Monarchy, he gave, in the latter's honour, the last and most admirable
of his blood-stained tourneys[454]. Favoured by the Carbonari, Joachim
at one time wished to declare himself the liberator of Italy, at
another hoped to divide her between himself and Bonaparte become
victorious. One morning, a courier brought to Naples the news of the
entry of the Russians into Paris. Madame Murat was still in bed and
Madame Récamier was talking with her, seated at her pillow; an enormous
pile of letters and newspapers was laid upon the bed. Among the latter
was my pamphlet, _De Bonaparte and des Bourbons._ The Queen exclaimed:
"Ah, here is a work by M. de Chateaubriand; we will read it together."
And she went on opening her letters.
Madame Récamier took the pamphlet and, after casting her eyes over it
at random, placed it back on the bed and said to the Queen:
"Madame, you shall read it alone, I am obliged to return home."
Napoleon was relegated to Elba; the Allies, with rare cleverness, had
placed him on the coast of Italy. Murat learnt that they were trying
at the Congress of Vienna to despoil him of the States which he had
nevertheless bought so dear; he came to a secret understanding with his
brother-in-law, who had become his neighbour. One is always surprised
that the Napoleons should have relations: who knows the name of
Arrhidæus[455], the brother of Alexander? In the course of the year
1814, the King and Queen of Naples gave an entertainment at Pompeii;
an excavation was conducted to the sound of music: the ruins which
Caroline and Joachim had dug up did not apprize them of their own ruin;
on the last borders of prosperity we hear but the last strains of the
dream that passes away.
At the time of the Peace of Paris, Murat formed part of the Alliance,
the Milanese having been handed back to Austria: the Neapolitans
retired within the Roman Legations. Murat, perplexed, having changed
his interest, sallied forth from the Legations and marched with forty
thousand men towards Upper Italy to make a diversion in favour of
Napoleon[456]. At Parma, he refused the conditions which the affrighted
Austrians offered him once more: to each of us comes a critical moment;
ill chosen or well, it decides our future. The Baron de Frimont[457]
forced back Murat's troops, took the offensive and drove them before
him fighting to Macerata[458]. The Neapolitans left the ranks; their
King and general returned to Naples[459], accompanied by four lancers.
He went to his wife and said:
"Madame, I have not been able to die."
The next day, a boat took him in the direction of the island of Ischia;
he joined at sea a smack carrying a few officers of his staff, and set
sail with them for France.
[Sidenote: Murat's flight.]
Madame Murat, left behind alone, displayed admirable presence of mind.
The Austrians were on the point of appearing: in the passing from one
authority to another, an interval of anarchy might have been filled
with disorders. The Regent did not precipitate her retreat; she allowed
the German soldier to occupy the town and had her galleries lighted up
at night. The people, seeing the lights from the outside, thinking that
the Queen was still there, remained quiet. Meantime Caroline left by a
secret stair-case and went on board ship. Seated on the poop, she saw
gleaming on the bank the illuminated, but deserted palace from which
she was departing, an image of the dazzling dream which she had had
during her sleep in the realm of the fairies.
Caroline met the frigate which was bringing Ferdinand[460] back. The
ship of the fugitive Queen fired a salute, the ship of the recalled
King did not return it: Prosperity does not recognise her sister
Adversity. Thus do illusions, faded for the one, begin anew for the
other; thus do the fickle destinies of humanity pass each other in the
winds and on the billows: smiling or baleful, one and the same abyss
bears them or engulfs them.
Murat was achieving his career elsewhere. On the 25th of May 1815,
at ten o'clock at night, he landed in the Golfe Juan, where his
brother-in-law had landed. Fortune made Joachim play the parody of
Napoleon. The latter did not believe in the strength of misfortune,
nor in the succour which it brings to great minds: he forbade the
dethroned King the approach to Paris; he consigned to the lazar-house
this man stricken with the plague of the conquered; he shut him up in
a country-house called _Plaisance_, near Toulon. He would have done
better to show less dread of a contagion with which he had himself been
seized: who knows what a soldier like Murat might have altered in the
Battle of Waterloo?
The King of Naples, in his trouble, wrote to Fouché on the 19th of June
1815:
"I shall reply to those who accuse me of commencing
hostilities too soon that it was done at the Emperor's
formal demand and that, for three months, he did not cease
to reassure me as to his sentiments by accrediting ministers
to me and writing to me that he relied on me and would
never abandon me. It is only when people saw that I had
lost, together with the throne, the means of continuing the
powerful diversion which had lasted three months that they
tried to mislead public opinion by insinuating that I acted
on my own behalf and without the Emperor's knowledge."
There existed a generous and beautiful woman; when she arrived in
Paris, Madame Récamier received her and would not abandon her in times
of misfortune. Among the papers which she has left behind were found
two letters from Murat written in the month of June 1819; they are
useful to the study of history:
[Sidenote: Letters from Murat.]
6 _June_ 1815.
"I have lost the fairest existence for France's sake; I have
fought for the Emperor; it is for his cause that my wife and
my children are in captivity. The country is in danger, I
offer my services; they put off accepting them. I know not
if I am free or a prisoner. I must needs be involved in the
Emperor's ruin if he falls, and they deprive me of the means
of serving him and serving my own cause. I ask their reasons;
they reply obscurely and I am unable clearly to establish
my position. At one time I cannot go to Paris, where my
presence would injure the Emperor, and I must not join the
army, where my presence would too much attract the attention
of the soldiers. What am I to do? Wait: that is what they
reply. On the other hand, I am told that I am not forgiven
for having abandoned the Emperor last year, whereas letters
from Paris said, when I was recently fighting for France,
'_Every one here is delighted with the King._' The Emperor
wrote to me, _I rely on you, do you rely on me, I shall never
abandon you._' King Joseph wrote to me, '_The Emperor orders
me to write to you to move rapidly upon the Alps._' And
when, on arriving, I display generous sentiments and offer
to fight for France, I am sent into the Alps. Not a word of
consolation is addressed to one who never did him any other
wrong than to rely too greatly on generous sentiments which
he never entertained for me.
"My friend, I come to ask you to inform me of the opinion
of France and the army regarding me. A man must know how to
endure all and my courage will make me rise superior to every
misfortune. All is lost save honour; I have lost the throne,
but I have preserved all my glory; I have been abandoned
by my soldiers, who were victorious in every fight, but I
have never been beaten. The desertion of twenty thousand men
placed me at the mercy of my enemies; a fisher's bark saved
me from captivity, and a merchant ship cast me in three days
on the coasts of France."
"Near TOULON, 18 _June_ 1815.
"I have just received your letter. I cannot describe to
you the different sensations which it made me experience.
I have been able for a moment to forget my misfortunes. I
am occupied only with my friend, whose noble and generous
soul comes to console me and show me its sorrow. Reassure
yourself: all is lost, but honour remains; my glory will
survive all my misfortunes, and my courage will be able to
make me rise superior to all the rigours of my destiny: have
no fear on that score. I have lost my throne and family
unmoved; but ingratitude has revolted me. I have lost all for
France, for her Emperor, by his order, and to-day he makes
it a crime in me to have done so. He refuses me permission
to fight and revenge myself, and I am not free to choose my
own retreat: can you conceive all my unhappiness? What can I
do? What decision can I take? I am a Frenchman and a father:
as a Frenchman, I must serve my country; as a father, I must
go to share my children's lot: honour lays upon me the duty
of fighting and nature tells me that I must belong to my
children. Which am I to obey? Cannot I satisfy both? Shall I
be allowed to listen to either? Already the Emperor refuses
me armies; and will Austria grant me the means to go to join
my children? Shall I ask them of her, I who have never been
willing to treat with her ministers? There is my situation:
give me advice. I shall await your reply, the Duc d'Otrante's
and Lucien's, before taking a determination. Consult opinion
well as to what it is thought right for me to do, for I am
free in the choice of my retreat; they are returning to the
past and making it a crime in me to have, by order, lost my
throne, when my family is languishing in captivity. Advise
me; listen to the voice of honour, to that of nature, and,
as an impartial judge, have the courage to write to me what
I am to do. I shall await your reply on the road between
Marseilles and Lyons."
Putting aside the personal vanities and the illusions which issue from
the throne, even from a throne on which one has been seated but for a
moment, these letters show us the idea which Murat entertained of his
brother-in-law.
Bonaparte lost the Empire a second time; Murat was a shelterless
vagrant on the same sands which have since beheld the roamings of the
Duchesse de Berry. Some smugglers consented, on the 22nd of August
1815, to put him and three others across to Corsica. A tempest greeted
him: the felucca which plies between Bastia and Toulon took him on
board. Scarce had he left his shore-boat, when she split. Landing
at Bastia on the 25th of August, he hastened to hide himself in the
village of Vescovato, at old Colonna-Ceccaldi's[461]. Two hundred
officers joined him with General Franceschetti[462]. He marched on
Ajaccio: Bonaparte's maternal town alone still cared for her son; of
all his Empire, Napoleon owned only his cradle. The garrison of the
citadel saluted Murat and wished to proclaim him King of Corsica: he
refused; he thought only the sceptre of the Two Sicilies equal to his
greatness. His aide-de-camp Macirone[463] brought him from Paris the
decision of Austria, by virtue of which he was to give up the title of
King and retire at will to Bohemia or Moldavia:
"It is too late," replied Joachim; "my dear Macirone, the die is cast."
On the 28th of September, Murat sailed for Italy; seven bottoms were
laden with his two hundred and fifty followers: he had scorned to have
for his kingdom the narrow mother-land of the immense man; full of
hope, led away by the example of a fortune higher than his own, he set
out from the island whence Napoleon had issued to take possession of
the world: it is not the same spots, but similar geniuses, that produce
the same destinies.
A storm dispersed the flotilla; Murat was cast ashore, on the 8th
of October, in the Gulf of Santa Eufemia, almost at the moment when
Bonaparte was approaching the Rock of St. Helena[464].
Of his seven praams, only two were left to him, including his own.
Landing with some thirty men, he tried to stir up the population of the
coast; the inhabitants fired on his band. The two praams stood out to
sea; Murat was betrayed. He ran to a stranded boat, tried to float it;
the boat would not move. Surrounded and captured, Murat, insulted by
the same mob that once used to shout itself hoarse with "Long live King
Joachim!" was taken to Pizzo Castle. Upon him and his companions were
seized insensate proclamations: they showed with what dreams men delude
themselves to their last hour.
Unruffled in his prison, Murat said:
"I shall have only my Kingdom of Naples; my cousin Ferdinand will keep
the second Sicily."
[Sidenote: Death of Murat.]
And at that moment a military commission was condemning Murat to
death. When he heard his sentence, his firmness deserted him for a few
instants; he shed tears and exclaimed:
"I am Joachim King of the Two Sicilies!"
He forgot that Louis XVI. had been King of France, the Duc d'Enghien
grandson of the Grand Condé, and Napoleon arbiter of Europe: Death
reckons as nothing what we may have been.
A priest is always a priest, say and do what we will; he comes and
restores its failing strength to an intrepid heart. On the 13th of
October 1815, Murat, after writing to his wife, was taken to a room in
Pizzo Castle, renewing in his romantic person the brilliant or tragic
adventures of the middle ages. Twelve soldiers, who perhaps had served
under him, awaited him, drawn up in two lines. Murat saw them load
their muskets, refused to let his eyes be bandaged, and himself, as an
experienced captain, chose the post where the bullets could best hit
him.
When aim had been taken at him, at the moment of the fire, he said:
"Men, spare the face; aim at my heart!"
He fell, holding in his hands the portraits of his wife and of his
children: those portraits used before to adorn the hilt of his
sword[465]. It was but one affair the more which the gallant man had
settled with life.
The different manners of death of Napoleon and Murat preserve the
characters of their lives.
Murat, so magnificent, was buried without state at Pizzo, in one of
those Christian churches in whose charitable bosom all ashes are
mercifully received.
Madame Récamier, returning to France, passed through Rome at the moment
when the Pope returned[466]. In another portion of these Memoirs, you
accompanied Pius VII., set at liberty at Fontainebleau, to the gates of
St Peter's[467]. Joachim, still alive, was about to disappear, and Pius
VII. was reappearing. Behind them, Napoleon was struck; the conqueror's
hand let the King fall and raised the Pontiff.
[Sidenote: Pope Pius VII.]
Pius VII. was received with shouts which shook the ruins of the city
of ruins. The horses were taken from his carriage and the crowd drew
him to the steps of the Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw
nothing, heard nothing; rapt in mind, his thought was far from the
earth; only his hand rose over the people from the tender habit of
blessing. He entered the basilica to the sound of trumpets, to the
singing of the _Te Deum_, to the acclamations of the Swiss of the
religion of William Tell. The thuribles wafted perfumes to him which he
did not inhale; he would not be carried on the _sedia gestatoria_ under
the shadow of the canopy and the palms; he walked like a shipwrecked
man fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Succour, and charged by Christ
with a mission which was to renew the face of the earth. He was clad
in a white robe; his hair, which had remained black in spite of
misfortune and years, formed a contrast with the anchorite's pallor.
On arriving at the Tomb of the Apostles, he prostrated himself: he
remained, without movement and as though dead, plunged in the depths of
the counsels of Providence. The emotion was profound; Protestants who
witnessed the scene wept scalding tears.
What a subject for meditation! An infirm, decrepit priest,
strengthless, defenseless, taken from the Quirinal, carried captive
to the heart of Gaul; a martyr, who awaited naught save his tomb,
delivered from the hands of Napoleon, who pressed the globe, resuming
the empire of an indestructible world, when the walls of a prison
beyond the seas were being prepared for that formidable gaoler of the
nations and the kings!
Pius VII. outlived the Emperor; he saw the master-pieces, the faithful
friends which had accompanied him in his exile, brought back to the
Vatican. On his return from persecution, the septuagenarian Pontiff,
prostrate beneath the cupola of St. Peter's, displayed at the same time
all the weakness of man and the grandeur of God.
On descending the Savoy Alps, Madame Récamier, at Pont-de-Beauvoisin,
found the White Flag and the white cockade. The Corpus Christi
processions, passing through the villages, seemed to have come back
with the Most Christian King. In Lyons, the traveller arrived in the
midst of a Restoration festival. The enthusiasm was unfeigned. At
the head of the rejoicings stood Alexis de Noailles[468] and Colonel
Clary, Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law. All that is told to-day of
the coldness and gloom with which the Legitimacy was received at the
First Restoration is a shameless falsehood. Joy was general in the
different sections of opinion, even among the Conventionals, even among
the Imperialists, excepting the soldiers: their noble pride suffered
from those reverses. Nowadays, when the weight of military government
is no longer felt, when vanities are aroused, it is necessary to deny
the facts, because they do not accord with the theories of the moment.
It suits the purpose of a system that the nation should have received
the Bourbons with abhorrence and that the Restoration should have been
a time of oppression and misery. This leads to melancholy reflections
on human nature. If the Bourbons had the inclination and the strength
to oppress, they might have looked forward to a long retention of the
throne. Bonaparte's violence and injustice, dangerous to his power
though they appeared, in reality served him: men are appalled by
iniquities, but manufacture a great idea out of them; they are disposed
to regard as a superior being one who places himself above the laws.
Madame de Staël, who arrived in Paris before Madame Récamier, had
written to her several times; only the following note reached her:
"PARIS, 20 _May_ 1814.
"I am ashamed to be in Paris without you, dear angel of my
life: tell me your plans. Would you like me to go before you
to Coppet, where I am going to stay for four months? After
so many sufferings, my sweetest prospect is yourself, and
my heart is for ever devoted to you. One word as to your
departure and arrival. I await that note to know what I shall
do. I am writing to you to Rome, Naples, etc."
[Sidenote: Madame de Genlis.]
Madame de Genlis, who had never had any relations with Madame Récamier,
was eager to become better acquainted with her. I find a passage
expressing a wish which, had it been realized, would have spared the
reader my story:
"11 _October._
"Here, madame, is the book which I had the honour to promise
you. I have marked the things which I should like you to
read....
"Come, madame, to tell me your story 'in these words,' as
they do in the novels. Then I will afterwards ask you to
write it in the form of recollections, which will be full of
interest, because, in your earliest youth, you were cast,
with a bewitching face and a mind full of shrewdness and
penetration, into the midst of those whirlpools of errors
and follies; because you have seen everything; and because,
having preserved, during those stormy times, your religious
sentiment, a pure soul, a stainless life, an impressionable
and loyal heart, possessing neither envy nor hateful
passions, you will depict everything in the truest colours.
You are one of the phenomena of these days, and certainly the
most amiable.
"You shall show me your 'Recollections;' my old experience
will offer some advice, and you will write a useful and
delightful work. Do not come and answer, 'I am not capable,'
etc., etc. I will permit you no commonplaces; they are
unworthy of your intelligence. You can cast back your eyes
over the past without remorse: this is, at all times, the
fairest of our privileges; in the days in which we live,
it is an inestimable one. Avail yourself of it for the
instruction of the young person[469] whom you are bringing
up; it will be the greatest boon you can show her.
"Adieu, madame, permit me to tell you that I love you and
that I embrace you with all my heart."
Now that Madame Récamier has returned to Paris[470], I will go back for
some time to my first guides. The Queen of Naples, uneasy about the
resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, wrote to Madame Récamier to find
her a man who would be capable of handling her interests in Vienna.
Madame Récamier applied to Benjamin Constant and asked him to draw up a
memorandum. This circumstance had the most unfortunate influence upon
the author of the memorandum; a stormy sentiment was the result of
an interview. Under the empire of this sentiment, Benjamin Constant,
already a violent Anti-Bonapartist, as is manifest in the _Esprit
de conquête_[471], allowed opinions to overflow the course of which
was soon changed by events. Thence arose a reputation for political
fickleness baleful to statesmen.
Madame Récamier, while admiring Bonaparte, had remained true to her
hatred against the oppressor of our liberties and the enemy of Madame
de Staël. As for what concerned herself, she did not give it a thought
and she made light of her exile. The letters which Benjamin Constant
wrote to her at this time will serve as a study, if not of the human
heart, at least of the human head: there we see all that could be
made of a passion by an ironical and romantic, serious and poetical
intelligence. Rousseau is not more genuine, but he mingles with his
imaginary loves a sincere melancholy and a real reverie.
Meanwhile, Bonaparte had landed at Cannes; the perturbation due to his
approach was beginning to make itself felt. Benjamin Constant wrote
Madame Récamier this note:
"Forgive me if I avail myself of circumstances to trouble
you; but the opportunity is too favourable. My fate will be
decided in four or five days surely; for, though you used
to like not to think so, in order to have to show me less
interest, I am certainly, with Marmont, Chateaubriand and
Lainé, one of the four most compromised men in France. It
is, therefore, certain that, if we do not triumph, I shall
in a week be either an outlaw or a fugitive, or in a cell or
shot. Grant me then, during the two or three days which will
precede the battle, as much of your time and as many of your
hours as you can. If I die, you will be glad to have done me
this kindness and you would be sorry to have afflicted me. My
feeling for you is my life; one sign of indifference hurts me
more than, four days hence, my sentence of death could do.
And, when I feel that danger is a means of obtaining a sign
of interest from you, I derive from it nothing but joy.
"Were you pleased with my article, and have you heard what
people say of it?"
Benjamin Constant was right, he was as much compromised as I: attached
to Bernadotte, he had served against Napoleon; he had published his
work _De l'esprit de conquête_, in which he handled the "tyrant"
more roughly than I handled him in my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des
Bourbons._ He crowned his perils by talking in the newspapers.
On the 19th of March, at the moment when Bonaparte was at the gates of
the Capital, he had the firmness to affix his signature to an article
in the _Journal des Débats_ ending with this phrase:
"I shall not, like a wretched turn-coat, go creeping from one power
to the other, covering infamy with sophisms and stammering out profane
words to redeem a shameful life."
Benjamin Constant wrote to her who inspired him with these noble
sentiments:
"I am glad that my article has appeared; at least none can
now doubt my sincerity. Here is a note which some one wrote
to me after reading it: if I were to receive a similar one
from somebody else, I should be gay upon the scaffold."
Madame Récamier always reproached herself for having unintentionally
exercised so great an influence over an honourable destiny. Nothing,
in fact, is more distressing than to inspire those fickle characters
with those energetic resolutions which they are incapable of keeping.
On the 20th of March, Benjamin Constant belied his article of the 19th.
After driving a little distance away from town, he returned to Paris
and allowed himself to be caught by Bonaparte's seductions. Appointed a
State councillor[472], he obliterated his generous pages by working at
the draft of the Additional Act.
From that time forward, he bore a secret wound at his heart; he no
longer with assurance broached the thought of posterity; his spoilt and
saddened life contributed in no small degree to his death. God preserve
us from triumphing over the miseries from which the loftiest natures
are not exempt! Heaven does not give us talents without attaching
infirmities to them: expiations offered to foolishness and envy. The
weaknesses of a superior man are the black victims which antiquity
sacrificed to the infernal gods, and still they never allow themselves
to be disarmed.
[Sidenote: Madame de Krüdener.]
Madame Récamier spent the Hundred Days in France, where Queen Hortense
invited her to stay; the Queen of Naples, on the other hand, offered
her an asylum in Italy. The Hundred Days passed. Madame de Krüdener
accompanied the Allies, who arrived once more in Paris. She had fallen
from novel-writing into mysticism; she wielded a great empire over the
mind of the Tsar of Russia.
Madame de Krüdener lodged in a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
The garden of this house extended as far as the Champs-Élysées.
Alexander used to arrive _incognito_ by a gate of the garden, and
politico-religious conversations would end with fervent prayers. Madame
de Krüdener invited me to one of these celestial incantations: I, the
man of every illusion, have a hatred of unreason, a loathing for the
nebulous and a scorn for hocus-pocus; we are none of us perfect. The
scene bored me; the more I tried to pray, the more I felt the dryness
of my soul. I could find nothing to say to God, and the devil incited
me to laugh. I had liked Madame de Krüdener better when, surrounded
with flowers and still inhabiting this paltry earth, she was writing
_Valérie._ Only, I used to consider that my old friend M. Michaud, so
oddly mixed up in this idyll, had not enough of the shepherd about
him, notwithstanding his name. Madame de Krüdener, become a seraph,
strove to surround herself with angels; the proof is contained in this
charming note from Benjamin Constant to Madame Récamier:
"_Thursday._
"I am a little embarrassed in fulfilling a commission which
Madame de Krüdener has just given me. She entreats you to
come looking as little beautiful as you can. She says that
you dazzle everybody and that, for that reason, all minds are
troubled and all attention becomes impossible. You cannot
lay aside your charmingness; but do not enhance it. I could
add many things about your beauty on this occasion, but I
have not the courage. One can be ingenious on the charm
which pleases, but not on that which kills. I shall see you
presently; you have told me five o'clock, but you will not
come in till six, and I shall not be able to say a word to
you. I shall try, however, to be amiable for this once again."
Did not the Duke of Wellington also lay claim to the honour of
attracting a glance from Juliet? One of his notes, which I transcribe,
is curious only because of the signature:
"PARIS, 13 _January._
"I confess, madame, that I do not much regret that business
will prevent me from calling on you after dinner, because,
every time I see you, I leave you more impressed with your
charms and less disposed to give my attention to _politics!!!_
"I will call on you to-morrow on my return from the Abbé
Sicard's, in case you should be in, and in spite of the
effect which those dangerous visits produce on me.
"Your most faithful servant,
"WELLINGTON."
On his return from Waterloo, entering Madame Récamier's drawing-room,
the Duke of Wellington exclaimed:
"I have beaten him soundly!"
In a French heart, his success would have made him lose the victory,
had he ever been able to lay claim to it.
[Sidenote: End of Madame de Staël.]
It was at a sad time for the glory of France that I met Madame Récamier
again; it was at the time of the death of Madame de Staël. Returning
to Paris after the Hundred Days, the author of Delphine had fallen ill
again; I had met her at her house and at Madame la Duchesse de Duras'.
Gradually, her condition growing worse, she was obliged to keep her
bed. One morning, I went to her in the Rue Royale; the shutters of her
windows were two-thirds closed; the bed, pushed towards the wall at the
back of the room, left only a space on the left; the curtains, drawn
back on metal rods, formed two columns at the head of the bed. Madame
de Staël, half sitting up, was propped up by pillows. I approached
and, when my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the darkness, I
distinguished the patient. A burning fever fired her cheeks. Her bright
glance met me in the dimness, and she said to me:
"Good morning, my dear Francis[473]. I suffer, but that does not
prevent me from loving you."
She held out her hand, which I pressed and kissed. As I raised my head,
I saw on the opposite side of the bed, against the wall, something
which rose up white and thin: it was M. de Rocca, with an emaciated
countenance, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes and a sallow complexion;
he was dying. I had never seen him, and I never saw him again. He did
not open his mouth; he bowed as he passed before me; the sound of his
footsteps was inaudible: he went away like a shadow. Stopping for a
moment at the door, "the vaporous idol twitching its fingers" turned
back towards the bed to wave adieu to Madame de Staël. Those two ghosts
looking at one another in silence, one erect and pale, the other seated
and coloured with a blood ready to flow down again and to congeal at
the heart, made one shudder.
A few days afterwards, Madame de Staël changed her lodging. She invited
me to dine with her, in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins: I went; she was
not in the drawing-room and was unable even to come in to dinner;
but she did not know that the fatal hour was so nigh. We sat down to
table. I found myself sitting by Madame Récamier. It was twelve years
since I had met her, and then I had seen her for but a moment. I did
not look at her, she did not look at me: we did not exchange a word.
When, towards the end of dinner, she timidly addressed a few words to
me on Madame de Staël's illness, I turned my head a little and raised
my eyes. I should fear to profane to-day through the mouth of my years
a sentiment which preserves all its youth in my memory and whose charm
increases as life withdraws. I separate my old days to discover behind
those days celestial apparitions, to hear from the bottom of the abyss
the harmonies of a happier region.
Madame de Staël died[474]. The last note which she wrote to Madame de
Duras was traced in big crazy letters, like a child's. It contained an
affectionate word for "Francis." The talent which expires impresses one
more painfully than the individual who dies: it is a general desolation
that strikes society; every one at the same moment suffers the same
loss.
With Madame de Staël disappeared a considerable portion of the time in
which I had lived: many of those breaches which the fall of a superior
intelligence forms in a century never close up again. Her death made on
me a particular impression, with which was mingled a sort of mysterious
astonishment: it was at that illustrious woman's that I had first met
Madame Récamier and, after long days of separation, Madame de Staël
brought together again two travelling persons who had become almost
strangers to one another: she left them, at a funeral banquet, her
memory and the example of her immortal attachment.
I went to see Madame Récamier in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and,
afterwards, in the Rue d'Anjou. When one has rejoined his destiny, he
believes himself never to have left it: life, according to the opinion
of Pythagoras, is only a reminiscence. Who does not, in the course
of his days, recollect some little circumstances indifferent to all,
except to him who recalls them? Belonging to the house in the Rue
d'Anjou was a garden; in that garden, a bower of lime-trees, between
whose leaves I saw a moonbeam when I waited for Madame Récamier: does
it not seem to me as though that beam were mine and as though, if I
went to look for it in the same place, I should find it? I scarce
remember the sun which I have seen shine on many fore-heads.
[Sidenote: The Abbaye-aux-Bois.]
It was at that time that I was obliged to sell the Vallée-aux-Loups,
which Madame Récamier had hired, in half shares with M. de Montmorency.
More and more tried by fortune, Madame Récamier soon retired to the
Abbaye-aux-Bois[475]. The Duchesse d'Abrantès speaks as follows of that
abode:
"The Abbaye-aux-Bois, with all its dependencies, its
beautiful gardens, its extensive cloisters, in which played
young girls of all ages, with careless looks and frolicsome
words, was known only as a saintly abode to which a family
could safely entrust its hope; even then, it was known only
to the mothers who had an interest beyond its high walls.
But, once Sister Marie had closed the little gate surmounted
by an attic, the boundary of the saintly domain, one crossed
the great court-yard which separates the convent from the
street, not only as neutral, but as foreign ground.
"To-day this is no longer so: the name of the Abbaye-aux-Bois
has become popular; its renown is general and familiar to all
classes. The woman who goes there for the first time and says
to her footmen, 'To the Abbaye-aux-Bois' is sure not to be
asked by them in which direction they have to drive....
"Whence did it, in so short a time, derive so positive a
renown, so wide-spread an illustriousness? Do you see two
little windows, right up at the top, in the lofts, there,
above the large windows of the great stair-case? That is one
of the small rooms of the house. Well, nevertheless, the fame
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois took birth within its confines, came
down from there, and became popular. And how could it but
become popular, when all classes of society knew that, in
that little room, dwelt a being who led a life disinherited
of all joy and who, nevertheless, found words of consolation
for every sorrow, magic words to alleviate every pain,
succour for every misfortune?
"When, from the recesses of his prison, Coudert[476] caught a
glimpse of the scaffold, whose pity was it that he invoked?
'Go to Madame Récamier,' he said to his brother[477] 'tell
her that I am innocent before God... she will understand
that evidence...' and Coudert was saved. Madame Récamier
joined in her generous action a man gifted with both talent
and kindness: M. Ballanche seconded her endeavours, and the
scaffold devoured one victim the less.
"It might almost be described as a marvel offered to the
study of the human mind, that little cell in which a woman
of more than European reputation came to seek repose and a
decent asylum. The world is generally inclined to forget
those who no longer invite it to their banquets; it did not
forget her who, formerly, in the midst of her joys, lent an
even more willing ear to a complaint than to the accents of
pleasure. Not only was the little room on the third floor
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the constant object of the errands
of Madame Récamier's friends, but, as though a fairy's
magic wand had relieved the steepness of the ascent, the
same strangers who used to ask as a favour to be admitted
to the elegant mansion on the Chaussée d'Antin continued
to beg the same boon. For them it was a sight really as
remarkable as any rarity in Paris to see, within a space of
ten feet by twenty, all opinions united under one banner,
marching in peace and almost hand in hand. The Vicomte de
Chateaubriand told Benjamin Constant of the unknown marvels
of America. Mathieu de Montmorency, with the urbanity
personal to himself, the chivalrous politeness of all that
bears his name, was as respectfully attentive to Madame
Bernadotte[478], who was about to reign in Sweden, as he
would have been to the sister[479] of Adelaide of Savoy[480],
daughter of Humbert the White-handed[481], that widow of
Louis the Fat[482] who married one of his ancestors[483]. And
the man of the feudal times had not a single bitter word for
the man of our days of liberty.
[Sidenote: Society at the Abbaye.]
"Seated side by side on the same divan, the duchess of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain became polite to the duchess of the
Empire; nothing seemed to shock in that unique room. When I
saw Madame Récamier again in that room, I had just returned
to Paris, after a long absence. I had a service to ask of
her, and went to her with confidence. I well knew, through
common friends, to how great a measure of strength her
courage had risen, but I myself lacked it when I saw her
there, under the loft, as peaceful and calm as in the gilded
drawing-rooms of the Rue du Mont-Blanc.
"'What!' said I to myself. 'Nothing but sufferings!'
"And my moist eye fixed itself upon her with an expression
which she must have understood. Alas, my memories passed
back over the years and recaptured the past! Ever beaten by
the storm, that woman, whom fame had placed at the very top
of the wreath of flowers of the age, had, for the last ten
years, seen her life surrounded by sorrows, the shock of
which was striking repeated blows at her heart and killing
her!...
"When, guided by old memories and a constant attraction, I
selected the Abbaye-aux-Bois as my refuge, the little room
on the third storey was no longer inhabited by her whom I
should have gone to seek there; Madame Récamier at that time
occupied a more spacious apartment. It was there that I saw
her again. Death had thinned the ranks of the combatants
around her, and, of all those political champions, M. de
Chateaubriand was almost the only one among her friends
who had survived. But for him too the hour struck of hope
deceived and royal ingratitude. He was wise; he bade farewell
to those false pretenses of happiness, and relinquished the
uncertain power of the tribune to grasp one more practical.
"You have already seen that, in this drawing-room at the
Abbaye-aux-Bois, there was question of other interests
besides literary interests, and that those who suffer may
turn towards it a look full of hope, Constantly occupied as
I have, for some months, been with all that relates to the
family of the Emperor, I have found a few documents which do
not seem to be devoid of interest at this moment.
"The Queen of Spain[484] found herself under an absolute
necessity to return to France. She wrote to Madame Récamier
to beg her to interest herself in the request which she was
making to be allowed to come to Paris. M. de Chateaubriand
was at that time in office, and the Queen of Spain, knowing
the loyalty of his character, had every confidence in
the success of her appeal. Nevertheless, the thing was
difficult, because there was a law which affected all that
unhappy family, even in its most virtuous members. But M. de
Chateaubriand had in him that feeling of a noble pity for
misfortune, which later made him write those touching words:
Sur le compte des grands je ne suis pas suspect:
Leurs malheurs seulement attirent mon respect.
Je hais ce Pharaon, que l'éclat environne;
Mais s'il tombe, à l'instant j'honore sa couronne;
Il devient, à mes yeux, roi par l'adversité;
Des pleurs je reconnais l'auguste autorité:
Courtisan du malheur, etc., etc.[485]
"M. de Chateaubriand lent an ear to the interests of a person
in distress; he examined his duty, which did not lay upon him
the fear of dreading a weak woman, and, two days after the
request was made, he wrote to Madame Récamier that Madame
Joseph Bonaparte might return to France, asking where she
was, in order that he might send her, through M. Durand de
Moreuil, then our Minister to Brussels[486], permission to
come to France under the name of the Comtesse de Villeneuve.
He wrote at the same time to M. de Fagel[487].
"I have related this fact with so much the more pleasure as
it honours both her who asked and the minister who obliged
her: the one through her noble confidence, the other through
his noble humanity[488]."
Madame d'Abrantès praises my conduct far too highly: it was not worth
even the trouble of remark; but, as she does not tell all there is to
tell about the Abbaye-aux-Bois, I will supply what she has forgotten or
omitted.
[Sidenote: Captain Roger.]
Captain Roger[489], another Coudert, had been condemned to death.
Madame Récamier had joined me in her pious work of saving him. Benjamin
Constant had also interceded on behalf of this companion of Caron's,
and had given the condemned man's brother the following letter for
Madame Récamier:
"I could not forgive myself, madame, for always importuning
you, but it is not my fault if there are incessant
condemnations to death. This letter will be delivered to
you by the brother of the unhappy Roger, sentenced with
Caron[490]. The story is very hateful and very well-known.
The name alone will acquaint M. de Chateaubriand with the
matter. He is fortunate enough to be at the same time the
first talent in the Ministry and the only minister under whom
no blood has been spilt. I say no more; I leave the rest to
your heart. It is very sad to have to write to you almost
exclusively on distressful matters; but you forgive me, I
know, and I am sure that you will add one more unfortunate to
the long list of those whom you have saved.
"A thousand fond respects.
"B. CONSTANT.
"PARIS, 1 _March_ 1823."
When Captain Roger was set at liberty, he hastened to express his
gratitude to his benefactress. One evening, after dinner, I was at
Madame Récamier's as usual; suddenly appeared this officer. He said to
us, in a southern accent:
"But for your intercession, my head would have rolled on the scaffold."
We were stupefied, for we had forgotten our merits; he shouted, red as
a turkey-cock:
"You don't remember?... You don't remember?..." In vain we made
a thousand excuses for our lack of memory; he went off, striking
the spurs of his boots together again and again, as furious at our
forgetting our good action as though he had had to reproach us with his
death.
About this time, Talma asked Madame Récamier to allow him to meet
me at her rooms in order to consult me on some verses in Ducis'
_Othello_, which he was not allowed to speak as they stood. Leaving my
dispatches, I hastened to keep the appointment; I spent the evening
with the modern Roscius recasting the unlucky lines. He proposed an
alteration to me, I proposed another to him; we vied with each other
in rhyming; we withdrew to the window-recess or to a corner to turn
and re-turn a hemistich. We had much difficulty in agreeing as to the
sense and the rhythm. It would have been rather curious to see me, the
minister of Louis XVIII., and Talma, the king of the stage, forgetting
what we might be, emulating each other in enthusiasm, and sending the
censorship and all the grandeurs of the world to the deuce. But, if
Richelieu had his dramas performed while letting Gustavus Adolphus[491]
loose on Europe, could not I, a humble secretary of State, busy myself
with the tragedies of others while seeking the independence of France
in Madrid?
[Sidenote: Sweet hours at the Abbaye.]
Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès, whose coffin I have saluted in the
church at Chaillot, has described only the _inhabited_ abode of Madame
Récamier; I will tell of the _solitary_ refuge. A dark corridor
separated two small rooms. I maintained that this vestibule was lit
up with a gentle light. The bed-room was furnished with a library,
a harp, a piano, a portrait of Madame de Staël and a view of Coppet
by moonlight; pots of flowers adorned the window-sills. When, quite
breathless with clambering up three flights of stairs, I entered the
cell at the fall of evening, I was enraptured. The outlook from the
windows was over the garden of the Abbaye, in the green clumps of which
the nuns moved to and fro and school-girls ran hither and thither.
The top of an acacia-tree rose to the level of the eye. Sharp-pointed
steeples pierced the sky, and on the horizon appeared the hills of
Sèvres. The expiring sun gilded the picture and entered through the
open windows. Madame Récamier sat at her piano; the Angelus tolled:
the sound of the bell which seemed "to weep the dying day, _pianger
il giorno che si muore_[492]," mingled with the last accents of the
Invocation of the Night in Steibelt's[493] _Romeo and Juliet._ A few
birds came to nestle in the raised outer blinds; I joined the silence
and solitude from afar, above the noise and tumult of a great city.
God, by giving me those hours of peace, indemnified me for my hours of
trouble; I foresaw the coming rest which my faith believes in and my
hope invokes. Agitated as I was elsewhere with political occupations,
or disgusted with the ingratitude of Courts, peacefulness of heart
awaited me in the recesses of that retreat, like the coolness of the
woods when one leaves a scorching plain. I recovered my calm beside a
woman who spread serenity around her; and yet that serenity was not
in any way too even, for it passed through deep affections. Alas, the
men whom I used to meet at Madame Récamier's, Mathieu de Montmorency,
Camille Jordan, Benjamin Constant, the Duc de Laval, have gone to
join Hingant, Joubert, Fontanes, others who were absent from another
absent company. Amid those successive friendships have risen young
friends, the vernal offshoots of an old forest in which the felling
is everlasting. I beg them, I beg M. Ampère, who will read this when
I am gone, I ask them all to keep me in their memory: I make over to
them the thread of the life the end of which Lachesis is spinning out
on my distaff. My inseparable road-fellow, M. Ballanche, has found
himself alone at the commencement and at the end of my career; he has
witnessed my friendships broken by time as I have witnessed his carried
away by the Rhone: rivers always undermine their banks.
The misfortune of my friends has often weighed heavily on me, and I
have never shrunk from the sacred burden: the moment of reward has
arrived; a serious attachment deigns to help me to support that which
the multitude of the bad days adds to their weight. As I draw near my
end, it seems to me that all that has been dear to me has been dear
to me in Madame Récamier, and that she was the hidden source of my
affections. My memories of diverse ages, those of my dreams as well as
those of my realities, have become moulded, blended, confounded into
a compound of charms and sweet sufferings of which she has become the
visible embodiment She regulates my sentiments, in the same way as
Heaven has set happiness, order and peace into my duties.
I have followed the fair wanderer along the path which she has trodden
so lightly; soon I shall go before her to a new country. As she passes
in the midst of these Memoirs, in the windings of the basilica which I
hasten to complete, she may come upon the chapel which here I dedicate
to her; it will perhaps please her to rest in it: I have placed her
image there.
[Footnote 336: This book was written in Paris in 1839.--T.]
[Footnote 337: MADAME DE STAËL, _Corinne, ou l'Italie_ (Paris,
1807).--T.]
[Footnote 338: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I., chap. III.: _Our
affections are transported beyond our selves._--T.]
[Footnote 339: Madame Récamier, before her marriage, was Jeanne
Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard. Of all her baptismal names, only
Julie remained, transformed into Juliette. Her father, Jean Bernard,
was a notary at Lyons; in 1784, he was appointed a receiver of finance
in Paris.--B.]
[Footnote 340: And not thirteen, as the earlier editions have it.--B.]
[Footnote 341: Jacques Rose Récamier (1751-1830), the Paris banker. The
marriage took place on the 24th of April 1793.--T.]
[Footnote 342: Benjamin Constant, _Adolphe: anecdote trouvée dans les
papiers d'un inconnu_ (Paris, 1816).--T.]
[Footnote 343: At the corner of the Boulevard de la Madeleine and the
Rue Louis-le-Grand: the last remnant of the Hôtel de Richelieu, which
was almost wholly destroyed during the Revolution. The Pavillon de
Hanovre served as a public ball-room.--T.]
[Footnote 344: ANDRÉ CHÉNIER, _La Jeune captive_ (Paris, 1795):
"I do not wish to die so soon."--T.
]
[Footnote 345: This letter is dated, "From my retreat at Corbeil,
Saturday, 28 September 1797." La Harpe was proscribed after the 18
Fructidor, and found a shelter at Corbeil, where Madame Récamier paid
him one visit.--B.]
[Footnote 346: This letter has no further date, but must have been
written a few days after the 18 Brumaire.--B.]
[Footnote 347: LUCIEN BONAPARTE, _La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et
Stellina_ (Paris, 1799).]
[Footnote 348: Like the Duc de Laval, another admirer of Madame
Récamier, Benjamin Constant disliked dates. His work on Madame
Récamier does not contain one. At the end of 1798, Madame de Staël was
charged by her father to sell the house which he owned in the Rue du
Mont-Blanc, now No. 7, Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. M. Récamier had long
had business-relations with M. Necker, whose banker he was, as well
as his daughter's; he bought the house. The deed of sale is dated 25
Vendémiaire Year VII. (16 October 1798).--B.]
[Footnote 349: Later the Duc de Laval-Montmorency, whom Chateaubriand
was to replace in Rome.--B.]
[Footnote 350: Madame de Staël's novel of _Delphine_, which appeared in
the autumn of 1802.--B.]
[Footnote 351: "By the voice of the old thou didst praise beauty's
charms."--T.]
[Footnote 352: Peace was concluded at Amiens between Great Britain and
Ireland on the one side, and France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic
on the 27th of March 1802, and lasted till the 18th of May 1803, when
Great Britain resumed hostilities.--T.]
[Footnote 353: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806), _née_
Spencer, wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and famous for her wit,
beauty and social and political influence.--T.]
[Footnote 354: Elizabeth Viscountess Melbourne (1753-1818), _née_
Milbanke, married in 1769 to Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne.
The rise of her family was due to her brilliant qualities.--T.]
[Footnote 355: Emily Mary Marchioness of Salisbury (1751-1835),
daughter of Wills Hill, first Marquess of Downshire, and married to
James Cecil, seventh Earl, later first Marquess of Salisbury, in 1773.
Lady Salisbury perished in the fire that burnt down the west wing of
Hatfield House in November 1835.--T.]
[Footnote 356: Antoine Philippe Duc de Montpensier (1775-1807) died in
England of a malady of the chest.--T.]
[Footnote 357: Louis Comte de Beaujolais (1779-1808) died in Malta.--T.]
[Footnote 358: George IV. was appointed Regent of the United Kingdom
in 1811, and came to the throne on the 29th of January 1820;
Louis-Philippe usurped the throne of France on the 9th of August
1830.--T.]
[Footnote 359: Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas, later
(1819) tenth Duke of Hamilton and seventh of Brandon (_d._ 1852), had
been Ambassador to St. Petersburg and was, at this time (1802), M.P.
for Lanarkshire.--T.]
[Footnote 360: Charles X. came to Holyrood in 1830. The Dukes of
Hamilton are Hereditary Keepers of Holyrood Palace.--T.]
[Footnote 361: Charlotte Duchess of Somerset, _née_ Douglas-Hamilton,
married, in 1800, to the eleventh Duke of Somerset.--T.]
[Footnote 362: Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1813), the famous Italian
engraver, lived in London from 1764 to 1802, when he removed to Lisbon
to take charge of the National Academy in that capital.--T.]
[Footnote 363: William I. was proclaimed first King of the Netherlands
on the 16th of March 1815. He abdicated on the 7th of October 1840,
one year after the above lines were written and three years before his
death.--T.]
[Footnote 364: Bernadotte became King of Sweden, as Charles XIV., in
1818.--T.]
[Footnote 365: September 1803.--B.]
[Footnote 366: Andoche Junot, Maréchal Duc d'Abrantès (1771-1813).--T.]
[Footnote 367: MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil_, Part I., chap.
XI.--B.]
[Footnote 368: Elzéar Louis Marie Comte de Sabran (1774-1846), a firm
friend of Madame de Staël's, and his mother, who married the Chevalier
de Boufflers as her second husband.--T.]
[Footnote 369: Louis Prince, later Louis I. King of Bavaria (1786-1868)
succeeded his father, Maximilian I., in 1825, and abdicated in
1848.--T.]
[Footnote 370: Prince Charles Frederic Augustus of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
(1785-1837).--T.]
[Footnote 371: Eugène de Beauharnais, later Duc de Leuchtenberg and
Prince d'Eichstädt (1781-1824), son of Joséphine, by her first husband,
and appointed Viceroy of Italy in 1805.--T.]
[Footnote 372: Madame Moreau, _née_ Hulot, was a Creole and a friend of
Joséphine de Beauharnais. After the death of Moreau, Alexander I. gave
her a donation of 500,000 roubles and a pension of 30,000 roubles per
annum.--T.]
[Footnote 373: Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), author of the
_Physiologie du goût_, had been appointed a judge of the Court of
Appeal by the Consulate in 1800.--B.]
[Footnote 374: Pichegru committed suicide, or was assassinated, in
prison, on the 5th of April 1804.--T.]
[Footnote 375: The execution of Georges Cadoudal and his eleven
companions took place on the 25th of July 1804, at eleven o'clock in
the morning, on the Place de Grève. The evening before, the gaol-keeper
at Bicêtre had entered Cadoudal's cell and brought him a petition for
mercy ready for signature. Georges cast a glance at the paper, and saw
that it was addressed "To His Majesty the Emperor." He refused to see
any more. Turning to his companions:
"Comrades," he said, "let us say our prayers."
On the morning of the execution, Captain Laborde said to someone who
asked him for news of the criminal:
"He has slept more peacefully than I."
On arriving at the Place de Grève, the Abbé de Keravenant made him say
the Angelic Salutation: "Hail Mary, full of grace... Holy Mary, Mother
of God, pray for us sinners now..."
Here Georges stopped.
"Continue," said the priest,"... and at the hour of our death."
"To what purpose?" asked Georges. "Is not now the hour of our death?"
Cadoudal insisted upon dying first, lest his comrades should imagine
that he could survive them.--B.]
[Footnote 376: The Monk of Saint-Gall (_circa_ 884) is the anonymous
author of the half-genuine, half-fabulous _Gestes de Charlemagne._--T.]
[Footnote 377: M. Necker died at Coppet on the 9th of April 1804.--B.]
[Footnote 378: M. Récamier's ruin happened two years after the death
of M. Necker, in the autumn of 1806. It was produced chiefly through
the political and financial condition of Spain, by which M. Récamier's
banking-house was seriously embarrassed. He asked the Bank of France
for a loan of a million francs, which would have saved him; the loan
was refused, and the crash came. Madame Récamier sold her jewellery to
the last piece; the plate was sold; the house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc
was bought by M. Mosselmann. So great was the confidence and esteem
of the creditors for M. Récamier that they entrusted him with the
liquidation of his own estate.--B.]
[Footnote 379: 17 November 1806.--B.]
[Footnote 380: Madame Récamier lost her mother on the 20th January
of 1807. Her first six months of mourning were spent in profound
seclusion; in the middle of the summer of 1807, she consented, at
Madame de Staël's entreaties, to go to Coppet.--B.]
[Footnote 381: Prince Augustus was taken prisoner, not at Eylau, but
at the Battle of Saalfeld (10 October 1806). The young Prince was
only twenty-four years of age; he was five years younger than Madame
Récamier.--B.]
[Footnote 382: MADAME DE GENLIS**, _Mademoiselle de Clermont_ (Paris,
1802).--T.]
[Footnote 383: _Athénaïs, ou le Château de Coppet en 1807_ was
published in 1832, two years after the Comtesse de Genlis' death. It
was written when she was over eighty years of age.--T.]
[Footnote 384: In the autumn of 1807.--B.]
[Footnote 385: And not 1812, as the previous editions have it.--B.]
[Footnote 386: Now the property of the Prince Amédée de Broglie.--B.]
[Footnote 387: Chateaubriand does not give the date of this letter,
which must have been written in September 1810. Madame de Staël tells,
in her _Dix années d'exil_ (Part II., chap, i.), how she corrected the
last proof of l'_Allemagne_ on the 23rd of September 1810, and how she
made a list of one hundred persons to whom she wished to send copies in
different parts of France and Europe.--B.]
[Footnote 388: October 1810. The three volumes of l'_Allemagne_ were
hardly printed, when the Duc de Rovigo, the Minister of Police, sent
his agents to destroy the ten thousand copies that had been struck off,
and served an order on the author to leave France within three days.
Having read in the newspapers that some American ships had arrived in
the Channel ports, Madame de Staël decided to make use of a passport
which she had for America, hoping that it would be possible for her to
land in England. She required a few days, in any case, to prepare for
the voyage, and she was obliged to apply to the Minister of Police for
those few days. In a letter dated 3 October 1810, Rovigo allowed her
eight days and said:
"It appears to me that the air of this country does not suit
you, and we are not yet reduced to looking for models in the
peoples which you admire. Your last work is un-French; I
myself stopped the printing.... I am instructing M. Corbigny
[the Prefect of Loir-et-Cher] to attend to the execution of
the order which I have given him, when the delay which I am
granting you has expired."
The letter of the Minister of Police ends with this postscript:
"I have my reasons, madame, for mentioning to you the ports
of Lorient, the Rochelle, Bordeaux and Rochefort as the only
ports at which you can embark. I request you to let me know
which you select."
The Channel ports were forbidden to Madame de Staël, in order to
prevent her from going to England. So soon as Coppet became the sole
alternative to America, she determined to go back to Coppet, where she
arrived in the latter half of October 1810.--B.]
[Footnote 389: The order of banishment was issued against Madame
Récamier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency in September 1811.--B.]
[Footnote 390: On arriving at Châlons, she first put up at the inn of
the Pomme d'Or, which she soon left to take a small apartment in the
Rue du Cloître.--B.]
[Footnote 391: The Château de Montmirail, the magnificent habitation of
the La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauvilles, in the Department of the Marne.--B.]
[Footnote 392: M. de Rocca (1784-1818), a young officer eighteen years
Madame de Staël's junior. He survived her one year only.--T.]
[Footnote 393: Auguste Louis de Staël Holstein ( 1790-1827), Madame de
Staël's eldest son.--B.]
[Footnote 394: This note, of which Chateaubriand does not give the
date, was written when Madame de Staël was on the point of setting
out from Switzerland for Germany. She left Coppet on the 23rd of May
1812.--B.]
[Footnote 395: Madame de Staël's youngest son was killed in a duel, in
1813.--B.]
[Footnote 396: Madame Récamier left Châlons in June 1812, to go
to Lyons to stay with Madame Delphin-Récamier, a sister of her
husband's.--B.]
[Footnote 397: The Duchesse de Chevreuse, _née_ Norbonne-Pelet, married
to the Duc de Chevreuse, son to the Duc de Luynes. Her father-in-law
was compelled to accept a senatorship, in 1803, and she obliged, in
1806, to consent to become one of the Empress Joséphine's ladies. Two
years later, when the Spanish Royal Family were arrested, the Emperor
wished to place the Duchesse de Chevreuse with the captive Queen; the
duchess replied that she could be a prisoner, but would never be a
gaoler. This proud answer procured her exile, which eventually resulted
in her death.--B.]
[Footnote 398: In the spring of 1813.--B.]
[Footnote 399: Amélie Lenormant, adopted daughter of Madame Récamier,
and married to M. Charles Lenormant.--T.]
[Footnote 400: Jacques Marquet de Montbreton, Baron de Norvins
(1769-1854), author of a now forgotten History of Napoleon (1827).--B.]
[Footnote 401: Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the famous Italian
sculptor and artificer in gold and silver. _Cf._ his Autobiography,
one of the most famous of Italian classics, circulated in MS. until it
was first printed in 1730, translated into German by Goethe and into
English by, _inter alios_, the late John Addington Symonds.--T.]
[Footnote 402: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), one of the chief names
in Tuscan literature.--T.]
[Footnote 403: The Albano fisherman was shot in September 1813; one
month later, in October of the same year, Napoleon lost his Empire on
the plains of Leipzig.--B.]
[Footnote 404: Madame de Beaumont.--_Author's Note._]
[Footnote 405: Madame Récamier went to Naples at the beginning of
December 1813.--B.]
[Footnote 406: Murat, the son of an inn-keeper, had commenced life as a
postilion.--T.]
[Footnote 407: The Gauls planted a bare sword to mark the centre of the
_Mallus_, or council. The _mallus_ survives in our modern word mall, a
space bordered with trees.--B.]
[Footnote 408: Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1782-1839), sister of
Napoleon Bonaparte, and married to Joachim Murat in 1800.--T.]
[Footnote 409: Publius Virgilius Maro (B.C. 70--B.C. 19), died at
Brundisium in Calabria, and was buried at Parthenope (Naples). Virgil's
tomb bears an inscription composed by himself in his last moments:--
_Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc_
_Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces_.--T.
]
[Footnote 410: Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was born at Sorrento.--T.]
[Footnote 411: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (B.C. 65-B.C. 8).--T.]
[Footnote 412: Titus Livius (B.C. 50--A.D. 17).--T.]
[Footnote 413: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the author of the
Decameron, lived at Naples from about 1330 to about 1341.--T.]
[Footnote 414: Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), the Italian and Latin
poet, was born and died at Naples.--T.]
[Footnote 415: Francesco Durante (1684-1755), the religious composer,
born at Naples 15 March 1684, director of the Conservatory of Santa
Maria di Loreto at Naples.--T.]
[Footnote 416: Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), composer of _Il
Matrimonio segreto_, born at Aversa, near Naples, 17 December 1749.--T.]
[Footnote 417: Admiral Horatio Nelson, first Viscount Nelson
(1758-1805), retired to Naples after the Battle of the Nile, in
1798, and remained there till 1800, when, on the expiration of Sir
William Hamilton's embassy, he returned to England and received his
peerage.--T.]
[Footnote 418: Emma Lady Hamilton (_circa_ 1761-1815), _née_ Hart,
originally a servant-girl of great personal beauty and loose character,
became mistress of, among many others, Charles Greville and Sir
William Hamilton, whom she married on the death of his first wife and
joined at Naples, where he was Envoy from 176410 1800, and finally of
Nelson. Lady Hamilton played a great part at the Court of Naples as the
intimate friend of Queen Maria Carolina. She died in distress.--T.]
[Footnote 419: The Posilipo contains the famous grotto, at the entrance
of which Virgil's tomb stands, and is pierced by a subterranean road to
Pozzuoli.--T.]
[Footnote 420: The correct date of Chateaubriand's excursion to
Liternum is January 1804.--B.]
[Footnote 421: Scipio Africanus died and was buried at Liternum, now
Torre di Patria, fourteen miles from Naples.--T.]
[Footnote 422: Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria (_circa_
1015-1085), son of Tancred de Hauteville, succeeded his brother
Humphrey as Count of Apulia in 1057, and became Duke of Apulia in
1059.--T.]
[Footnote 423: William I., first Norman Count of Apulia (_d._ 1046),
surnamed Iron-arm, eldest son of Tancred de Hauteville.--T.]
[Footnote 424: Roger II. Count of Sicily, later Roger I. first King of
the Two Sicilies (1093-1154), son of Roger I. Count of Sicily, twelfth
son of Tancred de Hauteville. Roger became Duke of Apulia on the death
of his cousin, William II. in 1127, and assumed the title of King of
the Two Sicilies in 1130.--T.]
[Footnote 425: Tancred Prince of Galilee, later of Edessa (_d._ 1112),
nephew of Robert Guiscard, and one of the most brilliant heroes of the
first Crusade and of Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata._--T.]
[Footnote 426: Salerno.--T.]
[Footnote 427: Capri.--T.]
[Footnote 428: Ischia.--T.]
[Footnote 429: Procida.---T.]
[Footnote 430: Miseno.--T.]
[Footnote 431: Baja.--T.]
[Footnote 432: Naples.--T.]
[Footnote 433: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Les Martyrs_: Book V., the story of
Eudorus.]
[Footnote 434: General Adam Adalbert Count von Neipperg (1775-1829) was
sent by Francis II., in July 1814, to escort Marie-Louise. He won the
Empress' favours, accompanied her, in 1816, to Parma, where she made
him Master of her Household and married him morganatically, in 1822,
after the death of Napoleon. Their eldest son, the present Prince von
Montenuovo (Neipperg = Neuberg = Montenuovo), was born on the 9th of
August 1821.--T.]
[Footnote 435: Louis François Auguste Prince de Léon, Cardinal Duc de
Rohan-Chabot (1788-1833), Archbishop of Besançon, was brought up in
England, where his family were living in emigration. He returned to
France, in 1809, with his wife, _née_ de Sérent, and became a Court
chamberlain under Napoleon, and an officer in the Red Musketeers
under Louis XVIII. The Duchesse de Rohan-Chabot was burnt to death
in 1815, and her husband renounced the world, took orders and became
successively Grand-vicar of Paris, Archbishop of Auch, Archbishop of
Besançon (1829) and a cardinal (1830). He left France at the Revolution
of July, but returned to his diocese in 1832, on the outbreak of the
cholera, caught the infection, and died of it.--T.]
[Footnote 436: Madame Lenormant drew the following portrait of M. de
Rohan-Chabot in 1813:
"He was in all the flower of his youth and had, in spite
of a shade of somewhat pronounced fatuousness, the most
charming, the most delicate, I would almost say the most
virginal face imaginable. M. de Chabot's appearance was one
of perfect elegance: his beautiful hair was curled with great
art and taste; he made an extreme study of his dress; he
was pale; his voice was very sweet. His manners were most
distinguished, but haughty. He was not clever, but, although
generally ill-informed, he had the gift of languages; he
grasped quickly and almost musically not the genius of a
language, but its accent."--B. ]
[Footnote 437: Madame Récamier was a native of Lyons on the Rhone.--T.]
[Footnote 438: After the death of the "People's Friend," Murat, by
simply changing one letter, transformed his name into that of Marat.
So proud was he of his invention that, in a letter which he wrote on
the 18th of November 1793, urging the execution of a "Moderantist," he
appended his new signature, "MARAT," no less than four times (MASSON,
_Napoléon et sa famille_, Vol. I. p. 311).--B.]
[Footnote 439: 1797.--T.]
[Footnote 440: 25 July 1799.--T.]
[Footnote 441: 10 November 1799.--T.]
[Footnote 442: 20 January 1800.--B.]
[Footnote 443: 14 June 1800.--T.]
[Footnote 444: 1804.--T.]
[Footnote 445: 13 November 1805.--B.]
[Footnote 446: 2 December 1805.--T.]
[Footnote 447: 14 October 1806.--T.]
[Footnote 448: 8 February 1807.--T.]
[Footnote 449: 14 June 1807.--T.]
[Footnote 450: 15 March 1806.--B.]
[Footnote 451: August 1812.--T.]
[Footnote 452: 16-19 October 1813.--T.]
[Footnote 453: Jean Michel Laurent Agar Comte de Mosbourg (1771-1844),
a schoolfellow of Murat, who made him Minister of Finance in his
Principality of Berg, married him to one of his nieces and gave him the
title and endowment of the County of Mosbourg. In 1808, he accompanied
the new King to Naples, where, as at Düsseldorf, he became Minister of
Finance, a post which he retained through almost the whole reign. He
entered the French Chamber of Deputies in 1830 and was raised to the
peerage in 1837.--T.]
[Footnote 454: 29 January 1814.--B.]
[Footnote 455: Arrhidæus (_d._ 317 B.C.), an illegitimate son of
Philip King of Macedon, and half-brother to Alexander. He was made
King of Macedon till Roxana, who was pregnant by Alexander, brought
into the world a legitimate male successor. Arrhidæus was seven
years in possession of the sovereign power, and was put to death by
Olympias.--T.]
[Footnote 456: 28 March 1815.--T.]
[Footnote 457: Lieutenant Field-marshal Johann Maria Baron, later Count
von Frimont, Prince of Antrodocco (1759-1831), a native of Belgium, had
served in the French army, emigrated in 1791, and entered the Austrian
service. Ferdinand I. created Frimont Prince of Antrodocco, and granted
him a donation of 220,000 ducats. In 1825, the Emperor of Austria
created him a count and made him Governor of Lombardy and, in 1831, the
year of his death, Frimont became President of the Austrian Council of
War.--T.]
[Footnote 458: 3 May 1815.--B.]
[Footnote 459: 19 May 1815.--B.]
[Footnote 460: Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies and IV. of Naples
(1751-1825) reigned in Naples from 1759 to 1806 and from 1815 to 1825,
and in Sicily from 1759 to 1825.--T.]
[Footnote 461: Collonna-Ceccaldi was Mayor of Vescovato and
father-in-law to General Franceschetti.--T.]
[Footnote 462: General Dominique César Franceschetti (1776-1835)
was severely wounded, when fighting by Murat's side in the Pizzo
Expedition, and taken prisoner. He was afterwards amnestied by King
Ferdinand I.--T.]
[Footnote 463: Colonel Francis Maceroni, or de Macirone (1787-1846),
was born near Manchester, of a family of Roman origin, and was sent
to Naples to complete his education. Here he was kept a prisoner of
war, as a British subject, from 1806 till the advent of Murat in 1808.
The new King took him into favour, made him his aide-de-camp and
employed him in his negociations with England. After Murat's departure
from Corsica, Maceroni returned to France, where he was arrested
and not released before the British Ambassador had made repeated
representations on his behalf. He fought as a soldier of fortune in the
South American Wars of Independence (1817) and in Spain (1823). His
later years were spent in invention, notably of the famous Maceroni
steam-carriage.--T.]
[Footnote 464: Napoleon set foot on St. Helena on the 15th of October
1815.--B.]
[Footnote 465: The portraits consisted of an engraved cornelian seal
with his wife's likeness and a miniature of the features of his four
children.--T.]
[Footnote 466: Pius VII. made his solemn entry into Rome on the 25th of
May 1814.--B.]
[Footnote 467: This description occurs in that portion of the Memoirs,
devoted to the life of Napoleon, which has been omitted.--T.]
[Footnote 468: Alexis Louis Joseph Comte de Noailles (1783-1835)
had been imprisoned, in 1809, for spreading Pius VII.'s Bull of
Excommunication against the authors and accomplices of the usurpation
of the Papal States. In May 1814, the Comte de Noailles was Royal
Commissary in Lyons.--B.]
[Footnote 469: Madame Charles Lenormant (_vide supra_ p. 180, n.
2).--T.]
[Footnote 470: She arrived in Paris on the 1st of June 1814.--B.]
[Footnote 471: _L'Esprit de conquête et d'usurpation dans ses rapports
avec la civilisation européenne_ was published, early in 1814, in
Germany, where Benjamin Constant then was; he returned to France with
the Bourbons.--B.]
[Footnote 472: The appointment is announced in the _Journal de
l'Empire_ of the 6th of April 1815.--B.]
[Footnote 473: In English in the original.--T.]
[Footnote 474: 14 July 1817.--T.]
[Footnote 475: In 1819, Madame Récamier retired to the Abbaye-aux-Bois,
where she occupied a small and incommodious apartment on the third
storey, with a stone flooring and a stair-case of the most awkward
description, which did not prevent its being climbed daily by the
greatest ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and by all the leading
lights of Paris.--B.]
[Footnote 476: He was implicated in the Bories Affair.--_Author's Note._
Charles Coudert, a quarter-master of cavalry, was not implicated in
the Bories Affair, but in a military conspiracy against the Government
which broke out, in December 1821, at Saumur. Of the eleven accused,
eight were acquitted, and Coudert and two others condemned to death, in
February 1822. Madame Récamier employed her credit on his behalf and,
on the 18th of April, Coudert's sentence was commuted to one of five
years' imprisonment.--B.]
[Footnote 477: Eugène Coudert, Charles Coudert's elder brother.--B.]
[Footnote 478: Eugénie Bernardine Désirée Clary, later Désirée Queen
of Sweden (1781-1860), _née_ Clary, married Bernadotte in 1798, after
having been engaged to Napoleon Bonaparte.--T.]
[Footnote 479: Agnès Dame de Bourbon, second daughter of Humbert II.
Count of Savoy, and married to Archambad VII. Sire de Bourbon, who died
in 1171.--T.]
[Footnote 480: Adelaide of Savoy, Queen of France (_d._ 1154), daughter
of Humbert II., not of Humbert the White-handed, married, in 1114, to
Louis the Fat, King of France, and, four years after his death, which
occurred in 1137, to the Constable de Montmorency.--T.]
[Footnote 481: Humbert I., first Count of Savoy (_circa_ 985--_circa_
1048), surnamed the White-handed.--T.]
[Footnote 482: Louis VI. King of France (1078-1137), surnamed the
Fat.--T.]
[Footnote 483: Mathieu I. Seigneur de Montmorency (_d._ 1160),
appointed Constable of France in 1130. He married, first, Aline,
illegitimate daughter of Henry I. King of England, and, secondly, Queen
Adelaide of France.--T.]
[Footnote 484: Julia Queen of Naples, later of Spain (1777-1845), was
Marie Julie Clary, sister to Madame Bernadette, and was married to
Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.--T.]
[Footnote 485: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Moïse_, Act III. sc. IV.-B.
"Where the great are concerned, I am nowise suspect:
Their misfortunes alone win from me my respect.
I hate this King Pharaoh, while glory's his own;
Let him fall: on the instant I honour his crown:
By reason of grief he is king in my eyes;
I bow down before tears as great magistracies;
Misfortune's sad courtier, etc."--T.
]
[Footnote 486: The ex-Queen of Spain was then living in Brussels under
the name of Comtesse de Survilliers.--T.]
[Footnote 487: Lieutenant-General Robert Baron Fagel (1771-1856),
Netherlands Envoy to the several Courts of France from 1814 to
1854.--T.]
[Footnote 488: DUCHESSE D'ABRANTÈS, _Histoire des Salons de Paris.
Tableaux et portraits du grande monde, sous Louis XVI., le Directoire,
le Consulat et l'Empire, la Restauration et le règne de Louis-Philippe
Ier,_ Vol. VII.--B.]
[Footnote 489: Ex-Lieutenant (not Captain) Roger had taken part with
Caron in the Colmar plot. He was condemned to death on the 23rd of
February 1823. The penalty was commuted to one of twenty years' penal
servitude. He was sent to the convict prison at Toulon and obtained a
full pardon at the end of two years.--B.]
[Footnote 490: Lieutenant-Colonel Augustin Joseph Caron (1774-1822),
the ringleader of the plot, was sentenced to death, in September 1822,
and executed before the Court of Cassation had rejected his appeal.--T.]
[Footnote 491: Gustavus II. Adolphus King of Sweden (1594-1632), the
great antagonist of Austria, at that time France's foremost rival.--T.]
[Footnote 492: _Purg._, Canto VIII., 6.--T.]
[Footnote 493: Daniel Steibelt (1765-1823), a Prussian pianist and
composer, came to Paris in 1790. His _Romeo and Juliet_ was performed
at the Théâtre de l'Opera-Comique National on the 10th of September
1793, in the midst of the Terror.--B.]
APPENDIX TO BOOK XI
(By M. EDMOND BIRÉ)
THE CONGRESS OF VERONA AND THE SPANISH WAR
The Memoirs present a voluntary and compulsory gap. Nothing is
said of the twenty months (October 1822 to June 1824) during which
Chateaubriand was, first, French Ambassador at the Congress of Verona
and, later, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris; nothing of the
Spanish War, which was nevertheless his work. Certainly he had no
intention of placing in the shade the very events to which the honour
of his name as a statesman is attached. He wished, on the contrary,
to speak of them at his ease. Of all the various periods of his life,
it is this which assumed the greatest development under his pen: a
development so great that this narrative at first formed four volumes,
reduced later to two, under circumstances which I will presently
relate. Those two volumes in reality form an integral portion of the
Mémoires d'Outre-tombe. That they do not figure there is due to the
fact that the author feared, by giving them a place in his Memoirs, to
disturb the fine ordering of his book, in which the proportions are
so well preserved, in which all the parts of the work harmonize among
themselves with an art so perfect. For this reason, and also in order
publicly to revenge the Restoration for the calumnies of which it was
then the daily object, he decided, in 1838, to publish as a separate
work all that he had written on the Congress of Verona and the Spanish
War.
His manuscript, as I have just said, formed four volumes. This meant
eighty thousand francs (twenty thousand francs per volume) which fell
due to him, under the terms of his contract with the syndicate which
possessed the right of publishing his future works. The four volumes
were almost printed, when M. de Marcellus and M. de La Ferronnays,
alarmed at seeing certain diplomatic documents brought to light
which were destined, according to them, to remain secret, entreated
Chateaubriand to sacrifice, here, there and everywhere, documents
which, nevertheless, possessed the liveliest interest He consented to
most of the curtailments asked for, and gave his friends such liberal
measure that the original four volumes became reduced to two actual
volumes.
"Well," said Chateaubriand to M. de Marcellus, when the sacrifice was
consummated, "the two of you cost me forty thousand francs."
"Be it so," rejoined M. de Marcellus; "rather forty thousand francs
than regrets when it is too late."
And Chateaubriand replied:
"The thing is done now; I have respected your scruples and La
Ferronnays'; I have struck out a great deal to please you. But neither
of you has placed himself sufficiently, in thought, outside his century
and public affairs. To judge of an effect of tone, we should place
ourselves at a distance. It is by saying all that one distinguishes
one's self from the herd of buttoned-up and over-scrupulous statesmen.
I have conceived diplomacy on a new plan; I speak out. You are wrong
to dread my revelations; they could only do you credit. I tell you:
you will do later, La Ferronnays or you, when you think the danger
lessened, and for the same reasons, what you are preventing me from
doing now. As far as I am concerned, I give you my authorization
beforehand[494]."
Since Chateaubriand was induced to leave out of his Memoirs the Spanish
War, which was "the great political event of his life," it is fitting
that I should here remind the reader, if only in a few words, that
this war was an act of high and great politics and not, as the enemies
of the Restoration have repeated to satiety, an act of "servitude and
subjection to the Northern Cabinets."
When M. de Montmorency, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, went to
the Congress of Verona, he was the bearer of positive instructions
containing these very words:
"France being the sole Power which is to act with her troops, she will
be the sole judge of that necessity. The plenipotentiaries must not
consent that the Congress should lay down the conduct of France with
regard to Spain."
[Sidenote: Appendix to Book XI.]
Led away by the generosity and elevation of his sentiments, which
sometimes assumed a tinge of mysticism, to embrace a policy in which
the private initiative of each nation should disappear before the
decisions taken in common by a sort of directorate of the Great Powers
charged to secure the universal prevalence of the interests of justice
and humanity, the loyal and chivalrous Mathieu de Montmorency had been
induced to demand that Russia, Austria, Prussia and France should
address a final notice to Spain, after which the ambassadors were to
be recalled. M. de Villèle declared himself against this collective
action, in the council of ministers held at the Tuileries on the 25th
of January 1822. He claimed the right of France to intervene alone.
Louis XVIII. sided with his opinion, and declared that "France occupied
a special position towards Spain; that for her to recall her ambassador
was either too much or too little;" then he added:
"Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees, I will not allow them to be set up
again; he placed my House on the Throne of Spain, I shall not allow
it to fall from it; my Ambassador must not leave Madrid before the
day when a hundred thousand Frenchmen are pushing forward to take his
place."
To speak in this way was to separate the action of France from that of
the other Powers; M. Duvergier de Hauranne does not hesitate to admit
this[495]. It was to disown M. de Montmorency; he forthwith resigned
his office. He had wished to make the Spanish question an European
question; with Chateaubriand, his successor, it became a French
question. At this the head of the British Cabinet, Mr. Canning[496],
displayed a profound irritation. The hostility of England did not stop
the Government of Louis XVIII.:
"Keep up a high tone with the English ministers," wrote
Chateaubriand, on the 16th of January 1823, to M. de
Marcellus, France's representative in London.
"Say and repeat to Mr. Canning," he wrote again in a dispatch
dated 28th January, "that we are as anxious for peace as he,
and that England can obtain it before the opening of the
campaign, if she will hold the same language as ourselves and
demand the liberty of the King. But be sure to add that our
decision is taken, and that _nothing will make us go back._"
And on the 13th of March 1823:
"Mr. Canning is angry with me for not yielding to his threats
and casting France at the knees of England. He cannot go to
war, he has not so much as one half a plausible reason for
doing so, he feels this, and he is piqued at having gone so
far. But _war or no war, France will do what she must do, or
I shall cease to be minister..._"
And, in a postscript:
"Give parties, and _answer Mr. Canning firmly._"
On the 17th of April:
"England feels that _this war is giving us back our influence
and restoring us to our place in Europe_; she must needs be
irritated and ill-disposed. Mr. Canning's self-esteem is
compromised: hence his violence and his ill-humour.... I
recommend you henceforth to show yourself cold and reserved
with Mr. Canning.... Be polite, but talk little; and let him
see, by your manner, _that the French Government knows its
strength and defends its dignity._[497]"
The deeds were on a level with the words. Chateaubriand's policy had
been able and firm: a prosperous and well-managed war crowned it. Read
in what terms Benjamin Constant and General Foy, although speaking in
the name of the Opposition, judged the Spanish War:
"So far from contesting what our honourable colleague has
said on past events, I wish to recognise with him that the
whole of that memorable expedition has been full of glory
for our army, and I will add that this glory is so much
the finer in that it does not consist solely of military
successes. French generosity, inspiring even our private
soldiers, has always worked and sometimes happily succeeded
in making humanity prevail over vengeance, pity over fury,
and in protecting the disarmed enemy against the auxiliary
embittered by long reverses."
Thus did Benjamin Constant express himself in the tribune of the
Chamber of Deputies, on the 28th of June 1824. In the same sitting,
General Foy added these words:
[Sidenote: Appendix to Book XI.]
"The swiftness of the operations in Spain and the plenitude of the
military success have deceived the expectations of those who were
opposed to the war and surpassed the hopes of those who wished for it."
All truly liberal minds have agreed to recognise that the Spanish
War was not only politic, but legitimate and, above all, national.
While strengthening the Government at home, it restored to France her
liberty of action abroad. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle had freed
our territory. The Congress of Verona and the campaign which followed
emancipated our policy. We once more became a great nation.
M. Guizot was, in 1823, one of the opponents of the expedition; this
did not prevent him, when he had himself passed through public life,
from writing in his Memoirs:
"As a bold stroke of dynastic and party politics, the
Spanish War succeeded fully. The sinister forebodings of
its adversaries were belied and the hopes of its supporters
surpassed. Put to the test together, the loyalty of the army
and the powerlessness of the conspirators seeking refuge
abroad were made manifest at the same time. The expedition
was an easy one, although not without glory. The Duc
d'Angoulême covered himself with credit. The prosperity and
tranquillity of France suffered from it in no way[498]."
Lastly, Sir Robert Peel, in a conversation with M. de Marcellus, thus
summed up the results of the campaign:
"Providence is on your side, you were right.... You have won a real
influence on the Continent: a loyal army; flourishing finances; an
heir to the Crown who has acquired as much glory by his courage as his
moderation[499]."
[Footnote 494: COMTE DE MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration en
1822 et 1823_, p. 49--B.]
[Footnote 495: DUVERGIER DE HAURANNE, _Histoire du gouvernement
parlementaire en France_, Vol. VII. p. 218.--B.]
[Footnote 496: Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister, Canning Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, in 1823.--T.]
[Footnote 497: MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration_, pp. 123, 128,
169, 201.--B.]
[Footnote 498: GUIZOT, _Mémoires_, Vol. I. p. 258.--B.]
[Footnote 499: MARCELLUS, _Politique de la Restauration_, p. 274.--B.]