BOOK IV[176

Berlin--Potsdam--Frederic the Great--My brother--My cousin Moreau--My sister, the Comtesse de Farcy--Julie a worldly woman--Dinner--Pommereul--Madame de Chastenay--Cambrai--The Navarre Regiment--La Martinière--Death of my father--My regrets--Would my father have appreciated me?--I return to Brittany--I stay with my eldest sister--My brother sends for me to Paris--First inspiration of the muse--My lonely life in Paris--I am presented at Versailles--I hunt with the King--Adventure with my mare _Heureuse_

It is a far cry from Combourg to Berlin, from a young dreamer to an old ambassador. In the foregoing pages I find these words: "In how many places have I already commenced to write these Memoirs, and in what place shall I finish them?" Nearly four years have passed between the date at which I wrote down the facts I have just related and that at which I resume these Memoirs. A thousand things have happened; a second man has shown himself in me, the politician: I care very little for him. I have defended the liberties of France, which alone can secure the duration of the lawful Throne. With the aid of the _Conservateur_[177], I have set M. de Villèle in power; I have seen the Duc de Berry die, and done honor to his memory[178]. In order to reconcile everybody, I have gone away; I have accepted the Berlin Embassy[179].

Yesterday I was at Potsdam, an ornate barrack, now void of soldiers: I studied the mock Julian in his mock Athens. At Sans-Souci, I was shown the table on which a great German monarch turned the maxims of the Encyclopædists into little French verses; the room occupied by Voltaire, decorated with carved monkeys and parrots; the mill which he who laid provinces waste made light of respecting; the tomb of the horse César and of the greyhounds Diane, Amourette, Biche, Superbe, and Pax. The royal infidel took pleasure in profaning even the religion of the tomb by raising mausoleums to his dogs; he had marked out a burying-place near them for himself, less from contempt of mankind than an ostentation of annihilation.

They showed me the New Palace, already falling to pieces. In the old palace of Potsdam, they preserve the tobacco-stains, the worn and soiled chairs, in a word, all the traces of the renegade Prince's uncleanliness. This place immortalizes at once the dirt of the cynic, the impudence of the atheist, the tyranny of the despot, and the glory of the soldier. One thing alone attracted my attention: the hands of a clock fixed at the moment of Frederic's death; I was deceived by the immobility of the picture: hours never stay their flight; it is not man that stops the career of time, it is time that stops the career of man. Besides, it matters little what part we have played in life; the brilliancy or obscurity of our doctrines, our riches or poverty, our joys or sorrows in no way influence the length of our days. Whether the hands of the clock move over a golden or wooden face, whether the face be large or small, and fill the bezel of a ring or the rose-window of a cathedral, the hour has but one duration.

In a vault of the Protestant church, immediately below the pulpit of the unfrocked schismatic, I saw the coffin of the crowned sophist. The coffin is of bronze; when you strike it, it resounds. The dragoon who slumbers in this brassy bed would not even be roused from sleep by the noise of his fame; he will awake only to the sound of the trumpet which shall summon him to his last battle-field, face to face with the Lord of Hosts.

I had so great a need of a change of impressions that I found relief in visiting the Marble House. The king who built it once spoke some flattering words to me when, a poor officer, I passed through his army. This king at least shared the ordinary failings of mankind: vulgar like other men, he took refuge in pleasures. Do the two skeletons trouble themselves today about the difference that once existed between them, when one was Frederic the Great and the other Frederic William[180]? Sans-Souci and the Marble House are both ruins without masters.

Upon the whole, though the immensity of the events of our own time has lessened past events, though Rosbach, Lissa, Liegnitz, Torgau are mere skirmishes beside the battles of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, the Moskowa, Frederic suffers less than other personages by comparison with the giant enchained at St. Helena. The King of Prussia and Voltaire are two strangely-grouped figures who will live: the second destroyed a society with a philosophy which assisted the first in founding a kingdom.

The Berlin evenings are long. I occupy a house belonging to the Duchesse de Dino[181]. My secretaries[182] leave me so soon as night sets in. When there is no entertainment at Court for the wedding of the Grand-Duke and Grand-Duchess Nicholas[183], I stay at home. Seated all alone by a cheerless stove, I hear nothing save the call of the sentry at the Brandenburg Gate and the steps on the snow of the man who whistles the hours. How shall I spend my time? With books? I have scarcely any. If I were to continue my Memoirs?

*

You last saw me on the road from Combourg to Rennes: I alighted in the latter place at the house of one of my kinsmen. He informed me with delight that a lady of his acquaintance, who was going to Paris, had a seat to give away in her carriage, and that he undertook to persuade this lady to take me with her. I accepted, cursing my kinsman's civility as I did so. He settled the matter, and quickly presented me to my traveling-companion, a sprightly, free-and-easy milliner, who began to laugh when she saw me. The horses arrived at midnight and we set out.

[Sidenote: My first visit to Paris.]

Behold me in a post-chaise, alone with a woman, in the middle of the night. How was I, who had never in my life looked at a woman without blushing, to descend from the height of my dreams to this terrifying reality? I did not know where I was; I clung to my corner of the carriage for fear of touching Madame Rose's gown. When she spoke to me, I stammered without being able to reply. She had to pay the postilion, to take everything upon herself, for I was capable of nothing. When day broke, she looked with fresh amazement at this booby with whom she regretted having saddled herself.

When the aspect of the landscape began to change and I ceased to recognize the dress and accent of the Breton peasants, I fell into a profound despondency, which increased the contempt in which Madame Rose held me. I noticed the feeling I inspired, and I received from this first trial of the world an impression which time has not wholly effaced. I was born shy but not shamefaced; I had the modesty but not the embarrassment of my years. When I suspected that I was ridiculous because of my good side, my shyness changed into insurmountable timidity. I was unable to speak a word: I felt that I had something to conceal, and that this something was a virtue; I made up my mind to self-concealment in order to wear my innocence in peace.

We sped towards Paris. As we came down from Saint-Cyr, I was struck by the width of the roads and the evenness of the plantations. Soon we reached Versailles: the orangery with its marble stairs amazed me. The success of the American War had brought triumphs to Louis XIV.'s palace; the Queen reigned there in all the splendour of youth and beauty; the Throne, so near its fall, seemed never to have been more solidly established. And I, an obscure passer-by, was destined to outlive this pomp, to survive to see the woods of Trianon as deserted as those which I was then leaving.

At last we drove into Paris. I saw a bantering look in every face: like the Périgord squire, I thought people looked at me to make fun of me. Madame Rose made them drive to the Hôtel de l'Europe in the Rue du Mail, and hastened to rid herself of her simpleton. Scarce had I stepped from the carriage when she said to the porter:

"Give this gentleman a room. Your servant," she added, with a bob courtesy.

I never saw Madame Rose again in my life.

*

A woman preceded me up a dark and steep staircase, holding a labelled key in her hand; a Savoyard followed with my little trunk. When we reached the third floor, the chamber-maid opened a room; the Savoyard put the trunk across the arms of a chair.

The chamber-maid asked: "Does monsieur require anything?"

I answered, "No."

[Sidenote: My cousin Moreau.]

Three whistles sounded; the chamber-maid cried, "Coming!" rushed out, closed the door, and tumbled downstairs with the Savoyard. When I found myself alone in my room, my heart became so strangely full that I was nearly taking the road back to Brittany. All that I had heard tell of Paris returned to my mind; I was embarrassed in a hundred ways. I should have liked to go to bed, and the bed was not made; I was hungry, and did not know how to set about dining. I was afraid of committing a solecism: ought I to call the people of the hotel? Ought I to go downstairs? To whom should I apply? I ventured to put my head out of the window: I saw only a small inner yard, deep as a well, through which people came and went who would never dream of giving a thought to the prisoner on the third floor. I went and sat down beside the dirty recess in which I was to sleep, reduced to examining the figures on the paper with which its walls were hung. A distant sound of voices reached my ears, increased, drew nigh; my door opened: in came my brother and one of my cousins, the son of a sister of my mother's who had made none too good a marriage. Madame Rose had after all taken pity on the numskull, and had sent word to my brother, whose address she learnt at Rennes, that I had arrived in Paris. My brother clasped me in his arms. My Cousin Moreau was a big fat man, daubed all over with snuff, who ate like an ogre, talked a great deal, was always trotting about, puffing, choking, with his mouth half open, his tongue half out, who knew everybody, and was equally at home in gaming-houses, antechambers, and drawing-rooms.

"Come, chevalier," he cried, "so here you are in Paris; I am going to take you to Madame de Chastenay's!"

Who was this woman whose name I heard uttered for the first time? This proposal set me against my Cousin Moreau.

"The chevalier is no doubt in need of rest," said my brother; "we will go and see Madame de Farcy, and then he shall come back to dine and sleep."

A feeling of gladness entered my heart: the thought of my family amid an indifferent world was as balm to me. We went out. Cousin Moreau raised a storm about the badness of the room, and charged my host to put me at least one floor lower. We stepped into my brother's carriage and drove to the convent where Madame de Farcy lived.

Julie had been some time in Paris to consult the physicians. Her charming appearance, her elegance and her wit had soon caused her to be sought after. I have already said that she was born with a real talent for poetry. She became a saint, after having been one of the most attractive women of her age: the Abbé Carron wrote her life[184]. The apostles who go everywhere in search of souls feel for her the love which one of the Fathers of the Church attributes to the Creator: "When a soul reaches Heaven," says this Father, with the simplicity of heart of a Primitive Christian and the directness of Greek genius, "God takes it upon His knees and calls it His daughter."

Lucile has left a striking lament: _À la sœur que je n'ai plus._ The Abbé Carron's admiration for Julie explains and justifies Lucile's words. The narrative of the saintly priest also shows that I said true in the preface to the _Génie du Christianisme_, and serves as a proof for some portions of my Memoirs.

The innocent Julie gave herself up to repentance; she consecrated the treasures of her austerities to the redemption of her brothers; and following the example of the illustrious African her patron saint[185], she became a willing martyr.

The Abbé Carron, author of the _Vie des justes_, is the ecclesiastic from my part of the country[186], the Francis of Paula of exile, whose fame, revealed by the afflicted, pierced even through the fame of Bonaparte. The voice of a poor proscribed priest was not stifled by the noise of a revolution which overthrew society; he seems to have returned expressly from foreign shores to write of my sister's virtues: he sought among our ruins and found a forgotten victim and tomb.

When the new hagiographer describes Julie's pious cruelties, it is as though one heard Bossuet preach his sermon on the profession of faith of Mademoiselle de la Vallière[187]:

"Will she dare to touch that body so tender, so dear, so gently treated? Will she not take pity on that delicate complexion? On the contrary, it is that principally which the soul arraigns as its most dangerous seducer; she hems herself round with safeguards; fenced in in every direction, she can no longer breathe except heavenwards!"

*

I cannot suppress a certain confusion at reading my name in the last lines traced by the hand of Julie's venerable biographer. What have I, with my weaknesses, to do with such lofty perfections? Have I kept all that my sister's letter made me promise, when I received it during my emigration in London? Is a book sufficient for God? Is it not my life that I ought to offer Him? And is that life, pray, true to the _Génie du Christianisme?_ What matter that I have drawn more or less brilliant pictures of religion, if my passions cast a shade over my faith! I have not gone on to the end; I have not donned the hair-shirt: that tunic of my viaticum would have drunk up and dried my sweat. Instead, a weary traveller, I sat down by the roadside: tired or not, I shall have to get up again in order to arrive where my sister has arrived.

[Sidenote: My sister Julie.]

There is nothing wanting to Julie's glory: the Abbé Carron has written her life; Lucile has mourned her death.

*

When I saw Julie again in Paris, she was in all the pomp of worldliness; she appeared covered with those flowers, adorned with those necklaces, veiled in those scented fabrics which St. Clement forbids the early Christian women. St. Basil wishes the middle of the night to be for the solitary what the morning is for the others, so that he may profit by the silence of nature. The middle of the night was the hour at which Julie went to parties at which her verses, recited with marvelous euphony by herself, formed the principal attraction.

Julie was infinitely handsomer than Lucile: she had soft blue eyes and dark hair, which she wore plaited or in large waves. Her hands and arms, models of whiteness and shape, added, by their graceful movements, something yet more charming to her already charming figure. She was brilliant, lively, laughed much, but without affectation, and, when she laughed, showed teeth like pearls. A crowd of portraits of women of the time of Louis XIV. resembled Julie, among others those of the three Mortemarts; but she had more elegance than Madame de Montespan[188].

Julie received me with the affection which one finds only in a sister. I had a sense of protection when pressed in her arms, her ribbons, her bouquet of roses, and her laces. Nothing replaces the attachment, delicacy and devotion of a woman; a man is forgotten by his brothers and friends, denied by his companions: but never by his mother, his sister, or his wife. When Harold was slain at the Battle of Hastings, none could point him out in the crowd of the dead; they had to seek the assistance of a young girl whom he loved. She came, and the unfortunate Prince was recognized by Edith the swan-necked:

_Editha swaneshales, quod sonat collum cycni._

My brother took me back to my hotel; he ordered my dinner and left me. I dined alone, and went sadly to bed. I passed my first night in Paris regretting my moors and trembling before the dimness of my future.

At eight o'clock the next morning, my fat cousin arrived; he had already done five or six errands:

"Well, chevalier, we are going to breakfast; we shall dine with Pommereul, and this evening I shall take you to Madame de Chastenay's."

This seemed to me a fate, and I resigned myself. Everything happened as my cousin had proposed. After breakfast he pretended to show me Paris, and dragged me through the dirtiest streets in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, telling me of the dangers to which a young man was exposed. We were punctual in keeping our appointment for dinner, at an eating-house. Everything put before us seemed bad to me. The conversation and the dinner-guests revealed a new world to me. The talk turned upon the Court, the financial projects, the Academy sittings, the women and intrigues of the day, the latest piece, the success of the actors, actresses and authors.

Several Bretons were among the guests, including the Chevalier de Guer[189] and Pommereul[190]. The latter was a good talker, who has since described some of Bonaparte's campaigns, and who, when I met him again, was at the head of the Publishing Department.

Under the Empire, Pommereul achieved a sort of renown by his hatred for the nobility[191]. And nevertheless Pommereul claimed, and with just cause, to be of gentle birth himself. He signed his name "Pommereux," and spoke of his descent from the Pommereux family mentioned in the letters of Madame de Sévigné[192].

[Sidenote: Madame de Chastenay.]

After dinner my brother wanted to take me to the play, but my cousin claimed me for Madame de Chastenay, and I went with him to meet my destiny. I saw a handsome woman, no longer in her first youth, but still capable of inspiring an attachment. She received me kindly, tried to put me at my ease, asked me about my part of the country and my regiment. I was awkward and embarrassed; I made signs to my cousin to cut short the visit. But he, without looking at me, was inexhaustible on the subject of my merits, declaring that I had written verses at my mother's breast, and calling upon me to sing Madame de Chastenay. She relieved me from this painful situation, begged me to forgive her for being obliged to go out, and invited me to come back and see her the next morning, in so gentle a voice that I involuntarily promised to obey.

The next day I returned alone: I found her in bed in an elegantly fitted room. She told me that she was not very well, and that she had the bad habit of rising late. For the first time I found myself by the bedside of a woman who was neither my mother nor my sister. She had observed my shyness on the evening before, and so far conquered it that I ventured to express myself with some sort of ease. She stretched towards me a half-bared arm and the most beautiful hand in the world, and said with a smile:

"We shall become friends."

I did not even kiss that beautiful hand; I withdrew quite confused. The next day I left for Cambrai. Who was this Dame de Chastenay? I have no idea: she passed like a charming shade across my life.

*

The mail-coach brought me to my quarters. One of my brothers-in-law, the Vicomte de Chateaubourg (he had married my sister Bénigne, widow of the Comte de Québriac[193]) had given me letters of recommendation to some of the officers of my regiment. The Chevalier de Guénan, a man of very good company, introduced me to a mess at which dined officers distinguished for their talents, Messieurs Achard, des Mahis, La Martinière. The Marquis de Mortemart[194] was colonel of the regiment; the Comte d'Andrezel[195] major: I was placed under the special protection of the latter. I met both of them in after years: one of them became my colleague in the House of Peers; the other applied to me for some services which I was happy to show him. There is a melancholy pleasure in meeting persons whom we have known at different periods of our life, and in contemplating the changes that have taken place in their mode of existence and our own. Like landmarks left behind us, they trace for us the road which we have followed in the desert of the past.

I joined my regiment in mufti; within twenty-four hours I had assumed the military dress, and I felt as though I had worn it always. My uniform was blue and white, like my vowing-clothes of years before: I marched under the same colours as a young man and as a child. I was submitted to none of the trials which the sub-lieutenants were in the habit of inflicting upon a newcomer; for some reason not known to me, they did not venture to indulge in this military child's-play with me. Before I had been a fortnight with the regiment, I was treated like an "ancient." I learnt the manual exercise and theory with ease; I passed my steps of corporal and sergeant to the applause of my instructors. My room became the meeting-place of the old captains as well as of the young sub-lieutenants; the former went over their campaigns with me, the latter confided to me their love-affairs.

La Martinière would come to fetch me to hang about the door of a belle of Cambrai whom he adored; this happened five or six times a day. He was very ugly, and his face was pitted with the small-pox. He told me of his passion while quaffing large glasses of gooseberry-syrup, which I sometimes paid for.

[Sidenote: Regimental life.]

All would have gone wonderfully well, but for my insane rage for dress. At that time they affected the stiffness of the Prussian uniform: a small hat, small curls pressed tight to the head, a pig-tail tied very fast, a closely-buttoned coat. I disliked this greatly; I submitted to these shackles during the day, but in the evening, when I hoped to escape the eyes of my superior officers, I put on a larger hat; the barber lowered the curls of my hair and loosened my pig-tail; I unbuttoned and turned back the facings of my coat. In this fond undress, I would go a-wooing on La Martinière's behalf under the cruel Fleming's windows. But one fine day brought me face to face with M. d'Andrezel.

"What is this, sir?" said the terrible major. "Consider yourself under arrest for three days."

I felt somewhat humiliated, but recognized the truth of the proverb that it is an ill wind that blows nobody good: I was delivered from my messmate's love-affairs.

I read _Télémaque_ beside Fénelon's tomb[196]: I was not much in the humour for the philanthropic tale of the cow and the bishop. It amuses me to recall the beginning of my career. When passing through Cambrai with the King, after the Hundred Days, I looked for the house I had lived in and the coffee-house I used to frequent, but could not find them: all had vanished, men and monuments.

*

In the same year in which I was undergoing my military apprenticeship at Cambrai, we heard of the death of Frederic II.[197]; I am now ambassador to that great King's nephew[198], and am writing this portion of my Memoirs in Berlin. Upon that piece of important public news followed sorrowful news for me: Lucile wrote to me that my father had been carried off by a fit of apoplexy two days after the Angevin Fair, one of the delights of my childhood.

Among the authentic documents which I keep for consultation I find the death-certificates of my parents. As these documents also in a special manner mark the death of a century, I place them on record here as constituting a page of history.

"Extract from the death-register of the parish of Combourg, for 1786, upon which is written as follows, page 8, _verso_:

"The body of the high and mighty Messire René de Chateaubriand, knight, Count of Combourg, Lord of Gaugres, the Plessis-l'Épine, Boulet, Malestroit in Dol, and other places, husband of the high and mighty Dame Appoline Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée de La Bouëtardais, Lady Countess of Combourg, aged about sixty-nine years, who died in his castle of Combourg, on the sixth of September, about eight o'clock of the evening, was interred on the eighth, in the vault of the said lordship, situated in the crypt of our church of Combourg, in presence of messieurs the undersigned noblemen, officers of the jurisdiction, and other notable burgesses. Signed in the register: Comte de Petitbois, de Monlouët, de Chateaudassy, Delaunay, Morault, Noury de Mauny, advocate; Hermer, procurator; Petit, advocate and procurator-fiscal; Robion, Portal, le Donarin, de Trevelec, Rector and Dean of Dingé; Sévin, rector."

In the "collated copy" delivered in 1812 by M. Lodin, Mayor of Combourg, the nineteen words giving the titles "high and mighty Messire" &c., are struck out.

"Extract from the death-register of the town of Saint-Servan, first arrondissement of the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine, for the Year VI. of the Republic, page 35, _recto_, upon which is written as follows:

"On the twelfth of Prairial Year Six of the French Republic, before me, Jacques Bourdasse, municipal officer of the commune of Saint-Servan, elected to public office on the fourth of Floréal last, have appeared Jean Baslé, gardener, and Joseph Boulin, day-labourer, who have declared to me that Appoline Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée, widow of René Auguste de Chateaubriand, died this day, at one o'clock after noon, at the house of Citizeness Gouyon, situated at the Ballue, in this commune. After which declaration, of the truth of which I have made sure, I have drawn up the present deed, which Jean Baslé alone has signed with me, Joseph Boulin declaring that he did not know how, after question put.

"Done at the communal house on the said day and year. Signed: Jean Baslé and Bourdasse."

In the first extract, the old society exists: M. de Chateaubriand is a "high and mighty lord," &c., &c.; the witnesses are "noblemen" and "notable burgesses"; among the signatories I find the Marquis de Monlouët, who used to stop at Combourg Castle in the winter, the Curé Sévin, who had so much difficulty in believing me to be the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: faithful guests of my father even at his last abode. But my father did riot sleep long in his shroud: he was cast out of it when Old France was cast into the common sewer.

In the mortuary extract of my mother, the earth revolves upon another axis: a new world, a new era; even the computation of the years and the names of the months are changed. Madame de Chateaubriand is nothing more than a poor woman who departs this life at the residence of "Citizeness" Gouyon; a gardener and a day-labourer, who does not know how to sign his name, alone testify to my mother's death: of friends and relations there are none; no funeral state; sole by-stander, the Revolution[199].

*

[Sidenote: Death of my father.]

I mourned the death of M. de Chateaubriand: it showed him to me better than he was; I remembered neither his harshness nor his failings. I seemed to see him as he walked in the evenings in the hall at Combourg; I was moved by the thought of these family scenes. If my father's affection for me was affected by his natural severity, it was none the less deep at heart. The ferocious Marshal de Montluc[200], who, disfigured by a terrible cut in the nose, was obliged to conceal the horrible nature of his glory beneath a strip of rag, this man of blood reproaches himself for his harshness towards a son whom he has lost:

"This poor lad," he said, "has seen nothing of me save a frowning face and full of scorn; he has died in this belief, that I neither knew how to love him nor to esteem him to his deserts. For whom did I keep it to discover the singular affection which I bore him in my soul? Was it not he who should have had all the pleasure of it and all the obligation? I have constrained and tortured myself to keep on this vain mask, and in thus doing have lost the pleasure of his converse, and his will in all things, which he cannot have borne to me other than very coldly, having never received from me aught save rudeness, nor been treated save in tyrannous fashion."

My "will was not borne very coldly" towards my father, and I do not doubt that, in spite of his "tyrannous fashion," he loved me tenderly: he would, I am sure, have regretted me had Providence called me before him. But would he, had we remained on earth together, have set store by the fame that has sprung from my life? A literary reputation would have wounded his nobility; he would have seen nothing but degeneration in his son's gifts; even the Berlin Embassy, conquered by the pen, not the sword, would have indifferently satisfied him. His Breton blood, besides, made him a political malcontent, a great opponent of taxation and a violent enemy of the Court. He read the _Gazette de Leyde_, the _Journal de Francfort_, the _Mercure de France_, and the _Histoire philosophique des deux Indes_, the declamatory style of which delighted him. He called the Abbé Raynal[201] "a master man." In diplomacy, he was an anti-Mussulman; he declared that forty thousand "Russian rascals" would march over the Janissaries' stomachs and take Constantinople. Hater of the Turks though he were, my father nevertheless bore a grudge in his heart against the "Russian rascals," because of his encounter at Dantzic.

I share M. de Chateaubriand's opinions as regards literary and other reputations, but for different reasons. I do not know of a fame in history that tempts me: had I to stoop to pick up at my feet and to my advantage the greatest glory in the world, I would not take the trouble. If I had formed my own clay, perhaps I would have created myself a woman, for love of them; or if I had made myself a man, I would in the first place have granted myself beauty; next, as a safeguard against weariness, my stubborn enemy, it would have suited me fairly well to be a consummate but unknown artist, using my talent only for the benefit of my solitude. In life, weighed by its light weight, measured by its short measure, relieved of all its cheating, there are but two things true: religion with intelligence, love with youth; that is to say, the future and the present: the rest is not worth while.

With my father's death ended the first act of my life; the paternal home became empty; I pitied it, as though it were capable of feeling desertion and solitude. Thenceforth I was independent and master of my fortune: this liberty frightened me. What should I do with it? To whom give it? I mistrusted my strength: I retreated before myself.

*

I obtained a furlough. M. d'Andrezel, promoted to Lieutenant-colonel of the Picardy Regiment, was leaving Paris: I served as his courier. I passed through Paris, where I refused to stop for a quarter of an hour; I set eyes upon the moors of my Brittany with more joy than that with which a Neapolitan, banished to our climes, would gaze again upon the shores of Portici, the champaign of Sorrento. My family came together; we settled the division of the property; when that was done, we dispersed, as birds fly away from the paternal nest. My brother, who had come from Paris, returned there; my mother established herself at Saint-Malo; Lucile accompanied Julie; I spent a part of my time with Mesdames de Marigny, de Chateaubourg and de Farcy. Marigny[202], my eldest sister's country-seat, is pleasantly situated, three leagues from Fougères, between two lakes, and amidst woods, rocks and meadows. I stayed there peacefully for some months; a letter from Paris came to disturb my repose.

[Sidenote: Ambitious projects.]

At the moment of entering the service and marrying Mademoiselle de Rosanbo, my brother had not yet quitted the long robe; for this reason he was unable to obtain the privilege of riding in the King's coaches. His eager ambition suggested to him to make me enjoy Court honors in order to prepare the way for his own rise. Our proofs of nobility had been made out for Lucile when she was received into the Chapter of the Argentière, so that everything was ready; the Marshal de Duras was to be my sponsor. My brother wrote to me that I was on the high-road to fortune; that already I was to obtain the rank of a cavalry captain, an honorary and courtesy rank; that it would be easy to secure my admission to the Order of Malta, by means of which I should enjoy fat benefices.

This letter came upon me like a thunder-bolt: to return to Paris, to be presented at Court, I who almost swooned away when I met three or four strangers in a drawing-room! To imbue me with ambition, who only dreamt of living forgotten! My first impulse was to reply to my brother that it was his duty, as the eldest, to keep up his name; that, as for me, a plain Breton younger son, I would not give up the service, as there was a chance of war; but that, though the King might have need of a soldier in his army, he had no need of a poor gentleman at his Court.

I hastened to read this romantic reply to Madame de Marigny, who uttered loud cries; she sent for Madame de Farcy, who laughed at me; Lucile would have supported me, but she dared not contend with her sisters. They tore my letter from me, and, weak as always where I myself am concerned, I informed my brother that I was ready to go.

I did go; I went to be presented at the first Court in Europe, to make the most brilliant start in life; and I looked like a man who is being dragged to the galleys or expecting a sentence of death.

*

I entered Paris by the same road which I had taken the first time; I went to the same hotel, in the Rue du Mail: I knew no other. I was taken to a room next door to my old one, but a little larger and overlooking the street.

My brother, whether because he felt embarrassed by my manners, or because he took pity upon my shyness, did not take me with him into the world, and introduced me to nobody. He lived in the Rue des Fossés-Montmartre; I went to him at three o'clock every day for dinner; we then parted and did not see one another till the next day. My fat Cousin Moreau was no longer in Paris. I walked twice or thrice past Madame de Chastenay's house, without venturing to ask the porter if she was still there.

Autumn set in. I rose at six; went to the riding-school; breakfasted. Luckily at that time I had a passion for Greek; I translated the _Odyssey_ and the _Cyropædia_ until two o'clock, interspersing my labours with the study of history. At two o'clock I dressed and went to my brother; he asked me what I had done, what I had seen; I replied, "Nothing." He shrugged his shoulders and turned his back upon me. One day there was a noise outside; my brother ran to the window and called to me: I refused to leave the arm-chair in which I lay stretched at the back of the room. My poor brother prophesied to me that I should die unknown, useless to myself or my family. At four o'clock I went home and sat down at my window. Two young girls of fifteen or sixteen used to come at that hour to sketch at the window of a house opposite, on the other side of the street. They had noticed my punctuality, as I had theirs. From time to time they raised their heads to look at their neighbor; I was infinitely grateful to them for this mark of attention: they formed my only society in Paris.

[Sidenote: My life in Paris.]

When night drew near, I went to the play. I took pleasure in the desert of the crowd, though it always cost me a little effort to take my ticket at the door and mix with other men. I corrected the ideas which I had formed at the Saint-Malo theatre. I saw Madame Saint-Huberti[203] as Armida; I felt that there had been something lacking in the sorceress of my creating. When I did not imprison myself in the Opera-house or at the Français, I wandered from street to street or along the quays until ten or eleven in the evening. To this day I cannot see the row of street-lamps from the Place Louis XV. to the Barrière des Bons-Hommes, without remembering the agonies which I endured when I followed that road to go to Versailles for my presentation.

On returning home, I spent a portion of the night with my head bowed over my fire, which told me nothing: I had not, like the Persians, an imagination rich enough to persuade me that the flame resembled the anemone, the cinders the pomegranate. I listened to the carriages coming, going, crossing each other; their distant rolling imitated the murmur of the sea upon the shores of my Brittany or of the wind in the Combourg woods. These worldly sounds which reminded me of those of solitude aroused my regrets; I conjured up my old trouble, or else my imagination would invent the story of the persons whom those chariots were bearing away: I saw radiant drawing-rooms, balls, loves, conquests. Soon, relapsing into myself, I saw myself as I was, alone in an inn, seeing the world through the window and hearing it by the echoes of my fireside.

Rousseau considers that he owes it to his sincerity, and to the instruction of mankind, to confess the covert pleasures of his life; he even supposes that he is being seriously questioned and asked for an account of his sins with the _donne pericolante_ of Venice. Had I prostituted myself to the courtesans of Paris, I should not have thought myself obliged to inform posterity of the fact; but I was too shy on the one hand, too much exalted on the other, to allow myself to be seduced by women of the town. When I passed through groups of these unfortunates falling upon the passers-by in order to drag them up to their rooms, like the Saint-Cloud cabmen trying to induce travellers to enter their flies, I was seized with horror and disgust. The pleasures of adventure would have suited me only in the days of old.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, our imperfect civilization, our superstitious beliefs, our strange and half-barbarous customs mingled romance with everything: characters were strongly marked, imagination was powerful, existence mysterious and concealed. At night, around the high walls of the graveyards and convents, beneath the deserted ramparts of the town, along the chains and ditches of the market-places, on the skirts of enclosures in narrow, lampless streets, where robbers and murderers lay in ambush, where meetings took place sometimes by torchlight, sometimes in the thick of darkness, it was at the risk of his head that one sought the trysting-place granted by some Héloïse. To abandon himself to disorder, one had really to love; to violate public morals, one had to make great sacrifices. Not only was it a matter of confronting fortuitous dangers and defying the sword of the law, but one was obliged to overcome the empire of regular habits, the authority of the family, the tyranny of domestic customs, the opposition of conscience, the terrors and duties of the Christian. All these obstacles doubled the energy of the passions.

In 1788, I would not have followed a starving wretch who would have dragged me to the den where she lived under police supervision; but it is probable that, in 1606, I should have seen the end of an adventure of the kind which Bassompierre[204] has told so well.

*

"Five or six months ago," says the marshal, "each time that I passed over the Petit Pont"--for in those days the Pont Neuf was not built--"a pretty woman, a sempstress at the sign of the Two Angels, made me deep courtesies and followed me with her eyes as far as she could; and as I had heeded her action, I also looked at her and greeted her with greater care.

"It happened that when I arrived from Fontainebleau in Paris, passing over the Petit Pont, so soon as she saw me coming, she put herself at the door of her shop, and said, as I passed:

"'Sir, I am your servant.'

"I returned her greeting, and turning round from time to time, I saw that she followed me with her eyes as far as she could."

Bassompierre obtained an assignation.

[Sidenote: Bassompierre's adventure.]

"I found," he says, "a very beautiful woman, twenty years of age, who had her head dressed for the night, wearing naught but a very fine shift and a short petticoat of green stuff, and slippers on her feet, with a wrapper around her. She pleased me mightily. I asked her if I could not see her once again.

"'If you wish to see me again,' she replied, 'it shall be at the house of one of my aunts, who lives in the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé, near the Markets, next to the Rue aux Ours, the third door on the side of the Rue Saint-Martin; I will await you there from ten o'clock till midnight, and later yet; I will leave the door open. At the entrance, there is a little passage through which you will go quickly, for the door of my aunt's room opens on it, and you will find a stair which will bring you to the second floor.'

"I came at ten o'clock and found the door she had indicated, and a great light, not only on the second floor, but on the third and the first too; but the door was closed. I knocked to show that I had come; but I heard a man's voice ask who I was. I returned to the Rue aux Ours, and having returned for the second time, finding the door opened, I climbed to the second floor, where I found that the light was the straw of the bed which they were burning, and two naked bodies lying upon the table in the room. Thereupon I retired greatly amazed, and in going out I met some crows"--buriers of the dead--"who asked me what I sought; and I, to make them turn aside, took sword in hand and passed out, returning to my lodging, somewhat moved by this unlooked-for sight[205]."

*

I in my turn went on a voyage of discovery, with the address given, two hundred and forty years before, by Bassompierre. I crossed the Petit Pont, passed the Markets, and followed the Rue Saint-Denis as far as the Rue aux Ours, on the right; the first street on the left, ending in the Rue aux Ours, is the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé. Its inscription, smoky as though through time and a fire, gave me good hope. I found the "third little door on the side of the Rue Saint-Martin," so faithful are the historian's directions. There, unfortunately, the two centuries and a half, which at first I thought had lingered in the street, disappear. The frontage of the house is modern; no light issued from the first, nor from the second, nor from the third floor. From the attic-windows, beneath the roof, hung a garland of nasturtiums and sweet peas; on the ground-floor, a hairdresser's shop displayed a variety of towers of hair behind the window-panes.

In great discomfiture, I entered this museum of the Eponines: since the Roman Conquest, the Gallic women have always sold their yellow tresses to foreheads less richly decked; my Breton countrywomen still let themselves be shorn on certain fair-days, and barter the natural veil of their heads for an Indian kerchief. Addressing a barber, who was drawing a wig over an iron comb:

"Sir," said I, "do you happen to have purchased the hair of a young sempstress who used to live at the sign of the Two Angels, near the Petit Pont?"

He stood dumfoundered, unable to say either yes or no. I asked a thousand pardons, and made my way out through a labyrinth of toupees.

I wandered next from door to door: no sempstress, twenty years of age, making me "deep courtesies;" no frank, disinterested, passionate young woman, "her head dressed for the night, wearing naught but a very fine shift, a short petticoat of green stuff, and slippers on her feet, with a wrapper around her." A grumbling old crone, ready to join her teeth in the tomb, was near to beating me with her crutch: perhaps it was the aunt of the assignation!

What a fine story, that story of Bassompierre's! One of the reasons for which he was so resolutely loved has to be understood. At that time, the French were divided into two classes, one dominant, the other semi-servile. The sempstress clasped Bassompierre in her arms like a demi-god who had descended to the bosom of a slave: he gave her the illusion of glory, and Frenchwomen alone among women are capable of intoxicating themselves with that illusion. But who will reveal to us the unknown causes of the catastrophe? Was the body which lay upon the table by the side of another body that of the pretty wench of the Two Angels? Whose was the other body? Was it the husband, or the man whose voice Bassompierre had heard? Had the plague (for the plague was raging in Paris) or jealousy reached the Rue Bourg-l'Abbé before love? The imagination can easily find matter for its exercises in such a subject as this. Mingle with the poet's inventions the chorus of the populace, the approaching grave-diggers, the "crows," and Bassompierre's sword, and a magnificent melodrama springs from the adventure.

You will also admire the chastity and reserve of my youthful life in Paris: in that capital I was free to give way to all my whims, as in the Abbey of Thélème, where each acted according to his wish. Nevertheless, I did not abuse my independence: I had no commerce except with a courtesan two hundred and sixty years of age, who had formerly been smitten with a marshal of France, the rival of the Bearnese[206] for the affections of Mademoiselle de Montmorency, and the lover of Mademoiselle d'Entragues, sister to the Marquise de Verneuil[207], who speaks so ill of Henry IV. Louis XVI., whom I was about to see, had no suspicion of my secret relations with his family.

*

[Sidenote: Versailles.]

The fatal day arrived; I had to set out for Versailles, more dead than alive. My brother took me there the day before my presentation, and carried me to the Maréchal de Duras, a worthy man with a mind so commonplace that it reflected a certain homeliness over his fine manners; nevertheless, the good marshal frightened me terribly.

The next morning I went alone to the palace. He has seen nothing who has not seen the pomp of Versailles, even after the disbanding of the old Royal Household: Louis XIV. still lingered there. All went well so long as I had only to pass through the guard-room: military display has always pleased and never awed me. But when I entered the Œil-de-bœuf and found myself among the courtiers, my distress commenced. I was scrutinized; I heard them ask who I was. One must remember the former prestige of royalty to realize the importance of a presentation in those days. A mysterious destiny clung to the _débutant_; he was spared the contemptuous air of protection which, coupled with extreme politeness, composed the inimitable manners of the grandee. Who was to tell that that _débutant_ would not become the master's favourite? In him was respected the future familiarity with which he might be honoured. Nowadays we rush to the palace with even greater eagerness than before, and, strangely enough, with no illusions: a courtier reduced to living on truths is very near to dying of hunger.

When the King's levee was announced, the persons not presented withdrew; I felt an impulse of vanity: I was not proud of remaining, but I should have felt humiliated at leaving. The door of the King's bed-chamber opened; I saw the King, according to custom, complete his toilet, in other words take his hat from the hand of the first lord-in-waiting. The King came towards me on his way to Mass; I bowed; the Marshal de Duras mentioned my name:

"Sire, the Chevalier de Chateaubriand."

The King looked at me, returned my bow, hesitated, appeared to wish to address me. I should have replied boldly: my shyness had vanished. To speak to the general of the army, to the head of the State, seemed quite simple to me, though I could not account for what I felt The King's embarrassment was greater than mine; he could think of nothing to say to me, and passed on. The vanity of human destinies: this sovereign whom I saw for the first time, this powerful monarch was Louis XVI., but six years removed from the scaffold! And the new courtier at whom he scarcely looked, charged with separating dead bones from dead bones, after having been presented, upon proof of nobility, to the majesty of the son of St. Louis, was one day to be presented to his dust upon proof of fidelity! A two-fold tribute of respect to the two-fold royalty of the sceptre and the palm. Louis XVI. might have answered his judges as Christ answered the Jews: "Many good works I have showed you ... for which of those works do you stone me[208]?"

We hurried to the gallery to find ourselves in the way of the Queen on her return from the chapel. She soon appeared in sight, environed with a glittering and numerous retinue; she made us a stately courtesy; she seemed enraptured with life. And those beautiful hands, which at that time carried with such great grace the sceptre of so many kings, were destined, before being bound by the executioner, to mend the rags of the widow, a prisoner at the Conciergerie!

My brother had obtained a sacrifice of me, but it was beyond his power to make me go through with it. He vainly entreated me to stay at Versailles in order to assist at the Queen's cards at night:

"You will be presented to the Queen," he said, "and the King will speak to you."

He could have given me no stronger reason for taking to flight. I hastened to go and hide my glory in my hotel, happy to escape from Court, but seeing still before me the terrible day of the coaches, of the 19th of February 1787.

[Sidenote: Hunt with the King.]

The Duc de Coigny[209] sent to inform me that I was to hunt with the King in the forest of Saint-Germain. I set out in the early morning towards my punishment, in the uniform of a _débutant_, a grey coat, red waistcoat and breeches, lace tops, Hessian boots, a hunting-knife in my belt, a small, gold-laced French hat. There were four of us _débutants_ at the Palace of Versailles, myself, the two Messieurs de Saint-Marsault, and the Comte d'Hautefeuille[210]. The Duc de Coigny gave us our instructions: he warned us not to interrupt the hunt, as the King flew into a passion if any one passed between him and the quarry. The Duc de Coigny bore a name fatal to the Queen[211]. The meet was at Val, in the forest of Saint-Germain, a domain leased by the Crown from the Maréchal de Beauvau[212]. The custom was for the horses of the first hunt in which the newly-presented men took part to be supplied from the royal stables[213].

The drums beat the salute: a voice gave the order to present arms. They cried, "The King!" The King left the house and entered his coach: we rode in the coaches following. It was a long cry from this hunting expedition with the King of France to my hunting expeditions on the moors of Brittany; and further still to my hunting expeditions with the savages of America: my life was to be filled with these contrasts.

We reached the rallying-point, where a number of saddle-horses, held in hand under the trees, showed signs of impatience. The coaches drawn up in the forest with the keepers; the groups of men and women; the packs held back with difficulty by the huntsmen; the baying of the hounds, the neighing of the horses, the sound of the horns composed a very animated scene. The hunting-parties of our kings recalled both the old and the new customs of the monarchy, the rude pastimes of Clodion, Chilperic, and Dagobert and the gallantries of François I., Henry IV., and Louis XIV.

I was too full of my reading not to behold on every hand Comtesses de Chateaubriand[214], Duchesses d'Étampes[215], Gabrielles d'Estrées, La Vallières, and Montespans. My imagination seized upon the historic aspect of this hunting-party, and I felt at my ease: besides, I was in a forest, and therefore at home.

On alighting from the coaches, I handed my ticket to the huntsmen. A mare called L'_Heureuse_ had been provided for me, a fast animal, but hard-mouthed, skittish, and full of tricks; a tolerable likeness of my fortune, which has constantly set back its ears. The King mounted and rode off; the members of the hunt followed, taking different roads. I stayed behind, struggling with L'_Heureuse_, who refused to let her new master get astride of her; I ended, however, in leaping upon her back: the hunt was already far ahead.

At first I mastered L'_Heureuse_ fairly well; compelled to shorten her stride, she put down her neck, shook her bit, which was white with foam, and bounded along sideways; but when she drew near the scene of action, it became impossible to hold her. She bore down her head, drove my hand down upon the saddlebow, dashed at full gallop into a group of hunters, clearing everything in her course, and only stopped when she struck against the horse of a woman whom she nearly knocked over, amid the roars of laughter of some and the screams of terror of others. I have made useless efforts today to remember the name of the woman who received my excuses so politely. There was nothing else talked of than the _débutant's_ "adventure."

[Sidenote: Louis XVI.]

I had not come to the end of my trials. About half-an-hour after my discomfiture, I was riding through a long opening in a deserted part of the wood; at the end stood a summer-house: I at once began to think of the palaces scattered through the Crown forests, in memory of the origin of the long-haired kings and their mysterious pleasures. A shot was heard; L'_Heureuse_ turned short, scoured the thicket with lowered head, and carried me to the exact spot where the roebuck had just been killed: the King appeared.

I then remembered, but too late, the Duc de Coigny's injunctions: the accursed _Heureuse_ had done all I leapt to the ground, pushing my mare back with one hand, holding my hat low in the other. The King looked and saw only a _débutant_ who had come in at the death before himself; he felt a need to speak; instead of flying into a passion, he said, in a good-natured voice and with a broad laugh:

"He did not hold out long."

That is the only word I ever had from Louis XVI. People came up from every side; they were astonished to find me "talking" with the King. The _débutant_ Chateaubriand created a sensation with his two "adventures;" but, as has ever happened to him since, he did not know how to turn either his good or his bad fortune to account.

The King hunted three other buck. As the _débutants_ were only allowed to hunt the first animal, I returned to Val with my companions to await the return of the hunt. The King came back to Val; he was in spirits and discussed the accidents of the chase. We drove back to Versailles. A fresh disappointment for my brother: instead of going to dress in order to be present at the unbooting, the moment of triumph and favour, I flung myself into my carriage and drove home to Paris, rejoicing at being delivered of my honors and my troubles. I told my brother that I was determined to return to Brittany. Satisfied with having made his name known, and hoping one day to bring to maturity, by means of his own presentation, what had proved abortive in mine, he placed no obstacle in the way of the departure of so eccentric a spirit[216].

Such was my first experience of the Town and the Court Society appeared even more hateful in my eyes than I had imagined it; but, though it frightened, it did not discourage me; I felt, in a confused fashion, that I was superior to what I had seen. I took an invincible dislike to the Court; this dislike, or rather this contempt, which I have been unable to conceal, will either prevent me from succeeding or will cause me to fall from the summit of my career.

For the rest, if I judged the world without knowing it, the world, in its turn, knew nothing of me. None, at my first entrance, guessed what I might be good for, and when I came back to Paris, they guessed it no more. Since attaining my sad celebrity, I have been told by numbers of people, "How we should have noticed you, if we had met you in your youth!" This obliging contention is only the illusion attaching to an established reputation. Outwardly men resemble each other; it is in vain for Rousseau to tell us that he had a pair of small, quite charming eyes; it is none the less certain, witness his portraits, that he had the appearance of a schoolmaster or a cross-grained shoemaker.

To have done with the Court, I will add that after revisiting Brittany and coming back to Paris to live with my younger sisters, Lucile and Julie, I plunged more deeply than ever into my habits of solitude. You ask what became of the story of my presentation. It remained where it was.

"Then you did not hunt with the King again?"

"No more than with the Emperor of China."

"And you never went back to Versailles?"

"I twice went as far as Sèvres; my heart failed me, and I returned to Paris."

"So you made nothing of your position?"

"Nothing at all."

"What did you do then?"

"I was bored."

"So you felt no ambition?"

[Sidenote: I print my first poem.]

"Yes, indeed: by means of intrigue and trouble, I attained the glory of printing in the _Almanack des Muses_ an idyll the appearance of which almost killed me with hope and fear[217]. I would have given all the King's coaches to have written the ballad, _Ô ma tendre musette!_ or, _De mon berger volage._"

Good for everything where others, good for nothing where I myself am concerned: there you have me.

[176] This book was written in Berlin in March and April 1821 and revised in July 1846.--T.

[177] The _Conservateur_ was founded by Chateaubriand in October 1818, with the motto, _Le Roi, la Charte et les Honnêtes Gens._ Some of Chateaubriand's most perfect work is to be found in this collection, and the other writers included the Abbé de Lamennais, the Vicomte de Bonald, Fiévée, Berryer the Younger, Eugène Genoude, the Vicomte de Castelbajac, the Marquis d'Herbouville, M. Agier, the Cardinal de La Luzerne, the Duc de FitzJames, &c. The _Conservateur_ ceased to appear in March 1820 in consequence of the revival of the censorship.--B.

[178] _Cf._ the _Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de Monseigneur le Duc de Berry_ (April 1820).--T.

[179] Chateaubriand was appointed, by an Order in Council of 28 November 1820, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Prussia.--B.

[180] Frederic William II. (1744-1797), the nephew and successor of Frederic the Great--T.

[181] Dorothea Princess of Courlande (1795-1862) married in 1810 the Comte Edmond de Périgord, nephew to Talleyrand, who abandoned to him his title of Duc de Dino. The duke subsequently came into the title of Duc de Talleyrand-Périgord, by which the duchess was known at the time of her death.--B.

[182] The Comte Roger de Caux and the Chevalier de Cussy.--B.

[183] Now Emperor and Empress of Russia.--_Authors Note_ (Paris, 1832).

Nicholas I. (1796-1855) married Charlotte, daughter of King Frederick William III. of Prussia. He ascended the Russian throne in 1825, on the death of his eldest brother, the Tsar Alexander I., and by virtue of the renunciation, for himself and his heirs, of the Grand-Duke Constantine.--T.

[184] I have inserted the life of my sister Julie in the supplement to these Memoirs.--_Author's Note._ This life, extracted from the Abbé Carron's _Vie des justes_, I omit. It will be found in the last series of the _Vie des justes_, entitled, _Dans les plus hauts rangs de la société._ The Abbé Guy Toussaint Julien Carron (1760-1820) was the founder of the Institut Royal de Marie-Thérèse, established under the patronage of the Duchesse d'Anjoulême for the daughters of families which had lost their fortune in the Revolution, in addition to a number of charitable institutions founded during the Emigration at Somers Town, to which Chateaubriand refers _infra._-T.

[185] St. Julia, Virgin and Martyr (22 May), was born at Carthage, and died for the Faith in Corsica, _circa_ 439.--T.

[186] The Abbé Carron was born at Rennes.--T.

[187] Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière (1644-1710), the unselfish mistress of Louis XIV. After twice seeking refuge in a convent, she definitely withdrew to the Carmelites in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques in 1674, and took the veil in 1675, from which date to that of her death she submitted herself to exercises of the most austere piety.--T.

[188] The Marquise de Montespan (1641-1707), mistress to Louis XIV. and successor to Mademoiselle de La Vallière, was one of the three daughters of Gabriel de Rochechouart, Duc de Mortemart; her sisters were the Marquise de Thianges and the Abbesse de Fontevrault.--T.

[189] Julien Hyacinthe de Marnière, Chevalier de Guer (1748-1816), born at Rennes, an active member of the Royalist party.--B.

[190] François René Jean, Baron de Pommereul (1745-1823), born at Fougères, became a general of division in 1796 and director-general of the State press and publishing department in 1811. The work to which Chateaubriand alludes is Pommereul's _Campagnes du général Bonaparte en Italie pendant les années IV, et V. de la République Française._--B.

[191] I omit a remark of Pommereul's, applied to the nobles who accepted the post of Chamberlain at the Imperial Court, which is too indelicate for translation.--T.

[192] Of 4, 11, and 18 December 1675.--B.

[193] Bénigne Jeanne de Chateaubriand, Comtesse de Québriac, married as her second husband, in 1786, Paul François de la Celle, Vicomte de Chateaubourg, a captain in the Condé Regiment, and a knight of St. Louis.--B.

[194] Victurnien Bonaventure Victor de Rochechouart, Marquis de Mortemart (1753-1823), served in the army of Condé under the Emigration, and was created a peer of France and lieutenant-general at the Restoration.--B.

[195] Christophe François Thérèse Picon, Comte d'Andrezel (1746-1821), also emigrated and fought in the Princes' Army. On the return of the Bourbons he exercised the functions of sub-prefect of Saint-Dié from 1815 till the year of his death.--B.

[196] François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715), author of the _Aventures de Télémaque_ was Archbishop of Cambrai and is buried in the cathedral.--T.

[197] Frederic II., or the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia, died on the 17th of August, twenty days before the Comte de Chateaubriand, as mentioned above.--T.

[198] Frederic William III. (1770-1840), son of Frederick William II., and grand-nephew of Frederick the Great, succeeded his father in 1797.--T.

[199] My nephew, Breton fashion, Frédéric de Chateaubriand, son of my cousin Armand, has purchased the Ballue, where my mother died.--_Author's Note._

[200] Marshal Blaise de Montluc (_circa_ 1502-1577), a valiant captain of François I., Henry II. and François II. Under Charles IX. he defeated the Huguenots in several encounters, and set himself to extirpate heresy by means of wholesale executions, which earned for him the nickname of the Royalist Butcher. He received his marshal's baton at the hands of Henry III.--T.

[201] Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713-1796), editor of the _Mercure_ and author of, among other works, the _Histoire philosophique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les Deux-Indes_ (1770). This work is full of political and anti-religious declamations, and was placed upon the Index in consequence. He published in 1780 a new and still bolder edition, which was condemned in 1781.--T.

[202] The Château de Marigny exists in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Coglès, canton of Saint-Brice-en-Coglès, Arrondissement of Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine). Balzac laid the scene of his _Chouans_ in the neighbourhood of Fougères, and wrote his novel at Marigny, where he was staying as the guest of General the Baron de Pommereul. The Comtesse de Marigny died 18 July 1860, in her one hundred and first year.--B.

[203] Antoinette Cécile Clavel (_circa_ 1756-1812), first singer at the Opera. Her features were not beautiful but exceedingly expressive; she excelled in Gluck's operas. She was first married to an adventurer called Saint-Huberti, and later to the Comte d'Entragues, whom she had followed into the Emigration. They were both assassinated at their cottage on the Terrace, Barnes, by an Italian servant who had been dismissed the day before.--T.

[204] François Maréchal Baron de Bassompierre (1579-1646), figured at the Court of Henry IV., and in the wars of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. The latter monarch created him a marshal, and employed him upon various embassies. He succeeded, however, in incurring the displeasure of Richelieu, who imprisoned him in the Bastille in 1631, where he remained until the Cardinal's death in 1643. It was there that he wrote his famous Memoirs.--T.

[205] _Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre, contenant l'histoire de sa vie et ce qui s'est fait de plus remarquable à la cour de France jusqu'en_ 1640, I. 305.--B.

[206] Henry IV. (1553-1610), King of France and Navarre, born at Pau in the Province of Béarn.--T.

[207] Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil (1583-1633), daughter of François d'Entragues, Governor of Orléans, and of Marie Touchet, mistress of Charles IX. She became Henry IV.'s mistress after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrées, and bitterly resented his marriage to Marie de Médicis, the more so as the King had given her a written promise of marriage, which was torn up by the Duc de Sully.--T.

[208] JOHN, X. 33.--T.

[209] Marie Henry François Franquetot, Duc de Coigny (1737-1821), the King's First Equerry. Under the Restoration, he was created a peer of France in 1814, appointed Governor of the Invalides in 1816, and a marshal of France in the same year.--B.

[210] I have met M. le Comte d'Hautefeuille again; he is engaged in translating selections from Byron; Madame la Comtesse d'Hautefeuille is the gifted author of the _Âme exilée_, &c.--_Author's Note._

Charles Louis Félicité Texier, Comte d'Hautefeuille (1770-1865), after fighting in the Princes' Army, took service in Sweden, in the Royal Guards, and did not return to France till 1811. He married, in 1823, Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire, daughter of one of the bravest officers in the Vendean Army. The Comtesse d'Hautefeuille published a number of noteworthy works under the pseudonym of "Anna-Marie."--B.

[211] The Duc de Coigny was accused by the detractors of Marie Antoinette of having been in her good graces in the early years of the reign of Louis XVI.--T.

[212] Charles Juste Maréchal Duc de Beauvau (1720-1793), member of the French and Della Cruscan Academies.--T.

[213] The following appears in the _Gazette de France_ of Tuesday 27 February 1787:

"The Comte Charles d'Hautefeuille, the Baron de Saint-Marsault, the Baron de Saint-Marsault Chatelaillon and the Chevalier de Chateaubriand, who had previously had the honor of being presented to the King, had, on the 19th, that of riding in His Majesty's carriages and following him in the hunt."--_Author's Note._

[214] Françoise Comtesse de Chateaubriand (1475-1537), daughter of Jean de Foix, Vicomte de Narbonne, and sister of the Vicomte de Lautrec and the Maréchal de Foix. She inspired a passion in François I., but after a year was supplanted by the Duchesse d'Étampes (_vide infra_), and remained the victim of the jealousy of her husband, who has been accused of hastening her death.--T.

[215] Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Étampes (_circa_ 1508-_circa_ 1576), first known as Mademoiselle d'Heilly, maid-of-honour to the Comtesse d'Angoulême, mother of François I. She became the King's mistress at the age of eighteen; he married her to a certain Jean de Brosse, and gave her the county of Étampes, first raising it to a duchy. She practically governed France for two-and-twenty years, until the King's death in 1547, when she retired into obscurity and solaced her solitude by embracing the Reformation.--T.

[216] The _Mémorial historique de la Noblesse_ has printed a hitherto unpublished document, annotated in the King's hand, taken from the Archives of the Kingdom, register M 813 and portfolio M 814; it contains the "Entrances." My own name and my brother's appear in it: this shows that my memory has not been at fruit as regards dates.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840).

[217] This idyll appears in the _Almanack des Muses_ for 1790, p. 205, under the title: L'_Amour de la campagne_ and the signature: "By the Chevalier de C *** ." Chateaubriand included it in his Complete Works.--B.