Chapter XXIII: Book III: 496 (2)

One emperor of Germany, I know not which, on being deposed, asked only for the sovereignty of a vineyard for which he had an affection.

[Sidenote: Rastibon.]

At Ratisbon, in former days the factory of sovereigns, they used to coin emperors, often of inferior standard; this industry has died away: one of Bonaparte's battles and the Prince Primate, the insipid courtier of our universal Gendarme, have failed to resuscitate the dying city. The Regensburghers, dressed and slovenly like the people of Paris, have no particular physiognomy. The town, in the absence of a sufficient number of inhabitants, is dull; grass and thistles are laying siege to its suburbs: soon they will have hoisted their plumes and their lances on its turrets. Kepler[535], who made the earth turn, as did Copernicus[536], sleeps for ever at Ratisbon.

We left by the bridge on the Prague Road, a greatly extolled and very ugly bridge. On quitting the basin of the Danube, one climbs steep inclines: Kirn, the first stage, is perched on a rough slope from the top of which, through watery mists, I discerned dead hills and pale valleys. The facial aspect of the peasants changes; the children, yellow and bloated, have a sickly look. From Kirn to Waldmünchen, the poverty of the landscape increases: one sees few more hamlets; only huts made of pine logs, plastered with mud, as on the more barren necks of the Alps.

France is the heart of Europe; as one goes further from it, social life decreases: a man might judge the distance at which he is from Paris by the greater or lesser languor of the country to which he is retiring. In Spain and Italy, the diminution in movement and the progress of death are less noticeable: in the former country, a new people, a new world, Christian Arabs occupy your attention; in the latter, the charms of climate and art, the enchantment of love and ruins leave you no time for depression. But, in England, despite the perfection of physical society, in Germany, despite the morality of the inhabitants, one feels one's self die. In Austria and Prussia, the military yoke weighs upon your ideas, even as the sunless sky weighs upon your head; something, I know not what, admonishes you that you cannot write, speak, nor think with independence; that you must lop off from your existence the whole of the nobler portion, leaving man's chief faculty to lie idle within you, as a useless gift of God. No arts, no beauties of nature come to beguile your hours and there is nothing left to you but to plunge into gross debauchery or into those speculative truths in which the Germans indulge. For a Frenchman, at least for me, this manner of existence is impossible; without dignity, I fail to understand life, which is difficult to understand even with all the seductions of liberty, glory and youth.

However, one thing charms me in the German people: its religious sentiment. If I were not too tired, I would leave the inn at Nittenau, where I am pencilling this diary; I would go to the evening prayer with those men, women and children whom a church calls with the sound of its bell. That crowd, seeing me on my knees in its midst, would welcome me by virtue of the unity of a common faith. When will the day come when Philosophers in their temple shall bless a Philosopher newly-arrived by the post, and offer up a like prayer with that stranger to a God respecting whom all Philosophers are in disagreement? The rosary of the parish-priest is safer: I stand by that.

21 _May._

Waldmünchen, where I arrived on Tuesday morning, the 21st of May, is the last Bavarian village on this side of Bohemia. I was congratulating myself on being able promptly to fulfil my mission; I was only fifty leagues from Prague. I plunged into water cold as ice, I made my toilet at a spring, like an ambassador preparing for a triumphal entry; I set out and, half a league from Waldmünchen, full of confidence I accosted the Austrian custom-house. A lowered toll-gate barred the road; I got down with Hyacinthe, his red ribbon blazing. A young custom-house officer, armed with a musket, took us to the ground-floor of a house, into a vaulted room. There, sitting at his desk, as though in court, was an old and fat chief of German customs, with red hair, red mustachios, thick eye-brows, sloping over two greenish, half-opened eyes, and a spiteful look: a mixture of the Viennese police-spy and the Bohemian smuggler.

[Sidenote: Delayed at the Customs.]

He took our passports without uttering a word; the young official timidly handed me a chair, while the chief, before whom he seemed to tremble, examined the passports. I did not sit down, but went to look at some pistols hanging on the wall and a carbine leaning against a corner of the room: it reminded me of the musket with which the aga of the Isthmus of Corinth fired on the Greek peasant. After five minutes' silence, the Austrian barked out two or three words which my Baslese translated thus:

"You can't pass."

What! I couldn't pass; and why? The explanation began:

"Your description is not on the passport."

"My passport is a Foreign-Office passport"

"Your passport is an old one."

"It is not a year old; it is legally valid."

"It has not been endorsed at the Austrian Embassy in Paris."

"You are mistaken: it has."

"It has not the blank stamp on it."

"An omission on the part of the embassy; you can see, besides, that it has the _visa_ of the other foreign legations. I have just passed through the Canton of Basle, the Grand-duchy of Baden, the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, the whole of Bavaria, and I have not met with the smallest difficulty. I had merely to declare my name, and my passport was not even opened."

"Have you a public character?"

"I have been a minister in France and His Most Christian Majesty's Ambassador to Berlin, London and Rome. I am known personally to your Sovereign and to Prince Metternich."

"You can't pass."

"Shall I leave you a security? Will you give me a guard who will be responsible for me?"

"You can't pass."

"If I send an express to the Bohemian Government?"

"As you please."

I lost my patience; I began to wish the custom-house officer at the devil. As ambassador of a king on his throne, I should not have minded a few hours wasted; but as ambassador of a Princess in irons, I thought myself faithless to misfortune, a traitor to my captive Sovereign.

The man was writing: the Baslese did not translate my monologue, but there are certain French words which our soldiers have taught Austria and which she has not forgotten. I said to the interpreter:

"Explain to him that I am going to Prague to offer my devotion to the King of France."

The custom-house officer, without interrupting his writing, answered:

"Charles X. is not King of France for Austria."

I retorted:

"He is for me."

These words flung back to the Cerberus seemed to make some impression on him; he eyed me up and down. I thought that his long annotation might, in the last result, be a favourable _visa._ He scrawled something on Hyacinthe's passport as well and returned the whole to the interpreter. It appeared that the _visa_ was an explanation of the reasons which did not permit him to allow me to continue my road, so that not only was it impossible for me to go to Prague, but my passport was stamped as bad for the other places to which I might repair. I climbed back into the calash and said to the postillion:

"Waldmünchen."

My return did not surprise the landlord of the inn. He spoke a little French; he told me that a similar thing had happened before: foreigners had been obliged to stop at Waldmünchen and to send their passports to Munich to be endorsed at the Austrian Legation. My host, a very worthy man, was the postmaster of the village and undertook to forward to the Grand Burgrave of Bohemia[537] the letter of which the following is a copy:

[Sidenote: Letter to Count Von Chotek.]

WALDMÜNCHEN, 21 _May_ 1833.

"MONSIEUR LE GOUVERNEUR,

"Having the honour to be known personally to His Majesty the
Emperor of Austria and to M. le Prince de Metternich, I thought
that I could travel in the Austrian State with a passport which,
being not yet one year old, was still legally valid and which had
been endorsed by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris for Switzerland
and Italy. As a matter of fact, monsieur le comte, I have travelled
through Germany and my name has been sufficient to allow me to
pass. Only this morning, the gentleman at the head of the Austrian
custom-house at Haselbach did not think himself authorized to be
equally accommodating and this for the reasons set forth in his
_visa_ on my passport, enclosed, and on that of M. Pilorge, my
secretary. He has compelled me, to my great regret, to retrace
my steps to Waldmünchen, where I await your orders. I venture to
hope, monsieur le comte, that you will be good enough to remove the
little difficulty which stops me, by sending me, by the express
which I have the honour of dispatching to you, the necessary
permission to go to Prague and thence to Vienna.

"I am, monsieur le gouverneur, with high regard,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

"Pray pardon, monsieur le comte, the liberty which I am taking of
enclosing an open note for M. le Duc de Blacas."

Some little pride appears in this letter: I was hurt; I was as much humiliated as Cicero, when, on his return in triumph from his government of Asia, his friends asked him if he came from Baiæ or from his house at Tusculum. What! My name, which flew from pole to pole, had not reached the ears of a custom-house officer in the mountains at Haselbach! A thing which seems all the more cruel when one thinks of my successes at Basle. In Bavaria, I had been addressed as "My Lord" or "Your Excellency;" a Bavarian officer, at Waldmünchen, said aloud, in the inn, that my name required no _visa_ from an Austrian ambassador. Those were great consolations, I admit; but, after all, a sad truth remained: the world contained a man who had never heard speak of me.

Who knows, however, if the Haselbach customs-officer did not know me a little! The police of all countries are so affectionately related! A politician who neither admires nor approves of the Treaties of Vienna, a Frenchman who loves the honour and liberty of France, who remains faithful to the fallen power, might well be on the index in Vienna. What a noble revenge to deal with M. de Chateaubriand as with one of those bagmen so suspicious to the spies! What a sweet satisfaction to treat as a vagabond whose papers are not in order an envoy charged to carry traitor-wise to a banished child the adieus of his captive mother!

The express left Waldmünchen on the 21st, at eleven o'clock in the morning; I calculated that it could be back on the second day, the 23rd, between twelve and four; but my imagination was at work: what was to be the fate of my message? If the Governor was a strong man and a man of the world, he would send me the permit; if he was a timid and unintelligent man, he would reply that my request did not come within his powers, he would hasten to refer it to Vienna. This little incident might at the same time please and displease Prince Metternich. I knew how he feared the newspapers; I had seen him at Verona leave the most important business and lock himself up distractedly with M. de Gentz[538] to draft out an article in reply to the _Constitutionnel_ and the _Débats._ How many days would elapse before the Imperial Minister's orders were transmitted?

On the other hand, would M. de Blacas[539] be glad to see me at Prague? Would not M. de Damas[540] think that I had come to dethrone him? Would M. le Cardinal de Latil[541] be quite free from anxiety? Would not the triumvirate turn my mishap to account to have the doors closed against me instead of opened to me? Nothing easier: a word in the Governor's ear, a word of which I should never know! In what a state of anxiety would my friends be in Paris! When the adventure was noised abroad, what would not the newspapers make of it! What wild statements would they not indulge in!

[Sidenote: Waldmünchen.]

And, if the Grand Burgrave did not think fit to reply to me, if he were away, if no one dared act in his absence, what would become of me without a passport? Where could I be sure of being recognised? At Munich? In Vienna? What postmaster would give me horses? I should be practically a prisoner at Waldmünchen.

Those are the cares that passed through my brain. I thought besides of my remoteness from what was dear to me: I have too short a time to live to waste that little. Horace said, "_Carpe diem_:" a counsel of pleasure at twenty, of reason at my age.

Tired of "ruminating on every case in my head," I heard the noise of a crowd outside; my inn stood on the village square. I looked through the window and saw a priest carrying the Last Sacraments to a dying man. What mattered to that dying man the affairs of kings, of their servants and of the world? Every one left his work and started to follow the priest; young women, old women, children, mothers with their babies in their arms repeated the prayer for the dying. On reaching the sick man's door, the priest gave the benediction with the Holy Viaticum. The by-standers knelt down and made the Sign of the Cross with lowered heads. The pass-port to Eternity will not be disowned by Him who distributes bread and opens the hostel to the traveller.

Although I had not been to bed for seven days, I was unable to stay indoors; it was only a little past one: leaving the village on the Ratisbon side, I caught sight of a white chapel, on the right, in the middle of a corn-field; I went in that direction. The door was locked; through a sloping window one saw an altar with a cross. The date of the erection of that sanctuary, 1830, was inscribed on the architrave: a monarchy was being overthrown in Paris while a chapel was being erected at Waldmünchen. The three banished generations were to come to live in a place of exile within fifty leagues of the new shelter raised to the King crucified. Millions of events are realized at one and the same time: what does a black man sleeping under a palm-tree on the bank of the Niger care for the white man who falls at the same moment under the dagger on the shore of the Tiber? What does he who weeps in Asia care for him who laughs in Europe? What did the mason who built this chapel, the Bavarian priest who exalted that Christ in 1830 care for the demolisher of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, the feller of the crosses in 1830? Events count only for those who suffer through them or benefit by them; they are nothing to those who have not heard of them, who are not touched by them. A certain race of herdsmen, in the Abruzzi, has witnessed, without descending from its mountain, the passage of the Carthaginians, the Gauls, the Romans, the Goths, the generations of the middle-ages and the men of the present age. That race has not mingled with the successive dwellers in the valley, and religion alone has mounted up to it.

Returning to the inn, I flung myself on two chairs, in the hope of sleeping; but in vain: the movement of my imagination was stronger than my lassitude. I repeated the contents of my express over and over again: dinner did not affect the matter. I went to bed amid the lowing of the herds returning from the fields. At ten o'clock, a new noise: the watchman sang the hour; fifty dogs barked, after which they went to their kennels as though the watchman had ordered them to be silent: I recognised German discipline.

Civilization has made progress in Germany since my journey to Berlin: the beds are now almost long enough for a man of ordinary stature; but the top sheet is still sewn to the blanket and the bottom sheet, which is too narrow, ends by twisting and curling up in such a way as to make you very uncomfortable; and, since I am in the country of Auguste Lafontaine[542], I will imitate his genius: I want to inform the latest posterity of what existed in my time in the room of my inn at Waldmünchen. Know then, grand-nephews, that that room was like an Italian room, with bare, white-washed walls, without any wood-work or hangings, a wide coloured band or skirting at the bottom, a ceiling with a circle of three fillets, a cornice painted with blue roses with a garland of chocolate-coloured laurel-leaves and, above the cornice, on the wall, foliage painted in red on an American-green ground. Here and there, little French and English engravings, in frames. Two windows with white cotton curtains. Between the windows, a looking-glass. In the middle of the room, a table for at least twelve people, covered with an oil-cloth with a raised ground, stamped with roses and different flowers. Six chairs upholstered in red tartan. A chest of drawers, three bedsteads round the room; in a corner, near the door, a stove in black glazed earthen-ware, of which the sides show the Bavarian arms in relief; it is topped with a receiver shaped like a Gothic crown. The door is furnished with a complicated iron mechanism capable of closing the gates of a gaol and baffling the picklocks of thieves or lovers. I describe, for the benefit of travellers, the excellent room in which I am writing this inventory, which competes with the Miser's[543]; I recommend it to future Legitimists who may be stopped by the red-headed wild-goat of Haselbach. This page of my Memoirs will give pleasure to the modern literary school.

[Sidenote: My room at the Inn.]

After counting, by the light of the night-lamp, the astragals of the ceiling and looking at the engravings of the _Young Milanese_, the _Beautiful Greeks_, the _Young Frenchwoman_, the _Young Russian_, the late King of Bavaria[544], the late Queen of Bavaria[545], who is like a lady whom I know and whose name I cannot possibly remember, I snatched a few minutes' sleep. I rose from bed at 7 o'clock on the 22nd. A bath took away the rest of my fatigue and I was interested only in my village, like Captain Cook discovering an islet in the Pacific Ocean.

Waldmünchen is built on the slope of a hill; it is not unlike a dilapidated village in the Papal States: a few house-fronts painted in fresco, an archway at either end of the main street, no ostensible shops, a dry well in the square, a frightful pavement of large flags mixed with small pebbles, of the kind which one no longer sees except in "the neighbourhood of Quimper-Corentin."

The people, whose appearance is rustic, wear no special dress. The women go with their heads bare or wrapped in a handkerchief in the manner of the Paris milk-maids; their skirts are short; they walk with Bare legs and feet, as do the children. The men are dressed, some like the men of the people in our towns, some like our old peasants. Heaven be praised, they have only hats, and the filthy cotton caps of our burgesses are unknown to them.

Every day, _ut mos_, there is a performance at Waldmünchen and I used to assist at it in the front row. At six o'clock in the morning, an old shepherd, tall and lean, goes through the village, stopping at different places; he blows a straight horn, six feet long, which one would take at a distance for a speaking-trumpet or a sheep-hook. He first produces three metallic and rather harmonious notes from it; then he sounds the quick tune of a sort of gallop or _ranz des vaches_, imitating the lowing of oxen and the grunting of pigs. The fanfare ends with a long, rising _falsetto_ note.

Suddenly from every gate debouch cows, heifers, calves, bulls; bellowing, they flood the village-square; they climb up or descend from all the circumjacent streets and, forming into columns, take the accustomed road to the pasturage. Follows the prancing squadron of swine, which look like wild boars and grunt The sheep and lambs, disposed as a rearguard, form the third part of the concert with their bleating; the geese compose the reserve: in a quarter of an hour all are out of sight

At seven o'clock in the evening, the horn is heard again; it is the herds returning. The order of the march is changed: the pigs form the van-guard, with the same music as before; a few, detached as scouts, run at hap-hazard or stop at every corner. The sheep defile; the cows, with their sons, daughters and husbands, bring up the rear; the geese waddle on the flanks. All these animals reach their own homes again, none mistakes its gate; but there are Cossacks that go marauding, madcaps that play about and refuse to go in, young bulls that persist in remaining with a mate which does not belong to their manger. Then come the women and children with their little switches; they compel the stragglers to rejoin the main body and the rebellious recruits to submit to the rules. I delighted in this performance, just as, formerly, Henry IV., at Chauny, used to be amused by the cow-keeper called "Tout-le-Monde," who collected his herds to the sound of the trumpet

[Sidenote: A study in Cattle.]

Many years ago, staying at the Château de Fervacques, in Normandy, at Madame de Custine's, I occupied the bed-room of Henry IV.: my bed was enormous; the Bearnese had slept in it with some Florette or other: I gained royalism there, for I did not have it by nature. Moats filled with water surround the castle. The view from my window spread over meadows edged by the little River Fervacques. In those meadows I perceived, one morning, an elegant sow of extraordinary whiteness; it looked as though it might be the mother of Prince Marcassin. It lay at the foot of a willow, on the cool grass, in the dew: a young boar-pig gathered a little fine, serrate moss with its ivory tusks and came to lay it on the sleeper; it repeated this operation so many times that the white wild-sow was entirely hidden: one saw only its black feet stick out from under the downy verdure in which it was buried.

Be this told to the glory of an ill-famed beast of which I should blush to have spoken at too great length, if Homer had not sung it I perceive, in fact, that this part of my Memoirs is nothing less than an Odyssey: Waldmünchen is Ithaca; the shepherd is the faithful Eumæus with his swine; I am the son of Laertes, returning after wandering on land and sea. I should, perhaps, have done better to intoxicate myself with the nectar of Evanthes, to eat the flower of the moly-plant, to linger in the land of the Lotus-eaters, to remain with Circe, or to obey the song of the Syrens saying:

"Approach, come to us!"

22 _May_ 1833.

If I were twenty years old, I should seek some adventures at Waldmünchen, as a means of shortening the hours; but, at my age, we have no silk ladders left, save in our memory, and we no longer scale walls except with the shadows. Formerly, I was very intimate with my body; I used to advise it to live wisely, in order to show itself quite lively and quite jolly in forty years' time. It laughed at the sermons of my soul, persisted in making merry and would not have given two doits to be one day what is called "a well-preserved man:"

"Out upon you!" it used to say. "What have I to gain by being niggardly with my spring, in order to enjoy life's days when there will be none left to care to share them with me?" And it steeped itself over head and ears in happiness.

I am obliged, therefore, to accept it as it now is: I took it for a walk, on the 22nd, to the south-east of the village. We followed through the marshes a little water-current which put some works in motion. They manufacture linen at Waldmünchen; breadths of linen were unrolled on the fields; young girls whose business it was to damp them ran bare-foot on the white strips, preceded by the water that spouted from their watering-pots, just as gardeners would water a border of flowers. Along the stream I thought of my friends, I was touched by their memory; then I asked what they must be saying of me in Paris:

"Has he arrived? Has he seen the Royal Family? Will he come back soon?"

And I was deliberating as to whether I would not send Hyacinthe to fetch some fresh butter and brown bread, in order to eat cress at the edge of a spring under a tuft of alder-shoots. My life was no more ambitious than that: why has Fortune fastened the skirt of my doublet to her wheel with the hem of the mantle of our Kings?

Returning to the village, I passed near the church: two outer sanctuaries prop up the wall; one of these shows St. Peter ad Vincula, with a poor-box for the prisoners: I dropped in a few kreutzers in memory of the Pellico's[546] prison and of my own cell at the Prefecture of Police. The other sanctuary showed the scene in the Garden of Olives: a scene so touching and so sublime that it is not destroyed even here by the grotesqueness of the figures.

I hurried through my dinner and hastened to the evening prayer for which I heard them ringing. As I turned the corner of the narrow street in which the church stands, a vista opened out over some distant hills: a little light still lingered on the horizon, and that dying light came from the side of France. A profound feeling gripped my heart When shall my pilgrimage be over? I passed through Germanic territory very miserably, when I was returning from the Army of the Princes, very triumphantly when, as Ambassador of Louis XVIII., I was going to Berlin: after so many and such different years, I was penetrating stealthily into the depths of that same Germany to seek the King of France banished anew.

[Sidenote: An evening service.]

I entered the church: it was quite dark; not even a lighted lamp. Through the blackness, I recognised the sanctuary, standing in a Gothic recess, only through its thicker gloom. The walls, the altars, the pillars seemed to me laden with ornaments and pictures veiled in crape; the nave was occupied by close-set parallel benches.

An old woman was reciting aloud, in German, the _Our Father_ of the rosary; women, young and old, whom I could not see, replied with the _Hail Marys._ The old woman spoke her words well, her voice was clear, her accent grave and pathetic; she was two benches away from me; her head bent slightly in the dusk each time she uttered the word Christo in some prayer which she added to the _Our Father._ The rosary was followed by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin: the _Ora pro nobis_, chanted in German by the invisible worshippers, sounded in my ear like a repetition of the word "hope:" "_espérance, espérance, espérance!_[547]" We left the church promiscuously; I went to sleep with Hope: it was long since I had clasped her in my arms; but she does not grow older and one always loves her, despite her infidelities.

According to Tacitus, the Germans believe the night to be older than the day: _nox ducere diem videtur._ Yet I have reckoned young nights and sempiternal days. The poets tell us also that Sleep is the brother of Death: I do not know; but Old Age is certainly its nearest relation.

23 _May_ 1833.

On the morning of the 23rd, Heaven mingled some sweetness with my pains: Baptiste told me that the most eminent man of the place, the brewer, had three daughters and owned my works, set out in a row among his beer-jugs. When I went out, this gentleman and two of his daughters watched me go by: what was the third young lady doing? In former days, a letter had come to me from Peru, written with her own hand by a lady, a cousin of the sun, who admired _Atala_; but to be known at Waldmünchen, under the very nose of the wolf of Haselbach, was a thousand times more glorious: it was true that this occurred in Bavaria, at a league from Austria, the curse of my renown. Do you know what would have happened if my trip to Bohemia had been taken out of my own head alone: but why should I have wanted to go to Bohemia for myself only? Once I had been stopped at the frontier, I should have gone back to Paris. There was a man who contemplated a voyage to Pekin; one of his friends met him on the Pont Royal in Paris:

"Why, I thought you were in China!"

"I have come back: those Chinamen put difficulties in my way at Canton, so I left them in the lurch."

While Baptiste was telling me of my triumphs, the passing-bell of a funeral called me to my window. The priest went by, preceded by the cross; men and women crowded after, the men in cloaks, the women in black gowns and mob-caps. The corpse, taken up at the third door from mine, was carried to the grave-yard: half-an-hour later, the procession-goers returned, _minus_ the procession. Two young women held their handkerchiefs to their eyes, one of the two uttered loud cries: they were mourning their father; the deceased was the man who had received the Viaticum on the day of my arrival.

If my Memoirs reach Waldmünchen, when I myself am no more, the family in mourning to-day will find the date of its sorrow past. Perhaps, as he lay on his bed, the dying man heard the noise of my carriage: it is the only noise of me that he will have heard upon earth.

After the crowd had dispersed, I took the road which I had seen the funeral take in the direction of the winter sunrise. I found first a fish-pond of stagnant water, beside which a stream flowed rapidly, like life beside the tomb. Crosses on the other side of a rising ground showed me the position of the cemetery. I crossed a sunk road and made my way, through a gap in the wall, into the consecrated ground.

Clay furrows represented the bodies under the soil; here and there stood crosses: they marked outlets through which the travellers had entered the new world, even as beacons at the mouth of a river indicate the passages open to ships. A poor old man was digging the grave of a child: alone, perspiring and bare-headed, he did not sing, he did not jest like the clowns in Hamlet. Further away was another grave, near which one saw a stool, a lever and a rope for the descent into Eternity.

I went straight up to this grave, which seemed to say:

"Here is a fine opportunity!"

At the bottom of the hole lay the recent coffin, covered with a few shovelfuls of white dust, while awaiting the rest. A piece of linen was gleaming upon the grass: the dead took care of their shroud. Far from his country, the Christian has it always in his power suddenly to waft himself there; he has but to visit man's last resting-place around the churches: the cemetery is the family field and religion the universal mother-land.

It was noon when I returned; by every calculation, the express could not be back before three o'clock; nevertheless every stamping of horses made me run to the window: as the hour approached, I grew convinced that the permit would not come.

To destroy the time, I asked for my bill; I set myself to reckon up the chickens I had eaten: a greater than I did not disdain this trouble. Henry Tudor, seventh of the name, in whom ended the Wars of the Roses, red and white, even as I am going to unite the white and the tricolour cockades, Henry VII.[548] initialled one after the other the pages of a little account-book which I have seen:

"To a woman for three apples, 12 pence; for discovering three
hares, 6 shillings 8 pence; to Master Bernard, the blind poet,
100 shillings [this was better than Homer]; to a little man at
Shaftesbury, 20 shillings."

We have many little men to-day, but they cost more than twenty shillings.

[Sidenote: Country road to Waldmünchen.]

At three o'clock, the hour at which the express might be back, I went with Hyacinthe along the road to Haselbach. It was a windy day, the sky was strewn with clouds that passed across the sun, casting their shadows over the fields and fir-groves. We were preceded by a herd of cattle from the village, which raised, as it went, the noble dust of the army of the Grand-duke of Quirocia, to which the Knight of the Mancha so valiantly gave battle[549]. A Calvary rose at the top of one of the ascents of the road; from there one discerned a long ribbon of the high-way. Seated in a ravine, I questioned Hyacinthe:

"Sister Anne, seest thou no one coming?"

Some village carts seen from afar made our hearts beat; as they approached, they proved to be empty, like everything that bears dreams. I had to return home and dine very sadly. A plank offered after the shipwreck: the diligence was to pass at six o'clock; might it not bring the Governor's reply? Six o'clock struck: no diligence. At a quarter past six, Baptiste entered the room:

"The ordinary post from Prague has just arrived; there is nothing for Monsieur."

The last ray of hope was extinguished.

Scarcely had Baptiste left my room, when Schwartz appeared, waving a big letter, with a big seal, in the air and shouting:

"Here is de bermid!"

I threw myself upon the dispatch; I tore open the envelope: it contained, together with a letter from the Governor, the permit and a note from M. de Blacas. Here is M. le Comte de Chotek's letter:

"PRAGUE, 23 _May_ 1833.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I much regret that, at your entrance into Bohemia, you should have
met with difficulties and a delay in your journey. But, in view
of the very severe orders prevailing on our frontiers regarding
all the travellers who come from France, orders which you yourself
must think very natural in the circumstances, I cannot but approve
of the conduct of the head of the customs at Haselbach. In spite
of the quite European celebrity of your name, you must be so good
as to excuse this official, who has not the honour to know you
personally, if he had doubts as to the identity of your person,
the more so as your passport was endorsed only for Lombardy, and
not for all the Austrian States. As to your plan for travelling
to Vienna, I am writing about it to-day to Prince Metternich and
will hasten to communicate his reply to you immediately after your
arrival in Prague.

"I have the honour to send you herewith the reply of M. le Duc de
Blacas and I beg you to be good enough to accept the assurance of
the high regard with which I have the honour to be, etc.

"The Comte de CHOTEK."

This reply was polite and proper: the Government could not abandon the inferior authority, which had, after all, done its duty. I had myself, in Paris, foreseen the cavilling of which my old passport might become the cause. As for Vienna, I had referred to it with a political object, in order to set M. le Comte de Chotek's mind at rest and show him that I was not trying to avoid the Prince de Metternich.

[Sidenote: I receive my permit.]

At eight o'clock in the evening, on Thursday the 23rd of May[550], I drove off. Who would believe it: I left Waldmünchen with a sort of regret! I had already grown used to my hosts; my hosts had grown accustomed to me. I knew all the faces at the windows and doors; when I walked out, they used to welcome me with a kindly air. The neighbourhood came running up to witness the departure of my calash, as dilapidated as was the monarchy of Hugh Capet. The men took off their hats, the women gave me a little nod of congratulation. My adventure was the subject of the village gossip; every one took my part: the Bavarians and the Austrians detest one another; the first were proud at having allowed me to pass.

I had often noticed, standing on the threshold of her cottage, a young Waldmünchen girl with a face like a Virgin in Raphael's first manner. Her father, with the peasant's civil bearing, used to take off his broad-brimmed felt hat to the ground to me and give me a greeting in German which I returned cordially in French: standing behind him, his daughter used to blush as she looked at me over the old man's shoulder. I caught sight of my virgin again, but she was alone. I waved good-bye to her with my hand; she remained motionless; she seemed astonished; I tried to imagine I know not what vague regrets in her thought: I left her like a wild flower which one has seen in a ditch by the road-side and which has scented one's way. I passed the flocks of Eumæus; he uncovered his head grown grey in the service of the sheep. He had finished his day's work; he was returning to sleep with his ewes, while Ulysses went to continue his wanderings.

I had said to myself, before receiving the permit:

"If I get it, I shall crush my persecutor."

On arriving at Haselbach, it happened to me, as to George Dandin, that my accursed good-nature was too much for me[551]; I had no heart for the triumph. Like a real poltroon, I cowered in a comer of the carriage, and Schwartz showed the order from the Governor; I should have suffered too much from the customs-officer's confusion. He, on his side, did not appear and did not even have my trunk searched. Peace be with him! Let him pardon me for the insults which I addressed to him, but which, owing to a remnant of spite, I will not erase from my Memoirs.

As one leaves Bavaria on that side, a vast black forest of pine-trees serves as a porch to Bohemia. Mists hovered in the valleys, the light was fading and the sky, towards the west, was the colour of peach-blossoms; the horizons fell till they almost touched the earth. Light is lacking at that latitude and, with light, life; all is dim, wintry, pale; winter seems to charge summer to keep the hoar-frost for it until its speedy return. A small piece of the moon, which shone faintly, pleased me; all was not lost, since I found a face that I knew. It seemed to say to me:

"What? Are you there? Do you remember how I saw you in other forests? Do you remember the pretty things you used to say to me when you were young? Really, you used to talk very nicely about me. Why are you so silent now? Where are you going alone and so late? Will you never end recommencing your career?"

O moon, you are right; but, if I did speak of your charms, you know the services which you used to do me: you used to light my steps, at the time when I wandered with my phantom of love; to-day, my head is silvered like your face, and you are surprised to find me solitary! And you scorn me! Yet I have spent whole nights wrapped in your veils: dare you deny our meetings on the lawns and by the sea-side? How often have you looked upon my eyes passionately fixed on yours! Ungrateful and mocking planet, you ask me where I am going so late: it is hard to be reproached with the continuation of my journeys. Ah, if I travel as much as you, I do not grow young again as you do, you who return monthly into the brilliant circle of your cradle! I reckon no new moons: my abatement has no limit other than my complete disappearance and, when I go out, I shall not rekindle my torch as you do yours.

I travelled all night; I passed through Teinitz, Stankau and Staab. In the morning of the 24th, I went on to Pilsen, the "beautiful barrack," Homeric style. The town is stamped with that air of melancholy which prevails in this country. At Pilsen, Wallenstein[552] hoped to seize a sceptre: I too was in quest of a crown, but not for myself.

The country is cut and slashed with heights called Bohemian mountains: paps whose tip is marked by pine-trees and whose swelling outlined by the green of the harvests.

[Sidenote: And leave Bavaria.]

The villages are scarce. A few fortresses, hungering for prisoners, roost on the rocks like old vultures. Between Zditz and Beraun, the mountains on the right become bald. One goes through a village: the roads are spacious, the posts well equipped; all points to a monarchy that imitates Old France.

Johann the Blind[553], under Philip of Valois[554], the ambassadors of George[555], under Louis XI.: by what forest paths did they pass? Of what use are the modern roads of Germany? They will remain deserted, for there is no history, art nor climate to call foreigners to their lonely causeways. For purposes of commerce it is unnecessary that the public thoroughfares should be so wide and so costly to keep in repair: the richest trade in the world, that of India and Persia, is conducted on the backs of mules, asses and horses, by narrow paths, hardly traced over the mountain-chains or sandy zones. The present high-roads, in unfrequented countries, will serve only for war, as vomitories for the use of the new Barbarians who, issuing from the North with the immense bustle of fire-arms, will come to flood regions favoured by intellect and the sun.

At Beraun passes the little river of the same name, rather spiteful, like all curs. In 1748, it rose to the level marked on the walls of the post-house. After Beraun, gorges twist round a few hills and spread out at the entrance to an upland. From this upland the road plunges into a valley with vague lines, the lap of which is occupied by a hamlet. There commences a long ascent which leads to Duschnik, the posting-station and the last stage. Soon, descending towards an opposite eminence, at the top of which stands a cross, one discerns Prague, on both banks of the Moldau. It is in that town that the sons of St. Louis are ending a life of exile, that the heir of their House is beginning a life of proscription, while his mother languishes in a fortress on the soil from which he has been driven. Frenchmen, you have sent the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, her to whom your fathers opened the gates of the Temple, to Prague: you have not cared to keep among you that unique monument of greatness and virtue! O my old King, you whom I love to call my master, because you have fallen! O young lad, whom I was the first to proclaim King, what am I to say to you? How shall I dare to appear in your presence, I who am not banished, I who am free to return to France, free to return my last breath to the air which fired my breast when I breathed for the first time, I whose bones may rest in their native land. Captive of Blaye, I am going to see your son!

[Footnote 496: This book was written, first, in Paris, on the 9th of May 1833 and the following days, and then, from the 14th to the 24th of May, on the road from Paris to Prague.--T.]

[Footnote 497: An erection of a similar character to the modern switchback railway.--T.]

[Footnote 498: HOR.: _Od._ II, vi. 14.--T.]

[Footnote 499: LA FONTAINE:

"Pity and tears, A sort of love not without charm."--T.]

[Footnote 500: St. Vincent of Paul (1576-1660) founded the Congregation of Lazarists, or Mission Priests, in 1625, the Institution of Sisters of Charity in 1634, and the Foundling Hospital in Paris in 1648. Still later, he founded, in 1653, the Hospice of the Name of Jesus and, two years later, the general hospital for the poor of Paris. St. Vincent was canonized in 1737 and is honoured on the 19th of July.--T.]

[Footnote 501: _Cf._ the _Génie du Christianisme_, Part IV. Book I. Chap. 8: _Des Rogations._--T.]

[Footnote 502: _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 106.--T.]

[Footnote 503: Gérard.--T.]

[Footnote 504: LOPE DE VEGA.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 505: Marie Victor Nicolas de Fay, Marquis de Latour-Maubourg (1768-1850), was an officer in the Body-guard under Louis XVI. He emigrated in 1792, returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, served under Bonaparte in Egypt, Germany, Spain and Russia, and lost a leg and thigh at Leipzig (16 October 1813). He was created a baron of the Empire in 1808 and a count of the Empire in 1814. In the same year, the Restoration created him a peer of France. He received a marquisate in 1817 and was sent to London as Ambassador. In 1819, he was appointed Minister for War and, in 1821, Governor of the Invalides. Latour-Maubourg resigned his offices and his peerage after the Revolution of 1830 and joined the Bourbons in exile. He was appointed Governor to the Duc de Bordeaux (Henry V.) in 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 506: Olga Nicolaiëvna Grand duchess of Russia, later Queen of Wurtemberg (1822-1892), married in 1846 to Charles Frederic Alexander Prince Royal, later Charles I. King of Wurtemberg.--T.]

[Footnote 507: Maria Christina Albertina Carlotta of Saxe-Courlande, Princess of Savoy-Carignan (1779-1851), married, first, Charles Emanuel Ferdinand Prince of Savoy-Carignan, by whom she became the mother of Prince Charles Albert, later King of Sardinia (_vide infra_). The Prince of Carignan died in 1800 and his widow married the Prince de Montléart.--T.]

[Footnote 508: Charles Albert King of Sardinia (1798-1849) succeeded on the death, without male issue, of his cousin King Charles Felix, in 1831. He abdicated, immediately after losing the Battle of Novara against the Austrians (23 March 1849), in favour of his son Victor Emanuel II. Charles Albert died, a few months after, at Oporto (28 July 1849).--T.]

[Footnote 509: Ettore Conte di Lucchesi-Palli (1805-1864) is described by some genealogists as Marchese di Lucchesi-Palli di Campo Franco e Pignatelli, Duca Della Gracia. He married the Duchesse de Berry in 1831 and had several children by her.--T.]

[Footnote 510: Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies (1777-1830).--T.]

[Footnote 511: Ferdinand II. King of the Two Sicilies (1810-1859), half-brother to the Duchesse de Berry, had succeeded his father at the death of the latter on the 8th of November 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 512: Charles Ferdinand Prince of Capua (1811-1862).--T.]

[Footnote 513: William I. King of the Netherlands had united Belgium and Holland under his sceptre since 1815. But, after the Insurrection of Brussels on the 25th August 1830, the Belgian Congress had voted the deposal of the House of Orange-Nassau. On the 21st of July 1831, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was elected and proclaimed King of the Belgians. William I. continued to hold the Citadel of Antwerp, refused to recognise the new kingdom and persisted in his resistance even after the Siege of Antwerp and the capitulation of the citadel (23 December 1832). On the date when the Duchesse de Berry wrote her Note (7 May 1833), he had not yet yielded. It was only on the 21st of May that he signed a convention for the suspension of hostilities and the resumption of navigation on the Scheldt and the Meuse. He did not definitely agree to the separation of Holland and Belgium until five years later, in 1838. He abdicated in 1840, was succeeded by his son, William II., the Prince of Orange mentioned above, and died suddenly, in Berlin, on the 12th of December 1843, in his seventy-first year.--T.]

[Footnote 514: Queen Marie-Thérèse (the Dauphine-Duchesse d'Angoulême).--T.]

[Footnote 515: The prefix of "My Lord" and "His Lordship," _Monseigneur et sa seigneurie_, were borne by those nobles only who were peers of France. Chateaubriand resigned his peerage, in 1830, by refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 516: The verse in the _Æneid_ (IX. 641) is as follows:

Macte nova virtute, puer! sic itur ad astra.

It was Statius who, slightly modifying Virgil's verse, said (_Th._ VII. 280):

Macte animo, generose puer! sic itur ad astra.

_Cf._ Vol. I, p. 56.--T.]

[Footnote 517: Serious troubles had lately broken out in the Canton of Basle between the peasants of the country and the burgesses of the town. The former claimed the right of a separate constitution and administration, as the conditions of joint government offered them by the town did not seem fair to them. Before long, the dispute came to an armed quarrel, attended with some bloodshed.--B.]

[Footnote 518: Pierre Vidal (_d._ 1229), the Provençal troubadour, who accompanied Richard Cœur-de-Lion to Cyprus in 1190.--T.]

[Footnote 519:

"Richer I with ribbon owed
To the favour of Raimbaude
Than King Richard with Poitiers
And with Tours and with Angiers."--T.]

[Footnote 520: Alphonsus II. of Este, Duke of Ferrara and Modena (1533-1597), the patron and persecutor of Tasso and brother of Leonora of Este (_vide infra_).--T.]

[Footnote 521: Leonora of Este (_d._ 1581), sister of Alphonsus II. Tasso went mad for love of her in 1577.--T.]

[Footnote 522: They were lost to France by the second Napoleon in 1870.--T.]

[Footnote 523: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke II. Chap. 33: _The Historie of Spurina._--T.]

[Footnote 524: Camille d'Hostun, Maréchal Duc de Tallart (1652-1728), defeated the Imperials at Speyer, in 1703, and was beaten by Marlborough and Prince Eugene at Blenheim, or Hochstadt, in 1704. He was taken prisoner and carried to England, where he was kept captive for eight years. During his stay in London, where he had before been Ambassador, he intrigued to bring about Marlborough's disgrace. On his return to France, he was created a duke and peer and, later, a member of the Council of Regency. He became a minister of State under Louis XV. and was a member of the Academy of Science, but not of the French Academy, as Chateaubriand says in error.--B.]

[Footnote 525: John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), Captain-general of the English Forces from 1702 to 1711.--T.]

[Footnote 526: Anne Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1655-1714), long under the influence of Marlborough and his wife. This influence did, in fact, come to an end in 1711, the year before Tallart's release.--T.]

[Footnote 527: LA FONTAINE, _Le Paysan du Danube_:

"Upon his chin there grew a bushy beard;
His person shaggy and weird
Resembled a bear, but an unlicked bear at that."--T.]

[Footnote 528: Claudius Ptolemæus, known as Ptolemy (_fl._. 150), the famous Alexandrian astronomer, geographer and mathematician:

"Ptolemy believed that the sun, planets and stars revolved round
the earth. His error in calculating the circumference of the globe
warranted Columbus in supposing that the distance from the western
coast of Europe to the eastern coast of Asia was about one-third
less than it actually is; and thus encouraged the enterprise which
led to the discovery of America" (JEBB: _Greek Literature_, Part
III. Chap. II.: _From Augustus to Justinian_).--T]

[Footnote 529: RACINE, _Mithridate_, Act III. sc. i.:

Doutez-vous que l'Euxin ne me porte en deux jours
Aux lieux où le Danube y vient finir son cours.

"Do you doubt that the Euxine will take me in two days
To the spot where the Danube its last tribute pays."--T.

"We are told that, on hearing these verses from _Mithridate_, an old soldier, who had waged war in those countries, exclaimed aloud:

"'Yes, certainly, I doubt it.'

"He was quite right." (LA HARPE: _Cours de Littérature_, Part II. Book i. Chap. 3.)-B.]

[Footnote 530: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Martyrs_, Book VII.--T.]

[Footnote 531: I omit a stanza of eight lines quoted from Régnier-Desmarais.--T.]

[Footnote 532: George Neville, Archbishop of York (_circa_ 1433-1476), a younger brother of Warwick the King-maker. He was Lord Chancellor from 1460 to 1467 and became Archbishop of York in 1465.--T.]

[Footnote 533: There is a play upon words here which I cannot render: _butor_, in French means a bittern and also a booby, a block-head, a dolt.--T.]