Chapter IV: Book VII: 1 (2)

But who thinks of these futile discussions to-day? The joys and feasts of the christening are far behind us. When Henry was born, on Michaelmas Day, did not people say that the archangel was going to trample the dragon under foot? It is to be feared, on the contrary, that the flaming sword was drawn from its scabbard only to drive out the innocent from the earthly paradise and to guard its gates against him.

However, the events which were becoming complicated determined nothing yet. The assassination of M. le Duc de Berry had brought about the fall of M. Decazes[52], which was not effected without heart-breakings. M. le Duc de Richelieu would not consent to afflict his aged master, save on a promise from M. Molé[53] to give M. Decazes a mission abroad. He set out for the Embassy in London, where I was to replace him[54]. Nothing was finished. M. de Villèle remained in seclusion with his fatality, M. de Corbière. I on my side offered a great obstacle. Madame de Montcalm[55] never ceased urging me towards quiet: I was much inclined for it, sincerely wishing only to retire from public life, which encroached upon me and for which I entertained a sovereign contempt. M. de Villèle, although more supple, was not at that time easy to deal with.

There are two ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de Villèle's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for that reason that there are so few statesmen.

M. de Villèle had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has worn the embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find him again sooner or later.

Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that, if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not, however, accept exile, unless M. de Villèle accepted his entrance into the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lainé with my two friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that it was I who made M. de Villèle's first ministry and who drove the Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.

[Sidenote: Under the Duc de Richelieu.]

I found an invincible obstinacy in M. Lainé's character. M. de Corbière did not want to become a mere member of the Council; I flattered him with the hope of also obtaining the Public Instruction. M. de Villèle, giving way only with repugnance to my desires, at first raised a thousand objections; his good wits and his ambition at last decided him to set forward: everything was arranged. Here are the irrefutable proofs of what I have just related; wearisome documents of those little facts which have justly passed into oblivion, but useful to my own history:

"20 _December_[56], _half-past three._

"To M. LE DUC DE RICHELIEU

"I have had the honour to call on you, monsieur le duc, to
report on the state of things: all is going admirably. I have
seen the two friends: Villèle at last consents to enter the
Council as minister secretary of State, without portfolio,
if Corbière consents to enter on the same terms, with the
Directorship of Public Instruction. Corbière, on his side,
is willing to enter on those conditions, provided Villèle
approves. And so there are no difficulties left Complete your
work, monsieur le duc; see the two friends; and, when you
have heard what I am writing to you from their own mouths,
you will restore to France her internal peace, even as you
have given her peace with the foreigners.

"Permit me to submit one more idea to you: would you think it
very inconvenient to make over to Villèle the directorship
vacant through the retirement of M. de Barante[57]? He
would then be placed in a more equal position with his
friend. Still, he told me positively that he would consent
to enter the Council without portfolio, if Corbière had the
Public Instruction. I say this only as a means the more of
completely satisfying the Royalists and of ensuring for
yourself an immense and steady majority.

"I will lastly have the honour of pointing out to you that
the great royalist meeting takes place to-morrow evening at
Piet's, and that it would be very useful if the two friends
could to-morrow evening say something which would calm any
effervescence and prevent any division.

"As I, monsieur le duc, am outside all this movement, you
will, I hope, see in my assiduity no more than the loyalty of
a man who desires his country's good and your successes.

"Pray accept, monsieur le duc, the assurance of my high
regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

"_Wednesday._

"I have just written to Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière,
monsieur, and I have asked them to call on me this evening,
for one must not lose a moment in so useful a piece of
work. I thank you for having pushed on the business so
rapidly; I hope that we shall come to a happy conclusion. Be
persuaded, monsieur, of the pleasure I feel at owing you this
obligation, and receive the assurance of my high regard.

"RICHELIEU."

"Permit me, monsieur le duc, to congratulate you on the
happy issue of this great business, and to applaud myself
for having had some part in it. It is very desirable that
the Orders should appear to-morrow; they will put a stop to
all opposition. I can be of use to the two friends in this
respect.

"I have the honour, monsieur le Duc, to renew to you the
assurance of my high regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

"_Friday._

"I have received with extreme pleasure the note which M. le
Vicomte de Chateaubriand has done me the honour to write to
me. I believe that he will have no cause to regret having
trusted to the King's goodness, and, if he will permit me to
add, to the desire which I have to contribute to whatever may
be agreeable to him. I beg him to receive the assurance of my
high regard.

"RICHELIEU."

[Sidenote: Ministerial negociations.]

"_Thursday._

"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the
business was settled at eleven o'clock yesterday evening, and
that all is arranged on the terms agreed between yourself and
the Duc de Richelieu. Your intervention has been most useful
to us; let thanks be given you for this preliminary step
towards an improvement which must henceforth be looked upon
as probable.

"Ever yours for life,

"J. DE POLIGNAC[58]."

"PARIS, _Wednesday, 20th December,

"Half-past eleven at night._

"I have just called on you, noble viscount, but you had
retired: I have come from Villèle, who himself returned late
from the conference which you prepared for him and told him
of. He asked me, as your nearest neighbour, to let you know
that Corbière also wished to tell you, on his side, that the
affair which you really conducted and managed during the day
is definitely settled in the simplest and shortest manner:
he without portfolio, his friend with the Instruction. He
seemed to think that one might have waited a little longer
and obtained better conditions; but it was not seemly to
gainsay an interpreter and negociator like yourself. It is
you really who have opened the entrance to this new career
to them: they reckon on you to make it smooth for them.
Do you, on your side, during the short time that we shall
still have the advantage of keeping you among us, speak to
your more spirited friends to second, or at least not to
oppose the plans for union. Good-night. I once more make
you my compliment on the promptness with which you conduct
negociations. You must settle Germany in the same way, so as
to return sooner to the midst of your friends. I personally
am delighted to see your position so much simplified.

"I renew all my sentiments to you.

"M. DE MONTMORENCY."

"I enclose, monsieur, a request addressed by one of the
King's Body-guards to the King of Prussia: it has been handed
to me and recommended by a field-officer of the Guards. I beg
you, therefore, to take it with you and to make use of it if,
when you have felt your ground a little in Berlin[59], you
think that it is of a nature to obtain some success.

"I have great pleasure in taking this occasion to
congratulate myself as well as you on this morning's
_Moniteur_[60], and to thank you for the part which you have
taken in this fortunate issue, which, I hope, will have the
happiest influence on the affairs of our France.

"Pray receive the assurance of my high regard and of my
sincere attachment.

"PASQUIER."

This series of notes is sufficient evidence that I am not boasting; it would bore me too much to be the fly on the coach; the pole or the coachman's nose are not places where I have ever had any ambition to sit: whether the coach reaches the top or rolls to the bottom matters little to me. Accustomed to live hidden in my own recesses, or momentarily in the wide life of the centuries, I had no taste for the mysteries of the ante-chamber. I do not enter readily into circulation like a piece of current money; to escape, I withdraw myself nearer to God: a fixed idea that comes from Heaven isolates you and kills everything around you.

[Footnote 1: This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised 22 February 1845.--T.]

[Footnote 2: "On an occurrence when the chamber, or a deputation of it, brought to Louis XVIII. some extravagant expression of its loyalty and love of kings, the monarch observed, no one can now tell whether in sincerity or irony, that such a chamber was _introuvable_, apparently impossible to find or replace. The epithet was too good to be lost; and the Chamber of 1815 was known to its contemporaries, and will be remembered in French history, as the _Chambre introuvable_" (EYRE CROWE, _History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X._).--T.]

[Footnote 3: The Order nominating the Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Chamber of Peers is dated 17 August 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 4: 19 December 1815.--B.]

[Footnote 5: Edme Bonaventure Courtois (1756-1816), member of the Convention for the Department of the Aube. He took charge of Robespierre's papers, including the will of Marie-Antoinette, after the 9 Thermidor, and published a notable report on them in January 1795. All the papers in Courtois' possession were seized by the police in January 1816.--T.]

[Footnote 6: Enjoyed by the priests who had taken wives.--B.]

[Footnote 7: Joseph Lebon (1769-1795), was curate of Neuville, near Arras, when the Revolution broke out. In 1792, he was sent to the Convention, where he signalled himself by his violence. In 1793, he was sent to the Pas-de-Calais as commissary of the Convention, established the Reign of Terror at Arras, and instituted a tribunal which caused thousands of heads to fall in a few months. Lebon was accused by the inhabitants of Cambrai, after the 9 Thermidor, and guillotined on the 9th of October 1795.--T.]

[Footnote 8: François Chabot (1759-1794) was a Capuchin friar at Rhodez at the outbreak of the Revolution. He was successively elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, voted for all the violent and bloody measures taken at that time, and became a leading member of the Club des Jacobins. Chabot was guillotined at the instance of Robespierre on the 5th of April 1794---T.]

[Footnote 9: Jacques Roux (_d._ 1794), was, in 1789, a priest of the Parish Church of St. Nicholas, and dubbed himself Preacher to the Sans-Culottes. He was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 15th of January 1794, and committed suicide with a knife on hearing the sentence pronounced.--T.]

[Footnote 10: 3 April 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 11: This ordinance, published in the _Moniteur_ of the 7th of September, dissolved the Chamber of 1815, which Louis XVIII. himself had called the Undiscoverable Chamber.--B.]

[Footnote 12: Jean Jacques Baron Baudé (1792-1862). In his quality as editor of the _Temps_, he signed the protest of the journalists against the ordinances of July 1830, and had his protest registered before notaries. Baudé was Prefect of Police from 26 December 1830 to 25 February 1831, and allowed the mob to sack the Archbishop's Palace and the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. He also sat in the Chamber of Deputies, where we shall meet him again.--B.]

[Footnote 13: Nicolas François Bellart (1761-1826) had distinguished himself by defending a large number of the victims of the Revolution. He was appointed Attorney-General by the Restoration, and was principal counsel for the prosecution in the trial of Marshal Ney.--T.]

[Footnote 14: Paris: Le Normant the Elder, 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 15: Louis XV. was the most licentious king that ever sat on the throne of France.--T.]

[Footnote 16: Élie Duc Decazes (1780-1860), Prefect of Police (July 1815), Minister of the General Police (September 1815), peer of France, with the title of count (September 1816), Minister of the Interior (1818), and President of the Council (1819). In 1820, he left office to take up the Embassy in London, with the title of duke, and retained it till 1822. In 1834, he succeeded the Marquis de Sémonville as Grand Referendary of the Chamber of Peers.--B.]

[Footnote 17: Anne Jacoby Comtesse de Balbi (_circa_ 1758-1842), _née_ de Caumont La Force, lady-in-waiting to the Comtesse de Provence, later Joséphine Queen of France (1780), a favourite of the Comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII., until the Comte d'Avaray supplanted her at Coblentz.--T.]

[Footnote 18: Zoé Victoire Comtesse de Cayla (1785-1852), _née_ Talon du Boullay-Thierry, favourite to Louis XVIII. from 1819 till the King's death in 1824.--T.]

[Footnote 19: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duc de Richelieu (1585-1642), governed France without interruption from 1623 to 1642.--T.]

[Footnote 20: Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) succeeded Richelieu as Prime Minister, remaining in power, with two short intervals, until the day of his death. Each of the two cardinals, therefore, governed France for nineteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 21: Murat was born near Cahors, the Duc Decazes near Libourne, both in Gascony.--T.]

[Footnote 22: M. Decazes had been private secretary to Madame Mère under the Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 23: M. Decazes had married, in 1805, a daughter of the Comte Muraire, First President of the Court of Appeal. She died in the following year. In August 1818, he married Mademoiselle de Sainte-Aulaire, grand-daughter, through her mother, of the last reigning Prince of Nassau-Saarbrück. In consideration of this marriage, the King of Denmark gave him the title of duke, with the domain of Glücksbjerg.--B.]

[Footnote 24: Marie Princeteau (1787-1879), _née_ Decazes, sister to the Duc Decazes, and for some time favourite of Louis XVIII. For an obvious reason, she, Madame de Balbi and Madame de Cayla are better described as the King's favourites than as his mistresses.--T.]

[Footnote 25: In an article in the _Conservateur_, dated 3 March 1820 (vol. VI., p. 476).--B.]

[Footnote 26: 20 September 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 27: Chateaubriand's library was sold on the 29th of April 1817 and the following days.--B.]

[Footnote 28: Louise Marie Adélaide Duchesse d'Orléans (1753-1821), daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, married to Égalité in 1769, divorced in 1792.--T.]

[Footnote 29: Matthieu Jean Félicité Vicomte, later Duc de Montmorency-Laval (1767-1826), Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1821 to 1822, a member of the French Academy (1825), and tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux (1825).--T.]

[Footnote 30: The Vallée-aux-Loups is now the property of M. le Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, whose mother was a Montmorency-Laval.--B.]

[Footnote 31: Jean Baptiste Guillaume Marie Anne Séraphin Joseph Comte de Villèle (1773-1854) placed himself at the head of the Royalist Opposition in 1816. In 1820, after the fall of the Duc Decazes, he entered the Ministry without a portfolio and, in 1821, became Minister of Finance. In 1822, he was made President of the Council, with the title of count. He remained in power until 1828, when he made way for M. de Martignac, and was raised to the peerage. The Comte de Villèle retired into private life after the Revolution of July.--T.]

[Footnote 32: Jacques Joseph Guillaume François Pierre Comte de Corbière (1766-1853) attached his political fortunes entirely to those of Villèle. They were both ministers together: Corbière of the Interior, Villèle of Finance; Louis XVIII. made them both counts, and Charles X. peers of France, on the same day. Both retired to the country after the Revolution of 1830, and they died within a few months of one another.--B.]

[Footnote 33: Jean Pierre Piet-Tardiveau (1763-1848), member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1819 and from 1820 to 1828. He entertained the ultra-Conservative party for many years at No. 8, Rue Thérèse, where he lived.--B.]

[Footnote 34: Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), dramatic author, publicist and politician. He became a member of the French Academy in 1811. Under the Empire, he had been the head of the literary division of the newspaper police; whereas, under the Restoration, he became an ardent "Liberal," attacking the Bourbons in the _Minerve française_ and the _Constitutionnel._ Étienne was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1820 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1830. Louis-Philippe raised him to the peerage in 1839. The _Minerve française_, founded in 1818, nine months before the _Conservateur_, appeared once a week, but on uncertain days: in this way, not being an absolutely periodical publication, it escaped the censorship.--B.]

[Footnote 35: Louis Gabriel Ambroise Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), member of the French Academy (1816) and a peer of France (1823), which latter dignity he resigned in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 36: Abbé Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), a distinguished Royalist writer, was converted to the democratic cause after 1830, when he attacked not only the Monarchy but the Church, which had condemned one of his writings. He played a small part in politics in 1848, but died forgotten and was, at his own wish, buried without religious rites.--T.]

[Footnote 37: The _Conservateur_ first appeared in October 1818 and lasted until March 1820, appearing in numbers of three printed sheets on irregular days, like the _Minerve._ It was, therefore, not a daily paper, and both Royalists and Liberals in this way succeeded in avoiding the censorship, which affected only periodicals.--B.]

[Footnote 38: Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles (1774-1854). Napoleon made him a baron in 1812. He became connected with Talleyrand and the Duc de Dalberg, tried to organize a rising in the South during the Hundred Days, and was arrested and imprisoned. He was elected to the Chamber in 1815, and in 1816 became one of the active agents of the personal policy of the Comte d'Artois. The latter, as Charles X., appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence (December 1827) and a peer of France (January 1828). The fall of the Elder Branch restored him to private life, although he was momentarily compromised in the Duchesse de Berry's rising in the Vendée (1832), and imprisoned for a few days.--B.]

[Footnote 39: Marie Barthélemy Vicomte de Castelbajac (1776-1868), an enthusiastic Royalist, sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1819 to 1827, in which latter year he was raised to the peerage. M. de Castelbajac withdrew completely from public life after the Revolution of July.--B.]

[Footnote 40: César Guillaume Cardinal de La Luzerne (1738-1821), Bishop of Langres from 1770 to 1789, created a cardinal in 1817.--T.]

[Footnote 41: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and later of England (_circa_ 1122-1203), was married at the age of fifteen to Louis VII. King of France, whom she accompanied to the Holy Land in 1147. Here she distinguished herself by the levity of her conduct, so much so that, in 1152, Louis obtained a divorce and Eleanor, two years later, married Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, soon to become Henry II. King of England. The second marriage was no happier than the first.--T.]

[Footnote 42: _Réflexions sur l'état intérieur de la France_ (22 October 1818): _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 113.--B.]

[Footnote 43: A _ci-devant_ marquis and ex-deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He sat as a juror in the Revolutionary Tribunal during the trials of the Queen and of the Girondins.--B.]

[Footnote 44: _Conservateur_, vol. I., p. 466.--B.]

[Footnote 45: Anne Victor Denis Hubault, Marquis de Vibraye (1766-1843), was a cavalry officer at the time of the Revolution, emigrated in 1791, and returned in 1814, when he became a colonel and aide-de-camp to Monsieur, later Charles X. He was created a peer on the 17th of August 1815, on the same day as Chateaubriand; was promoted to major-general in 1823; and left the Upper Chamber at the Revolution of 1830, so as not to take the oath to the new Sovereign.--B.]

[Footnote 46: Alexandre Comte de Girardin (1776-1885) served with distinction under Napoleon and was by Louis XVIII. appointed Master of the Hounds, an office which he retained till 1830. M. Émile de Girardin, the celebrated editor of the _Presse_, through whom the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_ were originally published, was his illegitimate son.--B.]

[Footnote 47: _Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 382. The article is by Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 48: "From the blood of our kings but a small drop escaping."--_Athalie_, act I., sc. 1.--T.]

[Footnote 49: Chateaubriand's article, dated 3 March 1820: the _Conservateur_, vol. VI., p. 471.--B.]

[Footnote 50: By the Papal Nuncio, in his congratulatory address, pronounced in the name of the Diplomatic Body.--B.]

[Footnote 51: By Lamartine, in his ode, the _Naissance du duc de Bordeaux._--B.]

[Footnote 52: M. Decazes resigned on the 17th of February. The _Moniteur_ of the 21st of February published three Orders, signed on the preceding day: the first accepting M. Decazes' resignation, the second appointing M. le Duc de Richelieu President of the Council, and the third conferring upon M. Decazes the title of duke and of minister of State.--B.]

[Footnote 53: This is a clerical error. The Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 1820 was M. Pasquier. M. Molé, under the Restoration, held only the office of Minister of Marine, and that at an earlier date, from 1817 to 1818.--B.]

[Footnote 54: The Duc Decazes was appointed Ambassador to England on the 20th of February 1820. He held that position until the 9th of January 1822.--B.]

[Footnote 55: Sister to the Duc de Richelieu, and a very close friend of Chateaubriand's.--B.]

[Footnote 56: 20 December 1820.--B.]

[Footnote 57: Prosper Brugière, Baron de Barante (1782-1866), had sent in his resignation as Director-general of Indirect Taxation, a post which at that time carried a salary of one hundred thousand francs.--B.]

[Footnote 58: Prince Jules de Polignac (1780-1847) had been made a peer of France in 1816, but long refused to take the oath to the Charter, which he considered injurious to the interests of religion and the Monarchy, and did not consent to take his seat until the Pope had raised his scruples. He was for some time Ambassador in London, and, in August 1829, became Premier of the ill-fated Ministry which, in 1830, brought about the downfall of the Royal House of France.--T.]

[Footnote 59: Chateaubriand had been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin (_Moniteur_, 30th November 1820).--B.]

[Footnote 60: Announcing the appointment of M. de Corbière and M. de Villèle as members of the Council.--B.]