BOOK V[218]

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.

All that has been read in the previous chapter was written in Berlin. I

have returned to Paris for the christening of the Duc de Bordeaux[219],

and have resigned my embassy through political fidelity to M. de

Villèle[220], who has left the Cabinet. Restored to leisure, let me

write. The more these Memoirs become filled with my years that have

passed, the more do they remind me of the lower bulb of an hour-glass

which marks what has fallen from my life: when all the sand shall have

passed through, I would not turn over my glass clock, if God gave me

power to do so.

*

The new solitude into which I entered in Brittany, after my

presentation, was no longer that of Combourg; it was not so entire,

nor so serious, nor, to tell the truth, so forced: I was free to

leave it; it lost its value. An old armorial lady of the castle,

an old escutcheoned baron, watching over their last son and their

last daughter in a feudal manor, presented what the English call

"characters:" there was nothing provincial, nothing narrow in that

life, because it was not the common life.

With my sisters, provincial life went on as usual amid the fields:

neighbours danced at each other's houses or acted plays, in which

I performed occasionally and very badly. In the winter one had, at

Fougères, to submit to the society of a small town, with its balls,

assemblies, and dinners, and I could not live forgotten, as in Paris.

On the other hand, I had not seen the army, the Court, without

undergoing a certain change in my ideas. In spite of my natural

inclinations, an indefinite something struggled within me against

obscurity, and besought me to emerge from the shadow. Julie detested

country life, and the instinct of genius and beauty impelled Lucile

towards a wider stage.

I thus felt a discomfort in my existence which warned me that that

existence was not my destiny.

[Sidenote: Garrison life at Dieppe.]

Nevertheless, I continued, to love the country, and round about Marigny

it was charming[221]. My regiment had moved its quarters: the first

battalion was garrisoned at the Havre, the second at Dieppe. I joined

the latter; my presentation at Court made a personage of me. I acquired

a taste for my profession; I worked hard at my training; I was placed

in charge of recruits, whom I drilled on the pebbly beach: the sea has

been the background of almost all the scenes of my life.

La Martinière did not concern himself at Dieppe with his homonym of

Lamartinière[222], nor with the Père Simon[223], who wrote against

Bossuet, Port-Royal, and the Benedictines, nor with Pecquet[224] the

anatomist, whom Madame de Sévigné[225] calls "little Pecquet;" but

La Martinière was in love at Dieppe as at Cambrai: he pined away at

the feet of a lusty woman of Caux[226], whose cap and head-dress were

half a fathom high. She was not young: by an odd chance, her name was

Cauchie, and she was apparently the grand-daughter of that other native

of Dieppe, Anne Cauchie, who, in 1645, was one hundred and fifty years

old.

In 1647, Anne of Austria, like myself watching the sea from the windows

of her chamber, amused herself by seeing the fire-ships bum for her

diversion. She allowed the nations which had been faithful to Henry IV.

to guard young Louis XIV., and gave endless benisons to those nations

"in spite of their villainous Norman speech."

At Dieppe there still prevailed some of the feudal fines which I had

seen paid at Combourg: there were due to the burgess Vauquelin three

pigs' heads, each with an orange between its teeth, and three marked

sous of the oldest known coinage.

I went to spend a week at Fougères. There reigned a noble spinster,

called Mademoiselle de La Belinaye[227], aunt to the Comtesse de

Tronjoli of whom I have spoken. An agreeable, but ugly, sister of an

officer in the Condé Regiment attracted my admiration: I was not bold

enough to raise my eyes to beauty; I dared to risk a respectful tribute

only by favour of a woman's imperfections.

Madame de Farcy, continuing in ill-health, at last resolved to leave

Brittany. She persuaded Lucile to accompany her; Lucile, in her

turn, overcame my repugnance: we set out for Paris; it was the sweet

partnership of the three youngest birds of the brood. My brother was

married; he lived with his father-in-law, the President de Rosanbo, in

the Rue de Bondy. We agreed to settle in his neighbourhood: through the

good offices of M. Delisle de Sales[228], who lived in the Pavilions

de Saint-Lazare, at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, we secured an

apartment in these same "pavilions[229]."

[Sidenote: Delisle de Sales.]

Madame de Farcy had become acquainted, I know not how, with Delisle de

Sales, who had formerly been sent to Vincennes for some philosophical

nonsense or other. At that time, one became a celebrity if he had

scribbled a few lines of prose or published a quatrain in the _Almanack

des Muses._ Delisle de Sales, a very worthy man, most decidedly under

the average, suffered from a serious relaxation of the intellect, and

allowed his years to slip from under him. The old man had got together

a handsome library consisting of his own works, which he dealt in

abroad, and which nobody read in Paris. Every year, in spring, he went

to Germany to renew his stock of ideas. He wore a greasy, unbuttoned

coat, and carried a roll of dirty paper which one saw protruding from

his pocket: on this he would jot down his thoughts of the moment at

the street-corners. On the pedestal of his own bust in marble he had

himself placed the following inscription, borrowed from the bust of

Buffon: "God, man and nature: he explained them all." Delisle de

Sales explaining everything! These boasts are very pleasant, but very

discouraging. Who is in a position to flatter himself that he possesses

real talent? May we not all, such as we are, be under the sway of an

illusion similar to that of Delisle de Sales? I would wager that some

author will read this phrase who believes himself a genius and is none

the less a blockhead.

If I have expatiated at too great length on the subject of the worthy

man of the Pavilions de Saint-Lazare, the reason is that he was the

first man of letters I met. He introduced me to the company of others.

The presence of my two sisters made life in Paris less unbearable

to me; my love of study still further overcame my distaste. Delisle

de Sales I considered an eagle. I met at his rooms Carbon Flins des

Oliviers[230], who fell in love with Madame de Farcy. She laughed at

him; he put a good face upon it, for he prided himself upon being a man

of breeding. Flins introduced me to his friend Fontanes, who became

mine.

Flins was the son of an administrator of woods and forests at Rheims,

and had received a neglected education; he was for all that a man of

sense, and sometimes of talent. It was impossible to imagine anything

uglier than he: short and bloated, with large, prominent eyes,

bristling hair, dirty teeth, and yet a not over-vulgar air. His manner

of life, which was that of nearly all the men of letters in Paris at

that time, deserves to be told. Flins occupied a lodging in the Rue

Mazarine, pretty near La Harpe, who lived in the Rue Guénégaud. He

was waited upon by two Savoyards, disguised as flunkeys by means of

livery cloaks; they followed him at night, and opened the door to

his visitors in the day-time. Flins went regularly to the Théâtre

Français, which at that time was situate in the Odéon and excelled

particularly in comedy. Brizard[231] had only just retired; Talma[232]

was commencing; Larive[233], Saint-Phal, Fleury[234], Molé[235],

Dazincourt, Dugazon[236], Grandmesnil[237], Mesdames Contat[238],

Saint-Val[239], Desgarcins, Olivier[240] were in the full vigor of

their talent, pending the arrival of Mademoiselle Mars[241], daughter

of Monvel[242], who was preparing to make her first appearance at

the Théâtre Montansier[243]. The actresses protected the authors, and

sometimes became the occasion of their fortune.

Flins, who had only a small allowance from his family, lived on credit.

When Parliament was not sitting, he pawned his Savoyards' liveries,

his two watches, his rings and underclothing, paid his debts with the

amount thus raised, went to Rheims, spent three months there, returned

to Paris, redeemed, with the money his father had given him, the

articles which he had pledged at the pawnshops, and resumed his round

of life, ever gay and popular.

*

[Sidenote: The Chevalier de Parny.]

In the course of the two years that elapsed between my settling in

Paris and the opening of the States-General, the circle in which I

moved increased. I knew the elegies of the Chevalier de Parny by heart,

as I know them still I wrote to him to ask leave to set eyes upon a

poet whose works delighted me; I received a civil reply, and called

upon him in the Rue de Cléry. I found a man still fairly young in

years, of very pleasant manners, tall, spare, with a face pitted with

the small-pox. He returned my visit; I introduced him to my sisters. He

cared little for society, and was soon driven from it on account of his

politics: at that time he belonged to the old party. I have never known

a writer who more closely resembled his works: poet and Creole[244] as

he was, all he needed was the Indian sky, a fountain, a palm-tree, and

a woman by his side. He dreaded noise, tried to glide unnoticed through

life, sacrificed everything to his idleness, and, amid the obscurity in

which he dwelt, was betrayed only by his pleasures, which played upon

his lyre as they passed[245].

It was this inability to escape from his indolence which turned the

Chevalier de Parny from the furious aristocrat that he was into a

wretched revolutionary, insulting persecuted religion and priests on

the scaffold, purchasing repose at all costs, and foisting upon the

muse that had sung Éléonore the language of the houses where Camille

Desmoulins went to haggle for the pleasures of love.

The author of the _Histoire de la literature italienne_, who crept into

the Revolution in Chamfort's wake, came to visit us, thanks to the

cousinship that exists among all Bretons. Ginguené lived in society

upon a reputation acquired through a rather graceful set of verses,

the _Confession de Zulmé_, which obtained for him a paltry place in M.

de Necker's[246] offices: hence his article upon his admission to the

office of the Controller-General. Somebody disputed Ginguené's claim

to the authorship of the _Confession de Zulmé_ upon which his fame was

based; but it was, as a matter of fact, his own.

The Rennes poet was a good musician and wrote ballads. Humble as he

began by being, we saw his pride grow as he succeeded in hanging upon

the skirts of some well-known man. About the time of the summoning of

the States-General, Chamfort employed him to scribble articles for the

newspapers and speeches for the clubs: he then became arrogant. At the

first Federation he said: "There's a fine entertainment! In order to

light it better, we ought to burn an aristocrat at each of the four

corners of the altar!" There was nothing original in this aspiration;

long before him, Louis Dorléans, the Leaguer, had written in his

_Banquet du Comte d'Arète_ that "one ought to fasten the Protestant

ministers by way of faggots to the stake of the Midsummer's Night

bonfires, and put King Henry IV. into the barrel where one put the

cats."

Ginguené knew of the revolutionary murders before they took place.

Madame Ginguené warned my sisters and my wife of the massacre planned

at the Carmelites, and gave them shelter: she lived in the Cul-de-sac

Férou, near the place where throats were to be cut.

After the Terror, Ginguené became a sort of head of the department of

Public Instruction; it was then that he sang the _Arbre de la liberté_

at the Cadran-Bleu, to the air of _Je l'ai planté, je l'ai vu naître._

He was considered sufficiently pious, philosophically, for an embassy

to the Court of one of the kings who were being discrowned. He wrote

from Turin to M. de Talleyrand that he had "overcome a prejudice:" he

had caused his wife to be received at Court in a _pet-en-l'air?_[247]

After falling from mediocrity to importance, from importance to

silliness, and from silliness to absurdity, he ended his days as a

distinguished critic, and what is better, as an independent writer in

the _Décade_[248]: nature had restored him to the place whence Society

had to such ill purpose taken him. His information is second-hand, his

prose dull, his verse correct and sometimes agreeable.

[Sidenote: Guinguené and Le Brun.]

Ginguené had a friend, the poet Le Brun[249]. Ginguené protected

Le Brun, in the way in which a man of talent, who knows the world,

protects the simplicity of a man of genius; Le Brun in his turn cast

his radiancy over Ginguené's eminence. Nothing more comical was seen

than the part played by these two cronies who, by a gentle commerce,

did each other all the services which two men excelling in different

spheres are able to render one to the other.

Le Brun was simply a mock gentleman of the Empyrean; his poetic spirit

was as cold as his transports were icy. His Parnassus was a top room in

the Rue Montmartre, furnished with a pile of books heaped pell-mell on

the floor, a trestle-bed, the curtains of which consisted of two dirty

towels dangling from a rusty iron rod, and the half of an ewer propped

up against a bottomless chair. It was not that Le Brun was in needy

circumstances; but he was a miser and addicted to loose women.

At M. de Vaudreuil's "classical supper[250]," he impersonated Pindar.

Among his lyrical poems are to be found energetic or elegant stanzas,

as in the ode on the ship _Vengeur_ or the ode on the _Environs de

Paris._ His elegies issued from his head, rarely from his soul; his

was a labored, not a natural, originality; he created only by sheer

force of art: he toiled to distort the meanings of words and to unite

them in monstrous alliances. Le Brun had only one real talent, that of

satire; his epistle on _La bonne et la mauvaise plaisanterie_ enjoyed a

well-deserved renown. Some of his epigrams are worthy of mention with

J. B. Rousseau's; La Harpe above all inspired him. One more justice

should be done him: he retained his independence under Bonaparte,

and has left trenchant verses directed against the oppressor of our

liberties[251].

But unquestionably the most atrabiliary of the men of letters whom I

knew in Paris at that time was Chamfort. Attacked with the disorder

that produced the Jacobins, he was unable to forgive mankind for the

accident of his birth[252]. He betrayed the houses to which he was

admitted; he took the cynicism of his language for a picture of the

manners of the Court. It would not be possible to deny that he had

wit and talent, but wit and talent of the kind which does not reach

posterity. When he saw that he was unable to attain to any position

under the Revolution, he turned against himself the hands which he

had raised against society. No longer to his vanity did the Phrygian

cap appear as but another kind of crown, sans-culottism as a sort of

nobility, of which Marat and Robespierre were the grandees. Furious

at finding inequality of rank in the very world of sorrow and of

tears, condemned to remain no more than a "villein" in the feudality

of executioners, he tried to kill himself in order to escape from

superiority in crime; he failed in his attempt: death laughs at those

who summon it and who mistake it for annihilation.

I did not meet the Abbé Delille[253] until 1798, in London, and I never

saw Rulhière[254], who lives through Madame d'Egmont[255] and makes her

live, nor Palissot[256], nor Beaumarchais[257], nor Marmontel[258].

The same with Chénier[259], whom I never met, who has often attacked

me, to whom I never replied, and whose place at the Institute was to be

the cause of one of the crises of my life.

[Sidenote: Eighteenth-century writers.]

When I read over again the majority of the writers of the eighteenth

century, I am amazed to think of the renown which they achieved and of

my former admiration for them. Whether it be that the language has made

progress, or that it has gone backward, or that we have advanced in

civilization or retreated towards barbarism, it is certain that I find

something threadbare, antiquated, grizzled, cold, and lifeless in the

authors who were the delight of my youth. I find even in the greatest

writers of the Voltairean age things that are poor in sentiment,

thought, and style.

Whom am I to blame for my disappointment? I fear the chief guilt

lies with myself; born innovator that I am, I may perhaps have

communicated to younger generations the malady with which I was seized.

Terror-stricken, in vain I cry to my children, "Do not forget your

French!" They reply in the words of the Limosin to Pantagruel, that

they come "from alme, inclyte and celebrate academy, which is vocitated

Lutetia[260]."

This habit of latinizing and hellenizing our language is not new, as we

see: Rabelais cured it, it reappeared in Ronsard[261]; Boileau attacked

it. In our time it has been revived by science; our revolutionaries,

great Greeks by nature, have compelled our merchants and farmers to

calculate in hectares, hectolitres, kilometers, millimeters, decagrams:

politics have "ronsardized" everything.

I might have spoken here of M. de La Harpe, whom I knew at that time,

and to whom I will return; I might have added M. de Fontanes' portrait

to my gallery; but although my acquaintance with that excellent man

began in 1789, it was not until we met in England that I became united

to him in a friendship which ever increased with bad, and never

diminished with good fortune: I will tell you of him later in all the

effusion of my heart. I shall have no talents to depict but those which

no longer console the earth. The death of my friend has occurred at the

moment when my recollections were leading me to trace the commencement

of his life[262]. So great a flight is our existence that, if we do not

write down in the evening what has happened in the morning, our work

obstructs us, and we no longer have the time to keep it posted up. This

does not prevent us from wasting our years, from flinging to the winds

the hours which are for men the seeds of eternity.

*

While my inclination and that of my two sisters threw me into this

literary society, our position obliged us to frequent another set; the

family of my brother's wife was naturally the centre for us of this

second circle.

The Président Le Peletier de Rosanbo, who since died with such great

courage[263], was at the time of my arrival in Paris a model of

frivolity. At that period, men's minds and manners were in every way

unsettled, a symptom of a coming revolution. Magistrates were ashamed

to wear the robe, and mocked at the gravity of their fathers. The

Lamoignons, the Molés, the Séguiers, the d'Aguesseaus[264] wished

to fight instead of judging. The Presidents' wives ceased to be

respectable mothers of families and left their gloomy mansions in order

to seek brilliant adventures[265]. The priest in the pulpit avoided

pronouncing the name of Jesus Christ and spoke only of the "Law-giver

of the Christians;" the ministers were falling pell-mell; power slipped

through each one's fingers. The height of fashion was to be American

in town, English at Court, Prussian in the army; to be anything except

French. All that was said, all that was done, was one long series of

inconsistencies. They wished to keep up the commendatory clergy, and

would have none of religion; none could be an officer who was not

of gentle birth, whereas the nobility was railed at; equality was

introduced into the drawing-rooms together with flogging into the camps.

[Sidenote: M. de Malesherbes.]

M. de Malesherbes had three daughters[266], Mesdames de Rosanbo,

d'Aulnay, and de Montboissier; he loved Madame de Rosanbo the best,

because her opinions resembled his own. The Président de Rosanbo[267]

also had three daughters, Mesdames de Chateaubriand, d'Aulnay[268],

and de Tocqueville, and one son, whose brilliant mind clothed itself

in Christian perfection. M. de Malesherbes was happy in the midst of

his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Time after time I

have seen him, in the early days of the Revolution, arrive at Madame de

Rosanbo's, all heated with politics, fling off his wig, lie down upon

the carpet of my sister's room, and submit to the uproarious teasing

of the rebellious children. His manners would have been considered

almost vulgar, if he had not possessed a certain brusqueness which

saved him from being commonplace: at the first words he uttered, one

recognized the bearer of an old name and the superior magistrate. His

natural virtues were somewhat tainted with affectation, thanks to

the philosophy which he mingled with them. He was full of knowledge,

honesty, and courage, but impetuous and passionate to such an extent

that he once said to me, speaking of Condorcet:

"That man was once my friend; today I would not scruple to kill him

like a dog."

The tide of the Revolution overwhelmed him, and his death established

his glory. This great man would have remained hidden beneath his

merits, if misfortune had not revealed him to the world. A noble

Venetian lost his life at the moment when he discovered his title-deeds

amid the falling ruins of an old palace.

[Illustration: C. G. Lamoignon de Malesherbes.]

M. de Malesherbes' free ways removed all my constraint. He found that

I was not without information; this first point gave us something

in common: we spoke of botany and geography, two of his favourite

subjects. It was in the course of my conversations with him that I

first conceived the idea of making a journey in North America, with

the object of discovering the ocean seen by Hearne and later by

Mackenzie[269]. We also held views in common on politics: the generous

sentiments which were at the root of our earlier troubles appealed

to the independence of my character; my natural antipathy to the

Court gave strength to this inclination. I was on the side of M. de

Malesherbes and of Madame de Rosanbo as against M. de Rosanbo and my

brother, who was nicknamed "the raving Chateaubriand." The Revolution

would have carried me away, had it not started in crime: I saw the

first head carried on the end of a pike, and I drew back. Murder will

never to my eyes be an object of admiration or an argument in favour

of liberty; I know nothing more servile, more contemptible, more

cowardly, more shallow than a Terrorist. Have I not in France seen the

whole of this race of Brutus take service with Cæsar and his police?

The levellers, regenerators, cut-throats had been transformed into

lackeys, spies, sycophants, and even less naturally into dukes, counts,

and barons: such a medievalism!

[Sidenote: My great liking for him.]

Lastly, what attached me still more to the illustrious old man was his

predilection for my sister: in spite of the Comtesse Lucile's shyness,

we succeeded, with the aid of a glass of champagne, in inducing her

to take a part in a little play on the occasion of M. de Malesherbes'

birthday; her performance was so touching that it turned that good and

great man's head. He was even more eager than my brother in urging her

translation from the Chapter of the Argentière to that of Remiremont,

which insisted upon the rigorous and difficult proofs of the "sixteen

quarterings." For all his philosophy, M. de Malesherbes possessed

principles of birth in an eminent degree.

This picture of men and society at the time of my entrance into the

world must be spread over a space of about two years, from 25 May

1787, the date of the closing of the first Assembly of Notables, to 5

May 1789, that of the opening of the States-General. During these two

years, my sisters and I did not continually live in Paris, nor in the

same part of Paris. I will now go back and carry my readers to Brittany.

I must add that I was still infatuated with my illusions; now

that I no longer had my woods, I had discovered a new solitude in

remote times instead of places. In old Paris, in the enclosures of

Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the cloisters of the convents, in the vaults

of Saint-Denis, in the Sainte Chapelle, in Notre Dame, in the little

streets of the Cité, at the modest door of Héloïse, I again met my

enchantress; but beneath the Gothic arches and among the tombs she had

assumed a deathlike aspect: she was pale, she looked at me with sad

eyes; she was but the shadow or the manes of the dream which I had

loved.

*

My political education commenced with my different visits to Brittany

in 1787 and 1788. The Provincial States furnished the model of the

States-General; also the local troubles which heralded those of the

nation broke out in two districts possessing States, Brittany and

Dauphiné.

The transformation that had been developing for two centuries was

nearing its termination. France had passed from feudal monarchy to the

monarchy of States-General, from the monarchy of States-General to the

monarchy of parliaments, from the monarchy of parliaments to absolute

monarchy, and was now tending towards representative monarchy, across

the struggle between the magistracy and the royal power.

The Maupeou Parliament[270], the establishment of provincial

assemblies, coupled with individual voting-power, the first and second

Assemblies of Notables, the Plenary Court, the formation of grand

bailiwicks, the reinstatement of the Protestants in their civil rights,

the partial abolition of torture and of forced labour, the equal

division of taxation were so many successive proofs of the revolution

which was at work. But at that time these facts were not seen as a

whole: each event appeared in the light of an isolated accident. At

every period of history, there exists a guiding thought. Looking only

at one point, one fails to see the rays converging at the centre of

all the other points; one does not go back as far as the secret agency

which gives life and movement to the whole, like water and fire in

machinery: that is why, at the outset of revolutions, so many people

believe that it is enough to break this wheel or that to prevent the

torrent from rushing or the steam from exploding.

The eighteenth century, a century of intellectual action, not of

material action, would not have succeeded in so promptly altering

the laws, had it not found its vehicle: the parliaments, and notably

the Parliament of Paris, became the instruments of the philosophical

system. Every opinion dies an impotent or distracted death, if it be

not lodged in an assembly which turns it into a power, supplies it with

a will, furnishes it with a tongue and a pair of arms. Revolutions

succeed, and always will succeed, only by means of corporate

assemblies, lawful or unlawful.

The parliaments had their cause to avenge: absolute monarchy had stolen

from them the authority which they had usurped from the States-General.

Enforced registrations[271], beds of justice, sentences of exile,

while making the magistrates popular, drove them to demand liberties

of which, in their hearts, they were not the sincere upholders. They

called for the restoration of the States-General, not daring to admit

that they wished to secure the legislative and political power for

themselves; and thus they hastened on the resurrection of a body of

which they had gathered the inheritance, a body which, on returning

to life, would at once reduce them to their own department. Men are

almost invariably deceived as to their true interests, whether moved by

wisdom or passion: Louis XVI. restored the parliaments which forced

him to summon the States-General; the States-General, converted into

a National Assembly and soon into a Convention, destroyed the throne

and the parliaments, and sent to their deaths both the judges and the

monarch from whom justice emanated. But Louis XVI. and the parliaments

acted in this manner because they were the unconscious instruments of a

social revolution.

[Sidenote: State-General.]

The idea of the States-General was, therefore, in all men's heads; only

they did not see whither it would lead them. It was the question, for

the crowd, how to make up a deficit which the smallest banker of today

would undertake to remove. The application of so violent a remedy to so

small an evil proves that the public was being carried towards unknown

political regions. For the year 1786, the only year of which the

financial state has been affirmed, the revenue amounted to 412,924,000,

the expenditure to 593,542,000 livres, leaving a deficit of 180,618,000

livres, which was reduced to 140 millions through economies amounting

to 40,618,000 livres. In this budget, the Royal Household figures for

the immense sum of 37,200,000 livres: the Princes' debts, the purchase

of country-seats, and the Court malversations were the cause of this

additional burden.

It was desired to have the States-General in the form they assumed in

1614. The historians always quote this form as though one had never

heard speak of States-General or of a demand for their convocation

since 1614. And yet in 1651 the orders of the nobility and the clergy,

meeting in Paris, demanded States-General. A bulky collection of acts

passed and speeches delivered on that occasion exists. The Parliament

of Paris, which was then all-powerful, far from seconding the wishes of

the two upper orders, quashed their meetings as illegal: as indeed they

were.

And since I am treating of this subject, I wish to note another

serious fact which has escaped those who have concerned, and are still

concerning, themselves with writing the history of France, without

knowing it. People talk of "the three orders" as being essential to

the constitution of the States known as States-General. Well, it often

happened that bailiwicks appointed deputies for only one or two orders.

In 1614, the bailiwick of Amboise appointed none for either the clergy

or the nobility; the bailiwick of Châteauneuf-en-Thimerais sent none

for the clergy nor for the third estate; the Puy, the Rochelle, the

Lauraguais, Calais, the Haute-Marche, Châtellerault sent none for the

clergy, and Montdidier and Roye none for the nobility. Nevertheless,

the States of 1614 were called States-General. Thus the ancient

chronicles express themselves more correctly when they say, in speaking

of our national assemblies, "the three estates," or "the burgess

notables," or "the barons and bishops" as the case may be, and they

attribute the same legislative power to the assemblies thus composed.

In the different provinces, the third estate, even though convoked,

often refrained from deputing representatives, and this for an unheeded

but very natural reason. The third estate had taken possession of the

magistracy, from which it had driven out the men-at-arms; it held

absolute sway, except in a few parliaments, in the offices of judge,

advocate, procurator, registrar, clerk, and so forth; it made civil

and criminal laws, and, thanks to its parliamentary usurpation, it

exercised even the political power. The fortune, honour, and lives of

the citizens depended upon the third estate: all obeyed its decrees,

every head fell beneath the sword of its justices. Seeing, therefore,

that it enjoyed unlimited power, to the exclusion of the other

estates, what need had it to go begging for a portion of that power in

assemblies in which it appeared upon its knees?

The people, metamorphosed into monks, had resorted to the cloisters,

and governed society through the power of religious opinion; the

people, metamorphosed into tax-gatherers and bankers, had resorted to

finance, and governed society through the power of money; the people,

metamorphosed into magistrates, had resorted to the tribunals, and

governed society through the power of the law. This great Realm of

France, so aristocratic in its parties and in its provinces, was

democratic when taken as a whole, under the direction of its King, with

whom it acted in admirable concert and nearly always went hand in hand.

This is the explanation of its long existence. There is an entirely new

history of France to be written, or rather, the history of France has

not yet been written.

All the above-mentioned important questions were especially vexed

in the years 1786, 1787, and 1788. The heads of my fellow-Bretons

found abundant cause for excitement in their natural vivacity, in

the privileges of the province, the clergy, and the nobles, in the

collisions between the Parliament and the States. M. de Calonne[272],

for a short while Intendant of Brittany, had increased the internal

strife by favouring the cause of the third estate. M. de Montmorin[273]

and M. de Thiard were not sufficiently strong leaders to ensure the

ascendency of the Court party. The nobility entered into a coalition

with the Parliament, which was itself noble; now it opposed M. Necker,

M. de Calonne, the Archbishop of Sens[274]; now it thrust back the

popular movement, which its own early resistance had favoured. It

assembled, deliberated, and protested; the communes or municipalities

assembled, deliberated and protested in opposition. The private

question of hearth-money was mixed up with the general questions and

increased the reigning ill-will. To understand this, it is necessary to

explain the constitution of the Duchy of Brittany.

[Sidenote: The States of Brittany.]

The States of Brittany varied more or less in their formation, in

common with all the States of Feudal Europe, which they resembled.

The Kings of France were established into the rights of the Dukes of

Brittany. The marriage-contract of the Duchess Anne[275], in 1491, not

only brought Brittany by way of dower to the crown of Charles VIII.

and Louis XII., but contained a covenant by virtue of which an end was

put to a contention which traced its origin to Charles of Blois[276]

and the Count of Montfort[277]. Brittany contended that daughters were

entitled to inherit the Duchy; France maintained that the succession

could take place only in the main line, and that when this line came

to be extinguished, Brittany, as a great feud, returned to the Crown.

Charles VIII. and Anne, and subsequently Anne and Louis XII., mutually

surrendered their rights or claims to each other. Claudia, daughter

of Anne and Louis XII., who became the wife of François I., on her

death left the Duchy of Brittany to François I., her husband, upon the

petition of the States assembled at Vannes, and by an edict published

at Nantes in 1532 united the Duchy to the Crown of France, guaranteeing

the Duchy's rights and privileges.

At that time the States of Brittany were summoned every year; but in

1630 the sittings became biennial. The Governor proclaimed the opening

of the States. The three orders sat, according to the place, in a

church or in the halls of a convent. Each order deliberated apart: they

formed three separate assemblies with their various tempests, which

turned into a general hurricane when the clergy, the nobles, and the

third estate came to meet together. The Court breathed discord, and

talents, vanities and ambitions came into play in this restricted field

as in any more extended arena.

The Père Grégoire de Rostrenen, a Capuchin friar, in the dedication

to his _Dictionnaire françois-breton_, addresses Their Lordships the

States of Brittany as follows:

"If it was meet for none save the Roman orator worthily to

praise the august assembly of the Roman Senate, was it meet

for me to venture upon the praise of your august assembly,

which so worthily recalls to us the image of all that ancient

and modern Rome possessed that was majestic and venerable?"

Rostrenen proves that Celtic is one of those primitive languages which

Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, brought to Europe, and that the

Lower Bretons, despite their short stature, descend from the giants.

Unfortunately, Gomer's Breton children, long separated from France,

allowed part of their old title-deeds to perish: their charters,

to which they did not attach sufficient importance as linking them

to general history, too often lack the authenticity to which the

decipherers of diplomas, on their side, attach too high a price.

The time of the holding of the States in Brittany was a time of

balls and festivals: one dined with M. le Commandant, dined with M.

le Président de la Noblesse, dined with M. le Président du Clergé,

dined with M. le Trésorier des États, dined with M. l'Intendant de

la Province, dined with M. le Président du Parlement; one dined

everywhere: and drank! At long refectory tables sat Du Guesclins who

were husbandmen, Duguay-Trouins who were seamen, wearing at their side

their iron swords with old-fashioned guards or their short cutlasses.

All the gentlemen assisting at the States in person bore no slight

resemblance to a Diet of Poland, of Poland on foot, not on horseback, a

diet of Scythians, not of Sarmatians.

[Sidenote: Madame de Sévigné.]

Unfortunately, they played too much. The balls never ended. The Bretons

are noted for their dances and dance-tunes. Madame de Sévigné has

described our political festivals in the midst of the waste-lands,

like the revels of fairies and goblins which were held at night on the

moors:

"You shall now," she writes[278]," have news about our

States for your pains of being a Breton. M. de Chaulnes made

his entry on Sunday evening, with all the noise that Vitré

could afford: on Monday morning he sent me a letter, which I

answered by going to dine with him. They dine at two tables

in the same room; there are fourteen covers at each table;

Monsieur presides at one, and Madame at the other. The good

cheer is excessive, whole dishes of roast meat are carried

away uncut; and the pyramids of fruit are so tall, that the

doorways have to be made higher. Our forefathers did not

foresee this kind of machines, seeing that they did not even

understand that a door ought to be higher than themselves....

After dinner, Messieurs de Lomaria and Coëtlogon danced some

marvelous jigs with two Breton ladies, and minuets with

an air which our courtiers cannot approach: they execute

Gipsy and Lower Breton steps with charming daintiness and

precision.... Night and day there reign such play, good

cheer, and freedom as will attract all the world. I had

never seen the States before; it is a pretty thing enough.

I doubt if there is a province whose assembly has so grand

an air as this; it must be very full, I fancy, for there

is not one of the members at the war nor at Court; except

the little cornet[279], who perhaps may return here one day

like the rest.... A multitude of presents, pensions, repairs

of highways and towns, fifteen or twenty large tables, a

continual round of dancing and gaming, plays three times a

week, and a great deal of show and splendor: there you have

the States. I have forgot three or four hundred pipes of wine

which are drank out here."

The Bretons find it difficult to forgive Madame de Sévigné for her

raillery. I am less severe; but I do not like to hear her say, "You

speak very pleasantly of our miseries; we are no longer so _roué_[280]:

_one_ in eight days only, to keep justice going. 'Tis true that a

hanging now comes refreshingly to me." This is carrying the agreeable

language of the Court to excess: Barère[281] spoke with the same grace

of the guillotine. In 1793, the drownings at Nantes were called

"republican marriages:" the popular despotism reproduced the amenities

of style of the royal despotism.

The Paris fops, who accompanied messieurs the King's company to the

States, related that we country squires had our pockets lined with tin

so that we might take home M. le Commandant's fricassees of chicken

to our wives. These jests were dearly paid for. A Comte de Sabran had

erewhile lost his life in return for his idle talk. This descendant of

the troubadours and of the Provencal kings, as big as a Swiss[282],

allowed himself to be killed by a little hare-hunter of Morbihan, no

taller than a Laplander[283]. This "Ker[284]" was not a whit second to

his adversary in pedigree: if St. Elzear of Sabran was a near kinsman

of St. Louis, St. Corentin[285], collateral ancestor of the most noble

Ker, was Bishop of Quimper under King Gallon II., three centuries

before Christ.

*

The King's revenue, in Brittany, consisted of the benevolences, which

varied according to needs; the income from the Crown domains, which

might amount to three or four hundred thousand francs; the stamp-duty,

&c.

Brittany had her own revenues, which served to meet her expenditure:

the "great due" and the "petty due," which were laid on liquor and

the liquor traffic, produced two millions a year; and then there were

the sums raised by hearth-money. One little suspects the important

part played by hearth-money in our history; yet it was to the French

Revolution what the stamp-duties were to the Revolution in America.

Hearth-money or _fouage_ (_census pro singulis focis exactus_) was a

quit-rent, or a sort of villain tax, charged upon the goods of the

commonalty for each hearth. This hearth-money, which was gradually

increased, went to pay the debts of the province. In time of war, the

expenditure amounted to more than seven millions from one session to

the next, a sum which exceeded the receipts. A plan had been proposed

to create a capital out of the funds provided by hearth-money and to

turn it into stock for the benefit of the payers of hearth-money: in

this way the tax became only a loan. The injustice (although it was an

injustice made legal by the wording of the customary law) lay in making

it bear upon the property of the commonalty alone. The commons never

ceased protesting; the nobles, who set less store by their money than

by their privileges, would not hear of a duty which would have made

them liable to a villain-tax. This was the question when the States of

Brittany, that were to prove so bloody, came together in December 1788.

Men's minds were at that time excited by various causes: the assembly

of the Notables, the territorial impost, the traffic in corn, the

approaching sittings of the States-General and the affair of the

Necklace, the Plenary Court and the _Mariage de Figaro_, the grand

bailiwicks and Cagliostro[286] and Mesmer[287], a thousand other

serious and trivial matters formed subjects of controversy in every

family.

[Sidenote: The Breton nobles.]

The Breton nobility had, at its own instance, assembled at Rennes to

protest against the establishment of the Plenary Court. I went to

this diet: it was the first political meeting I ever attended. I was

bewildered and amused by the cries I heard. The members climbed on the

tables and chairs; they gesticulated, and all spoke at one time. The

Marquis de Trémargat[288], who had a wooden leg, shouted in stentorian

tones:

"Let us all go to the Commandant, M. de Thiard[289]; we will say to

him, 'The nobles of Brittany are at your door; they ask to speak to

you; the King himself would not deny them!'"

At this outburst of eloquence, the cheers shook the rafters. He

commenced again:

"The King himself would not deny them!"

The shouts and stamping redoubled. We went to M. le Comte de Thiard,

a man of the Court, an erotic poet, a gentle and frivolous spirit,

mortally bored by our uproar; he looked upon us as so many _hou-hous_,

wild-boars, wild beasts; he was burning to be gone from our Armorica,

and had not the slightest desire to deny us the entrance to his house.

Our spokesman told him what he wanted, after which we went back and

drew up the following declaration:

"We declare infamous those who are capable of accepting any places,

whether in the new administration of justice, or in the administration

of the States, which shall not be approved by the constitutional laws

of Brittany."

Twelve gentlemen were chosen to carry this document to the King: upon

their arrival in Paris, they were locked up in the Bastille, whence

they soon emerged in the quality of heroes[290]; they were received

with laurel-branches on their return.

We wore coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl bedecked with

ermine, round which buttons was inscribed in Latin the motto, "Death

before dishonor." We triumphed over the Court, over which all the world

was triumphing, and we fell with it into the same abyss.

*

It was at this period that my brother, continuing to prosecute his

plans, resolved to have me admitted to the Order of Malta. In order

to effect this, it was necessary that I should receive the tonsure:

this could be given me by M. Cortois de Pressigny[291], Bishop of

Saint-Malo. I therefore went to my native city, where my good mother

was living: she no longer had her children with her; she spent her days

at church, her evenings knitting. Her absent-mindedness was incredible:

I met her one day in the street, carrying one of her slippers under

her arm by way of a prayer-book. From time to time some old friends

would find their way to her retreat and talk of the good times that

were past. When she and I were alone, she would improvise beautiful

stories for me in verse. In one of these stories the devil carried off

a chimney with an evil-doer in it, and the poet exclaimed:

Le diable en l'avenue

Chemina tant et tant,

Qu'on en perdit la vue

En moins d'une heur' de temps[292].

"I cannot help thinking," said I, "that the devil does not go very

fast."

But Madame de Chateaubriand proved to me that I did not know what I was

talking about: my mother was charming.

[Sidenote: My mother's ballads.]

She had a long and plaintive ballad on the subject of

the _Récit veritable d'une cane sauvage en la ville de

Montfort-la-Cane-lez-Saint-Malo._ A certain lord had imprisoned a young

and very beautiful girl in the Castle of Montfort, with the intention

of ravishing her. Through a dormer-window she could see the church of

St. Nicholas; she prayed to the saint with eyes full of tears, and was

miraculously wafted outside the castle. But she fell into the hands

of the traitor's servants, who proposed to do by her as they presumed

their master had done. The poor girl, distraught, looking to every side

in search of help, saw only the wild-duck upon the pond of the castle.

Renewing her prayers to St. Nicholas, she besought him to allow these

birds to be the witnesses of her innocence, so that, if she was doomed

to lose her life, and was unable to accomplish the vows which she had

taken to St. Nicholas, the birds themselves would fulfill them in their

own way, in her name and on her behalf.

The girl died within the year: and behold, on the Feast of the

Translation of the Bones of St. Nicholas, 9 May, a wild-duck,

accompanied by its brood of ducklings, came to St. Nicholas' Church.

She entered the building, fluttered before the statue of the Blessed

Liberator, and acclaimed him by flapping her wings; after which she

returned to the pond, leaving one of her little ones as an offering.

Some time afterwards, the duckling disappeared unobserved. For two

hundred years and more, the duck, always the same duck, returned, on a

fixed day, with her hatch, to the church of the great St. Nicholas at

Montfort.

The story was written and printed in 1652: the author very justly

observes that "a poor wild-duck is not a very considerable thing in the

eyes of God; that nevertheless she acts her part in doing homage to His

greatness; that St. François' grasshopper was of even less account, and

that nevertheless its trill charmed a seraph's heart."

But Madame de Chateaubriand followed a false legend: in her ballad,

the maiden imprisoned at Montfort was a princess, who succeeded in

being changed into a duck in order to escape her captor's violence. I

remember only the following lines of one stanza of my mother's ballad:

Cane la belle est devenue,

Cane la belle est devenue,

Et s'envola par une grille,

Dans un étang plein de lentilles[293].

As Madame de Chateaubriand was a real saint, she obtained the Bishop of

Saint-Malo's promise to give me the tonsure, although he had a scruple

on the subject: to bestow the mark of an ecclesiastic upon a layman

and a soldier appeared to him to be a profanation not far removed from

simony. M. Cortois de Pressigny, now Archbishop of Besançon and a peer

of France, is a worthy and deserving man. He was young at that time,

protected by the Queen, and on the high-road to fortune, which he

attained later by a better road: persecution.

Dressed in uniform, and wearing my sword, I went down on my knees

at the prelate's feet; he cut two or three hairs from the crown of

my head: this was called the tonsure, of which I received a formal

certificate. With this certificate, it was possible for an income of

200,000 livres to fall to me, when my proofs of nobility had been

admitted in Malta: an abuse, no doubt, in the ecclesiastical order, but

a useful thing in the political order of the old constitution. Was it

not better that a kind of military benefice should be attached to the

sword of a soldier than to the cloak of an Abbé who would have spent

the revenues of his fat living on the pavement of Paris?

The fact that the tonsure was conferred on me for the foregoing reasons

has caused ill-informed biographers to state that I had at one time

entered the Church.

This happened in 1788. I kept horses, I rode all over the country,

or galloped beside the waves, the moaning friends of my youth: I

alighted from my horse and frolicked with them; the whole barking

family of Scylla sprang to my knees to fondle me: _Nunc vada latrantis

Scyllæ._ I have travelled very far to admire the scenes of nature: I

might have contented myself with those which my native land offered to

my eyes.

Nothing could be more charming than the country for five or six leagues

round Saint-Malo. The banks of the Rance alone, as one ascends the

river from its mouth to Dinan, ought to attract the traveller, forming

a constant medley of rocks and verdure, of strands and forests, of

creeks and hamlets, of the ancient manors of feudal Brittany and the

modern habitations of commercial Brittany. The latter were built at a

time when the merchants of Saint-Malo were so rich that, on days of

merry-making, they heated piastres and flung them red-hot to the people

through the windows. These dwellings are very luxurious. Bonnaban,

the country-seat of Messieurs de La Saudre[294], is in part built of

marble brought from Genoa, a magnificence of which we in Paris have no

idea. The Briantais[295], the Bosq, the Montmarin[296], the Balue[297],

the Colombier[298] are, or were, adorned with orangeries, fountains,

and statues. In some cases the gardens slope down to the shore behind

the arcade formed by a screen of lime-trees, through a colonnade of

pine-trees, to the end of a lawn; across a bed of tulips, the sea

displays its ships, its calms, and its tempests.

[Sidenote: Country round Saint-Malo.]

Every peasant, sailor, and husbandman owns a little white cottage

with a garden; among the vegetables, the currant-bushes, the roses,

the irises, the marigolds of this garden, you find a shoot of Cayenne

tea, a stalk of Virginian tobacco, a Chinese flower, some kind of

souvenir of other shores and another sun: they compose the chart and

the itinerary of the owner. The occupiers of these coast holdings

belong to a fine Norman race; the women are tall, slender, active, and

wear grey-woolen bodices, petticoats of calamanco and striped silk,

white stockings with colored clocks. Their foreheads are shaded by an

ample dimity or cambric head-dress, the flaps of which stand up in the

shape of a cap or float like a veil. A number of silver chains hang

in a bunch at their left side. Every morning, in the spring, these

daughters of the North, stepping from their boats, as though they were

coming once again to invade the land, carry to market baskets of fruit

and shells filled with curds: when, with one hand, they hold on their

heads black jars full of milk or flowers, when the lappets of their

white caps set off their blue eyes, their pink faces, their fair hair

pearled with dew, the Valkyrs of the _Edda_, of whom the youngest is

the Future, or the Basket-bearers of Athens, were less graceful. Does

the picture still resemble the original? Those women, doubtless, no

longer exist; nought remains but my recollection of them.

*

I left my mother and went to see my two elder sisters, who lived

near Fougères. I stayed a month with Madame de Chateaubourg. Her

two country-houses, Lascardais[299] and Le Plessis[300], near

Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, famous for its tower and its battle[301], stood

in a country of rocks, moors, and woods. My sister's steward was M.

Livoret[302], formerly a Jesuit, who had met with a strange adventure.

When he was made steward at Lascardais, the Comte de Chateaubourg, the

elder, had just died: M. Livoret, who had not known him, was installed

as care-taker of the castle. The first night that he slept there

alone, he saw a pale old man come into his room, in a dressing-gown

and night-cap, and carrying a little light. The apparition went to the

hearth, placed the candlestick on the mantel, lit the fire and sat down

in a chair. M. Livoret trembled all over his body. After two hours

spent in silence, the old man rose, took his light again, and left the

room, closing the door behind him.

The next day the steward told his adventure to the farm-people, who,

on hearing the description of the spectre, declared that it was their

old master. The matter did not end there: if M. Livoret looked behind

him in a wood, he saw the ghost; if he had to climb over a stile in a

field, the shade set itself astride the stile. One day, the unhappy

haunted man venturing to say, "Monsieur de Chateaubourg, leave me," the

ghost replied, "No." M. Livoret, a cold and practical man, possessed

of very little imagination, repeated his story as often as he was

asked, always in the same way and with the same conviction.

[Sidenote: A visit to Normandy.]

A little later I accompanied to Normandy a brave officer attacked with

brain-fever. We were lodged in a farm-house: an old tapestry, lent by

the lord of the manor, separated my bed from the invalid's. Behind this

hanging the patient was bled: to relieve him of his sufferings, they

plunged him into ice-baths; he shivered under this torture, with his

nails turned blue, his violet face haggard, and his teeth clenched. His

head was shaven, and a long beard which came down from his pointed chin

served to clothe his bare, wet, lean chest.

When the invalid had a fit of crying, he opened an umbrella, thinking

that he was sheltering himself from his tears: if this were a sure

protection against weeping, a statue should be raised to the inventor.

My only happy moments were those at which I went to wander in the

grave-yard of the village church, built upon a mound. My companions

were the dead, a few birds, and the setting sun. I dreamed of Paris

society, of my early years, of my phantom, of the Combourg woods, to

which I was so near in point of space, though so far removed in point

of time. I returned to my poor sick man: it was the blind leading the

blind.

Alas, let a blow, a fall, a moral suffering deprive Homer, Newton,

Bossuet of their genius, and those divine men, instead of exciting

profound pity, bitter and eternal regret, would be the object of a

smile! Many people whom I have known and loved have seen their reason

troubled while about me, as though I bore with me the germ of the

contagion. I can explain Cervantes' masterpiece and its cruel gaiety

only by a sad reflection: when one considers existence as a whole, and

weighs its good and evil, one feels tempted to long for any accident

that brings forgetfulness with it, as a means of escaping from one's

self; a joyful drunkard is a happy being. Putting religion aside,

happiness lies in not knowing one's self and in reaching death without

having felt life.

I brought my friend back completely cured.

*

Madame Lucile and Madame de Farcy, who had returned with me to

Brittany, wished to go back to Paris; but I was detained by the

unsettled condition of the province. The States had been summoned for

the end of December 1788. The commune of Rennes and, following in its

wake, the other communes of Brittany had passed a resolution forbidding

their deputies to take part in any business before the question of

hearth-money had been settled.

The Comte de Boisgelin[303], who was to preside over the order of the

nobles, hurried to Rennes. The gentry were convoked by private letters;

among them were those who, like myself, were still too young to have

votes in the deliberations. We might be attacked, strong arms needed

counting as well as votes: we went to our posts.

A number of meetings were held at M. de Boisgelin's before the opening

of the States. All the scenes of confusion at which I had assisted were

renewed. The Chevalier de Guer, the Marquis de Trémargat, my uncle

the Comte de Bedée, nicknamed Bedée the Artichoke, because of his

stoutness, as opposed to another Bedée, long and slim, who was called

Bedée the Asparagus, broke a number of chairs in climbing on them to

deliver their harangues. The Marquis de Trémargat, a wooden-legged

naval officer, made many enemies for his order. One day they were

talking of establishing a military school for the education of the sons

of poor nobles; a member of the Third Estate cried:

"And what are our sons to have?"

"The almshouse," replied Trémargat.

The phrase fell among the crowd and soon bore fruit.

At these meetings I became aware of a disposition of character in

myself which I have since found again in the field of politics and

arms: the more my colleagues or companions grew inflamed, the calmer I

became. I saw the tribune or the gun fired with indifference: I have

never bowed before either words or cannon-balls.

The result of our deliberations was that the nobles were to treat

general matters first, and not busy themselves with hearth-money until

the other questions had been disposed of; a resolution directly opposed

to that of the commons. The nobles had no great confidence in the

clergy, who often abandoned them, especially when presided over by the

Bishop of Rennes[304], a wheedling, circumspect person, who spoke with

a slight and not ungraceful lisp, and nursed his prospects at Court.

The hatred was fomented by a newspaper, the _Sentinelle du Peuple_,

edited at Rennes by a scribbler newly arrived from Paris.

The States were held in the Jacobin Convent on the Place du Palais.

We entered the sessions-hall, in the temper which I have described;

we had hardly taken our seats before we were besieged by the mob. The

25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of January 1789 were unlucky days. The Comte

de Thiard had few troops under his command; he lacked both vigor and

decision, and moved without acting. The School of Law at Rennes, which

had Moreau at its head, had sent for the young men of Nantes; they came

to the number of four hundred, and in spite of his entreaties, the

Commandant was unable to prevent them from invading the town. Meetings

held by various factions in the cafés and on the Champ-Montmorin

resulted in collisions attended with bloodshed.

[Sidenote: Riots at Rennes.]

Tired of being blockaded in our hall, we resolved to sally forth

sword in hand; it was a pretty sight enough. At a signal given by our

president, we all drew our swords together, to the cry of "Brittany for

ever!" and, like a forlorn garrison, executed a furious sortie in order

to fight our way through. The mob received us with yells, with showers

of stones, blows of iron-shod sticks, and pistol-shots. We forced a

passage through the surging crowd, which closed in upon us. Several

gentlemen were wounded, dragged along the ground, lacerated, covered

with bruises and contusions. We succeeded with great difficulty in

extricating ourselves and reaching our respective lodgings.

Duels followed between the nobles and the law-students and their

friends from Nantes. One of these duels took place in public on the

Place Royale; the honors remained with old Keralieu[305], a naval

officer, who was attacked, and who fought with incredible vigor amid

the applause of his youthful adversaries.

Another mob had formed. The Comte de Montboucher[306] caught sight in

the crowd of a student called Ulliac, and said to him:

"Monsieur, this concerns you and me!"

A ring was formed around them; Montboucher disarmed Ulliac and handed

him back his sword: they embraced, and the crowd dispersed.

At least our Breton nobility did not succumb without honour. It refused

to send deputies to the States-General, because it had not been

convoked in accordance with the fundamental laws of the constitution

of the province; it joined the army of the Princes in vast numbers,

and was decimated in Condé's Army, or with Charette in the wars

of the Vendée. Would it have made any difference in the majority

in the National Assembly if it had joined that assembly? That is

scarcely likely: in great social transformations, cases of individual

resistance, however creditable to personal character, are powerless

against facts. Nevertheless it is difficult to say what might not

have been effected by a man of Mirabeau's genius, but of opposite

principles, if one had been found in the order of the Breton nobility.

Young Boishue and my schoolfellow Saint-Riveul had been killed in these

encounters, on their way to the chamber of the nobles: the former was

in vain defended by his father, who served as his second[307].

Reader, pause: see flow the first drops of blood which the Revolution

was to shed. Heaven decreed that they should issue from the veins of

a companion of my childhood. Suppose that I had fallen instead of

Saint-Riveul; it would have been said of me, merely changing the name,

as was said of the victim with whom commenced the great immolation:

"A gentleman called Chateaubriand was killed on his way to the

assembly-room of the States."

Those few words would have taken the place of my long history. Would

Saint-Riveul have played my part on the earth? Was he destined for fame

or for silence?

And now, reader, pass on; cross the river of blood which for all time

separates the old world, whence you are issuing, from the new, at the

entrance to which you shall die.

*

The year 1789, so famous in our history and in the history of the

human race, found me on the moors of my Brittany; I was not even

able to leave the country until rather late, and did not reach Paris

until after the sack of the Maison Reveillon[308], the opening of the

States-General[309], the constitution of the Third Estate into a

National Assembly, the oath of the Tennis Court[310], the Royal Speech

of the 23rd of June, and the joining of the clergy and the nobles to

the commons[311].

There was a great stir along my road: in the villages the peasants

stopped the carriages, asked to be shown passports, interrogated

the travelers. The nearer we approached to the capital, the more

the excitement increased. Passing through Versailles, I saw troops

quartered in the orangery, trains of artillery parked in the

court-yards, the provisional hall of the National Assembly erected on

the Place du Palais, and deputies moving to and fro amid sight-seers,

people of the palace, and soldiers.

[Sidenote: Disturbances in Paris.]

In Paris the streets were blocked by crowds standing before the bakers'

shops; the passers-by stood discussing at the street corners, the

tradesmen came out of their shops and gave and received the news before

their doors; the agitators gathered together at the Palais-Royal:

Camille Desmoulins began to distinguish himself in the throng[312].

I had scarcely alighted[313], together with Madame de Farcy and Madame

Lucile, at a lodging-house in the Rue de Richelieu, when a riot broke

out: the mob proceeded to the Abbaye to deliver some French Guards, who

had been imprisoned by order of their officers. The non-commissioned

officers of an artillery regiment quartered at the Invalides joined the

people. The defection of the army was commencing.

The Court, alternately yielding and resisting, a mixture of obstinacy

and weakness, of hectoring and fear, allowed itself to be bullied

by Mirabeau[314], who demanded that the troops should be removed to

a distance, and yet did not consent to remove them: it accepted the

affront and did not remove the cause of it. In Paris a rumor spread

that an army was arriving through the Montmartre sewer, that the

dragoons were about to force the barriers. It was suggested to take up

the street pavements, to carry the paving-stones to the top floors of

the houses, in order to hurl them upon the tyrant's satellites: every

one set to work. In the midst of this turmoil M. Necker was ordered

to resign. The new ministry consisted of M. de Breteuil[315], La

Galaizière, the Maréchal de Broglie[316], La Vauguyon, La Porte[317]

and Foullon[318]. These replaced Messieurs de Montmorin[319], de La

Luzerne[320], de Saint-Priest[321] and de Nivernais[322].

A Breton poet, newly landed, had asked me to take him to Versailles.

There are people who will go to see gardens and fountains amid the

downfall of empires: scribblers especially possess this faculty of

isolating themselves in their hobby during the course of the greatest

events; with them, their phrase or their strophe fills the place of

everything.

I took my Pindar to the gallery at Versailles at mass-time. The

Œil-de-Boeuf was radiant: M. Necker's dismissal had raised the

spirits of all; they felt sure of victory: possibly Sanson[323] and

Simon[324] were among the crowd, witnessing the delight of the Royal

Family.

[Sidenote: Marie Antoinette.]

The Queen passed by with her two children; their fair hair appeared

to be waiting for crowns: Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême[325], aged

eleven, drew all eyes through a virginal pride; beautiful through

nobility of birth and maidenly innocence, she seemed to say, like

Corneille's orange-blossom in the _Guirlande de Julie_:

J'ai la pompe de ma naissance[326].

[Illustration: Marie Antoinette.]

The little Dauphin[327] walked under his sister's protection, and M.

Du Touchet followed his pupil; he noticed me, and obligingly called

the Queen's attention to me. Casting a smiling look in my direction,

she gave me that gracious bow which she had already made me on the

day of my presentation. I shall never forget that look, so soon to be

extinguished. Marie Antoinette, when she smiled, outlined so clearly

the shape of her mouth, that the recollection of that smile (O horror!)

enabled me to recognize the jaw-bone of the daughter of kings when the

head of the unhappy woman was discovered in the exhumations of 1815.

The counter-stroke to the blow struck at Versailles resounded in Paris.

On my return I came upon a crowd hastening along and carrying the busts

of M. Necker and of M. le Duc d'Orléans[328], covered with crape. They

cried, "Long live Necker! Long live the Duc d'Orléans!" and among those

cries was heard one bolder and more unforeseen:

"Long live Louis XVII.!"

Long live the child whose very name would have been forgotten in the

funeral inscription of his family, if I had not recalled it to the

memory of the House of Peers[329]! Had Louis XVI. abdicated, Louis

XVII. been placed upon the throne, M. le Duc d'Orléans declared Regent,

what would have happened?

On the Place Louis XV., the Prince de Lambesc[330], at the head of the

"Royal German" regiment, drove back the crowd into the gardens of the

Tuileries and wounded an old man: suddenly the tocsin sounded. The

cutlers' shops were broken into, and thirty thousand muskets taken

from the Invalides. The people armed themselves with pikes, cudgels,

pitchforks, sabres, pistols; they sacked Saint-Lazare, burnt down the

barriers. The electors of Paris took in hand the government of the

Capital, and in a night sixty thousand citizens were organized, armed,

equipped into National Guards.

On the 14th of July came the fall of the Bastille. I was present, as

a spectator, at this assault against a few pensioners and a timid

governor: if the gates had been kept closed, the mob could never

have entered the fortress. I saw two or three guns fired, not by the

pensioners, but by French Guards who had climbed to the towers.

De Launey[331] was torn from his hiding-place, and after undergoing

a thousand outrages, was struck down on the steps of the Hôtel de

Ville; Flesselles[332], the provost of the merchants, had his brains

blown out by a pistol-shot: this was the spectacle which heartless

enthusiasts thought so fine. In the midst of these murders, the people

gave themselves up to orgies, as in the troubles in Rome under Otho and

Vitellius. "The victors of the Bastille," happy drunkards, declared

conquerors by pot-house votes, were driven about in hackney-coaches;

prostitutes and sans-culottes commenced to reign and escorted them.

The passers-by uncovered, with the respect born of fear, before those

heroes, some of whom died of fatigue amidst their triumph. The keys of

the Bastille multiplied; they were sent to all the important simpletons

in the four quarters of the world. How often have I missed my fortune!

If I, a spectator, had inscribed my name on the list of the victors, I

should be in receipt of a pension today.

The experts hurried to assist at the _post-mortem_ examination of

the Bastille. Temporary cafés were established under tents; people

hastened thither as to the fair at Saint-Germain or to Longchamp;

numbers of carriages drove slowly past, or stopped at the foot of the

towers, whence the stones were being hurled down amid whirlwinds of

dust. Elegantly-dressed women and fashionable young men stood upon

different points of the Gothic rubbish, and mingled with the half-naked

workmen engaged in demolishing the walls amid the acclamations of the

crowd. At this meeting-place were to be seen the most famous orators,

the best-known men of letters, the most celebrated painters, the most

renowned actors and actresses, the most popular dancers, the most

illustrious foreigners, the nobles of the Court and the ambassadors of

Europe: old France had come there to end, new France to commence, its

existence.

No event, however wretched or hateful in itself, should be treated

lightly when its circumstances are serious, or when it marks an epoch:

what should have been seen in the capture of the Bastille (and what

was not then seen) was, not the violent act of the emancipation of a

people, but the emancipation itself which resulted from that act.

[Sidenote: The fall of the Bastille.]

Men admired what they ought to condemn, the accident, and did not seek

to discover in the future the accomplishment of a peopled destiny,

the changes in morals, ideas, political power, a renovation of the

human race, of which the capture of the Bastille, like a blood-stained

jubilee, inaugurated the era. Brutal anger wrought ruins, and beneath

that anger was concealed the intelligence which laid among those ruins

the foundations of the new edifice.

But the nation, deceived as to the grandeur of the material fact, was

not deceived as to the grandeur of the moral fact: in the eyes of the

nation, the Bastille was the trophy of its servitude, and seemed to

be erected at the entrance to Paris, opposite the sixteen pillars of

Montfaucon[333], as the gibbet of its liberties[334]. In demolishing a

State fortress, the people considered that it was breaking the military

yoke, and made a tacit engagement to take the place of the army which

it was disbanding: we know what prodigies were wrought by the people

turned soldier.

*

Awakened by the sound of the fall of the Bastille, as though by the

premonitory sound of the fall of the throne, Versailles had lapsed

from the heights of self-confidence to the depths of despondency. The

King hurried to the National Assembly, and delivered a speech from the

president's chair; he declared that an order had been given for the

withdrawal of the troops, and returned to his palace amid a shower of

benedictions. A vain parade! Parties do not believe in the conversion

of the opposing parties: the liberty which capitulates, or the power

which degrades itself, receives no mercy from its foes.

Eighty deputies set out from Versailles to announce the making of

peace to the Capital; illuminations followed. M. de La Fayette[335]

was made Commandant of the National Guard, M. Bailly[336], Mayor of

Paris: I never knew the poor but respectable scholar, save through his

misfortunes. Revolutions possess men for each of their several periods;

some follow these revolutions to their finish, others commence but do

not complete them.

A general dispersal ensued; the courtiers left for Bâle, Lausanne,

Luxemburg, and Brussels. Madame de Polignac[337] in her flight met

M. Necker returning. The Comte d'Artois, his sons[338], the three

Condés[339] emigrated, drawing after them the higher clergy and a

portion of the nobility. The officers of the army, threatened by their

mutinous soldiers, yielded to the torrent which drifted them down

its stream. Louis XVI. alone remained behind to face the nation with

his two children and a few women: the Queen, "Mesdames[340]," and

Madame Élisabeth[341]. "Monsieur[342]," who stayed until the flight

to Varennes, was of no great assistance to his brother: although, by

declaring himself in the Assembly of Notables in favour of the vote

by heads, he had decided the fate of the Revolution, the Revolution

distrusted him; he, Monsieur, disliked the King, did not understand

the Queen, and was not loved by them.

Louis XVI. went to the Hôtel de Ville on the 17th: a hundred thousand

men, armed like the monks of the League, received him. He was harangued

by Messrs. Bailly, Moreau de Saint-Méry[343], and Lally-Tolendal[344],

all of whom wept: the last has remained subject to tears. The King

broke down in his turn; he fixed an enormous tricolour cockade on his

hat; he was then and there declared to be "an honest man, Father of the

French, King of a free people," while the said people was preparing,

by virtue of its liberty, to lay low the head of that honest man, its

father and its King.

[Sidenote: First revolutionary horrors.]

A few days after this reconciliation, I was at the windows of my

lodgings with my sisters and some Bretons; we heard cries of "Shut the

doors, shut the doors!" A troop of tatterdemalions approached from one

end of the street; from the midst of this troop rose two standards

which we could not see clearly at that distance. As they came nearer,

we distinguished two dishevelled and disfigured heads, which the

forerunners of Marat[345] were carrying, each at the end of a pike:

they were the heads of Messrs. Foullon and Bertier[346]. The others all

drew back from the windows; I remained. The assassins stopped in front

of me, stretched the pikes towards me, singing, capering, jumping up in

order to bring the pale effigies nearer to my face. One eye in one of

these heads had started from its socket, and fell upon the dead man's

lurid face; the pike projected through the open mouth, the teeth of

which bit upon the iron.

"Brigands!" I cried, filled with indignation which I was unable to

contain. "Is that how you understand liberty?"

Had I had a gun, I should have fired at those wretches as at a pack

of wolves. They shouted and yelled; they beat long at the doors of

the gate-way, in the hope of breaking them down and adding my head

to those of their victims. My sisters fainted; the poltroons of the

lodging-house overwhelmed me with reproaches. The murderers, who

were being pursued, had not time to break into the house, and passed

on. Those heads, and others which I saw soon afterwards, changed my

political tendencies; I held the banquets of cannibals in abhorrence,

and the idea of leaving France for some distant country began to take

root in my mind.

*

Recalled to office on the 25th of July, installed and received with

festivities, M. Necker, the third successor, after Calonne and

Taboureau[347], of Turgot[348], was soon left behind by events, and

lapsed into unpopularity. It is one of the singular facts of the

time that so serious a person should have been raised to the post of

minister through the tact of a man noted for such mediocrity and levity

as the Marquis de Pezay[349]. The _Compte rendu_[350], which replaced

in France the system of taxation by that of loans, stirred people's

ideas: women talked of receipts and expenditure; for the first time one

saw, or thought one saw, something in the mechanism of figures. These

calculations, painted in colours laid on _à la Thomas_[351], had first

established the reputation of the director-general of finance. The

banker was a clever accountant, but a resourceless economist; a noble

but turgid writer; an honest man, but devoid of the loftier virtues.

He was like the character which speaks the prologue in a classical

play, and which disappears at the rise of the curtain, after explaining

the piece to the audience. M. Necker was the father of Madame de

Staël[352]: his vanity hardly permitted him to believe that his true

title to the recollection of posterity lay in the fame achieved by his

daughter.

The monarchy was demolished, in imitation of the Bastille, at the

evening sitting of the National Assembly on the 4th of August. They

who, from hatred of the past, decry the nobility to this day, forget

that it was a member of that body, the Vicomte de Noailles[353],

supported by the Duc d'Aiguillon[354] and Matthieu de Montmorency[355],

who upset the edifice which was the object of the revolutionary

onslaughts. Upon the motion of the feudal delegate were abolished all

feudal rights: rights of hunting and preserving feathered and ground

game, tithes and champerty, the privileges of the orders, of the towns

and provinces, personal servitude, manorial jurisdiction, purchase of

offices. The severest blows struck against the ancient constitution

of the State were delivered by noblemen. The patricians began the

Revolution, the plebeians completed it: just as old France owed her

glory to the French nobility, even so does young France owe to it her

liberty, if liberty there be for France.

[Sidenote: "Ô Richard! Ô mon Roi!"]

The troops encamped around Paris had been sent away, and by one of

those contradictory counsels which vexed the will of the King, the

Flanders Regiment was summoned to Versailles. The Bodyguards invited

the officers of that regiment to dinner[356]; heads grew excited; the

Queen appeared in the middle of the banquet, with the Dauphin; toasts

were drunk to the health of the Royal Family; the King came in his

turn; the military band played the touching and favourite air, "_Ô

Richard! ô mon roi[357]!_" No sooner was this news spread through

Paris, than it was seized upon by the opposite opinion; people cried

that Louis was refusing his sanction to the Declaration of Rights with

the intention of escaping to Metz with the Comte d'Estaing[358]. Marat

propagated this rumour: he was already writing the _Ami du peuple_[359].

The 5th of October arrived. I did not witness the events of that day.

The accounts of what had occurred reached the Capital early on the 6th.

We were told at the same time to expect a visit from the King. I was as

bold in public places as I was timid in drawing-rooms: I felt myself

made for solitude or the forum. I hastened to the Champs-Élysées:

first appeared guns, upon which harpies, thieves' doxies, women of

the town rode astride, uttering the most obscene speeches, making the

most filthy gestures. Next, surrounded by a horde of people of every

age and sex, marched on foot the Bodyguards, who had exchanged hats,

swords, and bandoliers with the National Guards: each of their horses

carried two or three fish-fags, dirty bacchantes, drunk and indecently

clad. After them came the deputation from the National Assembly; the

royal carriages followed, rolling in the dusty darkness of a forest of

pikes and bayonets. Tattered rag-men, butchers with their blood-stained

aprons hanging from their thighs, their bare knives from their belts,

their shirtsleeves turned up, walked beside the carriage-doors; other

sinister guards had climbed upon the roof; others hung on to the

foot-board, lolled upon the box. They fired muskets and pistols; they

cried:

"Here are the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!"

By way of oriflamme, they carried before the descendant of St. Louis,

in mid-air, upraised on Swiss halberts, the heads of two Bodyguards,

powdered and curled by a Sèvres hair-dresser.

[Sidenote: The King brought to Paris.]

Bailly the astronomer told Louis XVI. at the Hôtel de Ville that the

"humane, respectful and faithful" people had "conquered" its King, and

the King on his side, "greatly touched and greatly pleased," declared

that he had come to Paris "of his free will:" unworthy insincerities

pertaining to the violence and fear which at that time dishonoured

all men and all parties. Louis XVI. was not insincere: he was weak;

weakness is not an insincerity, but it takes its place and fulfills its

functions: the respect with which the virtues and misfortunes of the

sainted and martyred King must needs inspire us render any expression

of human judgment almost sacrilegious.

*

The deputies left Versailles and held their first sitting on the 19th

of October in one of the halls of the archbishop's palace. On the 9th

of November they moved into the Riding-hall, near the Tuileries. The

remainder of the year 1789 witnessed the decrees which despoiled the

clergy, destroyed the old magistracy, and created the _assignats_[360];

the resolution of the Commune of Paris in favour of the first committee

of research; and the order of the judges for the prosecution of the

Marquis de Favras[361].

The Constituent Assembly, in spite of all with which it can be

reproached, remains nevertheless the most illustrious popular

assemblage that has ever appeared among the nations of the world, both

because of the magnitude of its transactions' and the immensity of

their results. There is no political question, however lofty, which it

did not discuss and suitably solve. What would it not have been, had it

kept to the _cahiers_[362] of the States-General and not endeavoured

to go beyond them! All that human experience and intelligence had

conceived, discovered and elaborated during three centuries is to be

found in these instructions. The various abuses of the old monarchy

are there pointed out and remedies proposed; every kind of liberty

is claimed, even the liberty of the press; every form of improvement

demanded for industries, manufactures, commerce, public roads, the

army, taxation, finance, the schools, public education, and the rest.

We have passed across abysses of crime and accumulations of glory to

no profit; the Republic and the Empire have served no purpose: the

Empire merely regulated the brute force of the arms which the Republic

had set in motion; it has left us centralization, a vigorous form of

administration which I consider an evil, but which alone, perhaps, was

able to replace the local systems of administration at a time when

these were destroyed, and when anarchy combined with ignorance filled

all men's heads. With that exception, we have not moved a step forward

since the Constituent Assembly: its labours are like those of the great

physician of antiquity, which at the same time extended and settled

the boundaries of science. Let us speak of some of the members of this

Assembly, and in particular of Mirabeau, in whom they are all summed

up, by whom they are all governed.

*

Connected, thanks to the disorders and the chances of his life, with

the greatest events and with the lives of malefactors, ravishers, and

adventurers, Mirabeau, the tribune of the aristocracy, the deputy of

the democracy, had in his composition something of Gracchus and Don

Juan, of Catiline and Guzman de Alfarache, of the Cardinal de Richelieu

and the Cardinal de Retz, of the _roué_ of the Regency and the savage

of the Revolution: moreover he had something of the Mirabeaus, the

exiled Florentine family, which retained a trace of those armed palaces

and of those great factionists celebrated by Dante; the naturalized

French family, in which the republican spirit of the Italian

middle-ages and the feudal spirit of our own middle-ages were united in

a succession of uncommon men.

Mirabeau's ugliness, laid on over the substratum of beauty special to

his race, produced a sort of powerful figure from the "Last Judgment"

of Michael Angelo, the fellow-countryman of the Arrighettis[363].

The scars dug into the orator's face by the small-pox had rather the

semblance of gaps left by the fire. Nature seemed to have moulded his

head for empire or the gallows, and to have hewn his arms to clasp a

nation or carry off a woman. When he shook his mane as he looked at the

mob, he stopped it; when he raised his paw and showed his claws, the

plebs ran furiously. I have seen him in the tribune, amid the awful

disorder of a sitting, sombre, ugly and motionless: he reminded one

of Milton's Chaos, shapeless and impassive in the centre of his own

confusion.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Mirabeau.]

Mirabeau took after his father[364] and his uncle[365], both of whom,

like Saint-Simon[366], wrote, off-hand, pages that became immortal.

Speeches were written for him to deliver from the tribune: he took

from them what his mind was able to amalgamate with its own substance.

If he adopted them in their entirety, he delivered them badly; his

hearers perceived that they were not his own, through words which he

inserted at random and which betrayed him. He derived his energy from

his vices; those vices did not spring from a chilly temperament, but

were supported by deep, burning, tempestuous passions. Cynicism of

manners, by annihilating the moral sense, brings back into society a

sort of barbarians; these barbarians of civilisation, while equipped

for destruction, like the Goths, have not their power of creating: the

latter were the enormous children of a virgin nature, the former are

the monstrous abortions of a nature that is depraved.