasm. I placed at

Niagara the dream of Atala, not yet realized; I met at Tivoli another

dream, already passed away upon earth: who knows if, in the keep

standing over the Falls of the Rhine, I should not have found a fairer

vision which, but now wandering on its banks, would have consoled me

for all the shades that I had lost!