Chapter IV: Book V: 1 (2)

"There are persons who would make of literature an abstract
thing and isolate it in the midst of human affairs. Such
persons will say to me, 'Why keep silence? Treat M. Chénier's
works only from the literary point of view.' That is to say,
gentlemen, that I must abuse your patience and my own by
repeating commonplaces which you can find anywhere and which
you know better than I. Manners change with the times: heirs
to a long series of peaceful years, our forerunners were able
to indulge in purely academic discussions which were even
less a proof of their talent than of their happiness. But we,
who remain the victims of a great shipwreck, no longer have
what is needed to relish so perfect a calm. Our ideas, our
minds have taken a different direction. The man has in us
taken the place of the academician: by divesting literature
of all its futility, we now behold it only in the light of
our mighty memories and of the experience of our adversity.
What! After a revolution which has caused us, in a few
years, to live through the events of many centuries, shall
the writer be forbidden all lofty considerations, shall he
be denied the right to examine the serious side of objects?
Shall he spend a trivial life occupied with grammatical
quibbles, rules of taste, petty literary judgments? Shall
he grow old, bound in the swaddling-clothes of his cradle?
Shall he not show, at the end of his days, a brow furrowed
by his long labours, by his grave reflections, and often by
those manly sufferings which add to the greatness of mankind?
What important cares, then, will have whitened his hair? The
miserable sorrows of self-love and the puerile sports of the
mind.

"Surely, gentlemen, that would be treating ourselves with a
very strange contempt! Speaking for myself, I cannot thus
belittle myself, nor reduce myself to the condition of
childhood at the age of strength and reason. I cannot confine
myself within the narrow circle which they would trace around
the writer. For instance, gentlemen, if I wished to pass a
eulogy on the man of letters, on the man of the Court who
presides over this meeting[41], do you believe that I would
content myself with praising in him the light and ingenious
French wit which he received from his mother[42], and of
which he displays to us the last model? No, assuredly: I
should wish to make glow once more in all its brilliancy
the noble name which he bears. I should mention the Duc de
Boufflers[43] who forced the Austrians to raise the blockade
of Genoa. I should speak of the marshal, his father[44],
of the governor who held the ramparts of Lille against the
enemies of France, and who, by that memorable defense,
consoled a great king's unhappy old age. It was of that
companion of Turenne that Madame de Maintenon said:

"'In him the heart was the last to die.'

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"Lastly, I should go back to that Louis de Boufflers[45],
called the Robust, who displayed in combat the vigour and
valour of Hercules. Thus, at the two extremities of this
family, I should find force and grace, the knight and the
troubadour. They say that the French are sons of Hector: I
would rather believe that they descend from Achilles, for
like that hero they wield both the lyre and the sword.

"If I wished, gentlemen, to talk to you of the celebrated
poet[46] who sang the charms of nature in such brilliant
tones, do you think that I would confine myself to pointing
out to you the admirable flexibility of a talent which
succeeded in rendering with equal distinction the regular
beauties of Virgil and the less correct beauties of Milton?
No: I would also show you the poet refusing to part from
his unfortunate countrymen, accompanying them with his
lyre to foreign shores, singing their sorrows to console
them; an illustrious exile among that crowd of banished men
whose number I increased. It is true that his age and his
infirmities, his talents and his glory had not protected him
against persecution in his own country. Men tried to make him
purchase peace with verses unworthy of his muse, and his muse
could sing only the redoubtable immortality of crime and the
reassuring immortality of virtue:

"Rassurez-vous, vous êtes immortels[47]!

"If, again, I wished to speak to you of a friend very dear
to my heart[48], one of those friends who, according to
Cicero, render prosperity more brilliant and adversity less
irksome, I should extol the refinement and purity of his
taste, the exquisite elegance of his prose, the beauty, the
strength, the harmony of his verses, which, while formed
after the great models, are nevertheless distinguished by
their original character. I should extol that superior talent
which has never known the feelings of envy, that talent made
happy by every success other than its own, that talent which,
for ten years, has felt all that has happened to me of an
honourable nature with the deep and simple joy known only to
the most generous characters and the liveliest friendship.
But I should not omit my friend's political side. I should
depict him at the head of one of the principal bodies of the
State, delivering those speeches which are master-pieces of
propriety, moderation and exaltedness. I should represent him
sacrificing the gentle commerce of the Muses to occupations
which would no doubt be without charm, if one did not abandon
one's self to them in the hope of forming children capable of
one day following the example of their fathers and avoiding
their errors.

"In speaking of the men of talent of whom this meeting
is composed, I could not therefore prevent myself from
considering them from the point of view of morality and
society. One is distinguished among you by a refined,
delicate and sagacious wit, by an urbanity nowadays so
rare, and by the most honourable constancy in his moderate
opinions[49]. Another, under the ice of age, found the
warmth of youth wherewith to plead the cause of the
unfortunate[50]. A third[51], an elegant historian and
agreeable poet, becomes more venerable and more dear to us
by the memory of a father[52] and a son[53], both mutilated
in the service of the country. Yet another, by restoring
their hearing to the deaf, their speech to the dumb, recalls
to us the miracles of the Gospels, to the cult of which he
has devoted himself[54]. Are there not, gentlemen, among
you some witnesses of your former triumphs who can tell the
worthy heir[55] of the Chancelier d'Aguesseau[56] how his
grandsire's name was once applauded in this assembly? I pass
to the favourite nurselings of the nine Sisters, and I see
the venerable author of Œdipe[57] retired in his solitude
and Sophocles forgetting at Colonos the glory that calls
him back to Athens. How greatly must we cherish the other
sons of Melpomene who have interested us in the misfortunes
of our fathers! Every French heart has throbbed anew at
the presentiment of the death of Henry IV[58]. The tragic
muse has re-established the honour of those gallant knights
dastardly betrayed by history, and nobly revenged by one of
our modern Euripides[59].

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"Coming to the successors of Anacreon, I would pause at the
amiable man[60] who, similar to the veteran of Teos[61],
still re-tells, after fifteen lustra, those love-songs
which one begins to write at fifteen years. I would also,
gentlemen, go to seek your renown on the stormy seas which
were formerly guarded by the giant Adamastor[62], and which
became appeased by the charming names of Éléonore[63] and
Virginie[64]. _Tibi rident æquora._

"Alas, too many of the talents in our midst have been
wandering and restless! Has poetry not sung in harmonious
verse of the art of Neptune[65], that so fatal art which
transported it to distant shores? And has not French
eloquence, after defending the altar and the State,
withdrawn, as though into its source, to the land where St.
Ambrose[66] first saw the light[67]? Why can I not here place
all the members of this assembly in a picture the colours of
which have not been embellished by flattery! For, if it be
true that envy sometimes obscures the estimable qualities
of men of letters, it is still more true that this class of
men is distinguished by lofty sentiments, by disinterested
virtues, by the hatred of oppression, devotion to friendship,
and fidelity to misfortune. It is thus, gentlemen, that I
love to consider a subject from all its aspects, and that I
love especially to give a serious character to literature
by applying it to the most exalted subjects of morality,
philosophy and history. With this independence of mind, I
must needs abstain from touching upon works which it is
impossible to examine without irritating the passions. Were
I to speak of the tragedy of _Charles IX_, could I refrain
from avenging the memory of the Cardinal de Lorraine and
discussing the strange lesson there given to Kings? _Caius
Gracchus, Calas, Henri VIII, Fénelon_[68] would in many
respects present sent to me a distortion of history upon
which to rest the same doctrines. When I read the satires,
I there find immolated men occupying places in the first
ranks of this assembly; nevertheless, written as they are
in a pure, elegant and easy style, they agreeably recall
the school of Voltaire, and I should take the more pleasure
in praising them inasmuch as my own name has not escaped
the author's malice[69]. But let us leave on one side works
which would give rise only to painful recriminations: I will
not disturb the memory of a writer who was your colleague
and who still numbers friends and admirers among you; he
will owe to religion, which appeared to him so contemptible
in the writings of those who defend it, the peace which I
wish to his tomb. But even here, gentlemen, shall I not have
the misfortune to strike upon a rock? For, in offering to
M. Chénier this tribute of respect which is due to all the
dead, I fear to meet beneath my steps ashes very differently
illustrious. If ungenerous interpretations would impute this
involuntary emotion to me as a crime, I should take refuge at
the foot of those expiatory altars which a powerful monarch
erects to the manes of outraged dynasties. Ah, how much
happier would it have been for M. Chénier not to have taken
part in those public calamities which at last fell back upon
his head! He has known, like myself, what it means to lose
in the storms a fondly cherished brother[70]. What would our
unhappy brothers have said, had God summoned them on the
same day before His tribunal? If they had met at the hour of
death, before mingling their blood they would doubtless have
cried to us, 'Cease your intestine wars, return to thoughts
of love and peace; death strikes all parties alike, and your
cruel divisions cost us our youth and our life.' That would
have been their fraternal cry.

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"If my predecessor could hear these words, which now
console only his shade, he would appreciate the tribute
which I am here paying to his brother, for he was by nature
generous: it was even this generosity of character which
drew him into new ideas, very seductive no doubt, since they
promised to restore to us the virtues of Fabricius[71]. But,
soon deceived in his hopes, he found his mood becoming
embittered, his talent changing its nature. Removed from the
poet's solitude into the midst of factions, how could he have
abandoned himself to those sentiments which make the charm of
life? Happy had he seen no sky save the sky of Greece under
which he was born[72], had he set eyes upon no ruins save
those of Sparta and Athens! I should perhaps have met him
in his mother's beautiful country, and we would have sworn
mutual friendship on the banks of the Permessus; or else,
since he was to return to his paternal fields, why did he
not follow me to the deserts upon which I was flung by our
tempests! The silence of the forests would have calmed that
troubled soul, and the huts of the savages would perhaps have
reconciled him to the palaces of kings. Vain wish! M. Chénier
remained upon the stage of our excitements and our sorrows.
Attacked while still in his youth by a mortal malady, you
have seen him, gentlemen, droop slowly towards the tomb and
leave for ever.... I have not been told of his last moments.

"None of us, who have lived through the troubles and
excitements, shall escape the eyes of history. Who can
flatter himself that he shall be found stainless in a time
of frenzy when none has the entire use of his reason? Let
us then be full of indulgence for others; let us excuse
that of which we cannot approve. Such is human weakness,
that talent, genius, virtue itself are sometimes able to
overstep the limits of duty. M. Chénier worshipped liberty:
can we ascribe it to him as a crime? The knights themselves,
were they to issue from their tombs, would follow the light
of our century. We should see that illustrious alliance
formed between honour and liberty, as under the reign of
the Valois, upon our monuments. Gothic battlements crowned
with infinite grace the orders borrowed from the Greeks.
Is not liberty the greatest of benefits and the first of
man's needs? It kindles genius, it elevates the heart, it
is as necessary to the friend of the Muses as the air he
breathes. The arts are, to a certain point, able to live in
dependence, because they make use of a language apart, which
is not understood by the crowd; but letters, which speak an
universal language, pine and perish in irons. How shall one
compose pages worthy of the future, if one must forbid one's
self, in writing, every magnanimous sentiment, every great
and powerful thought? Liberty is so naturally the friend
of science and literature, that she takes refuge with them
when she is banished from the midst of the peoples; and it
is we, gentlemen, whom she charges to write her annals and
to revenge her on her enemies, to hand down her name and her
cult to posterity for all time. To prevent any mistake in
the interpretation of my thought, I declare that I am here
speaking only of the liberty which is born of order and gives
birth to laws, and not of that liberty which is the daughter
of license and the mother of slavery. The wrong of the author
of Charles IX did not, therefore, lie in offering his incense
to the former of these divinities, but in believing that the
rights which she gives us are incompatible with a monarchical
form of government. A Frenchman displays in his opinions that
independence which other nations show in their laws. Liberty
is for him a sentiment rather than a principle, and he is a
citizen by instinct and a subject by choice. If the writer
whose loss you are mourning had made this reflection, he
would not have embraced in one and the same love the liberty
that creates and the liberty that destroys.

[Sidenote: My speech concluded.]

"Gentlemen, I have finished the task which the customs of
the Academy have laid upon me. On the point of ending this
speech, I am struck with an idea which saddens me: it is
not long since M. Chénier pronounced upon my writings some
findings which he was preparing to publish; and to-day it is
I who am judging my judge. I say, in all the sincerity of my
heart, that I would rather continue exposed to the satire of
an enemy, and live peacefully in solitude, than bring home
to you, by my presence in your midst, the rapid succession
of men upon earth, the sudden apparition of that death which
overthrows our projects and our hopes, which snatches us away
at a stroke, and which sometimes hands over our memory to
men entirely opposed to us in sentiment and principle. This
platform is a sort of battle-field in which talents come by
turns to shine and die. What diverse geniuses has it not seen
pass! Corneille, Racine, Boileau, La Bruyère[73], Bossuet,
Fénelon, Voltaire, Buffon[74], Montesquieu.... Who would not
be afraid, gentlemen, to think that he is about to form a
link in the chain of that illustrious lineage? Overcome by
the weight of those immortal names, and unable to make myself
recognised through my talents as the lawful heir, I will at
least try to prove my descent by my sentiments.

"When my turn shall have come to yield my place to the orator
who is to speak on my tomb, he may treat my works severely,
but he will be obliged to say that I loved my mother-land
passionately, that I would have endured a thousand ills
rather than cost my country a single tear, that I would
without hesitation have made the sacrifice of my days to
those noble sentiments which alone give value to life and
dignity to death.

"But what a moment have I chosen, gentlemen, to speak to you
of mourning and obsequies! Are we not surrounded by scenes
of festivity? A solitary traveller, I was meditating a few
days since on the ruin of the destroyed empires: and now I
see a new empire arise. Scarce have I quitted the graves in
which the buried nations sleep, and I perceive a cradle laden
with the destinies of the future. The acclamations of the
soldier resound on every hand. Cæsar mounts to the Capitol;
the nations tell of marvels, of monuments upraised, cities
beautified, the frontiers of the country bathed by those
distant seas which bore the ships of Scipio, and by those
remote waters which Germanicus did not see.

"While the triumpher advances surrounded by his legions, what
shall the tranquil children of the Muses do? They will go
before the car to add the olive-branch of peace to the palms
of victory, to mingle with the warlike recitals the touching
images which caused Æmilius Paulus[75] to weep over the
misfortunes of Perseus[76].

"And you, daughter of the Cæsars[77], come forth from your
palace with your young son[78] in your arms; come, to add
mercy to greatness; come, to soften victory and to temper
the glitter of arms by the gentle majesty of a queen and a
mother."

In the manuscript which was handed back to me, the commencement of the speech, which relates to the opinions of Milton, was struck out from one end to the other by Bonaparte's hand. A part of my protest against the isolation from affairs of State, in which it was desired to keep literature, was also stigmatized with the pencil. The eulogy of the Abbé Delille, which recalled the Emigration and the fidelity of the poet to the misfortunes of the Royal Family and to the sufferings of his companions in exile, was placed between brackets; the eulogy of M. de Fontanes had a cross set against it. Almost all that I said of M. Chénier, of his brother, of my own, of the expiatory altars which were being prepared at Saint-Denis was slashed with pencil marks. The paragraph commencing with the words, "M. Chénier worshipped liberty," etc., had a double longitudinal line drawn through it. Nevertheless, the agents of the Empire, when publishing the speech, kept this paragraph pretty correctly.

All was not ended when they had handed me back my speech; they wanted to force me to write a second. I declared that I stood by the first, and that I would write no other. The committee then declared to me that I should not be received into the Academy.

Gracious, generous and courageous persons, unknown to myself, interested themselves in me. Mrs. Lindsay, who at the time of my return to France, in 1800, had brought me from Calais to Paris, talked to Madame Gay[79]; the latter addressed herself to Madame Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, who asked the Duc de Rovigo to leave me alone. The women of that time interposed their beauty between power and misfortune.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's comments.]

All this perturbation was prolonged, by the decennial prizes, until the year 1812. Bonaparte, who was persecuting me, sent to the Academy to ask, in the matter of those prizes, why they had not put the _Génie du Christianisme_ on their list. The Academy explained; several of my colleagues wrote their unfavourable judgment of my work. I might have said what a Greek poet said to a bird:

"Daughter of Attica, nurtured on honey, thou who singest so
well, thou snatchest a grasshopper, a fine songstress like
thyself, and carriest her for food to thy young ones. Both of
you have wings, both inhabit these regions, both celebrate
the birth of spring: wilt thou not restore to her her
liberty? It is not just that a songstress should die by the
beak of one of her fellows[80]."

This mixture of anger against and attraction for me displayed by Bonaparte is constant and strange: but now he threatens, and suddenly he asks the Institute why it has not mentioned me on the occasion of the decennial prizes. He goes further, he declares to Fontanes that, since the Institute does not think me worthy to compete for the prizes, he will give me one, that he will appoint me superintendent-general of all the libraries of France: a superintendence with the salary attached to a first-class embassy. Bonaparte's original idea of employing me in a diplomatic career did not leave him: he would not admit, for a reason well known to himself, that I had ceased to form part of the Ministry of External Relations. And yet, in spite of this proposed munificence, his Prefect of Police invited me, some time later[81], to remove myself from Paris, and I went to continue my Memoirs at Dieppe.

Bonaparte stooped to play the part of a teasing school-boy; he disinterred the _Essai sur les Révolutions_ and delighted in the war which he brought down upon me on this subject. A certain M. Damaze de Raymond constituted himself my champion[82]: I went to thank him in the Rue Vivienne. He had a death's-head on his mantel-piece among his knick-knacks; some time later he was killed in a duel[83], and his charming features went to join the frightful face that seemed to call to him. Everyone fought in those days: one of the police-spies charged with the arrest of Georges received a bullet in the head from him.

To cut short my powerful adversary's unfair attack, I applied to that M. de Pommereul of whom I spoke to you at the time of my first arrival in Paris: he had become director-general of the State printing works and of the department of books. I asked him for leave to reprint the _Essai_ in its entirety. My correspondence and the result of that correspondence can be seen in the preface to the 1826 edition of the _Essai sur les Révolutions_, vol. II. of the Complete Works. Moreover, the Imperial Government was exceedingly right to refuse its assent to the reprinting of the work in its entirety: the _Essai_ was not, having regard both to the liberties and to the Legitimate Monarchy, a book which should be published while despotism and usurpation held sway. The police gave itself airs of impartiality by allowing something to be said in my favour, and it laughed while preventing me from doing the only thing capable of defending me. On the return of Louis XVIII., the _Essai_ was exhumed anew: as, in the time of the Empire, they had wished to make use of it against me in a political respect, so, in the days of the Restoration, they tried to plead it against me in a religious respect. I have made so complete an apology for my errors in the notes to the new edition of the _Essai historique_, that there is nothing left wherewith to reproach me. Posterity will come and will pronounce on both book and commentary, if such old trash is still able to interest it. I venture to hope that it will judge the _Essai_ as my grey head has judged it; for, as one advances in life, one assumes the equity of the future towards which one approaches. The book and the notes place me before the eyes of men such as I was at the commencement of my career and such as I am at the close of that career.

[Sidenote: The _Essai_ reprinted.]

Moreover, this work which I have treated with pitiless rigour offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist and a future politician. The pith of the work is overflowing, the boldness of the opinions urged as far as it will go. It must needs be admitted that, in the various roads upon which I have embarked, I have never been guided by prejudice, that I have never been blind in whatsoever cause, that no interest has led me on, that the sides which I have taken have always been those of my choice.

In the _Essai_, my independence in matters of religion and politics is complete; I examine everything: a _Republican_, I serve the Monarchy; a _philosopher_, I honour religion. These are not contradictions: they are forced consequences of the uncertainty of theory and the certainty of practice among men. My mind, constructed to believe in nothing, not even in myself, constructed to despise everything, splendours and miseries, peoples and kings, has nevertheless been dominated by an instinct of reason which commanded it to submit to all that is recognised as fine: religion, justice, humanity, equality, liberty, glory. That which people to-day dream concerning the future, that which the present generation imagines itself to have discovered concerning a society yet to be born, founded upon principles quite different from those of the old society, is announced positively in the _Essai._ I have anticipated by thirty years those who call themselves the proclaimers of an unknown world. My acts have belonged to the ancient city, my thoughts to the new; the former to my duty, the latter to my nature.

The _Essai_ was not an impious book; it was a book of doubt and sorrow. I have already said so[84].

For the rest, I have had to exaggerate my fault to myself, and to redeem with ideas of order so many passionate ideas strewn over my works. I fear lest, at the commencement of my career, I may have done harm to youth; I owe it a reparation, and at least I owe it other lessons. Let it learn that one can struggle successfully with a troubled nature; I have seen moral beauty, the divine beauty, superior to every earthly dream: it needs but a little courage to reach it and keep to it.

In order to finish what I have to say touching my literary career, I must mention the work which commenced it, and which remained in manuscript until the year in which I inserted it in my Complete Works.

At the beginning of the _Natchez_, the preface described how the work was recovered in England, thanks to the trouble and the obliging research of Messieurs de Thuisy.

A manuscript from which I have been able to extract _Atala, René_, and several descriptions included in the _Génie du Christianisme_, is not absolutely barren. This first manuscript was written in one piece, without sections; all the subjects were confused in it: journeys, natural history, the dramatic portion, etc.; but, besides this manuscript, composed in one stroke, there existed another, divided into books. In this second work, I had not only proceeded to the separation of the matter, but I had also changed the character of the composition, by altering it from the romantic to the idyllic.

A young man who promiscuously heaps up his ideas, his inventions, his studies, die results of his reading, is bound to produce chaos; but also in this chaos there is a certain fecundity which belongs to the potency of his age.

To me happened that which has perhaps happened to no other author: I read again, after a lapse of thirty years, a manuscript which I had totally forgotten.

I had one danger to fear. In repassing the brush over the picture, I might wipe out the colours; a surer but less rapid hand ran the risk, while obliterating some incorrect features, of causing the liveliest touches of youth to disappear: it was necessary to preserve the independence and, so to speak, the passion of the composition; the foam must be left on the bit of the youthful courser. If in the _Natchez_ there are things which I would hazard only in trembling to-day, there are also things which I would no longer write, especially René's letter in the second volume. It is in my first manner, and reproduces all René. I do not know that the Renés who followed in my steps can have said anything more nearly approaching folly.

[Sidenote: The _Natchez._]

The _Natchez_ opens with an invocation to the desert and to the star of the night, the supreme divinities of my youth:

"In the shade of the American forests I will sing airs of
solitude such as mortal ears have not yet heard; I will
relate your adversities, O Natchez, O nation of Louisiana, of
whom naught save the memories remain! Should the misfortunes
of an obscure dweller in the woods have less claim upon our
tears than those of other men? And are the mausoleums of the
kings in our temples more touching than the tomb of an Indian
under his native oak?

"And thou, torch of meditation, star of the night, be for me
the star of Pindus! Go before my steps across the unknown
regions of the New World, to reveal to me by thy light the
enchanting secrets of those deserts!"

My two natures lie mingled in this singular work, particularly in the primitive original. In it are found political incidents and romantic intrigues; but, across the narrative, there is heard, throughout, a voice that sings and that seems to come from an unknown region.

*

From 1812 to 1814, but two years are wanting to end the Empire[85], and those two years, of which we have seen something by anticipation, were employed by me in researches into French history, and in the writing of some books of these Memoirs; but I did not print anything more. My life of poetry and erudition was really closed by the publication of my three great works, the _Génie du Christianisme_, the _Martyrs_ and the _Itinéraire._ My political writings began with the Restoration; with those writings also began my active political existence. Here, therefore, ends my literary career properly so-called; carried away by the flood of years, I had omitted it; not until this year, 1839, have I recalled the bygone times of 1800 to 1814.

This literary career, as you have been free to convince yourselves, was no less disturbed than my career as a traveller and a soldier; there were also labours, encounters, and blood in the arena; all was not Muses and Castalian spring. My political career was even stormier.

Perhaps some remains may mark the spot where stood my gardens of Academus. The _Génie du Christianisme_ commences the religious revolution against the philosophism of the eighteenth century. I was at the same time preparing the revolution which threatens our language, for there can be no renewal of ideas without an accompanying renewal of style. Will there be other forms of art, at present unknown, when I am gone? Will it be possible to start from our studies of to-day in order to make progress, as we ourselves have taken a step forward by starting from past studies? Are there limits which one could not overstep, because one would then run against the nature of things? Do not those limits lie in the division of the modern languages, in the decay of those same languages, in human vanity such as modern society has made it? Languages do not follow the movement of civilization until they are on the point of attaining the period of their perfection; having reached this zenith, they remain stationary for a moment, and then descend, without being able to ascend again.

[Sidenote: Youth and age.]

Now, the story which I am finishing joins the first books of my political life, written previously at different dates. I feel a little more courage on returning to the finished portions of my edifice. When I resumed my work, I trembled lest the old son of Cœlus should see the golden trowel of the builder of Troy turn into a trowel of lead. And yet it seems to me that my memory, when bidden to pour me out my recollections, has not failed me too greatly. Have you felt the ice of winter to a great extent in my narrative? Do you find an enormous difference between the extinct ashes which I have striven to revive and the living persons whom I have shown you in telling you of my early youth? My years are my secretaries: when one of them comes to die, he passes the pen to his younger brother, and I continue to dictate. As they are of one family, they write very nearly the same hand.

[1] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised in June 1847.--T.

[2] Chateaubriand bought it from M. de Fontanes for 20,000 francs.--B.

[3] Chateaubriand bought the Vallée-aux-Loups in August 1807, for the sum of 30,000 francs.--B.

[4] Madame de Lavalette was the widow of the Marquis de Béville.--B.

[5] _Manger_, to eat; also, to run through, to squander.--T.

[6] The Infirmary, situated at No. 86, Rue d'Enfer (now 92, Rue Denfert-Rochereau), was founded by M. and Madame de Chateaubriand at a considerable cost. Madame de Chateaubriand was buried beneath the altar of the chapel.--B.

[7] Anne Louis Girodet Trioson, originally Girodet de Roussy (1767-1824), a pupil of David, and not only a fine painter, but also a poet of some merit.--T.

[8] Dominique Vivant Baron Denon (1747-1825), Director-General of Museums under the Empire.--T.

[9] Chateaubriand's portrait was exhibited in the Salon of 1808.--B.

[10] Jean François Boissonade (1774-1857), a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and a distinguished and indefatigable Hellenist.--T.

[11] Conrad Malte-Brun (1775-1826), the eminent Danish geographer.--T.

[12] "Each, his hand in _th' ink-pot_, swears to be revenged."--T.

[13] The crown of grass granted to a general who raised the siege of a beleaguered place.--T.

[14] François Bénoît Hoffmann (1760-1828), author of several comic operas, and a successful writer in the _Journal des Débats._--T.

[15] Claude Hippolyte Clausel de Montais (1769-1857) became Bishop of Chartres in 1824. He was the first to engage, in March 1841, in the struggle of the bishops in favour of liberty of instruction, which led to the law of 25 March 1850. Thanks to his writings during this contest, Monseigneur Clausel de Montais is one of the most imposing figures in the nineteenth-century episcopate.--B.

[16] Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755). In the _Esprit des lois_ (1748) he treats religion respectfully, but the book was condemned for its deistic tendency.--T.

[17] "Tasso wandering from town to town," etc.--T.

[18] Caius Valerius Jovius Aurelius Diocletianus, Roman Emperor (245-313), in 303 commenced a persecution of the Christians which lasted for ten years, or eight years after his abdication in 305.--T.

[19] _Martyrs_, XXIII.--B.

[20] Caius Galerius Valerius Maximianus, Roman Emperor (_d._ 311), adopted son and son-in-law of Diocletian, and associated with the latter in his persecution of the Christians.--T.

[21] Armand de Chateaubriand married in Jersey, in 1795, Jeanne Le Brun d'Anneville, who died in the island in 1857.--B.

[22] The English attempted a descent on Saint-Cast in 1758 and were defeated by the Duc d'Aiguillon.--T.

[23] Pierre François Joachim Henry-Larivière (1761-1838) worked ardently for the restoration of the Monarchy from the date of his proscription by the Convention, of which he was a member, in 1797. Louis XVIII. made him Advocate-General and a councillor of the Court of Appeal. He refused to take the oath to Louis-Philippe on the latter's usurpation in 1830.--B.

[24] The original documents of Armand's trial have been sent me by an unknown and generous hand.--_Author's Note._

[25] M. de Goyon-Vaurouault.--B.

[26] Jean Louis Laya (1761-1833), author of some poetical plays and of the _Ami des lois_, a stirring protest against the murder of Louis XVI. He was flung into prison, where he remained until the 9 Thermidor. Under the Empire, he became a professor at the Lycée Napoléon and eventually obtained the chair of poetry at the Faculté des Lettres.--T.

[27] The Abbé Roch Ambroise Cucurron Sicard (1742-1822), the great teacher and benefactor of the deaf and dumb, and a fervent Royalist.--T.

[28] Hortense Queen of Holland (1783-1837), daughter of the Empress Joséphine by her first husband, Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, and wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. She retired to Switzerland after the Restoration, with the title of Duchesse de Saint-Leu.--T.

[29] Chateaubriand says nothing of the time which elapsed between April 1809 and January 1811. These twenty months, in fact, were marked by no political or literary event that in any way affected him.--B.

[30] The _Itinéraire_ appeared in the month of March 1811.--B.

[31] Louis François Cardinal Duc de Bausset, Bishop of Alais (1748-1824), was appointed to the see of Alais in 1784. He was dispossessed and imprisoned under the Terror. On the return of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France in 1815, a cardinal in 1817, and a duke in the same year. He had published his successful _Histoire de Fénelon_ in 1808; his _Histoire de Bossuet_, which was less well received, appeared in 1814.--T.

[32] Marie Joseph de Chénier (1764-1811).--T.

[33] A contemporary, M. Auguis, thus describes the cavalier manner in which Chateaubriand paid his visits (he quotes from the unpublished Diary of Ferdinand Denis, author of _Scènes de la nature sous les tropiques_ and of _André le voyageur_):

"When Chateaubriand went to pay his French-Academy visits, he called upon his future colleagues on horseback. To the famous and powerful he paid a complete visit; to the small fry he sent in his card, without alighting from his mettlesome steed. When they came to discuss the election, M. ---- voted for the horse of his new colleague, saying that, in all conscience, it was the former alone that had paid him a visit."--B.

[34] Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Hugo Grotius, the celebrated Dutch jurist and writer on international law, author of _De Jure belli et pacis_ (1624), by which the system of international law was created, etc., etc., and for some years Ambassador of Christina Queen of Sweden to France.--T.

[35] The election took place on Wednesday 20 February 1811, forty days after Marie Joseph Chenier's death. Only twenty-five members were present, and Chateaubriand was elected almost unanimously.--B.

[36] MILTON, _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio secunda_: Archdeacon Wrangham's translation.--T.

[37] Cf. JOHNSON, _Lives of the English Poets: Milton_, in which the poet is very roughly handled.--T.

[38] The committee consisted of Messieurs François de Neufchâteau, Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély, Lacretelle the Elder, Laujon and Legouvé.--B.

[39] Pierre Antoine Noël Brunot, Comte Daru (1760-1829), a moderate revolutionary, had been imprisoned under the Terror. He was sent to Berlin as Minister Plenipotentiary in 1806 and entered the Institute in the same year. In 1811, he became Secretary of State, in which capacity he opposed the Russian War. He was created a peer by the Restoration. His works include a metrical translation of the Works of Horace (1804), a History of the Republic of Venice (1819), a History of Brittany (1826), etc.--T.

[40] Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772), author of the _Considération des mœurs_, etc., was a native of Dinan, in Brittany, and was noted for the independence of his opinions. Louis XV. pronounced the _Considération_ to be "the work of an honest man."--T.

[41] Stanislas Chevalier de Boufflers (1737-1815) became a member of the Academy in 1788, on his return from the Governorship of Senegal. He is best known for his light erotic verse.--T.

[42] The Marquise de Boufflers, _née_ de Beauvais-Craon, a beautiful and witty woman who had done the honours of the Court of King Stanislaus.--T.

[43] Joseph Marie Duc de Boufflers (1706-1747) relieved Genoa, besieged by the Imperial forces and by the King of Sardinia, in 1747, and died there in the same year of the small-pox.--T.

[44] Louis François Maréchal Duc de Boufflers (1644-1711), a pupil of Condé and the Turennes, became famous through his defense of Lille in 1708, for which service he was created a duke and a peer. He also conducted the retreat and saved the French Army after the defeat of Malplaquet in 1709.--T.

[45] Louis de Boufflers (1534-1553), a guidon to the Duc d'Enghien, and noted for his superhuman feats of strength and agility. He was killed, at the age of nineteen, at the siege of Pont-sur-Yonne.--T.

[46] The Abbé Delille.--B.

[47] "Be reassured, immortality's yours:" a line from Delille's _Dithyrambe sur l'immortalité de l'âme_, written during the Terror.--T.

[48] M. de Fontanes.--B.

[49] M. Suard.--B.

[50] The Abbé Morellet, who, in 1795, had published two eloquent appeals in favour of the victims of the Revolution, the _Cri des familles_ and the _Cause des pères._--B.

[51] Lieutenant-General Louis Philippe Comte de Ségur (1753-1830), a very intelligent writer. After going through the American War with Lafayette, he was sent as Ambassador to Russia, while still a very young man, returned to France on the outbreak of the Revolution, lived on his pen and was admitted to the Academy. Napoleon made him his Grand-Master of Ceremonies and a senator; under the Restoration, he was created a peer of France.--T.

[52] Philippe Henri Maréchal Marquis de Ségur (1724-1801) was badly wounded at the battle of Klosterkamp, in 1760.-T.

[53] Philippe Paul Comte de Ségur, author of the _Campagne de Russie_, was riddled with bullets at the Battle of Sommo-Sierra (1808), and refused to cease fighting until he swooned in the arms of his grenadiers.--B.

[54] The Abbé Sicard.--B.

[55] Henri Cardin Jean Baptiste Comte d'Aguesseau (1746-1826).--B.

[56] Henri François d'Aguesseau (1668-1751), thrice Chancellor of France.--T.

[57] Jean Francois Ducis (1733-1816), the tragic poet, author of _Œdipe chez Admète_, imitated from Sophocles and Euripides, and of imitations of many of Shakespeare's tragedies. His only original play was _Abufar, ou La Famille arabe_, which obtained a great success. He received Voltaire's seat in the Academy in 1778. Ducis refused the many advantages offered him by Bonaparte, preferring to live in poor and honourable retirement.--T.

[58] Gabriel Marie Jean Baptiste Legouvé (1764-1812), the poet, author of the _Mort d'Abel_, the _Mort d'Henri IV_ and other tragedies, and of some didactic poetry which is better than the plays.--T.

[59] François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761-1836), author of the tragedy of the _Templiers_, entered the Academy in 1807 and became its perpetual secretary in 1817.--T.

[60] Pierre Laujon (1727-1811), author of some comic operas and of a collection of sportive verse entitled _À-propos de société_ (1771). He had been secretary to the Prince de Condé.--T.

[61] Anacreon was born at Teos.--T.

[62] Cf. CAMOËNS, _Luciad_, where Adamastor is represented as the giant spirit of storms, warning Vasco de Gama off the Cape of Storms, now the Cape of Good Hope.--T.

[63] The Chevalier de Parny, author of _Éléonore_, was born in the Île Bourbon.--T.

[64] Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of _Paul et Virginie_, lived three years in the Mauritius.--T.

[65] Joseph Alphonse Esménard (1770-1811) accompanied General Leclerc to San Domingo, and on his return wrote his poem of the _Navigation._ Napoleon made him Theatrical Censor. In 1810, he entered the Institute. He was exiled, in 1811, for writing against the Emperor Alexander, returned to France after three months, and was immediately killed by a fall from his carriage.--T.

[66] St. Ambrose (_circa_ 340-397), one of the Fathers of the Church, was Governor of Liguria when he was elected bishop by the people, although himself but recently converted to Christianity and as yet unbaptized. He was ordained priest and consecrated Bishop of Milan within a few days (374). St. Ambrose is honoured on the 7th of December.--T.

[67] Jean Siffrein Cardinal Maury (1746-1817) had been appointed to the See of Montefiascone by Pope Pius VI. in 1794. In 1810, Napoleon had nominated him Archbishop of Paris, a fact which Chateaubriand purposely disregards.--B.

[68] Chénier's tragedy of _Charles IX_ was produced in 1789, _Henri VIII_ and the _Mort de Calas_ in 1791, _Gracchus_ in 1792, _Fénelon_ in 1793.--T.

[69] A reference to an attack in Chénier's satire entitled the _Nouveaux Saints_, which commences thus:

Ah! vous parlez du diable? il est bien poétique,
Dit le dévot Chactas, ce sauvage érotique.
--B.

[70] André de Chénier, guillotined in 1794.--T.

[71] Caius Fabricius Luscinus (_fl._ 282 B.C.), the type of the ancient Roman virtue.--T.

[72] Marie Joseph Chénier was born in Constantinople in 1764.--T.

[73] Jean de La Bruyère (1644-1696), author of the _Caractères._--T.

[74] Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), the great naturalist.--T.

[75] Lucius Æmilius Paulus Macedonicus (228-160 B.C.), elected Consul in 182 and 168, defeated Perseus in 167 B.C., and subdued Macedonia.--T.

[76] Perseus, the last King of Macedon (_d._ 167 B.C.), adorned his conqueror's triumph and allowed himself to die of starvation in his prison in Rome.--T.

[77] Marie-Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of the Emperor Francis I., had been married to Napoleon on the 1st of April 1810.--T.

[78] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duc de Reichstadt (1811-1832), created King of Rome on his birth (20 March).--T.

[79] Marie Françoise Sophie Gay (1776-1852), _née_ Nichault de Lavalette, author of _Léonie de Montbreuse, Anatolie_, the _Salons célèbres_ and other successful and distinguished works, and mother of Madame Émile de Girardin.--T.

[80] An epigram from the Anthology. The bird to which the Greek poet addressed it is the nightingale, "too great a friend of the author's," as M. de Marcellus very neatly observes, "for him to dare to call it by its name when about to speak ill of it."--B.

[81] 4 September 1812.--B.

[82] In a pamphlet entitled, _Réponse aux attaques dirigées contre M. de Chateaubriand._--B.

[83] Damaze de Raymond died on the 27th of February 1813, in a duel resulting from a quarrel at the gaming-table.--B.

[84] _Cf._ Vol. II. p. 116.--T.

[85] Except in so far as concerns the incidents of his literary life, Chateaubriand's Memoirs give us hardly any details on the two years elapsing between 1812 and 1814. They were spent between the Vallée-aux-Loups and an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli which M. and Madame de Chateaubriand had hired from M. Alexandre de Laborde.--B.