Journey in Switzerland with M. de Montmorency.
Determined to go by the way of Russia, I required a passport to
enter it. But a fresh difficulty occurred; I must write to
Petersburgh to obtain this passport: such was the formality which
circumstances rendered necessary; and although I was certain of
meeting with no refusal from the known generous character of the
emperor Alexander, I had reason to be afraid that in the ministerial
offices it might be mentioned that I had asked for a passport, and
in that way get to the French ambassador's ears, which would lead
to my arrest, and prevent me from executing my project. It was
necessary, therefore, to go first to Vienna, to ask for my passport
from thence, and there wait for it. The six weeks which would be
required to send my letter and receive an answer, would be passed
under the protection of a ministry which had given the archduchess
of Austria to Bonaparte;-could I trust myself to it? It was clear,
however, that by remaining as a hostage, under the hand of Napoleon,
I not only renounced the exercise of my own talents, but I prevented
my sons from following any public career; they could enter into no
service, either for Bonaparte or against him; it was impossible to
find an establishment for my daughter, as it was necessary either to
separate myself from her, or to confine her to Coppet; and yet if I
was arrested in my flight, there was an end of the fortune of my
children, who would not have wished to separate themselves from my
destiny.
It was in the midst of all these perplexities, that a friend of
twenty years standing, M. Mathieu de Montmorency proposed to come
and see me, as he had already done several times since my exile.
It is true that I was written to from Paris, that the Emperor had
expressed his displeasure against everyone who should go to Coppet,
and especially against M. de Montmorency, if he again went there.
But I confess I made light of these expressions of the Emperor,
which he throws out sometimes to terrify people, and struggled very
feebly with M. de Montmorency, who generously sought to tranquillize
me by his letters. I was wrong, no doubt; but who could have
persuaded themselves that an old friend of a banished woman would
have it charged to him as a crime, his going to spend a few days
with her. The life of M. de Montmorency, entirely consecrated to
works of piety, or to family affections, estranged him so completely
from all politics, that unless it would even go the length of
banishing the saints, it seemed to me impossible that the government
would attack such a man. I asked myself likewise, cui bono; a
question I have always put to myself whenever any action of Napoleon
was in discussion. I know that he will, without hesitation, do all
the evil which can be of use to him for the least thing; but I do
not always conjecture the lengths to which his prodigious egotism
extends in all directions, towards the infinitely little, as well as
the infinitely great.
Although the prefect had made me be told that he recommended me not
to travel in Switzerland, I paid no attention to an advice which
could not be made a formal order. I went to meet M. de Montmorency
at Orbd, and from thence I proposed to him, as the object of a
promenade in Switzerland, to return by way of Fribourg, to see the
establishment of female Trappists, at a short distance front that of
the men in Val-Sainte.
We reached the convent in the midst of a severe shower, after having
been obliged to come nearly a mile on foot. As we were flattering
ourselves with being admitted, the Procureur of la Trappe, who has
the direction of the female convent, told us that nobody could be
received there. I tried, however, to ring the bell at the gate of
the cloister; a nun appeared behind the latticed opening through
which the portress may speak to strangers.
"What do you want?" said she to me, in a voice without modulation as
we might suppose that of a ghost. "I should wish to see the interior
of your convent."--"That is impossible."--"But I am very wet, and
want to dry myself."--She immediately touched a spring which opened
the door of an outer apartment, in which I was allowed to rest
myself; but no living creature appeared. I had hardly been seated a
few minutes, when becoming impatient at being unable to penetrate
into the interior of the house, I rung again; the same person again
appeared, and I asked her if no females were ever admitted into the
convent; she answered that it was only in cases when any one had the
intention of becoming a nun. "But," said I to her, "how can I know
if I wish to remain in your house, if I am not permitted to examine
it."--"Oh, that is quite useless," replied she, "I am very sure
that you have no vocation for our state," and with these words
immediately shut her wicket. I know not by what signs this nun had
satisfied herself of my worldly dispositions; it is possible that a
quick manner of speaking, so different from theirs, is sufficient to
make them distinguish travellers, who are merely curious. The hour
of vespers approaching, I could go into the church to hear the nuns
sing; they were behind a black plose grating, through which nothing
could be seen. You only heard the noise of their wooden shoes, and
of the wooden benches as they raised them to sit down. Their singing
had nothing of sensibility in it, and I thought I could remark both
by their manner of praying, and in the conversation which I had
afterwards with the father Trappist, who directed them, that it was
not religious enthusiasm, such as we conceive it, but severe and
grave habits which could support such a kind of life. The tenderness
of piety would even exhaust the strength; a sort of ruggedness of
soul is necessary to so rude an existence.
The new Father Abbe of the Trappists, settled in the vallies of the
Canton of Fribourg, has added to the austerities of the order. One
can have no idea of the minute degrees of suffering imposed upon the
monks; they go so far as even to forbid them, when they have been
standing for some hours in succession, from leaning against the
wall, or wiping the perspiration from their forehead; in short every
moment of their life is filled with suffering, as the people of the
world fills theirs with enjoyment. They rarely live to be old, and
those to whom this lot falls, regard it as a punishment from heaven.
Such an establishment would be barbarous if any one was compelled to
enter it, or if there was the least concealment of what they suffer
there. But on the contrary, they distribute to whoever wishes to
read it, a printed statement, in which the rigors of the order are
rather exaggerated than softened; and yet there are novices who are
willing to take the vows, and those who are received never run away,
although they might do it without the least difficulty. The whole
rests, as it appears to me, upon the powerful idea of death; the
institutions and amusements of society are destined in the world to
turn our thoughts entirely upon life; but when the contemplation of
death gets a certain hold of the human heart, joined to a firm
belief in the immortality of the soul, there are no bounds to the
disgust which it may take to every thing which forms a subject of
interest in the world; and a state of suffering appearing the road
to a future life, such minds follow it with avidity, like the
traveller, who willingly fatigues himself, in order to get sooner
over the road which leads him to the object of his wishes. But what
equally astonished and grieved me, was to see children brought
up with this severity: their poor locks shaved off, their young
countenances already furrowed, that deathly dress with which they
were covered before they knew any thing of life, before they had
voluntarily renounced it, all this made my soul revolt against the
parents who had placed them there. When such a state is not the
adoption of a free and determined choice on the part of the person
who professes it, it inspires as much horror as it at first created
respect. The monk with whom I conversed, spoke of nothing but death;
all his ideas came from that subject, or connected themselves with
it; death is the sovereign monarch of this residence. As we talked
of the temptations of the world, I expressed to the father Trappist
my admiration of his conduct in thus sacrificing all, to withdraw
himself from their influence. "We are cowards" said he to me, "who
have retired into a fortress, because we feel we want the courage
to meet our enemy in the open field." This reply was equally modest
and ingenious*.
A few days after we had visited these places, the French government
ordered the seizure of the father Abbe, M. de L'Estrange; the
confiscation of the property of the order, and the dismissal of the
fathers from Switzerland.
* (Note of the Editor.)I accompanied my mother in the excursion here
related. Struck with the wild beauty of the place, and interested by
the spiritual conversation of the Trappist who had attended us, I
besought him to grant me hospitality until the following day, as I
proposed going over the mountain on foot, in order to see the great
convent of the Val-Sainte, and rejoining my mother and M. de
Montmorency at Fribourg. This monk, with whom I continued to
converse, had not much difficulty in discovering that I hated the
imperial government, and I could guess that he fully participated in
that sentiment. Afterwards, after thanking him for his kindness, I
entirely lost sight of him, nor did I imagine, that he had preserved
the least recollection of me.
Five years afterwards, in the first months of the Restoration, I was
not a little surprised at receiving a letter from this same
Trappist.
He had no doubt, he said, that now the legitimate monarch was
restored to his throne, I must have a number of friends at court,
and he requested me to employ their influence in procuring to his
order the restoration of the property which it possessed in France.
This letter was signed "Father A .... priest and procureur of La
Trappe," and he added, as a postscript, "If a twenty-three years'
emigration' and four campaigns in a regiment of horse-chasseurs in
the army of Conde, give me any claims to the royal favor, I beg you
will make use of them."
I could not help laughing, both at the idea which this good monk had
of my influence at court, and at the use of it which he required
from a protestant. I sent his letter to M. de Montmorency, whose
influence was much greater than mine, and I have reason to believe
that the petition was granted.
In other respects, these Trappists were not, in the deep vales
of the Canton of Fribourg, such strangers to politics as their
residence and their habit would lead one to believe.
I have since learned that they served as a medium for the
correspondence of the French clergy with the pope, then a prisoner
at Savonne. Certainly, although this does not at all excuse the
rigor with which they were treated by Bonaparte, it gives a
sufficient explanation of it.
(End of editor's note.)
I know not of what M. de L'Estrange was accused; but it is scarcely
probable that such a man should have meddled with the affairs
of the world, much less the monks, who never quitted their solitude.
The Swiss government caused search to be made every where for M. de
L'Estrange, and I hope for its honor, that it took care not to find
him. However, the unfortunate magistrates of countries which are
called allies of France, are very often employed to arrest persons
designated to them, ignorant whether they are delivering innocent
or guilty victims to the great Leviathan, which thinks proper to
swallow them up. The property of the Trappists was seized, that is
to say, their tomb, for they hardly possessed any thing else, and
the order was dispersed. It is said, that a Trappist at Genoa had
mounted the pulpit to retract the oath of allegiance which he had
taken to the emperor, declaring that since the captivity of the
pope, he considered every priest as released from this oath. At his
coming out from performing this act of repentance, he was, report
also says, tried by a military commission, and shot. One would think
that he was sufficiently punished, without rendering the whole order
responsible for his conduct.
We regained Vevay by the mountains, and I proposed to M. de
Montmorency to proceed as far as the entrance of the Valais, which I
had never seen. We stopped at Bex, the last Swiss village, for the
Valais was already united to France. A Portuguese brigade had left
Geneva to go and occupy the Valais: singular state of Europe, to
have a Portuguese garrison at Geneva going to take possession of a
part of Switzerland in the name of France! I had a curiosity to see
the Cretins of the Valais, of whom I had so often heard. This
miserable degradation of man affords ample subject for reflection;
but it is excessively painful to see the human countenance thus
become an object of horror and repugnance. I remarked, however, in
several of these poor creatures, a degree of vivacity bordering on
astonishment, produced on them by external objects. As they never
recognize what they have already seen, they feel each time fresh
surprize, and the spectacle of the world, with all its details, is
thus for ever new to them; it is, perhaps, the compensation for
their sad state, for certainly there is one. It is some years since
a Cretin, having committed assassination, was condemned to death: as
he was led to the scaffold, he took it into his head, seeing himself
surrounded with a crowd of people, that he was accompanied in this
manner to do him honor, and he laughed, held himself erect, and put
his dress in order, with the idea of rendering himself more worthy
of the fete. Was it right to punish such a being for the crime which
his arm had committed?
There is at three leagues from Bex, a famous cascade, where the
water falls from a very lofty mountain. I proposed to my friends to
go and see it, and we returned before dinner. It is true that this
cascade was upon the territory of the Valais, consequently then upon
the French territory, and I forgot that I was not allowed more of
that than the small space of ground which separates Coppet from
Geneva. When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for
having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest
proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had
committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire.
I might have said, in the words of Lafontaine's fable:
*Je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue
(I grazed of this meadow the breadth of my tongue.) But I confessed
with great simplicity the fault I had committed in going to see this
Swiss cascade, without dreaming that it was in France.