Chapter VIII: Book IX: 156 (2)

I attended Lord Londonderry's funeral at Westminster on the 20th of August. The Duke of Wellington appeared moved; Lord Liverpool was obliged to cover his face with his hat to hide his tears. One heard a few cries of insult and joy outside, as the body entered the Abbey. Were Colbert[216] and Louis XIV.[217] more respected? The living can teach nothing to the dead; the dead, on the contrary, instruct the living.

THE VICOMTE DE MONTMORENCY TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

"PARIS, 17 _August._

"Although there are no very important dispatches to entrust
to your faithful Hyacinthe, I wish nevertheless to send him
back, according to your own desire, noble viscount, and to
that which he has expressed to me, on behalf of Madame de
Chateaubriand, to see him return to you soon. I will make
use of this to send you a few words of a more confidential
character on the profound impression made upon us here, as in
London, by the terrible death of the Marquess of Londonderry,
and also, by the same occasion, on a matter to which you seem
to attach a very exaggerated and very exclusive interest.
The Council of the King has taken advantage of it and has
fixed for these days, immediately after the closing, which
took place this morning, the discussion of the principal
directions to be settled, the instructions to be given, and
also the persons to be selected: the first question is to
know if these will be one or several. You have somewhere, I
seem to think, expressed astonishment that we could think
of------, not to put you before him, you know very well
that he cannot be on the same line for us. If, after the
most mature examination, we did not think it possible to
avail ourselves of the good-will which you have very frankly
shown us in this respect, it would doubtless require, in
order to decide us, grave motives which I would communicate
to you with the same frankness: the postponement is rather
favourable to your desire, in this sense, that it would
be most inconvenient, both for you and for us, that you
should leave London within the next few weeks and before
the ministerial decision which continues to occupy all the
Cabinets. This strikes everybody so much that some friends
said to me the other day:

"'If M. de Chateaubriand had come at once to Paris, it would
have been rather annoying for him to be obliged to leave
again for London.'

"We therefore expect to make this important nomination on
the return from Edinburgh. The Chevalier Stuart[218] said
yesterday that surely the Duke of Wellington would go to
the Congress; it is important that we should know this at
the earliest possible moment. M. Hyde de Neuville arrived
yesterday in good health. I was delighted to see him. I renew
to you, noble viscount, all my inviolable sentiments.

"MONTMORENCY."

This new letter from M. de Montmorency, mingled with some ironical phrases, fully confirmed my impression that he did not want me at the Congress.

I gave a dinner on St. Louis' Day[219], in honour of Louis XVIII., and I went to visit Hartwell in remembrance of the King's exile; I was fulfilling a duty rather than enjoying a pleasure. Royal misfortunes are so common nowadays that one feels but little interest in spots that have not been inhabited by genius or virtue. All that I saw in the sad little park at Hartwell was the daughter of Louis XVI.

[Sidenote: Plenipotentiary at Verona.]

At last, I suddenly received from M. de Villèle an unexpected note which gave the lie to my previsions and put an end to my uncertainties:

"27 _August_ 1822.

"MY DEAR CHATEAUBRIAND,

"It has just been decided that, so soon as the proprieties
relating to the King's return to London permit you, you will
be authorized to come to Paris, thence to proceed to Vienna
or Verona, as one of the three plenipotentiaries charged to
represent France at the Congress. The two others will be
Messieurs de Caraman[220] and de La Ferronnays; which does
not prevent M. le Vicomte de Montmorency from leaving the
day after to-morrow for Vienna, in order to assist at the
conferences which may take place in that city before the
Congress. He is to return to Paris when the sovereigns leave
for Verona.

"This for yourself alone. I am glad that this matter has
taken the turn which you desire. Cordially and entirely
yours."

Upon this note, I prepared to leave.

The thunder-bolt which incessantly falls at my feet followed me everywhere. With Lord Londonderry died old England, which had struggled on till then in the midst of growing innovations. Supervened Mr. Canning: self-love carried him so far as to talk the language of the propagandist from his place in Parliament After him appeared the Duke of Wellington, a Conservative who came to pull down: when the sentence of societies is pronounced, the hand which was to build knows only how to demolish. Lord Grey[221], O'Connell[222], all those labourers at ruins were working successively at the overthrow of the old institutions. Parliamentary reform, Irish emancipation, all things excellent in themselves, became, thanks to the insalubrity of the time, causes of destruction. Fear increased the evils: if men had not been so greatly terrified at the threats, they would have been able to resist with a certain success.

What need had England to consent to our last troubles? Shut up in her island and in her national enmities, she was sheltered. What need had the Cabinet of St. James to dread the separation of Ireland? Ireland is only England's long-boat: cut the painter, and the long-boat, separated from the big ship, will go to wreck amid the waves. Lord Liverpool himself had sad forebodings. I dined with him one day: after dinner, we talked at a window overlooking the Thames; down the river we saw a portion of the City, of which the fog and smoke enlarged the bulk. I praised to my host the solidity of the English Monarchy, kept in balance by the even swing of liberty and power. The venerable peer, raising and stretching out his arm, pointed to the City and said:

"What sense of solidity can there be with these enormous towns? A serious insurrection in London, and all is lost."

It seems to me as though I were finishing a journey in England like that which I made, in earlier days, on the ruins of Athens, of Jerusalem, of Memphis and Carthage. Summoning to my presence the centuries of Albion, passing from renown to renown, seeing them swallowed up by turns, I feel a sort of painful giddiness. What has become of those brilliant and riotous days in which lived Shakespeare and Milton, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Cromwell and William[223], Pitt and Burke? All that is finished; superiorities and mediocrities, hatreds and loves, bliss and wretchedness, oppressors and oppressed, executioners and victims, kings and people, all sleep in the same silence and the same dust. But what nullities we are, if it is thus with the most living part of the human kind, with the genius which lingers like a shadow of olden time in the present generation, but which no longer lives in itself and which does not know that it ever existed!

[Sidenote: Changes in England.]

How many times has England, in the space of a few hundred years, been destroyed? Through how many revolutions has she not passed to come to the brink of a greater, a more deep-laid revolution, which will envelop posterity! I have seen those famous British parliaments in all their mightiness: what will become of them? I have seen England in her ancient manners and in her ancient prosperity: everywhere the little lonely church with its steeple, Gray's country churchyard, everywhere narrow and gravelled roads, valleys filled with cows, heaths spotted with sheep, parks, country-houses, towns; few large forests, few birds, the sea-breeze. It was not those plains of Andalusia, where I found the old Christians and the young loves among the voluptuous remains of the palace of the Moors in the midst of the aloes and palm-trees:

Quid dignum memorare tuis, Hispania, terris
Vox humana valet?

There was not that Roman Campagna, whose irresistible charm is incessantly calling after me; those waves and that sun were not the waves and the sun that bathe and light the promontory on which Plato[224] taught his disciples, that Sunium where I heard the cricket sing, in vain asking Minerva for the hearth of the priests of her temple; but after all, such as she was, this England, surrounded by her ships, covered with her herds and professing the cult of her great men, was charming and redoubtable.

To-day her valleys are darkened by the smoke of forges and workshops, her roads changed into iron ways; and along those roads, in lieu of Milton and Shakespeare, move wandering boilers. Already the nurseries of knowledge, Oxford and Cambridge, are assuming a deserted aspect: their colleges and their Gothic chapels, half-abandoned, distress the eye; in their cloisters, near the sepulchral stones of the middle ages, lie, forgotten, the marble annals of the ancient peoples of Greece: ruins guarding ruins.

By these monuments, around which the void was beginning to form, I left that part of my spring days which I had re-found; I parted a second time with my youth, on the same shore where I had abandoned it formerly: Charlotte had suddenly reappeared like that luminary, the delight of the shades, which, delayed by the flight of the months, should rise in the middle of the night. If you are not too weary, read in these Memoirs of the effect which the sudden vision of that woman produced upon me in 1822. When she had distinguished me before, I did not know those other Englishwomen who came to flock round me in my hour of power and renown: their homage was as fickle as my fortune. To-day, after sixteen new years have passed away since my embassy in London, after so many new destructions, my eyes are carried back to the daughter of the land of Desdemona and Juliet: she counts now in my memory only from the day on which her unexpected presence rekindled the torch of my recollections. A new Epimenides[225], awakened after a long sleep, I fix my gaze upon a beacon so much the brighter in that the others are extinguished along the shore; one alone excepted will shine long after me.

I did not finish telling all that concerns Charlotte in the preceding pages of these Memoirs: she came with a part of her family to see me in France, when I was a minister, in 1823. Through one of those inexplicable miseries of mankind, preoccupied as I was with a war on which depended the fate of the French Monarchy, something must no doubt have been lacking in my voice, for Charlotte, returning to England, left me a letter in which she shows herself hurt at the coldness of my reception. I have dared neither to write to her nor to send back to her some literary fragments which she had restored to me and which I had promised to return to her augmented. If it were true that she had had a genuine reason to complain, I would fling into the fire all that I have told of my first sojourn across the sea.

Often the thought has come to me to go to solve my doubts; but could I return to England, I, who am weak enough not to dare to visit the paternal rock on which I have marked out my tomb? I am afraid nowadays of my sensations: time, removing my young years, has made me like those soldiers whose limbs have been left on the battle-field; my blood, having a less long road to travel, rushes into my heart with so rapid a flow that that old organ of my joys and sorrows throbs as though ready to burst. The wish to burn all that concerns Charlotte, although she is treated with religious respect, is mingled in my mind with the longing to destroy these Memoirs: if they still belonged to me, or if I could buy them back, I should succumb to the temptation. I have so great a distaste for everything, so great a contempt for the present and for the immediate future, so firm a conviction that men, henceforth, taken all together as a public (and that for several centuries), will be pitiable, that I blush to consume my last moments in the relating of past things, in the depicting of a finished world, of which the language and the name will no more be understood.

[Sidenote: Memories of Lady Sutton.]

Man is as much deceived by the success of his wishes as by their disappointment: I had desired, contrary to my natural instinct, to go to the Congress; taking advantage of a prejudice of M. de Villèle's, I had induced him to force M. de Montmorency's hand. Well, my real inclination was not for that which I had obtained; I should doubtless have felt some spite, if I had been compelled to remain in England; but soon the idea of going to see Lady Sutton, of making a journey through the three kingdoms would have mastered the impulse of a superadded ambition which is not inherent in my nature. God ordained differently, and I left for Verona: thence the change in my life, thence my ministry, the Spanish War, my triumph, my fall, soon followed by that of the Monarchy.

One of the two handsome children on whose behalf Charlotte had asked me to interest myself, in 1822, has just been to see me in Paris: he is now Captain Sutton; he is married to a charming young wife, and he has told me that his mother has been very ill and has lately spent a winter in London.

I embarked at Dover on the 8th of September 1822, at the same port from which, twenty-two years earlier, "M. La Sagne of Neuchâtel" had set sail. Between that first departure to the moment of writing, thirty-nine years have elapsed. When a man looks upon or listens to his past life, he seems to perceive on a deserted sea the track of a vessel that has disappeared; he seems to hear the tolling of a bell of which the old tower is not in sight.

Here, in the order of dates, comes the place of the _Congrès de Vérone_[226], which I have published in two volumes apart. Should any one, by chance, feel a wish to read it, he can find it everywhere. My Spanish War, the great political event of my life, was a gigantic undertaking. The Legitimacy was for the first time about to burn powder under the White Flag, to fire its first gun-shot after those gun-shots of the Empire which will be audible to the utmost posterity. To bestride Spain with one step, to succeed on the same soil where formerly a conqueror's arms had encountered reverses, to do in six months what he was unable to do in seven years: who could have laid claim to that prodigy? That is, however, what I did; but by how many curses has not my head been smitten at the gaming-table at which the Restoration had seated me! I had before me a France hostile to the Bourbons, and two great foreign ministers, Prince von Metternich and Mr. Canning. Not a day passed but I received letters prophesying a catastrophe, for the war with Spain was not at all popular, either in France or in Europe. Indeed, some time after my successes in the Peninsula, my fall was not long in arriving.

In our ardour, after the receipt of the telegraphic dispatch announcing the deliverance of the King of Spain, we ministers hastened to the Palace. There I had a presentiment of my fall; I received a bucketful of cold water over my ears which brought me back to my habitual humility. The King and Monsieur did not notice us. Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, distracted by her husband's triumph, had eyes for nobody. That immortal victim wrote a letter on Ferdinand's deliverance ending in this exclamation, sublime in the mouth of a daughter of Louis XVI.:

"So it is proved that one can save an unfortunate king!"

On the Sunday, I returned, before the meeting of the council, to pay my court to the Royal Family; the august Princess spoke an obliging sentence to each of my colleagues: to me she did not address a word. I did not, certainly, deserve such an honour. The silence of the orphan of the Temple can never be ungrateful: Heaven has a right to the worship of the earth and owes nothing to any one.

I then lingered on till Whitsuntide; still, my friends were not without anxiety; they often said to me:

[Sidenote: Dismissed from office.]

"You will be dismissed to-morrow."

"This minute, if they like," I used to reply.

On Whitsunday, the 6th of June 1824, I had found my way to the first drawing-rooms of Monsieur: an usher came to tell me that I was being asked for. It was Hyacinthe, my secretary. He told me, when he saw me, that I was no longer in office. I opened the packet which he handed me; I found in it this note from M. de Villèle:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"In obedience to the King's orders, I am at once
communicating to Your Excellency a decree which His Majesty
has just issued.

"The Sieur Comte de Villèle, President of our Council of
Ministers, is charged _ad interim_ with the business of the
Foreign Office, _vice_ the Sieur Vicomte de Chateaubriand."

This decree was written in the hand of M. de Rainneville[227], who is good enough still to be embarrassed at it in my presence. Why, gracious Heaven! Do I know M. de Rainneville? Have I ever given him a thought? I meet him pretty often. Has he ever perceived that I knew that the decree by which I was struck off the list of ministers was written in his hand?

And yet, what had I done? Where did my intrigues or my ambition lie? Had I desired M. de Villèle's place, when going alone and in secret to walk in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne? It was that strange life that ruined me. I had the simplicity to remain as Heaven had made me and, because I longed for nothing, they thought that I wanted everything. To-day I can very well imagine that my life apart was a great mistake. What! You do not want to be anything? Go away! We do not choose that a man should despise what we worship, nor that he should think himself entitled to insult the mediocrity of our life.

The difficulties of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty followed me to my lodging in the Rue de l'Université: on the day of my dismissal, I had invitations sent out for a huge dinner-party at the Foreign Office; I had to send excuses to my guests and to pack three great courses, prepared for forty persons, into my little kitchen for two people. Montmirel and his assistants set to work and, cramming saucepans, frying-pans and stewpans into every corner, he put his warmed-up master-piece under shelter. An old friend came to share the marooned sailor's first meal. The Town and the Court came hastening up, for there was but one voice on the outrageousness of my dismissal after the service which I had just rendered; they were convinced that my disgrace would not last long; they gave themselves airs of independence in consoling a misfortune of a few days, at the end of which they would profitably remind the unlucky man returned to power that they had not abandoned him.

They were mistaken; they wasted their courage; they had reckoned on my lack of spirit, on my whining, on my toad-eating ambition, on my eagerness to plead guilty, to wait standing on those who had driven me out: they ill knew me. I retired without even claiming the salary which was due to me, without receiving a favour or a groat from the Court; I closed my door to whosoever had betrayed me; I refused the condoling crowd, and I took up arms. Then all dispersed; universal condemnation burst forth, and my game, which had at first seemed fine to the drawing-rooms and ante-chambers, appeared horrible.

Should I not have done better, after my discharge, to be silent? Had not the brutality of the proceeding brought back the public to me? M. de Villèle has repeatedly said that the letter of dismissal was delayed; by this accident it had the misfortune to be handed to me only at the Palace. Perhaps this was so; but, when we play, we must calculate the chances of the game; we must, above all, not write to a friend of any worth a letter which we should be ashamed to address to a guilty footman whom we would put out of doors without ceremony or remorse. The irritation of the Villèle party against myself was the greater inasmuch as they wished to appropriate my work to themselves and as I had displayed ability in matters of which I had been supposed to know nothing.

No doubt, with silence and moderation, as they said, I should have been lauded by the race who live in perpetual adoration of the portfolio; by doing penance for my innocence, I should have prepared my return to the Council. It would have been more in the common course of things; but that was taking me for the man I am not; that was suspecting me of a desire to recapture the helm of the State, the wish to make my way: a desire and a wish which would not occur to me in a hundred thousand years.

The idea which I had of representative government led me to enter the Opposition: the systematic Opposition seems to me the only one suited to that form of government; the Opposition known as "conscientious" is impotent. Conscience can decide a moral fact, it is no judge of an intellectual fact. It is absolutely necessary to place one's self under a leader, an appraiser of good laws and bad. If this be not so, then your deputy takes his stupidity for his conscience and votes accordingly. The so-called "conscientious Opposition" consists in fluctuating between the parties, in champing the bit, in even voting, should the case require, for the Ministry, in appearing magnanimous although fretting: an Opposition of mutinous imbecilities among the soldiers, of ambitious capitulations among the chiefs. So long as England was sane, she never had other than a systematic Opposition: a man came in and went out with his friends; on leaving office, he took his place on the bench of the assailants. As he was considered to have resigned because he did not wish to accept a system, that system, being retained by the Crown, must necessarily be combated. Now as men represent only principles, the systematic Opposition aimed only at carrying _principles_ when it attacked _men._

[Sidenote: Effects of my fall.]

My fall made a great noise: those who displayed the most satisfaction censured its form. I have since learnt that M. de Villèle hesitated; M. de Corbière decided the question:

"If he enters the Council by one door," he is reported to have said, "I go out by the other[228]."

I was allowed to go out: it was quite simple that they should prefer M. de Corbière to me. I bear him no ill-will: I was troubling him, he had me turned out; he did well.

The day after my dismissal and the following days, the _Journal des Débats_ contained these words, which do such honour to the Messieurs Bertin:

"This is the second time that M. de Chateaubriand stands the
test of a solemn dismissal.

"He was dismissed as a minister of State, in 1816, for
having attacked in his immortal work on the _Monarchie selon
la Charte_, the famous decree of the 5th of September,
pronouncing the dissolution of the _Chambre introuvable_ of
1815. Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière were then simple
deputies, leaders of the Royalist Opposition, and it was for
taking up their defense that M. de Chateaubriand became the
victim of the ministerial anger.

"Now, in 1824, M. de Chateaubriand is again dismissed, and it
is Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière, since become ministers,
who sacrifice him. Singular thing! In 1816, he was punished
for speaking; in 1824, they punish him for holding his
tongue: his crime is that he kept silence in the discussion
on the law for reducing the rate of interest. Not every
disgrace is a misfortune; public opinion, the supreme judge,
will tell us in which class to place M. de Chateaubriand; it
will tell us also to whom this day's decree shall have proved
the more fatal, to the victor or the vanquished.

"Who would have said, at the commencement of the session,
that we should thus spoil the results of the Spanish
Enterprise? What did we want this year? Nothing except the
Septennial Act (but, the complete Act) and the Budget. The
affairs of Spain, of the East, of the Americas, conducted as
they were, prudently and silently, would have been cleared
up; the fairest future lay before us; they wanted to gather
green fruit; it did not fall, and they imagined that they
could remedy precipitation by violence.

"Anger and envy are evil counsellors; it is not by means of
the passions and by proceeding with jerks and starts that
States are governed.

"_P.S._--The Septennial Act has been passed this evening
in the Chamber of Deputies. One may say that M. de
Chateaubriand's doctrines triumph after he has left the
Ministry. This Act, which he had long ago conceived as the
complement of our institutions, will, together with the
Spanish War, for ever mark his passing in public life. It
is very keenly regretted that M. de Corbière should, on
Saturday, have snatched the opportunity of speaking from him
who was then his illustrious colleague. The Chamber of Peers
would at least have heard the swan's song.

"As for ourselves, it is with the liveliest regret that we
enter again upon a career of combats which we hoped that we
had, thanks to the union of the Royalists, abandoned for
ever; but honour, political loyalty, the good of France do
not permit us to hesitate as to the course which we should
take."

The signal for the reaction was thus given. M. de Villèle
was not too much alarmed by it at first; he did not know the
strength of men's opinions. Many years were necessary to
overthrow him, but he fell at last.

[Sidenote: Comments in the _Débuts._]

I received from the President of the Council a letter which
settled everything and which proved, to my great simplicity,
that I had taken nothing of that which makes a man respected
and respectable:

"PARIS, 16 _June_ 1824.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have hastened to lay before His Majesty the Order by which
you are granted a full and entire discharge for the sums
which you have received from the Royal Treasury, for secret
expenses, during the whole time of your ministry.

"The King has approved of all the provisions of this Order,
which I have the honour to forward you herewith in the
original.

"Accept, monsieur le vicomte, etc."

My friends and I expedited a prompt correspondence:

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE MARQUIS DE TALARU[229]

"PARIS, 9 _June_ 1824.

"I am no longer minister, my dear friend; they contend that
you are. When I obtained the Madrid Embassy for you, I said
to several persons who still remember it:

"'I have appointed my successor.'

"I am anxious to have been a prophet. M. de Villèle is
holding the portfolio _ad interim._

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE RAYNEVAL[230]

"PARIS, 16 _June_ 1824.

"I have finished, monsieur; I hope that you have still plenty
before you. I have endeavoured that you should have no reason
to complain of me.

"It is possible that I may retire to Neuchâtel, in
Switzerland; should that happen, ask His Prussian Majesty
beforehand for his protection and favours for me; present
my respects to Count Bernstorff, my kind regards to M.
Ancillon, and my compliments to all your secretaries[231].
You, monsieur, I beg to believe in my devotion and in my most
sincere attachment.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE MARQUIS DE CARAMAN[232]

"PARIS, 22 _June_ 1824.

"I have received, monsieur le marquis, your letters of
the 11th of this month. Others than I will tell you the
road which you will henceforth have to follow; if it is
conformable to what you have heard, it will carry you far.
It is probable that my dismissal will give M. de Metternich
great pleasure, for a fortnight or so.

"Receive, monsieur le marquis, my adieus and the renewed
assurance of my devotion and of my high regard.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE BARON HYDE DE
NEUVILLE[233]

"PARIS, 22 _June_ 1824.

"You will doubtless have heard of my dismissal. It remains
for me only to tell you how happy I have been to have with
you the relations that have now been broken off. Continue,
monsieur and old friend, to render services to your country,
but do not reckon too much on gratitude, nor believe that
your successes will be a reason for maintaining you in the
post where you are doing yourself so much honour.

"I wish you, monsieur, all the happiness that you deserve,
and I embrace you.

"_P.S._--I have this minute received your letter of the 5th
of this month, in which you inform me of M. de Mérona's[234]
arrival. I thank you for your good friendship; be sure that I
have looked for nothing else in your letters.

"CHATEAUBRIAND[235]."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE SERRE[236]

"PARIS, 23 _June_ 1824.

"My dismissal, monsieur le comte, will have proved to you
my inability to serve you; it but remains for me to express
the wish to see you where your talents call you. I am
retiring, happy to have contributed towards restoring to
France her military and political independence, and to have
introduced septenniality into her electoral system; it is not
what I wanted it to be; the change of age was a necessary
consequence of it; but at last the principle is laid down;
time will do the rest, if, however, it do not undo it. I
venture to flatter myself, monsieur le comte, that you have
had no cause to complain of our relations; and I shall always
congratulate myself on having met in business a man of your
merit.

"Receive, with my adieus, etc.,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS[237]

"PARIS, 24 _June_ 1824.

"Should you by chance still be in St. Petersburg, monsieur
le comte, I will not end our correspondence without telling
you of all the esteem and all the friendship with which you
have inspired me: keep well; be happier than I, and believe
that you will find me again in any circumstance of life. I am
writing a line to the Emperor.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

The reply to this farewell reached me in the early days of August. M. de La Ferronnays had accepted the functions of ambassador under my ministry; later, I, in my turn, became ambassador under the ministry of M. de La Ferronnays: neither of us thought himself to be rising or descending. Fellow-countrymen and friends, we mutually did each other justice. M. de La Ferronnays endured the harshest trials without complaining; he remained loyal to his sufferings and to his noble poverty. After my fall, he acted on my behalf at St. Petersburg, as I would have acted on his. An honest man is always sure of being understood by an honest man. I am happy to produce this touching evidence of the courage, the loyalty and the elevation of soul of M. de La Ferronnays. At the moment when I received this note, it was a very superior compensation to me for the capricious and hackneyed favours of fortune. It is only here, for the first time, that I think it right to violate the secrecy which friendship recommended to me.

[Sidenote: Letter from La Ferronays.]

THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

"ST. PETERSBURG, 24 _July_ 1824.

"The Russian mail of the day before yesterday brought me
your little letter of the 16th; it will be for me one of the
most precious of all those which I have had the happiness
to receive from you; I am keeping it as a title in which I
glory, and I have the firm hope and the intimate conviction
that soon I shall be able to present it to you in less
melancholy circumstances. I shall imitate, monsieur le
vicomte, the example which you set me, and I shall permit
myself no reflection upon an event which has, in so abrupt
and unexpected a manner, broken off the relations which the
service established between you and myself; the very nature
of those relations, the confidence with which you honoured
me, lastly, considerations of a much graver kind, because
they are not exclusively personal, will explain to you
sufficiently the motives and all the extent of my regrets.
What has just occurred still remains entirely inexplicable to
me; I am absolutely ignorant of the reasons, but I see the
effects; they were so easy, so natural to foresee, that I am
astonished that people were so little afraid to set them at
naught. I am too well acquainted, however, with the nobility
of the sentiments which animate you and with the purity of
your patriotism, not to be very sure that you will approve
of the conduct which I have thought right to follow in this
circumstance; it was required of me by my duty, by my love
for my country and even by the interest of your glory; and
you are too good a Frenchman to accept, in the position in
which you find yourself, the protection and the support of
foreigners. You have won for ever the confidence and esteem
of Europe; but it is France whom you serve, and you belong
to her alone. She may be unjust; but neither you nor your
real friends will ever suffer your cause to be made less pure
or less fine by entrusting its defense to foreign voices. I
have, therefore, silenced every kind of private feeling or
consideration in the presence of the general interest; I have
forestalled measures, the first effect of which would have
been to arouse dangerous divisions among us and to violate
the dignity of the Throne. This is the last service which I
have rendered here before my departure; you alone, monsieur
le vicomte, shall know of it; the confidence was due to you,
and I know the nobility of your character too well not to
feel very sure that you will keep my secret and that you will
consider my conduct, in this circumstance, consonant with the
sentiments which you have the right to exact from those whom
you honour with your friendship and your esteem.

"Adieu, monsieur le vicomte: if the relations which I have
had the good fortune to have with you have been able to give
you a correct idea of my character, you must know that it
is not changes of position that can alter my sentiments,
nor will you ever doubt the attachment and devotion of one
who, in the actual circumstances, considers himself the most
fortunate of men to be placed by public opinion among the
number of your friends.

"LA FERRONAYS."

"Messieurs de Fontenay[238] and de Pontcarré[239] are keenly
alive to the value of the remembrance in which you are good
enough to bear them: witnesses, like myself, of the increase
of consideration which France had gained since your entrance
into the ministry, it is quite simple that they should share
my sentiments and my regrets."

I began the contest of my new opposition immediately after my fall; but it was interrupted by the death of Louis XVIII.[240] and was not actively resumed until after the coronation of Charles X.[241] In the month of July, I joined Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel; she had gone there to wait for me, and had hired a cottage beside the lake. The chain of the Alps unfolded itself north and south to a great distance before us; we had our backs to the Jura, whose flanks, black with pine-trees, rose perpendicularly over our heads. The lake was deserted; a wooden gallery served me as an exercise-ground. I thought of _Milord Maréchal._[242] When I climbed to the top of the Jura, I saw the Lake of Bienne, to whose breezes and waters Jean Jacques Rousseau owes one of his happiest inspirations. Madame de Chateaubriand went to visit Fribourg and a country-house which they had described to us as charming, and which she found icy-cold, although it was called the _Petite Provence._ A lean black cat, half wild, which caught little fish by dipping its paw into a large pail filled with water from the lake, was my only distraction. A quiet old woman, who was always knitting, prepared our banquet in an _huguenote._[243] had not lost the habit of the collation of the country-mouse.

Neuchâtel had had its good days; it had belonged to the Duchesse de Longueville[244]; Jean Jacques Rousseau had walked in an Armenian dress on its mountains, and Madame de Charrière[245], so daintily observed by M. de Sainte-Beuve[246], had described its society in the _Lettres Neuchâteloises_; but Juliane, Mademoiselle de La Prise, Henri Meyer[247] were no longer there; I saw only poor Fauche-Borel[248], of the old Emigration; he threw himself soon after from his window. The kept gardens of M. de Pourtalès[249] charmed me no more than did an English rockery raised by man's hands in a neighbouring vineyard facing the Jura. Berthier, last Prince of Neuchâtel, in the name of Bonaparte, was forgotten, in spite of his little Simplon of the Val-de-Travers, and although he smashed his skull in the same way as Fauche-Borel.

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

The King's illness called me back to Paris. The King died on the 16th of September, scarcely four months after my dismissal. My pamphlet, entitled _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ in which I hailed the new Sovereign, performed for Charles X. what my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_ had performed for Louis XVIII. I went to fetch Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel, and we came to Paris to live in the Rue du Regard. Charles X. made his reign popular at its commencement by abolishing the censorship; the coronation took place in the spring of 1825. "Already the bees were beginning to hum, the birds to warble, and the lambs to gambol on the green."

Among my papers I find the following pages written at Rheims:

"RHEIMS, 26 _May_ 1825.

"The King arrives the day after to-morrow; he will be crowned
on Sunday the 29th; I shall see him place on his head a
crown of which no one thought, in 1814, when I raised my
voice. I have contributed to opening the doors of France to
him; I have given him defenders, by bringing the Spanish War
to a satisfactory issue; I have caused the Charter to be
adopted, and I have succeeded in finding an army, the only
two things with which the King can reign at home and abroad:
what part is reserved for me at the coronation? That of an
outlaw. I come as one of the crowd to receive a ribbon,
distributed broadcast, which I do not even hold from Charles
X. The people whom I have served and placed turn their backs
on me. The King will hold my hands in his, he will see me at
his feet, when I take my oath, without being moved, even as
he sees me without interest recommencing my poverty. Does
that make a difference to me? No. Freed from the obligation
of going to the Tuileries, I am compensated for everything by
independence.

"I am writing this page of my Memoirs in the room in which I
am forgotten amid all the noise. I have this morning visited
Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated with stained paper.
I shall not have had a clear idea of this latter edifice,
except from the decorations of Schiller's _Joan of Arc_, as
played before me in Berlin: operatic machinery has shown me,
on the banks of the Spree, what operatic machinery hides from
me, on the banks of the Vesle; for the rest, I have taken my
diversion among the old dynasties, from Clovis[250], with
his Franks and his pigeon descending from Heaven, to Charles
VII.[251], with Joan of Arc[252]."

Je suis venu de mon pays
Pas plus haut qu'une botte,
Avecque mi, avecque mi,
Avecque ma marmotte[253].

"'A sou-piece, sir, if you please!'

[Sidenote: At Rheims.]

That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at Rheims, sang
to me returning from my walk.

"'And what have you come here for?' I asked him.

"'I have come to the coronation, sir.'

"'With your marmot?'

"'Yes, sir, with-a _mi_, with-a _mi_, with-a my marmot,' he
replied, dancing and turning.

"'Well, that's like me, my boy.'

"That was not correct: I had come to the coronation without a
marmot, and a marmot is a great resource; I had nothing in my
box but some old dream or other which no passer-by would have
paid a sou-piece to see climb up a stick.

"Louis XVII. and Louis XVIII. were not crowned; Charles X.'s
coronation comes immediately after Louis XVI.'s. Charles X.
was present at his brother's coronation; he represented the
Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. Under what happy
auspices did not Louis XVI. ascend the throne? How popular
was he on succeeding Louis XV.! And yet, what did he come to?
The present coronation will be, not a coronation, but the
representation of a coronation: we shall see Marshal Moncey,
an actor in the coronation of Napoleon; that marshal, who
formerly celebrated in his army the death of the tyrant Louis
XVI., we shall now see brandishing the royal sword at Rheims,
in the quality of Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine.
Who could be taken in by that parade? I would have wished no
pomp to-day: the King on horseback, the church bare, adorned
only with its old vaults and its old tombs; the two Chambers
present, the oath of fidelity to the Charter pronounced aloud
on the Gospels. There you would have the renewal of the
Monarchy; they might have recommenced it with liberty and
religion: unfortunately they had little love for liberty; if
still they had, at least, had the taste for glory!

Ah! que diront là-bas, sons les tombes poudreuses,
De tant de vaillants rois les ombres généreuses?
Que diront Pharamond, Clodion et Clovis,
Nos Pepins, nos Martels, nos Charles, nos Louis,
Qui de leur propre sang, à tous périls de guerre,
Ont acquis à leurs fils une si belle terre[254]?

"Lastly, has not the new coronation, to which the Pope
came to anoint a man as great as the chief of the Second
Dynasty[255], in changing the heads, destroyed the effect of
the ancient ceremony of our history? The people has been led
to believe that a pious rite dedicated no one to the throne,
or rendered indifferent the choice of the forehead to which
the holy oil was applied. The supernumeraries of Notre-Dame
de Paris, figuring likewise in the Cathedral of Rheims, will
be nothing more than the necessary characters in a scene that
has become vulgar: the advantage will remain with Napoleon,
who sends his walking gentlemen to Charles X. The figure of
the Emperor dominates everything henceforward. It stands at
the bottom of events and ideas: the pages of these lower days
to which we have come shrivel up under the glance of his
eagles."

"RHEIMS, _Saturday, eve of the Coronation._[256]

"I have seen the King's entry; I have seen pass the gilt
coaches of the monarch who but lately had not a horse to
ride; I have seen those carriages roll by filled with
courtiers who were not able to defend their master. This
herd went to the church to sing the _Te Deum_, and I went
to look at a Roman ruin and to walk by myself in a wood of
elm-trees called the 'Wood of Love.' I heard from afar the
jubilation of the bells, I contemplated the towers of the
Cathedral, secular witnesses of that ceremony which is always
the same and yet so different through history, the times,
ideas, manners, usages and customs. The Monarchy perished,
and the Cathedral was for some years turned into a stable.
Does Charles X., who sees it again to-day, remember that he
saw Louis XVI. anointed in the same place where he is to
be anointed in his turn? Will he believe that a coronation
yields protection against misfortune? There is no longer a
hand virtuous enough to heal the king's evil, no longer a
sacred phial salutary enough to render kings inviolable."

I hurriedly wrote what has just been read on the half-blank pages of a pamphlet entitled, _Le Sacre; par Barnage de Reims, avocat_, and on a printed letter of the Grand Referendary, M. de Sémonville[257], saying:

"The Grand Referendary has the honour to inform His Lordship,
Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, that places in the
chancel of Rheims Cathedral are intended and reserved for
those of Messieurs the Peers who wish to be present to-morrow
at His Majesty's consecration and coronation, at the ceremony
of the reception of the Chief and Sovereign Grand Master of
the Orders of the Holy Ghost and of St. Michael and of the
reception of Messieurs the Knights and Commanders."

Charles X. nevertheless had intended to conciliate me. The Archbishop of Paris[258] spoke to him at Rheims of the men in the Opposition; the King said:

"Those who will have nothing to do with me, I leave alone."

The Archbishop rejoined:

"But, Sire, M. de Chateaubriand?"

"Oh, him I regret!"

[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles X.]

The Archbishop asked the King if he might tell me so; the King hesitated, took two or three turns in the room, and replied, "Well, yes, tell him," and the Archbishop forgot to speak to me about it.

At the ceremony of the knights of the Orders, I was kneeling at the King's feet at the moment when M. de Villèle was taking his oath. I exchanged two or three words of politeness with my companion in knighthood[259], with regard to a feather that had come loose from my hat. We left the Sovereign's knees, and all was done. The King, finding a difficulty in removing his gloves to take my hands in his, had said to me, laughing:

"A gloved cat catches no mice."

It was thought that he had spoken to me at length, and the rumour was spread of my return to favour. It is probable that Charles X., thinking that the Archbishop had told me of his good-will towards me, expected a word of thanks from me and was offended at my silence.

Thus have I assisted at the last coronation of the successors of Clovis; I had occasioned it by the pages in which I had asked for the coronation and depicted it in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ Not that I had the least faith in the ceremony; but, as everything was lacking to the Legitimacy, it was necessary, to sustain it, to make use of everything, for better or for worse. I recalled Adalbéron's[260] definition: "The coronation of a King of France is, a public interest, not a private matter;" I quoted the admirable prayer set apart for the coronation:

"O God, who by Thy virtues counselled Thy peoples, give to this Thy servant the spirit of Thy wisdom! Let to all men born be in these days equity and justice: to friends succour, to enemies hinderance, to the afflicted consolation, to the lofty correction, to the rich instruction, to the needy pity, to pilgrims hospitality, to poor subjects peace and safety in the mother-land! Let him learn to command himself, moderately to govern each one according to his state, so that, O Lord, he may give to all the people an example of life pleasing to Thee!"

Before reproducing in my pamphlet, _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ this prayer preserved by Du Tillet[261], I had exclaimed:

"Let us humbly beseech Charles X. to imitate his ancestors:
thirty-two sovereigns of the Third Dynasty have received the
royal unction."

All my duties being fulfilled, I left Rheims, and was able to say, like Joan of Arc:

"My mission is ended."

[Footnote 156: This book was written in 1839 and revised in December 1846.--T.]

[Footnote 157: Joseph Planta (1787-1847) was secretary to Lord Londonderry for many years. From 1827 to 1830, he was one of the joint secretaries of the Treasury and, in 1834, was made a Privy Councillor. He sat as M. P. for Hastings, almost without interruption, from 1827 to 1844.--T.]

[Footnote 158: Amelia Anne Marchioness of Londonderry (1772-1829), _née_ Hobart, daughter and co-heiress of John Hobart, second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and married to the Marquess of Londonderry in 1794.--T.]

[Footnote 159: The Vicomte Mathieu de Montmorency, Minister of Foreign Affairs.--B.]

[Footnote 160: Édouard Duc de Fitz-James (1776-1838), descended from James II. through the Duke of Berwick. He was created a peer of France in 1814, and sent in his resignation when the bill was passed suppressing the heredity of the peerage (28th December 1831). From 1835 till his death, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, as a member of the Right, and distinguished himself by the eloquence of his speeches.--B.]

[Footnote 161: George Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), known as Beau Brummell. The story, as generally told, runs that the Prince Regent ordered "Mr. Brummell's carriage."--T.]

[Footnote 162: Prince Paul Anton von Esterhazy von Galantha (1786-1866), Austrian Minister to Dresden (1810), Ambassador to Rome (1814) and to London from 1815 to 1818 and 1830 to 1848. He was Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs for a short time in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 163: See one of my dispatches from Berlin.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 164: Lord John Russell, later first Earl Russell (1792-1878). The terms of his motion were "that the present state of representation of the people in parliament requires the most serious consideration of the House." The motion was lost by a majority of 105. Lord John Russell introduced his Reform Bill in 1831, and was Home Secretary (1835-1839), Secretary for War and the Colonies (1839-1841), Prime Minister (1846-1852), Foreign Secretary and later President of the Council (1852-1855), Colonial Secretary (1855), Foreign Secretary (1859-1865), and again Prime Minister (1865-1866). He was created an earl in 1861.--T.]

[Footnote 165: Chateaubriand appears here to confuse the Houses of Lords and Commons; probably, in any case, his memory betrays him.--T.]

[Footnote 166: John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), called to the Bar in 1776, King's Counsel in 1783, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1793, a peer in 1799, Lord Chancellor from 1801 to 1827. Eldon was a violent Tory and vehemently opposed to the Catholic Emancipation Bill.--T.]

[Footnote 167: Christopher Magnay, Lord Mayor of London from 1821 to 1822, would appear to have been Chateaubriand's host on this occasion.--T.]

[Footnote 168: Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1777-1836), head of all the Rothschild houses, with the exception of that at Frankfort. The dinner in question, Lord Rothschild informs me, must have taken place at the business-house in New Court, St. Swithin's Lane, where, on a foreign post night (Tuesdays and Fridays), it was Baron Rothschild's custom to remain in the city until midnight and frequently to give dinner-parties.--T.]

[Footnote 169: Baron Salomon Mayer de Rothschild (1774-1855), head of the Vienna branch of the house of Rothschild. He and his four brothers, Anselm, Nathan, Charles and James, were created barons of the Austrian Empire in 1822.--T.]

[Footnote 170: Richard Charles Francis Meade, third Earl of Clanwilliam (1795-1879), son of Richard Meade, second Earl of Clanwilliam, and Caroline, daughter of Joseph Count Thun. Lord Clanwilliam was Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1822, British Ambassador to Berlin (1823-1828) and a Grand Cross of Hanover.--T.]

[Footnote 171: Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond (1734 or 1735-1806), Ambassador to Paris (1765), Principal Secretary of State (1766), Master-general of the Ordnance (1782) and a knight of the Garter.--T.]

[Footnote 172: A famous political and allegorical satire of the reign of Henry III., attributed to Thomas Artus, Sire d'Embly. It was published without date of place or time, but was reprinted in the fourth volume of the _Journal de Henri III._ (1744).--T.]

[Footnote 173: Gillion Gaspard Alfred de Grimaud, Comte d'Orsay (1801-1852), long a leader of society in London and Paris, and noted for his intimacy with the Countess of Blessington. In 1827, he married Lady Harriet Gardiner, daughter of Lord Blessington by his first wife. She soon left him, and Lady Blessington, who was then a widow, took up her abode with him at Gore House. D'Orsay became bankrupt in 1849 and, to escape arrest, fled, on the 1st of April, to Paris, where Lady Blessington followed him in a fortnight. She died, suddenly, about a month after.--T.]

[Footnote 174: Anna Duchesse de Guiche (1803-1882), _née_ de Grimaud d'Orsay.--T.]