Chapter XX: Book II: 407 (3)

Madame Récamier went to fix herself at Wolfsberg, a country-house occupied by M. Parquin[463], near Arenenberg, where Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was living; I stayed two days at Constance. I saw all that there was to see: the market containing the public granary christened the "Hall of the Council," the so-called statue of Huss[464], the square in which Jerome of Prague[465] and John Huss were, they say, burnt; in fine, all the ordinary abominations of history and society.

The Rhine, issuing from the lake, announces itself very much like a king: nevertheless it was not able to defend Constance, which was, if I am not mistaken, sacked by Attila[466], besieged by the Hungarians[467], the Swedes[468], and twice taken by the French[469].

Constance is the Saint-Germain of Germany: the old people of the old society have retired to it. When I knocked at a door to look for rooms for Madame de Chateaubriand, I came upon some canoness, a girl past her minority; some prince of an ancient house, an elector on half-pay: which went very well with the abandoned steeples and the deserted convents of the city. Condé's Army fought gloriously under the walls of Constance and seems to have left its ambulance there. I had the misfortune to meet a veteran Emigrant; he did me the honour to have known me in former times; he had more days than hairs; his words were endless; he was unable to contain himself and allowed his years to run.

[Sidenote: Diner at Arenenberg.]

On the 29th of August, I went to dine at Arenenberg.

Arenenberg stands on a sort of promontory in a chain of steep hills. The Queen of Holland, whom the sword had made and whom the sword had unmade, built the _château_, or, if you prefer, the summer-house of Arenenberg. From it, one enjoys an extensive, but melancholy view. This view commands the Lower Lake of Constance, which is only an expansion of the Rhine over swamped fields. On the other side of the lake, one sees gloomy woods, remains of the Black Forest, a few white birds fluttering under a grey sky and driven by an icy wind. There, after having sat on a throne, after being outrageously slandered, Queen Hortense came to perch upon a rock; below is the isle of the lake on which, they say, the tomb of Charles the Fat[470] was discovered and on which, at present, canaries are dying which ask in vain for the sun of their native islands. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu was better off in Rome; nevertheless, she has not descended in proportion to her birth and her early life: on the contrary, she has risen; her abasement is only relative to an accident of her fortune; this is not one of those descents like that of Madame la Dauphine, who has fallen from all the height of the centuries.

The companions, male and female, of Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu were her son, Madame Salvage[471], Madame-----. By way of visitors, there were Madame Récamier, M. Vieillard[472] and myself. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu acquitted herself very well in her difficult position as a queen and a Demoiselle de Beauharnais.

After dinner, Madame de Saint-Leu sat down to her piano with M. Cottreau[473], a tall young painter in mustachios, a straw hat, a blouse, a turned-down shirt-collar, an eccentric costume, who hunted, painted, sang, laughed, in a witty and noisy fashion.

Prince Louis occupies a summer-house standing apart, where I saw arms, topographical and strategical charts; industries which made one, as though by accident, think of the blood of the Conqueror without naming him: Prince Louis is a studious and well-informed young man, full of honour and naturally grave.

Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu read me a few fragments of her Memoirs: she showed me a cabinet filled with relics of Napoleon. I asked myself why this wardrobe left me cold; why that little hat, that sash, that uniform worn at such and such a battle found me so indifferent: I was much more perturbed when writing of the death of Napoleon at St. Helena. The reason of this is that Napoleon is our contemporary; we have all seen him and known him: he lives in our memory; but the hero is still too close to his glory. A thousand years hence, it will be a different thing: it is only the centuries that have lent a perfume to Alexander's sweat; let us wait: of a conqueror one should show only the sword.

I returned to Wolfsberg with Madame Récamier and set out at night: the weather was dark and rainy; the wind whistled through the trees and the wood-owl hooted: a real Germanian scene.

Madame de Chateaubriand soon arrived at Lucerne: the dampness of the town frightened her and, as Lugano was too dear, we decided to come to Geneva. We took our route over Sempach: the lake preserves the memory of a battle[474] which ensured the enfranchisement of the Swiss, at a time when the nations on this side of the Alps had lost their liberties. Beyond Sempach, we passed before the Abbey of St. Urban's, crumbling like all the monuments of Christianity. It stands in a melancholy spot, on the skirt of a heath which leads to a wood: if I had been free and alone, I would have asked the monks for a hole in their walls, there to finish my Memoirs beside an owl; then I should have gone to end my days in doing nothing under the beautiful do-nothing sun of Naples or Palermo: but beautiful countries and spring-time have become insults, disasters and regrets.

On reaching Berne, we were told that there was a great revolution in progress in the city; I looked in vain: the streets were deserted, silence reigned, the terrible revolution was realized without a word, to the peaceful smoke of a pipe in the corner of some coffee-house.

Madame Récamier was not long in joining us at Geneva.

[Sidenote: A visit to Coppet.]

GENEVA, _end of September_ 1832.

I have begun to take up my work again seriously: I write in the morning and walk in the evening. Yesterday, I went to pay a visit to Coppet. The house was shut up; they opened the doors for me; I wandered through the deserted rooms. The companion of my pilgrimage recognised all the places, where she still seemed to see her friend, seated at her piano, or coming in, or going out, or talking on the terrace alongside of the gallery; Madame Récamier has seen again the room which she used to occupy; days gone by have come up again before her; it was like a rehearsal of the scene which I described in _René_:

"I passed through the sonorous apartments where nothing was heard
but the sound of my footsteps.... Everywhere the rooms were without
hangings and the spider spun its web in the abandoned couches....
How sweet, but how rapid are the moments which brothers and sisters
pass in their youthful years, gathered under the wing of their
old parents! Man's family is but of a day; God's breath disperses
it like a bubble. The son has scarce time to know the father, the
father the son, the brother the sister, the sister the brother! The
oak sees its acorns shoot up around itself: it is not thus with the
children of men!"

I also remembered what I said, in these Memoirs, of my last visit to Combourg, before leaving for America. Two different worlds, but connected by a common sympathy, occupied Madame Récamier and myself. Alas, each of us carries within himself one of those isolated worlds; for where are the persons who have lived long enough together not to have separate memories?

From the _château_, we entered the park; the early autumn began to redden and to loosen a few leaves; the wind fell by degrees and let one hear a stream that turns a mill. After following the alleys along which she had been accustomed to walk with Madame de Staël, Madame Récamier wanted to greet her ashes. At some distance from the park stands a coppice mingled with taller trees and surrounded by a damp and dilapidated wall. This coppice resembles those clusters of trees in the midst of plains which sportsmen call "covers:" it is there that death has driven its prey and shut up its victims.

A burial-place had been built beforehand in that wood to receive M. Necker, Madame Necker and Madame de Staël: when the last of these arrived at the trysting-place, they walled-up the door of the crypt. The child of Auguste de Staël remained outside, and Auguste himself, who died before his child, was laid under a stone, at his relations' feet. On the stone are carved these words taken from Scripture:

WHY SEEK YOU THE LIVING WITH THE DEAD[475]?

I did not go into the wood; Madame Récamier alone obtained permission to enter it. Remaining seated on a bench before the surrounding wall, I turned my back on France, and fixed my eyes, now on the summit of Mont Blanc, now on the Lake of Geneva: the golden clouds covered the horizon behind the dark line of the Jura; it was as though a halo of glory were rising above a long coffin. On the other side of the lake, I saw Lord Byron's[476] house, the ridge of which was touched by a ray of the setting sun. Rousseau was no more there to admire that spectacle, and Voltaire, who had also disappeared, had never cared about it. It was at the foot of the tomb of Madame de Staël that so many illustrious absentees on the same shore presented themselves to my recollection: they seemed to come to seek the shade their equal to fly away into the sky with her and escort her during the night At that moment, Madame Récamier, pale and in tears, came out from the funeral grove herself like a shadow. If ever I have felt at one time the vanity and the verity of glory and life, it was at the entrance of that silent, dark, unknown wood, where she sleeps who had so much lustre and fame, and when seeing what it is to be truly loved.

[Sidenote: With Madame Récamier.]

That same evening, the day after my devotions to the dead of Coppet, tired of the edge of the lake, I went, still with Madame Récamier, in search of less frequented walks. We discovered, going down the Rhone, a narrow gorge through which the stream flows bubbling under several mills, between rocky cliffs intersected by meadows. One of these meadows stretches at the foot of a hill on which a house is planted amid a cluster of elms.

We several times climbed and descended, talking the while, this narrow strip of grass which separates the boisterous stream from the silent hillock: how many persons are there whom one can weary with what one has been and carry back with one on the track of one's days? We spoke of those days, always painful and always regretted, in which the passions form the happiness and the martyrdom of youth. Now I am writing this page at midnight, while all is at rest around me, and through my window I see a few stars glimmering over the Alps.

Madame Récamier is going to leave us: she will return in the spring, and I shall spend the winter in evoking my vanished hours, in summoning them one by one before the tribunal of my reason. I do not know if I shall be very impartial nor if the judge will not be too indulgent towards. the culprit I shall spend next summer in the land of Jean Jacques. God grant that I may not catch the dreamer's malady. And then, when autumn shall have returned, we shall go to Italy: "_Italian!_" that is my eternal refrain.

GENEVA, _October_ 1832.

Prince Louis Napoleon having given me his pamphlet entitled, _Rêveries politiques_, I wrote him this letter:

"PRINCE,

"I have read attentively the little pamphlet which you were so good
as to entrust to me. I have jotted down, as you wished, a few
reflections, springing naturally from yours, which I had already
submitted to your judgment. You know, Prince, that my young King
is in Scotland, that, so long as he lives, there can be no other
King of France for me than he; but, if God, in his impenetrable
counsels, had rejected the House of St. Louis, if the habits of our
country did not render the republican state possible, there is no
name which goes better with the glory of France than yours.

"I am, etc., etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _January_ 1833.

I had dreamt much of that approaching future which I had made for myself and which I thought so near. At night-fall, I used to go wandering in the windings of the Arve, in the direction of Salève. One evening, I saw M. Berryer enter; he was returning from Lausanne and told me of the arrest of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[477]; he did not know any details. My plans for repose were once more upset. When the mother of Henry V. believed in her success, she discharged me; her misfortune destroyed her last note and recalled me to her defense. I started on the spot from Geneva, after writing to the ministers. On arriving in my Rue d'Enfer, I addressed the following circular letter to the editors of the newspapers:

"SIR,

"I arrived in Paris on the 17th of this month and wrote, on the
18th, to M. the Minister of Justice[478] to ask if the letter which
I had had the honour to send him from Geneva, on the 12th, for
Madame la Duchesse de Berry had reached him and if he had had the
goodness to forward it to Madame.

"I begged M. the Keeper of the Seals at the same time to give me
the necessary authorization to go to the Princess at Blaye.

"M. the Keeper of the Seals was so good as to reply, on the 19th,
that he had handed my letters to the President of the Council[479]
and that I must apply to the latter. I wrote, consequently, on
the 20th, to M. the Minister for War. To-day, the 22nd, I receive
his answer of the 21st: he 'regrets to be under the necessity of
informing me that the Government does not consider it expedient to
grant my request.' This decision has put an end to my applications
to the authorities.

"I have never, sir, pretended to think myself capable of defending
unaided the cause of misfortune and of France. My plan, if I had
been permitted to reach the feet of the august prisoner, was to
propose to her, in this emergency, the formation of a council of
men more enlightened than myself. In addition to the honourable and
distinguished persons that have already come forward, I would have
taken the liberty to suggest to Madame's choice M. le Marquis de
Pastoret[480], M. Lainé, M. de Villèle, etc., etc.

"Now, sir, that I am officially turned away, I return to my right
as a private individual. My _Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de
M. le Duc de Berry_, wrapped in the hair of the widow to-day a
captive, lie near the heart which Louvel made to resemble even more
that of Henry IV. I have not forgotten that signal honour, of which
the present moment asks me for a reckoning and makes me feel all
the responsibility.

"I am, sir, etc., etc.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

[Sidenote: My circular to the press.]

While I was writing this circular letter to the newspapers, I found means to have the following note handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry:

"PARIS, 23 _November_ 1832.

"MADAME,

"I had the honour to address to you from Geneva an earlier letter
dated the 12th of this month. This letter, in which I begged you
to do me the honour to choose me as one of your defenders, has been
printed in the newspapers[481].

"Your Royal Highness' cause may be taken up by all those who,
without being authorized to do so, might have useful truths to
make known; but, if Madame wishes that it be carried on in her own
name, it is not one man, but a council of men, of politicians and
lawyers, that must be charged with this high affair. In that case,
I would ask that Madame would consent to assign to me as coadjutors
(with the persons whom she would have already selected) M. le Comte
de Pastoret, M. Hyde de Neuville, M. de Villèle, M. Lainé, M.
Royer-Collard, M. Pardessus[482], M. Mandaroux-Vertamy[483], M. de
Vaufreland.

"I had also thought, Madame, that one might summon to this council
a few men of great talent and of an opinion contrary to ours; but
perhaps it would be to place them in a false position, to oblige
them to make a sacrifice of honour and principle to which lofty
minds and upright consciences do not readily lend themselves.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

An old disciplined soldier, I was therefore hastening up to take my place in the ranks and to march under my captains: reduced by the will of the authorities to a duel, I accepted it I had scarcely expected to come, from the tomb of the husband, to fight by the tomb of the widow.

Supposing that I were bound to remain alone, that I had misunderstood what suits France, I was none the less in the path of honour. Nor is it of little use for men that a man should immolate himself to his conscience; it is good that some one should consent to ruin himself to remain steadfast to principles of which he is convinced and which have to do with what is noble in our nature: those dupes are the necessary contestants of the brutal fact, the victims charged to utter the veto of the oppressed against the triumph of might. We praise the Poles: is their devotion other than a sacrifice? It has saved nothing; it could save nothing: even in the minds of my opponents, will that devotion be barren of results for the human race?

I prefer a family before my country, they say: no, I prefer fidelity to my oaths before perjury, the moral world before material society; that is all: in so far as the family is concerned, I devote myself to it because it was essentially beneficial to France; I confound its posterity with that of the country and, when I deplore the misfortunes of the one, I deplore the disasters of the other: beaten, I have prescribed duties to myself, even as the victors have laid interests upon themselves. I am trying to withdraw from the world with my self-respect; in solitude we have to be careful whom we choose for our companion.

[Sidenote: On the arrest of Madame.]

In France, the land of vanity, so soon as an occasion offers for making a fuss, a crowd of people seize it: some act from good-heartedness, others from their consciousness of their own merits. I therefore had many competitors; they begged, as I had done, of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, the honour to defend her. At least, my presumption in offering myself to the Princess as a champion was a little justified by former services; though I did not fling the sword of Brennus[484] into the scale, at least I put my name there: however unimportant that may be, it had already gained some victories for the Monarchy. I opened my _Mémoire sur la captivité de Madame la duchesse de Berry_[485] with a consideration by which I am forcibly struck; I have often reprinted it, and it is probable that I shall reprint it again:

"We never cease," I said, "to be astonished at events; ever
we imagine that we have come to the last; ever the revolution
recommences. Those who, since forty years, are marching to reach
the goal, repine; they thought they were sitting for a few hours by
the edge of their tomb: vain hope! Time strikes those travellers
gasping for breath, and forces them to move onward. How many times,
since they have been on the road, has the Old Monarchy fallen at
their feet! Scarce escaped from those successive crumblings, they
are obliged once more to pass over its rubbish and its dust. Which
century will see the end of the movement?...

"Providence has willed that the transient generations destined for
unremembered days should be small, in order that the damage might
not be great. And so we see that everything proves abortive, that
everything is inconsistent, that no one is like himself or embraces
his whole destiny, that no event produces what it contained and
what it ought to produce. The superior men of the age which is
expiring are dying away; will they have successors? The ruins of
Palmyra end in sands."

Passing from this general observation to particular facts, I show, in my reasoning, that they might deal with Madame la Duchesse de Berry by arbitrary measures, regarding her as a prisoner of police, of war, of State, or asking the Chambers to pass a bill of attainder; that they might bring her within the competence of the laws by applying to her the Briqueville Law of Exception or the common law of the Code; that they might regard her person as inviolable and sacred. The ministers maintained the first opinion, the men of July the second, the Royalists the third.

I go through the several suppositions: I prove that, if Madame la Duchesse de Berry made a descent upon France, she had been drawn thither only because she heard men's opinions asking for a different present, calling for a different future.

False to its popular extraction, the revolution proceeding from the Days of July repudiated glory and courted shame. Except in a few hearts worthy of giving it an asylum, liberty, become the object of the derision of those who made it their rallying-cry, that liberty which buffoons bandy about with kicks, that liberty strangled after dishonour by the tourniquet of the laws of exception will, through its destruction, transform the Revolution of 1830 into a cynical fraud.

Thereupon, and to deliver us all, Madame la Duchesse de Berry arrived. Fortune betrayed her; a Jew sold her; a minister bought her[486]. If they are not willing to proceed against her by police measures, the only alternative is to indict her at the assizes. I suppose this to have been done, and I bring on the stage the Princess's defending counsel; then, after making the defending counsel speak, I address the counsel for the prosecution:

[Sidenote: My pamphlet.]

"Advocate.... stand up....

"Establish learnedly that Caroline Ferdinande of Sicily, Widow de
Berry, niece of the late Marie-Antoinette of Austria, Widow Capet,
is guilty of opposition to a man, the reputed uncle and guardian of
an orphan called Henry, which uncle and guardian is said, according
to the calumnious allegation of the prisoner, unlawfully to detain
the crown of a ward, which ward impudently pretends to have been
King from the day of the abdication of the ex-King Charles X. and
the ex-Dauphin till the day of the election of the King of the
French....

"In support of your argument, let the judges first call up
Louis-Philippe as evidence for or against the prisoner, unless
he prefer to excuse himself as a kinsman. Next, let the judges
confront the prisoner and the descendant of the Great Traitor; let
the Iscariot into whom Satan had entered[487] say how many pieces
of silver he received for the bargain.

... Then it will be proved, by those who have examined the spot,
that the prisoner for six hours suffered the Gehenna of fire in
a space too narrow for her, in which four people could hardly
breathe, which caused the tortured person contumeliously to say
that they 'were making war upon her as though she were a St.
Laurence[488]. Now, Caroline Ferdinande being pressed by her
accomplices against the red-hot slab, her clothes twice caught
fire, and, at each blow of the gendarmes on the outside of the
fiery furnace, the shock was communicated to the prisoner's heart,
causing her to vomit blood.

"Next, in the presence of the image of Christ, they will lay on the
desk, as a piece of direct evidence, the burnt garments: for there
must always be lots cast upon garments in these Judas bargains."

Madame la Duchesse de Berry was set at liberty by an arbitrary act of the authorities, after they thought that they had dishonoured her. The picture which I drew of the proceedings made Philip see the invidiousness of a public trial and determined him to grant a pardon to which he believed that he had attached a punishment: the pagans, under Severus[489], used to throw to the lions a newly-delivered young Christian woman. My pamphlet, of which only some phrases survive, had its important historical result.

I am melted again, as I copy out the apostrophe which ends my work; it is, I admit, a foolish waste of tears:

"Illustrious captive of Blaye, Madame! May your heroic presence in
a land which knows something of heroism lead France to repeat to
you what my political independence has won for me the right to say:

"'Madame, your son is my King!'

"If Providence inflict yet a few hours upon me, shall I behold
your triumphs, after having had the honour of embracing your
adversities? Shall I receive that guerdon of my faith? At the
moment when you return happy, I would joyfully go to end in
retirement the days commenced in exile. Alas, I am disconsolate to
be able to do nothing for your present destinies! My words die away
in mere waste around the walls of your prison: the noise of the
winds, of the waves and of men, at the foot of the lonely fortress,
will not even allow the last accents of a faithful voice to ascend
to where you are."

PARIS, _March_ 1833.

Some newspapers, having repeated the phrase, "Madame, your son is my King!" were indicted in the courts for a press offense; I found myself involved in the proceedings. This time, I could not take exception to the competency of the judges; I had to try to save by my presence the men attacked for my sake; my honour was at stake and I had to answer for my works.

Moreover, the day before my summons before the court, the _Moniteur_ had given the declaration of Madame la Duchesse de Berry[490]; if I had stayed away, they would have thought that the Royalist Party was retreating, that it was abandoning misfortune and blushing for the Princess whose heroism it had celebrated.

There was no lack of timid counsellors who said to me:

"Do not put in an appearance; you will be too much embarrassed with your phrase, 'Madame, your son is my King!'"

"I shall shout it louder than ever," I replied.

I went to the very court where the revolutionary tribunal had formerly been installed, where Marie-Antoinette had appeared, where my brother had been condemned. The Revolution of July has ordered the removal of the crucifix whose presence, while consoling innocence, caused the judge to tremble.

[Sidenote: My trial in Paris.]

My appearance before the judges had a fortunate effect; it counterbalanced for a moment the effect of the declaration in the _Moniteur_ and maintained the mother of Henry V. in the rank in which her courageous adventure had placed her: men hesitated, when they saw that the Royalist Party dared to face the event and did not consider itself beaten.

I did not want a counsel, but M. Ledru, who had attached himself to me at the time of my imprisonment, wished to speak: he grew disconcerted and gave me great uneasiness. M. Berryer, who represented the _Quotidienne_, indirectly took up my defense. At the end of the proceedings, I called the jury the "universal peerage," which contributed not a little towards the acquittal of all of us[491].

Nothing remarkable occurred to signalize this trial in the terrible chamber that had resounded with the voices of Fouquier-Tinville and Danton; there was nothing amusing in it, except the arguments of M. Persil[492]: wishing to prove my guilt, he quoted this phrase from my pamphlet, "It is difficult to crush what flattens itself underfoot," and, exclaiming, "Do you feel, gentlemen, all the scorn comprised in that paragraph, 'It is difficult to crush what flattens itself underfoot'?" he made the movement of a man who crushes something under his feet He resumed his speech triumphantly: the laughter of the audience was renewed. The worthy man perceived neither the delight of the audience at his unlucky phrase nor the perfectly absurd figure which he cut while stamping his feet, in his black robes, as though he were dancing, at the same time that his face was pale with inspiration and his eyes haggard with eloquence.

When the jury returned and pronounced their verdict of "not guilty," applause broke out and I was surrounded by young men who had put on barristers' robes to get in: M. Carrel was there.

The crowd increased as I went out; there was a scuffle in the court-yard of the palace between my escort and the police. At last, I succeeded, with great difficulty, in reaching home in the midst of the crowd which followed my cab shouting:

"Long live Chateaubriand[493]!"

[Sidenote: I am acquitted.]

At any other time, this acquittal would have been very significant; to declare that it was not guilty to say to the Duchesse de Berry, "Madame, your son is my King!" was to condemn the Revolution of July; but to-day this verdict means nothing, because there is no opinion nor duration in anything. In four and twenty hours, everything is changed: I should be condemned to-morrow for the fact on which I was acquitted to-day.

I have been to leave my card on the jurymen and notably on M. Chevet[494], one of the members of the "universal peerage." It was easier for that worthy citizen to find a conscientious verdict in my favour than it would have been for me to find in my pocket the money necessary to add to the happiness of my acquittal the pleasure of eating a good dinner at my judge's establishment: M. Chevet arbitrated with more equity on the Legitimacy, the Usurpation and the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ than many publicists and censors.

PARIS, _April_ 1833.

The _Mémoire sur la captivité de madame la duchesse de Berry_ has obtained for me an immense popularity in the Royalist Party. Deputations and letters have reached me from every quarter. I have received from the North and South of France declarations of adhesion covered with many thousands of signatures. All of these, referring to my pamphlet, demand the liberation of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Fifteen hundred young men of Paris have come to congratulate me, not without great excitement on the part of the police. I have received a cup in silver gilt, with this inscription:

TO CHATEAUBRIAND FROM THE LOYAL MEN OF VILLENEUVE (LOT-ET-GARONNE)

A town in the South sent me some very good wine to fill this cup, but I do not drink. Lastly, Legitimist France has taken as its motto the words, "Madame, your son is my King!" and several newspapers have adopted them as an epigraph; they have been engraved on necklaces and rings. I am the first to have uttered, in the face of the Usurpation, a truth which no one dared to speak, and, strange to say, I believe less in the return of Henry V. than the most contemptible _juste-milieu_ man or the most violent Republican.

For the rest, I do not understand the word usurpation in the narrow sense given to it by the Royalist Party; there would be many things to say about this word, as about that of legitimacy: but there really is usurpation, and usurpation of the worst kind, in the guardian who plunders his ward and proscribes the orphan. All those grand phrases, that "the country had to be saved," are so many pretexts furnished to ambition by an immoral policy. Truly, ought we not to regard the meanness of your usurpation as an effort of virtue on your part? Are you Brutus[495], by chance, sacrificing his sons to the greatness of Rome?

I have been able, in the course of my life, to compare literary renown and popularity. The former pleased me for a few hours, but that love of renown soon passed. As for popularity, it found me indifferent, because, in the Revolution, I have seen too much of men surrounded by those masses which, after raising them on the shield, flung them into the gutter. A democrat by nature, an aristocrat by habit, I would most gladly sacrifice my fortune and my life to the people, provided I need have little relation with the crowd. Anyhow, I was extremely sensible of the impulse of the young men of July who carried me in triumph to the Chamber of Peers, and this inasmuch as they did not carry me there to be their leader or because I thought as they did: they were only doing justice to an enemy; they recognised in me a man of honour and liberty: that generosity touched me. But this other popularity which I have lately acquired in my own party has caused me no emotion; there is an icy barrier between the Royalists and myself: we want the same King; with that exception, most of our wishes are opposed one to the other.

[Footnote 407: This book was written in Paris, between the end of July and the 8th of August 1832; at Basle, Lucerne and Lugano, between August and October 1832; and again in Paris, between January and April 1833.--T.]

[Footnote 408: John Fraser Frisell (1772-1846), a member of a Scotch family, came to France at the age of eighteen to "see the Revolution," out of curiosity. He was arrested and imprisoned at Dijon under the Terror, and did not recover his liberty until the 18 Brumaire. The First Consul authorized Frisell, "as a savant," to reside on the Continent, at a time when all the English were under suspicion; and he remained almost permanently in France and Italy, to the great displeasure of his family. He wrote a great deal, but would consent to the publication of only one of his works, _De la Constitution de l'Angleterre_, which is remarkably well written in French. He made the acquaintance of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand under the Empire and remained most attached to them until his death, which shortly preceded that of his two old friends. Frisell died at Torquay, in Devonshire, in February 1846. _Cf._ an article by Mr. J. Fraser, entitled, _Un ami de Chateaubriand_, in the _Correspondant_ of 25 September 1897.--B.]

[Footnote 409: There is a slight error here. Chateaubriand, as well as his friends Hyde de Neuville and Fitz-James, were arrested on the 16th of June. The details of his arrest are in the newspapers of the 17th, and Hyde de Neuville also gives the 16th as the date. Probably this date of the 20th, in the _Mémoires de Outre-tombe_, is a copyist's error, the more so inasmuch as, in the whole course of the Memoirs, Chateaubriand has made no other mistake in his dates.--B.]

[Footnote 410: M. Henri Joseph Gisquet.--B.]

[Footnote 411: The _juste-milieu_ was the political system of government which consisted in conciliating all opinions. Louis-Philippe used it (after Montesquieu and others) in replying to a deputation from the town of Gaillac, on the 29th of January, in these words:

"As for our home policy, we shall strive to keep to a _juste milieu._"

The phrase was very soon turned into one of general derision.--T.]

[Footnote 412: Frédéric Benoît (1813-1832), aged 19, the son of a magistrate at Vouxiers, had been sentenced to death on the eve of Chateaubriand's arrest, 15 June 1832. He had killed his mother, on the night of the 8th of November 1829, and his friend Alexandre Formage, a youth of 17, on the 21st of July 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 413: Richard Lovelace (1618-1658), the Cavalier poet, was imprisoned by the Commons in 1642, subsequently released on £20,000 bail, was abroad from 1646 to 1648 in the French service, taking part in the Siege of Dunkirk, and was again incarcerated on his return to England. He was released once more towards the close of 1649 and spent the remainder of his life in want. His best-known prison poems include his _To Althea from Prison_ and the lines commencing:

Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage.--T.]

[Footnote 414: Jean Baptiste Santeuil (1630-1697), a modern Latin poet, almost as celebrated for his gaiety and eccentricities as for his undoubted poetic talent.--T.]

[Footnote 415: "The coffin sinks down and the unspotted roses."--T.]

[Footnote 416: I omit a poem of sixteen lines, entitled, _Jeune fille et jeune fleur_, on the death of Eliza Frisell.--T.]

[Footnote 417: M. Nay was engaged to M. Gisquet's daughter.--T.]

[Footnote 418: François Eugène Vidocq (1775-1857) was in early life a soldier and a thief and was several times imprisoned. He became connected with the Paris police as a detective in 1809 and resigned, as chief of the detective force, in 1825. In 1832, he started a private detective establishment, which was soon dosed by the Government. He was the reputed author of a famous set of Memoirs and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 419: Louis Henri Desmortiers had been appointed a counsellor to the Paris Courts by the Restoration; the Revolution of 1830 made him King's Attorney to the Tribunal of First Instance of the Seine. These functions he preserved during the greater part of the reign of Louis-Philippe; and he was therefore not an examining magistrate in 1832. The examining magistrate charged in the affair of Messieurs de Chateaubriand, Hyde de Neuville and de Fitz-James was M. Poultier, who "fulfilled his painful duty towards the accused with as much delicacy as consideration" (_Mémoires du baron Hyde de Neuville_, vol. III. p. 496).--B.]

[Footnote 420: Charles Guillaume Hello (1787-1850). He had been appointed attorney-general at Rennes in 1830. He was the author of _Philosophie de l'histoire de France_ and other works, and was the father of M. Ernest Hello (1828-1885), author of _L'Homme, Paroles de Dieu_, etc., which gave him an eminent rank among the writers and thinkers of his time.--B.]

[Footnote 421:

"My name is Loyal, sirs, I come from Normandy,
And am a tipstaff, in despite of jealousy."--T.]

[Footnote 422: This is one of the very few errors of fact that occur in the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, nor is it a very serious one. M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison, in his fine work on the _Congrégation_ (pp. 389 et seq.), publishes the complete list of its members: M. Desmortiers' name does not appear upon it.--B.

The Congregation was an association of laymen, formed, under the auspices of the Jesuits, to practise, under their direction, works of charity and piety.--T.]

[Footnote 423: Paul François Dubois (1793-1874) had founded the _Globe_, in 1824, with Pierre Leroux. He sat as Deputy for Nantes from 1831 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 424: Jean Jacques Ampère (1800-1864), son of the celebrated physicist and a member of the French Academy. His fidelity to Chateaubriand was the more meritorious inasmuch as he had conceived, from his youth, an ardent passion for Madame Récamier which time was unable to allay.--B.]

[Footnote 425: Charles Lenormant (1802-1859) had married, in 1826, Mademoiselle Amélie Cyvoct, niece to Madame Récamier.--B.]

[Footnote 426: Charles Ledru, a young advocate gifted with a real talent, was soon eclipsed by another republican advocate of the same surname, Auguste Ledru. The latter, wishing to avoid the confusion that would certainly have been established between himself and Charles Ledru, added the name of his maternal great-grandmother to his own, and became known as Ledru-Rollin.--B.]

[Footnote 427: Charles Philipon (1800-1862), the brilliant draughtsman, founder of the _Caricature_ (1831), the _Charivari_ (1834) and, after 1848, the _Journal amusant_, the _Musée français_ and the _Petit journal pour rire._ It was during one of his many trials that Philipon invented and drew the "pear" which was thenceforth to become the symbol of the head of Louis-Philippe. The next day, the walls of Paris were covered with it.--T.]

[Footnote 428: He signs his verses, "J. Chopin, _employé au cabinet._"--T.]

[Footnote 429: I omit these twenty lines.--T.]

[Footnote 430: Félix Barthe (1795-1863), after being linked with the Carbonari and taking an active part in the Revolution of July, entered M. Laffitte's dislocated ministry on the 27th of December 1830, to replace the Minister of Public Instruction, M. Mérilhou. On the 12th of March 1831, in the new Casimir-Périer Cabinet, he exchanged the portfolio of Public Instruction for that of Justice. He kept the Seals until the 4th of April 1834, when he fell with the Broglie Ministry. He was then made a peer of France and President of the Audit Office. The Second Empire made him a senator.--B.]

[Footnote 431: M. Demangeat.--B.]

[Footnote 432: Pierre Clément Bérard (1798--_circa_ 1890). During the Hundred Days, being then seventeen years of age, he had enlisted in the corps of Royal Volunteers of the Paris School of Law and accompanied King Louis XVIII. to Ghent. In 1831 and 1832, he published a little weekly pamphlet, the _Cancans_, whose title varied with every number: _Cancans parisiens, Cancans accusateurs, Cancans courtisans, Cancans inflexibles, Cancans saisis, Cancans prisonniers_, etc. Each issue ended with a song. It was, as it were, a resurrection, after 1830, of the _Actes des Apôtres_ of Rivarol, Champeenetz and their friends, with the same violence and also the same pluck and spirit. Only, the Cancans were edited, not by a company of wits, but by M. Bérard alone: true, he was as witty as any four or forty. Seizures and prosecutions rained upon the Cancans and their author, who was at last condemned to fourteen years' imprisonment and a fine of thirteen thousand francs. Fortunately, he succeeded in escaping to Holland, thus exchanging prison for exile. In 1833, he published _Mon Voyage à Prague_ and then went to Rome, where the Legitimists had founded a bank in which Bérard accepted a clerkship. He was not again to leave the Eternal City, where he died, not very many years ago, an impenitent Royalist. His _Souvenirs sur Sainte-Pélagie en_ 1832 appeared in 1886.--B.]

[Footnote 433: The reader will see in my account of my first journey to Prague my conversation with Charles X. on the subject of this loan.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1834). _Cf._ Vol. I, pp. 369-370.--T.]

[Footnote 434: Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry (1797-1873). In 1810, he was tutor to Talleyrand's grand-nephews and, in 1828, published his _Histoire des Gaulois_, with great success. After the Days of July, he was appointed Prefect of the Haute-Saône. Later he filled more than one judicial office, under the Usurpation and the Second Empire, and was made a senator in 1860. He continued throughout to produce his historical works.--B.]

[Footnote 435: _Cf._ AUGUSTIN THIERRY, _Récits des temps mérovingiens_: Preface.--B.]

[Footnote 436: The Comte d'Artois entered France by Vesoul, in February 1814, and from there, on the 27th of February, dated his Proclamation to the French.--B.]

[Footnote 437: Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1538), the great Dutch scholar and satirist, settled at Basle in 1521 and died there on the 12th of July 1528.--T.]

[Footnote 438: The Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia.--B.]

[Footnote 439: Hans Holbein the Younger (_circa_ 1497-1543) lived in Basle from 1515 to 1523 and from 1528 to 1532. The _Dance of Death_ at Basle, if really Holbein, was painted in the earlier period.--T.]

[Footnote 440: Martin Luther (1483-1546), founder of the heretical sect called after his name.--T.]

[Footnote 441: Giovanni de' Medici, Pope Leo X. (1475-1521), elected Pope in 1513. It was during his Papacy, in the year 1517, that the Reformation began with Luther's protest against the sale of indulgences.--T.]

[Footnote 442: Johann von Müller (1752-1809), a noted Swiss historian, author of the _Geschichte der Schweizer_, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 443: Walther Fürst, Arnold von Melchthal and Werner Stauffacher were the three companions of William Tell, perhaps less legendary than he, who, according to tradition, liberated their country in the fourteenth century. The date of the oath on the Grütli, or Rütli, is 8 November 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 444: Hermann Gessler, the imperial magistrate in Uri and Schwyz, said to have been shot by Tell in 1307.--T.]

[Footnote 445: Saxo Grammaticus (_fl._ 13th century), the Danish historian, whose chronicles contain the stories of William Tell, Hamlet and other oral traditions, myths and legends.--T.]

[Footnote 446: _Cf._ CHATEAUBRIAND, _Essai sur les révolutions_: the chapter entitled, _La Suisse pauvre et vertueuse_, in which the author describes as "very doubtful" the story of Tell and the apple.--B.]

[Footnote 447: The Duc de Reichstadt had died on the 22nd of July 1832, a month earlier than the date of Chateaubriand's journey.--T.]

[Footnote 448: Alexander Count Suwaroff (1729-1800), after defeating the French at Cassano, the Trebbia and Novi, in April, June and August 1799, was himself defeated by Masséna, who had already beaten one Russian army at Zurich (25-26 September 1799). Suwaroff was recalled in disgrace and died in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 449:

"At Mount Adula's foot, amid a thousand reeds,
The still Rhine, proud of how his great stream speeds,
Slept with one hand upon his tilted urn,
To the grateful music of the just-born burn."--T.]

[Footnote 450:

"One's country's to be found where'er the soul's enchanted."--T.]

[Footnote 451: St. Nicholas Bishop of Myra (_d. circa_ 342), the patron saint of sailors, thieves, virgins and children. The Church honours St. Nicholas on the 6th of December.--T.]

[Footnote 452: Clara Wendel was one of a company of vagabonds arrested, in 1825, for the murder, on the 15th September 1816, of Xavier Keller, a State councillor of Lucerne, the cause of whose death had for many years been a mystery. Revelations made by the band showed that Xavier Keller had been the victim of a political crime, the instigators of which were two official persons of Lucerne. Five individuals, including a brother and sister of Clara Wendel, had been guilty of committing this crime. The trial excited an European interest and ended in a number of condemnations. Clara Wendel was sentenced to imprisonment for life and served her sentence in the prison at Lucerne.--B.]

[Footnote 453: On the 5th of June 1832, Alexandre Dumas had followed the funeral of General Lamarque in the uniform of an artillery-man; it was rumoured that he had distributed arms at the Porte Saint-Martin. On the 9th of June, a newspaper announced that the author had been arrested with arms in his hands and that he had been shot on the morning of the 6th. An aide-de-camp of the King's hurried to his house, found him in perfect health and informed him that the question of his arrest had been seriously discussed. He was advised to go to spend a month or two abroad, in order that he might be forgotten. He put his dramatic affairs in order, obtained some money from Harel (no easy matter) and, on the 21st of July 1832, left for Switzerland, furnished with a regular passport. He returned to Paris at the commencement of October. His _Impressions de Voyage_, the publication of which began in 1833, have remained the best of his works. In the third volume, he tells of his visit to the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_, in a chapter entitled, _Les Poules de M. de Chateaubriand._--B.]

[Footnote 454: _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 72, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 455: Both ladies are no more.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 456: _Cf._ Vol. I., pp. 71-72.--T.]

[Footnote 457: Béranger's letter is dated 19 August 1832; Armand Carrel's 4 October 1834. They were both printed at the end of the second volume of the _Congrès de Vérone._--B.]

[Footnote 458: Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), the Swiss poet and theologian and founder of the so-called science of physiognomy, was born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 459: Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), the poet, landscape-painter and engraver was also born and died at Zurich.--T.]

[Footnote 460: Madame Récamier had been very much alarmed by the cholera, which had made many victims around her, in the Rue de Sèvres, and had decided, in the month of August, to leave Paris and travel in Switzerland. In spite of her real courage, and although she had often been known to be prodigal and fearless in her attendance on persons attacked by infectious complaints, she had an invincible and almost superstitious terror of cholera. Was it a presentiment? She died of cholera on the 11th of May 1849.--B.]

[Footnote 461: Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Comte de Saint-Leu, later Prince President of the French Republic, later Napoleon III. Emperor of the French (1808-1873), third son of Hortense de Beauhamais and, putatively, of Louis King of Holland, younger brother of Napoleon I.--T.]

[Footnote 462: Ancona, in the Papal States, was held by the French from 1831 to 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 463: Charles Parquin, an ex-officer of the Imperial Army, had known Prince Louis since 1822. In 1824, he bought the estate of Wolfsberg, situated near Arenenberg, and married Mademoiselle Cochelet, who was a maid-of-honour of Queen Hortense and who had been brought up with the Queen, when the latter was Mademoiselle de Beauhamais, at Madame Campan's. Major Parquin took a most active part in the Strasburg enterprise, 30 October 1836. He was arrested by the Prince's side, tried and acquitted (6 January 1837).--B.]

[Footnote 464: John Huss (1369-1415), the Bohemian reformer and Wyclifite, was cited before the Council of Constance, in Baden, and burned at the stake as a heretic on the 6th of July 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 465: Jerome of Prague (_circa_ 1365-1416) was a fellow-countryman, associate and follower of Huss. He was burned at Constance on the 30th of May 1415.--T.]

[Footnote 466: Constance was sacked by the Huns in the fifth century.--T.]

[Footnote 467: In the early part of the tenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 468: 30 August to 5 October 1633.--T.]

[Footnote 469: In 1796 and 1799.--T.]

[Footnote 470: Charles III. Emperor of the Romans and II. King of France (839-888), surnamed the Fat, died and was buried at the Abbey of Reichenau, in the Lake of Constance, one year after his deposition.--T.]

[Footnote 471: _Cf._ Vol. IV, p. 287, n. I.--T.]

[Footnote 472: Narcisse Vieillard (1791-1857) had been through the Campaigns of Russia (1812), Germany (1813) and France (1814). Queen Hortense selected him as tutor for her eldest son, Charles Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, and afterwards for the latter's brother, the future Napoleon III. He sat as a deputy or as a representative of the people from 1842 to 1846 and from 1848 to 1851; assisted in preparing and carrying out the _coup d'État_ of the 2nd of December 1851 and was appointed a senator in January 1852. His republicanism, however, marched abreast with his Bonapartism, and he voted against the restoration of the Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 473: Cottreau was a friend of Prince Louis Napoleon's and lived permanently at Arenenberg. He accompanied the Prince on a visit to England.--B.]

[Footnote 474: The Swiss defeated the Imperials at the Battle of Sempach, on the Lake of Sempach, on the 9th of July 1386, thus securing Swiss independence.--T.]

[Footnote 475: LUKE, XXIV., 5.--T.]

[Footnote 476: Byron abandoned England for good on the 25th of April 1816 and, in the summer of that year, spent some months at Diodati, near Geneva. It was here that he wrote the third canto of _Childe Harold_, the _Prisoner of Chillon_ and _Manfred_, the third act of which, however, he subsequently rewrote.--T.]

[Footnote 477: The Duchesse de Berry was arrested at Nantes on the 7th of November 1832. On the 12th, Berryer walked into Chateaubriand's study at Geneva and told him the news, without being able to give him any details. Chateaubriand at once left for Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 478: Félix Barthe.--T.]

[Footnote 479: Marshal Soult combined the offices of President of the Council and Minister for War.--T.]

[Footnote 480: Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre Marquis de Pastoret (1756-1840) filled various legal offices under Louis XVI. and was Minister of Justice and the Interior for a short while. He emigrated during the Terror and returned to France in 1795. After being elected to the Council of the Five Hundred, he was again obliged to flee, and remained in Switzerland till 1800. He obtained a professorial chair at the College of France in 1804 and became a senator in 1809. Under the Restoration, he received a peerage, was appointed President of the House of Peers in 1820, a minister of State in 1826 and Chancellor of France in 1829. In 1834, he was chosen to be tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux. Pastoret was the author of several important works, including a fine _Histoire générale de la législation des peuples_, and was a member of the French Academy and of the Academies of Inscriptions and of Moral Science.--T.]

[Footnote 481: The text of the letter of the 12th November ran as follows:

"MADAME,