THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ
VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND
BEING A TRANSLATION BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
OF THE MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES. In 6 Volumes. Vol. IV
"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY FREEMANTLE
AND CO. AT 217 PICCADILLY MDCCCCII
CONTENTS
VOLUME IV
BOOK VII 1-30
Changes in the world--The years 1815 and 1816--I am made a peer of
France--My first appearance in the tribune--Various speeches--The
_Monarchie selon la Charte_--Louis XVIII.--M. Decazes--I am struck
off the list of ministers of State--I sell my books and my Valley--My
speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818--The Piet meetings--The
_Conservateur_--Concerning the morality of material interests and that
of duty--The year 1820--Death of the Duc de Berry--Birth of the Duc de
Bordeaux--The market-women of Bordeaux--I cause M. de Villèle and M.
de Corbière to take office for the first time--My letter to the Duc
de Richelieu--Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply--Notes from
M. de Polignac--Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier--I am
appointed Ambassador to Berlin--I leave for that embassy
BOOK VIII 31-63
The year 1821--The Berlin, Embassy--I arrive in Berlin--M.
Ancillon--The Royal Family--Celebrations for the marriage of the
Grand-duke Nicholas--Berlin society--Count von Humboldt--Herr von
Chamisso--Ministers and ambassadors--The Princess William--The
Opera--A musical meeting--My first dispatches--M. de Bonnay--The
Park--The Duchess of Cumberland--Commencement of a Memorandum on
Germany--Charlottenburg--Interval between the Berlin Embassy and
the London Embassy--Baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux--Letter to M.
Pasquier--Letter from M. de Bernstoff--Letter from M. Ancillon--Last
letter from the Duchess of Cumberland--M. de Villèle, Minister of
Finance--I am appointed Ambassador to London
BOOK IX 64-112
The year 1822--My first dispatches from London--Conversation with
George IV. on M. Decazes--The noble character of our diplomacy under
the Legitimacy--A parliamentary sitting--English society--Continuation
of the dispatches--Resumption of parliamentary labours--A ball
for the Irish--Duel between the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of
Buckingham--Dinner at Royal Lodge--The Marchioness Conyngham
and her secret--Portraits of the ministers--Continuation of my
dispatches--Parleys on the Congress of Verona--Letter to M. de
Montmorency; his reply foreshadowing a refusal--A more favourable
letter from M. de Villèle--I write to Madame de Duras--Death of
Lord Londonderry--Another letter to M. de Montmorency--Trip to
Hartwell--Note from M. de Villèle announcing my nomination to the
Congress--The end of old England--Charlotte--Reflexions--I leave
London--The years 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827--Deliverance of the King
of Spain--My dismissal--The Opposition follows me--Last diplomatic
notes--Neuchâtel, in Switzerland--Death of Louis XVIII.--Coronation of
Charles X.--Reception of the knights of the Orders
BOOK X 113-146
I collect my former adversaries around myself--My public
charges--Extract from my polemics after my fall--Visit to
Lausanne--Return to Paris--The Jesuits--Letter from M. de Montlosier
and my reply--Continuation of my polemics--Letter from General
Sébastiani--Death of General Foy--The Law of Justice and Love--Letter
from M. Étienne--Letter from M. Benjamin Constant--I attain the
highest pitch of my political importance--Article on the King's
saint's-day--Withdrawal of the law on the police of the press--Paris
illuminated--Note from M. Michaud--M. de Villèle's irritation--Charles
X. proposes to review the National Guard on the Champ de Mars--I write
to him: my letter--The review--The National Guard disbanded--The
Elective Chamber is dissolved--The new Chamber--Refusals to
co-operate--Fall of the Villèle Ministry--I contribute towards forming
the new ministry and accept the Roman Embassy--Examination of a reproach
BOOK XI 147-219
Madame Récamier--Childhood of Madame Récamier described by M. Benjamin
Constant--Letter to Madame Récamier from Lucien Bonaparte--Continuation
of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier's journey to England--Madame de Staël's first journey to
Germany--Madame Récamier in Paris--Plans of the generals--Portrait
of Bernadotte--Trial of Moreau--Letters from Moreau and Masséna to
Madame Récamier--Death of M. Necker--Return of Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier at Coppet--Prince Augustus of Prussia--Madame de Staël's
second journey to Germany--The Château de Chaumont--Letter from
Madame de Staël to Bonaparte--Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de
Montmorency exiled--Madame Récamier at Châlons--Madame Récamier at
Lyons--Madame de Chevreuse--Spanish prisoners--Madame Récamier in
Rome--Albano-Canova: his letters--The Albano fisherman--Madame Récamier
in Naples--The Duc de Rohan-Chabot--King Murat: his letters--Madame
Récamier returns to France--Letter from Madame de Genlis--Letters from
Benjamin Constant--Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return
from Elba--Madame de Krüdener--The Duke of Wellington--I meet Madame
Récamier again--Death of Madame de Staël--The Abbaye-aux-Bois
BOOK XII 220-304
My Embassy to Rome--Three kinds of materials-Diary of the road--Letters
to Madame Récamier--Leo XII. and the Cardinals--The ambassadors--The
old artists and the new artists--Old Roman society--Present manners
of Rome--Town and country--Letter to M. Villemain--Letter to Madame
Récamier--Explanation concerning the memorandum I am about to
quote--Letter to M. le Comte de La Feironnays--Memorandum on Eastern
Affairs--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to M. Thierry--Dispatch to
M. le Comte de La Ferronnays--More letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch
to M. le Comte Portalis--Death of Leo XII.--Dispatch to M. le Comte
Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. IV
George IV
The Duc Decazes
The Duc de Berry
Frederica Queen of Hanover
The Duc de Richelieu
The Marquess of Londonderry
Madame Récamier
Pope Leo XII
[Illustration: GEORGE IV.]
THE
MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
VOLUME IV
BOOK VII[1]
Changes in the world--The years 1815 and 1816--I am made a peer of
France--My first appearance in the tribune--Various speeches--The
_Monarchie selon la Charte_--Louis XVIII.--M. Decazes--I am struck
off the list of ministers of State--I sell my books and my Valley--My
speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818--The Piet meetings--The
_Conservateur_--Concerning the morality of material interests and that
of duty--The year 1820--Death of the Duc de Berry--Birth of the Duc de
Bordeaux--The market-women of Bordeaux--I cause M. de Villèle and M.
de Corbière to take office for the first time--My letter to the Duc
de Richelieu--Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply--Notes from
M. de Polignac--Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier--I am
appointed Ambassador to Berlin--I leave for that embassy.
To fall back from Bonaparte and the Empire to that which followed them
is to fall from reality into nothingness, from the summit of a mountain
into a gulf. Did not everything finish with Napoleon? Ought I to have
spoken of anything else? What person can possess any interest beside
him? Of whom and of what can there be any question after such a man?
Dante alone had the right to associate himself with the great poets
whom he meets in the regions of another life. How can one speak of
Louis XVIII. in the stead of the Emperor? I blush when I think that, at
the present moment, I have to cant about a crowd of petty creatures, of
whom I myself am one, dubious and nocturnal beings that we were on a
stage from which the great sun had disappeared.
The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled up. Their members had become
bent and shrunk; the soul was lacking to the new universe so soon as
Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded from view from the moment
when they were no longer illuminated by the light which had given them
colour and relief. At the commencement of these Memoirs, I had only
myself to speak of: well, there is always a sort of paramountcy in
man's individual solitude. Later, I was surrounded by miracles: those
miracles kept up my voice; but at this present moment there is no more
conquest of Egypt, no more Battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena, no
more retreat from Russia, no more invasion of France, capture of Paris,
return from Elba, Battle of Waterloo, funeral at St. Helena: what
remains? Portraits to which only the genius of Molière could lend the
gravity of comedy!
While expressing myself upon our worthlessness, I taxed my conscience
home: I asked myself whether I did not purposely incorporate myself
with the nullity of these times, in order to acquire the right to
condemn the others, persuaded though I were _in petto_ that my name
would be read in the midst of all these obliterations. No, I am
convinced that we shall all fade out: first, because we have not in
us the wherewithal to live; secondly, because the age in which we are
commencing or ending our days has itself not the wherewithal to make
us live. Generations mutilated, exhausted, disdainful, faithless,
consecrated to the annihilation which they love, are unable to bestow
immortality; they have no power to create a renown; if you were to nail
your ear to their mouth, you would hear nothing: no sound issues from
the heart of the dead.
One thing strikes me, however: the little world to which I am now
coming was superior to the world which succeeded it in 1830; we were
giants in comparison with the society of maggots that has engendered
itself.
The Restoration offers at least one point in which we can find
importance: after the dignity of one man, that man having passed, there
was born again the dignity of mankind. If despotism has been replaced
by liberty, if we understand anything of independence, if we have lost
the habit of grovelling, if the rights of human nature are no longer
disregarded, we owe these things to the Restoration. Wherefore also I
threw myself into the fray in order, as far as I could, to revive the
species when the individual had come to an end.
Come, let us pursue our task! Let us descend, with a groan, to myself
and my colleagues. You have seen me amid my dreams; you are about to
see me in my realities: if the interest decreases, if I fall, reader,
be just, make allowance for my subject!
[Sidenote: I am made a peer of France.]
After the second return of the King and the final disappearance of
Bonaparte, the Ministry being in the hands of M. le Duc d'Otrante and
M. le Prince de Talleyrand, I was appointed president of the electoral
college of the Department of the Loiret. The elections of 1815 gave
the King the _Chambre introuvable._[2] I was carrying all the votes
at Orleans, when I received the Order which called me to the House
of Peers[3]. My active career had hardly commenced, when it suddenly
changed its course: what would it have been if I had been sent to the
Elective Chamber? It is fairly probable that that career would, in
the event of my success, have ended in the Ministry of the Interior,
instead of taking me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My habits and
manners were more in touch with the peerage, and, although the latter
became hostile to me from the first moment, by reason of my Liberal
opinions, it is nevertheless certain that my doctrines concerning the
liberty of the press and against the vassalage to foreigners gave the
Noble Chamber the popularity which it enjoyed so long as it suffered my
opinions.
I received, at my entrance, the only honour which my colleagues ever
did me during my fifteen years' residence in their midst: I was
appointed one of the four secretaries for the session of 1816. Lord
Byron met with no more favour when he appeared in the House of Lords,
and he left it for good: I ought to have returned to my deserts.
My first appearance in the tribune was to make a speech on the
irremovability of the judges[4]: I applauded the principle, but
censured its immediate application. At the Revolution of 1830, the
members of the Left who were most devoted to that revolution wished to
suspend the irremovability for a time.
On the 22nd of February 1816, the Duc de Richelieu brought us the
autograph will of the Queen. I ascended the tribune, and said:
"He who has preserved for us the will of Marie-Antoinette[5] had bought
the property of Montboisier: himself one of Louis XVI.'s judges, he
raised in that property a monument to the memory of the defender of
Louis XVI., and himself engraved on that monument an epitaph in French
verse in praise of M. de Malesherbes. This astonishing impartiality
shows that all is misplaced in the moral world."
On the 12th of March 1816, the question of the ecclesiastical
pensions[6] was discussed:
"You would," I said, "refuse an allowance to the poor vicar who
devotes the remainder of his days to the altar, and you would accord
pensions to Joseph Lebon[7], who struck off so many heads; to François
Chabot[8], who asked for a law against the Emigrants of so simple a
character that a child might lead them to the guillotine; to Jacques
Roux[9], who, refusing at the Temple to receive Louis XVI.'s will,
replied to the unfortunate monarch:
"'My only business is to take you to your death.'"
A bill had been introduced into the Hereditary Chamber relating to the
elections. I declared myself in favour of the integral renewal of the
Chamber of Deputies. It was not until 1824, being then a minister, that
I passed it into law.
It was also in this first speech on the law governing elections, in
1816[10], that I said, in reply to an opponent:
"I will not refer to what has been said about Europe watching our
discussions. Speaking for myself, gentlemen, I doubtless owe to the
French blood that flows in my veins the impatience which I experience
when, in order to influence my vote, people talk to me of opinions
existing outside my country; and, if civilized Europe tried to impose
the Charter on me, I should go to live in Constantinople."
[Sidenote: The Chamber of Peers.]
On the 9th of April 1816, I introduced a motion to the Chamber relating
to the Barbary Powers. The house decided that there was cause for its
discussion. I was already thinking of combating slavery, before I
obtained that favourable decision from the Peers, which was the first
political intervention of a great Power on behalf of the Greeks:
"I have seen the ruins of Carthage," I said to my colleagues; "I have
met among those ruins the successors of the unhappy Christians for
whose deliverance St. Louis sacrificed his life. Philosophy can take
its share of the glory attached to the success of my motion and boast
of having obtained in an age of light that for which religion strove in
vain in an age of darkness."
I found myself in an assembly in which my words, for three-fourths of
the time, turned against myself. One can move a popular chamber; an
aristocratic chamber is deaf. With no gallery, speaking in private
before old men, dried-up remains of the old Monarchy, of the Revolution
and of the Empire, anything that rose above the most commonplace seemed
madness. One day, the front row of arm-chairs, quite close to the
tribune, was filled with venerable peers, one more deaf than the other,
their heads bent forward, and holding to their ears a trumpet with the
mouth turned towards the tribune. I sent them to sleep, which is very
natural. One of them dropped his ear-trumpet; his neighbour, awakened
by the fall, wanted politely to pick up his colleague's trumpet; he
fell down. The worst of it was that I began to laugh, although I was
just then speaking pathetically on some subject of humanity, I forget
what.
The speakers who succeeded in that Chamber were those who spoke
without ideas, in a level and monotonous tone, or who found terms of
sensibility only in order to melt with pity for the poor ministers. M.
de Lally-Tolendal thundered in favour of the public liberties: he made
the vaults of our solitude resound with the praises of three or four
English Lord Chancellors, his ancestors, he said. When his panegyric
of the liberty of the press was finished, came a "but" based upon
"circumstances," which "but" left our honour safe, under the useful
supervision of the censorship.
The Restoration gave an impulse to men's minds; it set free the thought
suppressed by Bonaparte: the intellect, like a caryatic figure relieved
of the entablature that bent its brow, lifted up its head. The Empire
had struck France with dumbness; liberty restored touched her and gave
her back speech: oratorical talents existed which took up matters where
the Mirabeaus and Cazalès had left them, and the Revolution continued
its course.
My labours were not limited to the tribune, so new to me. Appalled at
the systems which men were embracing and at France's ignorance of the
principles of representative government, I wrote and had printed the
_Monarchie selon la Charte._ This publication marked one of the great
epochs of my political life: it made me take rank among the publicists;
it served to determine opinion on the nature of our government. The
English papers praised the work to the skies; among us, the Abbé
Morellet even could not recover from the transformation of my style and
the dogmatic precision of the truths.
The _Monarchie selon la Charte_ is a constitutional catechism: from
it have been taken the greater part of the propositions which are put
forward as new to-day. Thus the principle that "the King reigns but
does not govern" is found fully set forth in Chapters IV., V., VI. and
VII. on the Royal Prerogative.
The constitutional principles having been laid down in the first part
of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, I examine in the second the systems
of the three ministries which till then had followed upon one another,
from 1814 to 1816; in this part are brought together predictions
too well verified since and expositions of doctrines at that time
unperceived. These words appear in Chapter XXVI., in the Second Part:
"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a
revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change
of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the
order of right of succession to the Crown."
As I was finishing my work, appeared the ordinance of the 5th of
September 1816[11]: this measure dispersed the few Royalists assembled
to reconstruct the Legitimate Monarchy. I hastened to write the
_Postscript_, which caused an explosion of anger on the part of M. le
Duc de Richelieu and of Louis XVIII.'s favourite, M. Decazes.
[Sidenote: Seizure of my pamphlet.]
The _Postscript_ added, I ran to M. Le Normant, my publisher's. On
arriving, I found constables and a police-commissary making out
instruments. They had seized parcels and affixed seals. I had not
defied Bonaparte to be intimidated by M. Decazes: I objected to the
seizure; I declared that, as a free Frenchman and a peer of France, I
would yield only to force. The force arrived and I withdrew. I went
on the 18th of September to Messieurs Louis-Marthe Mesnier and his
colleague, notaries-royal; I protested in their office and called upon
them to register my statement of the fact of the apprehension of my
work, wishing to ensure the rights of French citizens by means of this
protest M. Baudé[12] followed my example in 1830.
I next found myself engaged in a rather long correspondence with M.
the Chancellor, M. the Minister of Police and M. the Attorney-General
Bellart[13], until the 9th of November, on which day the Chancellor
informed me of the order made in my favour by the Court of First
Instance, which placed me in possession of my seized work. In one of
his letters, M. the Chancellor told me that he had been distressed to
see the dissatisfaction which the King had publicly expressed with my
work. This dissatisfaction arose from the chapter in which I stood
up against the establishment of a minister of General Police in a
constitutional country.
In my account of the journey to Ghent, you have seen Louis XVIII.'s
value as a descendant of Hugh Capet; in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort:
vive le roi!_[14] I have told the Prince's real qualities. But man is
not a simple unit: why are there so few faithful portraits? Because the
model is made to pose at such or such a period of his life; ten years
later the portrait is no longer like.
Louis XVIII. did not see far the objects before or around him; all
seemed fair or foul to him according to the way he looked at it.
Smitten with his century, it is to be feared that "the most Christian
King" regarded religion only as an elixir fit for the amalgam of drugs
of which royalty is composed. The licentious imagination which he had
received from his grandfather[15] might have inspired some distrust of
his enterprises; but he knew himself and, when he spoke in a positive
manner, he boasted (well knowing it), while laughing at himself. I
spoke to him one day of the need of a new marriage for M. le Duc de
Bourbon, in order to bring back the race of the Condés to life. He
strongly approved of that idea, although he cared very little about the
sad resurrection; but in this connection he spoke to me of the Comte
d'Artois, and said:
"My brother might marry again without changing anything in the
succession to the throne: he would only make cadets. As for me,
I should only make elders; I do not want to disinherit M. le Duc
d'Angoulême."
And he drew himself up with a capable and bantering air; but I had no
intention of denying the King any power.
Selfish and unprejudiced, Louis XVIII. desired his peace of mind at any
price: he supported his ministers so long as they held the majority; he
dismissed them so soon as the majority was shaken and his tranquillity
liable to be upset: he did not hesitate to fall back when, to obtain
the victory, he ought to have taken a step forward. His greatness was
patience: he did not go towards events; events came to him.
Without being cruel, the King was not humane; tragic catastrophes
neither astonished nor touched him; he was satisfied with saying to the
Duc de Berry, who apologized for having had the misfortune to disturb
the King's sleep by his death:
"I have finished my night."
Nevertheless, this quiet man would fly into horrible rages when
annoyed; and also, this cold, unfeeling Prince had attachments which
resembled passions: thus there succeeded each other in his intimacy the
Comte d'Avaray, M. de Blacas, M. Decazes[16]; Madame de Balbi[17],
Madame de Cayla[18]. All these beloved persons were favourites;
unfortunately they have a great deal too many letters in their hands.
Louis XVIII. appeared to us in all the profundity of historic
tradition; he showed himself with the favouritism of the ancient
royalties. Does the heart of our isolated monarchs contain a void which
they fill with the first object they light upon? Is it sympathy, the
affinity of a nature analogous to their own? Is it a friendship which
drops down to them from Heaven to console their greatnesses? Is it a
leaning for a slave who gives himself body and soul, before whom one
conceals nothing, a slave who becomes a garment, a plaything, a fixed
idea bound up with all the feelings, all the tastes, all the whims
of him whom it has subdued and whom it holds under the empire of an
invincible fascination? The viler and closer a favourite has been,
the less easily is he to be dismissed, because he is in possession of
secrets which would put one to the blush if they were divulged: the
chosen one derives a dual force from his own baseness and his master's
weaknesses.
When the favourite happens to be a great man, like the besetting
Richelieu[19] or the undismissable Mazarin[20], the nations, while
detesting him, profit by his glory or his power; they only change a
wretched king _de jure_ for an illustrious king _de facto._
[Sidenote: The Duc Decazes.]
So soon as M. Decazes was made a minister, the carriages blocked
the Quai Malaquais in the evenings to set down in the new-comer's
drawing-room all that was noblest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The
Frenchman may do what he pleases, he will never be anything but a
courtier, no matter of whom, provided it be a power of the day.
Soon there was formed, on behalf of the new favourite, a formidable
coalition of stupidities. In democratic society, prate about liberties,
declare that you see the progress of the human race and the future of
things, adding to your speeches a few Crosses of the Legion of Honour,
and you are sure of your place; in aristocratic society, play whist,
utter commonplaces and carefully-prepared witticisms with a grave and
profound air, and the fortune of your genius is assured.
Born a fellow-countryman of Murat[21], but of Murat without a kingdom,
M. Decazes had come to us from the mother of Napoleon[22]. He was
familiar, obliging, never insolent; he wished me well; I do not know
why, I did not care: thence came the commencement of my disgraces. That
was to teach me that one must never fail in respect to a favourite. The
King loaded him with kindnesses and credit, and subsequently married
him to a very well-born person, daughter to M. de Sainte-Aulaire[23].
It is true that M. Decazes served royalty too well; it was he who
unearthed Marshal Ney in the mountains of Auvergne, where he had hidden
himself.
Faithful to the inspirations of his throne, Louis XVIII. said of M.
Decazes:
"I shall raise him up so high that the greatest lords will be envious
of him."
This phrase, borrowed from another king, was a mere anachronism: to
raise up others, one must be sure of not descending; now, at the time
when Louis XVIII. arrived, what were monarchs? If they could still make
a man's fortune, they could no longer make his greatness; they had
become merely their favourites' bankers.
[Illustration: Duc Decazes.]
Madame Princeteau[24], M. Decazes' sister, was an agreeable, modest and
excellent person; the King had fallen in love with her prospectively.
M. Decazes, the father, whom I saw in the throne-room in full dress,
sword at side, hat under his arm, made no success, however.
At last, the death of M. le Duc de Berry increased the ill-will on both
sides and brought about the favourite's fall. I have said that "his
feet slipped in the blood[25]," which does not mean, Heaven forbid!
that he was guilty of the murder, but that he fell in the reddened pool
that formed under Louvel's knife.
I had resisted the seizure of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ to
enlighten misled royalty and to uphold the liberty of thought and of
the press; I had frankly embraced our institutions, and I remained
loyal to them.
These broils over, I remained bleeding from the wounds inflicted on
me at the appearance of my pamphlet. I did not take possession of
my political career without bearing the scars of the blows which I
received on entering upon that career: I felt ill at ease in it, I was
unable to breathe.
[Sidenote: I am deprived of my place.]
Shortly afterwards, an Order[26] countersigned "Richelieu" struck me
off the list of ministers of State, and I was deprived of a place
till then reputed irremovable; it had been given me at Ghent, and the
pension attached to that place was withdrawn from me: the hand which
had taken Fouché struck me.
I have had the honour to be thrice stripped for the Legitimacy: first,
for following the sons of St. Louis into exile; the second time, for
writing in favour of the principles of the Monarchy, as "granted;" the
third, for keeping silence on a baleful law at the moment when I had
just caused the triumph of our arms. The Spanish Campaign had given
back soldiers to the White Flag, and, if I had been kept in power, I
should have carried back our frontiers to the banks of the Rhine.
My nature made me quite indifferent to the loss of my salary; I came
off with going on foot again and, on rainy days, driving to the Chamber
of Peers in a hackney-coach. In my popular conveyance, under the
protection of the rabble that surged around me, I re-entered into the
rights of the proletariat of which I formed part: from my lofty chariot
I looked down upon the train of kings.
I was obliged to sell my books; M. Merlin put them up to auction at
the Salle Sylvestre in the Rue des Bons-Enfants[27]. I kept only
a little Greek Homer, whose margins were covered with attempts at
translation and remarks in my handwriting. Soon it became necessary to
take energetic measures; I asked M. the Minister of the Interior for
leave to raffle my country-house. The lottery was opened at the office
of M. Denis, notary. There were ninety tickets at 1000 francs each:
the numbers were not taken up by the Royalists; the Dowager Madame la
Duchesse d'Orléans[28] took three numbers; my friend, M. Lainé, the
Minister of the Interior, who had countersigned the Order of the 5th of
September and consented in the Council to the striking off of my name,
took a fourth ticket under a false name. The money was returned to the
subscribers; M. Lainé, however, refused to withdraw his 1000 francs; he
left it with the notary for the poor.
Not long after, my Vallée-aux-Loups was sold, as they sell the
furniture of the poor, on the Place du Châtelet. I suffered much by
this sale; I had become attached to my trees, planted and, so to speak,
full-grown in my memories. The reserve was 50,000 francs; it was
covered by M. le Vicomte de Montmorency[29], who alone dared to bid one
hundred francs higher: the Vallée was knocked down to him[30]. He has
since inhabited my retreat. It is not a good thing to meddle with my
fortunes: that man of virtue is no more.
After the publication of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ and at the
opening of the new session in the month of November 1816, I continued
my contests. In the House of Peers, in the sitting of the 23rd of that
month, I moved a proposition to the effect that the King be humbly
begged to order an investigation into the proceedings at the last
elections. The corruption and violence of the Ministry during those
elections were flagrant.
In giving my opinion on the Bill relating to Supply (21 March 1817),
I spoke against Clause II. of that Bill: it had to do with the State
forests which they proposed to appropriate for the Sinking Fund, in
order afterwards to sell one hundred and fifty thousand hectares. These
forests consisted of three kinds of properties: the ancient domains of
the Crown, a few commanderies of the Order of Malta, and the remainder
of the goods of the Church. I do not know why, even to-day, I find a
sad interest in my words; they bear some resemblance to my Memoirs:
"With all due deference to those who have administered only during our
troubles, it is not the material security but the ethics of a people
that constitute the public credit. Will the new owners make good the
titles of their new property? To deprive them there will be quoted
to them instances of inheritances of nine centuries taken away from
their former possessors. Instead of those inalienable patrimonies in
which the same family outlived the race of the oaks, you will have
unfixed properties in which the reeds will scarcely have time to
spring up and die before they change masters. The homes will cease to
be the guardians of domestic morality; they will lose their venerable
authority; rights-of-way open to all comers, they will no longer be
hallowed by the grandfather's chair and the cradle of the new-born
child.
"Peers of France, it is your cause that I am pleading here, not mine: I
am speaking to you in the interests of your children; I shall have no
concern with posterity; I have no sons; I have lost my father's fields,
and a few trees which I have planted will soon cease to be mine."
[Sidenote: The Comte de Villèle.]
Because of the resemblance of opinions, then very keen, an intimacy had
been established between the minorities of the two Chambers. France
was learning representative government. As I had been foolish enough
to take it literally and make a real passion of it, to my prejudice, I
supported those who took it up, without troubling my head as to whether
their opposition was not prompted by human motives rather than by a
pure love like that which I felt for the Charter: not that I was a
simpleton, but I idolized my lady-love and would have gone through fire
to carry her off in my arms. It was during this constitutional attack
that I came to know M. de Villèle[31], in 1816. He was calmer; he
overcame his ardour; he, too, aimed at conquering liberty, but he laid
siege to it according to rule. He opened the trenches methodically: I,
who wanted to carry the place by assault, advanced to the escalade, and
often found myself flung back into the ditch.
I met M. de Villèle first at the Duchesse de Lévis'. He became the
leader of the Royalist Opposition in the Elective Chamber, as I was
in the Hereditary Chamber. He had as a friend his colleague M. de
Corbière[32]. The latter never left his side, and people used to speak
of "Villèle and Corbière" as they speak of "Orestes and Pylades" or
"Euryalus and Nisus."
To enter into fastidious details about persons whose names one will
not know to-morrow would be an idiotic vanity. Obscure and tedious
commotions, which one considers of immense interest and which interest
nobody, bygone intrigues, which have decided no important event, should
be left to those devoutly happy persons who imagine themselves to be,
or to have been, the object of the world's attention.
Nevertheless, there were proud moments in which my contentions with
M. de Villèle seemed to me personally like the dissensions of Sulla
and Marius, of Cæsar and Pompey. Together with the other members
of the Opposition, we went pretty often to spend the evening in
deliberation at M. Piet's[33], in the Rue Thérèse. We arrived looking
extremely ugly, and sat down round a room lighted by a flaring lamp.
In this legislative fog, we talked of the Bill introduced, of the
motion to be made, of the friend to be pushed into the secretaryship,
the questorship, the different committees. We were not unlike the
assemblies of the early Christians, as depicted by the enemies of the
Faith: we broached the worst news; we said that things were going to
turn, that Rome would be troubled by divisions, that our armies would
be routed.
M. de Villèle listened, summed up, and drew no conclusions; he was a
great aid in business: a prudent mariner, he never put to sea in a
storm and, though he would cleverly enter a known harbour, he would
never have discovered the New World. I often observed, in the matter
of our discussions concerning the sale of the goods of the clergy,
that the best Christians among us were the most eager in defense of
the constitutional doctrines. Religion is the well-spring of liberty:
in Rome, the _flamen dialis_ wore only a hollow ring on his finger,
because a solid ring had something of a chain; in his clothing and on
his head-dress the pontiff of Jupiter was forbidden to suffer a single
knot.
After the sitting, M. de Villèle would go away, accompanied by M.
de Corbière. I studied many personalities, I learnt many things, I
occupied myself with many interests at those meetings: finance, which
I always understood, the army, justice, administration initiated me
into their several elements. I left those conferences somewhat more
of a statesman and somewhat more persuaded of the poverty of all that
knowledge. Throughout the night, between sleeping and waking, I saw the
different attitudes of the bald heads, the different expressions of the
faces of those untidy and ungainly Solons. It was all very venerable,
truly; but I preferred the swallow which woke me in my youth and the
Muses who filled my dreams: the rays of the dawn which, striking
a swan, made the shadows of those white birds fall upon a golden
billow; the rising sun which appeared to me in Syria in the stem of a
palm-tree, like the phoenix' nest, pleased me more.
I felt that my fighting in the tribune, in a closed Chamber, and in the
midst of an assembly which was unfavourable to me, remained useless
to victory, and that I required another weapon. The censorship being
established over the periodical daily newspapers, I could fulfil my
object only by means of a free, semi-daily paper, with the aid of which
I would at once attack the system of the Ministers and the opinions
of the Extreme Left printed in the _Minerve_ by M. Étienne[34]. I was
staying at Noisiel with Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, in the summer of
1818, when my publisher, M. Le Normant, came to see me. I told him
of the idea which I had in mind; he caught fire, offered to run all
risks and undertook all expenses. I spoke to my friends, Messieurs de
Bonald[35] and de La Mennais[36], and asked them if they would take
part: they agreed, and the paper was not long in appearing under the
title of the _Conservateur._[37]
The revolution worked by this paper was unexampled: in France, it
changed the majority in the Chambers; abroad, it converted the spirit
of the Cabinets.
In this way the Royalists owed to me the advantage of issuing from
the state of nullity into which they had fallen with peoples and
kings. I put the pen into the hands of France's greatest families.
I decked out the Montmorencys and the Lévises as journalists; I
called out the arriere-ban; I made feudality march to the aid of the
liberty of the press. I had got together the most brilliant men of the
Royalist party, Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière, de Vitrolles[38],
de Castelbajac[39], etc. I could not help blessing Providence every
time that I spread the red robe of a prince of the Church over the
_Conservateur_ by way of a cover, and that I had the pleasure to read
an article signed in full: "The Cardinal de La Luzerne[40]." But it
came to pass that, after I had led my knights on the constitutional
crusade, so soon as they had conquered power by the deliverance of
liberty, so soon as they had become Princes of Edessa, of Antioch, of
Damascus, they locked themselves up in their new States with Eleanor of
Aquitaine[41], and left me out in the cold at the foot of Jerusalem,
where the infidels had recaptured the Holy Sepulchre.
[Sidenote: The _Conservator._]
My polemical warfare began in the _Conservateur_ and lasted from 1818
to 1820, that is to say, until the re-establishment of the censorship,
for which the death of the Duc de Berry was the pretext. During this
first period of my polemics, I upset the old Ministry and placed M. de
Villèle in power.
After 1824, when I again took up my pen in pamphlets and in the
_Journal des Débats_, the positions were changed. And yet, what did
those futile trifles matter to me, who had never believed in the time
in which I lived, to me, who belonged to the past, to me, who had no
faith in kings, no conviction with regard to the peoples, to me, who
have never troubled about anything, except dreams, and then only on
condition that they lasted but a night!
The first article in the _Conservateur_[42] describes the position of
things at the moment when I entered the lists. During the two years
for which the paper lasted, I had successively to treat of accidents
of the day and to examine interests of importance. I had occasion to
criticize the dastardliness of that "private correspondence" which the
Paris police was publishing in London. This "private correspondence"
might calumniate, but could not dishonour: that which is base has not
the power of debasing; honour alone is able to inflict dishonour.
"Anonymous calumniators," I said, "have the courage to say who you are;
a little shame is soon over; add your names to your articles: it will
be only one contemptible word the more."
I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that
ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.
Finally, under date 5 December 1818, the _Conservateur_ contained a
serious article on the morality of interests and on that of duty: it
was this article, which made a stir, that gave birth to the phrase of
"moral interests" and "material interests," first put forward by me,
and subsequently adopted by everybody. Here it is, much abridged; it
rises above the compass of a newspaper, and it is one of my works to
which my reason attaches some value. It has not aged, because the ideas
which it contains are of all time:
"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of
interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this
morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the
ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the
people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a
quarter of a century.
"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with
that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but
seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and
specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for
truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its
false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles
reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.
"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we
were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into
guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the
corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in
pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the
tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all
the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous
to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared
in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals
that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all.
The women of the people came and worked at their knitting
round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the
scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation
of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position
of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of
'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That
balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown.
They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich:
die;' and he died. Antonelle[43] wrote that no count had
been found against certain prisoners, but that he had
condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which,
notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society
is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by
killing him as guilty.
"Consequently, those hideous times are times of great acts of
self-devotion. Then women went heroically to the scaffold;
fathers gave themselves up for their sons, sons for their
fathers; unexpected assistance was introduced into the
prisons, and the priest who was being hunted consoled the
victim by the side of the executioner who failed to recognise
him.
[Sidenote: On moral interests.]
"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the corruption
of morals rather than of doctrines; license prevailed. Men
were hurled into pleasures as they had been heaped up in
the prisons; they forced the present to advance joys on the
future, in the fear of seeing a revival of the past. Every
man, not having yet had time to create himself a home, lived
in the street, on the public walks, in the public rooms.
Familiarized with the scaffolds, and already half cut off
from the world, they did not think it worth the trouble to go
indoors. There was question only of arts, balls, fashions;
people changed their ornaments and clothes as readily as they
would have stripped themselves of their lives.
"Under Bonaparte the seduction commenced again, but it was a
seduction that carried its own remedy: Bonaparte seduced by
means of the spell of glory, and all that is great carries a
principle of legislation within itself. He conceived that it
was useful to allow the doctrine of all peoples to be taught,
the morality of all times, the religion of eternity.
"I should not be surprised to hear some one reply:
"'To base society upon a _duty_, is to build it on a fiction;
to place it in an _interest_, is to establish it in a
reality.'
"Now it is precisely _duty_ which is a fact and _interest_
a fiction. _Duty_, which takes its source in the Godhead,
descends first into the family, where it establishes a real
affinity between the father and the children; from there,
passing into society and dividing into two branches, in the
political order it rules the relations of the king and the
subject; in the moral order it establishes the tie of service
and protection, of benefits and gratitude.
"Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives to
human society the only lasting existence that the latter can
have.
"Interest, on the contrary, is a fiction when it is taken as
people take it to-day, in its physical and rigorous sense,
since it is no longer in the evening what it was in the
morning; since it changes its nature at each moment; since,
founded on fortune, it has fortune's fickleness.
"By the morality of interest, every citizen is at enmity
with the laws and the government, because in society it is
always the great number that suffers. People do not fight for
abstract ideas of order, of place, of the mother-land; or,
if they fight for them, it is because they attach ideas of
_sacrifice_ to them; then they emerge from the morality of
interest to enter into that of duty: so true is it that the
existence of society is not to be found outside that sacred
limit.
"He who does his duty gains esteem; he who yields to his
interest is but little esteemed: it was very like the century
to draw a principle of government from a source of contempt!
Bring up politicians to think only of what affects them, and
you shall see how they will dress out the State; by that
means you will have only corrupt and hungry ministers, like
those mutilated slaves who governed the Lower Empire and who
sold all, remembering that they themselves had been sold.
"Mark this: interests are powerful only so long as they
prosper; when times are harsh, they become enfeebled. Duties,
on the contrary, are never so energetic as when they are
painful to fulfil. When times are good, they grow lax. I like
a principle of government which grows great in misfortune:
that greatly resembles virtue.
"What can be absurder than to cry to the people:
"'Do not be devoted! Have no enthusiasm! Think only of your
interests!'
"It is as though one were to say to them:
"'Do not come to our assistance, abandon us if such be your
interest.'
"With this profound policy, when the hour of devotion shall
have come, each one will shut his door, go to the window, and
watch the Monarchy pass[44]."
Such was this article on the morality of interest and the morality of
duty.
On the 3rd of December 1819, I again mounted the tribune of the Chamber
of Peers: I raised my voice against the bad Frenchmen who were able to
give us as a motive for tranquillity the watchfulness of the European
armies:
"Had we need of guardians? Were they still going to talk of
circumstances? Were we again, by means of diplomatic notes, to receive
certificates of good conduct? And should we not only have changed a
garrison of Cossacks for a garrison of ambassadors?"
From that time forward, I spoke of the foreigners as I have since
spoken of them in the Spanish War; I was thinking of our delivery at a
moment when even the Liberals contended with me. Men opposed in opinion
make a deal of noise to attain silence! Let a few years arrive, and the
actors will descend from the stage and the audience no longer be there
to hiss or applaud them.
[Sidenote: Murder of the Duc de Berry.]
I had gone to bed, on the evening of the 13th of February, when the
Marquis de Vibraye[45] came in to me to tell me of the assassination
of the Duc du Berry. In his haste, he did not tell me the place where
the event had occurred. I dressed hurriedly and stepped into M. de
Vibraye's carriage. I was surprised to see the coachman take the Rue
de Richelieu, and still more astonished when he stopped at the Opera:
the crowd about the approaches was immense. We went up, between two
lines of soldiers, through the side-door on the left, and, as we were
in our peers' coats, we were allowed to pass. We came to a sort of
little ante-room: the space was obstructed with all the people of
the palace. I pushed my way as far as the door of a box and found
myself face to face with M. le Duc d'Orléans. I was struck with an
ill-disguised expression of jubilation in his eyes, across the contrite
countenance which he assumed: he saw the throne nearer at hand. My
glance embarrassed him: he left the spot and turned his back to me.
Around me, they were telling the details of the crime, the man's name,
the conjectures of the different participants in the arrest; they were
excited, busy: men love anything theatrical, especially death, when
it is the death of one of the great. Each person who came out of the
blood-stained laboratory was asked for news. They heard General A. de
Girardin[46] relate how, having been left for dead on the battle-field,
he had nevertheless recovered from his wounds; this one was hoping
and consoling himself, that other was repining. Soon contemplation
overcame the crowd, a silence fell; from the inside of the box came a
dull sound: I held my ear laid to the door; I distinguished a rattle;
the sound ceased: the Royal Family had received the last breath of a
grandson of Louis XIV.! I entered at once.
Let the reader picture to himself an empty playhouse, after the
catastrophe of a tragedy: the curtain raised, the orchestra deserted,
the lights extinguished, the machinery motionless, the scenery fixed
and smoke-blackened, the actors, the singers, the dancers vanished
through the trap-doors and secret passages!
I have, in a separate work, given the life and death of M. le Duc de
Berry. My reflections made at that time are still true to-day:
"A son of St. Louis, the last scion of the Elder Branch,
escapes the crosses of a long banishment and returns to
his country; he begins to taste happiness; he indulges the
hope of seeing himself revive, of at the same time seeing
the monarchy revive in the children that God promises him:
suddenly he is struck down in the midst of his hopes, almost
in the arms of his wife. He is going to die, and he is not
full of years! Might he not accuse Heaven, ask It why It
treats him with such severity? Ah, how pardonable it would
have been in him to complain of his destiny! For, after all,
what harm did he do? He lived familiarly among us in perfect
simplicity, mingled in our pleasures and assuaged our pains;
already six of his relations have perished: why murder him
also, why seek out him, innocent, him so far from the throne,
twenty-seven years after the death of Louis XVI.? Let us
learn to know better the heart of a Bourbon! That heart, all
pierced by the dagger, was not able to find a single murmur
against us: not one regret for life, not one bitter word was
uttered by the Prince. A husband, son, father and brother, a
prey to every anguish of the mind, to every suffering of the
body, he does not cease to ask pardon for 'the man,' whom he
does not even call his assassin! The most impetuous becomes
suddenly the gentlest character. It is a man attached to
existence by every tie of the heart, it is a prince in the
flower of his youth, it is the heir to the fairest kingdom on
earth that is dying: and you would think that it was a poor
wretch who loses nothing here below."
[Illustration: Duc de Berry.]
The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such
as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something
of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that
Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a
plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members
of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by
one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single
thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act
was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the
whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre
has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material
enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime.
We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the
accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry
to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at.
On the 18th of February 1820, the _Conservateur_[47] paid the tribute
of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article
concluded with this verse of Racine's:
Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!
Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!
[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministry.]
M. Decazes fell. The censorship followed and, notwithstanding
the assassination of the Duc de Berry, I voted against it. The
_Conservateur_ refusing to be soiled by it, that paper came to an end
with the following apostrophe to the Duc de Berry:
"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious
scion of so many kings, before descending into your last
resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a
work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes
told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were
not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write
at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the
sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours
with the end of your life[49]."
M. le Duc de Bordeaux saw the light on the 29th of September 1820.
The new-born was called "the child of Europe[50]" and "the child of
miracle[51]," while waiting to become the child of exile.
Some time before the Princess' confinement, three market-women of
Bordeaux, in the name of all the ladies their companions, had a cradle
made, and chose me to present them, their cradle and themselves, to
Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Mesdames Dasté, Duranton and Aniche
came to see me. I hastened to ask the gentlemen in attendance for a
ceremonial audience. Suddenly, M. de Sèze thought that this honour was
his by right: it was said that I should never succeed at Court. I was
not yet reconciled with the Ministry, and I did not seem worthy of the
office of introducer of my humble ambassadresses. I got out of this
great negociation, as usual, by paying their expenses.
All this became an affair of State; the pother found its way into
the papers. The Bordeaux ladies were aware of this, and wrote me the
following letter on the subject:
"BORDEAUX, 24 _October_ 1820.
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,
"We owe you our thanks for the kindness which you have had
to lay our joy and our respects at the feet of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry: this time at least you will not have been
prevented from being our interpreter. We heard with the
greatest concern of the stir which M. le Comte de Sèze has
made in the newspapers, and, if we have kept silence, it
is because we feared to give you pain. Still, monsieur le
vicomte, none is better able than yourself to do homage to
truth and to undeceive M. de Sèze as to our real intentions
in our choice of an introducer to Her Royal Highness. We make
you the offer to state all that has passed in a newspaper of
your own choosing; and, as no one has the right to choose a
guide for us, and as we had been pleased to think until the
last moment that you would be that guide, what we shall state
in this respect will necessarily silence all tongues.
"That is what we have determined upon, monsieur le vicomte;
but we thought it our duty to do nothing without your
consent. Rely upon it that we will most gladly publish the
handsome way in which you behaved towards everybody in the
matter of our presentation. If we are the cause of the
mischief, we are quite ready to redress it.
"We are, and always shall be,
"Monsieur le vicomte,
"Your most humble and most respectful servants,
"Wives DASTÉ, DURANTON, ANICHE."
[Sidenote: the new Ministry.]
I replied to these generous ladies, who were so unlike the great ladies:
"I thank you, my dear ladies, for the offer you make me to
publish in a newspaper all that has happened with regard to
M. de Sèze. You are excellent Royalists, and I also am a good
Royalist: we must remember before all that M. de Sèze is an
honourable man, and that he has been the defender of our
King. That fine action is not wiped out by a little movement
of vanity. So let us keep silence: I am content with your
good accounts of me to your friends. I have already thanked
you for your excellent fruits: Madame de Chateaubriand and I
eat your chesnuts every day and talk of you.
"Now permit your host to embrace you. My wife sends you a
thousand messages, and I remain
"Your servant and friend,
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
"Paris, 2 November 1820."
But who thinks of these futile discussions to-day? The joys and
feasts of the christening are far behind us. When Henry was born, on
Michaelmas Day, did not people say that the archangel was going to
trample the dragon under foot? It is to be feared, on the contrary,
that the flaming sword was drawn from its scabbard only to drive out
the innocent from the earthly paradise and to guard its gates against
him.
However, the events which were becoming complicated determined nothing
yet. The assassination of M. le Duc de Berry had brought about the fall
of M. Decazes[52], which was not effected without heart-breakings. M.
le Duc de Richelieu would not consent to afflict his aged master, save
on a promise from M. Molé[53] to give M. Decazes a mission abroad. He
set out for the Embassy in London, where I was to replace him[54].
Nothing was finished. M. de Villèle remained in seclusion with his
fatality, M. de Corbière. I on my side offered a great obstacle.
Madame de Montcalm[55] never ceased urging me towards quiet: I was
much inclined for it, sincerely wishing only to retire from public
life, which encroached upon me and for which I entertained a sovereign
contempt. M. de Villèle, although more supple, was not at that time
easy to deal with.
There are two ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the
other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de
Villèle's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable
to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this
manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow
a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this
dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through
their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This
conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for
that reason that there are so few statesmen.
M. de Villèle had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the
ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to
gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes
he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases
allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable
nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering
public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It
seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without
portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That
would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly
to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of
the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make
himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a
minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry
is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has worn the
embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find
him again sooner or later.
Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no
longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing
to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King
would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that,
if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered
that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready
to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings
having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not,
however, accept exile, unless M. de Villèle accepted his entrance into
the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lainé with my two
friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the
master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that
it was I who made M. de Villèle's first ministry and who drove the
Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.
[Sidenote: Under the Duc de Richelieu.]
I found an invincible obstinacy in M. Lainé's character. M. de Corbière
did not want to become a mere member of the Council; I flattered him
with the hope of also obtaining the Public Instruction. M. de Villèle,
giving way only with repugnance to my desires, at first raised a
thousand objections; his good wits and his ambition at last decided
him to set forward: everything was arranged. Here are the irrefutable
proofs of what I have just related; wearisome documents of those little
facts which have justly passed into oblivion, but useful to my own
history:
"20 _December_[56], _half-past three._
"To M. LE DUC DE RICHELIEU
"I have had the honour to call on you, monsieur le duc, to
report on the state of things: all is going admirably. I have
seen the two friends: Villèle at last consents to enter the
Council as minister secretary of State, without portfolio,
if Corbière consents to enter on the same terms, with the
Directorship of Public Instruction. Corbière, on his side,
is willing to enter on those conditions, provided Villèle
approves. And so there are no difficulties left Complete your
work, monsieur le duc; see the two friends; and, when you
have heard what I am writing to you from their own mouths,
you will restore to France her internal peace, even as you
have given her peace with the foreigners.
"Permit me to submit one more idea to you: would you think it
very inconvenient to make over to Villèle the directorship
vacant through the retirement of M. de Barante[57]? He
would then be placed in a more equal position with his
friend. Still, he told me positively that he would consent
to enter the Council without portfolio, if Corbière had the
Public Instruction. I say this only as a means the more of
completely satisfying the Royalists and of ensuring for
yourself an immense and steady majority.
"I will lastly have the honour of pointing out to you that
the great royalist meeting takes place to-morrow evening at
Piet's, and that it would be very useful if the two friends
could to-morrow evening say something which would calm any
effervescence and prevent any division.
"As I, monsieur le duc, am outside all this movement, you
will, I hope, see in my assiduity no more than the loyalty of
a man who desires his country's good and your successes.
"Pray accept, monsieur le duc, the assurance of my high
regard.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
"_Wednesday._
"I have just written to Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière,
monsieur, and I have asked them to call on me this evening,
for one must not lose a moment in so useful a piece of
work. I thank you for having pushed on the business so
rapidly; I hope that we shall come to a happy conclusion. Be
persuaded, monsieur, of the pleasure I feel at owing you this
obligation, and receive the assurance of my high regard.
"RICHELIEU."
"Permit me, monsieur le duc, to congratulate you on the
happy issue of this great business, and to applaud myself
for having had some part in it. It is very desirable that
the Orders should appear to-morrow; they will put a stop to
all opposition. I can be of use to the two friends in this
respect.
"I have the honour, monsieur le Duc, to renew to you the
assurance of my high regard.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
"_Friday._
"I have received with extreme pleasure the note which M. le
Vicomte de Chateaubriand has done me the honour to write to
me. I believe that he will have no cause to regret having
trusted to the King's goodness, and, if he will permit me to
add, to the desire which I have to contribute to whatever may
be agreeable to him. I beg him to receive the assurance of my
high regard.
"RICHELIEU."
[Sidenote: Ministerial negociations.]
"_Thursday._
"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the
business was settled at eleven o'clock yesterday evening, and
that all is arranged on the terms agreed between yourself and
the Duc de Richelieu. Your intervention has been most useful
to us; let thanks be given you for this preliminary step
towards an improvement which must henceforth be looked upon
as probable.
"Ever yours for life,
"J. DE POLIGNAC[58]."
"PARIS, _Wednesday, 20th December,
"Half-past eleven at night._
"I have just called on you, noble viscount, but you had
retired: I have come from Villèle, who himself returned late
from the conference which you prepared for him and told him
of. He asked me, as your nearest neighbour, to let you know
that Corbière also wished to tell you, on his side, that the
affair which you really conducted and managed during the day
is definitely settled in the simplest and shortest manner:
he without portfolio, his friend with the Instruction. He
seemed to think that one might have waited a little longer
and obtained better conditions; but it was not seemly to
gainsay an interpreter and negociator like yourself. It is
you really who have opened the entrance to this new career
to them: they reckon on you to make it smooth for them.
Do you, on your side, during the short time that we shall
still have the advantage of keeping you among us, speak to
your more spirited friends to second, or at least not to
oppose the plans for union. Good-night. I once more make
you my compliment on the promptness with which you conduct
negociations. You must settle Germany in the same way, so as
to return sooner to the midst of your friends. I personally
am delighted to see your position so much simplified.
"I renew all my sentiments to you.
"M. DE MONTMORENCY."
"I enclose, monsieur, a request addressed by one of the
King's Body-guards to the King of Prussia: it has been handed
to me and recommended by a field-officer of the Guards. I beg
you, therefore, to take it with you and to make use of it if,
when you have felt your ground a little in Berlin[59], you
think that it is of a nature to obtain some success.
"I have great pleasure in taking this occasion to
congratulate myself as well as you on this morning's
_Moniteur_[60], and to thank you for the part which you have
taken in this fortunate issue, which, I hope, will have the
happiest influence on the affairs of our France.
"Pray receive the assurance of my high regard and of my
sincere attachment.
"PASQUIER."
This series of notes is sufficient evidence that I am not boasting;
it would bore me too much to be the fly on the coach; the pole or the
coachman's nose are not places where I have ever had any ambition
to sit: whether the coach reaches the top or rolls to the bottom
matters little to me. Accustomed to live hidden in my own recesses, or
momentarily in the wide life of the centuries, I had no taste for the
mysteries of the ante-chamber. I do not enter readily into circulation
like a piece of current money; to escape, I withdraw myself nearer
to God: a fixed idea that comes from Heaven isolates you and kills
everything around you.
[Footnote 1: This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised 22
February 1845.--T.]
[Footnote 2: "On an occurrence when the chamber, or a deputation of it,
brought to Louis XVIII. some extravagant expression of its loyalty and
love of kings, the monarch observed, no one can now tell whether in
sincerity or irony, that such a chamber was _introuvable_, apparently
impossible to find or replace. The epithet was too good to be lost;
and the Chamber of 1815 was known to its contemporaries, and will be
remembered in French history, as the _Chambre introuvable_" (EYRE
CROWE, _History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X._).--T.]
[Footnote 3: The Order nominating the Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the
Chamber of Peers is dated 17 August 1815.--B.]
[Footnote 4: 19 December 1815.--B.]
[Footnote 5: Edme Bonaventure Courtois (1756-1816), member of
the Convention for the Department of the Aube. He took charge of
Robespierre's papers, including the will of Marie-Antoinette, after the
9 Thermidor, and published a notable report on them in January 1795.
All the papers in Courtois' possession were seized by the police in
January 1816.--T.]
[Footnote 6: Enjoyed by the priests who had taken wives.--B.]
[Footnote 7: Joseph Lebon (1769-1795), was curate of Neuville, near
Arras, when the Revolution broke out. In 1792, he was sent to the
Convention, where he signalled himself by his violence. In 1793, he was
sent to the Pas-de-Calais as commissary of the Convention, established
the Reign of Terror at Arras, and instituted a tribunal which caused
thousands of heads to fall in a few months. Lebon was accused by the
inhabitants of Cambrai, after the 9 Thermidor, and guillotined on the
9th of October 1795.--T.]
[Footnote 8: François Chabot (1759-1794) was a Capuchin friar at Rhodez
at the outbreak of the Revolution. He was successively elected to the
Legislative Assembly and the Convention, voted for all the violent
and bloody measures taken at that time, and became a leading member
of the Club des Jacobins. Chabot was guillotined at the instance of
Robespierre on the 5th of April 1794---T.]
[Footnote 9: Jacques Roux (_d._ 1794), was, in 1789, a priest of the
Parish Church of St. Nicholas, and dubbed himself Preacher to the
Sans-Culottes. He was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal
on the 15th of January 1794, and committed suicide with a knife on
hearing the sentence pronounced.--T.]
[Footnote 10: 3 April 1816.--B.]
[Footnote 11: This ordinance, published in the _Moniteur_ of the 7th of
September, dissolved the Chamber of 1815, which Louis XVIII. himself
had called the Undiscoverable Chamber.--B.]
[Footnote 12: Jean Jacques Baron Baudé (1792-1862). In his quality as
editor of the _Temps_, he signed the protest of the journalists against
the ordinances of July 1830, and had his protest registered before
notaries. Baudé was Prefect of Police from 26 December 1830 to 25
February 1831, and allowed the mob to sack the Archbishop's Palace and
the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. He also sat in the Chamber of
Deputies, where we shall meet him again.--B.]
[Footnote 13: Nicolas François Bellart (1761-1826) had distinguished
himself by defending a large number of the victims of the Revolution.
He was appointed Attorney-General by the Restoration, and was principal
counsel for the prosecution in the trial of Marshal Ney.--T.]
[Footnote 14: Paris: Le Normant the Elder, 1824.--B.]
[Footnote 15: Louis XV. was the most licentious king that ever sat on
the throne of France.--T.]
[Footnote 16: Élie Duc Decazes (1780-1860), Prefect of Police (July
1815), Minister of the General Police (September 1815), peer of France,
with the title of count (September 1816), Minister of the Interior
(1818), and President of the Council (1819). In 1820, he left office
to take up the Embassy in London, with the title of duke, and retained
it till 1822. In 1834, he succeeded the Marquis de Sémonville as Grand
Referendary of the Chamber of Peers.--B.]
[Footnote 17: Anne Jacoby Comtesse de Balbi (_circa_ 1758-1842), _née_
de Caumont La Force, lady-in-waiting to the Comtesse de Provence,
later Joséphine Queen of France (1780), a favourite of the Comte de
Provence, later Louis XVIII., until the Comte d'Avaray supplanted her
at Coblentz.--T.]
[Footnote 18: Zoé Victoire Comtesse de Cayla (1785-1852), _née_ Talon
du Boullay-Thierry, favourite to Louis XVIII. from 1819 till the King's
death in 1824.--T.]
[Footnote 19: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duc de Richelieu
(1585-1642), governed France without interruption from 1623 to
1642.--T.]
[Footnote 20: Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) succeeded Richelieu as
Prime Minister, remaining in power, with two short intervals, until the
day of his death. Each of the two cardinals, therefore, governed France
for nineteen years.--T.]
[Footnote 21: Murat was born near Cahors, the Duc Decazes near
Libourne, both in Gascony.--T.]
[Footnote 22: M. Decazes had been private secretary to Madame Mère
under the Empire.--B.]
[Footnote 23: M. Decazes had married, in 1805, a daughter of the
Comte Muraire, First President of the Court of Appeal. She died
in the following year. In August 1818, he married Mademoiselle de
Sainte-Aulaire, grand-daughter, through her mother, of the last
reigning Prince of Nassau-Saarbrück. In consideration of this marriage,
the King of Denmark gave him the title of duke, with the domain of
Glücksbjerg.--B.]
[Footnote 24: Marie Princeteau (1787-1879), _née_ Decazes, sister to
the Duc Decazes, and for some time favourite of Louis XVIII. For an
obvious reason, she, Madame de Balbi and Madame de Cayla are better
described as the King's favourites than as his mistresses.--T.]
[Footnote 25: In an article in the _Conservateur_, dated 3 March 1820
(vol. VI., p. 476).--B.]
[Footnote 26: 20 September 1816.--B.]
[Footnote 27: Chateaubriand's library was sold on the 29th of April
1817 and the following days.--B.]
[Footnote 28: Louise Marie Adélaide Duchesse d'Orléans (1753-1821),
daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, married to Égalité in 1769, divorced
in 1792.--T.]
[Footnote 29: Matthieu Jean Félicité Vicomte, later Duc de
Montmorency-Laval (1767-1826), Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1821 to
1822, a member of the French Academy (1825), and tutor to the Duc de
Bordeaux (1825).--T.]
[Footnote 30: The Vallée-aux-Loups is now the property of M.
le Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, whose mother was a
Montmorency-Laval.--B.]
[Footnote 31: Jean Baptiste Guillaume Marie Anne Séraphin Joseph Comte
de Villèle (1773-1854) placed himself at the head of the Royalist
Opposition in 1816. In 1820, after the fall of the Duc Decazes, he
entered the Ministry without a portfolio and, in 1821, became Minister
of Finance. In 1822, he was made President of the Council, with the
title of count. He remained in power until 1828, when he made way for
M. de Martignac, and was raised to the peerage. The Comte de Villèle
retired into private life after the Revolution of July.--T.]
[Footnote 32: Jacques Joseph Guillaume François Pierre Comte de
Corbière (1766-1853) attached his political fortunes entirely to
those of Villèle. They were both ministers together: Corbière of the
Interior, Villèle of Finance; Louis XVIII. made them both counts,
and Charles X. peers of France, on the same day. Both retired to the
country after the Revolution of 1830, and they died within a few months
of one another.--B.]
[Footnote 33: Jean Pierre Piet-Tardiveau (1763-1848), member of the
Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1819 and from 1820 to 1828. He
entertained the ultra-Conservative party for many years at No. 8, Rue
Thérèse, where he lived.--B.]
[Footnote 34: Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), dramatic author,
publicist and politician. He became a member of the French Academy in
1811. Under the Empire, he had been the head of the literary division
of the newspaper police; whereas, under the Restoration, he became an
ardent "Liberal," attacking the Bourbons in the _Minerve française_
and the _Constitutionnel._ Étienne was a member of the Chamber of
Deputies from 1820 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1830. Louis-Philippe
raised him to the peerage in 1839. The _Minerve française_, founded
in 1818, nine months before the _Conservateur_, appeared once a week,
but on uncertain days: in this way, not being an absolutely periodical
publication, it escaped the censorship.--B.]
[Footnote 35: Louis Gabriel Ambroise Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840),
member of the French Academy (1816) and a peer of France (1823), which
latter dignity he resigned in 1830.--T.]
[Footnote 36: Abbé Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), a
distinguished Royalist writer, was converted to the democratic cause
after 1830, when he attacked not only the Monarchy but the Church,
which had condemned one of his writings. He played a small part in
politics in 1848, but died forgotten and was, at his own wish, buried
without religious rites.--T.]
[Footnote 37: The _Conservateur_ first appeared in October 1818 and
lasted until March 1820, appearing in numbers of three printed sheets
on irregular days, like the _Minerve._ It was, therefore, not a daily
paper, and both Royalists and Liberals in this way succeeded in
avoiding the censorship, which affected only periodicals.--B.]
[Footnote 38: Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles
(1774-1854). Napoleon made him a baron in 1812. He became connected
with Talleyrand and the Duc de Dalberg, tried to organize a rising in
the South during the Hundred Days, and was arrested and imprisoned.
He was elected to the Chamber in 1815, and in 1816 became one of the
active agents of the personal policy of the Comte d'Artois. The latter,
as Charles X., appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence
(December 1827) and a peer of France (January 1828). The fall of the
Elder Branch restored him to private life, although he was momentarily
compromised in the Duchesse de Berry's rising in the Vendée (1832), and
imprisoned for a few days.--B.]
[Footnote 39: Marie Barthélemy Vicomte de Castelbajac (1776-1868),
an enthusiastic Royalist, sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1819
to 1827, in which latter year he was raised to the peerage. M. de
Castelbajac withdrew completely from public life after the Revolution
of July.--B.]
[Footnote 40: César Guillaume Cardinal de La Luzerne (1738-1821),
Bishop of Langres from 1770 to 1789, created a cardinal in 1817.--T.]
[Footnote 41: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and later of
England (_circa_ 1122-1203), was married at the age of fifteen to Louis
VII. King of France, whom she accompanied to the Holy Land in 1147.
Here she distinguished herself by the levity of her conduct, so much so
that, in 1152, Louis obtained a divorce and Eleanor, two years later,
married Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, soon to become
Henry II. King of England. The second marriage was no happier than the
first.--T.]
[Footnote 42: _Réflexions sur l'état intérieur de la France_ (22
October 1818): _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 113.--B.]
[Footnote 43: A _ci-devant_ marquis and ex-deputy in the Legislative
Assembly. He sat as a juror in the Revolutionary Tribunal during the
trials of the Queen and of the Girondins.--B.]
[Footnote 44: _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 466.--B.]
[Footnote 45: Anne Victor Denis Hubault, Marquis de Vibraye
(1766-1843), was a cavalry officer at the time of the Revolution,
emigrated in 1791, and returned in 1814, when he became a colonel and
aide-de-camp to Monsieur, later Charles X. He was created a peer on the
17th of August 1815, on the same day as Chateaubriand; was promoted to
major-general in 1823; and left the Upper Chamber at the Revolution of
1830, so as not to take the oath to the new Sovereign.--B.]
[Footnote 46: Alexandre Comte de Girardin (1776-1885) served with
distinction under Napoleon and was by Louis XVIII. appointed Master
of the Hounds, an office which he retained till 1830. M. Émile
de Girardin, the celebrated editor of the _Presse_, through whom
the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_ were originally published, was his
illegitimate son.--B.]
[Footnote 47: _Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 382. The article is by
Chateaubriand.--B.]
[Footnote 48: "From the blood of our kings but a small drop
escaping."--_Athalie_, act I., sc. 1.--T.]
[Footnote 49: Chateaubriand's article, dated 3 March 1820: the
_Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 471.--B.]
[Footnote 50: By the Papal Nuncio, in his congratulatory address,
pronounced in the name of the Diplomatic Body.--B.]
[Footnote 51: By Lamartine, in his ode, the _Naissance du duc de
Bordeaux._--B.]
[Footnote 52: M. Decazes resigned on the 17th of February. The
_Moniteur_ of the 21st of February published three Orders, signed on
the preceding day: the first accepting M. Decazes' resignation, the
second appointing M. le Duc de Richelieu President of the Council, and
the third conferring upon M. Decazes the title of duke and of minister
of State.--B.]
[Footnote 53: This is a clerical error. The Minister of Foreign Affairs
in February 1820 was M. Pasquier. M. Molé, under the Restoration, held
only the office of Minister of Marine, and that at an earlier date,
from 1817 to 1818.--B.]
[Footnote 54: The Duc Decazes was appointed Ambassador to England on
the 20th of February 1820. He held that position until the 9th of
January 1822.--B.]
[Footnote 55: Sister to the Duc de Richelieu, and a very close friend
of Chateaubriand's.--B.]
[Footnote 56: 20 December 1820.--B.]
[Footnote 57: Prosper Brugière, Baron de Barante (1782-1866), had sent
in his resignation as Director-general of Indirect Taxation, a post
which at that time carried a salary of one hundred thousand francs.--B.]
[Footnote 58: Prince Jules de Polignac (1780-1847) had been made a peer
of France in 1816, but long refused to take the oath to the Charter,
which he considered injurious to the interests of religion and the
Monarchy, and did not consent to take his seat until the Pope had
raised his scruples. He was for some time Ambassador in London, and, in
August 1829, became Premier of the ill-fated Ministry which, in 1830,
brought about the downfall of the Royal House of France.--T.]
[Footnote 59: Chateaubriand had been appointed Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin (_Moniteur_, 30th
November 1820).--B.]
[Footnote 60: Announcing the appointment of M. de Corbière and M. de
Villèle as members of the Council.--B.]