Chapter XIX: Book IV: 649 (1)

The year 1804--I move to the Rue de Miromesnil-Verneuil--Alexis de Tocqueville--Le Ménil--Mézy--Mérévil--Madame de Coislin--Journey to Vichy, in Auvergne, and to Mont Blanc--Return to Lyons--Excursion to the Grande Chartreuse--Death of Madame de Caud--The years 1805 and 1806--I return to Paris--I leave for the Levant--I embark in Constantinople on a ship carrying pilgrims for Syria--From Tunis to my return to France through Spain--Reflections on my voyage--Death of Julien.

Henceforth removed from active life, and nevertheless saved from Bonaparte's anger by the protection of Madame Bacciochi, I left my temporary lodging in the Rue de Beaune and went to live in the Rue de Miromesnil. The little house which I hired was occupied later by M. De Lally-Tolendal and Madame Denain, his "best-beloved," as they said in the days of Diane de Poitiers[650]. My garden abutted on a timber-yard, and near my window I had a tall poplar-tree, which M. de Lally-Tolendal, in order to breathe a less moist air, himself felled with his coarse hand, which to his eyes was transparent and fleshless: it was an illusion like any other. The pavement of the street at that time came to an end before my door; higher up, the street or road wound across a piece of waste-land called the Butte-aux-Lapins, or Rabbit Hill. The Butte-aux-Lapins, sprinkled with a few isolated houses, joined on the right the Jardin de Tivoli, whence I had set out with my brother for the emigration, and on the left the Parc de Monceaux. I strolled pretty often in that abandoned park, where the Revolution had commenced among the orgies of the Duc d'Orléans: this retreat had been embellished with marble nudities and mock ruins, a symbol of the light and vicious policy which was about to cover France with prostitutes and wreckage.

I busied myself with nothing: at the utmost I conversed in the park with some pine-trees, or talked of the Duc d'Enghien with three rooks at the edge of an artificial river hidden beneath a carpet of green moss. Deprived of my Alpine Legation and of my Roman friendships, even as I had been suddenly separated from my attachments in London, I did not know how to dispose of my imagination and my feelings; I sent them every evening after the sun, and its rays were unable to carry them over the seas. I returned indoors and tried to fall asleep to the sound of my poplar tree.

Nevertheless my resignation had increased my reputation; in France a little courage always looks well. Some of the members of Madame de Beaumont's former company introduced me to new country-houses.

[Sidenote: The Tocqueville family.]

M. de Tocqueville[651], my brother's brother-in-law, and guardian of my two orphaned nephews, occupied Madame de Senozan's[652] country-seat[653]. On every hand were scaffold legacies. There I saw my nephews grow up with their three Tocqueville cousins, among whom Alexis[654], the author of the _Démocratie en Amérique_, was prominent. He was more spoilt at Verneuil than I had been at Combourg. Is this the last renown that I shall have seen unknown in its swaddling clothes? Alexis de Tocqueville has travelled through the civilized America, of which I have travelled through the forests.

Verneuil has changed masters; it has become the property of Madame de Saint-Fargeau, famous through her father[655] and through the Revolution, which adopted her as its daughter.

Near Mantes, at the Ménil[656], was Madame de Rosanbo: my nephew, Louis de Chateaubriand, eventually married Mademoiselle d'Orglandes there, niece to Madame de Rosanbo; the latter no longer airs her beauty around the pond and under the beeches of the manor: it has passed. When I went from Verneuil to the Ménil, I came to Mézy[657] on the road: Madame de Mézy was romance wrapped up in virtue and maternal grief. If only her child, which fell from a window and broke its head, had been able, like the young quails which we shot, to fly over the _château_ and take refuge in the Île-Belle, the smiling island of the Seine: _Coturnix per stipulas pascens!_

On the other side of the Seine, not far from the Marais, Madame de Vintimille had introduced me to Méréville[658]. Méréville was an oasis created by the smile of a muse, but of one of those muses whom the Gallic poets call "the learned fairies." Here the adventures of Blanca[659] and of Velléda were read before fashionable generations which, falling one from the other like flowers, to-day listen to the wailing of my years.

By degrees my brain, wearying of rest in my Rue de Miromesnil, saw phantoms form before it in the distance. The _Génie du Christianisme_ inspired me with the idea of proving that work by mixing Christian and mythological characters together. A shade which long afterwards I called Cymodocée sketched itself vaguely in my head; not one of its features was fixed. Cymodocée once conceived, I shut myself up with her, as I always do with the daughters of my imagination; but, before they have issued from the dreamy state and arrived from the banks of Lethe through the ivory portals, they often change their shape. If I create them through love, I undo them through love, and the one cherished object which I, later, present to the light is the offspring of a thousand infidelities.

I remained only a year in the Rue de Miromesnil, because the house was sold. I arranged with Madame la Marquise de Coislin[660], who let me the top floor of her house on the Place Louis XV[661].

*

[Sidenote: The Marquise de Coislin.]

Madame de Coislin was a woman of the grandest air. She was nearly eighty years of age, and her proud and domineering eyes bore an expression of wit and irony. Madame de Coislin was in no way lettered, and took pride in the fact; she had passed through the Voltairean age without being aware of it; if she had conceived any idea of it whatever, it was that of a time of a voluble middle-class. Not that she ever spoke of her birth; she was too great to make herself ridiculous: she very well knew how to see "small people" without compromising her rank; but, after all, she was born of the Premier Marquis of France[662]. If she was descended from Drogon de Nesle, killed in Palestine in 1096; from Raoul de Nesle[663], the Constable, knighted by Louis IX.; from Jean II. de Nesle, Regent of France during the last crusade of St. Louis, Madame de Coislin vowed that this was a stupidity on the part of fate for which she ought not to be held responsible; she was naturally of the Court, as others, more happy, are of the streets, as one may be a thorough-bred mare or a cab-hack: she could not help this accident, and had no choice but to endure the ill with which Heaven had been pleased to afflict her.

Had Madame de Coislin had relations with Louis XV.? She never owned so much to me: she admitted, however, that she had been very much loved, but she pretended that she had treated the royal lover with the utmost harshness.

"I have seen him at my feet," she would say to me; "he had charming eyes, and his language was seductive. He offered one day to give me a porcelain dressing-table, like that which Madame de Pompadour had.

"'Oh, Sire,' cried I, 'then I must use it to hide under!'"

By a singular chance I came across this dressing-table at the Marchioness Conyngham's in London; she had received it from George IV., and showed it to me with amusing simplicity.

Madame de Coislin occupied in her house a room opening under the colonnade corresponding to the colonnade of the Wardrobe. Two sea-pieces by Vernet[664], which Louis "the Well-beloved" had given to the noble dame, were hung up on an old green satin tapestry. Madame de Coislin remained lying till two o'clock in the afternoon in a large bed, with curtains also of green silk, seated and propped up by pillows; a sort of nightcap, badly fastened to her head, allowed her grey hairs to escape. Sprigs of diamonds mounted in the old-fashioned way fell upon the shoulder-pieces of her bed-cloak, all covered with snuff, as in the time of the fashionable ladies of the Fronde. Around her, on the bed-clothes, lay scattered the addresses of letters, torn off the letters themselves, and on these addresses Madame de Coislin wrote down her thoughts in every direction: she bought no stationery, the post supplied her with it. From time to time a little dog called Lili put her nose outside the sheets, came to bark at me for five or six minutes, and crept back growling into her mistress' kennel. Thus had time settled the young loves of Louis XV.

Madame de Châteauroux[665] and her two sisters were cousins of Madame de Coislin; the latter would not have been of the humour, as was Madame de Mailly[666], repentant and a Christian, to reply to a man who insulted her with a coarse name in the church of Saint-Roch:

"My friend, since you know me, pray to God for me."

Madame de Coislin, miserly as are many people of wit, piled up her money in cupboards. She lived all devoured by a vermin of crown-pieces which clung to her skin; her servants relieved her. When I found her plunged in a maze of figures, she reminded me of the miser Hermocrates[667], who, when dictating his will, appointed himself his own heir. Nevertheless she gave a dinner occasionally; but she would rail against coffee, which nobody liked, according to her, and which served only to prolong the repast.

Madame de Chateaubriand took a journey to Vichy with Madame de Coislin and the Marquis de Nesle; the marquis went on ahead, and had excellent dinners prepared. Madame de Coislin came after, and asked only for half a pound of cherries. On leaving, she was presented with huge bills, and then there was a terrible outcry. She would not hear of anything except the cherries; the landlord maintained that, whether you ate or did not eat, the custom was, at an inn, to pay for your dinner.

Madame de Coislin had invented a form of illuminism to her own taste. Credulous and incredulous, she was led by her want of faith to laugh at those beliefs the superstition of which frightened her. She had met Madame de Krüdener; the mysterious Frenchwoman was illuminated only under reserve; she did not please the fervent Russian, whom she herself liked no better. Madame de Krüdener said passionately to Madame de Coislin:

"Madame, who is your inside confessor?"

"Madame," replied Madame de Coislin, "I know nothing about my inside confessor; I only know that my confessor is in the inside of his confessional."

Thereupon the two ladies saw each other no more.

Madame de Coislin prided herself on having introduced a novelty at Court, the fashion of floating chignons, in spite of Queen Marie Leczinska[668], who was very pious and who opposed this dangerous innovation. She held that formerly no genteel person would ever have thought of paying her doctor. Crying out against the plentifulness of women's linen:

"That smacks of the upstart," she said; "we women of the Court had only two shifts: when they were worn out, we renewed them; we were dressed in silk gowns, and we did not look like grisettes, like the young ladies of nowadays."

Madame Suard[669], who lived in the Rue Royale, had a cock whose crowing annoyed Madame de Coislin. She wrote to Madame Suard:

"Madame, have your cock's throat cut."

Madame Suard sent back the messenger with this note:

"Madame, I have the honour to reply to you that I shall not have my cock's throat cut."

The correspondence went no further. Madame de Coislin said to Madame de Chateaubriand:

"Ah, my heart, what a time we live in! And yet it's that Panckoucke girl, the wife of that member of the Academy[670], you know."

M. Hennin[671], a former clerk at the Foreign Office, and as tedious as a protocol, used to scribble fat novels. One day he was reading a description to Madame de Coislin: a tearful and abandoned love-lorn woman was mournfully fishing a salmon. Madame de Coislin, who was growing impatient, and who disliked salmon, interrupted the author and said with the serious air which made her so comical:

"Monsieur Hennin, could you not make that lady catch a different fish?"

The stories which Madame de Coislin told could not be recollected, for there was nothing in them; all lay in the pantomime, the accent, and the expression of the narrator: she never laughed. There was one dialogue between "Monsieur and Madame Jacqueminot," the perfection of which surpassed everything. When, in the conversation between the husband and wife, Madame Jacqueminot rejoined, "But, _Monsieur Jacqueminot!_" the name was pronounced in such a tone that you were seized with immoderate laughter. Obliged to let this pass, Madame de Coislin gravely waited, taking snuff.

Reading in a newspaper of the death of several kings, she took off her spectacles, and blowing her nose, said:

"There is an epizootic among crowned cattle."

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Coislin.]

At the moment when she was ready to breathe her last, they were maintaining by her bedside that one succumbed only through letting one's self go; that, if one paid great attention, and never lost sight of the enemy, one would not die at all.

"I believe it," she said; "but I fear that something would distract me."

She expired.

I went down to her room the next day; I found Monsieur[672] and Madame d'Avaray, her brother-in-law and sister, sitting before the fire-place, with a little table between them, counting the louis in a bag which they had taken from a hollow wainscoting. The poor dead woman was there in her bed, behind the half-closed curtains: she no longer heard the sound of the gold which ought to have awaked her, and which fraternal hands were counting.

Among the thoughts written down by the defunct on margins of printed paper and addresses of letters were some which were extremely beautiful. Madame de Coislin showed me what remained of the Court of Louis XV. under Bonaparte and after Louis XVI., even as Madame de Houdetot had enabled me to see what still lingered, in the nineteenth century, of philosophic society.

*

In the summer of the year 1805, I went to join Madame de Chateaubriand at Vichy, where Madame de Coislin had taken her, as I have said. I did not find Jussac, Termes, Flamarens there, whom Madame de Sévigné had "before and behind her" in 1677: they had been sleeping since one hundred and twenty and so many years. I left my sister, Madame de Caud, in Paris, where she had fixed her residence since the autumn of 1804. After a short stay at Vichy, Madame de Chateaubriand proposed that we should travel, in order to be away for some time from the political troubles.

Two little _Journeys_[673] which I then took in Auvergne and to Mont Blanc have been collected in my works. After an absence of thirty-four years, I have lately received at Clermont, from men unacquainted with my person, the reception usually shown to an old friend. He who has long occupied himself with the principles which the human race enjoys in common has friends, brothers and sisters in every family; for, if man is thankless, humanity is grateful. To those who have connected themselves with you through a kindly reputation, and who have never seen you, you are always the same; you have always the age which they ascribed to you; their attachment, which is not disturbed by your presence, always beholds you young and beautiful, like the sentiments which they love in your writings.

When I was a child, in my Brittany, and heard speak of Auvergne, I imagined it a very distant, very distant country, where one saw strange things, where one could not go without great danger, and travelling under the protection of the Blessed Virgin. I never meet without a sort of melting curiosity those little Auvergnats who go to seek their fortunes in this great world with a small deal chest. They have little besides hope in their box, as they climb down their rocks: lucky are they if they bring it back with them!

Alas, Madame de Beaumont had not lain two years on the bank of the Tiber when I trod her natal soil in 1805; I was at but a few leagues from that Mont Dore where she had come in search of the life which she lengthened a little in order to reach Rome. Last summer, in 1838, I once more travelled through this same Auvergne. Between those two dates, 1805 and 1838, I can place the transformations which society has undergone around me.

We left Clermont and, on our way to Lyons, passed through Thiers and Roanne. This road, then little frequented, followed at intervals the banks of the Lignon. The author of the _Astrée_[674], who is not a great genius, nevertheless invented places and persons that live: such is the creative power of fiction, when it is appropriate to the age in which it appears. There is, moreover, something ingeniously fantastic in that resurrection of the nymphs and naiads who mingle with shepherds, ladies and knights: those different worlds go well together, and one is agreeably pleased with the fables of mythology united to the lies of fiction; Rousseau has related how he was taken in by d'Urfé.

[Sidenote: Geneva.]

At Lyons, we again found M. Ballanche: he made the excursion to Geneva and Mont Blanc with us. He went wherever one took him, without having the smallest business there. At Geneva, I was not received at the gate of the city by Clotilda, the betrothed of Clovis: M. de Barante, senior[675], had become Prefect of the Léman. At Coppet, I went to see Madame de Staël: I found her alone, buried in her castle, which was built round a melancholy court-yard. I spoke to her of her fortune and of her solitude as a precious means of independence and happiness: I offended her. Madame de Staël loved society; she looked upon herself as the most wretched of women, in an exile with which I should have been enchanted. Where in my eyes was the unhappiness of living on one's property with all the comforts of life? Where was the misfortune of enjoying fame, leisure, peace, in a sumptuous retreat within sight of the Alps, in comparison with those thousands of breadless, nameless, helpless victims, banished to all the corners of Europe, while their parents had perished on the scaffold? It is sad to be attacked by an ill which the crowd cannot understand. For the rest, that ill is therefore only the more intense: it is not lessened by being confronted with other ills; one is not judged by another's pain; that which afflicts the one rejoices the other; hearts have varied secrets, incomprehensible to other hearts. Let us deny none his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries: each man has his own.

Madame de Staël called the next day on Madame de Chateaubriand at Geneva, and we left for Chamouny. My opinion on the scenery of the mountains caused it to be said that I was seeking to make myself singular. It will be seen, when I come to speak of the Saint-Gothard, that I have kept to my opinion. In the _Voyage au Mont-Blanc_ appears a passage which I will recall as linking together the past events of my life and the events of that same life then still future, and to-day also past:

"There is one circumstance alone in which it is true that the
mountains produce an oblivion of earthly troubles: that is
when one withdraws far from the world to consecrate himself
to religion. An anchorite devoting himself to the service
of mankind, a saint wishing to meditate in silence on the
greatness of God, may find peace and joy on desert rocks;
but it is not then the tranquillity of the spot that passes
into the soul of those solitaries: it is, on the contrary,
their soul that diffuses its serenity through the region of
storms....

"There are mountains which I would still visit with extreme
pleasure: those, for instance, of Greece and Judæa. I should
like to go over the spots with which my new studies lead
me daily to occupy myself: I would gladly seek, upon the
Tabor and Taygetus, other colours and other harmonies, after
painting the unfamed mountains and unknown valleys of the New
World."

The last phrase foretold the voyage which, in fact, I performed in the next year, 1806.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Forbin.]

On our return to Geneva, without being able to see Madame de Staël again at Coppet, we found the inns crammed. But for the cares of M. de Forbin[676], who arrived unexpectedly and procured us a bad dinner in a dark waiting-room, we should have left the birth-place of Rousseau without eating. M. de Forbin was at that time in a state of beatitude; he displayed in his looks the inner felicity with which he was inundated; his feet did not touch the ground. Wafted on his talent and his blissfulness, he came down from the mountain as though from the sky, with his close-fitting painter's jacket, his pallet on his thumb, his brushes in a quiver. A good fellow, nevertheless, although excessively happy, preparing to imitate me one day, when I should have made my voyage to Syria, wishing even to go as far as Calcutta, to make his loves return to him by an uncommon road, when they failed him on the beaten track. His eyes showed a protecting pity: I was poor, humble, uncertain of myself, and I did not hold the hearts of princesses in my mighty hands. In Rome, I have had the honour of returning M. de Forbin his lake-side dinner; I had the merit of having become an ambassador. In these days one sees the poor devil whom one has left that morning in the street turned into a king by evening.

The noble gentleman, a painter in right of the Revolution, began that generation of artists who dress themselves up like sketches, grotesques, caricatures. Some wear prodigious mustachioes: one would think they were going to conquer the world; their brushes are halberds, their erasing-knives sabres: others have huge beards, and hanging or puffed-out hair; they smoke a cigar by way of vulcano. These "cousins of the rainbow," as our old Régnier[677] says, have their heads filled with deluges, seas, rivers, forests, cataracts, tempests, or else with carnages, executions and scaffolds. In their rooms they have human skulls, foils, mandolines, morions, and dolmans. Bragging, pushing, uncivil, liberal (as far as the portrait of the tyrant whom they are painting), they endeavour to form a separate species between the ape and the satyr; they are anxious to make it understood that the secrecy of the studio has its dangers, and that there is no safety for the models. But how handsomely do they not redeem these oddities by a fevered existence, a suffering and sensitive nature, an entire abnegation of self, an incalculable devotion to the miseries of others, a delicate, superior, idealized manner of feeling, a poverty proudly welcomed and nobly endured; lastly, sometimes by immortal talents: the offspring of work, passion, genius, and solitude!

Leaving Geneva at night to return to Lyons, we were stopped at the foot of the Fort de l'Écluse, waiting for the gates to be opened. During this stay of the witches in _Macbeth_ on the heath, strange things passed within me. My dead years came to life again and surrounded me like a band of phantoms; my burning seasons returned to me in their flame and sadness. My life, hollowed out by the death of Madame de Beaumont, had remained empty: airy forms, houris or dreams, issuing from that abyss, took me by the hand and led me back to the days of the sylph. I was no longer in the spot which I occupied, I dreamed of other shores. Some secret influence urged me to the regions of the Dawn, whither I was drawn besides by the plan of my new work and the religious voice which released me from the vow of the village woman, my foster-mother. As all my faculties had extended, as I had never misused life, it superabounded with the pith of my intelligence, and art, triumphing in my nature, added to the poet's inspirations. I had what the Fathers of the Thebaïde called "ascensions" of the heart. Raphael--forgive the blasphemy of the simile--Raphael, before the Transfiguration only sketched upon the easel, could not have been more electrified by his master-piece than was I by Eudore and Cymodocée, whose names I did not yet know and whose images I dimly saw through an atmosphere of love and fame.

Thus does the native genius which tormented me in the cradle sometimes return on its steps after deserting me; thus are my former sufferings renewed; nothing heals within me; if my wounds close instantly, they open again suddenly like those of the crucifixes of the Middle Ages, which bleed on the anniversary of the Passion. I have no alternative, to obtain relief during these crises, but to give a free course to the fever of my thoughts, in the same way as one has his veins lanced when the blood rushes to the heart or rises to the head. But of what am I speaking! O religion, where then are thy powers, thy restraints, thy balsams! Am I not writing all these things at a distance of countless years from the hour at which I gave birth to René? I had a thousand reasons to believe myself dead, and I live! 'Tis a great pity. Those afflictions of the isolated poet, condemned to suffer the spring in spite of Saturn, are unknown to the man who does not go outside the common laws; for him the years are ever young:

"The young kids," says Oppian, "watch over the author of their being; when he comes to fall into the huntsman's net, they offer him in their mouths the tender, flowering grass, which they have gone to gather from afar, and bring him in their lips fresh water, drawn from the adjacent brook[678]."

*

On my return from Lyons I found letters from M. Joubert: they informed me that it was not possible for him to be at Villeneuve before September. I replied:

[Sidenote: Lyons and M. Saget.]

"Your departure from Paris is too remote and distresses me;
you well know that my wife will never consent to arrive at
Villeneuve before you: she has a head of her own, and since
she has been with me, I find myself at the head of two heads
very difficult to govern. We shall remain at Lyons, where
they make us eat so prodigiously that I hardly have the
courage to leave this excellent town. The Abbé de Bonnevie is
here, back from Rome; he is wonderfully well; he is merry, he
preachifies, and no longer thinks of his woes; he embraces
you and will write to you. In short, everybody is in high
spirits, except myself; you are the only one to grumble. Tell
Fontanes that I have dined with M. Saget."

This M. Saget was the providence of the canons; he lived on the hill of Sainte-Foix, in the district of the good wine. The way to his house led up near the spot where Rousseau had spent the night on the banks of the Saône:

"I remember," he says, "spending a delightful night outside
the town, on a road which skirted the Saône. Gardens raised
terrace-wise bordered the road on the opposite side: it had
been very warm that day; the evening was charming, the dew
moistened the parched grass; no wind, a quiet night; the
air was cool without being chill; the sun after setting
had left red vapours in the sky, and their reflection made
the water rose-coloured; the trees on the terraces were
laden with nightingales which replied one to the other. I
walked along in a sort of ecstasy, abandoning my senses and
my heart to the enjoyment of all this, and only sighing a
little with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my
sweet reverie, I prolonged my walk well into the night,
without perceiving that I was tired. I perceived it at last:
I lay down voluptuously on the shelf of a sort of niche or
false door, sunk into a terrace-wall; the canopy of my bed
consisted of the tops of the trees, a nightingale was exactly
over my head; I fell asleep to its singing: my slumbers were
sweet, my awakening even more so. It was broad day-light: my
eyes on opening beheld the water, the verdure, an admirable
landscape."

*

With Rousseau's charming itinerary in one's hand, one arrived at M. Saget's. This ancient and lean bachelor, formerly married, wore a green cap, a grey camlet coat, nankeen pantaloons, blue stockings and beaver shoes. He had lived long in Paris, and had been intimate with Mademoiselle Devienne[679]. She wrote him very witty letters, scolded him, and gave him very good advice: he ignored it, for he did not take the world seriously, believing apparently, like the Mexicans, that the world had already used four suns, and that at the fourth (which is lighting us at present) men had been changed into maggots. He did not trouble his mind about the martyrdom of St. Pothin[680] and St. Ireneus[681], nor of the massacre of the Protestants drawn up side by side by order of Mandelot[682], the Governor of Lyons, all of them having their throats cut on the same side. Opposite the field of the shooting at the Brotteaux[683], he would tell me details of it, while strolling among his vines, mingling with his narrative verses of Loyse Labbé[684]: he would not have missed a single mouthful during the last misfortunes of Lyons, under the Charte-Vérité.

On certain days a certain calf's head was served up at Sainte-Foix, after being soused for five nights, boiled in madeira, and stuffed full of exquisite things; very pretty peasant-girls waited at table; they served excellent homegrown wine out of demi-johns the size of three bottles. We swooped upon the Saget banquet, I and the cassocked chapter: the hill-side was quite black with us.

Our _dapifer_ soon came to the end of his provisions: in the ruin of his last moments he was taken in by two or three of the old mistresses who had plundered his life, "a kind of women," says St. Cyprian[685], "who live as though they could be loved: _quæ sic vivis ut possis adamari._"

*

[Sidenote: The Grande Chartreuse.]

We tore ourselves from the delights of Capua to go and see the Chartreuse, still accompanied by M. Ballanche. We hired a calash whose disjointed wheels made a lamentable noise. On reaching Voreppe we stopped at an inn at the top of the town. The next morning, at break of day, we mounted on horseback and set out preceded by a guide. At the village of Saint-Laurent, at the bottom of the Grande-Chartreuse, we crossed the threshold of the valley, and passing between two walls of rocks, followed the road leading up to the monastery. When speaking of Combourg, I have told you what I experienced in that spot. The deserted buildings were cracking under the supervision of a kind of farmer of the ruins. A lay-brother had remained to take care of an infirm solitary who had just died: religion had imposed loyalty and obedience upon friendship. We saw the narrow grave freshly covered over: Napoleon was just about to dig a huge one at Austerlitz. We were shown the convent enclosure, the cells, each with its garden and workshop; we noticed joiners' boards and turners' wheels: the hand had dropped the chisel. In a gallery were displayed the portraits of the superiors of the Chartreuse. The ducal palace at Venice preserves the series of the _ritratti_ of the doges: what different spots and memories! Higher up, at some distance, we were taken to the chapel of Le Sueur's[686] immortal recluse[687].

After dining in an immense kitchen, we set out again and met, carried in a palanquin like a rajah, M. Chaptal, formerly an apothecary, then a senator, next owner of Chanteloup and inventor of beetroot sugar, the greedy heir of the beautiful Indian reed-canes of Sicily, perfected by the Otaheitan sun. As I descended from the forests, my thoughts turned to the cenobites of old; for centuries, they carried, together with a little earth, in the skirts of their gowns, fir plants which have grown into trees on the rocks. Happy O ye who travelled noiselessly through the world, nor even turned your heads in passing!

No sooner had we reached the entrance to the valley than a storm burst; a deluge dashed down, and vexed torrents rushed roaring from every ravine. Madame de Chateaubriand, becoming reckless for very fear, galloped through the flint stones, the water and the lightning-flashes. She had flung away her umbrella the better to hear the thunder; the guide cried to her:

"Recommend your soul to God! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!"

We reached Voreppe to the sound of the tocsin; what remained of the cloven storm lay before us. In the distant landscape, we saw a blazing village and the moon rounding out the upper portion of his disc above the clouds, like the pale, bald forehead of St. Bruno, the founder of the order of silence. M. Ballanche, all dripping with rain, said with his immovable placidity:

"I am like a fish in the water."

I have just seen Voreppe again, in this year 1838: the storm was there no longer; but two witnesses of it still remain, Madame de Chateaubriand and M. Ballanche. I mention this because I have too often, in these Memoirs, had to call attention to the dead.

On returning to Lyons we left our companion there, and went to Villeneuve. I have told you about this little town, my walks and my regrets on the banks of the Yonne with M. Joubert. Three old maids used to live there, Mesdemoiselles Piat; they reminded me of my grandmother's three friends at Plancoët, saving the difference in social position. The virgins of Villeneuve died one after the other, and I thought of them when I saw a grass-grown flight of steps, running up outside their empty house. What used these village damsels to talk about in their time! They spoke of a dog, and of a muff which their father had once bought them at Sens Fair. To me this was as charming as the council of the same town at which St. Bernard had Abélard, my fellow-Breton, condemned. The maids of the muff were Heloïses perhaps; perhaps they loved, and their letters, brought to light, will one day entrance posterity. Who knows? Perhaps they wrote to their "lord, also their father, also their brother, also their spouse: _domino suo, imo patri_," etc., that they felt honoured by the name of friend, by the name of "mistress" or of "courtesan: _concubinæ vel scorti._"

"In the midst of his learning," says a grave doctor, "I find that Abélard played an admirably foolish prank when he suborned with love his pupil Héloïse."

[Sidenote: Illness of Lucile.]

A great and new sorrow surprised me at Villeneuve. To tell it you, I must go back to a few months before my Swiss journey. I was still occupying the house in the Rue Miromesnil when, in the autumn of 1804, Madame de Caud came to Paris. The death of Madame de Beaumont had finished the affecting of my sister's reason; she was very near refusing to believe in the death, suspecting some mystery in the disappearance, or including Heaven in the number of the enemies who mocked at her misfortunes. She had nothing; I had chosen an apartment in the Rue Caumartin for her, deceiving her as to the rent and as to the arrangements which I told her to make with the keeper of an eating-house. Like a flame ready to expire, her genius shed the brightest light; she was all illumined with it. She would write a few lines which she threw into the fire, or else copy from books some thoughts in harmony with the disposition of her soul. She did not remain long in the Rue Caumartin; she went to live with the Dames Saint-Michel, in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques: Madame de Navarre was the superior of the convent. Lucile had a little cell overlooking the garden: I noticed that she followed with her eyes, with I know not what gloomy longing, the nuns who walked in the enclosure around the vegetable beds. One could guess that she envied the saints and, going further, aspired to the angels. I will sanctify these Memoirs by deposing in them, as relics, the following letters of Madame de Caud, written before she had taken flight for her eternal country:

"17 _January._

"I had placed all my happiness in you and in Madame de
Beaumont; I fled from my cares and my sorrows in the thought
of you two: my whole occupation was to love you. Last night
I made long reflections upon your character and your ways.
As you and I are always near each other, it needs some time,
I think, to know me, such is the variety of ideas in my
head! Such is the opposition of my timidity and my peculiar
external weakness to my real inner strength! Too much about
myself. My illustrious brother, accept my fondest thanks for
all the favours and all the marks of friendship which you
have never ceased to show me. This is the last letter you
will receive from me in the morning. Albeit I communicate
my ideas to you, they nevertheless remain quite completely
within myself."

(_No date._)

"Do you seriously, dear, think me safe from some impertinence
on the part of M. Chênedollé? I am quite determined not to
invite him to continue his visits; I resign myself to look
upon Tuesday's as the last. I do not wish to trouble his
politeness. I am closing for ever the book of my fate, and
sealing it with the seal of reason; I shall now consult its
pages no more on the trifles than on the important things of
life. I give up all my foolish notions; I wish neither to
occupy nor to vex myself with those of other people; I will
abandon myself with heart and soul to all the events of my
passage through this world. What a pity that I should pay
myself so much attention! God can now afflict me only in you.
I thank Him for the precious, kind and dear present which He
has made me in your person and for having preserved my life
without stain: those are all my treasures. I could take for
an emblem of my life the moon in a cloud, with this device:
'Often obscured, never tarnished.' Farewell, dear. You will
perhaps be surprised at my words since yesterday morning.
Since I saw you, my heart has raised itself to God, and I
have laid it wholly at the foot of the Cross, its sole and
true place."

"_Thursday._

"Good-morning, dear. What colour are your ideas this morning?
As for me, I remember that the only person who was able to
relieve me when I was fearing for Madame de Farcy's life was
she who said to me, 'But it is within the range of possible
things that you may die before her.' Could any one have
spoken more to the point? There is nothing, dear, like the
idea of death to rid us of the future. I hasten to rid you of
myself this morning, for I feel myself too much in the mood
to say fine things. Good-bye, my poor brother. Keep joyful."

(_No date._)

"While Madame de Farcy lived, always by her side, I had not
noticed the need of being in communion of thought with some
one. I possessed that advantage unconsciously. But since we
lost that friend, and circumstances having separated me from
you, I have known the torture of never being able to refresh
and renew one's mind in some one's conversation; I feel that
my ideas hurt me when I am unable to get rid of them; this
has surely to do with my bad organization. Nevertheless I am
fairly satisfied, since yesterday, with my courage. I pay no
attention to my grief and to the sort of inward faintness
which I feel. I have abandoned myself. Continue to be always
kind to me: before long it will be humanity. Good-bye, dear.
Till soon, I hope."

[Sidenote: Lucile's letters.]

(_No date._)

"Be easy, dear; my health is recovering visibly. I often ask
myself why I take so much pains to bolster it up. I am like a
madman who should build a fortress in the middle of a desert.
Farewell, my poor brother."

(_No date._)

"As I have a bad headache to-night, I have just simply, and
at haphazard, written down some thoughts of Fénelon's for
you, so as to keep my promise:

'"We are confined within narrow limits when we shut ourselves
up in our own existence; on the contrary, we feel at liberty
when we quit this prison to enter into the immensity of God.'

"'We shall soon find once more all that we have lost We are
daily approaching it with rapid strides. Yet a little while,
and we shall no more have cause to weep. It is we who die:
what we love still lives and shall never die.'

"'You impart to yourself a deceitful strength, such as a
raging fever gives to a sick man. For some days past, a
sort of convulsive movement has been visible in you, from
the effort to affect an air of gaiety and courage, whilst a
silent anguish filled your soul.'

"That is as much as my head and my bad pen permit me to
write to you this evening. If you like, I will begin again
to-morrow, and perhaps tell you some more. Good-evening,
dear. I shall never cease telling you that my heart
prostrates itself before that of Fénelon, whose tenderness
seems to me so profound, and his virtue so exalted. Good-bye,
dear.

"I am awake, and offer you a thousand loves and a hundred
blessings. I feel well this morning and am anxious as to
whether you will be able to read me, and whether those
thoughts of Fénelon's will seem to you well chosen. I fear my
heart has concerned itself too much with the selection."

(_No date._)

"Could you think that since yesterday I have been madly
occupied in correcting you? The Blossacs have trusted me
with one of your novels in the greatest secrecy. As I do not
think that you have made the most of your ideas, I am amusing
myself by trying to render them in their full value. Can
audacity go further than that? Forgive me, great man, and
remember that I am your sister, and that I have some little
right to make an ill use of your riches."

"SAINT-MICHEL.

"I will no longer say, 'Do not come to see me again,'
because, having from now but a few days to spend in Paris,
I feel that your presence is essential to me. Do not come
to-day until four; I expect to be out till then. Dear, I have
in my head a thousand contradictory ideas touching things
which seem to me to exist and not to exist, which to me have
the effect of objects of which one only caught sight in a
glass, and of which, consequently, one could not make sure,
however distinctly one saw them. I wish to trouble about all
this no longer; from this moment I abandon myself. Unlike
you, I have not the resource of changing banks, but I feel
sufficient courage to attach no importance to the persons
and things on my shore, and to fix myself entirely and
irrevocably in the Author of all justice and all truth. There
is only one displeasure to which I fear that I shall grow
insensible with great difficulty, that of unintentionally, in
passing, striking against the destiny of some other person,
not because of any interest that might be taken in me: I am
not mad enough for that."

"SAINT-MICHEL.

"Dear, never did the sound of your voice give me so much
pleasure as when I heard it yesterday on my staircase. My
ideas then strove to overcome my courage. I was seized with
content to feel you so near me; you appeared, and my whole
inner being returned to orderliness. I sometimes feel a great
repugnance at heart to drinking my cup. How can that heart,
which is so small a space, contain so much existence and so
much grief? I am greatly dissatisfied with myself, greatly
dissatisfied. My affairs and my ideas carry me away; I
scarcely occupy myself with God now, and I confine myself to
saying to Him a hundred times a day, 'O Lord, make haste to
hearken unto my prayer, for my spirit waxeth faint.'"

[Sidenote: More letters from Lucile.]

(_No date._)

"Brother, do not grow weary of my letter, nor of my company;
think that soon you will be for ever released from my
importunities. My life is casting its last light, like a
lamp which has burnt out in the darkness of a long night,
and which sees the rise of the dawn in which it is to die.
Please, brother, cast a single glance at the early moments
of our existence; remember that we have often been seated
on the same lap, and pressed both together to the same
bosom; that already you added tears to mine, that from
the earliest days of your life you protected and defended
my frail existence, that our games united us and that I
shared your first studies. I will not speak to you of our
adolescence, of the innocence of our thoughts and of our
joys, nor of our mutual need to see each other incessantly.
If I retrace the past, I candidly confess, brother, that
it is to make me revive the more in your heart. When you
left France for the second time, you placed your wife in my
hands, you made me promise never to part from her. True to
this dear engagement, I voluntarily stretched out my hands
to the irons, and entered into the regions destined alone
for the victims vowed to death. In those abodes I have had
no anxiety save as to your fate; incessantly I questioned
the forebodings of my heart touching yourself. When I had
recovered my liberty, amidst the ills which came to overwhelm
me, the thought alone of our meeting kept me up. To-day, when
I am irretrievably losing the hope of running my course by
your side, bear with my griefs. I shall become resigned to my
destiny, and it is only because I am still fighting against
it that I suffer such cruel anguish; but when I shall have
grown submissive to my fate.... And what a fate! Where are
my friends, my protectors and my treasures! To whom matters
my existence, that existence abandoned by all, and weighing
down entirely upon itself? My God, are not my present woes
enough for my weakness, without yet adding to them the dread
of the future? Forgive me, my too dear friend, I will resign
myself; I will fall asleep, in a slumber as of death, upon
my destiny. But, during the few days which I have to spend in
this town, let me seek my last consolations in you; let me
believe that my presence is sweet to you. Believe me, among
the hearts that love you, none approaches the sincerity and
tenderness of my impotent friendship for you. Fill my memory
with agreeable recollections, which prolong my existence
beside you. Yesterday, when you spoke to me of coming to
you, you seemed to me anxious and serious, while your words
were affectionate. Why, brother, could I be to you also a
subject of aversion and annoyance? You know it was not I
that proposed the amiable distraction of going to see you,
and that I promised you to make no ill use of it; but, if
you have changed your opinion, why did you not tell me so
frankly? I have no courage to set against your politeness.
Formerly you used to distinguish me a little more from the
common herd and to do me more justice. As you reckon upon me
to-day, I will come to see you presently, at eleven o'clock.
We will arrange together what seems best to you for the
future. I have written to you, feeling sure that I should not
have the courage to say to you a single word of what this
letter contains."

This so affecting and quite admirable letter is the last which I received; it alarmed me through the increase of sadness of which it bears the impress. I hurried to the Dames Saint-Michel; my sister was walking in the garden with Madame de Navarre; she went in when she knew that I had gone up to her room. She made visible efforts to collect her ideas, and at intervals she had a slight convulsive movement of the lips. I entreated her to return entirely to reason, to cease writing such unjust things to me, things that rent my heart, to cease thinking that I could ever grow weary of her. She appeared to grow a little calmer at the words which I repeated to distract and console her. She told me that she believed that the convent was doing her harm, that she would feel better living alone, in the neighbourhood of the Jardin des Plantes, there where she could see doctors and walk about. I urged her to please her own taste, adding that in order to help Virginie, her maid, I would give her old Saint-Germain. This proposal seemed to give her great pleasure, in memory of Madame de Beaumont, and she assured me that she would go to look out for her new lodging. She asked me how I was thinking of spending the summer. I said that I should go to Vichy to join my wife, and then to M. Joubert at Villeneuve, to return to Paris from there. I suggested to her to accompany us. She answered that she wished to spend the summer alone, and that she was going to send Virginie back to Fougères. I left her; she was more at ease.

Madame de Chateaubriand left for Vichy, and I prepared to follow her. Before leaving Paris I went again to see Lucile. She was affectionate; she spoke to me of her little writings. I encouraged the great poet to work; she kissed me, wished me a good journey, made me promise to come back soon. She saw me to the landing of the staircase, leant over the baluster, and quietly watched me go down. When I reached the bottom I stopped, and lifting my head, cried to the unhappy woman who was still looking at me:

"Farewell, dear sister! I shall see you soon! Take great care of yourself! Write to me at Villeneuve. I will write to you. I hope that next winter you will agree to live with us."

[Sidenote: Death of Lucile.]

That evening I saw the worthy Saint-Germain; I gave him orders and some money, so that he might secretly reduce the prices of anything she might require. I enjoined him to keep me informed of everything and not to fail to call me back in case he should want to see me. Three months passed. When I reached Villeneuve, I found two fairly tranquillizing letters about Madame de Caud's health: but Saint-Germain forgot to speak to me of my sister's new lodging. I had begun to write her a long letter, when suddenly Madame de Chateaubriand fell dangerously ill: I was at her bedside when I was brought a new letter from Saint-Germain; I opened it: a withering line told me of the sudden death of Lucile.

I have cared for many tombs in my life: it fell to my lot and to my sister's destiny that her ashes should be flung to the skies. I was not in Paris when she died; I had no relations there; kept at Villeneuve by my wife's critical condition, I was unable to go to the sacred remains; orders sent from a distance arrived too late to prevent a common burial. Lucile knew no one and had not a friend; she was known only to Madame de Beaumont's old servant: it was as though he had been charged to link two destinies. He alone followed the forsaken coffin, and he himself was dead before Madame de Chateaubriand's sufferings allowed me to bring her back to Paris.