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.
I was greatly distressed, when passing by Mestre, towards the end of
the night, not to be able to go down to the shore: perhaps a distant
beacon in the furthermost lagoons would have shown me the fairest
of the islands of the Old World, even as a tiny light revealed to
Christopher Columbus the first island of the New World[240]. It was at
Mestre that I landed from Venice, at the time of my first journey in
1806: _fugit ætas._
I breakfasted at Conegliano; I there received the compliments of
the friends of a lady who had translated the _Abencerrage_ and who
doubtless resembled Bianca:
"He saw a young woman come out, attired much after the fashion
of those Gothic queens sculptured on the monuments of our old
abbeys... a black mantilla was thrown over her head; with her left
hand she held the ends of this mantilla crossed and drawn up close
like a veil over her chin, so that nothing was seen of her whole
face but her large eyes and rosy mouth."
I pay my debt to the translator of my Spanish reveries by reproducing
her portrait here.
When I climbed back into my carriage, a priest harangued me on the
_Génie du Christianisme._ I was crossing the scene of the victories
which led Bonaparte to encroach upon our liberties.
Udine is a beautiful town: I noticed a portico copied from the Palace
of the Doges. I dined at the inn, in the room lately occupied by Madame
la Comtesse de Samoyloff; it was still quite full of her disorder. Is
that niece of the Princesse Bagration, "another injustice of years,"
still as pretty as she was in Rome, in 1829, when she used to sing so
wonderfully at my concerts? What breeze had blown that flower once
again under my feet? What wind impelled that cloud? O daughter of the
North, you enjoy life; make haste: harmonies that used to delight you
have already ceased; your days will not have the length of the arctic
day.
[Sidenote: My second journey to Prague.]
In the visitors'-book of the hotel I read the name of my noble friend,
the Comte de La Ferronnays, who was returning from Prague to Naples,
in the same way as I was going from Padua to Prague. The Comte de La
Ferronnays, who is my fellow-countryman in more than one respect, since
he is both a Breton and a Malouin, mingled his political destinies
with mine: he was Ambassador in St. Petersburg when I was Minister of
Foreign Affairs in Paris; he occupied this latter office, and I, in my
turn, became an ambassador under his direction. I was sent to Rome,
and resigned on the accession to power of the Polignac Ministry; La
Ferronnays succeeded to my embassy. He is M. de Blacas' brother-in-law,
and is as poor as the latter is rich; he resigned the peerage and the
diplomatic service at the time of the Revolution of July; every one
esteems him and no one hates him, because of the genuineness of his
character and the moderation of his mind. In his last negociation in
Prague, he allowed himself to be overreached by Charles X., who is
approaching the end of his days. Old people take pleasure in secret
practices, having nothing to show that is any good. Excepting my old
King, I would like every one to be drowned who is no longer young,
myself first of all, together with a dozen of my friends.
At Udine, I took the Villach Road; I was going towards Bohemia by way
of Salzburg and Linz. Before attacking the Alps, I heard bells pealing
and saw an illuminated _campanile_ in the plain. I had the postilion
questioned through the intermediary of a German from Strasburg, my
Italian _cicerone_ in Venice, whom Hyacinthe had brought me to act
as my Slav interpreter in Prague. The rejoicings about which I was
asking were taking place on the occasion of the promotion of a priest
to Holy Orders; he was to say his first Mass on the morrow. How often
will those bells, which to-day are proclaiming the indissoluble union
between a man and his God, summon that man to the sanctuary, and how
soon will those same bells ring out for his funeral?
22 _September._
I slept almost through the night, to the sound of the torrents, and
awoke at day-break, on the 22nd, among the mountains. The Carinthian
valleys are pleasant, but present no striking characteristics: the
peasants have no distinctive dress; a few women wear furs, like the
Hungarian women; others have white hoods set on the back of their
heads, or blue woollen caps with a padded edging, half way between the
Osmanli's turban and the bonze's skull-cap with the button at the top.
I changed horses at Villach. On leaving that stage, I followed a wide
valley on the banks of the Drave, a new acquaintance: by dint of
crossing rivers, I shall end by reaching my last shore. Lander[241]
has just discovered the mouth of the Niger; the daring traveller
surrendered his life to Eternity at the very moment when he taught us
that the mysterious African stream discharges its waters into the Ocean.
At nightfall, we were nearly stopped at the village of St. Paternion:
the carriage wanted greasing; a peasant screwed the nut of one of
the wheels in the wrong direction, with so much force that it was
impossible to remove it. All the clever people in the village, with the
blacksmith at their head, failed in their attempts. A boy of fourteen
or fifteen years of age left the band, returned with a pair of
pincers, thrust aside the workers, wound a brass wire round the bolt,
twisted it with his plyers and, bearing with his hand in the direction
of the screw, removed the nut without the slightest effort, amid
general cheering. Might not that child be a budding Archimedes? The
queen of an Esquimaux tribe, the same woman who drew for Captain Parry
a chart of the polar seas, used attentively to watch sailors welding
pieces of iron at the forge and outstripped all her race through her
genius.
During the night of the 22nd, I passed through a thick mass of
mountains; their confusion continued before me as far as Salzburg: and
yet those ramparts did not protect the Roman Empire. The author of the
_Essayes_, speaking of the Tyrol, says, with his ordinary vivacity of
imagination:
"It resembles a gown that we only see plaited up, but that, if it
were spread out, it would form a very large country[242]."
The mounts among which I wound were like a landslip from the upper
chains, which, covering a vast ground, had formed little Alps
presenting the different accidental features of the great ones.
Cascades rushed down from every side, leaping over beds of stones,
like the torrents in the Pyrenees. The road passed through gorges
hardly open to the gauge of the calash. In the neighbourhood of Gmünd,
hydraulic forges mixed the echo of their stamps with that of the
sluices; from their chimneys, columns of sparks escaped amid the night
and the dark forests of pine-trees. At each blow of the bellows on the
hearth-stone, the open roofs of the factory lit up suddenly, like the
dome of St. Peter's in Rome on a holiday.
In the Karch Range, they added three couple of oxen to our horses. Our
long team, on the torrent waters and in the flooded ravines, looked
liked a living bridge. The chain opposite the Tauern was draped in snow.
[Sidenote: St. Michael.]
On the 23rd, at nine o'clock in the morning, I stopped at the
pretty hamlet of St. Michael, at the bottom of a valley. Some tall,
good-looking Austrian girls served me with a very clean breakfast
in a little room whose two windows looked out over meadows and
the village-church. The grave-yard, which surrounded the church,
was separated from me only by a rustic yard. Wooden crosses, with
semicircular inscriptions and with holy-water fonts hanging from them,
rose above the grass of the old tombs: five graves as yet unturfed
proclaimed five new resting-places. Some of the graves, like the
borders of kitchen-gardens, were adorned with marigolds in full yellow
flower; wag-tails chased grass-hoppers in this garden of the dead. A
very old lame woman, leaning on a crutch, crossed the cemetery and
brought back a cross that had fallen down: perhaps the law permitted
her to pilfer that cross for her tomb; dead wood, in the forests,
belong to him who picks it up.
Là dorment dans l'oubli des poètes sans gloire,
Des orateurs sans voix, des héros sans victoire[243].
Would not the child of Prague sleep better here, without a crown, than
in the chamber in the Louvre where his father's body was laid in state?
My solitary breakfast, taken in the company of the satisfied travellers
lying under my window, would have been to my taste if I had not been
afflicted by too recent a death: I had heard the screams of the chicken
served at my banquet. Poor young bird! It had been so happy, five
minutes before my arrival! It was wandering among the grasses, the
vegetables and the flowers; it was running about among the troops of
goats come down from the mountain; to-night it would have gone to roost
with the sun, and it was still small enough to sleep under its mother's
wing.
When the calash was put to, I climbed in, surrounded by the women,
and the waiters of the inn accompanied me to the carriage-door; they
seemed glad to have seen me, although they did not know me and were
never to see me again: they gave me so many blessings! I do not tire
of this German cordiality. You never meet a peasant but takes off
his hat to you and wishes you a hundred good things: in France we
salute only death; insolence is accounted as liberty and equality;
there is no sympathy between man and man; to envy whoever travels a
little comfortably, to stand with one arm akimbo, ready to draw the
sword on any one who wears a new coat or a white shirt: those are the
characteristic signs of our national independence, always provided that
we spend our days in the antechambers accepting the rebuffs of some
upstart clodhopper. This does not take away from our high intelligence,
nor prevent us from triumphing with arms in hand; but manners cannot
be made _à priori_: for eight centuries we have been a great military
nation; fifty years have not been able to change us: we have not been
able to acquire a genuine love for liberty. So soon as we have a
moment's rest under a transitory government, the Old Monarchy shoots up
again on its stock, the old French spirit reappears: we are courtiers
and soldiers, nothing more.
23 _and_24 _September_ 1833.
The last range of mountains shutting in the Province of Salzburg
commands the arable region. The Tauern has glaciers; its table-land
resembles all the table-lands of the Alps, but more particularly that
of the Saint-Gotthard. On this table-land, crusted over with reddish,
frozen moss, stands a Calvary: an ever-ready consolation, an eternal
refuge for the unfortunate. Around that Calvary are buried the victims
who perish amid the snows.
What were the hopes of the travellers passing, like myself, through
this spot when the snow-storm surprised them? Who are they? Who has
wept for them? How do they rest there, so far from their kindred, their
country, hearing each winter the roar of the tempests whose breath
carried them off the earth? But they sleep at the foot of the Cross;
Christ, their sole companion, their only friend, nailed to the sacred
wood, leans towards them, is covered with the same hoar-frost that
whitens their graves: in the celestial regions, He will present them to
His Father and warm them in His breast.
The descent of the Tauern is long, bad and dangerous; I was delighted
with it: it reminds one, at one time by its cascades and its wooden
bridges, at another by the narrowness of its chasm, of the Valley of
the Pont-d'Espagne at Cauterets or the Domo d'Ossola slope of the
Simplon; but it is far from leading to Granada or Naples. We find no
gleaming lakes, no orange-trees at the bottom: it is unprofitable to
give one's self so much trouble to come to some potato-fields.
At the stage, half-way down the descent, I found myself among my family
in the room of the inn: the walls were hung with the Adventures of
Atala, in six prints. My daughter did not suspect that I should pass
that way, nor had I hoped to meet an object so dear to me on the brink
of a torrent called, I believe, the Dragon. Poor Atala! She had grown
very ugly, very old; she was greatly changed! She wore big feathers
on her head and a short, tight skirt round her hips, like the lady
savages of the Théâtre de la Gaîté. Vanity turns everything into money;
I carried my head high before my works in the depths of Carinthia like
Cardinal Mazarin before the pictures in his gallery. I felt inclined to
say to mine host:
"I made that!"
I had to separate from my first-born, although with less difficulty
than on the island in the Ohio.
As far as Werfen, nothing attracted my attention, unless it were the
manner in which they put the second crop of grass to dry: they drive
stakes of fifteen to twenty feet in height into the ground; they roll
the unbleached grass round those stakes, not too tightly: it dries
there and blackens. At a certain distance, those columns look just like
cypress-trees or like trophies planted in memory of the flowers mown
down in those dales.
[Sidenote: Salzburg.]
24 _September, Tuesday._
Germany was determined to revenge herself for my ill-humour against
her. In the Salzburg Plain, on the morning of the 24th, the sun
appeared to the east of the mountains which I had left behind me; some
rocky peaks on the west lit up with its first softest rays. Darkness
still hovered over the plain, half green, half tilled, whence rose a
smoke, like the steam of man's sweat. Salzburg Castle, raising the
summit of the hill that commands the town, encrusted the blue sky with
its white surface. With the ascending sun, there rose, from out of the
bosom of the cool exhalation of the dew, avenues, clusters of wood,
red-brick houses, cottages rough-plastered with gleaming white lime,
mediæval towers slashed and pierced, old champions of time, wounded
in the head and breast, left standing alone on the battle-field of the
centuries. The autumnal light of the scene had the violent tint of the
colchicums which blossom at this season of the year and with which the
meads along the banks of the Salza were strewn. Flights of crows left
the creepers and holes of the ruins and descended upon the fields;
their gleaming wings were glazed with rose in the reflection of the
dawn.
It was the Feast of St. Rupert[244], the Patron of Salzburg. The
peasant-women were going to market, decked out in the fashion of
their village: their fair hair and snowy foreheads were enclosed in a
sort of helmet of gold, well suited to women of Germania. When I had
passed through the town, which is clean and handsome, I saw two or
three thousand foot-soldiers in a field; they were being reviewed by a
general, accompanied by his staff. Those white lines cutting into the
green grass, the glitter of arms at sunrise formed a stately display
worthy of those peoples depicted or rather sung by Tacitus: Mars the
Teuton was offering a sacrifice to Aurora. What were my gondoliers
doing at that moment in Venice? They were sporting like swallows, after
the night was past, in the returning dawn and preparing to skim over
the surface of the water; next would come the joys of the night, loves
and barcarolles. Every nation has its lot: this one enjoys strength;
that one, pleasures: the Alps make the division.
From Salzburg to Linz, a fertile country-side; the horizon on the right
denticulated with mountains. Forests of pines and beeches, wild and
similar oases, are surrounded by a skilful and varied cultivation.
Herds of all kinds of cattle, hamlets, churches, oratories, crosses
furnish and enliven the landscape.
After we had passed the radius of the festival of St. Rupert (festivals
do not last long with men, nor do they go far), we found all the people
in the fields, busy with the autumnal sowing and the potato-harvest.
Those rustic populations were better clad, more polite, and appeared
happier than our own. Do not let us disturb the order, the peace, the
simple virtues which they enjoy, under the pretext of substituting for
them political boons which are neither conceived nor felt in the same
manner by all, whereas the whole of mankind understands the joys of the
home, family affection, the abundance of life, simplicity of heart and
religion.
The Frenchman, who is so much in love with women, is very well able to
dispense with them in a number of cares and works; the German cannot
live without his mate: he employs her and takes her with him wherever
he goes, to the battle-field as to the plough-field, to feasts and
funerals alike.
In Germany, the very animals partake of the temperate character of
their sober-minded masters. It is interesting, when travelling, to
observe the physiognomy of the brute beasts. We can judge beforehand
of the manners and passions of the inhabitants of a country by the
gentleness or wickedness, the tameness or wildness, the cheerfulness or
sadness of that living part of creation which God has subjected to our
sway.
[Sidenote: Woknabrück.]
An accident to the calash obliged me to stop at Woknabrück. As I roamed
about the inn, I came upon a back-door which let me out on a canal.
Beyond it lay meadows striped with pieces of brown holland. A river,
inflected under wooded hills, served as a belt for those meadows.
Something, I know not what, reminded me of the village of Plancoët,
where happiness had appeared to me in my childhood. O shades of my old
kinsfolk, I did not expect to find you on these shores! You are drawing
nearer to me, because I am drawing nearer to the grave, your shelter;
we are going to meet again there. My kind aunt, do you still sing your
ballad of the Sparrow-hawk and the Warbler[245] on the banks of Lethe?
Have you met the fickle Trémigon[246] among the dead, just as Dido saw
Æneas in the region of the shades?
The day was drawing to a close when I left Woknabrück; Sol transferred
me to his sister's hands: a double light of undefinable hue and
fluidity. Soon Luna reigned alone: she was inclined to renew our
conversation of the forests of Haselbach[247]; but I was not in the
mood for her. I preferred Venus, who rose at two o'clock on the morning
of the 25th; she was as beautiful as amid those dawns in which I used
to contemplate and invoke her on the seas of Greece.
Leaving many mysteries of woods, streams and valleys to the right and
left, I passed through Lambach, Wels and Neuban, quite new little
townships, with flat-roofed houses, as in Italy. In one of those
houses, they were making music; there were young women at the windows:
things were different in Maroboduus'[248] time.
In the towns of Germany, the streets are wide, drawn up in line like
the tents of a camp or the files of a battalion; the market-places
are spacious, the drill-grounds extensive: the people want sun, and
everything happens in public.
In the towns of Italy, the streets are narrow and winding, the
market-places small, the drill-grounds cramped: the people want shade,
and everything happens in secret.
At Linz, my passport was endorsed without difficulty.
24 _and_25 _September_ 1833.
I crossed the Danube at three o'clock in the morning: I had said to it
in the summer what I could no longer find to say to it in the autumn;
its waters were no longer the same and I was there at a different hour.
Far on my left, as I passed, lay my good village of Waldmünchen, with
its droves of pigs[249], Eumaus the shepherd[250] and the peasant-girl
who looked at me over her father's shoulder[251]. The dead man's grave
in the cemetery was filled up by now[252]; the deceased had been eaten
by some thousands of worms for having had the honour of being a man.
M. and Madame de Bauffremont, who had arrived at Linz, were a few hours
ahead of me; they themselves were preceded by some Royalists, bearing a
message of peace, who believed Madame to be travelling quietly behind
them: and I came after them all, like Discord, with news of war.
The Princesse de Bauffremont, _née_ de Montmorency[253], was going to
Butschirad[254] to congratulate the Kings of France, _née_ Bourbons:
what could be more natural?
On the 25th, at nightfall, I entered some woods. Carrion-crows flew
screaming through the air; their thick flights whirled above the trees
whose tops they were making ready to crown. Behold me returning to my
early youth: I saw once more the crows in the Mall at Combourg[255];
I imagined myself renewing my family life in the old castle[256]: O
memories, you pierce the heart like a sword! O Lucile[257], we are
parted by many years: now the crowd of my days has passed and, in
dispersing, allows me to see your image more clearly!
I reached Thabor at night: its square, surrounded by arcades, struck me
as immense; but the moonlight is deceptive.
On the morning of the 26th, a mist wrapped us in its boundless
solitude. At about ten o'clock, it seemed to me that I was passing
between two lakes. I was now only a few leagues from Prague.
[Sidenote: Prague.]
The fog lifted. The approaches by the Linz Road are livelier than by
the Ratisbon Road; the landscape is less insipid. One sees villages,
country-houses with woods and ponds. I met a woman with a resigned and
pious face, going bent under the weight of an enormous basket; two old
market-women with apples spread out for sale beside a ditch; a young
girl and a young man sitting on the grass, the man smoking, the girl
glad, spending the day beside her friend and the night in his arms;
children at a cottage-door playing with cats or driving geese to the
common; turkeys in coops going to Prague, like myself, for Henry V.'s
coming of age; next, a shepherd blowing his horn, while Hyacinthe,
Baptiste, the Venetian _cicerone_ and My Excellency jolted along in our
patched calash: such are the destinies of life. I would not give a doit
for the best of them.
Bohemia had nothing new to show me: my ideas were fixed on Prague.
PRAGUE, 29 _September_ 1833.
The second day after my arrival in Prague, I sent Hyacinthe to take a
letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, whom, according to my reckoning,
he ought to meet at Trieste. This letter informed the Princess that
"I had found the Royal Family leaving for Leoben; that some young
Frenchmen had arrived for the coming of age of Henry V. and that the
King was avoiding them; that I had seen Madame la Dauphine; that she
had bidden me to go at once to Butschirad, where Charles X. still was;
that I had not seen Mademoiselle, because she was a little unwell;
that I had been admitted to her room, where the shutters were closed,
and that she had held out to me her hot hand in the dark and asked me
to save them all; that I had gone to Butschirad, seen M. de Blacas
and talked with him about the declaration of the majority of Henry
V.; that I had been taken to the King's room and found him asleep
and that, after I had subsequently handed him Madame la Duchesse de
Berry's letter, he had appeared to me to be very much incensed against
my august client; that, otherwise, the short deed drawn up by me on the
subject of the coming of age had seemed to be to his liking."
My letter concluded with the following paragraph:
"And now, Madame, I must not conceal the fact from you that there
is a great deal amiss here. Our enemies would laugh if they saw us
contending for a kingship without a kingdom, a sceptre which is
merely the stick with which we assist our steps on the pilgrimage,
perhaps a long one, of our exile. All the drawbacks lie in your
son's education, and I see no prospect of its being changed. I am
returning to the midst of the poor whom Madame de Chateaubriand
provides for; there I shall always be at your orders. If ever you
become Henry's absolute mistress, if you continue to think that
that precious trust might safely be placed in my hands, I shall
be as happy as I shall be honoured to devote the rest of my life
to him; but I could not undertake so terrible a responsibility
except on the condition of remaining entirely free, subject to
your advice, in my selections and ideas and of being placed on an
independent soil, outside the circle of the absolute monarchies."
The letter enclosed the following copy of my draft for the declaration
of majority:
"We, Henry V., having attained the age at which the laws of the
Realm settle the majority of the Heir to the Throne, do ordain that
the first act of that majority shall be a solemn protest against
the usurpation of Louis-Philippe Duc d'Orléans. Wherefore, and by
the advice of Our Council, We have drawn up this present Act to
maintain Our rights and the rights of Frenchmen.
"Given on the thirtieth day of September in the Year of Our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three."
PRAGUE, 30 _September_ 1833.
My letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry described the general facts,
but did not enter into details.
When I saw Madame de Gontaut, surrounded by half-packed trunks and
open boxes, she threw herself on my neck and, sobbing:
"Save us!" she said. "Save us!"
"And what am I to save you from, madame? I have just arrived, I know
nothing about anything."
Hradschin was deserted; one would have thought that we were in the
midst of the Days of July and the flight from the Tuileries, as though
revolutions had become attached to the footsteps of the outlawed House.
[Sidenote: The young men from France.]
Young men were coming to congratulate Henry on the day of his attaining
his majority[258]; several were under penalty of death: some of them,
who had been wounded in the Vendée[259], almost all of them poor,
had been obliged to club together in order to enable them to go to
Prague and give voice to their loyalty. Forthwith an order closed
the frontiers of Bohemia to them. Those who succeeded in reaching
Butschirad were received only after making great efforts; etiquette
barred their way, even as Messieurs the lords of the Bed-chamber
defended the door of Charles X.'s closet at Saint-Cloud, while the
Revolution entered by the windows. The young men were told that the
King was going away, that he would not be in Prague on the 29th. The
horses were ordered, the Royal Family packed up bag and baggage.
When the travellers at last obtained leave to pronounce some hurried
compliments, they were listened to in fear and trembling. Not so much
as a glass of water was offered to the faithful little band; they
were not bidden to the table of the orphan whom they had come to seek
from so far away; they were driven to drink to the health of Henry V.
in a tap-house. Men fled before a handful of Vendeans, even as they
scattered before five score heroes of July.
And what was the pretext for this stampede? They were going to meet
the Duchesse de Berry, they were going to make an appointment with the
Princess on the high-road in order stealthily to show her her daughter
and her son. Was she not very guilty? She persisted in claiming an
empty title for Henry. And, in order to extricate themselves from the
simplest position, they displayed before the eyes of Austria and France
(always presuming France to notice such pin-points) a spectacle which
rendered the Legitimacy, already too much disparaged, the despair of
its friends and an object of calumny to its enemies.
Madame la Dauphine realized the disadvantages of the education of Henry
V., and her virtues ran over in tears, even as at night the skies fall
in dew. The brief audience which she granted me did not give her time
to speak of my letter of the 30th of June from Paris; she wore an air
of concern when she looked at me.
A means of safety seemed to lie hidden in the very rigours of
Providence: the orphan's expatriation separated him from that which
threatened to ruin him at the Tuileries; in the school of adversity,
he might have been brought up under the guidance of a few men of the
new social order, qualified to instruct him in the new theories of
kingship. Instead of adopting those masters of the moment, so far from
bettering Henry V.'s education, they made it more fatal by the intimacy
produced by the constricted family-life: during the winter evenings,
old men, stirring up the centuries by the fireside, taught the child
about days the light of which nothing will ever bring back; they
transformed the Chronicles of Saint-Denis[260] into nursery-tales for
his benefit: surely the two First Barons of the modern era, Liberty
and Equality, would know how to force Henry "Lackland" to grant a Great
Charter!
[Illustration: The Duc and the Duchesse d'Angoulême.]
[Sidenote: I go to Butschirad.]
The Dauphine had urged me to take the trip of Butschirad. Messieurs
Dufougerais[261] and Nugent[262] escorted me on my embassy to Charles
X. on the evening of my arrival in Prague. They were at the head of the
deputation of the young men and were going to complete the negotiations
which had been entered into on the subject of the presentation. The
former of the two, who had been implicated in my trial before the
Assize-court, had pleaded his case with great intelligence; the
second had just finished a term of imprisonment of eight months for a
royalist newspaper offense. The author of the _Génie du Christianisme_,
therefore, had the honour of going to wait on the Most Christian King
seated in a hired calash between the author of the _Mode_ and the
author of the _Revenant._
PRAGUE, 30 _September_ 1833.
Butschirad is a villa belonging to the Grand-duke of Tuscany at
about six leagues from Prague, on the road to Carlsbad. The Austrian
Princes have their ancestral possessions in their own country and are
merely owners for life on the other side of the Alps: they hold Italy
on lease. Butschirad is reached by a triple avenue of apple-trees.
The villa makes no show; with its out-houses, it looks like a fine
farm-house: it stands in the middle of a bare plain and the view
commands a hamlet with green trees and a tower. The inside of the house
is an Italian misconception, in the latitude of 50 degrees: large
living-rooms without stoves or chimneys. The apartments are enriched in
a melancholy fashion with the spoils of Holyrood. The palace of James
II., which Charles X. refurnished[263], has supplied Butschirad, by the
removal, with its carpets and chairs.
[Sidenote: Charles X. asleep.]
The King had a touch of fever and had gone to bed when I arrived at
Butschirad at eight o'clock in the evening, on the 28th. M. de Blacas
introduced me into Charles X.'s bed-room, as I wrote to the Duchesse de
Berry. A little lamp was burning on the mantel-piece; in the silence
of the darkness, I heard only the loud breathing of the thirty-fifth
successor of Hugh Capet. O my old King, your sleep was painful; time
and adversity, those heavy nightmares, were seated on your breast! A
young man might approach the bed of his young bride with less love than
I felt respect as I stepped with stealthy tread towards your lonely
couch. At least, I was not a bad dream like that which woke you to go
to see your son die! I inwardly addressed you with these words, which I
could not have uttered aloud without bursting into tears:
"May Heaven protect you against all ills to come! Sleep in peace during
these nights adjoining your last sleep! Long enough have your vigils
been vigils of sorrow. May this bed of exile lose its hardness while
awaiting the visit of God: He alone can make the foreign earth lie
light upon your bones!"
Yes, I would joyfully have given all my blood to make the Legitimacy
possible for France. I had imagined that it would be with the Old
Royalty as with the dry rod of Aaron: when taken away from the Temple
of Jerusalem, it was budded, and the buds swelling it had bloomed
blossoms, which, swelling the leaves, were formed into almonds, a
token of the renewal of the covenant. I do not study to stifle my
regrets, to keep back the tears with which I would like to wash out the
last trace of the royal sorrows. The impulses which I experience in
different directions with respect to the same persons bear witness to
the sincerity with which these Memoirs are written. In Charles X., the
man moves me to pity, the Sovereign offends me: I give way to these two
impressions as they succeed one another, without seeking to reconcile
them.
On the 28th of September, after Charles X. had received me in the
morning by his bed-side, Henry V. sent for me: I had not asked to see
him. I spoke a few serious words to him on his coming of age and on the
loyal Frenchmen whose ardour had led them to offer him a pair of golden
spurs.
For the rest, it was impossible to be better treated than I was. My
arrival had given alarm; they dreaded the report of my journey in
Paris. For me, therefore, every attention; all the rest were neglected.
My companions, scattered, dying of hunger and thirst, wandered about
the passages, the staircases, the court-yards of the _château_, amid
the scare of the occupiers and the preparations for their escape.
The Austrian guards wondered at these individuals in mustachios and
mufti; they suspected them of being French soldiers in disguise,
thinking of taking Bohemia by surprise.
During this storm without, Charles X. was saying to me indoors:
"I am busy correcting the act establishing my 'Government' in Paris.
You will have M. de Villèle as your colleague, as you asked, and the
Marquis de La Tour-Maubourg and the Chancellor[264]."
I thanked the King for his goodness, while wondering at the illusions
of this world. Society crumbles to pieces, monarchies come to an end,
the face of the earth is renewed, and Charles in Prague establishes a
"government" in France, after "taking the opinion" of his Council! Let
us not jeer overmuch: which of us but has his delusions? Which of us
but feeds his budding hopes? Which of us but has his "government _in
petto_," after "taking the opinion" of his passions? Raillery would ill
beseem me, the man of dreams. These Memoirs, which I scribble as I run,
are not they my "government," after "taking the opinion" of my vanity?
Do not I think that I can speak very seriously to the future, which is
as little at my disposal as France is at the orders of Charles X.?
Cardinal Latil, wishing to escape the hubbub, had gone to spend a
few days with the Duc de Rohan[265]. M. de Foresta[266] passed by
mysteriously with his portfolio under his his arm; Madame de Bouille
made me deep courtesies, like a party-person, with lowered eyes that
tried to see through their lids; M. La Villate was waiting to receive
his dismissal; there was no longer any question of M. Barrande, who
cherished the hope of being restored to favour and was living in a
corner in Prague.
[Sidenote: The Dauphin.]
I went to pay my court to the Dauphin. Our conversation was brief:
"How does Monseigneur find himself at Butschirad?"
"Getting oldish."
"We're all doing that, Monseigneur."
"How's your wife?"
"Monseigneur, she has the tooth-ache."
"Inflammation?"
"No, Monseigneur: age."
"You're dining with the King? We shall meet again."
And we parted.
PRAGUE, 28 and 29 _September._
I found myself free at three o'clock: they dined at six. Not
knowing what to do with myself, I went for a walk through avenues
of apple-trees worthy of Normandy. The fruit-crop from those mock
orange-trees in good years amounts to the value of eighteen thousand
francs. The calvilles are exported to England. They are not made into
cider, as the Bohemian beer-monopoly is opposed to it. According to
Tacitus, the Germans had words to express spring, summer and winter,
but none for autumn, of which they knew neither the name nor the gifts:
_nomen ac bona ignorantur._ Since Tacitus' time, a Pomona has come to
dwell among them.
Feeling very tired, I sat down on the steps of a ladder leaning against
the trunk of an apple-tree. I was there in the Œil-de-bœuf of
the _château_ of Butschirad or at the railing of the Council-chamber.
Looking at the roof which covered the three generations of my Kings, I
called to mind the complaint of the Arab Maoual:
"Here we saw vanish below the horizon the stars which we love to
see rise under the sky of our country."
Full of these melancholy ideas, I fell asleep. A gentle voice woke me.
A Bohemian peasant-woman came to gather apples; throwing forward her
breast and lifting her head, she made me a Slav bow with a queenly
smile: I thought I should fall from my roosting-place; I said to her in
French:
"You are very beautiful; I thank you!"
I saw from her look that she had understood me: apples always play a
part in my encounters with "Bohemians[267]." I climbed down from my
ladder like one of those condemned men of feudal times delivered by the
presence of a young woman. Thinking on Normandy, Dieppe, Fervacques,
the sea, I resumed my way to the Trianon of Charles X.'s old age.
We sat down to table, namely, the Prince and Princesse de Bauffremont,
the Duc and Duchesse de Narbonne, M. de Blacas, M. de Damas, M.
O'Heguerty, I, M. le Dauphin and Henry V.: I would rather have seen
the young men there than myself. Charles X. did not come in to dinner:
he was nursing himself, in order to be able to start on the morrow.
The banquet was noisy, thanks to the young Prince's prattle: he never
ceased talking of his ride on horseback, his horse, his horse's pranks
on the grass, his horse's snorting in the ploughed fields. This
conversation was most natural, and yet it grieved me; I liked our old
talk on travels and history better.
The King came and chatted to me. He complimented me again on the note
on the majority: it pleased him because it left the abdications on one
side as an accomplished thing, required no signature except Henry's
and revived no sores. According to Charles X., the declaration would
be sent from Vienna to M. de Pastoret before my return to France; I
bowed with an incredulous smile. His Majesty, after striking me on the
shoulder according to his custom, asked:
"Chateaubriand, where are you going now?"
"Quite foolishly to Paris, Sire."
"No, no, not foolishly," replied the King, seeking, with a sort of
uneasiness, to discover what was at the back of my thought
The newspapers were brought in; the Dauphin took possession of the
English journals; suddenly, amid profound silence, he translated aloud
the following passage from the _Times_:
"The Baron de--- is here; he is four feet high, seventy--five years
old and as brisk as though he were fifty."
And Monseigneur said nothing more.
The King retired; M. de Blacas said to me:
"You ought to come to Leoben with us."
The proposal was not seriously meant. Besides, I was not at all anxious
to be present at a family scene; I wished neither to divide relations
nor to meddle with dangerous reconciliations. When I half saw a chance
of becoming the favourite of one of the two powers, I shuddered; the
post did not seem fast enough to take me away from my possible honours.
I trembled before the shadow of fortune even as the Philistines
trembled before the shadow of Richard's horse.
On the next day, the 28th, I locked myself up at the Bath Hotel and
wrote my dispatch to Madame. That same evening, Hyacinthe set out with
the dispatch.
On the 29th, I went to see the Comte and Comtesse de Chotek; I found
them confounded by the uproar at the Court of Charles X. The Grand
Burgrave sent by means of expresses to recall the orders which were
delaying the young men at the frontiers. For the rest, those who were
to be seen in the streets of Prague had lost none of their national
characteristics: a Legitimist and a Republican, politics apart, are
the same man. What a noise they made, what joking, what merriment!
The travellers came to see me to tell me their adventures. M.---- had
visited Frankfort with a German guide, who delighted in the French;
M.---- asked him the reason; the guide answered:
"De Vrench gome to Frankfort; dey trink de vine und mague loff to de
breddy vifes of de cidicens. Cheneral Aucherau lay a dax of vorty-vun
millions on de Down of Frankfort."
Those are the reasons why the French were so much loved in Frankfort.
[Sidenote: Breakfast of the young men.]
A great breakfast was served at my inn; the rich paid the scot of the
poor. They drank champagne on the banks of the Moldau to the health of
Henry V., who was covering the roads with his grandfather, for fear
of hearing the toasts proposed to his crown. At eight o'clock, having
arranged my business, I drove off, hoping never to return to Bohemia in
my life.
It has been said that Charles X. had intended to retire to the altar:
he had precedents for such a plan in his family. Richer, monk of
Senones, and Geoffroy de Beaulieu, confessor to St. Louis, narrate that
that great man had thought of shutting himself up in a convent, when
his son should have reached an age to take his place on the throne.
Christine de Pisan[268] says of Charles V.:
"The wise King[269] had deliberated within himself that, if he
could live so long that his son was of age to wear the crown, he
would relinquish the Kingdom to him... and turn priest."
Such princes as these, if they had laid down the sceptre, would have
been missed as guardians to their sons; and still, by remaining kings,
did they make their successors worthy of them? What was Philip the
Bold[270] beside St. Louis? All Charles V.'s wisdom turned into madness
in his heir[271].
I passed at ten o'clock in the evening in front of Butschirad, in the
silent fields, brightly lit by the moon. I saw the huddled mass of
villa, hamlet and ruin inhabited by the Dauphin: the rest of the Royal
Family were travelling. Such profound isolation came upon me with a
shock; that man, as I have already told you, possessed virtues: he
was moderate in politics, he entertained few prejudices; he had only
a drop of the blood of St. Louis in his veins, but he had that; his
uprightness was unequalled, his word as inviolable as God's. Gifted
by nature with courage, he was undone at Rambouillet by his filial
piety. He showed himself brave and humane in Spain, and had the glory
of restoring a kingdom to his kinsman, but was not able to save his
own. Louis-Antoine, since the Days of July, thought of asking a shelter
in Andalusia: Ferdinand would doubtless have refused it to him. The
husband of Louis XVI.'s daughter was languishing in a village in
Bohemia; a dog whose voice I heard was the Prince's only guard: thus
Cerberus barks at the shades in the regions of death, silence and
darkness.
I was never able, in the course of my long life, to revisit my paternal
hearth; I was not able to settle down in Rome, where I so greatly
longed to die; the eight hundred leagues which I was now completing,
including my first journey to Bohemia, would have taken me to the most
beautiful sites in Greece, Italy and Spain. I have covered all this
distance and spent my last days to return to this cold, grey land: what
have I done to Heaven to deserve this?
I entered Prague on the 29th, at four o'clock in the evening.
I alighted at the Bath Hotel. I did not see the young Saxon
servant-girl[272]; she had gone back to Dresden to console the banished
pictures of Raphael with the songs of Italy.
[Sidenote: I leave Bohemia.]
29 _September to_ 6 _October_ 1833.
At Schlau, at midnight, a carriage was changing horses in front of the
post-office. Hearing French spoken, I put my head out of the calash and
said:
"Gentlemen, are you going to Prague? You will not find Charles X.
there; he has gone away with Henry V."
I mentioned my name.
"What, gone?" exclaimed several voices together. "Go ahead, postillion,
go ahead!"
My eight fellow-countrymen, after being stopped at Eger, had obtained
permission to continue their journey, but under the care of an officer
of police. It was curious, in 1833, to meet a convoy of servants of
the Throne and the Altar, dispatched by the French Legitimacy and
escorted by a policeman! In 1822, at Verona, I had seen cages full
of _Carbonari_ pass, accompanied by gendarmes. What is it that the
sovereigns want? Whom do they recognise as friends? Do they fear the
too-great crowds of their partisans? Instead of being touched by their
fidelity, they treat men devoted to their crowns as propagandists and
revolutionaries[273].
The post-master at Schlau had just invented the accordion[274]: he sold
me one; the whole night I played upon its bellows, the sound of which
carried away for me the memories of this world.
Carlsbad, through which I passed on the 30th of September, was
deserted, like an opera-house after the performance. I met at Eger the
extortioner who had made me tumble from the moon where I was spending
the month of June with a lady from the Roman Campagna[275].
At Hollfeld, no swifts[276], no little girl with her basket[277];
this saddened me. Such is my nature: I idealize real personages and
impersonate dreams, making matter and mind change places. A little girl
and a bird to-day swell the crowd of the beings of my creation with
whom my imagination is peopled, like those day-flies which sport in a
ray of the sun. Forgive me, I am speaking of myself: I notice it when
it is too late.
Here is Bamberg. Padua reminded me of Livy[278]; at Bamberg, Father
Horrion recovered the first portion of the third and of the thirtieth
books of the Roman historian. While I was supping in the birthplace
of Joachim Camerarius[279] and Clavius[280], the librarian of the
town came to greet me on account of my fame, the greatest in the
world, according to him, which warmed the marrow of my bones. Next,
a Bavarian general came running up. At the door of the inn, the crowd
surrounded me when I made for my carriage. A young woman had climbed
upon a mile-stone, as did the Sainte-Beuve to see the Duc de Guise go
by. She laughed:
"You are laughing at me?" I asked.
"No," she replied, in French, with a German accent, "it is because I am
so glad!"
[Sidenote: And return to France.]
From the 1st to the 4th of October, I saw again the places which I had
seen three months before. On the 4th, I reached the French frontier. To
me St. Francis' Day is, every year, a day for examining my conscience.
I turn my eyes upon the past; I ask myself where I was, what I was
doing on each previous anniversary. This year 1833 found me wandering,
a slave to my roving destinies. At the end of the road I saw a cross;
it stood in a cluster of trees which silently dropped a few dead leaves
upon the Man-God crucified. Twenty-seven years before, I spent St.
Francis' Day at the foot of the real Golgotha.
My Patron Saint also visited the Holy Sepulchre. Francis of
Assisi[281], the founder of the Mendicant Orders, by virtue of that
institution caused the Gospel to take a great step forward: a fact that
has not been sufficiently remarked upon. He achieved the introduction
of the people into religion; by clothing the poor in a monk's frock,
he forced the world to charity, raised the beggar in the eyes of the
rich and, in a Christian proletarian army, established the model of
that brotherhood of men which Christ had preached, a brotherhood which
will be the fulfilment of that political side of Christianity as yet
undeveloped, without which there will never be complete liberty and
justice upon earth.
My Patron extended this brotherly love to the very animals, over whom
he appeared to have reconquered by his innocence the empire which
man exercised over them before his fall; he spoke to them as if they
understood him; he gave them the name of "brothers" and "sisters." Near
Baveno, as he was passing, a multitude of birds gathered around him; he
greeted them and said:
"My winged brothers, love and praise God, for He hath clothed you with
feathers and given you the power to fly in the sky."
The birds of the Lake of Rieti followed him. He rejoiced when he met
flocks of sheep; he had a great compassion for them:
"Brothers," he said to them, "come to me."
Sometimes he would give his clothes in exchange for a sheep which was
being led to the butcher's; he remembered a very meek Lamb, _illius
mentor agni minissimi_, offered up for the salvation of mankind. A
grass-hopper lived on the bough of a fig-tree near his door at the
Portiuncula; he called it to him; it came to lie upon his hand and he
said to it:
"Sister grasshopper, sing God thy Creator."
He did the same by a nightingale and was beaten at the concerts by
a bird which he blessed and which flew away after its victory. He
was obliged to have the little wild animals which ran up to him and
sought shelter in his breast carried far away into the woods. When
he wished to pray in the morning, he ordered silence of the swallows
and they were dumb. A young man was going to Siena to sell some
turtle-doves; the servant of God begged him to give them to him, so
that doves, which, in the Scriptures, are the symbol of innocence and
candour, might not be killed. The saint carried them to his convent
at Ravacciano: he planted his stick at the door of the monastery; the
stick changed into a tall evergreen oak; the saint let the turtle-doves
go to it and commanded them to build their nest in its branches, which
they did for many years.
Francis dying wished to leave the world naked, as he had entered it;
he asked that his stripped body might be buried in the spot where the
criminals were executed, in imitation of Christ, whom he had taken for
his model. He dictated a will which was wholly spiritual, for he had
nothing to leave to his brethren except poverty and peace: a sainted
woman laid him in his tomb.
[Sidenote: Back in Paris.]
I received, from my Patron, poverty, the love of the small and humble,
compassion for animals; but my barren stick will not change into an
evergreen oak to protect them. I ought to think myself lucky to have
trodden French soil on my saint's-day; but have I a country? Have I
ever, in that country, enjoyed a moment of rest? On the 6th of October,
in the morning, I returned to my Infirmary. The gale of St. Francis was
still blowing. My trees, the budding refuges of the miseries collected
by my wife, bent before the anger of my Patron. In the evening, through
the branchy elms of my boulevard, I saw the hanging street-lamps shaken
to and fro, their half-extinguished lights flickering like the little
lamp of my life[282].
[239] This book was written on the road from Padua to Prague, from
20 to 26 September 1833, and on the road from Prague to Paris, from
26 September to 6 October.--T.
[240] Columbus first touched land in America at Guanahani, one of
the Bahama Islands, on the 12th of October 1492. The island is
called "Watling's Island" on the English maps: it is possible to
vulgarize most things; Christopher was content to christen it San
Salvador.--T.
[241] Richard Lemon Lander (1804-1834) made several journeys of
discovery in Africa, penetrated to the mouth of the Niger in 1831
and settled the question of its course and outlet. He returned to
the Nun mouth in 1833, when he was fired upon by the natives and
struck by a musket-ball in the thigh. He was removed to Fernando
Po, where he died in February 1834.--T.
[242] Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE: _A Journey into Italy._--T.
[243] Chateaubriand: _Tombeaux champêtres_, 52-53, imitated from
Gray's _Elegy written in a Country Church-yard. Cf._ 57-60:
"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."--T.
[244] Saint Rupert Bishop of Worms (_fl. circa_ 700), known as the
Apostle of the Bavarians from his missionary labours at Ratisbon,
Salzburg, etc.--T.
[245] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 21.--T.
[246] _Ibid._--T.
[247] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 354.--T.
[248] Maroboduus, or Marbod, King of the Marcomanni (_b._ 18 B.C.),
mentioned in Tacitus.--T.
[249] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 346.--T.
[250] _Ibid._, p. 347.--T.
[251] _Ibid._, p. 353.--T.
[252] _Ibid._, p. 350.--T.
[253] _Cf._ p. 38, n. 2, _supra._--T.
[254] During the summer and part of the autumn, the Royal Family used
to live at Butschirad, a lonely and gloomy residence, situated in a
dull and desolate country, about five hours' drive from Prague.--B.
[255] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 88.--T.
[256] _Ibid._, pp. 74 _et seq._--T.
[257] _Ibid._, pp. 81 _et seq._--T.
[258] By the old laws of the Monarchy, the majority of the Kings of
France was fixed at the commencement of their fourteenth year. The
memory of this law determined several hundreds of Frenchmen to go
together to visit the Elder Branch of the Bourbons, at fifteen hundred
miles from their country. This manifestation carried with it a certain
hostility to the new Dynasty. The Government of July, accordingly,
did not fail, naturally enough, when all is said and done, to put
some petty annoyances in the way of the travellers. It prevailed upon
the Austrian Government to turn a large number of them back at the
frontiers. In Frankfort and Munich, King Louis-Philippe's _chargés
d'affaires_ refused to give the necessary _visas_; several were
detained at Pilsen and Waldmünchen, _as_ also at Mayence and Eger.
Moreover, this little manifestation was looked upon almost as
unfavourably in Prague as in Paris. King Charles X. and his son, the
Dauphin, had abdicated at Rambouillet, and they had no thought of
withdrawing their respective abdications; only, in order to keep up
the moral absence of responsibility of the Duc de Bordeaux and also
to facilitate the relations between the exiles and the Cabinets,
particularly the Cabinet of Vienna, they wished to retain, while on
foreign soil, a title which seemed to them inseparable from that of
heads of the Bourbon Family. The journey of the young Frenchmen who
were coming to greet Henry of France on the day of his entering upon
his fourteenth year might upset those private arrangements of the
exiled Family. It was therefore not calculated to please the old King
and his son. Hence the little incidents which the author of the Memoirs
will presently describe to us.--B.
The Duc de Bordeaux was born on the 29th of September 1820, seven and
a half months after his father's assassination, and therefore attained
his majority, according to the laws of the French Monarchy, on the 29th
of September 1833--T.
[259] "Among the visitors to Prague were Vendeans whose wounds were not
yet closed and as many as eight persons who had been sentenced to death
in their absence and who had saved their heads by flight." (ALFRED
NETTEMENT: _Henri de France_, Vol. I, p. 264).--B.
[260] The _Chroniques de Saint-Denys_ or _Grandes chroniques de
France_ were chronicles compiled from the earliest times of the French
Monarchy by the Benedictines of Saint-Denis and kept in the treasury
of the abbey. The Abbot of Saint-Denis used to appoint a monk as
historiographer whose duty it was to follow the Court in order to
collect and write down events as they occurred. On the death of the
king, a history of his reign was drawn up from these notes, and this
history, after being submitted to the Chapter, was incorporated in the
_Grandes chroniques._ Suger, who became Abbot of Saint-Denis in 1122,
collected all the chronicles compiled from the commencement of the
Monarchy and himself wrote those of his own time. After the discovery
of printing, an abstract of the _Grandes chroniques_ was prepared and
published by Jean Chartier, the Benedictine, in 1476, under the title,
_Chroniques de France depuis les Troiens jusqu'à la mort de Charles
VII._, in 3 volumes 4to. They constitute the first French book known to
have been printed in Paris. These three volumes, which brought up the
History of France to 1461, were reprinted, with a continuation to 1513,
in 1514. A more recent edition appeared in Paris in 1836 to 1841, in 6
volumes 8vo.--T.
[261] Alfred Xavier Baron Dufougerais (1804-1874), a member of a
royalist family, was a barrister in Paris when, in 1828, he became
one of the proprietors and one of the editors of the _Quotidien._ In
April 1831, he bought the _Mode, revue du monde élégant_ from Émile
de Girardin, its founder, and turned it into a political organ. He
kept the fashion article and plates, so as to justify the title and
retain the advantages attaching to the speciality; but at the same
time the paper, in his hands, became a formidable weapon against the
Monarchy of July. Without being exactly a writer, Alfred Dufougerais
possessed the journalistic instinct to a high degree, and, under his
management, the _Mode_ soon took the leading place in the van-guard
of the royalist press. In September 1834, the state of his health
obliged him to transfer the ownership of his paper to other hands.
Alfred Dufougerais, who was gifted with a genuine talent for speaking,
preferred the contests of the bar to those of the press. He appeared in
all the leading newspaper trials and soon became standing counsel to
the royalist journals both in the provinces and in Paris. Among other
feats, he thrice obtained the acquittal of the _Indépendant de l'Ouest_
at Laval. In 1849, Dufougerais was elected by the Department of the
Vendée to the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the
Right until the _coup d'État_ of 2 December 1851, when he retired into
private life.--B.
[262] Charles Vicomte de Nugent, poet and prose-writer and a member of
the editorial staff of the _Revenant_ and the _Mode._--B.
[263] The modern apartments at Holyrood Palace were quite bare, when
they were lent to Charles X. in 1830, and almost uninhabitable. The
Wellington Administration, which made great difficulties about lending
the palace to the King and his family at all, did so only on the
express and almost barbarous condition that, "if there was a nail to be
knocked in, they would have to do it at their own expense." In short,
the unfortunate French exiles were allowed to arrive in Edinburgh,
during a Scotch winter, to take possession of a lodging in which the
very essentials of comfort were lacking, in which there was little
but the four walls of each room: and these, the Duchesse de Gontaut,
in 1831, informed M. P. J. Fallon, whose interesting little volume,
_Voyage à Holyrood pendant l'automne de_ 1831, is my authority, were,
in the case of Mademoiselle's apartment, so cold and damp that at first
they gave up the idea of occupying it. The state of the chimneys was
such that it was impossible to warm the rooms without being stifled
with smoke. M. Fallon gives a few details of the furniture supplied by
Charles X. The throne-room or picture-gallery was left empty, but for
a small table supporting an old lamp. The room before it was turned
into a chapel, in which Mass was said daily: Charles X. used to hear
Vespers at three o'clock on Sundays in the Catholic chapel next to the
Adelphi Theatre. The large drawing-room leading out of the throne-room
was fully but very simply furnished and contained a sofa with a back
about four feet high: the little Duc de Bordeaux used to amuse himself
by vaulting over it with one hand resting on the kick of it. The room
leading out of this drawing-room, on the left, was almost empty; it
contained a picture, by M. d'Hardivilliers, representing the landing
of Charles X. at Leith. Next to this was the closet of Charles X., a
large room completely furnished. The Dauphin and Dauphiness at first
occupied a little eight-roomed house at 34 Regent's Terrace, in the New
Town, at a rental of £80 a year, and did not move into Holyrood until
October 1831. M, Fallon adds a further anecdote typical of the timorous
policy of the Duke of Wellington's Ministry. So long as it remained in
power, no guard was placed at the palace gate. Later, when the duke
was succeeded by Earl Grey (November 1830), sentries were posted in
the entrance-hall and at the foot of the two towers. But they were
considered to be a guard of protection or convenience, not of honour,
and they received no orders to present arms when the members of the
Royal Family passed them.--T.
[264] The Marquis de Pastoret (_Cf._ Vol. V., p. 303, n. 2). He
succeeded Dambray in 1829 as Chancellor of France and, although he
resigned all his functions after the Revolution of July, he always
remained the "Chancellor" to Charles X. In 1834, he became tutor to the
children of the Duchesse de Berry, a charge to which he applied himself
with great devotion, in spite of his advanced years: he was born in
1756.--B.
[265] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 187, n. 4 and p. 188, n. 1.--T.
[266] Marie Joseph Marquis de Foresta (_d._ 1858) was prefect of
different departments, under the Restoration, and an honorary lord of
the Bed-chamber to the King. He had a cultured, nice and penetrating
mind and had given proof of his literary talents at an early age,
having dedicated to the Duchesse de Berry two charming and ingenious
volumes entitled, _Lettres sur la Sicile_ and published when he was
only twenty-two. He remained attached to the person of the Comte de
Chambord until his death (11 February 1858). The Marquise de Foresta
was the finished type of a Christian gentleman.--B.
[267] _Bohémiennes_: gipsy-women. _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 55, where
Chateaubriand, suffering from smallpox and starving, meets a
gipsy-woman who gives him an apple.--T.
[268] Christine de Pisan (1363-1415), born in Venice, came to the Court
of France with her father, Thomas de Pisan, who had been appointed
astrologer to Charles V. She married a Frenchman of good family, was
left a widow at an early age, and devoted herself to literature for
her consolation. She left ballads, lays, virelays, rondeaus and short
poems, such as the _Débat des deux amants_, the _Chemin de longue
étude_, etc., and a number of prose works, including the _Vision de
Christine de Pisan_ and the work from which the above quotation is
taken, entitled, the _Livre des faiets et bonnes mœurs de Charles V._
Some of her works were translated from the Romance language into French
and published separately, in Paris, in 1522, 1536, 1549 and later
years.--T.
[269] King Charles V. of France was surnamed the "Wise."--T.
[270] Philip III. King of France (1245-1285), surnamed the Bold,
succeeded St. Louis IX., in 1270. He was a gallant King and would have
cut a fine figure beside any other than his glorious father.--T.
[271] Charles VI. (1368-1422), surnamed the Well-Beloved, succeeded
his father in 1380 and lost his reason in 1392 (_Cf. supra_ p. 10, n.
3).--T.
[272] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 392.--T.
[273] I received from Périgueux, on the 14th of November, the following
letter, which, leaving the praises of myself on one side, states facts
as I have told them:
PÉRIGUEUX, 10 _November_ 1833.
"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,
"I cannot resist the wish to tell you of my disappointment when
I was told, on Monday the 28th of October, that you were away. I
had called on you to have the honour of paying you my respects and
exchanging a few words with the man to whom I have devoted all my
admiration. Obliged as I was to leave Paris that same night, where
perhaps I shall not return again, it would have been very pleasant
for me to have seen you. When, in spite of my family's moderate
means, I undertook the journey to Prague, I had placed among the
Dumber of my hopes that of introducing myself to you. And yet,
monsieur le vicomte, I cannot say that I have not seen you: I was
one of the eight young men whom you met in the middle of the night
at Schlau, not far from Prague. We arrived after having, for five
mortal days, been the victims of the intrigue that has since been
revealed to us. That meeting, at that place and hour, has something
odd about it and will never be effaced from my memory, any more
than will the image of him to whom royalist France owes the most
useful services.
"Pray accept, etc.
"P. G. JULES DETERMES."--(_Author's Note_).
[274] The accordion appears to have been invented really by Damian, in
Vienna, in the year 1829.--T.
[275] _Cf. supra_, p. 4.--T.
[276] _Cf. supra_, p. 8.--T.
[277] _Cf. supra_, p. 8.--T.
[278] _Cf. supra_, p. 105.--T.
[279] Joachim Liebhard (1500-1574), known as Camerarius, because
several members of his family had been chamberlains, a native of
Bamberg, a learned scholar, a friend of Melanchthon. Camerarius was the
author of valuable Latin translations of many of the Greek classics,
published editions, with commentaries, of many of the Latin classics,
edited Melanchthon's Letters and left a Life of Melanchthon, Letters,
Fables, etc.
[280] Christopher Clavius (1537-1612), a native of Bamberg and a great
Jesuit mathematician, was sent to Rome, where Gregory XIII. employed
him on the reform of the Calendar.--T.
[281] Giovanni Francesco Bernardone (1182-1226), canonized by Pope
Gregory IX., in 1228, as St. Francis of Assisi, founded the Order of
the Franciscans, or Mendicant Friars, in 1208: their rule was confirmed
by Pope Honorius III. in 1223. St. Francis visited the Holy Land in
1219. In 1224, two years before his death, he received the Stigmata, on
the heights of Monte La Verna, on the morning of the 14th of September,
the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross.--T.
[282] The above page was written on the 6th of October 1833. Those
which follow were begun in 1837. In September 1836, Chateaubriand
wrote, at the Château de Maintenon, a chapter which was intended for
his Memoirs, but not included in the earlier editions. This short
chapter has been recovered by M. Biré and it will be found at the end
of this volume as Appendix II.: _Unpublished Fragments of the Mémoires
if Outre-tombe._--T.