BOOK VIII[146

The Literary Fund--My garret in Holborn--Decline in health--Visit to the doctors--Emigrants in London--Peltier--Literary labours--My friendship with Hingant--Our excursions--A night in Westminster Abbey--Distress--Unexpected succour--Lodging overlooking a cemetery--New companions in misfortune--Our pleasures--My cousin de La Boüétardais--A sumptuous rout--I come to the end of my forty crowns--Renewed distress--Table d'hôte--Bishops-Dinner at the London Tavern--The Camden Manuscripts--My work in the country--Death of my brother--Misfortunes of my family--Two Frances--Letters from Hingant--Charlotte--I return to London--An extraordinary meeting--A defect in my character--The _Essai historique sur les révolutions_--Its effect--Letter from Lemierre, nephew to the poet--Fontanes--Cléry.

A society has been formed in London for the assistance of men of letters, both English and foreign. This society invited me to its annual meeting[147]; I made it my duty to attend and to present my subscription[148]. H.R.H. the Duke of York[149] occupied the chair; on his right were the Duke of Somerset[150] and Lords Torrington[151] and Bolton[152]; I myself sat on his left. I met my friend Mr. Canning[153] there. The poet, orator, and illustrious minister made a speech in which occurred the following passage, which did me too great honour, and which was reported in the newspapers:

"Although the person of my noble friend, the Ambassador of France, is as yet but little known here, his character and writings are well known to all Europe. He began his career by expounding the principles of Christianity, and continued it by defending those of monarchy; and now he comes amongst us to unite the two countries by the common bonds of monarchical principles and Christian virtues[154]."

*

[Sidenote: The literary fund.]

It is many years since Mr. Canning, the man of letters, improved himself by the political lessons of Mr. Pitt[155]; it is almost the same number of years since I began obscurely to write in that same English capital. Both of us have attained high station and are now members of a society devoted to the relief of unfortunate authors. Is it the affinity of our grandeurs or the relation of our sufferings that brought us together in this place? What should the Governor of the East Indies and the French Ambassador be doing at the banquet of the afflicted muses? It was rather George Canning and François de Chateaubriand who sat down to it, in remembrance of their former adversity and perhaps of their former happiness: they drank to the memory of Homer singing his verses for a morsel of bread.

If the Literary Fund had existed when I arrived in London from Southampton on the 21st of May 1793, it would perhaps have paid a doctor's visit to the garret in Holborn in which my cousin de La Boüétardais[156], son of my uncle de Bedée, harboured me. It had been hoped that the change of air would do marvels towards restoring to me the strength essential to a soldier's life; but my health, instead of recovering, declined. My chest became involved; I was thin and pale, I coughed frequently, I breathed with difficulty; I had attacks of perspiration and I spat blood. My friends, who were as poor as I, dragged me from doctor to doctor. These Hippocrates kept the band of beggars waiting at their door, and then told me, for the price of one guinea, that I must bear my complaint patiently, adding:

"That's all, my dear sir."

Dr. Goodwyn[157], famous for his experiments relating to drowning people, made on his own person by his own prescriptions, was more generous: he assisted me with his advice gratis; but he said to me, with the harshness which he employed towards himself, that I might "last" a few months, perhaps one or two years, provided I gave up all fatigue.

"Do not look forward to a long career:" that was the substance of his consultations.

The certainty of my approaching end thus acquired, while increasing the natural gloom of my imagination, gave me an incredible peace of mind. This inner disposition explains a passage of the note placed at the head of the _Essai historique_[158], as well as the following passage from the _Essai_ itself:

"Smitten as I am with an illness which leaves me little hope, I behold objects with a tranquil eye; the calm atmosphere of the tomb is perceptible to the traveller who is but a few days' march removed from it[159]."

The bitterness of the reflections spread over the _Essai_ will therefore arouse no astonishment: I wrote that work while lying under sentence of death, between the verdict and the execution. A writer who believed himself to be drawing near his end, amid the destitution of his exile, could scarcely cast a smiling glance upon the world.

But how to spend the days of grace that had been granted me? I might have lived or died promptly by my sword: I was forbidden to use it. What remained? A pen? It was neither known nor proved, and I was ignorant of its power. Would my innate taste for letters, the poems of my childhood, the sketches of my travels suffice to attract the public attention? The idea of writing a work on the comparative Revolutions had occurred to me; I turned it over in my mind as a subject more suited to the interests of the day; but who would undertake the printing of a manuscript with none to extol its merits, and who would support me during the composition of that manuscript? Even if I had but a few days to spend on earth, I must nevertheless have some means of support for those few days. My thirty louis, already seriously curtailed, could not go very far, and, in addition to my own distress, I had to support the general distress of the Emigration. My companions in London all had occupations: some had embarked in the coal trade, others with their wives made straw hats, others again taught the French which they did not know. They were all merry. The fault of our nation, its frivolity, had at that moment changed into virtue. They laughed in Fortune's face: that thieving wench was quite abashed at carrying off something which she was not asked to restore.

*

[Sidenote: Peltier.]

Peltier, author of the _Domine salvum fac regem_[160] and principal editor of the _Actes des Apôtres_, continued his Parisian enterprise in London. He was not precisely vicious: but he was devoured by a vermin of small faults of which it was impossible to purify him; he was a rake, a good-for-nothing, earned a great deal of money and spent it as lavishly, was at the same time the adherent of the Legitimacy and the ambassador of the black King Christophe[161] to George III., diplomatic correspondent of M. le Comte de "Limonade," and drank up in champagne the salary which was paid him in sugar[162]. This sort of M. Violet playing the grand airs of the Revolution on a pocket violin came to see me, and offered his services as a Breton. I spoke to him of my plan of the _Essai_; he loudly approved of it:

"It will be superb!" he exclaimed, and offered me a room in the house of his printer, Baylis, who would print the work piece by piece as I wrote it.

Deboffe the bookseller should have the sale of it; he, Peltier, would trumpet it in his paper, the _Ambigu_, while one might obtain a footing in the London _Courrier français_, the editorship of which was soon to be transferred to M. de Montlosier[163]. Peltier never entertained a doubt: he spoke of getting me the Cross of St. Louis for my siege of Thionville. My Gil Blas, tall, lean, lanky, with powdered hair and a bald forehead, always shouting and joking, put his round hat on one ear, took me by the arm, and carried me off to Baylis the printer, where, without any ceremony, he hired a room for me at a guinea a month.

I was face to face with my golden future; but how to bridge over the present? Peltier obtained translations from the Latin and the English for me; I worked at translating by day, and at night at the _Essai historique_, into which I introduced a portion of my travels and my day-dreams. Baylis supplied me with the books, and I laid out a few shillings to ill purpose on the purchase of old volumes displayed on the bookstalls.

Hingant, whom I had met on the Jersey packet, had become intimate with me. He cultivated literature, he was well informed, and he wrote novels in secret and read me pages of them. He had a lodging not far from Baylis, at the end of a street leading into Holborn. I breakfasted with him every morning at ten o'clock; we talked about politics and above all about my work. I told him how much I had built of my nocturnal edifice, the _Essai_; then I reverted to my labour of the daytime, the translations. We met for dinner, at a shilling a head, in a public-house; thence we made for the fields. Often also we walked alone, for we were both of us fond of musing.

I would then direct my steps towards Kensington or Westminster. Kensington pleased me; I wandered about its solitary part, while the part adjacent to Hyde Park became filled with a brilliant multitude. The contrast between my penury and the display of wealth, between my destitution and the crowd, was pleasant to me. I watched the young Englishwomen pass in the distance with that sense of desirous confusion which my sylph had formerly caused me to feel when, after decking her with all my extravagances, I scarce dared lift my eyes upon my handiwork. Death, which I thought that I was approaching, added a mystery to this vision of a world from which I had almost departed. Did ever a look rest upon the foreigner seated at the foot of a fir-tree? Did some fair woman divine the invisible presence of René?

[Sidenote: A night in Westminster Abbey.]

At Westminster I found a different pastime: in that labyrinth of tombs I thought of mine ready to open. The bust of an unknown man like myself would never find a place amid those illustrious effigies! Then appeared the sepulchres of the monarchs: Cromwell[164] was there no longer, and Charles I.[165] was not there. The ashes of a traitor, Robert of Artois[166], lay beneath the flagstones which I trod with my loyal steps. The fate of Charles I. had just been extended to Louis XVI.; the steel was reaping its daily harvest in France, and the graves of my kindred were already dug.

The singing of the choir and the conversation of the visitors interrupted my reflections. I was not able often to repeat my visits, for I was obliged to give to the guardians of those who lived no more the shilling which was necessary to me to live. But then I would turn round and round outside the abbey with the rooks, or stop to gaze at the steeples, twins of unequal height, which the setting sun stained red with its fiery light against the black hangings of the smoke of the City.

One day, however, it happened that, wishing towards evening to contemplate the interior of the basilica, I became lost in admiration of its spirited and capricious architecture. Dominated by the sentiment of the "dowdy vastitie of our churches[167]," I wandered with slow footsteps and became benighted: the doors were closed. I tried to find an outlet; I called the usher, I knocked against the doors: all the noise I made, spread and spun out in the silence, was lost; I had to resign myself to sleeping among the dead.

After hesitating in my choice of a resting-place I stopped near Lord Chatham's[168] mausoleum, at the foot of the rood and of the double stair of Henry the Seventh's and the Knights' Chapel. At the entrance to those stairs, to those aisles enclosed with railings, a sarcophagus built into the wall, opposite to a marble figure of death armed with its scythe, offered me its shelter. The fold of a winding-sheet, also of marble, served me for a niche: following the example of Charles V.[169], I inured myself to my burial. I was in the best seats for seeing the world as it is. What a mass of greatnesses were confined beneath those vaults! What remains of them? Afflictions are no less vain than felicities: the hapless Jane Grey[170] is not different from the blithe Alice of Salisbury[171] save that the skeleton is less horrible because it has no head; her body is beautified by her punishment and by the absence of that which constituted its beauty. The tournaments of the victor of Crecy[172], the sports of the Field of the Cloth of Gold of Henry VIII.[173] will not be renewed in that theatre of funereal spectacles. Bacon[174], Newton[175], Milton[176] are interred as deeply, have passed away as completely, as their more obscure contemporaries. Should I, an exile, a vagabond, a pauper, consent to be no longer the petty, forgotten, sorrowful thing that I am in order to have been one of those famous, mighty, pleasure-sated dead? Ah, life is not all that! If from the shores of this world we cannot distinctly discern matters divine, let us not be astonished: time is a veil set between ourselves and God, even as our eyelids are interposed between our eyes and the light.

[Sidenote: Reflections and release.]

Crouching under my marble sheet, I descended from these lofty thoughts to the simple impressions of the place and moment. My anxiety mingled with pleasure was analogous to that which I used to experience in winter in my turret at Combourg, as I listened to the wind: a breeze and a shadow possess a kindred nature. Little by little I grew accustomed to the darkness and distinguished the figures placed over the tombs. I looked up at the vaults of this English Saint-Denis, whence one might say that the years that have been and the issues of the past hung down like Gothic lamps: the entire edifice was as it were a monolithic temple of ages turned to stone.

I had counted ten o'clock, eleven o'clock by the abbey clock: the hammer rising and falling upon the bell-metal was the only living creature in those regions beside myself. Outside, the sound of a carriage, the voice of the watchman: that was all; those distant sounds of earth reached me as though from one world to another. The fog from the Thames and the smoke of coal crept into the basilica, and spread a denser dusk around.

At last a twilight spread out in a corner filled with the dimmest shadows: with fixed gaze I watched the progressive growth of the light; did it emanate from the two sons[177] of Edward IV., assassinated by their uncle? The great tragedian says:

"O thus," quoth Dighton, "lay the gentle babes,"-- "Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girdling one another Within their alabaster innocent arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which, in their summer beauty, kiss'd each other[178]."

God did not send me those two sad and charming souls; but the light phantom of a scarcely adolescent woman appeared carrying a light sheltered in a sheet of paper twisted shell-wise: it was the little bell-ringer. I heard the sound of a kiss, and the bell tolled the break of day. The ringer was quite terrified when I went out with her through the gate of the cloisters. I told her of my adventure; she said she had come to do duty for her father, who was sick: we did not speak of the kiss.

*

I amused Hingant with the story of my adventure, and we made a plan to lock ourselves in at Westminster; but our distress summoned us to the dead in a less poetic manner.

My funds were becoming exhausted: Baylis and Deboffe had ventured, against a written promise of reimbursement in case of non-sale, to commence the printing of the _Essai_; there their generosity ended, and very naturally; I was even astonished at their boldness. The translations fell off; Peltier, a man of pleasure, grew weary of his prolonged obligingness. He would willingly have given me what he had, if he had not preferred to squander it; but to go looking here and there for work, to do patient acts of kindness, was beyond him. Hingant also saw his treasure diminishing; we were reduced to sixty francs between us. We cut down our rations, as on a vessel when the passage is prolonged. Instead of a shilling apiece, we spent only sixpence on our dinner. With our morning tea we reduced the bread by one half, and suppressed the butter. This abstinence vexed my friend's nerves. His wits went wool-gathering; he would prick his ears and seem to be listening to some one; he would burst out laughing in reply, or shed tears. Hingant believed in magnetism, and had disordered his brain with Swedenborg's[179] rubbish. He told me in the morning that he had heard noises during the night; if I denied his fancies he grew angry. The anxiety which he caused me prevented me from feeling my own sufferings.

These were great, nevertheless: that rigorous diet, combined with the work, chafed my diseased chest; I began to find a difficulty in walking, and yet I spent my days and a part of my nights out of doors, so as not to betray my distress. When we came to our last shilling, my friend and I agreed to keep it in order to make a pretense of breakfasting. We arranged that we should buy a penny roll; that we should have the hot water and the tea-pot brought up as usual; that we should not put in any tea; that we should not eat the bread, but that we should drink the hot water with a few little morsels of sugar left at the bottom of the bowl.

Five days passed in this fashion. I was devoured with hunger; I burned with fever; sleep had deserted me; I sucked pieces of linen which I soaked in water; I chewed grass and paper. When I passed the bakers' shops, the torment I endured was horrible. One rough winter's night, I stood for two hours outside a shop where they sold dried fruits and smoked meats, swallowing all I saw with my eyes: I could have eaten not only the provisions, but the boxes and baskets in which they were packed.

On the morning of the fifth day, dropping from inanition, I dragged myself to Hingant's; I knocked at the door: it was closed. I called out; Hingant was some time without answering: at last he rose and opened the door. He laughed with a bewildered air; his frock-coat was buttoned; he sat down at the tea-table.

"Our breakfast is coming," he said in a strange voice.

I thought I saw some stains of blood on his shirt; I suddenly unbuttoned his coat: he had given himself a wound with a penknife, two inches deep, in his left breast. I called out for help. The maid-servant went to fetch a surgeon. The wound was dangerous.

This new misfortune obliged me to take a resolution. Hingant, who was a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany, had refused to take the salary which the English Government allowed the French magistrates, in the same way that I had declined the shilling a day doled out to the Emigrants: I wrote to M. de Barentin[180] and disclosed my friend's position to him. Hingant's relations hurried to his assistance and took him away to the country. At that very moment my uncle de Bedée forwarded me forty crowns, a touching offering from my persecuted family. I seemed to see all the gold of Peru before my eyes: the mite of the French prisoners supported the exiled Frenchman.

[Sidenote: Destitution.]

My destitution had impeded my work. As I delivered no more manuscript, the printing was suspended. Deprived of Hingant's company, I did not keep on my room at Baylis' at a guinea per month; I paid the quarter that was due and went away. Below the needy Emigrants who had served as my first protectors in London were others who were even more necessitous. There are degrees among the poor as among the rich; one can go from the man who in winter keeps himself warm with his dog down to him who shivers in his torn rags. My friends found me a room more suited to my diminishing fortune: one is not always at the height of prosperity! They installed me in the neighbourhood of Marylebone Street, in a garret whose dormer window overlooked a cemetery: every night the watchman's rattle told me of the proximity of body-snatchers. I had the consolation to hear that Hingant was out of danger.

Friends came to see me in my work-room. To judge from our independence and our poverty, we might have been taken for painters on the ruins of Rome; we were artists in wretchedness on the ruins of France. My face served as a model, my bed as a seat for my pupils. The bed consisted of a mattress and a blanket. I had no sheets; when it was cold my coat and a chair, added to my blanket, kept me warm. I was too weak to make my bed; it remained turned down as God had left it.

My cousin de La Boüétardais, turned out of a low Irish lodging for not paying his rent, although he had put his violin in pawn, came to ask me for a shelter against the constable: a vicar from Lower Brittany lent him a trestle-bed. La Boüétardais, like Hingant, had been a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany; he did not possess a handkerchief to tie round his head; but he had deserted with bag and baggage, that is to say, he had brought away his square cap and his red robe, and he slept under the purple by my side. Jocular, a good musician with a fine voice, on nights when we could not sleep he would sit up quite naked on his trestles, put on his square cap, and sing ballads, accompanying himself on a guitar with only three strings. One night when the poor fellow was in this way humming _Scendi propizia_ from Metastasio's[181] _Hymn to Venus_, he was struck by a draught; he twisted his mouth, and he died of it, but not at once, for I rubbed his cheek heartily. We held counsel in our elevated room, argued on politics, and discussed the gossip of the Emigration. In the evening, we went to our aunts and cousins to dance, after the dresses had been trimmed with ribbons and the hats made up.

They who read this portion of my Memoirs are not aware that I have interrupted them twice: once to offer a great dinner to the Duke of York, brother of the King of England; and once to give a rout on the anniversary of the entry of the King of France into Paris, on the 8th of July. That rout cost me forty thousand francs. Peers and peeresses of the British Empire, ambassadors, distinguished foreigners filled my gorgeously-decorated rooms. My tables gleamed with the glitter of London crystal and the gold of Sèvres porcelain. The most delicate dainties, wines and flowers abounded. Portland Place was blocked with splendid carriages. Collinet and the band from Almack's enraptured the fashionable melancholy of the dandies and the dreamy elegance of the pensively-dancing ladies. The Opposition and the Ministerial majority had struck a truce: Mrs. Canning[182] talked to Lord Londonderry, Lady Jersey to the Duke of Wellington. Monsieur, who this year sent me his compliments on the sumptuousness of my entertainments in 1822, did not know in 1793 that, not far from him, lived a future minister who, while awaiting the advent of his greatness, fasted over a cemetery for his sin of loyalty. I congratulate myself to-day on having experienced shipwreck, gone through war, and shared the sufferings of the humblest classes of society, as I applaud myself for meeting with injustice and calumny in times of prosperity. I have profited by these lessons: life, without the ills that make it serious, is a child's bauble.

*

I was the man with the forty crowns; but since fortunes had not yet been levelled, nor the price of commodities reduced, there was nothing to serve as a counterpoise to my rapidly diminishing purse. I could not reckon on further help from my family, exposed in Brittany to the double scourge of the Chouans[183] and the Terror. I saw nothing before me but the workhouse or the Thames.

[Sidenote: A contrast.]

Some of the Emigrants' servants, whom their masters could no longer feed, had turned into eating-house keepers in order to feed their masters. God knows the merry meals that were made at these ordinaries! God knows, too, what politics were talked there! All the victories of the Republic were turned into defeats, and, if by chance one entertained a doubt as to an immediate restoration, he was declared a Jacobin. Two old bishops, who looked like live corpses, were walking one morning in St James's Park:

"Monseigneur," said one, "do you think we shall be in France by June?"

"Why, monseigneur," replied the other, after ripe reflection, "I see nothing against it."

Peltier, the man of resource, unearthed me, or rather unnested me, in my eyry. He had read in a Yarmouth newspaper that a society of antiquarians was going to produce a history of the County of Suffolk, and that they wanted a Frenchman able to decipher some French twelfth-century manuscripts from the Camden[184] Collection. The parson at Beccles was at the head of the undertaking; he was the man to whom to apply.

"That will just suit you," said Peltier; "go down there, decipher that old waste-paper, go on sending copy for the _Essai_ to Baylis; I'll make the wretch go on with his printing; and you will come back to London with two hundred guineas in your pocket, your work done, and go ahead!" I tried to stammer out some objections:

"What the deuce!" cried my man. "Do you want to stay in this _palace_, where I'm catching cold already? If Rivarol, Champcenetz, Mirabeau-Tonneau and I had gone about pursing up our mouths, a fine business we should have made of the _Actes des Apôtres!_ Do you know that that story of Hingant is making the devil of a to-do? So you both wanted to let yourself die of hunger, did you? Ha, ha, ha! Pouf!.... Ha, ha!"

Peltier, doubled in two, was holding his knees with laughter. He had just received a hundred subscriptions to his paper from the colonies; he had been paid for them, and jingled his guineas in his pocket. He dragged me by main force, together with the apoplectic La Boüétardais and two tattered Emigrants who were at hand, to dine at the London Tavern. He made us drink port and eat roast beef and plum-pudding till we were ready to burst.

"Monsieur le comte," he asked my cousin, "what makes you carry your potato-trap askew like that?"

La Boüétardais, half shocked, half pleased, explained the thing as best he could; he described how he had been suddenly seized while singing the words, "_O bella Venere!_" My poor paralytic looked so dead, so benumbed, so shabby, as he stammered out his "_bella Venere_" that Peltier fell back, roaring with laughter, and almost upset the table by striking it with his two feet underneath.

[Sidenote: I go to Beccles.]

Upon reflection, the advice of my fellow-countryman, a real character out of my other fellow-countryman, Le Sage[185], did not appear to me so bad. After three days spent in making inquiries and in obtaining some clothes from Peltier's tailor, I set out for Beccles with some money lent me by Deboffe, on the understanding that I was going on with the _Essai._ I changed my name, which no Englishman was able to pronounce, for that of Combourg, which had been borne by my brother, and which reminded me of the sorrows and pleasures of my early youth. I alighted at the inn, and handed the minister of the place a letter from Deboffe, who was greatly esteemed in the English book-world. The letter recommended me as a scholar of the first rank. I was very well received, saw all the gentlemen of the district, and met two officers of our Royal Navy who were giving French lessons in the neighbourhood.

*

My strength improved; my trips on horseback restored my health a little. England, viewed thus in detail, was melancholy, but charming; it was the same thing, the same outlook wherever I went. M. de Combourg was invited to every party. I owed to study the first alleviation of my lot. Cicero was right to recommend the commerce of letters in the troubles of life. The women were delighted to meet a Frenchman to talk French with.

The misfortunes of my family, which I learnt from the newspapers, and which made me known by my real name (for I was unable to conceal my grief), increased the interest which my acquaintances took in me. The public journals announced the death of M. de Malesherbes; of his daughter, Madame la Présidente de Rosanbo; of his granddaughter, Madame de Chateaubriand; and of his grandson-in-law, the Comte de Chateaubriand, my brother, all immolated together, on the same day, at the same hour, on the same scaffold[186]. M. de Malesherbes was an object of admiration and veneration among the English; my family connection with the defender of Louis XVI. added to the kindness of my hosts.

My uncle de Bedée informed me of the persecutions endured by the rest of my relations. My old and incomparable mother had been flung into a cart with other victims and carried from the depths of Brittany to the gaols of Paris, in order to share the lot of the son whom she had loved so well. My wife and my sister Lucile were awaiting their sentence in the dungeons at Rennes; there had been a question of imprisoning them at Combourg Castle, which had become a State fortress: their innocence was accused of the crime of my emigration. What were our sorrows on foreign soil compared with those of the French who had remained at home? And yet, what unhappiness, amid the sufferings of exile, to know that our very exile was made the pretext for the persecution of our kin.

Two years ago my sister-in-law's wedding ring was picked up in the kennel of the Rue Cassette; it was brought to me, broken; the two hoops of the ring had come apart and hung linked together; the names were clearly legible engraved inside. How had the ring come to be found there? When and where had it been lost? Had the victim, imprisoned at the Luxembourg, passed by the Rue Cassette on her way to execution? Had she dropped the ring from the tumbril? Had the ring been torn from her finger after the execution? I was shocked at the sight of this symbol, which, both by its broken condition and its inscription, reminded me of a destiny so cruel. Something fatal and mysterious was attached to this ring, which my sister-in-law seemed to send me from among the dead, in memory of herself and my brother. I have given it to her son[187]: may it not bring him ill-luck!

Cher orphelin, image de ta mère, Au ciel pour toi, je demande, ici-bas, Les jours heureux retranchés à ton père Et les enfants que ton oncle n'a pas[188].

This halting stanza and two or three others are the only present I was able to make my nephew on his marriage.

[Sidenote: Execution of my brother.]

Another relic remains to me of these misfortunes. The following is a letter which M. de Contencin wrote to me when, in turning over the city records, he found the order of the revolutionary tribunal which sent my brother and his family to the scaffold:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"There is a sort of cruelty in awaking in a mind that has suffered much the memory of the ills which have affected it most painfully. This consideration made me hesitate some time before offering for your acceptance a very pathetic document, upon which I alighted in the course of my historical researches. It is a death-certificate, signed before the decease by a man who always displayed himself as implacable as death itself, whenever he found illustriousness and virtue united in the same person.

"I hope, monsieur le vicomte, that you will not take it too ill of me if I add to your family records a document which recalls such cruel memories. I presumed that it would have an interest for you, since it had a value in my eyes, and I at once thought of offering it to you. If I am not guilty of an indiscretion, I shall be doubly gratified, as this proceeding gives me the opportunity to express to you the feelings of profound respect and sincere admiration with which you have long inspired me, and with I am, monsieur le vicomte,

"your most humble, obedient servant,

"A. DE CONTENCIN.

"Prefecture of the Seine,

"Paris, 28 _March_ 1835."

I replied to the above letter as follows:

"I had had the Sainte-Chapelle searched, monsieur, for the documents concerning the trial of my unfortunate brother and his wife, but the 'order' which you have been good enough to send me was not to be found. This order and so many others, with their erasures and their mangled names, have doubtless been presented to Fouquier before the tribunal of God; he will have been compelled to acknowledge his signature. Those are the times which people regret, and on which they write volumes filled with admiration! For the rest, I envy my brother: he, at least, has since many a long year quitted this sad world. I thank you infinitely, monsieur, for the esteem which you have shown me in your beautiful and noble letter, and I beg you to accept the assurance of the very distinguished consideration with which I have the honour to be, etc."

This death order is, above all, remarkable for the proof which it affords of the levity with which the murders were committed: names are wrongly spelt, others are effaced. These defects of form, which would have been enough to stay the simplest sentence, did not stop the headsmen; all they cared for was the exact hour of death: "at five o'clock precisely." Here is the authentic document, I copy it faithfully:

"Executor of Criminal Judgments,

"REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.

"The executor of criminal judgments will not fail to go to the house of justice of the Conciergerie, there to execute the judgment which condemns Mousset, d'Esprémenil, Chapelier, Thouret, Hell, Lamoignon Malsherbes, the woman Lepelletier Rosambo, Chateau Brian, and his wife [proper name effaced and illegible], the widow Duchatelet, the wife of Grammont, formerly duke, the woman Rochechuart [Rochechouart], and Parmentier;--14, to the penalty of death. The execution will take place to-day, at five o'clock precisely, on the Place de la Révolution in this city.

"H. Q. FOUQUIER,

"Public Prosecutor.

"Given at the Tribunal, 3 Floréal, Year II. of the French Republic.

"_Two conveyances._"

The 9 Thermidor saved my mother's days; but she was forgotten at the Conciergerie. The conventional commissary found her:

"What are you doing here, citizeness?" he asked. "Who are you? Why do you stay here?"

My mother replied that, having lost her son, she had not inquired what was going on, and that it was indifferent to her whether she died in prison or elsewhere.

"But perhaps you have other children?" said the commissary.

[Sidenote: Release of my mother.]

My mother mentioned my wife and sisters detained in custody at Rennes. An order was sent to place them at liberty, and my mother was compelled to leave the prison.

In the histories of the Revolution, the writers have omitted to set the picture of outer France by the side of the picture of inner France, to depict that great colony of exiles, changing its industry and its sorrows in accordance with the diversity of climate and the difference in national manners.

Outside France, everything operated by individuals: changes of condition, obscure afflictions, noiseless and unrewarded sacrifices; and, in this variety of individuals of every rank, age and sex, one fixed idea was preserved: that of Old France travelling with her prejudices and her faithful sons, as formerly the Church of God had wandered over the earth with her virtues and her martyrs.

Inside France, everything operated in the mass: Barère announcing murders and conquests, civil wars and foreign wars; the gigantic combats of the Vendée and on the banks of the Rhine; thrones toppling to the sound of the march of our armies; our fleets swallowed up by the waves; the people disinterring the monarchs at Saint-Denis and flinging the dust of the dead kings into the eyes of the living kings to blind them; New France, glorying in her new-found liberties, proud even of her crimes, steadfast on her own soil, while extending her frontiers, doubly armed with the headsman's blade and the soldier's sword.

In the midst of my family sorrows I received some letters from my friend Hingant, to reassure me as to his fate: letters very remarkable in themselves; he wrote to me in September 1795:

"Your letter of the 23rd of August is full of the most touching feeling. I showed it to a few people, whose eyes filled with tears on reading it. I was almost tempted to say what Diderot said on the day when J. J. Rousseau came and cried in his prison at Vincennes:

"'See how my friends love me.'

"My illness, as a matter of fact, was only one of those nervous fevers which cause great suffering, and for which time and patience are the best remedies. During the fever I read extracts from the _Phædo_ and _Timæus_, and I said with Cato:

"'It must be so, Plato; thou reason'st well[189]!'

"I had formed an idea of my journey as one might form an idea of a voyage to India. I imagined that I should see many new objects in the 'spirit world,' as Swedenborg calls it, and above all that I should be free from the fatigue and dangers of the journey."

Eight miles from Beccles, in a little town called Bungay, lived an English clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Ives[190], a great Hellenist and mathematician. He had a wife who was still young, with a charming appearance, mind and manners, and an only daughter, fifteen years of age. I was introduced to this household, and was better received there than anywhere else. We took our wine in the old English fashion, and sat two hours at table after the ladies had left. Mr. Ives, who had been to America, liked to tell of his travels, to hear the story of my own, to talk of Newton and Homer. His daughter, who had become learned in order to please her father, was an excellent musician, and sang as Madame Pasta[191] sings to-day. She reappeared in time to pour out tea, and charmed away the old parson's infectious drowsiness. Leaning against the end of the piano, I listened to Miss Ives in silence.

When the music was over, the young lady questioned me about France, about literature; asked me to set her plans of studies; she wished particularly to know the Italian authors, and begged me to give her some notes on the _Divina Commedia_ and the _Gerusalemme._ Gradually I began to experience a timid charm that issued from the soul: I had decked the Floridans, I should not have ventured to pick up Miss Ives's glove; I grew confused when I tried to translate a passage from Tasso. I was more at my ease with that chaster and more masculine genius, Dante.

Charlotte Ives's age and my own were suited. Into friendships formed in the midst of one's career, there enters a certain melancholy; when two people do not meet at the very outset, the memories of the person beloved are not mingled with that portion of our days in which we breathed without knowing her: those days, which belong to another society, are painful to the memory, and as though curtailed from our existence. When there is a disproportion of age, the drawbacks increase: the older of the two commenced life before the younger was born; the younger is destined to remain alone in his turn: one has walked in a solitude this side of a cradle, the other will cross a solitude that side of a tomb; the past was a desert for the first, the future will be a desert for the second. It is difficult to be in love in all the conditions that produce happiness: youth, beauty, seasonable time, harmony of hearts, tastes, character, graces, and years.

Having had a fall from my horse, I stayed some time with Mr. Ives. It was winter; the dreams of my life began to flee before reality. Miss Ives became more reserved; she ceased to bring me flowers; she would no longer sing.

[Sidenote: Charlotte Ives.]

If I could have been told that I should pass the rest of my life unknown in the bosom of this retiring family, I should have died of pleasure: love needs but permanency to become at once an Eden before the fall and an Hosanna without end. Contrive that beauty lasts, that youth remains, that the heart can never weary, and you reproduce Heaven. Love is so surely the sovereign felicity that it is pursued by the phantom of perpetuity; it will consent to pronounce only irrevocable vows; in the absence of joys, it seeks to make endless its sorrows; a fallen angel, it still speaks the language it spoke in the incorruptible abode; its hope is that it may never cease; in its twofold nature and its twofold illusion here below, it strives to perpetuate itself by immortal thoughts and never-failing generations.

I beheld with dismay the moment approach when I should be obliged to go. On the eve of the day announced for my departure, our dinner was a gloomy one. To my great surprise, Mr. Ives withdrew at dessert, taking his daughter with him, and I remained alone with Mrs. Ives: she was extremely embarrassed. I thought she was going to reproach me with an inclination which she might have discovered, although I had never mentioned it. She looked at me, lowered her eyes, blushed; herself bewitching in her confusion, there was no sentiment which she might not by right have claimed for herself. At last, overcoming with an effort the obstacle which had prevented her from speaking:

"Sir," she said in English, "you behold my confusion: I do not know if Charlotte pleases you, but it is impossible to deceive a mother's eyes; my daughter has certainly conceived an attachment for you. Mr. Ives and I have consulted together: you suit us in every respect; we believe you will make our daughter happy. You no longer possess a country; you have lost your relations; your property is sold: what is there to take you back to France? Until you inherit what we have, you will live with us."

Of all the sorrows that I had undergone, this was the sorest and greatest. I threw myself at Mrs. Ives's feet; I covered her hands with my kisses and my tears. She thought I was weeping with happiness, and herself began to sob for joy. She stretched out her arm to pull the bell-rope; she called her husband and daughter:

"Stop!" I cried. "I am a married man!"

She fell back fainting.

I went out and, without returning to my room, left the house on foot I reached Beccles and took the mail for London, after writing a letter to Mrs. Ives of which I regret that I did not keep a copy.

I have retained the sweetest, the tenderest, the most grateful recollection of that event. Before I made my name, Mr. Ives's family was the only one that bore me good-will and welcomed me with genuine affection. Poor, unknown, proscribed, with neither beauty nor attraction, I was offered an assured future, a country, a charming wife to take me out of my loneliness, a mother almost as beautiful to fill the place of my old mother, a father full of information, loving and cultivating literature, to replace the father of whom Heaven had bereaved me: what did I bring to set off against all that? No illusion could possibly enter into the choice they made of me; there was no doubt that I was loved. Since that time, I have met with but one attachment sufficiently lofty to inspire me with the same confidence. As to any interest of which I may subsequently have been the object, I have never been able to make out whether outward causes, a noisy fame, official finery, the glamour of a high literary or political position were not the covering which attracted the attentions shown to me.

For the rest, if I had married Charlotte Ives, my part on earth would have been changed: buried in an English county, I should have become a sporting gentleman; not a single line would have fallen from my pen; I should even have forgotten my language, for I wrote in English, and my ideas were beginning to take shape in English in my head. Would my country have lost much by my disappearance? If I could put on one side that which has consoled me, I would say that I should already have numbered days of calm, instead of the troubled days that have fallen to my share. The Empire, the Restoration, the divisions and quarrels of France: what would all that have mattered to me? I should not each morning have to palliate faults, to contend with errors. Is it certain that I possess a real talent, and that that talent is worth the sacrifice of my whole life? Shall I outlast my tomb? If I do go beyond it, in the transformation which is now being brought about, in a changed world occupied with very different things, will there be a public to hear me? Shall I not be a man of the past, unintelligible to the new generations? Will not my ideas, my opinions, my very style seem tedious and antiquated to a scornful posterity? Will my shade be able to say, as the shade of Virgil said to Dante:

"_Poeta fui e cantai_: I was a poet and I sang?"[192]

*

[Sidenote: I return to London.]

I returned to London, but found no repose: I had fled from my fate as a miscreant from his crime. How painful it must have been to a family so worthy of my homage, of my respect, of my gratitude, to receive a sort of refusal from the unknown man whom they had welcomed, to whom they had offered a new home with a simplicity, an absence of suspicion, of precaution, almost patriarchal in character! I imagined Charlotte's grief, the just reproaches with which I was liable and deserved to be covered: for, after all, I had taken pleasure in yielding to an inclination of which I knew the insuperable unlawfulness. Had I, in fact, made a vain attempt at seduction, without taking into account the heinousness of my conduct? But whether I stopped, as I did, in order to remain an honest man, or overcame all obstacles in order to surrender to an inclination stigmatized beforehand through my conduct, I could only have plunged the object of that seduction into sorrow or regret.

From these bitter reflections I abandoned myself to other thoughts no less filled with bitterness: I cursed my marriage, which, according to the false perception of a mind at that time very sick, had thrown me out of my course and was robbing me of happiness. I did not reflect that, on account of the ailing temperament to which I was subject, and the romantic notions of liberty which I cherished, a marriage with Miss Ives would have been as painful to me as a more independent union.

One thing within me remained pure and charming, although profoundly sad: the image of Charlotte; that image ended by prevailing over my revolts against my fate. I was tempted a hundred times to return to Bungay, not to appear before the troubled family, but to hide by the road-side to see Charlotte pass, to follow her to the temple where we had the same God, if not the same altar, in common, to offer that woman, through the medium of Heaven, the inexpressible ardour of my vows, to pronounce, at least in thought, the prayer from the nuptial benediction which I might have heard from a clergyman's lips in that temple:

"O God,... look mercifully upon this thy handmaid. ... now to be joined in wedlock.... May it be to her a yoke of love and peace.... May she be fruitful in offspring ... that they may both see their children's children unto the third and fourth generation, and arrive at a desired old age[193]."

Wavering between resolve and resolve, I wrote Charlotte long letters which I tore up. A few unimportant notes which I had received from her served me as a talisman; attached to my steps by my thought, Charlotte, gracious and compassionate, followed me along the paths of my sylph, purifying them as she went. She absorbed my faculties; she was the centre through which my intelligence made its way, in the same way as the blood passes through the heart; she disgusted me with all else, for I made of her a perpetual object of comparison to her advantage. A real and unhappy passion is a poisoned leaven which remains at the bottom of the soul, and which would poison the bread of the angels.

The spots by which I had wandered, the hours and words which I had exchanged with Charlotte, were engraved on my memory: I saw the smile of the wife who had been destined for me; I respectfully touched her black tresses; I pressed her shapely arms to my breast, like a chain which I might have worn round my neck. No sooner was I in some sequestered spot than Charlotte, with her white hands, came to sit by my side. I divined her presence, as at night one inhales the perfume of unseen flowers.

I had lost Hingant's company, and my walks, more solitary than before, left me full liberty to carry with me the image of Charlotte. There was not a common, a road, a church, within thirty miles of London, that I did not visit. The most deserted places, a field of nettles, a ditch planted with thistles, all that was neglected by men, became favourite spots for me, and in those spots Byron already drew breath. Leaning my head upon my hand, I contemplated the scorned sites; when their painful impression affected me too greatly, the memory of Charlotte came to enchant me: I was then like the pilgrim who, on reaching a solitude within view of the rocks of Mount Sinai, heard the nightingale sing.

In London, my habits aroused surprise. I looked at nobody, I never replied, I did not know what was said to me: my old associates suspected me of madness.

*

What happened at Bungay after my departure? What became of that family to which I had brought joy and mourning?

You will have remembered that I am at present Ambassador to the Court of George IV., and that I am writing in London, in 1822, of what happened to me in London in 1795.

Some matters of business obliged me, a week ago, to interrupt the narrative which I resume to-day. During this interval, my man came and told me one morning, between twelve and one o'clock, that a carriage had stopped at my door and that an English lady was asking to see me. As I have made it a rule, in my public position, to deny myself to nobody, I ordered the lady to be shown up.

[Sidenote: Lady Sutton.]

I was in my study, when Lady Sutton was announced; I saw a lady in mourning enter the room, accompanied by two handsome boys also in mourning: one might have been sixteen, the other fourteen years of age. I went towards the stranger; her perturbation was such that she could hardly walk. She said to me, in faltering accents:

"My lord, do you remember me?"

Yes, I remembered Miss Ives! The years which had passed over her head had left only their spring-time behind. I took her by the hand, I made her sit down, and I sat down by her side. I could not speak; my eyes were full of tears; I gazed at her in silence through those tears; I felt how deeply I had loved her by what I was now experiencing. At last I was able to say, in my turn:

"And you, madam, do you remember me?"

She raised her eyes, which till then she had kept lowered, and for sole reply gave me a smiling and melancholy glance, like a long remembrance. Her hand still lay between mine. Charlotte said to me:

"I am in mourning for my mother; my father has been dead many years. These are my children."

At these words, she drew away her hand and sank back into her chair, covering her eyes with her handkerchief. Soon she resumed:

"My lord, I am now speaking to you in the language which I practised with you at Bungay. I am ashamed: excuse me. My children are the sons of Admiral Sutton[194], whom I married three years after your departure from England. But I am not sufficiently self-possessed to-day to tell you the details. Permit me to come again."

I asked her for her address, and gave her my arm to take her to her carriage. She trembled, and I pressed her hand to my heart.

I called on Lady Sutton the next day; I found her alone. Then there began between us a long series of those "Do you remember?" questions which cause a whole life-time to revive. At each "Do you remember?" we looked at one another; we sought to discover in each other's faces those traces of time which so cruelly mark the distance from the starting-point and the length of the road traversed. I said to Charlotte:

"How did your mother tell you?"

Charlotte blushed, and hastily interrupted me:

"I have come to London to ask you to interest yourself on behalf of Admiral Sutton's children. The eldest would like to go to Bombay. Mr. Canning, who has been appointed Governor-General of India, is your friend; he might consent to take my son with him. I should be very grateful to you, and I should like to owe to you the happiness of my first child."

She laid a stress on these last words.

"Ah, madam," I replied, "of what do you remind me? What a subversion of destinies! You, who received a poor exile at your father's hospitable board; you, who did not scorn his sufferings; you, who perhaps thought of raising him to a glorious and unhoped-for rank: it is you who now ask his protection in your own country! I will see Mr. Canning; your son, however much it costs me to give him that name, your son shall go to India, if it only depends on me. But tell me, madam, how does my new position affect you? In what light do you look upon me at present? That word, 'my lord,' which you employ seems very harsh to me."

Charlotte replied:

"I don't think you changed, not even aged. When I spoke of you to my parents during your absence, I always gave you the title of 'my lord;' it seemed to me that you had a right to bear it: were you not to me the same as a husband, 'my lord and master'."

[Sidenote: Sentimental memories.]

That graceful woman reminded me of Milton's Eve, as she uttered these words: she was not born in the womb of another woman; her beauty bore the imprint of the divine hand that had moulded it.

I went to Mr. Canning and to Lord Londonderry; they made as many difficulties about a small place as would have been made in France, but they promised, as people promise at Court. I gave Lady Sutton an account of the measures I had taken. I saw her three times more: at my fourth visit, she told me she was returning to Bungay. This last interview was a sad one. Charlotte talked to me once more of the past, of our secret life, of our reading, our walks, our music, the flowers of yester-year, the hopes of bygone days.

"When I knew you," she said, "no one spoke your name; now, who has not heard it? Do you know that I have a work and several letters in your handwriting? Here they are." And she handed me a packet. "Do not be offended if I prefer to keep nothing of yours." She began to weep. "Farewell, farewell," she said. "Think of my son. I shall not see you again, for you will not come to see me at Bungay."

"I will," I cried; "I shall come to bring you your son's appointment."

She shook her head with an air of doubt, and withdrew. On returning to the Embassy, I locked myself in and opened the packet. It contained only a few unimportant notes from myself and a scheme of studies, with remarks on the English and Italian poets. I had hoped to find a letter from Charlotte: there was none; but, in the margins of the manuscript, I perceived some notes in English, French, and Italian: the age of the ink and the youthfulness of the hand in which they were written showed that it was long since they had been inscribed upon those margins.

That is the story of my relations with Miss Ives. As I finish telling it, it seems to me as though I were losing a second Charlotte in the same island in which I lost the first. But between that which I feel at this moment and that which I felt at the hours whose tenderness I have recalled lies the whole space of innocence: passions have interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. I could no longer bring to an artless woman the candour of desire, the sweet ignorance of a love that did not surpass the limits of a dream. I was writing then on the wave of sadness; I am now no longer tossed on the wave of life. Well, if I had pressed in my arms, as a wife and a mother, her who was destined for me as a virgin and a bride, it would have been with a sort of rage, to blight, to fill with sorrow, to crush out of existence those seven-and-twenty years which had been given to another after having been offered to me.

I must look upon the sentiment which I have just recalled as the first of that kind which entered my heart; it was nevertheless in no way sympathetic with my stormy nature: the latter would have corrupted it and made me incapable of long enjoying such sacred delectations. It was then that, embittered as I was by misfortunes, already a pilgrim from beyond the seas, having begun my solitary travels, it was then that I became obsessed by the mad ideas depicted in the mystery of René, which turned me into the most tormented being on the face of the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by causing a few rays of true light to penetrate to the depths of my soul, at first dissipated a cloud of phantoms: my dæmon, like an evil genius, plunged back into the abyss, and awaited the effects of time in order to renew her apparitions.

*

My relations with Deboffe in connection with the _Essai sur les révolutions_ had never been completely interrupted, and it was important for me to resume them in London at the earliest possible moment to support my material existence. But whence had my last misfortune arisen? From my obstinate bent for silence. In order to understand this it is necessary to enter into my character.

At no time of my life have I been able to overcome the spirit of reticence and of mental solitude which prevents me from talking of my private affairs.

[Sidenote: My reserved nature.]

No one can state without lying that I have told what most people tell in a moment of pain, pleasure, or vanity. A name, a confession of any seriousness never issues, or issues but rarely, from my lips. I never talk to casual people of my interests, my plans, my work, my ideas, my attachments, my joys, my sorrows, being persuaded of the profound weariness which one causes to others by talking of one's self. Sincere and truthful though I be, I am lacking in openness of heart: my soul incessantly tends to close up; I do not tell anything wholly, and I have never allowed my complete life to transpire, except in these Memoirs. If I try to begin a story, I am suddenly terrified at the idea of its length; after four words, the sound of my voice becomes unendurable to me, and I am silent. As I believe in nothing except religion, I distrust everything: malevolence and disparagement are the two distinctive qualities of the French mind; derision and calumny, the certain result of a confidence.

But what have I gained by my reserved nature? To become, because I was impenetrable, a fantastic something, having no relation with my real being? My very friends are mistaken in me, when they think that they are making me better known and when they adorn me with the illusions of their love for me. All the small intellects of the ante-chambers, the public offices, the newspapers, the cafés have assigned ambition to me, whereas I have none at all. Cold and dry in matters of everyday life, I have nothing of the enthusiast or the sentimentalist: my clear and swift perception quickly pierces men and facts, and strips them of all importance. Far from carrying me away, from idealizing apposite truths, my imagination disparages the loftiest events and baffles even myself; I see the petty and ridiculous side of things first of all; great geniuses and great things scarcely exist in my eyes. While I show myself polite, encomiastic and full of admiration for the self-conceited minds which proclaim themselves superior intelligences, my secret contempt laughs at all those faces intoxicated with incense, and covers them with Callot[195] masks. In politics, the warmth of my opinions has never exceeded the length of my speech or my pamphlet. In the inner and theoretical life, I am the man of all the dreams; in the outer and practical life, I am the man of realities. Adventurous and orderly, passionate and methodical, I am the most chimerical and the most positive, the most ardent and the most icy being that ever existed, a whimsical androgynus, formed out of the different blood of my mother and my father.

The portraits, utterly without resemblance, that have been made of me, are due in the main to the reticence of my speech. The crowd is too thoughtless, too inattentive, to see individuals as they are. Whenever, by chance, I have endeavoured to rectify some of these false judgments in my prefaces, I have not been believed. In the ultimate result, all things being indifferent to me, I have not insisted; an "as you please" has always rid me of the irksomeness of persuading anyone or of seeking to establish a truth. I return to my spiritual tribunal, like a hare to its form: there I resume my contemplation of the moving leaf or the bending blade of grass.

I do not make a virtue of my guardedness, which is as invincible as it is involuntary: although it is not deceitful, it has the appearance of being so; it is not in harmony with natures happier, more amiable, more facile, more candid, more ample, more communicative than mine. It has often injured me in matters of sentiment and business, because I have never been able to endure explanations, reconciliations brought about by protests and elucidations, lamentations and tears, verbiage and reproaches, details and apologies.

In the case of the Ives family, this obstinate silence of mine concerning myself proved extremely fatal to me. A score of times Charlotte's mother had inquired into my family and given me the opportunity of speaking openly. Not foreseeing whither my silence would lead me, I contented myself, as usual, with replying in short, vague sentences. Had I not been the victim of that odious mental perversity, all misunderstanding would have become impossible, and I should not have appeared to wish to deceive the most generous hospitality; the truth, as I told it at the last moment, did not excuse me: genuine harm had none the less been done.

I resumed my work in the midst of my grief and of the just reproaches with which I covered myself. I even took pleasure in this work, for it struck me that, by achieving renown, I should be giving the Ives family less cause to repent the interest which they had shown me. Charlotte, with whom I thus sought to be reconciled through my glory, presided over my studies. Her image was seated before me while I wrote. When I raised my eyes from the paper, I lifted them upon the adored image, as though the original were in fact there. The inhabitants of Ceylon one morning saw the luminary of day rise in extraordinary splendour; its orb opened out, and from it issued a dazzling being, who said to the Cingalese:

"I have come to reign over you."

Charlotte, issuing from a ray of light, reigned over me.

Let us leave these memories; memories grow old and dim like hopes. My life is about to change, to speed under other skies, in other valleys. First love of my youth, you flee with all your charms! I have just seen Charlotte again, it is true; but after how many years did I see her again? Sweet glimpse of the past, pale rose of the twilight which borders the night, long after the sun has set!

*

[Sidenote: The _Essai Historique._]

Life has often been represented (by me first of all) as a mountain which we climb on one side and descend on the other: it would be as true to compare it to an Alp, to the bare, ice-crowned summit which has no reverse. Following up this figure, the traveller always climbs upwards and never down; he then sees more clearly the space which he has covered, the paths which he has not taken, although by doing so he could have risen by a gentler slope: he looks down with sorrow and regret upon the point where he commenced to stray. Thus I must mark at the publication of the _Essai historique_ the first step which led me out of the peaceful road. I finished the first part of the great work which I had planned; I wrote the last word between the idea of death (I had fallen ill again) and a vanished dream: _In somnis venit imago conjugis._[196] The _Essai_, printed by Baylis, was published by Deboffe in 1797[197]. This date marks one of the turning-points in my life. There are moments at which our destiny, whether because it yields to society, or obeys the laws of nature, or begins to make us what we shall have to remain, suddenly turns aside from its first line, like a river which changes its course with a sudden bend.

The _Essai_ offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist, a publicist, and a politician. To say that I hoped, in so far at least as I am capable of hoping, to make a great success with the work, goes without saying: we authors, petty prodigies of a prodigious era, make a claim to keep up intelligence with future races; but we do not, I firmly believe, know where posterity lives, and we put the wrong address. When we grow numb in our graves, death will freeze our words, written or sung, so hard that they will not melt like the "frozen words" of Rabelais.

The _Essai_ was to be a sort of historical encyclopædia. The only volume published is in itself a fairly wide inquiry; I had the sequel in manuscript; then came, beside the researches and annotations of the annalist, the lays and roundelays of the poet, the _Natchez_, and so on. I am hardly able to understand to-day how I could give myself up to such extensive studies amid an active wandering life, subject to so many reverses. My obstinacy in working explains this fertility: in my young days I often wrote for twelve or fifteen hours without leaving the table at which I sat, scratching out and recommencing the same page ten times over. Age has not caused me to lose any part of this faculty of application: to this day my diplomatic correspondence, which in no way interrupts my literary composition, is entirely from my own hand.

The _Essai_ made a stir among the Emigration: it was opposed to the opinions of my companions in misfortune; in the different social positions which I have occupied, my independence has nearly always offended the men with whom I went. I have by turns been the leader of different armies of which the soldiers did not belong to my side: I have led the Old Royalists to the conquest of the public liberties, and especially of the liberty of the press, which they detested; I have rallied the Liberals, in the name of that same liberty, to the standard of the Bourbons, whom they hold in abhorrence. As it happened, Emigrant opinion attached itself to my person through self-love: the English reviews having spoken of me with praise, the commendation was reflected over the whole body of the "faithful."

I had sent copies of the _Essai_ to La Harpe, Ginguené, and de Sales. Lemierre[198], nephew of the poet of the same name[199], and translator of Gray's _Poems_, wrote to me from Paris, on the 15th of July 1797, that my _Essai_ had had the greatest success. One thing is certain, that, if the _Essai_ became for a moment known, it was almost immediately forgotten: a sudden shadow swallowed up the first ray of my glory.

[Sidenote: Mrs. O'Larry.]

As I had become almost a personage, the upper Emigration began to seek me out in London. I made my way from street to street; I first left Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, and advanced as far as the Hampstead Road. Here I stopped for some months at the house of Mrs. O'Larry, an Irish widow, the mother of a very pretty daughter of fourteen, and tenderly devoted to cats. Linked by this common passion, we had the misfortune to lose two beautiful kittens, white all over, like two ermines, with black tips to their tails.

Mrs. O'Larry was visited by old ladies of the neighbourhood with whom I was obliged to drink tea in the old-fashioned style. Madame de Staël has depicted this scene in _Corinne_ at Lady Edgermond's:

"'My dear, do you think the water has boiled long enough to pour it on the tea?'

"'My dear, I think it is a little too early[200].'"

There also came to these evenings a tall and beautiful young Irishwoman, called Mary Neale, in the charge of her guardian. She noticed a wound lurking in my gaze, for she said to me:

"You carry your heart in a sling."

I carried my heart anyhow.

Mrs. O'Larry left for Dublin; then, moving once more from the neighbourhood of the colony of the poor Emigration of the east, I arrived, from lodging to lodging, in the quarter of the rich Emigration of the west, among the bishops, the Court families, and the West Indian planters. Peltier had come back to me: he had got married as a joke; he was the same boaster as always, lavishly obliging, and frequenting his neighbours' pockets rather than their society. I made several new acquaintances, particularly in the society in which I had family connections: Christian de Lamoignon[201], who had been seriously wounded in the leg in the engagement at Quiberon, and who is now my colleague in the House of Lords, became my friend. He presented me to Mrs. Lindsay, who was attached to Auguste de Lamoignon[202], his brother: the Président Guillaume[203] was not installed in this fashion at Basville, in the midst of Boileau[204], Madame de Sévigné, and Bourdaloue[205].

Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of character: the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the fireside of the last of the Ninons[206]. The old monarchy was going under, with all its abuses and all its graces. It will be dug up one day, like those skeletons of queens, decked with necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings, which they exhume in Etruria. At Mrs. Lindsay's I met M. Malouet[207] and Madame du Belloy, a woman worthy of affection, the Comte de Montlosier and the Chevalier de Panat[208]. The last had a well-earned reputation for wit, dirtiness, and gluttony; he belonged to that audience of men of taste who used formerly to sit with folded arms in the presence of French society: idlers whose mission was to look on at everything and criticize everything; they exercised the functions which the newspapers fulfill to-day, without the same bitterness, but also without attaining their great popular influence.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Montlosier.]

Montlosier continued to ride cock-horse on his famous phrase of the "wooden cross," a phrase somewhat smoothed down by me, when I revived it, but true at bottom. On leaving France he went to Coblentz: he was badly received by the Princes, had a quarrel, fought a duel at night on the bank of the Rhine, and was run through. Being unable to move and quite unable to see, he asked the seconds if the point of the sword was sticking out behind:

"Only three inches," said they, feeling him.

"Then it's nothing," replied Montlosier. "Sir, withdraw your weapon."

Thus badly received for his royalism, Montlosier went to England, and took refuge in literature, the great almshouse of the Emigrants, in which I had a pallet next to his. He obtained the editorship of the _Courrier français._[209] In addition to his newspaper, he wrote physico-politico-philosophical works: in one of these works he proved that blue is the colour of life, because our veins turn blue after death, life coming to the surface of the body in order to evaporate and return to the blue sky; as I am very fond of blue, I was quite charmed.

Feudally liberal, aristocratic and democratic, with a motley mind, made up of shreds and patches, Montlosier is delivered, with difficulty, of incongruous ideas; but, once he has succeeded in extricating them from their after-birth, they are sometimes fine, above all energetic: an anti-clerical as a noble, a Christian through sophistry and as a lover of the olden times, he would, in the days of paganism, have been an eager partisan of freedom in theory and of slavery in practice, and would have had the slave thrown to the lampreys in the name of the liberty of the human race. Wrong-headed, cavilling, stiff-necked, and hirsute, the ex-deputy of the nobles of Riom nevertheless indulges in condescendences to the powers that be; he knows how to look after his interests, but he does not suffer others to perceive this, and he shelters his weaknesses as a man beneath his honour as a gentleman. I do not wish to speak ill of my "smoky Auvernat," with his novels of the _Mont-d'Or_ and his polemics of the _Plaine_; I like his heteroclitous person. His long and obscure setting forth and twisting of ideas, with parentheses, clearings of the throat, and tremulous "oh, ohs," bore me (I abominate the tenebrous, the involved, the vaporous, the laborious); but, on the other hand, I am amused by this naturalist of volcanoes, this abortive Pascal, this mountain orator who holds forth in the tribune as his little fellow-countrymen sing in the chimney-tops[210]; I love this gazetteer of peat-bogs and castle-keeps, this Liberal explaining the Charter through a Gothic window, this shepherd-lord half married to his milkmaid, himself sowing his barley in the snow, in his little pebbly field; I shall always thank him for dedicating to me, in his chalet in the Puy-de-Dôme, an old black rock taken from a cemetery of the Gauls discovered by himself.

The Abbé Delille, another fellow-countryman of Sidonius Apollinarius, of the Chancelier de l'Hospital, of La Fayette, of Thomas, of Chamfort[211], had also come to settle in London, after being driven from the Continent by the inundation of the Republican victories. The Emigration was proud to number him in its ranks: he sang our misfortunes, a reason the more for loving his muse. He did a great deal of work; he could not help himself, for Madame Delille locked him up and did not release him until he had earned his day's keep by writing a certain number of verses. I called on him one day, and was kept waiting; then he appeared with very red cheeks: it is said that Madame Delille used to box his ears; I know nothing about it; I only say what I saw.

Who has not heard the Abbé Delille recite his verses? He told a very good story: his ugly, irregular features, lit up by his imagination, went admirably with his affected delivery, with the character of his talent, and with his clerical profession. The Abbé Delille's masterpiece is his translation of the _Georgics_, with the exception of the sentimental pieces; but it is as though you were reading Racine translated into the language of Louis XV.

[Sidenote: The Abbé Delille.]

The literature of the eighteenth century, saving a few fine talents which dominate it, standing as it does between the classical literature of the seventeenth century and the romantic literature of the nineteenth, without lacking naturalness lacks nature; given up wholly to arrangements of words, it was neither sufficiently original as a new school, nor sufficiently pure as an ancient school. The Abbé Delille was the poet of the modern country-houses, in the same way as the troubadours were the poets of the old castles; the verses of the one and the ballads of the other point the difference which existed between aristocracy in its prime and aristocracy in its decrepitude: the abbé describes the pleasures of reading and chess in the manor-houses in which the troubadours sang of tourneys and crusades.

The distinguished persons of our Church militant were at that time in England: the Abbé Carron, who wrote the life of my sister Julie; the Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon[212], a stern and narrow-minded prelate, who contributed more and more to estrange M. le Comte d'Artois from his country; the Archbishop of Aix[213], slandered perhaps because of his success in society; another learned and pious bishop, but so avaricious that, had he had the misfortune to lose his soul, he would never have bought it back. Nearly all misers are men of wit: I must be a great fool.

Among the Frenchwomen in the West End was Madame de Boigne[214], amiable, witty, filled with talent, extremely pretty, and the youngest of them all; she has since, together with her father, the Marquis d'Osmond[215], represented the Court of France in England much better than my unsociability has done. She is writing now, and her talents will reproduce admirably all that she has seen[216].

Mesdames de Caumont[217], de Gontaut[218], and du Cluzel also inhabited the quarter of the exiled felicities, if at least I am mistaking Madame de Caumont and Madame du Cluzel, both of whom I had seen for a moment in Brussels. What is quite certain is that Madame la Duchesse de Duras[219] was in London at that time: I was not to know her till ten years later. How often in one's life one passes by that which would constitute its charm, even as the navigator cuts through the waters of a heaven-favoured land which he has only missed by one horizon and one day's sail! I am writing this on the banks of the Thames, and to-day a letter will go by post to tell Madame de Duras, on the banks of the Seine, that I have come across my first memory of her.

*

From time to time the Revolution sent us Emigrants of new kinds and opinions; different layers of exiles were formed: the earth contains beds of sand or clay left behind by the waves of the Deluge. One of those waves brought me a man whose loss I mourn to-day, a man who was my guide in literature, and whose friendship was both one of the honours and one of the consolations of my life.

You have read, in an earlier book of these Memoirs, that I had known M. de Fontanes in 1789: it was in Berlin, last year, that I learnt the news of his death. He was born at Niort of a noble Protestant family: his father had had the misfortune to kill his brother-in-law in a duel. Young Fontanes, brought up by a brother of great merit, came to Paris. He saw Voltaire[220] die, and that great representative of the eighteenth century inspired his first verses: his poetic attempts attracted the notice of La Harpe. He undertook some work for the stage, and became intimate with a charming actress, Mademoiselle Desgarcins. Living near the Odéon, wandering around the Chartreuse he celebrated its solitude. He had made a friend destined to become mine, M. Joubert[221]. When the Revolution occurred, the poet became entangled with one of those stationary parties which always remain torn by the progressive party which pulls them forwards and the retrograde party which draws them back. The monarchists attached M. de Fontanes to the staff of the _Modérateur._ When the bad days began, he took refuge at Lyons, where he married. His wife was confined of a son: during the siege of the town, which the revolutionaries had called "Commune-Affranchie[222]," in the same way as Louis XI., when banishing the citizens, had called Arras "Ville-Franchise[223]," Madame de Fontanes was obliged to move her nursling's cradle in order to place it within shelter from the bombs. Returning to Paris after the 9 Thermidor, M. de Fontanes established the _Mémorial_[224] with M. de La Harpe and the Abbé de Vauxelles[225]. He was proscribed on the 18 Fructidor, and England became his haven of refuge.

[Sidenote: The Marquis de Fontanes.]

M. de Fontanes, together with Chénier, was the last writer of the classic school in the elder line: his prose and verse resemble each other and have a similar merit. His thoughts and images have a melancholy unknown to the century of Louis XIV., which knew only the austere and holy sadness of religious eloquence. That melancholy is mingled with the works of the chanter of the _Jours des Morts_, as it were the imprint of the period in which he lived: it fixes the date of his coming; it shows that he was born after Rousseau, while connected by taste with Fénelon. If the writings of M. de Fontanes were reduced to two very small volumes, one of prose, the other of verse, it would be the most graceful funeral monument that could be raised upon the tomb of the classic school[226].

Among the papers which my friend left are several cantoes of his poem of the _Grèce Sauvée_, books of odes, scattered poems, and so on. He would not have published any more himself: for that critic, so acute, so enlightened, so impartial when not blinded by his political opinions, had a horrible dread of criticism. He was superlatively unjust to Madame de Staël. An envious article by Garat[227] on the _Forêt de Navarre_ almost stopped him short at the outset of his political career. Fontanes, so soon as he appeared, killed the affected school of Dorat[228], but he was unable to restore the classic school, which was hastening to its end together with the language of Racine[229].

If one thing in the world was likely to be antipathetic to M. de Fontanes, it was my manner of writing. With me began the so-called romantic school, a revolution in French literature: nevertheless, my friend, instead of revolting against my barbarism, became enamoured of it. I could see a great wonderment on his face when I read to him fragments of the _Natchez, Atala_ and _René_; he was unable to bring those productions within the scope of the common rules of criticism, but he felt that he was entering into a new world; he saw a new form of nature; he understood a language which he could not speak. He gave me excellent advice; I owe to him such correctness of style as I possess; he taught me to respect the reader's ear; he prevented me from falling into the extravagance of invention and the ruggedness of execution of my disciples.

It was a great joy to me to see him again in London, received with open arms by the Emigration; they asked him for cantoes from the _Grèce Sauvée_; they crowded to hear him. He came to live near me; we became inseparable. We were present together at a scene worthy of those days of misfortune: Cléry[230], who had lately landed, read us his Memoirs in manuscript. Imagine the emotion of an audience of exiles, listening to the valet of Louis XVI. telling, as an eye-witness, of the sufferings and death of the prisoner of the Temple! The Directory, alarmed by Cléry's Memoirs, published an interpolated edition, in which it made the author talk like a lackey and Louis XVI. like a street-porter: this is, perhaps, one of the dirtiest of all the instances of revolutionary turpitude.

[Sidenote: Emigrant society.]

M. du Theil[231], who had charge of the affairs of M. le Comte d'Artois in London, had hastened to seek out Fontanes; the latter asked me to take him to the agent of the Princes. We found him surrounded by all the defenders of the Throne and the Altar who were idling about Piccadilly, by a crowd of spies and sharpers who had escaped from Paris under various names and disguises, and by a swarm of adventurers, Belgians, Germans, Irishmen, dealers in the Counter-revolution. In a corner of the crowd was a man of thirty or thirty-two, at whom nobody looked, and who himself seemed interested only in an engraving of the Death of General Wolfe. Struck by his appearance, I asked who he was: one of my neighbours answered:

"It's nobody; it's a Vendean peasant who has brought a letter from his leaders."

This man, who was "nobody," had seen the deaths of Cathelineau[232], the first general of the Vendée and a peasant like himself; Bonchamps, in whom Bayard had come to life again; Lescure[233], armed with a hair-cloth which was not bullet-proof; d'Elbée[234], shot in an armchair, his wounds not permitting him to embrace death standing; La Rochejacquelein[235], whose body was ordered to be "verified" in order to reassure the Convention in the midst of its victories. That man, who was "nobody," had assisted at two hundred captures and recaptures of towns, villages, and redoubts, at seven hundred skirmishes, and seventeen pitched battles; he had fought against three hundred thousand regular troops and six or seven hundred thousand recruits and national guards; he had assisted in taking one hundred guns and fifty thousand muskets; he had passed through the "infernal columns," companies of incendiaries commanded by Conventional; he had been in the midst of the ocean of fire which, three several times, rolled its waves over the woods of the Vendée; lastly, he had seen three hundred thousand Hercules of the plough, the associates of his work, die, and one hundred square leagues of fertile country change into a desert of ashes.

The two Frances met upon this soil levelled by them. All that remained in blood and memory of the France of the Crusades fought against the new blood and hopes of the France of the Revolution. The conqueror recognised the greatness of the conquered. Turreau[236], the Republican general, declared that "the Vendeans would take their place in history in the first rank of soldier peoples." Another general wrote to Merlin de Thionville[237]:

"Troops which have beaten such Frenchmen as those may well hope to beat all other nations."

The legions of Probus[238], in their song, said as much of our fathers. Bonaparte called the combats of the Vendée "combats of giants."

[Sidenote: A Vendean peasant.]

In the crowd in the parlour, I was the only one to look with admiration and respect upon the representative of those ancient "Jacques[239]," who, while breaking the yoke of their lords, repelled the foreign invasion under Charles V.[240]: I seemed to see a child of the Commons of the time of Charles VII.[241], who, with the small provincial nobility, foot by foot, furrow by furrow, reconquered the soil of France. He wore the indifferent air of the savage; his look was grey and inflexible as steel rod; his lower lip trembled over his clenched teeth; his hair hung down from his head like a mass of torpid snakes, ready, however, to dart erect again; his arms, hanging by his sides, gave nervous jerks to a pair of huge fists slashed with sword-cuts: one would have taken him for a sawyer. His physiognomy expressed a homely, rustic nature, employed, by force of manners, in the service of interests and ideas contrary to that nature; the native fidelity of the vassal, the Christian's simple faith were mingled with the rough plebeian independence accustomed to value itself and to take the law into its own hands. The feeling of liberty in him seemed to be merely the consciousness of the strength of his hand and the intrepidity of his heart. He spoke no more than a lion; he scratched himself like a lion, yawned like a lion, sat on his flank like a bored lion, and seemed to dream of blood and forests.

What men, in every party, were the French of that time, and what a race are we to-day! But the Republicans had their principle in themselves, in the midst of themselves, while the principle of the Royalists was outside France. The Vendeans sent deputations to the exiles; the giants sent to ask leaders of the pigmies. The rude messenger upon whom I gazed had seized the Revolution by the throat and cried:

"Enter; pass behind me; she will not hurt you; she shall not move; I have got hold of her!"

No one was willing to pass: then Jacques Bonhomme let go the Revolution, and Charette[242] broke his sword.

*

While I was making these reflections on this tiller of the soil, as I had made others of a different kind at the sight of Mirabeau and Danton, Fontanes obtained a private audience of him whom he pleasantly called "the controller-general of finance:" he came out of it greatly satisfied, for M. du Theil had promised to encourage the publication of my works, and Fontanes thought only of me. It was impossible to be a better man than he: timid where he himself was concerned, he became all courage in matters of friendship; he proved this to me at the time of my resignation on the occasion of the death of the Duc d'Enghien[243]. In conversation, he burst into ludicrous fits of literary rage. In politics, he reasoned falsely: the crimes of the Convention had inspired him with a horror of liberty. He detested the newspapers, the band of false philosophers, the whole science of ideas, and he communicated that hatred to Bonaparte, when he became connected with the master of Europe.

We went for walks in the country; we stopped under some of those spreading elm-trees scattered about the fields. Leaning against the trunk of these elms, my friend told me of his early journey to England before the Revolution, and of the verses he then addressed to two young ladies who had grown old in the shadow of the towers of Westminster: towers which he found standing as he had left them, while at their base lay buried the illusions and the hours of his youth.

We often dined at some solitary tavern in Chelsea, on the Thames, where we talked of Milton and Shakespeare: they had seen what we saw; they had sat, like ourselves, on the bank of that stream, a foreign stream to us, the national stream to them. We returned to London, at night, by the faltering rays of the stars, drowned one after the other in the fog of the city. We reached our lodging, guided by uncertain glimmers which scarcely showed us the road across the coal smoke hovering red around every lamp: thus speeds the poet's life.

We saw London in detail; as an old exile, I acted as _cicerone_ to the new recruits of banishment which the Revolution demanded, young or old: there is no legal age for misfortune. In the course of one of these excursions, we were surprised by a rain-storm, mingled with thunder, and obliged to take shelter in the passage of a mean house, of which the door had been left open by accident. There we met the Duc de Bourbon[244]: I saw for the first time, at this Chantilly[245], a prince who was not yet the Last of the Condés.

[Sidenote: The Duc of Bourbon.]

The Duc de Bourbon, Fontanes and I, all three outlaws, seeking a shelter from the same storm, on foreign soil, under a poor man's roof! _Fata viam invenient._

Fontanes was recalled to France. He embraced me, expressing wishes for a speedy meeting. On arriving in Germany, he wrote me the following letter:

"28 July 1798.

"If you have experienced any regrets at my departure from London, I swear to you that mine have been no less real. You are the second person in whom, in the course of my life, I have found an imagination and a heart corresponding to my own. I shall never forget the consolation you brought me in exile and in a foreign land. My fondest and most constant thoughts, since I have left you, have turned upon the Natchez. What you have read to me, especially of recent days, is admirable and will not leave my memory. But the charm of the poetic ideas which you left in my mind disappeared for a moment on my arrival in Germany.

"The most hideous news from France followed on that which I showed you on leaving you. I spent five or six days in the cruellest perplexity. I even feared for persecutions directed against my family. My fears are now greatly diminished. The evil has even been very slight; they threaten rather than strike, and it is not those of my 'date' whom they wish to see exterminated. The last post has brought me assurances of peace and good-will. I can continue my journey, and shall set out early next month. I shall live near the Forest of Saint-Germain, among my family, Greece, and my books: why can I not also say the _Natchez!_ The unexpected storm which has just taken place in Paris was due, I am certain, to the follies of the agents and leaders you know of. I have a clear proof of this in my hands. Convinced as I am of this, I am writing to Great Pulteney Street[246] with all possible politeness, but also with all the caution which prudence demands. I wish to escape all correspondence in the coming month, and I leave the greatest doubt upon the steps which I am going to take and the residence which I intend to select.

"For the rest, I am again speaking of you in the accents of friendship, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that the hopes of future usefulness which they may place in me may revive the favourable dispositions which they showed me in this matter, and which are so certainly due to your person and your great talents. Work, work, my dear friend, and become illustrious. You have it in your power: the future is in your hands. I hope that the word so often given by the 'controller-general of finance' has been at least in part redeemed. That part consoles me, for I cannot bear the thought of a fine work delayed for the sake of a little assistance. Write to me; let our hearts be in communication, let our muses remain ever friends. Do not doubt but that, when I am able to move about freely in my country, I shall prepare a hive and flowers for you beside my own. My attachment is unalterable. I shall be alone so long as I am not with you. Talk to me of your work. I want to gladden you in conclusion: I wrote half of a new canto on the banks of the Elbe, and I am better pleased with it than with all the rest.

"Farewell, I embrace you tenderly, and am your friend.

"FONTANES."

Fontanes tells me that he wrote verses on changing the spot of his banishment. One can never take everything from the poet: he takes his lyre with him. Leave the swan his wings; each evening unknown streams will re-echo the melodious plaints which he would rather have sung to Eurotas.

"The future is in your hands": did Fontanes speak truly? Am I to congratulate myself on his prophecy? Alas! That promised future is already past: shall I have another?

*

[Sidenote: Death of Fontanes.]

This first and affectionate letter from the first friend whom I had in my life, the friend who walked by my side for twenty-three years from the date of that letter, reminds me painfully of my gradual isolation. Fontanes is no more; a profound sorrow, the tragic death of a son, cast him into an untimely grave. Almost all the persons of whom I have spoken in these Memoirs have disappeared; I am keeping an obituary register. A few years more and I, doomed to catalogue the dead, shall leave none to write my name in the book of the departed.

But if it must be that I remain alone, if not one being who has loved me is to stay by me to lead me to my last resting-place, I have less need than another of a guide: I have inquired the road, I have studied the places through which I should have to pass; I wished to see what happens at the last moment. Often, by the side of a pit into which a coffin was being lowered with ropes, I have heard the death-rattle of those ropes; next, I have caught the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on the coffin: at each new spadeful the hollow sound decreased; the earth, as it filled up the vault, gradually drove the eternal silence to the surface of the grave.

Fontanes, you wrote to me, "Let our muses remain ever friends:" you have not written to me in vain.

[146] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in December 1846.--T.

[147] The anniversary dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern, 21 May 1822.--T.

[148] The amount of M. de Chateaubriand's donation was £20.--T.

[149] Field-Marshal Frederick Duke of York and Albany, Bishop of Osnaburg, K.G. (1763-1827), second son of George III., and Commander-in-Chief of the army. A military commander of no capacity; four defeats stand to his debit: Hondschoote (8th September 1793), Turcoing (1794), Alxmaar (1799), Castricum (1799), not to mention the scandals in connection with Mrs. Clarke and the sale of commissions in the army.--T.

[150] Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset, K.G. (1775-1855).--T.

[151] Vice-Admiral George Byng, sixth Viscount Torrington (1768-1831).--T.

[152] William Powlett Orde-Powlett, second Lord Bolton (1782-1850).--T.

[153] George Canning (1770-1827), appointed Viceroy of India, but did not take up the appointment. He became Premier in 1827.--T.

[154] _Times_, 22nd May 1822. Chateaubriand had asked Canning to return thanks on his behalf for the toast of "the illustrious foreign personages who honoured the society with their company." These were Chateaubriand and the Tripolitan Ambassador, who also "returned thanks through the medium of another gentleman."--T.

[155] Canning entered Parliament as a member of Pitt's party in 1793, and joined his ministry as Under-Secretary of State in 1796. Pitt used to speak of Canning and Arthur Wellesley as "the boys."--T.

[156] Marie Joseph Annibal de Bedée, Comte de La Boüétardais (1758-1809). He emigrated in 1790, after the death of his wife, never returned to France, and died in London, 6 January 1809.--B.

[157] Dr. Edmund Goodwyn (1756-1829), author of _Dissertatio Medica de morte Submersorum_ (1786), and of a translation of the same work in English (1788). He is supposed to have been the original of Thackeray's Dr. Goodenough.--T.

[158] "For the rest, my health, disturbed by much travel and many cares, vigils and studies, is so deplorable that I fear I shall be unable to fulfil forthwith my promise concerning the other volumes of the _Essai historique._"--B.

[159] _Essai historique sur les révolutions_, Book I. part i., Introduction.--B.

[160] One of Peltier's first pamphlets, published October 1789, and denouncing the Duc d'Orléans and Mirabeau as the principal authors of the day's work of the 5th and 6th of October.--B.

[161] Henri Christophe (1767-1820), King of Haiti under the title of Henry I. He led the negro insurrection in 1790, caused himself to be proclaimed President in 1806, assumed the title of Emperor in 1811, and reigned until 1820, when he committed suicide to escape being put to death by his subjects.--T.

[162] Peltier was paid his salary as Haitian Minister by shipments of sugar and coffee, the sale of which brought him in some eight thousand pounds a year. One of his epigrams against Louis XVIII., who received him coldly after the Restoration, happening to be applicable to Christophe, the supplies were stopped together with his ministerial powers, and he died a poor man.--B.

[163] François Dominique Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier (1755-1838). He came to London after going through the campaign of the Princes, and became editor, not of the _Courrier français_, but of the _Courrier de Londres_, which had been founded by the Abbé de Calonne.--B.

[164] Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was buried in Westminster, but dug up at the Restoration, hanged at Tyburn, and buried under the gallows.--T.

[165] The remains of King Charles I. are buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.--T.

[166] Robert, Count of Artois ( 1287-1343), endeavoured to recover from his brother-in-law, Philip VI. of France, the county of Artois, which had been taken from him in a former reign. He was sentenced to perpetual banishment, but had before this fled from the kingdom and began plotting against the King of France. Philip pursued him from county to county, causing the various princes to refuse him refuge, until he fled to England, where he was welcomed by Edward III. (1333). In 1336 Philip proclaimed Robert of Artois a traitor and an enemy of France, and forbade all his vassals of whatever rank, in or out of France, to receive or aid him on penalty of confiscation of their fiefs. Edward accepted the insult as addressed to himself, prepared for war, proclaimed himself King of France in 1337, and invaded France in 1339, thus commencing the Hundred Years' War.--T.

[167] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke II. Chap. xii.: _An Apologie of Raymond Sebond._--T.

[168] William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-1778). His monument by Bacon stands in the North Transept near the entrance to the chapels which lead to the Chapel of Henry VII. and the Knights of the Bath.--T.

[169] Charles V., Emperor of Germany (1500-1558), abdicated in 1556 and retired to the neighbourhood of the Monastery of San Yuste in Estremadura. One month before his death (which occurred on the 21st of September 1558) he was seized with a fancy for going through the ceremonies of his own funeral, and, attired in a monk's dress, he joined in the chants of the community around an empty coffin placed in the convent chapel.--T.

[170] Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) was buried after her execution, together with her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London.--T.

[171] Catharine, not Alice, Countess of Salisbury (_d._ _circa_ 1350), _née_ Grandison, wife of William de Montacute, first Earl of Salisbury, and heroine of the spurious Garter story, was buried in her husband's foundation at Bisham.--T.

[172] Edward III., King of England (1312-1377), is buried in the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor.--T.

[173] Henry VIII., King of England (1491-1547), is buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.--T.

[174] Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, first Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626), is buried in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans.--T.

[175] Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is buried in the North Aisle of Westminster Abbey. His monument is by Rysbrack.--T.

[176] John Milton (1608-1674) has a monumental bust by Rysbrack in Poets' Corner. He is buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate.--T.

[177] Edward V. King of England (1471-1483) and Richard Duke of York (1474-1483), smothered in the Tower of London by order of their uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. Some bones, presumed to be theirs, were found in the White Tower or Keep and removed to Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, where they now lie.--T.

[178] Shakespeare, _Life and Death of King Richard III._, Act IV. sc. 3.--T.

[179] Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the mystic theosophist. His doctrines made a certain amount of way in England, and he died in London.--T.

[180] Charles Louis François de Barentin (1738-1819). He had opened the States-General, as Keeper of the Seals, in 1789. He emigrated after Mirabeau had denounced him, on the 15th of July, as an enemy of the people.--B.

[181] Pietro Bonaventure Trapassi (1698-1782), known as Metastasio, one of the most graceful and charming of the Italian dramatic poets. He settled in Vienna in 1730, by invitation of the Emperor Charles VI., who gave him the title of _Poeta Cesareo_, and there wrote a multitude of lyrical tragedies, operas, oratorios, and poems of all kinds.--T.

[182] Mrs. Canning, _née_ Joan Scott, a sister to the Duchess of Portland, married to Mr. Canning 8 July 1800.--T.

[183] The insurrectionary Royalists in Brittany had adopted this name from their rallying-cry, which imitated the note of the _chat-huant_, or screech-owl. Their marauding excursions were somewhat indiscriminate, and their presence not always welcome even to the loyal inhabitants.--T.

[184] William Camden (1551-1623), the famous antiquary, first head-master of Westminster School and later Clarencieux King-at-Arms. He has been surnamed the Strabo and the Pausanias of England.--T.

[185] Alain René Le Sage (1668-1747), author of the _Aventures de Gil Blas_, to whom Peltier has already been compared by Chateaubriand. Le Sage was born at Sarzeau, in Brittany: hence Chateaubriand speaks of him as his "fellow-countryman."--T.

[186] 22 April 1794.--B.

[187] The Comte Louis de Chateaubriand (1790-1873) followed a military career. In 1823 King Louis XVIII. created him heir-presumptive to his uncle's peerage. In 1830 he resigned his commission at the same time that his uncle withdrew from the House of Peers. In 1870, when eighty years of age, he refused to leave Paris, and inscribed his name on the register of the defenders of the besieged capital. He died at the Château de Malesherbes, 14 October 1873.--B.

[188]

"Dear orphan, of thy mother the close type, Of Heaven above I ask for thee below The happy days snatched from thy sire ere ripe, The children whom your uncle may not know."--T.

[189] ADDISON, _Cato_, Act V. sc. I.--T.

[190] Rev. John Clement Ives (_d._ 1812) was incumbent of Ilketshall St. Margaret, near Bungay, and of Great Holland in Essex.--T.

[191] Giuditta Pasta (1798-1865), _née_ Negri, a famous Italian operatic singer of Jewish birth. Her celebrity commenced in 1822, the year in which Chateaubriand is writing, and lasted until 1835, when she retired into private life.--T.

[192] _Inferno_, I.--B.

[193] Order of Marriage according to the Catholic ritual.--T.

[194] Admiral Sir John Sutton was gazetted an Admiral of the Blue on the 12th of August 1819. I have no certainty that either Ives or Sutton (spelt Sulton in the original) are the real names of the individuals of whom Chateaubriand speaks, although I have succeeded in establishing that there was a clergyman of the name of Ives residing at Bungay in 1795, and an Admiral Sir John Sutton on the Navy List in 1822.--T.

[195] Jacques Callot (1593-1635), a painter, engraver, and etcher of the first order; his works amount to nearly 1600 pieces, and include an array of immensely powerful grotesque subjects, in which he caricatures the vices and absurdities of mankind.--T.

[196] VIR., _Æn._, I. 357.--B.

[197] Chateaubriand began to write the _Essai_ in 1794; the work was printed in London in 1796, and published in the beginning of 1797. It formed one volume, large 8vo, of 681 pages, without counting prefaces, tables of contents, etc. The full title ran: _Essai historique, politique et moral sur les Révolutions anciennes et modernes, considérées dans leur rapports avec la Révolution françaises. Dédié à tous les partis._ With this epigraph: _Experti invicem sumus ego et fortuna._--TACITE. And at the foot of the title-page: _A Londres: Se trouve chez_ J. DEBOFFE, _Gerrard-Street_; J. DEBRETT, _Piccadilly_; Mme. LOWES, _Pall-Mall_; A. DULAU ET CO., _Wardour-Street_; BODSEY, _Broad-Street_; et J.-F. FAUCHE, _à Hambourg._ The author's name did not appear in the first edition.--B.

[198] Auguste Jacques Lemierre (_circa_ 1760-1815). He also translated Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_ and some German works. He died in hospital, under a false name, of a disease arising from his excesses.--T.

[199] Antoine Marin Lemierre (1723-1793), the author of two didactic poems and several tragedies, some of which achieved great success. His versification is considered incorrect and harsh, but some of his poems contain passages of great beauty.--T.

[200] _Corinne_, XIV. i.--B.

[201] Anne Pierre Christian Vicomte de Lamoignon (1770-1827), third son of Chrétien François de Lamoignon, Marquis de Basville. Louis XVIII. created him a peer of France in 1815. He never wholly recovered from his wound.--B.

[202] René Chrétien Auguste Marquis de Lamoignon (1765-1845), Christian's elder brother, made a peer of France by Louis-Philippe in 1832.--B.

[203] Guillaume I. de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris, and founder of the Lamoignon-de Basville-de Malesherbes family.--T.

[204] Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711), surnamed Despréaux, the distinguished poet and critic, and friend of Lamoignon.--T.

[205] Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), the eminent Jesuit preacher.--T.

[206] Ninon de Lenclos (1616-1706) was a lady of loose morals and decent manners who retained her charms and her lovers to her dying day. Her salon was frequented by the ladies of Louis XIV.'s Court and the whole society of the time, and she was a distinguished protectress of the contemporary men of letters.--T.

[207] Pierre Victor Baron Malouet (1740-1814), Intendant of the Navy before the Revolution and Commissary-General of the Navy under Napoleon. Louis XVIII. appointed him Minister of the Navy in 1814, but he died shortly after his nomination.--T.

[208] The Chevalier de Panat (1762-1834) was a naval officer of distinction. He became a rear-admiral and Secretary-General to the Admiralty in 1814. He neglected his person to such an extent that Rivarol said of him that he would stain mud.--T.

[209] Or rather, the _Courrier de Londres_, as explained above.--B.

[210] The Auvergnat lads in Paris were employed as chimney-sweeps.--T.

[211] The Comte de Montlosier and the Abbé Delille were both born at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne; Sidonius Apollinarius (430-489) was born near Lyons, and became Bishop of Clermont; Michel de l'Hôpital (1505-1573), Chancellor of France, was born near Aigueperse in Auvergne; La Fayette was born in the same province, as were Thomas and Chamfort.--T.

[212] Jean François de La Marche, Comte de Léon (1729-1805), Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon. The bishopric was suppressed in 1790 and was not restored.--T.

[213] Jean-de-Dieu Raymond de Boisgelin de Cicé (1732-1804), Archbishop of Aix, and a member of the French Academy. After the Concordat he became Archbishop of Tours and a cardinal.--T.

[214] Madame de Boigne was the wife of Bénoît, Comte de Boigne (1741-1831), who had seen service in India under one of the native princes, and returned laden with colossal riches.--B.

[215] The Marquis d'Osmond (1751-1838) was French Minister at the Hague at the outbreak of the Revolution. In 1791 he was appointed Ambassador in St. Petersburg, but resigned before going out, and emigrated. He filled several diplomatic posts under the Empire, was Minister at Turin under the First Restoration, and in 1815 was created a peer of France and Ambassador to England, where he remained until January 1819.--B.

[216] The Comtesse de Boigne wrote some novels, of which the chief was _Une Passion dans le grand monde._ They were published after her death under the Second Empire, none of them attaining the smallest success.--B.

[217] Marie Constance de Caumont La Force (1774-1823), _née_ de Lamoignon, wife of François Philibert Bertrand Nompar de Caumont, Marquis de La Force.--B.

[218] The Duchesse de Gontaut, _née_ de Montault Navailles, married the Vicomte de Gontaut-Biron in London in 1794. She became Governess of the Children of France under the Restoration after the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux, and Louis XVIII. gave her the rank and title of duchess.--B.

[219] Claire Duchesse de Duras (1777-1828), _née_ Lechat de Kersaint, the friend of Madame de Staël, and author of two novels, _Ottrika_ and _Édouard_, which attained a great success.--T.

[220] François Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known as Voltaire. He was refused burial in Paris, and his remains were interred in the abbey at Scellières and removed to the Panthéon, where they still lie, in 1791.--T.

[221] Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), author of the _Pensées_, published in 1838, thanks to the care of Chateaubriand.--T.

[222] 1793--The town was nearly destroyed, its 200,000 inhabitants almost decimated by the commissaries of the Convention, and its name changed as stated.--T.

[223] 1477.--T.

[224] The _Mémorial historique, politique et littéraire_ ran from 20 May to 4 September 1797. It is full of articles of the rarest merit, especially those by La Harpe, which are masterpieces.--B.

[225] Jacques Bourlet, Abbé de Vauxelles (1734-1802).--T.

[226] It has been raised by the filial piety of Madame Christine de Fontanes. M. Sainte-Beuve has adorned the frontal of the monument with his ingenious notice.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1839).

[227] Dominique Joseph Garat (1749-1833), Minister of Justice under the Revolution in succession to Danton, Minister of the Interior in succession to Roland, and a writer of merit. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1806, but excluded at the Restoration.--T.

[228] Claude Joseph Dorat (1734-1780), an artificial, fastidious, and somewhat monotonous follower of Voltaire.--T.

[229] I omit a reference to Fontanes' _Anniversaire de sa naissance_ and a quotation from that ode.--T.

[230] Jean Baptiste Cléry (1759-1809), the King's valet. His Memoirs were published in London, in 1799; with the title. _Journal de ce qui s'est passé à la Tour du Temple pendant la captivité de Louis XVI., roi de France_, and printed the same year in France. In order to destroy the interest attached to this publication, the Directory caused a spurious edition to be disseminated, entitled _Mémoires de M. Cléry sur la détention de Louis XVI._, and filled with matter calculated to injure the memory of the unhappy Sovereign and the Royal Family. Cléry protested against this with indignation so soon as it reached his ears, his protest appearing in July 1801 in the _Spectateur du Nord_, published in Hamburg.--B.

[231] Jean François du Theil (_circa_ 1760-1822) emigrated in 1790, returned to France in 1792, during the captivity of Louis XVI., and exposed himself to the greatest dangers in order to communicate with the King. After escaping arrest, almost by a miracle, inside the Temple itself, he returned to Germany, where he joined the Comte d'Artois. He and the Duc d'Harcourt were together charged with the affairs of the Comte d'Artois and the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) in connection with the British Government.--B.

[232] Jacques Cathelineau (1758-1793), a weaver by trade and Commander-in-Chief of the Vendéan Army. He was mortally wounded in the assault upon Nantes (29 June 1793).--T.

[233] Louis Marie Marquis de Lescure (1766-1793), a brilliant Vendéan general, killed at the Tremblaye (3 November 1793).--T.

[234] Gigot d'Elbée (1752-1794), nicknamed General Providence, from his habit of relying on Providence for victory. He succeeded Cathelineau as general-in-chief, but was a far from capable commander. He was wounded at Chollet, and captured and shot on the island of Noirmoutiers.--T.

[235] Henri du Vergier, Comte de La Rochejacquelein (1773-1794) succeeded Lescure and repeatedly defeated the troops of the Republic. He was killed at the fight of Nouaillé, near Chollet, 4 March 1794.--T.

[236] Louis Marie Baron Turreau de Garambouville (1756-1816), Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the West (1793). He was French Ambassador to the United States from 1804 to 1810.--T.

[237] Merlin de Thionville (1762-1833), the Conventional, so called to distinguish him from Merlin de Douay, the jurisconsult.--T.

[238] Marcus Aurelius Probus, Emperor of Rome (_circa_ 232-282), conquered and pacified Gaul, restoring the vineyards destroyed by order of Domitian.--T.

[239] The "Jacquerie" was a faction which ravaged France during the captivity of King John in England (1358). It consisted of peasants who had revolted against their feudal lords, and was led by a certain Guillaume Caillet, nicknamed "Jacques Bonhomme," after whom the "Jacques" called themselves.--T.

[240] Charles V., King of France (1337-1380), known as Charles the Wise, son and successor of John II. He successfully resisted the English invasion under Edward III., and recovered a large portion of the country, leaving Bordeaux, Calais, Cherbourg, Bayonne, and several fortresses in the hands of the English at his death.--T.

[241] Charles VII., King of France (1403-1461), surnamed Charles the Victorious, with the assistance of Joan of Arc, drove the English out of all France, with the sole exception of Calais.--T.

[242] François Athanase Charette de La Contrie (1763-1796) was at the head of the Poitou peasants in the rising of the Vendée and joined forces with Cathelineau. Discords broke out between the Royalist chiefs, and Charette left the army with his division and fought alone, capturing the Republican camp at Saint-Christophe, near Challans, in 1794. In 1796, Hoche utterly destroyed his small force, and Charette himself was taken prisoner and shot at Nantes.--T.

[243] Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-Condé, Duc d'Enghien (1772-1804), son of the Duc de Bourbon and grandson of the Prince de Condé. He was arrested on neutral territory and shot, after a mock trial, at Vincennes, by order of Napoleon (21 March 1804). Chateaubriand resigned his diplomatic appointment, as will appear, immediately after learning the news of this crime.--T.

[244] The Duc de Bourbon, father of the Duc d'Enghien, became "the Last of the Condés" on the latter's death.--T.

[245] Chantilly was the seat of the Condé family: the Duc de Bourbon left it on his death (1830) to the Duc d'Aumale, who bequeathed it to the French Nation.--T.

[246] The street in which M. du Theil lived.--_Author's Note._