Chapter XVII: Appendix: IV

THE TRANSLATOR'S SECOND NOTE

When, eighteen months ago, I wrote my Note to the first volume of this version of the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe_, I neglected to add to my list of omissions from the original work three several items which I have since felt justified in disregarding. My neglect must be ascribed to the fact that, at that time, the last volume of M. Biré's edition was not yet in my hands; and that these three items form the _Supplément à mes Mémoires_ which occurs at the end of the work and which had escaped my notice. The reader should, therefore, understand that, to the list of omissions on pages XV and XVI of Vol. I., must be added:

6. Chateaubriand's Life of his sister Julie de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Farcy. This is extracted, for the most part, from the Abbé Carron's _Vie des justes dans les plus hauts rangs de la Société_ and in no way affects the interest of the Memoirs.

7. A very long letter addressed by the Comte de La Ferronnays, French Minister to Russia, to the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Foreign Secretary, on the 14th of May 1824 and treating of contemporary politics.

8. The Genealogy of the Family of Chateaubriand, which fills 122 pages of the first edition and is not of sufficient general interest to be included in this translation. I can, however, refer the curious to the very full account of the Chateaubriand Family in M. René Kerviler's _Essai d'une bio-bibliographie de Chateaubriand et de sa famille_ (Vannes: 1895).

M. Louis Cahen, of Paris, who read and collated the greater part of the proofs of the first two volumes, died before those volumes were published and before he could read the tribute which I paid to his kindness. He was a man of leisure and of great intelligence, and he made it a labour of love to compare the two versions sentence for sentence and line for line. I wish also gratefully to acknowledge the assistance which I have received in the translation of many technical expressions from Mr. Oswald Barron, of the Society of Antiquaries; from Mr. W. B. Campbell and Mr. C. H. Swanton of the English Bar; from Mr. Edgar Jepson, the author of many delightful novels; from Mr. F. Norreys Connell, who is as able a military expert as he is a diverting story-writer; from "Snaffle," most accurate of sporting writers; and from more than one of the Jesuit Fathers at Farm street. But I have not consulted these gentlemen invariables; and, if any mistakes are found to occur, those mistakes are mine, not theirs.

No book of reference that I have consulted has been of such constant daily use to me as the _Century Cyclopædia of Names_, published in this country by Mr. Unwin; this and my old Bouillet have reduced my necessary visits to the British Museum to not more than two a month during the two years and a half for which I have been engaged on the translation. At the Museum, over and above the splendid French biographical dictionaries and the ever-ready Larousse, I have found the _Dictionary of National Biography_ of some service; but it did not tell me who "Master Bernard" was, the "blind poet," to whom Henry VII. gave "100 shillings" (_cf._ Vol. V, p. 351). This disappointed me; but the dictionary sets no great store by the national poets: it has no biography of Ernest Dowson. In the matter of the European journeys I have found no gazetteer published so useful as Baedeker's admirable Guides, which are always accurate and have not that bad modern fault of too great conciseness which distinguishes so many of their rivals.

*

The reviewers of the first four volumes have done more than write universally favourable notices: not only have they appraised at its true worth what is, perhaps, the greatest prose work of, certainly, the greatest prose writer of nineteenth-century France; but they have spoken of the translation in generous terms of praise which I cannot feel that I have deserved. But I thank them for their kindness and I only wish that I could have earned it by devoting as long a time to the translating of these Memoirs as Chateaubriand did to the writing of them. That would have been thirty years: but I should have known scarce a dull moment.

A. T. DE M.

CHELSEA, _June_ 1902.

[456] September 1833.--T.

[457] Antoine Louis Marie Hennequin (1786-1840) was a distinguished member of the Paris Bar, who had made a great name for himself in political cases and invariably placed his talent at the disposal of the distressed Royalists. In 1830, he defended Peyronnet in his trial before the Chamber of Peers and, in 1832, assisted the Duchesse de Berry after her arrest.--T.

[458] Vittorio Fossombroni (1754-1844), Foreign Minister and Premier to the Grand-duke Ferdinand. He continued in office until his death at the advanced age of ninety years.--T.

[459] In the spring of 1832, when the cholera was raging most fiercely, the Duc de Noailles was introduced to Madame Récamier. He was at once adopted by her and M. de Chateaubriand. The latter prized very highly the judgment and political feeling, the reason and the upright character of the young peer of France, who had just made a brilliant first speech in the tribune of the Upper House, and who, seventeen years later, was to become his successor in the French Academy. In the month of September 1836, Chateaubriand went to spend a few days with M. de Noailles at the Château de Maintenon, and he wrote a chapter which he intended to form part of his Memoirs. This chapter, however, was not inserted there; the manuscript was given by the author to Madame Récamier. Madame Lenormant has published it in Vol. II. of her _Souvenirs et correspondence tirés des papiers de Madame Récamier_, pp. 453 _et seq._, and it is reprinted here as forming a natural and essential complement of the Memoirs.--B.

[460] I omit four lines of verse.--T.

[461] Bianca Capello, Grand-duchess of Tuscany (_circa_ 1548-1587), was originally an Italian adventuress, the mistress of Francis de' Medici, Grand-duke of Tuscany, whom she married, in 1578, when he became a widower. She was recognised as Grand-duchess in 1579.

[462] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 120, n. 2.--T.

[463] _Cf._ Marot: _La Cimetière_; VIII.: _De Messire Jean Cotereau, chevalier, seigneur de Maintenon_; IX.: _De luy mesmes_; and X.: _De luy encores._--T.

[464] Mademoiselle d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon's niece and adopted daughter, married the Duc de Noailles in 1698.--T.

[465] Adrien Maurice Maréchal Duc de Noailles (1678-1766), after distinguishing himself in the Spanish War of Succession, was created a grandee of Spain by Philip V. (1712) and a duke and peer of France by Louis XIV, became President of the Board of Finance under the Regency (1715) and did much to avert the disasters consequent upon John Law's "System." He returned to military service in 1733, won his marshal s baton at the Siege of Philippsburg and forced the the Germans to evacuate Worms in 1734. In 1743 he was defeated by George II. at Dettingen. In 1745, he was sent to Spain as Ambassador and, later, became a member of the Home Administration. The Maréchal Duc de Noailles is the ancestor of the two present branches of the Noailles family, the Ducs de Noailles and the Ducs de Mouchy, Princes de Poix.--T.

[466] The Aqueduct of Segovia, presumed to be of the time of Trajan, forms a great bridge, 937 feet long, and consisting of 320 arches in two tiers. The tallest arches, in the middle of the lower tier, are 102 feet high. It is built of large blocks of arches, somewhat rounded at the edges and assembled without cement.--T.

[467] _Cf._ COMTESSE DE LA FAYETTE: _Mémoires de la cour de France pour les années 1688 et 1689_; the opening pages:

"France was in a condition of perfect tranquillity; no arms were
known other than the implements necessary for removing the earth
and building. The troops were employed for these purposes, not
only with the intention of the Ancient Romans, which was only to
take them out of a state of idleness as injurious to themselves as
excessive work would be. But the object was also to make the River
Eure flow against its will, to make the fountains of Versailles
play continuously. They employed the troops on this prodigious
plan, so as to advance the King's pleasures by a few years, and
they did so at less expense and in less time than they had dared
hope.

"The quantity of sickness always caused by earth-work rendered the
troops in camp at Maintenon, where the chief part of the work lay,
incapable of performing any service. But this drawback did not seem
worthy of any attention in the midst of the tranquillity which we
were enjoying."--T.

[468] Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698), a tragic poet who has left a reputation as a ridiculous, vain and jealous author. Nevertheless, he achieved some success in his day and, when Racine produced his _Phèdre_, his envious rivals brought out Pradon's tragedy of the same name in opposition to the great poet's masterpiece (1677). A few days sufficed to restore the two plays to their relative places in the judgment of the public. Besides several other tragedies, Pradon wrote a comedy directed against Racine and entitled the _Jugement d'Apollon sur Phèdre_ and a pamphlet against Boileau entitled the _Triomphe de Pradon_ (1684).--T.

[469] I omit ten lines quoted from Racine.--T.

[470] Charles d'Aubigné (1634-1703) answered his sister with a blasphemous phrase. He married, in 1678, Mademoiselle Geneviève Piètre and was the father of the Mademoiselle d'Aubigné who married the Duc de Noailles in 1698, receiving the estates of Maintenon as her marriage-portion.--T.

[471] Constant d'Aubigné (_d. circa_ 1645), second son of Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné, the Calvinist favourite of Henry IV.--T.

[472] Paul Scarron (1610-1660), the burlesque author, married Mademoiselle d'Aubigné in 1652, when she was only seventeen years of age. Louis XIV. gave her the domain of Maintenon in 1674 and erected it into a marquisate for her.--T.

[473] The reproach which M. de Chateaubriand, following the example of so many others, here levels against Madame de Maintenon has ceased to bear upon the memory of that illustrious woman since the publication of the Marquis de Dangeau's _Relation de la dernière maladie de Louis XIV.--Note by Madame Lenormant._

[474] Louis Dauphin of France (1661-1711), known as the Great Dauphin, and Louis Duc de Bourgogne (1682-1712), his son, who became Dauphin, for one year, on his father's death, predeceased Louis XIV., their father and grandfather, who was succeeded, in 1715, by his great-grandson, Louis XV.--T.

[475] André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the great French architect and landscape-gardener, designed not only the gardens at Versailles and most of the other French royal palaces, but laid out Kensington Gardens, St. James's Park and Greenwich Park in England and a number of the most celebrated gardens in Rome. Louis XIV. granted him letters of nobility in 1675.--T.

[476] Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), known in France as the "Father of Agriculture," was summoned to Paris by Henry IV. and introduced various improvements into the royal domains. _Inter alia_, he imported the silk-industry into France and planted fifteen thousand white mulberry-trees in the Tuileries Gardens.--T.

[477] Louis XV. used part of the materials of the Maintenon Aqueduct to construct a _château_ for Madame de Pompadour, which has since been demolished.--T.

[478] Paul Duc de Noailles (1802-1885) took his scat in the Upper House in 1827. In 1830, he took the oath to Louis-Philippe, but employed all his oratorical power in favour of the alleviation of the laws against the exiled Bourbons of the Elder Branch and kindred subjects. He retired into private life after the Revolution of 1848. In 1849, he was elected to the French Academy on the strength of some historical works of no particular merit and of not the slightest originality. The Duc de Noailles was Ambassador to St. Petersburg for two or three months from May to July 1871.--T.

[479] Langhome's PLUTARCH: _Julius Cæsar._--T.

[480] Mademoiselle de Beauvilliers Saint-Aignan, later Princesse de Chalais-Périgord (_vide infra_, p. 245).--T.

[481] The distance from Rambouillet to Maintenon is about 13 miles.--T.

[482] Alice de Rochechouart-Mortemart, Duchesse de Noailles (1800-1887), married to the Duc de Noailles in 1823.--T.

[483] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 153.--T.

[484] Paul Duc de Beauvilliers (1648-1714), a soldier and statesman of austere virtue, was, in 1685, appointed President of the Board of Finance and governor to the Duc de Bourgogne, Louis XIV.'s grandson, and his brothers, the Duc d'Anjou, afterwards Philip V. King of Spain, and Charles Duc de Berry. Beauvilliers took Fénelon to assist him and the two became very firm friends. He survived the death of the Duc de Bourgogne by only two years.--T.

[485] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 71-72. The "books" are numbered differently in the original edition of the Memoirs.--T.

[486] I omit five lines of verse from La Fontaine on Madame de Montespan.--T.

[487] Madame de Montespan was a Mademoiselle de Rochechouart de Mortemart (_Cf._ Vol. I., p. 103, n. 1).-T.

[488] Jacques Duc de FitzJames (1799-1846).--T.

[489] François Christophe Edmond Kellermann, Duc de Valmy (1802-1868), grandson of Marshal Kellermann, first Duc de Valmy, shortly after the Revolution of July became a fervent Legitimist. He resigned his seat in the Chamber of Deputies, after his visit to Belgrave Square, and was re-elected; but he retired from political life entirely in 1846. Like the Duc de Noailles and the other Legitimists, Valmy was opposed to Louis-Philippe's English Alliance and would have preferred an alliance with Russia. Those who have read the Memoirs carefully will entertain little doubt that these were also the views of Chateaubriand himself.--T.

[490] Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé (1626-1700), the great reformer of the Trappist Order. Chateaubriand's Life of Rancé appeared in 1844.--T.

[491] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 189 and Vol. II., p. 72.--T.

[492] _Cf._ Vol. IV., Book IX.-T.

[493] _Cf._ Vol. II., pp. 86 _et seq._--T.

[494] _Cf._ Vol. I., p. 187.--T.

[495] _Ibid._ pp. 188-189.--T.

[496] _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 69.--T.

[497] I find that Anne Louise de Chateaubriand, eldest daughter of Geoffroy Louis Comte de Chateaubriand, became Baronne de Baudry (not Baulny).--T.

[498] Later Charles III. Duke of Parma (1823-1854), assassinated on the 27th of March 1854, father to the present Duke. (_Cf._ Vol. IV., p. 224, n. 2.)--T.

[499] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 364.--T.

[500] Marie Anne Françoise de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Marigny (1760-1860), who lived to the age of over a hundred years (_Cf._ Vol. I., _passim_).--T.

[501] LACOMBE: _Vie de Berryer_, VOL. II., P. 401.--B.

[502] By the Abbé Georges Bertram, professor of the Catholic Institute of Paris (Paris: 1899; one vol. 8vo).--B.

[503] _Mémoires et souvenirs du baron Hyde de Neuville_, VOL. III., P. 579.--B.

[504] Théodore Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842), a noted philosophical writer, a professor at several institutions and librarian of the University of Paris from 1838. He translated Dugal Stewart's _Outlines of Moral Philosophy_ (1826) and the Complete Works of Thomas Reid (1824-1836) and wrote a _Cours de droit naturel_ (1834-1842), a _Cours d'esthétique_ (posthumous: 1843), _Mélanges philosophiques_ (1833) and _Nouveaux mélanges_ (published after his death).-T.

[505] Pierre Benjamin Lafaye (1808-1867), a distinguished philologist, was appointed professor of philosophy at the Royal College of Marseilles in 1837 and, in 1849, was transferred to Aix. In 1858, he published his _Dictionnaire des synonymes de la langue française_, the finest work of this class that exists in any language.--T.

[506] Étienne Gaston Baron de Flotte (1805-1882), a poet and man of letters of some merit and an ardent Catholic and Legitimist.--T.

[507] Pierre Marin Victor Richard de Laprade (1812-1885) had published _Parfums de Madeleine_ (1839), the _Colère de Jésus_ (1840), _Psyché_, (1841) and _Odes et poèmes_ (1844) before the date of Chateaubriand's death. None of his poems were of great value; but he was elected to the French Academy in 1858. He sat as a silent member (of the Right) of the National Assembly from 1871 to 1873.--T.

[508] Madame Mohl was the wife of Julius von Mohl (1800-1876), the German-French Orientalist, who had been appointed Professor of Persian to the Collège de France in 1845.--T.

We read in Vol. II., p. 564, of the _Souvenirs et correspondance de Madame Récamier_:

"An amiable, witty and kind-hearted Englishwoman, Madame Mohl,
lived on the floor above, in the same house and on the same
stair-case as M. de Chateaubriand."--B.

[509] MADAME LENORMANT: _Souvenirs et correspondance tirés des papiers de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p. 543.--B.

[510] _Cf._ Victor de Laprade's article, _Académie de Lyon. Concours pour l'éloge de Madame Récamier_, in the _Revue de Lyon_ for 1849, Vol. I., p. 65.--B.

[511] _Chataubriand et son temps_, p. 290.--B.

[512] _Souvenirs et correspondance de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p. 554.--B.

[513] Madame Récamier died on the 11th of May 1849, in the seventy-third year of her age.--T.

[514] "It was in the midst of the Days of June that the death occurred of a man who, perhaps, of all men of our day best preserved the spirit of the old races: M. de Chateaubriand, with whom I was connected by so many family ties and childish recollections. He had long since fallen into a sort of speechless stupor, which made one sometimes believe that his intelligence was extinguished. Nevertheless, while in this condition, he heard a rumour of the Revolution of February and desired to be told what was happening. They informed him that Louis-Philippe's Government had been overthrown. He said, 'Well done!' and nothing more. Four months later, the din of the Days of June reached his ears, and again he asked what that noise was. They answered that people were fighting in Paris, and that it was the sound of cannon. Thereupon he made vain efforts to rise, saying, 'I want to go to it,' and was then silent, this time for ever; for he died the next day." (_Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville_, p. 230).--T.

[515] _Souvenirs et correspondance de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II., p. 563.--B.

[516] Abbé Gaspard Deguerry (1797-1871), Rector of Saint-Eustache from 1845 to 1849 and of the Madeleine to his death, in 1871, when he was shot as a hostage under the Commune. A monument has since been erected to the Abbé Deguerry in the crypt of the Madeleine.--T.

[517] It has often been said that Béranger was present at the death; but this is not so.--B.

[518] _Journal des Débats_, 5 July 1848.--B.

[519] Denis Auguste Affre (1793-1848), Archbishop of Paris, was appointed Co-adjutor of Strasburg, in 1839, and Archbishop of Paris, in succession to Monseigneur de Quélen, in 1840. He was mortally wounded during the Insurrection of 1848, while admonishing the insurgents, at the barricades in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, on the 25th of June. Monseigneur Affre died two days later, repeating Christ's words:

"The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.--T."

[520]

"I know no sweeter place on earth Than the fair spot that gave me birth!"--T.