Chapter I

Lucerne--The lion of August 10--M. de Chateaubriand's fowls--Reichenau --A picture by Conder--Letter to M. le duc d'Orléans--A walk in the park of Arenenberg

I have already said that I have no intention of beginning over again my account of my peregrinations through Switzerland. However, I will ask my reader's leave to place before him three small extracts from my _Impressions de Voyage,_ which are indispensable to the course of these Memoirs. They were published in 1834, and concern M. de Chateaubriand, Monseigneur le due d'Orléans and Her Majesty Queen Hortense; they contain my own independent opinions; and some strange light will be shed now and then on the future of the poet. If a statesman had written what I am about to quote, he would have been looked upon as a prophet.

Let us follow the order of my visits to Lucerne, to Reichenau and to Arenenberg, and begin by M. de Chateaubriand.

_A tout seigneur, tout honneur._

"M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND'S FOWLS

"The first news I learned on arriving at the _Hôtel du
Cheval blanc_ was that M. de Chateaubriand was living in
Lucerne. It will be recollected that, after the revolution
of July, our great poet, who had dedicated his pen to the
defence of the fallen dynasty, voluntarily exiled himself,
and did not return to Paris until he was recalled to it by
the arrest of the Duchesse de Berry. He lived at the Hôtel
de l'Aigle. I soon dressed myself with the intention of
going to pay him a call. I did not know him personally: at
Paris I had not dared to present myself, but, out of France,
at Lucerne, isolated as he was, I thought it might be some
pleasure to him to see a compatriot. I therefore boldly
presented myself at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I asked the hôtel
waiter for M. de Chateaubriand. He replied that he had just
gone out to feed his fowls. I made him repeat it, thinking I
had heard wrongly; but he made me the same reply the second
time. I left my name, at the same time asking the favour of
being received the next day.

"Next morning a letter was handed to me from M. de
Chateaubriand, sent the previous evening: it was an
invitation to breakfast at ten o'clock; it was nine then, so
I had no time to lose. I leapt out of bed and dressed. For a
very long time I had wanted to see M. de Chateaubriand; my
admiration for him was the religion of my childhood; he was
the man whose genius had been the first to stray out of the
beaten paths to mark out for our young literature the road
it has since followed; he had alone excited more hatred than
all the cenacula put together; he was the rock against which
the jealous waves, still stirring against us, had beaten in
vain for fifty years; he was the file on which the teeth
were used which had tried to bite us.

"So, when I put foot on the first step of the staircase,
my heart nearly failed me. Entirely unknown, I felt that I
should be at least crushed under such immense superiority;
for at that time the point of comparison was wanting by
which to measure our respective heights, and I had not
resource enough to say, as Stromboli might to Monte Rosa,
'I am only a hill, but I contain a volcano!' When I reached
the landing I stopped.... I believe I should have hesitated
less to knock at the door of a conclave. Perhaps at that
moment M. de Chateaubriand thought I was keeping him waiting
out of politeness, while I dared not go in from feelings
of veneration. Finally, I heard the waiter coming up the
stairs; I could not stay any longer outside the door, so I
knocked. M. de Chateaubriand himself came and opened it;
he must have formed a strange opinion of my manners if he
did not attribute my embarrassment to its true cause. I
stuttered like a country bumpkin; I did not know whether I
ought to go in in front of him or behind. I think that, like
M. Parseval before Napoleon, if he had asked me my name, I
should not have known what to reply. But he did better than
that: he held out his hand to me.

"During breakfast we talked. One after the other he reviewed
all the political questions which were being discussed at
that period, from the tribune to the club, with the lucidity
of a man of genius who went to the bottom of things, and
like a man who estimates principles and interests at their
right value and has no illusions about anything. I was
convinced that M. de Chateaubriand looked upon the party to
which he belonged as henceforth lost, believing that the
whole future rested in a socialistic Republicanism, and
that he remained attached to his cause more because he saw
it was unfortunate than because he thought it good. It is
thus with all great souls: they must devote themselves to
something; when it is not to women, it is to kings; when not
to kings, then to God. I could not resist remarking to M. de
Chateaubriand that his theories, though Royalist in form,
were fundamentally Republican.

"'Does that surprise you?' he said, smiling. 'It surprises
me still more! I have progressed without willing it, like a
rock rolled along by the torrent; and now, behold! I find I
am nearer to you than you are to me!... Have you seen the
Lion of Lucerne?'

"'Not yet.'

"'Well, let us go and see it.... It is the most important
monument in the town. You know upon what occasion it was
erected?'

"'In memory of 10 August.'

"'That was it.'

"'Is it a beautiful thing?'

"'It is better than that: it is a beautiful idea!'

"'There is but one drawback: the blood shed for the monarchy
was bought from a republic, and the dead Swiss Guards were
but the strict payment of a bill of exchange.'

"'That is no less remarkable in a time when there were many
people who let their bills be protested.'

"As will be seen, we differed in our ideas on that point;
that is the misfortune of opinions which are divided into
two opposite principles; every time necessity brings them
together, they understand one another in theory but they
separate over facts.

"We reached the monument, which is situated at some distance
from the town, in General Pfyffer's garden. It is a rock
cut perpendicularly, with its base bathed by a circular
pool; a grotto forty-four feet long by forty-eight feet
high has been hollowed out in the rock, and in this grotto
a young sculptor from Constance, named Ahrorth, has carved
a colossal lion after a plaster model by Thorwaldsen.
Pierced through by a spear, with the broken fragment left
in the wound, the lion is dying, covering with its body
the fleur-de-lis emblazoned shield which it can no longer
defend. Above the grotto are the words, '_Helvetiorum fidei
ac virtuti,'_ and below this inscription the names of
the officers and soldiers who perished on 10 August. The
officers numbered twenty-six and the soldiers seven hundred
and sixty. This monument, moreover, acquired a greater
interest from the fresh revolution which had just taken
place, and from the renewed fidelity displayed by the Swiss.
Yet it was an odd thing! the disabled soldier who watches
over the lion spoke much to us of 10 August but did not say
a word of 29 July. The more recent of the two catastrophes
was that which he had already forgotten. It is quite
simple: 1830 had but driven a king away, 1792 had driven
out royalty. I pointed out to M. de Chateaubriand the names
of those men who had done honour to their signature, and I
asked him which names would be inscribed on the gravestone
of royalty to balance these popular names if a similar
monument were raised in France.

"'Not one!' he replied.

"'Do you really mean that?'

"'Perfectly; the dead do not get themselves killed.'

"The history of the July Revolution lay entirely in those
words: 'Nobility is loyalty's true buckler; so long as she
has worn it on her arm, she has driven back foreign warfare
and smothered civil war; but, from the day when, in anger,
she imprudently breaks it, she is defenceless. Louis XI. had
slain the great vassals; Louis XIII. the grand seigneurs
and Louis XIV. the aristocrats, so that, when Charles X.
called to his aid the d'Armagnacs, the Montmorencys and the
Lauzuns, his voice only called up shades and phantoms.'

"'Now,' said M. de Chateaubriand, 'if you have seen all you
want to see, we will go and feed my fowls.'

"'By the way, that reminds me of something; when I called
yesterday at your hôtel the waiter told me you had gone
out to fulfil that country occupation. Does your scheme of
retirement go so far as make you a farmer?'

"'Why not? A man whose life has been like mine, driven
by caprice, poetry, revolutions and exile over the
four quarters of the globe, will be happy, I think, to
possess--if not a châlet among the mountains (I do not like
the Alps)--a meadow in Normandy or a farm in Brittany. I am
decidedly of opinion that this is the vocation for my old
age.'

"'Allow me to doubt it.... You remember Charles Quint at
Saint-Just; you are not one of the emperors who abdicate
or one of the kings whom people dethrone: you are one of
those princes who die under a canopy and are interred like
Charlemagne, with his feet on a shield, his sword by his
side, a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand.'

"'Take care! it is so long since I have been flattered, and
I am quite capable of letting myself be carried away by it.
Come, let us go and give the chickens their food.'

"Upon my honour, I could have fallen on my knees before
this man, so simple and yet at the same time so great was
he. We went by the bridge of la Cour, which crosses an arm
of the lake; after Rapperssweil's bridge, it is the longest
covered one in Switzerland. We stopped about two-thirds of
the way across, at some distance from a spot covered with
reeds. M. de Chateaubriand drew a piece of bread from his
pocket which he had put there after breakfast, and began to
crumble it in the lake. Soon a dozen water-fowls came out
from a kind of isle formed by the reeds, and began hastily
to fight over the repast prepared for them by the hand
that had written the _Génie du Christianisme, les Martyrs_
and _Le dernier des Abencerrages._ For a long while,
without saying anything, I watched the singular spectacle
of this man leaning over the bridge, his lips curved in
smiles, but with sad, grave eyes. Gradually his occupation
became mechanical, his face assumed an expression of deep
melancholy, his thoughts passed across his broad brow as
clouds across a sky; among them were memories of country,
family and tender friendships, more gloomy than others. I
guessed that this moment was reserved by him wherein to
meditate on France, and I respected his meditation as long
as it lasted. In the end, he made a movement and heaved a
sigh. I went nearer, and he remembered I was there and held
out his hand.

"'But if you regret Paris so much,' I said to him, 'why not
go back to it? Nothing exiles you from it, and everything
calls you back.'

"'What would you have me do?' he replied. 'I was at
Cauterets when the July Revolution took place. I returned to
Paris: I behold one throne in blood and another in the mud,
lawyers drawing up a charter and a king shaking hands with
rag-and-bone men.... It was sad unto death, especially when,
as in my case, one is filled with great traditions of the
monarchy. I went away from it all.'

"'From some words you let drop this morning, I believe you
recognise popular sovereignty?'

"'Yes, there is no doubt it is good from time to time
for royalty to be tempered again at its source, which is
election; but, this time, they knocked off a bough of the
tree, a link of the chain: it was Henri V. they should have
elected and not Louis-Philippe.'

"'You are wishing but a sad wish for the poor child,' I
replied. 'Kings of the name of Henri are unlucky in France:
Henri I was poisoned, Henry II. killed in a tournament,
Henris III. and IV. were assassinated.'

"'Very well, but, at all events, it is better to die by
poison than in exile; it is sooner over and one suffers
less!'

"'But shall you not return to France?'

"'If the Duchesse de Berry, after having committed the
madness of returning to la Vendée, commits the foolishness
of letting herself be captured there, I shall return to
Paris to defend her before her judges, if my advice has not
prevented her from appearing there.'

"'If not?'

"'If not,' pursued M. de Chateaubriand, crumbling up a
second piece of bread, 'I shall continue to feed my birds.'"

Two hours after this conversation, I left Lucerne in a boat rowed by two rowers. Some time afterwards, I was at the Grisons, not far from the little town of Reichenau, whose name awakened in my memory a singular recollection.

During my term in the offices of the Duc d'Orléans I had been for a long time instructed to give tickets to persons desirous of visiting the apartments of the Palais-Royal or of walking in the park at Monceaux. They could see the rooms on Saturdays and walk in the park on Thursdays and Sundays. On the days when the apartments were visited, the duke and duchess and Madame Adélaïde and the rest of the princely family kept themselves to one or two rooms, where they lived in retirement from ten in the morning till four in the evening, and yet it often happened that some inquisitive visitor, whilst the footman was engaged in another direction, would turn a key, half open the door, stretch out his head and plunge into the ducal retreat. The first thing people went to see above everything else was the picture gallery--not that all the pictures were good, far from it, indeed! but there were several which were the cause of talk at the time; these were the battle-pictures by Horace Vernet, four masterpieces, marvellous productions, to which I have already referred--the battles of _Montmirail, Hanau, Jemmapes_ and of _Valmy._ There was one point particularly in the _Battle of Montmirail_ which attracted attention: in the background, under a grove of trees, hidden in the mist, was a horseman trotting on a white horse. Horse and rider between them were only four inches in breadth by two in height, and yet that little white-and-grey spot had been enough to exclude the picture from the Salon of 1821. The microscopic cavalier was, as we said when we were specially occupied with Horace Vernet, no other than the Emperor Napoleon.

When they had looked well at these four battle-pictures, for which they had come on purpose to the Palais-Royal, the footman said, "Messieurs et mesdames, will you come this way, please?" They followed him, and he took the inquisitive ones to a little _genre_ painting, representing a handsome young man in a blue coat and leather breeches, with his eyes raised to heaven, pointing out, to a dozen children who surrounded him, the word _France_ written on a terrestrial globe. This fine youth was the exiled Duc d'Orléans, giving geography and mathematical lessons at the Reichenau College.

I saw that small picture by Couder once again; I was, as I have said, a few miles from Reichenau, and I decided to go and see the room in which the actual King of France had spent one of the most honourable years of his life, earning 5 francs per day. I have often heard it said that, in spite of his sixteen millions from the Civil List, and his Château des Tuileries, perhaps even because of these, he at times would murmur, "O Reichenau! Reichenau!..."

I therefore did those few miles--two or three followed the banks of the Rhine, which is slate colour at this spot and yet blue in Germany--and I reached Reichenau. I wrote the following letter the same day to the Duc d'Orléans, which will be found produced in its entirety in my _Impressions de Voyage_:--

"MONSEIGNEUR,--The date of this letter and the place from
whence it is sent will readily explain the sentiment to
which I am yielding in addressing Your Highness. I am not
speaking to the royal hereditary prince of the crown of
France, of His Majesty King Louis-Philippe, now reigning,
but to the Duc de Chartres, pupil of Henri IV., of the Duc
d'Orléans, teacher at Reichenau. I write to Your Highness
from the very room in which your exiled father taught
arithmetic and geography; or, rather, from that same room,
pressed by the post time, I send to Your Highness the page
I have just torn from my album."

"REICHENAU

"The little Grisons village is in no way remarkable except
for the strange story with which its name is associated.
Towards the end of last century burgomaster Tscharner,
from Coire, had set up a school at Reichenau. They were
looking out in the canton for a teacher in French, when a
young man presented himself to M. Boul, headmaster of the
establishment, bearing a letter of recommendation signed
by bailie Aloys Toost of Zizers. The young man was French,
spoke his mother tongue, English and German, and, besides
these three languages, could teach mathematics, physics and
geography. The find was too marvellous and too rare for
the headmaster of the college to let him escape; besides,
the youth was modest in his claims. M. Boul settled with
him to come at 1400 francs per annum, so the new professor
was immediately installed and entered upon his duties.
This young professor was Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de
Chartres, to-day King of France.

"It was, I admit, with emotion intermingled with pride that,
in this very place, in the room situated in the middle of
the corridor, with its folding door, its flower-painted side
doors, its corner chimney-places, its pictures of Louis XV.
surrounded with gilt arabesques and its decorated ceiling;
it was, I say with keen emotion, that, in this room, where
the Duc de Chartres had taught, I gathered information
concerning the strange vicissitudes of a royal personage
who, not wishing to beg the bread of exile, worthily bought
it with his work.

"One single teacher, a colleague of the Duc d'Orléans, and
a single scholar, one of his pupils, still lived in 1832,
the period at which I visited Reichenau. The teacher was,
the novel-writer Zschokke, and the scholar was burgomaster
Tscharner, son of the man who had founded the school. The
worthy bailie Aloys Toost died in 1827, and was buried at
Zizers, his native village. Now, there remains nothing more
of the college where a future King of France had taught save
the schoolroom we have described and the chapel adjoining
the corridor with its reading-desk and altar surmounted
by a crucifix painted in fresco. The rest of the buildings
have been turned into a kind of villa belonging to Colonel
Pastalluzzi, and this memorial, so honourable for every
Frenchman that it deserves to rank among our national
memorials, threatens to disappear with the generation of
old men who are dying out, were there not living a man of
artistic feeling, who is noble and great, who will not, we
hope, let anything be forgotten which is honourable for
himself and for France. That man is yourself, Monseigneur
Ferdinand d'Orléans, who, having been our schoolfellow, will
also be our king; you who, from the throne which you will
one day ascend, will lay one hand on the old monarchy and
the other on the young republic; will inherit the galleries
which contain pictures of the battles of _Taülebourg,
Fleurus, Bouvines_ and of _Aboukir,_ of _Agincourt_ and
of _Marengo_; you who are ignorant that the fleurs-de-lis
of Louis XIV. are the lance-heads of Clovis; you who know
so well that all the glories of a country are glorious no
matter when they saw birth, or what sun made them flourish;
you, in fact, who by your royal fillet can bind together a
thousand years of memories, and assume the consular dignity
of the lictors who will march in front of you!

"So it will be a delight to you, monseigneur, to recall
the little lonely port, the voyager beaten by the sea of
exile, the sailor driven by the wind of proscription, where
your father found a noble shelter against the tempest; it
will be worthy of you, monseigneur, to give orders that
the hospitable roof shall be again raised for hospitality,
and, on the very site where the old building fell in ruins
shall be erected a new one, destined to receive every
son of exile who shall come, staff of exile in hand, to
knock at its doors as your father came, irrespective of
his opinions and country; whether he be threatened by the
anger of peoples or pursued by the hatred of kings; for,
monseigneur, the future, though serene and blue for France,
which has accomplished its revolutionary work, is big with
storms for the rest of the world! We have sowed the seeds
of liberty so broadcast in our excursions through Europe
that, on all sides, they spring up like corn in May; so well
that it only needs a ray of sunshine to ripen the most
distant harvests.... Throw your glance back over the past,
monseigneur, and then concentrate it upon the present. Have
you ever felt more shaking of thrones, or encountered more
discrowned travellers on the highways? You see, indeed, that
it will be necessary, some day, to found an asylum, were it
but for the sons of kings whose fathers cannot, like yours,
be teachers at Reichenau!"

I wish to return from Reichenau by way of Arenenberg. The comparison of a teacher of mathematics King of France with an exiled Queen of Holland pleases the imagination of poets. Besides, indeed, when quite a child, I had heard much ill spoken of Napoleon and much good of Joséphine! Now what did I see in Queen Hortense but Joséphine's case over again? I persisted, therefore, in seeing Queen Hortense, and any détour, however long, was but nothing compared with that desire. But, since I do not wish these lines to be taken for tardy flattery--I insist on being thought incapable of flattering any one but exiles or dead people--I will write here what I wrote about Queen Hortense in 1832. I copy the following passage from my _Impressions de Voyage_:--

"As the château d'Arenenberg is only a league's distance
from Constance, I was seized by a great desire to pay
my homage at the feet of fallen majesty and to see what
remained of a queen in a woman when fate has torn the crown
from her head, the sceptre from her hand and the robes
from her shoulders; from that queen, moreover, who was
the gracious daughter of Joséphine Beauharnais, sister of
Eugène, and the diamond in Napoleon's crown.

"I had heard so much of her in my youth as a beauteous
and good fairy, most gracious and charitable, from the
daughters to whom she had given a dowry, the mothers whose
children she had redeemed, and the prisoners for whom she
had obtained pardon, that I worshipped her. Add to this, the
remembrance of the romances which my sister sang about the
queen, which were so impressed on my heart by memory that
even now, although it is twenty years since I heard these
lines and music, I could repeat both without forgetting a
word, and I could jot down the music without transposing
a note. These romances about a queen are sung by a queen;
a combination which can only be seen in the _Thousand and
One Nights,_ and which has remained in my mind like a glad
surprise."[1]

I had no letter of introduction to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu; but I hoped that my name was not entirely unknown to her; I had already written at that time _Henri III., Christine, Antony, Richard Darlington, Charles III._ and _La Tour de Nesle._

When I reached Arenenberg, it was too early in the morning to present myself to the queen. I left my card with Madame Parquin, reader to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, and sister of the noted barrister of that name, and I took advantage of a fine storm which had just risen to go for a sail on the lake. On my return, I found an invitation to dinner awaiting me at the hôtel; then a letter from France had found me out there, an act of cleverness which was a great achievement on the part of the Swiss post: it contained the manuscript ode by Victor Hugo on the death of the King of Rome. I went on foot to the queen's residence and read the letter as I went.

All the details of that gracious hospitality which the queen made me accept for three days can be seen in my _Impressions de Voyage._ I merely wish to reproduce here a conversation which revealed an odd profession of faith in the present--if it be borne in mind that the _present_ of that time corresponded with September 1832--and a singular forecast of the future.

"A WALK IN THE PARK AT ARENENBERG

"The queen and I took about a hundred steps in silence. I
was the first to interrupt it.

"'I believe you have something to tell me, Madame la
Comtesse?' I asked.

"'True,' she said, looking at me; 'I wanted to talk to you
of Paris. What news was there when you left it?'

"'Much bloodshed in the streets, many wounded in the
hospitals, too few prisons and too many prisoners.'

"'You saw the 5th and 6th of June?'

"'Yes, madame.'

"'Pardon, I am perhaps going to be inquisitive; but, from
some words which you said yesterday, I believe you are a
Republican.'

"I smiled.

"'You are not mistaken, madame; and yet, thanks to the
sense and to the colour which the papers representing the
party to which I belong and am in sympathy with (though
not with all its methods) have given to that word, before
accepting the qualification which you give me, I will ask
your permission to lay bare my principles before you. To
any other woman such a profession would be absurd; but
you, Madame la Comtesse, as queen, must have heard so many
serious speeches, and, as woman, so many frivolous ones,
that I shall not hesitate to tell you at what point I join
myself to Republican Socialism and where I am at variance
with revolutionary Republicanism.'

"'You are not, then, agreed among yourselves?'

"'We have the same hopes, madame, but the means by which
each one of us wishes to act are different. Some talk of
chopping off heads and dividing properties; these are
ignorant and insane.... You are surprised that I do not
employ a stronger term by which to designate them ... it
is unnecessary: they are neither afraid nor to be feared;
they think themselves strongly in advance and are totally
behind the times; they date from 1793 and we are in 1832.
Louis-Philippe's government makes a show of being in great
fear of them, and would be much vexed if they did not exist;
for their theories are the quiver from whence they derive
their weapons. These are not Republicans, they are believers
in a _commonwealth._ Others there are who forget that France
is the oldest sister among the nations, who do not remember
that her past is rich with traditions, and go searching
about among the constitutions of Switzerland and England
and America for that one which shall be most applicable to
our country. They are dreamers and Utopians: wrapped up
in their cabinet theories, they do not perceive in their
imaginary applications that the constitution of a people can
only last so long; that it is born but of its geographical
situation, that it springs from its nationality and that
it is in unison with its customs. The result is that as no
two people under heaven have the same geographical position
or have identical national characteristics and habits, the
more perfect a constitution is, the more individual it is
and the less, consequently, is it applicable to another
locality than that which gave it birth. These people are not
any longer Republicans but _Republicists._ Others there are
who think that an opinion only means a light blue silk coat,
a large lappelled waistcoat and a flowing tie and pointed
hat: they are the parodists and the brayers. These excite
riots, but take good care to keep out of them; they erect
barricades and leave others to get killed behind them; they
compromise their friends and hide themselves thoroughly as
though they themselves were the compromised. These are not
Republicans, they are _Republiquets_! But there are others,
madame, to whom the honour of France is sacred, and not
to be touched; to whom a promise is a sacred engagement
which they will not suffer to be broken by either king
or people; a noble and immense fraternity which extends
to every country that is suffering, every nation that is
waking up; these have shed their blood in Belgium, Italy and
Poland, and returned to be killed or captured at the Cloître
Saint-Merry: they, madame, are Puritans and martyrs. A day
will come when not only will the captives be released from
prisons but when the bodies of the dead will be looked for
in order to raise tombstones above them. The only wrong they
can be accused of is of having been in advance of their age,
and been born thirty years too soon. These, madame, are the
true Republicans.'

"'I have no need to ask you,' the queen said to me; 'you
belong to that party.'

"'Alas! madame,' I replied, 'I cannot wholly boast of that
honour.... Certainly, all my sympathies are with them; but,
instead of letting myself be carried away by my feelings,
I have appealed to my reason; I want to do for politics
what Faust did for science: go down and touch the bottom. I
was for a year plunged in the depths of the past; I entered
it with instinctive opinion, I left it from reasoned-out
conviction. I saw that the revolution of 1830 had brought
us a step forward, it is true, but that it had simply
led us from the aristocratic monarchy to the bourgeois
monarchy, and this bourgeois monarchy was an era which must
be exhausted before it could arrive at popular magistracy.
Henceforth, madame, without doing anything to bring myself
nearer to the government from which I had parted company,
I have ceased to be an enemy to it; I watch it tranquilly
running its period, and I shall probably see the end of it;
I applaud what good it does, I protest against the evil;
but, at the same time, without either enthusiasm or hatred.
I neither accept nor reject it: I submit; I do not look on
this as good fortune, but I believe it to be a necessity.'

"'But to hear you talk, there will be no chance for it to
change.'

"'No, Madame ... not for long years at least.'

"'Suppose, however, the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, and
that he had made an attempt.'

"'I believe he would have failed.'

"'True, I forgot that, with your Republican opinions,
Napoleon must appear to you a tyrant.'

"'I beg your pardon, madame, I look at it from another point
of view. In my opinion Napoleon was one of those men who
were elected from the beginning of time, and have received
a providential mission from God. One judges such men not
according to their own will-power, which has made them act
as they did, but according to the degree of divine wisdom
which has inspired them; not according to the work they have
done, but according to the result it has produced. When this
mission is accomplished, God recalls them, and they believe
they are dying, but they really go to render their account.'

"'And, according to you, what was the emperor's mission?'

"'One of liberty.'

"'Do you know that others quite different from me will ask
you for proof of your statement?'

"'Even to you will I give it.'

"Proceed! you have no idea how deeply I am interested in all
this!'

"'When Napoleon, or, rather, Bonaparte, appeared before our
fathers, madame, France was emerging from a revolution, not
from a Republic. In one of its fits of political fever it
was flung so much in advance of other nations that it had
disturbed the world's equilibrium. It needed an Alexander to
deal with this Bucephalus, an Androcles with this lion! The
13 Vendémiaire brought them face to face: and the Revolution
was beaten. The kings, who should have recognised a brother
in the cannon of the rue Saint-Honoré, thought they had
an enemy in the dictator of 18 Brumaire; they mistook the
Consul of a Republic in him who was already the head of a
monarchy, and, insane as they were, instead of keeping him
prisoner in a general peace, they made European war upon
him. Then Napoleon rallied round him all the youth, courage
and intellect of France, and spread them abroad over the
world. A reactionist, as far as we were concerned, wherever
he passed among other nations he was in a state of advance,
and flung the seeds of revolution broadcast: Italy, Prussia,
Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Russia herself, turn by
turn, called their sons to the sacred harvest; and he, like
a tired labourer after his day's work, folded his arms and
watched them gathering it in, from the top of his rock at
St. Helena. Then it was that he had a revelation of his
divine mission, and there dropped from his lips a prophecy
of a future Republican Europe.'

"'Do you believe, then, that, if the Duc de Reichstadt had
not died, he would have continued his father's work?'

"'In my opinion, madame, men like Napoleon have neither
fathers nor sons: they are born like meteors in the twilight
of the dawn, and light up the sky from one horizon to the
other as they cross it before they are lost in the twilight
of the night.'

"'What you are saying is not consoling to those of his
family who preserve some hope.'

"'It is as I say, madame; for we have only given him a place
in our heavens on condition that he did not leave any heir
on the earth.'

"'But he bequeathed his sword to his son.'

"'The gift was fatal, madame, and God broke the bequest.'

"'You terrify me, for his son, in turn, bequeathed it to
mine.'

"'It will be heavy for a simple officer of the Swiss
Confederation to bear!'

"'Yes, you are right, for the sword is a sceptre.'

"'Take care lest you go astray, madame! I am, indeed,
afraid that you only live in the deceptive and intoxicating
atmosphere which exiles carry away with them; the times
which continue to march for the rest of the world seem to
stand still to outlaws: they still see men and things as
they left them. Yet men's faces change and so do the aspect
of things; the generation which saw Napoleon pass as he
returned from the isle of Elba is dying out daily, madame,
and that miraculous march is already more than a memory: it
is a historical fact.'

"'So you think it is hopeless for the Napoleon family to
return to France?'

"'If I were king, I would recall it to-morrow.'

"'That is not what I meant.'

"'Otherwise, there is very little chance.'

"'What advice would you give to a member of that family who
should dream of the resurrection of the glory and power of
the Napoleons?'

"'I would counsel him to wake up.'

"'If he persisted in spite of that first advice (which in my
opinion is the best), and asked you for a second piece of
advice?"

"'Then, madame, I would tell him to obtain the cancelling of
his exile, to buy a plot of ground in France and to make use
of the immense popularity of his name to get himself elected
a deputy, to try by his talent to win over the majority of
the Chamber, and to use it to depose Louis-Philippe and
become elected king in his stead.'

"'You think,' said the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, with a
melancholy smile, 'that all other methods would fail?'

"'I am convinced of it.'

"The comtesse sighed. At that moment the breakfast bell rang
and we took our way back to the château, pensive and silent.
The comtesse did not address a single word to me as we
returned, but, when we reached the door, she stopped, and,
looking at me with an indefinable expression of anguish,
said--

"'Oh! I wish my son were here and could have heard what you
have been saying!'"

[Footnote 1: Do not let it be forgotten that these lines were written under Louis-Philippe, at the time when the Bonapartes were exiled.]