Chapter XVI: Book II: 446 (4)

[545] Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti, Pope Pius VII. (1740-1823), was elected to the Papacy in 1800. He signed the Concordat with Bonaparte in 1801, crowned him Emperor in Paris in 1804, but excommunicated him in 1809, after the invasion of the Papal States. Napoleon had him kidnapped and taken to Savona, and thence to Fontainebleau, where Pope Pius was kept in captivity until 1814. On returning to his States he had the generosity to give an asylum to the members of his persecutor's family.--T.

[546] Ercole Cardinal Consalvi (1757-1824), Secretary of State to Pius VII., and one of the greatest statesmen of the century. He too signed the famous Concordat, and he too was imprisoned for some time by Napoleon. He represented the Pope at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.--T.

[547] Charles Emanuel IV., King of Sardinia (1751-1819), succeeded his father Victor Amedeus III. in 1796, was obliged to surrender his continental possessions to the French Republic in 1798, and retired to Sardinia. In 1802 he abdicated and was succeeded by his brother Victor Emanuel I. He ended his days in Rome as a Jesuit. Charles Emanuel IV. became Heir in Line of the House of Stuart on the death of the Cardinal of York (Henry IX.) in 1807, and appears in the Jacobite Calendars as Charles IV. King of England.--T.

[548] The Abbé Nicolas Silvestre Guillon (1760-1847) had been chaplain, reader, and librarian to the Princesse de Lamballe. He hid himself under the Terror and reappeared in 1801 to publish his _Recherches sur le Concordat_, which caused him to be confined in the Temple for four months. On returning from Rome he became Professor of Rhetoric at the new University. In 1810 he was appointed to the Faculty of Theology in Paris, and for thirty years professed sacred eloquence in that faculty, of which he ultimately became the dean. He became chaplain to the Orleans Family in 1818, and in 1831 Louis-Philippe named him for the See of Beauvais, which, owing to a technical misdemeanour, he was not allowed to accept. Having confessed his error, he was in the course of the next year installed as Bishop of Morocco _in partibus._--T.

[549] Marie Thérèse Princesse de Lamballe, _née_ Princesse de Savoie-Carignan (1749-1792), was murdered at the prison of the Force in September 1792.--T.

[550] Antoine François Philippe Dubois-Descours, Marquis de La Maisonfort (1778-1827), had returned from the Emigration at the commencement of the Consulate, and was arrested and confined in the island of Elba, whence he escaped to Rome. Under the Restoration, he sat for a time in Parliament and represented France as Minister Plenipotentiary at Florence.--B.

[551] Louis François Bertin (1766-1841), usually known as Bertin the Elder, to distinguish him from his brother Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux, together with whom he bought the _Journal des Débats_ in 1799, and immeasurably improved the property. He was deprived of it in 1811, but revived the paper in 1814, and vigorously supported the Restoration until 1830, when he allied himself to Louis-Philippe and the new monarchy.--T.

[552] Pierre Joseph Briot (1771-1827) opposed Bonaparte in the Council of the Five Hundred, but nevertheless obtained his appointment as Government Commissary-General in Elba through the influence of Lucien Bonaparte. On Napoleon's coronation as Emperor, Briot went to Italy, and held various offices under Joseph and Joachim Murat, Kings of Naples. He refused to accept titles or decorations from either of these monarchs, which is probably the reason why Chateaubriand speaks of him as "the Republican" Briot.--B.

[553] The Princesse Pauline Borghèse (1780-1825), _née_ Bonaparte, was Napoleon's second sister. She married General Leclerc in 1797, and shortly after his death married Prince Camille Borghèse (1803), from whom she soon separated, leaving Italy to reside at the Château de Neuilly. She enjoyed the title of Duchess of Guastalla from 1806 to 1814. In the latter year, she devoted herself wholly to Napoleon, accompanying him to Elba, and placing her diamonds at his disposal. In her later years, she became reconciled to her husband and lived with him at Florence. Pauline Borghèse was one of the most beautiful of women of her time. She sat to Canova for a nude Venus, and was doubtless in no way shy of "making her toilet" before Chateaubriand.--T.

[554]

"I perish last and most wretched of all!"--T.

[555]

"My days do not warrant the price of a sigh."--T.

[556] Madame de Sévigné's seat in Brittany.--B.

[557] This house stood near the Trinità-del-Monte, and was known by the name of the Villa Margherita.--B.

[558] Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d'Agincourt (1730-1814), a distinguished antiquarian and archæologist. He had been a farmer-general under Louis XV., and amassed a huge fortune, which he devoted to study and the cultivation of the arts. After visiting England, Holland, Germany, and Italy, he settled in Rome, in 1778, where he became intimate with the Cardinal de Bernis and Azara, the Spanish Ambassador and art-patron, and compiled his great work, the _Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments, depuis le IVe siècle jusqu'au XVIe_, in 6 volumes folio, with 336 plates.--T.

[559] ISAIAS XXII. 18.--T.

[560] Barbara Juliana Baroness Krüdener (1764-1824), _née_ von Vietinghoff-Scheel, a famous Russian mystic, was married, when fourteen years of age, to Baron Krüdener, Russian Ambassador in Berlin. After leading a very dissipated life, and publishing her well-known novel, _Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G._ (1803), she suddenly, in 1807, withdrew from the world, gave way to exalted devotion, and pretended to have received from Heaven a mission for the regeneration of Christianity. She travelled through Germany, visiting the prisons, preaching in the open air, and converting men by the thousand. In 1814, she came into contact with the foreign sovereigns then in Paris, exercised a great ascendant over the Emperor Alexander, foretold to him the return of Napoleon from Elba and his ultimate fall, and inspired him with the idea of the Holy Alliance. She next resumed her travels through Switzerland and the various States of Germany, but her extraordinary influence began to be dreaded, and she was expelled wherever she went. In 1822, she took refuge in the Crimea, where she founded an institution for sinners and criminals, and died at Karasu-Bazar on Christmas Day 1824.--T.

[561] Joseph Michaud (1767-1839), author of the _Printemps d'un proscrit_ and a History of the Crusades, and a member of the French Academy. In 1795, he was condemned to death for professing Royalist opinions in his paper, the _Quotidienne_, but succeeded in evading execution of the sentence, which was revoked in 1796. He was appointed Press Censor under the Restoration.--T.

[562] The Comte Guillaume de La Luzerne, who in 1787 married Madame de Beaumont's elder sister, Mademoiselle Victoire de Montmorin, was the nephew of the Comte de La Luzerne, the ambassador, and son of César Henri de La Luzerne, Minister of Marine under Louis XVI. Chateaubriand appears to have confused the two.--B.

[563] The Saint-Germains, husband (Germain Couhaillon) and wife, had been for thirty-eight years in the service of the Montmorin family. Chateaubriand afterwards took them into his own service, which they never left.--B.

[564] Auguste de Montmorin (_d._ 1793), a naval officer, had perished in a storm when returning from the Mauritius.--B.

[565] Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), succeeded Pope Pius VII. in 1823.--T.

[566] This tomb, which faces that of the Cardinal de Bernis at San Luigi dei Francesi, was erected by Chateaubriand himself at a cost of some nine thousand francs.--B.

[567] And not in 1827, as is given in all the earlier editions of the Memoirs. Chateaubriand spent the whole of the year 1827 in Paris. It was not until 1828, under the Mortignac Ministry, that he was appointed to the Embassy in Rome.--B.

[568] _Greek Anthology_, VII. 346.--B.

[569] M. de Fontanes' friendship goes much too far: Madame de Beaumont knew me better; she no doubt felt that, if she had left me her fortune, I should not have accepted it.--_Author's Note._

[570] Madame de Beaumont left her books to Chateaubriand in her will, dated Paris, 15 May 1802.--B.

[571] The words italicized are in English.--T.

[572] Baron Matthieu de Staël, Madame de Staël's second son, who died while still very young.--T.

[573] In 1802, for her opposition to Bonaparte.--T.

[574] Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), the eminent Prussian diplomatist and philologist, and the friend and correspondent of all the literary eminences of his time.--T.

[575] JOHN XI. 44.--T.

[576] The _Lettre à M. de Fontanes_, on the Roman Campagna, is dated to January 1804, and first appeared in the Mercure de France, in its issue of March 1804.--B.

[577] Rome, December 1803.--B.

[578] Cf. ROUSSEAU'S _Confessions._--T.

[579] _Gen._ III. 22.--T.

[580] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835) displayed considerable independence in the Legislative Body, of which he was a member for the Department of the Gironde. Under the Restoration, he was Minister of the Interior from 1816 to 1818. In 1823, he was made a viscount and a peer of France. He had become a member of the French Academy in 1818, although he had never produced any literary work, properly speaking.--T.

[581] _Martyrs_, V.--B.

[582] Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the famous sculptor. In 1819 he was sent to Paris as a special ambassador from the Pope.--T.

[583] Now the Hôtel de France et de Lorraine, at No. 5, Rue de Beaune.--B.

[584] Not the 20th, as the previous editions and the manuscript of the Memoirs have it. This was clearly a slip of the pen. The execution of the Duc d'Enghien took place, not on the 20th, but on the 21st of March 1804.--B.

[585] Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834), private secretary to Napoleon I. and Minister of State under Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 and the consequent loss of his fortune caused him to lose his reason, and he died in a madhouse. His Memoirs, written by himself and revised by M. de Villemarest were published in ten volumes, 1829-1831.--T.

[586] _Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne_, vol. V. p. 348.--B.

[587] Here again the manuscript gives the 20th of March in error.--B.

[588] Chateaubriand's letter of resignation ran as follows:

"CITIZEN MINISTER,

"The doctors have just stated that Madame de Chateaubriand's
state of health is such as to raise fears for her life. As
it is absolutely impossible for me to leave my wife in these
circumstances, or to expose her to the danger of a journey,
I beg Your Excellency to approve that I return to you the
credentials and instructions which you have sent me for the
Valais. I also trust to your extreme kindness to persuade the
First Consul to accept _the painful reasons_ which prevent me
to-day from undertaking the mission with which he was pleased
to honour me. As I do not know whether my position requires
me to take any other steps, I venture to appeal to your usual
indulgence, Citizen Minister, for orders and advice; I shall
receive these with the gratitude which I shall not cease to
feel for your past kindnesses.

"I have the honour to greet you respectfully,

"CHATEAUBRIAND.

"HÔTEL DE FRANCE, RUE DE BEAUNE, PARIS.

"1 _Germinal Year XII_ [22 _March_ 1804]."--B.

[589] Moreau had been arrested on the 15th of February; Pichegru on the 28th of February; and Georges Cadoudal on the 9th of March 1804.--B.

[590] Jean Claude Clausel de Coussergues (1759-1846), a distinguished magistrate and orator. Under the Restoration, he became a deputy and a member of the Court of Appeal. He resigned after the Revolution of 1830.--B.

[591] _Prov._ VI. 17.--T.

[592] JOHN VIII. 43.--T.

[593] Talleyrand's letter did not arrive until ten days after the letter of resignation, and was thus worded:

"12 _Germinal_ [2 _April_ 1804].

"CITIZEN,

"I have brought to the notice of the First Consul the motives
which prevent you from accepting the Legation in the Valais,
to which you had been appointed.

"The Citizen Consul had been pleased to give you a proof of
confidence. The same feelings of good-will have caused him
to learn with regret the reasons which do not permit you to
fulfill that mission.

"I must also express to you the great interest which I
attached to the new relations which I should have had to
maintain with you; and to this regret, which is personal to
myself, I add that of seeing my department deprived of your
talents and services."--B.