Chapter XIII: Book XI: 336 (2)

"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the shocking
news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does not
permit me to be with you, to press you to my heart! You have
lost all that has to do with the ease and comfort of life;
but, if it were possible to be more loved, more interesting
than you are, that is what would have happened to you. I am
going to write to M. Récamier, whom I pity and respect. But,
tell me, would it be a dream to hope to see you here this
winter? If you were willing, three months spent here, in a
narrow circle where you would be passionately cared for:
but in Paris also you inspire that feeling. At any rate, I
will come to see you at Lyons, or anywhere outside my 'forty
leagues,' to embrace you, to tell you that I have felt more
tenderness for you than for any woman I have ever known. I
can say nothing to you by way of consolation, unless it be
that you will be loved and valued more than ever and that
the admirable features of your generosity and benevolence
will be known, in spite of yourself, through this misfortune,
as they never would have been without it. Certainly, to
compare your situation with what it was, you have lost; but
if it were possible for me to envy what I love, I would give
all that I am to be you. A beauty unmatched in Europe, a
stainless reputation, a proud and generous character, what a
fortune of happiness that remains in this sad life through
which we go so naked! Dear Juliet, let our friendship draw
closer; let it consist not only of generous services, which
have all come from you, but of a sustained correspondence, a
reciprocal desire to confide our thoughts in one another, a
life together. Dear Juliet, you shall make me come back to
Paris, for you are still an all-powerful person, and we shall
see each other every day; and, as you are younger than I, you
shall close my eyes, and my children shall be your friends.
My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear
Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your
fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no
longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has
made herself loved thus.

"Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de
Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you.
Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows.
Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends
threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear
angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...."

Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest: she left society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche has said, "fortune withdrew alone."

Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to both.

Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship which united Corinne and Juliet.

The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them.

Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais:

[Sidenote: Prince Augustus of Prussia.]

"The Prince entered the drawing-room, with Madame de Staël
showing him the way. Suddenly the door half opened, and
Athenais advanced. By the elegance of her figure, by the
dazzling brilliancy of her features, the Prince could not
fail to recognise her, but he had formed a quite different
idea of her: he had represented this woman to himself as
famous for her beauty, as proud of her successes, with an
assumed bearing and the kind of confidence which that sort
of celebrity only too often gives; and he saw a timid young
person step forward with embarrassment and blush as she
appeared. The sweetest sentiment mingled with his surprise.

"After dinner, they did not go out, because of the excessive
heat; they went down into the gallery to make music until the
time came to take the air. After a few brilliant chords and
harmonious sounds of entrancing sweetness, Athenais sang to
her own accompaniment on the harp. The Prince listened to her
with rapture and, when she had finished, looked at her with
inexpressible commotion, exclaiming:

"'And such talents!'"

Madame de Staël, in her maturity, loved Madame Récamier: Madame de Genlis, in her decrepitude, found back for her the accents of her youth; the author of _Mademoiselle de Clermont_[382] lays the scene of her novel[383] at Coppet, with the author of _Corinne_, a rival whom she detested: that was one wonder. Another wonder is to see me writing these details. I am turning over letters which remind me of times in which I lived solitary and unknown. There was happiness without me on the shores of Coppet, which I have not seen since without a certain movement of envy. The things which have escaped me on earth, which have fled from me, which I regret, would kill me, were I not so near my tomb; but, at this short distance from eternal oblivion, truths and dreams are equally vain: at the end of one's life, all is time lost.

Madame de Staël set out a second time for Germany[384]. Here begins again a series of letters to Madame Récamier, perhaps even more charming than the first.

There is nothing in Madame de Staël's printed works which approaches this naturalness, this eloquence, in which imagination lends its expression to the feelings. The virtue of Madame Récamier's friendship must have been great, since it was able to make a woman of genius produce what was hidden and, as yet, unrevealed in her talent. We divine, moreover, in the sad accent of Madame de Staël a secret displeasure, of which the beauty would naturally be the confidant, she who could never receive like wounds.

Madame de Staël, having returned to France, came, in the spring of 1810[385], to live at the Château de Chaumont[386], on the banks of the Loire, at forty leagues from Paris, the distance fixed by the radius of her banishment. Madame Récamier joined her at that country-house.

Madame de Staël was at that time supervising the impression of her work on Germany; when it was on the point of publication, she sent it to Bonaparte with this letter:

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël to Napoleon.]

"SIRE,

"I take the liberty of presenting to Your Majesty my work on
Germany. If you deign to read it, it seems to me that you
will find in it proof of a mind capable of some reflection
and ripened by time. Sire, it is twelve years since I
saw Your Majesty and since I was exiled. Twelve years of
misfortune modify all characters, and destiny teaches
resignation to those who suffer. Prepared to put to sea, I
beseech Your Majesty to grant me half-an-hour's conversation.
I believe that I have things to tell you which may interest
you, and it is on that score that I beseech you to grant
me the favour of speaking to you before my departure. I
will allow myself only one thing in this letter, which is
an explanation of the motives which oblige me to leave the
Continent, if I do not obtain permission from Your Majesty to
live at a country-place near enough to Paris for my children
to stay there. Your Majesty's disgrace casts so great a
disfavour in Europe upon the persons who are its object,
that I cannot take a step without encountering its effects.
Some fear to compromise themselves by seeing me, others
think themselves Romans when triumphing over that fear.
The simplest social relations become services which a proud
mind cannot put up with. Among my friends are some who have
allied themselves to my lot with admirable generosity; but
I have seen the most intimate sentiments shattered against
the necessity to live with me in solitude, and I have spent
my life during the past eight years between the dread of not
obtaining sacrifices and the sorrow of being the object of
them. It is perhaps ridiculous thus to enter into details of
one's impressions with the sovereign of the world; but that
which gave you the world, Sire, is a sovereign genius. And,
in respect of observation of the human heart, Your Majesty's
comprehension embraces the greatest and the most delicate
springs. My sons have no career, my daughter is thirteen
years of age; in a few years it will be necessary to settle
her: it would be selfish to compel her to live in the insipid
residences to which I am condemned. I shall therefore have
to part from her, alas! This life is unendurable, and I know
no remedy for it on the Continent. What city can I choose in
which Your Majesty's disgrace does not place an invincible
obstacle to both the settling of my children and my personal
repose? Your Majesty is not yourself, perhaps, aware of the
fear which most of the authorities of every country entertain
of exiles, and in this connection I should have things to
tell you which surely exceed what you may have ordered. Your
Majesty has been told that I regretted Paris because of the
Museum and Talma: this is an agreeable jest upon exile, in
other words upon the misfortune which Cicero and Bolingbroke
have declared to be the most insupportable of all; but, if I
were to love the master-pieces of art which France owes to
Your Majesty's conquests, if I were to love those beautiful
tragedies, the images of heroism: would it be for you, Sire,
to blame me for it? Is not the happiness of each individual
compounded of the nature of his faculties? And, if Heaven has
given me talents, have I not the imagination which renders
the enjoyment of the arts and the mind necessary? So many
people ask of Your Majesty real advantages of every kind!
Why should I blush to ask of you friendship, poetry, music,
pictures, all that ideal existence which I can enjoy without
swerving from the submission which I owe to the Monarch of
France?"

This unpublished letter was worth preserving[387]. Madame de Staël was not, as has been contended, a blind and implacable enemy. She was listened to no more than I, when I also saw myself obliged to write to Bonaparte to ask him for the life of my cousin Armand. Alexander and Cæsar would have been touched by this letter so lofty in tone, written by so famous a woman; but the confidence of the merit which judges itself the equal of the supreme dominion, that sort of familiarity of the intellect which places itself on the level of the master of Europe to treat with him as from crown to crown appeared to Bonaparte but the arrogance of a disordered self-esteem. He thought himself set at defiance by all that had any independent greatness; to him baseness seemed fidelity, pride revolt: he did not know that true talent recognises no Napoleons save in genius, that it has its right of entry into the palaces as into the temples, because it is immortal.

Madame de Staël left Chaumont and returned to Coppet[388]; Madame Récamier again hastened to go to her; M. Mathieu de Montmorency also remained devoted to her. Both were punished for it; they were smitten with the very penalty which they had gone to console: the forty leagues' distance from Paris was inflicted on them[389].

Madame Récamier retired to Châlons-sur-Marne[390] influenced in her selection by its propinquity to Montmirail[391], where Messieurs de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville resided.

A thousand details of Bonaparte's oppression have become lost in the general tyranny: the persecuted persons dreaded to see their friends for fear of compromising them; their friends dared not visit them, for fear of drawing down upon them some increase of severity. The unhappy outlaw, becoming as one infected with the plague, lived sequestered from the human race, in quarantine in the despot's hatred. You were well received so long as your independence of opinion was unknown; so soon as it became known, every one drew back; there remained around you none save authorities spying on your connections, your feelings, your correspondence, your proceedings: such were those times of honour and liberty.

Madame de Staël's letters reveal the sufferings of that period, in which talents were at each moment threatened with a dungeon, in which one busied one's self only with the means of escaping, in which one aspired to flight as to a deliverance: when liberty has disappeared there remains a country, but no more mother-land.

[Sidenote: Madame de Staël's marriage.]

When writing to her friend that she did not wish to see her, from apprehension of the evil which she might bring upon her, Madame de Staël did not say all: she was secretly married to M. de Rocca[392], whence resulted a complication of difficulties by which the imperial police profited. Madame Récamier, from whom Madame de Staël thought it right to conceal her new cares, was astonished, with good reason, at the stubbornness which she displayed in forbidding her the entry of her place at Coppet: though wounded by the resistance of Madame de Staël, for whom she had already sacrificed herself, she persisted in her resolve to join her.

All the letters which ought to have restrained Madame Récamier only served to confirm her in her intention; she started and, at Dijon, received this fatal note:

"I bid you adieu, dear angel of my life, with all the
tenderness of my soul. I recommend Auguste[393] to you:
let him see you and then let him see me again. You are a
celestial creature. If I had lived in your company, I should
have been too happy: fate carries me away. Adieu[394]."

Madame de Staël was to meet Juliet again only to die. Her note struck the traveller with a thunder-bolt: to fly suddenly, to depart before pressing in her arms her who was hastening to fling herself into her adversity, was not that a cruel resolution on Madame de Staël's part? It appeared to Madame Récamier that friendship might have been less "carried away by fate."

Madame de Staël went in search of England by way of Germany and Sweden: the power of Napoleon was a second sea separating Albion from Europe, even as the Ocean separates her from the world.

Auguste, Madame de Staël's son, had lost his brother killed by a sword-thrust in a duel[395]; he married and had a son: this son, a few months old, followed him into the tomb. With Auguste de Staël the male posterity of an illustrious woman died out, for it does not revive in the honourable, but unknown name of Rocca.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Chevreuse.]

Madame Récamier, left alone and full of regret, first sought a refuge in her native town of Lyons[396]: there she met Madame de Chevreuse[397], another exile. Madame de Chevreuse had been forced by the Emperor and, afterwards, by her own family to enter the new society. You would scarce find an historic name which did not consent to lose its honour rather than a single forest. Once engaged at the Tuileries, Madame de Chevreuse thought she would be able to hold sway in a Court newly-issued from the camps: that Court, it is true, sought to acquaint itself with the airs of olden times, in the hope of covering its recent origin; but the plebeian manner was still too rough to receive lessons from aristocratic impertinence. In a revolution which endures and which has taken its last step, as for instance in Rome, the Patricians, a century after the fall of the Republic, could resign themselves to being no more than the Senate of the Emperors; the past had nought wherewith to reproach the Emperors of the present, since that past was finished; every existence was branded with a like stigma. But in France the nobles who converted themselves into chamberlains were in too great a hurry; the new-born Empire disappeared before them, and they found themselves face to face with the old Monarchy raised to life again.

Madame de Chevreuse, attacked by a disease of the chest, begged and was refused the favour of ending her days in Paris; we do not expire when and where we please: Napoleon, who made so many dead, would never have done with them if he had left them the choice of their tomb.

Madame Récamier succeeded in forgetting her own sorrows only by interesting herself in those of others; through the charitable connivance of a sister of Mercy, she secretly visited the Spanish prisoners in Lyons. One of them, brave and handsome, a Christian like the Cid, was passing away to God: seated on his straw, he played the guitar; his sword had betrayed his hand. So soon as he caught sight of his benefactress, he sang her ballads of his country, having no other means to thank her. His enfeebled voice and the confused sounds of the instrument were lost in the silence of the prison. The soldier's comrades, half wrapped in their torn cloaks, their black locks hanging over their bronzed and emaciated faces, raised eyes, proud of their Castilian blood, moist with gratitude, on the exile who recalled to them a mother, a sister, a sweetheart, and who bore the yoke of the same tyranny.

The Spaniard died. He could say with Zarviska, the young and valorous Polish poet:

"An unknown hand shall close my eyes; the tolling of a
foreign bell shall announce my death, and voices which are
not those of my country shall pray for me."

Mathieu de Montmorency came to Lyons to visit Madame Récamier. She then knew M. Camille Jordan and M. Ballanche, both worthy to swell the train of friendships attached to her noble life.

Madame Récamier was too proud to solicit her recall. Fouché had long and to no purpose urged her to adorn the Court of the Emperor: the details of these palace negociations can be read in the writings of the time. Madame Récamier retired to Italy[398]; M. de Montmorency accompanied her as far as Chambéry. She crossed the rest of the Alps with no other travelling-companion than a little niece of seven, to-day Madame Lenormant[399].

Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the palace of Francis I.

Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a different point in Europe.

Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in deserted Rome.

[Sidenote: Antonio Canova.]

Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees, one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and a pleasant voice, the barcarolle, _O pescator dell'onda_; Madame Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that simple and gentle Canova!

More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was deserted like the Coliseum.

I have read the eloquent letters which the most illustrious woman of our past days wrote to her friend; read the same feelings of tenderness, expressed with the most charming artlessness, in the language of Petrarch[402], by the first sculptor of modern times. I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of trying to translate them:

"_Domenico, mattina._

"Dio eterno? siamo vivi, o siamo morti? lo voglio esser
vivo, almeno per scriveri; si, lo vuole il mio cuore, anzi
mi comanda assolutamente di farlo. Oh! se'l conoscete bene
a fondo questo povero cuor mio, quanto, quanto mai ve ne
persuadereste! Ma per disgrazia mia pare ch'egli sia alquanto
all'oscuro per voi. Pazienza! Ditemi almeno come state di
saluto, se di più non volete dire; benchè mi abbiate promesso
di scrivere a di scrivermi dolce. Io davvero che avrei voluto
vedervi personalmente in questi giorni, ma non vi poteva
essere alcuna via di poterlo fare; anzi su di questo vi dirò
a voce delle cose curiose. Convenie dunque che mi contenti, a
forza, di vidervi in spirito. In questo modo sempre mi siete
presente, sempre vi veggo, sempre vi parlo, vi dico tante,
tante cose, ma tutte, tutte al vento, tutte! Pazienza anche
di questo! gran fatto che la cosa abbia d'andare sempre in
questo modo! voglio intanto però che siate certa, certissima
che l'anima mia vi ama molto più assai di quello che mai
possiate credere ed imaginare."

Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman, accused of holding intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man. She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.

Nevertheless, Madame Récamier, although persuaded of the uselessness of her application, did not hesitate. She sent for her carriage and stepped into it, without the hope which she left to the condemned man. She drove through the Campagna infested with brigands, reached Rome, and failed to find the Director of Police. She waited two hours at the Palazzo Fiano, counting the minutes of a life of which the last was approaching. When M. de Norvins arrived, she explained to him the object of her journey. He replied that the sentence was pronounced and that he had not the necessary power to suspend it.

[Sidenote: The Albano fisherman.]

Madame Récamier set out again heart-broken; the prisoner had ceased to live when she approached Albano. The inhabitants were awaiting the Frenchwoman on the road; so soon as they discovered her, they hastened up to her. The priest who had attended the culprit brought her his last vows: he thanked _la dama_, whom he had not ceased to seek with his eyes while going to the place of execution; he begged her to pray for him: for a Christian has not done with everything and is not beyond fear when he is no more. Madame Récamier was led by the ecclesiastic to the church, where the crowd of handsome Albano peasant-women followed her. The fisherman had been shot at the hour at which the sun rose upon the bark, now unguided, which he had been accustomed to steer over the seas and upon the shores which he had been accustomed to survey.

To become disgusted with conquerors, one must have known all the ills they cause, one must have been a witness to the indifference with which men sacrifice to them the most inoffensive creatures in a corner of the globe in which they have never set foot. Of what consequence to Bonaparte's successes were the days of a poor net-maker in the Papal States? Undoubtedly, he never knew that that paltry fisherman existed; amid the clatter of his struggle with kings, he did not so much as know the name of his plebeian victim.

The world perceives in Napoleon naught save victories; the tears with which the triumphal columns are cemented do not fall from his eyes. And I, I think that, out of those despised sufferings, those calamities of the small and the lowly, are formed, in the councils of Providence, the secret causes which hurl the ruler from his pinnacle. When instances of injustice accumulate in such a way as to bear down the weight of fortune, the scale descends. There is blood which is dumb and blood which cries out: the blood of the battle-field is drunk in silence by the earth; peaceable blood when shed spurts with a moan towards Heaven; God receives it and avenges it. Bonaparte slew the Albano fisherman; a few months later[403], he was banished among the fishermen of Elba, and he died among those of St. Helena.

Did my vague memory, scarce outlined in Madame Récamier's thoughts, appear to her amid the plains of the Tiber and the Anio? I had already passed through those melancholy wastes; I had left a tomb there honoured by Juliet's friends. When M. de Montmorin's daughter[404] died, in 1803, Madame de Staël and M. Necker wrote me letters of regret; you have seen those letters. Thus I received at Rome, almost before I knew Madame Récamier, letters dated from Coppet; it was the first sign of an affinity of destiny. Madame Récamier has also told me that my Letter of 1804 to M. de Fontanes served her as a guide in 1814, and that she often read and re-read the following passage:

"Whosoever has no tie left in life should come to live in
Rome. There he will find for company a land which will feed
his reflections and occupy his heart, and walks which will
always say something to him. The stone which he treads under
foot will speak to him; the dust which the wind raises
beneath his steps will contain some human greatness. If he
is unhappy, if he has mingled the ashes of those whom he
loved with so many illustrious ashes, with what charm will
he not pass from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the last
resting-place of a virtuous friend!... If he is a Christian,
ah! how can he then tear himself away from that land which
has become his country, from that land which has witnessed
the birth of a second empire, holier in its cradle, greater
in its might than that which preceded it, from that land
where the friends whom we have lost, sleeping with the
martyrs in the catacombs, under the eye of the Father of the
Faithful, appear as though they ought to be the first to
awake in their dust and seem to be nearer to the skies?"

But, in 1814, I was only a vulgar cicerone to Madame Récamier, the common property of all travellers; more fortunate in 1823, I had ceased to be a stranger to her and we were able to talk together of the Roman ruins.

In Naples, where Madame Récamier went in the autumn[405], the occupations of solitude ceased. Scarce had she alighted at her inn, when King Joachim's ministers came hastening up. Murat, forgetting the hand which had changed his whip[406] into a sceptre, was ready to join the Coalition. Bonaparte had planted his sword in the middle of Europe, as the Gauls planted their blade in the middle of the _mallus_[407]; around Napoleon's sword were drawn up in a circle kingdoms which he distributed to his family. Caroline[408] had received that of Naples. Madame Murat was not so elegant an antique cameo as the Princess Borghese; but she had more expression and more wit than her sister. In the firmness of her character one recognised the blood of Napoleon. If the diadem had not been for her an ornament for a woman's head, it would still have been the emblem of a queen's power.

[Sidenote: Queen Caroline Murat.]

Caroline received Madame Récamier with an alacrity which was the more affectionate that the oppression of tyranny made itself felt as far as Portici. Nevertheless, the city which possesses Virgil's[409] tomb and Tasso's[410] cradle, the city in which Horace[411], Livy[412], Boccaccio[413] and Sannazaro[414] lived, in which Durante[415] and Cimarosa[416] were born, had been beautified by its new master. Order had been restored; the _lazzaroni_ no longer played at ball with human heads to amuse Admiral Nelson[417] and Lady Hamilton[418]. The excavations at Pompeii had been extended; a road wound over the Posilipo[419], into whose flanks I had penetrated, in 1803[420], to go to ask at Liternum[421] for Scipio's retreat. Those new royalties of a military dynasty had brought back life to regions in which before them the moribund languor of an old race of kings had made itself manifest. Robert Guiscard[422], William Iron-arm[423], Roger[424] and Tancred[425] seemed to have returned, minus the chivalry.

Madame Récamier was in Naples in February 1814; where was I then? In my Vallée-aux-Loups, commencing the story of my life. I was concerning myself with the sports of my childhood to the sound of the foreign soldier's footsteps. The woman whose name was to close these Memoirs was strolling on the _marine_ of Baja. Had I not a presentiment of the good which was one day to come to me from that quarter, when I was depicting the Parthenopian seduction in the _Martyrs_:

"Every morning, so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under
a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with
its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the
blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the
islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape
of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.

"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less
fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades
of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to
find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce
gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before
that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts,
desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious
air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that
divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with
an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament
like a pure spirit....

"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards
us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to
float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with
flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of
that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where
Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days....
Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their
extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious
fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432]
was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of
the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the
rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the
streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the
senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....

"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of
the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory,
we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If
some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves
brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby.
Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum
in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they
sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded
me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the
fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be
watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."

Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest, the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal.

[Sidenote: The Duc de Rohan.]

The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron, had all a martyr's elegance. He used to preach at dusk, in sombre oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in mezzotint, like a picture[436].

We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service, we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value; the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady:

"As a matter of fact, there are only yourselves that know how to serve."

Religion and death have passed the sponge over a few weaknesses, very pardonable after all, of the Cardinal de Rohan. A Christian priest, he consummated his sacrifice at Besançon, succouring the unhappy, feeding the poor, clothing the orphan, and wearing out in good works his life, the course of which was naturally shortened by deplorable ill-health.

Reader, if you grow impatient at these quotations, these accounts, reflect, first, that perhaps you have not read my works and, next, that I can no longer hear you; I am sleeping in the ground on which you tread; if you be angry with me, stamp on the ground, you will insult only my bones. Reflect, moreover, that my writings form an essential part of that existence whose leaves I am unfolding. Ah, why had not my pictures of Naples a background of truth! Why was not the daughter of the Rhone[437] the real woman of my imaginary delights? But no; if I was Augustine, Jerome, Eudorus, I was all these alone; my days went before the days of the friend of Corinne in Italy. How happy should I have been could I have spread my whole life under her feet like a carpet of flowers! My life is rough and its unevenness hurts. May my dying hours at least reflect the tenderness and charm with which she has filled them upon her who was beloved by all and of whom none had ever to complain!

[Sidenote: Murat, King of Naples.]

Murat, King of Naples, born 25 March 1767, at the Bastide, near Cahors, was sent to Toulouse for his studies. He took a dislike to letters, enlisted in the Ardennes Chasseurs, deserted, and ran away to Paris. Admitted into Louis XVI.'s Constitutional Guard, he received, after the disbanding of that guard, a cornetcy in the 12th Regiment of Mounted Chasseurs. On the death of Robespierre, he was dismissed as a Terrorist[438]; the same thing happened to Bonaparte, and both soldiers were left without resources. Murat was restored to favour on the 13 Vendémiaire, and became aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He served under him in the early Italian campaigns, took the Valtellina and added it to the Cisalpine Republic[439]; he took part in the Egyptian Expedition and distinguished himself at the Battle of Abukir[440]. Returning to France with his master, he was ordered to turn out the Council of the Five Hundred[441]. Bonaparte gave him his sister Caroline in marriage[442]. Murat commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Marengo[443]. He was Governor of Paris at the time of the death of the Duc d'Enghien and bemoaned in secret a murder which he had not the courage to condemn aloud.

Brother-in-law to Napoleon, and a marshal of the Empire[444], Murat entered Vienna in 1805[445]; he contributed to the victories of Austerlitz[446], Jena[447], Eylau[448], and Friedland[449], became Grand-duke of Berg[450], and invaded Spain in 1808.

Napoleon recalled him and gave him the Crown of Naples. Proclaimed King of the Two Sicilies on the 1st of August 1808, he pleased the Neapolitans through his magnificence, his theatrical dress, his cavalcades and his entertainments.

Summoned in his capacity as a grand vassal of the Empire to the invasion of Russia, he reappeared in all the battles and found himself charged with the command of the retreat from Smolensk to Wilna[451]. After manifesting his discontent, he left the army, following Bonaparte's example, and went to warm himself in the sun of Naples, as did his captain at the fireside of the Tuileries. Those men of triumph could never accustom themselves to reverses. Then began his connexion with Austria. He appeared once more in the camps of Germany in 1813, returned to Naples after the loss of the Battle of Leipzig[452], and resumed his Austro-British negociations. Before entering into a complete alliance, Murat wrote Napoleon a letter which I have heard read by M. de Mosbourg[453]: he told his brother-in-law in this letter that he had found the Peninsula in a very agitated condition, that the Italians were demanding their national independence and that, if this were not restored to them, it was to be feared that they should join the European Coalition and thus increase the dangers of France. He besought Napoleon to make peace, as the only means of preserving so powerful and fine an empire. He added that, if Bonaparte refused to listen to him, he, Murat, abandoned at the further end of Italy, would find himself compelled to leave his kingdom or embrace the interests of Italian liberty. This very reasonable letter was left for several months unanswered; Napoleon was, therefore, not able to reproach Murat justly with having betrayed him.

Murat, obliged to make a quick choice, signed a treaty with the Court of Vienna on the 11th of January 1814; he bound himself to furnish the Allies with a corps of thirty thousand men. As the price of his defection, he was guaranteed his Kingdom of Naples, and his right of conquest over the Papal Marches. Madame Murat revealed this important transaction to Madame Récamier. At the moment when he was about to declare himself openly, Murat, very much excited, met Madame Récamier at Caroline's, and asked her what she thought of the decision which he had to take; he begged her to weigh well the interests of the people whose sovereign he had become. Madame Récamier said to him:

"You are a Frenchman and you must remain faithful to the French."

Murat's face became distorted; he rejoined:

"So I am a traitor? What can I do? It is too late!"

He threw open a window and pointed to an English fleet entering under full sail.

Vesuvius was in a state of eruption and throwing out flames. Two hours later, Murat was on horseback at the head of his guards; the crowd surrounded him, shouting, "Long live King Joachim!" He had forgotten all; he seemed drunk with delight. The next day, a great performance at the Teatro di San-Carlo; the King and Queen were received with frantic acclamations unknown to people on this side of the Alps. The Envoy of Francis II. was also applauded; the box of Napoleon's Minister was empty; Murat appeared troubled at this, as though he had seen the ghost of France at the back of that box.

[Sidenote: Fall of Murat.]

Murat's army, set in motion on the 16th of February 1814, forced Prince Eugene to fall back upon the Adige. Napoleon, who had at first obtained unhoped for successes in Champagne, wrote to his sister Caroline some letters which were captured by the Allies and their contents communicated to the English Parliament by Lord Castlereagh. He said to her:

"Your husband is very brave on the battle-field, but he is
weaker than a woman or a monk when he does not see the enemy
before him. He has no moral courage. He has been afraid, and
he would not risk to lose in one instant what he can hold
only through me and with me."

In another letter, addressed to Murat himself, Napoleon said to his brother-in-law:

"I presume that you are not one of those who think that the
lion is dead; if that was your calculation, it would be
erroneous.... You have done me all the harm you could since
your departure from Wilna. The title of King has turned your
head; if you wish to keep it, behave yourself."

Murat did not pursue the Viceroy to the Adige; he hesitated between the Allies and the French, according to the chances which Bonaparte seemed to be winning or losing.

In the fields of Brienne, where Napoleon was educated by the old Monarchy, he gave, in the latter's honour, the last and most admirable of his blood-stained tourneys[454]. Favoured by the Carbonari, Joachim at one time wished to declare himself the liberator of Italy, at another hoped to divide her between himself and Bonaparte become victorious. One morning, a courier brought to Naples the news of the entry of the Russians into Paris. Madame Murat was still in bed and Madame Récamier was talking with her, seated at her pillow; an enormous pile of letters and newspapers was laid upon the bed. Among the latter was my pamphlet, _De Bonaparte and des Bourbons._ The Queen exclaimed:

"Ah, here is a work by M. de Chateaubriand; we will read it together."

And she went on opening her letters.

Madame Récamier took the pamphlet and, after casting her eyes over it at random, placed it back on the bed and said to the Queen:

"Madame, you shall read it alone, I am obliged to return home."

Napoleon was relegated to Elba; the Allies, with rare cleverness, had placed him on the coast of Italy. Murat learnt that they were trying at the Congress of Vienna to despoil him of the States which he had nevertheless bought so dear; he came to a secret understanding with his brother-in-law, who had become his neighbour. One is always surprised that the Napoleons should have relations: who knows the name of Arrhidæus[455], the brother of Alexander? In the course of the year 1814, the King and Queen of Naples gave an entertainment at Pompeii; an excavation was conducted to the sound of music: the ruins which Caroline and Joachim had dug up did not apprize them of their own ruin; on the last borders of prosperity we hear but the last strains of the dream that passes away.

At the time of the Peace of Paris, Murat formed part of the Alliance, the Milanese having been handed back to Austria: the Neapolitans retired within the Roman Legations. Murat, perplexed, having changed his interest, sallied forth from the Legations and marched with forty thousand men towards Upper Italy to make a diversion in favour of Napoleon[456]. At Parma, he refused the conditions which the affrighted Austrians offered him once more: to each of us comes a critical moment; ill chosen or well, it decides our future. The Baron de Frimont[457] forced back Murat's troops, took the offensive and drove them before him fighting to Macerata[458]. The Neapolitans left the ranks; their King and general returned to Naples[459], accompanied by four lancers. He went to his wife and said:

"Madame, I have not been able to die."

The next day, a boat took him in the direction of the island of Ischia; he joined at sea a smack carrying a few officers of his staff, and set sail with them for France.

[Sidenote: Murat's flight.]

Madame Murat, left behind alone, displayed admirable presence of mind. The Austrians were on the point of appearing: in the passing from one authority to another, an interval of anarchy might have been filled with disorders. The Regent did not precipitate her retreat; she allowed the German soldier to occupy the town and had her galleries lighted up at night. The people, seeing the lights from the outside, thinking that the Queen was still there, remained quiet. Meantime Caroline left by a secret stair-case and went on board ship. Seated on the poop, she saw gleaming on the bank the illuminated, but deserted palace from which she was departing, an image of the dazzling dream which she had had during her sleep in the realm of the fairies.

Caroline met the frigate which was bringing Ferdinand[460] back. The ship of the fugitive Queen fired a salute, the ship of the recalled King did not return it: Prosperity does not recognise her sister Adversity. Thus do illusions, faded for the one, begin anew for the other; thus do the fickle destinies of humanity pass each other in the winds and on the billows: smiling or baleful, one and the same abyss bears them or engulfs them.

Murat was achieving his career elsewhere. On the 25th of May 1815, at ten o'clock at night, he landed in the Golfe Juan, where his brother-in-law had landed. Fortune made Joachim play the parody of Napoleon. The latter did not believe in the strength of misfortune, nor in the succour which it brings to great minds: he forbade the dethroned King the approach to Paris; he consigned to the lazar-house this man stricken with the plague of the conquered; he shut him up in a country-house called _Plaisance_, near Toulon. He would have done better to show less dread of a contagion with which he had himself been seized: who knows what a soldier like Murat might have altered in the Battle of Waterloo?

The King of Naples, in his trouble, wrote to Fouché on the 19th of June 1815:

"I shall reply to those who accuse me of commencing
hostilities too soon that it was done at the Emperor's
formal demand and that, for three months, he did not cease
to reassure me as to his sentiments by accrediting ministers
to me and writing to me that he relied on me and would
never abandon me. It is only when people saw that I had
lost, together with the throne, the means of continuing the
powerful diversion which had lasted three months that they
tried to mislead public opinion by insinuating that I acted
on my own behalf and without the Emperor's knowledge."

There existed a generous and beautiful woman; when she arrived in Paris, Madame Récamier received her and would not abandon her in times of misfortune. Among the papers which she has left behind were found two letters from Murat written in the month of June 1819; they are useful to the study of history:

[Sidenote: Letters from Murat.]

6 _June_ 1815.

"I have lost the fairest existence for France's sake; I have
fought for the Emperor; it is for his cause that my wife and
my children are in captivity. The country is in danger, I
offer my services; they put off accepting them. I know not
if I am free or a prisoner. I must needs be involved in the
Emperor's ruin if he falls, and they deprive me of the means
of serving him and serving my own cause. I ask their reasons;
they reply obscurely and I am unable clearly to establish
my position. At one time I cannot go to Paris, where my
presence would injure the Emperor, and I must not join the
army, where my presence would too much attract the attention
of the soldiers. What am I to do? Wait: that is what they
reply. On the other hand, I am told that I am not forgiven
for having abandoned the Emperor last year, whereas letters
from Paris said, when I was recently fighting for France,
'_Every one here is delighted with the King._' The Emperor
wrote to me, _I rely on you, do you rely on me, I shall never
abandon you._' King Joseph wrote to me, '_The Emperor orders
me to write to you to move rapidly upon the Alps._' And
when, on arriving, I display generous sentiments and offer
to fight for France, I am sent into the Alps. Not a word of
consolation is addressed to one who never did him any other
wrong than to rely too greatly on generous sentiments which
he never entertained for me.

"My friend, I come to ask you to inform me of the opinion
of France and the army regarding me. A man must know how to
endure all and my courage will make me rise superior to every
misfortune. All is lost save honour; I have lost the throne,
but I have preserved all my glory; I have been abandoned
by my soldiers, who were victorious in every fight, but I
have never been beaten. The desertion of twenty thousand men
placed me at the mercy of my enemies; a fisher's bark saved
me from captivity, and a merchant ship cast me in three days
on the coasts of France."

"Near TOULON, 18 _June_ 1815.