Chapter XVI: Appendix: III

(BY M. EDMOND BIRÉ)

THE LAST YEARS OF CHATEAUBRIAND

On the 16th of November, at daybreak, Chateaubriand wrote the last lines of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_:

"It but remains for me," he said, "to sit down by the edge of
my grave; and then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, to
Eternity."

He had lately entered on his seventy-fourth year, and he had still seven years to live. Shortly after the Revolution in July, in April 1831, he had said, in the Preface to his _Études historiques_:

"I began my literary career with a work in which I contemplate
Christianity under its poetic and moral aspects; I end it with a
work in which I consider the same religion under its philosophical
and historical aspects. I began my political career with the
Restoration; I end it with the Restoration. It is not without a
secret satisfaction that I behold this consistency with myself. The
main lines of my existence have never wavered: if, like all men,
I have not always been alike in the details, let human frailty be
forgiven for it."

His last years will show him to us consistent with himself to the end.

In the first days of October 1843, he received a letter from the Comte de Chambord, dated Magdeburg, 30 September, and concluding with these words:

"I shall be in London in the first fortnight of November and I hope
most eagerly that it will be possible for you to join me there;
your presence with me will be of great use to me and will explain
better than anything could the object of my journey. I shall be
happy and proud to show by my side a man whose name is one of the
glories of France and who has represented her so nobly in the
country which I am about to visit.

"Come, then, monsieur le vicomte, and be sure to believe in all my
gratitude and in the pleasure which it will give me to express to
you, by word of mouth, the feelings of high esteem and attachment
of which I love to send you with this the renewed and most sincere
assurance."

Ill as he was and almost paralyzed with gout, the old man was moved to tears by the young Prince's invitation:

"To such a letter as that," he said, "one answers by going in one's coffin, if necessary."

He set out for England on the 22nd of November. The Prince was not to arrive in London until a week later, the 29th. On the 30th, a large number of French Royalists, with the Duc Jacques de Fitz-James[488] at their head, came to Chateaubriand to pay him their respects and thank him for coming. Suddenly the door opened and the Comte de Chambord appeared, accompanied by Berryer and the Duc de Valmy[489]:

"Gentlemen," he said to the assembled company, "I heard that you were all at M. de Chateaubriand's and I decided to come here to pay you a visit... I am so happy to find myself surrounded by Frenchmen! I love France, because France is the land of my birth, and, if I have ever turned my thoughts towards the throne of my ancestors, it has been only in the hope that it might be possible for me to serve my country in the principles and sentiments which have been so gloriously proclaimed by M. de Chateaubriand and which are honoured, in addition, by so many and such noble defenders in your native land."

This scene moved Chateaubriand deeply. On the same day, he wrote to Madame Récamier:

"I have just received the reward of my whole life: the Prince has
deigned to speak of me, in the midst of a crowd of Frenchmen,
with an effusiveness worthy of his youth. If I were able to tell
anything, I would tell you about this; but here I am crying like a
fool.

"Protect me with all your prayers."

The Comte de Chambord had had an apartment reserved for him in his own house in Belgrave Square. Every morning, Chateaubriand would see the descendant of Louis XIV. come into his room, sit down familiarly on his bed and talk with him at length of the interest, liberties and future of France. During the day, the Prince came to take him for a drive in his carriage, so as to lose hardly an hour of his stay.

When Chateaubriand was on the eve of departure, Henry of France wrote him the following letter:

"LONDON, 4 _December_ 1843.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND,

"At the moment when I am about to have the grief of parting from
you, I wish once more to express to you all my gratitude for the
visit which you have come to pay me on foreign soil and to tell you
all the pleasure which I have felt at seeing you again and talking
with you of the great interests of the future. Finding myself as
I do in perfect community of opinion and feeling with yourself,
I am happy to see that the line of conduct which I have adopted
in exile and the position which I have taken up are, in every
respect, consonant with the advice which I wished to ask of your
long experience and of your judgment. I shall, therefore, walk with
still more confidence and firmness in the path which I have marked
out for myself.

"More fortunate than I, you are going to see our dear country
again; tell France of all the love that my heart contains for
her. I am glad to take as my interpreter that voice so dear to
France which has, at all times, so gloriously defended monarchical
principles and the national liberties.

"I renew, monsieur le vicomte, the assurance of my sincere
friendship.

"HENRY."

Chateaubriand replied to the Comte de Chambord:

"LONDON, 5 _December_ 1843.

"MONSEIGNEUR,

"The marks of your esteem would console me for every disgrace; but,
expressed as they are, I see in them more than kindness towards
myself: they discover another world; another universe opens up
before France.

"I greet with tears of joy the future which you proclaim. Shall
you, innocent of all, to whom there is nothing to object save that
you are descended from the House of St. Louis, be the only unhappy
one among the youth that turns its eyes towards you?

"You tell me that, more fortunate than you, I am going to see
France again: 'more fortunate than you!' That is the only reproach
which you found to address to your country. No, Prince, I can never
be happy so long as you lack happiness. I have not long to live,
and that is my consolation. I dare to ask you, after I am gone, to
keep the memory of your old servant.
"I am, with the most profound respect,
"Monseigneur,
"Your Royal Highness' most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

On his return to Paris, Chateaubriand put the finishing touches to the work which was to close his literary career, the _Vie de Rancé._ He added to his manuscript some pages on his pilgrimage to Belgrave Square which were worthy of his talent and almost equal to the finest pages of the Memoirs. After a description of the Château de Chambord, in the neighbourhood of which the Abbé de Rancé[490] possessed a priory, the great writer's thought harks back to the Prince whom he has been visiting in London, and he continues in these words:

"That orphan has lately sent for me to London; I obeyed the close
writ of misfortune. Henry has given me hospitality in a land that
flies from under his feet. I have again seen that town which
witnessed my fleeting greatness and my interminable wretchedness,
those squares filled with fogs and silence, whence issued the
phantoms of my youth. How long a time already has passed between
the days when I dreamt of René at Kensington[491] and these last
hours! The old exile found himself called upon to show to the
orphan a town which my eyes can scarcely recognise.

"A refugee in England for eight years; next, Ambassador to London
and intimately acquainted with Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning and Mr.
Croker: what changes have I not seen in those spots, from George
IV.[492], who honoured me with his intercourse to Charlotte[493],
whom you will find in my Memoirs! What has become of my brothers
in banishment? ...On that soil, where we were not noticed, we
nevertheless had our merry-makings and, above all, our youth.
Growing girls commencing life in adversity brought the weekly fruit
of their toil, to revel in some dance or other of the country;
attachments were formed; we prayed in chapels which I have just
revisited and found unchanged. We wept aloud on the 21st of
January, and were much moved by a funeral oration pronounced by the
Emigrant curate of our village. We also strolled beside the Thames,
to see vessels laden with the world's riches enter the port, to
admire the country-houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost
the shelter of the paternal roof-tree! All those things constituted
true happiness[494]. Will you ever return, O happiness of my
misery? Ah, come back to life, companions of my exile, comrades
of my bed of straw: behold me returned! Let us go once more into
the little gardens of some despised tavern and drink a cup of bad
tea while we talk of our country[495]: but I see no one; I have
remained behind alone....

. . . . . . . . . . .

"I was not received, on my last visit to London, in a garret in
Holborn by one of my Emigrant cousins[496], but by the 'Heir of the
Ages.' That heir took a pleasure in showing me hospitality in the
places where I had so long awaited him. He hid himself behind me
like the sun behind ruins. The torn screen that sheltered me seemed
to me more magnificent than the wainscotings of Versailles. Henry
was my last sick-nurse: those are the perquisites of misfortune.
When the orphan entered, I tried to stand up; I had no other way of
showing my gratitude. At my age, we have only the impotence of life
left Henry has consecrated his wretchedness; stripped though he be,
he is not without authority: every morning, I saw an Englishwoman
pass before my window; she would stand still and burst into tears
so soon as she saw the young Bourbon: what king on his throne would
have had the power to make such tears as those flow! Those are the
unknown subjects conferred by misfortune."

The _Vie de Rancé_ appeared in the month of May 1844. Chateaubriand had dedicated his work to the memory of the Abbé Sequin, an old priest, his spiritual director, who had died the year before at the age of ninety-five:

"I have written the story of the Abbé de Rancé in obedience to the
orders of the director of my life."

The work had only just appeared, when the Duc d'Angoulême died at Goritz, on the 3rd of June 1844. The author of the _Congrès de Vérone_, on this occasion, wrote the following letter, addressed to M. le Vicomte de Baulny:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have just read in the _France_ the letter which you were good
enough to communicate to me and which anticipated the sentiments so
nobly expressed in the _Gazette de France_ and the _Quotidienne._
I congratulate myself that my family has contracted with yours an
alliance which does me honour and which is dear to me. I would
myself have tried to raise my voice once more, if it deserved to be
heard; I would have said once again what I think of the liberator
of Spain, of the man who recalled to existence the last soldiers
of Napoleon. M. le Duc d'Angoulême loved and protected my nephew,
whose daughter has married your brother[497]. Christian, my second
nephew, also much loved by the august Prince, has gone to God. And
so all disappears for me! When I cast back my eyes, I see only
a woman who weeps; and what a woman! Marie-Thérèse over-towers
all ruins. And yet, this family which, for nine centuries, has
commanded the world would to-day scarce find an old servant to
raise to it, on the sea-shore, a funeral pile built out of the
remnants of a shipwreck! Marie-Thérèse buries her grief in the
bosom of God, in order that that sorrow may be everlasting. I have
said that that sorrow was one of the greatnesses of France; was I
wrong? In the wastes of Bohemia, I used to see, at night, at the
window of a tower, a solitary light which proclaimed the new exile
of the Duc d'Angoulême. Alas, that light has disappeared! The
virtuous Prince has gone to seek his true country in Heaven. There
revolutions will no longer strike him. He will stretch out his hand
to us to climb to him, and, under the protection of his stainless
life, we shall find grace with the Father of Mercies."

In the spring of 1845, Chateaubriand wanted to see "his young King" again for the last time. He accordingly went to Venice, at the end of May, and spent a few days with the Comte de Chambord. Seeing him set out in the state of weakness to which his ailments reduced him, his friends in Paris were very anxious about the journey. He bore it better than had been expected. The Prince persuaded him to prolong his stay a little:

"I was about to depart," he wrote, from Venice, in June 1845; "the
young Prince's embraces and prayers retain me. My days are his;
and, when he asks me only for a sacrifice of twenty-four hours,
what right have I to refuse him?"

If rejoicings in exile are rare, the Royal Family nevertheless knew a few. On the 11th of November 1845 was celebrated, at Frohsdorf, the marriage of H.R.H. Mademoiselle with the Hereditary Prince of Lucca[498], like herself of a royal race, like herself sprung from the House of Bourbon. This was that Princesse Louise, the sister of the Duc de Bordeaux, whom Chateaubriand had seen in Prague in the month of May 1833 and of whom he had at that time drawn the following portrait:

"Mademoiselle somewhat recalls her father: she is fair-haired;
her blue eyes have a shrewd expression.... Her whole person is a
mixture of the child, the young girl and the young princess: she
looks up, lowers her eyes, smiles with an artless coquetry mingled
with art; one does not know if one ought to tell her fairy stories,
make her a declaration, or talk to her with respect as to a queen.
The Princesse Louise adds to the agreeable accomplishments a good
deal of information....[499]"

So soon as the marriage was announced, the Breton Royalists decided to offer the Princess a gift, a product of local manufacture. They asked Chateaubriand to take it to Frohsdorf and present it in their name.

"I owe," he said to their delegate, M. Thibault de La Guichardière, "I owe Louise of France a wedding-visit; I shall be delighted to offer her a fine specimen of the work of our Breton looms."

He wrote on this subject, on the 9th of September 1845, to his sister, the Comtesse de Marigny[500], who was living at Dinan:

"I have received your letter, dear sister; it goes without saying
that I add my name to those of all the Bretons who wish to make
the Princess a present. You can therefore look upon me as a
subscriber for the sum which you think right to fix.... But be sure
to remember that I want to be mixed with the crowd and that I am
ambitious for no distinction but that of my eagerness and my zeal."

On the 15th of the same month, he wrote again to his sister:

"If I am specially charged, by a certain number of Bretons, to be
the bearer of their respects, that is all that I want I shall go
at my own expense. I know the young Princess; she will receive me
well, wherever she may be. I would rather that she were already
in Italy. If we are to believe the newspapers, she is already in
Venice; but the place does not matter.... You can put me down for
100 francs; once more, the amount makes no difference: it is enough
to know that I am commissioned to take a Breton subscription to
the daughter of the Duc de Berry; the choice is everything....
Your canton is more than I need to authorize me to go to Madame la
Princesse de Lucques, whose brother, moreover, has invited me to
go to present my compliments to him next spring."

Shortly before his death, Chateaubriand was anxious to give Henry of France a last proof of his fidelity. By a disposition "outside his will," a disposition specially recommended to his family, of which a duplicate was forwarded to the Comte de Chambord, he gave the latter his little collection of choice books, some of them "annotated," those which he was "re-reading," he said, in order to serve for the Prince's "leisure" and instruction.

Until the end, therefore, to use the very true expression of M. Charles de Lacombe, "his royalist flame, kept alive by honour, did not cease to burn, under an appearance of scepticism, in that disabused heart[501]."

And, in the same way, the Christian remained faithful. A whole volume has been written recently on the _Sincérité religieuse de Chateaubriand._[502] This was, perhaps, a good subject for a thesis; it seems to me, however, that the demonstration did not require to be made: one does not demonstrate evidence. For the rest, I have nothing to speak of here except the last years of the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_, those which go from 1841 to 1848.

In a letter to his friend Hyde de Neuville, on the 14th of June 1841, Chateaubriand wrote:

"I admire you from the bottom of my heart; you interest yourself in
everything; I no longer interest myself in anything; my courage is
not used up; but it is overcome by disgust. I no longer think of
anything but of dying a Christian, and I hope that the good Père
Sequin, old though he be, will have strength enough to raise his
hand to cleanse me and send me to God[503]."

In the month of March 1842, speaking of the recent death of Théodore Jouffroy[504], one of the professors of the Royal College of Marseilles, M. Lafaye[505], said to his pupils:

"Jouffroy, the sceptic, sent for a confessor, and no one can give the name of the confessor of the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._"

These words created some stir, and M. Lafaye, fearing lest he should be dismissed, begged the Baron de Flotte[506], a friend and co-religionist of Chateaubriand, to write to the latter asking him to intercede on his behalf with M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction. Chateaubriand replied:

"Thank God, monsieur, I neither have nor can have any credit with
the present Government. At the time when I possessed some political
power, I do not remember ever employing it except for the benefit
of persons who might be oppressed. M. Lafaye has not offended me
in the least; but, if he were molested on my account, I would ask
them to leave him in peace. I no longer occupy myself with what
goes on in society. My part is played, monsieur. I live far from
the world, and I shall be forgiven, I hope, because of my great
age, for having a confessor. It is M. l'Abbé Sequin, a priest at
Saint-Sulpice. When one has lived many days, one must needs accuse
one's self of many faults."

He rigorously observed the rules of the Church on fasting and abstinence, often even, in his practice, going beyond the limits prescribed by health. I make the following ex-tract from a letter which Victor de Laprade[507] wrote me, on the 12th of August 1870:

"To those who are inclined to doubt the firmness of his Christian
faith, you can tell this detail, which was given me by a Protestant
lady who was for a long time his neighbour and who still lives
in the house in which he died at No. 120, Rue du Bac. Madame
Mohl[508] was very intimate with Madame de Chateaubriand, who did
not go out and saw hardly any one. The wife of that truly great
man used often to lament to her neighbour about the difficulty
which she had to prevent her husband from following with the most
scrupulous strictness the rules for Lent and the other seasons of
fasting and abstinence. Chateaubriand had at that time reached
the age at which the Church dispenses us from fasting, and his
health suffered greatly from these austerities. He practised them,
nevertheless, with his Breton stubbornness, and it needed all his
wife's entreaties to make him give way sometimes. This was not
done for the world nor for the sake of 'posing,' as one would say
nowadays. Madame de Chateaubriand and her confidant were the only
witnesses, and I am perhaps the only one to know of it to-day. Do
you, who are young, keep and hand down this recollection of the
author of the _Génie du Christianisme._

"I like indulging in this old man's gossip; but it is only thus
that traditions are preserved. I have known a whole vanished world.
There are hardly any people left who have seen Chateaubriand
close. There are only two of us now at the French Academy who have
seen Madame Récamier's _salon_: M. le Duc de Noailles and myself.
Outside the Academy, I know only Madame Lenormant and Madame Mohl
who have lived in that illustrious intimacy."

In his conversations, as in his letters, Victor de Laprade loved
to call up before my eyes those vanished days, those figures
now extinguished. He used frequently to describe to me M. de
Chateaubriand's punctual regularity. The great writer used to
arrive at Madame Récamier's every day at half-past two; they took
tea together and spent an hour in private chat. Then the door would
open for visitors; the worthy Ballanche came first; after him, a
wave of more or less numerous, more or less varied, more or less
animated comers and goers, amid whom was the group of persons
accustomed to see one another daily and, as Ballanche said, to
"gravitate towards the centre" of the Abbaye-aux-Bois[509].

While the author of _Antigone_ and _Orphèe_, lively, smiling,
often flung some light-hearted jest into the midst of the most
serious conversations and sometimes even tried to point a pun, the
author of _René_ usually stayed till six o'clock, but in an almost
absolute silence. Seated in one of the corners of the chimney,
opposite Madame Récamier, he leant upon his cane, listened to
everything with interest and sometimes replied by means of an
ironical and disheartened question.

Because he has, in many places in his Memoirs, spoken of the
strength of the democratic current, some have thought themselves
authorized to turn him into a deserter from Royalism, hailing in
the triumph of Democracy the realization of his supreme hopes.
This is just contrary to the truth. That France was going towards
Democracy he saw and proclaimed aloud; but, far from rejoicing in
this new revolution, or looking upon it in the light of a progress
for humanity or a happiness for France, he saw in Democracy the
worst of governments, _omnium deterrimum_, to use Bellarmine's
strong expression. One day, at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, Laprade,
who, at that time, was an ingenuous person, thought he might
confess before the great poet his juvenile faith in the future of
Democracy, of a Christian Democracy which would fulfil all the
promises of the Divine Law-giver. Chateaubriand received these
enthusiastic confidences with his melancholy smile; and then,
after saying that he believed the fall of the Throne of July to
be near at hand and the advent of Democracy to be inevitable, he
began to sketch in broad lines that future society which would be
the offspring of a democracy without religion or ideals. The more
he spoke, the more did the singer of _Psyché_ see his beautiful
illusions fade away. The New Jerusalem of which he had dreamt so
long crumbled to the noise of that great word, as the walls of
Jericho fell to the sound of the trumpet. Instead of the promised
land, a riotous arena, stained with blood by the struggle of
appetites and covetousness; and, at the furthermost point of the
horizon, at the end of the journey, rest in the stupidity of a
semi-Barbarism, of vast pastures in which human herds browzed
on thick grass, with lowered heads, without ever looking at the
sky[510].

On the subject of the dangers and disgraces which the democratic
system was preparing for France, he spoke the strongest and most
contemptuous words at every juncture. M. de Marcellus tells us how,
in 1844, on a day when they were taking a little stroll together in
his garden in the Rue du Bac, Chateaubriand said:

"The stream of the Monarchy disappeared in blood at the end of
the last century. We have been carried away by the currents of
Democracy, and have only a few times halted on the mud of the foul
places. But the torrent will submerge us and it is all up, in
France, with true political liberty and the dignity of man[511]."

On the 16th of August 1846, driving in the Champ de Mars, he was trying to alight from his carriage, when his foot slipped and he broke his collar-bone. This accident marked a new stage in his physical decay; from that time, he no longer walked. When he came to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, his footman and Madame Récamier's carried him from his carriage to the door of the drawing-room; he was then put into an arm-chair and rolled to the chimney-corner. This happened in the presence of Madame Récamier only, and the visitors who were admitted after tea found M. de Chateaubriand settled in his place; but, when leaving, he had to be moved before the strangers present. They pretended in vain to notice nothing; it was nevertheless a cruel torture to the old man that his infirmities should be seen[512].

The hour was now near at which death was to close that _salon_ in the Abbaye-aux-Bois on which the shades of night were already falling:

Majoresque cadunt celsis de montibus umbræ.

Madame de Chateaubriand was the first one struck. She softly fell
asleep in the Lord on the 9th of February 1847; Ballanche followed:
on the 12th of June 1847, he expired with the calmness of a sage
and the resignation of a saint, gentle towards death as he had
been towards life. Madame Récamier, who had not left her post by
his death-bed, thanks to the tears which she there shed ended by
compromising

her sight, which had been growing more and more weak. She was
threatened with complete blindness; it was then that Chateaubriand
offered to consummate his friendship by asking her to share his
name. She refused that honour and, in doing so, was prompted by the
noblest and nicest scruples.

He was to precede her to the grave[513]. In the month of June 1848,
at the very moment when the cannon of civil war was thundering in
the streets of the capital[514], he took to his bed never to rise
again. He was given the Last Sacraments on the 2nd of July. He
received the Viaticum "not only in full and perfect consciousness,
but also with a profound sense of faith and humility[515]."

The next day, he dictated the following lines to his nephew:

"I declare before God that I retract all that my writings may
contain that is contrary to faith, morals and, generally, to the
principles preservative of goodness.

"PARIS, 3 _July_1848.

"Signed for my uncle François de Chateaubriand, whose hand was
unable to sign, and in conformity with the wish which he expressed
to me.

"Geoffroy-Louis de CHATEAUBRIAND."

When this declaration was written, the dying man made them read it out to him; next, he insisted on reading it with his own eyes and then, calmly and with a peaceful mind, the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ awaited the hour at which he was to appear before God. He drew his last breath on Tuesday the 4th of July. Only four persons were present: his spiritual director, the Abbé Deguerry[516], Rector of Saint-Eustache; his nephew; a sister of Charity; and Madame Récamier[517].

In a letter to the _Journal des Débats_, the Abbé Deguerry, the future martyr of the Commune, describes the great writer's last moments in these words:

"PARIS, 4 _July_ 1848.

"SIR,

"France has lost one of her noblest children.

"M. de Chateaubriand died this morning at a quarter past eight. We
have gathered his last breath. He drew it in full consciousness.
So beautiful an intellect was bound to prevail over death and to
preserve a visible freedom in its embrace.

"The death of Madame de Chateaubriand, which happened last year,
struck M. de Chateaubriand so hard that he said to us at the time,
laying his hand upon his breast:

"'I have this moment felt life struck and withered at its source;
it is now but a question of a few months.'

"The death of M. Ballanche, which followed only too soon after, was
the last blow for his old and illustrious friend. Since then, M. de
Chateaubriand seemed no longer to be sinking, but rather rushing to
the grave.

"A few moments before his death, M. de Chateaubriand, who had
received the Last Sacraments on Sunday last, once more pressed his
lips to the cross with the emotion of a lively faith and a firm
confidence. One of the sayings that he repeated most frequently
during his last years was that the social problems that are
harassing the nations to-day can never be resolved without the
Gospel, without the spirit of Christ, whose doctrines and examples
have called down a curse upon selfishness, that canker of all
concord. Wherefore M. de Chateaubriand hailed Christ as the Saviour
of the World from the social point of view and he loved to call Him
his King as well as his God.

"A priest, a sister of Charity knelt at the foot of M. de
Chateaubriand's bed at the moment of his death. It was amid
prayers and tears of that nature that the author of the _Génie du
Christianisme_ was to deliver his soul into the hands of God.

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"DEGUERRY,

"Rector of Saint-Eustache[518]."

The Comte de Chambord, on the occasion of this death, wrote the following letter:

"Your letter, monsieur, was the first to bring me the news of the
death of M. de Chateaubriand. I had in him a sincere friend, a
faithful counsellor, whose opinions I was happy to receive, whose
generous thoughts I was glad to search, in my exile. For several
months I had grieved at seeing that fine genius approach the end
of his career; this great loss is even more painful to me at the
present moment, when my heart has so much to weep for in the
sorrows of my country.

"How many misfortunes have I not to deplore! Those terrible
battles which have stained the capital with blood; the death of
so many honourable and distinguished men in the National Guard
and the Army; the martyrdom of the Archbishop of Paris[519]; the
wretchedness of the poor people; the ruin of our manufactures; the
alarms of all France! I pray to God to stay their course.

"May the spectacle of these calamities and the dread of the evils
that threaten the future not carry away men's minds from the great
principles of justice and public liberty which in these days, more
than ever, the friends of nations and kings ought to defend and
maintain.

"I renew, monsieur, the assurance of my very sincere and constant
affection.

"HENRY.

"15 _July_ 1848."

On Saturday, the 8th of July, a funeral service was celebrated in the church of the Foreign Missions, in the Rue du Bac, quite close to the house of the deceased; the body was next taken down into the vaults of the chapel, to be removed, from there, to Saint-Malo. The solemn obsequies took place in that town on the 18th of July. The Mass was celebrated by the Rector of Combourg. At the Elevation, by a touching inspiration, the musicians played the melody to which Chateaubriand wrote his well-known lines:

Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance[520]!

After the Mass, the funeral procession took its way between the ramparts and the sea towards the isle of the Grand-Bé. Two long rows of surpliced priests wound along the beach. The flags of the national guards who had come from the different towns of Brittany waved in the wind; the helmets gleamed in the sun. The cannon thundered at intervals. An innumerable crowd covered the ramparts of Saint-Malo, which rise so formidably above the perpendicular rocks and the sea. All the reefs, all the rocks bore human figures; boats dressed with mourning flags were laden with spectators. At the foot of the Grand-Bé, the coffin was shouldered by sailors and carried to the top, in the midst of a squall that resembled a storm: a last caress which the Ocean gave him who so much loved the noise of the waves and the winds. Then, suddenly, there was a great calm, and the coffin was solemnly laid on the rock which is to guard it for ever. The last prayers of the Church were recited by the Rector of Saint-Malo and holy water sprinkled on the bier.

Brittany and Religion gave the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ a magnificent funeral. For half a century, he has slept, beside the waves, in his granite sepulchre, under a stone surrounded by a little Gothic iron railing and surmounted by a cross. For the rest, no inscription, no name, no date. He had asked that this might be so, in his letter of 1831 to the Mayor of Saint-Malo:

"The cross," he wrote, "will tell that the man resting at its feet
was a Christian; that will be enough for my memory."