Talleyrand is not of the height to create a lasting illusion; he has
not in him a great enough power of growth to turn lies into an increase
of stature. He has been seen too near; he will not live, because his
life is not connected with a national idea that survives him, nor with
a celebrated action, nor with a peerless talent, nor with a useful
discovery, nor with an epoch-making conception. Existence through
virtue is forbidden him; dangers did not so much as deign to honour his
days: he spent the Reign of Terror away from his country and returned
only when the forum had become transformed into an antechamber.
Diplomatic monuments go to prove Talleyrand's relative mediocrity:
you cannot quote a fact held in any esteem that belongs to him. Under
Bonaparte, no important negociation was his; when he was free to
act alone, he allowed occasions to escape him and spoilt what he
touched. It is well averred that he was the cause of the death of
the Duc d'Enghien; that stain of blood cannot be wiped out: so far
from over-drawing the minister when telling the story of the Prince's
murder, I spared him a great deal too much.
In his affirmations contrary to the truth, M. de Talleyrand displayed
terrible effrontery. I have not spoken, in the _Congrès de Vérone_, of
the speech which he read to the Chamber of Peers with reference to the
address on the Spanish War; that speech opened with these solemn words:
"It is sixteen years to-day since I was called upon by him who
was then governing the world to give him my opinion as to the
struggle to be engaged upon with the Spanish people, when I had
the misfortune to displease him by unveiling the future to him,
by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise in
a mass from an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was
reckless. My disgrace was the fruit of my sincerity. How strange
is the destiny that brings me back, after this long space of time,
to repeat with the Legitimate Sovereign the same efforts, the same
advice[370]!"
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's lies.]
There are lapses of memory or lies that are terrifying: you open your
ears, you rub your eyes, not knowing whether to believe that you are
waking or sleeping. When the retailer of those imperturbable assertions
descends the tribune and goes impassively to sit down in his seat,
you follow him with your eyes, hung up as you are between a kind of
dismay and a sort of admiration: you are not sure that that man has not
received from nature an authority so great that he has the power of
reconstructing or annihilating truth.
I did not reply; it seemed to me as though the shade of Bonaparte was
about to ask leave to speak and to repeat the terrible contradiction
which he had once given M. de Talleyrand. Witnesses of that scene were
sitting among the peers, among others M. le Comte de Montesquiou[371];
the virtuous Duc de Doudeauville[372] has described it to me: he had
it from the lips of the same M. de Montesquiou, his brother-in-law; M.
le Comte de Cessac[373], who was present at that scene, tells it to
whoever cares to listen to him: he thought that the great elector would
be arrested on leaving the Emperor's closet. Napoleon, in his rage,
apostrophizing his pallid minister, shouted:
"It suits you well to decry the Spanish War, you who advised me to
embark on it, you from whom I have a heap of letters in which you try
to prove to me that that war was as essential as it was politic[374]."
Those letters disappeared at the time of the abduction of the archives
in the Tuileries, in 1814[375].
M. de Talleyrand declared, in his speech, that he had had "the
misfortune to displease "Bonaparte" by unveiling the future to him,
by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise from
an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was reckless." Let
M. de Talleyrand console himself in his grave: he did not have that
misfortune; he must not add that calamity to all the afflictions of his
life.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's diplomatic errors.]
M. de Talleyrand's principal mistake as against the Legitimacy was that
he deterred Louis XVIII. from concluding the proposed marriage between
the Duc de Berry and a Russian Princess[376]; M. de Talleyrand's
unpardonable mistake as against France was that he consented to the
revolting Treaties of Vienna.
The result of M. de Talleyrand's negociations is that we are left
without frontiers: a battle lost at Metz or Coblentz would bring the
enemy's cavalry under the walls of Paris in a week. Under the Old
Monarchy, not only was France enclosed within a circle of fortresses,
but she was defended on the Rhine by the independent States of Germany.
It was necessary to invade the electorates or negociate with them in
order to reach us. On another frontier stood Switzerland, a neutral and
free country; she had no roads; no one would violate her territory.
The Pyrenees were impassable, guarded as they were by the Spanish
Bourbons. That is what M. de Talleyrand failed to understand; those are
the mistakes which will for ever condemn him as a politician: mistakes
which, in one day, deprived us of the work of Louis XIV. and the
victories of Napoleon.
It has been contended that his policy was superior to Napoleon's:
in the first place, we must well bear in mind that a man is purely
and simply a clerk, when he holds the portfolio of a conqueror who
every morning puts into it the bulletin of a victory that changes the
geography of States. When Napoleon had once become inebriated, he made
mistakes so enormous as to strike every eye: M. de Talleyrand probably
perceived them, like everybody else; but that points to no lynx-like
vision. He compromised himself in a strange fashion in the catastrophe
of the Duc d'Enghien; he was mistaken about the Spanish War of 1808,
although he tried, later, to disown his advice and take back his words.
However, an actor creates no illusion, if he is utterly unprovided
with means of fascinating the pit: therefore the prince's life was
a perpetual deception. Knowing what he lacked, he avoided, shunned
whosoever was able to know him: his constant study was not to allow
his measure to be taken; he withdrew into silence at seasonable
times; he concealed himself during the three dumb hours which he
devoted to whist. Men wondered that so great a capacity could descend
to the amusements of the vulgar: who knows if that capacity was not
partitioning empires while sorting the four knaves in his hand?
During those moments of juggling, he inwardly worded some effective
phrase, inspired by a pamphlet of the morning or a conversation of
the evening. If he took you on one side to render you illustrious by
his conversation, his chief manner of seduction was to load you with
praises, to call you the hope of the future, to prophesy brilliant
destinies for you, to give you a bill of exchange as a great man, drawn
upon himself and payable at sight; but, if he thought that your faith
in him was a little open to suspicion, if he perceived that you did not
sufficiently admire a few short sentences with pretensions of depth,
but with nothing behind them, he went away, lest he should allow the
end of his wit to come to the surface. He would have told a good story,
were it not that his jests fell upon an underling or a fool, at whose
cost he amused himself without danger, or upon a victim, attached to
his person, who formed a butt for his jokes. He was unable to keep up a
serious conversation: the third time that he opened his lips, his ideas
evaporated.
Old engravings of the "Abbé de Périgord" represent a very pretty man;
as he grew old, M. de Talleyrand's face had turned into a death's head:
his eyes were dull, so that one had a difficulty in reading them, which
served his purpose. As he had received a great deal of contempt, he had
soaked himself in it and placed it in the two hanging corners of his
mouth.
A great manner, which came from his birth, a strict observance of the
niceties, a cold and disdainful air contributed to keep up the illusion
that surrounded the Prince de Bénévent. His manners exercised an empire
over second-rate people and the men of the new society, to whom the
society of the old days was unknown. Formerly one met persons at every
turn whose ways resembled M. de Talleyrand's, and one took no notice
of them; but, almost alone in the field in the midst of democratic
customs, he appeared a phenomenon: in order to submit to the yoke of
his forms, it suited self-love to ascribe to the minister's wit the
ascendant exercised by his breeding.
When, occupying a considerable place, you find yourself mixed up with
prodigious revolutions, these give you a chance importance which the
common herd take for your personal merit: lost in Bonaparte's rays,
M. de Talleyrand shone, under the Restoration, with the brightness
borrowed from a fortune that was not his. The accidental position of
the Prince de Bénévent permitted him to attribute to himself the power
of overthrowing Napoleon and the honour of restoring Louis XVIII.:
have I myself, like all those gapers, not been foolish enough to fall
into that fable? When I was better informed, I came to know that M. de
Talleyrand was not a political Warwick: his arm lacked the strength
that lays low and raises thrones.
Impartial numskulls say:
"We agree, he was a very immoral man; but what ability!"
Alas, no! That hope must be lost too, so consoling for his enthusiasts,
so desirable in the interests of the prince's memory: the hope of
making M. de Talleyrand a demon. Beyond certain ordinary negociations,
at the bottom of which he had the cleverness to place his personal
interest in the first rank, there was nothing to be expected of M. de
Talleyrand.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's mediocrity.]
M. de Talleyrand kept up a few habits and a few maxims for the use of
the sycophants and worthless fellows of his intimate circle. His toilet
in public, copied after that of a minister in Vienna, was a triumph
of diplomacy. He boasted of never being in a hurry; he boasted that
time is our enemy and that we must kill it: by this he reckoned to be
occupied for only a few moments.
But, as, in the last result, M. de Talleyrand did not succeed in
transforming his idleness into a master-piece, it is probable that he
was mistaken in talking of the necessity of getting rid of time: we
triumph over time only by creating immortal things; with works that
have no future, with frivolous distractions, we do not kill it: we
waste it.
M. de Talleyrand entered into office[377] on the recommendation of
Madame de Staël, who obtained his appointment from Chénier. He was then
very destitute and he began to make his fortune five or six times over
again: by the million which he received from Portugal in the hope of a
signature of peace with the Directory, a peace which was never signed;
by the purchase of Belgian bonds on the Peace of Amiens, of which
he, M. de Talleyrand, knew before it was known to the public; by the
erection of the short-lived Kingdom of Etruria; by the secularization
of the ecclesiastical properties of Germany; by the jobbing of his
opinions at the Congress of Vienna. The prince went so far as to try
to make over some old papers in our archives to Austria; but this time
he was duped by M. de Metternich, who religiously returned him the
originals, after having copies taken of them.
Incapable of writing a single sentence unaided, M. de Talleyrand
made men work competently under him: when, by dint of erasions and
alterations, his secretary had succeeded in drafting his dispatches
to his liking, he copied them out with his own hand. I have heard him
read, from the Memoirs which he commenced, a few pleasing details
about his youth. As he varied in his tastes, detesting to-morrow what
he loved yesterday, if those Memoirs exist in their entirety, which I
doubt, and if he has preserved the opposite versions, it is probable
that his judgments on the same fact and especially on the same man
will contradict each other outrageously. I do not believe in the story
that the manuscripts have been deposited in England; the order which,
they pretend, has been given to publish them not before forty years
hence[378] seems to me a piece of posthumous jugglery.
Slothful and without attainments, with a frivolous nature and a
dissipated heart, the Prince de Bénévent gloried in that which ought
to have humbled his pride, in remaining standing after the fall of
empires. The minds of the first order which produce revolutions
disappear; the minds of the second order which profit by them survive.
Those persons of the morrow and of their wits preside at the march-past
of the generations; it is their business to endorse the passports, to
confirm the sentence: M. de Talleyrand was of that inferior species; he
signed events, he did not make them.
To survive governments, to remain when a power goes, to declare one's
self permanent, to boast of belonging only to the country, of being the
man of things and not the man of individuals: that is the fatuousness
of an uneasy egoism, which strives to hide its want of elevation under
lofty words. Nowadays we count many of those unruffled characters,
many of those citizens of the soil: still, if there is to be any
greatness in growing old like the hermit in the ruins of the Coliseum,
they must be guarded with a cross; M. de Talleyrand had trodden his
underfoot.
Our species is divided into two unequal parts: the men of death, loved
by death, a chosen band which is born again; the men of life, forgotten
by life, a multitude condemned to annihilation which is born no more.
The temporary existence of these latter consists of name, credit,
place, fortune; their fame, their authority, their power fade away with
their person: closed are their drawing-room and their coffin, closed
is their destiny. Thus befell M. de Talleyrand; his mummy, before
descending into its crypt, was shown for a moment in London[379], as
the representative of the corpse-like Royalty that reigns over us.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's depravity.]
M. de Talleyrand betrayed all governments and, I repeat, raised or
overthrew none. He had no real superiority, in the sincere acceptance
of those two words. A fry of trite prosperities, so common in
aristocratic life, does not take a man two feet beyond the grave.
The evil which is not worked with a terrible explosion, the evil
parsimoniously exerted by the slave for the master's benefit is no
more than turpitude. Vice, the pander of crime, enters into domestic
service. Suppose M. de Talleyrand a plebeian, poor, obscure, having,
besides his immorality, nothing save his incontestable drawing-room
wit: we should certainly never have heard speak of him. Take away
from M. de Talleyrand the debased great lord, the married priest, the
degraded bishop: what remains to him? His reputation and his successes
have depended on that treble depravity.
The comedy with which the prelate crowned his eighty-two years is a
pitiful thing: first, to give a proof of strength, he went to pronounce
at the Institute the common eulogy of a poor German dolt[380] whom he
did not care about. In spite of all the sights with which our eyes
have been glutted, people lined up to see the great man go out[381];
next, he came to die at home, like Diocletian, showing himself to the
universe. The crowd gaped at the last moments[382] of that prince
three parts rotten, with a gangrenous aperture in his side, his head
falling on his breast in spite of the bandage that supported it, he
disputing minute by minute his reconciliation with Heaven, his niece
playing beside him a part long prepared between a priest who was
imposed upon and a little girl who was deceived. Weary of resistance,
when his power of speech was about to leave him, he signed (or perhaps
he did not even sign) the disavowal of his early adhesion to the
Constitutional Church; but without giving any sign of repentance,
without fulfilling the Christian's last duties, without retracting
the immorality and scandal of his life. Never did pride appear so
contemptible, admiration so foolish, piety so greatly duped. Rome,
always prudent, did not make the retractation public, for a very good
reason.
[Sidenote: Talleyrand's death.]
M. de Talleyrand failed to put in an appearance in answer to a
long-standing summons issued by the Judgment Seat on High; death sought
him on the part of God and has found him at last.
To analyze minutely a life as corrupted as that of M. de Lafayette
was healthy, one would have to face a distaste which I am incapable
of overcoming. Men of sores resemble prostitutes' carcasses: they
have been so much eaten away by the ulcers that they are of no use
to the dissecting-room. The French Revolution is one vast political
destruction, set in the midst of the old world; let us fear lest a much
more fatal destruction be established, let us fear a moral destruction
through the evil side of that Revolution. What would become of the
human race if a strenuous attempt were made to rehabilitate manners
justly stigmatized, to offer odious examples to our enthusiasm, to
show us the progress of the age, the establishment of liberty, the
profundity of genius in abject natures and atrocious actions? Not
daring to extol the evil under its own name, they sophisticate it:
beware of taking that brute for a spirit of darkness; it is an angel
of light! All ugliness is beautiful, every shame honourable, every
enormity sublime; every vice has its admiration awaiting it. We have
gone back to that material society of paganism in which every form
of depravity had its altars. Back, those cowardly, lying, criminal
praises, which pervert the public conscience, which debauch youth,
which discourage good people, which are an outrage against virtue and
the spitting of the Roman soldier in the face of Christ!
PARIS, 1839.
When I was in Prague, in 1833, Charles X. said to me:
"So that old Talleyrand is still alive?"
And Charles X. left this life two years before M. de Talleyrand; the
Monarch's private and Christian death forms a contrast with the public
death of the apostate bishop, dragged against his will to the feet of
the divine incorruptibility.
On the 3rd of October 1836, I wrote the following letter to Madame
la Duchesse de Berry, and I added a postscript to it on the 15th of
November of the same year:
"MADAME,
"M. Walsh[383] has handed me the letter with which you have been
good enough to honour me. I should be ready to obey Your Royal
Highness' wishes, if writing could do anything at present; but
public opinion has fallen into such a state of apathy that the
greatest events would hardly be able to stir it. You have permitted
me, Madame, to speak with an amount of frankness which only my
devotion could excuse: as Your Royal Highness knows, I have been
opposed to almost all that has been done; I ventured even not to
be in favour of your journey to Prague. Henry V. is now emerging
from childhood; he will soon enter the world with an education
that has taught him nothing of the age in which we live. Who will
be his guide, who will show him Courts and men? Who will make him
known and as it were appear, at a distance, to France? These are
important questions which will, probably and unfortunately, be
resolved in the same sense as all the others. Be this as it may,
the rest of my life belongs to my young King and his august mother.
My previsions of the future will never make me unfaithful to my
duty.
"Madame de Chateaubriand asks leave to lay her respects at Madame's
feet. I offer to Heaven all my prayers for the glory and prosperity
of the mother of Henry V. and I am, with profound respect,
"Madame,
"Your Royal Highness' most humble and most obedient servant,
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
_"P.S._ This letter has been waiting for a month for a safe
opportunity of reaching Madame. This very day, I hear of the death
of Henry's august grandfather[384]. Will the sad news cause any
change in Your Royal Highness' destiny? Dare I beg Madame to permit
me to enter into all the sentiments of regret which she must feel,
and to offer the respectful tribute of my grief to Monsieur le
Dauphin and Madame la Dauphine?
"CHATEAUBRIAND.
"15 _November._"
[Sidenote: Death of Charles X.]
Charles X. is no more:
Soixante ans de malheurs out paré la victime[385]!
Thirty years of exile; death at seventy-nine in a foreign land! So that
none might doubt of the errand of misfortune with which Heaven had
entrusted that Prince, it was a plague that came to fetch him.
Charles X., at his last hour, recovered the calm, the equanimity which
sometimes failed him during his long career. When he learnt the danger
that threatened, he was content to say:
"I did not think that this illness would turn so short."
When Louis XVI. set out for the scaffold, the officer on duty refused
to receive the will of the condemned man because there was no time, and
he, the officer, had to take the King to execution; the King replied:
"That is so."
If Charles X., in other days of peril, had treated his life with the
same indifference, what wretchedness would he not have spared himself!
One can understand that the Bourbons cling to a religion which makes
them so noble at the moment of death; Louis IX., attached to his
posterity, sends them the saint's courage to await them beside the
coffin. That House knows wonderfully how to die: true, it has been
learning death for more than eight hundred years.
Charles X. went away persuaded that he had made no mistake: if he hoped
for the divine mercy, it was because of the sacrifice which he believed
that he had made of his crown to what he thought to be the duty of his
conscience and the welfare of his people; conviction is too rare not to
be valued. Charles X. was able to bear himself this witness that the
reign of his two brothers and his own were neither without liberty nor
without glory: under the Martyr King, the enfranchisement of America
and the emancipation of France; under Louis XVIII., representative
government given to our country, the Royalty restored in Spain, the
independence of Greece recovered at Navarino; under Charles X.,
Africa left to us in compensation for the territory lost through the
conquests of the Republic and the Empire: those are results which
remain established in our records, in spite of stupid jealousies and
vain enmities; those results will stand out more prominently as we
sink lower into the abasement of the Royalty of July. But it is to be
feared that those costly ornaments will be for the benefit of past days
only, like the garland of flowers on Homer's head discarded with great
respect by the Republic of Plato. The Legitimacy to-day seems to have
no intention of going further; it appears to be adopting its fall.
The death of Charles X. could be an effective event only by putting an
end to a deplorable contest for a sceptre and giving a new direction
to the education of Henry V.: now it is to be feared that the absent
crown will always be disputed, that the education will be finished
without having been virtually changed. Perhaps, by saving themselves
the trouble of taking sides, they will fall asleep in habits dear to
weakness, sweet to family-life, easy to lassitude, the result of long
sufferings. Misfortune perpetuated produces on the mind the same effect
as old age on the body: one can no longer move, one takes to one's
bed. Misfortune again resembles the executioner of the high decrees
of Heaven: it strips the condemned man, snatches the sceptre from the
king, the sword from the warrior; it takes the noble's dignity, the
soldier's heart, and sends them back degraded into the crowd.
On the other hand, one derives from extreme youth arguments in favour
of postponement: when one has much time to spend, one persuades one's
self that one can wait, that one has years to play with before events
happen:
"They will come to us," one cries, "without our going to any trouble;
all will ripen; the throne will come of itself; in twenty years,
prejudice will be wiped out."
This calculation might have some justness, if generations did not pass
away or did not become indifferent; but a certain thing may appear a
necessity at one time and not be even felt at another.
[Sidenote: Charles's predecessors.]
Alas, how swiftly things fade away! Where are the three brothers whom
I have seen reign in succession? Louis XVIII. is at Saint-Denis, with
the mutilated relics of Louis XVI.; Charles X. has just been laid, at
Gorlitz, in a coffin locked with three keys.
The remains of that King, falling from on high, startled his ancestors;
they turned in their sepulchres; drawing closer together, they said:
"Let us make room; here is the last of our number."
Bonaparte did not make so much noise on entering eternal life; the old
dead did not wake for the emperor of the new dead. They did not know
him.
The French Monarchy connects the Ancient World with the Modern World.
Augustulus[386] laid down the diadem in 476. Five years later, in 481,
the first dynasty of our kings, in the person of Clovis, was reigning
over the Gauls.
Charlemagne, when associating Louis the Débonnaire with himself on the
throne, said to him:
"Son dear to God, my years are hastening, even my old age escapes me;
the time of my death is drawing nigh. The land of the Franks beheld
my birth: Christ accorded me that honour. First among the Franks, I
have obtained the name of Cæsar and transferred to the Empire of the
Franks the Empire of the House of Romulus."
Under Hugh, with the Third Dynasty, the Elective Monarchy became
hereditary. Hereditary right gave birth to legitimacy, or permanence,
or duration.
The Christian Empire of the French must be placed between the baptismal
fonts of Clovis and the scaffold of Louis XVI. The same religion stood
at either barrier:
"Gentle Sicamber, bow thy neck, worship what thou hast burnt, burn what
thou hast worshipped," said the priest who administered the baptism of
water to Clovis.
"Son of St. Louis, rise up to Heaven," said the priest[387] who
assisted Louis XVI. at the baptism of blood.
If there were nothing in France save that old House of France built up
by time and of astounding majesty, we could make a finer show than all
the other nations in the matter of illustrious things. The Capets were
reigning when the other sovereigns of Europe were still subjects. The
vassals of our kings have become kings. Those sovereigns have handed
down to us, with their names, titles which posterity has accepted as
authentic: some are called Augustus[388], Saint[389], the Pious[390],
the Great[391], the Courteous[392], the Bold[393], the Wise[394],
the Victorious[395], the Well-beloved[396]; others the Father of the
People[397], the Father of Letters[398]:
"As it is writ in blame," says an old historian, "that all the good
Servian kings could easily go into a ring, the bad kings of France
could do so more easily, so small is their number."
Under the Royal Family, the darkness of the Barbarians was dispelled,
the language was formed; literature and arts produced their
master-pieces; our towns were beautified, our monuments raised, our
roads opened, our harbours constructed; our armies astonished Europe
and Asia and our fleets covered the two oceans.
Our pride waxes furious at the mere display of those magnificent
tapestries in the Louvre; shadows, shadowy embroideries shock us.
Unknown this morning, still more unknown this evening, we are none the
less persuaded that we efface all that went before us. And yet each
fleeting moment asks us, "Who art thou?" and we know not what to reply.
Charles X. replied: he went away with a whole era of the world; the
dust of a thousand generations is mingled with his; history salutes
him, the centuries kneel before his tomb; all have known his House; it
has never failed them: it is they who have been wanting towards that
House.
[Sidenote: The last of the Bourbons.]
O banished King, men have been able to outlaw you, but you shall not be
driven out by time: you are sleeping your hard sleep in a monastery,
on the last plank but yesterday destined for some Franciscan. No
heralds-at-arms at your obsequies: none save a troop of bleached and
hoary old times; no grandees to fling the emblems of their dignities
into the vault: they have done homage for them elsewhere. Mute ages are
seated beside your bier; a long procession of past days, with closed
eyes, silently mourns around your coffin.
By your side lie your heart and your intestines, snatched from your
breast and your loins, even as we lay beside a dead mother the abortive
fruit that has cost her her life. At each anniversary, O Most Christian
Monarch, O cenobite after death, some brother will recite to you the
prayers of the memorial service; you will attract to your eternal _Hic
Jacet_ none save your sons banished with you: for even at Trieste the
monument of Mesdames is empty; their sacred relics have returned to
their country and you have paid to exile, by your own exile, the debt
of those noble ladies.
Ah, why do they not to-day bring together so many dispersed remains,
even as they collect antiques unearthed from different excavations? The
Arc de Triomphe would carry Napoleon's sarcophagus as its crowning, or
the bronze column raise motionless victories over immortal remains.
And yet the stone carved by order of Sesostris hence-forward buries the
scaffold of Louis XVI. under the weight of the ages. The hour will come
when the obelisk of the desert shall find again, on the place of the
murders, the silence and solitude of Luxor.
[283] This book was written in Paris, in 1837 and 1838, and revised in
June 1847--T.
[284] Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Duc d'Orléans
(1810-1842) married, on the 30th of May 1837, the Princess Helen of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was killed, on the 13th of July, at Neuilly,
by leaping from his carriage, of which the horses had run away. His
widow, who was and remained a Lutheran, died in 1858.--T.
[285] Charles Jean Marie Barbaroux (1767-1794), a noted Girondin
orator and politician, belonged, like most of the participants in
the Revolution of 1789, to the middle-classes, and was a lawyer by
profession. He led the Marseillaise section in the attack on the
Tuileries, on the 10th of August 1792. He was sent, as a Girondin
deputy, to the Convention, where he appears to have been noted for the
beauty of his person no less than for his eloquence, and soon went to
loggerheads with Marat and Robespierre. In the trial of Louis XVI.,
he voted for the appeal to the nation. He was proscribed, on the 31st
of May 1793, as a Royalist and an enemy of the Republic: he sought
shelter in Calvados and took ship at Quimper for Bordeaux. Hardly had
he arrived there when he was arrested and well and duly guillotined, on
the 25th of July 1794 and in the twenty-eighth year of his age. Carlyle
says, wrongly, I believe, that he shot himself to escape arrest.--T.
[286] Antoine Saint-Just (1767-1794) has been only once mentioned in
the Memoirs (_Cf._ Vol. III., p. 196). He was born a few months after
Barbaroux, and died three days later. This "black-haired, mild-toned
youth," to quote Carlyle, was one of the most violent organizers of the
Terror. He became President of the Convention in February 1794 and took
charge of the reports against his colleagues Danton, Camille Desmoulins
and others, who were promptly sent to the scaffold. Almost alone he
defended Robespierre, was eventually involved in the same condemnation,
and was guillotined with him on the 28th of July. Saint-Just cultivated
the Muse: at the early age of twenty, he published _Organt_, a
licentious poem in twenty cantos (1789). He also left the _Esprit de la
Révolution_ (1791) and a number of Reports and Opinions delivered in
the Convention.--T.
[287] _Cf._, in Chateaubriand's preface to his _Études historiques_,
the table of the victims of the Terror, taken from the six volumes of
Prudhomme, the Republican. There were 18,923 men not of noble birth, of
different conditions; 2,231 wives of labourers or artisans; and 2,000
children guillotined, drowned and shot. In the Vendée, 15,000 women
were killed, and almost all of these were peasant-women. Terrible as
they are, these figures are very far below the reality.--B.
[288] Thiers was Premier and Foreign Minister from the 22nd of February
to the 25th of August 1836 and, for the second time, from the 1st of
March to the 28th of October 1840.--T.
[289] This is in allusion to an episode which occurred in 1834, of
which the country-house of a ministerial deputy was the scene and
M. Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, the hero. Dr. Bonnet de
Malherbe, in his _Notes inédites sur M. Thiers_ (1888, p. 73) refers to
it in the following words:
"One episode especially, the feast of Grand-Vaux, at the _château_
of the Comte Vigier, which the newspapers called the 'Orgy of
Grand-Vaux,' made a great stir at the time. M. Thiers, if the
chroniclers of the time are to be credited, played a part in it
which went far beyond the 'pranks' of the Marseilles school-boy,
and 'showed himself' in a 'posture' which was not exactly that of
which another minister spoke, with some emphasis, half a century
later. The _Quotidienne_ published a very spicy article in this
connection, nor was the _Charivari_ sparing in caricatures."--B.
[290] Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes (_circa_ 104--_circa_ 180),
a Greek rhetorician celebrated for his munificence. He erected many
public works at his own expense and restored several decayed towns in
various parts of Greece.--T.
[291] Thiers had published his _Histoire de la Révolution française_ in
1823 to 1827. The _Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire_ did not appear
till many years later (1845 to 1862).--T.
[292] The remains of Napoleon were brought back to France in 1840.--T.
[293] M. Thiers had said in the Tribune, under the Monarchy of July, in
the course of the discussion of the law against the associations:
"France abhors the Republic; speak of it to her, and she recoils in
affright; she knows that that form of government turns to blood or
imbecility."
In 1872, Henry Reeve met him in Paris and describes the conversation as
follows in his Journal:
"M. Thiers' conversation on the war, the Commune and the siege was
very interesting. He said to me:
"'_Certainement je suis pour la République! Sans la République
qu'est-ce que je serais, moi? Un bourgeois, Adolphe Thiers!_'
"He described the withdrawal of the troops from Paris, which was
his own act. Then the siege, which he claims to have directed, the
battery of _Mouton Tout_, adding:
"'_Nous avons enterré, en entrant à Paris, vingt mille cadavres!_'"
(JOHN KNOX LAUGHTON: _Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
Reeve_, Vol. II., p. 202).--B.
[294] At the same time that Chateaubriand was drawing this portrait of
M. Thiers, another seer, Balzac, wrote in the _Chronique de Paris_, on
the 12th of May 1836:
"M. Thiers has always wished for the same thing, he has never
had but one thought, one system, one aim; all his efforts have
been constantly directed towards it: he has always thought of M.
Thiers.... M. Thiers is a weather-cock which, in spite of its
incessant mobility, remains on the same building."--B.
[295] Simon Deutz was the converted Jew who betrayed the Duchesse de
Berry's hiding-place to Thiers in 1832 (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 156).--T.
[296] DANTE: _Hell_, Canto I., 50.--B.
[297] The Sirens, daughters of Achelous and Calliope, represented as
having the head, arms and bust of a young woman and the wings and lower
part of the body of a bird.--T.
[298] _Cf._ VIR., _Geor._, IV., 82-83, 86-87:
Ipsi per medias acies, insignibus alis,
Ingentes animos angusto in pectore versant.
. . . . . . . .
Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.--B.
[299] La Fayette died in Paris on the 19th of May 1834. He was already
suffering from indisposition, when he insisted on following, on foot,
the funeral of Dulong, the deputy killed in a duel by General Bugeaud.
He took to his bed on returning home and did not leave it again.--B.
[300] Rivarol, in the early days of the Revolution, had nicknamed
General La Payette "César-Gille."--B.
[301] La Fayette was mixed up in Caron's military conspiracy at Belfort
in 1821 (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 211, nn. 4-5).--T.
[302] Having failed to secure his re-election as a deputy in 1824, La
Fayette took advantage of this enforced rest to revisit America. He was
absent from France for fourteen months.--B.
[303] Edward Everett (1794-1865), a celebrated American statesman,
orator and author. He was professor of Greek at Harvard College from
1819 to 1825; editor of the _North American Review_ from 1820 to 1824;
Member of Congress from Massachusetts from 1825 to 1835; Governor of
Massachusetts from 1836 to 1840; Minister to England from 1841 to 1845;
President of Harvard College from 1846 to 1849; Secretary of State
from 1852 to 1853; and Senator from Massachusetts from 1853 to 1854.
In 1860, he was the candidate for Vice-president of the Constitutional
Union Party. His _Orations and Speeches on various Occasions_ were
published in Boston, in 4 volumes, in 1850.--T.
[304] EVERETT: _An Oration pronounced at Cambridge before the Society
of Phi Beta Kappa, August_ 26, 1824 (Boston, Mass.: 1824).--T.
[305] I omit six lines of verse.--T.
[306] La Fayette was married to Mademoiselle de Noailles on the 11th of
April 1774; she died in 1807.--T.
[307] La Fayette's tomb is in one corner of the little Picpus Cemetery,
near the Avenue de Saint-Mandé. At the end of the Picpus Cemetery is
the _Cimetière des guillotinés_, where 1300 victims of the Revolution,
executed at the Barrière du Trône, are interred. These include André
Chénier, Lavoisier, General Beauharnais and many other bearers of noted
names.--T.
[308] The Duc de Montmorency-Laval died in 1826.--T.
[309] A sort of cakes.--T.
[310] M. Dupin the Elder.--B.
[311] Georges de La Fayette.--_Author's Note._
Georges Washington de La Fayette (1779-1849), La Fayette's only son and
a godson of Washington, sat in the Chamber of Deputies, on the Extreme
Left, from 1827 to 1849.--T.
[312] Chateaubriand is wrong. The notice of _Ambroise_, a comic opera
by Monvel and Nicolas Dalayrac occcurs in the _Gazette nationale, ou Le
Moniteur universel_ of the 22nd of January 1793! but the report of the
execution of Louis XVI. appears in the issue of the next day, Wednesday
23 January, two days after the tragedy took place. Immediately after
the report comes this paragraph:
"That excellent patriot, Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, member of the
Convention, was assassinated on Sunday at a tavern-keeper's, in the
Palais _ci-devant_ Royal, by a former body-guard called Paris. The
details of the crime were communicated to the National Convention;
they will be found in the report of Monday's sitting."
This report of "Monday's sitting" appears in the following Thursday's
_Moniteur._--T.
[313] _Cf._ Vol. V., pp. 206.207.--T.
[314] At the time of the failure of the Duchesse de Berry's plans,
followed by her arrest and imprisonment, feelings of irritation and
regret reigned among the Royalists, of which several duels with members
of the opposite party were the direct consequence. At the end of
January 1833, Armand Carrel, after a certain article that appeared in
the _National_, accepted a personal provocation and, from a list of ten
names put before him, selected that of M. Roux-Laborie the Younger, who
was personally quite unknown to him. Swords were the chosen weapons;
the adversaries were both wounded: M. Roux-Laborie by two thrusts in
the arm and hand; Carrel by a thrust in the stomach, which put his life
in danger.--B.
[315] Émile de Girardin (1806-1881), the journalist and economist
(_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 21, n. 2). A duel was arranged between Girardin and
Armand Carrel in consequence of articles published in their respective
journals, the _Presse_ and the _National._ It was fought in the Bois de
Vincennes; the weapons chosen were pistols. The two adversaries were
placed at forty paces from one another, with powers each to walk ten
paces and to fire at will, a very much more dangerous method than the
firing at the word of command, at a fixed distance, which is generally
practised to-day. After each taking a few steps, the two adversaries
fired almost at the same time: Émile de Girardin was shot through the
thigh and Carrel was hit in the pit of the stomach. He succumbed to
acute peritonitis from the lesions caused by the bullet, which had torn
the intestines.--B.
[316] _Cf._ p. 83, _supra._--T.
[317] SHAKESPEARE: _Hamlet_, Act III., sc. i.--T.
[318] Carrel's article on Sautelet's suicide (_Cf._ Vol. V., p.
83.--T.) appeared in the _Revue de Paris_ of June 1830, under the title
of _Une Mort volontaire._--B.
[319] Armand Carrel was born, at Rouen, on the 8th of May 1800, the day
on which Chateaubriand set foot at Calais (_Cf._ Vol. II., p. 148, n.
1).-T.
[320] _Cf._ Vol. V., pp. 120-122.--T.
[321] The gravity of Carrel's wound did not allow of his being
conveyed to the house in which he lived, at No. 7, now No. 18,
Rue Grange-Batelière. He was accordingly taken to one of his old
school-fellows of the Military School, M. Adolphe Peyra, who was
spending the summer at his mother's house at Saint-Mandé. M. Peyra was
a retired officer in the Guards, who had himself fought many duels
and had kept up friendly relations with Carrel, although they were in
different camps: Peyra was an ardent Royalist.--B.
[322]
THE GRAVE-DIGGER'S RECEIPT.
"I have received from M. de Chateaubriand the sum of eighteen
francs that remained owing for the trellis-work which surrounds the
grave of M. Armand Carrel.
"SAINT-MANDÉ, 21 _June_ 1838.
"Paid: VAUDRAN."
"Received from M. de Chateaubriand the sum of twenty francs for
keeping up the grave of M. Carrel at Saint-Mandé.
"PARIS, 28 _September_ 1839.
"Paid: VAUDRAN."--B.
]
[323] Sabine Casimir Amable Voïart, Dame Tastu (1798-1885), author
of several volumes of verse: _Poésies_(1826), _Chroniques de
France_(1829), _Poésies nouvelles_ (1834), _Œuvres politiques_(1837).
She also published a large number of educational books. Some of her
poems, notably the _Ange gardien_, the _Dernier jour de l'année_ and
the _Feuilles de saule_ are happily inspired and deserve to live.--B.
[324] Favorinus (_d. circa_ 135), a skeptical philosopher, a native
of Arles, in Gaul, who taught rhetoric in Athens and in Rome under
Hadrian.--T.
[325] 451-450 B.C.--T.
[326] Carmenta, the Arcadian prophetess, mother of Evander by
Mercury.--T.
[327] Sappho (_b. circa_ 612 B.C.), the most famous of poetesses. She
was surnamed the Tenth Muse.--T.
[328] Corinna (_fl. circa_ 470 B.C.), the Greek poetess, surnamed the
Lyric Muse. She conquered Pindar in a trial of poetry and carried off
the palm before him no less than five times.--T.
[329] Pindar (_circa_ 520 B.C.--_circa_ 450 B.C.), the greatest of the
Greek lyric poets.--T.
[330] Marie de France (_fl._ 13th Century), author of a collection
of fables entitled _Ysopet_, narrative poems entitled _Laïs_ and a
Purgatory of St. Patrick. Her works were collected and published in
Paris in 1832.--T.
[331] Beatrix Comtesse de Die in her own right (_fl._ 12th Century),
author of a few Provençal poems.--T.
[332] _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 308, n. 6.--T.
[333] Loyse Labé, _Sonnets_, XIII., 1-2:
"Oh, if I were in that fair bosom rapt
Of him for whom I ever dying go!"--T.
[334] Clémence de Bourges was a young girl of Lyons, famous for her wit
and her beauty and a friend and admirer of Loyse Labé. She died early,
of a broken heart, and was given a magnificent funeral by the Lyonese.
The poets of the day called her the "Pearl of Damsels, a truly Oriental
pearl."--T.
[335] Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre (1492-1549), sister
of Francis I. and married, in 1526, to Henry II. d'Albret, King
of Navarre, is the author of the _Heptaméron des nouvelles de
très-illustre et très-excellente princesse Marguerite de Valois_
(1558-1559), the _Miroir de l'âme pêcheresse_ (1533), _Marguerites de
la Marguerite des princesses, très-illustre royne de Navarre_ (1547),
the _Miroir de Jésus-Christ crucifié_ (1556) and Letters, published
in the last century. The other Margaret is Margaret of France, Queen
of Navarre (1552-1615), sister of Henry III. and married, in 1572,
to Henry III. King of Navarre, later Henry IV. King of France, and
left her admirable Memoirs for the enjoyment of posterity, with some
Poems.--T.
[336] Mary Queen of Scots, France and (_de jure_) England (1542-1587).
The only extant specimens of Mary's poetry, in addition to the reputed
sonnets to Bothwell, are the verses on the death of her husband Francis
II., printed by Brantôme in his Memoirs; a sonnet to Elizabeth in Latin
and French; a _Méditation faite par la Reyne d'Escosse Douarière de
France, recueillie d'un Livre des Consolations Divines_; and a sonnet
written at Fotheringay, in the State Paper Office (_Cf._ the article in
the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Vol. XXXVI., p. 389).--T.
[337] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 21. I omit Madame Claude de Chateaubriand's
sixty-sixth sonnet, which is quoted by her nephew many times
removed.--T.
[338] Antoinette du Ligier de La Garde, Dame Deshoulières (1638-1694),
married, in 1651, to Guillaume de Lafon de Boisguérin, Seigneur
Deshoulières, enjoyed a great reputation under Louis XIV., when she was
surnamed the Tenth Muse and the French Calliope. She is now remembered
chiefly by her idyll of the _Moutons_, although her collected idylls,
odes, elegiacs and songs, to say nothing of two highly unsuccessful
tragedies, fill two, volumes 8vo.--T.
[339] Marie Anne Henriette Payan de L'Étang, Marquise d'Antremont,
later Baronne de Bourdic, later Madame Viot (1746-1802) was three times
married. She was already known for several pieces of verse inserted in
the _Almanach des Muses_ when, for a while, she acquired a real fame
through her _Ode au Silence_, which was long considered one of the
master-pieces of the eighteenth century.--B.
[340] Hortense Allan de Méritens (1801-1879) published, as her first
work, in 1821, a remarkable novel, the _Conjuration d'Amboise_,
which was succeeded by _Sextus, ou le Romain des Maremmes_, the
_Indienne, Settimia_ and others. In 1873 and 1874, she published,
under the pseudonym of "Madame Prudence de Saman" and the title of
the _Enchantements de Prudence_, a series of erotic confidences, or
romantic autobiography, in which she mixes up Chateaubriand, Lamennais,
Béranger and a score of others with her imaginary adventures.--B.
[341] Mélanie Villenave, Dame Waldor (1796-1871), author of some
volumes of poems, of which the principal, entitled _Poésies du cœur_,
had appeared in 1835. Her novels include _André le Vendéen_ (1843) and
the _Moulin en deuil_ (1849).--B.
[342] Marceline Josèphe Félicité Desbordes, Dame Desbordes-Valmore
(1786-1859) had appeared, with some success, at the Opéra-Comique,
when, in 1817, she married François Prosper Lanchantin, known as
Valmore, the actor, and left the stage. Her poetry is distinguished for
sweetness and pathos, without affectation. That published before the
time in which Chateaubriand is writing includes _Élégies et romances_
(1818), _Élégies et poésies nouvelles_ (1824) and the _Pleurs_ (1833).
_Pauvres fleurs_ appeared in 1839 and _Bouquets et prières_ in 1843.--T.
[343] Anaïs Ménard, Dame Ségalas (_b._ 1814), published the
_Algériennes_ in 1831, when only seventeen years of age. Next came
the _Oiseaux de passage_ (1836) and, later, _Enfantines: poésies à ma
fille_ (1844), the _Femme_ (1847) and _Nos bons Parisiens_ (1865).
To these must be added a number of novels and plays of various
descriptions. Madame Ségalas will, however, remain known mainly as the
author of the _Enfantines_, a collection of verse that has had no less
than ten editions.--B.
[344] Louise Révoil, Dame Colet (1815-1876), published her first
volume, _Fleurs du Midi_, accompanied by two kindly letters from
Chateaubriand, in 1836. From that year till the year of her death she
did not cease writing in prose and verse. The list of her works, which
include poems, novels, dramatic essays, travels and works on history
and politics, would exceed the space of these notes. She obtained the
prize for poetry at the French Academy four times between 1839 and
1854. For the rest, Madame Colet mixed romance with her life in such
proportions that it is best to keep silence upon both the lady and her
career.--B.
[345] Elisa Mercœur (1809-1835), the girl poet, died before the above
lines were written. The first edition of her _Poésies_ appeared in
1827, when Mademoiselle Mercœur was only eighteen years old. Her
Complete Works were published in 1843, in three volumes 8vo.--T.
[346] Maria Felicita Garcia, Dame Malibran, later Dame de Bériot
(1808-1836), one of the most famous opera-singers of the time, was the
daughter of Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, the Spanish singer and
composer. She made her first appearance in opera in London, on the 7th
of June 1825, when she took the place of Madame Pasta, who was ill.
She made a great sensation and was at once engaged for the rest of the
season. In 1826, she went to New York and there, in the middle of a
successful season, married Malibran, the French banker, who soon became
bankrupt. She left him in 1827, returned to France and appeared for
the first time in Paris, on the 12th of January 1828, in _Sémiramide._
Her success was prodigious and she continued to rouse unparalleled
enthusiasm in all the great cities of Europe. On the 30th of March
1836, Madame Malibran married Charles Auguste de Bériot, the Belgian
violinist; six months later, on the 23rd of September, she died, in
Manchester, from the effects of a fall from her horse, in London, a few
days earlier.--T.
[347] At this time (1833), George Sand had published only _Indiana_
(September 1832) and _Valentine_ (November 1832). _Lélia_ appeared in
September 1833, the _Secrétaire intime_ and _Jacques_ in 1834.--T.
[348] In an article on Étienne Pivert de Sénancour's _Obermann_, in the
_Revue des Deux-Mondes_ of 15 June 1833.--B.
[349] October 1834.--B.
[350] _Rêveries du promeneur solitaire_, published in 1782, four years
after Rousseau's death.--T.
[351] _Études de la nature_(1784).--T.
[352] _Æn._, IV. 625.--T.
[353] LUCIAN: _Dialogues of the Courtezans_, VII.--_Author's Note._
[354] _Cf._ MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, II., 752-760.
"All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee; dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth; till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess arm'd
Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seized
All the host of heaven; back they recoil'd afraid
At first, and cal I'd me Sin."--T.
[355] _Sic_, in all the editions.--T.
[356] Phila (_fl._ 370 B.C.), a celebrated Athenian courtezan and
mistress to Hyperides the Attic orator.--T.
[357] Lais (_d. circa_ 340 B.C.), a noted Corinthian courtezan, said
to have been advised to adopt her profession by Apelles. Demosthenes
was one of her many lovers; Diogenes another. She was assassinated in
Thessaly by a number of women jealous of their husbands' affections.--T.
[358] Gnathæna, a Greek poetess and courtezan, of an uncertain period.
Some of her witty sayings are recorded by Athenæus.--T.
[359] Phryne (_fl. circa_ 328 B.C.), a celebrated Athenian hetaira,
mistress to Praxiteles, one of whose many statues of her is known as
the _Cnidian Aphrodite_, while Apelles took her for his model for the
_Aphrodite Anadyomene._--T.
[360] Apelles (_fl. circa_ 332 B.C.), the famous Greek painter. His
_Aphrodite Anadyomene_ (_vide supra_) was originally painted for the
Temple of Æsculapius in Cos. It was afterwards bought by Augustus and
placed in the Temple of Cæsar in Rome.--T.
[361] Praxiteles (_circa_ 360 B.C.--_circa_ 280 B.C.), the greatest
Greek sculptor after Phidias. His _Aphrodite of Cnidus_ ranks as one of
the most admired statues of antiquity. A replica of this statue is now
in the Glyptothek in Munich.--T.
[362] Leæna (_fl._ 514 B.C.), the mistress of Harmodius and
Aristogiton, the Athenian patriots.--T.
[363] Harmodius (_d._ 514 B.C.), who, with Aristogiton, delivered
Athens from the tyranny of Hipparchus.--T.
[364] _Cf._, on the _Congrès de Vérone_, M. Biré's Appendix, Vol. IV.,
pp. 215-219.--T.
[365] Talleyrand died in Paris on the 17th of May 1838.--B.
[366] _Cf._ Vol. III., pp. 145 _et seq._--T.
[367] _Ibid._, pp. 171-175.--T.
[368] The Marquis de Maubreuil (_cf._ Vol. III., p. 86, n. 1), escaping
from police surveillance, went, on the 20th of January, to Saint-Denis,
during the celebration of the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.,
and there, in the midst of the solemnity, he struck Talleyrand in
the face and threw him to the ground. Maubreuil was charged with
the offense and received sentence; but the affair made a terrible
noise, of which Talleyrand's innumerable enemies did not fail to take
advantage.--B.
[369] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 147--T.
[370] Speech of the Prince de Talleyrand against the vote of one
hundred millions proposed for the cost of the Spanish War (March
1823).--B.
[371] Elisabeth Pierre Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1764-1834) was
President of the Legislative Body in 1810, 1811 and 1813. He was
created a count of the Empire in 1809 and, in the following year, was
appointed Great Chamberlain of France in Talleyrand's stead.--B.
[372] The Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 134,
n. 1) was a member of the Chamber of Peers from 1814 to 1831.--B.
[373] Jean Girard Lacuée, Comte de Cessac (1752-1841) was an
inspector-general of reviews under Napoleon (1806), a minister of State
(1806) and Minister of the Board of Military Administration. He was a
member of the French Academy.--B.
[374] The Comte Roederer, in his _Souvenirs_, describes a conversation
which he had with the Emperor, at the Élysée, on the 6th of March
1809. The subject of the conversation was King Joseph, who, in his
letters from Madrid to his wife and Napoleon, complained of his brother
and threatened to leave the Throne of Spain to go and grow his small
potatoes at Mortefontaine. Napoleon, in the course of this interview
with Roederer, walked to and fro, and became more and more excited as
he spoke of the contents of those letters:
"'He says that he wants to go to Mortefontaine, rather than stay
in a country bought by blood unjustly shed. And what is this
Mortefontaine? It is the price of the blood which I spilled in
Italy. Does he hold it from his father? Does he hold it from his
work? He holds it from me. Yes, I have spilt blood, but it is the
blood of my enemies, of the enemies of France. Does it become
him to use their language? Does he want to act like Talleyrand?
Talleyrand! I have covered him with honours, riches, diamonds. He
has employed all of that against me. He has betrayed me as much
as he could, on the first occasion that he had to do it in.... He
said, during my absence'--during the Spanish War--'that he had gone
on his knees to prevent the Spanish business; and he pestered me
for two years to undertake it! He maintained to me that I should
require only twenty thousand men; he gave me twenty memorandums
to prove it. He behaved in the same way in the affair of the Duc
d'Enghien; I knew nothing about him; it was Talleyrand who told me
about him.' The Emperor always pronounces it Taillerand. 'I did not
know where he was.' The Emperor stopped in front of me. 'It was he
who told me the place where he was and, after advising his death,
he bemoaned it with all his acquaintances.' The Emperor resumed
his walk and, in a calmer tone, after a short pause, continued, 'I
shall do him no harm; I am keeping him in all his offices; I even
have the same feelings for him that I used to have; but I have
taken from him the right to enter my closet at all times. He shall
never have a private conversation with me; he will no longer be
able to say that he has advised me or dissuaded me from one thing
or the other.'"
[375] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 281-282.--T.
[376] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 144.--T.
[377] Talleyrand was appointed Minister of External Relations, on the
16th of July 1797, in succession to Charles Delacroix, the father of
Eugène Delacroix the painter.--B.
[378] Yet Talleyrand's Memoirs were not published until 1891-1892. They
were disappointing when published.--T.
[379] After the Revolution of July, Talleyrand accepted the London
Embassy at the hands of the new Government (September 1830); he asked
to be recalled on the 13th of November 1834.--B.
[380] Charles Frédéric Comte Reinhard (1761-1838), a retired head
of a department at the Foreign Office and a native of Schöndorf, in
Wurtemberg.--B.
[381] Talleyrand read his _Éloge de Reinhard_ at the Institute on the
3rd of March 1838. The room was crowded. M. Mignet, the Perpetual
Secretary, went to meet him in the room adjoining the lecture-room. The
prince, who was then in his eighty-fifth year, was not able to climb
the stairs on foot; he was carried up by two men in livery. When he
entered the lecture-room, leaning on M. Mignet's arm and on his crutch,
the whole audience stood up. His speech was delivered in a very strong
voice and was frequently interrupted by applause. The reading took less
than half an hour in all, which constituted the whole performance. When
it was over, the enthusiasm knew no bounds:
"On his way out," says Sainte-Beuve (_Nouveaux Lundis_, Vol. I., p.
110), "the prince had to pass through a double row of foreheads which
bowed with redoubled reverence."--B.
[382] The Prince de Talleyrand died on the 17th of May 1838, at
thirty-five minutes past three in the afternoon; he was horn on the 2nd
of February 1754, and was consequently 84 years, 3 months and 15 days
old. He was assisted in his last illness by the Abbé Dupanloup, the
future Bishop of Orleans, who himself wrote the story of the prince's
last moments. On the morning of the 17th of May, M. de Talleyrand had
signed his retractation and a letter to the Pope; some hours later,
the Abbé Dupanloup arrived. Upon a word from the abbé, saying that
Monseigneur de Quélen, the Archbishop of Paris, would be happy to
give his life for him, he raised himself a little and said, in a very
distinct voice:
"Tell him that he can make a much better use of it."
"Prince," continued the abbé, "this morning you gave the Church a
great consolation; I now come, in the name of the Church, to offer
you the last consolations of faith, the last succour of religion.
You have been reconciled with the Catholic Church, which you had
offended; the moment is come to be reconciled with God by a new
confession and a sincere repentance for all the faults of your
life."
"Thereupon," in the words of the Abbé Dupanloup, "he made a
movement as though to come towards me; I went up to him, and,
at once grasping my two hands in his and pressing them with
extraordinary force and emotion, he did not leave go of them during
the whole time that his confession took to make; I had even to make
a great effort to release my hand from his, when the moment had
come to give him absolution. He received it with an humility, an
amount of feeling and faith that made me shed tears."
He also received Extreme Unction while fully conscious. Then the Abbé
Dupanloup, kneeling beside him, recited the Litany of the Saints. When
he came to the invocation of the martyrs and pronounced the name of St.
Maurice, M. de Talleyrand's patron-saint, the prince was seen to bow
his head and his glance to seek that of the Abbé Dupanloup, to prove to
him that he was joining in those prayers. At three o'clock, seeing the
last hour come, the Abbé Dupanloup began the Prayers for the Dying. The
sick man appeared to join in them so visibly that one of those present
remarked upon it:
"Monsieur l'abbé, see how he is praying!"
He was in fact seen, with eyes now open, now lowered, to follow with
evidences of perfect understanding all that was happening around him.
At last his strength suddenly failed him and his lips closed for ever.
The Abbé Dupanloup ends his narrative with these words:
"God sees the secrets of men's hearts; but I ask Him to give those
who thought that they might doubt M. de Talleyrand's sincerity, I
ask for them, at the hour of death, the same sentiments which I
beheld in M. de Talleyrand when dying, the memory of which will
never leave me."(_Cf._ LAGRANGE: _Vie de Monseigneur #/ Dupanloup_,
Vol. I., Chaps, XIV. and XV.)--B.
[383] Édouard Vicomte Walsh had, since the 25th of September 1835, had
the management of the _Mode_, the liveliest of the royalist papers,
published under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry.--B.
[384] Charles X. died at Goritz, on the 6th of November 1836, of an
attack of cholera, of which he had felt the first symptoms two days
before, on St. Charles's Day, the 4th of November. The doctor asked to
have the King's grandchildren taken away, because of the danger of the
illness, but the Duc de Bordeaux declared that no consideration would
prevent his following the impulse of his heart and Mademoiselle made
the same reply as her brother. The King kissed them fondly and laid his
hand upon their heads:
"May God protect you, my children!" he said. "Walk before Him in the
paths of justice.... Do not forget me.... Pray sometimes for me!"
The Cardinal de Latil and Doctor Bougon, who had already met by the Duc
de Berry's bed-side on the night of the 13th February 1820, met again,
on the night of the 6th of November 1836, by the bed-side of Charles X.
An altar had hurriedly been erected near the bed for the celebration
of Mass. It was said by the Bishop of Hermopolis, Monseigneur de
Frayssinous. At the end of the Mass, the King meditated an instant; he
prayed for France and blessed her; and, as the bishop exhorted him to
forgive, at that last moment, those who had done him so much harm:
"I have long forgiven them," he replied. "I forgive them again, at this
moment, with all my heart; may the Lord be merciful to them and me."
"At one o'clock in the morning, on the 6th of November, M. Bougon
announced that the King had but a few moments to live. All fell on
their knees; M. le Dauphin (the Duc d'Angoulême) had his head bowed
towards his father. Madame la Dauphine alone remained standing at the
King's feet, with her hands joined, and seemed to be presiding over
that scene of sorrow. At half past one, M. Bougon made a sign to the
Duc de Blacas, who leant towards the Dauphin and said a few words to
him in a low voice. Then the Prince respectfully closed his father's
eyes, and Madame la Dauphine's sobs, bursting forth suddenly amid the
silence of death that reigned in the room, announced that all was
over." (NETTEMENT: _Histoire de quinze ans d'exil_, Vol. II., pp. 96
_et seq._)--B.
[385] "Sixty years with misfortunes the victim have decked!"--T.
[386] Romulus Momyllus Augustus, the last Roman Emperor of the West,
nicknamed Augustulus because of his youth, was placed on the throne at
a very early age, in 475, but compelled to abdicate in the following
year by Odoacer King of the Heruli.--T.
[387] Henry Essex, Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont (1745-1807).--T.
[388] Philip II. Augustus (1165-1223), son of Louis VII., succeeded in
1180.--T.
[389] St. Louis IX. (1215-1270), son of Louis VIII., succeeded in
1226.--T.
[390] Robert II. (_circa_ 970-1031), son of Hugh Capet, succeeded in
996.--T.
[391] Henry IV. (1553-1610) succeeded Henry III. in 1569; and Louis
XIV. (1638-1715), son of Louis XIII., succeeded in 1643.--T.
[392] Charles VIII. (1470-1498), surnamed the Affable or the Courteous,
son of Louis XI., succeeded in 1483.--T.
[393] Philip III. (1245-1285), son of St. Louis IX., succeeded in
1270.--T.
[394] Charles V. (1337-1380), son of John II., succeeded in 1364.--T.
[395] Charles VII. (1403-1461), son of Charles VI., succeeded in
1422.--T.
[396] Charles VI. (1368-1422), son of Charles V., succeeded in 1380.--T.
[397] Louis XII. (1462-1515) succeeded his cousin Charles VIII. in
1498.--T.
[398] Francis I. (1494-1547) succeeded his cousin Louis XII. in
1515.--T.