BOOK IV[556

The castle of the Kings of Bohemia--First interview with Charles X.--Monsieur le Dauphin--The Children of France--The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche--The triumvirate--Mademoiselle--Conversation with the King--Dinner and evening at Hradschin--Visits--General Skrzynecki--Dinner at Count Chotek's--Whit Sunday--The Duc de Blacas--Casual observations--Tycho Brahe--Perdita: more casual observations--Bohemia--Slav and neo-Latin literature--I take leave of the King--Adieus--The children's letters to their mother--A Jew--The Saxon servant-girl--What I am leaving in Prague--The Duc de Bordeaux--Madame la Dauphine--Casual observations--Springs--Mineral waters--Historical memories--The Teplitz Valley--Its flora--Last conversation with the Dauphiness--My departure.

I entered Prague on the 24th of May, at seven o'clock in the evening, and alighted at the Bath Hotel, in the old town built on the left bank of the Moldau. I wrote a note to M. le Duc de Blacas to inform him of my arrival and received the following reply:

"If you are not too tired, monsieur le vicomte, the King will be charmed to receive you this evening, at a quarter to ten; but, if you wish to rest, His Majesty would see you with great pleasure to-morrow morning, at half-past eleven.

"Pray accept my sincere compliments.

"_Friday_ 24 _May_ seven o'clock.

"BLACAS D'AULPS."

I did not feel that I ought to avail myself of the alternative offered to me: I set out at half-past nine; a man belonging to the inn, who knew a few words of French, led the way for me. I climbed up silent, gloomy streets, without street-lamps, to the foot of the tall hill which is crowned by the immense castle of the Kings of Bohemia. The building outlined its black mass against the sky; no light issued from its windows: there was there something akin to the solitude, the site and the grandeur of the Vatican, or of the Temple of Jerusalem, seen from the Valley of Jehoshaphat. One heard nothing but the sound of my footsteps and my guide's. I was obliged to stop at intervals on the landings of the steps that formed the roadway, so steep was the incline.

As I climbed, I discovered the town below me. The links of history, the fate of men, the destruction of empires, the designs of Providence presented themselves to my recollection, identified themselves with the memory of my own destiny: after exploring dead ruins, I was summoned to the spectacle of living ruins.

When we had reached the platform on which Hradschin[557] is built, we passed through an infantry post whose guard-room was near the outer wicket-gate. Through this wicket-gate we entered a square court-yard, surrounded by uniform and deserted buildings. On the ground-floor, on the right, we threaded a long corridor lighted at wide intervals by glass lanterns hung on the wall on either side, as in a convent or barracks. At the end of this corridor was a stair-case, at whose foot two sentries marched up and down.

As I was climbing the second flight, I met M. de Blacas, who was coming down. I entered the apartments of Charles X. with him; there two more grenadiers were standing sentry. This foreign guard, those white uniforms at the door of the King of France made a painful impression on me: the idea of a prison came to me, rather than a palace.

We passed through three pitch-dark and almost unfurnished rooms: I felt as though I were wandering once more through the terrible monastery of the Escorial. M. de Blacas left me in the third room to inform the King, with the same etiquette as at the Tuileries. He came back to fetch me, showed me into His Majesty's closet and withdrew.

Charles X. came up to me, held out his hand to me cordially and said:

"Good-evening, good-evening, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: I am delighted to see you. I expected you. You ought not to have come this evening, for you must be very tired. Don't stand; let us sit down. How is your wife?"

[Sidenote at Hradschin.]

Nothing breaks one's heart so much as simplicity of speech in the high positions of society and the great catastrophes of life. I began to cry like a child; I found a difficulty in stifling the sound of my sobs with my handkerchief. All the bold things which I had resolved to say, all the vain and relentless philosophy with which I intended to arm my conversation failed me. Should I become the pedagogue of misfortune! Should I dare to remonstrate with my King, my white-haired King, my King outlawed, exiled, ready to lay his mortal remains on foreign soil! My old Sovereign again took my hand on seeing the trouble of that "relentless enemy," that "opponent" of the Ordinances of July. His eyes were moist; he made me sit beside a little wooden table, on which stood two candles; he sat down by the same table, leaning his good ear towards me to hear me better, thus apprizing me of his years, which came to mingle their common misfortunes with the extraordinary calamities of his life.

It was impossible for me to recover my voice at the sight, in the residence of the Emperors of Austria, of the sixty-eighth King of France, bent under the weight of those reigns and of seventy-six years: of those years, twenty-four had been spent in exile, five on a tottering throne; the Monarch was ending his last days in a last exile, with the grandson whose father had been assassinated and whose mother was a prisoner. Charles X. to break this silence, addressed a few questions to me. Thereupon I briefly explained the object of my journey: I said that I was the bearer of a letter from Madame la Duchesse de Berry, addressed to Madame la Dauphine, in which the prisoner of Blaye confided the care of her children to the prisoner of the Temple, as to one practised in misfortune. I added that I also had a letter for the children. The King replied:

"Do not give it to them: they know only a part of what has happened to their mother; you must hand me that letter. However, we will talk of all that at two o'clock tomorrow: go to bed now. You shall see my son and the children at eleven o'clock and you will dine with us."

The King rose, wished me good-night and retired.

I went out; I joined M. de Blacas in the entrance-room; the guide was waiting for me on the stair-case. I returned to my inn, descending the streets on their slippery pavements in as short a time as I had taken long to climb them.

PRAGUE, 25 _May_ 1833.

The next day, the 25th of May, I received a visit from M. le Comte de Cossé, staying at my inn. He told me of the disagreements at the Castle relative to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. At half-past ten, I went up to Hradschin; the Duc de Guiche[558] took me in to M. le Dauphin. I found him grown old and thin; he was dressed in a shabby blue coat, buttoned up to the chin; it was too wide for him and looked as though it had been bought at a rag-fair: the poor Prince excited a great pity in me.

M. le Dauphin has personal courage; his obedience to Charles X. alone prevented him from proving himself at Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet what he proved himself at Chiclana: his bashfulness has increased in consequence. He finds it difficult to bear the sight of a new face. He often says to the Duc de Guiche:

"Why are you here? I have no need of any one. There is no mouse-hole small enough to hide me."

He has said also, repeatedly:

"Don't talk about me; don't trouble about me; I am nobody; I don't want to be anybody. I have twenty thousand francs a year; it is more than I need. I have to think only of saving my soul and making a good end."

Again he has said:

"If my nephew had need of me, I would serve him with my sword; but I signed my abdication, against my own feeling, out of obedience to my father: I shall not renew it; I shall sign nothing more; let them leave me in peace, word is enough: I never lie."

[Sidenote: The Dauphin (Louis XIX.)]

And that is true: his mouth has never uttered a lie. He reads much; he has considerable attainments, even in languages; his correspondence with M. de Villèle during the Spanish War has its value, and his correspondence with Madame la Dauphine, which was intercepted and inserted in the _Moniteur_, makes one love him. His probity is incorruptible; his religion is profound; his filial piety rises to the height of virtue; but an unconquerable shyness deprives him of the full use of his faculties.

To put him at his ease, I avoided entering upon politics with him and only enquired after his father's health: this is a subject on which he is inexhaustible. The difference in climate between Edinburgh and Prague, the King's prolonged attacks of gout, the waters of Teplitz which the King was going to take, the good which they would do him: there you have the purport of our conversation. M. le Dauphin watches over Charles X. as over a child; he kisses his hand when he goes up to him, asks how he has slept, picks up his pocket-handkerchief, speaks loud so as to make himself heard by him, prevents him from eating what might disagree with him, makes him put on or leave off an over-coat according to the state of the weather, takes him out walking and brings him back again. I was careful to speak to him of nothing else. Of the Days of July, of the fall of an empire, of the future of the Monarchy, not a word.

"It is eleven o'clock," he said: "you are going to see the children; we shall meet again at dinner."

I was taken to the apartment of the Governor; the doors opened: I saw the Baron de Damas with his pupil, Madame de Gontaut with Mademoiselle[559], M. Barrande[560], M. La Villate[561] and a few other devoted servants; all were standing. The young Prince, scared, looked at me sideways, looked at his governor as though to ask him what he was to do, how to act in this danger, or as though to obtain permission to speak to me. Mademoiselle smiled with a half-smile and a timid and independent air; she seemed to be paying attention to her brother's movements and gestures. Madame de Gontaut looked proud of the education which she had given her pupils. After bowing to the two children, I went up to the orphan and said:

"Will Henry V. allow me to lay the homage of my respect at his feet? When he has ascended his throne, perhaps he will remember that I had the honour to say to his illustrious mother, 'Madame, your son is my King!' So I was the first to proclaim Henry V. King of France, and a French jury, by acquitting me, allowed my proclamation to stand good. God save the King!"

The child, flurried at hearing himself greeted as King, at hearing me speak of his mother, of whom no one spoke to him now, recoiled and took refuge between the Baron de Damas' knees, uttering a few emphatic but almost whispered words. I said to M. de Damas:

"Monsieur le baron, my words seem to surprise the King. I see that he knows nothing of his courageous mother and that he is ignorant of what his servants have sometimes had the happiness to do for the cause of the Legitimate Royalty.'

The governor replied:

"Monseigneur is taught what loyal subjects like yourself, monsieur le vicomte...."

He did not finish his sentence.

M. de Damas hastened to state that the moment for study had arrived. He invited me to the riding-lesson at four o'clock.

I went to pay a visit to Madame la Duchesse de Guiche, who lived at some distance in another part of the Castle; it took nearly ten minutes to go to her through corridor after corridor. When Ambassador in London, I had given a little fête in honour of Madame de Guiche, then in all the brilliancy of her youth and followed by a host of adorers; in Prague, I found her changed, but the expression of her face pleased me more. Her head was dressed in a way that suited her delightfully: her hair, plaited in little tresses, like that of an odalisk or a Sabine medal, was festooned in ringlets on either side of her forehead. The Duchesse and Duc de Guiche represented in Prague beauty chained to adversity.

Madame de Guiche had heard of what I had said to the Duc de Bordeaux. She told me that they wanted to send away M. Barrande; that there was a talk of calling in some Jesuits[562]; that M. de Damas had postponed but not abandoned his plans.

[Sidenote: The triumvirate.]

A triumvirate existed, composed of the Duc de Blacas, the Baron de Damas and the Cardinal de Latil: this triumvirate tended to take possession of the coming reign by isolating the young King and bringing him up in principles and under men antipathetic to France. The remainder of the inhabitants of the Castle caballed against the triumvirate; the children themselves headed the opposition. The opposition, however, had different shades: the Gontaut party was not quite the same as the Guiche party; the Marquise de Bouillé, a deserter from the Berry party, took sides with the Abbé Moligny[563]. Madame la Dauphine, placed at the head of the impartials, was not exactly favourable to the Young France party, represented by M. Barrande; but, as she spoilt the Duc de Bordeaux, she often leant towards his side and stood by him against his governor. Madame d'Agoult[564], devoted body and soul to the triumvirate, had no credit with the Dauphiness other than that which she enjoyed thanks to her presence and importunity.

After paying my respects to Madame de Guiche, I went to Madame de Gontaut's. She was expecting me with the Princesse Louise.

Mademoiselle somewhat recalls her father: she is fair-haired; her blue eyes have a shrewd expression; she is short for her age and is not so full-grown as her portraits represent her. Her whole person is a mixture of the child, the young girl and the young princess: she looks up, lowers her eyes, smiles with an artless coquetry mingled with art; one does not know if one ought to tell her fairy-stories, make her a declaration, or talk to her with respect as to a queen. The Princesse Louise adds to the agreeable accomplishments a good deal of information: she speaks English and is beginning to know German well; she even has a little foreign accent, and exile is already marking itself in her language.

Madame de Gontaut presented me to my little King's sister; innocent fugitives, they were like two gazelles hiding among ruins. Mademoiselle Vachon, the under-governess, an excellent and distinguished spinster, arrived. We sat down and Madame de Gontaut said to me:

"We can speak, Mademoiselle knows all; she deplores with us what we see."

Mademoiselle said to me at once:

"Oh, Henry was very silly this morning; he was frightened. Grand-papa said to us, 'Guess whom you will see to-morrow: it's one of the powers of the earth!' We said, 'Well, it's the Emperor.' 'No,' said Grand-papa. We tried again; we could not guess. He said, 'It's the Vicomte de Chateaubriand.' I hit myself on the forehead for not guessing.'

The Princess struck her forehead, blushing like a rose, smiling wittily through her moist and gentle eyes; I was dying with the respectful longing to kiss her little white hand. She continued:

"You did not hear what Henry said when you asked him to remember you? He said, 'Oh yes, always,' but he said it so low! He was afraid of you and afraid of his governor. I was making signs to him: did you see? You will be more pleased this evening; he will speak: wait!"

This solicitude of the young Princess on her brother's behalf was charming; I was almost committing a crime of lezemajesty. Mademoiselle remarked it, and this gave her a bearing of conquest that was captivating in its grace. I put her mind at rest as to the impression which Henry had made upon me.

"I was very glad," she said, "to hear you speak of Mamma before M. de Damas. Will she soon have left prison?"

My readers know that I had a letter from Madame la Duchesse de Berry for the children: I did not tell them of it, because they did not know of the details subsequent to the captivity. The King had asked me for this letter; I considered that I was not at liberty to give it to him and that I ought to take it to Madame la Dauphine, to whom I was sent and who was then taking the waters at Carlsbad.

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle.]

Madame de Gontaut repeated what M. de Cossé and Madame de Guiche had already told me. Mademoiselle groaned with childish seriousness. Her governess having spoken of M. Barrande's discharge and the probable arrival of a Jesuit, the Princesse Louise crossed her hands and said, with a sigh:

"That would be very unpopular!"

I could not help laughing; Mademoiselle began to laugh also, still blushing.

A few moments remained before my audience of the King. I got into my calash and went to call on the Grand Burgrave, Count Chotek. He lived in a country-house half a league from the town, on the side of the Castle. I found him at home and thanked him for his letter. He invited me to dinner for Monday the 27th of May.

On returning to the Castle at two o'clock, I was introduced to the King's presence, as on the preceding day, by M. de Blacas. Charles X. received me with his customary kindness and with that elegant ease of manner which the years render more perceptible in him. He made me sit again at the little table. Here is a detailed account of our conversation:

"Sire, Madame la Duchesse de Berry commanded me to come to see you and to hand a letter to Madame la Dauphine. I do not know what the letter contains, although it is open; it is written in invisible ink, as is the letter for the children. But in my two letters of credence, one intended to be shown, the other of a confidential character, Marie-Caroline explains to me what is in her mind. During her captivity, she commits her children, as I told Your Majesty yesterday, to the special protection of Madame la Dauphine. Madame la Duchesse de Berry charges me besides to report to her on the education of Henry V., whom they here call the Duc de Bordeaux. Lastly, Madame la Duchesse de Berry declares that she has contracted a secret marriage with Count Hector Lucchesi-Palli, a member of an illustrious family. These secret marriages of princesses, for which there are many precedents, do not deprive them of their rights. Madame la Duchesse de Berry asks to preserve her rank as a French princess, the Regency and the guardianship. When she is free, she proposes to come to Prague to embrace her children and lay her respects at Your Majesty's feet."

The King answered with severity. I made the best reply that I could out of a recrimination:

"I beg Your Majesty to pardon me, but it seems to me that you have been prejudiced; M. de Blacas is no doubt an enemy of my august client."

Charles X. interrupted me:

"No; but she has treated him badly, because he prevented her from committing follies, from embarking on mad enterprises."

"It is not given to everybody," I said, "to commit follies of that kind: Henry IV. fought like Madame la Duchesse de Berry and, like her, he was not always sufficiently strong. Sire," I continued, "you do not wish Madame de Berry to be a princess of France: she will be so in spite of you; the whole world will always call her the Duchesse de Berry, the heroic mother of Henry V.; her dauntless courage and her sufferings overtower everything; you cannot, like the Duc d'Orléans, wish to brand at one blow the children and the mother: is it so difficult for you, then, to forgive a woman's glory?"

"Well, _monsieur l'ambassadeur_," said the King, with good-natured emphasis, "let Madame la Duchesse de Berry go to Palermo; let her there live with M. Lucchesi as husband and wife, in sight of all the world; then her children shall be told that their mother is married; she shall come to embrace them."

I felt that I had pushed the matter far enough; the principal points were three-fourths obtained: the preservation of the title and the admission to Prague at a more or less distant period; feeling surer of completing my task with Madame la Dauphine, I changed the conversation. Obstinate minds jib at persistency; one spoils everything, with such minds, when one tries to carry everything by main force.

I passed to the Prince's education in the interest of the future: on this subject I was not clearly understood. Religion has made a solitary of Charles X.; his ideas are cloistered. I slipped in a few words on the capacity of M. Barrande and the want of capacity of M. de Damas. The King said:

[Sidenote: Conversations with Charles X.]

"M. Barrande is a man of attainments, but he takes too much upon himself; he was chosen to teach the Duc de Bordeaux the exact sciences, but he teaches everything: history, geography, Latin. I have sent for the Abbé MacCarthy[565], to share M. Barrande's labours; he will be here soon."

These words made me shudder, for the new tutor could evidently be only a Jesuit replacing a Jesuit. The fact that, in the present state of society in France, the mere idea of attaching a disciple of Loyola to the person of Henry V. had entered into the head of Charles X. was enough to make one despair of the House. When I had recovered from my astonishment, I asked:

"Is not the King afraid of the effect upon public opinion of a tutor taken from the ranks of a famous, but calumniated society?"

The King exclaimed:

"Pooh! Are they still at the Jesuits?"

I spoke to the King of the elections and the desire of the Royalists to know his wishes. The King replied:

"I cannot say to a man, 'Take an oath against your conscience.' Those who think that they ought to take it are doubtless acting with good intentions. I have no prejudice, my dear friend, against men; their past lives matter little, when they are sincerely anxious to serve France and the Legitimacy. The Republicans wrote to me in Edinburgh: I accepted, as concerns them personally, all that they asked of me; but they wanted to impose conditions of government upon me: I rejected them. I will never yield on matters of principle; I want to leave my grandson a more solid throne than mine was. Are the French happier and freer to-day than they were with me? Do they pay less taxes? What a milch-cow France is! If I had allowed myself to do a quarter of the things that M. le Duc d'Orléans has done, what outcries, what curses! They plotted against me, they have owned it: I wanted to defend myself...."

The King stopped, as though embarrassed by the number of his thoughts and by the fear of saying something that might hurt me.

All this was well and good; but what did Charles X. understand by "principles?" Had he accounted for the cause of the real or imaginary conspiracies hatched against his government? After a moment of silence, he resumed:

"How are your friends the Bertins? They have no reason to complain of me, as you know: they are very severe upon a banished man who has done them no harm, at least as far as I know. But, my dear fellow, I bear no one ill-will; let everybody behave as he thinks right."

This sweetness of temperament, this Christian meekness on the part of an expelled and slandered King brought tears to my eyes. I tried to say a few words about Louis-Philippe:

"Ah!" said the King. "M. le Duc d'Orléans... he judged.. . What do you expect?... Men are like that."

Not a bitter word, not a reproach, not a complaint could escape from the mouth of the thrice-banished old man. And yet French hands had cut off his brother's head and pierced his son's heart; to such an extent have those hands been mindful and implacable towards him!

I praised the King with all my heart and in a voice broken with emotion. I asked him if it was not part of his intention to put a stop to all that secret correspondence, to dismiss all those commissaries who, for forty years, have been deceiving the Legitimacy. The King assured me that he was resolved to put an end to that impotent mischief; he had already, he said, named a few serious persons, including myself, to compose a sort of council, in France, competent to keep him informed of the truth. M. de Blacas would explain all that. I begged Charles X. to assemble his servants and hear me; he referred me to M. de Blacas.

I called the King's attention to the time of the majority of Henry V.; I spoke to him of a declaration as a necessary thing to be made. The King, who, inwardly, would have nothing to say to this declaration, invited me to draft the model for him. I replied, respectfully, but firmly, that I would never formulate a declaration at the foot of which my name should not appear below the King's. My reason was that I did not wish to have put to my account the eventual changes introduced into any deed by Prince Metternich and M. de Blacas.

I pointed out to the King that he was too far from Paris, that one would have time to make two or three revolutions before he was informed of it in Prague. The King replied that the Emperor had left him free to choose his place of residence in all the Austrian States, the Kingdom of Lombardy excepted.

[Sidenote: The King's poverty.]

"But," added His Majesty, "the towns in Austria that one can live in are all at more or less the same distance from France; in Prague, I am lodged for nothing, and my position obliges me to make that calculation."

A noble calculation for a Prince who had, for five years, enjoyed a civil list of twenty millions, without counting the royal residences; for a Prince who had left to France the Colony of Algiers and the ancient patrimony of the Bourbons, valued at twenty-five to thirty millions per annum!

"Sire, your loyal subjects have often thought that your royal indigence might have some needs; they are ready to club together, each according to his means, in order to make you independent of foreigners."

"I believe, my dear Chateaubriand," said the King, laughing, "that you are not much richer than myself. How have you paid for your journey?"

I said:

"Sire, it would have been impossible for me to come to you, if Madame la Duchesse de Berry had not instructed her banker, M. Jauge, to pay me six thousand francs."

"That's very little!" exclaimed the King. "Do you want any more?"

"No, Sire; I ought even, by careful management, to be able to return something to the poor prisoner; but I am not good at bargaining."

"You were a magnificent lord in Rome."

"I always conscientiously squandered what the King gave me; I did not have two sous left."

"You know that I still have your peer's salary at your disposal: you refused it."

"No, Sire, because you have more unfortunate servants than myself. You helped me out of my difficulty for the twenty thousand francs of debts that remained over from my Roman embassy, after the ten thousand which I borrowed from your great friend M. Laffitte."

"I owed them to you," said the King. "It did not even amount to what you sacrificed in salary when sending in your resignation as ambassador, which, by the way, hurt me not a little."

"However that may be, Sire, whether it was due to me or not, Your Majesty, by coming to my assistance, did me a service at the time and I will pay you back your money when I can; but not at present, for I am as poor as a rat. My house in the Rue d'Enfer is not paid for. I live promiscuously with Madame de Chateaubriand's poor, while waiting for the lodging which I have already visited, for Your Majesty's sake, at M. Gisquet's. When I pass through a town, I first enquire if there is an alms-house; if there is, I sleep peacefully: 'board and lodging, who asks for more?'"

"Oh, it won't end like that. How much would you want, Chateaubriand, to be rich?"

"Sire, you would be wasting your time; if you gave me four millions this morning, I should not have a farthing to-night."

The King shook my shoulder with his hand:

"Capital! But what the devil do you throw away your money on?"

"Faith, Sire, I don't know, for I have no tastes and no expenses: it's incomprehensible! I am such a fool that, when I went to the Foreign Office, I would not take the twenty-five thousand francs allowed for the expenses of installation and that, when leaving, I scorned to purloin the secret-service money! You are talking to me of my fortune to avoid talking to me of your own."

"That is true," said the King. "Here is my confession in my turn: by spending my capital in equal portions from year to year, I have calculated that, at my age, I can live till my last day without needing anybody. If I found myself in distress, I should prefer, as you suggest, to apply to Frenchmen rather than foreigners. They have offered to raise loans for me, among others one of thirty millions which would have been subscribed in Holland; but I knew that that loan, when quoted on the principal exchanges in Europe, would send down the French funds; this prevented me from adopting that plan: nothing that would affect the public fortune in France could suit me."

A sentiment worthy of a king!

In this conversation, the reader will have remarked the generous character, the gentle manners and the good sense of Charles X. It would have been a curious sight for a philosopher to see the subject and the King questioning each other as to their fortunes and making mutual confidences as to their poverty inside a castle borrowed from the Sovereigns of Bohemia!

[Sidenote: Henry V.]

PRAGUE, 25 _and_ 26 _May_ 1833.

At the end of this conference, I attended Henry's riding-lesson. He rode two horses, the first without stirrups, the horse being led, the second with stirrups, performing volts without his holding the reins, with a stick passed between his back and arms. The child is daring and nothing less than elegant in his white trousers, his short coat, his little ruff and his cap. M. O'Heguerty the Elder, the teaching equerry, shouted:

"What's that leg doing? It's like a stick! Let your leg go! Good! Awful! What's the matter with you to-day?" and so on.

The lesson over, the young page-King pulled up on horse-back in the middle of the riding-school, took off his cap, suddenly, to salute me in the gallery where I was standing with the Baron de Damas and some French people, and sprang from his horse as nimbly and gracefully as the Little Jehan de Saintré[566].

Henry is slender, agile, well-built; he is fair; he has blue eyes with a trait in the left eye which reminds one of his mother's look. His movements are sudden; he accosts you frankly; he is curious and asks questions; he has none of the pedantry which the newspapers ascribe to him; he is a genuine little boy, like any little boy of twelve. I complimented him on his good appearance on horse-back:

"You have seen nothing," he said; "you ought to see me on my black horse; he's as vicious as a demon: he kicks, he throws me; I get up again, we jump the gate. The other day, he hit himself; he's got a leg as thick as that. Isn't the last horse I was riding a pretty one? But I was not in form."

Henry at present detests the Baron de Damas, whose appearance, character and ideas are repellent to him. He frequently loses his temper with him. In consequence of these rages, the Prince must needs be punished; he is sometimes condemned to stay in bed: a stupid punishment. Next comes an Abbé Moligny, who confesses the rebel and tries to frighten him out of his wits. The obstinate one will not listen and refuses to eat Then Madame la Dauphine decides in favour of Henry, who eats and laughs at the baron. The education proceeds in this vicious circle.

What M. le Duc de Bordeaux ought to have is a light hand which would lead him without making him feel the bit, a governor who should be his friend rather than his master.

If the family of St. Louis were, like that of the Stuarts, a kind of private family expelled by a revolution, confined within an island, the destiny of the Bourbons would, in a short time, be foreign to the new generations. Our old royal power is more than that; it represents the Old Royalty: the political, moral and religious past of the people is born of that power and grouped around it. The fate of a House so closely intertwined with the social order that was, so nearly allied to the social order that is, can never be indifferent to mankind. But, destined though that House be to live, the condition of the individuals composing it, with whom a hostile fate had not made a truce, would be deplorable. In perpetual misfortune, those individuals would march forgotten on a parallel line along the glorious memory of their family.

There is nothing sadder than the existence of fallen kings; their days are no more than a tissue of realities and fictions; remaining sovereigns by their own fire-sides, among their people and their memories, they have no sooner crossed the threshold of their house than they find the ironical truth at their door: James II. or Edward VII.[567], Charles X. or Louis XIX. behind closed doors become, with opened doors, James or Edward, Charles or Louis, without numerals, like the labourers their neighbours; they suffer the two-fold drawbacks of Court life and private life: the flatterers, the favourites, the intrigues, the ambitions of the one; the affronts, the distress, the gossiping of the other: it is a continual masquerade of menials and ministers, changing clothes. The mood sours in this situation, hopes weaken, regrets increase; one recalls the past; one recriminates; one exchanges reproaches which are the more bitter inasmuch as the utterance ceases to be confined within the good taste of a high origin and the proprieties of a superior fortune: one becomes vulgar through vulgar sufferings; the cares of a lost throne degenerate into domestic worries: Popes Clement XIV.[568] and Pius VI.[569] were never able to restore peace in the Pretender's Household. Those discrowned aliens remain under supervision in the middle of the world, repelled by the princes as infected with adversity, suspected by the peoples as smitten with power.

[Sidenote: Dinner at Hradschin.]

I went to dress: I had been informed that I might keep on my frock and my boots; but misfortune is too high in station to be approached with familiarity. I reached the Castle at a quarter to six; the dinner was laid in one of the entrance-rooms. I found the Cardinal de Latil in the drawing-room. I had not met him since he had dined with me in Rome, at the Embassy Palace, at the time of the meeting of the conclave after the death of Leo XII. What a change of destiny for me and for the world between those two dates!

He was still the hedge-priest with the plump belly, the pointed nose, the pale face, just as I had seen him in the Chamber of Peers with an ivory paper-knife in his hand. People asserted that he had no influence and that he was put in a comer and received more kicks than half-pence: perhaps; but there are different sorts of credit: the cardinal's is none the less sure because it is secret; he derives this credit from the long years spent beside the King and from his priestly character. The Abbé de Latil has been an intimate confidant; the remembrance of Madame de Polastron[570] hangs about the confessor's surplice: the charm of the last human frailties and the sweetness of the first religious sentiments are prolonged as memories in the old Monarch's heart.

There arrived in succession M. de Blacas, M. A. de Damas[571], the baron's brother, M. O'Heguerty the Elder, M. and Madame de Cossé. At six o'clock precisely, the King appeared, followed by his son; we hurried in to dinner. The King put me on his right; he had M. le Dauphin on his left; M. de Blacas sat down opposite the King, between the cardinal and Madame de Cossé: the other guests were placed at random. The children dine with their grand-father on Sundays only; this is to deprive one's self of the only happiness that remains in exile: family life and intimacy.

It was a fish-dinner and none too good at that. The King extolled to me the merits of a fish from the Moldau which possessed none at all. Four or five footmen in black roamed like lay-brothers about the refectory; there was no house-steward. Every one helped himself and offered to help others from the dish before him.

The King ate well, asked to be served and himself served what he was asked for. He was in a good humour; the fear which he had had of me was past. The conversation turned within a circle of commonplaces, on the Bohemian climate, the health of Madame la Dauphine, my journey, the Whit Sunday ceremonies which were to take place to-morrow; not a word of politics. M. le Dauphin, after sitting with his nose deep in his plate, would sometimes emerge from his silence and, addressing the Cardinal de Latil, said:

"Prince of the Church, the gospel of this morning was according to St. Matthew, was it not?"

"No, Monseigneur, according to St. Mark."

"What, St. Mark?"

A great dispute followed between St. Mark and St. Matthew, and the cardinal was beaten.

Dinner lasted nearly an hour; the King rose, and we followed him to the drawing-room. The newspapers lay on a table; we all sat down and began to read then and there as if in a café.

[Sidenote: The royal children.]

The children came in, the Duc de Bordeaux escorted by his governor, Mademoiselle by her governess. They ran up to kiss their grandfather and then rushed to me; we ensconced ourselves in the embrasure of a window overlooking the town and commanding a splendid view. I renewed my compliments on the riding-lesson. Mademoiselle hastened to tell me again what her brother had already told me, that I had seen nothing; that one could not form an opinion while the black horse was lame. Madame de Gontaut came to sit near us, M. de Damas a little further away, giving an ear, in an amusing state of anxiety, as though I were going to eat his pupil or drop a few words on the liberty of the press or the glory of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. I would have laughed at the fears with which I inspired him, if I had been able to laugh at a poor man after M. de Polignac. Suddenly Henry said to me:

"Have you ever seen a constrictor?"

"A boa-constrictor, Monseigneur means: there are none either in Egypt or at Tunis, the only places in Africa at which I have touched; but I have seen many snakes in America."

"Oh yes," said the Princesse Louise, "the rattle-snake, in the _Génie du Christianisme._"

I bowed to thank Mademoiselle.

"But you have seen plenty of other snakes?" asked Henry. "Are they very vicious?"

"Some of them, Monseigneur, are exceedingly dangerous; others have no venom and one makes them dance."

The two children came close up to me with delight, keeping their four beautiful eyes fixed on mine.

"And then there is the glass-snake," I said; "he is splendid to look at and does you no harm; he is as transparent and brittle as glass: you break him as soon as you touch him."

"Can't the pieces come together again?" asked the Prince.

"No, no, dear," Mademoiselle answered for me.

"You went to the Falls of Niagara?" Henry resumed.

"They roar terribly, don't they? Can you go down in a boat?"

"Monseigneur, one American amused himself by sending a great barge down; another American, they say, himself jumped into the cataract: he was not destroyed the first time; he tried again and was killed at the second attempt."

The two children lifted up their hands and said:

"Oh!"

Madame de Gontaut joined in the conversation:

"M. de Chateaubriand has been to Egypt and Jerusalem."

Mademoiselle clapped her hands and came still closer to me:

"M. de Chateaubriand," she said, "do tell my brother about the Pyramids and Our Lord's Sepulchre."

I told them a story as best I could of the Pyramids, the Holy Sepulchre, the Jordan, the Holy Land. The children were marvellously attentive: Mademoiselle took her pretty face in her two hands, with her elbows almost resting on my knees, and Henry, perched on a high arm-chair, swung his legs to and fro.

After that fine talk about serpents, cataracts, pyramids and the Holy Sepulchre, Mademoiselle said:

"Will you put me a question in history?"

"How, in history?"

"Yes, ask me about a year, the least important year in the whole history of France, except the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which we have not yet begun."

"Oh, I," exclaimed Henry, "I prefer a famous year: ask me something about a famous year!"

He was not so sure of his facts as his sister.

I began by obeying the Princess and said:

"Well, then! Will Mademoiselle tell me what happened and who was reigning, in France, in 1001?"

And the brother and sister began to try, Henry pulling at his fore-lock, Mademoiselle shading her face with her two hands, a familiar trick with her, as though she were playing at hide-and-seek, and then she suddenly reveals her young and merry countenance, her smiling mouth, her limpid look. She was the first to say:

"Robert[572] was reigning, Gregory V.[573] was Pope, Basil II.[574] Emperor of the East..."

"And Otto III.[575] Emperor of the West," cried Henry, hurrying so as not to remain behind his sister, and added, "Veremund II.[576] in Spain."

Mademoiselle, interrupting him, said:

"Ethelred[577] in England."

"No, no," said her brother, "it was Edmund Ironside[578]."

[Sidenote: Questions in History.]

Mademoiselle was right; Henry was a few years out in favour of Ironside, who had fascinated him; but it was none the less prodigious.

"And my famous year?" asked Henry, in a half-vexed tone.

"That's true, Monseigneur: what happened in the year 1593?"

"Pooh!" exclaimed the young Prince. "The abjuration of Henry IV.[579]"

Mademoiselle turned red at not having been able to answer first.

Eight o'clock struck: the Baron de Damas' voice cut short our conversation, just as when the hammer of the clock, striking ten, used to arrest my father's steps in the great hall at Combourg.

Dear children, the old crusader has told you his adventures in Palestine, but not by the fire-side in the Castle of Queen Blanche[580]! To find you, he came knocking with his palmer's staff and his dusty sandals at the foreigner's icy threshold. Blondel[581] has sung in vain at the foot of the tower of the Dukes of Austria[582]: his voice could not open the road to the mother-land for you. Young outlaws, the traveller to distant lands has concealed a part of his story from you: he has not told you that, a poet and prophet, he dragged through the forests of Florida and on the mountains of Judea as much despair, sadness and passion as you have hope, gladness and innocence; that there was a day when, like Julian, he threw his blood at Heaven, blood of which God, in His mercy, has preserved a few drops for him so that he may redeem those which he gave up to the god of curses.

The Prince, taken away by his governor, invited me to his history-lesson, fixed for next Monday, at eleven o'clock in the morning. Madame de Gontaut withdrew with Mademoiselle. Then began a scene of another kind: the future Royalty, in the person of a child, had just drawn me into its games; and now the past Royalty, in the person of an old man, made me assist at its diversions. A rubber of whist, lighted by two candles in the corner of a dark room, began between the King and the Dauphin and the Duc de Blacas and the Cardinal de Latil. I was the only onlooker, with O'Heguerty, the equerry. Through the windows, whose shutters were not closed, the twilight came to mingle its pallor with that of the candles: the Monarchy was dying out between those two expiring lights. Profound silence reigned, but for the shuffling of the cards and a few exclamations from the King, who was angry. Cards were renewed after the Latins in order to solace the adversity of Charles VI.[583]: but there is no Ogier[584] nor Lahire[585] nowadays to give his name, under Charles X., to those distractions of misfortune.

When the cards were over, the King wished me good-night I went through the deserted and gloomy rooms through which I had passed on the previous evening, the same stairs, the same court-yards, the same guards, and, descending the slope of the hill, I returned to my inn, after losing my way in the streets and the dark. Charles X. remained shut up in the black mass which I had just left: nothing can equal the sadness of his forlornness and of his years.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had great need of my bed; but the Baron Capelle[586], newly-arrived from Holland, was lodged in a room next to mine and came hurrying to me.

When the torrent falls from on high, the abyss which it hollows out and in which it is swallowed up fixes one's gaze and leaves one dumb; but I have neither patience nor pity to waste on the ministers whose feeble hands let the crown of St. Louis fall into the whirl-pool, as though the waves would carry it back! Those of his ministers who claim to have opposed the Ordinances are the most guilty; those who say that they were the most moderate are the least innocent: if they saw so clearly, why did they not resign?

"They did not want to abandon the King; Monsieur le Dauphin treated them as cowards."

A poor evasion; they were unable to tear themselves from their portfolios. Whatever they may say, there is nothing else at the bottom of that immense catastrophe. And what a fine composure after the event. One[587] is scribbling about the history of England, after bringing the history of France to so pretty a plight; the other[588] laments the life and death of the Duc de Reichstadt, after sending the Duc de Bordeaux to Prague.

I knew M. Capelle: it is only fair to remember that he had remained poor; his pretensions did not exceed his value; he would very readily have said, with Lucian:

"If you come to listen to me in the hope of smelling amber and hearing the song of the swan, I call the gods to witness that I have never spoken of myself in terms so magnificent."

At the present day, modesty is a rare quality and the only wrong that M. Capelle did was to allow himself to be appointed a minister.

[Sidenote: The Baron de Damas.]

I received a visit from M. le Baron de Damas: the virtues of that brave officer had flown to his head; a religious congestion was puzzling his brain. There are some associations which are fatal: the Duc de Rivière[589], when dying, recommended M. de Damas as Governor to the Duc de Bordeaux; the Prince de Polignac was a member of that set Incapacity is a form of freemasonry which has its lodges in every country; that secret society has oubliettes of which it opens the plugs and in which it causes States to disappear.

The domestic condition came so naturally to the Court that M. de Damas, when choosing M. La Villatte, would never grant him any title other than that of First Groom of the Bed-chamber to Monseigneur le Duc de Bordeaux. I took a liking at first sight to this grey-mustachioed soldier, whose business it was, like a faithful dog, to bark round his sheep. He belonged to those loyal "grenade-throwers" whom the terrible Maréchal de Montluc[590] used to esteem, saying:

"They have no back-shop in them."

M. La Villatte will be dismissed because of his sincerity, not because of his bluntness: one can put up with barrack-room bluntness; often adulation in camp imparts an air of independence to flattery. But, with the brave old soldier of whom I am speaking, it was all frankness; he would have taken off his mustachios with honour to himself, if he had borrowed 30,000 piastres on them like João de Castro[591]. His crabbed face was only the expression of liberty; he merely informed one, by his appearance, that he was ready. Before taking the field with their army, the Florentines used to warn the enemy of their intention by the sound of the bell Martinella.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

I had intended to hear Mass at the Cathedral, within the castle precincts, but, being detained by visitors, I had time only to go to what was formerly the Jesuit Church. They were singing to an organ accompaniment A woman near me had a voice which made me look round at her. At the communion, she covered her face with her two hands and did not approach the Holy Table.

Alas, I have already explored many churches in the four quarters of the globe, without being able to lay aside, even at the Tomb of the Saviour, the rough hair-cloth of my thoughts! I have depicted Aben-Hamet wandering in the Christian mosque at Cordova:

"He caught a glimpse, at the foot of a pillar, of a motionless figure which he took, at first sight, for a statue on a tomb-stone."

The original of that knight of whom Aben-Hamet caught sight was a religious whom I had met in the church of the Escorial and whom I had envied his faith. Who knows, however, the storms deep down in that contemplative soul or what entreaty ascended towards the "holy and innocent pontiff?" I had been admiring, in the unfrequented sacristy of the Escorial, one of Murillo's most beautiful Virgins; I was with a woman: it was she who first showed me the monk deaf to the sound of the passions that passed through the formidable silence of the sanctuary around him.

After Mass in Prague, I sent for a calash; I took the road laid out along the old fortifications by which carriages drive up to the Castle. They were busy marking out gardens on the ramparts: the euphony of a forest will take the place here of the noise of the Battle of Prague[592]; the whole will be very handsome in forty years or so: God grant that Henry V. may not stay here long enough to enjoy the shade of a leaf as yet unborn[593]!

Having to dine at the Governor's to-morrow, I thought that it would be polite to go to call on Madame la Comtesse de Chotek: I should have thought her amiable and pretty, even if she had not quoted passages from writings to me from memory.

[Sidenote: General Skrzynecki.]

I went to Madame de Guiche's evening, where I met General Skrzynecki[594] and his wife. He told me the story of the Polish Insurrection and the Battle of Ostrolenka. When I rose to go, the general asked me to permit him to press my "venerable hand" and to embrace the "patriarch of the liberty of the press;" his wife wished to embrace in me the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: the Monarchy accepted with all its heart the fraternal kiss of the Republic. I felt an honest man's satisfaction: I was glad to rouse noble sympathies, on different scores, in two foreign hearts; to be pressed, in turn, to the breast of husband and wife, through liberty and religion.

On Monday the 27th, in the morning, the "Opposition" came to tell me that I could not see the young Prince: M. de Damas had tired his pupil by dragging him from church to church to the Stations of the Jubilee. This weariness served as a pretext for a holiday and was made to justify a trip to the country: they wanted to hide the child from me. I spent the morning in visiting the town. At five o'clock, I went to dine at Count Chotek's.

The house belonging to Count Chotek was built by his father[595], who was also Grand Burgrave of Bohemia, and presents externally the form of a Gothic chapel: nothing is original nowadays, everything is copied. The drawing-room gives a view over the gardens; they slope down into a valley: the light is always dull, the soil greyish, as in those many-cornered recesses of the mountains of the North, where gaunt nature wears the hair-shirt.

The table was laid under the trees in the "pleasure-ground[596]." We dined without our hats: my head, which so many storms have insulted by carrying off my hair, was sensitive to the breath of the wind. While I strove to keep my mind on my dinner, I could not help watching the birds and clouds that flew over the banquet: passengers embarked on the breezes and having secret relations with my destinies; travellers, the objects of my envy, whose aerial course my eyes cannot follow without a sort of emotion. I was more at home with those parasites wandering in the sky than with the guests seated near me on the earth: happy those anchorites who had a raven for _dapifer!_

I cannot speak to you of Prague society, because I met it only at that dinner. There was a woman present who was very much in the fashion in Vienna and very witty, I was told; she seemed to me an acrimonious and foolish person, although she still had a certain youthfulness, like those trees which keep in summer the dried clusters of the flower which they have borne in spring.

[Sidenote: Society in Prague.]

I know, therefore, of the manners of this country only those of the sixteenth century, as told by Bassompierre[597]: he loved Anna Esther, eighteen years of age and six months a widow. He spent five days and six nights in disguise and hidden in a room with his mistress. He played tennis in Hradschin with Wallenstein. Being neither Wallenstein nor Bassompierre, I laid claim to neither empire nor love. The modern Esthers ask for Assueruses who are able, disguised though they be, to get rid of their dominoes at night: one does not lay aside the mask of the years.

PRAGUE, 27 _May_ 1833.

After the dinner was over, at seven o'clock, I waited on the King; I there met the same persons as before, excepting M. le Duc de Bordeaux, who was said to be ailing from his Stations on the Sunday. The King was half reclining on a sofa, and Mademoiselle sitting on a chair right up against the knees of Charles X., who was stroking his grand-daughter's arm and telling her stories. The young Princess listened attentively: when I appeared, she looked at me with the smile of a reasonable person who should say:

"I must do something to amuse my grand-papa."

"Chateaubriand," exclaimed the King, "I did not see you yesterday!"

"Sire, I was told too late that Your Majesty had done me the honour to name me for your dinner-party: also, it was Whit Sunday, a day on which I am not allowed to see Your Majesty."

"How is that?" asked the King.

"Sire, it was on Whit Sunday, nine years ago, that, when I came to pay my Court to you, they forbade me your door."

Charles X. seemed touched:

"They won't drive you away from the Castle of Prague."

"No, Sire, for I do not see those good servants here who showed me out on the day of prosperity."

The whist-playing began and the day came to an end. After the rubber, I returned the Duc de Blacas' visit:

"The King," he said, "has told me that we were to have a talk."

I replied that, as the King had not thought it expedient to summon his Council, before which I could have set forth my ideas regarding the future of France and the majority of the Duc de Bordeaux, I had nothing more to say.

"His Majesty has no council," rejoined the Duc de Blacas with a tremulous laugh and a self-satisfied look in his eyes; "he has no one but me, absolutely no one."

The Grand-master of the Wardrobe has the highest opinion of himself: a French complaint. To hear him speak, he does everything, he is equal to everything: he married the Duchesse de Berry; he does what he pleases with the Kings; he leads Metternich by the nose; he has Nesselrode[598] under his thumb; he reigns in Italy; he has carved his name on an obelisk in Rome; he has the keys of the conclaves in his pocket; the three last Popes owe their elevation to him; he knows public opinion so well, he measures his ambition so well by his strength that, when accompanying Madame la Duchesse de Berry, he had himself given a diploma appointing him Head of the Council of Regency, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs! And that is how those poor people understand France and the times.

Nevertheless, M. de Blacas is the most intelligent and the most moderate of the band. In conversation he is reasonable; he always agrees with you:

"Is that what you think? It is just what I was saying yesterday. We have absolutely the same ideas!"

He bemoans his slavery; he is tired of business, he would like to live in an unknown corner of the earth, to die there in peace, far from the world. As to his influence with Charles X., don't speak of it to him; they think that he sways Charles X.: they are wrong! He can do nothing with the King! The King refuses a thing in the morning; at night he grants the same thing, and nobody knows why he has changed his mind, and so on. When M. de Blacas tells you these tales, he is telling the truth, because he never thwarts the King; but he is not sincere, because he inspires Charles X. only with those wishes which are in accordance with that Prince's inclinations.

[Sidenote: The Duc de Blacas.]

For the rest, M. de Blacas possesses courage and honour; he is not without generosity; he is devoted and faithful. By rubbing himself against the high aristocracy and acquiring wealth, he has caught the ways of both. He is very well-born; he comes of a poor, but ancient house, known in poetry and arms[599]. His stiff and formal manners, his assurance, his strictness in matters of etiquette preserve for his masters an air of nobility which one loses too easily in misfortune: at least, in the Museum in Prague, the inflexibility of a suit of armour holds erect a body which would fall without it M. de Blacas does not lack a certain energy; he dispatches ordinary affairs quickly; he is orderly and methodical. A fairly enlightened connoisseur in some branches of archaeology, a lover of the arts without imagination and an icy libertine, he does not grow excited even over his passions; his coolness would be a statesmanlike quality if his coolness were other than his confidence in his genius, and his genius betrays him: one feels in him the abortive great lord, even as one feels it in his fellow-countryman, La Valette, Duc d'Épernon[600].

Either there will or there will not be a restoration: if there is a restoration, M. de Blacas will come back with places and honours; if there is no restoration, the fortune of the Grand-master of the Wardrobe is almost all invested out of France; Charles X. and Louis XIX. will be dead; he, M. de Blacas, will be very old: his children will remain the companions of the exiled Prince, illustrious foreigners at foreign Courts. Praise God for all things!

Thus the Revolution, which exalted and ruined Bonaparte, will have enriched M. de Blacas: that makes amends. M. de Blacas, with his long, impassive, colourless face, is the Monarchy's undertaker-in-ordinary: he buried it at Hartwell, he buried it at Ghent, he buried it again in Edinburgh and he will bury it again in Prague or elsewhere, always attending to the remains of the high and mighty defunct, like those peasants on the coasts who pick up the wreckage which the sea casts up on its shores.

PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

On Monday the 28th of May, as the history lesson at which I was to have been present at eleven o'clock did not take place, I found myself free to go through, or, rather, to revisit the town which I had already seen and seen again in coming and going. I do not know why I had imagined that Prague was nestled in a gap of mountains that threw their black shadow over a huddled kettleful of houses. Prague is a bright city, in which twenty-five or thirty graceful towers and steeples rise up to the sky; its architecture reminds one of a town of the Renascence. The long sway of the Emperors over the Cisalpine countries filled Germany with artists from those countries; the Austrian villages are villages of Lombardy, Tuscany or the Venetian main-land: one would think one's self under the roof of an Italian peasant, if, in the farm-houses, with their great bare rooms, a stove did not take the place of the sun.

The view enjoyed from the windows of the Castle is agreeable: on one side, you see the orchards of a cool valley, with green slopes, enclosed by the denticulated walls of the town, which run down to the Moldau, almost as the walls of Rome run from the Vatican down to the Tiber; on the other side, you perceive the city, cut in two by the river, which is beautified by an island set up stream and embraces another island down stream, after leaving the northern suburb. The Moldau flows into the Elbe. A boat might have taken me on board at the bridge of Prague and landed me at the Pont-Royal in Paris. I am not the work of the ages and kings; I have neither the weight nor the duration of the obelisk[601] which the Nile is now sending to the Seine; the girdle of the Vestal of the Tiber would be strong enough to tow my galley.

The Moldau Bridge, which was first built in wood, in 795, by Mnata, has been rebuilt, at different times, in stone. While I was taking the measure of this bridge, Charles X. was walking on the pavement; he carried an umbrella; his son accompanied him like a paid _cicerone._ I had said, in the _Conservateur_, that "men would go to the window to see the Monarchy pass:" I saw it pass on the bridge of Prague.

In the constructions of which Hradschin is composed one sees historic halls, museums hung with the restored portraits and the furbished arms of the Dukes and Kings of Bohemia. Not far from the shapeless masses, there stands detached against the sky a pretty building decked with one of the graceful porticoes of the Cinquecento: this architecture has the drawback of being out of harmony with the climate. If at least one could, during the Bohemian winter, put those Italian palaces in the hot-house, with the palm-trees? I was always preoccupied with the thought of the cold which they must feel at night.

[Sidenote: History of Prague.]

Prague, often besieged, taken and re-taken, is known to us, in a military respect, by the battle called after it and by the retreat in which Vauvenargues[602] took part. The bulwarks of the town are demolished. The moat of the Castle, on the side of the high plane, forms a deep and narrow groove, now planted with poplars. At the time of the Thirty Years' War, this moat was filled with water. The Protestants, having penetrated into the Castle, on the 23rd of May 1618, threw two Catholic lords, together with the Secretary of State, out of window: the three divers saved their lives. The Secretary, like a well-bred man, begged a thousand pardons of one of the lords for his rudeness in falling on his head. In this present month of May 1833, we are no longer so polite: I am not sure what I should say in a similar case, although I have been a secretary of State myself.

Tycho Brahe died in Prague[603]: would you, for all his knowledge, have a false nose in wax or silver as he did? Tycho consoled himself in Bohemia, like Charles X., by contemplating the heavens; the astronomer admired the work, the King adores the Workman. The star which appeared in 1572 (and died out in 1574) and which passed successively from dazzling white to the red yellow of Mars and the leaden white of Saturn presented to Tycho's observations the spectacle of the conflagration of a world. What is the revolution whose breath blew the brother of Louis XVI. to the tomb of the Danish Newton beside the destruction of a globe, accomplished in less than two years?

General Moreau came to Prague to concert with the Emperor of Russia a restoration which he, Moreau, did not live to see.

If Prague were by the sea-side, nothing would be more charming; and Shakespeare, striking Bohemia with his wand turns it into a shipping country:

"Thou art perfect then," says Antigonus to a Mariner in the _Winter's Tale_:

Thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon The deserts of Bohemia?

Antigonus lands, charged to abandon a little girl, to whom he addresses these words:

Blossom, speed thee well! . . . . . . . . . . . The storm begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thou art like to have A lullaby too rough[604].

Does not Shakespeare seem to have told in advance the story of the Princesse Louise, that young "blossom," that new Perdita transported to the deserts of Bohemia?

PRAGUE, 28 _and_ 29 _May_ 1833.

Confusion, blood, catastrophes compose the history of Bohemia; her dukes and kings, in the midst of civil wars and foreign wars, fight with their subjects or come to logger-heads with the Dukes and Kings of Silesia, Saxony, Poland, Moravia, Hungary, Austria and Bavaria.

During the reign of Wenceslaus VI.[605], who spitted his cook for roasting a hare badly, arose John Huss, who, having studied at Oxford, brought back the doctrine of Wyclif[606]. The Protestants, who were looking for ancestors everywhere without being able to find any, report that, from the top of his funeral pile, John sang and prophesied the coming of Luther:

"The world filled with acidity," says Bossuet, "gave birth to Luther and Calvin, who canton Christendom."

From the Christian and pagan struggles, the precocious heresies of Bohemia, the importation of foreign interests and foreign manners, resulted a state of confusion favourable to lying. Bohemia passed as the native land of the sorcerers.

Some old poems, discovered, in 1817, by M. Hanka[607], the Librarian of the Prague Museum, in the archives of the church at Königinhof, have become famous. A young man whom I have pleasure in naming, the son of an illustrious scholar, M. Ampère, has made known the spirit of those lays. Czelakovsky[608] has spread popular songs in the Slav idiom.

The Poles think the Bohemian dialect effeminate: it is the quarrel of the Doric and Ionic. The Lower Breton of Vannes treats the Lower Breton of Tréguier as a barbarian. Slav as well as Magyar lends itself to the translation of all languages: my poor _Atala_ has been rigged out in a robe of Hungarian point-lace; she also wears an Armenian dolman and an Arab veil.

[Sidenote: Bohemian literature.]

There is another literature that has flourished in Bohemia: the modern Latin literature. The prince of this literature, Bohuslas Hassenstein, Baron Lobkowitz[609], born in 1462, took ship, in 1490, in Venice and visited Greece, Syria, Arabia and Egypt Lobkowitz preceded me in those celebrated places by three hundred and sixteen years and, like Lord Byron, sang his pilgrimage. With what a difference in mind, heart, thoughts, manners have we, at an interval of over three centuries, meditated on the same ruins and under the same sun: Lobkowitz, the Bohemian; Byron, the Englishman; and I, the child of France!

At the time of Lobkowitz' voyage, wonderful monuments, since overthrown, were standing. It must have been an astonishing spectacle, that of barbarism in all its strength, holding civilization on the ground under its feet, the janissaries of Mahomet II.[610] drunk with opium, victories and women, scimitar in hand, their foreheads girt with the blood-stained turban, drawn up in line for the assault on the rubbish of Egypt and Greece: and I have seen the same barbarism, among the same ruins, struggling under the feet of civilization.

As I surveyed the town and suburbs of Prague, the things which I have just told came to apply themselves on my memory like transfers on a canvas. But, in whatever corner I happened to be, I saw Hradschin and the King of France leaning on the windows of that castle, like a ghost over-towering all those shades.

PRAGUE, 29 _May_ 1833.

Having finished my review of Prague, I went, on the 29th of May, to dine at the Castle, at six o'clock. The King was in high spirits. When we left the table, sitting down on the sofa in the drawing-room, he said:

"Chateaubriand, do you know that the _National_ which arrived this morning declares that I had the right to issue my Ordinances?"

"Sire," I replied, "Your Majesty is making innuendoes against me."

The King, undecided, hesitated; then, taking his resolution:

"I have something on my mind: you dealt me devilish hard measure in the first part of your speech in the House of Peers." And at once the King, without giving me the time to answer, cried, "Oh, the end, the end!... The empty grave at Saint-Denis.... That was admirable! That was very fine, very fine! Do not let us talk of it any more. I did not want to keep that... it's done with, it's done with." And he excused himself for venturing to risk those few words. I kissed the royal hand with pious respect.

"Let me tell you," Charles X. resumed: "perhaps I was wrong not to defend myself at Rambouillet; I still had great resources... but I did not want blood to flow for me; I retired."

I did not combat this noble excuse; I replied:

"Sire, Bonaparte retired twice like Your Majesty, in order not to prolong the ills of France."

I thus put the weakness of my old King under the shelter of Napoleon's glory.

The children arrived and we went up to them. The King spoke of Mademoiselle's age:

"What, you little doll," he exclaimed, "are you fourteen already?"

"Oh, when I'm fifteen!" said Mademoiselle.

"Well, what will you do then?"

Mademoiselle stopped short.

Charles X. was telling something:

"I don't remember that," said the Duc de Bordeaux.

"I should think not," said the King; "it happened on the very day when you were born."

"Oh," replied Henry, "so it's very long ago!"

Mademoiselle, leaning her head a little on one shoulder, lifting her face towards her brother, while casting a glance aslant at me, said, with an ironical little look:

"Is it so very long, then, since you were born?"

The children retired; I took leave of the orphan: I was to start during the night I said good-bye to him in French, English and German. How many languages will Henry learn in which to tell his wandering miseries, to ask for bread and a shelter from the stranger?

When the rubber began, I took His Majesty's orders:

"You will see Madame la Dauphine at Carlsbad," said Charles X. "A good journey, my dear Chateaubriand. We shall read about you in the papers."

I went from door to door to pay my last respects to the inhabitants of the Castle. I saw the young Princess again at Madame de Gontaut's; she gave me a letter for her mother at the foot of which were a few lines from Henry.

[Sidenote: I take leave of my Kings.]

I was to have left at five o'clock, on the morning of the 30th; Count Chotek had had the goodness to order horses along the road: a jobbing transaction detained me till noon. I was the bearer of a letter of credit for 2000 francs payable in Prague; I had called upon a fat little monkey of a Jew who uttered cries of admiration when he saw me. He summoned his wife to his aid; she ran, or, rather, rolled up to my feet; she sat down opposite me, quite short, fat and black, with two arms like fins, staring at me with her round eyes: if the Messiah had come in by the window, this Rachel would not have appeared more delighted; I thought myself threatened with an "Hallelujah." The broker offered me his fortune, letters of credit for the whole extent of the Israelitish dispersion; he added that he would send me my 2000 francs to my hotel.

The money was not paid on the evening of the 29th; on the 30th, in the morning, when the horses were already put to, came a clerk with a parcel of bills, paper of different sources, which loses more or less on change and which is not current outside the Austrian States. My account was made out on a bill which said, in discharge, "good money." I was astounded:

"What good is this to me?" I asked the clerk. "How am I to pay the posting and my hotel-bills with this paper?"

The clerk ran off in search of explanations. Another clerk came and made me endless calculations. I sent back the second clerk; a third brought me cash in the form of Brabant crowns. I set out, thenceforth on my guard against the affection with which I might inspire the daughters of Jerusalem.

My calash was surrounded, under the gate-way, by the people of the hotel, among whom squeezed a pretty Saxon servant-girl, who used to run off to a piano every time she could snatch a moment between two rings at the bell: just ask Léonarde of Limousin, or Fanchon of Picardy to sing or play _Tanti palpiti_ to you on the piano, or _Moses' Prayer!_

PRAGUE AND ON THE ROAD, 29 _and_ 30 _May_ 1833.

I had come to Prague with the greatest apprehension. I had said to myself:

"To ruin us, it is often enough for God to place our own destinies in our hands; God works miracles in men's favour, but He leaves the conduct of these to them; but for which it would be He that would govern in person: now men make the fruits of those miracles abortive. Crime is not always punished in this world; mistakes always. Crime is part of the infinite and general nature of men; Heaven alone knows the depth of it and sometimes reserves its punishment to Itself. The mistakes of a limited and accidental nature come within the scope of the narrow justice of the earth: that is why it would be possible for the last mistakes of the Monarchy to be rigorously punished by men."

I had said to myself also:

"Royal families have been seen to fall into irreparable errors, by becoming infatuated with a false idea of their own nature: at one time they look upon themselves as divine and exceptional families, at another as mortal and private families; they set themselves above the common law or within that law, as the case may require. When they violate political constitutions, they cry that they have the right to do so, that they are the fount of the law, that they cannot be judged by ordinary rules. When they want to make a domestic mistake, to give a dangerous education, for instance, to the Heir to the Throne, they reply to the protests made:

"'A private person can act towards his children as he pleases, and we cannot!'"

[Sidenote: Reflections on the road.]

Well no, you cannot: you are neither a divine family, nor a private family; you are a public family; you belong to society. The mistakes made by royalty do not affect royalty alone; they are detrimental to the whole nation: a king trips and goes away; but does a nation go away? Does it suffer no hurt? Are not those victims of their honour who have remained attached to the absent Royalty interrupted in their careers, persecuted in the persons of their kin, trammelled in their liberty, threatened in their lives? Once more, the Royalty is not a private possession, it is a public property, held in joint tenancy, and third parties are involved in the fortune of the Throne. I feared that, in the confusion inseparable from misfortune, the Royalty had not perceived these truths and had done nothing to come back to them at the expedient time.

On the other hand, while recognising the immense advantages of the Salic Law, I did not conceal from myself the fact that the duration of a House has some serious draw-backs for both nations and kings: for the nations, because it blends their destiny too closely with that of the kings; for the kings, because permanent power intoxicates them; they lose earthly notions: all that is not a part of their altars, prostrate prayers, humble vows, profound abasement, is impiousness. Misfortune teaches them nothing: adversity is but a coarse plebeian who fails to show them respect, and catastrophes are, for them, but so many displays of insolence.

I had fortunately deceived myself: I did not find Charles X. in those high errors which take their rise at the pinnacle of society; I found him only in the common illusions of an unexpected accident, which are more easily explained. Everything serves to console the self-esteem of the brother of Louis XVIII.; he sees the political world falling into decay, and, with some justice, he attributes this decay to his epoch, not to himself: did not Louis XVI. perish? Did not the Republic fall? Was not Bonaparte compelled twice to forsake the scene of his glory and did he not go to die a captive on a rock? Are not the thrones of Europe threatened? What, then, could he, Charles X., do more than those overthrown powers? He wanted to defend himself against his enemies; he was warned of the danger by his police and by public symptoms: he took the initiative; he attacked so as not to be attacked. Did not the heroes of the three riots admit that they were conspiring, that they had been playing a part for fifteen years? Well then, Charles thought that it was his duty to make an effort; he tried to save the French Legitimacy and, with it, the European Legitimacy: he gave battle and lost; he sacrificed himself to save the monarchies; that is all: Napoleon had his Waterloo, Charles X. his Days of July.

This is the light in which things present themselves to the unfortunate Monarch; he remains immutable, leaning upon events which wedge in and fasten down his mind. By dint of his immovability, he achieves a certain greatness: a man of imagination, he listens to you, he does not get angry with your ideas, he appears to enter into them and does not enter into them at all. There are certain general axioms which a man puts in front of himself like gabions; taking up his position behind that shelter, he takes shots from there at intellects which march ahead.

The mistake of many is to persuade themselves, according to events repeated in history, that mankind is always in its primitive place; they confound passions and ideas: the first are the same in every century, the second change in successive ages. If the material effects of certain actions are alike at different periods, the causes which have produced them vary.

Charles X. looks upon himself as a principle and, in fact, there are men who, by dint of living with fixed ideas, alike from generation to generation, are no longer more than so many monuments. Certain individuals, through the lapse of time and their own preponderance, become "things transformed into persons;" those individuals perish when those things come to perish: Brutus and Cato were the Roman Republic incarnate; they could not survive it, any more than the heart can beat when the blood ceases to flow.

In former days, I drew this portrait of Charles X.:

"You have seen him for ten years, that loyal subject, that respectful brother, that tender father, so greatly afflicted in one of his sons, so greatly consoled by the other! You know him, this Bourbon who was the first to come after our misfortunes, a worthy herald of Old France, to throw himself between you and Europe, with a branch of lilies in his hand! Your eyes are fixed with love and gladness on this Prince who, in the fulness of age, has preserved the charm and the noble elegance of youth and who now, adorned with the diadem, is still 'but one Frenchman the more in the midst of you!' You repeat with emotion so many happy phrases escaped from this new Monarch, who derives from the loyalty of his heart the grace of speaking well!

"Where is that one among us who would not trust him with his life, his fortune, his honour? That man, whom we would all wish to have as our friend, we have to-day as our King. Ah, let us try to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May the crown lie light upon the whitened head of that Christian Knight! Pious as Louis XII.[611], courteous as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may he be happy with all the happiness which he has lacked during so many long years! May the throne, on which so many monarchs have encountered storms, be to him a place of rest[612]!"

Elsewhere I have again celebrated the same Prince: the model has only grown older, but one recognises it in the youthful touches of the portrait; age withers us by taking from us a certain truth of poetry which gives colour and bloom to our faces and yet one loves, in spite of one's self, the face which has faded at the same time as our own features. I have sung hymns to the House of Henry IV.; I would begin them again with all my heart, while combating anew the mistakes of the Legitimacy and bringing down upon myself anew its disgraces, if it were destined to rise again. The reason of this is that the Constitutional Legitimate Royalty has always appeared to me the gentlest and safest road to entire liberty. I believed and I should still believe that I was playing the part of a good citizen even when exaggerating the advantages of that royalty, in order to give it, if so much should depend on me, the duration necessary for the accomplishment of the gradual transformation of society and manners.

[Sidenote: Memoires of Charles X.]

I am doing a service to the memory of Charles X. by opposing the pure and simple truth to what will be said of him in the future. The hostility of parties will represent him as a man faithless to his oaths and the violator of the public liberties: he is nothing of the sort. He acted in good faith in attacking the Charter; he did not, nor did he need to think himself forsworn; he had the firm intention of restoring the Charter after he had "saved" it, in his own way and as he understood it.

Charles X. is what I have described him to be: mild, although subject to anger, kind and affectionate to his intimates, lovable, easy-going, free from malice, having all the knightly qualities, devotion, nobleness, an elegant courtesy, mixed, however, with weakness, which does not exclude passive courage and the glory of a fine death; incapable of carrying out to the end a good or bad resolution; built up of the prejudices of his century and his rank; in ordinary times, a proper king; in extraordinary times, a man of perdition, not of misfortune.

As for the Duc de Bordeaux, they would like, at Hradschin, to make of him a King ever on horse-back, ever flourishing his sword. It is necessary, no doubt, that he should be brave; but it is a mistake to imagine that in these times the right of conquest will be recognised, that it would be enough to be Henry IV. to reascend the throne. Without courage, one cannot reign; but one no longer reigns with courage alone: Bonaparte has killed the authority of victory.

An extraordinary part might be conceived by Henry V.; I will suppose that, at the age of twenty, he feels his position and says to himself:

"I can no longer remain inactive; I have the duties of my Blood to fulfil towards the past; but am I then obliged to trouble France because of myself alone? Must I weigh upon centuries yet to come with all the weight of the centuries that are done with? Let us solve the question; let us inspire with regrets those who unjustly outlawed me in my childhood; let us show them what I could be. It but depends on me to devote myself to my country by consecrating anew, whatever be the issue of the contest, the principle of the hereditary monarchies."

Then the son of St. Louis would land in France with a double idea of glory and sacrifice; he would descend upon it with the firm resolve to remain there with a crown upon his head or a bullet in his heart: in the latter case, his inheritance would go to Philip. The triumphant life or the sublime death of Henry V. would restore the Legitimacy, stripped only of that which the century no longer understands and which no longer suits the times. For the rest, supposing the sacrifice of my young Prince made, he would not have made it for me: after the death of Henry V. without children, I should never recognise a monarch in France!

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the elder branch.]

I have abandoned myself to these dreams, but what I suppose in relation to the resolution to be taken by Henry is impossible: by arguing in this wise, I placed myself, in thought, in an order of things above us, an order which would be natural at a time of elevation and magnanimity, but which would to-day look like the exaltation of romance; it is as though I were to speak at the present time in favour of going back to the Crusades, whereas we have become common-place in the sad reality of a deteriorated human nature. Such is the disposition of men's souls that Henry V. would encounter invincible obstacles in the apathy of France within and in the royalties without. He will therefore have to submit, to consent to await events, unless indeed he decided on a part which men would not fail to brand as that of an adventurer. He will have to enter into the sequence of ordinary facts and see the difficulties which surround him, without, however, allowing them to overwhelm him.

The Bourbons held good after the Empire, because they were succeeding an arbitrary government: can one see Henry transported from Prague to the Louvre after men have grown used to the most complete liberty? The French nation does not, at bottom, love that liberty; but it adores equality: it admits absolutism only for and through itself and its vanity commands it to obey only what it imposes upon itself. The Charter made a vain attempt to cause two nations which had become foreign to one another to live under the same law: Ancient France and Modern France; how would you make the two Frances understand one another, now that prejudices have increased? You would never appease men's minds by placing incontestable truths under their eyes.

To listen to passion or ignorance, the Bourbons are the authors of all our misfortunes; to reinstate the Elder Branch would mean to restore the domination of the castles; the Bourbons are the abettors and accomplices of those oppressive treaties of which, with good reason, I never ceased to complain: and yet nothing could be more absurd than all those accusations, in which both dates are forgotten and facts grossly distorted. The Restoration exercised no influence in diplomatic acts except at the time of the first invasion. It is admitted that men did not want that Restoration, because they were treating with Bonaparte at Châtillon, and that, had he pleased, he could have remained Emperor of the French. When his genius proved obstinate, for want of anything better, they took the Bourbons, who were on the spot Monsieur, as Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, then took a certain part in the transactions of the day; we have seen, in the life of Alexander, what the Treaty of Paris of 1814 left to us.

In 1815, there was no longer any question of the Bourbons; they had nothing to do with the predatory contracts of the second invasion: those contracts were the result of the escape from Elba. In Vienna, the Allies declared that they were only uniting against one man; that they did not intend to impose any sort of master nor any kind of government upon France. Alexander even suggested to the Congress another King than Louis XVIII. If the latter had not, by coming to seat himself in the Tuileries, hastened to snatch his throne, he would never have reigned. The treaties of 1815 were abominable for the very reason that men refused to hearken to the voice of the Legitimacy, and it was in order to destroy those same treaties that I wanted to rebuild our power in Spain.

The only moment at which we again find the spirit of the Restoration is at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle; the Allies had agreed to take from us our northern and eastern provinces: M. de Richelieu intervened. The Tsar, touched by our misfortune and influenced by his leanings towards fairness, handed to M. le Duc de Richelieu the map of France on which the fatal line had been drawn. I have, with my own eyes, seen that map of Styx in the hands of Madame de Montcalm, the sister of the noble negociator[613].

With France occupied as she was, our fortified towns garrisoned by foreign troops, could we have resisted? Once deprived of our military departments, how long should we have groaned under conquest? If we had had a sovereign of a new family, a prince at second-hand, he would never have been respected. Among the Allies, some bowed before the illusion of a great House, others thought that, under a worn-out authority, the Kingdom would lose its energy and cease to be an object of anxiety: Cobbett[614] himself agrees to this in his Letter. It is therefore a monstrous piece of ingratitude to refuse to see that, if we are still Old Gaul, we owe it to the blood which we have cursed most loudly. That blood which, since eight centuries, had flowed in the very veins of France, that blood which made her what she is saved her once more. Why persist in eternally denying the facts? They took advantage of victory against us, even as we had taken advantage of it against Europe. Our soldiers had gone to Russia; they brought after them, upon their footsteps, the soldiers who had fled before them. After action, reaction: that is the law. That makes no difference to the glory of Bonaparte, an isolated glory which remains complete; that makes no difference to our national glory, all covered as it is with the dust of Europe, whose towers have been swept by our flags. It was unnecessary, in a moment of but too justifiable spite, to go in search of any cause for our misfortunes other than the real cause. So far from their being that cause, had we not had the Bourbons in our reverses, we should have been portioned out.

Appreciate now the calumnies of which the Restoration has been made the object: examine the archives of the Foreign Office, and you shall be convinced of the independence of the language held to the Powers under the reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. Our sovereigns had the sentiment of the national dignity; they were kings above all to the foreigner, who never frankly wanted the re-establishment and who witnessed the resurrection of the Elder Monarchy with regret. The diplomatic language of France at the time of which I am speaking is, it must be said, peculiar to the aristocracy; the democracy, full of broad and prolific virtues, is nevertheless arrogant when it governs: capable of incomparable munificence when there is a need for immense devotion, it splits on the rock of details; it is rarely elevated, especially in prolonged misfortunes. Part of the hatred of the Courts of England and Austria for the Legitimacy is due to the firmness of the Bourbon Cabinet.

Instead of throwing down that Legitimacy, it would have been better policy to shore up its ruins; sheltered inside it, one would have erected the new edifice, as one builds a ship that is to brave the deep under a covered dock hewn out of the rock: in this way English liberty took its form in the breast of the Norman law. It was wrong to repudiate the monarchic phantom: that centenarian of the middle-ages, like Dandolo[615], "had fine eyes in his head; and, if it could not see out of them," was an old man who could guide the young Crusaders and who, adorned with his white hair, still vigorously printed his ineffaceable footsteps in the snow.

It is conceivable that, in our prolonged fears, we should be blinded by prejudice and vain and ridiculous shame; but distant posterity will not fail to see that, historically speaking, the Restoration was one of the happiest phases of our revolutionary cycle. Parties whose heat is not extinguished may cry, "We were free under the Empire, slaves under the Monarchy of the Charter!" but future generations, going beyond this mock praise, which would be ludicrous if it were not a sophism, will say that the recalled Bourbons prevented the dismemberment of France, that they laid the foundations of representative government among us, that they brought prosperity to our finances, discharged debts which they had not contracted, and religiously paid the pension even of Robespierre's sister. Lastly, to make good our lost colonies, they left us, in Africa, one of the richest provinces of the Roman Empire.

Three things remain standing to the credit of the restored Legitimacy: it entered Cadiz; at Navarino it gave Greece her independence; it freed Christianity by seizing Algiers: enterprises in which Bonaparte, Russia, Charles V. and Europe had failed. Show me a Power of a few days (and a Power so much disputed) which has accomplished such things as these.

I believe, with my hand on my heart, that I have exaggerated nothing and set forth nothing but facts in what I have just said of the Legitimacy. It is certain that the Bourbons neither would nor could have restored a castle monarchy or cantoned themselves in a tribe of nobles and priests; it is certain that they were not brought back by the Allies; they were the accident, not the cause of our disasters: the cause is evidently due to Napoleon. But it is certain also that the return of the Third Dynasty unfortunately coincided with the success of the foreign arms. The Cossacks appeared in Paris at the moment when Louis XVIII. returned there: hence, for France humiliated, for private interests, for all excited passions, the Restoration and the invasion are two identical things; the Bourbons have become the victims of a confusion of facts, of a calumny changed, like so many others, into a truth-lie. Alas, it is difficult to escape those calamities produced by nature and the times: fight them as we may, right does not always carry victory with it. The Psylli, a nation of Ancient Africa, had taken up arms against the South wind; a whirlwind arose and swallowed up those brave men:

"The Nasamonians," says Herodotus, "seized upon their abandoned country."

[Sidenote: The death of Henry IV.]

When speaking of the last calamity of the Bourbons, I am reminded of their commencement: an indescribable omen of their grave made itself heard in their cradle. Henry IV. no sooner saw himself master of Paris than he was seized with a fatal presentiment. The repeated attempts at assassination, without alarming his courage, had an influence on his natural gaiety. In the procession of the Holy Ghost, on the 5th of January, he appeared clad in black, wearing a plaister on his upper lip, on the wound which Jean Châtel[616] had given him when aiming at his heart. He wore a gloomy visage; Madame de Balagni asking him the reason:

"How," he said, "could I be pleased to see a people so ungrateful that, while I have done and am still doing daily what I can for it and for whose safety I would sacrifice a thousand lives, if God had given me so many, it daily prepares new attempts on me, for, since I am here, I hear speak of naught else?"

Meantime the people cried:

"Long live the King!"

"Sire," said one of the Court lords, "see how all your people rejoices to see you."

Henry, shaking his head:

"What a people it is. If my greatest enemy were here where I am and it saw him pass, it would do for him as much as for me and would shout still louder."

A Leaguer, seeing the King huddled at the back of his carriage, said:

"There he is already at the cart's tail."

Does it not seem to you as though that Leaguer were speaking of Louis XVI. going from the Temple to the scaffold?

On Friday the 14th of May 1610, returning from the Feuillants with Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise, the King said to them:

"You do not know me now, none of you, and when you have lost me, you will then know what I was worth and the difference between me and other men."

"My God, Sire," answered Bassompierre, "will you never have done troubling us by telling us that you will soon die?"

And then the marshal recounts to Henry his glory, his prosperity, his good health which was prolonging his youth.

"My friend," said the King, "I must leave all that."

Ravaillac was at the gate of the Louvre.

Bassompierre withdrew and did not see the King again except in his closet:

"He was stretched out," he says, "on his bed; and M. de Vic[617], sitting on the same bed as he, had laid his cross of the Order on his mouth and reminded him of God. M. le Grand on arriving knelt down between the bed and the wall and held one of his hands which he kissed, and I had flung myself at his feet which I held clasped, weeping bitterly."

That is Bassompierre's story.

Pursued by these sad memories, it seemed to me that, in the long halls of Hradschin, I had seen the last Bourbons pass "sad and melancholy," like the first Bourbon in the gallery of the Louvre; I had come to kiss the feet of the Royalty after its death. Whether it die for ever or be resuscitated, it will have my last oaths: the day after its final disappearance, the Republic will commence for me. In the case that the Fates, who are to edit my Memoirs, do not publish them forthwith, you will know, when they appear, when you have read all, weighed all, how far I was mistaken in my regrets and in my conjectures. Respecting misfortune, respecting that which I have served and will continue to serve at the cost of the repose of my last days, I am writing my words, true or deluded, on my falling hours, dry and light leaves which the breath of Eternity will soon have blown away.

Supposing the high dynasties to be nearing their limit, omitting, however, the possibilities of the future and the lively hopes that spring incessantly at the bottom of men's hearts, would it not be better that they should make an end worthy of their greatness and withdraw with the centuries into the night of the past? To prolong one's days beyond a dazzling illustriousness is good for nothing; the world tires of you and your fame; it is angry with you for being still there: Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon have disappeared in accordance with the rules of fame. To die beautiful, one must die young; do not make the children of spring say:

"What, is that the genius, the person, the dynasty that the world applauded, for a hair of whose head, a smile, a glance one would have thrown away one's life!"

How sad it is see old Louis XIV. find no one near him, to talk to him of his century, except the old Duc de Villeroi! It was a last victory of the Great Condé to have met Bossuet by his grave-side: the orator revived the mute waters of Chantilly; out of the old man's childhood he kneaded again the young man's adolescence; he made brown again the hair on the forehead of the victor of Rocroi while bidding an undying farewell to his white hairs. You who love glory, look to your tomb; lie down comfortably in it; try to cut a good figure in it, for you will remain there.

[Sidenote: My journey to Carlsbad.]

The road from Prague to Carlsbad stretches out through the tedious plains which the Thirty Years' War stained with blood. As I cross those battle-fields at night, I humble myself before the God of Armies, who bears the sky on His arm like a buckler. One can see at some distance the wooded hillocks at whose foot the waters lie. The wits among the doctors at Carlsbad compare the road to Æsculapius' snake which came down the hill to drink of Hygieia's cup.

On the top of the tower of the town, the _Stadtthurm_, a tower mitred with a steeple, watchmen blow the horn, so soon as they perceive a traveller. I was greeted by the joyous sound like a dying man, and every one in the valley began to say with delight:

"Here's a gouty man, here's an hypochondriac, here's a myopic subject!"

Alas, I was better than all that: I was an incurable!

At seven o'clock, on the morning on the 31st, I was installed at the Golden Shield, an inn kept for the benefit of Count Bolzona, a very high-born ruined man. In the same hotel were staying the Comte and Madame la Comtesse de Cossé, who had gone before me, and my fellow-countryman General de Trogoff[618], formerly Governor of the Château de Saint-Cloud, born long ago at Landivisiau, within the rays of the moon of Landerneau, and, squat of figure though he be, a captain of Austrian Grenadiers in Prague during the Revolution. He had just been to see his banished lord, the successor of St. Clodoald[619], a monk in his time at Saint-Cloud. Trogoff, after his pilgrimage, was returning to Lower Brittany. He was taking with him an Hungarian nightingale and a Bohemian nightingale which prevented everybody in the hotel from sleeping, so loudly did they complain of Tereus' cruelty. Trogoff used to cram them with grated bullock's heart, without being able to get the better of their sorrow.

Et mœstis late loca questibus implet[620].

Trogoff and I embraced like two Bretons. The general, short and square like a Celt of Cornouailles, has a certain shrewdness under an air of candour and an amusing way of telling a story. Madame la Dauphine was inclined to like him and, as he knows German, she used to walk with him. On hearing of my arrival from Madame de Cossé, she sent to me to propose that I should go to see her at half-past nine or at twelve: I was with her at twelve.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Angoulême.]

She occupied a house standing by itself, at the end of the village, on the right bank of the Tepl, the little river which rushes from the mountain and flows through Carlsbad from one end to the other. As I climbed the stairs to the Princess' apartment, I felt perturbed: I was going, almost for the first time, to see that perfect model of human suffering, that Antigone of Christendom. I had not talked for ten minutes with Madame la Dauphine in my life; she had addressed scarcely two or three words to me during the rapid course of her prosperity; she had always shown herself at a loss in my presence. Though I had never written or spoken of her except in terms of profound admiration, Madame la Dauphine was necessarily bound to entertain towards me the prejudices of that antechamber gang in whose midst she lived: the Royal Family used to vegetate isolated in that citadel of stupidity and envy to which the young generations laid siege, without being able to force their way in.

A man-servant opened the door to me; I saw Madame la Dauphine seated, at the further end of a drawing-room, on a sofa between two windows, embroidering a piece of tapestry-work. I entered feeling so agitated that I did not know whether I should be able to reach the Princess. She raised her head, which she had kept lowered right against her work, as though herself to hide her emotion, and, addressing me, said:

"I am glad to see you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand; the King wrote to me that you were coming. You travelled at night? You must be tired."

I respectfully handed her Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letters; she took them, laid them on the table beside her and said:

"Sit down, sit down."

Then she began her embroidery again, with a quick, mechanical and convulsive movement.

I did not speak; Madame la Dauphine kept silence: I could hear the pricking of the needle and the drawing of the wool as the Princess passed it smartly through the canvas, on which I saw some tears fall. The illustrious victim of misfortune wiped them from her eyes with the back of her hand and, without raising her head, said:

"How is my sister? She is very unhappy, very unhappy. I am very sorry for her, I am very sorry for her."

These brief and repeated phrases failed to open a conversation for which neither of the two interlocutors could find the necessary expressions. The redness of the Dauphine's eyes, caused by the habit of tears, gave her a beauty which made her look like the Spasimo Virgin.

"Madame," I replied at last, "Madame la Duchesse de Berry is very unhappy, without a doubt; she has charged me to come to place her children under your protection during her captivity. It is a great relief to think that Henry V. finds a second mother in Your Majesty."

Pascal was right to connect the greatness and wretchedness of man: who would have believed that Madame la Dauphine attached any value, to those titles of Queen, of Majesty, which were so natural to her and of which she had known the vanity? Well, the word Majesty was, nevertheless, a magic word; it beamed upon the Princess's forehead, from which, for a moment, it removed the clouds: they soon returned to place themselves there like a diadem.

"Oh no, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," said the Princess, looking at me and ceasing her work, "I am not Queen."

"You are, Madame, you are, by the laws of the realm: Monseigneur le Dauphin was able to abdicate only because he was King. France looks upon you as her Queen, and you will be the mother of Henry V."

The Dauphiness discussed no longer: this little weakness, by making her a woman again, veiled the glamour of so many different greatnesses, gave them a sort of charm and brought them into closer connexion with the human condition.

I read out my credentials, in which Madame la Duchesse de Berry declared her marriage to me, ordered me to go to Prague, asked to be allowed to keep her title as a French Princess and placed her children in her sister's care.

The Princess resumed her embroidery; when I finished reading, she said to me:

"Madame la Duchesse de Berry does well to rely on me; that's quite right, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, quite right: I am very sorry for my sister-in-law, you must tell her so."

This persistency on the part of Madame la Dauphine in saying that she was sorry for Madame la Duchesse de Berry, without going further, showed me how little sympathy there was, at bottom, between those two souls. It also seemed to me as though an involuntary impulse had stirred the saint's heart. A rivalry in misfortune! Nevertheless, the daughter of Marie-Antoinette had nothing to fear in this struggle; the palm would have remained hers.

"If Madame," I resumed, "would like to read the letter which Madame la Duchesse de Berry sends her and that which she addresses to her children, she will perhaps find some new explanations there. I hope that Madame will give me a letter to take back to Blaye."

[Sidenote: A question of invisible ink.]

The letters were written in invisible ink.

"I don't understand this at all," said the Princess. "What are we to do?"

I suggested the expedient of a chafing-dish with a few sticks of white wood; Madame pulled the bell, the rope of which hung down behind the sofa. A footman came, took the order and set up the apparatus on the landing, at the door of the drawing-room. Madame rose and we went to the chafing-dish. We put it on a little table standing against the stair-rail. I took one of the two letters and held it parallel to the flame. Madame la Dauphine watched me, and smiled because I did not succeed. She said:

"Give it to me, give it to me, let me try my hand."

She passed the letter over the flame; Madame la Duchesse de Berry's large, round hand-writing appeared: the same operation was performed for the second letter. I congratulated Madame on her success. It was a strange scene: the daughter of Louis XVI. deciphering with me, at the top of a stair-case at Carlsbad, the mysterious characters which the captive of Blaye was sending to the captive of the Temple!

We went back to our seats in the drawing-room. The Dauphiness read the letter which was addressed to her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry thanked her sister for the concern she had shown in her misfortune, recommended her children to her, and specially placed her son under the guardianship of his aunt's virtues. The letter to the children consisted of a few loving words. The Duchesse de Berry invited Henry to make himself worthy of France.

Madame la Dauphine said to me:

"My sister does me justice, I have been very much concerned at her troubles. She must have suffered much, suffered much. You must tell her that I will look after M. le Duc de Bordeaux. I am very fond of him. How did you find him? His health is good, is it not? He is strong, although a little nervous."

I spent two hours in private conversation with Madame, an honour rarely granted: she seemed satisfied. Having never known anything about me except from hostile reports, she no doubt believed me to be a violent man, puffed up with my own merits; she was pleased with me for having a human aspect and being a good fellow. She said to me, cordially:

"I am going out walking: I am keeping to the regimen of the waters; we shall dine at three: you must come, if you do not want to go to bed. I want to see you, so long as it does not tire you."

I do not know to what I owed my success; but certainly the ice was broken, the prejudice wiped out; that glance which had been fixed, in the Temple, on the eyes of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, had rested kindly upon a poor servant. At the same time, though I had succeeded in putting the Dauphiness at her ease, I felt myself exceedingly constrained: the fear of passing a certain level took from me that faculty for every-day intercourse which I had with Charles X. Whether it was that I did not possess the secret of drawing what was sublime from the soul of Madame; whether it was that my feeling of respect closed the road to the intercommunication of thought, I felt a distressing sterility which came from within myself.

At three o'clock, I was back at Madame la Dauphine's. I there met Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy and her daughter, Madame d'Agoult, Messieurs O'Heguerty the Younger and de Trogoff, who had the honour of dining with the Princess. Countess Esterhazy, once a beautiful woman, is still good-looking: she had been intimate with M. le Duc de Blacas in Rome. They say that she meddles in politics and tells M. le Prince de Metternich all that she hears. When, on leaving the Temple, Madame was sent to Vienna, she met Countess Esterhazy, who became her companion. I noticed that she listened attentively to what I said; she had the simplicity, the next morning, to tell me that she had spent the night in writing. She was preparing to leave for Prague; a secret interview was arranged at a spot agreed upon with M. de Blacas; from there she was going to Vienna. Old attachments made young again by espionage! What a business and what pleasures! Mademoiselle Esterhazy is not pretty: she looks witty and mischievous.

The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, a devotee to-day, is an important person of the class which one finds in all princesses' closets. She has pushed on her family as much as she could, by applying to everybody, especially to myself: I have had the satisfaction of placing her nephews; she had as many as the late Arch-chancellor Cambacérès.

[Sidenote: I dine with the Dauphiness.]

The dinner was so bad and so scanty that I rose dying of hunger; it was served in Madame la Dauphine's own drawing-room, for she had no dining-room. After the meal, the table was cleared; Madame went back to sit on the sofa, took up her work again and we formed a circle round. Trogoff told stories; Madame likes them. She interests herself particularly in women. The Duchesse de Guiche was mentioned:

"Her tresses do not suit her," said the Dauphiness, to my great surprise.

From her sofa, Madame saw through the window what was happening outside: she named the ladies and gentlemen walking. Came two little horses, with two grooms dressed in the Scotch fashion; Madame ceased working, looked long and said:

"It is Madame-----[I forget the name] going into the mountains with her children."

Marie-Thérèse curious, knowing the habits of the neighbourhood, the Princess of thrones and scaffolds descending from the heights of her life to the level of other women, interested me singularly; I watched her with a sort of philosophic tenderness.

At five o'clock, the Dauphiness went out driving; at seven, I was back for the evening gathering. The same arrangement: Madame on the sofa, the guests of the dinner and five or six young and old water-drinkers enlarged the circle. The Dauphiness made touching, but visible efforts to be gracious; she addressed a word to every one. She spoke to me several times, making a point of calling me by my name to make me known; but she became absent-minded again after each sentence. Her needle multiplied its movements, her face drew nearer to her embroidery; I saw the Princess's profile and was struck by a sinister resemblance: Madame has begun to look like her father; when I saw her head lowered under the blade of sorrow, I thought that I saw Louis XVI.'s head awaiting the fall of the blade. At half-past eight, the evening ended; I went to bed overcome by sleep and lassitude.

On Friday the 31st of May[621], I was up at five o'clock; at six, I went to the Mühlenbad: the men and women water-drinkers crowded round the spring, walked under the gallery of wooden pillars, or in the garden next to the gallery. Madame la Dauphine arrived, dressed in a shabby grey silk gown; she wore a thread-bare shawl on her shoulders and an old hat on her head. She looked as though she had mended her clothes, as her mother did at the Conciergerie. M. O'Heguerty, her equerry, gave her his arm. She mixed with the crowd and handed her cup to the women who draw the water from the spring. No one paid any attention to Madame la Comtesse de Marnes[622]. Maria Theresa, her grandmother, in 1762, built the house known as the Mühlenbad: she also presented Carlsbad with the bells which were to call her grand-daughter to the foot of the Cross.

Madame having entered the garden, I went up to her: she seemed surprised at this courtier-like flattery. I had seldom risen so early for royal personages, except, perhaps, on the 13th of February 1820, when I went to look for the Duc de Berry at the Opera. The Princess allowed me to take five or six turns round the garden by her side, talked kindly and told me that she would receive me at two o'clock and give me a letter. I left her, out of discretion; I breakfasted hurriedly and spent the time remaining to me in visiting the valley.

[Sidenote: Carlsbad.]

CARLSBAD, 1 _June_ 1833.

As a Frenchman, I found none but painful memories at Carlsbad. The town takes its name from Charles IV.[623] King of Bohemia, who came here to be cured of three wounds received at Crécy, while fighting beside his father John. Lobkowitz pretends that John was killed by a Scotchman, a circumstance not known to the historians:

Sed cum Gallorum fines et arnica tuetur Arva, Caledonia cuspide fossus obit.

Cannot the poet have written _Caledonia_ for the sake of the quantity? In 1346, Edward was at war with Robert Bruce[624], and the Scotch were Philip's[625] allies.

The death of the blind John of Bohemia, at Crécy, is one of the most heroic and touching adventures of chivalry. John wanted to go to the assistance of his son Charles; he said to his companions:

"My lords, you are my friends; I call upon you to lead me so far forwards that I may strike a blow with my sword."

"They replied that gladly would they do so.... The King of Bohemia went so far forwards that he struck a blow with his sword, indeed more than four, and combated most vigorously, and so did they of his company; and so much forward they pushed against the English that all remained there and were on the morrow found on the field around their lord, and all the horses tied together."

Few people know that John of Bohemia was buried at Montargis, in the church of the Dominicans, and that on his tomb one used to read this remnant of an obliterated inscription:

"He died at the head of his attendants, together recommending them to God the Father. Pray to God for that sweet King."

May this remembrance of a Frenchman expiate the ingratitude of France, when, in the days of our new calamities, we appalled Heaven by our sacrilege and cast out of his tomb a Prince who died for us in the days of our old misfortunes!

At Carlsbad, the chronicles relate that, Charles IV., the son of King John, having gone out hunting, one of his hounds, darting after a deer, fell from the top of a hill into a bason of boiling water. Its howls caused the huntsmen to hurry in its direction and the source of the Sprudel was discovered. A hog which scalded itself in the waters of Teplitz showed them to the herdsmen.

Such are the traditions of Germania. I have been to Corinth: the ruins of the temple of the courtesans were dispersed over the ashes of Glycera; but the fountain of Pyrene, which sprang from the tears of a nymph, still flowed among the oleanders through which Pegasus flew in the times of the Muses. The waters of a port without ships bathed fallen columns whose capitals lay steeped in the sea, like heads of drowned girls stretched upon the sands; the myrtle had grown in their hair and replaced the acanthus leaves: there you have the traditions of Greece.

Carlsbad numbers eight springs: the most celebrated is the Sprudel, discovered by the stag-hound. This spring issues from the ground between the church and the Tepl with a hollow sound and a white steam; it leaps up with irregular bounds to a height of six or seven feet. The hot-springs of Iceland are superior to the Sprudel, but none goes to seek health in the deserts of the Hecla, where life expires; where the summer's day, issuing from the day, knows neither sunset nor sunrise; where the winter's night, born again of the night, is without dawn or twilight.

The water of the Sprudel boils eggs and serves to wash plates and dishes; this fine phenomenon has entered the service of the Carlsbad housewives: an image of genius which degrades itself by lending its power to vile works[626].

Carlsbad is the meeting-place in ordinary of sovereigns: they ought surely to get cured there of the crown for themselves and for us.

A daily list is published of the visitors to the Sprudel: on the old rolls we find the names of the poets and the most enlightened men of letters of the North: Gurowsky[627], Dunker, Weisse[628], Herder[629], Goethe; I should have liked to meet with that of Schiller, my favourite. In the sheet of the day, among obscure arrivals, one observes the name of the "Comtesse de Marnes:" it is only printed in small capitals.

In 1830, at the very moment of the fall of the Royal Family at Saint-Cloud, the widow and daughters of Christophe were taking the waters at Carlsbad. Their Haytian Majesties have retired to Tuscany, near the Neapolitan Majesties. King Christophe's youngest daughter, very well-educated and exceedingly pretty, has died at Pisa: her ebon beauty rests free under the porticoes of the Campo Santo, far from the cane-fields and mangrove-trees beneath whose shade she was born a slave.

In 1826, an Englishwoman from Calcutta was seen at Carlsbad, passing from the banian fig-tree to the Bohemian olive-tree, from the sun of the Ganges to the sun of the Tepl; she died away like a ray from the Indian sky lost in the cold and the darkness. The sight of cemeteries, in places consecrated to health, is a melancholy one: there young women sleep, strangers to one another; on their tombs are carved the number of their days and the place of their birth: one seems to be going through a hot-house in which flowers are cultivated of every climate, whose names are written on a label at the foot of the flowers.

The native law has anticipated the requirements of exotic death: foreseeing the decease of the travellers far from their country, it permits the exhumations beforehand. I might, then, have slept half a score of years in the Cemetery of St. Andrew and nothing would have hindered the testamentary dispositions of these Memoirs. If Madame la Dauphine were to expire here, would the French laws permit the return of her ashes? That would be a controversial point between the Sorbonizers of doctrine and the casuists of proscription.

The Carlsbad waters are stated to be good for the liver and bad for the teeth. I know nothing about the liver, but there are many toothless people at Carlsbad; perhaps the years are responsible for this, rather than the waters: time is an arrant liar and a great tooth-drawer.

Does it not seem to you as though I were recommencing the _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu[630]?_ One word leads me to another; I go from Iceland to India:

Voilà les Apennins et voici le Caucase[631].

[Sidenote: The Teplitz Valley.]

And nevertheless I have not yet left the Teplitz Valley.

To obtain a view of the whole of the Valley of the Tepl, I climbed a hill, through a wood of pine-trees: the perpendicular columns of these trees formed an acute angle with the slanting rays of the sun; some had their tops, two thirds, one half, a quarter of their trunks where the others had their feet.

I shall always love the woods: the flora of Carlsbad, whose breath seemed to have embroidered the grass under my footsteps, seemed charming to me; I met again the fingered sedge, the common night-shade, the small loose-strife, the perforated St. John's wort, the hardy lily-of-the-valley, the white willow: sweet subjects of my early anthologies.

See my youth coming to hang its reminiscences on the stalks of those plants which I recognised in passing. Do you remember my botanical studies among the Seminoles, my cenotheras, my nymphæas, with which I decked my Floridans, the garlands of clematis with which they entwined the tortoise, our sleep on the island by the lake-side, the shower of roses from the magnolia-tree that fell upon our heads? I dare not calculate the age which my fickle "painted girl" would have reached by now; what should I gather on her brow to-day? The wrinkles that lie on my own. She is no doubt sleeping for ever beneath the roots of a cypress-grove of Alabama; and I, who bear in my memory those distant, unknown recollections, I am alive! I am in Bohemia, not with Atala and Céluta, but near Madame la Dauphine, who is going to give me a letter for Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

At one o'clock, I was at Madame la Dauphine's orders.

"You wish to leave to-day, Monsieur de Chateaubriand?"

"If Your Majesty will permit me. I shall try to find Madame de Berry in France; otherwise I should be obliged to make the journey to Sicily, and Her Royal Highness would be kept too long waiting for the answer which she expects."

"Here is a note for her. I took care not to mention your name, so as not to compromise you if anything happened. Read it."

I took the note; it was written entirely in Madame la Dauphine's hand: I have taken an exact copy of it.

"CARLSBAD, 31 _May_ 1833.

"It was a genuine pleasure for me, my dear sister, at last to hear from you direct I pity you with all my soul. Reckon always on my constant concern for you and especially for your dear children, who will be more precious to me than ever. My existence, as long as it endures, shall be consecrated to them. I have not yet been able to execute your commissions as regards our family, my health having required that I should come here to take the waters. But I shall discharge it immediately on my return to them; they and I, believe me, will never have any but the same sentiments on everything.

"Farewell, my dear sister: I pity you from the bottom of my heart and embrace you fondly.

"M. T."

I was struck by the reserve of this note: a few vague expressions of attachment but poorly covered the dryness of its substance. I respectfully said as much, and again pleaded the cause of the unfortunate prisoner. Madame answered that the King would give his decision. She promised me to interest herself on behalf of her sister; but there was no cordiality either in the voice or tone of the Dauphiness: one perceived rather a restrained irritation. The game seemed to me lost as far as my client's person was concerned. I fell back upon Henry V. I thought that I owed to the Princess the sincerity which I had always employed, at my risk and peril, to enlighten the Bourbons; I spoke to her, frankly and without flattery, of the education of M. le Duc de Bordeaux:

[Sidenote: I talk to the Dauphiness.]

"I know that Madame has read in a kindly spirit the pamphlet at the end of which I expressed a few ideas relating to the education of Henry V. I fear lest the child's surroundings should injure his cause: Messieurs de Damas, de Blacas and Latil are not popular."

Madame agreed with this; she even quite threw over M. de Damas, while saying two or three words in honour of his courage, his probity and his religion.

"In the month of September, Henry V. will be of age: does not Madame think that it would be a good thing to establish a council around him to which one would summon men upon whom France looks with less prejudice?"

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, by multiplying counsellors one multiplies opinions: and then, whom would you propose to the King's choice?"

"M. de Villèle."

Madame, who was embroidering, stopped her needle, looked at me in surprise and surprised me, in my turn, by giving a pretty judicious criticism of the mind and character of M. de Villèle. She regarded him only as an able administrator.

"Madame is too severe," said I to her: "M. de Villèle is a man of method, of accounts, of moderation, of composure, of infinite resource; if he had not had the ambition to fill the first place, he would have been a man to keep everlastingly in the King's Council: he will never be replaced. His presence with Henry V. would have the best effect."

"I thought that you did not like M. de Villèle?"

"I should despise myself if, after the fall of the throne, I continued to cherish a sentiment of some petty rivalry. Our royalist divisions have already done too much harm; I forswear them with all my heart and am ready to beg pardon of those who have offended me. I entreat Your Majesty to believe that this is neither a display of false generosity nor a stone laid by way of prevision of a future fortune. What could I ask of Charles X. in exile? If the Restoration were to come about, should I not be at the bottom of my grave?"

Madame looked at me with kindness; she had the goodness to praise me in these simple words:

"That is very well said, Monsieur de Chateaubriand."

She seemed to be still surprised to find a Chateaubriand so different from the one who had been described to her.

"There is another person, Madame," I resumed, "whom one might send for: my noble friend M. Lainé. There were three of us in France who ought never to take the oath to Philip: myself, M. Lainé and M. Royer-Collard. Outside the government and in different positions, we should have formed a triumvirate of some value. M. Lainé took the oath from weakness, M. Royer-Collard from pride: the first will die of it; the second will live by it, because he lives by all that he does, being incapable of doing anything that is not admirable."

"Were you pleased with Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux?"

"I thought him charming. They say that Your Majesty spoils him a little."

"Oh no, no. Were you satisfied with his health?"

"He seemed to me to be wonderfully well; he looks delicate and a little pale."

"He often has a nice colour; but he is nervous. Monsieur le Dauphin is very much esteemed in the army, is he not? Very much esteemed? They remember him, do they not?"

This abrupt question, which had no connection with what we had just been saying, revealed to me a secret wound which the days of Saint-Cloud and Rambouillet had left in the heart of the Dauphiness. She brought up her husband's name in order to reassure herself: I hastened to anticipate the thought of the Princess and wife; I declared, and with truth, that the army had never forgotten the impartiality, the virtues, the courage of its Commander-in-Chief.

Seeing that the hour for walking had come:

"Your Majesty has no more orders to give me? I am afraid of being troublesome."

"Tell your friends of the love I bear to France; let them well understand that I am a Frenchwoman. I charge you particularly to say that; you will do me a pleasure in saying it: I regret France much, I regret France very much."

"Ah, Madame, what has that France not done to you? How can you, who have suffered so much, continue to feel 'home-sick?'"

"No, no, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, do not forget it, be sure to tell them all that I am a Frenchwoman, that I am a Frenchwoman."

Madame left me; I was obliged to stop on the stair-case before going out; I would not have dared to show myself in the street; my tears still moisten my eyelids as I retrace this scene.

On returning to my inn, I resumed my travelling-dress. While the carriage was being got ready, Trogoff let his tongue run on; he told me again and again that Madame la Dauphine was very pleased with me, that she made no attempt to conceal her satisfaction, that she spoke of it to anyone who was willing to listen to her.

"It's an immense thing, this journey of yours!" shouted Trogoff, trying to drown the voices of his two nightingales. "You will see some results from it!"

I did not believe in any result.

I was right. They were expecting M. le Duc de Bordeaux that same evening. Although everybody knew of his arrival, they had made a mystery of it to me. I was careful not to show that I was informed of the secret.

[Sidenote: And take my leave.]

At six o'clock in the evening, I was rolling towards Paris. Whatever may be the greatness of misfortune in Prague, the pettiness of the life of princes reduced to itself is difficult to swallow; to drink the last drop of it, one must have burnt one's palate and intoxicated one's self with a glowing faith.

Alas, a new Symmachus, I bewail the abandonment of the altars; I raise my hands towards the Capitol; I invoke the majesty of Rome! But if the god should have turned into wood and Rome fail to come to life again in its dust?

[Footnote 556: This book was written in Prague, from the 24th to the 30th of May 1833, and at Carlsbad, on the 1st of June.--T.]

[Footnote 557: When Charles X. arrived in England, in August 1830, he accepted the hospitality of a Catholic Jacobite family, the Welds, which thus paid the Bourbons the debt of Stuarts. The head of that family, Cardinal Weld, offered the King of France the use of Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, not far from the little town of Wareham. After a stay of two months at Lulworth, the Royal Family went to live at Holyrood Palace, in Edinburgh, where they remained for two years. On the 25th of October 1832, Charles X. arrived in Prague, at the Castle of Hradschin, which the Emperor of Austria, Francis I., had put at his disposal until he was able to find a private residence. Here Charles X. spent three years and a half. In the month of May 1836, he hired from Count Coronini his property of Graffenberg, situated at one end of the town of Gorlitz, on a rising ground which overlooks it.--B.]

[Footnote 558: The notes on p. 78, Vol. IV., and p. 130 _supra_, by M. Biré, give a brief biography, not, as stated, of this Duc de Guiche, later Duc de Gramont, but of his father, the Duc de Gramont. M. Biré himself corrects this error by giving the following details of the Duc de Guiche with whom we have to do. He emigrated with his parents when only three weeks of age. He served in Portugal and Spain under Wellington. After the Battle of Vittoria (June 1813), he made his way into France, established relations with the Royalists of the South and was sent by them to Louis XVIII., in England, to ask him to send a prince of the Blood to place himself at the head of a movement which was being organized. He succeeded in his mission and returned to Bordeaux, followed in a few days by the Duc d'Angoulême. Until that time he had been known as the Comte de Gramont. By order of Louis XVIII., he assumed, on his return to France, the name and rank of Duc de Guiche, which had formerly been borne by the eldest sons of the family. Under the Restoration, the Duc de Guiche became First Equerry to the Duc d'Angoulême, served under him in the South during the Hundred Days and, later, in 1823, in Spain. In 1830, he accompanied the Royal Family from Rambouillet to Cherbourg, whence he was sent back to Paris to put the Duc d'Angoulême's personal affairs in order. Having completed this business, he went, with all his family, to join the Prince in Edinburgh, and afterwards accompanied him to Prague. The Duc de Guiche returned to France in 1833 and, on the death of his father, in August 1836, succeeded to the name and rank of Duc de Gramont.--T.]

[Footnote 559: Louise Princess of France (1819-1864), married, in 1845, to Charles III. Duke of Parma, and Regent of Parma during the minority of the present Duke from the date of his father's murder, in 1854, until his own deposition in 1859.--T.]

[Footnote 560: M. Barrande was the Duc de Bordeaux's principal professor. Without having the title of tutor, he held all the branches of the education in his hands, which enabled him to give a valuable impulse to the Prince's studies. M. Barrande, at that time, was between thirty and thirty-five years of age; he was a man of the younger generation, a distinguished pupil of the Polytechnic School and had a firm and severe character. He retired at the end of 1833, when the Baron de Damas ceased to fulfil the functions of Governor.--B.]

[Footnote 561: M. de La Villate (_b._ 1776) had served in the Royal Grenadiers of the Guard during the Restoration. He was a brave and loyal officer, and the Duc de Bordeaux took a great liking to him at an early age. M. de La Villate took no part in the Prince's education properly so-called, as he did not instruct him in any branch of knowledge; but he exercised a real influence upon his character and instilled into him a love of the rough, plain truth. The young Prince loved him for his loyalty, his soldierly frankness and his white hairs. It was not age that had turned his head white. He was eighteen years old, in 1794, when his father was flung into prison. Young La Villate was resolved to make every effort to save him and succeeded in obtaining admittance to him. After a long struggle, persuaded by his tears and his persistency, the prisoner consented to change clothes with his son and to leave in his stead, relying upon a remnant of humanity in his gaolers which would prevent them, who shrank from scarcely any crime, from committing the additional crime of taking vengeance upon this act of filial devotion. A reprieve was, in fact, granted; and young La Villate was restored to his family on the 9 Thermidor. But the painful emotions of that terrible night, during which he had struggled against his father's refusal, had turned his hair white in a few hours and given him that silver crown at the age of eighteen years.--T.]

[Footnote 562: In 1833, after the retirement of M. Barrande, two Jesuits, the Pères Étienne Deplace and Julien Druilhet, were sent for to Prague and attached to the education of the Duc de Bordeaux. They remained only three months in Prague and were replaced by the Bishop of Hermopolis, M. de Frayssinous, who directed the Prince's education from 1833 to 1838.--B.]

[Footnote 563: The Abbé de Moligny was the young Duc de Bordeaux's confessor.--B.]

[Footnote 564: The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, the Dauphiness' habitual companion.--B.]

[Footnote 565: The Abbé Nicolas de MacCarthy (1769-1833) was a native of Dublin, whose father settled in France soon after the child's birth. Although destined for the priesthood before the Revolution, MacCarthy was not ordained until 1814, when he became a member of the Company of Jesus. His talent won him a quick reputation and, in 1819, he preached the Advent sermons at the Tuileries with extraordinary success. He was gifted with an impassioned and penetrating eloquence and shone more particularly by his improvisation. The Père MacCarthy's action added greatly to the value of his sermons. Many of the preachers of the time set themselves to imitate him and went so far as to adopt in the pulpit the peculiar attitude which he himself was obliged to assume through an infirmity contracted in the service of the poor. This was called preaching à la MacCarthy. One severe winter's day he had carried a heavy load of wood up to the garret of a poor friendless woman. The burden was beyond his strength and brought about a weakness of the loins from which he suffered until his death, which occurred on the 3rd of May 1833, a few weeks before Chateaubriand's conversation with Charles X. MacCarthy's Sermons, published in 1834, are remarkable for their style, their logic and their rhetorical swing.--B.]

[Footnote 566: _Cf._ ANTOINE DE LA SALLE, _Hystoire et plaisante chronique du petit Jehan de Saintré et de la jeune dame des Belles-Cousines, sans autre nom nommer._--T.]

[Footnote 567: It is curious, in the present year 1902, to read of this style, adopted only, I believe, by Chateaubriand. It is, of course, wrong: Prince Charles Edward, after his father's death, was always known to his adherents as Charles III. There was no reason, such as prevailed with His present Majesty, to induce the Prince to style himself Edward VII.--T.]

[Footnote 568: Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, Pope Clement XIV. (1705-1774), was elected Pope in 1758. Prince Charles Edward succeeded James III. as _de jure_ King of England in 1766.--T.]

[Footnote 569: Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope Pius VI. (1717-1799), was elected Pope in 1775, succession to Clement XIV. He survived Charles III. by eleven years.--T.]

[Footnote 570: Marie Louise Françoise de Lussan d'Esparbès, Vicomtesse de Polastron (1764-1804), was married to the Vicomte de Polastron, Madame de Polignac's brother, in December 1780. Her connection with the Comte d'Artois commenced before the Revolution and was continued during the Emigration. She died of a slow fever, in Brompton Grove, after confessing to the Abbé de Latil and imploring the Comte d'Artois, on her death-bed, to swear that she should be his last mistress, his last love on earth, that he should thenceforth love none other than God. The Prince swore and kept his word.--T.]

[Footnote 571: Alfred Charles François Gabriel Comte de Damas (1794-1840), a knight of St. Louis and of the Legion of Honour and an honorary lord of the Bed-chamber to Charles X.--B.]

[Footnote 572: Robert II. (sometimes called Robert I.) King of France (971-1031), surnamed the Pious, son of Hugh Capet, whom he succeeded in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 573: Bruno of Carinthia, Pope Gregory V. (_d._ 999) was elected Pope in 996. Mademoiselle was two years out: the Pope reigning in 1001 was his successor, Silvester II., who died in 1003.--T.]

[Footnote 574: Basil II. Emperor of the East (_circa_ 958-1025) became Byzantine Emperor in 976.--T.]

[Footnote 575: Otto III. Emperor of the West (980-1002), surnamed the Wonder of the World, succeeded as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 983, and assumed the reins of government in 996.--T.]

[Footnote 576: Veremund II. King of Leon and Asturias died in 999; he was succeeded by Alphonsus V., who reigned till 1027. In this case Henry V. was two years out.--T.]

[Footnote 577: Ethelred II. King of England (968-1016), surnamed the Unready, succeeded to the throne in 979.--T.]

[Footnote 578: Edmund II. King of England (_circa_ 989-1016), surnamed Ironside, son of Ethelred the Unready, whom he succeeded in 1016, himself dying in the same year.--T.]

[Footnote 579: Henry IV. abjured Calvinism in 1593, in order to secure his recognition as King of France.--T.]

[Footnote 580: In the royal domain of Chantilly.--T.]

[Footnote 581: Blondel (_fl._ 12th Century), the French troubadour, said to have found Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in the castle in which the King was confined, by singing under his tower a song which the two had composed.--T.]

[Footnote 582: Leopold I. or V. Duke of Austria (1157-1194) took Richard prisoner in Austria, in December 1192, and kept him in the Castle of Dürrenstein until March 1193, when the King was transferred to the Emperor Henry VI.--T.]

[Footnote 583: Charles VI. King of France (1368-1422) succeeded to the throne in 1380, but became deranged in 1392, four years after he had assumed the government. Cards are generally supposed to have been invented about this time to amuse the unfortunate King: "they were invented," I have heard it said, "to amuse a fool and they have amused fools ever since."--T.]

[Footnote 584: Oger, or Ogier, or Outcaire, or Adalgarius (_fl._ 9th Century), the Danish paladin of Charlemagne, gives his name, in the French pack of playing-cards, to the Knave of Spades.--T.]

[Footnote 585: Étienne de Vignoles, known as Lahire (_circa_ 1390-1443), the valiant captain of Charles VII., has the Knave of Hearts called after him on French cards.--T.]

[Footnote 586: _Cf._ Vol. III. p. 129, n. 4. The Baron Capelle was Minister of Commerce in the last Cabinet under Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 587: Charles Le Mercher de Longpré, Baron d'Haussez (1778-1854), Minister of Marine in the Polignac Cabinet, fled from France in 1830 and went to England, where he wrote his Grande Bretagne en 1833, the work referred to. Subsequently he travelled in Holland, Germany and Italy, describing his journey in the _Voyage d'un exilé_ (1835) and in Alpes et Danube (1837). He returned to France in consequence of the political amnesty decreed in 1837.--T.]

[Footnote 588: The Comte de Montbel (_cf._ p. 81, n. 5, _supra_), who was Minister of the Interior and, later, Minister of Finance in the Polignac Cabinet, published, in 1833, a _Notice sur la vie du duc de Reichstadt._--B.]

[Footnote 589: _Cf._ Vol. IV. p. 138, n. 4.--T.]

[Footnote 590: The "Royalist Butcher." _Cf._ Vol. I. p. 109, n. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 591: João de Castro (1500-1548) was Portuguese Governor of India, in 1545, and won several signal victories over the natives. He was as upright as he was brave; he died poor and was buried at the expense of the public. He is said to have offered to pledge his mustachios in exchange for a loan from the merchants of Goa; but the merchants were satisfied with his word.--T.]

[Footnote 592: "This is the famed Battle of Prag; fought May 6th, 1757; which sounded through all the world, and used to deafen us in drawing-rooms within man's memory." (CARLYLE, _History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great_, Book XVIII., Chap, II.)-T.]

[Footnote 593: The Comte de Chambord was destined to spend over fifty years more in Austria: he died at Frohsdorf, about thirty miles from Vienna, on the 24th of August 1883.--T.]

[Footnote 594: Jan Sigismund Boncza Skrzynecki (1786-1860) served in the Polish contingent in aid of Napoleon; joined in the Polish Insurrection in 1830; served with distinction at Grochow, on the 25th of February 1831, and was appointed commander-in-chief on the next day. He defeated the Russians at Warwe and Dembe in March and at Iganie on the 8th of April; but his nominal victory at Ostrolenka (26 May 1831) was tantamount to a defeat, owing to his subsequent inaction, and he was superseded in August. He fled to Bohemia and lived in Prague until Leopold I. placed him in command of the Belgian Army. In 1839, the representations of Russia, Austria and Prussia compelled him to lay down this command. General Skrzynecki continued to live in Brussels until 1859, when he obtained leave to settle in Cracovia. He died in the month of January of the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 595: Johann Rudolf Count von Chotkowa and Wognin (1748-1824) was Grand Burgrave of Bohemia from 1802 to 1805.--T.]

[Footnote 596: _Anglicè_, in the original.--T.]

[Footnote 597: _Mémoires du maréchal de Bassompierre_, Vol. I. p. 326 _et seq._--B.]

[Footnote 598: Karl Robert Count Nesselrode (1780-1862), the famous Russian statesman, was Minister of Foreign Affairs almost continuously from 1813 to 1856.--T.]

[Footnote 599: Blacas d'Aulps the troubadour died in 1229; Blacas d'Aulps the "Great Warrior," one of the most gallant knights at the Court of Provence, in 1235.--T.]

[Footnote 600: _Cf._ Vol. II., p. 202, n. 5. Blacas d'Aulps and d'Épernon were both natives of the South of France.--T.]

[Footnote 601: The Obelisk of Luxor was brought from Egypt in 1831 and set up in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, in 1836. It weighs 240 tons.--T.]

[Footnote 602: Luc de Clapier, Marquis de Vauvenargues ( 1715-1747), the French moralist, author of the _Introduction à la connaissance de l'esprit humain_, took part in the retreat from Prague (December 1742) as a captain of foot. His health suffered, and he was obliged to resign his commission soon after.--T.]

[Footnote 603: Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the celebrated Danish astronomer, entered the service of the Emperor Rudolph II. and settled in Prague in 1599. The constellation which Tycho discovered in 1572 was Cassiopeia, in which appeared a temporary star brighter than Venus at its brightest.--T.]

[Footnote 604: Shakespeare: _Winter's Tale_, Act III. sc. iii. 1-2, 45, 48, 53-54.--T.]

[Footnote 605: Wenceslaus VI. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany (1361-1419), surnamed the Drunkard, was the son of the Emperor Charles IV. He was elected King of the Romans in 1376 and succeeded to the German and Bohemian Thrones in 1378. His cruelties made him so odious that his Bohemian nobles imprisoned him in 1394 and, in 1400, he was solemnly deposed from the Throne of Germany. He renounced his right to the Imperial Crown in 1410, but continued to reign as King of Bohemia.--T.]

[Footnote 606: John Wyclif (_circa_ 1324-1384) became Master of Balliol in 1360. Huss began spreading his doctrines in Prague in 1398.--T.]

[Footnote 607: Vaclav Hanka (1791-1861), an eminent Bohemian philologist and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 608: Frantisek Ladislav Czelakovsky (1799-1852), the poet and philologist. He published his collection of Slav folk-songs in 1822-1827.--T.]

[Footnote 609: Boguslav Lobkowitz, Baron von Hassenstein (1462-1510), the author of a number of odes, elegies and letters in Latin, of which a German translation was published, in Prague, in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 610: Mahomet II. Sultan of Turkey (_circa_ 1430-1481), surnamed the Conqueror, or the Great. He besieged and captured Constantinople in 1453; and conquered the Morea, Servia, Bosnia and Albania and made the Crimea a dependency of Turkey in 1457.--T.]

[Footnote 611: Louis XII. King of France (1462-1515), surnamed the Father of the People.--T.]

[Footnote 612: CHATEAUBRIAND: _Le Roi est mort! Vive le roi!_ (1824).--B.]

[Footnote 613: It was not at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, as Chateaubriand says in error, that the Allies called for the dismemberment of France, but three years earlier, during the discussion of the Treaties of 1815. It was then that the Emperor Alexander gave the Duc de Richelieu this "map of Styx," as an incontestable proof of the concessions obtained by the latter. On this map, our new frontier is marked out by a line drawn in blue, which takes away from France a portion of the Departments of the Isère, with Fort Barraux; of the Ain, with Belley, Gex and the Fort de l'Écluse; of the Jura, with Saint-Claude; of the Doubs, with the Fort de Tour, Pontarlier, Saint-Hippolyte and Montbéliard; the whole of the Haut-Rhin; the whole of the Bas-Rhin; the whole of the Moselle; a part of the Meuse, including Montmédy; the Ardennes, with Sedan, Mérières and Rocroy; the whole Department of the Nord, excepting Cambrai and Douai. The fact that this blue line was not put through and France not wiped out from the political map of Europe we owe entirely to Louis XVIII. and the Duc de Richelieu.--B.]

[Footnote 614: William Cobbett (1762-1835), the peasant essayist and politician. The letter referred to is his _Letter to Monsieur de Chateaubriand on his speech in the French Chamber of Deputies, on the 25th February_, 1823, _relative to the war proposed to be undertaken by France against the Revolutionists of Spain_, dated Kensington, 5 March 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 615: Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice (_circa_ 1108-1205), became Doge in 1192. He went as Ambassador to the Byzantine Court in 1173 and was blinded by order of the Emperor Manuel I.--T.]

[Footnote 616: Jean Châtel (1577-1594), in December 1594, stabbed Henry IV. on the lip, while the King was stooping to lift up two officers who were kneeling to him. Châtel was sentenced by the Parliament of Paris to be quartered.--T.]

[Footnote 617: Dominique de Vic, Viscount d'Ermenonville (_d._ 1610), one of the most faithful servants of Henry IV. Passing, after the King's death, through the Rue de la Ferronnerie, in which Henry had been assassinated, he was seized with a grief so keen that he died of it the next day.--T.]

[Footnote 618: Joachim Simon Comte de Trogoff (1763-1840) was born at the Château de Penlan, in Brittany. He entered the service in 1779 and fought in the War of American Independence. After the Emigration, he joined the Austrian service, where he remained till 1814, when the Restoration made him a brigadier-general and the Comte d'Artois admitted him to his intimacy. When Charles X. became King, he appointed Trogoff to the Governorship of Saint-Cloud. In 1830, at the time of the halt at Rambouillet, Trogoff acted as governor of the palace and wanted to fight, but was not permitted. He accompanied the King to the ship which was to take him to England and, having accomplished this duty, withdrew to the Château de Keruroret, near Saint-Pol, which he never left except to go to visit his old master in exile.--B.]

[Footnote 619: St. Clodoald, or Cloud (_d._ 560), was the son of Clodomir King of Orleans and the grandson of Clovis King of the Franks. After the death of his father and the murder of his two elder brothers, in 533, he devoted himself to a monastic life and lived in a retreat near Paris which was subsequently called after him. St. Cloud is honoured on the 7th of September.--T.]

[Footnote 620: VIR., _Georg._ IV. 515.--B.]

[Footnote 621: And not Friday the 1st of June, as the earlier editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 622: The Duc d'Angoulême had taken the name of Comte de Marnes in exile,--T.]

[Footnote 623: Charles IV. King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany (1316-1378) succeeded his father as King of Bohemia on the death of the latter at Crécy, in 1346, and was crowned Emperor in the following year.--T.]

[Footnote 624: Robert I. Bruce, King of Scotland (1274-1329), died seventeen years before the Battle of Crécy; but his son, David II. Bruce (1324-1371), invaded England in 1346, was defeated and captured at Neville's Cross (17 October 1346) and kept in captivity till 1357.--T.]

[Footnote 625: Philip VI. King of France (1293-1350), the first king of the House of Valois, was defeated by Edward III. at Crécy on the 26th of August 1346.--T.]

[Footnote 626: I omit a quotation from Alexandre Dumas' translation in verse of Lobkowitz' Latin Ode to the Sprudel.--T.]

[Footnote 627: Gurowsky (_b._ 1800), the Polish poet.--T.]

[Footnote 628: Christian Hermann Weisse (1801 -1866), author of the _System der Ästhetik_ (1830) and other philosophical works.--T.]

[Footnote 629: Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), the German critic and poet.--T.]

[Footnote 630: The _Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu, poème heureusement découvert et mis au jour par le docteur Mathanasius_ is an amusing satire by Hyacinthe Cordonnier (1684-1746), known as Thémiseuil de Saint-Hyacinthe, published in 1714, in the midst of the "quarrel of the ancients and moderns." Its success was maintained throughout the eighteenth century.--T.]

[Footnote 631: LA FONTAINE, _Le Rat et l'huître_:

"Here stand the Apennines and here the Caucasus."

_Cf._ JOHNSON: "Survey mankind from China to Peru."--T.]

END OF VOL. V.

APPENDIX

THE ROYAL ORDINANCES OF JULY 1830

"CHARLES, etc.

"To all to whom these presents shall come, health.

"On the report of our Council of Ministers, We have ordained and do ordain as follows:

"Art I. The liberty of the periodical press is suspended.

"II. The regulations of Articles I., II. and IX., of the First Section of the Law of the 21st of October 1814 are again put in force; in consequence of which no journal, or periodical, or semi-periodical writing, established, or about to be established, without distinction of the matters therein treated, shall appear in Paris or in the Departments, except by the virtue of an authority first obtained from Us by the authors and printer respectively. This authority shall be renewed every three months. It may also be revoked.

"III. The authority shall be provisionally granted and provisionally withdrawn by the Prefects from journals and periodicals, or semi-periodical works, published, or about to be published, in the Departments.

"IV. Journals and writings published in contravention of Article II., shall be immediately seized. The presses and types used in the printing of them shall be placed in a public depository under seal, or rendered unfit for use.

"V. No writing of less than twenty printed pages shall appear, except with the authority of Our Minister the Secretary of State for the Interior in Paris, and of the Prefects in the Departments. Every writing of more than twenty printed pages, which shall not constitute one single work, must also be published under authority only. Writings published without authority shall be immediately seized; the presses and types used in printing them shall be placed in a public depository under seal, or rendered unfit for use.

"VI. Minutes relating to legal process and minutes of scientific and literary societies must be previously authorized, if they treat in whole or in part of political matters, in which case the measures prescribed by Article V. shall be applicable.

"VII. Every regulation contrary to the present shall be without effect.

"VIII. The execution of the present Ordinance shall take place in conformity with Article IV. of the Ordinance of 27 November 1816 and of that which is prescribed by the Ordinance of 18 January 1817.

"IX. Our Secretaries of State are charged with the execution of this Ordinance.

"Given at the Palace of Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830 and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

(Countersigned) "Prince de POLIGNAC, President. "CHANTELAUZE, Keeper of the Seals. "Baron d'HAUSSEZ, Minister of Marine. "MONTBEL, Minister of Finance. "Comte de GUERNON-RANVILLE, Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs. "Baron CAPELLE, Secretary of State for Public Works."

"CHARLES,

"To all to whom these presents shall come, etc.

"Having considered Article L. of the Constitutional Charter; being informed of the manœuvres which have been practised in various parts of Our Kingdom, to deceive and mislead the electors during the late operations of the electoral colleges; having heard our Council, We have ordained and do ordain as follows:

"Art. I. The Chamber of Deputies of departments is dissolved.

"II. Our Minister the Secretary of State of the Interior is charged with the execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830 and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES.

(Countersigned) "Comte de Peyronnet, Peer of France, Secretary of State for the Interior."

"CHARLES,

"To all who shall see these presents, health.

"Having resolved to prevent the return of the manœuvres which have exercised a pernicious influence on the late operations of the Electoral Colleges and wishing, in consequence, to reform, according to the principles of the Constitutional Charter, the rules of election, of which experience has shown the inconvenience, We have recognised the necessity of using the right which belongs to Us to provide, by acts emanating from Ourselves, for the safety of the State and for the suppression of every enterprise injurious to the dignity of Our Crown. For these reasons, having heard Our council, We have ordained and do ordain:

"Art I. Conformably with Articles XV., XXXVI. and XXX. of the Constitutional Charter, the Chamber of Deputies shall consist only of Deputies of Departments.

"II. The electoral rate and the rate of eligibility shall consist exclusively of the sums for which the elector and the candidate shall be inscribed individually, as holders of real or personal property in the roll of the land-tax, or of personal taxes.

"III. Each Department shall have the number of Deputies allotted to it by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional Charter.

"IV. The Deputies shall be elected, and the Chamber renewed, in the form and for the time fixed by Article XXXVI. of the Constitutional Charter.

"V. The Electoral Colleges shall be divided into Colleges of Arrondissement and Colleges of Departments, except the case of those Electoral Colleges of Departments to which only one Deputy is allotted.

"VI. The Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements shall consist of all the electors whose political domicile is established in the Arrondissement The Electoral Colleges of Departments shall consist of a fourth part of the most highly taxed of the electors of Departments.

"VII. The present limits of the Electoral Colleges of Arrondissements are retained.

"VIII. Every Electoral College of Arrondissement shall elect a number of candidates equal to the number of Departmental Deputies.

"IX. The College of Arrondissement shall be divided into as many Sections as candidates. Each Division shall be in proportion to the number of Sections and to the total number of electors, having regard as much as possible to the convenience of place and neighbourhood.

"X. The Sections of the Electoral College of Arrondissement may assemble in different places.

"XI. Each Section of the Electoral College of Arrondissement shall choose a candidate and proceed separately.

"XII. The Presidents of the Sections of the Electoral College of Arrondissement shall be nominated by the Prefects from among the electors of the Arrondissement.

"XIII. The College of Department shall choose the Deputies; half the Deputies of Departments shall be chosen from the general list of candidates proposed by the Colleges of Arrondissements; nevertheless, if the number of Deputies of the Department is uneven, the division shall be made without impeachment of the right reserved by the College of Department.

"XIV. In cases where, by the effect of omissions, or of void or double nominations, the list of candidates proposed by the College of Arrondissement shall be incomplete, if the list is reduced below half the number required, the College of the Department shall choose another Deputy not in the list; if the list is reduced below a fourth, the College of the Department may elect the whole of the Deputies of the Department.

"XV. The Prefects, the Sub-prefects and the General Officers commanding Military Divisions and Departments are not to be elected in the Departments where they exercise their functions.

"XVI. The list of electors shall be settled by the Prefect in the Council of Prefecture. It shall be posted up five days before the assembling of the Colleges.

"XVII. Claims regarding the power of voting which have not been authorized by the Prefects shall be decided by the Chamber of Deputies, at the same time that it shall decide upon the validity of the operations of the Colleges.

"XVIII. In the Electoral Colleges of Departments, the two oldest electors and the two electors who pay the most taxes shall execute the duty of scrutators. The same disposition shall be observed in the Sections of the College of Arrondissement, composed, at most, of only fifty electors. In the other Sections, the functions of scrutators shall be executed by the oldest and the richest of the electors. The secretary of the College or Section shall be nominated by the President and the scrutators.

"XIX. No person shall be admitted into the College, or Section of College, if he is not inscribed in the list of electors who compose it. This list will be delivered to the President and will remain posted up in the place of the sitting of the College, during the period of its proceedings.

"XX. All discussion and deliberation whatever are forbidden in the bosom of the Electoral Colleges.

"XXI. The police of the College belongs to the President No armed force, without his order, can be placed near the hall of its sittings. The Military Commandant shall be bound to obey his requisitions.

"XXII. The nominations shall be made in the Colleges and Sections of Colleges, by the absolute majority of the votes given. Nevertheless, if the nominations are not finished after two rounds of scrutiny, the bureau shall determine the list of persons who shall have obtained the greatest number of suffrages at the second round. It shall contain a number of names double that of the nominations which remain to be made. At the third round, no suffrages can be given except to the persons inscribed on that list; and the nominations shall be made by a relative majority.

"XXIII. The electors shall vote by bulletins; every bulletin shall contain as many names as there are nominations to be made.

"XXIV. The electors shall write their vote on the bureau, or cause it to be written by one of the scrutators.

"XXV. The name, qualification and domicile of each elector who shall deposit his bulletin shall be inscribed by the secretary on a list destined to establish the number of the voters.

"XXVI. Every scrutiny shall remain open for six hours, and the result shall be declared during the sitting.

"XXVII. There shall be drawn up a _procès verbal_ for each sitting. This _procès verbal_, or minute, shall be signed by all the members of the bureau.

"XXVIII. Conformably with Article XLVI. of the Constitutional Charter, no amendment can be made upon any Law in the Chamber, unless it has been proposed and consented to by Us and unless it has been discussed in the bureau.

"XXIX. All regulations contrary to the present Ordinance shall remain without effect.

"XXX. Our Ministers, the Secretaries of State, are charged with the execution of the present Ordinance.

"Given at Saint-Cloud, this 25th day of July in the Year of Grace 1830 and the sixth of Our reign.

(Signed) "CHARLES." (Countersigned by all the Ministers.)