COMBOURG.
A letter from the Viscount Vésin was to gain us entrance to the castle.
So as soon as we arrived, we called on the steward, M. Corvesier. They
ushered us into a large kitchen where a young lady in black, marked by
smallpox and wearing horn spectacles over her prominent eyes, was
stemming currants. The kettle was on the fire and they were crushing
sugar with bottles. It was evident that we were intruding. After several
minutes had elapsed, we were informed that M. Corvesier was confined to
his bed with a fever and was very sorry that he could not be of any
service to us, but sent us his regards. In the meantime, his clerk, who
had just come in from an errand, and who was lunching on a glass of
cider and a piece of buttered bread, offered to show us the castle. He
put his napkin down, sucked his teeth, lighted his pipe, took a bunch of
keys from the wall and started ahead of us through the village.
After following a long wall, we entered through an old door into a
silent farm-yard. Silica here and there shows through the beaten ground,
on which grows a little grass soiled by manure. There was nobody around
and the stable was empty. In the barns some chickens were roosting on
the poles of the wagons, with their heads under their wings. Around the
buildings, the sound of our footsteps was deadened by the dust
accumulated from the straw in the lofts.
Four large towers connected by curtains showed battlements beneath their
pointed roofs; the openings in the towers, like those in the main part
of the castle, are small, irregular windows, which form uneven black
squares on the grey stones. A broad stoop, comprising about thirty
steps, reaches to the first floor, which has become the ground-floor of
the interior apartments, since the trenches have been filled up.
The yellow wall-flower does not grow here, but instead, one finds
nettles and lentisks, greenish moss and lichens. To the left, next to
the turret, is a cluster of chestnut-trees reaching up to the roof and
shading it.
After the key had been turned in the lock and the door pushed open with
kicks, we entered a dark hallway filled with boards and ladders and
wheelbarrows.
This passage led into a little yard enclosed by the thick interior walls
of the castle. It was lighted from the top like a prison yard. In the
corners, drops of humidity dripped from the stones. We opened another
door. It led into a large, empty, sonorous hall; the floor was cracked
in a hundred places, but there was fresh paint on the wainscoting.
The green forest opposite sheds a vivid reflection on the white walls,
through the large windows of the castle. There is a lake and underneath
the windows were clusters of lilacs, petunia-blossoms and acacias, which
have grown pell-mell in the former parterre, and cover the hill that
slopes gradually to the road, following the banks of the lake and then
continuing through the woods.
The great, deserted hall, where the child who afterwards wrote _René_,
used to sit and gaze out of the windows, was silent. The clerk smoked
his pipe and expectorated on the floor. His dog, which had followed him,
hunted for mice, and its nails clicked on the pavement.
We walked up the winding stairs. Moss covers the worn stone steps.
Sometimes a ray of light, passing through a crack in the walls, strikes
a green blade and makes it gleam in the dark like a star.
We wandered through the halls, through the towers, and over the narrow
curtain with its gaping machicolations, which attract the eye
irresistibly to the abyss below.
On the second floor is a small room which looks out into the inside
courtyard and has a massive oak door that closes with a latch. The beams
of the ceiling (you can touch them), are rotten from age; the
whitewashed walls show their lattice-work and are covered with big
spots; the window-panes are obscured by cobwebs and their frames are
buried in dust. This used to be Chateaubriand's room. It faces the West,
towards the setting sun.
We continued; when we passed in front of a window or a loop-hole, we
warmed ourselves in the warm air coming from without, and this sudden
transition rendered the ruins all the more melancholy and cheerless. The
floors of the apartments are rotting away, and daylight enters through
the fireplaces along the blackened slab where rain has left long green
streaks. The golden flowers on the drawing-room ceiling are falling off,
and the shield that surmounts the mantelpiece is broken into bits. While
we were looking around, a flight of birds entered, flew around for a few
minutes and passed out through the chimney.
In the evening, we went to the lake. The meadow has encroached upon it
and will soon cover it entirely, and wheat will grow in the place of
pond-lilies. Night was falling. The castle, flanked by its four turrets
and framed by masses of green foliage, cast a dark shadow over the
village. The setting sun made the great mass appear black; the dying
rays touched the surface of the lake and then melted in the mist on the
purplish top of the silent forest.
We sat down at the foot of an oak and opened _René_. We faced the lake
where he had often watched the nimble swallow on the bending reeds; we
sat in the shadow of the forest where he had often pursued rainbows over
the dripping hills; we harkened to the rustling of the leaves and the
whisperings of the water that had added their murmur to the sad melody
of his youth. As the darkness gathered on the pages of the book, the
bitterness of its words went to our hearts, and we experienced a
sensation of mingled melancholy and sweetness.
A wagon passed in the road, and the wheels sank in the deep tracks. A
smell of new-mown hay pervaded the air. The frogs were croaking in the
marshes. We went back.
The sky was heavy and a storm raged all night. The front of a
neighbouring house was illumined and flared like a bonfire at every
flash of lightning. Gasping, and tired of tossing on my bed, I arose,
lighted a candle, opened the window and leaned out.
The night was dark, and as silent as slumber. The lighted candle threw
my huge shadow on the opposite wall. From time to time a flash of
lightning blinded me.
I thought of the man whose early life was spent here and who filled half
a century with the clamouring of his grief.
I thought of him first in these quiet streets, playing with the village
boys and looking for nests in the church-steeple and in the woods. I
imagined him in his little room, leaning his elbows on the table, and
watching the rain beating on the window-panes and the clouds passing
above the curtain, while his dreams flew away. I thought of the bitter
loneliness of youth, with its intoxications, its nausea, and its bursts
of love that sicken the heart. Is it not here that our own grief was
nourished, is this not the very Golgotha where the genius that fed us
suffered its anguish?
Nothing can express the gestation of the mind or the thrills which
future great works impart to those who carry them; but we love to see
the spot where we know they were conceived and lived, as if it had
retained something of the unknown ideal which once vibrated there.
His room! his room! his childhood's poor little room! It was here that
he was tormented by vague phantoms which beckoned to him and clamoured
for birth: Attala shaking the magnolias out of her hair in the soft
breeze of Florida, Velléda running through the woods in the moonlight,
Cymodocée protecting her white bosom from the claws of the leopards, and
frail Amélie and pale René!
One day, however, he tears himself away from the old feudal homestead,
never to return. Now he is lost in the whirl of Paris and mingles with
his fellow-men; and then he feels an impulse to travel and he starts
off.
I can see him leaning over the side of the ship, I can see him looking
for a new world and weeping over the country he has left. He lands; he
listens to the waterfalls and the songs of the Natchez; he watches the
flowing rivers and the bright scales of the snakes and the eyes of the
savages. He allows his soul to be fascinated by the languor of the
Savannah. They tell each other of their native melancholy and he
exhausts its pleasures as he exhausted those of love. He returns,
writes, and everyone is carried away by the charm of his magnificent
style with its royal sweep and its supple, coloured, undulating phrase,
as stormy as the winds that sweep over virgin forests, as brilliant as
the neck of a humming-bird, and as soft as the light of the moon shining
through the windows of a chapel.
He travels again; this time he goes to ancient shores; he sits down at
Thermoplyæ and cries: Leonidas! Leonidas! visits the tomb of Achilles,
Lacedæmon, and Carthage, and, like the sleepy shepherd who raises his
head to watch the passing caravans, all those great places awake when he
passes through them.
Banished, exiled, laden with honours, this man who had starved in the
streets will dine at the table of kings; he will be an ambassador and a
minister, will try to save the tottering monarchy, and after seeing the
ruin of all his beliefs, he will witness his own glorification as if he
were already counted among the dead.
Born during the decline of one period and at the dawn of another, he was
to be its transition and the guardian of its memories and hopes. He was
the embalmer of Catholicism and the proclaimer of liberty. Although he
was a man of old traditions and illusions, he was constitutional in
politics and revolutionary in literature. Religious by instinct and
education, it is he, who, in advance of everyone else, in advance of
Byron, gave vent to the most savage pride and frightful despair.
He was an artist, and had this in common with the artists of the
eighteenth century: he was always hampered by narrow laws which,
however, were always broken by the power of his genius. As a man, he
shared the misery of his fellow-men of the nineteenth century. He had
the same turbulent preoccupations and futile gravity. Not satisfied with
being great, he wished to appear grandiose, and it seems that this
conceited mania did not in the least efface his real grandeur. He
certainly does not belong to the race of dreamers who have made no
incursion into life, masters with calm brows who have had neither
period, nor country nor family. But this man cannot be separated from
the passions of his time; they made him what he was, and he in turn
created a number of them. Perhaps the future will not give him credit
for his heroic stubbornness and no doubt it will be the episodes of his
books that will immortalise their titles with the names of the causes
they upheld.
I stayed at the window enjoying the night and feeling with delight the
cold morning air on my lids. Little by little the day dawned; the wick
of the candle grew longer and longer and its flame slowly faded away.
The roof of the market appeared in the distance and a cock crowed; the
storm had passed; a few drops of water remained in the dust of the road
and made large round spots on it. As I was very tired, I went back to
bed and slept.
We felt very sad on leaving Combourg, and besides, the end of our
journey was at hand. Soon this delightful trip which we had enjoyed for
three months would be over. The return, like the leave-taking, produces
an anticipated sadness, which gives one a proof of the insipid life we
lead.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Gustave Flaubert was twenty-six years old when he started
on this journey. He travelled on foot and was accompanied by M. Maxime
Ducamp. When they returned, they wrote an account of their journey. It
is by far the most important of the unpublished writings, for in it the
author gives his personal genius full sway and it abounds in picturesque
descriptions and historical reflections.]
[Footnote 2: Founder of the abbey of Fontevrault, in 1099.]
[Footnote 3: He strangled his mistress whose mutilated body was found
floating in a sack on a pond. (See _Causes Célèbres_.)]
[Footnote 4: A contraction of Poulbeuzanneval, the swamp where the beast
was drowned.]
[Footnote 5: Josselin Frotet, sieur de La Lanbelle, at whose place the
rebels congregated before the escalade. (Note on the manuscript of
G.F.)]
[Footnote 6: D'Argentré, _Hist. de Bretagne_. p. 62.]