Chapter IV: Book V (2)

M. le Duc de Blacas, in Prague, had announced to me the formation of a council of which I was to be the head, with M. the Chancellor[47] and M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg: I was going to become alone (still according to M. le Duc) the Council of Charles X., absent on some business. I was shown a plan: the machinery was very complicated; M. de Blacas' work retained a few arrangements made by the Duchesse de Berry, when she, on her side, had laid claim to organizing the State by coming madly, but bravely, to place herself at the head of her Kingdom _in partibus._ The ideas of that adventurous woman were not at all lacking in good sense: she had divided France into four great military governments, chosen the commanders, appointed the officers, embodied the soldiers and, without troubling whether all her people had joined the flag, she would herself have hastened to carry it; she did not doubt but that she would find in the fields St. Martin's[48] cope or the Oriflamme, Galaor[49] or Bayard. Blows of battle-axes and bullets from fire-locks, retreats into the forests, perils in the homes of a few faithful friends, caves, castles, cottages, escalades: all this suited and delighted Madame. There is something eccentric, original and captivating in her character that will make her live. The future will take her as it pleases, in spite of correct persons and sober-minded cowards.

[Sidenote: My plans for Henry V.]

I should have brought to the Bourbons, if they had sent for me, the popularity which I enjoyed by my two-fold claim as a writer and a statesman. I could have no doubt of that popularity, for I had received the confidences of every shade of opinion. People had not confined themselves to generalities; each had pointed out to me what he desired in case of eventualities; many had confessed their genius to me and rendered obvious to me the place for which they were eminently fitted. Everybody, friends and enemies alike, sent me to be about the person of the Duc de Bordeaux. By the different combinations of my opinions and my fortunes, by the ravages of death, which had successively carried away the men of my generation, I seemed to be the only one left for the choice of the Royal Family.

I might feel tempted by the part awarded to me: there was something calculated to flatter my vanity, as an unknown servant and rejected by the Bourbons, in the idea of being the support of their House; of holding out my hand to Philip Augustus, St. Louis, Charles V., Louis XII., Francis I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. in their tombs; of protecting with my feeble renown the blood, the crown and the shades of so many great men: I alone against faithless France and dishonoured Europe.

But to arrive at that what should I have had to do? What the commonest mind would have done: fawn upon the Court of Prague, overcome its antipathies, conceal my ideas from it until I was in a position to develop them.

And, certainly, those ideas went far: if I had been the young Prince's governor, I should have striven to gain his confidence. If he had recovered his crown, I should have advised him to wear it only to lay it aside at the proper time. I would have liked to see the Capets disappear in a manner worthy of their greatness. What a fine, what an illustrious day that would have been when, after setting up religion, perfecting the Constitution of the State, enlarging the rights of citizens, breaking the last fetters of the press, emancipating the commons, destroying monopoly, striking the balance between wages and labour, consolidating property and restricting its abuses, reviving industry, reducing taxation, re-establishing our honour among the nations, extending our frontiers and thus securing our independence against the foreigner; when, after accomplishing all these things, my pupil would have said to the nation solemnly called together:

"Frenchmen, your education is finished with mine. My first ancestor, Robert the Strong[50], died for you, and my father asked for mercy for the man who took his life. My sires raised and formed France through barbarism; now the march of events, the progress of civilization compel you to dispense with a protector. I am descending the throne; I confirm all the benefits of my fathers, while releasing you from your oaths to the Monarchy."

Say if that end would not have surpassed all that is most wonderful in that dynasty! Say if ever a magnificent enough temple could have been raised to its memory! Compare that end with that which the decrepit sons of Henry IV. would make, stubbornly pinning themselves to a throne swamped by democracy, trying to preserve their power with the aid of measures of police, measures of violence, methods of corruption, and dragging on for a few short moments a degraded existence!

"Let them make my brother King," said the child Louis XIII., after the death of Henry IV., "I do not want to be King."

Henry V. has no other brother than his people: let him make it King.

To arrive at this resolution, chimerical though it may seem, one would have to feel the greatness of one's race, not because one was descended from an old stock, but because one was the heir of men through whom France became powerful, enlightened and civilized.

Now, as I have just said, the way to be called upon to set to work on that plan would have been to wheedle the weaknesses of Prague, to raise magpies with the child of the throne like Luynes[51], to flatter Concini[52] like Richelieu. I had begun well at Carlsbad; a little note of submission and gossip would have forwarded my business. To bury myself alive in Prague was no easy matter, it is true; for not only should I have had to overcome the repugnance of the Royal Family, but the hatred of the foreigners as well. My ideas are odious to the Cabinets; they know that I detest the Treaties of Vienna, that I would make war at any price to give France the necessary frontiers and to restore the balance of power in Europe.

However, by giving signs of repentance, by weeping, by expiating my sins of national honour, by beating my breast, by admiring for my penance the genius of the blockheads who govern the world, I might perhaps have been able to crawl into the Baron de Damas' place; then, suddenly standing erect, I should have flung away my crutches.

[Sidenote: Wherein I fail.]

But, alas, where is my ambition? Where is my faculty of dissimulation? Where is my art of enduring constraint and boredom? Where is my capacity for attaching importance to anything whatsoever? I took up my pen two or three times, I began to draft two or three letters in obedience to Madame la Dauphine, who had ordered me to write to her. Soon, revolting against myself, I wrote at one dash and after my own manner the letter which was to break my neck. I knew it quite well; I weighed the results quite well: it matters little. And to-day, now that the thing is done, I am delighted at having sent the whole business to the devil and flung my "governorship " out of so wide a window. I shall be told:

"Could you not have expressed the same truths by stating them less crudely?"

Yes, yes, by diluting, beating about the bush, employing honeyed words, bleating, quavering:

Son œil tout pénitent ne pleure qu'eau béniste[53].

I cannot do that.

Here is the letter, abridged, however, by almost half its length, which will make the hair of our drawing-room diplomatists rise up in dismay: the Duc de Choiseul was somewhat of my humour; therefore he spent the end of his end at Chanteloup:

"PARIS, _Rue d'Enfer_, 30 _June_ 1833.

"MADAME,

"The most precious moments of my long career are those which Madame
la Dauphine permitted me to spend with her. It was in a humble
house at Carlsbad that a Princess who is the object of universal
veneration deigned to speak to me with confidence. Heaven has laid
at the bottom of her soul a treasure of magnanimity and religion
which the prodigality of misfortune has not been able to dry up. I
had before me the daughter of Louis XVI. exiled anew; that orphan
of the Temple whom the Martyr-King pressed to his heart before
going to gather the palm! God's name is the only name that one can
pronounce when one comes to plunge one's self in contemplation of
the impenetrable counsels of His Providence.

"Praise is suspicious, when it is addressed to prosperity: with
the Dauphiness, admiration knows no embarrassment. I have said it,
Madame: your sorrows have attained so great a height, that they have
become one of the glories of the Revolution. I shall therefore,
once in my life, have met destinies so superior, so much apart,
that I can tell them, without fear of offending them or of being
misunderstood, what I think of the future state of society. One can
discuss the fate of empires with you, who would, without regretting
them, see pass at the feet of your virtue all those earthly
kingdoms, many of which have already flowed away at the feet of
your House.

"The catastrophes of which you have been the most illustrious
witness and the sublimest victim, great though they appeared to
be, are, nevertheless, but the particular accidents of the general
transformation which is being operated in the human race; the
reign of Napoleon, which shook the world, is but a link in the
revolutionary chain. We must start from this truth to understand
the possibilities of a third Restoration and what means that
Restoration possesses of being included in the plan of social
changes. If it did not enter into it as an homogeneous element, it
would inevitably be rejected by an order of things contrary to its
nature.

"Therefore, Madame, if I told you that the Legitimacy had a chance
of returning through the aristocracy of the nobles and clergy, with
their privileges; through the Court, with its distinctions; through
the Royalty, with its attractions, I should be deceiving you. The
Legitimacy, in France, is no longer a sentiment; it is a principle
in so far as it guarantees property and interests, rights and
liberties; but if it remained proved that the Legitimacy would
not defend or was powerless to protect that property and those
interests, those rights and those liberties, it would cease to be
even a principle. When any one puts forward that the Legitimacy
will necessarily come about, that it cannot be dispensed with, that
it is enough to wait, for France to come crying mercy to it on her
knees, he is putting forward an illusion. The Restoration may never
return, or may last for but a moment, if the Legitimacy seeks its
strength where it does not exist.

[Sidenote: My letter to the Dauphiness.]

"Yes, Madame, I say it sorrowfully, Henry V. might remain a foreign
and banished Prince: a young and new ruin of an edifice already
fallen, but, in short, a ruin. We old servants of the Legitimacy
will soon have spent the small stock of years that is left to us;
we shall shortly be resting in our graves, asleep with our old
ideas, like the ancient knights with their ancient suits of armour
into which rust and time have eaten, suits of armour which no
longer shape themselves to the figure nor adapt themselves to the
usages of the living.

"All that was militating, in 1789, for the preservation of the
old order of things, religion, laws, manners, customs, property,
classes, privileges, corporations, no longer exists. A general
ferment has become manifest; Europe is hardly safer than
ourselves; no form of society is entirely destroyed, none entirely
established; all is worn or new, or decrepit or not yet rooted; all
has the weakness of old age or childhood. The kingdoms that have
sprung from the territorial limitations drawn by the last treaties
are of yesterday; love of country has lost its force, because the
country is an uncertain and fleeting thing to populations sold
by auction, dealt in like second-hand furniture, now allotted to
hostile populations, now handed over to unknown masters. Thus
dug up, furrowed, tilled, the soil is prepared to receive the
democratic seed which the Days of July have ripened.

"The kings think that, by keeping sentry around their thrones,
they will stop the movements of intelligence; they imagine that,
by giving a description of the principles, they will have them
seized at the frontiers; they are persuaded that, by multiplying
customs-officers, gendarmes, police-spies, military commissions,
they will prevent them from circulating. But those ideas do not
travel on foot: they are in the air, they fly, we breathe them. The
absolute governments, which are establishing telegraphs, railways,
steam-boats and trying, at the same time, to keep men's minds on
the level of the political dogmas of the fourteenth century, are
inconsistent; at once progressive and reactionary, they are lost
in the confusion resulting from a contradiction of theory and
practice. It is impossible to separate the industrial principle
from the principle of liberty; one must needs stifle both or admit
both. Wherever the French language is understood, ideas come with
the passports of the age.

"You see, Madame, how essential it is that the starting-point
should be carefully chosen. The child of hope under your guard,
innocence taking refuge under your virtues and misfortunes as under
a royal canopy: I know no more imposing spectacle; if there be a
chance of success for the Legitimacy, it is there in its entirety.
The France of the future will be able to bow, without descending,
before the glory of the past, to stand in emotion before that
great apparition in her history represented by the daughter of
Louis XVI. leading the last of the Henrys by the hand. As the
Queen-protectress of the young Prince, you will exercise over the
nation the influence of the immense memories mingled in your august
person. Who will not feel an unaccustomed confidence revive within
him when the orphan of the Temple watches over the education of the
orphan of St. Louis?

"It is to be desired, Madame, that this education, directed by men
whose names are popular in France, should in a certain measure
become public. Louis XIV., who otherwise justifies the pride of his
motto[54], did a great injury to his House by isolating the Sons of
France behind the barriers of an Oriental education.

"The young Prince appeared to me to be gifted with a quick
intelligence. He will have to complete his studies by travels
among the nations of the Old and even of the New Continent, so as
to become acquainted with politics and to be alarmed at neither
institutions nor doctrines. If he could serve as a soldier in some
far-off foreign war, one ought not to dread to expose him. He has a
resolute air; he seems to have in his heart the blood of his father
and of his mother; but, if he could ever experience anything but
the sense of glory in danger, let him abdicate: without courage, in
France, there is no crown.

"Madame, on seeing me extend into a long future the thought of the
education of Henry V., you will naturally suppose that I do not
think him destined to ascend the throne so soon. I will endeavour
impartially to deduct the opposite reasons for hopes and fears.

"The Restoration may take place to-day, to-morrow. There is
something so sudden, so inconstant observable in the French
character, that a change is always probable; it is always safe
to wager a hundred to one, in France, that any particular thing
will not last: it is at the moment when the Government appears
most firmly seated that it falls. We have seen the nation worship
Bonaparte and detest him, abandon him, take him back, abandon him
again, forget him in his exile, raise altars to him after his
death, and then relapse from its enthusiasm. That fickle nation,
which never loved liberty save by fits and starts, but which ever
dotes on equality; that multiform nation was fanatical under
Henry IV., factious under Louis XIII., grave under Louis XIV.,
revolutionary under Louis XVI., gloomy under the Republic, warlike
under Bonaparte, constitutional under the Restoration: to-day it is
prostituting its liberties to the so-called Republican Monarchy,
perpetually varying its nature in the spirit of its leaders. Its
changefulness has increased since it has thrown off the habits of
the home and the yoke of religion.

[Sidenote: On the prospects.]

"Therefore, a chance may bring about the fall of the Government of
the 9th of August; but a chance may be delayed: an abortive child
has been born to us, but France is a sturdy mother; she may, with
the milk of her breast, be able to correct the vices of a depraved
paternity.

"Although the present royalty does not seem as though it were
likely to live, I continue to fear that it may live beyond the
limit which one might assign to it. Since forty years, all
governments have perished in France by their own fault alone. Louis
XVI. could have saved his crown and his life twenty times over;
the Republic died only of the excesses of its furies; Bonaparte
was able to establish his dynasty, yet flung himself down from the
height of his glory; but for the Ordinances of July, the Legitimist
Throne would still be standing. The head of the present Government
will make none of those mistakes that kill; his power will never
commit suicide; all his cleverness is employed exclusively for his
preservation: he is too intelligent to die by an act of folly nor
has he enough in him to be guilty of the mistakes of genius or
the weaknesses of honour or virtue. He has felt that he might be
destroyed by war: he will not make war; it matters little to him,
whether France be degraded in the eyes of foreigners: publicists
will prove to him that disgrace is industry and ignominy credit.

"The sham Legitimacy wants all that the Legitimacy wants, with
the exception of the Royal Person: it wants order; it can obtain
that through 'arbitrariness' more easily than the Legitimacy. To
perpetrate acts of despotism with words of liberty and pretended
royalist institutions, that is all that it wants; each accomplished
fact brings forth a recent right which combats an ancient right,
each hour commences a legality. Time has two powers: with one hand
it overthrows, with the other it builds up. Lastly, time acts
upon men's minds by the mere fact that it progresses; they sever
violently from those in power, attack them, sulk with them; then
lassitude supervenes; success reconciles people to its cause: soon
none remains outside, save a few lofty souls, whose perseverance
confounds those who have failed.

"Madame, this long statement obliges me to make a few explanations
to Your Royal Highness.

"If I had not raised a free voice in the day of fortune, I should
not have felt the courage to speak the truth in the time of
misfortune. I did not go to Prague of my own accord; I would not
have ventured to trouble you with my presence; the dangers of
devotion do not lie about your august person, they lie in France:
that is where I have sought them. Since the Days of July, I have
never ceased to fight for the legitimist cause. I was the first
to proclaim the kingship of Henry V. A jury of Frenchmen, which
acquitted me, left my proclamation in force. I long for nothing but
rest, the need of my years; yet I did not hesitate to sacrifice
it when the decrees extended and renewed the proscription of the
Royal Family. Offers were made to me to attach me to the Government
of Louis-Philippe: I had not earned that proof of good-will; I
showed how incompatible it was with my nature by claiming my share
in my old King's adversity. Alas, I had not brought about that
adversity and I had tried to prevent it! I am not recalling these
circumstances to give myself an importance or create for myself a
merit which I do not possess; I have done no more than my duty; I
am only explaining my position, in order to excuse the independence
of my language. Madame will pardon the frankness of a man who
would joyfully accept a scaffold to restore to her a throne.

"When I appeared before Your Majesty at Carlsbad, I may say that I
had not the happiness to be known to you. You had scarcely done me
the honour to address a few words to me in my life. You were able
to see, in our solitary conversations, that I was not the man that
had perhaps been described to you, that the independence of my mind
did not take away from the moderation of my character and, above
all, did not break the chains of my admiration and respect for the
illustrious daughter of my Kings.

[Sidenote: Of the Legitimate Monarchy.]

"I again beseech Your Majesty to consider that the order of the
truths developed in this letter, or rather in this memorandum,
is what constitutes my strength, if I have any; it is that which
enables me to reach men of different parties and bring them back to
the royalist cause. If I had rejected the opinions of the age, I
should have had no hold upon my time. I am seeking to rally round
the ancient throne those modern ideas which, from being hostile,
become friendly in passing through my loyalty. If the liberal
opinions which abound ceased to be diverted to the profit of the
reconstructed Legitimate Monarchy, Monarchical Europe would perish.
It is a fight to the death between the two principles, monarchical
and republican, if they remain distinct and separate: the
consecration of a single edifice built up again out of the various
materials of two edifices would belong to you, Madame, to you who
have been admitted into the highest as into the most mysterious of
initiations, undeserved misfortune, to you who are marked at the
altar with the blood of the spotless victim, to you who, in the
contemplation attendant upon a saintly austerity, would open with a
pure and blessed hand the portals of the new temple.

"Your sagacity, Madame, and your superior reason will throw light
upon and correct all that may be doubtful or erroneous in my
opinions touching the present state of France.

"My emotion, as I end this letter, passes all that I can say.

"And so the palace of the sovereigns of Bohemia is the Louvre of
Charles X. and of his pious and royal son! And so Hradschin is
young Henry's Pau Castle! And you, Madame: in what Versailles
do you live? With what can your piety, your greatnesses, your
sufferings be compared, if not with those of the women of the
House of David who wept at the foot of the Cross? May Your Majesty
see the Royalty of St Louis rise radiant from the tomb! May I
exclaim, recalling the century which bears the name of your
glorious ancestor; for, Madame, nothing becomes you, nothing is
contemporaneous with you but what is great and sacred:

O jour heureux pour moi!
De quelle ardeur j'irais reconnaître mon roi[55]!

"I am, Madame, with the most profound respect,

"Your Majesty's most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

After writing this letter, I resumed the habits of my life: I found my old priests again, the lonely corner in my garden, which seemed to me much finer than Count Chotek's garden, my Boulevard d'Enfer, my Cimetière de l'Ouest, my Memoirs reminding me of my past days and, above all, the select little society of the Abbaye-aux-Bois. The kindness of a serious friendship makes the thoughts abound; a few moments of the commerce of the soul suffice for the needs of my nature; I afterwards make up for this expenditure of intelligence by twenty-two hours of inaction and sleep.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 25 _August_ 1833.

While I was beginning to breathe, I saw one morning the traveller enter my house who had handed a packet from me to Madame la Duchesse de Berry at Palermo; he brought me this reply from the Princess:

[Sidenote: Letter from Madame de Berry.]

"NAPLES, 10 _August_ 1833.

"I have written you a line, monsieur le vicomte, to acknowledge
the receipt of your letter, wishing to have a safe opportunity of
speaking to you of my gratitude for what you have seen and done
in Prague. It seems to me that they _let you see very little_,
but enough, however, to enable you to judge that, despite the
_methods_ employed, the result, in so far as our dear child is
concerned, is not what one might fear. I am very glad to receive
this assurance from you; but I hear from Paris that M. Barrande has
been sent away. What is to be done in this? How I long to be at my
post!

"As to the requests which I asked you to make (and which were not
quite welcomed), they have proved by their action that they were no
better informed than I: for I was not in any need of what I asked,
having in no way lost my rights.

"I am going to ask your advice to reply to the solicitations which
I receive from all sides. You will make such use of what follows
as, in your wisdom, you think proper. Royalist France, the people
devoted to Henry V. look to his mother, now at last free, to issue
a proclamation.

"I left at Blaye a few lines which must be known to-day; they
expect more from me; they want to know the sad story of my
detention during seven months in that impenetrable fortress. It
ought to be made known in its fullest details; let the cause be
seen, in this story, of all the tears and griefs that have broken
my heart. Men will learn from it the moral tortures which I have
been made to suffer. Justice must be done in it to them to whom
it belongs; but also it must reveal the atrocious measures taken
against a defenseless woman, defenseless because she was always
refused a council, by a Government having her kinsman at its head,
in order to tear from me a secret which, in any case, could not
concern politics and the discovery of which ought not to change my
situation if I was an object of dread to the French Government,
which had the power of guarding me, but not the right, without a
trial which I claimed more than once.

"But my kinsman, the husband of my aunt, the head of a family
which, in spite of the general and so justly wide-spread opinion
against it, I had allowed to hope for the hand of my daughter,
Louis-Philippe in short, thinking me to be with child and unmarried
(which would have decided any other family to open the doors of
my prison), had every form of moral torture inflicted on me to
force me to take steps by means of which he expected to be able to
establish his niece's dishonour. For the rest, if I am bound to
explain myself positively as to my declarations and their motives,
without entering into any details as to my private life, for which
I am accountable to no one, I will say in all truth that they were
torn from me by my vexations, my moral tortures and the hope of
recovering my liberty.

"The bearer will give you details and tell you of the forced
uncertainty as to the moment of my journey and its destination,
which interfered with my wish to avail myself of your obliging
offer by inviting you to join me before I went to Prague, as I
have great need of your advice. To-day it would be too late, as I
wish to be with my children as soon as possible. But, as nothing
is certain in this world and as I am used to disappointments, if
my arrival in Prague should, _against my wish_, be delayed, I rely
surely upon seeing you at the place where I shall be obliged to
stop and will write to you from there; if, on the contrary, I reach
my son as soon as I hope, you know better than I if you ought to
come there. I can only assure you of the pleasure it would give me
to see you at all times and places.

"MARIE CAROLINE."

NAPLES, 18 _August_ 1833.

"Our friend has not been able to start yet and I have received news
of what is happening in Prague which is not of a nature calculated
to diminish my longing to go there, but which also makes the need
of your advice more urgent. If, therefore, you are able to proceed
to Venice without delay, you will find me there, or else letters
left at the post-office telling you where you can join me. I shall
travel part of the journey with some people for whom I entertain
feelings of great friendship and gratitude: M.[56] and Madame
de Bauffremont[57]. We often speak of you; their devotion to
myself and to our Henry makes them long to see you arrive. M. de
Mesnard[58] shares that longing."

Madame de Berry refers in her letter to a little manifesto[59] which was issued after she left Blaye and which was of no great value, because it said neither yes nor no. The letter, on the other hand, is curious as an historical document, since it reveals the feelings of the Princess towards her kinsmen-gaolers and points to the sufferings endured by her. Marie-Caroline's reflections are just; she expresses them with spirit and pride. Again, one likes to see that courageous and devoted mother, whether fettered or free, constantly occupied with the interests of her son. There, at least in that heart, are youth and life to be found. It cost me an effort once more to undertake a long journey; but I was too much touched by the confidence of that poor Princess to refuse to obey her wishes and to abandon her on the high-road. M. Jauge came to the assistance of my poverty, as he had done the first time.

I took the field again with a dozen volumes scattered around me. Now, while I was peregrinating _da capo_ in the Prince de Bénévent's calash, he was eating in London in the manger of his fifth master, in expectation of the accident which will send him, perhaps, to sleep at Westminster, among saints, kings and wise men: a burial to which his religion, fidelity and virtues have justly entitled him.

[1] This book was written on the road from Carlsbad to Paris, from the 1st to the 5th of June 1833, and in Paris, in the Rue d'Enfer, from the 6th of June to the 25th of August 1833.--T.

[2] The author addresses an imaginary Cynthia. Cynthia was one of the surnames of Diana, from Mount Cynthus, where she was born.--B.

[3] SCHILLER: _Wallenstein's Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.

[4] Max Piccolomini, son to Octavio Piccolomini, the famous Austrian general.--T.

[5] Thekla, Wallenstein's daughter.--T.

[6] _Wallenstein: Tod_, Act V. Sc. iii.--T.

[7] _Wallenstein's Tod_. Act V. Sc. v.--T.

[8]

"It is the knight of the Landes:
O unhappy knight!
Heard bells ring on every hand,
When crossing the waste at night."--T.

[9] VOLTAIRE: _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de Bareith_, 141-144:

"Lonely Sylvander, thou shalt sing no more
In this Art's palace, where thy voice did ban,
Loudly, the firm-set prejudice of yore
And made the world talk of the rights of man."--T.

[10] _Ode sur la mort de S. A. S. Mme. la princesse de Bareith_, 91-94:

"From philosophie heights, free from all strife,
Thy pity contemplated, with calm eyes,
The changing phantoms of the dreams of life:
So many a dream or plan in ruin lies."--T.

[11] Mathew Laensberg (_fl._ 17th Century) was supposed to be the author of the famous _Almanack de Liège_, called by his name and first published in 1636, containing prognostications in the manner of the modern _Zadkiel_ or _Old Moore._--T.

[12] The Comte de Toumon (_cf._ Vol. V., p. 258, n. 1) was appointed Intendant of Bayreuth by Napoleon before being moved to Rome, as Prefect, in 1809.--T.

[13] ARISTOPHANES.--_Author's Note._

[14] VOLTAIRE: _Stances à madame la marquise Du Châtelet_, 29-36:

"I followed her, but wept that now
I could not follow others as well."

The poet is able to continue the pursuit of friendship, but must abandon that of love.--T.

[15] Jean Louis Eugène Lerminier (1803-1857), a liberal professor and journalist. He had published, on the 15th of October 1832, an article in the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_, entitled, _De l'Opinion légitimiste: M. de Chateaubriand_, to which the author of the Memoirs alludes above.--B.

[16] BÉRANGER: _La Vivandière_, 1-7, not quite correctly quoted. In the original, the _vivandière_ is called "Catin:" Chateaubriand substitutes "Javotte," a favourite name for an inn-servant in France, and alters the last lines so as to avoid the rhyme to "Catin" at the end. To attempt a rough translation:

"I'm the vivandière so gay,
Javotte I'm called: that's handy;
I sell, I drink, I give away
My wine, my rum, my brandy.
I'm light of foot and I give a wink,
Chink chink, chink chink, chink chink, chink chink,
Clink, clink, chink."--T.

[17] Isabel, or Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (_d._ 1435), married in 1385 to Charles VI. She obtained the Regency when the King became demented in 1392, favoured the enemies of France and, in 1420, concluded the Treaty of Troyes, which placed the crown on the head of Henry V. of England.--T.

[18] _Cf._ Vol. III., p. 91, n. 3. Berthier was watching a Russian regiment pass under his windows, on its way to the French frontier, when he was seized with a sudden fit of madness and jumped from the balcony to the pavement below (1 June 1815).--T.

[19] _Andria_, Act. I. Sc. i. 44.45.--T.

[20] Ferdinand III. Archduke of Austria, Grand-duke of Tuscany, later Grand-duke of Würzburg (1769-1824), brother of the Emperor Francis I. He was Grand-duke of Tuscany from 1790, but lost his States in 1796. In 1805, the Bishopric of Würzburg was secularized and turned into a grand-duchy, and the Archduke Ferdinand became its titulary. On the fall of the Empire, Tuscany was restored to Austria and Ferdinand reinstated. At the same time (1814), Würzburg was restored to Bavaria.--B.

[21] These lines are a translation from the χελιδονίζειν, recorded by Athenæus.--B.

[22] Chateaubriand writes, when describing his arrival at Jaffa, in the _Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem_:

"The wind fell, at mid-day. The calm continued for the rest of that
day and was prolonged till the 29th [of September 1806]. We were
boarded by three new passengers: two wagtails and a swallow."

And then he refers again to the swallows at Combourg in his childhood and to the swallows in America which, in their turn, reminded him of the Combourg swallows.--B.

[23] In the _Congrès de Vérone_ (Vol. II., p. 389), Chateaubriand, writing of his dismissal from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (6 June 1824), begins with these charming lines:

"On the 6th, in the morning, we were not sleeping; the dawn
murmured in the little garden; the birds twittered: we heard the
day break; a swallow fell down our chimney into our room; we opened
the window for it: if we could only have flown away with it!"--B.

[24] This reply to the swallow was written long before 1833. The Comte de Marcellus relates, in _Chateaubriand et son temps_, how, in the summer of 1822, he was walking with the Ambassador in Kensington Gardens. Chateaubriand told him how, early that same morning, he had imagined that he heard a swallow twittering outside his window. He looked and saw a smoke and soot-blackened sparrow which might almost be mistaken for a swallow; and he set himself to hold an imaginary conversation with the swallow disguised as a sparrow. He handed Marcellus a paper covered with the words which he had addressed to it and which he had written down so soon as the light permitted. They correspond literally with the above speech.

Marcellus goes on to say that he clapped his hands with delight at reading this inspiration in the manner of the ancients, until, at the end of the paper and as though at the end of his enthusiasm, he began to smile:

"'What is it?' asked the poet, alarmed. 'Some slip?'

'Oh no,' I replied; 'only that "I live on little" troubles me,
although it suits the passage so admirably.'

"'Well?' asked M. de Chateaubriand, with a certain animation.

"'Why, have you so soon forgotten that the Duke of York is dining
with you to-night and that yesterday we drew up together, under the
dictation of our famous Montmirel, the fabric of the most splendid
banquet that ever perfumed the kitchens and honoured the annals of
diplomacy?'

"M. de Chateaubriand replied:

"'Ah, you are right; I did not think of that this morning.'"--B.

[25] St. Geneviève of Brabant (_fl._ 8th Century), the subject of a number of romantic legends and adventures.--T.

[26] Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), known as Domenichino, a noted Italian painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.

[27] Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), the celebrated Italian architect.--T.

[28] BOILEAU: _Épitres_, vi.--B.

[29] Jean Philippe René de La Bletterie (1696-1772), a priest of the Oratory, a native of Brittany like Chateaubriand and author of an _Histoire de l'empereur Julien l'Apostat_ (1735).--T.

[30] The following is John Duncombe's translation of Julian's Greek Epigram on Barley-wine:

"Who, what art thou? Thy name, thy birth declare:
Thou art no Bacchus, I by Bacchus swear.
Jove's son alone I know, I know not thee;
Thou smell'st like goats, but sweet as nectar he.
In Gallia, thirsty Gallia, thou wert born,
Scanty of grapes, but prodigal of corn.
Bromus, not Bromius, styl'd, thy brows with corn,
As sprung from Ceres, not from Jove, adorn."

[31] The common phrase is, "That's Toulouse gold, which will cost him dear:" a reference to the gold stolen by the Romans at Toulouse, which brought ill-luck, according to the legend, to all who possessed it.--T.

[32] François Michel Letellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), the organizer of the French standing army. Louvois was Minister of War from 1666 to 1691; the Palatinate was burnt down in 1674 and again in 1689.--T.

[33] François de Bonne de Créqui, Maréchal Duc de Lesdiguières (_circa_ 1687), one of the greatest French captains of the seventeenth century, served gloriously under Louis XIV. in the campaigns of Flanders, Alsace and Lorraine, from 1667 to 1678. He took Luxemburg in 1684.--T.

[34] Armand Maréchal de La Force (_circa_ 1586-1675) served with distinction in the Italian and German Wars.--T.

[35] Louis Hector Maréchal Duc de Villars (1653-1734), Marlborough's famous adversary.--T.

[36] Turenne was killed by a cannon-ball while reconnoitering at Sasbach (27 July 1675). The _Pic_ was his favourite piebald charger.--T.

[37] François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, successfully defended Metz against Charles V. from October 1552 to January 1553; Vauban laid the new fortifications, outside the old, in the reign of Louis XIV.--T.

[38] The father of Alexis de Tocqueville.--_Author's Note. Cf._ Vol. II., p. 295, n. 1.--T.

The Comte de Tocqueville administered the Department of the Moselle from February 1817 to June 1823.--B.

[39] Abraham Maréchal Fabert (1599-1662), Governor of Sedan, son of Abraham Fabert, the director of the ducal printing-works at Metz, was the first commoner who became a marshal of France (1658).--T.

[40] Metz was plundered by the Vandals in 406.--T.

[41] Iñez de Castro (_d._ 1355), favourite and, later, wife of Peter of Portugal, son of Alphonsus IV. The King had her murdered to prevent the consequences of an unequal union. When Peter ascended the throne, as Peter I., afterwards surnamed the Justiciary and the Cruel, he avenged her death on her murderers by having their hearts torn out in his presence at Santarem, in 1360. He caused Iñez to be exhumed and crowned and showed her royal honours.--T.

[42] _Cf._ Vol. V., p. 207, n. 1.--T.

[43] Madame Récamier was banished to Châlons in September 1811.--T.

[44] Madame de La Sablière (_fl._ 17th Century), wife of Antoine Rambouillet de La Sablière, one of the ornaments of the seventeenth century and immortalized by the hospitality which she accorded to La Fontaine.--T.

[45] Bossuet was Bishop of Meaux.--T.

[46] The Duchesse de Berry embarked on the 9th of June 1833.--B.

[47] The Marquis de Pastoret.--B.

[48] St. Martin (_circa_ 316--_circa_ 397) Bishop of Tours (371). He is honoured on the 11th of November.--T.

[49] The brother of Amadis of Gaul.--T.

[50] Robert Count of Paris (_d._ 866), surnamed the Strong, father of Robert I. King of France and stock of the Capets, was killed at Brissarthe, in Anjou, while giving battle to the Normans.--T.

[51] Charles d'Albert, Connétable Duc de Luynes (1578-1621), was a page of Henry IV. He curried favour with the Dauphin by his skill in raising speckled magpies. When the latter succeeded as Louis XIII., he loaded Luynes with favours and dignities, gave him his duchy and created him Constable of France. Luynes was on the verge of being disgraced, when he died, of purples, on the 15th of December 1621.--T.

[52] Concino Concini, later Maréchal Marquis d'Ancre, Baron de Lussigny (_d._ 1617), was a member of the Household of Marie de' Medici, wife of Henry IV. After the King's death, he bought the Marquisate of Ancre and was appointed Governor of Normandy and a marshal of France without ever having drawn the sword. He was, at the same time, Prime Minister of Louis XIII.; and he had Richelieu for his private secretary. The Duc de Luynes contributed towards hastening his downfall and, at last, the young King ordered his assassination, which took place in the court-yard of the Louvre on the 14th of April 1617.--T.

[53] MATHURIN RÉGNIER: _Sat._ XIII.; _Macette_, 30:

"Her penitent eye sheds holy water and none other."--T.

[54] "_L'État c'est moi!_ The State is I!"--T.

[55] RACINE: _Athalie_, Act I. Sc. i.:

"O happy day for me!
How gladly would I go my King again to see!"--T.

[56] Théodore Demetrius Prince de Bauffremont-Courtenay (1793-1853).--T.

[57] Anne Laurence de Montmorency, Princesse de Bauffremont-Courtenay (1802-1860), married to Théodore Prince de Bauffremont on the 6th of September 1819.--T.

[58] Louis Charles Bonaventura Pierre Comte de Mesnard (1769-1842) emigrated in 1791 and became attached to the person of the Duc de Berry. The Duke, on his return to France, appointed him his aide-de-camp and, in 1816, he was appointed First Equerry to the Duchess, whom he had gone to Marseilles to meet. The Comte de Mesnard was with the Duc de Berry at the moment of his assassination. He was created a peer of France in 1823. In 1830, he accompanied the Duchesse de Berry to England, returned with her to France in 1832, took part in the attempted rising in the Vendée and was arrested with his royal mistress at Nantes. He was tried and acquitted on the 15th of March 1833 and at once joined the Duchesse de Berry in Italy.--T.

[59] The following is the text of this little manifesto, which the newspapers of the day did not dare to publish and which has remained comparatively unknown:

"The mother of Henry V., I returned without other support than his
misfortunes and his good right to put an end to the calamities
which France is undergoing, by restoring lawful authority, order
and stability, pledges essential to the rest and peace of nations.
Treachery handed me over to our enemies. Kept a prisoner and long
oppressed by persons to whom I had shown nothing but kindness, I
have bewailed their ingratitude and suffered with resignation the
wrongs with which they have overwhelmed me; but I shall never cease
to protest against the usurpation of the rights of a child whom
justice, ties of blood, honour and faith obliged them to protect
and defend.

"I thank the people of France for the man? marks of attachment
which they have given me; my heart will never lose the remembrance
of it.

"I beg all those who have been persecuted for the sake of my
son and myself, those who have offered me advice of which I was
deprived, in spite of the sad situation to which I was reduced
and those who have protested, in France's name and mine, against
the sequestration and the moral sufferings which stifled my very
complaints, to receive the assurance that I shall never forget
their affection nor the pains which they have endured.

"The reproaches which some have dared to attribute to me as having
been uttered against friends of whose devotion I was too sure to
accuse their conduct have offended me to the quick: I indignantly
deny those insulting suppositions.

"Whatever may be the future which Providence has in store for my
son, to love France, to devote his cares and his life to repairing
her misfortunes, to hope that she may be happy, even if he were not
himself charged to make her happy: those will at all tunes be his
sentiments and his wishes, those will also always be mine.

"The French have never enjoyed real liberty except under the
protection of their lawful Sovereign: it will behove the heir of
the name and, I hope, the virtues of Henry the Great to continue
his reign and to realize all that he promised to France.

"MARIE-CAROLINE."

"Blaye Citadel, 7 June 1833."

--B.