Chapter XIV: Book XI: 336 (3)

"I have just received your letter. I cannot describe to
you the different sensations which it made me experience.
I have been able for a moment to forget my misfortunes. I
am occupied only with my friend, whose noble and generous
soul comes to console me and show me its sorrow. Reassure
yourself: all is lost, but honour remains; my glory will
survive all my misfortunes, and my courage will be able to
make me rise superior to all the rigours of my destiny: have
no fear on that score. I have lost my throne and family
unmoved; but ingratitude has revolted me. I have lost all for
France, for her Emperor, by his order, and to-day he makes
it a crime in me to have done so. He refuses me permission
to fight and revenge myself, and I am not free to choose my
own retreat: can you conceive all my unhappiness? What can I
do? What decision can I take? I am a Frenchman and a father:
as a Frenchman, I must serve my country; as a father, I must
go to share my children's lot: honour lays upon me the duty
of fighting and nature tells me that I must belong to my
children. Which am I to obey? Cannot I satisfy both? Shall I
be allowed to listen to either? Already the Emperor refuses
me armies; and will Austria grant me the means to go to join
my children? Shall I ask them of her, I who have never been
willing to treat with her ministers? There is my situation:
give me advice. I shall await your reply, the Duc d'Otrante's
and Lucien's, before taking a determination. Consult opinion
well as to what it is thought right for me to do, for I am
free in the choice of my retreat; they are returning to the
past and making it a crime in me to have, by order, lost my
throne, when my family is languishing in captivity. Advise
me; listen to the voice of honour, to that of nature, and,
as an impartial judge, have the courage to write to me what
I am to do. I shall await your reply on the road between
Marseilles and Lyons."

Putting aside the personal vanities and the illusions which issue from the throne, even from a throne on which one has been seated but for a moment, these letters show us the idea which Murat entertained of his brother-in-law.

Bonaparte lost the Empire a second time; Murat was a shelterless vagrant on the same sands which have since beheld the roamings of the Duchesse de Berry. Some smugglers consented, on the 22nd of August 1815, to put him and three others across to Corsica. A tempest greeted him: the felucca which plies between Bastia and Toulon took him on board. Scarce had he left his shore-boat, when she split. Landing at Bastia on the 25th of August, he hastened to hide himself in the village of Vescovato, at old Colonna-Ceccaldi's[461]. Two hundred officers joined him with General Franceschetti[462]. He marched on Ajaccio: Bonaparte's maternal town alone still cared for her son; of all his Empire, Napoleon owned only his cradle. The garrison of the citadel saluted Murat and wished to proclaim him King of Corsica: he refused; he thought only the sceptre of the Two Sicilies equal to his greatness. His aide-de-camp Macirone[463] brought him from Paris the decision of Austria, by virtue of which he was to give up the title of King and retire at will to Bohemia or Moldavia:

"It is too late," replied Joachim; "my dear Macirone, the die is cast."

On the 28th of September, Murat sailed for Italy; seven bottoms were laden with his two hundred and fifty followers: he had scorned to have for his kingdom the narrow mother-land of the immense man; full of hope, led away by the example of a fortune higher than his own, he set out from the island whence Napoleon had issued to take possession of the world: it is not the same spots, but similar geniuses, that produce the same destinies.

A storm dispersed the flotilla; Murat was cast ashore, on the 8th of October, in the Gulf of Santa Eufemia, almost at the moment when Bonaparte was approaching the Rock of St. Helena[464].

Of his seven praams, only two were left to him, including his own. Landing with some thirty men, he tried to stir up the population of the coast; the inhabitants fired on his band. The two praams stood out to sea; Murat was betrayed. He ran to a stranded boat, tried to float it; the boat would not move. Surrounded and captured, Murat, insulted by the same mob that once used to shout itself hoarse with "Long live King Joachim!" was taken to Pizzo Castle. Upon him and his companions were seized insensate proclamations: they showed with what dreams men delude themselves to their last hour.

Unruffled in his prison, Murat said:

"I shall have only my Kingdom of Naples; my cousin Ferdinand will keep the second Sicily."

[Sidenote: Death of Murat.]

And at that moment a military commission was condemning Murat to death. When he heard his sentence, his firmness deserted him for a few instants; he shed tears and exclaimed:

"I am Joachim King of the Two Sicilies!"

He forgot that Louis XVI. had been King of France, the Duc d'Enghien grandson of the Grand Condé, and Napoleon arbiter of Europe: Death reckons as nothing what we may have been.

A priest is always a priest, say and do what we will; he comes and restores its failing strength to an intrepid heart. On the 13th of October 1815, Murat, after writing to his wife, was taken to a room in Pizzo Castle, renewing in his romantic person the brilliant or tragic adventures of the middle ages. Twelve soldiers, who perhaps had served under him, awaited him, drawn up in two lines. Murat saw them load their muskets, refused to let his eyes be bandaged, and himself, as an experienced captain, chose the post where the bullets could best hit him.

When aim had been taken at him, at the moment of the fire, he said:

"Men, spare the face; aim at my heart!"

He fell, holding in his hands the portraits of his wife and of his children: those portraits used before to adorn the hilt of his sword[465]. It was but one affair the more which the gallant man had settled with life.

The different manners of death of Napoleon and Murat preserve the characters of their lives.

Murat, so magnificent, was buried without state at Pizzo, in one of those Christian churches in whose charitable bosom all ashes are mercifully received.

Madame Récamier, returning to France, passed through Rome at the moment when the Pope returned[466]. In another portion of these Memoirs, you accompanied Pius VII., set at liberty at Fontainebleau, to the gates of St Peter's[467]. Joachim, still alive, was about to disappear, and Pius VII. was reappearing. Behind them, Napoleon was struck; the conqueror's hand let the King fall and raised the Pontiff.

[Sidenote: Pope Pius VII.]

Pius VII. was received with shouts which shook the ruins of the city of ruins. The horses were taken from his carriage and the crowd drew him to the steps of the Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw nothing, heard nothing; rapt in mind, his thought was far from the earth; only his hand rose over the people from the tender habit of blessing. He entered the basilica to the sound of trumpets, to the singing of the _Te Deum_, to the acclamations of the Swiss of the religion of William Tell. The thuribles wafted perfumes to him which he did not inhale; he would not be carried on the _sedia gestatoria_ under the shadow of the canopy and the palms; he walked like a shipwrecked man fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Succour, and charged by Christ with a mission which was to renew the face of the earth. He was clad in a white robe; his hair, which had remained black in spite of misfortune and years, formed a contrast with the anchorite's pallor. On arriving at the Tomb of the Apostles, he prostrated himself: he remained, without movement and as though dead, plunged in the depths of the counsels of Providence. The emotion was profound; Protestants who witnessed the scene wept scalding tears.

What a subject for meditation! An infirm, decrepit priest, strengthless, defenseless, taken from the Quirinal, carried captive to the heart of Gaul; a martyr, who awaited naught save his tomb, delivered from the hands of Napoleon, who pressed the globe, resuming the empire of an indestructible world, when the walls of a prison beyond the seas were being prepared for that formidable gaoler of the nations and the kings!

Pius VII. outlived the Emperor; he saw the master-pieces, the faithful friends which had accompanied him in his exile, brought back to the Vatican. On his return from persecution, the septuagenarian Pontiff, prostrate beneath the cupola of St. Peter's, displayed at the same time all the weakness of man and the grandeur of God.

On descending the Savoy Alps, Madame Récamier, at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, found the White Flag and the white cockade. The Corpus Christi processions, passing through the villages, seemed to have come back with the Most Christian King. In Lyons, the traveller arrived in the midst of a Restoration festival. The enthusiasm was unfeigned. At the head of the rejoicings stood Alexis de Noailles[468] and Colonel Clary, Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law. All that is told to-day of the coldness and gloom with which the Legitimacy was received at the First Restoration is a shameless falsehood. Joy was general in the different sections of opinion, even among the Conventionals, even among the Imperialists, excepting the soldiers: their noble pride suffered from those reverses. Nowadays, when the weight of military government is no longer felt, when vanities are aroused, it is necessary to deny the facts, because they do not accord with the theories of the moment. It suits the purpose of a system that the nation should have received the Bourbons with abhorrence and that the Restoration should have been a time of oppression and misery. This leads to melancholy reflections on human nature. If the Bourbons had the inclination and the strength to oppress, they might have looked forward to a long retention of the throne. Bonaparte's violence and injustice, dangerous to his power though they appeared, in reality served him: men are appalled by iniquities, but manufacture a great idea out of them; they are disposed to regard as a superior being one who places himself above the laws.

Madame de Staël, who arrived in Paris before Madame Récamier, had written to her several times; only the following note reached her:

"PARIS, 20 _May_ 1814.

"I am ashamed to be in Paris without you, dear angel of my
life: tell me your plans. Would you like me to go before you
to Coppet, where I am going to stay for four months? After
so many sufferings, my sweetest prospect is yourself, and
my heart is for ever devoted to you. One word as to your
departure and arrival. I await that note to know what I shall
do. I am writing to you to Rome, Naples, etc."

[Sidenote: Madame de Genlis.]

Madame de Genlis, who had never had any relations with Madame Récamier, was eager to become better acquainted with her. I find a passage expressing a wish which, had it been realized, would have spared the reader my story:

"11 _October._

"Here, madame, is the book which I had the honour to promise
you. I have marked the things which I should like you to
read....

"Come, madame, to tell me your story 'in these words,' as
they do in the novels. Then I will afterwards ask you to
write it in the form of recollections, which will be full of
interest, because, in your earliest youth, you were cast,
with a bewitching face and a mind full of shrewdness and
penetration, into the midst of those whirlpools of errors
and follies; because you have seen everything; and because,
having preserved, during those stormy times, your religious
sentiment, a pure soul, a stainless life, an impressionable
and loyal heart, possessing neither envy nor hateful
passions, you will depict everything in the truest colours.
You are one of the phenomena of these days, and certainly the
most amiable.

"You shall show me your 'Recollections;' my old experience
will offer some advice, and you will write a useful and
delightful work. Do not come and answer, 'I am not capable,'
etc., etc. I will permit you no commonplaces; they are
unworthy of your intelligence. You can cast back your eyes
over the past without remorse: this is, at all times, the
fairest of our privileges; in the days in which we live,
it is an inestimable one. Avail yourself of it for the
instruction of the young person[469] whom you are bringing
up; it will be the greatest boon you can show her.

"Adieu, madame, permit me to tell you that I love you and
that I embrace you with all my heart."

Now that Madame Récamier has returned to Paris[470], I will go back for some time to my first guides. The Queen of Naples, uneasy about the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, wrote to Madame Récamier to find her a man who would be capable of handling her interests in Vienna. Madame Récamier applied to Benjamin Constant and asked him to draw up a memorandum. This circumstance had the most unfortunate influence upon the author of the memorandum; a stormy sentiment was the result of an interview. Under the empire of this sentiment, Benjamin Constant, already a violent Anti-Bonapartist, as is manifest in the _Esprit de conquête_[471], allowed opinions to overflow the course of which was soon changed by events. Thence arose a reputation for political fickleness baleful to statesmen.

Madame Récamier, while admiring Bonaparte, had remained true to her hatred against the oppressor of our liberties and the enemy of Madame de Staël. As for what concerned herself, she did not give it a thought and she made light of her exile. The letters which Benjamin Constant wrote to her at this time will serve as a study, if not of the human heart, at least of the human head: there we see all that could be made of a passion by an ironical and romantic, serious and poetical intelligence. Rousseau is not more genuine, but he mingles with his imaginary loves a sincere melancholy and a real reverie.

Meanwhile, Bonaparte had landed at Cannes; the perturbation due to his approach was beginning to make itself felt. Benjamin Constant wrote Madame Récamier this note:

"Forgive me if I avail myself of circumstances to trouble
you; but the opportunity is too favourable. My fate will be
decided in four or five days surely; for, though you used
to like not to think so, in order to have to show me less
interest, I am certainly, with Marmont, Chateaubriand and
Lainé, one of the four most compromised men in France. It
is, therefore, certain that, if we do not triumph, I shall
in a week be either an outlaw or a fugitive, or in a cell or
shot. Grant me then, during the two or three days which will
precede the battle, as much of your time and as many of your
hours as you can. If I die, you will be glad to have done me
this kindness and you would be sorry to have afflicted me. My
feeling for you is my life; one sign of indifference hurts me
more than, four days hence, my sentence of death could do.
And, when I feel that danger is a means of obtaining a sign
of interest from you, I derive from it nothing but joy.

"Were you pleased with my article, and have you heard what
people say of it?"

Benjamin Constant was right, he was as much compromised as I: attached to Bernadotte, he had served against Napoleon; he had published his work _De l'esprit de conquête_, in which he handled the "tyrant" more roughly than I handled him in my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._ He crowned his perils by talking in the newspapers.

On the 19th of March, at the moment when Bonaparte was at the gates of the Capital, he had the firmness to affix his signature to an article in the _Journal des Débats_ ending with this phrase:

"I shall not, like a wretched turn-coat, go creeping from one power to the other, covering infamy with sophisms and stammering out profane words to redeem a shameful life."

Benjamin Constant wrote to her who inspired him with these noble sentiments:

"I am glad that my article has appeared; at least none can
now doubt my sincerity. Here is a note which some one wrote
to me after reading it: if I were to receive a similar one
from somebody else, I should be gay upon the scaffold."

Madame Récamier always reproached herself for having unintentionally exercised so great an influence over an honourable destiny. Nothing, in fact, is more distressing than to inspire those fickle characters with those energetic resolutions which they are incapable of keeping. On the 20th of March, Benjamin Constant belied his article of the 19th. After driving a little distance away from town, he returned to Paris and allowed himself to be caught by Bonaparte's seductions. Appointed a State councillor[472], he obliterated his generous pages by working at the draft of the Additional Act.

From that time forward, he bore a secret wound at his heart; he no longer with assurance broached the thought of posterity; his spoilt and saddened life contributed in no small degree to his death. God preserve us from triumphing over the miseries from which the loftiest natures are not exempt! Heaven does not give us talents without attaching infirmities to them: expiations offered to foolishness and envy. The weaknesses of a superior man are the black victims which antiquity sacrificed to the infernal gods, and still they never allow themselves to be disarmed.

[Sidenote: Madame de Krüdener.]

Madame Récamier spent the Hundred Days in France, where Queen Hortense invited her to stay; the Queen of Naples, on the other hand, offered her an asylum in Italy. The Hundred Days passed. Madame de Krüdener accompanied the Allies, who arrived once more in Paris. She had fallen from novel-writing into mysticism; she wielded a great empire over the mind of the Tsar of Russia.

Madame de Krüdener lodged in a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The garden of this house extended as far as the Champs-Élysées. Alexander used to arrive _incognito_ by a gate of the garden, and politico-religious conversations would end with fervent prayers. Madame de Krüdener invited me to one of these celestial incantations: I, the man of every illusion, have a hatred of unreason, a loathing for the nebulous and a scorn for hocus-pocus; we are none of us perfect. The scene bored me; the more I tried to pray, the more I felt the dryness of my soul. I could find nothing to say to God, and the devil incited me to laugh. I had liked Madame de Krüdener better when, surrounded with flowers and still inhabiting this paltry earth, she was writing _Valérie._ Only, I used to consider that my old friend M. Michaud, so oddly mixed up in this idyll, had not enough of the shepherd about him, notwithstanding his name. Madame de Krüdener, become a seraph, strove to surround herself with angels; the proof is contained in this charming note from Benjamin Constant to Madame Récamier:

"_Thursday._

"I am a little embarrassed in fulfilling a commission which
Madame de Krüdener has just given me. She entreats you to
come looking as little beautiful as you can. She says that
you dazzle everybody and that, for that reason, all minds are
troubled and all attention becomes impossible. You cannot
lay aside your charmingness; but do not enhance it. I could
add many things about your beauty on this occasion, but I
have not the courage. One can be ingenious on the charm
which pleases, but not on that which kills. I shall see you
presently; you have told me five o'clock, but you will not
come in till six, and I shall not be able to say a word to
you. I shall try, however, to be amiable for this once again."

Did not the Duke of Wellington also lay claim to the honour of attracting a glance from Juliet? One of his notes, which I transcribe, is curious only because of the signature:

"PARIS, 13 _January._

"I confess, madame, that I do not much regret that business
will prevent me from calling on you after dinner, because,
every time I see you, I leave you more impressed with your
charms and less disposed to give my attention to _politics!!!_

"I will call on you to-morrow on my return from the Abbé
Sicard's, in case you should be in, and in spite of the
effect which those dangerous visits produce on me.

"Your most faithful servant,

"WELLINGTON."

On his return from Waterloo, entering Madame Récamier's drawing-room, the Duke of Wellington exclaimed:

"I have beaten him soundly!"

In a French heart, his success would have made him lose the victory, had he ever been able to lay claim to it.

[Sidenote: End of Madame de Staël.]

It was at a sad time for the glory of France that I met Madame Récamier again; it was at the time of the death of Madame de Staël. Returning to Paris after the Hundred Days, the author of Delphine had fallen ill again; I had met her at her house and at Madame la Duchesse de Duras'. Gradually, her condition growing worse, she was obliged to keep her bed. One morning, I went to her in the Rue Royale; the shutters of her windows were two-thirds closed; the bed, pushed towards the wall at the back of the room, left only a space on the left; the curtains, drawn back on metal rods, formed two columns at the head of the bed. Madame de Staël, half sitting up, was propped up by pillows. I approached and, when my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the darkness, I distinguished the patient. A burning fever fired her cheeks. Her bright glance met me in the dimness, and she said to me:

"Good morning, my dear Francis[473]. I suffer, but that does not prevent me from loving you."

She held out her hand, which I pressed and kissed. As I raised my head, I saw on the opposite side of the bed, against the wall, something which rose up white and thin: it was M. de Rocca, with an emaciated countenance, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes and a sallow complexion; he was dying. I had never seen him, and I never saw him again. He did not open his mouth; he bowed as he passed before me; the sound of his footsteps was inaudible: he went away like a shadow. Stopping for a moment at the door, "the vaporous idol twitching its fingers" turned back towards the bed to wave adieu to Madame de Staël. Those two ghosts looking at one another in silence, one erect and pale, the other seated and coloured with a blood ready to flow down again and to congeal at the heart, made one shudder.

A few days afterwards, Madame de Staël changed her lodging. She invited me to dine with her, in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins: I went; she was not in the drawing-room and was unable even to come in to dinner; but she did not know that the fatal hour was so nigh. We sat down to table. I found myself sitting by Madame Récamier. It was twelve years since I had met her, and then I had seen her for but a moment. I did not look at her, she did not look at me: we did not exchange a word. When, towards the end of dinner, she timidly addressed a few words to me on Madame de Staël's illness, I turned my head a little and raised my eyes. I should fear to profane to-day through the mouth of my years a sentiment which preserves all its youth in my memory and whose charm increases as life withdraws. I separate my old days to discover behind those days celestial apparitions, to hear from the bottom of the abyss the harmonies of a happier region.

Madame de Staël died[474]. The last note which she wrote to Madame de Duras was traced in big crazy letters, like a child's. It contained an affectionate word for "Francis." The talent which expires impresses one more painfully than the individual who dies: it is a general desolation that strikes society; every one at the same moment suffers the same loss.

With Madame de Staël disappeared a considerable portion of the time in which I had lived: many of those breaches which the fall of a superior intelligence forms in a century never close up again. Her death made on me a particular impression, with which was mingled a sort of mysterious astonishment: it was at that illustrious woman's that I had first met Madame Récamier and, after long days of separation, Madame de Staël brought together again two travelling persons who had become almost strangers to one another: she left them, at a funeral banquet, her memory and the example of her immortal attachment.

I went to see Madame Récamier in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and, afterwards, in the Rue d'Anjou. When one has rejoined his destiny, he believes himself never to have left it: life, according to the opinion of Pythagoras, is only a reminiscence. Who does not, in the course of his days, recollect some little circumstances indifferent to all, except to him who recalls them? Belonging to the house in the Rue d'Anjou was a garden; in that garden, a bower of lime-trees, between whose leaves I saw a moonbeam when I waited for Madame Récamier: does it not seem to me as though that beam were mine and as though, if I went to look for it in the same place, I should find it? I scarce remember the sun which I have seen shine on many fore-heads.

[Sidenote: The Abbaye-aux-Bois.]

It was at that time that I was obliged to sell the Vallée-aux-Loups, which Madame Récamier had hired, in half shares with M. de Montmorency. More and more tried by fortune, Madame Récamier soon retired to the Abbaye-aux-Bois[475]. The Duchesse d'Abrantès speaks as follows of that abode:

"The Abbaye-aux-Bois, with all its dependencies, its
beautiful gardens, its extensive cloisters, in which played
young girls of all ages, with careless looks and frolicsome
words, was known only as a saintly abode to which a family
could safely entrust its hope; even then, it was known only
to the mothers who had an interest beyond its high walls.
But, once Sister Marie had closed the little gate surmounted
by an attic, the boundary of the saintly domain, one crossed
the great court-yard which separates the convent from the
street, not only as neutral, but as foreign ground.

"To-day this is no longer so: the name of the Abbaye-aux-Bois
has become popular; its renown is general and familiar to all
classes. The woman who goes there for the first time and says
to her footmen, 'To the Abbaye-aux-Bois' is sure not to be
asked by them in which direction they have to drive....

"Whence did it, in so short a time, derive so positive a
renown, so wide-spread an illustriousness? Do you see two
little windows, right up at the top, in the lofts, there,
above the large windows of the great stair-case? That is one
of the small rooms of the house. Well, nevertheless, the fame
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois took birth within its confines, came
down from there, and became popular. And how could it but
become popular, when all classes of society knew that, in
that little room, dwelt a being who led a life disinherited
of all joy and who, nevertheless, found words of consolation
for every sorrow, magic words to alleviate every pain,
succour for every misfortune?

"When, from the recesses of his prison, Coudert[476] caught a
glimpse of the scaffold, whose pity was it that he invoked?
'Go to Madame Récamier,' he said to his brother[477] 'tell
her that I am innocent before God... she will understand
that evidence...' and Coudert was saved. Madame Récamier
joined in her generous action a man gifted with both talent
and kindness: M. Ballanche seconded her endeavours, and the
scaffold devoured one victim the less.

"It might almost be described as a marvel offered to the
study of the human mind, that little cell in which a woman
of more than European reputation came to seek repose and a
decent asylum. The world is generally inclined to forget
those who no longer invite it to their banquets; it did not
forget her who, formerly, in the midst of her joys, lent an
even more willing ear to a complaint than to the accents of
pleasure. Not only was the little room on the third floor
of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the constant object of the errands
of Madame Récamier's friends, but, as though a fairy's
magic wand had relieved the steepness of the ascent, the
same strangers who used to ask as a favour to be admitted
to the elegant mansion on the Chaussée d'Antin continued
to beg the same boon. For them it was a sight really as
remarkable as any rarity in Paris to see, within a space of
ten feet by twenty, all opinions united under one banner,
marching in peace and almost hand in hand. The Vicomte de
Chateaubriand told Benjamin Constant of the unknown marvels
of America. Mathieu de Montmorency, with the urbanity
personal to himself, the chivalrous politeness of all that
bears his name, was as respectfully attentive to Madame
Bernadotte[478], who was about to reign in Sweden, as he
would have been to the sister[479] of Adelaide of Savoy[480],
daughter of Humbert the White-handed[481], that widow of
Louis the Fat[482] who married one of his ancestors[483]. And
the man of the feudal times had not a single bitter word for
the man of our days of liberty.

[Sidenote: Society at the Abbaye.]

"Seated side by side on the same divan, the duchess of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain became polite to the duchess of the
Empire; nothing seemed to shock in that unique room. When I
saw Madame Récamier again in that room, I had just returned
to Paris, after a long absence. I had a service to ask of
her, and went to her with confidence. I well knew, through
common friends, to how great a measure of strength her
courage had risen, but I myself lacked it when I saw her
there, under the loft, as peaceful and calm as in the gilded
drawing-rooms of the Rue du Mont-Blanc.

"'What!' said I to myself. 'Nothing but sufferings!'

"And my moist eye fixed itself upon her with an expression
which she must have understood. Alas, my memories passed
back over the years and recaptured the past! Ever beaten by
the storm, that woman, whom fame had placed at the very top
of the wreath of flowers of the age, had, for the last ten
years, seen her life surrounded by sorrows, the shock of
which was striking repeated blows at her heart and killing
her!...

"When, guided by old memories and a constant attraction, I
selected the Abbaye-aux-Bois as my refuge, the little room
on the third storey was no longer inhabited by her whom I
should have gone to seek there; Madame Récamier at that time
occupied a more spacious apartment. It was there that I saw
her again. Death had thinned the ranks of the combatants
around her, and, of all those political champions, M. de
Chateaubriand was almost the only one among her friends
who had survived. But for him too the hour struck of hope
deceived and royal ingratitude. He was wise; he bade farewell
to those false pretenses of happiness, and relinquished the
uncertain power of the tribune to grasp one more practical.

"You have already seen that, in this drawing-room at the
Abbaye-aux-Bois, there was question of other interests
besides literary interests, and that those who suffer may
turn towards it a look full of hope, Constantly occupied as
I have, for some months, been with all that relates to the
family of the Emperor, I have found a few documents which do
not seem to be devoid of interest at this moment.

"The Queen of Spain[484] found herself under an absolute
necessity to return to France. She wrote to Madame Récamier
to beg her to interest herself in the request which she was
making to be allowed to come to Paris. M. de Chateaubriand
was at that time in office, and the Queen of Spain, knowing
the loyalty of his character, had every confidence in
the success of her appeal. Nevertheless, the thing was
difficult, because there was a law which affected all that
unhappy family, even in its most virtuous members. But M. de
Chateaubriand had in him that feeling of a noble pity for
misfortune, which later made him write those touching words:

Sur le compte des grands je ne suis pas suspect:
Leurs malheurs seulement attirent mon respect.
Je hais ce Pharaon, que l'éclat environne;
Mais s'il tombe, à l'instant j'honore sa couronne;
Il devient, à mes yeux, roi par l'adversité;
Des pleurs je reconnais l'auguste autorité:
Courtisan du malheur, etc., etc.[485]

"M. de Chateaubriand lent an ear to the interests of a person
in distress; he examined his duty, which did not lay upon him
the fear of dreading a weak woman, and, two days after the
request was made, he wrote to Madame Récamier that Madame
Joseph Bonaparte might return to France, asking where she
was, in order that he might send her, through M. Durand de
Moreuil, then our Minister to Brussels[486], permission to
come to France under the name of the Comtesse de Villeneuve.
He wrote at the same time to M. de Fagel[487].

"I have related this fact with so much the more pleasure as
it honours both her who asked and the minister who obliged
her: the one through her noble confidence, the other through
his noble humanity[488]."

Madame d'Abrantès praises my conduct far too highly: it was not worth even the trouble of remark; but, as she does not tell all there is to tell about the Abbaye-aux-Bois, I will supply what she has forgotten or omitted.

[Sidenote: Captain Roger.]

Captain Roger[489], another Coudert, had been condemned to death. Madame Récamier had joined me in her pious work of saving him. Benjamin Constant had also interceded on behalf of this companion of Caron's, and had given the condemned man's brother the following letter for Madame Récamier:

"I could not forgive myself, madame, for always importuning
you, but it is not my fault if there are incessant
condemnations to death. This letter will be delivered to
you by the brother of the unhappy Roger, sentenced with
Caron[490]. The story is very hateful and very well-known.
The name alone will acquaint M. de Chateaubriand with the
matter. He is fortunate enough to be at the same time the
first talent in the Ministry and the only minister under whom
no blood has been spilt. I say no more; I leave the rest to
your heart. It is very sad to have to write to you almost
exclusively on distressful matters; but you forgive me, I
know, and I am sure that you will add one more unfortunate to
the long list of those whom you have saved.

"A thousand fond respects.

"B. CONSTANT.

"PARIS, 1 _March_ 1823."

When Captain Roger was set at liberty, he hastened to express his gratitude to his benefactress. One evening, after dinner, I was at Madame Récamier's as usual; suddenly appeared this officer. He said to us, in a southern accent:

"But for your intercession, my head would have rolled on the scaffold."

We were stupefied, for we had forgotten our merits; he shouted, red as a turkey-cock:

"You don't remember?... You don't remember?..." In vain we made a thousand excuses for our lack of memory; he went off, striking the spurs of his boots together again and again, as furious at our forgetting our good action as though he had had to reproach us with his death.

About this time, Talma asked Madame Récamier to allow him to meet me at her rooms in order to consult me on some verses in Ducis' _Othello_, which he was not allowed to speak as they stood. Leaving my dispatches, I hastened to keep the appointment; I spent the evening with the modern Roscius recasting the unlucky lines. He proposed an alteration to me, I proposed another to him; we vied with each other in rhyming; we withdrew to the window-recess or to a corner to turn and re-turn a hemistich. We had much difficulty in agreeing as to the sense and the rhythm. It would have been rather curious to see me, the minister of Louis XVIII., and Talma, the king of the stage, forgetting what we might be, emulating each other in enthusiasm, and sending the censorship and all the grandeurs of the world to the deuce. But, if Richelieu had his dramas performed while letting Gustavus Adolphus[491] loose on Europe, could not I, a humble secretary of State, busy myself with the tragedies of others while seeking the independence of France in Madrid?

[Sidenote: Sweet hours at the Abbaye.]

Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès, whose coffin I have saluted in the church at Chaillot, has described only the _inhabited_ abode of Madame Récamier; I will tell of the _solitary_ refuge. A dark corridor separated two small rooms. I maintained that this vestibule was lit up with a gentle light. The bed-room was furnished with a library, a harp, a piano, a portrait of Madame de Staël and a view of Coppet by moonlight; pots of flowers adorned the window-sills. When, quite breathless with clambering up three flights of stairs, I entered the cell at the fall of evening, I was enraptured. The outlook from the windows was over the garden of the Abbaye, in the green clumps of which the nuns moved to and fro and school-girls ran hither and thither. The top of an acacia-tree rose to the level of the eye. Sharp-pointed steeples pierced the sky, and on the horizon appeared the hills of Sèvres. The expiring sun gilded the picture and entered through the open windows. Madame Récamier sat at her piano; the Angelus tolled: the sound of the bell which seemed "to weep the dying day, _pianger il giorno che si muore_[492]," mingled with the last accents of the Invocation of the Night in Steibelt's[493] _Romeo and Juliet._ A few birds came to nestle in the raised outer blinds; I joined the silence and solitude from afar, above the noise and tumult of a great city.

God, by giving me those hours of peace, indemnified me for my hours of trouble; I foresaw the coming rest which my faith believes in and my hope invokes. Agitated as I was elsewhere with political occupations, or disgusted with the ingratitude of Courts, peacefulness of heart awaited me in the recesses of that retreat, like the coolness of the woods when one leaves a scorching plain. I recovered my calm beside a woman who spread serenity around her; and yet that serenity was not in any way too even, for it passed through deep affections. Alas, the men whom I used to meet at Madame Récamier's, Mathieu de Montmorency, Camille Jordan, Benjamin Constant, the Duc de Laval, have gone to join Hingant, Joubert, Fontanes, others who were absent from another absent company. Amid those successive friendships have risen young friends, the vernal offshoots of an old forest in which the felling is everlasting. I beg them, I beg M. Ampère, who will read this when I am gone, I ask them all to keep me in their memory: I make over to them the thread of the life the end of which Lachesis is spinning out on my distaff. My inseparable road-fellow, M. Ballanche, has found himself alone at the commencement and at the end of my career; he has witnessed my friendships broken by time as I have witnessed his carried away by the Rhone: rivers always undermine their banks.

The misfortune of my friends has often weighed heavily on me, and I have never shrunk from the sacred burden: the moment of reward has arrived; a serious attachment deigns to help me to support that which the multitude of the bad days adds to their weight. As I draw near my end, it seems to me that all that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Récamier, and that she was the hidden source of my affections. My memories of diverse ages, those of my dreams as well as those of my realities, have become moulded, blended, confounded into a compound of charms and sweet sufferings of which she has become the visible embodiment She regulates my sentiments, in the same way as Heaven has set happiness, order and peace into my duties.

I have followed the fair wanderer along the path which she has trodden so lightly; soon I shall go before her to a new country. As she passes in the midst of these Memoirs, in the windings of the basilica which I hasten to complete, she may come upon the chapel which here I dedicate to her; it will perhaps please her to rest in it: I have placed her image there.

[Footnote 336: This book was written in Paris in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 337: MADAME DE STAËL, _Corinne, ou l'Italie_ (Paris, 1807).--T.]

[Footnote 338: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I., chap. III.: _Our affections are transported beyond our selves._--T.]

[Footnote 339: Madame Récamier, before her marriage, was Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard. Of all her baptismal names, only Julie remained, transformed into Juliette. Her father, Jean Bernard, was a notary at Lyons; in 1784, he was appointed a receiver of finance in Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 340: And not thirteen, as the earlier editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 341: Jacques Rose Récamier (1751-1830), the Paris banker. The marriage took place on the 24th of April 1793.--T.]

[Footnote 342: Benjamin Constant, _Adolphe: anecdote trouvée dans les papiers d'un inconnu_ (Paris, 1816).--T.]

[Footnote 343: At the corner of the Boulevard de la Madeleine and the Rue Louis-le-Grand: the last remnant of the Hôtel de Richelieu, which was almost wholly destroyed during the Revolution. The Pavillon de Hanovre served as a public ball-room.--T.]

[Footnote 344: ANDRÉ CHÉNIER, _La Jeune captive_ (Paris, 1795):

"I do not wish to die so soon."--T.

]

[Footnote 345: This letter is dated, "From my retreat at Corbeil, Saturday, 28 September 1797." La Harpe was proscribed after the 18 Fructidor, and found a shelter at Corbeil, where Madame Récamier paid him one visit.--B.]

[Footnote 346: This letter has no further date, but must have been written a few days after the 18 Brumaire.--B.]

[Footnote 347: LUCIEN BONAPARTE, _La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et Stellina_ (Paris, 1799).]

[Footnote 348: Like the Duc de Laval, another admirer of Madame Récamier, Benjamin Constant disliked dates. His work on Madame Récamier does not contain one. At the end of 1798, Madame de Staël was charged by her father to sell the house which he owned in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, now No. 7, Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. M. Récamier had long had business-relations with M. Necker, whose banker he was, as well as his daughter's; he bought the house. The deed of sale is dated 25 Vendémiaire Year VII. (16 October 1798).--B.]

[Footnote 349: Later the Duc de Laval-Montmorency, whom Chateaubriand was to replace in Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 350: Madame de Staël's novel of _Delphine_, which appeared in the autumn of 1802.--B.]

[Footnote 351: "By the voice of the old thou didst praise beauty's charms."--T.]

[Footnote 352: Peace was concluded at Amiens between Great Britain and Ireland on the one side, and France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic on the 27th of March 1802, and lasted till the 18th of May 1803, when Great Britain resumed hostilities.--T.]

[Footnote 353: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806), _née_ Spencer, wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and famous for her wit, beauty and social and political influence.--T.]

[Footnote 354: Elizabeth Viscountess Melbourne (1753-1818), _née_ Milbanke, married in 1769 to Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne. The rise of her family was due to her brilliant qualities.--T.]

[Footnote 355: Emily Mary Marchioness of Salisbury (1751-1835), daughter of Wills Hill, first Marquess of Downshire, and married to James Cecil, seventh Earl, later first Marquess of Salisbury, in 1773. Lady Salisbury perished in the fire that burnt down the west wing of Hatfield House in November 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 356: Antoine Philippe Duc de Montpensier (1775-1807) died in England of a malady of the chest.--T.]

[Footnote 357: Louis Comte de Beaujolais (1779-1808) died in Malta.--T.]

[Footnote 358: George IV. was appointed Regent of the United Kingdom in 1811, and came to the throne on the 29th of January 1820; Louis-Philippe usurped the throne of France on the 9th of August 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 359: Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas, later (1819) tenth Duke of Hamilton and seventh of Brandon (_d._ 1852), had been Ambassador to St. Petersburg and was, at this time (1802), M.P. for Lanarkshire.--T.]

[Footnote 360: Charles X. came to Holyrood in 1830. The Dukes of Hamilton are Hereditary Keepers of Holyrood Palace.--T.]

[Footnote 361: Charlotte Duchess of Somerset, _née_ Douglas-Hamilton, married, in 1800, to the eleventh Duke of Somerset.--T.]

[Footnote 362: Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1813), the famous Italian engraver, lived in London from 1764 to 1802, when he removed to Lisbon to take charge of the National Academy in that capital.--T.]

[Footnote 363: William I. was proclaimed first King of the Netherlands on the 16th of March 1815. He abdicated on the 7th of October 1840, one year after the above lines were written and three years before his death.--T.]

[Footnote 364: Bernadotte became King of Sweden, as Charles XIV., in 1818.--T.]

[Footnote 365: September 1803.--B.]

[Footnote 366: Andoche Junot, Maréchal Duc d'Abrantès (1771-1813).--T.]

[Footnote 367: MADAME DE STAËL, _Dix années d'exil_, Part I., chap. XI.--B.]

[Footnote 368: Elzéar Louis Marie Comte de Sabran (1774-1846), a firm friend of Madame de Staël's, and his mother, who married the Chevalier de Boufflers as her second husband.--T.]

[Footnote 369: Louis Prince, later Louis I. King of Bavaria (1786-1868) succeeded his father, Maximilian I., in 1825, and abdicated in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 370: Prince Charles Frederic Augustus of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1785-1837).--T.]

[Footnote 371: Eugène de Beauharnais, later Duc de Leuchtenberg and Prince d'Eichstädt (1781-1824), son of Joséphine, by her first husband, and appointed Viceroy of Italy in 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 372: Madame Moreau, _née_ Hulot, was a Creole and a friend of Joséphine de Beauharnais. After the death of Moreau, Alexander I. gave her a donation of 500,000 roubles and a pension of 30,000 roubles per annum.--T.]

[Footnote 373: Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), author of the _Physiologie du goût_, had been appointed a judge of the Court of Appeal by the Consulate in 1800.--B.]

[Footnote 374: Pichegru committed suicide, or was assassinated, in prison, on the 5th of April 1804.--T.]

[Footnote 375: The execution of Georges Cadoudal and his eleven companions took place on the 25th of July 1804, at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the Place de Grève. The evening before, the gaol-keeper at Bicêtre had entered Cadoudal's cell and brought him a petition for mercy ready for signature. Georges cast a glance at the paper, and saw that it was addressed "To His Majesty the Emperor." He refused to see any more. Turning to his companions:

"Comrades," he said, "let us say our prayers."

On the morning of the execution, Captain Laborde said to someone who asked him for news of the criminal:

"He has slept more peacefully than I."

On arriving at the Place de Grève, the Abbé de Keravenant made him say the Angelic Salutation: "Hail Mary, full of grace... Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now..."

Here Georges stopped.

"Continue," said the priest,"... and at the hour of our death."

"To what purpose?" asked Georges. "Is not now the hour of our death?"

Cadoudal insisted upon dying first, lest his comrades should imagine that he could survive them.--B.]

[Footnote 376: The Monk of Saint-Gall (_circa_ 884) is the anonymous author of the half-genuine, half-fabulous _Gestes de Charlemagne._--T.]

[Footnote 377: M. Necker died at Coppet on the 9th of April 1804.--B.]

[Footnote 378: M. Récamier's ruin happened two years after the death of M. Necker, in the autumn of 1806. It was produced chiefly through the political and financial condition of Spain, by which M. Récamier's banking-house was seriously embarrassed. He asked the Bank of France for a loan of a million francs, which would have saved him; the loan was refused, and the crash came. Madame Récamier sold her jewellery to the last piece; the plate was sold; the house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc was bought by M. Mosselmann. So great was the confidence and esteem of the creditors for M. Récamier that they entrusted him with the liquidation of his own estate.--B.]

[Footnote 379: 17 November 1806.--B.]

[Footnote 380: Madame Récamier lost her mother on the 20th January of 1807. Her first six months of mourning were spent in profound seclusion; in the middle of the summer of 1807, she consented, at Madame de Staël's entreaties, to go to Coppet.--B.]

[Footnote 381: Prince Augustus was taken prisoner, not at Eylau, but at the Battle of Saalfeld (10 October 1806). The young Prince was only twenty-four years of age; he was five years younger than Madame Récamier.--B.]

[Footnote 382: MADAME DE GENLIS**, _Mademoiselle de Clermont_ (Paris, 1802).--T.]

[Footnote 383: _Athénaïs, ou le Château de Coppet en 1807_ was published in 1832, two years after the Comtesse de Genlis' death. It was written when she was over eighty years of age.--T.]

[Footnote 384: In the autumn of 1807.--B.]

[Footnote 385: And not 1812, as the previous editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 386: Now the property of the Prince Amédée de Broglie.--B.]

[Footnote 387: Chateaubriand does not give the date of this letter, which must have been written in September 1810. Madame de Staël tells, in her _Dix années d'exil_ (Part II., chap, i.), how she corrected the last proof of l'_Allemagne_ on the 23rd of September 1810, and how she made a list of one hundred persons to whom she wished to send copies in different parts of France and Europe.--B.]

[Footnote 388: October 1810. The three volumes of l'_Allemagne_ were hardly printed, when the Duc de Rovigo, the Minister of Police, sent his agents to destroy the ten thousand copies that had been struck off, and served an order on the author to leave France within three days. Having read in the newspapers that some American ships had arrived in the Channel ports, Madame de Staël decided to make use of a passport which she had for America, hoping that it would be possible for her to land in England. She required a few days, in any case, to prepare for the voyage, and she was obliged to apply to the Minister of Police for those few days. In a letter dated 3 October 1810, Rovigo allowed her eight days and said:

"It appears to me that the air of this country does not suit
you, and we are not yet reduced to looking for models in the
peoples which you admire. Your last work is un-French; I
myself stopped the printing.... I am instructing M. Corbigny
[the Prefect of Loir-et-Cher] to attend to the execution of
the order which I have given him, when the delay which I am
granting you has expired."

The letter of the Minister of Police ends with this postscript:

"I have my reasons, madame, for mentioning to you the ports
of Lorient, the Rochelle, Bordeaux and Rochefort as the only
ports at which you can embark. I request you to let me know
which you select."

The Channel ports were forbidden to Madame de Staël, in order to prevent her from going to England. So soon as Coppet became the sole alternative to America, she determined to go back to Coppet, where she arrived in the latter half of October 1810.--B.]

[Footnote 389: The order of banishment was issued against Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency in September 1811.--B.]

[Footnote 390: On arriving at Châlons, she first put up at the inn of the Pomme d'Or, which she soon left to take a small apartment in the Rue du Cloître.--B.]

[Footnote 391: The Château de Montmirail, the magnificent habitation of the La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauvilles, in the Department of the Marne.--B.]

[Footnote 392: M. de Rocca (1784-1818), a young officer eighteen years Madame de Staël's junior. He survived her one year only.--T.]

[Footnote 393: Auguste Louis de Staël Holstein ( 1790-1827), Madame de Staël's eldest son.--B.]

[Footnote 394: This note, of which Chateaubriand does not give the date, was written when Madame de Staël was on the point of setting out from Switzerland for Germany. She left Coppet on the 23rd of May 1812.--B.]

[Footnote 395: Madame de Staël's youngest son was killed in a duel, in 1813.--B.]

[Footnote 396: Madame Récamier left Châlons in June 1812, to go to Lyons to stay with Madame Delphin-Récamier, a sister of her husband's.--B.]