BOOK V[218

Stay in Brittany--In garrison at Dieppe--I return to Paris with Lucile and Julie--Delisle de Sales--Men of letters--Portraits--The Rosanbo family--M. de Malesherbes--His predilection for Lucile--Appearance and change of my sylph--Early political disturbances in Brittany--A glance at the history of the monarchy--Constitution of the States of Brittany--The holding of the States--The King's revenue in Brittany--Private revenue of the province--Hearth-money--I am present for the first time at a political meeting--A scene--My mother moves to Saint-Malo--I receive the tonsure--The country round Saint-Malo--The ghost--The sick man--The States of Brittany in 1789--Riots--Saint-Riveul, my schoolfellow, is killed--The year 1789--Journey from Brittany to Paris--Movement on the road--Appearance of Paris--Dismissal of M. Necker--Versailles--Delight of the Royal Family--General insurrection--Capture of the Bastille--Effect of the capture of the Bastille on the Court--The heads of Foullon and Bertier--Recall of M. Necker--Sitting of the 4th of August 1789--The day's work of the 5th of October--The King is taken to Paris--The Constituent Assembly--Mirabeau--Sittings of the National Assembly--Robespierre--Society-Aspect of Paris--What I did amidst all this turmoil--My solitary days--Mademoiselle Monet--I draw up with M. de Malesherbes the plan of my journey in America--Bonaparte and I both unknown subalterns--The Marquis de La Rouërie--I embark at Saint-Malo--Last thoughts on leaving my native land.

All that has been read in the previous chapter was written in Berlin. I have returned to Paris for the christening of the Duc de Bordeaux[219], and have resigned my embassy through political fidelity to M. de Villèle[220], who has left the Cabinet. Restored to leisure, let me write. The more these Memoirs become filled with my years that have passed, the more do they remind me of the lower bulb of an hour-glass which marks what has fallen from my life: when all the sand shall have passed through, I would not turn over my glass clock, if God gave me power to do so.

*

The new solitude into which I entered in Brittany, after my presentation, was no longer that of Combourg; it was not so entire, nor so serious, nor, to tell the truth, so forced: I was free to leave it; it lost its value. An old armorial lady of the castle, an old escutcheoned baron, watching over their last son and their last daughter in a feudal manor, presented what the English call "characters:" there was nothing provincial, nothing narrow in that life, because it was not the common life.

With my sisters, provincial life went on as usual amid the fields: neighbours danced at each other's houses or acted plays, in which I performed occasionally and very badly. In the winter one had, at Fougères, to submit to the society of a small town, with its balls, assemblies, and dinners, and I could not live forgotten, as in Paris.

On the other hand, I had not seen the army, the Court, without undergoing a certain change in my ideas. In spite of my natural inclinations, an indefinite something struggled within me against obscurity, and besought me to emerge from the shadow. Julie detested country life, and the instinct of genius and beauty impelled Lucile towards a wider stage.

I thus felt a discomfort in my existence which warned me that that existence was not my destiny.

[Sidenote: Garrison life at Dieppe.]

Nevertheless, I continued, to love the country, and round about Marigny it was charming[221]. My regiment had moved its quarters: the first battalion was garrisoned at the Havre, the second at Dieppe. I joined the latter; my presentation at Court made a personage of me. I acquired a taste for my profession; I worked hard at my training; I was placed in charge of recruits, whom I drilled on the pebbly beach: the sea has been the background of almost all the scenes of my life.

La Martinière did not concern himself at Dieppe with his homonym of Lamartinière[222], nor with the Père Simon[223], who wrote against Bossuet, Port-Royal, and the Benedictines, nor with Pecquet[224] the anatomist, whom Madame de Sévigné[225] calls "little Pecquet;" but La Martinière was in love at Dieppe as at Cambrai: he pined away at the feet of a lusty woman of Caux[226], whose cap and head-dress were half a fathom high. She was not young: by an odd chance, her name was Cauchie, and she was apparently the grand-daughter of that other native of Dieppe, Anne Cauchie, who, in 1645, was one hundred and fifty years old.

In 1647, Anne of Austria, like myself watching the sea from the windows of her chamber, amused herself by seeing the fire-ships bum for her diversion. She allowed the nations which had been faithful to Henry IV. to guard young Louis XIV., and gave endless benisons to those nations "in spite of their villainous Norman speech."

At Dieppe there still prevailed some of the feudal fines which I had seen paid at Combourg: there were due to the burgess Vauquelin three pigs' heads, each with an orange between its teeth, and three marked sous of the oldest known coinage.

I went to spend a week at Fougères. There reigned a noble spinster, called Mademoiselle de La Belinaye[227], aunt to the Comtesse de Tronjoli of whom I have spoken. An agreeable, but ugly, sister of an officer in the Condé Regiment attracted my admiration: I was not bold enough to raise my eyes to beauty; I dared to risk a respectful tribute only by favour of a woman's imperfections.

Madame de Farcy, continuing in ill-health, at last resolved to leave Brittany. She persuaded Lucile to accompany her; Lucile, in her turn, overcame my repugnance: we set out for Paris; it was the sweet partnership of the three youngest birds of the brood. My brother was married; he lived with his father-in-law, the President de Rosanbo, in the Rue de Bondy. We agreed to settle in his neighbourhood: through the good offices of M. Delisle de Sales[228], who lived in the Pavilions de Saint-Lazare, at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, we secured an apartment in these same "pavilions[229]."

[Sidenote: Delisle de Sales.]

Madame de Farcy had become acquainted, I know not how, with Delisle de Sales, who had formerly been sent to Vincennes for some philosophical nonsense or other. At that time, one became a celebrity if he had scribbled a few lines of prose or published a quatrain in the _Almanack des Muses._ Delisle de Sales, a very worthy man, most decidedly under the average, suffered from a serious relaxation of the intellect, and allowed his years to slip from under him. The old man had got together a handsome library consisting of his own works, which he dealt in abroad, and which nobody read in Paris. Every year, in spring, he went to Germany to renew his stock of ideas. He wore a greasy, unbuttoned coat, and carried a roll of dirty paper which one saw protruding from his pocket: on this he would jot down his thoughts of the moment at the street-corners. On the pedestal of his own bust in marble he had himself placed the following inscription, borrowed from the bust of Buffon: "God, man and nature: he explained them all." Delisle de Sales explaining everything! These boasts are very pleasant, but very discouraging. Who is in a position to flatter himself that he possesses real talent? May we not all, such as we are, be under the sway of an illusion similar to that of Delisle de Sales? I would wager that some author will read this phrase who believes himself a genius and is none the less a blockhead.

If I have expatiated at too great length on the subject of the worthy man of the Pavilions de Saint-Lazare, the reason is that he was the first man of letters I met. He introduced me to the company of others. The presence of my two sisters made life in Paris less unbearable to me; my love of study still further overcame my distaste. Delisle de Sales I considered an eagle. I met at his rooms Carbon Flins des Oliviers[230], who fell in love with Madame de Farcy. She laughed at him; he put a good face upon it, for he prided himself upon being a man of breeding. Flins introduced me to his friend Fontanes, who became mine.

Flins was the son of an administrator of woods and forests at Rheims, and had received a neglected education; he was for all that a man of sense, and sometimes of talent. It was impossible to imagine anything uglier than he: short and bloated, with large, prominent eyes, bristling hair, dirty teeth, and yet a not over-vulgar air. His manner of life, which was that of nearly all the men of letters in Paris at that time, deserves to be told. Flins occupied a lodging in the Rue Mazarine, pretty near La Harpe, who lived in the Rue Guénégaud. He was waited upon by two Savoyards, disguised as flunkeys by means of livery cloaks; they followed him at night, and opened the door to his visitors in the day-time. Flins went regularly to the Théâtre Français, which at that time was situate in the Odéon and excelled particularly in comedy. Brizard[231] had only just retired; Talma[232] was commencing; Larive[233], Saint-Phal, Fleury[234], Molé[235], Dazincourt, Dugazon[236], Grandmesnil[237], Mesdames Contat[238], Saint-Val[239], Desgarcins, Olivier[240] were in the full vigor of their talent, pending the arrival of Mademoiselle Mars[241], daughter of Monvel[242], who was preparing to make her first appearance at the Théâtre Montansier[243]. The actresses protected the authors, and sometimes became the occasion of their fortune.

Flins, who had only a small allowance from his family, lived on credit. When Parliament was not sitting, he pawned his Savoyards' liveries, his two watches, his rings and underclothing, paid his debts with the amount thus raised, went to Rheims, spent three months there, returned to Paris, redeemed, with the money his father had given him, the articles which he had pledged at the pawnshops, and resumed his round of life, ever gay and popular.

*

[Sidenote: The Chevalier de Parny.]

In the course of the two years that elapsed between my settling in Paris and the opening of the States-General, the circle in which I moved increased. I knew the elegies of the Chevalier de Parny by heart, as I know them still I wrote to him to ask leave to set eyes upon a poet whose works delighted me; I received a civil reply, and called upon him in the Rue de Cléry. I found a man still fairly young in years, of very pleasant manners, tall, spare, with a face pitted with the small-pox. He returned my visit; I introduced him to my sisters. He cared little for society, and was soon driven from it on account of his politics: at that time he belonged to the old party. I have never known a writer who more closely resembled his works: poet and Creole[244] as he was, all he needed was the Indian sky, a fountain, a palm-tree, and a woman by his side. He dreaded noise, tried to glide unnoticed through life, sacrificed everything to his idleness, and, amid the obscurity in which he dwelt, was betrayed only by his pleasures, which played upon his lyre as they passed[245].

It was this inability to escape from his indolence which turned the Chevalier de Parny from the furious aristocrat that he was into a wretched revolutionary, insulting persecuted religion and priests on the scaffold, purchasing repose at all costs, and foisting upon the muse that had sung Éléonore the language of the houses where Camille Desmoulins went to haggle for the pleasures of love.

The author of the _Histoire de la literature italienne_, who crept into the Revolution in Chamfort's wake, came to visit us, thanks to the cousinship that exists among all Bretons. Ginguené lived in society upon a reputation acquired through a rather graceful set of verses, the _Confession de Zulmé_, which obtained for him a paltry place in M. de Necker's[246] offices: hence his article upon his admission to the office of the Controller-General. Somebody disputed Ginguené's claim to the authorship of the _Confession de Zulmé_ upon which his fame was based; but it was, as a matter of fact, his own.

The Rennes poet was a good musician and wrote ballads. Humble as he began by being, we saw his pride grow as he succeeded in hanging upon the skirts of some well-known man. About the time of the summoning of the States-General, Chamfort employed him to scribble articles for the newspapers and speeches for the clubs: he then became arrogant. At the first Federation he said: "There's a fine entertainment! In order to light it better, we ought to burn an aristocrat at each of the four corners of the altar!" There was nothing original in this aspiration; long before him, Louis Dorléans, the Leaguer, had written in his _Banquet du Comte d'Arète_ that "one ought to fasten the Protestant ministers by way of faggots to the stake of the Midsummer's Night bonfires, and put King Henry IV. into the barrel where one put the cats."

Ginguené knew of the revolutionary murders before they took place. Madame Ginguené warned my sisters and my wife of the massacre planned at the Carmelites, and gave them shelter: she lived in the Cul-de-sac Férou, near the place where throats were to be cut.

After the Terror, Ginguené became a sort of head of the department of Public Instruction; it was then that he sang the _Arbre de la liberté_ at the Cadran-Bleu, to the air of _Je l'ai planté, je l'ai vu naître._ He was considered sufficiently pious, philosophically, for an embassy to the Court of one of the kings who were being discrowned. He wrote from Turin to M. de Talleyrand that he had "overcome a prejudice:" he had caused his wife to be received at Court in a _pet-en-l'air?_[247] After falling from mediocrity to importance, from importance to silliness, and from silliness to absurdity, he ended his days as a distinguished critic, and what is better, as an independent writer in the _Décade_[248]: nature had restored him to the place whence Society had to such ill purpose taken him. His information is second-hand, his prose dull, his verse correct and sometimes agreeable.

[Sidenote: Guinguené and Le Brun.]

Ginguené had a friend, the poet Le Brun[249]. Ginguené protected Le Brun, in the way in which a man of talent, who knows the world, protects the simplicity of a man of genius; Le Brun in his turn cast his radiancy over Ginguené's eminence. Nothing more comical was seen than the part played by these two cronies who, by a gentle commerce, did each other all the services which two men excelling in different spheres are able to render one to the other.

Le Brun was simply a mock gentleman of the Empyrean; his poetic spirit was as cold as his transports were icy. His Parnassus was a top room in the Rue Montmartre, furnished with a pile of books heaped pell-mell on the floor, a trestle-bed, the curtains of which consisted of two dirty towels dangling from a rusty iron rod, and the half of an ewer propped up against a bottomless chair. It was not that Le Brun was in needy circumstances; but he was a miser and addicted to loose women.

At M. de Vaudreuil's "classical supper[250]," he impersonated Pindar. Among his lyrical poems are to be found energetic or elegant stanzas, as in the ode on the ship _Vengeur_ or the ode on the _Environs de Paris._ His elegies issued from his head, rarely from his soul; his was a labored, not a natural, originality; he created only by sheer force of art: he toiled to distort the meanings of words and to unite them in monstrous alliances. Le Brun had only one real talent, that of satire; his epistle on _La bonne et la mauvaise plaisanterie_ enjoyed a well-deserved renown. Some of his epigrams are worthy of mention with J. B. Rousseau's; La Harpe above all inspired him. One more justice should be done him: he retained his independence under Bonaparte, and has left trenchant verses directed against the oppressor of our liberties[251].

But unquestionably the most atrabiliary of the men of letters whom I knew in Paris at that time was Chamfort. Attacked with the disorder that produced the Jacobins, he was unable to forgive mankind for the accident of his birth[252]. He betrayed the houses to which he was admitted; he took the cynicism of his language for a picture of the manners of the Court. It would not be possible to deny that he had wit and talent, but wit and talent of the kind which does not reach posterity. When he saw that he was unable to attain to any position under the Revolution, he turned against himself the hands which he had raised against society. No longer to his vanity did the Phrygian cap appear as but another kind of crown, sans-culottism as a sort of nobility, of which Marat and Robespierre were the grandees. Furious at finding inequality of rank in the very world of sorrow and of tears, condemned to remain no more than a "villein" in the feudality of executioners, he tried to kill himself in order to escape from superiority in crime; he failed in his attempt: death laughs at those who summon it and who mistake it for annihilation.

I did not meet the Abbé Delille[253] until 1798, in London, and I never saw Rulhière[254], who lives through Madame d'Egmont[255] and makes her live, nor Palissot[256], nor Beaumarchais[257], nor Marmontel[258]. The same with Chénier[259], whom I never met, who has often attacked me, to whom I never replied, and whose place at the Institute was to be the cause of one of the crises of my life.

[Sidenote: Eighteenth-century writers.]

When I read over again the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century, I am amazed to think of the renown which they achieved and of my former admiration for them. Whether it be that the language has made progress, or that it has gone backward, or that we have advanced in civilization or retreated towards barbarism, it is certain that I find something threadbare, antiquated, grizzled, cold, and lifeless in the authors who were the delight of my youth. I find even in the greatest writers of the Voltairean age things that are poor in sentiment, thought, and style.

Whom am I to blame for my disappointment? I fear the chief guilt lies with myself; born innovator that I am, I may perhaps have communicated to younger generations the malady with which I was seized. Terror-stricken, in vain I cry to my children, "Do not forget your French!" They reply in the words of the Limosin to Pantagruel, that they come "from alme, inclyte and celebrate academy, which is vocitated Lutetia[260]."

This habit of latinizing and hellenizing our language is not new, as we see: Rabelais cured it, it reappeared in Ronsard[261]; Boileau attacked it. In our time it has been revived by science; our revolutionaries, great Greeks by nature, have compelled our merchants and farmers to calculate in hectares, hectolitres, kilometers, millimeters, decagrams: politics have "ronsardized" everything.

I might have spoken here of M. de La Harpe, whom I knew at that time, and to whom I will return; I might have added M. de Fontanes' portrait to my gallery; but although my acquaintance with that excellent man began in 1789, it was not until we met in England that I became united to him in a friendship which ever increased with bad, and never diminished with good fortune: I will tell you of him later in all the effusion of my heart. I shall have no talents to depict but those which no longer console the earth. The death of my friend has occurred at the moment when my recollections were leading me to trace the commencement of his life[262]. So great a flight is our existence that, if we do not write down in the evening what has happened in the morning, our work obstructs us, and we no longer have the time to keep it posted up. This does not prevent us from wasting our years, from flinging to the winds the hours which are for men the seeds of eternity.

*

While my inclination and that of my two sisters threw me into this literary society, our position obliged us to frequent another set; the family of my brother's wife was naturally the centre for us of this second circle.

The Président Le Peletier de Rosanbo, who since died with such great courage[263], was at the time of my arrival in Paris a model of frivolity. At that period, men's minds and manners were in every way unsettled, a symptom of a coming revolution. Magistrates were ashamed to wear the robe, and mocked at the gravity of their fathers. The Lamoignons, the Molés, the Séguiers, the d'Aguesseaus[264] wished to fight instead of judging. The Presidents' wives ceased to be respectable mothers of families and left their gloomy mansions in order to seek brilliant adventures[265]. The priest in the pulpit avoided pronouncing the name of Jesus Christ and spoke only of the "Law-giver of the Christians;" the ministers were falling pell-mell; power slipped through each one's fingers. The height of fashion was to be American in town, English at Court, Prussian in the army; to be anything except French. All that was said, all that was done, was one long series of inconsistencies. They wished to keep up the commendatory clergy, and would have none of religion; none could be an officer who was not of gentle birth, whereas the nobility was railed at; equality was introduced into the drawing-rooms together with flogging into the camps.

[Sidenote: M. de Malesherbes.]

M. de Malesherbes had three daughters[266], Mesdames de Rosanbo, d'Aulnay, and de Montboissier; he loved Madame de Rosanbo the best, because her opinions resembled his own. The Président de Rosanbo[267] also had three daughters, Mesdames de Chateaubriand, d'Aulnay[268], and de Tocqueville, and one son, whose brilliant mind clothed itself in Christian perfection. M. de Malesherbes was happy in the midst of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Time after time I have seen him, in the early days of the Revolution, arrive at Madame de Rosanbo's, all heated with politics, fling off his wig, lie down upon the carpet of my sister's room, and submit to the uproarious teasing of the rebellious children. His manners would have been considered almost vulgar, if he had not possessed a certain brusqueness which saved him from being commonplace: at the first words he uttered, one recognized the bearer of an old name and the superior magistrate. His natural virtues were somewhat tainted with affectation, thanks to the philosophy which he mingled with them. He was full of knowledge, honesty, and courage, but impetuous and passionate to such an extent that he once said to me, speaking of Condorcet:

"That man was once my friend; today I would not scruple to kill him like a dog."

The tide of the Revolution overwhelmed him, and his death established his glory. This great man would have remained hidden beneath his merits, if misfortune had not revealed him to the world. A noble Venetian lost his life at the moment when he discovered his title-deeds amid the falling ruins of an old palace.

M. de Malesherbes' free ways removed all my constraint. He found that I was not without information; this first point gave us something in common: we spoke of botany and geography, two of his favourite subjects. It was in the course of my conversations with him that I first conceived the idea of making a journey in North America, with the object of discovering the ocean seen by Hearne and later by Mackenzie[269]. We also held views in common on politics: the generous sentiments which were at the root of our earlier troubles appealed to the independence of my character; my natural antipathy to the Court gave strength to this inclination. I was on the side of M. de Malesherbes and of Madame de Rosanbo as against M. de Rosanbo and my brother, who was nicknamed "the raving Chateaubriand." The Revolution would have carried me away, had it not started in crime: I saw the first head carried on the end of a pike, and I drew back. Murder will never to my eyes be an object of admiration or an argument in favour of liberty; I know nothing more servile, more contemptible, more cowardly, more shallow than a Terrorist. Have I not in France seen the whole of this race of Brutus take service with Cæsar and his police? The levellers, regenerators, cut-throats had been transformed into lackeys, spies, sycophants, and even less naturally into dukes, counts, and barons: such a medievalism!

[Sidenote: My great liking for him.]

Lastly, what attached me still more to the illustrious old man was his predilection for my sister: in spite of the Comtesse Lucile's shyness, we succeeded, with the aid of a glass of champagne, in inducing her to take a part in a little play on the occasion of M. de Malesherbes' birthday; her performance was so touching that it turned that good and great man's head. He was even more eager than my brother in urging her translation from the Chapter of the Argentière to that of Remiremont, which insisted upon the rigorous and difficult proofs of the "sixteen quarterings." For all his philosophy, M. de Malesherbes possessed principles of birth in an eminent degree.

This picture of men and society at the time of my entrance into the world must be spread over a space of about two years, from 25 May 1787, the date of the closing of the first Assembly of Notables, to 5 May 1789, that of the opening of the States-General. During these two years, my sisters and I did not continually live in Paris, nor in the same part of Paris. I will now go back and carry my readers to Brittany.

I must add that I was still infatuated with my illusions; now that I no longer had my woods, I had discovered a new solitude in remote times instead of places. In old Paris, in the enclosures of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the cloisters of the convents, in the vaults of Saint-Denis, in the Sainte Chapelle, in Notre Dame, in the little streets of the Cité, at the modest door of Héloïse, I again met my enchantress; but beneath the Gothic arches and among the tombs she had assumed a deathlike aspect: she was pale, she looked at me with sad eyes; she was but the shadow or the manes of the dream which I had loved.

*

My political education commenced with my different visits to Brittany in 1787 and 1788. The Provincial States furnished the model of the States-General; also the local troubles which heralded those of the nation broke out in two districts possessing States, Brittany and Dauphiné.

The transformation that had been developing for two centuries was nearing its termination. France had passed from feudal monarchy to the monarchy of States-General, from the monarchy of States-General to the monarchy of parliaments, from the monarchy of parliaments to absolute monarchy, and was now tending towards representative monarchy, across the struggle between the magistracy and the royal power.

The Maupeou Parliament[270], the establishment of provincial assemblies, coupled with individual voting-power, the first and second Assemblies of Notables, the Plenary Court, the formation of grand bailiwicks, the reinstatement of the Protestants in their civil rights, the partial abolition of torture and of forced labour, the equal division of taxation were so many successive proofs of the revolution which was at work. But at that time these facts were not seen as a whole: each event appeared in the light of an isolated accident. At every period of history, there exists a guiding thought. Looking only at one point, one fails to see the rays converging at the centre of all the other points; one does not go back as far as the secret agency which gives life and movement to the whole, like water and fire in machinery: that is why, at the outset of revolutions, so many people believe that it is enough to break this wheel or that to prevent the torrent from rushing or the steam from exploding.

The eighteenth century, a century of intellectual action, not of material action, would not have succeeded in so promptly altering the laws, had it not found its vehicle: the parliaments, and notably the Parliament of Paris, became the instruments of the philosophical system. Every opinion dies an impotent or distracted death, if it be not lodged in an assembly which turns it into a power, supplies it with a will, furnishes it with a tongue and a pair of arms. Revolutions succeed, and always will succeed, only by means of corporate assemblies, lawful or unlawful.

The parliaments had their cause to avenge: absolute monarchy had stolen from them the authority which they had usurped from the States-General. Enforced registrations[271], beds of justice, sentences of exile, while making the magistrates popular, drove them to demand liberties of which, in their hearts, they were not the sincere upholders. They called for the restoration of the States-General, not daring to admit that they wished to secure the legislative and political power for themselves; and thus they hastened on the resurrection of a body of which they had gathered the inheritance, a body which, on returning to life, would at once reduce them to their own department. Men are almost invariably deceived as to their true interests, whether moved by wisdom or passion: Louis XVI. restored the parliaments which forced him to summon the States-General; the States-General, converted into a National Assembly and soon into a Convention, destroyed the throne and the parliaments, and sent to their deaths both the judges and the monarch from whom justice emanated. But Louis XVI. and the parliaments acted in this manner because they were the unconscious instruments of a social revolution.

[Sidenote: State-General.]

The idea of the States-General was, therefore, in all men's heads; only they did not see whither it would lead them. It was the question, for the crowd, how to make up a deficit which the smallest banker of today would undertake to remove. The application of so violent a remedy to so small an evil proves that the public was being carried towards unknown political regions. For the year 1786, the only year of which the financial state has been affirmed, the revenue amounted to 412,924,000, the expenditure to 593,542,000 livres, leaving a deficit of 180,618,000 livres, which was reduced to 140 millions through economies amounting to 40,618,000 livres. In this budget, the Royal Household figures for the immense sum of 37,200,000 livres: the Princes' debts, the purchase of country-seats, and the Court malversations were the cause of this additional burden.

It was desired to have the States-General in the form they assumed in 1614. The historians always quote this form as though one had never heard speak of States-General or of a demand for their convocation since 1614. And yet in 1651 the orders of the nobility and the clergy, meeting in Paris, demanded States-General. A bulky collection of acts passed and speeches delivered on that occasion exists. The Parliament of Paris, which was then all-powerful, far from seconding the wishes of the two upper orders, quashed their meetings as illegal: as indeed they were.

And since I am treating of this subject, I wish to note another serious fact which has escaped those who have concerned, and are still concerning, themselves with writing the history of France, without knowing it. People talk of "the three orders" as being essential to the constitution of the States known as States-General. Well, it often happened that bailiwicks appointed deputies for only one or two orders. In 1614, the bailiwick of Amboise appointed none for either the clergy or the nobility; the bailiwick of Châteauneuf-en-Thimerais sent none for the clergy nor for the third estate; the Puy, the Rochelle, the Lauraguais, Calais, the Haute-Marche, Châtellerault sent none for the clergy, and Montdidier and Roye none for the nobility. Nevertheless, the States of 1614 were called States-General. Thus the ancient chronicles express themselves more correctly when they say, in speaking of our national assemblies, "the three estates," or "the burgess notables," or "the barons and bishops" as the case may be, and they attribute the same legislative power to the assemblies thus composed. In the different provinces, the third estate, even though convoked, often refrained from deputing representatives, and this for an unheeded but very natural reason. The third estate had taken possession of the magistracy, from which it had driven out the men-at-arms; it held absolute sway, except in a few parliaments, in the offices of judge, advocate, procurator, registrar, clerk, and so forth; it made civil and criminal laws, and, thanks to its parliamentary usurpation, it exercised even the political power. The fortune, honour, and lives of the citizens depended upon the third estate: all obeyed its decrees, every head fell beneath the sword of its justices. Seeing, therefore, that it enjoyed unlimited power, to the exclusion of the other estates, what need had it to go begging for a portion of that power in assemblies in which it appeared upon its knees?

The people, metamorphosed into monks, had resorted to the cloisters, and governed society through the power of religious opinion; the people, metamorphosed into tax-gatherers and bankers, had resorted to finance, and governed society through the power of money; the people, metamorphosed into magistrates, had resorted to the tribunals, and governed society through the power of the law. This great Realm of France, so aristocratic in its parties and in its provinces, was democratic when taken as a whole, under the direction of its King, with whom it acted in admirable concert and nearly always went hand in hand. This is the explanation of its long existence. There is an entirely new history of France to be written, or rather, the history of France has not yet been written.

All the above-mentioned important questions were especially vexed in the years 1786, 1787, and 1788. The heads of my fellow-Bretons found abundant cause for excitement in their natural vivacity, in the privileges of the province, the clergy, and the nobles, in the collisions between the Parliament and the States. M. de Calonne[272], for a short while Intendant of Brittany, had increased the internal strife by favouring the cause of the third estate. M. de Montmorin[273] and M. de Thiard were not sufficiently strong leaders to ensure the ascendency of the Court party. The nobility entered into a coalition with the Parliament, which was itself noble; now it opposed M. Necker, M. de Calonne, the Archbishop of Sens[274]; now it thrust back the popular movement, which its own early resistance had favoured. It assembled, deliberated, and protested; the communes or municipalities assembled, deliberated and protested in opposition. The private question of hearth-money was mixed up with the general questions and increased the reigning ill-will. To understand this, it is necessary to explain the constitution of the Duchy of Brittany.

[Sidenote: The States of Brittany.]

The States of Brittany varied more or less in their formation, in common with all the States of Feudal Europe, which they resembled. The Kings of France were established into the rights of the Dukes of Brittany. The marriage-contract of the Duchess Anne[275], in 1491, not only brought Brittany by way of dower to the crown of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., but contained a covenant by virtue of which an end was put to a contention which traced its origin to Charles of Blois[276] and the Count of Montfort[277]. Brittany contended that daughters were entitled to inherit the Duchy; France maintained that the succession could take place only in the main line, and that when this line came to be extinguished, Brittany, as a great feud, returned to the Crown. Charles VIII. and Anne, and subsequently Anne and Louis XII., mutually surrendered their rights or claims to each other. Claudia, daughter of Anne and Louis XII., who became the wife of François I., on her death left the Duchy of Brittany to François I., her husband, upon the petition of the States assembled at Vannes, and by an edict published at Nantes in 1532 united the Duchy to the Crown of France, guaranteeing the Duchy's rights and privileges.

At that time the States of Brittany were summoned every year; but in 1630 the sittings became biennial. The Governor proclaimed the opening of the States. The three orders sat, according to the place, in a church or in the halls of a convent. Each order deliberated apart: they formed three separate assemblies with their various tempests, which turned into a general hurricane when the clergy, the nobles, and the third estate came to meet together. The Court breathed discord, and talents, vanities and ambitions came into play in this restricted field as in any more extended arena.

The Père Grégoire de Rostrenen, a Capuchin friar, in the dedication to his _Dictionnaire françois-breton_, addresses Their Lordships the States of Brittany as follows:

"If it was meet for none save the Roman orator worthily to praise the august assembly of the Roman Senate, was it meet for me to venture upon the praise of your august assembly, which so worthily recalls to us the image of all that ancient and modern Rome possessed that was majestic and venerable?"

Rostrenen proves that Celtic is one of those primitive languages which Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, brought to Europe, and that the Lower Bretons, despite their short stature, descend from the giants. Unfortunately, Gomer's Breton children, long separated from France, allowed part of their old title-deeds to perish: their charters, to which they did not attach sufficient importance as linking them to general history, too often lack the authenticity to which the decipherers of diplomas, on their side, attach too high a price.

The time of the holding of the States in Brittany was a time of balls and festivals: one dined with M. le Commandant, dined with M. le Président de la Noblesse, dined with M. le Président du Clergé, dined with M. le Trésorier des États, dined with M. l'Intendant de la Province, dined with M. le Président du Parlement; one dined everywhere: and drank! At long refectory tables sat Du Guesclins who were husbandmen, Duguay-Trouins who were seamen, wearing at their side their iron swords with old-fashioned guards or their short cutlasses. All the gentlemen assisting at the States in person bore no slight resemblance to a Diet of Poland, of Poland on foot, not on horseback, a diet of Scythians, not of Sarmatians.

[Sidenote: Madame de Sévigné.]

Unfortunately, they played too much. The balls never ended. The Bretons are noted for their dances and dance-tunes. Madame de Sévigné has described our political festivals in the midst of the waste-lands, like the revels of fairies and goblins which were held at night on the moors:

"You shall now," she writes[278]," have news about our States for your pains of being a Breton. M. de Chaulnes made his entry on Sunday evening, with all the noise that Vitré could afford: on Monday morning he sent me a letter, which I answered by going to dine with him. They dine at two tables in the same room; there are fourteen covers at each table; Monsieur presides at one, and Madame at the other. The good cheer is excessive, whole dishes of roast meat are carried away uncut; and the pyramids of fruit are so tall, that the doorways have to be made higher. Our forefathers did not foresee this kind of machines, seeing that they did not even understand that a door ought to be higher than themselves.... After dinner, Messieurs de Lomaria and Coëtlogon danced some marvelous jigs with two Breton ladies, and minuets with an air which our courtiers cannot approach: they execute Gipsy and Lower Breton steps with charming daintiness and precision.... Night and day there reign such play, good cheer, and freedom as will attract all the world. I had never seen the States before; it is a pretty thing enough. I doubt if there is a province whose assembly has so grand an air as this; it must be very full, I fancy, for there is not one of the members at the war nor at Court; except the little cornet[279], who perhaps may return here one day like the rest.... A multitude of presents, pensions, repairs of highways and towns, fifteen or twenty large tables, a continual round of dancing and gaming, plays three times a week, and a great deal of show and splendor: there you have the States. I have forgot three or four hundred pipes of wine which are drank out here."

The Bretons find it difficult to forgive Madame de Sévigné for her raillery. I am less severe; but I do not like to hear her say, "You speak very pleasantly of our miseries; we are no longer so _roué_[280]: _one_ in eight days only, to keep justice going. 'Tis true that a hanging now comes refreshingly to me." This is carrying the agreeable language of the Court to excess: Barère[281] spoke with the same grace of the guillotine. In 1793, the drownings at Nantes were called "republican marriages:" the popular despotism reproduced the amenities of style of the royal despotism.

The Paris fops, who accompanied messieurs the King's company to the States, related that we country squires had our pockets lined with tin so that we might take home M. le Commandant's fricassees of chicken to our wives. These jests were dearly paid for. A Comte de Sabran had erewhile lost his life in return for his idle talk. This descendant of the troubadours and of the Provencal kings, as big as a Swiss[282], allowed himself to be killed by a little hare-hunter of Morbihan, no taller than a Laplander[283]. This "Ker[284]" was not a whit second to his adversary in pedigree: if St. Elzear of Sabran was a near kinsman of St. Louis, St. Corentin[285], collateral ancestor of the most noble Ker, was Bishop of Quimper under King Gallon II., three centuries before Christ.

*

The King's revenue, in Brittany, consisted of the benevolences, which varied according to needs; the income from the Crown domains, which might amount to three or four hundred thousand francs; the stamp-duty, &c.

Brittany had her own revenues, which served to meet her expenditure: the "great due" and the "petty due," which were laid on liquor and the liquor traffic, produced two millions a year; and then there were the sums raised by hearth-money. One little suspects the important part played by hearth-money in our history; yet it was to the French Revolution what the stamp-duties were to the Revolution in America.

Hearth-money or _fouage_ (_census pro singulis focis exactus_) was a quit-rent, or a sort of villain tax, charged upon the goods of the commonalty for each hearth. This hearth-money, which was gradually increased, went to pay the debts of the province. In time of war, the expenditure amounted to more than seven millions from one session to the next, a sum which exceeded the receipts. A plan had been proposed to create a capital out of the funds provided by hearth-money and to turn it into stock for the benefit of the payers of hearth-money: in this way the tax became only a loan. The injustice (although it was an injustice made legal by the wording of the customary law) lay in making it bear upon the property of the commonalty alone. The commons never ceased protesting; the nobles, who set less store by their money than by their privileges, would not hear of a duty which would have made them liable to a villain-tax. This was the question when the States of Brittany, that were to prove so bloody, came together in December 1788.

Men's minds were at that time excited by various causes: the assembly of the Notables, the territorial impost, the traffic in corn, the approaching sittings of the States-General and the affair of the Necklace, the Plenary Court and the _Mariage de Figaro_, the grand bailiwicks and Cagliostro[286] and Mesmer[287], a thousand other serious and trivial matters formed subjects of controversy in every family.

[Sidenote: The Breton nobles.]

The Breton nobility had, at its own instance, assembled at Rennes to protest against the establishment of the Plenary Court. I went to this diet: it was the first political meeting I ever attended. I was bewildered and amused by the cries I heard. The members climbed on the tables and chairs; they gesticulated, and all spoke at one time. The Marquis de Trémargat[288], who had a wooden leg, shouted in stentorian tones:

"Let us all go to the Commandant, M. de Thiard[289]; we will say to him, 'The nobles of Brittany are at your door; they ask to speak to you; the King himself would not deny them!'"

At this outburst of eloquence, the cheers shook the rafters. He commenced again:

"The King himself would not deny them!"

The shouts and stamping redoubled. We went to M. le Comte de Thiard, a man of the Court, an erotic poet, a gentle and frivolous spirit, mortally bored by our uproar; he looked upon us as so many _hou-hous_, wild-boars, wild beasts; he was burning to be gone from our Armorica, and had not the slightest desire to deny us the entrance to his house. Our spokesman told him what he wanted, after which we went back and drew up the following declaration:

"We declare infamous those who are capable of accepting any places, whether in the new administration of justice, or in the administration of the States, which shall not be approved by the constitutional laws of Brittany."

Twelve gentlemen were chosen to carry this document to the King: upon their arrival in Paris, they were locked up in the Bastille, whence they soon emerged in the quality of heroes[290]; they were received with laurel-branches on their return.

We wore coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl bedecked with ermine, round which buttons was inscribed in Latin the motto, "Death before dishonor." We triumphed over the Court, over which all the world was triumphing, and we fell with it into the same abyss.

*

It was at this period that my brother, continuing to prosecute his plans, resolved to have me admitted to the Order of Malta. In order to effect this, it was necessary that I should receive the tonsure: this could be given me by M. Cortois de Pressigny[291], Bishop of Saint-Malo. I therefore went to my native city, where my good mother was living: she no longer had her children with her; she spent her days at church, her evenings knitting. Her absent-mindedness was incredible: I met her one day in the street, carrying one of her slippers under her arm by way of a prayer-book. From time to time some old friends would find their way to her retreat and talk of the good times that were past. When she and I were alone, she would improvise beautiful stories for me in verse. In one of these stories the devil carried off a chimney with an evil-doer in it, and the poet exclaimed:

Le diable en l'avenue Chemina tant et tant, Qu'on en perdit la vue En moins d'une heur' de temps[292].

"I cannot help thinking," said I, "that the devil does not go very fast."

But Madame de Chateaubriand proved to me that I did not know what I was talking about: my mother was charming.

[Sidenote: My mother's ballads.]

She had a long and plaintive ballad on the subject of the _Récit veritable d'une cane sauvage en la ville de Montfort-la-Cane-lez-Saint-Malo._ A certain lord had imprisoned a young and very beautiful girl in the Castle of Montfort, with the intention of ravishing her. Through a dormer-window she could see the church of St. Nicholas; she prayed to the saint with eyes full of tears, and was miraculously wafted outside the castle. But she fell into the hands of the traitor's servants, who proposed to do by her as they presumed their master had done. The poor girl, distraught, looking to every side in search of help, saw only the wild-duck upon the pond of the castle. Renewing her prayers to St. Nicholas, she besought him to allow these birds to be the witnesses of her innocence, so that, if she was doomed to lose her life, and was unable to accomplish the vows which she had taken to St. Nicholas, the birds themselves would fulfill them in their own way, in her name and on her behalf.

The girl died within the year: and behold, on the Feast of the Translation of the Bones of St. Nicholas, 9 May, a wild-duck, accompanied by its brood of ducklings, came to St. Nicholas' Church. She entered the building, fluttered before the statue of the Blessed Liberator, and acclaimed him by flapping her wings; after which she returned to the pond, leaving one of her little ones as an offering. Some time afterwards, the duckling disappeared unobserved. For two hundred years and more, the duck, always the same duck, returned, on a fixed day, with her hatch, to the church of the great St. Nicholas at Montfort.

The story was written and printed in 1652: the author very justly observes that "a poor wild-duck is not a very considerable thing in the eyes of God; that nevertheless she acts her part in doing homage to His greatness; that St. François' grasshopper was of even less account, and that nevertheless its trill charmed a seraph's heart."

But Madame de Chateaubriand followed a false legend: in her ballad, the maiden imprisoned at Montfort was a princess, who succeeded in being changed into a duck in order to escape her captor's violence. I remember only the following lines of one stanza of my mother's ballad:

Cane la belle est devenue, Cane la belle est devenue, Et s'envola par une grille, Dans un étang plein de lentilles[293].

As Madame de Chateaubriand was a real saint, she obtained the Bishop of Saint-Malo's promise to give me the tonsure, although he had a scruple on the subject: to bestow the mark of an ecclesiastic upon a layman and a soldier appeared to him to be a profanation not far removed from simony. M. Cortois de Pressigny, now Archbishop of Besançon and a peer of France, is a worthy and deserving man. He was young at that time, protected by the Queen, and on the high-road to fortune, which he attained later by a better road: persecution.

Dressed in uniform, and wearing my sword, I went down on my knees at the prelate's feet; he cut two or three hairs from the crown of my head: this was called the tonsure, of which I received a formal certificate. With this certificate, it was possible for an income of 200,000 livres to fall to me, when my proofs of nobility had been admitted in Malta: an abuse, no doubt, in the ecclesiastical order, but a useful thing in the political order of the old constitution. Was it not better that a kind of military benefice should be attached to the sword of a soldier than to the cloak of an Abbé who would have spent the revenues of his fat living on the pavement of Paris?

The fact that the tonsure was conferred on me for the foregoing reasons has caused ill-informed biographers to state that I had at one time entered the Church.

This happened in 1788. I kept horses, I rode all over the country, or galloped beside the waves, the moaning friends of my youth: I alighted from my horse and frolicked with them; the whole barking family of Scylla sprang to my knees to fondle me: _Nunc vada latrantis Scyllæ._ I have travelled very far to admire the scenes of nature: I might have contented myself with those which my native land offered to my eyes.

Nothing could be more charming than the country for five or six leagues round Saint-Malo. The banks of the Rance alone, as one ascends the river from its mouth to Dinan, ought to attract the traveller, forming a constant medley of rocks and verdure, of strands and forests, of creeks and hamlets, of the ancient manors of feudal Brittany and the modern habitations of commercial Brittany. The latter were built at a time when the merchants of Saint-Malo were so rich that, on days of merry-making, they heated piastres and flung them red-hot to the people through the windows. These dwellings are very luxurious. Bonnaban, the country-seat of Messieurs de La Saudre[294], is in part built of marble brought from Genoa, a magnificence of which we in Paris have no idea. The Briantais[295], the Bosq, the Montmarin[296], the Balue[297], the Colombier[298] are, or were, adorned with orangeries, fountains, and statues. In some cases the gardens slope down to the shore behind the arcade formed by a screen of lime-trees, through a colonnade of pine-trees, to the end of a lawn; across a bed of tulips, the sea displays its ships, its calms, and its tempests.

[Sidenote: Country round Saint-Malo.]

Every peasant, sailor, and husbandman owns a little white cottage with a garden; among the vegetables, the currant-bushes, the roses, the irises, the marigolds of this garden, you find a shoot of Cayenne tea, a stalk of Virginian tobacco, a Chinese flower, some kind of souvenir of other shores and another sun: they compose the chart and the itinerary of the owner. The occupiers of these coast holdings belong to a fine Norman race; the women are tall, slender, active, and wear grey-woolen bodices, petticoats of calamanco and striped silk, white stockings with colored clocks. Their foreheads are shaded by an ample dimity or cambric head-dress, the flaps of which stand up in the shape of a cap or float like a veil. A number of silver chains hang in a bunch at their left side. Every morning, in the spring, these daughters of the North, stepping from their boats, as though they were coming once again to invade the land, carry to market baskets of fruit and shells filled with curds: when, with one hand, they hold on their heads black jars full of milk or flowers, when the lappets of their white caps set off their blue eyes, their pink faces, their fair hair pearled with dew, the Valkyrs of the _Edda_, of whom the youngest is the Future, or the Basket-bearers of Athens, were less graceful. Does the picture still resemble the original? Those women, doubtless, no longer exist; nought remains but my recollection of them.

*

I left my mother and went to see my two elder sisters, who lived near Fougères. I stayed a month with Madame de Chateaubourg. Her two country-houses, Lascardais[299] and Le Plessis[300], near Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, famous for its tower and its battle[301], stood in a country of rocks, moors, and woods. My sister's steward was M. Livoret[302], formerly a Jesuit, who had met with a strange adventure.

When he was made steward at Lascardais, the Comte de Chateaubourg, the elder, had just died: M. Livoret, who had not known him, was installed as care-taker of the castle. The first night that he slept there alone, he saw a pale old man come into his room, in a dressing-gown and night-cap, and carrying a little light. The apparition went to the hearth, placed the candlestick on the mantel, lit the fire and sat down in a chair. M. Livoret trembled all over his body. After two hours spent in silence, the old man rose, took his light again, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

The next day the steward told his adventure to the farm-people, who, on hearing the description of the spectre, declared that it was their old master. The matter did not end there: if M. Livoret looked behind him in a wood, he saw the ghost; if he had to climb over a stile in a field, the shade set itself astride the stile. One day, the unhappy haunted man venturing to say, "Monsieur de Chateaubourg, leave me," the ghost replied, "No." M. Livoret, a cold and practical man, possessed of very little imagination, repeated his story as often as he was asked, always in the same way and with the same conviction.

[Sidenote: A visit to Normandy.]

A little later I accompanied to Normandy a brave officer attacked with brain-fever. We were lodged in a farm-house: an old tapestry, lent by the lord of the manor, separated my bed from the invalid's. Behind this hanging the patient was bled: to relieve him of his sufferings, they plunged him into ice-baths; he shivered under this torture, with his nails turned blue, his violet face haggard, and his teeth clenched. His head was shaven, and a long beard which came down from his pointed chin served to clothe his bare, wet, lean chest.

When the invalid had a fit of crying, he opened an umbrella, thinking that he was sheltering himself from his tears: if this were a sure protection against weeping, a statue should be raised to the inventor.

My only happy moments were those at which I went to wander in the grave-yard of the village church, built upon a mound. My companions were the dead, a few birds, and the setting sun. I dreamed of Paris society, of my early years, of my phantom, of the Combourg woods, to which I was so near in point of space, though so far removed in point of time. I returned to my poor sick man: it was the blind leading the blind.

Alas, let a blow, a fall, a moral suffering deprive Homer, Newton, Bossuet of their genius, and those divine men, instead of exciting profound pity, bitter and eternal regret, would be the object of a smile! Many people whom I have known and loved have seen their reason troubled while about me, as though I bore with me the germ of the contagion. I can explain Cervantes' masterpiece and its cruel gaiety only by a sad reflection: when one considers existence as a whole, and weighs its good and evil, one feels tempted to long for any accident that brings forgetfulness with it, as a means of escaping from one's self; a joyful drunkard is a happy being. Putting religion aside, happiness lies in not knowing one's self and in reaching death without having felt life.

I brought my friend back completely cured.

*

Madame Lucile and Madame de Farcy, who had returned with me to Brittany, wished to go back to Paris; but I was detained by the unsettled condition of the province. The States had been summoned for the end of December 1788. The commune of Rennes and, following in its wake, the other communes of Brittany had passed a resolution forbidding their deputies to take part in any business before the question of hearth-money had been settled.

The Comte de Boisgelin[303], who was to preside over the order of the nobles, hurried to Rennes. The gentry were convoked by private letters; among them were those who, like myself, were still too young to have votes in the deliberations. We might be attacked, strong arms needed counting as well as votes: we went to our posts.

A number of meetings were held at M. de Boisgelin's before the opening of the States. All the scenes of confusion at which I had assisted were renewed. The Chevalier de Guer, the Marquis de Trémargat, my uncle the Comte de Bedée, nicknamed Bedée the Artichoke, because of his stoutness, as opposed to another Bedée, long and slim, who was called Bedée the Asparagus, broke a number of chairs in climbing on them to deliver their harangues. The Marquis de Trémargat, a wooden-legged naval officer, made many enemies for his order. One day they were talking of establishing a military school for the education of the sons of poor nobles; a member of the Third Estate cried:

"And what are our sons to have?"

"The almshouse," replied Trémargat.

The phrase fell among the crowd and soon bore fruit.

At these meetings I became aware of a disposition of character in myself which I have since found again in the field of politics and arms: the more my colleagues or companions grew inflamed, the calmer I became. I saw the tribune or the gun fired with indifference: I have never bowed before either words or cannon-balls.

The result of our deliberations was that the nobles were to treat general matters first, and not busy themselves with hearth-money until the other questions had been disposed of; a resolution directly opposed to that of the commons. The nobles had no great confidence in the clergy, who often abandoned them, especially when presided over by the Bishop of Rennes[304], a wheedling, circumspect person, who spoke with a slight and not ungraceful lisp, and nursed his prospects at Court. The hatred was fomented by a newspaper, the _Sentinelle du Peuple_, edited at Rennes by a scribbler newly arrived from Paris.

The States were held in the Jacobin Convent on the Place du Palais. We entered the sessions-hall, in the temper which I have described; we had hardly taken our seats before we were besieged by the mob. The 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of January 1789 were unlucky days. The Comte de Thiard had few troops under his command; he lacked both vigor and decision, and moved without acting. The School of Law at Rennes, which had Moreau at its head, had sent for the young men of Nantes; they came to the number of four hundred, and in spite of his entreaties, the Commandant was unable to prevent them from invading the town. Meetings held by various factions in the cafés and on the Champ-Montmorin resulted in collisions attended with bloodshed.

[Sidenote: Riots at Rennes.]

Tired of being blockaded in our hall, we resolved to sally forth sword in hand; it was a pretty sight enough. At a signal given by our president, we all drew our swords together, to the cry of "Brittany for ever!" and, like a forlorn garrison, executed a furious sortie in order to fight our way through. The mob received us with yells, with showers of stones, blows of iron-shod sticks, and pistol-shots. We forced a passage through the surging crowd, which closed in upon us. Several gentlemen were wounded, dragged along the ground, lacerated, covered with bruises and contusions. We succeeded with great difficulty in extricating ourselves and reaching our respective lodgings.

Duels followed between the nobles and the law-students and their friends from Nantes. One of these duels took place in public on the Place Royale; the honors remained with old Keralieu[305], a naval officer, who was attacked, and who fought with incredible vigor amid the applause of his youthful adversaries.

Another mob had formed. The Comte de Montboucher[306] caught sight in the crowd of a student called Ulliac, and said to him:

"Monsieur, this concerns you and me!"

A ring was formed around them; Montboucher disarmed Ulliac and handed him back his sword: they embraced, and the crowd dispersed.

At least our Breton nobility did not succumb without honour. It refused to send deputies to the States-General, because it had not been convoked in accordance with the fundamental laws of the constitution of the province; it joined the army of the Princes in vast numbers, and was decimated in Condé's Army, or with Charette in the wars of the Vendée. Would it have made any difference in the majority in the National Assembly if it had joined that assembly? That is scarcely likely: in great social transformations, cases of individual resistance, however creditable to personal character, are powerless against facts. Nevertheless it is difficult to say what might not have been effected by a man of Mirabeau's genius, but of opposite principles, if one had been found in the order of the Breton nobility.

Young Boishue and my schoolfellow Saint-Riveul had been killed in these encounters, on their way to the chamber of the nobles: the former was in vain defended by his father, who served as his second[307].

Reader, pause: see flow the first drops of blood which the Revolution was to shed. Heaven decreed that they should issue from the veins of a companion of my childhood. Suppose that I had fallen instead of Saint-Riveul; it would have been said of me, merely changing the name, as was said of the victim with whom commenced the great immolation:

"A gentleman called Chateaubriand was killed on his way to the assembly-room of the States."

Those few words would have taken the place of my long history. Would Saint-Riveul have played my part on the earth? Was he destined for fame or for silence?

And now, reader, pass on; cross the river of blood which for all time separates the old world, whence you are issuing, from the new, at the entrance to which you shall die.

*

The year 1789, so famous in our history and in the history of the human race, found me on the moors of my Brittany; I was not even able to leave the country until rather late, and did not reach Paris until after the sack of the Maison Reveillon[308], the opening of the States-General[309], the constitution of the Third Estate into a National Assembly, the oath of the Tennis Court[310], the Royal Speech of the 23rd of June, and the joining of the clergy and the nobles to the commons[311].

There was a great stir along my road: in the villages the peasants stopped the carriages, asked to be shown passports, interrogated the travelers. The nearer we approached to the capital, the more the excitement increased. Passing through Versailles, I saw troops quartered in the orangery, trains of artillery parked in the court-yards, the provisional hall of the National Assembly erected on the Place du Palais, and deputies moving to and fro amid sight-seers, people of the palace, and soldiers.

[Sidenote: Disturbances in Paris.]

In Paris the streets were blocked by crowds standing before the bakers' shops; the passers-by stood discussing at the street corners, the tradesmen came out of their shops and gave and received the news before their doors; the agitators gathered together at the Palais-Royal: Camille Desmoulins began to distinguish himself in the throng[312].

I had scarcely alighted[313], together with Madame de Farcy and Madame Lucile, at a lodging-house in the Rue de Richelieu, when a riot broke out: the mob proceeded to the Abbaye to deliver some French Guards, who had been imprisoned by order of their officers. The non-commissioned officers of an artillery regiment quartered at the Invalides joined the people. The defection of the army was commencing.

The Court, alternately yielding and resisting, a mixture of obstinacy and weakness, of hectoring and fear, allowed itself to be bullied by Mirabeau[314], who demanded that the troops should be removed to a distance, and yet did not consent to remove them: it accepted the affront and did not remove the cause of it. In Paris a rumor spread that an army was arriving through the Montmartre sewer, that the dragoons were about to force the barriers. It was suggested to take up the street pavements, to carry the paving-stones to the top floors of the houses, in order to hurl them upon the tyrant's satellites: every one set to work. In the midst of this turmoil M. Necker was ordered to resign. The new ministry consisted of M. de Breteuil[315], La Galaizière, the Maréchal de Broglie[316], La Vauguyon, La Porte[317] and Foullon[318]. These replaced Messieurs de Montmorin[319], de La Luzerne[320], de Saint-Priest[321] and de Nivernais[322].

A Breton poet, newly landed, had asked me to take him to Versailles. There are people who will go to see gardens and fountains amid the downfall of empires: scribblers especially possess this faculty of isolating themselves in their hobby during the course of the greatest events; with them, their phrase or their strophe fills the place of everything.

I took my Pindar to the gallery at Versailles at mass-time. The Œil-de-Boeuf was radiant: M. Necker's dismissal had raised the spirits of all; they felt sure of victory: possibly Sanson[323] and Simon[324] were among the crowd, witnessing the delight of the Royal Family.

[Sidenote: Marie Antoinette.]

The Queen passed by with her two children; their fair hair appeared to be waiting for crowns: Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême[325], aged eleven, drew all eyes through a virginal pride; beautiful through nobility of birth and maidenly innocence, she seemed to say, like Corneille's orange-blossom in the _Guirlande de Julie_:

J'ai la pompe de ma naissance[326].

The little Dauphin[327] walked under his sister's protection, and M. Du Touchet followed his pupil; he noticed me, and obligingly called the Queen's attention to me. Casting a smiling look in my direction, she gave me that gracious bow which she had already made me on the day of my presentation. I shall never forget that look, so soon to be extinguished. Marie Antoinette, when she smiled, outlined so clearly the shape of her mouth, that the recollection of that smile (O horror!) enabled me to recognize the jaw-bone of the daughter of kings when the head of the unhappy woman was discovered in the exhumations of 1815.

The counter-stroke to the blow struck at Versailles resounded in Paris. On my return I came upon a crowd hastening along and carrying the busts of M. Necker and of M. le Duc d'Orléans[328], covered with crape. They cried, "Long live Necker! Long live the Duc d'Orléans!" and among those cries was heard one bolder and more unforeseen:

"Long live Louis XVII.!"

Long live the child whose very name would have been forgotten in the funeral inscription of his family, if I had not recalled it to the memory of the House of Peers[329]! Had Louis XVI. abdicated, Louis XVII. been placed upon the throne, M. le Duc d'Orléans declared Regent, what would have happened?

On the Place Louis XV., the Prince de Lambesc[330], at the head of the "Royal German" regiment, drove back the crowd into the gardens of the Tuileries and wounded an old man: suddenly the tocsin sounded. The cutlers' shops were broken into, and thirty thousand muskets taken from the Invalides. The people armed themselves with pikes, cudgels, pitchforks, sabres, pistols; they sacked Saint-Lazare, burnt down the barriers. The electors of Paris took in hand the government of the Capital, and in a night sixty thousand citizens were organized, armed, equipped into National Guards.

On the 14th of July came the fall of the Bastille. I was present, as a spectator, at this assault against a few pensioners and a timid governor: if the gates had been kept closed, the mob could never have entered the fortress. I saw two or three guns fired, not by the pensioners, but by French Guards who had climbed to the towers.

De Launey[331] was torn from his hiding-place, and after undergoing a thousand outrages, was struck down on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville; Flesselles[332], the provost of the merchants, had his brains blown out by a pistol-shot: this was the spectacle which heartless enthusiasts thought so fine. In the midst of these murders, the people gave themselves up to orgies, as in the troubles in Rome under Otho and Vitellius. "The victors of the Bastille," happy drunkards, declared conquerors by pot-house votes, were driven about in hackney-coaches; prostitutes and sans-culottes commenced to reign and escorted them. The passers-by uncovered, with the respect born of fear, before those heroes, some of whom died of fatigue amidst their triumph. The keys of the Bastille multiplied; they were sent to all the important simpletons in the four quarters of the world. How often have I missed my fortune! If I, a spectator, had inscribed my name on the list of the victors, I should be in receipt of a pension today.

The experts hurried to assist at the _post-mortem_ examination of the Bastille. Temporary cafés were established under tents; people hastened thither as to the fair at Saint-Germain or to Longchamp; numbers of carriages drove slowly past, or stopped at the foot of the towers, whence the stones were being hurled down amid whirlwinds of dust. Elegantly-dressed women and fashionable young men stood upon different points of the Gothic rubbish, and mingled with the half-naked workmen engaged in demolishing the walls amid the acclamations of the crowd. At this meeting-place were to be seen the most famous orators, the best-known men of letters, the most celebrated painters, the most renowned actors and actresses, the most popular dancers, the most illustrious foreigners, the nobles of the Court and the ambassadors of Europe: old France had come there to end, new France to commence, its existence.

No event, however wretched or hateful in itself, should be treated lightly when its circumstances are serious, or when it marks an epoch: what should have been seen in the capture of the Bastille (and what was not then seen) was, not the violent act of the emancipation of a people, but the emancipation itself which resulted from that act.

[Sidenote: The fall of the Bastille.]

Men admired what they ought to condemn, the accident, and did not seek to discover in the future the accomplishment of a peopled destiny, the changes in morals, ideas, political power, a renovation of the human race, of which the capture of the Bastille, like a blood-stained jubilee, inaugurated the era. Brutal anger wrought ruins, and beneath that anger was concealed the intelligence which laid among those ruins the foundations of the new edifice.

But the nation, deceived as to the grandeur of the material fact, was not deceived as to the grandeur of the moral fact: in the eyes of the nation, the Bastille was the trophy of its servitude, and seemed to be erected at the entrance to Paris, opposite the sixteen pillars of Montfaucon[333], as the gibbet of its liberties[334]. In demolishing a State fortress, the people considered that it was breaking the military yoke, and made a tacit engagement to take the place of the army which it was disbanding: we know what prodigies were wrought by the people turned soldier.

*

Awakened by the sound of the fall of the Bastille, as though by the premonitory sound of the fall of the throne, Versailles had lapsed from the heights of self-confidence to the depths of despondency. The King hurried to the National Assembly, and delivered a speech from the president's chair; he declared that an order had been given for the withdrawal of the troops, and returned to his palace amid a shower of benedictions. A vain parade! Parties do not believe in the conversion of the opposing parties: the liberty which capitulates, or the power which degrades itself, receives no mercy from its foes.

Eighty deputies set out from Versailles to announce the making of peace to the Capital; illuminations followed. M. de La Fayette[335] was made Commandant of the National Guard, M. Bailly[336], Mayor of Paris: I never knew the poor but respectable scholar, save through his misfortunes. Revolutions possess men for each of their several periods; some follow these revolutions to their finish, others commence but do not complete them.

A general dispersal ensued; the courtiers left for Bâle, Lausanne, Luxemburg, and Brussels. Madame de Polignac[337] in her flight met M. Necker returning. The Comte d'Artois, his sons[338], the three Condés[339] emigrated, drawing after them the higher clergy and a portion of the nobility. The officers of the army, threatened by their mutinous soldiers, yielded to the torrent which drifted them down its stream. Louis XVI. alone remained behind to face the nation with his two children and a few women: the Queen, "Mesdames[340]," and Madame Élisabeth[341]. "Monsieur[342]," who stayed until the flight to Varennes, was of no great assistance to his brother: although, by declaring himself in the Assembly of Notables in favour of the vote by heads, he had decided the fate of the Revolution, the Revolution distrusted him; he, Monsieur, disliked the King, did not understand the Queen, and was not loved by them.

Louis XVI. went to the Hôtel de Ville on the 17th: a hundred thousand men, armed like the monks of the League, received him. He was harangued by Messrs. Bailly, Moreau de Saint-Méry[343], and Lally-Tolendal[344], all of whom wept: the last has remained subject to tears. The King broke down in his turn; he fixed an enormous tricolour cockade on his hat; he was then and there declared to be "an honest man, Father of the French, King of a free people," while the said people was preparing, by virtue of its liberty, to lay low the head of that honest man, its father and its King.

[Sidenote: First revolutionary horrors.]

A few days after this reconciliation, I was at the windows of my lodgings with my sisters and some Bretons; we heard cries of "Shut the doors, shut the doors!" A troop of tatterdemalions approached from one end of the street; from the midst of this troop rose two standards which we could not see clearly at that distance. As they came nearer, we distinguished two dishevelled and disfigured heads, which the forerunners of Marat[345] were carrying, each at the end of a pike: they were the heads of Messrs. Foullon and Bertier[346]. The others all drew back from the windows; I remained. The assassins stopped in front of me, stretched the pikes towards me, singing, capering, jumping up in order to bring the pale effigies nearer to my face. One eye in one of these heads had started from its socket, and fell upon the dead man's lurid face; the pike projected through the open mouth, the teeth of which bit upon the iron.

"Brigands!" I cried, filled with indignation which I was unable to contain. "Is that how you understand liberty?"

Had I had a gun, I should have fired at those wretches as at a pack of wolves. They shouted and yelled; they beat long at the doors of the gate-way, in the hope of breaking them down and adding my head to those of their victims. My sisters fainted; the poltroons of the lodging-house overwhelmed me with reproaches. The murderers, who were being pursued, had not time to break into the house, and passed on. Those heads, and others which I saw soon afterwards, changed my political tendencies; I held the banquets of cannibals in abhorrence, and the idea of leaving France for some distant country began to take root in my mind.

*

Recalled to office on the 25th of July, installed and received with festivities, M. Necker, the third successor, after Calonne and Taboureau[347], of Turgot[348], was soon left behind by events, and lapsed into unpopularity. It is one of the singular facts of the time that so serious a person should have been raised to the post of minister through the tact of a man noted for such mediocrity and levity as the Marquis de Pezay[349]. The _Compte rendu_[350], which replaced in France the system of taxation by that of loans, stirred people's ideas: women talked of receipts and expenditure; for the first time one saw, or thought one saw, something in the mechanism of figures. These calculations, painted in colours laid on _à la Thomas_[351], had first established the reputation of the director-general of finance. The banker was a clever accountant, but a resourceless economist; a noble but turgid writer; an honest man, but devoid of the loftier virtues. He was like the character which speaks the prologue in a classical play, and which disappears at the rise of the curtain, after explaining the piece to the audience. M. Necker was the father of Madame de Staël[352]: his vanity hardly permitted him to believe that his true title to the recollection of posterity lay in the fame achieved by his daughter.

The monarchy was demolished, in imitation of the Bastille, at the evening sitting of the National Assembly on the 4th of August. They who, from hatred of the past, decry the nobility to this day, forget that it was a member of that body, the Vicomte de Noailles[353], supported by the Duc d'Aiguillon[354] and Matthieu de Montmorency[355], who upset the edifice which was the object of the revolutionary onslaughts. Upon the motion of the feudal delegate were abolished all feudal rights: rights of hunting and preserving feathered and ground game, tithes and champerty, the privileges of the orders, of the towns and provinces, personal servitude, manorial jurisdiction, purchase of offices. The severest blows struck against the ancient constitution of the State were delivered by noblemen. The patricians began the Revolution, the plebeians completed it: just as old France owed her glory to the French nobility, even so does young France owe to it her liberty, if liberty there be for France.

[Sidenote: "Ô Richard! Ô mon Roi!"]

The troops encamped around Paris had been sent away, and by one of those contradictory counsels which vexed the will of the King, the Flanders Regiment was summoned to Versailles. The Bodyguards invited the officers of that regiment to dinner[356]; heads grew excited; the Queen appeared in the middle of the banquet, with the Dauphin; toasts were drunk to the health of the Royal Family; the King came in his turn; the military band played the touching and favourite air, "_Ô Richard! ô mon roi[357]!_" No sooner was this news spread through Paris, than it was seized upon by the opposite opinion; people cried that Louis was refusing his sanction to the Declaration of Rights with the intention of escaping to Metz with the Comte d'Estaing[358]. Marat propagated this rumour: he was already writing the _Ami du peuple_[359].

The 5th of October arrived. I did not witness the events of that day. The accounts of what had occurred reached the Capital early on the 6th. We were told at the same time to expect a visit from the King. I was as bold in public places as I was timid in drawing-rooms: I felt myself made for solitude or the forum. I hastened to the Champs-Élysées: first appeared guns, upon which harpies, thieves' doxies, women of the town rode astride, uttering the most obscene speeches, making the most filthy gestures. Next, surrounded by a horde of people of every age and sex, marched on foot the Bodyguards, who had exchanged hats, swords, and bandoliers with the National Guards: each of their horses carried two or three fish-fags, dirty bacchantes, drunk and indecently clad. After them came the deputation from the National Assembly; the royal carriages followed, rolling in the dusty darkness of a forest of pikes and bayonets. Tattered rag-men, butchers with their blood-stained aprons hanging from their thighs, their bare knives from their belts, their shirtsleeves turned up, walked beside the carriage-doors; other sinister guards had climbed upon the roof; others hung on to the foot-board, lolled upon the box. They fired muskets and pistols; they cried:

"Here are the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy!"

By way of oriflamme, they carried before the descendant of St. Louis, in mid-air, upraised on Swiss halberts, the heads of two Bodyguards, powdered and curled by a Sèvres hair-dresser.

[Sidenote: The King brought to Paris.]

Bailly the astronomer told Louis XVI. at the Hôtel de Ville that the "humane, respectful and faithful" people had "conquered" its King, and the King on his side, "greatly touched and greatly pleased," declared that he had come to Paris "of his free will:" unworthy insincerities pertaining to the violence and fear which at that time dishonoured all men and all parties. Louis XVI. was not insincere: he was weak; weakness is not an insincerity, but it takes its place and fulfills its functions: the respect with which the virtues and misfortunes of the sainted and martyred King must needs inspire us render any expression of human judgment almost sacrilegious.

*

The deputies left Versailles and held their first sitting on the 19th of October in one of the halls of the archbishop's palace. On the 9th of November they moved into the Riding-hall, near the Tuileries. The remainder of the year 1789 witnessed the decrees which despoiled the clergy, destroyed the old magistracy, and created the _assignats_[360]; the resolution of the Commune of Paris in favour of the first committee of research; and the order of the judges for the prosecution of the Marquis de Favras[361].

The Constituent Assembly, in spite of all with which it can be reproached, remains nevertheless the most illustrious popular assemblage that has ever appeared among the nations of the world, both because of the magnitude of its transactions' and the immensity of their results. There is no political question, however lofty, which it did not discuss and suitably solve. What would it not have been, had it kept to the _cahiers_[362] of the States-General and not endeavoured to go beyond them! All that human experience and intelligence had conceived, discovered and elaborated during three centuries is to be found in these instructions. The various abuses of the old monarchy are there pointed out and remedies proposed; every kind of liberty is claimed, even the liberty of the press; every form of improvement demanded for industries, manufactures, commerce, public roads, the army, taxation, finance, the schools, public education, and the rest. We have passed across abysses of crime and accumulations of glory to no profit; the Republic and the Empire have served no purpose: the Empire merely regulated the brute force of the arms which the Republic had set in motion; it has left us centralization, a vigorous form of administration which I consider an evil, but which alone, perhaps, was able to replace the local systems of administration at a time when these were destroyed, and when anarchy combined with ignorance filled all men's heads. With that exception, we have not moved a step forward since the Constituent Assembly: its labours are like those of the great physician of antiquity, which at the same time extended and settled the boundaries of science. Let us speak of some of the members of this Assembly, and in particular of Mirabeau, in whom they are all summed up, by whom they are all governed.

*

Connected, thanks to the disorders and the chances of his life, with the greatest events and with the lives of malefactors, ravishers, and adventurers, Mirabeau, the tribune of the aristocracy, the deputy of the democracy, had in his composition something of Gracchus and Don Juan, of Catiline and Guzman de Alfarache, of the Cardinal de Richelieu and the Cardinal de Retz, of the _roué_ of the Regency and the savage of the Revolution: moreover he had something of the Mirabeaus, the exiled Florentine family, which retained a trace of those armed palaces and of those great factionists celebrated by Dante; the naturalized French family, in which the republican spirit of the Italian middle-ages and the feudal spirit of our own middle-ages were united in a succession of uncommon men.

Mirabeau's ugliness, laid on over the substratum of beauty special to his race, produced a sort of powerful figure from the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, the fellow-countryman of the Arrighettis[363]. The scars dug into the orator's face by the small-pox had rather the semblance of gaps left by the fire. Nature seemed to have moulded his head for empire or the gallows, and to have hewn his arms to clasp a nation or carry off a woman. When he shook his mane as he looked at the mob, he stopped it; when he raised his paw and showed his claws, the plebs ran furiously. I have seen him in the tribune, amid the awful disorder of a sitting, sombre, ugly and motionless: he reminded one of Milton's Chaos, shapeless and impassive in the centre of his own confusion.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Mirabeau.]

Mirabeau took after his father[364] and his uncle[365], both of whom, like Saint-Simon[366], wrote, off-hand, pages that became immortal. Speeches were written for him to deliver from the tribune: he took from them what his mind was able to amalgamate with its own substance. If he adopted them in their entirety, he delivered them badly; his hearers perceived that they were not his own, through words which he inserted at random and which betrayed him. He derived his energy from his vices; those vices did not spring from a chilly temperament, but were supported by deep, burning, tempestuous passions. Cynicism of manners, by annihilating the moral sense, brings back into society a sort of barbarians; these barbarians of civilisation, while equipped for destruction, like the Goths, have not their power of creating: the latter were the enormous children of a virgin nature, the former are the monstrous abortions of a nature that is depraved.

I twice met Mirabeau at a banquet, once at the house of Voltaire's niece, the Marquise de Villette[367], and on another occasion at the Palais-Royal, with some members of the Opposition to whom Chapelier[368] had introduced me: Chapelier went to the scaffold in the same tumbril with my brother and M. de Malesherbes.

Mirabeau talked much, and, above all, much of himself. This lion's whelp, himself a lion with a chimera's head, this man so positive where facts were concerned, was all romance, all poetry, all enthusiasm in imagination and language: one recognized the lover of Sophie[369], exalted in sentiment, capable of sacrifice.

"I discovered her," he said, "that adorable woman.... I knew what her soul was, that soul shaped by nature's hands in a moment of magnificence."

Mirabeau delighted me with stories of love, with desires for retirement, among which he interspersed barren discussions. He interested me, moreover, in another direction: like myself, he had been treated sternly by his father, who, like mine, had kept up the inflexible tradition of absolute paternal authority.

My great table-companion enlarged upon foreign politics, and hardly spoke of politics at home, although it was the latter which occupied him; but he let fall a few words of sovereign contempt for those men who proclaim themselves superior by reason of the indifference which they affect for misfortunes and crimes. Mirabeau was by nature generous, sensible to friendship, ready to forgive injuries. Notwithstanding his immorality, he had not been able to warp his conscience; he was only corrupt for himself: his firm and upright mind did not treat murder as a sublime effort of the intelligence; he had no sort of admiration for the sewer or the slaughter-house.

Nevertheless, Mirabeau was not wanting in arrogance; he was an outrageous boaster; although he had become a cloth-merchant in order to be elected by the Third Estate (the order of the nobility having committed the honourable folly of rejecting him), he was in love with his birth: "a refractory hawk," says his father, "whose nest was laid among four towers." He did not forget that he had figured at Court, ridden in the coaches, and hunted with the King. He insisted upon being addressed by his title of count; he adhered to his colours, and put his servants into livery when every one else ceased to do so. In and out of season, he referred to "his kinsman," Admiral de Coligny. The _Moniteur_ having spoken of him as Riquet[370]:

"Are you aware," he said angrily to the journalist, "that with your 'Riquet' you have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days?"

He repeated that impudent and well-known jest:

"In any other family, my brother the viscount would be the wit and the worthless fellow; in my family, he is the fool and the good man."

Some biographers ascribe the phrase to the viscount, comparing himself humbly with the other members of the family.

The ground-work of Mirabeau's opinions was monarchical; he once uttered these fine words:

"I have tried to cure the French of the superstition of monarchy and to substitute its cult."

In a letter intended to be laid before Louis XVI. he wrote:

"I should not like to have worked only for a vast destruction." This, nevertheless, is what happened to him: Heaven, to punish us for making a bad use of our talents, gives us occasion to repent of our successes.

[Sidenote: Mirabeau's power.]

Mirabeau moved public opinion with two levers: on the one side, he placed his fulcrum in the masses, of whom he had constituted himself the defender, while despising them; on the other, although he was a traitor to his order, he retained its sympathy through caste affinity and common interest. This would not happen to a plebeian who should become the champion of the privileged classes: he would be abandoned by his own party, without winning over the aristocracy, which is naturally ungrateful and not to be won by those not born within its ranks. The aristocracy, moreover, is not able to make a noble without notice, since nobility is the daughter of time.

Mirabeau created a school. Men imagined that by shaking off the moral shackles they were turning themselves into statesmen. These imitations produced only petty miscreants: this one who flatters himself that he is corrupt and a robber is only debauched and a cheat; that other who thinks himself vicious is only vile; a third who boasts of being a criminal is merely infamous.

Too early for himself, too late for the Court, Mirabeau sold himself to the Court, and the Court bought him. He staked his reputation for a pension and an embassy: Cromwell was on the verge of bartering his future for a title and the Order of the Garter. Notwithstanding his haughtiness, Mirabeau did not rate himself high enough. Nowadays, when the abundance of cash and places has raised the price of consciences, there is not a street-boy but costs hundreds of thousands of francs and the leading honours of the State to buy. The grave released Mirabeau from his promises, and shielded him from the perils which he would probably not have been able to conquer: his life would have shown his weakness in good; his death left him in possession of his strength in evil.

At the end of dinner, the discussion turned upon Mirabeau's enemies; I found myself by his side and had not spoken a word. He looked me in the face with his eyes of pride, vice and genius, and laying his hand upon my shoulder, said:

"They will never forgive me my superiority!"

I still feel the pressure of that hand, as though Satan had touched me with his fiery claw. When Mirabeau fixed his look upon a young mute, had he a presentiment of my future condition? Did he think that he would one day figure in my recollections? I was destined to become the historian of great personages: they have defiled before me without my hanging to their mantles to make them drag me with them to posterity.

Mirabeau has already undergone the metamorphosis which is wrought in those whose memory is destined to survive: carried from the Pantheon to the sewer, and back from the sewer to the Pantheon, he has raised himself to the full height of that time which today forms his pedestal. We no longer behold the real Mirabeau, but the idealized Mirabeau, the Mirabeau as the painters depict him, in order to make him the symbol or the myth of the period which he represents: he thus becomes both more false and more true. From among so many reputations, so many actors, so many events, so many ruins, there will remain but three men, attached to each of the three great revolutionary epochs: Mirabeau for the aristocracy, Robespierre for the democracy, Bonaparte for the despotism; the monarchy has none: France has paid dear for three reputations which virtue is unable to acknowledge!

*

The sittings of the National Assembly offered a spectacle of an interest which our "Chambers" are far from approaching. One rose early to find room in the crowded galleries. The deputies arrived eating, talking, gesticulating; they formed groups in the various parts of the house, according to their opinions. The orders of the day were read; after that, the subject agreed upon was set forth, or else an extraordinary motion. There was no question of any insipid point of law; rarely did some scheme of destruction fail to form part of the proceedings. The members spoke for or against; each spoke extempore as best he could. The debates grew stormy; the galleries joined in the discussion, applauded and cheered, hissed and hooted the speakers. The president rang his bell, the deputies apostrophized each other from bench to bench. Mirabeau the Younger[371] took his competitor by the collar; Mirabeau the Elder cried:

"Silence, the 'thirty votes'!"

One day I was seated behind the royalist opposition; before me was a Dauphiné nobleman, swarthy of visage, short of stature, who jumped upon his seat with rage and said to his friends:

"Let us fall upon those ragamuffins, sword in hand!"

He pointed in the direction of the majority. The ladies of the markets, who sat knitting in the galleries, heard him, rose from their seats, and all cried at once, their stockings in their hands, and foaming at the mouth:

"To the lantern with them!"

The Vicomte de Mirabeau, Lautrec[372], and some younger nobles proposed to take the galleries by assault.

Soon this tumult was drowned by another: petitioners, armed with pikes, appeared at the bar:

"The people are starving," they said: "it is time to take measures against the aristocrats and to rise 'to the level of the situation.'"

The president assured these citizens of his respect:

"We have our eye upon the traitors," he replied, "and the Assembly will see justice done."

[Sidenote: The National Assembly.]

Thereupon a fresh din; the deputies of the Right cried that they were making for anarchy; the deputies of the Left replied that the people was free to express its will, that it had the right to complain of the abettors of despotism, seated in the very midst of the national representatives: they spoke thus of their colleagues to that sovereign people which was waiting for them under the street lamps.

The evening sittings surpassed the morning sittings in scandalousness: people speak better and more boldly by candlelight. At such times the Riding-hall became a veritable playhouse, in which was enacted one of the greatest tragedies in the world. The leading characters still belonged to the old order of things: their terrible substitutes, hidden behind them, spoke little or not at all. At the end of a violent discussion, I saw a common-looking deputy ascend the tribune, a man with a grey and impassive face, his hair neatly dressed, decently clad like the steward in a good house, or like a village attorney careful of his appearance. He read a long and tedious report; he was not listened to; I asked his name: it was Robespierre[373]. The men in leathern shoes were ready to leave the drawing-rooms, and already the wooden shoes were kicking at the door.

*

When, before the Revolution, I read the history of public disturbances among various nations, I could not conceive how it was possible to live in those times; I was surprised that Montaigne was able to write with such spirit in a castle which he could not go round without running the risk of being taken prisoner by bands of Leaguers or Protestants[374].

The Revolution made me understand the possibility of existence under such conditions. Moments of crisis produce a reduplication of life in men. In a society which is dissolving and Recomposing itself, the struggle of two geniuses, the clash of the past and the future, the mixture of old manners and new manners form a transient combination which does not leave a moment for weariness. Passions and characters, when at liberty, display themselves with an energy which they do not possess in the well-regulated State. The breaches of the laws, the emancipation from duties, social usages, and seemly manners, the very dangers, all add to the interest of this disorder. The human race making holiday perambulates the streets, having got rid of its schoolmasters and returned for a moment to a state of nature, and does not begin again to feel the need of social restraint until it bears the yoke of the new tyrants engendered by license.

[Sidenote: The theatres.]

I cannot better depict society in 1789 and 1790 than by comparing it with the architecture of the time of Louis XII. and François I., when the Greek orders began to be grafted upon the Gothic style, or rather by likening it to the collection of ruins and tombs of all ages heaped pell-mell, after the Terror, in the cloisters of the Petits-Augustins: only, the ruins of which I speak were alive and constantly changing. In every corner of Paris were literary sets, political societies, and spectacles; future celebrities wandered unrecognized in the crowd, like the souls on the shore of Lethe, before enjoying the light. I saw Marshal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr[375], play a part in Beaumarchais' _Mère Coupable_[376] at the Théâtre du Marais. One went from the Club des Feuillants to the Club des Jacobins, from the public ball-rooms and gaming-houses to the meetings in the Palais-Royal, from the gallery of the National Assembly to the gallery in the open air. The streets were filled with popular deputations, cavalry pickets, infantry patrols passing to and fro. Behind a man in a French coat, with powdered hair, a sword, a hat carried under his arm, pumps and silk stockings, walked a man wearing his hair short and without powder, an English frock and an American neck-cloth. At the theatres the actors gave out the news; the pit shouted patriotic ditties. Topical pieces drew crowds: an Abbé appeared upon the stage; the audience cried, "Jack-priest! Jack-priest!" and the Abbé answered:

"Gentlemen, long live the nation!"

People trooped to hear Mandini and his wife, Viganoni and Rovedino[377], sing at the _Opera Buffa_ after hearing _Ça ira_ roared in the streets; they went to admire Madame Dugazon[378], Madame Saint-Aubin[379], Carline[380], little Olivier[381], Mademoiselle Contat, Molé, Fleury, Talma at the commencement of his career, after seeing Favras hanged.

The walks on the Boulevard du Temple and the Boulevard des Italiens, or de Coblentz, the paths of the Tuileries Gardens were inundated with smartly dressed women: three young daughters of Grétry's[382] shone there, white and pink as their costumes; they soon died, all three.

"She fell asleep for ever," said Grétry, speaking of his eldest daughter, "seated on my knees, as beautiful as in life."

A multitude of carriages ploughed across the muddy spaces in which the sans-culottes plodded on foot, and one saw the beautiful Madame de Buffon[383] sitting alone in a phaeton belonging to the Duc d'Orléans, waiting at the door of some club.

All that was elegant and in good taste in aristocratic society met at the Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld[384], at the _soirées_ of Mesdames de Poix, d'Hénin, de Simiane, de Vaudreuil, in the few _salons_ that remained open of the upper magisterial circle. At M. Necker's, at M. le Comte de Montmorin's, at the houses of the different ministers gathered (in addition to Madame de Staël, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, Mesdames de Beaumont[385] and de Sérilly[386]) all the new lights of France and all the liberties of the new manners. The shoemaker knelt to take the measure of your foot in the uniform of an officer of the National Guard; the monk who on Friday trailed his white or black gown along the ground appeared on Sunday in a round hat and a lay coat; the shorn Capuchin read the paper in the public-house, and in the midst of a circle of frivolous women, a nun appeared gravely seated: it was an aunt or a sister turned out of her monastery. The crowd visited these convents thrown open to the world like the travellers who, at Grenada, wander through the deserted halls of the Alhambra, or, at Tivoli, linger beneath the columns of the Sibyl's temple.

For the rest, many duels and love-affairs, prison attachments and political friendships, mysterious meetings among ruins, under a tranquil sky, amid nature's peace and poetry; silent, remote, solitary walks, mingled with undying oaths and indefinable affections, to the dull tumult of a fleeing world, to the distant noise of a crumbling society, which threatened in its fall to crush the happiness set at the foot of events. Those who had lost sight of each other for twenty-four hours were not sure of ever meeting again. Some went the revolutionary way; others contemplated civil war; others set out for Ohio, sending ahead plans for country-houses to be built among the savages; others went to join the Princes: all this cheerfully, often without a sou in their pockets, the Royalists declaring that the thing would come to an end one of these mornings by a decree of Parliament, the patriots, quite as airy in their hopes, foretelling the reign of peace and happiness together with that of liberty. People sang:

La sainte chandelle d'Arras, Le flambeau de la Provence, S'ils ne nous éclairent pas, Mettent le feu dans la France; On ne peut pas les toucher, Mais on espère les moucher[387].

And that was how people spoke of Robespierre and Mirabeau!

"It is as little within the power of any earthly faculty," wrote L'Éstoile[388], "to keep the French people from talking as to hide the sun in the ground or bury it in a hole."

The Palace of the Tuileries, a great gaol filled with sentenced prisoners, rose erect amid these festivals of destruction. The condemned themselves made merry while waiting for the "cart," the "shears," and the "red shirt" which had been put out to dry; and through the windows one saw the dazzling illuminations of the Queen's circle.

[Sidenote: The newspapers.]

Pamphlets and newspapers swarmed in thousands; the satires and poems, the songs of the _Actes des Apôtres_[389] replied to the _Ami du peuple_, or to the _Modérateur_[390] of the Club Monarchien, edited by Fontanes; Mallet Du Pan[391], on the political side of the _Mercure_, was in opposition to La Harpe and Chamfort on the literary side of the same journal. Champcenetz[392], the Marquis de Bonnay, Rivarol[393], Mirabeau the Younger (the Holbein of the sword, who levied on the Rhine the legion of the Hussars of Death), Honoré Mirabeau the Elder amused themselves by drawing caricatures at dinner and composing the _Petit almanach des grands hommes_: Honoré would subsequently go off to move martial law or the seizure of the property of the clergy. He spent the night at Madame Le Jay's[394], after declaring that he would not leave the National Assembly unless driven out at the point of the bayonet. Égalité consulted the devil in the Montrouge stone-quarries, and returned to the Jardin de Monceau to preside over the orgies prepared by Laclos[395]. The future regicide proved himself worthy of his race: he was twice prostituted; debauchery handed him over exhausted to ambition. Lauzun[396], already worn out, supped in his pleasure-house at the Barrière du Maine with dancers from the Opera, caressed indifferently by Messrs. de Noailles, de Dillon[397], de Choiseul, de Talleyrand[398] and other elegants of the time, of whom two or three mummies still survive.

The majority of the courtiers celebrated for their immorality at the end of the reign of Louis XV., and during the reign of Louis XVI., were enlisted under the tricolour banner: almost all of them had been through the American war and had besmirched their ribbons with the Republican colours. The Revolution employed them so long as it remained at a middling height; they even became the first generals of its armies. The Duc de Lauzun, the romantic lover of the Princess Czartoriska, the woman-hunter of the high-road, the Lovelace who "had" this one and then "had" that one, in the chaste and noble cant of the Court; the Duc de Lauzun, becoming Duc de Biron, and commanding the forces of the Convention in the Vendée: the pity of it! The Baron de Besenval[399], the lying and cynical revealer of the corruption of the upper classes, the fly on the wheel of the puerilities of the expiring old monarchy; that ponderous baron, compromised in the affair of the Bastille, and saved by M. Necker and Mirabeau only because he was a Swiss: the disgrace of it! What had such men to do with such events? When the Revolution had attained its full height, it scornfully abandoned these frivolous apostates from the throne: it had needed their vices, it now needed their heads; it disdained no blood, not even that of the Du Barry[400].

*

The year 1790 brought to completion the measures outlined by the year 1789. The property of the Church, first placed in the hands of the nation, was confiscated, the civil constitution of the clergy decreed, the nobility abolished.

[Sidenote: The Federation of July.]

I did not attend the Federation of July 1790: a somewhat serious illness made me keep my bed; but before that I had been much amused by the sight of the wheel-barrows on the Champ de Mars. Madame de Staël has written a wonderful description of that scene[401]. I shall always regret not to have seen M. de Talleyrand say Mass, served by the Abbé Louis[402], as I regret not to have seen him, sword at side, give audience to the Ambassador of the Grand Turk.

Mirabeau forfeited his popularity in the year 1790; his relations with the Court were obvious. M. Necker resigned office and withdrew into private life, none caring to restrain him[403]. Mesdames, the King's aunts, left for Rome with a passport from the National Assembly[404]. The Duc d'Orléans returned from England and declared himself the King's most humble and most obedient servant. Societies of Friends of the Constitution multiplied upon the soil and connected themselves with the parent society, receiving its suggestions and executing its orders.

Public life met with a favourable disposition in my character: I was attracted by what happened in public, because, in the crowd, I beheld my loneliness and had no occasion to combat my shyness. Nevertheless, the salons, sharing as they did in the universal agitation, had become a little less foreign to my mood, and I had made new acquaintances in spite of myself.

The Marquise de Villette I had met casually. Her husband[405], who bore a slandered reputation, wrote with Monsieur, the King's brother, in the _Journal de Paris._ Madame de Villette, still charming, lost a daughter of sixteen, more charming than her mother, upon whom the Chevalier de Parny wrote some verses worthy of the Anthology[406].

My regiment, which was in garrison at Rouen, preserved its discipline pretty late. It had an encounter with the mob on the subject of the execution of the actor Bordier[407], who underwent the last sentence pronounced by the parliamentary power; hanged one day, he would have been a hero the next, had he lived twenty-four hours longer. But at last the insurrection showed itself among the soldiers of the Navarre Regiment. The Marquis de Mortemart emigrated; his officers followed him. I had neither adopted nor rejected the new opinions; I was as little disposed to attack as to serve them, was unwilling either to emigrate or to continue in the military career, and I resigned my commission.

Freed from all bonds, I had, on the one side, somewhat animated discussions with my brother and the President de Rosanbo; on the other, discussions no less embittered with Ginguené, La Harpe, and Chamfort. From my early youth, my political impartiality pleased nobody. Besides, I attached importance to the questions then raised only through general ideas concerning the liberty and dignity of the human race; personal politics bored me; my real life lay in higher regions.

The streets of Paris, blocked with people night and day, were no longer suited to my lounging inclinations. To recover the desert, I took refuge in the theatre: I ensconced myself at the back of a box and allowed my thoughts to wander to the sound of Racine's[408] verses, Sacchini's[409] music, or the Opera ballets. I must have had the courage to see _Barbe-bleue_[410] and the _Sabot perdu_[411] twenty times in succession at the Italiens, courting tedium in order to dispel it, like an owl in a hole in a wall; while the monarchy fell, I heard neither the cracking of the venerable vaults nor the screeching of the vaudeville, neither Mirabeau's voice thundering in the tribune nor Colin's singing to Babet on the stage:

Qu'il pleuve, qu'il vente ou qu'il neige, Quand la nuit est longue, ou l'abrège[412].

Madame Ginguené sometimes sent M. Monet, the director of mines, and his young daughter to disturb my unsociable mood: Mademoiselle Monet took her seat in the front of the box; I sat, half pleased, half grumbling, behind her. I do not know whether she attracted me, whether I liked her; but I was very much afraid of her. When she was gone, I regretted her, while rejoicing at no longer seeing her. Still, I sometimes went, with the perspiration standing on my brow, to fetch her for a walk: I gave her my arm, and I believe I pressed hers a little.

One idea governed me, the idea of going to the United States: a useful object was wanting for my voyage; I proposed, as I have said in the Memoirs and in several of my works, to discover the North-West Passage. This plan was not out of keeping with my poetic nature. No one troubled himself about me; I was at that time, like Bonaparte, a slim sub-lieutenant, entirely unknown; both of us emerged from obscurity at the same period, I to seek renown in solitude, he to seek glory among mankind. I had not attached myself to any woman, and my sylph still possessed my imagination. I placed before myself the bliss of realizing my fantastic wanderings in her company in the forests of the New World. Through the influence of a new manifestation of nature, my flower of love, my nameless phantom of the woods of Armorica, grew into _Atala_ beneath the shady groves of Florida.

[Sidenote: The North-West passage.]

M. de Malesherbes excited me on the subject of this voyage. I went to see him in the mornings: we sat, with our noses glued to maps; we compared the different plans of the Arctic Circle; we calculated the distances between Behring's Straits and the furthermost part of Hudson's Bay; we read the different narratives of the travellers and navigators, English, Dutch, French, Russian, Swedish, Danish; we enquired into the roads to be followed on land to reach the shores of the Polar Sea; we discussed the difficulties to be overcome, the precautions to be taken against the rigours of the climate, the attacks of wild animals, the scarcity of food. This illustrious man said to me:

"If I were younger, I would go with you, I would spare myself the sight of all the crimes, meannesses and madnesses which I see about me. But, at my age, a man must die where he stands. Do not fail to write to me by every ship, to keep me informed of your progress and your discoveries: I will commend them to the ministers. It is a great pity that you know no botany."

After these conversations, I would peruse Tournefort[413], Duhamel[414], Bernard de Jussieu[415], Grew[416], Jacquin, Rousseau's[417] Dictionary, the _Flores élementaires_; I ran to the Jardin du Roi, and before long thought myself a very Linnæus[418].

At last, in January 1791, I seriously made up my mind. The chaos was increasing: it was sufficient to bear an "aristocratic" name to be exposed to persecution: the more moderate and conscientious your opinions the more were you liable to suspicion and annoyance. I therefore resolved to strike my tents: I left my brother and my sisters in Paris, and made for Brittany.

At Fougères I met the Marquis de La Rouërie: I asked him to give me a letter for General Washington[419]. "Colonel Armand" (the name by which the marquis was known in America) had distinguished himself in the American War of Independence. He made himself famous in France through the royalist conspiracy which made such touching victims in the Desilles[420] family. He having died while organizing this conspiracy, his body was disinterred and recognized, and caused the misfortune of his hosts and of his friends. The rival of La Fayette and Lauzun, the predecessor of La Rochejacquelein, the Marquis de La Rouërie was a more spirited person than they: he had fought oftener than the first; he had carried off opera-singers like the second; he would have become the companion in arms of the third. He swept the woods in Brittany in company with an American major[421], and with a monkey seated on his horse's crupper. The Rennes law-students loved him for his boldness of action and his liberty of ideas: he had been one of the twelve Breton nobles sent to the Bastille. His figure and manners were elegant, his appearance smart, his features charming, and he resembled the portraits of the young lords of the League.

[Sidenote: I embark for America.]

I selected Saint-Malo as my port of embarkation, in order to embrace my mother. I have told you in the third book of these Memoirs how I passed through Combourg and of the sentiments that oppressed me. I stayed two months at Saint-Malo, busying myself with preparations for my departure, as I had done before, when I was thinking of departing for the Indies.

I struck a bargain with a captain called Dujardin[422], who was to carry to Baltimore the Abbé Nagault[423], superior of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, and several seminarists under the conduct of their head. These travelling companions would have been more to my liking four years earlier: from being a zealous Christian I had become "a man of strong mind[424]," in other words a man of weak mind. This change in my religious opinions had been brought about by reading philosophical books. I believed in good faith that a religious mind was in part paralyzed, that there existed truths which it was unable to comprehend, superior though it might be in other respects. This blessed pride imposed upon me; I inferred in the religious mind that very absence of a faculty which exists precisely in the philosophic mind: the narrow intelligence thinks that it sees everything because it keeps its eyes open; the superior intelligence consents to close its eyes, because it sees everything within. Lastly, one thing finished me: the groundless despair which I carried at the bottom of my heart.

A letter from my brother has fixed the date of my departure in my memory: he wrote to my mother from Paris, informing her of the death of Mirabeau[425]. Three days after the arrival of this letter, I joined the ship lying in the roads[426]; my luggage was already on board. The anchor was weighed, a solemn moment with mariners. The sun was setting when the coasting pilot left us, after putting us through the channels. The weather was overcast, the wind slack, and the swell beat heavily upon the rocks at a few cables' length from our vessel.

My eyes remained fixed upon Saint-Malo, where I had left my mother in tears. I saw the steeples and domes of the churches where I had prayed with Lucile, the walls, the ramparts, the forts, the towers, the beach where I had spent my childhood with Gesril and my other play-fellows; I was abandoning my distracted country at the moment when she had lost a man who could never be replaced. I was going away in equal uncertainty as to my country's destinies and my own: which of us was to perish, France or I? Should I ever see France and my family again?

With nightfall came a calm which kept us lying at the mouth of the roads; the lights of the town and the beacons were kindled: those lights which twinkled beneath my paternal roof seemed at once to smile to me and bid me farewell, while lighting me amid the rocks, the darkness of the night, and the blackness of the waves.

I carried with me only my youth and my illusions: I was deserting a world whose dust I had trod and whose stars I had counted for a world of which the soil and the sky were both unknown to me. What was to become of me if I attained the object of my voyage? While I roamed upon the polar shores, the years of discord which have crushed so many generations with so loud a noise would have fallen silently over my head; society would have renewed its aspect in my absence. It is probable that I should never have had the misfortune to write; my name would have remained unknown, or would have won only a peaceful renown of the kind which is less than glory, which is scorned by envy and left to happiness. Who knows whether I would have recrossed the Atlantic, whether I would not have settled down among the solitudes explored and discovered at my peril and risk, like a conqueror in the midst of his conquests!

[Sidenote: We set sail.]

But no, I was to return to my native land, there to undergo altered miseries, to become something quite different from what I had been! The sea in whose lap I was born was about to become the cradle of my second life; she bore me upon my first voyage as though in the bosom of my foster-mother, in the arms of the confidant of my first tears and my first pleasures.

The ebb-tide, in the absence of the wind, carried us out to sea; the lights of the shore grew smaller and smaller, and disappeared. Exhausted with my reflections, with vague regrets, with even vaguer hopes, I went below to my cabin: I lay down to rest, rocked in my hammock to the sound of the billows which caressed the side of the vessel. The wind rose; the unfurled sails, which hung flapping about the masts, filled out, and when, next morning, I went up on deck, the land of France was out of sight.

Here toy destinies changed: "Again to sea!" as Byron sings.

[218] This book was written in Paris between June and December 1821, and revised in December 1846.--T.

[219] The _Moniteur_ of Sunday 29 April 1821 contains the following, under the heading, Paris, 28 April: "M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, French Minister Plenipotentiary in Berlin, arrived in Paris on the day before yesterday." The Duc de Bordeaux was christened at Notre-Dame on the 1st of May 1821.--B.

[220] Villèle left the Cabinet on the 27th of July 1821; Chateaubriand resigned his ambassadorship on the 31st of July.--B.

[221] Marigny has greatly changed since my sister occupied it. It has been sold and now belongs to Messieurs de Pommereul, who nave rebuilt it and much improved it.--_Author's Note._

[222] Antoine Auguste Bruzen de Lamartinière (1662-1746), compiler of the _Dictionnaire géographique, historique et critique._ He was born and spent his youth at Dieppe, and was the nephew of Richard Simon (_vide infra_).--T.

[223] Richard Simon (1638-1712), an early Rationalist, author of a number of works on the Old and New Testaments, which were promptly condemned by the Holy See.--T.

[224] Jean Pecquet (1610-1674), discoverer of the chyle reservoir or _réservoir de Pecquet._--T.

[225] See Madame de Sévigné's letters of 22 December 1664, January 1665, 19 November 1670, and 11 July 1672.--B.

[226] The district of Caux, in Upper Normandy, which includes Dieppe, is noted for the beauty of its women and the singularity of their head-dresses.--T.

[227] Renée Élisabeth de La Belinaye (1728-1816), eldest daughter of Armand Magdelon Comte de La Belinaye, and sister of Thérèse de La Belinaye who married Anne Joseph Jacques Tuffin de La Rouërie, and was the mother of the Marquis Armand de La Rouërie, the famous conspirator.--B.

[228] Jean Baptiste Isoard (1743-1816), known as Delisle de Sales, and nicknamed Diderot's Ape. Nevertheless, and although certain of his philosophical treatises were indicted and burned, he fought against Atheism and Materialism. His works ran into scores of volumes and made no mark whatever.--T.

[229] Or "villas," as we should say nowadays.--T.

[230] Claude Marie Louis Emmanuel Carbon de Flins des Oliviers (1757-1806) edited the _Journal de la Ville et des Provinces, ou le Modérateur_ with Fontanes, and produced, not without success, a number of comedies in verse.--B.

[231] Jean Baptiste Britard (1721-1791), known as Brizard, a well-known player of heavy fathers and kings. He retired on the 1st of April 1786.--B.

[232] François Joseph Talma (1763-1826) made his first appearance in 1787, and is regarded as the greatest actor of his day. Napoleon Bonaparte admitted him to his intimacy, and twice paid his debts. He had been educated in England, knew English perfectly, and played in London on more than one occasion.--T.

[233] Jean Mauduit de Larive (1749-1827) held the stage at the Français until eclipsed by Talma, when he retired and opened a school of declamation. He accompanied Joseph Bonaparte to Naples as reader in 1806, and built the hamlet of Larive on his property at Montlignon, near Montmorency.--T.

[234] Joseph Abraham Bénard (1750-1822), known as Fleury, a very popular light-comedy actor.--T.

[235] François René Molet (1734-1802), known as Molé, another player of light-comedy parts, principally those then known as fats and _petits-maîtres_: fops and dandies. He was an active member of the Comédie Française for forty-two years, from 1760 to the day of his death.--T.

[236] Henri Gourgaud (1714-1809), known as Dugazon, played comic men-servants' parts. He was the brother of Madame Vestris, the tragic actress.--T.

[237] Jean Baptiste Fouchard de Grandménil (1737-1816) gave up the bar for the stage. He excelled in _rôles à manteaux_ or mysterious strangers' parts. He was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and professor at the Conservatoire.--T.

[238] Mademoiselle Contat (1760-1813), a very perfect and versatile actress, who created the part of Suzanne in Beaumarchais' _Mariage de Figaro_ in 1784. She married M. de Parny, nephew to the poet.--T.

[239] Mademoiselle Saint-Val the younger. Her elder sister had left the Comédie Française in 1779.--B.

[240] Jeanne Adélaïde Gérardine Olivier (1765-1787), a native of London. A very charming actress; she was scarcely nineteen when she created the part of Chérubin in the _Mariage de Figaro_, achieving a success almost equal to that of Mademoiselle Contat as Suzanne.--B.

[241] Anne Françoise Hippolyte Boutet (1779-1847), known as Mademoiselle Mars, one of the most famous of French comic actresses. She made her first appearance at the Théâtre Montansier when thirteen years of age, in 1792, and did not definitely leave the stage until 1841, when she was sixty-two. She created over one hundred parts at the Théâtre Français alone, which she joined in 1798.--T.

[242] Jacques Marie Boutet (1745-1811), known as Monvel, an exceedingly intelligent actor. He commenced by playing Mold's parts at the Comédie Française, and in later life made a successful heavy father at the Théâtre de la République. He also wrote a number of successful comedies and comic operas, and under the Empire became a professor at the Conservatoire and a Member of the Institute.--T.

Monvel was the father of Mademoiselle Mars by a provincial actress called Marguerite Salvetat, who acted under the name of Madame Mars, whence the daughter took her stage-name.--B.

[243] Now the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.--B.

[244] Parny was born in the Île Bourbon.--T.

[245] I here omit some lines quoted from Parny.--T.

[246] Jacques Necker (1732-1804), Controller-General from 1776 to 1781, 1788 to 1789, and 1789 to 1790.--T.

[247] Ginguené was accredited as Ambassador of the French Republic at Turin in the early part of 1798. By affectation of simplicity, and also doubtless from economy, he caused his wife to be dispensed from appearing at the audiences in Court dress. He did not lose an hour before dispatching a special courier to carry the great piece of news to the Foreign Minister: the Citizeness Ambassadress had appeared in a _pet-en-l'air!_ Within a very few days, Talleyrand had signed Ginguené's recall.--B.

A _pet-en-l'air_ is a very vulgar term for a short morning gown.--T.

[248] The _Décade philosophique_, founded 10 Floréal Year II. (29 April 1794). Ginguené was its editor-in-chief. In 1804, after the Empire had been established, it changed its title to that of _Revue philosophique, littéraire et politique._ It ceased to appear in 1807.--B.

[249] Ponce Denis Escouchard Le Brun (1729-1807), nicknamed the French Pindar, a versatile poet and epigrammatist, who sang by turns, and with equal fervor, the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire. Ginguené edited and published his Collected Works in 1811.--T.

[250] For an account of this "classical supper," see the Recollections of Madame Vigée-Lebrun. Le Brun recited imitations of Anacreon, crowned with Pindar's laurels.--B.

[251] It is true that Le Brun wrote trenchant versus against Bonaparte, but he kept them to himself, and took care to publish those in which he extolled him. Bonaparte awarded him a pension of 6000 francs.--B.

[252] Chamfort was his adopted name. He never knew his real name nor that of his father.--T.

[253] Jacques Delille (1738-1813) translated the _Georgics_, the _Æneid_, and _Paradise Lost_ into French verse. He had a facile talent for versification, and was admitted to the French Academy in 1774. He appears to have been in orders, and undoubtedly for some time held the abbey of Saint-Séverin, but he never followed an ecclesiastical career, and he married after the Revolution.--T.

[254] Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1735-1791) was elected to the Academy in 1787. He commenced life as aide-de-camp to the Marshal de Richelieu in Guyenne. He then became secretary to the Baron de Breteuil, whom he accompanied on his embassy to Russia in 1760. In 1765, having meantime enjoyed a pension of 6000 francs for that purpose, he completed his _Histoire de la révolution de Russie en 1762._ This work, however, could not be published during the lifetime of Catherine II., and it eventually saw the light in 1797, six years after the death of the author. He published some poetry, in addition to the above and other historical works.--T.

[255] The Comtesse d'Egmont was the daughter of the Maréchal de Richelieu, and it was she who urged Rulhière to adopt a literary career.--B.

[256] Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730-1814), author of a number of more or less polemical comedies, poems, and historical works.--T.

[257] Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), author of the _Barbier de Séville_, the _Folle Journée, ou le Manage do Figaro, Tarare_, &c.--T.

[258] Jean François Marmontel (1723-1799), author of the _Contes moraux_ and a large number of miscellaneous and voluminous works.--T.

[259] Marie Joseph de Chénier (1764-1811), the poet, brother of André de Chénier. Chateaubriand succeeded to his chair at the Institute.--T.

[260] Urquhart and Motteux' RABELAIS, Book II. chap. 6: _How Pantagruel met with a Limosin, who affected to speak in learned phrase._--T.

[261] Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), the leading French poet of his day, but also noted for a pedantic affectation of erudition and a barbarous neologism which made Boileau say of him:

Que sa muse en français parla grec et latin.

("That his muse, speaking French, talked in Latin and Greek").--T.

[262] Chateaubriand wrote this page in June 1821; Fontanes had died on the 17th of March previous.--B.

[263] Rosanbo was guillotined on 1 Floréal Year II. (20 April 1794).--B.

[264] These are the four leading magisterial or parliamentary families of France under the Old Order. The Lamoignons produced Guillaume de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris (1658-1677), himself the son of a chief justice; his sons Chrétien François de Lamoignon, a chief justice (1690) and Nicolas Lamoignon de Baville (1648-1724), Counsellor to the Parliament (1670), Master of Requests (1675), and lastly, Intendant of Languedoc; Guillaume de Lamoignon, Seigneur de Malesherbes, Chancellor of France (1750-1768), son of Chrétien François; his son, Chrétien Guillaume de Malesherbes (1721-1794), the famous minister and counsel for Louis XVI. at the King's trial; and Chrétien François Lamoignon (_d._ 1789), Chief Justice of the Parliament of Paris (1758) and Chancellor in 1787, great-grandson of the first Guillaume de Lamoignon. His son, Christian de Lamoignon, was created a peer of France, and died in 1827; in him the family of Lamoignon became extinct. The Molés held chief-justiceships from 1602 to the Revolution. The more remarkable members of the family were Édouard Molé (1558-1641), its founder, son of a counsellor to the Parliament, himself successively a counsellor, Procurator-General, and Chief Justice of the Parliament of Paris (1602); Matthieu Molé (1584-1656), his son, counsellor (1606), Procurator-General (1614), Chief Justice (1641) and Keeper of the Seals (1650); and more recently Matthieu Louis Molé (1781-1855), son of the President Molé de Champlatreux, Minister of Justice under Bonaparte (1813), who created him a count of the Empire, Minister of Marine (1815-1818) under the Restoration, when he became a peer of France, Foreign Minister (1830-1836), and Premier (1836-1839) under Louis Philippe. In 1840 he was elected a member of the French Academy. Of the Séguiers, Pierre Séguier (1504-1580) was an advocate, Advocate-General, and Chief Justice; his son, Antoine Séguier (1552-1626), was a counsellor to the Parliament, Advocate-General, and Ambassador of Henry IV. at Venice; Pierre Séguier (1588-1672), grandson of the first Pierre, was Intendant of Guyenne, Keeper of the Seals (1633), and Chancellor (1635); Antoine Louis Séguier (1726-1791) was Advocate-General to the Grand Council and subsequently to the Parliament (1755-1790) and a member of the French Academy (1757); and his son, Matthieu Séguier (_d._ 1848), was for many years a chief justice. Henri François d'Aguesseau (1688-1751) was the son of an intendant of Limousin, and was Chancellor of France from 1717 to 1718, 1720 to 1722, and 1737 to 1750.--T.

[265] _Cf. inter alia_, the character of the Présidente de Tourvel in Choderlos de Laclos' _Liaisons dangereuses._--T.

[266] This must be a slip of the pen. Malesherbes had only two daughters: Marie Thérèse, born 1756, who married, in 1769, Louis Le Peletier, Seigneur de Rosanbo, and Françoise Pauline, born 1758, who married, in 1775, Charles Philippe Simon de Montboissier-Beaufort-Canillac, commanding the Orléans Regiment of Dragoons.--B.

[267] The President de Rosanbo's three daughters married the Comte de Chateaubriand, the author's brother, the Comte Lepelletier d'Aulnay, and the Comte de Tocqueville. The last was made a lord of the Bed-chamber and a peer of France by Charles X., and was the father of Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the _Démocratie en Amérique._--B.

[268] Louis Le Peletier, Vicomte de Rosanbo (1777-1858) was created a peer of France on the same day as Chateaubriand, 17 August 1815, and together with the latter, retired from the Upper House in August 1830, refusing to take the oath to the usurper.--B.

[269] Navigated in recent years by Captain Franklin and Captain Parry.--(_Author's Note_ Geneva, 1831).

[270] René Nicolas Maupeou (1714-1792) succeeded his father in 1768 as Chancellor of France. In 1771 he banished the Parliament of Paris and installed in its stead the King's Privy Council, which was derisively nicknamed the "Maupeou Parliament" by the public, and which continued in power until the death of Louis XV. in 1774, when the Parliament was restored and Maupeou banished in his turn.--T.

[271] Of the royal edicts.--T.

[272] Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802), Controller-General of Finance (1783-1787).--T.

[273] Armand Marc Comte de Montmorin-Saint-Hérem (1746-1792), Minister of Foreign Affairs under Necker, and killed in the massacres of September.--T.

[274] Étienne Charles de Loménie, Comte de Brienne (1727-1794), successively Bishop of Condom, Archbishop of Toulouse, Archbishop of Sens, and a cardinal. In 1787 he was appointed Controller-General, and soon after became Prime Minister. He was arrested in 1793 and died in prison in 1794.--T.

[275] Anne of Brittany (1476-1514), daughter and heiress of Duke François II., was first married by proxy to the Emperor Maximilian I. The marriage was not consummated, and in 1491 Anne married King Charles VIII. of France. Charles died in 1498, and in 1499 his widow married his cousin and successor, Louis XII.--T.

[276] Charles of Blois, son of Margaret, sister of Philip VI., married in 1337 Joan of Penthièvre, daughter of Guy, and niece of John III., Duke of Brittany, on the understanding that he was to succeed to the latter's estates. Upon the death of John in 1341, a war broke out between Charles and the Count of Montfort (_vide infra_) which lasted until 1364, when Charles was slain at the Battle of Auray.--T.

[277] John Count of Montfort, brother of John III. Duke of Brittany, assumed the title of John IV. He died in 1345, and was succeeded by his son John V., who eventually entered into possession of the Duchy.--T.

[278] Letter to Madame de Grignan, 5 August 1671.--T.

[279] M. de Sévigné, her son.--_Author's Note._

[280] A play upon words: a _roué_ is a rake and also one broken on the wheel.--T.

[281] Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac(1755-1841), President of the Convention during the trial of Louis XVI., and member of the Committee of Public Safety (1793-1795).--T.

[282] A Suisse, or porter.--T.

[283] This duel took place _circa_ 1735 between Jean François de Kératry, a younger son from Cornouaille, not Morbihan, and the Marquis, not Comte, de Sabran.--B.

[284] A large proportion of Breton names commence with Ker: one says a "Ker" of Brittany as who should say a "Tre, Pol, or Pen" of Cornwall or a "Thwaite" of Westmoreland.--T.

[285] St. Corentin was the first titular Bishop of Cornouaille (or Quimper), which see was created by King Gallon, or Grallon, Mur, or the Great, not "three centuries before Christ," but towards the close of the fifth century A.D.--B.

[286] Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-1795), known as Alessandro Conte di Cagliostro, the conjurer, and one of the leading spirits in the affair of the Necklace.--T.

[287] Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), the discoverer of animal magnetism.--T.

[288] Louis Anne Pierre Geslin, Comte (not Marquis) de Trémargat (_b._ 1749), a naval officer and knight of St. Louis.--B.

[289] Henri Charles Comte de Thiard-Bissy (1726-1794), a lieutenant-general and principal equerry to the Duc d'Orléans. In February 1787 he succeeded M. de Montmorin in his post of King's Commandant in Brittany. He was guillotined on the 26th of July 1794.--B.

[290] The twelve gentlemen sent to the Bastille, 15 July 1788, were the Marquis de La Rouërie, the Comte de La Fruglaye, the Marquis de La Bourdonnaye de Montluc, the Comte de Trémargat, the Marquis de Corné, the Comte Godet de Châtillon, the Vicomte de Champion de Cicé, the Marquis Alexis de Bedée, the Chevalier de Guer, the Marquis du Bois de La Feronnière, the Comte Hay des Nétumières, and the Comte de Becdelièvre-Penhouët. Their captivity was anything but harsh, and lasted under two months, from 15 July to 12 September 1788.--B.

[291] Gabriel Comte Cortois de Pressigny (1745-1823). He emigrated in 1791; on the Restoration he was sent as a special envoy to the Holy See. In 1816 he was created a peer of France, and in 1817 appointed Archbishop of Besançon.--B.

[292]

"Along the avenue The devil went so fast That he was lost to view Before an hour had passed."--T.

[293]

"The beautiful maid became a duck, Became a duck, became a duck, And through a lattice off she flew To a pond where duck-weed grew."--T.

[294] Pierre and François Guillaume de La Saudre. The Château de Bonnaban is still one of the finest seats in the neighbourhood of Saint-Malo. It is now the property of the Comte de Kergariou.--B.

[295] The Briantais, at Saint-Servan, on the banks of the Rance, was at that time the property of the Picot de Prémesnil family, and now belongs to M. Lachambre, a late member of the Chamber of Deputies.--B.

[296] The Bosq and the Montmarin faced each other on opposite banks of the Rance: the former at Saint-Servan, the latter at Pleurtuit. Both belonged to the opulent family of Magon.--B.

[297] The Balue, at Saint-Servan, also belonged to the Magons.--B.

[298] The Colombier, at Paramé, was the property, in 1788, of the Eon de Carissan family.--B.

[299] The Château de Lascardais was the principal residence of M. and Madame de Chateaubourg. It is in the commune of Mézières, canton of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, Arrondissement of Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine) and is now occupied by Madame la Vicomtesse de Breil de Pontbriand, the Comtesse de Chateaubourg's grand-daughter.--B.

[300] Le Plessis-Pillet is in the commune of Dourdain, canton of Liffré, Arrondissement of Fougères.--B.

[301] Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier is twelve miles S.E. of Fougères. The tower is a very tall one. The battle referred to is that in which La Trémoille defeated the Bretons and the revolted Duc d'Orléans (afterwards Louis XII.) in 1488.--T.

[302] Robert Lambert Livorel (not Livoret) entered the Company of Jesus in 1753, at the age of eighteen. He was a coadjutor brother at Rennes College at the time of the suppression of the Company in 1762.--B.

[303] Louis Bruno Comte de Boisgelin (1734-1794), Knight of St. Louis and of the Holy Ghost, and holder of several Court and military appointments. He was guillotined on the 7th of July 1794; his wife, a sister of the Chevalier de Boufflers, ascended the scaffold on the same day.--B.

[304] François Bareau de Girac (1736-1820).--B.

[305] The name of Keralieu does not figure upon the lists of the States of 1788-1789, nor is it to be found in the Breton peerages. Doubtless the name should read Kersalaün. A duel did, in fact, take place between M. de Kersalaün and a young citizen of Rennes, Joseph Marie Jacques Blin. Jean Joseph Comte de Kersalaün was the eldest son of the Marquis de Kersalaün, the senior member of the Parliament. He was forty-five, and therefore much "older" than his adversary, who was only twenty-four years of age.--B.

[306] Captain René François Joseph de Montbourcher (1759-1835). His name was pronounced Montboucher, as Chateaubriand spells it.--B.

[307] Louis Pierre de Guehenneuc de Boishue (1767-1789) eldest son of Jean Baptiste René de Guehenneuc, Comte de Boishue. He was therefore only twenty-one years of age when he was killed, on the 27th of January 1789, in the streets of Rennes, at the same time as young Saint-Riveul (on whom see note _ante_).--B.

[308] The sacking of the house of Reveillon, the paper manufacturer of the Rue Saint-Antoine, took place 28 April 1789.--T.

[309] 4 May 1789.--T.

[310] 20 June 1789.--T.

[311] 30 June 1789.--T.

[312] Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794) delivered his famous harangue, at the conclusion of which he distributed leaves from the trees overhead to the rioters as a rallying-token, in the Palais-Royal on the 12th of July 1789. He was guillotined 5 April 1794--T.

[313] 30 June 1789.--B.

[314] Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791), represented the Third Estate of the town of Aix in the National Assembly.--T.

[315] Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier, Baron de Breteuil (_b._ 1733) was head of the Royal Household and Governor of Paris when placed at the head of this short-lived ministry.--T.

[316] Victor François Maréchal Duc de Broglie (1718-1804) became Minister of War. He was a distinguished soldier, and had been created a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1759 by the Emperor of Germany in recognition of his services in the war against Prussia. The title is still borne by the heads of both branches of the Broglie family.--T.

[317] Arnaud de La Porte (1737-1792), Intendant-General of the Navy. In 1790 he was appointed Intendant of the Civil List, and distinguished himself by his fidelity and firmness in the King's cause, notably at the time of the arrest at Varennes. He perished on the scaffold in 1792.--T.

[318] Joseph François Foullon (1715-1789) was appointed Controller-General of Finance on the 12th of July and hanged from a lantern in the Rue de la Verrerie on the 22nd, thus becoming one of the first victims of the Revolution.--T.

[319] Armand Marc Comte de Montmorin-Saint-Hérem (_d._ 1792) was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Necker's cabinet. In 1791 he received the portfolio of the Interior. He perished in the massacres of September 1792.--T.

[320] César Guillaume de la Luzerne (1738-1821), Bishop of Langres, created a cardinal in 1817.--T.

[321] François Emmanuel Guignard, Comte de Saint-Priest (1735-1821), Minister of the Interior, created a Peer of France in 1815.--T.

[322] Louis Jules Mancini-Mazarini, Duc de Nivernais (1716-1798).--T.

[323] Charles Henri Sanson (_b._ 1739), appointed public executioner in 1778 by Louis XVI., who died by his hand fifteen years later.--B.

[324] Antoine Simon (_d._ 1794), cobbler and member of the Paris Commune, appointed tutor to Louis XVII., 1 July 1793, guillotined 28 July 1794.--B.

[325] Marie Thérèse of France (1778-1851), daughter of Louis XVI., married in 1799 her cousin the Duc d'Angoulême, second son of the Comte d'Artois, later Charles X.--T.

[326] "Of my birth I have the splendour."--T.

[327] Louis Duc de Normandie (1785-1795), second son of Louis XVI., became Dauphin on the death of his elder brother, and was recognised as King of France by the emigrants and the foreign Powers after the execution of his father. He died a wretched death in the Temple, 8 June 1795.--T.

[328] Louis Philippe Joseph, fifth Duc d'Orléans (1747-1793), nicknamed Philippe Égalité, voted for the King's death, and was himself guillotined, 6 November 1793.--T.

[329] In a speech made on the 9th of January 1816, preparatory to the general mourning ordered for the 21st, the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVT.--B.

[330] Charles Eugène of Lorraine, Duc d'Elbeuf, Prince de Lambesc (1754-1825), a kinsman of Marie Antoinette, whom he accompanied to France, becoming colonel of the regiment known as Royal-Allemand. After his trial and acquittal for charging the people at the Tuileries, he emigrated and took service in the Austrian army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Field-Marshal in 1796. He continued to live in Vienna after the Restoration, and died there, childless, in 1825, one of the branches of the House of Lorraine dying out with him.--T.

[331] Bernard René Jourdan, Marquis de Launey (1740-1789), Captain-Governor of the Bastille.--B.

[332] Jacques de Flesselles (1721-1789), provost of the merchants of Paris.--T.

[333] An unsavoury eminence, between the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the Faubourg du Temple, on which stood a number of gibbets, erected early in the fourteenth century.--T.

[334] After a lapse of fifty-two years, fifteen bastilles are being built in order to oppress the liberty in whose name the first Bastille was destroyed.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1841).

[335] Marie Paul Joseph Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757-1834) had taken a leading part in the assistance rendered by the French to the American Revolution. He was outlawed in 1792, fled, was captured by the Austrians, and imprisoned, for his complicity in the French Revolution, in the citadel of Olmütz, until 1797. This foreign captivity doubtless saved him from the native guillotine. He took no part in public affairs until the Restoration, when he sat in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the opposition. In 1830, after the Orleanist usurpation he for the second time received the command of the National Guard.--T.

[336] Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793) was a member of the French Academy and of the Academy of Science, and keeper of the picture-gallery at Versailles. He became the first president of the National Assembly, having presided at the occasion of the Oath of the Tennis Court, and was the first Mayor of Paris. His popularity left him in 1791, after his endeavour to suppress the riotous meetings in the Champ-de-Mars; he resigned the mayoralty and quitted Paris. In 1793, he was recognised at Melun, brought back to Paris, and guillotined (11 November).--T.

[337] Yolande Martine Gabrielle, Duchesse de Polignac (1749-1793), _née_ de Polastron, wife of the Comte Jules, later Duc de Polignac, governess of the Children of France, and favourite of Marie Antoinette. She was the mother of the Prince de Polignac who became minister to Charles X.--T.

[338] Louis Antoine, Duc d'Angoulême (1775-1844), and Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry (1778-1820).--T.

[339] Louis Joseph Prince de Condé (1736-1818), his son Louis Henri Joseph Duc de Bourbon (1756-1830), and his grandson Louis Antoine Henri Duc d'Enghien (1772-1804).--T.

[340] The King's aunts, daughters of Louis XV.: Madame Adélaïde (1732-1800) and Madame Victoire (1733-1799). They emigrated in 1791.--T.

[341] Madame Élisabeth (1764-1794), the King's sister, guillotined 10 May 1794.--T.

[342] Louis Stanislas Xavier Comte de Provence (1755-1824); succeeded to the Crown in 1795 as Louis XVIII. "Monsieur" is the title of the eldest brother of the King of France.--T.

[343] Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), chairman of the electors of Paris. He was arrested after the 10th of August 1792, but succeeded in making good his escape.--B.

[344] Trophine Gérard Marquis de Lally-Tolendal (1751-1830), delegate of the nobles of Paris to the States-General. He too escaped from the Abbaye after his arrest in August, and took refuge in England, whence he wrote to the Convention in order to obtain the honour (eventually awarded to Malesherbes) of defending Louis XVI. He was created a peer of France under the Restoration, and made a member of the French Academy; in 1817 he received his marquisate, the original title of the family being Comte de Lally and Baron Tollendal in Ireland.--T.

[345] Jean Paul Marat (1744-1793), the famous demagogue of the Terror.--T.

[346] Louis Bénigne François Bertier de Sauvigny (1742-1789), Intendant of Paris, and son-in-law to Foullon. He was hanged from a lantern after being made to kiss the head of his father-in-law, who had just met with the same fate.--T.

[347] Taboureau des Réaux, Intendant of Valenciennes, was Controller-General from October 1776 to June 1777.--B.

[348] Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de L'Aulne (1727-1781), Controller-General from 1774 to 1776.--T.

[349] Alexandre Frédéric Jacques Masson, Marquis de Pezay (1741-1777), commenced life as an officer of Musketeers, and made his name known by means of some trivial drawing-room verse and of his inferior prose translations of Tibullus, Catullus, and Propertius. He was charged with the duty of instructing Louis XVI., then Dauphin, in elementary tactics, managed to insinuate himself into the Prince's intimacy, and eventually succeeded in bringing about the fall of Terray and the rise of Necker.--T.

[350] The _Compte rendu au Roi_ was a sort of specimen budget published by Necker in 1780, from which public opinion was for the first time enabled to form an opinion of the working of the administration of the public revenues, till then kept secret. The _Compte rendu_ caused a prodigious sensation.--B.

[351] Antoine Leonard Thomas (1732-1785), a member of the French Academy, and a man of letters noted for rhetoric and over-emphasis of style. Chateaubriand's allusion is to the excessive optimism of the _Compte rendu_, which showed a very large surplus.--T.

[352] Anne Louise Germaine Baronne de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817), the most famous of women-writers. She married the Baron de Staël-Holstein, Swedish Ambassador to France, in 1786. He died in 1802, and eight years later she was married for the second time, but secretly, to a young officer, M. de Rocca. In 1815 she obtained two million francs from Louis XVIII., by way of a restitution of moneys due to her father.--T.

[353] Louis Marie Vicomte de Noailles (1756-1804), second son of Philippe de Noailles, Marshal Duc de Mouchy, and brother-in-law of La Fayette. He took part in the French expedition to the United States, and pronounced himself in favour of the Revolution in 1789. He sat in the States-General as deputy for the nobility of the bailiwick of Nemours.--T.

[354] Armand Désiré de Wignerod-Duplessis-Richelieu, Duc d'Aiguillon (1731-1800), representative of the nobility of the seneschalty of Agen in the States-General, and son of the Duc d'Aiguillon, Prime Minister to Louis XV.--T.

[355] Matthieu Jean Félicité Vicomte, later Duc de Montmorency-Laval (1767-1826), had also imbibed his revolutionary opinions in the American Campaign. He abandoned them, however, at the Restoration, under which he became a peer of France, Minister of Foreign Affairs, a member of the French Academy, and a duke. In January 1826 he was appointed governor to the Duc de Bordeaux, but died a few weeks later.--T.

[356] In the Opera-house, 1 October 1789.--T.

[357] When Louis XVI. entered the hall, M. de Canecaude, commissary of the King's Military Household, ordered the band-master to play Grétry's "_Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?_" "Where is greater happiness found than in one's family circle?" The band-master replied that he had not the music, and played, "_Ô Richard! ô mon Roi, l'univers t'abandonne_:" "O Richard, O my King, the world is forsaking thee," from Richard Cœur-de-Lion by the same composer.--B.

[358] Vice-Admiral Charles Hector Comte d'Estaing (1729-1794) was a member of both forces, and had seen much service both on sea and land. He embraced the side of the Revolution, and was at this time Commandant of the National Guard. He was guillotined 28 April 1794.--T.

[359] Marat's paper was first published 12 September 1789, with the title the _Publiciste parisien._ With the sixth issue, that is, on 17 September 1789, the title was changed to the _Ami du peuple, ou le Publiciste parisien._--B.

[360] The paper money of the French Republic, "assigned" upon the spoils of the clergy, &c.--T.

[361] Thomas Mahi, Marquis de Favras (1744-1790), was accused of conspiring to assassinate La Fayette, Necker, and Bailly, and to carry off Louis XVI. in order to place him at the head of an anti-revolutionary army. He was condemned to be hanged, and executed 19 February 1790--T.

[362] The so-called cahiers or note-books consisted of the official instructions of the electors to the deputies to the States-General.--T.

[363] The original name of the Riquettis de Mirabeau was Arrighetti.--T.

[364] Victor Riquetti, Marquis de Mirabeau (1715-1789). He joined the economists, advocated liberty, and called himself the Friend of Men, after the title of his principal work, the _Ami des hommes_: nevertheless he proved himself the tyrant of his family, a bad husband, and a bad father. He died on the eve of the capture of the Bastille, 13 July 1789.--T.

[365] Jean Antoine Joseph Charles Elzéar de Riquetti (1717-1794). He adopted the title of _bailli_ in 1763, on becoming a grand-cross of the Order of Malta, and was thenceforth known as the Bailli de Mirabeau.--B.

[366] Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755), author of the famous Memoirs.--T.

[367] Reine Philiberte Marquise de Villette (_d._ 1822), _née_ Roupt de Varicourt, was adopted by Voltaire at the instance of his niece, Mme. Denis. She called him uncle; he called her "_Belle et bonne_," and married her in 1777 to the Marquis de Villette (_vide infra_, p. 178).--T.

[368] Isaac René Guy Le Chapelier (1754-1794), one of the most capable members of the Constituent Assembly, and a founder of the Club Breton, later the Club des Jacobins. He was guillotined 22 April 1794.--T.

[369] Sophie Marquise de Monnier (1760-1789), _née_ Ruffei. For eloping with her, Mirabeau was imprisoned for nearly four years, 1777-1780, at Vincennes by _lettre-de-cachet_ obtained at his father's instance. His letters to Sophie from Vincennes, written in a style of exalted sentiment, were published in 1792 in 4 vols. 8vo. The lady herself was locked up in a convent until the death of her husband, a man very much her senior. She eventually committed suicide because of the infidelity of one of her lovers.--T.

[370] Riquetti, not Riquet, instead of Mirabeau. It was in the account of the sitting in which titles of nobility were abolished that the journalist, in conformity with that abolition, dropped Mirabeau's territorial title, and wrote of him by his patronymic of Riquetti.--B.

[371] André Boniface Louis Riquetti, Vicomte de Mirabeau (1754-1792), the Comte de Mirabeau's younger brother, nicknamed Mirabeau-Tonneau, because of his stoutness, to distinguish him from his brother, Mirabeau-Tonnerre.--T.

[372] M. de Lautrec de Saint-Simon was not a member of the Constituent Assembly, but acted as one of Mirabeau-Tonneau's seconds in his duel with the Duc de Liancourt.--B.

[373] Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre (1759-1794), the leader of the Terror.--T.

[374] The Château de Montaigne stood on a hill near the village of Saint-Michel, five leagues from Bergerac, in Guyenne. Montaigne was on one occasion captured by marauders and likely to be shot. His good-humour won not only his release but the restoration of the property of which he had been robbed (_Cf._ MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. 12: _Of Physiognomy_).--T.

[375] Laurent Marshal Marquis Gouvion-Saint-Cyr (1764-1830), later a distinguished officer in the armies of the Republic and the Empire. He would appear to have achieved no great success as either an amateur or professional actor.--T.

[376] L'_Autre Tartufe, ou, la Mère Coupable_, a prose drama in five acts, produced 6 June 1792.--B.

[377] The four leading and accomplished singers in the Italian _Opera Buffa_ company which first played in the Salle des Machines at the Tuileries and later, when the Royal Family came to occupy the palace, at the Théâtre de Monsieur, renamed Théâtre de la Rue Feydeau.--B.

[378] Louise Rosalie Lefèvre (1755-1821), wife of the actor Dugazon, a brilliant performer of amoureuses or leading ladies at the Théâtre Italien, later Opéra Comique, in the Rue Favart.--T.

[379] Jeanne Charlotte Dame d'Herbey (1764-1850), _née_ Schrœder, known as Madame Saint-Aubin, a player of _ingénues'_ parts at the Opéra Comique.--B.

[380] Marie Gabrielle Malagrida (1763-1818), known as Carline, and married to Nivelon, the dancer at the Opera. She played _soubrettes_ charmingly at the Théâtre Italien, but her acting was better than her singing: she had a very small voice.--B.

[381] Chateaubriand is mistaken here. He is writing of the theatres in 1789 and 1790, whereas Mademoiselle Olivier died in 1787.--B.

[382] André Ernest Modeste Gréry (1741-1813), the famous composer.--T.

[383] Marguerite Françoise Comtesse de Buffon (1767-1808), _née_ de Bouvier de Cépoy, and wife of Georges Louis Marie Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, son of the great writer. She was the mistress of Philippe Égalité, to whom she bore a son who was killed when fighting in the English army in the Peninsula. The Comte de Buffon was guillotined 10 July 1794. In 1798 his widow married M. Renouard de Bussières, a Strasburg banker.--B.

[384] The town-house of Louis Alexandre Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1735-1792).--T.

[385] Pauline Marie Michelle Frédérique Ulrique Comtesse de Beaumont (1768-1803), _née_ de Montmorin-Saint-Hérem, wife of the Comte Christophe François de Beaumont.--B.

[386] Anne Louise Dame de Shrilly, _née_ Thomas, wife of Antoine Jean François de Megret de Sérilly. Her husband and brother-in-law were guillotined in 1794. Her own death-sentence was commuted owing to the fact that she was pregnant In 1795 she married François de Pange, who died in September 1796.--B.

[387]

"Arras' candle so sacred and bright, The torch that from far Provence came, Although they afford us no light, Are setting our fair France aflame; We cannot touch them, no doubt. But hope to snuff both of them out."

Robespierre was deputy for Arras, Mirabeau for Aix, the old capital of Provence.--T.

[388] Pierre de L'Éstoile (1540-1611) Grand-Crier to the French Chancery, and author of a valuable diary of the times of Henry III. and Henry IV.--T.

[389] The _Actes des Apôtres_ was published from November 1789 to October 1791; 311 numbers were issued in all. Its principal contributors were Peltier, Rivarol, Champcenetz, Mirabeau the younger, the Marquis de Bonnay, François Suleau, Montlosier, Bergasse, &c.--B.

[390] The _Journal de la Ville et des Provinces, ou, le Modérateur_, edited by M. de Fontanes, first appeared 1 October 1789.--B.

[391] Jacques Mallet-Dupan (1749-1800), political editor of the _Mercure de France._ He left France in 1792, returned first to his native city, Geneva, and then settled in London, where he founded the Mercure britannique (1799).--T.

[392] The Chevalier de Champcenetz (1759-1794), one of the wittiest Royalist partisans under the Revolution; arrested and murdered in 1794.--T.

[393] Antoine Comte de Rivarol (1753-1801), a brilliant and caustic wit.--T.

[394] The wife of Le Jay the bookseller, Mirabeau's publisher.--B.

[395] Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803), author of _Les Liaisons dangereuses_, editor of the _Journal des amis de la Constitution_, and secretary to the Duc d'Orléans. He served as an artillery-general in the Army of Italy.--T.

[396] Armand Louis de Gontaut-Biron, Duc de Lauzun (1747-1793), son of the Duc de Biron, to whose title he succeeded in 1788. He fought on the American side in the War of Independence, and served as a general in the republican armies until his arrest and execution, 31 December 1793.--T.

[397] The two brothers Arthur Comte de Dillon and Theobald de Dillon, both fought in the republican campaigns. Arthur was executed in 1794, Theobald killed in 1792 by his soldiers, who believed that he was betraying them.--T.

[398] Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), Bishop of Autun, created Prince de Bénévent by Bonaparte m 1806, Duc de Talleyrand and Duc de Dino by Louis XVIII. in 1817.--T.

[399] Pierre Victor Baron de Besenval (1722-1791), whose Memoirs were published in 1805-1807 by the Vicomte de Ségur, but were disowned by the baron's family.--T.

[400] Jeanne Vaubernier, Comtesse Du Barry (1744-1794), the last mistress of Louis XV., was guillotined 30 June 1794, having ventured to return to France from England in order to rescue her personal belongings.--T.

[401] _Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Revolution française, II. 16: De la Federation du 14 juillet 1790._--B.

[402] Joseph Dominique Baron Louis (1755-1837). He had taken minor orders and served as deacon at Talleyrand's Mass in the Champ de Mars. He was several times Minister of Finance under the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe.--T.

[403] 4 September 1790.--B.

[404] 20 February 1791.--B.

[405] Charles Michel Marquis de Villette (1736-1793). At the trial of Louis XVI., he voted for imprisonment and for banishment at the conclusion of the war.--B.

[406] I omit a poetical quotation from Parny.--T.

[407] Bordier was a comedian well known in Paris for his performances of the character of Harlequin. He and Jourdain, an advocate from Lisieux, placed themselves at the head of a riot on the night of 3 August 1789 and were eventually taken and hanged.--B.

[408] Jean Racine (1639-1699), the greatest of the French tragic poets.--T.

[409] Antoine Marie Gaspard Sacchini (1735-1786), the "Racine of music," composer of a number of brilliant operas. His merits were never fully appreciated, owing to the disputes between the adherents of Gluck and Piccini, which absorbed public attention at the time.--T.

[410] A comedy in three acts, interspersed with songs; words by Michel Jean Sedaine (1719-1797).--B.

[411] A comic opera in one act, words and the greater part of the music by Jean Cazotte (1720-1792).--B.

[412]

"Fall rain, or fell snow, or blow wind, To shorten long nights we've a mind."--T.

[413] Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708), author of an early classification of botanical _genera_ and species.--T.

[414] Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782), Inspector-General of the Navy, and an eminent agricultural and arboricultural expert.--T.

[415] Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), the most learned member of a family comprising no less than four distinguished botanists.--T.

[416] Nehemiah Grew (_circa_ 1628-1711), author of the _Anatomy of Plants_, and an early Fellow of the Royal Society (1673).--T.

[417] Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): the work referred to is his _Dictionnaire botanique._--T.

[418] Charles Linnæus (1707-1778), the great Swedish botanist.--T.

[419] George Washington (1732-1799), first President of the United States (1789-1793 and 1793-1797).--T.

[420] Angélique Françoise Dame de La Fonchais (1769-1793), sister to André Desilles, the hero of Nancy, was guillotined 13 June 1793, the same time as her brother-in-law, Michel Julien Picot de Limoëlan, displaying admirable courage on the scaffold.--B.

[421] Major Chafner, _vide supra_, p. 66.--B.

[422] Captain Dujardin Pinte-de-Vin of the brig _Saint-Pierre_, bound for the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miguelon, whence she was to make for Baltimore.--B.

[423] François Charles Nagot (_d._ 1816), not Nagault, was the superior, not of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, but of the community of Robertines in Paris, one of the annexes of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He left for Baltimore in order to become the superior of a Sulpician seminary in that city, accompanied by three young priests of the Company. The Abbé Nagot arrived at Baltimore in July 1791, and in the September following established St Mary's Seminary, the first and best-known seminary in the United States. In 1822 Pope Pius VII. erected St Mary's College into a Catholic university.--B.

[424] _Esprit fort_, a free-thinker or latitudinarian.--T.

[425] 2 April 1791.--T.

[426] 8 April 1791.--B.