THE MEMOIRS OF FRANÇOIS RENÉ

VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND

SOMETIME AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND

BEING A TRANSLATION BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
OF THE MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-TOMBE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES. In 6 Volumes. Vol. IV

"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY FREEMANTLE AND CO. AT 217 PICCADILLY MDCCCCII

CONTENTS

VOLUME IV

BOOK VII 1-30

Changes in the world—The years 1815 and 1816—I am made a peer of France—My first appearance in the tribune—Various speeches—The Monarchie selon la Charte—Louis XVIII.—M. Decazes—I am struck off the list of ministers of State—I sell my books and my Valley—My speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818—The Piet meetings—The Conservateur—Concerning the morality of material interests and that of duty—The year 1820—Death of the Duc de Berry—Birth of the Duc de Bordeaux—The market-women of Bordeaux—I cause M. de Villèle and M. de Corbière to take office for the first time—My letter to the Duc de Richelieu—Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply—Notes from M. de Polignac—Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier—I am appointed Ambassador to Berlin—I leave for that embassy

BOOK VIII 31-63

The year 1821—The Berlin, Embassy—I arrive in Berlin—M. Ancillon—The Royal Family—Celebrations for the marriage of the Grand-duke Nicholas—Berlin society—Count von Humboldt—Herr von Chamisso—Ministers and ambassadors—The Princess William—The Opera—A musical meeting—My first dispatches—M. de Bonnay—The Park—The Duchess of Cumberland—Commencement of a Memorandum on Germany—Charlottenburg—Interval between the Berlin Embassy and the London Embassy—Baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux—Letter to M. Pasquier—Letter from M. de Bernstoff—Letter from M. Ancillon—Last letter from the Duchess of Cumberland—M. de Villèle, Minister of Finance—I am appointed Ambassador to London

BOOK IX 64-112

The year 1822—My first dispatches from London—Conversation with George IV. on M. Decazes—The noble character of our diplomacy under the Legitimacy—A parliamentary sitting—English society—Continuation of the dispatches—Resumption of parliamentary labours—A ball for the Irish—Duel between the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham—Dinner at Royal Lodge—The Marchioness Conyngham and her secret—Portraits of the ministers—Continuation of my dispatches—Parleys on the Congress of Verona—Letter to M. de Montmorency; his reply foreshadowing a refusal—A more favourable letter from M. de Villèle—I write to Madame de Duras—Death of Lord Londonderry—Another letter to M. de Montmorency—Trip to Hartwell—Note from M. de Villèle announcing my nomination to the Congress—The end of old England—Charlotte—Reflexions—I leave London—The years 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827—Deliverance of the King of Spain—My dismissal—The Opposition follows me—Last diplomatic notes—Neuchâtel, in Switzerland—Death of Louis XVIII.—Coronation of Charles X.—Reception of the knights of the Orders

BOOK X 113-146

I collect my former adversaries around myself—My public charges—Extract from my polemics after my fall—Visit to Lausanne—Return to Paris—The Jesuits—Letter from M. de Montlosier and my reply—Continuation of my polemics—Letter from General Sébastiani—Death of General Foy—The Law of Justice and Love—Letter from M. Étienne—Letter from M. Benjamin Constant—I attain the highest pitch of my political importance—Article on the King's saint's-day—Withdrawal of the law on the police of the press—Paris illuminated—Note from M. Michaud—M. de Villèle's irritation—Charles X. proposes to review the National Guard on the Champ de Mars—I write to him: my letter—The review—The National Guard disbanded—The Elective Chamber is dissolved—The new Chamber—Refusals to co-operate—Fall of the Villèle Ministry—I contribute towards forming the new ministry and accept the Roman Embassy—Examination of a reproach

BOOK XI 147-219

Madame Récamier—Childhood of Madame Récamier described by M. Benjamin Constant—Letter to Madame Récamier from Lucien Bonaparte—Continuation of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Staël—Madame Récamier's journey to England—Madame de Staël's first journey to Germany—Madame Récamier in Paris—Plans of the generals—Portrait of Bernadotte—Trial of Moreau—Letters from Moreau and Masséna to Madame Récamier—Death of M. Necker—Return of Madame de Staël—Madame Récamier at Coppet—Prince Augustus of Prussia—Madame de Staël's second journey to Germany—The Château de Chaumont—Letter from Madame de Staël to Bonaparte—Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency exiled—Madame Récamier at Châlons—Madame Récamier at Lyons—Madame de Chevreuse—Spanish prisoners—Madame Récamier in Rome—Albano-Canova: his letters—The Albano fisherman—Madame Récamier in Naples—The Duc de Rohan-Chabot—King Murat: his letters—Madame Récamier returns to France—Letter from Madame de Genlis—Letters from Benjamin Constant—Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return from Elba—Madame de Krüdener—The Duke of Wellington—I meet Madame Récamier again—Death of Madame de Staël—The Abbaye-aux-Bois

BOOK XII 220-304

My Embassy to Rome—Three kinds of materials-Diary of the road—Letters to Madame Récamier—Leo XII. and the Cardinals—The ambassadors—The old artists and the new artists—Old Roman society—Present manners of Rome—Town and country—Letter to M. Villemain—Letter to Madame Récamier—Explanation concerning the memorandum I am about to quote—Letter to M. le Comte de La Feironnays—Memorandum on Eastern Affairs—Letters to Madame Récamier—Letter to M. Thierry—Dispatch to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays—More letters to Madame Récamier—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Death of Leo XII.—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Letter to Madame Récamier

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. IV

George IV
The Duc Decazes
The Duc de Berry
Frederica Queen of Hanover
The Duc de Richelieu
The Marquess of Londonderry
Madame Récamier
Pope Leo XII

George IV.

[Pg 1]

THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND

VOLUME IV

BOOK VII[1]

Changes in the world—The years 1815 and 1816—I am made a peer of France—My first appearance in the tribune—Various speeches—The Monarchie selon la Charte—Louis XVIII.—M. Decazes—I am struck off the list of ministers of State—I sell my books and my Valley—My speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818—The Piet meetings—The Conservateur—Concerning the morality of material interests and that of duty—The year 1820—Death of the Duc de Berry—Birth of the Duc de Bordeaux—The market-women of Bordeaux—I cause M. de Villèle and M. de Corbière to take office for the first time—My letter to the Duc de Richelieu—Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply—Notes from M. de Polignac—Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier—I am appointed Ambassador to Berlin—I leave for that embassy.

To fall back from Bonaparte and the Empire to that which followed them is to fall from reality into nothingness, from the summit of a mountain into a gulf. Did not everything finish with Napoleon? Ought I to have spoken of anything else? What person can possess any interest beside him? Of whom and of what can there be any question after such a man? Dante alone had the right to associate himself with the great poets whom he meets in the regions of another life. How can one speak of Louis XVIII. in the stead of the Emperor? I blush when I think that, at the present moment, I have to cant about a crowd of petty creatures, of whom I myself am one, dubious and nocturnal beings that we were on a stage from which the great sun had disappeared.

[Pg 2]

The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled up. Their members had become bent and shrunk; the soul was lacking to the new universe so soon as Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded from view from the moment when they were no longer illuminated by the light which had given them colour and relief. At the commencement of these Memoirs, I had only myself to speak of: well, there is always a sort of paramountcy in man's individual solitude. Later, I was surrounded by miracles: those miracles kept up my voice; but at this present moment there is no more conquest of Egypt, no more Battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena, no more retreat from Russia, no more invasion of France, capture of Paris, return from Elba, Battle of Waterloo, funeral at St. Helena: what remains? Portraits to which only the genius of Molière could lend the gravity of comedy!

While expressing myself upon our worthlessness, I taxed my conscience home: I asked myself whether I did not purposely incorporate myself with the nullity of these times, in order to acquire the right to condemn the others, persuaded though I were in petto that my name would be read in the midst of all these obliterations. No, I am convinced that we shall all fade out: first, because we have not in us the wherewithal to live; secondly, because the age in which we are commencing or ending our days has itself not the wherewithal to make us live. Generations mutilated, exhausted, disdainful, faithless, consecrated to the annihilation which they love, are unable to bestow immortality; they have no power to create a renown; if you were to nail your ear to their mouth, you would hear nothing: no sound issues from the heart of the dead.

One thing strikes me, however: the little world to which I am now coming was superior to the world which succeeded it in 1830; we were giants in comparison with the society of maggots that has engendered itself.

The Restoration offers at least one point in which we can find importance: after the dignity of one man, that man having passed, there was born again the dignity of mankind. If despotism has been replaced by liberty, if we understand anything of independence, if we have lost the habit of grovelling, if the rights of human nature are no longer disregarded, we owe these things to the Restoration. Wherefore also I threw myself into the fray in order, as far as I could, to revive the species when the individual had come to an end.

[Pg 3]

Come, let us pursue our task! Let us descend, with a groan, to myself and my colleagues. You have seen me amid my dreams; you are about to see me in my realities: if the interest decreases, if I fall, reader, be just, make allowance for my subject!

*

After the second return of the King and the final disappearance of Bonaparte, the Ministry being in the hands of M. le Duc d'Otrante and M. le Prince de Talleyrand, I was appointed president of the electoral college of the Department of the Loiret. The elections of 1815 gave the King the Chambre introuvable.[2] I was carrying all the votes at Orleans, when I received the Order which called me to the House of Peers[3]. My active career had hardly commenced, when it suddenly changed its course: what would it have been if I had been sent to the Elective Chamber? It is fairly probable that that career would, in the event of my success, have ended in the Ministry of the Interior, instead of taking me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My habits and manners were more in touch with the peerage, and, although the latter became hostile to me from the first moment, by reason of my Liberal opinions, it is nevertheless certain that my doctrines concerning the liberty of the press and against the vassalage to foreigners gave the Noble Chamber the popularity which it enjoyed so long as it suffered my opinions.

I received, at my entrance, the only honour which my colleagues ever did me during my fifteen years' residence in their midst: I was appointed one of the four secretaries for the session of 1816. Lord Byron met with no more favour when he appeared in the House of Lords, and he left it for good: I ought to have returned to my deserts.

My first appearance in the tribune was to make a speech on the irremovability of the judges[4]: I applauded the principle, but censured its immediate application. At the Revolution of 1830, the members of the Left who were most[Pg 4] devoted to that revolution wished to suspend the irremovability for a time.

On the 22nd of February 1816, the Duc de Richelieu brought us the autograph will of the Queen. I ascended the tribune, and said:

"He who has preserved for us the will of Marie-Antoinette[5] had bought the property of Montboisier: himself one of Louis XVI.'s judges, he raised in that property a monument to the memory of the defender of Louis XVI., and himself engraved on that monument an epitaph in French verse in praise of M. de Malesherbes. This astonishing impartiality shows that all is misplaced in the moral world."

On the 12th of March 1816, the question of the ecclesiastical pensions[6] was discussed:

"You would," I said, "refuse an allowance to the poor vicar who devotes the remainder of his days to the altar, and you would accord pensions to Joseph Lebon[7], who struck off so many heads; to François Chabot[8], who asked for a law against the Emigrants of so simple a character that a child might lead them to the guillotine; to Jacques Roux[9], who, refusing at the Temple to receive Louis XVI.'s will, replied to the unfortunate monarch:

"'My only business is to take you to your death.'"

A bill had been introduced into the Hereditary Chamber relating to the elections. I declared myself in favour of the integral renewal of the Chamber of Deputies. It was not until 1824, being then a minister, that I passed it into law.

[Pg 5]

It was also in this first speech on the law governing elections, in 1816[10], that I said, in reply to an opponent:

"I will not refer to what has been said about Europe watching our discussions. Speaking for myself, gentlemen, I doubtless owe to the French blood that flows in my veins the impatience which I experience when, in order to influence my vote, people talk to me of opinions existing outside my country; and, if civilized Europe tried to impose the Charter on me, I should go to live in Constantinople."

On the 9th of April 1816, I introduced a motion to the Chamber relating to the Barbary Powers. The house decided that there was cause for its discussion. I was already thinking of combating slavery, before I obtained that favourable decision from the Peers, which was the first political intervention of a great Power on behalf of the Greeks:

"I have seen the ruins of Carthage," I said to my colleagues; "I have met among those ruins the successors of the unhappy Christians for whose deliverance St. Louis sacrificed his life. Philosophy can take its share of the glory attached to the success of my motion and boast of having obtained in an age of light that for which religion strove in vain in an age of darkness."

I found myself in an assembly in which my words, for three-fourths of the time, turned against myself. One can move a popular chamber; an aristocratic chamber is deaf. With no gallery, speaking in private before old men, dried-up remains of the old Monarchy, of the Revolution and of the Empire, anything that rose above the most commonplace seemed madness. One day, the front row of arm-chairs, quite close to the tribune, was filled with venerable peers, one more deaf than the other, their heads bent forward, and holding to their ears a trumpet with the mouth turned towards the tribune. I sent them to sleep, which is very natural. One of them dropped his ear-trumpet; his neighbour, awakened by the fall, wanted politely to pick up his colleague's trumpet; he fell down. The worst of it was that I began to laugh, although I was just then speaking pathetically on some subject of humanity, I forget what.

The speakers who succeeded in that Chamber were those who spoke without ideas, in a level and monotonous tone, or who found terms of sensibility only in order to melt with pity for the poor ministers. M. de Lally-Tolendal thundered in favour of the public liberties: he made the vaults[Pg 6] of our solitude resound with the praises of three or four English Lord Chancellors, his ancestors, he said. When his panegyric of the liberty of the press was finished, came a "but" based upon "circumstances," which "but" left our honour safe, under the useful supervision of the censorship.

The Restoration gave an impulse to men's minds; it set free the thought suppressed by Bonaparte: the intellect, like a caryatic figure relieved of the entablature that bent its brow, lifted up its head. The Empire had struck France with dumbness; liberty restored touched her and gave her back speech: oratorical talents existed which took up matters where the Mirabeaus and Cazalès had left them, and the Revolution continued its course.

*

My labours were not limited to the tribune, so new to me. Appalled at the systems which men were embracing and at France's ignorance of the principles of representative government, I wrote and had printed the Monarchie selon la Charte. This publication marked one of the great epochs of my political life: it made me take rank among the publicists; it served to determine opinion on the nature of our government. The English papers praised the work to the skies; among us, the Abbé Morellet even could not recover from the transformation of my style and the dogmatic precision of the truths.

The Monarchie selon la Charte is a constitutional catechism: from it have been taken the greater part of the propositions which are put forward as new to-day. Thus the principle that "the King reigns but does not govern" is found fully set forth in Chapters IV., V., VI. and VII. on the Royal Prerogative.

The constitutional principles having been laid down in the first part of the Monarchie selon la Charte, I examine in the second the systems of the three ministries which till then had followed upon one another, from 1814 to 1816; in this part are brought together predictions too well verified since and expositions of doctrines at that time unperceived. These words appear in Chapter XXVI., in the Second Part:

"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the order of right of succession to the Crown."

As I was finishing my work, appeared the ordinance of[Pg 7] the 5th of September 1816[11]: this measure dispersed the few Royalists assembled to reconstruct the Legitimate Monarchy. I hastened to write the Postscript, which caused an explosion of anger on the part of M. le Duc de Richelieu and of Louis XVIII.'s favourite, M. Decazes.

The Postscript added, I ran to M. Le Normant, my publisher's. On arriving, I found constables and a police-commissary making out instruments. They had seized parcels and affixed seals. I had not defied Bonaparte to be intimidated by M. Decazes: I objected to the seizure; I declared that, as a free Frenchman and a peer of France, I would yield only to force. The force arrived and I withdrew. I went on the 18th of September to Messieurs Louis-Marthe Mesnier and his colleague, notaries-royal; I protested in their office and called upon them to register my statement of the fact of the apprehension of my work, wishing to ensure the rights of French citizens by means of this protest M. Baudé[12] followed my example in 1830.

I next found myself engaged in a rather long correspondence with M. the Chancellor, M. the Minister of Police and M. the Attorney-General Bellart[13], until the 9th of November, on which day the Chancellor informed me of the order made in my favour by the Court of First Instance, which placed me in possession of my seized work. In one of his letters, M. the Chancellor told me that he had been distressed to see the dissatisfaction which the King had publicly expressed with my work. This dissatisfaction arose from the chapter in which I stood up against the establishment of a minister of General Police in a constitutional country.

*

In my account of the journey to Ghent, you have seen Louis XVIII.'s value as a descendant of Hugh Capet; in my pamphlet, Le Roi est mort: vive le roi![14] I have told the[Pg 8] Prince's real qualities. But man is not a simple unit: why are there so few faithful portraits? Because the model is made to pose at such or such a period of his life; ten years later the portrait is no longer like.

Louis XVIII. did not see far the objects before or around him; all seemed fair or foul to him according to the way he looked at it. Smitten with his century, it is to be feared that "the most Christian King" regarded religion only as an elixir fit for the amalgam of drugs of which royalty is composed. The licentious imagination which he had received from his grandfather[15] might have inspired some distrust of his enterprises; but he knew himself and, when he spoke in a positive manner, he boasted (well knowing it), while laughing at himself. I spoke to him one day of the need of a new marriage for M. le Duc de Bourbon, in order to bring back the race of the Condés to life. He strongly approved of that idea, although he cared very little about the sad resurrection; but in this connection he spoke to me of the Comte d'Artois, and said:

"My brother might marry again without changing anything in the succession to the throne: he would only make cadets. As for me, I should only make elders; I do not want to disinherit M. le Duc d'Angoulême."

And he drew himself up with a capable and bantering air; but I had no intention of denying the King any power.

Selfish and unprejudiced, Louis XVIII. desired his peace of mind at any price: he supported his ministers so long as they held the majority; he dismissed them so soon as the majority was shaken and his tranquillity liable to be upset: he did not hesitate to fall back when, to obtain the victory, he ought to have taken a step forward. His greatness was patience: he did not go towards events; events came to him.

Without being cruel, the King was not humane; tragic catastrophes neither astonished nor touched him; he was satisfied with saying to the Duc de Berry, who apologized for having had the misfortune to disturb the King's sleep by his death:

"I have finished my night."

Nevertheless, this quiet man would fly into horrible rages when annoyed; and also, this cold, unfeeling Prince had attachments which resembled passions: thus there succeeded each other in his intimacy the Comte d'Avaray, M. de Blacas,[Pg 9] M. Decazes[16]; Madame de Balbi[17], Madame de Cayla[18]. All these beloved persons were favourites; unfortunately they have a great deal too many letters in their hands.

Louis XVIII. appeared to us in all the profundity of historic tradition; he showed himself with the favouritism of the ancient royalties. Does the heart of our isolated monarchs contain a void which they fill with the first object they light upon? Is it sympathy, the affinity of a nature analogous to their own? Is it a friendship which drops down to them from Heaven to console their greatnesses? Is it a leaning for a slave who gives himself body and soul, before whom one conceals nothing, a slave who becomes a garment, a plaything, a fixed idea bound up with all the feelings, all the tastes, all the whims of him whom it has subdued and whom it holds under the empire of an invincible fascination? The viler and closer a favourite has been, the less easily is he to be dismissed, because he is in possession of secrets which would put one to the blush if they were divulged: the chosen one derives a dual force from his own baseness and his master's weaknesses.

When the favourite happens to be a great man, like the besetting Richelieu[19] or the undismissable Mazarin[20], the nations, while detesting him, profit by his glory or his power; they only change a wretched king de jure for an illustrious king de facto.

*

So soon as M. Decazes was made a minister, the carriages blocked the Quai Malaquais in the evenings to set down in the new-comer's drawing-room all that was noblest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The Frenchman may do what he pleases, he will never be anything but a courtier, no matter of whom, provided it be a power of the day.

[Pg 10]

Soon there was formed, on behalf of the new favourite, a formidable coalition of stupidities. In democratic society, prate about liberties, declare that you see the progress of the human race and the future of things, adding to your speeches a few Crosses of the Legion of Honour, and you are sure of your place; in aristocratic society, play whist, utter commonplaces and carefully-prepared witticisms with a grave and profound air, and the fortune of your genius is assured.

Born a fellow-countryman of Murat[21], but of Murat without a kingdom, M. Decazes had come to us from the mother of Napoleon[22]. He was familiar, obliging, never insolent; he wished me well; I do not know why, I did not care: thence came the commencement of my disgraces. That was to teach me that one must never fail in respect to a favourite. The King loaded him with kindnesses and credit, and subsequently married him to a very well-born person, daughter to M. de Sainte-Aulaire[23]. It is true that M. Decazes served royalty too well; it was he who unearthed Marshal Ney in the mountains of Auvergne, where he had hidden himself.

Faithful to the inspirations of his throne, Louis XVIII. said of M. Decazes:

"I shall raise him up so high that the greatest lords will be envious of him."

This phrase, borrowed from another king, was a mere anachronism: to raise up others, one must be sure of not descending; now, at the time when Louis XVIII. arrived, what were monarchs? If they could still make a man's fortune, they could no longer make his greatness; they had become merely their favourites' bankers.

Duc Decazes.

Madame Princeteau[24], M. Decazes' sister, was an agreeable, modest and excellent person; the King had fallen in love with her prospectively. M. Decazes, the father, whom I saw[Pg 11] in the throne-room in full dress, sword at side, hat under his arm, made no success, however.

At last, the death of M. le Duc de Berry increased the ill-will on both sides and brought about the favourite's fall. I have said that "his feet slipped in the blood[25]," which does not mean, Heaven forbid! that he was guilty of the murder, but that he fell in the reddened pool that formed under Louvel's knife.

*

I had resisted the seizure of the Monarchie selon la Charte to enlighten misled royalty and to uphold the liberty of thought and of the press; I had frankly embraced our institutions, and I remained loyal to them.

These broils over, I remained bleeding from the wounds inflicted on me at the appearance of my pamphlet. I did not take possession of my political career without bearing the scars of the blows which I received on entering upon that career: I felt ill at ease in it, I was unable to breathe.

Shortly afterwards, an Order[26] countersigned "Richelieu" struck me off the list of ministers of State, and I was deprived of a place till then reputed irremovable; it had been given me at Ghent, and the pension attached to that place was withdrawn from me: the hand which had taken Fouché struck me.

I have had the honour to be thrice stripped for the Legitimacy: first, for following the sons of St. Louis into exile; the second time, for writing in favour of the principles of the Monarchy, as "granted;" the third, for keeping silence on a baleful law at the moment when I had just caused the triumph of our arms. The Spanish Campaign had given back soldiers to the White Flag, and, if I had been kept in power, I should have carried back our frontiers to the banks of the Rhine.

My nature made me quite indifferent to the loss of my salary; I came off with going on foot again and, on rainy days, driving to the Chamber of Peers in a hackney-coach. In my popular conveyance, under the protection of the rabble that surged around me, I re-entered into the rights of the proletariat of which I formed part: from my lofty chariot I looked down upon the train of kings.

I was obliged to sell my books; M. Merlin put them up to auction at the Salle Sylvestre in the Rue des Bons-Enfants[27].[Pg 12] I kept only a little Greek Homer, whose margins were covered with attempts at translation and remarks in my handwriting. Soon it became necessary to take energetic measures; I asked M. the Minister of the Interior for leave to raffle my country-house. The lottery was opened at the office of M. Denis, notary. There were ninety tickets at 1000 francs each: the numbers were not taken up by the Royalists; the Dowager Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans[28] took three numbers; my friend, M. Lainé, the Minister of the Interior, who had countersigned the Order of the 5th of September and consented in the Council to the striking off of my name, took a fourth ticket under a false name. The money was returned to the subscribers; M. Lainé, however, refused to withdraw his 1000 francs; he left it with the notary for the poor.

Not long after, my Vallée-aux-Loups was sold, as they sell the furniture of the poor, on the Place du Châtelet. I suffered much by this sale; I had become attached to my trees, planted and, so to speak, full-grown in my memories. The reserve was 50,000 francs; it was covered by M. le Vicomte de Montmorency[29], who alone dared to bid one hundred francs higher: the Vallée was knocked down to him[30]. He has since inhabited my retreat. It is not a good thing to meddle with my fortunes: that man of virtue is no more.

*

After the publication of the Monarchie selon la Charte and at the opening of the new session in the month of November 1816, I continued my contests. In the House of Peers, in the sitting of the 23rd of that month, I moved a proposition to the effect that the King be humbly begged to order an investigation into the proceedings at the last elections. The corruption and violence of the Ministry during those elections were flagrant.

In giving my opinion on the Bill relating to Supply (21 March 1817), I spoke against Clause II. of that Bill: it had to do with the State forests which they proposed to appropriate for the Sinking Fund, in order afterwards to sell one hundred and fifty thousand hectares. These forests consisted of three kinds of properties: the ancient domains of[Pg 13] the Crown, a few commanderies of the Order of Malta, and the remainder of the goods of the Church. I do not know why, even to-day, I find a sad interest in my words; they bear some resemblance to my Memoirs:

"With all due deference to those who have administered only during our troubles, it is not the material security but the ethics of a people that constitute the public credit. Will the new owners make good the titles of their new property? To deprive them there will be quoted to them instances of inheritances of nine centuries taken away from their former possessors. Instead of those inalienable patrimonies in which the same family outlived the race of the oaks, you will have unfixed properties in which the reeds will scarcely have time to spring up and die before they change masters. The homes will cease to be the guardians of domestic morality; they will lose their venerable authority; rights-of-way open to all comers, they will no longer be hallowed by the grandfather's chair and the cradle of the new-born child.

"Peers of France, it is your cause that I am pleading here, not mine: I am speaking to you in the interests of your children; I shall have no concern with posterity; I have no sons; I have lost my father's fields, and a few trees which I have planted will soon cease to be mine."

*

Because of the resemblance of opinions, then very keen, an intimacy had been established between the minorities of the two Chambers. France was learning representative government. As I had been foolish enough to take it literally and make a real passion of it, to my prejudice, I supported those who took it up, without troubling my head as to whether their opposition was not prompted by human motives rather than by a pure love like that which I felt for the Charter: not that I was a simpleton, but I idolized my lady-love and would have gone through fire to carry her off in my arms. It was during this constitutional attack that I came to know M. de Villèle[31], in 1816. He was calmer; he overcame his ardour; he, too, aimed at conquering liberty, but he laid siege to it according to rule. He opened the trenches methodically:[Pg 14] I, who wanted to carry the place by assault, advanced to the escalade, and often found myself flung back into the ditch.

I met M. de Villèle first at the Duchesse de Lévis'. He became the leader of the Royalist Opposition in the Elective Chamber, as I was in the Hereditary Chamber. He had as a friend his colleague M. de Corbière[32]. The latter never left his side, and people used to speak of "Villèle and Corbière" as they speak of "Orestes and Pylades" or "Euryalus and Nisus."

To enter into fastidious details about persons whose names one will not know to-morrow would be an idiotic vanity. Obscure and tedious commotions, which one considers of immense interest and which interest nobody, bygone intrigues, which have decided no important event, should be left to those devoutly happy persons who imagine themselves to be, or to have been, the object of the world's attention.

Nevertheless, there were proud moments in which my contentions with M. de Villèle seemed to me personally like the dissensions of Sulla and Marius, of Cæsar and Pompey. Together with the other members of the Opposition, we went pretty often to spend the evening in deliberation at M. Piet's[33], in the Rue Thérèse. We arrived looking extremely ugly, and sat down round a room lighted by a flaring lamp. In this legislative fog, we talked of the Bill introduced, of the motion to be made, of the friend to be pushed into the secretaryship, the questorship, the different committees. We were not unlike the assemblies of the early Christians, as depicted by the enemies of the Faith: we broached the worst news; we said that things were going to turn, that Rome would be troubled by divisions, that our armies would be routed.

M. de Villèle listened, summed up, and drew no conclusions; he was a great aid in business: a prudent mariner, he never put to sea in a storm and, though he would cleverly enter a known harbour, he would never have discovered the[Pg 15] New World. I often observed, in the matter of our discussions concerning the sale of the goods of the clergy, that the best Christians among us were the most eager in defense of the constitutional doctrines. Religion is the well-spring of liberty: in Rome, the flamen dialis wore only a hollow ring on his finger, because a solid ring had something of a chain; in his clothing and on his head-dress the pontiff of Jupiter was forbidden to suffer a single knot.

After the sitting, M. de Villèle would go away, accompanied by M. de Corbière. I studied many personalities, I learnt many things, I occupied myself with many interests at those meetings: finance, which I always understood, the army, justice, administration initiated me into their several elements. I left those conferences somewhat more of a statesman and somewhat more persuaded of the poverty of all that knowledge. Throughout the night, between sleeping and waking, I saw the different attitudes of the bald heads, the different expressions of the faces of those untidy and ungainly Solons. It was all very venerable, truly; but I preferred the swallow which woke me in my youth and the Muses who filled my dreams: the rays of the dawn which, striking a swan, made the shadows of those white birds fall upon a golden billow; the rising sun which appeared to me in Syria in the stem of a palm-tree, like the phoenix' nest, pleased me more.

*

I felt that my fighting in the tribune, in a closed Chamber, and in the midst of an assembly which was unfavourable to me, remained useless to victory, and that I required another weapon. The censorship being established over the periodical daily newspapers, I could fulfil my object only by means of a free, semi-daily paper, with the aid of which I would at once attack the system of the Ministers and the opinions of the Extreme Left printed in the Minerve by M. Étienne[34]. I was staying at Noisiel with Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, in the summer of 1818, when my publisher, M. Le Normant, came to see me. I told him of the idea which I had in mind;[Pg 16] he caught fire, offered to run all risks and undertook all expenses. I spoke to my friends, Messieurs de Bonald[35] and de La Mennais[36], and asked them if they would take part: they agreed, and the paper was not long in appearing under the title of the Conservateur.[37]

The revolution worked by this paper was unexampled: in France, it changed the majority in the Chambers; abroad, it converted the spirit of the Cabinets.

In this way the Royalists owed to me the advantage of issuing from the state of nullity into which they had fallen with peoples and kings. I put the pen into the hands of France's greatest families. I decked out the Montmorencys and the Lévises as journalists; I called out the arriere-ban; I made feudality march to the aid of the liberty of the press. I had got together the most brilliant men of the Royalist party, Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière, de Vitrolles[38], de Castelbajac[39], etc. I could not help blessing Providence every time that I spread the red robe of a prince of the Church over the Conservateur by way of a cover, and that I had the pleasure to read an article signed in full: "The Cardinal de La Luzerne[40]." But it came to pass that, after I had led my knights on the constitutional crusade, so soon as they had[Pg 17] conquered power by the deliverance of liberty, so soon as they had become Princes of Edessa, of Antioch, of Damascus, they locked themselves up in their new States with Eleanor of Aquitaine[41], and left me out in the cold at the foot of Jerusalem, where the infidels had recaptured the Holy Sepulchre.

My polemical warfare began in the Conservateur and lasted from 1818 to 1820, that is to say, until the re-establishment of the censorship, for which the death of the Duc de Berry was the pretext. During this first period of my polemics, I upset the old Ministry and placed M. de Villèle in power.

After 1824, when I again took up my pen in pamphlets and in the Journal des Débats, the positions were changed. And yet, what did those futile trifles matter to me, who had never believed in the time in which I lived, to me, who belonged to the past, to me, who had no faith in kings, no conviction with regard to the peoples, to me, who have never troubled about anything, except dreams, and then only on condition that they lasted but a night!

The first article in the Conservateur[42] describes the position of things at the moment when I entered the lists. During the two years for which the paper lasted, I had successively to treat of accidents of the day and to examine interests of importance. I had occasion to criticize the dastardliness of that "private correspondence" which the Paris police was publishing in London. This "private correspondence" might calumniate, but could not dishonour: that which is base has not the power of debasing; honour alone is able to inflict dishonour.

"Anonymous calumniators," I said, "have the courage to say who you are; a little shame is soon over; add your names to your articles: it will be only one contemptible word the more."

I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.

Finally, under date 5 December 1818, the Conservateur[Pg 18] contained a serious article on the morality of interests and on that of duty: it was this article, which made a stir, that gave birth to the phrase of "moral interests" and "material interests," first put forward by me, and subsequently adopted by everybody. Here it is, much abridged; it rises above the compass of a newspaper, and it is one of my works to which my reason attaches some value. It has not aged, because the ideas which it contains are of all time:

"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a quarter of a century.

"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.

"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all. The women of the people came and worked at their knitting round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of 'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown. They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich: die;' and he died. Antonelle[43] wrote that no count had been found against[Pg 19] certain prisoners, but that he had condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which, notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by killing him as guilty.

"Consequently, those hideous times are times of great acts of self-devotion. Then women went heroically to the scaffold; fathers gave themselves up for their sons, sons for their fathers; unexpected assistance was introduced into the prisons, and the priest who was being hunted consoled the victim by the side of the executioner who failed to recognise him.

On moral interests.

"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the corruption of morals rather than of doctrines; license prevailed. Men were hurled into pleasures as they had been heaped up in the prisons; they forced the present to advance joys on the future, in the fear of seeing a revival of the past. Every man, not having yet had time to create himself a home, lived in the street, on the public walks, in the public rooms. Familiarized with the scaffolds, and already half cut off from the world, they did not think it worth the trouble to go indoors. There was question only of arts, balls, fashions; people changed their ornaments and clothes as readily as they would have stripped themselves of their lives.

"Under Bonaparte the seduction commenced again, but it was a seduction that carried its own remedy: Bonaparte seduced by means of the spell of glory, and all that is great carries a principle of legislation within itself. He conceived that it was useful to allow the doctrine of all peoples to be taught, the morality of all times, the religion of eternity.

"I should not be surprised to hear some one reply:

"'To base society upon a duty, is to build it on a fiction; to place it in an interest, is to establish it in a reality.'

"Now it is precisely duty which is a fact and interest a fiction. Duty, which takes its source in the Godhead, descends first into the family, where it establishes a real affinity between the father and the children; from there, passing into society and dividing into two branches, in the political order it rules the relations of the king and the subject; in the moral order it establishes the tie of service and protection, of benefits and gratitude.

"Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives to human society the only lasting existence that the latter can have.

"Interest, on the contrary, is a fiction when it is taken as people take it to-day, in its physical and rigorous sense, since it is no longer in the evening what it was in the morning;[Pg 20] since it changes its nature at each moment; since, founded on fortune, it has fortune's fickleness.

"By the morality of interest, every citizen is at enmity with the laws and the government, because in society it is always the great number that suffers. People do not fight for abstract ideas of order, of place, of the mother-land; or, if they fight for them, it is because they attach ideas of sacrifice to them; then they emerge from the morality of interest to enter into that of duty: so true is it that the existence of society is not to be found outside that sacred limit.

"He who does his duty gains esteem; he who yields to his interest is but little esteemed: it was very like the century to draw a principle of government from a source of contempt! Bring up politicians to think only of what affects them, and you shall see how they will dress out the State; by that means you will have only corrupt and hungry ministers, like those mutilated slaves who governed the Lower Empire and who sold all, remembering that they themselves had been sold.

"Mark this: interests are powerful only so long as they prosper; when times are harsh, they become enfeebled. Duties, on the contrary, are never so energetic as when they are painful to fulfil. When times are good, they grow lax. I like a principle of government which grows great in misfortune: that greatly resembles virtue.

"What can be absurder than to cry to the people:

"'Do not be devoted! Have no enthusiasm! Think only of your interests!'

"It is as though one were to say to them:

"'Do not come to our assistance, abandon us if such be your interest.'

"With this profound policy, when the hour of devotion shall have come, each one will shut his door, go to the window, and watch the Monarchy pass[44]."

*

Such was this article on the morality of interest and the morality of duty.

On the 3rd of December 1819, I again mounted the tribune of the Chamber of Peers: I raised my voice against the bad Frenchmen who were able to give us as a motive for tranquillity the watchfulness of the European armies:

"Had we need of guardians? Were they still going to talk of circumstances? Were we again, by means of diplomatic notes, to receive certificates of good conduct? And[Pg 21] should we not only have changed a garrison of Cossacks for a garrison of ambassadors?"

From that time forward, I spoke of the foreigners as I have since spoken of them in the Spanish War; I was thinking of our delivery at a moment when even the Liberals contended with me. Men opposed in opinion make a deal of noise to attain silence! Let a few years arrive, and the actors will descend from the stage and the audience no longer be there to hiss or applaud them.

*

I had gone to bed, on the evening of the 13th of February, when the Marquis de Vibraye[45] came in to me to tell me of the assassination of the Duc du Berry. In his haste, he did not tell me the place where the event had occurred. I dressed hurriedly and stepped into M. de Vibraye's carriage. I was surprised to see the coachman take the Rue de Richelieu, and still more astonished when he stopped at the Opera: the crowd about the approaches was immense. We went up, between two lines of soldiers, through the side-door on the left, and, as we were in our peers' coats, we were allowed to pass. We came to a sort of little ante-room: the space was obstructed with all the people of the palace. I pushed my way as far as the door of a box and found myself face to face with M. le Duc d'Orléans. I was struck with an ill-disguised expression of jubilation in his eyes, across the contrite countenance which he assumed: he saw the throne nearer at hand. My glance embarrassed him: he left the spot and turned his back to me. Around me, they were telling the details of the crime, the man's name, the conjectures of the different participants in the arrest; they were excited, busy: men love anything theatrical, especially death, when it is the death of one of the great. Each person who came out of the blood-stained laboratory was asked for news. They heard General A. de Girardin[46] relate how, having been left for dead on the battle-field, he had nevertheless recovered from his[Pg 22] wounds; this one was hoping and consoling himself, that other was repining. Soon contemplation overcame the crowd, a silence fell; from the inside of the box came a dull sound: I held my ear laid to the door; I distinguished a rattle; the sound ceased: the Royal Family had received the last breath of a grandson of Louis XIV.! I entered at once.

Let the reader picture to himself an empty playhouse, after the catastrophe of a tragedy: the curtain raised, the orchestra deserted, the lights extinguished, the machinery motionless, the scenery fixed and smoke-blackened, the actors, the singers, the dancers vanished through the trap-doors and secret passages!

I have, in a separate work, given the life and death of M. le Duc de Berry. My reflections made at that time are still true to-day:

"A son of St. Louis, the last scion of the Elder Branch, escapes the crosses of a long banishment and returns to his country; he begins to taste happiness; he indulges the hope of seeing himself revive, of at the same time seeing the monarchy revive in the children that God promises him: suddenly he is struck down in the midst of his hopes, almost in the arms of his wife. He is going to die, and he is not full of years! Might he not accuse Heaven, ask It why It treats him with such severity? Ah, how pardonable it would have been in him to complain of his destiny! For, after all, what harm did he do? He lived familiarly among us in perfect simplicity, mingled in our pleasures and assuaged our pains; already six of his relations have perished: why murder him also, why seek out him, innocent, him so far from the throne, twenty-seven years after the death of Louis XVI.? Let us learn to know better the heart of a Bourbon! That heart, all pierced by the dagger, was not able to find a single murmur against us: not one regret for life, not one bitter word was uttered by the Prince. A husband, son, father and brother, a prey to every anguish of the mind, to every suffering of the body, he does not cease to ask pardon for 'the man,' whom he does not even call his assassin! The most impetuous becomes suddenly the gentlest character. It is a man attached to existence by every tie of the heart, it is a prince in the flower of his youth, it is the heir to the fairest kingdom on earth that is dying: and you would think that it was a poor wretch who loses nothing here below."

Duc de Berry.

[Pg 23]

*

The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime. We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at.

On the 18th of February 1820, the Conservateur[47] paid the tribute of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article concluded with this verse of Racine's:

Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!

Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!

M. Decazes fell. The censorship followed and, notwithstanding the assassination of the Duc de Berry, I voted against it. The Conservateur refusing to be soiled by it, that paper came to an end with the following apostrophe to the Duc de Berry:

"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious scion of so many kings, before descending into your last resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours with the end of your life[49]."

[Pg 24]

M. le Duc de Bordeaux saw the light on the 29th of September 1820. The new-born was called "the child of Europe[50]" and "the child of miracle[51]," while waiting to become the child of exile.

Some time before the Princess' confinement, three market-women of Bordeaux, in the name of all the ladies their companions, had a cradle made, and chose me to present them, their cradle and themselves, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Mesdames Dasté, Duranton and Aniche came to see me. I hastened to ask the gentlemen in attendance for a ceremonial audience. Suddenly, M. de Sèze thought that this honour was his by right: it was said that I should never succeed at Court. I was not yet reconciled with the Ministry, and I did not seem worthy of the office of introducer of my humble ambassadresses. I got out of this great negociation, as usual, by paying their expenses.

All this became an affair of State; the pother found its way into the papers. The Bordeaux ladies were aware of this, and wrote me the following letter on the subject:

"Bordeaux, 24 October 1820.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"We owe you our thanks for the kindness which you have had to lay our joy and our respects at the feet of Madame la Duchesse de Berry: this time at least you will not have been prevented from being our interpreter. We heard with the greatest concern of the stir which M. le Comte de Sèze has made in the newspapers, and, if we have kept silence, it is because we feared to give you pain. Still, monsieur le vicomte, none is better able than yourself to do homage to truth and to undeceive M. de Sèze as to our real intentions in our choice of an introducer to Her Royal Highness. We make you the offer to state all that has passed in a newspaper of your own choosing; and, as no one has the right to choose a guide for us, and as we had been pleased to think until the last moment that you would be that guide, what we shall state in this respect will necessarily silence all tongues.

"That is what we have determined upon, monsieur le vicomte; but we thought it our duty to do nothing without[Pg 25] your consent. Rely upon it that we will most gladly publish the handsome way in which you behaved towards everybody in the matter of our presentation. If we are the cause of the mischief, we are quite ready to redress it.

"We are, and always shall be,

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Your most humble and most respectful servants,

"Wives Dasté, Duranton, Aniche."

I replied to these generous ladies, who were so unlike the great ladies:

"I thank you, my dear ladies, for the offer you make me to publish in a newspaper all that has happened with regard to M. de Sèze. You are excellent Royalists, and I also am a good Royalist: we must remember before all that M. de Sèze is an honourable man, and that he has been the defender of our King. That fine action is not wiped out by a little movement of vanity. So let us keep silence: I am content with your good accounts of me to your friends. I have already thanked you for your excellent fruits: Madame de Chateaubriand and I eat your chesnuts every day and talk of you.

"Now permit your host to embrace you. My wife sends you a thousand messages, and I remain

"Your servant and friend,

"Chateaubriand.

"Paris, 2 November 1820."

But who thinks of these futile discussions to-day? The joys and feasts of the christening are far behind us. When Henry was born, on Michaelmas Day, did not people say that the archangel was going to trample the dragon under foot? It is to be feared, on the contrary, that the flaming sword was drawn from its scabbard only to drive out the innocent from the earthly paradise and to guard its gates against him.

However, the events which were becoming complicated determined nothing yet. The assassination of M. le Duc de Berry had brought about the fall of M. Decazes[52], which was not effected without heart-breakings. M. le Duc de Richelieu[Pg 26] would not consent to afflict his aged master, save on a promise from M. Molé[53] to give M. Decazes a mission abroad. He set out for the Embassy in London, where I was to replace him[54]. Nothing was finished. M. de Villèle remained in seclusion with his fatality, M. de Corbière. I on my side offered a great obstacle. Madame de Montcalm[55] never ceased urging me towards quiet: I was much inclined for it, sincerely wishing only to retire from public life, which encroached upon me and for which I entertained a sovereign contempt. M. de Villèle, although more supple, was not at that time easy to deal with.

There are two ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de Villèle's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for that reason that there are so few statesmen.

M. de Villèle had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has[Pg 27] worn the embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find him again sooner or later.

Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that, if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not, however, accept exile, unless M. de Villèle accepted his entrance into the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lainé with my two friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that it was I who made M. de Villèle's first ministry and who drove the Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.

I found an invincible obstinacy in M. Lainé's character. M. de Corbière did not want to become a mere member of the Council; I flattered him with the hope of also obtaining the Public Instruction. M. de Villèle, giving way only with repugnance to my desires, at first raised a thousand objections; his good wits and his ambition at last decided him to set forward: everything was arranged. Here are the irrefutable proofs of what I have just related; wearisome documents of those little facts which have justly passed into oblivion, but useful to my own history:

"20 December[56], half-past three.

"To M. le Duc de Richelieu

"I have had the honour to call on you, monsieur le duc, to report on the state of things: all is going admirably. I have seen the two friends: Villèle at last consents to enter the Council as minister secretary of State, without portfolio, if Corbière consents to enter on the same terms, with the Directorship of Public Instruction. Corbière, on his side, is willing to enter on those conditions, provided Villèle approves. And so there are no difficulties left Complete your work, monsieur le duc; see the two friends; and, when you have[Pg 28] heard what I am writing to you from their own mouths, you will restore to France her internal peace, even as you have given her peace with the foreigners.

"Permit me to submit one more idea to you: would you think it very inconvenient to make over to Villèle the directorship vacant through the retirement of M. de Barante[57]? He would then be placed in a more equal position with his friend. Still, he told me positively that he would consent to enter the Council without portfolio, if Corbière had the Public Instruction. I say this only as a means the more of completely satisfying the Royalists and of ensuring for yourself an immense and steady majority.

"I will lastly have the honour of pointing out to you that the great royalist meeting takes place to-morrow evening at Piet's, and that it would be very useful if the two friends could to-morrow evening say something which would calm any effervescence and prevent any division.

"As I, monsieur le duc, am outside all this movement, you will, I hope, see in my assiduity no more than the loyalty of a man who desires his country's good and your successes.

"Pray accept, monsieur le duc, the assurance of my high regard.

"Chateaubriand."

"Wednesday.

"I have just written to Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière, monsieur, and I have asked them to call on me this evening, for one must not lose a moment in so useful a piece of work. I thank you for having pushed on the business so rapidly; I hope that we shall come to a happy conclusion. Be persuaded, monsieur, of the pleasure I feel at owing you this obligation, and receive the assurance of my high regard.

"Richelieu."

"Permit me, monsieur le duc, to congratulate you on the happy issue of this great business, and to applaud myself for having had some part in it. It is very desirable that the Orders should appear to-morrow; they will put a stop to all opposition. I can be of use to the two friends in this respect.

[Pg 29]

"I have the honour, monsieur le Duc, to renew to you the assurance of my high regard.

"Chateaubriand."

"Friday.

"I have received with extreme pleasure the note which M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand has done me the honour to write to me. I believe that he will have no cause to regret having trusted to the King's goodness, and, if he will permit me to add, to the desire which I have to contribute to whatever may be agreeable to him. I beg him to receive the assurance of my high regard.

"Richelieu."

"Thursday.

"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the business was settled at eleven o'clock yesterday evening, and that all is arranged on the terms agreed between yourself and the Duc de Richelieu. Your intervention has been most useful to us; let thanks be given you for this preliminary step towards an improvement which must henceforth be looked upon as probable.

"Ever yours for life,

"J. de Polignac[58]."

"Paris, Wednesday, 20th December,
"Half-past eleven at night.

"I have just called on you, noble viscount, but you had retired: I have come from Villèle, who himself returned late from the conference which you prepared for him and told him of. He asked me, as your nearest neighbour, to let you know that Corbière also wished to tell you, on his side, that the affair which you really conducted and managed during the day is definitely settled in the simplest and shortest manner: he without portfolio, his friend with the Instruction. He seemed to think that one might have waited a little longer and obtained better conditions; but it was not seemly to gainsay an interpreter and negociator like yourself. It is you[Pg 30] really who have opened the entrance to this new career to them: they reckon on you to make it smooth for them. Do you, on your side, during the short time that we shall still have the advantage of keeping you among us, speak to your more spirited friends to second, or at least not to oppose the plans for union. Good-night. I once more make you my compliment on the promptness with which you conduct negociations. You must settle Germany in the same way, so as to return sooner to the midst of your friends. I personally am delighted to see your position so much simplified.

"I renew all my sentiments to you.

"M. de Montmorency."

"I enclose, monsieur, a request addressed by one of the King's Body-guards to the King of Prussia: it has been handed to me and recommended by a field-officer of the Guards. I beg you, therefore, to take it with you and to make use of it if, when you have felt your ground a little in Berlin[59], you think that it is of a nature to obtain some success.

"I have great pleasure in taking this occasion to congratulate myself as well as you on this morning's Moniteur[60], and to thank you for the part which you have taken in this fortunate issue, which, I hope, will have the happiest influence on the affairs of our France.

"Pray receive the assurance of my high regard and of my sincere attachment.

"Pasquier."

This series of notes is sufficient evidence that I am not boasting; it would bore me too much to be the fly on the coach; the pole or the coachman's nose are not places where I have ever had any ambition to sit: whether the coach reaches the top or rolls to the bottom matters little to me. Accustomed to live hidden in my own recesses, or momentarily in the wide life of the centuries, I had no taste for the mysteries of the ante-chamber. I do not enter readily into circulation like a piece of current money; to escape, I withdraw myself nearer to God: a fixed idea that comes from Heaven isolates you and kills everything around you.

BOOK VIII[61]

The year 1821—The Berlin, Embassy—I arrive in Berlin—M. Ancillon—The Royal Family—Celebrations for the marriage of the Grand-duke Nicholas—Berlin society—Count von Humboldt—Herr von Chamisso—Ministers and ambassadors—The Princess William—The Opera—A musical meeting—My first dispatches—M. de Bonnay—The Park—The Duchess of Cumberland—Commencement of a Memorandum on Germany—Charlottenburg—Interval between the Berlin Embassy and the London Embassy—Baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux—Letter to M. Pasquier—Letter from M. de Bernstoff—Letter from M. Ancillon—Last letter from the Duchess of Cumberland—M. de Villèle, Minister of Finance—I am appointed Ambassador to London.

I left France, leaving my friends in possession of an authority which I had purchased for them at the cost of my absence: I was a little Lycurgus[62]. What was good in it was that the first trial which I had made of my political strength restored me my liberty; I was going to enjoy abroad that liberty within the power. At the bottom of this liberty, personally new to me, I saw I know not what confused romances in the midst of realities: was there nothing in Courts? Were not they solitudes of another kind? Perhaps they were Elysian fields with their shades.

I left Paris on the 1st of January 1821: the Seine was frozen, and for the first time I was racing along the roads with the comforts of money. I was gradually recovering from my contempt for riches; I was beginning to feel that it was not unpleasant to roll in a good carriage, to be well served, not to have to trouble about anything, and to be preceded by an enormous Warsaw courier, who was always famished and who, in default of the Tsars, would have devoured Poland unaided. But I soon got used to my good fortune; I had the presentiment that it would not last long and that I should soon be made to go on foot again, as was right and proper. Before I reached my destination, all that remained to me of[Pg 32] the journey was my primitive taste for travel itself, the taste for independence, the satisfaction of having broken the bonds of society.

You shall see, when I am returning from Prague in 1833, what I say of my old memories of the Rhine: I was obliged, because of the ice, to ascend its banks and to cross it above Mayence. I troubled myself little with "Moguntia," its archbishop, its three or four sieges, and the invention of printing, through which however I reigned. Frankfort, the city of the Jews, delayed me only for one of their transactions: to change some money.

The road was sad: the highway was snowy and hoar-frost covered the branches of the pine-trees. I caught sight of Jena in the distance, with the worms of its double battle[63]. I passed through Erfurt and Weimar: at Erfurt, the Emperor was wanting; at Weimar dwelt Goethe[64], whom I had admired so much, and whom I admire much less. The singer of matter lived, and his old dust still adhered around his genius. I might have seen Goethe and did not see him; he leaves a gap in the procession of the celebrated persons who have defiled before my eyes.

Luther's[65] tomb at Wittenberg did not tempt me: Protestantism in religion is only an illogical heresy, in politics only an abortive revolution. After eating, while crossing the Elbe, a little black loaf kneaded in tobacco-smoke, I should have wanted to drink out of Luther's big glass, which is preserved as a relic. From there, passing through Potsdam and crossing the Spree, a river of ink along which crawl barges guarded by a white dog, I arrived in Berlin. There lived, as I have said, "the mock Julian in his mock Athens." I sought in vain the sun of Mount Hymettus. I wrote in Berlin the fourth book of these Memoirs. You have found in it the description of that city, my trip to Potsdam, my memories of the Great Frederic, of his horse, of his greyhounds and of Voltaire.

Alighting on the 11th of January at an inn, I next went to live Unter den Linden, in the house which M. le Marquis de Bonnay had left, and which belonged to Madame la Duchesse de Dino: I was[Pg 33] there received by Messieurs de Caux, de Flavigny[66] and de Gussy, the secretaries of legation.

On the 17th of January, I had the honour of presenting to the King[67] M. le Marquis de Bonnay's letter of recall and my own credentials. The King, lodged in an ordinary house, had two sentries at his door for all distinction: entered who would; one spoke to him "if he was at home." This simplicity of the German sovereigns tends to make the name and prerogatives of the great less felt by the small. Frederic William went every day, at the same hour, in an open cariole which he drove himself, in a cap and a grey cloak, to smoke his cigar in the Park. I used often to meet him and we continued our drive, each in his own direction. When he entered Berlin again, the sentry at the Brandenburg Gate shouted at the top of his voice; the guard took up arms and turned out; the King passed and all was over.

On the same day I paid my court to the Prince Royal[68] and the Princes his brothers[69], very lively young officers. I saw the Grand-duke Nicholas[70] and the Grand-duchess[71], newly married, who were being feasted. I also saw the Duke[72] and Duchess of Cumberland[73], Prince William[74], the King's brother, Prince Augustus[Pg 34] of Prussia[75], for a long time our prisoner: he had wished to marry Madame Récamier; he owned the admirable portrait which Gérard[76] painted of her and which she had exchanged with the Prince for the picture of Corinna.

I hastened to find M. Ancillon[77]. We were mutually acquainted through our works. I had met him in Paris with the Prince Royal, his pupil; he was in charge of the Foreign Office in Berlin, ad interim, during the absence of Count von Bernstorff[78]. His was a very touching life: his wife had lost her sight; all the doors in his house were left open; the poor blind woman wandered from room to room, among flowers, and sat down at hap-hazard, like a caged nightingale: she sang well, and died early.

M. Ancillon, like many illustrious Prussians, was of French origin: as a Protestant minister, he had at first held very Liberal opinions; little by little he cooled. When I met him again in Rome, in 1828, he had gone back to moderate monarchy, and he retrograded to absolute monarchy. With an enlightened love of generous sentiments, he combined a hatred and fear of the revolutionaries; it was this hatred that drove him towards despotism, in order to ask for shelter there. Will they who still extol 1793 and admire its crimes never understand to how great an extent the horror with which one is seized for those crimes acts as an obstacle to the establishment of liberty?

There was a fête at Court, and with that commenced for me honours of which I was very unworthy. Jean Bart[79], to go to Versailles,[Pg 35] put on a coat of cloth-of-gold lined with cloth-of-silver, which made him very uncomfortable. The Grand-duchess, now Empress of Russia, and the Duchess of Cumberland chose my arm in a polonaise: my worldly romances were beginning. The air of the march was a kind of medley, composed of various pieces, among which, to my great satisfaction, I recognised the song of King Dagobert[80]: that encouraged me and came to the rescue of my timidity. These fêtes were repeated; one of them in particular took place in the King's Great Palace. Not caring to undertake the description on my own account, I give it as chronicled in the Berlin Morgenblatt by the Baroness von Hohenhausen[81]:

Berlin, 22 March 1821 (Morgenblatt No. 70).

"One of the notable persons present at this entertainment was the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, the French Minister, and however great the splendour of the spectacle that unfolded before their eyes, the fair Berlinese still kept a glance for the author of Atala, that superb and melancholy novel, in which the most ardent love succumbs in the fight against religion. The death of Atala and Chactas' hour of happiness, during a storm in the ancient forests of America, depicted in Miltonian colours, will remain ever engraved in the memory of all the readers of the novel. M. de Chateaubriand wrote Atala in his youth, painfully tried by his exile from his country: hence the profound melancholy and the burning passion which breathe throughout the work. At present this consummate statesman has devoted his pen solely to politics. His last work, the Vie et la mort du duc de Berry, is written quite in the tone employed by the panegyrists of Louis XIV.

"M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender, stature. His oval countenance has an expression of reverence and[Pg 36] melancholy. He has black hair and eyes: the latter glow with the fire of his mind, which is pronounced in his features."

But I have white hair: so forgive the Baroness von Hohenhausen for having sketched me in my good days, although already she grants me years. The portrait, besides, is very handsome; but I owe it to my sincerity to say that it is not like.

*

The house Unter den Linden was much too large for me, cold and dilapidated: I occupied only a small part of it. Among my colleagues, the ministers and ambassadors, the only one worthy of note was M. d'Alopeus[82]. I have since met his wife and daughter[83] in Rome with the Grand-duchess Helen[84]: if the latter had been in Berlin instead of the Grand-duchess Nicholas, her sister-in-law, I should have been better pleased.

M. d'Alopeus, my colleague, had a gentle mania for believing himself to be adored. He was persecuted by the passions which he inspired:

"Upon my word," he used to say, "I don't know what there is about me; wherever I go the women follow me. Madame d'Alopeus became obstinately attached to me."

He would have been an excellent Saint-Simonian. Private society has its own aspect, like public society: in the former, it is always attachments formed and broken off, family affairs, deaths, births, private sorrows and pleasures; the whole varied in appearance according to the centuries. In the other, it is always change of ministers, battles lost or won, negociations with Courts, kings who disappear, or kingdoms that fall.

Under Frederic II.[85] Elector of Brandenburg, surnamed "Iron-tooth";[Pg 37] under Joachim II.[86], poisoned by the Jew Lippold[87]; under John Sigismund[88], who added the Duchy of Prussia to his Electorate; under George William[89], "the Irresolute," who, losing his fortresses, allowed Gustavus Adolphus[90] to chat with the ladies of the Court and said, "What is to be done? They have guns;" under the Great Elector[91], who found nothing in his States but "heaps of ashes, which prevented the grass from growing[92]," who gave audience to the Ambassador of Tartary, "whose interpreter had a wooden nose and slit ears;" under his son, the first King of Prussia[93], who, startled out of his sleep by his wife, took the fever with fright and died of it: under all these reigns, the different Memoirs display only a repetition of the same adventures in private life.

Frederic William I.[94], father of the great Frederic, a stern and eccentric man, was brought up by Madame de Rocoules, the refugee: he loved a young woman who was unable to soften him; his drawing-room was a smoking-room. He nominated the buffoon Gundling[95] President of the Royal Academy of Berlin; he shut up his son in the Citadel of Custrin, and Quatt had his head chopped off before the young Prince's eyes: that was the private life of that time. Frederic the Great, having ascended the throne, had an intrigue with an Italian dancer, the Barbarini, the only woman he ever approached: he contented himself on his wedding-night with playing the flute[Pg 38] under the window of the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick[96] when he married her. Frederic had a taste for music and a mania for verses. The intrigues and epigrams of the two poets, Frederic and Voltaire[97], disturbed Madame de Pompadour[98], the Abbé de Bernis[99] and Louis XV.[100] The Margravine of Bayreuth[101] was mixed up in all this with love, such as a poet might feel. Literary parties at the King's; next, dogs on unclean arm-chairs; next, concerts before statues of Antinous; next, great dinner-parties; next, a quantity of philosophy; next, the liberty of the press and blows with the stick; next, a lobster or an eel-pie, which put an end to the days of an old great man who wanted to live: these are the things with which private society occupied itself in that time of letters and battles. And, notwithstanding, Frederic renovated Germany, established a counterpoise to Austria, and altered all Germany's relations and all her political interests.

In the later reigns, we find the Marble Palace, Frau Rietz[102], with her son, Alexander Count von der Marck, the Baroness von Stoltzenberg, mistress to the Margrave Schwed, and formerly an actress; Prince Henry[103] and his suspicious friends, Fräulein Voss, Frau Rietz's rival; an intrigue at a masked ball between a young Frenchman and the wife of a Prussian general; lastly Madame de F———, whose adventure we can read in the Histoire secrète[Pg 39] de la cour de Berlin[104]: who knows all those names? Who will remember ours? To-day, in the Prussian capital, octogenarians scarcely preserve the memory of that past generation.

The habits of Berlin society suited me: people "went to evening-parties" between five and six; all was over by nine, and I used to go to bed just as though I had not been an ambassador. Sleep devours existence, which is a good thing:

"The hours are short and life is long," says Fénelon.

Herr Wilhelm von Humboldt[105], brother of my illustrious friend the Baron Alexander, was in Berlin: I had known him as minister in Rome; suspected by the Government because of his opinions, he led a retired life; to kill time, he learnt all the languages and even all the dialects of the world. He reproduced the peoples, the ancient inhabitants of a soil, by means of the geographical denominations of the country. One of his daughters talked ancient and modern Greek with equal ease; if one had happened on a good day, one might have chatted at table in Sanskrit.

Adelbert von Chamisso[106] lived in the Botanical Gardens, some way from Berlin. I visited him in that solitude, where the plants froze in the hot-houses. He was tall, with rather agreeable features. I felt an attraction towards that exile, a traveller like myself: he had seen the Polar seas to which I had hoped to penetrate. An Emigrant like myself, he had been brought up in Berlin as a royal page. Adelberg, travelling through Switzerland, stopped for a moment at Coppet. He took part in an excursion on the lake, where he was in danger of being drowned. He wrote that same day:

"I clearly see that I must seek my safety on the high seas."

Herr von Chamisso had been appointed professor at Napoléonville by M. de Fontanes; later Greek professor at Strasburg; he rejected the offer in these noble words:

"The first condition for working at the instruction of youth is[Pg 40] independence; though I admire Bonaparte's genius, it is not to my taste."

In the same way he refused the advantages offered to him by the Restoration:

"I have done nothing for the Bourbons," he said, "and I cannot accept the price of the services and the blood of my fathers. In this age, every man must provide for his own existence."

In Herr von Chamisso's family this note is preserved, written in the Temple, in the hand of Louis XVI.:

"I recommend M. de Chamisso, one of my faithful servants, to my brothers."

The Martyr King had hidden the little note in his bosom to have it handed to his first page, Chamisso[107], Adelbert's uncle[108].

Herr von Chamisso embarked on the ship equipped by Count Romanzoff[109], and, in company with Captain Kotzebue[110], discovered the strait to the east of Behring's Straits and gave his name to one of the islands from which Cook had caught sight of the American coast. In Kamchatka he picked up a portrait of Madame Récamier on porcelain and a copy of his little tale, Peter Schlemihl, translated into Dutch. Adelbert's hero, Peter Schlemihl, sold his shadow to the devil: I would rather have sold him my body.

I remember Chamisso as I do the imperceptible breeze that lightly swayed the stalks of the heather through which I passed when returning to Berlin.

*

Following a rule of Frederic II., the Princes and Princesses of the Blood in Berlin do not see the diplomatic body; but, thanks to the carnival, to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with the Princess Frederica of Prussia, sister to the late Queen[111],[Pg 41] thanks also to a certain relaxation of etiquette which they permitted themselves, it was said, because of my person, I had occasion to be oftener with the Royal Family than my colleagues. As from time to time I visited the Great Palace, I there met the Princess William[112]: she liked taking me over the apartments. I never saw a sadder expression than hers: in the uninhabited rooms at the back of the palace, on the Spree, she showed me a chamber haunted on certain days by a white lady, and, pressing herself against me with a certain terror, she looked like that white lady herself. On the other hand, the Duchess of Cumberland told me that she and her sister the Queen of Prussia, when both still very young, had heard their mother[113], who had recently died, talk to them from under her closed curtains.

The King, into whose presence I came as I finished my sight-seeing, took me to his oratories: he called my attention to the crucifixes and pictures, and ascribed the honour of those innovations to me, because, said he, having read in the Génie du christianisme that the Protestants had stripped their cult too bare, he had thought my remark just: he had not yet reached the excess of his Lutheran fanaticism.

In the evening, at the Opera, I had a box next to the Royal Box, situated facing the stage. I talked with the Princesses; the King went out between the acts; I met him in the corridor: he would look round to see that no one was near us and that we could not be overheard; then he would confess to me, in a whisper, his detestation of Rossini[114] and his love of Gluck[115]. He branched out into lamentations on the decadence of art, and, above all, on those gargling notes destructive of dramatic singing: he confided to me that he dared say this only to me, because of the people who surrounded him. If he saw any one coming, he hurried back into his box.

I saw a performance of Schiller's[116] Joan of Arc; the Cathedral of Rheims was perfectly copied. The King, who was seriously[Pg 42] religious, with difficulty endured the representation of Catholic worship on the stage. Signor Spontini[117], composer of the Vestal, was manager of the Opera. Madame Spontini, daughter of M. Érard[118], was pleasant, but she seemed to atone for the volubility of the language of women by her own slowness in speaking: any word divided into syllables died away on her lips; if she had tried to say to you, "I love you," a Frenchman's love would have had time to fly between the commencement and the end of those three words. She was unable to finish my name, and she did not come to the end without a certain grace.

A public musical assembly took place two or three times in the week. In the evening, on returning from their work, little work-women, their baskets on their arms, journeymen artisans, carrying the tools of their trades, crowded promiscuously into a hall; on entering, they were given a written sheet of music and they joined in the general chorus with astonishing precision. It was something surprising to hear those two or three hundred blended voices. When the piece was finished, each resumed his homeward road. We are very far from this feeling for harmony, a powerful means of civilization; it has introduced into the cottage of the German peasants an education which our rustics lack: wherever there is a piano, there is no more grossness.

*

About the 13th of January, I opened the series of my dispatches with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. My mind easily accommodates itself to this kind of work: why not? Did not Dante[119], Ariosto[120] and Milton[121] succeed as well in politics as in[Pg 43] poetry? No doubt I am not Dante, nor Ariosto, nor Milton; nevertheless, Europe and France have seen by the Congrès de Vérone what I could do.

My predecessor in Berlin treated me, in 1816, as he treated M. de Lameth[122] in his little verses at the commencement of the Revolution. When one is so amiable, he should not leave minute-books behind him, nor have the orderliness of a clerk when he has not the capacity of a diplomatist. It happens, in the times in which we live, that a gust of wind sends into your place the man against whom you rose up; and, as the ambassador's duty is first to make himself acquainted with the archives of the embassy, behold him coming upon the notes in which he is dealt with in masterly fashion. What would you have? Those profound minds, which worked for the success of the good cause, could not think of everything.

Extracts from the minute-book of M. de Bonnay

No. 64.

"22 November 1816.

"All Europe has taken cognizance and approved of the words which the King addressed to the newly-formed bureau of the Chamber of Peers. I have been asked if it was possible that men devoted to the King, that persons attached to his person and holding places in his Household or in those of our Princes had indeed been able to give their votes to put M. de Chateaubriand into the secretaryship. My reply was that, as the balloting was secret, no one could know how individual votes went.

"'Ah,' exclaimed a leading man, 'if the King could be assured of it, I hope that the access to the Tuileries would be forthwith closed to those faithless servants.'

"I thought it my duty to make no answer, and I made no answer."

"15 October 1815.

. . . . . . . . . .

"It will be the same, monsieur le duc, with the measures of the 5th and of the 20th of September: both meet with nothing but approval in Europe. But what is astonishing is to see that[Pg 44] very pure and very worthy Royalists continue to be smitten with M. de Chateaubriand, notwithstanding the publication of a book which lays down the principle that the King of France, by virtue of the Charter, is no longer more than a moral entity, essentially null, and without a will of his own. If any other than he had put forward a similar maxim, the same men, not without apparent reason, would have qualified him as a Jacobin."

*

There you have me finely put in my place. For the rest, it is a good lesson; that brings down our pride, by teaching us what will become of us when we are gone.

From the dispatches of M. de Bonnay and those of some other ambassadors belonging to the Old Order, it appears to me that the dispatches treated less of diplomatic affairs than of anecdotes relating to persons in society and at Court; they reduced themselves to a journal, encomiastic like Dangeau's[123], or satirical like Tallemant's[124]. And Louis XVIII. and Charles X. much preferred the amusing letters of my colleagues to my serious correspondence. I could have laughed and jested like my predecessors, but the time was past in which scandalous adventures and petty intrigues were connected with public business. What good would have resulted for my country from a portrait of M. de Hardenberg[125], a handsome old man, white as a swan, deaf as a post, going to Rome without permission, amusing himself with too many things, believing in all sorts of dreams, given over in the last resort to magnetism in the hands of Dr. Koreff[126], whom I used to meet on[Pg 45] horseback, trotting in sequestered neighbourhoods between the devil, medicine and the Muses?

This contempt for a frivolous correspondence makes me say to M. Pasquier in my letter of the 13th of February 1821, No. 13:

"I have not spoken to you, monsieur le baron, according to custom, of the receptions, the balls, the spectacles, etc.; I have not drawn little portraits nor composed useless satires for you; I have tried to lift diplomacy out of mere gossip. The reign of the commonplace will return when the time of the extraordinary has passed: meanwhile, one should describe only that which is destined to live and attack only that which threatens."

*

Berlin has left me a lasting memory, because the nature of the recreations which I found there carried me back to the days of my childhood and my youth; only, very real princesses filled the part of my Sylphide. Old rooks, my eternal friends, used to come to perch on the lime-trees before my window; I threw food to them: when they had caught too large a piece of bread, they threw it up again with inconceivable dexterity to catch a smaller one, in such a way that they were able to take another a little larger, and so on up to the chief piece, which, held at the point of their beak, kept it open, without permitting any of the increasing layers of bread to fall. His meal over, the bird would sing after his fashion: cantus cornicum ut secla vetusta. I wandered in the desert spaces of frozen Berlin, but I did not hear beautiful voices of young girls issue from its walls, as from the old walls of Rome. Instead of white-bearded Capuchins dragging their sandals among flowers, I met soldiers making snow-balls.

One day, on turning the corner of the wall of circumvallation, Hyacinthe[127] and I found ourselves face to face with so cutting an east wind that we were obliged to run across country to regain town, half-dead. We passed through enclosed grounds, and all the watch-dogs flew at our legs, pursuing us. That day, the thermometer went down to 22 degrees below freezing-point. One or two sentries at Potsdam were frozen to death.

On the further side of the park was an old abandoned pheasantry: the Prussian princes do not go shooting. I crossed a little wooden bridge over a canal leading out of the Spree and found[Pg 46] myself among the pine-wood columns which form the portico of the pheasantry. A fox, which reminded one of those in the mall at Combourg, came out of a hole contrived in the wall of the preserve, passed the time of day, and retreated into his coppice.

What is known as the Park, in Berlin, is a wood of oaks, birches, beeches, limes and alders. It lies outside the Charlottenburg Gate, and is crossed by the high-road leading to that royal residence. To the right of the Park is an exercise-ground; to the left are booths.

Inside the Park, which was not at that time intersected with regular walks, one saw meadows, uncultivated spots, and beech-wood benches, on which Young Germany not long ago had carved hearts pierced by daggers: under these stabbed hearts one read the name of "Sand[128]." Flights of crows, taking up their dwelling in the trees at the approach of spring, were beginning to chatter. Living nature was reviving before vegetable nature, and quite black frogs were being gobbled up by ducks in the ponds which here and there had thawed: those were the nightingales which "opened the spring-time in the woods" of Berlin. However, the Park was not without pretty animals: squirrels scrambled along the branches or darted along the ground, sporting their tails as a flag. When I came near the merry-making, the actors climbed the trunks of the oaks, stopped in a fork, and snarled at me as I passed below. Few strollers frequented the forest, the uneven soil of which was lined and cut by canals. Sometimes I would meet a gouty old officer who, quite warm and lively, would say to me, speaking of the pale ray of the sun under which I was shivering with cold:

"That's scorching!"

From time to time, I came across the Duke of Cumberland, on horseback and almost blind, pulling up in front of an alder-tree, against which he had ridden and knocked his nose. Some six-horsed carriages would pass: in them were the Austrian Ambassadress or the Princess von Radziwill and her daughter, fifteen years of age, charming as one of those clouds with maidens' faces that surround Ossian's moon. The Duchess of Cumberland nearly always took the same walk as myself: at one[Pg 47] time, she was returning from a cottage where she had been relieving a poor woman of Spandau; at another, she stopped and graciously told me that she had wanted to meet me: an amiable daughter of the thrones alighting from her car, like the Goddess of Night, to roam in the forest! I also saw her in her own house: she would repeat that she wished to entrust me with her son, that little "George[129]," since grown into the Prince whom his cousin Victoria[130] would, they say, have liked to place by her side on the throne of England.

The Princess Frederica has since dragged out her days on the banks of the Thames, in those gardens at Kew which formerly saw me wander between my two acolytes, illusion and poverty. After my departure from Berlin, she honoured me with a correspondence; in it she describes, from hour to hour, the life of an inhabitant of those heaths where Voltaire passed, where Frederic died, where that Mirabeau hid himself who was to commence the Revolution of which I was the victim. One's attention is captivated on seeing the links by which so many men are connected who have never seen each other.

Here are some extracts from the correspondence opened with me by H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland:

"19 April[131], Thursday.

"This morning, on waking, I was handed the last evidence of your remembrance; later, I passed before your house. I saw the windows open as usual, everything was in the same place, except yourself! I cannot tell you what this made me feel! I now no longer know where to find you; each moment carries you farther away; the only fixed point is the 26th, the day on which you count on arriving, and the memory which I retain of you.

"God grant that you may find everything changed for the better, both for yourself and for the general good! Accustomed as I[Pg 48] am to sacrifices, I shall know also how to bear that of not seeing you again, if it is for your happiness and that of France."

"22.

"Since Thursday, I have passed in front of your house every day on my way to church; I prayed hard for you there. Your windows are constantly open, that touches me: who pays you that attention to follow your tastes and instructions, in spite of your absence? It occurs to me sometimes that you have not gone away; that business detains you, or that you want to keep off intruders, so as to finish it at your ease. Do not believe that that would mean a reproach: it is the only way; but, if that be so, pray tell me, in confidence."

"23.

"It is so prodigiously warm to-day, even in church, that I cannot take my walk at the usual time: that is all the same to me now. The dear little wood has no charm left for me, everybody bores me there! This sudden change from cold to heat is common in the North; the inhabitants, with their moderation of character and sentiments, do not resemble the climate."

"24.

"Nature has grown much more beautiful; all the leaves have come out since your departure: I should have liked them to come two days earlier, so that you might have carried away in your memory a more smiling picture of your stay here."

"Berlin, 12 May 1821.

"Thank God, here is a letter from you at last! I knew quite well that you could not write to me earlier; but in spite of the calculations which my reason made for me, three weeks, or rather twenty-three days, are very long for friendship in privation, and to remain without news is like the saddest exile: still, memory and hope remained to me."

"15 May.

"It is not from my stirrup, like the Grand Turk, but still from my bed that I write to you; but this retreat has given me all the time to reflect on the new dietary which you propose to make Henry V. observe. I like it much; the roast lion can only do him great good; only I advise you to make him begin[Pg 49] with the heart. You will have to make your other pupil[132] eat lamb, lest he should play the deuce too much. It is absolutely necessary that this plan of education should be realized and that George and Henry V. should become good friends and good allies."

Frederica Queen of Hanover.

H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland continued to write to me from the waters at Ems, next from the waters at Schwalbach, and afterwards from Berlin, where she returned on the 22nd of September in the year 1821. She wrote to me from Ems:

"The Coronation in England will happen without me; I am grieved that the King[133] should have fixed on the saddest day of my life to have himself crowned: the day on which I lost that adored sister[134]. The death of Bonaparte[135] has also made me think of the sufferings which he made him endure."

"Berlin, 22 September.

"I have already revisited those long, solitary walks. How much obliged I shall be to you if you send me, as you promised, the verses which you have written for Charlottenburg! I also again took the road leading to the house in the wood where you were kind enough to help me in relieving the poor woman of Spandau; how good you are to remember that name! Everything reminds me of happy times. It is not new to regret happiness.

"As I was about to send off this letter, I hear that the King has been detained at sea by the storms and probably driven on to the Irish coast; he had not arrived in London on the 14th; but you will know of his return before we do.

"The poor Princess William to-day received the sad news of the death of her mother, the Dowager Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg. You see how I am telling you of all that concerns our family; Heaven grant that you may have better news to give me!" were having

Does it not seem as if the sister of the beautiful Queen of Prussia is speaking to me of "our family" even as though she[Pg 50] the kindness to talk to me of my grandmother, my aunt and my humble relations at Plancouët? Did the Royal Family of France ever honour me with a smile similar to that of this foreign Royal Family, which nevertheless hardly knew me and which owed me nothing? I suppress a number of other affectionate letters: there is about them something suffering and restrained, resigned and noble, intimate and exalted; they serve as a counterpoise to what I have said that was perhaps too severe of the Sovereign Houses. A thousand years earlier, and the Princess Frederica, being a daughter of Charlemagne, would have carried off Eginhard[136] at night on her shoulders, lest he should leave traces in the snow.

*

I have just re-read this book in 1840: I cannot help being struck with this continual romance of my life. What a series of missed destinies! Had I returned to England with little George, the possible heir to that crown, I should have seen the new dream fade away which could have made me change my country, in the same way as, if I had not been married, I should have remained, on the first occasion, in the land of Shakespeare and Milton. The young Duke of Cumberland, who has lost his sight, did not marry his cousin the Queen of England. The Duchess of Cumberland has become Queen of Hanover: where is she? Is she happy? Where am I? Thank God, in a few days I shall no longer have to turn my eyes over my past life, nor to put these questions to myself. But it is impossible for me not to pray Heaven to shed its favours over the last years of the Princess Frederica[137].

*

I had been sent to Berlin with the olive-branch, and because my presence brought trouble into the administration; but, knowing the inconstancy of fortune, and feeling that my political part was not played out, I watched events: I did not wish to abandon my friends. I soon perceived that the reconciliation between the Royalist Party and the Ministerial Party was not sincere; distrust and prejudice remained; they did not do what they had promised me: they were beginning to attack me. The entrance into the Council of Messieurs de[Pg 51] Villèle and de Corbière had excited the jealousy of the Extreme Right; it no longer marched under the banner of the first, and he, whose ambition was impatient, was beginning to grow weary. We exchanged some letters. M. de Villèle regretted having entered the Council: he was wrong; the proof that I had seen right was that, before a year passed, he had become Minister of Finance and M. de Corbière obtained the Interior[138].

I also had an explanation with M. le Baron Pasquier; I wrote to him, on the 10th of February 1821:

"I hear from Paris, monsieur le baron, by the post which arrived this morning, 9 February, that it was found amiss that I should have written from Mayence to the Prince von Hardenberg, or even that I should have sent him a messenger. I have not written to M. de Hardenberg, and still less have I sent him a messenger. I desire, monsieur le baron, to be spared chicanery. When my services are no longer agreeable, let me be told so roundly: I could not be done a greater pleasure. I neither asked nor wished for the mission with which I have been charged; it was neither by taste nor choice that I accepted an honourable exile, but for the sake of peace. If the Royalists have rallied to the Ministry, the Ministry is aware that I had the good fortune to contribute to that union. I should have some right to complain. What has been done for the Royalists since my departure? I do not cease to write on their behalf: am I listened to? Monsieur le baron, I have, thank God, other things to do in life than to attend balls. My country claims me, my wife is ill and needs my care, my friends want their guide again. I am either above or below an embassy, or even a ministry of State. You cannot lack men abler than myself to conduct diplomatic business; so it would be unnecessary to seek pretexts to chicane with me. I shall understand with half a word; and you will find me willing to return to my obscurity."

All this was sincere: that facility for cutting everything and regretting nothing would have given me great strength, if I had had any ambition.

My diplomatic correspondence with M. Pasquier went on; continuing to[Pg 52] occupy myself with the affair of Naples[139], I said:

No. 15.

"20 February 1821.

"Austria is doing a service to the monarchies by destroying the Jacobin edifice in the Two Sicilies; but she would ruin those same monarchies if the result of a salutary and necessary expedition were to be the conquest of a province or the oppression of a people. Naples must be freed from demagogic independence, and monarchical liberty established there; irons must be broken, not chains brought there. But Austria does not desire a constitution in Naples: what will she place there? Men? Where are they? It wants only one Liberal priest and two hundred soldiers for the troubles to begin all over again.

"It is after the voluntary or forced occupation that you must intervene to establish in Naples a constitutional government, under which all social liberties will be respected."

I always preserved a preponderance of opinion in France which obliged me to look at home affairs. I ventured to submit the following plan to my minister:

"Frankly adopt constitutional government.

"Bring in a bill for septennial elections, without aiming at retaining a portion of the present Chamber, which would be suspicious, or keeping the whole, which would be dangerous.

"Give up the laws of exception, a source of arbitrariness, an eternal subject of quarrels and calumnies.

"Free the communes from ministerial despotism."

In my despatch of the 3rd of March, No. 18, I reverted to Spain; I said:

"It may be possible that Spain will soon change her monarchy into a republic: her Constitution must bear its fruit.[Pg 53] The King[140] will either fly or be killed or dethroned; he is not strong enough to master the revolution. It is possible again that this same Spain might exist for some time in a popular state, if she were to form herself into federal republics, an aggregation for which she is better suited than any other country by the variety of her kingdoms, her manners, her laws and even her language."

The Naples affair returns three or four times more. On the 6th of March, No. 19, I observe:

"That the Legitimacy has not been able to take deep root in a State which has so often changed masters and whose habits have been upset by so many revolutions. Affections have not had time to be born, manners to receive the uniform imprint of centuries and institutions. In the Neapolitan nation are many corrupt or wild men who have no mutual connection, and who are attached to the Crown only by feeble bonds: royalty is too near the lazzarone and too far removed from the Calabrian to be respected. The French had too many military virtues to establish democratic liberty; the Neapolitans will not have sufficient"

Lastly, I said a few words about Portugal and again about Spain.

The rumour was being spread that John VI.[141] had embarked at Rio de Janeiro for Lisbon. It was a frolic of fortune worthy of our time that a king of Portugal should fly to an European revolution to seek shelter against an American revolution, and pass at the foot of the rock on which was confined the conqueror who had formerly compelled him to take refuge in the New World.

[Pg 54]

"All is to be feared from Spain," I said, on the 17th of March, No. 21; "the revolution in the Peninsula will go through its periods, unless an arm arises capable of stopping it; but where is that arm? That is always the question."

*

That arm I had the good fortune to find in 1823: it was the arm of France.

I am pleased, in this passage from my dispatch of the 10th of April, No. 26, to find again my jealous antipathy to the Allies and my preoccupation for the dignity of France; I said, writing of Piedmont:

"I do not at all dread the prolongation of the troubles in Piedmont[142] in its immediate results; but it may produce a distant evil by justifying the military intervention of Austria and Russia. The Russian Army is still moving, and has received no counter-order.

"See if, in that case, it would not be for the dignity and security of France to occupy Savoy with twenty-five thousand men during the whole time that Russia and Austria would occupy Piedmont. I am persuaded that that act of vigour and of high policy, while flattering French amour-propre, would, for that reason alone, be very popular and do infinite honour to the ministers. Ten thousand men of the Royal Guard and a selection from the rest of our troops would easily make you up an army of twenty-five thousand excellent and trusty soldiers: the white cockade will be secured as soon as it has faced the enemy.

"I know, monsieur le baron, that we must avoid wounding French amour-propre and that the domination of the Russians and Austrians in Italy may revolt our military pride; but we have an easy means of contenting it, that is, to occupy Savoy ourselves. The Royalists will be charmed and the Liberals can only applaud when they see us take up an attitude worthy of our strength. We should at the same time have the[Pg 55] good fortune to crush a demagogic revolution and the honour of restoring the preponderance of our arms. It would show a poor acquaintance with the French spirit to be afraid of collecting twenty-five thousand men to march into a foreign country and to cut an equal figure with the Russians and Austrians as a military power. I would answer for the event with my head. We have been able to remain neutral in the Neapolitan affair; can we afford to do so, for our safety and for our glory, in the Piedmontese troubles?"

*

Here my whole system lies disclosed: I was a Frenchman; I had a bold policy long before the Spanish War, and I foresaw the responsibility which my very successes, if I obtained any, would cause to weigh upon my head.

All that I am recalling here can doubtless interest nobody; but that is the drawback of Memoirs: when they have no historical facts to relate, they tell you only about the author's person and weary your life out with it. Let us abandon these forgotten shadows! I prefer to remind you that Mirabeau, then unknown, was, in 1786, fulfilling in Berlin an unsuspected mission[143], and that he was obliged to train a pigeon to announce to the King of France the last breath of the terrible Frederic.

*

"I was thrown into some perplexity," says Mirabeau. "That the city gates would be shut was certain; it was even possible that the drawbridges of the island of Potsdam would be raised the moment death should take place, and should this happen my uncertainty would continue as long as it should please the new King. On the first supposition, how send off a courier? There were no means of scaling the ramparts or the palisadoes, without being exposed to a fray, for there are sentinels at every forty paces behind the palisadoes, and at every fifty behind the wall. What was to be done?... Had I been ambassador, the certain symptoms of mortality would have determined me to have sent off an express before death. For what addition was the word death? How was I to act in my present situation? It certainly was most important to serve, and not merely to appear to have served....

"I still had great reason to be diffident of the activity of our embassy. How did I act? I sent a man, on whom I could[Pg 56] depend, with a strong and swift horse to a farm four miles from Berlin, from the master of which I had some days before received two pairs of pigeons, an experiment on the flight of which had been made; so that, unless the bridges of the isle of Potsdam were raised, I acted with certainty....

"After considering, I did not find we were rich enough to throw a hundred guineas away; I therefore renounced all my fine projects, which had cost me some thought, some trouble, and some louis; and I let fly my pigeons to my man with the word 'Return.' Have I done well or ill? Of this I am ignorant; but I had no express orders, and sometimes works of supererogation gain but little applause."

*

The ambassadors were charged, during their residence abroad, to draw up a memorandum on the condition of the peoples and the governments to which they were accredited. This series of memoranda might be useful to the historian. To-day the same injunctions are issued, but scarcely one diplomatic agent complies with it. I had too little time in my embassies to finish off long studies; nevertheless, I made drafts for them; my patience for work was not entirely unfruitful. I find this commencement of a sketch of my investigations on Germany:

"After the fall of Napoleon, the introduction of the representative governments into the Germanic Confederation reawakened in Germany those first ideas of innovation which the Revolution had originally called forth there. They fomented for some time with great violence: the youth of the country had been called to its defense by a promise of liberty; this promise had been greedily received by scholars who found in their masters the inclination which science has shown, in this century, to second liberal theories. Under the sky of Germany, this love of liberty becomes a sort of sombre and mysterious fanaticism, which is propagated by means of secret societies. Sand came to strike terror into Europe. That man, for the rest, who revealed the existence of a powerful sect, was no more than a vulgar enthusiast; he deceived himself and took a common mind for a transcendental mind: his crime went to waste itself upon a writer whose genius could not aspire to empire and had not enough of the conqueror and the king to merit a dagger-thrust.

"A sort of tribunal of political inquisition and the suppression of the liberty of the press have stopped this movement of men's[Pg 57] minds; but it must not be believed that they have broken its main-spring. Germany, like Italy, to-day desires political unity, and with this idea, which will remain dormant for a greater or lesser length of time according to events and men, one can always be sure, by arousing it, to stir the Germanic peoples. The princes or ministers who may appear in the ranks of the Confederation of the German States will hasten or delay the revolution in this country, but they will not prevent the human race from developing: every century has its dynasty. To-day there is no one left in Germany, nor even in Europe: we have passed from the giants to the dwarfs and fallen from the immense into the narrow and limited. Bavaria, by means of the bureaus formed by M. de Montgelas[144], still pushes on towards new ideas, although she has receded in the race, while the Landgraviate of Hesse would not even admit that there was a revolution in Europe. The Prince[145] who has just died wanted his soldiers, who had formerly been soldiers of Jerome Bonaparte[146], to wear powder and pig-tails: he mistook old fashions for old manners, forgetting that one can copy the first, but that one can never restore the second."

*

In Berlin and in the North, the monuments are fortresses; the sight of them alone oppresses the heart. If you see these places in populous and fertile countries, they give rise to the idea of a legitimate defense; the women and children, sitting and playing at some distance from the sentries, form a rather agreeable contrast; but a fortress on heaths, in a desert, only recalls human anger: against whom are those ramparts raised, if not against poverty and independence? You have to be myself to find a pleasure in prowling at the foot of those bastions, in hearing the wind whistle through those trenches, in seeing those breastworks raised in prevision of enemies who perhaps will[Pg 58] never appear. Those military labyrinths, those guns mute in face of one another on salient and gazoned angles, those stone watch-towers, where you see nobody and whence no eye observes you, are of an incredible grimness. If, in the dual solitude of nature and war, you come across a daisy sheltered under the redan of a glacis, that floral amenity relieves you. When, in the castles in Italy, I saw goats suspended to the ruins and the goat-girl sitting under a parasol pine; when, on the mediæval walls with which Jerusalem is surrounded, my eyes plunged into the Valley of Cedron upon some Arab women climbing up steeps among pebble-stones, the sight was a sad one doubtless, but history was there, and the silence of the present allowed the sounds of the past to be heard all the more clearly.

I had asked for leave of absence on the occasion of the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux. Being granted this leave, I prepared to start: Voltaire, in a letter to his niece, says that he sees the Spree flow, that the Spree empties itself into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and that the sea receives the Seine; he thus came down to Paris. Before leaving Berlin, I went to pay a last visit to Charlottenburg; it was not Windsor, nor Aranjuez, nor Caserta, nor Fontainebleau[147]: the villa, supported by a hamlet, is surrounded by an English park, of small extent, from which waste land can be seen outside. The Queen of Prussia here enjoys a peace which Bonaparte's memory will no longer be able to disturb. What an uproar the conqueror made, in the old days, in this refuge of silence, when he arrived there with his flourishing trumpets and his legions blooded at Jena! It was from Berlin, after wiping the kingdom of Frederic the Great from the map, that he announced the continental blockade and prepared the Moscow campaign in his mind; his words had already carried death to the heart of an accomplished sovereign: she now sleeps at Charlottenburg, in a monumental vault; a statue, a fine portrait in marble, represents her. I wrote some verses on the tomb for which the Duchess of Cumberland asked me[148].

[Pg 59]

I arrived in Paris[149] at the time of the celebration for the baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux. The cradle of the descendant of Louis XIV., of which I had had the honour to pay the carriage[150], has disappeared like that of the King of Rome. In a time different from the present, Louvel's outrage would have ensured the sceptre to Henry V.; but crime no longer constitutes a right, except for the man who commits it.

After the baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux[151], I was at last reinstated in my ministry of State: M. de Richelieu had taken it from me, M. de Richelieu restored it to me; the reparation gave me no more pleasure than the wrong had given me offense.

While I was looking forward to returning to see my crows, the cards were being shuffled: M. de Villèle resigned[152]. Loyal to my friendship and my political principles, I thought it my duty to retire into private life with him. I wrote to M. Pasquier:

"Paris, 30 July 1821.

"Monsieur le baron,

"When you were good enough to invite me to call on you, on the 14th of this month, it was to tell me that my presence was necessary in Berlin. I had the honour to reply that, as Messieurs de Corbière and de Villèle appeared to be retiring from office, it was my duty to follow them. In the practice of representative government, it is the usage that men of the same opinion should share the same fortune. What usage demands, monsieur le baron, honour commands of me, since it is a question, not of a favour, but of a disgrace. In consequence, I now repeat to you in writing the offer which I made to you verbally of my resignation as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin. I hope, monsieur le baron, that you will kindly lay it at the King's feet. I entreat His Majesty to accept its motives and to believe in my profound and respectful gratitude for the kindness with which he has deigned to honour me.

"I have the honour to be, etc.,

"Chateaubriand."

[Pg 60]

I announced to M. le Comte de Bernstorff the event which was breaking off our diplomatic relations; he wrote in reply:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Although I ought long to have expected the intelligence which you have been good enough to send me, I am none the less painfully affected by it. I know and respect the motives which, in this delicate circumstance, have determined your resolutions; but, while adding new claims to those which have in this country won for you an universal esteem, they also add to the regrets which are here felt at the certainty of a loss long dreaded and for ever irreparable. These sentiments are keenly shared by the King and the Royal Family, and I am only awaiting the moment of your recall to tell you so officially.

"Bear me kindly in your remembrance, I pray you, and accept the renewed expression of my inviolable devotion and of the high regard with which I have the honour to be, etc., etc.

"Bernstorff."

"Berlin, 25 August 1821.

I had hastened to express my friendship and my regrets to M. Ancillon: his very beautiful reply (leaving my praises on one side) deserves to be recorded here:

"Berlin, 22 September 1821.

"And so, monsieur and illustrious friend, you are irrevocably lost to us? I foresaw this misfortune, and yet it has affected me as though it had been unexpected. We deserved to keep you and to possess you, because at least we had the feeble merit of feeling, recognizing, admiring all your superiority. To tell you that the King, the Princes, the Court and the Town regret you is to sound their praises rather than yours; to tell you that I rejoice in these regrets, that I am proud of them for the sake of my country and that I acutely share them would be to fall far short of the truth and to give you a very imperfect idea of what I feel. Permit me to believe that you know me well enough to read my heart. If that heart accuses you, my mind not only absolves you, but more, does homage to your noble proceeding and to the principles which dictated it. You owed France a great lesson and a fine example; you have given her both by refusing to serve a ministry which is unable to judge its situation and which has not the mental courage necessary to extricate itself from it. In a representative monarchy, the ministers and those whom they employ[Pg 61] in the first places must form an homogeneous whole, all the parts of which are jointly and severally responsible one to the other. There, less than anywhere else, should a man separate himself from his friends; he maintains himself and rises with them, he descends and falls in the same way. You have proved the truth of this maxim to France by resigning with Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière. You have taught her at the same time that fortune does not enter into consideration where principles are concerned; and certainly, if yours had not had reason, conscience and the experience of all the centuries on their side, the sacrifice which they dictate to a man like yourself would be sufficient to establish a powerful presumption in their favour in the eyes of all who know anything of dignity.

"I impatiently await the result of the coming elections to draw the horoscope of France. They will decide her future.

"Farewell, my illustrious friend; sometimes, from the heights on which you dwell, shed a few drops of dew on a heart which will cease to admire and love you only when it ceases to beat.

"Ancillon."

Mindful of France's welfare, without occupying myself further with myself or my friends, I at that period submitted the following note to Monsieur:

"If the King did me the honour to consult me, this is what I should propose for the good of his service and the repose of France.

"The Left Centre of the Elective Chamber is gratified at the nomination of M. Royer-Collard[153]: still, I should think peace more assured, if they brought into the Council a man of merit taken from that side and chosen from among the members of the Chamber of Peers or the Chamber of Deputies.

"To place in addition in the Council a deputy from the side of the Independent Right.

"To complete the distribution of offices in that spirit.

"As to things:

"To bring forward at a suitable time a complete law on the[Pg 62] liberty of the press, said law to abolish constructional prosecutions and the optional censorship; to prepare a communal law; to complete the Septennial Act, carrying the eligible age to thirty years; in one word, to proceed, Charter in hand, courageously to defend religion against impiety, but at the same time to protect it against fanaticism and the indiscretions of a zeal that do it great harm.

"As to foreign affairs, three things must guide the King's ministers: the honour, the independence and the interest of France.

"New France is wholly Royalist; she may become wholly Revolutionary: let them follow the institutions, and I would answer with my head for a future of many centuries; let them violate or molest those institutions, and I would not answer for a future of a few months.

"I and my friends are ready to support with all our strength an administration formed on the bases as suggested above.

"Chateaubriand."

A voice in which the woman prevailed over the princess came to give consolation to what was only the affliction of a life incessantly varying. The handwriting of H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland was so greatly altered that I had some difficulty in recognising it. The letter bore the date of the 28th of September 1821: it is the last which I received from that royal hand[154]. Alas, the other noble friends who at that time supported me in Paris have quitted this earth! Shall I, then, remain with such stubbornness here below that none of the persons to whom I have attached myself can survive me? Happy they on whom age has the effect of wine and who lose their memory when they have had their fill of days!

The resignations of Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière were not long in bringing about the dissolution of the Cabinet and the return of my friends to the Council, as I had foreseen: M. le Vicomte de Montmorency was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. de Villèle Minister of Finance, M. de Corbière Minister of the Interior[155]. I had played too great a part in recent[Pg 63] political movements and exercised too great an influence on public opinion to be left on one side. It was resolved that I should replace M. le Duc Decazes at the London Embassy. Louis XVIII. always consented to send me away. I went to thank him; he spoke to me of his favourite with a constancy of attachment rare in kings; he "begged" me to remove from the mind of George IV. the prejudice which that sovereign had conceived against M. Decazes, and myself to forget the differences which had existed between me and the former Minister of Police. That monarch, from whom so many misfortunes had been unable to draw a tear, was moved by a few sufferings which may have afflicted the man whom he had honoured with his friendship.

My nomination reawoke my memories: Charlotte returned to my thoughts; my youth, my emigration appeared before me, with their sorrows and their joys. Human weakness also made it a pleasure to me to reappear, well-known and powerful, there where I had been unknown and powerless. Madame de Chateaubriand, fearing the sea, dared not cross the Channel, and I set out alone. The secretaries of the Embassy had gone before me.

BOOK IX[156]

The year 1822—My first dispatches from London—Conversation with George IV. on M. Decazes—The noble character of our diplomacy under the Legitimacy—A parliamentary sitting—English society—Continuation of the dispatches—Resumption of parliamentary labours—A ball for the Irish—Duel between the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham—Dinner at Royal Lodge—The Marchioness Conyngham and her secret—Portraits of the ministers—Continuation of my dispatches—Parleys on the Congress of Verona—Letter to M. de Montmorency; his reply foreshadowing a refusal—A more favourable letter from M. de Villèle—I write to Madame de Duras—Death of Lord Londonderry—Another letter to M. de Montmorency—Trip to Hartwell—Note from M. de Villèle announcing my nomination to the Congress—The end of old England—Charlotte—Reflexions—I leave London—The years 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827—Deliverance of the King of Spain—My dismissal—The Opposition follows me—Last diplomatic notes—Neuchâtel, in Switzerland—Death of Louis XVIII.—Coronation of Charles X.—Reception of the knights of the Orders.

It was in London, in 1822, that I wrote, without intermission, the longest part of these Memoirs, including my travels in America, my return to France, my marriage, my passing through Paris, my emigration to Germany with my brother, my residence and misfortunes in England between 1793 and 1800. There is found the description of old England, and, as I retraced all this at the time of my embassy (1822), the changes that had come over the manners and persons of the time between 1793 and the end of the century struck me: I was naturally led to compare what I saw in 1822 with what I had seen during the seven years of my exile across the Channel.

In this way were told, by anticipation, things which I should now have to place under the proper date of my diplomatic mission. I spoke to you of my emotion, of the feelings recalled to me by the sight of those spots dear to my memory; but perhaps you have not read that part of my book? You have done well. It is enough that I should now tell you of the place in which the gaps that will be found in the present story of my embassy in London are filled up. You see me, therefore, writing in 1839, among the dead of 1822 and the dead that went before in 1793.

[Pg 65]

In London, in the month of April 1822, I was within fifty leagues of Lady Sutton. I strolled in Kensington Gardens with my recent impressions and the early past of my young years: a confusion of times which produces in me a confusion of memories; life which burns out mingles, like the fire of Corinth, the molten brass of the statues of the Muses and Love, of the tripods and the tombs.

The parliamentary holidays were still proceeding when I alighted at my house in Portland Place. The Under-secretary of State, Mr. Planta[157], invited me, on behalf of the Marquess of Londonderry, to go to dine at North Cray, the noble lord's country-place. This villa, with a large tree before the windows on the garden side, looked out over some meadows; a little underwood growing on hillocks distinguished this site from the ordinary English sites. Lady Londonderry[158] was much in vogue in her quality as a marchioness and as wife of the Prime Minister.

My dispatch of the 12th of April, No. 4, relates my first interview with Lord Londonderry; it touches on the affairs with which I had to occupy myself:

"London, 12 April 1822.

"Monsieur le vicomte[159],

"I went two days ago, on Wednesday the 10th instant, to North Cray. I shall now have the honour of giving you an account of my conversation with the Marquess of Londonderry. It lasted for an hour and a half before dinner, and we resumed it later, but less at our ease, because we were no longer alone.

"Lord Londonderry first asked for news of the King's health, with a persistency which manifestly revealed a political interest; when I had reassured him on this point, he passed to the Ministry:

"'It is consolidating itself,' he said.

"I replied:

"'It has never been shaken and, as it belongs to one opinion, it will remain the master so long as that opinion prevails in the Chambers.'

[Pg 66]

"This brought us to speak of the elections: he seemed struck by what I said of the advantage of a summer session to restore order in the financial year; he had not till then well understood the state of the question.

"The war between Russia and Turkey next became the subject of conversation. Lord Londonderry, when speaking of soldiers and armies, appeared to me to be of the opinion of our late ministry as to the danger there might be for us in getting together large bodies of troops; I opposed this idea, I maintained that there was nothing to be feared in leading the French soldier into battle; that he would never be unfaithful in the sight of the enemy's flag; that our army has lately been increased; that it could be trebled to-morrow, if that were necessary, without the smallest inconvenience; that, in truth, a few non-commissioned officers might shout, 'Long live the Charter!' in a garrison, but that our grenadiers would always shout, 'Long live the King!' on the battle-field.

"I do not know whether these greater politics made Lord Londonderry forget the treaty of the negroes; he did not say a word about it to me. Changing the subject, he spoke of the message in which the President of the United States invites Congress to recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies:

"'Commercial interests,' I said to him, 'may derive some advantage from it, but I doubt whether political interests will find the same profit in it; there are already enough political ideas in the world. To increase the mass of those ideas is to compromise more and more the fate of the monarchies in Europe.'

"Lord Londonderry abounded in my sense and spoke these remarkable words to me:

"'As for us (the English), we are not at all disposed to recognise those revolutionary governments.'

"Was he sincere?

"I have had, monsieur le vicomte, to report to you, word for word, an important conversation. However, we must not hide from ourselves the fact that England will sooner or later recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies; public opinion and the impulse of her trade will drive her to it. She has already, during the last three years, gone to considerable expense to establish secret relations with the revolted provinces north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.

"Upon the whole, monsieur le vicomte, I have found in the[Pg 67] Marquess of Londonderry a man of sense, of perhaps somewhat doubtful frankness; a man still steeped in the old ministerial system; a man accustomed to a submissive diplomacy and surprised, without being offended, at language more worthy of France; a man, in short, who could not refrain from a sort of astonishment while talking with one of those Royalists who, since seven years, have been represented to him as madmen or imbeciles.

"I have the honour, etc."

With these general affairs were mingled, as in all embassies, private transactions. I had to occupy myself with the petitions of M. le Duc de Fitz-James[160], with the lawsuit of the ship Eliza Ann, with the depredations of the Jersey fishermen on the Granville oyster-banks, etc., etc. I regretted to be obliged to set aside a little pigeon-hole in my brain for the papers of the claimants. When one ransacks one's memory, it is hard to come across Messieurs Usquin, Coppinger, Deliège and Piffre. But, in a few years, shall we be better known than those gentlemen? A certain M. Bonnet having died in America, all the Bonnets in France wrote to me to claim his succession; those tormentors write to me still! Yet it ought to be time to leave me in peace. It is all very well for me to reply that, the little accident of the fall of the Throne having occurred, I no longer occupy myself with this world: they hold out and want their inheritance at all costs.

As to the East, it was in contemplation to recall the different ambassadors from Constantinople. I foresaw that England would not follow the movement of the Continental Alliance, and I informed M. de Montmorency of this. The rupture which had been feared between Russia and the Porte did not happen: Alexander's moderation delayed the event. In this connection, I made a great expenditure of going and coming, of sagacity and argument; I wrote a multitude of dispatches, which have gone to must in our archives with the reports of events that never occurred. I at least have this advantage over my colleagues, that I attach no importance to my labours; I saw them, without a care, swallowed up in oblivion with all the lost ideas of mankind.

[Pg 68]

Parliament resumed its sittings on the 17th of April; the King returned on the 18th, and I was presented to him on the 19th. I gave an account of this presentation in my dispatch of the 19th; it ended thus:

"H. B. M., thanks to his close and varied conversation, did not give me an opening to tell him something with which the King had specially charged me; but the favourable and early occasion of a new audience is about to present itself."

This "something" with which the King had specially charged me related to M. le Duc Decazes. Later, I executed my orders: I told George IV. that Louis XVIII. was distressed at the coldness with which the Ambassador of His Most Christian Majesty had been received. George IV. replied:

"Listen, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I will confess to you: M. Decazes' mission was not to my liking; it was acting a little cavalierly towards me. My friendship for the King of France alone made me put up with a favourite who had no other merit than his master's attachment. Louis XVIII. reckoned greatly on my good-will, and he was right; but I could not carry indulgence so far as to treat M. Decazes with a distinction at which England would have taken offense. However, tell your King that I am touched by what he ordered you to represent to me, and that I shall always be happy to prove my real attachment for him."

Emboldened by these words, I laid before George IV. all that came to my mind in favour of M. Decazes. He answered, half in English, half in French:

"À merveille! You are a true gentleman!"

When I returned to Paris, I gave Louis XVIII. an account of this conversation: he seemed grateful to me. George IV. had spoken to me like a well-bred but easy-going prince; he was free from bitterness because he thought of other things. Nevertheless it did not do to trifle with him beyond moderation. One of his table-fellows[161] had wagered that he would ask George IV. to ring the bell, and that George IV. would obey. George IV. did in fact ring the bell and said to the gentleman-in-waiting:

"Show this gentleman the door."

[Pg 69]

The idea of restoring strength and brilliancy to our arms continued to dominate me. I wrote to M. de Montmorency, on the 13th of April:

"I have had an idea, monsieur le vicomte, which I submit to your judgment. Would you think it amiss that, in the form of a conversation with Prince Esterhazy[162], I should give him to understand that, if Austria required to withdraw a part of her troops, we could replace them in Piedmont? A few rumours spread as to an intended muster of our troops in Dauphiné would give me a favourable pretext. I proposed to the former ministry to garrison Savoy at the time of the revolt in June 1821[163]. He rejected that measure and I think that, in so doing, he made a capital mistake. I persist in thinking that the presence of some French troops in Italy would produce a great effect on public opinion and that the King's Government would derive much glory from it."

Proofs superabound of the noble character of our diplomacy during the Restoration. What does this matter to parties? Have I not read this very morning, in a newspaper of the Left, that the Alliance forced us to act as its policeman and to make war on Spain, when the Congrès de Vérone is there, when diplomatic documents show in an irrefutable manner that all Europe, with the exception of Russia, objected to the war; that not only did it object to it, but that England openly opposed it; and that Austria secretly thwarted us by most ignoble measures? This will not prevent them from lying afresh to-morrow; they will not even take the trouble to examine the question, to read that of which they speak "knowingly" without having read it! Every lie repeated becomes a truth: one cannot have too great a contempt for human opinions.

Lord John Russell[164], on the 25th of April, introduced a motion[Pg 70] in the House of Commons on the state of the national representation in Parliament: Mr. Canning opposed it. The latter, in his turn, introduced a Bill to repeal a portion of the Act depriving Catholic peers of their right of sitting and voting in the House. I was present at these sittings on the woolsack[165], where the Speaker had made me sit. Mr. Canning was present, in 1822, at the sitting of the House of Lords which rejected his Bill; he was hurt at a phrase of the old Chancellor's[166]: the latter, speaking of the author of the Bill, exclaimed scornfully:

"They say he is leaving for India: ah, let him go, this fine gentleman, let him go, and a good journey to him!"

Mr. Canning said to me as we went out:

"I'll catch him yet."

Lord Holland spoke very well, without, however, recalling Mr. Fox. He used to spin round, so that he often presented his back to the House and addressed his remarks to the walls. The peers cried, "Hear, hear!" No one was offended by this eccentricity.

In England, every one expresses himself as he can; petty pleading is unknown; there is no resemblance in the voice or in the delivery of the speakers. The members listen patiently; they are not offended when the speaker has no facility; let him splutter, let him hem and haw, let him seek his words, they find that he has made "a fine speech" if he has uttered a few phrases of good sense. This variety of men who have remained what nature made them ends by being agreeable; it breaks the monotony. It is true that there are only a small number of lords and members of the House of Commons who get up to speak. We, always placed upon a stage, hold forth and gesticulate like a solemn puppet-show. It was a useful study to me to pass from the secret and silent monarchy of Berlin to the public and noisy monarchy of London: one could derive some instruction from the contrast between two nations at the two ends of the ladder.

*

The arrival of the King, the re-opening of Parliament, the commencement of the Season blended duty, business and[Pg 71] pleasure: one could meet the ministers only at Court, at balls, or in Parliament. To celebrate His Majesty's birthday, I dined with Lord Londonderry; I dined on the Lord Mayor's[167] galley, which went up to Richmond: I prefer the miniature Bucentaur in the arsenal at Venice, which no longer bears more than the memory of the Doges and a Virgilian name. In the old days, as an Emigrant, lean and half-naked, I had amused myself, without being Scipio, by throwing stones into the water along that bank now hugged by the Lord Mayor's plump and well-lined barge.

I also dined in the East End of the town with Mr. Rothschild[168] of London, of the younger branch of Salomon[169]: where did I not dine? The roast-beef equalled that of the Tower of London in stateliness; the fish were so long that one could not see their tails; ladies, whom I met there and nowhere else, sang like Abigail. I quaffed tokay not far from the place which had seen me toss off water by the pitcherful and almost die of hunger; reclining against the silk-squabbed back of my well-padded carriage, I saw that same Westminster where I had spent a night locked in the Abbey, and around which I had strolled, covered with mud, with Hingant and Fontanes. My house, the rent of which cost me twelve hundred pounds a year, was opposite the garret inhabited by my cousin de La Boüétardais what time, in a red robe, he used to play the guitar on a borrowed truckle-bed to which I had offered shelter beside my own.

There was no longer a question of those Emigrant hops at which we used to dance to the tune of the violin of a counsellor to the Breton Parliament; it was Almack's, conducted by Collinet, that provided my delight: a public ball under the patronage of the great ladies of the West End. There the old and the young dandies met. Among the old, shone the victor of Waterloo, who aired his glory like a snare for women stretched across the quadrilles; at the head of[Pg 72] the young, stood out Lord Clanwilliam[170], said to be the son of the Duke of Richmond[171]. He did wonderful things: he galloped out to Richmond and returned to Almack's after twice falling from his horse. He had a certain manner of utterance, after the fashion of Alcibiades, which was thought enchanting. The fashions in words, the affectations of language and pronunciation changing, as they do, in almost every parliamentary session in high society in London, an honest man is wonder-struck at no longer knowing English, which he believed himself to know perfectly six months before. In 1822, the duty of the man of fashion was, at the first glance, to present an unhappy and ailing figure; he was expected to have something neglected about his person: long nails; beard worn neither full nor shaved, but seeming to have sprouted at a given moment by surprise, through forgetfulness, amid the preoccupations of despair; a waving lock of hair; a profound, sublime, wandering and fatal glance; lips contracted in scorn of the human race; a heart bored, Byronian, drowned in the disgust and mystery of existence.

To-day it is no longer so: the dandy must have a conquering, thoughtless, insolent air; he must attend to his dress, wear mustachios or a beard cut round like Queen Elizabeth's ruff or the radiant disk of the sun; he reveals the lofty independence of his character by keeping his hat on his head, by lolling on the sofa, stretching out his boots before the noses of the ladies seated in admiration on chairs before him; he rides with a cane which he carries like a wax-taper, indifferent to the horse which chances to be between his legs. His health must be perfect and his soul always at the height of five or six felicities. A few Radical dandies, those most advanced towards the future, possess a pipe.

But, no doubt, all these things are changed in the very time which I am taking to describe them. They say that the dandy of the present moment must no longer know if he exists, if the world is there, if there are women, and if he ought to salute his neighbour. Is it not curious to find the original of the dandy under Henry III.?

[Pg 73]

"Those pretty minions," says the author of the Isle des Hermaphrodites[172], "wore their hair longish, curled and curled again, showing above their little velvet caps, like the women, and their shirt-ruffs of linen all around, starched and half-a-foot wide, in such fashion that, to see their heads above their ruffs, it seemed as though it was the head of Saint John in a dish." They leave to go to Henry III.'s chamber, "swinging their body, their heads and their legs so that I thought at every turn that they must needs fall at full length.... They found that manner of walking finer than any other."

All the English are mad by nature or by fashion.

Lord Clanwilliam passed quickly: I met him again at Verona; he became British Minister in Berlin after me. For a moment we followed the same road, although we did not walk with the same step.

Nothing in London succeeded like insolence, as witness d'Orsay[173] the brother of the Duchesse de Guiche[174]: he had taken to galloping in Hyde Park, leaping turnpike gates, gambling, treating the dandies without ceremony; he had an unequalled success and, to crown the whole, he ended by carrying off an entire family, father, mother and children.

The ladies most in fashion pleased me little; there was one, however, who was charming, Lady Gwydyr: she resembled a Frenchwoman in her tone and manners. Lady Jersey still maintained her position as a beauty. I met the Opposition at her house. Lady Conyngham belonged to the Opposition, and the King himself kept a secret liking for his old friends. Among the patronesses of Almack's, one marked the Russian Ambassadress[175].

[Pg 74]

The Countess de Lieven had had some rather ridiculous affairs with Madame d'Osmond[176] and George IV. As she was audacious and was considered to be in favour at Court, she had become extremely fashionable. She was thought to have wit, because her husband was supposed to have none, which was not true: M. de Lieven[177] was much superior to Madame. Madame de Lieven, with sharp and unprepossessing features, is a commonplace, wearisome, arid woman, who has only one style of conversation: vulgar politics; for the rest, she knows nothing and she hides the dearth of her ideas under the abundance of her words. When she finds herself with people of merit, her sterility is silent; she invests her nullity with a superior air of boredom, as though she had the right to be bored; having fallen through the effect of time, and being unable to keep from meddling with something, the dowager of the Congress has come from Verona to give, in Paris[178], with the permission of the magistrates of St. Petersburg, a representation of the diplomatic puerilities of former days. She keeps up private correspondences and has shown herself a specialist in unhappy marriages. Our novices have rushed to her rooms to learn to know the fine world and the art of secrets; they entrust her with theirs, which, spread abroad by Madame de Lieven, change into underhand tittle-tattle. The ministers, and those who aspire to become so, are quite proud to be protected by a lady who has had the honour to see M. de Metternich at the hours in which the great man, to refresh himself after the weight of business, amused himself by unravelling silk. Ridicule awaited Madame de Lieven in Paris. A serious doctrinaire[179] has fallen at Omphale's feet: "Love, 'twas thou lost Troy."

The day was thus distributed in London: at six o'clock in the morning, one hastened to a party of pleasure, consisting of a breakfast in the country; one returned to lunch in London; one changed one's dress to walk in Bond Street or Hyde Park; one dressed again to dine at half-past seven; one dressed again for the Opera; at midnight, one dressed once more for an evening party or rout. What a life of[Pg 75] enchantment! I should a hundred times have preferred the galleys. The supreme height of fashion was to be unable to make one's way into the small rooms of a private ball, to remain on the stair-case blocked by the crowd, and to find one's self nose to nose with the Duke of Somerset[180]; a state of beatitude to which I once attained. The English of the new breed are infinitely more frivolous than we; their heads are turned for a "show:" if the Paris executioner were to go to London, all England would run after him. Did not Marshal Soult enrapture the ladies[181], like Blücher, whose mustachios they kissed? Our marshal, who is not Antipater[182], nor Antigonus[183], nor Seleucus[184], nor Antiochus[185], nor Ptolemy[186], nor any of the captain-kings of Alexander, is a distinguished soldier, who pillaged Spain while getting beaten, and with whom Capuchins redeemed their lives with pictures. But it is true that, in March 1814, he published a furious proclamation against Bonaparte, whom he received in triumph a few days later: he has since done his Easter duty at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin. They show his old boots in London for a shilling.

All reputations are quickly made on the banks of the Thames and as quickly lost. In 1822, I found that great city immersed in the recollection of Bonaparte; the people had passed from the vilification of "Nick" to a stupid enthusiasm. Memoirs of Bonaparte swarmed; his bust adorned every chimney-piece; his engravings shone in the windows of all the picture-dealers; his colossal statue, by Canova[187], decorated[Pg 76] the Duke of Wellington's stair-case. Could they not have consecrated another sanctuary to Mars enchained? This deification seems rather the work of the vanity of a door-porter than of the honour of a warrior. General, you did not defeat Napoleon at Waterloo: you only forced the last link of a destiny already shattered.

*

After my official presentation to George IV., I saw him several times. The recognition of the Spanish Colonies by England was pretty well decided upon; at least it seemed as though the ships of those independent States were to be received under their own flag in the ports of the British Empire. My dispatch of the 7th of May reports a conversation which I had had with Lord Londonderry, and the ideas of that minister. This dispatch, important for the affairs of that time, would be almost without interest for the reader of to-day. Two things had to be distinguished in the position of the Spanish Colonies with regard to England and France: commercial interests and political interests. I entered into the details of those interests:

"The more I see of the Marquess of Londonderry," I wrote to M. de Montmorency, "the subtler I find him. He is a man full of resource, who never says what he means; one would sometimes be tempted to think him a simple, easy man. In his voice, his laugh, his look, he has something of M. Pozzo di Borgo. He does not exactly inspire one with confidence."

The dispatch concludes thus:

"If Europe is obliged to recognise the de facto governments in America, its whole policy must tend to bring monarchies to life in the New World, instead of these revolutionary republics which will send us their principles together with the products of their soil.

"In reading this dispatch, monsieur le vicomte, you will doubtless, like myself, experience a movement of satisfaction. It is already a great step forward in politics to have forced England to wish to associate herself with us in interests on which she would not have deigned to consult us six months ago. I congratulate myself as a good Frenchman on all that tends to put back our country in the high rank which she should occupy among foreign nations."

Duc de Richelieu.

[Pg 77]

This letter was the basis of all my ideas and of all the negociations on colonial affairs with which I occupied myself during the Spanish War, almost a year before that war broke out.

*

On the 17th of May, I went to Covent Garden, in the Duke of York's[188] box. The King appeared. This sovereign, once detested, was greeted with acclamations such as he would not, in other days, have received from the monks, the inhabitants of that former convent. On the 26th, the Duke of York came to dinner at the Embassy: George IV. was greatly tempted to do me the same honour, but he feared the diplomatic jealousies of my colleagues.

The Vicomte de Montmorency refused to enter into negociations on the Spanish Colonies with the Cabinet of St. James. On the 19th of May, I heard of the almost sudden death of M. le Duc de Richelieu[189]. That honest man had patiently borne his first retirement from office; but, when business came to be taken from him for too long a time, he failed because he had not a double life to replace that which he had lost. The great name of Richelieu has been handed down to our time only by women.

The revolutions continued in America. I wrote to M. de Montmorency:

No. 26.

"London, 28 May 1822.

"Peru has just adopted a monarchical Constitution. European policy should employ every care to obtain a similar result in the case of the colonies which declare themselves independent. The United States are singularly afraid of the establishment of an empire in Mexico. If ever the whole of the New World is Republican, the monarchies of the Old World will perish."

There was much spoken of the distress of the Irish peasants, and society danced in order to console them. A great full-dress ball at the Opera occupied sensitive souls. The King, meeting me in a corridor, asked me what I was[Pg 78] doing there and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his box.

The English pit, in my days of exile, was noisy and coarse; sailors drank ale in the pit, ate oranges, apostrophized the boxes. I found myself one evening next to a sailor who had entered the theatre drunk; he asked me where he was; I told him:

"At Covent Garden."

"Pretty garden, indeed!" he exclaimed, seized, like Homer's gods, with inextinguishable laughter.

Invited lately to an evening-party at Lord Lansdowne's[190], I was presented by His Majesty to a severe-looking lady, seventy-three years old: she was dressed in crape, wore a black veil like a diadem on her white hair, and resembled a queen who had abdicated her throne. She greeted me in a solemn voice with three mangled sentences from the Génie du Christianisme; then she said to me, with no less solemnity:

"I am Mrs Siddons[191]."

If she had said to me, "I am Lady Macbeth," I should have believed her. I had seen her formerly on the stage in all the strength of her talent. One has but to live to find again those wrecks of one century cast by the billows of time upon the shore of another century.

My French visitors in London were M. le Duc[192] and Madame la Duchesse de Guiche[193], of whom I will talk to you at Prague; M. le Marquis de Custine, whom I had seen as a child at Fervacques; and Madame la Vicomtesse de Noailles[194], as agreeable, witty and gracious as though she were still wandering, at fourteen years of age, in the beautiful gardens of Méréville.

[Pg 79]

People were weary of pleasure; the ambassadors were longing to go on leave; Prince Esterhazy was preparing to set out for Vienna: he hoped to be summoned to the Congress, for already they were speaking of a congress. M. Rothschild[195] was returning to France after concluding with his brother the Russian loan of twenty-three million roubles. The Duke of Bedford[196] had fought a duel with the huge Duke of Buckingham[197], at the bottom of a pit, in Hyde Park; an insulting song against the King of France, sent over from Paris and printed in the London papers, amused the Radical English mob, which laughed without knowing at what.

I left, on the 6th of June, for Royal Lodge, where the King had gone. He had invited me to dine and sleep.

I saw George IV. again on the 12th, 13th and 14th, at His Majesty's levee, drawing-room and ball. On the 24th, I gave a fête to the Prince[198] and Princess[199] of Denmark: the Duke of York had invited himself to it.

In earlier times, the kindness with which the Marchioness Conyngham treated me would have been an important thing: she told me that the idea of His Britannic Majesty's visit to the Continent was not quite abandoned. I religiously kept this great secret locked in my bosom. What important dispatches would have been written on this word of a favourite in the time of Mesdames de Verneuil[200], de Maintenon[201], des Ursins[202], de Pompadour! For the rest I should[Pg 80] have heated myself unduly to obtain any information out of the Court in London: in vain do you speak, they do not listen to you.

*

Lord Londonderry especially was impassive: he embarrassed you at once by his sincerity as a minister and his reserve as a man. He explained his policy frankly, with the iciest air, and kept a profound silence as to facts. He wore an air of indifference to what he said, even as to what he did not say; one could not tell what one was to believe of what he showed or concealed. He would not have budged if you had "caught him in the ear with a sausage," as Saint-Simon says.

Lord Londonderry had a sort of Irish eloquence which often aroused the laughter of the House of Lords and the gaiety of the public; his blunders were celebrated, but he also sometimes attained flashes of eloquence which carried away the crowd, as, for instance, his words relating to the Battle of Waterloo, which I have recalled.

Lord Harrowby[203] was President of the Council; he spoke correctly, lucidly, and as one acquainted with the facts. It would be considered unbecoming in London for a president of the ministers to express himself prolixly or rhetorically. He was, moreover, a perfect gentleman for manner. One day, at the Pâquis, at Geneva, an Englishman was announced: Lord Harrowby entered; I recognised him only with difficulty: he had lost his old King; mine was exiled. It was the last time that the England of my time of grandeur appeared before me.

I have mentioned Sir Robert Peel[204] and Lord Westmorland[205] in the Congrès de Vérone.

I do not know if Lord Bathurst[206] was descended from or related to that Earl Bathurst[207] of whom Sterne wrote:

[Pg 81]

"This nobleman ... is a prodigy; for at eighty-five he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty. A disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others beyond whatever I knew[208]."

*

Lord Bathurst, the minister of whom I am telling you, was well-informed and well-bred; he kept up the tradition of the old French manners of good company. He had three or four daughters who ran, or rather who flew like sea-swallows, along the waves, white, tall, and slender. What has become of them[209]? Did they fall into the Tiber with the young Englishwoman of their name?

Lord Liverpool[210] was not, like Lord Londonderry, the principal minister; but he was the most influential and the most respected minister. He enjoyed that reputation of a religious man and a good man which does so much for him who possesses it; one comes to such a man with the confidence which one has for a father; no action seems good if it is not approved by that godly person, invested with an authority far superior to that of talent. Lord Liverpool was the son of Charles Jenkinson, Baron Hawkesbury, Earl of Liverpool[211], the favourite of Lord Bute[212]. Almost all the English statesmen have begun with the literary career, with pieces of poetry more or less good, or with articles, generally excellent, inserted in the reviews. A portrait remains of this first Earl of Liverpool when he was private secretary to Lord Bute; his family is greatly distressed by it: this vanity, puerile at all times, is doubtless much more so to-day; but we must not forget that our most ardent revolutionaries took their hatred of society from natural disgraces or social inferiorities.

[Pg 82]

It is possible that Lord Liverpool, who was inclined towards reforms, and to whom Mr. Canning owed his last ministry, was influenced, despite the rigour of his religious principles, by some dislike of recollections. At the time when I knew Lord Liverpool, he had almost reached a Puritan illumination. Habitually he lived alone with an old sister, some miles out of London. He spoke little; his countenance was melancholy; he often bent an ear and seemed to be listening to something sad: one would have said that he was hearing his years fall, like the drops of a winter's rain upon the pavement. For the rest, he had no passions and he lived according to God.

Mr. Croker[213], Secretary to the Admiralty, famous as a speaker and as a writer, belonged, like Mr. Canning, to the school of Mr. Pitt; but he was more sophisticated than the latter. He occupied, at Whitehall, one of those gloomy apartments from which Charles I. had passed through a window to walk on the same level to the scaffold. One is astonished, in London, on entering the habitations where sit the directors of those establishments whose weight makes itself felt to the ends of the earth. A few men in black frock-coats sitting at a bare table: that is all you see; yet those are the directors of the British Navy, or the members of that company of merchants, the successors of the Mogul emperors, who number two-hundred millions of subjects in India.

Mr. Croker came to visit me, two years ago, at the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse. He pointed out to me the similarity of our opinions and of our destinies. Events separate us from the world; politics make solitaries, even as religion makes anchorites. When man dwells in the desert, he finds within himself some distant image of the Infinite Being who, living alone in immensity, sees the revolutions of the worlds accomplish themselves.

*

In the course of the months of June and July, the affairs of Spain began seriously to occupy the Cabinet of London. Lord Londonderry and the majority of the ambassadors displayed a ludicrous anxiety and almost dread in talking of these affairs. The Ministry feared lest, in case of a rupture, we should get the better of the Spaniards; the ministers of the other Powers trembled lest we should be[Pg 83] beaten: they still saw our army taking the tricolour cockade.

In my dispatch of the 28th of June, No. 35, the dispositions of England are faithfully stated:

No. 35.

"London, 28 June 1822.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"It has been more difficult for me to tell you what Lord Londonderry thinks, relative to Spain, than it will be easy for me to penetrate the secret of the instructions given to Sir W. A'Court[214]; however, I will leave nothing undone to procure you the information for which you ask me in your last dispatch, No. 18. If I have correctly estimated the policy of the English Cabinet and the character of Lord Londonderry, I am persuaded that Sir W. A'Court has taken with him scarcely anything in writing. They will have charged him verbally to observe the parties without mixing in their quarrels. The Cabinet of St. James does not love the Cortes, but it despises Ferdinand. It will certainly do nothing for the Royalists. Besides, it will be enough that our influence should be exercised in favour of one opinion for the English influence to support the other. Our reviving prosperity inspires a lively jealousy. It is true that there is here, among the statesmen, a certain vague fear of the revolutionary passions which are agitating Spain; but this fear is silent in the presence of private interests: so much so that if, on the one hand, Great Britain could exclude our wares from the Peninsula and if, on the other, she could recognise the independence of the Spanish Colonies, she would easily resign herself to events and console herself for the misfortunes which might overwhelm the Continental monarchies anew. The same principle that prevents England from withdrawing her ambassador from Constantinople makes her send an ambassador to Madrid: she severs herself from the common destinies and attends only to what she may be able to make out of the revolutions of the empires.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

Reverting to the news from Spain in my dispatch of the 16th of July, No. 40, I said to M. de Montmorency:

[Pg 84]

No. 40.

"London, 16 July 1822.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"The English newspapers, copying from the French newspapers, this morning give news from Madrid up to and including the 8th. I never expected better from the King of Spain, and I was not surprised. If that unhappy Prince is doomed to perish, the manner of the catastrophe is not a matter of indifference to the rest of the world: the dagger would lay low only the Monarch, the scaffold might kill the Monarchy. Already the judgments on Charles I. and Louis XVI. are a great deal too much: Heaven preserve us from a third judgment which would appear to establish, through the authority of crimes, a sort of right of peoples and a body of jurisprudence against the kings! We can now expect anything: a declaration of war on the part of the Spanish Government is one of the chances which the French Government must have foreseen. In any case, we shall soon be obliged to put an end to the sanitary cordon, for, once the month of September is past and the plague not reappearing at Barcelona, it would be a real mockery still to speak of a sanitary cordon; we should therefore quite frankly confess to an army and give the reason which obliges us to maintain that army. Would not that be equivalent to a declaration of war against the Cortes? On the other hand, shall we break up the sanitary cordon? That act of weakness would compromise the safety of France, disgrace the ministry and revive the hopes of the revolutionary faction in our midst.

"I have the honour to be, etc., etc., etc."

Since the Congress of Vienna and of Aix-la-Chapelle, the princes of Europe had their heads turned with congresses: it was there that one amused one's self and divided a few peoples. Scarcely was the Congress, commenced at Laibach and continued at Troppau, ended, when they thought of convoking another in Vienna, at Ferrara, or at Verona; Spanish affairs offered the occasion to hasten the moment. Each Court had already marked out its ambassador.

In London, I saw every one preparing to leave for Verona: as my head was full of Spanish affairs and as I was dreaming of a plan for the honour of France, I thought I could be of some use to the new congress by making myself known in a respect which was not thought of. I had written to M. de Montmorency on the 24th of May; but I met with no favour. The minister's long reply is evasive, embarrassed, entangled;[Pg 85] a marked aversion to me is ill-disguised under expressions of friendliness; it ends with this paragraph:

"Since I am in a confidential mood, noble viscount, I wish to tell you what I would not insert in an official dispatch, but what has been urged upon me by some personal observations and also by some opinions from persons who know the ground well upon which you are placed. Has it not already occurred to you that one must be mindful, with the English Ministry, of certain effects of jealousy and temper which it is always ready to conceive at direct marks of favour with the King and of credit in society? You must tell me if you have not happened to observe some traces of this."

Through whom had the complaints of my "credit" with the King and in "society" (meaning, I suppose, with the Marchioness Conyngham) reached the Vicomte de Montmorency? I do not know.

Foreseeing, through this private dispatch, that my game was lost with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I addressed myself to M. de Villèle, then my friend, who did not lean much towards his colleague. In his letter of the 5th of May 1822, he at first replied with a favourable word:

"Paris, 5 May 1822.

"I thank you," he said, "for all that you have done for us in London; the determination of the Court there on the subject of the Spanish Colonies can have no influence on ours; the position is very different; we must above all avoid being prevented by a war with Spain from acting elsewhere, as we must, if affairs in the East brought about new political combinations in Europe.

"We will not allow the French Government to be disgraced through a failure to participate in the events which may result from the present situation of the world; others may intervene with more advantage, none with more courage or loyalty.

"People are greatly mistaken, I think, both as to the real means of our country and as to the power which the King's Government is still able to exercise within the forms which it has laid down for itself; they offer more resources than appears to be believed, and I hope that, when the time comes, we shall know how to prove it.

"You will help us, my dear friend, in these great circumstances,[Pg 86] if they offer themselves. We know it and rely upon it; the honour will be for all, and it is not a question at present of that partition which will be made according to the services rendered; let us all vie in zeal as to who shall render the most signal services.

"I do not know, indeed, if this will turn to a congress; but, in any case, I shall not forget what you have told me.

"Jh. de Villèle."

At this first word of good understanding, I brought pressure on the Minister of Finance through Madame la Duchesse de Duras; she had already lent me the support of her friendship against the forgetfulness of the Court in 1814. She soon received this note from M. de Villèle:

"All that we were saying is said; all that lies in my heart and in my mind to do for the public good and for my friend is done and shall be done, be certain of it. I have no need to be preached to nor to be converted, as I said before; I act on conviction and sentiment.

"Receive, madame, the homage of my affectionate respect."

My last dispatch, dated 9 August, informed M. de Montmorency that Lord Londonderry would leave for Vienna between the 15th and 20th. The swift and mighty contradiction of mortal projects was given me; I thought that I had to speak to the Most Christian King's Council of human affairs only, whereas I had to report to it on the affairs of God:

"London, 12 August 1822, four o'clock in the afternoon.

"Dispatch transmitted to Paris by the Calais telegraph.

"The Marquess of Londonderry died suddenly this morning, 12th, at nine o'clock in the morning, at his country-house at North Cray."

Marquess of Londonderry.

No. 49.

"London, 13 August 1822.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"If the weather has put no obstacle in the way of my telegraphic dispatch, and if no accident has arrived to my special messenger, sent off at four o'clock, I hope that you have been the first on the Continent to receive the news of the sudden death of Lord Londonderry.

[Pg 87]

"This death was extremely tragic. The noble marquess was in London on Friday; he felt his head a little troubled; he had himself bled between the shoulders. After which he left for North Cray, where the Marchioness of Londonderry had been settled since a month. Fever broke out on Saturday the 10th and Sunday the 11th; but it seemed to subside in the night from Sunday to Monday, and on Monday morning the 12th the patient seemed so well that his wife, who was nursing him, thought she might leave him for a moment. Lord Londonderry, whose head was wandering, finding himself alone, got up, went into another room, seized a razor and, at the first attempt, cut his jugular vein. He fell bathed in his blood, at the feet of a doctor who was coming to his assistance.

"They are keeping back this deplorable accident as much as possible, but it has come to the knowledge of the public in a distorted shape and has given rise to all sorts of rumours.

"Why should Lord Londonderry have attempted his life? He had neither passions nor misfortunes; he was established more firmly than ever in his place. He was preparing to leave on Thursday next. He was making a pleasure-trip of a business journey. He was to be back on the 15th of October for shooting-parties, arranged beforehand, to which he had invited me. Providence ordained otherwise, and Lord Londonderry has followed the Duc de Richelieu."

*

Here are some details which did not enter into my dispatches.

On his return to London, George IV. told me that Lord Londonderry had gone to show him the scheme of instructions which he had drawn up for himself and which he was to follow at the Congress. George IV. took up the manuscript, the better to weigh its terms, and began to read it aloud. He noticed that Lord Londonderry was not listening to him and that he was turning his eyes round the ceiling of the closet:

"What's the matter, my lord?" asked the King.

"It's that insufferable John[215], sir, who is at the door; he will not go away, though I am always telling him."

The King, astonished, folded up the manuscript and said:

"You are ill, my lord; go home; get yourself bled."

[Pg 88]

Lord Londonderry went out and went to buy the pen-knife with which he cut his throat.

On the 15th, I continued my reports to M. de Montmorency:

"Messengers have been sent in every direction, to the watering-places, to the sea-side, to the country-houses, to fetch the absent ministers. At the time of the accident none of them were in London. They are expected to-day or to-morrow; they will hold a Council, but they cannot decide anything, for in the last result the King will appoint their new colleague, and the King is in Edinburgh. It is unlikely that His Britannic Majesty will hasten to make a choice in the midst of the celebrations. The death of the Marquess of Londonderry is a serious matter for England: he was not loved, but he was feared; the Radicals hated him, but they were afraid of him. Singularly courageous, he overawed the Opposition, which did not dare to insult him too much in Parliament or in the newspapers. His imperturbable coolness, his profound indifference for men and things, his instinct for despotism and his secret contempt for constitutional liberties made him a minister well-fitted to contend successfully with the tendencies of the century. His defects became good qualities at a time when exaggeration and democracy threaten the world.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"London, 15 August 1822.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Further intelligence confirms what I had the honour to tell you touching the death of the Marquess of Londonderry, in my ordinary dispatch of the day before yesterday, No. 49. Only, the fatal instrument with which the unfortunate minister cut his jugular vein was a pen-knife, and not a razor as I told you. The coroner's report, which you will read in the newspapers, will inform you fully. This inquest held on the corpse of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, as though on the body of a murderer, adds something still more terrible to this event

"You are doubtless now aware, monsieur le vicomte, that Lord Londonderry had shown proofs of mental alienation some days before his suicide and that the King himself had noticed it. A slight circumstance to which I had paid no attention, but which returned to my memory after the catastrophe, deserves to be told. I had gone to see the Marquess[Pg 89] of Londonderry, some twelve or fifteen days ago. Contrary to his custom and to the custom of the country, he received me familiarly in his dressing-room. He was about to shave himself and, laughing a sardonic laugh, he spoke to me in praise of the English razors. I complimented him on the approaching closing of the session:

"'Yes,' said he, 'either that must come to an end, or I must.'

"I have the honour to be, etc."

All that the English Radicals and the French Liberals have told concerning the death of Lord Londonderry, namely, that he killed himself through political despair, feeling that the principles opposed to his own were going to triumph, is a pure fable invented by the imagination of some, the party spirit and silliness of others. Lord Londonderry was not the man to repent of having sinned against humanity, for which he cared very little, nor against the enlightenment of the age, for which he had a profound contempt: madness had come into the Castlereagh family through the women.

It was decided that the Duke of Wellington, accompanied by Lord Clanwilliam, should take Lord Londonderry's place at the Congress. The official instructions were reduced to this: to forget Italy entirely, not to mix at all in the affairs of Spain, to negociate, where those of the East were concerned, by maintaining peace without increasing the influence of Russia. The chances continued in favour of Mr. Canning, and the business of the Foreign Office was entrusted ad interim to Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary.

I attended Lord Londonderry's funeral at Westminster on the 20th of August. The Duke of Wellington appeared moved; Lord Liverpool was obliged to cover his face with his hat to hide his tears. One heard a few cries of insult and joy outside, as the body entered the Abbey. Were Colbert[216] and Louis XIV.[217] more respected? The living can teach nothing to the dead; the dead, on the contrary, instruct the living.

[Pg 90]

The Vicomte de Montmorency to the Vicomte de Chateaubriand

"Paris, 17 August.

"Although there are no very important dispatches to entrust to your faithful Hyacinthe, I wish nevertheless to send him back, according to your own desire, noble viscount, and to that which he has expressed to me, on behalf of Madame de Chateaubriand, to see him return to you soon. I will make use of this to send you a few words of a more confidential character on the profound impression made upon us here, as in London, by the terrible death of the Marquess of Londonderry, and also, by the same occasion, on a matter to which you seem to attach a very exaggerated and very exclusive interest. The Council of the King has taken advantage of it and has fixed for these days, immediately after the closing, which took place this morning, the discussion of the principal directions to be settled, the instructions to be given, and also the persons to be selected: the first question is to know if these will be one or several. You have somewhere, I seem to think, expressed astonishment that we could think of———, not to put you before him, you know very well that he cannot be on the same line for us. If, after the most mature examination, we did not think it possible to avail ourselves of the good-will which you have very frankly shown us in this respect, it would doubtless require, in order to decide us, grave motives which I would communicate to you with the same frankness: the postponement is rather favourable to your desire, in this sense, that it would be most inconvenient, both for you and for us, that you should leave London within the next few weeks and before the ministerial decision which continues to occupy all the Cabinets. This strikes everybody so much that some friends said to me the other day:

"'If M. de Chateaubriand had come at once to Paris, it would have been rather annoying for him to be obliged to leave again for London.'

"We therefore expect to make this important nomination on the return from Edinburgh. The Chevalier Stuart[218] said[Pg 91] yesterday that surely the Duke of Wellington would go to the Congress; it is important that we should know this at the earliest possible moment. M. Hyde de Neuville arrived yesterday in good health. I was delighted to see him. I renew to you, noble viscount, all my inviolable sentiments.

"Montmorency."

This new letter from M. de Montmorency, mingled with some ironical phrases, fully confirmed my impression that he did not want me at the Congress.

I gave a dinner on St. Louis' Day[219], in honour of Louis XVIII., and I went to visit Hartwell in remembrance of the King's exile; I was fulfilling a duty rather than enjoying a pleasure. Royal misfortunes are so common nowadays that one feels but little interest in spots that have not been inhabited by genius or virtue. All that I saw in the sad little park at Hartwell was the daughter of Louis XVI.

At last, I suddenly received from M. de Villèle an unexpected note which gave the lie to my previsions and put an end to my uncertainties:

"27 August 1822.

"My dear Chateaubriand,

"It has just been decided that, so soon as the proprieties relating to the King's return to London permit you, you will be authorized to come to Paris, thence to proceed to Vienna or Verona, as one of the three plenipotentiaries charged to represent France at the Congress. The two others will be Messieurs de Caraman[220] and de La Ferronnays; which does not prevent M. le Vicomte de Montmorency from leaving the day after to-morrow for Vienna, in order to assist at the conferences which may take place in that city before the Congress. He is to return to Paris when the sovereigns leave for Verona.

"This for yourself alone. I am glad that this matter has taken the turn which you desire. Cordially and entirely yours."

Upon this note, I prepared to leave.

The thunder-bolt which incessantly falls at my feet followed[Pg 92] me everywhere. With Lord Londonderry died old England, which had struggled on till then in the midst of growing innovations. Supervened Mr. Canning: self-love carried him so far as to talk the language of the propagandist from his place in Parliament After him appeared the Duke of Wellington, a Conservative who came to pull down: when the sentence of societies is pronounced, the hand which was to build knows only how to demolish. Lord Grey[221], O'Connell[222], all those labourers at ruins were working successively at the overthrow of the old institutions. Parliamentary reform, Irish emancipation, all things excellent in themselves, became, thanks to the insalubrity of the time, causes of destruction. Fear increased the evils: if men had not been so greatly terrified at the threats, they would have been able to resist with a certain success.

What need had England to consent to our last troubles? Shut up in her island and in her national enmities, she was sheltered. What need had the Cabinet of St. James to dread the separation of Ireland? Ireland is only England's long-boat: cut the painter, and the long-boat, separated from the big ship, will go to wreck amid the waves. Lord Liverpool himself had sad forebodings. I dined with him one day: after dinner, we talked at a window overlooking the Thames; down the river we saw a portion of the City, of which the fog and smoke enlarged the bulk. I praised to my host the solidity of the English Monarchy, kept in balance by the even swing of liberty and power. The venerable peer, raising and stretching out his arm, pointed to the City and said:

"What sense of solidity can there be with these enormous towns? A serious insurrection in London, and all is lost."

It seems to me as though I were finishing a journey in England like that which I made, in earlier days, on the ruins of Athens, of Jerusalem, of Memphis and Carthage. Summoning to my presence the centuries of Albion, passing from renown to renown, seeing them swallowed up by turns,[Pg 93] I feel a sort of painful giddiness. What has become of those brilliant and riotous days in which lived Shakespeare and Milton, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Cromwell and William[223], Pitt and Burke? All that is finished; superiorities and mediocrities, hatreds and loves, bliss and wretchedness, oppressors and oppressed, executioners and victims, kings and people, all sleep in the same silence and the same dust. But what nullities we are, if it is thus with the most living part of the human kind, with the genius which lingers like a shadow of olden time in the present generation, but which no longer lives in itself and which does not know that it ever existed!

How many times has England, in the space of a few hundred years, been destroyed? Through how many revolutions has she not passed to come to the brink of a greater, a more deep-laid revolution, which will envelop posterity! I have seen those famous British parliaments in all their mightiness: what will become of them? I have seen England in her ancient manners and in her ancient prosperity: everywhere the little lonely church with its steeple, Gray's country churchyard, everywhere narrow and gravelled roads, valleys filled with cows, heaths spotted with sheep, parks, country-houses, towns; few large forests, few birds, the sea-breeze. It was not those plains of Andalusia, where I found the old Christians and the young loves among the voluptuous remains of the palace of the Moors in the midst of the aloes and palm-trees:

Quid dignum memorare tuis, Hispania, terris
Vox humana valet?

There was not that Roman Campagna, whose irresistible charm is incessantly calling after me; those waves and that sun were not the waves and the sun that bathe and light the promontory on which Plato[224] taught his disciples, that Sunium where I heard the cricket sing, in vain asking Minerva for the hearth of the priests of her temple; but after all, such as she was, this England, surrounded by her ships, covered with her herds and professing the cult of her great men, was charming and redoubtable.

[Pg 94]

To-day her valleys are darkened by the smoke of forges and workshops, her roads changed into iron ways; and along those roads, in lieu of Milton and Shakespeare, move wandering boilers. Already the nurseries of knowledge, Oxford and Cambridge, are assuming a deserted aspect: their colleges and their Gothic chapels, half-abandoned, distress the eye; in their cloisters, near the sepulchral stones of the middle ages, lie, forgotten, the marble annals of the ancient peoples of Greece: ruins guarding ruins.

By these monuments, around which the void was beginning to form, I left that part of my spring days which I had re-found; I parted a second time with my youth, on the same shore where I had abandoned it formerly: Charlotte had suddenly reappeared like that luminary, the delight of the shades, which, delayed by the flight of the months, should rise in the middle of the night. If you are not too weary, read in these Memoirs of the effect which the sudden vision of that woman produced upon me in 1822. When she had distinguished me before, I did not know those other Englishwomen who came to flock round me in my hour of power and renown: their homage was as fickle as my fortune. To-day, after sixteen new years have passed away since my embassy in London, after so many new destructions, my eyes are carried back to the daughter of the land of Desdemona and Juliet: she counts now in my memory only from the day on which her unexpected presence rekindled the torch of my recollections. A new Epimenides[225], awakened after a long sleep, I fix my gaze upon a beacon so much the brighter in that the others are extinguished along the shore; one alone excepted will shine long after me.

I did not finish telling all that concerns Charlotte in the preceding pages of these Memoirs: she came with a part of her family to see me in France, when I was a minister, in 1823. Through one of those inexplicable miseries of mankind, preoccupied as I was with a war on which depended the fate of the French Monarchy, something must no doubt have been lacking in my voice, for Charlotte, returning to England, left me a letter in which she shows herself hurt at the coldness of my reception. I have dared neither to write to her nor to send back to her some literary fragments which she had restored[Pg 95] to me and which I had promised to return to her augmented. If it were true that she had had a genuine reason to complain, I would fling into the fire all that I have told of my first sojourn across the sea.

Often the thought has come to me to go to solve my doubts; but could I return to England, I, who am weak enough not to dare to visit the paternal rock on which I have marked out my tomb? I am afraid nowadays of my sensations: time, removing my young years, has made me like those soldiers whose limbs have been left on the battle-field; my blood, having a less long road to travel, rushes into my heart with so rapid a flow that that old organ of my joys and sorrows throbs as though ready to burst. The wish to burn all that concerns Charlotte, although she is treated with religious respect, is mingled in my mind with the longing to destroy these Memoirs: if they still belonged to me, or if I could buy them back, I should succumb to the temptation. I have so great a distaste for everything, so great a contempt for the present and for the immediate future, so firm a conviction that men, henceforth, taken all together as a public (and that for several centuries), will be pitiable, that I blush to consume my last moments in the relating of past things, in the depicting of a finished world, of which the language and the name will no more be understood.

Man is as much deceived by the success of his wishes as by their disappointment: I had desired, contrary to my natural instinct, to go to the Congress; taking advantage of a prejudice of M. de Villèle's, I had induced him to force M. de Montmorency's hand. Well, my real inclination was not for that which I had obtained; I should doubtless have felt some spite, if I had been compelled to remain in England; but soon the idea of going to see Lady Sutton, of making a journey through the three kingdoms would have mastered the impulse of a superadded ambition which is not inherent in my nature. God ordained differently, and I left for Verona: thence the change in my life, thence my ministry, the Spanish War, my triumph, my fall, soon followed by that of the Monarchy.

One of the two handsome children on whose behalf Charlotte had asked me to interest myself, in 1822, has just been to see me in Paris: he is now Captain Sutton; he is married to a charming young wife, and he has told me that his mother has been very ill and has lately spent a winter in London.

I embarked at Dover on the 8th of September 1822, at the[Pg 96] same port from which, twenty-two years earlier, "M. La Sagne of Neuchâtel" had set sail. Between that first departure to the moment of writing, thirty-nine years have elapsed. When a man looks upon or listens to his past life, he seems to perceive on a deserted sea the track of a vessel that has disappeared; he seems to hear the tolling of a bell of which the old tower is not in sight.

*

Here, in the order of dates, comes the place of the Congrès de Vérone[226], which I have published in two volumes apart. Should any one, by chance, feel a wish to read it, he can find it everywhere. My Spanish War, the great political event of my life, was a gigantic undertaking. The Legitimacy was for the first time about to burn powder under the White Flag, to fire its first gun-shot after those gun-shots of the Empire which will be audible to the utmost posterity. To bestride Spain with one step, to succeed on the same soil where formerly a conqueror's arms had encountered reverses, to do in six months what he was unable to do in seven years: who could have laid claim to that prodigy? That is, however, what I did; but by how many curses has not my head been smitten at the gaming-table at which the Restoration had seated me! I had before me a France hostile to the Bourbons, and two great foreign ministers, Prince von Metternich and Mr. Canning. Not a day passed but I received letters prophesying a catastrophe, for the war with Spain was not at all popular, either in France or in Europe. Indeed, some time after my successes in the Peninsula, my fall was not long in arriving.

In our ardour, after the receipt of the telegraphic dispatch announcing the deliverance of the King of Spain, we ministers hastened to the Palace. There I had a presentiment of my fall; I received a bucketful of cold water over my ears which brought me back to my habitual humility. The King and Monsieur did not notice us. Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, distracted by her husband's triumph, had eyes for nobody. That immortal victim wrote a letter on Ferdinand's deliverance ending in this exclamation, sublime in the mouth of a daughter of Louis XVI.:

"So it is proved that one can save an unfortunate king!"

On the Sunday, I returned, before the meeting of the[Pg 97] council, to pay my court to the Royal Family; the august Princess spoke an obliging sentence to each of my colleagues: to me she did not address a word. I did not, certainly, deserve such an honour. The silence of the orphan of the Temple can never be ungrateful: Heaven has a right to the worship of the earth and owes nothing to any one.

I then lingered on till Whitsuntide; still, my friends were not without anxiety; they often said to me:

"You will be dismissed to-morrow."

"This minute, if they like," I used to reply.

On Whitsunday, the 6th of June 1824, I had found my way to the first drawing-rooms of Monsieur: an usher came to tell me that I was being asked for. It was Hyacinthe, my secretary. He told me, when he saw me, that I was no longer in office. I opened the packet which he handed me; I found in it this note from M. de Villèle:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"In obedience to the King's orders, I am at once communicating to Your Excellency a decree which His Majesty has just issued.

"The Sieur Comte de Villèle, President of our Council of Ministers, is charged ad interim with the business of the Foreign Office, vice the Sieur Vicomte de Chateaubriand."

This decree was written in the hand of M. de Rainneville[227], who is good enough still to be embarrassed at it in my presence. Why, gracious Heaven! Do I know M. de Rainneville? Have I ever given him a thought? I meet him pretty often. Has he ever perceived that I knew that the decree by which I was struck off the list of ministers was written in his hand?

And yet, what had I done? Where did my intrigues or my ambition lie? Had I desired M. de Villèle's place, when going alone and in secret to walk in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne? It was that strange life that ruined me. I had the simplicity to remain as Heaven had made me and, because I longed for nothing, they thought that I wanted everything. To-day I can very well imagine that my life apart was a great mistake. What! You do not want to be anything? Go away! We do not choose that a man[Pg 98] should despise what we worship, nor that he should think himself entitled to insult the mediocrity of our life.

The difficulties of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty followed me to my lodging in the Rue de l'Université: on the day of my dismissal, I had invitations sent out for a huge dinner-party at the Foreign Office; I had to send excuses to my guests and to pack three great courses, prepared for forty persons, into my little kitchen for two people. Montmirel and his assistants set to work and, cramming saucepans, frying-pans and stewpans into every corner, he put his warmed-up master-piece under shelter. An old friend came to share the marooned sailor's first meal. The Town and the Court came hastening up, for there was but one voice on the outrageousness of my dismissal after the service which I had just rendered; they were convinced that my disgrace would not last long; they gave themselves airs of independence in consoling a misfortune of a few days, at the end of which they would profitably remind the unlucky man returned to power that they had not abandoned him.

They were mistaken; they wasted their courage; they had reckoned on my lack of spirit, on my whining, on my toad-eating ambition, on my eagerness to plead guilty, to wait standing on those who had driven me out: they ill knew me. I retired without even claiming the salary which was due to me, without receiving a favour or a groat from the Court; I closed my door to whosoever had betrayed me; I refused the condoling crowd, and I took up arms. Then all dispersed; universal condemnation burst forth, and my game, which had at first seemed fine to the drawing-rooms and ante-chambers, appeared horrible.

Should I not have done better, after my discharge, to be silent? Had not the brutality of the proceeding brought back the public to me? M. de Villèle has repeatedly said that the letter of dismissal was delayed; by this accident it had the misfortune to be handed to me only at the Palace. Perhaps this was so; but, when we play, we must calculate the chances of the game; we must, above all, not write to a friend of any worth a letter which we should be ashamed to address to a guilty footman whom we would put out of doors without ceremony or remorse. The irritation of the Villèle party against myself was the greater inasmuch as they wished to appropriate my work to themselves and as I had displayed ability in matters of which I had been supposed to know nothing.

[Pg 99]

No doubt, with silence and moderation, as they said, I should have been lauded by the race who live in perpetual adoration of the portfolio; by doing penance for my innocence, I should have prepared my return to the Council. It would have been more in the common course of things; but that was taking me for the man I am not; that was suspecting me of a desire to recapture the helm of the State, the wish to make my way: a desire and a wish which would not occur to me in a hundred thousand years.

The idea which I had of representative government led me to enter the Opposition: the systematic Opposition seems to me the only one suited to that form of government; the Opposition known as "conscientious" is impotent. Conscience can decide a moral fact, it is no judge of an intellectual fact. It is absolutely necessary to place one's self under a leader, an appraiser of good laws and bad. If this be not so, then your deputy takes his stupidity for his conscience and votes accordingly. The so-called "conscientious Opposition" consists in fluctuating between the parties, in champing the bit, in even voting, should the case require, for the Ministry, in appearing magnanimous although fretting: an Opposition of mutinous imbecilities among the soldiers, of ambitious capitulations among the chiefs. So long as England was sane, she never had other than a systematic Opposition: a man came in and went out with his friends; on leaving office, he took his place on the bench of the assailants. As he was considered to have resigned because he did not wish to accept a system, that system, being retained by the Crown, must necessarily be combated. Now as men represent only principles, the systematic Opposition aimed only at carrying principles when it attacked men.

*

My fall made a great noise: those who displayed the most satisfaction censured its form. I have since learnt that M. de Villèle hesitated; M. de Corbière decided the question:

"If he enters the Council by one door," he is reported to have said, "I go out by the other[228]."

I was allowed to go out: it was quite simple that they should prefer M. de Corbière to me. I bear him no ill-will: I was troubling him, he had me turned out; he did well.

[Pg 100]

The day after my dismissal and the following days, the Journal des Débats contained these words, which do such honour to the Messieurs Bertin:

"This is the second time that M. de Chateaubriand stands the test of a solemn dismissal.

"He was dismissed as a minister of State, in 1816, for having attacked in his immortal work on the Monarchie selon la Charte, the famous decree of the 5th of September, pronouncing the dissolution of the Chambre introuvable of 1815. Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière were then simple deputies, leaders of the Royalist Opposition, and it was for taking up their defense that M. de Chateaubriand became the victim of the ministerial anger.

"Now, in 1824, M. de Chateaubriand is again dismissed, and it is Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière, since become ministers, who sacrifice him. Singular thing! In 1816, he was punished for speaking; in 1824, they punish him for holding his tongue: his crime is that he kept silence in the discussion on the law for reducing the rate of interest. Not every disgrace is a misfortune; public opinion, the supreme judge, will tell us in which class to place M. de Chateaubriand; it will tell us also to whom this day's decree shall have proved the more fatal, to the victor or the vanquished.

"Who would have said, at the commencement of the session, that we should thus spoil the results of the Spanish Enterprise? What did we want this year? Nothing except the Septennial Act (but, the complete Act) and the Budget. The affairs of Spain, of the East, of the Americas, conducted as they were, prudently and silently, would have been cleared up; the fairest future lay before us; they wanted to gather green fruit; it did not fall, and they imagined that they could remedy precipitation by violence.

"Anger and envy are evil counsellors; it is not by means of the passions and by proceeding with jerks and starts that States are governed.

"P.S.—The Septennial Act has been passed this evening in the Chamber of Deputies. One may say that M. de Chateaubriand's doctrines triumph after he has left the Ministry. This Act, which he had long ago conceived as the complement of our institutions, will, together with the Spanish War, for ever mark his passing in public life. It is very keenly regretted that M. de Corbière should, on Saturday,[Pg 101] have snatched the opportunity of speaking from him who was then his illustrious colleague. The Chamber of Peers would at least have heard the swan's song.

"As for ourselves, it is with the liveliest regret that we enter again upon a career of combats which we hoped that we had, thanks to the union of the Royalists, abandoned for ever; but honour, political loyalty, the good of France do not permit us to hesitate as to the course which we should take."

The signal for the reaction was thus given. M. de Villèle was not too much alarmed by it at first; he did not know the strength of men's opinions. Many years were necessary to overthrow him, but he fell at last.

*

I received from the President of the Council a letter which settled everything and which proved, to my great simplicity, that I had taken nothing of that which makes a man respected and respectable:

"Paris, 16 June 1824.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"I have hastened to lay before His Majesty the Order by which you are granted a full and entire discharge for the sums which you have received from the Royal Treasury, for secret expenses, during the whole time of your ministry.

"The King has approved of all the provisions of this Order, which I have the honour to forward you herewith in the original.

"Accept, monsieur le vicomte, etc."

My friends and I expedited a prompt correspondence:

The Vicomte de Chateaubraind to the Marquis de Talaru[229]

"Paris, 9 June 1824.

"I am no longer minister, my dear friend; they contend that you are. When I obtained the Madrid Embassy for you, I said to several persons who still remember it:

"'I have appointed my successor.'

"I am anxious to have been a prophet. M. de Villèle is holding the portfolio ad interim.

"Chateaubriand."

[Pg 102]

The Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Comte de Rayneval[230]

"Paris, 16 June 1824.

"I have finished, monsieur; I hope that you have still plenty before you. I have endeavoured that you should have no reason to complain of me.

"It is possible that I may retire to Neuchâtel, in Switzerland; should that happen, ask His Prussian Majesty beforehand for his protection and favours for me; present my respects to Count Bernstorff, my kind regards to M. Ancillon, and my compliments to all your secretaries[231]. You, monsieur, I beg to believe in my devotion and in my most sincere attachment.

"Chateaubriand "

The Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Marquis de Caraman[232]

"Paris, 22 June 1824.

"I have received, monsieur le marquis, your letters of the 11th of this month. Others than I will tell you the road which you will henceforth have to follow; if it is conformable to what you have heard, it will carry you far. It is probable that my dismissal will give M. de Metternich great pleasure, for a fortnight or so.

"Receive, monsieur le marquis, my adieus and the renewed assurance of my devotion and of my high regard.

"Chateaubriand."

The Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Baron Hyde de Neuville[233]

"Paris, 22 June 1824.

"You will doubtless have heard of my dismissal. It remains for me only to tell you how happy I have been to have with you the relations that have now been broken off. Continue, monsieur and old friend, to render services to your country, but do not reckon too much on gratitude, nor believe that your successes will be a reason for maintaining[Pg 103] you in the post where you are doing yourself so much honour.

"I wish you, monsieur, all the happiness that you deserve, and I embrace you.

"P.S.—I have this minute received your letter of the 5th of this month, in which you inform me of M. de Mérona's[234] arrival. I thank you for your good friendship; be sure that I have looked for nothing else in your letters.

"Chateaubriand[235]."

The Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Comte de Serre[236]

"Paris, 23 June 1824.

"My dismissal, monsieur le comte, will have proved to you my inability to serve you; it but remains for me to express the wish to see you where your talents call you. I am retiring, happy to have contributed towards restoring to France her military and political independence, and to have introduced septenniality into her electoral system; it is not what I wanted it to be; the change of age was a necessary consequence of it; but at last the principle is laid down; time will do the rest, if, however, it do not undo it. I venture to flatter myself, monsieur le comte, that you have had no cause to complain of our relations; and I shall always congratulate myself on having met in business a man of your merit.

"Receive, with my adieus, etc.,

"Chateaubriand."

[Pg 104]

The Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Comte de La Ferronays[237]

"Paris, 24 June 1824.

"Should you by chance still be in St. Petersburg, monsieur le comte, I will not end our correspondence without telling you of all the esteem and all the friendship with which you have inspired me: keep well; be happier than I, and believe that you will find me again in any circumstance of life. I am writing a line to the Emperor.

"Chateaubriand."

The reply to this farewell reached me in the early days of August. M. de La Ferronnays had accepted the functions of ambassador under my ministry; later, I, in my turn, became ambassador under the ministry of M. de La Ferronnays: neither of us thought himself to be rising or descending. Fellow-countrymen and friends, we mutually did each other justice. M. de La Ferronnays endured the harshest trials without complaining; he remained loyal to his sufferings and to his noble poverty. After my fall, he acted on my behalf at St. Petersburg, as I would have acted on his. An honest man is always sure of being understood by an honest man. I am happy to produce this touching evidence of the courage, the loyalty and the elevation of soul of M. de La Ferronnays. At the moment when I received this note, it was a very superior compensation to me for the capricious and hackneyed favours of fortune. It is only here, for the first time, that I think it right to violate the secrecy which friendship recommended to me.

The Comte de La Ferronays to the Vicomte de Chateaubriand

"St. Petersburg, 24 July 1824.

"The Russian mail of the day before yesterday brought me your little letter of the 16th; it will be for me one of the most precious of all those which I have had the happiness to receive from you; I am keeping it as a title in which I glory, and I have the firm hope and the intimate conviction that soon I shall be able to present it to you in less melancholy circumstances. I shall imitate, monsieur le vicomte, the example which you set me, and I shall permit myself no reflection upon an event which has, in so abrupt and unexpected[Pg 105] a manner, broken off the relations which the service established between you and myself; the very nature of those relations, the confidence with which you honoured me, lastly, considerations of a much graver kind, because they are not exclusively personal, will explain to you sufficiently the motives and all the extent of my regrets. What has just occurred still remains entirely inexplicable to me; I am absolutely ignorant of the reasons, but I see the effects; they were so easy, so natural to foresee, that I am astonished that people were so little afraid to set them at naught. I am too well acquainted, however, with the nobility of the sentiments which animate you and with the purity of your patriotism, not to be very sure that you will approve of the conduct which I have thought right to follow in this circumstance; it was required of me by my duty, by my love for my country and even by the interest of your glory; and you are too good a Frenchman to accept, in the position in which you find yourself, the protection and the support of foreigners. You have won for ever the confidence and esteem of Europe; but it is France whom you serve, and you belong to her alone. She may be unjust; but neither you nor your real friends will ever suffer your cause to be made less pure or less fine by entrusting its defense to foreign voices. I have, therefore, silenced every kind of private feeling or consideration in the presence of the general interest; I have forestalled measures, the first effect of which would have been to arouse dangerous divisions among us and to violate the dignity of the Throne. This is the last service which I have rendered here before my departure; you alone, monsieur le vicomte, shall know of it; the confidence was due to you, and I know the nobility of your character too well not to feel very sure that you will keep my secret and that you will consider my conduct, in this circumstance, consonant with the sentiments which you have the right to exact from those whom you honour with your friendship and your esteem.

"Adieu, monsieur le vicomte: if the relations which I have had the good fortune to have with you have been able to give you a correct idea of my character, you must know that it is not changes of position that can alter my sentiments, nor will you ever doubt the attachment and devotion of one who, in the actual circumstances, considers himself the most fortunate of men to be placed by public opinion among the number of your friends.

"La Ferronays."

[Pg 106]

"Messieurs de Fontenay[238] and de Pontcarré[239] are keenly alive to the value of the remembrance in which you are good enough to bear them: witnesses, like myself, of the increase of consideration which France had gained since your entrance into the ministry, it is quite simple that they should share my sentiments and my regrets."

I began the contest of my new opposition immediately after my fall; but it was interrupted by the death of Louis XVIII.[240] and was not actively resumed until after the coronation of Charles X.[241] In the month of July, I joined Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel; she had gone there to wait for me, and had hired a cottage beside the lake. The chain of the Alps unfolded itself north and south to a great distance before us; we had our backs to the Jura, whose flanks, black with pine-trees, rose perpendicularly over our heads. The lake was deserted; a wooden gallery served me as an exercise-ground. I thought of Milord Maréchal.[242] When I climbed to the top of the Jura, I saw the Lake of Bienne, to whose breezes and waters Jean Jacques Rousseau owes one of his happiest inspirations. Madame de Chateaubriand went to visit Fribourg and a country-house which they had described to us as charming, and which she found icy-cold, although it was called the Petite Provence. A lean black cat, half wild, which caught little fish by dipping its paw into a large pail filled with water from the lake, was my only distraction. A quiet old woman, who was always knitting, prepared our banquet in an huguenote.[243] had not lost the habit of the collation of the country-mouse.

Neuchâtel had had its good days; it had belonged to the Duchesse de Longueville[244]; Jean Jacques Rousseau had[Pg 107] walked in an Armenian dress on its mountains, and Madame de Charrière[245], so daintily observed by M. de Sainte-Beuve[246], had described its society in the Lettres Neuchâteloises; but Juliane, Mademoiselle de La Prise, Henri Meyer[247] were no longer there; I saw only poor Fauche-Borel[248], of the old Emigration; he threw himself soon after from his window. The kept gardens of M. de Pourtalès[249] charmed me no more than did an English rockery raised by man's hands in a neighbouring vineyard facing the Jura. Berthier, last Prince of Neuchâtel, in the name of Bonaparte, was forgotten, in spite of his little Simplon of the Val-de-Travers, and although he smashed his skull in the same way as Fauche-Borel.

*

The King's illness called me back to Paris. The King died on the 16th of September, scarcely four months after my dismissal. My pamphlet, entitled Le Roi est mort: vive le roi! in which I hailed the new Sovereign, performed for Charles X. what my pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons had performed for Louis XVIII. I went to fetch Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel, and we came to Paris to live in the Rue du Regard. Charles X. made his reign popular at its commencement by abolishing the censorship; the coronation took place in the spring of 1825. "Already the bees were beginning to hum, the birds to warble, and the lambs to gambol on the green."

Among my papers I find the following pages written at Rheims:

"Rheims, 26 May 1825.

"The King arrives the day after to-morrow; he will be crowned on Sunday the 29th; I shall see him place on his[Pg 108] head a crown of which no one thought, in 1814, when I raised my voice. I have contributed to opening the doors of France to him; I have given him defenders, by bringing the Spanish War to a satisfactory issue; I have caused the Charter to be adopted, and I have succeeded in finding an army, the only two things with which the King can reign at home and abroad: what part is reserved for me at the coronation? That of an outlaw. I come as one of the crowd to receive a ribbon, distributed broadcast, which I do not even hold from Charles X. The people whom I have served and placed turn their backs on me. The King will hold my hands in his, he will see me at his feet, when I take my oath, without being moved, even as he sees me without interest recommencing my poverty. Does that make a difference to me? No. Freed from the obligation of going to the Tuileries, I am compensated for everything by independence.

"I am writing this page of my Memoirs in the room in which I am forgotten amid all the noise. I have this morning visited Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated with stained paper. I shall not have had a clear idea of this latter edifice, except from the decorations of Schiller's Joan of Arc, as played before me in Berlin: operatic machinery has shown me, on the banks of the Spree, what operatic machinery hides from me, on the banks of the Vesle; for the rest, I have taken my diversion among the old dynasties, from Clovis[250], with his Franks and his pigeon descending from Heaven, to Charles VII.[251], with Joan of Arc[252]."

Je suis venu de mon pays
Pas plus haut qu'une botte,
Avecque mi, avecque mi,
Avecque ma marmotte[253].

"'A sou-piece, sir, if you please!'

[Pg 109]

At Rheims.

That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at Rheims, sang to me returning from my walk.

"'And what have you come here for?' I asked him.

"'I have come to the coronation, sir.'

"'With your marmot?'

"'Yes, sir, with-a mi, with-a mi, with-a my marmot,' he replied, dancing and turning.

"'Well, that's like me, my boy.'

"That was not correct: I had come to the coronation without a marmot, and a marmot is a great resource; I had nothing in my box but some old dream or other which no passer-by would have paid a sou-piece to see climb up a stick.

"Louis XVII. and Louis XVIII. were not crowned; Charles X.'s coronation comes immediately after Louis XVI.'s. Charles X. was present at his brother's coronation; he represented the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. Under what happy auspices did not Louis XVI. ascend the throne? How popular was he on succeeding Louis XV.! And yet, what did he come to? The present coronation will be, not a coronation, but the representation of a coronation: we shall see Marshal Moncey, an actor in the coronation of Napoleon; that marshal, who formerly celebrated in his army the death of the tyrant Louis XVI., we shall now see brandishing the royal sword at Rheims, in the quality of Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine. Who could be taken in by that parade? I would have wished no pomp to-day: the King on horseback, the church bare, adorned only with its old vaults and its old tombs; the two Chambers present, the oath of fidelity to the Charter pronounced aloud on the Gospels. There you would have the renewal of the Monarchy; they might have recommenced it with liberty and religion: unfortunately they had little love for liberty; if still they had, at least, had the taste for glory!

Ah! que diront là-bas, sons les tombes poudreuses,
De tant de vaillants rois les ombres généreuses?
Que diront Pharamond, Clodion et Clovis,
Nos Pepins, nos Martels, nos Charles, nos Louis,
Qui de leur propre sang, à tous périls de guerre,
Ont acquis à leurs fils une si belle terre[254]?

[Pg 110]

"Lastly, has not the new coronation, to which the Pope came to anoint a man as great as the chief of the Second Dynasty[255], in changing the heads, destroyed the effect of the ancient ceremony of our history? The people has been led to believe that a pious rite dedicated no one to the throne, or rendered indifferent the choice of the forehead to which the holy oil was applied. The supernumeraries of Notre-Dame de Paris, figuring likewise in the Cathedral of Rheims, will be nothing more than the necessary characters in a scene that has become vulgar: the advantage will remain with Napoleon, who sends his walking gentlemen to Charles X. The figure of the Emperor dominates everything henceforward. It stands at the bottom of events and ideas: the pages of these lower days to which we have come shrivel up under the glance of his eagles."

"Rheims, Saturday, eve of the Coronation.[256]

"I have seen the King's entry; I have seen pass the gilt coaches of the monarch who but lately had not a horse to ride; I have seen those carriages roll by filled with courtiers who were not able to defend their master. This herd went to the church to sing the Te Deum, and I went to look at a Roman ruin and to walk by myself in a wood of elm-trees called the 'Wood of Love.' I heard from afar the jubilation of the bells, I contemplated the towers of the Cathedral, secular witnesses of that ceremony which is always the same and yet so different through history, the times, ideas, manners, usages and customs. The Monarchy perished, and the Cathedral was for some years turned into a stable. Does Charles X., who sees it again to-day, remember that he saw Louis XVI. anointed in the same place where he is to be anointed in his turn? Will he believe that a coronation yields protection against misfortune? There is no longer a hand virtuous enough to heal the king's evil, no longer a sacred phial salutary enough to render kings inviolable."

I hurriedly wrote what has just been read on the half-blank pages of a pamphlet entitled, Le Sacre; par Barnage de Reims, avocat, and on a printed letter of the Grand Referendary, M. de Sémonville[257], saying:

[Pg 111]

"The Grand Referendary has the honour to inform His Lordship, Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, that places in the chancel of Rheims Cathedral are intended and reserved for those of Messieurs the Peers who wish to be present to-morrow at His Majesty's consecration and coronation, at the ceremony of the reception of the Chief and Sovereign Grand Master of the Orders of the Holy Ghost and of St. Michael and of the reception of Messieurs the Knights and Commanders."

Charles X. nevertheless had intended to conciliate me. The Archbishop of Paris[258] spoke to him at Rheims of the men in the Opposition; the King said:

"Those who will have nothing to do with me, I leave alone."

The Archbishop rejoined:

"But, Sire, M. de Chateaubriand?"

"Oh, him I regret!"

The Archbishop asked the King if he might tell me so; the King hesitated, took two or three turns in the room, and replied, "Well, yes, tell him," and the Archbishop forgot to speak to me about it.

At the ceremony of the knights of the Orders, I was kneeling at the King's feet at the moment when M. de Villèle was taking his oath. I exchanged two or three words of politeness with my companion in knighthood[259], with regard to a feather that had come loose from my hat. We left the Sovereign's knees, and all was done. The King, finding a difficulty in removing his gloves to take my hands in his, had said to me, laughing:

"A gloved cat catches no mice."

It was thought that he had spoken to me at length, and the rumour was spread of my return to favour. It is probable[Pg 112] that Charles X., thinking that the Archbishop had told me of his good-will towards me, expected a word of thanks from me and was offended at my silence.

Thus have I assisted at the last coronation of the successors of Clovis; I had occasioned it by the pages in which I had asked for the coronation and depicted it in my pamphlet, Le Roi est mort: vive le roi! Not that I had the least faith in the ceremony; but, as everything was lacking to the Legitimacy, it was necessary, to sustain it, to make use of everything, for better or for worse. I recalled Adalbéron's[260] definition: "The coronation of a King of France is, a public interest, not a private matter;" I quoted the admirable prayer set apart for the coronation:

"O God, who by Thy virtues counselled Thy peoples, give to this Thy servant the spirit of Thy wisdom! Let to all men born be in these days equity and justice: to friends succour, to enemies hinderance, to the afflicted consolation, to the lofty correction, to the rich instruction, to the needy pity, to pilgrims hospitality, to poor subjects peace and safety in the mother-land! Let him learn to command himself, moderately to govern each one according to his state, so that, O Lord, he may give to all the people an example of life pleasing to Thee!"

Before reproducing in my pamphlet, Le Roi est mort: vive le roi! this prayer preserved by Du Tillet[261], I had exclaimed:

"Let us humbly beseech Charles X. to imitate his ancestors: thirty-two sovereigns of the Third Dynasty have received the royal unction."

All my duties being fulfilled, I left Rheims, and was able to say, like Joan of Arc:

"My mission is ended."

BOOK X[262]

I collect my former adversaries around myself—My public charges—Extract from my polemics after my fall—Visit to Lausanne—Return to Paris—The Jesuits—Letter from M. de Montlosier and my reply—Continuation of my polemics—Letter from General Sébastiani—Death of General Foy—The Law of Justice and Love—Letter from M. Étienne—Letter from M. Benjamin Constant—I attain the highest pitch of my political importance—Article on the King's saint's-day—Withdrawal of the law on the police of the press—Paris illuminated—Note from M. Michaud—M. de Villèle's irritation—Charles X. proposes to review the National Guard on the Champ de Mars—I write to him: my letter—The review—The National Guard disbanded—The Elective Chamber is dissolved—The new Chamber—Refusals to co-operate—Fall of the Villèle Ministry—I contribute towards forming the new ministry and accept the Roman Embassy—Examination of a reproach.

Paris had seen its last festivals: the period of indulgence, reconciliation and favours was past; the sad truth alone remained before us.

When, in 1820, the censorship put an end to the Conservateur, I scarcely expected, four years later, to recommence the same polemics under another form and through the medium of another press. The men who fought by my side in the Conservateur, like myself, demanded the restoration of the liberty of the press and the pen; they were in opposition like myself, in disgrace like myself, and they called themselves my friends. On attaining power in 1820, through my labours even more than their own, they turned against the liberty of the press: the persecuted became persecutors; they ceased to be and to call themselves my friends; they maintained that the license of the press had begun only on the 6th of June 1824, the day of my dismissal from office; their memory was short: had they re-read the opinions which they pronounced, the articles which they wrote against another ministry and in favour of the liberty of the press, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that they, at least in 1818 or 1819, were the submanagers of license.

On the other hand, my former adversaries were drawing closer to me. I tried to connect the partisans of independence with the Legitimate Royalty, with more success than when I[Pg 114] rallied the servants of the throne and the altar to the Charter. My public had changed. I was obliged to warn the Government of the dangers of absolutism, after having cautioned it against popular enthusiasm. Accustomed as I was to respect my readers, I did not give them a line which I had not written with all the care of which I was capable: many of those opuscules of a day have cost me more pains, in proportion, than the longest works that have come from my pen. My life was incredibly full. Honour and my country recalled me to the battle-field. I had reached an age at which men have need of rest; but, if I had judged my years by the ever-increasing hatred with which oppression and meanness inspired me, I might have believed myself restored to youth.

I collected a society of writers around me to give uniformity to my combats. Among them were peers, deputies, magistrates, young authors commencing their career. To my house came Messieurs de Montalivet[263], Salvandy[264], Duvergier de Hauranne[265], many others who were my pupils and who retail to-day, as new things under the Representative Monarchy, things which I taught them and which occur on every page of my writings. M. de Montalivet has become Minister of the Interior and a favourite of Philip's; men who care to follow the variations of a destiny will find this note rather curious:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"I have the honour to send you the statement of the mistakes which I found in the table of judgments of the Royal Court that has been communicated to you. I have verified them again, and I think I may answer for the correctness of the list enclosed.

[Pg 115]

"Pray, monsieur le vicomte, accept the homage of the profound respect with which I have the honour to be,

"Your very devoted colleague and sincere admirer,

"Montalivet."

This did not prevent my "respectful colleague and sincere admirer," M. le Comte de Montalivet, in his day so great a partisan of the liberty of the press, from making me, as an abettor of that liberty, enter M. Gisquet's[266] prison.

An abstract of my new war of polemics, which lasted five years but ended by triumphing, will prove the strength of ideas against facts even when supported by the power. I was thrown on the 6th of June 1824; on the 21st, I had descended into the arena; I remained there till the 18th of December 1826[267]: I entered alone, stripped and bare, and I emerged victorious. I am making history here in making an extract from the arguments which I employed.

"We have had the courage and the honour to wage a dangerous war in presence of the liberty of the press, and it was the first time that this noble spectacle was given to the monarchy. We soon repented of our honesty. We had set the newspapers at naught when they could injure only the success of our soldiers and our captains; it became necessary to reduce them to servitude when they dared to speak of the clerks and ministers....

"If those who administer the State seem completely ignorant of the genius of France in serious matters, they are no less foreign to it in those graceful and ornamental matters which are mingled with and beautify the life of civilized nations.

"The bounties which the Legitimate Government lavishes upon the arts surpass the aids awarded to them by the Usurping Government; but how are they dispensed? Vowed by nature and taste to oblivion, the distributors of those bounties seem to have an antipathy to renown; so invincible[Pg 116] is their obscurity that, when they approach lights, they make them turn pale; one would say that they pour money on the arts to extinguish them, as on our liberties to stifle them...[268]

"If even the narrow mechanism within which France is pinched resembled those finished models which one examines through the magnifying-glass in the collector's cabinet, the delicacy of that curiosity might interest one for a moment; but not at all: it is a small thing badly constructed.

"We have said that the system followed nowadays by the administration offends against the genius of France: we will try to prove that it also disregards the spirit of our institutions.

"The Monarchy has been restored in France without effort, because it has the strength of our whole history, because the crown is worn by a family which has almost seen the nation born, which has formed it, civilized it, which has given it all its liberties, which has made it immortal; but time has reduced that monarchy to its realities. The age of fictions in politics is past: one can no longer have a government of adoration, of cult and of mystery; each one knows his rights; nothing is possible without the limits of reason; and, down to favour, the last illusion of absolute monarchies, everything is weighed, everything valued to-day.

"Let us make no mistake; a new era is commencing for the nations; will it be a happier one? Providence knows. As for us, it is given to us only to prepare ourselves for the exigencies of the future. Let us not imagine that we can go back: our only safety lies in the Charter.

"The Constitutional Monarchy was not born among us of a written system, even though it has a printed Code; it is the daughter of time and of events, like the Old Monarchy of our fathers.

"Why should not liberty maintain herself in the edifice raised by despotism and filled with its traces? Victory, still so to speak decked with the three colours, has taken refuge in the tent of the Duc d'Angoulême; the Legitimacy inhabits the Louvre, even though the eagles be still seen there.

"In a constitutional monarchy, the public liberties are respected; they are considered as the safeguard of the Sovereign, the people and the laws.

"We understand representative government otherwise. A company is being formed (they say even two rival companies,[Pg 117] for competition is needful) to corrupt the newspapers with bribes of money. They are not afraid to maintain scandalous prosecutions against proprietors who have refused to sell themselves; they would like to force them to be stigmatized by the sentence of the tribunals. This trade being repugnant to men of honour, they enlist, to support a Royalist ministry, libellers who have persecuted the Royal Family with their calumnies. They recruit all who served in the former police and in the imperial ante-chamber, even as our neighbours, when they wish to procure sailors, send the press-gang into the taverns and disorderly houses. Those convict-crews of free writers are embarked on five or six bought newspapers, and what they say is called 'public opinion' at the Ministers[269]'."

*

There, very greatly abridged, and still perhaps at too great length, is a specimen of my polemical warfare in my pamphlets and in the Journal des Débats: in it will be found all the principles that are being proclaimed to-day.

*

When I was turned out of the ministry, my pension as a minister of State was not restored to me; I did not claim it; but M. de Villèle, upon an observation of the King's, thought of sending me a new warrant for that pension through M. de Peyronnet[270]. I refused it. Either I was entitled to my former pension, or else I was not entitled to it: in the first case I had no need for a new warrant; in the second, I did not wish to become the pensioner of the President of the Council.

The Hellenes threw off the yoke: a Greek Committee was formed in Paris, of which I was a member. The committee came together at M. Ternaux'[271] on the Place des Victoires. The members used to arrive one after the other at the meeting-place. M. le Général Sébastiani declared, when he had sat down, that it was a "big affair;" he made it a long one: this displeased our practical chairman, M. Ternaux, who would certainly have made a shawl for Aspasia, but who would not have wasted his time with her. The committee suffered from the dispatches of M. Fabvier; he scolded us roundly; he[Pg 118] held us responsible for whatever did not go according to his views, us, who had not won the Battle of Marathon. I devoted myself to the liberty of Greece: it seemed to me that I was fulfilling a duty towards a mother. I wrote a Note; I addressed myself to the successors of the Tsar of Russia, as I had addressed myself to him at Verona. The Note was printed and subsequently reprinted at the head of the Itinéraire.

I laboured to the same purpose in the House of Peers, to set a political body going. The following note from M. Molé shows the obstacles which I encountered and the circuitous methods which I was obliged to employ:

"You will find us all at the opening to-morrow, ready to fly in your footsteps: I shall write to Lainé if I do not see him. He must be allowed only to expect a few sentences about the Greeks; but take care that you are not kept strictly within the limits of all amendments, and that, relying on the rules, they do not refuse to hear you. Perhaps they will tell you to lay your motion on the table: you might then do so subsidiarily and after having said all that you have to say. Pasquier has been rather unwell, and I fear that he will not be on his legs by to-morrow. As for the ballot, we shall have it. What is worth more than all this is the arrangement which you have made with your publishers. It is a fine thing to recover by one's talent all that which the injustice and ingratitude of men have taken from us.

"Yours while life lasts,

"Molé."

Greece has become free from the yoke of Islamism; but, instead of a federal republic, as I wished, a Bavarian monarchy[272] has been set up at Athens. Now, as kings have no memory, I, who had in some small way served the cause of the Greeks, have not heard speak of them since, except in Homer. Greece delivered has not said, "Thank you" to me. She is as ignorant of my name and more so than on the day when I wept on her ruins when crossing her deserts.

Hellas, not yet royal, had been more grateful. Among a few children whom the committee brought up was young Canaris:[Pg 119] his father[273], a worthy descendant of the sailors of Mycale[274], wrote him a note which the child translated into French on the blank space at foot. Here is the translation:

"My dear child,

"None of the Greeks has had the same good fortune as yourself: that of being selected by the benevolent society which interests itself in us to learn the duties of man. I gave you birth; but these commendable persons will give you an education which really makes a man. Be very docile to these new fathers, if you wish to give comfort to him who gave you the light. Farewell.

"Your father,

"C. Canaris."

"Nauplia, 5 September 1825.

I have kept the dual text as the reward of the Greek Committee.

Republican Greece had testified her particular regret when I left the ministry. Madame Récamier wrote to me from Naples, on the 29th of October 1824:

"I have received a letter from Greece which has made a long round before reaching me. In it I find some lines on yourself which I want you to see; here they are:

"'The decree of the 6th of June has come to our ears; it has produced the liveliest sensation on our leaders. Their best-founded hopes lying in the generosity of France, they are anxiously asking themselves what the removal may forebode of a man whose character promised them a support.'

"If I am not mistaken, this testimony ought to please you. I enclose the letter: the first page concerned only myself."

Soon you will read the life of Madame Récamier: you will know how sweet it was to me to receive a remembrance of the land of the Muses through a woman who would have adorned it.

As for the note from M. Molé, given above, it alludes to the bargain which I had made relating to the publication of my Complete Works. This arrangement ought, in fact, to have ensured the peace of my life; it nevertheless turned badly for me, although it was profitable to the publishers to whom[Pg 120] M. Ladvocat, after his bankruptcy, left my Works[275]. In point of Plutus or Pluto (the mythologists confound the two), I am like Alcestes: I always see the fatal bark; like William Pitt, and that is my excuse, I am a spendthrift, a panier percé: but I do not myself make the hole in the basket.

At the conclusion of the General Preface to my Works, 1826, vol. I., I address France in these words:

"O France, 'my dear country and my first love,' one of thy sons, at the end of his career, is collecting beneath thy eyes the claims which he may have to thy good-will. If he can do no more for thee, thou canst do all for him, by declaring that his attachment for thy religion, for thy King, for thy liberties has been pleasing to thee. Fair and illustrious mother-land, I would have desired a little glory only to augment thine own."

Madame de Chateaubriand, being ill, made a journey in the South of France, derived no benefit from it, and returned to Lyons, where Dr. Prunelle[276] condemned her. I went to join her; I took her to Lausanne, where she proved M. Prunelle in the wrong. At Lausanne I stayed in turn with M. de Sivry and with Madame de Cottens, a warm-hearted, witty and unhappy woman. I saw Madame de Montolieu[277]: she was living in retirement on a high hill; she died in the illusions of romance, like Madame de Genlis, her contemporary. Gibbon[278] had composed his History of the Roman Empire:

"It was ... as I sat musing among the ruins of the Capitol," he writes at Lausanne, on the 27th of June 1787, "while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."

[Pg 121]

Madame de Staël had appeared at Lausanne with Madame Récamier. The whole Emigration, a whole finished world had stopped for some short moments in that sad and smiling town, a sort of false city of Granada. Madame de Duras has recalled its memory in her Memoirs, and the following note reached me there to tell me of the new loss which I was condemned to suffer:

"Bex, 13 July 1826.

"It is all over, monsieur, your friend[279] exists no more; she gave up her soul to God, without pain, at a quarter to eleven this morning. She was out driving as late as yesterday evening. Nothing announced her end to be so near; what am I saying? we did not think that her illness was to end in this way. M. de Custine[280], whose sorrow does not permit him to write to you himself, had been on one of the mountains around Bex only yesterday morning, to order mountain-milk to be sent down every morning for the dear sufferer.

"I am too much overcome with grief to be able to enter into longer details. We are getting ready to return to France with the precious remains of the best of mothers and friends. Enguerrand[281] will lie at rest between his two mothers.

"We shall pass through Lausanne, where M. de Custine will come to see you so soon as we arrive.

"Receive, monsieur, the assurance of the respectful attachment with which I am, etc.,

"Berstœcher[282]."

See above and below what I have had the happiness and the unhappiness to recall touching the memory of Madame de Custine.

Madame de Charrière's work, the Lettres écrites de Lausanne, well describes the scene which I had daily before my eyes, and the feelings of grandeur which it inspires:

"I am sitting alone," says the mother of Cécile, "opposite to a window which looks upon the lake. I am grateful to[Pg 122] you, ye mountains, snow, and sun, for the pleasure which you afford me. Above all, I am grateful to Thee, Thou Author of all the things which I contemplate, for having created objects so lovely to the sight.... O ye amiable and affecting beauties of nature! My eyes are daily employed in contemplating you, and ye fill my heart with perpetual rapture[283]."

At Lausanne I commenced the Remarques on the first work of my life, the Essai sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes. From my windows I saw the rocks of Meillerie:

"Rousseau," I wrote in one of those Remarques, "is decidedly not above the authors of his time, except in some sixty letters of the Nouvelle Héloïse and in a few pages of his Rêveries and of his Confessions. There, placed in the real nature of his talent, he attains an eloquence of passion unknown before him. Voltaire and Montesquieu found models of style in the writers of the age of Louis XIV.; Rousseau, and even Buffon to some extent, in another manner, created a language which was unknown to the Grand Century[284]."

*

On my return to Paris, my life was occupied between my installation in the Rue d'Enfer, my renewed combats, in the House of Peers and in my pamphlets, against the different Bills opposed to the public liberties, my speeches and writings in favour of the Greeks, and my labours in connection with the complete edition of my Works. The Emperor of Russia died[285], and with him died the only royal friendship remaining to me. The Duc de Montmorency had become governor to the Duc de Bordeaux. He did not long enjoy that weighty honour: he expired on Good Friday 1826[286], in the Church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin; at the hour when Jesus expired on the Cross, he went with Christ's last sigh to God.

The attack against the Jesuits had begun; one heard the trite and threadbare accusations against that famous Order, in which, it must be admitted, reigns something disquieting, for a mysterious cloud always covers the affairs of the Jesuits.

[Pg 123]

With regard to the Jesuits, I received the following letter from M. de Montlosier, and I sent him the reply which will be read after the letter:

Forsake not an old friend,
for the new will not be like to him.—Eccles[287].

"My dear friend, these words are not only of a high antiquity, they are not only of a high wisdom; for the Christian they are sacred. In addressing you, I invoke all the authority that they possess. Never among old friends, never among good citizens, has the need for drawing together been greater. To dose up the ranks, to close up all the bonds between us, to excite with emulation all our wishes, all our efforts, all our sentiments is a duty commanded by the eminently deplorable state of king and country. In addressing these words to you, I know that they will be received by a heart which has been rent by ingratitude and injustice; and yet I still address them to you with confidence, certain as I am that they will make their way through all the clouds. In this delicate point, I do not know, my dear friend, if you will be pleased with me; but, in the midst of your tribulations, if perchance I have heard you accused, I have not made it my business to defend you: I have not even listened. I have said to myself, 'And if it were so?' I do not know that Alcibiades did not display a little too much humour when he put out of his own house the rhetorician who could not show him the works of Homer. I do not know that Hannibal did not display a little too much violence when he threw from his seat the senator who was talking against his opinion. If I were allowed to tell my way of thinking of Achilles, perhaps I should not approve of his leaving the army of the Greeks for some chit of a girl who had been carried off from him. After that, it is enough to pronounce the names of Alcibiades, Hannibal and Achilles to put an end to all contention. It is the same to-day with the iracundus, inexorabilis Chateaubriand. When one has pronounced his name, all is said and done. With that name, when I say to myself, 'He is complaining,' I feel my affection moved; when I say to myself, 'France is indebted to him,' I feel myself penetrated with respect. Yes, my friend, France is indebted to you. She must be indebted to you still further; she has recovered from you her love for the religion of her fathers:[Pg 124] this benefit must be preserved to her; and for that, she must be preserved from the mistakes of her priests, those priests themselves preserved from the fatal declivity on which they have placed themselves.

"My dear friend, you and I, for long years, have not ceased fighting. It remains to us to preserve the King and the State from ecclesiastical, self-styled religious preponderance. In the old situations, the evil with its roots lay within ourselves: we could circumvent and master them. To-day the branches which cover us within have their roots without. Doctrines covered with the blood of Louis XVI. and Charles I. have consented to leave their place to doctrines stained with the blood of Henry IV. and Henry III. Neither you nor I will surely suffer this state of things; it is to unite with you, it is to receive your approval for my encouragement, it is to offer you as a soldier my heart and my arms, that I write to you.

"It is with these sentiments of admiration for yourself and of a true devotion, that I implore you with affection and also with respect.

"Comte de Montlosier.

"Randanne, 28 November 1825."

"Paris, 3 December 1825.

"Your letter, my dear old friend, is very serious, and yet it has made me laugh where I am concerned. Alcibiades, Hannibal, Achilles! You do not say all that to me seriously. As to the chit of a girl of the son of Peleus, if it is my portfolio that is in question, I protest to you that I did not love the faithless one for three days, and that I did not regret her for a quarter of an hour. My resentment is another matter. M. de Villèle, to whom I was sincerely, heartily attached, has not only been lacking towards the duties of friendship, towards the public marks of affection which I gave him, towards the sacrifices which I had made for him, but even in the simplest matters of conduct.

"The King had no further need of my services: nothing more natural than to remove me from his counsels; but manner is everything to an honest man and, as I had not stolen the King's watch from his mantel-piece, I ought not to have been turned out as I was. I had made the Spanish War alone and kept Europe in peace during that dangerous period; by that single fact I had given an army to the Legitimacy and, of all the ministers of the Restoration, I was the only[Pg 125] one thrust out of my office without any mark of remembrance from the Crown, as though I had betrayed the Sovereign and the country. M. de Villèle thought that I would accept that treatment, and he has made a mistake. I have been a sincere friend, I shall remain an irreconcilable enemy. I was unluckily born; the injuries people do me never heal.

"But this is too much about myself: let us speak of something more important. I fear lest I should not come to an understanding with you on serious objects, and that would distress me greatly! I want the Charter, the whole Charter, the public liberties to their full extent. Do you want them?

"I want religion, like yourself; like you, I hate the Congregation and those societies of hypocrites who transform my servants into spies and who seek nothing at the altar but power. But I think that the clergy, rid of those parasites, may very well enter into a constitutional system and even become the stay of our new institutions. Do you not wish too much to separate it from the political order? Here I am giving you a proof of my extreme impartiality. The clergy, which, I venture to say, owes me so much, does not love me at all, has never defended me nor rendered me any service. But what matter? It is a question of being just and of seeing what is good for religion and the monarchy.

"I did not, old friend, doubt your courage; you will, I am convinced, do all that will appear to you to be useful, and your talent answers for your triumph. I shall expect to hear from you again, and I embrace my faithful companion in exile with all my heart.

"Chateaubriand."

I resumed my controversies. Every day I had skirmishes and van-guard actions with the soldiers of the ministerial hangers-on; they did not always fight with clean weapons. In the two first centuries of Rome, they punished the horse-soldiers who rode badly to the charge, whether because they were too stout or not brave enough, by condemning them to undergo a bleeding: I made the chastisement my affair.

"The universe is changing around us," I said: "new peoples are appearing upon the world's scene, ancient peoples are rising again in the midst of ruins; astonishing discoveries proclaim an approaching revolution in the arts of peace and war: religion, politics, manners, all is assuming a different character. Do we take notice of that movement? Are we marching with society? Are we following the course[Pg 126] of the time? Are we preparing to keep our place in a transmuted or growing civilization? No: the men who rule us are as foreign to the state of things in Europe as though they belonged to the people lately discovered in the interior of Africa. What do they know then? The stock-exchange: and even that they know badly. Are we condemned to bear the burden of obscurity to punish us for having undergone the yoke of glory[288]?"

*

The transaction relating to San Domingo furnished me with the occasion to develop some points of our public right, of which no one was thinking.

Coming to high considerations and announcing the transformation of the world, I replied to opponents who had said to me, "What! we might be Republicans some day? Senseless chatter! Who dreams of a republic nowadays?" etc. etc.:

"Attached by reason to the monarchical order of things," I rejoined, "I regard constitutional monarchy as the best possible government at this epoch of society.

"But, if they want to reduce everything to personal interests, if they suppose that, for myself, I think I might have everything to fear in a Republican State, they are mistaken.

"Would it treat me worse than the Monarchy has treated me? Twice or three times have I been stripped bare for or by the Monarchy: did the Empire, which would have done everything for me had I been willing, disown me more rudely? I abhor servitude; liberty pleases my natural independence; I prefer that liberty in the monarchical order, but I can conceive it in the popular order of things. Who has less to fear from the future than I? I have that which no revolution can take from me: without place, honours, or fortune, any government which would not be stupid enough to disdain public opinion would be obliged to reckon me for something. Popular governments, above all, are composed of individual existences and make for themselves a general value out of the particular value of every citizen. I shall always be certain of the esteem of the public, because I shall never do anything to lose it, and I should perhaps find more justice among my enemies than among my pretended friends.

"Therefore, on computation, I should have no fear of[Pg 127] republics, as I should have no antipathy to liberty; I am not a king; I await no crown; it is not my own cause that I plead.

"I have said under another ministry, and speaking of that ministry, that one morning we should go to the window to see the Monarchy pass.

"I say to the actual ministers:

"'If you continue to do as you are doing, the whole revolution might, within a given time, reduce itself to a new edition of the Charter in which they would content themselves with changing only two or three words.[289]"

I have underlined these last phrases to attract the reader's eyes to that striking prediction. Even to-day, when opinions are in full flight, when every man utters at random all that passes through his brain, those Republican ideas expressed by a Royalist during the Restoration still sound daring. In point of the future, the pretended progressive minds have no initiative in anything.

My last articles stirred up even M. de La Fayette, who, by way of compliment, had a bay-leaf handed to me. The effect of my opinions, to the great surprise of those who had not believed in them, made itself felt from the book-sellers, who came to me in a deputation, to the parliament-men at first least allied to me in politics. The letter given below in proof of what I am putting forward will cause a certain surprise because of its signature. Attention should be given only to the significance of the letter, to the change which had occurred in the ideas and position of the writer and the recipient: as to its composition, I am "Bossuet" and "Montesquieu," that goes without saying; that is the daily bread of us authors, just as ministers are always Sully and Colbert.

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Permit me to participate in the universal admiration: I have too long entertained this sentiment to resist the need of expressing it to you.

"You unite the loftiness of Bossuet with the profundity of Montesquieu: you have revived their pen and their genius. Your articles are a great education to any statesman.

"In the new method of warfare which you have created, you recall the mighty hand of him who, in other fights, also[Pg 128] filled the world with his glory. May your successes prove more enduring: they interest the country and humanity.

"All who, like myself, profess the principles of constitutional monarchy, are proud to find in you their noblest interpreter.

"Accept, monsieur le vicomte, a renewed assurance of my high regard.

"Horace Sébastiani.

"Sunday, 30 October."

Thus fell at my feet friends, enemies, adversaries, in the moment of victory. All the pusillanimous and ambitious spirits who had believed me lost began to see me come forth beaming from the whirlwinds of dust in the lists: it was my second Spanish War; I was triumphing over all parties at home as I had triumphed over France's enemies abroad. I had had to discharge my duty in person, in the same way as, with my dispatches, I had paralyzed and rendered useless the dispatches of M. de Metternich and Mr. Canning.

General Foy[290] and the deputy Manuel[291] died and deprived the Opposition of the Left of its best speakers. M. de Serre[292] and Camille Jordan[293] also sank into the tomb. Even in my arm-chair at the Academy, I was obliged to defend the liberty of the press against the tearful supplications of M. de Lally-Tolendal[294]. The law on the police of the press, which was called the "Law of Justice and Love[295]," owed its fall[Pg 129] chiefly to my attacks. My Opinion on this bill is a work of historical curiosity; I received compliments on it; among them occur two names which it is strange to recall:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"I appreciate the thanks which you are kind enough to address to me. You call obligingness what I regarded as a debt which I was glad to pay to the eloquent writer. All true friends of letters participate in your triumph and are bound to regard themselves as jointly and severally interested in your success. At all times and places, I shall contribute to it with all my might, if it be possible that you have need of efforts so feeble as mine.

"In our enlightened century, genius is the only power that remains above the blows of disgrace; it falls to you, monsieur, to furnish a living proof of this to those who rejoice at it as well as to those who have the misfortune to deplore it.

"I have the honour to be, with the most distinguished regard, your, etc. etc.,

"Étienne.

"Paris, 5 April 1826."

"I have delayed very long, monsieur, in thanking you for your admirable speech. An inflammation of the eyes, my work for the Chamber and, still more, the terrible scenes in that Chamber shall serve as my excuse. You know, besides, how my mind and soul participate in all that you say and sympathize with all the good that you are trying to do to our unhappy country. I am glad to add my feeble efforts to your powerful influence; and the frenzy of a ministry which plagues France and would like to degrade it, while disquieting me as to its approaching results, gives me the consoling assurance that such a state of things cannot last long. You will have powerfully contributed to put an end to it; and, if I deserve some day that my name be placed far after yours in the struggle which we must maintain against so much folly and crime, I shall consider myself amply rewarded.

"Accept, monsieur, the homage of a sincere admiration, of a profound esteem and of the highest regard.

"Benjamin Constant.

"Paris, 21 May 1827."

It was at the time of which I am speaking that I attained the highest pitch of my political importance. Through the[Pg 130] Spanish War, I had swayed Europe; but a violent opposition was fighting against me in France. After my fall, I became, at home, the acknowledged ruler of public opinion. Those who had accused me of committing an irreparable fault in resuming my pen were obliged to recognise that I had formed for myself an empire mightier than the first. Young France had come over in its entirety to my side and has not left me since. In several of the industrial classes, the workmen were at my orders, and I could no longer take a step in the streets without being surrounded. Whence came this popularity? From the fact that I knew the real spirit of France. I had set out for the combat with one newspaper, and I had become the master of all the rest. My daring came to me from my indifference: as it would have been all one to me had I failed, I advanced towards success without troubling lest I fell on the way. All that remains to me is this satisfaction with myself; for what matters to anybody, to-day, a past popularity which has rightly been effaced from the memory of all?

The King's saint's-day[296] having arrived, I took occasion of it to blaze forth a loyalty which my Liberal opinions have never impaired. I published this article:

"Another royal truce!

"Peace to-day to the ministers!

"Glory, honour, long happiness and long life to Charles X.! It is St. Charles's Day!

"It is we above all, the old companions in exile of our Monarch, who should be asked to tell the history of Charles X.

"You others, Frenchmen who have not been forced to leave your country, you who received one Frenchman the more only to escape imperial despotism and the foreign yoke, inhabitants of the great and good town who have seen only the happy Prince: when you crowded round him, on the 12th of April 1814; when, weeping with emotion, you touched consecrated hands; when, on a brow ennobled by age and misfortune, you found again all the graces of youth, as one sees beauty through a veil, you perceived only virtue triumphant, and you led the son of kings to the royal couch of his fathers.

"But we, we have seen him sleep on the bare ground, like ourselves homeless, like ourselves outlawed and despoiled. Well, the goodness which charms you was the same; he wore[Pg 131] misfortune as he wears the crown to-day, without finding the burden too heavy, with that Christian mildness which tempered the vividness of his misfortune as it softens the vividness of his prosperity.

"To the bounties of Charles X. must be added all the bounties with which his ancestors loaded us; the feast of a Most Christian King is for the French a feast of gratitude: let us therefore give way to the transports of grateful acknowledgment with which it should inspire us. Let us allow nothing to enter our souls that can for a moment render our joy less pure! Woe to the men...! We were about to violate the truce! God save the King[297]!"

*

My eyes have filled with tears while copying this page of my controversy, and I have not the courage to continue making extracts from it. O my King, you whom I had seen on foreign soil, I have seen you again on that same soil where you were about to die! When I was fighting for you so eagerly, to snatch you from hands which were beginning to undo you, judge, by the words which I have just transcribed, if I was your enemy or, rather, the fondest and sincerest of your servants! Alas, I speak to you, and you no longer hear me!

The Bill relating to the police of the press having been withdrawn, Paris was illuminated at night. I was struck by the public manifestation, an evil prognostication for the Monarchy: the opposition had passed into the people, and the people, by its character, transforms the opposition into a revolution.

The hatred of M. de Villèle went on increasing; the Royalists, as at the time of the Conservateur, had become Constitutionalists again, at the back of me. M. Michaud[298] wrote to me:

"My honourable master,

"I had the announcement of your work on the censorship printed yesterday, but the paragraph, consisting of two lines, was struck out by messieurs the censors. M. Capefigue[299] will explain to you why we have not left blanks or dots.

[Pg 132]

"If God does not come to our aid, all is lost; the Royalty is like unhappy Jerusalem in the hands of the Turks: its children can hardly approach it; to what a cause have we then sacrificed ourselves!

"Michaud."

The Opposition had at last communicated irascibility to the cold temperament of M. de Villèle and rendered despotic the malevolent spirit of M. de Corbière. The latter had removed the Duc de Liancourt[300] from seventeen unpaid offices. The Duc de Liancourt was not a saint, but he was a benevolent man, upon whom philanthropy had bestowed the title of venerable; by the softening influence of Time, old Revolutionaries no longer move except with an epithet, like the gods in Homer: it is always the respectable M. This, it is always the inflexible Citizen That, who, like Achilles, has never eaten broth (ἃ-χὺλος). On the occasion of the scandal that happened at M. de Liancourt's funeral, M. de Sémonville[301] said to us, in the Chamber of Peers:

"Be easy, my lords, such a thing shall never happen again; I will myself conduct you to your last resting-place."

The King, in the month of April 1827, proposed to review the National Guard on the Champ de Mars[302]. Two days before this fatal review, prompted by my zeal, and asking no better than to lay down my arms, I addressed a letter to Charles X., which was handed to him by M. de Blacas, who acknowledged its receipt by this note:

"I did not lose a single moment, monsieur le vicomte, in handing the King the letter which you did me the honour to send me for His Majesty and, if he deigns to entrust me with a reply, I shall show no less alacrity in forwarding it to you.

[Pg 133]

"Receive, monsieur le vicomte, my most sincere compliments.

"Blacas d'Aulps.

"27 April, 1 p.m."

To the King

"Sire,

"Permit a loyal subject, whom moments of agitation will always find at the foot of the throne, to confide to Your Majesty a few reflections which he thinks useful both to the glory of the Crown and the happiness and safety of the King.

"Sire, it is but too true, there is danger within the State, but it is also certain that this danger is nothing if the very principles of government be not thwarted.

"A great secret has been revealed to me, Sire: your ministers have had the misfortune to teach France that the people, which was said no longer to exist, is still quite alive. Paris, during twice twenty-four hours, has evaded authority. The same scenes are being repeated throughout France: the factions will not forget this attempt.

"But popular assemblages, so dangerous under absolute monarchies, because they take place in presence of the Sovereign himself, mean little under the representative monarchy, because they come into contact only with ministers or laws. Between the monarch and the subjects is fixed a barrier that stops everything: the two Chambers and the public institutions. Outside these movements, the King always finds his authority and his sacred Person sheltered.

"But, Sire, there is one condition indispensable to the general safety, and that is to act in the spirit of the institutions: a resistance on the part of your Council to that spirit would make popular movements as dangerous under the representatative monarchy as they are under the absolute monarchy.

"I pass from theory to application:

"Your Majesty is about to appear at the review: you will be received as you should; but it is possible that, amid the cries of 'God Save the King!' you will hear other cries which will express the public opinion of the ministers.

"Furthermore, Sire, it is false to say, as they do, that there is a Republican faction at present; but it is true that there are some partisans of an illegitimate monarchy: now the latter are too clever not to avail themselves of the opportunity and mingle their voices, on the 29th, with that of France to impose upon the public.

[Pg 134]

"What will the King do? Will he yield his ministers to the popular clamour? That would be to kill the power. Will the King keep his ministers? Those ministers will make all the unpopularity that pursues them fall upon the head of their august master. I am well aware that the King would have the courage to burden himself with a personal sorrow to avoid harm befalling the Monarchy; but it is possible, by the simplest means, to avoid these calamities; permit me, Sire, to tell it to you: it is possible by remaining within the spirit of our institutions; the ministers have lost their majority in the House of Peers and in the nation, the natural consequences of that critical position is their resignation. How, with a sense of their duty, could they persist, by remaining in power, in compromising the Crown? By laying their resignation at the feet of your Majesty they will calm everything, they will end everything; it is no longer the King who yields, it is the ministers who resign in accordance with all the usages and all the principles of representative government The King can afterwards take back those among them whom he will think fit to retain: there are two whom public opinion honours, M. le Duc de Doudeauville[303] and M. le Comte de Chabrol[304].

"The review would in this way lose its disadvantages and be no more than an unmixed triumph. The Session will end peaceably amid blessings showered on the King's head.

"Sire, to dare to write you this letter, I must be very firmly persuaded of the necessity for taking a resolution; a very imperious sense of duty must have prompted me. The ministers are my enemies; I am theirs; I forgive them as a Christian; but I shall never forgive them as a man; in this position, I should never have spoken to the King of their retiring, if the safety of the Monarchy were not at stake.

"I am, etc.,

"Chateaubriand."

Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de Berry[Pg 135] were insulted on going to the review; the King was generally well received; but one or two companies of the 6th Legion cried:

"Down with the ministers! Down with the Jesuits!" Charles X. was offended, and replied:

"I came to receive homage, and not a lesson."

He often had noble words in his mouth which were not always supported by vigorous action: his spirit was bold, his character timid. On returning to the Palace, Charles X. said to Marshal Oudinot[305]:

"The effect as a whole was satisfactory. There were a few marplots, but the bulk of the National Guard is good: express my satisfaction to it."

M. de Villèle arrived. On their way back, some of the legions had passed by the Ministry of Finance and shouted:

"Down with Villèle!"

Irritated by all the previous attacks, the minister was no longer proof against the impulses of a cold anger; he proposed to the Council to disband the National Guard. He was supported by Messieurs de Corbière, de Peyronnet, de Damas[306] and de Clermont-Tonnerre[307] and opposed by M. de Chabrol[308], the Bishop of Hermopolis[309] and the Duc de Doudeauville[310]. A royal decree pronounced the disbanding, the most baleful blow struck at the Monarchy before the last blow of the days of July: if, at that moment, the National Guard had not been dissolved, the barricades would not have gone forward. M. le Duc de Doudeauville sent in his resignation; he wrote the King a letter giving his motives and foretelling the future, which everybody, for the rest, foresaw.

The Government began to be afraid; the newspapers were[Pg 136] redoubling in audacity and a plan of censorship was put forward against them, from habit; there was even talk of a La Bourdonnaye[311] Ministry, in which M. de Polignac would have figured. I had had the misfortune to appoint M. de Polignac Ambassador to London, in spite of what M. de Villèle said to me: on this occasion he saw more clearly and further than I. On entering the ministry, I had hastened to do something agreeable to Monsieur. The President of the Council had contrived to reconcile the two brothers, in view of an approaching change of reign: he was successful in that; I, taking it into my head for once in my life to try to be shrewd, was stupid. Had M. Polignac not been an ambassador, he would not have become Minister for Foreign Affairs.

M. de Villèle, beset on one side by the Royalist Liberal Opposition, plagued on the other by the requirements of the bishops, misled by the prefects consulted, who were themselves misled[312], determined to dissolve the Electoral Chamber, despite the three hundred who remained faithful to him. The dissolution was preceded by the revival of the censorship[313]. I attacked more vigorously than ever[314]; the different sections of the Opposition joined hands; the elections of the small colleges all went against the ministry[315]; in Paris, the Left triumphed; seven colleges returned M. Royer-Collard[316], and the two colleges before which M. de Peyronnet[317], a minister, presented himself rejected him. Paris illuminated again; there were scenes of bloodshed; barricades were thrown up[318], and the troops sent to establish order were obliged to fire:[Pg 137] thus the way was prepared for the last and fatal days. In the meantime, the news arrived of the Battle of Navarino[319], a success in which I could claim my share. The great misfortunes of the Restoration have been announced by victories; they had difficulty in detaching themselves from the heirs of Louis the Great.

The Chamber of Peers enjoyed the public favour, thanks to its resistance to the oppressive laws; but it did not know how to defend itself: it allowed itself to be gorged with batches[320] against which I was almost the only one to protest. I prophesied to it that those nominations would vitiate its principle and cause it, in the long run, to lose all its strength in public opinion: was I mistaken? Those batches, introduced with the object of breaking up a majority, have not only destroyed the aristocracy in France, but have become the means which will be employed against the English aristocracy; the latter will be stifled under a multitudinous fabrication of togas and will end by losing its hereditary right, even as the distorted peerage has lost it in France.

The new Chamber, on its arrival, pronounced its famous refusal of co-operation. M. de Villèle, reduced to extremities, thought of dismissing part of his colleagues and negociated with Messieurs Laffitte[321] and Casimir Périer[322]. The two leaders of the Opposition of the Left lent an ear; the plot was discovered; M. Laffitte did not dare to take a resolution; the President's hour struck and the portfolio fell from his hands[323]. I had cried out aloud on withdrawing from office; M. de Villèle lay down: he had a feeble desire to remain in the Chamber of Deputies; that was what he ought to have made up his mind to, but he had neither a sufficiently profound acquaintance with representative government nor a sufficiently great authority on outside opinion to play a part of that sort: the new ministers demanded his banishment to the Chamber of Peers and he accepted it. I was consulted as to some substitutes for the cabinet and I invited them to take M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani: my words were wasted.

[Pg 138]

M. de Chabrol, charged with the construction of the new ministry, put me at the head of the list: I was indignantly struck out by Charles X. M. Portalis[324], the most miserable character that ever was, a Federate during the Hundred Days, grovelling at the feet of the Legitimacy, of which he spoke as the most ardent Royalist would have blushed to speak, to-day lavish of his hackneyed adulation to Philip, received the Seals. At the War Office, M. de Caux[325] replaced M. de Clermont-Tonnerre. M. le Comte Roy[326], the skilful artisan of his immense fortune, was given Finance. The Comte de La Ferronnays, my friend, had the Foreign Office. M. de Martignac[327], entered the Ministry of the Interior; the King soon conceived a hatred for him. Charles X. obeyed his tastes rather than his principles: he disliked M. de Martignac because of his love of pleasure, yet he favoured Messieurs de Corbière and de Villèle, neither of whom went to Mass.

M. de Chabrol and the Bishop of Hermopolis remained temporarily in the ministry. The bishop, before retiring, came to see me; he asked me if I would replace him as Minister of Public Instruction:

"Take M. Royer-Collard," said I to him, "I have no desire to be a minister; but if the King wished absolutely to recall me to the Council, I would come back only through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in reparation of the affront which I received. And I can have no claim on that office, which is very well placed in the hands of my noble friend."

After the death of M. Mathieu de Montmorency, M. de Rivière[328] had become governor to the Duc de Bordeaux;[Pg 139] from that time he worked for the overthrow of M. de Villèle, for the devout Court Party had risen against the Minister of Finance. M. de Rivière met me by appointment in the Rue de Taranne, at M. de Marcellus', to make the same useless proposal to me which the Abbé de Frayssinous made later. M. de Rivière died, and M. le Baron de Damas succeeded him about the person of the Duc de Bordeaux. The question remained therefore to find successors to M. de Chabrol and M. the Bishop of Hermopolis. The Abbé Feutrier[329], Bishop of Beauvais, was installed at the Ministry of Public Worship, which was separated from the Public Instruction, the latter falling to M. de Vatimesnil[330]. Remained the Ministry of Marine: it was offered to me; I declined it. M. le Comte Roy asked me to tell him some one who would be acceptable to me and whom I would select, in my shade of opinion. I mentioned M. Hyde de Neuville. The tutor of the Duc de Bordeaux had also to be found; the Comte Roy spoke of it to me: M. de Chéverus[331] at once occurred to my mind. The Minister of Finance hastened to Charles X.; the King said to him:

"I have no objection: Hyde for the Navy; but why cannot Chateaubriand take that office himself? As for M. de Chéverus, it would be an excellent choice; I am sorry not to have thought of it; two hours earlier, and the thing would have been done: tell Chateaubriand so; but M. Tharin[332] is appointed."

M. Roy came to inform me of the success of his negociation; he added:

"The King wishes you to accept an embassy; if you like, you shall go to Rome."

That word "Rome" had a magic effect upon me; I felt the temptation to which the anchorites were exposed in the[Pg 140] desert. Charles X., in accepting for the Navy the friend whom I had suggested, was making the first advances; I could no longer refuse what he expected of me: I therefore consented once more to go away. This time, at least, the place of exile attracted me: Pontificum veneranda sedes, sacrum solium. I felt myself seized with the desire to settle for good, with the longing to disappear (even with some calculated idea of fame) in the city of funerals, at the very moment of my triumph. I should no longer have raised my voice, unless like Pliny's prophetic bird, to say Ave every morning to the Capitol and the dawn. It may be that it was useful to my country to get rid of me: by the weight which I feel to myself, I can guess the burden which I must be to others. Minds of some power which prey upon themselves and turn upon themselves are tiring. Dante places tortured souls, in the Inferno, on a bed of fire. M. le Duc de Laval, whom I was going to replace in Rome, was appointed to the Embassy in Vienna.

*

Before changing my subject, I beg leave to retrace my steps and relieve myself of a burden. I did not enter without suffering into the details of my long difference with M. de Villèle. I have been accused of contributing to the fall of the Legitimist Monarchy; it is right that I should examine that reproach.

The events which happened under the ministry of which I formed part have an importance which binds it to the common fortune of France: there is no Frenchman but his lot has been affected by the good which I may have done, the ill which I have undergone. Through whimsical and inexplicable affinities, through secret relations which sometimes entwine lofty and vulgar destinies, the Bourbons prospered so long as they deigned to listen to me, although I am far from believing, with the poet, that "my eloquence gave alms to the Royalty[333]." So soon as it was thought right to break the reed that grew at the foot of the throne, the crown leant over, soon to fall: often, by plucking a blade of grass, one causes a great ruin to crumble into dust.

These incontestable facts you may explain as you will;[Pg 141] if they give to my political career a relative value which it does not possess of itself, I shall get no vainer, I feel no evil joy at the chance which connects my short-lived name with the events of the centuries. Whatever the variety of the accidents of my adventurous course, wherever names and facts may have led me, the last horizon of the picture is always threatening and sad.

Juga cœpta moveri
Silvarum, visæque canes ululare per umbram[334].

But, if the scene has changed in a deplorable manner, I must, they say, accuse only myself: to avenge what appeared to me an injury, I divided everything, and this division in the last result produced the overthrow of the Throne. Let us see.

M. de Villèle has declared that it was impossible to govern either with me or without me. With me, there he was wrong; without me, at the time when M. de Villèle said that, he was saying the truth, for the most varied opinions made up a majority for me.

M. the President of the Council has never known me. I was sincerely attached to him; I had made him enter his first ministry, as is proved by M. le Duc de Richelieu's note of thanks and the other notes which I have quoted. I had sent in my resignation as Plenipotentiary to Berlin when M. de Villèle retired. They persuaded him that, on his second entrance into office, I desired his place. I had no such desire. I do not belong to the fearless race, deaf to the voice of devotion and reason. The truth is that I have no ambition; that is precisely the passion which I lack, because I have another that governs me. When I asked M. de Villèle to take some important dispatch to the King, to save me the trouble of going to the Palace, in order to leave me at leisure to visit a Gothic chapel in the Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, he might have felt assured against my ambition, if he had judged better of my puerile candour or of the loftiness of my disdain.

Nothing attracts me in practical life, except, perhaps, the Foreign Office. I was not insensible to the idea that the country would owe to me its liberty at home, its independence abroad. Far from seeking to overthrow M. de Villèle, I had said to the King:

"Sire, M. de Villèle is a most enlightened President; Your[Pg 142] Majesty must keep him for evermore at the head of your Councils."

M. de Villèle did not notice it: my mind might lean towards domination, but it was subject to my character; I found pleasure in my obedience, because it rid me of my will. My capital fault is weariness, distaste for everything, perpetual doubt. Had a sovereign been found who, understanding me, had kept me at work by force, he would perhaps have turned me to some account: but Heaven rarely causes to be born together the man who will and the man who can. When all is said and done, is there a thing to-day for which one would take the trouble to get out of bed? We fall asleep to the sound of the kingdoms which fall during the night and which are swept up each morning before our door.

Besides, since M. de Villèle parted from me, politics had become deranged: the ultraism against which the wisdom of the President of the Council still struggled had gone beyond him. The annoyance which he experienced at the hands of opinion at home and of the movement of opinion abroad rendered him irritable: hence the fettering of the press, the suppression of the National Guard of Paris, and so forth. Was I to allow the Monarchy to perish, in order to acquire the reputation of an hypocritical moderation on the look-out? I believed myself most sincerely to be fulfilling a duty in fighting at the head of the Opposition, paying too much attention to the peril which I beheld on one side, not enough struck with the contrary danger. When M. de Villèle was overthrown, I was consulted on the nomination of a new ministry. If they had, as I suggested, taken M. Casimir Périer, General Sébastiani and M. Royer-Collard, things might have held out. I would not accept the department of the Navy and I made them give it to my friend M. Hyde de Neuville; I also twice refused the Ministry of Public Instruction; never would I have entered the Council unless I were the master. I went to Rome to seek my other self among the ruins, for there are in my person two distinct beings, having no communication one with the other.

I will, however, make a loyal admission: my excessive resentment does not justify me according to the rule and the time-honoured word of virtue; but my whole life serves as my excuse.

An officer in the Navarre Regiment, I had returned from the forests of America to join the fleeing Legitimacy, to fight in its ranks against my own judgment, all without conviction,[Pg 143] from sheer soldierly duty. I remained eight years on foreign soil, overwhelmed with every wretchedness.

This generous tribute paid, I returned to France in 1800. Bonaparte sought me out and placed me; on the death of the Duc d'Enghien, I devoted myself once more to the memory of the Bourbons. My words on the tomb of Mesdames at Trieste revived the wrath of the dispenser of empires; he threatened to have me cut down on the steps of the Tuileries. The pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons was worth to Louis XVIII., on his own confession, as much as a hundred thousand men.

With the aid of the popularity which I then enjoyed, anti-Constitutional France understood the institutions of the Legitimate Royalty. During the Hundred Days, the Monarchy saw me by its side in its second exile. Lastly, through the Spanish War, I had contributed to the suppression of the conspiracies, to the union of opinions under one and the same cockade, and to the restoring of its range to our cannon. The rest of my plans are well known: to extend our frontiers, to give new crowns in the New World to the family of St. Louis.

This long perseverance in the same sentiments perhaps merited some consideration. Sensitive to affront, I did not find it possible also to put on one side what I might be worth, to forget entirely that I was the restorer of religion, the author of the Génie du Christianisme.

My agitation necessarily increased still further at the thought that a paltry quarrel made our country miss an opportunity of greatness which it would not find again. Had they said to me, "Your plans will be followed; what you have taken in hand will be carried out without you," I should have forgotten all for France. Unfortunately, I had the belief that my ideas would not be adopted; the event has proved it.

I was, perhaps, in error, but I was persuaded that M. le Comte de Villèle did not understand the society which he ruled; I am convinced that the solid qualities of that able minister were inadequate at the hour of his ministry: he had come too early under the Restoration. Financial operations, commercial companies, the industrial movement, canals, steamboats, railways, high-roads, a material society which has no passion save that of peace, which dreams only of the comforts of life, which wants to make of the future only a perpetual to-day: in this order of things, M. de Villèle would[Pg 144] have been king. M. de Villèle wanted a time which could not be his and, from honour, he will have nothing to do with a time which belongs to him. Under the Restoration, all the faculties of the mind were alive; all parties dreamt of realities or illusions; all, advancing or receding, came into tumultuous collision; none purposed to remain where he was; to no earnest mind did the Constitutional Legitimacy seem to be the last word of the Republic or the Monarchy. We felt stirring in the ground under our feet armies or revolutions which came to offer themselves for extraordinary destinies. M. de Villèle was quite alive to this movement; he saw the wings grow which, sprouting from the nation's shoulders, were about to restore it to its element, to the air, to space, immense and light as it is. M. de Villèle wished to keep this nation to the ground, to fasten it down, but he never had the strength for it. I, on the other hand, wished to occupy the French with glory, to fasten them up above, to endeavour to lead them to reality through dreams: that is what they love.

It would be better to be more humble, more prostrate, more Christian. Unfortunately I am subject to err; I have not the evangelic perfection: if a man struck me on the cheek, I should not turn to him the other also.

Had I conjectured the result, I should certainly have refrained; the majority which voted the phrase of refusal to co-operate would not have voted it, if they had foreseen the consequence of their vote. None seriously desired a catastrophe, except a few men apart. There was at first only a riot, and the Legitimacy alone transformed it into a revolution: when the moment had come, it lacked the intelligence, the prudence, the resolution that could still save it. After all, it is a monarchy fallen; many more will fall: I owed it only my fidelity; it will have that ever.

Devoted to the early adversities of the Monarchy, I have consecrated myself to its final misfortunes: ill-fortune will always have for me a second. I have given back all, places, pensions, honours; and, in order that I might have nothing more to ask of anybody, I have pledged my coffin. O stern and rigid judges, virtuous and infallible Royalists, who mixed an oath with your riches as you mix salt with the meats of your banquets to preserve them, have a little indulgence in respect of my past bitternesses; I am expiating them to-day after my fashion, which is not yours. Do you think that, at the evening hour, at the hour at which the toiler seeks repose,[Pg 145] he does not feel the weight of life, when that weight is cast back upon his shoulders? And yet, I need not have borne the burden. I saw Philip in his palace, from the 1st to the 6th of August 1830, as I shall tell when the time comes; it but lay with me to hearken to generous words.

Later, if I had been able to repent of doing right, it was still possible for me to retract the first impulse of my conscience. M. Benjamin Constant, the man so powerful then, wrote to me on the 20th of September[335]:

"I would much rather write to you of yourself than of myself, the thing would have more importance. I should like to be able to speak to you of the loss which you are causing all France to sustain by withdrawing yourself from her destinies, you who have exercised so noble and wholesome an influence upon her. But it would be indiscreet of me to treat personal questions in this way, and I am bound, while groaning like every Frenchman, to respect your scruples."

My duties not yet seeming to me to be consummated, I have defended the widow and the orphan, I have undergone the trial and the prison which Bonaparte, even in his greatest angers, spared me. I stand forth between my resignation on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and my cry on behalf of the plundered child; I rest upon a prince shot dead and a prince in banishment; they sustain my old arms entwined in their feeble arms: O Royalists, are you so well attended?

But, the more I have tied down my life with the bonds of devotion and honour, the more have I changed my liberty of action for independence of thought; that thought has resumed its nature. Now, outside everything, I appraise governments at their worth. Can one believe in the kings of the future? Is one to believe in the peoples of the present? The wise and disconsolate man of this century without conviction finds a wretched repose only in political atheism. Let the young generations lull themselves with hopes: before hitting the mark, they will wait long years; the ages are proceeding towards the general levelling, but they do not hasten their speed at the call of our desires. Time is a sort of eternity adapted to mortal things; it counts the races and their sorrows for nothing in the works which it accomplishes.

It follows from what you have just read that, if what I advised had been done, if petty longings had not placed their[Pg 146] own satisfaction before the interests of France; if those in power had shown a clearer appreciation of relative capacities; if the foreign Cabinets had, like Alexander, deemed that the safety of the French Monarchy lay in Liberal institutions; if those Cabinets had not maintained the restored authority in defiance of the principles of the Charter, the Legitimacy would still be occupying the throne. Ah, what is past is past! It is useless to turn back, to resume the place which we have quitted; we find nothing of that which we left there: men, ideas, circumstances, all have faded away.

BOOK XI[336]

Madame Récamier—Childhood of Madame Récamier described by M. Benjamin Constant—Letter to Madame Récamier from Lucien Bonaparte—Continuation of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Staël—Madame Récamier's journey to England—Madame de Staël's first journey to Germany—Madame Récamier in Paris—Plans of the generals—Portrait of Bernadotte—Trial of Moreau—Letters from Moreau and Masséna to Madame Récamier—Death of M. Necker—Return of Madame de Staël—Madame Récamier at Coppet—Prince Augustus of Prussia—Madame de Staël's second journey to Germany—The Château de Chaumont—Letter from Madame de Staël to Bonaparte—Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency exiled—Madame Récamier at Châlons—Madame Récamier at Lyons—Madame de Chevreuse—Spanish prisoners—Madame Récamier in Rome—Albano-Canova: his letters—The Albano fisherman—Madame Récamier in Naples—The Duc de Rohan-Chabot—King Murat: his letters—Madame Récamier returns to France—Letter from Madame de Genlis—Letters from Benjamin Constant—Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return from Elba—Madame de Krüdener—The Duke of Wellington—I meet Madame Récamier again—Death of Madame de Staël—The Abbaye-aux-Bois.

We pass to the embassy to Rome, to Italy, the dream of my life. Before continuing my story, I must speak of a woman of whom we shall not lose sight again till the end of these Memoirs. A correspondence is about to open between us from Rome to Paris: it is necessary, therefore, to know to whom I am writing, how and at what period I became acquainted with Madame Récamier.

She met, in the different ranks of society, persons, more or less celebrated, engaged upon the stage of the world: all offered her their worship. Her beauty mingles its ideal existence with the material facts of our history: a placid light illuminating a stormy picture.

Let us resume once more the consideration of times gone by; let us endeavour, by the light of my setting sun, to trace a portrait on the sky where my night, which approaches, will soon spread its shadows.

A letter published in the Mercure after my return to France, in 1800, had attracted the attention of Madame de Staël. I was not yet struck off the list of Emigrants; Atala drew me from my obscurity. Madame Bacciocchi (Élisa Bonaparte), at the request of M. de Fontanes, applied for and obtained my[Pg 148] erasure. Madame de Staël had interested herself in this matter: I went to thank her. I cannot remember if it was Christian de Lamoignon or the author of Corinne[337] who introduced me to Madame Récamier, her friend; the latter was then living at her house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc. On emerging from my woods and the obscurity of my life, I was still quite timid; I scarce dared lift my eyes to a woman surrounded by adorers.

One morning, about a month later, I was at Madame de Staël's; she had received me at her toilet; she let Mademoiselle Olive dress her, while she talked, twisting a little green branch between her fingers. Entered suddenly Madame Récamier, dressed in a white gown; she sat down in the middle of a sofa covered in blue silk. Madame de Staël, remaining standing, continued her very animated conversation, and talked eloquently; I hardly answered, my eyes fixed on Madame Récamier. I had never imagined anything like her, and was more than ever discouraged: my admiration changed into ill-humour against my person. Madame Récamier went out, and I did not see her again till twelve years later.

Twelve years! What adverse power thus cuts and fritters away our days, squandering them ironically on all the indifferences called attachments, on all the miseries styled felicities! Then, by a further derision, when it has blighted and spent the most precious part, it brings you back to the starting-point of your career. And how does it bring you back? With your mind possessed with the foreign ideas, the importunate phantoms, the deluded or incomplete feelings of a world which has left you no happiness. Those ideas, those phantoms, those feelings place themselves between you and the bliss which you might still enjoy. You return with your heart sick with regret, afflicted by those errors of youth so painful to the memory in the modesty of years. That is how I returned, after having been to Rome, to Syria, after seeing an empire go by, after becoming the man of noise, after ceasing to be the man of silence. What had Madame Récamier done? What had been her life?

I have not known the greater portion of the existence at once brilliant and retired of which I am about to talk to you: I am obliged, therefore, to betake myself to authorities other than mine; but they shall be unexceptionable. First, Madame Récamier has described to me facts which she has witnessed[Pg 149] and communicated to me valuable letters. She has written, on what she has seen, notes of which she has permitted me to consult the text and, too rarely, to quote it. Next, Madame de Staël in her correspondence, Benjamin Constant in his recollections, some printed, the others in manuscript, M. Ballanche in a notice on our common friend, Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès in her sketches, Madame de Genlis in hers have furnished abundant materials for my narrative: I have only knotted all these fine names together, filling up the gaps with my own statement, when some links of the chain of events were overlooked or broken.

Montaigne says that men go gaping after future things[338]: I have the passion for gaping after past things. All is pleasure, particularly when we turn our eyes to the early years of those we love; we spin out a cherished life; we extend the affection which we feel over days which we never knew and which we revive; we adorn that which was with that which is; we recompose youthfulness.

*

At Lyons, I have seen the Jardin des Plantes laid down on the ruins of the ancient amphitheatre and in the gardens of the old Abbaye de la Déserte, now pulled down; the Rhone and the Saône flow at its feet; far away rises the highest mountain in Europe, the first mile-post of Italy, with its white board above the clouds. Madame Récamier was placed in this abbey; she there passed her childhood behind a grill which opened upon the outer church only at the elevation of the Mass. Then one saw young girls bowing down in the inner chapel of the convent. The saint's-day of the abbess was the principal festival of the community; the prettiest boarder paid the customary compliment: her dress was arranged, her hair plaited, her head veiled and crowned by the hands of her playmates; and all this in silence, for the hour of rising was one of those which were called "grand silence" in the monasteries. It goes without saying that Juliette[339] had the honours of the day. Her father and mother, having settled in Paris, sent to fetch their child. From some rough drafts written by Madame Récamier, I gather this note:

[Pg 150]

"On the eve of the day on which my aunt was to come to fetch me, I was taken to the room of Madame the Abbess to receive her blessing. The next day, bathed in tears, I went out through the door, which I did not remember seeing opened to admit me, found myself in a carriage with my aunt, and we drove off for Paris.

"I leave with regret a time so calm and so pure to enter upon that of excitement. It often comes back to me as in a vague, sweet dream, with its clouds of incense, its numberless ceremonies, its processions in the gardens, its singing and its flowers."

*

Those hours which have left a pious desert now rest in another religious solitude, without having lost anything of their freshness and their harmony.

Benjamin Constant, the wittiest man after Voltaire, strives to give an idea of Madame Récamier's early youth: he has drawn from the model whose features he aimed at tracing a grace which was not natural to him.

"Among the women of our time," he says, "whom advantages of feature, mind, or character have rendered famous, there is one whom I wish to depict. Her beauty made her admired at first; her soul next made itself known, and her soul appeared even superior to her beauty. The habit of society supplied her mind with the means to display itself, and her mind remained below neither her beauty nor her soul.

"At the age of barely fifteen[340], married to a man[341] who, occupied by an immense amount of business, could not guide her extreme youthfulness, Madame Récamier found herself left almost entirely to herself in a country which was still in a state of chaos.

"Several women of the same period have filled Europe with their diverse fames. The majority have paid tribute to their century, some through indelicate loves, others by guilty condescensions towards the successive tyrannies.

"She whom I am describing emerged radiant and pure from that atmosphere which blighted all that it did not corrupt. Childhood was at first a safeguard for her, thanks to the Author of this beautiful work, who made everything turn to[Pg 151] her advantage. Far removed from the world, in a solitude beautified by the arts, she formed for herself a gentle occupation out of all those attractive and poetic studies which remain the charm of another age.

"Often also, surrounded by young companions, she indulged with them in clamorous sports. Slender and light of foot, she outstripped them in the race; she covered with a bandage her eyes which were one day to penetrate every soul. Her glance, to-day so expressive and so profound, which seems to us to reveal mysteries unknown to herself, sparkled then only with a lively and playful gaiety. Her beautiful hair, which cannot become undone without filling us with perturbation, then fell, without danger to any, over her white shoulders. Laughter loud and long often interrupted her childish conversation; but already one could perceive in her that nice and quick observation which seizes upon the ridiculous, that gentle malice which is amused by it without ever wounding, and particularly that exquisite sentiment of eloquence, purity and good taste, a real inborn nobility, the titles to which are stamped upon privileged beings.

---

Madame Récamier.

---

Her girlhood.

"The great world of that time was too uncongenial to her nature that she should not prefer retirement. She was never seen in the houses open to all comers, the only meeting-places possible when every closed company was suspected; where all classes rushed, because there they could talk and say nothing, meet and not be compromised; where ill manners took the place of wit and disorder of gaiety. She was never seen at the Court of the Directory, where the power was at once terrible and familiar, inspiring dread without escaping contempt.

"However, Madame Récamier sometimes issued from her retreat to go to the play or to the public walks and, in those places frequented by all, her rare appearances were real events. Every other object of those vast assemblies was forgotten, and all flung themselves in her way. The man fortunate enough to escort her had to overcome admiration as it were an obstacle; his steps were at every moment delayed by the onlookers crowding around her; she delighted in this success with the gaiety of a child and the shyness of a young girl; but her graceful dignity, which in her home distinguished her from her young friends, abroad restrained the exuberant throng. It was as though she reigned by her mere presence over her companions and the public. Thus passed the first years of Madame Récamier's[Pg 152] marriage, between poetical occupations, childish sports at home, and short and brilliant appearances in the world."

Interrupting the narrative of the author of Adolphe[342], I will say that, in this society following upon the Terror, everybody feared to have the air of possessing a home. People met in the public places, especially in the Pavillon de Hanovre[343]: when I saw that pavilion, it was deserted like the hall of a yesterday's feast, or like a stage from which the actors had descended for ever. There were wont to come together young women escaped from prison, whom André Chénier had made to say:

Je ne veux point mourir encore[344].

Madame Récamier had met Danton on his road to execution and, soon after, she saw some of the fair victims snatched from men who had themselves become victims of their own fury.

I come back to my guide Benjamin Constant:

"Madame Récamier's mind had need of another food. The instinct for the beautiful caused her to delight beforehand, without knowing them, in men distinguished by a reputation for talent and genius.

"M. de La Harpe was one of the first to appreciate this woman who was destined one day to group around herself all the celebrities of her age. He had met her in her childhood, he saw her again married, and the conversation of this young person of sixteen years possessed a thousand attractions for a man whom his excessive self-esteem and the habit of intercourse with the most intelligent men in France rendered extremely difficult and hard to please.

"M. de La Harpe divested himself, in the presence of Madame Récamier, of most of the defects which made commerce with him laborious and almost insupportable. He took pleasure in acting as her guide: he admired the swiftness with which her mind made good her want of experience and grasped all that he revealed to her concerning the world[Pg 153] and mankind. It was at the time of the famous conversion which so many people have qualified as hypocrisy. I have always regarded that conversion as sincere. The sentiment of religion is an inherent faculty in man; it is absurd to pretend that fraud and falsehood have created that faculty. Nothing is put into the human soul except what nature has put there. The persecutions, the abuses of authority in favour of certain dogmas can delude us personally and revolt us against what we should feel if it were not imposed upon us; but, so soon as the external causes have ceased, we return to our primitive tendency: when there is no more courage in resisting, we no longer applaud ourselves for our resistance. Now, the Revolution having taken this merit from unbelief, the men whom vanity alone had rendered unbelieving were able to become religious in good faith.

"M. de La Harpe was of that number; but he retained his intolerant character and that bitterness of disposition which made him conceive new hatreds without abjuring the old ones. All those thorns of his devotion disappeared, however, when he was with Madame Récamier."

Here are a few fragments of the letters from M. de La Harpe to Madame Récamier of which Benjamin Constant speaks:

"Saturday, 28 September.

"What, madame, you carry your kindness so far as to wish to honour a poor outlaw like myself with a visit! This time I might say, like the ancient patriarchs, whom I resemble so little otherwise, that 'an angel has come into my house.' I well know that you like to do works of mercy; but, as things go nowadays, all good is difficult, and this like the rest. I must inform you, to my great regret, that to come alone is first of all impossible, for many reasons: among others that, with your youth and your face, the splendour of which will follow you everywhere, you could not travel without a waiting-maid, to whom prudence forbids me to confide the secret of my retreat, which is not mine alone. You would therefore have only one means of carrying out your generous resolution, which would be to take counsel with Madame de Clermont, who would bring you one day to her little sylvan castle, and from there it would be very easy for you to come with her. You are both made to appreciate and love one another.... I am writing many verses at this moment. In writing them, I often reflect that I shall one[Pg 154] day be able to read them to the fair and charming Juliet, whose mind is as penetrating as her glance, and her taste as pure as her soul. I would also willingly send you the fragment of Adonis which you like, although it has become a little profane for me; but I would want a promise that it shall not leave your hands....

"Farewell, madame; I indulge with you in ideas which anyone but yourself would think very extraordinary addressed to a person of sixteen years; but I know that your sixteen years are only in your face[345]."

"Saturday[346].

"It is long indeed, madame, since I had the pleasure of talking with you, and, if you be sure, as you must be, that this is one of my privations, you will make me no reproaches....

"You have read in my soul; you have seen there that I wore in it the mourning for the public misfortunes and for my own faults, and I could not but feel that this sad disposition formed too strong a contrast with all the brilliancy that encompasses your age and your charms. I even fear lest it should sometimes have made itself felt in the few moments which I have been permitted to spend with you, and I entreat your indulgence therefore. But now, madame, when Providence seems to show us a better future very near at hand, to whom could I better than to yourself confide the joy which I derive from hopes so sweet and, to my belief, so near? Who will fill a greater place than you in the private pleasures which will be mingled with the public joy? I shall then be more susceptible and less unworthy of the delights of your charming company, and how happy I shall deem myself still to count for something in it! If you deign to attach the same value to the fruit of my labour, you shall always be the first to whom I shall hasten to present it. Then no more contradictions nor obstacles; you shall always find me at your orders, and none, I hope, will be able to blame me for this preference. I shall say, 'Here is she who, at the age of illusions and with all the brilliant advantages that can excuse them, has known all the nobility and delicacy of proceedings of the purest friendship and, in the midst of every homage,[Pg 155] has remembered an outlaw!' I shall say, 'Here is she whose youth and grace I have seen grow amid a general corruption which was never able to overtake them, she whose reason at sixteen years has often put mine to shame!' and I am sure that none will be tempted to contradict me."

The sadness of events, of age and of religion, hidden under a melting expression, present in these letters a singular admixture of thought and style. Let us return once more to Benjamin Constant's narrative:

"We come to the time when Madame Récamier saw herself for the first time the object of a strong and regular passion. Till then she had received unanimous worship from all who had met her, but her manner of life nowhere offered centres of union where one could be sure of finding her. She never received at home and she had not yet formed a society where one could penetrate every day to see her and try to please her.

Lucien Bonaparte.

"In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to live at the Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league from Paris. A man since celebrated through different sorts of pretensions, and even more celebrated through the advantages which he has refused than through the successes which he has won, Lucien Bonaparte, obtained an introduction to her.

"He had not, till then, aspired to any save facile conquests and, to obtain these, had studied only the romancing methods which his want of knowledge of the world represented to him as infallible. It is possible that he was enticed at first by the idea of captivating the loveliest woman of his time. Young, the leader of a party in the Council of the Five Hundred, the brother of the first general of the age, he was gratified at uniting the triumphs of a statesman and the successes of a lover in his person.

"He conceived the idea of having recourse to a fiction to declare his love to Madame Récamier; he imagined a letter from Romeo to Juliet, and sent it as a work of his to her who bore the same name."

Here is this letter from Lucien, known to Benjamin Constant; in the midst of the revolutions which have stirred the world of reality, it is racy to see a Bonaparte plunge into the world of fictions:

[Pg 156]

LETTER FROM ROMEO TO JULIET
by the author of the Tribu indienne[347]

"Venice, 29 July.

"Romeo writes to you, Juliet: if you refuse to read me, you will be crueller than our parents whose long strife has at last been appeased; no doubt that horrid strife will not revive. ... A few days since, I knew you only by repute. I had sometimes seen you in the temples and at feasts; I knew you were the most beautiful; a thousand lips repeated your praises, and your charms had struck but not dazzled me.... Why has peace delivered me to your empire? Peace! It reigns in our families, but trouble reigns in my heart....

"Recall to yourself the day when I was first presented to you. We were celebrating at a large banquet the reconciliation of our fathers. I had come from the Senate, where the troubles raised against the Republic had created a lively impression.... You arrived; then all flocked round:

"'How lovely she is!' they cried....

"The throng in the evening filled the gardens of Bedmar. Importunate people, who are everywhere, took possession of me. This time I had neither patience with them nor affability: they kept me from you!... I wished to account for the emotion that was overcoming me. I knew love and wished to master it.... I was carried away, and with you left the festive spot.

"I have seen you since: love has seemed to smile upon me. One day, seated at the water's edge, motionless and pensive, you were stripping a rose of its leaves; alone with you, I spoke.... I heard a sigh... vain illusion! Recovering from my mistake, I saw indifference with its placid brow seated between us two.... The passion which masters me found utterance in my discourse, and yours bore the amiable and cruel impress of childhood and pleasantry.

"Each day I would wish to see you, as though the dart were not fixed deep enough in my heart. The moments at which I see you are very rare, and those young Venetians who surround you and talk insipid gallantry to you are hateful to me. How is it possible to talk to Juliet as to other women!

"I have wanted to write to you; you will know me, you will no longer refuse to believe me; my soul is ill at ease; it thirsts for sentiment. If love has not stirred yours; if Romeo in your eyes is but an ordinary man, oh, I conjure you by the[Pg 157] bonds which you have laid upon me, be severe with me from kindness; do not smile to me again, do not speak to me again, thrust me far from you. Tell me to go away and, if I can execute that rigorous order, remember at least that Romeo will ever love you; that none has ever reigned over him as Juliet has; and that he can no longer cease to live for her, at least in remembrance."

*

For a sober-minded man, all this is rather laughable: the Bonapartes used to live on theatres, novels and verses; is the life of Napoleon himself aught else than a poem?

Benjamin Constant continues, while commenting upon this letter:

"The style of this letter is evidently imitated from all the novels that have depicted the passions, from Werther to the Nouvelle Héloïse. Madame Récamier easily discovered, from several circumstances of detail, that she herself was the object of the declaration offered as though simply for her perusal. She was not sufficiently accustomed to the language of love to be warned by experience that everything in the expressions was, perhaps, not sincere; but a true and sure instinct warned her; she replied with simplicity and even gaiety, and showed much more indifference than disquietude or fear. It needed no more for Lucien really to experience the passion which he had at first somewhat exaggerated.

"Lucien's letters grew truer, more eloquent, in proportion as he grew more impassioned; certainly they always show the ambition for ornamentation, the desire to attitudinize; he cannot go to sleep without 'flinging himself into the arms of Morpheus.' In the midst of his despair, he describes himself as surrendered to the great occupations which surround him; he is astonished that a man like him sheds tears; but, in all this alloy of declamation and phrases, there is nevertheless eloquence, sensibility and grief. At last, in a letter full of passion in which he wrote to Madame Récamier, 'I cannot hate you, but I can kill myself,' he suddenly makes a general reflection: 'I am forgetting that love is not snatched, but won,' and then adds, 'After receiving your note, I received many of a diplomatic character; I learnt some news of which public rumour has no doubt informed you. Congratulations surround, deafen me... people talk to me of what is not you! 'Then another exclamation:

"'How weak is nature compared to love!'

[Pg 158]

"And yet this news which found Lucien unconcerned was an immense piece of news: Bonaparte's disembarkation on his return from Egypt.

"A new destiny had landed with its promises and its threats; the 18 Brumaire was not more than three weeks distant.

"Barely escaped from the dangers of that day, which will always fill so great a place in history, Lucien wrote to Madame Récamier:

"'I have seen your image!... You will have had my last thought!'...

"Madame Récamier contracted a friendship, which became daily more intimate and which still endures, with a woman who was illustrious in a very different way from that in which M. de La Harpe was famous.

"M. Necker, having been struck off the list of Emigrants, charged Madame de Staël, his daughter, to sell a house which he had. Madame Récamier bought it, and this was an occasion for her to see Madame de Staël[348].

"The sight of this celebrated woman at first filled her with excessive timidity. The face of Madame de Staël has been very widely discussed. But a proud glance, a sweet smile, an habitual expression of kindliness, the absence of any minute affectation and of any embarrassing reserve, caressing words, praises somewhat direct but seeming to escape from enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety of enthusiasm surprise, attract and conciliate almost all who approach her. I know no woman, nor even any man, who is more convinced of her own vast superiority to all the world and who makes this conviction bear less hard upon others.

"Nothing could be more engaging than the conversations of Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. The quickness of the one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the quickness of the other in grasping and perceiving them; that masculine and powerful mind which disclosed all, that delicate and subtle mind which understood all; those revelations made by a trained genius to a youthful intelligence worthy to receive them: all this formed a union which it is impossible to describe without having had the happiness to witness it one's self.

[Pg 159]

"The friendship of Madame Récamier for Madame de Staël was strengthened by a sentiment which they both entertained: filial love. Madame Récamier was fondly attached to her mother, a woman of rare merit, whose health was already giving rise to fears and whose loss her daughter has never since ceased to regret. Madame de Staël had vowed a worship to her father which his death has rendered but the more exalted. Always overpowering in her manner of expressing herself, she becomes still more so, above all, when speaking of him. Her earnest voice, her eyes ready to grow wet with tears, the sincerity of her enthusiasm moved the soul of even those who did not share her opinion of that celebrated man. Ridicule has frequently been cast on the praises which she has awarded him in her writings; but, when you have heard her on that subject, it is not possible to make it an object of mockery, for nothing that is true is ridiculous."

*

The letters of Corinne to her friend Madame Récamier began at the period here recalled by Benjamin Constant: they have a charm which is almost akin to love; I will set forth a few:

"Coppet, 9 September.

"Do you recollect, fair Juliet, a person whom you loaded with marks of interest last winter and who is bold enough to invite you to do twice as much in the winter to come? How do you govern the empire of beauty? One awards it you with pleasure, that empire, because you are eminently good, and it seems natural that so gentle a soul should have a charming face to express it. Of all your admirers you know that I prefer Adrien de Montmorency[349]. I have received letters from him, remarkable for wit and grace, and I believe in the solidity of his affections, notwithstanding the charm of his manners. For the rest, that word 'solidity' suits me, who claim to play but a very secondary part in his heart. But you, who are the heroine of every sentiment, are exposed to the great events out of which tragedies and novels are made. Mine[350] is progressing[Pg 160] at the foot of the Alps. I hope you will read it with interest. I like this occupation. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Amid all those successes, what you are and what you will remain is an angel of purity and beauty, and you will have the worship of the devout as well as of the worldly.... Have you seen the author of Atala again? Are you still at Clichy? In short, I ask for details of yourself. I love to know what you are doing, to represent to myself the places in which you dwell. Is not all a picture in the memories which one retains of you? I add to this natural enthusiasm for your rare advantages a great inclination for your company. Pray accept kindly all that I offer you, and promise me that we shall meet often in the coming winter."

"Coppet, 30 April.

"Do you know, fair Juliet, that my friends have been flattering me somewhat with the notion that you might come here? Could you not give me that great pleasure? It is some time since happiness spoilt me, and your arrival would be a return of luck and would give me hopes for all that I desire. Adrien and Mathieu say they will come. If you came with them, a month's stay here would serve to show you our splendid nature. My father says that you ought to choose Coppet for your residence and that we should make our excursions from there. My father is very eager in his desire to see you. You know what they said of Homer:

"Par la voix des vieillards tu louais la beauté[351].

"And independently of that beauty you are charming."

During the short Peace of Amiens[352], Madame Récamier took a journey to London with her mother. She had letters of introduction from the old Duc de Guignes, who had been Ambassador to England thirty years before. He had kept up a correspondence with the most brilliant women of the time: the Duchess of Devonshire[353], Lady Melbourne[354], the[Pg 161] Marchioness of Salisbury[355], the Margravine of Anspach, with whom he had been in love. His embassy was still celebrated, his memory green among those respectable ladies.

Such is the power of novelty in England that, on the morning after her arrival, the newspapers were full of the foreign beauty. Madame Récamier received visits from nearly all the persons to whom she had sent letters. Among these persons, the most remarkable was the Duchess of Devonshire, then between forty-five and fifty years of age. She was still in vogue and beautiful, although she had lost one eye, which she concealed behind a lock of her hair. The first time that Madame Récamier appeared in public, it was in her company. The duchess took her to the Opera in her box, in which were the Prince of Wales, the Duc d'Orléans and his brothers the Duc de Montpensier[356] and the Comte de Beaujolais[357]: the first two were to become kings; one was on the verge of the throne, the other was still separated from it by an abyss[358].

Eyes and opera-glasses were turned on the duchess' box. The Prince of Wales said to Madame Récamier that, if she did not want to be suffocated, she must leave before the end of the performance. Scarcely was she on her feet, before the doors of the boxes opened precipitously; she escaped nothing, and was carried by the tide of the crowd to her carriage.

The next day, Madame Récamier went to Kensington Gardens, accompanied by the Marquess of Douglas, later Duke of Hamilton[359], who has since received Charles X. at Holyrood[360], and by his sister the Duchess of Somerset[361]. The crowd flung itself on the fair foreigner's footsteps. This[Pg 162] effect was repeated each time she showed herself in public; the newspapers resounded with her name; her portrait, engraved by Bartolozzi[362], was spread broadcast through England. The author of Antigone, M. Ballanche, adds that ships carried it as far as the isles of Greece: beauty returned to the spots where its image had been invented. We have a sketch of Madame Récamier by David, a full-length portrait by Gérard, a bust by Canova. The portrait is Gérard's master-piece; but it does not please me, because I recognise the model's features in it without recognising the expression.

On the eve of Madame Récamier's departure, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Devonshire asked leave to call on her and to bring with them some persons of their society. Music was performed. Together with the Chevalier Marin, the first harper of the time, she played variations on a theme by Mozart. This evening was mentioned in the public press as a concert which the beautiful foreigner had given, on leaving, to the Prince of Wales.

The next day, she set sail for the Hague and took three days to make a crossing of sixteen hours. She has told me that, during those days dashed with storms, she read the Génie du Christianisme straight through; I was "revealed" to her, to use her kind expression: I recognise in this the good-will which the winds and the sea have always had for me.

Near the Hague, she visited the country-house of the Prince of Orange. The Prince, having made her promise to go to see that residence, wrote her several letters in which he speaks of his reverses and of his hope to conquer them: William I. has, in fact, become a monarch[363]; at that time one intrigued to become king as nowadays to become a deputy, and those candidates for the sovereignty used to throng round the feet of Madame Récamier as though she had crowns in her gift.

The following note from Bernadotte, who reigns to-day over Sweden[364], ended Madame Récamier's journey to England:
. . . . . . . . . .

[Pg 163]

"The English papers, while calming my apprehensions for your health, have informed me of the dangers to which you have been exposed. I at first blamed the people of London for their too great assiduity, but, I confess to you, I soon excused them, for I am an interested party when it is necessary to justify persons who become indiscreet in order to admire the charms of your celestial countenance.

"Amid the lustre which surrounds you and which you deserve by such manifold rights, deign sometimes to remember that the being most devoted to you in nature is

"Bernadotte."

Madame de Staël, threatened with exile, attempted to settle down at Maffliers, a country-place eight leagues from Paris. She accepted the proposal made to her by Madame Récamier, on her return from England, to spend a few days with her at Saint-Brice; afterwards she went back to her first refuge. She relates what happened then, in the Dix années d'exil:

"I was at table," she says, "with three of my friends in a room from which one saw the high road and the entrance-door. It was at the end of September[365], at four o'clock: a man in grey, on horseback, stopped and rang; I was sure of my fate; he asked for me; I received him in the garden. As I went towards him, I was struck by the scent of the flowers and the beauty of the sun. The sensations that come to us through the combinations of society are so different from those of nature! The man told me that he was the commandant of the Versailles Gendarmery.... He showed me a letter, signed by Bonaparte, which contained the order to remove me to forty leagues from Paris, with an injunction to make me leave within twenty-four hours, while treating me, however, with all the consideration due to a woman whose name was known.... I replied to the officer of gendarmes that to set out within twenty-four hours might suit conscripts, but not a woman and children. Consequently I proposed that he should accompany me to Paris, where I had need of three days to make the necessary arrangements for my journey. I therefore got into my carriage with my children and this officer, who had been selected as being the most literary of the gendarmes. In fact, he paid me compliments on my writings.

[Pg 164]

"'You see, monsieur,' I said to him, 'what comes of being an intellectual woman. I beg you, dissuade the members of your family from it, if you have occasion to do so.'

"I tried to rouse myself with pride, but I felt the clutching at my heart.

"I stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier's. I there found General Junot[366], who, out of devotion for her, promised to go the next day to speak to the First Consul. He did so in fact with the greatest warmth....

"On the eve of the last day given me, Joseph Bonaparte made yet one attempt....

"I was obliged to await the answer in an inn at two leagues from Paris, not daring to return to my own home in town. A day passed without the answer reaching me. Not wishing to attract attention by remaining longer at the inn where I was, I made the circuit of the walls of Paris to go to look for another, also at two leagues from Paris, but on a different road. This wandering life, at four steps from my friends and my home, caused me a grief which I cannot recall without shuddering[367]."

*

Madame de Staël, instead of returning to Coppet, set out on her first journey to Germany. At that time she wrote me the letter on the death of Madame de Beaumont which I quoted when writing of my first journey to Rome.

Madame Récamier gathered round her in Paris all that was most distinguished in the oppressed parties and in the opinions which had not yielded to victory. One saw there the lights of the old Monarchy and the new Empire: the Montmorencys, the Sabrans[368], the Lamoignons, Generals Masséna, Moreau and Bernadotte; one destined for exile, another for the throne. Illustrious foreigners also visited there: the Prince of Orange, the Prince of Bavaria[369], the brother[370] of the Queen of Prussia surrounded her, just as in London the Prince of Wales was proud to carry her shawl. So irresistible was the attraction that Eugène de[Pg 165] Beauharnais[371] and the Emperor's very ministers went to these assemblies. Bonaparte could not suffer success, even when it was a woman's. He used to say:

"Since how long has the Council been held at Madame Récamier's?"

I now return to Benjamin Constant:

"For a long time, Bonaparte, who had seized upon the government, had been progressing towards tyranny. The most opposite parties became incensed against him and, while the bulk of the citizens were still allowing themselves to be enervated by the tranquillity which was promised them, the Republicans and the Royalists desired an inversion. M. de Montmorency belonged to the latter by his birth, his connections and his opinions. Madame Récamier cared for politics only through her generous interest in the vanquished of all parties. The independence of her character made her averse to the Court of Napoleon, of which she had refused to form part M. de Montmorency conceived the idea of confiding his hopes to her, painted the restoration of the Bourbons to her in colours calculated to arouse her enthusiasm, and charged her to bring together two men at that time of importance in France, Moreau and Bernadotte, to see if they could unite against Bonaparte. She was intimately acquainted with Bernadotte, who has since become Prince Royal of Sweden. Something chivalrous in his appearance, something noble in his manners, something very subtle in his intelligence, something declamatory in his conversation make him a remarkable man. Courageous in battle, bold in speech, but timid in actions which are not military, irresolute in all his designs, he has one thing which makes him very seductive at first sight, but which, at the same time, places an obstacle to any combination of plans with him, and that is a habit of haranguing, a relic of his revolutionary education which does not leave him. He sometimes has movements of real eloquence; he knows it, he loves this kind of success and, when he has entered upon the development of some general idea connected with what he has heard in the clubs or the rostrum, he loses sight of all that occupies him and is no longer anything[Pg 166] but an impassioned orator. That is what he appeared in France during the early years of the reign of Bonaparte, whom he always hated and by whom he was suspected, and that again is what he has shown himself in these later days, amid the disorder of Europe, of which, nevertheless, we owe the liberation to him, because he reassured the foreigners by showing them a Frenchman ready to march against the tyrant of France and knowing how to say only such things as could have an influence for his nation's good.

"Anything that offers a woman the means of exercising power is always agreeable to her. Moreover, in the idea of rousing against the despotism of Bonaparte men important through their dignities and their glory there was something generous and noble which was bound to tempt Madame Récamier. She therefore lent herself to M. de Montmorency's wishes. She often threw Bernadotte and Moreau together at her house. Moreau wavered, Bernadotte spouted. Madame Récamier took Moreau's indecisive speeches for a commencement of resolution and Bernadotte's harangues as a signal for the overthrow of tyranny. The two generals, on their side, were enraptured to see their discontent pampered by so much beauty, wit and grace. There was, in fact, something romantic and poetic in that young and bewitching woman who talked to them of the liberty of their country. Bernadotte never ceased repeating to Madame Récamier that she was made to electrify the world and create fanatics."

*

While noting the delicacy of this portraiture by Benjamin Constant, it must be said that Madame Récamier would never have entered into political interests but for the irritation which she felt at the banishment of Madame de Staël. The future King of Sweden had a list of the generals who still held with the party of independence, but Moreau's name was not on it; it was the only one fit to be opposed to Napoleon's, only Bernadotte did not know what manner of man the Bonaparte was whose power he was attacking.

Madame Moreau[372] gave a ball: all Europe was there, excepting France, which was represented only by the Republican Opposition. In the course of this entertainment, General Bernadotte led Madame Récamier to a little drawing-room where only the sound of the music followed them to remind[Pg 167] them where they were. Moreau passed into this drawing-room; Bernadotte said to him, after long explanations:

"You have a popular name; you are the only one of us who can put himself forward with the support of the people; see what you can do, what we can do under your leader-ship."

Moreau repeated what he had often said before, that "he felt the danger with which liberty was threatened, that they must watch Bonaparte, but that he feared civil war."

This conversation was prolonged and became animated; Bernadotte lost his temper, and said to General Moreau:

"You do not dare to take up the cause of liberty; well, then, Bonaparte will make sport of liberty and you. It will perish in spite of our efforts and, as for you, you will be involved in its ruin without having fought."

Prophetic words!

Madame Récamier's mother was intimately acquainted with Madame Hulot, the mother of Madame Moreau, and Madame Récamier had contracted with the latter one of those childish friendships which it is a pleasure to continue in after life.

During General Moreau's trial, Madame Récamier spent all her time with Madame Moreau. The latter told her friend that her husband complained that he had not yet seen her among the public which filled the court and the bench. Madame Récamier arranged to be present at the sitting on the day after this conversation. One of the judges, M. Brillat-Savarin[373], undertook to pass her in through a private door which opened on to the amphitheatre of the court. She raised her veil, on entering, and cast a glance over the rows of prisoners in order to find Moreau. He recognised her, rose and bowed. All eyes were turned in her direction; she hastened to descend the steps of the amphitheatre to reach the place intended for her. The prisoners were forty-seven in number; they filled the benches placed opposite the judges of the court. Each prisoner was placed between two gendarmes: the soldiers treated General Moreau with deference and respect.

Messieurs de Polignac and de Rivière attracted attention, but especially Georges Cadoudal. Pichegru, whose name will remain associated with that of Moreau, was missing from his[Pg 168] side, or, rather, one seemed to see his shadow there, for it was known that he was also missing from prison[374].

There was no more question of Republicans: it was Royalist loyalty fighting against the new power; nevertheless, this cause of the Legitimacy and of its high-born partisans had, as its leader, a man of the people, Georges Cadoudal. One saw him there, with the thought that that so pious and so fearless head was about to fall on the scaffold, that he, Cadoudal, alone, perhaps, would not be saved, for he would do nothing to be saved. He defended only his friends; as for what concerned him in particular, he told all. Bonaparte was not so generous as people supposed: eleven persons devoted to Georges perished with him[375].

Moreau did not speak. At the end of the sitting, the judge who had brought Madame Récamier came to take her away. She crossed the bar at the opposite side to that by which she had entered, and passed by the bench of the prisoners. Moreau came down, followed by his two gendarmes; he was separated from her only by a hand-rail. He addressed a few words to her, which, in her startled condition, she did not hear; she tried to reply, her voice broke.

To-day, when the times are changed and when Bonaparte's name alone seems to fill them, we do not conceive how small a hold his power as yet had. On the night preceding the sentence, during which the court sat, all Paris was on foot. Floods of people went towards the Palace of Justice. Georges wanted no mercy; he replied to them who wished to ask it for him:

"Do you promise me a finer occasion of death?"

[Pg 169]

Moreau, condemned to transportation, set out for Cadiz, whence he was to cross to America. Madame Moreau went to join him. Madame Récamier was with her at her departure. She saw her kiss her son in his cradle and saw her turn back again to kiss him a second time; she took her to her carriage, and received her last farewell.

General Moreau wrote the following letter from Cadiz to his generous friend:

"Chiclana (near Cadiz), 12 October 1804.

"Madame,

"You will, no doubt, be pleased to hear news of two fugitives in whom you have shown so much interest. After going through all sorts of fatigues, by land and sea, we were hoping to rest at Cadiz, when the yellow fever, which in some way may be compared to the ills we had recently undergone, came to besiege us in that town.

"Although my wife's confinement obliged us to remain there for more than a month during the sickness, we were lucky enough to escape infection; only one of our servants caught it.

"At last we are at Chiclana, a very pretty village at a few leagues from Cadiz, enjoying good health, and my wife quite convalescent, after giving me a very healthy daughter.

"She is persuaded that you take as great an interest in this event as in all that has happened to us, and she asks me to acquaint you with it and to send you her kind remembrances.

"I say nothing of the kind of life which we lead: it is excessively tedious and monotonous, but at least we breathe at liberty, although in the land of the Inquisition.

"I beg you, madame, to receive the assurance of my respectful attachment, and to believe me ever

"Your most humble and most obedient servant,

"V. Moreau."

This letter is dated from Chiclana, a spot which, together with glory, seemed to promise an assured reign to M. le Duc d'Angoulême: and yet he appeared on that coast only with as fatal a result as Moreau, who has been believed devoted to the Bourbons. Moreau, in the depths of his soul, was devoted to liberty; when he had the misfortune to join the Coalition, the question in his eyes was solely that of contending against the despotism of Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. said to M. de Montmorency, who was deploring the death of Moreau as a great loss to the Crown:

[Pg 170]

"Not so great: Moreau was a Republican."

The general returned to Europe only to find the cannon-ball on which his name was engraved by the finger of God.

Moreau recalls to my mind another illustrious captain, Masséna. The latter was going to the Army of Italy; he asked Madame Récamier for a white ribbon from the trimming of her dress. One day she received this note in Masséna's hand:

"The charming ribbon given him by Madame Récamier was worn by General Masséna in the battles and the blockade of Genoa: it never left the general and constantly promoted his victory."

The old manners peep out through the new manners of which they form the ground-work. The gallantry of the knight of gentle birth appeared again in the plebeian soldier: the memory of the tournaments and crusades lay hidden in the feats of arms with which modern France has crowned her ancient victories. Cisher, the companion of Charlemagne, did not deck himself in the fight with his lady's colours:

"He carried," says the Monk of Saint-Gall[376], "seven, eight, or even nine enemies strung on his lance."

Cisher went before and Masséna came after chivalry.

*

Madame de Staël in Berlin heard of her father's illness; she hurried back, but M. Necker was dead[377] before she reached Switzerland.

At that time happened M. Récamier's ruin[378]; Madame de Staël was soon informed of this unfortunate event. She at once wrote to Madame Récamier, her friend:

"Geneva, 17 November.[379]

"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the shocking news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does[Pg 171] not permit me to be with you, to press you to my heart! You have lost all that has to do with the ease and comfort of life; but, if it were possible to be more loved, more interesting than you are, that is what would have happened to you. I am going to write to M. Récamier, whom I pity and respect. But, tell me, would it be a dream to hope to see you here this winter? If you were willing, three months spent here, in a narrow circle where you would be passionately cared for: but in Paris also you inspire that feeling. At any rate, I will come to see you at Lyons, or anywhere outside my 'forty leagues,' to embrace you, to tell you that I have felt more tenderness for you than for any woman I have ever known. I can say nothing to you by way of consolation, unless it be that you will be loved and valued more than ever and that the admirable features of your generosity and benevolence will be known, in spite of yourself, through this misfortune, as they never would have been without it. Certainly, to compare your situation with what it was, you have lost; but if it were possible for me to envy what I love, I would give all that I am to be you. A beauty unmatched in Europe, a stainless reputation, a proud and generous character, what a fortune of happiness that remains in this sad life through which we go so naked! Dear Juliet, let our friendship draw closer; let it consist not only of generous services, which have all come from you, but of a sustained correspondence, a reciprocal desire to confide our thoughts in one another, a life together. Dear Juliet, you shall make me come back to Paris, for you are still an all-powerful person, and we shall see each other every day; and, as you are younger than I, you shall close my eyes, and my children shall be your friends. My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has made herself loved thus.

"Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you. Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows. Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...."

Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest:[Pg 172] she left society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche has said, "fortune withdrew alone."

Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to both.

Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship which united Corinne and Juliet.

The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them.

Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and[Pg 173] distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais:

"The Prince entered the drawing-room, with Madame de Staël showing him the way. Suddenly the door half opened, and Athenais advanced. By the elegance of her figure, by the dazzling brilliancy of her features, the Prince could not fail to recognise her, but he had formed a quite different idea of her: he had represented this woman to himself as famous for her beauty, as proud of her successes, with an assumed bearing and the kind of confidence which that sort of celebrity only too often gives; and he saw a timid young person step forward with embarrassment and blush as she appeared. The sweetest sentiment mingled with his surprise.

"After dinner, they did not go out, because of the excessive heat; they went down into the gallery to make music until the time came to take the air. After a few brilliant chords and harmonious sounds of entrancing sweetness, Athenais sang to her own accompaniment on the harp. The Prince listened to her with rapture and, when she had finished, looked at her with inexpressible commotion, exclaiming:

"'And such talents!'"

Madame de Staël, in her maturity, loved Madame Récamier: Madame de Genlis, in her decrepitude, found back for her the accents of her youth; the author of Mademoiselle de Clermont[382] lays the scene of her novel[383] at Coppet, with the author of Corinne, a rival whom she detested: that was one wonder. Another wonder is to see me writing these details. I am turning over letters which remind me of times in which I lived solitary and unknown. There was happiness without me on the shores of Coppet, which I have not seen since without a certain movement of envy. The things which have escaped me on earth, which have fled from me, which I regret, would kill me, were I not so near my tomb; but, at this short distance from eternal oblivion, truths and dreams are equally vain: at the end of one's life, all is time lost.

Madame de Staël set out a second time for Germany[384].[Pg 174] Here begins again a series of letters to Madame Récamier, perhaps even more charming than the first.

There is nothing in Madame de Staël's printed works which approaches this naturalness, this eloquence, in which imagination lends its expression to the feelings. The virtue of Madame Récamier's friendship must have been great, since it was able to make a woman of genius produce what was hidden and, as yet, unrevealed in her talent. We divine, moreover, in the sad accent of Madame de Staël a secret displeasure, of which the beauty would naturally be the confidant, she who could never receive like wounds.

*

Madame de Staël, having returned to France, came, in the spring of 1810[385], to live at the Château de Chaumont[386], on the banks of the Loire, at forty leagues from Paris, the distance fixed by the radius of her banishment. Madame Récamier joined her at that country-house.

Madame de Staël was at that time supervising the impression of her work on Germany; when it was on the point of publication, she sent it to Bonaparte with this letter:

"Sire,

"I take the liberty of presenting to Your Majesty my work on Germany. If you deign to read it, it seems to me that you will find in it proof of a mind capable of some reflection and ripened by time. Sire, it is twelve years since I saw Your Majesty and since I was exiled. Twelve years of misfortune modify all characters, and destiny teaches resignation to those who suffer. Prepared to put to sea, I beseech Your Majesty to grant me half-an-hour's conversation. I believe that I have things to tell you which may interest you, and it is on that score that I beseech you to grant me the favour of speaking to you before my departure. I will allow myself only one thing in this letter, which is an explanation of the motives which oblige me to leave the Continent, if I do not obtain permission from Your Majesty to live at a country-place near enough to Paris for my children to stay there. Your Majesty's disgrace casts so great a disfavour in Europe upon the persons who are its object, that I cannot take a step without encountering its effects. Some fear to compromise themselves by seeing me, others think themselves Romans when triumphing over that[Pg 175] fear. The simplest social relations become services which a proud mind cannot put up with. Among my friends are some who have allied themselves to my lot with admirable generosity; but I have seen the most intimate sentiments shattered against the necessity to live with me in solitude, and I have spent my life during the past eight years between the dread of not obtaining sacrifices and the sorrow of being the object of them. It is perhaps ridiculous thus to enter into details of one's impressions with the sovereign of the world; but that which gave you the world, Sire, is a sovereign genius. And, in respect of observation of the human heart, Your Majesty's comprehension embraces the greatest and the most delicate springs. My sons have no career, my daughter is thirteen years of age; in a few years it will be necessary to settle her: it would be selfish to compel her to live in the insipid residences to which I am condemned. I shall therefore have to part from her, alas! This life is unendurable, and I know no remedy for it on the Continent. What city can I choose in which Your Majesty's disgrace does not place an invincible obstacle to both the settling of my children and my personal repose? Your Majesty is not yourself, perhaps, aware of the fear which most of the authorities of every country entertain of exiles, and in this connection I should have things to tell you which surely exceed what you may have ordered. Your Majesty has been told that I regretted Paris because of the Museum and Talma: this is an agreeable jest upon exile, in other words upon the misfortune which Cicero and Bolingbroke have declared to be the most insupportable of all; but, if I were to love the master-pieces of art which France owes to Your Majesty's conquests, if I were to love those beautiful tragedies, the images of heroism: would it be for you, Sire, to blame me for it? Is not the happiness of each individual compounded of the nature of his faculties? And, if Heaven has given me talents, have I not the imagination which renders the enjoyment of the arts and the mind necessary? So many people ask of Your Majesty real advantages of every kind! Why should I blush to ask of you friendship, poetry, music, pictures, all that ideal existence which I can enjoy without swerving from the submission which I owe to the Monarch of France?"

This unpublished letter was worth preserving[387]. Madame[Pg 176] de Staël was not, as has been contended, a blind and implacable enemy. She was listened to no more than I, when I also saw myself obliged to write to Bonaparte to ask him for the life of my cousin Armand. Alexander and Cæsar would have been touched by this letter so lofty in tone, written by so famous a woman; but the confidence of the merit which judges itself the equal of the supreme dominion, that sort of familiarity of the intellect which places itself on the level of the master of Europe to treat with him as from crown to crown appeared to Bonaparte but the arrogance of a disordered self-esteem. He thought himself set at defiance by all that had any independent greatness; to him baseness seemed fidelity, pride revolt: he did not know that true talent recognises no Napoleons save in genius, that it has its right of entry into the palaces as into the temples, because it is immortal.

*

Madame de Staël left Chaumont and returned to Coppet[388]; Madame Récamier again hastened to go to her; M. Mathieu de Montmorency also remained devoted to her. Both were[Pg 177] punished for it; they were smitten with the very penalty which they had gone to console: the forty leagues' distance from Paris was inflicted on them[389].

Madame Récamier retired to Châlons-sur-Marne[390] influenced in her selection by its propinquity to Montmirail[391], where Messieurs de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville resided.

A thousand details of Bonaparte's oppression have become lost in the general tyranny: the persecuted persons dreaded to see their friends for fear of compromising them; their friends dared not visit them, for fear of drawing down upon them some increase of severity. The unhappy outlaw, becoming as one infected with the plague, lived sequestered from the human race, in quarantine in the despot's hatred. You were well received so long as your independence of opinion was unknown; so soon as it became known, every one drew back; there remained around you none save authorities spying on your connections, your feelings, your correspondence, your proceedings: such were those times of honour and liberty.

Madame de Staël's letters reveal the sufferings of that period, in which talents were at each moment threatened with a dungeon, in which one busied one's self only with the means of escaping, in which one aspired to flight as to a deliverance: when liberty has disappeared there remains a country, but no more mother-land.

When writing to her friend that she did not wish to see her, from apprehension of the evil which she might bring upon her, Madame de Staël did not say all: she was secretly married to M. de Rocca[392], whence resulted a complication of difficulties by which the imperial police profited. Madame Récamier, from whom Madame de Staël thought it right to conceal her new cares, was astonished, with good reason, at the stubbornness which she displayed in forbidding her the entry of her place at Coppet: though wounded by the resistance of Madame de Staël, for whom she had already sacrificed herself, she persisted in her resolve to join her.

All the letters which ought to have restrained Madame[Pg 178] Récamier only served to confirm her in her intention; she started and, at Dijon, received this fatal note:

"I bid you adieu, dear angel of my life, with all the tenderness of my soul. I recommend Auguste[393] to you: let him see you and then let him see me again. You are a celestial creature. If I had lived in your company, I should have been too happy: fate carries me away. Adieu[394]."

Madame de Staël was to meet Juliet again only to die. Her note struck the traveller with a thunder-bolt: to fly suddenly, to depart before pressing in her arms her who was hastening to fling herself into her adversity, was not that a cruel resolution on Madame de Staël's part? It appeared to Madame Récamier that friendship might have been less "carried away by fate."

Madame de Staël went in search of England by way of Germany and Sweden: the power of Napoleon was a second sea separating Albion from Europe, even as the Ocean separates her from the world.

Auguste, Madame de Staël's son, had lost his brother killed by a sword-thrust in a duel[395]; he married and had a son: this son, a few months old, followed him into the tomb. With Auguste de Staël the male posterity of an illustrious woman died out, for it does not revive in the honourable, but unknown name of Rocca.

*

Madame Récamier, left alone and full of regret, first sought a refuge in her native town of Lyons[396]: there she met Madame de Chevreuse[397], another exile. Madame de Chevreuse had been forced by the Emperor and, afterwards, by her own family to enter the new society. You would scarce find an[Pg 179] historic name which did not consent to lose its honour rather than a single forest. Once engaged at the Tuileries, Madame de Chevreuse thought she would be able to hold sway in a Court newly-issued from the camps: that Court, it is true, sought to acquaint itself with the airs of olden times, in the hope of covering its recent origin; but the plebeian manner was still too rough to receive lessons from aristocratic impertinence. In a revolution which endures and which has taken its last step, as for instance in Rome, the Patricians, a century after the fall of the Republic, could resign themselves to being no more than the Senate of the Emperors; the past had nought wherewith to reproach the Emperors of the present, since that past was finished; every existence was branded with a like stigma. But in France the nobles who converted themselves into chamberlains were in too great a hurry; the new-born Empire disappeared before them, and they found themselves face to face with the old Monarchy raised to life again.

Madame de Chevreuse, attacked by a disease of the chest, begged and was refused the favour of ending her days in Paris; we do not expire when and where we please: Napoleon, who made so many dead, would never have done with them if he had left them the choice of their tomb.

Madame Récamier succeeded in forgetting her own sorrows only by interesting herself in those of others; through the charitable connivance of a sister of Mercy, she secretly visited the Spanish prisoners in Lyons. One of them, brave and handsome, a Christian like the Cid, was passing away to God: seated on his straw, he played the guitar; his sword had betrayed his hand. So soon as he caught sight of his benefactress, he sang her ballads of his country, having no other means to thank her. His enfeebled voice and the confused sounds of the instrument were lost in the silence of the prison. The soldier's comrades, half wrapped in their torn cloaks, their black locks hanging over their bronzed and emaciated faces, raised eyes, proud of their Castilian blood, moist with gratitude, on the exile who recalled to them a mother, a sister, a sweetheart, and who bore the yoke of the same tyranny.

The Spaniard died. He could say with Zarviska, the young and valorous Polish poet:

[Pg 180]

"An unknown hand shall close my eyes; the tolling of a foreign bell shall announce my death, and voices which are not those of my country shall pray for me."

Mathieu de Montmorency came to Lyons to visit Madame Récamier. She then knew M. Camille Jordan and M. Ballanche, both worthy to swell the train of friendships attached to her noble life.

*

Madame Récamier was too proud to solicit her recall. Fouché had long and to no purpose urged her to adorn the Court of the Emperor: the details of these palace negociations can be read in the writings of the time. Madame Récamier retired to Italy[398]; M. de Montmorency accompanied her as far as Chambéry. She crossed the rest of the Alps with no other travelling-companion than a little niece of seven, to-day Madame Lenormant[399].

Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the palace of Francis I.

Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a different point in Europe.

Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in deserted Rome.

Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees, one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and a pleasant voice, the barcarolle,[Pg 181] O pescator dell'onda; Madame Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that simple and gentle Canova!

More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was deserted like the Coliseum.

I have read the eloquent letters which the most illustrious woman of our past days wrote to her friend; read the same feelings of tenderness, expressed with the most charming artlessness, in the language of Petrarch[402], by the first sculptor of modern times. I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of trying to translate them:

"Domenico, mattina.

"Dio eterno? siamo vivi, o siamo morti? lo voglio esser vivo, almeno per scriveri; si, lo vuole il mio cuore, anzi mi comanda assolutamente di farlo. Oh! se'l conoscete bene a fondo questo povero cuor mio, quanto, quanto mai ve ne persuadereste! Ma per disgrazia mia pare ch'egli sia alquanto all'oscuro per voi. Pazienza! Ditemi almeno come state di saluto, se di più non volete dire; benchè mi abbiate promesso di scrivere a di scrivermi dolce. Io davvero che avrei voluto vedervi personalmente in questi giorni, ma non vi poteva essere alcuna via di poterlo fare; anzi su di questo vi dirò a voce delle cose curiose. Convenie dunque che mi contenti, a forza, di vidervi in spirito. In questo modo sempre mi siete presente, sempre vi veggo, sempre vi parlo, vi dico tante, tante cose, ma tutte, tutte al vento, tutte! Pazienza anche di questo! gran fatto che la cosa abbia d'andare sempre in questo modo! voglio intanto però che[Pg 182] siate certa, certissima che l'anima mia vi ama molto più assai di quello che mai possiate credere ed imaginare."

*

Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman, accused of holding intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man. She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.

Nevertheless, Madame Récamier, although persuaded of the uselessness of her application, did not hesitate. She sent for her carriage and stepped into it, without the hope which she left to the condemned man. She drove through the Campagna infested with brigands, reached Rome, and failed to find the Director of Police. She waited two hours at the Palazzo Fiano, counting the minutes of a life of which the last was approaching. When M. de Norvins arrived, she explained to him the object of her journey. He replied that the sentence was pronounced and that he had not the necessary power to suspend it.

Madame Récamier set out again heart-broken; the prisoner had ceased to live when she approached Albano. The inhabitants were awaiting the Frenchwoman on the road; so soon as they discovered her, they hastened up to her. The priest who had attended the culprit brought her his last vows: he thanked la dama, whom he had not ceased to seek with his eyes while going to the place of execution; he begged her to pray for him: for a Christian has not done with everything and is not beyond fear when he is no more. Madame Récamier was led by the ecclesiastic to the church, where the crowd of handsome Albano peasant-women followed her. The fisherman had been shot at the hour at which the sun rose upon the bark, now unguided, which he had been accustomed to steer over the seas and upon the shores which he had been accustomed to survey.

To become disgusted with conquerors, one must have known all the ills they cause, one must have been a witness to the[Pg 183] indifference with which men sacrifice to them the most inoffensive creatures in a corner of the globe in which they have never set foot. Of what consequence to Bonaparte's successes were the days of a poor net-maker in the Papal States? Undoubtedly, he never knew that that paltry fisherman existed; amid the clatter of his struggle with kings, he did not so much as know the name of his plebeian victim.

The world perceives in Napoleon naught save victories; the tears with which the triumphal columns are cemented do not fall from his eyes. And I, I think that, out of those despised sufferings, those calamities of the small and the lowly, are formed, in the councils of Providence, the secret causes which hurl the ruler from his pinnacle. When instances of injustice accumulate in such a way as to bear down the weight of fortune, the scale descends. There is blood which is dumb and blood which cries out: the blood of the battle-field is drunk in silence by the earth; peaceable blood when shed spurts with a moan towards Heaven; God receives it and avenges it. Bonaparte slew the Albano fisherman; a few months later[403], he was banished among the fishermen of Elba, and he died among those of St. Helena.

Did my vague memory, scarce outlined in Madame Récamier's thoughts, appear to her amid the plains of the Tiber and the Anio? I had already passed through those melancholy wastes; I had left a tomb there honoured by Juliet's friends. When M. de Montmorin's daughter[404] died, in 1803, Madame de Staël and M. Necker wrote me letters of regret; you have seen those letters. Thus I received at Rome, almost before I knew Madame Récamier, letters dated from Coppet; it was the first sign of an affinity of destiny. Madame Récamier has also told me that my Letter of 1804 to M. de Fontanes served her as a guide in 1814, and that she often read and re-read the following passage:

"Whosoever has no tie left in life should come to live in Rome. There he will find for company a land which will feed his reflections and occupy his heart, and walks which will always say something to him. The stone which he treads under foot will speak to him; the dust which the wind[Pg 184] raises beneath his steps will contain some human greatness. If he is unhappy, if he has mingled the ashes of those whom he loved with so many illustrious ashes, with what charm will he not pass from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the last resting-place of a virtuous friend!... If he is a Christian, ah! how can he then tear himself away from that land which has become his country, from that land which has witnessed the birth of a second empire, holier in its cradle, greater in its might than that which preceded it, from that land where the friends whom we have lost, sleeping with the martyrs in the catacombs, under the eye of the Father of the Faithful, appear as though they ought to be the first to awake in their dust and seem to be nearer to the skies?"

But, in 1814, I was only a vulgar cicerone to Madame Récamier, the common property of all travellers; more fortunate in 1823, I had ceased to be a stranger to her and we were able to talk together of the Roman ruins.

*

In Naples, where Madame Récamier went in the autumn[405], the occupations of solitude ceased. Scarce had she alighted at her inn, when King Joachim's ministers came hastening up. Murat, forgetting the hand which had changed his whip[406] into a sceptre, was ready to join the Coalition. Bonaparte had planted his sword in the middle of Europe, as the Gauls planted their blade in the middle of the mallus[407]; around Napoleon's sword were drawn up in a circle kingdoms which he distributed to his family. Caroline[408] had received that of Naples. Madame Murat was not so elegant an antique cameo as the Princess Borghese; but she had more expression and more wit than her sister. In the firmness of her character one recognised the blood of Napoleon. If the diadem had not been for her an ornament for a woman's head, it would still have been the emblem of a queen's power.

Caroline received Madame Récamier with an alacrity which was the more affectionate that the oppression of tyranny made itself felt as far as Portici. Nevertheless, the[Pg 185] city which possesses Virgil's[409] tomb and Tasso's[410] cradle, the city in which Horace[411], Livy[412], Boccaccio[413] and Sannazaro[414] lived, in which Durante[415] and Cimarosa[416] were born, had been beautified by its new master. Order had been restored; the lazzaroni no longer played at ball with human heads to amuse Admiral Nelson[417] and Lady Hamilton[418]. The excavations at Pompeii had been extended; a road wound over the Posilipo[419], into whose flanks I had penetrated, in 1803[420], to go to ask at Liternum[421] for Scipio's retreat. Those new royalties of a military dynasty had brought back life to regions in which before them the moribund languor of an old race of kings had made itself manifest. Robert Guiscard[422], William Iron-arm[423],[Pg 186] Roger[424] and Tancred[425] seemed to have returned, minus the chivalry.

Madame Récamier was in Naples in February 1814; where was I then? In my Vallée-aux-Loups, commencing the story of my life. I was concerning myself with the sports of my childhood to the sound of the foreign soldier's footsteps. The woman whose name was to close these Memoirs was strolling on the marine of Baja. Had I not a presentiment of the good which was one day to come to me from that quarter, when I was depicting the Parthenopian seduction in the Martyrs:

"Every morning, so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.

"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts, desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament like a pure spirit....

"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days.... Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their extreme[Pg 187] voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432] was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....

"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory, we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby. Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."

Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest, the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal.

The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron, had all a martyr's elegance. He[Pg 188] used to preach at dusk, in sombre oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in mezzotint, like a picture[436].

We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service, we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value; the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady:

"As a matter of fact, there are only yourselves that know how to serve."

Religion and death have passed the sponge over a few weaknesses, very pardonable after all, of the Cardinal de Rohan. A Christian priest, he consummated his sacrifice at Besançon, succouring the unhappy, feeding the poor, clothing the orphan, and wearing out in good works his life, the course of which was naturally shortened by deplorable ill-health.

Reader, if you grow impatient at these quotations, these accounts, reflect, first, that perhaps you have not read my works and, next, that I can no longer hear you; I am sleeping in the ground on which you tread; if you be angry with me, stamp on the ground, you will insult only my bones. Reflect, moreover, that my writings form an essential part of that existence whose leaves I am unfolding. Ah, why had not my pictures of Naples a background of truth! Why was not the daughter of the Rhone[437] the real woman of my imaginary delights? But no; if I was Augustine, Jerome, Eudorus, I was all these alone; my days went before the days of the friend of Corinne in Italy. How happy should I have been[Pg 189] could I have spread my whole life under her feet like a carpet of flowers! My life is rough and its unevenness hurts. May my dying hours at least reflect the tenderness and charm with which she has filled them upon her who was beloved by all and of whom none had ever to complain!

*

Murat, King of Naples, born 25 March 1767, at the Bastide, near Cahors, was sent to Toulouse for his studies. He took a dislike to letters, enlisted in the Ardennes Chasseurs, deserted, and ran away to Paris. Admitted into Louis XVI.'s Constitutional Guard, he received, after the disbanding of that guard, a cornetcy in the 12th Regiment of Mounted Chasseurs. On the death of Robespierre, he was dismissed as a Terrorist[438]; the same thing happened to Bonaparte, and both soldiers were left without resources. Murat was restored to favour on the 13 Vendémiaire, and became aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He served under him in the early Italian campaigns, took the Valtellina and added it to the Cisalpine Republic[439]; he took part in the Egyptian Expedition and distinguished himself at the Battle of Abukir[440]. Returning to France with his master, he was ordered to turn out the Council of the Five Hundred[441]. Bonaparte gave him his sister Caroline in marriage[442]. Murat commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Marengo[443]. He was Governor of Paris at the time of the death of the Duc d'Enghien and bemoaned in secret a murder which he had not the courage to condemn aloud.

Brother-in-law to Napoleon, and a marshal of the Empire[444], Murat entered Vienna in 1805[445]; he contributed to the victories of Austerlitz[446], Jena[447], Eylau[448], and Friedland[449], became Grand-duke of Berg[450], and invaded Spain in 1808.

Napoleon recalled him and gave him the Crown of Naples. Proclaimed King of the Two Sicilies on the 1st of August 1808, he pleased the Neapolitans through his magnificence, his theatrical dress, his cavalcades and his entertainments.

[Pg 190]

Summoned in his capacity as a grand vassal of the Empire to the invasion of Russia, he reappeared in all the battles and found himself charged with the command of the retreat from Smolensk to Wilna[451]. After manifesting his discontent, he left the army, following Bonaparte's example, and went to warm himself in the sun of Naples, as did his captain at the fireside of the Tuileries. Those men of triumph could never accustom themselves to reverses. Then began his connexion with Austria. He appeared once more in the camps of Germany in 1813, returned to Naples after the loss of the Battle of Leipzig[452], and resumed his Austro-British negociations. Before entering into a complete alliance, Murat wrote Napoleon a letter which I have heard read by M. de Mosbourg[453]: he told his brother-in-law in this letter that he had found the Peninsula in a very agitated condition, that the Italians were demanding their national independence and that, if this were not restored to them, it was to be feared that they should join the European Coalition and thus increase the dangers of France. He besought Napoleon to make peace, as the only means of preserving so powerful and fine an empire. He added that, if Bonaparte refused to listen to him, he, Murat, abandoned at the further end of Italy, would find himself compelled to leave his kingdom or embrace the interests of Italian liberty. This very reasonable letter was left for several months unanswered; Napoleon was, therefore, not able to reproach Murat justly with having betrayed him.

Murat, obliged to make a quick choice, signed a treaty with the Court of Vienna on the 11th of January 1814; he bound himself to furnish the Allies with a corps of thirty thousand men. As the price of his defection, he was guaranteed his Kingdom of Naples, and his right of conquest over the Papal Marches. Madame Murat revealed this important transaction to Madame Récamier. At the moment when he was about to declare himself openly, Murat, very much excited, met Madame Récamier at Caroline's, and asked her what she[Pg 191] thought of the decision which he had to take; he begged her to weigh well the interests of the people whose sovereign he had become. Madame Récamier said to him:

"You are a Frenchman and you must remain faithful to the French."

Murat's face became distorted; he rejoined:

"So I am a traitor? What can I do? It is too late!"

He threw open a window and pointed to an English fleet entering under full sail.

*

Vesuvius was in a state of eruption and throwing out flames. Two hours later, Murat was on horseback at the head of his guards; the crowd surrounded him, shouting, "Long live King Joachim!" He had forgotten all; he seemed drunk with delight. The next day, a great performance at the Teatro di San-Carlo; the King and Queen were received with frantic acclamations unknown to people on this side of the Alps. The Envoy of Francis II. was also applauded; the box of Napoleon's Minister was empty; Murat appeared troubled at this, as though he had seen the ghost of France at the back of that box.

Murat's army, set in motion on the 16th of February 1814, forced Prince Eugene to fall back upon the Adige. Napoleon, who had at first obtained unhoped for successes in Champagne, wrote to his sister Caroline some letters which were captured by the Allies and their contents communicated to the English Parliament by Lord Castlereagh. He said to her:

"Your husband is very brave on the battle-field, but he is weaker than a woman or a monk when he does not see the enemy before him. He has no moral courage. He has been afraid, and he would not risk to lose in one instant what he can hold only through me and with me."

In another letter, addressed to Murat himself, Napoleon said to his brother-in-law:

"I presume that you are not one of those who think that the lion is dead; if that was your calculation, it would be erroneous.... You have done me all the harm you could since your departure from Wilna. The title of King has turned your head; if you wish to keep it, behave yourself."

Murat did not pursue the Viceroy to the Adige; he hesitated[Pg 192] between the Allies and the French, according to the chances which Bonaparte seemed to be winning or losing.

In the fields of Brienne, where Napoleon was educated by the old Monarchy, he gave, in the latter's honour, the last and most admirable of his blood-stained tourneys[454]. Favoured by the Carbonari, Joachim at one time wished to declare himself the liberator of Italy, at another hoped to divide her between himself and Bonaparte become victorious. One morning, a courier brought to Naples the news of the entry of the Russians into Paris. Madame Murat was still in bed and Madame Récamier was talking with her, seated at her pillow; an enormous pile of letters and newspapers was laid upon the bed. Among the latter was my pamphlet, De Bonaparte and des Bourbons. The Queen exclaimed:

"Ah, here is a work by M. de Chateaubriand; we will read it together."

And she went on opening her letters.

Madame Récamier took the pamphlet and, after casting her eyes over it at random, placed it back on the bed and said to the Queen:

"Madame, you shall read it alone, I am obliged to return home."

Napoleon was relegated to Elba; the Allies, with rare cleverness, had placed him on the coast of Italy. Murat learnt that they were trying at the Congress of Vienna to despoil him of the States which he had nevertheless bought so dear; he came to a secret understanding with his brother-in-law, who had become his neighbour. One is always surprised that the Napoleons should have relations: who knows the name of Arrhidæus[455], the brother of Alexander? In the course of the year 1814, the King and Queen of Naples gave an entertainment at Pompeii; an excavation was conducted to the sound of music: the ruins which Caroline and Joachim had dug up did not apprize them of their own ruin; on the last borders of prosperity we hear but the last strains of the dream that passes away.

At the time of the Peace of Paris, Murat formed part of the Alliance, the Milanese having been handed back to[Pg 193] Austria: the Neapolitans retired within the Roman Legations. Murat, perplexed, having changed his interest, sallied forth from the Legations and marched with forty thousand men towards Upper Italy to make a diversion in favour of Napoleon[456]. At Parma, he refused the conditions which the affrighted Austrians offered him once more: to each of us comes a critical moment; ill chosen or well, it decides our future. The Baron de Frimont[457] forced back Murat's troops, took the offensive and drove them before him fighting to Macerata[458]. The Neapolitans left the ranks; their King and general returned to Naples[459], accompanied by four lancers. He went to his wife and said:

"Madame, I have not been able to die."

*

The next day, a boat took him in the direction of the island of Ischia; he joined at sea a smack carrying a few officers of his staff, and set sail with them for France.

Madame Murat, left behind alone, displayed admirable presence of mind. The Austrians were on the point of appearing: in the passing from one authority to another, an interval of anarchy might have been filled with disorders. The Regent did not precipitate her retreat; she allowed the German soldier to occupy the town and had her galleries lighted up at night. The people, seeing the lights from the outside, thinking that the Queen was still there, remained quiet. Meantime Caroline left by a secret stair-case and went on board ship. Seated on the poop, she saw gleaming on the bank the illuminated, but deserted palace from which she was departing, an image of the dazzling dream which she had had during her sleep in the realm of the fairies.

Caroline met the frigate which was bringing Ferdinand[460] back. The ship of the fugitive Queen fired a salute, the ship of the recalled King did not return it: Prosperity does not recognise her sister Adversity. Thus do illusions, faded for[Pg 194] the one, begin anew for the other; thus do the fickle destinies of humanity pass each other in the winds and on the billows: smiling or baleful, one and the same abyss bears them or engulfs them.

Murat was achieving his career elsewhere. On the 25th of May 1815, at ten o'clock at night, he landed in the Golfe Juan, where his brother-in-law had landed. Fortune made Joachim play the parody of Napoleon. The latter did not believe in the strength of misfortune, nor in the succour which it brings to great minds: he forbade the dethroned King the approach to Paris; he consigned to the lazar-house this man stricken with the plague of the conquered; he shut him up in a country-house called Plaisance, near Toulon. He would have done better to show less dread of a contagion with which he had himself been seized: who knows what a soldier like Murat might have altered in the Battle of Waterloo?

The King of Naples, in his trouble, wrote to Fouché on the 19th of June 1815:

"I shall reply to those who accuse me of commencing hostilities too soon that it was done at the Emperor's formal demand and that, for three months, he did not cease to reassure me as to his sentiments by accrediting ministers to me and writing to me that he relied on me and would never abandon me. It is only when people saw that I had lost, together with the throne, the means of continuing the powerful diversion which had lasted three months that they tried to mislead public opinion by insinuating that I acted on my own behalf and without the Emperor's knowledge."

There existed a generous and beautiful woman; when she arrived in Paris, Madame Récamier received her and would not abandon her in times of misfortune. Among the papers which she has left behind were found two letters from Murat written in the month of June 1819; they are useful to the study of history:

6 June 1815.

"I have lost the fairest existence for France's sake; I have fought for the Emperor; it is for his cause that my wife and my children are in captivity. The country is in danger, I offer my services; they put off accepting them. I know not if I am free or a prisoner. I must needs be involved in the Emperor's ruin if he falls, and they deprive me of the means[Pg 195] of serving him and serving my own cause. I ask their reasons; they reply obscurely and I am unable clearly to establish my position. At one time I cannot go to Paris, where my presence would injure the Emperor, and I must not join the army, where my presence would too much attract the attention of the soldiers. What am I to do? Wait: that is what they reply. On the other hand, I am told that I am not forgiven for having abandoned the Emperor last year, whereas letters from Paris said, when I was recently fighting for France, 'Every one here is delighted with the King.' The Emperor wrote to me, I rely on you, do you rely on me, I shall never abandon you.' King Joseph wrote to me, 'The Emperor orders me to write to you to move rapidly upon the Alps.' And when, on arriving, I display generous sentiments and offer to fight for France, I am sent into the Alps. Not a word of consolation is addressed to one who never did him any other wrong than to rely too greatly on generous sentiments which he never entertained for me.

"My friend, I come to ask you to inform me of the opinion of France and the army regarding me. A man must know how to endure all and my courage will make me rise superior to every misfortune. All is lost save honour; I have lost the throne, but I have preserved all my glory; I have been abandoned by my soldiers, who were victorious in every fight, but I have never been beaten. The desertion of twenty thousand men placed me at the mercy of my enemies; a fisher's bark saved me from captivity, and a merchant ship cast me in three days on the coasts of France."

"Near Toulon, 18 June 1815.

"I have just received your letter. I cannot describe to you the different sensations which it made me experience. I have been able for a moment to forget my misfortunes. I am occupied only with my friend, whose noble and generous soul comes to console me and show me its sorrow. Reassure yourself: all is lost, but honour remains; my glory will survive all my misfortunes, and my courage will be able to make me rise superior to all the rigours of my destiny: have no fear on that score. I have lost my throne and family unmoved; but ingratitude has revolted me. I have lost all for France, for her Emperor, by his order, and to-day he makes it a crime in me to have done so. He refuses me permission to fight and revenge myself, and I am not free to choose my own retreat: can you conceive all my unhappiness?[Pg 196] What can I do? What decision can I take? I am a Frenchman and a father: as a Frenchman, I must serve my country; as a father, I must go to share my children's lot: honour lays upon me the duty of fighting and nature tells me that I must belong to my children. Which am I to obey? Cannot I satisfy both? Shall I be allowed to listen to either? Already the Emperor refuses me armies; and will Austria grant me the means to go to join my children? Shall I ask them of her, I who have never been willing to treat with her ministers? There is my situation: give me advice. I shall await your reply, the Duc d'Otrante's and Lucien's, before taking a determination. Consult opinion well as to what it is thought right for me to do, for I am free in the choice of my retreat; they are returning to the past and making it a crime in me to have, by order, lost my throne, when my family is languishing in captivity. Advise me; listen to the voice of honour, to that of nature, and, as an impartial judge, have the courage to write to me what I am to do. I shall await your reply on the road between Marseilles and Lyons."

Putting aside the personal vanities and the illusions which issue from the throne, even from a throne on which one has been seated but for a moment, these letters show us the idea which Murat entertained of his brother-in-law.

Bonaparte lost the Empire a second time; Murat was a shelterless vagrant on the same sands which have since beheld the roamings of the Duchesse de Berry. Some smugglers consented, on the 22nd of August 1815, to put him and three others across to Corsica. A tempest greeted him: the felucca which plies between Bastia and Toulon took him on board. Scarce had he left his shore-boat, when she split. Landing at Bastia on the 25th of August, he hastened to hide himself in the village of Vescovato, at old Colonna-Ceccaldi's[461]. Two hundred officers joined him with General Franceschetti[462]. He marched on Ajaccio: Bonaparte's maternal town alone still cared for her son; of all his Empire, Napoleon owned only his cradle. The garrison of the citadel saluted Murat and wished to proclaim him King of Corsica: he refused; he thought only the sceptre of the Two Sicilies equal to his greatness.[Pg 197] His aide-de-camp Macirone[463] brought him from Paris the decision of Austria, by virtue of which he was to give up the title of King and retire at will to Bohemia or Moldavia:

"It is too late," replied Joachim; "my dear Macirone, the die is cast."

On the 28th of September, Murat sailed for Italy; seven bottoms were laden with his two hundred and fifty followers: he had scorned to have for his kingdom the narrow mother-land of the immense man; full of hope, led away by the example of a fortune higher than his own, he set out from the island whence Napoleon had issued to take possession of the world: it is not the same spots, but similar geniuses, that produce the same destinies.

A storm dispersed the flotilla; Murat was cast ashore, on the 8th of October, in the Gulf of Santa Eufemia, almost at the moment when Bonaparte was approaching the Rock of St. Helena[464].

Of his seven praams, only two were left to him, including his own. Landing with some thirty men, he tried to stir up the population of the coast; the inhabitants fired on his band. The two praams stood out to sea; Murat was betrayed. He ran to a stranded boat, tried to float it; the boat would not move. Surrounded and captured, Murat, insulted by the same mob that once used to shout itself hoarse with "Long live King Joachim!" was taken to Pizzo Castle. Upon him and his companions were seized insensate proclamations: they showed with what dreams men delude themselves to their last hour.

Unruffled in his prison, Murat said:

"I shall have only my Kingdom of Naples; my cousin Ferdinand will keep the second Sicily."

And at that moment a military commission was condemning Murat to death. When he heard his sentence, his firmness deserted him for a few instants; he shed tears and exclaimed:

[Pg 198]

"I am Joachim King of the Two Sicilies!"

He forgot that Louis XVI. had been King of France, the Duc d'Enghien grandson of the Grand Condé, and Napoleon arbiter of Europe: Death reckons as nothing what we may have been.

A priest is always a priest, say and do what we will; he comes and restores its failing strength to an intrepid heart. On the 13th of October 1815, Murat, after writing to his wife, was taken to a room in Pizzo Castle, renewing in his romantic person the brilliant or tragic adventures of the middle ages. Twelve soldiers, who perhaps had served under him, awaited him, drawn up in two lines. Murat saw them load their muskets, refused to let his eyes be bandaged, and himself, as an experienced captain, chose the post where the bullets could best hit him.

When aim had been taken at him, at the moment of the fire, he said:

"Men, spare the face; aim at my heart!"

He fell, holding in his hands the portraits of his wife and of his children: those portraits used before to adorn the hilt of his sword[465]. It was but one affair the more which the gallant man had settled with life.

The different manners of death of Napoleon and Murat preserve the characters of their lives.

Murat, so magnificent, was buried without state at Pizzo, in one of those Christian churches in whose charitable bosom all ashes are mercifully received.

*

Madame Récamier, returning to France, passed through Rome at the moment when the Pope returned[466]. In another portion of these Memoirs, you accompanied Pius VII., set at liberty at Fontainebleau, to the gates of St Peter's[467]. Joachim, still alive, was about to disappear, and Pius VII. was reappearing. Behind them, Napoleon was struck; the conqueror's hand let the King fall and raised the Pontiff.

Pius VII. was received with shouts which shook the ruins of the city of ruins. The horses were taken from his carriage and the crowd drew him to the steps of the Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw nothing, heard nothing;[Pg 199] rapt in mind, his thought was far from the earth; only his hand rose over the people from the tender habit of blessing. He entered the basilica to the sound of trumpets, to the singing of the Te Deum, to the acclamations of the Swiss of the religion of William Tell. The thuribles wafted perfumes to him which he did not inhale; he would not be carried on the sedia gestatoria under the shadow of the canopy and the palms; he walked like a shipwrecked man fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Succour, and charged by Christ with a mission which was to renew the face of the earth. He was clad in a white robe; his hair, which had remained black in spite of misfortune and years, formed a contrast with the anchorite's pallor. On arriving at the Tomb of the Apostles, he prostrated himself: he remained, without movement and as though dead, plunged in the depths of the counsels of Providence. The emotion was profound; Protestants who witnessed the scene wept scalding tears.

What a subject for meditation! An infirm, decrepit priest, strengthless, defenseless, taken from the Quirinal, carried captive to the heart of Gaul; a martyr, who awaited naught save his tomb, delivered from the hands of Napoleon, who pressed the globe, resuming the empire of an indestructible world, when the walls of a prison beyond the seas were being prepared for that formidable gaoler of the nations and the kings!

Pius VII. outlived the Emperor; he saw the master-pieces, the faithful friends which had accompanied him in his exile, brought back to the Vatican. On his return from persecution, the septuagenarian Pontiff, prostrate beneath the cupola of St. Peter's, displayed at the same time all the weakness of man and the grandeur of God.

On descending the Savoy Alps, Madame Récamier, at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, found the White Flag and the white cockade. The Corpus Christi processions, passing through the villages, seemed to have come back with the Most Christian King. In Lyons, the traveller arrived in the midst of a Restoration festival. The enthusiasm was unfeigned. At the head of the rejoicings stood Alexis de Noailles[468] and Colonel Clary, Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law. All that is told to-day of the coldness and gloom with which the[Pg 200] Legitimacy was received at the First Restoration is a shameless falsehood. Joy was general in the different sections of opinion, even among the Conventionals, even among the Imperialists, excepting the soldiers: their noble pride suffered from those reverses. Nowadays, when the weight of military government is no longer felt, when vanities are aroused, it is necessary to deny the facts, because they do not accord with the theories of the moment. It suits the purpose of a system that the nation should have received the Bourbons with abhorrence and that the Restoration should have been a time of oppression and misery. This leads to melancholy reflections on human nature. If the Bourbons had the inclination and the strength to oppress, they might have looked forward to a long retention of the throne. Bonaparte's violence and injustice, dangerous to his power though they appeared, in reality served him: men are appalled by iniquities, but manufacture a great idea out of them; they are disposed to regard as a superior being one who places himself above the laws.

Madame de Staël, who arrived in Paris before Madame Récamier, had written to her several times; only the following note reached her:

"Paris, 20 May 1814.

"I am ashamed to be in Paris without you, dear angel of my life: tell me your plans. Would you like me to go before you to Coppet, where I am going to stay for four months? After so many sufferings, my sweetest prospect is yourself, and my heart is for ever devoted to you. One word as to your departure and arrival. I await that note to know what I shall do. I am writing to you to Rome, Naples, etc."

Madame de Genlis, who had never had any relations with Madame Récamier, was eager to become better acquainted with her. I find a passage expressing a wish which, had it been realized, would have spared the reader my story:

"11 October.

"Here, madame, is the book which I had the honour to promise you. I have marked the things which I should like you to read....

"Come, madame, to tell me your story 'in these words,' as they do in the novels. Then I will afterwards ask you to write it in the form of recollections, which will be full of[Pg 201] interest, because, in your earliest youth, you were cast, with a bewitching face and a mind full of shrewdness and penetration, into the midst of those whirlpools of errors and follies; because you have seen everything; and because, having preserved, during those stormy times, your religious sentiment, a pure soul, a stainless life, an impressionable and loyal heart, possessing neither envy nor hateful passions, you will depict everything in the truest colours. You are one of the phenomena of these days, and certainly the most amiable.

"You shall show me your 'Recollections;' my old experience will offer some advice, and you will write a useful and delightful work. Do not come and answer, 'I am not capable,' etc., etc. I will permit you no commonplaces; they are unworthy of your intelligence. You can cast back your eyes over the past without remorse: this is, at all times, the fairest of our privileges; in the days in which we live, it is an inestimable one. Avail yourself of it for the instruction of the young person[469] whom you are bringing up; it will be the greatest boon you can show her.

"Adieu, madame, permit me to tell you that I love you and that I embrace you with all my heart."

*

Now that Madame Récamier has returned to Paris[470], I will go back for some time to my first guides. The Queen of Naples, uneasy about the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, wrote to Madame Récamier to find her a man who would be capable of handling her interests in Vienna. Madame Récamier applied to Benjamin Constant and asked him to draw up a memorandum. This circumstance had the most unfortunate influence upon the author of the memorandum; a stormy sentiment was the result of an interview. Under the empire of this sentiment, Benjamin Constant, already a violent Anti-Bonapartist, as is manifest in the Esprit de conquête[471], allowed opinions to overflow the course of which was soon changed by events. Thence arose a reputation for political fickleness baleful to statesmen.

Madame Récamier, while admiring Bonaparte, had remained true to her hatred against the oppressor of our liberties and the enemy of Madame de Staël. As for what concerned herself,[Pg 202] she did not give it a thought and she made light of her exile. The letters which Benjamin Constant wrote to her at this time will serve as a study, if not of the human heart, at least of the human head: there we see all that could be made of a passion by an ironical and romantic, serious and poetical intelligence. Rousseau is not more genuine, but he mingles with his imaginary loves a sincere melancholy and a real reverie.

*

Meanwhile, Bonaparte had landed at Cannes; the perturbation due to his approach was beginning to make itself felt. Benjamin Constant wrote Madame Récamier this note:

"Forgive me if I avail myself of circumstances to trouble you; but the opportunity is too favourable. My fate will be decided in four or five days surely; for, though you used to like not to think so, in order to have to show me less interest, I am certainly, with Marmont, Chateaubriand and Lainé, one of the four most compromised men in France. It is, therefore, certain that, if we do not triumph, I shall in a week be either an outlaw or a fugitive, or in a cell or shot. Grant me then, during the two or three days which will precede the battle, as much of your time and as many of your hours as you can. If I die, you will be glad to have done me this kindness and you would be sorry to have afflicted me. My feeling for you is my life; one sign of indifference hurts me more than, four days hence, my sentence of death could do. And, when I feel that danger is a means of obtaining a sign of interest from you, I derive from it nothing but joy.

"Were you pleased with my article, and have you heard what people say of it?"

Benjamin Constant was right, he was as much compromised as I: attached to Bernadotte, he had served against Napoleon; he had published his work De l'esprit de conquête, in which he handled the "tyrant" more roughly than I handled him in my pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons. He crowned his perils by talking in the newspapers.

On the 19th of March, at the moment when Bonaparte was at the gates of the Capital, he had the firmness to affix his signature to an article in the Journal des Débats ending with this phrase:

"I shall not, like a wretched turn-coat, go creeping from[Pg 203] one power to the other, covering infamy with sophisms and stammering out profane words to redeem a shameful life."

Benjamin Constant wrote to her who inspired him with these noble sentiments:

"I am glad that my article has appeared; at least none can now doubt my sincerity. Here is a note which some one wrote to me after reading it: if I were to receive a similar one from somebody else, I should be gay upon the scaffold."

Madame Récamier always reproached herself for having unintentionally exercised so great an influence over an honourable destiny. Nothing, in fact, is more distressing than to inspire those fickle characters with those energetic resolutions which they are incapable of keeping. On the 20th of March, Benjamin Constant belied his article of the 19th. After driving a little distance away from town, he returned to Paris and allowed himself to be caught by Bonaparte's seductions. Appointed a State councillor[472], he obliterated his generous pages by working at the draft of the Additional Act.

From that time forward, he bore a secret wound at his heart; he no longer with assurance broached the thought of posterity; his spoilt and saddened life contributed in no small degree to his death. God preserve us from triumphing over the miseries from which the loftiest natures are not exempt! Heaven does not give us talents without attaching infirmities to them: expiations offered to foolishness and envy. The weaknesses of a superior man are the black victims which antiquity sacrificed to the infernal gods, and still they never allow themselves to be disarmed.

*

Madame Récamier spent the Hundred Days in France, where Queen Hortense invited her to stay; the Queen of Naples, on the other hand, offered her an asylum in Italy. The Hundred Days passed. Madame de Krüdener accompanied the Allies, who arrived once more in Paris. She had fallen from novel-writing into mysticism; she wielded a great empire over the mind of the Tsar of Russia.

Madame de Krüdener lodged in a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The garden of this house extended as far as[Pg 204] the Champs-Élysées. Alexander used to arrive incognito by a gate of the garden, and politico-religious conversations would end with fervent prayers. Madame de Krüdener invited me to one of these celestial incantations: I, the man of every illusion, have a hatred of unreason, a loathing for the nebulous and a scorn for hocus-pocus; we are none of us perfect. The scene bored me; the more I tried to pray, the more I felt the dryness of my soul. I could find nothing to say to God, and the devil incited me to laugh. I had liked Madame de Krüdener better when, surrounded with flowers and still inhabiting this paltry earth, she was writing Valérie. Only, I used to consider that my old friend M. Michaud, so oddly mixed up in this idyll, had not enough of the shepherd about him, notwithstanding his name. Madame de Krüdener, become a seraph, strove to surround herself with angels; the proof is contained in this charming note from Benjamin Constant to Madame Récamier:

"Thursday.

"I am a little embarrassed in fulfilling a commission which Madame de Krüdener has just given me. She entreats you to come looking as little beautiful as you can. She says that you dazzle everybody and that, for that reason, all minds are troubled and all attention becomes impossible. You cannot lay aside your charmingness; but do not enhance it. I could add many things about your beauty on this occasion, but I have not the courage. One can be ingenious on the charm which pleases, but not on that which kills. I shall see you presently; you have told me five o'clock, but you will not come in till six, and I shall not be able to say a word to you. I shall try, however, to be amiable for this once again."

Did not the Duke of Wellington also lay claim to the honour of attracting a glance from Juliet? One of his notes, which I transcribe, is curious only because of the signature:

"Paris, 13 January.

"I confess, madame, that I do not much regret that business will prevent me from calling on you after dinner, because, every time I see you, I leave you more impressed with your charms and less disposed to give my attention to politics!!!

"I will call on you to-morrow on my return from the Abbé[Pg 205] Sicard's, in case you should be in, and in spite of the effect which those dangerous visits produce on me.

"Your most faithful servant,

"Wellington."

On his return from Waterloo, entering Madame Récamier's drawing-room, the Duke of Wellington exclaimed:

"I have beaten him soundly!"

In a French heart, his success would have made him lose the victory, had he ever been able to lay claim to it.

It was at a sad time for the glory of France that I met Madame Récamier again; it was at the time of the death of Madame de Staël. Returning to Paris after the Hundred Days, the author of Delphine had fallen ill again; I had met her at her house and at Madame la Duchesse de Duras'. Gradually, her condition growing worse, she was obliged to keep her bed. One morning, I went to her in the Rue Royale; the shutters of her windows were two-thirds closed; the bed, pushed towards the wall at the back of the room, left only a space on the left; the curtains, drawn back on metal rods, formed two columns at the head of the bed. Madame de Staël, half sitting up, was propped up by pillows. I approached and, when my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the darkness, I distinguished the patient. A burning fever fired her cheeks. Her bright glance met me in the dimness, and she said to me:

"Good morning, my dear Francis[473]. I suffer, but that does not prevent me from loving you."

She held out her hand, which I pressed and kissed. As I raised my head, I saw on the opposite side of the bed, against the wall, something which rose up white and thin: it was M. de Rocca, with an emaciated countenance, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes and a sallow complexion; he was dying. I had never seen him, and I never saw him again. He did not open his mouth; he bowed as he passed before me; the sound of his footsteps was inaudible: he went away like a shadow. Stopping for a moment at the door, "the vaporous idol twitching its fingers" turned back towards the bed to wave adieu to Madame de Staël. Those two ghosts looking at one another in silence, one erect and pale, the other seated and coloured with a blood ready[Pg 206] to flow down again and to congeal at the heart, made one shudder.

A few days afterwards, Madame de Staël changed her lodging. She invited me to dine with her, in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins: I went; she was not in the drawing-room and was unable even to come in to dinner; but she did not know that the fatal hour was so nigh. We sat down to table. I found myself sitting by Madame Récamier. It was twelve years since I had met her, and then I had seen her for but a moment. I did not look at her, she did not look at me: we did not exchange a word. When, towards the end of dinner, she timidly addressed a few words to me on Madame de Staël's illness, I turned my head a little and raised my eyes. I should fear to profane to-day through the mouth of my years a sentiment which preserves all its youth in my memory and whose charm increases as life withdraws. I separate my old days to discover behind those days celestial apparitions, to hear from the bottom of the abyss the harmonies of a happier region.

Madame de Staël died[474]. The last note which she wrote to Madame de Duras was traced in big crazy letters, like a child's. It contained an affectionate word for "Francis." The talent which expires impresses one more painfully than the individual who dies: it is a general desolation that strikes society; every one at the same moment suffers the same loss.

With Madame de Staël disappeared a considerable portion of the time in which I had lived: many of those breaches which the fall of a superior intelligence forms in a century never close up again. Her death made on me a particular impression, with which was mingled a sort of mysterious astonishment: it was at that illustrious woman's that I had first met Madame Récamier and, after long days of separation, Madame de Staël brought together again two travelling persons who had become almost strangers to one another: she left them, at a funeral banquet, her memory and the example of her immortal attachment.

I went to see Madame Récamier in the Rue Basse-du-Rempart and, afterwards, in the Rue d'Anjou. When one has rejoined his destiny, he believes himself never to have left it: life, according to the opinion of Pythagoras, is only a[Pg 207] reminiscence. Who does not, in the course of his days, recollect some little circumstances indifferent to all, except to him who recalls them? Belonging to the house in the Rue d'Anjou was a garden; in that garden, a bower of lime-trees, between whose leaves I saw a moonbeam when I waited for Madame Récamier: does it not seem to me as though that beam were mine and as though, if I went to look for it in the same place, I should find it? I scarce remember the sun which I have seen shine on many fore-heads.

*

It was at that time that I was obliged to sell the Vallée-aux-Loups, which Madame Récamier had hired, in half shares with M. de Montmorency. More and more tried by fortune, Madame Récamier soon retired to the Abbaye-aux-Bois[475]. The Duchesse d'Abrantès speaks as follows of that abode:

"The Abbaye-aux-Bois, with all its dependencies, its beautiful gardens, its extensive cloisters, in which played young girls of all ages, with careless looks and frolicsome words, was known only as a saintly abode to which a family could safely entrust its hope; even then, it was known only to the mothers who had an interest beyond its high walls. But, once Sister Marie had closed the little gate surmounted by an attic, the boundary of the saintly domain, one crossed the great court-yard which separates the convent from the street, not only as neutral, but as foreign ground.

"To-day this is no longer so: the name of the Abbaye-aux-Bois has become popular; its renown is general and familiar to all classes. The woman who goes there for the first time and says to her footmen, 'To the Abbaye-aux-Bois' is sure not to be asked by them in which direction they have to drive....

"Whence did it, in so short a time, derive so positive a renown, so wide-spread an illustriousness? Do you see two little windows, right up at the top, in the lofts, there, above the large windows of the great stair-case? That is one of the small rooms of the house. Well, nevertheless, the fame of the Abbaye-aux-Bois took birth within its confines, came[Pg 208] down from there, and became popular. And how could it but become popular, when all classes of society knew that, in that little room, dwelt a being who led a life disinherited of all joy and who, nevertheless, found words of consolation for every sorrow, magic words to alleviate every pain, succour for every misfortune?

"When, from the recesses of his prison, Coudert[476] caught a glimpse of the scaffold, whose pity was it that he invoked? 'Go to Madame Récamier,' he said to his brother[477] 'tell her that I am innocent before God... she will understand that evidence...' and Coudert was saved. Madame Récamier joined in her generous action a man gifted with both talent and kindness: M. Ballanche seconded her endeavours, and the scaffold devoured one victim the less.

"It might almost be described as a marvel offered to the study of the human mind, that little cell in which a woman of more than European reputation came to seek repose and a decent asylum. The world is generally inclined to forget those who no longer invite it to their banquets; it did not forget her who, formerly, in the midst of her joys, lent an even more willing ear to a complaint than to the accents of pleasure. Not only was the little room on the third floor of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the constant object of the errands of Madame Récamier's friends, but, as though a fairy's magic wand had relieved the steepness of the ascent, the same strangers who used to ask as a favour to be admitted to the elegant mansion on the Chaussée d'Antin continued to beg the same boon. For them it was a sight really as remarkable as any rarity in Paris to see, within a space of ten feet by twenty, all opinions united under one banner, marching in peace and almost hand in hand. The Vicomte de Chateaubriand told Benjamin Constant of the unknown marvels of America. Mathieu de Montmorency, with the urbanity personal to himself, the chivalrous politeness of all that bears his name, was as respectfully attentive to Madame Bernadotte[478],[Pg 209] who was about to reign in Sweden, as he would have been to the sister[479] of Adelaide of Savoy[480], daughter of Humbert the White-handed[481], that widow of Louis the Fat[482] who married one of his ancestors[483]. And the man of the feudal times had not a single bitter word for the man of our days of liberty.

Society at the Abbaye.

"Seated side by side on the same divan, the duchess of the Faubourg Saint-Germain became polite to the duchess of the Empire; nothing seemed to shock in that unique room. When I saw Madame Récamier again in that room, I had just returned to Paris, after a long absence. I had a service to ask of her, and went to her with confidence. I well knew, through common friends, to how great a measure of strength her courage had risen, but I myself lacked it when I saw her there, under the loft, as peaceful and calm as in the gilded drawing-rooms of the Rue du Mont-Blanc.

"'What!' said I to myself. 'Nothing but sufferings!'

"And my moist eye fixed itself upon her with an expression which she must have understood. Alas, my memories passed back over the years and recaptured the past! Ever beaten by the storm, that woman, whom fame had placed at the very top of the wreath of flowers of the age, had, for the last ten years, seen her life surrounded by sorrows, the shock of which was striking repeated blows at her heart and killing her!...

"When, guided by old memories and a constant attraction, I selected the Abbaye-aux-Bois as my refuge, the little room on the third storey was no longer inhabited by her whom I should have gone to seek there; Madame Récamier at that time occupied a more spacious apartment. It was there that I saw her again. Death had thinned the ranks of the combatants around her, and, of all those political champions, M. de Chateaubriand was almost the only one among her friends who had survived. But for him too the hour struck of hope deceived and royal ingratitude. He was wise; he bade farewell to those false pretenses of happiness,[Pg 210] and relinquished the uncertain power of the tribune to grasp one more practical.

"You have already seen that, in this drawing-room at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, there was question of other interests besides literary interests, and that those who suffer may turn towards it a look full of hope, Constantly occupied as I have, for some months, been with all that relates to the family of the Emperor, I have found a few documents which do not seem to be devoid of interest at this moment.

"The Queen of Spain[484] found herself under an absolute necessity to return to France. She wrote to Madame Récamier to beg her to interest herself in the request which she was making to be allowed to come to Paris. M. de Chateaubriand was at that time in office, and the Queen of Spain, knowing the loyalty of his character, had every confidence in the success of her appeal. Nevertheless, the thing was difficult, because there was a law which affected all that unhappy family, even in its most virtuous members. But M. de Chateaubriand had in him that feeling of a noble pity for misfortune, which later made him write those touching words:

Sur le compte des grands je ne suis pas suspect:
Leurs malheurs seulement attirent mon respect.
Je hais ce Pharaon, que l'éclat environne;
Mais s'il tombe, à l'instant j'honore sa couronne;
Il devient, à mes yeux, roi par l'adversité;
Des pleurs je reconnais l'auguste autorité:
Courtisan du malheur, etc., etc.[485]

"M. de Chateaubriand lent an ear to the interests of a person in distress; he examined his duty, which did not lay upon him the fear of dreading a weak woman, and, two days after the request was made, he wrote to Madame Récamier that Madame Joseph Bonaparte might return to[Pg 211] France, asking where she was, in order that he might send her, through M. Durand de Moreuil, then our Minister to Brussels[486], permission to come to France under the name of the Comtesse de Villeneuve. He wrote at the same time to M. de Fagel[487].

"I have related this fact with so much the more pleasure as it honours both her who asked and the minister who obliged her: the one through her noble confidence, the other through his noble humanity[488]."

Madame d'Abrantès praises my conduct far too highly: it was not worth even the trouble of remark; but, as she does not tell all there is to tell about the Abbaye-aux-Bois, I will supply what she has forgotten or omitted.

Captain Roger[489], another Coudert, had been condemned to death. Madame Récamier had joined me in her pious work of saving him. Benjamin Constant had also interceded on behalf of this companion of Caron's, and had given the condemned man's brother the following letter for Madame Récamier:

"I could not forgive myself, madame, for always importuning you, but it is not my fault if there are incessant condemnations to death. This letter will be delivered to you by the brother of the unhappy Roger, sentenced with Caron[490]. The story is very hateful and very well-known. The name alone will acquaint M. de Chateaubriand with the matter. He is fortunate enough to be at the same time the first talent in the Ministry and the only minister under whom no blood has been spilt. I say no more; I leave the rest to your heart. It is very sad to have to write to you almost exclusively on distressful matters; but you forgive me, I[Pg 212] know, and I am sure that you will add one more unfortunate to the long list of those whom you have saved.

"A thousand fond respects.

"B. Constant.

"Paris, 1 March 1823."

When Captain Roger was set at liberty, he hastened to express his gratitude to his benefactress. One evening, after dinner, I was at Madame Récamier's as usual; suddenly appeared this officer. He said to us, in a southern accent:

"But for your intercession, my head would have rolled on the scaffold."

We were stupefied, for we had forgotten our merits; he shouted, red as a turkey-cock:

"You don't remember?... You don't remember?..." In vain we made a thousand excuses for our lack of memory; he went off, striking the spurs of his boots together again and again, as furious at our forgetting our good action as though he had had to reproach us with his death.

About this time, Talma asked Madame Récamier to allow him to meet me at her rooms in order to consult me on some verses in Ducis' Othello, which he was not allowed to speak as they stood. Leaving my dispatches, I hastened to keep the appointment; I spent the evening with the modern Roscius recasting the unlucky lines. He proposed an alteration to me, I proposed another to him; we vied with each other in rhyming; we withdrew to the window-recess or to a corner to turn and re-turn a hemistich. We had much difficulty in agreeing as to the sense and the rhythm. It would have been rather curious to see me, the minister of Louis XVIII., and Talma, the king of the stage, forgetting what we might be, emulating each other in enthusiasm, and sending the censorship and all the grandeurs of the world to the deuce. But, if Richelieu had his dramas performed while letting Gustavus Adolphus[491] loose on Europe, could not I, a humble secretary of State, busy myself with the tragedies of others while seeking the independence of France in Madrid?

Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès, whose coffin I have saluted in the church at Chaillot, has described only the inhabited abode of Madame Récamier; I will tell of the solitary refuge. A dark corridor separated two small rooms. I maintained that this vestibule was lit up with a gentle[Pg 213] light. The bed-room was furnished with a library, a harp, a piano, a portrait of Madame de Staël and a view of Coppet by moonlight; pots of flowers adorned the window-sills. When, quite breathless with clambering up three flights of stairs, I entered the cell at the fall of evening, I was enraptured. The outlook from the windows was over the garden of the Abbaye, in the green clumps of which the nuns moved to and fro and school-girls ran hither and thither. The top of an acacia-tree rose to the level of the eye. Sharp-pointed steeples pierced the sky, and on the horizon appeared the hills of Sèvres. The expiring sun gilded the picture and entered through the open windows. Madame Récamier sat at her piano; the Angelus tolled: the sound of the bell which seemed "to weep the dying day, pianger il giorno che si muore[492]," mingled with the last accents of the Invocation of the Night in Steibelt's[493] Romeo and Juliet. A few birds came to nestle in the raised outer blinds; I joined the silence and solitude from afar, above the noise and tumult of a great city.

God, by giving me those hours of peace, indemnified me for my hours of trouble; I foresaw the coming rest which my faith believes in and my hope invokes. Agitated as I was elsewhere with political occupations, or disgusted with the ingratitude of Courts, peacefulness of heart awaited me in the recesses of that retreat, like the coolness of the woods when one leaves a scorching plain. I recovered my calm beside a woman who spread serenity around her; and yet that serenity was not in any way too even, for it passed through deep affections. Alas, the men whom I used to meet at Madame Récamier's, Mathieu de Montmorency, Camille Jordan, Benjamin Constant, the Duc de Laval, have gone to join Hingant, Joubert, Fontanes, others who were absent from another absent company. Amid those successive friendships have risen young friends, the vernal offshoots of an old forest in which the felling is everlasting. I beg them, I beg M. Ampère, who will read this when I am gone, I ask them all to keep me in their memory: I make over to them the thread of the life the end of which Lachesis is spinning out on my distaff. My inseparable road-fellow, M. Ballanche, has found himself alone at the commencement and at the end of my[Pg 214] career; he has witnessed my friendships broken by time as I have witnessed his carried away by the Rhone: rivers always undermine their banks.

The misfortune of my friends has often weighed heavily on me, and I have never shrunk from the sacred burden: the moment of reward has arrived; a serious attachment deigns to help me to support that which the multitude of the bad days adds to their weight. As I draw near my end, it seems to me that all that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Récamier, and that she was the hidden source of my affections. My memories of diverse ages, those of my dreams as well as those of my realities, have become moulded, blended, confounded into a compound of charms and sweet sufferings of which she has become the visible embodiment She regulates my sentiments, in the same way as Heaven has set happiness, order and peace into my duties.

I have followed the fair wanderer along the path which she has trodden so lightly; soon I shall go before her to a new country. As she passes in the midst of these Memoirs, in the windings of the basilica which I hasten to complete, she may come upon the chapel which here I dedicate to her; it will perhaps please her to rest in it: I have placed her image there.

APPENDIX TO BOOK XI

(By M. EDMOND BIRÉ)

THE CONGRESS OF VERONA AND THE SPANISH WAR

The Memoirs present a voluntary and compulsory gap. Nothing is said of the twenty months (October 1822 to June 1824) during which Chateaubriand was, first, French Ambassador at the Congress of Verona and, later, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris; nothing of the Spanish War, which was nevertheless his work. Certainly he had no intention of placing in the shade the very events to which the honour of his name as a statesman is attached. He wished, on the contrary, to speak of them at his ease. Of all the various periods of his life, it is this which assumed the greatest development under his pen: a development so great that this narrative at first formed four volumes, reduced later to two, under circumstances which I will presently relate. Those two volumes in reality form an integral portion of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe. That they do not figure there is due to the fact that the author feared, by giving them a place in his Memoirs, to disturb the fine ordering of his book, in which the proportions are so well preserved, in which all the parts of the work harmonize among themselves with an art so perfect. For this reason, and also in order publicly to revenge the Restoration for the calumnies of which it was then the daily object, he decided, in 1838, to publish as a separate work all that he had written on the Congress of Verona and the Spanish War.

His manuscript, as I have just said, formed four volumes. This meant eighty thousand francs (twenty thousand francs per volume) which fell due to him, under the terms of his contract with the syndicate which possessed the right of publishing his future works. The four volumes were almost printed, when M. de Marcellus and M. de La Ferronnays, alarmed at seeing certain diplomatic documents brought to light which were destined, according to them, to remain secret, entreated Chateaubriand to sacrifice, here, there and everywhere, documents[Pg 216] which, nevertheless, possessed the liveliest interest He consented to most of the curtailments asked for, and gave his friends such liberal measure that the original four volumes became reduced to two actual volumes.

"Well," said Chateaubriand to M. de Marcellus, when the sacrifice was consummated, "the two of you cost me forty thousand francs."

"Be it so," rejoined M. de Marcellus; "rather forty thousand francs than regrets when it is too late."

And Chateaubriand replied:

"The thing is done now; I have respected your scruples and La Ferronnays'; I have struck out a great deal to please you. But neither of you has placed himself sufficiently, in thought, outside his century and public affairs. To judge of an effect of tone, we should place ourselves at a distance. It is by saying all that one distinguishes one's self from the herd of buttoned-up and over-scrupulous statesmen. I have conceived diplomacy on a new plan; I speak out. You are wrong to dread my revelations; they could only do you credit. I tell you: you will do later, La Ferronnays or you, when you think the danger lessened, and for the same reasons, what you are preventing me from doing now. As far as I am concerned, I give you my authorization beforehand[494]."

Since Chateaubriand was induced to leave out of his Memoirs the Spanish War, which was "the great political event of his life," it is fitting that I should here remind the reader, if only in a few words, that this war was an act of high and great politics and not, as the enemies of the Restoration have repeated to satiety, an act of "servitude and subjection to the Northern Cabinets."

When M. de Montmorency, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, went to the Congress of Verona, he was the bearer of positive instructions containing these very words:

"France being the sole Power which is to act with her troops, she will be the sole judge of that necessity. The plenipotentiaries must not consent that the Congress should lay down the conduct of France with regard to Spain."

Led away by the generosity and elevation of his sentiments, which sometimes assumed a tinge of mysticism, to[Pg 217] embrace a policy in which the private initiative of each nation should disappear before the decisions taken in common by a sort of directorate of the Great Powers charged to secure the universal prevalence of the interests of justice and humanity, the loyal and chivalrous Mathieu de Montmorency had been induced to demand that Russia, Austria, Prussia and France should address a final notice to Spain, after which the ambassadors were to be recalled. M. de Villèle declared himself against this collective action, in the council of ministers held at the Tuileries on the 25th of January 1822. He claimed the right of France to intervene alone. Louis XVIII. sided with his opinion, and declared that "France occupied a special position towards Spain; that for her to recall her ambassador was either too much or too little;" then he added:

"Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees, I will not allow them to be set up again; he placed my House on the Throne of Spain, I shall not allow it to fall from it; my Ambassador must not leave Madrid before the day when a hundred thousand Frenchmen are pushing forward to take his place."

To speak in this way was to separate the action of France from that of the other Powers; M. Duvergier de Hauranne does not hesitate to admit this[495]. It was to disown M. de Montmorency; he forthwith resigned his office. He had wished to make the Spanish question an European question; with Chateaubriand, his successor, it became a French question. At this the head of the British Cabinet, Mr. Canning[496], displayed a profound irritation. The hostility of England did not stop the Government of Louis XVIII.:

"Keep up a high tone with the English ministers," wrote Chateaubriand, on the 16th of January 1823, to M. de Marcellus, France's representative in London.

"Say and repeat to Mr. Canning," he wrote again in a dispatch dated 28th January, "that we are as anxious for peace as he, and that England can obtain it before the opening of the campaign, if she will hold the same language as ourselves and demand the liberty of the King. But be sure to add[Pg 218] that our decision is taken, and that nothing will make us go back."

And on the 13th of March 1823:

"Mr. Canning is angry with me for not yielding to his threats and casting France at the knees of England. He cannot go to war, he has not so much as one half a plausible reason for doing so, he feels this, and he is piqued at having gone so far. But war or no war, France will do what she must do, or I shall cease to be minister..."

And, in a postscript:

"Give parties, and answer Mr. Canning firmly."

On the 17th of April:

"England feels that this war is giving us back our influence and restoring us to our place in Europe; she must needs be irritated and ill-disposed. Mr. Canning's self-esteem is compromised: hence his violence and his ill-humour.... I recommend you henceforth to show yourself cold and reserved with Mr. Canning.... Be polite, but talk little; and let him see, by your manner, that the French Government knows its strength and defends its dignity.[497]"

The deeds were on a level with the words. Chateaubriand's policy had been able and firm: a prosperous and well-managed war crowned it. Read in what terms Benjamin Constant and General Foy, although speaking in the name of the Opposition, judged the Spanish War:

"So far from contesting what our honourable colleague has said on past events, I wish to recognise with him that the whole of that memorable expedition has been full of glory for our army, and I will add that this glory is so much the finer in that it does not consist solely of military successes. French generosity, inspiring even our private soldiers, has always worked and sometimes happily succeeded in making humanity prevail over vengeance, pity over fury, and in protecting the disarmed enemy against the auxiliary embittered by long reverses."

Thus did Benjamin Constant express himself in the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies, on the 28th of June 1824. In the same sitting, General Foy added these words:

[Pg 219]

"The swiftness of the operations in Spain and the plenitude of the military success have deceived the expectations of those who were opposed to the war and surpassed the hopes of those who wished for it."

All truly liberal minds have agreed to recognise that the Spanish War was not only politic, but legitimate and, above all, national. While strengthening the Government at home, it restored to France her liberty of action abroad. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle had freed our territory. The Congress of Verona and the campaign which followed emancipated our policy. We once more became a great nation.

M. Guizot was, in 1823, one of the opponents of the expedition; this did not prevent him, when he had himself passed through public life, from writing in his Memoirs:

"As a bold stroke of dynastic and party politics, the Spanish War succeeded fully. The sinister forebodings of its adversaries were belied and the hopes of its supporters surpassed. Put to the test together, the loyalty of the army and the powerlessness of the conspirators seeking refuge abroad were made manifest at the same time. The expedition was an easy one, although not without glory. The Duc d'Angoulême covered himself with credit. The prosperity and tranquillity of France suffered from it in no way[498]."

Lastly, Sir Robert Peel, in a conversation with M. de Marcellus, thus summed up the results of the campaign:

"Providence is on your side, you were right.... You have won a real influence on the Continent: a loyal army; flourishing finances; an heir to the Crown who has acquired as much glory by his courage as his moderation[499]."

BOOK XII[500]

My Embassy to Rome—Three kinds of materials-Diary of the road—Letters to Madame Récamier—Leo XII. and the Cardinals—The ambassadors—The old artists and the new artists—Old Roman society—Present manners of Rome—Town and country—Letter to M. Villemain—Letter to Madame Récamier—Explanation concerning the memorandum I am about to quote—Letter to M. le Comte de La Feironnays—Memorandum on Eastern Affairs—Letters to Madame Récamier—Letter to M. Thierry—Dispatch to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays—More letters to Madame Récamier—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Death of Leo XII.—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Letter to Madame Récamier.

The preceding book, which I have just written in 1839, joins this book of my Roman Embassy, written in 1828 and 1829, ten years ago. My Memoirs, as Memoirs, have gained by the story of Madame Récamier's life: other persons have been brought upon the scene; we have seen Naples under Murat, Rome under Bonaparte, the Pope set free, returning to St. Peter's; unpublished letters of Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Canova, La Harpe, Madame de Genlis, Lucien Bonaparte, Moreau, Bernadotte, Murat are preserved; the narrative of Benjamin Constant shows him in a new light. I have introduced the reader to a little "out-of-the-way canton" of the Empire, while that Empire was accomplishing its universal movement; I now find myself brought to my Roman Embassy. The distraction of a fresh subject will have been a relief from myself: all has been to the reader's advantage.

For this book of my Roman Embassy there has been no lack of materials; they are of three kinds:

The first contain the story of my innermost sentiments and of my private life, as related in the letters addressed to Madame Récamier.

The second set forth my public life: those are my dispatches.

The third are a medley of historical details concerning the popes, old Roman society, the changes that have taken place from century to century in that society, and so on.

Among these investigations are thoughts and descriptions,[Pg 221] the fruit of my rambles. All this has been written in the space of seven months, the time of the duration of my embassy, in the midst of festivities or serious occupations[501]. Nevertheless, my health was impaired. I could not lift up my eyes without feeling dizziness; to admire the sky, I was obliged to place it around me by climbing to the top of a palace or a hill. But I cured the lassitude of the body by means of mental application: the exercise of my thought renewed my physical vigour; what would kill another man gives me life.

In revising all this, I have been struck with one thing. On my arrival in the Eternal City, I feel a certain dislike and, for a moment, I believe that everything has changed; little by little, the fever of the ruins overtakes me and I end, like a thousand other travellers, by adoring that which left me cold at first. Nostalgia is the regret of one's native country; on the banks of the Tiber we also suffer from "home-sickness," but it produces an opposite effect to its customary effect: we are seized with the love of solitudes and the distaste for our own country. I had already felt this "sickness" at the time of my first visit, and I was able to say:

Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ[502].

You know how, when the Martignac Ministry was formed, the mere name of Italy had dispelled what remained of my repugnance; but I am never sure of my disposition in matters of joy: no sooner had I set out with Madame Chateaubriand than my natural melancholy joined me on the way. You shall convince yourselves of this by my diary of the road:

"Lausanne, 22 September 1828.

"I left Paris on the 14th of this month; I spent the 16th at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne: what memories! Joubert is gone; the deserted Château de Passy[503] has changed masters; I have been told, 'Be thou the cricket of the nights: Esto cicada noctium.'"

"Arona, 25 September.

"Arriving at Lausanne on the 22nd, I followed the road[Pg 222] along which disappeared two other women who wished me well and who, in the order of nature, should have survived me. One, Madame la Marquise de Custine, came to die at Bex; the other, Madame la Duchesse de Duras, was hastening, not a year ago, to the Simplon, flying before the face of death which overtook her at Nice[504]."

"Noble Clara, digne et constante amie,
Ton souvenir ne vit plus en ces lieux;
De ce tombeau l'on détourne les yeux;
Ton nom s'efface et le monde t'oublie[505]!

"The last letter which I received from Madame de Duras brings home to us the bitterness of that last drop of life which we shall all have to drain:

"'Nice, 14 November 1828.

"'I have sent you an asclepias carnata; it is a laurel creeper which grows in the open air, is not afraid of the cold, and has a red flower like the camélia, with an excellent smell; plant it under the windows of the Benedictine's Library.

"'I will tell you my news in a word: it is always the same thing; I droop on my sofa all day, that is to say, all the time that I am not driving or walking out, which I cannot do for more than half-an-hour a day. I dream of the past: my life has been so agitated, so varied, that I cannot say that I am violently bored: if I could only do some needle-work or rug-work, I should not feel unhappy. My present life is so far removed from my past life that it seems to me as though I were reading Memoirs or watching a play[506].'

"And so I have returned to Italy deprived of my friends, as I left it five and twenty years ago. But, at that first time, I was able to repair my losses; to-day, who would wish to take part in a few remaining old days? No one cares to live in a ruin.

[Pg 223]

"At the village of the Simplon itself, I saw the first smile of a happy dawn. The rocks, whose base stretched out black at my feet, gleamed with rose-colour at the mountain-top, struck by the rays of the sun. To issue from darkness, it is enough to rise towards Heaven.

"If Italy had already lost some of its brilliancy for me at the time of my journey to Verona in 1822, in this year, 1828, it appeared to me still more discoloured; I have measured the progress of time. Leaning on the balcony of the inn at Arona, I gazed at the banks of the Lago Maggiore, blazoned with the gold of the setting sun and edged with azure. Nothing was more agreeable than this landscape, which the Castle edged with its battlements. This sight afforded me neither pleasure nor sentiment. The years of spring-time wed their hopes to what they see; a young man goes a-roaming with what he loves, or with the memories of his absent happiness. If he have no bond, he seeks one; he flatters himself at each step that he will find something; thoughts of felicity haunt him: this disposition of his soul is reflected upon surrounding objects.

"However, I notice the littleness of present society less when I find myself alone. Left to the solitude in which Bonaparte has left the world, I scarcely hear the feeble generations which pass and mewl on the edge of the desert."

"Bologna, 22 September 1828.

"In Milan, in less than a quarter of an hour, I counted seventeen hunchbacks passing under the window of my inn. The German flogging has deformed young Italy.

"I saw St. Charles Borromeo[507] in his sepulchre, after touching his birthplace at Arona. He reckoned two hundred and forty-four years of death. He was not beautiful.

An earthquake.

"At Borgo San Donnino, Madame de Chateaubriand came running into my room in the middle of the night: she had seen her clothes and her straw hat fall off the chairs over which they were hung. She had concluded from this that we were in an inn haunted by ghosts or inhabited by robbers. I had noticed no shock as I lay in bed; nevertheless it was the case that an earthquake had been felt in the Apennines:[Pg 224] that which overturns cities is able to throw down a woman's clothes. I said as much to Madame de Chateaubriand; I also told her that, in Spain, in the Vega del Xenil, I had passed without accident through a village which had been turned upside down the day before by a subterranean concussion. These lofty consolations did not have the smallest success, and we hastened to leave this cave of murderers.

"The continuation of my journey has displayed to me on every hand the flight of men and the inconstancy of fortune. At Parma, I found the portrait of Napoleon's widow that daughter of the Cæsars is now the wife of Count Neipperg; that mother of the conqueror's son has presented that son with brothers[508]: she allows the debts which she piles up to be guaranteed by a little Bourbon[509] who lives at Lucca and who, if it is expedient, is to inherit the Duchy of Parma.

"Bologna appears to me less deserted than at the time of my first journey. I have been received here with the honours with which ambassadors are pestered. I have visited a fine cemetery: I never forget the dead; they are our family.

[Pg 225]

"I have never so much admired the Carraccis[510] as in the new gallery at Bologna. It seemed to me as though I were seeing Raphael's St. Cecilia for the first time, so much more divine is it here than at the Louvre, under our sooty sky."

"Ravenna, 1 October 1828.

"In the Romagna, a country which I did not know, a multitude of towns, with their houses coated with marble lime, are perched on the tops of different little mountains, like coveys of white pigeons. Each of those towns possesses a few master-pieces of modern art or a few monuments of antiquity. This canton of Italy contains the whole of Roman history: the traveller should go through it with his Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius in his hand.

Dante's tomb.

"I passed through Imola, the bishopric of Pius VII.[511], and Faenza. At Forli I went out of my road to visit Dante's tomb at Ravenna. As I approached the monument, I was seized with that thrill of admiration which a great renown gives, when the master of that renown has been unfortunate. Alfieri, who bore on his forehead il pallor della morta e la speranza, flung himself prone upon that marble and addressed to it his sonnet, O gran Padre Alighier! Standing before the tomb, I applied to myself this verse from the Purgatorio:

Frate,
Lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui[512].

"Beatrice[513] appeared to me; I saw her as she was when she inspired her poet with the longing di sospirare e di morir di pianto[514]:

My plaintive song, take now thy mournful way,
And find the dames and damosels, to whom
Thy sisters, joyful-gay,
Were wont to bear the light of sunny gladness,
And thou, distressful daughter of my sadness,
Go thou and dwell with them in cheerless gloom[515]!

[Pg 226]

"And yet the creator of a new world of poetry forgot Beatrice when she had left the earth! He only found her again, to adore her in his genius, when he was undeceived. Beatrice reproaches him with it, when she is preparing to show Paradise to her lover:

"'These looks,' she says to the powers of Paradise,

These looks sometimes upheld him; for I show'd
My youthful eyes, and led him by their light
In upright walking. Soon as I had reach'd
The threshold of my second age, and changed
My mortal for immortal; then he left me,
And gave himself to others[516].

"Dante refused to return to his country at the price of a pardon. He replied to one of his kinsmen:

"'If there is no other way of returning to Florence than that which is opened to me, I shall not return there. I can everywhere contemplate the stars and sun.'"

Dante refused the Florentines his days and Ravenna refused them his ashes, even though Michael Angelo, the resuscitated genius of the poet, was resolving to decorate the funeral monument of him who had learnt come l'uom s'eterna.[517]

"The painter of the Last Judgment, the sculptor of the Moses, the architect of the dome of St. Peter's, the engineer of the Old Bastion at Florence, the poet of the sonnets addressed to Dante joined his fellow-townsmen and supported the petition which they presented to Leo X. with these words:

"'Io Michel Agnolo, scultore, il medesimo a Vostra Santità supplico, offerendomi al divin poeta fare la sepoltura sua condecente e in loco onorevole in quest a città.'

"Michael Angelo, whose chisel was disappointed in its hope, had recourse to his pencil to raise another mausoleum to that other himself. He drew the principal subjects of the Divina Commedia on the margins of a folio copy of the works of the great poet; a vessel which bore this two-fold monument from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia suffered shipwreck.

[Pg 227]

"I returned much moved and feeling something of that commotion, mingled with a divine terror, which I experienced at Jerusalem when my cicerone proposed to take me to Lord Byron's house. Ah, what were Childe Harold and the Signora Guiccioli[518] to me in presence of Dante and Beatrice! Misfortune and the centuries are still lacking to Childe Harold; let him await the future. Byron was badly inspired in his Prophecy of Dante.

At Ravenna.

"I have found Constantinople again at San Vitale[519] and San Apollinare[520]. Honorius[521] and his hen were indifferent to me; I prefer Placidia[522] and her adventures, the memory of which came back to me in the basilica of St. John the Baptist: they form the romance of the Barbarians. Theodoric[523] remains great, even though he put Boethius[524] to death. Those Goths were a superior race; Amalasontha[525], banished to an island in the Lake of Bolsena, strove, with her minister Cassiodorus[526], to save what remained of Roman civilization.[Pg 228] The Exarchs[527] brought to Ravenna the decadence of their empire. Ravenna was Lombard under Astolf[528]; the Carlovingians restored it to Rome. It became subject to its archbishop; then it changed from a republic into a tyranny; finally, after having been Guelph or Ghibelline, after having formed part of the Venetian States, it returned to the Church[529] under Pope Julius II.[530] and lives to-day only through the name of Dante.

"This city, which Rome bore in her advanced age, had, from its birth, something of the old age of its mother. Upon the whole, I should not mind living here; I should like to go to the French Column, raised in memory of the Battle of Ravenna. There were the Cardinal de Medici[531] and Ariosto[532], Bayard[533] and Lautrec, brother to the Comtesse de Chateaubriand. There the handsome Gaston de Foix[534] was killed at the age of twenty-four.

"'Notwithstanding all the artillery fired by the Spaniards,' says the Loyal Serviteur, 'the French marched on; never since God created Heaven and earth was a crueller nor fiercer assault between French and Spaniards. They rested in front of one another to recover their breath; then, lowering their visors, began again worse than ever, crying "France!" and "Spain!"'

"Of all those warriors there remained but a few knights who then, become freed-men of glory, put on the frock.

"One saw also in some cabin a young girl who, in turning[Pg 229] her spindle, caught her dainty fingers in the hemp; she was not accustomed to that life: she was a Trivulzis. When, through her half-open door, she saw two billows join each other on the bosom of the waters, she felt her sadness increase: that woman had been beloved by a great king. She continued to go slowly, by a lonely way, from her cabin to an abandoned church and from the church to her cabin.

"The old forest through which I passed was composed of solitary pines: they resembled the masts of galleys settled in the sand. The sun was near its setting when I left Ravenna; I heard the distant sound of a bell tolling: it was summoning the faithful to prayer."

"Ancona, 3 and 4 October.

"Returning to Forli, I left it once again without having seen on its crumbling ramparts the place where the Duchess Caterina Sforza[535] declared to her enemies, who were preparing to murder her only son, that she could still be a mother. Pius VII., born at Cesena, was a monk in the admirable convent of Madonna del Monte.

"Near Savignano, I passed across the ravine of a little torrent: when I was told that I had crossed the Rubicon, it seemed to me as though a curtain was raised and that I saw the land of Cæsar's time. My own Rubicon is life: it is long since I cleared its first bank.

"At Rimini, I met neither Francesca nor the other shade, her companion, ‘ who seemed so light before the wind:'

E paion si al vento esser leggieri[536].

"Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia have brought me to Ancona over roads and bridges left by the Augustuses. In Ancona they are to-day keeping the Pope's[537] birthday; I hear the music from Trajan's[538] triumphal arch: a double sovereignty of the Eternal City."

[Pg 230]

"Loretto, 5 and 6 October.

"We have come to sleep at Loretto. The territory offers a perfectly-preserved specimen of the Roman colonia. The peasant farmers of Our Lady are in easy circumstances and seem happy; the peasant-women, handsome and gay, wear a flower in their hair. The Prelate Governor gave us his hospitality. From the top of the steeple and the summit of some of the eminences of the city one enjoys smiling vistas over the plains, Ancona and the sea. In the evening we had a storm. I took pleasure in watching the valentia muralis and the fumitory beloved by the goats bow before the wind on the old walls. I walked under the double galleries erected after Bramante's[539] designs. Those pavements will be beaten by the autumn rains, those blades of grass will shiver at the breath of the Adriatic long after I shall have passed away.

"At midnight, I had retired to a bed eight feet square, hallowed by Bonaparte; a night-light hardly illumined the darkness of my room; suddenly, a little door opened, and I saw a man enter mysteriously, bringing with him a veiled woman. I raised myself on my elbow and looked at them; he approached my bed and lost no time, bowing down to the ground, in offering me a thousand excuses for thus disturbing the rest of His Excellency the Ambassador: but he was a widower; he was a poor steward; he wished to marry his ragazza, here present: unfortunately he fell somewhat short of the dowry. He lifted up the orphan's veil: she was pale, very pretty, and kept her eyes lowered with becoming modesty. This family man looked as though he wanted to go away and leave the affianced bride with me to finish her story. In this urgent danger, I did not ask the obliging and unhappy man, as the good knight asked the mother of the young girl of Grenoble, if she was a maid; very much flurried, I took some pieces of gold off the table by my bed and gave them, to do credit to the King my master, to the zitella, 'whose eyes were not swollen by dint of weeping.' She kissed my hand with infinite gratitude. I did not utter a word, and, upon my falling back on my immense couch, as though I wanted to sleep, the vision of St. Anthony disappeared. I thanked my patron saint, St. Francis, whose feast it was; I remained[Pg 231] in the darkness, half smiling, half regretting, and rapt in a profound admiration of my virtues.

Loretto.

"It was thus, however, that I 'scattered gold,' that I was an ambassador, entertained in pomp and state by the Governor of Loretto, in the same town where Tasso was lodged in a sorry den and where, for want of a little money, he was unable to continue his journey. He payed his debt to Our Lady of Loretto by his canzone:

Ecco fra le tempeste e i fieri venti.

"Madame de Chateaubriand made amends for my transient fortune by climbing the steps of the Santa Chiesa[540] on her knees. After my victory of the night, I had a better right than the King of Saxony to deposit my wedding-coat in the Treasury of Loretto; but I shall never forgive myself, a puny child of the Muses, for having been so powerful and so happy in the spot where the singer of Jerusalem had been so weak and so miserable! Torquato, do not take me in this unusual moment of my inconstant prosperity; riches are not my habit; see me on my way to Namur, in my attic in London, in my infirmary in Paris, in order to find in me some distant resemblance to thyself!

"I have not, like Montaigne, left my portrait in silver at Our Lady of Loretto, nor that of my daughter, Leonora Montana, filia unica[541]; I have never desired to survive myself; but still, a daughter, and one who should bear the name of Leonora!"

"Spoleto.

"After leaving Loretto, passing Macerata, leaving Tolentino[542], which marks a step of Bonaparte and recalls a treaty, I climbed the last redans of the Apennines. The mountain table-land is moist and cultivated as a hop-garden. To the left were the seas of Greece, to the right those of Iberia; I could be pressed by the breath of the breezes which I had inhaled at Athens and Granada. We descended towards Umbria, winding down the curves of the leafless gorges, where live suspended in clusters of woods the descendants[Pg 232] of the mountaineers who furnished the Romans with soldiers after the Battle of Trasimenus[543].

"Foligno used to possess a Virgin by Raphael which is to-day in the Vatican. 'Vene' occupies a charming position at the source of the Clitumnus. Poussin[544] has reproduced that warm, suave site; Byron has sung it coldly[545].

"Spoleto gave birth to the present Pope[546]. According to my courier Giorgini, Leo XII. has placed the galley-slaves in that town to do honour to his birthplace. Spoleto dared to resist Hannibal[547]. It displays several works of Lippi the Elder[548] who, nurtured in the cloister, a slave in Barbary, a kind of Cervantes[549] among painters, died at over sixty years of age of the poison administered to him by the relations of Lucrezia[550], whom he was believed to have seduced."

"Civita Castellana.

"At Monte Lupo, Count Potoçki[551] buried himself in charming laurœ; but did not the thoughts of Rome follow him there? Did he not believe himself transported there amid 'choirs of young girls?' And I too, like St. Jerome[552], 'have in my time spent day and night in uttering cries, in beating my breast, until God gave me back my peace.' Plango me non esse quod fuerim.

[Pg 233]

"After passing the hermitage of Monte Lupo, we began to wind round the Somma. I had already taken that road on my first journey from Florence to Rome over Perugia, when accompanying a dying woman....

"By the nature of the light and a sort of vivacity of the landscape, I should have believed myself on one of the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains, were it not that a tall aqueduct, surmounted by a narrow bridge[553], recalled to me a Roman work to which the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto had put their hands: the Americans have not yet come to those monuments which follow upon liberty. I climbed the Somma on foot, walking beside Clitumnian oxen which dragged Her Excellency the Ambassadress to her triumph. A young goat-girl, as thin, light of foot and pretty as her kid, followed me with her little brother in that opulent country-side, asking me for carità: I gave it her in memory of Madame de Beaumont, whom these spots have forgotten.

Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day[554].

Civita Castellana.

"I saw Terni again and its cascades. A champaign planted with olive-trees brought me to Narni; then, after passing through Otricoli, we arrived and stopped at sad Civita Castellana. I should much like to go to Santa Maria di Faleri to see a city of which nothing is left but its skin, the walls; inside, it was empty: misère humaine à Dieu ramène.[555] Let us wait till my grandeurs are past, and I shall return to seek out the city of the Faliscans. Soon, from Nero's Tomb, I shall be showing my wife the cross of St. Peter's which commands the city of the Cæsars."

*

You have glanced through my diary of the road, you shall now read my letters to Madame Récamier, interspersed, as I announced, with pages of history. Alongside of these, you will find my dispatches. Here will appear distinctly the two men that exist in me.

[Pg 234]

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, 11 October 1828.

"I have crossed this beautiful country, filled with your memory; it consoled me, without being able to take from me the sadness of all the other memories that I encountered at every step. I have seen again that Adriatic Sea which I crossed more than twenty years ago, in what a disposition of soul! At Terni, I had stopped with a poor expiring woman. Finally I entered Rome. Its monuments, as I feared, appeared less perfect to me after those of Athens. My memory of the places, astonishing and cruel at once, had not allowed me to forget a single stone....

"I have seen no one yet, except the Secretary of State, Cardinal Bernetti[556]. To have somebody to talk to, I went to call on Guérin[557] yesterday, at sunset: he seemed delighted with my visit. We opened a window upon Rome and admired the horizon. It was the only thing that had remained, for me, such as I had seen it; either my eyes or the objects had changed, perhaps both[558]."

The first moments of my sojourn in Rome were employed in official visits. His Holiness received me in private audience; public audiences are not customary and cost too dear. Leo XII., a prince of tall stature and of an air at once serene and melancholy, is dressed in a plain white cassock; he maintains no pomp, and keeps to a poor room, almost unfurnished. He eats scarcely anything; he lives, with his cat, on a little polenta. He knows that he is very ill and sees himself waste away with a resignation that partakes of Christian joy: he would be quite willing, like Benedict XIV., to keep his coffin under his bed. When I come to the door of the Pope's apartments, I am taken by a priest through dark passages to the refuge or sanctuary[Pg 235] of His Holiness. He does not allow himself the time to dress, for fear of keeping me waiting; he rises, comes towards me, will never allow me to touch the ground with my knee to kiss the hem of his robe instead of his slipper, and leads me by the hand to the seat placed on the right of his own poor arm-chair. We sit down and talk.

Pope Leo XII.

On Monday I go at seven o'clock in the morning to the Secretary of State, Bernetti, a man of affairs and pleasure. He has an intimacy with the Princess Doria; he knows his century, and has accepted the cardinal's hat only in self-defense. He has refused to enter the Church, is a sub-deacon only by patent, and by giving back his hat can get married to-morrow. He believes in revolutions, and goes so far as to think that, if he lives long enough, he has a chance of seeing the fall of the temporal power of the Papacy.

The cardinals are divided into three factions:

The first consists of those who try to march with the times; among these are Benvenuti[559] and Oppizoni[560]. Benvenuti has become famous through his extirpation of brigandage and his mission to Ravenna after Cardinal Rivarola[561]; Oppizoni, Archbishop of Bologna, has conciliated the various shades of opinion in this industrial and literary town so difficult to govern.

The second faction is formed of the zelanti, who try to go backwards: one of their leaders is Cardinal Odescalchi[562].

Lastly, the third faction comprises the immovable men, old men who will not or cannot go either forwards or backwards: among these old ones is Cardinal Vidoni[563], a kind of gendarme of the Treaty of Tolentino: tall and fat, with a red face, and a skull-cap worn on one side. When you tell him that he has a chance of the Papacy, he replies, "Lo santo Spirito sarebber dunque ubriaco!" He plants trees at Ponte-Mole, where Constantine made the world Christian. I see those trees when I leave Rome by the Porta del Popolo to return by the Porta Angelica. The moment he catches sight of me at a distance, the cardinal shouts, "Ah! ah! Signor Ambasciadore di Francia!" and then flies out against the men who plant his pines. He does not follow the[Pg 236] cardinalist etiquette; he goes out accompanied by a single footman in a carriage to his fancy: people forgive him everything, content to call him Madama Vidoni[564].

My ambassadorial colleagues are Count Lützow, the Austrian Ambassador, a polished man; his wife sings well, always the same air, and is always talking of her "little children;" the learned Baron Bunsen[565], the Prussian Minister, and friend of Niebuhr[566] the historian (I am in treaty with him to have the lease of his palace on the Capitol cancelled in my favour); Prince Gagarin, the Russian Minister, exiled among the past grandeurs of Rome by reason of banished loves: if he was preferred by the beautiful Madame Narischkine[567], who for a moment inhabited my hermitage at Aulnay, there must be some charm in his bad temper; we prevail rather through our defects than our good qualities.

M. de Labrador[568], the Spanish Ambassador, a faithful man, talks little, walks about alone, thinks a great deal, or does not think at all, I cannot make out which.

Old Count Fuscaldo represents Naples as winter represents spring. He has a great cardboard placard on which he studies, through his spectacles, not the rose-fields of Pæstum, but the names of suspicious foreigners to whose passports he must not put his visa. I envy him his palace (the Farnese), an admirable unfinished structure, crowned by Michael Angelo, painted by Annibale Carracci, aided by his brother Agostino, and sheltering under its portico the sarcophagus of Cæcilia Metella, who has lost nothing by the change of mausoleum. Fuscaldo, ragged in mind and body, is said to have a mistress.

[Pg 237]

The Comte de Celles[569], Ambassador of the King of the Netherlands, was married to Mademoiselle de Valence[570], who is now dead. He has had two daughters by her, who are consequently great-grand-daughters of Madame de Genlis. M. de Celles has remained a prefect because he used to be one; his character is that medley of the gossip, the petty tyrant, the recruiting sergeant and the steward which one never loves. If you meet a man who, instead of acres, yards and feet, talks to you of hectares, metres and decimetres, you have laid your hand on a prefect.

M. de Funchal, the semi-acknowledged Ambassador of Portugal, is a little, fat man, excitable, grimacing, green as a Brazil monkey and yellow as a Lisbon orange: he sings his negress, however, this modern Camoëns. A great lover of music, he keeps a sort of Paganini[571] in his pay while awaiting the restoration of his King[572].

Here and there I have caught glimpses of little sly-boots of ministers of various little States, very much scandalized to see how cheaply I hold my embassy: their buttoned-up, solemn and silent importance walks close-legged and with short steps: it looks ready to burst with secrets which it does not know.

*

As ambassador in England in 1822[573], sought out the places and men that I had formerly known in London in 1793; as Ambassador to the Holy See in 1828, I hastened to visit the[Pg 238] palaces and ruins, to ask after the persons whom I had seen in Rome in 1803: of the palaces and ruins I have found many there; of the persons, few.

The Palazzo Lancellotti, formerly let to Cardinal Fesch, is now occupied by its real owners, Prince Lancellotti[573] and the Princess Lancellotti[574], daughter of Prince Massimo[575]. The house in which Madame de Beaumont lived, on the Piazza d'Espagna, has disappeared. As to Madame de Beaumont, she has remained in her last asylum and I have prayed with Pope Leo XII. at her tomb.

Canova has also taken leave of the world[576]. I twice visited him in his studio in 1803; he received me mallet in hand. He showed me, with the simplest and gentlest air, his enormous statue of Bonaparte and his Hercules and Lichas: he was anxious to persuade you that he was able to achieve energy of form; but even then his chisel refused to dig deep into anatomy; the nymph lingered in the flesh in spite of him, and Hebe reappeared in the wrinkles of his old men. I have met the first sculptor of my time upon my road; he has fallen from his scaffold, as Goujon[577] fell from the scaffold at the Louvre: death is always there to continue the eternal St. Bartholomew and to lay us low with its darts.

But there is one still alive, to my great delight, and that is my old Boquet, the oldest of the French painters in Rome. Twice had he tried to leave his beloved campagne; he has gone as far as Genoa; his heart has failed him, and he has returned to his adopted home. I have cockered him up at the Embassy, as well as his son, for whom he has the tenderness of a mother. I have begun our old walks over again with him; I notice his old age only by the slowness of his steps; I feel a sort of emotion when I mimic a little child and measure my strides by his. We have neither of us much longer before us to see the Tiber flow.

The great artists, at their great period, led a very different life from that which they lead now: attached to the ceilings of the Vatican, to the walls of St. Peter's, to the partitions of the Farnese, they worked at their master-pieces suspended[Pg 239] with them in mid-air. Raphael walked surrounded by his pupils, escorted by cardinals and princes, like a senator of Ancient Rome, preceded and followed by his clients. Charles V. sat thrice to Titian[578]. He picked up his brush, and yielded the right to him when walking, even as Francis I. attended Leonardo da Vinci[579] on his death-bed. Titian went in triumph to Rome; the immense Buonarotti received him there: at the age of ninety-nine, at Venice, Titian still held with a firm hand his century-old brush, the conqueror of the centuries.

The Grand-duke of Tuscany[580] secretly disinterred Michael Angelo, who had died in Rome after laying, at the age of eighty-eight, the coping-stone of the cupola of St. Peter's. Florence, with a magnificent funeral, expiated on the ashes of its great painter the neglect which it had shown to the ashes of Dante, its great poet.

Velasquez[581] twice visited Italy, and Italy twice rose to greet him. The precursor of Murillo[582] resumed the road to Spain laden with the fruits of that Ausonian Hesperia, which had fallen into his hands: he carried away a picture by each of the twelve most celebrated painters of that time.

Those famous artists spent their days in adventures and feasting; they defended towns and castles; they built churches, palaces and ramparts; they gave and received mighty sword-thrusts, seduced women, took refuge in the cloisters, were absolved by the popes and saved by the princes. In an orgy described by Benvenuto Cellini we see the names figure of Michael Angelo and of Giulio Romano[583].

To-day the scene has greatly changed; the artists in Rome live poor and in retirement. Perhaps this life contains a poetry which is as good as the first. A society of German[Pg 240] painters[584] has set itself to carry painting back to Perugino[585], in order to restore to it its Christian inspiration. Those young neophytes of St. Luke[586] maintain that Raphael, in his second manner, became a pagan and that his talent degenerated. Be it so; let us be pagans like the Raphaelite Virgins; let our talent degenerate and grow enfeebled as in the picture of the Transfiguration! This creditable error of the new sacred school is none the less an error; it would follow that the stiffness and bad drawing of the forms would be a proof of intuitive vision, whereas that expression of faith which we observe in the works of the painters who precede the Renascence comes from the fact, not that the figures are posed squarely and motionless as sphinxes but that painting believed as did its century. It is the thought, not the painting, of the century that is religious; so true is this, that the Spanish School is eminently pious in its expression, notwithstanding that it has the grace and movement of the painting subsequent to the Renascence. Whence does this come? From the fact that the Spaniards are Christians.

I go to see the artists separately at work; the pupil sculptor lives in some grotto, under the evergreen oaks of the Villa Medici, where he finishes his marble child giving a serpent to drink out of a shell. The painter inhabits a dilapidated house in some deserted spot; I find him alone, taking through his open window some view of the Roman Campagna. M. Schnetz's[587] Brigand's Wife has become the mother asking of the Madonna the cure of her son. Léopold Robert[588], returning from Naples, passed through Rome[Pg 241] recently, bringing with him the enchanted scenes of that lovely clime, which he has simply stuck on to his canvas.

Guérin has retired, like a sick dove, to the top of a pavilion of the Villa Medici. He listens, with his head under his wing, to the sound of the wind from the Tiber; when he wakes up, he makes a pen-drawing of the Death of Priam.

Horace Vernet[589] is struggling to change his manner: will he succeed? The snake which he twines round his neck, the dress which he affects, the cigar which he smokes, the masks and foils with which he surrounds himself remind one too much of the bivouac.

Who has ever heard speak of my friend M. Quecq[590], the successor of Julius III.[591] in the cabin of Michael Angelo, Vignola[592] and Taddeo Zuccaro[593]? And yet he painted the Death of Vitellius none too badly, in his nymphic grotto seized under distress. The waste garden-plots are haunted by a crafty animal which M. Quecq occupies himself in hunting: it is a fox, the great-grandson of Reynard the Fox, first of the name, and nephew of Ysengrin the Wolf.

Pinelli[594], between two fits of drunkenness, has promised me twelve scenes of dances, gambling and robbers. It is a pity that he starves the big dog which lies at his door. Thorwaldsen[595] and Camuccini[596] are the two princes of the poor artists of Rome.

[Pg 242]

Sometimes those scattered artists meet and go together, on foot, to Subiaco. On the road, they scrawl grotesque figures on the walls of the inn at Tivoli. One day, perhaps, some Michael Angelo will be recognised by the charcoal drawing which he will have made on a work of Raphael's.

I would like to have been born an artist: the solitude, the independence, the sunshine amid ruins and master-pieces would suit me. I have no wants; a piece of bread, a pitcher of the Aqua Felice would content me. My life has been wretchedly caught in the thickets on my road; how happy should I have been, had I been the free bird that sings and builds its nest in those thickets!

Nicolas Poussin bought, out of his wife's dowry, a house on the Pincian Hill, opposite another casino which had belonged to Claude Gelée, surnamed Lorraine[597]. My other fellow-countryman, Claude, also died in the lap of the Queen of the World[598]. If Poussin reproduces the Roman Campagna, even when the scene of his landscapes is set elsewhere, Claude Lorraine reproduces the skies of Rome, even when he paints ships and a sunset at sea.

Why was I not the contemporary of certain privileged creatures to whom I feel attracted in the different centuries? But I should have had to rise from the dead too often. Poussin and Claude Lorraine have trodden the Capitol; kings have come there and not been worth so much as they. De Brosses[599] there met the English Pretender[600]; I found there, in 1803, the abdicated King of Sardinia and to-day, in 1828, I see there Napoleon's brother, the King of Westphalia. Rome in her decline offers an asylum to the fallen powers; her ruins are a place of sanctuary for persecuted glory and unfortunate talents.

[Pg 243]

If I had painted Roman society, a quarter of a century ago, as I have just painted the Roman Campagna, I should be obliged to retouch my portrait; it would no longer be like. Every generation lasts thirty-three years, the life of Christ (Christ is the type of all things); every generation in our western world changes its outward aspect. Man is placed in a picture whose frame is invariable, but whose figures move. Rabelais[601] was in this city, in 1536, with the Cardinal du Bellay[602]; he performed the functions of house-steward to His Eminence; he "carved and handed."

Rabelais, changed into "Friar John of the Funnels," is not of the opinion of Montaigne, who heard scarce any bells in Rome and "fewer than in the most insignificant town in France[603];" Rabelais, on the contrary, hears many in the "Ringing Island" (Rome): "some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian Kettle[604]."

Four and forty years after Rabelais, Montaigne found the banks of the Tiber planted, and he observed that, on the 16th of March, there were roses and artichokes in Rome. The churches were bare, without statues of saints, without pictures, less ornate and less beautiful than the French churches. Montaigne was accustomed to "the cloudy vastitie and gloomy canopies of our churches[605];" he speaks several times of St. Peter's without describing it, insensible or indifferent as he appears to be to the arts. In the presence of so many master-pieces, no name offers itself to Montaigne's recollection; his memory does not speak to him of Raphael nor of Michael Angelo, not yet sixteen years dead.

For the rest, ideas on the arts, on the philosophic influence of the geniuses which have magnified or protected them, were not yet born. Time does for men what space does for monuments; we judge both one and the other correctly only at a distance and from the point of view of perspective; viewed from too near, we do not see them; from too far, we no longer see them.

[Pg 244]

The author of the Essayes looked in Rome only for Ancient Rome:

"The buildings in this bastard Rome, which the moderns were raising upon, or appending to, the glorious structures of the antique world, though they sufficed enough to excite the admiration of the present age, yet seemed to him to bear a close resemblance to those nests which the rooks and the swallows construct upon the roofs and walls of the churches in France, which the Huguenots have demolished[606]."

What sort of idea had Montaigne of Ancient Rome, if he regarded St. Peter's as a swallow's nest, hung on to the walls of the Coliseum?

The new Roman citizen by an "authenticke bull" of the year 1581 A.D.[607] had remarked that the Roman ladies wore no masks, as they did in France; they appeared in public resplendent with pearls and precious stones, but "they had the waist exceedingly loose, which gives them all the appearance of being with child." The men were dressed in black, and although they were "dukes, marquisses, counts," they "are somewhat mean-looking[608]."

It is not singular that St. Jerome remarks the gait of the Roman women, which gives them the appearance of being with child: solutis genibus fractus incessus?

Almost every day, when I go out through the Porta Angelica, I see a mean house not far from the Tiber with a smoky French sign-board representing a bear; it was there that Michael Lord of Montaigne landed on arriving at Rome, not far from the hospital which served as an asylum to that poor madman[609], "one most fitted under the ayre of true ancient poesie," whom Montaigne saw "in so piteous a plight" at Ferrara, and "rather spited than pitied him[610]."

It was a memorable event when the seventeenth century deputed its greatest Protestant poet and its most serious[Pg 245] genius to visit great Catholic Rome in 1638. Leaning against the Cross, holding the Old and New Testaments in her hands, with the guilty generations driven from Eden behind her and the redeemed generations descended from the Garden of Olives before her, she said to the heretic born of yesterday:

"What do you want of your old mother?"

Leonora[611], the Roman, bewitched Milton[612]. Has it ever been remarked that Leonora appears once again in the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville[613], at the concerts of Cardinal Mazarin[614]?

The order of dates brings the Abbé Arnauld[615] to Rome after Milton. This abbé, who had borne arms, relates an anecdote which is curious on account of the name of one of its persons, while, at the same time, it brings before us the manners of the courtesans. The "hero of the fable," the Duc de Guise[616], grandson of the Balafré, going in search of his Naples adventure, passed through Rome, in 1647: he there knew Nina Barcarola. Maison-Blanche, secretary to M. Deshayes[617], Ambassador to Constantinople, took it into his head to become the rival of the Duc de Guise. It was a bad business for him; they substituted (it was at night, in an unlighted room) a hideous old hag for Nina:

"If the laughter was great on one side," says Arnauld, "the confusion on the other side was as great, as may well be[Pg 246] imagined. The Adonis, extricating himself with difficulty from his divinity's embraces, ran quite naked out of the house, as though the devil were at his heels."

The Cardinal de Retz tells us nothing on the subject of Roman manners. I prefer "little" Coulanges[618] and his two journeys of 1656 and 1689: he celebrates those "vineyards" and "gardens" whose mere names possess a charm. When I walk to the Porta Pia, I meet almost all the persons named by Coulanges: those persons? No: their grandsons and grand-daughters!

Madame de Sévigné receives verses from Coulanges; she replies to him from the Château des Rochers in my poor Brittany, at ten leagues from Combourg:

"What a sad date after yours, my amiable cousin! It suits a solitary like myself, and that of Rome suits you, whose star is a wandering one. How gently has fortune treated you, as you say, even though it have fastened a quarrel on you!!!"

Between Coulanges' first journey to Rome, in 1656, and his second journey, in 1689, thirty-three years elapsed: I reckon only twenty-five years wasted between my first journey to Rome, in 1803, and my second journey, in 1828. If I had known Madame de Sévigné, I should have cured her of the grief of growing old.

Spon[619], Misson[620], Dumont[621], Addison[622] successively follow[Pg 247] Coulanges. Spon, with Wheler, his companion, acted as my guide over the ruins of Athens.

It is curious to read in Dumont how the master-pieces which we admire were disposed at the time of his journey in 1690: one saw at the Belvedere the statues of the Nile and the Tiber[623], the Antinous[624], the Cleopatra, the Laocoon[625] and the supposed torso of Hercules[626]. Dumont places in the gardens of the Vatican "the bronze peacocks which once adorned the tomb of Scipio Africanus."

Addison travels as a "scholar[627]," his trip is summed up in classical quotations tinged with English recollections; when passing through Paris, he presented his poems to M. Boileau[628].

Père Labat[629] follows the author of Cato: a singular man, this Parisian monk of the Order of Preaching Friars. A missionary to the Antilles, a filibuster, an able mathematician, architect and soldier, a brave gunner levelling the cannon like a grenadier, a learned critic, who had restored the Dieppois to the possession of their original discovery in Africa[630], he had a mind inclined to raillery and a character to liberty. I know of no traveller who gives clearer and more exact ideas concerning the Pontifical Government. Labat walks the streets, goes to the processions, meddles in everything and laughs at nearly everything.

The Preaching Friar relates how the Capuchins, at Cadiz, gave him sheets to his bed which had been quite new since ten years, and how he saw a St. Joseph dressed in the Spanish fashion, sword at side, hat under its arm, powdered hair, and spectacles on nose. In Rome he attends a mass:

"Never," he says, "have I seen so many mutilated musicians together, nor so numerous a symphony. Those who[Pg 248] were judges said that there was nothing so fine. I said as much, to make believe that I was a judge too; but, if I had not had the honour to form one of the train of the officiating priest, I should have left the ceremony, which lasted at least three good hours, which seemed to me quite six."

The more I come down to the time at which I write, the more do the usages of Rome begin to resemble the usages of to-day. In the time of De Brosses, the Roman women wore false hair; the custom proceeded from far back; Propertius asks his "life" why she delights in adorning her hair:

Quid juvat ornato precedere, vita, capillo?[631]

The Gallic women, our mothers, supplied the hair of the Severinas, Piscas, Faustinas, Sabinas. Velleda says to Eudorus, speaking of her hair:

"'Tis my diadem, and I have kept it for thee"[632].

A head of hair was not the greatest conquest of the Romans, but it was one of the most lasting: we often take from the tombs of women the whole of that ornament, which has resisted the scissors of the daughters of the night, and we look in vain for the comely brow which it adorned. The perfumed tresses, the object of the idolatry of the lightest of the passions, have outlived empires; death, which shatters all chains, has been unable to break that net. To-day the Italians wear their own hair, which the women of the people plait with coquettish grace.

De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more[633]! Had she lived in the days of Raphael, he would have represented her in the[Pg 249] form of one of those Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace, and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model. How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam!

De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.:

"Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder[634] is about twenty years old, the younger[635] fifteen. I have heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder is worth by far the more and is better loved in private; that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of Gaeta[636], at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up:

"'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have to go to fetch it myself one day.'"

De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany, lost his father[637]; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern[638] and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited[Pg 250] London in 1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the crowd:

"The man who is the object of all this pomp is he whom I envy least?"

The Pretender's was not a happy union; the Countess of Albany separated from him and fixed her residence in Rome: it was there that another traveller, Bonstetten[639], met her; the Bernese gentleman, in his old age, gave me to understand, at Geneva, that he had letters written in the first youth of the Countess of Albany[640].

Alfieri saw the wife of the Pretender at Florence, and fell in love with her for life:

"Twelve years afterwards," he says, "at the moment I am writing, and at an age when the illusions of the passions have ceased to operate, I feel that I become daily more attached to her, in proportion as time destroys the brilliancy of her fleeting beauty, the only charm which she owes not to herself. Whenever I reflect on her virtues, my soul is elevated, improved and tranquillized, and I dare to affirm that the feelings of her mind, which I have uniformly endeavoured to fortify and confirm, are not dissimilar to my own[641]."

I have met Madame d'Albany at Florence; age had apparently produced in her an effect contrary to that which it generally produces: time ennobles the countenance and, when it belongs to an old race, imprints some trace of that race on the brow which it has marked; the Countess of Albany was thick-set, with expressionless features and a common air. If the women in Rubens' pictures were to grow old, they would be like Madame d'Albany at the age at which I met her. I am sorry that that heart, "fortified and confirmed" by Alfieri, should have had need of another support[642]. I will here recall a passage from my Letter on Rome to M. de Fontanes:

[Pg 251]

"Do you know that I only once saw Count Alfieri in my life, and could you guess how? I saw him laid in his bier: I was told that he had hardly altered; his physiognomy appeared to me to be noble and grave; death doubtless gave it an added severity; the coffin was a little too short, and they bent the dead man's head upon his breast, which caused him to make a terrible movement."

Nothing is so sad as, at the end of our days, to read what we have written in our youth: all that was in the present is now in the past.

I saw for a moment in Rome, in 1803, the Cardinal of York, Henry IX., that last of the Stuarts[643], then seventy-nine years of age. He had had the weakness to accept a pension from George III.: the widow of Charles I.[644] had in vain begged one from Cromwell. Thus the House of Stuart took one hundred and nineteen years to die out after losing the throne which it never recovered. Three pretenders[Pg 252] have handed on to one another in exile the shadow of a crown; they had intelligence and courage: what did they lack? The hand of God.

Besides, the Stuarts consoled themselves at the sight of Rome; they were but one slight accident the more in those vast fragments, a small shattered column raised in the midst of a great burial-ground of ruins. Their House, in disappearing from the world, enjoyed yet this further comfort: it saw the fall of old Europe; the fatality clinging to the Stuarts dragged other kings with them to the dust, among whom was Louis XVI., whose grandfather had refused an asylum to the descendant of Charles I.[645], and Charles X. has died in exile at the age of the Cardinal of York, and his son and his grandson are wanderers on the face of the earth!

Lalande's[646] Journey in Italy, in 1765 and 1766, remains the best and the most exact as regards the Rome of the arts and of antiquities:

"I like to read the historians and poets," he says, "but one could not read them with more pleasure than when treading the soil which bore them, climbing the hills they describe, and watching the flow of the rivers they have sung."

That is not so bad for an astronomer who used to eat spiders.

Duclos[647], who is almost as lean and dry as Lalande, makes this shrewd observation:

"The plays of the different nations give a fairly correct image of their manners. Harlequin, the valet and the principal character in the Italian comedies, is always represented with a great desire for eating, which comes from an habitual need. Our own comedy valets are commonly drunkards, which may imply debauchery, but not penury."

[Pg 253]

The declamatory admiration of Dupaty[648] offers no compensation for the aridity of Duclos and Lalande; still it makes one feel the presence of Rome; one feels by reflex that eloquence of descriptive style is born under the breath of Rousseau, spiraculum vitæ. Dupaty approaches the new school which was soon to substitute sentimentality, obscurity and mannerism for the truthfulness, clarity and naturalness of Voltaire. Nevertheless, across his affected jargon, Dupaty observes correctly; he explains the patience of the people of Rome through the age of their successive pontiffs:

"A pope," he says, "is always to them a dying king[649]."

Dupaty sees night approach at the Villa Borghese:

"There remains but one ray of day... it is expiring on the brow of that Venus[650]."

Would the poets of our day say better? He takes leave of Tivoli:

"Adieu, thou valley!... I am a stranger; I do not inhabit your beautiful Italy; I shall never behold you more: but perhaps my children, some at least of my children, will come to visit you one day; appear but as charming in their eyes as you have to their father[651]."

"Some of the children" of the scholar and poet have visited Rome, and they could have seen the last ray of sunlight expire on the brow of the Venus Genitrix of Dupaty[652].

Scarce had Dupaty left Rome when Goethe came to take his place[653]. Did the president of the Parliament of Bordeaux ever hear speak of Goethe? And nevertheless the name of Goethe lives on this earth whence that of Dupaty has vanished. It is not that I love the mighty genius of Germany; I have little sympathy for the poet of matter: I feel Schiller, I understand Goethe. There may be great[Pg 254] beauties in the enthusiasm which Goethe experiences in Rome for Jupiter: excellent critics think so; but I prefer the God of the Cross to the God of Olympus. I look in vain for the author of Werther along the banks of the Tiber; I find him only in this phrase:

"My present life is as it were a dream of youth; we shall see if I am fated to enjoy it, or to recognise that this too is vain, as so many others have been."

When Napoleon's eagle allowed Rome to escape from its claws, she fell back into the bosom of her peaceful pastors: then Byron appeared at the crumbling walls of the Cæsars[654]; he flung his distressed imagination over so many ruins, like a mourning cloak. Rome, thou hadst a name, he gave thee another; that name will cling to thee; he called thee:

"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago[655]."

After that last storm of poetry, Byron was not long in dying[656]. I might have seen Byron at Geneva, and I did not see him; I might have seen Goethe at Weimar, and I did not see him; but I saw Madame de Staël die, who, disdaining to live beyond her youth, passed swiftly to the Capitol with Corinne: imperishable names, illustrious ashes, which have associated themselves with the name and the ashes of the Eternal City[657].

*

Thus have the changes in manners and persons proceeded from century to century in Italy; but the great transformation has been worked, above all, by our two occupations of Rome.

The "Roman Republic," established under the influence of the Directorate, ridiculous as it was with its two "consuls" and its "lictors" (scurvy facchini taken from the populace), for all that, made excellent innovations in the civil laws: it[Pg 255] was from the prefectures, invented by that "Roman Republic," that Bonaparte borrowed the institution of his own prefects.

We brought to Rome the germ of an administration which had no existence; Rome, become the chief town of the Department of the Tiber, was superlatively well ruled. Its mortgage system it owes to us. The suppression of the convents, the sale of ecclesiastical property sanctioned by Pius VII. have diminished the faith in the permanence of the consecration of religious things. The famous Index, which still makes a little noise on our side of the Alps, makes none at all in Rome: for a few bajocchi you obtain permission to read the forbidden work with a safe conscience. The Index is one of those works which remain as evidences of the old times in the midst of the new. In the Republics of Rome and Athens, were not the titles of "King," the names of the great families adhering to the Monarchy respectfully preserved? It is only the French who foolishly take offense at their tombs and their annals, who hurl down the crosses, devastate the churches, out of grudge against the clergy of the Year of Grace 1000 or 1100. There is nothing more puerile or more stupid than those reminiscent outrages; nothing which would tend more to the belief that we are incapable of anything serious whatsoever, that the true principles of liberty will for ever remain unknown to us. Far from despising the past, we ought, as all nations do, to treat it as a venerable greybeard, who sits by our fireside telling what he has seen: what harm can he do us? He instructs and amuses us with his stories, his ideas, his language, his manners, his habits of former days; but he is without strength, and his hands are weak and trembling. Can it be that we are afraid of that contemporary of our fathers, who would already be with them in the tomb, if he could die, and who has no authority, save that of their dust?

The French, passing through Rome, left their principles there: that is what always happens when the conquest is accomplished by a people more advanced in civilization than the people which undergoes that conquest, as witness the Greeks in Asia under Alexander, as witness the French in Europe under Napoleon. Bonaparte, when snatching sons from their mothers, when forcing the Italian nobility to leave its palaces and bear arms, was hastening the transformation of the national spirit.

As to the physiognomy of Roman society, on days of concerts or balls one might have thought himself in Paris. The[Pg 256] Altieris[658], the Palestrinas[659], the Zagarolos[660], the Del Dragos[661], the Lantes[662], the Lozzanos would not have felt strangers in the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: still, some of those women wear a certain frightened air which has, I believe, to do with the climate. The charming Falconieri, for instance, always stands near a door, ready to fly to the Monte Mario if you look at her: the Villa Millini[663] belongs to her; a novel placed in that abandoned lodge, under the cypress trees, in view of the sea, would have its value.

But, whatever the changes in manners and persons, from century to century, in Italy may be, we observe a habit of greatness there which we paltry barbarians cannot approach. There still remains Roman blood in Rome and the traditions of the masters of the world. When one sees foreigners crammed into small new houses at the Porta del Popolo, or lodged in palaces which they have divided into boxes and pierced with chimneys, it is as though one saw rats scratching at the feet of the monuments of Apollodorus[664] and Michael Angelo and gnawing holes into the pyramids.

To-day, the Roman nobles, ruined by the Revolution, immure themselves within their palaces, live parsimoniously and have become their own stewards. When you have the good fortune, which happens very rarely, to be received by them in the evening, you pass through vast halls, unfurnished and scarcely lighted, along which antique statues stand out white against the thick shadow, like phantoms or exhumed corpses. At the end of those halls, the ragged footman who leads the way ushers you into a sort of gynecæum: around a table are seated three or four, old or young, ill-dressed women, plying their needles at fancy-work, by the light of a lamp, and exchanging a few words with a father, a brother, a husband recumbent in the dim background on tattered arm-chairs.[Pg 257] Nevertheless, there is something, I know not what, fine, sovereign, appertaining to high breeding, in this assemblage entrenched behind its master-pieces and giving a first impression of a witches' Sabbath. The species of the cicisbei is extinct, although a few shawl-bearing and footwarmer-carrying abbés survive; here and there, a cardinal still fixes himself in a woman's house like a sofa.

Nepotism and pontifical scandals are no longer possible, just as kings can no longer keep titular and honoured mistresses. Nowadays, when politics and the tragic adventures of love have ceased to fill the lives of the great ladies of Rome, how do they spend their time in the interior of their homes? It would be interesting to get to the bottom of these new manners; if I stay in Rome, I shall make it my business to do so.

*

I visited Tivoli in 1803; at that time I said, in a narrative which was printed then:

"This spot is suited to reflection and day-dreams; I go back into my past life; I feel the burden of the present; I seek to penetrate the future; where shall I be, what shall I be doing and what shall I be twenty years hence?"

Twenty years! It seemed a century to me; I thought myself certain of inhabiting my tomb before that century had lapsed. And it is not I that have passed away, but the master of the world and his empire that have sped!

Almost all the ancient and modern travellers saw in the Roman Campagna only what they call "its horror and its nudity." Montaigne himself, who assuredly was not lacking in imagination, says:

"Far away on the left lay the Apennines; the aspect of the foreground was exceedingly unpleasant to the eye, hilly, with every here and there deep marshes... the country ...open, barren, and altogether destitute of trees, and almost equally so of houses[665]."

The Protestant Milton casts upon the Roman Campagna a look as dry and barren as his faith. Lalande and the Président De Brosses are as blind as Milton. Only in M. de[Pg 258] Bonstetten's Voyage sur la scène des six derniers livres de l'Énéide, published at Geneva in 1804, one year after my Letter to M. de Fontanes (printed in the Mercure at the end of the year 1803), do we find any true sensations of that admirable solitude, and even they are mingled with objurgations:

"What a pleasure to read Virgil under the sky of Æneas and, so to speak, in the presence of the gods of Homer!" says M. de Bonstetten. "What a profound solitude in these deserts in which we behold only the sea, ruined woods, trees, great meadows, and not one inhabitant! In a vast extent of country, I saw but a single house, and that house was near me, on the summit of a hill. I went to it, it had no door; I climbed a stair-case, I entered a sort of chamber, a bird of prey had built its nest there....

"I stood some time at the window of that abandoned house. I saw at my feet that declivity, so rich and so magnificent in Pliny's day, now uncultivated."

Since my description of the Roman Campagna, they have passed from disparagement to enthusiasm. The English and French travellers who have followed me have marked all their steps from the Storta to Rome by ecstasies. M. de Tournon[666], in his Études statistiques, enters the road of admiration which I had the happiness to open:

"The Roman Campagna," he says, "unfolds more distinctly, at each step, the serious beauty of its immense lines, its numerous plains and its fine frame of mountains. Its monotonous grandeur impresses and elevates the thought."

I have no need to mention M. Simond[667], whose journey reads like a wager, so much does he amuse himself by looking at Rome upside down. I was at Geneva when he died almost suddenly. A farmer, he had just cut his hay and gaily reaped his first grain, when he went to join his mown grass and his gathered harvest.

We have a few letters of the great landscape painters; Poussin and Claude Lorraine do not say a word about the[Pg 259] Roman Campagna. But, if their pen is silent, their brush speaks; the Agro Romano was a mysterious source of beauty, at which they drew, while hiding it by a sort of avarice of genius and as it were in fear, lest it should be profaned by the vulgar. Strange that it should be French eyes that best saw the light of Italy.

I have read again my Letter to M. de Fontanes on Rome, written five and twenty years ago, and I confess that I have found it so exact that it would be impossible for me to take away or add a word to it. A foreign company has come this winter (1829) to propose to clear the Roman Campagna: ah, gentlemen, spare us your cottages and your English gardens on the Janiculum! If ever they were to disfigure the waste lands against which the ploughshare of Cincinnatus struck, on which all the grasses bend before the breath of the centuries, I should fly Rome, never to set foot in it again. Go to drag your improved ploughs elsewhere; here the earth grows and must grow only tombs. The cardinals have closed their ears to the calculations of the commercial adventurers hastening to demolish the ruins of Tusculum, which they mistake for the castles of aristocrats: they would have made lime with the marble of the sarcophagus of Æmilius Paulus, even as they have made water-shoots with the lead of the coffins of our ancestors. The Sacred College clings to the past; besides, it has been proved, to the great confusion of the economists, that the Roman Campagna paid the owners five per cent, as pasture-land and that it would not yield more than one and a half in corn. It is not through idleness, but through practical interest, that the cultivator of the plains gives the preference to pastorizia over maggesi. The produce of an acre in the Roman territory is almost equal to the produce of the same measure in the best French departments: to convince one's self of that, one has but to read the work of Monsignore Nicolaï[668].

*

I have told you that, at first, I had a sense of weariness, at the commencement of my second journey to Rome, and that I ended by recovering under the influence of the ruins and the sun. I was still under my first impression when, on the 3rd of November 1828, I wrote to M. Villemain:

[Pg 260]

"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past, I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left, I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo my honours, overcome by the sirocco and stabbed by the tramontane. There you have all my life, save only a tomb which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left young have become old, and the ruins have become young again: what would you have one do here?

"Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled all my engagements towards my country and my friends. Once you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I have been admirably received, I have found a government full of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy; but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one will find there.

"I thank you for being so good as to speak to me of your labours. You will write a work which will be worthy of you and increase your reputation[669]. If you have any researches to make here, have the kindness to tell me of them: a rummage in the Vatican might furnish you with treasures. Alas,[Pg 261] I saw but too much of that poor M. Thierry[670]! I assure you that I am haunted by his memory: so young, so full of love for his work, and to go! And, as always happens with real merit, his mind was improving and reason, with him, taking the place of system: I still hope for a miracle. I have written on his behalf; I have not even had an answer. I have been more fortunate for you, and a letter from M. de Martignac gives me to hope at last that justice, although tardy and incomplete, will be done you. I no longer live, monsieur, except for my friends; you must permit me to include yourself in the number of those who are still left to me.

"I remain, monsieur, with as much sincerity as admiration,

"Your most devoted servant[671],

"Chateaubriand."

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, Saturday, 8 November 1832.

"M. de La Ferronnays informs me of the surrender of Varna[672], which I knew. I believe that I once told you that the whole question seemed to me to lie in the fall of that place, and that the Grand Turk would not dream of peace until the Russians had done what they did not do in their earlier wars. Our newspapers have been wretchedly Turcophile these last times. How can they ever have been able to forget the noble cause of Greece and to fall into admiration before the barbarians who spread slavery and pestilence over the country of great men and the fairest portion of Europe? That is what we[Pg 262] are, we French: a trifle of personal discontent makes us forget our principles and the most generous sentiments. The Turks, when beaten, will perhaps arouse some pity in me; the Turks victorious would fill me with horror.

"So my friend M. de La Ferronnays remains in power. I flatter myself that my determination to follow him has got rid of the competitors for his office. But, after all, I shall have to leave this; I now long only to return to my solitude and to quit the career of politics. I thirst for independence in my last years. New generations have arisen, they will find the public liberty established for which I have fought so hard: let them then lay hold of, but let them not misuse my inheritance, and let me go to die in peace near you.

"I went two days ago to walk in the grounds of the Villa Panfili: what a beautiful solitude!"

"Rome, Saturday, 15 November.

"There has been a first ball at Torlonia's[673]. I met all the English on earth there; I thought myself still Ambassador in London. The Englishwomen appear to me to be figurantes who are engaged to dance in the winter in Paris, Milan, Rome, Naples, and who return to London in the spring, when their engagements have expired. The hoppings on the ruins of the Capitol, the uniform manners which 'great' society puts on everywhere are very strange things: if even I had the resource of escape into the deserts of Rome!

"What is really deplorable here, what clashes with the nature of the place is that multitude of insipid Englishwomen and frivolous dandies who, holding each other linked by the arm, as the bats do by the wing, parade their eccentricity, their boredom and their insolence at your receptions, and make themselves at home in your house as at an inn. This vagrant and swaggering Great Britain makes for your seats at public solemnities, and boxes with you to turn you out of them: all day long it hastily swallows pictures and ruins and, in the evening, it comes to swallow cakes and ices at your parties, feeling that it confers a great honour upon you in doing so. I do not know how an ambassador can endure those unmannerly guests, nor why he does not show them his door."

[Pg 263]

I have spoken in the Congrès de Vérone of the existence of my Memorandum on Eastern Affairs. When I sent it, in 1828, to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the world was not what it is: in France, the Legitimacy existed; in Russia, Poland had not perished; Spain was still Bourbon; England had not yet the honour of protecting us. Many things, therefore, have become old in this Memorandum: to-day, my foreign policy would, in many respects, be different; twelve years have altered diplomatic relations, but the basis of the truths has remained the same. I have inserted this Memorandum in its entirety in order once more to revenge the Restoration for the absurd reproaches which continue to be obstinately addressed to it, in spite of the evidence of facts. The Restoration, so soon as it had chosen its ministers from among its friends, never ceased to occupy itself with the independence and honour of France: it protested against the Treaties of Vienna; it demanded protective frontiers, not for the vain-glory of pushing itself to the banks of the Rhine, but to ensure its safety; it laughed when they talked to it of the equilibrium of Europe, an equilibrium so unjustly broken where it was concerned: that was why it first wished to cover itself on the south, because it had pleased the others to disarm it on the north. At Navarino, it recovered a navy and the liberty of Greece; the Eastern Question did not take it unawares.

I have kept three opinions on the East from the time at which I wrote that Memorandum:

First, if Turkey in Europe is to be broken up, we must have a share in that distribution in the shape of an increase of territory on our frontiers and the ownership of some military point in the Archipelago. To compare the partition of Turkey with the partition of Poland is an absurdity.

Secondly, to regard Turkey, as it was during the reign of Francis I., as a useful power to our policy, is to do away with three centuries of history.

Thirdly, to pretend to civilize Turkey by giving her steamboats and railways, by disciplining her armies, by teaching her to work her fleets, is not to extend civilization to the East, but to introduce barbarism into the West. Ibrahims to come would be able to carry back the future to the time of Charles the Hammer or to the time of the Siege of Vienna, when Europe was saved by that heroic Poland on whom weighs the ingratitude of kings.

[Pg 264]

I must remark that I was the only one, with Benjamin Constant, to point out the improvidence of the Christian governments: a people whose social order is based upon slavery and polygamy is a people that must be sent back to the steppes of the Mongols.

In the last result, Turkey in Europe, become a vassal of Russia by virtue of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi[674], no longer exists: if the question is to be decided at once, which I doubt, it would perhaps be better that an independent empire should have its seat in Constantinople and form Greece into a whole. Is that possible? I do not know. As for Mehemet Ali[675], the relentless tax-gatherer and custom-house officer, Egypt, in so far as French interests are concerned, is better guarded by him than she would be by the English.

But here am I exerting myself to demonstrate the honour of the Restoration: why, who troubles himself about what it has done, who, above all, will trouble himself about it some years hence? It would be as well worth my while to become excited over the interests of Tyre and Ecbatana: that past world is gone, never to return. After Alexander, the Roman power commenced; after Cæsar, Christianity changed the world; after Charlemagne, the feudal night gave birth to a new society; after Napoleon, nothing: we see no empire come, nor religion, nor barbarians. Civilization has risen to its highest level, but it is a material civilization, an unfruitful civilization, which can produce nothing, since life can be given only by moral means; we can arrive at the creation of peoples only by the roads of Heaven: railways will lead us only more swiftly to the abyss.

You now have the prolegomena which seemed to me necessary for the understanding of the Memorandum which follows, and which is also to be found at the Foreign Office.

[Pg 265]

Letter to M. le Comte de La Ferronays

"Rome, 30 November 1828.

"In your private letter of the 10th of November, my noble friend, you said:

"'I send you a brief summary of our political situation, and you will be kind enough to let me, in return, have your ideas, which are always so useful to know in matters of this sort.'

"Your friendship, noble count, judges me too indulgently; I do not in the least believe that I shall be enlightening you by sending you the Memorandum annexed: I merely obey you."

Memorandum

Part I.

"At the distance at which I am placed from the theatre of events, and in my almost total ignorance of the state of negociations, I can scarcely reason fitly. Nevertheless, as I have long had a definite system touching the foreign policy of France, as I was, so to speak, the first to call for the emancipation of Greece, I readily, noble count, submit my ideas to your judgment.

"There was as yet no question of the Treaty of the 6th of July[676], when I published my Note on Greece[677]. That Note contained the germ of the treaty: I proposed to the five Great Powers of Europe to address a collective dispatch to the Divan imperatively to demand the cessation of all hostility between the Porte and the Hellenes. In case of refusal, the five Powers were to declare that they recognised the independence of the Greek Government and that they would receive the representatives of that Government.

"This Note was read by the several Cabinets. The position which I had occupied as Minister for Foreign Affairs lent[Pg 266] some importance to my opinion: what is singular is that Prince Metternich showed himself less opposed to my Note than Mr. Canning.

"The latter, with whom I had had fairly intimate relations, was an orator rather than a great politician, a man of talent rather than a statesman. He entertained a certain jealousy of success in general, and especially of that of France. When the Parliamentary Opposition either wounded or exalted his self-esteem, he flung himself into false measures, he launched out into sarcasm or boasting. It was thus that, after the Spanish War, he rejected the demand for intervention, which I had extracted with so much difficulty from the Cabinet of Madrid, for the settlement of affairs across the Atlantic: the secret reason was that he had not himself made that demand, and he refused to see that, even according to his system (always presuming that he had one), England, represented in a general congress, would in no way be bound by the acts of that congress, and would always remain free to act separately. It was thus again that Mr. Canning moved troops into Portugal, not to defend a Charter at which he was the first to laugh, but because the Opposition reproached him with the presence of our soldiers in Spain and he wanted to be able to say that the British Army was occupying Lisbon as the French Army occupied Cadiz. Lastly, it was thus that he signed the Treaty of the 6th of July against his private opinion, against the opinion of his country, which was unfavourable to the cause of the Greeks. If he agreed to that treaty, it was solely because he was afraid of seeing us take the initiative in the question with Russia and gain the glory of a generous resolution alone. That minister, who, after all, will leave a great reputation, also thought that he was hindering Russia's movements by this very treaty; nevertheless, it was clear that the text of the instrument in no way tied down the Emperor Nicholas and in no way obliged him to waive a war of his own with Turkey.

"The Treaty of the 6th of July is a crude document hurriedly drafted, devoid of all foresight and teeming with contradictory provisions.

"In my Note on Greece, I presupposed the adhesion of the five Great Powers; as Austria and Prussia have kept aloof, their neutrality leaves them free, according to events, to declare for or against either of the belligerent parties.

"There is no longer any question of going back to the past, we must take things as they are. All that the[Pg 267] governments are obliged to do is to make the most of the facts when they are accomplished. Let us therefore examine those facts.

"We are occupying the Morea[678], the towns on that peninsula have fallen into our hands. So much for what concerns ourselves.

"Varna is taken, Varna becomes an outpost at seventy hours' march from Constantinople. The Dardanelles are blockaded; the Russians will, in the course of the winter, seize Silistria[679] and some other fortresses; numbers of recruits will arrive. In the early days of spring, all will move for a decisive campaign; in Asia, General Paskevitch[680] has invaded three pashalics, he commands the sources of the Euphrates and threatens the road to Erzeroum. So much for what concerns Russia.

"Would the Emperor Nicholas have done better to undertake a winter campaign in Europe? I think so, if it were possible. By marching on Constantinople, he would have cut the Gordian knot and put an end to all diplomatic intrigue; people embrace the side of success; the way to secure allies is to be victorious.

"As for Turkey, it has been made clear to me that she would have declared war on us if Russia had failed before Varna. Will she have the good sense to-day to open up negociations with England and France, if only to rid herself of both? Austria would gladly advise her to adopt that course; but it is difficult to foresee the conduct of a race of men who have not European ideas. At the same time cunning as slaves and haughty as tyrants, with them anger is never tempered by anything save fear. Sultan Mahmud II.[681] appears, in some respects, to be a superior[Pg 268] prince to the last sultans; he has, above all, political courage; but has he personal courage? He is content to hold reviews in the suburbs of his capital, and he lets himself be entreated by the magnates not to go even so far as Adrianople. The mob of Constantinople would be better held in check by triumphs than by the presence of its master.

"Let us, however, admit that the Divan consents to a parley on the basis of the Treaty of the 6th of July. The negociation would be a very intricate one; even if one had only to fix the limits of Greece, there would be no end to it. Where shall those limits be placed on the Continent? How many islands shall be restored to liberty? Shall Samos, which has so gallantly defended its independence, be abandoned? Let us look further, suppose the conference to be established: will it paralyze the armies of the Emperor Nicholas? While the plenipotentiaries of the Turks and of the three Allied Powers are treating in the Archipelago, every step of the invading forces in Bulgaria will change the state of the question. If the Russians were repulsed, the Turks would break up the conference; if the Russians arrived at the gates of Constantinople, there would be a fine question of the independence of the Morea! The Hellenes would need neither protectors nor negociators.

"Therefore, to persuade the Divan to apply itself to the Treaty of the 6th of July is to postpone the difficulty, not to solve it. The coincidence of the emancipation of Greece and the signing of peace between the Turks and Russians is, in my opinion, necessary to extricate the Cabinets of Europe from their present embarrassment.

"What conditions will the Emperor Nicholas lay down for peace?

"In his manifesto, he declares that he waives conquests, but he speaks of indemnities for the cost of the war: that is vague and may lead to much.

"Will the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, pretending to regularize the Treaties of Akerman[682] and Jassy[683] demand (1) the complete[Pg 269] independence of the two principalities; (2) liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, not only for Russia, but the other nations; (3) the repayment of the sums expended in this last campaign?

"Innumerable difficulties present themselves against the conclusion of a peace on these bases.

"If Russia desires to give the principalities sovereigns of her choosing, Austria will look upon Moldavia and Wallachia as two Russian provinces and will oppose this political transaction.

"Will Moldavia and Wallachia fall under the sway of a prince who shall be independent of any Great Power, or of a prince installed under the protectorate of several sovereigns?

"In that case, Nicholas would prefer the hospodars appointed by Mahmud, for the principalities, continuing to be Turkish, would remain vulnerable to the Russian armies.

On Eastern affairs: part I.

"Liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, the opening of that sea to all the fleets of Europe and America would shake the power of the Porte to its foundations. To grant the right of passage of warships under Constantinople is, with reference to the geography of the Ottoman Empire, as though one were to recognise the right of foreign armies to cross France at all times along the walls of Paris.

"Lastly, where would Turkey find the money to pay the costs of the campaign? The so-called treasure of the Sultans is an antiquated fable. The provinces conquered beyond the Caucasus might, it is true, be ceded as security for the sum demanded: of the two Russian armies, one, in Europe, appears to me to be entrusted with the interests of Nicholas' honour; the other, in Asia, with his pecuniary interests. But, if Nicholas did not consider himself bound by the declarations of his manifesto, would England with an indifferent eye see the Muscovite soldier advancing along the road to India? Was she not alarmed already in 1827, when he took one more step forward in the Persian Empire?

"If the double difficulty arising from the carrying into effect of the treaty and from the pertinence of the conditions of a peace between Turkey and Russia were to render useless the efforts made to overcome so many obstacles; if a second campaign were to open in the spring, would the powers of Europe take sides in the quarrel? What part ought France to play? This is what I propose to examine in the second part of this Note."

[Pg 270]

Part II.

"Austria and England have interests in common, they are naturally allied through their foreign policy, whatever otherwise may be the different forms of their governments and the opposite maxims that regulate their home policy. Both are hostile to and jealous of Russia, both desire to check the progress of that Power; they will perhaps unite in an extreme case, but they feel that, if Russia does not allow herself to be overawed, she can defy that union, which is more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"Austria has nothing to ask from England; the latter, on her side, is of no use to Austria except to supply her with money. Now, England, crushed under the weight of her debt, has no money left to lend to anybody. Austria, if abandoned to her own resources, would not, in the present state of her finances, be able to set large armies in motion, especially as she is obliged to watch over Italy and to stand on her guard on the frontiers of Poland and Prussia. The present position of the Russian troops would permit them to enter Vienna earlier than Constantinople.

"What can the English do against Russia? Close the Baltic, cease buying hemp and timber in the markets of the North, destroy Admiral van Heiden's[684] fleet in the Mediterranean, throw a few engineers and a few soldiers into Constantinople, stock that capital with food-stuffs and munitions of war, penetrate into the Black Sea, blockade the ports of the Crimea, deprive the Russian troops in the field of the assistance of their commercial and naval fleets?

"Suppose all this to be accomplished (which, to begin with, could not be done without considerable expenditure, for which there would be neither compensation nor guarantee), Nicholas would still have his huge land force. An attack on the part of Austria and England against the Cross on behalf of the Crescent would increase the popularity in Russia of what is already a national and religious war. Wars of this[Pg 271] nature are waged without money, it is they which, by force of public opinion, hurl nations one upon the other. If the popes begin to evangelize in St. Petersburg, as the ulemas are mohammedanizing in Constantinople, they will find more soldiers than they want; they would stand a greater chance of success than their adversaries in this appeal to the passions and beliefs of men. Invasions which descend from north to south are much more rapid and much more irresistible than those which climb from south to north: the propensity of the populations inclines them to flow towards beautiful climates.

Memorandum.

"Would Prussia remain an indifferent spectatress of this great struggle, if Austria and England declared for Turkey? There is no reason to think so.

"There exists, no doubt, in the Cabinet of Berlin a party which hates and fears the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; but this party, which, moreover, is beginning to grow old, finds an obstacle in the anti-Austrian party, and especially in the domestic affections.

"Family ties, generally weak among sovereigns, are very strong in the Prussian Family: King Frederic William III. fondly loves his daughter, the present Empress of Russia, and he likes to think that his grandson[685] will ascend the throne of Peter the Great[686]; Princes Frederic, William, Charles, Henry Albert are also greatly attached to their sister Alexandra; the Hereditary Prince Royal saw no objection recently to declaring in Rome that he was a 'Turk-eater.'

"By thus analyzing the interests, we perceive that France is in an admirable political position: she can become the arbitress of that great contest; she can, at her pleasure, maintain neutrality, or declare for a side, according to the time and circumstances. If she were ever obliged to go to that extremity, if her counsels were not heard, if the nobility and moderation of her conduct did not secure for her the peace which she desires for herself and for others, then, in the necessity in which she would find herself of taking up arms, all her interests would incline her to the side of Russia.

"If an alliance were formed between Austria and England against Russia, what benefit would France derive from her adhesion to that alliance?

[Pg 272]

"Would England lend ships to France?

"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if necessary, the naval forces of Russia.

"Would England furnish us with subsidies?

"England has no money; France has more than she, and the French have no need to be in the pay of the British Parliament.

"Would England assist us with soldiers and arms?

"France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers.

"Would England assure us an increase of insular or continental territory?

"Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled?

"Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England, besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her ports.

"Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human affairs succeeds.

On Eastern affairs: Part II.

"Let us admit, nevertheless, that, against all likelihood, our[Pg 273] efforts were crowned with complete success in this unnatural Triple Alliance, let us suppose that Prussia remained neutral during all this strife, as well as the Netherlands, and that, free to move our forces abroad, we were not obliged to fight within sixty leagues of Paris: well, what advantage should we derive from our crusade for the deliverance of the tomb of Mahomet? Knights of the Turks, we should return from the Levant with a fur-lined coat-of-honour; we should have the glory of having thrown away a thousand million francs and two hundred thousand men to calm the terrors of Austria, to satisfy the jealousies of England, to keep up in the fairest portion of the world the plague and barbarism attached to the Ottoman Empire. Austria would perhaps have enlarged her States on the side of Wallachia and Moldavia, and England would perhaps have obtained some commercial privileges from the Porte, privileges of little interest to us if we shared in them, as we have neither so large a number of merchant ships as the English, nor so many manufactured goods to spread in the Levant. We should be completely duped by this Triple Alliance, which might fail in its object and which, if it achieved it, would achieve it only at our expense.

"But, if England has no direct means of being of use to us, could she not at least act upon the Cabinet of Vienna and engage Austrians a compensation for the sacrifices we should make for her, to allow us to recover our old departments on the left bank of the Rhine?

"No: Austria and England will always oppose any such concession; Russia alone can make it to us, as we shall see hereafter. Austria detests and fears us, even more than she hates and dreads Russia; as a choice of evils, she would prefer to see the latter Power expand on the side of Bulgaria rather than France on the side of Bavaria.

"But would the independence of Europe be threatened if the Tsars made Constantinople the capital of their Empire?

"It is necessary to explain what is understood by the independence of Europe: do we mean to say that, all equilibrium being shattered, Russia, after making the conquest of Turkey in Europe, would seize Austria, subjugate Germany and Prussia, and end by subjecting France?

"First, any empire which expands without measure loses some of its strength; it almost always becomes divided; soon we should see two or three Russias hostile one to the other.

[Pg 274]

"Next, does the equilibrium of Europe exist for France since the last treaties?

"England has retained almost all the conquests which she has made in the colonies of three quarters of the globe during the War of the Revolution; in Europe she has gained Malta and the Ionian Islands; even her Electorate of Hanover she has inflated into a kingdom and enlarged by a few baronies.

"Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland, some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy. She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that province has not devolved upon France, and it has become a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against ourselves.

"Prussia has enlarged herself by the Duchy or Palatinate of Posen, a fragment of Saxony and the chief circles of the Rhine; her advance-post is on our own territory, at ten days' march from our capital.

"Russia has recovered Finland and settled down on the banks of the Vistula.

"And what have we gained in all these partitions? We have been despoiled of our colonies; not even our old soil has been respected: Landau detached from France, Hüningen demolished leave a breach of more than fifty leagues in our frontiers; the little State of Sardinia has not blushed to clothe herself in a few shreds stolen from the Empire of Napoleon and the Kingdom of Louis the Great.

"In this position, what interest have we to safeguard Austria and England against the victories of Russia? If the latter were to extend towards the East and alarm the Cabinet of Vienna, should we be in any danger? Have we received so much consideration that we should be so sensible to the anxieties of our enemies? England and Austria have always been and will always be France's natural adversaries; we should see them cheerfully join forces with Russia to-morrow, if it were a question of fighting us and plundering us.

"Let us not forget that, while we should be taking up arms for the so-called safety of Europe, imperilled by the supposed ambition of Nicholas, it would probably happen that Austria, less chivalrous and more rapacious than we, would listen to the proposals of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; an abrupt and sudden change of policy costs her little. With the consent of Russia, she would seize Bosnia and Servia, leaving to us the satisfaction of exerting ourselves for Mahmud.

[Pg 275]

"France is already in a state of semi-hostility with the Turks; she alone has already spent many millions and endangered twenty thousand soldiers in the cause of Greece. England would lose only a few words by betraying the principles of the Treaty of the 6th of July; France would lose honour, men and money. Our expedition would no longer be other than a real political miscarriage.

Memorandum.

"But, if we do not unite with Austria and England, will the Emperor Nicholas then go to Constantinople? Will the equilibrium of Europe then be shattered?

"Let us, to repeat once again, leave these feigned or genuine fears to England and Austria. That the former should fear to see Russia seize upon the trade of the Levant and become a naval Power matters little to us. Is it, then, so necessary that Great Britain should remain in possession of the monopoly of the seas, that we should spill French blood to preserve the sceptre of the ocean for the destroyer of our colonies, our fleets and our commerce? Is the Legitimate Dynasty to move armies in order to protect the House which coalesces with the illegitimacy and which is, perhaps, reserving for times of discord the means which it believes itself to possess to disturb France? A fine equilibrium for us is that of Europe, when all the Powers, as I have already shown, have increased their own bulk and, with one accord, diminished the weight of France! Let them return within their old boundaries, as we have done; then we shall fly to the aid of their independence, if that independence be threatened. They made no scruples to join hands with Russia, in order to dismember us and incorporate the fruit of our victories; let them then suffer us to-day to draw closer the bonds formed between us and that same Russia, in order to recover suitable boundaries and restore the real balance of Europe!

"Besides, if the Emperor Nicholas were desirous and able to go to sign a peace in Constantinople, would the destruction of the Ottoman Empire be the strict consequence of that fact? Peace has been signed under arms in Vienna, in Berlin, in Paris; almost all the capitals of Europe have been taken in these latter days: have Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain perished? Twice have the Cossacks and the Pandoors come to camp in the court-yard of the Louvre; the Kingdom of Henry IV. has been under military occupation during three years; and yet we should be quite touched to see the Cossacks in possession of the Seraglio,[Pg 276] and we should show for the honour of barbarism the susceptibility which we did not display for the honour of civilization and for our own country! Let the pride of the Porte be humbled, and then perhaps it will be obliged to recognise some of the rights of humanity which it outrages!

"I have now made evident whither I am tending and the consequence which I am preparing to deduce from all the foregoing. Here is this consequence:

"If the belligerent Powers cannot come to an arrangement during the winter, if the rest of Europe think itself bound in the spring to intervene in the quarrel, if different alliances be propounded, if France be absolutely obliged to choose between those alliances, if events force her to emerge from her neutrality, all her interests must needs determine her to unite by preference with Russia: a combination which is all the safer inasmuch as it would be easy, with the offer of certain advantages, to make Prussia enter into it.

"There is a sympathy between Russia and France; the latter has almost civilized the former in the upper classes of society; she has given her her language and her manners. Placed at the two extremities of Europe, France and Russia have no contiguous frontiers; they have no battle-field on which they can meet, they have no commercial rivalry, and the natural enemies of Russia, the English and Austrians, are also the natural enemies of France. In time of peace, let the Cabinet of the Tuileries remain allied with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and nothing can stir in Europe. In time of war, the union of the two Cabinets will dictate laws to the world.

"I have shown sufficiently that the alliance of France with England and Austria against Russia is a dupe's alliance, in which we should find only loss of blood and treasure. The Russian Alliance, on the contrary, would enable us to obtain establishments in the Archipelago and to push back our frontier to the banks of the Rhine. We can hold this language to Nicholas:

"'Your enemies are making overtures to us; we prefer peace to war, we prefer to preserve neutrality. But, however, if you cannot adjust your differences with Turkey except by arms, if you are determined to go to Constantinople, enter into an equitable partition of Turkey in Europe with the Christian Powers. Those of the Powers which are not so situated as to be able to enlarge their territory towards[Pg 277] the East will receive compensation elsewhere. As for us, we wish to have the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Cologne. Those are our just claims. It is to Russia's interest (your brother Alexander has said so) that France should be strong. If you consent to this arrangement and the other Powers refuse, we will not suffer them to intervene in your dispute with Turkey. If they attack you in spite of our remonstrances, we will fight them with you, always on the conditions which we have just expressed.'

On Eastern affairs.

"That is what we can say to Nicholas. Never will Austria, never will England give us the Rhine boundary as the price of our alliance with them: and yet it is there that France must, sooner or later, place her frontiers, both for her honour and her safety.

"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds, forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all Italy to action.

"As for hostilities with England, if they were ever to commence, we should have either to throw twenty-five thousand more men into the Morea, or promptly recall our troops and our fleet. Give up squadron formation, disperse your ships singly over all the seas, give orders that all prizes are to be sunk after the crews have been removed, multiply your letters of marque in the ports of the four quarters of the globe, and soon Great Britain, forced by the bankruptcies and outcries of her trade, will sue for the restoration of peace. Did we not see her, in 1814, capitulate before the Navy of the United States, notwithstanding that this consists to-day of only nine frigates and eleven ships?

"Considered in the two-fold respect of the general interests of society and of our own interests, the war of Russia against the Porte should give us no umbrage. On the principle of the higher civilization, the human race can only gain by the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: it is a thousand times better for the nations that the Cross should hold sway in Constantinople than the Crescent. All the elements of morality and of political society are at the root of Christianity, all the germs of social destruction are in the religion of Mahomet. They say that the present Sultan has taken steps towards civilization: is this because[Pg 278] he has tried, with the assistance of a few French renegades, of a few English and Austrian officers, to submit his irregular hordes to regular exercises? And since when has the mechanical apprenticeship of arms constituted civilization? It is an enormous mistake, it is almost a crime, to have initiated the Turks into the science of our tactics; we must baptize the soldiers whom we discipline, unless we wish purposely to educate destroyers of society.

"The want of foresight is great: Austria, which applauds herself for organizing the Ottoman Armies, would be the first to bear the penalty of her joy; if the Turks beat the Russians they would be all the more capable of measuring their strength with the Imperials their neighbours. This time, Vienna would not escape the Grand Vizier. Would the rest of Europe, which thinks it has nothing to fear from the Porte, be in greater safety? Passionate and short-sighted men want Turkey to be a regular military Power, to enter into the common right of peace and war of civilized nations, all in order to maintain some balance or other, of which the mere word, void of sense, dispenses those men from having any idea: what would be the consequences were those wishes realized? Whenever it pleased the Sultan, under any pretext, to attack a Christian government, a well-manœuvred Constantinopolitan fleet, augmented by the fleet of the Pasha of Egypt and the naval contingent of the Barbary Powers, would declare the coasts of Spain or Italy in a state of blockade and land fifty thousand men at Carthagena or Naples. You do not wish to plant the Cross on St. Sophia: continue to discipline the hordes of Turks, Albanians, Negroes and Arabs, and, in less than twenty years, perhaps, the Crescent will gleam on the dome of St. Peter's. Will you then summon Europe to a crusade against infidels armed with the plague, slavery and the Koran? It will be too late.

"The general interests of society would therefore benefit by the success of the arms of the Emperor Nicholas.

"As to France's own interests, I have proved sufficiently that these lie in an alliance with Russia, and that they may be singularly favoured by the very war which that Power is to-day waging in the East."

Summary.

Summary, Conclusion and Reflections

"To sum up:

"1. If Turkey were to consent to treat on the basis of the[Pg 279] treaty of the 6th of July, nothing would yet be decided, since peace has not been made between Turkey and Russia; the chances of the war in the Balkan Passes would at every moment change the data and the position of the plenipotentiaries occupied with the emancipation of Greece.

"2. The probable conditions of peace between the Emperor Nicholas and Sultan Mahmud are open to the greatest objections.

"3. Russia can defy the union of England and Austria, a union more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"4. It is probable that Prussia would join hands with the Emperor Nicholas, the son-in-law of Frederic William III., rather than with the Emperor's enemies.

"5. France would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allying herself with England and Austria against Russia.

"6. The independence of Europe would not be at all threatened by Russia's conquests in the East. It is tolerably absurd, it is to ignore every obstacle, to imagine the Russians hastening from the Bosphorus to lay their yoke upon Germany and France: every empire weakens itself by extension. As to the balance of power, this has long been shattered for France; she has lost her colonies, she has shrunk back within her old boundaries, while England, Prussia, Russia and Austria have prodigiously enlarged theirs.

"7. If France were obliged to emerge from her neutrality, to take up arms for one side or the other, the general interests of civilization, as well as the particular interests of our country, must make us enter by preference into the Russian Alliance. By this means we could obtain the course of the Rhine as our frontier, and colonies in the Archipelago, advantages which the Cabinets of St. James and Vienna will never grant us.

"That is the summary of this Note. I have been able to reason only hypothetically; I do not know what England, Austria and Russia are proposing, or have proposed, at the moment of writing; there may be a piece of information or a dispatch which reduces the truths here set forth to useless generalities: that is the drawback of distances and of conjectural politics. Nevertheless, it remains certain that France holds a strong position and that the Government is so placed as to be able to make the very utmost of events,[Pg 280] if it thoroughly realizes what it requires, if it allows no one to intimidate it, if to firmness of language it adds vigour in action. We have a revered King, an Heir to the Throne who, with three hundred thousand men, would increase, on the banks of the Rhine, the glory which he has reaped in Spain; our Morean Expedition is making us play a part filled with honour; our political institutions are excellent; our finances are in a state of prosperity unequalled in Europe: with that one can walk with one's head raised. What a fine country is that which possesses genius, courage, men and money!

"For the rest, I do not pretend to have said everything, to have foreseen everything; I have not the presumption to put forward my system as the best; I know that there is something mysterious, something indiscernible, in human affairs. If it be true that one can fairly well prophesy the last and general results of a revolution, it is no less true that one deceives one's self as to the details, that particular events are often modified in an unexpected manner and that, while seeing the end, one reaches it by roads whose very existence one did not suspect. It is certain, for instance, that the Turks will be driven from Europe; but when and how? Will the war now waging deliver the civilized world from that scourge? Are the obstacles to peace to which I have pointed insurmountable? Yes, if we confine ourselves to analogous arguments; no, if we bring into our calculations circumstances foreign to those which have occasioned the resort to arms.

"Scarcely anything to-day resembles what it has been; outside religion and morality, the majority of truths have altered, if not in their essence, at least in their relations to men and things. D'Ossat[687] survives as an able negociator; Grotius[688] as a publicist of genius; Pufendorf[689] as a judicious mind; but we could not apply the rules of their diplomacy to our times, nor go back, in political law, to the Treaty of[Pg 281] Westphalia[690]. Nowadays, the peoples take a part in their affairs, conducted formerly by the governments alone. Those peoples no longer feel things as they used to feel them; they are no longer affected by the same events; they no longer see objects from the same point of view; reason has made progress with them at the cost of imagination; facts carry the day over exaltation and passionate determinations; a certain reason prevails on every hand. On most of the thrones and in the majority of the Cabinets of Europe are seated men weary of revolutions, surfeited with war and opposed to any spirit of adventure; those are causes of hope for peaceful arrangements. Also it is possible that nations may have internal troubles which would dispose them towards conciliatory measures.

Conclusions.

"The death of the Dowager Empress of Russia[691] may develop seeds of disturbance which were not wholly stifled. This Princess took little part in foreign politics, but she was a link between her sons; she is supposed to have exercised a great influence over the transactions which gave the crown to the Emperor Nicholas[692]. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, if Nicholas began again to be afraid, this would be a reason the more for him to push on his soldiers from their native soil and to seek safety in victory.

"England, independently of her debt, which hampers her movements, is embarrassed with affairs in Ireland. Whether Catholic Emancipation pass through Parliament or not, it will be an immense event. King George's health is breaking down, that of his immediate successor is no better; if the accident foreseen were to happen soon, there would be a new parliament summoned, perhaps a change of ministers, and capable men are rare in England to-day; a long regency might perhaps come. In this precarious and critical position, it is possible that England sincerely desires peace and that she is afraid to throw herself into the chances of a great war, in the midst of which she might find herself surprised by internal catastrophes.

[Pg 282]

"Lastly, to come to ourselves, in spite of our genuine and incontrovertible prosperity, although we could make a glorious appearance on a field of battle, if called to it: are we quite prepared to figure on one? Are our fortresses in a state of repair? Have we the stores necessary for a large army? Is that army even on a complete peace footing? If we were suddenly aroused by a declaration of war from England, Prussia and the Netherlands, could we make an effective opposition against a third invasion? The Napoleonic wars have divulged a fatal secret: that it is possible to reach Paris in a few days after a successful engagement; that Paris does not defend itself; that this same Paris is much too near the frontier. The capital of France will not be safe until we possess the left bank of the Rhine. We may therefore require some time to prepare ourselves.

"Add to all this that the vices and virtues of the sovereigns, their moral strength and weakness, their character, their passions, their very habits are causes of acts and of facts which defy calculation and which enter into no political formula: the most petty influence sometimes decides the greatest event in a sense opposed to the likelihood of things; a slave can cause a peace to be signed in Constantinople which all Europe, coalesced or on its knees, would not obtain.

"If, then, one of those reasons, placed outside the limits of human foresight, should, in the course of this winter, produce demands for negociations, ought they to be rejected, if they did not agree with the principles of this Note? No, doubtless: to gain time is a great thing, when one is not ready. One can know what would be best and be content with what is least bad; political truths, above all, are relative; the absolute, in matters of State, has grave disadvantages. It would be a good thing for the human race that the Turks should be thrown into the Bosphorus; but we are not charged with the expedition, and the hour of Mohammedanism has perhaps not struck: hatred must be enlightened in order not to commit follies. Nothing, therefore, should prevent France from entering into negociations, while taking care to reconcile them as far as possible with the spirit in which this Note is drawn up. It is for the men at the helm of empires to steer them according to the winds and avoid the foul places.

"Certainly, if the powerful Sovereign of the North consented[Pg 283] to reduce the terms of peace to the fulfilment of the Treaty of Akerman and the emancipation of Greece, it would be possible to make the Porte listen to reason; but what likelihood is there that Russia will confine herself to terms which she might have obtained without firing a gun? How could she abandon claims so loudly and so publicly expressed? One means alone, if there be one, would present itself: to propose a general congress at which the Emperor Nicholas would yield, or appear to yield, to the wishes of Christian Europe. A means of success with men is to save their self-esteem, to supply them with a reason to withdraw their word and issue from a bad plight with honour.

And reflections.

"The greatest obstacle to this plan of a congress would come from the unexpected success of the Ottoman arms during the winter. If, owing to the rigour of the season, the want of provisions, the insufficiency of the troops, or any other cause, the Russians were obliged to abandon the Siege of Silistria, if Varna, which, however, is hardly probable, were to fall again into the hands of the Turks, the Emperor Nicholas would find himself in a position which would no longer permit him to listen to any proposal, under the penalty of descending to the lowest rank of monarchs: then the war would continue and we should come back to the eventualities inferred in this Note. If Russia lost her rank as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality, Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now, the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the intention to do so. Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran?

"While Austria, at last terrified by those false calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear, a new military insurrection, a possible result of the humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set fire to the north of Germany.[Pg 284] That is what the men do not perceive who, in politics, confine themselves to vulgar terrors and commonplaces. Petty dispatches, petty intrigues are the barriers which Austria designs to oppose to an all—threatening movement. If France and England adopted a course worthy of themselves, if they notified the Porte that, in case the Sultan should close his ears to all proposals of peace, he would find them on the battle-field in the spring, that resolution would soon have put an end to the anxiety of Europe."

*

The existence of this Memorandum, having transpired in the diplomatic world, attracted to me a certain consideration which I did not decline, but which I did not either aspire to. I do not too clearly see what there was to surprise the "practical" men. My Spanish War was a very "practical" thing. The incessant work of the general revolution operating in the old society, while bringing about among ourselves the fall of the Legitimacy, has upset calculations subordinate to the permanence of facts as they existed in 1828.

Do you wish to convince yourselves of the enormous difference of merit and glory between a great writer and a great politician? My works as a diplomatist have been hallowed by what is recognised as the supreme ability, success. And, still, whosoever may at any time read this Memorandum will no doubt skip it close-legged, and I should do as much in the reader's place[693]. Well, suppose that, instead of this little diplomatic master-piece, we were to find in this writing some episode after the manner of Homer or Virgil, if Heaven had granted me their genius: do you think we should be tempted to skip the loves of Dido at Carthage or the tears of Priam in Achilles' tent?

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, Wednesday, 10 December 1828.

"I have been to the Tiberine Academy, of which I have the honour to be a member. I have heard very witty[Pg 285] speeches and very fine verses. What an amount of wasted intelligence! To-night I have my great ricevimento; I am terrified of it as I write to you."

A reception at the Embassy.

"11 December.

"The great ricevimento passed off admirably. Madame de Chateaubriand is delighted, because we had all the cardinals on the face of the earth. All Europe in Rome was there with Rome. Since I am condemned for some days to this business, I prefer to do it as well as another ambassador. The enemies dislike any kind of success, even the most miserable, and it is punishing them to succeed in a field where they believe themselves unequalled. Next Saturday, I transform myself into a canon of St. John Lateran, and on Sunday I give a dinner to my colleagues. An assembly more to my taste is that which takes place this evening: I dine at Guérin's with all the artists and we shall settle your monument to Poussin. A young pupil full of talent, M. Desprez[694], will make the bas-relief, taken from a picture by the great painter, and M. Lemoyne[695] will make the bust. We must have only French hands here.

"To complete my History of Rome, Madame de Castries has arrived. She again is one of those little girls who have sat on my knee, like Césarine (Madame de Barante)[696]. The poor woman is very much changed; her eyes filled with tears when I reminded her of her childhood at Lormois. It seems to me that the new arrival is no longer under the spell of enchantment. What an isolation! And for whom? I tell you, the best thing for me to do is to go to see you again as soon as possible. If my Moses[697] comes down safely from the mountain, I will borrow one of his rays, to reappear before your eyes quite brilliant and youthful."

"Saturday, 13.

"My dinner at the Academy went off admirably. The young men were pleased: it was the first time an ambassador[Pg 286] had dined 'with them.' I announced the Poussin Monument to them; it was as though I were already honouring their ashes."

Thursday, 18 December 1828.

"Instead of wasting my time and yours in telling you the doings of my life, I prefer to send them to you all written down in the Roman newspaper. Here are another twelve months that have fallen on my head. When shall I have rest? When shall I cease to waste on the high-roads the days that were given me to make a better use of? I have spent with my eyes shut while I was rich; I thought the treasure inexhaustible. Now, when I see how it has diminished and how little time is left to me to lay at your feet, I feel a pain at my heart. But is there not a long existence after that on earth? A poor, humble Christian, I tremble before Michael Angelo's Last Judgment; I know not where I shall go, but, wherever you are not, I shall be very unhappy. I have a hundred times acquainted you with my plans and my future. Ruins, health, the loss of all illusion, all say to me, 'Go away, retire, have done.' I find nothing at the end of my day's journey but you. You wished me to mark my stay in Rome, it is done: Poussin's tomb will remain. It will bear this inscription:

F. A. de Ch. to Nicolas Poussin,
for the glory of art and the honour of france[698].

"What more have I to do here now? Nothing, especially after subscribing your name for the sum of one hundred ducats to the monument of the man whom you say you love best 'after myself:' Tasso."

"Rome, Saturday, 3 January 1829.

"I am recommencing my good wishes for the New Year: may Heaven grant you health and a long life! Do not forget me; I have hopes, for, indeed, you remember M. de Montmorency and Madame de Staël: your memory is as good as your heart. I was saying yesterday to Madame[Pg 287] Salvage[699] that I knew nothing in the world so beautiful as yourself or better.

An hour with Leo XII.

"I spent an hour yesterday with the Pope. We spoke of everything, including the loftiest and gravest topics. He is a very distinguished and enlightened man and a Prince full of dignity. The adventures of my political life needed only that I should be in relations with a sovereign pontiff; that completes my career.

"Would you like to know exactly what I do? I rise at half-past five, I breakfast at seven o'clock; at eight o'clock, I go back to my study, I write to you, or do some business, when there is any to do (the detail-work in connection with the French establishments and the French poor is pretty considerable); at mid-day, I go to wander for two or three hours among the ruins, or to St. Peter's, or to the Vatican. Sometimes I pay a necessary visit before or after my walk; at five o'clock, I come home; I dress for the evening; I dine at six o'clock; at half-past seven, I go to a party with Madame de Chateaubriand, or I receive a few people at home. At eleven, I go to bed, or else I go back once more to the campagna, in spite of the robbers and the malaria. What do I do there? Nothing: I listen to the silence and watch my shadow passing from portico to portico along the moonlit aqueducts.

"The Romans are so accustomed to my 'methodical' life that they reckon the hours by me. They must be quick about it; I shall soon have been round the clock."

"Rome, Thursday, 8 January 1828.

"I am very unhappy; the finest weather in the world has changed into rain, so that I am no longer able to take my walks. And yet that is the only pleasant moment of my day. I used to go thinking of you to these deserted campagne; they linked the past and the future in my sentiments, for formerly I used to take the same walks. Once or twice a week, I go to the place where the English girl was drowned: who now remembers that poor young woman, Miss Bathurst[700]? Her fellow-countrymen and women gallop[Pg 288] along the river-side without thinking of her. The Tiber, which has seen many other things, does not trouble about her at all. Besides, its waters have been renewed: they are as pale and still as when they passed over that creature full of hope, beauty and life.

"I have fallen into a very lofty strain without knowing it. Forgive a poor hare imprisoned and steeped in his form. I must tell you a little story of my last 'Tuesday.' There was an immense crowd at the Embassy; I was standing with my back against a marble table, bowing to the people arriving and leaving. An Englishwoman, of whom I knew neither the name nor the appearance, came up to me, looked me straight in the face and said, with the famous accent:

"'Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you are very unhappy!'

"Astonished at this apostrophe and at this manner of entering into conversation, I asked her what she meant. She replied:

"'I mean to say that I pity you.'

"So saying, she linked her arm into that of another Englishwoman, was lost in the crowd, and I did not see her again during the rest of the evening. That eccentric stranger was neither young nor pretty: I feel grateful to her, nevertheless, for her mysterious words.

"Your newspapers continue to say the same things about me. I don't know what has possessed them. I ought to believe myself as forgotten as I wish to be.

"I am writing to M. Thierry by this post. He is at Hyères and very ill. Not a word of reply from M. de La Bouillerie[701]."

To M. Thierry[702]

"Rome, 8 January 1829.

"I was much touched, monsieur, to receive the new edition of your Letters, with a line which proves that you have thought of me. If that line had been in your own hand,[Pg 289] I should have hoped for the sake of my country that your eyes would reopen to the studies which your talent turns to such wonderful account. I am greedily reading, or rather re-reading, this too short work. I am making dog's ears to every page, in order the better to mark the passages upon which I wish to rely. I shall quote you very frequently, monsieur, in the work which I have been so many years preparing, on the two first dynasties. I shall shelter my ideas and my researches behind your authority; I shall often adopt your reforms in nomenclature; lastly, I shall have the good fortune to be almost invariably of your opinion, while departing, much despite of myself, no doubt, from the system put forth by M. Guizot; but I cannot, in common with that illustrious writer, overthrow the most authentic monuments, turn all the Franks into 'nobles' and 'free-men,' and all the Roman-Gauls into 'slaves of the Franks.' The Salic Law and the Ripuarian Law have a multitude of articles based on the difference of condition among the Franks:

"'St quis ingenuus ingenuum ripuarium extra solum vendiderit, etc., etc.'

Letter to Augustin Thierry.

"You know, monsieur, how eagerly I wished for you in Rome. We should have sat down on some ruins: there you would have taught me history; I, an old disciple, would have listened to my young master with the sole regret that I no longer had enough years before me to profit by his lessons:

Tel est le sort de l'homme: il s'instruit avec l'âge.
Mais que sert être sage,
Quand le terme est si près[703]?

"Those lines are from an unpublished ode, written by a man who is no more, by my good and old friend, Fontanes. Thus, monsieur, does everything remind me, among the remains of Rome, of all that I have lost, of the short time that still remains to me and of the brevity of those hopes which seemed so long to me in former days: spem longam.

"Believe, monsieur, that no one admires you more, or is more devoted to you than your servant."

[Pg 290]

Dispatch to M. le Comte de La Ferronays

"Rome, 12 January 1829.

"Monsieur le comte,

"I saw the Pope on the 2nd of this month; he was good enough to keep me with him in private audience for an hour and a half. I must report to you the conversation which I had with His Holiness.

"We first spoke of France. The Pope began with the most sincere praise of the King.

"'At no time,' he said, 'has the Royal Family of France displayed so complete a harmony of good qualities and virtues. Now calm has been restored among the clergy; the bishops have made their submission.'

"'That submission,' I replied, 'is, in part, due to the sagacity and moderation of Your Holiness.'

"'I advised what seemed reasonable to me to be done,' answered the Pope. 'There were no spiritual matters involved in the ordinances[704]; the bishops would have done better to leave their first letter unwritten; but, after saying, "Non possumus," it was difficult for them to withdraw. They tried to display as little contradiction as possible between their actions and their language at the moment of their adhesion: we must forgive them for it. They are pious men, firmly attached to the King and the Monarchy; they have their weaknesses in common with all men.'

"All this, monsieur le comte, was said in very clear and excellent French.

"After thanking the Holy Father for the confidence which he showed me, I spoke to him in terms of consideration of the Cardinal Secretary of State:

"'I chose him,' he said, 'because he has travelled, because he knows the general affairs of Europe and because he seemed to me to possess the sort of capacity which his post demands. He has written, with respect to your two ordinances, only what I thought and what I recommended him to write.'

[Pg 291]

"'Might I venture to give Your Holiness,' I resumed, 'my opinion of the religious situation in France?'

"'You will be doing me a great pleasure,' replied the Pope.

"I suppress a few compliments which His Holiness was good enough to address to me.

"'I think then, Most Holy Father, that the mischief arose in the first place from a mistake of the clergy: instead of supporting the new institutions, or at least keeping silence respecting those institutions, they allowed words of blame, to say no more, to escape in their charges and sermons. Irreligious persons, who were at a loss with what to reproach saintly ministers, seized upon those words and made a weapon of them; they cried that Catholicism was incompatible with the establishment of public liberty, that it was war to the death between the Charter and the priests. By holding the opposite conduct, our ecclesiastics would have obtained all they wanted from the nation. There is a great ground-work of religion in France and a visible inclination to forget our old misfortunes at the foot of the altars; but also there is a real attachment to the institutions introduced by the sons of St. Louis. It would be impossible to calculate the measure of power to which the clergy might have attained, if they had shown themselves at the same time friends to the King and the Charter. I have never ceased to preach this policy in my writings and in my speeches; but the passions of the moment refused me a hearing and took me for an enemy.'

"The Pope had listened to me with the greatest attention.

"'I enter into your ideas,' he said, after a moment's pause. 'Jesus Christ made no pronouncement as to the form of governments. "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's[705]" means only, "Obey the established authorities." The Catholic religion has prospered in the midst of republics as in the bosom of monarchies; it has made immense progress in the United States; it reigns alone in Spanish America.'

"These words are very remarkable, monsieur le comte, at the very moment when the Court of Rome is strongly inclining to establish the bishops nominated by Bolivar[706].

[Pg 292]

"The Pope resumed:

"'You see how great is the influx of Protestant strangers to Rome: their presence does good to the country; but it is also good in another respect: the English come here with strange notions regarding the Pope and the Papacy, the fanaticism of the clergy, the slavery of the people in this country; they have not stayed here two months before they are quite changed. They see that I am only a bishop like any other bishop, that the Roman clergy are neither ignorant nor persecuting, and that my subjects are not beasts of burden!'

"Encouraged by this sort of effusion of the heart, and seeking to widen the scope of the conversation, I said to the Sovereign Pontiff:

"'Does not Your Holiness think that the moment is favourable for the recomposition of Catholic unity, for the reconciliation of the dissenting sects, by some slight concessions of discipline? The prejudices against the Court of Rome are vanishing in every quarter and, in a century which was still ardent, the work of reunion had already been attempted by Leibnitz[707] and Bossuet.'

"'This is a great matter,' said the Pope; 'but I must await the moment fixed by Providence. I agree that the prejudices are vanishing; the division of the sects in Germany has brought about the lassitude of those sects. In Saxony, where I resided for three years, I was the first to establish a foundling hospital and to obtain that this hospital should be served by Catholics. A general outcry arose against me at the time among the Protestants; to-day those same Protestants are the first to praise and endow the institution. The number of Catholics is increasing in Great Britain; it is true that they include many foreigners.'

"The Pope pausing for a moment, I took occasion to introduce the question of the Irish Catholics:

"'If the emancipation takes place,' I said, 'the Catholic religion will increase still more in Great Britain.'

[Pg 293]

Pope Leo XII. on Ireland.

"'That is true on one side,' replied His Holiness, 'but on the other there are disadvantages. The Irish Catholics are very ardent and very incautious. Has not O'Connell, in other respects a man of merit, gone so far as to say that a concordat had been proposed between the Holy See and the British Government? There is not a word of truth in this assertion; I cannot contradict it publicly; and it has given me great pain. And so, for the union of the dissenters, it is necessary that things should be ripe and that God Himself should complete His work. The popes can only wait.'

"This was not my opinion, monsieur le comte; but my business was to inform the King of the Holy Father's opinion on so serious a subject, not to combat it.

"'What will your newspapers say?' asked the Pope, with a sort of gaiety. 'They talk a great deal! Those of the Netherlands still more; but I am told that, in your country, nobody thinks of their articles an hour after they have read them.'

"'That is absolutely true, Most Holy Father: you see how the Gazette de France deals with me,'—for I know that His Holiness reads all our newspapers, not excepting the Courrier—'and still the Sovereign Pontiff treats me with extreme kindness; I have reason to believe, therefore, that the Gazette does not make a great impression on him.'—The Pope laughed and shook his head.—'Well, Most Holy Father, there are others like Your Holiness; when the paper tells the truth, the good it says remains; if it lies, it is as though it had said nothing at all. The Pope must expect some speeches during this session: the Extreme Right will maintain that M. le Cardinal Bernetti is not a priest and that his letters on the ordinances are not articles of faith; the Extreme Left will declare that we need not have taken our orders from Rome. The majority will commend the deference of the Privy Council and will loudly praise the spirit of peace and wisdom of Your Holiness.'

"This little explanation appeared to charm the Holy Father, who was pleased to meet with some one acquainted with the workings of our constitutional machine. Finally, monsieur le comte, thinking that the King and his Council would like to know the views of the Pope on the present state of affairs in the East, I repeated some news out of the papers, not being authorized to communicate to the Holy See the positive facts of which you informed me in your dispatch[Pg 294] of the 18th December touching the recall of our expedition to the Morea.

"The Pope did not hesitate to reply; he appeared to me to be alarmed at the imprudence of instructing the Turks in military discipline. I give his own words:

"'If the Turks are already capable of resisting Russia, what will their power be when they have obtained a glorious peace? Who will prevent them, after four or five years spent in rest and in perfecting their new tactics, from hurling themselves upon Italy?'

"I will confess, monsieur le comte, that, when I recognised these ideas and these anxieties in the mind of the Sovereign most exposed to the effects of the consequence of the enormous error that has been committed, I congratulated myself on having displayed to you in fuller detail, in my Note on Eastern Affairs, the same ideas and the same anxieties.

"'Nothing,' added the Pope, 'except a firm resolution on the part of the Allied Powers, can put an end to a misfortune which threatens the future. France and England are still in time to stop everything; but, if a new campaign open, it can set Europe on fire, and then it will be too late to extinguish it.'

"'That reflection is the more just,' I answered, 'seeing that, if Europe were to become divided, which God forbid, the presence of fifty thousand Frenchmen would stir up the whole question again.'

"The Pope made no reply; only it appeared to me that the idea of seeing the French in Italy filled him with no sort of fear. Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the Austrian yoke into a confederation against France.

"This, monsieur le comte, is a summary of my long conversation with His Holiness. I do not know that any one has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and in no way sought to deceive.

"The leanings and wishes of the Pope are evidently towards[Pg 295] France: when he assumed the Keys of St. Peter, he belonged to the faction of the zelanti; to-day he has sought his strength in moderation: that is what the habit of power always teaches. For this reason he is not beloved by the faction of cardinals which he has quitted. Finding no man of talent in the secular clergy, he has chosen his chief advisers among the regular clergy; hence it comes that the monks are on his side, while the prelates and the simple priests make a sort of opposition to him. The latter, when I arrived in Rome, all had their minds more or less infected with the lies of our congregation; they are now infinitely more reasonable; they all, generally speaking, blame the rising in arms of our clergy. It is curious to remark that the Jesuits have as many enemies here as in France: they have as their special adversaries the other religious and the heads of Orders. They had formed a plan by means of which they would have seized upon the public instruction in Rome to the exclusion of the others: the Dominicans have foiled that plan. The Pope is not very popular, because he administers well. His little army consists of old soldiers of Bonaparte, who have a very military bearing and keep excellent order on the high-roads. If material Rome has lost in picturesqueness, it has gained in cleanliness and healthiness. His Holiness plants trees and arrests hermits and beggars: another subject of complaint for the populace. Leo XII. is a great worker; he sleeps little and eats scarcely at all. Only one taste remains to him of his youth, that of sport, an exercise necessary to his health, which, for that matter, seems to be improving. He has a few shots with a fowling-piece in the vast enclosure of the Gardens of the Vatican. The zelanti find it very difficult to forgive him this innocent diversion. The Pope is reproached with the weakness and inconstancy of his affections.

"The radical vice of the political constitution of this country is easily seized upon: it is old men who appoint as sovereign an old man like themselves. This old man, when he becomes the master, in his turn appoints old men as cardinals. Turning in this vicious circle, the enervated supreme power is in this way always at the edge of the tomb. The prince never occupies the throne for a long enough period to execute the plans of improvement which he may have conceived. A pope ought to have sufficient resolution suddenly to promote a number of young cardinals, in such a way as to ensure at the next election the majority of a young[Pg 296] pope. But the rules of Sixtus V.[708], which give the hat to palace employments, the empire of custom and habit, the interests of the people, who receive gratifications at each change of the tiara, the individual ambition of the cardinals, who wish for short reigns in order to multiply their chances of the papacy, these and a thousand other obstacles too long to narrate are opposed to the rejuvenation of the Sacred College.

"The conclusion of this dispatch, monsieur le comte, is that, in the present condition of affairs, the King can reckon entirely on the Court of Rome.

"Cautious as I am in my manner of seeing and feeling, if I have anything with which to reproach myself in the report which I have the honour to send you, it is that I have weakened rather than exaggerated the expression of His Holiness' words. My memory is very safe; I wrote down the conversation on leaving the Vatican and my private secretary has simply copied it word for word from my minutes. The latter, rapidly jotted down, were hardly legible to myself. You would never have been able to decipher them[709].

"I have the honour to be, etc."

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, Tuesday, 13 January 1829.

"Yesterday evening, at eight o'clock, I wrote you the letter which M. Du Viviers[710] is bringing you; this morning, on waking, I am writing to you again by the ordinary post, which leaves at noon. You know the poor ladies of Saint-Denis: they have been much neglected since the arrival of the great ladies of the Trinità-del-Monte; without being the enemy of the latter, I have taken the side of the former with Madame de Ch. For the last month, the ladies of Saint-Denis have been wishing to give a fête in honour of 'M. the Ambassador' and 'Madame the Ambassadress:' it took place yesterday at mid-day. Imagine a theatre arranged in a sort of sacristy[Pg 297] with a platform giving on to the church; as actors, a dozen young girls from eight years to fourteen, who played the Machabées. They had themselves made their helmets and cloaks. They spoke their French lines with an enthusiasm and an Italian accent which were the funniest things in the world; they stamped their feet at energetic moments: there was a niece of Pius VII., a daughter of Thorwaldsen, and another daughter of Chauvin[711] the painter. They were incredibly pretty in their paper finery. The one who played the High Priest had a great black beard which delighted her but pricked her, and which she was constantly obliged to put right with a little thirteen-year-old white hand. As spectators, ourselves, a few mothers, the nuns, Madame Salvage, two or three priests and a further score of little school-girls, all in white, with veils. We had had cakes and ices brought from the Embassy. They played the piano between the acts. Imagine the hopes and joys which, must have preceded this fête at the convent, and the memories which will follow it! The whole ended with Vivat in æternum, sung by three nuns in the church."

"Rome, 15 January 1829.

"Yours again! Last night we had wind and rain as in France: I imagined them beating against your little window; I found myself transported to your little room, I saw your harp, your piano, your birds; you played me my favourite air, or Shakspeare's: and I was in Rome, far away from you! Four hundred leagues and the Alps separate us!

Amateur theatricals.

"I have received a letter from that witty lady who used sometimes to come to see me at the Foreign Office; you can judge how well she courts me: she is a furious Turcophile; Mahmud is a great man, who is in advance of his nation!

"This Rome, in whose midst I live, ought to teach me to despise politics. Here liberty and tyranny have both perished: I see the huddled ruins of the Roman Republic and the Empire of Tiberius; what is all this to-day blended in the same dust? Does not the Capuchin who sweeps that dust with his gown as he goes by seem to make the vanity of so many vanities even more perceptible? Nevertheless, I come back, in spite of myself, to the destinies of my poor country. I would wish it religion, glory and liberty, without thinking of my powerlessness to deck it with that triple crown."

[Pg 298]

"Rome, Thursday, 5 February 1829.

"Torre Vergata is a domain of monks situated at about a league from Nero's Tomb, on the left as you come from Rome, in the most beautiful and deserted spot: there is an immense number of ruins level with the ground covered with grass and thistle. I began an excavation there two days ago, on Tuesday, just after I had written to you. I was accompanied by Hyacinthe and by Visconti[712], who is directing the excavation. The weather was the loveliest in the world. A dozen men armed with spades and pickaxes, digging up tombs and ruins of houses and palaces amid profound solitude, offered a spectacle worthy of you. I uttered but one wish: that you might be there. I would gladly consent to live with you in a tent amid those ruins.

"I myself put my hand to the work; I discovered fragments of marble: the clues are excellent and I hope to find something to compensate me for the money wasted in this lottery of the dead; already I have a block of Greek marble large enough to make Poussin's bust. This excavation will become the object of my walks; I shall go and sit everyday in the midst of these remains. To which century, to which men did they belong? We are perhaps removing the most illustrious dust without knowing it. Perhaps an inscription will come to throw light upon some historic fact, to destroy some error, to establish some truth. And then, when I have gone away with my twelve half-naked peasants, all will fall back into oblivion and silence. Do you picture to yourself all the passions, all the interests which once bestirred themselves in these abandoned spots? There were masters and slaves, happy people and unhappy, beautiful persons who were beloved and ambitious people who wanted to be ministers. There remain a few birds and I, for but a very short time longer; soon we shall fly away. Tell me, do you think it worth while to be one of the members of the council of a little king of the Gauls, for me, an Armorican barbarian, a traveller among savages of a world unknown to the Romans and ambassador to the priests whom they used to throw to the lions? When I called to Leonidas at Lacedæmon, he did not answer: the sound of my footsteps at Torre Vergata will have roused nobody. And when I, in my turn, am in my grave, I shall not hear even the sound of your voice. I must[Pg 299] therefore hurry to come closer to you and to put an end to all these idle fancies of the life of men. There is nothing good save retirement, nothing true save an attachment like yours."

"Rome, 7 February 1829.

"I have received a long letter from General Guilleminot[713]; he gives me a lamentable account of what he suffered during his journeys on the coasts of Greece: and yet Guilleminot was an ambassador; he had large ships and an army under his orders. To go, after our soldiers have left, to a country in which not a house nor a corn-field remains, among a few scattered men, driven by poverty to become brigands, is an impossible project for a woman[714].

My excavations.

"I shall go to my excavation this morning: yesterday we found the skeleton of a Gothic soldier and the arm of a female statue. It was as though one had come upon the destroyer together with the ruin he had made; we have great hopes of finding the statue this morning. If the architectural remains which I am uncovering are worth the trouble, I shall not break them up to sell the bricks, as is usually done: I shall leave them standing, and they will bear my name. They belong to the time of Domitian. We have an inscription which shows this: it is the good time of the Roman arts."

Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis

"Rome, Monday, 9 February 1829.

"Monsieur le comte,

"His Holiness had a sudden attack this morning of the disorder to which he is subject; his life is in the most imminent danger. The order has been given to close all the theatres. I have just left the Cardinal Secretary of[Pg 300] State, who is himself ill and who despairs of the Pope's life. The loss of this enlightened and modern Sovereign Pontiff would, at the present moment, be a real calamity for Christianity and especially for France. I thought it important, monsieur le comte, that His Majesty's Government should be warned of this probable event, so that it may be enabled to take such measures beforehand as it shall consider necessary. Consequently, I have dispatched a mounted courier to Lyons. This courier carries a letter which I am writing to Monsieur the Prefect of the Rhône, with a telegraphic dispatch which he will forward to you, and another letter which I am asking him to send you by express. If we have the misfortune to lose His Holiness, a fresh courier will bring you all the details to Paris.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"Eight o'clock in the evening.

"The congregation of Cardinals already assembled has forbidden the Cardinal Secretary of State to give permits for post-horses. My courier will not be able to leave until after the departure of the courier of the Sacred College, in case of the Pope's death. I have tried to send a man to carry my dispatches to the Tuscan frontier. The bad roads and the absence of livery-horses have made this plan impracticable. Obliged to wait in Rome, which has become a kind of closed prison, I still hope that the news will reach you by telegraph a few hours before it is known to the other governments beyond the Alps. It might nevertheless happen that the courier sent to the Nuncio, who will necessarily leave before mine, will himself, when passing through Lyons, give you the news by telegraph."

Death of Leo XII.

"Tuesday, 10 February, nine o'clock in the morning.

"The Pope is dead; my courier is leaving. In a few hours he will be followed by M. le Comte de Montebello[715], attaché to the Embassy."

[Pg 301]

Rome, 10 February 1829.

"Monsieur le comte,

I dispatched to Lyons, about two hours ago, the special mounted courier who will forward to you the unexpected and deplorable news of the death of His Holiness. Now I am sending off M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the Embassy, to convey to you some necessary details.

"The Pope died of the hemorrhoidal affection to which he was subject. The blood being extravasated into the bladder occasioned a retention, which an attempt was made to relieve by means of a sound. His Holiness is believed to have been wounded in the course of the operation. In any case, after four days' suffering, Leo XII. expired this morning at nine o'clock, as I came to the Vatican, where an agent of the Embassy had passed the night. The letter sent by my first courier informs you, monsieur le comte, of my useless efforts to obtain a permit for post-horses before the Pope's death.

"Yesterday I called on the Cardinal Secretary of State, who was still very ill with a violent attack of gout; I had a rather long conversation with him on the consequences of the misfortune with which we were threatened. I lamented the death of a Prince whose moderate sentiments and whose knowledge of European affairs were so useful to the repose of Christianity.

"'It is not only a great misfortune for France,' answered the Secretary of State, 'but a greater misfortune for the Roman States than you imagine. Discontent and poverty are great in our provinces and, if the cardinals think fit to adopt a different system from that of Leo XII., they will find their work cut out for them. As for myself, my functions cease with the death of the Pope and I have nothing to reproach myself with.'

"This morning I again saw Cardinal Bernetti, who has, in fact, laid down his functions as Secretary of State: he spoke to me to the same effect as on the preceding day. I asked him to let me meet him before he secluded himself in the Conclave. We agreed that we should talk of electing a sovereign pontiff who should continue the system of moderation of Leo XII. I shall have the honour to communicate to you all the information that I may gather.

"It is probable that the death of the Pope and the fall of Cardinal Bernetti will delight the enemies of the ordinances[716],[Pg 302] they will proclaim this unhappy event a punishment from Heaven. It is easy already to read that thought on certain French faces in Rome.

"I regret the Pope for more than one reason; I had had the good fortune to gain his confidence: the prejudices which had been carefully instilled into his mind against me, before my arrival, had become dispelled and he did me the honour, on all occasions, to bear witness, publicly and aloud, to the esteem in which he was good enough to hold me.

"Now, monsieur le comte, permit me to enter into the explanation of a few facts.

"I was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the death of Pius VII. You will find in the boxes at the Office, if you think it advisable to look into the matter, the continuous account of my relations with M. le Duc de Laval. The custom is, on the death of a Pope, to send an extraordinary ambassador, or to accredit the resident ambassador through new letters to the Sacred College. The latter is the course which I proposed to His late Majesty, Louis XVIII., to follow. The King will do what he thinks best for his service. Four French cardinals came to Rome for the election of Leo XII. France to-day numbers five; a number of votes certainly not to be despised in the Conclave. I shall, monsieur le comte, await the King's orders. M. de Montebello, who is instructed to hand you this dispatch, will remain at your disposal.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, 10 February 1829, eleven d clock at night.

"I wished to write you a long letter; but the dispatch, which I was obliged to write with my own hand, and the fatigue of these last days have exhausted me.

"I regret the Pope; I had obtained his confidence. I am now charged with an important mission; it is impossible for me to know what the result will be, or what influence it will have over my destiny.

Conclave arrangements.

"The conclaves generally last two months, which will at least leave me free for Easter. I will soon talk to you thoroughly of all that.

[Pg 303]

"Picture to yourself that they found that poor Pope, on Thursday last, before he fell ill, writing his epitaph. They tried to divert him from such sad thoughts:

"'No, no,' he said; 'it will be over in a few days.'"

"Rome, Thursday, 12 February 1829.

"I read your newspapers. They often give me pain. I see in the Globe that Monsieur le Comte Portalis is, according to that journal, my declared enemy. Why? Do I ask his place? He is taking too much pains; I do not so much as think of him. I wish him all possible prosperity; but yet, if it were true that he wanted war, he would find me there. People seem to me to be talking nonsense about everything, both about the immortal Mahmud and the evacuation of the Morea.

"In the most probable event, this evacuation will put back Greece under the yoke of the Turks, with the loss to us of our honour and forty millions. There is a prodigious amount of wit in France, but we lack judgment and common-sense; two phrases make us drunk, we are led with words, and what is worse is that we are always ready to disparage our friends and exalt our enemies. Besides, is it not curious that they should make the King, in his Speech[717], use my own language on 'the agreement of the public liberties and the Royalty,' and that they should have found such fault with me for using that language? And the men who make the Crown speak thus were once the warmest partizans of the censorship! For the rest, I am going to see the election of the Head of Christianity; this spectacle is the last great spectacle that I shall witness in my life[718]; it will close my career.

"Now that pleasures have ceased in Rome, business is commencing. I shall be obliged, on the one hand, to write of all that happens to the Government and, on the other, to fulfil the duties of my new position. I must compliment the Sacred College and attend the funeral of the Holy Father, to whom I had become attached because he was but little loved, and the more so in that, fearing that I should find an enemy in him, I found a friend who, from the chair of St. Peter, formally gave the lie to my 'Christian'[Pg 304] calumniators. Then the French cardinals are going to come down upon me. I have written to make representations at least touching the Archbishop of Toulouse[719].

"In the midst of all this stir, the Poussin monument is being executed; the excavation is successful; I have found three fine heads, a draped female torso, a funeral inscription by a brother to a young sister, which touched me.

"Talking of inscriptions, I told you that the poor Pope had made his on the day before that on which he was taken ill, predicting that he was soon going to die. He has left a writing in which he recommends his indigent family to the Roman Government: only those who have loved much have such great virtues."