BOOK V 1-40

Journal from Carlsbad to Paris--Cynthia--Eger--Wallenstein--Weissenstadt

--Berneck--Memories--Bayreuth--Voltaire--Hollfeld--The

church--The little girl with the basket--The inn-keeper and his

maid-servant--Bamberg--The female hunchback--Würzburg: its canons--A

drunkard--The swallow--The inn at Wiesenbach--A German and his wife--My

age and appearance--Heidelberg--Pilgrims--Ruins--Mannheim--The

Rhine—-The Palatinate--Aristocratic and plebeian armies--Convent

and castle--A lonely inn--Kaiserslautern--Saarbrück--Metz--Charles

X.'s Council in France--Ideas on Henry V.--My letter to Madame la

Dauphine--Letters from Madame la Duchesse de Berry

BOOK VI 41-76

Journal from Paris to Venice--The Jura--The Alps--Milan--Verona--The

roll-call of the dead--The Brenta--Incidental remarks--Venice--Venetian

architecture--Antonio--The Abbé Betio and M. Gamba--The rooms in the

Palace of the Doges--Prisons--Silvio Pellico's prison--The Frari--The

Academy of Fine Arts--Titian's _Assumption_--The metopes of the

Parthenon--Original drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and

Raphael--The Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo--The Arsenal--Henry

IV.--A frigate leaving for America--The Cemetery of San Cristoforo--San

Michele di Murano--Murano--The woman and the child--Gondoliers--Bretons

and Venetians--Breakfast on the Riva degli Schiavoni--The tomb of

Mesdames at Trieste--Rousseau and Byron--Great geniuses inspired by

Venice--Old and new courtezans--Rousseau and Byron compared

BOOK VII 77-118

Arrival of Madame de Bauffremont in Venice--Catajo--The Duke of

Modena--Petrarch's Tomb at Arqua--The land of poets--Tasso--Arrival

of Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Mademoiselle Lebeschu--Count

Lucchesi-Palli--Discussion--Dinner--Bugeaud the gaoler--Madame de

Saint-Priest, M. de Saint-Priest--Madame de Podenas--Our band--I

refuse to go to Prague--I yield at a word--Padua--Tombs--Zanze's

manuscript--Unexpected news--The Governor of the Lombardo-Venetian

Kingdom--Letters from Madame to Charles X. and Henry V.--M. de

Montbel--My note to the Governor--I set out for Prague

BOOK VIII 119-145

Journal from Padua to Prague, from the 20th to the 26th of

September 1833--Conegliano--The translator of the _Dernier

Abencerrage_--Udine--Countess Samoyloff--M. de La Ferronays--A

priest--Carinthia--The Drave--A peasant lad--Forges--Breakfast

at the hamlet of St. Michael--The neck of the Tauern--A

cemetery--Atala: how changed--A sunrise--Salzburg--A military

review--Happiness of the peasants--Woknabrück--Reminiscences of

Plancoët--Night--German and Italian towns contrasted--Linx--The

Danube--Waldmünchen--Woods--Recollections of Combourg

and Lucile--Travellers--Prague--Madame de Gontaut--The

young Frenchmen--Madame la Dauphine--An excursion to

Butschirad--Butschirad--Charles X. asleep--Henry V.--Reception

of the young men--The ladder and the peasant-woman--Dinner at

Butschirad--Madame de Narbonne--Henry V.--A rubber--Charles X.--My

incredulity touching the declaration of majority--The newspapers--Scene

of the young men--Prague--I leave for France--I pass by Butschirad

at night--A meeting at Schlau--Carlsbad empty--Hollfeld--Bamberg--My

different St. Francis' Days--Trials of religion--France

BOOK IX 146-198

General politics of the moment--Louis-Philippe--M. Thiers--M. de La

Fayette--Armand Carrel--Of some women: the lady from Louisiana--Madame

Tastu--Madame Sand--M. de Talleyrand--Death of Charles X.

BOOK X 199-225

Conclusion--Historical antecedents from the Regency to 1793--The

Past--The old European order expiring--Inequality of fortunes--Danger

of the expansion of intellectual nature and material nature--The

downfall of the monarchies--The decline of society and the progress of

the individual--The future--The difficulty of understanding it--The

Christian idea is the future of the world--Recapitulation of my

life--Summary of the changes that have happened on the globe during my

life--End of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_

APPENDICES

I. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE OF THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY 229-235

II. UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE _MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE_ 236-247

III. THE LAST YEARS OF CHATEAUBRIAND 248-264

IV. THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE 265-266

INDEX 269-332

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. VI

CHATEAUBRIAND'S TOMB

THE DUCHESSE DE BERRY

THE DUC AND DUCHESSE D'ANGOULÊME

LOUIS PHILIPPE

ADOLPHE THIERS

THE VICOMTESSE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

THE

MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND

VOLUME VI[1]

BOOK V

Journal from Carlsbad to

Paris--Cynthia--Eger--Wallenstein--Weisaenstadt--Berneck--Memories

--Bayreuth--Voltaire--Hollfeld--The church--The little girl with

the basket--The inn-keeper and his maid-servant--Bamberg--The

female hunchback--Würzburg: its canons--A drunkard--The

swallow--The inn at Wiesenbach--A German and his wife--My age and

appearance--Heidelberg--Pilgrims--Ruins--Mannheim--The Rhine--The

Palatinate--Aristocratic and plebeian armies--Convent and castle--A

lonely inn--Kaiserslautern--Saarbrück--Metz--Charles X.'s Council in

France--Ideas on Henry V.--My letter to Madame la Dauphine--Letters

from Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

1 _June_ 1833, _evening._

The journey from Carlsbad to Elbogen, along the Eger, is pleasant. The

castle of this little town is of the twelfth century and keeps sentry

on a rock, at the entrance to the gorge of a valley. The foot of the

rock, covered with trees, is contained within a bend of the Eger: hence

the name of the town and the castle, Elbogen, the Elbow.

The donjon was red with the last rays of the sun when I saw it from the

high-road. Above the mountains and woods hung the twisted column of

smoke of a foundry.

I started at half-past nine from the Zwoda stage. I followed the road

along which Vauvenargues passed in the retreat from Prague, the young

man to whom Voltaire, in the _Éloge funèbre des officiers morts en

1741_, addresses these words:

"Thou art no more, O sweet hope of my remaining days;

I have always beheld in thee the most unfortunate of men

and the most tranquil."

From inside my calash, I watched the stars rise.

Be not afraid, Cynthia,[2] it is but the whispering of the reeds bent

by our passage through their mobile forest. I have a dagger for jealous

men and blood for thee. Let not this tomb cause thee any alarm; it is

that of a woman once loved like thyself: Cecilia Metella lay here.

How wonderful is this night in the Roman Campagna! The moon rises

behind the Sabine Hill to contemplate the sea; she causes to stand

forth from the diaphanous darkness the ashen-blue summits of Albano,

the more distant, less deeply-graven lines of Soracte. The long canal

of the old aqueducts lets fall a few globules of its waters through the

mosses, columbines, gilliflowers, and joins the mountains to the city

walls. Planted one above the other, the aerial porticoes, cutting into

the sky, turn in mid-air the torrent of the ages and the course of the

brooks. The legislatrix of the world, Rome, seated on the stone of her

sepulchre, with her robe of centuries, projects the irregular outline

of her tall figure into the milky solitude.

Let us sit down: this pine-tree, like the goat-herd of the Abruzzi,

unfolds its parasol among ruins. The moon showers her snowy light upon

the Gothic crown of the tower of Metella's tomb and on the festoons of

marble that link the horns of the bucrania: a graceful pomp inviting us

to enjoy life, which speeds so soon.

Hark! The nymph Egeria is singing beside her fountain; the nightingale

warbles in the vine of the Hypogeum of the Scipios; the languid Syrian

breeze indolently wafts to us the fragrance of the wild tuberoses. The

palm-tree of the abandoned villa waves half-drowned in the amethyst and

azure of the Phosbean light. But thou, made pale by the reflections of

Diana's purity, thou, O Cynthia, art a thousand times more graceful

than that palm-tree. The shades of Delia, Lalage, Lydia, Lesbia,

resting on broken cornices, stammer mysterious words around thee. Thy

glances cross those of the stars and mingle with their rays.

[Sidenote: To Cynthia.]

But, Cynthia, nothing is real except the happiness which thou canst

enjoy. Those constellations which shine so brightly on thy head

harmonize with thy bliss only through the illusions of a beguiling

perspective. O young and fair Italian, time is ending! On those flowery

carpets thy companions have already passed.

A mist unfolds itself, rises and veils the eye of the night with a

silvery retina; the pelican cries and returns to the strand; the

woodcock alights in the horse-tails of the diamond-studded springs;

the bell resounds under the dome of St. Peter's; the nocturnal

plain-chant, the voice of the middle-ages, saddens the lonely monastery

of Santa-Croce; the monk chants Lauds upon his knees, on the calcined

columns of San Paolo; vestals prostrate themselves on the icy slab that

closes their crypts; the _pifferaro_ pipes his midnight lament before

the solitary Madonna, at the condemned gate of a catacomb. 'Tis the

hour of melancholy; religion awakens and love falls asleep!

Cynthia, thy voice is weakening: the refrain which the Neapolitan

fisherman taught thee in his swift-sailing bark, or the Venetian

oarsman in his gondola, dies away on thy lips. Yield to the exhaustion

of thy sleep; I will watch over thy repose. The darkness with which thy

lids cover thy eyes vies in suavity with that which drowsy, perfumed

Italy pours over thy brow. When the neighing of our horses is heard in

the Campagna, when the morning-star proclaims the dawn, the herd of

Frascati will come down with his goats and I shall not cease to soothe

thee with my whispered lullaby:

"A bundle of jasmin and narcissus, an alabaster Hebe but lately

emerging from the hollow way of an excavation, or fallen from the

frontal of a temple, lies on this bed of anemones: no, Muse, you

err. The jasmin, the alabaster Hebe is a Roman sorceress, born

sixteen months ago of May and the half of a spring, to the sound of

the lyre, at the rise of dawn, in a field of roses of Pæstum.

"Winds from the orange-trees of Palermo that blow over Circe's

isle; breezes that pass to Tasso's tomb, that caress the nymphs

and Cupids of the Farnese; you that play in the Vatican among

Raphael's Virgins, among the statues of the Muses; you that dip

your wings in the cascades of Tivoli; genii of the arts that live

on master-pieces and flutter with the memories, come: you alone do

I permit to inspire Cynthia's sleep.

"And you, majestic daughters of Pythagoras, Fates in your robes

of flax, inevitable sisters seated at the axle of the spheres,

turn the thread of Cynthia's destiny over golden spindles; make it

fall from your fingers and rise again to your hands with ineffable

harmony; immortal spinsters, open the gate of ivory to those dreams

which lie on a woman's breast without oppressing it! I will sing

thee, O canephor of the Roman solemnities, young Charite fed on

ambrosia in Venus' lap, smile sent from the East to glide over my

life, violet forgotten in Horace' garden...."

"Mein Herr, ten kreutzers vor de durnbike!"

A plague upon you with your "crutches!" I had changed my sky! I was

just in the right mood! The Muse will not return! That accursed Eger,

to which we are coming, is the cause of my unhappiness.

The nights are fatal at Eger. Schiller shows us Wallenstein, betrayed

by his accomplices, going to the window of a room in the fortress of

Eger:

Am Himmel ist geschäftige Bewegung,

Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht

Der Wolken Zug, die Mondeszichel wankt,

Und durch die Nacht zucht ungewisse Helle[3].

Wallenstein, on the point of being assassinated, expresses himself in

touching terms on the death of Max Piccolomini[4], beloved by Thekla[5]:

Die Blume ist hinweg aus meinem Leben

. . . . . . .

Denn er stand neben mir, wie meine Jugend,

Er machte mir das Wirkliche zum Traum[6].

Wallenstein retires to his place of rest:

Sieh, es ist Nacht geworden; auf dem Schloss

Ist's auch schon stille. Leucine, Kämmerling!

. . . . . . .

Ich denke einen langen Schlaf zu thun;

Denn dieser letzten Tage Qual war gross.

Sorgt, dass sie nicht zu zeitig mir erwecken[7].

The dagger of the murderers snatches Wallenstein from his dreams of

ambition, even as the voice of the turnpike-man put an end to my

dream of love. Both Schiller and Benjamin Constant, who gave proof of

a new talent by imitating the German tragic poet, have gone to join

Wallenstein, while I, at the gates of Eger, recall their treble fame.

[Sidenote: Bavaria.]

2 _June_ 1833.

I passed through Eger and, on Saturday the 1st of June, at day-break,

entered Bavaria: a tall red-haired girl, bare-foot and bare-headed,

came to open the turnpike to me, like Austria in person. The cold

lasted: the grass in the moats was covered with a white hoar-frost; wet

foxes came out of the oat-fields; grey, zig-zag, wide-spreading clouds

hung across in the sky like eagles' wings.

I arrived at Weissenstadt at nine o'clock in the morning; at the same

moment, a sort of gig was carrying away a young woman driving without a

hat; she looked very much like what she probably was: joy, love's short

fortune, then the hospital and the common grave. Strolling pleasure,

may Heaven not be too severe on your boards! There are so many actors

worse than yourself in this world!

Before entering the village, I passed through "_wastes_:" this word

was at the point of my pencil; it belonged to our old Frankish tongue:

it describes the aspect of a desolate country better than the word

"_lande_," which means earth. I still know the song which they used to

sing in the evening when crossing the waste-lands:

C'est le chevalier des Landes:

Malheureux chevalier!

Quand il fut dans la lande,

A ouï les sings sonner[8].

After Weissenstadt comes Berneck. On leaving Berneck, the road is lined

with poplar-trees, whose winding avenue filled me with an indescribable

sentiment of mingled pleasure and sadness. On ransacking my memory,

I found that they resembled the poplars with which the high-road was

formerly laid out at the entrance to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne on the Paris

side. Madame de Beaumont is no more; M. Joubert is no more; the poplars

are felled and, after the fourth fall of the Monarchy, I am passing at

the feet of the poplars at Berneck:

"Give me," says St. Augustine, "a man who loves, and he will

understand what I say."

Youth laughs at those disappointments; it is charming, happy: in vain

do you tell it that the time will come when it too will know a similar

bitterness; it thrusts you aside with its light wing and flies away in

search of pleasures: it is right, if it dies with them.

Here is Bayreuth, a reminiscence of another sort. This town stands in

the middle of a hollow plain of crops mixed with meadow-land: it has

wide streets, low houses, a weak population. In the time of Voltaire

and Frederic II., the Margravine of Bayreuth was famous; her death

inspired the bard of Ferney with the only ode in which he displayed any

lyrical talent:

Tu ne chanteras plus, solitaire Sylvandre,

Dans ce palais des arts, où les sons de ta voix

Contre les préjugés osaient se faire entendre,

Et de l'humanité faisaient parler les droits[9].

The poet here praises himself justly, were it not that there was no

one less solitary in the world than Voltaire-Sylvander. The poet adds,

addressing the Margravine:

Des tranquilles hauteurs de la philosophie,

Ta pitié contemplait, avec des yeux sereins,

Les fantômes changeants du songes de la vie,

Tant de rêves détruits, tant de projets si vains[10].

[Sidenote: Bayreuth.]

From the height of a palace, it is easy to look down with calm eyes

upon the poor devils who pass along the street; but those lines are

none the less mightily true.... Who could feel them better than myself?

I have seen so many phantoms defile through the dream of life! At

this very moment, have I not been looking on the three royal larvæ

in the Castle in Prague and on the daughter of Marie-Antoinette at

Carlsbad? In 1733, just a century ago, what was it occupied men's

minds? Had they the least idea of what is now? When Frederic was

married, in 1733, under the rough tutelage of his father, had he, in

_Mathew Laensberg_[11], seen M. de Tournon[12] Intendant of Bayreuth

and leaving his intendance for the "Prefectship" of Rome? In 1933, the

traveller passing through Franconia will ask of my shade if I could

have guessed the facts of which he will be a witness.

While I was breakfasting, I read some lessons which a German lady,

young and pretty, of course, was writing to a master's dictation:

"_Celui_ qu'il _est content, est riche. Vous et_ je _nous avons peu

d'argent; mais nous sommes_ content. _Nous sommes_ ainci _à mon

avis plus riches que tel qui a_ un _tonne d'or, et il est...._"

That is true, mademoiselle, you and _je_ have little money; you are

satisfied, as it seems, and you laugh at a ton of gold; but, if, by

chance, I were not satisfied, you must agree that, for me, a ton of

gold might be rather pleasant.

On leaving Bayreuth, one goes up. Slender pruned firs represented to

me the pillars of the mosque at Cairo or the Cathedral of Cordova,

but shrunk and blackened, like a landscape reproduced in the _camera

obscura._ The road runs on from hill to hill and valley to valley: the

hills wide, with a tuft of wood on their brows; the valleys narrow and

green, but badly watered. At the lowest point of these valleys, one

sees a hamlet marked by the _campanile_ of a little church. The whole

of Christian civilization was formed in this way: the missionary,

become a parish-priest, stopped; the Barbarians cantoned themselves

around him, like flocks gathering round the shepherd. In former days,

those remote habitations would have made me dream more than one kind of

dream; to-day, I dream not at all and am nowhere at ease.

Baptiste, suffering from over-fatigue, compelled me to stop at

Hollfeld. While supper was being made ready, I climbed the rock which

overlooks a part of the village. Upon that rock rises a square belfry;

swifts screamed as they swept round the roof and fronts of the turret.

That scene consisting of a few birds and an old tower had not repeated

itself since the days of my childhood at Combourg; my heart was quite

oppressed by it. I went down to the church on a hanging ground towards

the west; it was surrounded by its grave-yard abandoned by the new

deceased. The old dead only marked out their furrows there: a proof

that they had tilled their field. The setting sun, pale and drowned,

on the horizon, in a fir-plantation, lit up the lonely refuge where no

other man than I stood erect. When shall I be recumbent in my turn? We

are beings of nothingness and darkness; our impotency and our potency

are strongly characterized: we cannot, at will, procure for ourselves

either light or life; but nature, by giving us eye-lids and a hand, has

put night and death at our disposal.

Entering the church, whose door was half-open, I knelt down with the

intention of saying an _Our Father_ and _Hail Mary_ for the repose of

my mother's soul: a servitude of immortality laid upon Christian souls

in their mutual affection. Suddenly I thought I heard the shutter of a

confessional open; I fancied that Death, instead of a priest, was about

to appear at the penance grating. At that very moment, the bell-ringer

came to lock the door of the church: I had only time to leave.

[Sidenote: The little basket-carrier.]

Returning to the inn, I met a little basket-carrier: she had bare legs

and feet; her skirt was short, her bodice torn; she walked stooping and

with her arms crossed. Together we climbed a steep road; she turned her

sun-burnt face a little to my side; her pretty and dishevelled head

was glued against her basket. Her eyes were black; her mouth was half

open to facilitate her breathing; one saw that, under her burdened

shoulders, her young breast had as yet felt no other weight than the

spoils of the orchards. She tempted one to talk to her of roses:

"Ρόδα μ'εἴ ρηχας[13]."

I applied myself to casting the adolescent vintager's horoscope: will

she grow old at the wine-press, unknown and happy as the mother of a

family? Will she be carried off to the camps by a corporal? Will she

fall a prey to some Don Juan? The abducted village-girl loves her

ravisher as much with astonishment as with passion: he transports

her to a marble palace on the Straits of Messina, under a palm-tree

beside a spring, opposite the sea displaying its azure billows and Etna

belching flames.

I had reached this point in my story, when my companion, turning to

the left in a wide open space, went towards some lonely dwellings.

As she was about to disappear, she stopped, cast a last look at the

stranger, and then, bowing her head to pass, with her basket, under a

low door-way, entered a cottage, like a little shy cat gliding into a

barn among the sheaves. Let us go on to find in her prison Her Royal

Highness Madame la Duchesse de Berry:

Je la suivis, mais je pleurai

De ne pouvoir plus suivre qu'elle[14].

My host at Hollfeld is a curious man: he and his maid-servant are

inn-keepers with extreme reluctance; they abhor travellers. When they

espy a carriage from afar, they go to hide themselves, cursing those

vagabonds who have nothing to do but scour the high-roads, those idle

persons who disturb an honest publican and prevent him from drinking

the wine which he is obliged to sell to them. The old servant sees

that her master is being ruined, but she is waiting for a stroke of

Providence in his favour; like Sancho, she will say:

"Sir, accept this fine Kingdom of Micomicon which falls from heaven

into your hand."

Once the first movement of ill-humour is past, the couple, in the

interval between two bouts, put a good face on the matter. The

chamber-maid murders a trifle of French, squints for two and has an air

of saying to you:

"I have seen finer sparks than you in Napoleon's armies!"

She smelt of tobacco and brandy, like glory by the camp-fire; she ogled

me with a provoking and wicked glance: how sweet it is to be loved at

the very moment when one had given up all hopes of it! But, Javotte,

you come too late for my "broken and mortified temptations," as a

Frenchman of old said; my sentence is passed:

"Harmonious veteran, take thy rest," M. Lerminier[15] has said to me.

You see, fair and friendly stranger, I am forbidden to listen to your

song:

Vivandière du regiment,

_Javotte_ l'on me nomme,

Je vends, je donne, et bois gaîment

Mon vin et mon rogomme.

J'ai le pied leste et l'œil mutin,

Tin tin, tin tin, tin tin, tin tin,

R'lin lin tin[16].

There you have another reason why I withstand your seductions; you are

frivolous; you would betray me. Fly away then, Dame Javotte of Bavaria,

like your predecessor, Madame Isabeau[17].

2 _June_ 1833.

I have left Hollfeld, I am passing through Bamberg at night. All is

sleeping: I see only a tiny light whose feeble glimmer comes from the

back of a room to grow wan at a window. What is waking here: pleasure

or sorrow, love or death?

At Bamberg, in 1815, Berthier, Prince of Neufchâtel, fell from a

balcony into the street[18]: his master was about to fall from a

greater height.

_Sunday_ 2 _June._

At Dettelbach, reappearance of the vines. Four growths mark the limit

of four natures and four climates: the birch, the vine, the olive and

the palm, always going towards the sun.

[Sidenote: The Hunchback.]

After Dettelbach, two stages to Würzburg, and a female hunchback seated

behind my carriage; it was Terence's Andria: _Inopia.... egregia

forma.... ætate integra._[19] The postillion wanted to make her get

down; I objected, for two reasons: first, because I should have been

afraid lest that fairy should have thrown a spell over me; secondly,

because, having read in a biography of myself that I am a hunchback,

all female hunchbacks are my sisters. Who can satisfy himself that

he is not hunchbacked? Who will ever tell you that you are? If you

look at yourself in the glass, you cannot say at all; do we ever see

ourselves as we are? You will find a turn in your figure that suits you

to perfection. All hunchbacks are proud and happy; the advantages of

the hump are hallowed in song. At the entrance to a lane, my hunchback,

in her ragged finery, stepped majestically to the ground: carrying her

burden, like all mortals, Serpentina plunged into a corn-field and

disappeared among spikes taller than herself.

At mid-day, on the 2nd of June, I had reached the top of a hill from

which one descried Würzburg: the citadel on a height, the town below,

with its palace, its steeples and its turrets. The palace, although

thick-set, would be handsome even in Florence; in case of rain, the

Prince could give shelter to all his subjects in his mansion without

giving up his own apartments.

The Bishop of Würzburg was formerly the Sovereign Bishop: the

nomination was in the gift of the canons of the Chapter. After his

election, he passed, stripped to the waist, between his colleagues

drawn up in two rows, who scourged him. It was hoped that the princes,

offended at this manner of consecrating a royal back, would refrain

from presenting themselves as candidates. To-day this would be of no

avail: there is not a descendant of Charlemagne but would consent to be

whipped for three days on end to obtain the crown of Yvetot.

I have seen the Emperor of Austria's brother Duke of Würzburg[20]; he

used to sing very prettily at Fontainebleau, in the Galerie de François

I^er, at the concerts of the Empress Joséphine.

They kept Schwartz two hours at the passport-office. Left with my

unharnessed carriage in front of a church, I went in: I prayed with

the Christian crowd which represents the old society in the midst of

the new. A procession went out and marched round the church: why am I

not a monk on the walls of Rome? The times to which I belong would be

realized in me.

When the first seeds of religion budded in my soul, I opened out like

a virgin soil which, cleared of its brambles, bears its first harvest.

Came a dry and icy wind, and the soil was parched. The sky took pity

on it; it gave it its tepid dews; then the wind blew again. This

alternation of faith and doubt long made my life a mixture of despair

and unspeakable delights. O my good, sainted mother, pray Jesus Christ

for me: your son needs redeeming more than other men!

I left Würzburg at four o'clock and took the Mannheim Road. I entered

the Grand-duchy of Baden; I found a village in a merry mood; a drunkard

gave me his hand, shouting:

"Long live the Emperor!"

Everything that has happened since the fall of Napoleon is null and

void in Germany. The men who rose to snatch their national independence

from Bonaparte's ambition dream only of him, so greatly did he stir the

imagination of the nations, from the Bedouins in their tents to the

Teutons in their huts.

As I went towards France, the children became noisier in the hamlets,

the postillions drove faster, life sprang up once more.

[Sidenote: The Swallow.]

At Bischoffsheim, where I dined, a fair onlooker appeared at my state

banquet: a swallow, a real Procne, with a reddish breast, came to perch

at my open window, on the iron bar from which swung the sign of the

Golden Sun; then it warbled most sweetly, looking at me as though it

knew me and without showing the least alarm. I have never complained of

being awakened by the daughter of Pandion; I have never, like Anacreon,

called her a "chatterer;" I have always, on the contrary, hailed her

return with the song of the children of the isle of Rhodes:

"She comes, the swallow comes, bringing good seasons and a joyful

time! Open the window, do not despise the swallow[21]!"

"François," said my fellow-guest at Bischoffsheim, "my

great-great-grandmother used to live at Combourg, under the rafters

of the roof of your turret; you used to keep her company every year,

in autumn, in the reeds in the pond, when you went dreaming, of an

evening, with your sylph. She landed on your native rock, on the very

day when you embarked for America, and she followed your sail for some

time. My grandmother built her nest in Charlotte's window; eight years

after, she arrived at Jaffa with you: you have mentioned this in your

_Itinéraire?_[22] My mother, while twittering to the dawn, fell one day

into your room at the Foreign Office[23]; you opened the window for her.

My mother has had many children: I who am speaking to you am of her

last nest; I have met you before on the old Tivoli Road in the Roman

Campagna: do you remember? My feathers were so black and so glossy! You

looked at me sadly. Would you like us to fly away together?"

"Alas, my dear swallow, who know my story so well, you are extremely

kind; but I am a poor moulting bird, and my feathers will never come

back; I cannot, therefore, fly away with you. And you could not carry

me: I am too heavy with sorrows and years. And then, where should we

go? Spring and beautiful climates are no longer of my season. For you,

the air and love; for me, the ground and loneliness. You are going

away: may the dew cool your wings! May a hospitable yard offer to your

tired flight, when you are crossing the Ionian Sea! May a peaceful

October save you from shipwreck! Greet the olive-trees of Athens and

the palm-trees of Rosetta for me. If I am no more when the flowers

bring you back, I invite you to my funeral banquet: come at sunset to

snap up the gnats on the grass of my grave; like you, I love liberty

and I have lived on little[24]."

3 _and_ 4 _June_ 1833.

I set out myself by land, a few moments after the swallow had set sail.

The night was overcast; the moon hovered, weakened and wasted, among

the clouds; my eyes, half-asleep, closed as they looked at it; I felt

as though I were expiring in the mysterious light which illumines the

shadows: "I felt," says Manzoni, "I know not what peaceful depression,

the fore-runner of the last rest."

I stopped at Wiesenbach: a solitary inn, a narrow, cultivated valley

between two wooded hills. A German from Brunswick, a traveller like

myself, hearing my name pronounced, came running up to me. He pressed

my hand, spoke to me of my works; his wife, he told me, was learning

to read French in the _Génie du Christianisme._ He did not cease to

express surprise at my "youth:"

"But," he added, "that is the fault of my judgment; I ought to think

you, from your last works, as young as you look."

[Sidenote: My age and appearance.]

My life has been mixed up with so many events that, in my readers'

heads, I have the ancientness of those events themselves. I often speak

of my grey head; this is calculated vanity on my part, so that people

may exclaim, when they see me:

"Ah, he is not so old!"

A man is at ease with white hair: he can boast of it; to glory in

having black hair would be in bad taste: a fine matter for triumph, to

be as your mother made you! But to be as time, misfortune and wisdom

have dressed you, that is fine! My little artifice has succeeded

sometimes. Quite recently a priest asked to see me; he stood dumb at

the sight of me; at last recovering his speech, he cried:

"Ah, monsieur, so you will be able to fight a long time yet for the

faith!"

One day, as I was passing through Lyons, a lady wrote to me; she begged

me to give her daughter a seat in my carriage and take her to Paris.

The proposal struck me as singular; but, after all, having verified the

signature, I found my unknown correspondent to be a highly respectable

lady and I replied politely. The mother introduced her daughter to me,

a divinity of sixteen. No sooner had the mother set eyes upon me than

she blushed scarlet; her confidence forsook her:

"Forgive me," she stammered; "I am none the less filled with esteem....

But you understand the proprieties.... I made a mistake.... I am so

greatly surprised."

I insisted, looking at my promised companion, who seemed amused at the

discussion; I was lavish with protestations that I would take every

imaginable care of that beautiful young person; the mother humbled

herself with excuses and courtesies. The two ladies departed. I was

proud of having frightened them so much. For some hours I thought

myself made young again by the Dawn. The lady had fancied that the

author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ was a venerable Abbé de

Chateaubriand, a tall, dry, simple old man, constantly taking snuff

out of a huge tin snuff-box, who might very well be trusted to take an

innocent school-girl to the Sacred Heart.

They used to tell in Vienna, two or three lustres ago, that I lived

all alone in a certain valley called the Vallée-aux-Loups. My house

was built on an island; when people wanted to see me, they had to blow

a horn on the opposite bank of the river: a river at Châtenay! I then

looked out through a hole: if the company pleased me, a thing that

hardly ever happened, I came myself to fetch them in a little boat;

if not, not. In the evening, I pulled my boat on shore and nobody

was allowed to land on my island. In point of fact, I ought to have

lived in this way; this Viennese story has always charmed me: M. de

Metternich surely did not invent it; he is not sufficiently my friend

for that.

I do not know what the German traveller will have told his wife

about me, nor if he went out of his way to undeceive her as to my

decrepitude. I fear that I possess the drawbacks of black hair and

white hair both and that I am neither young enough nor staid enough.

For the rest, I was hardly in the mood for coquetry at Wiesenbach; a

melancholy wind blew under the doors and through the passages of the

inn: when the breeze blows, I am in love with nothing else.

From Wiesenbach to Heidelberg, one follows the course of the Necker,

cased by hills which carry forests on a bank of sand and red sulphate.

How many rivers I have seen flow! I met pilgrims from Walthüren:

they formed two parallel lines on either side of the high-road; the

carriages passed in the middle. The women walked bare-foot, beads in

hand, with a parcel of linen on their heads; the men bare-headed, also

carrying their beads in their hands. It was raining; in some places the

watery clouds crept along the sides of the hills. Boats loaded with

timber went down the river, others went up, under sail, or in tow. In

the broken places in the hills were hamlets standing among the fields,

in the midst of rich vegetable-gardens adorned with Bengal roses and

different flowering shrubs. Pilgrims, pray for my poor little King: he

is exiled, he is innocent; he is commencing his pilgrimage while you

are performing yours and I ending mine. If he is not to reign, it will

always be a certain glory to me to have fastened the wreck of so great

a fortune to my life-boat God alone sends the fair wind and opens the

harbour.

[Sidenote: Heidelberg.]

As one approaches Heidelberg, the bed of the Necker, strewn with rocks,

widens. One sees the wharf of the town and the town itself, which wears

a pleasant mien. The back-ground of the whole picture ends in a tall

earthly horizon: it seems to bar the stream.

A red-brick triumphal arch marks the entrance to Heidelberg. To the

left, on a hill, stand the ruins of a medieval castle. Apart from

their picturesque effect and some popular traditions, the remains of

the Gothic period interest only the nations whose work they are. Does

a Frenchman trouble his head about the lords Palatine, the princesses

Palatine, plump, white and blue-eyed though they may have been? One

forgets them for St. Geneviève of Brabant[25]. Those modern ruins have

nothing in common with modern nations, excepting their outward aspect

of Christianity and their feudal character.

It is different, leaving out the sun, with the monuments of Greece and

Italy; these belong to all nations: they commence their history; their

inscriptions are written in languages known to all civilized men. The

ruins even of renovated Italy possess a general interest, because they

are stamped with the seal of the arts and the arts come within the

public domain of society. A fresco by Domenichino[26] or Titian that

becomes obliterated, a palace by Michael Angelo or Palladio[27] that

crumbles throw the genius of all the centuries into mourning.

At Heidelberg, they show a tun of inordinate proportions, a drunkards'

Coliseum in ruins: at least no Christian has lost his life in that

amphitheatre of the Vespasians of the Rhine; his reason, yes: that is

no great loss.

At the outlet of Heidelberg, the hills to the right and left of the

Necker fall away, and one enters upon a plain. A winding embankment,

raised a few feet above the level of the corn-fields, is delineated

between two rows of cherry-trees harshly treated by the wind and of

walnut-trees "often by the wayfarers attacked[28]."

At the entrance to Mannheim, one drives through hop-vines, whose long,

dry props were as yet decorated to only one third of their height

by the climbing creeper. Julian the Apostate wrote a pretty epigram

against beer; the Abbé de La Bletterie[29] imitated it with some

elegance:

Tu n'es qu'un faux Bacchus ...

J'en atteste le véritable.

. . . . . . .

Que le Gaulois, pressé d'une soif éternelle

Au défaut de la grappe ait recours aux épis,

De Cérès qu'il vante le fils:

Vive le fils de Semèle[30].

A few orchards, some walks shaded by willow-trees of all sizes form a

verdant suburb to Mannheim. The houses in the town have often only one

storey above the ground-floor. The main street is wide and planted with

trees in the middle: one more down-fallen city. I do not like false

gold, and so I did not want any Mannheim gold; but I certainly have

"Toulouse gold[31]," to judge by the disasters of my life: yet who has

more than I respected the Temple of Apollo?

3 _and_ 4 _June_ 1833.

I crossed the Rhine at two o'clock in the afternoon. At the moment of

passing, a steam-boat came up stream. What would Cæsar have said if he

had met such a machine while he was building his bridge?

On the other side of the Rhine, opposite Mannheim, one finds Bavaria

again, as a result of the odious slashings and jobbings of the Treaties

of Paris, Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. Every one cut out his share with

scissors, without any regard for reason, humanity or justice, without

troubling about the slice of population that fell into a pair of royal

chops.

[Sidenote: The Palatinate.]

Driving through the Cisrhenan Palatinate, I reflected how this country

had once formed a department of France, how white Gaul was girt about

by the Rhine, the "blue sash" of Germany. Napoleon and the Republic

before him had realized the dream of several of our kings, above all

of Louis XIV. So long as we do not occupy our natural frontiers, there

will be war in Europe, because the interest of self-preservation drives

France to seize the boundaries necessary to her national independence.

Here we have planted trophies to claim back in due season.

The plain between the Rhine and the Monts Tonnerre looks sad; earth and

men seem to say that their fate is not settled, that they belong to

no people; they appear to be expecting new invasions, as it were new

river-floods. The Germans of Tacitus devastated great spaces on their

frontiers and left them empty between these and their enemies. Woe to

the border populations that till the battlefields on which the nations

are to meet!

As I approached ----, I saw a sad sight: a wood of young fir-trees,

five or six feet high, felled and bound into faggots, a forest mown

like grass. I have spoken of the cemetery of Lucerne, where the

children's burials throng on one side. I never felt more keenly the

need to end my wanderings, to die under the protection of a friendly

hand laid upon my heart to interrogate it, when they shall say:

"It has stopped beating."

From the edge of my tomb I would like to be able to cast back a glance

of satisfaction over my many years, just as a pontiff, on reaching the

sanctuary, blesses the long line of the priests who have served as his

retinue.

Louvois[32] burnt down the Palatinate; unfortunately it was Turenne's

hand that held the torch. The Revolution laid waste the same country,

the witness and victim by turns of our aristocratic and plebeian

struggles. It is enough to name the warriors to judge of the difference

of the times: on the one side, Condé, Turenne, Créqui[33], Luxembourg,

La Force[34], Villars[35]; on the other, Kellermann, Hoche, Pichegru,

Moreau. Let us deny none of our victories; military glories especially

have known only enemies of France and held only one opinion: on the

battle-field, honour and danger level all ranks. Our fathers called

the blood that flowed from a non-mortal wound "volatile blood:" a

phrase typical of the contempt for death natural to Frenchmen in every

century. Institutions can alter nothing in this national genius. The

soldiers who, after the death of Turenne[36], said, "Let the _Pie_

loose, we shall encamp where she stops," would have been quite as good

as Napoleon's grenadiers.

On the heights of Dunkheim, the first rampart of the Gauls on that

side, one discovers the seats of camps and military positions to-day

empty of soldiers: Burgundians, Franks, Goths, Huns, Suevi, so many

waves of the Barbarian deluge, have by turns assailed those heights.

Not far from Dunkheim, one sees the remains of a monastery. The monks

enclosed within that retreat had seen many armies passing round at

their feet; they had shown hospitality to many warriors; there some

crusader had ended his life, changed his helm for the frock; there were

passions which called for silence and rest before the last rest and the

last silence. Did they find what they sought? Those ruins will not tell.

After the remnants of the sanctuary of peace come the fragments of the

lair of war: the demolished bastions, mantlets, curtains, trunnions of

a fortress. Ramparts crumble even as cloisters. The castle was ambushed

in a rugged path to close it to the enemy: it did not keep time and

death from passing.

From Dunkheim to Frankenstein, the road pushes through a valley so

narrow that it will scarcely hold a carriage way; the trees descending

from two opposite slopes join and embrace in the ravine. I have

followed similar dales between Messenia and Arcadia, but for the good

road: Pan knew nothing about civil engineering. Flowering broom and a

jay carried me back to the recollection of Brittany; I remember the

pleasure which the cry of that bird gave me in the mountains of Judea.

My memory is a panorama; there the most varied sites and skies, with

their scorching sun or their foggy horizon, come to paint themselves on

the same canvas.

The inn at Frankenstein is placed in a meadow in the mountains, watered

by a stream. The postmaster speaks French; his young sister, or his

wife, or his daughter is charming. He complains of being a Bavarian; he

busies himself with the cultivation of forests; to me he represented an

American planter.

At Kaiserslautern, where I arrived at night as at Bamberg, I passed

through the region of dreams: what did all those sleeping inhabitants

see in their slumbers? If I had time, I would tell the story of their

visions. Nothing would have reminded me of earth, if two quails had

not called to one another from cage to cage. In the fields in Germany,

from Prague to Mannheim, one meets only carrion crows, sparrows and

larks; but the towns are full of nightingales, warblers, thrushes,

quails: plaintive prisoners, male and female, who greet you at the

bars of their gaol when you pass. The windows are decked with pinks,

mignonette, roses, jasmine. The northern nations have the tastes of

another clime; they love the arts and music: the Germans came to fetch

the vine in Italy; their sons would gladly repeat the invasion to

conquer birds and flowers in the same spots.

[Sidenote: Prussia.]

The change in the post-boy's jacket told me, on Tuesday the 4th of

June, at Saarbrück, that I was entering Prussia. I saw a squadron

of hussars ride past under the window of my inn; they looked very

spirited: I was as spirited as they; I would cheerfully have helped

to give those gentry a drubbing, even though a lively feeling of

respect makes me attached to the Prussian Royal Family, even though the

outbursts of the Prussians in Paris were but reprisals for Napoleon's

brutality in Berlin; but, if history has the time to enter into the

cold justice which connects consequences with their origins, the man

who witnesses living facts is carried away by those facts, without

going back to the past to seek the causes from which they sprang and

which excuse them. My country has done me great harm; but how gladly I

would offer up my blood for her! Oh, what strong heads, what consummate

politicians, above all, what good Frenchmen were those negociators of

the Treaties of 1815!

A few hours yet, and my native soil will once more quiver beneath my

steps. What shall I hear? Since three weeks I have known nothing of

what my friends have been saying and doing. Three weeks! A long space

of time for man whom one moment carries away, for empires which three

days suffice to overthrow! And my prisoner of Blaye: what has become

of her? Shall I be able to convey to her the answer which she is

awaiting? If ever the person of an ambassador should be sacred, it is

mine; my diplomatic career was consecrated near the Head of the Church;

it has been completely sanctified near an unfortunate monarch: I have

negociated a new family compact among the children of the Bearnese; I

have carried and brought back its deeds from prison to exile and from

exile to prison.

4 _and_ 5 _June._

As I passed the border which separates the territory of Saarbrück from

that of Forbach, France did not show herself to me in a brilliant

manner: first, a cripple seated in a wooden bowl; then, another man

who crawled on his hands and knees, dragging his legs after him like

two crooked tails or two dead snakes; next, appeared, in a cart, two

swarthy, wrinkled old women, the van-guard of the women of France. It

was enough to make one go back again to the Prussian Army.

But presently I found a handsome young soldier walking with a young

girl; the soldier was pushing the young girl's wheel-barrow before him

and she was carrying the trooper's pipe and sword. Further on, another

young girl holding the tail of a plough and an aged ploughman goading

the oxen; further on, an old man begging for a blind child; further on,

a cross. In a hamlet, a dozen children's heads, at the window of an

unfinished house, looked like a group of angels in a glory. Here is a

tiny girl of five or six, sitting on the threshold of a cottage-door,

with bare head, fair hair, a dirty face, pulling a little grimace

because of a cold wind blowing; with her two white shoulders peeping

from a torn frock, her arms crossed over her knees drawn up close to

her chest, looking at what was going on around her with the curiosity

of a bird, Raphael would have sketched her; as for me, I felt inclined

to steal her from her mother.

[Sidenote: France.]

At the entrance to Forbach, a troop of learned dogs appeared: the two

biggest harnessed to the costume-wagon; five or six others of different

tails, noses, sizes and colours followed the baggage, each with its

piece of bread in its mouth. Two grave instructors, one carrying a

big drum, the other carrying nothing, led the band. Go, my friends,

go round the world as I have done, in order to learn to know the

nations. You have your place in the world just as much as I; you are

quite as good as the dogs of my kind. Give a paw to Diane, to Mirza,

to Pax, with your hat on your ear, your sword by your side, your tail

sticking out like a trumpet between the skirts of your coat: dance for

a bone, or for a kick, as we men do; but do not go making the mistake

of jumping for the King!

Reader, bear with these arabesques; the hand that traced them will

never do you any other harm: it is withered. Remember, when you see

them, that they are only the freakish scrolls drawn by a painter on the

vault of his tomb.

At the custom-house, an elderly junior clerk made a pretense at

examining my calash. I had got a five-franc piece ready; he saw it in

my hand, but dared not take it, because of his superiors, who were

watching him. He took off his cap, on the pretext of searching me

better, laid it on the seat in front of me and said, in an under-tone:

"In my cap, please."

Oh, what a great phrase! It comprises the history of the human race;

how often have liberty, loyalty, friendship, devotion, love said:

"In my cap, please!"

I shall give that phrase to Béranger for the chorus of a song.

I was struck, on entering Metz, by something which I had not noticed

in 1821; the modern fortifications surround the Gothic fortifications:

Guise and Vauban[37] are two names that go well together.

Our years and our memories lie in regular and parallel strata at

different depths of our life, deposited by the waves of time that pass

over us in succession. It was from Metz, in 1792, that the column

issued which was engaged under the walls of Thionville with our little

corps of Emigrants. I am returning from my pilgrimage to the retreat of

the banished Prince whom I served in his first exile. I then gave him

a little of my blood; I have just been weeping with him: at my age, we

have little left but tears.

In 1821, M. de Tocqueville[38], my brother's brother-in-law, was

Prefect of the Moselle. The trees, no thicker than laths, which M. de

Tocqueville planted, in 1820, at the gates of Metz now give shade.

There is a scale to measure our days by; but man is not like wine,

he does not improve when reckoned by vintages. The ancients used to

steep roses in their Falernian; when an amphora of a hundred-year-old

consulate was uncorked, it perfumed the banquet. The clearest

intelligence might be mingled with old years, and no one would be

tempted to get tipsy with it.

I had not been a quarter of an hour in the inn at Metz, when behold

Baptiste coming in a great state of excitement: mysteriously he drew

from his pocket a white paper parcel, containing a seal; M. le Duc de

Bordeaux and Mademoiselle had charged him with that seal, telling him

to give it me "only on French soil." They had been very anxious the

whole night before my departure, fearing lest the jeweller would not

have time to finish the work.

The seal has three faces: on one is engraved an anchor; on the second,

the two words which Henry said to me at our first interview: "Yes,

always!" on the third, the date of my arrival in Prague. The brother

and sister begged me to wear the seal "for love of them." The mystery

of this present, the order given by the two exiled children to hand me

the token of their memory "only on French soil" filled my eyes with

tears. The seal shall never leave me; I shall wear it "for love of

Louise and Henry."

I would have liked to see, at Metz, the house of Fabert[39], the common

soldier who became a marshal of France and who received the collar of

the Orders, his nobility tracing its origin only to his sword.

The Barbarians our fathers, at Metz, butchered the Romans[40] surprised

in the midst of the debauchery of a feast; our soldiers have waltzed,

in the monastery of Alcobaça, with the skeleton of Iñez de Castro[41]:

sorrows and pleasures, crimes and follies, fourteen centuries separate

you and you are all alike completely past. The eternity commenced just

now is as old as the eternity dating from the first death, the murder

of Abel. Nevertheless, men, during their ephemeral appearance on this

globe, persuade themselves that they are leaving some trace behind

them: why, good Heaven, yes, every fly has its shadow!

I left Metz and passed through Verdun, where I was so unhappy and where

Carrel's lonely friend lives to-day[42]. I skirted the heights of

Valmy; I do not care to speak of it any more than of Jemmapes: I should

be afraid lest I should find a crown there.

Châlons reminded me of a great weakness of Bonaparte, who banished

beauty there[43]. Peace be with Châlons, which tells me that I still

have friends!

At Château-Thierry, I found my idol, La Fontaine. It was the hour of

the Angelus: Jean's wife was no longer there, and Jean had returned to

Madame de La Sablière[44].

As I grazed the wall of Meaux Cathedral, I repeated Bossuet's[45] own

words to him:

"Man reaches his tomb dragging behind him the long chain of his hopes

deceived."

[Sidenote: Back in Paris.]

In Paris, I passed the quarters in which I had lived with my sisters in

my youth; next, the Palace of Justice, commemorative of my trial; next,

the Prefecture of Police, which served me as a prison. I have returned

at last to my hospice, thus winding off the skein of my days. The frail

insect of the sheep-folds drops at the end of a silken thread to the

ground, where the foot of some ewe will soon crush it.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 6 _June_ 1833.

On alighting from my carriage and before going to bed, I wrote a letter

to Madame la Duchesse de Berry to give her an account of my mission.

My return had put the police into a flutter; the telegraph announced

it to the Prefect of Bordeaux and the commandant of the fortress of

Blaye: orders were given to redouble the measures of supervision; it

appears even that Madame was put on board before the day fixed for her

departure[46]. My letter missed Her Royal Highness by a few hours and

was taken to her in Italy.

If Madame had made no declaration; if even, after that declaration, she

had denied the consequences of it; much more if, on arriving in Sicily,

she had protested against the part which she had been compelled to

play in order to escape from her gaolers, France and Europe would have

believed her word, so greatly was Philip's Government under suspicion.

All the Judases would have suffered punishment for the spectacle which

they gave to the world in the smoking-room at Blaye. But Madame would

not consent to retain a political character by denying her marriage;

what one gains, by a lie, in reputation for cleverness one loses in

consideration: any former sincerity which you may have professed hardly

avails to defend you. When a man who enjoys public esteem demeans

himself, he is no longer sheltered within his name, but behind his

name. Madame, by her admission, escaped from the gloom of her prison:

the female eagle, like the male eagle, has need of liberty and sunlight.

M. le Duc de Blacas, in Prague, had announced to me the formation of a

council of which I was to be the head, with M. the Chancellor[47] and

M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg: I was going to become alone (still

according to M. le Duc) the Council of Charles X., absent on some

business. I was shown a plan: the machinery was very complicated; M.

de Blacas' work retained a few arrangements made by the Duchesse de

Berry, when she, on her side, had laid claim to organizing the State by

coming madly, but bravely, to place herself at the head of her Kingdom

_in partibus._ The ideas of that adventurous woman were not at all

lacking in good sense: she had divided France into four great military

governments, chosen the commanders, appointed the officers, embodied

the soldiers and, without troubling whether all her people had joined

the flag, she would herself have hastened to carry it; she did not

doubt but that she would find in the fields St. Martin's[48] cope or

the Oriflamme, Galaor[49] or Bayard. Blows of battle-axes and bullets

from fire-locks, retreats into the forests, perils in the homes of a

few faithful friends, caves, castles, cottages, escalades: all this

suited and delighted Madame. There is something eccentric, original and

captivating in her character that will make her live. The future will

take her as it pleases, in spite of correct persons and sober-minded

cowards.

[Sidenote: My plans for Henry V.]

I should have brought to the Bourbons, if they had sent for me, the

popularity which I enjoyed by my two-fold claim as a writer and a

statesman. I could have no doubt of that popularity, for I had received

the confidences of every shade of opinion. People had not confined

themselves to generalities; each had pointed out to me what he desired

in case of eventualities; many had confessed their genius to me and

rendered obvious to me the place for which they were eminently fitted.

Everybody, friends and enemies alike, sent me to be about the person of

the Duc de Bordeaux. By the different combinations of my opinions and

my fortunes, by the ravages of death, which had successively carried

away the men of my generation, I seemed to be the only one left for the

choice of the Royal Family.

I might feel tempted by the part awarded to me: there was something

calculated to flatter my vanity, as an unknown servant and rejected

by the Bourbons, in the idea of being the support of their House;

of holding out my hand to Philip Augustus, St. Louis, Charles V.,

Louis XII., Francis I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. in their tombs; of

protecting with my feeble renown the blood, the crown and the shades

of so many great men: I alone against faithless France and dishonoured

Europe.

But to arrive at that what should I have had to do? What the commonest

mind would have done: fawn upon the Court of Prague, overcome its

antipathies, conceal my ideas from it until I was in a position to

develop them.

And, certainly, those ideas went far: if I had been the young Prince's

governor, I should have striven to gain his confidence. If he had

recovered his crown, I should have advised him to wear it only to lay

it aside at the proper time. I would have liked to see the Capets

disappear in a manner worthy of their greatness. What a fine, what an

illustrious day that would have been when, after setting up religion,

perfecting the Constitution of the State, enlarging the rights of

citizens, breaking the last fetters of the press, emancipating the

commons, destroying monopoly, striking the balance between wages and

labour, consolidating property and restricting its abuses, reviving

industry, reducing taxation, re-establishing our honour among the

nations, extending our frontiers and thus securing our independence

against the foreigner; when, after accomplishing all these things, my

pupil would have said to the nation solemnly called together:

"Frenchmen, your education is finished with mine. My first ancestor,

Robert the Strong[50], died for you, and my father asked for mercy for

the man who took his life. My sires raised and formed France through

barbarism; now the march of events, the progress of civilization compel

you to dispense with a protector. I am descending the throne; I confirm

all the benefits of my fathers, while releasing you from your oaths to

the Monarchy."

Say if that end would not have surpassed all that is most wonderful in

that dynasty! Say if ever a magnificent enough temple could have been

raised to its memory! Compare that end with that which the decrepit

sons of Henry IV. would make, stubbornly pinning themselves to a throne

swamped by democracy, trying to preserve their power with the aid of

measures of police, measures of violence, methods of corruption, and

dragging on for a few short moments a degraded existence!

"Let them make my brother King," said the child Louis XIII., after the

death of Henry IV., "I do not want to be King."

Henry V. has no other brother than his people: let him make it King.

To arrive at this resolution, chimerical though it may seem, one would

have to feel the greatness of one's race, not because one was descended

from an old stock, but because one was the heir of men through whom

France became powerful, enlightened and civilized.

Now, as I have just said, the way to be called upon to set to work

on that plan would have been to wheedle the weaknesses of Prague, to

raise magpies with the child of the throne like Luynes[51], to flatter

Concini[52] like Richelieu. I had begun well at Carlsbad; a little

note of submission and gossip would have forwarded my business. To

bury myself alive in Prague was no easy matter, it is true; for not

only should I have had to overcome the repugnance of the Royal Family,

but the hatred of the foreigners as well. My ideas are odious to the

Cabinets; they know that I detest the Treaties of Vienna, that I would

make war at any price to give France the necessary frontiers and to

restore the balance of power in Europe.

However, by giving signs of repentance, by weeping, by expiating my

sins of national honour, by beating my breast, by admiring for my

penance the genius of the blockheads who govern the world, I might

perhaps have been able to crawl into the Baron de Damas' place; then,

suddenly standing erect, I should have flung away my crutches.

[Sidenote: Wherein I fail.]

But, alas, where is my ambition? Where is my faculty of dissimulation?

Where is my art of enduring constraint and boredom? Where is my

capacity for attaching importance to anything whatsoever? I took up

my pen two or three times, I began to draft two or three letters in

obedience to Madame la Dauphine, who had ordered me to write to her.

Soon, revolting against myself, I wrote at one dash and after my own

manner the letter which was to break my neck. I knew it quite well; I

weighed the results quite well: it matters little. And to-day, now that

the thing is done, I am delighted at having sent the whole business to

the devil and flung my "governorship " out of so wide a window. I shall

be told:

"Could you not have expressed the same truths by stating them less

crudely?"

Yes, yes, by diluting, beating about the bush, employing honeyed words,

bleating, quavering:

Son œil tout pénitent ne pleure qu'eau béniste[53].

I cannot do that.

Here is the letter, abridged, however, by almost half its length, which

will make the hair of our drawing-room diplomatists rise up in dismay:

the Duc de Choiseul was somewhat of my humour; therefore he spent the

end of his end at Chanteloup:

"PARIS, _Rue d'Enfer_, 30 _June_ 1833.

"MADAME,

"The most precious moments of my long career are those which Madame

la Dauphine permitted me to spend with her. It was in a humble

house at Carlsbad that a Princess who is the object of universal

veneration deigned to speak to me with confidence. Heaven has laid

at the bottom of her soul a treasure of magnanimity and religion

which the prodigality of misfortune has not been able to dry up. I

had before me the daughter of Louis XVI. exiled anew; that orphan

of the Temple whom the Martyr-King pressed to his heart before

going to gather the palm! God's name is the only name that one can

pronounce when one comes to plunge one's self in contemplation of

the impenetrable counsels of His Providence.

"Praise is suspicious, when it is addressed to prosperity: with

the Dauphiness, admiration knows no embarrassment. I have said it,

Madame: your sorrows have attained so great a height, that they have

become one of the glories of the Revolution. I shall therefore,

once in my life, have met destinies so superior, so much apart,

that I can tell them, without fear of offending them or of being

misunderstood, what I think of the future state of society. One can

discuss the fate of empires with you, who would, without regretting

them, see pass at the feet of your virtue all those earthly

kingdoms, many of which have already flowed away at the feet of

your House.

"The catastrophes of which you have been the most illustrious

witness and the sublimest victim, great though they appeared to

be, are, nevertheless, but the particular accidents of the general

transformation which is being operated in the human race; the

reign of Napoleon, which shook the world, is but a link in the

revolutionary chain. We must start from this truth to understand

the possibilities of a third Restoration and what means that

Restoration possesses of being included in the plan of social

changes. If it did not enter into it as an homogeneous element, it

would inevitably be rejected by an order of things contrary to its

nature.

"Therefore, Madame, if I told you that the Legitimacy had a chance

of returning through the aristocracy of the nobles and clergy, with

their privileges; through the Court, with its distinctions; through

the Royalty, with its attractions, I should be deceiving you. The

Legitimacy, in France, is no longer a sentiment; it is a principle

in so far as it guarantees property and interests, rights and

liberties; but if it remained proved that the Legitimacy would

not defend or was powerless to protect that property and those

interests, those rights and those liberties, it would cease to be

even a principle. When any one puts forward that the Legitimacy

will necessarily come about, that it cannot be dispensed with, that

it is enough to wait, for France to come crying mercy to it on her

knees, he is putting forward an illusion. The Restoration may never

return, or may last for but a moment, if the Legitimacy seeks its

strength where it does not exist.

[Sidenote: My letter to the Dauphiness.]

"Yes, Madame, I say it sorrowfully, Henry V. might remain a foreign

and banished Prince: a young and new ruin of an edifice already

fallen, but, in short, a ruin. We old servants of the Legitimacy

will soon have spent the small stock of years that is left to us;

we shall shortly be resting in our graves, asleep with our old

ideas, like the ancient knights with their ancient suits of armour

into which rust and time have eaten, suits of armour which no

longer shape themselves to the figure nor adapt themselves to the

usages of the living.

"All that was militating, in 1789, for the preservation of the

old order of things, religion, laws, manners, customs, property,

classes, privileges, corporations, no longer exists. A general

ferment has become manifest; Europe is hardly safer than

ourselves; no form of society is entirely destroyed, none entirely

established; all is worn or new, or decrepit or not yet rooted; all

has the weakness of old age or childhood. The kingdoms that have

sprung from the territorial limitations drawn by the last treaties

are of yesterday; love of country has lost its force, because the

country is an uncertain and fleeting thing to populations sold

by auction, dealt in like second-hand furniture, now allotted to

hostile populations, now handed over to unknown masters. Thus

dug up, furrowed, tilled, the soil is prepared to receive the

democratic seed which the Days of July have ripened.

"The kings think that, by keeping sentry around their thrones,

they will stop the movements of intelligence; they imagine that,

by giving a description of the principles, they will have them

seized at the frontiers; they are persuaded that, by multiplying

customs-officers, gendarmes, police-spies, military commissions,

they will prevent them from circulating. But those ideas do not

travel on foot: they are in the air, they fly, we breathe them. The

absolute governments, which are establishing telegraphs, railways,

steam-boats and trying, at the same time, to keep men's minds on

the level of the political dogmas of the fourteenth century, are

inconsistent; at once progressive and reactionary, they are lost

in the confusion resulting from a contradiction of theory and

practice. It is impossible to separate the industrial principle

from the principle of liberty; one must needs stifle both or admit

both. Wherever the French language is understood, ideas come with

the passports of the age.

"You see, Madame, how essential it is that the starting-point

should be carefully chosen. The child of hope under your guard,

innocence taking refuge under your virtues and misfortunes as under

a royal canopy: I know no more imposing spectacle; if there be a

chance of success for the Legitimacy, it is there in its entirety.

The France of the future will be able to bow, without descending,

before the glory of the past, to stand in emotion before that

great apparition in her history represented by the daughter of

Louis XVI. leading the last of the Henrys by the hand. As the

Queen-protectress of the young Prince, you will exercise over the

nation the influence of the immense memories mingled in your august

person. Who will not feel an unaccustomed confidence revive within

him when the orphan of the Temple watches over the education of the

orphan of St. Louis?

"It is to be desired, Madame, that this education, directed by men

whose names are popular in France, should in a certain measure

become public. Louis XIV., who otherwise justifies the pride of his

motto[54], did a great injury to his House by isolating the Sons of

France behind the barriers of an Oriental education.

"The young Prince appeared to me to be gifted with a quick

intelligence. He will have to complete his studies by travels

among the nations of the Old and even of the New Continent, so as

to become acquainted with politics and to be alarmed at neither

institutions nor doctrines. If he could serve as a soldier in some

far-off foreign war, one ought not to dread to expose him. He has a

resolute air; he seems to have in his heart the blood of his father

and of his mother; but, if he could ever experience anything but

the sense of glory in danger, let him abdicate: without courage, in

France, there is no crown.

"Madame, on seeing me extend into a long future the thought of the

education of Henry V., you will naturally suppose that I do not

think him destined to ascend the throne so soon. I will endeavour

impartially to deduct the opposite reasons for hopes and fears.

"The Restoration may take place to-day, to-morrow. There is

something so sudden, so inconstant observable in the French

character, that a change is always probable; it is always safe

to wager a hundred to one, in France, that any particular thing

will not last: it is at the moment when the Government appears

most firmly seated that it falls. We have seen the nation worship

Bonaparte and detest him, abandon him, take him back, abandon him

again, forget him in his exile, raise altars to him after his

death, and then relapse from its enthusiasm. That fickle nation,

which never loved liberty save by fits and starts, but which ever

dotes on equality; that multiform nation was fanatical under

Henry IV., factious under Louis XIII., grave under Louis XIV.,

revolutionary under Louis XVI., gloomy under the Republic, warlike

under Bonaparte, constitutional under the Restoration: to-day it is

prostituting its liberties to the so-called Republican Monarchy,

perpetually varying its nature in the spirit of its leaders. Its

changefulness has increased since it has thrown off the habits of

the home and the yoke of religion.

[Sidenote: On the prospects.]

"Therefore, a chance may bring about the fall of the Government of

the 9th of August; but a chance may be delayed: an abortive child

has been born to us, but France is a sturdy mother; she may, with

the milk of her breast, be able to correct the vices of a depraved

paternity.

"Although the present royalty does not seem as though it were

likely to live, I continue to fear that it may live beyond the

limit which one might assign to it. Since forty years, all

governments have perished in France by their own fault alone. Louis

XVI. could have saved his crown and his life twenty times over;

the Republic died only of the excesses of its furies; Bonaparte

was able to establish his dynasty, yet flung himself down from the

height of his glory; but for the Ordinances of July, the Legitimist

Throne would still be standing. The head of the present Government

will make none of those mistakes that kill; his power will never

commit suicide; all his cleverness is employed exclusively for his

preservation: he is too intelligent to die by an act of folly nor

has he enough in him to be guilty of the mistakes of genius or

the weaknesses of honour or virtue. He has felt that he might be

destroyed by war: he will not make war; it matters little to him,

whether France be degraded in the eyes of foreigners: publicists

will prove to him that disgrace is industry and ignominy credit.

"The sham Legitimacy wants all that the Legitimacy wants, with

the exception of the Royal Person: it wants order; it can obtain

that through 'arbitrariness' more easily than the Legitimacy. To

perpetrate acts of despotism with words of liberty and pretended

royalist institutions, that is all that it wants; each accomplished

fact brings forth a recent right which combats an ancient right,

each hour commences a legality. Time has two powers: with one hand

it overthrows, with the other it builds up. Lastly, time acts

upon men's minds by the mere fact that it progresses; they sever

violently from those in power, attack them, sulk with them; then

lassitude supervenes; success reconciles people to its cause: soon

none remains outside, save a few lofty souls, whose perseverance

confounds those who have failed.

"Madame, this long statement obliges me to make a few explanations

to Your Royal Highness.

"If I had not raised a free voice in the day of fortune, I should

not have felt the courage to speak the truth in the time of

misfortune. I did not go to Prague of my own accord; I would not

have ventured to trouble you with my presence; the dangers of

devotion do not lie about your august person, they lie in France:

that is where I have sought them. Since the Days of July, I have

never ceased to fight for the legitimist cause. I was the first

to proclaim the kingship of Henry V. A jury of Frenchmen, which

acquitted me, left my proclamation in force. I long for nothing but

rest, the need of my years; yet I did not hesitate to sacrifice

it when the decrees extended and renewed the proscription of the

Royal Family. Offers were made to me to attach me to the Government

of Louis-Philippe: I had not earned that proof of good-will; I

showed how incompatible it was with my nature by claiming my share

in my old King's adversity. Alas, I had not brought about that

adversity and I had tried to prevent it! I am not recalling these

circumstances to give myself an importance or create for myself a

merit which I do not possess; I have done no more than my duty; I

am only explaining my position, in order to excuse the independence

of my language. Madame will pardon the frankness of a man who

would joyfully accept a scaffold to restore to her a throne.

"When I appeared before Your Majesty at Carlsbad, I may say that I

had not the happiness to be known to you. You had scarcely done me

the honour to address a few words to me in my life. You were able

to see, in our solitary conversations, that I was not the man that

had perhaps been described to you, that the independence of my mind

did not take away from the moderation of my character and, above

all, did not break the chains of my admiration and respect for the

illustrious daughter of my Kings.

[Sidenote: Of the Legitimate Monarchy.]

"I again beseech Your Majesty to consider that the order of the

truths developed in this letter, or rather in this memorandum,

is what constitutes my strength, if I have any; it is that which

enables me to reach men of different parties and bring them back to

the royalist cause. If I had rejected the opinions of the age, I

should have had no hold upon my time. I am seeking to rally round

the ancient throne those modern ideas which, from being hostile,

become friendly in passing through my loyalty. If the liberal

opinions which abound ceased to be diverted to the profit of the

reconstructed Legitimate Monarchy, Monarchical Europe would perish.

It is a fight to the death between the two principles, monarchical

and republican, if they remain distinct and separate: the

consecration of a single edifice built up again out of the various

materials of two edifices would belong to you, Madame, to you who

have been admitted into the highest as into the most mysterious of

initiations, undeserved misfortune, to you who are marked at the

altar with the blood of the spotless victim, to you who, in the

contemplation attendant upon a saintly austerity, would open with a

pure and blessed hand the portals of the new temple.

"Your sagacity, Madame, and your superior reason will throw light

upon and correct all that may be doubtful or erroneous in my

opinions touching the present state of France.

"My emotion, as I end this letter, passes all that I can say.

"And so the palace of the sovereigns of Bohemia is the Louvre of

Charles X. and of his pious and royal son! And so Hradschin is

young Henry's Pau Castle! And you, Madame: in what Versailles

do you live? With what can your piety, your greatnesses, your

sufferings be compared, if not with those of the women of the

House of David who wept at the foot of the Cross? May Your Majesty

see the Royalty of St Louis rise radiant from the tomb! May I

exclaim, recalling the century which bears the name of your

glorious ancestor; for, Madame, nothing becomes you, nothing is

contemporaneous with you but what is great and sacred:

O jour heureux pour moi!

De quelle ardeur j'irais reconnaître mon roi[55]!

"I am, Madame, with the most profound respect,

"Your Majesty's most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

After writing this letter, I resumed the habits of my life: I found

my old priests again, the lonely corner in my garden, which seemed to

me much finer than Count Chotek's garden, my Boulevard d'Enfer, my

Cimetière de l'Ouest, my Memoirs reminding me of my past days and,

above all, the select little society of the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The

kindness of a serious friendship makes the thoughts abound; a few

moments of the commerce of the soul suffice for the needs of my nature;

I afterwards make up for this expenditure of intelligence by twenty-two

hours of inaction and sleep.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 25 _August_ 1833.

While I was beginning to breathe, I saw one morning the traveller enter

my house who had handed a packet from me to Madame la Duchesse de Berry

at Palermo; he brought me this reply from the Princess:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame de Berry.]

"NAPLES, 10 _August_ 1833.

"I have written you a line, monsieur le vicomte, to acknowledge

the receipt of your letter, wishing to have a safe opportunity of

speaking to you of my gratitude for what you have seen and done

in Prague. It seems to me that they _let you see very little_,

but enough, however, to enable you to judge that, despite the

_methods_ employed, the result, in so far as our dear child is

concerned, is not what one might fear. I am very glad to receive

this assurance from you; but I hear from Paris that M. Barrande has

been sent away. What is to be done in this? How I long to be at my

post!

"As to the requests which I asked you to make (and which were not

quite welcomed), they have proved by their action that they were no

better informed than I: for I was not in any need of what I asked,

having in no way lost my rights.

"I am going to ask your advice to reply to the solicitations which

I receive from all sides. You will make such use of what follows

as, in your wisdom, you think proper. Royalist France, the people

devoted to Henry V. look to his mother, now at last free, to issue

a proclamation.

"I left at Blaye a few lines which must be known to-day; they

expect more from me; they want to know the sad story of my

detention during seven months in that impenetrable fortress. It

ought to be made known in its fullest details; let the cause be

seen, in this story, of all the tears and griefs that have broken

my heart. Men will learn from it the moral tortures which I have

been made to suffer. Justice must be done in it to them to whom

it belongs; but also it must reveal the atrocious measures taken

against a defenseless woman, defenseless because she was always

refused a council, by a Government having her kinsman at its head,

in order to tear from me a secret which, in any case, could not

concern politics and the discovery of which ought not to change my

situation if I was an object of dread to the French Government,

which had the power of guarding me, but not the right, without a

trial which I claimed more than once.

"But my kinsman, the husband of my aunt, the head of a family

which, in spite of the general and so justly wide-spread opinion

against it, I had allowed to hope for the hand of my daughter,

Louis-Philippe in short, thinking me to be with child and unmarried

(which would have decided any other family to open the doors of

my prison), had every form of moral torture inflicted on me to

force me to take steps by means of which he expected to be able to

establish his niece's dishonour. For the rest, if I am bound to

explain myself positively as to my declarations and their motives,

without entering into any details as to my private life, for which

I am accountable to no one, I will say in all truth that they were

torn from me by my vexations, my moral tortures and the hope of

recovering my liberty.

"The bearer will give you details and tell you of the forced

uncertainty as to the moment of my journey and its destination,

which interfered with my wish to avail myself of your obliging

offer by inviting you to join me before I went to Prague, as I

have great need of your advice. To-day it would be too late, as I

wish to be with my children as soon as possible. But, as nothing

is certain in this world and as I am used to disappointments, if

my arrival in Prague should, _against my wish_, be delayed, I rely

surely upon seeing you at the place where I shall be obliged to

stop and will write to you from there; if, on the contrary, I reach

my son as soon as I hope, you know better than I if you ought to

come there. I can only assure you of the pleasure it would give me

to see you at all times and places.

"MARIE CAROLINE."

NAPLES, 18 _August_ 1833.

"Our friend has not been able to start yet and I have received news

of what is happening in Prague which is not of a nature calculated

to diminish my longing to go there, but which also makes the need

of your advice more urgent. If, therefore, you are able to proceed

to Venice without delay, you will find me there, or else letters

left at the post-office telling you where you can join me. I shall

travel part of the journey with some people for whom I entertain

feelings of great friendship and gratitude: M.[56] and Madame

de Bauffremont[57]. We often speak of you; their devotion to

myself and to our Henry makes them long to see you arrive. M. de

Mesnard[58] shares that longing."

Madame de Berry refers in her letter to a little manifesto[59] which

was issued after she left Blaye and which was of no great value,

because it said neither yes nor no. The letter, on the other hand, is

curious as an historical document, since it reveals the feelings of

the Princess towards her kinsmen-gaolers and points to the sufferings

endured by her. Marie-Caroline's reflections are just; she expresses

them with spirit and pride. Again, one likes to see that courageous

and devoted mother, whether fettered or free, constantly occupied with

the interests of her son. There, at least in that heart, are youth

and life to be found. It cost me an effort once more to undertake a

long journey; but I was too much touched by the confidence of that

poor Princess to refuse to obey her wishes and to abandon her on the

high-road. M. Jauge came to the assistance of my poverty, as he had

done the first time.

I took the field again with a dozen volumes scattered around me.

Now, while I was peregrinating _da capo_ in the Prince de Bénévent's

calash, he was eating in London in the manger of his fifth master, in

expectation of the accident which will send him, perhaps, to sleep at

Westminster, among saints, kings and wise men: a burial to which his

religion, fidelity and virtues have justly entitled him.

[1] This book was written on the road from Carlsbad to Paris, from the

1st to the 5th of June 1833, and in Paris, in the Rue d'Enfer, from the

6th of June to the 25th of August 1833.--T.

[2] The author addresses an imaginary Cynthia. Cynthia was one of the

surnames of Diana, from Mount Cynthus, where she was born.--B.

[3] SCHILLER: _Wallenstein's Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.

[4] Max Piccolomini, son to Octavio Piccolomini, the famous Austrian

general.--T.

[5] Thekla, Wallenstein's daughter.--T.

[6] _Wallenstein: Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.--T.

[7] _Wallenstein's Tod_. Act V. Sc. v.--T.

[8]

"It is the knight of the Landes:

O unhappy knight!

Heard bells ring on every hand,

When crossing the waste at night."--T.

[9] VOLTAIRE: _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de

Bareith_, 141-144:

"Lonely Sylvander, thou shalt sing no more

In this Art's palace, where thy voice did ban,

Loudly, the firm-set prejudice of yore

And made the world talk of the rights of man."--T.

[10] _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de Bareith_, 91-94:

"From philosophie heights, free from all strife,

Thy pity contemplated, with calm eyes,

The changing phantoms of the dreams of life:

So many a dream or plan in ruin lies."--T.

[11] Mathew Laensberg (_fl._ 17th Century) was supposed to be the

author of the famous _Almanack de Liège_, called by his name and first

published in 1636, containing prognostications in the manner of the

modern _Zadkiel_ or _Old Moore._--T.

[12] The Comte de Toumon (_cf._ Vol. V., p. 258, n. 1) was appointed

Intendant of Bayreuth by Napoleon before being moved to Rome, as

Prefect, in 1809.--T.

[13] ARISTOPHANES.--_Author's Note._

[14] VOLTAIRE: _Stances à madame la marquise Du Châtelet_, 29-36:

"I followed her, but wept that now

I could not follow others as well."

The poet is able to continue the pursuit of friendship, but must

abandon that of love.--T.

[15] Jean Louis Eugène Lerminier (1803-1857), a liberal professor and

journalist. He had published, on the 15th of October 1832, an article

in the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_, entitled, _De l'Opinion légitimiste: M.

de Chateaubriand_, to which the author of the Memoirs alludes above.--B.

[16] BÉRANGER: _La Vivandière_, 1-7, not quite correctly quoted. In the

original, the _vivandière_ is called "Catin:" Chateaubriand substitutes

"Javotte," a favourite name for an inn-servant in France, and alters

the last lines so as to avoid the rhyme to "Catin" at the end. To

attempt a rough translation:

"I'm the vivandière so gay,

Javotte I'm called: that's handy;

I sell, I drink, I give away

My wine, my rum, my brandy.

I'm light of foot and I give a wink,

Chink chink, chink chink, chink chink, chink chink,

Clink, clink, chink."--T.

[17] Isabel, or Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (_d._ 1435),

married in 1385 to Charles VI. She obtained the Regency when the King

became demented in 1392, favoured the enemies of France and, in 1420,

concluded the Treaty of Troyes, which placed the crown on the head of

Henry V. of England.--T.

[18] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 91, n. 3. Berthier was watching a Russian

regiment pass under his windows, on its way to the French frontier,

when he was seized with a sudden fit of madness and jumped from the

balcony to the pavement below (1 June 1815).--T.

[19] _Andria_, Act. I. Sc. i. 44.45.--T.

[20] Ferdinand III. Archduke of Austria, Grand-duke of Tuscany, later

Grand-duke of Würzburg (1769-1824), brother of the Emperor Francis I.

He was Grand-duke of Tuscany from 1790, but lost his States in 1796.

In 1805, the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized and turned into a

grand-duchy, and the Archduke Ferdinand became its titulary. On the

fall of the Empire, Tuscany was restored to Austria and Ferdinand

reinstated. At the same time (1814), Würzburg was restored to

Bavaria.--B.

[21] These lines are a translation from the χελιδονίζειν, recorded by

Athenæus.--B.

[22] Chateaubriand writes, when describing his arrival at Jaffa, in the

_Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem_:

"The wind fell, at mid-day. The calm continued for the rest of that

day and was prolonged till the 29th [of September 1806]. We were

boarded by three new passengers: two wagtails and a swallow."

And then he refers again to the swallows at Combourg in his childhood

and to the swallows in America which, in their turn, reminded him of

the Combourg swallows.--B.

[23] In the _Congrès de Vérone_ (Vol. II., p. 389), Chateaubriand,

writing of his dismissal from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (6 June

1824), begins with these charming lines:

"On the 6th, in the morning, we were not sleeping; the dawn

murmured in the little garden; the birds twittered: we heard the

day break; a swallow fell down our chimney into our room; we opened

the window for it: if we could only have flown away with it!"--B.

[24] This reply to the swallow was written long before 1833. The

Comte de Marcellus relates, in _Chateaubriand et son temps_, how, in

the summer of 1822, he was walking with the Ambassador in Kensington

Gardens. Chateaubriand told him how, early that same morning, he had

imagined that he heard a swallow twittering outside his window. He

looked and saw a smoke and soot-blackened sparrow which might almost

be mistaken for a swallow; and he set himself to hold an imaginary

conversation with the swallow disguised as a sparrow. He handed

Marcellus a paper covered with the words which he had addressed to it

and which he had written down so soon as the light permitted. They

correspond literally with the above speech.

Marcellus goes on to say that he clapped his hands with delight at

reading this inspiration in the manner of the ancients, until, at the

end of the paper and as though at the end of his enthusiasm, he began

to smile:

"'What is it?' asked the poet, alarmed. 'Some slip?'

'Oh no,' I replied; 'only that "I live on little" troubles me,

although it suits the passage so admirably.'

"'Well?' asked M. de Chateaubriand, with a certain animation.

"'Why, have you so soon forgotten that the Duke of York is dining

with you to-night and that yesterday we drew up together, under the

dictation of our famous Montmirel, the fabric of the most splendid

banquet that ever perfumed the kitchens and honoured the annals of

diplomacy?'

"M. de Chateaubriand replied:

"'Ah, you are right; I did not think of that this morning.'"--B.

[25] St. Geneviève of Brabant (_fl._ 8th Century), the subject of a

number of romantic legends and adventures.--T.

[26] Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, a noted

Italian painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.

[27] Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), the celebrated Italian architect.--T.

[28] BOILEAU: _Épitres_, vi.--B.

[29] Jean Philippe René de La Bletterie (1696-1772), a priest of the

Oratory, a native of Brittany like Chateaubriand and author of an

_Histoire de l'empereur Julien l'Apostat_ (1735).--T.

[30] The following is John Duncombe's translation of Julian's Greek

Epigram on Barley-wine:

"Who, what art thou? Thy name, thy birth declare:

Thou art no Bacchus, I by Bacchus swear.

Jove's son alone I know, I know not thee;

Thou smell'st like goats, but sweet as nectar he.

In Gallia, thirsty Gallia, thou wert born,

Scanty of grapes, but prodigal of corn.

Bromus, not Bromius, styl'd, thy brows with corn,

As sprung from Ceres, not from Jove, adorn."

[31] The common phrase is, "That's Toulouse gold, which will cost him

dear:" a reference to the gold stolen by the Romans at Toulouse, which

brought ill-luck, according to the legend, to all who possessed it.--T.

[32] François Michel Letellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), the

organizer of the French standing army. Louvois was Minister of War

from 1666 to 1691; the Palatinate was burnt down in 1674 and again in

1689.--T.

[33] François de Bonne de Créqui, Maréchal Duc de Lesdiguières (_circa_

1687), one of the greatest French captains of the seventeenth century,

served gloriously under Louis XIV. in the campaigns of Flanders, Alsace

and Lorraine, from 1667 to 1678. He took Luxemburg in 1684.--T.

[34] Armand Maréchal de La Force (_circa_ 1586-1675) served with

distinction in the Italian and German Wars.--T.

[35] Louis Hector Maréchal Duc de Villars (1653-1734), Marlborough's

famous adversary.--T.

[36] Turenne was killed by a cannon-ball while reconnoitering at

Sasbach (27 July 1675). The _Pic_ was his favourite piebald charger.--T.

[37] François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, successfully defended Metz

against Charles V. from October 1552 to January 1553; Vauban laid the

new fortifications, outside the old, in the reign of Louis XIV.--T.

[38] The father of Alexis de Tocqueville.--_Author's Note. Cf._ Vol.

II., p. 295, n. 1.--T.

The Comte de Tocqueville administered the Department of the Moselle

from February 1817 to June 1823.--B.

[39] Abraham Maréchal Fabert (1599-1662), Governor of Sedan, son of

Abraham Fabert, the director of the ducal printing-works at Metz, was

the first commoner who became a marshal of France (1658).--T.

[40] Metz was plundered by the Vandals in 406.--T.

[41] Iñez de Castro (_d._ 1355), favourite and, later, wife of Peter of

Portugal, son of Alphonsus IV. The King had her murdered to prevent the

consequences of an unequal union. When Peter ascended the throne, as

Peter I., afterwards surnamed the Justiciary and the Cruel, he avenged

her death on her murderers by having their hearts torn out in his

presence at Santarem, in 1360. He caused Iñez to be exhumed and crowned

and showed her royal honours.--T.

[42] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 207, n. 1.--T.

[43] Madame Récamier was banished to Châlons in September 1811.--T.

[44] Madame de La Sablière (_fl._ 17th Century), wife of Antoine

Rambouillet de La Sablière, one of the ornaments of the seventeenth

century and immortalized by the hospitality which she accorded to La

Fontaine.--T.

[45] Bossuet was Bishop of Meaux.--T.

[46] The Duchesse de Berry embarked on the 9th of June 1833.--B.

[47] The Marquis de Pastoret.--B.

[48] St. Martin (_circa_ 316--_circa_ 397) Bishop of Tours (371). He is

honoured on the 11th of November.--T.

[49] The brother of Amadis of Gaul.--T.

[50] Robert Count of Paris (_d._ 866), surnamed the Strong, father

of Robert I. King of France and stock of the Capets, was killed at

Brissarthe, in Anjou, while giving battle to the Normans.--T.

[51] Charles d'Albert, Connétable Duc de Luynes (1578-1621), was a page

of Henry IV. He curried favour with the Dauphin by his skill in raising

speckled magpies. When the latter succeeded as Louis XIII., he loaded

Luynes with favours and dignities, gave him his duchy and created him

Constable of France. Luynes was on the verge of being disgraced, when

he died, of purples, on the 15th of December 1621.--T.

[52] Concino Concini, later Maréchal Marquis d'Ancre, Baron de Lussigny

(_d._ 1617), was a member of the Household of Marie de' Medici, wife

of Henry IV. After the King's death, he bought the Marquisate of Ancre

and was appointed Governor of Normandy and a marshal of France without

ever having drawn the sword. He was, at the same time, Prime Minister

of Louis XIII.; and he had Richelieu for his private secretary. The

Duc de Luynes contributed towards hastening his downfall and, at last,

the young King ordered his assassination, which took place in the

court-yard of the Louvre on the 14th of April 1617.--T.

[53] MATHURIN RÉGNIER: _Sat._ XIII.; _Macette_, 30:

"Her penitent eye sheds holy water and none other."--T.

[54] "_L'État c'est moi!_ The State is I!"--T.

[55] RACINE: _Athalie_, Act I. Sc. i.:

"O happy day for me!

How gladly would I go my King again to see!"--T.

[56] Théodore Demetrius Prince de Bauffremont-Courtenay (1793-1853).--T.

[57] Anne Laurence de Montmorency, Princesse de Bauffremont-Courtenay

(1802-1860), married to Théodore Prince de Bauffremont on the 6th of

September 1819.--T.

[58] Louis Charles Bonaventura Pierre Comte de Mesnard (1769-1842)

emigrated in 1791 and became attached to the person of the Duc

de Berry. The Duke, on his return to France, appointed him his

aide-de-camp and, in 1816, he was appointed First Equerry to the

Duchess, whom he had gone to Marseilles to meet. The Comte de Mesnard

was with the Duc de Berry at the moment of his assassination. He was

created a peer of France in 1823. In 1830, he accompanied the Duchesse

de Berry to England, returned with her to France in 1832, took part

in the attempted rising in the Vendée and was arrested with his royal

mistress at Nantes. He was tried and acquitted on the 15th of March

1833 and at once joined the Duchesse de Berry in Italy.--T.

[59] The following is the text of this little manifesto, which the

newspapers of the day did not dare to publish and which has remained

comparatively unknown:

"The mother of Henry V., I returned without other support than his

misfortunes and his good right to put an end to the calamities

which France is undergoing, by restoring lawful authority, order

and stability, pledges essential to the rest and peace of nations.

Treachery handed me over to our enemies. Kept a prisoner and long

oppressed by persons to whom I had shown nothing but kindness, I

have bewailed their ingratitude and suffered with resignation the

wrongs with which they have overwhelmed me; but I shall never cease

to protest against the usurpation of the rights of a child whom

justice, ties of blood, honour and faith obliged them to protect

and defend.

"I thank the people of France for the man? marks of attachment

which they have given me; my heart will never lose the remembrance

of it.

"I beg all those who have been persecuted for the sake of my

son and myself, those who have offered me advice of which I was

deprived, in spite of the sad situation to which I was reduced

and those who have protested, in France's name and mine, against

the sequestration and the moral sufferings which stifled my very

complaints, to receive the assurance that I shall never forget

their affection nor the pains which they have endured.

"The reproaches which some have dared to attribute to me as having

been uttered against friends of whose devotion I was too sure to

accuse their conduct have offended me to the quick: I indignantly

deny those insulting suppositions.

"Whatever may be the future which Providence has in store for my

son, to love France, to devote his cares and his life to repairing

her misfortunes, to hope that she may be happy, even if he were not

himself charged to make her happy: those will at all tunes be his

sentiments and his wishes, those will also always be mine.

"The French have never enjoyed real liberty except under the

protection of their lawful Sovereign: it will behove the heir of

the name and, I hope, the virtues of Henry the Great to continue

his reign and to realize all that he promised to France.

"MARIE-CAROLINE."

"Blaye Citadel, 7 June 1833."

--B.