The Prince, taken away by his governor, invited me to his

history-lesson, fixed for next Monday, at eleven o'clock in the

morning. Madame de Gontaut withdrew with Mademoiselle. Then began a

scene of another kind: the future Royalty, in the person of a child,

had just drawn me into its games; and now the past Royalty, in the

person of an old man, made me assist at its diversions. A rubber of

whist, lighted by two candles in the corner of a dark room, began

between the King and the Dauphin and the Duc de Blacas and the Cardinal

de Latil. I was the only onlooker, with O'Heguerty, the equerry.

Through the windows, whose shutters were not closed, the twilight

came to mingle its pallor with that of the candles: the Monarchy was

dying out between those two expiring lights. Profound silence reigned,

but for the shuffling of the cards and a few exclamations from the

King, who was angry. Cards were renewed after the Latins in order to

solace the adversity of Charles VI.[583]: but there is no Ogier[584]

nor Lahire[585] nowadays to give his name, under Charles X., to those

distractions of misfortune.

When the cards were over, the King wished me good-night I went through

the deserted and gloomy rooms through which I had passed on the

previous evening, the same stairs, the same court-yards, the same

guards, and, descending the slope of the hill, I returned to my inn,

after losing my way in the streets and the dark. Charles X. remained

shut up in the black mass which I had just left: nothing can equal the

sadness of his forlornness and of his years.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had great need of my bed; but the Baron Capelle[586], newly-arrived

from Holland, was lodged in a room next to mine and came hurrying to me.

When the torrent falls from on high, the abyss which it hollows out and

in which it is swallowed up fixes one's gaze and leaves one dumb; but I

have neither patience nor pity to waste on the ministers whose feeble

hands let the crown of St. Louis fall into the whirl-pool, as though

the waves would carry it back! Those of his ministers who claim to have

opposed the Ordinances are the most guilty; those who say that they

were the most moderate are the least innocent: if they saw so clearly,

why did they not resign?

"They did not want to abandon the King; Monsieur le Dauphin treated

them as cowards."

A poor evasion; they were unable to tear themselves from their

portfolios. Whatever they may say, there is nothing else at the bottom

of that immense catastrophe. And what a fine composure after the event.

One[587] is scribbling about the history of England, after bringing

the history of France to so pretty a plight; the other[588] laments

the life and death of the Duc de Reichstadt, after sending the Duc de

Bordeaux to Prague.

I knew M. Capelle: it is only fair to remember that he had remained

poor; his pretensions did not exceed his value; he would very readily

have said, with Lucian:

"If you come to listen to me in the hope of smelling amber and hearing

the song of the swan, I call the gods to witness that I have never

spoken of myself in terms so magnificent."

At the present day, modesty is a rare quality and the only wrong that

M. Capelle did was to allow himself to be appointed a minister.

[Sidenote: The Baron de Damas.]

I received a visit from M. le Baron de Damas: the virtues of that brave

officer had flown to his head; a religious congestion was puzzling

his brain. There are some associations which are fatal: the Duc de

Rivière[589], when dying, recommended M. de Damas as Governor to

the Duc de Bordeaux; the Prince de Polignac was a member of that set

Incapacity is a form of freemasonry which has its lodges in every

country; that secret society has oubliettes of which it opens the plugs

and in which it causes States to disappear.

The domestic condition came so naturally to the Court that M. de Damas,

when choosing M. La Villatte, would never grant him any title other

than that of First Groom of the Bed-chamber to Monseigneur le Duc de

Bordeaux. I took a liking at first sight to this grey-mustachioed

soldier, whose business it was, like a faithful dog, to bark round his

sheep. He belonged to those loyal "grenade-throwers" whom the terrible

Maréchal de Montluc[590] used to esteem, saying:

"They have no back-shop in them."

M. La Villatte will be dismissed because of his sincerity, not because

of his bluntness: one can put up with barrack-room bluntness; often

adulation in camp imparts an air of independence to flattery. But, with

the brave old soldier of whom I am speaking, it was all frankness; he

would have taken off his mustachios with honour to himself, if he had

borrowed 30,000 piastres on them like João de Castro[591]. His crabbed

face was only the expression of liberty; he merely informed one, by his

appearance, that he was ready. Before taking the field with their army,

the Florentines used to warn the enemy of their intention by the sound

of the bell Martinella.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had intended to hear Mass at the Cathedral, within the castle

precincts, but, being detained by visitors, I had time only to go to

what was formerly the Jesuit Church. They were singing to an organ

accompaniment A woman near me had a voice which made me look round at

her. At the communion, she covered her face with her two hands and did

not approach the Holy Table.

Alas, I have already explored many churches in the four quarters

of the globe, without being able to lay aside, even at the Tomb of

the Saviour, the rough hair-cloth of my thoughts! I have depicted

Aben-Hamet wandering in the Christian mosque at Cordova:

"He caught a glimpse, at the foot of a pillar, of a motionless figure

which he took, at first sight, for a statue on a tomb-stone."

The original of that knight of whom Aben-Hamet caught sight was a

religious whom I had met in the church of the Escorial and whom I had

envied his faith. Who knows, however, the storms deep down in that

contemplative soul or what entreaty ascended towards the "holy and

innocent pontiff?" I had been admiring, in the unfrequented sacristy

of the Escorial, one of Murillo's most beautiful Virgins; I was with a

woman: it was she who first showed me the monk deaf to the sound of the

passions that passed through the formidable silence of the sanctuary

around him.

After Mass in Prague, I sent for a calash; I took the road laid out

along the old fortifications by which carriages drive up to the Castle.

They were busy marking out gardens on the ramparts: the euphony of

a forest will take the place here of the noise of the Battle of

Prague[592]; the whole will be very handsome in forty years or so: God

grant that Henry V. may not stay here long enough to enjoy the shade of

a leaf as yet unborn[593]!

Having to dine at the Governor's to-morrow, I thought that it would be

polite to go to call on Madame la Comtesse de Chotek: I should have

thought her amiable and pretty, even if she had not quoted passages

from writings to me from memory.

[Sidenote: General Skrzynecki.]

I went to Madame de Guiche's evening, where I met General

Skrzynecki[594] and his wife. He told me the story of the Polish

Insurrection and the Battle of Ostrolenka. When I rose to go, the

general asked me to permit him to press my "venerable hand" and to

embrace the "patriarch of the liberty of the press;" his wife wished to

embrace in me the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: the Monarchy

accepted with all its heart the fraternal kiss of the Republic. I felt

an honest man's satisfaction: I was glad to rouse noble sympathies, on

different scores, in two foreign hearts; to be pressed, in turn, to the

breast of husband and wife, through liberty and religion.

On Monday the 27th, in the morning, the "Opposition" came to tell me

that I could not see the young Prince: M. de Damas had tired his pupil

by dragging him from church to church to the Stations of the Jubilee.

This weariness served as a pretext for a holiday and was made to

justify a trip to the country: they wanted to hide the child from me. I

spent the morning in visiting the town. At five o'clock, I went to dine

at Count Chotek's.

The house belonging to Count Chotek was built by his father[595],

who was also Grand Burgrave of Bohemia, and presents externally the

form of a Gothic chapel: nothing is original nowadays, everything is

copied. The drawing-room gives a view over the gardens; they slope

down into a valley: the light is always dull, the soil greyish, as in

those many-cornered recesses of the mountains of the North, where gaunt

nature wears the hair-shirt.

The table was laid under the trees in the "pleasure-ground[596]." We

dined without our hats: my head, which so many storms have insulted by

carrying off my hair, was sensitive to the breath of the wind. While

I strove to keep my mind on my dinner, I could not help watching the

birds and clouds that flew over the banquet: passengers embarked on the

breezes and having secret relations with my destinies; travellers, the

objects of my envy, whose aerial course my eyes cannot follow without a

sort of emotion. I was more at home with those parasites wandering in

the sky than with the guests seated near me on the earth: happy those

anchorites who had a raven for _dapifer!_

I cannot speak to you of Prague society, because I met it only at that

dinner. There was a woman present who was very much in the fashion in

Vienna and very witty, I was told; she seemed to me an acrimonious and

foolish person, although she still had a certain youthfulness, like

those trees which keep in summer the dried clusters of the flower which

they have borne in spring.

[Sidenote: Society in Prague.]

I know, therefore, of the manners of this country only those of the

sixteenth century, as told by Bassompierre[597]: he loved Anna Esther,

eighteen years of age and six months a widow. He spent five days and

six nights in disguise and hidden in a room with his mistress. He

played tennis in Hradschin with Wallenstein. Being neither Wallenstein

nor Bassompierre, I laid claim to neither empire nor love. The modern

Esthers ask for Assueruses who are able, disguised though they be, to

get rid of their dominoes at night: one does not lay aside the mask of

the years.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

After the dinner was over, at seven o'clock, I waited on the King; I

there met the same persons as before, excepting M. le Duc de Bordeaux,

who was said to be ailing from his Stations on the Sunday. The King was

half reclining on a sofa, and Mademoiselle sitting on a chair right up

against the knees of Charles X., who was stroking his grand-daughter's

arm and telling her stories. The young Princess listened attentively:

when I appeared, she looked at me with the smile of a reasonable person

who should say:

"I must do something to amuse my grand-papa."

"Chateaubriand," exclaimed the King, "I did not see you yesterday!"

"Sire, I was told too late that Your Majesty had done me the honour to

name me for your dinner-party: also, it was Whit Sunday, a day on which

I am not allowed to see Your Majesty."

"How is that?" asked the King.

"Sire, it was on Whit Sunday, nine years ago, that, when I came to pay

my Court to you, they forbade me your door."

Charles X. seemed touched:

"They won't drive you away from the Castle of Prague."

"No, Sire, for I do not see those good servants here who showed me out

on the day of prosperity."

The whist-playing began and the day came to an end. After the rubber, I

returned the Duc de Blacas' visit:

"The King," he said, "has told me that we were to have a talk."

I replied that, as the King had not thought it expedient to summon his

Council, before which I could have set forth my ideas regarding the

future of France and the majority of the Duc de Bordeaux, I had nothing

more to say.

"His Majesty has no council," rejoined the Duc de Blacas with a

tremulous laugh and a self-satisfied look in his eyes; "he has no one

but me, absolutely no one."

The Grand-master of the Wardrobe has the highest opinion of himself: a

French complaint. To hear him speak, he does everything, he is equal to

everything: he married the Duchesse de Berry; he does what he pleases

with the Kings; he leads Metternich by the nose; he has Nesselrode[598]

under his thumb; he reigns in Italy; he has carved his name on an

obelisk in Rome; he has the keys of the conclaves in his pocket; the

three last Popes owe their elevation to him; he knows public opinion

so well, he measures his ambition so well by his strength that, when

accompanying Madame la Duchesse de Berry, he had himself given a

diploma appointing him Head of the Council of Regency, Prime Minister

and Minister of Foreign Affairs! And that is how those poor people

understand France and the times.

Nevertheless, M. de Blacas is the most intelligent and the most

moderate of the band. In conversation he is reasonable; he always

agrees with you:

"Is that what you think? It is just what I was saying yesterday. We

have absolutely the same ideas!"

He bemoans his slavery; he is tired of business, he would like to live

in an unknown corner of the earth, to die there in peace, far from the

world. As to his influence with Charles X., don't speak of it to him;

they think that he sways Charles X.: they are wrong! He can do nothing

with the King! The King refuses a thing in the morning; at night he

grants the same thing, and nobody knows why he has changed his mind,

and so on. When M. de Blacas tells you these tales, he is telling

the truth, because he never thwarts the King; but he is not sincere,

because he inspires Charles X. only with those wishes which are in

accordance with that Prince's inclinations.

[Sidenote: The Duc de Blacas.]

For the rest, M. de Blacas possesses courage and honour; he is not

without generosity; he is devoted and faithful. By rubbing himself

against the high aristocracy and acquiring wealth, he has caught the

ways of both. He is very well-born; he comes of a poor, but ancient

house, known in poetry and arms[599]. His stiff and formal manners,

his assurance, his strictness in matters of etiquette preserve for his

masters an air of nobility which one loses too easily in misfortune: at

least, in the Museum in Prague, the inflexibility of a suit of armour

holds erect a body which would fall without it M. de Blacas does not

lack a certain energy; he dispatches ordinary affairs quickly; he

is orderly and methodical. A fairly enlightened connoisseur in some

branches of archaeology, a lover of the arts without imagination and

an icy libertine, he does not grow excited even over his passions;

his coolness would be a statesmanlike quality if his coolness were

other than his confidence in his genius, and his genius betrays him:

one feels in him the abortive great lord, even as one feels it in his

fellow-countryman, La Valette, Duc d'Épernon[600].

Either there will or there will not be a restoration: if there is a

restoration, M. de Blacas will come back with places and honours;

if there is no restoration, the fortune of the Grand-master of the

Wardrobe is almost all invested out of France; Charles X. and Louis

XIX. will be dead; he, M. de Blacas, will be very old: his children

will remain the companions of the exiled Prince, illustrious foreigners

at foreign Courts. Praise God for all things!

Thus the Revolution, which exalted and ruined Bonaparte, will have

enriched M. de Blacas: that makes amends. M. de Blacas, with his long,

impassive, colourless face, is the Monarchy's undertaker-in-ordinary:

he buried it at Hartwell, he buried it at Ghent, he buried it again

in Edinburgh and he will bury it again in Prague or elsewhere, always

attending to the remains of the high and mighty defunct, like those

peasants on the coasts who pick up the wreckage which the sea casts up

on its shores.

PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

On Monday the 28th of May, as the history lesson at which I was to have

been present at eleven o'clock did not take place, I found myself free

to go through, or, rather, to revisit the town which I had already

seen and seen again in coming and going. I do not know why I had

imagined that Prague was nestled in a gap of mountains that threw their

black shadow over a huddled kettleful of houses. Prague is a bright

city, in which twenty-five or thirty graceful towers and steeples

rise up to the sky; its architecture reminds one of a town of the

Renascence. The long sway of the Emperors over the Cisalpine countries

filled Germany with artists from those countries; the Austrian villages

are villages of Lombardy, Tuscany or the Venetian main-land: one would

think one's self under the roof of an Italian peasant, if, in the

farm-houses, with their great bare rooms, a stove did not take the

place of the sun.

The view enjoyed from the windows of the Castle is agreeable: on

one side, you see the orchards of a cool valley, with green slopes,

enclosed by the denticulated walls of the town, which run down to the

Moldau, almost as the walls of Rome run from the Vatican down to the

Tiber; on the other side, you perceive the city, cut in two by the

river, which is beautified by an island set up stream and embraces

another island down stream, after leaving the northern suburb. The

Moldau flows into the Elbe. A boat might have taken me on board at the

bridge of Prague and landed me at the Pont-Royal in Paris. I am not the

work of the ages and kings; I have neither the weight nor the duration

of the obelisk[601] which the Nile is now sending to the Seine; the

girdle of the Vestal of the Tiber would be strong enough to tow my

galley.

The Moldau Bridge, which was first built in wood, in 795, by Mnata,

has been rebuilt, at different times, in stone. While I was taking the

measure of this bridge, Charles X. was walking on the pavement; he

carried an umbrella; his son accompanied him like a paid _cicerone._ I

had said, in the _Conservateur_, that "men would go to the window to

see the Monarchy pass:" I saw it pass on the bridge of Prague.

In the constructions of which Hradschin is composed one sees historic

halls, museums hung with the restored portraits and the furbished arms

of the Dukes and Kings of Bohemia. Not far from the shapeless masses,

there stands detached against the sky a pretty building decked with

one of the graceful porticoes of the Cinquecento: this architecture

has the drawback of being out of harmony with the climate. If at least

one could, during the Bohemian winter, put those Italian palaces in

the hot-house, with the palm-trees? I was always preoccupied with the

thought of the cold which they must feel at night.

[Sidenote: History of Prague.]

Prague, often besieged, taken and re-taken, is known to us, in a

military respect, by the battle called after it and by the retreat

in which Vauvenargues[602] took part. The bulwarks of the town are

demolished. The moat of the Castle, on the side of the high plane,

forms a deep and narrow groove, now planted with poplars. At the

time of the Thirty Years' War, this moat was filled with water. The

Protestants, having penetrated into the Castle, on the 23rd of May

1618, threw two Catholic lords, together with the Secretary of State,

out of window: the three divers saved their lives. The Secretary, like

a well-bred man, begged a thousand pardons of one of the lords for his

rudeness in falling on his head. In this present month of May 1833, we

are no longer so polite: I am not sure what I should say in a similar

case, although I have been a secretary of State myself.

Tycho Brahe died in Prague[603]: would you, for all his knowledge, have

a false nose in wax or silver as he did? Tycho consoled himself in

Bohemia, like Charles X., by contemplating the heavens; the astronomer

admired the work, the King adores the Workman. The star which appeared

in 1572 (and died out in 1574) and which passed successively from

dazzling white to the red yellow of Mars and the leaden white of Saturn

presented to Tycho's observations the spectacle of the conflagration

of a world. What is the revolution whose breath blew the brother of

Louis XVI. to the tomb of the Danish Newton beside the destruction of a

globe, accomplished in less than two years?

General Moreau came to Prague to concert with the Emperor of Russia a

restoration which he, Moreau, did not live to see.

If Prague were by the sea-side, nothing would be more charming; and

Shakespeare, striking Bohemia with his wand turns it into a shipping

country:

"Thou art perfect then," says Antigonus to a Mariner in the _Winter's

Tale_:

Thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon

The deserts of Bohemia?

Antigonus lands, charged to abandon a little girl, to whom he addresses

these words:

Blossom, speed thee well!

. . . . . . . . .

. . The storm begins

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . Thou art like to have

A lullaby too rough[604].

Does not Shakespeare seem to have told in advance the story of the

Princesse Louise, that young "blossom," that new Perdita transported to

the deserts of Bohemia?

PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

Confusion, blood, catastrophes compose the history of Bohemia; her

dukes and kings, in the midst of civil wars and foreign wars, fight

with their subjects or come to logger-heads with the Dukes and Kings of

Silesia, Saxony, Poland, Moravia, Hungary, Austria and Bavaria.

During the reign of Wenceslaus VI.[605], who spitted his cook for

roasting a hare badly, arose John Huss, who, having studied at Oxford,

brought back the doctrine of Wyclif[606]. The Protestants, who were

looking for ancestors everywhere without being able to find any, report

that, from the top of his funeral pile, John sang and prophesied the

coming of Luther:

"The world filled with acidity," says Bossuet, "gave birth to

Luther and Calvin, who canton Christendom."

From the Christian and pagan struggles, the precocious heresies of

Bohemia, the importation of foreign interests and foreign manners,

resulted a state of confusion favourable to lying. Bohemia passed as

the native land of the sorcerers.

Some old poems, discovered, in 1817, by M. Hanka[607], the Librarian of

the Prague Museum, in the archives of the church at Königinhof, have

become famous. A young man whom I have pleasure in naming, the son of

an illustrious scholar, M. Ampère, has made known the spirit of those

lays. Czelakovsky[608] has spread popular songs in the Slav idiom.

The Poles think the Bohemian dialect effeminate: it is the quarrel of

the Doric and Ionic. The Lower Breton of Vannes treats the Lower Breton

of Tréguier as a barbarian. Slav as well as Magyar lends itself to the

translation of all languages: my poor _Atala_ has been rigged out in a

robe of Hungarian point-lace; she also wears an Armenian dolman and an

Arab veil.

[Sidenote: Bohemian literature.]

There is another literature that has flourished in Bohemia: the modern

Latin literature. The prince of this literature, Bohuslas Hassenstein,

Baron Lobkowitz[609], born in 1462, took ship, in 1490, in Venice and

visited Greece, Syria, Arabia and Egypt Lobkowitz preceded me in those

celebrated places by three hundred and sixteen years and, like Lord

Byron, sang his pilgrimage. With what a difference in mind, heart,

thoughts, manners have we, at an interval of over three centuries,

meditated on the same ruins and under the same sun: Lobkowitz, the

Bohemian; Byron, the Englishman; and I, the child of France!

At the time of Lobkowitz' voyage, wonderful monuments, since

overthrown, were standing. It must have been an astonishing spectacle,

that of barbarism in all its strength, holding civilization on the

ground under its feet, the janissaries of Mahomet II.[610] drunk with

opium, victories and women, scimitar in hand, their foreheads girt

with the blood-stained turban, drawn up in line for the assault on the

rubbish of Egypt and Greece: and I have seen the same barbarism, among

the same ruins, struggling under the feet of civilization.

As I surveyed the town and suburbs of Prague, the things which I have

just told came to apply themselves on my memory like transfers on a

canvas. But, in whatever corner I happened to be, I saw Hradschin and

the King of France leaning on the windows of that castle, like a ghost

over-towering all those shades.

PRAGUE, 29 _May_ 1833.

Having finished my review of Prague, I went, on the 29th of May, to

dine at the Castle, at six o'clock. The King was in high spirits. When

we left the table, sitting down on the sofa in the drawing-room, he

said:

"Chateaubriand, do you know that the _National_ which arrived this

morning declares that I had the right to issue my Ordinances?"

"Sire," I replied, "Your Majesty is making innuendoes against me."

The King, undecided, hesitated; then, taking his resolution:

"I have something on my mind: you dealt me devilish hard measure in the

first part of your speech in the House of Peers." And at once the King,

without giving me the time to answer, cried, "Oh, the end, the end!...

The empty grave at Saint-Denis.... That was admirable! That was very

fine, very fine! Do not let us talk of it any more. I did not want to

keep that... it's done with, it's done with." And he excused himself

for venturing to risk those few words. I kissed the royal hand with

pious respect.

"Let me tell you," Charles X. resumed: "perhaps I was wrong not to

defend myself at Rambouillet; I still had great resources... but I did

not want blood to flow for me; I retired."

I did not combat this noble excuse; I replied:

"Sire, Bonaparte retired twice like Your Majesty, in order not to

prolong the ills of France."

I thus put the weakness of my old King under the shelter of Napoleon's

glory.

The children arrived and we went up to them. The King spoke of

Mademoiselle's age:

"What, you little doll," he exclaimed, "are you fourteen already?"

"Oh, when I'm fifteen!" said Mademoiselle.

"Well, what will you do then?"

Mademoiselle stopped short.

Charles X. was telling something:

"I don't remember that," said the Duc de Bordeaux.

"I should think not," said the King; "it happened on the very day when

you were born."

"Oh," replied Henry, "so it's very long ago!"

Mademoiselle, leaning her head a little on one shoulder, lifting her

face towards her brother, while casting a glance aslant at me, said,

with an ironical little look:

"Is it so very long, then, since you were born?"

The children retired; I took leave of the orphan: I was to start

during the night I said good-bye to him in French, English and German.

How many languages will Henry learn in which to tell his wandering

miseries, to ask for bread and a shelter from the stranger?

When the rubber began, I took His Majesty's orders:

"You will see Madame la Dauphine at Carlsbad," said Charles X. "A good

journey, my dear Chateaubriand. We shall read about you in the papers."

I went from door to door to pay my last respects to the inhabitants of

the Castle. I saw the young Princess again at Madame de Gontaut's; she

gave me a letter for her mother at the foot of which were a few lines

from Henry.

[Sidenote: I take leave of my Kings.]

I was to have left at five o'clock, on the morning of the 30th; Count

Chotek had had the goodness to order horses along the road: a jobbing

transaction detained me till noon. I was the bearer of a letter of

credit for 2000 francs payable in Prague; I had called upon a fat

little monkey of a Jew who uttered cries of admiration when he saw me.

He summoned his wife to his aid; she ran, or, rather, rolled up to

my feet; she sat down opposite me, quite short, fat and black, with

two arms like fins, staring at me with her round eyes: if the Messiah

had come in by the window, this Rachel would not have appeared more

delighted; I thought myself threatened with an "Hallelujah." The broker

offered me his fortune, letters of credit for the whole extent of the

Israelitish dispersion; he added that he would send me my 2000 francs

to my hotel.

The money was not paid on the evening of the 29th; on the 30th, in

the morning, when the horses were already put to, came a clerk with a

parcel of bills, paper of different sources, which loses more or less

on change and which is not current outside the Austrian States. My

account was made out on a bill which said, in discharge, "good money."

I was astounded:

"What good is this to me?" I asked the clerk. "How am I to pay the

posting and my hotel-bills with this paper?"

The clerk ran off in search of explanations. Another clerk came and

made me endless calculations. I sent back the second clerk; a third

brought me cash in the form of Brabant crowns. I set out, thenceforth

on my guard against the affection with which I might inspire the

daughters of Jerusalem.

My calash was surrounded, under the gate-way, by the people of the

hotel, among whom squeezed a pretty Saxon servant-girl, who used to run

off to a piano every time she could snatch a moment between two rings

at the bell: just ask Léonarde of Limousin, or Fanchon of Picardy to

sing or play _Tanti palpiti_ to you on the piano, or _Moses' Prayer!_

PRAGUE AND ON THE ROAD, 29 _and_ 30 _May_ 1833.

I had come to Prague with the greatest apprehension. I had said to

myself:

"To ruin us, it is often enough for God to place our own destinies

in our hands; God works miracles in men's favour, but He leaves the

conduct of these to them; but for which it would be He that would

govern in person: now men make the fruits of those miracles abortive.

Crime is not always punished in this world; mistakes always. Crime is

part of the infinite and general nature of men; Heaven alone knows

the depth of it and sometimes reserves its punishment to Itself. The

mistakes of a limited and accidental nature come within the scope of

the narrow justice of the earth: that is why it would be possible for

the last mistakes of the Monarchy to be rigorously punished by men."

I had said to myself also:

"Royal families have been seen to fall into irreparable errors, by

becoming infatuated with a false idea of their own nature: at one

time they look upon themselves as divine and exceptional families,

at another as mortal and private families; they set themselves above

the common law or within that law, as the case may require. When they

violate political constitutions, they cry that they have the right to

do so, that they are the fount of the law, that they cannot be judged

by ordinary rules. When they want to make a domestic mistake, to give

a dangerous education, for instance, to the Heir to the Throne, they

reply to the protests made:

"'A private person can act towards his children as he pleases, and we

cannot!'"

[Sidenote: Reflections on the road.]

Well no, you cannot: you are neither a divine family, nor a private

family; you are a public family; you belong to society. The mistakes

made by royalty do not affect royalty alone; they are detrimental to

the whole nation: a king trips and goes away; but does a nation go

away? Does it suffer no hurt? Are not those victims of their honour

who have remained attached to the absent Royalty interrupted in their

careers, persecuted in the persons of their kin, trammelled in their

liberty, threatened in their lives? Once more, the Royalty is not a

private possession, it is a public property, held in joint tenancy,

and third parties are involved in the fortune of the Throne. I feared

that, in the confusion inseparable from misfortune, the Royalty had not

perceived these truths and had done nothing to come back to them at the

expedient time.

On the other hand, while recognising the immense advantages of the

Salic Law, I did not conceal from myself the fact that the duration of

a House has some serious draw-backs for both nations and kings: for the

nations, because it blends their destiny too closely with that of the

kings; for the kings, because permanent power intoxicates them; they

lose earthly notions: all that is not a part of their altars, prostrate

prayers, humble vows, profound abasement, is impiousness. Misfortune

teaches them nothing: adversity is but a coarse plebeian who fails to

show them respect, and catastrophes are, for them, but so many displays

of insolence.

I had fortunately deceived myself: I did not find Charles X. in those

high errors which take their rise at the pinnacle of society; I found

him only in the common illusions of an unexpected accident, which are

more easily explained. Everything serves to console the self-esteem of

the brother of Louis XVIII.; he sees the political world falling into

decay, and, with some justice, he attributes this decay to his epoch,

not to himself: did not Louis XVI. perish? Did not the Republic fall?

Was not Bonaparte compelled twice to forsake the scene of his glory

and did he not go to die a captive on a rock? Are not the thrones of

Europe threatened? What, then, could he, Charles X., do more than those

overthrown powers? He wanted to defend himself against his enemies;

he was warned of the danger by his police and by public symptoms: he

took the initiative; he attacked so as not to be attacked. Did not

the heroes of the three riots admit that they were conspiring, that

they had been playing a part for fifteen years? Well then, Charles

thought that it was his duty to make an effort; he tried to save the

French Legitimacy and, with it, the European Legitimacy: he gave battle

and lost; he sacrificed himself to save the monarchies; that is all:

Napoleon had his Waterloo, Charles X. his Days of July.

This is the light in which things present themselves to the unfortunate

Monarch; he remains immutable, leaning upon events which wedge in

and fasten down his mind. By dint of his immovability, he achieves a

certain greatness: a man of imagination, he listens to you, he does not

get angry with your ideas, he appears to enter into them and does not

enter into them at all. There are certain general axioms which a man

puts in front of himself like gabions; taking up his position behind

that shelter, he takes shots from there at intellects which march ahead.

The mistake of many is to persuade themselves, according to events

repeated in history, that mankind is always in its primitive place;

they confound passions and ideas: the first are the same in every

century, the second change in successive ages. If the material effects

of certain actions are alike at different periods, the causes which

have produced them vary.

Charles X. looks upon himself as a principle and, in fact, there are

men who, by dint of living with fixed ideas, alike from generation

to generation, are no longer more than so many monuments. Certain

individuals, through the lapse of time and their own preponderance,

become "things transformed into persons;" those individuals perish when

those things come to perish: Brutus and Cato were the Roman Republic

incarnate; they could not survive it, any more than the heart can beat

when the blood ceases to flow.

In former days, I drew this portrait of Charles X.:

"You have seen him for ten years, that loyal subject, that

respectful brother, that tender father, so greatly afflicted in one

of his sons, so greatly consoled by the other! You know him, this

Bourbon who was the first to come after our misfortunes, a worthy

herald of Old France, to throw himself between you and Europe, with

a branch of lilies in his hand! Your eyes are fixed with love and

gladness on this Prince who, in the fulness of age, has preserved

the charm and the noble elegance of youth and who now, adorned

with the diadem, is still 'but one Frenchman the more in the midst

of you!' You repeat with emotion so many happy phrases escaped from

this new Monarch, who derives from the loyalty of his heart the

grace of speaking well!

"Where is that one among us who would not trust him with his

life, his fortune, his honour? That man, whom we would all wish

to have as our friend, we have to-day as our King. Ah, let us try

to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May the crown lie

light upon the whitened head of that Christian Knight! Pious as

Louis XII.[611], courteous as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may

he be happy with all the happiness which he has lacked during so

many long years! May the throne, on which so many monarchs have

encountered storms, be to him a place of rest[612]!"

Elsewhere I have again celebrated the same Prince: the model has only

grown older, but one recognises it in the youthful touches of the

portrait; age withers us by taking from us a certain truth of poetry

which gives colour and bloom to our faces and yet one loves, in spite

of one's self, the face which has faded at the same time as our own

features. I have sung hymns to the House of Henry IV.; I would begin

them again with all my heart, while combating anew the mistakes of the

Legitimacy and bringing down upon myself anew its disgraces, if it were

destined to rise again. The reason of this is that the Constitutional

Legitimate Royalty has always appeared to me the gentlest and safest

road to entire liberty. I believed and I should still believe that

I was playing the part of a good citizen even when exaggerating the

advantages of that royalty, in order to give it, if so much should

depend on me, the duration necessary for the accomplishment of the

gradual transformation of society and manners.

[Sidenote: Memoires of Charles X.]

I am doing a service to the memory of Charles X. by opposing the

pure and simple truth to what will be said of him in the future. The

hostility of parties will represent him as a man faithless to his

oaths and the violator of the public liberties: he is nothing of the

sort. He acted in good faith in attacking the Charter; he did not, nor

did he need to think himself forsworn; he had the firm intention of

restoring the Charter after he had "saved" it, in his own way and as he

understood it.

Charles X. is what I have described him to be: mild, although subject

to anger, kind and affectionate to his intimates, lovable, easy-going,

free from malice, having all the knightly qualities, devotion,

nobleness, an elegant courtesy, mixed, however, with weakness, which

does not exclude passive courage and the glory of a fine death;

incapable of carrying out to the end a good or bad resolution; built

up of the prejudices of his century and his rank; in ordinary times,

a proper king; in extraordinary times, a man of perdition, not of

misfortune.

As for the Duc de Bordeaux, they would like, at Hradschin, to make

of him a King ever on horse-back, ever flourishing his sword. It is

necessary, no doubt, that he should be brave; but it is a mistake to

imagine that in these times the right of conquest will be recognised,

that it would be enough to be Henry IV. to reascend the throne. Without

courage, one cannot reign; but one no longer reigns with courage alone:

Bonaparte has killed the authority of victory.

An extraordinary part might be conceived by Henry V.; I will suppose

that, at the age of twenty, he feels his position and says to himself:

"I can no longer remain inactive; I have the duties of my Blood to

fulfil towards the past; but am I then obliged to trouble France

because of myself alone? Must I weigh upon centuries yet to come with

all the weight of the centuries that are done with? Let us solve the

question; let us inspire with regrets those who unjustly outlawed me in

my childhood; let us show them what I could be. It but depends on me to

devote myself to my country by consecrating anew, whatever be the issue

of the contest, the principle of the hereditary monarchies."

Then the son of St. Louis would land in France with a double idea of

glory and sacrifice; he would descend upon it with the firm resolve to

remain there with a crown upon his head or a bullet in his heart: in

the latter case, his inheritance would go to Philip. The triumphant

life or the sublime death of Henry V. would restore the Legitimacy,

stripped only of that which the century no longer understands and which

no longer suits the times. For the rest, supposing the sacrifice of my

young Prince made, he would not have made it for me: after the death

of Henry V. without children, I should never recognise a monarch in

France!

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the elder branch.]

I have abandoned myself to these dreams, but what I suppose in relation

to the resolution to be taken by Henry is impossible: by arguing in

this wise, I placed myself, in thought, in an order of things above us,

an order which would be natural at a time of elevation and magnanimity,

but which would to-day look like the exaltation of romance; it is as

though I were to speak at the present time in favour of going back to

the Crusades, whereas we have become common-place in the sad reality

of a deteriorated human nature. Such is the disposition of men's souls

that Henry V. would encounter invincible obstacles in the apathy of

France within and in the royalties without. He will therefore have

to submit, to consent to await events, unless indeed he decided on a

part which men would not fail to brand as that of an adventurer. He

will have to enter into the sequence of ordinary facts and see the

difficulties which surround him, without, however, allowing them to

overwhelm him.

The Bourbons held good after the Empire, because they were succeeding

an arbitrary government: can one see Henry transported from Prague to

the Louvre after men have grown used to the most complete liberty?

The French nation does not, at bottom, love that liberty; but it

adores equality: it admits absolutism only for and through itself and

its vanity commands it to obey only what it imposes upon itself. The

Charter made a vain attempt to cause two nations which had become

foreign to one another to live under the same law: Ancient France

and Modern France; how would you make the two Frances understand one

another, now that prejudices have increased? You would never appease

men's minds by placing incontestable truths under their eyes.

To listen to passion or ignorance, the Bourbons are the authors of all

our misfortunes; to reinstate the Elder Branch would mean to restore

the domination of the castles; the Bourbons are the abettors and

accomplices of those oppressive treaties of which, with good reason, I

never ceased to complain: and yet nothing could be more absurd than all

those accusations, in which both dates are forgotten and facts grossly

distorted. The Restoration exercised no influence in diplomatic acts

except at the time of the first invasion. It is admitted that men did

not want that Restoration, because they were treating with Bonaparte at

Châtillon, and that, had he pleased, he could have remained Emperor

of the French. When his genius proved obstinate, for want of anything

better, they took the Bourbons, who were on the spot Monsieur, as

Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, then took a certain part in the

transactions of the day; we have seen, in the life of Alexander, what

the Treaty of Paris of 1814 left to us.

In 1815, there was no longer any question of the Bourbons; they had

nothing to do with the predatory contracts of the second invasion:

those contracts were the result of the escape from Elba. In Vienna, the

Allies declared that they were only uniting against one man; that they

did not intend to impose any sort of master nor any kind of government

upon France. Alexander even suggested to the Congress another King than

Louis XVIII. If the latter had not, by coming to seat himself in the

Tuileries, hastened to snatch his throne, he would never have reigned.

The treaties of 1815 were abominable for the very reason that men

refused to hearken to the voice of the Legitimacy, and it was in order

to destroy those same treaties that I wanted to rebuild our power in

Spain.

The only moment at which we again find the spirit of the Restoration is

at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle; the Allies had agreed to take from

us our northern and eastern provinces: M. de Richelieu intervened. The

Tsar, touched by our misfortune and influenced by his leanings towards

fairness, handed to M. le Duc de Richelieu the map of France on which

the fatal line had been drawn. I have, with my own eyes, seen that map

of Styx in the hands of Madame de Montcalm, the sister of the noble

negociator[613].

With France occupied as she was, our fortified towns garrisoned by

foreign troops, could we have resisted? Once deprived of our military

departments, how long should we have groaned under conquest? If we

had had a sovereign of a new family, a prince at second-hand, he

would never have been respected. Among the Allies, some bowed before

the illusion of a great House, others thought that, under a worn-out

authority, the Kingdom would lose its energy and cease to be an object

of anxiety: Cobbett[614] himself agrees to this in his Letter. It is

therefore a monstrous piece of ingratitude to refuse to see that, if we

are still Old Gaul, we owe it to the blood which we have cursed most

loudly. That blood which, since eight centuries, had flowed in the very

veins of France, that blood which made her what she is saved her once

more. Why persist in eternally denying the facts? They took advantage

of victory against us, even as we had taken advantage of it against

Europe. Our soldiers had gone to Russia; they brought after them, upon

their footsteps, the soldiers who had fled before them. After action,

reaction: that is the law. That makes no difference to the glory of

Bonaparte, an isolated glory which remains complete; that makes no

difference to our national glory, all covered as it is with the dust of

Europe, whose towers have been swept by our flags. It was unnecessary,

in a moment of but too justifiable spite, to go in search of any cause

for our misfortunes other than the real cause. So far from their being

that cause, had we not had the Bourbons in our reverses, we should have

been portioned out.

Appreciate now the calumnies of which the Restoration has been made

the object: examine the archives of the Foreign Office, and you shall

be convinced of the independence of the language held to the Powers

under the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. Our sovereigns had

the sentiment of the national dignity; they were kings above all to

the foreigner, who never frankly wanted the re-establishment and who

witnessed the resurrection of the Elder Monarchy with regret. The

diplomatic language of France at the time of which I am speaking is, it

must be said, peculiar to the aristocracy; the democracy, full of broad

and prolific virtues, is nevertheless arrogant when it governs: capable

of incomparable munificence when there is a need for immense devotion,

it splits on the rock of details; it is rarely elevated, especially in

prolonged misfortunes. Part of the hatred of the Courts of England

and Austria for the Legitimacy is due to the firmness of the Bourbon

Cabinet.

Instead of throwing down that Legitimacy, it would have been better

policy to shore up its ruins; sheltered inside it, one would have

erected the new edifice, as one builds a ship that is to brave the

deep under a covered dock hewn out of the rock: in this way English

liberty took its form in the breast of the Norman law. It was wrong to

repudiate the monarchic phantom: that centenarian of the middle-ages,

like Dandolo[615], "had fine eyes in his head; and, if it could not

see out of them," was an old man who could guide the young Crusaders

and who, adorned with his white hair, still vigorously printed his

ineffaceable footsteps in the snow.

It is conceivable that, in our prolonged fears, we should be blinded

by prejudice and vain and ridiculous shame; but distant posterity will

not fail to see that, historically speaking, the Restoration was one of

the happiest phases of our revolutionary cycle. Parties whose heat is

not extinguished may cry, "We were free under the Empire, slaves under

the Monarchy of the Charter!" but future generations, going beyond this

mock praise, which would be ludicrous if it were not a sophism, will

say that the recalled Bourbons prevented the dismemberment of France,

that they laid the foundations of representative government among us,

that they brought prosperity to our finances, discharged debts which

they had not contracted, and religiously paid the pension even of

Robespierre's sister. Lastly, to make good our lost colonies, they left

us, in Africa, one of the richest provinces of the Roman Empire.

Three things remain standing to the credit of the restored Legitimacy:

it entered Cadiz; at Navarino it gave Greece her independence; it

freed Christianity by seizing Algiers: enterprises in which Bonaparte,

Russia, Charles V. and Europe had failed. Show me a Power of a few days

(and a Power so much disputed) which has accomplished such things as

these.

I believe, with my hand on my heart, that I have exaggerated nothing

and set forth nothing but facts in what I have just said of the

Legitimacy. It is certain that the Bourbons neither would nor could

have restored a castle monarchy or cantoned themselves in a tribe of

nobles and priests; it is certain that they were not brought back by

the Allies; they were the accident, not the cause of our disasters: the

cause is evidently due to Napoleon. But it is certain also that the

return of the Third Dynasty unfortunately coincided with the success

of the foreign arms. The Cossacks appeared in Paris at the moment when

Louis XVIII. returned there: hence, for France humiliated, for private

interests, for all excited passions, the Restoration and the invasion

are two identical things; the Bourbons have become the victims of a

confusion of facts, of a calumny changed, like so many others, into a

truth-lie. Alas, it is difficult to escape those calamities produced by

nature and the times: fight them as we may, right does not always carry

victory with it. The Psylli, a nation of Ancient Africa, had taken up

arms against the South wind; a whirlwind arose and swallowed up those

brave men:

"The Nasamonians," says Herodotus, "seized upon their abandoned

country."

[Sidenote: The death of Henry IV.]

When speaking of the last calamity of the Bourbons, I am reminded of

their commencement: an indescribable omen of their grave made itself

heard in their cradle. Henry IV. no sooner saw himself master of Paris

than he was seized with a fatal presentiment. The repeated attempts

at assassination, without alarming his courage, had an influence on

his natural gaiety. In the procession of the Holy Ghost, on the 5th of

January, he appeared clad in black, wearing a plaister on his upper

lip, on the wound which Jean Châtel[616] had given him when aiming at

his heart. He wore a gloomy visage; Madame de Balagni asking him the

reason:

"How," he said, "could I be pleased to see a people so ungrateful that,

while I have done and am still doing daily what I can for it and for

whose safety I would sacrifice a thousand lives, if God had given me

so many, it daily prepares new attempts on me, for, since I am here, I

hear speak of naught else?"

Meantime the people cried:

"Long live the King!"

"Sire," said one of the Court lords, "see how all your people rejoices

to see you."

Henry, shaking his head:

"What a people it is. If my greatest enemy were here where I am and it

saw him pass, it would do for him as much as for me and would shout

still louder."

A Leaguer, seeing the King huddled at the back of his carriage, said:

"There he is already at the cart's tail."

Does it not seem to you as though that Leaguer were speaking of Louis

XVI. going from the Temple to the scaffold?

On Friday the 14th of May 1610, returning from the Feuillants with

Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise, the King said to them:

"You do not know me now, none of you, and when you have lost me, you

will then know what I was worth and the difference between me and other

men."

"My God, Sire," answered Bassompierre, "will you never have done

troubling us by telling us that you will soon die?"

And then the marshal recounts to Henry his glory, his prosperity, his

good health which was prolonging his youth.

"My friend," said the King, "I must leave all that."

Ravaillac was at the gate of the Louvre.

Bassompierre withdrew and did not see the King again except in his

closet:

"He was stretched out," he says, "on his bed; and M. de Vic[617],

sitting on the same bed as he, had laid his cross of the Order on his

mouth and reminded him of God. M. le Grand on arriving knelt down

between the bed and the wall and held one of his hands which he kissed,

and I had flung myself at his feet which I held clasped, weeping

bitterly."

That is Bassompierre's story.

Pursued by these sad memories, it seemed to me that, in the long halls

of Hradschin, I had seen the last Bourbons pass "sad and melancholy,"

like the first Bourbon in the gallery of the Louvre; I had come to kiss

the feet of the Royalty after its death. Whether it die for ever or

be resuscitated, it will have my last oaths: the day after its final

disappearance, the Republic will commence for me. In the case that the

Fates, who are to edit my Memoirs, do not publish them forthwith, you

will know, when they appear, when you have read all, weighed all, how

far I was mistaken in my regrets and in my conjectures. Respecting

misfortune, respecting that which I have served and will continue to

serve at the cost of the repose of my last days, I am writing my words,

true or deluded, on my falling hours, dry and light leaves which the

breath of Eternity will soon have blown away.

Supposing the high dynasties to be nearing their limit, omitting,

however, the possibilities of the future and the lively hopes that

spring incessantly at the bottom of men's hearts, would it not be

better that they should make an end worthy of their greatness and

withdraw with the centuries into the night of the past? To prolong

one's days beyond a dazzling illustriousness is good for nothing; the

world tires of you and your fame; it is angry with you for being still

there: Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon have disappeared in accordance with

the rules of fame. To die beautiful, one must die young; do not make

the children of spring say:

"What, is that the genius, the person, the dynasty that the world

applauded, for a hair of whose head, a smile, a glance one would have

thrown away one's life!"

How sad it is see old Louis XIV. find no one near him, to talk to him

of his century, except the old Duc de Villeroi! It was a last victory

of the Great Condé to have met Bossuet by his grave-side: the orator

revived the mute waters of Chantilly; out of the old man's childhood

he kneaded again the young man's adolescence; he made brown again the

hair on the forehead of the victor of Rocroi while bidding an undying

farewell to his white hairs. You who love glory, look to your tomb; lie

down comfortably in it; try to cut a good figure in it, for you will

remain there.

[Sidenote: My journey to Carlsbad.]

The road from Prague to Carlsbad stretches out through the tedious

plains which the Thirty Years' War stained with blood. As I cross those

battle-fields at night, I humble myself before the God of Armies, who

bears the sky on His arm like a buckler. One can see at some distance

the wooded hillocks at whose foot the waters lie. The wits among the

doctors at Carlsbad compare the road to Æsculapius' snake which came

down the hill to drink of Hygieia's cup.

On the top of the tower of the town, the _Stadtthurm_, a tower mitred

with a steeple, watchmen blow the horn, so soon as they perceive a

traveller. I was greeted by the joyous sound like a dying man, and

every one in the valley began to say with delight:

"Here's a gouty man, here's an hypochondriac, here's a myopic subject!"

Alas, I was better than all that: I was an incurable!

At seven o'clock, on the morning on the 31st, I was installed at

the Golden Shield, an inn kept for the benefit of Count Bolzona, a

very high-born ruined man. In the same hotel were staying the Comte

and Madame la Comtesse de Cossé, who had gone before me, and my

fellow-countryman General de Trogoff[618], formerly Governor of the

Château de Saint-Cloud, born long ago at Landivisiau, within the rays

of the moon of Landerneau, and, squat of figure though he be, a captain

of Austrian Grenadiers in Prague during the Revolution. He had just

been to see his banished lord, the successor of St. Clodoald[619],

a monk in his time at Saint-Cloud. Trogoff, after his pilgrimage,

was returning to Lower Brittany. He was taking with him an Hungarian

nightingale and a Bohemian nightingale which prevented everybody in the

hotel from sleeping, so loudly did they complain of Tereus' cruelty.

Trogoff used to cram them with grated bullock's heart, without being

able to get the better of their sorrow.

Et mœstis late loca questibus implet[620].

Trogoff and I embraced like two Bretons. The general, short and square

like a Celt of Cornouailles, has a certain shrewdness under an air of

candour and an amusing way of telling a story. Madame la Dauphine was

inclined to like him and, as he knows German, she used to walk with

him. On hearing of my arrival from Madame de Cossé, she sent to me to

propose that I should go to see her at half-past nine or at twelve: I

was with her at twelve.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Angoulême.]

She occupied a house standing by itself, at the end of the village,

on the right bank of the Tepl, the little river which rushes from the

mountain and flows through Carlsbad from one end to the other. As I

climbed the stairs to the Princess' apartment, I felt perturbed: I was

going, almost for the first time, to see that perfect model of human

suffering, that Antigone of Christendom. I had not talked for ten

minutes with Madame la Dauphine in my life; she had addressed scarcely

two or three words to me during the rapid course of her prosperity;

she had always shown herself at a loss in my presence. Though I had

never written or spoken of her except in terms of profound admiration,

Madame la Dauphine was necessarily bound to entertain towards me the

prejudices of that antechamber gang in whose midst she lived: the Royal

Family used to vegetate isolated in that citadel of stupidity and envy

to which the young generations laid siege, without being able to force

their way in.

A man-servant opened the door to me; I saw Madame la Dauphine seated,

at the further end of a drawing-room, on a sofa between two windows,

embroidering a piece of tapestry-work. I entered feeling so agitated

that I did not know whether I should be able to reach the Princess. She

raised her head, which she had kept lowered right against her work, as

though herself to hide her emotion, and, addressing me, said:

"I am glad to see you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand; the King wrote to me

that you were coming. You travelled at night? You must be tired."

I respectfully handed her Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letters; she

took them, laid them on the table beside her and said:

"Sit down, sit down."

Then she began her embroidery again, with a quick, mechanical and

convulsive movement.

I did not speak; Madame la Dauphine kept silence: I could hear the

pricking of the needle and the drawing of the wool as the Princess

passed it smartly through the canvas, on which I saw some tears fall.

The illustrious victim of misfortune wiped them from her eyes with the

back of her hand and, without raising her head, said:

"How is my sister? She is very unhappy, very unhappy. I am very sorry

for her, I am very sorry for her."

These brief and repeated phrases failed to open a conversation for

which neither of the two interlocutors could find the necessary

expressions. The redness of the Dauphine's eyes, caused by the habit of

tears, gave her a beauty which made her look like the Spasimo Virgin.

"Madame," I replied at last, "Madame la Duchesse de Berry is very

unhappy, without a doubt; she has charged me to come to place her

children under your protection during her captivity. It is a great

relief to think that Henry V. finds a second mother in Your Majesty."

Pascal was right to connect the greatness and wretchedness of man:

who would have believed that Madame la Dauphine attached any value,

to those titles of Queen, of Majesty, which were so natural to her

and of which she had known the vanity? Well, the word Majesty was,

nevertheless, a magic word; it beamed upon the Princess's forehead,

from which, for a moment, it removed the clouds: they soon returned to

place themselves there like a diadem.

"Oh no, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," said the Princess, looking at

me and ceasing her work, "I am not Queen."

"You are, Madame, you are, by the laws of the realm: Monseigneur le

Dauphin was able to abdicate only because he was King. France looks

upon you as her Queen, and you will be the mother of Henry V."

The Dauphiness discussed no longer: this little weakness, by making her

a woman again, veiled the glamour of so many different greatnesses,

gave them a sort of charm and brought them into closer connexion with

the human condition.

I read out my credentials, in which Madame la Duchesse de Berry

declared her marriage to me, ordered me to go to Prague, asked to be

allowed to keep her title as a French Princess and placed her children

in her sister's care.

The Princess resumed her embroidery; when I finished reading, she said

to me:

"Madame la Duchesse de Berry does well to rely on me; that's quite

right, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, quite right: I am very sorry for my

sister-in-law, you must tell her so."

This persistency on the part of Madame la Dauphine in saying that she

was sorry for Madame la Duchesse de Berry, without going further,

showed me how little sympathy there was, at bottom, between those

two souls. It also seemed to me as though an involuntary impulse had

stirred the saint's heart. A rivalry in misfortune! Nevertheless, the

daughter of Marie-Antoinette had nothing to fear in this struggle; the

palm would have remained hers.

"If Madame," I resumed, "would like to read the letter which Madame

la Duchesse de Berry sends her and that which she addresses to her

children, she will perhaps find some new explanations there. I hope

that Madame will give me a letter to take back to Blaye."

[Sidenote: A question of invisible ink.]

The letters were written in invisible ink.

"I don't understand this at all," said the Princess. "What are we to

do?"

I suggested the expedient of a chafing-dish with a few sticks of white

wood; Madame pulled the bell, the rope of which hung down behind the

sofa. A footman came, took the order and set up the apparatus on the

landing, at the door of the drawing-room. Madame rose and we went to

the chafing-dish. We put it on a little table standing against the

stair-rail. I took one of the two letters and held it parallel to the

flame. Madame la Dauphine watched me, and smiled because I did not

succeed. She said:

"Give it to me, give it to me, let me try my hand."

She passed the letter over the flame; Madame la Duchesse de Berry's

large, round hand-writing appeared: the same operation was performed

for the second letter. I congratulated Madame on her success. It was a

strange scene: the daughter of Louis XVI. deciphering with me, at the

top of a stair-case at Carlsbad, the mysterious characters which the

captive of Blaye was sending to the captive of the Temple!

We went back to our seats in the drawing-room. The Dauphiness read

the letter which was addressed to her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry

thanked her sister for the concern she had shown in her misfortune,

recommended her children to her, and specially placed her son under

the guardianship of his aunt's virtues. The letter to the children

consisted of a few loving words. The Duchesse de Berry invited Henry to

make himself worthy of France.

Madame la Dauphine said to me:

"My sister does me justice, I have been very much concerned at her

troubles. She must have suffered much, suffered much. You must tell

her that I will look after M. le Duc de Bordeaux. I am very fond of

him. How did you find him? His health is good, is it not? He is strong,

although a little nervous."

I spent two hours in private conversation with Madame, an honour rarely

granted: she seemed satisfied. Having never known anything about me

except from hostile reports, she no doubt believed me to be a violent

man, puffed up with my own merits; she was pleased with me for having a

human aspect and being a good fellow. She said to me, cordially:

"I am going out walking: I am keeping to the regimen of the waters; we

shall dine at three: you must come, if you do not want to go to bed. I

want to see you, so long as it does not tire you."

I do not know to what I owed my success; but certainly the ice was

broken, the prejudice wiped out; that glance which had been fixed, in

the Temple, on the eyes of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, had rested

kindly upon a poor servant. At the same time, though I had succeeded

in putting the Dauphiness at her ease, I felt myself exceedingly

constrained: the fear of passing a certain level took from me that

faculty for every-day intercourse which I had with Charles X. Whether

it was that I did not possess the secret of drawing what was sublime

from the soul of Madame; whether it was that my feeling of respect

closed the road to the intercommunication of thought, I felt a

distressing sterility which came from within myself.

At three o'clock, I was back at Madame la Dauphine's. I there met

Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy and her daughter, Madame d'Agoult,

Messieurs O'Heguerty the Younger and de Trogoff, who had the honour

of dining with the Princess. Countess Esterhazy, once a beautiful

woman, is still good-looking: she had been intimate with M. le Duc de

Blacas in Rome. They say that she meddles in politics and tells M. le

Prince de Metternich all that she hears. When, on leaving the Temple,

Madame was sent to Vienna, she met Countess Esterhazy, who became her

companion. I noticed that she listened attentively to what I said; she

had the simplicity, the next morning, to tell me that she had spent

the night in writing. She was preparing to leave for Prague; a secret

interview was arranged at a spot agreed upon with M. de Blacas; from

there she was going to Vienna. Old attachments made young again by

espionage! What a business and what pleasures! Mademoiselle Esterhazy

is not pretty: she looks witty and mischievous.

The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, a devotee to-day, is an important person of

the class which one finds in all princesses' closets. She has pushed on

her family as much as she could, by applying to everybody, especially

to myself: I have had the satisfaction of placing her nephews; she had

as many as the late Arch-chancellor Cambacérès.

[Sidenote: I dine with the Dauphiness.]

The dinner was so bad and so scanty that I rose dying of hunger; it

was served in Madame la Dauphine's own drawing-room, for she had no

dining-room. After the meal, the table was cleared; Madame went back

to sit on the sofa, took up her work again and we formed a circle

round. Trogoff told stories; Madame likes them. She interests herself

particularly in women. The Duchesse de Guiche was mentioned:

"Her tresses do not suit her," said the Dauphiness, to my great

surprise.

From her sofa, Madame saw through the window what was happening

outside: she named the ladies and gentlemen walking. Came two little

horses, with two grooms dressed in the Scotch fashion; Madame ceased

working, looked long and said:

"It is Madame-----[I forget the name] going into the mountains with her

children."

Marie-Thérèse curious, knowing the habits of the neighbourhood, the

Princess of thrones and scaffolds descending from the heights of her

life to the level of other women, interested me singularly; I watched

her with a sort of philosophic tenderness.

At five o'clock, the Dauphiness went out driving; at seven, I was back

for the evening gathering. The same arrangement: Madame on the sofa,

the guests of the dinner and five or six young and old water-drinkers

enlarged the circle. The Dauphiness made touching, but visible

efforts to be gracious; she addressed a word to every one. She spoke

to me several times, making a point of calling me by my name to make

me known; but she became absent-minded again after each sentence.

Her needle multiplied its movements, her face drew nearer to her

embroidery; I saw the Princess's profile and was struck by a sinister

resemblance: Madame has begun to look like her father; when I saw her

head lowered under the blade of sorrow, I thought that I saw Louis

XVI.'s head awaiting the fall of the blade. At half-past eight, the

evening ended; I went to bed overcome by sleep and lassitude.

On Friday the 31st of May[621], I was up at five o'clock; at six, I

went to the Mühlenbad: the men and women water-drinkers crowded round

the spring, walked under the gallery of wooden pillars, or in the

garden next to the gallery. Madame la Dauphine arrived, dressed in a

shabby grey silk gown; she wore a thread-bare shawl on her shoulders

and an old hat on her head. She looked as though she had mended her

clothes, as her mother did at the Conciergerie. M. O'Heguerty, her

equerry, gave her his arm. She mixed with the crowd and handed her

cup to the women who draw the water from the spring. No one paid any

attention to Madame la Comtesse de Marnes[622]. Maria Theresa, her

grandmother, in 1762, built the house known as the Mühlenbad: she also

presented Carlsbad with the bells which were to call her grand-daughter

to the foot of the Cross.

Madame having entered the garden, I went up to her: she seemed

surprised at this courtier-like flattery. I had seldom risen so early

for royal personages, except, perhaps, on the 13th of February 1820,

when I went to look for the Duc de Berry at the Opera. The Princess

allowed me to take five or six turns round the garden by her side,

talked kindly and told me that she would receive me at two o'clock

and give me a letter. I left her, out of discretion; I breakfasted

hurriedly and spent the time remaining to me in visiting the valley.

[Sidenote: Carlsbad.]

CARLSBAD, 1 _June_ 1833.

As a Frenchman, I found none but painful memories at Carlsbad. The town

takes its name from Charles IV.[623] King of Bohemia, who came here to

be cured of three wounds received at Crécy, while fighting beside his

father John. Lobkowitz pretends that John was killed by a Scotchman, a

circumstance not known to the historians:

Sed cum Gallorum fines et arnica tuetur

Arva, Caledonia cuspide fossus obit.

Cannot the poet have written _Caledonia_ for the sake of the quantity?

In 1346, Edward was at war with Robert Bruce[624], and the Scotch were

Philip's[625] allies.

The death of the blind John of Bohemia, at Crécy, is one of the most

heroic and touching adventures of chivalry. John wanted to go to the

assistance of his son Charles; he said to his companions:

"My lords, you are my friends; I call upon you to lead me so far

forwards that I may strike a blow with my sword."

"They replied that gladly would they do so.... The King of Bohemia

went so far forwards that he struck a blow with his sword, indeed

more than four, and combated most vigorously, and so did they of

his company; and so much forward they pushed against the English

that all remained there and were on the morrow found on the field

around their lord, and all the horses tied together."

Few people know that John of Bohemia was buried at Montargis, in the

church of the Dominicans, and that on his tomb one used to read this

remnant of an obliterated inscription:

"He died at the head of his attendants, together recommending them

to God the Father. Pray to God for that sweet King."

May this remembrance of a Frenchman expiate the ingratitude of France,

when, in the days of our new calamities, we appalled Heaven by our

sacrilege and cast out of his tomb a Prince who died for us in the days

of our old misfortunes!

At Carlsbad, the chronicles relate that, Charles IV., the son of King

John, having gone out hunting, one of his hounds, darting after a deer,

fell from the top of a hill into a bason of boiling water. Its howls

caused the huntsmen to hurry in its direction and the source of the

Sprudel was discovered. A hog which scalded itself in the waters of

Teplitz showed them to the herdsmen.

Such are the traditions of Germania. I have been to Corinth: the

ruins of the temple of the courtesans were dispersed over the ashes of

Glycera; but the fountain of Pyrene, which sprang from the tears of

a nymph, still flowed among the oleanders through which Pegasus flew

in the times of the Muses. The waters of a port without ships bathed

fallen columns whose capitals lay steeped in the sea, like heads of

drowned girls stretched upon the sands; the myrtle had grown in their

hair and replaced the acanthus leaves: there you have the traditions of

Greece.

Carlsbad numbers eight springs: the most celebrated is the Sprudel,

discovered by the stag-hound. This spring issues from the ground

between the church and the Tepl with a hollow sound and a white steam;

it leaps up with irregular bounds to a height of six or seven feet. The

hot-springs of Iceland are superior to the Sprudel, but none goes to

seek health in the deserts of the Hecla, where life expires; where the

summer's day, issuing from the day, knows neither sunset nor sunrise;

where the winter's night, born again of the night, is without dawn or

twilight.

The water of the Sprudel boils eggs and serves to wash plates and

dishes; this fine phenomenon has entered the service of the Carlsbad

housewives: an image of genius which degrades itself by lending its

power to vile works[626].

Carlsbad is the meeting-place in ordinary of sovereigns: they ought

surely to get cured there of the crown for themselves and for us.

A daily list is published of the visitors to the Sprudel: on the

old rolls we find the names of the poets and the most enlightened

men of letters of the North: Gurowsky[627], Dunker, Weisse[628],

Herder[629], Goethe; I should have liked to meet with that of Schiller,

my favourite. In the sheet of the day, among obscure arrivals, one

observes the name of the "Comtesse de Marnes:" it is only printed in

small capitals.

In 1830, at the very moment of the fall of the Royal Family at

Saint-Cloud, the widow and daughters of Christophe were taking the

waters at Carlsbad. Their Haytian Majesties have retired to Tuscany,

near the Neapolitan Majesties. King Christophe's youngest daughter,

very well-educated and exceedingly pretty, has died at Pisa: her ebon

beauty rests free under the porticoes of the Campo Santo, far from the

cane-fields and mangrove-trees beneath whose shade she was born a slave.

In 1826, an Englishwoman from Calcutta was seen at Carlsbad, passing

from the banian fig-tree to the Bohemian olive-tree, from the sun of

the Ganges to the sun of the Tepl; she died away like a ray from the

Indian sky lost in the cold and the darkness. The sight of cemeteries,

in places consecrated to health, is a melancholy one: there young women

sleep, strangers to one another; on their tombs are carved the number

of their days and the place of their birth: one seems to be going

through a hot-house in which flowers are cultivated of every climate,

whose names are written on a label at the foot of the flowers.

The native law has anticipated the requirements of exotic death:

foreseeing the decease of the travellers far from their country, it

permits the exhumations beforehand. I might, then, have slept half a

score of years in the Cemetery of St. Andrew and nothing would have

hindered the testamentary dispositions of these Memoirs. If Madame

la Dauphine were to expire here, would the French laws permit the

return of her ashes? That would be a controversial point between the

Sorbonizers of doctrine and the casuists of proscription.

The Carlsbad waters are stated to be good for the liver and bad for the

teeth. I know nothing about the liver, but there are many toothless

people at Carlsbad; perhaps the years are responsible for this, rather

than the waters: time is an arrant liar and a great tooth-drawer.

Does it not seem to you as though I were recommencing the _Chef-d'œuvre

d'un inconnu[630]?_ One word leads me to another; I go from Iceland to

India:

Voilà les Apennins et voici le Caucase[631].

[Sidenote: The Teplitz Valley.]

And nevertheless I have not yet left the Teplitz Valley.

To obtain a view of the whole of the Valley of the Tepl, I climbed a

hill, through a wood of pine-trees: the perpendicular columns of these

trees formed an acute angle with the slanting rays of the sun; some had

their tops, two thirds, one half, a quarter of their trunks where the

others had their feet.

I shall always love the woods: the flora of Carlsbad, whose breath

seemed to have embroidered the grass under my footsteps, seemed

charming to me; I met again the fingered sedge, the common night-shade,

the small loose-strife, the perforated St. John's wort, the hardy

lily-of-the-valley, the white willow: sweet subjects of my early

anthologies.

See my youth coming to hang its reminiscences on the stalks of those

plants which I recognised in passing. Do you remember my botanical

studies among the Seminoles, my cenotheras, my nymphæas, with which I

decked my Floridans, the garlands of clematis with which they entwined

the tortoise, our sleep on the island by the lake-side, the shower

of roses from the magnolia-tree that fell upon our heads? I dare not

calculate the age which my fickle "painted girl" would have reached by

now; what should I gather on her brow to-day? The wrinkles that lie

on my own. She is no doubt sleeping for ever beneath the roots of a

cypress-grove of Alabama; and I, who bear in my memory those distant,

unknown recollections, I am alive! I am in Bohemia, not with Atala and

Céluta, but near Madame la Dauphine, who is going to give me a letter

for Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

At one o'clock, I was at Madame la Dauphine's orders.

"You wish to leave to-day, Monsieur de Chateaubriand?"

"If Your Majesty will permit me. I shall try to find Madame de Berry in

France; otherwise I should be obliged to make the journey to Sicily,

and Her Royal Highness would be kept too long waiting for the answer

which she expects."

"Here is a note for her. I took care not to mention your name, so as

not to compromise you if anything happened. Read it."

I took the note; it was written entirely in Madame la Dauphine's hand:

I have taken an exact copy of it.

"CARLSBAD, 31 _May_ 1833.

"It was a genuine pleasure for me, my dear sister, at last to hear

from you direct I pity you with all my soul. Reckon always on my

constant concern for you and especially for your dear children, who

will be more precious to me than ever. My existence, as long as it

endures, shall be consecrated to them. I have not yet been able to

execute your commissions as regards our family, my health having

required that I should come here to take the waters. But I shall

discharge it immediately on my return to them; they and I, believe

me, will never have any but the same sentiments on everything.

"Farewell, my dear sister: I pity you from the bottom of my heart

and embrace you fondly.

"M. T."

I was struck by the reserve of this note: a few vague expressions

of attachment but poorly covered the dryness of its substance.

I respectfully said as much, and again pleaded the cause of the

unfortunate prisoner. Madame answered that the King would give his

decision. She promised me to interest herself on behalf of her sister;

but there was no cordiality either in the voice or tone of the

Dauphiness: one perceived rather a restrained irritation. The game

seemed to me lost as far as my client's person was concerned. I fell

back upon Henry V. I thought that I owed to the Princess the sincerity

which I had always employed, at my risk and peril, to enlighten

the Bourbons; I spoke to her, frankly and without flattery, of the

education of M. le Duc de Bordeaux:

[Sidenote: I talk to the Dauphiness.]

"I know that Madame has read in a kindly spirit the pamphlet at the end

of which I expressed a few ideas relating to the education of Henry V.

I fear lest the child's surroundings should injure his cause: Messieurs

de Damas, de Blacas and Latil are not popular."

Madame agreed with this; she even quite threw over M. de Damas, while

saying two or three words in honour of his courage, his probity and his

religion.

"In the month of September, Henry V. will be of age: does not Madame

think that it would be a good thing to establish a council around

him to which one would summon men upon whom France looks with less

prejudice?"

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, by multiplying counsellors one multiplies

opinions: and then, whom would you propose to the King's choice?"

"M. de Villèle."

Madame, who was embroidering, stopped her needle, looked at me in

surprise and surprised me, in my turn, by giving a pretty judicious

criticism of the mind and character of M. de Villèle. She regarded him

only as an able administrator.

"Madame is too severe," said I to her: "M. de Villèle is a man of

method, of accounts, of moderation, of composure, of infinite resource;

if he had not had the ambition to fill the first place, he would have

been a man to keep everlastingly in the King's Council: he will never

be replaced. His presence with Henry V. would have the best effect."

"I thought that you did not like M. de Villèle?"

"I should despise myself if, after the fall of the throne, I continued

to cherish a sentiment of some petty rivalry. Our royalist divisions

have already done too much harm; I forswear them with all my heart and

am ready to beg pardon of those who have offended me. I entreat Your

Majesty to believe that this is neither a display of false generosity

nor a stone laid by way of prevision of a future fortune. What could

I ask of Charles X. in exile? If the Restoration were to come about,

should I not be at the bottom of my grave?"

Madame looked at me with kindness; she had the goodness to praise me in

these simple words:

"That is very well said, Monsieur de Chateaubriand."

She seemed to be still surprised to find a Chateaubriand so different

from the one who had been described to her.

"There is another person, Madame," I resumed, "whom one might send

for: my noble friend M. Lainé. There were three of us in France who

ought never to take the oath to Philip: myself, M. Lainé and M.

Royer-Collard. Outside the government and in different positions, we

should have formed a triumvirate of some value. M. Lainé took the oath

from weakness, M. Royer-Collard from pride: the first will die of it;

the second will live by it, because he lives by all that he does, being

incapable of doing anything that is not admirable."

"Were you pleased with Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux?"

"I thought him charming. They say that Your Majesty spoils him a

little."

"Oh no, no. Were you satisfied with his health?"

"He seemed to me to be wonderfully well; he looks delicate and a little

pale."

"He often has a nice colour; but he is nervous. Monsieur le Dauphin

is very much esteemed in the army, is he not? Very much esteemed? They

remember him, do they not?"

This abrupt question, which had no connection with what we had

just been saying, revealed to me a secret wound which the days of

Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet had left in the heart of the Dauphiness.

She brought up her husband's name in order to reassure herself:

I hastened to anticipate the thought of the Princess and wife; I

declared, and with truth, that the army had never forgotten the

impartiality, the virtues, the courage of its Commander-in-Chief.

Seeing that the hour for walking had come:

"Your Majesty has no more orders to give me? I am afraid of being

troublesome."

"Tell your friends of the love I bear to France; let them well

understand that I am a Frenchwoman. I charge you particularly to say

that; you will do me a pleasure in saying it: I regret France much, I

regret France very much."

"Ah, Madame, what has that France not done to you? How can you, who

have suffered so much, continue to feel 'home-sick?'"

"No, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, do not forget it, be sure to tell

them all that I am a Frenchwoman, that I am a Frenchwoman."

Madame left me; I was obliged to stop on the stair-case before going

out; I would not have dared to show myself in the street; my tears

still moisten my eyelids as I retrace this scene.

On returning to my inn, I resumed my travelling-dress. While the

carriage was being got ready, Trogoff let his tongue run on; he told me

again and again that Madame la Dauphine was very pleased with me, that

she made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction, that she spoke of it

to anyone who was willing to listen to her.

"It's an immense thing, this journey of yours!" shouted Trogoff, trying

to drown the voices of his two nightingales. "You will see some results

from it!"

I did not believe in any result.

I was right. They were expecting M. le Duc de Bordeaux that same

evening. Although everybody knew of his arrival, they had made a

mystery of it to me. I was careful not to show that I was informed of

the secret.

[Sidenote: And take my leave.]

At six o'clock in the evening, I was rolling towards Paris. Whatever

may be the greatness of misfortune in Prague, the pettiness of the

life of princes reduced to itself is difficult to swallow; to drink the

last drop of it, one must have burnt one's palate and intoxicated one's

self with a glowing faith.

Alas, a new Symmachus, I bewail the abandonment of the altars; I raise

my hands towards the Capitol; I invoke the majesty of Rome! But if the

god should have turned into wood and Rome fail to come to life again in

its dust?

[Footnote 556: This book was written in Prague, from the 24th to the

30th of May 1833, and at Carlsbad, on the 1st of June.--T.]

[Footnote 557: When Charles X. arrived in England, in August 1830, he

accepted the hospitality of a Catholic Jacobite family, the Welds,

which thus paid the Bourbons the debt of Stuarts. The head of that

family, Cardinal Weld, offered the King of France the use of Lulworth

Castle, in Dorsetshire, not far from the little town of Wareham. After

a stay of two months at Lulworth, the Royal Family went to live at

Holyrood Palace, in Edinburgh, where they remained for two years. On

the 25th of October 1832, Charles X. arrived in Prague, at the Castle

of Hradschin, which the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., had put at his

disposal until he was able to find a private residence. Here Charles X.

spent three years and a half. In the month of May 1836, he hired from

Count Coronini his property of Graffenberg, situated at one end of the

town of Gorlitz, on a rising ground which overlooks it.--B.]

[Footnote 558: The notes on p. 78, Vol. IV., and p. 130 _supra_,

by M. Biré, give a brief biography, not, as stated, of this Duc de

Guiche, later Duc de Gramont, but of his father, the Duc de Gramont.

M. Biré himself corrects this error by giving the following details

of the Duc de Guiche with whom we have to do. He emigrated with his

parents when only three weeks of age. He served in Portugal and Spain

under Wellington. After the Battle of Vittoria (June 1813), he made

his way into France, established relations with the Royalists of the

South and was sent by them to Louis XVIII., in England, to ask him to

send a prince of the Blood to place himself at the head of a movement

which was being organized. He succeeded in his mission and returned to

Bordeaux, followed in a few days by the Duc d'Angoulême. Until that

time he had been known as the Comte de Gramont. By order of Louis

XVIII., he assumed, on his return to France, the name and rank of Duc

de Guiche, which had formerly been borne by the eldest sons of the

family. Under the Restoration, the Duc de Guiche became First Equerry

to the Duc d'Angoulême, served under him in the South during the

Hundred Days and, later, in 1823, in Spain. In 1830, he accompanied the

Royal Family from Rambouillet to Cherbourg, whence he was sent back to

Paris to put the Duc d'Angoulême's personal affairs in order. Having

completed this business, he went, with all his family, to join the

Prince in Edinburgh, and afterwards accompanied him to Prague. The Duc

de Guiche returned to France in 1833 and, on the death of his father,

in August 1836, succeeded to the name and rank of Duc de Gramont.--T.]

[Footnote 559: Louise Princess of France (1819-1864), married, in 1845,

to Charles III. Duke of Parma, and Regent of Parma during the minority

of the present Duke from the date of his father's murder, in 1854,

until his own deposition in 1859.--T.]

[Footnote 560: M. Barrande was the Duc de Bordeaux's principal

professor. Without having the title of tutor, he held all the branches

of the education in his hands, which enabled him to give a valuable

impulse to the Prince's studies. M. Barrande, at that time, was between

thirty and thirty-five years of age; he was a man of the younger

generation, a distinguished pupil of the Polytechnic School and had

a firm and severe character. He retired at the end of 1833, when the

Baron de Damas ceased to fulfil the functions of Governor.--B.]

[Footnote 561: M. de La Villate (_b._ 1776) had served in the Royal

Grenadiers of the Guard during the Restoration. He was a brave and

loyal officer, and the Duc de Bordeaux took a great liking to him at

an early age. M. de La Villate took no part in the Prince's education

properly so-called, as he did not instruct him in any branch of

knowledge; but he exercised a real influence upon his character and

instilled into him a love of the rough, plain truth. The young Prince

loved him for his loyalty, his soldierly frankness and his white

hairs. It was not age that had turned his head white. He was eighteen

years old, in 1794, when his father was flung into prison. Young La

Villate was resolved to make every effort to save him and succeeded in

obtaining admittance to him. After a long struggle, persuaded by his

tears and his persistency, the prisoner consented to change clothes

with his son and to leave in his stead, relying upon a remnant of

humanity in his gaolers which would prevent them, who shrank from

scarcely any crime, from committing the additional crime of taking

vengeance upon this act of filial devotion. A reprieve was, in fact,

granted; and young La Villate was restored to his family on the 9

Thermidor. But the painful emotions of that terrible night, during

which he had struggled against his father's refusal, had turned his

hair white in a few hours and given him that silver crown at the age of

eighteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 562: In 1833, after the retirement of M. Barrande, two

Jesuits, the Pères Étienne Deplace and Julien Druilhet, were sent for

to Prague and attached to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. They

remained only three months in Prague and were replaced by the Bishop of

Hermopolis, M. de Frayssinous, who directed the Prince's education from

1833 to 1838.--B.]

[Footnote 563: The Abbé de Moligny was the young Duc de Bordeaux's

confessor.--B.]

[Footnote 564: The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, the Dauphiness' habitual

companion.--B.]

[Footnote 565: The Abbé Nicolas de MacCarthy (1769-1833) was a native

of Dublin, whose father settled in France soon after the child's birth.

Although destined for the priesthood before the Revolution, MacCarthy

was not ordained until 1814, when he became a member of the Company of

Jesus. His talent won him a quick reputation and, in 1819, he preached

the Advent sermons at the Tuileries with extraordinary success. He was

gifted with an impassioned and penetrating eloquence and shone more

particularly by his improvisation. The Père MacCarthy's action added

greatly to the value of his sermons. Many of the preachers of the time

set themselves to imitate him and went so far as to adopt in the pulpit

the peculiar attitude which he himself was obliged to assume through

an infirmity contracted in the service of the poor. This was called

preaching à la MacCarthy. One severe winter's day he had carried a

heavy load of wood up to the garret of a poor friendless woman. The

burden was beyond his strength and brought about a weakness of the

loins from which he suffered until his death, which occurred on the

3rd of May 1833, a few weeks before Chateaubriand's conversation with

Charles X. MacCarthy's Sermons, published in 1834, are remarkable for

their style, their logic and their rhetorical swing.--B.]

[Footnote 566: _Cf._ ANTOINE DE LA SALLE, _Hystoire et plaisante

chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des

Belles-Cousines, sans autre nom nommer._--T.]

[Footnote 567: It is curious, in the present year 1902, to read of this

style, adopted only, I believe, by Chateaubriand. It is, of course,

wrong: Prince Charles Edward, after his father's death, was always

known to his adherents as Charles III. There was no reason, such as

prevailed with His present Majesty, to induce the Prince to style

himself Edward VII.--T.]

[Footnote 568: Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV.

(1705-1774), was elected Pope in 1758. Prince Charles Edward succeeded

James III. as _de jure_ King of England in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 569: Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope Pius VI. (1717-1799), was

elected Pope in 1775, succession to Clement XIV. He survived Charles

III. by eleven years.--T.]

[Footnote 570: Marie Louise Françoise de Lussan d'Esparbès, Vicomtesse

de Polastron (1764-1804), was married to the Vicomte de Polastron,

Madame de Polignac's brother, in December 1780. Her connection with the

Comte d'Artois commenced before the Revolution and was continued during

the Emigration. She died of a slow fever, in Brompton Grove, after

confessing to the Abbé de Latil and imploring the Comte d'Artois, on

her death-bed, to swear that she should be his last mistress, his last

love on earth, that he should thenceforth love none other than God. The

Prince swore and kept his word.--T.]

[Footnote 571: Alfred Charles François Gabriel Comte de Damas

(1794-1840), a knight of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour and an

honorary lord of the Bed-chamber to Charles X.--B.]

[Footnote 572: Robert II. (sometimes called Robert I.) King of France

(971-1031), surnamed the Pious, son of Hugh Capet, whom he succeeded in

996.--T.]

[Footnote 573: Bruno of Carinthia, Pope Gregory V. (_d._ 999) was

elected Pope in 996. Mademoiselle was two years out: the Pope reigning

in 1001 was his successor, Silvester II., who died in 1003.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Basil II. Emperor of the East (_circa_ 958-1025) became

Byzantine Emperor in 976.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Otto III. Emperor of the West (980-1002), surnamed the

Wonder of the World, succeeded as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in

983, and assumed the reins of government in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 576: Veremund II. King of Leon and Asturias died in 999; he

was succeeded by Alphonsus V., who reigned till 1027. In this case

Henry V. was two years out.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Ethelred II. King of England (968-1016), surnamed the

Unready, succeeded to the throne in 979.--T.]

[Footnote 578: Edmund II. King of England (_circa_ 989-1016), surnamed

Ironside, son of Ethelred the Unready, whom he succeeded in 1016,

himself dying in the same year.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Henry IV. abjured Calvinism in 1593, in order to secure

his recognition as King of France.--T.]

[Footnote 580: In the royal domain of Chantilly.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Blondel (_fl._ 12th Century), the French troubadour,

said to have found Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in the castle in which the

King was confined, by singing under his tower a song which the two had

composed.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Leopold I. or V. Duke of Austria (1157-1194) took

Richard prisoner in Austria, in December 1192, and kept him in the

Castle of Dürrenstein until March 1193, when the King was transferred

to the Emperor Henry VI.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Charles VI. King of France (1368-1422) succeeded to

the throne in 1380, but became deranged in 1392, four years after he

had assumed the government. Cards are generally supposed to have been

invented about this time to amuse the unfortunate King: "they were

invented," I have heard it said, "to amuse a fool and they have amused

fools ever since."--T.]

[Footnote 584: Oger, or Ogier, or Outcaire, or Adalgarius (_fl._ 9th

Century), the Danish paladin of Charlemagne, gives his name, in the

French pack of playing-cards, to the Knave of Spades.--T.]

[Footnote 585: Étienne de Vignoles, known as Lahire (_circa_

1390-1443), the valiant captain of Charles VII., has the Knave of

Hearts called after him on French cards.--T.]

[Footnote 586: _Cf._ Vol. III. p. 129, n. 4. The Baron Capelle was

Minister of Commerce in the last Cabinet under Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Charles Le Mercher de Longpré, Baron d'Haussez

(1778-1854), Minister of Marine in the Polignac Cabinet, fled from

France in 1830 and went to England, where he wrote his Grande Bretagne

en 1833, the work referred to. Subsequently he travelled in Holland,

Germany and Italy, describing his journey in the _Voyage d'un exilé_

(1835) and in Alpes et Danube (1837). He returned to France in

consequence of the political amnesty decreed in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 588: The Comte de Montbel (_cf._ p. 81, n. 5, _supra_), who

was Minister of the Interior and, later, Minister of Finance in the

Polignac Cabinet, published, in 1833, a _Notice sur la vie du duc de

Reichstadt._--B.]

[Footnote 589: _Cf._ Vol. IV. p. 138, n. 4.--T.]

[Footnote 590: The "Royalist Butcher." _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 109, n. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 591: João de Castro (1500-1548) was Portuguese Governor of

India, in 1545, and won several signal victories over the natives.

He was as upright as he was brave; he died poor and was buried at

the expense of the public. He is said to have offered to pledge his

mustachios in exchange for a loan from the merchants of Goa; but the

merchants were satisfied with his word.--T.]

[Footnote 592: "This is the famed Battle of Prag; fought May 6th,

1757; which sounded through all the world, and used to deafen us in

drawing-rooms within man's memory." (CARLYLE, _History of Friedrich II.

of Prussia, called Frederick the Great_, Book XVIII., Chap, II.)-T.]

[Footnote 593: The Comte de Chambord was destined to spend over fifty

years more in Austria: he died at Frohsdorf, about thirty miles from

Vienna, on the 24th of August 1883.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Jan Sigismund Boncza Skrzynecki (1786-1860) served

in the Polish contingent in aid of Napoleon; joined in the Polish

Insurrection in 1830; served with distinction at Grochow, on the 25th

of February 1831, and was appointed commander-in-chief on the next day.

He defeated the Russians at Warwe and Dembe in March and at Iganie on

the 8th of April; but his nominal victory at Ostrolenka (26 May 1831)

was tantamount to a defeat, owing to his subsequent inaction, and he

was superseded in August. He fled to Bohemia and lived in Prague until

Leopold I. placed him in command of the Belgian Army. In 1839, the

representations of Russia, Austria and Prussia compelled him to lay

down this command. General Skrzynecki continued to live in Brussels

until 1859, when he obtained leave to settle in Cracovia. He died in

the month of January of the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 595: Johann Rudolf Count von Chotkowa and Wognin (1748-1824)

was Grand Burgrave of Bohemia from 1802 to 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 596: _Anglicè_, in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 597: _Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre_, Vol. I. p. 326

_et seq._--B.]

[Footnote 598: Karl Robert Count Nesselrode (1780-1862), the famous

Russian statesman, was Minister of Foreign Affairs almost continuously

from 1813 to 1856.--T.]

[Footnote 599: Blacas d'Aulps the troubadour died in 1229; Blacas

d'Aulps the "Great Warrior," one of the most gallant knights at the

Court of Provence, in 1235.--T.]

[Footnote 600: _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 202, n. 5. Blacas d'Aulps and

d'Épernon were both natives of the South of France.--T.]

[Footnote 601: The Obelisk of Luxor was brought from Egypt in 1831 and

set up in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, in 1836. It weighs 240

tons.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Luc de Clapier, Marquis de Vauvenargues ( 1715-1747),

the French moralist, author of the _Introduction à la connaissance de

l'esprit humain_, took part in the retreat from Prague (December 1742)

as a captain of foot. His health suffered, and he was obliged to resign

his commission soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the celebrated Danish

astronomer, entered the service of the Emperor Rudolph II. and settled

in Prague in 1599. The constellation which Tycho discovered in 1572 was

Cassiopeia, in which appeared a temporary star brighter than Venus at

its brightest.--T.]

[Footnote 604: Shakespeare: _Winter's Tale_, Act III. sc. iii. 1-2, 45,

48, 53-54.--T.]

[Footnote 605: Wenceslaus VI. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany

(1361-1419), surnamed the Drunkard, was the son of the Emperor Charles

IV. He was elected King of the Romans in 1376 and succeeded to the

German and Bohemian Thrones in 1378. His cruelties made him so odious

that his Bohemian nobles imprisoned him in 1394 and, in 1400, he was

solemnly deposed from the Throne of Germany. He renounced his right

to the Imperial Crown in 1410, but continued to reign as King of

Bohemia.--T.]

[Footnote 606: John Wyclif (_circa_ 1324-1384) became Master of Balliol

in 1360. Huss began spreading his doctrines in Prague in 1398.--T.]

[Footnote 607: Vaclav Hanka (1791-1861), an eminent Bohemian

philologist and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 608: Frantisek Ladislav Czelakovsky (1799-1852), the poet

and philologist. He published his collection of Slav folk-songs in

1822-1827.--T.]

[Footnote 609: Boguslav Lobkowitz, Baron von Hassenstein (1462-1510),

the author of a number of odes, elegies and letters in Latin, of which

a German translation was published, in Prague, in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Mahomet II. Sultan of Turkey (_circa_ 1430-1481),

surnamed the Conqueror, or the Great. He besieged and captured

Constantinople in 1453; and conquered the Morea, Servia, Bosnia and

Albania and made the Crimea a dependency of Turkey in 1457.--T.]

[Footnote 611: Louis XII. King of France (1462-1515), surnamed the

Father of the People.--T.]

[Footnote 612: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Le Roi est mort! Vive le roi!_

(1824).--B.]

[Footnote 613: It was not at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, as Chateaubriand

says in error, that the Allies called for the dismemberment of France,

but three years earlier, during the discussion of the Treaties of 1815.

It was then that the Emperor Alexander gave the Duc de Richelieu this

"map of Styx," as an incontestable proof of the concessions obtained by

the latter. On this map, our new frontier is marked out by a line drawn

in blue, which takes away from France a portion of the Departments of

the Isère, with Fort Barraux; of the Ain, with Belley, Gex and the

Fort de l'Écluse; of the Jura, with Saint-Claude; of the Doubs, with

the Fort de Tour, Pontarlier, Saint-Hippolyte and Montbéliard; the

whole of the Haut-Rhin; the whole of the Bas-Rhin; the whole of the

Moselle; a part of the Meuse, including Montmédy; the Ardennes, with

Sedan, Mérières and Rocroy; the whole Department of the Nord, excepting

Cambrai and Douai. The fact that this blue line was not put through and

France not wiped out from the political map of Europe we owe entirely

to Louis XVIII. and the Duc de Richelieu.--B.]

[Footnote 614: William Cobbett (1762-1835), the peasant essayist and

politician. The letter referred to is his _Letter to Monsieur de

Chateaubriand on his speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, on the

25th February_, 1823, _relative to the war proposed to be undertaken by

France against the Revolutionists of Spain_, dated Kensington, 5 March

1823.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice (_circa_ 1108-1205),

became Doge in 1192. He went as Ambassador to the Byzantine Court in

1173 and was blinded by order of the Emperor Manuel I.--T.]

[Footnote 616: Jean Châtel (1577-1594), in December 1594, stabbed Henry

IV. on the lip, while the King was stooping to lift up two officers who

were kneeling to him. Châtel was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris

to be quartered.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Dominique de Vic, Viscount d'Ermenonville (_d._ 1610),

one of the most faithful servants of Henry IV. Passing, after the

King's death, through the Rue de la Ferronnerie, in which Henry had

been assassinated, he was seized with a grief so keen that he died of

it the next day.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Joachim Simon Comte de Trogoff (1763-1840) was born at

the Château de Penlan, in Brittany. He entered the service in 1779

and fought in the War of American Independence. After the Emigration,

he joined the Austrian service, where he remained till 1814, when

the Restoration made him a brigadier-general and the Comte d'Artois

admitted him to his intimacy. When Charles X. became King, he appointed

Trogoff to the Governorship of Saint-Cloud. In 1830, at the time of the

halt at Rambouillet, Trogoff acted as governor of the palace and wanted

to fight, but was not permitted. He accompanied the King to the ship

which was to take him to England and, having accomplished this duty,

withdrew to the Château de Keruroret, near Saint-Pol, which he never

left except to go to visit his old master in exile.--B.]

[Footnote 619: St. Clodoald, or Cloud (_d._ 560), was the son of

Clodomir King of Orleans and the grandson of Clovis King of the Franks.

After the death of his father and the murder of his two elder brothers,

in 533, he devoted himself to a monastic life and lived in a retreat

near Paris which was subsequently called after him. St. Cloud is

honoured on the 7th of September.--T.]

[Footnote 620: VIR., _Georg._ IV. 515.--B.]

[Footnote 621: And not Friday the 1st of June, as the earlier editions

have it.--B.]

[Footnote 622: The Duc d'Angoulême had taken the name of Comte de

Marnes in exile,--T.]

[Footnote 623: Charles IV. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany

(1316-1378) succeeded his father as King of Bohemia on the death of

the latter at Crécy, in 1346, and was crowned Emperor in the following

year.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Robert I. Bruce, King of Scotland (1274-1329), died

seventeen years before the Battle of Crécy; but his son, David II.

Bruce (1324-1371), invaded England in 1346, was defeated and captured

at Neville's Cross (17 October 1346) and kept in captivity till

1357.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Philip VI. King of France (1293-1350), the first king of

the House of Valois, was defeated by Edward III. at Crécy on the 26th

of August 1346.--T.]

[Footnote 626: I omit a quotation from Alexandre Dumas' translation in

verse of Lobkowitz' Latin Ode to the Sprudel.--T.]

[Footnote 627: Gurowsky (_b._ 1800), the Polish poet.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Christian Hermann Weisse (1801 -1866), author of the

_System der Ästhetik_ (1830) and other philosophical works.--T.]

[Footnote 629: Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), the German

critic and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 630: The _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu, poème heureusement

découvert et mis au jour par le docteur Mathanasius_ is an amusing

satire by Hyacinthe Cordonnier (1684-1746), known as Thémiseuil de

Saint-Hyacinthe, published in 1714, in the midst of the "quarrel of

the ancients and moderns." Its success was maintained throughout the

eighteenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 631: LA FONTAINE, _Le Rat et l'huître_:

"Here stand the Apennines and here the Caucasus."

_Cf._ JOHNSON: "Survey mankind from China to Peru."--T.]

END OF VOL. V.

APPENDIX

THE ROYAL ORDINANCES OF JULY 1830

"CHARLES, etc.

"To all to whom these presents shall come, health.

"On the report of our Council of Ministers, We have ordained and do

ordain as follows:

"Art I. The liberty of the periodical press is suspended.

"II. The regulations of Articles I., II. and IX., of the First Section

of the Law of the 21st of October 1814 are again put in force; in

consequence of which no journal, or periodical, or semi-periodical

writing, established, or about to be established, without distinction

of the matters therein treated, shall appear in Paris or in the

Departments, except by the virtue of an authority first obtained from

Us by the authors and printer respectively. This authority shall be

renewed every three months. It may also be revoked.

"III. The authority shall be provisionally granted and provisionally

withdrawn by the Prefects from journals and periodicals, or

semi-periodical works, published, or about to be published, in the

Departments.

"IV. Journals and writings published in contravention of Article II.,

shall be immediately seized. The presses and types used in the printing

of them shall be placed in a public depository under seal, or rendered

unfit for use.

"V. No writing of less than twenty printed pages shall appear, except

with the authority of Our Minister the Secretary of State for the

Interior in Paris, and of the Prefects in the Departments. Every

writing of more than twenty printed pages, which shall not constitute

one single work, must also be published under authority only. Writings

published without authority shall be immediately seized; the presses

and types used in printing them shall be placed in a public depository

under seal, or rendered unfit for use.

"VI. Minutes relating to legal process and minutes of scientific

and literary societies must be previously authorized, if they treat

in whole or in part of political matters, in which case the measures

prescribed by Article V. shall be applicable.

"VII. Every regulation contrary to the present shall be without effect.

"VIII. The execution of the present Ordinance shall take place in

conformity with Article IV. of the Ordinance of 27 November 1816 and of

that which is prescribed by the Ordinance of 18 January 1817.

"IX. Our Secretaries of State are charged with the execution of this

Ordinance.

"Given at the Palace of Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year

of Grace 1830 and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

(Countersigned) "Prince de POLIGNAC, President.

"CHANTELAUZE, Keeper of the Seals.

"Baron d'HAUSSEZ, Minister of Marine.

"MONTBEL, Minister of Finance.

"Comte de GUERNON-RANVILLE,

Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

"Baron CAPELLE, Secretary of State for

Public Works."

"CHARLES,

"To all to whom these presents shall come, etc.

"Having considered Article L. of the Constitutional Charter; being

informed of the manœuvres which have been practised in various parts

of Our Kingdom, to deceive and mislead the electors during the late

operations of the electoral colleges; having heard our Council, We have

ordained and do ordain as follows:

"Art. I. The Chamber of Deputies of departments is dissolved.

"II. Our Minister the Secretary of State of the Interior is charged

with the execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830

and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

(Countersigned) "Comte de Peyronnet, Peer of France, Secretary of State

for the Interior."

"CHARLES,

"To all who shall see these presents, health.

"Having resolved to prevent the return of the manœuvres which have

exercised a pernicious influence on the late operations of the

Electoral Colleges and wishing, in consequence, to reform, according to

the principles of the Constitutional Charter, the rules of election,

of which experience has shown the inconvenience, We have recognised

the necessity of using the right which belongs to Us to provide, by

acts emanating from Ourselves, for the safety of the State and for the

suppression of every enterprise injurious to the dignity of Our Crown.

For these reasons, having heard Our council, We have ordained and do

ordain:

"Art I. Conformably with Articles XV., XXXVI. and XXX. of the

Constitutional Charter, the Chamber of Deputies shall consist only of

Deputies of Departments.

"II. The electoral rate and the rate of eligibility shall consist

exclusively of the sums for which the elector and the candidate shall

be inscribed individually, as holders of real or personal property in

the roll of the land-tax, or of personal taxes.

"III. Each Department shall have the number of Deputies allotted to it

by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional Charter.

"IV. The Deputies shall be elected, and the Chamber renewed, in the

form and for the time fixed by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional

Charter.

"V. The Electoral Colleges shall be divided into Colleges of

Arrondissement and Colleges of Departments, except the case of those

Electoral Colleges of Departments to which only one Deputy is allotted.

"VI. The Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements shall consist of all the

electors whose political domicile is established in the Arrondissement

The Electoral Colleges of Departments shall consist of a fourth part of

the most highly taxed of the electors of Departments.

"VII. The present limits of the Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements

are retained.

"VIII. Every Electoral College of Arrondissement shall elect a number

of candidates equal to the number of Departmental Deputies.

"IX. The College of Arrondissement shall be divided into as many

Sections as candidates. Each Division shall be in proportion to the

number of Sections and to the total number of electors, having regard

as much as possible to the convenience of place and neighbourhood.

"X. The Sections of the Electoral College of Arrondissement may

assemble in different places.

"XI. Each Section of the Electoral College of Arrondissement shall

choose a candidate and proceed separately.

"XII. The Presidents of the Sections of the Electoral College of

Arrondissement shall be nominated by the Prefects from among the

electors of the Arrondissement.

"XIII. The College of Department shall choose the Deputies; half the

Deputies of Departments shall be chosen from the general list of

candidates proposed by the Colleges of Arrondissements; nevertheless,

if the number of Deputies of the Department is uneven, the division

shall be made without impeachment of the right reserved by the College

of Department.

"XIV. In cases where, by the effect of omissions, or of void or

double nominations, the list of candidates proposed by the College of

Arrondissement shall be incomplete, if the list is reduced below half

the number required, the College of the Department shall choose another

Deputy not in the list; if the list is reduced below a fourth, the

College of the Department may elect the whole of the Deputies of the

Department.

"XV. The Prefects, the Sub-prefects and the General Officers commanding

Military Divisions and Departments are not to be elected in the

Departments where they exercise their functions.

"XVI. The list of electors shall be settled by the Prefect in the

Council of Prefecture. It shall be posted up five days before the

assembling of the Colleges.

"XVII. Claims regarding the power of voting which have not been

authorized by the Prefects shall be decided by the Chamber of Deputies,

at the same time that it shall decide upon the validity of the

operations of the Colleges.

"XVIII. In the Electoral Colleges of Departments, the two oldest

electors and the two electors who pay the most taxes shall execute

the duty of scrutators. The same disposition shall be observed in the

Sections of the College of Arrondissement, composed, at most, of only

fifty electors. In the other Sections, the functions of scrutators

shall be executed by the oldest and the richest of the electors. The

secretary of the College or Section shall be nominated by the President

and the scrutators.

"XIX. No person shall be admitted into the College, or Section of

College, if he is not inscribed in the list of electors who compose it.

This list will be delivered to the President and will remain posted up

in the place of the sitting of the College, during the period of its

proceedings.

"XX. All discussion and deliberation whatever are forbidden in the

bosom of the Electoral Colleges.

"XXI. The police of the College belongs to the President No armed

force, without his order, can be placed near the hall of its sittings.

The Military Commandant shall be bound to obey his requisitions.

"XXII. The nominations shall be made in the Colleges and Sections of

Colleges, by the absolute majority of the votes given. Nevertheless,

if the nominations are not finished after two rounds of scrutiny, the

bureau shall determine the list of persons who shall have obtained the

greatest number of suffrages at the second round. It shall contain a

number of names double that of the nominations which remain to be made.

At the third round, no suffrages can be given except to the persons

inscribed on that list; and the nominations shall be made by a relative

majority.

"XXIII. The electors shall vote by bulletins; every bulletin shall

contain as many names as there are nominations to be made.

"XXIV. The electors shall write their vote on the bureau, or cause it

to be written by one of the scrutators.

"XXV. The name, qualification and domicile of each elector who shall

deposit his bulletin shall be inscribed by the secretary on a list

destined to establish the number of the voters.

"XXVI. Every scrutiny shall remain open for six hours, and the result

shall be declared during the sitting.

"XXVII. There shall be drawn up a _procès verbal_ for each sitting.

This _procès verbal_, or minute, shall be signed by all the members of

the bureau.

"XXVIII. Conformably with Article XLVI. of the Constitutional Charter,

no amendment can be made upon any Law in the Chamber, unless it has

been proposed and consented to by Us and unless it has been discussed

in the bureau.

"XXIX. All regulations contrary to the present Ordinance shall remain

without effect.

"XXX. Our Ministers, the Secretaries of State, are charged with the

execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830

and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES." (Countersigned by all the Ministers.)