THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ
VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND
BEING A TRANSLATION BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
OF THE MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES. In 6 Volumes
NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY G. P PUTNAM'S
SONS AND IN LONDON BY FREEMANTLE
AND COMPANY
MDCCCCII
VOL. I
"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"
[Illustration: Le Vicomte de Chateaubriand]
CONTENTS
The Translator's Note
The Author's Preface
The Author's Preface to the First Edition
PART THE FIRST
1768-1800
BOOK I
Birth of my brothers and sisters--My own birth--Plancoët--I
am vowed--Combourg--My father's scheme of education for
me--Villeneuve--Lucile--Mesdemoiselles Couppart--I am a bad pupil--The
life led by my maternal grandmother and her sister at Plancoët--My
uncle, the Comte de Bedée, at Monchoix--I am relieved from my nurse's
vow--Holidays--Saint-Malo--Gesril--Hervine Magon--Fight with two ship's
lads
BOOK II
A note from M. Pasquier--Dieppe--Change in my education--Spring in
Brittany--An historic forest--Pelagian fields--The moon setting over
the sea--Departure for Combourg--Description of the castle--Dol
College--Mathematics and languages--An instance of memory--Holidays
at Combourg--Life at a country-seat--Feudal customs--The inhabitants
of Combourg--Second holidays at Combourg--The Conti Regiment--Camp
at Saint-Malo--An abbey--A provincial theatre--Marriage of my two
eldest sisters--Return to college--A revolution begins to take place
in my ideas--Adventure of the magpie--Third holidays at Combourg--The
quack--Return to college--Invasion of France--Games--The Abbé de
Chateaubriand--My First Communion--I leave Dol College--A mission at
Combourg--Rennes College--I meet Gesril--Moreau-Limoëlan--Marriage
of my third sister--I am sent to Brest for my naval examination--The
harbour of Brest--I once more meet Gesril--Lapeyrouse--I return to
Combourg
BOOK III
At Montboissier--Reminiscences of Combourg--Dinan College--Broussais--I
return home--Life at Combourg--Our days and evenings--My
donjon--Change from childhood to manhood--Lucile--Last lines written
at the Vallée-aux-Loups--Revelations concerning the mystery of my
life--A phantom of love--Two years of delirium--Occupations and
illusions--My autumn joys--Incantation--Temptation--Illness--I
fear and decline to enter the ecclesiastical state--A moment in my
native town--Recollection of Villeneuve and the tribulations of my
childhood--I am called back to Combourg--Last interview with my
father--I enter the service--I bid farewell to Combourg
BOOK IV
Berlin--Potsdam--Frederic the Great--My brother--My cousin
Moreau--My sister, the Comtesse de Farcy--Julie a worldly
woman--Dinner--Pommereul--Madame de Chastenay--Cambrai--The Navarre
Regiment--La Martinière--Death of my father--My regrets--Would my
father have appreciated me?--I return to Brittany--I stay with my
eldest sister--My brother sends for me to Paris--First inspiration of
the muse--My lonely life in Paris--I am presented at Versailles--I hunt
with the King--Adventure with my mare _Heureuse_
BOOK V
Stay in Brittany--In garrison at Dieppe--I return to Paris with Lucile
and Julie--Delisle de Sales--Men of letters--Portraits--The Rosanbo
family--M. de Malesherbes--His predilection for Lucile--Appearance
and change of my sylph--Early political disturbances in Brittany--A
glance at the history of the monarchy--Constitution of the States
of Brittany--The holding of the States--The King's revenue in
Brittany--Private revenue of the province--Hearth-money--I am
present for the first time at a political meeting--A scene--My
mother moves to Saint-Malo--I receive the tonsure--The country
round Saint-Malo--The ghost--The sick man--The States of Brittany
in 1789--Riots--Saint-Riveul, my schoolfellow, is killed--The year
1789--Journey from Brittany to Paris--Movement on the road--Appearance
of Paris--Dismissal of M. Necker--Versailles--Delight of the Royal
Family--General insurrection--Capture of the Bastille--Effect of
the capture of the Bastille on the Court--The heads of Foullon
and Bertier--Recall of M. Necker--Sitting of the 4th of August
1789--The day's work of the 5th of October--The King is taken to
Paris--The Constituent Assembly--Mirabeau--Sittings of the National
Assembly--Robespierre--Society-Aspect of Paris--What I did amidst all
this turmoil--My solitary days--Mademoiselle Monet--I draw up with
M. de Malesherbes the plan of my journey in America--Bonaparte and
I both unknown subalterns--The Marquis de La Rouërie--I embark at
Saint-Malo--Last thoughts on leaving my native land
BOOK VI
In London as Ambassador--I cross the ocean--François
Tulloch--Christopher Columbus--Camoëns--The Azores--The isle of
Graciosa--Sports on board ship--The isle of Saint-Pierre--The shores of
Virginia--Sunset--Danger and escape--I land in America--Baltimore--The
passengers separate--Tulloch--Philadelphia--General
Washington--Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte--Journey from
Philadelphia to New York and Boston--Mackenzie--The Hudson River--Song
of the lady passenger--Mr. Swift--I set out for the Falls of Niagara
with a Dutch guide--M. Violet--My savage outfit--Hunting--Wolverine
and Canadian Fox--Musk-rat--Fishing dogs--Insects--Montcalm and
Wolfe--Encampment on the shore of the Onondaga Lake--Arabs--The Indian
woman and her cow--An Iroquois--The Onondaga chief--Velly and the
Franks--Ceremonies of hospitality--The ancient Greeks--Journey from
the Onondaga Lake to the Genesee River--Clearings--Hospitality--My
bed--The enchanted rattle-snake--Niagara Falls--The rattle-snake--I
fall to the edge of the abyss--Twelve days in a hut--Change of
manners among the savages--Birth and death--Montaigne-Song of the
adder--The little Indian girl, the original of Mila--Incidents--Old
Canada--True civilisation spread by religion--False civilisation
introduced by commerce--Traders--Agents--Hunts--Half-breeds or
Burnt-woods--Wars of the companies--The Indian languages dying
out--The old French possessions in America--Regrets--A note from Lord
François Conyngham--The Canadian lakes--A fleet of Indian canoes--The
American rivers--Legends--Muscogulges and Siminoles--Our camp--Two
Floridan beauties--Ruins on the Ohio--What the Muscogulge damsels
were--Arrest of the King at Varennes--I interrupt my journey to go back
to Europe--Dangers for the United States--Return to Europe--Shipwreck
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
The Vicomte de Chateaubriand
Chateaubriand's Birthplace
Combourg Castle
Louis XVI
Malesherbes
Marie Antoinette
Mirabeau
Washington
THE TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Many years ago, M. Pierre Louÿs, who had not then achieved his
astonishing successes, and I sat talking literature in a Paris café.
The future author of _Aphrodite_ had praise for none save the moderns,
of whom he has now become a recognized type and leader. I turned to him
suddenly and asked:
"Is there any nineteenth-century French writer at all whom you others
read nowadays and approve of?"
"Yes," said Louÿs, "Chateaubriand."
"How do you mean?" said I. "The novels? _Atala?_ The essays?"
"Ah no," he answered: "but the _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, yes.
That--that is monumental; that will live for ever."
Our talk drifted to other things; I remembered what Louis had said--for
two days: had I come across these Memoirs in the course of my rambles
along the quays, I should have bought them; I did not, and bought other
books instead.
*
In the winter of 1898, I spent two months at the house of my kinsman,
David Teixeira de Mattos, in Amsterdam. It stands on one of the oldest
of the canals. It is a quaint, spacious seventeenth-century house,
and the habits of the house are of the same date as the architecture:
there are few books in it. Knowing this, I had brought books with me,
but not enough to last out my stay; and, before very long, I was driven
to rummage in the one small, old-fashioned book-case which contained
David Teixeira's library. I found it to consist in the main of volumes
bearing upon the history of the reigning House of Orange, in whose
restoration my kinsman's near predecessors had been concerned; of
family records; of the Dutch poets of the early nineteenth century:
until, suddenly, I came across a poor little pirated edition of
Chateaubriand's masterpiece, printed in Brussels in twenty small parts,
and bound up into five small volumes. I carried them to my room, spent
three weeks in their perusal, started to read them a second time, and
came back to London determined to find a publisher who would undertake
the risk of an English translation.
I found one at almost the first asking, and it will ever remain a
mystery to me why no complete translation of this admirable work has
seen the light in England during the more than fifty years that have
elapsed since the _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_ were first published.
*
The British Museum Library contains two attempts at a translation. One,
published in the "Parlour Library of Instruction," is entitled, "_An
Autobiography._ By François René, Viscount de Chateaubriand. London
and Belfast: Simms & M'Intyre, 1849." It consists of four slim volumes
containing in all less than half of the work. The other appeared, under
the title of "_Memoirs of Chateaubriand._ Written by Himself. London:
Henry Colburn, 1848-49. To be completed in ten parts," in "Colburn's
Standard Library." Only three parts were published, embracing not more
than a quarter of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._
In both cases the translator is anonymous; in both cases the
translation seems careless and hastily made; in both cases the English
version, as I have said, is far from complete.
*
The present translation, by arrangement with the publishers, is
complete in so far that no attempt whatever has been made at
compression or condensation; nor has a single passage been omitted
without the insertion of a footnote pointing out exactly where the
omission occurs. The omissions are very few, and consist of the
following:
1. All that portion of Chateaubriand's account of the career of
Napoleon Bonaparte which touches the period during which the author
was not himself residing in France and which is of historical rather
than autobiographical interest. This portion Messrs. Freemantle hope to
publish later, as a supplemental volume to the Memoirs. Left where it
stood, it hampered the action of the work, and its omission is in no
way noticeable.
2. Part of the account of the journey to Jerusalem which Chateaubriand
quotes from the Itinerary of his body-servant Julien, side by side with
his own; also some discursive correspondence and quotations following
upon the Itinerary.
3. A selection from the writings of Chateaubriand's sister Lucile
(Madame de Caud). This selection is a short one; but it is of interest
to none save the author and her brother, and nothing is lost by the
omission.
4. Some of the longer quotations from the French or Italian poets,
besides a few poems by Chateaubriand himself.
5. One passage, or at most two, which, without being in any sense
immoral, seemed to me to contain a little too much of the _esprit
gaulois_ to prove acceptable to English taste. I was anxious that not a
line should appear which would prevent the universal reading of so fine
a work.
*
For the rest, I have striven to perform my task of translation, which
has taken me over two years to accomplish, conscientiously, correctly,
and above all respectfully. If here and there I have seemed to follow
the original a little too closely, my excuse must be that I had too
great a respect for this great man to take liberties with his writing.
To reproduce his style in another language has been no easy matter: I
have done my best.
The volumes will be found to be fully annotated. The author's own
notes are so marked; those signed "B." are by M. Edmond Biré, the
accomplished editor of the latest edition of the Memoirs, from which
edition my version has, in the main, been made; those signed "T" are
mine. I claim no merit of erudition for these notes: my aim has been
merely to give the essential details concerning each new person,
belonging to whatever period, mentioned in the work, and, whenever
possible, to add the date of his birth and death. More particularly in
the case of Chateaubriand's contemporaries, I thought it not without
value to furnish a clue to the age and to the stage of their career
which they had attained at the time when they were brought into contact
with the writer. A full index of all persons mentioned in the _Mémoires
d'outre-tombe_ will be found at the end of the last volume.
*
My thanks are due to M. Louis Cahen, of Paris, who has read and
collated most of the proofs and suggested a happy solution of many a
difficulty, and to Mr. Frederic J. Simmons for the care with which he
has selected the illustrations to the several volumes.
A. T. de M.
Chelsea, _December_ 1901.
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE[1]
_Sicut nubes ... quasi naves ... velut umbra._--JOB.[2]
As it is not possible for me to foresee the moment of my end; as at
my age the days accorded to man are but days of grace, or rather
of reprieve, I propose, lest I be taken by surprise, to make an
explanation touching a work with which I intend to cheat the tedium
of those last forlorn hours which we neither desire, nor know how to
employ.
The Memoirs prefaced by these lines embrace and will embrace the whole
course of my life: they were commenced in the year 1811 and continued
to the present day. I tell in that portion which is already completed,
and shall tell in that which as yet is but roughly sketched, the
story of my childhood, my education, my youth, my entrance into the
service, my arrival in Paris, my presentation to Louis XVI., the early
scenes of the Revolution, my travels in America, my return to Europe,
my emigration to Germany and England, my return to France under the
Consulate, my employment and work under the Empire, my journey to
Jerusalem, my employment and work under the Restoration, and finally
the complete history of the Restoration and of its fall.
I have met nearly all the men who in my time have played a part, great
or small, in my own country or abroad: from Washington to Napoleon,
from Louis XVIII. to Alexander, from Pius VII. to Gregory XVI., from
Fox, Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, Capo d'Istrias to Malesherbes,
Mirabeau and the rest; from Nelson, Bolivar, Mehemet Pasha of Egypt to
Suffren, Bougainville, La Pérouse, Moreau and so forth. I have been one
of an unprecedented triumvirate: three poets of different interests
and nationality, who filled, within the same decade, the post of
minister of Foreign Affairs--myself in France, Mr. Canning in England,
Señor Martinez de la Rosa in Spain. I have lived successively through
the empty years of my youth and the years filled with the Republican
Era, the annals of Bonaparte and the reign of the Legitimacy.
I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trod the
soil of the four quarters of the globe. After camping in Iroquois
shelters and Arab tents, in the wigwams of the Hurons, amid the
remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Grenada, among
Greeks, Turks and Moors, in forests and among ruins; after wearing the
bearskin of the savage and the silken caftan of the mameluke; after
enduring poverty, hunger, thirst and exile, I have sat, as minister
and ambassador, in a gold-laced coat, my breast motley with stars
and ribbons, at the tables of kings, at the feasts of princes and
princesses, only to relapse into indigence and to receive a taste of
prison.
I have been connected with a host of personages famous in the career
of arms, the Church, politics, law, science and art. I have endless
materials in my possession: more than four thousand private letters,
the diplomatic correspondence of my several embassies, that of my term
at the Foreign Office, including documents of an unique character,
known to none save myself. I have carried the soldier's musket, the
traveller's cudgel, the pilgrim's staff: I have been a sea-farer, and
my destinies have been as fickle as my sails; a halcyon, and made my
nest upon the billows.
I have meddled with peace and war; I have signed treaties and
protocols, and published numerous works the while. I have been
initiated into secrets of parties, of Court and of State: I have been
a close observer of the rarest miseries, the highest fortunes, the
greatest renowns. I have taken part in sieges, congresses, conclaves,
in the restoration and overturning of thrones. I have made history, and
I could write it. And my life, solitary, dreamy, poetic, has gone on
through this world of realities, catastrophes, tumult, uproar, in the
company of the sons of my dreams, Chactas, René, Eudore, Aben-Hamet,
of the daughters of my imagination, Atala, Amélie, Blanca, Velléda,
Cymodocée. Of my age and not of it, I perhaps exercised upon it,
without either wishing or seeking to do so, a three-fold influence,
religious, political and literary.
There are left to me but four or five contemporaries of established
fame. Alfieri, Canova and Monti have disappeared; Italy has only
Pindemonte and Manzoni left over from her brilliant days. Pellico has
wasted his best days in the cells of the Spielberg: the talents of
the land that gave Dante birth are condemned to silence or driven to
languish on foreign soil; Lord Byron and Mr. Canning have died young;
Walter Scott is no longer with us; Goethe has left us, full of years
and glory. France has scarce anything remaining from her abundant past;
she is commencing a new era, while I linger behind to bury my period,
like the old priest who, in the sack of Béziers, was to toll the bell
before falling himself when the last citizen had expired.
When death lowers the curtain between me and the world, it shall be
found that my drama was divided into three acts.
From my early youth until 1800, I was a soldier and a traveller; from
1800 to 1811, under the Consulate and the Empire, my life was given
to literature; from the Restoration to the present day, it has been
devoted to politics.
During each of my three successive careers, I have always placed some
great task before myself: as a traveller, I aimed at discovering
the polar world; as a man of letters, I have striven to reconstruct
religion from its ruins; as a statesman, I have endeavoured to give to
the people the true system of representative monarchy, accompanied with
its various liberties: I have at least assisted in winning that liberty
which is worth all the others, which replaces them and serves in stead
of any constitution, the liberty of the press. When, frequently, I
have failed in my enterprises, there has been in my case a failure
of destiny. The foreigners who have succeeded in their designs were
aided by fortune; they had powerful friends behind them and a peaceful
country. I have been less lucky.
Of the modern French authors of my own period, I may be said to be the
only one whose life resembles his works: a traveller, soldier, poet,
publicist, it is amid forests that I have sung the forest, aboard ship
that I have depicted the sea, in camp that I have spoken of arms, in
exile that I have learnt to know exile, in Courts, in affairs of State,
in Parliament that I have studied princes, politics, law and history.
The orators of Greece and Rome played their part in the republic and
shared its fate. In Italy and Spain, at the end of the Middle Ages and
at the Renascence, the leading intellects in letters and the arts took
part in the social movement. How stormy and how fine were the lives of
Dante, of Tasso, of Camoëns, of Ercilla, of Cervantes!
In France our ancient poets and historians sang and wrote in the midst
of pilgrimages and battles: Thibaut Count of Champagne, Villehardouin,
Joinville borrow the felicity of their style from their adventurous
careers; Froissart travels the highways in search of history, and
learns it from the mouths of the knights and abbots whom he meets, by
whose side he rides along the roads. But, commencing from the reign
of François I., our writers have been men leading detached lives, and
their talents have perchance expressed the spirit but not the deeds of
their age. If I were destined to live, I should represent in my person,
as represented in my Memoirs, the principles, the ideas, the events,
the catastrophes, the idylls of my time, the more in that I have seen
a world end and a world commence, and that the conflicting characters
of that ending and that commencement lie intermingled in my opinions.
I have found myself caught between two ages as in the conflux of two
rivers, and I have plunged into their waters, turning regretfully from
the old bank upon which I was born, yet swimming hopefully towards the
unknown shore at which the new generations are to land.
These Memoirs, divided into books and parts, have been written at
different times and in different places: each section naturally entails
a kind of prologue which recalls the occurrences that have arisen since
the last date and describes the place in which I resume the thread
of my narrative. In this way the various events and the changeful
circumstances of my life enter one into the other; it happens that, in
moments of prosperity, I have to tell of times of penury, and that,
in days of tribulation, I retrace my days of happiness. The diverse
opinions formed in diverse periods of my life, my youth penetrating
into my old age, the gravity of my years of experience casting a
shadow over my lighter years, the rays of my sun, from its rise to its
setting, intercrossing and commingling like the scattered reflections
of my existence, all these give a sort of indefinable unity to my work;
my cradle bears the mark of my tomb, my tomb of my cradle; my hardships
become pleasures, my pleasures sorrows, and one no longer knows whether
these Memoirs proceed from a dark or a hoary head.
I do not say this in self-praise, for I do not know that it is good;
I say what is the fact, what happened without reflection on my part,
through the very fickleness of the tempests loosed against my bark,
which often have left me but the rock that caused my shipwreck upon
which to write this or that fragment of my life.
I have applied to the writing of these Memoirs a really paternal
predilection; I would wish to be able to rise at the ghostly hour to
correct the proofs: the dead go fast.
The notes accompanying the text are of three kinds: the first, printed
at the end of each volume, consist of explanatory documents, proofs
and illustrations; the second, printed at the foot of the pages, are
contemporary with the text; the third, also printed as foot-notes, have
been added after the text was written, and bear the date of the time
and place at which they were written. A year or two of solitude spent
in some corner of the earth would suffice to enable me to complete my
Memoirs; but the only period of rest that I have known was the nine
months during which I slept in my mother's womb: it is probable that I
shall not recover this antenatal rest until I lie in the entrails of
our common mother after death.
Several of my friends have urged me to publish a portion of my story
now: I could not bring myself to accede to their wish. In the first
place, I should be less candid and less veracious, in spite of myself;
and then, I have always imagined myself to be writing seated in my
grave. From this my work has assumed a certain religious character,
which I could not remove without impairing its merit; it would be
painful to me to stifle the distant voice which issues from the tomb,
and which makes itself heard throughout the course of this narrative.
None will be surprised that I should preserve certain weaknesses, that
I should be concerned for the fate of the poor orphan destined to
survive me upon earth. Should Minos judge that I had suffered enough in
this world to become at least a happy Shade in the next, a little light
thrown from the Elysian Fields to illumine my last picture would serve
to make the defects of the painter less prominent. Life does not suit
me; perhaps death will become me better.
Paris, 1 _December_, 1833.
[1] This preface is first printed in the edition of 1899, from which
the present version is made.--T.
[2] "I am brought to nothing: as a wind thou hast taken away my desire:
and my prosperity hath passed away _like a cloud._"--JOB, XXX. 15.
"My days have passed by _as ships_ carrying fruits, as an eagle flying
to the prey."--JOB, IX. 26.
"Man cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed, and fleeth _as a
shadow_, and never continueth in the same state."--JOB, XIV. 2.--T.
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION[1]
_Sicut nubes ... quasi naves ... velut umbra._--JOB.[2]
As it is not possible for me to foresee the moment of my end; as at
my age the days accorded to man are but days of grace, or rather of
reprieve, I propose to make an explanation.
On the 4th of September next I shall have completed my seventy-eighth
year: it is high time that I should quit a world which is quitting me
and which I do not regret.
The Memoirs prefaced by these lines follow, in their divisions, the
natural divisions of my several careers.
The sad necessity which has always held me by the throat has obliged
me to sell my Memoirs. None can know what I have suffered by being
compelled thus to hypothecate my tomb; but I owed this last sacrifice
to my vows and to the consistency of my conduct. With an almost
pusillanimous attachment, I looked upon these Memoirs as confidants
from whom I would not care to part; my intention was to leave them to
Madame de Chateaubriand; she would have published them at will, or
suppressed them, as I would have desired more than ever today.
Ah, if, before quitting the earth, I could have found some one rich
enough, confiding enough, to buy up the shares of the "Syndicate,"
and one who would not, like the Syndicate, be under the necessity of
sending the work to press so soon as my knell had sounded! Some of the
shareholders are my friends; several of them are obliging persons who
have sought to assist me; nevertheless the shares have perhaps been
sold, they will have been transferred to third parties with whom I am
not acquainted, and with whom family interests must take the first
place; to the latter it is natural that the prolongation of my days
should mean to them, if not an annoyance, at least an actual loss.
Lastly, if I were still the owner of these Memoirs, I would either keep
them in manuscript or delay their appearance for fifty years.
These Memoirs have been put together at different dates and in
different countries. Hence the necessary prologues, which depict the
environments upon which I cast my eyes, the thoughts which occupied me
at the time when I resume the thread of my narrative. The changeful
circumstances of my life have in this way entered one into the other:
it has happened that, in moments of prosperity, I have had to tell
of times of penury; in days of tribulation, to retrace my days of
happiness. My youth penetrating into my old age, the gravity of my
years of experience casting a shadow over my lighter years, the rays of
my sun, from its rise to its setting, intercrossing and commingling:
all these have produced in my recital a sort of confusion, or, if you
will, a sort of indefinable unity; my cradle bears the mark of my tomb,
my tomb of my cradle; my hardships become pleasures, my pleasures
sorrows, and I no longer know, as I finish reading these Memoirs,
whether they proceed from a dark or a hoary head.
I cannot tell if this medley, to which I can apply no remedy, will
please or displease; it is the fruit of the inconstancy of my fate;
often the tempests have left me no writing-table save the rock that has
caused my shipwreck.
I have been urged to publish portions of these Memoirs during my life;
I prefer to speak from the depths of my grave: my narrative will then
be accompanied by those voices which are in a measure consecrated,
because they issue from the tomb. If I have suffered enough in this
world to become a happy Shade in the next, a ray escaping from the
Elysian Fields will cast a protecting light over my last pictures. Life
does not suit me; perhaps death will become me better.
These Memoirs have been the object of my predilection. St. Bonaventure
obtained from Heaven permission to continue his after death; I hope for
no such favour, but I would wish to rise at the ghostly hour at least
to correct the proofs. However, when Eternity shall with its two hands
have stopped my ears, in the dusty family of the deaf, I shall hear
nobody.
If any part of this work has interested me more than another, it is
that which relates to my youth, the least-known side of my life. There
I have had to reveal to the world what was known to myself alone; in
wandering among that vanished company I have met only remembrances and
silence: of all the persons I have known, how many are alive today?
The inhabitants of Saint-Malo applied to me, on the 28th of August
1828, through the medium of their mayor, on the subject of a floating
dock they wished to build. I hastened to reply, begging, in exchange
for my good will, a concession of a few feet of ground, for my tomb,
on the Grand-Bé[3]. This encountered some difficulty, owing to the
opposition of the military engineering authorities. At last, on the
27th of October 1831, I received a letter from the mayor, M. Hovius. He
said:
"The resting-place which you desire by the side of the sea,
at a few steps from your birthplace, will be prepared by the
filial piety of the Malouins. A sad thought is mingled with
this task. Ah, may the monument remain long unoccupied! But
honour and glory survive all that dies upon earth."
I quote these beautiful words of M. Hovius with gratitude; there is but
one word too much: "glory."
I shall therefore rest on the shore of the sea which I have loved
so well. If I die out of France, I hope that my body will not be
brought back to the land of my birth until fifty years shall have
been completed since my first burial. Let my remains be spared a
sacrilegious autopsy; let not my chilled brain and my dead heart be
searched for the mystery of my being. Death does not reveal the secrets
of life. A corpse riding post fills me with horror; bones, bleached
and light, are easily moved: they will be less fatigued by this last
journey than when I dragged them hither and thither, laden with the
burden of my cares.
Paris, 14 _April_, 1846.
_Revised_ 28 _July_, 1846.
[1] 1848-1850.--T.
[2] "I am brought to nothing: as a wind thou hast taken away my desire:
and my prosperity hath passed away _like a cloud._"--JOB, XXX. 15.
"My days have passed by _as ships_ carrying fruits, as an eagle flying
to the prey."--JOB, IX. 26.
"Man cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed, and fleeth _as a
shadow_, and never continueth in the same state."--JOB, XIV. 2.--T.
[3] A small island situated in the roadstead of Saint-Malo.-_Author's
Note._
THE
MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND
PART THE FIRST
1768-1800
BOOK I[1]
Birth of my brothers and sisters--My own birth-Plancoët--I
am vowed--Combourg--My father's scheme of education for
me--Villeneuve--Lucile--Mesdemoiselles Couppart--I am a bad pupil--The
life led by my maternal grandmother and her sister at Plancoët--My
uncle, the Comte de Bedée, at Monchoix--I am relieved from my nurse's
vow--Holidays--Saint-Malo--Gesril--Hervine Magon--Fight with two ship's
lads.
Four years ago, on my return from the Holy Land, I purchased near
the little village of Aulnay, in the neighbourhood of Sceaux[2] and
Châtenay, a small country-house, lying hidden among wooded hills. The
sandy and uneven ground attached to this house consisted of a sort
of wild orchard, at the end of which was a ravine and a coppice of
chestnut-trees. This narrow space seemed to me fitted to contain my
long hopes: _spatio brevi spem longam reseces[3]._ The trees which I
have planted here are thriving. They are still so small that I can
shade them by placing myself between them and the sun. One day they
will give me shade and protect my old age as I have protected their
youth. I have selected them, in so far as I could, from the different
climes in which I have wandered; they recall my travels and foster
other illusions in my heart.
If ever the Bourbons reascend the throne, I will ask from them no
greater reward for my loyalty than that they should make me rich enough
to add to my fee-simple the skirts of the surrounding woods: I have
grown ambitious, and would wish to expand my walks by a few roods.
Knight-errant though I be, I have the sedentary tastes of a monk: I
doubt whether, since taking up my abode in this retreat, I have thrice
set foot without my boundary. If my pines, my fir-trees, my larches,
my cedars ever keep their promise, the Vallée-aux-Loups will become a
veritable hermitage. When, on the 20th of February 1694,[4] Voltaire
saw the light at Châtenay, what was then the appearance of the hill to
which the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ was to retire in 1807?
This spot pleases me; it has taken the place of my paternal acres; I
have bought it with the price of my dreams and my vigils; I owe the
little wilderness of Aulnay to the vast wilderness of Atala; and I have
not, in order to acquire this refuge, imitated the American planter and
despoiled the Indian of the Two Floridas[5]. I am attached to my trees;
I have addressed elegies to them, sonnets, odes. There is not one of
them which I have not tended with my own hands, which I have not rid of
the worm attached to its roots, the caterpillar clinging to its leaves;
I know them all by their names, as though they were my children: they
are my family, I have no other, and I hope to die in their midst.
Here, I have written the _Martyrs_, the _Abencerages_, the _Itinéraire_
and _Moïse_; what shall I do now during these autumn evenings? This
4th day of October 1811, the anniversary of my saint's-day[6] and of
my entrance into Jerusalem,[7] tempts me to commence the history of
my life. The man who today is endowing France with the empire of the
world only so that he may trample her under foot, the man whose genius
I admire and whose despotism I abhor, that man surrounds me with his
tyranny as it were with a new solitude; but though he may crush the
present, the past defies him, and I remain free in all that precedes
his glory.
The greater part of my feelings have remained buried in the recesses
of my soul, or are displayed in my works only as applied to imaginary
beings. To-day, while I still regret, without pursuing, my illusions, I
will reascend the acclivity of my happier years: these Memoirs shall be
a shrine erected to the clearness of my remembrances.
[Sidenote: My birth and ancestry.]
Let us commence, then, and speak first of my family. This is essential,
because the character of my father depended in a great measure upon his
position and, in its turn, exercised a great influence upon the nature
of my ideas, by determining the manner of my education[8].
*
I am of noble birth. In my opinion I have improved the hazard of
my cradle and retained that firmer love of liberty which belongs
principally to the aristocracy whose last hour has struck. Aristocracy
has three ages: the age of superiority, the age of privilege, the age
of vanity; issuing from the first, it degenerates in the second to
become extinguished in the third.
He who is curious for information concerning my family may consult
Moréri's[9] Dictionary, the different Histories of Brittany by
d'Argentré[10], Dom Lobineau[11], Dom Morice, Père Du Paz' _Histoire
généalogique de plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne_, Toussaint de
Saint-Luc, Le Borgne, and lastly Père Anselme's _Histoire des grands
officiers de la Couronne._[12]
My proofs of descent were made out by Chérin[13], for the admission of
my sister Lucile as a canoness of the Chapter of the Argentière, whence
she was to be transferred to that of Remiremont. They were reproduced
for my presentation to Louis XVI., again for my affiliation to the
Order of Malta, and lastly, when my brother was presented to the same
unfortunate Louis XVI.
My name was first written "Brien," and then "Briant" and "Briand,"
following the invasion of French spelling. Guillaume le Breton says
"Castrum-Briani." There is not a French name that does not present
these literal variations. What is the spelling of Du Guesclin?
About the commencement of the eleventh century, the Briens gave
their name to an important Breton castle, and this castle became
the burgh of the Barony of Chateaubriand. The Chateaubriand arms at
first consisted of fir-cones with the motto, _Je sème l'or._ Geoffrey
Baron of Chateaubriand accompanied St Louis to Palestine. He was
taken prisoner at the battle of the Mansourah[14], but returned, and
his wife Sybil died of joy and surprise at seeing him. St. Louis, in
reward for his services, granted to him and his heirs, in lieu of his
old arms, an escutcheon gules, strewn with fleur-de-lis or: "_Cui et
ejus hæredibus_" a cartulary of the Priory of Bérée bears witness,
"_sanctus Ludovicus turn Francorum rex, propter ejus probitatem in
armis, flores lilii auri, loco pomorum pini auri, contulit._"
[Sidenote: My proofs of nobility.]
The Chateaubriands were divided, soon after their origin, into three
branches: the first, that of the Barons of Chateaubriand, was the
stock of the two others, and commenced in the year 1000 in the person
of Thiern, son of Brien, grandson of Alan III., Count or Chief of
Brittany; the second was called the Lords[15] of the Roches Baritaut,
or of the Lion d'Angers; the third bore the title of Lords[16] of
Beaufort.
When the line of the Lords of Beaufort became extinct in the person of
Dame Renée, one Christopher II., of a collateral branch of that line,
came into possession of the estate of the Guerrande in Morbihan[17].
At this period, the middle of the seventeenth century, great
confusion prevailed in the order of the nobility. Names and titles
had been usurped. Louis XIV. ordered a visitation, so that each might
be reinstated in his rights. Christopher, upon giving proofs of his
ancient nobility, was confirmed in his title and in the ownership of
his arms, by judgment of the Chamber instituted at Rennes for the
reforming of the nobility of Brittany. This judgment was issued on the
16th of September 1669, and ran as follows:
"Judgment of the Chamber instituted by the King for the
reforming of the nobility in the Province of Brittany,
delivered the 16th of September 1669: between the King's
Attorney-General and M. Christophe de Chateaubriand, Sieur
de La Guerrande; which declares the said Christophe to
issue from an ancient noble house, permits him to take the
quality of knight, and confirms his right to bear arms gules
strewn with fleur-de-lys or without number, and this after
production by him of his authentic titles, from which it
appears, &c, &c. The said judgment signed Malescot."
This judgment declares that Christophe de Chateaubriand de La Guerrande
was descended in the direct line from the Chateaubriands, Lords of
Beaufort; the Lords of Beaufort were connected through historical
evidences with the first Barons of Chateaubriand. The Chateaubriands
de Villeneuve, du Plessis and de Combourg were younger branches of the
Chateaubriands de La Guerrande, as is proved by the descent of Amaury,
brother of Michel, the said Michel being the son of the Christophe de
La Guerrande whose descent was confirmed by the above-quoted decree of
the reforming of the nobility of 16 September 1669.
After my presentation to Louis XVI., my brother proposed to increase my
portion as a younger son by endowing me with some of those benefices
known as _bénéfices simples._ There was but one practical means of
doing this, since I was a layman and a soldier, and that was to have me
received into the Order of Malta. My brother sent my proofs to Malta,
and soon after, he presented a petition, in my name, to the Chapter of
the Grand Priory of Aquitaine, held at Poitiers, with a view to the
appointing of a commission to declare urgency. M. Pontois was at the
time archivist, vice-chancellor and genealogist of the Order of Malta
at the Priory.
The president of the Chapter was Louis Joseph des Escotais, _bailli_,
Grand Prior of Aquitaine, having with him the Bailli de Freslon, the
Chevalier de La Laurencie, the Chevalier de Murat, the Chevalier de
Lanjamet, the Chevalier de La Bourdonnaye-Montluc and the Chevalier du
Bouëtiez. The petition was allowed at the sittings of the 9th, 10th,
and 11th of September 1789. It is stated, in the terms of admission of
the "Memorial," that I deserved the favour which I solicited "by more
than one title," and that "considerations of the greatest weight" made
me worthy of the satisfaction which I claimed.
And all this took place after the fall of the Bastille[18], on the eve
of the scenes of the 6th of October 1789[19], and of the removal of the
Royal Family to Paris. And at its sitting of the 7th of August in this
same year 1789, the National Assembly had abolished titles of nobility!
How could the knights, the examiners of my proofs, find that I deserved
"by more than one title the favour which I solicited" and so forth,
I, who was nothing more than a petty sub-lieutenant of Foot, unknown,
without credit, interest or fortune?
My brother's eldest son (I add this in 1831 to my original text,
written in 1811), the Comte Louis de Chateaubriand, married
Mademoiselle d'Orglandes, by whom he had five daughters and one son,
the latter called Geoffroy. Christian, Louis' younger brother, the
great-grandson and godson of M. de Malesherbes, to whom he bore a
striking resemblance, served with distinction in Spain in 1823 as a
captain of the Dragoons of the Guard. He became a Jesuit in Rome.
The Jesuits supply the place of solitude in proportion as the latter
vanishes from the earth. Christian died recently at Chieri, near Turin:
old and ailing as I am, I should have preceded him; but his virtues
summoned him to Heaven before me, who have yet many faults to deplore.
In the division of the family patrimony, Christian had received as his
share the property of Malesherbes, and Louis the estate of Combourg.
Christian did not look upon an equal division as just, and on retiring
from the world, determined to disburden himself of a property which did
not belong to him and restore it to his elder brother.
To judge from my parchments, it would but rest with myself if I
inherited the infatuation of my father and brother, and believed myself
to represent a younger branch of the Dukes of Brittany, descending from
Thiern, grandson of Alan III.
[Sidenote: Royal alliances.]
These Chateaubriands aforesaid had twice mixed their blood with the
Blood Royal of England, Geoffrey IV. of Chateaubriand having married
as his second wife Agnes of Laval, grand-daughter of the Count of
Anjou and of Maud, daughter of Henry I., while Margaret of Lusignan,
widow of the King of England and grand-daughter of Louis the Fat[20],
married Geoffrey V., twelfth Baron of Chateaubriand. With respect to
the Royal House of Spain, we find Brien, a younger brother of the
ninth Baron of Chateaubriand, who would seem to have married Joan,
daughter of Alphonsus, King of Aragon. It is stated, moreover, in so
far as the great families of France are concerned, that Edward of Rohan
took Margaret of Chateaubriand to wife; and again that a Croï married
Charlotte of Chateaubriand. Tinténiac, the victor of the Battle of the
Thirty[21], and Du Guesclin, the Constable, allied themselves with our
three branches. Tiphaine Du Guesclin, grand-daughter of Bertrand's
brother, made over the property of the Plessis-Bertrand to Brien of
Chateaubriand, her cousin and heir. In treaties, Chateaubriands are
given as sureties for the peace to the Kings of France, to Clisson[22],
to the Baron of Vitré. The Dukes of Brittany send records of their
assizes to the Chateaubriands. The Chateaubriands become grand officers
of the Crown and _illustres_ in the Court of Nantes; they receive
commissions to defend the safety of their province against the English.
Brien I. is present at the Battle of Hastings: he was the son of Eudon,
Count of Penthièvre. Guy of Chateaubriand is one of the lords whom
Arthur of Brittany appoints to accompany his son upon his embassy to
the Pope in 1309.
I should never come to an end if I finished stating all that of which
I intended to give only a brief summary: the note[23] which I have at
last determined to write, from consideration for my two nephews, who
doubtless do not hold these bygone trifles as cheaply as I do, will
supply the place of my omissions in the text. Still, nowadays we go
too much to the other extreme; it has become the custom to declare
that one comes of a stock liable to villain service, that one has the
honour to be the son of a man bound to the soil. Are these declarations
as proud as they are philosophical? Is it not taking the side of the
strongest? Are the marquises, the counts, the barons of the present
day, who have neither privileges nor furrows, three-fourths of whom are
starving, blackening one another, refusing to recognize each other,
mutually contesting each other's birth: are these nobles, whose very
names are denied them or only allowed with reserve, able to inspire any
fear?
For the rest, I ask pardon for being obliged to stoop to this puerile
recital, in order to account for my father's dominant passion, which
forms the key to the drama of my youth. As for myself, I neither boast
nor complain of the old or the new society. If in the first I was the
Chevalier or the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, in the second I am François
de Chateaubriand: I prefer my name to my title. Monsieur my father
would readily, like a certain mighty land-owner of the Middle Ages,
have called God "the gentleman on high" and surnamed Nicodemus (the
Nicodemus of the Gospels) "a holy gentleman." And now, passing over
my immediate progenitor, let us come from Christopher, feudal lord
of the Guerrande, descending in the direct line from the Barons of
Chateaubriand, to me, François, lord without vassals or money of the
Vallée-aux-Loups.
To trace backwards the line of the Chateaubriands, consisting, as it
did, of three branches: after the two first had failed, the third, that
of the Lords of Beaufort, represented by a branch, the Chateaubriands
of the Guerrande, grew poor, as the inevitable result of the law of
the land; the eldest sons of the nobility received two-thirds of the
property, by virtue of the custom of Brittany, while the younger sons
divided among all of them one-third only of the paternal inheritance.
The degeneration of the frail stock of the latter worked with a
rapidity which became the greater as they married; and as the same
distribution into two-thirds and one-third existed in the case of their
children, these younger sons of younger sons soon came to dividing a
pigeon, a rabbit, a duck or two, and a hound, although they did not
cease to be "high knights and mighty lords" of a dove-cote, a toad-pool
and a rabbit-warren. In the old noble families we see a number of
younger sons; we follow them during two or three generations, and then
they disappear, descending gradually to the plough or absorbed by the
labouring classes, no man knowing what has become of them.
[Sidenote: My father's family.]
The head in name and blazon of my family at the commencement of
the eighteenth century was Alexis de Chateaubriand, Seigneur de La
Guerrande, son of Michel, the said Michel having a brother named
Amaury. Michel was the son of the Christophe confirmed in his descent
from the Lords of Beaufort and the Barons of Chateaubriand in the
judgment above-quoted. Alexis de La Guerrande was a widower and a
confirmed drunkard, spent his days in rioting with his maid-servants,
and used his most precious family documents as covers for his
butter-jars.
Contemporary with this head in name and blazon lived his cousin
François, son of Amaury, Michel's younger brother. François, born
19 February 1683, owned the small lordships of the Touches and the
Villeneuve. He married, on the 27th of August 1713, Pétronille Claude
Lamour, Dame de Lanjégu, by whom he had four sons: François Henri, René
(my father), Pierre Seigneur du Plessis and Joseph Seigneur du Parc.
My grandfather, François, died 28 March 1729; in my grand-mother, whom
I knew in my childhood, lingered a beautiful expression of the eyes,
which seemed to smile in the shade of her many years. At the time of
her husband's death, she was living in the manor of the Villeneuve,
in the neighbourhood of Dinan. My grandmother's whole fortune did not
exceed 5,000 livres a year, of which her eldest son took 3,333 livres,
leaving 1,666 livres a year to be divided among the three younger sons,
of which sum the eldest again first took the largest share.
To crown the misfortune, my grandmother's plans were thwarted by
the characters of her sons: the eldest, François Henri, to whom the
magnificent heritage of the lordship of the Villeneuve had fallen,
refused to marry and became a priest; but instead of seeking the
benefices which his name would have procured for him, and with which he
could have supported his brothers, prompted by pride and indifference,
he asked for nothing. He buried himself in a country vicarage, and was
successively Rector of Saint-Launeuc and of Madrignac in the Diocese of
Saint-Malo. He had a passion for poetry; I have seen a goodly number
of his verses. The jovial character of this sort of high-born Rabelais,
the cult of the Muses practised by this Christian priest in his
presbytery, aroused no little interest He gave away all he possessed
and died insolvent.
My father's fourth brother, Joseph, went to Paris and shut himself up
in a library: every year his younger son's portion of 416 livres was
sent to him. He lived unknown amidst his books, occupying himself with
historical research. During his life, which was a short one, he wrote
to his mother on each first of January: the only sign of existence he
ever gave. Strange destiny! There you have my two uncles, one a man of
erudition, the other a poet; my elder brother wrote agreeable verse;
one of my sisters, Madame de Farcy, had a real talent for poetry;
another of my sisters, the Comtesse Lucile, a canoness, might have
become known through a few admirable pages; I myself have blackened no
little paper. My brother died on the scaffold, my two sisters quitted
a life of pain after languishing in the prisons; my two uncles did not
leave enough to pay for the four boards of their coffin; literature has
caused my joys and my sorrows, and I do not despair, God willing, of
ending my days in the alms-house.
My grandmother, having exhausted her means in doing something for her
eldest and her youngest sons, was unable to do anything for the two
others, René, my father, and Pierre, my uncle. This family, which had
"strewn gold," according to its motto, looked out from its small manor
upon the rich abbeys which it had founded and in which its ancestors
lay entombed. It had presided over the States of Brittany, by virtue
of possessing one of the nine baronies; it had witnessed with its
signature the treaties of sovereigns, had served as surety to Clisson,
and would not have had sufficient credit to obtain an ensigncy for the
heir of its name.
One resource was left to the poor Breton nobles, the Royal Navy. An
endeavour was made to use this on behalf of my father; but he must
first go to Brest, live there, pay masters, buy his uniform, arms,
books, mathematical instruments: how were all these expenses to be met?
The brevet applied for to the Minister of Marine was not sent, for want
of a protector to solicit its despatch: the Lady of Villeneuve sickened
with grief.
It was then that my father gave the first sign of that decision of
character for which I have known him. He was about fifteen years of
age; observing his mother's distress, he approached the bed on which
she lay, and said:
"I will no longer be a burden to you."
Thereupon my grandmother began to weep: I have heard my father describe
the scene a score of times.
"René," said she, "what do you wish to do? Till your fields."
"They will not keep us; let me go away."
"Well, then," said the mother, "go where God wills that you should go."
She embraced the child with sobs. That same evening my father left the
maternal farm and arrived at Dinan, where one of our kinswomen gave him
a letter of recommendation to an inhabitant of Saint-Malo. The orphan
adventurer was taken as a volunteer on board an armed schooner, which
set sail a few days later.
[Sidenote: My father's career.]
At that time, the little commonwealth of Saint-Malo alone maintained
the honour of the French ensign at sea. The schooner joined the fleet
which the Cardinal de Fleury was dispatching to the assistance of
Stanislaus, who was besieged at Dantzig by the Russians. There my
father landed, and was present at the memorable combat which 1,500
Frenchmen, commanded by the Breton de Bréhan, Comte de Plélo[24],
delivered, on the 29th of May 1734, against 40,000 Muscovites under
Munich[25]. De Bréhan, diplomatist, warrior and poet, was killed; my
father was twice wounded. He returned to France, and embarked once
more. Wrecked upon the Spanish coast, he was attacked and stripped by
robbers in Galicia, took a passage on board ship to Bayonne, and landed
once again beneath the paternal roof. His courage and his orderly
conduct had brought him into notice. He went to the West Indies, made
money in the colonies, and laid the foundations of a new fortune for
his family.
My grandmother entrusted to her son René the care of her son Pierre,
M. de Chateaubriand du Plessis[26] whose son, Armand de Chateaubriand,
was shot, by order of Bonaparte, on Good Friday[27] 1809. He was one
of the last of the French nobles to die for the cause of the monarchy.
My father took charge of his brother's fate, although the habit of
suffering had endowed him with a sternness of character that lasted
through his life. _Non ignara mali_ is not always a true saying:
unhappiness has its harsh as well as its gentle side.
M. de Chateaubriand was tall and spare; he had an aquiline nose and
thin, pale lips; his eyes were deep-set, small, and of a bluish or
sea-green color, like the eyes of lions or of the barbarians of olden
time. I have never seen an expression like theirs: when inflamed with
anger, each flashing pupil seemed to shoot out and strike you like a
bullet.
My father was governed by one sole passion, that of his name. His
general condition was one of deep sadness, which increased with age,
and of a silence from which he issued only in fits of anger. Avaricious
in the hope of restoring to his family its pristine splendour, haughty
of demeanour with the nobles at the States of Brittany, harsh with his
dependants at Combourg, taciturn, despotic and threatening at home,
the feeling which the sight of him inspired was one of fear. Had he
lived until the Revolution, and had he been younger, he would have
played a great part, or got himself massacred in his castle. He was
certainly possessed of genius: I have no doubt that, at the head of an
administration or an army, he would have been a man out of the ordinary.
He first thought of marriage on returning from America. Born on the
23rd of September 1718, he was thirty-five years of age when, on the
3rd of July 1753, he married Apolline Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée, born
7 April 1726, and daughter of Messire Ange Annibal Comte de Bedée,
Seigneur de La Bouëtardais. He took up his residence with her at
Saint-Malo, within seven or eight leagues of which both of them had
been born, so that their house commanded the horizon under which they
had first seen the light. My maternal grandmother, Marie Anne de
Ravenel de Boisteilleul, Dame de Bedée, born at Rennes on the 16th of
October 1698, had been brought up at Saint-Cyr during the last years of
Madame de Maintenon: her education had left its mark upon her daughters.
My mother was endowed with great wit and intelligence, and with
a prodigious imagination; her mind had been formed by the works
of Fénelon, Racine, Madame de Sévigné, and stored with anecdotes
of the Court of Louis XIV.; she knew the whole of _Cyrus_[28] by
heart. Apolline de Bedée was dark, short and ill-favoured, with
large features; the elegance of her manners, the vivacity of her
temperament, formed a contrast with my father's stiffness and calm.
Loving society as much as he loved solitude, as humoursome and animated
as he was cold and unimpassioned, she had no tastes but what were
opposed to her husband's. The antagonism which she encountered saddened
her naturally gay and light-hearted disposition. Obliged to hold her
tongue when she would have wished to speak, she made amends to herself
by a kind of clamorous melancholy broken with sighs which alone
interrupted my father's silent gloom. For piety my mother was an angel.
My mother was brought to bed at Saint-Malo of an eldest son, who
died in the cradle and was christened Geoffroy, like almost all the
first-born of my family. This son was followed by another and by two
daughters, none of whom lived more than a few months.
[Sidenote: My birth and baptism.]
These four children died of an extravasation of blood on the brain.
At last my mother bore a third son, who was named Jean-Baptiste: it
was he who later married M. de Malesherbes' grand-daughter. After
Jean-Baptiste came four daughters: Marie-Anne, Bénigne, Julie and
Lucile, all four endowed with rare beauty; the two eldest alone
survived the storms of the Revolution. Beauty, that serious trifle,
remains when all the rest has passed away. I was the last of the ten
children. Probably my four sisters owed their existence to my father's
desire to assure the perpetuation of his name through the arrival of a
second boy; I resisted, I had an aversion to life.
Here is my baptismal certificate[29]:
"Extract from the civil register of the Commune of Saint-Malo
for the year 1768.
"François René de Chateaubriand, son of René de Chateaubriand
and of Pauline Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée, his wife, born 4
September 1768, baptized on the following day by us Pierre
Henri Nouail, grand-vicar of the Bishop of Saint-Malo.
Godfather, Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand, his brother, and
godmother, Françoise-Gertrude de Contades, who sign with the
father. Thus signed on the register: Contades de Plouër,
Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand, Brignon de Chateaubriand, de
Chateaubriand, and Nouail, vicar-general[30]."
It will be observed that I have made a mistake in my Works: I say that
I was born on the 4th of October[31] and not on the 4th of September;
my Christian names are François René and not François Auguste[32].
The house in which my parents were then living at Saint-Malo stands
in a dark and narrow street called the Rue des Juifs[33]: it has now
been turned into an inn[34]. The room in which my mother was confined
overlooks a bare portion of the city wall, and from the windows one can
contemplate an endless expanse of sea, which breaks upon the rocks. My
god-father, as appears from my baptismal certificate, was my brother,
and my godmother the Comtesse de Plouër, daughter of the Marshal de
Contades[35]. I was almost dead when I first saw the light. The roaring
of the waves, upheaved by a squall which heralded the autumnal equinox,
deadened my cries: I have often been told these details; their sadness
has never been erased from my memory. A day seldom passes on which,
reflecting on what I have been, I do not see again in thought the rock
upon which I was born, the room in which my mother inflicted life upon
me, the tempest whose sound first lulled me to sleep, the unfortunate
brother who gave me a name which I have nearly always dragged through
misfortune. Heaven seemed to unite these several circumstances in order
to lay within my cradle a symbol of my destiny.
[Illustration: Chateaubriand's birth place at St. Malo.]
On leaving my mother's breast I underwent my first exile: I was
banished to Plancoët, a pretty village situated between Dinan,
Saint-Malo and Lamballe. My mother's only brother, the Comte de
Bedée, had built a house near the village, to which he gave the name
of Monchoix. My maternal grand-mother's property stretched from this
neighbourhood to the market-town of Courseul, the Curiosolites of
Cæsar's Commentaries. My grandmother, since many years a widow,
lived with her sister, Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul, in a hamlet
divided from Plancoët by a bridge, and known as the Abbaye, from a
Benedictine abbey dedicated to Our Lady of Nazareth.
[Sidenote: My nurse's vow.]
My nurse was sterile; another poor Christian took me to her breast.
She vowed me to the patron of the hamlet, Our Lady of Nazareth, and
promised that I should wear blue and white in her honor for seven
years. I had lived but a few hours, and already the weight of years was
marked upon my brow. Why did they not let me die? God in His wisdom
granted to the prayer of humbleness and innocence the preservation of a
life for which a vain renown was lying in wait.
This vow of the Breton peasant woman is no longer in the spirit of the
age: yet nothing can be more touching than the intervention of a Divine
Mother coming between Heaven and the child and sharing the terrestrial
mother's solicitude.
After three years I was brought back to Saint-Malo. Already seven years
had elapsed since my father had recovered the domain of Combourg.
He wished to gain possession of the estates where his ancestors had
lived and died; and unable to treat for the purchase of the manor of
Beaufort, which had passed to the Goyon family, or for the barony of
Chateaubriand, which had fallen into the hands of the House of Condé,
he turned his attention to Combourg, which is spelt "Combour"[36] in
Froissart, and which has been held by various branches of my family
through their inter-marriages with the Coëtquens. Combourg served as
a defense to Brittany in the Norman and English marches: it was built
in 1016 by Junken, Bishop of Dol; the great tower dates to 1100.
The Marshal de Duras[37], who held Combourg by right of his wife,
Maclovie de Coëtquen, whose mother was a Chateaubriand, came to terms
with my father. The Marquis du Hallay[38], an officer in the Mounted
Grenadiers of the Royal Guards, perhaps too well known for his valor,
is the last of the Coëtquen Chateaubriands: M. du Hallay has a brother.
The same Maréchal de Duras, in his quality as our ally, subsequently
presented my brother and myself to Louis XVI.
I was intended for the Royal Navy: a distaste for Court life was
natural to any Breton, and particularly to my father. This feeling was
strengthened in him by the aristocratic character of our States.
When I was brought home to Saint-Malo, my father was at Combourg, my
brother at Saint-Brieuc College; my four sisters were living with my
mother. All the latter's affections were centered upon her eldest son:
not that she did not love her other children, but she showed a blind
preference for the young Comte de Combourg. True, I had, as a boy,
as the youngest-born, as the "chevalier," as I was called, certain
privileges not shared by my sisters; but, upon the upshot, I was left
to the care of the servants. Moreover, my mother, full of intelligence
and virtue, was largely taken up with social claims and religious
duties. The Comtesse de Plouër, my godmother, was her intimate friend;
she also saw Maupertuis'[39] family and the Abbé Trublet's[40]. She
loved politics, excitement, society: for people talked politics at
Saint-Malo like the monks in the Cedron hollow[41]; and she threw
herself with ardor into the La Chalotais[42] affair. She would bring
home with her a cross humour, an absent-mindedness, a spirit of
parsimony, which at first prevented one from recognising her admirable
qualities. She was methodical, and showed no method in the management
of her children; generous, and appeared avaricious; gentle, yet ever
scolding: my father was the terror of the servants, my mother their
scourge.
Such were the dispositions of my parents, whence sprang the earliest
feelings of my life. I attached myself to the woman who took care of
me, an excellent creature called Villeneuve, whose name I write with
a movement of gratitude and with tears in my eyes. Villeneuve was a
sort of superintendent of the household; she carried me in her arms,
gave me, by stealth, anything she could come across, wiped away my
tears, kissed me, pushed me into a corner, took me out, and constantly
muttering: "There's one who won't grow up proud, who has a good heart,
who does not snub poor people! Here, little fellow," she would stuff me
with sugar and wine.
[Sidenote: My sister Lucile.]
Soon my childish affection for Villeneuve was controlled by a worthier
friendship. Lucile, my fourth sister, was two years older than I[43].
Neglected as the youngest, she was given none save her sisters'
left-off clothes to wear. Imagine a little thin girl, too tall for
her age, with loose-jointed arms, shy, speaking with difficulty, and
unable to learn a thing; dress her in a frock taken from a child of a
different size and shape; confine her chest in a quilted corset the
gores of which cut wounds into her ribs; hold up her neck with an iron
collar cased in brown velvet; dress her hair back upon the top of her
head, fasten it with a cap of black stuff, and you see before you the
wretched object that struck my eyes on returning to the paternal roof.
No one would have suspected in the puny Lucile the talent and beauty
with which she was one day to shine.
She was given me as a plaything; I did not abuse my power; instead
of submitting her to my will, I became her defender. She and I were
taken every morning to the sisters Couppart, two hunch-backed old
women dressed in black, who taught children to read. Lucile read
very badly; I still worse. She was scolded; I scratched the sisters'
faces; great complaints were carried to my mother. I began to pass
for a ne'er-do-well, a rebel, an idler, in short, an ass. These ideas
sank into my parents' heads: my father said that all the Chevaliers
de Chateaubriand had been hare-hunters, drunkards, and brawlers. My
mother sighed and grumbled when she saw the disordered condition of my
jacket. Child though I was, my father's remark revolted me; when my
mother crowned her remonstrances with a panegyric on my brother, whom
she called a Cato, a hero, I felt inclined to do all the ill that they
seemed to expect of me.
My writing-master, M. Desprès, who wore a pig-tail, was no more
satisfied with me than were my parents; he was eternally making me
copy, from a slip in his own writing, the following couplet, which I
came to detest, not by reason of any error of construction that it may
contain:
C'est à vous, mon esprit, à qui je veux parler:
Vous avez des défauts que je ne puis celer[44].
He accompanied his reprimands with cuffs in my neck, calling me _tête
d'achôcre_: did he mean ἀχὼρ[45]? I do not know what a _tête d'achôcre_
is, but I take it to be something frightful.
Saint-Malo is a mere rock. Originally rising from the middle of a
salt marsh, it became an island in 709 through an incursion of the
sea, which hollowed out the gulf and set Mont Saint-Michel amid the
waves. Nowadays the rock of Saint-Malo is attached to the mainland
only by a causeway poetically designated as the Sillon, or Furrow.
The Sillon is on one side assaulted by the open sea, and on the other
washed by the flowing tide, which turns to enter the harbour. In 1730
it was almost entirely destroyed by a storm. At ebb-tide the harbour
is dry, displaying on its edge east and north of the sea a beach of
the most beautiful sand. It is then possible to walk round my paternal
nest. Near and far are strewn rocks, forts, uninhabited islets: the
Fort-Royal, the Conchée, Césembre, and the Grand-Bé, where my tomb will
be. I unwittingly made a good choice: _bé_, in Breton, means tomb.
At the end of the Furrow, a Calvary stands upon a sandy knoll jutting
out into the open sea. This knoll is called the Hoguette; it is crowned
with an old gallows: we used to play puss-in-the-corner between its
posts, disputing their possession with the birds of the sea-shore. It
was not, however, without a certain sense of fright that we stopped in
that place.
There, too, are the Miels, downs on which the sheep used to graze; to
the right are meadows below Paramé, the posting-road to Saint-Servan,
a Calvary, and wind mills standing on rising ground, like those on
Achilles' Tomb at the entrance to the Hellespont.
I reached my seventh year; my mother took me to Plancoët, to be
released from my nurse's vow; we stayed at my grandmother's. If ever I
have known happiness, it was certainly in that house.
[Sidenote: My grandmother.]
My grandmother lived in the Rue du Hameau-de-l'Abbaye, in a house
whose gardens ran terrace-wise into a dale, at the bottom of which
was a spring surrounded by willows. Madame de Bedée could no
longer walk, but with this exception she suffered from none of the
inconveniences attendant upon her age. She was a pleasant old woman,
fat, white-haired, neat, with the grand air and fine and noble manners.
She wore old-fashioned plaited gowns and a head-dress of black lace
fastened under her chin. Her mind was cultivated, her conversation
grave, her mood was serious. She was cared for by her sister, who
resembled her only in kind-heartedness. Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul
was a little lean person, sprightly, talkative, addicted to raillery.
She had been in love with a certain Comte de Trémigon, and the said
count, after becoming engaged to her, had broken his promise. My
great-aunt had consoled herself by singing her love, for she was
poetically inclined. I remember often hearing her hum, in snuffling
fashion, with her glasses on her nose, while embroidering double-rowed
ruffles for her sister, an apologue commencing:
Un épervier aimait une fauvette
Et, ce dit-on, il en était aimé[46],
which I always thought strange for a sparrow-hawk.
The song ended with this refrain:
Ah! Trémigon, la fable est-elle obscure?
Ture, lure[47].
How many things in this world end, like my aunt's love, in "Derry down!"
My grandmother left the housekeeping to my sister. She dined at eleven
o'clock in the morning, took her _siesta_, woke up at one; she was
carried down the garden terraces and placed under the willows near the
spring, where she sat knitting, surrounded by her sister, her children,
and grandchildren. At that time old age was a distinction; nowadays it
is an encumbrance. At four o'clock, my grandmother was carried back
to her drawing-room; Pierre, the man-servant, set out a card-table;
Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul knocked with the tongs against the back
of the fire-place, and a few minutes later three other old maids would
walk in, who had come from the next house in obedience to my aunt's
summons.
These three sisters were called the Demoiselles Vildéneux[48]; they
were the daughters of a poor gentleman, and instead of dividing his
slender inheritance, they had enjoyed it in common, had never left
one another, had never been out of their natal village. They had been
intimate with my grandmother since childhood, lived next door to her,
and came every day, at the preconcerted signal in the chimney, to make
up their friend's party at quadrille. The game began; the good ladies
quarrelled; it was the only incident in their lives, the only moment
that spoiled the evenness of their temper. At eight o'clock, supper
restored their serenity. Often my uncle de Bedée[49], with his son and
his three daughters, would be present at my grandmother's supper. The
latter would tell a thousand stories of the old days; my uncle, in his
turn, would describe the battle of Fontenoy, at which he was present,
and crown his boasting with stories which were a little free and which
made the worthy spinsters die with laughing. At nine o'clock, supper
over, the servants entered; all went on their knees, and Mademoiselle
de Boisteilleul said prayers aloud. At ten o'clock all in the house
slept, except my grand-mother, who made her waiting-woman read to her
till one in the morning.
This society, which was the first I saw in my life, was also the first
to disappear from my eyes. I saw death enter that abode of peace and
bliss, making it gradually lonely, closing first one room and then
another which were never reopened. I saw my grandmother obliged to
forego her quadrille, for want of her accustomed partners; I saw the
number of her constant friends diminish until the day came when my
grand-mother was the last to fall. She and her sister had promised to
call each other so soon as one had preceded the other; they kept their
word, and Madame de Bedée survived Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul but
a few months. I am perhaps the only man living that knows that these
persons existed. Twenty times since that period I have made the same
remark; twenty times have societies been formed and dissolved around
me. The impossibility of long duration in human relations, the profound
forgetfulness that pursues us, the invincible silence that takes
possession of our tomb and spreads thence over our house, constantly
recall me to the necessity of isolation. Any hand will serve to give
us the glass of water which we may need in the fever preceding death.
Ah, that it may not be too dear to us! For how can one forsake without
despair the hand which he has covered with kisses, and which he would
like to hold to his heart for ever?
[Sidenote: The Bedée family.]
The Comte de Bedée's house[50] was a league away from Plancoët, in a
high and cheerful position. Everything about it breathed gladness: my
uncle's gaiety was inexhaustible. He had three daughters, Caroline,
Marie and Flore, and one son, the Comte de La Bouëtardais, a counsellor
to the Parliament, all of whom shared his light-heartedness. Monchoix
was filled with cousins from the neighbourhood; they made music,
danced, hunted, and revealed from morning till night. My aunt, Madame
de Bedée[51], who saw my uncle gaily squandering his capital and his
income, was very properly vexed; but no one listened to her, and her
ill-humour but increased the good-humour of her family, the more so
as my aunt herself displayed a number of eccentricities: she always
had a great snarling hound lying in her lap, and was followed by a
tame boar, which filled the house with its grunts. When I came from my
father's house, so sombre and so silent, to this house of noise and
merry-making, I felt myself in a genuine paradise. The contrast became
more striking when my family were settled in the country: the change
from Combourg to Monchoix was a change from the wilderness to the
world, from the castle-keep of a mediæval baron to the villa of a
Roman prince.
On Ascension Day 1775, I set out from my grandmother's house to
go to Our Lady of Nazareth, accompanied by my mother, my aunt de
Boisteilleul, my uncle de Bedée and his children, my nurse, and my
foster-brother. I wore a white surtout, white shoes, gloves, and hat,
and a blue silk sash. We went up to the Abbaye at ten o'clock in
the morning. The convent, which stood by the road-side, derived an
appearance of age from a quincunx of elms dating back to John V. of
Brittany[52]. The quincunx led to the cemetery; it was only through the
region of the tombstones that the Christian could reach the church: it
is death which admits to the presence of God.
The monks were already seated in their stalls; the altar was lighted
with a multitude of candles; lamps hung from the different arches:
Gothic edifices offer successive distances and, as it were, horizons.
The bedels met me at the door, in state, and conducted me to the choir.
Three seats had been prepared; I sat down upon the middle one, my nurse
placed herself on my left, my foster-mother on my right.
The mass commenced; at the Offertory, the celebrant turned to me and
read some prayers; after which my white clothes were taken off and hung
as an _ex voto_ beneath a picture of the Virgin. They then dressed me
in a violet-coloured frock. The Prior delivered a discourse upon the
efficacy of vows; he recalled the history of the Baron of Chateaubriand
who had gone to the East with St Louis; he told me that perhaps I, too,
should go to Palestine and visit that Virgin of Nazareth to whom I owed
my life, thanks to the prayers of the poor, which were always powerful
with God. This monk, who told me the history of my family as Dante's
grandfather told him the history of his ancestors, might also, like
Cacciaguida, have added to it by predicting my exile[53].
Since the Benedictine's exhortation, I always dreamt of the pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, and I ended by accomplishing it.
I was consecrated to religion; the wardrobe of my innocence has lain
upon its altars: it is not my garments that should today be hung within
its temples, but my misfortunes.
I was taken back to Saint-Malo. Saint-Malo is not the Aleth of the
_Notitia Imperii_: Aleth was better placed by the Romans in what is
now the suburb of Saint-Servan, in the military port known as Solidor,
at the mouth of the Rance. Facing Aleth was a rock, _est in conspectu
Tenedos_[54], not the refuge of the perfidious Greeks, but the retreat
of Aaron the Hermit[55], who took up his abode on that island in 507,
the date of the victory of Clovis over Alaric[56]: one founded a
little convent, the other a great monarchy, two edifices both of which
have perished.
[Sidenote: Saint-Malo.]
Malo, in Latin Maclovius, Macutus, or Machutes, became Bishop of Aleth
in 541, and, attracted as he was by Aaron's fame, visited him. As
chaplain of the hermit's oratory, after the saint's death he raised a
cenobitical church, _in prædio Machutis._ Malo's name was given to
the island, and subsequently to the town, Maclovium, Maclopolis.
Between St. Malo, first Bishop of Aleth, and Blessed John surnamed "of
the Gridiron," who was consecrated in 1140 and built the cathedral,
came five-and-forty bishops. Aleth was already almost wholly abandoned,
and John of the Gridiron transferred the episcopal see from the Roman
to the Breton city which was spreading over Aaron's rock.
Saint-Malo suffered greatly in the wars waged between the Kings of
France and England. The Earl of Richmond, later Henry VII. of England,
in whom ended the Wars of the Roses, was taken to Saint-Malo. He was
handed over by the Duke of Brittany to the ambassadors of Richard,
who carried him to London to be put to death. He escaped from his
guards, and took refuge in the cathedral, _asylum quod in eâ urbe est
inviolatissimum_: the right of sanctuary dated back to the Druids, the
first priests of Aaron's isle.
A Bishop of Saint-Malo was one of the three favourites (the others were
Arthur de Montauban and Jean Hingant) who killed the unfortunate Giles
of Brittany, as may be read in the _Histoire lamentable de Gilles,
seigneur de Chateaubriand et de Chantocé prince du sang de France et de
Bretagne, étranglé en prison par les ministres du favori, le 24 avril
1450._
There exists a fine capitulation between Henry IV. and Saint-Malo:
the city treats as between Power and Power, protects those who have
taken refuge within its walls, and retains the right, by an order of
Philibert de La Guiche, grand-master of artillery of France, to cast
one hundred pieces of cannon. Nothing more closely resembled Venice
(failing the sun and the pursuit of the arts) than did this little
commonwealth of Saint-Malo in religion, wealth, and prowess at sea.
It supported Charles V.'s expedition to Africa and came to the aid of
Louis XIII. at the Rochelle. It flew its ensign over all the seas,
maintained relations with Mocha, Surat, Pondicherry; a company formed
in its midst explored the South Sea.
From the reign of Henry IV. onwards, my native city distinguished
itself for its devotion and fidelity to France. The English bombarded
it in 1693; on the 29th of November in that year, they launched against
it an infernal machine, in the wreck of which I have often disported
myself with my play-fellows. They bombarded it again in 1758.
The Malouins lent considerable sums of money to Louis XIV. during the
war of 1701; in recognition of this service, he confirmed them in their
privilege of guarding their own city, and ordered that the crew of the
first ship in the Royal Navy should consist exclusively of sailors
drawn from Saint-Malo and its territory. In 1771, the Malouins repeated
their sacrifice and lent thirty millions to Louis XV.
The famous Admiral Anson[57] landed at Cancale in 1758, and burnt
Saint-Servan. In Saint-Malo Castle, La Chalotais wrote upon rags,
with the aid of a tooth-pick, soot and water, the Memoirs which made
so much noise and which nobody remembers. Events efface events; they
are but inscriptions traced upon other inscriptions, making pages of
palimpsestic history.
Saint-Malo furnished the Royal Navy with its best sailors; the complete
roll may be found in a folio volume published in 1682 with the title:
_Rôle général des officiers, mariniers et matelots de Saint-Malo._
There is a _Coutume de Saint-Malo_, printed in the collection of the
Customary-General. The city archives contain a fair number of charters
useful to the study of history and maritime law.
Saint-Malo gave birth to Jacques Cartier[58], the French Christopher
Columbus, who discovered Canada. At the other extremity of America the
Malouins marked out the islands to which they gave their name: Îles
Malouins[59]. It is the native city of Duguay-Trouin[60], one of the
greatest seamen ever known, and more recently, of Surcouf[61]. The
celebrated Mahé de La Bourdonnais[62], Governor of the Isle of France,
was born at Saint-Malo, as were La Mettrie[63], Maupertuis, the Abbé
Trublet, of whom Voltaire made sport: all this is not bad for an area
not so large as that of the Tuileries Gardens.
Far ahead of these smaller literary lights of my birthplace stands the
Abbé de Lamennais[64]. Broussais[65] also was born at Saint-Malo, as
well as my noble friend, the Comte de La Ferronnays[66].
[Sidenote: The dogs of Saint-Malo.]
Finally, so as to omit nothing, I will mention the mastiffs which
formed the garrison of Saint-Malo, They were descended from the famous
dogs which were regimental pets under the Gauls, and which, according
to Strabo, fought by their masters' side in pitched battles against
the Romans. Albertus Magnus, a monk of the Dominican Order, and as
serious a writer as the Greek geographer, declares that at Saint-Malo
"the safety of this important place was entrusted nightly to the
faithful care of certain dogs, which patrolled well and trustily." They
were condemned to capital punishment for having had the misfortune
inconsiderately to bite a gentleman's legs; which gave rise in our days
to the song, _Bon voyage_: people will laugh at anything. The criminals
were imprisoned; one of them refused to take his food from the hands
of his keeper, who wept; the noble animal elected to die of hunger:
dogs, like men, are punished for their fidelity. In addition to this,
the Capitol was, like my own Delos, guarded by dogs, which did not bark
when Scipio Africanus came to say his morning prayer.
Saint-Malo is an enclosure of walls of different periods, divided
into "great" and "little" walls, which form walks, and is defended
besides by a castle of which I have spoken, and which the Duchess Anne
fortified with towers, bastions, and moats. Seen from the outside, the
island city resembles a granite citadel.
The children's meeting-place is the strand of the open sea, between
the Castle and the Fort-Royal; here I was reared, the companion of
the waves and winds. One of my earliest delights was to fight with
the storms, to play with the waves which retired before me or chased
me across the beach. Another diversion was, with the sand on the
sea-shore, to build edifices which my play-fellows called "ovens."
Since that time I have often seen castles, built for eternity, that
have crumbled more swiftly than my sand palaces.
My lot being irrevocably fixed, I was left to pass an idle childhood.
A few notions of drawing, English, hydrography and mathematics seemed
more than sufficient for the education of a little boy destined
beforehand for the rough life of a sailor.
I grew up in my family without lessons. We no longer occupied the house
in which I was born: my mother lived in a large house in the Place
Saint-Vincent, almost facing the gate which leads to the Sillon. The
ragamuffins of the town had become my dearest friends: I filled the
yard and the staircases of the house with them. I resembled them in all
things: I spoke their language; I had their ways and their walk; I was
dressed like them, my clothes were as indecent and undone as theirs; my
shirts fell to rags; I had never a pair of stockings but it was full
of holes; I shuffled about in shabby shoes, down at heel, falling off
my feet at every step; I often lost my hat and sometimes my coat. My
face was smudged, scratched, bruised; my hands black. So strange was my
appearance that my mother, in the midst of her anger, could not keep
from laughing and exclaiming, "How ugly he is!"
Nevertheless I loved, and I have always loved, cleanliness and
elegance. At night I tried to mend my rags. Kind Villeneuve and my
Lucile assisted in repairing my clothes, to save me from scoldings
and punishments; but their patching only served to make my outfit the
odder. I was particularly disconsolate when I appeared in tatters among
children proud of their new clothes and of their finery.
There was something about my fellow-townsmen that was foreign and
suggested Spain. Families from Saint-Malo had settled at Cadiz;
families from Cadiz lived at Saint-Malo. Saint-Malo's insular position,
its embankment, its architecture, its houses, its tanks, and its
granite walls give it a certain resemblance to Cadiz; when I saw the
latter town it often reminded me of the former.
Locked up at night in their city under the same key, the Malouins
formed but one family. So primitive were the habits of the place, that
young women who sent to Paris for their ribbons and muslins were
looked upon as worldly creatures from whom their startled acquaintances
held aloof. A frailty was a thing unknown: suspicion having fallen upon
a certain Comtesse d'Abbeville, the result was a ballad in singing
which people crossed themselves. Nevertheless the poet, faithful, in
spite of himself, to the troubadour tradition, took sides against the
husband, whom he called "a barbarous monster."
On certain days of the year, the townsmen and the country-people met at
fairs called "assemblies," which were held upon the islands and forts
surrounding Saint-Malo; these were reached on foot when the sea was
low, by boat when it was high. The crowd of sailors and peasants; the
covered carts; the caravans of horses, donkeys and mules; the concourse
of dealers; the tents lining the sea-shore; the processions of monks
and brotherhoods winding with their banners and crosses amid the crowd;
the rowing and sailing-boats flitting to and fro; the ships entering
harbor or heaving anchor in the roads; the salutes of artillery, the
pealing of the bells, all combined to fill these gatherings with noise,
movement and variety.
[Sidenote: Holidays at Saint-Malo.]
I was the only witness of these holidays who did not share in the
general gaiety. I had no money to buy toys and cakes. In order to avoid
the scorn attached to ill-fortune, I sat far from the crowd, near
those pools of water which the sea keeps up and replenishes in the
hollows of the rocks. There I amused myself by watching the flight of
the gulls and sea-mews, staring at the blue expanse of sky, gathering
shells, listening to the refrain of the waves among the rocks. At
night, at home, I was but little happier; I disliked certain dishes:
I was forced to eat them. I cast beseeching glances at La France, who
cleverly whipped away my plate when my father's head was turned. In
the matter of the fire, the same harshness: I was not permitted to go
near the chimney. It is a far cry from those severe parents to the
spoil-children of to-day.
But if I had troubles unknown to modern children, I had some pleasures
also of which they know nothing. The very meaning has been forgotten
of those religious and domestic solemnities in which the whole country
and the God of that country seemed to rejoice. Christmas, New Year's
Day, Twelfth Night, Whitsuntide, Midsummer were prosperous days for me.
Possibly the influence of my native rock worked upon my sentiments
and studies. In the year 1015 the Malouins vowed to assist "with their
hands and means" to build the steeples of the cathedral at Chartres:
have I too not labored with my hands to rebuild the stricken spire of
the ancient Christian basilica? "The sun," says Père Maunoir, "never
shone upon canton where more constant and invariable fidelity to the
true Faith was shown than in Brittany. For thirteen centuries no heresy
has stained the tongue which has served as an organ for preaching Jesus
Christ, and the man is as yet unborn who has seen a Breton of Brittany
preach any religion other than the Catholic."
On the feast-days which I have mentioned, I was taken with my sisters
to perform my stations at the various sanctuaries in the town, at St.
Aaron's Chapel or the Convent of Victory; my ear was struck by the
sweet voices of a hidden choir of women; the harmony of their chant
mingled with the roar of the billows. When, in the winter, at the hour
of Benediction, the Cathedral was filled by the multitude; when old
sailors upon their knees, young women and children read their Hours
with lighted tapers in their hands; when the congregation at the
Benediction joined in singing the _Tantum Ergo_; when, in the intervals
between the hymns, the Christmas squalls dashed against the panes of
the Cathedral and shook the arches of the nave which had resounded with
the manly tones of Jacques Cartier and Duguay-Trouin, I experienced
an extraordinary feeling of religion. I had no need to be told by
Villeneuve to fold my hands and invoke God by all the names which my
mother had taught me; I saw the heavens opening, the angels offering up
our incense and our prayers; I bowed my forehead: it was not yet laden
with those cares which weigh upon us so terribly that we are tempted
not to raise our heads after bending them at the foot of the altar.
One sailor, the function concluded, would set sail all fortified
against the night, while another would return to harbour and turn his
steps to the illuminated dome of the church: thus religion and danger
were constantly in sight one of the other, and their features were
inseparable in my thoughts. I was hardly born before I heard speak of
death: in the evening, a man went from street to street with a bell,
calling upon Christians to pray for a brother deceased. Scarcely a year
passed but vessels went under before my eyes, and as I played upon the
beach the sea rolled to my feet the corpses of foreign men who had
expired far from their native land. Madame de Chateaubriand said to me,
as St. Monica said to her son: _Nihil longe est a Deo._ My education
had been entrusted to Providence, which spared me none of its lessons.
[Sidenote: My early love of religion.]
Vowed as I was to the Virgin, I knew and loved my Protectress, whom I
confused with my Guardian Angel: her portrait, which had cost my kind
Villeneuve a half sou, was fastened with four pins over the head of my
bed. I ought to have lived in the times when one said to Mary: "Sweet
Lady of Heaven and Earth, Mother of Pity, Fountain of all Good, that
carried Jesus Christ in thy precious womb, fair and most sweet Lady, I
thank thee and entreat thee."
The first thing I knew by heart was a sailors' hymn, which began:
Je mets ma confiance,
Vierge, en votre secours;
Servez-moi de défense,
Prenez soin de mes jours;
Et quand ma dernière heure
Viendra finir mon sort,
Obtenez que je meure
De la plus sainte mort[67].
I have since heard this hymn sung in a shipwreck. To this day I can
repeat these bad rhymes with as much pleasure as Homer's verses. A
statue of Our Lady, adorned with a Gothic crown and clad in a robe of
blue silk trimmed with a silver fringe, inspires me with more devotion
than one of Raphael's Virgins.
If at least that peaceful _Stella maris_ had been able to calm my
troubled life! But I was doomed to agitation even in my childhood. I
was like the Arab's date-tree: scarce had my stem issued from the rock
before it was stricken by the wind.
*
I have told how my premature revolt against Lucile's mistresses began
my bad reputation: a play-fellow completed it.
My uncle, M. de Chateaubriand du Plessis, lived at Saint-Malo like his
brother, and had, like him, four girls and two boys. Of my two cousins,
Pierre and Armand, who were my first companions, Pierre became one of
the Queen's pages, Armand was sent to college as being destined for
the ecclesiastical state. Pierre, his service as a page ended, entered
the navy and was drowned off the coast of Africa. Armand, after a long
stay at college, left France in 1790, served throughout the emigration,
made a score of intrepid descents in a small vessel upon the coast of
Brittany, and at last, on Good Friday 1809[68], gave his life for the
King on the Plaine de Grenelle, as I have already stated and as I shall
repeat once more when I come to relate the catastrophe[69].
Deprived of the society of my two cousins, I made up for it by a new
connection. On the second floor of the house in which we lived, resided
a gentleman called Gesril, who had a son and two daughters. This son
had been brought up differently from myself; a spoilt child, all he
did was thought charming. His one pleasure consisted in fighting, and
especially in raising quarrels in which he appointed himself referee.
He played practical jokes on nursemaids taking children out walking,
and nothing was talked of save his pranks, which were transformed into
the blackest crimes. The father laughed at everything, and "Joson" was
but the more petted for it.
[Sidenote: My friend Gesril.]
Gesril became my intimate friend, and acquired an incredible ascendency
over me: I was his apt pupil, although my character was the entire
opposite of his. I liked solitary games, and sought quarrels with
nobody: Gesril doted on pleasures and crowds, and revealed in childish
squabbles. When some ragamuffin addressed me, Gesril would ask, "Do you
allow that?" Thereupon I thought my honour at stake, and struck out at
the rash one's eyes; his age and height made no difference. My friend
would watch the fight and applaud my courage, but did nothing to assist
me. Sometimes he levied an army of all the gutter-snipes he knew,
divided his recruits into two bands, and we skirmished on the sands
with the aid of stones.
Another game invented by Gesril was still more dangerous. At
high-tide, when there was a storm, the waves, beating at the foot of
the Castle, on the side of the long beach, would leap to the level of
the great towers. Twenty feet above the base of one of these towers
ran a granite parapet, narrow, sloping, and slippery, leading to the
ravelin which defended the moat. The trick was to seize the moment
between two waves and clear the dangerous spot before the surge broke
and covered the tower. You saw a mountain of water approach you,
roaring as it came, which, if you delayed a minute, must either drag
you with it or crush you against the wall. Not one of us refused the
venture, but I have seen children turn pale before attempting it.
This inclination to urge others to encounters of which he remained a
spectator would lead one to think that, in after life, Gesril did not
display great generosity of character; and yet, although on a smaller
stage, he succeeded perhaps in surpassing the heroism of Regulus: his
glory only needed Rome and Titus Livy. He became a naval officer, and
he was taken prisoner in the engagement of Quiberon[70]. When the
action was decided, seeing that the English continued to fire upon
the Republican troops, Gesril[71] sprang into the sea, swam out to
the ships, and told the English to cease fire, informing them of the
disaster and of the capitulation of the Emigrants. They tried to save
him by throwing a rope to him, and urged him to come on board. "I am a
prisoner on parole," he cried, from the midst of the waves, and swam
back to land: he was shot with Sombreuil and his companions[72].
Gesril was my first friend; both of us were misunderstood in childhood,
and we became intimate through an instinct that told us what we might
some day be worth.
Two adventures put an end to this first part of my story, and produced
a noteworthy change in the system upon which my education was
conducted. We were one Sunday on the beach, in the "fan" of the Porte
Saint-Thomas and along the Sillon, where great stakes sunk into the
sand protect the walls against the swell of the sea. We would generally
climb to the top of these stakes to watch the first waves of the rising
tide flow beneath us. We had taken our places as usual; several little
girls were among us small boys. I was the furthest out at sea, having
none in front of me save a pretty little thing called Hervine Magon,
who was laughing with pleasure and crying with fear. Gesril was at the
further end inland.
The tide rose; it was blowing; already the nurses and footmen were
crying: "Come down, miss! Come down, sir!" Gesril waited for a big
wave, and as it dashed between the stakes, he pushed the child seated
next to him. This one fell against another, that against a third; the
whole row fell flat like "friars" of cards, but each was saved by his
neighbour; the only exception was the little girl at the extreme end
of the row, against whom I was upset, with the result that, having no
one to support her, she fell off. She was dragged away by the reflux; a
thousand cries arose; all the nurses tucked up their skirts and waded
into the sea, each catching hold of her brat and giving it a smack.
Hervine was fished out, and declared that François had thrown her down.
The nurses made a rush for me; I escaped from them, and ran and shut
myself in the cellar at home, whither the army of females pursued me.
Fortunately my father and mother had gone out Villeneuve valiantly
defended the door, and boxed the ears of the enemy's van-guard. The
real author of the mischief, Gesril, lent me his aid: climbing to his
own floor, with his two sisters he threw pots of water and baked apples
at my assailants from the windows. They raised the siege at nightfall;
but the news spread through the town, and the nine-year-old Chevalier
de Chateaubriand was reputed a monster of iniquity, a survival of those
pirates whom St. Aaron had driven from his rock.
The other adventure was this: I went with Gesril to Saint-Servan,
the suburb divided from Saint-Malo by the merchant harbor. In order
to reach it at low water, you cross certain currents by means of low
and narrow stepping-stones, which are covered when the sea rises. The
footmen who escorted us had loitered some way behind. At the end of
one of these bridges of stones we saw two ship's lads coming in our
direction. Gesril said to me: "Are we to let those beggars pass?" and
shouted to them: "Into the water, ducks!" Like true salts, refusing to
take chaff, they came on; Gesril retreated; and stationing ourselves at
one end of the bridge, we caught up some pebbles and threw them at the
ship-boys' heads. They rushed upon us, forced us to fall back, armed
themselves with pebbles in their turn, and drove us back, fighting,
upon our reserves, in other words, our servants. I was not, like
Horatius, hit in the eye; but a stone caught me so violently that my
left ear was cut in two and hung down upon my shoulder.
[Sidenote: Our dangerous pastimes.]
I did not think of my hurt, but of my return home. When my friend came
back from his excursions with a black eye and a torn coat, he was
pitied, pampered, coddled, dressed up again; while I, under similar
circumstances, was promptly punished. The wound I had received was
dangerous, but La France was unable to persuade me to come indoors,
such was my fright. I went and hid on the second floor with Gesril, who
bound up my head in a napkin. This napkin set him going: it suggested
a mitre to him; he turned me into a bishop and made me sing High Mass
with him and his sisters until supper-time. The dignitary of the Church
was at last obliged to go downstairs: my heart beat. Taken aback by my
face disordered and smeared with blood, my father said not a word; my
mother screamed; La France told my piteous case, and tried to excuse
me; I was nevertheless rated for it. They dressed my ear, and Monsieur
and Madame de Chateaubriand resolved to separate me from Gesril as soon
as possible[73].
I am not sure that it was not in this year that the Comte d'Artois[74]
visited Saint-Malo: a sham fight was arranged for him in the roads.
From the top of the bastion of the powder-magazine I watched the young
Prince standing among the crowd on the beach: in his splendour and in
my obscurity how many unknown destinies lay hidden! Thus, if my memory
do not fail me, Saint-Malo has seen two Kings of France only: Charles
IX. and Charles X.
*
There you have the picture of my early childhood. I do not know whether
the harsh education I received be sound in principle, but it was
adopted by my relations without purpose and as the natural outcome of
their temperament. What is certain is that it imbued me with ideas
different from those of other men; what is still more certain is
that it impressed upon my sentiments a character of melancholy which
arose from the habit of suffering acquired in the age of weakness,
improvidence and mirth.
Is it suggested that the manner of my bringing-up might have led me
to abhor the authors of my being? Not at all: the remembrance of
their sternness is almost pleasant to me; I value and honour their
great good qualities. When my father died, my comrades in the Navarre
Regiment witnessed my regret. From my mother I derive the consolation
of my life, since it was she who taught me my religion; I gathered
the Christian verities that issued from her mouth, as Pierre de
Langres studied at night in church, by the light of the lamp burning
before the Blessed Sacrament. Would my intelligence have received a
greater development had I been set earlier to my studies? I doubt it:
the waves, the winds, the solitude which were my first masters were
probably better suited to my native disposition; possibly I owe to
those wild tutors virtues which might have remained unknown to me.
The truth is that no system of education is in itself to be preferred
to any other system: do children love their parents better nowadays
when they say _tu_ and _toi_ to them and no longer fear them? Gesril
was spoilt in the same house in which I was scolded: we have both
been honest men and loving and respectful sons. This thing which you
think bad brings out your child's gifts; that other which you think
good would stifle those same gifts. What God does is well done: it is
Providence that guides us, when it destines us to play a part upon the
world's stage.
[1] This book was written at the Vallée-aux-Loups between October 1811
and June 1812.--T.
[2] Seven miles south of Paris, in the Department of Seine.--T.
[3] HORACE, _Od._ I. XI--T.
[4] Voltaire was not born on the 20th of February 1694, and he was
not born at Châtenay. In 1864, M. A. Jal (_Dictionnaire critique de
biographie et d'histoire_, pp. 1283, _et seq._), after searching the
register of the Parish of Saint-André-des-Arcs, established the fact
that Voltaire was born in Paris on Sunday, 21 November 1694.--B.
[5] The district now known as Florida was formerly divided into Eastern
and Western Florida, with St. Augustine and Pensacola for their
respective capitals.--T.
[6] The 4th of October is the feast of St François of Assisi--T.
[7] Chateaubriand made his entrance into Jerusalem on the 4th of
October 1806.--B.
[8] Following M. Edmond Biré in his edition of 1899, I have borrowed
this paragraph from the manuscript known as the _Manuscrit_ de 1826,
which was in the handwriting, for the most part, of Madame Récamier,
and which was published by Madame Charles Lenormant in 1874. It is
certainly preferable to the paragraph in all other editions of the
_Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, which runs as follows:
"My father's birth and the trials of his first position caused his
character to become one of the gloomiest ever known. Now this character
influenced my ideas because it terrified me in childhood, saddened me
in youth, and determined the manner of my education."
The Comte de Marcellus (_Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 6) remarks
that this paragraph interrupts the narrative and in no way assists
it.--T.
[9] Louis Moréri (1643-1680) took orders at Lyons, and in 1673
published in that town his _Dictionnaire historique et géographique_,
which forms the basis of Bayle's _Dictionnaire critique_
(1697-1702).--T.
[10] Bertrand d'Argentré (1519-1590), Seneschal of Rennes, and author
of an _Histoire de Bretagne and Commentaires sur la coutume de
Bretagne._--T.
[11] Père Lobineau of the Benedictines (1666-1727), author of the
_Histoire de Bretagne_ (1707), _Histoire des Saints de la Bretagne_,
and other historical works.--T.
[12] This genealogy is summarised in the _Histoire généalogique
et héraldique des Pairs de France_, by M. le Chevalier de
Courcelles.--_Author's Note._
The full title of the work by Pierre de Gibours, known as Père Anselme,
is _Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison de France et
des grands officiers de la Couronne_ (1674). Its importance is mainly
due to the labours of the compilers who continued it, Du Fourni and
Père Ange de Sainte-Rosalie (1726-1733).--T.
[13] Bernard Chérin (1718-1785), genealogist and historiographer of the
Orders of St. Lazarus, St. Michael, and the Holy Ghost--B.
[14] 1250, when St. Louis defeated the Saracens, but was subsequently
taken prisoner, with a number of his knights.--T.
[15] _Seigneurs._--T.
[16] _Sires._--T.
[17] The estate of the Guerrande is situated not in Morbihan, but in
the parish of Hénan-Bihen, now one of the communes of the Canton of
Matignon, Arrondissement of Dinan (Côtes-du-Nord).--B.
[18] 14 July 1789.--T.
[19] The massacre of the _gardes-du-corps_ at Versailles.--T.
[20] The second wife of Edward I. was Margaret, daughter of Philip
the Bold, and grand-daughter of St. Louis, not of Louis the Fat. The
reference is perhaps to Isabella of Angoulême, the affianced bride of
Hugh of Lusignan, Count of the Marche, who was carried off and married
by King John of England.--T.
[21] The Lord of Beaumanoir in 1351 sent his famous challenge to
the English Lord of Ploërmel. Thirty Bretons and thirty Englishmen
met in mortal combat at the foot of the oak midway between Ploërmel
and Josselin. Eight of the English were killed, and the remainder
surrendered. In the heat of the fight, Beaumanoir, parched with heat
and fatigue, drank the blood flowing from his own wounds.--T.
[22] Olivier de Clisson, Constable of France, surnamed the Butcher. He
succeeded Du Guesclin as Constable in 1380 and held the office until
1392. He died in his castle of Josselin, in Brittany, in 1407.--T.
[23] See this note at the end of these Memoirs.--_Authors Note._
[24] Louis Robert Hyppolite de Bréhan, Comte de Plélo (1699-1734),
French Ambassador at Copenhagen, a grand-nephew of Madame de Sévigné,
and author of some light poems.--T.
[25] Christopher Burchard, Count Munich (1683-1767), a native of
Oldenburg and a favourite field-marshal, privy-councillor and
eventually prime-minister of the Empress Anne of Russia. He was exiled
on the accession of Elizabeth, and recalled by Peter III. after
enduring twenty years of banishment.--T.
[26] Pierre Marie Anne de Chateaubriand, Seigneur du Plessis et
du Val-Guildo (1727-1794), commanded several of his brother's
merchant-ships. On the 12th of February 1760 he married Marie Jeanne
Thérèse Brignon, daughter of Nicolas Jean Brignon, Seigneur de Laher,
merchant, and of Marie Anne Le Tendu. He was imprisoned during the
Terror and died in Saint-Malo jail, 3 Fructidor Year II. (20 August
1794).--B.
[27] 31 March.--T.
[28] MADELEINE de SCUDÉRI, _Le Grand Cyrus_, one of the longest of the
old French romances, published 1650, in ten volumes 8vo.--T.
[29] The full text runs as follows:--
"François René de Chateaubriand, son of the high and mighty René
de Chateaubriand, Knight, Comte de Combourg, and of the high and
mighty dame, Apolline Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée, Dame de Chateaubriand,
his wife, born 4 September 1768, baptized on the following day by
us, Messire Pierre Henri Nouail, grand-chanter and canon of the
cathedral church, official and grand-vicar of Monseigneur the Bishop
of Saint-Malo. Godfather, the high and mighty Jean-Baptiste de
Chateaubriand his brother, and godmother, the high and mighty dame,
Françoise Marie Gertrude de Contades, Dame and Comtesse de Plouër,
who sign with the father. Signed: Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand,
Brignon de Chateaubriand, Contades de Plouër, de Chateaubriand, Nouail,
vicar-general."--B.
[30] Twenty days before my birth, on the 15th of August 1768, was
born, in another island, at the other extremity of France, the man who
abolished the old society, Bonaparte.--_Author's Note._
[31] In the _Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem._--T.
[32] _Atala_, the _Génie du Christianisme_, the _Martyrs_ and the
_Itinéraire_ are all signed François Auguste de Chateaubriand. The
author's object in suppressing the name of René on the title-pages of
his early works was to avoid a false interpretation on the part of
those who might have been tempted to identify him with the immortal
episode in his works which has René for its title.--B.
[33] Now Rue de Chateaubriand.--T.
[34] The Hôtel de France et de Chateaubriand.--T.
[35] Louis George Érasme Marquis de Contades (1704-1795), for some
time Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, a marshal of France, and
Governor of Alsace from 1763 to 1788.--T.
[36] "It was so spelt long after Froissart's time, following the
ancient form, "Comburnium." The final "g" was first added between 1660
and 1680."--B.
[37] Emmanuel Félicité de Durfort, Duc de Duras (1715-1789), a peer and
marshal of France. First Lord of the Bedchamber, and a member of the
French Academy. He married in 1736 Louise Françoise Maclovie Céleste de
Coëtloquen, who died 7 January 1802.--B.
[38] Jean Georges Charles Frédéric Emmanuel Marquis du Hallay-Coëtquen
(1799-1867). He was a captain in the 1st Mounted Grenadiers of the
Royal Guard under the Restoration, and a Lord of the Bedchamber. The
reference to his valor applies to his reputation as a judge in points
of honor and a referee in matters of the duel. His brother, the Comte
du Hallay-Coëtquen, served as a page to Louis XVIII. in 1814, and was
subsequently a guard to Monsieur and a lieutenant in the 4th Mounted
Chasseurs.--B.
[39] Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759), the distinguished
geometrician and French Academician, and President of the Berlin
Academy. Maupertuis was a native of Saint-Malo.--T.
[40] Nicholas Charles Joseph Trublet (1697-1770), Archdeacon and Canon
of Saint-Malo, his native city. He was a writer of little merit,
although elected a member of the French Academy in 1761, and was the
hero of Voltaire's satire, _Le Pauvre Diable._--T.
[41] See the _Itinéraire_ for this anecdote.--T.
[42] Louis René de Caradeuc de La Chalotais (1701-1785) was
Attorney-General to the Parliament of Brittany. He was accused of
instigating the opposition of the States and Parliament of Brittany
to certain financial edicts affecting the Breton liberties. After a
long confinement in the Citadel of Saint-Malo (1765), he was exiled
to Saintes and was not permitted to return to Rennes until ten years
later, on the accession of Louis XVI., when he resumed his functions.
The affair created a great and prolonged local commotion.--T.
[43] Lucile was four, not two years, older than her brother. She was
born on the 7th of August 1764.--B.
[44]
"To you, my mind, I wish to remark,
You have many faults which I cannot keep dark."--T.
[45] 'Aχὼρ, scurf.-_Author's Note._
[46]
"A sparrow-hawk loved a warbler fair.
And, it is said, was loved by her."--T.
[47]
"Is the fable obscure, Trémigon?
Derry down!"--T.
[48] Their correct name was Loisel de La Villedeneu.--B.
[49] Marie Antoine Bénigne de Bedée, Comte de La Bouëtardais
(1727-1807), younger brother to Madame de Chateaubriand.--B.
[50] The Château de Monchoix is in the parish of Pluduno, now one of
the communes of the Canton of Plancoët, Arrondissement of Dinan, and is
inhabited by M. du Boishamon, the Comte de Bedée's great-grandson.--B.
[51] Marie Angélique Fortunée Cécile Ginguené (1729-1823), daughter
of Écuyer François Ginguené and of Dame Thérèse Françoise Jean. She
married the Comte de Bedée on the 23rd of November 1756.--B.
[52] 1339-1442.--T.
[53] I omit eleven lines of quotation and their translation.--T.
[54] VIR., Æn. I. 184.--T.
[55] St. Aaron the Hermit is honoured on the 22nd of June.--T.
[56] At the battle of Vouillé, where Clovis killed Alaric II., King of
the Visigoths, with his own hand.--T.
[57] George Anson, Lord Anson (1697-1762). He received his promotion
and peerage after defeating La Jonguère in 1747.--T.
[58] Jacques Cartier (1494-_circa_ 1554), discovered the St. Lawrence
in 1534-35, following this up by exploring the greater part of
Canada.--T.
[59] The Falkland Islands.--T.
[60] René Duguay-Trouin (1673-1736), the hero of a number of brilliant
naval expeditions, of which the most famous is the capture of Rio de
Janeiro in 1711.--T.
[61] Robert Surcouf (1773-1827), the celebrated corsair, said to have
been descended on the mother's side from Duguay-Trouin.--T.
[62] Bertrand François Mahé de La Bourdonnais (1699-1753),
Governor-General of the Isle of France (Mauritius) and Bourbon from
1734 to 1743, when he went to India, defeating the English in Madras in
1746.--T.
[63] Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-1752), the author of a number of works
of perverted philosophy. Frederic II. appointed him his reader and
composed a eulogy upon his death, which occurred from indigestion.--T.
[64] The Abbé Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), a religious
and royalist writer until the Revolution of 1830, which converted him
to demagogy and irreligion. His later works were condemned by the Holy
See, and he was buried, by his own desire, without funeral rites.--T.
[65] François Joseph Victor Broussais (1772-1832), a distinguished
physician and adversary of the spiritualistic sects.--T.
[66] Pierre Louis Auguste Ferron, Comte de La Ferronnays (1772-1842),
occupied a number of prominent diplomatic posts under the Restoration.
He was one of the most honest Frenchmen of his time.--T.
[67]
"To thee, O Mother-Maid,
My song of hope I raise;
Be thou my constant aid,
Watch over all my ways;
And when Death's hour is nigh,
When life's long toil shall cease,
Pray, Mother, that I die
In holiness and peace."--T.
[68] This should be 1810: _vide supra._--T.
[69] He left a son, Frédéric, for whom I first obtained a post in
the Guards of Monsieur, and who afterwards joined a regiment of
Cuirassiers. He married, at Nancy, Mademoiselle de Gastaldi, by whom
he has had two sons, and retired from the service. Armand's elder
sister, my cousin, has for many years been a superior of the Trappist
nuns.--_Authors Note_ (Geneva, 1831).
[70] 21 July 1795.--T.
[71] Joseph François Anne Gesril du Papeu (1767-1795) fought in the
American War of Independence as a lad of fourteen.--B.
[72] 27 August 1795. The Republicans denied the capitulation. But M.
Biré gives a list of nine names which all bear witness to the fact that
Sombreuil and his men laid down their arms only after capitulating.--T.
[73] I have already spoken of Gesril in my other works. One of his
sisters, Angélique Gesril de La Trochardais wrote to ask me to obtain
leave for her husband and her sister's husband to add the name of
Gesril to their surnames: I failed in my negotiation.--_Author's Note_
(Geneva, 1831).
[74] Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois (1757-1836), afterwards King
Charles X. His visit to Saint-Malo took place on the 11th of May 1777,
and lasted three days.--T.