Chapter XXVII: Book IV: 556 (3)

She occupied a house standing by itself, at the end of the village, on the right bank of the Tepl, the little river which rushes from the mountain and flows through Carlsbad from one end to the other. As I climbed the stairs to the Princess' apartment, I felt perturbed: I was going, almost for the first time, to see that perfect model of human suffering, that Antigone of Christendom. I had not talked for ten minutes with Madame la Dauphine in my life; she had addressed scarcely two or three words to me during the rapid course of her prosperity; she had always shown herself at a loss in my presence. Though I had never written or spoken of her except in terms of profound admiration, Madame la Dauphine was necessarily bound to entertain towards me the prejudices of that antechamber gang in whose midst she lived: the Royal Family used to vegetate isolated in that citadel of stupidity and envy to which the young generations laid siege, without being able to force their way in.

A man-servant opened the door to me; I saw Madame la Dauphine seated, at the further end of a drawing-room, on a sofa between two windows, embroidering a piece of tapestry-work. I entered feeling so agitated that I did not know whether I should be able to reach the Princess. She raised her head, which she had kept lowered right against her work, as though herself to hide her emotion, and, addressing me, said:

"I am glad to see you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand; the King wrote to me that you were coming. You travelled at night? You must be tired."

I respectfully handed her Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letters; she took them, laid them on the table beside her and said:

"Sit down, sit down."

Then she began her embroidery again, with a quick, mechanical and convulsive movement.

I did not speak; Madame la Dauphine kept silence: I could hear the pricking of the needle and the drawing of the wool as the Princess passed it smartly through the canvas, on which I saw some tears fall. The illustrious victim of misfortune wiped them from her eyes with the back of her hand and, without raising her head, said:

"How is my sister? She is very unhappy, very unhappy. I am very sorry for her, I am very sorry for her."

These brief and repeated phrases failed to open a conversation for which neither of the two interlocutors could find the necessary expressions. The redness of the Dauphine's eyes, caused by the habit of tears, gave her a beauty which made her look like the Spasimo Virgin.

"Madame," I replied at last, "Madame la Duchesse de Berry is very unhappy, without a doubt; she has charged me to come to place her children under your protection during her captivity. It is a great relief to think that Henry V. finds a second mother in Your Majesty."

Pascal was right to connect the greatness and wretchedness of man: who would have believed that Madame la Dauphine attached any value, to those titles of Queen, of Majesty, which were so natural to her and of which she had known the vanity? Well, the word Majesty was, nevertheless, a magic word; it beamed upon the Princess's forehead, from which, for a moment, it removed the clouds: they soon returned to place themselves there like a diadem.

"Oh no, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," said the Princess, looking at me and ceasing her work, "I am not Queen."

"You are, Madame, you are, by the laws of the realm: Monseigneur le Dauphin was able to abdicate only because he was King. France looks upon you as her Queen, and you will be the mother of Henry V."

The Dauphiness discussed no longer: this little weakness, by making her a woman again, veiled the glamour of so many different greatnesses, gave them a sort of charm and brought them into closer connexion with the human condition.

I read out my credentials, in which Madame la Duchesse de Berry declared her marriage to me, ordered me to go to Prague, asked to be allowed to keep her title as a French Princess and placed her children in her sister's care.

The Princess resumed her embroidery; when I finished reading, she said to me:

"Madame la Duchesse de Berry does well to rely on me; that's quite right, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, quite right: I am very sorry for my sister-in-law, you must tell her so."

This persistency on the part of Madame la Dauphine in saying that she was sorry for Madame la Duchesse de Berry, without going further, showed me how little sympathy there was, at bottom, between those two souls. It also seemed to me as though an involuntary impulse had stirred the saint's heart. A rivalry in misfortune! Nevertheless, the daughter of Marie-Antoinette had nothing to fear in this struggle; the palm would have remained hers.

"If Madame," I resumed, "would like to read the letter which Madame la Duchesse de Berry sends her and that which she addresses to her children, she will perhaps find some new explanations there. I hope that Madame will give me a letter to take back to Blaye."

[Sidenote: A question of invisible ink.]

The letters were written in invisible ink.

"I don't understand this at all," said the Princess. "What are we to do?"

I suggested the expedient of a chafing-dish with a few sticks of white wood; Madame pulled the bell, the rope of which hung down behind the sofa. A footman came, took the order and set up the apparatus on the landing, at the door of the drawing-room. Madame rose and we went to the chafing-dish. We put it on a little table standing against the stair-rail. I took one of the two letters and held it parallel to the flame. Madame la Dauphine watched me, and smiled because I did not succeed. She said:

"Give it to me, give it to me, let me try my hand."

She passed the letter over the flame; Madame la Duchesse de Berry's large, round hand-writing appeared: the same operation was performed for the second letter. I congratulated Madame on her success. It was a strange scene: the daughter of Louis XVI. deciphering with me, at the top of a stair-case at Carlsbad, the mysterious characters which the captive of Blaye was sending to the captive of the Temple!

We went back to our seats in the drawing-room. The Dauphiness read the letter which was addressed to her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry thanked her sister for the concern she had shown in her misfortune, recommended her children to her, and specially placed her son under the guardianship of his aunt's virtues. The letter to the children consisted of a few loving words. The Duchesse de Berry invited Henry to make himself worthy of France.

Madame la Dauphine said to me:

"My sister does me justice, I have been very much concerned at her troubles. She must have suffered much, suffered much. You must tell her that I will look after M. le Duc de Bordeaux. I am very fond of him. How did you find him? His health is good, is it not? He is strong, although a little nervous."

I spent two hours in private conversation with Madame, an honour rarely granted: she seemed satisfied. Having never known anything about me except from hostile reports, she no doubt believed me to be a violent man, puffed up with my own merits; she was pleased with me for having a human aspect and being a good fellow. She said to me, cordially:

"I am going out walking: I am keeping to the regimen of the waters; we shall dine at three: you must come, if you do not want to go to bed. I want to see you, so long as it does not tire you."

I do not know to what I owed my success; but certainly the ice was broken, the prejudice wiped out; that glance which had been fixed, in the Temple, on the eyes of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, had rested kindly upon a poor servant. At the same time, though I had succeeded in putting the Dauphiness at her ease, I felt myself exceedingly constrained: the fear of passing a certain level took from me that faculty for every-day intercourse which I had with Charles X. Whether it was that I did not possess the secret of drawing what was sublime from the soul of Madame; whether it was that my feeling of respect closed the road to the intercommunication of thought, I felt a distressing sterility which came from within myself.

At three o'clock, I was back at Madame la Dauphine's. I there met Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy and her daughter, Madame d'Agoult, Messieurs O'Heguerty the Younger and de Trogoff, who had the honour of dining with the Princess. Countess Esterhazy, once a beautiful woman, is still good-looking: she had been intimate with M. le Duc de Blacas in Rome. They say that she meddles in politics and tells M. le Prince de Metternich all that she hears. When, on leaving the Temple, Madame was sent to Vienna, she met Countess Esterhazy, who became her companion. I noticed that she listened attentively to what I said; she had the simplicity, the next morning, to tell me that she had spent the night in writing. She was preparing to leave for Prague; a secret interview was arranged at a spot agreed upon with M. de Blacas; from there she was going to Vienna. Old attachments made young again by espionage! What a business and what pleasures! Mademoiselle Esterhazy is not pretty: she looks witty and mischievous.

The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, a devotee to-day, is an important person of the class which one finds in all princesses' closets. She has pushed on her family as much as she could, by applying to everybody, especially to myself: I have had the satisfaction of placing her nephews; she had as many as the late Arch-chancellor Cambacérès.

[Sidenote: I dine with the Dauphiness.]

The dinner was so bad and so scanty that I rose dying of hunger; it was served in Madame la Dauphine's own drawing-room, for she had no dining-room. After the meal, the table was cleared; Madame went back to sit on the sofa, took up her work again and we formed a circle round. Trogoff told stories; Madame likes them. She interests herself particularly in women. The Duchesse de Guiche was mentioned:

"Her tresses do not suit her," said the Dauphiness, to my great surprise.

From her sofa, Madame saw through the window what was happening outside: she named the ladies and gentlemen walking. Came two little horses, with two grooms dressed in the Scotch fashion; Madame ceased working, looked long and said:

"It is Madame-----[I forget the name] going into the mountains with her children."

Marie-Thérèse curious, knowing the habits of the neighbourhood, the Princess of thrones and scaffolds descending from the heights of her life to the level of other women, interested me singularly; I watched her with a sort of philosophic tenderness.

At five o'clock, the Dauphiness went out driving; at seven, I was back for the evening gathering. The same arrangement: Madame on the sofa, the guests of the dinner and five or six young and old water-drinkers enlarged the circle. The Dauphiness made touching, but visible efforts to be gracious; she addressed a word to every one. She spoke to me several times, making a point of calling me by my name to make me known; but she became absent-minded again after each sentence. Her needle multiplied its movements, her face drew nearer to her embroidery; I saw the Princess's profile and was struck by a sinister resemblance: Madame has begun to look like her father; when I saw her head lowered under the blade of sorrow, I thought that I saw Louis XVI.'s head awaiting the fall of the blade. At half-past eight, the evening ended; I went to bed overcome by sleep and lassitude.

On Friday the 31st of May[621], I was up at five o'clock; at six, I went to the Mühlenbad: the men and women water-drinkers crowded round the spring, walked under the gallery of wooden pillars, or in the garden next to the gallery. Madame la Dauphine arrived, dressed in a shabby grey silk gown; she wore a thread-bare shawl on her shoulders and an old hat on her head. She looked as though she had mended her clothes, as her mother did at the Conciergerie. M. O'Heguerty, her equerry, gave her his arm. She mixed with the crowd and handed her cup to the women who draw the water from the spring. No one paid any attention to Madame la Comtesse de Marnes[622]. Maria Theresa, her grandmother, in 1762, built the house known as the Mühlenbad: she also presented Carlsbad with the bells which were to call her grand-daughter to the foot of the Cross.

Madame having entered the garden, I went up to her: she seemed surprised at this courtier-like flattery. I had seldom risen so early for royal personages, except, perhaps, on the 13th of February 1820, when I went to look for the Duc de Berry at the Opera. The Princess allowed me to take five or six turns round the garden by her side, talked kindly and told me that she would receive me at two o'clock and give me a letter. I left her, out of discretion; I breakfasted hurriedly and spent the time remaining to me in visiting the valley.

[Sidenote: Carlsbad.]

CARLSBAD, 1 _June_ 1833.

As a Frenchman, I found none but painful memories at Carlsbad. The town takes its name from Charles IV.[623] King of Bohemia, who came here to be cured of three wounds received at Crécy, while fighting beside his father John. Lobkowitz pretends that John was killed by a Scotchman, a circumstance not known to the historians:

Sed cum Gallorum fines et arnica tuetur
Arva, Caledonia cuspide fossus obit.

Cannot the poet have written _Caledonia_ for the sake of the quantity? In 1346, Edward was at war with Robert Bruce[624], and the Scotch were Philip's[625] allies.

The death of the blind John of Bohemia, at Crécy, is one of the most heroic and touching adventures of chivalry. John wanted to go to the assistance of his son Charles; he said to his companions:

"My lords, you are my friends; I call upon you to lead me so far forwards that I may strike a blow with my sword."

"They replied that gladly would they do so.... The King of Bohemia
went so far forwards that he struck a blow with his sword, indeed
more than four, and combated most vigorously, and so did they of
his company; and so much forward they pushed against the English
that all remained there and were on the morrow found on the field
around their lord, and all the horses tied together."

Few people know that John of Bohemia was buried at Montargis, in the church of the Dominicans, and that on his tomb one used to read this remnant of an obliterated inscription:

"He died at the head of his attendants, together recommending them
to God the Father. Pray to God for that sweet King."

May this remembrance of a Frenchman expiate the ingratitude of France, when, in the days of our new calamities, we appalled Heaven by our sacrilege and cast out of his tomb a Prince who died for us in the days of our old misfortunes!

At Carlsbad, the chronicles relate that, Charles IV., the son of King John, having gone out hunting, one of his hounds, darting after a deer, fell from the top of a hill into a bason of boiling water. Its howls caused the huntsmen to hurry in its direction and the source of the Sprudel was discovered. A hog which scalded itself in the waters of Teplitz showed them to the herdsmen.

Such are the traditions of Germania. I have been to Corinth: the ruins of the temple of the courtesans were dispersed over the ashes of Glycera; but the fountain of Pyrene, which sprang from the tears of a nymph, still flowed among the oleanders through which Pegasus flew in the times of the Muses. The waters of a port without ships bathed fallen columns whose capitals lay steeped in the sea, like heads of drowned girls stretched upon the sands; the myrtle had grown in their hair and replaced the acanthus leaves: there you have the traditions of Greece.

Carlsbad numbers eight springs: the most celebrated is the Sprudel, discovered by the stag-hound. This spring issues from the ground between the church and the Tepl with a hollow sound and a white steam; it leaps up with irregular bounds to a height of six or seven feet. The hot-springs of Iceland are superior to the Sprudel, but none goes to seek health in the deserts of the Hecla, where life expires; where the summer's day, issuing from the day, knows neither sunset nor sunrise; where the winter's night, born again of the night, is without dawn or twilight.

The water of the Sprudel boils eggs and serves to wash plates and dishes; this fine phenomenon has entered the service of the Carlsbad housewives: an image of genius which degrades itself by lending its power to vile works[626].

Carlsbad is the meeting-place in ordinary of sovereigns: they ought surely to get cured there of the crown for themselves and for us.

A daily list is published of the visitors to the Sprudel: on the old rolls we find the names of the poets and the most enlightened men of letters of the North: Gurowsky[627], Dunker, Weisse[628], Herder[629], Goethe; I should have liked to meet with that of Schiller, my favourite. In the sheet of the day, among obscure arrivals, one observes the name of the "Comtesse de Marnes:" it is only printed in small capitals.

In 1830, at the very moment of the fall of the Royal Family at Saint-Cloud, the widow and daughters of Christophe were taking the waters at Carlsbad. Their Haytian Majesties have retired to Tuscany, near the Neapolitan Majesties. King Christophe's youngest daughter, very well-educated and exceedingly pretty, has died at Pisa: her ebon beauty rests free under the porticoes of the Campo Santo, far from the cane-fields and mangrove-trees beneath whose shade she was born a slave.

In 1826, an Englishwoman from Calcutta was seen at Carlsbad, passing from the banian fig-tree to the Bohemian olive-tree, from the sun of the Ganges to the sun of the Tepl; she died away like a ray from the Indian sky lost in the cold and the darkness. The sight of cemeteries, in places consecrated to health, is a melancholy one: there young women sleep, strangers to one another; on their tombs are carved the number of their days and the place of their birth: one seems to be going through a hot-house in which flowers are cultivated of every climate, whose names are written on a label at the foot of the flowers.

The native law has anticipated the requirements of exotic death: foreseeing the decease of the travellers far from their country, it permits the exhumations beforehand. I might, then, have slept half a score of years in the Cemetery of St. Andrew and nothing would have hindered the testamentary dispositions of these Memoirs. If Madame la Dauphine were to expire here, would the French laws permit the return of her ashes? That would be a controversial point between the Sorbonizers of doctrine and the casuists of proscription.

The Carlsbad waters are stated to be good for the liver and bad for the teeth. I know nothing about the liver, but there are many toothless people at Carlsbad; perhaps the years are responsible for this, rather than the waters: time is an arrant liar and a great tooth-drawer.

Does it not seem to you as though I were recommencing the _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu[630]?_ One word leads me to another; I go from Iceland to India:

Voilà les Apennins et voici le Caucase[631].

[Sidenote: The Teplitz Valley.]

And nevertheless I have not yet left the Teplitz Valley.

To obtain a view of the whole of the Valley of the Tepl, I climbed a hill, through a wood of pine-trees: the perpendicular columns of these trees formed an acute angle with the slanting rays of the sun; some had their tops, two thirds, one half, a quarter of their trunks where the others had their feet.

I shall always love the woods: the flora of Carlsbad, whose breath seemed to have embroidered the grass under my footsteps, seemed charming to me; I met again the fingered sedge, the common night-shade, the small loose-strife, the perforated St. John's wort, the hardy lily-of-the-valley, the white willow: sweet subjects of my early anthologies.

See my youth coming to hang its reminiscences on the stalks of those plants which I recognised in passing. Do you remember my botanical studies among the Seminoles, my cenotheras, my nymphæas, with which I decked my Floridans, the garlands of clematis with which they entwined the tortoise, our sleep on the island by the lake-side, the shower of roses from the magnolia-tree that fell upon our heads? I dare not calculate the age which my fickle "painted girl" would have reached by now; what should I gather on her brow to-day? The wrinkles that lie on my own. She is no doubt sleeping for ever beneath the roots of a cypress-grove of Alabama; and I, who bear in my memory those distant, unknown recollections, I am alive! I am in Bohemia, not with Atala and Céluta, but near Madame la Dauphine, who is going to give me a letter for Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

At one o'clock, I was at Madame la Dauphine's orders.

"You wish to leave to-day, Monsieur de Chateaubriand?"

"If Your Majesty will permit me. I shall try to find Madame de Berry in France; otherwise I should be obliged to make the journey to Sicily, and Her Royal Highness would be kept too long waiting for the answer which she expects."

"Here is a note for her. I took care not to mention your name, so as not to compromise you if anything happened. Read it."

I took the note; it was written entirely in Madame la Dauphine's hand: I have taken an exact copy of it.

"CARLSBAD, 31 _May_ 1833.

"It was a genuine pleasure for me, my dear sister, at last to hear
from you direct I pity you with all my soul. Reckon always on my
constant concern for you and especially for your dear children, who
will be more precious to me than ever. My existence, as long as it
endures, shall be consecrated to them. I have not yet been able to
execute your commissions as regards our family, my health having
required that I should come here to take the waters. But I shall
discharge it immediately on my return to them; they and I, believe
me, will never have any but the same sentiments on everything.

"Farewell, my dear sister: I pity you from the bottom of my heart
and embrace you fondly.

"M. T."

I was struck by the reserve of this note: a few vague expressions of attachment but poorly covered the dryness of its substance. I respectfully said as much, and again pleaded the cause of the unfortunate prisoner. Madame answered that the King would give his decision. She promised me to interest herself on behalf of her sister; but there was no cordiality either in the voice or tone of the Dauphiness: one perceived rather a restrained irritation. The game seemed to me lost as far as my client's person was concerned. I fell back upon Henry V. I thought that I owed to the Princess the sincerity which I had always employed, at my risk and peril, to enlighten the Bourbons; I spoke to her, frankly and without flattery, of the education of M. le Duc de Bordeaux:

[Sidenote: I talk to the Dauphiness.]

"I know that Madame has read in a kindly spirit the pamphlet at the end of which I expressed a few ideas relating to the education of Henry V. I fear lest the child's surroundings should injure his cause: Messieurs de Damas, de Blacas and Latil are not popular."

Madame agreed with this; she even quite threw over M. de Damas, while saying two or three words in honour of his courage, his probity and his religion.

"In the month of September, Henry V. will be of age: does not Madame think that it would be a good thing to establish a council around him to which one would summon men upon whom France looks with less prejudice?"

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, by multiplying counsellors one multiplies opinions: and then, whom would you propose to the King's choice?"

"M. de Villèle."

Madame, who was embroidering, stopped her needle, looked at me in surprise and surprised me, in my turn, by giving a pretty judicious criticism of the mind and character of M. de Villèle. She regarded him only as an able administrator.

"Madame is too severe," said I to her: "M. de Villèle is a man of method, of accounts, of moderation, of composure, of infinite resource; if he had not had the ambition to fill the first place, he would have been a man to keep everlastingly in the King's Council: he will never be replaced. His presence with Henry V. would have the best effect."

"I thought that you did not like M. de Villèle?"

"I should despise myself if, after the fall of the throne, I continued to cherish a sentiment of some petty rivalry. Our royalist divisions have already done too much harm; I forswear them with all my heart and am ready to beg pardon of those who have offended me. I entreat Your Majesty to believe that this is neither a display of false generosity nor a stone laid by way of prevision of a future fortune. What could I ask of Charles X. in exile? If the Restoration were to come about, should I not be at the bottom of my grave?"

Madame looked at me with kindness; she had the goodness to praise me in these simple words:

"That is very well said, Monsieur de Chateaubriand."

She seemed to be still surprised to find a Chateaubriand so different from the one who had been described to her.

"There is another person, Madame," I resumed, "whom one might send for: my noble friend M. Lainé. There were three of us in France who ought never to take the oath to Philip: myself, M. Lainé and M. Royer-Collard. Outside the government and in different positions, we should have formed a triumvirate of some value. M. Lainé took the oath from weakness, M. Royer-Collard from pride: the first will die of it; the second will live by it, because he lives by all that he does, being incapable of doing anything that is not admirable."

"Were you pleased with Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux?"

"I thought him charming. They say that Your Majesty spoils him a little."

"Oh no, no. Were you satisfied with his health?"

"He seemed to me to be wonderfully well; he looks delicate and a little pale."

"He often has a nice colour; but he is nervous. Monsieur le Dauphin is very much esteemed in the army, is he not? Very much esteemed? They remember him, do they not?"

This abrupt question, which had no connection with what we had just been saying, revealed to me a secret wound which the days of Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet had left in the heart of the Dauphiness. She brought up her husband's name in order to reassure herself: I hastened to anticipate the thought of the Princess and wife; I declared, and with truth, that the army had never forgotten the impartiality, the virtues, the courage of its Commander-in-Chief.

Seeing that the hour for walking had come:

"Your Majesty has no more orders to give me? I am afraid of being troublesome."

"Tell your friends of the love I bear to France; let them well understand that I am a Frenchwoman. I charge you particularly to say that; you will do me a pleasure in saying it: I regret France much, I regret France very much."

"Ah, Madame, what has that France not done to you? How can you, who have suffered so much, continue to feel 'home-sick?'"

"No, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, do not forget it, be sure to tell them all that I am a Frenchwoman, that I am a Frenchwoman."

Madame left me; I was obliged to stop on the stair-case before going out; I would not have dared to show myself in the street; my tears still moisten my eyelids as I retrace this scene.

On returning to my inn, I resumed my travelling-dress. While the carriage was being got ready, Trogoff let his tongue run on; he told me again and again that Madame la Dauphine was very pleased with me, that she made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction, that she spoke of it to anyone who was willing to listen to her.

"It's an immense thing, this journey of yours!" shouted Trogoff, trying to drown the voices of his two nightingales. "You will see some results from it!"

I did not believe in any result.

I was right. They were expecting M. le Duc de Bordeaux that same evening. Although everybody knew of his arrival, they had made a mystery of it to me. I was careful not to show that I was informed of the secret.

[Sidenote: And take my leave.]

At six o'clock in the evening, I was rolling towards Paris. Whatever may be the greatness of misfortune in Prague, the pettiness of the life of princes reduced to itself is difficult to swallow; to drink the last drop of it, one must have burnt one's palate and intoxicated one's self with a glowing faith.

Alas, a new Symmachus, I bewail the abandonment of the altars; I raise my hands towards the Capitol; I invoke the majesty of Rome! But if the god should have turned into wood and Rome fail to come to life again in its dust?

[Footnote 556: This book was written in Prague, from the 24th to the 30th of May 1833, and at Carlsbad, on the 1st of June.--T.]

[Footnote 557: When Charles X. arrived in England, in August 1830, he accepted the hospitality of a Catholic Jacobite family, the Welds, which thus paid the Bourbons the debt of Stuarts. The head of that family, Cardinal Weld, offered the King of France the use of Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, not far from the little town of Wareham. After a stay of two months at Lulworth, the Royal Family went to live at Holyrood Palace, in Edinburgh, where they remained for two years. On the 25th of October 1832, Charles X. arrived in Prague, at the Castle of Hradschin, which the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., had put at his disposal until he was able to find a private residence. Here Charles X. spent three years and a half. In the month of May 1836, he hired from Count Coronini his property of Graffenberg, situated at one end of the town of Gorlitz, on a rising ground which overlooks it.--B.]

[Footnote 558: The notes on p. 78, Vol. IV., and p. 130 _supra_, by M. Biré, give a brief biography, not, as stated, of this Duc de Guiche, later Duc de Gramont, but of his father, the Duc de Gramont. M. Biré himself corrects this error by giving the following details of the Duc de Guiche with whom we have to do. He emigrated with his parents when only three weeks of age. He served in Portugal and Spain under Wellington. After the Battle of Vittoria (June 1813), he made his way into France, established relations with the Royalists of the South and was sent by them to Louis XVIII., in England, to ask him to send a prince of the Blood to place himself at the head of a movement which was being organized. He succeeded in his mission and returned to Bordeaux, followed in a few days by the Duc d'Angoulême. Until that time he had been known as the Comte de Gramont. By order of Louis XVIII., he assumed, on his return to France, the name and rank of Duc de Guiche, which had formerly been borne by the eldest sons of the family. Under the Restoration, the Duc de Guiche became First Equerry to the Duc d'Angoulême, served under him in the South during the Hundred Days and, later, in 1823, in Spain. In 1830, he accompanied the Royal Family from Rambouillet to Cherbourg, whence he was sent back to Paris to put the Duc d'Angoulême's personal affairs in order. Having completed this business, he went, with all his family, to join the Prince in Edinburgh, and afterwards accompanied him to Prague. The Duc de Guiche returned to France in 1833 and, on the death of his father, in August 1836, succeeded to the name and rank of Duc de Gramont.--T.]

[Footnote 559: Louise Princess of France (1819-1864), married, in 1845, to Charles III. Duke of Parma, and Regent of Parma during the minority of the present Duke from the date of his father's murder, in 1854, until his own deposition in 1859.--T.]

[Footnote 560: M. Barrande was the Duc de Bordeaux's principal professor. Without having the title of tutor, he held all the branches of the education in his hands, which enabled him to give a valuable impulse to the Prince's studies. M. Barrande, at that time, was between thirty and thirty-five years of age; he was a man of the younger generation, a distinguished pupil of the Polytechnic School and had a firm and severe character. He retired at the end of 1833, when the Baron de Damas ceased to fulfil the functions of Governor.--B.]

[Footnote 561: M. de La Villate (_b._ 1776) had served in the Royal Grenadiers of the Guard during the Restoration. He was a brave and loyal officer, and the Duc de Bordeaux took a great liking to him at an early age. M. de La Villate took no part in the Prince's education properly so-called, as he did not instruct him in any branch of knowledge; but he exercised a real influence upon his character and instilled into him a love of the rough, plain truth. The young Prince loved him for his loyalty, his soldierly frankness and his white hairs. It was not age that had turned his head white. He was eighteen years old, in 1794, when his father was flung into prison. Young La Villate was resolved to make every effort to save him and succeeded in obtaining admittance to him. After a long struggle, persuaded by his tears and his persistency, the prisoner consented to change clothes with his son and to leave in his stead, relying upon a remnant of humanity in his gaolers which would prevent them, who shrank from scarcely any crime, from committing the additional crime of taking vengeance upon this act of filial devotion. A reprieve was, in fact, granted; and young La Villate was restored to his family on the 9 Thermidor. But the painful emotions of that terrible night, during which he had struggled against his father's refusal, had turned his hair white in a few hours and given him that silver crown at the age of eighteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 562: In 1833, after the retirement of M. Barrande, two Jesuits, the Pères Étienne Deplace and Julien Druilhet, were sent for to Prague and attached to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. They remained only three months in Prague and were replaced by the Bishop of Hermopolis, M. de Frayssinous, who directed the Prince's education from 1833 to 1838.--B.]

[Footnote 563: The Abbé de Moligny was the young Duc de Bordeaux's confessor.--B.]

[Footnote 564: The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, the Dauphiness' habitual companion.--B.]

[Footnote 565: The Abbé Nicolas de MacCarthy (1769-1833) was a native of Dublin, whose father settled in France soon after the child's birth. Although destined for the priesthood before the Revolution, MacCarthy was not ordained until 1814, when he became a member of the Company of Jesus. His talent won him a quick reputation and, in 1819, he preached the Advent sermons at the Tuileries with extraordinary success. He was gifted with an impassioned and penetrating eloquence and shone more particularly by his improvisation. The Père MacCarthy's action added greatly to the value of his sermons. Many of the preachers of the time set themselves to imitate him and went so far as to adopt in the pulpit the peculiar attitude which he himself was obliged to assume through an infirmity contracted in the service of the poor. This was called preaching à la MacCarthy. One severe winter's day he had carried a heavy load of wood up to the garret of a poor friendless woman. The burden was beyond his strength and brought about a weakness of the loins from which he suffered until his death, which occurred on the 3rd of May 1833, a few weeks before Chateaubriand's conversation with Charles X. MacCarthy's Sermons, published in 1834, are remarkable for their style, their logic and their rhetorical swing.--B.]

[Footnote 566: _Cf._ ANTOINE DE LA SALLE, _Hystoire et plaisante chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des Belles-Cousines, sans autre nom nommer._--T.]

[Footnote 567: It is curious, in the present year 1902, to read of this style, adopted only, I believe, by Chateaubriand. It is, of course, wrong: Prince Charles Edward, after his father's death, was always known to his adherents as Charles III. There was no reason, such as prevailed with His present Majesty, to induce the Prince to style himself Edward VII.--T.]

[Footnote 568: Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV. (1705-1774), was elected Pope in 1758. Prince Charles Edward succeeded James III. as _de jure_ King of England in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 569: Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope Pius VI. (1717-1799), was elected Pope in 1775, succession to Clement XIV. He survived Charles III. by eleven years.--T.]

[Footnote 570: Marie Louise Françoise de Lussan d'Esparbès, Vicomtesse de Polastron (1764-1804), was married to the Vicomte de Polastron, Madame de Polignac's brother, in December 1780. Her connection with the Comte d'Artois commenced before the Revolution and was continued during the Emigration. She died of a slow fever, in Brompton Grove, after confessing to the Abbé de Latil and imploring the Comte d'Artois, on her death-bed, to swear that she should be his last mistress, his last love on earth, that he should thenceforth love none other than God. The Prince swore and kept his word.--T.]

[Footnote 571: Alfred Charles François Gabriel Comte de Damas (1794-1840), a knight of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour and an honorary lord of the Bed-chamber to Charles X.--B.]

[Footnote 572: Robert II. (sometimes called Robert I.) King of France (971-1031), surnamed the Pious, son of Hugh Capet, whom he succeeded in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 573: Bruno of Carinthia, Pope Gregory V. (_d._ 999) was elected Pope in 996. Mademoiselle was two years out: the Pope reigning in 1001 was his successor, Silvester II., who died in 1003.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Basil II. Emperor of the East (_circa_ 958-1025) became Byzantine Emperor in 976.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Otto III. Emperor of the West (980-1002), surnamed the Wonder of the World, succeeded as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 983, and assumed the reins of government in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 576: Veremund II. King of Leon and Asturias died in 999; he was succeeded by Alphonsus V., who reigned till 1027. In this case Henry V. was two years out.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Ethelred II. King of England (968-1016), surnamed the Unready, succeeded to the throne in 979.--T.]

[Footnote 578: Edmund II. King of England (_circa_ 989-1016), surnamed Ironside, son of Ethelred the Unready, whom he succeeded in 1016, himself dying in the same year.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Henry IV. abjured Calvinism in 1593, in order to secure his recognition as King of France.--T.]

[Footnote 580: In the royal domain of Chantilly.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Blondel (_fl._ 12th Century), the French troubadour, said to have found Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in the castle in which the King was confined, by singing under his tower a song which the two had composed.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Leopold I. or V. Duke of Austria (1157-1194) took Richard prisoner in Austria, in December 1192, and kept him in the Castle of Dürrenstein until March 1193, when the King was transferred to the Emperor Henry VI.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Charles VI. King of France (1368-1422) succeeded to the throne in 1380, but became deranged in 1392, four years after he had assumed the government. Cards are generally supposed to have been invented about this time to amuse the unfortunate King: "they were invented," I have heard it said, "to amuse a fool and they have amused fools ever since."--T.]

[Footnote 584: Oger, or Ogier, or Outcaire, or Adalgarius (_fl._ 9th Century), the Danish paladin of Charlemagne, gives his name, in the French pack of playing-cards, to the Knave of Spades.--T.]

[Footnote 585: Étienne de Vignoles, known as Lahire (_circa_ 1390-1443), the valiant captain of Charles VII., has the Knave of Hearts called after him on French cards.--T.]

[Footnote 586: _Cf._ Vol. III. p. 129, n. 4. The Baron Capelle was Minister of Commerce in the last Cabinet under Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Charles Le Mercher de Longpré, Baron d'Haussez (1778-1854), Minister of Marine in the Polignac Cabinet, fled from France in 1830 and went to England, where he wrote his Grande Bretagne en 1833, the work referred to. Subsequently he travelled in Holland, Germany and Italy, describing his journey in the _Voyage d'un exilé_ (1835) and in Alpes et Danube (1837). He returned to France in consequence of the political amnesty decreed in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 588: The Comte de Montbel (_cf._ p. 81, n. 5, _supra_), who was Minister of the Interior and, later, Minister of Finance in the Polignac Cabinet, published, in 1833, a _Notice sur la vie du duc de Reichstadt._--B.]

[Footnote 589: _Cf._ Vol. IV. p. 138, n. 4.--T.]

[Footnote 590: The "Royalist Butcher." _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 109, n. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 591: João de Castro (1500-1548) was Portuguese Governor of India, in 1545, and won several signal victories over the natives. He was as upright as he was brave; he died poor and was buried at the expense of the public. He is said to have offered to pledge his mustachios in exchange for a loan from the merchants of Goa; but the merchants were satisfied with his word.--T.]

[Footnote 592: "This is the famed Battle of Prag; fought May 6th, 1757; which sounded through all the world, and used to deafen us in drawing-rooms within man's memory." (CARLYLE, _History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great_, Book XVIII., Chap, II.)-T.]

[Footnote 593: The Comte de Chambord was destined to spend over fifty years more in Austria: he died at Frohsdorf, about thirty miles from Vienna, on the 24th of August 1883.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Jan Sigismund Boncza Skrzynecki (1786-1860) served in the Polish contingent in aid of Napoleon; joined in the Polish Insurrection in 1830; served with distinction at Grochow, on the 25th of February 1831, and was appointed commander-in-chief on the next day. He defeated the Russians at Warwe and Dembe in March and at Iganie on the 8th of April; but his nominal victory at Ostrolenka (26 May 1831) was tantamount to a defeat, owing to his subsequent inaction, and he was superseded in August. He fled to Bohemia and lived in Prague until Leopold I. placed him in command of the Belgian Army. In 1839, the representations of Russia, Austria and Prussia compelled him to lay down this command. General Skrzynecki continued to live in Brussels until 1859, when he obtained leave to settle in Cracovia. He died in the month of January of the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 595: Johann Rudolf Count von Chotkowa and Wognin (1748-1824) was Grand Burgrave of Bohemia from 1802 to 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 596: _Anglicè_, in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 597: _Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre_, Vol. I. p. 326 _et seq._--B.]

[Footnote 598: Karl Robert Count Nesselrode (1780-1862), the famous Russian statesman, was Minister of Foreign Affairs almost continuously from 1813 to 1856.--T.]

[Footnote 599: Blacas d'Aulps the troubadour died in 1229; Blacas d'Aulps the "Great Warrior," one of the most gallant knights at the Court of Provence, in 1235.--T.]

[Footnote 600: _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 202, n. 5. Blacas d'Aulps and d'Épernon were both natives of the South of France.--T.]

[Footnote 601: The Obelisk of Luxor was brought from Egypt in 1831 and set up in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, in 1836. It weighs 240 tons.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Luc de Clapier, Marquis de Vauvenargues ( 1715-1747), the French moralist, author of the _Introduction à la connaissance de l'esprit humain_, took part in the retreat from Prague (December 1742) as a captain of foot. His health suffered, and he was obliged to resign his commission soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the celebrated Danish astronomer, entered the service of the Emperor Rudolph II. and settled in Prague in 1599. The constellation which Tycho discovered in 1572 was Cassiopeia, in which appeared a temporary star brighter than Venus at its brightest.--T.]

[Footnote 604: Shakespeare: _Winter's Tale_, Act III. sc. iii. 1-2, 45, 48, 53-54.--T.]

[Footnote 605: Wenceslaus VI. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany (1361-1419), surnamed the Drunkard, was the son of the Emperor Charles IV. He was elected King of the Romans in 1376 and succeeded to the German and Bohemian Thrones in 1378. His cruelties made him so odious that his Bohemian nobles imprisoned him in 1394 and, in 1400, he was solemnly deposed from the Throne of Germany. He renounced his right to the Imperial Crown in 1410, but continued to reign as King of Bohemia.--T.]

[Footnote 606: John Wyclif (_circa_ 1324-1384) became Master of Balliol in 1360. Huss began spreading his doctrines in Prague in 1398.--T.]

[Footnote 607: Vaclav Hanka (1791-1861), an eminent Bohemian philologist and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 608: Frantisek Ladislav Czelakovsky (1799-1852), the poet and philologist. He published his collection of Slav folk-songs in 1822-1827.--T.]

[Footnote 609: Boguslav Lobkowitz, Baron von Hassenstein (1462-1510), the author of a number of odes, elegies and letters in Latin, of which a German translation was published, in Prague, in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Mahomet II. Sultan of Turkey (_circa_ 1430-1481), surnamed the Conqueror, or the Great. He besieged and captured Constantinople in 1453; and conquered the Morea, Servia, Bosnia and Albania and made the Crimea a dependency of Turkey in 1457.--T.]

[Footnote 611: Louis XII. King of France (1462-1515), surnamed the Father of the People.--T.]

[Footnote 612: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Le Roi est mort! Vive le roi!_ (1824).--B.]

[Footnote 613: It was not at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, as Chateaubriand says in error, that the Allies called for the dismemberment of France, but three years earlier, during the discussion of the Treaties of 1815. It was then that the Emperor Alexander gave the Duc de Richelieu this "map of Styx," as an incontestable proof of the concessions obtained by the latter. On this map, our new frontier is marked out by a line drawn in blue, which takes away from France a portion of the Departments of the Isère, with Fort Barraux; of the Ain, with Belley, Gex and the Fort de l'Écluse; of the Jura, with Saint-Claude; of the Doubs, with the Fort de Tour, Pontarlier, Saint-Hippolyte and Montbéliard; the whole of the Haut-Rhin; the whole of the Bas-Rhin; the whole of the Moselle; a part of the Meuse, including Montmédy; the Ardennes, with Sedan, Mérières and Rocroy; the whole Department of the Nord, excepting Cambrai and Douai. The fact that this blue line was not put through and France not wiped out from the political map of Europe we owe entirely to Louis XVIII. and the Duc de Richelieu.--B.]

[Footnote 614: William Cobbett (1762-1835), the peasant essayist and politician. The letter referred to is his _Letter to Monsieur de Chateaubriand on his speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, on the 25th February_, 1823, _relative to the war proposed to be undertaken by France against the Revolutionists of Spain_, dated Kensington, 5 March 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice (_circa_ 1108-1205), became Doge in 1192. He went as Ambassador to the Byzantine Court in 1173 and was blinded by order of the Emperor Manuel I.--T.]

[Footnote 616: Jean Châtel (1577-1594), in December 1594, stabbed Henry IV. on the lip, while the King was stooping to lift up two officers who were kneeling to him. Châtel was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris to be quartered.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Dominique de Vic, Viscount d'Ermenonville (_d._ 1610), one of the most faithful servants of Henry IV. Passing, after the King's death, through the Rue de la Ferronnerie, in which Henry had been assassinated, he was seized with a grief so keen that he died of it the next day.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Joachim Simon Comte de Trogoff (1763-1840) was born at the Château de Penlan, in Brittany. He entered the service in 1779 and fought in the War of American Independence. After the Emigration, he joined the Austrian service, where he remained till 1814, when the Restoration made him a brigadier-general and the Comte d'Artois admitted him to his intimacy. When Charles X. became King, he appointed Trogoff to the Governorship of Saint-Cloud. In 1830, at the time of the halt at Rambouillet, Trogoff acted as governor of the palace and wanted to fight, but was not permitted. He accompanied the King to the ship which was to take him to England and, having accomplished this duty, withdrew to the Château de Keruroret, near Saint-Pol, which he never left except to go to visit his old master in exile.--B.]

[Footnote 619: St. Clodoald, or Cloud (_d._ 560), was the son of Clodomir King of Orleans and the grandson of Clovis King of the Franks. After the death of his father and the murder of his two elder brothers, in 533, he devoted himself to a monastic life and lived in a retreat near Paris which was subsequently called after him. St. Cloud is honoured on the 7th of September.--T.]

[Footnote 620: VIR., _Georg._ IV. 515.--B.]

[Footnote 621: And not Friday the 1st of June, as the earlier editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 622: The Duc d'Angoulême had taken the name of Comte de Marnes in exile,--T.]

[Footnote 623: Charles IV. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany (1316-1378) succeeded his father as King of Bohemia on the death of the latter at Crécy, in 1346, and was crowned Emperor in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Robert I. Bruce, King of Scotland (1274-1329), died seventeen years before the Battle of Crécy; but his son, David II. Bruce (1324-1371), invaded England in 1346, was defeated and captured at Neville's Cross (17 October 1346) and kept in captivity till 1357.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Philip VI. King of France (1293-1350), the first king of the House of Valois, was defeated by Edward III. at Crécy on the 26th of August 1346.--T.]

[Footnote 626: I omit a quotation from Alexandre Dumas' translation in verse of Lobkowitz' Latin Ode to the Sprudel.--T.]

[Footnote 627: Gurowsky (_b._ 1800), the Polish poet.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Christian Hermann Weisse (1801 -1866), author of the _System der Ästhetik_ (1830) and other philosophical works.--T.]

[Footnote 629: Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), the German critic and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 630: The _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu, poème heureusement découvert et mis au jour par le docteur Mathanasius_ is an amusing satire by Hyacinthe Cordonnier (1684-1746), known as Thémiseuil de Saint-Hyacinthe, published in 1714, in the midst of the "quarrel of the ancients and moderns." Its success was maintained throughout the eighteenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 631: LA FONTAINE, _Le Rat et l'huître_:

"Here stand the Apennines and here the Caucasus."

_Cf._ JOHNSON: "Survey mankind from China to Peru."--T.]

END OF VOL. V.