PART II.

"Austria and England have interests in common, they are naturally allied through their foreign policy, whatever otherwise may be the different forms of their governments and the opposite maxims that regulate their home policy. Both are hostile to and jealous of Russia, both desire to check the progress of that Power; they will perhaps unite in an extreme case, but they feel that, if Russia does not allow herself to be overawed, she can defy that union, which is more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"Austria has nothing to ask from England; the latter, on her side, is of no use to Austria except to supply her with money. Now, England, crushed under the weight of her debt, has no money left to lend to anybody. Austria, if abandoned to her own resources, would not, in the present state of her finances, be able to set large armies in motion, especially as she is obliged to watch over Italy and to stand on her guard on the frontiers of Poland and Prussia. The present position of the Russian troops would permit them to enter Vienna earlier than Constantinople.

"What can the English do against Russia? Close the Baltic, cease buying hemp and timber in the markets of the North, destroy Admiral van Heiden's[684] fleet in the Mediterranean, throw a few engineers and a few soldiers into Constantinople, stock that capital with food-stuffs and munitions of war, penetrate into the Black Sea, blockade the ports of the Crimea, deprive the Russian troops in the field of the assistance of their commercial and naval fleets?

"Suppose all this to be accomplished (which, to begin with, could not be done without considerable expenditure, for which there would be neither compensation nor guarantee), Nicholas would still have his huge land force. An attack on the part of Austria and England against the Cross on behalf of the Crescent would increase the popularity in Russia of what is already a national and religious war. Wars of this nature are waged without money, it is they which, by force of public opinion, hurl nations one upon the other. If the popes begin to evangelize in St. Petersburg, as the ulemas are mohammedanizing in Constantinople, they will find more soldiers than they want; they would stand a greater chance of success than their adversaries in this appeal to the passions and beliefs of men. Invasions which descend from north to south are much more rapid and much more irresistible than those which climb from south to north: the propensity of the populations inclines them to flow towards beautiful climates.

[Sidenote: Memorandum.]

"Would Prussia remain an indifferent spectatress of this great struggle, if Austria and England declared for Turkey? There is no reason to think so.

"There exists, no doubt, in the Cabinet of Berlin a party which hates and fears the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; but this party, which, moreover, is beginning to grow old, finds an obstacle in the anti-Austrian party, and especially in the domestic affections.

"Family ties, generally weak among sovereigns, are very strong in the Prussian Family: King Frederic William III. fondly loves his daughter, the present Empress of Russia, and he likes to think that his grandson[685] will ascend the throne of Peter the Great[686]; Princes Frederic, William, Charles, Henry Albert are also greatly attached to their sister Alexandra; the Hereditary Prince Royal saw no objection recently to declaring in Rome that he was a 'Turk-eater.'

"By thus analyzing the interests, we perceive that France is in an admirable political position: she can become the arbitress of that great contest; she can, at her pleasure, maintain neutrality, or declare for a side, according to the time and circumstances. If she were ever obliged to go to that extremity, if her counsels were not heard, if the nobility and moderation of her conduct did not secure for her the peace which she desires for herself and for others, then, in the necessity in which she would find herself of taking up arms, all her interests would incline her to the side of Russia.

"If an alliance were formed between Austria and England against Russia, what benefit would France derive from her adhesion to that alliance?

"Would England lend ships to France?

"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if necessary, the naval forces of Russia.

"Would England furnish us with subsidies?

"England has no money; France has more than she, and the French have no need to be in the pay of the British Parliament.

"Would England assist us with soldiers and arms?

"France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers.

"Would England assure us an increase of insular or continental territory?

"Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled?

"Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England, besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her ports.

"Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human affairs succeeds.

[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: Part II.]

"Let us admit, nevertheless, that, against all likelihood, our efforts were crowned with complete success in this unnatural Triple Alliance, let us suppose that Prussia remained neutral during all this strife, as well as the Netherlands, and that, free to move our forces abroad, we were not obliged to fight within sixty leagues of Paris: well, what advantage should we derive from our crusade for the deliverance of the tomb of Mahomet? Knights of the Turks, we should return from the Levant with a fur-lined coat-of-honour; we should have the glory of having thrown away a thousand million francs and two hundred thousand men to calm the terrors of Austria, to satisfy the jealousies of England, to keep up in the fairest portion of the world the plague and barbarism attached to the Ottoman Empire. Austria would perhaps have enlarged her States on the side of Wallachia and Moldavia, and England would perhaps have obtained some commercial privileges from the Porte, privileges of little interest to us if we shared in them, as we have neither so large a number of merchant ships as the English, nor so many manufactured goods to spread in the Levant. We should be completely duped by this Triple Alliance, which might fail in its object and which, if it achieved it, would achieve it only at our expense.

"But, if England has no direct means of being of use to us, could she not at least act upon the Cabinet of Vienna and engage Austrians a compensation for the sacrifices we should make for her, to allow us to recover our old departments on the left bank of the Rhine?

"No: Austria and England will always oppose any such concession; Russia alone can make it to us, as we shall see hereafter. Austria detests and fears us, even more than she hates and dreads Russia; as a choice of evils, she would prefer to see the latter Power expand on the side of Bulgaria rather than France on the side of Bavaria.

"But would the independence of Europe be threatened if the Tsars made Constantinople the capital of their Empire?

"It is necessary to explain what is understood by the independence of Europe: do we mean to say that, all equilibrium being shattered, Russia, after making the conquest of Turkey in Europe, would seize Austria, subjugate Germany and Prussia, and end by subjecting France?

"First, any empire which expands without measure loses some of its strength; it almost always becomes divided; soon we should see two or three Russias hostile one to the other.

"Next, does the equilibrium of Europe exist for France since the last treaties?

"England has retained almost all the conquests which she has made in the colonies of three quarters of the globe during the War of the Revolution; in Europe she has gained Malta and the Ionian Islands; even her Electorate of Hanover she has inflated into a kingdom and enlarged by a few baronies.

"Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland, some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy. She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that province has not devolved upon France, and it has become a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against ourselves.

"Prussia has enlarged herself by the Duchy or Palatinate of Posen, a fragment of Saxony and the chief circles of the Rhine; her advance-post is on our own territory, at ten days' march from our capital.

"Russia has recovered Finland and settled down on the banks of the Vistula.

"And what have we gained in all these partitions? We have been despoiled of our colonies; not even our old soil has been respected: Landau detached from France, Hüningen demolished leave a breach of more than fifty leagues in our frontiers; the little State of Sardinia has not blushed to clothe herself in a few shreds stolen from the Empire of Napoleon and the Kingdom of Louis the Great.

"In this position, what interest have we to safeguard Austria and England against the victories of Russia? If the latter were to extend towards the East and alarm the Cabinet of Vienna, should we be in any danger? Have we received so much consideration that we should be so sensible to the anxieties of our enemies? England and Austria have always been and will always be France's natural adversaries; we should see them cheerfully join forces with Russia to-morrow, if it were a question of fighting us and plundering us.

"Let us not forget that, while we should be taking up arms for the so-called safety of Europe, imperilled by the supposed ambition of Nicholas, it would probably happen that Austria, less chivalrous and more rapacious than we, would listen to the proposals of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; an abrupt and sudden change of policy costs her little. With the consent of Russia, she would seize Bosnia and Servia, leaving to us the satisfaction of exerting ourselves for Mahmud.

"France is already in a state of semi-hostility with the Turks; she alone has already spent many millions and endangered twenty thousand soldiers in the cause of Greece. England would lose only a few words by betraying the principles of the Treaty of the 6th of July; France would lose honour, men and money. Our expedition would no longer be other than a real political miscarriage.

[Sidenote: Memorandum.]

"But, if we do not unite with Austria and England, will the Emperor Nicholas then go to Constantinople? Will the equilibrium of Europe then be shattered?

"Let us, to repeat once again, leave these feigned or genuine fears to England and Austria. That the former should fear to see Russia seize upon the trade of the Levant and become a naval Power matters little to us. Is it, then, so necessary that Great Britain should remain in possession of the monopoly of the seas, that we should spill French blood to preserve the sceptre of the ocean for the destroyer of our colonies, our fleets and our commerce? Is the Legitimate Dynasty to move armies in order to protect the House which coalesces with the illegitimacy and which is, perhaps, reserving for times of discord the means which it believes itself to possess to disturb France? A fine equilibrium for us is that of Europe, when all the Powers, as I have already shown, have increased their own bulk and, with one accord, diminished the weight of France! Let them return within their old boundaries, as we have done; then we shall fly to the aid of their independence, if that independence be threatened. They made no scruples to join hands with Russia, in order to dismember us and incorporate the fruit of our victories; let them then suffer us to-day to draw closer the bonds formed between us and that same Russia, in order to recover suitable boundaries and restore the real balance of Europe!

"Besides, if the Emperor Nicholas were desirous and able to go to sign a peace in Constantinople, would the destruction of the Ottoman Empire be the strict consequence of that fact? Peace has been signed under arms in Vienna, in Berlin, in Paris; almost all the capitals of Europe have been taken in these latter days: have Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain perished? Twice have the Cossacks and the Pandoors come to camp in the court-yard of the Louvre; the Kingdom of Henry IV. has been under military occupation during three years; and yet we should be quite touched to see the Cossacks in possession of the Seraglio, and we should show for the honour of barbarism the susceptibility which we did not display for the honour of civilization and for our own country! Let the pride of the Porte be humbled, and then perhaps it will be obliged to recognise some of the rights of humanity which it outrages!

"I have now made evident whither I am tending and the consequence which I am preparing to deduce from all the foregoing. Here is this consequence:

"If the belligerent Powers cannot come to an arrangement during the winter, if the rest of Europe think itself bound in the spring to intervene in the quarrel, if different alliances be propounded, if France be absolutely obliged to choose between those alliances, if events force her to emerge from her neutrality, all her interests must needs determine her to unite by preference with Russia: a combination which is all the safer inasmuch as it would be easy, with the offer of certain advantages, to make Prussia enter into it.

"There is a sympathy between Russia and France; the latter has almost civilized the former in the upper classes of society; she has given her her language and her manners. Placed at the two extremities of Europe, France and Russia have no contiguous frontiers; they have no battle-field on which they can meet, they have no commercial rivalry, and the natural enemies of Russia, the English and Austrians, are also the natural enemies of France. In time of peace, let the Cabinet of the Tuileries remain allied with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and nothing can stir in Europe. In time of war, the union of the two Cabinets will dictate laws to the world.

"I have shown sufficiently that the alliance of France with England and Austria against Russia is a dupe's alliance, in which we should find only loss of blood and treasure. The Russian Alliance, on the contrary, would enable us to obtain establishments in the Archipelago and to push back our frontier to the banks of the Rhine. We can hold this language to Nicholas:

"'Your enemies are making overtures to us; we prefer peace to war, we prefer to preserve neutrality. But, however, if you cannot adjust your differences with Turkey except by arms, if you are determined to go to Constantinople, enter into an equitable partition of Turkey in Europe with the Christian Powers. Those of the Powers which are not so situated as to be able to enlarge their territory towards the East will receive compensation elsewhere. As for us, we wish to have the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Cologne. Those are our just claims. It is to Russia's interest (your brother Alexander has said so) that France should be strong. If you consent to this arrangement and the other Powers refuse, we will not suffer them to intervene in your dispute with Turkey. If they attack you in spite of our remonstrances, we will fight them with you, always on the conditions which we have just expressed.'

[Sidenote: On Eastern affairs.]

"That is what we can say to Nicholas. Never will Austria, never will England give us the Rhine boundary as the price of our alliance with them: and yet it is there that France must, sooner or later, place her frontiers, both for her honour and her safety.

"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds, forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all Italy to action.

"As for hostilities with England, if they were ever to commence, we should have either to throw twenty-five thousand more men into the Morea, or promptly recall our troops and our fleet. Give up squadron formation, disperse your ships singly over all the seas, give orders that all prizes are to be sunk after the crews have been removed, multiply your letters of marque in the ports of the four quarters of the globe, and soon Great Britain, forced by the bankruptcies and outcries of her trade, will sue for the restoration of peace. Did we not see her, in 1814, capitulate before the Navy of the United States, notwithstanding that this consists to-day of only nine frigates and eleven ships?

"Considered in the two-fold respect of the general interests of society and of our own interests, the war of Russia against the Porte should give us no umbrage. On the principle of the higher civilization, the human race can only gain by the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: it is a thousand times better for the nations that the Cross should hold sway in Constantinople than the Crescent. All the elements of morality and of political society are at the root of Christianity, all the germs of social destruction are in the religion of Mahomet. They say that the present Sultan has taken steps towards civilization: is this because he has tried, with the assistance of a few French renegades, of a few English and Austrian officers, to submit his irregular hordes to regular exercises? And since when has the mechanical apprenticeship of arms constituted civilization? It is an enormous mistake, it is almost a crime, to have initiated the Turks into the science of our tactics; we must baptize the soldiers whom we discipline, unless we wish purposely to educate destroyers of society.

"The want of foresight is great: Austria, which applauds herself for organizing the Ottoman Armies, would be the first to bear the penalty of her joy; if the Turks beat the Russians they would be all the more capable of measuring their strength with the Imperials their neighbours. This time, Vienna would not escape the Grand Vizier. Would the rest of Europe, which thinks it has nothing to fear from the Porte, be in greater safety? Passionate and short-sighted men want Turkey to be a regular military Power, to enter into the common right of peace and war of civilized nations, all in order to maintain some balance or other, of which the mere word, void of sense, dispenses those men from having any idea: what would be the consequences were those wishes realized? Whenever it pleased the Sultan, under any pretext, to attack a Christian government, a well-manœuvred Constantinopolitan fleet, augmented by the fleet of the Pasha of Egypt and the naval contingent of the Barbary Powers, would declare the coasts of Spain or Italy in a state of blockade and land fifty thousand men at Carthagena or Naples. You do not wish to plant the Cross on St. Sophia: continue to discipline the hordes of Turks, Albanians, Negroes and Arabs, and, in less than twenty years, perhaps, the Crescent will gleam on the dome of St. Peter's. Will you then summon Europe to a crusade against infidels armed with the plague, slavery and the Koran? It will be too late.

"The general interests of society would therefore benefit by the success of the arms of the Emperor Nicholas.

"As to France's own interests, I have proved sufficiently that these lie in an alliance with Russia, and that they may be singularly favoured by the very war which that Power is to-day waging in the East."

[Sidenote: Summary.]

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND REFLECTIONS

"To sum up:

"1. If Turkey were to consent to treat on the basis of the treaty of the 6th of July, nothing would yet be decided, since peace has not been made between Turkey and Russia; the chances of the war in the Balkan Passes would at every moment change the _data_ and the position of the plenipotentiaries occupied with the emancipation of Greece.

"2. The probable conditions of peace between the Emperor Nicholas and Sultan Mahmud are open to the greatest objections.

"3. Russia can defy the union of England and Austria, a union more formidable in appearance than in reality.

"4. It is probable that Prussia would join hands with the Emperor Nicholas, the son-in-law of Frederic William III., rather than with the Emperor's enemies.

"5. France would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allying herself with England and Austria against Russia.

"6. The independence of Europe would not be at all threatened by Russia's conquests in the East. It is tolerably absurd, it is to ignore every obstacle, to imagine the Russians hastening from the Bosphorus to lay their yoke upon Germany and France: every empire weakens itself by extension. As to the balance of power, this has long been shattered for France; she has lost her colonies, she has shrunk back within her old boundaries, while England, Prussia, Russia and Austria have prodigiously enlarged theirs.

"7. If France were obliged to emerge from her neutrality, to take up arms for one side or the other, the general interests of civilization, as well as the particular interests of our country, must make us enter by preference into the Russian Alliance. By this means we could obtain the course of the Rhine as our frontier, and colonies in the Archipelago, advantages which the Cabinets of St. James and Vienna will never grant us.

"That is the summary of this Note. I have been able to reason only hypothetically; I do not know what England, Austria and Russia are proposing, or have proposed, at the moment of writing; there may be a piece of information or a dispatch which reduces the truths here set forth to useless generalities: that is the drawback of distances and of conjectural politics. Nevertheless, it remains certain that France holds a strong position and that the Government is so placed as to be able to make the very utmost of events, if it thoroughly realizes what it requires, if it allows no one to intimidate it, if to firmness of language it adds vigour in action. We have a revered King, an Heir to the Throne who, with three hundred thousand men, would increase, on the banks of the Rhine, the glory which he has reaped in Spain; our Morean Expedition is making us play a part filled with honour; our political institutions are excellent; our finances are in a state of prosperity unequalled in Europe: with that one can walk with one's head raised. What a fine country is that which possesses genius, courage, men and money!

"For the rest, I do not pretend to have said everything, to have foreseen everything; I have not the presumption to put forward my system as the best; I know that there is something mysterious, something indiscernible, in human affairs. If it be true that one can fairly well prophesy the last and general results of a revolution, it is no less true that one deceives one's self as to the details, that particular events are often modified in an unexpected manner and that, while seeing the end, one reaches it by roads whose very existence one did not suspect. It is certain, for instance, that the Turks will be driven from Europe; but when and how? Will the war now waging deliver the civilized world from that scourge? Are the obstacles to peace to which I have pointed insurmountable? Yes, if we confine ourselves to analogous arguments; no, if we bring into our calculations circumstances foreign to those which have occasioned the resort to arms.

"Scarcely anything to-day resembles what it has been; outside religion and morality, the majority of truths have altered, if not in their essence, at least in their relations to men and things. D'Ossat[687] survives as an able negociator; Grotius[688] as a publicist of genius; Pufendorf[689] as a judicious mind; but we could not apply the rules of their diplomacy to our times, nor go back, in political law, to the Treaty of Westphalia[690]. Nowadays, the peoples take a part in their affairs, conducted formerly by the governments alone. Those peoples no longer feel things as they used to feel them; they are no longer affected by the same events; they no longer see objects from the same point of view; reason has made progress with them at the cost of imagination; facts carry the day over exaltation and passionate determinations; a certain reason prevails on every hand. On most of the thrones and in the majority of the Cabinets of Europe are seated men weary of revolutions, surfeited with war and opposed to any spirit of adventure; those are causes of hope for peaceful arrangements. Also it is possible that nations may have internal troubles which would dispose them towards conciliatory measures.

[Sidenote: Conclusions.]

"The death of the Dowager Empress of Russia[691] may develop seeds of disturbance which were not wholly stifled. This Princess took little part in foreign politics, but she was a link between her sons; she is supposed to have exercised a great influence over the transactions which gave the crown to the Emperor Nicholas[692]. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, if Nicholas began again to be afraid, this would be a reason the more for him to push on his soldiers from their native soil and to seek safety in victory.

"England, independently of her debt, which hampers her movements, is embarrassed with affairs in Ireland. Whether Catholic Emancipation pass through Parliament or not, it will be an immense event. King George's health is breaking down, that of his immediate successor is no better; if the accident foreseen were to happen soon, there would be a new parliament summoned, perhaps a change of ministers, and capable men are rare in England to-day; a long regency might perhaps come. In this precarious and critical position, it is possible that England sincerely desires peace and that she is afraid to throw herself into the chances of a great war, in the midst of which she might find herself surprised by internal catastrophes.

"Lastly, to come to ourselves, in spite of our genuine and incontrovertible prosperity, although we could make a glorious appearance on a field of battle, if called to it: are we quite prepared to figure on one? Are our fortresses in a state of repair? Have we the stores necessary for a large army? Is that army even on a complete peace footing? If we were suddenly aroused by a declaration of war from England, Prussia and the Netherlands, could we make an effective opposition against a third invasion? The Napoleonic wars have divulged a fatal secret: that it is possible to reach Paris in a few days after a successful engagement; that Paris does not defend itself; that this same Paris is much too near the frontier. The capital of France will not be safe until we possess the left bank of the Rhine. We may therefore require some time to prepare ourselves.

"Add to all this that the vices and virtues of the sovereigns, their moral strength and weakness, their character, their passions, their very habits are causes of acts and of facts which defy calculation and which enter into no political formula: the most petty influence sometimes decides the greatest event in a sense opposed to the likelihood of things; a slave can cause a peace to be signed in Constantinople which all Europe, coalesced or on its knees, would not obtain.

"If, then, one of those reasons, placed outside the limits of human foresight, should, in the course of this winter, produce demands for negociations, ought they to be rejected, if they did not agree with the principles of this Note? No, doubtless: to gain time is a great thing, when one is not ready. One can know what would be best and be content with what is least bad; political truths, above all, are relative; the absolute, in matters of State, has grave disadvantages. It would be a good thing for the human race that the Turks should be thrown into the Bosphorus; but we are not charged with the expedition, and the hour of Mohammedanism has perhaps not struck: hatred must be enlightened in order not to commit follies. Nothing, therefore, should prevent France from entering into negociations, while taking care to reconcile them as far as possible with the spirit in which this Note is drawn up. It is for the men at the helm of empires to steer them according to the winds and avoid the foul places.

"Certainly, if the powerful Sovereign of the North consented to reduce the terms of peace to the fulfilment of the Treaty of Akerman and the emancipation of Greece, it would be possible to make the Porte listen to reason; but what likelihood is there that Russia will confine herself to terms which she might have obtained without firing a gun? How could she abandon claims so loudly and so publicly expressed? One means alone, if there be one, would present itself: to propose a general congress at which the Emperor Nicholas would yield, or appear to yield, to the wishes of Christian Europe. A means of success with men is to save their self-esteem, to supply them with a reason to withdraw their word and issue from a bad plight with honour.

[Sidenote: And reflections.]

"The greatest obstacle to this plan of a congress would come from the unexpected success of the Ottoman arms during the winter. If, owing to the rigour of the season, the want of provisions, the insufficiency of the troops, or any other cause, the Russians were obliged to abandon the Siege of Silistria, if Varna, which, however, is hardly probable, were to fall again into the hands of the Turks, the Emperor Nicholas would find himself in a position which would no longer permit him to listen to any proposal, under the penalty of descending to the lowest rank of monarchs: then the war would continue and we should come back to the eventualities inferred in this Note. If Russia lost her rank as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality, Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now, the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the intention to do so. Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran?

"While Austria, at last terrified by those false calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear, a new military insurrection, a possible result of the humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set fire to the north of Germany. That is what the men do not perceive who, in politics, confine themselves to vulgar terrors and commonplaces. Petty dispatches, petty intrigues are the barriers which Austria designs to oppose to an all--threatening movement. If France and England adopted a course worthy of themselves, if they notified the Porte that, in case the Sultan should close his ears to all proposals of peace, he would find them on the battle-field in the spring, that resolution would soon have put an end to the anxiety of Europe."

The existence of this Memorandum, having transpired in the diplomatic world, attracted to me a certain consideration which I did not decline, but which I did not either aspire to. I do not too clearly see what there was to surprise the "practical" men. My Spanish War was a very "practical" thing. The incessant work of the general revolution operating in the old society, while bringing about among ourselves the fall of the Legitimacy, has upset calculations subordinate to the permanence of facts as they existed in 1828.

Do you wish to convince yourselves of the enormous difference of merit and glory between a great writer and a great politician? My works as a diplomatist have been hallowed by what is recognised as the supreme ability, _success._ And, still, whosoever may at any time read this Memorandum will no doubt skip it close-legged, and I should do as much in the reader's place[693]. Well, suppose that, instead of this little diplomatic master-piece, we were to find in this writing some episode after the manner of Homer or Virgil, if Heaven had granted me their genius: do you think we should be tempted to skip the loves of Dido at Carthage or the tears of Priam in Achilles' tent?

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Wednesday_, 10 _December_ 1828.

"I have been to the Tiberine Academy, of which I have the honour to be a member. I have heard very witty speeches and very fine verses. What an amount of wasted intelligence! To-night I have my great _ricevimento_; I am terrified of it as I write to you."

[Sidenote: A reception at the Embassy.]

"11 _December._

"The great _ricevimento_ passed off admirably. Madame de Chateaubriand is delighted, because we had all the cardinals on the face of the earth. All Europe in Rome was there with Rome. Since I am condemned for some days to this business, I prefer to do it as well as another ambassador. The enemies dislike any kind of success, even the most miserable, and it is punishing them to succeed in a field where they believe themselves unequalled. Next Saturday, I transform myself into a canon of St. John Lateran, and on Sunday I give a dinner to my colleagues. An assembly more to my taste is that which takes place this evening: I dine at Guérin's with all the artists and we shall settle _your_ monument to Poussin. A young pupil full of talent, M. Desprez[694], will make the bas-relief, taken from a picture by the great painter, and M. Lemoyne[695] will make the bust. We must have only French hands here.

"To complete my History of Rome, Madame de Castries has arrived. She again is one of those little girls who have sat on my knee, like Césarine (Madame de Barante)[696]. The poor woman is very much changed; her eyes filled with tears when I reminded her of her childhood at Lormois. It seems to me that the new arrival is no longer under the spell of enchantment. What an isolation! And for whom? I tell you, the best thing for me to do is to go to see you again as soon as possible. If my _Moses_[697] comes down safely from the mountain, I will borrow one of his rays, to reappear before your eyes quite brilliant and youthful."

"_Saturday_, 13.

"My dinner at the Academy went off admirably. The young men were pleased: it was the first time an ambassador had dined 'with them.' I announced the Poussin Monument to them; it was as though I were already honouring their ashes."

_Thursday_, 18 _December_ 1828.

"Instead of wasting my time and yours in telling you the doings of my life, I prefer to send them to you all written down in the Roman newspaper. Here are another twelve months that have fallen on my head. When shall I have rest? When shall I cease to waste on the high-roads the days that were given me to make a better use of? I have spent with my eyes shut while I was rich; I thought the treasure inexhaustible. Now, when I see how it has diminished and how little time is left to me to lay at your feet, I feel a pain at my heart. But is there not a long existence after that on earth? A poor, humble Christian, I tremble before Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_; I know not where I shall go, but, wherever you are not, I shall be very unhappy. I have a hundred times acquainted you with my plans and my future. Ruins, health, the loss of all illusion, all say to me, 'Go away, retire, have done.' I find nothing at the end of my day's journey but you. You wished me to mark my stay in Rome, it is done: Poussin's tomb will remain. It will bear this inscription:

F. A. DE CH. TO NICOLAS POUSSIN,

FOR THE GLORY OF ART AND THE HONOUR OF FRANCE[698].

"What more have I to do here now? Nothing, especially after subscribing your name for the sum of one hundred ducats to the monument of the man whom you say you love best 'after myself:' Tasso."

"ROME, _Saturday_, 3 _January_ 1829.

"I am recommencing my good wishes for the New Year: may Heaven grant you health and a long life! Do not forget me; I have hopes, for, indeed, you remember M. de Montmorency and Madame de Staël: your memory is as good as your heart. I was saying yesterday to Madame Salvage[699] that I knew nothing in the world so beautiful as yourself or better.

[Sidenote: An hour with Leo XII.]

"I spent an hour yesterday with the Pope. We spoke of everything, including the loftiest and gravest topics. He is a very distinguished and enlightened man and a Prince full of dignity. The adventures of my political life needed only that I should be in relations with a sovereign pontiff; that completes my career.

"Would you like to know exactly what I do? I rise at half-past five, I breakfast at seven o'clock; at eight o'clock, I go back to my study, I write to you, or do some business, when there is any to do (the detail-work in connection with the French establishments and the French poor is pretty considerable); at mid-day, I go to wander for two or three hours among the ruins, or to St. Peter's, or to the Vatican. Sometimes I pay a necessary visit before or after my walk; at five o'clock, I come home; I dress for the evening; I dine at six o'clock; at half-past seven, I go to a party with Madame de Chateaubriand, or I receive a few people at home. At eleven, I go to bed, or else I go back once more to the _campagna_, in spite of the robbers and the _malaria._ What do I do there? Nothing: I listen to the silence and watch my shadow passing from portico to portico along the moonlit aqueducts.

"The Romans are so accustomed to my 'methodical' life that they reckon the hours by me. They must be quick about it; I shall soon have been round the clock."

"ROME, _Thursday_, 8 _January_ 1828.

"I am very unhappy; the finest weather in the world has changed into rain, so that I am no longer able to take my walks. And yet that is the only pleasant moment of my day. I used to go thinking of you to these deserted _campagne_; they linked the past and the future in my sentiments, for formerly I used to take the same walks. Once or twice a week, I go to the place where the English girl was drowned: who now remembers that poor young woman, Miss Bathurst[700]? Her fellow-countrymen and women gallop along the river-side without thinking of her. The Tiber, which has seen many other things, does not trouble about her at all. Besides, its waters have been renewed: they are as pale and still as when they passed over that creature full of hope, beauty and life.

"I have fallen into a very lofty strain without knowing it. Forgive a poor hare imprisoned and steeped in his form. I must tell you a little story of my last 'Tuesday.' There was an immense crowd at the Embassy; I was standing with my back against a marble table, bowing to the people arriving and leaving. An Englishwoman, of whom I knew neither the name nor the appearance, came up to me, looked me straight in the face and said, with the famous accent:

"'Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you are very unhappy!'

"Astonished at this apostrophe and at this manner of entering into conversation, I asked her what she meant. She replied:

"'I mean to say that I pity you.'

"So saying, she linked her arm into that of another Englishwoman, was lost in the crowd, and I did not see her again during the rest of the evening. That eccentric stranger was neither young nor pretty: I feel grateful to her, nevertheless, for her mysterious words.

"Your newspapers continue to say the same things about me. I don't know what has possessed them. I ought to believe myself as forgotten as I wish to be.

"I am writing to M. Thierry by this post. He is at Hyères and very ill. Not a word of reply from M. de La Bouillerie[701]."

TO M. THIERRY[702]

"ROME, 8 _January_ 1829.

"I was much touched, monsieur, to receive the new edition of your Letters, with a line which proves that you have thought of me. If that line had been in your own hand, I should have hoped for the sake of my country that your eyes would reopen to the studies which your talent turns to such wonderful account. I am greedily reading, or rather re-reading, this too short work. I am making dog's ears to every page, in order the better to mark the passages upon which I wish to rely. I shall quote you very frequently, monsieur, in the work which I have been so many years preparing, on the two first dynasties. I shall shelter my ideas and my researches behind your authority; I shall often adopt your reforms in nomenclature; lastly, I shall have the good fortune to be almost invariably of your opinion, while departing, much despite of myself, no doubt, from the system put forth by M. Guizot; but I cannot, in common with that illustrious writer, overthrow the most authentic monuments, turn all the Franks into 'nobles' and 'free-men,' and all the Roman-Gauls into 'slaves of the Franks.' The Salic Law and the Ripuarian Law have a multitude of articles based on the difference of condition among the Franks:

"'_St quis ingenuus ingenuum ripuarium extra solum vendiderit, etc., etc._'

[Sidenote: Letter to Augustin Thierry.]

"You know, monsieur, how eagerly I wished for you in Rome. We should have sat down on some ruins: there you would have taught me history; I, an old disciple, would have listened to my young master with the sole regret that I no longer had enough years before me to profit by his lessons:

Tel est le sort de l'homme: il s'instruit avec l'âge. Mais que sert être sage, Quand le terme est si près[703]?

"Those lines are from an unpublished ode, written by a man who is no more, by my good and old friend, Fontanes. Thus, monsieur, does everything remind me, among the remains of Rome, of all that I have lost, of the short time that still remains to me and of the brevity of those hopes which seemed so long to me in former days: _spem longam._

"Believe, monsieur, that no one admires you more, or is more devoted to you than your servant."

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS

"ROME, 12 _January_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I saw the Pope on the 2nd of this month; he was good enough to keep me with him in private audience for an hour and a half. I must report to you the conversation which I had with His Holiness.

"We first spoke of France. The Pope began with the most sincere praise of the King.

"'At no time,' he said, 'has the Royal Family of France displayed so complete a harmony of good qualities and virtues. Now calm has been restored among the clergy; the bishops have made their submission.'

"'That submission,' I replied, 'is, in part, due to the sagacity and moderation of Your Holiness.'

"'I advised what seemed reasonable to me to be done,' answered the Pope. 'There were no spiritual matters involved in the ordinances[704]; the bishops would have done better to leave their first letter unwritten; but, after saying, "_Non possutnus_," it was difficult for them to withdraw. They tried to display as little contradiction as possible between their actions and their language at the moment of their adhesion: we must forgive them for it. They are pious men, firmly attached to the King and the Monarchy; they have their weaknesses in common with all men.'

"All this, monsieur le comte, was said in very clear and excellent French.

"After thanking the Holy Father for the confidence which he showed me, I spoke to him in terms of consideration of the Cardinal Secretary of State:

"'I chose him,' he said, 'because he has travelled, because he knows the general affairs of Europe and because he seemed to me to possess the sort of capacity which his post demands. He has written, with respect to your two ordinances, only what I thought and what I recommended him to write.'

"'Might I venture to give Your Holiness,' I resumed, 'my opinion of the religious situation in France?'

"'You will be doing me a great pleasure,' replied the Pope.

"I suppress a few compliments which His Holiness was good enough to address to me.

"'I think then, Most Holy Father, that the mischief arose in the first place from a mistake of the clergy: instead of supporting the new institutions, or at least keeping silence respecting those institutions, they allowed words of blame, to say no more, to escape in their charges and sermons. Irreligious persons, who were at a loss with what to reproach saintly ministers, seized upon those words and made a weapon of them; they cried that Catholicism was incompatible with the establishment of public liberty, that it was war to the death between the Charter and the priests. By holding the opposite conduct, our ecclesiastics would have obtained all they wanted from the nation. There is a great ground-work of religion in France and a visible inclination to forget our old misfortunes at the foot of the altars; but also there is a real attachment to the institutions introduced by the sons of St. Louis. It would be impossible to calculate the measure of power to which the clergy might have attained, if they had shown themselves at the same time friends to the King and the Charter. I have never ceased to preach this policy in my writings and in my speeches; but the passions of the moment refused me a hearing and took me for an enemy.'

"The Pope had listened to me with the greatest attention.

"'I enter into your ideas,' he said, after a moment's pause. 'Jesus Christ made no pronouncement as to the form of governments. "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's[705]" means only, "Obey the established authorities." The Catholic religion has prospered in the midst of republics as in the bosom of monarchies; it has made immense progress in the United States; it reigns alone in Spanish America.'

"These words are very remarkable, monsieur le comte, at the very moment when the Court of Rome is strongly inclining to establish the bishops nominated by Bolivar[706].

"The Pope resumed:

"'You see how great is the influx of Protestant strangers to Rome: their presence does good to the country; but it is also good in another respect: the English come here with strange notions regarding the Pope and the Papacy, the fanaticism of the clergy, the slavery of the people in this country; they have not stayed here two months before they are quite changed. They see that I am only a bishop like any other bishop, that the Roman clergy are neither ignorant nor persecuting, and that my subjects are not beasts of burden!'

"Encouraged by this sort of effusion of the heart, and seeking to widen the scope of the conversation, I said to the Sovereign Pontiff:

"'Does not Your Holiness think that the moment is favourable for the recomposition of Catholic unity, for the reconciliation of the dissenting sects, by some slight concessions of discipline? The prejudices against the Court of Rome are vanishing in every quarter and, in a century which was still ardent, the work of reunion had already been attempted by Leibnitz[707] and Bossuet.'

"'This is a great matter,' said the Pope; 'but I must await the moment fixed by Providence. I agree that the prejudices are vanishing; the division of the sects in Germany has brought about the lassitude of those sects. In Saxony, where I resided for three years, I was the first to establish a foundling hospital and to obtain that this hospital should be served by Catholics. A general outcry arose against me at the time among the Protestants; to-day those same Protestants are the first to praise and endow the institution. The number of Catholics is increasing in Great Britain; it is true that they include many foreigners.'

"The Pope pausing for a moment, I took occasion to introduce the question of the Irish Catholics:

"'If the emancipation takes place,' I said, 'the Catholic religion will increase still more in Great Britain.'

[Sidenote: Pope Leo XII. on Ireland.]

"'That is true on one side,' replied His Holiness, 'but on the other there are disadvantages. The Irish Catholics are very ardent and very incautious. Has not O'Connell, in other respects a man of merit, gone so far as to say that a concordat had been proposed between the Holy See and the British Government? There is not a word of truth in this assertion; I cannot contradict it publicly; and it has given me great pain. And so, for the union of the dissenters, it is necessary that things should be ripe and that God Himself should complete His work. The popes can only wait.'

"This was not my opinion, monsieur le comte; but my business was to inform the King of the Holy Father's opinion on so serious a subject, not to combat it.

"'What will your newspapers say?' asked the Pope, with a sort of gaiety. 'They talk a great deal! Those of the Netherlands still more; but I am told that, in your country, nobody thinks of their articles an hour after they have read them.'

"'That is absolutely true, Most Holy Father: you see how the _Gazette de France_ deals with me,'--for I know that His Holiness reads all our newspapers, not excepting the _Courrier_--'and still the Sovereign Pontiff treats me with extreme kindness; I have reason to believe, therefore, that the _Gazette_ does not make a great impression on him.'--The Pope laughed and shook his head.--'Well, Most Holy Father, there are others like Your Holiness; when the paper tells the truth, the good it says remains; if it lies, it is as though it had said nothing at all. The Pope must expect some speeches during this session: the Extreme Right will maintain that M. le Cardinal Bernetti is not a priest and that his letters on the ordinances are not articles of faith; the Extreme Left will declare that we need not have taken our orders from Rome. The majority will commend the deference of the Privy Council and will loudly praise the spirit of peace and wisdom of Your Holiness.'

"This little explanation appeared to charm the Holy Father, who was pleased to meet with some one acquainted with the workings of our constitutional machine. Finally, monsieur le comte, thinking that the King and his Council would like to know the views of the Pope on the present state of affairs in the East, I repeated some news out of the papers, not being authorized to communicate to the Holy See the positive facts of which you informed me in your dispatch of the 18th December touching the recall of our expedition to the Morea.

"The Pope did not hesitate to reply; he appeared to me to be alarmed at the imprudence of instructing the Turks in military discipline. I give his own words:

"'If the Turks are already capable of resisting Russia, what will their power be when they have obtained a glorious peace? Who will prevent them, after four or five years spent in rest and in perfecting their new tactics, from hurling themselves upon Italy?'

"I will confess, monsieur le comte, that, when I recognised these ideas and these anxieties in the mind of the Sovereign most exposed to the effects of the consequence of the enormous error that has been committed, I congratulated myself on having displayed to you in fuller detail, in my Note on Eastern Affairs, the same ideas and the same anxieties.

"'Nothing,' added the Pope, 'except a firm resolution on the part of the Allied Powers, can put an end to a misfortune which threatens the future. France and England are still in time to stop everything; but, if a new campaign open, it can set Europe on fire, and then it will be too late to extinguish it.'

"'That reflection is the more just,' I answered, 'seeing that, if Europe were to become divided, which God forbid, the presence of fifty thousand Frenchmen would stir up the whole question again.'

"The Pope made no reply; only it appeared to me that the idea of seeing the French in Italy filled him with no sort of fear. Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the Austrian yoke into a confederation against France.

"This, monsieur le comte, is a summary of my long conversation with His Holiness. I do not know that any one has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and in no way sought to deceive.

"The leanings and wishes of the Pope are evidently towards France: when he assumed the Keys of St. Peter, he belonged to the faction of the _zelanti_; to-day he has sought his strength in moderation: that is what the habit of power always teaches. For this reason he is not beloved by the faction of cardinals which he has quitted. Finding no man of talent in the secular clergy, he has chosen his chief advisers among the regular clergy; hence it comes that the monks are on his side, while the prelates and the simple priests make a sort of opposition to him. The latter, when I arrived in Rome, all had their minds more or less infected with the lies of our congregation; they are now infinitely more reasonable; they all, generally speaking, blame the rising in arms of our clergy. It is curious to remark that the Jesuits have as many enemies here as in France: they have as their special adversaries the other religious and the heads of Orders. They had formed a plan by means of which they would have seized upon the public instruction in Rome to the exclusion of the others: the Dominicans have foiled that plan. The Pope is not very popular, because he administers well. His little army consists of old soldiers of Bonaparte, who have a very military bearing and keep excellent order on the high-roads. If material Rome has lost in picturesqueness, it has gained in cleanliness and healthiness. His Holiness plants trees and arrests hermits and beggars: another subject of complaint for the populace. Leo XII. is a great worker; he sleeps little and eats scarcely at all. Only one taste remains to him of his youth, that of sport, an exercise necessary to his health, which, for that matter, seems to be improving. He has a few shots with a fowling-piece in the vast enclosure of the Gardens of the Vatican. The _zelanti_ find it very difficult to forgive him this innocent diversion. The Pope is reproached with the weakness and inconstancy of his affections.

"The radical vice of the political constitution of this country is easily seized upon: it is old men who appoint as sovereign an old man like themselves. This old man, when he becomes the master, in his turn appoints old men as cardinals. Turning in this vicious circle, the enervated supreme power is in this way always at the edge of the tomb. The prince never occupies the throne for a long enough period to execute the plans of improvement which he may have conceived. A pope ought to have sufficient resolution suddenly to promote a number of young cardinals, in such a way as to ensure at the next election the majority of a young pope. But the rules of Sixtus V.[708], which give the hat to palace employments, the empire of custom and habit, the interests of the people, who receive gratifications at each change of the tiara, the individual ambition of the cardinals, who wish for short reigns in order to multiply their chances of the papacy, these and a thousand other obstacles too long to narrate are opposed to the rejuvenation of the Sacred College.

"The conclusion of this dispatch, monsieur le comte, is that, in the present condition of affairs, the King can reckon entirely on the Court of Rome.

"Cautious as I am in my manner of seeing and feeling, if I have anything with which to reproach myself in the report which I have the honour to send you, it is that I have weakened rather than exaggerated the expression of His Holiness' words. My memory is very safe; I wrote down the conversation on leaving the Vatican and my private secretary has simply copied it word for word from my minutes. The latter, rapidly jotted down, were hardly legible to myself. You would never have been able to decipher them[709].

"I have the honour to be, etc."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Tuesday_, 13 _January_ 1829.

"Yesterday evening, at eight o'clock, I wrote you the letter which M. Du Viviers[710] is bringing you; this morning, on waking, I am writing to you again by the ordinary post, which leaves at noon. You know the poor ladies of Saint-Denis: they have been much neglected since the arrival of the great ladies of the Trinità-del-Monte; without being the enemy of the latter, I have taken the side of the former with Madame de Ch. For the last month, the ladies of Saint-Denis have been wishing to give a fête in honour of 'M. the Ambassador' and 'Madame the Ambassadress:' it took place yesterday at mid-day. Imagine a theatre arranged in a sort of sacristy with a platform giving on to the church; as actors, a dozen young girls from eight years to fourteen, who played the _Machabées._ They had themselves made their helmets and cloaks. They spoke their French lines with an enthusiasm and an Italian accent which were the funniest things in the world; they stamped their feet at energetic moments: there was a niece of Pius VII., a daughter of Thorwaldsen, and another daughter of Chauvin[711] the painter. They were incredibly pretty in their paper finery. The one who played the High Priest had a great black beard which delighted her but pricked her, and which she was constantly obliged to put right with a little thirteen-year-old white hand. As spectators, ourselves, a few mothers, the nuns, Madame Salvage, two or three priests and a further score of little school-girls, all in white, with veils. We had had cakes and ices brought from the Embassy. They played the piano between the acts. Imagine the hopes and joys which, must have preceded this fête at the convent, and the memories which will follow it! The whole ended with _Vivat in æternum_, sung by three nuns in the church."

"ROME, _January_ 1829.

"Yours again! Last night we had wind and rain as in France: I imagined them beating against your little window; I found myself transported to your little room, I saw your harp, your piano, your birds; you played me my favourite air, or Shakspeare's: and I was in Rome, far away from you! Four hundred leagues and the Alps separate us!

[Sidenote: Amateur theatricals.]

"I have received a letter from that witty lady who used sometimes to come to see me at the Foreign Office; you can judge how well she courts me: she is a furious Turcophile; Mahmud is a great man, who is in advance of his nation!

"This Rome, in whose midst I live, ought to teach me to despise politics. Here liberty and tyranny have both perished: I see the huddled ruins of the Roman Republic and the Empire of Tiberius; what is all this to-day blended in the same dust? Does not the Capuchin who sweeps that dust with his gown as he goes by seem to make the vanity of so many vanities even more perceptible? Nevertheless, I come back, in spite of myself, to the destinies of my poor country. I would wish it religion, glory and liberty, without thinking of my powerlessness to deck it with that triple crown."

"ROME, _Thursday_, 5 _February_ 1829.

"Torre Vergata is a domain of monks situated at about a league from Nero's Tomb, on the left as you come from Rome, in the most beautiful and deserted spot: there is an immense number of ruins level with the ground covered with grass and thistle. I began an excavation there two days ago, on Tuesday, just after I had written to you. I was accompanied by Hyacinthe and by Visconti[712], who is directing the excavation. The weather was the loveliest in the world. A dozen men armed with spades and pickaxes, digging up tombs and ruins of houses and palaces amid profound solitude, offered a spectacle worthy of you. I uttered but one wish: that you might be there. I would gladly consent to live with you in a tent amid those ruins.

"I myself put my hand to the work; I discovered fragments of marble: the clues are excellent and I hope to find something to compensate me for the money wasted in this lottery of the dead; already I have a block of Greek marble large enough to make Poussin's bust. This excavation will become the object of my walks; I shall go and sit everyday in the midst of these remains. To which century, to which men did they belong? We are perhaps removing the most illustrious dust without knowing it. Perhaps an inscription will come to throw light upon some historic fact, to destroy some error, to establish some truth. And then, when I have gone away with my twelve half-naked peasants, all will fall back into oblivion and silence. Do you picture to yourself all the passions, all the interests which once bestirred themselves in these abandoned spots? There were masters and slaves, happy people and unhappy, beautiful persons who were beloved and ambitious people who wanted to be ministers. There remain a few birds and I, for but a very short time longer; soon we shall fly away. Tell me, do you think it worth while to be one of the members of the council of a little king of the Gauls, for me, an Armorican barbarian, a traveller among savages of a world unknown to the Romans and ambassador to the priests whom they used to throw to the lions? When I called to Leonidas at Lacedæmon, he did not answer: the sound of my footsteps at Torre Vergata will have roused nobody. And when I, in my turn, am in my grave, I shall not hear even the sound of your voice. I must therefore hurry to come closer to you and to put an end to all these idle fancies of the life of men. There is nothing good save retirement, nothing true save an attachment like yours."

"ROME, 7 _February_ 1829.

"I have received a long letter from General Guilleminot[713]; he gives me a lamentable account of what he suffered during his journeys on the coasts of Greece: and yet Guilleminot was an ambassador; he had large ships and an army under his orders. To go, after our soldiers have left, to a country in which not a house nor a corn-field remains, among a few scattered men, driven by poverty to become brigands, is an impossible project for a woman[714].

[Sidenote: My excavations.]

"I shall go to my excavation this morning: yesterday we found the skeleton of a Gothic soldier and the arm of a female statue. It was as though one had come upon the destroyer together with the ruin he had made; we have great hopes of finding the statue this morning. If the architectural remains which I am uncovering are worth the trouble, I shall not break them up to sell the bricks, as is usually done: I shall leave them standing, and they will bear my name. They belong to the time of Domitian. We have an inscription which shows this: it is the good time of the Roman arts."

DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, _Monday_, 9 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"His Holiness had a sudden attack this morning of the disorder to which he is subject; his life is in the most imminent danger. The order has been given to close all the theatres. I have just left the Cardinal Secretary of State, who is himself ill and who despairs of the Pope's life. The loss of this enlightened and modern Sovereign Pontiff would, at the present moment, be a real calamity for Christianity and especially for France. I thought it important, monsieur le comte, that His Majesty's Government should be warned of this probable event, so that it may be enabled to take such measures beforehand as it shall consider necessary. Consequently, I have dispatched a mounted courier to Lyons. This courier carries a letter which I am writing to Monsieur the Prefect of the Rhône, with a telegraphic dispatch which he will forward to you, and another letter which I am asking him to send you by express. If we have the misfortune to lose His Holiness, a fresh courier will bring you all the details to Paris.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"_Eight o'clock in the evening._

"The congregation of Cardinals already assembled has forbidden the Cardinal Secretary of State to give permits for post-horses. My courier will not be able to leave until after the departure of the courier of the Sacred College, in case of the Pope's death. I have tried to send a man to carry my dispatches to the Tuscan frontier. The bad roads and the absence of livery-horses have made this plan impracticable. Obliged to wait in Rome, which has become a kind of closed prison, I still hope that the news will reach you by telegraph a few hours before it is known to the other governments beyond the Alps. It might nevertheless happen that the courier sent to the Nuncio, who will necessarily leave before mine, will himself, when passing through Lyons, give you the news by telegraph."

[Sidenote: Death of Leo XII.]

"_Tuesday_, 10 _February, nine o'clock in the morning._

"_The Pope is dead_; my courier is leaving. In a few hours he will be followed by M. le Comte de Montebello[715], attaché to the Embassy."

ROME, 10 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

I dispatched to Lyons, about two hours ago, the special mounted courier who will forward to you the unexpected and deplorable news of the death of His Holiness. Now I am sending off M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the Embassy, to convey to you some necessary details.

"The Pope died of the hemorrhoidal affection to which he was subject. The blood being extravasated into the bladder occasioned a retention, which an attempt was made to relieve by means of a sound. His Holiness is believed to have been wounded in the course of the operation. In any case, after four days' suffering, Leo XII. expired this morning at nine o'clock, as I came to the Vatican, where an agent of the Embassy had passed the night. The letter sent by my first courier informs you, monsieur le comte, of my useless efforts to obtain a permit for post-horses before the Pope's death.

"Yesterday I called on the Cardinal Secretary of State, who was still very ill with a violent attack of gout; I had a rather long conversation with him on the consequences of the misfortune with which we were threatened. I lamented the death of a Prince whose moderate sentiments and whose knowledge of European affairs were so useful to the repose of Christianity.

"'It is not only a great misfortune for France,' answered the Secretary of State, 'but a greater misfortune for the Roman States than you imagine. Discontent and poverty are great in our provinces and, if the cardinals think fit to adopt a different system from that of Leo XII., they will find their work cut out for them. As for myself, my functions cease with the death of the Pope and I have nothing to reproach myself with.'

"This morning I again saw Cardinal Bernetti, who has, in fact, laid down his functions as Secretary of State: he spoke to me to the same effect as on the preceding day. I asked him to let me meet him before he secluded himself in the Conclave. We agreed that we should talk of electing a sovereign pontiff who should continue the system of moderation of Leo XII. I shall have the honour to communicate to you all the information that I may gather.

"It is probable that the death of the Pope and the fall of Cardinal Bernetti will delight the enemies of the ordinances[716], they will proclaim this unhappy event a punishment from Heaven. It is easy already to read that thought on certain French faces in Rome.

"I regret the Pope for more than one reason; I had had the good fortune to gain his confidence: the prejudices which had been carefully instilled into his mind against me, before my arrival, had become dispelled and he did me the honour, on all occasions, to bear witness, publicly and aloud, to the esteem in which he was good enough to hold me.

"Now, monsieur le comte, permit me to enter into the explanation of a few facts.

"I was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the death of Pius VII. You will find in the boxes at the Office, if you think it advisable to look into the matter, the continuous account of my relations with M. le Duc de Laval. The custom is, on the death of a Pope, to send an extraordinary ambassador, or to accredit the resident ambassador through new letters to the Sacred College. The latter is the course which I proposed to His late Majesty, Louis XVIII., to follow. The King will do what he thinks best for his service. Four French cardinals came to Rome for the election of Leo XII. France to-day numbers five; a number of votes certainly not to be despised in the Conclave. I shall, monsieur le comte, await the King's orders. M. de Montebello, who is instructed to hand you this dispatch, will remain at your disposal.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 10 _February_ 1829, _eleven d clock at night._

"I wished to write you a long letter; but the dispatch, which I was obliged to write with my own hand, and the fatigue of these last days have exhausted me.

"I regret the Pope; I had obtained his confidence. I am now charged with an important mission; it is impossible for me to know what the result will be, or what influence it will have over my destiny.

[Sidenote: Conclave arrangements.]

"The conclaves generally last two months, which will at least leave me free for Easter. I will soon talk to you thoroughly of all that.

"Picture to yourself that they found that poor Pope, on Thursday last, before he fell ill, writing his epitaph. They tried to divert him from such sad thoughts:

"'No, no,' he said; 'it will be over in a few days.'"

"ROME, _Thursday_, 12 _February_ 1829.

"I read your newspapers. They often give me pain. I see in the Globe that Monsieur le Comte Portalis is, according to that journal, my declared enemy. Why? Do I ask his place? He is taking too much pains; I do not so much as think of him. I wish him all possible prosperity; but yet, if it were true that he wanted war, he would find me there. People seem to me to be talking nonsense about everything, both about the immortal Mahmud and the evacuation of the Morea.

"In the most probable event, this evacuation will put back Greece under the yoke of the Turks, with the loss to us of our honour and forty millions. There is a prodigious amount of wit in France, but we lack judgment and common-sense; two phrases make us drunk, we are led with words, and what is worse is that we are always ready to disparage our friends and exalt our enemies. Besides, is it not curious that they should make the King, in his Speech[717], use my own language on 'the agreement of the public liberties and the Royalty,' and that they should have found such fault with me for using that language? And the men who make the Crown speak thus were once the warmest partizans of the censorship! For the rest, I am going to see the election of the Head of Christianity; this spectacle is the last great spectacle that I shall witness in my life[718]; it will close my career.

"Now that pleasures have ceased in Rome, business is commencing. I shall be obliged, on the one hand, to write of all that happens to the Government and, on the other, to fulfil the duties of my new position. I must compliment the Sacred College and attend the funeral of the Holy Father, to whom I had become attached because he was but little loved, and the more so in that, fearing that I should find an enemy in him, I found a friend who, from the chair of St. Peter, formally gave the lie to my 'Christian' calumniators. Then the French cardinals are going to come down upon me. I have written to make representations at least touching the Archbishop of Toulouse[719].

"In the midst of all this stir, the Poussin monument is being executed; the excavation is successful; I have found three fine heads, a draped female torso, a funeral inscription by a brother to a young sister, which touched me.

"Talking of inscriptions, I told you that the poor Pope had made his on the day before that on which he was taken ill, predicting that he was soon going to die. He has left a writing in which he recommends his indigent family to the Roman Government: only those who have loved much have such great virtues."

[Footnote 500: This book was written in Rome in 1828 and 1829, and revised in February 1845.--T.]

[Footnote 501: In re-reading those manuscripts, I have merely added a few passages from works published subsequently to the date of my embassy to Rome.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 502: Æn., IV. 23.--B.]

[Footnote 503: Formerly the residence of the Comtesse de Beaumont.--T.]

[Footnote 504: Madame de Duras died at Nice in January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 505:

"Great-hearted Clara, noble, faithful friend, Thy memory is no longer in the land; Thy very grave by men's cold eyes is bann'd; The world forgets thee, and thy name doth end."--T.

]

[Footnote 506: All the foregoing, from the words "which overtook her at Nice," was added afterwards to Chateaubriand's diary of the road. Manifestly he could not insert in his journal, on the 25th of September 1828, a note from the Duchesse de Duras written on the 14th of November 1828; nor could he speak of the death of Madame de Duras and of her tomb, seeing that she died only in 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 507: St. Charles Cardinal Count Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan (1538-1584), was born at Arona on the Lago Maggiore, where a colossal statue, 70 feet high, was erected to his memory in 1697. St. Charles is buried in Milan Cathedral. He was canonized in 1610 and is honoured on the 4th of November.--T.]

[Footnote 508: If Chateaubriand did not see Marie-Louise in 1828, when passing through Parma, he had dined with her, some years before, at Verona, where she had gone to see her father, during the sitting of the Congress.

"We at first," he writes, "refused an invitation from the Archduchess of Parma. She insisted, and we went. We found her very gay; the universe having made it its business to remember Napoleon, she no longer had the trouble of thinking of him. She spoke a few careless words, and as it were casually, about the King of Rome: she was pregnant. Her Court had a certain air of dilapidation and decay, excepting M. de Neipperg, a man of good manners. There was nothing out of the common except ourselves dining at Marie-Louise's table and the bracelets, made out of the stone of Juliet's sarcophagus, worn by Napoleon's widow. As we crossed the Po, at Piacenza, a single bark, newly painted, carrying a sort of imperial ensign, attracted our eyes. Two or three dragoons, in shell-jackets and forage-caps, were watering their horses; we were entering the States of Marie-Louise; that was all that remained of the power of the man who clove the rocks of the Simplon, planted his banners on the capitals of Europe, and raised Italy which had lain prostrate for so many centuries."

When speaking to Marie-Louise, Chateaubriand told her that he had met her soldiers at Piacenza, but that that little troop was nothing beside the great imperial armies of former days. She answered drily:

"I never think of that now." (_Congrès de Vérone_, Vol. I. p. 69.)--B.]

[Footnote 509: Charles Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Lucca, later Charles II. Duke of Parma (1799-1883), son of Maria Louisa of Spain, ex-Queen of Etruria, and heir, by the terms of an arrangement concluded in Paris in 1817, to the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza on the death of Marie-Louise. This occurred in 1847, when Charles became Duke of Parma; but he abdicated, in March 1849, in favour of his son, Charles III., who was assassinated in 1854. Charles III. was succeeded by his son, the present Duke Robert I., then a child of six years of age, who was dethroned in 1860, and his duchy annexed to Sardinia by Victor Emmanuel II.--B.]

[Footnote 510: Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619), the founder of the Bolognese School, and his two cousins and pupils, Agostino Carracci (1558-1602) and his brother Annibale Carracci (1560-1609).--T.]

[Footnote 511: Pius VII. became Bishop of Tivoli in 1780, Bishop of Imola and a cardinal in 1785, and Pope in 1800.--T.]

[Footnote 512: _Purgatorio_, Canto XVI. 65-66.--B.]

[Footnote 513: Beatrice de' Bardi (1266-1290), _née_ Portinari, celebrated by Dante in his _Vita Nuova_ and _Divina Commedia._--T.]

[Footnote 514: DANTE, _Vita Nuova_, Canto III. 78.--T.]

[Footnote 515: Theodore Martin's DANTE, _Vita Nuova_, Canto III., the closing stanza.--T.]

[Footnote 516: Cary's DANTE: _Purgatory_, XXX. 23-28.--T.]

[Footnote 517:

"Quando nel mondo ad ora adora M'insegnavate come l'uom s'eterna."

_Inferno_, Canto XV. 84-85.--B.]

[Footnote 518: Teresa Contessa Guiccioli, later Marquise de Boissy (1801-1873), _née_ Gamba. She lived with Lord Byron between 1819 and 1823. She married Hilaire Étienne Octave Rouillé, Marquis de Boissy, in 1851.--T.]

[Footnote 519: The octagonal basilica of San Vitale does, in fact, recall Constantinople, because it was built, under Justinian, in imitation of St. Sophia. Charlemagne caused it to be copied for the Church of Aix-la-Chapelle.--B.]

[Footnote 520: The Church of San Apollinare, erected under Theodoric at the commencement of the sixth century, also presents the Byzantine type in all its oriental brilliancy. The twenty-four columns of Greek marble which divide the church into three aisles were brought to Ravenna from Constantinople.--T.]

[Footnote 521: Honorius Flavius Emperor of the West (384-423). His love for a hen called Roma forms an anecdote related by Procopius.--B.]

[Footnote 522: Galla Placidia (_circa_ 388-450 or 451), daughter of Theodosius the Great, sister of Honorius and mother of Valentinian III. Her adventures indeed form the strangest of romances. Born at Constantinople, she was taken prisoner at the siege of Rome by Alaric and carried off in captivity. Atawulf, Alaric's brother-in-law, became smitten with her and married her. After his death, she married Constantius, one of Honorius' generals, who soon assumed the title of Constantius III. After being first the slave and then the Queen of the Visigoths, she governed the Western Empire in the name of her infant son. Her tomb is at Ravenna.--B.]

[Footnote 523: Theodoric the Great (_circa_ 454-526), King of the Ostrogoths and, after 493, sole ruler of Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 524: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (_circa_ 475--_circa_ 524), a Roman philosopher, author of _De Consolatione Philosophiæ._ He was put to death by Theodoric, without trial, on the charge of treason and magic.--T.]

[Footnote 525: Amalasontha (498-535), daughter of Theodoric the Great, and Regent during the minority of her son Athalric King of the Ostrogoths (526). Athalric died in 534, and Amalasontha divided the authority with her cousin Theodatus, whom she married, and who ordered her to be strangled in 535.--T.]

[Footnote 526: Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (_circa_ 468--_circa_ 560), a wise administrative officer under Odoacer, Theodoric and Amalasontha. He retired to a monastery in Calabria in 538, where he wrote his History of the Goths and other works.--T.]

[Footnote 527: The Exarchate of Ravenna was instituted in 568, after the conquest of the Ostrogothic Kingdom by the Byzantines. It at first comprised all Italy, but was soon confined to the district round Ravenna and, in 755, was taken from the Lombards by Pepin the Short, and granted to Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 528: Astolf King of the Lombards (_d._ 756). His conquest of the Exarchate of Ravenna (752) was wrested from him by Pepin the Short in 755.--T.]

[Footnote 529: Ravenna finally passed to the Papal States in 1509.--T.]

[Footnote 530: Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julius II. (1443-1513), elected to the Papacy in 1503.--T.]

[Footnote 531: Giovanni Cardinal de' Medici, later Pope Leo X. (1475-1521), was created a cardinal at the age of thirteen, fought for Pope Julius II. at Ravenna, in 1512, where he was taken prisoner, and was elected successor to Julius on his death in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 532: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), the celebrated Italian poet and author of _Orlando Furioso._--T.]

[Footnote 533: Pierre du Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard (1476-1524), the _Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche._--T.]

[Footnote 534: Gaston de Foix, Maréchal Duc de Nemours (1489-1512), defeated the Papal and Spanish forces at the celebrated Battle of Ravenna, on the 11th of April 1512, but was killed while pursuing the beaten enemy.--T.]

[Footnote 535: Caterina Sforza (_d._ 1460), natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and widow of Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola and Forli, sustained a siege at Forli against Cæsar Borgia, and was captured in the breach with her son Ottaviano. Louis XII. caused her to be set at liberty. She had taken a Medici for her second husband, and died at Florence.--T.]

[Footnote 536: _Inferno_, Canto VII. 75.--B.]

[Footnote 537: Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), elected to the Papacy in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 538: Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, Roman Emperor (_circa_ 53-117), succeeded the Emperor Nerva in 98. The Arch of Trajan was erected at Ancona in 112; it is of white marble, stands at the end of the break-water, and is perhaps the best-proportioned of all the Roman triumphal arches.--T.]

[Footnote 539: Donato d'Agnolo Bramante (1444-1514), the celebrated Italian architect and predecessor of Michael Angelo.--T.]

[Footnote 540: The Chiesa della Santa Casa, which contains the famous pilgrimage shrine of the veritable House of Our Lady, transported by angels from Nazareth and miraculously set down in Italy on the 10th of December 1294.--T.]

[Footnote 541: Léonore de Montaigne, later Vicomtesse de Gamaches. The reference occurs in Montaigne's _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 542: The Treaty of Tolentino was signed on the 19th of February 1797, between General Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII.--T.]

[Footnote 543: The Battle of Lake Trasimenus (217 B.C.) at which Hannibal routed the Romans. Fifteen thousand of the latter were killed or driven into the lake and drowned; six thousand were taken prisoners; and ten thousand saved themselves by dispersion and flight.--T.]

[Footnote 544: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the French historical and landscape painter.--T.]

[Footnote 545: _Cf._ LORD BYRON, _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV., stanzas 66 _et seq._--T.]

[Footnote 546: Leo XII. was born at Genga, near Spoleto, in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 547: Spoleto repulsed the victorious enemy after the Battle of Trasimenus in 217 B.C.--T.]

[Footnote 548: Fra Filippo Lippi (_circa_ 1402-1469) was placed by his aunt in a Carmelite convent. He left it when about twenty and, during an excursion at sea, was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. He purchased his liberty by drawing a full-length portrait of his master in charcoal on a white wall. He died at Spoleto, said to have been poisoned, on the 9th of October 1469.--T.]

[Footnote 549: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), the author of _Don Quixote de la Mancha_, was captured on returning to Spain, four years after the Battle of Lepanto, in 1575, and passed five years in captivity in Algiers. He was ransomed by his family and religious charity in 1580.--T.]

[Footnote 550: Lucrezia Buti sat to Filippo Lippi for the Madonna at Prato, where he was painting an altar-piece for the nuns of Santa Margherita. He became enamoured of her, and finally ran off with her.--T.]

[Footnote 551: Jan Count Potoçki (1761-1815), the Polish traveller, archæologist and historian. He committed suicide on the 2nd of December 1815.--T.]

[Footnote 552: St. Jerome (_circa_ 331-420), a father of the Church, honoured on the 30th of September, the anniversary of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 553: The bridge of Spoleto is the highest in Europe.--T.]

[Footnote 554: GRAY, _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_, 51-54.--T.]

[Footnote 555: "Man's misery leads him back to God."--T.]

[Footnote 556: Tommaso Cardinal Bernetti (1779-1852), created a cardinal in 1727, and Secretary of State from 1828 to 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 557: Pierre Narcisse Baron Guérin (1774-1833), a French historical painter and pupil of Regnault. He gained the Prix de Rome in 1797, became an academician in 1815 and, in 1816, returned to Rome as director of the French Academy in that city.--T.]

[Footnote 558: Chateaubriand here gives only the commencement of his letter of 11th October. The other letters to Madame Récamier contained in the present book have all been more or less modified by the author, who sometimes curtails and sometimes adds to the original text. Madame Lenormant, in the second volume of her _Souvenir de Madame Récamier_, has reprinted the great writer's letters in their entirety, after the originals in her possession.--B.]

[Footnote 559: Giacomo Antonio Cardinal Benvenuti (1665-1838), created a cardinal in 1826 and Legate _a letere_ of the Marches in 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 560: Carlo Cardinal Oppizoni (1769-1855), Archbishop of Bologna (1802) and a cardinal (1804).--B.]

[Footnote 561: Agostino Cardinal Rivarola (1758-1842) had been Governor of Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 562: Carlo Cardinal Odescalchi (1786-1841), created a cardinal in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 563: Pietro Cardinal Vidoni (1759-1830).--T.]

[Footnote 564: When I left Rome, he bought my calash and did me the honour to die in it on his way to Ponte-Mole.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).]

[Footnote 565: Christian Karl Josias Baron von Bunsen (1791-1860), a distinguished scholar and diplomatist. He was successively secretary of Legation, _Chargé d'affaires_ and Minister to Rome (1818-1838), Minister to Switzerland (1839-1841) and Minister to London (1841-1854), and published a number of erudite historical works in the German language.--T.]

[Footnote 566: Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1774-1831), a celebrated German historian, philologist and critic, was born at Copenhagen and was in the Danish Civil Service until 1806, when he entered that of Prussia. He was Prussian Minister to Rome from 1816 to 1823, with Bunsen as his secretary of Legation. Niebuhr's _Römische Geschichte_ (1811-1832) revolutionized the study of Roman history.--T.]

[Footnote 567: Maria Antonovna Narischkine, wife of Alexander Narischkine, a graceful and poetic Russian beauty, much admired by Alexander I.--B.]

[Footnote 568: Pedro Gomez Kavelo, Marques de Labrador (1775-1850), Spanish Minister to Florence in 1808, when the troubles burst out at home by which Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. were dethroned. He followed his Princes to France and shared their exile until 1814. He was sent as Plenipotentiary to the Congress of Vienna and subsequently received the Naples Embassy, followed by the Rome Embassy.--B.]

[Footnote 569: Antoine Philippe Fiacre Ghislain Visscher, Comte de Celles (1779-1841), a native of Brussels, took sides with the French at the annexation of his country in 1795, became a town councillor of Brussels in 1800, fought for the French at Austerlitz, was made Prefect of the Loire Inférieure in 1806, a count in 1811, and Prefect of the Zuyder Zee in 1811. From 1811 to 1813, he oppressed the Dutch in Napoleon's name. After the formation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Celles withdrew from public life until 1821, when he was elected to the Second Chamber of the States-General. He was appointed Ambassador to Rome in 1826, and held that post until 1829. He supported the Belgian Revolution of 1830; but, in 1832, removed to Paris, where he took out letters of naturalization.--T.]

[Footnote 570: The Comtesse de Celles, _née_ de Valence, daughter of General Comte and the Comtesse de Valence, of whom the latter was the daughter of Madame de Genlis.--B.]

[Footnote 571: Nicola Paganini (1782-1840), the great violinist of those days.--T.]

[Footnote 572: Michael (Dom Miguel) I., King of Portugal (1802-1866), had been declared King on the 30th of June 1828. His struggle against his niece, Mary II. (Donna Maria de Gloria), failed, however, and he was compelled to quit Portugal by the Convention of Evora Monte, 26 May 1834, and, by the law of 29 May following, he was deprived of his title of Infant of Portugal, and he and his descendants were declared to have forfeited all rights as Portuguese citizens. He was succeeded by his son, Michael (Dom Miguel) II., the present _de jure_ King of Portugal (MARQUIS DE RUVIGNY AND RAINEVAL, _The Legitimist Kalendar for 1895_, p. 33).--T.]

[Footnote 573: Ottavio Principe Lancellotti married Prince Massimo's daughter in 1818.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Giuseppina Principessa Lancelotti (_b._ 1799), _née_ Massimo d'Arsoli.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Camillo Massimihano Massimo, Principe d'Arsoli (_d._ 1840).--T.]

[Footnote 576: Canova died at Venice on the 13th of October 1822.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Jean Goujon (_circa_ 1515-1572), a celebrated sculptor of the French Renascence period. He was a Calvinist, and is supposed to have been shot on his scaffold in the court-yard of the Louvre during the massacre of St. Bartholomew (23-24 August 1652).--T.]

[Footnote 578: Tiziano Vicelli (1477-1576), known as Titian. He was first called to Bologna by Charles V. in 1532; in 1547 he was summoned to Augsburg; and the Emperor's favour lasted until his death, and was followed by that of Philip II.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) went to France in 1516 by invitation of Francis I., and died there, at the Château de Cloux, near Amboise, on the 2nd of May 1519.--T.]

[Footnote 580: Cosmo I. de' Medici, the Great, first Grand-duke of Tuscany (1519-1574). Michael Angelo was a native of Caprese, near Florence, and is buried in the Santa Croce in the Tuscan capital.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velasquez (1599-1660) visited Italy in 1629 and again in 1649.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617-1683), Velasquez' pupil.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Giulio di Pietro di Filippo de' Giannuzzi (1492-1546), known as Giulio Romano, a painter and architect, one of Raphael's principal pupils.--T.]

[Footnote 584: This school was founded by Friedrich Johann Overbeck (1789-1869), who visited Rome in 1810 and there formed a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, became converted to Catholicism, in 1813, and devoted himself to painting, and encouraging painting, after the method of Perugino. The leading members of this New-old Raphaelite or Nazarene School were Philipp Veit (1793-1877), Wilhelm Friedrich von Schadow (1789-1862), Karl Eggers (1787-1863), Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872), Joseph Führich (1800-1876), Eduard Steinle (1810-1886) and Peter Cornelius (1783-1867), perhaps the most noteworthy of this company of remarkable artists (_cf._ RICHARD MUTHER, _History of Modern Painting_, Vol. I. chap. VI.: _The Nazarenes_).--T.]

[Footnote 585: Pietro Vannucci (1446-1524), known as Perugino, from Perugia, his birth-place, a famous painter of the Umbrian School and the master of Raphael.--T.]

[Footnote 586: St. Luke the Evangelist is the patron saint of artists. The Church honours him on the 18th of October.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Jean Victor Schnetz (1787-1870), a native of Paris. The reference is to his best-known picture, the _Vow to the Madonna._ Schnetz became Director of the French School in Rome in 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 588: Louis Leopold Robert (1794-1835), a well-known French painter of Neapolitan landscapes. After 1830, he was sent for to Florence to give lessons to the Princess Charlotte Bonaparte, daughter of King Joseph, and wife, soon to become widow, of her cousin, Charles Napoleon Louis, second son of the ex-King of Holland. He became violently enamoured of her, and his hopeless passion drove him to commit suicide, at Venice, on the 20th of March 1835.--B.]

[Footnote 589: Émile Jean Horace Vernet (1789-1863), Director of the French School in Rome from 1827 to 1839. He painted mostly battle-pictures up to 1836; after that year, his works represented mainly scenes of Arab life.--T.]

[Footnote 590: Jacques Édouard Quecq (1796-1873). His _Death of Vitellius_ was exhibited in Rome in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 591: Gianmaria de' Medici, or del Monte, or Giocchi, Pope Julius III. (1487-1555). Pope in 1550.--T.]

[Footnote 592: Giacomo Barrocchio, or Barozzi (1507-1573), known as Vignola, after his birth-place, a noted Italian architect, who succeeded Michael Angelo as architect of St. Peter's.--T.]

[Footnote 593: Taddeo Zuccaro (1529-1566), the painter.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Bartolomeo Pinelli, a celebrated Roman engraver. His works include a _Raccolta di cinquante costumi pittoreschi incisi all'acqua forte_ (1809) and a _Nuova raccolta di cinquante costumi pittoreschi incisi all'acqua forte_ (1815), 100 folio plates in all. It was doubtless out of this collection that he promised "twelve scenes" to Chateaubriand.--B.]

[Footnote 595: Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen or Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), the famous Danish sculptor. He lived in Rome from 1797 to 1838 and from 1841 to 1843.--T.]

[Footnote 596: Vicenzo Camuccini (1775-1844), an Italian historical painter, Inspector-general of the Papal Museums and Keeper of the Vatican Collections.--B.]

[Footnote 597: Claude Gelée (1600-1682), known as Lorraine, after his native province. The house which he inhabited in Rome still stands at the angle of the Vie Sistina and Gregoriana. He lived in Rome from 1619 to 1625 and from 1627 to his death.--T.]

[Footnote 598: Poussin and Claude Lorraine both died in Rome: the former on the 19th of November 1665, the latter on the 21st of November 1682. Claude Lorraine was buried in the Church of Trinità-del-Monte, and an inscription was placed on his tomb by his nephews. We shall see later that Chateaubriand erected a monument to Nicolas Poussin in the Church of San-Lorenzo-in-Lucina.--B.]

[Footnote 599: Charles Président de Brosses (1709-1777), author of the _Lettres historiques et critiques écrites d'Italie_, visited Rome in 1739 and there met King James III., known also as the Pretender, Prince James Edward, Chevalier de Saint Georges.--B.]

[Footnote 600: Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, _de jure_ James III. King of England (1688-1766), retired to Rome soon after the unsuccessful rising of 1715 and spent the last fifty years of his life there.--T.]

[Footnote 601: François Rabelais (1595-1533), Curé of Meudon and author of _Gargantua and Pantagruel_, from the latter of which the extracts are taken.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Jean Cardinal du Bellay (1492-1560), Bishop of Bayonne (1526), Archbishop of Paris (1533), and a cardinal (1535). He is noted as a man of letters and the patron of Rabelais.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 604: Urquhart and Motteux' RABELAIS, _Pantagruel_, Book V. chap. I.: _How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island and of the noise that we heard._--T.]

[Footnote 605: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke II. chap. XII.: _An Apologie of Raymond Sebond._--T.]

[Footnote 606: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 607: _Cf._ Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. IX.: _Of Vanitie._ "Amongst her vaine favours I have none doth so much please my fond self-pleasing conceit as an authenticke bull, charter or patent of denizenship or borgeouship of Rome, which at my last being there, was granted me by the whole Senate of that citie--garish and trimly adorned with goodly seales, and written in faire golden letters--bestowed upon me with all gracious and free liberalitie."--T.]

[Footnote 608: Hazlitt's** MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 609: Torquato Tasso.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Florio's MONTAIGNE: Booke II. chap. XII.: _An Apologie of Raymond Sebond._--T.]

[Footnote 611: Leonora Baroni (1611-1670), esteemed by her contemporaries one of the finest singers of the world. Milton heard her at Cardinal Barberini's concerts. She married, in 1640, Giulio Cesare Castellani, who died in 1662.--T.]

[Footnote 612: _Cf._ MILTON, _Epigrammatum: Liber VI. Ad Leonoram Romæ canentem_; VII. _Ad Eandem_; VIII. _Ad Eandem._ Milton has left no written account of his journey to Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 613: Françoise Dame de Motteville (_circa_ 1621-1689), _née_ Bertaud, married in 1639 to Nicolas Langlois, Sieur de Motteville, who died two years later. She is the author of the _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche_, first published in 1723, in which Leonora Baroni is mentioned.--T.]

[Footnote 614: Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), Prime Minister of France after the death of Richelieu.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Antoine Arnauld (1616-1698), author of some agreeable Memoirs.--B.]

[Footnote 616: Henri II. de Lorraine, fifth Duc de Guise (1614-1664), a famous general and adventurer. He took part in the Neapolitan rebellion of 1647, defeated the Spanish troops and placed himself at the head of the government. But his exploits in gallantry turned the nobles against him; they opened the gates of the town to the enemy, and the duke was captured and kept a prisoner in Spain until 1652. In 1654, he was appointed Grand Chamberlain of France.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Louis Deshayes, Baron de Courmenin (_d._ 1632), had been charged with various missions by Louis XIII. to the Levant, Denmark, Persia and Muscovy. He entered into a conspiracy against the Cardinal de Richelieu and was beheaded, at Béziers, in 1632.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Philippe Emmanuel Marquis de Coulanges (_circa_ 1631-1716), first cousin to Madame de Sévigné, whose letters to him are printed at the end of his Memoirs, first published in 1820.--T.]

[Footnote 619: Jacques Spon (1647-1685), a French Protestant physician and antiquary, visited Italy, Greece and the Levant, about 1675, and left a record of his travels, besides other works. He left France at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and died soon after at Vevey.--T.]

[Footnote 620: François Maximilien Misson (_d._ 1722), another Protestant writer, took refuge in England, in 1685, and there had charge of the education of a young nobleman with whom he had been travelling in Germany and Italy. His _Nouveau voyage en Italie_ (1691-1698) is on the _Index._ A later edition (1722) is enriched with notes by Addison.--T.]

[Footnote 621: Jean Dumont, Baron von Carlskron (_circa_ 1660-1726), a distinguished publicist, travelled all over Europe. The work from which the following quotation is taken is his _Voyages en France, en Italie, en Allemagne, à Malte et en Turquie_ (1699). The Emperor of Germany made him his historiographer and a baron.--T.]

[Footnote 622: Joseph Addison (1672-1719) prepared himself for the diplomatic service by travel and study on the Continent (1699-1703). His works included a _Letter from Italy_ in verse, written as he was crossing the Alps in 1701 and published in 1703, and _Remarks on several Parts of Italy_ (1705). His tragedy of _Cato_ was also written in Italy.--T.]

[Footnote 623: Now in the Louvre in Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Now in the Vatican.--T.]

[Footnote 626: Now in the Atrio Quadrato, leading out of the Belvedere Gallery.--T.]

[Footnote 627: _Anglicè_ in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711), the famous French poet and academician (1684).--T.]

[Footnote 629: Jean Baptiste Labat (1663-1738), a Dominican friar, was sent by his Order to Martinique, in 1693, and remained stationed in the Antilles till 1705. He visited Rome in 1706. His many works include a _Voyage en Espagne et en Italie_ (1730).--T.]

[Footnote 630: The coast of Senegambia was visited, in the fourteenth century, by Dieppe and Rouen merchants, who established markets there.--T.]

[Footnote 631: PROP. I. ii.; _Ad Cynthiam_, I.--T.]

[Footnote 632: CHATEAUBRIAND, _Martyrs_, Book X.--T.]

[Footnote 633: Pauline Borghese died on the 9th of June 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 634: Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, Prince of Wales, later Charles III., _de jure_ King of England (1720-1788), known as the Young Pretender or the Young Chevalier.--T.]

[Footnote 635: Henry Benedict Maria Clement Cardinal Duke of York, later Henry IX., _de jure_ King of England (1725-1807), created a cardinal in 1747.--T.]

[Footnote 636: 1734---T.]

[Footnote 637: Prince Charles returned to Rome after the failure of the rising of 1745; his father died in 1788.--T.]

[Footnote 638: Louise Marie Caroline of Stolberg-Gedern, _de jure_ Louise Queen of England (1753-1824), known as the Countess of Albany after Charles's death, when she secretly married the poet Alfieri, in whom she had long inspired a lively passion. Alfieri died in 1803, and Louise is said to have contracted a second _liaison_ and a third marriage with François Xavier Pascal Fabre, the French historical painter.--T.]

[Footnote 639: Charles Victor de Bonstetten (1745-1822), a celebrated Swiss philosophical writer.--T.]

[Footnote 640: The Countess of Albany was nineteen years of age when she married Prince Charles in 1772.--T.]

[Footnote 641: _Memoirs of Victor Alfieri_, Vol. II., chap. V.: _I become at length susceptible of a sincere and durable attachment._--T.]

[Footnote 642: Xavier Fabre, _supra._--T.]

[Footnote 643: Henry IX. was the last of the Stuarts in the male line. At his death the "_hereditary right_ to these realms passed to (IV.) Charles Emmanuel, sometime (1796 to 1802) King of Sardinia, he being son and heir of Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia (1773 to 1796), who was son and heir of Charles Emmanuel III., King of Sardinia (1730 to 1773), who was son and heir of Victor Amadeus (_of Savoy_), King of Sardinia, by Anna Maria, the only child (that left issue) of her mother, Henrietta Anne, first wife of Philip (_of Bourbon_), Duke of Orleans, the said Henrietta being the only child whose issue then (1807) remained of Charles I., King of England. This Charles Emmanuel was by _hereditary right_ KING CHARLES IV. OF ENGLAND (1807 to 1819), and died _s.p._ October 6, 1819, being succeeded by his brother (V.) Victor Emmanuel I., sometime (1802 to 1821) King of Sardinia, who by hereditary right was KING VICTOR I. OF ENGLAND (1819 to 1824). He died without male issue January 10, 1824 (the Kingdom of Sardinia having previously devolved on his distant cousin and heir male), and was succeeded as to the hereditary right to these realms by (VI.) Mary Beatrice, his eldest daughter and heir of line, wife of Francis IV., Duke of Modena, which Lady, according to such right, was QUEEN MARY II. OF ENGLAND (1824 to 1840). On her death, September 15, 1840 (VII.) Francis, her son and heir, afterwards (1846) Duke of Modena, became, according to such right, KING FRANCIS I. OF ENGLAND (1840 to 1875). He died _s.p._ November 20, 1875, and was succeeded in such right, by (VIII.) Maria Theresa, his niece and heiress, daughter and sole heir of his only brother, Ferdinand Charles Victor of Modena. This Lady, who was born July 2, 1849, and who married, February 20, 1868, Louis, Prince of Bavaria, became by such hereditary right QUEEN MARY III. OF ENGLAND in 1875, being thus 8th titular (_jure hereditario_) sovereign, just as QUEEN VICTORIA is the 8th actual (_de facto et de lege_) sovereign since the Revolution of 1688."--(Note to the _Seize Quartiers of the Kings and Queens of England_, by G. E. C.--_i.e._ G. E. COKAYNE, Clarenceux King-of-Arms. _The Genealogist_, N.S., Vol. VIII., p. 46.) Those, and they are practically the whole number of the modern Legitimists, who reckon Mary Queen of Scots as Mary II. Queen of England speak of the Princess Louis of Bavaria as Mary IV. _de jure_ Queen of England.--T.]

[Footnote 644: Henrietta Maria of France, Queen of England (1609-1669), married to King Charles I. in 1625. She finally left England for France in 1644, five years before the King's death.--T.]

[Footnote 645: Louis XV. ordered Prince Charles Edward to leave France after the failure of the Forty-five.--T.]

[Footnote 646: Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande (1732-1807), a distinguished but eccentric astronomer. The singularity of his taste displayed itself in the consumption of spiders and caterpillars; that of his opinions in his love for proclaiming himself an atheist. Lalande's _Voyage dun Français en Italie_ was published in 1769.--T.]

[Footnote 647: Duclos (_see_ Vol. I., p. 74, n. 1) visited Italy in 1766 and wrote his _Considérations sur l'Italie_, which were not published till 1791, nineteen years after his death.--B.]

[Footnote 648: Charles Marguerite Jean Baptiste Mercier Dupaty (1746-1788), an eminent French jurist, a president of the Parliament of Bordeaux and author of _Réflexions historiques sur les lois criminelles: Lettres sur l'Italie in 1785_ (1788), a superficial, turgid, but not unsuccessful work, promptly placed on the _Index._--T.]

[Footnote 649: DUPATY, _Travels through Italy_, Letter 79.--T.]

[Footnote 650: _Ibid._, Letter 87.--T.]

[Footnote 651: _Ibid._, Letter 55.--T.]

[Footnote 652: Charles Dupaty (1771-1825), the president's eldest son, studied in Rome and became a sculptor of merit. His Venus Genitrix is one of his best-known works.--B.]

[Footnote 653: Goethe visited Italy in 1786.--T]

[Footnote 654: Byron visited Rome in 1817.--T.]

[Footnote 655: _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV. stanza 79.--T.]

[Footnote 656: The fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ was published in 1818; Byron died at Missolonghi in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 657: I invite the perusal of two articles by M. Jean Jacques Ampère in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 1st and 15th of July 1835, entitled, _Portraits de Rome à différents ages._ Those curious documents will complete a picture of which I here give only a sketch.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1837).]

[Footnote 658: Vittoria Principessa Altieri (1799-1840), _née_ Boncompagni-Ludovisi degli Principi di Piombino.--T.]

[Footnote 659: The Principessa Barberini-Colonna di Palestrina.--T.]

[Footnote 660: Margherita Principessa Rospigliosi, Duchessa di Zagarolo (1786-1864), _née_ Gioeni-Colonna.--T.]

[Footnote 661: Teresa Principessa Del Drago (1801-1858), _née_ Massimo.--T.]

[Footnote 662: Maria Duchessa di Lante Monfeltrio delle Rovere (1799-1840), _née_ Colonna.--T.]

[Footnote 663: Not Mellini, as the earlier editions have it. It was at the Villa Millini that General Alexandre Berthier, the future Prince of Neuchâtel, on the 11th of February 1798, received the lawyers, bankers and artists who were to constitute the new Roman Republic.--B.]

[Footnote 664: Apollodorus (117-138), the architect who designed the Forum and Column of Trajan.--T.]

[Footnote 665: Hazlitt's MONTAIGNE, _Journey into Italy._--T.]

[Footnote 666: Philippe Camille Marcelin Comte de Tournon (1778-1833), Prefect of Rome under the Empire (1809-1814), a peer of France under the Restoration (1824) and author of _Études statistiques sur Rome et les États romains_ (1831).--T.]

[Footnote 667: Louis Simond (1767-1831), author of a _Voyage d'un Français en Angleterre_ (1810-1811), _Voyage en Italie et en Sicilie_ (1827-1828), etc. Simond ended by settling at Geneva and being naturalized a Swiss.--T.]

[Footnote 668: _Cf._ Monsignore NICOLA MARIA NICOLAÏ, _Memorie, leggi ed osservazioni sulle campagne e sull' annona di Roma_ (Rome, 1803), at that time accepted as the leading authority on economic matters.--B.]

[Footnote 669: Villemain was then preparing his History of Gregory VII., a work which was celebrated before its appearance and fell into oblivion so soon as it had appeared, which was not until 1873, three years after the author's death.--B.]

[Footnote 670: Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), a noted French historian. In 1826, he became completely broken down in health, and was left blind and paralyzed. The remainder of his work was done through the medium of secretaries. With their help he published his _Dix ans d'études historiques_ (1834), his _Récits des temps mérovingiens_ (1840), and an _Essai sur l'histoire de la formation et du progrès du tiers-état_ ( 1853). His famous _Histoire de la conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands_ had been published in 1825.--T.]

[Footnote 671: Thanks to God, M. Thierry has been restored to life and has resumed his fine and important work with renewed strength; he works at night, but like the chrysalis:

La nymphe s'enferme avec joie Dans ce tombeau d'or et de soie Qui la dérobe à tous les yeux.

--_Author's Note._

"The nymph herself doth gladly hide That tomb of gold and silk inside Which conceals her from every eye."--T.

]

[Footnote 672: The Russians took Varna on the 11th of October 1828.--B.]

[Footnote 673: Giovanni Torlonia, Duca di Bracciano (_d._ 1829), the famous Roman banker, created Duca di Bracciano and a Roman prince, in 1809, by Pope Pius VII.--T.]

[Footnote 674: The Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi was signed between Russia and Turkey on the 8th of June 1833 and was a treaty of defensive and offensive alliance concluded for eight years. A secret clause eventually closed the Dardanelles to the European Powers, while leaving both that passage and the Bosphorus open to Russia and Russia alone.--B.]

[Footnote 675: Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt (_circa_ 1769-1849), appointed Governor of Egypt in 1805, massacred the Mamelukes in 1811; conquered Nubia, Sennaar, and Kordofan (1820-1822); assisted the Turks in the War of Greek Independence (1827); conquered Syria (1831-1832); defeated Turkey (1839); and was obliged to give up Syria in 1841. From then until 1847, when he lost his reason, he devoted himself to the improvement of his vice-realm.--T.]

[Footnote 676: The Treaty of London, signed on the 6th of July 1827, by which England, France and Russia agreed to compel Turkey and Greece to accept their mediation with a view to restoring peace in the East. The offer of mediation was rejected by Turkey, with the result that armed intervention ensued.--T.]

[Footnote 677: The _Note sur la Grèce_ appeared in 1825.--B.]

[Footnote 678: The victory of Navarino (20 October 1827) had not succeeded in delivering Greece from the Ottoman yoke. On the 27th of August 1828, twelve French regiments, commanded by General Maison, were landed on the Morea. Within a few weeks, the French had driven the Turkish garrisons from the towns and strongholds of the peninsula. The Morea and the Cyclades were placed under the general protection of the Powers and General Maison, promoted to Marshal, returned to France, leaving two brigades to aid the Greeks in organizing the government of their territory.--B.]

[Footnote 679: The Russians captured Silistria in 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 680: General Ivan Paskevitch, later Field-marshal Prince of Warsaw (1782-1856), captured Kars in 1828 and Erzeroum in 1829; as Commander-in-Chief in Poland, he took Warsaw, in 1831, and became Governor of Poland, executing the Organic Statute.--T.]

[Footnote 681: Mahmud II. Sultan of Turkey (1785-1839), brother to Mustapha IV., whom he succeeded.--T.]

[Footnote 682: By the Convention of Akerman, concluded on the 6th of October 1826, Russia obtained the right of navigating the Black Sea and various agreements were entered into regarding Moldavia, Wallachia and Servia. The non-fulfilment of this treaty by Turkey led to the War of 1828-1829 now under discussion.--T.]

[Footnote 683: By the Treaty of Jassy (1792), the frontiers of Russia were extended to the Dniester.--T.]

[Footnote 684: Vice-Admiral Lodewijk Sigismund Vincent Gustaaf Count van Heiden, G.C.B. (1772-1850), entered the Dutch Navy as a boy, was promoted to lieutenant in 1789 and, in 1795, took the Stadtholder William V. to England in a fishing-smack. He was tried and imprisoned and, on recovering his liberty, entered the Russian service, where he was promoted to rear-admiral in 1817, to vice-admiral in 1827, after the Battle of Navarino, in which he took a brilliant part, and to full admiral in 1850. He received the Grand Cross of the Bath after Navarino, as well as the Orders of St. Louis of France and St. George of Russia.--T.]

[Footnote 685: Alexander II. Tsar of all the Russias (1818-1881), succeeded in 1855, assassinated 13 March 1881.--T.]

[Footnote 686: Peter I., the Great, Tsar of Russia (1672-1725).--T.]

[Footnote 687: Arnaud Cardinal d'Ossat (1536-1604), Bishop of Rennes, later of Bayeux, Ambassador to Rome from Henry III. and Henry IV. He obtained the papal absolution for Henry IV. and received the cardinal's hat and the See of Bayeux as his reward (1599). His Letters (1624) are regarded as a classic among diplomatists.--T.]

[Footnote 688: Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), known as Grotius, the famous Dutch jurist and founder of the science of international law. His principal work. _De Jure belli et pacis_, was published in 1625.--T.]

[Footnote 689: Samuel Baron von Pufendorf (1632-1692), a noted German jurist and publicist. His _De Jure naturæ et gentium_ was published in 1672.--T.]

[Footnote 690: The Treaties of Munster and Osnabrück, culminating in the general Peace signed at Munster on the 24th of October 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War.--T.]

[Footnote 691: Maria (Sophia) Feodorowna of Wurtemberg-Mümpelgard, Empress of Russia (1759-1828), widow of Paul I. and mother of Alexander I. and Nicholas I. She died in the night of 4-5 November 1828.--B.]

[Footnote 692: Nicholas, the third son of Paul I., succeeded his brother Alexander in 1825, the second son, Constantine, having renounced his right of succession. The first year of his reign was marked by a military revolt which was immediately suppressed.--T.]

[Footnote 693: I am inclined here to echo a footnote by M. Edmond Biré, who says:

"The readers, I hope, will not skip a line of this Memorandum, a master-piece of logic and patriotism and, which is no detriment, a master-piece of style. Chateaubriand has written no pages that do him more honour."

]

[Footnote 694: Louis Desprez (_b._ 1799), a young sculptor, had won the Prix de Rome in 1826. The bas-relief which he carved for Poussin's tomb, copying the Arcadian Shepherds, is one of his finest works.--T.]

[Footnote 695: Paul Lemoyne (1784--_circa_ 1860), known as Lemoyne-Saint-Paul, a French sculptor of some merit.--T.]

[Footnote 696: The Baronne de Barante, was a daughter of General César Ange de Houdetot, grand-daughter of Madame de Houdetot, Rousseau's friend, and married to Aimable Guillaume Prosper Brugière, Baron de Barante, author of the _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne._--B.]

[Footnote 697: Chateaubriand's tragedy of _Moïse_ was first published in his Complete Works (1826-1831), and has never been performed.--T.]

[Footnote 698: The costly monument to Nicolas Poussin, in the Church of San Lorenzo-in-Lucina, was erected entirely at Chateaubriand's expense and was not fully completed until 1831, when Chateaubriand had again renounced all titles and emoluments and was once more penniless. It took him four years, from 1831 to 1834, to clear his debt to the artist, who was not much richer than himself.--B.]

[Footnote 699: Madame Salvage de Faverolles, daughter of M. Dumorey, the French Consul at Cività-Vecchia, and a devoted friend to Madame Récamier. Subsequently, she attached herself to the Duchesse de Saint-Leu (Queen Hortense of Holland), with whom she lived till her death, and acted as her testamentary executrix.--B.]

[Footnote 700: This incident, to which Chateaubriand has already referred when speaking of Earl Bathurst, took place in March 1824. Miss Bathurst while riding in the Tiber Woods with a numerous and brilliant company of friends, was thrown into the river by a false step of her horse and drowned. She was seventeen years of age and remarkably pretty.--B.]

[Footnote 701: François Marie Pierre Roullet, Baron de La Bouillerie (1764-1833), a peer of France and Steward of the Royal Household.--B.]

[Footnote 702: AUGUSTIN THIERRY, _Lettres sur l'histoire de France, pour servir d'introduction à l'étude de cette histoire._ They had appeared in the _Courrier français_, in 1820, and were first collected and published in book form in 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 703:

"Such is the lot of man: his learning grows with age. But what use to be sage, When the end is So near?"--T.

]

[Footnote 704: The ordinances, or Orders in Council, of the 16th of June 1828. The first declared that the establishments known as secondary ecclesiastical schools and hitherto managed by persons belonging to an unauthorized religious congregation should be subjected to the control of the University of France. The second limited the number of pupils who could be admitted into the seminaries to twenty thousand and generally restricted the liberty of the seminaries, especially in the matter of the conferring of degrees.--B.]

[Footnote 705: MATT. XXII. 17.--T.]

[Footnote 706: Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), the "Liberator of South America." He became Dictator of Venezuela in 1817, united Venezuela and New Granada into the Republic of Colombia and became its president in 1819, added Ecuador to Colombia in 1822, was made Dictator of Peru in 1823 and Protector of the new Republic of Bolivia in 1825. Peru declared against him, in 1826, and Bolivia soon followed; and, although he remained President of the three countries forming Colombia until his death, the republic created by him fell to pieces soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 707: Gottfried Wilhelm Baron von Leibnitz (1646-1716), the universal genius, laboured first with Pellisson and Bossuet in an endeavour to reunite the Catholic and Protestant religions; having failed in this enterprise, he set himself to reconcile at least the several Protestant sects, but met with as little success. Leibnitz prompted the foundation and was made Perpetual President of the Berlin Academy.--T.]

[Footnote 708: Felice Peretti, Pope Sixtus V. (1521-1590), elected Pope in 1585, fixed the number of cardinals at seventy and reorganized the whole public administration of the Papal States.--T.]

[Footnote 709: Shortly after the date of this letter, M. de La Ferronnays, who was ill, started for Italy and left the Foreign Office _ad interim_ in charge of M. Portalis.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 710: M. Du Viviers was one of the attachés to the Embassy. He took with him to Paris the letter to Madame Récamier and also the report of Chateaubriand's conversation with the Pope--B.]

[Footnote 711: Pierre Chauvin, the French landscape painter, lived in Rome from 1809 to 1827.--T.]

[Footnote 712: Cavaliere Filippo Aureliano Visconti (1754-1831), President of the Roman Academy of Arts.--B.]

[Footnote 713: General Armand Charles Comte Guilleminot (1774-1840) served under Dumouriez and Pichegru, later under Moreau, became a general in 1808, and a general of division in 1813. Under the Restoration, he became director-general of the military depots (1816) and, in 1823, drew up the plan of campaign of the Spanish War and accompanied the Duc d'Angoulême as chief of staff. At the end of the war, he was created a peer of France and, in 1824, sent as ambassador to Constantinople, where he remained till 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 714: Madame Lenormant.--_Author's Note._

An expedition to the Morea from the point of view of science and art had been organized by the French Government. M. Charles Lenormant was to take part in it, and his wife, Madame Récamier's niece and adopted daughter, was proposing to accompany him.--B.]

[Footnote 715: Napoléon Auguste Comte, later Duc de Montebello (1801-1874), son of Marshal Lannes. He had been created a peer of France in 1827, but did not take his seat in the Upper House until after the Revolution of July. In 1836, he became French Ambassador to Switzerland and, in 1838, Ambassador to Naples. He was subsequently Minister of Marine (1847-1848), a senator (1864) and Ambassador to St. Petersburg (1858-1866).--B.]

[Footnote 716: This again refers to the ordinances of the 16th of June 1828.--B.]

[Footnote 717: At the opening of the Chambers, 27 January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 718: I was mistaken.--_Author's Note_ (1837).]

[Footnote 719: The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre, who was on bad terms with the King's Government. He had protested loudly against the ordinance of the 16th of June 1828, touching the minor seminaries, concluding his letter to Monseigneur Feutrier, the Minister of Public Worship, with these words:

"My lord, the motto of my family, which it received from Calixtus II., in 1120, is: _Etiamsi omnes, ego non._ It is also that of my conscience.

"I have the honour to be, with the respectful consideration due to the King's minister,

"† A. J. CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF TOULOUSE."

In consequence of this letter, the King ordered the prelate to be prohibited from appearing at Court.]

END OF VOL. IV.