that of the naval cavalry, a wood spread its screen, against which the
place was directing an inexpedient fire; the town was shooting too
much, it believed us to be more numerous than we were, which explains
the pompous bulletins of the commander of Thionville. While crossing
this wood, I saw something move in the grass: a man lay stretched at
full length with his nose against the ground, showing only his broad
back. I thought he was wounded: I took him by the nape of the neck and
half lifted his head. He opened a pair of terror-struck eyes and raised
himself a little upon his hands. I burst out laughing: it was my cousin
Moreau! I had not seen him since our visit to Madame de Chastenay.
He had lain flat on his stomach to escape a bomb, and found it
impossible to get up again. I had all the difficulty in the world to
set him on his legs; his paunch was three times its former size. He
told me that he was serving on the commissariat, and that he was on his
way to offer some oxen to the Prince of Waldeck. In addition to this,
he carried a rosary. Hugues Métel[100] tells of a wolf which resolved
to embrace the monastic condition, but which, failing to accustom
itself to the fasting diet, became a canon.
As I returned to camp, an officer of engineers passed close by me,
leading his horse by the bridle; a cannon-ball struck the animal in
the narrowest part of the neck and cut it right off; the head and neck
remained hanging in the officer's hand and dragged him to the ground
with their weight. I had seen a bomb fall in the middle of a ring of
naval officers who were sitting eating in a circle. The mess-platter
disappeared; the officers, tumbling head over heels and run, as it
were, on a sand-bank, shouted like the old sea captain:
"Fire starboard guns, fire larboard guns, fire all guns, fire my wig!"
These singular shots seem to pertain to Thionville. In 1558, François
de Guise[101] laid siege to the place. Marshal Strozzi[102] was killed,
"while talking in the trenches to the aforesaid Sieur de Guise, who had
his hand on his shoulder at the time."
*
[Sidenote: Market in camp.]
A sort of market had been formed behind our camp. The peasants had
brought octaves of white Moselle wine, which remained on the wagons:
the horses were taken out and ate fastened to one end of the cart,
while the soldiers drank at the other end. Here and there gleamed the
fires of ovens. Sausages were fried in pans, hasty puddings boiled
in basins, pancakes tossed on iron dishes, puffcakes swollen out on
hampers. Cakes flavoured with aniseed, rye loaves at one sou, maize
cakes, green apples, red and white eggs, pipes and tobacco were sold
under a tree from whose branches hung coarse cloth great-coats, for
which the passers-by haggled. Village women, seated astride portable
stools, milked cows, while each presented his cup to the dairy-woman
and waited his turn. Before the stoves roamed cutlers in smocks and
soldiers in uniform. The canteen-women went about crying aloud in
German and French. There were groups standing, others seated at deal
tables planted askew on the uneven ground. One sought shelter at
random under a packing cloth or under branches cut in the forest, as
on Palm Sunday. I believe also that there were weddings in the covered
wagons, in memory of the Frankish kings. The patriots could easily have
followed Majorian's[103] example and carried away the bride's chariot:
_Rapit esseda victor, nubentemque nurum._[104] All sang, laughed,
smoked. The scene was extremely gay at night, between the fires which
lit up the earth and the stars shining overhead.
When I was neither on guard at the batteries nor on duty in the tent,
I liked supping at the fair. There the stories of the camp were told
again; but under the influence of liquor and good cheer they became
much finer. One of our fellows, a brevet-captain, whose name I have
forgotten in that of "Dinarzade" which we gave him, was famous for
his yarns; it would have been more correct to say "Scheherazade," but
we were not so careful as that. As soon as we saw him, we ran up to
him, fought for him: we vied with each other as to who should have him
on his score. Short of body, long of leg, with sunk cheeks, drooping
mustachios, eyebrows forming a comma at the outer angle, a hollow
voice, a huge sword in a coffee-coloured scabbard, the carriage of a
soldier poet, something between the suicide and the jolly dog, that
solemn wag Dinarzade never laughed, and it was impossible to look at
him without laughing. He was the necessary second in all the duels and
the lover of all the barmaids. He viewed all he said on the dark side,
and interrupted his recitals only to take a pull at a bottle, relight
his pipe, or swallow a sausage.
One night, when it was drizzling, we were seated round the tap of a
wine-cask tilted towards us in a cart with its shafts in the air.
A candle stuck on the cask lighted us; a piece of packing-cloth,
stretched from the end of the shafts to two posts, served us for a
roof. Dinarzade, with his sword awry after the manner of Frederic II.,
stood between one of the wheels and a horse's crupper, telling a story
to our great content. The canteen-women who brought us our rations
stayed with us to listen to our Arab. The attentive group of bacchantes
and Silenuses which formed the chorus accompanied the narrative with
marks of its surprise, approval, or disapproval.
"Gentlemen," said the story-teller, "you all knew the Green Knight, who
lived in the days of King John[105]?"
Every one said:
"Yes, yes."
Dinarzade swallowed down a rolled pancake, burning himself as he did so.
"This Green Knight, gentlemen, as you know, since you have seen him,
was very good-looking: when the wind blew back his ruddy locks over
his casque, it looked like a twist of tow round a green turban."
The audience: "Bravo!"
[Sidenote: Dinarzade's tales.]
"One evening in May, he sounded his horn at the draw-bridge of a castle
in Picardy, or Auvergne, no matter which. In that castle lived "the
Lady of Great Companies." She welcomed the knight, told her servants
to disarm him and lead him to the bath, and came and sat with him at a
splendid table; and the pages-in-waiting were mute."
The audience: "Oh, oh!"
"The lady, gentlemen, was tall, flat, lean, and shambling, like the
major's wife; otherwise she had plenty of expression and an arch look.
When she laughed and showed her long teeth beneath her stumpy nose, one
did not know what one was about. She fell in love with the knight and
the knight with her, although he was afraid of her."
Dinarzade emptied the ashes of his pipe on the rim of the wheel and
wanted to refill his cutty; they made him continue: "The Green Knight,
utterly dumfoundered, resolved to leave the castle; but, before taking
his leave, he asked the lady of the keep for an explanation of many
strange things; at the same time he made her an offer of marriage,
always provided she was not a witch."
Dinarzade's rapier was planted stiff and straight between his knees.
Seated and leaning forward with our pipes, we made a garland of
fire-flakes beneath him, like Saturn's ring. Suddenly Dinarzade
shouted, as though beside himself:
"Well, gentlemen, the Lady of Great Companies was Death!"
And the captain, breaking the ranks and shouting "Death! Death!" put
the canteen-women to flight. The meeting was closed: the uproar was
great, the laughter prolonged. We approached Thionville amid the roar
of the cannon of the place.
*
The siege continued, or rather, there was no siege, for the trenches
were not opened, and troops were wanting to invest the place regularly.
We reckoned on receiving intelligence, and waited for news of the
successes of the Prussian Army or of Clerfayt's[106] Army, with which
was the French corps of the Duc de Bourbon. Our scanty supplies were
becoming exhausted; Paris seemed to draw farther away. The bad weather
never ceased; we were flooded in the midst of our works; I sometimes
woke in a trench with water up to my neck: the next day, I was a
cripple.
Among my fellow-Bretons I had met Ferron de La Sigonnière[107], my old
class-fellow at Dinan. We slept badly under our tent; our heads went
beyond the canvas and received the rain from that sort of gutter. I
would get up and go with Ferron to walk in front of the stacked arms;
for all our evenings were not so gay as those with Dinarzade. We walked
in silence, listening to the voices of the sentries, looking at the
lights of our streets of tents as we had formerly watched the lamps
in the passages at our college. We discussed the past and the future,
the mistakes that had been made, those that would still be made; we
deplored the blindness of our Princes, who imagined that they could
return to their country with a handful of adherents and consolidate the
crown on their brother's head with the aid of the foreigner. I remember
saying to my friend, in the course of these conversations, that France
wished to imitate England, that the King would perish on the scaffold,
and that our expedition before Thionville would probably be one of the
principal counts in the indictment of Louis XVI. Ferron was struck by
my prophecy: it was the first I ever made. Since that time, I have
made many others quite as true, quite as unheeded: when the accident
occurred, the others took shelter and left me to struggle with the
misfortune which I had foreseen. When the Dutch encounter a squall
on the open sea, they retreat to the interior of the ship, close the
hatches, and drink punch, leaving a dog on deck to bark at the storm;
the danger past, Trust is sent back to his kennel in the hold, and the
captain returns to enjoy the fine weather on the quarter-deck. I have
been the Dutch dog of the Legitimist ship.
The memories of my life as a soldier have engraved themselves upon
my thoughts; I have related them in the sixth book of the _Martyrs._
Armorican barbarian in the Princes' camp as I was, I carried Homer with
my sword; I preferred "my country, the poor, small isle of Aaron, to
the hundred cities of Crete." I said with Telemachus:
"The harsh country which only feeds goats is dearer to me than those in
which horses are reared[108]."
My words would have brought a smile to the lips of the warlike
Menelaus: άγάθος Μενἐλαος.
The rumour spread that we were at last coming to action; the Prince of
Waldeck was to attempt an assault while we were to cross the river and
make a diversion by a feint attack on the place from the French side.
[Sidenote: My company.]
Five Breton companies, including mine, the company of the Picardy
and Navarre officers, and the regiment of volunteers, composed of
young Lorraine peasants and of deserters from various regiments, were
ordered up for duty. We were to be supported by the Royal Germans,
the squadrons of musketeers and the different corps of dragoons which
covered our left: my brother was with this cavalry with the Baron de
Montboissier, who had married a daughter of M. de Malesherbes, sister
to Madame de Rosanbo, and therefore aunt to my sister-in-law. We
escorted three companies of Austrian artillery with heavy guns and a
battery of three mortars.
We started at six o'clock in the evening; at ten we crossed the
Moselle, above Thionville, on a coppered pontoon bridge:
Amæna fluenta
Subterlabentis tacito rumore Mosellæ[109].
At daybreak, we were drawn up in order of battle on the left bank, with
the heavy cavalry in echelons on both flanks, and the light cavalry
in front. At our second movement, we formed in column and began to
defile. At about nine o'clock, we heard a volley fired on our left.
A carabineer officer came dashing up at full speed to tell us that
a detachment of Kellermann's army was about to join issue with us,
and that the action had already begun between the skirmishers. The
officer's horse had been struck by a bullet on the forehead; it reared,
with the foam streaming from its mouth and the blood from its nostrils:
the carabineer, seated sword in hand on this wounded horse, was superb.
The corps which had come out of Metz manœuvred to take us in flank:
they had field-pieces with them, whose fire reached our volunteer
regiment. I heard the exclamations of some recruits struck by the
cannon-balls; the last cries of youth snatched living from life gave me
a feeling of profound pity: I thought of the poor mothers.
The drums beat the charge, and we rushed in disorder upon the enemy.
We came so close that the smoke did not prevent us from seeing the
terrible expression on the faces of men ready to shed your blood. The
patriots had not yet acquired the assurance that comes from the long
habit of fighting and victory. Their movements were slack, they felt
their way; fifty grenadiers of the Old Guard would have made head
against an heterogeneous mass of undisciplined nobles, old and young:
ten to twelve hundred foot-soldiers were taken aback by a few gun-shots
from the Austrian heavy artillery; they retreated; our cavalry pursued
them for two leagues.
A deaf-and-dumb German girl, called Libbe, or Libba, had become
attached to my cousin Armand and had followed him. I found her sitting
on the grass, which stained her dress with blood: her elbow rested
on her upturned knees; her hand, passed through her tangled yellow
tresses, supported her head. She wept as she looked at three or four
killed men, new deaf-mutes, lying around her. She had not heard the
clap of the thunderbolts of which she saw the effect, nor could she
hear the sighs which escaped her lips when she looked at Armand; she
had never heard the sound of the voice of him she loved, and she would
not hear the first cry of the child she bore in her womb: if the grave
contained only silence, she would not know that she had sunk into it.
For that matter, fields of slaughter lie on every hand: in the Eastern
Cemetery[110] in Paris, twenty-seven thousand tombstones, two hundred
and thirty thousand corpses, will show you the extent of the battle
which death wages day and night at your doors.
[Sidenote: The assault of Thionville.]
After a somewhat long halt, we resumed our march, and arrived under the
walls of Thionville at nightfall. The drums did not beat; the word of
command was given in a whisper. The cavalry, in order to repulse any
sortie, stole along the roads and hedges to the gate which we were to
cannonade. The Austrian artillery, protected by our infantry, took up
a position at fifty yards from the advanced works, behind a hastily
thrown-up epaulement of gabions. At one o'clock on the morning of the
1st of September, a rocket, sent up from the Prince of Waldeck's camp
on the other side of the place, gave the signal. The Prince commenced a
smart fire, to which the town made a vigorous reply. We began to fire
forthwith.
The besieged, not thinking that we had troops on that side, and not
foreseeing this assault, had left the southern ramparts unprotected; we
did not lose for waiting: the garrison armed a double battery, which
penetrated our epaulements and dismounted two of our guns. The sky was
aflame; we were shrouded in torrents of smoke. I behaved like a little
Alexander: weakened by fatigue, I fell sound asleep, almost under the
wheels of the gun-carriage where I was on guard. A shell, bursting six
inches off the ground, sent a splinter into my right thigh. I awoke
with the shock, but felt no pain, and perceived only by my blood that I
was wounded. I bound up my thigh with my hand-kerchief. In the affair
on the plain, two bullets had struck my knapsack during a wheeling
movement. _Atala_, like a devoted daughter, placed herself between her
father and the lead of the enemy: she had still to withstand the fire
of the Abbé Morellet[111].
At four o'clock in the morning, the Prince of Waldeck's fire ceased: we
thought the town had surrendered; but the gates were not opened, and we
had to think of retiring. We returned to our positions, after a tiring
march of three days.
The Prince of Waldeck had gone as far as the edge of the ditches, which
he had tried to cross, hoping to bring about a surrender by means of
the simultaneous attack: divisions were still supposed to exist in the
town, and we flattered ourselves that the Royalist party would bring
the keys to the Princes. The Austrians, having fired in barbette, lost
a considerable number of men; the Prince of Waldeck had an arm shot
off. While a few drops of blood flowed under the walls of Thionville,
blood was flowing in torrents in the prisons of Paris: my wife and
sisters were in greater danger than I.
*
We raised the siege of Thionville and set out for Verdun, which had
been restored to the Allies on the 2nd of September. Longwy, the
birthplace of François de Mercy[112], had fallen on the 23rd of August.
Wreaths and festoons of flowers bore evidence on every side of the
passage of Frederic William. Among the peaceful trophies, I observed
the Prussian Eagle affixed to Vauban's[113] fortifications: it was
not to stay there long; as to the flowers, they were soon to see the
innocent creatures who had gathered them fade away like themselves. One
of the most atrocious murders of the Terror was that of the young girls
of Verdun.
"Fourteen young girls of Verdun," says Riouffe[114], "of
unexampled purity, who had the air of young virgins decked
for a public festival, were led together to the scaffold.
They disappeared suddenly and were gathered in their
springtime; the 'Court of Women,' on the morrow of their
death, looked like a garden-plot stripped of its flowers by a
storm. Never have I witnessed such despair as that which this
act of barbarity excited among us."
Verdun is famous for its female sacrifices. According to Gregory of
Tours[115], Deuteric, to protect his daughter from the prosecution of
Theodebert[116], placed her in a cart drawn by two untamed oxen and had
her flung into the Meuse. The instigator of the massacre of the young
girls of Verdun was the regicide poetaster Pons de Verdun[117], who was
infuriated against his native city. The number of agents of the Terror
supplied by the _Almanach des Muses_ is incredible; the unsatisfied
vanity of the mediocrities produced as many revolutionaries as the
wounded pride of the cripples and abortions: a revolt analogous to
that of the infirmities of mind and body. Pons attached the point of a
dagger to his blunt epigrams. Faithful, as it seemed, to the traditions
of Greece, the poet was willing to offer none save the blood of virgins
to his gods: for the Convention decreed, on his motion, that no woman
with child could be put on her trial. He also caused the sentence to
be annulled condemning Madame de Bonchamps to death, the widow of the
celebrated Vendean general[118]. Alas, we Royalists in the train of the
Princes attained the reverses of the Vendée without passing through its
glory!
We had not at Verdun, to pass the time, "that famous Comtesse de
Saint-Balmont[119], who laid aside her female apparel, mounted
on horseback, and herself served as an escort to the ladies who
accompanied her or whom she had left in her chariot..." We had no
passion for "old Gallic," nor did we write "notes in the language of
Amadis[120]."
The Prussian evil[121] communicated itself to our little army: I caught
it. Our cavalry had gone to join Frederic William at Valmy. We knew
nothing of what was happening, and were hourly expecting the order to
march forward: we received the order to beat a retreat.
[Sidenote: I am weakened by my wound.]
Very greatly weakened, and prevented by my troublesome wound from
walking without pain, I dragged myself as best I could in the wake of
my company, which soon dispersed. Jean Balue[122], son of a miller at
Verdun, left his father's house at a very early age with a monk, who
burdened him with his wallet. On leaving Verdun, "Ford Hill" according
to Saumaise[123], _ver dunum_, I carried the wallet of the Monarchy,
but I did not become Comptroller of Finance, nor a bishop or cardinal.
If, in the novels which I have written, I have drawn upon my own
history, in the histories which I have told I have placed memories of
the living history in which I took part. Thus, in my life of the Duc
de Berry[124], I described some of the scenes which took place before
my eyes:
"When an army is disbanded, it returns to its homes; but had
the soldiers of Condé's Army any homes? Whither was the stick
to lead them which they were hardly permitted to cut in the
forests of Germany, after laying down the musket which they
had taken up in defense of their King?...
"The time had come to part. The brothers-in-arms bade each
other a last farewell, and took different roads on earth.
All, before setting out, went to salute their father and
captain, white-haired old Condé: the patriarch of glory gave
his blessing to his children, wept over his dispersed tribe,
and saw the tents of his camp fall with the grief of a man
witnessing the destruction of his ancestral roof[125]."
Less than twenty years later, the leader of the new French Army,
Bonaparte, also took leave of his companions: so quickly do men and
empires pass, so little does the most extraordinary renown save one
from the most common destiny!
We left Verdun. The rains had broken up the roads; everywhere one saw
ammunition-wagons, gun-carriages, cannon stuck in the mire, chariots
overturned, cutler-women with their children on their backs, soldiers
dying or dead in the mud. Crossing a ploughed field, I sank down to
my knees; Ferron and another comrade dragged me out despite myself: I
begged them to leave me there; I had rather died.
On the 16th of October, at the camp near Longwy, the captain of my
company, M. de Goyon-Miniac, handed me a very honourable certificate.
At Arlon, we saw a file of wagons with their teams on the high-road:
the horses, some standing, others kneeling down, others with their
noses on the ground, were dead, and their bodies had grown stiff
between the shafts: it was as though one saw the shades of a
battlefield bivouacking on the shores of Styx.
Ferron asked me what I meant to do, and I answered that, if I could go
as far as Ostend, I would take ship for Jersey, where I should find my
uncle de Bedée; from there I should be able to join the Royalists in
Brittany.
[Sidenote: And catch the smallpox.]
The fever was sapping my strength; I could only with difficulty support
myself on my swollen thigh. I felt a new ailment lay hold of me. After
twenty-four hours' vomiting, my face and body were covered with an
eruption: confluent smallpox broke out; it appeared to be affected by
the temperature of the air. In this condition, I set out on foot to
make a journey of two hundred leagues, rich as I was to the extent
of eighteen livres Tournois: all this for the greater glory of the
Monarchy. Ferron, who had lent me my six small crowns of three francs,
left me, he having arranged to be met in Luxembourg.
*
As I was leaving Arlon, a peasant took me up in his cart for the sum of
four sous, and put me down five leagues farther on a heap of stones. I
hopped a few paces with the aid of my crutch, and washed the bandage
round my scratch, which had developed into a sore, in a spring rustling
by the roadside, which did me a great deal of good. The smallpox had
come quite out, and I felt relieved. I had not abandoned my knapsack,
the straps of which cut my shoulders.
I spent that first night in a barn, and had nothing to eat. The wife
of the farmer who owned the barn refused payment for my lodging. At
daybreak she brought me a great basin of coffee and milk, with a black
loaf which I thought excellent. I resumed my road quite merrily,
although I often fell. I was joined by four or five of my comrades,
who carried my knapsack; they were also very ill. We met villagers;
by taking cart after cart we covered a sufficient distance in the
Ardennes, in five days, to reach Attert, Flamizoul, and Bellevue. On
the sixth day I found myself alone. My smallpox had grown paler and was
less puffy.
After walking two leagues, which took me six hours, I saw a gipsy
family encamped behind a ditch around a furze fire, with two goats
and a donkey. I had no sooner reached them than I let myself drop to
the ground, and the strange creatures hastened to succour me. A young
woman in rags, lively, dark, and mischievous, sang, leaped, skipped
around, holding her child aslant upon her breast, as though it were a
hurdy-gurdy with which she was enlivening her dance; she next squatted
on her heels close by my side, examined me curiously by the light of
the fire, took my dying hand to tell me my fortune, and asked me for "a
little sou:" it was too dear. It would be difficult to possess more
knowledge, charm, and wretchedness than my sybil of the Ardennes. I
do not know when the nomads, of whom I should have been a worthy son,
left me; they were not there when I woke from my torpor at dawn. My
fortune-teller had gone away with the secret of my future. In exchange
for my "little sou," she had laid by my head an apple which served to
refresh my mouth. I shook myself, like John Rabbit, among the "thyme"
and the "dew"; but I was not able to "browse," nor to "trot," nor to
cut many "pranks[126]." Nevertheless, I rose with the intention of
"paying my court to Aurora:" she was very beautiful and I very ugly;
her rosy face proclaimed her good health; she was better than the poor
Cephalus[127] of Armorica. Although both of us young, we were old
friends, and I imagined that her tears that morning were shed for me.
I penetrated into the forest, feeling not too sad; solitude had
restored me to my own nature. I hummed the ballad by the ill-fated
Cazotte[128]:
Tout au beau milieu des Ardennes,
Est un château sur le haut d'un rocher[129].
Was it not in the donjon of this ghostly castle that Philip II. King
of Spain imprisoned my fellow-Breton, Captain La Noue[130], who had a
Chateaubriand for his grand-mother? Philip consented to release the
illustrious prisoner if the latter consented to have his eyes put out;
La Noue was on the point of accepting the proposal, so great was his
longing to return to his dear Brittany. Alas! I was possessed with the
same desire, and to lose my sight I needed only the ailment with which
it had pleased God to afflict me. I did not meet "Sir Enguerrand coming
from Spain[131]," but poor wretches, small pedlars who, like myself,
carried their whole fortune on their back. A wood-cutter, with felt
knee-caps, entered the woods: he should have taken me for a dead branch
and cut me down. A few carrion crows, a few larks, a few buntings, a
kind of large finches, hopped along the road or stood motionless on the
border of stones, watchful of the sparrow-hawk which hovered circling
in the sky. From time to time, I heard the sound of the horn of the
swine-herd watching his sows and their little ones acorning. I rested
in a shepherd's movable hut; I found no one at home except Puss, who
made me a thousand graceful caresses. The shepherd was standing a long
way off, in the centre of a common pasture, with his dogs sitting at
irregular distances around the sheep; by day that herdsman gathered
simples: he was a doctor and a wizard; by night, he watched the stars:
then he was a Chaldean shepherd.
[Sidenote: A weary journey.]
I stood still, half a league farther, in a pasturage of deer: hunters
went by at the other end. A spring murmured at my feet; at the bottom
of this spring Orlando (Inamorato, not Furioso) saw a palace of crystal
filled with ladies and knights. If the paladin, who joined the dazzling
water-nymphs, had at least left Golden Bridle[132] at the brink of the
well; if Shakespeare had sent me Rosalind and the Exiled Duke[133],
they would have been very helpful to me.
After taking breath I continued my road. My impaired ideas floated
in a void that was not without charm; my old phantoms, having scarce
the consistency of shades three parts effaced, crowded round me to
bid me farewell. I had no longer the power of memory; I beheld at
an indeterminate distance the aerial forms of my relations and my
friends, mingled with unknown figures. When I sat down to rest against
a mile stone, I thought I saw faces smile to me in the threshold of
the distant cabins, in the blue smoke escaping from the roofs of the
cottages, in the tree-tops, in the transparency of the clouds, in the
luminous sheaves of the sun dragging its beams over the heather like a
golden rake. These apparitions were those of the Muses coming to assist
the poet's death: my tomb, dug with the uprights of their lyres under
an oak of the Ardennes, would have fairly well suited the soldier and
the traveller. Some hazel-hens, which had strayed into the forms of
the hares under the privets, alone, with the insects, produced a few
murmurs around me: lives as slender, as unknown, as my life. I could
walk no farther; I felt extremely ill; the smallpox was turning in and
choking me.
Towards the end of the day, I lay down on my back, in a ditch, with
Atala's knapsack under my head, my crutch by my side, my eyes fixed
upon the sun, whose light was going out with my own. I greeted in all
gentleness of thought the luminary which had lighted my first youth on
my paternal moors: we retired to rest together, he to rise in greater
glory, I, according to all appearances, never to wake again. I fainted
away in a feeling of religion: the last sounds I heard were the fall of
a leaf and the whistling of a bullfinch.
*
It seems that I lay unconscious for nearly two hours. The wagons of the
Prince de Ligne[134] happened to pass; one of the drivers, stopping to
cut a birch twig, stumbled over me without seeing me: he thought me
dead and pushed me with his foot; I gave a sign of life. The driver
called his comrades and, prompted by an instinct of pity, they threw
me into a cart. The jolting revived me; I was able to talk to my
deliverers; I told them that I was a soldier of the Princes' Army, and
that if they would take me as far as Brussels, where I was going, I
would reward them for their trouble.
"All right, mate," said one of them, "but you'll have to get down at
Namur, for we're forbidden to carry anybody. We'll take you up again
t'other side of the town."
I asked for something to drink; I swallowed a few drops of brandy,
which threw the symptoms of my disease out again and relieved my chest
for a moment: nature had endowed me with extraordinary strength.
We reached the suburbs of Namur at ten o'clock in the morning. I got
down and followed the waggons at a distance; I soon lost sight of
them. I was stopped at the entrance to the town. I sat down under the
gateway, while my papers were being examined. The soldiers on guard,
seeing my uniform, offered me a scrap of ammunition bread, and the
corporal handed me some peppered brandy in a blue glass drinking-cup.
I made some ceremony about drinking out of the cup of military
hospitality:
"Catch hold!" he exclaimed angrily, accompanying his injunction with a
_Sackerment der Teufel!_
My passage through Namur was a laborious one: I walked leaning against
the houses. The first woman who saw me left her shop, gave me her arm
with a pitying air, and helped me to drag myself along. I thanked her,
and she replied:
"No, no, soldier,"
Soon other women came running up, bringing bread, wine, fruit, milk,
soup, old clothes, blankets.
"He is wounded," said some, in their Brabançon French dialect.
"He has the smallpox," cried others, and kept back their children.
"But, young man, you will not be able to walk; you will die if you do;
stay in the hospital."
[Sidenote: The women of Namur.]
They wanted to take me to the hospital, they relieved each other from
door to door, and in this way helped me to the gate of the town,
outside which I found the wagons again. You have seen a peasant-woman
succour me; you shall see another woman show me hospitality in
Guernsey. Women who have aided me in my distress, if you be still
living, may God help you in your old age and in your sorrows! If you
have departed this life, may your children share the happiness which
Heaven has long refused me!
The women of Namur assisted me to climb into the wagon, recommended me
to the driver's care, and compelled me to accept a woollen blanket.
I noticed that they treated me with a sort of respect and deference:
there is something superior, something delicate, in the nature of
Frenchmen which other nations recognise.
The Prince de Ligne's men put me down for the second time on the road
just outside Brussels, and refused to accept my last crown-piece. In
Brussels, not one inn-keeper was willing to take me in. The wandering
Jew, the popular Orestes, whom the ballad represents as going to that
town:
Quand il fut dans la ville
De Bruxelle en Brabant[135],
met with a better reception than I, for he had always five sous in his
pocket. I knocked: they opened; when they saw me they said, "Move on,
move on!" and shut the door in my face. I was driven out of a café. My
hair hung over my face, hidden behind my beard and mustachios; I had a
hay bandage round my thigh; over my tattered uniform I wore the blanket
of the Namur women, knotted round my throat by way of a cloak. The
beggar in the _Odyssey_ was more insolent, but not so poor as I.
I had at first presented myself to no purpose at the hotel where I had
stayed with my brother: I made a second attempt; as I approached the
door I saw the Comte de Chateaubriand stepping from a carriage with
the Baron de Montboissier. He was alarmed at my spectral appearance.
They looked for a room outside the hotel, for the proprietor absolutely
refused to admit me. A wig-maker offered me a den suited to my
wretchedness. My brother brought me a surgeon and a doctor. He had
received letters from Paris: M. de Malesherbes invited him to return
to France. He told me of the day's work of the 10th of August, the
massacres of September, and the political news, of which I knew not
a word. He approved of my plan to cross to Jersey, and advanced me
twenty-five louis. My impaired sight hardly permitted me to distinguish
my brother's features; I believed that that gloom emanated from myself,
whereas it was the shadow which Eternity was spreading around him:
without knowing it, we were seeing each other for the last time. All of
us, such as we are, have only the present moment for our own: the next
belongs to God; there are always two chances of not seeing again the
friend who is leaving us: our death and his. How many men have never
reclimbed the staircase they have descended!
Death touches us more before than after the decease of a friend:
it is a piece of ourselves that is torn away, a world of childish
recollections, of familiar intimacy, of affections and interests in
common, that dissolves. My brother preceded me in my mother's womb; he
was the first to dwell in those same sainted entrails whence I issued
after him; he sat before me by the paternal hearth; he waited several
years to welcome me, to give me my name in the Name of Jesus Christ,
and to ally himself with the whole of my youth. My blood, mingled with
his blood in the revolutionary receptacle, would have had the same
savour, like a draught of milk supplied by the pasturage of the same
mountain. But, if men caused the head of my elder, my god-father,
to fall before its time, the years will not spare mine; already my
forehead is shedding its covering; I feel an Ugolino, Time, stooping
over me and gnawing at my skull:
... come'l pan perf ame si manduca[136].
The doctor could not recover from his astonishment: he looked upon
that which did not kill me, which came to none of its natural crises,
as a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of medicine. Gangrene had
set in in my wound; they dressed it with quinine. Having obtained this
first aid, I insisted on departing for Ostend. Brussels was hateful to
me, I burned to leave it; it was once again filling with those heroes
of domesticity who had returned from Verdun in their carriages, and
whom I did not see in Brussels when I accompanied the King there during
the Hundred Days.
[Sidenote: I reached Guernsey.]
I travelled pleasantly to Ostend by the canals: I found some Bretons
there, my comrades-in-arms. We chartered a decked barge and went down
the Channel. We slept in the hold, on the shingle which served as
ballast. The strength of my constitution was at last exhausted. I could
no longer speak; the motion of a rough sea broke me down completely.
I swallowed scarce a few drops of water and lemon, and, when the bad
weather compelled us to put in to Guernsey, they thought I was going to
breathe my last: an emigrant priest read me the prayers for the dying.
The captain, not wishing to have me die on board his ship, ordered me
to be put down on the quay; they set me down in the sun, with my back
leaning against a wall, and my head turned towards the open sea, facing
that Isle of Alderney where, eight months before, I had beheld death in
another shape.
It would seem that I was vowed to pity. The wife of an English pilot
happened to pass by; she was moved and called her husband, who,
assisted by two or three sailors, carried me into a fisherman's house:
me, the friend of the waves; they laid me on a comfortable bed, between
very white sheets. The young barge-woman took every possible care of
the stranger: I owe her my life. The next day I was taken on board
again. My hostess almost wept on taking leave of her patient: women
have a heaven-born instinct for misfortune. My fair-haired and comely
guardian, who resembled a figure in the old English prints, pressed
my bloated and burning hands between her own, so cool and long; I was
ashamed to touch anything so charming with anything so unseemly.
We set sail and reached the westernmost point of Jersey. One of my
companions, M. du Tilleul, went to St. Helier's to my uncle. M. de
Bedée sent a carriage to fetch me the next morning. We drove across the
entire island: dying as I was, I was charmed with its groves; but I
only talked nonsense about them, having fallen into a delirium.
I lay four months between life and death. My uncle, his wife, his son
and his three daughters took it in turns to watch by my bedside. I
occupied an apartment in one of the houses which they were beginning to
build along the harbour: the windows of my room came down to the level
of the floor, and I was able to see the sea from my bed. The doctor,
M. Delattre, had forbidden them to talk to me of serious things, and
especially of politics. Towards the end of January 1793, seeing my
uncle enter my room in deep mourning, I trembled, for I thought we had
lost one of our family: he informed me of the death of Louis XVI. I was
not surprised: I had foreseen it. I asked for news of my relatives:
my sisters and my wife had returned to Brittany after the September
massacres; they had had great difficulty in leaving Paris. My brother
had gone back to France, and was living at Malesherbes. I began to get
up; the smallpox was gone; but I suffered with my chest, and a weakness
remained which I long retained.
Jersey, the Cæsarea of the Itinerary of Antoninus[137], has remained
subject to the Crown of England since the death of Robert, Duke
of Normandy[138]; we have often tried to capture it, but always
unsuccessfully. The island is a remnant of our early history: the
saints coming to Brittany-Armorica from Hibernia and Albion rested at
Jersey. St. Hélier[139], a solitary, dwelt in the rocks of Cæsarea; he
was butchered by the Vandals. In Jersey, one finds a specimen of the
old Normans; it is as though one heard William the Bastard[140] speak,
or the author of the _Roman du Rou._
The island is fertile: it has two towns and twelve parishes; it is
covered with country-houses and herds of cattle. The ocean wind, which
seems to belie its rudeness, gives Jersey exquisite honey, cream
of extraordinary sweetness, and butter deep-yellow in colour and
violet-scented. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre conjectures that the apple
came to us from Jersey; he is mistaken: we have the apple and the pear
from Greece, as we owe the peach to Persia, the lemon to Media, the
plum to Syria, the cherry to Cerasus, the chestnut to Castanea, the
quince to Canea, and the pomegranate to Cyprus.
[Sidenote: And Jersey.]
I took great pleasure in going out in the early days of May. Spring in
Jersey preserves all her youth; she might still be called by her former
name of Primavera, a name which, as she grew older, it left to her
daughter, the first flower with which it crowns itself.
*
Here I will copy for you two pages from the Life of the Duc de Berry;
it is as though I told you my own:
"After twenty-two years of fighting, the brazen barrier with
which France was girt about was forced: the hour of the
Restoration drew nigh; our Princes left their retreats. Each
of them made for a different point of the frontier, like
travellers who, at the risk of their lives, seek to penetrate
into a country of which marvels are related. Monsieur set out
for Switzerland; Monseigneur le Duc d'Angoulême for Spain,
and his brother for Jersey. In that island, in which some of
the judges of Charles I. died unknown to their fellow-men,
Monseigneur le Duc de Berry found French Royalists grown old
in exile and forgotten for their virtues, as in former days
the English regicides for their crime. He met old priests,
henceforth consecrated to solitude; he realized with them the
fiction of the poet who makes a Bourbon land on the island
of Jersey after a storm. One of these confessors and martyrs
might say to the heir of Henry IV., as the hermit of Jersey
said to that great king:
Loin de la cour alors, dans cette grotte obscure
De ma religion je viens pleurer l'injure[141].
"Monseigneur le Duc de Berry spent some months in Jersey; the sea, the
winds, politics bound him there. Everything opposed his impatience; he
found himself on the point of renouncing his enterprise and taking ship
for Bordeaux. A letter from him to Madame la Maréchale Moreau gives us
a vivid idea of his occupations on his rock:
"'8 _February_ 1814.
"'Here I am like Tantalus, in sight of that unhappy France
which finds so much difficulty in breaking its chains.
You whose soul is so beautiful, so French, can judge of
my feelings; how much it would cost me to move away from
that shore which I should need but two hours to reach!
When the sun lights it, I climb the tallest rocks and,
with my spy-glass in my hand, I follow the whole coast:
I can see the rocks of Coutances. My imagination rises,
I see myself leaping on shore, surrounded by Frenchmen,
wearing the white cockade in their hats; I hear the cry of
'Long live the King!' that cry which no Frenchman has ever
heard with composure; the loveliest woman of the province
girds me with a white sash, for love and glory always go
together. We march on Cherbourg; some rascally fort, with a
garrison of foreigners, tries to defend itself: we carry it
by assault, and a vessel puts out to fetch the King, with
the White Ensign which recalls the days of France's glory
and happiness! Ah, madame, when removed by but a few hours
from so likely a dream, can one think of betaking himself
elsewhere!'"
*
It is three years since I wrote these pages in Paris; I had gone before
M. le Duc de Berry in Jersey, the city of the exiled, by twenty-two
years; I was to leave my name behind me, since Armand de Chateaubriand
was married, and his son Frédéric born there[142].
Gaiety had not abandoned the family of my uncle de Bedée; my aunt
continued to nurse a big dog, descended from the one whose virtues I
have related: as it bit everybody and had the mange, my cousins had
it secretly hanged, notwithstanding its nobility. Madame de Bedée
persuaded herself that some English officers, charmed with Azor's
beauty, had stolen it, and that it was living, laden with honours and
dinners, in the richest castle of the Three Kingdoms. Alas, our present
hilarity was compounded only out of our past gaiety! By recalling the
scenes at Monchoix we found means of laughter in Jersey. The case is
rare enough, for in the human heart pleasures do not keep up the same
relations one to the other that sorrows do: new joys do not restore
their springtime to former joys, but recent sorrows cause old sorrows
to blossom over again.
For the rest, the Emigrants at that time excited general sympathy;
our cause appeared to be the cause of European order: an honoured
unhappiness, such as ours, is something.
M. de Bouillon[143] was the protector of the French refugees in Jersey:
he dissuaded me from my plan of crossing over to Brittany, unfit as
I was to endure a life of caves and forests; he advised me to go
to England, and there seek the opportunity of entering the regular
service. My uncle, who was very ill provided with money, began to feel
straitened with his large family; he had found himself obliged to send
his son to London to feed himself on starvation and hope. Fearing lest
I should be a burden to M. de Bedée, I decided to relieve him of my
presence.
[Sidenote: I set sail for England.]
Thirty louis, which a Saint-Malo smuggler brought me, enabled me to
put my plan into execution, and I booked a berth on the packet for
Southampton. I was deeply touched, on bidding farewell to my uncle: he
had nursed me with the affection of a father; with him were connected
the few happy moments of my childhood; he knew all I loved; I found
in his features a certain resemblance to my mother. I had left that
excellent mother, and was never to see her again; I had left my sister
Julie and my brother, and was doomed to meet them no more; I was
leaving my uncle, and his genial countenance was never again to gladden
my eyes. A few months had sufficed to bring all these losses, for the
death of our friends is not reckoned from the moment at which they die,
but from that at which we cease to live with them.
Were it possible to say to Time, "Not so fast!" one would stop it at
the hours of delight; but, as this is not possible, let us not linger
here below; let us go away before witnessing the flight of friends
and of those years which the poet considers alone worthy of life:
_Vitâ dignior ætas._ That which delights us in the age of friendships
becomes an object of suffering and regret in the age of destitution.
We no longer desire the return of the smiling months to the earth;
we dread it rather: the birds, the flowers, a fine evening at the
end of April, a fine night commencing in the evening with the first
nightingale and ending in the morning with the first swallow, those
things which give the need and longing for happiness kill one. You
still feel their charms, but they are no longer for you: youth which
tastes them by your side, and which looks down upon you with scorn,
fills you with jealousy and makes you realize the completeness of your
desolation. The grace and freshness of nature, while recalling your
past happiness, adds to the unsightliness of your misery. You have
become a mere blot upon that nature; you spoil its harmony and its
suavity by your presence, by your words, and even by the sentiments
which you venture to express. You may love, but you can no longer be
loved. The vernal fountain has renewed its waters without restoring
your youth to you, and the sight of all that is born again, of all that
is happy, reduces you to the sorrowful remembrance of your pleasures.
*
The packet on which I embarked was crowded with Emigrant families.
I there made the acquaintance of M. Hingant[144], an old colleague
of my brother's in the Parliament of Brittany, a man of taste and
intelligence, of whom I shall have much to say. A naval officer was
playing chess in the captain's room; he did not recollect my features,
so greatly was I changed; but I recognised Gesril. We had not met
since Brest; we were destined to part at Southampton. I told him of
my travels, he told me of his. This young man, born near me among the
waves, embraced his first friend for the last time in the midst of the
waves which were about to witness his glorious death. Lamba Doria[145],
admiral of the Genoese, after beating the Venetian fleet, learnt that
his son had been killed:
"Bury him in the sea," said this Roman father, as though he had said,
"Bury him in his victory."
Gesril voluntarily left the billows into which he had flung himself
only the better to show them his "victory" on shore.
[Sidenote: And land at Southampton.]
I gave the certificate of my landing from Jersey at Southampton at the
commencement of the sixth book of these Memoirs. Behold me, therefore,
after my travels in the forests of America and the camps of Germany,
arriving, as a poor Emigrant, in 1793, in the land in which I am
writing all this in 1822, and in which I am living to-day a splendid
ambassador.
[1] This book was written in London between April and September 1822,
and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.--T.
[2] Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), perhaps the least contemptible
of the demagogues of the time.--T.
[3] The National or Constituent Assembly passed the Constitution on
the 3rd of September 1791, the King accepting it on the 13th. This
Constitution created a Legislative Assembly, which alone was to retain
the power of making laws, subject to the veto of the Sovereign. On
the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and
immediately succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, which consisted of
745 deputies elected by the people, and sat from 1 October 1791 to
21 September 1792. It was in this assembly that the parties of the
Mountain and the Gironde were formed.--T.
[4] Jean Claude Marin Victor Marquis de Laqueville (1742-1810)
commanded the corps of the nobles of Auvergne under the Comte d'Artois.
He was impeached on the 1st of January 1792. He returned to France
under the Consulate, and lived in retirement until his death.--B.
[5] M. Buisson de La Vigne, a retired captain of the Indian Company's
fleet, had been ennobled in 1776.--B.
[6] Alexis Jacques Buisson de La Vigne, the Indian Company's manager at
Lorient, married in 1770 Mademoiselle Céleste Rapion de La Placelière,
of Saint-Malo.--B.
[7] Anne Buisson de La Vigne (1772-1813) married, in 1789, Hervé Louis
Joseph Marie Comte du Plessix de Parscau (1762-1831). She died at
Lymington in Hampshire, and is buried there with seven of her thirteen
children. In 1814, the Comte de Parscau married Mademoiselle de
Kermalun, a lady of forty, for the sake of the six young children left
to him.--B.
[8] Knight of St. Louis.--T.
[9] Céleste Buisson de La Vigne (1774-1847), who became Madame de
Chateaubriand.--B.
[10] Michel Bossinot de Vauvert (1724-1809), formerly a king's counsel
and attorney to the Admiralty. He was an uncle, "Brittany fashion," of
Mademoiselle Buisson de La Vigne.--B.
[11] George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron (1788-1824), the poet.--T.
[12] Francis II. Emperor of Germany (1768-1835) ascended the Imperial
Throne in 1792. In 1808 he renounced his title and assumed that of
Emperor of Austria, as Francis I.--T.
[13] Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783) had died, after a life
supported by unsolicited alms and spent in constant mortifications, of
a tumour in the leg resulting from his habit of being always upon his
knees.--T.
[14] The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795), Keeper of the
Royal Cabinet of Medals, member of the French Academy and the Academy
of Inscriptions, and a distinguished archæologist. In 1788 he
published his _Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce vers le milieu du
IVe. siècle avant l'ère vulgaire_, which made his name. He
spent the greater portion of his life with the Duc and Duchesse de
Choiseul on their estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise.--T.
[15] Ange François Fariau (1747-1810), known as M. de Saint-Ange,
became a member of the French Academy just before his death. His
translations in verse of the _Metamorphoses_ and other of Ovid's works
are of great merit; but he appears to have been cursed with inordinate
vanity, in addition to the stupidity of which Chateaubriand speaks.--T.
[16] Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), the famous
author of the _Études de la nature_ and of _Paul et Virginie._ He
preached virtue in all his works; his personal character and conduct
were far from being irreproachable.--T.
[17] 30 January 1791.--B.
[18]
"D'Egmont with Love one day this bank her presence gave;
For a moment the water stained
With the image of her beauty upon the fleeting wave:
Then D'Egmont disappeared; and Love alone remained.--T."
[19] By Carbon de Flins des Oliviers.--T.
[20]
"Our brave defenders' warlike zeal
Wakes pride within my breast,
But when through gore the people reel,
Their fury I detest.
Let Europe of us dwell in fear,
Let us live ever free,
But Gallic wit our lives shall cheer,
And amiability."--T.
[21] Anne Joseph Terwagne, Demoiselle Théroigne de Méricourt
(1762-1817), a formidable virago of the Revolution. She was fustigated
and driven insane by her fellow-bacchanals in October 1792, and died
mad at the Salpétrière.--T.
[22] Manon Jeanne Roland (1754-1793), _née_ Philipon, wife of Jean
Marie Roland de La Platière, Minister of the Interior in 1791. She and
her husband espoused the party of the Girondins; and Madame Roland
was guillotined at the instance of the Mountain, 8 November 1793. Her
husband killed himself on hearing the news.--T.
[23] Major the Comte de Belsunce (_d._ 1790). He was cut up into pieces
and his heart was eaten by a woman.--B.
[24] Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (1759-1794) was elected mayor on the
14th of November 1791. He took no step to suppress the insurrections
of June and August 1792, nor the massacres of September. Having voted,
however, at the trial of Louis XVI. for "death with delay and appeal to
the people," he became odious to the revolutionaries and was proscribed
with the Girondins, 31 May 1793. He fled and perished in the Bordeaux
marshes, where his body was half eaten by wolves.--T.
[25] Before 1789, Paris was divided into 21 quarters. On the 23rd
of April 1789 the King ruled that, for the convocation of the three
Estates, the town should be divided into 60 arrondissements, or wards,
and districts, for which, on the 27th of June 1790, the Constituent
Assembly substituted 48 sections.--B.
[26] On the 17th of Germinal Year II. (6 April 1794) a citizen
presented himself at the bar of the Convention and offered a sum
of money "towards the expenses of the support and repairing of the
guillotine" (_Moniteur_, 7 April 1794).--B.
[27] 23 March 1792.--B.
[28] Francis II., Emperor of Germany, etc., etc.--T.
[29] Maximin Isnard (1751-1825) voted for the death of the King, but,
after distinguishing himself by the violence of his language and
opinions, underwent a remarkable religious and political conversion. He
was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, but took no part in public
affairs after the advent of Bonaparte.--B.
[30] Armand Gensonné (1758-1793), the friend and confidant of
Dumouriez, executed 31 October 1793.--T.
[31] Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793), at one time editor of
the _Moniteur_ and of the _Patriote français_, and prime mover in the
declaration of war against Austria. He was guillotined on the same day
as Gensonné.--T.
[32] The decree ordering the dissolution of the King's Constitutional
Guard was voted 29 May 1792.--B.
[33] It was burnt down in 1580.--_Author's Note._
[34] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1554-1611), second son of
François Duc de Guise, and head of the League.--T.
[35] A political club connected with the League and called the Sixteen
from the number of its leading members, each of whom was put in charge
of one of the then sixteen quarters of Paris.--T.
[36] Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) was born either at Geneva or at
Boudry, near Neufchâtel, in Switzerland.--T.
[37] Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (1763-1794), the inventor of the Feast of
Reason, self-known as "Anaxagoras Chaumette," and guillotined 13 April
1794.--T.
[38] Méot kept the best tavern in Paris, in the Palais-Royal.--B.
[39] Joseph Fouché, Duc d'Otrante (1754-1820), had been a schoolmaster
at Juilly and principal of the Oratorian College at Nantes, when he was
sent to the Convention. He became subsequently a Conservative senator
under Napoleon, a duke and a peer, and was Minister of Police under the
Directory, Napoleon, and Louis XVIII.--T.
[40] Triboulet (1479-_circa_ 1536), Court Fool to Louis XII. and
Francis I.--T.
[41] _Paradise Lost_, II. 790-814, in which Sin is represented as being
violated by her own offspring, Death.--T.
[42] Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), the great painter of the
Revolution and the Empire.--T.
[43] Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (1755-1794), a light
dramatic poet of no mean order, acted as Danton's secretary. He was
subsequently traduced for accepting bribes from the Indian Company, and
guillotined on the same day (5 April 1794) as Danton and Desmoulins,
who protested at being "coupled with a thief."--T.
[44] Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756-1819), a very bloodthirsty
member of the Convention. Billaud was transported with Collot d'Herbois
to Cayenne, and succeeded in making his escape, after twenty years,
to the Republic of San Domingo, the President of which gave him a
pension.--T.
[45] Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V. (1521-1590), was elected to the
Holy See on the death of Gregory XIII. in 1585. His short reign
was marked by a magnificent internal administration. In France he
patronized and encouraged the League.--T.
[46] Jacques Clément (1564-1589), the Dominican monk who assassinated
Henry III. and was himself killed on the spot. It is a fact that some
of the extreme Leaguers called for his canonization.--T.
[47] Charles IX. (1550-1574), elder brother and predecessor of Henry
III.--T.
[48] 24 August 1572.--T.
[49] King Charles I. (1600-1649) was murdered on the 30th of January
1649; King Louis XVI. on the 21st of January 1793.--T.
[50] Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (1747-1795), Public Prosecutor
to the Revolutionary Tribunal, guillotined 6 May 1795.--T.
[51] The blasphemy was not even accurate. Desmoulins was in his
thirty-fourth year.--T.
[52] _Le Philinte de Molière, ou, la suite du Misanthrope_, a comedy
in five acts, in verse, first performed at the Théâtre Français on the
22nd of February 1790, is Fabre d'Églantine's best piece: it is one
of our good comedies of the second rank. What will live longest of
Fabre d'Églantine's is his ballad, "Il pleut, il pleut, bergère" ("O
shepherdess, 'tis raining").--B.
[53] Barnabé Brisson (1531-1591), made First President of the
Parliament of Paris by the Sixteen (_vide supra_, p. 15), when Henry
III. had left the capital, instead of Achille de Harlay, whom they had
sent to the Bastille; but they were dissatisfied with him, owing to
the attachment he preserved for the royal authority, and eventually
murdered him by hanging him.--T.
[54] Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1550-1588), nicknamed the
_Balafré_ from a disfiguring scar which he received at the engagement
of Dormans (1575). He was the son of François Duc de Guise, and brother
to the Duc de Mayenne (_vide supra_, p. 15) and Louis de Lorraine,
Cardinal de Guise. In 1576 he became the head of the newly formed
League. In 1588, after conducting a long and active opposition to the
Throne, he attended the States-General summoned by Henry III. at his
castle at Blois, and was murdered by the royal guards at the door of
the King's closet, 23 December 1588. His brother Louis II., Cardinal de
Guise, Archbishop of Rheims, was put to death by the King's orders on
the following day.--T.
[55] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. 12: _Of Physiognomy._--T.
[56] Silas Deane (1737-1789), a member of the first American Congress,
was sent to Paris to rally the Court of France to the cause of the
insurgents. His negotiations were fruitless, and Franklin was sent to
second him. The latter was more successful, and signed two treaties
with the Cabinet of Versailles in February 1778.--B.
[57] Joachim Murat (1767-1815), later King of Naples. He was the son of
an inn-keeper, enlisted at the commencement of the Revolution, and was
a member of the King's Constitutional Guard for about a month in the
spring of 1792. He was in command of the sixty grenadiers who dispersed
the Council of Five Hundred, and Bonaparte rewarded him with the hand
of his sister Caroline. When Bonaparte became Emperor, Murat received
his marshal's baton and the title of prince. In 1808, Napoleon made him
King of the Two Sicilies. He did not cross the Straits, but reigned
peacefully on the mainland until 1812. In 1814, the Powers consented
to leave him on the throne, but, declaring in favour of Napoleon on
his return from Elba, he was defeated at Tolentino, captured at Pizzo
in Calabria, and shot, by order of King Ferdinand II., on the 13th of
October 1815.--T.
[58] Jean Marie Roland de La Platière (1734-1793), twice Minister
of the Interior, and husband of the more famous Madame Roland.
He committed suicide with a sword-stick on hearing of his wife's
execution.--T.
[59] Louis François Duport du Tertre (1754-1793), Minister of the
Interior from 1790 to 1792, and guillotined 28 November 1793. His wife
committed suicide in despair a few days later.--T.
[60] Louise Florence Pétronille de La Live d'Épinay (1725-1783), _née_
Tardieu d'Esclavelles, wife of Denis Joseph de La Live d'Épinay, a rich
farmer-general. She built the Hermitage for Rousseau in the Forest of
Montmorency, ten miles north of Paris, and lavished benefits upon him.
Eventually, however, the philosopher grew jealous of Grimm, and turned
ungrateful for the favours shown him.--T.
[61] Bernard Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839). Bonaparte made
him Secretary-general to the Consuls, and, in 1804, Secretary of State,
in which capacity he accompanied the Emperor on all his campaigns. In
1811, he was created Duc de Bassano, and appointed Foreign Minister; in
1813, Minister for War. In 1815, he was exiled, returning to France in
1820. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France, and he held office for
less than a week in 1834.--T.
[62] Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841), one of the meanest
turn-coats and time-servers of revolutionary France. He was exiled
on the Restoration, and returned to France on the usurpation of
Louis-Philippe.--T.
[63] M. Boutin (_d._ 1794), Treasurer to the Navy, had built the Tivoli
garden in the middle of the Rue de Clichy. He was guillotined 22 July
1794.--T.
[64] This is not accurate. Madame de Malesherbes was Françoise
Thérèse Grimod, daughter of Gaspard Grimod, Seigneur de La Reynière,
farmer-general. M. and Madame de Malesherbes were married on the 4th of
February 1749.--B.
[65] Clovis I. (465-511), grandson of Merovius or Merowig, was the real
founder of the First or Merovingian Race of Kings of France (418-752).
The second was the Carlovingian Race or Dynasty (715-987); the third
the Capetians (987), who were subdivided into numerous branches, and
preserve their right to the French Throne to this day.--T.
[66] Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (_circa_ 1057-1134), author of a
number of Latin treatises, letters, and poems.--T.
[67] Guillaume de Nangis (_d._ 1300), a Benedictine of Saint-Denis,
author of a Chronicle of the Kings of France, etc.--T.
[68] Albéric, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines, near
Châlons-sur-Marne, who lived in the thirteenth century, and wrote a
Chronicle which goes from the Creation to 1241.--T.
[69] Rigord, Rigordus, or Rigoltus (_d. circa_ 1207), author of a
History of Philip Augustus, in Latin, continued by Guillaume le
Breton.--T.
[70] Gervase of Tilbury (_fl._ 1211), author of the _Otia
Imperialia._--T.
[71] The Baron de Montboissier was Malesherbes' son-in-law, and uncle
by marriage to Chateaubriand's brother.--B.
[72] Louis XI., King of France (1423-1479), who had incited the town
of Liège to revolt, was enticed to Péronne by Charles the Bold, Duke
of Burgundy, on the pretext of a conference, held as a prisoner, and
released only on condition that he accompanied the Duke to the siege of
the insurgent city.--T.
[73] Pope Leo III. (_d._ 816), elected to the Papacy in 795, was
driven from Rome by a conspiracy to murder him, and took shelter with
Charlemagne. He consecrated the octagonal Cathedral of Aix in 799; and
in 800, in Rome, crowned Charles Emperor of the West.--T.
[74] John Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims (_d. circa_ 794), Charlemagne's
secretary, friend, and comrade-in-arms. He was falsely reputed the
author of the be _Vitâ Caroli Magni et Rolandi_, popularly known as
Archbishop Turpin's Chronicle.--T.
[75] Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch (1304-1374), tells the
legend in his poems.--T.
[76] Caligula (12-41) was the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, at whose
instance Germanicus enlarged Cologne, calling it Colonia Agrippina.--T.
[77] St. Bruno (_circa_ 1030-1101), founder of the Carthusian order,
was born at Cologne.--T.
[78] Frederic William II., King of Prussia (1744-1797), nephew and
successor (1786) of Frederic the Great.--T.
[79] Charles Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1735-1806),
Commander-in-Chief of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. He was
mortally wounded at the Battle of Auerstadt (14 October 1806), and was
the father of "Brunswick's fated chieftain" killed at Waterloo.--T.
[80] Pierre Louis Alexandre de Gouyon (not Goyon) de Miniac (_circa_
1754-1818).--B.
[81] Anne Hilarion de Contentin, Comte de Tourville (1642-1701), a
famous French admiral; fought under Duquesne, commanded under the
Maréchal de Vivonne at Palermo (1677), went to Ireland in 1690 to
support the cause of James II., was defeated by the English at the
Battle of the Hogue (1692), but defeated them at the first Battle of
St. Vincent (1693).--T.
[82] Salvianus (_circa_ 390-484), author of the treatises, _De
Gubernatione Dei, Adversus Avaritiam_, and some letters--T.
[83] Henry IV. defeated the Leaguers at Ivry in 1590.--T.
[84] Words and music by the Marquise de Travanet, _née_ de Bombelles,
lady to Madame Élisabeth.--B.
[85] Lope Felix de Vega Carpia (1562-1635), the fertile Spanish poet,
author of the _Arcadia_ and some 2000 plays and an endless number of
poems of every description.--T.
[86] Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), Secretary of
State to Charles I. Although at first favouring the rebellion, he
joined the King's side and died fighting for Charles at Newbury.--T.
[87] Christian Augustus Prince of Waldeck (1744-1798), fought for
Austria against the Turks and against the French, lost an arm at
the siege of Thionville, took part in the attack on the lines of
Weissemberg, replaced Mack, and went to Portugal, where he died.--T.
[88] Louis Félix Baron de Wimpfen (1744-1814), a Royalist brigadier in
the Revolutionary service. He defended Thionville for fifty-five days,
until he was relieved by the victory of Valmy. He concealed himself
during the Terror. The Consulate restored him to his rank as general of
division, and Napoleon appointed him inspector of studs, and created
him a baron in 1809.--B.
[89] Louis II. Prince de Condé (1621-1686), known as the Grand Condé,
captured Thionville in 1643, after first causing the Spaniards to raise
the siege of Rocroi, and signally defeating them on the 19th of May.--T.
[90] Manassès de Pas, Marquis de Feuquières (1590-1639), besieged
Thionville in 1639, but was defeated by the garrison, and himself
wounded and taken prisoner. He died of his wounds a few months
later.--T.
[91] The Chevalier de La Baronnais was one of the numerous sons of
François Pierre Collas, Seigneur de La Baronnais, married in 1750
to Renée de Kergu. Chateaubriand is not quite accurate as to the
proportions of his family. There were twenty children in all, twelve
sons and eight daughters.--B.
[92] Joseph Henri Bouchard d'Esparbès, Maréchal Marquis d'Aubeterre
(1714-1788), after fulfilling several important embassies, was
appointed Commandant of Brittany in 1775.--T.
[93] St. John the Silent (454-_circa_ 589), so called from his love of
silence and retirement. At the age of twenty-eight he was consecrated
Bishop of Colonus, near Athens, but resigned his see in nine years, and
withdrew to the Monastery of St. Sabar in Jerusalem. His feast falls on
the 13th of May.--T.
[94] St. Dominic Loricatus (_d._ 1060) spent his life in the Apennines,
wearing a coat of mail, which he laid aside only to scourge himself. He
is honoured on the 14th of October.--T.
[95] St. James Intercisus (_d._ 421). Born in Persia, he at first
abjured Christianity in obedience to a decree of King Yezdedjerd I.;
but, repenting of his apostasy, he resumed the faith, and was condemned
to be cut to pieces while living, a martyrdom which he heroically
endured on the 27th of November 421. His feast is celebrated on the
anniversary of that day.--T.
[96] St. Paul the Simple (229-342) retired at the age of twenty-two
to the Thebaïde Desert, where he became a disciple of St. Anthony and
lived for ninety-one years. He is honoured on the 7th of March.--T.
[97] St. Basil the Hermit (_d._ circa 640), a native of Limousin, spent
forty years wrestling with the Evil One in a retreat which he had built
for himself in the neighbourhood of Verzy, in Champagne. His feast
falls on the 26th of November.--T.
[98] Philip Augustus defeated the Emperor Otho IV. and his allies at
Bouvines, 27 August 1214.--T.
[99] St. Germanus of Auxerre, Bishop of Auxerre (380-448), was Governor
of the province of Auxerre for the Emperor of the West, when he was
ordained priest by Amador, the bishop of the diocese, whom he succeeded
after the latter's death in 418. He visited England in 428 and 446
to preach against the Pelagian heresy. He is honoured on the 26th of
July.--T.
[100] Hugues Métel (1080-1157), a twelfth-century ecclesiastical
writer. The allusion is to an apologue entitled, _D'un loup qui se fit
hermite_, which stands at the head of the poems.--B.
[101] François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1519-1563), one of the
greatest French captains, and leader of the Catholic army. He was
assassinated at the siege of Orléans by a Huguenot nobleman called
Poltrot de Méré.--T.
[102] Pietro Strozzi (1550-1558), a marshal in the French service, and
commander-in-chief of the army of Pope Paul IV.--T.
[103] Julius Majorianus, known as the Emperor Majorian (_d._ 461)
defeated Theodoric II., King of the Visigoths, in Gaul, and was about
to attack Genseric, King of the Vandals, in Africa, when he was deposed
and put to death by Ricimer, who had raised him to power.--T.
[104] SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS.--_Author's Note._
[105] John II., King of France (1319-1364), known as John the Good,
taken prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by Edward the Black Prince
(1356). Peace was concluded in 1360, and John returned to France,
leaving his son as a hostage. The latter escaped, and King John
voluntarily returned to London and surrendered, saying that "if good
faith was banished from the earth, it should find an asylum in the
hearts of kings." He died shortly after his arrival in London (8 April
1364).--T.
[106] François Sébastien Charles Joseph de Croix, Comte de Clerfayt
(1733-1798), created, in 1795, a field-marshal in the Austrian Army.
He was a native of Brussels, at that time the capital of the Austrian
Netherlands, and was a very fine general. Not the least of his feats
was his masterly retreat after the Battle of Jemmapes (6 November
1792). In 1795, he defeated three French army corps in succession, and
relieved Mayence, which was besieged by one of them.--T.
[107] François Prudent Malo Ferron de La Sigonnière (1768-1815).--B.
[108] Cf. _Odyssey_, IV. 606.--T.
[109] AUSONIUS, _Eidyllia_, CCCXXXIV. 21, _Ausonii Mosella._--T.
[110] Now known as the cemetery of Père Lachaise.--T.
[111] The Abbé André Morellet (1727-1819), a Member of the Academy, and
at one time a leading member of Madame Geoffrin's circle. His attacks
on Chateaubriand are mentioned later, when Chateaubriand speaks of the
publication of _Atala._--T.
[112] Field-Marshal Franz Baron von Mercy (_d._ 1645), one of the great
generals of the seventeenth century. He took service under the Elector
of Bavaria, and distinguished himself in the German wars against
France. In 1645 he defeated Turenne at Mariendal, but was himself
beaten by Condé in the plains of Nördlingen (7 August 1645), and
received a wound of which he died the next day.--T.
[113] Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), the famous French
engineer. Longwy was one of the many fortifications constructed by
Vauban along the German frontier. He was created a marshal in 1703 by
Louis XIV., who in 1693 had founded the order of St. Louis at Vauban's
instance.--T.
[114] Honoré Jean Riouffe (1764-1813), created a baron of the Empire
in 1810; author of the _Mémoires d'un détenu, pour servir à l'histoire
de la tyrannie de Robespierre_, from which the above quotation is
taken.--B.
[115] St. Gregory of Tours (_circa_ 540--_circa_ 594), Bishop of Tours,
and author of a _History of the Franks_ extending from 417 to 591.--T.
[116] Theodebert I., King of Metz or Austrasia (_d._ 548).--T.
[117] Philippe Laurent Pons (1759-1844), known as Pons de Verdun,
was, before the Revolution, a regular contributor to the _Almanach
des Muses._ He was sent to the Convention by the Meuse and voted for
the death of the King. As a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he
rallied to the cause of Bonaparte, and became advocate-general to the
Court of Appeal under the Empire.--B.
[118] Artus de Bonchamp (1769-1793), mortally wounded outside Cholet
(17 October 1793).--T.
[119] Alberte Barbe d'Ercecourt, Dame de Saint-Balmon (1608-1660), took
up arms during her husband's absence in the Thirty Years' War, and
defended her house against the marauders.--B.
[120] Amadis of Gaul, hero of the famous prose romance written in the
fourteenth century by different authors, partly in Spanish, partly in
French.--T.
[121] A loathsome form of vermin.--T.
[122] Jean La Balue (1421-1491) became a bishop, Almoner to King
Louis XI., Intendant of Finance, and was for many years virtual Prime
Minister of France. He abolished the Pragmatic Sanction (1461), and was
created a cardinal by Pope Pius II. Subsequently he corresponded with
the King's enemies and (1469) was imprisoned by Louis XI. in an iron
cage, from which he was released only upon the King's death, eleven
years later. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII. sent La Balue to France as
legate _in latere_; but he was so badly received that he was obliged to
return to Rome.--T.
[123] Claude de Saumaise (1588-1658), known as Salmasius, or the Prince
of Commentators.--T.
[124] Charles Ferdinand Duc de Berry (1778-1820), second son of the
Comte d'Artois, later Charles X., and father of the Duc de Bordeaux,
known later as Comte de Chambord and Henry V. The Duc de Berry was
assassinated by Louvel on leaving the Opera House in Paris, 6 February
1820.--T.
[125] _Mémoires, lettres, et pièces authentiques touchant la vie et la
mort de S. A. R. Ch. F. d'Artois, fils de France, Duc de Berry_, II.
viii.--B.
[126] LA FONTAINE'S _Fables_, book VII., fab. 16: _The Cat, the Weasel,
and the Young Rabbit_, 7-9.--T.
[127] Cephalus of Thessaly, husband of Procris, and beloved by Aurora
because of his surpassing beauty.--T.
[128] Jean Cazotte (1720-1792), the facile Royalist poet, author of the
_Veillée de la Bonne femme; ou, le Réveil d'Enguerrand_, which opens
with the lines quoted.--T.
[129]
"Right in the middle of the Ardennes
Stands a fine castle atop of a rock."--T.
[130] François de La Noue (1531-1591), nicknamed _Bras-de-Fer_, Iron
Arm, a famous Calvinist captain. Fighting at the head of the army of
the States-General against Spain, he was captured (1578) and kept
prisoner for five years in the fortresses of Limburg and Charlemont. He
was killed at the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, where he was sent by
Henry IV.--T.
[131] CAZOTTE, _La Veillée de la Bonne femme_, supra.--T.
[132] Orlando's famous steed.--T.
[133] Most of the scenes in _As You Like It_ are laid in the Forest of
Arden.--T.
[134] Charles Joseph Prince de Ligne (1735-1844), a Flemish general in
the Austrian service, famous for his wit, his personal graces, and his
military talent. Francis II. created him a field-marshal in 1808.--T.
[135]
"When he was in the town,
Brussels town in Brabant."--T.
[136] DANTE, _Inferno_, XXXVII. 127.--T.
[137] Antoninus Pius, Emperor of Rome (86-161), author or originator of
the _Itinerarium Provinciarum._--T.
[138] Robert II., Duke of Normandy (_circa_ 1056-1134), nicknamed
Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror. He was defeated
by his brother, Henry I., at Tinchebray (1106), and imprisoned at
Cardiff Castle until his death in 1134.--T.
[139] St. Helerius, hermit and martyr, patron saint of Jersey. His head
was cut off by pirates. His feast falls on the 16th of July.--T.
[140] William I., the Conqueror, King of England (1027-1087), is
generally called William the Bastard by French writers. He was the
illegitimate son of Robert I. the Devil, Duke of Normandy, and Arlotta,
a washerwoman of Falaise.--T.
[141] VOLTAIRE, L'_Henriade_:
"Then, far removed from Court, to this obscure retreat,
I come to mourn the blows with which my creed has met."--T.
[142] Armand Louis de Chateaubriand married in Guernsey, 14 September
1795, Mademoiselle Jeanne le Brun, of Jersey; the young couple settled
in Jersey, where were born Jeanne (16 June 1796) and Frédéric (11
November 1799).--B.
[143] Philippe d'Auvergne, Prince de Bouillon (1754-1816), born in
Jersey, was the son of Charles d'Auvergne, a poor lieutenant in the
British Navy, and had been adopted by the Duc Godefroy de Bouillon, who
saw his race threatened with extinction. Philippe d'Auvergne devoted
himself whole-heartedly to the cause of his new fellow-countrymen in
their difficulties with the English governors of the island. His career
was one of inconceivable adventures, and his end, which occurred in
London, was mysterious.--B.
[144] François Marie Anne Joseph Hingant de La Tiemblais (1761-1827).
No less than twenty-two members of his family suffered as victims
of their religious and political faith. He furnished Chateaubriand
with many of the materials for the _Génie du Christianisme_, and
himself published some valuable literary and scientific works
and an interesting novel (1826), entitled _Le Capucin, anecdote
historique._--B.
[145] Lamba Doria defeated Andrea Dandola, the Venetian admiral, before
the island of Curzola, off the coast of Dalmatia, in 1298.--T.