Chapter XVIII: Book II: 407 (1)

My arrest--I am transferred from my thieves' cell to Mademoiselle Gisquet's dressing-room--Achille de Harlay--The examining magistrate, M. Desmortiers--My life at M. Gisquet's--I am set at liberty--Letter to M. the Minister of Justice and his reply--I receive an offer of my peer's pension from Charles X.--My reply--Note from Madame la Duchesse de Berry--Letter to Béranger--I leave Paris--Diary from Paris to Lugano--M. Augustin Thierry--The road over the Saint-Gotthard--The Valley of Schöllenen--The Devil's Bridge--The Saint-Gotthard--Description of Lugano--The mountains--Excursions round about Lucerne--Clara Wendel--The peasants' prayer--M. Alexandre Dumas--Madame de Colbert--Letter to M. de Béranger--Zurich--Constance--Madame Récamier--Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu--Madame de Saint-Leu after reading M. de Chateaubriand's last letter--After reading a note signed "Hortense"--Arenenberg--I return to Geneva--Coppet--The tomb of Madame de Staël--A walk--Letter to Prince Louis Napoleon--Letters to the Minister of Justice, to the President of the Council, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry--I write my memorial on the captivity of the Princess--Circular to the editors of the newspapers--Extract from the _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry_--My trial--Popularity.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832.

One of my old friends, Mr. Frisell[408], an Englishman, had just lost, at Passy, his only daughter, aged seventeen years. I had gone, on the 19th of June, to the funeral of poor Eliza, whose portrait the pretty Madame Delessert was completing when Death put the finishing touch to it. Returning to my solitude in the Rue d'Enfer, I had hardly gone to bed, full of the melancholy thoughts that arise from the association of youth, beauty and the grave, when, at four o'clock in the morning, on the 20th of June[409], Baptiste, who had long been in my service, entered my room, came up to the bed and said:

"Sir, the court-yard is full of men who have placed themselves at all the doors, after compelling Desbrosses to open the carriage-entrance; and there are three gentlemen asking to speak to you."

As he finished these words, the "gentlemen" entered, and the chief of them, very politely approaching my bed, told me that he had an order to arrest me and take me to the Prefecture of Police. I asked him if the sun had risen, as the law demanded, and if he was the bearer of a legal warrant; he did not answer for the sun, but he showed me the following judicial notice:

"Copy

"PREFECTURE OF POLICE

"In the King's name.

"We, counsellor of State, Prefect of Police[410],

"In view of information in our possession,

"By virtue of Article X. of the Code of Criminal Instruction,

"Call upon the commissary or, if he be prevented, another to repair
to the house of M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, or elsewhere
if need be, he being accused of plotting against the safety of
the State, in order there to seek for and seize all papers,
correspondence and writings containing provocations to crimes and
offenses against the public peace or liable to examination, as well
as any seditious objects or arms which may be in his possession."

While I perused the declaration of the great "plotting against the safety of the State," of which I, poor I was accused, the captain of the police-spies said to his subordinates:

"Gentlemen, do your duty!"

The duty of those gentlemen consisted in opening every cupboard, fumbling in every pocket, seizing all papers, letters and documents, reading the same, where possible, and discovering all arms, as appears from the warrant aforesaid.

[Sidenote: I am arrested.]

After reading over the document, addressing the worthy leader of those thieves of men and liberties:

"You know, sir," I said, "that I do not recognise your Government and that I protest against the violence which you are doing me; but, as I am not the stronger and as I have no wish to come to blows with you, I will get up and accompany you: pray take the trouble to be seated."

I dressed and, without taking anything with me, said to the venerable commissary:

"Sir, I am at your orders: are we going on foot?"

"No, sir, I took care to bring you a coach."

"You are very good, sir; let us start; but allow me to go to take leave of Madame de Chateaubriand. Will you permit me to enter my wife's room alone?"

"Sir, I will go with you to the door and wait for you."

"Very well, sir," and we went down.

Everywhere, on my road, I found sentries; a picket had been posted even on the boulevard, outside a little gate which opens at the bottom of my garden. I said to the leader:

"Those precautions were very useless; I have not the smallest wish to run away from you and escape."

The gentlemen had turned my papers topsy-turvy, but taken nothing. My big mameluke's sabre caught their attention; they whispered among themselves and ended by leaving the weapon under a heap of dusty folios, in the midst of which it lay beside a yellow-wood crucifix which I had brought from the Holy Land.

This dumb-show would almost have made me inclined to laugh, but I was cruelly distressed for Madame de Chateaubriand. Every one who knows her knows also the affection which she bears me, her ready alarm, the quickness of her imagination and the pitiful state of her health: this descent of the police and my removal might do her a terrible harm. She had already heard some noise and I found her sitting up in bed, listening quite terrified, as I entered her room at so unusual an hour.

"Ah, dear God!" she exclaimed. "Are you ill? Ah, dear God! What is happening? What is happening?"

And she was seized with a fit of trembling. I kissed her, with difficulty kept back my tears, and said:

"It is nothing; they have sent for me to make a statement as a witness in a matter that has to do with a newspaper trial. It will all be over in a few hours and I shall come back to breakfast with you."

The police-spy had remained standing at the open door; he saw this scene and I said to him, as I returned to place myself in his hands:

"You see, sir, the effect of your somewhat matutinal visit."

I crossed the court-yard with my bumbailiffs; three of them got into the coach with me, the rest of the squad accompanied the capture on foot and we reached the yard of the Prefecture of Police unmolested.

The gaoler who was to put me under lock and key was not up: they woke him by tapping at his wicket and he went to prepare my lodging. While he was busy with this work, I walked up and down the yard with the Sieur Léotaud, who was guarding me. He chatted and said to me, in a friendly way, for he was very civil:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I have the great honour of remembering you; I have often presented arms to you, when you were a minister and used to come to the King's: I used to serve in the Body-guards. But what would you have one do? One has a wife and children; one must live!"

"You are right, Monsieur Léotaud; how much does this pay you?"

"Ah, monsieur le vicomte, that depends on our captures .... The perquisites are sometimes good and sometimes poor, just as in war."

During my walk, I saw the spies return in different disguises like maskers on Ash Wednesday coming down from the Courtille: they came to report on the doings of the night. Some were dressed as vendors of green-stuff, as street-hawkers, as charcoal-sellers, as market-porters, as old-clothes'-men, as rag-men, as organ-grinders; others wore wigs under which appeared hair of a different colour; others had false beards, whiskers and mustachios; others dragged their legs like respectable invalids and wore a dazzling red ribbon at their button-holes. They disappeared into a small yard and soon returned in other clothes, without mustachios, without beards, without whiskers, without wigs, without baskets, without wooden legs, without arms worn in a sling: all these birds of day-break of the police flew away and vanished as the light increased.

My lodging was ready, the gaoler came to tell us, and M. Léotaud, hat in hand, led me to the door of my honest dwelling, saying, as he left me in the hands of the gaoler and his assistants:

"Monsieur le vicomte, I am your humble servant; I trust to have the pleasure of meeting you again."

[Sidenote: And taken to prison.]

The entrance-door closed behind me. Preceded by the gaoler, who carried his keys, and went before his two men, who followed me to prevent me from turning tail, I went up a narrow stair-case till I came to the second floor. A little dark passage led to a door: the turnkey opened it; I followed him into my box. He asked me if I wanted anything: I answered that I would have breakfast in an hour. He told me that there were a coffee-house and a tavern which supplied prisoners with all that they wanted for their money. I bagged my keeper to send me some tea and, if possible, some hot and cold water and towels. I gave him twenty francs in advance: he withdrew respectfully, promising to return.

Left alone, I inspected my den: its length was a little greater than its width, and its height was perhaps some seven or eight feet. The walls, stained and bare, were scribbled over with the prose and verse of my predecessors, and especially with the scrawl of a woman who said much that was insulting about the _juste-milieu._[411] A pallet, with dirty sheets, took up half of my cell; a plank, supported by two brackets fastened against the wall, two feet above the pallet, served as a cupboard for the prisoners' linen, boots and shoes: a chair and a sordid article composed the rest of the furniture.

My faithful keeper brought me the towels and jugs of water that I had asked for; I besought him to take away from the bed the dirty sheets and the yellow woollen blanket, to remove the pail, which was choking me, and to sweep out my den after first sprinkling it All the works of the _juste-milieu_ having been carried off, I shaved; I poured the water from my jug over myself, I changed my linen: Madame de Chateaubriand had sent me a little parcel; I set out all my things on the plank over my bed as though I were in the cabin of a ship. When this was done, my breakfast arrived, and I took my tea on my well-washed table, which I covered with a clean napkin. Soon they came to fetch the utensils of my matutinal feast and I was left alone, duly locked in.

My cell was lighted only by a grated window which opened very high up; I placed my table under this window and climbed on the table to breathe and to enjoy the light Through the bars of my thieves' cell, I saw only a yard, or rather a dark and narrow passage, with gloomy buildings with bats fluttering around them. I heard the clanking of keys and chains, the noise of policemen and spies, the foot-steps of soldiers, the movement of arms, the shouting, the laughter, the licentious songs of the prisoners, my neighbours, the yells of Benoît[412], condemned to death for the murder of his mother and his obscene friend. I caught these words uttered by Benoît between his confused exclamations of fear and repentance:

"Ah, my mother, my poor mother!"

I was seeing the under side of society, the sores of humanity, the hideous machines by which this world is moved.

I thank the men of letters, those great partisans of the liberty of the press, who formerly had taken me for their leader and fought under my orders: but for them, I should have left this life without knowing what prison was, and I should have missed this ordeal. I recognise in this delicate attention the genius, the goodness, the generosity, the honour, the courage of the placed penmen. But, after all, what was this short trial? Tasso spent years in a dungeon; and shall I complain? No; I have not the mad pride to measure my vexation of a few hours with the prolonged sacrifices of the immortal victims whose names history has preserved.

Moreover, I was not at all unhappy; the genius of my past grandeurs and of my thirty-year-old "glory" did not appear to me; but my Muse of former days, very poor, very unknown, came all radiant to kiss me through my window: she was charmed with my lodging and quite inspired; she found me again as she had seen me in my wretchedness in London, when the first visions of René were wafting in my head. What were we going to compose, the solitary of Mount Pindus and I? A song, in imitation of that poor poet Lovelace[413], who, in the gaols of the English Commons, sang King Charles I., his master? No; the voice of a prisoner would have seemed to me to be of ill-omen for my little King Henry V.: it is from the foot of the altar that hymns should be addressed to misfortune. I did not therefore sing the crown fallen from an innocent brow; I contented myself with telling of another crown, white also, laid on a young girl's bier: I remembered Eliza Frisell, whom I had seen buried the day before in the cemetery at Passy. I began a few elegiac verses of a Latin epitaph; but suddenly I was in doubt as to the quantity of a word: I quickly sprang from the table on which I was perched, leaning against the bars of the window, and ran to the door, on which I rained blows with my fist. The neighbouring dens rang out; the gaoler came up in dismay, followed by two gendarmes; he opened my wicket, and I cried, as Santeuil[414] would have done:

"A _Gradus!_ A _Gradus!_"

[Sidenote: My life in prison.]

The gaoler opened his eyes, the gendarmes thought that I was revealing the name of one of my accomplices; they were quite ready to handcuff me; I explained; I gave them money to buy the book, and they went off to ask the astonished police for a _Gradus._

While they were attending to my commission, I clambered up on my table again and, changing my ideas on that tripod, set myself to compose strophes on the death of Eliza; but, when I was in the midst of my inspiration, at about three o'clock, behold tipstaffs entering my cell and bodily apprehending me on the banks of Permessus: they took me to the examining magistrate, who sat drawing out instruments in a gloomy office, opposite my prison, on the other side of the yard. The magistrate, a fatuous and pompous young limb of the law, put the usual questions to me as to my surname, Christian names, age and place of residence. I refused to answer or sign anything whatever, declining to recognise the political authority of a government which was able to point neither to the ancient hereditary right nor the election of the people, since France had not been consulted and no national congress summoned. I was taken back to my mouse-trap.

At six o'clock, they brought me my dinner, and I continued to turn and turn over in my head the lines of my stanzas, at the same time improvising an air which I thought charming. Madame de Chateaubriand sent me a mattress, a bolster, sheets, a cotton blanket, candles and the books which I read at night. I arranged my room, and still humming:

Il descend le cercueil et les roses sans taches[415],

I found my ballad of the Young Girl and the Young Flower finished[416].

I began to undress; a sound of voices was heard; my door opened; and M. the Prefect of Police, accompanied by M. Nay,[417] appeared. He made a thousand apologies for the prolongation of my detention in custody at the police-station; he informed me that my friends, the Duc de Fitz-James and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, had been arrested like myself and that the Prefect's Offices were so full that they did not know where to put the persons who had to be examined by the justiciary.

"But," he added, "you shall come to me, monsieur le vicomte, and choose in my apartment whatever suits you best."

I thanked him and begged him to leave me in my hole; I was already quite charmed with it, like a monk with his cell. M. the Prefect declined my entreaties and I had to forsake my nest I saw again the rooms which I had not visited since the day when Bonaparte's Prefect of Police had sent for me to invite me to leave Paris. M. Gisquet and Madame Gisquet opened all their rooms for me, begging me to pick the one which I would like to sleep in. M. Nay offered to give up his to me. I was confused at so much politeness; I accepted a lonely little room which looked out on the garden and which was used, I think, by Mademoiselle Gisquet as a dressing-room; I was allowed to have my servant with me: he slept on a mattress outside my door, at the entrance of a narrow stair-case leading down to Madame Gisquet's large apartment Another stair-case led to the garden; but this one was forbidden me and, every evening, a sentry was placed at the foot against the railing which separates the garden from the quay. Madame Gisquet is the kindest woman in the world and Mademoiselle Gisquet is very pretty and an exceedingly good musician. I have every reason to be satisfied with the care shown me by my hosts; they seemed anxious to atone for the twelve hours of my first confinement.

[Sidenote: The Disquiet family.]

The day after my installation in Mademoiselle Gisquet's dressing-room, I rose quite pleased, as I remembered Anacreon's song on the toilet of a young Greek girl; I put my head to the window: I perceived a small, very green garden and a great wall concealed behind japanned varnish; to the right, at the back of the garden, offices in which one caught glimpses of agreeable police-clerks, like beautiful nymphs amid lilac-bushes; to the left, the quay along the Seine, the river and a corner of old Paris, in the parish of Saint-André-des-Arcs. The sound of Mademoiselle Gisquet's piano reached me with the voices of the police-spies calling for head-clerks to receive their reports.

How everything changes in this world! That little romantic English garden of the police was a ragged and queer-shaped strip of the French garden, with its closely-trimmed elms, of the mansion of the First President of Paris. This old garden, in 1580, occupied the site of that block of houses which stops the view to the north and west, and it stretched to the bank of the Seine. It was there that, after the day of the barricades, the Duc de Guise came to visit Achille de Harlay:

"He found the First President, who was walking in his garden, who
was so little astonished at his coming, that he did not so much
as deign to turn his head nor discontinue the walk which he had
commenced, which having finished, and being at the end of his
alley, he turned, and, in turning, he saw the Duc de Guise, who
came to him; then that grave magistrate, raising his voice, said to
him:

"'It is a great pity that the varlet should drive out the master;
for the rest, my soul is God's, my heart the King's and my body is
in the hands of the wicked: let them do with it what they please.'"

The Achille de Harlay who walks in that garden to-day is M.
Vidocq[418], and the Duc de Guise is Coco Lacour; we have changed
great men for great principles. How free we are now! How free was
I especially at my window, watching that good gendarme standing
sentry at the foot of my staircase and prepared to shoot me flying,
if I had sprouted wings! There was no nightingale in my garden, but
there were plenty of frisky, shameless, quarrelsome sparrows, which
are to be found everywhere, in the country, in town, in palaces,
in prisons, and which perch as gaily on the instrument of death
as on a rose-bush: to one that can fly away, what matter earthly
sufferings?

Madame de Chateaubriand obtained permission to see me. She had spent thirteen months, under the Terror, in the Rennes prisons, with my two sisters Lucile and Julie; her imagination, remaining under the impression, can no longer endure the idea of a prison. My poor wife had a violent attack of hysterics, on entering the Prefect's Offices, and this was an obligation the more which I owed to the _juste-milieu._ On the second day of my detention, the examining magistrate, the Sieur Desmortiers[419], arrived, accompanied by his clerk.

M. Guizot had obtained the appointment as attorney-general to the Royal Court at Rennes of one M. Hello[420], a writer and, consequently, an envious and irritable man, like all who spoil paper in a triumphing party.

M. Guizot's creature, finding my name and those of M. le Duc de Fitz-James and M. Hyde de Neuville mixed up in the proceedings that were being conducted against M. Berryer at Nantes, wrote to the Minister of Justice that, if he were the master, he would not fail to have us arrested and included in the trial, both as accomplices and as witnesses for the prosecution. M. de Montalivet had thought it his duty to yield to the advice of M. Hello: there was a time when M. de Montalivet used to come to me to ask my opinion and my ideas relating to the elections and the liberty of the press. The Restoration, which made M. de Montalivet a peer, was unable to make him a man of intelligence, and that is no doubt why it makes him "feel sick" to-day.

[Sidenote: The examining magistrate.]

So M. Desmortiers, the examining magistrate, entered my room; a mawkish air was spread like a layer of honey over a contracted and violent face:

Je m'appelle Loyal, natif de Normandie,
Et suis huissier à verge, en dépit de l'envie[421].

M. Desmortiers formerly belonged to the Congregation[422]: a great communicant, a great Legitimist, a great partisan of the Ordinances, since become a furious juste-milieu man. I begged this animal to take a seat with all the politeness of the Old Order; I drew up an arm-chair for him; I put a little table, a pen and ink before his clerk; I sat down opposite M. Desmortiers and, in a mild voice, he read out to me the little accusations which, duly proved, would have tenderly got my head cut off: after which, he passed to his examination.

I declared again that, not recognising the existing political order, I had no answers to make; that I should sign nothing; that all these judicial proceedings were superfluous; that they might spare themselves the trouble and pass on; that, for the rest, I should always be charmed to have the honour of receiving M. Desmortiers.

I saw that this manner of acting was throwing the sainted man into a fury; that, having once shared my opinions, he thought my conduct a satire on his own. With this resentment was mingled the pride of a magistrate who believed himself wounded in his functions. He tried to argue with me; I was quite unable to make him grasp the difference that exists between the social order and the political order of things. I submitted, I told him, to the former, because it belongs to natural law: I obeyed the civil, military and financial laws, the laws of police and of public order; but I owed obedience to the political law only in so far as that law emanated from the royal authority consecrated by the ages or sprang from the sovereignty of the people. I was not silly enough, or false enough to believe that the people had been convoked, consulted, and that the established political order was the result of a national decree. If they prosecuted me for theft, murder, arson, or other social crimes or misdemeanours, I should reply to justice; but, when they instituted a political trial against me, I had nothing to reply to an authority which had no legal power and, in consequence, nothing to ask me.

A fortnight passed in this way. M. Desmortiers, whose fury I had heard of (a fury which he endeavoured to communicate to the judges), used to approach me with his sugary air, saying:

"Won't you tell me your illustrious name?"

In the course of one of the examinations, he read me a letter from Charles X. to the Duc de Fitz-James, containing a phrase complimentary to myself.

"Well, sir," I said, "what is the meaning of that letter? It is a matter of common knowledge that I have remained faithful to my old King, that I have not taken the oath to Philip. As for the rest, I am deeply touched by my exiled Sovereign's letter. In the time of his prosperity, he never said anything of that kind to me, and this phrase repays me for all my services."

Madame Récamier, to whom so many prisoners have owed consolation and deliverance, had herself brought to my new retreat. M. de Béranger came down from Passy to tell me in song, under the reign of his friends, what used to happen in the gaols in the time of my friends: he was no longer able to fling the Restoration in my face. My fat old friend M. Bertin came to administer the ministerial sacraments to me; an enthusiastic woman came hurrying from Beauvais in order to "admire" my glory; M. Villemain performed an act of courage; M. Dubois[423], M. Ampère[424], M. Lenormant[425], my generous and learned young friends, did not forget me; the Republicans' lawyer, M. Ch. Ledru[426], never left me: in the hope of a trial, he magnified the affair, and he would have given up all his fees for the honour of defending me.

[Sidenote: Visits from my friends.]

M. Gisquet, as I have told you, had offered me the run of his rooms, but I did not abuse his permission. Only, one evening I went down to hear Mademoiselle Gisquet play the piano. I sat between M. Gisquet and his wife. M. Gisquet scolded his daughter and maintained that she had executed her sonata less well than usual. This little concert which my host offered me in the bosom of his family, with myself for sole audience, was exceedingly singular. While the most pastoral scene was taking place in the intimacy of the home, policemen were bringing me colleagues from the outside with blows of musket-butts and loaded sticks; and yet what peace and harmony reigned in the very heart of the police!

I had the good fortune to obtain for M. Ch. Philipon[427] the grant of a favour exactly similar to that which I enjoyed, the favour of the gaol: sentenced, because of his talent, to some months' imprisonment, he spent them in an asylum at Chaillot; he was called to Paris as a witness in a law-suit, and availed himself of the opportunity not to return to his lodging; but he repented of it: in the place where he lay concealed, he was no longer able to see, in comfort, a child whom he loved. Regretting his prison and not knowing how to enter it again, he wrote me the following letter to ask me to arrange this matter with my host:

"SIR,

"You are a prisoner and you would understand me even if you were
not Chateaubriand.... I also am a prisoner, a voluntary prisoner
since the proclamation of martial law, at the house of a friend,
a poor artist like myself. I wanted to escape from the justice of
the courts-martial with which I was threatened by the seizure of my
newspaper on the 9th of this month. But, in order to hide myself, I
have had to deprive myself of the kisses of a child whom I idolize,
an adopted daughter, five years old, my happiness and my joy. This
privation is a torture which I could not endure any longer: it is
death to me! I am going to give myself up and they will put me into
Sainte-Pélagie, where I shall see my poor child only rarely, if
they allow it at all, and at fixed hours, where I shall tremble for
her health and where I shall die of anxiety, if I do not see her
every day.

"I appeal to you, sir, to you a Legitimist I a whole-hearted
Republican, to you a grave and parliamentary man I a caricaturist
and a partisan of the bitterest political personalities, to you
to whom I am quite unknown and who are a prisoner like myself, to
persuade M. the Prefect of Police to allow me to return to the
asylum to which I had been transferred. I pledge my word of honour
to appear before justice whenever I shall be called upon to do so
and I undertake not to flee _from any tribunal whatever_ if they
will leave me with my poor child.

"You will believe me, sir, when I speak of honour and when I swear
not to run away, and I am persuaded that you will plead for me,
even though profound politicians may see in this a new proof of
alliance between the Legitimists and the Republicans, all men whose
opinions agree so well.

"If to such a guest, to such an advocate, they refused what I ask,
I should know that I have nothing more to hope for and I should see
myself parted for _nine months_ from my poor Emma.

"In any case, sir, whatever may be the result of your generous
intervention, my gratitude will be none the less eternal, for I
shall never doubt the urgent solicitations which your heart will
suggest to you.

"Accept, sir, the expression of the sincerest admiration and
believe me

"Your most humble and most devoted servant,

"CH. PHILIPON, "Proprietor of the _Caricature_ (newspaper),
sentenced to thirteen months' imprisonment."

"PARIS, 21 _June_ 1832.

[Sidenote: Letters from Philipon.]

I obtained the favour which M. Philipon asked: he thanked me in a note which proves, not the greatness of the service, which was limited to having my client guarded at Chaillot by a gendarme, but that secret joy of the passions which can be well understood only by those who have really felt it:

"SIR,

"I am leaving for Chaillot with my dear child.

"I wanted to thank you, but I feel that words are too cold to
express the gratitude which I feel; I was right to think, sir, that
your heart would suggest eloquent entreaties to you. I am sure that
I am not deceived when I believe that it will tell you that I am
not ungrateful and that it will depict to you better than I could
the confusion of happiness into which your kindness has thrown me.

"Accept, sir, I beg, my most sincere thanks and deign to believe me
the most affectionate of your servants.

"CHARLES PHILIPON."

To this singular mark of my credit, I will add this strange proof of my "fame:" a young Clerk[428] in M. Gisquet's offices addressed to me some very beautiful verses[429], which were handed to me by M. Gisquet himself; for, after all, we must be fair: if a government of literary men attacked me ignobly, the Muses defended me nobly; M. Villemain pronounced in my favour courageously, and, in the _Journal des Débats_ itself, my fat friend Bertin protested, under his own signature, against my arrest.

Mademoiselle Noemi, which I presume must be Mademoiselle Gisquet's Christian name, used often to walk alone in the little garden, with a book in her hand. She would cast a stealthy glance towards my window. How sweet it would have been to be released from my irons, like Cervantes, by my master's daughter! While I was assuming a romantic air, handsome young M. Nay came to dispel my dream. I saw him talking with Mademoiselle Gisquet with that air which does not deceive us creators of sylphs. I tumbled down from my clouds, shut my window and abandoned the idea of growing my mustachios, bleached by the wind of adversity.

After fifteen days, an order of non-suit restored me to liberty, on the 30th of June, to the great happiness of Madame de Chateaubriand, who would have died, I believe, if my detention had been prolonged. She came to fetch me in a coach; I filled it with my little luggage as nimbly as I had formerly left the ministry, and I returned to the Rue d'Enfer with "that inexpressible finish which misfortune gives to virtue."

If history were to hand M. Gisquet down to posterity, perhaps he would arrive there in a rather bad plight; I want what I have just written to serve him here as a counter-poise to a hostile renown. I have nothing but praise for his attentions and his obligingness; doubtless, if I had been condemned, he would not have allowed me to escape; but, in short, he and his family treated me with a decency, a good taste, a feeling for my position, for what I was and for what I had been, which were not displayed by a literary Administration and by men of law who were the more brutal inasmuch as they were acting against the weak and had nothing to fear.

Of all the governments that have arisen in France during the last forty years, Philip's is the only one that threw me into the highwayman's cell; it laid its hand upon my head, upon my head respected even by an incensed conqueror: Napoleon raised his arm, but did not strike me. And why this anger? I will tell you: I dare to raise a protest in favour of right against might in a country in which I have asked for liberty under the Empire, for glory under the Restoration; in a country where, solitary that I am, I reckon not by brothers, sisters, children, joys, pleasures, but by tombstones. The last political changes have separated me from the rest of my friends: some have gone towards fortune and, all battered with their dishonour, pass by my poverty; others have abandoned their homes exposed to insults. The generations so greatly smitten with independence have sold themselves: from those generations, common in their conduct, intolerable in their pride, mediocre or mad in their writings, I expect nothing but scorn and I return it to them; they have not the wherewithal to understand me: they know nothing of loyalty to the sworn oath, love for generous institutions, respect for one's own opinions, contempt for success and gold, the felicity of sacrifice, the worship of what is weak and unhappy.

After the order of non-suit, one duty remained to me to perform. The offense with which I had been charged was connected with that for which M. Berryer was awaiting trial at Nantes. I was unable to explain my position to the examining magistrate, because I did not recognise the competency of the tribunal. To repair the harm which my silence might have done to M. Berryer, I wrote to M. the Minister of Justice[430] the letter which you will find below and which I made public through the medium of the newspapers:

[Sidenote: Letter to M. Barthe.]

"PARIS, 3 _July_ 1832.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE,

"Permit me to perform with reference to yourself, in the interest
of a man too long deprived of liberty, a duty prompted by
conscience and honour.

"M. Berryer the Younger, when questioned by the examining
magistrate at Nantes, on the 18th of last month, replied that 'he
had seen Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he had, with the respect
due to her rank, her courage and her misfortunes, submitted to her
his personal opinion and that of honourable friends on the actual
situation of France and on the consequences of Her Royal Highness'
presence in the West.'

"M. Berryer, developing this wide subject with his accustomed
talent, summed it up thus:

"'No foreign or civil war, supposing it to be crowned with success,
can either subdue or rally opinions.'

"Questioned as to the honourable friends of whom he had spoken, M.
Berryer nobly said that, 'grave men having manifested to him an
opinion on the present circumstances agreeing with his own, he had
thought that he ought to strengthen his opinion with the authority
of theirs; but that he would not give their names without their
consent.'

"I, monsieur le ministre de la justice, am one of those men
consulted by M. Berryer. Not only did I approve of his opinion,
but I drew up a note in the sense of that very opinion. It was to
be handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry in the event that that
Princess should really be on French soil, which I did not believe.
As this first note was not signed, I wrote a second, which I signed
and in which I still more earnestly entreated the intrepid mother
of the grandson of Henry IV. to leave a country which has been torn
by so many discords.

"This declaration was due from me to M. Berryer. The real culprit,
if culprit there be, is I. This declaration will serve, I hope, for
the prompt deliverance of the prisoner of Nantes; it will allow
the guilt to rest upon my head alone of a fact, no doubt very
innocent, of which, however, in the final result, I accept all the
consequences.

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND. "RUE D'ENFER SAINT MICHEL, No. 84.

"I wrote on the 9th of last month to M. le Comte de Montalivet
on a matter relating to M. Berryer, but M. the Minister of the
Interior did not think it incumbent upon him even to inform me that
he had received my letter: as it is very important to me to know
what becomes of that which I have the honour to write to-day to M.
the Minister of Justice, I shall be infinitely obliged to him if
he will instruct his office to send me an acknowledgment of its
receipt.

"CH."

The reply of M. the Minister of Justice was not long in coming; here it is:

"PARIS, 3 _July._

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"As the letter which you have addressed to me contains information
which may enlighten justice, I am forwarding it without delay
to the King's Attorney to the Nantes Court[431], so that it may
be added to the documents in the proceedings pending against M.
Berryer.

"I am, with respect, etc.,

"BARTHE, "Keeper of the Seals."

By this reply, M. Barthe graciously reserved to himself the right to institute a new prosecution against me. I remember the proud disdain of the great men of the juste-milieu when I allowed a glimpse to pass of the possibility of any violence exercised upon my person or my writings. What! Good Heavens! Why deck myself with an imaginary danger? Who troubled about my opinion? Who thought of touching a hair of my head? Trusty and well-beloved friends of the stew-pan, dauntless heroes of peace at any price, you have nevertheless had your Terror of the counting-house and the police, your martial law in Paris, your thousand press trials, your military commissions to condemn the author of the Cancans[432] to death; you nevertheless flung me into your gaols: the punishment applicable to my "crime" was nothing less than capital punishment With what pleasure would I yield you my head, if, thrown into the scales of justice, it made them lean on the side of the honour, the glory and the liberty of my country!

[Sidenote: I prepare to depart.]

I was more than ever determined to resume my exile; Madame de Chateaubriand, terrified at my adventure, would already have wished to be very far away; the only question was to seek the spot where we should pitch our tents. The great difficulty was to find some money with which to live on foreign soil and pay a debt which was drawing down upon me threats of law-suits and distress.

The first year of an embassy always ruins the ambassador: that is what happened to me in Rome. I resigned on the succession of the Polignac Ministry, and I went away adding to my ordinary afflictions sixty thousand francs of borrowed money. I had applied to all the royalist purses; none was opened to me: I was advised to ask Laffitte. M. Laffitte advanced me ten thousand francs, which I at once gave to the more pressing creditors. I recovered the sum on the proceeds of my pamphlets and repaid it to him with gratitude; but there still remained some thirty thousand francs to be paid, over and above my old debts, for I have some that have grown a beard, so aged are they: unfortunately that beard is a golden beard which has to be cut upon my chin once a year.

M. le Duc de Lévis, on his return from a journey to Scotland, had told me, on behalf of Charles X., that that Prince wished to continue to pay me my peer's pension: I thought it my duty to refuse the offer. The Duc de Lévis returned to the charge when he saw me, on leaving prison, in the most cruel difficulties, finding nothing left of my house and garden in the Rue d'Enfer, and harassed by a swarm of creditors. I had already sold my plate. The Duc de Lévis brought me twenty thousand francs, nobly saying that these were not the two years' peerage pension which the King admitted owing me and that my debts in Rome were simply a debt of the Crown. This sum set me free; I accepted it as a temporary loan and wrote the King the following letter[433]:

"SIRE,

"In the midst of the calamities with which it has pleased God to
hallow your life, you have not forgotten those who suffer at the
foot of the throne of St. Louis. You deigned to send word to me,
some months ago, of your generous intention to continue the peer's
pension which I renounced when refusing to take the oath to the
unlawful power; I thought that Your Majesty had servants poorer
than I and worthier of your bounty. But the last writings which I
have published have cost me damages and brought prosecutions down
upon me; I have in vain tried to sell the little that I possess. I
find myself obliged to accept, not the annual pension which Your
Majesty proposed to allow me out of your royal poverty, but a
provisional succour to free me from the difficulties which prevent
me from reaching a refuge where I can live by my work. Sire, I must
needs be very unhappy to make myself a burden, even for a moment,
on a crown which I have supported with all my efforts and which I
shall continue to serve for the rest of my life.

"I am, with the most profound respect, etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

My nephew, the Comte Louis de Chateaubriand, on his side lent me a similar sum of twenty thousand francs. Thus rid of material obstacles, I made my preparations for my second departure. But a reason based upon honour stopped me: Madame la Duchesse de Berry was on French soil; what would become of her, and was I not bound to remain on the spot where her dangers might summon me? A note from the Princess, which reached me from the depths of the Vendée, set me completely free:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame.]

"I was going to write to you, monsieur le vicomte, touching this
'Provisional Government' which I thought it my duty to form, when
I did not know when nor even if I might return to France, and of
which I am informed that you consented to form part. It did not
exist in fact, because it never met, and some of the members came
to an understanding only to communicate to me an opinion which I
was not able to follow. I do not take it in the least unkindly of
them. You judged in accordance with the report on my position and
that of the country made to you by those who had reason to know
better than I the effects of a _fatal influence_ in which I was
never willing to believe, and I am sure that, if M. de Ch. had been
with me, his noble and generous heart would also have refused to do
so. I rely therefore none the less on the good individual services
and even the counsels of the persons who formed part of the
Provisional Government and whose choice had been dictated to me by
their enlightened zeal and their devotion to the Legitimacy in the
person of Henry V. I see that it is your intention to leave France
again: I should regret this greatly, if I could have you near me;
but you have weapons which strike at a distance and I hope that you
will not cease to fight for Henry V.

"Believe, monsieur le vicomte, in all my esteem and friendship.

"M. C. R."

With this note, Madame dispensed with my services and did not yield to the advice which I had ventured to give her in the note of which M. Berryer was the bearer; she even seemed a little hurt by it, although she admitted that a _fatal influence_ had led her astray.

Thus restored to my liberty and released from all engagements, on this day, 7 August, having nothing left to do but go away, I wrote my letter to M. de Béranger, who had visited me in prison:

TO M. DE BÉRANGER

"PARIS, 7 August 1832.

"I wanted, monsieur, to go to say good-bye to you and thank you for
your remembrance; time failed me and I was obliged to start without
having the pleasure of seeing you and embracing you. I am ignorant
as to my future: is there a clear future for anybody to-day? We are
living not in a time of revolution, but of social transformation:
now transformations are realized slowly, and the generations which
find themselves placed in the period of metamorphosis perish
obscure and miserable. If Europe, as might well be the case,
has reached the age of decrepitude, it is another matter: it
will produce nothing and will die out in an impotent anarchy of
passions, morals and doctrines. In that event, monsieur, you will
have sung over a tomb.

"I have fulfilled all my engagements, monsieur: I returned at
the sound of your voice; I have defended what I came to defend;
I have undergone the cholera; I am returning to the mountain. Do
not break your lyre, as you threaten to do; I owe to it one of my
most glorious titles to the memory of mankind. Continue to make
France smile and weep: for it so happens, by a secret known to you
alone, that, in your popular songs, the words are gay and the music
plaintive.

"I recommend myself to your friendship and your muse.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

I am to set out to-morrow. Madame de Chateaubriand will meet me at Lucerne.

[Sidenote: I leave for Switzerland.]

BASLE, 12 _August_ 1832.

Many men die without losing sight of their steeple: I cannot meet with the steeple which is to see me die. In quest of a refuge in which to finish my Memoirs, I am taking the road anew, dragging at my heels an enormous luggage of papers, diplomatic correspondence, confidential notes, letters from ministers and kings; it is history riding pillion with romance.

At Vesoul, I saw M. Augustin Thierry, living with his brother the prefect[434] When, formerly, in Paris, he sent me his _Histoire de la conquête des Normands_, I went to thank him. I found a young man in a room with half-closed shutters; he was almost blind; he tried to rise to receive me, but his legs no longer carried him and he fell into my arms. He blushed when I expressed to him my sincere admiration; it was then that he replied that his work was mine and that it was when reading the Battle of the Franks in the _Martyrs_ that he had conceived a new idea of writing history[435]. When I took leave of him, he then made an effort to follow me and dragged himself to the door, leaning against the wall: I went out quite affected by so much talent and so much misfortune.

At Vesoul, after a long banishment, appeared Charles X.[436], now setting sail for the new exile which will be for him the last.

I passed the frontier without accident with all my rubbish: let us see if, on the other side of the Alps, I may not enjoy the liberty of Switzerland and the sun of Italy, the needs of my opinions and my years.

At the entrance to Basle, I met an old Swiss, a custom-house officer; he made me undergo "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" my luggage was taken down into a cellar; they set in movement something or other which made the same sound as a stocking-frame; there rose a vinegary fume; and, thus purified from the contagion of France, I was released by my good Swiss.

I have said, in the _Itinéraire_, speaking of the storks of Athens:

"From the height of their nests, which revolutions cannot reach,
they have seen the race of mortals change beneath them: while
impious generations have risen on the tombs of the religious
generations, the young stork has always nourished its old father."

I find again at Basle the storks nest which I left there six years ago; but the hospital in whose roof the stork of Basle has built its nest is not the Parthenon, the sun of the Rhine is not the sun of the Cephissus, the Council is not the Areopagus, Erasmus[437] is not Pericles; nevertheless, the Rhine, the Black Forest, Roman and Germanic Basle are something. Louis XIV. extended France to the gates of that city and three hostile monarchs[438] passed through it, in 1813, to come to sleep in the bed of Louis the Great, defended by Napoleon in vain. Let us go to see Holbein's[439] _Dance of Death_; it will tell us a tale of human vanities.

The _Dance of Death_ (always presuming that it was not even then a real painting) took place in Paris, in 1424, in the Cimetière des Innocents: it came to us from England. The performance of this spectacle was recorded in pictures: these were exhibited in the cemeteries of Dresden, Lübeck, Minden, of the Chaise-Dieu, Strasburg and Blois in France; and Holbein's pencil immortalized these joys of the tomb at Basle.

These dances of death of the great artist have in their turn been carried away by death, which does not spare its own follies: there remain at Basle, of Holbein's labour, only six pieces sawn from the stones of the cloisters and lodged in the library of the University. A coloured drawing has preserved the harmony of the work.

Those grotesque figures on a terrible back-ground partake of the genius of Shakespeare, a genius blended of comedy and tragedy. The persons bear a lively expression: rich and poor, old and young, men and women, popes, cardinals, priests, emperors, kings, queens, princes, dukes, nobles, magistrates, warriors, all struggle and argue with Death; not one accepts it with a good grace.

Death is infinitely various, but always clownish, like life, which is only a serious piece of buffoonery. This Death of the satirical painter goes one leg short, like the wooden-legged beggar whom it accosts; it plays the mandoline behind its back-bone, like the musician whom it drags away. It is not always bald: tufts of fair, brown, or grey hair flutter on the skeleton's neck and make it more frightful by making it nearly alive. In one of the cartoons, Death has almost hair, it is almost young, like a young man, and it carries off a young girl who is looking at herself in a glass. Death has in its wallet the tricks of a crafty schoolboy: with a pair of scissors, it cuts the string of a dog which leads a blind man, and the blind man is at two steps from an open pit; elsewhere, Death, in a short mantle, accosts one of its victims with the gestures of a Pasquin. Holbein may have taken the idea of this formidable gaiety in nature itself: enter a reliquary, all the death's-heads seem to grin, because they uncover their teeth; that is laughter. What are they grinning at? At death or at life?

[Sidenote: Basle.]