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.
The preceding book, which I have just written in 1839, joins this
book of my Roman Embassy, written in 1828 and 1829, ten years ago. My
Memoirs, as Memoirs, have gained by the story of Madame Récamier's
life: other persons have been brought upon the scene; we have seen
Naples under Murat, Rome under Bonaparte, the Pope set free, returning
to St. Peter's; unpublished letters of Madame de Staël, Benjamin
Constant, Canova, La Harpe, Madame de Genlis, Lucien Bonaparte,
Moreau, Bernadotte, Murat are preserved; the narrative of Benjamin
Constant shows him in a new light. I have introduced the reader to a
little "out-of-the-way canton" of the Empire, while that Empire was
accomplishing its universal movement; I now find myself brought to my
Roman Embassy. The distraction of a fresh subject will have been a
relief from myself: all has been to the reader's advantage.
For this book of my Roman Embassy there has been no lack of materials;
they are of three kinds:
The first contain the story of my innermost sentiments and of my
private life, as related in the letters addressed to Madame Récamier.
The second set forth my public life: those are my dispatches.
The third are a medley of historical details concerning the popes,
old Roman society, the changes that have taken place from century to
century in that society, and so on.
Among these investigations are thoughts and descriptions, the fruit
of my rambles. All this has been written in the space of seven months,
the time of the duration of my embassy, in the midst of festivities or
serious occupations[501]. Nevertheless, my health was impaired. I could
not lift up my eyes without feeling dizziness; to admire the sky, I
was obliged to place it around me by climbing to the top of a palace
or a hill. But I cured the lassitude of the body by means of mental
application: the exercise of my thought renewed my physical vigour;
what would kill another man gives me life.
[Sidenote: My journey to Rome.]
In revising all this, I have been struck with one thing. On my arrival
in the Eternal City, I feel a certain dislike and, for a moment, I
believe that everything has changed; little by little, the fever of
the ruins overtakes me and I end, like a thousand other travellers, by
adoring that which left me cold at first. Nostalgia is the regret of
one's native country; on the banks of the Tiber we also suffer from
"home-sickness," but it produces an opposite effect to its customary
effect: we are seized with the love of solitudes and the distaste for
our own country. I had already felt this "sickness" at the time of my
first visit, and I was able to say:
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ[502].
You know how, when the Martignac Ministry was formed, the mere name
of Italy had dispelled what remained of my repugnance; but I am never
sure of my disposition in matters of joy: no sooner had I set out with
Madame Chateaubriand than my natural melancholy joined me on the way.
You shall convince yourselves of this by my diary of the road:
"LAUSANNE, 22 _September_ 1828.
"I left Paris on the 14th of this month; I spent the 16th at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne: what memories! Joubert is gone; the
deserted Château de Passy[503] has changed masters; I have
been told, 'Be thou the cricket of the nights: _Esto cicada
noctium._'"
"ARONA, 25 _September_.
"Arriving at Lausanne on the 22nd, I followed the road along
which disappeared two other women who wished me well and who,
in the order of nature, should have survived me. One, Madame
la Marquise de Custine, came to die at Bex; the other, Madame
la Duchesse de Duras, was hastening, not a year ago, to the
Simplon, flying before the face of death which overtook her
at Nice[504]."
"_Noble Clara_, digne et constante amie,
Ton souvenir ne vit plus en ces lieux;
De ce tombeau l'on détourne les yeux;
Ton nom s'efface et le monde t'oublie[505]!
"The last letter which I received from Madame de Duras brings
home to us the bitterness of that last drop of life which we
shall all have to drain:
"'NICE, 14 _November_ 1828.
"'I have sent you an _asclepias carnata_; it is a laurel
creeper which grows in the open air, is not afraid of
the cold, and has a red flower like the camélia, with
an excellent smell; plant it under the windows of the
Benedictine's Library.
"'I will tell you my news in a word: it is always the same
thing; I droop on my sofa all day, that is to say, all the
time that I am not driving or walking out, which I cannot do
for more than half-an-hour a day. I dream of the past: my
life has been so agitated, so varied, that I cannot say that
I am violently bored: if I could only do some needle-work or
rug-work, I should not feel unhappy. My present life is so
far removed from my past life that it seems to me as though I
were reading Memoirs or watching a play[506].'
"And so I have returned to Italy deprived of my friends, as I
left it five and twenty years ago. But, at that first time, I
was able to repair my losses; to-day, who would wish to take
part in a few remaining old days? No one cares to live in a
ruin.
"At the village of the Simplon itself, I saw the first smile
of a happy dawn. The rocks, whose base stretched out black at
my feet, gleamed with rose-colour at the mountain-top, struck
by the rays of the sun. To issue from darkness, it is enough
to rise towards Heaven.
"If Italy had already lost some of its brilliancy for me at
the time of my journey to Verona in 1822, in this year, 1828,
it appeared to me still more discoloured; I have measured the
progress of time. Leaning on the balcony of the inn at Arona,
I gazed at the banks of the Lago Maggiore, blazoned with the
gold of the setting sun and edged with azure. Nothing was
more agreeable than this landscape, which the Castle edged
with its battlements. This sight afforded me neither pleasure
nor sentiment. The years of spring-time wed their hopes to
what they see; a young man goes a-roaming with what he loves,
or with the memories of his absent happiness. If he have no
bond, he seeks one; he flatters himself at each step that he
will find something; thoughts of felicity haunt him: this
disposition of his soul is reflected upon surrounding objects.
"However, I notice the littleness of present society less
when I find myself alone. Left to the solitude in which
Bonaparte has left the world, I scarcely hear the feeble
generations which pass and mewl on the edge of the desert."
"BOLOGNA, 22 _September_ 1828.
"In Milan, in less than a quarter of an hour, I counted
seventeen hunchbacks passing under the window of my inn. The
German flogging has deformed young Italy.
"I saw St. Charles Borromeo[507] in his sepulchre, after
touching his birthplace at Arona. He reckoned two hundred and
forty-four years of death. He was not beautiful.
[Sidenote: An earthquake.]
"At Borgo San Donnino, Madame de Chateaubriand came running
into my room in the middle of the night: she had seen her
clothes and her straw hat fall off the chairs over which they
were hung. She had concluded from this that we were in an
inn haunted by ghosts or inhabited by robbers. I had noticed
no shock as I lay in bed; nevertheless it was the case that
an earthquake had been felt in the Apennines: that which
overturns cities is able to throw down a woman's clothes.
I said as much to Madame de Chateaubriand; I also told her
that, in Spain, in the Vega del Xenil, I had passed without
accident through a village which had been turned upside
down the day before by a subterranean concussion. These
lofty consolations did not have the smallest success, and we
hastened to leave this cave of murderers.
"The continuation of my journey has displayed to me on every
hand the flight of men and the inconstancy of fortune. At
Parma, I found the portrait of Napoleon's widow that daughter
of the Cæsars is now the wife of Count Neipperg; that
mother of the conqueror's son has presented that son with
brothers[508]: she allows the debts which she piles up to be
guaranteed by a little Bourbon[509] who lives at Lucca and
who, if it is expedient, is to inherit the Duchy of Parma.
"Bologna appears to me less deserted than at the time of my
first journey. I have been received here with the honours
with which ambassadors are pestered. I have visited a fine
cemetery: I never forget the dead; they are our family.
"I have never so much admired the Carraccis[510] as in the
new gallery at Bologna. It seemed to me as though I were
seeing Raphael's St. Cecilia for the first time, so much more
divine is it here than at the Louvre, under our sooty sky."
"RAVENNA, 1 _October_ 1828.
"In the Romagna, a country which I did not know, a multitude
of towns, with their houses coated with marble lime, are
perched on the tops of different little mountains, like
coveys of white pigeons. Each of those towns possesses a few
master-pieces of modern art or a few monuments of antiquity.
This canton of Italy contains the whole of Roman history: the
traveller should go through it with his Livy, Tacitus and
Suetonius in his hand.
[Sidenote: Dante's tomb.]
"I passed through Imola, the bishopric of Pius VII.[511], and
Faenza. At Forli I went out of my road to visit Dante's tomb
at Ravenna. As I approached the monument, I was seized with
that thrill of admiration which a great renown gives, when
the master of that renown has been unfortunate. Alfieri, who
bore on his forehead _il pallor della morta e la speranza_,
flung himself prone upon that marble and addressed to it his
sonnet, _O gran Padre Alighier!_ Standing before the tomb, I
applied to myself this verse from the _Purgatorio_:
Frate,
Lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui[512].
"Beatrice[513] appeared to me; I saw her as she was when she
inspired her poet with the longing _di sospirare e di morir
di pianto_[514]:
My plaintive song, take now thy mournful way,
And find the dames and damosels, to whom
Thy sisters, joyful-gay,
Were wont to bear the light of sunny gladness,
And thou, distressful daughter of my sadness,
Go thou and dwell with them in cheerless gloom[515]!
"And yet the creator of a new world of poetry forgot Beatrice
when she had left the earth! He only found her again, to
adore her in his genius, when he was undeceived. Beatrice
reproaches him with it, when she is preparing to show
Paradise to her lover:
"'These looks,' she says to the powers of Paradise,
These looks sometimes upheld him; for I show'd
My youthful eyes, and led him by their light
In upright walking. Soon as I had reach'd
The threshold of my second age, and changed
My mortal for immortal; then he left me,
And gave himself to others[516].
"Dante refused to return to his country at the price of a
pardon. He replied to one of his kinsmen:
"'If there is no other way of returning to Florence than
that which is opened to me, I shall not return there. I can
everywhere contemplate the stars and sun.'"
Dante refused the Florentines his days and Ravenna refused them his
ashes, even though Michael Angelo, the resuscitated genius of the poet,
was resolving to decorate the funeral monument of him who had learnt
_come l'uom s'eterna._[517]
"The painter of the Last Judgment, the sculptor of the Moses,
the architect of the dome of St. Peter's, the engineer of the
Old Bastion at Florence, the poet of the sonnets addressed to
Dante joined his fellow-townsmen and supported the petition
which they presented to Leo X. with these words:
"'_Io Michel Agnolo, scultore, il medesimo a Vostra Santità
supplico, offerendomi al divin poeta fare la sepoltura sua
condecente e in loco onorevole in quest a città._'
"Michael Angelo, whose chisel was disappointed in its hope,
had recourse to his pencil to raise another mausoleum to that
other himself. He drew the principal subjects of the _Divina
Commedia_ on the margins of a folio copy of the works of the
great poet; a vessel which bore this two-fold monument from
Leghorn to Civita Vecchia suffered shipwreck.
"I returned much moved and feeling something of that
commotion, mingled with a divine terror, which I experienced
at Jerusalem when my _cicerone_ proposed to take me to Lord
Byron's house. Ah, what were Childe Harold and the Signora
Guiccioli[518] to me in presence of Dante and Beatrice!
Misfortune and the centuries are still lacking to Childe
Harold; let him await the future. Byron was badly inspired in
his _Prophecy of Dante._
[Sidenote: At Ravenna.]
"I have found Constantinople again at San Vitale[519]
and San Apollinare[520]. Honorius[521] and his hen
were indifferent to me; I prefer Placidia[522] and her
adventures, the memory of which came back to me in the
basilica of St. John the Baptist: they form the romance of
the Barbarians. Theodoric[523] remains great, even though
he put Boethius[524] to death. Those Goths were a superior
race; Amalasontha[525], banished to an island in the Lake
of Bolsena, strove, with her minister Cassiodorus[526], to
save what remained of Roman civilization. The Exarchs[527]
brought to Ravenna the decadence of their empire. Ravenna
was Lombard under Astolf[528]; the Carlovingians restored
it to Rome. It became subject to its archbishop; then it
changed from a republic into a tyranny; finally, after having
been Guelph or Ghibelline, after having formed part of the
Venetian States, it returned to the Church[529] under Pope
Julius II.[530] and lives to-day only through the name of
Dante.
"This city, which Rome bore in her advanced age, had, from
its birth, something of the old age of its mother. Upon the
whole, I should not mind living here; I should like to go to
the French Column, raised in memory of the Battle of Ravenna.
There were the Cardinal de Medici[531] and Ariosto[532],
Bayard[533] and Lautrec, brother to the Comtesse de
Chateaubriand. There the handsome Gaston de Foix[534] was
killed at the age of twenty-four.
"'Notwithstanding all the artillery fired by the Spaniards,'
says the _Loyal Serviteur_, 'the French marched on; never
since God created Heaven and earth was a crueller nor fiercer
assault between French and Spaniards. They rested in front
of one another to recover their breath; then, lowering their
visors, began again worse than ever, crying "France!" and
"Spain!'"
"Of all those warriors there remained but a few knights who
then, become freed-men of glory, put on the frock.
"One saw also in some cabin a young girl who, in turning her
spindle, caught her dainty fingers in the hemp; she was not
accustomed to that life: she was a Trivulzis. When, through
her half-open door, she saw two billows join each other on
the bosom of the waters, she felt her sadness increase: that
woman had been beloved by a great king. She continued to
go slowly, by a lonely way, from her cabin to an abandoned
church and from the church to her cabin.
"The old forest through which I passed was composed of
solitary pines: they resembled the masts of galleys settled
in the sand. The sun was near its setting when I left
Ravenna; I heard the distant sound of a bell tolling: it was
summoning the faithful to prayer."
[Sidenote: Ancona.]
"ANCONA, 3 and 4 _October._
"Returning to Forli, I left it once again without having
seen on its crumbling ramparts the place where the Duchess
Caterina Sforza[535] declared to her enemies, who were
preparing to murder her only son, that she could still be
a mother. Pius VII., born at Cesena, was a monk in the
admirable convent of Madonna del Monte.
"Near Savignano, I passed across the ravine of a little
torrent: when I was told that I had crossed the Rubicon, it
seemed to me as though a curtain was raised and that I saw
the land of Cæsar's time. My own Rubicon is life: it is long
since I cleared its first bank.
"At Rimini, I met neither Francesca nor the other shade, her
companion, ‘ who seemed so light before the wind:'
E paion si al vento esser leggieri[536].
"Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia have brought me to Ancona
over roads and bridges left by the Augustuses. In Ancona they
are to-day keeping the Pope's[537] birthday; I hear the music
from Trajan's[538] triumphal arch: a double sovereignty of
the Eternal City."
"LORETTO, 5 and 6 _October._
"We have come to sleep at Loretto. The territory offers a
perfectly-preserved specimen of the Roman _colonia._ The
peasant farmers of Our Lady are in easy circumstances and
seem happy; the peasant-women, handsome and gay, wear a
flower in their hair. The Prelate Governor gave us his
hospitality. From the top of the steeple and the summit of
some of the eminences of the city one enjoys smiling vistas
over the plains, Ancona and the sea. In the evening we had a
storm. I took pleasure in watching the _valentia muralis_ and
the fumitory beloved by the goats bow before the wind on the
old walls. I walked under the double galleries erected after
Bramante's[539] designs. Those pavements will be beaten by
the autumn rains, those blades of grass will shiver at the
breath of the Adriatic long after I shall have passed away.
"At midnight, I had retired to a bed eight feet square,
hallowed by Bonaparte; a night-light hardly illumined the
darkness of my room; suddenly, a little door opened, and I
saw a man enter mysteriously, bringing with him a veiled
woman. I raised myself on my elbow and looked at them; he
approached my bed and lost no time, bowing down to the
ground, in offering me a thousand excuses for thus disturbing
the rest of His Excellency the Ambassador: but he was a
widower; he was a poor steward; he wished to marry his
_ragazza_, here present: unfortunately he fell somewhat short
of the dowry. He lifted up the orphan's veil: she was pale,
very pretty, and kept her eyes lowered with becoming modesty.
This family man looked as though he wanted to go away and
leave the affianced bride with me to finish her story. In
this urgent danger, I did not ask the obliging and unhappy
man, as the good knight asked the mother of the young girl
of Grenoble, if she was a maid; very much flurried, I took
some pieces of gold off the table by my bed and gave them,
to do credit to the King my master, to the _zitella_, 'whose
eyes were not swollen by dint of weeping.' She kissed my hand
with infinite gratitude. I did not utter a word, and, upon
my falling back on my immense couch, as though I wanted to
sleep, the vision of St. Anthony disappeared. I thanked my
patron saint, St. Francis, whose feast it was; I remained in
the darkness, half smiling, half regretting, and rapt in a
profound admiration of my virtues.
[Sidenote: Loretto.]
"It was thus, however, that I 'scattered gold,' that I was an
ambassador, entertained in pomp and state by the Governor of
Loretto, in the same town where Tasso was lodged in a sorry
den and where, for want of a little money, he was unable
to continue his journey. He payed his debt to Our Lady of
Loretto by his _canzone_:
Ecco fra le tempeste e i fieri venti.
"Madame de Chateaubriand made amends for my transient fortune
by climbing the steps of the Santa Chiesa[540] on her knees.
After my victory of the night, I had a better right than the
King of Saxony to deposit my wedding-coat in the Treasury of
Loretto; but I shall never forgive myself, a puny child of
the Muses, for having been so powerful and so happy in the
spot where the singer of Jerusalem had been so weak and so
miserable! Torquato, do not take me in this unusual moment
of my inconstant prosperity; riches are not my habit; see me
on my way to Namur, in my attic in London, in my infirmary
in Paris, in order to find in me some distant resemblance to
thyself!
"I have not, like Montaigne, left my portrait in silver
at Our Lady of Loretto, nor that of my daughter, _Leonora
Montana, filia unica_[541]; I have never desired to survive
myself; but still, a daughter, and one who should bear the
name of Leonora!"
"SPOLETO.
"After leaving Loretto, passing Macerata, leaving
Tolentino[542], which marks a step of Bonaparte and recalls
a treaty, I climbed the last redans of the Apennines. The
mountain table-land is moist and cultivated as a hop-garden.
To the left were the seas of Greece, to the right those of
Iberia; I could be pressed by the breath of the breezes which
I had inhaled at Athens and Granada. We descended towards
Umbria, winding down the curves of the leafless gorges, where
live suspended in clusters of woods the descendants of the
mountaineers who furnished the Romans with soldiers after the
Battle of Trasimenus[543].
"Foligno used to possess a Virgin by Raphael which is to-day
in the Vatican. 'Vene' occupies a charming position at the
source of the Clitumnus. Poussin[544] has reproduced that
warm, suave site; Byron has sung it coldly[545].
"Spoleto gave birth to the present Pope[546]. According to
my courier Giorgini, Leo XII. has placed the galley-slaves
in that town to do honour to his birthplace. Spoleto dared
to resist Hannibal[547]. It displays several works of Lippi
the Elder[548] who, nurtured in the cloister, a slave in
Barbary, a kind of Cervantes[549] among painters, died at
over sixty years of age of the poison administered to him by
the relations of Lucrezia[550], whom he was believed to have
seduced."
"CIVITA CASTELLANA.
"At Monte Lupo, Count Potoçki[551] buried himself in charming
_laurœ_; but did not the thoughts of Rome follow him there?
Did he not believe himself transported there amid 'choirs of
young girls?' And I too, like St. Jerome[552], 'have in my
time spent day and night in uttering cries, in beating my
breast, until God gave me back my peace.' _Plango me non esse
quod fuerim._
"After passing the hermitage of Monte Lupo, we began to wind
round the Somma. I had already taken that road on my first
journey from Florence to Rome over Perugia, when accompanying
a dying woman....
"By the nature of the light and a sort of vivacity of the
landscape, I should have believed myself on one of the ridges
of the Alleghany Mountains, were it not that a tall aqueduct,
surmounted by a narrow bridge[553], recalled to me a Roman
work to which the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto had put their
hands: the Americans have not yet come to those monuments
which follow upon liberty. I climbed the Somma on foot,
walking beside Clitumnian oxen which dragged Her Excellency
the Ambassadress to her triumph. A young goat-girl, as thin,
light of foot and pretty as her kid, followed me with her
little brother in that opulent country-side, asking me for
_carità_: I gave it her in memory of Madame de Beaumont, whom
these spots have forgotten.
Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day[554].
[Sidenote: Civita Castellana.]
"I saw Terni again and its cascades. A champaign planted with
olive-trees brought me to Narni; then, after passing through
Otricoli, we arrived and stopped at sad Civita Castellana. I
should much like to go to Santa Maria di Faleri to see a city
of which nothing is left but its skin, the walls; inside, it
was empty: _misère humaine à Dieu ramène._[555] Let us wait
till my grandeurs are past, and I shall return to seek out
the city of the Faliscans. Soon, from Nero's Tomb, I shall be
showing my wife the cross of St. Peter's which commands the
city of the Cæsars."
You have glanced through my diary of the road, you shall now read my
letters to Madame Récamier, interspersed, as I announced, with pages
of history. Alongside of these, you will find my dispatches. Here will
appear distinctly the two men that exist in me.
TO MADAME RÉCAMIER
"ROME, 11 _October_ 1828.
"I have crossed this beautiful country, filled with your
memory; it consoled me, without being able to take from me
the sadness of all the other memories that I encountered
at every step. I have seen again that Adriatic Sea which I
crossed more than twenty years ago, in what a disposition of
soul! At Terni, I had stopped with a poor expiring woman.
Finally I entered Rome. Its monuments, as I feared, appeared
less perfect to me after those of Athens. My memory of the
places, astonishing and cruel at once, had not allowed me to
forget a single stone....
"I have seen no one yet, except the Secretary of State,
Cardinal Bernetti[556]. To have somebody to talk to, I went
to call on Guérin[557] yesterday, at sunset: he seemed
delighted with my visit. We opened a window upon Rome and
admired the horizon. It was the only thing that had remained,
for me, such as I had seen it; either my eyes or the objects
had changed, perhaps both[558]."
[Sidenote: Leo XII.]
The first moments of my sojourn in Rome were employed in official
visits. His Holiness received me in private audience; public audiences
are not customary and cost too dear. Leo XII., a prince of tall stature
and of an air at once serene and melancholy, is dressed in a plain
white cassock; he maintains no pomp, and keeps to a poor room, almost
unfurnished. He eats scarcely anything; he lives, with his cat, on a
little _polenta._ He knows that he is very ill and sees himself waste
away with a resignation that partakes of Christian joy: he would
be quite willing, like Benedict XIV., to keep his coffin under his
bed. When I come to the door of the Pope's apartments, I am taken by
a priest through dark passages to the refuge or sanctuary of His
Holiness. He does not allow himself the time to dress, for fear of
keeping me waiting; he rises, comes towards me, will never allow me to
touch the ground with my knee to kiss the hem of his robe instead of
his slipper, and leads me by the hand to the seat placed on the right
of his own poor arm-chair. We sit down and talk.
[Illustration: Pope Leo XII.]
On Monday I go at seven o'clock in the morning to the Secretary of
State, Bernetti, a man of affairs and pleasure. He has an intimacy
with the Princess Doria; he knows his century, and has accepted the
cardinal's hat only in self-defense. He has refused to enter the
Church, is a sub-deacon only by patent, and by giving back his hat can
get married to-morrow. He believes in revolutions, and goes so far as
to think that, if he lives long enough, he has a chance of seeing the
fall of the temporal power of the Papacy.
The cardinals are divided into three factions:
The first consists of those who try to march with the times; among
these are Benvenuti[559] and Oppizoni[560]. Benvenuti has become famous
through his extirpation of brigandage and his mission to Ravenna
after Cardinal Rivarola[561]; Oppizoni, Archbishop of Bologna, has
conciliated the various shades of opinion in this industrial and
literary town so difficult to govern.
The second faction is formed of the _zelanti_, who try to go backwards:
one of their leaders is Cardinal Odescalchi[562].
Lastly, the third faction comprises the immovable men, old men who will
not or cannot go either forwards or backwards: among these old ones is
Cardinal Vidoni[563], a kind of gendarme of the Treaty of Tolentino:
tall and fat, with a red face, and a skull-cap worn on one side. When
you tell him that he has a chance of the Papacy, he replies, "_Lo santo
Spirito sarebber dunque ubriaco!_" He plants trees at Ponte-Mole, where
Constantine made the world Christian. I see those trees when I leave
Rome by the Porta del Popolo to return by the Porta Angelica. The
moment he catches sight of me at a distance, the cardinal shouts, "_Ah!
ah! Signor Ambasciadore di Francia!_" and then flies out against the
men who plant his pines. He does not follow the cardinalist etiquette;
he goes out accompanied by a single footman in a carriage to his fancy:
people forgive him everything, content to call him Madama Vidoni[564].
My ambassadorial colleagues are Count Lützow, the Austrian Ambassador,
a polished man; his wife sings well, always the same air, and is always
talking of her "little children;" the learned Baron Bunsen[565], the
Prussian Minister, and friend of Niebuhr[566] the historian (I am
in treaty with him to have the lease of his palace on the Capitol
cancelled in my favour); Prince Gagarin, the Russian Minister, exiled
among the past grandeurs of Rome by reason of banished loves: if he was
preferred by the beautiful Madame Narischkine[567], who for a moment
inhabited my hermitage at Aulnay, there must be some charm in his bad
temper; we prevail rather through our defects than our good qualities.
M. de Labrador[568], the Spanish Ambassador, a faithful man, talks
little, walks about alone, thinks a great deal, or does not think at
all, I cannot make out which.
Old Count Fuscaldo represents Naples as winter represents spring.
He has a great cardboard placard on which he studies, through his
spectacles, not the rose-fields of Pæstum, but the names of
suspicious foreigners to whose passports he must not put his visa. I
envy him his palace (the Farnese), an admirable unfinished structure,
crowned by Michael Angelo, painted by Annibale Carracci, aided by his
brother Agostino, and sheltering under its portico the sarcophagus
of Cæcilia Metella, who has lost nothing by the change of mausoleum.
Fuscaldo, ragged in mind and body, is said to have a mistress.
The Comte de Celles[569], Ambassador of the King of the Netherlands,
was married to Mademoiselle de Valence[570], who is now dead. He has
had two daughters by her, who are consequently great-grand-daughters
of Madame de Genlis. M. de Celles has remained a prefect because he
used to be one; his character is that medley of the gossip, the petty
tyrant, the recruiting sergeant and the steward which one never loves.
If you meet a man who, instead of acres, yards and feet, talks to
you of hectares, metres and decimetres, you have laid your hand on a
prefect.
[Sidenote: My ambassadorial colleagues.]
M. de Funchal, the semi-acknowledged Ambassador of Portugal, is a
little, fat man, excitable, grimacing, green as a Brazil monkey and
yellow as a Lisbon orange: he sings his negress, however, this modern
Camoëns. A great lover of music, he keeps a sort of Paganini[571] in
his pay while awaiting the restoration of his King[572].
Here and there I have caught glimpses of little sly-boots of ministers
of various little States, very much scandalized to see how cheaply I
hold my embassy: their buttoned-up, solemn and silent importance walks
close-legged and with short steps: it looks ready to burst with secrets
which it does not know.
As ambassador in England in 1822[573], sought out the places and men
that I had formerly known in London in 1793; as Ambassador to the Holy
See in 1828, I hastened to visit the palaces and ruins, to ask after
the persons whom I had seen in Rome in 1803: of the palaces and ruins I
have found many there; of the persons, few.
The Palazzo Lancellotti, formerly let to Cardinal Fesch, is now
occupied by its real owners, Prince Lancellotti[573] and the Princess
Lancellotti[574], daughter of Prince Massimo[575]. The house in which
Madame de Beaumont lived, on the Piazza d'Espagna, has disappeared. As
to Madame de Beaumont, she has remained in her last asylum and I have
prayed with Pope Leo XII. at her tomb.
Canova has also taken leave of the world[576]. I twice visited him in
his studio in 1803; he received me mallet in hand. He showed me, with
the simplest and gentlest air, his enormous statue of Bonaparte and
his Hercules and Lichas: he was anxious to persuade you that he was
able to achieve energy of form; but even then his chisel refused to dig
deep into anatomy; the nymph lingered in the flesh in spite of him, and
Hebe reappeared in the wrinkles of his old men. I have met the first
sculptor of my time upon my road; he has fallen from his scaffold, as
Goujon[577] fell from the scaffold at the Louvre: death is always there
to continue the eternal St. Bartholomew and to lay us low with its
darts.
But there is one still alive, to my great delight, and that is my old
Boquet, the oldest of the French painters in Rome. Twice had he tried
to leave his beloved _campagne_; he has gone as far as Genoa; his
heart has failed him, and he has returned to his adopted home. I have
cockered him up at the Embassy, as well as his son, for whom he has the
tenderness of a mother. I have begun our old walks over again with him;
I notice his old age only by the slowness of his steps; I feel a sort
of emotion when I mimic a little child and measure my strides by his.
We have neither of us much longer before us to see the Tiber flow.
[Sidenote: The Roman artists.]
The great artists, at their great period, led a very different life
from that which they lead now: attached to the ceilings of the Vatican,
to the walls of St. Peter's, to the partitions of the Farnese, they
worked at their master-pieces suspended with them in mid-air.
Raphael walked surrounded by his pupils, escorted by cardinals and
princes, like a senator of Ancient Rome, preceded and followed by
his clients. Charles V. sat thrice to Titian[578]. He picked up his
brush, and yielded the right to him when walking, even as Francis
I. attended Leonardo da Vinci[579] on his death-bed. Titian went in
triumph to Rome; the immense Buonarotti received him there: at the
age of ninety-nine, at Venice, Titian still held with a firm hand his
century-old brush, the conqueror of the centuries.
The Grand-duke of Tuscany[580] secretly disinterred Michael Angelo,
who had died in Rome after laying, at the age of eighty-eight, the
coping-stone of the cupola of St. Peter's. Florence, with a magnificent
funeral, expiated on the ashes of its great painter the neglect which
it had shown to the ashes of Dante, its great poet.
Velasquez[581] twice visited Italy, and Italy twice rose to greet him.
The precursor of Murillo[582] resumed the road to Spain laden with the
fruits of that Ausonian Hesperia, which had fallen into his hands: he
carried away a picture by each of the twelve most celebrated painters
of that time.
Those famous artists spent their days in adventures and feasting; they
defended towns and castles; they built churches, palaces and ramparts;
they gave and received mighty sword-thrusts, seduced women, took refuge
in the cloisters, were absolved by the popes and saved by the princes.
In an orgy described by Benvenuto Cellini we see the names figure of
Michael Angelo and of Giulio Romano[583].
To-day the scene has greatly changed; the artists in Rome live poor
and in retirement. Perhaps this life contains a poetry which is as
good as the first. A society of German painters[584] has set itself
to carry painting back to Perugino[585], in order to restore to it its
Christian inspiration. Those young neophytes of St. Luke[586] maintain
that Raphael, in his second manner, became a pagan and that his talent
degenerated. Be it so; let us be pagans like the Raphaelite Virgins;
let our talent degenerate and grow enfeebled as in the picture of the
_Transfiguration!_ This creditable error of the new sacred school is
none the less an error; it would follow that the stiffness and bad
drawing of the forms would be a proof of intuitive vision, whereas that
expression of faith which we observe in the works of the painters who
precede the Renascence comes from the fact, not that the figures are
posed squarely and motionless as sphinxes but that painting believed
as did its century. It is the thought, not the painting, of the
century that is religious; so true is this, that the Spanish School
is eminently pious in its expression, notwithstanding that it has the
grace and movement of the painting subsequent to the Renascence. Whence
does this come? From the fact that _the Spaniards are Christians._
I go to see the artists separately at work; the pupil sculptor lives
in some grotto, under the evergreen oaks of the Villa Medici, where he
finishes his marble child giving a serpent to drink out of a shell. The
painter inhabits a dilapidated house in some deserted spot; I find him
alone, taking through his open window some view of the Roman Campagna.
M. Schnetz's[587] _Brigand's Wife_ has become the mother asking of
the Madonna the cure of her son. Léopold Robert[588], returning from
Naples, passed through Rome recently, bringing with him the enchanted
scenes of that lovely clime, which he has simply stuck on to his canvas.
[Sidenote: Guérin, Horace Vernet, Quecq.]
Guérin has retired, like a sick dove, to the top of a pavilion of the
Villa Medici. He listens, with his head under his wing, to the sound of
the wind from the Tiber; when he wakes up, he makes a pen-drawing of
the Death of Priam.
Horace Vernet[589] is struggling to change his manner: will he succeed?
The snake which he twines round his neck, the dress which he affects,
the cigar which he smokes, the masks and foils with which he surrounds
himself remind one too much of the bivouac.
Who has ever heard speak of my friend M. Quecq[590], the successor
of Julius III.[591] in the cabin of Michael Angelo, Vignola[592] and
Taddeo Zuccaro[593]? And yet he painted the _Death of Vitellius_ none
too badly, in his nymphic grotto seized under distress. The waste
garden-plots are haunted by a crafty animal which M. Quecq occupies
himself in hunting: it is a fox, the great-grandson of Reynard the Fox,
first of the name, and nephew of Ysengrin the Wolf.
Pinelli[594], between two fits of drunkenness, has promised me twelve
scenes of dances, gambling and robbers. It is a pity that he starves
the big dog which lies at his door. Thorwaldsen[595] and Camuccini[596]
are the two princes of the poor artists of Rome.
Sometimes those scattered artists meet and go together, on foot, to
Subiaco. On the road, they scrawl grotesque figures on the walls of the
inn at Tivoli. One day, perhaps, some Michael Angelo will be recognised
by the charcoal drawing which he will have made on a work of Raphael's.
I would like to have been born an artist: the solitude, the
independence, the sunshine amid ruins and master-pieces would suit me.
I have no wants; a piece of bread, a pitcher of the _Aqua Felice_ would
content me. My life has been wretchedly caught in the thickets on my
road; how happy should I have been, had I been the free bird that sings
and builds its nest in those thickets!
Nicolas Poussin bought, out of his wife's dowry, a house on the Pincian
Hill, opposite another _casino_ which had belonged to Claude Gelée,
surnamed Lorraine[597]. My other fellow-countryman, Claude, also died
in the lap of the Queen of the World[598]. If Poussin reproduces the
Roman Campagna, even when the scene of his landscapes is set elsewhere,
Claude Lorraine reproduces the skies of Rome, even when he paints ships
and a sunset at sea.
Why was I not the contemporary of certain privileged creatures to whom
I feel attracted in the different centuries? But I should have had to
rise from the dead too often. Poussin and Claude Lorraine have trodden
the Capitol; kings have come there and not been worth so much as they.
De Brosses[599] there met the English Pretender[600]; I found there, in
1803, the abdicated King of Sardinia and to-day, in 1828, I see there
Napoleon's brother, the King of Westphalia. Rome in her decline offers
an asylum to the fallen powers; her ruins are a place of sanctuary for
persecuted glory and unfortunate talents.
If I had painted Roman society, a quarter of a century ago, as I
have just painted the Roman Campagna, I should be obliged to retouch
my portrait; it would no longer be like. Every generation lasts
thirty-three years, the life of Christ (Christ is the type of all
things); every generation in our western world changes its outward
aspect. Man is placed in a picture whose frame is invariable, but
whose figures move. Rabelais[601] was in this city, in 1536, with the
Cardinal du Bellay[602]; he performed the functions of house-steward to
His Eminence; he "carved and handed."
Rabelais, changed into "Friar John of the Funnels," is not of the
opinion of Montaigne, who heard scarce any bells in Rome and "fewer
than in the most insignificant town in France[603];" Rabelais, on
the contrary, hears many in the "Ringing Island" (Rome): "some of us
doubted that it was the Dodonian Kettle[604]."
[Sidenote: Old-time visitors to Rome.]
Four and forty years after Rabelais, Montaigne found the banks of the
Tiber planted, and he observed that, on the 16th of March, there were
roses and artichokes in Rome. The churches were bare, without statues
of saints, without pictures, less ornate and less beautiful than the
French churches. Montaigne was accustomed to "the cloudy vastitie and
gloomy canopies of our churches[605];" he speaks several times of St.
Peter's without describing it, insensible or indifferent as he appears
to be to the arts. In the presence of so many master-pieces, no name
offers itself to Montaigne's recollection; his memory does not speak to
him of Raphael nor of Michael Angelo, not yet sixteen years dead.
For the rest, ideas on the arts, on the philosophic influence of the
geniuses which have magnified or protected them, were not yet born.
Time does for men what space does for monuments; we judge both one and
the other correctly only at a distance and from the point of view of
perspective; viewed from too near, we do not see them; from too far, we
no longer see them.
The author of the _Essayes_ looked in Rome only for Ancient Rome:
"The buildings in this bastard Rome, which the moderns were
raising upon, or appending to, the glorious structures of
the antique world, though they sufficed enough to excite the
admiration of the present age, yet seemed to him to bear a
close resemblance to those nests which the rooks and the
swallows construct upon the roofs and walls of the churches
in France, which the Huguenots have demolished[606]."
What sort of idea had Montaigne of Ancient Rome, if he regarded St.
Peter's as a swallow's nest, hung on to the walls of the Coliseum?
The new Roman citizen by an "authenticke bull" of the year 1581
A.D.[607] had remarked that the Roman ladies wore no masks, as they did
in France; they appeared in public resplendent with pearls and precious
stones, but "they had the waist exceedingly loose, which gives them all
the appearance of being with child." The men were dressed in black,
and although they were "dukes, marquisses, counts," they "are somewhat
mean-looking[608]."
It is not singular that St. Jerome remarks the gait of the Roman women,
which gives them the appearance of being with child: _solutis genibus
fractus incessus?_
Almost every day, when I go out through the Porta Angelica, I see
a mean house not far from the Tiber with a smoky French sign-board
representing a bear; it was there that Michael Lord of Montaigne landed
on arriving at Rome, not far from the hospital which served as an
asylum to that poor madman[609], "one most fitted under the ayre of
true ancient poesie," whom Montaigne saw "in so piteous a plight" at
Ferrara, and "rather spited than pitied him[610]."
It was a memorable event when the seventeenth century deputed its
greatest Protestant poet and its most serious genius to visit great
Catholic Rome in 1638. Leaning against the Cross, holding the Old and
New Testaments in her hands, with the guilty generations driven from
Eden behind her and the redeemed generations descended from the Garden
of Olives before her, she said to the heretic born of yesterday:
"What do you want of your old mother?"
Leonora[611], the Roman, bewitched Milton[612]. Has it ever been
remarked that Leonora appears once again in the Memoirs of Madame de
Motteville[613], at the concerts of Cardinal Mazarin[614]?
[Sidenote: Milton, the Abbé Arnold.]
The order of dates brings the Abbé Arnauld[615] to Rome after Milton.
This abbé, who had borne arms, relates an anecdote which is curious
on account of the name of one of its persons, while, at the same
time, it brings before us the manners of the courtesans. The "hero of
the fable," the Duc de Guise[616], grandson of the Balafré, going in
search of his Naples adventure, passed through Rome, in 1647: he there
knew Nina Barcarola. Maison-Blanche, secretary to M. Deshayes[617],
Ambassador to Constantinople, took it into his head to become the rival
of the Duc de Guise. It was a bad business for him; they substituted
(it was at night, in an unlighted room) a hideous old hag for Nina:
"If the laughter was great on one side," says Arnauld, "the
confusion on the other side was as great, as may well be
imagined. The Adonis, extricating himself with difficulty
from his divinity's embraces, ran quite naked out of the
house, as though the devil were at his heels."
The Cardinal de Retz tells us nothing on the subject of Roman manners.
I prefer "little" Coulanges[618] and his two journeys of 1656 and
1689: he celebrates those "vineyards" and "gardens" whose mere names
possess a charm. When I walk to the Porta Pia, I meet almost all the
persons named by Coulanges: those persons? No: their grandsons and
grand-daughters!
Madame de Sévigné receives verses from Coulanges; she replies to him
from the Château des Rochers in my poor Brittany, at ten leagues from
Combourg:
"What a sad date after yours, my amiable cousin! It suits a
solitary like myself, and that of Rome suits you, whose star
is a wandering one. How gently has fortune treated you, as
you say, even though it have fastened a quarrel on you!!!"
Between Coulanges' first journey to Rome, in 1656, and his second
journey, in 1689, thirty-three years elapsed: I reckon only twenty-five
years wasted between my first journey to Rome, in 1803, and my second
journey, in 1828. If I had known Madame de Sévigné, I should have cured
her of the grief of growing old.
Spon[619], Misson[620], Dumont[621], Addison[622] successively follow
Coulanges. Spon, with Wheler, his companion, acted as my guide over the
ruins of Athens.
[Sidenote: Dumont, Addison, Labat.]
It is curious to read in Dumont how the master-pieces which we
admire were disposed at the time of his journey in 1690: one saw
at the Belvedere the statues of the Nile and the Tiber[623], the
Antinous[624], the Cleopatra, the Laocoon[625] and the supposed torso
of Hercules[626]. Dumont places in the gardens of the Vatican "the
bronze peacocks which once adorned the tomb of Scipio Africanus."
Addison travels as a "scholar[627]," his trip is summed up in classical
quotations tinged with English recollections; when passing through
Paris, he presented his poems to M. Boileau[628].
Père Labat[629] follows the author of Cato: a singular man, this
Parisian monk of the Order of Preaching Friars. A missionary to the
Antilles, a filibuster, an able mathematician, architect and soldier, a
brave gunner levelling the cannon like a grenadier, a learned critic,
who had restored the Dieppois to the possession of their original
discovery in Africa[630], he had a mind inclined to raillery and a
character to liberty. I know of no traveller who gives clearer and
more exact ideas concerning the Pontifical Government. Labat walks the
streets, goes to the processions, meddles in everything and laughs at
nearly everything.
The Preaching Friar relates how the Capuchins, at Cadiz, gave him
sheets to his bed which had been quite new since ten years, and how
he saw a St. Joseph dressed in the Spanish fashion, sword at side,
hat under its arm, powdered hair, and spectacles on nose. In Rome he
attends a mass:
"Never," he says, "have I seen so many mutilated musicians
together, nor so numerous a symphony. Those who were judges
said that there was nothing so fine. I said as much, to make
believe that I was a judge too; but, if I had not had the
honour to form one of the train of the officiating priest, I
should have left the ceremony, which lasted at least three
good hours, which seemed to me quite six."
The more I come down to the time at which I write, the more do the
usages of Rome begin to resemble the usages of to-day. In the time of
De Brosses, the Roman women wore false hair; the custom proceeded from
far back; Propertius asks his "life" why she delights in adorning her
hair:
Quid juvat ornato precedere, vita, capillo[631]?
The Gallic women, our mothers, supplied the hair of the Severinas,
Piscas, Faustinas, Sabinas. Velleda says to Eudorus, speaking of her
hair:
"'Tis my diadem, and I have kept it for thee[632]."
A head of hair was not the greatest conquest of the Romans, but it
was one of the most lasting: we often take from the tombs of women
the whole of that ornament, which has resisted the scissors of the
daughters of the night, and we look in vain for the comely brow which
it adorned. The perfumed tresses, the object of the idolatry of the
lightest of the passions, have outlived empires; death, which shatters
all chains, has been unable to break that net. To-day the Italians wear
their own hair, which the women of the people plait with coquettish
grace.
De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and
writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute
about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed
of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another
princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's
glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more[633]! Had she lived in the days of
Raphael, he would have represented her in the form of one of those
Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace,
and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model.
How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I
made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam!
[Sidenote: De Brosses, King James III.]
De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we
see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor
mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in
London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses
obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.:
"Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder[634]
is about twenty years old, the younger[635] fifteen. I have
heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder
is worth by far the more and is better loved in private;
that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels
his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from
it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was
told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of
Gaeta[636], at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of
Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to
fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up:
"'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have
to go to fetch it myself one day.'"
De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he
will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his
gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany,
lost his father[637]; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern[638]
and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited London in
1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation
of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the
crowd:
"The man who is the object of all this pomp is he whom I envy least?"
The Pretender's was not a happy union; the Countess of Albany separated
from him and fixed her residence in Rome: it was there that another
traveller, Bonstetten[639], met her; the Bernese gentleman, in his old
age, gave me to understand, at Geneva, that he had letters written in
the first youth of the Countess of Albany[640].
Alfieri saw the wife of the Pretender at Florence, and fell in love
with her for life:
"Twelve years afterwards," he says, "at the moment I am
writing, and at an age when the illusions of the passions
have ceased to operate, I feel that I become daily more
attached to her, in proportion as time destroys the
brilliancy of her fleeting beauty, the only charm which she
owes not to herself. Whenever I reflect on her virtues, my
soul is elevated, improved and tranquillized, and I dare to
affirm that the feelings of her mind, which I have uniformly
endeavoured to fortify and confirm, are not dissimilar to my
own[641]."
I have met Madame d'Albany at Florence; age had apparently produced
in her an effect contrary to that which it generally produces: time
ennobles the countenance and, when it belongs to an old race, imprints
some trace of that race on the brow which it has marked; the Countess
of Albany was thick-set, with expressionless features and a common air.
If the women in Rubens' pictures were to grow old, they would be like
Madame d'Albany at the age at which I met her. I am sorry that that
heart, "fortified and confirmed" by Alfieri, should have had need of
another support[642]. I will here recall a passage from my Letter on
Rome to M. de Fontanes:
"Do you know that I only once saw Count Alfieri in my life,
and could you guess how? I saw him laid in his bier: I was
told that he had hardly altered; his physiognomy appeared to
me to be noble and grave; death doubtless gave it an added
severity; the coffin was a little too short, and they bent
the dead man's head upon his breast, which caused him to make
a terrible movement."
Nothing is so sad as, at the end of our days, to read what we have
written in our youth: all that was in the present is now in the past.
[Sidenote: King Henry IX.]
I saw for a moment in Rome, in 1803, the Cardinal of York, Henry IX.,
that last of the Stuarts[643], then seventy-nine years of age. He had
had the weakness to accept a pension from George III.: the widow of
Charles I.[644] had in vain begged one from Cromwell. Thus the House of
Stuart took one hundred and nineteen years to die out after losing the
throne which it never recovered. Three pretenders have handed on to
one another in exile the shadow of a crown; they had intelligence and
courage: what did they lack? The hand of God.
Besides, the Stuarts consoled themselves at the sight of Rome; they
were but one slight accident the more in those vast fragments, a small
shattered column raised in the midst of a great burial-ground of ruins.
Their House, in disappearing from the world, enjoyed yet this further
comfort: it saw the fall of old Europe; the fatality clinging to the
Stuarts dragged other kings with them to the dust, among whom was Louis
XVI., whose grandfather had refused an asylum to the descendant of
Charles I.[645], and Charles X. has died in exile at the age of the
Cardinal of York, and his son and his grandson are wanderers on the
face of the earth!
Lalande's[646] Journey in Italy, in 1765 and 1766, remains the best and
the most exact as regards the Rome of the arts and of antiquities:
"I like to read the historians and poets," he says, "but one
could not read them with more pleasure than when treading the
soil which bore them, climbing the hills they describe, and
watching the flow of the rivers they have sung."
That is not so bad for an astronomer who used to eat spiders.
Duclos[647], who is almost as lean and dry as Lalande, makes this
shrewd observation:
"The plays of the different nations give a fairly correct
image of their manners. Harlequin, the valet and the
principal character in the Italian comedies, is always
represented with a great desire for eating, which comes
from an habitual need. Our own comedy valets are commonly
drunkards, which may imply debauchery, but not penury."
The declamatory admiration of Dupaty[648] offers no compensation
for the aridity of Duclos and Lalande; still it makes one feel the
presence of Rome; one feels by reflex that eloquence of descriptive
style is born under the breath of Rousseau, _spiraculum vitæ._ Dupaty
approaches the new school which was soon to substitute sentimentality,
obscurity and mannerism for the truthfulness, clarity and naturalness
of Voltaire. Nevertheless, across his affected jargon, Dupaty observes
correctly; he explains the patience of the people of Rome through the
age of their successive pontiffs:
"A pope," he says, "is always to them a dying king[649]."
Dupaty sees night approach at the Villa Borghese:
"There remains but one ray of day... it is expiring on the
brow of that Venus[650]."
Would the poets of our day say better? He takes leave of Tivoli:
"Adieu, thou valley!... I am a stranger; I do not inhabit
your beautiful Italy; I shall never behold you more: but
perhaps my children, some at least of my children, will come
to visit you one day; appear but as charming in their eyes as
you have to their father[651]."
"Some of the children" of the scholar and poet have visited Rome, and
they could have seen the last ray of sunlight expire on the brow of the
Venus Genitrix of Dupaty[652].
[Sidenote: Dupaty, Goethe.]
Scarce had Dupaty left Rome when Goethe came to take his place[653].
Did the president of the Parliament of Bordeaux ever hear speak of
Goethe? And nevertheless the name of Goethe lives on this earth whence
that of Dupaty has vanished. It is not that I love the mighty genius
of Germany; I have little sympathy for the poet of matter: I feel
Schiller, I understand Goethe. There may be great beauties in the
enthusiasm which Goethe experiences in Rome for Jupiter: excellent
critics think so; but I prefer the God of the Cross to the God of
Olympus. I look in vain for the author of _Werther_ along the banks of
the Tiber; I find him only in this phrase:
"My present life is as it were a dream of youth; we shall see
if I am fated to enjoy it, or to recognise that this too is
vain, as so many others have been."
When Napoleon's eagle allowed Rome to escape from its claws, she fell
back into the bosom of her peaceful pastors: then Byron appeared at the
crumbling walls of the Cæsars[654]; he flung his distressed imagination
over so many ruins, like a mourning cloak. Rome, thou hadst a name, he
gave thee another; that name will cling to thee; he called thee:
"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago[655]."
After that last storm of poetry, Byron was not long in dying[656]. I
might have seen Byron at Geneva, and I did not see him; I might have
seen Goethe at Weimar, and I did not see him; but I saw Madame de Staël
die, who, disdaining to live beyond her youth, passed swiftly to the
Capitol with Corinne: imperishable names, illustrious ashes, which
have associated themselves with the name and the ashes of the Eternal
City[657].
Thus have the changes in manners and persons proceeded from century to
century in Italy; but the great transformation has been worked, above
all, by our two occupations of Rome.
The "Roman Republic," established under the influence of the
Directorate, ridiculous as it was with its two "consuls" and its
"lictors" (scurvy _facchini_ taken from the populace), for all that,
made excellent innovations in the civil laws: it was from the
prefectures, invented by that "Roman Republic," that Bonaparte borrowed
the institution of his own prefects.
[Sidenote: The "Roman Republic."]
We brought to Rome the germ of an administration which had no
existence; Rome, become the chief town of the Department of the Tiber,
was superlatively well ruled. Its mortgage system it owes to us. The
suppression of the convents, the sale of ecclesiastical property
sanctioned by Pius VII. have diminished the faith in the permanence of
the consecration of religious things. The famous _Index_, which still
makes a little noise on our side of the Alps, makes none at all in
Rome: for a few _bajocchi_ you obtain permission to read the forbidden
work with a safe conscience. The _Index_ is one of those works which
remain as evidences of the old times in the midst of the new. In the
Republics of Rome and Athens, were not the titles of "King," the names
of the great families adhering to the Monarchy respectfully preserved?
It is only the French who foolishly take offense at their tombs and
their annals, who hurl down the crosses, devastate the churches, out of
grudge against the clergy of the Year of Grace 1000 or 1100. There is
nothing more puerile or more stupid than those reminiscent outrages;
nothing which would tend more to the belief that we are incapable of
anything serious whatsoever, that the true principles of liberty will
for ever remain unknown to us. Far from despising the past, we ought,
as all nations do, to treat it as a venerable greybeard, who sits by
our fireside telling what he has seen: what harm can he do us? He
instructs and amuses us with his stories, his ideas, his language, his
manners, his habits of former days; but he is without strength, and
his hands are weak and trembling. Can it be that we are afraid of that
contemporary of our fathers, who would already be with them in the
tomb, if he could die, and who has no authority, save that of their
dust?
The French, passing through Rome, left their principles there: that is
what always happens when the conquest is accomplished by a people more
advanced in civilization than the people which undergoes that conquest,
as witness the Greeks in Asia under Alexander, as witness the French
in Europe under Napoleon. Bonaparte, when snatching sons from their
mothers, when forcing the Italian nobility to leave its palaces and
bear arms, was hastening the transformation of the national spirit.
As to the physiognomy of Roman society, on days of concerts or
balls one might have thought himself in Paris. The Altieris[658],
the Palestrinas[659], the Zagarolos[660], the Del Dragos[661], the
Lantes[662], the Lozzanos would not have felt strangers in the
drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: still, some of those women
wear a certain frightened air which has, I believe, to do with the
climate. The charming Falconieri, for instance, always stands near a
door, ready to fly to the Monte Mario if you look at her: the Villa
Millini[663] belongs to her; a novel placed in that abandoned lodge,
under the cypress trees, in view of the sea, would have its value.
But, whatever the changes in manners and persons, from century to
century, in Italy may be, we observe a habit of greatness there which
we paltry barbarians cannot approach. There still remains Roman blood
in Rome and the traditions of the masters of the world. When one sees
foreigners crammed into small new houses at the Porta del Popolo, or
lodged in palaces which they have divided into boxes and pierced with
chimneys, it is as though one saw rats scratching at the feet of the
monuments of Apollodorus[664] and Michael Angelo and gnawing holes into
the pyramids.
To-day, the Roman nobles, ruined by the Revolution, immure themselves
within their palaces, live parsimoniously and have become their own
stewards. When you have the good fortune, which happens very rarely,
to be received by them in the evening, you pass through vast halls,
unfurnished and scarcely lighted, along which antique statues stand out
white against the thick shadow, like phantoms or exhumed corpses. At
the end of those halls, the ragged footman who leads the way ushers you
into a sort of gynecæum: around a table are seated three or four, old
or young, ill-dressed women, plying their needles at fancy-work, by the
light of a lamp, and exchanging a few words with a father, a brother,
a husband recumbent in the dim background on tattered arm-chairs.
Nevertheless, there is something, I know not what, fine, sovereign,
appertaining to high breeding, in this assemblage entrenched behind its
master-pieces and giving a first impression of a witches' Sabbath. The
species of the _cicisbei_ is extinct, although a few shawl-bearing and
footwarmer-carrying abbés survive; here and there, a cardinal still
fixes himself in a woman's house like a sofa.
Nepotism and pontifical scandals are no longer possible, just as kings
can no longer keep titular and honoured mistresses. Nowadays, when
politics and the tragic adventures of love have ceased to fill the
lives of the great ladies of Rome, how do they spend their time in the
interior of their homes? It would be interesting to get to the bottom
of these new manners; if I stay in Rome, I shall make it my business to
do so.
*
I visited Tivoli in 1803; at that time I said, in a narrative which was
printed then:
"This spot is suited to reflection and day-dreams; I go back
into my past life; I feel the burden of the present; I seek
to penetrate the future; where shall I be, what shall I be
doing and what shall I be _twenty years hence_?"
Twenty years! It seemed a century to me; I thought myself certain of
inhabiting my tomb before that century had lapsed. And it is not I that
have passed away, but the master of the world and his empire that have
sped!
Almost all the ancient and modern travellers saw in the Roman Campagna
only what they call "its horror and its nudity." Montaigne himself, who
assuredly was not lacking in imagination, says:
"Far away on the left lay the Apennines; the aspect of the
foreground was exceedingly unpleasant to the eye, hilly, with
every here and there deep marshes... the country ...open,
barren, and altogether destitute of trees, and almost equally
so of houses[665]."
The Protestant Milton casts upon the Roman Campagna a look as dry and
barren as his faith. Lalande and the Président De Brosses are as blind
as Milton. Only in M. de Bonstetten's _Voyage sur la scène des six
derniers livres de l'Énéide_, published at Geneva in 1804, one year
after my Letter to M. de Fontanes (printed in the _Mercure_ at the end
of the year 1803), do we find any true sensations of that admirable
solitude, and even they are mingled with objurgations:
"What a pleasure to read Virgil under the sky of Æneas
and, so to speak, in the presence of the gods of Homer!" says
M. de Bonstetten. "What a profound solitude in these deserts
in which we behold only the sea, ruined woods, trees, great
meadows, and not one inhabitant! In a vast extent of country,
I saw but a single house, and that house was near me, on the
summit of a hill. I went to it, it had no door; I climbed a
stair-case, I entered a sort of chamber, a bird of prey had
built its nest there....
"I stood some time at the window of that abandoned house. I
saw at my feet that declivity, so rich and so magnificent in
Pliny's day, now uncultivated."
Since my description of the Roman Campagna, they have passed from
disparagement to enthusiasm. The English and French travellers who have
followed me have marked all their steps from the Storta to Rome by
ecstasies. M. de Tournon[666], in his _Études statistiques_, enters the
road of admiration which I had the happiness to open:
"The Roman Campagna," he says, "unfolds more distinctly,
at each step, the serious beauty of its immense lines,
its numerous plains and its fine frame of mountains. Its
monotonous grandeur impresses and elevates the thought."
I have no need to mention M. Simond[667], whose journey reads like a
wager, so much does he amuse himself by looking at Rome upside down. I
was at Geneva when he died almost suddenly. A farmer, he had just cut
his hay and gaily reaped his first grain, when he went to join his mown
grass and his gathered harvest.
We have a few letters of the great landscape painters; Poussin and
Claude Lorraine do not say a word about the Roman Campagna. But,
if their pen is silent, their brush speaks; the _Agro Romano_ was a
mysterious source of beauty, at which they drew, while hiding it by a
sort of avarice of genius and as it were in fear, lest it should be
profaned by the vulgar. Strange that it should be French eyes that best
saw the light of Italy.
[Sidenote: Vandalism in the Campagna.]
I have read again my Letter to M. de Fontanes on Rome, written five
and twenty years ago, and I confess that I have found it so exact
that it would be impossible for me to take away or add a word to it.
A foreign company has come this winter (1829) to propose to clear the
Roman Campagna: ah, gentlemen, spare us your cottages and your English
gardens on the Janiculum! If ever they were to disfigure the waste
lands against which the ploughshare of Cincinnatus struck, on which
all the grasses bend before the breath of the centuries, I should
fly Rome, never to set foot in it again. Go to drag your improved
ploughs elsewhere; here the earth grows and must grow only tombs. The
cardinals have closed their ears to the calculations of the commercial
adventurers hastening to demolish the ruins of Tusculum, which they
mistake for the castles of aristocrats: they would have made lime with
the marble of the sarcophagus of Æmilius Paulus, even as they have
made water-shoots with the lead of the coffins of our ancestors. The
Sacred College clings to the past; besides, it has been proved, to
the great confusion of the economists, that the Roman Campagna paid
the owners five per cent, as pasture-land and that it would not yield
more than one and a half in corn. It is not through idleness, but
through practical interest, that the cultivator of the plains gives the
preference to _pastorizia_ over _maggesi._ The produce of an acre in
the Roman territory is almost equal to the produce of the same measure
in the best French departments: to convince one's self of that, one has
but to read the work of Monsignore Nicolaï[668].
*
I have told you that, at first, I had a sense of weariness, at the
commencement of my second journey to Rome, and that I ended by
recovering under the influence of the ruins and the sun. I was still
under my first impression when, on the 3rd of November 1828, I wrote to
M. Villemain:
"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman
solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I
was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than
my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as
they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find
consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all
these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as
a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past,
I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that
lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left,
I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used
to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo
my honours, overcome by the _sirocco_ and stabbed by the
_tramontane._ There you have all my life, save only a tomb
which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great
attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid
them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left
young have become old, and the ruins have become young again:
what would you have one do here?
"Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to
my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled
all my engagements towards my country and my friends. Once
you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I
shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon
carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to
bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public
liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must
now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to
my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I
have been admirably received, I have found a government full
of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy;
but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than
the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it
is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one
will find there.
"I thank you for being so good as to speak to me of your
labours. You will write a work which will be worthy of you
and increase your reputation[669]. If you have any researches
to make here, have the kindness to tell me of them: a rummage
in the Vatican might furnish you with treasures. Alas, I saw
but too much of that poor M. Thierry[670]! I assure you that
I am haunted by his memory: so young, so full of love for his
work, and to go! And, as always happens with real merit, his
mind was improving and reason, with him, taking the place
of system: I still hope for a miracle. I have written on
his behalf; I have not even had an answer. I have been more
fortunate for you, and a letter from M. de Martignac gives me
to hope at last that justice, although tardy and incomplete,
will be done you. I no longer live, monsieur, except for my
friends; you must permit me to include yourself in the number
of those who are still left to me.
"I remain, monsieur, with as much sincerity as admiration,
"Your most devoted servant[671],
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
[Sidenote: Augustin Thierry.]
TO MADAME RÉCAMIER
"ROME, _Saturday_, 8 _November_ 1832.
"M. de La Ferronnays informs me of the surrender of
Varna[672], which I knew. I believe that I once told you that
the whole question seemed to me to lie in the fall of that
place, and that the Grand Turk would not dream of peace until
the Russians had done what they did not do in their earlier
wars. Our newspapers have been wretchedly Turcophile these
last times. How can they ever have been able to forget the
noble cause of Greece and to fall into admiration before the
barbarians who spread slavery and pestilence over the country
of great men and the fairest portion of Europe? That is what
we are, we French: a trifle of personal discontent makes us
forget our principles and the most generous sentiments. The
Turks, when beaten, will perhaps arouse some pity in me; the
Turks victorious would fill me with horror.
"So my friend M. de La Ferronnays remains in power. I flatter
myself that my determination to follow him has got rid of
the competitors for his office. But, after all, I shall have
to leave this; I now long only to return to my solitude and
to quit the career of politics. I thirst for independence in
my last years. New generations have arisen, they will find
the public liberty established for which I have fought so
hard: let them then lay hold of, but let them not misuse my
inheritance, and let me go to die in peace near you.
"I went two days ago to walk in the grounds of the Villa
Panfili: what a beautiful solitude!"
"ROME, _Saturday_, 15 _November._
"There has been a first ball at Torlonia's[673]. I met all
the English on earth there; I thought myself still Ambassador
in London. The Englishwomen appear to me to be _figurantes_
who are engaged to dance in the winter in Paris, Milan,
Rome, Naples, and who return to London in the spring, when
their engagements have expired. The hoppings on the ruins of
the Capitol, the uniform manners which 'great' society puts
on everywhere are very strange things: if even I had the
resource of escape into the deserts of Rome!
"What is really deplorable here, what clashes with the nature
of the place is that multitude of insipid Englishwomen and
frivolous dandies who, holding each other linked by the arm,
as the bats do by the wing, parade their eccentricity, their
boredom and their insolence at your receptions, and make
themselves at home in your house as at an inn. This vagrant
and swaggering Great Britain makes for your seats at public
solemnities, and boxes with you to turn you out of them: all
day long it hastily swallows pictures and ruins and, in the
evening, it comes to swallow cakes and ices at your parties,
feeling that it confers a great honour upon you in doing so.
I do not know how an ambassador can endure those unmannerly
guests, nor why he does not show them his door."
[Sidenote: My Memorandum on the East.]
I have spoken in the _Congrès de Vérone_ of the existence of my
Memorandum on Eastern Affairs. When I sent it, in 1828, to M. le Comte
de La Ferronnays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the world was
not what it is: in France, the Legitimacy existed; in Russia, Poland
had not perished; Spain was still Bourbon; England had not yet the
honour of protecting us. Many things, therefore, have become old in
this Memorandum: to-day, my foreign policy would, in many respects,
be different; twelve years have altered diplomatic relations, but
the basis of the truths has remained the same. I have inserted
this Memorandum in its entirety in order once more to revenge the
Restoration for the absurd reproaches which continue to be obstinately
addressed to it, in spite of the evidence of facts. The Restoration,
so soon as it had chosen its ministers from among its friends, never
ceased to occupy itself with the independence and honour of France:
it protested against the Treaties of Vienna; it demanded protective
frontiers, not for the vain-glory of pushing itself to the banks of
the Rhine, but to ensure its safety; it laughed when they talked to it
of the equilibrium of Europe, an equilibrium so unjustly broken where
it was concerned: that was why it first wished to cover itself on the
south, because it had pleased the others to disarm it on the north. At
Navarino, it recovered a navy and the liberty of Greece; the Eastern
Question did not take it unawares.
I have kept three opinions on the East from the time at which I wrote
that Memorandum:
First, if Turkey in Europe is to be broken up, we must have a share
in that distribution in the shape of an increase of territory on our
frontiers and the ownership of some military point in the Archipelago.
To compare the partition of Turkey with the partition of Poland is an
absurdity.
Secondly, to regard Turkey, as it was during the reign of Francis I.,
as a useful power to our policy, is to do away with three centuries of
history.
Thirdly, to pretend to civilize Turkey by giving her steamboats and
railways, by disciplining her armies, by teaching her to work her
fleets, is not to extend civilization to the East, but to introduce
barbarism into the West. Ibrahims to come would be able to carry back
the future to the time of Charles the Hammer or to the time of the
Siege of Vienna, when Europe was saved by that heroic Poland on whom
weighs the ingratitude of kings.
I must remark that I was the only one, with Benjamin Constant, to point
out the improvidence of the Christian governments: a people whose
social order is based upon slavery and polygamy is a people that must
be sent back to the steppes of the Mongols.
In the last result, Turkey in Europe, become a vassal of Russia by
virtue of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi[674], no longer exists:
if the question is to be decided at once, which I doubt, it would
perhaps be better that an independent empire should have its seat
in Constantinople and form Greece into a whole. Is that possible? I
do not know. As for Mehemet Ali[675], the relentless tax-gatherer
and custom-house officer, Egypt, in so far as French interests are
concerned, is better guarded by him than she would be by the English.
But here am I exerting myself to demonstrate the honour of the
Restoration: why, who troubles himself about what it has done, who,
above all, will trouble himself about it some years hence? It would be
as well worth my while to become excited over the interests of Tyre and
Ecbatana: that past world is gone, never to return. After Alexander,
the Roman power commenced; after Cæsar, Christianity changed the world;
after Charlemagne, the feudal night gave birth to a new society; after
Napoleon, nothing: we see no empire come, nor religion, nor barbarians.
Civilization has risen to its highest level, but it is a material
civilization, an unfruitful civilization, which can produce nothing,
since life can be given only by moral means; we can arrive at the
creation of peoples only by the roads of Heaven: railways will lead us
only more swiftly to the abyss.
You now have the prolegomena which seemed to me necessary for the
understanding of the Memorandum which follows, and which is also to be
found at the Foreign Office.
[Sidenote: To M. de La Ferronnays.]
LETTER TO M. LE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS
"ROME, 30 _November_ 1828.
"In your private letter of the 10th of November, my noble
friend, you said:
"'I send you a brief summary of our political situation,
and you will be kind enough to let me, in return, have your
ideas, which are always so useful to know in matters of this
sort.'
"Your friendship, noble count, judges me too indulgently; I
do not in the least believe that I shall be enlightening you
by sending you the Memorandum annexed: I merely obey you."
MEMORANDUM
PART I.
"At the distance at which I am placed from the theatre of
events, and in my almost total ignorance of the state of
negociations, I can scarcely reason fitly. Nevertheless, as I
have long had a definite system touching the foreign policy
of France, as I was, so to speak, the first to call for the
emancipation of Greece, I readily, noble count, submit my
ideas to your judgment.
"There was as yet no question of the Treaty of the 6th of
July[676], when I published my Note on Greece[677]. That
Note contained the germ of the treaty: I proposed to the
five Great Powers of Europe to address a collective dispatch
to the Divan imperatively to demand the cessation of all
hostility between the Porte and the Hellenes. In case of
refusal, the five Powers were to declare that they recognised
the independence of the Greek Government and that they would
receive the representatives of that Government.
"This Note was read by the several Cabinets. The position
which I had occupied as Minister for Foreign Affairs lent
some importance to my opinion: what is singular is that
Prince Metternich showed himself less opposed to my Note than
Mr. Canning.
"The latter, with whom I had had fairly intimate relations,
was an orator rather than a great politician, a man of
talent rather than a statesman. He entertained a certain
jealousy of success in general, and especially of that of
France. When the Parliamentary Opposition either wounded
or exalted his self-esteem, he flung himself into false
measures, he launched out into sarcasm or boasting. It was
thus that, after the Spanish War, he rejected the demand for
intervention, which I had extracted with so much difficulty
from the Cabinet of Madrid, for the settlement of affairs
across the Atlantic: the secret reason was that he had
not himself made that demand, and he refused to see that,
even according to his system (always presuming that he had
one), England, represented in a general congress, would in
no way be bound by the acts of that congress, and would
always remain free to act separately. It was thus again that
Mr. Canning moved troops into Portugal, not to defend a
Charter at which he was the first to laugh, but because the
Opposition reproached him with the presence of our soldiers
in Spain and he wanted to be able to say that the British
Army was occupying Lisbon as the French Army occupied Cadiz.
Lastly, it was thus that he signed the Treaty of the 6th of
July against his private opinion, against the opinion of his
country, which was unfavourable to the cause of the Greeks.
If he agreed to that treaty, it was solely because he was
afraid of seeing us take the initiative in the question with
Russia and gain the glory of a generous resolution alone.
That minister, who, after all, will leave a great reputation,
also thought that he was hindering Russia's movements by this
very treaty; nevertheless, it was clear that the text of the
instrument in no way tied down the Emperor Nicholas and in no
way obliged him to waive a war of his own with Turkey.
"The Treaty of the 6th of July is a crude document
hurriedly drafted, devoid of all foresight and teeming with
contradictory provisions.
"In my Note on Greece, I presupposed the adhesion of the five
Great Powers; as Austria and Prussia have kept aloof, their
neutrality leaves them free, according to events, to declare
for or against either of the belligerent parties.
"There is no longer any question of going back to the past,
we must take things as they are. All that the governments
are obliged to do is to make the most of the facts when they
are accomplished. Let us therefore examine those facts.
"We are occupying the Morea[678], the towns on that peninsula
have fallen into our hands. So much for what concerns
ourselves.
"Varna is taken, Varna becomes an outpost at seventy hours'
march from Constantinople. The Dardanelles are blockaded;
the Russians will, in the course of the winter, seize
Silistria[679] and some other fortresses; numbers of recruits
will arrive. In the early days of spring, all will move for
a decisive campaign; in Asia, General Paskevitch[680] has
invaded three pashalics, he commands the sources of the
Euphrates and threatens the road to Erzeroum. So much for
what concerns Russia.
"Would the Emperor Nicholas have done better to undertake a
winter campaign in Europe? I think so, if it were possible.
By marching on Constantinople, he would have cut the Gordian
knot and put an end to all diplomatic intrigue; people
embrace the side of success; the way to secure allies is to
be victorious.
"As for Turkey, it has been made clear to me that she would
have declared war on us if Russia had failed before Varna.
Will she have the good sense to-day to open up negociations
with England and France, if only to rid herself of both?
Austria would gladly advise her to adopt that course; but
it is difficult to foresee the conduct of a race of men who
have not European ideas. At the same time cunning as slaves
and haughty as tyrants, with them anger is never tempered
by anything save fear. Sultan Mahmud II.[681] appears, in
some respects, to be a superior prince to the last sultans;
he has, above all, political courage; but has he personal
courage? He is content to hold reviews in the suburbs of his
capital, and he lets himself be entreated by the magnates not
to go even so far as Adrianople. The mob of Constantinople
would be better held in check by triumphs than by the
presence of its master.
"Let us, however, admit that the Divan consents to a
parley on the basis of the Treaty of the 6th of July. The
negociation would be a very intricate one; even if one had
only to fix the limits of Greece, there would be no end to
it. Where shall those limits be placed on the Continent? How
many islands shall be restored to liberty? Shall Samos, which
has so gallantly defended its independence, be abandoned? Let
us look further, suppose the conference to be established:
will it paralyze the armies of the Emperor Nicholas? While
the plenipotentiaries of the Turks and of the three Allied
Powers are treating in the Archipelago, every step of the
invading forces in Bulgaria will change the state of the
question. If the Russians were repulsed, the Turks would
break up the conference; if the Russians arrived at the gates
of Constantinople, there would be a fine question of the
independence of the Morea! The Hellenes would need neither
protectors nor negociators.
"Therefore, to persuade the Divan to apply itself to the
Treaty of the 6th of July is to postpone the difficulty, not
to solve it. The coincidence of the emancipation of Greece
and the signing of peace between the Turks and Russians is,
in my opinion, necessary to extricate the Cabinets of Europe
from their present embarrassment.
"What conditions will the Emperor Nicholas lay down for peace?
"In his manifesto, he declares that he waives conquests, but
he speaks of indemnities for the cost of the war: that is
vague and may lead to much.
"Will the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, pretending to regularize
the Treaties of Akerman[682] and Jassy[683] demand (1) the
complete independence of the two principalities; (2) liberty
of commerce in the Black Sea, not only for Russia, but the
other nations; (3) the repayment of the sums expended in this
last campaign?
"Innumerable difficulties present themselves against the
conclusion of a peace on these bases.
"If Russia desires to give the principalities sovereigns of
her choosing, Austria will look upon Moldavia and Wallachia
as two Russian provinces and will oppose this political
transaction.
"Will Moldavia and Wallachia fall under the sway of a prince
who shall be independent of any Great Power, or of a prince
installed under the protectorate of several sovereigns?
"In that case, Nicholas would prefer the hospodars appointed
by Mahmud, for the principalities, continuing to be Turkish,
would remain vulnerable to the Russian armies.
[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: part I.]
"Liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, the opening of that
sea to all the fleets of Europe and America would shake the
power of the Porte to its foundations. To grant the right of
passage of warships under Constantinople is, with reference
to the geography of the Ottoman Empire, as though one were to
recognise the right of foreign armies to cross France at all
times along the walls of Paris.
"Lastly, where would Turkey find the money to pay the costs
of the campaign? The so-called treasure of the Sultans is
an antiquated fable. The provinces conquered beyond the
Caucasus might, it is true, be ceded as security for the sum
demanded: of the two Russian armies, one, in Europe, appears
to me to be entrusted with the interests of Nicholas' honour;
the other, in Asia, with his pecuniary interests. But, if
Nicholas did not consider himself bound by the declarations
of his manifesto, would England with an indifferent eye see
the Muscovite soldier advancing along the road to India? Was
she not alarmed already in 1827, when he took one more step
forward in the Persian Empire?
"If the double difficulty arising from the carrying into
effect of the treaty and from the pertinence of the
conditions of a peace between Turkey and Russia were
to render useless the efforts made to overcome so many
obstacles; if a second campaign were to open in the spring,
would the powers of Europe take sides in the quarrel? What
part ought France to play? This is what I propose to examine
in the second part of this Note."
PART II.
"Austria and England have interests in common, they are
naturally allied through their foreign policy, whatever
otherwise may be the different forms of their governments and
the opposite maxims that regulate their home policy. Both
are hostile to and jealous of Russia, both desire to check
the progress of that Power; they will perhaps unite in an
extreme case, but they feel that, if Russia does not allow
herself to be overawed, she can defy that union, which is
more formidable in appearance than in reality.
"Austria has nothing to ask from England; the latter, on
her side, is of no use to Austria except to supply her with
money. Now, England, crushed under the weight of her debt,
has no money left to lend to anybody. Austria, if abandoned
to her own resources, would not, in the present state of her
finances, be able to set large armies in motion, especially
as she is obliged to watch over Italy and to stand on her
guard on the frontiers of Poland and Prussia. The present
position of the Russian troops would permit them to enter
Vienna earlier than Constantinople.
"What can the English do against Russia? Close the Baltic,
cease buying hemp and timber in the markets of the North,
destroy Admiral van Heiden's[684] fleet in the Mediterranean,
throw a few engineers and a few soldiers into Constantinople,
stock that capital with food-stuffs and munitions of war,
penetrate into the Black Sea, blockade the ports of the
Crimea, deprive the Russian troops in the field of the
assistance of their commercial and naval fleets?
"Suppose all this to be accomplished (which, to begin with,
could not be done without considerable expenditure, for
which there would be neither compensation nor guarantee),
Nicholas would still have his huge land force. An attack on
the part of Austria and England against the Cross on behalf
of the Crescent would increase the popularity in Russia of
what is already a national and religious war. Wars of this
nature are waged without money, it is they which, by force
of public opinion, hurl nations one upon the other. If the
popes begin to evangelize in St. Petersburg, as the ulemas
are mohammedanizing in Constantinople, they will find more
soldiers than they want; they would stand a greater chance of
success than their adversaries in this appeal to the passions
and beliefs of men. Invasions which descend from north to
south are much more rapid and much more irresistible than
those which climb from south to north: the propensity of the
populations inclines them to flow towards beautiful climates.
[Sidenote: Memorandum.]
"Would Prussia remain an indifferent spectatress of this
great struggle, if Austria and England declared for Turkey?
There is no reason to think so.
"There exists, no doubt, in the Cabinet of Berlin a party
which hates and fears the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; but this
party, which, moreover, is beginning to grow old, finds an
obstacle in the anti-Austrian party, and especially in the
domestic affections.
"Family ties, generally weak among sovereigns, are very
strong in the Prussian Family: King Frederic William III.
fondly loves his daughter, the present Empress of Russia,
and he likes to think that his grandson[685] will ascend
the throne of Peter the Great[686]; Princes Frederic,
William, Charles, Henry Albert are also greatly attached
to their sister Alexandra; the Hereditary Prince Royal saw
no objection recently to declaring in Rome that he was a
'Turk-eater.'
"By thus analyzing the interests, we perceive that France
is in an admirable political position: she can become the
arbitress of that great contest; she can, at her pleasure,
maintain neutrality, or declare for a side, according to
the time and circumstances. If she were ever obliged to go
to that extremity, if her counsels were not heard, if the
nobility and moderation of her conduct did not secure for her
the peace which she desires for herself and for others, then,
in the necessity in which she would find herself of taking
up arms, all her interests would incline her to the side of
Russia.
"If an alliance were formed between Austria and England
against Russia, what benefit would France derive from her
adhesion to that alliance?
"Would England lend ships to France?
"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in
Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if
necessary, the naval forces of Russia.
"Would England furnish us with subsidies?
"England has no money; France has more than she, and
the French have no need to be in the pay of the British
Parliament.
"Would England assist us with soldiers and arms?
"France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers.
"Would England assure us an increase of insular or
continental territory?
"Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on
Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents
on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's
Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to
attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our
assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled?
"Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against
foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England,
besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations
cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice
monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she
proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the
same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she
sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused
a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be
seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights
of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she
is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to
the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her
ports.
"Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects
of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go
in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not
on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a
hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or
Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect
the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople
to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire
grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on
the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human
affairs succeeds.
[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: Part II.]
"Let us admit, nevertheless, that, against all likelihood,
our efforts were crowned with complete success in this
unnatural Triple Alliance, let us suppose that Prussia
remained neutral during all this strife, as well as the
Netherlands, and that, free to move our forces abroad, we
were not obliged to fight within sixty leagues of Paris:
well, what advantage should we derive from our crusade for
the deliverance of the tomb of Mahomet? Knights of the
Turks, we should return from the Levant with a fur-lined
coat-of-honour; we should have the glory of having thrown
away a thousand million francs and two hundred thousand men
to calm the terrors of Austria, to satisfy the jealousies
of England, to keep up in the fairest portion of the world
the plague and barbarism attached to the Ottoman Empire.
Austria would perhaps have enlarged her States on the
side of Wallachia and Moldavia, and England would perhaps
have obtained some commercial privileges from the Porte,
privileges of little interest to us if we shared in them,
as we have neither so large a number of merchant ships as
the English, nor so many manufactured goods to spread in
the Levant. We should be completely duped by this Triple
Alliance, which might fail in its object and which, if it
achieved it, would achieve it only at our expense.
"But, if England has no direct means of being of use to us,
could she not at least act upon the Cabinet of Vienna and
engage Austrians a compensation for the sacrifices we should
make for her, to allow us to recover our old departments on
the left bank of the Rhine?
"No: Austria and England will always oppose any such
concession; Russia alone can make it to us, as we shall see
hereafter. Austria detests and fears us, even more than she
hates and dreads Russia; as a choice of evils, she would
prefer to see the latter Power expand on the side of Bulgaria
rather than France on the side of Bavaria.
"But would the independence of Europe be threatened if the
Tsars made Constantinople the capital of their Empire?
"It is necessary to explain what is understood by the
independence of Europe: do we mean to say that, all
equilibrium being shattered, Russia, after making the
conquest of Turkey in Europe, would seize Austria, subjugate
Germany and Prussia, and end by subjecting France?
"First, any empire which expands without measure loses some
of its strength; it almost always becomes divided; soon we
should see two or three Russias hostile one to the other.
"Next, does the equilibrium of Europe exist for France since
the last treaties?
"England has retained almost all the conquests which she has
made in the colonies of three quarters of the globe during
the War of the Revolution; in Europe she has gained Malta and
the Ionian Islands; even her Electorate of Hanover she has
inflated into a kingdom and enlarged by a few baronies.
"Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland,
some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy.
She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that
province has not devolved upon France, and it has become
a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against
ourselves.
"Prussia has enlarged herself by the Duchy or Palatinate of
Posen, a fragment of Saxony and the chief circles of the
Rhine; her advance-post is on our own territory, at ten days'
march from our capital.
"Russia has recovered Finland and settled down on the banks
of the Vistula.
"And what have we gained in all these partitions? We have
been despoiled of our colonies; not even our old soil has
been respected: Landau detached from France, Hüningen
demolished leave a breach of more than fifty leagues in our
frontiers; the little State of Sardinia has not blushed to
clothe herself in a few shreds stolen from the Empire of
Napoleon and the Kingdom of Louis the Great.
"In this position, what interest have we to safeguard Austria
and England against the victories of Russia? If the latter
were to extend towards the East and alarm the Cabinet of
Vienna, should we be in any danger? Have we received so much
consideration that we should be so sensible to the anxieties
of our enemies? England and Austria have always been and will
always be France's natural adversaries; we should see them
cheerfully join forces with Russia to-morrow, if it were a
question of fighting us and plundering us.
"Let us not forget that, while we should be taking up arms
for the so-called safety of Europe, imperilled by the
supposed ambition of Nicholas, it would probably happen that
Austria, less chivalrous and more rapacious than we, would
listen to the proposals of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; an
abrupt and sudden change of policy costs her little. With the
consent of Russia, she would seize Bosnia and Servia, leaving
to us the satisfaction of exerting ourselves for Mahmud.
"France is already in a state of semi-hostility with the
Turks; she alone has already spent many millions and
endangered twenty thousand soldiers in the cause of Greece.
England would lose only a few words by betraying the
principles of the Treaty of the 6th of July; France would
lose honour, men and money. Our expedition would no longer be
other than a real political miscarriage.
[Sidenote: Memorandum.]
"But, if we do not unite with Austria and England, will
the Emperor Nicholas then go to Constantinople? Will the
equilibrium of Europe then be shattered?
"Let us, to repeat once again, leave these feigned or
genuine fears to England and Austria. That the former should
fear to see Russia seize upon the trade of the Levant and
become a naval Power matters little to us. Is it, then, so
necessary that Great Britain should remain in possession of
the monopoly of the seas, that we should spill French blood
to preserve the sceptre of the ocean for the destroyer of
our colonies, our fleets and our commerce? Is the Legitimate
Dynasty to move armies in order to protect the House which
coalesces with the illegitimacy and which is, perhaps,
reserving for times of discord the means which it believes
itself to possess to disturb France? A fine equilibrium for
us is that of Europe, when all the Powers, as I have already
shown, have increased their own bulk and, with one accord,
diminished the weight of France! Let them return within their
old boundaries, as we have done; then we shall fly to the aid
of their independence, if that independence be threatened.
They made no scruples to join hands with Russia, in order to
dismember us and incorporate the fruit of our victories; let
them then suffer us to-day to draw closer the bonds formed
between us and that same Russia, in order to recover suitable
boundaries and restore the real balance of Europe!
"Besides, if the Emperor Nicholas were desirous and able to
go to sign a peace in Constantinople, would the destruction
of the Ottoman Empire be the strict consequence of that fact?
Peace has been signed under arms in Vienna, in Berlin, in
Paris; almost all the capitals of Europe have been taken in
these latter days: have Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain
perished? Twice have the Cossacks and the Pandoors come to
camp in the court-yard of the Louvre; the Kingdom of Henry
IV. has been under military occupation during three years;
and yet we should be quite touched to see the Cossacks in
possession of the Seraglio, and we should show for the
honour of barbarism the susceptibility which we did not
display for the honour of civilization and for our own
country! Let the pride of the Porte be humbled, and then
perhaps it will be obliged to recognise some of the rights of
humanity which it outrages!
"I have now made evident whither I am tending and the
consequence which I am preparing to deduce from all the
foregoing. Here is this consequence:
"If the belligerent Powers cannot come to an arrangement
during the winter, if the rest of Europe think itself bound
in the spring to intervene in the quarrel, if different
alliances be propounded, if France be absolutely obliged to
choose between those alliances, if events force her to emerge
from her neutrality, all her interests must needs determine
her to unite by preference with Russia: a combination which
is all the safer inasmuch as it would be easy, with the offer
of certain advantages, to make Prussia enter into it.
"There is a sympathy between Russia and France; the latter
has almost civilized the former in the upper classes of
society; she has given her her language and her manners.
Placed at the two extremities of Europe, France and Russia
have no contiguous frontiers; they have no battle-field on
which they can meet, they have no commercial rivalry, and the
natural enemies of Russia, the English and Austrians, are
also the natural enemies of France. In time of peace, let the
Cabinet of the Tuileries remain allied with the Cabinet of
St. Petersburg, and nothing can stir in Europe. In time of
war, the union of the two Cabinets will dictate laws to the
world.
"I have shown sufficiently that the alliance of France with
England and Austria against Russia is a dupe's alliance,
in which we should find only loss of blood and treasure.
The Russian Alliance, on the contrary, would enable us to
obtain establishments in the Archipelago and to push back our
frontier to the banks of the Rhine. We can hold this language
to Nicholas:
"'Your enemies are making overtures to us; we prefer peace to
war, we prefer to preserve neutrality. But, however, if you
cannot adjust your differences with Turkey except by arms,
if you are determined to go to Constantinople, enter into an
equitable partition of Turkey in Europe with the Christian
Powers. Those of the Powers which are not so situated as to
be able to enlarge their territory towards the East will
receive compensation elsewhere. As for us, we wish to have
the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Cologne. Those are
our just claims. It is to Russia's interest (your brother
Alexander has said so) that France should be strong. If you
consent to this arrangement and the other Powers refuse,
we will not suffer them to intervene in your dispute with
Turkey. If they attack you in spite of our remonstrances, we
will fight them with you, always on the conditions which we
have just expressed.'
[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs.]
"That is what we can say to Nicholas. Never will Austria,
never will England give us the Rhine boundary as the price of
our alliance with them: and yet it is there that France must,
sooner or later, place her frontiers, both for her honour and
her safety.
"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success
and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means
of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and
Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare
themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds,
forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all
Italy to action.