Chapter XV: Book II: 446 (3)

"I share all your regrets, my dear friend: I feel the
painfulness of your position. To die so young, and after
outliving all her family! But, at any rate, that interesting
and unhappy woman did not lack the help and the remembrance
of friendship. Her memory will live in hearts worthy of her.
I have forwarded to M. de La Luzerne the touching account
intended for him. Old Saint-Germain, your friend's servant,
has taken it with him. That faithful attendant made me shed
tears when talking of his mistress. I told him that he
had a legacy of ten thousand francs; but he did not give
it a single thought. If it were possible to talk of money
matters under such mournful circumstances, I would say that
it would have been very natural to have given you at least
the use of a fortune which will have to pass to distant and
almost unknown collaterals[569]. I approve of your conduct;
I know your delicacy; but I cannot be as disinterested for
my friend as he is for himself. I confess that this omission
surprises and pains me[570]. Madame de Beaumont spoke to you
on her death-bed, with the eloquence of a last farewell,
of the future and of your destinies. Her voice must needs
have greater strength than mine. But did she advise you to
throw up a salary of eight or ten thousand francs just when
your path was cleared of its first thorns? Could you rashly,
my dear friend, take so momentous a step? You know what a
pleasure it would be to me to see you again. Were I only
to consult my own happiness, I would say, 'Come at once.'
But your interests are as dear to me as my own, and I see
no immediate prospects for you which could make good the
advantages which you are voluntarily surrendering. I know
that your talents, your name and your industry will never
leave you in want of the first necessities; but in all that
I see more fame than fortune. Your education, your habits,
demand some little expenditure. Reputation alone will not
provide the wants of life, and the wretched science of 'bread
and cheese' takes precedence of all others, if you want to be
independent and at ease. I trust that nothing will persuade
you to seek your fortune among foreigners. Believe me, my
friend, after the first blandishments, they are worth even
less than one's fellow-countrymen. If your loving friend
made all these reflections, her last moments must have been
somewhat disturbed; but I hope that, at the foot of her
grave, you will find lessons and lights superior to any which
your remaining friends could give you. That amiable woman
loved you: she will advise you well. Her memory and your
heart will be a safe guide to you: I have no more concern if
you listen to them both. Adieu, my dear friend, I embrace you
tenderly."

M. Necker wrote me the only letter which I ever received from him. I had witnessed the delight of the Court at the dismissal of this minister, the disregard of whose honest warnings contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. He had been M. de Montmorin's colleague. M. Necker was shortly to die at the place whence his letter was dated; not at that time having Madame de Staël by his side, he found some tears for his daughter's friend:

[Sidenote: M. Necker, Madame de Staël.]

M. NECKER TO CHATEAUBRIAND.

"SIR,

"My daughter, when setting out for Germany, asked me to
open any packets of large size that might be addressed to
her, so as to decide whether they were worth the trouble
of forwarding by post. This is the reason of my learning
the news of Madame de Beaumont's death before she does. I
forwarded your letter to her, sir, at Frankfort, whence it
will probably be sent on farther to her, perhaps to Weimar or
Berlin. Do not, therefore, be surprised, sir, if you do not
receive a reply from Madame de Staël as early as you have the
right to expect. You must be assured, sir, of the grief which
Madame de Staël will feel on hearing of the loss of a friend
of whom I have always heard her speak with profound feeling.
I join in her sorrow, I join, sir, in yours, and I have my
own particular share when I think of the unhappy fate of the
whole family of my friend M. de Montmorin.

"I see, sir, that you are on the point of leaving Rome to
return to France: I hope you will choose your road through
Geneva, where I shall spend the winter. I should be very
eager to do you the honours of a town where you are already
known by reputation. But where, sir, are you not so known?
Your last work, sparkling with incomparable beauties, is in
the hands of all who love to read.

"I have the honour, sir, to offer you the assurance and the
homage of my most distinguished sentiments.

"NECKER.

"Coppet, 27 _November_ 1803."

MADAME DE STAËL TO CHATEAUBRIAND.

"FRANKFORT, 3 _December_ 1803.

"Ah, Heavens, my dear Francis[571] with what sorrow was I
smitten on receiving your letter! Already, yesterday, this
frightful news was burst upon me through the papers, and now
comes your heart-rending narrative to engrave it for ever in
letters of blood on my heart. Can you, can you speak to me of
different opinions on religion, on the priests? Are there two
opinions where there is but one sentiment? I have read your
account through the most sorrowful tears. My dear Francis,
think of the time at which you felt the greatest friendship
for me; above all, do not forget that at which my whole heart
was drawn towards you, and tell yourself that those feelings,
more tender, more profound than ever, remain for you at the
bottom of my soul. I loved, I admired the character of Madame
de Beaumont: I knew not one more generous, more grateful,
more passionately sensitive. Since I first entered into
the world, I never ceased to have relations with her, and
I always felt, even in the midst of some differences, that
we held together by the same roots. My dear Francis, give
me a place in your heart. I admire you, I love you, I loved
her whom you regret. I am a devoted friend, I will be a
sister to you. I must respect your opinions more than ever.
Matthieu[572], who holds them, has been an angel to me in
this last sorrow which I have felt. Give me a new reason for
showing them my consideration: let me be useful or agreeable
to you in some way. Did you hear that I had been banished to
a distance of forty leagues from Paris[573]? I have taken
the occasion to go round Germany; but in the spring I shall
have returned to Paris itself, if my exile be ended, or near
Paris, or to Geneva. Arrange that, in some manner, we may
meet. Do you not feel that my mind and my soul understand
yours, and do you not feel wherein we resemble each other,
notwithstanding the differences? M. de Humboldt[574] wrote me
a letter a few days ago in which he spoke to me of your work
with an admiration which must flatter you in a man of his
merit and opinions. But why speak to you of your successes at
such a moment? Yet she loved those successes of yours, and
attached her own fame to them. Farewell, my dear François. I
will write to you from Weimar, in Saxony. Write to me there,
to the care of Messrs. Desport, bankers. What harrowing
phrases your story contains! And then your resolve to keep
poor Saint-Germain: you must bring her to my house one day.

"Farewell, affectionately: and sorrowfully, farewell.

"M. DE STAËL."

This eager and affectionately informal letter, written by an illustrious woman, redoubled my emotion. Madame de Beaumont would have been very happy at that moment had Heaven permitted her to return to life! But our attachments, which are perceived by the dead, cannot free them from their bonds: when Lazarus rose from the tomb he was bound feet and hands with winding-bands, and his face was bound about with a napkin; but friendship cannot say, as Christ said to Martha and Mary:

"Loose him and let him go[575]."

My consolers have also passed away, and they claim for themselves the regrets which they gave to another.

*

[Sidenote: My grief.]

I had determined to leave this official career in which personal misfortunes had come in addition to the triviality of the work and to paltry political annoyances. One does not know what desolation of the heart means until one has remained alone, wandering through spots once inhabited by a person who accepted your life: you seek her and do not find her; she speaks to you, smiles to you, accompanies you; all that she has worn or touched presents her image; between her and you there is only a transparent curtain, but so heavy that you cannot raise it. The remembrance of the first friend who has left you on the road is a cruel one; for if your days have been prolonged, you have necessarily suffered other losses: the dead who have followed each other become linked to the first, and you mourn at one time and in one person all those whom you have successively lost.

At this distance from France, the arrangements which I was making progressed slowly; meanwhile I remained forlorn among the ruins of Rome. When I first walked out, the aspect of things seemed changed to me: I did not recognise the trees, nor the monuments, nor the sky; I wandered through the fields, along the cascades and aqueducts, as I had done before beneath the overhanging forests of the New World. Then I re-entered the Eternal City, which now added one more extinguished life to so many spent existences. By dint of my many rambles in the solitudes of the Tiber, they became so clearly engraved upon my memory that I was able to describe them fairly accurately in my Letter to M. de Fontanes[576]:

"If the traveller be unhappy," I said, "if he have
mingled the ashes that he loved with so many ashes of the
illustrious, what a charm will he not find in passing from
the tomb of Cæcilia Metella to the grave of an ill-fortuned
woman!"

It was also in Rome that I first formed the idea of writing the Memoirs of my Life; I find a few lines jotted down at random, from which I decipher these few words:

"After wandering over the world, spending the best years of
my youth far from my native land, and suffering nearly all
that man can suffer, not excluding hunger, I returned to
Paris in 1800."

In a letter to M. Joubert[577] I thus sketched my plan:

"My only pleasure is to snatch a few hours wherein to busy
myself with a work which alone can bring some assuagement
to my grief: it is the Memoirs of my Life. Rome will have a
place in it; it is in this way only that I can henceforth
speak of Rome. Have no fear; there will be no confessions
likely to give pain to my friends: if I am to count for
anything in the future, my friends' names will therein appear
glorified and respected. Nor shall I entertain posterity
with the details of my frailties; I shall say of myself only
what becomes my dignity as a man, and, I dare say it, the
elevation of my heart. One should show to the world only what
is beautiful; it is no lie against God to unveil of one's
life no more than may lead our fellows towards noble and
generous feelings. Not that, in truth, I have anything to
conceal: I have not caused the dismissal of a servant-girl
for a stolen ribbon, nor left my friend to die in the street,
nor dishonoured the woman who sheltered me, nor taken my
bastards to the Foundling Hospital[578]; but I have had my
moments of weakness, of faint-heartedness: one sigh over
myself will be sufficient to make others understand those
common miseries, meant to be left behind the veil. What would
society gain by the reproduction of sores that occur on every
side? There is no lack of examples, where it is a question of
triumphing over our poor human nature."

*

[Sidenote: I decide to write my memoirs.]

In this plan which I made for myself I omitted my family, my childhood, my youth, my travels, and my exile: yet these are the recitals in which I took most pleasure.

I had been like a happy slave: accustomed to apply his liberty to the vine-stocks, he no longer knows what to do with his leisure when his chains are broken. Whenever I decided to set to work, a figure came and placed itself before me, and I could not take my eyes from it: religion alone held me by its gravity and by the reflections of a higher order which it suggested to me.

And yet, while occupied with the thought of writing my Memoirs, I felt the price which the ancients attached to the value of their name: there is perhaps a touching reality in this perpetuity of the memories which one may leave on the way. Perhaps, among the great men of antiquity, this idea of an immortal life among the human race supplied the place of the immortality of the soul which for them remained a problem. If fame is but a small thing when it relates to ourselves, it must nevertheless be agreed that to give an imperishable existence to all that it has loved is one of the finest privileges attached to the friendship of genius.

I undertook a commentary upon certain books of the Bible, beginning with _Genesis._ Upon the verse, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever[579]," I remarked the tremendous irony of the Creator: "Behold Adam is become as one of us, etc. Lest perhaps the man put forth his hand and take of the tree of life." Why? Because he has tasted of the fruit of knowledge, and knows good and evil, he is now loaded with ills: "therefore, lest perhaps he live for ever." What a blessing from God is death!

There are prayers begun, some for "disquietude of soul," others "to strengthen one's self against the prosperity of the wicked." I sought to bring back to a centre of repose the thoughts which strayed beyond me.

As God was not pleased to let my life end there, reserving it for prolonged trials, the storms which had arisen abated. Suddenly the Cardinal Ambassador changed his manner towards me; I had an explanation with him, and declared my resolve to resign. He opposed this: he maintained that my resignation at that moment would have the appearance of a disgrace; that I should be delighting my enemies, that the First Consul would take offense, which would prevent me from remaining undisturbed in the places to which I proposed to retire. He suggested that I should go to spend a fortnight or a month at Naples.

Just at this moment, I was being sounded on behalf of Russia with a view to my accepting the place of governor to a grand-duke: it was as much as I would have done had I proposed to sacrifice to Henry V. the last years of my life.

While wavering between a thousand resolutions, I received the news that the First Consul had appointed me Minister to the Valais. He had at first flown into a passion on the faith of some denunciations; but, returning to his senses, he understood that I was of the race which is of value only in the front rank, that I should not be mixed with others, as otherwise I could never be used to advantage. There was no place vacant: he created one, and, choosing it in conformity with my instinct for solitude and independence, he placed me in the Alps; he gave me a Catholic republic, in a world of torrents: the Rhone and our soldiers would cross at my feet, the one descending towards France, the others climbing towards Italy, while the Simplon opened its daring road before me. The Consul was to allow me as frequent leave as I might wish to travel in Italy, and Madame Bacciochi sent me a message through Fontanes that the first important embassy available was reserved for me. I thus won this first diplomatic victory without either expecting or intending it; true that, at the head of the State, was a lofty intelligence, which was not willing to sacrifice to official intrigues another intelligence which it knew to be but too well disposed to secede from the government.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Fesch.]

This remark is all the more true in that Cardinal Fesch, to whom I do justice in these Memoirs in a manner upon which, perhaps, he did not reckon, had sent two malicious dispatches to Paris, almost at the very moment at which his manners had become more obliging, after the death of Madame de Beaumont. Did his true thought lie in his conversations, when he gave me leave to go to Naples, or in his diplomatic missives? The conversations and the missives bear the same date and are contradictory. It would have been easy for me to set M. le Cardinal, right with himself by destroying all traces of the reports that concerned me: I had but to remove the Ambassador's lucubrations from the _cartons_ at the time when I was Minister for Foreign Affairs; I should have done only what M. de Talleyrand did in the matter of his correspondence with the Emperor. I did not consider that I had the right to turn my power to my own advantage. If, by chance, any one should look up these documents, he would find them in their place. That this conduct is self-deceiving I readily admit; but, in order not to make a merit of a virtue which I do not possess, I must say that this respect for the correspondence of my detractors arises more from my contempt than from my generosity. I have also seen, in the archives of the Berlin Embassy, offensive letters from M. le Marquis de Bonnay concerning myself: far from considering my own feelings, I shall make them public.

M. le Cardinal Fesch was no more reticent as to the poor Abbé Guillon (the Bishop of Morocco): the latter was marked out as "a Russian agent." Bonaparte called M. Lainé[580] "an English agent:" these are instances of the gossip of which that great man had taken the bad habit from the police reports. But was there nothing to be said against M. Fesch himself? The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre was at Rome like myself, in 1803: what did he not write of Napoleon's uncle! I have the letters.

For the rest, to whom do these contentions, buried since forty years in worm-eaten files, matter? Of the several actors of that period, one alone will remain: Bonaparte. All of us who make pretensions to live are dead already: can the insect's name be read by the feeble light which it sometimes drags with it as it crawls?

When M. le Cardinal Fesch met me again I was Ambassador to Leo XII.; he gave me marks of his esteem: I on my side made a point of outdoing him in deference. It is natural, moreover, that I should have been judged with a severity which I have never spared myself. All this is past and done with: I do not wish even to recognise the handwriting of those who, in 1803, served as official or semi-official secretaries to M. le Cardinal Fesch.

I set out for Naples: there began a year without Madame de Beaumont, a year of absence to be followed by so many others! I have never seen Naples again since that time, although I was on the threshold of that same town in 1828, having promised myself to go there with Madame de Chateaubriand. The orange-trees were covered with their fruits, the myrtles with their flowers. Baie, the Campi Elysei, and the sea were delights of which I no longer had any one to whom to speak. I have described the Bay of Naples in the _Martyrs._[581] I climbed Vesuvius and descended into its crater. I pilfered from myself: I was enacting a scene in _René._

At Pompeii I was shown a skeleton in irons, and mutilated Latin words scribbled by soldiers on the walls. I returned to Rome. Canova[582] permitted me to visit his studio while he was working at the statue of a nymph. Elsewhere the models for the marbles of the tomb which I had ordered had already attained much expression. I went to pray over ashes at San Luigi, and I left for Paris on the 21st of January 1804, another day of misfortune.

Behold a prodigious misery: five and thirty years have sped since the date of those events. Did not I flatter myself, in those distant days of grief, that the bond just broken would be my last? And yet how soon have I, not forgotten, but replaced what was dear to me! Thus man goes from weakness to weakness. When he is young and drives his life before him, a shadow of an excuse remains to him; but when he gets between the shafts and laboriously drags it behind him, how is he to be excused? The poverty of our nature is so intense that in our volatile infirmities, in order to express our new affections, we can employ only words which we have already worn threadbare in our former attachments. There are words, nevertheless, which ought to be used but once: they become profaned by repetition. Our betrayed and neglected friendships reproach us with the new companionships that we have formed; our hours arraign one another: our life is one perpetual blush, because it is one continued fault.

As my intention was not to remain in Paris, I alighted at the Hôtel de France[583], in the Rue de Beaune, where Madame de Chateaubriand came to join me to accompany me to the Valais. My former society, already half dispersed, had lost the link which held it together.

Bonaparte was marching towards the Empire; his genius rose in the measure that events increased in importance: he was able, like gunpowder when it expands, to carry away the world; already immense, and yet not feeling himself at his zenith, he was tormented by his strength; he groped, he seemed to be feeling his way; when I arrived in Paris he was dealing with Pichegru and Moreau; through petty envy he had consented to admit them as rivals: Moreau, Pichegru, and Georges Cadoudal, who was greatly their superior, were arrested.

This vulgar train of conspiracies, which we encounter in all the affairs of life, was very distasteful to me, and I was glad to seek flight in the mountains.

The council of the town of Sion wrote to me. The simplicity of this despatch has made a document of it to me; I was entering politics through religion: the _Génie du Christianisme_ had opened the doors for me.

[Sidenote: I am promoted.]

"REPUBLIC OF THE VALAIS.

"SION, 20 _February_ 1804.

"COUNCIL OF THE TOWN OF SION.

"_To Monsieur Chateaubriand, Secretary of Legation of the
French Republic in Rome._

"SIR,

"An official letter from our High Bailiff apprizes us of your
nomination to the post of French Minister to our Republic.
We hasten to express to you the very complete satisfaction
which this choice gives us. We see in this nomination a
precious token of the good-will of the First Consul towards
our Republic, and we congratulate ourselves on the honour of
having you within our walls: we draw from it the happiest
auguries for the welfare of our country and of our town.
In order to give you a proof of these sentiments, we have
resolved to have a provisional lodging prepared for you,
worthy to receive you, fitted with furniture and effects
suited for your use, in so far as the locality and our
circumstances permit, pending the time when you will yourself
have been able to make arrangements to your own convenience.

"Pray, sir, accept this offer as a proof of our sincere
inclination to honour the French Government in the person
of its envoy, the choice of whom must needs be peculiarly
pleasing to a religious people. We beg you to be so good as
to acquaint us with the date of your arrival in this town.

"Accept, sir, the assurances of our respectful consideration.

"DE RIEDMATTEN,

"President of the Town Council of Sion.

"By order of the Town Council:

"DE TORRENTÉ,

"Secretary to the Council."

Two days before the 21st of March[584], I dressed to go to take leave of Bonaparte at the Tuileries; I had not seen him again since the moment during which he had spoken to me at Lucien's. The gallery in which he was receiving was full; he was accompanied by Murat and a principal aide-de-camp; he passed through almost without stopping. As he approached me, I was struck by the alteration in his face: his cheeks were sunk and livid, his eyes hard, his complexion pale and muddy, his aspect gloomy and terrible. The attraction which had previously urged me towards him ceased; instead of remaining on his passage, I made a movement to avoid him. He threw a glance at me as though to seek to recognise me, took a few steps towards me, then turned and walked away. Had I appeared to him as a warning? His aide-de-camp noticed me: when the crowd covered me, the aide-de-camp tried to catch sight of me between the persons standing before me, and again drew the Consul in my direction. This sport continued for nearly a quarter of an hour, I always drawing back, Napoleon always following me without knowing it. I have never been able to explain to myself what idea had struck the aide-de-camp. Did he take me for a suspicious man whom he had never seen? Did he, if he knew who I was, wish to force Bonaparte to speak to me? However this may be, Napoleon passed on to another apartment. Content to have done my duty in presenting myself at the Tuileries, I withdrew. From the joy which I have always felt at leaving palaces, it is evident that I was not made to enter them.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte.]

On returning to the Hôtel de France, I said to several of my friends:

"Something strange must be happening, of which we do not know, for Bonaparte cannot have changed to that extent, unless he be ill."

M. de Bourrienne[585] knew of my singular foresight: he has only confused the dates; here is his sentence:

"On returning from the First Consul's, M. de Chateaubriand
declared to his friends that he had remarked a great
alteration in the First Consul, and something very sinister
in his look[586]."

Yes, I remarked it: a superior intelligence does not bring forth evil without pain, because that is not its natural fruit, and it ought not to bear it.

Two days later, on the 21st of March[587], I rose early, for the sake of a memory that was sad and dear to me. M. de Montmorin had built himself a house at the corner of the Rue Plumet, on the new Boulevard des Invalides. In the garden of that house, which was sold during the Revolution, Madame de Beaumont, then almost a child, had planted a cypress-tree, and she had sometimes taken pleasure in showing it to me as we passed: it was to this cypress-tree, of which I alone knew the origin and the history, that I went to bid adieu. It still exists, but it is pining away, and scarce rises to the level of the casement beneath which a hand which has vanished loved to tend it. I distinguish that poor tree from among three or four others of its species; it seems to know me and to rejoice when I approach; mournful breezes bend its yellowed head a little towards me, and it murmurs at the window of the deserted room: a mysterious intelligence reigns between us, which will cease when one or the other shall have fallen.

Having paid my pious tribute, I went down the Boulevard and Esplanade des Invalides, crossed the Pont Louis XV. and the Tuileries Gardens, which I left, near the Pavilion Marsan, by the gate which now opens into the Rue de Rivoli. There, between eleven and twelve o'clock in the morning, I heard a man and a woman crying official news; passers-by were stopping, suddenly petrified by these words:

"Verdict of the special military commission summoned at
Vincennes, condemning to pain of death THE MAN KNOWN AS LOUIS
ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON, BORN ON THE 2ND OF AUGUST 1772 AT
CHANTILLY."

[Sidenote: Death of the Duc D'Enghien.]

This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; it changed my life, as it changed Napoleon's. I returned home; I said to Madame Chateaubriand:

"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."

I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation[588]. Madame de Chateaubriand raised no objection, and with great courage watched me writing. She did not blind herself to my danger: General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal were being prosecuted[589]; the lion had tasted blood, this was not the moment to irritate him.

M. Clausel de Coussergues[590] arrived in the interval; he also had heard the sentence cried. He found me pen in hand: my letter, from which, out of compassion for Madame de Chateaubriand, he made me suppress certain angry phrases, was despatched; it was addressed to the Minister of Foreign Relations. The wording mattered little: my opinion and my crime lay in the fact of my resignation: Bonaparte made no mistake as to that. Madame Bacciochi exclaimed loudly on hearing of what she called my "disloyalty;" she sent for me and made me the liveliest reproaches. M. de Fontanes at first went almost mad with fear: he already saw me shot, with all the persons who were attached to me. During several days, my friends went in dread of seeing me carried off by the police; they called on me from one minute to the other, always trembling as they approached the porter's lodge. M. Pasquier came and embraced me on the day after my resignation, saying he was happy to have such a friend as I. He remained for a fairly considerable time in an honourably moderate opposition, removed from place and power.

Nevertheless, the movement of sympathy which impels us to praise a generous action came to an end. I had, in consideration of religion, accepted a place outside France, a place conferred upon me by a mighty genius, the conqueror of anarchy, a leader sprung from the popular principle, the _consul_ of a _republic_, and not a king continuing an usurped _monarchy_; at that time I stood alone in my feeling, because I was consistent in my conduct; I retired when the conditions to which I was able to subscribe altered; but, so soon as the hero had changed himself into a murderer, there came a rush for his ante-chamber. Six months after the 21st of March, one might have thought that there was only one opinion in society, but for a few malicious jests in which people indulged in private. _Fallen_ persons pretended to have been _violated_, and only they, it was said, were _violated_ who possessed a great name or great importance, and each one, to prove his importance or his quarterings, contrived to be _violated_ by dint of solicitation.

Those who had most loudly applauded me fell away; my presence was a reproach to them: prudent people find imprudence in those who yield to honour. There are times in which loftiness of soul is a real infirmity; no one understands it; it passes for a sort of narrowness of mind, for a prejudice, an unintelligent trick of education, a crotchet, a whim which interferes with the judgment: an honourable imbecility, perhaps, but a stupid helotism. What capacity can any one find in shutting your eyes, in remaining indifferent to the march of the century, to the movement of ideas, to the change of manners, to the progress of society? Is it not a deplorable mistake to attach to events an importance which they do not possess? Barricaded behind your narrow principles, your mind as limited as your judgment, you are like a man living at the back of a house, looking out only on a little yard, unaware of what happens in the street or of the noise to be heard outside. That is what a little independence reduces you to, an object of pity to the average man: as to the great minds with their affectionate pride and their haughty eyes, _oculos sublimes_[591], their compassionate disdain forgives you, because they know that "you cannot hear[592]." I therefore shrank back humbly into my literary career, a poor Pindar destined in my first Olympic to praise "the excellence of water," leaving wine to the happy.

[Sidenote: I resign my Embassy.]

Friendship put fresh heart into M. de Fontanes; Madame Bacciochi placed her kindness between her brother's anger and my resolution; M. de Talleyrand, through indifference or calculation, kept my resignation for several days before speaking of it: when he announced it to Bonaparte the latter had had time to reflect. On receiving from me the only direct sign of blame from an honest man who was not afraid to defy him, he uttered merely these two words:

"Very well."

Later, he said to his sister:

"Were you very much alarmed for your friend?"

Long after, in conversation with M. de Fontanes, he confessed that my resignation was one of the things that had impressed him most M. de Talleyrand had an official letter sent to me in which he gracefully reproached me for depriving his department of my talents and services[593]. I returned the expenses of installation, and all was apparently finished. But, in daring to leave Bonaparte, I had placed myself upon his level, and he was incensed against me with all the strength of his perfidy, as I against him with all that of my loyalty. Till the day of his fall, he held the sword suspended over my head: sometimes he returned to me by a natural leaning and tried to drown me in his fatal prosperity; sometimes I was drawn to him by the admiration with which he inspired me, by the idea that I was assisting at a transformation of society, not at a mere change of dynasty: but antipathetic in so many respects, our respective natures gained the upper hand, and if he would gladly have had me shot, I should have felt no great compunction in killing him.

Death makes a great man or unmakes him; it stops him on the stair which he was about to descend, or on the step which he was about to climb: his is a destiny that has succeeded or failed; in the first case, one is reduced to examine what it has been, in the second to conjecture what it might have become.

If, in doing my duty, I had been prompted by far-seeing views of ambition, I should have deceived myself. Charles X. learnt only at Prague what I had done in 1804: he had but lately been King.

"Chateaubriand," he said to me at the Castle of Hradschin, "had you served Bonaparte?"

"Yes, Sire."

"Did you resign on the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien?"

"Yes, Sire."

Misfortune instructs or restores the memory. I have told you how one day in London, when I had taken shelter with M. de Fontanes in a passage during a storm, M. le Duc de Bourbon came and sought cover under the same refuge: in France, his gallant father and he, who so politely thanked whoever wrote a funeral oration on M. le Duc d'Enghien, did not send me one word of remembrance; they were doubtless unaware of my conduct: true, I never told them of it.

[446] This book was commenced in Paris in 1837, continued and completed in Paris in 1838, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.--T.

[447] The Château du Marais was built by M. Le Maître, a very rich man, who left it to Madame de La Briche, his niece. It stands in the commune of the Val-Saint-Maurice, canton of Dourdan, Department of Seine-et-Oise, and is now the property of the Dowager Duchesse de Noailles.--B.

[448] Adélaïde Edmée de La Briche, _née_ Prévost, widow of Alexis Janvier de La Live de La Briche, Introducer of Ambassadors and Private Secretary to the Queen.--B.

[449] Louise Joséphine Comtesse de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1764-1832), _née_ de La Live de Jully, sister to Madame de Vintimille.--B.

[450] The Château de Champlâtreux, in the commune of Épinay-Champlâtreux, canton of Luzarches, Department of Seine-et-Oise, was the old seat of the Molé family. It belongs now to M. le Duc de Noailles. The Comte Molé died there, 25 November 1855.--B.

[451] Édouard François Matthieu Molé de Champlâtreux (_d._ 1794), a President in the Parliament of Paris, guillotined 20 April 1794.--B.

[452] The domain, now in the Department of Eure-et-Loir, presented to Madame de Maintenon by Louis XIV.--T.

[453] Louise Éléonore Mélanie Marquise de Custine (1770-1826), _née_ de Sabran, married in 1787 to Amand Louis Philippe François de Custine, guillotined 4 January 1794.--B.

[454] Margaret Queen of France (1219-1295), daughter of Raymond Berengarius IV. Count of Provence, and married in 1234 to King Louis IX.: a virtuous queen in every way worthy of her spouse.--T.

[455] The Château de Fervacques is near Lisieux in Calvados. Madame de Custine bought it of the Duc de Montmorency-Laval and his sister the Duchesse de Luynes. It is now the property of M. le Comte de Montgomery.--T.

[456] Christina Queen of Sweden (1626-1689) spent some years in France after her abdication in 1654.--T.

[457] Astolphe Louis Léonor Marquis de Custine (1793-1857), author of an excellent book on La Russie en 1839, in 4 volumes (1843), and many other remarkable works that obtained a well-deserved success.--B.

[458] Madame de Custine had been imprisoned at the Carmelites and had escaped execution thanks only to the Revolution of 9 Thermidor.--T.

[459]

"The lady of Fervacques
Deserves a brisk attack."--T.

[460] Afterwards Madame de Bérenger.--B.

[461] Louise Julie Talma (_d._ 1805), _née_ Carreau, married Talma on the 19th of April 1791. They were divorced on the 6th of February 1801 by mutual consent. Talma married next year (16 June 1802) Charlotte Vanhove, the divorced wife of Louis Sébastien Olympe Petit, from whom he was also separated shortly afterwards on the same terms.--B.

[462] Stanislas Marie Adélaïde Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (1747-1792), a Monarchical member of the Constituent Assembly, butchered by the populace on the 10th of August 1792.--T.

[463] Louis Justin Marie Marquis de Talaru (1769-1850), for some time French Ambassador in Madrid under the Restoration. He was created a peer of France on the same day as Chateaubriand (17 August 1815).--B.

[464] Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), known as the Unknown Philosopher, the exponent of "pure spiritualism." His principal works are _Des Erreurs et de la vérité_ (1775), the _Homme de désir_ (1790), and the _Ministère de l'Homme-Esprit_ (1802).--T.

[465] Jean Jacques Comte Lenoir-Laroche (1749-1825) held office for a few days in 1797, was a Conservative member of the Senate (1799-1814), was made a count by Napoleon, and a peer of France by Louis XVIII. (4 June 1814). On the 31st of August 1817, this dignity was declared hereditary in his family.--B.

[466] The Abbé Joseph Faria (_circa_ 1755-1819), a native of Goa, and a famous magnetizer. He plays an important part in _Monte Cristo_, in which Dumas makes him die at the Château d'If. He died, in fact, in Paris.--B.

[467] Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a German doctor (naturalized a Frenchman in 1819) who invented the science of craniology, now known as phrenology.--T.

[468] _Mon portrait historique et philosophique_, M. de Saint-Martin's posthumous work, printed in a very much mutilated and incomplete form.--B.

[469] The Polytechnic School was installed at the time at the Palais-Bourbon, and removed to the building of the former Collège de Navarre in 1804.--B.

[470] Henri François Marquis de Saint-Lambert (1717-1803), author of a poem, the _Saisons_, which secured his admission to the French Academy (1770), and of several philosophical works of a pronounced materialistic tendency.--T.

[471] Élisabeth Françoise Sophie Comtesse de Houdetot (1730-1813), _née_ de La Live de Bellegarde. She married Lieutenant-General the Comte de Houdetot in 1748. She was the author of a few _Pensées_, but owes her reputation rather to the lively passion with which she inspired Rousseau and to her liaison with Saint-Lambert, which lasted nearly half a century.--T.

[472]

"Woe be unto him to whom Heaven grants long days!"--T.

[473]

"And love consoles me still!
But nought will e'er console me for love's loss."--T.

[474] Friedrich Melchior Baron Grimm (1723-1807), the friend of Rousseau and Diderot, created a baron by the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, whom he represented at the French Court from 1776-1790. In 1795 the Empress Catherine II. made him her minister in Lower Saxony. His diverting correspondence with both potentates was published in 1812-1813.--T.

[475] Pierre Simon Ballanche (1778-1847) started life as a printer at Lyons, where he published the second and third editions of the _Génie du Christianisme._ He began to devote himself to literature in 1813, wrote several notable works of Christian philosophy, and became elected a member of the French Academy in 1844.--T.

[476] The article on the _Législation primitive_ appeared in the _Mercure_ of the 18 Nivôse Year XI. (8 January 1803).--B.

[477] The Celestines were suppressed in 1778. They were founded in 1244 by Pietro di Murrhone, the hermit Pope, who was elected to the Holy See in 1294, when nearly eighty years of age, and assumed the title of Celestine V. He was canonized in 1313.--T.

[478] René I. Duke of Anjou, titular King of Naples (1408-1480), known as Good King René, and father of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. of England.--T.

[479] I omit two or three pages devoted mainly to quotations from Petrarch.--T.

[480] A terrible revolutionary massacre took place at Avignon in 1791.--T.

[481] Petrarch immortalized the source of the Sorgue, which rises near Vaucluse, and is known as the Fountain of Vaucluse.--T.

[482] Alain Chartier (1386-1458), the "Father of French Eloquence," an early French poet, and Secretary to the Household to King Charles VI. Margaret kissed him on the mouth, as he lay sleeping, to show the value she set upon the mouth from which so many fair speeches had issued.--T.

[483] Margaret of Scotland (1418-1445), daughter of James I. King of Scots, was married to the Dauphin, later King Louis XI. of France, as a child, in 1428, but was not united to him until 1436. He made her very unhappy.--T.

[484] _Pro. L. Flacco_, XXVI. 36.--T.

[485] JOB XXXVIII. II.--T.

[486] Pytheas (_circa_ 350 B.C.), the famous Greek navigator, was a native of Massilia or Marseilles.--T.

[487] Jean Sire de Joinville (_circa_ 1223--_circa_ 1319) accompanied St. Louis on the Seventh Crusade (1248), which took Cyprus in its course.--T.

[488] Berengarius I. and II., Kings of Italy and Marquises of Ivrea in the tenth century.--T.

[489] Louis II., Duke of Anjou and titular King of Naples (1377-1417), father of Good King René.--T.

[490] Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duc d'Épernon (1554-1642), one of the favourites of Henry III., was the head of a Languedoc family and governor of Provence, of which Marseilles was one of the chief cities.--T.

[491] Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castel Moron, Bishop of Marseilles (1671-1755), distinguished himself by his courage and zeal during the plague which ravaged the city in the years 1720 and 1721, and by his vigorous opposition to the Jansenistic doctrines.--T.

[492] Vittorio Conte Alfieri (1749-1803), the Italian tragic poet, secretly married in 1788 to the Countess of Albany, widow of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. His _Memoirs_ were published in 1804.--T.

[493] ALFIERI, _Memoirs_, chap. IV.--T.

[494] The Roman amphitheatre or bull-arena at Nîmes was laid in ruins by the English during their occupation in 1417.--T.

[495] The famous Roman remains, in the Corinthian style.--T.

[496] Jean Reboul (1796-1864), the baker-poet, author of _Poésies_ (1836), the _Dernier Jour_ (1839), the _Martyre de Vivia_, a mystery play, performed at the Odéon (1850), and the _Traditionnelles_ (1857). He continued his trade throughout. In 1848 he was sent to the Constituent Assembly as Royalist member for the Department of the Gard.--B.

[497] I omit a quotation from Reboul.--T.

[498] Plautus spent some years in the service of a baker in Rome.--T.

[499] Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), the Protestant philosopher, Professor of Literature at the University of Leyden, a distinguished philologist and founder of the system of modern chronology.--T.

[500] 1622.--T.

[501] The Canal des Deux-Mers, also known as the Canal du Midi or de Languedoc, joins the Atlantic and Mediterranean.--T.

[502] The project of the canal, first formed under Francis I., was executed by Colbert's orders under Louis XIV. in the years 1666-1681. I omit the quotation from Corneille.--T.

[503] Paule Baronne de Fontenille (1518-1610), _née_ de Viguier, nicknamed Fair Paule by King Francis I., who saw her as a child. She married first the Sire de Bayganuet, and later Philippe de Laroche, Baron de Fontenille. Her beauty, which she retained until extreme old age, was so intense that her resolution to stay at home, in order to save herself from being pestered with the admiration of the people, was checkmated by a resolution of the _Capitouls_ or municipal officers of Toulouse, who ordered her to show herself in public, with uncovered features, two days in the week. _La Belle Paule_ was as virtuous as she was beautiful.--T.

[504] Henri II. Maréchal Duc de Montmorency (1595-1632), revolted against Louis XIII., was defeated and taken prisoner at Castelnaudary, and tried and beheaded at Toulouse.--T.

[505] Claude Fauriel (1772-1844), a capable literary critic and considerable linguist. He translated and published in 1837 the _Histoire de la croisade contre les hérétiques albigeois, écrits en vers provençaux par un poète contemporain_, from which the above extract is taken.--T.

[506] Simon Baron, later Comte, de Montfort (_d._ 1218), known as the Machabee of his century, the leader of the crusade against the Albigenses, of whom he put some 60,000 or more to the sword. Simon de Montfort was killed at Toulouse, 25 June 1218.--T.

[507] Jacques de Cujas (1522-1590), the famous jurist.--T.

[508] Margaret of France, Duchesse de Berry, afterwards Duchess of Savoy (1523-1574), married in 1559 to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Her subjects named her the Mother of the Peoples.--T.

[509] Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre (1552-1615), married in 1572 to the Prince of Béarn, afterwards Henry IV., and III. King of France and Navarre.--T.

[510] Gui du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac (1529-1584), represented France at the Council of Trent and accompanied Henry III. to Poland. His _Quatrains moraux_ have been universally translated, and he also published various political writings.--T.

[511] Florio's MONTAIGNE, the Third Booke, chap. IX.: _Of Vanitie._--T.

[512] Raymond IV. Count of Toulouse, Duke of Bordeaux, and Marquis of Provence (_circa_ 1042-1105), one of the leaders of the First Crusade (1096), and one of the first to storm the walls of Jerusalem.--T.

[513] Louis Gabriel Léonce Guilhaud de Lavergne (1809-1880), a member of the Right in the Chamber of Deputies, became "reconciled" to the Republic, and was ultimately elected a Life Senator in 1875.--B.

[514] Mademoiselle Honorine Gasc, the owner of an admirable voice, married Herr Ol de Kop, Danish Consul at Bordeaux and Paris.--B.

[515] Clémence Isaure, a wealthy lady of Toulouse, who restored the Floral Games at Toulouse in 1490, and left large sums of money to the town to provide for the expenses of annual competitions in the art of poetry.--T.

[516] Claude Emmanuel Luillier Chapelle (1626-1686) and François Le Coigneux de Bachaumont (1624-1702), joint authors of the _Voyage_ and other Epicurean pieces.--T.

[517]

"Ah, how happy one would be
In this fair seductive spot
If, by Sylvia ne'er forgot,
Loving to eternity,
With her he could cast his lot!"--T

[518] The Chateau Trompette has also since been destroyed.--T.

[519] Joseph Spon (1647-1685), a French Protestant antiquarian.--T.

[520]

"Ah, why do they throw down those columns of the gods, The work of the great Cæsars, a tutelary shrine?"--T.

[521] The Duchesse de Berry was imprisoned at Blaye Castle in 1833.--T.

[522] In 1797 La Harpe had published his eloquent _Du Fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire._--B.

[523] This poem appeared in 1814, with the title, _Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi martyr._--B.

[524]

"But if they ventured all, 'twas you permitted all: The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."--T.

[525] On the 9th of August 1797, La Harpe, then a widower and fifty-seven years of age, married, at the instance of his friend M. Récamier, Mademoiselle de Hatte-Longuerue, a very beautiful girl of twenty-three. Her mother, a penniless widow, concealed from the bridegroom any repugnance that Mademoiselle de Longuerue entertained for the match; but three weeks after the marriage the latter declared this repugnance to be invincible, and asked for a divorce. La Harpe behaved like a gallant gentleman and a Christian: he was unable to lend himself to the divorce, forbidden as it was by the religious law; but he allowed it to take place, and forgave the young lady the outcry and scandal produced by this rupture.--B.

[526] JOB IV. 15, 16.--T.

[527] DANTE, _Inferno_, XIV. 46.--B.

[528] The Abbé Jacques André Émery (1732-1811), author of the _Esprit_ (later _Pensées) de Leibnitz_, the _Christianisme de Bacon_, the _Pensées de Descartes_, and many other works of a religious tendency.--T.

[529] Joseph Cardinal Comte Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons (1763-1839), was the half-brother of Madame Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother. He was made Archbishop of Lyons in 1802, a cardinal and Ambassador to Rome in 1803, Grand Almoner of the Empire, a count, and a senator in 1805. Later he refused the Archbishopric of Paris, opposed Napoleon's wishes with regard to Pius VII. in 1810, was disgraced and sent into exile in his diocese, where he remained till 1814. After the Emperor's abdication, he retired to Rome, where he lived for twenty-five years, refusing to surrender his archbishopric till the day of his death, 13 May 1839.--T.

[530] In Auvergne.--T.

[531] Talleyrand was Foreign Minister from 1796 to 1807.--T.

[532] The Abbé Pierre Étienne de Bonnevie (1761-1849), a great friend of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand, and a very witty priest.--B.

[533] Anne Antoine Jules Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne (1749-1830). Before returning from the Emigration, he had placed his resignation in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff, in accordance with the terms of the Concordat. Under the Restoration he became a peer of France (1814), Archbishop of Toulouse (1820), and a cardinal (1822).--B.

[534] Pope Pius VII. (_vide infra_, p. 220) was a Chiaramonti. This name is the Italian equivalent for Clermont.--T.

[535]

"Alps, ye have not by my hard fate been torn! On you time leaves no sign; The years have lightly by your brows been borne That heavy weigh on mine.

When first across your rugged walls I passed, Dazzled with hope's bright rays, Like the horizon, a future, boundless, vast, Lay spread before my gaze."

Italy at my feet, and all the world before me!"--T.

[536] Chateaubriand himself had probably not known "that" long, and had learnt it from his young friend Jean Jacques Ampère, the only man in France who at that time interested himself in Scandinavian matters.--B.

[537] This "Fotrad, son of Eupert," is a little far-fetched. When the author was writing this part of his Memoirs his mind was still full of his long and learned researches preparatory to the writing of his _Études historiques_ and his chapters on the Franks.--B.

[538] Odet de Foix, Maréchal Vicomte de Lautrec (1485-1528), was Lieutenant-General in Italy under Francis I., and subdued a part of the Duchy of Milan.--T.

[539] Francesco di Melzi, Duca di Lodi (1753-1826), was Vice-president of the Cisalpine Republic, organized by General Bonaparte in 1797, which in 1802 took the name of the Italian Republic. When, in 1805, it became the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon for its King and Eugène de Beauharnais for its Viceroy, Melzi was appointed Grand Chancellor and Keeper of the Seals. In 1807 he was created a duke.--B.

[540] Napoleon Charles Lucien Prince Murat (1803-1873), second son of Joachim Murat, was born 16 May 1803. He was made a senator in 1852, and a member of the civil family of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1853, with the title of Imperial Highness. He was Grand Master of Freemasons from 1852 to 1862.--B.

[541] The feast of SS. Peter and Paul falls on the 29th of June.--T.

[542] St. Francis of Assisi, honoured on the 4th of October.--T.

[543] François Cacault (1743-1805), French Minister Plenipotentiary in Rome from 1801 to 1803.--B.

[544] The Chevalier Artaud de Montor, author of several works, of which the most important is his _Histoire du pape Pie VII._--B.