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
Three years and six months have elapsed between the last date attached
to these Memoirs, Vallée-aux-Loups, January 1814, and the date of
today, Montboissier, July 1817. Did you hear the Empire fall? No:
nothing has disturbed the repose of this spot. Nevertheless the Empire
is lost; the immense ruin has crumbled in the course of my life like
Roman remains overturned in the bed of some unknown stream. But events
matter little to one who does not reckon them: a few years escaping
from the hands of the Eternal Father will do justice to all these
reports with an endless silence.
The previous chapter was written under the expiring tyranny of
Bonaparte and by the light of the last flashes of his glory: I am
commencing the present chapter under the reign of Louis XVIII. I have
been in close proximity to kings, and my political illusions have
vanished, as have the sweeter fancies of which I am continuing the
tale. Let me first say what makes me resume my pen: the human heart is
the toy of everything, nor can we foresee what trivial circumstance
will cause its joys and sorrows. Montaigne remarked this: "There
needeth no cause," he says, "to excite our minde. A doating humour
without body, without substance, overswayeth and tosseth it up and
down[148]."
I am now at Montboissier, on the borders of the Beauce and the
Perche[149]. The castle situated upon this property, belonging
to Madame la Comtesse de Colbert-Montboissier[150], was sold and
demolished during the Revolution; only two pavilions remain, divided by
a railing, and formerly inhabited by the lodge-keeper. The park, which
is now laid out in the English style, retains some traces of its former
French symmetry: straight walks, copses set within hedges give it a
serious aspect; it has the attraction of a ruin.
Yesterday evening I was walking alone; the sky was like an autumn sky;
a cold wind blew at intervals. I stopped at an opening in a thicket
to look at the sun: it was sinking into the clouds above the tower of
Alluye, from which Gabrielle[151], occupying that tower, saw the sun
set, as I did, two hundred years ago. What has become of Henry and
Gabrielle? The same that shall have become of me when these Memoirs are
published.
I was drawn from my reflections by the twittering of a thrush perched
on the topmost branch of a birch-tree. At once that magic sound brought
back before my eyes my father's domain: I forgot the catastrophes which
I had lately witnessed, and suddenly carried back into the past, I saw
once more the fields where I had so often heard the thrush's song. When
I listened to it then, I was sad, as I am today; but that first sadness
was of the kind which springs from a vague longing for happiness, at
a time when we are without experience; the sadness which I now feel
comes from the knowledge of things appreciated and judged. The song of
the bird in the Combourg woods told me of a happiness which I hoped to
achieve; the same song in the park at Montboissier reminded me of days
wasted in the pursuit of that unattainable happiness. I have nothing
more to learn; I have travelled faster than others, and have made the
circuit of life. The hours fly and drag me with them; I have not even
the certainty of being able to complete these Memoirs. In how many
places have I already commenced to write them, and in what place shall
I finish them? How long shall I wander on the edge of the wood? Let me
make the most of the few moments left to me; let me hasten to depict my
youth, while I am still in touch with it: the traveller quitting for
ever an enchanted shore writes his journal in sight of the land which
is withdrawing, soon to disappear from sight.
I have described my return to Combourg and my reception by my father,
my mother, and my sister Lucile. The reader will perhaps remember
that my three other sisters were married and living on the estates of
their new families in the neighbourhood of Fougères. My brother, whose
ambition was beginning to display itself, was oftener in Paris than at
Rennes. He first bought a post as _maître des requêtes_, which he sold
in order to enter the military service. He entered the Royal Cavalry
Regiment; he then joined the diplomatic service, and accompanied the
Comte de La Luzerne to London, where he met André Chénier[152]; he was
on the point of obtaining the Vienna Embassy, when our troubles broke
out. He asked for Constantinople, but found a formidable competitor
in Mirabeau, who had been promised this embassy as the price of his
alliance with the Court party. My brother had therefore almost taken
leave of Combourg at the time when I came to live there.
My father entrenched himself in his manor, which he never left, not
even to attend the sittings of the States[153]. My mother went to
Saint-Malo for six weeks in every year, at Eastertide; she looked
forward to that time as the period of her deliverance, for she detested
Combourg. A month before the journey, it was discussed as though
it were a hazardous enterprise; preparations were made; the horses
were rested. On the eve of departure, we went to bed at seven in the
evening, in order to get up at two o'clock in the morning. My mother,
to her great contentment, set out at three, and occupied the whole day
in covering twelve leagues.
[Sidenote: I am sent to Dinan College.]
Lucile, who had been received as a canoness to the Chapter of the
Argentière, was about to be transferred to that of Remiremont: while
awaiting this change, she remained buried in the country. As for
myself, after my escapade from Brest, I declared my wish to embrace
the ecclesiastical state: the truth is that I was only seeking to gain
time, for I did not know what I wished. I was sent to the college at
Dinan to complete my humanities. I knew Latin better than my masters;
but I began to learn Hebrew. The Abbé de Rouillac was the principal of
the college, and the Abbé Duhamel my tutor.
Dinan, adorned with old trees, fortified with old towers, is built
upon a picturesque site, on a high hill at the foot of which flows the
tidal Rance, and overlooks sloping and pleasantly-wooded valleys. The
mineral waters of Dinan have some renown. This historic city, which
gave birth to Duclos[154], displayed among its antiquities the heart of
Du Guesclin: an heroic dust which, stolen during the Revolution, was on
the point of being pounded by a glazier to be used for paint. Was it
intended for pictures of victories won over the enemies of the country?
M. Broussais, my fellow-townsman, became my fellow-student at Dinan.
The students were taken to bathe on Thursdays, like the clerks under
Pope Adrian I., or on Sundays, like the prisoners under the Emperor
Honorius. Once I was nearly drowned; on another occasion, M. Broussais
was bitten by ungrateful leeches, which failed to foresee the
future[155]. Dinan was at an equal distance from Combourg and Plancoët.
I visited my uncle de Bedée at Monchoix and my own family at Combourg
by turns.
M. de Chateaubriand, who found it cheaper to keep me at home, my
mother, who wished me to persist in my religious vocation, but who
would have scrupled to urge me, no longer insisted upon my residence
at college, and I found myself imperceptibly settling down under the
paternal roof.
I should take pleasure in recalling the habits of my parents even if
they were no more to me than a touching remembrance; but I reproduce
them the more readily in that the picture will appear as though traced
from the vignettes in mediæval manuscripts: centuries separate the
present days from those which I am about to depict.
*
On my return from Brest the gentry at Combourg Castle consisted
of four: my father, my mother, my sister, and me. A woman-cook, a
waiting-maid, two footmen and a coachman composed the whole household:
two old mares and a sporting-dog were huddled in a corner of the
stable. These twelve living beings were lost to sight in a manor-house
where a hundred knights, their ladies, squires, and varlets, and King
Dagobert's chargers and pack might almost have gone unnoticed.
All through the year, not a visitor presented himself at the castle,
save a few gentlemen, the Marquis de Montlouet[156], the Comte de
Goyon-Beaufort[157], who begged a night's lodging on their way to plead
their suits before the Parliament. They used to arrive in winter, on
horseback, with pistols in their saddle-bows, hunting-knives at their
sides, and followed by a servant, also on horseback, with a livery
trunk behind him.
[Sidenote: Visitors to Combourg.]
My father, always very ceremonious, received them bareheaded on the
steps, in the midst of the wind and rain. Once inside the house, the
country gentlemen would talk of their Hanoverian campaigns, their
family affairs, their law-suits. At night they were conducted to the
North Tower, to Queen Christina's bed-chamber, a state-room containing
a bed seven feet by seven, hung with a double set of curtains in green
muslin and crimson silk, and held up by four gilt Cupids. The next
morning, when I came down to the great hall and looked out through
the windows upon the country covered with floods or hoar-frost, I saw
nothing except two or three travelers on the lonely embankment of the
pond: it was our guests riding away to Rennes.
These visitors did not know much about the things of life; nevertheless
our view was by their means extended a few miles beyond the horizon of
our woods. When they were gone, we were reduced on week-days to our
family circle, and on Sundays to the company of the village commoners
and the neighboring gentry.
On Sundays, in fine weather, my mother, Lucile, and I went to the
parish church across the Little Mall and along a country road; when it
rained, we went by the abominable Combourg High Street. We were not
carried, like the Abbé de Marolles[158], in a light chariot drawn by
four white horses, captured from the Turks in Hungary. My father went
but once a year to the parish church to perform his Easter duties; the
rest of the year he heard Mass in the castle chapel. Seated in the
pew of the lord of the manor, we received the incense and the prayers
in front of the black marble sepulchre of Renée de Rohan: a symbol of
mortal honors; a few grains of incense before a tomb!
Our Sunday diversions vanished with the day; they did not even recur
regularly. During the bad weather, entire months would pass and not a
single human being knock at the gate of our fortress. The sadness was
great that hung over the moors of Combourg, but greater still at the
castle: as one made his way beneath its vaultings, he experienced the
same feeling as on entering the Carthusian Monastery at Grenoble[159].
When I visited the latter in 1805, I crossed a wilderness which
increased in desolation as I went; I thought it would end at the
monastery, but I was shown, within the very convent walls, the gardens
of the Carthusian Friars even more neglected than the woods. And
at length, in the centre of the monument, I found, shrouded in the
folds of all this solitude, the former graveyard of the community, a
sanctuary from which eternal silence, the genius of the place, spread
its dominion over the mountains and forests around.
[Sidenote: Life at Combourg Castle.]
The gloomy stillness of Combourg Castle was increased by my father's
taciturn and unsocial humour. Instead of drawing his family and his
retainers closer to him, he had dispersed them to all the winds of
the building. His bedroom was in the small east tower, his study in
the small west tower. The furniture of this study consisted of three
chairs in black leather and a table covered with parchments and
title-deeds. A genealogical tree of the Chateaubriand family adorned
the chimney-mantel, and in the embrasure of a window hung arms of
all sorts, from a pistol to a blunderbuss. My mother's room extended
over the great hall, between the two small towers; it had a parqueted
flooring and was adorned with faceted Venetian mirrors. My sister
occupied a closet leading out of my mother's room. The waiting-maid
slept far away, on the ground floor between the two great towers.
Myself, I was nestled in a sort of isolated cell at the top of the
turret containing the staircase which led from the inner yard to the
different parts of the castle. At the foot of this staircase, my
father's valet and the other man-servant lay in a vaulted basement, and
the cook kept garrison in the great west tower.
My father rose at four o'clock in the morning, winter and summer alike:
he went to the inner yard to call and wake his valet at the entrance
to the turret staircase. A cup of coffee was brought to him at five;
he then worked in his study till midday. My mother and sister each
breakfasted in her own chamber at eight o'clock. I had no fixed time
for rising or breakfasting; I was supposed to study till noon: the
greater part of the time I did nothing.
At half-past eleven, the bell rang for dinner, which was served at
twelve. The great hall did duty as both dining-room and drawing-room:
we dined and supped at one end, on the east side; when the meal was
over, we went and sat at the other end, the west side, before a huge
chimney. The hall was wainscoted, painted whity-grey, and adorned with
old portraits ranging from the reign of François I. to that of Louis
XIV. Among these portraits one recognized those of Condé and Turenne: a
picture representing Achilles slaying Hector beneath the walls of Troy
hung over the chimney-piece.
After dinner we remained together until two o'clock. Then, if it was
summer, my father went fishing, visited his kitchen-gardens, walked
within the limits of the home park; in the autumn and winter he went
shooting. My mother withdrew to the chapel, where she spent some hours
in prayer. This chapel was a gloomy oratory, adorned with fine pictures
by the greatest masters, such as one would scarcely expect to find in a
feudal castle in the heart of Brittany. I still have in my possession
a Holy Family by Albani, painted on copper, which was taken from this
chapel: it is all that remains to me of Combourg. When my father had
left the house and my mother gone to her prayers, Lucile withdrew to
her room and I either returned to my cell or went out to roam about the
country.
At eight o'clock the bell rang for supper. After supper, in fine
weather, we sat out on the steps. My father, armed with his gun, shot
at the brown owls which issued from the battlements at nightfall. My
mother, Lucile and I watched the sky, the woods, the dying rays of the
sun, the rising stars. At ten o'clock we went in and retired to bed.
The autumn and winter evenings were different. Supper over, the four of
us would leave the table and gather round the chimney. My mother flung
herself, with a sigh, upon an old couch covered in imitation Siam; a
stand was put before her with a candle. I sat down with Lucile by the
fire; the servants cleared the table and withdrew. My father then began
a tramp which lasted till he went to bed. He was dressed in a white
ratteen gown, or rather a kind of cloak, which I have seen no one wear
except him. His half-bald head was covered with a big white cap that
stood straight up on end. When he walked away to a distance from the
fire-place, the huge hall was so badly lighted by its solitary candle
that he was no longer visible; we could only hear him still walking
in the darkness: then he would slowly return towards the light and
gradually emerge from the dusk, like a ghost, with his white gown, his
white cap, his long pale face. Lucile and I exchanged a few words in
a low voice when he was at the other end of the hall; we hushed when
he drew nearer to us. He asked, as he passed, "What were you talking
about?" Terror-stricken, we made no reply; he continued his walk. For
the rest of the evening, the ear heard nothing save the measured sound
of his steps, my mother's sighs, and the murmuring of the wind[160].
The hour of ten struck on the castle clock: my father stopped; the
same spring which had raised the hammer of the clock seemed to have
arrested his steps. He drew out his watch, wound it, took a great
silver candle-stick holding a tall candle, went for a moment to the
small west tower, then returned, candle in hand, and went towards
his bedroom, which formed part of the small east tower. Lucile and I
placed ourselves on his way; we kissed him and wished him good-night.
He turned his dry, hollow cheek to us without replying, continued
his road, and withdrew inside the tower, the doors of which we heard
closing behind him.
The spell was broken: my mother, my sister and myself, who had been
changed into statues by my father's presence, recovered the functions
of life. The first effect of our disenchantment took the form of an
overflow of words: silence was made to pay us dear for having so
long oppressed us. When this torrent of words had sped, I called the
waiting-woman and escorted my mother and sister to their rooms. Before
I went, they made me look under the beds, up the chimneys, behind the
doors, and inspect the surrounding stairs, passages and corridors. All
the traditions of the castle concerning robbers and ghosts returned
to their memory. The servants were persuaded that a certain Comte
de Combourg, with a wooden leg, who had been dead three centuries,
appeared at certain intervals, and that he had been seen in the great
staircase of the turret; sometimes also his wooden leg walked alone,
accompanied by a black cat.
These stories took up the whole of the time occupied by my mother and
sister in preparing for the night: they got into bed dying of fright; I
climbed to the top of my turret; the cook returned to the main tower,
and the men went down to their basement.
[Sidenote: My lonely nights.]
The window of my donjon opened upon the inner courtyard; by day I had a
view of the battlements of the curtain opposite, where hart's-tongues
grew and a wild plum-tree. Some martins, which in summer buried
themselves, screeching, in the holes in the walls, were my sole
companions. At night I could see only a small strip of sky and a few
stars. When the moon shone and sank in the east, I knew it by the beams
which struck my bed across the lozenged window-panes. Owls, flitting
from one tower to the other, passed and passed again between the moon
and me, outlining the mobile shadow of their wings upon my curtains.
Banished to the loneliest part, at the opening of the galleries, I
lost not a murmur of the darkness. Sometimes the wind seemed to trip
with light steps; sometimes it uttered wailings; suddenly my door was
violently shaken, groans issued from the basement, and then these
sounds would die away, only to commence anew. At four o'clock in the
morning, the voice of the master of the castle, calling the footman at
the entrance to the venerable vaults, made itself heard like the voice
of the last phantom of the night. This voice supplied for me the place
of the sweet harmony with the sound of which Montaigne's father was
wont to awaken his son[161].
The Comte de Chateaubriand's stubbornness in making a child sleep alone
at the top of a tower might have had its inconvenience, but it turned
out to my advantage. This violent manner of treatment left me with
the courage of a man, without taking from me that vivid imagination
of which it is nowadays the tendency to deprive the young. Instead of
seeking to persuade me that ghosts did not exist, they obliged me to
set them at defiance. When my father asked me, with an ironical smile,
"Is monsieur le chevalier afraid?" he could have made me sleep with
a corpse. When my excellent mother said, "My child, nothing happens
without God's leave; you have nothing to fear from evil spirits so
long as you remain a good Christian," I was more reassured than by
all the arguments of philosophy. So complete was my success, that the
night winds, in my uninhabited tower, served but as playthings for my
fancies and wings for my dreams. My imagination, thus kindled, spread
over every object, found nowhere sufficient nourishment, and could have
devoured heaven and earth. It is this moral condition which it is now
my task to describe. Immersed once more in the days of my youth, I will
try to grasp myself in the past, to depict myself such as I was, such
as perhaps I regret that I no longer am, despite the torments which I
then endured.
*
Scarcely had I returned from Brest to Combourg when a revolution took
place in my existence; the child vanished and there appeared the man,
with his joys which pass and his troubles which remain. At first all
became passion with me, pending the arrival of the passions themselves.
When, after a silent dinner, at which I had dared neither to eat nor
speak, I succeeded in escaping, my delight was incredible. I could not
descend the steps then and there: I should have flung myself headlong.
I was obliged to sit upon one of the steps to allow my excitement to
subside; but so soon as I had reached the Cour Verte and the woods, I
began to run, to leap, to bound, to skip, to rejoice until I fell down
exhausted, panting, drunk with frolic and liberty.
My father took me with him shooting. I was seized with the taste for
sport, and carried it to excess; I still see the field where I killed
my first hare. Often, in autumn, I have stood for four or five hours
to my waist in water, waiting at the edge of a pond for wild-duck; to
this very day I lose my composure when I see a dog point. Nevertheless,
my first ardor for sport was built upon a basis of independence; to
leap ditches, to tramp over fields, marshes, moors, to find myself
with a gun in an unfrequented spot, alone and powerful, all this was
my natural manner of being. When out shooting, I would go so far that
I had not the strength to walk back, and the keepers were obliged to
carry me on twisted branches.
However, the pleasures of the chase no longer satisfied me; I was
fretted with a longing for happiness which I could neither control nor
understand; my mind and my heart ended by forming as it were two empty
temples, without altars or sacrifices; it was not yet known which god
would be worshipped there. I grew up by the side of my sister Lucile:
our friendship was all our life.
*
Lucile was tall and endowed with remarkable, but serious, beauty. Her
pale features were shaded with long black tresses; she often fixed her
eyes on heaven or cast looks around her full of sadness or fire. Her
gait, her voice, her smile, her expression showed something pensive and
suffering.
[Sidenote: Lucile.]
Lucile and I were mutually useless. When we spoke of the world, it was
of that which we carried within ourselves, a world very unlike the true
world. She saw in me her protector, I in her my friend. She was seized
with gloomy fits of thought which I had difficulty in dispelling: at
the age of seventeen she bewailed the loss of her youth; she wished to
bury herself in a convent. Everything to her was a care, a sorrow, a
hurt: an expression she sought for, an illusion she entertained would
torment her for months on end. I have often seen her, with one arm
thrown over her head, dream without life or movement; the life that was
in her ebbed to her heart, and ceased to show itself without; her very
bosom no longer heaved. Her attitude, her melancholy, her beauty gave
her the air of a funeral Genius. I then endeavored to console her, and
the next moment was myself plunged in inexplicable despair.
Lucile liked to read some pious book, in the evening, alone: her
favourite oratory was the junction of two country-roads, marked by a
stone cross and a poplar-tree, whose long stylus rose into the sky like
a pencil. My mother, devout and quite charmed, said that her daughter
reminded her of a Christian of the primitive Church, praying at the
stations called _Lauræ._
My sister's concentration of mind gave birth to extraordinary
intellectual effects: in her sleep, she dreamt prophetic dreams;
waking, she seemed to read the future. A clock ticked upon a landing of
the staircase in the main tower, and struck the hours amid the silence.
Lucile, when unable to sleep, would go to sit upon a stair opposite
the clock and watch its face by the light of her lamp placed upon the
ground. When the two hands met at midnight and in their formidable
conjunction engendered the hour of disorder and crime, Lucile heard
sounds which revealed distant deaths to her. She was in Paris a few
days before the 10th of August, staying with my other sisters near the
Carmelite Convent, and casting her eyes upon a mirror, she gave a cry,
and said, "I have just seen Death come in." On the moors of Scotland,
Lucile would have been one of the celestial women of Walter Scott,
gifted with second sight; on the moors of Brittany, she was no more
than a lonely creature favoured with beauty, genius and misfortune.
*
The life which my sister and I led at Combourg heightened the
exaltation natural to our age and character. Our chief pastime was
to walk side by side in the Great Mall, in spring on a carpet of
primroses, in autumn on a bed of dead leaves, in winter on a sheet
of snow edged by the footprints of birds, squirrels, and weazels.
We were young as the primroses, sad as the dead leaves, pure as the
newly-fallen snow: our recreations were in harmony with ourselves.
It was during one of these walks that Lucile, hearing me speak
rapturously of solitude, said, "You ought to write all that down."
These words revealed the muse to me; a divine inspiration passed over
me. I began to lisp verses, as though it were my natural language; day
and night I sang my pleasures, in other words my valleys and my woods;
I wrote a multitude of little idylls or pictures of nature[162]. I
wrote in verse long before writing in prose: M. de Fontanes used to
maintain that I had received both instruments.
Did this talent which friendship foresaw for me ever really come to me?
How many things have I awaited in vain! In the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus,
a slave is placed as sentry on the roof of the palace of Argos; his
eyes seek to discern the concerted signal for the return of the ships;
he sings to while away his vigils, but the hours speed by and the stars
set, and the torch does not shine forth. When, after many years, its
tardy light appears upon the billows, the slave is bent beneath the
weight of time; there is naught left for him but to reap misfortunes,
and the chorus says to him that "an old man is a shadow that wanders by
day."
Οναρ ἡμερόϕαντον ἀλαίνει
Under the first spell of my inspiration, I engaged Lucile to do as I
did. We spent days in mutual consultation, in communicating to each
other what we had done and what we proposed to do. We undertook works
in common; guided by our instincts, we translated the finest and
saddest passages in Job and Lucretius upon life: the _Tædet animam
meam vitæ meæ_[163], the _Homo natus de muliere_[164], the _Tum porro
puer, ut sævis projectus ab undis navita_[165], and so forth.
Lucile's thoughts were sheer feeling; they issued with difficulty from
her soul; but when she succeeded in expressing them, there was nothing
higher. She has left some thirty pages in manuscript; it is impossible
to read them without profound emotion. The elegance, the suavity,
the dreaminess, the passionate tenderness of these pages present a
combination of the Greek and German genius[166].
*
[Sidenote: Lucile's manuscript.]
My brother sometimes vouchsafed to spend a few moments with the
hermits of Combourg. He was in the habit of bringing with him a young
counsellor of the Parliament of Brittany, M. de Malfilatre[167],
cousin to the unfortunate poet of the same name[168]. I believe that,
unknown to herself, Lucile felt a secret passion for this friend of
my brother's, and that this stifled passion lay at the root of my
sister's melancholy. She possessed, moreover, Rousseau's folly without
his pride: she thought that everybody was in a conspiracy against her.
She came to Paris in 1789, accompanied by her sister Julie, whose loss
she deplored with an affection tinged with the sublime. All who knew
her admired her, from M. de Malesherbes to Chamfort[169]. Thrown into
the revolutionary crypts at Rennes[170], she was on the point of being
imprisoned at Combourg Castle, which had been turned into a gaol during
the Terror. After her release from prison, she married M. de Caud[171],
who left her a widow within a year. I met the friend of my childhood
on my return from my emigration: I will tell how she disappeared, when
it pleased God to afflict me.
*
I have returned from Montboissier, and these are the last lines that I
shall trace in my hermitage; I have to leave it, filled with the tall
striplings which already hide and crown their father in their close
ranks. I shall not see again the magnolia which promised its blossom
to the tomb of my fair Floridan, the Jerusalem pine-tree and the cedar
of Lebanon consecrated to the memory of Jerome, the laurel of Granada,
the Greek plane-tree, the Armorican oak, at whose feet I drew Blanca,
sang Cymodocée, invented Velléda. These trees were born and grew with
my dreams, of which they were the hamadryads. They are about to pass
under another's sway: will their new master love them as I have loved
them? He will allow them to wither, he will cut them down perhaps: I am
doomed to keep nothing upon this earth. While bidding farewell to the
woods of Aulnay I shall recall the farewell which long ago I bade to
the woods of Combourg: my days are all farewells.
*
The taste for poetry with which Lucile had inspired me was as fuel
added to the flames. My sensations gathered new strength; vain thoughts
of fame passed through my mind; for a moment I believed in my "talent,"
but soon recovered a proper mistrust of my own powers, and began to
entertain doubts of that talent, as I have always done. I looked upon
my work as a temptation of the Evil One; I was angry with Lucile for
arousing an unfortunate propensity within me: I ceased writing and
began to mourn my future glory as one might mourn his glory that is
past.
Returning to my former state of idleness, I felt more strongly what was
lacking to my youth: I was a mystery to myself. I could not see a woman
without feeling confused; I blushed if she spoke to me. My shyness,
already excessive with people in general, became so great in the
presence of a woman that I would have preferred any torture to that of
being left alone with her: no sooner was she gone than I recalled her
with all my wishes. The descriptions of Virgil, Tibullus and Massillon,
it is true, presented themselves to my memory; but the image of my
mother and sister covered all with its purity and made thicker the
veils which nature sought to raise: my filial and brotherly affection
deceived me with respect to an affection less disinterested. Had the
loveliest slaves of the seraglio been handed over to me, I should not
have known what to ask of them. Chance enlightened me.
A neighbor of the Combourg domain came to spend a few days at the
castle with his wife, a very pretty woman. Something, I know not what,
happened in the village; we ran to one of the windows of the hall to
look. I reached the window first, the fair visitor followed close upon
my heels, I turned to give her my place. Involuntarily she obstructed
my way, and I felt myself pressed between her and the window. I was no
longer conscious of what was happening around me.
[Sidenote: Vague longings.]
From that moment I was aware that to love and be loved in a manner
unknown to me must be the supreme happiness. Had I done what other men
do, I should soon have become acquainted with the pains and pleasures
of the passion whose germs I bore within me; but everything in me
assumed an extraordinary character. The ardor of my imagination, my
shyness, the solitude in which I lived caused me, rather than rush
out of doors, to fall back upon myself; for want of a real object, I
evoked, by the strength of my vague longings, a phantom which never
left my side. I do not know whether the history of the human heart
offers another instance of this nature.
*
And so I built up a woman out of all the women whom I had seen: she
had the figure, the hair, the smile of the stranger who had pressed
me to her bosom; I gave her the eyes of one of the young girls of the
Village, the complexion of another. The portraits of the fine ladies
of the time of François I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. which adorned
the drawing-room supplied me with other features, and I even borrowed
graces from the pictures of the Virgins that hung upon the church walls.
This invisible charmer accompanied me wherever I went; I communed
with her as with a real being; she varied in the measure of my folly:
Aphrodite unveiled; Diana clad in the dew and the blue of heaven;
Thalia with her laughing mask; Hebe bearing the cup of youth; sometimes
she became a fairy who laid nature at my feet. I touched and retouched
my canvas; I took one attraction from my beauty to replace it with
another. I also changed her finery; I borrowed it from every country,
every century, every art, every religion. Then, when I had completed
a masterpiece, I dispersed my drawings and paints again; my one woman
turned into a crowd of women in whom I idolized separately the charms
I had adored when united.
Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue: my difficulty was how to
please mine. Recognizing in myself none of the qualities calculated
to awaken love, I lavished upon myself all that I lacked. I rode
like Castor and Pollux; I played the lyre like Apollo; Mars wielded
his arms with less power and skill: a hero of romance or history, I
heaped fictitious adventures on fiction itself! The shades of Morven's
daughters, the sultanas of Bagdad and Granada, the ladies of the
castles of olden time; baths, perfumes, dances, Asiatic delights were
all borne to me by a magic wand.
See this young queen coming, decked in diamonds and flowers (it
was still my sylph): she fetches me at midnight, across gardens of
orange-trees, in the galleries of a palace bathed by the waves of the
sea, on the balmy shore of Naples or Messina, beneath a sky of love
pierced by the light of Endymion's star; she advances, an animated
statue by Praxiteles, amidst motionless statues, pale pictures and
frescoes white and silent in the moonlight: the soft sound of her
progress over the marble mosaic mingles with the imperceptible murmurs
of the deep. The royal jealousy encompasses us. I fall at the knees of
the sovereign of Enna's plains; the silk waves from her loosened diadem
fall caressingly upon my brow as she bends her girlish head over my
face, and her hands rest upon my breast, throbbing with respect and
with desire.
On emerging from these dreams, when I found myself once more a poor
little obscure Breton lad, without fame, beauty, or talents, who would
attract the looks of none, who would pass unknown, whom no woman would
ever love, I was seized with despair: I no longer dared lift my eyes to
the dazzling image I had attached to my steps.
This delirium lasted two whole years, during which the faculties of my
soul attained the loftiest pitch of exaltation. I used to speak little,
I now spoke not at all; I used still to study, I flung my books aside;
my taste for solitude redoubled. I had all the symptoms of a violent
passion: my eyes grew hollow; I fell away; I could not sleep; I was
absent, melancholy, ardent, fierce. My days slipped by in a manner that
was wild, odd, insensate, and yet full of delights.
To the north of the castle stretched a waste land strewn with druidical
stones; I would go and sit upon one of these stones at sunset. The
gilded summit of the woods, the splendor of the earth, the evening
star twinkling through the rosy clouds brought me back to my dreams:
I longed to enjoy this sight with the ideal object of my desires. I
followed in thought the luminary of the day; I gave him my beauty to
escort, so that he might present her all radiant with himself to the
homage of the universe. The evening breeze shattering the web woven by
insects upon the tips of the blades of grass, the field-lark alighting
upon a pebble recalled me to reality: I turned my steps back to the
castle, with heart oppressed and downcast face.
[Sidenote: The Sylph of my dreams.]
On stormy days in summer, I climbed to the top of the great west
tower. The thunder roaring beneath the castle lofts, the torrents of
rain which fell dashing upon the cone-shaped roof of the towers, the
lightning which furrowed the clouds and marked the brass weathercocks
with its electric flame aroused my enthusiasm: like Ismen on the
ramparts of Jerusalem, I invoked the thunder, I hoped that it would
bring Armida to me.
If the sky was clear, I crossed the Great Mall, around which lay
meadows divided by hedges of willow-trees. In one of these willows, I
had contrived a seat, like a nest: here, isolated between heaven and
earth, I spent hours with the singing birds; my nymph was by my side. I
also associated her image with the beauty of those spring nights filled
with the freshness of the dew, the sighs of the nightingale and the
murmuring of the breeze.
At other times I followed a deserted path, a stream adorned with
its river-side plants; I listened to the sounds that issued from
unfrequented parts; I lent an ear to every tree; I thought I heard
the moonlight singing in the woods: I tried to tell these pleasures,
and the words died upon my lips. I know not how I found my goddess
again in the accents of a voice, the vibration of a harp, the velvety
or liquid sounds of a horn or an harmonica. It would take too long to
describe the fine journeys I took with my flower of love; how, hand
in hand, we visited famous ruins, Venice, Rome, Athens, Jerusalem,
Memphis, Carthage; how we crossed the seas; how we asked happiness of
the palm-trees of Otaheite, of the scented groves of Timor and Amboyna;
how, on the summit of the Himalayas, we went to wake the dawn; how we
descended the sacred rivers whose spreading waves encircle gilt-domed
pagodas; how we slept on the banks of the Ganges, while the Bengali,
perched on the mast of a bamboo wherry, sang his Hindoo boat-song.
Earth and Heaven no longer existed for me; above all, I forgot the
latter; but though it no longer received my prayers, it heard the
voice of my secret misery: for I suffered, and sufferings pray.
*
The sadder the season, the greater its harmony with myself; the time of
hoar-frost makes communication less easy and isolates those who dwell
in country-places: one feels more beyond the reach of men.
A moral character clings to autumn scenery: those leaves which fall
like our years, those flowers which fade like our days, those clouds
which fleet like our illusions, that light which fails like our
intelligence, that sun which cools like our love, those streams which
freeze like our life bear a secret relation to our destinies.
I beheld with ineffable pleasure the return of the season of storms,
the passing of the swans and the ring-doves, the muster of the crows
on the pond field, and their perching at nightfall on the tallest
oaks in the Great Mall. When the evening raised a bluish vapor in the
cross-roads of the forest, and the plaintive lays of the wind moaned
in the withered moss, I entered into full possession of the sympathies
of my nature. If I met some ploughman at the end of a field, I stopped
to look at that man who had shot up in the shadow of the wheat with
which he was to be reaped, and who, turning over the earth of his tomb
with the plough-share, mingled his burning sweat with the icy rains of
autumn: the furrow which he dug was the monument intended to outlive
him. What did my elegant dæmon then do? By means of her magic, she
wafted me to the banks of the Nile, and showed me the Egyptian pyramid
sunk beneath the dust, as one day the Armorican furrow would lie hidden
beneath the heather: I congratulated myself on having placed the fables
of my felicity beyond the circle of human realities.
In the evening I embarked upon the pond, and, alone in my boat, rowed
amidst the rushes and the broad floating leaves of the water-lilies.
Overhead was the meeting-place of the swallows preparing to quit
our climes. Not one of their twitterings did I lose; the child
Tavernier[172] followed less closely the traveller's tale. They played
on the water at sundown, chased the flies, darted together into the
air, as though to test their wings, dropped down upon the surface of
the lake, and then perched upon the reeds, which scarcely bent beneath
their weight, and which were filled with their warbling turmoil.
Night fell; the reeds shook their fields of swords and distaves, among
which the feathered caravan of moor-fowl, teal, kingfishers, snipe
lay silent; the lake washed against its shores; the loud voices of
autumn issued from the woods and marshes; I ran my boat aground and
returned to the castle. Ten o'clock struck. I went to my room, and at
once opened the windows, fixed my eyes upon the sky, and commenced an
incantation. In company with my witch I mounted the clouds: enveloped
in her tresses and her veil, I was swept along by the tempest, shaking
the forest-tops, hustling the mountain-summits, whirling upon the seas.
I plunged into space, I dropped from the Throne of God to the gates of
the abyss, and the worlds were surrendered to the power of my love.
Amid the disorder of the elements, I frenzically wedded the idea of
danger to that of pleasure. The breath of the north wind brought to me
but the sighs of voluptuousness; the murmur of the rain summoned me
to sleep upon a woman's breast. The words which I addressed to that
woman would have revived the senses of old age and warmed the marble
of the tombs. Nothing-knowing and all-knowing, at once maid and lover,
Eve before and after the fall, the enchantress from whom I derived my
madness was a commixture of mystery and passion: I placed her on an
altar and worshipped her. The pride of being loved by her yet further
increased my love. When she walked, I prostrated myself to be trod
beneath her feet or kiss their traces. I grew confused at her smile; I
trembled at the sound of her voice; I thrilled with desire if I touched
what she had touched. The air exhaled from her moist mouth penetrated
into the marrow of my bones, coursed through my veins instead of blood.
At a look from her I would have flown to the ends of the earth: a
desert would have sufficed me with her! With her at my side, the lions'
den would have changed into a palace, and millions of centuries would
have been too short to exhaust the fires with which I felt myself
consumed.
[Sidenote: Nocturnal incantations.]
To this madness was added a moral idolatry: by a further play of my
imagination, the Phryne that clasped me in her arms also represented
glory to me and, above all, honour; virtue performing its noblest
sacrifices, genius conceiving the rarest thoughts would scarcely give
an idea of this other kind of happiness. I found at one and the same
time in my marvelous creation all the blandishments of the senses and
all the joys of the soul. Overwhelmed and as it were submerged beneath
these dual delights, I no longer knew which was my true existence: I
was a man and was not a man; I became cloud, wind, sound; I was a
pure spirit, a creature of the air, singing the sovereign felicity.
I divested myself of my nature to become one with the maiden of my
desires, to be transmuted into her, to touch beauty more closely, to
be at once passion given and received, love and the object of love.
Suddenly, struck with my madness, I flung myself upon my couch; I
rolled myself in my grief; I watered my pillow with scalding tears
which none saw, piteous tears which flowed for a nonexistent thing.
*
Soon, no longer able to remain in my tower, I climbed down through
the darkness, furtively opened the door leading to the steps, like
a murderer, and went to wander in the great wood. After walking at
random, waving my hands, embracing the winds which escaped me like
the shadow, the object of my pursuit, I leant against the trunk of
a beech-tree; I watched the crows which I made fly from one tree to
settle on another, or the moon lingering over the unclothed summits
of the forest: I would have liked to inhabit this dead world, which
reflected the pallor of the tomb. I felt neither the cold nor the
dampness of the night; not even the icy breath of dawn would have drawn
me from the depth of my thoughts, if at that hour the village bell had
not made itself heard.
In most of the villages of Brittany, it is the custom at daybreak to
toll the bell for the dead. The peal consists of three repeated notes,
which give a monotonous, melancholy, rustic little tune. Nothing suited
my sick and wounded soul better than to be recalled to the tribulations
of existence by the bell which announced its end. I pictured to myself
the herdsman expiring in his unknown hut, and laid in a graveyard no
less unknown. What had he come to do in the world? And I, what was I
doing in this world? Since I should have to go at last, was it not
better to depart in the cool of morning, to arrive early, than to
complete the journey beneath the weight and in the heat of day? The
blush of longing mantled on my face; the idea of ceasing to exist took
possession of my heart in the manner of a sudden joy. At the period of
the errors of my youth, I often hoped not to outlive happiness: there
lay in the first success a measure of felicity that led me to aspire to
destruction.
Bound ever more closely to my phantom, unable to enjoy what did not
exist, I was like those mutilated men who contemplate a state of bliss
to them unattainable and conjure up dreams whose pleasures rival the
tortures of hell. I had, moreover, a presentiment of the misery of my
future lot; ingenious in the fabrication of sufferings, I had placed
myself between two forms of despair: sometimes I thought myself a mere
nullity, incapable of rising above the vulgar herd; sometimes I seemed
to feel within myself qualities which would never be appreciated. A
secret instinct warned me that, as I moved onward through the world, I
should find no part of that which I sought.
Everything furnished food for the bitterness of my disgust: Lucile
was unhappy; my mother did not console me; my father made me feel the
terrors of life. His moroseness increased with years; old age stiffened
his soul as it did his body; he constantly spied upon me to chide me.
When I returned from my wild rounds and saw him sitting on the steps,
one might have killed me rather than make me enter the castle. Yet this
but postponed my torture: obliged as I was to appear at supper, I sat
down sheepishly upon the edge of my chair, my cheeks wet with the rain,
my hair entangled. I sat motionless beneath my father's glances, and
the perspiration stood upon my brow: the last glimmer of reason escaped
me.
[Sidenote: I attempt my life.]
I now come to a moment when I shall need some strength to confess my
weakness. The man who attempts to take his own life displays less
the vigor of his soul than the exhaustion of his nature. I owned a
fowling-piece whose worn trigger often went off when uncocked. I loaded
this gun with three bullets, and went to a remote part of the Great
Mall. I cocked the gun, placed the muzzle of the barrel in my mouth,
and struck the butt-end against the ground; I several times repeated
the ordeal; the charge did not go off; the appearance of a keeper
stopped my resolve. Involuntary and unconscious fatalist that I was,
I presumed that my hour had not come, and I deferred the execution of
my project to another day. Had I killed myself, all that I have been
would have been buried with me; none would have known of the history
that led to my catastrophe; I should have swelled the crowd of nameless
unfortunates, I should not have let myself be followed by the traces of
my sorrows as a wounded man is followed by the traces of his blood.
Those who might be troubled by these descriptions and tempted to
imitate these follies, those who might attach themselves to my memory
through my illusions, must remember that they are listening only to a
dead man's voice. Reader, whom I shall never know, nothing remains:
nought is left of me save that I am in the hands of the living God who
has judged me.
An illness, the fruits of this unruly life, put an end to the torments
which brought me the first inspirations of the Muse and the first
attacks of the passions. These passions with which my soul was
overwrought, these yet vague passions resembled the storms at sea which
rush from every point of the horizon: inexperienced pilot that I was, I
knew not in which direction to spread my sail to the uncertain winds.
My chest swelled, a fever laid hold of me; they sent to Bazouges, a
small town some five or six leagues from Combourg, for an excellent
doctor called Cheftel, whose son[173] played a part in the affair
of the Marquis de La Rouërie. He examined me attentively, ordered
remedies, and declared that it was essential that I should be removed
from my present mode of life. I lay six weeks in danger. One morning my
mother came and sat on my bed, and said:
"It is time for you to take a decision; your brother is in a position
to obtain a benefice for you; but before going to the seminary, you
must take good counsel with yourself, for although I wish you to adopt
the ecclesiastical state, I would rather see you a man of the world
than a scandalous priest."
Those who have read the foregoing pages will be able to judge if the
proposal of my pious mother came at a good moment. I have always, in
the more important events of my life, at once known what to avoid:
I am prompted by a movement of honor. As a priest, I struck myself
as ridiculous. As a bishop, the majesty of the sacerdotal office
overawed me, and I respectfully recoiled before the altar. Should I,
as a bishop, make efforts to acquire virtues, or content myself with
hiding my vices? I felt myself too weak to take the first course,
too candid to adopt the second. They who treat me as a hypocrite and
an ambitious man know me but little; I shall never succeed in the
world, precisely because I lack one passion and one vice: ambition and
hypocrisy. The first of these would with me be at the most a form of
injured self-love; I might sometimes wish to be a minister or king in
order to laugh at my enemies; but in twenty-four hours I should throw
my portfolio or my crown out of window.
[Sidenote: My new career.]
I therefore told my mother that my religious vocation was not
sufficiently strong. For the second time I changed my plans: I had
refused to become a sailor, and now I was no longer willing to be a
priest. There remained the military career, which I loved: but how
to suffer the loss of my independence and the restraint of European
discipline? I took an absurd idea into my head: I declared that I would
go to Canada and clear forests, or to India and take service in the
armies of the princes of that country. By one of those contrasts which
we perceive in all men, my father, so reasonable in other respects, was
never greatly shocked by an adventurous project. He chided my mother
for my fickleness, but decided to ship me to India. I was dispatched to
Saint-Malo, where an expedition was being fitted out for Pondicherry.
*
Two months elapsed: I found myself back and alone in my maternal
island. Villeneuve had just died there. I went to weep for her beside
the poor, empty bed on which she had breathed her last, and saw the
little wicker go-cart in which I had learnt to stand upright upon this
world of sorrows. I pictured my old nurse lying on her pillow and
fixing her feeble gaze upon that basket on wheels: this first memorial
of my life opposite the last memorial of the life of my second mother,
the thought of the wishes for the happiness of her nursling which the
kind Villeneuve addressed to Heaven on leaving this world, this proof
of an attachment so constant, disinterested and pure broke my heart
with tenderness, gratitude and regret.
I found nothing else to remind me of my past at Saint-Malo: in the
harbor I sought in vain for the ships in whose rigging I had played;
they were gone or broken up; in the town, the house where I was born
had been turned into an inn. I was scarce out of my cradle, and already
a whole world had fallen into decay. I was a stranger in the parts of
my childhood; people who met me asked who I was, for the sole reason
that my head rose a few inches higher above the ground towards which
it will sink again in a few years. How rapidly and how often we change
our manner of existence and our illusions! Friends leave us, others
take their place; our ties alter: there is always a time at which we
possessed nothing of what we now possess, at which we have nothing of
what we once had. Man has not one self-same life: he has several on
end, and that is his calamity.
*
Henceforward friendless and alone, I explored the beach which had
borne my sand-castles: _campos ubi Troja fuit._ I walked on the shore
deserted by the sea. The strand abandoned by the rising tide offered me
the picture of those desolate places which our illusions leave around
us when they go. Abailard, my fellow-Breton[174], like myself watched
these rollers eight hundred years ago, thinking of his Héloïse; like
me, he saw some vessel speed (_ad horizontis undas_), and his ear,
like mine, was lulled with the monotone of the waves. I exposed myself
to the breakers while indulging in the baleful imaginings which I had
brought with me from the woods at Combourg. A head called Cap Lavarde
was the limit of my walks: seated at the extremity of this head, I
remembered with the bitterest reflections that these same rocks had
served to hide me as a child during the fairs; I had there gulped down
my tears, while my playmates elated themselves with joy. I felt neither
better loved nor happier than at that time. Soon I was to leave the
country of my birth to crumble away my days in various climes. These
reflections wounded me to death, and I was tempted to let myself fall
into the waves.
A letter called me back to Combourg: I arrived, I supped with my
family, monsieur my father did not speak a word, my mother sighed,
Lucile appeared dismayed. At ten o'clock we retired. I questioned my
sister; she knew nothing. At eight o'clock the next morning I was sent
for. I went downstairs: my father was waiting for me in his study.
"Monsieur le chevalier," he said, "you must renounce your follies. Your
brother has procured you a sub-lieutenant's commission in the Navarre
Regiment. You will go first to Rennes, and thence to Cambrai. Here are
a hundred louis: be sparing with them. I am old and ill; I have not
long to live. Conduct yourself as a good man and never disgrace your
name."
He kissed me. I felt that severe, wrinkled face press with emotion
against mine: it was the last paternal embrace I was to receive.
At that moment the Comte de Chateaubriand, a man so formidable in my
eyes, appeared to me only as a father most worthy of my affection. I
flung myself upon his emaciated hand and wept. He was threatened with
an approaching attack of paralysis, which brought him to the grave; his
left arm had a convulsive movement which he was obliged to check with
his right hand. He was thus holding his arm when, after giving me his
old sword, without leaving me time to recover myself, he led me to the
cabriolet which was waiting for me in the Cour Verte. He made me get in
before him. The post-boy drove off, while I with my eyes bade farewell
to my mother and sister, who dissolved into tears on the steps.
I drove along the road by the pond; I saw the reeds of my swallows, the
mill-stream and the meadow; I cast a look at the castle. Then, like
Adam after his sin, I proceeded towards unknown ground, and "the world
was all before me[175]."
*
[Sidenote: Last visits to Combourg.]
From that day I saw Combourg but three times: after my father's death
we met, in mourning, to share our inheritance and take leave of each
other. On another occasion I accompanied my mother to Combourg: she was
engaged in furnishing the castle, in expectation of the arrival of my
brother, who was to bring my sister-in-law to Brittany. My brother did
not come; he was soon, with his young wife, to receive at the hands of
the executioner a different pillow from that prepared by my mother's
hands. Lastly, I passed through Combourg a third time on my road to
Saint-Malo to embark for America. The castle was abandoned, I had to
put up at the steward's lodge. Wandering through the Great Mall, from
the bottom of a dark avenue I caught sight of the deserted steps, the
closed door and windows, and fainted away. I had difficulty in making
my way back to the village: I sent for my horses and left in the middle
of the night.
After an absence of fifteen years, and before again leaving France on
my visit to the Holy Land, I went to Fougères to embrace what remained
of my family. I had not the courage to undertake the pilgrimage to the
fields to which the most vivid portion of my existence was attached. It
is in the woods of Combourg that I became what I am, that I began to
feel the first attacks of the weariness which I have dragged with me
through life, of the sadness which has been my torment and my felicity.
There I sought for a heart that could beat in touch with mine; there I
saw my family united only to disperse. My father there dreamt of his
name restored, of the fortunes of his house revived: another illusion
which time and the revolutions have dispelled. Of six children that we
were, we remain but three: my brother, Julie and Lucile are no more, my
mother died of grief, my father's ashes were snatched from his grave.
If my works survive me, if I am to leave a name behind me, perhaps one
day, prompted by these Memoirs, some traveller will come to visit the
spots I have depicted. He will be able to recognize the castle; but
he will look in vain for the great wood: the cradle of my dreams has
vanished like those dreams. Left standing alone upon its rock, the
ancient keep mourns the oaks, the old friends that surrounded it and
protected it against the storm. Isolated also, I too have seen falling
around me the family which beautified my days and lent me its shelter:
fortunately my life is not built upon the earth so solidly as the
towers in which I spent my youth, nor does man offer to the tempests a
resistance so great as that of the monuments raised by his hands.
[147] This book was written at the Château de Montboissier (July-August
1817) and at the Vallée-aux-Loups (November 1817), and revised in
December 1846.--T.
[148] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. 5: _Of Diverting and
Diversions._--T.
[149] In the Orléannais.--T. The castle stands in the commune of
Montboissier, canton of Bonneval, Arrondissement of Châteaudun
(Eure-et-Loire).--B.
[150] The Comtesse de Colbert-Montboissier, grand-daughter of
Malesherbes, and daughter of the Marquis de Montboissier. In 1803 she
married Édouard Charles Victornien Comte de Colbert de Maulevrier,
who was descended from the Comte de Maulevrier, brother to the great
Colbert.--B.
[151] Gabrielle d'Estrées (_circa_ 1565-1599), mistress to Henry IV.,
who created her Duchesse de Beaufort--T.
[152] André de Chénier (1762-1794), son of the French Consul at
Constantinople, and elder brother of the better-known Marie Joseph
de Chénier. A poet of some merit, and a courageous antagonist of the
Revolution.--T. He was a secretary at the London Embassy when M. de La
Luzerne took it over in 1788.--B.
[153] The States of Brittany, which held their sittings at Rennes.--T.
[154] Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772), historiographer of France
(1745), member of the French Academy (1747), and perpetual secretary of
that body (1755).--T. Mayor of his native city from 1744 to 1750.--B.
[155] Broussais belonged to the school which carried the use of dieting
and leeches to excess.--T.
[156] François Jean Raphaël de Brunes, Comte (not Marquis) de Montlouet
(1728-1787), Commissary of the States of Brittany.--B.
[157] Luc Jean Comte de Gouyon-Beaufort (1725-1794), Knight of St
Louis. Guillotined 15 February 1794.--B.
[158] The Abbé Michel de Marolles (1600-1681), an indifferent but
indefatigable translator, and author of some historical works,
including the Memoirs from which this reference is taken.--T.
[159] The Grande-Chartreuse is the waste-land near Grenoble which gives
its name to the Carthusian Order.--T.
[160] "A solitary incident would vary these evenings, which might
figure in a romance of the eleventh century. Sometimes my father would
interrupt his walk and come and sit down by the hearth to tell us
the story of his youthful distress and the crosses of his life. He
described storms and dangers, a journey in Italy, a shipwreck on the
Spanish coast.
"He had seen Paris; he spoke of it as he might speak of a haunt of
abomination and of a foreign country. The Bretons looked upon China as
being in their neighbourhood, but Paris seemed to them the end of the
world. I eagerly listened to my father. When I heard this man who was
so hard to himself regret that he had not done enough for his family
and complain in short but bitter words of his fate, when I saw him
at the conclusion of his recital rise brusquely, wrap himself in his
cloak, and renew his tramp, first hastening his steps and then slowing
them to correspond with the movements of his heart, filial love would
fill my eyes with tears; I revolved my father's troubles in my mind,
and it seemed to me that the sufferings undergone by the author of my
days should have fallen upon me and me alone."--_Manuscript of_ 1826.
[161] _Cf_ Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I. chap. 25: _Of the Institution
and Education of Children._--T.
[162] See my Complete Works.-_Author's Note._
[163] JOB, X. I.--T.
[164] JOB, XIV. I.--T.
[165] LUCR., V. 223.--T.
[166] I omit three short prose poems by Lucile de Chateaubriand. The
curious will find them in a volume entitled, _Lucile de Chateaubriand,
ses contes, ses poèmes, ses lettres, précédés d'une Étude sur sa vie_,
edited by M. Anatole France (Paris: 1879).--T.
[167] Alexandre Henri de Malfilatre (1757-1803). He took orders during
the Emigration, and died at Somers Town, London.--B.
[168] Jacques Charles Louis de Clinchamp de Malfilatre (1733-1767), a
minor poet and translator, who died of hunger and the results of his
excesses at the early age of thirty-four.--T.
[169] Sebastien Roch Nicolas (1741-1794) adopted the name of Chamfort
on commencing his career as a poet and man of letters. He was private
secretary to the Prince de Condé, and later reader to the Princesse
Élisabeth. On the outbreak of the Revolution he joined Mirabeau's
party. In 1794 he was arrested and tried to commit suicide; he was
subsequently released, but died in a few weeks of his self-inflicted
wounds.--T.
[170] She was arrested in December 1793, imprisoned in the Convent of
the Good Shepherd, and released in November 1794.--B.
[171] Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Louis René Chevalier de Caud
(1727-1797), Knight of St. Louis. He was sixty-nine years of age when
he married Lucile, then thirty-one, in August 1796; and he died seven
months later, 16 March 1797--B.
[172] Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1686), a great traveller and
linguist, and author of a famous book of Voyages in Turkey, Persia, and
India.--T.
[173] As I advance in years, I continue to meet persons mentioned in
my Memoirs: the widow of Dr. Cheftel's son has just been admitted
to the Marie-Thérèse Infirmary; this is a further proof of my
veracity.--_Author's Note._ (Paris, 1834).
Doubtless from pity and from gratitude to the doctor who tended him,
Chateaubriand does not describe the part played by Cheftel the Younger.
He was not content with selling the Marquis de La Rouërie's secrets: he
betrayed the very corpse of him who had been his friend. His perfidious
operations led to the revolutionary tribunal those whose plans he had
pretended to serve; and he was the cause through which three heroic
women mounted the scaffold: Thérèse de Moëlien, Madame de La Motte de
la Guyomarais, and Madame de La Fonchais, sister to André Desilles.--B.
[174] Pierre Abailard, or Abélard (1079-1142), the hero of the Héloïse
idyll, was a native of Pallet, near Nantes, in Brittany.--T.
[175] _Cf._ MILTON, Paradise Lost, XII., 646-647:
"The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."--T.