Chapter IV: Book VII: 1 (3)

Verdun is famous for its female sacrifices. According to Gregory of Tours[115], Deuteric, to protect his daughter from the prosecution of Theodebert[116], placed her in a cart drawn by two untamed oxen and had her flung into the Meuse. The instigator of the massacre of the young girls of Verdun was the regicide poetaster Pons de Verdun[117], who was infuriated against his native city. The number of agents of the Terror supplied by the _Almanach des Muses_ is incredible; the unsatisfied vanity of the mediocrities produced as many revolutionaries as the wounded pride of the cripples and abortions: a revolt analogous to that of the infirmities of mind and body. Pons attached the point of a dagger to his blunt epigrams. Faithful, as it seemed, to the traditions of Greece, the poet was willing to offer none save the blood of virgins to his gods: for the Convention decreed, on his motion, that no woman with child could be put on her trial. He also caused the sentence to be annulled condemning Madame de Bonchamps to death, the widow of the celebrated Vendean general[118]. Alas, we Royalists in the train of the Princes attained the reverses of the Vendée without passing through its glory!

We had not at Verdun, to pass the time, "that famous Comtesse de Saint-Balmont[119], who laid aside her female apparel, mounted on horseback, and herself served as an escort to the ladies who accompanied her or whom she had left in her chariot..." We had no passion for "old Gallic," nor did we write "notes in the language of Amadis[120]."

The Prussian evil[121] communicated itself to our little army: I caught it. Our cavalry had gone to join Frederic William at Valmy. We knew nothing of what was happening, and were hourly expecting the order to march forward: we received the order to beat a retreat.

[Sidenote: I am weakened by my wound.]

Very greatly weakened, and prevented by my troublesome wound from walking without pain, I dragged myself as best I could in the wake of my company, which soon dispersed. Jean Balue[122], son of a miller at Verdun, left his father's house at a very early age with a monk, who burdened him with his wallet. On leaving Verdun, "Ford Hill" according to Saumaise[123], _ver dunum_, I carried the wallet of the Monarchy, but I did not become Comptroller of Finance, nor a bishop or cardinal.

If, in the novels which I have written, I have drawn upon my own history, in the histories which I have told I have placed memories of the living history in which I took part. Thus, in my life of the Duc de Berry[124], I described some of the scenes which took place before my eyes:

"When an army is disbanded, it returns to its homes; but had
the soldiers of Condé's Army any homes? Whither was the stick
to lead them which they were hardly permitted to cut in the
forests of Germany, after laying down the musket which they
had taken up in defense of their King?...

"The time had come to part. The brothers-in-arms bade each
other a last farewell, and took different roads on earth.
All, before setting out, went to salute their father and
captain, white-haired old Condé: the patriarch of glory gave
his blessing to his children, wept over his dispersed tribe,
and saw the tents of his camp fall with the grief of a man
witnessing the destruction of his ancestral roof[125]."

Less than twenty years later, the leader of the new French Army, Bonaparte, also took leave of his companions: so quickly do men and empires pass, so little does the most extraordinary renown save one from the most common destiny!

We left Verdun. The rains had broken up the roads; everywhere one saw ammunition-wagons, gun-carriages, cannon stuck in the mire, chariots overturned, cutler-women with their children on their backs, soldiers dying or dead in the mud. Crossing a ploughed field, I sank down to my knees; Ferron and another comrade dragged me out despite myself: I begged them to leave me there; I had rather died.

On the 16th of October, at the camp near Longwy, the captain of my company, M. de Goyon-Miniac, handed me a very honourable certificate. At Arlon, we saw a file of wagons with their teams on the high-road: the horses, some standing, others kneeling down, others with their noses on the ground, were dead, and their bodies had grown stiff between the shafts: it was as though one saw the shades of a battlefield bivouacking on the shores of Styx.

Ferron asked me what I meant to do, and I answered that, if I could go as far as Ostend, I would take ship for Jersey, where I should find my uncle de Bedée; from there I should be able to join the Royalists in Brittany.

[Sidenote: And catch the smallpox.]

The fever was sapping my strength; I could only with difficulty support myself on my swollen thigh. I felt a new ailment lay hold of me. After twenty-four hours' vomiting, my face and body were covered with an eruption: confluent smallpox broke out; it appeared to be affected by the temperature of the air. In this condition, I set out on foot to make a journey of two hundred leagues, rich as I was to the extent of eighteen livres Tournois: all this for the greater glory of the Monarchy. Ferron, who had lent me my six small crowns of three francs, left me, he having arranged to be met in Luxembourg.

*

As I was leaving Arlon, a peasant took me up in his cart for the sum of four sous, and put me down five leagues farther on a heap of stones. I hopped a few paces with the aid of my crutch, and washed the bandage round my scratch, which had developed into a sore, in a spring rustling by the roadside, which did me a great deal of good. The smallpox had come quite out, and I felt relieved. I had not abandoned my knapsack, the straps of which cut my shoulders.

I spent that first night in a barn, and had nothing to eat. The wife of the farmer who owned the barn refused payment for my lodging. At daybreak she brought me a great basin of coffee and milk, with a black loaf which I thought excellent. I resumed my road quite merrily, although I often fell. I was joined by four or five of my comrades, who carried my knapsack; they were also very ill. We met villagers; by taking cart after cart we covered a sufficient distance in the Ardennes, in five days, to reach Attert, Flamizoul, and Bellevue. On the sixth day I found myself alone. My smallpox had grown paler and was less puffy.

After walking two leagues, which took me six hours, I saw a gipsy family encamped behind a ditch around a furze fire, with two goats and a donkey. I had no sooner reached them than I let myself drop to the ground, and the strange creatures hastened to succour me. A young woman in rags, lively, dark, and mischievous, sang, leaped, skipped around, holding her child aslant upon her breast, as though it were a hurdy-gurdy with which she was enlivening her dance; she next squatted on her heels close by my side, examined me curiously by the light of the fire, took my dying hand to tell me my fortune, and asked me for "a little sou:" it was too dear. It would be difficult to possess more knowledge, charm, and wretchedness than my sybil of the Ardennes. I do not know when the nomads, of whom I should have been a worthy son, left me; they were not there when I woke from my torpor at dawn. My fortune-teller had gone away with the secret of my future. In exchange for my "little sou," she had laid by my head an apple which served to refresh my mouth. I shook myself, like John Rabbit, among the "thyme" and the "dew"; but I was not able to "browse," nor to "trot," nor to cut many "pranks[126]." Nevertheless, I rose with the intention of "paying my court to Aurora:" she was very beautiful and I very ugly; her rosy face proclaimed her good health; she was better than the poor Cephalus[127] of Armorica. Although both of us young, we were old friends, and I imagined that her tears that morning were shed for me.

I penetrated into the forest, feeling not too sad; solitude had restored me to my own nature. I hummed the ballad by the ill-fated Cazotte[128]:

Tout au beau milieu des Ardennes,
Est un château sur le haut d'un rocher[129].

Was it not in the donjon of this ghostly castle that Philip II. King of Spain imprisoned my fellow-Breton, Captain La Noue[130], who had a Chateaubriand for his grand-mother? Philip consented to release the illustrious prisoner if the latter consented to have his eyes put out; La Noue was on the point of accepting the proposal, so great was his longing to return to his dear Brittany. Alas! I was possessed with the same desire, and to lose my sight I needed only the ailment with which it had pleased God to afflict me. I did not meet "Sir Enguerrand coming from Spain[131]," but poor wretches, small pedlars who, like myself, carried their whole fortune on their back. A wood-cutter, with felt knee-caps, entered the woods: he should have taken me for a dead branch and cut me down. A few carrion crows, a few larks, a few buntings, a kind of large finches, hopped along the road or stood motionless on the border of stones, watchful of the sparrow-hawk which hovered circling in the sky. From time to time, I heard the sound of the horn of the swine-herd watching his sows and their little ones acorning. I rested in a shepherd's movable hut; I found no one at home except Puss, who made me a thousand graceful caresses. The shepherd was standing a long way off, in the centre of a common pasture, with his dogs sitting at irregular distances around the sheep; by day that herdsman gathered simples: he was a doctor and a wizard; by night, he watched the stars: then he was a Chaldean shepherd.

[Sidenote: A weary journey.]

I stood still, half a league farther, in a pasturage of deer: hunters went by at the other end. A spring murmured at my feet; at the bottom of this spring Orlando (Inamorato, not Furioso) saw a palace of crystal filled with ladies and knights. If the paladin, who joined the dazzling water-nymphs, had at least left Golden Bridle[132] at the brink of the well; if Shakespeare had sent me Rosalind and the Exiled Duke[133], they would have been very helpful to me.

After taking breath I continued my road. My impaired ideas floated in a void that was not without charm; my old phantoms, having scarce the consistency of shades three parts effaced, crowded round me to bid me farewell. I had no longer the power of memory; I beheld at an indeterminate distance the aerial forms of my relations and my friends, mingled with unknown figures. When I sat down to rest against a mile stone, I thought I saw faces smile to me in the threshold of the distant cabins, in the blue smoke escaping from the roofs of the cottages, in the tree-tops, in the transparency of the clouds, in the luminous sheaves of the sun dragging its beams over the heather like a golden rake. These apparitions were those of the Muses coming to assist the poet's death: my tomb, dug with the uprights of their lyres under an oak of the Ardennes, would have fairly well suited the soldier and the traveller. Some hazel-hens, which had strayed into the forms of the hares under the privets, alone, with the insects, produced a few murmurs around me: lives as slender, as unknown, as my life. I could walk no farther; I felt extremely ill; the smallpox was turning in and choking me.

Towards the end of the day, I lay down on my back, in a ditch, with Atala's knapsack under my head, my crutch by my side, my eyes fixed upon the sun, whose light was going out with my own. I greeted in all gentleness of thought the luminary which had lighted my first youth on my paternal moors: we retired to rest together, he to rise in greater glory, I, according to all appearances, never to wake again. I fainted away in a feeling of religion: the last sounds I heard were the fall of a leaf and the whistling of a bullfinch.

*

It seems that I lay unconscious for nearly two hours. The wagons of the Prince de Ligne[134] happened to pass; one of the drivers, stopping to cut a birch twig, stumbled over me without seeing me: he thought me dead and pushed me with his foot; I gave a sign of life. The driver called his comrades and, prompted by an instinct of pity, they threw me into a cart. The jolting revived me; I was able to talk to my deliverers; I told them that I was a soldier of the Princes' Army, and that if they would take me as far as Brussels, where I was going, I would reward them for their trouble.

"All right, mate," said one of them, "but you'll have to get down at Namur, for we're forbidden to carry anybody. We'll take you up again t'other side of the town."

I asked for something to drink; I swallowed a few drops of brandy, which threw the symptoms of my disease out again and relieved my chest for a moment: nature had endowed me with extraordinary strength.

We reached the suburbs of Namur at ten o'clock in the morning. I got down and followed the waggons at a distance; I soon lost sight of them. I was stopped at the entrance to the town. I sat down under the gateway, while my papers were being examined. The soldiers on guard, seeing my uniform, offered me a scrap of ammunition bread, and the corporal handed me some peppered brandy in a blue glass drinking-cup. I made some ceremony about drinking out of the cup of military hospitality:

"Catch hold!" he exclaimed angrily, accompanying his injunction with a _Sackerment der Teufel!_

My passage through Namur was a laborious one: I walked leaning against the houses. The first woman who saw me left her shop, gave me her arm with a pitying air, and helped me to drag myself along. I thanked her, and she replied:

"No, no, soldier,"

Soon other women came running up, bringing bread, wine, fruit, milk, soup, old clothes, blankets.

"He is wounded," said some, in their Brabançon French dialect.

"He has the smallpox," cried others, and kept back their children.

"But, young man, you will not be able to walk; you will die if you do; stay in the hospital."

[Sidenote: The women of Namur.]

They wanted to take me to the hospital, they relieved each other from door to door, and in this way helped me to the gate of the town, outside which I found the wagons again. You have seen a peasant-woman succour me; you shall see another woman show me hospitality in Guernsey. Women who have aided me in my distress, if you be still living, may God help you in your old age and in your sorrows! If you have departed this life, may your children share the happiness which Heaven has long refused me!

The women of Namur assisted me to climb into the wagon, recommended me to the driver's care, and compelled me to accept a woollen blanket. I noticed that they treated me with a sort of respect and deference: there is something superior, something delicate, in the nature of Frenchmen which other nations recognise.

The Prince de Ligne's men put me down for the second time on the road just outside Brussels, and refused to accept my last crown-piece. In Brussels, not one inn-keeper was willing to take me in. The wandering Jew, the popular Orestes, whom the ballad represents as going to that town:

Quand il fut dans la ville
De Bruxelle en Brabant[135],

met with a better reception than I, for he had always five sous in his pocket. I knocked: they opened; when they saw me they said, "Move on, move on!" and shut the door in my face. I was driven out of a café. My hair hung over my face, hidden behind my beard and mustachios; I had a hay bandage round my thigh; over my tattered uniform I wore the blanket of the Namur women, knotted round my throat by way of a cloak. The beggar in the _Odyssey_ was more insolent, but not so poor as I.

I had at first presented myself to no purpose at the hotel where I had stayed with my brother: I made a second attempt; as I approached the door I saw the Comte de Chateaubriand stepping from a carriage with the Baron de Montboissier. He was alarmed at my spectral appearance. They looked for a room outside the hotel, for the proprietor absolutely refused to admit me. A wig-maker offered me a den suited to my wretchedness. My brother brought me a surgeon and a doctor. He had received letters from Paris: M. de Malesherbes invited him to return to France. He told me of the day's work of the 10th of August, the massacres of September, and the political news, of which I knew not a word. He approved of my plan to cross to Jersey, and advanced me twenty-five louis. My impaired sight hardly permitted me to distinguish my brother's features; I believed that that gloom emanated from myself, whereas it was the shadow which Eternity was spreading around him: without knowing it, we were seeing each other for the last time. All of us, such as we are, have only the present moment for our own: the next belongs to God; there are always two chances of not seeing again the friend who is leaving us: our death and his. How many men have never reclimbed the staircase they have descended!

Death touches us more before than after the decease of a friend: it is a piece of ourselves that is torn away, a world of childish recollections, of familiar intimacy, of affections and interests in common, that dissolves. My brother preceded me in my mother's womb; he was the first to dwell in those same sainted entrails whence I issued after him; he sat before me by the paternal hearth; he waited several years to welcome me, to give me my name in the Name of Jesus Christ, and to ally himself with the whole of my youth. My blood, mingled with his blood in the revolutionary receptacle, would have had the same savour, like a draught of milk supplied by the pasturage of the same mountain. But, if men caused the head of my elder, my god-father, to fall before its time, the years will not spare mine; already my forehead is shedding its covering; I feel an Ugolino, Time, stooping over me and gnawing at my skull:

... come'l pan perf ame si manduca[136].

The doctor could not recover from his astonishment: he looked upon that which did not kill me, which came to none of its natural crises, as a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of medicine. Gangrene had set in in my wound; they dressed it with quinine. Having obtained this first aid, I insisted on departing for Ostend. Brussels was hateful to me, I burned to leave it; it was once again filling with those heroes of domesticity who had returned from Verdun in their carriages, and whom I did not see in Brussels when I accompanied the King there during the Hundred Days.

[Sidenote: I reached Guernsey.]

I travelled pleasantly to Ostend by the canals: I found some Bretons there, my comrades-in-arms. We chartered a decked barge and went down the Channel. We slept in the hold, on the shingle which served as ballast. The strength of my constitution was at last exhausted. I could no longer speak; the motion of a rough sea broke me down completely. I swallowed scarce a few drops of water and lemon, and, when the bad weather compelled us to put in to Guernsey, they thought I was going to breathe my last: an emigrant priest read me the prayers for the dying. The captain, not wishing to have me die on board his ship, ordered me to be put down on the quay; they set me down in the sun, with my back leaning against a wall, and my head turned towards the open sea, facing that Isle of Alderney where, eight months before, I had beheld death in another shape.

It would seem that I was vowed to pity. The wife of an English pilot happened to pass by; she was moved and called her husband, who, assisted by two or three sailors, carried me into a fisherman's house: me, the friend of the waves; they laid me on a comfortable bed, between very white sheets. The young barge-woman took every possible care of the stranger: I owe her my life. The next day I was taken on board again. My hostess almost wept on taking leave of her patient: women have a heaven-born instinct for misfortune. My fair-haired and comely guardian, who resembled a figure in the old English prints, pressed my bloated and burning hands between her own, so cool and long; I was ashamed to touch anything so charming with anything so unseemly.

We set sail and reached the westernmost point of Jersey. One of my companions, M. du Tilleul, went to St. Helier's to my uncle. M. de Bedée sent a carriage to fetch me the next morning. We drove across the entire island: dying as I was, I was charmed with its groves; but I only talked nonsense about them, having fallen into a delirium.

I lay four months between life and death. My uncle, his wife, his son and his three daughters took it in turns to watch by my bedside. I occupied an apartment in one of the houses which they were beginning to build along the harbour: the windows of my room came down to the level of the floor, and I was able to see the sea from my bed. The doctor, M. Delattre, had forbidden them to talk to me of serious things, and especially of politics. Towards the end of January 1793, seeing my uncle enter my room in deep mourning, I trembled, for I thought we had lost one of our family: he informed me of the death of Louis XVI. I was not surprised: I had foreseen it. I asked for news of my relatives: my sisters and my wife had returned to Brittany after the September massacres; they had had great difficulty in leaving Paris. My brother had gone back to France, and was living at Malesherbes. I began to get up; the smallpox was gone; but I suffered with my chest, and a weakness remained which I long retained.

Jersey, the Cæsarea of the Itinerary of Antoninus[137], has remained subject to the Crown of England since the death of Robert, Duke of Normandy[138]; we have often tried to capture it, but always unsuccessfully. The island is a remnant of our early history: the saints coming to Brittany-Armorica from Hibernia and Albion rested at Jersey. St. Hélier[139], a solitary, dwelt in the rocks of Cæsarea; he was butchered by the Vandals. In Jersey, one finds a specimen of the old Normans; it is as though one heard William the Bastard[140] speak, or the author of the _Roman du Rou._

The island is fertile: it has two towns and twelve parishes; it is covered with country-houses and herds of cattle. The ocean wind, which seems to belie its rudeness, gives Jersey exquisite honey, cream of extraordinary sweetness, and butter deep-yellow in colour and violet-scented. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre conjectures that the apple came to us from Jersey; he is mistaken: we have the apple and the pear from Greece, as we owe the peach to Persia, the lemon to Media, the plum to Syria, the cherry to Cerasus, the chestnut to Castanea, the quince to Canea, and the pomegranate to Cyprus.

[Sidenote: And Jersey.]

I took great pleasure in going out in the early days of May. Spring in Jersey preserves all her youth; she might still be called by her former name of Primavera, a name which, as she grew older, it left to her daughter, the first flower with which it crowns itself.

*

Here I will copy for you two pages from the Life of the Duc de Berry; it is as though I told you my own:

"After twenty-two years of fighting, the brazen barrier with
which France was girt about was forced: the hour of the
Restoration drew nigh; our Princes left their retreats. Each
of them made for a different point of the frontier, like
travellers who, at the risk of their lives, seek to penetrate
into a country of which marvels are related. Monsieur set out
for Switzerland; Monseigneur le Duc d'Angoulême for Spain,
and his brother for Jersey. In that island, in which some of
the judges of Charles I. died unknown to their fellow-men,
Monseigneur le Duc de Berry found French Royalists grown old
in exile and forgotten for their virtues, as in former days
the English regicides for their crime. He met old priests,
henceforth consecrated to solitude; he realized with them the
fiction of the poet who makes a Bourbon land on the island
of Jersey after a storm. One of these confessors and martyrs
might say to the heir of Henry IV., as the hermit of Jersey
said to that great king:

Loin de la cour alors, dans cette grotte obscure
De ma religion je viens pleurer l'injure[141].

"Monseigneur le Duc de Berry spent some months in Jersey; the sea, the winds, politics bound him there. Everything opposed his impatience; he found himself on the point of renouncing his enterprise and taking ship for Bordeaux. A letter from him to Madame la Maréchale Moreau gives us a vivid idea of his occupations on his rock:

"'8 _February_ 1814.

"'Here I am like Tantalus, in sight of that unhappy France
which finds so much difficulty in breaking its chains.
You whose soul is so beautiful, so French, can judge of
my feelings; how much it would cost me to move away from
that shore which I should need but two hours to reach!
When the sun lights it, I climb the tallest rocks and,
with my spy-glass in my hand, I follow the whole coast:
I can see the rocks of Coutances. My imagination rises,
I see myself leaping on shore, surrounded by Frenchmen,
wearing the white cockade in their hats; I hear the cry of
'Long live the King!' that cry which no Frenchman has ever
heard with composure; the loveliest woman of the province
girds me with a white sash, for love and glory always go
together. We march on Cherbourg; some rascally fort, with a
garrison of foreigners, tries to defend itself: we carry it
by assault, and a vessel puts out to fetch the King, with
the White Ensign which recalls the days of France's glory
and happiness! Ah, madame, when removed by but a few hours
from so likely a dream, can one think of betaking himself
elsewhere!'"

*

It is three years since I wrote these pages in Paris; I had gone before M. le Duc de Berry in Jersey, the city of the exiled, by twenty-two years; I was to leave my name behind me, since Armand de Chateaubriand was married, and his son Frédéric born there[142].

Gaiety had not abandoned the family of my uncle de Bedée; my aunt continued to nurse a big dog, descended from the one whose virtues I have related: as it bit everybody and had the mange, my cousins had it secretly hanged, notwithstanding its nobility. Madame de Bedée persuaded herself that some English officers, charmed with Azor's beauty, had stolen it, and that it was living, laden with honours and dinners, in the richest castle of the Three Kingdoms. Alas, our present hilarity was compounded only out of our past gaiety! By recalling the scenes at Monchoix we found means of laughter in Jersey. The case is rare enough, for in the human heart pleasures do not keep up the same relations one to the other that sorrows do: new joys do not restore their springtime to former joys, but recent sorrows cause old sorrows to blossom over again.

For the rest, the Emigrants at that time excited general sympathy; our cause appeared to be the cause of European order: an honoured unhappiness, such as ours, is something.

M. de Bouillon[143] was the protector of the French refugees in Jersey: he dissuaded me from my plan of crossing over to Brittany, unfit as I was to endure a life of caves and forests; he advised me to go to England, and there seek the opportunity of entering the regular service. My uncle, who was very ill provided with money, began to feel straitened with his large family; he had found himself obliged to send his son to London to feed himself on starvation and hope. Fearing lest I should be a burden to M. de Bedée, I decided to relieve him of my presence.

[Sidenote: I set sail for England.]

Thirty louis, which a Saint-Malo smuggler brought me, enabled me to put my plan into execution, and I booked a berth on the packet for Southampton. I was deeply touched, on bidding farewell to my uncle: he had nursed me with the affection of a father; with him were connected the few happy moments of my childhood; he knew all I loved; I found in his features a certain resemblance to my mother. I had left that excellent mother, and was never to see her again; I had left my sister Julie and my brother, and was doomed to meet them no more; I was leaving my uncle, and his genial countenance was never again to gladden my eyes. A few months had sufficed to bring all these losses, for the death of our friends is not reckoned from the moment at which they die, but from that at which we cease to live with them.

Were it possible to say to Time, "Not so fast!" one would stop it at the hours of delight; but, as this is not possible, let us not linger here below; let us go away before witnessing the flight of friends and of those years which the poet considers alone worthy of life: _Vitâ dignior ætas._ That which delights us in the age of friendships becomes an object of suffering and regret in the age of destitution. We no longer desire the return of the smiling months to the earth; we dread it rather: the birds, the flowers, a fine evening at the end of April, a fine night commencing in the evening with the first nightingale and ending in the morning with the first swallow, those things which give the need and longing for happiness kill one. You still feel their charms, but they are no longer for you: youth which tastes them by your side, and which looks down upon you with scorn, fills you with jealousy and makes you realize the completeness of your desolation. The grace and freshness of nature, while recalling your past happiness, adds to the unsightliness of your misery. You have become a mere blot upon that nature; you spoil its harmony and its suavity by your presence, by your words, and even by the sentiments which you venture to express. You may love, but you can no longer be loved. The vernal fountain has renewed its waters without restoring your youth to you, and the sight of all that is born again, of all that is happy, reduces you to the sorrowful remembrance of your pleasures.

*

The packet on which I embarked was crowded with Emigrant families. I there made the acquaintance of M. Hingant[144], an old colleague of my brother's in the Parliament of Brittany, a man of taste and intelligence, of whom I shall have much to say. A naval officer was playing chess in the captain's room; he did not recollect my features, so greatly was I changed; but I recognised Gesril. We had not met since Brest; we were destined to part at Southampton. I told him of my travels, he told me of his. This young man, born near me among the waves, embraced his first friend for the last time in the midst of the waves which were about to witness his glorious death. Lamba Doria[145], admiral of the Genoese, after beating the Venetian fleet, learnt that his son had been killed:

"Bury him in the sea," said this Roman father, as though he had said, "Bury him in his victory."

Gesril voluntarily left the billows into which he had flung himself only the better to show them his "victory" on shore.

[Sidenote: And land at Southampton.]

I gave the certificate of my landing from Jersey at Southampton at the commencement of the sixth book of these Memoirs. Behold me, therefore, after my travels in the forests of America and the camps of Germany, arriving, as a poor Emigrant, in 1793, in the land in which I am writing all this in 1822, and in which I am living to-day a splendid ambassador.

[1] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.--T.

[2] Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), perhaps the least contemptible of the demagogues of the time.--T.

[3] The National or Constituent Assembly passed the Constitution on the 3rd of September 1791, the King accepting it on the 13th. This Constitution created a Legislative Assembly, which alone was to retain the power of making laws, subject to the veto of the Sovereign. On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and immediately succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, which consisted of 745 deputies elected by the people, and sat from 1 October 1791 to 21 September 1792. It was in this assembly that the parties of the Mountain and the Gironde were formed.--T.

[4] Jean Claude Marin Victor Marquis de Laqueville (1742-1810) commanded the corps of the nobles of Auvergne under the Comte d'Artois. He was impeached on the 1st of January 1792. He returned to France under the Consulate, and lived in retirement until his death.--B.

[5] M. Buisson de La Vigne, a retired captain of the Indian Company's fleet, had been ennobled in 1776.--B.

[6] Alexis Jacques Buisson de La Vigne, the Indian Company's manager at Lorient, married in 1770 Mademoiselle Céleste Rapion de La Placelière, of Saint-Malo.--B.

[7] Anne Buisson de La Vigne (1772-1813) married, in 1789, Hervé Louis Joseph Marie Comte du Plessix de Parscau (1762-1831). She died at Lymington in Hampshire, and is buried there with seven of her thirteen children. In 1814, the Comte de Parscau married Mademoiselle de Kermalun, a lady of forty, for the sake of the six young children left to him.--B.

[8] Knight of St. Louis.--T.

[9] Céleste Buisson de La Vigne (1774-1847), who became Madame de Chateaubriand.--B.

[10] Michel Bossinot de Vauvert (1724-1809), formerly a king's counsel and attorney to the Admiralty. He was an uncle, "Brittany fashion," of Mademoiselle Buisson de La Vigne.--B.

[11] George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron (1788-1824), the poet.--T.

[12] Francis II. Emperor of Germany (1768-1835) ascended the Imperial Throne in 1792. In 1808 he renounced his title and assumed that of Emperor of Austria, as Francis I.--T.

[13] Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783) had died, after a life supported by unsolicited alms and spent in constant mortifications, of a tumour in the leg resulting from his habit of being always upon his knees.--T.

[14] The Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795), Keeper of the Royal Cabinet of Medals, member of the French Academy and the Academy of Inscriptions, and a distinguished archæologist. In 1788 he published his _Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce vers le milieu du IVe. siècle avant l'ère vulgaire_, which made his name. He spent the greater portion of his life with the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul on their estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise.--T.

[15] Ange François Fariau (1747-1810), known as M. de Saint-Ange, became a member of the French Academy just before his death. His translations in verse of the _Metamorphoses_ and other of Ovid's works are of great merit; but he appears to have been cursed with inordinate vanity, in addition to the stupidity of which Chateaubriand speaks.--T.

[16] Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), the famous author of the _Études de la nature_ and of _Paul et Virginie._ He preached virtue in all his works; his personal character and conduct were far from being irreproachable.--T.

[17] 30 January 1791.--B.

[18]

"D'Egmont with Love one day this bank her presence gave; For a moment the water stained With the image of her beauty upon the fleeting wave: Then D'Egmont disappeared; and Love alone remained.--T."

[19] By Carbon de Flins des Oliviers.--T.

[20]

"Our brave defenders' warlike zeal
Wakes pride within my breast,
But when through gore the people reel,
Their fury I detest.
Let Europe of us dwell in fear,
Let us live ever free,
But Gallic wit our lives shall cheer,
And amiability."--T.

[21] Anne Joseph Terwagne, Demoiselle Théroigne de Méricourt (1762-1817), a formidable virago of the Revolution. She was fustigated and driven insane by her fellow-bacchanals in October 1792, and died mad at the Salpétrière.--T.

[22] Manon Jeanne Roland (1754-1793), _née_ Philipon, wife of Jean Marie Roland de La Platière, Minister of the Interior in 1791. She and her husband espoused the party of the Girondins; and Madame Roland was guillotined at the instance of the Mountain, 8 November 1793. Her husband killed himself on hearing the news.--T.

[23] Major the Comte de Belsunce (_d._ 1790). He was cut up into pieces and his heart was eaten by a woman.--B.

[24] Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve (1759-1794) was elected mayor on the 14th of November 1791. He took no step to suppress the insurrections of June and August 1792, nor the massacres of September. Having voted, however, at the trial of Louis XVI. for "death with delay and appeal to the people," he became odious to the revolutionaries and was proscribed with the Girondins, 31 May 1793. He fled and perished in the Bordeaux marshes, where his body was half eaten by wolves.--T.

[25] Before 1789, Paris was divided into 21 quarters. On the 23rd of April 1789 the King ruled that, for the convocation of the three Estates, the town should be divided into 60 arrondissements, or wards, and districts, for which, on the 27th of June 1790, the Constituent Assembly substituted 48 sections.--B.

[26] On the 17th of Germinal Year II. (6 April 1794) a citizen presented himself at the bar of the Convention and offered a sum of money "towards the expenses of the support and repairing of the guillotine" (_Moniteur_, 7 April 1794).--B.

[27] 23 March 1792.--B.

[28] Francis II., Emperor of Germany, etc., etc.--T.

[29] Maximin Isnard (1751-1825) voted for the death of the King, but, after distinguishing himself by the violence of his language and opinions, underwent a remarkable religious and political conversion. He was a member of the Council of Five Hundred, but took no part in public affairs after the advent of Bonaparte.--B.

[30] Armand Gensonné (1758-1793), the friend and confidant of Dumouriez, executed 31 October 1793.--T.

[31] Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793), at one time editor of the _Moniteur_ and of the _Patriote français_, and prime mover in the declaration of war against Austria. He was guillotined on the same day as Gensonné.--T.

[32] The decree ordering the dissolution of the King's Constitutional Guard was voted 29 May 1792.--B.

[33] It was burnt down in 1580.--_Author's Note._

[34] Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne (1554-1611), second son of François Duc de Guise, and head of the League.--T.

[35] A political club connected with the League and called the Sixteen from the number of its leading members, each of whom was put in charge of one of the then sixteen quarters of Paris.--T.

[36] Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793) was born either at Geneva or at Boudry, near Neufchâtel, in Switzerland.--T.

[37] Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (1763-1794), the inventor of the Feast of Reason, self-known as "Anaxagoras Chaumette," and guillotined 13 April 1794.--T.

[38] Méot kept the best tavern in Paris, in the Palais-Royal.--B.

[39] Joseph Fouché, Duc d'Otrante (1754-1820), had been a schoolmaster at Juilly and principal of the Oratorian College at Nantes, when he was sent to the Convention. He became subsequently a Conservative senator under Napoleon, a duke and a peer, and was Minister of Police under the Directory, Napoleon, and Louis XVIII.--T.

[40] Triboulet (1479-_circa_ 1536), Court Fool to Louis XII. and Francis I.--T.

[41] _Paradise Lost_, II. 790-814, in which Sin is represented as being violated by her own offspring, Death.--T.

[42] Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), the great painter of the Revolution and the Empire.--T.

[43] Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Églantine (1755-1794), a light dramatic poet of no mean order, acted as Danton's secretary. He was subsequently traduced for accepting bribes from the Indian Company, and guillotined on the same day (5 April 1794) as Danton and Desmoulins, who protested at being "coupled with a thief."--T.

[44] Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756-1819), a very bloodthirsty member of the Convention. Billaud was transported with Collot d'Herbois to Cayenne, and succeeded in making his escape, after twenty years, to the Republic of San Domingo, the President of which gave him a pension.--T.

[45] Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V. (1521-1590), was elected to the Holy See on the death of Gregory XIII. in 1585. His short reign was marked by a magnificent internal administration. In France he patronized and encouraged the League.--T.

[46] Jacques Clément (1564-1589), the Dominican monk who assassinated Henry III. and was himself killed on the spot. It is a fact that some of the extreme Leaguers called for his canonization.--T.

[47] Charles IX. (1550-1574), elder brother and predecessor of Henry III.--T.

[48] 24 August 1572.--T.

[49] King Charles I. (1600-1649) was murdered on the 30th of January 1649; King Louis XVI. on the 21st of January 1793.--T.

[50] Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (1747-1795), Public Prosecutor to the Revolutionary Tribunal, guillotined 6 May 1795.--T.

[51] The blasphemy was not even accurate. Desmoulins was in his thirty-fourth year.--T.

[52] _Le Philinte de Molière, ou, la suite du Misanthrope_, a comedy in five acts, in verse, first performed at the Théâtre Français on the 22nd of February 1790, is Fabre d'Églantine's best piece: it is one of our good comedies of the second rank. What will live longest of Fabre d'Églantine's is his ballad, "Il pleut, il pleut, bergère" ("O shepherdess, 'tis raining").--B.

[53] Barnabé Brisson (1531-1591), made First President of the Parliament of Paris by the Sixteen (_vide supra_, p. 15), when Henry III. had left the capital, instead of Achille de Harlay, whom they had sent to the Bastille; but they were dissatisfied with him, owing to the attachment he preserved for the royal authority, and eventually murdered him by hanging him.--T.

[54] Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1550-1588), nicknamed the _Balafré_ from a disfiguring scar which he received at the engagement of Dormans (1575). He was the son of François Duc de Guise, and brother to the Duc de Mayenne (_vide supra_, p. 15) and Louis de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise. In 1576 he became the head of the newly formed League. In 1588, after conducting a long and active opposition to the Throne, he attended the States-General summoned by Henry III. at his castle at Blois, and was murdered by the royal guards at the door of the King's closet, 23 December 1588. His brother Louis II., Cardinal de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims, was put to death by the King's orders on the following day.--T.

[55] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. 12: _Of Physiognomy._--T.

[56] Silas Deane (1737-1789), a member of the first American Congress, was sent to Paris to rally the Court of France to the cause of the insurgents. His negotiations were fruitless, and Franklin was sent to second him. The latter was more successful, and signed two treaties with the Cabinet of Versailles in February 1778.--B.

[57] Joachim Murat (1767-1815), later King of Naples. He was the son of an inn-keeper, enlisted at the commencement of the Revolution, and was a member of the King's Constitutional Guard for about a month in the spring of 1792. He was in command of the sixty grenadiers who dispersed the Council of Five Hundred, and Bonaparte rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline. When Bonaparte became Emperor, Murat received his marshal's baton and the title of prince. In 1808, Napoleon made him King of the Two Sicilies. He did not cross the Straits, but reigned peacefully on the mainland until 1812. In 1814, the Powers consented to leave him on the throne, but, declaring in favour of Napoleon on his return from Elba, he was defeated at Tolentino, captured at Pizzo in Calabria, and shot, by order of King Ferdinand II., on the 13th of October 1815.--T.

[58] Jean Marie Roland de La Platière (1734-1793), twice Minister of the Interior, and husband of the more famous Madame Roland. He committed suicide with a sword-stick on hearing of his wife's execution.--T.

[59] Louis François Duport du Tertre (1754-1793), Minister of the Interior from 1790 to 1792, and guillotined 28 November 1793. His wife committed suicide in despair a few days later.--T.

[60] Louise Florence Pétronille de La Live d'Épinay (1725-1783), _née_ Tardieu d'Esclavelles, wife of Denis Joseph de La Live d'Épinay, a rich farmer-general. She built the Hermitage for Rousseau in the Forest of Montmorency, ten miles north of Paris, and lavished benefits upon him. Eventually, however, the philosopher grew jealous of Grimm, and turned ungrateful for the favours shown him.--T.

[61] Bernard Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839). Bonaparte made him Secretary-general to the Consuls, and, in 1804, Secretary of State, in which capacity he accompanied the Emperor on all his campaigns. In 1811, he was created Duc de Bassano, and appointed Foreign Minister; in 1813, Minister for War. In 1815, he was exiled, returning to France in 1820. Louis Philippe made him a peer of France, and he held office for less than a week in 1834.--T.

[62] Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841), one of the meanest turn-coats and time-servers of revolutionary France. He was exiled on the Restoration, and returned to France on the usurpation of Louis-Philippe.--T.

[63] M. Boutin (_d._ 1794), Treasurer to the Navy, had built the Tivoli garden in the middle of the Rue de Clichy. He was guillotined 22 July 1794.--T.

[64] This is not accurate. Madame de Malesherbes was Françoise Thérèse Grimod, daughter of Gaspard Grimod, Seigneur de La Reynière, farmer-general. M. and Madame de Malesherbes were married on the 4th of February 1749.--B.

[65] Clovis I. (465-511), grandson of Merovius or Merowig, was the real founder of the First or Merovingian Race of Kings of France (418-752). The second was the Carlovingian Race or Dynasty (715-987); the third the Capetians (987), who were subdivided into numerous branches, and preserve their right to the French Throne to this day.--T.

[66] Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (_circa_ 1057-1134), author of a number of Latin treatises, letters, and poems.--T.

[67] Guillaume de Nangis (_d._ 1300), a Benedictine of Saint-Denis, author of a Chronicle of the Kings of France, etc.--T.

[68] Albéric, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines, near Châlons-sur-Marne, who lived in the thirteenth century, and wrote a Chronicle which goes from the Creation to 1241.--T.

[69] Rigord, Rigordus, or Rigoltus (_d. circa_ 1207), author of a History of Philip Augustus, in Latin, continued by Guillaume le Breton.--T.

[70] Gervase of Tilbury (_fl._ 1211), author of the _Otia Imperialia._--T.

[71] The Baron de Montboissier was Malesherbes' son-in-law, and uncle by marriage to Chateaubriand's brother.--B.

[72] Louis XI., King of France (1423-1479), who had incited the town of Liège to revolt, was enticed to Péronne by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on the pretext of a conference, held as a prisoner, and released only on condition that he accompanied the Duke to the siege of the insurgent city.--T.

[73] Pope Leo III. (_d._ 816), elected to the Papacy in 795, was driven from Rome by a conspiracy to murder him, and took shelter with Charlemagne. He consecrated the octagonal Cathedral of Aix in 799; and in 800, in Rome, crowned Charles Emperor of the West.--T.

[74] John Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims (_d. circa_ 794), Charlemagne's secretary, friend, and comrade-in-arms. He was falsely reputed the author of the be _Vitâ Caroli Magni et Rolandi_, popularly known as Archbishop Turpin's Chronicle.--T.

[75] Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch (1304-1374), tells the legend in his poems.--T.

[76] Caligula (12-41) was the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, at whose instance Germanicus enlarged Cologne, calling it Colonia Agrippina.--T.

[77] St. Bruno (_circa_ 1030-1101), founder of the Carthusian order, was born at Cologne.--T.

[78] Frederic William II., King of Prussia (1744-1797), nephew and successor (1786) of Frederic the Great.--T.

[79] Charles Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1735-1806), Commander-in-Chief of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Auerstadt (14 October 1806), and was the father of "Brunswick's fated chieftain" killed at Waterloo.--T.

[80] Pierre Louis Alexandre de Gouyon (not Goyon) de Miniac (_circa_ 1754-1818).--B.

[81] Anne Hilarion de Contentin, Comte de Tourville (1642-1701), a famous French admiral; fought under Duquesne, commanded under the Maréchal de Vivonne at Palermo (1677), went to Ireland in 1690 to support the cause of James II., was defeated by the English at the Battle of the Hogue (1692), but defeated them at the first Battle of St. Vincent (1693).--T.

[82] Salvianus (_circa_ 390-484), author of the treatises, _De Gubernatione Dei, Adversus Avaritiam_, and some letters--T.

[83] Henry IV. defeated the Leaguers at Ivry in 1590.--T.

[84] Words and music by the Marquise de Travanet, _née_ de Bombelles, lady to Madame Élisabeth.--B.

[85] Lope Felix de Vega Carpia (1562-1635), the fertile Spanish poet, author of the _Arcadia_ and some 2000 plays and an endless number of poems of every description.--T.

[86] Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), Secretary of State to Charles I. Although at first favouring the rebellion, he joined the King's side and died fighting for Charles at Newbury.--T.

[87] Christian Augustus Prince of Waldeck (1744-1798), fought for Austria against the Turks and against the French, lost an arm at the siege of Thionville, took part in the attack on the lines of Weissemberg, replaced Mack, and went to Portugal, where he died.--T.

[88] Louis Félix Baron de Wimpfen (1744-1814), a Royalist brigadier in the Revolutionary service. He defended Thionville for fifty-five days, until he was relieved by the victory of Valmy. He concealed himself during the Terror. The Consulate restored him to his rank as general of division, and Napoleon appointed him inspector of studs, and created him a baron in 1809.--B.

[89] Louis II. Prince de Condé (1621-1686), known as the Grand Condé, captured Thionville in 1643, after first causing the Spaniards to raise the siege of Rocroi, and signally defeating them on the 19th of May.--T.

[90] Manassès de Pas, Marquis de Feuquières (1590-1639), besieged Thionville in 1639, but was defeated by the garrison, and himself wounded and taken prisoner. He died of his wounds a few months later.--T.

[91] The Chevalier de La Baronnais was one of the numerous sons of François Pierre Collas, Seigneur de La Baronnais, married in 1750 to Renée de Kergu. Chateaubriand is not quite accurate as to the proportions of his family. There were twenty children in all, twelve sons and eight daughters.--B.

[92] Joseph Henri Bouchard d'Esparbès, Maréchal Marquis d'Aubeterre (1714-1788), after fulfilling several important embassies, was appointed Commandant of Brittany in 1775.--T.

[93] St. John the Silent (454-_circa_ 589), so called from his love of silence and retirement. At the age of twenty-eight he was consecrated Bishop of Colonus, near Athens, but resigned his see in nine years, and withdrew to the Monastery of St. Sabar in Jerusalem. His feast falls on the 13th of May.--T.

[94] St. Dominic Loricatus (_d._ 1060) spent his life in the Apennines, wearing a coat of mail, which he laid aside only to scourge himself. He is honoured on the 14th of October.--T.

[95] St. James Intercisus (_d._ 421). Born in Persia, he at first abjured Christianity in obedience to a decree of King Yezdedjerd I.; but, repenting of his apostasy, he resumed the faith, and was condemned to be cut to pieces while living, a martyrdom which he heroically endured on the 27th of November 421. His feast is celebrated on the anniversary of that day.--T.

[96] St. Paul the Simple (229-342) retired at the age of twenty-two to the Thebaïde Desert, where he became a disciple of St. Anthony and lived for ninety-one years. He is honoured on the 7th of March.--T.

[97] St. Basil the Hermit (_d._ circa 640), a native of Limousin, spent forty years wrestling with the Evil One in a retreat which he had built for himself in the neighbourhood of Verzy, in Champagne. His feast falls on the 26th of November.--T.