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.

[Sidenote: My polemical warfare.]

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

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

"The bounties which the Legitimate Government lavishes upon the arts surpass the aids awarded to them by the Usurping Government; but how are they dispensed? Vowed by nature and taste to oblivion, the distributors of those bounties seem to have an antipathy to renown; so invincible 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.

[Sidenote: I refuse my pension.]

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

The Hellenes threw off the yoke: a Greek Committee was formed in Paris, of which I was a member. The committee came together at M. Ternaux'[271] on the Place des Victoires. The members used to arrive one after the other at the meeting-place. M. le Général Sébastiani declared, when he had sat down, that it was a "big affair;" he made it a long one: this displeased our practical chairman, M. Ternaux, who would certainly have made a shawl for Aspasia, but who would not have wasted his time with her. The committee suffered from the dispatches of M. Fabvier; he scolded us roundly; he 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.

[Sidenote: The Greek Committee.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for the note from M. Molé, given above, it alludes to the bargain which I had made relating to the publication of my Complete Works. This arrangement ought, in fact, to have ensured the peace of my life; it nevertheless turned badly for me, although it was profitable to the publishers to whom 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."

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Custine.]

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

"BEX, 13 _July_ 1826.

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

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

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

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

"BERSTŒCHER[282]."

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

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

"I am sitting alone," says the mother of Cécile, "opposite to a window which looks upon the lake. I am grateful to 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.

[Sidenote: Letter from M. de Montlosier.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: My reply to M. de Montlosier.]

"PARIS, 3 _December_ 1825.

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

"The King had no further need of my services: nothing more natural than to remove me from his counsels; but manner is everything to an honest man and, as I had not stolen the King's watch from his mantel-piece, I ought not to have been _turned out_ as I was. I had made the Spanish War alone and kept Europe in peace during that dangerous period; by that single fact I had given an army to the Legitimacy and, of all the ministers of the Restoration, I was the only 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.

[Sidenote: Letter from General Sébastiani.]

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

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

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

"In the new method of warfare which you have created, you recall the mighty hand of him who, in other fights, also 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."

[Sidenote: Letter from Benjamin Constant.]

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

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

"BENJAMIN CONSTANT.

"PARIS, 21 _May_ 1827."

It was at the time of which I am speaking that I attained the highest pitch of my political importance. Through the 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]!"

[Sidenote: Article in praise of Charles X.]

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

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

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

"MY HONORABLE 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."

[Sidenote: My letter to the King.]

TO THE KING

"SIRE,

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

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

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

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

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

"I pass from theory to application:

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

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

"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!"

[Sidenote: The National Guard.]

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

The Government began to be afraid; the newspapers were 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.

[Sidenote: The Chambers.]

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

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

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."

[Sidenote: Ambassador to Rome.]

That word "Rome" had a magic effect upon me; I felt the temptation to which the anchorites were exposed in the 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.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Villèle.]

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

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

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

"Sire, M. de Villèle is a most enlightened President; Your 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.

[Sidenote: My difference with him.]

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

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

I was, perhaps, in error, but I was persuaded that M. le Comte de Villèle did not understand the society which he ruled; I am convinced that the solid qualities of that able minister were inadequate at the hour of his ministry: he had come too early under the Restoration. Financial operations, commercial companies, the industrial movement, canals, steamboats, railways, high-roads, a material society which has no passion save that of peace, which dreams only of the comforts of life, which wants to make of the future only a perpetual to-day: in this order of things, M. de Villèle would 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?

[Sidenote: My sacrifices.]

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

It follows from what you have just read that, if what I advised had been done, if petty longings had not placed their 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.

[Footnote 262: This book was written in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 267: 21 June 1826 and 18 December 1826 are the dates of Chateaubriand's first and last article in the _Journal des Débats._--B.]

[Footnote 268: Article of 28 June 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 269: Article of 5 July 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 270: Charles Ignace Comte de Peyronnet (1778-1854), Minister of Justice from 1821 to 1828, and Minister of the Interior in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 271: Louis Guillaume Baron Ternaux (1765-1833), a famous manufacturer of Cashmere shawls. He was created a baron in 1819.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 274: The Greeks defeated the Persian naval forces near Mycale in 479 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 276: Clément François Victor Gabriel Prunelle (1777-1853), a distinguished French physician, settled in Lyons and, in 1830, became mayor of that city.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 279: The Marquise de Custine.--B.]

[Footnote 280: Astolphe de Custine, son of the marchioness.--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 282: M. Berstœcher was Astolphe de Custine's old tutor.--B.]

[Footnote 283: _Letters written from Lausanne_: Letter XVI.--T.]

[Footnote 284: Pp. 120-123 of the new edition of the _Essai_, published in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 285: The Tsar Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 286: 24 March 1826.--T.]

[Footnote 287: _Ecclesiasticus_, IX. 14.]

[Footnote 288: Article of 8 August 1825 on the Conversion of the Funds.--B.]

[Footnote 289: Article of 24 October 1825 on the Farewell Speech of the President of the United States to General de La Fayette.--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 291: Manuel died on the 20th of August 1827. His funeral also was accompanied by vast crowds, numbering over 100,000 persons.--T.]

[Footnote 292: M. de Serre died on the 21st of July 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 296: St. Charles's Day, 4 November.--T.]

[Footnote 297: Article of 3 November 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 298: Joseph Michaud was, in 1827, manager of the _Quotidienne._--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 301: The Grand Referendary de Sémonville was 73 years of age in 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 302: The review took place on the 29th of April 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 307: General Aimé Marie Gaspard Marquis, later Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre (1779-1865), Minister of War.--T.]

[Footnote 308: The Comte de Chabrol de Crouzol was Minister of Marine.--T.]

[Footnote 309: Denis Comte de Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis (1765-1841), Minister of Worship and Public Instruction.--T.]

[Footnote 310: The Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville was Minister of the Royal Household.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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. ]

[Footnote 313: The censorship was revived by an ordinance dated 24 June 1827 and countersigned by Messieurs de Villèle, de Corbière and de Peyronnet.--B.]

[Footnote 314: _Cf. Du Rétablissement de la censure par l'ordonnance du 24 juin 1827._ Paris: Ladvocat, 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 315: The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved on the 5th of November 1827. The elections took place on the 17th and 24th.--B.]

[Footnote 316: Royer-Collard was elected at Vitry, Châlons, Paris, Lyons, Neufchâteau, Melun and Béziers.--B.]

[Footnote 317: M. de Peyronnet was rejected at Bourges and at Bordeaux.--B.]

[Footnote 318: 19 November 1827.--B.]

[Footnote 319: 20 October 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 320: An ordinance creating seventy-six new peers was issued simultaneously with that dissolving the Chamber of Deputies.--B.]

[Footnote 321: Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the banker and statesman, Governor of the Bank of France (1814), Minister of Finance and Premier (1830-1831).--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 323: M. de Villèle resigned office on the 2nd of December 1827.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 325: Lieutenant-general Louis Victor Vicomte de Caux (1775-_circa_ 1845), raised to the peerage by Louis-Philippe in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 329: François Jean Hyacinthe Comte Feutrier (1785-1830), Bishop of Beauvais since 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.

]

[Footnote 334: _Æneid_, VI, 256-257.--B.]

[Footnote 335: 20 September 1830.--B.]