two hundred years ago; airy, in great suites of rooms, with the
windows lighting them from either side. The ground falls away from
before it in a park with tall trees forming a sweep of descending
lawn, and is faced by the enclosing hills, where the trees hide
all but the summit of a long, arched aqueduct, which furnished the
fountains of the king’s palace. The west illumines that slope at
evening; the summer sun sets behind the arches of that old, high
aqueduct on its ridges of the hills, and far away beyond, miles away,
are the farther hills, which are the threshold of the Vexin; while to
the right, to the northwards, lies mistedly the plain of the Seine.
In this house, in the very heart of the eighteenth century, and in
the crisis of its fate, Louis, the king of France, the fifteenth of
that name, sat waiting by the fire; for it was autumn, and they had
brought in chestnut logs from the woods and lit them.
The coach stood outside the glass-roofed porch, having just brought
its master--for he had come suddenly, capriciously, without warning,
as was his habit in these last years--and the Pompadour was within.
He sat there waiting for her, putting out his hands in a simple
gesture towards the fire, unwatched, alone; his fine deep eyes were
full of mood and reverie, and also of the beginnings of despair; but
he had come for companionship.
The brief two years of passion, the three years of intimacy, had
passed, but something more enduring remained in that strange soul
which could not tear itself away from any roots, and yet could not
act: full of energy within, of emotion, even of desire; but lacking
the strength to pierce that shell which cursedly fenced it from the
outside world. There he sat, waiting for the Pompadour, and still
putting out his hands to the warmth of the fire after the damp
coldness of that autumn drive.
In the vestibule without, four gentlemen whispered; and in the far
staircases of the place a discreet servant had brought the message
to his friend.
Before that fire, less lonely for his loneliness, the last of the
undisturbed kings, the last secure king of that tremendous line,
communed with his own mind.
It was not a communion of despair, though despair was creeping in
to the outer parts of his soul; it was a communion of hopeless
fatigue--not fatigue as yet of the body, but an impossible fatigue of
the soul; his body was still strong; his soul could still perfectly
use that instrument--yet there was nothing left; he had tried all
things. He had discovered in childhood how this half-divine position
cut him off from men. He had hated, he had accepted, he had used
his isolation; he had tried to be two men--and the end of that is
destruction. He had tried to be what all his duty should make him,
and yet to be a man surrounded by habits and by a domestic air. Under
the twin effort he had fallen to be a man entirely alone, yet with
certain friends; yet with one friend--no longer a lover, but notedly
a friend.
The restlessness which came of his unhappy mood stirred him as he
thus sat alone. He swung up suddenly from his chair, turned round,
peered here and there at ornaments in the room before him, looked
closely at a piece of Chinese work upon a shelf, thought it odd, yet
discovered at once its genius; then strolled to the long window upon
his right, and looked with eyes too full of reminiscence towards the
aqueduct and the wooded hill. The autumn evening was reddening, but
there was sun behind the clouds, and, far on the horizon, a shaft
of light against which St. Germains stood delicately.... All his
life had run in that little groove of one countryside--the Parisis.
He had lost power to feel other things, and yet he remembered one
or two longer drives, and he smiled as he thought of the noise, the
peril, the wind, the acclamations of Fontenoy, and the repose of that
battle-evening after victory.
It was more than four years gone; he was in the fifth year from that
great day. But five years seems long in what is still the active
middle of life. Too soon was he to know how five years would race by
in the degradation of sense, when the later years of a man have led
him into a closed labyrinth of lust.
As he still stood looking to the north through the window across that
afternoon autumn air, with the majesty of the high trees framing his
landscape, he heard a step he thought he knew. His attitude changed.
He started round. It died away again. She was long in coming!
He felt the chill of his place, and, sensitive to every slight
impression of the body, long steeped in immediate enjoyment of
every detail of luxury, he moved at once instinctively back to that
chair before the fire and sat him down again; but this time leaning
backwards, his arms on the arms of the gilded thing that supported
him, and a deeper reverie in his eyes.
The chestnut logs had caught; they made a murmuring which effaced
time and were a sort of lullaby. For some few moments he did not know
that he was waiting for a step and a voice, though they were those
of a friend. For some few moments he did but dream, and there passed
before his mind certain odd convictions which inhabited it, and
certain common terrors; both of these stood against a background of
disappointment and of nothingness.... None of his line could be lost
... none of his line could be lost.... St. Louis had baptized them
all into a sort of security.... If only the poor were not oppressed,
if only he were always master of the rich, and a true king, his soul
would be at last secure.... Nor was he too much to blame. These
awful and remote dignities of kingship must be counterweighted by
something human; it was a crying need; and affection, though passing,
was still affection.... There was no gallery of faces in his mind ...
he had been good to all these women, and would be good to all to come.
But there had now come upon him friendship. Though the particular
love had passed and all its habits, friendship remained; and
friendship, even to a man so jaded, was a profound thing.
Even as he thus mused he heard the step which was unmistakable, and
a particular voice greeting his gentlemen without salutations in the
vestibule. That charming voice answered their respect without any
insolence and yet with a certain frankness which was properly bred of
a great, a thoroughly exalted place now long enjoyed. Then the tall
white-and-gilt door was opened--one leaf of it--by a hand delicate
and poised, shut at once, and he took her hands.
Now at last he was at home, and for some few minutes the intolerable
tedium, the inexorable weight of what life had come to be for him,
would be lifted; the voice was enough for that, and the gestures,
and the more than kindness of the face; the sympathy in everything
of the senses, and common memories apparently unregretted, and
permitting her apparently (he did not deceive himself, he believed
it, though to her it was bitter enough), a powerful abandonment of
the past.
She had all that remains of youth in the beginning of her maturity,
which endeared her the more to him, and an acquiescence in this new
relation, in this frank friendship, which yet again endeared her to
him. Yes ... he was sure ... affection was a stronger motive with her
than the mere desire to retain a power in great affairs, though this
she also loved.
That fresh, that musical, that companionable voice soothed him,
supported him, and nourished him; he was steeped in home.
So those two sat together before that fire, using little names they
had used for so many years; he receiving what he had never known
with any other--I mean the maternity and the sisterhood of women,
so strongly reinforced by recently remembered, recently practised
love. She alone could ask him, without his first speaking, whether
he would not remain. (In the kitchens towards the _Ménage_ what
courses had she not prepared!) But the Furies were upon him again,
the cold Furies of the body and of the soul, the Furies of exhausted
passions, which led to no end, the Furies of the flesh. He could not
rest; he rose again. They had been together twenty minutes. It was
enough for him, and he could not think of her save as in relation to
himself. Yet was this man not selfish, only cursed; but this curse
could not now be lifted. He might once have conjured it away, not so
long ago--it was now too late.
The gentlemen in the vestibule drew themselves up as they heard his
step, not stiffly, but with just that rectitude which marked the
obeisance of great names to their master, and he and she went out,
talking almost gaily, to the doors of the coach. He gave her an
appointment, not for the morrow, for he had public business that he
hated, but for the morrow after, and at Versailles. He needed her
advice with the envoys, and she must meet these foreigners. Whereat
they smiled at each other. Then went he into his coach, and his
gentlemen with him. They drove up to the great iron gates before this
little palace; they turned to the right along the road to Versailles.
She went about her business in the house; she could not help but
listen with a part of her mind, strangely detached though it were, to
the last clatter of the horses beyond the wall; and neither he nor
she understood that the monarchy had been wasted, lost, thrown away.
THE THREE PLACES: FONTAINEBLEAU, MADRID, SARATOGA
(_October 16, 1777_)
The 16th of October is a date of some import in French annals. On
that day Marie Antoinette was killed before her Tuileries gardens.
On that day was Wattignies won: “The chief feat of arms of the
Republic.” On that day also--years before--were done, in three widely
distance places, four very different acts; if we see these acts,
first each separate, then all combined, they show us the magnitude
and the irony of our lives. Sharply do these four acts in these three
places illuminate the story of France and of the world.
* * * * *
For now two years the American colonies of England had been in
organized rebellion. The lingering of that war, its distance, its
varied and (in the eyes of Europe) petty episodes, had arrested
but not determined opinion. The enemies of England had watched it
at first with hope, then with anxiety, and at last with tedium. It
dragged out; its issue became more and more clear. The rebels all
together made up not half the colonists. Their active forces were but
a small fraction of the total manhood. Their failure was foredoomed.
The French monarchy (the great but increasingly embarrassed
counterweight to the growing power of London) had missed its chance
to strike. The issue was now certain: the colonies (already secured
through the defeat of the French before Quebec but a few years ago)
would now fall back to the English crown. No solid judgment could
doubt that. The drama was ending.
The very young King of France--large, lethargic, slow to comprehend
and slower to decide--had earned (over and above the effect of such
disabilities) the contempt of his immediate servants. It was not for
nothing that Louis XVI. was ponderous with German blood. To all this
was added a public negligence, for he had (and it was said, could
have) no heir. His young queen had entered that road of abrupt,
nervous dissipation, had sown that undeserved enmity, which together
would lead on to such a close. The whole air of the Court already
threatened. The great strains were at work beneath the even ritual
and weighted grandeur of what still governed the nation: the brick
behind the encrusted marble was giving way.
The end approached; but, before it came, an accident--a side
effect--was to arise. It seemed but a divergence at the time. It
proved itself, in its conclusion, something almost as large as the
revolution itself.
* * * * *
It was Thursday, the 16th of October, in the palace of Fontainebleau.
The Court of France had withdrawn thither for the autumn’s hunting.
Its concern was with its own splendour and with its innumerable
personal dramas. No large affair was toward.
The season was benignant, the woods were still gorgeous, the forest
beyond the palace was full of fruition and repose; something of a
late summer still lingered.
There had been hunting in the rides between the trees that day, but
long before sunset the most tardy of the followers had returned,
their mud upon them. Evening had come, the horses were stabled, the
day’s work was long over. The magnificence of the public banquet was
extinguished; even the eternal card-playing had tired itself out, and
the silence had come. In their distant rooms two separate men began
to work alone: each to think in silence before he put pen to paper.
One was Vergennes, the other Goltz.
Vergennes, Foreign Minister to the King of France, a man of sixty,
tried, careful, covered his face with his hand as he sat and wove
within his mind. His every energy had been bent to the undoing of
the war which had lost Canada--and much more. He sought an issue
and he found none. There had been a moment.... There had been a
moment.... Best when the formal declaration of independence was
known in Europe: recoverable that summer when the ships with the
American envoys on board had been seen from the British coast. But
the moment had passed.... He saw no issue. He considered the play of
the forces in Europe. He considered the decision of his master, the
king. He saw, as in a picture, the fleets and their balanced powers,
the prestige, the promptitude of the British admirals. He felt, like
the memory of a voice, the hesitation of any king to help rebels in
arms. He remembered the way in which the Spanish Court (Bourbons
also) had failed them. He feared it would fail them still. Spain
would not move. He stirred a moment, as though to rise and seek some
paper in a drawer. He lifted his hand from his eyes and blinked at
the candlelight. Then he sank back again. Of what purport could it
be to find the precise words? His one ally, the Spanish Court, had
failed him and would fail him. Perhaps they were right. The American
colonies could now claim no friends. Their sovereign was too strong,
and, after all, his rule was legitimate. The British would make good
at last.
All such meditation done, the man changed his place, pulled his chair
up towards the desk, settled his papers, and set him down to write.
It was more than deep night. For all the fast shut windows and heavy
curtains, one could smell the early morning. There was no sound in
the vast house. All slept (he thought) save him. In such a silence
and such a darkness he put down his judgment--that the Ministers of
George III. now thought themselves independent of the world; that
while it was true that the two Bourbon Courts must go warily, yet had
he worked hard and felt broken hearted. He paused a moment in his
writing, then set down, to guide himself, what was true enough, “He
had no wish for war.... But neither had he any wish for humiliation.
But what should he do if the triumphant British Government demanded
of him that he should treat the Americans as outlaws and as
pirates?” It was an inconclusive jumble: no more than the fixing of
his mind by repetition of what he had written publicly that day. Not
often do men of such powers leave work of such sort incomplete. But
he left it thus; summoned his servant, who had fallen asleep in the
room without, and himself went through the great doors to the inner
room to sleep.
In that same night, in another room, far more simply furnished, the
envoy of the Prussian king--Goltz--entered, in his precise idiom
and hand, another conclusion, which showed how all minds at that
instant worked together. He wrote down that the French had had their
opportunity and had lost it, and that George III. was now secure in
the mastery of the two worlds.
In Madrid, on that same night, Florida Blanca wrote for his master
also. He drafted advice, and made a memorandum of the advice he had
drafted. It was advice to his colleague of the Court of France.
It was a judgment of the King of Spain for his brother Bourbon of
France. There was but one thing to be done--regrettable, no doubt,
but necessary. Perhaps there had been a chance, but the chance was
lost. The immediate, the practical, unquestioned concern of any sane
man now was to walk very carefully where Britain was concerned.
Everything must be forgone which could even raise complaint from
St. James’s, for said he to himself, as he rose from this brief
exercise and made also himself for his own chamber: “The thing is now
settled and history cannot be re-written. It would have been better
otherwise, no doubt, but the American Colonies are destined to be
British Colonies again, and for ever. All that talk I have heard
young men indulge in, of a new State beyond the Atlantic, is young
men’s talk.”
At that phrase he smiled, and in his turn summoned his servants and
went to his repose.
* * * * *
But in the woods above the Hudson Valley, on the heights of Saratoga,
on that same Thursday, the 16th of October, 1777, a lost body of
only four thousand effectives all told, under the British general
Burgoyne, with its guns (not three dozen left), had completed its
surrender to the colonial levies. And in much those same hours of
which I speak, those European midnight hours and hours of the early
morning, the late evening of the West had seen this small thing
quite completed. A little force, such a force as to-day we might
almost put upon a couple of transports, had laid down its arms to an
uncertain gathering of irregulars.
And what a consequence!
Some three weeks later a rumour was abroad, no one knew why it
came, or how. Another week and men asked why it was that Ministers
in England said nothing of the Hudson, and spoke only of successes
elsewhere. Moved by we know not what instinct, Vergennes sat him
down at last and wrote a note insisting that the new State should be
recognized.
It was the 4th of December. Upon the very morrow the full news was
known. Upon the 6th the young king--Heaven knows with what hesitation
and with what future regrets--put, in his large round hand, at the
foot of that document, “Approved.” Upon the 8th Franklin and his
companions, sitting at Passy, wrote out and signed their acceptance
of the French Alliance.
THE END OF CHATEAUBRIAND
(_November 27, 1843–July 18, 1848_)
Chateaubriand was in England. He was at 35 Berkeley Square--a very
old man (he was in his seventy-fifth year), and nearer the tomb
than he knew. His legs, very thin and feeble, supported him ill.
His hands, gouty and knotted, trembled a little. Even his fine eyes
had lost much of their brilliance. He stooped in his slow walk, but
he was supported by pride. He had determined to return to England
where, fifty years before, in the eagerness of his young manhood, he
had first loved. For of all his unstable, self-reflecting, unrooted
adventures in those affairs, two only left something permanent with
him--one the parson’s daughter of his youth in Bungay, and the other
the strong friendship of his last hours. He returned to the country
where he had been ambassador and in the height of his fame.
It was the heir of France in exile who had bidden him come, and it
was certainly in loyalty to the throne--to that immemorial line,
to the institution which was the soul of his country, to the
Capetians--that the old man had made the journey. It was not for
memories of Bungay, still less for memories of the Embassy.
It was November--the most lonely month of the year. It was the 27th
of that month. Chateaubriand had already been in London three days.
The young heir of France in exile, the Comte de Chambord, bade him
to that house, giving him for his use all the ground floor (for the
great man dared not face stairs, though he still could move), and
when, the next day, the prince received, he had himself helped and
carried up to the main room, where a crowded mass of curious English,
of loyal or interested French, passed before the prince in exile
and bowed in turn to him. At the back of that crowd the Comte de
Chambord saw, standing with difficulty among the rest in the press,
the figure of the man whom he had brought at such a season overseas.
He moved towards him at once, vigorously and spontaneously; without
care for his own position at the moment; eager to salute the man
whose greatness he sincerely recognized, whose usefulness to the
throne had been a tradition for that younger generation (the prince
was but twenty-three), and whose name was at the moment greater than
any other name in France. He took both his poor gouty hands and said
Chateaubriand must not stand. He put a chair for him. He told him,
without flattery, that he depended upon his presence.
There was no one in that room like him, and Chateaubriand himself
complained how many French had stayed away from fear--he had also
complained, without reason, that official England had shunned the
exile--there was no one in that room, I say, but saw two figures
supreme among them: the exile, who later might, if he would, have
been king; and that old man of the laurels, who knew himself, and was
known by all of them already, to be a sort of immortal--such a pen
had he.
The reception was over, the blaze of candles extinguished, the old
man had been helped back again to his rooms below. He took paper and,
as best he could with his failing fingers, noted the points of what
next day he must dictate--as next day he did--to his last friend.
Next day also that long letter was written and remains to us. It has
a phrase upon the Comte de Chambord, upon Henry V., which is not to
be forgotten:--
“The kings would have done well to have saluted this young ghost of a
time outworn. They would have done well not to insult, as he passed,
a traveller who had nothing to show but a broken sceptre in his hand.
They laughed: they did not see that the world has grown tired of
them, and that time will force them at last to take that same road as
has been taken by the great royal line which protected them all and
lent them a life which fails them now.”
* * * * *
Chateaubriand was in the rue du Bac, in those rooms on the ground
floor where he was to end. The great windows opened upon a town
garden, dark with trees in spite of the light of July.
His friend, Jeanne Françoise Récamier, was awaiting, herself in old
age, ready to join him again.
Everything that he had been, all that had made up himself--his
vivacity and changeableness of love, and tenacious hate--seemed to
have departed, and he lay as though he had already fallen into the
power of death, though his eyes still shone. He heard, but with
difficulty. He spoke hardly at all, and then in but few, murmuring
words. Over his paralysed body they had thrown a coverlet, upon which
his hands lay still. He was waiting for the advent of the friend
whose friendship alone remained to him of life. But she herself, who
had been the most famous of beautiful women as he had been the most
famous of lyrical men, had come also to the term of things; and those
eyes of hers, which had held captive a generation, were now nearly
blind. As he so lay, awaiting her, there returned to his weakened
mind a certain phrase of his own writing not so long before, where he
had spoken of human affection and had said of love that time changes
our hearts as it does our complexion and our years. Nevertheless
there is one exception amid all this infirmity of human things, for
it does come about sometimes that in some strong soul one love lasts
long enough to be transformed into a passionate friendship, to take
on the qualities of duty, and almost those of virtue. Then does
love lose the decadence of our nature and lives on, supported by an
immortal principle.
She to whom--or rather, round whom--those words were written was
brought in, a ghost of the past, as he was a ghost of the past, to
sit by him as he lay there, silent and deafened, on the edge of
death. There could pass very little between them. They had neither of
them the strength to speak at any length: nor she in a voice which he
could well hear, nor he in a voice strong enough to reach her ears.
But her presence was a final consolation.
When she left him after that singular interval of communion and
silence he slept a little, and the next day he knew that his end had
come.