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Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
"Loose him and let him go[575]."
My consolers have also passed away, and they claim for themselves
the regrets which they gave to another.
*
I had determined to leave this official career in
which personal misfortunes had come in addition to My grief.
the triviality of the work and to paltry political
annoyances. One does not know what desolation of the heart means
until one has remained alone, wandering through spots once
inhabited by a person who accepted your life: you seek her and do
not find her; she speaks to you, smiles to you, accompanies you; all
that she has worn or touched presents her image; between her and
you there is only a transparent curtain, but so heavy that you cannot
raise it. The remembrance of the first friend who has left you on the
road is a cruel one; for if your days have been prolonged, you have
necessarily suffered other losses: the dead who have followed each
other become linked to the first, and you mourn at one time and in
one person all those whom you have successively lost.
At this distance from France, the arrangements which I was making
progressed slowly; meanwhile I remained forlorn among the ruins of
Rome. When I first walked out, the aspect of things seemed
changed to me: I did not recognise the trees, nor the monuments,
nor the sky; I wandered through the fields, along the cascades and
aqueducts, as I had done before beneath the overhanging forests of
the New World. Then I re-entered the Eternal City, which now added
one more extinguished life to so many spent existences. By dint of
my many rambles in the solitudes of the Tiber, they became so
clearly engraved upon my memory that I was able to describe them
fairly accurately in my Letter to M. de Fontanes[576]:

"If the traveller be unhappy," I said, "if he have mingled the

ashes that he loved with so many ashes of the illustrious, what
a charm will he not find in passing from the tomb of Cæcilia
Metella to the grave of an ill-fortuned woman!"
It was also in Rome that I first formed the idea of writing the
Memoirs of my Life; I find a few lines jotted down at random, from
which I decipher these few words:

"After wandering over the world, spending the best years of my

youth far from my native land, and suffering nearly all that man
can suffer, not excluding hunger, I returned to Paris in 1800."

In a letter to M. Joubert[577] I thus sketched my plan:

"My only pleasure is to snatch a few hours wherein to busy

myself with a work which alone can bring some assuagement to
my grief: it is the Memoirs of my Life. Rome will have a place in
it; it is in this way only that I can henceforth speak of Rome.
Have no fear; there will be no confessions likely to give pain to
my friends: if I am to count for anything in the future, my
friends' names will therein appear glorified and respected. Nor
shall I entertain posterity with the details of my frailties; I shall
say of myself only what becomes my dignity as a man, and, I
dare say it, the elevation of my heart. One should show to the
world only what is beautiful; it is no lie against God to unveil of
one's life no more than may lead our fellows towards noble and
generous feelings. Not that, in truth, I have anything to conceal:
I have not caused the dismissal of a servant-girl for a stolen
ribbon, nor left my friend to die in the street, nor dishonoured
the woman who sheltered me, nor taken my bastards to the
Foundling Hospital[578]; but I have had my moments of
weakness, of faint-heartedness: one sigh over myself will be
sufficient to make others understand those common miseries,
meant to be left behind the veil. What would society gain by the
reproduction of sores that occur on every side? There is no lack
of examples, where it is a question of triumphing over our poor
human nature."

*
In this plan which I made for myself I omitted my
family, my childhood, my youth, my travels, and my I decide to write
my memoirs.
exile: yet these are the recitals in which I took
most pleasure.
I had been like a happy slave: accustomed to apply his liberty to the
vine-stocks, he no longer knows what to do with his leisure when his
chains are broken. Whenever I decided to set to work, a figure came
and placed itself before me, and I could not take my eyes from it:
religion alone held me by its gravity and by the reflections of a
higher order which it suggested to me.
And yet, while occupied with the thought of writing my Memoirs, I
felt the price which the ancients attached to the value of their name:
there is perhaps a touching reality in this perpetuity of the memories
which one may leave on the way. Perhaps, among the great men of
antiquity, this idea of an immortal life among the human race
supplied the place of the immortality of the soul which for them
remained a problem. If fame is but a small thing when it relates to
ourselves, it must nevertheless be agreed that to give an
imperishable existence to all that it has loved is one of the finest
privileges attached to the friendship of genius.
I undertook a commentary upon certain books of the Bible,
beginning with Genesis. Upon the verse, "Behold, Adam is become
as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he
put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live
for ever[579]," I remarked the tremendous irony of the Creator:
"Behold Adam is become as one of us, etc. Lest perhaps the man
put forth his hand and take of the tree of life." Why? Because he has
tasted of the fruit of knowledge, and knows good and evil, he is now
loaded with ills: "therefore, lest perhaps he live for ever." What a
blessing from God is death!
There are prayers begun, some for "disquietude of soul," others "to
strengthen one's self against the prosperity of the wicked." I sought
to bring back to a centre of repose the thoughts which strayed
beyond me.
As God was not pleased to let my life end there, reserving it for
prolonged trials, the storms which had arisen abated. Suddenly the
Cardinal Ambassador changed his manner towards me; I had an
explanation with him, and declared my resolve to resign. He
opposed this: he maintained that my resignation at that moment
would have the appearance of a disgrace; that I should be delighting
my enemies, that the First Consul would take offense, which would
prevent me from remaining undisturbed in the places to which I
proposed to retire. He suggested that I should go to spend a
fortnight or a month at Naples.
Just at this moment, I was being sounded on behalf of Russia with a
view to my accepting the place of governor to a grand-duke: it was
as much as I would have done had I proposed to sacrifice to Henry
V. the last years of my life.
While wavering between a thousand resolutions, I received the news
that the First Consul had appointed me Minister to the Valais. He had
at first flown into a passion on the faith of some denunciations; but,
returning to his senses, he understood that I was of the race which
is of value only in the front rank, that I should not be mixed with
others, as otherwise I could never be used to advantage. There was
no place vacant: he created one, and, choosing it in conformity with
my instinct for solitude and independence, he placed me in the Alps;
he gave me a Catholic republic, in a world of torrents: the Rhone
and our soldiers would cross at my feet, the one descending towards
France, the others climbing towards Italy, while the Simplon opened
its daring road before me. The Consul was to allow me as frequent
leave as I might wish to travel in Italy, and Madame Bacciochi sent
me a message through Fontanes that the first important embassy
available was reserved for me. I thus won this first diplomatic victory
without either expecting or intending it; true that, at the head of the
State, was a lofty intelligence, which was not willing to sacrifice to
official intrigues another intelligence which it knew to be but too well
disposed to secede from the government.
This remark is all the more true in that Cardinal
Fesch, to whom I do justice in these Memoirs in a Cardinal Fesch.
manner upon which, perhaps, he did not reckon,
had sent two malicious dispatches to Paris, almost at the very
moment at which his manners had become more obliging, after the
death of Madame de Beaumont. Did his true thought lie in his
conversations, when he gave me leave to go to Naples, or in his
diplomatic missives? The conversations and the missives bear the
same date and are contradictory. It would have been easy for me to
set M. le Cardinal, right with himself by destroying all traces of the
reports that concerned me: I had but to remove the Ambassador's
lucubrations from the cartons at the time when I was Minister for
Foreign Affairs; I should have done only what M. de Talleyrand did in
the matter of his correspondence with the Emperor. I did not
consider that I had the right to turn my power to my own
advantage. If, by chance, any one should look up these documents,
he would find them in their place. That this conduct is self-deceiving
I readily admit; but, in order not to make a merit of a virtue which I
do not possess, I must say that this respect for the correspondence
of my detractors arises more from my contempt than from my
generosity. I have also seen, in the archives of the Berlin Embassy,
offensive letters from M. le Marquis de Bonnay concerning myself:
far from considering my own feelings, I shall make them public.
M. le Cardinal Fesch was no more reticent as to the poor Abbé
Guillon (the Bishop of Morocco): the latter was marked out as "a
Russian agent." Bonaparte called M. Lainé[580] "an English agent:"
these are instances of the gossip of which that great man had taken
the bad habit from the police reports. But was there nothing to be
said against M. Fesch himself? The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre
was at Rome like myself, in 1803: what did he not write of
Napoleon's uncle! I have the letters.
For the rest, to whom do these contentions, buried since forty years
in worm-eaten files, matter? Of the several actors of that period, one
alone will remain: Bonaparte. All of us who make pretensions to live
are dead already: can the insect's name be read by the feeble light
which it sometimes drags with it as it crawls?
When M. le Cardinal Fesch met me again I was Ambassador to Leo
XII.; he gave me marks of his esteem: I on my side made a point of
outdoing him in deference. It is natural, moreover, that I should
have been judged with a severity which I have never spared myself.
All this is past and done with: I do not wish even to recognise the
handwriting of those who, in 1803, served as official or semi-official
secretaries to M. le Cardinal Fesch.
I set out for Naples: there began a year without Madame de
Beaumont, a year of absence to be followed by so many others! I
have never seen Naples again since that time, although I was on the
threshold of that same town in 1828, having promised myself to go
there with Madame de Chateaubriand. The orange-trees were
covered with their fruits, the myrtles with their flowers. Baie, the
Campi Elysei, and the sea were delights of which I no longer had
any one to whom to speak. I have described the Bay of Naples in
the Martyrs.[581] I climbed Vesuvius and descended into its crater. I
pilfered from myself: I was enacting a scene in René.
At Pompeii I was shown a skeleton in irons, and mutilated Latin
words scribbled by soldiers on the walls. I returned to Rome.
Canova[582] permitted me to visit his studio while he was working at
the statue of a nymph. Elsewhere the models for the marbles of the
tomb which I had ordered had already attained much expression. I
went to pray over ashes at San Luigi, and I left for Paris on the 21st
of January 1804, another day of misfortune.
Behold a prodigious misery: five and thirty years have sped since the
date of those events. Did not I flatter myself, in those distant days of
grief, that the bond just broken would be my last? And yet how soon
have I, not forgotten, but replaced what was dear to me! Thus man
goes from weakness to weakness. When he is young and drives his
life before him, a shadow of an excuse remains to him; but when he
gets between the shafts and laboriously drags it behind him, how is
he to be excused? The poverty of our nature is so intense that in our
volatile infirmities, in order to express our new affections, we can
employ only words which we have already worn threadbare in our
former attachments. There are words, nevertheless, which ought to
be used but once: they become profaned by repetition. Our betrayed
and neglected friendships reproach us with the new companionships
that we have formed; our hours arraign one another: our life is one
perpetual blush, because it is one continued fault.

As my intention was not to remain in Paris, I alighted at the Hôtel de

France[583], in the Rue de Beaune, where Madame de
Chateaubriand came to join me to accompany me to the Valais. My
former society, already half dispersed, had lost the link which held it
together.
Bonaparte was marching towards the Empire; his genius rose in the
measure that events increased in importance: he was able, like
gunpowder when it expands, to carry away the world; already
immense, and yet not feeling himself at his zenith, he was
tormented by his strength; he groped, he seemed to be feeling his
way; when I arrived in Paris he was dealing with Pichegru and
Moreau; through petty envy he had consented to admit them as
rivals: Moreau, Pichegru, and Georges Cadoudal, who was greatly
their superior, were arrested.
This vulgar train of conspiracies, which we encounter in all the
affairs of life, was very distasteful to me, and I was glad to seek
flight in the mountains.
The council of the town of Sion wrote to me. The simplicity of this
despatch has made a document of it to me; I was entering politics
through religion: the Génie du Christianisme had opened the doors
for me.

"REPUBLIC OF THE VALAIS.

 "Sion, 20 February 1804.
I am promoted.
"Council of the Town of Sion.
"To Monsieur Chateaubriand, Secretary of Legation of the
French Republic in Rome.
"Sir,
"An official letter from our High Bailiff apprizes us of your
nomination to the post of French Minister to our Republic. We
hasten to express to you the very complete satisfaction which
this choice gives us. We see in this nomination a precious token
of the good-will of the First Consul towards our Republic, and
we congratulate ourselves on the honour of having you within
our walls: we draw from it the happiest auguries for the welfare
of our country and of our town. In order to give you a proof of
these sentiments, we have resolved to have a provisional
lodging prepared for you, worthy to receive you, fitted with
furniture and effects suited for your use, in so far as the locality
and our circumstances permit, pending the time when you will
yourself have been able to make arrangements to your own
convenience.
"Pray, sir, accept this offer as a proof of our sincere inclination to
honour the French Government in the person of its envoy, the
choice of whom must needs be peculiarly pleasing to a religious
people. We beg you to be so good as to acquaint us with the
date of your arrival in this town.
"Accept, sir, the assurances of our respectful consideration.
"De Riedmatten,
"President of the Town Council of Sion.
"By order of the Town Council:
"De Torrenté,
"Secretary to the Council."
Two days before the 21st of March[584], I dressed to go to take
leave of Bonaparte at the Tuileries; I had not seen him again since
the moment during which he had spoken to me at Lucien's. The
gallery in which he was receiving was full; he was accompanied by
Murat and a principal aide-de-camp; he passed through almost
without stopping. As he approached me, I was struck by the
alteration in his face: his cheeks were sunk and livid, his eyes hard,
his complexion pale and muddy, his aspect gloomy and terrible. The
attraction which had previously urged me towards him ceased;
instead of remaining on his passage, I made a movement to avoid
him. He threw a glance at me as though to seek to recognise me,
took a few steps towards me, then turned and walked away. Had I
appeared to him as a warning? His aide-de-camp noticed me: when
the crowd covered me, the aide-de-camp tried to catch sight of me
between the persons standing before me, and again drew the Consul
in my direction. This sport continued for nearly a quarter of an hour,
I always drawing back, Napoleon always following me without
knowing it. I have never been able to explain to myself what idea
had struck the aide-de-camp. Did he take me for a suspicious man
whom he had never seen? Did he, if he knew who I was, wish to
force Bonaparte to speak to me? However this may be, Napoleon
passed on to another apartment. Content to have done my duty in
presenting myself at the Tuileries, I withdrew. From the joy which I
have always felt at leaving palaces, it is evident that I was not made
to enter them.
On returning to the Hôtel de France, I said to
several of my friends: Bonaparte.

"Something strange must be happening, of which we do not know,

for Bonaparte cannot have changed to that extent, unless he be ill."
M. de Bourrienne[585] knew of my singular foresight: he has only
confused the dates; here is his sentence:

"On returning from the First Consul's, M. de Chateaubriand

declared to his friends that he had remarked a great alteration
 in the First Consul, and something very sinister in his look[586]."

Yes, I remarked it: a superior intelligence does not bring forth evil
without pain, because that is not its natural fruit, and it ought not to
bear it.
Two days later, on the 21st of March[587], I rose early, for the sake
of a memory that was sad and dear to me. M. de Montmorin had
built himself a house at the corner of the Rue Plumet, on the new
Boulevard des Invalides. In the garden of that house, which was sold
during the Revolution, Madame de Beaumont, then almost a child,
had planted a cypress-tree, and she had sometimes taken pleasure
in showing it to me as we passed: it was to this cypress-tree, of
which I alone knew the origin and the history, that I went to bid
adieu. It still exists, but it is pining away, and scarce rises to the
level of the casement beneath which a hand which has vanished
loved to tend it. I distinguish that poor tree from among three or
four others of its species; it seems to know me and to rejoice when I
approach; mournful breezes bend its yellowed head a little towards
me, and it murmurs at the window of the deserted room: a
mysterious intelligence reigns between us, which will cease when
one or the other shall have fallen.
Having paid my pious tribute, I went down the Boulevard and
Esplanade des Invalides, crossed the Pont Louis XV. and the Tuileries
Gardens, which I left, near the Pavilion Marsan, by the gate which
now opens into the Rue de Rivoli. There, between eleven and twelve
o'clock in the morning, I heard a man and a woman crying official
news; passers-by were stopping, suddenly petrified by these words:

"Verdict of the special military commission summoned at

Vincennes, condemning to pain of death the man known as Louis
Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born on the 2nd of August 1772 at
Chantilly."

This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; it changed my life, as it

changed Napoleon's. I returned home; I said to Madame
Chateaubriand:
Death of the Duc
"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot." D'Enghien.

I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation[588].

Madame de Chateaubriand raised no objection, and with great
courage watched me writing. She did not blind herself to my danger:
General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal were being prosecuted[589];
the lion had tasted blood, this was not the moment to irritate him.
M. Clausel de Coussergues[590] arrived in the interval; he also had
heard the sentence cried. He found me pen in hand: my letter, from
which, out of compassion for Madame de Chateaubriand, he made
me suppress certain angry phrases, was despatched; it was
addressed to the Minister of Foreign Relations. The wording
mattered little: my opinion and my crime lay in the fact of my
resignation: Bonaparte made no mistake as to that. Madame
Bacciochi exclaimed loudly on hearing of what she called my
"disloyalty;" she sent for me and made me the liveliest reproaches.
M. de Fontanes at first went almost mad with fear: he already saw
me shot, with all the persons who were attached to me. During
several days, my friends went in dread of seeing me carried off by
the police; they called on me from one minute to the other, always
trembling as they approached the porter's lodge. M. Pasquier came
and embraced me on the day after my resignation, saying he was
happy to have such a friend as I. He remained for a fairly
considerable time in an honourably moderate opposition, removed
from place and power.
Nevertheless, the movement of sympathy which impels us to praise
a generous action came to an end. I had, in consideration of
religion, accepted a place outside France, a place conferred upon me
by a mighty genius, the conqueror of anarchy, a leader sprung from
the popular principle, the consul of a republic, and not a king
continuing an usurped monarchy; at that time I stood alone in my
feeling, because I was consistent in my conduct; I retired when the
conditions to which I was able to subscribe altered; but, so soon as
the hero had changed himself into a murderer, there came a rush for
his ante-chamber. Six months after the 21st of March, one might
have thought that there was only one opinion in society, but for a
few malicious jests in which people indulged in private. Fallen
persons pretended to have been violated, and only they, it was said,
were violated who possessed a great name or great importance, and
each one, to prove his importance or his quarterings, contrived to be
violated by dint of solicitation.
Those who had most loudly applauded me fell away; my presence
was a reproach to them: prudent people find imprudence in those
who yield to honour. There are times in which loftiness of soul is a
real infirmity; no one understands it; it passes for a sort of
narrowness of mind, for a prejudice, an unintelligent trick of
education, a crotchet, a whim which interferes with the judgment:
an honourable imbecility, perhaps, but a stupid helotism. What
capacity can any one find in shutting your eyes, in remaining
indifferent to the march of the century, to the movement of ideas, to
the change of manners, to the progress of society? Is it not a
deplorable mistake to attach to events an importance which they do
not possess? Barricaded behind your narrow principles, your mind as
limited as your judgment, you are like a man living at the back of a
house, looking out only on a little yard, unaware of what happens in
the street or of the noise to be heard outside. That is what a little
independence reduces you to, an object of pity to the average man:
as to the great minds with their affectionate pride and their haughty
eyes, oculos sublimes[591], their compassionate disdain forgives you,
because they know that "you cannot hear[592]." I therefore shrank
back humbly into my literary career, a poor Pindar destined in my
first Olympic to praise "the excellence of water," leaving wine to the
happy.
Friendship put fresh heart into M. de Fontanes;
Madame Bacciochi placed her kindness between I resign my
Embassy.
her brother's anger and my resolution; M. de
Talleyrand, through indifference or calculation, kept my resignation
for several days before speaking of it: when he announced it to
Bonaparte the latter had had time to reflect. On receiving from me
the only direct sign of blame from an honest man who was not
afraid to defy him, he uttered merely these two words:
"Very well."
Later, he said to his sister:
"Were you very much alarmed for your friend?"
Long after, in conversation with M. de Fontanes, he confessed that
my resignation was one of the things that had impressed him most
M. de Talleyrand had an official letter sent to me in which he
gracefully reproached me for depriving his department of my talents
and services[593]. I returned the expenses of installation, and all was
apparently finished. But, in daring to leave Bonaparte, I had placed
myself upon his level, and he was incensed against me with all the
strength of his perfidy, as I against him with all that of my loyalty.
Till the day of his fall, he held the sword suspended over my head:
sometimes he returned to me by a natural leaning and tried to
drown me in his fatal prosperity; sometimes I was drawn to him by
the admiration with which he inspired me, by the idea that I was
assisting at a transformation of society, not at a mere change of
dynasty: but antipathetic in so many respects, our respective natures
gained the upper hand, and if he would gladly have had me shot, I
should have felt no great compunction in killing him.
Death makes a great man or unmakes him; it stops him on the stair
which he was about to descend, or on the step which he was about
to climb: his is a destiny that has succeeded or failed; in the first
case, one is reduced to examine what it has been, in the second to
conjecture what it might have become.
If, in doing my duty, I had been prompted by far-seeing views of
ambition, I should have deceived myself. Charles X. learnt only at
Prague what I had done in 1804: he had but lately been King.
"Chateaubriand," he said to me at the Castle of Hradschin, "had you
served Bonaparte?"
"Yes, Sire."
"Did you resign on the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien?"
"Yes, Sire."
Misfortune instructs or restores the memory. I have told you how
one day in London, when I had taken shelter with M. de Fontanes in
a passage during a storm, M. le Duc de Bourbon came and sought
cover under the same refuge: in France, his gallant father and he,
who so politely thanked whoever wrote a funeral oration on M. le
Duc d'Enghien, did not send me one word of remembrance; they
were doubtless unaware of my conduct: true, I never told them of it.

[446] This book was commenced in Paris in 1837, continued and completed in
Paris in 1838, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.—T.
[447] The Château du Marais was built by M. Le Maître, a very rich man, who left
it to Madame de La Briche, his niece. It stands in the commune of the Val-Saint-
Maurice, canton of Dourdan, Department of Seine-et-Oise, and is now the property
of the Dowager Duchesse de Noailles.—B.
[448] Adélaïde Edmée de La Briche, née Prévost, widow of Alexis Janvier de La
Live de La Briche, Introducer of Ambassadors and Private Secretary to the Queen.
—B.
[449] Louise Joséphine Comtesse de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1764-1832), née de
La Live de Jully, sister to Madame de Vintimille.—B.
[450] The Château de Champlâtreux, in the commune of Épinay-Champlâtreux,
canton of Luzarches, Department of Seine-et-Oise, was the old seat of the Molé
family. It belongs now to M. le Duc de Noailles. The Comte Molé died there, 25
November 1855.—B.
[451] Édouard François Matthieu Molé de Champlâtreux (d. 1794), a President in
the Parliament of Paris, guillotined 20 April 1794.—B.
[452] The domain, now in the Department of Eure-et-Loir, presented to Madame
de Maintenon by Louis XIV.—T.
[453] Louise Éléonore Mélanie Marquise de Custine (1770-1826), née de Sabran,
married in 1787 to Amand Louis Philippe François de Custine, guillotined 4 January
1794.—B.
[454] Margaret Queen of France (1219-1295), daughter of Raymond Berengarius
IV. Count of Provence, and married in 1234 to King Louis IX.: a virtuous queen in
every way worthy of her spouse.—T.
[455] The Château de Fervacques is near Lisieux in Calvados. Madame de Custine
bought it of the Duc de Montmorency-Laval and his sister the Duchesse de Luynes.
It is now the property of M. le Comte de Montgomery.—T.
[456] Christina Queen of Sweden (1626-1689) spent some years in France after
her abdication in 1654.—T.
[457] Astolphe Louis Léonor Marquis de Custine (1793-1857), author of an
excellent book on La Russie en 1839, in 4 volumes (1843), and many other
remarkable works that obtained a well-deserved success.—B.
[458] Madame de Custine had been imprisoned at the Carmelites and had escaped
execution thanks only to the Revolution of 9 Thermidor.—T.
[459] "The lady of Fervacques
Deserves a brisk attack."—T.
[460] Afterwards Madame de Bérenger.—B.
[461] Louise Julie Talma (d. 1805), née Carreau, married Talma on the 19th of
April 1791. They were divorced on the 6th of February 1801 by mutual consent.
Talma married next year (16 June 1802) Charlotte Vanhove, the divorced wife of
Louis Sébastien Olympe Petit, from whom he was also separated shortly
afterwards on the same terms.—B.
[462] Stanislas Marie Adélaïde Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (1747-1792), a
Monarchical member of the Constituent Assembly, butchered by the populace on
the 10th of August 1792.—T.
[463] Louis Justin Marie Marquis de Talaru (1769-1850), for some time French
Ambassador in Madrid under the Restoration. He was created a peer of France on
the same day as Chateaubriand (17 August 1815).—B.
[464] Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), known as the Unknown
Philosopher, the exponent of "pure spiritualism." His principal works are Des
Erreurs et de la vérité (1775), the Homme de désir (1790), and the Ministère de
l'Homme-Esprit (1802).—T.
[465] Jean Jacques Comte Lenoir-Laroche (1749-1825) held office for a few days
in 1797, was a Conservative member of the Senate (1799-1814), was made a
count by Napoleon, and a peer of France by Louis XVIII. (4 June 1814). On the
31st of August 1817, this dignity was declared hereditary in his family.—B.
[466] The Abbé Joseph Faria (circa 1755-1819), a native of Goa, and a famous
magnetizer. He plays an important part in Monte Cristo, in which Dumas makes
him die at the Château d'If. He died, in fact, in Paris.—B.
[467] Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a German doctor (naturalized a Frenchman
in 1819) who invented the science of craniology, now known as phrenology.—T.
[468] Mon portrait historique et philosophique, M. de Saint-Martin's posthumous
work, printed in a very much mutilated and incomplete form.—B.
[469] The Polytechnic School was installed at the time at the Palais-Bourbon, and
removed to the building of the former Collège de Navarre in 1804.—B.
[470] Henri François Marquis de Saint-Lambert (1717-1803), author of a poem,
the Saisons, which secured his admission to the French Academy (1770), and of
several philosophical works of a pronounced materialistic tendency.—T.
[471] Élisabeth Françoise Sophie Comtesse de Houdetot (1730-1813), née de La
Live de Bellegarde. She married Lieutenant-General the Comte de Houdetot in
1748. She was the author of a few Pensées, but owes her reputation rather to the
lively passion with which she inspired Rousseau and to her liaison with Saint-
Lambert, which lasted nearly half a century.—T.
[472] "Woe be unto him to whom Heaven grants long days!" —T.
[473] "And love consoles me still!
But nought will e'er console me for love's loss." —T.
[474] Friedrich Melchior Baron Grimm (1723-1807), the friend of Rousseau and
Diderot, created a baron by the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, whom he represented at the
French Court from 1776-1790. In 1795 the Empress Catherine II. made him her
minister in Lower Saxony. His diverting correspondence with both potentates was
published in 1812-1813.—T.
[475] Pierre Simon Ballanche (1778-1847) started life as a printer at Lyons, where
he published the second and third editions of the Génie du Christianisme. He
began to devote himself to literature in 1813, wrote several notable works of
Christian philosophy, and became elected a member of the French Academy in
1844.—T.
[476] The article on the Législation primitive appeared in the Mercure of the 18
Nivôse Year XI. (8 January 1803).—B.
[477] The Celestines were suppressed in 1778. They were founded in 1244 by
Pietro di Murrhone, the hermit Pope, who was elected to the Holy See in 1294,
when nearly eighty years of age, and assumed the title of Celestine V. He was
canonized in 1313.—T.
[478] René I. Duke of Anjou, titular King of Naples (1408-1480), known as Good
King René, and father of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. of England.—T.
[479] I omit two or three pages devoted mainly to quotations from Petrarch.—T.
[480] A terrible revolutionary massacre took place at Avignon in 1791.—T.
[481] Petrarch immortalized the source of the Sorgue, which rises near Vaucluse,
and is known as the Fountain of Vaucluse.—T.
[482] Alain Chartier (1386-1458), the "Father of French Eloquence," an early
French poet, and Secretary to the Household to King Charles VI. Margaret kissed
him on the mouth, as he lay sleeping, to show the value she set upon the mouth
from which so many fair speeches had issued.—T.
[483] Margaret of Scotland (1418-1445), daughter of James I. King of Scots, was
married to the Dauphin, later King Louis XI. of France, as a child, in 1428, but was
not united to him until 1436. He made her very unhappy.—T.
[484] Pro. L. Flacco, xxvi. 36.—T.
[485] Job xxxviii. II.—T.
[486] Pytheas (circa 350 B.C.), the famous Greek navigator, was a native of
Massilia or Marseilles.—T.
[487] Jean Sire de Joinville (circa 1223—circa 1319) accompanied St. Louis on the
Seventh Crusade (1248), which took Cyprus in its course.—T.
[488] Berengarius I. and II., Kings of Italy and Marquises of Ivrea in the tenth
century.—T.
[489] Louis II., Duke of Anjou and titular King of Naples (1377-1417), father of
Good King René.—T.
[490] Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duc d'Épernon (1554-1642), one of the
favourites of Henry III., was the head of a Languedoc family and governor of
Provence, of which Marseilles was one of the chief cities.—T.
[491] Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castel Moron, Bishop of Marseilles
(1671-1755), distinguished himself by his courage and zeal during the plague
which ravaged the city in the years 1720 and 1721, and by his vigorous opposition
to the Jansenistic doctrines.—T.
[492] Vittorio Conte Alfieri (1749-1803), the Italian tragic poet, secretly married in
1788 to the Countess of Albany, widow of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. His
Memoirs were published in 1804.—T.
[493] Alfieri, Memoirs, chap. IV.—T.
[494] The Roman amphitheatre or bull-arena at Nîmes was laid in ruins by the
English during their occupation in 1417.—T.
[495] The famous Roman remains, in the Corinthian style.—T.
[496] Jean Reboul (1796-1864), the baker-poet, author of Poésies (1836), the
Dernier Jour (1839), the Martyre de Vivia, a mystery play, performed at the Odéon
(1850), and the Traditionnelles (1857). He continued his trade throughout. In
1848 he was sent to the Constituent Assembly as Royalist member for the
Department of the Gard.—B.
[497] I omit a quotation from Reboul.—T.
[498] Plautus spent some years in the service of a baker in Rome.—T.
[499] Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), the Protestant philosopher, Professor of
Literature at the University of Leyden, a distinguished philologist and founder of
the system of modern chronology.—T.
[500] 1622.—T.
[501] The Canal des Deux-Mers, also known as the Canal du Midi or de Languedoc,
joins the Atlantic and Mediterranean.—T.
[502] The project of the canal, first formed under Francis I., was executed by Colbert's
orders under Louis XIV. in the years 1666-1681. I omit the quotation from Corneille.—T.
[503] Paule Baronne de Fontenille (1518-1610), née de Viguier, nicknamed Fair Paule
by King Francis I., who saw her as a child. She married first the Sire de Bayganuet, and
later Philippe de Laroche, Baron de Fontenille. Her beauty, which she retained until
extreme old age, was so intense that her resolution to stay at home, in order to save
herself from being pestered with the admiration of the people, was checkmated by a
resolution of the Capitouls or municipal officers of Toulouse, who ordered her to show
herself in public, with uncovered features, two days in the week. La Belle Paule was as
virtuous as she was beautiful.—T.
[504] Henri II. Maréchal Duc de Montmorency (1595-1632), revolted against Louis
XIII., was defeated and taken prisoner at Castelnaudary, and tried and beheaded at
Toulouse.—T.
[505] Claude Fauriel (1772-1844), a capable literary critic and considerable linguist. He
translated and published in 1837 the Histoire de la croisade contre les hérétiques
albigeois, écrits en vers provençaux par un poète contemporain, from which the above
extract is taken.—T.
[506] Simon Baron, later Comte, de Montfort (d. 1218), known as the Machabee of his
century, the leader of the crusade against the Albigenses, of whom he put some 60,000
or more to the sword. Simon de Montfort was killed at Toulouse, 25 June 1218.—T.
[507] Jacques de Cujas (1522-1590), the famous jurist.—T.
[508] Margaret of France, Duchesse de Berry, afterwards Duchess of Savoy (1523-
1574), married in 1559 to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Her subjects named her
the Mother of the Peoples.—T.
[509] Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre (1552-1615), married in 1572 to the Prince
of Béarn, afterwards Henry IV., and III. King of France and Navarre.—T.
[510] Gui du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac (1529-1584), represented France at the Council
of Trent and accompanied Henry III. to Poland. His Quatrains moraux have been
universally translated, and he also published various political writings.—T.
[511] Florio's Montaigne, the Third Booke, chap. IX.: Of Vanitie.—T.
[512] Raymond IV. Count of Toulouse, Duke of Bordeaux, and Marquis of Provence
(circa 1042-1105), one of the leaders of the First Crusade (1096), and one of the first
to storm the walls of Jerusalem.—T.
[513] Louis Gabriel Léonce Guilhaud de Lavergne (1809-1880), a member of the Right
in the Chamber of Deputies, became "reconciled" to the Republic, and was ultimately
elected a Life Senator in 1875.—B.
[514] Mademoiselle Honorine Gasc, the owner of an admirable voice, married Herr Ol
de Kop, Danish Consul at Bordeaux and Paris.—B.
[515] Clémence Isaure, a wealthy lady of Toulouse, who restored the Floral Games at
Toulouse in 1490, and left large sums of money to the town to provide for the expenses
of annual competitions in the art of poetry.—T.
[516] Claude Emmanuel Luillier Chapelle (1626-1686) and François Le Coigneux de
Bachaumont (1624-1702), joint authors of the Voyage and other Epicurean pieces.—T.
[517] "Ah, how happy one would be
In this fair seductive spot
If, by Sylvia ne'er forgot,
Loving to eternity,
With her he could cast his lot!"—T
[518] The Chateau Trompette has also since been destroyed.—T.
[519] Joseph Spon (1647-1685), a French Protestant antiquarian.—T.
[520] "Ah, why do they throw down those columns of the gods,
The work of the great Cæsars, a tutelary shrine?"—T.
[521] The Duchesse de Berry was imprisoned at Blaye Castle in 1833.—T.
[522] In 1797 La Harpe had published his eloquent Du Fanatisme dans la langue
révolutionnaire.—B.
[523] This poem appeared in 1814, with the title, Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi
martyr.—B.
[524] "But if they ventured all, 'twas you permitted all:
The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."—T.
[525] On the 9th of August 1797, La Harpe, then a widower and fifty-seven years of
age, married, at the instance of his friend M. Récamier, Mademoiselle de Hatte-
Longuerue, a very beautiful girl of twenty-three. Her mother, a penniless widow,
concealed from the bridegroom any repugnance that Mademoiselle de Longuerue
entertained for the match; but three weeks after the marriage the latter declared this
repugnance to be invincible, and asked for a divorce. La Harpe behaved like a gallant
gentleman and a Christian: he was unable to lend himself to the divorce, forbidden as it
was by the religious law; but he allowed it to take place, and forgave the young lady
the outcry and scandal produced by this rupture.—B.
[526] Job iv. 15, 16.—T.
[527] Dante, Inferno, xiv. 46.—B.
[528] The Abbé Jacques André Émery (1732-1811), author of the Esprit (later Pensées)
de Leibnitz, the Christianisme de Bacon, the Pensées de Descartes, and many other
works of a religious tendency.—T.
[529] Joseph Cardinal Comte Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons (1763-1839), was the half-
brother of Madame Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother. He was made Archbishop of Lyons in
1802, a cardinal and Ambassador to Rome in 1803, Grand Almoner of the Empire, a
count, and a senator in 1805. Later he refused the Archbishopric of Paris, opposed
Napoleon's wishes with regard to Pius VII. in 1810, was disgraced and sent into exile in
his diocese, where he remained till 1814. After the Emperor's abdication, he retired to
Rome, where he lived for twenty-five years, refusing to surrender his archbishopric till
the day of his death, 13 May 1839.—T.
[530] In Auvergne.—T.
[531] Talleyrand was Foreign Minister from 1796 to 1807.—T.
[532] The Abbé Pierre Étienne de Bonnevie (1761-1849), a great friend of M. and
Madame de Chateaubriand, and a very witty priest.—B.
[533] Anne Antoine Jules Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne
(1749-1830). Before returning from the Emigration, he had placed his resignation in the
hands of the Sovereign Pontiff, in accordance with the terms of the Concordat. Under
the Restoration he became a peer of France (1814), Archbishop of Toulouse (1820),
and a cardinal (1822).—B.
[534] Pope Pius VII. (vide infra, p. 220) was a Chiaramonti. This name is the Italian
equivalent for Clermont.—T.
[535] "Alps, ye have not by my hard fate been torn!
On you time leaves no sign;
The years have lightly by your brows been borne
That heavy weigh on mine.
When first across your rugged walls I passed,
Dazzled with hope's bright rays,
Like the horizon, a future, boundless, vast,
Lay spread before my gaze."
Italy at my feet, and all the world before me!"—T.
[536] Chateaubriand himself had probably not known "that" long, and had learnt it
from his young friend Jean Jacques Ampère, the only man in France who at that time
interested himself in Scandinavian matters.—B.
[537] This "Fotrad, son of Eupert," is a little far-fetched. When the author was writing
this part of his Memoirs his mind was still full of his long and learned researches
preparatory to the writing of his Études historiques and his chapters on the Franks.—B.
[538] Odet de Foix, Maréchal Vicomte de Lautrec (1485-1528), was Lieutenant-General
in Italy under Francis I., and subdued a part of the Duchy of Milan.—T.
[539] Francesco di Melzi, Duca di Lodi (1753-1826), was Vice-president of the Cisalpine
Republic, organized by General Bonaparte in 1797, which in 1802 took the name of the
Italian Republic. When, in 1805, it became the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon for its
King and Eugène de Beauharnais for its Viceroy, Melzi was appointed Grand Chancellor
and Keeper of the Seals. In 1807 he was created a duke.—B.
[540] Napoleon Charles Lucien Prince Murat (1803-1873), second son of Joachim
Murat, was born 16 May 1803. He was made a senator in 1852, and a member of the
civil family of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1853, with the title of Imperial Highness. He
was Grand Master of Freemasons from 1852 to 1862.—B.
[541] The feast of SS. Peter and Paul falls on the 29th of June.—T.
[542] St. Francis of Assisi, honoured on the 4th of October.—T.
[543] François Cacault (1743-1805), French Minister Plenipotentiary in Rome from 1801
to 1803.—B.
[544] The Chevalier Artaud de Montor, author of several works, of which the most
important is his Histoire du pape Pie VII.—B.
[545] Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti, Pope Pius VII. (1740-1823), was elected to
the Papacy in 1800. He signed the Concordat with Bonaparte in 1801, crowned him
Emperor in Paris in 1804, but excommunicated him in 1809, after the invasion of the
Papal States. Napoleon had him kidnapped and taken to Savona, and thence to
Fontainebleau, where Pope Pius was kept in captivity until 1814. On returning to his
States he had the generosity to give an asylum to the members of his persecutor's
family.—T.
[546] Ercole Cardinal Consalvi (1757-1824), Secretary of State to Pius VII., and one of
the greatest statesmen of the century. He too signed the famous Concordat, and he too
was imprisoned for some time by Napoleon. He represented the Pope at the Congress
of Vienna in 1814.—T.
[547] Charles Emanuel IV., King of Sardinia (1751-1819), succeeded his father Victor
Amedeus III. in 1796, was obliged to surrender his continental possessions to the
French Republic in 1798, and retired to Sardinia. In 1802 he abdicated and was
succeeded by his brother Victor Emanuel I. He ended his days in Rome as a Jesuit.
Charles Emanuel IV. became Heir in Line of the House of Stuart on the death of the
Cardinal of York (Henry IX.) in 1807, and appears in the Jacobite Calendars as Charles
IV. King of England.—T.
[548] The Abbé Nicolas Silvestre Guillon (1760-1847) had been chaplain, reader, and
librarian to the Princesse de Lamballe. He hid himself under the Terror and reappeared
in 1801 to publish his Recherches sur le Concordat, which caused him to be confined in
the Temple for four months. On returning from Rome he became Professor of Rhetoric
at the new University. In 1810 he was appointed to the Faculty of Theology in Paris,
and for thirty years professed sacred eloquence in that faculty, of which he ultimately
became the dean. He became chaplain to the Orleans Family in 1818, and in 1831
Louis-Philippe named him for the See of Beauvais, which, owing to a technical
misdemeanour, he was not allowed to accept. Having confessed his error, he was in the
course of the next year installed as Bishop of Morocco in partibus.—T.
[549] Marie Thérèse Princesse de Lamballe, née Princesse de Savoie-Carignan (1749-
1792), was murdered at the prison of the Force in September 1792.—T.
[550] Antoine François Philippe Dubois-Descours, Marquis de La Maisonfort (1778-
1827), had returned from the Emigration at the commencement of the Consulate, and
was arrested and confined in the island of Elba, whence he escaped to Rome. Under
the Restoration, he sat for a time in Parliament and represented France as Minister
Plenipotentiary at Florence.—B.
[551] Louis François Bertin (1766-1841), usually known as Bertin the Elder, to
distinguish him from his brother Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux, together with whom he
bought the Journal des Débats in 1799, and immeasurably improved the property. He
was deprived of it in 1811, but revived the paper in 1814, and vigorously supported the
Restoration until 1830, when he allied himself to Louis-Philippe and the new monarchy.
—T.
[552] Pierre Joseph Briot (1771-1827) opposed Bonaparte in the Council of the Five
Hundred, but nevertheless obtained his appointment as Government Commissary-
General in Elba through the influence of Lucien Bonaparte. On Napoleon's coronation as
Emperor, Briot went to Italy, and held various offices under Joseph and Joachim Murat,
Kings of Naples. He refused to accept titles or decorations from either of these
monarchs, which is probably the reason why Chateaubriand speaks of him as "the
Republican" Briot.—B.
[553] The Princesse Pauline Borghèse (1780-1825), née Bonaparte, was Napoleon's
second sister. She married General Leclerc in 1797, and shortly after his death married
Prince Camille Borghèse (1803), from whom she soon separated, leaving Italy to reside
at the Château de Neuilly. She enjoyed the title of Duchess of Guastalla from 1806 to
1814. In the latter year, she devoted herself wholly to Napoleon, accompanying him to
Elba, and placing her diamonds at his disposal. In her later years, she became
reconciled to her husband and lived with him at Florence. Pauline Borghèse was one of
the most beautiful of women of her time. She sat to Canova for a nude Venus, and was
doubtless in no way shy of "making her toilet" before Chateaubriand.—T.
[554] "I perish last and most wretched of all!"—T.
[555] "My days do not warrant the price of a sigh."—T.
[556] Madame de Sévigné's seat in Brittany.—B.
[557] This house stood near the Trinità-del-Monte, and was known by the name of the
Villa Margherita.—B.
[558] Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d'Agincourt (1730-1814), a distinguished
antiquarian and archæologist. He had been a farmer-general under Louis XV., and
amassed a huge fortune, which he devoted to study and the cultivation of the arts.
After visiting England, Holland, Germany, and Italy, he settled in Rome, in 1778, where
he became intimate with the Cardinal de Bernis and Azara, the Spanish Ambassador
and art-patron, and compiled his great work, the Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments,
depuis le IVe siècle jusqu'au XVIe, in 6 volumes folio, with 336 plates.—T.
[559] Isaias xxii. 18.—T.
[560] Barbara Juliana Baroness Krüdener (1764-1824), née von Vietinghoff-Scheel, a
famous Russian mystic, was married, when fourteen years of age, to Baron Krüdener,
Russian Ambassador in Berlin. After leading a very dissipated life, and publishing her
well-known novel, Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G. (1803), she
suddenly, in 1807, withdrew from the world, gave way to exalted devotion, and
pretended to have received from Heaven a mission for the regeneration of Christianity.
She travelled through Germany, visiting the prisons, preaching in the open air, and
converting men by the thousand. In 1814, she came into contact with the foreign
sovereigns then in Paris, exercised a great ascendant over the Emperor Alexander,
foretold to him the return of Napoleon from Elba and his ultimate fall, and inspired him
with the idea of the Holy Alliance. She next resumed her travels through Switzerland
and the various States of Germany, but her extraordinary influence began to be
dreaded, and she was expelled wherever she went. In 1822, she took refuge in the
Crimea, where she founded an institution for sinners and criminals, and died at Karasu-
Bazar on Christmas Day 1824.—T.
[561] Joseph Michaud (1767-1839), author of the Printemps d'un proscrit and a History
of the Crusades, and a member of the French Academy. In 1795, he was condemned to
death for professing Royalist opinions in his paper, the Quotidienne, but succeeded in
evading execution of the sentence, which was revoked in 1796. He was appointed Press
Censor under the Restoration.—T.
[562] The Comte Guillaume de La Luzerne, who in 1787 married Madame de
Beaumont's elder sister, Mademoiselle Victoire de Montmorin, was the nephew of the
Comte de La Luzerne, the ambassador, and son of César Henri de La Luzerne, Minister
of Marine under Louis XVI. Chateaubriand appears to have confused the two.—B.
[563] The Saint-Germains, husband (Germain Couhaillon) and wife, had been for thirty-
eight years in the service of the Montmorin family. Chateaubriand afterwards took them
into his own service, which they never left.—B.
[564] Auguste de Montmorin (d. 1793), a naval officer, had perished in a storm when
returning from the Mauritius.—B.
[565] Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), succeeded Pope Pius VII. in
1823.—T.
[566] This tomb, which faces that of the Cardinal de Bernis at San Luigi dei Francesi,
was erected by Chateaubriand himself at a cost of some nine thousand francs.—B.
[567] And not in 1827, as is given in all the earlier editions of the Memoirs.
Chateaubriand spent the whole of the year 1827 in Paris. It was not until 1828, under
the Mortignac Ministry, that he was appointed to the Embassy in Rome.—B.
[568] Greek Anthology, VII. 346.—B.
[569] M. de Fontanes' friendship goes much too far: Madame de Beaumont knew me
better; she no doubt felt that, if she had left me her fortune, I should not have
accepted it.—Author's Note.
[570] Madame de Beaumont left her books to Chateaubriand in her will, dated Paris, 15
May 1802.—B.
[571] The words italicized are in English.—T.
[572] Baron Matthieu de Staël, Madame de Staël's second son, who died while still very
young.—T.
[573] In 1802, for her opposition to Bonaparte.—T.
[574] Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), the
eminent Prussian diplomatist and philologist, and the friend and correspondent of all
the literary eminences of his time.—T.
[575] John xi. 44.—T.
[576] The Lettre à M. de Fontanes, on the Roman Campagna, is dated to January 1804,
and first appeared in the Mercure de France, in its issue of March 1804.—B.
[577] Rome, December 1803.—B.
[578] Cf. Rousseau's Confessions.—T.
[579] Gen. III. 22.—T.
[580] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835) displayed considerable
independence in the Legislative Body, of which he was a member for the Department of
the Gironde. Under the Restoration, he was Minister of the Interior from 1816 to 1818.
In 1823, he was made a viscount and a peer of France. He had become a member of
the French Academy in 1818, although he had never produced any literary work,
properly speaking.—T.
[581] Martyrs, V.—B.
[582] Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the famous sculptor. In 1819 he was sent to Paris
as a special ambassador from the Pope.—T.
[583] Now the Hôtel de France et de Lorraine, at No. 5, Rue de Beaune.—B.
[584] Not the 20th, as the previous editions and the manuscript of the Memoirs have it.
This was clearly a slip of the pen. The execution of the Duc d'Enghien took place, not
on the 20th, but on the 21st of March 1804.—B.
[585] Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834), private secretary to Napoleon
I. and Minister of State under Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 and the consequent
loss of his fortune caused him to lose his reason, and he died in a madhouse. His
Memoirs, written by himself and revised by M. de Villemarest were published in ten
volumes, 1829-1831.—T.
[586] Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, vol. V. p. 348.—B.
[587] Here again the manuscript gives the 20th of March in error.—B.
[588] Chateaubriand's letter of resignation ran as follows:

"Citizen Minister,
 "The doctors have just stated that Madame de Chateaubriand's state of health is
such as to raise fears for her life. As it is absolutely impossible for me to leave my
wife in these circumstances, or to expose her to the danger of a journey, I beg
Your Excellency to approve that I return to you the credentials and instructions
which you have sent me for the Valais. I also trust to your extreme kindness to
persuade the First Consul to accept the painful reasons which prevent me to-day
from undertaking the mission with which he was pleased to honour me. As I do not
know whether my position requires me to take any other steps, I venture to appeal
to your usual indulgence, Citizen Minister, for orders and advice; I shall receive
these with the gratitude which I shall not cease to feel for your past kindnesses.
"I have the honour to greet you respectfully,
"Chateaubriand.
"Hôtel de France, Rue de Beaune, Paris.
"1 Germinal Year XII [22 March 1804]."—B.
[589] Moreau had been arrested on the 15th of February; Pichegru on the 28th of
February; and Georges Cadoudal on the 9th of March 1804.—B.
[590] Jean Claude Clausel de Coussergues (1759-1846), a distinguished magistrate and
orator. Under the Restoration, he became a deputy and a member of the Court of
Appeal. He resigned after the Revolution of 1830.—B.
[591] Prov. VI. 17.—T.
[592] John viii. 43.—T.
[593] Talleyrand's letter did not arrive until ten days after the letter of resignation, and
was thus worded:

"12 Germinal [2 April 1804].

"Citizen,
"I have brought to the notice of the First Consul the motives which prevent you
from accepting the Legation in the Valais, to which you had been appointed.
"The Citizen Consul had been pleased to give you a proof of confidence. The same
feelings of good-will have caused him to learn with regret the reasons which do not
permit you to fulfill that mission.
"I must also express to you the great interest which I attached to the new relations
which I should have had to maintain with you; and to this regret, which is personal
to myself, I add that of seeing my department deprived of your talents and
services."—B.
 BOOK III[594]

Death of the Duc d'Enghien—The year 1804—General Hulin—The Duc de

Rovigo—M. de Talleyrand—Part played by each—Bonaparte, his sophistry
and remorse—Conclusions to be drawn from the whole story—Enmities
engendered by the death of the Duc D'Enghien—An article in the
Mercure—Change in the life of Bonaparte.

Like the migratory birds, I am seized in the month of October with a

restlessness which would oblige me to change my clime, were I still
strong on the wing and swift as the hours: the clouds flitting across the
sky make me long to flee. In order to cheat this instinct, I made for
Chantilly. I have wandered on the lawn, where old keepers crawl along
the border of the woods. Some crows, flying in front of me over broom,
coppice and glades, have led me to the Commelle Ponds. Death has
breathed upon the friends who used to accompany me to the castle of
Queen Blanche[595]: the sites of these solitudes were but a sad horizon,
half-opened for a moment on the side of my past. In the days of René, I
should have found mysteries of life in the little stream of the Thève: it
steals hidden among horse-tails and mosses; reeds screen it from sight;
it dies in the ponds which it feeds with its youth, ever expiring, ever
renewed: those ripples used to charm me when I bore within myself the
desert with the phantoms which smiled to me, for all their melancholy,
and which I decked with flowers.
Walking back along the hedges, now scarcely traced, I was surprised by
the rain; I took shelter beneath a beech: its last leaves were falling like
my years; its top was stripping itself like my head; its trunk was marked
with a red circle, to be cut down like myself. Now that I have returned to
my inn, with a harvest of autumn plants and in a mood little suited for
joy, I will tell you of the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien while within sight
of the ruins of Chantilly.
*
This death at first froze all hearts with terror; men
dreaded a return of the reign of Robespierre. Paris Protest of Louis
XVIII.
thought it was seeing again one of those days which
men do not see more than once, the day of the execution of Louis XVI.
Bonaparte's servants, friends and family were struck with consternation.
Abroad, though the language of diplomacy promptly stifled the popular
feeling, the latter none the less stirred the hearts of the crowd. In the
exiled family of the Bourbons, the blow struck through and through:
Louis XVIII. returned to the King of Spain[596] the Order of the Golden
Fleece, with which Bonaparte had just been decorated; it was
accompanied by a letter which did honour to the royal mind:

"Sir and dear Cousin,

"There can be nothing in common between me and the great
criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed on a throne which
he has had the barbarity to stain with the blood of a Bourbon, the
Duc d'Enghien. Religion may prompt me to forgive an assassin; but
the tyrant of my people must always be my enemy. Providence, for
inexplicable reasons, can condemn me to end my days in exile; but
never shall my contemporaries nor posterity be able to say that I
showed myself in time of adversity unworthy to occupy, till my last
breath, the throne of my ancestors."

We must not forget another name connected with that of the Duc
d'Enghien: Gustavus Adolphus[597], since dethroned and exiled, was the
only one of the kings then reigning who dared to raise a voice to save
the young French Prince. He dispatched an aide-de-camp from Carlsruhe
bearing a letter for Bonaparte; the letter arrived too late: the last of the
Condés was no more. Gustavus Adolphus returned the ribbon of the
Black Eagle to the King of Prussia[598], as Louis XVIII. had returned the
Golden Fleece to the King of Spain. Gustavus declared to the heir of
Frederic the Great that, "according to the laws of chivalry, he could not
consent to be the brother-in-arms of the butcher of the Duc
d'Enghien[599]." There is an inexpressibly bitter irony in these almost
mad memories of chivalry, everywhere extinct, save in the heart of an
unhappy king for a murdered friend; honour to the noble sympathies of
misfortune, which stand aloof, not understood, in a world unknown to
men!
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