Chapter VII: Book II: 75 (2)

The time approached for making my First Communion, when the family used to decide upon the child's future condition. This religious ceremony took the place among young Christians of the assumption of the _toga virilis_ among the Romans. Madame de Chateaubriand had come in order to be present at the First Communion of her son, who, after being united to his God, was about to part from his mother.

My piety seemed to be sincere; I edified the whole college; there was ardor in my eyes; I was so persistent in my fasting as to make my masters uneasy. They feared lest I should drive devotion to excess; their religious enlightenment sought to temper my fervor. My confessor was the superior of the Eudist Seminary, a man of fifty, of stern appearance. Each time that I presented myself at the confessional, he anxiously questioned me. Surprised at the unimportance of my sins, he did not know how to reconcile my distress with the triviality of the secrets I confided to his bosom. The nearer Easter approached, the more pressing did the priest's questions become. "Are you keeping nothing back?" he would ask. I replied, "No, father." "Have you not committed such and such a sin?" "No, father." And it was always: "No, father." He dismissed me doubtfully, sighing, gazing into my very soul, while I left his presence pale and out of face, like a criminal.

[Sidenote: Confession and Absolution.]

I was to receive absolution on the Wednesday in Holy Week. I spent the night of Tuesday in praying and in reading with terror the _Confessions mal faites._ At three o'clock on the Wednesday afternoon, we started for the seminary, accompanied by our parents. All the vain renown that has since attached itself to my name would not have given Madame de Chateaubriand one moment of the pride which she felt, as a Christian and a mother, on beholding her son prepared to participate in the great mystery of religion.

On reaching the church, I prostrated myself before the altar, and lay as though annihilated. When I rose to go to the sacristy, where the superior awaited me, my knees trembled beneath me. I flung myself at the priest's feet; it was only in the most broken accents that I was able to pronounce the _Confiteor._ "Well, have you forgotten nothing?" asked the messenger of Jesus Christ. I remained silent. He began to question me again, and the fatal "No, father," came from my lips. He lapsed into meditation, asked counsel of Him who conferred upon the Apostles the power of binding and loosing souls. Then, making an effort, he prepared to give me absolution.

Had the sky shot a bolt at me, it would have caused me less dread. I cried:

"I have not confessed everything!"

This formidable judge, this deputy of the Sovereign Arbiter, whose visage inspired me with so much fear, became the tenderest of shepherds; he took me in his arms and burst into tears:

"Come, my dear child," said he, "courage!"

I shall never experience such another moment in my life. Had the weight of mountains been lifted from me, I should not have been more relieved: I sobbed with happiness. I venture to say that it was from that day forward that I became an upright man; I felt that I should never outlive a remorse: how great must be the remorse for a crime, when I could suffer so terribly for concealing the little sins of a child! But also how divine is the religion which can thus take hold of our best instincts! What precepts of morality can ever take the place of these Christian institutions?

The first admission made, the rest cost me nothing. My suppressed childish offenses, which would have made the world smile, were weighed in the balance of religion. The superior was very much perplexed; he would have liked to postpone my Communion; but I was about to leave Dol College, soon to enter the Navy. With great perspicacity, he discerned the nature of my proclivities from the very character of my juvenile faults, insignificant though they were; he was the first man to fathom the secret of the possibilities of my life. He divined my future passions; he did not conceal from me what he thought he saw good in me, but he also predicted the evils to come.

"After all," he added, "though time is short for your repentance, you are cleansed of your sins by your courageous, if tardy, confession."

Raising his hand, he pronounced the Absolution. On this second occasion, the fulminating hand showered upon my head only the heavenly dew; I bent my brow to receive it; my feelings partook of the joy of the angels. I rose and threw myself upon the bosom of my mother, who was awaiting me at the foot of the altar. I no longer appeared the same being to my masters and school-fellows; I walked with a light step my head held high, a radiant air, in all the triumph of repentance.

On the next day, which was Holy Thursday, I was admitted to the sublime and touching ceremony which I have vainly endeavored to describe in the _Génie du Christianisme._[119] I might here have felt again my usual little humiliations: my nosegay and my clothes were less fine than those of my companions; but that day everything was of God and for God. I know exactly what Faith means: the Real Presence of the Victim in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar was as evident to me as the presence of my mother by my side. When the Host was laid upon my lips, I felt as though a light had been kindled within me. I trembled with veneration, and the only material thing that occupied my thoughts was the dread of profaning the sacramental bread.

Le pain que je vous propose
Sert aux anges d'aliment,
Dieu lui-même le compose
De la fleur de son froment[120].--RACINE.

I conceived besides the courage of the martyrs; at that moment I could have confessed Christ on the rack or in the midst of the lions.

I delight in recalling these joys which my soul felt but a little while before it became filled with the tribulations of the world. Those who compare these ardours with the transports which I shall presently depict, who see the same heart experiencing, within a space of three or four years, all that is sweetest and most wholesome in innocence and in religion and also all that is most seductive and most baneful in the passions, will choose one of the two forms of joy; they will see in which direction to seek happiness and, above all, peace.

Three weeks after my First Communion, I left Dol College. I retain a pleasant remembrance of this house: our childhood leaves a trace of itself upon places it has beautified by its presence, as a flower communicates a perfume to the objects it has touched. To this day I am affected when I think of the scattering of my first friends and my first masters. The Abbé Leprince was appointed to a living near Rouen, but died soon after; the Abbé Égault received a cure in the Diocese of Rennes; and I saw the death of the good principal, the Abbé Porcher, at the commencement of the Revolution: he was a learned, gentle, and simple-hearted man. The memory of that obscure Rollin[121] will always be dear and venerable to me.

*

At Combourg I found a Mission on which to feed my piety; I followed its exercises. I received confirmation on the manor steps, with the peasant lads and lasses, from the hand of the Bishop of Saint-Malo. After that, a cross was erected; I helped to hold it, while it was being fixed upon its base. It still exists: it stands in front of the tower in which my father died. For thirty years, it has seen no one appear at the windows of that tower; it is no longer saluted by the castle children; every spring-time it waits for them in vain; it sees none return save the swallows, the companions of my childhood, more faithful to their nest than man to his house. How happy should I have been, had my life been spent at the foot of that mission cross, had my hair been whitened only by the years which have covered the arms of that cross with moss!

[Sidenote: I go to Rennes College.]

I did not long delay my departure for Rennes, where I was to continue my studies and complete my mathematical course, before submitting myself for examination as a Naval Guard[122] at Brest. M. de Fayolle was principal of Rennes College. The staff of that Breton Juilly[123] included three distinguished professors: the Abbé de Chateaugiron, master of the second form, the Abbé Germé, master of rhetoric, and the Abbé Marchand, of physics. There were a large number of boarders and day-scholars, and the classes were strong. Within living memory, Geoffroy[124] and Ginguené[125], who were educated at the college, would have done honour to Sainte-Barbe[126] or the Plessis. The Chevalier de Parny[127] had also studied at Rennes; I succeeded to his bed in the room allotted to me.

Rennes seemed to me a Babylon, the college a world. The crowd of masters and school-boys, the size of the buildings, garden, and play-grounds appeared immense to my eyes[128]. I grew accustomed to it, however. On the saint's-day of the principal, we had a holiday; at the top of our voices we sang in his praise superb lines of our own composing, in which we said:

Ô Terpsichore, ô Polymnie,
Venez, venez remplir nos vœux;
La raison même vous convie[129].

At the cost of a few buffets, I assumed over my new schoolfellows the same ascendant that I had exercised over my old companions at Dol. The young Bretons are quarrelsome monkeys; on half-holidays we sent each other challenges to fight in the shrubbery of the garden of the Benedictines, called "the Thabor." Our arms consisted of compasses fastened to the end of a walking-stick, which gradually led to a hand-to-hand fight, more or less treacherous or courteous according to the gravity of the challenge. We had umpires who decided if battle was to be waged and how the champions should use their hands. The combat did not end until one of the two parties owned himself vanquished. I found my old friend Gesril presiding over these engagements, as at Saint-Malo. He offered to be my second in an affair in which I was engaged with Saint-Riveul[130], a young noble who became the first victim of the Revolution. I fell under my adversary, refused to surrender, and paid dearly for my pride. I said, like Jean Desmarets[131] on his road to the scaffold, "I cry mercy to God alone!"

I met at this college two men who have since become famous in different ways: Moreau[132], the general, and Limoëlan[133], the author of the infernal machine, who is now a priest in America. There is only one portrait of Lucile extant, a bad miniature by Limoëlan, who turned portrait-painter during the revolutionary troubles. Moreau was a day-boy, Limoëlan a boarder. Rarely have two such singular destinies been found at the same time, in the same province, the same small town, the same school[134].

[Sidenote: My intellectual disposition.]

Although the training at Rennes College was very religious, my fervor abated: the number of my masters and schoolfellows tended to multiply the occasions for distraction. I made progress in the study of languages; I became strong in mathematics, for which I have always had a decided leaning: I should have made a good naval officer or sapper. I was born with a generally quick disposition, I was susceptible to serious and agreeable things alike: I commenced with poetry before taking up prose; the arts delighted me; I have always passionately loved music and architecture. Although disposed to be easily bored, I was capable of grasping the smallest details; gifted with a patience that was proof against anything, however wearied I might be of the subject in hand, my perseverance overcame my distaste. I have never abandoned a matter that was worth completing; there are things which I have pursued for fifteen or twenty years of my life, as full of ardor on the last day as on the first.

This intellectual suppleness was again apparent in matters of secondary importance. I was good at chess, handy at billiards, a good shot, an expert swordsman; I drew tolerably; I should have sung well, if my voice had been trained. All this, added to the manner in which I was brought up and to the life I led as a soldier and traveller, produced the result that I have never played the prig nor displayed the stupid self-sufficiency, the awkwardness, the slovenly habits of the men of letters of former days, still less the conceited assurance, the jealousy and the blustering vanity of the new authors.

I spent two years at Rennes College; Gesril left eighteen months before I did. He entered the navy. Julie, my third sister, was married in the course of these two years; she gave her hand to the Comte de Farcy[135], a captain in the Condé Regiment, and settled with her husband at Fougères, where my two eldest sisters, Mesdames de Marigny and de Québriac were already living. Julie's wedding took place at Combourg, and I was present at it. I there met the Comtesse de Tronjoli[136], who distinguished herself by her courage on the scaffold: she was the cousin and close friend of the Marquis de La Rouërie, and was implicated in his conspiracy. I had never yet seen beauty except in my own family; I was confused on perceiving it in the face of a strange woman. Each step in life opened out a new perspective before me; I heard the distant and alluring voice of the passions which were coming to me; I hastened towards those sirens, attracted by an unknown harmony. It appeared that, like the High Priest of Eleusis, I had a different incense for each divinity. But could the hymns which I sang while burning that incense be called "balsams," like the poems of the hierophant[137]?

*

After Julie's marriage, I set out for Brest. On leaving the great College of Rennes, I did not feel the same regret that I had experienced on bidding farewell to the little College of Dol; perhaps I had lost the bud of innocence which turns everything into a charm for us; time was beginning to open it. My mentor in my new position was one of my maternal uncles, Vice-Admiral the Comte Ravenel de Boisteilleul[138], one of whose sons[139], a very distinguished artillery-officer in the armies of Bonaparte, married the only daughter[140] of my sister the Comtesse de Farcy.

[Sidenote: My life at Brest.]

On my arrival at Brest, I did not find my cadet's commission awaiting me; some accident had delayed it. I remained what was called an "aspirant," and, as such, was exempt from following the regular studies. My uncle put me to board in the Rue de Siam, at a cadets' ordinary, and introduced me to the naval commander, the Comte d'Hector[141]. Left for the first time to my own resources, instead of becoming intimate with my future messmates, I indulged in my instinct for solitude. My usual society was confined to my fencing-master, my drawing-master, and my mathematical tutor.

The sea which I was to behold upon so many coasts bathed, at Brest, the extremity of the Armorican Peninsula: beyond that prominent cape lay nothing but the boundless ocean and unknown worlds. My imagination revealed in all this space. Often, seated on some mast lying along the Quai de Recouvrance, I watched the movements of the crowd: shipwrights, sailors, soldiers, custom-house officers, convicts passed to and fro before my eyes. Passengers embarked and disembarked, pilots directed the steering, carpenters squared blocks of wood, cordwainers twisted hawsers, ship's boys lit fires under coppers from which issued a thick smoke and the healthy smell of tar. Bales of merchandise, sacks of victuals were carried to and from the quay; trains of artillery were rolled from the sea to the magazines, from the magazines to the sea. Here, carts were pushed backwards into the water to receive cargoes; there, loads were hoisted with tackle, while cranes lowered stones and dredging-machines dug out the alluvium. Forts fired signals, ships' boats came and went, vessels set sail or returned to harbor.

My mind became filled with vague ideas on society, its blessings and its evils. An indefinite sadness overtook me; I left the mast on which I was sitting, walked up the Penfeld, which runs into the port, and reached a turn where the port disappeared from view. Here, with nothing before me except a turfy valley, but with the confused murmur of the sea and human voices still in my ears, I lay down upon the bank of the little river. Watching by turns the rippling of the water and the flight of the sea-mew, enjoying the silence around me or listening to the strokes of the calker's hammer, I fell into the deepest musing. In the midst of this reverie, if the wind carried to me the sound of the gun of a ship leaving port, I started, and tears moistened my eyes.

One day I had walked in the direction of the outer extremity of the harbor, to the side of the sea: it was warm; I lay down upon the beach and fell asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a grand noise; I opened my eyes like Augustus to see the triremes in the anchorage of Sicily after the victory over Sextus Pompey: reports of artillery followed one upon the other; the roads were crowded with men-of-war; the great French squadron was returning after the signing of peace[142]. The ships manœuvred under full sail, bathed themselves in flame, hoisted ensigns, turned their poops, bows, broadsides towards the shore, stopped short by dropping anchor while still under sail, or continued to skim over the billows. Nothing ever gave me a higher idea of the human intelligence: man seemed at that moment to borrow something from Him who said to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou go and no further."

All Brest hastened to the port. Boats left the fleet and landed at the mole. The officers with whom they were crowded, their faces bronzed by the sun, had that foreign look which is brought back from another atmosphere, and the indescribable air of gaiety, of pride, of daring, worn by men who had restored the honour of the national ensign. These officers, so deserving, so illustrious, these companions of Suffren[143], Lamotte-Piquet[144], Couëdic, d'Estaing[145], had escaped from the blows of the enemy only to fall beneath those of Frenchmen!

[Sidenote: I meet Gesril.]

I was watching the gallant troop march by, when one of the officers disengaged himself from the others and fell upon my neck: it was Gesril. He seemed taller, but weak and ailing from a sword-thrust he had received in the chest. He left Brest the same evening to join his family. I only saw him once since, shortly before his heroic death: I will tell the occasion of the meeting later.

Gesril's sudden appearance and departure made me take a resolve which changed the course of my life: it was written that that young man should have an absolute empire over my destiny. One can see how my character was shaping, the turn my ideas were taking, the first attacks of my genius; for I can speak of that genius as a malady, whatever it may have been, rare or vulgar, worthy or unworthy of the name I give it for want of a word wherewith to express myself. Had I been more like the rest of mankind, I should have been happier: any one who could have succeeded, without depriving me of my intelligence, in killing what is called my talent would have treated me as a friend.

When the Comte de Boisteilleul took me to M. d'Hector, I heard old and young sailors discuss their campaigns and talk of the countries they had visited: one had returned from India, another from America; this one was to set sail to go round the world, the other was about to join the Mediterranean station, to visit the shores of Greece. My uncle pointed out La Pérouse[146] to me in the crowd, a new Cook, the manner of whose death has remained the secret of the tempests. I listened to everything, I looked at everything, without uttering a word; but there was no sleep for me that night: I spent it, in imagination, in delivering combats or discovering unknown lands.

Be that as it may, on seeing Gesril return to his parents, I thought that there was nothing to prevent me from going home to my own. I should have much liked the naval service, if my spirit of independence had not disinclined me to service of any kind: I was born with an incapacity for obedience. Voyages tempted me, but I felt that I should enjoy them only in solitude, left free to follow my own will. At last, giving my first proof of fickleness, without telling my uncle Ravenel, without writing to my parents, without asking permission of anybody, without waiting for my cadet's commission, I left one morning for Combourg, where I dropped as though from the clouds.

I am to this day astonished to think how, in view of the terror with which my father inspired me, I could have dared to take such a resolve; and what is quite as astonishing is the manner in which I was welcomed. I had every reason to expect transports of the most furious anger, and I was gently received. My father was content to shake his head, as though to say, "Here's a pretty trick!" My mother embraced me with all her heart, grumbling the while, and my Lucile kissed me in an ecstasy of joy.

[75] This book was written at Dieppe in September and October 1812 and at the Vallée-aux-Loups in December 1813 and January 1814, and was revised in June 1846.--T.

[76] The author's forty-fourth birthday.--B.

[77] Étienne Denis Duc Pasquier (1767-1862), became Prefect of Police under Bonaparte in 1810, President of the Chamber of Deputies under Louis XVIII. in 1816, Foreign Minister in 1819. In 1821, on the fall of the Villèle Ministry, Pasquier received his peerage. Louis-Philippe made him President of the Chamber of Peers in 1830, Chancellor in 1837, and created him a duke in 1844. In his capacity as a peer, therefore, and also as an Academician, he eventually became Chateaubriand's colleague.--T.

[78] The River Arques, which discharges itself at Dieppe, was formerly called the Deep.--T.

[79] Abraham Marquis Duquesne (1610-1688), the famous sailor. His religion--he was a Huguenot--prevented Louis XIV. from making him an admiral; the highest rank he obtained was that of lieutenant-general. A statue of Duquesne was erected at Dieppe in 1844.--T.

[80] Robert Wace, a native of Jersey, author of the _Brut d'Angleterre_ or _Artus de Bretagne_, the _Roman du Rou_ (Rollo Duke of Normandy), and the _Chronique ascendante des ducs de Normandie._ He was reading-clerk to Henry I. and Henry II., later a canon of Bayeux, and died in England _circa_ 1184.--T.

[81] Pliny, III. X. 15.--T.

[82] Urbain René de Hercé (1726-1795), consecrated Bishop of Dol in 1757, was shot not at, but after, Quiberon, at Vannes, 28 July 1795, together with Sombreuil and fourteen other victims, including his brother, François de Hercé (1733-1795), Grand-Vicar of Dol, and Gesril (_vide supra_).--B.

[83] Étienne Bezout (1730-1783), author of a number of mathematical works employed in schools in the eighteenth century.--T.

[84] Charles Dufresne Ducange (1610-1688), a learned expert in historical research, author of the _Glossarium mediæ et infimœ Latinitatis_, in which the description of the quintain occurs, and a number of other works of value.--T.

[85] The Manuscript of 1826 here contains a short description of the sport of the quintain: "All the bridegrooms of the year within the holding of Combourg were obliged, in the month of May, to come and break a wooden lance against a post placed in a sunk road that ran above the Great Mall. The tilters were on horseback; the bailiff, who acted as lord of the lists, examined the lance, and declared that there was no fraud nor guile in the arms: it was allowed to tilt three times at the post, but at the third time, if the lance was not broken, the jibers of the rustic tournament covered the awkward tilter with pleasantries, who paid a crown-piece to the liege lord."--T.

[86] Noble Maître François Jean Baptiste Potelet, Seigneur de Saint-Mahé et de La Durantais.--B.

[87] Gilles Marie de Launay, Sieur de La Billardière, successively procurator-fiscal of Bécherel, _sénéchal des juridictions_ of the Vauruffier, the Viscounty of Besso and the Marquisate of Caradenc, and bonder of the King's tobacco taxes at Combourg.--B.

[88] I have met my friend David again since: I shall tell when and how.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832).

[89] Jean Baptiste Gesbert, Seigneur de La Noé-Sécho, seneschal of the manorial jurisdiction of Combourg.--B.

[90] Maître René Petit, procurator-fiscal of the County of Combourg.--B.

[91] Maître Julien Corvaisier or Le Corvaisier, notary and attorney of the jurisdiction.--B.

[92] The Abbé Jean François Chalmel, chaplain of Combourg Castle.--B.

[93] Jean Anne Pinot du Petitbois (1737-1789) lived in the Château du Grandval at Combourg, still occupied by his descendants.--B.

[94] Michel Charles Locquet, Comte de Château-d'Assis, lived in the Château de Triaudin, Combourg, now owned by the Vicomte Roger du Petitbois.--B.

[95] Nicolas Pierre Philippes, Seigneur de Trémaudan.--B.

[96] René Malo Sévin, rector of the parish of Combourg in 1776, refused to subscribe to the civil constitution of the clergy, and went to Jersey in 1792. He returned in 1797, was reinstated in his parish in 1803, and died at Combourg in 1817.--B.

[97] Claude Anne, successively Vicomte, Marquis, and Duc de Saint-Simon, emigrated to Spain, entered the Spanish service, and became Captain-General of Old Castile. King Charles IV. created him a grandee of Spain, King Ferdinand VII. a duke. He died in Madrid in 1819. In 1808, on the capture of Madrid by the French, he was sentenced to death by court-martial; the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life, and he was confined in the Citadel of Besançon until the fall of the Empire in 1814.--B.

[98] It gave me a genuine pleasure to renew my acquaintance, during the Restoration, with this gallant officer, so distinguished for his loyalty and his Christian virtues.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1831).

Jacques Vincent Marquis de Causans de Mauléon (1751-1824), was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general in 1814, and sat in the Chamber of Deputies as member for Vaucluse from 1815 until his death.--B.

[99] Antoine Louis Marquis de Wignacourt, Knight of St. Louis.--B.

[100] François Placide Maillard, Seigneur de La Morandais. The Maillards de La Morandais delivered proofs of eight generations of nobility in 1670. Those who had settled at Combourg had degenerated through poverty.--B.

[101] Guillaume de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris, founder of a most distinguished legal family, and great-grandfather of Lamoignon de Malesherbes.--T.

[102]

"Right gladly and in brave array,
By wood and river made his way:
For no folk through the woods advance
Right gladly like the folk of France."--T.

[103] Armand Louis de Gontaut de Biron, Duc de Lauzun (1747-1793), and Duc de Biron on the death of his father in 1788. He was one of the handsomest men at the Court of Louis XVI. In 1789 he joined the party of the Duc d'Orléans, and served as a general in the Republican army, but was guillotined on the last day of December 1793.--T.

[104] Prince Eugène de Savoie-Carignan (1753-1785), younger son of Prince Louis Victor de Savoie-Carignan, and brother of the Princesse de Lamballe. A scion of the younger branch of the Royal House of Savoy, he entered the French service under the title of Count of Villafranca, and was made colonel of the Villefranche Regiment. In 1781 he married Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Jean François Nicolas Magon, Seigneur de Boisgarein; but the marriage was annulled by parliament upon the petition of the Prince's parents. He struggled desperately to obtain a revision of the decree of annulment. On the accession of the younger branch to the throne of Sardinia in 1831, the grandson of Prince Eugène and Mademoiselle de Boisgarein was restored to his ancestral rank, and in 1888 his morganatic children received from the late King of Italy the name of Villafranca-Soisson, with the title of count.--B.

[105] Pierre Louis Lacretelle (1751-1824), known as Lacretelle the Elder, to distinguish him from his brother, Charles Joseph Lacretelle, the Younger. He was a member of the French Academy, and author of a number of legal works and political and philosophical treatises.--T.

[106] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I. chap. 9: _Of Lyers._--T.

[107] By Diderot; printed in 1738, and first performed at the Comédie Française ten years after, when it met with indifferent success, attaining a total of seven performances.--B.

[108] 11 January 1780, Marie Anne Françoise married Jean Joseph Geffelot, Comte de Marigny; Bénigne Jeanne married Jean François Xavier Comte de Québriac, Seigneur de Patrion.--B.

[109] LUCRETIUS, I. i.--T.

[110] TIBULLUS, I. i, 45.--T.

[111] Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), Bishop of Clermont, and a famous Catholic preacher. He left nearly a hundred sermons, in addition to a great number of other religious works. Massillon was elected an Academician in 1789.--T.

[112] François Eudes de Mézeray (1610-1683). The Eudists, founded by Jean Eudes, hare still a house at Rennes. The community is also known as the Congregation of Jesus and Mary.--T.

[113] STAT., _Th._, VII. 280.--T.

[114] SUET, _Cæs._ 39.--T.

[115] _De Buonaparte et des Bourbons.--Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1831).

[116] Charles Hilaire de Chateaubriand (1708-1782), rector successively of a number of country livings.--B.

[117] Louis Joseph (Louis V.) Prince de Condé (1736-1818), fourth in descent from the Great Condé, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Emigrants, 1789-1800. At the Restoration, King Louis XVIII. made his kinsman Grand-Master of the Household and Colonel-General of the Infantry.--T.

[118] Louis Henri Joseph (Louis VI.) Duc de Bourbon (1756-1830), son of Louis V. Prince de Condé and of the Princesse Louise d'Orléans, and father of the unhappy Duc d'Enghien. The Duc de Bourbon was found strangled-whether by his own hands or those of his mistress, Madame de Feuchères, is uncertain--a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left the greater part of his large fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale.--T.

[119] Part I. book I. chap. 7: _De la communion._--T.

[120]

"The bread I offer for your taking
Is that which the angels eat;
It is bread of God's own baking
From the first fruits of his wheat."--T.

[121] Charles Rollin (1661-1741), a famous French professor and theologian.--T.

[122] The French Naval Guard (_Garde marine_) was a body of nobles from which the naval officers were appointed.--T.

[123] The name of a celebrated Oratorian college, near Meaux, suppressed by the Revolution of 1789.--T.

[124] Julien Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), a distinguished dramatic critic. He originated the literary _feuilleton_ in the _Journal des Débats._--T.

[125] Pierre Louis Ginguené (1748-1815), Ambassador to Turin under the Directory, and author of the _Histoire littéraire d'Italie_ and some poems, mostly imitated from the Italian.--T.

[126] The famous college on the Montagne Sainte-Généviève in Paris, founded by Jean Hubert in 1430.--T.

[127] Évariste Désiré Desforges, Chevalier de Parny (1753-1814), the author of a number of elegies and love-poems, which earned for him the name of "the French Tibullus."--T.

[128] Rennes College was one of the most important in France. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1607. When they left it, in 1762, a communal college was established in the same buildings. These are now occupied by the Lycée de Rennes, which, however, is greatly diminished in size.--B.

[129]

"Listen to the vows we offer,
O Terpsichore, Polyhymnia!
Reason herself her prayers doth proffer."--T.

[130] André François Jean du Rocher de Saint-Riveul (1772-1789), son of Henri du Rocher, Comte de Saint-Riveul.--B. The Manuscript of 1826 mentions that he was killed in the street at Rennes, as he was going with his father to the Chamber of Nobles.--T.

[131] Jean Desmarets, advocate-general to the Parliament of Paris, beheaded in 1382 for his failure to suppress the revolt of the Maillotins.--T.

[132] Jean Victor Moreau (1763-1813), one of the greatest generals of the Revolution, and the victor of the Battles of Hochstädt and Hohenlinden. He subsequently entered into relations with the Royalist Generals Pichegru and Cadoudal, was tried and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, a sentence commuted to exile in the United States. Here he received offers from the Tsar Alexander to join the army of the Allies, which he eventually accepted; but was killed by a cannon-ball immediately after reaching the head-quarters of the Allied Army outside Dresden.--T.

[133] Joseph Pierre Picot de Limoëlan de Clorivière (1768-1826) entered the army, espoused the Royalist cause, and refused to accept the pacification of 1799. He returned to Paris, and was on the eve of marrying a charming young lady of Versailles, Mademoiselle Julie d'Albert, when the explosion of the infernal machine took place in the Rue Saint-Nicaise (24 December 1799). Limoëlan was one of the principal agents in the plot. Thanks to the devotion of his betrothed, he escaped to America, and upon his arrival in New York wrote to Mademoiselle d'Albert to come out to him and be married there. The reply came as a shock to him. Mademoiselle d'Albert had taken a vow to devote herself to God, if her lover succeeded in making good his escape. She besought him to forget the past and to think only of his eternal future. In 1808 the young officer entered the seminary at Baltimore. He commenced a new life, changed his name to Clorivière, was ordained priest in 1812, and received a curacy at Charleston. He returned to France in 1815 to collect what remained of his fortune, the whole of which he devoted to pious works in America, including the re-endowment of the Convent of the Visitation at Georgetown, founded by Miss Alice Lalor in 1805. Mademoiselle d'Albert survived Father de Clorivière for many years. She kept her vow of celibacy, but did not take the veil, for want of a vocation. At the age of fifty she was relieved by Pope Gregory XVI. from her vow. She died at Versailles, advanced in years, after a life devoted entirely to works of piety and charity.--B.

[134] I omit a short anecdote.--T.

[135] Annibal Pierre François de Farcy de Montavallon. The wedding took place in 1782.--B.

[136] Thérèse Josèphe de Moëlien (1759-1793), daughter of Sébastien Marie Hyacinthe de Moëlien, Chevalier, Seigneur de Trojolif (not Tronjoli), Kermoisan, Kerguelenet, &c. She was twenty-three years of age when Chateaubriand saw her at Combourg, and when writing his Memoirs he must have recalled her with his school-boy eyes; for contemporary evidence declares that she was not beautiful, nor even pretty. The words "and close friend of the Marquis de La Rouërie" do not occur in the Manuscript of 1826. Thérèse de Moëlien was in love, not with La Rouërie, but with Major Chafner, an American officer, whom she was to have married if she outlived the plot in which they were both engaged. She was guillotined, however, in Paris on the 18th of June 1793. Major Chafner was in London at the time of the discovery of the so-called Breton Conspiracy. He returned to Brittany, and perished at Nantes, after fighting on the side of the Vendeans to revenge the death of Mademoiselle de Moëlien.--B.

[137] An allusion to the mystical hymns of Orpheus, which were called "perfumes" (αρώματα).--B.

[138] Jean Baptiste Joseph Eugène de Ravenel du Boisteilleul (1738-1815), first cousin of Chateaubriand's mother, and therefore uncle in the manner of Brittany of the great writer.--B.

[139] Hyacinthe Eugène Pierre de Ravenel du Boisteilleul (1784-1868), a captain of artillery, and decorated on the battle-field at Smolensk, 17 August 1812.--B.

[140] Pauline Zoé Marie de Farcy de Montavallon (1784-1850) married Hyacinthe de Ravenel du Boisteilleul, 16 November 1814.--B.

[141] Vice-Admiral Charles Jean Comte d'Hector (1722-1808), commander of the port of Brest from 1780 to 1791. He joined the Princes' Army at Coblentz, and was made colonel of a regiment consisting exclusively of naval officers. He died at Reading in Berkshire at the age of eighty-six.--B.

[142] The Peace of Versailles, 1783.--T.

[143] Pierre André de Suffren-Saint-Tropez (1726-1788), known as the Bailli de Suffren, had fought the English in India by sea and land in the war of 1782.--T.

[144] Comte de Lamotte-Piquet (1720-1791), lieutenant-general of the French Navy. Between 1737 and 1783 he took part in twenty-eight campaigns, and distinguished himself especially in America.--T.

[145] Charles Hector Comte d'Estaing (1720-1794), admiral in command of the combined fleets at Cadiz on the signature of the treaty of peace. He embraced the principles of the Revolution, and served in the Republican army and naval forces; but was guillotined in 1794.--T.

[146] Jean François Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse (1741-1788[?]) set out on a voyage of discovery in 1785. He was known to have visited Japan and New Holland when, in 1788, all traces of him were lost. In 1827, Captain Dillon discovered the wrecks of his ships, the _Boussole_ and the _Astrolabe_, off the coast of Vanikoro, since called the Pérouse, one of the Santa Cruz group, between the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides.--T.