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Title: The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime
Ambassador to England, Volume 4 (of 6)

Author: vicomte de François-René Chateaubriand

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

Release date: June 10, 2017 [eBook #54879]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEMOIRS OF
FRANÇOIS RENÉ VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND SOMETIME
AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND, VOLUME 4 (OF 6) ***

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.

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.
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.
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 I am made a peer of
France.
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 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.
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 The Chamber of
Peers.
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 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 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 Seizure of my
pamphlet.
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 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, 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 The Duc Decazes.
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.
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 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 Iplace.
am deprived of my
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]. 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 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 The Comte de Villèle.
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: 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 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; 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
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 Conservator.
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 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 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.
"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the
corruption of morals rather than of doctrines; license On moral interests.

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; 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 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 MurderBerry.
of the Duc de

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 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.

*
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 Fall of the Ministry.
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]."

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 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: the new Ministry.

"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 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 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 Under the Duc de
Richelieu.
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 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.

"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.
Ministerial
"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the negociations.
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 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.

[1] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised 22 February 1845.—T.
[2] "On an occurrence when the chamber, or a deputation of it, brought to Louis XVIII. some extravagant
expression of its loyalty and love of kings, the monarch observed, no one can now tell whether in sincerity or
irony, that such a chamber was introuvable, apparently impossible to find or replace. The epithet was too good
to be lost; and the Chamber of 1815 was known to its contemporaries, and will be remembered in French
history, as the Chambre introuvable" (Eyre Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.).—T.
[3] The Order nominating the Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Chamber of Peers is dated 17 August 1815.—B.
[4] 19 December 1815.—B.
[5] Edme Bonaventure Courtois (1756-1816), member of the Convention for the Department of the Aube. He
took charge of Robespierre's papers, including the will of Marie-Antoinette, after the 9 Thermidor, and

published a notable report on them in January 1795. All the papers in Courtois' possession were seized by the
police in January 1816.—T.
[6] Enjoyed by the priests who had taken wives.—B.
[7] Joseph Lebon (1769-1795), was curate of Neuville, near Arras, when the Revolution broke out. In 1792, he
was sent to the Convention, where he signalled himself by his violence. In 1793, he was sent to the Pas-de-
Calais as commissary of the Convention, established the Reign of Terror at Arras, and instituted a tribunal
which caused thousands of heads to fall in a few months. Lebon was accused by the inhabitants of Cambrai,
after the 9 Thermidor, and guillotined on the 9th of October 1795.—T.
[8] François Chabot (1759-1794) was a Capuchin friar at Rhodez at the outbreak of the Revolution. He was
successively elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, voted for all the violent and bloody
measures taken at that time, and became a leading member of the Club des Jacobins. Chabot was guillotined at
the instance of Robespierre on the 5th of April 1794—-T.
[9] Jacques Roux (d. 1794), was, in 1789, a priest of the Parish Church of St. Nicholas, and dubbed himself
Preacher to the Sans-Culottes. He was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 15th of January
1794, and committed suicide with a knife on hearing the sentence pronounced.—T.
[10] 3 April 1816.—B.
[11] This ordinance, published in the Moniteur of the 7th of September, dissolved the Chamber of 1815, which
Louis XVIII. himself had called the Undiscoverable Chamber.—B.
[12] Jean Jacques Baron Baudé (1792-1862). In his quality as editor of the Temps, he signed the protest of the
journalists against the ordinances of July 1830, and had his protest registered before notaries. Baudé was
Prefect of Police from 26 December 1830 to 25 February 1831, and allowed the mob to sack the Archbishop's
Palace and the Church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. He also sat in the Chamber of Deputies, where we shall
meet him again.—B.
[13] Nicolas François Bellart (1761-1826) had distinguished himself by defending a large number of the
victims of the Revolution. He was appointed Attorney-General by the Restoration, and was principal counsel
for the prosecution in the trial of Marshal Ney.—T.
[14] Paris: Le Normant the Elder, 1824.—B.
[15] Louis XV. was the most licentious king that ever sat on the throne of France.—T.
[16] Élie Duc Decazes (1780-1860), Prefect of Police (July 1815), Minister of the General Police (September
1815), peer of France, with the title of count (September 1816), Minister of the Interior (1818), and President of
the Council (1819). In 1820, he left office to take up the Embassy in London, with the title of duke, and
retained it till 1822. In 1834, he succeeded the Marquis de Sémonville as Grand Referendary of the Chamber of
Peers.—B.
[17] Anne Jacoby Comtesse de Balbi (circa 1758-1842), née de Caumont La Force, lady-in-waiting to the
Comtesse de Provence, later Joséphine Queen of France (1780), a favourite of the Comte de Provence, later
Louis XVIII., until the Comte d'Avaray supplanted her at Coblentz.—T.
[18] Zoé Victoire Comtesse de Cayla (1785-1852), née Talon du Boullay-Thierry, favourite to Louis XVIII.
from 1819 till the King's death in 1824.—T.
[19] Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duc de Richelieu (1585-1642), governed France without interruption
from 1623 to 1642.—T.
[20] Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) succeeded Richelieu as Prime Minister, remaining in power, with two
short intervals, until the day of his death. Each of the two cardinals, therefore, governed France for nineteen
years.—T.
[21] Murat was born near Cahors, the Duc Decazes near Libourne, both in Gascony.—T.
[22] M. Decazes had been private secretary to Madame Mère under the Empire.—B.
[23] M. Decazes had married, in 1805, a daughter of the Comte Muraire, First President of the Court of Appeal.
She died in the following year. In August 1818, he married Mademoiselle de Sainte-Aulaire, grand-daughter,

through her mother, of the last reigning Prince of Nassau-Saarbrück. In consideration of this marriage, the King
of Denmark gave him the title of duke, with the domain of Glücksbjerg.—B.
[24] Marie Princeteau (1787-1879), née Decazes, sister to the Duc Decazes, and for some time favourite of
Louis XVIII. For an obvious reason, she, Madame de Balbi and Madame de Cayla are better described as the
King's favourites than as his mistresses.—T.
[25] In an article in the Conservateur, dated 3 March 1820 (vol. VI., p. 476).—B.
[26] 20 September 1816.—B.
[27] Chateaubriand's library was sold on the 29th of April 1817 and the following days.—B.
[28] Louise Marie Adélaïde Duchesse d'Orléans (1753-1821), daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre, married to
Égalité in 1769, divorced in 1792.—T.
[29] Matthieu Jean Félicité Vicomte, later Duc de Montmorency-Laval (1767-1826), Minister of Foreign
Affairs from 1821 to 1822, a member of the French Academy (1825), and tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux (1825).
—T.
[30] The Vallée-aux-Loups is now the property of M. le Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, whose mother
was a Montmorency-Laval.—B.
[31] Jean Baptiste Guillaume Marie Anne Séraphin Joseph Comte de Villèle (1773-1854) placed himself at the
head of the Royalist Opposition in 1816. In 1820, after the fall of the Duc Decazes, he entered the Ministry
without a portfolio and, in 1821, became Minister of Finance. In 1822, he was made President of the Council,
with the title of count. He remained in power until 1828, when he made way for M. de Martignac, and was
raised to the peerage. The Comte de Villèle retired into private life after the Revolution of July.—T.
[32] Jacques Joseph Guillaume François Pierre Comte de Corbière (1766-1853) attached his political fortunes
entirely to those of Villèle. They were both ministers together: Corbière of the Interior, Villèle of Finance;
Louis XVIII. made them both counts, and Charles X. peers of France, on the same day. Both retired to the
country after the Revolution of 1830, and they died within a few months of one another.—B.
[33] Jean Pierre Piet-Tardiveau (1763-1848), member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1819 and from
1820 to 1828. He entertained the ultra-Conservative party for many years at No. 8, Rue Thérèse, where he
lived.—B.
[34] Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), dramatic author, publicist and politician. He became a member of
the French Academy in 1811. Under the Empire, he had been the head of the literary division of the newspaper
police; whereas, under the Restoration, he became an ardent "Liberal," attacking the Bourbons in the Minerve
française and the Constitutionnel. Étienne was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1820 to 1824 and
from 1827 to 1830. Louis-Philippe raised him to the peerage in 1839. The Minerve française, founded in 1818,
nine months before the Conservateur, appeared once a week, but on uncertain days: in this way, not being an
absolutely periodical publication, it escaped the censorship.—B.
[35] Louis Gabriel Ambroise Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), member of the French Academy (1816) and a
peer of France (1823), which latter dignity he resigned in 1830.—T.
[36] Abbé Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), a distinguished Royalist writer, was converted to the
democratic cause after 1830, when he attacked not only the Monarchy but the Church, which had condemned
one of his writings. He played a small part in politics in 1848, but died forgotten and was, at his own wish,
buried without religious rites.—T.
[37] The Conservateur first appeared in October 1818 and lasted until March 1820, appearing in numbers of
three printed sheets on irregular days, like the Minerve. It was, therefore, not a daily paper, and both Royalists
and Liberals in this way succeeded in avoiding the censorship, which affected only periodicals.—B.
[38] Eugène François Auguste d'Armand, Baron de Vitrolles (1774-1854). Napoleon made him a baron in 1812.
He became connected with Talleyrand and the Duc de Dalberg, tried to organize a rising in the South during the
Hundred Days, and was arrested and imprisoned. He was elected to the Chamber in 1815, and in 1816 became
one of the active agents of the personal policy of the Comte d'Artois. The latter, as Charles X., appointed him
Minister Plenipotentiary to Florence (December 1827) and a peer of France (January 1828). The fall of the

Elder Branch restored him to private life, although he was momentarily compromised in the Duchesse de
Berry's rising in the Vendée (1832), and imprisoned for a few days.—B.
[39] Marie Barthélemy Vicomte de Castelbajac (1776-1868), an enthusiastic Royalist, sat in the Chamber of
Deputies from 1819 to 1827, in which latter year he was raised to the peerage. M. de Castelbajac withdrew
completely from public life after the Revolution of July.—B.
[40] César Guillaume Cardinal de La Luzerne (1738-1821), Bishop of Langres from 1770 to 1789, created a
cardinal in 1817.—T.
[41] Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and later of England (circa 1122-1203), was married at the age of
fifteen to Louis VII. King of France, whom she accompanied to the Holy Land in 1147. Here she distinguished
herself by the levity of her conduct, so much so that, in 1152, Louis obtained a divorce and Eleanor, two years
later, married Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, soon to become Henry II. King of England. The
second marriage was no happier than the first.—T.
[42] Réflexions sur l'état intérieur de la France (22 October 1818): Conservateur, vol. I., p. 113.—B.
[43] A ci-devant marquis and ex-deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He sat as a juror in the Revolutionary
Tribunal during the trials of the Queen and of the Girondins.—B.
[44] Conservateur, vol. I., p. 466.—B.
[45] Anne Victor Denis Hubault, Marquis de Vibraye (1766-1843), was a cavalry officer at the time of the
Revolution, emigrated in 1791, and returned in 1814, when he became a colonel and aide-de-camp to Monsieur,
later Charles X. He was created a peer on the 17th of August 1815, on the same day as Chateaubriand; was
promoted to major-general in 1823; and left the Upper Chamber at the Revolution of 1830, so as not to take the
oath to the new Sovereign.—B.
[46] Alexandre Comte de Girardin (1776-1885) served with distinction under Napoleon and was by Louis
XVIII. appointed Master of the Hounds, an office which he retained till 1830. M. Émile de Girardin, the
celebrated editor of the Presse, through whom the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe were originally published, was his
illegitimate son.—B.
[47] Conservateur, vol. VI., p. 382. The article is by Chateaubriand.—B.
[48] "From the blood of our kings but a small drop escaping."—Athalie, act I., sc. 1.—T.
[49] Chateaubriand's article, dated 3 March 1820: the Conservateur, vol. VI., p. 471.—B.
[50] By the Papal Nuncio, in his congratulatory address, pronounced in the name of the Diplomatic Body.—B.
[51] By Lamartine, in his ode, the Naissance du duc de Bordeaux.—B.
[52] M. Decazes resigned on the 17th of February. The Moniteur of the 21st of February published three
Orders, signed on the preceding day: the first accepting M. Decazes' resignation, the second appointing M. le
Duc de Richelieu President of the Council, and the third conferring upon M. Decazes the title of duke and of
minister of State.—B.
[53] This is a clerical error. The Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 1820 was M. Pasquier. M. Molé, under
the Restoration, held only the office of Minister of Marine, and that at an earlier date, from 1817 to 1818.—B.
[54] The Duc Decazes was appointed Ambassador to England on the 20th of February 1820. He held that
position until the 9th of January 1822.—B.
[55] Sister to the Duc de Richelieu, and a very close friend of Chateaubriand's.—B.
[56] 20 December 1820.—B.
[57] Prosper Brugière, Baron de Barante (1782-1866), had sent in his resignation as Director-general of Indirect
Taxation, a post which at that time carried a salary of one hundred thousand francs.—B.
[58] Prince Jules de Polignac (1780-1847) had been made a peer of France in 1816, but long refused to take the
oath to the Charter, which he considered injurious to the interests of religion and the Monarchy, and did not
consent to take his seat until the Pope had raised his scruples. He was for some time Ambassador in London,

and, in August 1829, became Premier of the ill-fated Ministry which, in 1830, brought about the downfall of the
Royal House of France.—T.
[59] Chateaubriand had been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of
Berlin (Moniteur, 30th November 1820).—B.
[60] Announcing the appointment of M. de Corbière and M. de Villèle as members of the Council.—B.

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 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 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 Ambassador
Prussia.
to

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 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 A fête at Court.
Versailles, 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 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"; 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 The House of
Hohenzollern.
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
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 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, Berlin society.
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 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], 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 Frederic William III.
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 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 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 Minute-book
revelations.
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 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 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 Berlin in Winter.
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 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 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 The Duchess of
Cumberland.
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 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
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 Letters from the
Duchess.
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 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 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: Letter to the Baron
Pasquier.

"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 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. 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. Official dispatches.

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.
"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 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 A recollection of
Mirabeau.
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 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 Memorandum on
Germany.
movement of men's 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 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].
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 Baptism of the Duc
de Bordeaux.
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."

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 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 I resign the Berlin
embassy.
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 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 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 And am sent to
London.
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.

[61] This book was written in 1839 and revised in December 1846.—T.
[62] Lycurgus (circa 880 B.C.), the Spartan legislator, after making his fellow-citizens swear to make no
changes in his laws during his absence, set out on a long journey, but never returned.—T.
[63] The Battle of Jena, won by Napoleon, and of Auerstädt, a few miles distant, won by Davout on the
same day, 14 October 1806.—T.
[64] Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) lived eleven years longer, dying at Weimar at the age of 83.—T.
[65] Martin Luther (1483-1546). His monument at Wittenberg was erected in this year, 1821, of which
Chateaubriand speaks. Until then, his tomb was shown in the church of the University.—T.
[66] Maurice Adolphe Charles Vicomte de Flavigny (1799-1873). He became secretary to the Prince de
Polignac, accepted the Monarchy of July, and was raised to the peerage on the 25th of December 1841.
After the coup d'État, he rallied to the government of Louis Napoleon, and sat as a member of the
Legislative Body from 1852 to 1863, after which date he was not re-elected, owing to his support of the
Temporal Power of the Pope.—B.
[67] Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840).—T.
[68] Prince Frederic William, later Frederic William IV. King of Prussia (1795-1861) succeeded his father
in 1840.—T.
[69] Prince William, later William I. King of Prussia and German Emperor (1797-1888), Prince Charles
(1801-1883) and Prince Albert (1809-1872) of Prussia.—T.
[70] Grand-duke Nicholas, later Nicholas I. Tsar of Russia (1796-1855), had married the Princess Charlotte
of Prussia in July 1817, so that the wedding was not exactly recent. Nicholas was the third son of the Tsar
Paul I., and succeeded Alexander I. in 1825.—T.
[71] Princess Charlotte of Prussia, later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorowna of Russia (1798-1860), daughter of
Frederic William III.—T.
[72] Ernest Augustus Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, later Ernest I. King of Hanover (1771-1851),
fifth son of George III. King of Great Britain, Ireland, and Hanover, succeeded on the death of William IV.
in 1837.—T.
[73] Frederica Caroline Sophia Alexandrina Duchess of Cumberland, later Queen of Hanover (1778-1841),
daughter of Charles II. Grand-duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was married first (1793) to Prince Louis of

Prussia, who died in 1796, secondly (1799) to Prince Frederic William of Solmo-Braunfels, who divorced
her and who died in 1814, and thirdly (1815) to the Duke of Cumberland.—T.
[74] Prince Frederic William Charles of Prussia (1783-1851).—T.
[75] Prince Augustus of Prussia (1779-1843), son of Prince Ferdinand and nephew of Frederic the Great,
was taken prisoner at the Battle of Saalfeld, at which his brother, Prince Louis Ferdinand, was killed.—B.
[76] François Pascal Simon Baron Gerard (1770-1837). His portrait of Madame Récamier is Gérard's
master-piece. His Corinne improvisant au cap Misène, referred to above, is also one of his best-known
paintings.—T.
[77] Jean Pierre Frédéric Ancillon (1766-1837), a famous statesman and historian, of Huguenot descent,
was, in 1791, appointed Professor of History at the Military Academy in Berlin. Soon after, he became
pastor of the French Reformed Church in that city. In 1803, he published his Tableau des révolutions du
système politique de l'Europe, which secured his admission to the Berlin Academy. In 1836, he became
tutor to the Crown-prince, with whom he visited Paris in 1814. On his return, he entered official life and, in
1831, became Prussian Foreign Secretary.—T.
[78] Christian Günther Count von Bernstorff (1769-1835), Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs.—T.
[79] Jean Bart (1650-1702), a famous French sailor. After serving some time in the Dutch Navy, he
returned to France, when war broke out with Holland, and equipped a privateer, with which he did great
damage to the enemy. Louis XIV. thereupon gave him a commission in the Navy, then generally granted
only to nobles, and, in 1691, made him a vice-admiral. In that year, Bart burnt over eighty English ships
outside Dunkirk, and made a descent upon Newcastle, returning with an enormous booty. He fought
continuously against the Dutch and English until the Peace of Rijswijk, in 1697. Louis XIV. ennobled him
and sent for him to Court: his rough and awkward manners and brusque frankness of speech aroused the
mirth of the courtiers, and the King himself more than once went out of his way to defend him.—T.
[80] "Le bon roi Dagobert
Portrait sa culotte à l'envers," etc.:
"Our good King Dagobert
Wore his breeches front to rear," etc.—T.
[81] Elise Philippine Amalie Baroness von Hohenhausen (1789-1857), née von Ochs, a woman of letters
well-known in her day, and a regular contributor to the Morgenblatt.—T.
[82] Count David d'Alopeus (1769-1831), after being Russian Minister first to the Court of Sweden, and
later to that of Wurtemberg, in 1813 became Commissary-General to the Allied Armies. His wife, who
accompanied him to head-quarters, made herself noted for her beauty and the charms of her mind. In 1815,
the Count d'Alopeus was Governor of Lorraine for Russia. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Minister
Plenipotentiary to Berlin, where he continued till his death in 1831.—B.
[83] Mademoiselle Alexandrine d'Alopeus married Albert de La Ferronnays, a son of the Comte de La
Ferronnays, Chateaubriand's friend.—B.
[84] Princess Frederica Charlotte Mary of Wurtemberg, later Grand-duchess Helen Paulowna of Russia
(1807-1873), daughter of Prince Paul of Wurtemberg, and married, in 1824, to the Grand-duke Michael
Paulovitch, brother to the Tsar Alexander and the Grand-duke Nicholas.—B.
[85] Frederic II. Elector of Brandenburg (1413-1471), surnamed "Iron-tooth," on account of his strength;
abdicated in 1469.—T.
[86] Joachim II. Elector of Brandenburg (1505-1571), the first Lutheran Elector of Brandenburg. He died
on the 3rd of January 1571, said to have been poisoned by Lippold, a Jew at the Court of Brandenburg.—T.
[87] Lippold (d. 1571), Master of the Mint, was tortured and executed for the death of Joachim II., although
the case was never proved against him.—T.

[88] John Sigismund Elector of Brandenburg (1572-1619) added the Duchy of Prussia to his States,
through his marriage with Anne, eldest daughter of Albert Duke of Prussia, and heiress to the Duchy.—T.
[89] George William Elector of Brandenburg (1595-1640), surnamed "the Irresolute." The anecdote is taken
from Frederic the Great's Memoirs of Brandenburg.—T.
[90] Gustavus II. Adolphus King of Sweden (1594-1632).—T.
[91] Frederic William Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1648), surnamed the Great Elector, in whom began
the power of this House.—T.
[92] A quotation from Frederick the Great's Memoirs of Brandenburg.—T.
[93] Frederic III. Elector of Brandenburg, later Frederic I. King of Prussia (1657-1713). In 1701, the
Emperor Leopold, whom he had assisted against the Turks, raised his Duchy of Prussia into a kingdom.—
T.
[94] Frederic William I. King of Prussia (1688-1740), son of Frederic I.—T.
[95] Johann Paul Gundling (1673-1731), an historiographer of some merit, was the butt of the Court of
Frederic I., owing to his absurdities. He left a Life of Frederic I. and an excellent description of
Brandenburg.—T.
[96] Elizabeth Queen of Prussia (1715-1797), married to Frederic the Great in 1733—T.
[97] François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) lived at Berlin in the intimacy of Frederic the Great
from 1750 to 1753.—T.
[98] Jeanne Antoinette Lenormand d'Étioles, Marquise de Pompadour (1722-1764), née Poisson, mistress
to Louis XV. from 1744 to her death, and practical ruler of France during that period.—T.
[99] François Joachim Abbé, later Cardinal de Pierres de Bernis (1715-1794), wielded considerable power
during the time of his favour with Madame de Pompadour.—T.
[100] Louis XV. King of France (1710-1774), great-grandson of Louis XIV. and grandfather of Louis XVI.
It was during his reign that the Prussian Alliance was abandoned for the Austrian Alliance, destined to be so
disastrous to France.—T.
[101] Sophia Wilhelmina Margravine of Bayreuth (1709-1758), sister to Frederic the Great and married, in
1731, to the future Margrave of Bayreuth. Her Memoirs and Correspondence with her brother are well-
known.—T.
[102] Wilhelmina Rietz, Countess von Lichtenau (1754-1820), née Enke, daughter of a musician of the
Prussian Chapel Royal. At sixteen, she became the mistress of the Crown Prince, nephew of Frederic II.,
who married her to one of his footmen, called Rietz, and who became king in 1786 as Frederic William II.,
when he gave her the title of Countess von Lichtenau.—B.
[103] Prince Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), brother to Frederic the Great, and one of the latter's most
distinguished generals. He went to live in France in 1788, intending to spend the rest of his days there; but
the Revolution compelled him to return to Germany, and he died at Rheinsberg at the age of seventy-six.—
T.
[104] Mirabeau, Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin, ou Correspondance d'un voyageur français du 5
juillet 1786 au 19 janvier 1787 (Alençon, 1789).—T.
[105] Karl Wilhelm Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), a distinguished Prussian diplomatist and author of a
number of extremely erudite philological works.—T.
[106] Louis Charles Adélaide de Chamisso de Boncourt (1781-1835), known as Adelbert von Chamisso, a
noted German writer and naturalist, of French birth. His parents had taken him to Germany during the
Emigration, and he subsequently made Prussia his adopted country. The best known of Chamisso's
multifarious works, most of which are in German, is the world-famed Peter Schlemihl, the story of the
shadowless man.—T.

[107] Chamisso's two elder brothers (not his uncles), Hippolyte and Charles, were with Louis XVI. on the
10th of August 1792. Charles was wounded, while defending the King, and was saved by a man of the
people. Shortly afterwards, he received a sword that had been worn by the unfortunate monarch, with a
note thus worded:

"I commend to my brothers M. de Chamisso, one of my faithful servants; he has often exposed his life
for me.
"Louis."—T.

[108] I here omit a quotation of some thirty-two lines of verse of Chamisso's.—T.
[109] Nikolai Count Romanzoff (1754-1826), Russian Chancellor previous to 1812, and a considerable
patron of science.—T.
[110] Captain Otto von Kotzebue (1787-1846) of the Russian Navy, son of Kotzebue the German writer,
discovered the Kotzebue Straits, on the north-east coast of America, in 1816. The expedition lasted three
years, from 1815 to 1818.—T.
[111] Louisa Augusta Wilhelmina Amelia Queen of Prussia (1776-1810), daughter of the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, married to the Hereditary Prince of Prussia, later King Frederic William III., in 1793.
—T.
[112] Princess William of Prussia (1785-1846), formerly Princess Amelia Marianne of Hesse-Homburg,
sister-in-law to the King.—B.
[113] Caroline, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, formerly Princess Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt.—T.
[114] Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868) had produced some twenty operas prior to 1823.—T.
[115] Christopher Gluck (1712-1787), the great classical operatic composer.—T.
[116] Johann Friedrich Christopher Schiller (1759-1805). His tragedy of Joan of Arc, or, rather, the
Jungfrau von Orleans, appeared in 1802.—T.
[117] Gaspardo Spontini (1778-1851), a native of the Papal States, made his first great success with the
Vestal in 1807, at which time he was musical director to the Empress Joséphine. In 1810, he became
manager of the Théâtre Italien in Paris and, in 1820, manager of the Berlin Opera. On the death of Frederic
William, in 1842, he returned to Paris, where he had been elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in
1839.—T.
[118] Sébastian Érard (1752-1831), the famous pianoforte manufacturer. He was born at Strasburg, went to
Paris in 1768 and, after a stay of some years in London, settled finally in Paris in 1812. Érard perfected the
modern piano, organ and harp.—T.
[119] Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) fulfilled a number of political missions before 1300, when he was made
a Florentine magistrate.—T.
[120] Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) spent his life between poetry and public affairs. In 1512, he was sent
on a mission from the Duke of Ferrara to Pope Julius II.; in 1521, he was sent to suppress the bands of
brigands infesting one of the provinces, and so on.—T.
[121] John Milton (1608-1674) was secretary-interpreter for the Latin tongue to the Privy Council under
the Commonwealth and, subsequently, private secretary to the Protector Cromwell.—T.
[122] Charles de Lameth had made himself ridiculous in 1790, in his capacity as a member of the
Committee of Inspection of the Constituent Assembly, by leading a nocturnal expedition against the
convent of the Nuns of the Annunciation at Pontoise, in order to look for M. de Barentin, brother of the
Abbess. The Marquis de Bonnay, Chateaubriand's predecessor in Berlin, wrote on this occasion an heroi-
comical poem of the wittiest description, entitled the Prise des Annonciades.—B.
[123] Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau (1638-1720), a great favourite with Louis XIV., thanks
originally to his skill at cards. He accompanied the king as aide-de-camp in all his campaigns. Dangeau had

a great reputation for wit and learning, and, although he had published nothing, was admitted a member of
the French Academy in 1668. He left manuscript Memoirs from which extracts were published by Voltaire
(1770), Madame de Genlis (1817) and Lemontey (1818); but the whole, entitled Journal de la cour de
Louis XIV., first appeared in 1858.—T.
[124] Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (circa 1619—circa 1700) left Memoirs which were first published by
M. Monmerqué in 1834, under the title of Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, forming a crowd of curious
and cynical anecdotes.—T.
[125] Karl August Prince von Hardenberg (1750-1822), born in Hanover, entered the Prussian service in
1790, and became Foreign Minister in 1806, and State Chancellor in 1810. He signed the Treaty of Paris in
1814, in which year the King of Prussia made him a prince, and took part as plenipotentiary in all the
important congresses of the time.
[126] David Friedrich Koreff (1783-1851), a famous German doctor, for some time secretary to Prince von
Hardenberg.—B.
[127] Hyacinthe Pilorge, Chateaubriand's secretary.—B.
[128] Karl Ludwig Sand (1795-1819), a student of the University of Jena, who had assassinated August von
Kotzebue, the famous writer, on the 23rd of March 1819, at Mannheim. Kotzebue was regarded as the tool
of absolutism by Young Germany. He was the father of the Captain Otto von Kotzebue mentioned above in
connection with Chamisso.—B.
[129] Prince George of Cumberland, late George V. King of Hanover (1819-1878), succeeded to the throne
of Hanover in 1851. In 1866, his kingdom was annexed by Prussia. King George, who was totally blind,
married, in 1843, the Princess Mary of Saxe-Altenburg. Her Majesty is still living (1902) at Gmunden, in
Upper Austria.—T.
[130] Victoria Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India (1819-1901), the last sovereign of the
house of Brunswick-Lüneburg, succeeded to the throne in 1837 and, in 1840, married Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who died in 1861.—T.
[131] 19 April 1821. Chateaubriand had gone to Paris to attend the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux.—B.
[132] George.—Author's Note.
[133] George IV. King of Great Britain and Ireland (1762-1830) was crowned on the 19th of July 1821.
Queen Louise of Prussia died on the 19th of July 1810.—B.
[134] The Queen of Prussia.—Author's Note.
[135] Napoleon died on the 5th of March 1821.—T.
[136] Eginhard (d. circa 839), secretary to Charlemagne: the reference is to his more or less legendary
adventures with Charlemagne's daughter Emma, whose hand Eginhard is supposed to have obtained. The
family of the Counts of Erbach claim to be descended from Emma and Eginhard.—T.
[137] Queen Frederica of Hanover died in July 1841; Chateaubriand lived until the 4th of July 1848.—T.
[138] 14 December 1822.—B.
[139] A military revolution had broken out in Naples on the 2nd of July 1820. The army had been won over
by the Carbonari, a vast secret society which covered a large part of Italy with its network. General Pepe
had obliged Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies to proclaim a constitution modelled on that which the
Revolutionaries had lately established in Spain. The Austrians entered Naples on the 23rd of March 1821.
The principal actors in the movement took refuge on foreign ships. The Parliament broke up, and the
supreme council of the Carbonari pronounced its own dissolution. Ferdinand I., who had been forced to
leave his capital on the 10th of December 1820, entered it again on the 15th of May 1821.—B.
[140] Ferdinand VII. King of Spain (1784-1833) had been compelled to grant a Constitution to his subjects
in 1820, but revoked it, with the material aid of the King of France, in 1823. It was owing to Ferdinand's
unconstitutional repeal of the Salic Law, without the consent of the Cortes, that the present Alphonsist

Branch occupies the throne of Spain, to the prejudice of the Legitimist, or Carlist, Branch, and as the result
of a long series of bloody civil wars.—T.
[141] John VI. King of Portugal and Brazil (1767-1826) was proclaimed Regent of Portugal in 1792, when
his mother, Mary I., became insane. In 1807, attacked by the French, he withdrew with the Royal Family to
the Colony of Brazil, which he raised to a kingdom. In 1816, on the death of his mother, he was proclaimed
King of Portugal, but did not return to Europe until 1821. On his arrival, he found himself obliged to accept
a Constitution, which he abolished two years later. Meanwhile, Brazil had declared her independence
(1822) and proclaimed John's son, Peter I. (IV. of Portugal), Emperor. Civil wars, curiously similar in their
origin to those in Spain, broke out in Portugal soon after his death, in 1826.—T.
[142] Troubles broke out in Piedmont so soon as the Neapolitan revolution had died away. On the 10th of
March, the garrison at Alessandria mutinied. Turin, Pinerolo and Ivrea followed suit. On the 13th, King
Victor Emmanuel I. abdicated in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. In the absence of the latter he gave
the regency to Charles Albert, the King's cousin, who promptly proclaimed the constitution of the Spanish
Cortes, but, at the end of a few days (21 March), he was obliged to fall back before the Austrian
intervention. The conspirators of Alessandria and the Italian "federates" were dispersed at Novara, and the
victorious army entered Turin on the 10th of April. Victor Emmanuel maintained his abdication and Charles
Felix restored the old government.—B.
[143] He gave bold advice which was disregarded at Versailles.—Author's Note.
[144] Max Jose Garnerin, Count von Montgelas (1759-1838), the favourite minister of Maximilian I. King
of Bavaria, under whom he held successively pretty well all the great departments of State.—T.
[145] William IX. Landgrave, later William I. Elector of Hesse-Cassel (1743-1821), a field-marshal in the
Prussian service, reigning Count of Hanau (1764) and Landgrave of Hesse (1785). He entered into the
coalition against France in 1792, went through the campaign of 1793, and concluded a treaty of peace with
the Republic in 1795. In 1803, he changed his title of Landgrave for that of Elector, but after the battle of
Jena (1806) he was deprived of his sovereignty, which he did not recover till 1813. He died in 1821. The
Landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel was absorbed into Prussia in 1866.—T.
[146] Jerome Bonaparte became King of Westphalia, a State specially created for him, with Cassel as its
capital, in 1807.—T.
[147] The Palace of Charlottenburg was built by Sophia Charlotte, wife of Frederic I. King of Prussia, in
1706. Windsor Castle was built by the Norman sovereigns from William I. to Edward III.; the palace at
Aranjuez was begun under Philip II., from designs by Juan de Herrera; the palace at Caserta was built, in
1752, by Charles IV. King of the Two Sicilies, and III. of Spain: the castle is very old; the Palace of
Fontainebleau, in 999, by Robert II. King of France: it was successively enlarged and embellished by
Francis I., Henry II., Henry IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon I. and Louis-Philippe.—T.
[148] I omit these lines.—T.
[149] "Paris, 28 April. M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Minister Plenipotentiary of France in Berlin,
arrived in Paris on the day before yesterday" (Moniteur, 29 April 1821).—B.
[150] Vide the incident of the Bordeaux market-women, supra, p. 24.—T.
[151] The baptism took place at Notre Dame on the 1st of May 1821. Chateaubriand was restored to the list
of ministers of State, Messieurs de Blacas and de Montesquieu were created dukes and numerous
promotions were made in the several Orders.—B.
[152] Villèle and Corbière resigned on the 27th of July 1821, on the question of the censorship.—B.
[153] Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1763-1845), politician and philosopher, was President of the Commission
of Public Instruction in 1816, resigned this office in 1820, when the Ultra-Royalist Party had won the day,
opposed the reactionary measures in the Chamber of Deputies and, in 1828, became President of the
Chamber. Royer-Collard held no office after 1830. He was elected a member of the French Academy in
1827.—T.

[154] The Princess Frederica, Queen of Hanover, has just succumbed after a long illness: death is always
present in the "Note" at the end of my text!—Author's Note (Paris, July 1841).
[155] The other ministers were: the Duc de Bellune, War; M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, Navy; M. de
Peyronnet, Justice; M. de Lauriston, the Royal Household.—B.

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.
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 The Marquess of
Londonderry.
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.'

"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 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 The Eastern
question.
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.
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."
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? Our bold diplomacy.
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 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 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 Dinners.
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 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.?
"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.
London society.
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].
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 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 English frivolity.
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 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.

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. Death of the Duc de
Richelieu.
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 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.
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 George IV.

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 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:
"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 Earl of
Liverpool.
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.
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 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: Dispatch on
Spanish affairs.

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:

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; 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 Letter from M. de
addressed myself to M. de Villèle, then my friend, who Villèle.
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, 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 Death of Lord
afternoon. Londonberry.

"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.
"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."
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 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, Details of the
suicide.
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.

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 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 Plenipotentiary at
Verona.
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 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, 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 Changes in
England.
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.
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 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 Memories of Lady
Sutton.
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 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 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."
Dismissed from
"This minute, if they like," I used to reply. office.

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 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.
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 Effects of my fall.
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.
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,
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 Comments in the
Débuts.
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."

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 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."

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 Letter from La
Chateaubriand Ferronays.

"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 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."

"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 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 Death of Louis
XVIII.
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 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!'
That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at
Rheims, sang to me returning from my walk. At Rheims.

"'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]?
"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:

"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, Coronation of
Charles X.
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 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."

[156] This book was written in 1839 and revised in December 1846.—T.
[157] Joseph Planta (1787-1847) was secretary to Lord Londonderry for many years. From 1827 to
1830, he was one of the joint secretaries of the Treasury and, in 1834, was made a Privy Councillor.

He sat as M. P. for Hastings, almost without interruption, from 1827 to 1844.—T.
[158] Amelia Anne Marchioness of Londonderry (1772-1829), née Hobart, daughter and co-heiress
of John Hobart, second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and married to the Marquess of Londonderry in
1794.—T.
[159] The Vicomte Mathieu de Montmorency, Minister of Foreign Affairs.—B.
[160] Édouard Duc de Fitz-James (1776-1838), descended from James II. through the Duke of
Berwick. He was created a peer of France in 1814, and sent in his resignation when the bill was
passed suppressing the heredity of the peerage (28th December 1831). From 1835 till his death, he
sat in the Chamber of Deputies, as a member of the Right, and distinguished himself by the
eloquence of his speeches.—B.
[161] George Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), known as Beau Brummell. The story, as generally told,
runs that the Prince Regent ordered "Mr. Brummell's carriage."—T.
[162] Prince Paul Anton von Esterhazy von Galantha (1786-1866), Austrian Minister to Dresden
(1810), Ambassador to Rome (1814) and to London from 1815 to 1818 and 1830 to 1848. He was
Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs for a short time in 1848.—T.
[163] See one of my dispatches from Berlin.—Author's Note.
[164] Lord John Russell, later first Earl Russell (1792-1878). The terms of his motion were "that the
present state of representation of the people in parliament requires the most serious consideration of
the House." The motion was lost by a majority of 105. Lord John Russell introduced his Reform Bill
in 1831, and was Home Secretary (1835-1839), Secretary for War and the Colonies (1839-1841),
Prime Minister (1846-1852), Foreign Secretary and later President of the Council (1852-1855),
Colonial Secretary (1855), Foreign Secretary (1859-1865), and again Prime Minister (1865-1866).
He was created an earl in 1861.—T.
[165] Chateaubriand appears here to confuse the Houses of Lords and Commons; probably, in any
case, his memory betrays him.—T.
[166] John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), called to the Bar in 1776, King's Counsel in 1783,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1793, a peer in 1799, Lord Chancellor from 1801 to 1827.
Eldon was a violent Tory and vehemently opposed to the Catholic Emancipation Bill.—T.
[167] Christopher Magnay, Lord Mayor of London from 1821 to 1822, would appear to have been
Chateaubriand's host on this occasion.—T.
[168] Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1777-1836), head of all the Rothschild houses, with the
exception of that at Frankfort. The dinner in question, Lord Rothschild informs me, must have taken
place at the business-house in New Court, St. Swithin's Lane, where, on a foreign post night
(Tuesdays and Fridays), it was Baron Rothschild's custom to remain in the city until midnight and
frequently to give dinner-parties.—T.
[169] Baron Salomon Mayer de Rothschild (1774-1855), head of the Vienna branch of the house of
Rothschild. He and his four brothers, Anselm, Nathan, Charles and James, were created barons of the
Austrian Empire in 1822.—T.
[170] Richard Charles Francis Meade, third Earl of Clanwilliam (1795-1879), son of Richard Meade,
second Earl of Clanwilliam, and Caroline, daughter of Joseph Count Thun. Lord Clanwilliam was
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1822, British Ambassador to Berlin (1823-1828) and a Grand
Cross of Hanover.—T.
[171] Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond (1734 or 1735-1806), Ambassador to Paris (1765),
Principal Secretary of State (1766), Master-general of the Ordnance (1782) and a knight of the

Garter.—T.
[172] A famous political and allegorical satire of the reign of Henry III., attributed to Thomas Artus,
Sire d'Embly. It was published without date of place or time, but was reprinted in the fourth volume
of the Journal de Henri III. (1744).—T.
[173] Gillion Gaspard Alfred de Grimaud, Comte d'Orsay (1801-1852), long a leader of society in
London and Paris, and noted for his intimacy with the Countess of Blessington. In 1827, he married
Lady Harriet Gardiner, daughter of Lord Blessington by his first wife. She soon left him, and Lady
Blessington, who was then a widow, took up her abode with him at Gore House. D'Orsay became
bankrupt in 1849 and, to escape arrest, fled, on the 1st of April, to Paris, where Lady Blessington
followed him in a fortnight. She died, suddenly, about a month after.—T.
[174] Anna Duchesse de Guiche (1803-1882), née de Grimaud d'Orsay.—T.
[175] Dorothea Christophorowna Countess, later Princess de Lieven (1785-1855), née von
Blenkendorf. She was much sought after by the statesmen of her time: Castlereagh, Canning,
Metternich were her friends; Lord Grey wrote to her every morning from his bed. She has been said
to have had an intrigue with George IV. In Paris, where she settled after her husband's death, she
became the Egeria of M. Guizot.—B.
[176] Éléonore Marquise d'Osmond, née Dillon, wife of René Eustache Marquis d'Osmond, who was
French Ambassador to London from 1814 to 1819.—T.
[177] General Christopher Andreiëvitch Count, later Prince de Lieven (d. 1839), Minister
Plenipotentiary to Berlin (1810-1812), and Ambassador to London (1812-1834), Governor to the
Tsarevitch, later Tsar Alexander II. (1834-1839).—T.
[178] Madame de Lieven migrated to Paris after the death of her husband in 1839.—T.
[179] Guizot made it a rule of his life to call daily on Madame de Lieven in Paris.—B.
[180] Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset (1775-1855).—T.
[181] Louis-Philippe appointed Marshal Soult, on the 23rd of April 1838, Ambassador Extraordinary
to England for the coronation of Queen Victoria. The population of London accorded the marshal an
enthusiastic reception, and he was lionized wherever he went. The coronation of Victoria took place
on the 20th of June 1838.—B.
[182] Antipater (d. 319 B.C.), a Macedonian general, acted as Viceroy of Macedon and Greece
during Alexander's absence, governed for some time after Alexander's death, defeated the Athenians
at Cranon, and had just been appointed regent during the minority of Alexander's children when he
himself died.—T.
[183] Antigonus (circa 382 B.C.—301 B.C.), surnamed Cyclops, another of Alexander's captains,
who shared the latter's empire after his death, and for six years called himself King of Asia, until
overthrown and slain at the Battle of Ipsus.—T.
[184] Seleucus I. Nicator(354 B.C.—281 B.C.), one of Alexander's best officers, proclaimed King of
Syria, and finally of Macedon, Thrace and Asia Minor. He was killed by Ptolemy II. Ceraunus in 281
B.C.—T.
[185] Antiochus I. King of Syria (circa 323 B.C.—261 B.C.), surnamed Soter, son of Seleucus
Nicator, whom he succeeded.—T.
[186] Ptolemy I. King of Egypt (d. 283 B.C.), also surnamed Soter, another of Alexander's officers,
received Egypt as his share of the Macedonian Empire and assumed the title of King in 308 B.C.—T.
[187] Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the Italian sculptor, long protected by Napoleon.—T.

[188] Frederick Duke of York, titular Bishop of Osnaburg (1763-1827), second son, and one of the
most scandalous, of George III.—T.
[189] On quitting office, the Duc de Richelieu had intended to make a journey to Vienna and Odessa
in the spring of 1822. Before leaving, he went to spend some time at the Château de Courteille, with
his wife and mother-in-law. There he was taken ill; and hastened back to Paris, where he had scarcely
arrived when he was attacked by a congestion of the brain. He died on the 17th of May 1822, at the
age of fifty-five years and eight months.—B.
[190] Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Marquess of Lansdowne (1780-1863), Chancellor of the
Exchequer (1806-1807), Home Secretary (1827-1828), Lord President of the Council (1830-1834
and 1846-1852), a member of the Cabinet (1852-1858), and a knight of the Garter.—T.
[191] Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), née Kemble, the famous actress, was 67, not 73, years of age in
1822. She made her first appearance in 1782, her last in 1812. Lady Macbeth was her greatest part.—
T.
[192] Antoine Louis Marie de Gramont, Duc de Guiche (1755-1836), had served in the Bodyguard,
as Captain Gramont, before the Revolution. On the Restoration, he was created a peer of France. The
Duc de Guiche consented to take the oath to the Government of July and remained in the Upper
Chamber till his death.—B.
[193] Madame la Duchesse de Guiche was a daughter of the Duchesse de Polignac.—B.
[194] Charlotte Marie Antoinette Léontine Vicomtesse de Noailles (1791-1851), née de Noailles-
Mouchy, married, in 1809, to her cousin Alfred Louis Dominique Vincent de Paule Vicomte de
Noailles, who was killed at the Battle of the Beresina in 1812.—B.
[195] James de Rothschild (1792-1868), youngest son of Mayer Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, and
created a baron of the Austrian Empire in 1822.—T.
[196] John Russell, sixth Duke of Bedford (1766-1839), Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1806-1807), and
a knight of the Garter (1830).—T.
[197] Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
(1776-1839), created a knight of the Garter (1820) and a duke (1822) by George IV.—T.
[198] Christian Prince, later Christian VIII. King of Denmark and, de jure, of Norway (1786-1848),
succeeded to the throne of Denmark on the death of his cousin, Frederic VI., in 1839. In 1814, when
Norway was ceded to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, he was proclaimed King of the former country,
with the title of Christian I., by the Norwegians, who refused to accept the union with Sweden (May
1814). Unable to maintain his position against the Swedes, he relinquished the crown (October
1814). His son, Frederic VII., was the last Danish Sovereign of the House of Oldenburg.—T.
[199] Caroline Amelia Princess, later Queen of Denmark (1796-1881), daughter of Frederic Christian
Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.—T.
[200] Cathérine Henriette Marquise de Verneuil (1583-1633), née de Balzac d'Entragues, mistress to
Henry IV. King of France, after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrées.—T.
[201] Françoise Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), née d'Aubigné, mistress to Louis XIV., to
whom she was married in 1684 or 1685.—T.
[202] Anne Marie Princesse des Ursins (circa 1643-1722), née de La Trémoïlle, married first to the
Prince de Talleyrand-Chalais, secondly to the Duca di Bracciano-Orsini, or des Ursins, for many
years the influential favourite of Philip V. King of Spain and his first Queen.—T.
[203] Dudley Ryder, first Earl of Harrowby (1762-1847), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
(1804) and Lord President of the Council (1812-1827).—T.

[204] Sir Robert Peel, second Baronet (1788-1850), Under-secretary for the Colonies (1810), Chief
Secretary for Ireland (1812), Home Secretary (1828), First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister
(1834-1835 and 1841-1846). Peel died on the 2nd of July 1850, through a fall from his horse while
riding in Hyde Park.—T.
[205] John Fane, tenth Earl of Westmorland (1759-1841), Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1790-1795),
Master of the Horse (1795-1798), Lord Privy Seal (1798-1827) and a knight of the Garter (1793).—
T.
[206] Henry Bathurst, third Earl Bathurst (1762-1834), President of the Board of Trade (1807-1812),
Secretary for War and the Colonies (1812-1827), President of the Council (1828-1830) and a knight
of the Garter (1817).—T.
[207] Allen Bathurst, first Earl Bathurst (1684-1775), the friend of Pope, Swift, Prior, Congreve and
Sterne, and grandfather to the third Earl Bathurst.—T.
[208] STERNE, Letters from Yorick to Eliza, Letter III.—T.
[209] Lord Bathurst had two daughters, Lady Louisa Georgiana Bathurst, who died unmarried in
1874, and Lady Emily Charlotte Bathurst, who married in 1825 Major-General the Hon. Sir
Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, K.C.B., and died in 1877.—T.
[210] Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool (1770-1828), Foreign Secretary (1801-
1804), Home Secretary (1804-1806 and 1807), Secretary for War (1809), Prime Minister (1812-
1827), and a knight of the Garter (1814).—T.
[211] Charles Jenkinson, first Earl of Liverpool (1727-1808), Secretary for War (1778), Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster (1786-1802), Earl of Liverpool and Baron Hawkesbury (1796).—T.
[212] John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713-1792), Secretary of State (1761), Prime Minister (1761-
1762), a knight of the Garter, and an exceedingly unpopular minister.—T.
[213] John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) was Secretary to the Admiralty from 1808 to 1830.—T.
[214] Sir William A'Court, second Baronet, later first Lord Heytesbury (1779-1860), Envoy
Extraordinary to the Barbary States (1813), to Naples (1814), to Spain (1822), Ambassador to
Portugal (1824), and to Russia (1828-1832). He was created Baron Heytesbury in 1828, and served
as Viceroy of Ireland (1844-1846) and, later, as Governor of the Isle of Wight.—T.
[215] A jockey, or groom.—Author's Note.
[216] Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), Comptroller-general of Finance under Louis XIV.,
increased the prosperity of France in a brilliant manner. At the same time he amassed a private
fortune, amounting to some ten millions of francs, and, at his death, the populace, seeing in this
fortune a proof of depredation, insulted his coffin.—T.
[217] I can find no record of any insult being offered at the funeral of Louis XIV. The obsequies of
Louis XV., on the other hand, were certainly disturbed by riotous conduct on the part of the mob.—T.
[218] Sir Charles Stuart, later first Lord Stuart de Rothesay (1779-1845), Envoy to Portugal (1810),
where he was created Count of Machico and Marquis of Angra, Minister at the Hague (1815-1816),
Ambassador to Paris (1815-1830), raised to the peerage (1828), and Ambassador to St. Petersburg
(1841-1845).—T.
[219] 25 August.—T.
[220] Victor Louis Charles de Riquet de Caraman, Marquis, later Duc de Caraman (1762-1839),
created a peer of France in 1815 and appointed Ambassador to Vienna in 1816. In 1830, he rallied to
the government that issued from the Revolution of July.—B.

[221] Charles Grey, second Earl Grey (1764-1845), First Lord of the Admiralty (1806), Foreign
Secretary (1806-1807), First Lord of the Admiralty and Prime Minister (1830-1834), and a knight of
the Garter. Lord Grey passed the first Reform Bill in 1832.—T.
[222] Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), leader of the agitation in favour of Catholic emancipation
(passed 1829), was elected to Parliament as member for Clare in 1828. He became leader of the
Repeal Movement in 1840. It is interesting here to note that M. Biré speaks of Daniel O'Connell as
an "admirable orator, an ardent patriot, a fervent Catholic: the Irish Liberator will be remembered as
one of the greatest figures of this century."—T.
[223] William III., Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of England (1650-1702).—T.
[224] Plato (429 or 430 B.C.—347 or 348 B.C.) often discoursed to his disciples on Cape Sunium,
now Cape Colonna, which forms the south-eastern extremity of the Attic Peninsula. Minerva had a
temple there, of which nineteen columns are still standing.—T.
[225] Epimenides (596 B.C.—538 B.C.), a pious Cretan, fabulously said to have slept for fifty years
in a cave, to have lived three hundred years, etc.—T.
[226] Congrès de Vérone, Guerre d'Espagne, Négociations, Colonies espagnoles. Paris: Delloye,
1838. Two volumes, 8vo.—B.
[227] Alphonse Valentin Vaysse, Comte de Rainneville (1798-1864), was in 1824 chief of a
department at the Ministry of Finance and one of M. de Villèle's ablest assistants. He sat in the
Chamber of Deputies from 1846 to 1848, and retired from political life at the Revolution of February.
—B.
[228] The phrase here reported by Chateaubriand was used, not by M. de Corbière, but by the Baron
de Damas, Minister for War. Cf. the Mémoires du Comte de Villèle.—B.
[229] Major-General Louis Justin Marie Marquis de Talaru (1769-1850), Ambassador to Madrid, in
1824, and a peer of France.—B.
[230] François Joseph Maximilien Gérard Comte de Rayneval (1778-1836), Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary to Berlin, in 1824, and, subsequently, Ambassador to Vienna and, under
Louis-Philippe, to Madrid.—T.
[231] Chevalier de Bourgoing, First Secretary, and M. Adolphe Billecocq, Second Secretary of
Legation in 1824.—T.
[232] Ambassador to Vienna in 1824.—T.
[233] Ambassador to Lisbon in 1824.—T.
[234] French Secretary of Legation at the Hague in 1824.—T.
[235] One year later, on the 3rd of July 1825, Hyde de Neuville, in his turn, informed his friend
Chateaubriand that his embassy had been taken from him:

"My noble friend,
"You announced to me your departure from the ministry. I, in my turn, inform you that I am no
longer ambassador.
"They strike me because I have followed you. So much the better, that will rivet our bonds of
friendship; praise God and bless the King!
"The King can do wrong.
"Entirely yours,

"Hyde de Neuville."

He received the following reply:

"Bravo, my dear friend; let them blame men like you, and they will not go far. I cannot offer
you, in quarterly payments, the five thousand francs which you had placed at my disposal; but I
have still a few china plates at your service, and if you want them we will sell them.
"Poor France!
"Yours more than ever,
"Chateaubriand."—B.
[236] Ambassador to Naples in 1824.—T.
[237] Ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1824.—T.
[238] The Chevalier de Fontenay, First Secretary of Embassy in St. Petersburg in 1824.—T.
[239] The Vicomte de Pontcarré, Third Secretary of Embassy in St. Petersburg in 1824.—T.
[240] 16 September 1824.—T.
[241] 29 May 1825.—T.
[242] George Keith, tenth Earl Marischal (circa 1693-1778), was sentenced to death for taking up
arms for the Chevalier in 1715, took refuge in Spain, whence he commanded the Spanish expedition,
was defeated at Glenshiel in 1719, and again fled to Prussia. Frederic II. appointed him Ambassador
to Paris in 1751, and Governor of Neuchâtel in 1752. Here, in 1762, he gave his protection to
Rousseau. He is generally known on the continent as Milord Maréchal.—T.
[243] "An earthenware cooking-pot, without feet, in which meat is noiselessly cooked, over a stove,
the French Huguenots being said to have taken this precaution to avoid scandal on days when flesh-
meat was forbidden" (Littré).—B.
[244] The County of Neuchâtel passed in 1707, on the death of Marie Duchesse de Nemours, the last
of the Longuevilles, to Frederic I. King of Prussia, to whom it was guaranteed by the Peace of
Utrecht in 1713. In 1806, Napoleon seized it and erected it into a principality for Marshal Berthier; in
1815, it returned to Prussia, while remaining a Swiss canton. Neuchâtel declared its independence in
1848; this independence was recognised by Prussia in 1857.—T.
[245] Isabelle Agnès de Sainte-Hyacinthe de Charrière (1745-1805), née van Tuyll, author, under the
pseudonym of the Abbé de La Tour, of the Lettres Neuchâteloises (1784), Caliste, ou Lettres écrites
de Lausanne (1786), etc.—T.
[246] Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), the eminent French critic. His appreciation of
Madame de Charrière occurs in his Portraits de femmes, published in 1844.—T.
[247] Characters in the Lettres Neuchâteloises.—B.
[248] Louis Fauche-Borel (1762-1829), a Neuchâtel printer and Royalist agent. He devoted himself
to the cause of the Bourbons and was repeatedly imprisoned under the Directorate and Consulate. He
met with nothing but ingratitude from the Restoration and returned to Neuchâtel, where he lived in
penury and at last put an end to his life in the manner stated by Chateaubriand.—T.
[249] Louis Comte de Pourtalès (1773-1848), Governor of Neuchâtel.—B.
[250] Clovis King of the Franks (465-511), founder of the French Monarchy, embraced Christianity
and was baptised and crowned at Rheims at the hands of St. Remy, in 496.—T.

[251] Charles VII. King of France (1403-1461), surnamed the Victorious, defeated the English with
the aid of Joan of Arc in 1429, and was crowned at Rheims in the same year.—T.
[252] Joan of Arc (1410-1431) was present at the coronation of Charles VII. on the 17th of July 1429.
She was subsequently captured by the English and burned by them at the stake, on the 30th of May
1431, at Rouen.—T.
[253] "I have come from my country
No taller than a boot,
With-a mi, with-a mi,
With-a my marmot."—T.
[254] "Ah, what will they say from the dust of the grave.
The generous spirits of sovereigns brave?
What will Pharamond say, Clodion and Clovis,
Our Pepins, our Martels, our Charleses and Louis,
Who by blood and by peril, a warrior band,
Have acquired for their sons such a beautiful land?"—T.
[255] Pepin King of the Franks (d. 768), surnamed the Short, founder of the Second or Carlovingian
Dynasty.—T.
[256] 28 May 1825.—T.
[257] Charles Louis Huguet, Marquis de Sémonville (1754-1839), had been sent to Constantinople as
Ambassador by the Republic, was arrested by the Austrian Government on his way to his embassy
(1793) and was, in 1795, exchanged, together with other members of the Convention, against the
daughter of Louis XVI. He declared for Bonaparte and was employed by him; and, in 1814, was
appointed Grand Referendary by Louis XVIII. Sémonville retained the functions under Charles X.
and also under Louis-Philippe, resigning them in 1834, when he had completed his eightieth year.—
T.
[258] Hyacinthe de Quélen, Archbishop of Paris (1778-1839), a member of the French Academy, had
received his see in 1821. Monseigneur de Quélen was a man of saintly and charitable life, refused to
acknowledge the Government of July, and suffered through the furious riot of 1831, when the
Archbishop's Palace was wrecked.—T.
[259] Chateaubriand was a Knight Commander of the Holy Ghost and a Knight Grand Cross of the
Legion of Honour; Villèle a Knight Commander of the Holy Ghost and a Knight Grand Cross of St.
Louis.—T.
[260] Adalbéron, Archbishop of Rheims (d. 988) and Chancellor of France under Lothair and Louis
V., officiated at the coronation of Hugh Capet, in 987, and was raised by him to the position of Lord
High Chancellor.—T.
[261] Jean Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux (d. 1570), author of the Chronicon de regibus Francorum
(1545).—T.

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 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.
"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 My polemical
dangerous war in presence of the liberty of the press, warfare.
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 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, 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 I refuse my
pension.
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 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: 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. 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 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."

Madame de Staël had appeared at Lausanne with
Madame Récamier. The whole Emigration, a whole Death of Madame
de Custine.
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 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.
With regard to the Jesuits, I received the following letter
from M. de Montlosier, and I sent him the reply which Letter from M. de
Montlosier.
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: 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.
My reply to M. de
"Your letter, my dear old friend, is very serious, and Montlosier.
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 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 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 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, Letter from General
Sébastiani.
"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 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
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 Letter from
Benjamin Constant.
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 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 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]!"

*
Article in praise of
My eyes have filled with tears while copying this page Charles X.
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.
"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.
"Receive, monsieur le vicomte, my most sincere compliments.
"Blacas d'Aulps.
"27 April, 1 p.m."

To the King
My letter to the
"Sire, King.

"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.
"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 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 The National
proposed to the Council to disband the National Guard. 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 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: 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 The Chambers.
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.
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; 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 Ambassador to
Rome.
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; 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 The Comte de
Villèle.
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 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, 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 My difference with
not find it possible also to put on one side what I might him.
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 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, 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 My sacrifices.
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 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.

[262] This book was written in 1839.—T.
[263] Marthe Camille Bachasson, Comte de Montalivet (1801-1880), inherited the title of peer on the
death of his father and his elder brother (22 January and 12 October 1823), but was not admitted to
take his seat in the Upper Chamber until 12 May 1826, because of his age. He became, from the first,
a defender of constitutional ideas; published in 1827 a pamphlet entitled, Un jeune pair de France
aux Français de son age; held several offices, from 1830 to 1839; and was Intendant General of the
Civil List from 1839 to 1848. In 1879, M. de Montalivet was elected a perpetual senator.—B.

[264] Narcisse Achille Comte de Salvandy (1795-1856), one of the principal writers on the Journal
des Débats, and author of a large number of political pamphlets published between 1824 and 1827. In
1835, he was elected a member of the French Academy. The Comte de Salvandy was twice Minister
of Public Instruction (1837-1839 and 1845-1848).—B.
[265] Prosper Léon Duvergier de Hauranne (1798-1881), author of the Histoire du gouvernement
parlementaire en France ( 1857-1872). He was imprisoned by Louis-Napoleon, in 1851, and
banished for a short period. Duvergier became a member of the French Academy in 1870.
[266] Henri Joseph Gisquet (1792-1866) was Prefect of Police from 1831 to 1836, and it was under
his administration that Chateaubriand was sent to jail, in 1832, as we shall see later. Gisquet's name
was subsequently mixed up in more than one scandal, notably that of the inferior muskets supplied,
in 1831, by the firm of Périer, in which Gisquet, as well as Casimir Périer, had been a partner. In
1838, he was mulcted in a fine and dismissed from the Council of State for bribery and corruption, in
which his family and his mistress were concerned with him.—B.
[267] 21 June 1826 and 18 December 1826 are the dates of Chateaubriand's first and last article in
the Journal des Débats.—B.
[268] Article of 28 June 1824.—B.
[269] Article of 5 July 1824.—B.
[270] Charles Ignace Comte de Peyronnet (1778-1854), Minister of Justice from 1821 to 1828, and
Minister of the Interior in 1830.—T.
[271] Louis Guillaume Baron Ternaux (1765-1833), a famous manufacturer of Cashmere shawls. He
was created a baron in 1819.—T.
[272] The first King of modern Greece was Otto, second son of Louis I. King of Bavaria. Otto was
elected in 1832, declared of age in 1835, and deposed in 1862. In 1863, the Greeks elected William,
second son of Christian IX. King of Denmark, as their sovereign, with the title of George I. King of
the Hellenes.—T.
[273] Constantine Canaris (1790-1877), the famous Greek admiral and politician, distinguished
himself in the Greek War of Independence (1821-1825), and was several times Minister of Marine
and President of the Cabinet.—T.
[274] The Greeks defeated the Persian naval forces near Mycale in 479 B.C.—T.
[275] Chateaubriand had sold the copyright of his Complete Works to Ladvocat for seven hundred
thousand francs. The writer gave almost all the money which he received of this sum to the Hospice
de Marie-Thérèse, which Madame de Chateaubriand was founding. Ladvocat's failure caused him to
lose nearly all that he had reserved to "ensure the peace of his life."—B.
[276] Clément François Victor Gabriel Prunelle (1777-1853), a distinguished French physician,
settled in Lyons and, in 1830, became mayor of that city.—T.
[277] Jeanne Isabelle Pauline Baronne de Montolieu (1751-1832) married, first, M. de Crouzas and,
secondly, the Baron de Montolieu. She is the author of Caroline de Litchfield (1786), of the Robinson
suisse, or Swiss Robinson Crusoe(1813), and of a number of translations from the German and
English, notably Undine and St. Clair of the Isles.—T.
[278] Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. At Lausanne, he was for a time engaged to marry Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod, who
subsequently married M. Necker and became the mother of Madame de Staël.—T.
[279] The Marquise de Custine.—B.

[280] Astolphe de Custine, son of the marchioness.—B.
[281] Louis Philippe Enguerrand de Custine (1823-1826), only son of Astolphe de Custine and his
wife, née de Saint-Simon de Courtomer. The child, who died at the age of three years, is buried in the
chapel of the Château de Fervacques between his mother and grandmother.—B.
[282] M. Berstœcher was Astolphe de Custine's old tutor.—B.
[283] Letters written from Lausanne: Letter XVI.—T.
[284] Pp. 120-123 of the new edition of the Essai, published in 1826.—B.
[285] The Tsar Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December 1825.—B.
[286] 24 March 1826.—T.
[287] Ecclesiasticus, IX. 14.
[288] Article of 8 August 1825 on the Conversion of the Funds.—B.
[289] Article of 24 October 1825 on the Farewell Speech of the President of the United States to
General de La Fayette.—B.
[290] General Maximilien Sébastien Foy (1775-1825), after rendering brilliant service in the army,
was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1819 and displayed an unsuspected oratorical talent as a
defender of constitutional principles. He died, suddenly, on the 28th of November 1825. An immense
concourse of citizens followed his body to the grave, and a public subscription set on foot for the
endowment of his children reached the surprisingly large sum of nearly a million francs.—T.
[291] Manuel died on the 20th of August 1827. His funeral also was accompanied by vast crowds,
numbering over 100,000 persons.—T.
[292] M. de Serre died on the 21st of July 1824.—B.
[293] Camille Jordan (1771-1821), a zealous member of the Opposition in the Chamber of Deputies
and author of a number of literary and philosophical works. His death occurred on the 19th of May
1821.—T.
[294] On the 11th of January 1827, Charles Lacretelle proposed to his colleagues of the Academy to
draw up a petition to the King against the suggested Press Law. M. de Lally-Tolendal opposed the
motion, and asked why they should make a request which was bound to remain unsuccessful.
Chateaubriand replied that conscience is not determined by the more or less probable chances of a
useful result. Eighteen of the twenty-nine Academicians present voted in favour of the proposed
petition. The King refused to receive the petition, and the Academy decided not to publish it
(Mesnard, Histoire de l'Académie française).—B.
[295] An article in the Moniteur of 5 January 1827 described the Bill as a "law of justice and love,"
which words were promptly turned into a nickname of hatred and ridicule for the Bill.—B.
[296] St. Charles's Day, 4 November.—T.
[297] Article of 3 November 1825.—B.
[298] Joseph Michaud was, in 1827, manager of the Quotidienne.—B.
[299] Jean Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue (1802-1872), a noted French historian and publicist,
author of over a hundred volumes treating of the history of France. He was, in 1827, a leading
member of the staff of the Quotidienne.—B.
[300] General François Alexandre Frédéric Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827) and a
peer of France, had been a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1789. He was at the head of a

number of charitable institutions, founder of the first savings-bank in France and other benevolent
schemes, and extremely popular. He died on the 27th of March 1827, and his funeral coincided with
the agitation produced by the Press Law and was marked by painful incidents. The pupils of the
Châlons School of Arts and Crafts wanted themselves to carry the coffin, in spite of the prohibition of
the police, and a scuffle ensued between the students and the soldiers of the military escort to which,
as a general officer, the duke was entitled. In the midst of the riot, the coffin fell into the mud, and the
peer's insignia, which lay upon it, were trodden under foot.—B.
[301] The Grand Referendary de Sémonville was 73 years of age in 1827.—T.
[302] The review took place on the 29th of April 1827.—B.
[303] Ambroise Polycarpe de La Rochefoucauld, Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville (1765-
1841), created a peer of France (1814), Postmaster-general (1822) and Minister of the King's
Household (1824). After his resignation, in 1827, the Duc de Doudeauville occupied himself
exclusively with philanthropical works.—T.
[304] André Jean Comte de Chabrol de Crouzol (1771-1836), Intendant-general of the Illyrian
Provinces (1810), Prefect of the Rhône (1814), Under-secretary of the Interior (1817), a peer of
France and Minister of Marine (1824), Minister of Finance (1829-1830). Chabrol was a consistent
adherent of the Elder Branch from 1814 onwards.—T.
[305] Nicolas Charles Oudinot, Maréchal Duc de Reggio (1767-1847), one of Napoleon's bravest
generals, rallied to the Restoration and was created a peer of France in 1814. He remained loyal
during the Hundred Days and, under the Second Restoration, became Major-general of the Royal
Guard (September 1815) and Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard (October 1815). Louis-
Philippe made him Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour (1839) and Governor of the Invalides
(1842).—T.
[306] The Comte de Corbière was Minister of the Interior, the Comte de Peyronnet Keeper of the
Seals and Minister of Justice, the Baron de Damas Minister of Foreign Affairs.—T.
[307] General Aimé Marie Gaspard Marquis, later Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre (1779-1865), Minister
of War.—T.
[308] The Comte de Chabrol de Crouzol was Minister of Marine.—T.
[309] Denis Comte de Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis (1765-1841), Minister of Worship and
Public Instruction.—T.
[310] The Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville was Minister of the Royal Household.—T.
[311] François Régis Comte de La Bourdonnaye (1767-1839) was a member of the Extreme Right of
the Chamber of Deputies. He was Minister of the Interior for a few months, in 1829, in the Polignac
Ministry and, in January 1830, was raised to the peerage, six months before the revolution which put
an end to his political career.—B.
[312] Chateaubriand is here himself misled and unconsciously calumniates the poor prefects. M. de
Villèle, better informed than he, wrote on the 8th of August 1827:

"The prefects are alarmed at the mere idea of a general election. They say that, if it were held
this year, the result would be detestable."—B.

[313] The censorship was revived by an ordinance dated 24 June 1827 and countersigned by
Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière and de Peyronnet.—B.
[314] Cf. Du Rétablissement de la censure par l'ordonnance du 24 juin 1827. Paris: Ladvocat, 1827.
—B.

[315] The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved on the 5th of November 1827. The elections took
place on the 17th and 24th.—B.
[316] Royer-Collard was elected at Vitry, Châlons, Paris, Lyons, Neufchâteau, Melun and Béziers.—
B.
[317] M. de Peyronnet was rejected at Bourges and at Bordeaux.—B.
[318] 19 November 1827.—B.
[319] 20 October 1827.—T.
[320] An ordinance creating seventy-six new peers was issued simultaneously with that dissolving
the Chamber of Deputies.—B.
[321] Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the banker and statesman, Governor of the Bank of France
(1814), Minister of Finance and Premier (1830-1831).—T.
[322] Casimir Périer (1777-1832) was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, after the
Revolution of 1830, and succeeded Laffitte as Prime Minister in 1831. He was the grandfather of M.
Jean Paul Pierre Casimir-Périer, who was President of the French Republic from June 1894 to
January 1895.—T.
[323] M. de Villèle resigned office on the 2nd of December 1827.
[324] Joseph Marie Comte Portalis (1778-1858), a count of the Empire (1810), peer of France
(1819), Keeper of the Seals (1828), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1829), First President of the Court of
Appeal (1829-1852).—B.
[325] Lieutenant-general Louis Victor Vicomte de Caux (1775-circa 1845), raised to the peerage by
Louis-Philippe in 1832.—T.
[326] Antoine Comte Roy (1764-1847) was three times Minister of Finance (1818, 1819-1821 and
1828-1829). In 1798, the Duc de Bouillon made over the greater part of his property to M. Roy, in
return for an annuity of 300,000 francs; the duke died a few months later, and M. Roy found himself
one of the richest landed proprietors in France.—B.
[327] Jean Baptiste Silvère Gaye, Vicomte de Martignac (1776-1832), the well-meaning but
unfortunate minister. He defended the Prince de Polignac on his trial in 1831 and died within the
following year.—T.
[328] Charles François Riffardeau, Duc de Rivière (1763-1828). As a personal friend of the Comte
d'Artois and his aide-de-camp during the Emigration, he was implicated in the trial of Georges
Cadoudal, in 1804, and sentenced to death. The Empress Joséphine's intervention caused this penalty
to be commuted, and he was imprisoned for four years in the fortress of Joux and subsequently
transported. Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France and Ambassador to Constantinople. Charles X.
created him an hereditary duke (1825) and, in 1826, made him governor to the Duc de Bordeaux. In
1822, the Duc de Rivière presented Louis XVIII. with the Venus of Milo, which he had discovered
during his embassy to the Sultan.—B.
[329] François Jean Hyacinthe Comte Feutrier (1785-1830), Bishop of Beauvais since 1826.—B.
[330] Antoine François Henri Lefebvre de Vatimesnil (1789-1860) played a prominent part later in
the struggle for religious liberty and the liberty of the press.—B.
[331] Jean Louis Anne Madeleine Lefébure, Comte de Chéverus (1768-1836), Bishop of Boston in
Massachusetts (1808), Bishop of Montauban ( 1823), Archbishop of Bordeaux (1826), a peer of
France (1826) and a cardinal (1836). He refused a peerage at the hands of the Government of July.—
B.

[332] Claude Marie Paul Tharin (1787-1843), Bishop of Strasburg (1823), resigned his see on
receiving his appointment as tutor to the Duc de Bordeaux in 1826. He quitted the Court before the
end of the Restoration and lived in profound retirement throughout the Orleanist Usurpation.—T.
[333] Béranger, À M. de Chateaubriand (September 1831), 37-40:
Son éloquence à ces rois fit l'aumône:
Prodigue fée, en ses enchantements,
Plus elle voit de rouille à leur vieux trône,
Plus elle y sème et fleurs et diamants.—T.
[334] Æneid, VI, 256-257.—B.
[335] 20 September 1830.—B.

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
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
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 Madame Récamier.
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:

"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 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.

"The great world of that time was too uncongenial to
her nature that she should not prefer retirement. She Her girlhood.
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 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 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 M. de La Harpe.
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 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, 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.
"In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to
live at the Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league Lucien Bonaparte.
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:

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 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: Lucien's passion.

"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!'
"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.
"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: Madame de Staël.
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 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 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 Madame Récamier
in London.
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 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:
..........

"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 Madame de Staël's
from Paris. She accepted the proposal made to her by exil.
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.
"'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 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:
General Bernadotte.
"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 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
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 The trial of General
Moreau.
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 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?"
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: Letter from General
Moreau.

"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:
"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] Letter from
Madame de Staël.
"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the
shocking news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does 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: 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 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 Prince Augustus of
de Staël showing him the way. Suddenly the door half Prussia.
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]. 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, Madame de Staël to
Napoleon.
"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
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 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 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 Madame de Staël's
marriage.
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 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 The Duchesse de
Chevreuse.
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 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:

"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 Antonio Canova.
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, 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 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 The Albano
fisherman.
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 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 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 Queen Caroline
Murat.
tyranny made itself felt as far as Portici. Nevertheless,
the 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], 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
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 The Duc de Rohan.
his coquettish and studied dress. When he became an
abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron, had all a martyr's elegance. He 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 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 Murat, King of
Naples.
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.

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 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. Fall of Murat.
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 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 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 Murat's flight.
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 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. Letters from Murat.
"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 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? 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. 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 Death of Murat.
sentence, his firmness deserted him for a few instants; he
shed tears and exclaimed:
"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 Pope Pius VII.
carriage and the crowd drew him to the steps of the
Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw nothing, heard nothing; 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 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 Madame de Genlis.
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 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, 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 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 Madame de
Krüdener.
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 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 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 End of Madame de
Staël.
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
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 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 The Abbaye-aux-
Bois.
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: