The year 1804--I move to the Rue de Miromesnil-Verneuil--Alexis de

Tocqueville--Le Ménil--Mézy--Mérévil--Madame de Coislin--Journey to

Vichy, in Auvergne, and to Mont Blanc--Return to Lyons--Excursion

to the Grande Chartreuse--Death of Madame de Caud--The years 1805

and 1806--I return to Paris--I leave for the Levant--I embark in

Constantinople on a ship carrying pilgrims for Syria--From Tunis to

my return to France through Spain--Reflections on my voyage--Death of

Julien.

Henceforth removed from active life, and nevertheless saved from

Bonaparte's anger by the protection of Madame Bacciochi, I left my

temporary lodging in the Rue de Beaune and went to live in the Rue

de Miromesnil. The little house which I hired was occupied later by

M. De Lally-Tolendal and Madame Denain, his "best-beloved," as they

said in the days of Diane de Poitiers[650]. My garden abutted on a

timber-yard, and near my window I had a tall poplar-tree, which M. de

Lally-Tolendal, in order to breathe a less moist air, himself felled

with his coarse hand, which to his eyes was transparent and fleshless:

it was an illusion like any other. The pavement of the street at that

time came to an end before my door; higher up, the street or road wound

across a piece of waste-land called the Butte-aux-Lapins, or Rabbit

Hill. The Butte-aux-Lapins, sprinkled with a few isolated houses,

joined on the right the Jardin de Tivoli, whence I had set out with my

brother for the emigration, and on the left the Parc de Monceaux. I

strolled pretty often in that abandoned park, where the Revolution had

commenced among the orgies of the Duc d'Orléans: this retreat had been

embellished with marble nudities and mock ruins, a symbol of the light

and vicious policy which was about to cover France with prostitutes and

wreckage.

I busied myself with nothing: at the utmost I conversed in the park

with some pine-trees, or talked of the Duc d'Enghien with three rooks

at the edge of an artificial river hidden beneath a carpet of green

moss. Deprived of my Alpine Legation and of my Roman friendships, even

as I had been suddenly separated from my attachments in London, I did

not know how to dispose of my imagination and my feelings; I sent them

every evening after the sun, and its rays were unable to carry them

over the seas. I returned indoors and tried to fall asleep to the sound

of my poplar tree.

Nevertheless my resignation had increased my reputation; in France a

little courage always looks well. Some of the members of Madame de

Beaumont's former company introduced me to new country-houses.

[Sidenote: The Tocqueville family.]

M. de Tocqueville[651], my brother's brother-in-law, and guardian

of my two orphaned nephews, occupied Madame de Senozan's[652]

country-seat[653]. On every hand were scaffold legacies. There I saw

my nephews grow up with their three Tocqueville cousins, among whom

Alexis[654], the author of the _Démocratie en Amérique_, was prominent.

He was more spoilt at Verneuil than I had been at Combourg. Is this the

last renown that I shall have seen unknown in its swaddling clothes?

Alexis de Tocqueville has travelled through the civilized America, of

which I have travelled through the forests.

Verneuil has changed masters; it has become the property of Madame

de Saint-Fargeau, famous through her father[655] and through the

Revolution, which adopted her as its daughter.

Near Mantes, at the Ménil[656], was Madame de Rosanbo: my nephew, Louis

de Chateaubriand, eventually married Mademoiselle d'Orglandes there,

niece to Madame de Rosanbo; the latter no longer airs her beauty around

the pond and under the beeches of the manor: it has passed. When I went

from Verneuil to the Ménil, I came to Mézy[657] on the road: Madame

de Mézy was romance wrapped up in virtue and maternal grief. If only

her child, which fell from a window and broke its head, had been able,

like the young quails which we shot, to fly over the _château_ and take

refuge in the Île-Belle, the smiling island of the Seine: _Coturnix per

stipulas pascens!_

On the other side of the Seine, not far from the Marais, Madame de

Vintimille had introduced me to Méréville[658]. Méréville was an

oasis created by the smile of a muse, but of one of those muses whom

the Gallic poets call "the learned fairies." Here the adventures of

Blanca[659] and of Velléda were read before fashionable generations

which, falling one from the other like flowers, to-day listen to the

wailing of my years.

By degrees my brain, wearying of rest in my Rue de Miromesnil, saw

phantoms form before it in the distance. The _Génie du Christianisme_

inspired me with the idea of proving that work by mixing Christian

and mythological characters together. A shade which long afterwards I

called Cymodocée sketched itself vaguely in my head; not one of its

features was fixed. Cymodocée once conceived, I shut myself up with

her, as I always do with the daughters of my imagination; but, before

they have issued from the dreamy state and arrived from the banks

of Lethe through the ivory portals, they often change their shape.

If I create them through love, I undo them through love, and the one

cherished object which I, later, present to the light is the offspring

of a thousand infidelities.

I remained only a year in the Rue de Miromesnil, because the house was

sold. I arranged with Madame la Marquise de Coislin[660], who let me

the top floor of her house on the Place Louis XV[661].

*

[Sidenote: The Marquise de Coislin.]

Madame de Coislin was a woman of the grandest air. She was nearly

eighty years of age, and her proud and domineering eyes bore an

expression of wit and irony. Madame de Coislin was in no way lettered,

and took pride in the fact; she had passed through the Voltairean

age without being aware of it; if she had conceived any idea of it

whatever, it was that of a time of a voluble middle-class. Not that she

ever spoke of her birth; she was too great to make herself ridiculous:

she very well knew how to see "small people" without compromising

her rank; but, after all, she was born of the Premier Marquis of

France[662]. If she was descended from Drogon de Nesle, killed in

Palestine in 1096; from Raoul de Nesle[663], the Constable, knighted

by Louis IX.; from Jean II. de Nesle, Regent of France during the last

crusade of St. Louis, Madame de Coislin vowed that this was a stupidity

on the part of fate for which she ought not to be held responsible; she

was naturally of the Court, as others, more happy, are of the streets,

as one may be a thorough-bred mare or a cab-hack: she could not help

this accident, and had no choice but to endure the ill with which

Heaven had been pleased to afflict her.

Had Madame de Coislin had relations with Louis XV.? She never owned so

much to me: she admitted, however, that she had been very much loved,

but she pretended that she had treated the royal lover with the utmost

harshness.

"I have seen him at my feet," she would say to me; "he had charming

eyes, and his language was seductive. He offered one day to give me a

porcelain dressing-table, like that which Madame de Pompadour had.

"'Oh, Sire,' cried I, 'then I must use it to hide under!'"

By a singular chance I came across this dressing-table at the

Marchioness Conyngham's in London; she had received it from George IV.,

and showed it to me with amusing simplicity.

Madame de Coislin occupied in her house a room opening under the

colonnade corresponding to the colonnade of the Wardrobe. Two

sea-pieces by Vernet[664], which Louis "the Well-beloved" had given to

the noble dame, were hung up on an old green satin tapestry. Madame

de Coislin remained lying till two o'clock in the afternoon in a

large bed, with curtains also of green silk, seated and propped up by

pillows; a sort of nightcap, badly fastened to her head, allowed her

grey hairs to escape. Sprigs of diamonds mounted in the old-fashioned

way fell upon the shoulder-pieces of her bed-cloak, all covered with

snuff, as in the time of the fashionable ladies of the Fronde. Around

her, on the bed-clothes, lay scattered the addresses of letters, torn

off the letters themselves, and on these addresses Madame de Coislin

wrote down her thoughts in every direction: she bought no stationery,

the post supplied her with it. From time to time a little dog called

Lili put her nose outside the sheets, came to bark at me for five or

six minutes, and crept back growling into her mistress' kennel. Thus

had time settled the young loves of Louis XV.

Madame de Châteauroux[665] and her two sisters were cousins of Madame

de Coislin; the latter would not have been of the humour, as was

Madame de Mailly[666], repentant and a Christian, to reply to a man who

insulted her with a coarse name in the church of Saint-Roch:

"My friend, since you know me, pray to God for me."

Madame de Coislin, miserly as are many people of wit, piled up her

money in cupboards. She lived all devoured by a vermin of crown-pieces

which clung to her skin; her servants relieved her. When I found

her plunged in a maze of figures, she reminded me of the miser

Hermocrates[667], who, when dictating his will, appointed himself his

own heir. Nevertheless she gave a dinner occasionally; but she would

rail against coffee, which nobody liked, according to her, and which

served only to prolong the repast.

Madame de Chateaubriand took a journey to Vichy with Madame de Coislin

and the Marquis de Nesle; the marquis went on ahead, and had excellent

dinners prepared. Madame de Coislin came after, and asked only for half

a pound of cherries. On leaving, she was presented with huge bills, and

then there was a terrible outcry. She would not hear of anything except

the cherries; the landlord maintained that, whether you ate or did not

eat, the custom was, at an inn, to pay for your dinner.

Madame de Coislin had invented a form of illuminism to her own taste.

Credulous and incredulous, she was led by her want of faith to laugh

at those beliefs the superstition of which frightened her. She had met

Madame de Krüdener; the mysterious Frenchwoman was illuminated only

under reserve; she did not please the fervent Russian, whom she herself

liked no better. Madame de Krüdener said passionately to Madame de

Coislin:

"Madame, who is your inside confessor?"

"Madame," replied Madame de Coislin, "I know nothing about my inside

confessor; I only know that my confessor is in the inside of his

confessional."

Thereupon the two ladies saw each other no more.

Madame de Coislin prided herself on having introduced a novelty at

Court, the fashion of floating chignons, in spite of Queen Marie

Leczinska[668], who was very pious and who opposed this dangerous

innovation. She held that formerly no genteel person would ever have

thought of paying her doctor. Crying out against the plentifulness of

women's linen:

"That smacks of the upstart," she said; "we women of the Court had only

two shifts: when they were worn out, we renewed them; we were dressed

in silk gowns, and we did not look like grisettes, like the young

ladies of nowadays."

Madame Suard[669], who lived in the Rue Royale, had a cock whose

crowing annoyed Madame de Coislin. She wrote to Madame Suard:

"Madame, have your cock's throat cut."

Madame Suard sent back the messenger with this note:

"Madame, I have the honour to reply to you that I shall not have my

cock's throat cut."

The correspondence went no further. Madame de Coislin said to Madame de

Chateaubriand:

"Ah, my heart, what a time we live in! And yet it's that Panckoucke

girl, the wife of that member of the Academy[670], you know."

M. Hennin[671], a former clerk at the Foreign Office, and as tedious

as a protocol, used to scribble fat novels. One day he was reading a

description to Madame de Coislin: a tearful and abandoned love-lorn

woman was mournfully fishing a salmon. Madame de Coislin, who was

growing impatient, and who disliked salmon, interrupted the author and

said with the serious air which made her so comical:

"Monsieur Hennin, could you not make that lady catch a different fish?"

The stories which Madame de Coislin told could not be recollected,

for there was nothing in them; all lay in the pantomime, the accent,

and the expression of the narrator: she never laughed. There was one

dialogue between "Monsieur and Madame Jacqueminot," the perfection

of which surpassed everything. When, in the conversation between

the husband and wife, Madame Jacqueminot rejoined, "But, _Monsieur

Jacqueminot!_" the name was pronounced in such a tone that you were

seized with immoderate laughter. Obliged to let this pass, Madame de

Coislin gravely waited, taking snuff.

Reading in a newspaper of the death of several kings, she took off her

spectacles, and blowing her nose, said:

"There is an epizootic among crowned cattle."

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Coislin.]

At the moment when she was ready to breathe her last, they were

maintaining by her bedside that one succumbed only through letting

one's self go; that, if one paid great attention, and never lost sight

of the enemy, one would not die at all.

"I believe it," she said; "but I fear that something would distract me."

She expired.

I went down to her room the next day; I found Monsieur[672] and Madame

d'Avaray, her brother-in-law and sister, sitting before the fire-place,

with a little table between them, counting the louis in a bag which

they had taken from a hollow wainscoting. The poor dead woman was there

in her bed, behind the half-closed curtains: she no longer heard the

sound of the gold which ought to have awaked her, and which fraternal

hands were counting.

Among the thoughts written down by the defunct on margins of printed

paper and addresses of letters were some which were extremely

beautiful. Madame de Coislin showed me what remained of the Court of

Louis XV. under Bonaparte and after Louis XVI., even as Madame de

Houdetot had enabled me to see what still lingered, in the nineteenth

century, of philosophic society.

*

In the summer of the year 1805, I went to join Madame de Chateaubriand

at Vichy, where Madame de Coislin had taken her, as I have said. I

did not find Jussac, Termes, Flamarens there, whom Madame de Sévigné

had "before and behind her" in 1677: they had been sleeping since one

hundred and twenty and so many years. I left my sister, Madame de Caud,

in Paris, where she had fixed her residence since the autumn of 1804.

After a short stay at Vichy, Madame de Chateaubriand proposed that we

should travel, in order to be away for some time from the political

troubles.

Two little _Journeys_[673] which I then took in Auvergne and to Mont

Blanc have been collected in my works. After an absence of thirty-four

years, I have lately received at Clermont, from men unacquainted with

my person, the reception usually shown to an old friend. He who has

long occupied himself with the principles which the human race enjoys

in common has friends, brothers and sisters in every family; for, if

man is thankless, humanity is grateful. To those who have connected

themselves with you through a kindly reputation, and who have never

seen you, you are always the same; you have always the age which they

ascribed to you; their attachment, which is not disturbed by your

presence, always beholds you young and beautiful, like the sentiments

which they love in your writings.

When I was a child, in my Brittany, and heard speak of Auvergne, I

imagined it a very distant, very distant country, where one saw strange

things, where one could not go without great danger, and travelling

under the protection of the Blessed Virgin. I never meet without a

sort of melting curiosity those little Auvergnats who go to seek their

fortunes in this great world with a small deal chest. They have little

besides hope in their box, as they climb down their rocks: lucky are

they if they bring it back with them!

Alas, Madame de Beaumont had not lain two years on the bank of the

Tiber when I trod her natal soil in 1805; I was at but a few leagues

from that Mont Dore where she had come in search of the life which

she lengthened a little in order to reach Rome. Last summer, in 1838,

I once more travelled through this same Auvergne. Between those two

dates, 1805 and 1838, I can place the transformations which society has

undergone around me.

We left Clermont and, on our way to Lyons, passed through Thiers

and Roanne. This road, then little frequented, followed at intervals

the banks of the Lignon. The author of the _Astrée_[674], who is not

a great genius, nevertheless invented places and persons that live:

such is the creative power of fiction, when it is appropriate to the

age in which it appears. There is, moreover, something ingeniously

fantastic in that resurrection of the nymphs and naiads who mingle with

shepherds, ladies and knights: those different worlds go well together,

and one is agreeably pleased with the fables of mythology united to the

lies of fiction; Rousseau has related how he was taken in by d'Urfé.

[Sidenote: Geneva.]

At Lyons, we again found M. Ballanche: he made the excursion to Geneva

and Mont Blanc with us. He went wherever one took him, without having

the smallest business there. At Geneva, I was not received at the

gate of the city by Clotilda, the betrothed of Clovis: M. de Barante,

senior[675], had become Prefect of the Léman. At Coppet, I went to see

Madame de Staël: I found her alone, buried in her castle, which was

built round a melancholy court-yard. I spoke to her of her fortune and

of her solitude as a precious means of independence and happiness: I

offended her. Madame de Staël loved society; she looked upon herself

as the most wretched of women, in an exile with which I should have

been enchanted. Where in my eyes was the unhappiness of living on one's

property with all the comforts of life? Where was the misfortune of

enjoying fame, leisure, peace, in a sumptuous retreat within sight of

the Alps, in comparison with those thousands of breadless, nameless,

helpless victims, banished to all the corners of Europe, while their

parents had perished on the scaffold? It is sad to be attacked by

an ill which the crowd cannot understand. For the rest, that ill is

therefore only the more intense: it is not lessened by being confronted

with other ills; one is not judged by another's pain; that which

afflicts the one rejoices the other; hearts have varied secrets,

incomprehensible to other hearts. Let us deny none his sufferings; it

is with sorrows as with countries: each man has his own.

Madame de Staël called the next day on Madame de Chateaubriand at

Geneva, and we left for Chamouny. My opinion on the scenery of the

mountains caused it to be said that I was seeking to make myself

singular. It will be seen, when I come to speak of the Saint-Gothard,

that I have kept to my opinion. In the _Voyage au Mont-Blanc_ appears

a passage which I will recall as linking together the past events of

my life and the events of that same life then still future, and to-day

also past:

"There is one circumstance alone in which it is true that the

mountains produce an oblivion of earthly troubles: that is

when one withdraws far from the world to consecrate himself

to religion. An anchorite devoting himself to the service

of mankind, a saint wishing to meditate in silence on the

greatness of God, may find peace and joy on desert rocks;

but it is not then the tranquillity of the spot that passes

into the soul of those solitaries: it is, on the contrary,

their soul that diffuses its serenity through the region of

storms....

"There are mountains which I would still visit with extreme

pleasure: those, for instance, of Greece and Judæa. I should

like to go over the spots with which my new studies lead

me daily to occupy myself: I would gladly seek, upon the

Tabor and Taygetus, other colours and other harmonies, after

painting the unfamed mountains and unknown valleys of the New

World."

The last phrase foretold the voyage which, in fact, I performed in the

next year, 1806.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Forbin.]

On our return to Geneva, without being able to see Madame de Staël

again at Coppet, we found the inns crammed. But for the cares of

M. de Forbin[676], who arrived unexpectedly and procured us a bad

dinner in a dark waiting-room, we should have left the birth-place of

Rousseau without eating. M. de Forbin was at that time in a state of

beatitude; he displayed in his looks the inner felicity with which he

was inundated; his feet did not touch the ground. Wafted on his talent

and his blissfulness, he came down from the mountain as though from

the sky, with his close-fitting painter's jacket, his pallet on his

thumb, his brushes in a quiver. A good fellow, nevertheless, although

excessively happy, preparing to imitate me one day, when I should

have made my voyage to Syria, wishing even to go as far as Calcutta,

to make his loves return to him by an uncommon road, when they failed

him on the beaten track. His eyes showed a protecting pity: I was

poor, humble, uncertain of myself, and I did not hold the hearts of

princesses in my mighty hands. In Rome, I have had the honour of

returning M. de Forbin his lake-side dinner; I had the merit of having

become an ambassador. In these days one sees the poor devil whom one

has left that morning in the street turned into a king by evening.

The noble gentleman, a painter in right of the Revolution, began

that generation of artists who dress themselves up like sketches,

grotesques, caricatures. Some wear prodigious mustachioes: one would

think they were going to conquer the world; their brushes are halberds,

their erasing-knives sabres: others have huge beards, and hanging or

puffed-out hair; they smoke a cigar by way of vulcano. These "cousins

of the rainbow," as our old Régnier[677] says, have their heads filled

with deluges, seas, rivers, forests, cataracts, tempests, or else with

carnages, executions and scaffolds. In their rooms they have human

skulls, foils, mandolines, morions, and dolmans. Bragging, pushing,

uncivil, liberal (as far as the portrait of the tyrant whom they are

painting), they endeavour to form a separate species between the

ape and the satyr; they are anxious to make it understood that the

secrecy of the studio has its dangers, and that there is no safety

for the models. But how handsomely do they not redeem these oddities

by a fevered existence, a suffering and sensitive nature, an entire

abnegation of self, an incalculable devotion to the miseries of others,

a delicate, superior, idealized manner of feeling, a poverty proudly

welcomed and nobly endured; lastly, sometimes by immortal talents: the

offspring of work, passion, genius, and solitude!

Leaving Geneva at night to return to Lyons, we were stopped at the foot

of the Fort de l'Écluse, waiting for the gates to be opened. During

this stay of the witches in _Macbeth_ on the heath, strange things

passed within me. My dead years came to life again and surrounded me

like a band of phantoms; my burning seasons returned to me in their

flame and sadness. My life, hollowed out by the death of Madame de

Beaumont, had remained empty: airy forms, houris or dreams, issuing

from that abyss, took me by the hand and led me back to the days of

the sylph. I was no longer in the spot which I occupied, I dreamed of

other shores. Some secret influence urged me to the regions of the

Dawn, whither I was drawn besides by the plan of my new work and the

religious voice which released me from the vow of the village woman,

my foster-mother. As all my faculties had extended, as I had never

misused life, it superabounded with the pith of my intelligence, and

art, triumphing in my nature, added to the poet's inspirations. I had

what the Fathers of the Thebaïde called "ascensions" of the heart.

Raphael--forgive the blasphemy of the simile--Raphael, before the

Transfiguration only sketched upon the easel, could not have been more

electrified by his master-piece than was I by Eudore and Cymodocée,

whose names I did not yet know and whose images I dimly saw through an

atmosphere of love and fame.

Thus does the native genius which tormented me in the cradle sometimes

return on its steps after deserting me; thus are my former sufferings

renewed; nothing heals within me; if my wounds close instantly, they

open again suddenly like those of the crucifixes of the Middle Ages,

which bleed on the anniversary of the Passion. I have no alternative,

to obtain relief during these crises, but to give a free course to the

fever of my thoughts, in the same way as one has his veins lanced when

the blood rushes to the heart or rises to the head. But of what am I

speaking! O religion, where then are thy powers, thy restraints, thy

balsams! Am I not writing all these things at a distance of countless

years from the hour at which I gave birth to René? I had a thousand

reasons to believe myself dead, and I live! 'Tis a great pity. Those

afflictions of the isolated poet, condemned to suffer the spring in

spite of Saturn, are unknown to the man who does not go outside the

common laws; for him the years are ever young:

"The young kids," says Oppian, "watch over the author of their being;

when he comes to fall into the huntsman's net, they offer him in their

mouths the tender, flowering grass, which they have gone to gather from

afar, and bring him in their lips fresh water, drawn from the adjacent

brook[678]."

*

On my return from Lyons I found letters from M. Joubert: they informed

me that it was not possible for him to be at Villeneuve before

September. I replied:

[Sidenote: Lyons and M. Saget.]

"Your departure from Paris is too remote and distresses me;

you well know that my wife will never consent to arrive at

Villeneuve before you: she has a head of her own, and since

she has been with me, I find myself at the head of two heads

very difficult to govern. We shall remain at Lyons, where

they make us eat so prodigiously that I hardly have the

courage to leave this excellent town. The Abbé de Bonnevie is

here, back from Rome; he is wonderfully well; he is merry, he

preachifies, and no longer thinks of his woes; he embraces

you and will write to you. In short, everybody is in high

spirits, except myself; you are the only one to grumble. Tell

Fontanes that I have dined with M. Saget."

This M. Saget was the providence of the canons; he lived on the hill of

Sainte-Foix, in the district of the good wine. The way to his house led

up near the spot where Rousseau had spent the night on the banks of the

Saône:

"I remember," he says, "spending a delightful night outside

the town, on a road which skirted the Saône. Gardens raised

terrace-wise bordered the road on the opposite side: it had

been very warm that day; the evening was charming, the dew

moistened the parched grass; no wind, a quiet night; the

air was cool without being chill; the sun after setting

had left red vapours in the sky, and their reflection made

the water rose-coloured; the trees on the terraces were

laden with nightingales which replied one to the other. I

walked along in a sort of ecstasy, abandoning my senses and

my heart to the enjoyment of all this, and only sighing a

little with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my

sweet reverie, I prolonged my walk well into the night,

without perceiving that I was tired. I perceived it at last:

I lay down voluptuously on the shelf of a sort of niche or

false door, sunk into a terrace-wall; the canopy of my bed

consisted of the tops of the trees, a nightingale was exactly

over my head; I fell asleep to its singing: my slumbers were

sweet, my awakening even more so. It was broad day-light: my

eyes on opening beheld the water, the verdure, an admirable

landscape."

*

With Rousseau's charming itinerary in one's hand, one arrived at M.

Saget's. This ancient and lean bachelor, formerly married, wore a

green cap, a grey camlet coat, nankeen pantaloons, blue stockings and

beaver shoes. He had lived long in Paris, and had been intimate with

Mademoiselle Devienne[679]. She wrote him very witty letters, scolded

him, and gave him very good advice: he ignored it, for he did not take

the world seriously, believing apparently, like the Mexicans, that

the world had already used four suns, and that at the fourth (which

is lighting us at present) men had been changed into maggots. He did

not trouble his mind about the martyrdom of St. Pothin[680] and St.

Ireneus[681], nor of the massacre of the Protestants drawn up side by

side by order of Mandelot[682], the Governor of Lyons, all of them

having their throats cut on the same side. Opposite the field of the

shooting at the Brotteaux[683], he would tell me details of it, while

strolling among his vines, mingling with his narrative verses of Loyse

Labbé[684]: he would not have missed a single mouthful during the last

misfortunes of Lyons, under the Charte-Vérité.

On certain days a certain calf's head was served up at Sainte-Foix,

after being soused for five nights, boiled in madeira, and stuffed

full of exquisite things; very pretty peasant-girls waited at table;

they served excellent homegrown wine out of demi-johns the size of

three bottles. We swooped upon the Saget banquet, I and the cassocked

chapter: the hill-side was quite black with us.

Our _dapifer_ soon came to the end of his provisions: in the ruin of

his last moments he was taken in by two or three of the old mistresses

who had plundered his life, "a kind of women," says St. Cyprian[685],

"who live as though they could be loved: _quæ sic vivis ut possis

adamari._"

*

[Sidenote: The Grande Chartreuse.]

We tore ourselves from the delights of Capua to go and see the

Chartreuse, still accompanied by M. Ballanche. We hired a calash whose

disjointed wheels made a lamentable noise. On reaching Voreppe we

stopped at an inn at the top of the town. The next morning, at break of

day, we mounted on horseback and set out preceded by a guide. At the

village of Saint-Laurent, at the bottom of the Grande-Chartreuse, we

crossed the threshold of the valley, and passing between two walls of

rocks, followed the road leading up to the monastery. When speaking of

Combourg, I have told you what I experienced in that spot. The deserted

buildings were cracking under the supervision of a kind of farmer

of the ruins. A lay-brother had remained to take care of an infirm

solitary who had just died: religion had imposed loyalty and obedience

upon friendship. We saw the narrow grave freshly covered over: Napoleon

was just about to dig a huge one at Austerlitz. We were shown the

convent enclosure, the cells, each with its garden and workshop; we

noticed joiners' boards and turners' wheels: the hand had dropped the

chisel. In a gallery were displayed the portraits of the superiors of

the Chartreuse. The ducal palace at Venice preserves the series of the

_ritratti_ of the doges: what different spots and memories! Higher

up, at some distance, we were taken to the chapel of Le Sueur's[686]

immortal recluse[687].

After dining in an immense kitchen, we set out again and met, carried

in a palanquin like a rajah, M. Chaptal, formerly an apothecary, then a

senator, next owner of Chanteloup and inventor of beetroot sugar, the

greedy heir of the beautiful Indian reed-canes of Sicily, perfected by

the Otaheitan sun. As I descended from the forests, my thoughts turned

to the cenobites of old; for centuries, they carried, together with a

little earth, in the skirts of their gowns, fir plants which have grown

into trees on the rocks. Happy O ye who travelled noiselessly through

the world, nor even turned your heads in passing!

No sooner had we reached the entrance to the valley than a storm burst;

a deluge dashed down, and vexed torrents rushed roaring from every

ravine. Madame de Chateaubriand, becoming reckless for very fear,

galloped through the flint stones, the water and the lightning-flashes.

She had flung away her umbrella the better to hear the thunder; the

guide cried to her:

"Recommend your soul to God! In the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Ghost!"

We reached Voreppe to the sound of the tocsin; what remained of the

cloven storm lay before us. In the distant landscape, we saw a blazing

village and the moon rounding out the upper portion of his disc above

the clouds, like the pale, bald forehead of St. Bruno, the founder of

the order of silence. M. Ballanche, all dripping with rain, said with

his immovable placidity:

"I am like a fish in the water."

I have just seen Voreppe again, in this year 1838: the storm was

there no longer; but two witnesses of it still remain, Madame de

Chateaubriand and M. Ballanche. I mention this because I have too

often, in these Memoirs, had to call attention to the dead.

On returning to Lyons we left our companion there, and went to

Villeneuve. I have told you about this little town, my walks and my

regrets on the banks of the Yonne with M. Joubert. Three old maids

used to live there, Mesdemoiselles Piat; they reminded me of my

grandmother's three friends at Plancoët, saving the difference in

social position. The virgins of Villeneuve died one after the other,

and I thought of them when I saw a grass-grown flight of steps, running

up outside their empty house. What used these village damsels to talk

about in their time! They spoke of a dog, and of a muff which their

father had once bought them at Sens Fair. To me this was as charming

as the council of the same town at which St. Bernard had Abélard, my

fellow-Breton, condemned. The maids of the muff were Heloïses perhaps;

perhaps they loved, and their letters, brought to light, will one day

entrance posterity. Who knows? Perhaps they wrote to their "lord, also

their father, also their brother, also their spouse: _domino suo, imo

patri_," etc., that they felt honoured by the name of friend, by the

name of "mistress" or of "courtesan: _concubinæ vel scorti._"

"In the midst of his learning," says a grave doctor, "I find that

Abélard played an admirably foolish prank when he suborned with love

his pupil Héloïse."

[Sidenote: Illness of Lucile.]

A great and new sorrow surprised me at Villeneuve. To tell it you,

I must go back to a few months before my Swiss journey. I was still

occupying the house in the Rue Miromesnil when, in the autumn of

1804, Madame de Caud came to Paris. The death of Madame de Beaumont

had finished the affecting of my sister's reason; she was very near

refusing to believe in the death, suspecting some mystery in the

disappearance, or including Heaven in the number of the enemies who

mocked at her misfortunes. She had nothing; I had chosen an apartment

in the Rue Caumartin for her, deceiving her as to the rent and as

to the arrangements which I told her to make with the keeper of an

eating-house. Like a flame ready to expire, her genius shed the

brightest light; she was all illumined with it. She would write a few

lines which she threw into the fire, or else copy from books some

thoughts in harmony with the disposition of her soul. She did not

remain long in the Rue Caumartin; she went to live with the Dames

Saint-Michel, in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques: Madame de Navarre

was the superior of the convent. Lucile had a little cell overlooking

the garden: I noticed that she followed with her eyes, with I know

not what gloomy longing, the nuns who walked in the enclosure around

the vegetable beds. One could guess that she envied the saints and,

going further, aspired to the angels. I will sanctify these Memoirs by

deposing in them, as relics, the following letters of Madame de Caud,

written before she had taken flight for her eternal country:

"17 _January._

"I had placed all my happiness in you and in Madame de

Beaumont; I fled from my cares and my sorrows in the thought

of you two: my whole occupation was to love you. Last night

I made long reflections upon your character and your ways.

As you and I are always near each other, it needs some time,

I think, to know me, such is the variety of ideas in my

head! Such is the opposition of my timidity and my peculiar

external weakness to my real inner strength! Too much about

myself. My illustrious brother, accept my fondest thanks for

all the favours and all the marks of friendship which you

have never ceased to show me. This is the last letter you

will receive from me in the morning. Albeit I communicate

my ideas to you, they nevertheless remain quite completely

within myself."

(_No date._)

"Do you seriously, dear, think me safe from some impertinence

on the part of M. Chênedollé? I am quite determined not to

invite him to continue his visits; I resign myself to look

upon Tuesday's as the last. I do not wish to trouble his

politeness. I am closing for ever the book of my fate, and

sealing it with the seal of reason; I shall now consult its

pages no more on the trifles than on the important things of

life. I give up all my foolish notions; I wish neither to

occupy nor to vex myself with those of other people; I will

abandon myself with heart and soul to all the events of my

passage through this world. What a pity that I should pay

myself so much attention! God can now afflict me only in you.

I thank Him for the precious, kind and dear present which He

has made me in your person and for having preserved my life

without stain: those are all my treasures. I could take for

an emblem of my life the moon in a cloud, with this device:

'Often obscured, never tarnished.' Farewell, dear. You will

perhaps be surprised at my words since yesterday morning.

Since I saw you, my heart has raised itself to God, and I

have laid it wholly at the foot of the Cross, its sole and

true place."

"_Thursday._

"Good-morning, dear. What colour are your ideas this morning?

As for me, I remember that the only person who was able to

relieve me when I was fearing for Madame de Farcy's life was

she who said to me, 'But it is within the range of possible

things that you may die before her.' Could any one have

spoken more to the point? There is nothing, dear, like the

idea of death to rid us of the future. I hasten to rid you of

myself this morning, for I feel myself too much in the mood

to say fine things. Good-bye, my poor brother. Keep joyful."

(_No date._)

"While Madame de Farcy lived, always by her side, I had not

noticed the need of being in communion of thought with some

one. I possessed that advantage unconsciously. But since we

lost that friend, and circumstances having separated me from

you, I have known the torture of never being able to refresh

and renew one's mind in some one's conversation; I feel that

my ideas hurt me when I am unable to get rid of them; this

has surely to do with my bad organization. Nevertheless I am

fairly satisfied, since yesterday, with my courage. I pay no

attention to my grief and to the sort of inward faintness

which I feel. I have abandoned myself. Continue to be always

kind to me: before long it will be humanity. Good-bye, dear.

Till soon, I hope."

[Sidenote: Lucile's letters.]

(_No date._)

"Be easy, dear; my health is recovering visibly. I often ask

myself why I take so much pains to bolster it up. I am like a

madman who should build a fortress in the middle of a desert.

Farewell, my poor brother."

(_No date._)

"As I have a bad headache to-night, I have just simply, and

at haphazard, written down some thoughts of Fénelon's for

you, so as to keep my promise:

'"We are confined within narrow limits when we shut ourselves

up in our own existence; on the contrary, we feel at liberty

when we quit this prison to enter into the immensity of God.'

"'We shall soon find once more all that we have lost We are

daily approaching it with rapid strides. Yet a little while,

and we shall no more have cause to weep. It is we who die:

what we love still lives and shall never die.'

"'You impart to yourself a deceitful strength, such as a

raging fever gives to a sick man. For some days past, a

sort of convulsive movement has been visible in you, from

the effort to affect an air of gaiety and courage, whilst a

silent anguish filled your soul.'

"That is as much as my head and my bad pen permit me to

write to you this evening. If you like, I will begin again

to-morrow, and perhaps tell you some more. Good-evening,

dear. I shall never cease telling you that my heart

prostrates itself before that of Fénelon, whose tenderness

seems to me so profound, and his virtue so exalted. Good-bye,

dear.

"I am awake, and offer you a thousand loves and a hundred

blessings. I feel well this morning and am anxious as to

whether you will be able to read me, and whether those

thoughts of Fénelon's will seem to you well chosen. I fear my

heart has concerned itself too much with the selection."

(_No date._)

"Could you think that since yesterday I have been madly

occupied in correcting you? The Blossacs have trusted me

with one of your novels in the greatest secrecy. As I do not

think that you have made the most of your ideas, I am amusing

myself by trying to render them in their full value. Can

audacity go further than that? Forgive me, great man, and

remember that I am your sister, and that I have some little

right to make an ill use of your riches."

"SAINT-MICHEL.

"I will no longer say, 'Do not come to see me again,'

because, having from now but a few days to spend in Paris,

I feel that your presence is essential to me. Do not come

to-day until four; I expect to be out till then. Dear, I have

in my head a thousand contradictory ideas touching things

which seem to me to exist and not to exist, which to me have

the effect of objects of which one only caught sight in a

glass, and of which, consequently, one could not make sure,

however distinctly one saw them. I wish to trouble about all

this no longer; from this moment I abandon myself. Unlike

you, I have not the resource of changing banks, but I feel

sufficient courage to attach no importance to the persons

and things on my shore, and to fix myself entirely and

irrevocably in the Author of all justice and all truth. There

is only one displeasure to which I fear that I shall grow

insensible with great difficulty, that of unintentionally, in

passing, striking against the destiny of some other person,

not because of any interest that might be taken in me: I am

not mad enough for that."

"SAINT-MICHEL.

"Dear, never did the sound of your voice give me so much

pleasure as when I heard it yesterday on my staircase. My

ideas then strove to overcome my courage. I was seized with

content to feel you so near me; you appeared, and my whole

inner being returned to orderliness. I sometimes feel a great

repugnance at heart to drinking my cup. How can that heart,

which is so small a space, contain so much existence and so

much grief? I am greatly dissatisfied with myself, greatly

dissatisfied. My affairs and my ideas carry me away; I

scarcely occupy myself with God now, and I confine myself to

saying to Him a hundred times a day, 'O Lord, make haste to

hearken unto my prayer, for my spirit waxeth faint.'"

[Sidenote: More letters from Lucile.]

(_No date._)

"Brother, do not grow weary of my letter, nor of my company;

think that soon you will be for ever released from my

importunities. My life is casting its last light, like a

lamp which has burnt out in the darkness of a long night,

and which sees the rise of the dawn in which it is to die.

Please, brother, cast a single glance at the early moments

of our existence; remember that we have often been seated

on the same lap, and pressed both together to the same

bosom; that already you added tears to mine, that from

the earliest days of your life you protected and defended

my frail existence, that our games united us and that I

shared your first studies. I will not speak to you of our

adolescence, of the innocence of our thoughts and of our

joys, nor of our mutual need to see each other incessantly.

If I retrace the past, I candidly confess, brother, that

it is to make me revive the more in your heart. When you

left France for the second time, you placed your wife in my

hands, you made me promise never to part from her. True to

this dear engagement, I voluntarily stretched out my hands

to the irons, and entered into the regions destined alone

for the victims vowed to death. In those abodes I have had

no anxiety save as to your fate; incessantly I questioned

the forebodings of my heart touching yourself. When I had

recovered my liberty, amidst the ills which came to overwhelm

me, the thought alone of our meeting kept me up. To-day, when

I am irretrievably losing the hope of running my course by

your side, bear with my griefs. I shall become resigned to my

destiny, and it is only because I am still fighting against

it that I suffer such cruel anguish; but when I shall have

grown submissive to my fate.... And what a fate! Where are

my friends, my protectors and my treasures! To whom matters

my existence, that existence abandoned by all, and weighing

down entirely upon itself? My God, are not my present woes

enough for my weakness, without yet adding to them the dread

of the future? Forgive me, my too dear friend, I will resign

myself; I will fall asleep, in a slumber as of death, upon

my destiny. But, during the few days which I have to spend in

this town, let me seek my last consolations in you; let me

believe that my presence is sweet to you. Believe me, among

the hearts that love you, none approaches the sincerity and

tenderness of my impotent friendship for you. Fill my memory

with agreeable recollections, which prolong my existence

beside you. Yesterday, when you spoke to me of coming to

you, you seemed to me anxious and serious, while your words

were affectionate. Why, brother, could I be to you also a

subject of aversion and annoyance? You know it was not I

that proposed the amiable distraction of going to see you,

and that I promised you to make no ill use of it; but, if

you have changed your opinion, why did you not tell me so

frankly? I have no courage to set against your politeness.

Formerly you used to distinguish me a little more from the

common herd and to do me more justice. As you reckon upon me

to-day, I will come to see you presently, at eleven o'clock.

We will arrange together what seems best to you for the

future. I have written to you, feeling sure that I should not

have the courage to say to you a single word of what this

letter contains."

This so affecting and quite admirable letter is the last which I

received; it alarmed me through the increase of sadness of which it

bears the impress. I hurried to the Dames Saint-Michel; my sister was

walking in the garden with Madame de Navarre; she went in when she knew

that I had gone up to her room. She made visible efforts to collect her

ideas, and at intervals she had a slight convulsive movement of the

lips. I entreated her to return entirely to reason, to cease writing

such unjust things to me, things that rent my heart, to cease thinking

that I could ever grow weary of her. She appeared to grow a little

calmer at the words which I repeated to distract and console her. She

told me that she believed that the convent was doing her harm, that she

would feel better living alone, in the neighbourhood of the Jardin des

Plantes, there where she could see doctors and walk about. I urged her

to please her own taste, adding that in order to help Virginie, her

maid, I would give her old Saint-Germain. This proposal seemed to give

her great pleasure, in memory of Madame de Beaumont, and she assured me

that she would go to look out for her new lodging. She asked me how I

was thinking of spending the summer. I said that I should go to Vichy

to join my wife, and then to M. Joubert at Villeneuve, to return to

Paris from there. I suggested to her to accompany us. She answered that

she wished to spend the summer alone, and that she was going to send

Virginie back to Fougères. I left her; she was more at ease.

Madame de Chateaubriand left for Vichy, and I prepared to follow her.

Before leaving Paris I went again to see Lucile. She was affectionate;

she spoke to me of her little writings. I encouraged the great poet to

work; she kissed me, wished me a good journey, made me promise to come

back soon. She saw me to the landing of the staircase, leant over the

baluster, and quietly watched me go down. When I reached the bottom I

stopped, and lifting my head, cried to the unhappy woman who was still

looking at me:

"Farewell, dear sister! I shall see you soon! Take great care of

yourself! Write to me at Villeneuve. I will write to you. I hope that

next winter you will agree to live with us."

[Sidenote: Death of Lucile.]

That evening I saw the worthy Saint-Germain; I gave him orders and some

money, so that he might secretly reduce the prices of anything she

might require. I enjoined him to keep me informed of everything and not

to fail to call me back in case he should want to see me. Three months

passed. When I reached Villeneuve, I found two fairly tranquillizing

letters about Madame de Caud's health: but Saint-Germain forgot to

speak to me of my sister's new lodging. I had begun to write her a long

letter, when suddenly Madame de Chateaubriand fell dangerously ill: I

was at her bedside when I was brought a new letter from Saint-Germain;

I opened it: a withering line told me of the sudden death of Lucile.

I have cared for many tombs in my life: it fell to my lot and to my

sister's destiny that her ashes should be flung to the skies. I was not

in Paris when she died; I had no relations there; kept at Villeneuve by

my wife's critical condition, I was unable to go to the sacred remains;

orders sent from a distance arrived too late to prevent a common

burial. Lucile knew no one and had not a friend; she was known only to

Madame de Beaumont's old servant: it was as though he had been charged

to link two destinies. He alone followed the forsaken coffin, and he

himself was dead before Madame de Chateaubriand's sufferings allowed me

to bring her back to Paris.

My sister was buried among the poor: in what grave-yard was she laid?

In what motionless wave of an ocean of dead was she swallowed up? In

what house did she die, after leaving the community of the Dames de

Saint-Michel? If, by making researches, if, by examining the archives

of the municipalities, the registers of the parishes, I should come

across my sister's name, what would that avail me[688]? Should I

find the same keeper of the cemetery? Should I find the man who dug

a grave that remained nameless and unlabelled? Would the rough hands

that were the last to touch so pure a clay have remembered it? What

nomenclator of the shades could point out to me the obliterated tomb?

Might he not make a mistake as to the dust? Since Heaven has willed it

so, let Lucile be for ever lost! I find in this absence of locality a

distinction from the burials of my other friends. My predecessor in

this world and in the next is praying to the Redeemer for me; she is

praying to Him from the midst of the pauper remains among which her

own lie confounded: even so does Lucile's mother and mine rest lost

among the preferred of Jesus Christ. God will certainly have been able

to recognise my sister; and she, who was so little attached to earth,

ought to leave no trace there. She has left me, that sainted genius.

Not a day has passed but I have wept for her. Lucile loved to hide

herself; I have made her a solitude in my heart: she shall leave it

only when I shall have ceased to live[689].

Those are the true, the only events of my real life! What mattered

to me, at the moment when I was losing my sister, the thousands of

soldiers falling on the battlefields, the destruction of thrones, the

changes in the face of the world?

Lucile's death struck at the sources of my soul: it was my childhood

in the midst of my family, the first vestiges of my existence, that

were disappearing. Our life resembles those frail buildings, shored

up in the sky by flying buttresses: they do not crumble at once, but

become loose piecemeal; they still support some gallery or other, while

already they have become separated from the chancel or vault of the

edifice. Madame de Chateaubriand, still bruised by Lucile's imperious

whims, saw only a deliverance for the Christian who had gone to rest in

the Lord. Let us be gentle if we would be regretted; the loftiness of

genius and the higher qualities are mourned only by the angels. But I

cannot enter into the consolation of Madame de Chateaubriand.

*

[Sidenote: My journey to the East.]

When, returning to Paris by the Burgundy road, I caught sight of the

cupola of the Val-de-Grâce and the dome of Sainte-Geneviève, which

overlooks the Jardin des Plantes, my heart was broken: one more

companion of my life left on the wayside! We went back to the Hôtel de

Coislin, and although M. de Fontanes, M. Joubert, M. de Clausel, M.

Molé came to spend the evenings with me, I was distraught by so many

memories and thoughts that I was utterly exhausted. Remaining alone

behind the objects that had quitted me, like a foreign mariner whose

engagement has expired, and who has neither home nor country, I struck

the shore with my foot; I longed to swim in a new ocean to refresh

myself and cross it. Nursed on Mount Pindus, a crusader to Hierosolyma,

I was impatient to go to mingle my loneliness with the ruins of Athens,

my tears with those of the Magdalen.

I went to see my family[690] in Brittany, returned to Paris, and

left for Trieste on the 13th of July 1806; Madame de Chateaubriand

accompanied me as far as Venice, where M. Ballanche came to join her.

As my life is set forth hour by hour in the _Itinéraire_, I should

have no more to say here, if I had not kept some hitherto unknown

letters written or received during and after my voyage. Julien, my

servant and companion, wrote his own Itinerary side by side with mine,

just as passengers on a vessel keep their private logs on a journey

of discovery. The little manuscript which he places at my disposal

will serve as a check upon my narrative: I shall be Cook, he will be

Clarke[691].

In order to bring into clearer light the different manner in which one

is impressed according to one's place in the social order and in the

intellectual hierarchy, I will mingle my narrative with Julien's[692].

I shall let him begin by speaking first, because he relates some days'

sailing without me from Modon to Smyrna.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We went on board[693] on Friday the 1st of August; but,

the wind not being favourable to leave harbour, we waited

until daybreak the next morning. Then the harbour-pilot

came to tell us that he could bring us out. As I had never

been on the sea, I had formed an exaggerated idea of the

danger, for I saw none during two days. But, on the third, a

tempest rose; lightning, thunder and, in short, a terrible

storm attacked us and beat up the sea frightfully. Our

crew consisted of only eight sailors, a captain, a mate, a

pilot and a cook, and five passengers, including Monsieur

and myself, which made seventeen men in all. Then we all

set ourselves to help the seamen in furling the sails, in

spite of the rain with which we were soon drenched, having

taken off our coats to move more freely. This work filled my

thoughts and made me forget the danger, which, indeed, is

more terrible through the idea which one forms of it than it

is in reality. The storms followed one another during two

days, which seasoned me in my first days of sea-faring; I was

in no way inconvenienced. Monsieur was afraid lest I should

be ill at sea; when calm set in again, he said to me:

"'Now I am reassured about your health; as you have borne

these two stormy days so well, you can set your mind at rest

as to any other mischance.'

"None occurred during the remainder of our crossing to

Smyrna. On the 10th, which was a Sunday, Monsieur made them

heave-to near a Turkish town called Modon, where he landed to

go to Greece. Among the passengers who were with us were two

Milanese, who were going to Smyrna to follow their trade of

tinmen and pewter-founders. One of the two, called Joseph,

spoke the Turkish language fairly well, and Monsieur proposed

that he should go with him as servant interpreter, and

mentions him in his _Itinéraire._ He told us, on leaving us,

that the journey would only take a few days, that he would

join the vessel at an island where we were to pass in four

or five days, and that he would wait for us in that island

if he arrived there before us. As Monsieur found that man to

suit him for that short journey[694], he left me on board

to continue my voyage to Smyrna and to look after all our

luggage. He had given me a letter of recommendation to the

French Consul, in case he did not join us, which was what

happened. On the fourth day, we arrived at the appointed

island and Monsieur was not there. We passed the night and

waited for him till seven o'clock in the morning. The captain

went back on shore to leave word that he was compelled to

go on, having a fair wind and being obliged to take his

crossing into consideration. Besides, he saw a pirate who was

trying to approach us, and it was urgent that we should place

ourselves promptly on the defensive. He made the men load his

four pieces of cannon and bring on deck his muskets, pistols

and side-arms; but, as the wind favoured us, the pirate gave

us up. We arrived, on Monday the 18th, at seven o'clock in

the evening, at the port of Smyrna."

*

[Sidenote: Greece.]

After crossing Greece, and touching Zea and Chio, I found

Julien at Smyrna. To-day I see Greece in my memory as one

of those dazzling circles which one sometimes beholds on

closing one's eyes. Against that mysterious phosphorescence

are outlined ruins of a delicate and admirable architecture,

the whole rendered still more resplendent by I know not

what brightness of the Muses. When shall I see again the

thyme of Mount Hymettus, the oleanders of the banks of the

Eurotas? One of the men whom I have left with the greatest

envy on foreign shores is the Turkish custom-house officer

of the Piræus: he lived alone, the guardian of three

deserted ports, turning his gaze over bluey isles, gleaming

promontories, golden seas. There I heard nought save the

sound of the billows in the shattered tomb of Themistocles

and the murmur of distant memories; in the silence of the

ruins of Sparta, fame itself was dumb.

In the cradle of Melesigene I left my poor dragoman,

Joseph, the Milanese, at his tinman's shop, and set out for

Constantinople. I went to Pergamos, wishing first to go to

Troy, from motives of poetic piety; a fall from my horse

awaited me at the commencement of my road; not that Pegasus

stumbled, but I slept. I have recalled this accident in my

_Itinéraire_; Julien relates it also, and he makes remarks

concerning the roads and the horses to the exactness of which

I can certify.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"Monsieur, who had fallen asleep on his horse, tumbled off

without waking. His horse stopped forthwith, as did mine,

which followed it. I at once alighted to know the reason, for

it was impossible for me to see it at a fathom's distance.

I saw Monsieur half asleep beside his horse, and quite

astonished to find himself on the ground; he assured me that

he had not hurt himself. His horse did not try to run away,

which would have been dangerous, for there were precipices

very near to the spot where we were."

On leaving the Soma, after passing Pergamos, I had the

dispute with my guide which I describe in the _Itinéraire._

Here is Julien's version:

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We left that village very early, after renewing our canteen.

A little way from the village, I was greatly surprised to

see Monsieur angry with our guide; I asked him the reason.

Monsieur then told me that he had arranged with the guide,

at Smyrna, that he would take him to the plains of Troy on

the way, and that he was now refusing, saying that the plains

were infested with brigands. Monsieur declined to believe

a word of it, and would listen to no one. As I saw that he

was getting more and more out of temper, I made a sign to

the guide to come near the interpreter and the janissary to

explain to me what he had been told about the dangers to be

risked in the plains which Monsieur wished to visit. The

guide told the interpreter that he had been assured that one

had to be in great numbers not to be attacked; the janissary

told me the same thing. Thereupon I went to Monsieur and

told him what they had all three said, and that, besides, we

should find a little village at a day's march where there

was a sort of consul who would be able to inform us of the

truth. After this statement, Monsieur composed himself, and

we continued our road till we reached that place. He at

once went to the consul, who told him of all the dangers he

would risk if he persisted in his wish to go in such small

numbers to those plains of Troy. Thereupon Monsieur was

obliged to abandon his project, and we continued our road for

Constantinople."

[Sidenote: Constantinople.]

I arrived at Constantinople.

MY ITINERARY.

"The almost total absence of women, the dearth of wheeled

carriages, and the packs of ownerless dogs were the three

distinctive characteristics that first struck me in this

extraordinary town. As nearly every one walks in papouches,

as there is no noise of carriages and carts, as there are

no bells and scarcely any hammering trades, the silence

is continual. You see around you a voiceless crowd which

seems to wish to pass unnoticed, and which always looks as

though it were stealing away from its master's sight. You

constantly come to a bazaar or a cemetery, as though the

Turks were only there to buy, sell, or die. The cemeteries,

unwalled and placed in the middle of the streets, are

magnificent cypress-woods: the doves build their nests in the

cypress-trees and share the peace of the dead. Here and there

one discovers some ancient monuments which have no connection

with the modern men, nor with the new monuments by which they

are surrounded; it is as though they had been transported to

this eastern town by the working of a talisman. No sign of

joy, no appearance of happiness shows itself to your eyes;

what you see is not a people but a herd whom an iman drives

and a janissary slays. Amidst the prisons and the gaols rises

a seraglio, the capitol of servitude: it is there that a

sacred guardian carefully preserves the germs of pestilence

and the primitive laws of tyranny."

Julien does not soar so near the clouds[695].

MY ITINERARY.

"We were about two hundred passengers on the ship, men,

women, children and old people. As many mats lay ranged in

rows on both sides of the steerage. In this kind of republic,

each kept house as he pleased: the women looked after their

children, the men smoked or prepared their dinners, the

popes talked together. On every side was heard the sound

of mandolines, fiddles and lyres. They sang, they danced,

they laughed, they prayed. Every one was joyful. They said

to me, 'Jerusalem!' pointing to the south; and I replied,

'Jerusalem!' In short, but for the fright, we should have

been the happiest people in the world; but at the least wind

the seamen furled the sails, the pilgrims cried, '_Christos,

Kyrie eleison!_' When the storm had passed, we resumed our

boldness."

Here I am beaten by Julien.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We had to busy ourselves with our departure for Jaffa, which

took place on Thursday the 18th of September. We embarked on

board a Greek ship, where there were at least, men, women,

and children, one hundred and fifty Greeks who were going on

a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which caused much disturbance on

board.

"Like the other passengers, we too had our supply of

provisions and our cooking utensils, which I had bought in

Constantinople. I had, besides, a further and fairly complete

supply which M. l'Ambassadeur had given us, consisting of

very fine biscuits, hams, sausages, saveloys, different sorts

of wine, rum, sugar, lemons, and even quinine-wine against

the fever. I was therefore furnished with a very plentiful

provision, which I husbanded and only consumed with great

economy, knowing that we had more than this one crossing to

make: everything was locked up where the passengers were not

allowed to go.

"Our crossing, which lasted only thirteen days, seemed

very long to me through all sorts of unpleasantness and

uncleanliness on board. During several days of bad weather

which we encountered, the women and children were sick,

throwing up everywhere, so much so that we were obliged to

leave our cabin and sleep on deck. There we took our meals

much more comfortably than elsewhere, as we decided to wait

until all our Greeks had finished their littering."

[Sidenote: Mount Carmel.]

I passed through the Dardanelles, touched at Rhodes, and took a pilot

for the Syrian coast. We were stopped by a calm below the Asiatic

continent, almost opposite the old Cape Chelidonia. We remained two

days at sea without knowing where we were.

MY ITINERARY.

"The weather was so fine and the air so mild that all the

passengers spent the night on deck. I had contended for a

place on the quarter-deck with two fat caloyers, who yielded

it to me only after much grumbling. I was lying asleep there

at six o'clock in the morning on the 30th of September,

when I was aroused by a confused noise of voices: I opened

my eyes, and saw the pilgrims looking towards the prow of

the vessel. I asked what it was; they shouted '_Signor,

il Carmelo!_' Mount Carmel! The wind had risen at eight

o'clock the previous evening, and we had arrived in sight of

the Syrian coast during the night. As I was sleeping fully

dressed, I was soon on my feet, asking the whereabouts of the

sacred mountain. Everyone was eager to point it out to me;

but I perceived nothing, owing to the sun which was beginning

to rise opposite to us. That moment had about it something

religious and august: all the pilgrims, their beads in their

hands, had remained silently in the same attitude, awaiting

the apparition of the Holy Land; the chief of the popes

prayed aloud: one heard only that prayer and the sound of the

running of the vessel, which the most favourable wind was

impelling across a dazzling sea. From time to time a shout

rose from the prow, when one caught sight of Mount Carmel

again. At last I myself perceived the mountain, like a round

patch beneath the rays of the sun. I then went on my knees in

the manner of the Latins. I did not feel the peculiar trouble

which I experienced on discovering the coast of Greece: but

the sight of the cradle of the Israelites and the native land

of the Christians filled me with joy and respect. I was about

to step upon the land of prodigies, near the sources of the

most astounding poetry, in the region where, even humanly

speaking, the greatest event took place that ever changed the

face of the world. . . . . . . . . . .

"The wind dropped at noon; it rose again at four o'clock; but

through the ignorance of the pilot we went beyond our aim....

At two o'clock in the afternoon we saw Jaffa again.

"A boat left the shore with three monks. I stepped into the

launch with them; we entered the harbour through an opening

effected between the rocks, and dangerous even for a ship's

boat.

"The Arabs on the beach came out into the water to their

waists, in order to take us on their shoulders. Then there

followed a rather laughable scene: my servant was dressed in

a whitish frock-coat; white being the colour of distinction

among the Arabs, they deemed that Julien was the sheik. They

caught hold of him and carried him off in triumph, despite

his protests, while, thanks to my blue coat, I made my escape

humbly on the back of a ragged beggar."

Now let us hear Julien, the principal actor in the scene:

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"What surprised me greatly was to see six Arabs come to carry

me on land, while there were only two for Monsieur, which

amused him much, to see me carried like a reliquary. I do not

know whether my apparel seemed to them more brilliant than

Monsieur's: he wore a brown frock-coat and buttons of the

same; mine was whitish, with buttons of white metal which

gave off a certain gleam in the bright sunshine: this may, no

doubt, have caused the mistake.

"We went, on Wednesday the 1st of October, to the monks of

Jaffa, who belong to the Order of Cordeliers, speaking Latin

and Italian, but very little French. They received us very

well, and did all that in them lay to procure for us all we

needed."

I arrived in Jerusalem. On the advice of the Fathers of the convent,

I passed quickly through the Holy City to go to the Jordan. After

stopping at the monastery at Bethlehem, I set out with an Arab escort;

I stopped at St. Sabas. At midnight, I found myself on the shore of the

Dead Sea.

MY ITINERARY.

"When one travels in Judæa, at first the heart is seized

with a great sense of tediousness; but when, as you pass from

solitude to solitude, space stretches limitless before your

eyes, that feeling gradually wears away, and you experience

a secret terror which, far from casting down the soul, gives

courage and raises the spirit. Extraordinary views discover

on every side a land laboured by miracles: the burning sun,

the swooping eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all

the scenes of the Scriptures are there. Every name contains

a mystery; every grotto declares the future; every summit

resounds with a prophet's accents. God Himself has spoken on

those shores: the dried-up torrents, the cleft rocks, the

half-open tombs testify to the working of wonders; the desert

appears to be still mute with terror, and it is as though

it had not ventured to break the silence since it heard the

voice of the Almighty.

"We descended from the brow of the mountain, in order to go

to spend the night on the shore of the Dead Sea, and next to

go up to the Jordan[696].

. . . . . . . . . .

"We broke up our camp, and made our way for an hour and a

half with excessive difficulty through a fine white dust.

We were proceeding towards a small wood of balsam-trees and

tamarinds, which I saw to my great astonishment rising from

the midst of a sterile soil. Suddenly the Bethlemites stopped

and pointed to something which I had not perceived, at the

bottom of a ravine. Without being able to say what it was, I

caught a glimpse as though of a kind of sand moving over the

immobility of the soil. I approached this singular object,

and I saw a yellow river which I had some difficulty in

distinguishing from the sand of its two banks. It was deeply

embanked, and flowed slowly in a thick stream: it was the

Jordan....

"The Bethlemites stripped and plunged into the Jordan. I did

not dare to follow their lead, because of the fever which

still troubled me."

[Sidenote: Jerusalem.]

We returned to Jerusalem; Julien was not much struck with the sacred

places: like a true philosopher, he was dry[697].

I left Jerusalem, arrived at Jaffa, and took ship for Alexandria. From

Alexandria I went to Cairo, and I left Julien with M. Drovetti, who had

the kindness to charter an Austrian vessel for me for Tunis. Julien

continued his journal at Alexandria:

"There are Jews here," he says, "who gamble in stocks, as they do

wherever they are. Half a league from the city stands Pompey's Column,

which is in reddish granite, mounted on a block of hewn stone."

MY ITINERARY.

"On the 23rd of November, at midday, the wind having

become favourable, I went on board the vessel. I embraced

M. Drovetti on the shore, and we made mutual promises of

friendship and remembrance: I am paying my debt to-day.

"We heaved the anchor at two o'clock. A pilot brought us

out of harbour. The wind was faint and southerly. We kept

for three days within sight of Pompey's Column, which we

discovered on the horizon. On the evening of the third day we

heard the evening gun of the port of Alexandria. This was as

it were the signal for our definite departure, for the north

wind rose and we made sail for the west.

"On the 1st of December, the wind, veering due west, stopped

our way. Gradually it fell to the south-west and turned into

a tempest which did not cease until we reached Tunis. To

occupy my time, I copied out and set in order my notes on

this voyage and my descriptions for the _Martyrs._ At night,

I walked the deck with the mate, Captain Dinelli. Nights

spent amid the waves, on a vessel beaten by the storm, are

not barren; the uncertainty of our future gives objects

their true value: the land, contemplated from the midst of a

tempestuous sea, resembles life as it presents itself to a

man about to die[698]."

We continued our voyage and anchored before the Kerkenna Isles.

MY ITINERARY.

"A gale rose, to our great delight, from the south-east, and

in five days we arrived in the waters of the island of Malta.

We came into sight of it on Christmas Eve; but, on Christmas

Day, the wind, shifting to west-north-west, drove us to the

south of Lampedusa. We remained for eighteen days off the

east coast of the Kingdom of Tunis, between life and death.

I shall never in my life forget the day of the 28th.

"We cast anchor before the Kerkenna Isles. For eight days

we lay at anchor in the Gulf of Cabes, where I saw the

commencement of the year 1807. Under how many planets and

amid what varied fortunes had I already seen the years renew

for me, years which pass so quickly or which are so long!

How far away from me were those times of my childhood in

which, with a heart beating with joy, I received the paternal

blessing and the paternal gifts! How I used to look forward

to New Year's Day! And now, on a foreign vessel, in the

middle of the sea, within sight of a barbarous land, that New

Year's Day sped for me without witnesses, without pleasures,

without the kisses of my family, without the fond wishes of

happiness which a mother shapes with such sincerity for her

sons! That day, born in the womb of the tempests, let fall on

my head nought but cares, regrets and silver hairs."

[Sidenote: The Kerkenna Isles.]

Julien is exposed to the same fate, and he rebukes me for one of those

fits of impatience of which I have, fortunately, corrected myself.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We were very near the island of Malta, and we had reason

to fear that we might be seen by some English vessel, which

could have forced us to enter the harbour; but we encountered

none. Our crew was greatly exhausted, and the wind continued

to be unfavourable to us. The captain, seeing on his chart

an anchorage called Kerkenna, from which we were at no great

distance, made sail for it without telling Monsieur, who,

seeing that we were approaching that anchorage, became angry

at not having been consulted, and said to the captain that

he ought to continue his course, having been through worse

weather. But we had gone too far to resume our course, and

besides, the captain's prudence was highly approved, for

that night the wind grew much stronger and the sea very bad.

Finding that we were obliged to remain in the anchoring-place

four-and-twenty hours longer than was foreseen, Monsieur gave

the captain lively marks of his discontent, in spite of the

good reasons which the latter gave him.

"We had been a month at sea, and we only wanted seven or

eight hours to reach the port of Tunis. Suddenly the wind

became so violent that we were obliged to stand out to sea,

and we remained three weeks without being able to touch the

port. Thereupon Monsieur once more reproached the captain

with having wasted thirty-six hours at the anchorage. It was

impossible to persuade him that a greater misfortune would

have befallen us if the captain had been less foreseeing.

The misfortune which I anticipated was to see our provisions

diminishing, without knowing when we should arrive."

At last I trod Carthaginian soil. I found the most generous hospitality

at the hands of M. and Madame Devoise. Julien describes my host well;

he also speaks of the country and the Jews:

"They pray and weep," says he.

An American man-of-war brig gave me a passage on board, and I crossed

the lake of Tunis to go to the port.

"On the way," says Julien, "I asked Monsieur if he had taken the gold

which he had put into the writing-table in his bed-room; he told me he

had forgotten it, and I was obliged to return to Tunis."

I can never keep money in my mind.

When I arrived from Alexandria, we cast anchor opposite the ruins of

the city of Hannibal[699]. I looked at them from the deck without

guessing what they were. I saw a few Moorish huts, a Mussulman

hermitage on the point of a prominent head-land, some sheep grazing

among ruins, ruins so unapparent that I could hardly distinguish them

from the ground on which they stood: that was Carthage. I visited it

before embarking for Europe.

MY ITINERARY.

"From the top of Byrsa, the eye embraces the ruins of

Carthage, which are more numerous than is generally believed:

they resemble those of Sparta, having nothing in a good state

of preservation, but occupying a considerable space. I saw

them in the month of February; the fig-trees, olive-trees,

and carobs were already putting out their young leaves;

large angelicas and acanthas formed tufts of verdure among

the ruins of marble of every colour. In the distance, I

turned my gaze over the isthmus, a two-fold sea, far islands,

a smiling country-side, bluey lakes, azured mountains; I

descried forests, ships, aqueducts, Moorish villages,

Mohammedan hermitages, minarets, and the white houses of

Tunis. Millions of starlings, gathered into battalions and

resembling clouds, flew above my head. Surrounded by the

greatest and most touching memories, I thought of Dido[700],

of Sophonisba[701], of Hasdrubal's noble spouse[702]; I

viewed the vast plains in which the legions of Hannibal,

Scipio[703], and Cæsar[704] lie buried; my eyes tried to

recognise the site of the Palace of Utica. Alas, the remains

of the palace of Tiberius[705] still exist at Capri, and we

look in vain at Utica for the spot where stood Cato's[706]

house! Lastly, the terrible Vandals, the light Moors passed

in turn before my memory, which showed me, as a final

picture, St. Louis dying on the ruins of Carthage[707]."

*

[Sidenote: The ruins of Carthage.]

Julien, like myself, takes his last view of Africa at Carthage[708].

Julien briefly narrates our passage from Tunis to the Bay of Gibraltar;

from Algeciras he promptly arrives at Cadiz, and from Cadiz at Granada.

Careless of Blanca, he observes only that "the Alhambra and other lofty

buildings stand on rocks of immense height." My own _Itinéraire_ does

not give many more details on Granada; I content myself with saying:

"The Alhambra seems to me to be worthy of note, even after the temples

of Greece. The valley of Granada is delightful, and much resembles

that of Sparta: it is easy to conceive that the Moors regret so fine a

country."

I have described the Alhambra in the _Dernier des Abencerages._[709]

The Alhambra, the Generalife, the Monte-Santo are impressed upon my

mind like those fantastic landscapes of which often, at peep of day,

one imagines that one catches a glimpse in the first brilliant ray of

the dawn. I still feel that I possess sufficient sense of nature to

paint the Vega[710]; but I should not dare to attempt it, for fear

of "the Archbishop of Granada[711]." During my stay in the town of

the sultanas, a guitar-player, driven by an earthquake from a village

through which I had just passed, had devoted himself to me. Deaf as a

post, he followed me wherever I went: when I sat down on a ruin in the

Palace of the Moors, he stood and sang by my side, accompanying himself

on his guitar. The harmonious vagrant would not perhaps have composed

the symphony of the _Creation_[712], but his dusky skin showed through

his tattered cloak, and he would have had a great need to write as did

Beethoven[713] to Fraülein Breuning:

"Revered Eleonora, my dearest friend, how gladly would I be the

possessor of a rabbits'-wool waistcoat of your knitting."

I travelled from end to end of that Spain in which, sixteen years

later, Heaven reserved to me a great part, that of aiding in stamping

out anarchy in a noble nation and delivering a Bourbon: the honour of

our arms was restored, and I should have saved the Legitimacy, had the

Legitimacy been able to understand the conditions of its continuance.

Julien does not allow me to escape until he has brought me back to

the Place Louis XV. at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th of

June 1807. From Granada he conducts me to Aranjuez, to Madrid, to the

Escurial, whence he jumps to Bayonne.

"We left Bayonne," he says, "on Tuesday the 9th of May, for

Pau, Tarbes, Barèges and Bordeaux, where we arrived on the

18th, very tired, and both with a touch of fever. We left on

the 19th and went to Angoulême and Tours, and we arrived on

the 28th at Blois, where we slept. On the 31st we continued

our journey to Orleans, and later we spent our last night at

Angerville."

*

[Sidenote: Back in France.]

I was there, at one stage from a country-seat[714] whose inhabitants

my long voyage had not caused me to forget. But the gardens of Armida,

where were they? Two or three times, when returning to the Pyrenees,

I have caught sight of the Column of Méréville[715]; like Pompey's

Column, it acquainted me with the presence of the desert: like my

fortunes at sea, all has changed.

I reached Paris before the news I sent of myself: I had out-distanced

my life. Insignificant as are the letters which I wrote, I go

through them as one looks over inferior sketches representing the

places one has visited. Those notes, dated from Modon, Athens, Zea,

Constantinople, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Tunis, Granada, Madrid,

and Burgos, those lines written on every manner of paper, with every

manner of ink, carried by all the winds, interest me. I love unrolling

even my very firmans: it is a pleasure to me to touch the vellum, to

observe the elegant caligraphy, to wonder at the pomp of the style.

How great a personage I must have been! And what poor devils we are,

with our letters and our forty-sou passports, beside those lords of the

turban!

Osman Seïd, Pasha of Morea, thus addresses to whomsoever it may concern

my firman for Athens:

"Men of law of the townships of Misitra[716] and Argos,

cadis, nadirs, and eflendis, of whom may the wisdom ever

increase; you who are the honour of your peers and our

great men, vaïvodes, and you through whose eyes your master

sees, who replace him in each of your jurisdictions, public

officers and business men, whose credit can only grow greater.

"We inform you that of the nobles of France, one noble in

particular from Paris, the bearer of this order, accompanied

by an armed janissary and by a servant as his escort, has

solicited permission and explained his intention to pass

through some of the places and localities which are within

your jurisdictions in order to go to Athens, which is an

isthmus lying beyond and separated from your jurisdictions.

"Wherefore, effendis, vaïvodes, and all others

above-mentioned, when the aforesaid person shall arrive at

the places subject to your jurisdiction, you shall take the

greatest care that he be treated with all the particular

consideration of which friendship makes a law, etc., etc

"Year 1221 of the Hegira."

My passport from Constantinople for Jerusalem says:

"To the sublime tribunal of His Grandeur the Cadi of

Kouds[717], Scherif and Most Excellent Effendi:

"Most Excellent Effendi, may Your Grandeur seated on your

august tribunal accept our sincere blessings and our

affectionate greetings.

"We inform you that a noble personage from the Court of

France, named François Auguste de Chateaubriand, is at

present on his way towards you to make the _holy_ pilgrimage

(of the Christians)."

Would we extend a like protection to the unknown traveller with the

mayors and gendarmes who inspect his passport? In these firmans we can

also read the revolutions of the nations: how many "permits" has it

required that God should grant to the empires, before a Tartar slave

could lay orders upon a vaïvode of Misistra, that is, a magistrate of

Sparta; before a Mussulman could recommend a Christian to the Cadi of

Kouds, that is, of Jerusalem!

The _Itinéraire_ has entered into the elements that compose my life.

When I set out in 1806, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem appeared a great

undertaking. Now that the crowd has followed in my steps and that the

whole world is in the diligence, the wonder of it has vanished; I have

little left of my own save Tunis: people have travelled less in that

direction, and it has been allowed that I pointed out the real sights

of the ports of Carthage. This creditable letter proves it:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have just received a plan of the ground and ruins of

Carthage, giving the exact outlines and inclinations of the

soil; it has been taken trigonometrically on a basis of

1500 meters, and rests upon barometrical observations made

with corresponding barometers. It is a work of ten years

of precision and patience; and it confirms your opinions

regarding the position of the ports of Byrsa.

"With this exact plan I have gone over all the ancient texts,

and have, I believe, determined the outer circumference and

the other portions of the Cothon, Byrsa, Megara, etc., etc.

I wish to do you the right which is your due upon so many

scores.

"If you are not afraid to see me swoop down upon your genius

with my trigonometry and my heavy erudition, I will be with

you at the first sign from yourself. If we, my father[718]

and I, follow you in literature _longissimo intervallo_,

at least we shall have tried to imitate you in the noble

independence of which you set France so fine an example.

"I have the honour to be, and I am proud of it, your frank

admirer,

"DUREAU DE LA MALLE[719]."

[Sidenote: My geographical accuracy.]

So accurate a rectification of localities would formerly have been

sufficient to give me a name in geography. From this time forward,

if I still had a mania for being talked about, I do not know where

I could go in order to attract the attention of the public: perhaps

I should resume my old plan of discovering the passage to the North

Pole; perhaps I should ascend the Ganges. There I should see the long,

straight, dark line of the woods which defend the approach to the

Himalayas; when, after reaching the neck which joins the two principal

peaks of Mount Ganghur, I descried the immeasurable amphitheatre of

the eternal snows, and should ask my guides, as did Heber[720], the

Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, the name of the other mountains in the

East, they would reply that they marked the border of the Chinese

Empire: well and good! But to return from the Pyramids is as though

you returned from Montlhéry[721]. By the by, I remember that a pious

antiquary, who lived near Saint-Denis in France wrote to me to ask if

Pontoise did not resemble Jerusalem.

The last page of the _Itinéraire_ is as though I had written it this

moment, so exactly does it reproduce my present sentiments.

"For twenty years," I said, "I have devoted myself to study

amid hazards and troubles of every kind, _diversa exsilia et

desertas quærere terras_: many of the pages of my books have

been written under canvas, in the deserts, upon the ocean; I

have often held the pen without knowing how I should for a

few instants prolong my existence.... If Heaven grant me a

repose which I have never tasted, I will try in silence to

raise a monument to my country; if Providence refuse me that

repose, I must think only of shielding my last days from the

cares which have embittered the first. I am no longer young,

I no longer have the love of fame; I know that literature,

the commerce of which is so sweet when it is secret, only

draws down storms upon us from the outside. In any case, I

have written enough if my name is to live; far too much if it

is to die."

It is possible that my _Itinéraire_ may survive as a manual for the

use of Wandering Jews like myself: I have scrupulously noted the

halting-places, and drawn a map of the roads. All the travellers to

Jerusalem have written to congratulate me and thank me for my accuracy;

I will quote one witness[722].

*

I see before me, of the sites of Syria, Egypt and Carthage, only

the spots in harmony with my solitary nature; these pleased me

independently of antiquity, art or history. The Pyramids struck me not

so much on account of their size, as of the desert against which they

were set; Diocletian's Column did not catch my eye as did the segments

of the sea along the sands of Lybia. At the Pelusian mouth of the Nile,

I should not have wished fora monument to remind me of the scene thus

depicted by Plutarch:

"The enfranchised slave, casting his eyes over the shore,

spied the old remains of a fishing-boat, which, though not

large, would make a sufficient pile for a poor naked body

that was not quite entire. While he was collecting the pieces

of plank, and putting them together, an old Roman, who had

made some of his first campaigns under Pompey, came up, and

said to Philip:

"Who are you that are preparing the funeral of Pompey the

Great?'

"Philip answered:

"'I am his freedman.'

"'But you shall not,' said the old Roman, 'have this honour

entirely to yourself. As a work of piety offers itself, let

me have a share in it; that I may not absolutely repent my

having passed so many years in a foreign country; but, to

compensate many misfortunes, may have the consolation of

doing some of the last honours to the greatest general Rome

ever produced[723].'"

Cæsar's rival no longer has a tomb near Lybia, and a young Lybian

slave-girl has received burial at the hands of a Pompey not far from

the Rome whence the great Pompey was banished. From these freaks of

fortune one conceives how the Christians used to go and hide themselves

in the Thebaïde[724].

The winds have scattered the personages of Europe, Asia, Africa,

amid whom I appeared and of whom I have told you: one fell from the

Acropolis at Athens, another from the shore of Chios, another flung

himself from Mount Sion, yet another will never emerge from the waves

of the Nile or the tanks of Carthage. The places themselves have

changed: in the same way, as in America, cities have sprung up where I

saw forests, an empire is being formed on those sands of Egypt where

my eyes encountered only "horizons bare and rounded like the boss of a

shield," as the Arab poems say, "and wolves so thin that their jaws are

like a cleft stick." Greece has recovered the liberty which I wished

her when travelling across her under the guard of a janissary. But

does she enjoy her national liberty, or has she merely changed her yoke?

[Sidenote: The future of the East.]

In some measure I am the last visitor of the Turkish Empire under

its old customs. The revolutions which have everywhere immediately

preceded, or followed upon, my footsteps have spread over Greece,

Syria, Egypt. Is a new East about to be formed? What will it bring

forth? Shall we receive our just punishment for having taught

the modern art of warfare to nations whose social state is based

upon slavery and polygamy? Have we carried civilization beyond

our boundaries, or have we brought barbarism within the circle of

Christianity? What will result from the new interests, the new

political relations, the creation of the Powers which may spring up in

the Levant? No one can tell. I do not allow myself to be dazzled by

steam-boats and railways, by the sale of the produce of manufactures,

and by the fortunes of a few French, English, German, Italian soldiers

enrolled in a pasha's service: all that is not civilization. Perhaps we

shall behold the return, through the aid of the disciplined troops of

future Ibrahims, of the perils which threatened Europe at the time of

Charles the Hammer[725], and from which we were saved by the generous

Poland. I pity the travellers who shall succeed me: the harem will no

longer hide its secrets from them; they will not have seen the old sun

of the East and the turban of Mahomet. The little Bedouin called out to

me in French, when I passed into the mountains of Judæa:

"Forward, march!"

The order was given, and the East marched.

*

[Sidenote: _MEMENTO MORI._]

What became of Ulysses' companion, Julien? He asked, when handing me

his manuscript, to be made _concierge_ of my house in the Rue d'Enfer:

this place was occupied by an old porter and his family, whom I could

not send away. The wrath of Heaven having made Julien headstrong and

a drunkard, I supported him for a long time; at last we were obliged

to part. I gave him a small sum, and granted him a little pension on

my privy purse, a somewhat light one, but always copiously filled

with excellent notes mortgaged on my castles in Spain. I obtained

Julien's admission, at his wish, to the Old Men's asylum: there

he finished the last great journey. I shall soon go to occupy his

empty bed, even as, in the camp of Etnir-Capi, I slept on a mat from

which a plague-stricken Mussulman had just been removed. My vocation

is positively for the almshouse, in which the old society lies. It

pretends to live, but is none the less at death's door. When it has

expired, it will decompose in order to be reproduced under new forms,

but it must first succumb; the first necessity for peoples, as for man,

is to die:

"When God bloweth, there cometh frost," says Job[726].

[649] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised in December

1846.--T.

[650] Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was the daughter of Jean de

Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint-Vallier, and married in 1512 Louis de

Brézé, Comte de Maulevrier, who died in 1531. Some years later she

became mistress to Henry II., then Duc d'Orléans, who shortly after

his accession created her Duchesse de Valentinois. She retained her

empire over the King and her power in France until Henry's death, which

occurred in 1559.--T.

[651] Hervé Louis François Joseph Bonaventure Clérel, Comte de

Tocqueville (1772-1856) was made a peer of France and a prefect

under the Restoration. He was married to Mademoiselle de Rosanbo, a

grand-daughter of Malesherbes.--T.

[652] Anne Nicole Marquise de Senozan (1718-1794), _née_ de Lamoignon

de Blancménil, sister to Malesherbes and wife of the Président de

Senozan. She mounted the scaffold on the 10th of May 1794, on the same

day as Madame Élisabeth, at the age of seventy-six, and her estate

passed later into the possession of her grand-nephew, the Comte de

Tocqueville.--B.

[653] The Château de Verneuil in the Department of Seine-et-Oise.--B.

[654] Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was

appointed an assistant judge, and in 1831 was sent to America, in

company with Gustave de Beaumont, to study the penal system on that

continent. On his return he published a treatise on this subject, and

in 1835 appeared his great work on American Democracy, which secured

his election to the Academy of Moral Science in 1839 and to the French

Academy in 1841. Two years earlier he had been sent to the Chamber

as deputy for the Arrondissement of Valognes, in Normandy, in which

his father's property of Tocqueville was situated, and this seat he

retained until his withdrawal from political life in 1851. He was

Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon

Bonaparte from June to October 1849.--T.

[655] Michel Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau (1760-1793), a renegade

representative of the Paris nobility, which sent him to the

States-General in 1789. In 1792 he became a member of the Convention,

where he voted in favour of the death of Louis XVI.; and on the 20th

of January 1793, the day before the execution of the King, he was

assassinated in a restaurant by an old Bodyguard called Paris. His body

was conveyed to the Pantheon in state, and the Convention adopted his

daughter, then eight years old.--T.

[656] The Château du Ménil is in the commune of Fontenay-Saint-Père,

canton of Limay, Arrondissement of Mantes, Department of Seine-et-Oise.

It is now the property of M. le Marquis de Rosanbo.--B.

[657] The Château de Mézy is in the canton of Meulan, Department of

Seine-et-Oise.--B.

[658] The Château de Méréville is in Beauce. It had formerly belonged

to a celebrated Court banker, Jean Joseph de La Borde, guillotined in

1794, who had turned it into a dwelling of finished splendour. The

park, laid out by Robert, the landscape-painter, was a marvel. One of

La Borde's daughters had married the Comte de Noailles, later Duc de

Mouchy.--B.

[659] Blanca is the heroine of the _Aventures du dernier

Abencerage._--T.

[660] Marie Anne Louise Adélaïde Marquise de Coislin (1732-1817), _née_

de Mailly, of the Rubempré and Nesle branch, was the daughter of Louis

de Mailly, Comte de Rubempré and cousin to the four Mesdemoiselles de

Mailly, daughters of the Marquis de Nesle--the Comtesse de Mailly, the

Comtesse de Vintimille, the Duchesse de Lauraguais, and the Marquise

de La Tournelle, afterwards Duchesse de Châteauroux--who successively

became mistresses to Louis XV. She married first, in 1750, Charles

Georges René de Cambout, Marquis de Coislin, who died in 1771, leaving

no children living. More than twenty years later, in 1793, the Marquise

de Coislin, then over sixty, married one of her cousins, twelve years

younger than herself, Louis Marie Duc de Mailly, who died and left her

a widow for the second time in 1795. There is reason to believe that

this marriage was never legally consecrated, as the Duchesse de Mailly

continued to be called Marquise de Coislin.--B.

[661] Now the Place de la Concorde. The house stands at the corner

of the Rue Royale, facing the Ministry of Marine, formerly the Crown

Wardrobe.--T.

[662] This title is the appanage of the Marquisate of Nesle.--T.

[663] Killed at the Battle of Courtrai in 1302.--T.

[664] Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the father of Carle and

grandfather of Horace Vernet. Louis XV. commissioned him to paint the

principal French ports. The majority of his sea-pieces are now at the

Louvre.--T.

[665] Marie Anne de Mailly (1719-1744) married the Marquis de La

Tournelle in 1734. He left her a widow at the age of twenty-three,

and she became mistress, in succession to her sisters Mesdames de

Vintimille and de Mailly, to Louis XV., who created her Duchesse de

Châteauroux. She obtained the support of the Duc de Richelieu, and was

for a time all-powerful at Court, accompanying Louis at the head of

his armies in Flanders and Alsace. In 1744, when the King fell ill,

she was sent back to Paris in disgrace, but was restored to favour on

his recovery, and was on the point of becoming Superintendent of the

Dauphiness' Household, when she died a sudden death, attributed by some

to poison.--T.

[666] Louise Julie Comtesse de Mailly (1710-1751), the first of the

Nesle family to become the mistress of Louis XV. She amended her life

when deserted in favour of one of her sisters, and was doubtless the

most estimable and sympathetic of the four.--T.

[667] A reference to an epigram in the Anthology.--B.

[668] Queen Marie Leczinska (1703-1768), daughter of Stanislaus

Leczinski, ex-King of Poland, and married to Louis XV. in 1725.--T.

[669] Madame Suard (1750-1830), _née_ Panckoucke, sister of Panckoucke,

the printer, founder of the _Moniteur universel_, and herself

the author of several agreeable works. Her salon was a favourite

meeting-place of the Encyclopædists under Louis XVI.--B.

[670] Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard (1734-1817) took part in the editing

of an English newspaper printed in Paris, became a member of the

Academy in 1772, and obtained a censorship in 1774. At the Revolution,

he became a moderate member of the new party. In 1803 he was appointed

perpetual secretary to the Institute. His works consist mainly of

translations from the English: Cook's _Voyages_, Robertson's _History

of America_, etc.--T.

[671] Pierre Michel Hennin (1728-1807) was Secretary of Embassy in

Poland in 1759, Resident at Warsaw in 1763, Resident at Geneva in

1765, and in 1779 became First Clerk at the Foreign Office, a post

in which he did eminent service until 1792, when he was dismissed by

General Dumouriez. He was obliged to sell his collections, and took to

"scribbling fat novels" for a livelihood, working at learning languages

and at his writing until his death, on the 5th of July 1807, at the age

of nearly eighty.--B.

[672] Claude Antoine de Bésiade, Duc d'Avaray (1740-1829), brother to

the Comte d'Avaray, Louis XVIII.'s companion in exile and chief agent.

D'Avaray was imprisoned during the Terror, recovered his liberty on the

9 Thermidor, and emigrated, returning to France in 1814. Louis XVIII.

raised him to the peerage in 1815, created him a duke in 1817, and made

him his First Chamberlain in 1820.--B.

[673] _Cinq jours à Clermont (Auvergne) 2, 3, 4, 5 et 6 août_ 1805 and

_Le Mont-Blanc, paysages de montagnes, fin d'août_ 1805. They appear in

Vol. VI. of the complete works.--B.

[674] Honoré d'Urfé (1567-1625), after a life spent in war and

diplomacy, wrote the famous pastoral romance of the _Astrée_, in which

he depicted the happiness of the shepherds of the Lignon. The singular

book was received with the greatest favour, and gave rise to a whole

school of bucolic novelists. D'Urfé died before completing his work,

and his secretary, Baro, finished it from the author's manuscripts or

his own imagination.--T.

[675] Claude Ignace Brugière de Barante (1745-1814). Napoleon dismissed

him because of the indulgence shown by him to Madame de Staël, and he

died at the moment when the return of the Bourbons appeared to promise

him a just reparation.--B.

[676] Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste Comte de Forbin (1779-1841), a

successful writer and painter, and a member of the Academy of Fine

Arts. Under the Restoration he became Director of the Museums.--T.

[677] Mathurin Régnier (1573-1613), the first of the French satiric

poets. He received the tonsure at the age of thirteen, obtained a rich

canonry before he was thirty, and died at forty of his pleasures and

excesses.--T.

[678] OPPIAN, _Cynegetica_, II. 348.--B.

[679] Jeanne Françoise Thévenin (1763-1841), known as Sophie Devienne,

acted at the Comédie Française from 1785 to 1813, and was one of the

best "waiting-maids" at that classic theatre.--B.

[680] St. Pothin (87-177), one of the first apostles to the Gauls,

became Bishop of Lyons, where he suffered martyrdom at the age of

nearly ninety years. He is honoured on the 2nd of June.--T.

[681] St. Ireneus (_circa_ 120--_circa_ 202) succeeded St. Pothin in

the Bishopric of Lyons, and suffered martyrdom like his predecessor,

his feast falling on the 28th of June.--T.

[682] François de Mandelot (1520-1588), Governor of Lyonnais,

distinguished himself by his wholesale murder of the Lyons Protestants

on St. Bartholomew's Night.--T.

[683] The Allées des Brotteaux, Lyons, where the condemned were shot

under the Revolution.--T.

[684] Loyse Labbé (1526-1566), known as _la Belle Cordière_, married a

rich merchant cord-spinner of Lyons called Perrin. She had been well

educated, devoted herself to literature, and left a number of poems.--T.

[685] St. Cyprian (_circa_ 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, persecuted

under Decius, and exiled and martyred under Valerian. He was the author

of the famous treatise on the Lapsed from which the above quotation is

taken. St. Cyprian is honoured on the 16th of September.--T.

[686] Eustache Le Sueur (1617-1655), known as the French Raphael, the

first painter of the French school under Louis XIV. Persecuted by his

envious rivals, he retired to the Chartreuse on the death of his wife,

and painted for the monastery his greatest work, the Life of St. Bruno,

in twenty-two pictures.--T.

[687] St. Bruno (_circa_ 1040-1101), Founder of the Carthusian Order,

and honoured on the 6th of October.--T.

[688] The certificate of death has since been discovered. Madame de

Caud died in the Marais, at No. 6, Rue d'Orléans, on the 18 Brumaire,

Year XIII (9 November 1804).--B.

[689] On the 13th of November 1804, Chateaubriand, who was then staying

at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne with his friend Joubert, wrote to Chênedollé:

"Madame de Caud is no more. She died in Paris on the 9th. We

have lost the most beautiful soul, the most exalted genius,

that ever existed. You see that I am born for every sorrow.

In how few days has Lucile gone to join Pauline [Madame

de Beaumont]! Come, my dear friend, and weep with me this

winter, in January. You will find a man who is inconsolable,

but who is your friend for life.--Joubert sends you a million

loves."--B.

[690] Chateaubriand's family at that date comprised Madame la Comtesse

de Marigny; Madame la Comtesse de Chateaubourg, and their children; the

daughter of the Comtesse Julie de Farcy; and the sons of the Comte de

Chateaubriand.--B.

[691] The juxtaposition of the names of Julien and Clarke, is somewhat

forced. Edward Clarke was not Cook's valet, but his companion and his

rival in fame. He three times circumnavigated the world. Both left

Plymouth together, on the 12th of July 1776, Captain Cook commanding

the _Discovery_ and Captain Clarke the _Resolution._ After the death of

Cook, killed by the natives of Owhyhee, on the 14th of February 1779,

Clarke succeeded him in the command of the expedition, and himself died

as he was arriving in Kamchatka. The _Discovery_ and the _Resolution_

returned to England on the 4th of October 1780.--B.

[692] I omit a portion of the extracts from the servant's Itinerary.

These will be indicated in their places.--T.

[693] At Trieste.--T.

[694] _De Sparte et d'Athènes._--_Author's Note._

[695] I omit Julien's description of the streets of Constantinople.--T.

[696] I omit a quotation from Julien's narrative.--T.

[697] I omit Julien's observations here.--T.

[698] I omit a quotation from Julien's Itinerary.--T.

[699] Hannibal (247-183 B.C.), the famous Carthaginian general.--T.

[700] Dido Queen of Tyre founded Carthage _circa_ 860 B.C.--T.

[701] Sophonisba (235-203 B.C.), daughter of the third Hasdrubal,

was betrothed to Masinissa King of Massylia and Numidia, but married

in his stead his rival Syphax. Masinissa recaptured his domains from

the latter, and with them his wife, whom he married. When Scipio,

however, insisted upon Sophonisba's appearance in his triumph in Rome,

Masinissa, to save her from this disgrace, sent her poison. Her story

is the subject of one of Voltaire's tragedies.--T.

[702] When the fourth Hasdrubal (170-100 B.C.), then commander of

Carthage, surrendered to Scipio, his wife, horrified at his treachery,

killed her children before his eyes, and then threw herself into the

flames, 146 B.C.--T.

[703] Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (_circa_ 235-184 B.C.).--T.

[704] Caius Julius Cæsar (100-44 B.C.) defeated Metellus Scipio and

Cato at Carthage in 46 B.C.--T.

[705] Tiberius Claudius Nero (42 B.C.-37 A.D.), the second Roman

Emperor. Capri contains the ruins of his twelve palaces.--T.

[706] Marcus Portius Cato (95-46 B.C.), known as Cato the Younger, or

Uticensis, sided against Cæsar with Pompey, and retired to Utica after

the defeat of the latter. He prepared to resist Cæsar in Africa, but

when Metellus had been beaten, stabbed himself rather than fall into

his enemy's hands.--T.

[707] In 1270, on his way to Palestine, in the course of his second

(the Eighth) Crusade.--T.

[708] I omit this portion of Julien's Itinerary.--T.

[709] Written under the Empire, but first published in 1827, in Volume

XVI. of the Complete Works, with the title, _Les Aventures du dernier

Abencerage._--B.

[710] The beautiful valley overlooking Granada referred to above.--T.

[711] _Cf._ LE SAGE, _Gil Blas._--T.

[712] By Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).--T.

[713] Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the great composer.--T.

[714] The Château de Malesherbes, situated at six kilometers from

Angerville, and belonging to Louis de Chateaubriand, the writer's

nephew. It is to-day the property of Madame la Marquise de Beaufort,

_née_ de Chateaubriand.--T.

[715] The column standing in the grounds of the Château de Méréville,

equalling the column of the Place Vendôme in height, and commanding a

view of over twenty leagues in extent.--B.

[716] Sparta.--_Author's Note._

[717] Jerusalem.--_Author's Note._

[718] Jean Baptiste René Dureau de La Malle (1742-1807), a native of

San Domingo, who settled in Paris and devoted his large fortune to

literature. He published translations of Seneca (1776), Sallust (1808),

and Tacitus (1793), the last of which was twice reprinted (1808 and

1816), and he was at work on a translation of Livy when he died. He

became a member of the Institute in 1804.--T.

[719] Adolphe Jules César Auguste Dureau de La Malle (1777-1857),

author of a number of learned works and some poems, and a considerable

authority on the geography and statistics of the nations of antiquity.

In the year in which the above letter was written he published his

_Géographie physique de la Méditerranée et de la mer Noire._ He was

admitted in 1818 to the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1840 published

his greatest work, the _Économie politique des Romains._--T.

[720] Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta (1783-1826), was appointed to

his bishopric in 1822. He was the author of a volume of Hymns (1819),

and of a narrative of a Journey through India, published after his

death by his widow.--T.

[721] A market town in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, some twelve

miles from Paris.--T.

[722] I omit this letter and some others addressed to the author from

the East; also a letter addressed by Fénelon to Bossuet on the eve of

the former's departure for Greece.--T.

[723] Langhorne's PLUTARCH: _Life of Pompey._--T.

[724] I omit a quotation from the Anthology.--T.

[725] Charles Martel, or the Hammer, Duke of Austrasia (_circa_

691-741), reigned over France with the title of Mayor of the Palace,

and in 732 gained a complete victory over the Saracens between Tours

and Poitiers, which put an end to the Mussulman invasion, and assured

the Christianization of Europe.--T.

[726] JOB, XXXVII. 10.--T.

END OF VOL. II.