BOOK XIII[1

The Roman Embassy continued--Letter to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Conclaves--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Letter to the Marchese Capponi--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to M. le Duc de Blacas--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Monseigneur le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Fête at the Villa Medici for the Grand-duchess Helen--My relations and correspondence with the Bonaparte Family--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Monte Cavallo--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Presumption--The French in Rome--Walks--My nephew Christian de Chateaubriand--Letter to Madame Récamier--I return to Paris--My plans--The King and his disposition--M. Portalis--M. de Martignac--I leave for Rome--The Pyrenees--Adventures--The Polignac Ministry--My consternation--I come back to Paris--Interview with M. de Polignac--I resign my Roman Embassy.

ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

Before passing to important matters, I will recall a few facts.

On the decease of the Sovereign Pontiff, the government of the Roman States falls into the hands of the three cardinals heads of the respective orders, deacon, priest and bishop, and of the Cardinal Camerlingo. The custom is for the ambassadors to go to compliment, in a speech, the Congregation of Cardinals who meet before the opening of the conclave at St. Peter's.

His Holiness' corpse, after first lying in state in the Sistine Chapel, was carried on Friday last, the 13th of February, to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Peter's; it remained there till Sunday the 15th. Then it was laid in the monument which contained the ashes of Pius VII., and the latter were lowered into the subterranean church.

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

"I have seen Leo XII. lying in state, with his face uncovered, on a paltry state bed, amid the master-pieces of Michael Angelo; I have attended the first funeral ceremony in the Church of St. Peter. A few old cardinal commissaries, no longer able to see, assured themselves with their trembling fingers that the Pope's coffin was well nailed down. By the light of the candles, mingling with the moon-light, the coffin was at last raised by a pulley and hung up in the shadows to be laid in the sarcophagus of Pius VII.[2]

"They have just brought me the poor Pope's little cat; it is quite grey and very gentle, like its old master."

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 17 February 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons with the telegraphic dispatch, and in my Dispatch No. 15, of the difficulties which I encountered in sending off my two couriers on the 10th of this month. These people have not got beyond the history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, as though the fact of the death of a pope becoming known an hour sooner or an hour later could cause an imperial army to enter Italy.

"The obsequies of the Holy Father were concluded on Sunday the 22nd, and the Conclave will open on Monday evening the 23rd, after attending the Mass of the Holy Ghost in the morning; they are already furnishing the cells in the Quirinal Palace.

"I shall not speak to you, monsieur le comte, of the views of the Austrian Court or the wishes of the Cabinets of Naples, Madrid and Turin. M. le Duc le Laval, in his correspondence with me in 1823, has described the personal qualities of the cardinals, who are in part those of to-day. I refer you to No. 5 and its appendix, Nos. 34, 55, 70 and 82. There are also in the boxes at the office some notes from another source. These portraits, pretty, often fanciful, are capable of providing amusement, but prove nothing. Three things no longer make popes: the intrigues of women, the devices of the ambassadors, the power of the Courts. Neither do they issue from the general interest of society, but from the particular interest of individuals and families, who seek places and money in the election of the Head of the Church.

"There are immense things that could be effected nowadays by the Holy See: the union of the dissenting sects, the consolidation of European society, etc. A pope who would enter into the spirit of the age and place himself at the head of the enlightened generations might give fresh life to the Papacy; but these ideas are quite unable to make their way into the old heads of the Sacred College; the cardinals who have arrived at the end of life hand down to one another an elective royalty which soon dies with them: seated on the double ruins of Rome, the popes appear to be impressed only with the power of death.

"Those cardinals elected Cardinal Della Genga[3], after the exclusion of Cardinal Severoli, because they thought that he was going to die; Della Genga taking it into his head to live, they detested him cordially for that piece of deceit. Leo XII. chose capable administrators from the convents; another cause for murmuring for the cardinals. But, on the other hand, this deceased Pope, while advancing the monks, wanted to see regularity established in the monasteries, so that no one was grateful to him for the boon. The arrest of the vagrant hermits, the compelling of the people to drink standing in the street in order to prevent the stabbing in the taverns, unfortunate changes in the collection of the taxes, abuses committed by some of the Holy Father's familiars, even the death of the Pope, occurring at a time which makes the theatres and tradesmen of Rome lose the profit arising from the follies of the Carnival, have caused the memory to be anathematized of a Prince worthy of the liveliest regret; at Cività-Vecchia they wanted to burn down the house of two men who were thought to be honoured with his favour.

"Among many competitors, four are particularly designated: Cardinal Capellari[4], the head of the Propaganda, Cardinal Pacca[5], Cardinal Di Gregorio[6] and Cardinal Giustiniani[7].

"Cardinal Capellari is a learned and capable man. They say that he will be rejected by the cardinals as being too young a monk and unacquainted with worldly affairs. He is an Austrian and said to be obstinate and ardent in his religious opinions. Nevertheless, it was he who, when consulted by Leo XII., saw nothing in the Orders in Council to warrant the complaint of our bishops; it was he also who drew up the concordat between the Court of Rome and the Netherlands and who was of opinion that canonical institution should be granted to the bishops of the Spanish republics: all this points to a reasonable, conciliatory and moderate spirit. I have these details from Cardinal Bernetti, with whom, on Friday the 13th, I had one of the conversations which I announced to you in my Dispatch No. 15.

"It is important to the Diplomatic Body, and especially to the French Ambassador, that the Secretary of State in Rome should be a man of ready intercourse and accustomed to the affairs of Europe. Cardinal Bernetti is the minister who suits us best in every respect; he has committed himself on our behalf with the _Zelanti_ and the members of the lay congregations; we are bound to wish that he should be re-employed by the next Pope. I asked him with which of the four cardinals he would have most chance of returning to power. He answered:

"'With Capellari.'

"Cardinals Pacca and Di Gregorio are faithfully depicted in the appendix to No. 5 of the correspondence already mentioned; but Cardinal Pacca is very much enfeebled by age, and his memory, like that of the Senior Cardinal, La Somaglia[8], is beginning to fail him entirely.

[Sidenote: Candidates for the Papacy.]

"Cardinal Di Gregorio would be a suitable Pope. Although he ranks among the _Zelanti_, he is not without moderation; he thrusts back the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal Di Gregorio is rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani[9], the executor of the high decrees of Austria. The cardinal is Legate at Bologna, he is over eighty and he is ill; there is therefore some chance of his not coming to Rome.

"Lastly, Cardinal Giustiniani is the cardinal of the Roman nobility; Cardinal Odescalchi is his nephew, and he will probably receive a fairly good number of votes. But, on the other hand, he is poor and has poor relations; Rome would fear the demands of this indigence.

"You are aware, monsieur le comte, of all the harm that Giustiniani did as Nuncio in Spain, and I am more aware of it than anyone else through the troubles which he caused me after the delivery of King Ferdinand. In the Bishopric of Imola, which the cardinal governs at present, he has shown himself no more moderate; he has revived the laws of St. Louis against blasphemers; he is not the pope of our period. Apart from that, he is a man of some learning, a hebraist, a hellenist, a mathematician, but better suited for the work of the study than for public business. I do not believe that he is backed by Austria.

"After all, human foresight is often deceived; often a man changes on attaining power; the _zelante_ Cardinal Della Genga became the moderate Pope Leo XII. Perhaps, amid the four competitors, a pope will spring up, of whom no one is thinking at this moment. Cardinal Castiglioni[10], Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galleffi[11], Cardinal Arezzo[12], Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and venerable Dean of the Sacred College, La Somaglia, in spite of his semi-childishness, or rather because of it, are presenting themselves as candidates. The last has even some hope, because, as he is Bishop and Prince of Ostia, his exaltation would bring about alterations which would leave five great places free.

"It is expected that the Conclave will be either very long or very short: there will be no systematic contests as at the time of the decease of Pius VII.; the 'conclavists' and 'anti-conclavists' have totally disappeared, which will make the election easier. But, on the other hand, there will be personal struggles between the candidates who assemble a certain number of votes, and, as it requires only one more than a third of the votes of the Conclave to give the _exclusive_, which must not be confounded with the right of _exclusion_[13], the balloting among the candidates may be prolonged.

"Does France wish to exercise the right of _exclusion_ which she shares with Austria and Spain? Austria exercised it in the preceding conclave against Severoli, through the intermediary of Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise that right? Would it be against Cardinal Fesch, if by chance he were thought of, or against Cardinal Giustiniani? Would the latter be worth the trouble of striking with this _veto_, always a little odious, inasmuch as it trammels independence of election?

"To which of the cardinals would His Majesty's Government wish to entrust the exercise of its right of exclusion? Does it wish the French Ambassador to appear armed with the secret of his Government, and as though ready to strike at the election of the Conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles X.? Lastly, has the Government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, if all the cardinals of family, that is to say the Spanish, Neapolitan and even Piedmontese cardinals, would add their votes to those of the French cardinals, if one could form a party of the crowns, we should gain the day at the Conclave; but those coalitions are chimerical, and we have foes rather than friends in the cardinals of the different Courts.

[Sidenote: Reasons against interference.]

"It is asserted that the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of Milan will come to the Conclave. The Austrian Ambassador in Rome, Count Lützow, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character which the new Pope must have. Let us await the instructions of Vienna.

"Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do nothing to-day to influence the election of the Sovereign Pontiff, and that we are all perfectly useless in Rome. For the rest, I can see no pressing interest in hastening or delaying (which, besides, is in nobody's power) the operations of the Conclave. Whether the non-Italian cardinals do or do not assist at this Conclave is of the very slightest interest to the result of the election. If one had millions to distribute, it might still be possible to make a pope: I see no other means, and that method is not in keeping with the customs of France.

"In my confidential instructions to M. le Duc de Laval, on the 13th of September 1823, I said to him:

"'We ask that a prelate should be placed on the Pontifical Throne who shall be distinguished for his piety and his virtues. We desire only that he should possess sufficient enlightenment and a sufficiently conciliatory spirit to enable him to judge the political position of governments and not to throw them, owing to useless exigencies, into inextricable difficulties as vexatious to the Church as to the Throne.... We want a moderate member of the Italian _zelante_ party, capable of being accepted by all parties. All that we ask of them in our interest is not to seek to profit by the divisions which may arise among our clergy in order to disturb our ecclesiastical affairs.'

"In another confidential letter, written with reference to the illness of the new Pope Della Genga, on the 28th of January 1824, I again said to M. le Duc de Laval:

"'What we are concerned in obtaining (supposing there should be a new conclave) is that the Pope should, through his inclinations, be independent of the other Powers, that his principles should be wise and moderate, and that he should be a friend of France.'

"Am I, monsieur le comte, to-day, to follow as ambassador the spirit of those instructions which I gave as minister?

"This dispatch contains all. I shall only have to keep the King succinctly informed of the operations of the Conclave and of the incidents that may arise; the only questions will be the counting of the votes and the variations of the suffrages.

"The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Giustiniani, Odescalchi, Pedicini[14] and Bertalozzi[15].

"The cardinals opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes and different circumstances, are Zurla[16], Di Gregorio, Bernetti, Capellari and Micara[17].

"It is believed that, out of fifty-eight cardinals, only forty-eight or forty-nine will attend the Conclave. In that case thirty-three or thirty-four would effect the election.

"The Spanish Minister, M. de Labrador, a solitary and secluded man, whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity, is greatly embarrassed by the part he is called upon to play. The instructions of his Court have foreseen nothing; he is writing in that sense to His Catholic Majesty's _chargé d'affaires_ at Lucca.

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"P.S.-They say that Cardinal Benvenuti has already twelve votes certain. If that choice succeeded, it would be a good one. Benvenuti knows Europe and has displayed capacity and moderation in different employments."

As the Conclave is about to open, I will rapidly trace the history of that great law of election, which already counts eighteen hundred years' duration. Where do the Popes come from? How have they been elected from century to century?

At the moment when liberty, equality and the Republic were completely expiring, about the time of Augustus, was born at Bethlehem the universal Tribune of the peoples, the great Representative on earth of equality, liberty and the Republic, Christ, who, after planting the Cross to serve as a boundary to two worlds, after allowing Himself to be nailed to that Cross, after dying on it, the Symbol, Victim and Redeemer of human sufferings, handed down His power to His Chief Apostle. From Adam to Jesus Christ, we have society with slaves, with inequality of men among themselves; from Jesus Christ to our time, we have society with equality of men among themselves, social equality of man and woman, we have society without slaves, or, at least, without the principle of slavery. The history of modern society commences at the foot and on this side of the Cross.

[Sidenote: The early Popes.]

Peter[18] Bishop of Rome inaugurated the Papacy: tribune-dictators successively elected by the people, and most part of the time chosen from among the humblest classes of the people, the Popes held their temporal power from the democratic order, from that new society of brothers which Jesus of Nazareth had come to found, Jesus, the workman, the maker of yokes and ploughs, born of a woman according to the flesh, and yet God and Son of God, as His works prove.

The Popes had the mission to avenge and maintain the rights of man; the heads of public opinion, all feeble though they were, they obtained the strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea: for a soldier they had but a plebeian, his head protected by a cowl, his hand armed with a cross. The Papacy, marching at the head of civilization, progressed towards the goal of society. Christian men, in all regions of the globe, gave obedience to a priest whose name was hardly known to them, because that priest was the personification of a fundamental truth; he represented in Europe the political independence which was almost everywhere destroyed; in the Gothic world he was the defender of the popular liberties, as in the modern world he became the restorer of science, letters and the arts. The people enrolled itself among his troops in the habit of a mendicant friar.

The quarrel between the Empire and the priesthood is the struggle of the two social principles of the middle ages, power and liberty. The Popes, favouring the Guelphs, declared themselves for the governments of the peoples; the Emperors, adopting the Ghibellines, urged the government of the nobles: these were precisely the parts played by the Athenians and Spartans in Greece. Therefore, when the Popes took side with the kings, when they turned themselves into Ghibellines, they lost their power, because they were disengaging themselves from their natural principle, and, for an opposite and yet analogous reason, the monks have seen their authority decrease, when political liberty has returned directly to the peoples, because the peoples have no longer needed to be replaced by the monks, their representatives.

Those thrones declared vacant and delivered to the first occupant in the middle ages; those emperors who came on their knees to implore a pontiff's forgiveness; those kingdoms laid under an interdict; an entire nation deprived of worship by a magic word; those anathematized sovereigns, abandoned not only by their subjects, but also by their servants and kindred; those princes avoided like lepers, separated from the mortal race while waiting to be cut off from the eternal race; the food they had tasted, the objects they had touched passed through the flames as things sullied: all this was but the forceful effect of popular sovereignty delegated to and wielded by religion.

The oldest electoral law in the world is the law by virtue of which the pontifical power has been handed down from St. Peter to the priest who wears the tiara to-day: from that priest you go back from pope to pope till you come to saints who touch Christ; at the first link of the pontifical chain stands a God. The bishops were elected by the general assembly of the faithful; from the time of Tertullian[19], the Bishop of Rome was named the Bishop of Bishops. The clergy, forming part of the people, concurred in the election. As passions exist everywhere, as they debase the fairest institutions and the most virtuous characters, in the measure that the papal power increased, it attempted more, and human rivalries produced great disorders. In Pagan Rome, similar troubles had broken out on the occasion of the election of the Tribunes: of the two Gracchi, one[20] was flung into the Tiber, the other[21] stabbed by a slave in a wood consecrated to the Furies. The nomination of Pope Damasus[22], in 366, led to an affray attended by bloodshed: one hundred and thirty-seven people succumbed in the Sicinian Basilica, known to-day as Santa Maria Maggiore.

[Sidenote: History of their election.]

We find St. Gregory[23] elected Pope by the Clergy, the Senate and the People of Rome. Any Christian could rise to the tiara: Leo IV.[24] was promoted to the Sovereign Pontificate, on the 12th of April 847, to defend Rome against the Saracens, and his ordination deferred until he had given proofs of his courage. The same thing happened to the other bishops: Simplicius[25] ascended the See of Bourges, layman though he were. To this day (which is not generally known) the choice of the Conclave might fall on a layman, even if he were married: his wife would take the veil, and he would receive all the orders together with the papacy.

The Greek and Latin Emperors tried to suppress the liberty of the popular papal election; they sometimes usurped it, and often exacted that the election should at least be confirmed by them: a capitulary of Louis the Débonnaire[26] restores its primitive liberty to the election of the bishops, which was accomplished according to a treaty of the same time, by "the unanimous consent of the clergy and the people."

The dangers of an election proclaimed by the masses of the people or dictated by the emperors made necessary certain changes in the law. There existed, in Rome, priests and deacons known as "cardinals," whether because they served at the horns or corners of the altar, _ad cornua altaris_, or that the word cardinal is derived from the Latin word _cardo_, a hinge. Pope Nicholas II.[27], in a council held in Rome in 1059, carried a resolution that the cardinals alone should elect the popes and that the clergy and the people should ratify the election. One hundred and twenty years later, the Lateran Council[28] took away the ratification from the clergy and the people, and made the election valid by a majority of two-thirds of the votes in the assembly of cardinals.

But, as this canon of the Council fixed neither the duration nor the form of this electoral college, it came about that discord was produced among the electors, and there was no provision, in the new modification of the law, to put an end to that discord. In 1268, after the death of Clement IV.[29], the cardinals who had met at Viterbo were unable to come to an agreement, and the Holy See remained vacant for two years. The Podesta and the people were obliged to lock up the cardinals in their palace, and even, it is said, to unroof that palace in order to compel the electors to make a choice. At last Gregory X.[30] came out of the ballot, and thereupon, to remedy this abuse in future, established the Conclave, _cum clave_, with or under key; he regulated the internal dispositions of the Conclave in much the same manner as they exist to-day: separate cells, a common room for the balloting, walled-up outer windows, from one of which the election is proclaimed, by demolishing the plaster with which it is sealed, and so on. The Council held at Lyons in 1274 confirms and improves these arrangements. Nevertheless, one article of this rule has fallen into disuse: that in which it was laid down that, if the choice of a pope were not made in three days of confinement, during five days after those three days the cardinals should have only one dish at their meals, and that, after that, they should have only bread, wine and water until the Sovereign Pontiff was elected.

To-day the duration of a conclave is no longer limited, nor are the cardinals now punished in their diet, like naughty children. Their dinner, placed in baskets, carried on barrows, is brought to them from the outside, accompanied by lackeys in livery; a dapifer follows the convoy, sword at side, and drawn by caparisoned horses in the emblazoned coach of the cardinal recluse. On reaching the conclave tower, the chickens are drawn, the pies examined, the oranges cut into quarters, the corks of the bottles cut up, lest some paper should be concealed inside. These old customs, some childish, others ridiculous, have their drawbacks. If the dinner be sumptuous, the poor man starving of hunger who sees it go by makes his comparison and murmurs. If it be mean, by another infirmity of human nature, the pauper laughs at it and despises the Roman purple. It would be a good thing to abolish this usage, which is no longer in keeping with our present customs; Christianity has gone back to its source; it has returned to the time of the Lord's Supper and the love-feasts, and Christ alone should to-day preside over those banquets.

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Conclaves.]

The intrigues of the conclaves are famous; some of them had baneful results. During the Western Schism, different popes and anti-popes were seen to curse and excommunicate one another from the top of the ruined walls of Rome. The schism seemed on the point of extinction, when Pedro de Luna[31] revived it, in 1394, through an intrigue of the conclave at Avignon. Alexander VI.[32], in 1492, bought the votes of twenty-two cardinals, who prostituted the tiara to him, leaving memories of Lucrezia[33] behind him. Sixtus V. had no intrigue in the conclave except with his crutches, and when he was Pope his genius no longer had need of those supports. I have seen in a Roman villa a portrait of Sixtus V.'s sister, a woman of the people, whom the terrible pontiff, in all his plebeian pride, pleased himself by having painted:

"The first arms of our house," he said to this sister, "are rags[34]."

That was still the time at which some sovereigns dictated orders to the Sacred College. Philip II. used to have notes passed into the conclave, saying:

"_Su Magestad no quiere que N. sea Papa; quiere que N. to tenga._"

From that period, the intrigues of the conclave are scarcely more than agitations without general results. Nevertheless, Du Perron[35] and d'Ossat obtained the reconciliation of Henry IV. with the Holy See, which was a great event. The _Ambassades_ of Du Perron are greatly inferior to the Letters of d'Ossat. Before then, Du Bellay was at one time on the point of preventing the schism of Henry VIII.[36] Having obtained from that tyrant, before his separation from the Church, that he should submit to the judgment of the Holy See, he arrived in Rome at the moment when the condemnation of Henry VIII. was about to be pronounced. He obtained a delay to send a man of trust to England; the bad roads retarded the reply. The partisans of Charles V. caused the sentence to be pronounced, and the bearer of the powers of Henry VIII. arrived two days later. The delay of a message made England Protestant and changed the political face of Europe. The destinies of the world depend on no more potent causes: a too capacious goblet emptied at Babylon caused Alexander to disappear.

Next comes to Rome, in the time of Olimpia[37], the Cardinal de Retz, who, in the conclave held after the death of Innocent X.[38], enlisted in the "flying squadron," the name given to ten independent cardinals; they carried with them "Sacchetti," who was "only good to paint," in order to pass Alexander VII.[39], _savio col silenzio_, who, as Pope, showed himself to be nothing much.

The Président de Brosses describes the death of Clement XII.[40], which he witnessed, and saw the election of Benedict XIV.[41]--as I saw Leo XII. the Pontiff lying dead on his abandoned bed: the Cardinal Camerlingo had struck Clement XII. twice or thrice on the forehead, according to the custom, with a little hammer, calling him by his name, Lorenzo Corsini.

"He made no reply," says de Brosses, and adds, "That is how your daughter comes to be dumb[42]."

And that is how at that time the most serious things were treated: a dead pope at whose head one knocks as it were at the gate of understanding, while calling on the deceased and voiceless man by his name, could, it seems to me, have inspired a witness with something else than raillery, even though it were borrowed from Molière. What would the frivolous Dijon magistrate have said had Clement XII. answered him from the depths of eternity:

"What do you want with me?"

[Sidenote: Cynicism of de Brosses.]

The Président de Brosses sends his friend the Abbé Courtois a list of the cardinals of the Conclave, with a word on each of them to his honour:

"Guadagni[43], a bigot, a hypocrite, witless, tasteless, a poor monk.

"Aquaviva of Aragon, a fine presence, although somewhat heavy in figure, as he is also in mind.

"Ottoboni[44], no morals, no credit, debauched, ruined, a lover of the arts.

"Alberoni[45], full of ardour, anxious, restless, despised, no morals, no decency, no consideration, no judgment: according to him, a cardinal is a ----- dressed in red."

The rest of the list is all of a piece; cynicism here takes the place of wit.

A singular piece of buffoonery took place: de Brosses went to dine with some Englishmen at the Porta San Pancrazio; they had a mock election of a pope: a certain Sir Ashwood took off his wig and represented the dean of the cardinals; they sang _Oremus_, and Cardinal Alberoni was elected by the ballot of that orgy. The Protestant soldiers in the Constable de Bourbon's army nominated Martin Luther pope in the Church of St. Peter. Nowadays the English, who are at once the plague and the providence of Rome, respect the Catholic Religion which has permitted them to build a church outside the Porta del Popolo. The government and manners of the day would no longer suffer such scandals.

So soon as a cardinal is imprisoned in the conclave, the first thing he does is, with the aid of his servants, in the dark, to scratch at the newly blocked-up walls until they have made a little hole. Through this, during the night, they pass strings by means of which news is sent and received between the inside and the outside. For the rest, the Cardinal de Retz, whose opinion is above suspicion, after speaking of the miseries of the conclave in which he took part, ends his story with these fine words:

"We lived there, always together, with the same mutual respect and the same civility that are observed in the closets of kings; with the same politeness that obtained at the Court of Henry III.; with the same familiarity that is seen in the colleges; with the same modesty that prevails in noviciates, and the same charity, at least in appearance, that might exist among brothers wholly united."

I am struck, in finishing this epitome of a vast history, by the serious manner in which it commences and the almost burlesque manner in which it ends: the greatness of the Son of God opens the scene which, shrinking in proportion as the Catholic Religion moves farther from its source, ends in the littleness of the son of Adam. We scarcely find again the primitive loftiness of the Cross until we come to the decease of the Sovereign Pontiff: that childless, friendless pope, whose corpse lies neglected on its couch, shows that the man was reckoned as naught in the head of the evangelical world. Honours are rendered to the Pope as a temporal prince; as a man, his abandoned corpse is flung down at the door of the church where of old the sinner did penance.

[Sidenote: Dispatches to Portalis.]

DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I do not know whether the King will be pleased to send an extraordinary ambassador to Rome, or whether it will suit him to accredit me to the Sacred College. In the latter case, I have the honour to observe to you that I allowed M. le Duc de Laval, for his expenses for extraordinary service in a similar circumstance, in 1823, a sum which amounted, as far as I can remember, to 40,000 or 50,000 francs. The Austrian Ambassador, M. le Comte d'Apponyi[46], at first received from his Court a sum of 36,000 francs for the first requirements, a supplementary allowance of 7,200 francs per month over and above his ordinary salary during the sitting of the Conclave, and 10,000 francs for presents, chancery expenses, etc. I do not, monsieur le comte, pretend to compete in magnificence with His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador, as M. le Duc de Laval did; I shall hire no horses, carriages, nor liveries to dazzle the Roman mob; the King of France is a great enough lord to pay for the pomp of his ambassadors, if he wishes it: borrowed magnificence is wretched. I shall therefore go modestly to the Conclave with my ordinary footmen and in my ordinary carriages. It only remains for me to know whether the King will not think that, as long as the Conclave lasts, I shall be bound to keep up a display for which my ordinary salary will not be sufficient I ask nothing, I merely submit the question to your judgment and to the royal decision.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"ROME, 19 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I had the honour yesterday to be presented to the Sacred College and to deliver the little speech of which I sent you a copy in advance in my Dispatch No. 17, which left on Tuesday the 17th inst. by a special courier. I was listened to with the most auspicious marks of satisfaction, and the Senior Cardinal, the venerable Della Somaglia, replied to me in terms most affectionate towards the King and France.

"Having informed you of everything in my last dispatch, I have absolutely nothing new to tell you to-day, unless it be that Cardinal Bussi[47] arrived yesterday from Benevento. Cardinals Albani, Macchi[48], and Oppizzoni are expected to-day.

"The members of the Sacred College will lock themselves up in the Quirinal Palace on Monday evening the 23rd of this month. Ten days will then elapse to await the arrival of the foreign cardinals, after which the serious operations of the Conclave will commence, and, if they were to come to an understanding at once, the pope could be elected in the first week of Lent.

"I am, monsieur le comte, awaiting the King's orders. I presume that you dispatched a courier to me after M. de Montebello's arrival in Paris. It is urgent that I should receive either the announcement of an extraordinary embassy, or my new credentials together with the instructions of the Government.

"Are my five French cardinals coming? Politically speaking, their presence here is very little necessary. I have written to Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil[49] to offer him my services in case he should decide to come,

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"_P.S._ I enclose a copy of a letter which M. le Comte de Funchal has written to me. I have not replied to this ambassador in writing; I only went to talk to him."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Monday_ 23 _February_ 1829.

"Yesterday the Pope's obsequies were finished. The pyramid of 'paper' and the four candelabra were fine enough, because they were of immense proportions and reached up to the cornice of the church. The last _Dies iræ_ was admirable. It is composed by an unknown man, who belongs to the pope's chapel, and who seems to me to possess a very different sort of genius from Rossini's. To-day we pass from sorrow to joy; we sing the _Veni Creator_ for the opening of the Conclave; then we shall go every evening to see if the ballot-papers are burnt, if the smoke issues from a certain chimney: on the day on which there is no smoke, the pope will have been appointed, and I shall go to see you again; that is the whole business as it affects me. The King of England's speech is very insolent to France! What a deplorable expedition that Morean Expedition is! Are they beginning to see it? General Guilleminot wrote me a letter on the subject which made me laugh; he can only have written as he did because he presumed me to be a minister."

[Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

"25 _February._

"Death is here; Torlonia went yesterday evening after two days' illness; I have seen him lying all painted on his death-bed, his sword at his side. He lent money on pledges, but on such pledges! On antiquities, on pictures huddled promiscuously in an old, dusty palace. That was different from the shop in which the Miser put away 'a Bologna lute, fitted with all its strings, or nearly... the skin of a lizard three feet long... and a four-foot bedstead with slips in Hungarian point[50].'

"One sees nothing but dead people carried dressed-up through the streets; one of them passes regularly under my windows when we sit down to dinner. For the rest, everything proclaims the spring parting; people are beginning to disperse; they are leaving for Naples; they will come back a moment for Holy Week, and then separate for good. Next year there will be different travellers, different faces, a different society. There is something melancholy in this journey over ruins: the Romans are like the remains of their city; the world passes at their feet. I picture those persons going back to their families in the various countries of Europe, the young 'Misses' returning to the midst of their fogs. If, by chance, thirty years hence, one of them is brought back to Italy, who will remember to have seen her in the palaces whose masters shall be no more. St. Peter's and the Coliseum: that is all that she herself would recognise."

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"My first courier having reached Lyons, on the 14th of last month, at nine o'clock in the evening, you must have learned the news of the Pope's death, by telegraph, on the morning of the 15th. It is to-day the 3rd of March, and I am still without instructions and without an official reply. The newspapers have announced the departure of two or three cardinals. I had written to Paris to Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil to place the Embassy Palace at his disposal; I have just written to him again at different points on his road to renew my offers.

"I am sorry to be obliged to tell you, monsieur le comte, that I notice some little intrigues here to keep the cardinals away from the Embassy, to lodge them where they might be placed more within reach of the influences which it is hoped to exercise over them.

"As far as I am concerned, this is a matter of indifference to me. I shall show Their Eminences all the services which depend upon myself. If they question me touching things which it is well that they should know, I shall tell them what I can; if you transmit the King's orders for them to me, I will communicate these to them; but, if they were to arrive here in a spirit hostile to the views of His Majesty's Government, if it were perceived that they were not in agreement with the King's Ambassador, if they held a language contrary to mine, if they went so far as to give their votes in the Conclave to some exaggerated man, if even they were divided among themselves, nothing would be more fatal. It would be better for the King's service that I should instantly hand in my resignation rather than present this public spectacle of our discords. Austria and Spain have a line of conduct with reference to their clergy which leaves no opening for intrigue. No Austrian or Spanish priest, cardinal or bishop, can have any other agent or correspondent in Rome than the ambassador of his Court himself; the latter has the right to remove from Rome, at a moment's notice, any ecclesiastic of his nationality who may obstruct him.

"I hope, monsieur le comte, that no division will take place, that Their Eminences the cardinals will have formal orders to submit to the instructions which I shall before long receive from you, and that I shall know which of them will be charged with the exercise of the exclusion, in case of need, and which heads that exclusion is to strike.

"It is very necessary that we should be on our guard; the last ballots revealed the awakening of a party. This party, which gave twenty or twenty-one votes to Cardinals Della Marmora[51] and Pedicini, forms what is known here as the Sardinian faction. The other cardinals, alarmed, want all to give their suffrages to Oppizzoni, a man both firm and moderate. Although an Austrian, that is to say, a Milanese, he coped against Austria at Bologna. He would be an excellent choice. The votes of the French might, by settling on one candidate or another, decide the election. Rightly or wrongly, these cardinals are believed to be hostile to the present system of His Majesty's Government, and the Sardinian faction is reckoning on them.

"I have the honour to be, etc[52]."

[Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

"I am quite surprised at your acquaintance with the story of my excavation; I did not remember having written you so well on that subject. I am, as you think, very busy: left without directions or instructions, I am obliged to take everything upon myself. I believe, however, that I can promise you a moderate and enlightened pope, if God only grant that he be made at the expiration of the interim of M. Portalis' ministry."

"4 _March._

"Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, I was on my knees alone in the Church of Santa Croce, which rests against the walls of Rome, near the Porta di Napoli. I heard the monotonous and lugubrious chanting of the monks within that solitude: I should have liked myself to be in a frock, singing among those ruins. What a spot to appease ambition and to contemplate the vanities of earth! While I am suffering, I hear that M. de La Ferronnays is getting better; he rides on horseback, and his convalescence is looked upon in the country as miraculous: God grant that it be so, and that he may resume work at the end of the interim. What a number of questions that would solve for me!"

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"_Sunday_[53] 15 _March_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I have had the honour to inform you of the successive arrivals of their Eminences the French cardinals. Three of them, Messieurs de Latil, de La Fare[54] and de Croy[55] have done me the honour to be my guests. The first entered the Conclave on Thursday evening the 12th, with M. le Cardinal Isoard[56]; the two others locked themselves in on Friday evening the 13th.

"I told them all I know; I gave them important notes on the minority and majority in the Conclave, and on the sentiments which animate the different parties. We agreed that they should support the candidates of whom I have already spoken to you, namely, Cardinals Capellari, Oppizzoni, Benvenuti, Zurla, Castiglioni and, lastly, Pacca and Di Gregorio; and that they should reject the cardinals of the Sardinian faction: Pedicini, Giustiniani, Galleffi, and Cristaldi[57].

"I hope that this good intelligence between the ambassadors and cardinals will have the best effect: at least I shall have nothing with which to reproach myself if passions or interests intervene to deceive my hopes.

"I have, monsieur le comte, discovered dangerous and contemptible intrigues carried on between Paris and Rome through the channel of Monsignor Lambruschini, the Nuncio[58]. It was no less a question than to cause to be read, in open conclave, a copy of some pretended secret instructions, divided into several clauses and given (so it was impudently asserted) to M. le Cardinal de Latil. The majority of the Conclave has pronounced strongly against these machinations; it wished the Nuncio to be instructed to break off all relations with those men of discord who, while troubling France, would end by making the Catholic Religion hateful to all. I am, monsieur le comte, making a collection of these authentic revelations, and I will send it to you after the election of the pope: that will be worth more than all the dispatches in the world. The King will learn to know who are his friends and who his enemies, and the Government will be able to rely on facts suited to guide its conduct

"Your Dispatch No. 14 informs me of the encroachments which His Holiness' Nuncio endeavoured to renew in France in connection with the death of Leo XII. The same thing had happened before, when I was Foreign Minister, at the time of the death of Pius VII.: fortunately, we always have means of defending ourselves against those public attacks; it is much more difficult to escape the plots laid in the dark.

"The conclavists who accompany our cardinals appeared to me to be reasonable men: the Abbé Coudrin[59] alone, whom you mentioned to me, is one of those cramped and narrow minds into which nothing can enter, one of those men who have mistaken their profession. As you are well aware, he is a monk, head of an order, and he even has bulls of institution: this is but little in agreement with our civil laws and our political institutions.

"It may happen that the pope will be elected at the end of this week. But, if the French cardinals fail to make their presence felt at once, it will become impossible to assign a limit to the duration of the Conclave. New combinations would perhaps bring about an unexpected nomination: to have done with it, they might agree on some insignificant cardinal, such as Dandini[60].

"In times gone by, monsieur le comte, I have found myself placed in difficult circumstances, whether as Ambassador to London, or as Minister during the Spanish War, or as a member of the House of Peers, or Leader of the Opposition; but nothing has given me so much anxiety and care as my present position in the midst of every kind of intrigue. I have to act upon an invisible body locked up in a prison, the approaches to which are strictly guarded. I have no money to give, no places to promise; the decaying passions of fifty old men give me no hold on them. I have to fight against stupidity in some, against ignorance of the times in others; fanaticism in these, craft and duplicity in those; in almost all, ambition, self-interest, political hatred: and I am separated by walls and mysteries from the assembly in which so many elements of division are fermenting. At each moment, the scene varies; every quarter of an hour, contradictory reports plunge me into fresh perplexities. I am not, monsieur le comte, telling you of these difficulties to show my importance, but rather to serve as my excuse in case the election should result in a pope contrary to what it seems to promise and to the nature of our wishes. At the time of the death of Pius VII., public opinion was not excited over religious questions: to-day, these questions have begun to play their part in politics, and never did the election of the Head of the Church fall at a less auspicious moment

"I have the honour to be, etc."

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

ROME, 17 _March_ 1829.

"The King of Bavaria[61] has called in mufti to see me. We spoke of you. This 'Greek' sovereign, though he wears a crown, seems to know what he has on his head, and to understand that you cannot nail the present to the past. He is to dine with me on Thursday, and wants no one there.

"For the rest, behold us in the midst of great events: a pope to be made; what will he be like? Will Catholic Emancipation be passed? A new campaign in the East: on which side will victory be? Shall we profit by this position? Who will conduct our affairs? Is there a head capable of perceiving all that this contains for France and of profiting by it according to events? I am persuaded that they do not so much as think of it in Paris and that, what with the salons and the Chambers, pleasures and legislation, worldly joys and ministerial anxieties, they don't trouble about Europe or anything else. Only I myself, in my exile, have time to indulge in dreams and to look about me. Yesterday I went for a walk in a sort of gale on the old Tivoli Road. I came to the old Roman pavement, which is so well preserved that one would believe it had been newly laid. Yet Horace had trod the stones which I was treading: where is Horace?"

The Marquis Capponi[62] arrived from Florence, bringing me letters of recommendation from ladies in Paris. I replied to one of these letters on the 21st of March 1829:

"I have received your letters: the services I am able to do are nothing, but I am entirely at your orders. I was already well acquainted with the Marquis Capponi's merits. I can tell you that he is still good-looking; he has weathered time. I did not answer your first letter, so full of enthusiasm for the sublime Mahmud and for 'disciplined' barbarism, for those slaves 'bastinadoed' into soldiers[63]. I can imagine that women are carried away with admiration for men who marry hundreds of them at a time, and that they take that for the progress of enlightenment and civilization; but, as for me, I cling to my poor Greeks; I desire their liberty as I do that of France. I also want frontiers which will cover Paris and ensure our independence; and it is not by means of the triple alliance of the pale of Constantinople, the _schlag_ of Vienna and the fisticuffs of London that you will obtain the bank of the Rhine. Many thanks for the fur-coat of honour which our glory might obtain from the invincible Commander of the Faithful, who has not yet sallied from the outskirts of his seraglio; I prefer that glory naked; she is a woman and beautiful: Phidias would certainly never have robed her in a Turkish dressing-gown."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

ROME, 21 _March_ 1829.

"Well, I am right and you are wrong! I went yesterday, between two ballots and while waiting for a pope, to Sant' Onofrio: and it is two _orange-trees_ that grow in the cloister, and not an evergreen oak. I am quite proud of this fidelity of my memory. I ran, almost with my eyes shut, to the little stone that covers your friend; I prefer it to the great monument they are going to raise to him. What a charming solitude! What an admirable view! What happiness to lie there between the frescoes of Domenichino[64] and Leonardo da Vinci! I wish I were there, I never felt so tempted. Did they let you enter the interior of the convent? Did you see, in a long corridor, that delicious, though half-obliterated, head of a Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci? Did you see in the library Tasso's mask, his withered laurel-wreath, a mirror which he used, his ink-stand, his pen and the letter written by his hand, pasted to a board that hangs below his bust? In this letter, in a small, scratched-out, but easily legible hand, he speaks of 'friendship' and the 'wind of fortune;' the latter scarcely ever blew for him, and the former often failed him.

"No pope yet, we expect him hourly; but, if the choice has been delayed, if obstacles have arisen on every hand, it is not my fault: they ought to have listened to me a little more, and not acted in a sense exactly opposite to that which they seemed to decide upon. For the rest, it seems to me at present that every one wants to be at peace with me. The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre himself has just written to tell me that he claims my former kindness for him; and after all that he comes to stay with me resolved to vote for the most moderate pope.

"You have read my second speech. Thank M. Kératry[65], who has spoken so obligingly of the first; I hope he will be still more pleased with the other. We shall both of us try to make liberty Christian, and we shall succeed. What do you say to the answer Cardinal Castiglioni made me? Have I been finely enough praised 'in open conclave'? You could not have done better in the days when you spoilt me."

[Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

"24 _March_ 1829.

"If I were to believe the rumours of Rome, we should have a pope to-morrow; but I am in a moment of discouragement, and I refuse to believe in such happiness. You can understand that that happiness is not political happiness, the joy of a triumph, but the happiness of being free and seeing you again. When I speak to you so much about the Conclave, I am like the people who have a fixed idea and who believe that the whole world is interested in that idea. And yet, in Paris, who thinks of the Conclave, who troubles about a pope or my tribulations? French light-heartedness, the interests of the moment, the discussions in the Chambers, excited ambitions have very different things to do. When the Duc de Laval used also to write to me of his cares about the Conclave, preoccupied with the Spanish War as I was, I used to say, when I received his dispatches, 'Oh, good Heavens, I have something else to think of!' and M. Portalis is applying the _lex talionis_ to me to-day. Nevertheless, one may fairly say that things at that time were not what they are now: religious ideas were not mixed up with political ideas as they have since been throughout Europe; the quarrel did not lie there; the nomination could not, as it does now, disturb or pacify States.

"Since the letter which informed me that M. de La Ferronnays' leave had been extended and that he had left for Rome, I have heard nothing: still, I believe that news true.

"M. Thierry has written me a touching letter from Hyères; he tells me that he is dying, and still he wants a place in the Academy of Inscriptions and asks me to write for him. I am going to do so. My excavation continues to give me sarcophaguses; death can only yield what it possesses. The Poussin monument is getting on. It will be noble and large. You cannot imagine how the picture of the Arcadian Shepherds was made for a bas-relief, nor how well it suits sculpture."

"28 _March._

"M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre, who has been staying with me, enters the Conclave to-day; this is an age of marvels. I have with me the son of Marshal Lannes and the grandson of the Chancellor[66]; _Messieurs du Constitutionnel_ dine at my table beside _Messieurs de la Quotidienne._ That is the advantage of being sincere; let every one think what he pleases, provided I am allowed the same liberty; I only endeavour that my opinion shall have the majority, because I think it, and rightly, better than the others. I attribute to this sincerity the tendency of the most diverging opinions to gather round me. I exercise the right of sanctuary towards them: they cannot be seized beneath my roof."

TO M. LE DUC DE BLACAS[67]

"ROME, 24 _March_ 1829.

"I am sorry, monsieur le duc, that a phrase in my letter should have been able to cause you any anxiety. I have no reason whatever to complain of a man of sense and intelligence[68], who told me nothing save diplomatic commonplaces. Do we ambassadors ever talk anything else? As to the cardinal of whom you do me the honour to speak, the French Government has not designated any one in particular; it has left the matter entirely as I reported it. Seven or eight moderate and peaceful cardinals, who seem to attract the wishes of all the Courts alike, are the candidates among whom we wish to see the votes fall. But, if we lay no claim to impose a choice upon the majority of the Conclave, we do with all our might and by every means repel two or three fanatical, intriguing, or incapable cardinals, whom the minority are supporting.

"I have no other possible means of sending you this letter, monsieur le duc; I am therefore very simply posting it, because it contains nothing that you and I cannot confess aloud.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

[Sidenote: To Blacas and Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 31 _March_ 1829.

"M. de Montebello has arrived and has brought me your letter, with a letter from M. Bertin and from M. Villemain.

"My excavations are doing well: I find plenty of empty sarcophaguses; I shall be able to choose one for myself, without my ashes being obliged to turn out those of the old dead men whom the wind has carried away. Depopulated sepulchres afford the spectacle of a resurrection, and yet they await only a more profound death. It is not life but annihilation which has made those tombs deserted.

"To finish my little diary of the moment, I will tell you that the day before yesterday I climbed to the ball of St. Peter's during a storm. You cannot imagine the noise of the wind in mid-sky, around that cupola of Michael Angelo and above that temple of the Christians which crushes Ancient Rome."

"31 _March, evening._

"Victory! I have one of the Popes whom I had placed on my list: it is Castiglioni, the very cardinal whom I was supporting for the Papacy in 1823, when I was Minister, he who lately replied to me in the Conclave with 'many praises.' Castiglioni is a moderate man and devoted to France; it is a complete triumph. The Conclave, before separating, gave orders to write to the Nuncio in Paris, to tell him to express to the King the satisfaction of the Sacred College with my conduct. I have already dispatched the news to Paris by the telegraph. The Prefect of the Rhone is the intermediary of this aerial correspondence, and this prefect is M. de Brosses, son of that Comte de Brosses, the frivolous traveller to Rome, whom I have often quoted in the notes which I collect while writing to you. The courier who carries this letter to you carries my dispatch to M. Portalis.

"I never have two consecutive days of good health now; this makes me furious, for I have no heart for anything in the midst of my sufferings. Still, I am awaiting with some impatience to hear the effect in Paris of the nomination of my Pope, what they will say, what they will do, what will become of me. The most certain thing is that my leave has been applied for. I have seen in the papers the great quarrel raised by the _Constitutionnel_ about my speech; it accuses the _Messager_ of not printing it, and we in Rome have _Messagers_ of the 22nd of March (the quarrel belongs to the 24th or 25th) containing the speech. Isn't it singular? It seems clear that there are _two_ editions, one for Rome and the other for Paris. Poor people! I am thinking of the mistake made by another paper; it assures its readers that the Conclave was very much dissatisfied with this speech: what can it have said when it read the praises given me by Cardinal Castiglioni, who has become Pope?

"When shall I have done talking to you of all these trifles? When shall I busy myself only with finishing the Memoirs of my Life and my life also, as the last page of those Memoirs? I have great need of it; I am very weary, the weight of my days increases and makes itself felt on my head; I amuse myself by calling it 'rheumatism' but it is the kind that one cannot cure. One word only sustains me, when I again say:

"'Soon.'"

"3 _April._

"I forgot to tell you that, as Cardinal Fesch behaved very well in the Conclave and voted with our cardinals, I took a resolution and invited him to dinner. He refused in a very tactful note."

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 2 _April_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"Cardinal Albani has been appointed Secretary of State, as I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons by the mounted messenger dispatched on the evening of the 31st of March. The new minister is not pleasing to the Sardinian faction, nor to the majority of the Sacred College, nor even to Austria, because he is violent, an Anti-Jesuit, rude in his manner, and an Italian above everything. Rich and excessively avaricious, Cardinal Albani is mixed up in all sorts of enterprises and speculations. I went yesterday to pay him my first visit; the moment he saw me, he exclaimed:

"'I am a pig!' He was, in fact, exceedingly dirty. 'You shall see that I am not an enemy.'

"I am giving you his own words, monsieur le comte. I replied that I was very far from regarding him as an enemy.

"'You people' he resumed, 'want water, not fire: don't I know your country? Haven't I lived in France?' He speaks French like a Frenchman. 'You will be satisfied, and your master too. How is the King? Good-morning. Let us go to St. Peter's!'

"It was eight o'clock in the morning; I had already seen His Holiness, and all Rome was hastening to the ceremony of the Adoration.

"Cardinal Albani is a man of intelligence, false by nature and frank by temperament; his violence foils his cunning; one can make use of him by flattering his pride and satisfying his avarice.

"Pius VIII. is very learned, especially in matters of theology; he speaks French, but with less facility and grace than Leo XII. He is attacked on the right side with partial paralysis, and is subject to convulsive movements: the supreme power will cure him. He is to be crowned on Sunday next, Passion Sunday, the 5th of April.

"Now, monsieur le comte, that the principal business which kept me in Rome is ended, I shall be infinitely obliged to you if you will obtain for me from His Majesty's kindness a leave of a few months. I shall not take it until after I have handed the Pope the letter in which the King will reply to that which Pius VIII. has written or is going to write to him to announce his elevation to the Chair of St Peter. Permit me to beg once more, on behalf of my two secretaries of Legation, M. Bellocq[69] and M. de Givré[70], the favours which I have asked of you for them.

"The intrigues of Cardinal Albani in the Conclave, the partisans whom he had won, even among the majority, had made me fear some unexpected stroke to carry him to the Sovereign Pontificate. It seemed to me impossible to allow ourselves to be thus surprised and to permit the Austrian _chargé d'affaires_ to put on the tiara under the eyes of the French Ambassador. I therefore availed myself of the arrival of M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre to charge him against all eventualities with the letter enclosed, the terms of which I framed on my own responsibility. Fortunately he was not called upon to make use of this letter; he handed it back to me, and I have the honour to send it to you.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

TO HIS EMINENCE MONSEIGNEUR LE CARDINAL DE CLERMONT-TONNERRE

"ROME, 28 _March_ 1829.

"MONSEIGNEUR,

"Unable to communicate with your colleagues, Messieurs the French cardinals, confined in the Monte Cavallo Palace; obliged to provide for every thing to the advantage of His Majesty's service, and in the interests of our country; knowing how often unexpected nominations have been made in the conclaves, I find myself, to my regret, in the disagreeable necessity of confiding to Your Eminence a power of eventual exclusion.

"Although M. le Cardinal Albani appears to have no chance, he is none the less a man of capacity on whom, in case of a prolonged struggle, they might turn their eyes; but he is the cardinal charged at the Conclave with the instructions of Austria: M. le Comte de Lützow has already designated him in that quality in his speech. Now it is impossible to allow the elevation to the Sovereign Pontificate of a cardinal openly belonging to a crown, whether it be the Crown of France or any other.

"Consequently, monseigneur, I charge you, by virtue of my full powers as His Most Christian Majesty's Ambassador, and taking all the responsibility upon myself alone, to give the exclusion to M. le Cardinal Albani, if, on the one hand, by a fortuitous juncture, or, on the other, by a secret combination, he should come to obtain the majority of the suffrages.

"I am, etc., etc."

[Sidenote: The letter of exclusion.]

This letter of exclusion, entrusted to a cardinal by an ambassador who is not formally authorized to that effect, is a piece of diplomatic temerity: it is enough to send a shudder through all stay-at-home statesmen, all the heads of departments, all the chief clerks, all the copiers at the Foreign Office; but, as the Minister knew so little about his business as not even to think of an eventual case of exclusion, needs must that I should think of it for him. Suppose that Albani had been made Pope by accident: what would have become of me? I should have been ruined for ever as a politician.

I say this, not for myself, who care little for a politician's fame, but for the future generation of writers who would be browbeaten because of my accident and who would expiate my misfortune at the cost of their career, even as the whipping-boy is punished when M. le Dauphin commits a blunder. But neither should my daring foresight, in taking the letter of exclusion upon myself, be too much admired: that which appears enormous, when measured by the stunted scale of the old diplomatic ideas, is really nothing at all, in the actual order of society. I owed my audacity on the one hand to my insensibility to all disgrace, on the other to my knowledge of contemporary opinion: the world as it is to-day does not care two sous for the nomination of a pope, the rivalries of crowns, or the internal intrigues of a conclave.

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

_Confidential._

"ROME, 2 _April_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I have the honour to-day to send you the important documents which I promised you. These are nothing less than the secret and official journal of the Conclave. It is translated, word for word, from the Italian original; I have only removed any part of it which might point too precisely to the sources whence I drew it. If the smallest atom of these perhaps unexampled revelations were to transpire, it would cost the fortune, the liberty and perhaps the lives of several persons. This would be the more deplorable inasmuch as we owe these revelations not to interest and corruption, but to confidence in French honour. This document, monsieur le comte, must therefore remain for ever secret after it has been read in the King's Council; for, in spite of the precautions which I have taken to keep names silent and to suppress direct references, it still says enough to compromise its authors. I have added a commentary, to facilitate its perusal. The Pontifical Government is in the habit of keeping a register on which its decisions, its acts and deeds are noted down day by day, and so to speak hour by hour: what an historical treasure, if one could delve into it, going back towards the earlier centuries of the Papacy! I have been given a momentary glimpse of it, for the present period. The King will see, through the documents which I am sending you, what has never been seen before, the inside of a Conclave; the most intimate sentiments of the Court of Rome will be known to him, and His Majesty's Ministers will not be walking in the dark.

"The commentary which I have made of the journal dispensing me from any other reflection, it but remains for me to offer you the renewed assurance of the high regard with which I have the honour to be, etc., etc."

The Italian original of the precious document announced in this confidential dispatch was burnt in Rome before my eyes; I have kept no copy of the translation of this document which I sent to the Foreign Office; I have only a copy of the "commentary" or "remarks" which I added to that translation. But the same discretion which made me charge the Minister to keep the document for ever secret obliges me here to suppress my own remarks; for, however great the obscurity in which those remarks are enveloped, in the absence of the document to which they refer, that obscurity would still be daylight in Rome. Now resentment is long in the Eternal City; it might happen that, fifty years hence, it should fall upon some grand-nephew of the authors of the mysterious confidence. I shall therefore content myself with giving a general epitome of the contents of the commentary, while laying stress on a few passages which bear a direct relation to the affairs of France.

We see, first, how greatly the Court of Naples was deceiving M. de Blacas, or else how much it was itself deceived; for, while it was causing me to be told that the Neapolitan cardinals would vote with us, they were joining the minority or the so-called Sardinian faction.

The minority of the cardinals imagined that the vote of the French cardinals would influence _the form of our government._ How so? Apparently by means of secret orders with which they were supposed to be charged and by their votes in favour of a hot-headed pope.

[Sidenote: A secret document.]

The Nuncio Lambruschini declared to the Conclave that the Cardinal de Latil had the King's secret; all the efforts of the faction tended to create the belief that Charles X. and his Government were not in agreement.

On the 13th of March, the Cardinal de Latil announced that he had a declaration purely of conscience to make to the Conclave; he was sent before four cardinal-bishops: the acts of that secret confession remained in the keeping of the Grand Penitentiary. The other French cardinals knew nothing of the subject-matter of this confession, and Cardinal Albani sought in vain to find out: the fact is important and curious.

The minority consisted of sixteen compact votes. The cardinals forming this minority called themselves the "Fathers of the Cross;" they placed a St. Andrew's cross on their doors as a sign that, having decided on their choice, they did not want to communicate with any one. The majority of the Conclave displayed reasonable sentiments and a firm resolution in no way to mix in foreign politics.

The minutes drawn up by the protonotary of the Conclave are worthy of remark. They conclude with these words:

"Pius VIII. determined to appoint Cardinal Albani Secretary of State, in order also to satisfy the Cabinet of Vienna."

The Sovereign Pontiff divides the lots between the two crowns: he declares himself the French Pope, and gives the secretaryship of State to Austria.

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Wednesday_ 8 _April_ 1829.

"This day I have had the whole Conclave to dinner. Tomorrow I receive the Grand-duchess Helen. On Easter Tuesday, I give a ball for the closing of the session; and then I shall prepare to come to see you. You can judge of my anxiety: at the moment of writing to you, I have no news yet of my mounted courier announcing the death of the Pope, and yet the Pope is already crowned; Leo XII. is forgotten; I have begun again to transact affairs with the new Secretary of State, Albani; everything is going on as though nothing had happened, and I do not even know whether you in Paris know that there is a new Pontiff! How beautiful that ceremony of the papal benediction is! The Sabine Range on the horizon, then the deserted Roman Campagna, then Rome itself, then the Piazza San Pietro and the whole people falling on its knees under an old man's hand: the Pope is the only prince who blesses his subjects.

"I had written so far when a courier arrived from Genoa bringing me a telegraphic dispatch from Paris to Toulon, which dispatch, replying to the one I had sent, informs me that, on the 4th of April, at eleven o'clock in the evening, they received in Paris my telegraphic dispatch from Rome to Toulon announcing the election of Cardinal Castiglioni, and that the King is greatly pleased.

"The rapidity of these communications is prodigious; my courier left at eight o'clock in the evening on the 31st of March, and at eight o'clock in the evening on the 8th of April I received a reply from Paris."

"11 _April_ 1829.

"To-day is the 11th of April: in eight days we shall have Easter with us, in fifteen days my leave, and then to see you! Everything disappears before that hope; I am no more sad; I no longer think of ministers or politics. To-morrow we begin Holy Week. I shall think of all you have told me. Why are you not here to hear the beautiful songs of sorrow with me! We should go to walk in the deserts of the Roman Campagna, now covered with flowers and verdure. All the ruins seem to become young with the new year: I am of their number."

[Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]

_Wednesday in Holy Week_, 15 _April._

"I have just left the Sistine Chapel, where I attended Tenebræ and heard the _Miserere_ sung. I remembered that you had talked to me of this ceremony, which touched me a hundred times as much because of that.

"The daylight was failing; the shadows crept slowly across the frescoes of the chapel, and one distinguished but a few bold strokes of Michael Angelo's brush. The candles, extinguished one by one in turns, sent forth from their stifled flames a slender white smoke, a very natural image of life, which Scripture compares to a little smoke[71]. The cardinals were kneeling, the Pope prostrate before the same altar where a few days before I had seen his predecessor; the admirable prayer of penance and mercy, which succeeded the Lamentations of the prophet, rose at intervals in the silence of the night. One felt overwhelmed by the great mystery of a God dying that the sins of mankind might be wiped out. The Catholic Heiress was there on her seven hills with all her memories; but, instead of the powerful pontiffs, those cardinals who contended for precedence with monarchs, a poor old paralyzed Pope, without family or support, Princes of the Church, without splendour, announced the end of a power which has civilized the modern world. The master-pieces of the arts were disappearing with it, were fading away on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican, that half-abandoned palace. Inquisitive strangers, separated from the unity of the Church, assisted at the ceremony on their way and took the place of the community of the Faithful. The heart was seized with a two-fold sadness. Christian Rome, while commemorating the Agony of Jesus Christ, seemed to be celebrating her own, to be repeating for the new Jerusalem the words which Jeremias addressed to the old."

[Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"Things are developing here as I had the honour to foreshadow to you; the words and actions of the new Pope are in complete agreement with the pacificatory system followed by Leo XII.: Pius VIII. goes even further than his predecessor; he expresses himself with greater frankness on the Charter, of which he is not afraid to pronounce the word nor to advise the French to follow the spirit. The Nuncio, having again written about our business, has received a dry intimation to mind his own. All is being concluded for the Concordat with the Netherlands, and M. le Comte de Celles will complete his mission next month.

"Cardinal Albani, finding himself in a difficult position, is obliged to pay for it: the protestations which he makes to me of his devotion to France annoy the Austrian Ambassador, who is unable to conceal his ill-humour. From the religious point of view we have nothing to fear from Cardinal Albani; himself troubled with very little religion, he will not feel the impulse to trouble us either with his own fanaticism or with the moderate opinions of his Sovereign.

"As for the political point of view, Italy is not at this day to be juggled away through police intrigues and a cypher correspondence; to allow the Legations to be occupied or to place an Austrian garrison at Ancona on some pretext or other would mean stirring up Europe and declaring war against France: now we are no longer in 1814, 1815, 1816 and 1817; a greedy and unjust ambition is not to be satisfied before our eyes with impunity. And so, that Cardinal Albani is in receipt of a pension from Prince Metternich; that he is a kinsman of the Duke of Modena[72], to whom he declares himself to be leaving his enormous fortune; that he is hatching a little plot with that Prince against the Heir to the Crown of Sardinia[73]: all that is true, all that would have been dangerous at the time when secret and absolute governments set soldiers dimly in movement behind the shelter of a dim dispatch; but, in these days, with public governments, with liberty of the press and of free speech, with the telegraph and general rapidity of communication, with knowledge of affairs spread through the several classes of society, we are protected against the conjuring tricks and artifices of the old diplomacy. At the same time it cannot be denied that there are drawbacks attached to an _Austrian chargé d'affaires_ in the position of Secretary of State in Rome; there are even certain notes (those for instance relating to the imperial power in Italy) which it would not be possible to place in Cardinal Albani's hands.

"No one has yet been able to fathom the secret of an appointment which everybody dislikes, including even the Cabinet of Vienna. Has this to do with interests foreign to politics? They say that Cardinal Albani is at this moment offering to make the Holy Father an advance of 200,000 piastres of which the Roman Government stands in need; others pretend that this sum will be lent by an Austrian banker. Cardinal Macchi told me on Saturday last that His Holiness, not wishing to re-appoint Cardinal Bernetti and desirous, nevertheless, of giving him a big place, found no other means of arranging things than to make vacant the Bologna Legation. Wretched little difficulties often become the motives of the most important resolutions. If Cardinal Macchi's version is the true one, all that Pius VIII. is doing and saying for the _satisfaction_ of the Crowns of France and Austria would be only an apparent reason, by the aid of which he would seek to mask his own weakness in his own eyes. For the rest, no one believes that Albania ministry will last. So soon as he begins to enter into relations with the ambassadors, difficulties will spring up on every hand.

[Sidenote: The position of Italy.]

"As to the position of Italy, monsieur le comte, you must read with caution what will be written to you from Rome or elsewhere. It is, unhappily, but too true that the Government of the Two Sicilies has fallen into the last stage of contempt. The manner in which the Court lives in the midst of its guards, for ever trembling, for ever pursued by the phantoms of fear, presenting the sole spectacle of ruinous hunting-parties and gibbets, contributes more and more to debase royalty in this country. Yet they take for _conspiracies_ what is only the general uneasiness, the product of the century, the struggle of the old society with the new, the contest between the decrepitude of the old institutions and the energy of the young generations: in fine, the comparison which everybody makes of that which is with that which might be. Let us not blind our eyes to this fact: the great spectacle of a powerful, free and happy France, that great spectacle which strikes the eyes of the nations which have remained or relapsed under the yoke, excites regrets or feeds hopes. The medley of representative governments and absolute governments cannot long continue; one or the other must go under, and politics must return to an even level, as in the time of Gothic Europe. The custom-house on a frontier can henceforth not separate liberty from slavery; a man can no longer be hung on this side of a brook for principles reputed sacred on the other side of that brook. It is in this sense, monsieur le comte, and in this sense alone, that there is any _conspiracy_ in Italy; it is in this sense too that Italy is _French._ On the day when she shall enter on the enjoyment of the rights which her intelligence perceives and which the progressive march of time is carrying to her, on that day she will be peaceful and purely Italian. It is not a few poor devils of _Carbonari_, stirred up by the manœuvres of the police and mercilessly hanged, that will rouse the country to revolt. Governments are given the falsest ideas of the true state of things; they are prevented from doing what they ought to do to ensure their safety by always having pointed out to them as the private conspiracies of a handful of Jacobins what is really the effect of a permanent and general cause.

"This, monsieur le comte, is the real position of Italy. Each of her States, in addition to the common working of men's minds, is tortured with some local malady: Piedmont is delivered to a fanatical faction; the Milanese is being devoured by the Austrians; the domains of the Holy Father are being ruined by bad financial administration; the taxes amount to nearly fifty millions and do not leave the landlord one per cent, of his income; the customs bring in hardly anything; smuggling is general; the Prince of Modena has established shops in his Duchy (a place of immunity for all ancient abuses) for the sale of prohibited merchandise, which he passes at night into the Bologna Legation[74].

"I have already, monsieur le comte, spoken to you of Naples, where the weakness of the government is saved only by the cowardice of the population.

"It is this absence of military valour that will prolong the death-agony of Italy. Bonaparte did not have time to revive that valour in the land of Marius and Cæsar. The habits of an idle life and the charm of the climate contribute still more to deprive the Southern Italians of the desire to agitate for an improved condition. Antipathies arising from the territorial divisions add to the difficulties of an inside movement; but, if some impulse came from without, if some prince beyond the Alps granted a charter to his subjects, a revolution would take place, because all is ripe for such a revolution. Happier than we and instructed by our experience, the people would be sparing in the crimes and miseries with which we were lavish.

"I have no doubt, monsieur le comte, that I shall soon receive the leave for which I asked you: I shall perhaps use it. At the moment, therefore, of leaving Italy, I have thought it my duty to place a few general hints before you, in order to fix the ideas of the King's Council and to warn it against reports inspired by narrow minds or blind passions.

"I have the honour to be, etc., etc."

[Sidenote: Expensive visitors.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"Messieurs the French cardinals are very eager to know what sum will be allowed them for their expenses and their stay in Rome: they have repeatedly asked me to write to you on the subject; I shall therefore be infinitely obliged to you if you will inform me as soon as possible of the King's decision.

"As regards myself, monsieur le comte, when you were good enough to allow me an additional sum of thirty thousand francs, you were under the impression that none of the cardinals would stay with me. Now M. de Clermont-Tonnerre put up here with his suite, consisting of two conclavists, an ecclesiastical secretary, a lay secretary, a valet, two men-servants and a French cook, besides a Roman groom of the chambers, a master of ceremonies, three footmen, a coachman and all the Italian establishment which a cardinal is obliged to keep up here. The Archbishop of Toulouse, who is not able to walk[75], does not dine at my table; he requires two or three courses at different hours, and horses and carriages for his guests and friends. My reverend visitor will certainly not pay his expenditure here; he will go, and leave the bills to me; I shall have to pay not only the cook, the laundress, the livery-stable keeper, etc., etc., but also the two surgeons who came to look at His Lordship's leg, the shoemaker who makes his white and purple slippers, and the tailor who has 'confectioned' the cloaks, cassocks, neck-bands, the whole outfit of the cardinal and his abbés.

"If to this, monsieur le comte, you add my extraordinary expenses for costs of representation, which expenses have been increased by the presence of the Grand-duchess Helen, Prince Paul of Wurtemberg[76] and the King of Bavaria, you will no doubt find that the thirty thousand francs which you allowed me will have been much exceeded. The first year of an ambassador's establishment is a ruinous one, the grants allowed for that establishment being far below its needs. It requires a residence of almost three years for a diplomatic agent to find means to pay off the debts which he has begun by making and to keep his expenses on a level with his receipts. I know all the penury of the budget of the Foreign Office; if I had any fortune of my own, I would not trouble you: nothing is more disagreeable to me, I assure you, than these details of money into which a rigorous necessity compels me to enter, much against my will.

"Accept, monsieur le comte, etc."

I had given balls and evening-parties in London and Paris, and, although a child of a different desert, I had not passed too badly through those new solitudes; but I had had no glimmer of the nature of the entertainments in Rome: they have something of ancient poetry, which places death by the side of pleasures. At the Villa Medicis, where I received the Grand-duchess Helen, the gardens themselves are an adornment, and the frame of the picture is magnificent: on one side, the Villa Borghese, with Raphael's house; on the other the Villa Monte-Maria, and the slopes edging the Tiber; below the spectator, the whole of Rome, like an old, abandoned eagle's nest. Amid the groves thronged, together with the descendants of the Paulas and Corinnas, beauties come from Naples, Florence and Milan: the Princess Helen seemed to be their queen. Boreas, suddenly descending from the mountain, tore the banqueting-tent and fled with shreds of canvas and garlands, as though to give us an image of all that time has swept away on this shore. The Embassy staff were in consternation; I felt an indescribable ironical gaiety at seeing a breath from heaven carry off my gold of a day and my joys of an hour. The mischief was promptly repaired. Instead of lunching on the terrace, we lunched in the graceful palace: the harmony of the horns and oboes, spread by the wind, had something of the murmur of my American forests. The groups disporting amid the squalls, the women whose tortured veils beat their hair and faces, the _saltarello_ which continued during the storm, the _improvisatrice_ declaiming to the clouds, the balloon escaping crooked-wise with the cypher of the Daughter of the North: all this gave a new character to those sports in which the customary tempests of my life seemed to take part.

What a fascination for any man who should not have counted his heap of years, and who should have asked illusions of the world and the storm! It is difficult indeed for me to remember my autumn when, at my receptions, I see pass before me those women of spring-time who penetrate among the flowers, the concerts and the lights of my successive galleries: as who should sway swans swimming towards radiant climes. To what _désennui_ are they going? Some seek what they already love, others what they do not yet love. At the end of the road, they will fall into those sepulchres, always open here, into those ancient sarcophaguses which serve as basins to fountains hanging from porticoes; they will go to swell so many light and charming ashes. Those waves of beauties, diamonds, flowers and feathers roll to the sound of Rossini's music, which is re-echoed and grows feebler from orchestra to orchestra. Is that melody the sigh of the breeze to which I listened in the savannahs of the Floridas, the moan which I heard in the Temple of Erechtheus at Athens? Is it the distant wailing of the north winds, which rocked me on the ocean? Could my sylph be hidden beneath the form of some of these brilliant Italian women? No: my hamadryad has remained united to the willow of the meadows where I used to talk with her on the further side of the hedge at Combourg. I have little in common with these frolics of the society which has attached itself to my steps at the end of my race; and yet this fairy-scene contains a certain intoxication that flies to my head: I get rid of it only by going to cool my brow in the solitary square of St. Peter's or in the deserted Coliseum. Then the puny sights of the earth are lost, and I find nothing equal to the sudden change of scene but the old melancholy of my early days.

[Sidenote: The exiled Bonapartes.]

I will now set forth here my relations, as Ambassador, with the Bonaparte Family, in order to clear the Restoration of one of the calumnies that are incessantly being thrown at its head.

France did not act alone in banishing the members of the Imperial Family; she merely obeyed the hard necessity put upon her by the force of arms; it was the Allies who provoked that banishment: diplomatic conventions, formal treaties pronounce the exile of the Bonapartes, lay down the very places they are to live at, forbid a minister or ambassador to deliver a passport, by himself, to Napoleon's kinsmen; the visa of the four other ministers or ambassadors of the four other contracting Powers is exacted. To such a degree did the blood of Napoleon frighten the Allies, even when it did not flow in his own veins!

Thank God, I never submitted to those measures. In 1823, without consulting anybody, in spite of the treaties, and on my own responsibility as Minister of Foreign Affairs, I delivered a passport to Madame la Comtesse de Survilliers[77], then in Brussels, to enable her to come to Paris to nurse one of her kinsmen, who was ill. Twenty times over I called for the repeal of those laws of persecution; twenty times over I told Louis XVIII. that I should like to see the Duc de Reichstadt captain of his Guards, and the statue of Napoleon put back on the top of the column in the Place Vendôme. Both as minister and ambassador, I rendered all the services in my power to the Bonaparte Family. That was the broad view I took of the Legitimate Monarchy: liberty can look glory in the face. As Ambassador to Rome, I authorized my secretaries and attachés to appear in the palace of Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu; I threw down the barrier raised between Frenchmen who had all known adversity. I wrote to M. le Cardinal Fesch to invite him to join the cardinals who were to meet at my house; I expressed to him my sorrow at the political measures which it had been thought necessary to take; I reminded him of the time when I had formed part of his mission to the Holy See; and I begged my old ambassador to honour with his presence the banquet of his old secretary of embassy. I received the following reply, full of dignity, discretion and prudence:

[Sidenote: Fesch, Jerome Bonaparte.]

"PALAZZO FALCONIERI, 4 _April_ 1829.

"Cardinal Fesch greatly appreciates M. de Chateaubriand's obliging invitation, but his position on returning to Rome was such as to recommend him to forsake the world and lead a life quite apart from any society except that of his family. The circumstances that followed proved to him that this course was indispensable to his tranquillity; and, as the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against unpleasantness in the future, he is obliged not to change his mode of life. Cardinal Fesch begs M. de Chateaubriand to be convinced that nothing can equal his gratitude, and that it is with much regret that he will not wait upon His Excellency as frequently as he would have desired.

'His very humble, etc.,

"CARDINAL FESCH."

The phrase, "the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against unpleasantness in the future," is an allusion to the threat uttered by M. de Blacas, who had given orders for M. le Cardinal Fesch to be flung down his stairs if he presented himself at the French Embassy: M. de Blacas was too much inclined to forget that he had not always been so great a lord. I who, in order to be what I have to be, in so far as I can, in the present, am constantly recalling my past, have acted differently with His Eminence the Archbishop of Lyons: the little misunderstandings that existed between him and me in Rome oblige me to adopt a tone of propriety the more respectful inasmuch as I, in my turn, belong to the triumphant and he to the beaten party.

Prince Jerome, on his side, did me the honour to ask my intervention, sending me a copy of a request which he was addressing to the Cardinal Secretary of State; he says in his letter to me:

"Exile is terrible enough, both in its principle and in its consequences, for that generous France which witnessed his birth [Prince Jerome's], that France which possesses all his affections and which he has served for twenty years, not to wish to aggravate his situation by permitting every government to abuse the delicacy of his position.

"Prince Jérôme de Montfort, confiding in the loyalty of the French Government and in the character of its noble representative, does not hesitate to believe that justice will be done him.

"He takes this opportunity, etc.

"JÉRÔME."

In consequence of this request, I addressed a confidential note to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Bernetti; it ends with these words:

"The motives inferred by Prince Jérôme de Montfort appearing to the undersigned to be founded on justice and reason, he could not refuse the applicant the intervention of his good offices, persuaded as he is that the French Government will always regret to see the severity of the political laws aggravated by measures likely to give umbrage.

"The undersigned would set an especial value upon obtaining, in this circumstance, the powerful interest of H. E. the Cardinal Secretary of State.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

At the same time I replied to Prince Jerome as follows:

"ROME, 9 _May_ 1829.

"The French Ambassador to the Holy See has received the copy of the note which Prince Jérôme de Montfort has done him the honour to send him. He hastens to thank him for the confidence which he has been good enough to show him; he will make it a duty to write to His Holiness' Secretary of State in support of His Highness' just claims.

"The Vicomte de Chateaubriand, who has also been banished from his country, would be only too happy to be able to soften the fate of the Frenchmen who still find themselves placed under the blow of a political law. The exiled brother of Napoleon, addressing himself to an Emigrant formerly struck off the list of outlaws by Napoleon himself, is one of those freaks of fortune which must needs have the ruins of Rome for witnesses.

"The Vicomte de Chateaubriand has the honour, etc."

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 4 _May_ 1829.

"I have had the honour to inform you, in my letter of 30 April, acknowledging the receipt of your Dispatch No. 25, that the Pope received me in private audience on the 29th of April at mid-day. His Holiness appeared to me to be enjoying very good health. He made me sit beside him and kept me nearly an hour and a quarter. The Austrian Ambassador had had a public audience before me to hand over his new credentials.

"On leaving the closet of His Holiness at the Vatican, I called on the Secretary of State, and, frankly broaching the question with him, said:

"'Well, you see what our newspapers are making you out to be! You are "an Austrian, you hate France," you want to do her some bad turns: what am I to believe of all that?'

"He shrugged his shoulders and replied:

"'Your newspapers make me laugh; I cannot convince you by my words if you are not convinced already; but put me to the test and you shall see if I do not love France, if I do not do what you ask me in the name of your King!'

"I believe, monsieur le comte, that Cardinal Albani is sincere. He is profoundly indifferent in religious matters; he is not a priest; he has even thought of giving up the purple and marrying; he does not like the Jesuits, who tire him with the noise they make; he is lazy, a glutton, a great lover of all kinds of pleasures; the weariness which bishops' charges and pastoral letters produce in him makes him extremely unfavourable to the cause of the authors of those charges and pastoral letters: that old man of eighty wants to die in peace and joyousness.

"I have the honour, etc."

[Sidenote: Monte Cavallo.]

I often visit Monte Cavallo; there the solitude of the gardens is increased by the solitude of the Roman Campagna, in search of which one's eyes turn beyond Rome and up the right bank of the Tiber. The gardeners are my friends; there are walks leading to the Panatteria, a poor dairy-farm, aviary, or poultry-yard, the occupants of which are as indigent and peaceful as the latter-day popes. Looking down from the height of the terraces of the Quirinal enclosure, one sees a narrow street in which women sit working at their windows on the different storeys: some embroider, others paint, in the silence of this retired quarter.

The cells of the cardinals of the last Conclave do not interest me at all. When St. Peter's was built, when master-pieces were ordered of Raphael, when at the same time the Kings came to kiss the Pontiffs slipper, there was something worthy of attention in the Temporal Papacy. I would gladly see the cell of a Gregory VII.[78], of a Sixtus V., just as I would look for the lions' den in Babylon; but dark holes, deserted by an obscure company of septuagenarians, represent to me only those _columbaria_ of Ancient Rome, which are empty to-day of their dust and from which a family of dead have fled.

I therefore pass rapidly by those cells, already half demolished, to walk through the rooms of the palace: there everything speaks to me of an event[79] for which one finds no precedent except by going back to Sciarra Colonna[80], Nogaret[81] and Boniface VIII.[82]

My first and my last visit to Rome are connected by memories of Pius VII., to whose story I have referred when speaking of Madame de Beaumont and of Bonaparte. My two visits are two pendentives outlined under the vault of my monument. My faithfulness to the memory of my old friends must give confidence to the friends who remain to me: for me nothing sinks into the tomb; all that I have known lives around me: according to the Indian doctrine, death, when it smites us, does not destroy us; it only makes us invisible.

TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 7 _May_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I have at last received, by Messieurs Desgranges and Franqueville, your Dispatch No. 25. This rude dispatch, made out by some ill-bred Foreign-Office clerk, is not what I had the right to expect after the services which I had had the honour to render the King during the Conclave; and above all they might have remembered a little whom they were addressing. Not an obliging word for M. Bellocq, who obtained such exceptional documents; nothing in reply to the request I made on his behalf; gratuitous comments on Cardinal Albania nomination, a nomination made in the Conclave which no one, therefore, could have foreseen or prevented, a nomination concerning which I have never ceased to send you explanations. In my Dispatch No. 34, which has doubtless now reached you, I again offer you a very simple method of getting rid of this cardinal, if he causes France such alarm, and that method will already be half carried out when you receive this letter: to-morrow I shall take leave of His Holiness; I shall hand over the Embassy to M. Bellocq, as _chargé d'affaires_, in accordance with the instructions in your Dispatch No. 24, and leave for Paris.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

This last note is a rude one, and puts an abrupt close to my correspondence with M. Portalis.

[Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"14 _May_ 1829.

"My departure is fixed for the 16th. Letters from Vienna arriving this morning announce that M. de Laval has refused the Foreign Office; is it true? If he keeps to this refusal, what will happen? God knows. I hope that all will be decided before my arrival in Paris. It seems to me that we have become paralyzed and that we have nothing free except our tongues.

"You think I shall come to an arrangement with M. de Laval; I doubt it. I am inclined to come to an arrangement with nobody. I was going to arrive in the most peaceful mood, and those people think fit to pick a quarrel with me. So long as I had a chance of office, they could not praise and flatter me enough in their dispatches; the day on which the place was taken, or thought to be taken, they drily inform me of M. de Laval's nomination in the rudest and at the same time the most stupid dispatch. But, before becoming so flat and insolent between one post and another, they ought to have reflected a little whom they were addressing, and M. Portalis will have learnt as much from a word which I have sent him lately in reply. It is possible that he merely signed without reading, just as Carnot signed hundreds of death-warrants on trust."

The friend of the great L'Hôpital[83], the Chancelier Olivier[84], in his sixteenth-century language, which set politeness at defiance, compares the French to monkeys which clamber to the tree-tops and never cease climbing until they reach the top-most branch, where they show what they ought to hide. All that has happened in France from 1789 to our own time proves the correctness of the simile: every man, as he ascends through life, becomes like the Chancellor's ape; he ends by shamelessly exposing his infirmities to the passers-by. See, at the end of my dispatches I am seized with a desire to boast: the great men who swarm at this present time prove that a man is a dupe if he does not himself proclaim his immortality.

Have you read, in the archives of the Foreign Office, the diplomatic correspondence relating to the most important events at the period of that correspondence?

"No."

At least you have read the printed correspondence: you know the negociations of Du Bellay, of d'Ossat, of Du Perron, of the Président Jeannin[85], the State Memoirs of Villeroi[86], the _Économies royales_ of Sully[87]; you have seen the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Richelieu[88], numbers of letters of Mazarin, the papers and documents relating to the Treaty of Westphalia[89], to the Peace of Munster[90]? You know Barillon's[91] Dispatches on English affairs; the negociations on the Spanish Succession are not unfamiliar to you; the name of Madame des Ursins has not escaped you; M. de Choiseul's[92] Family Compact has come under your notice; you are not unacquainted with Ximenes[93], Olivarez[94] and Pombal[95], Hugo Grotius on the liberty of the seas[96], his letters to the two Oxenstierns[97], the Negociations of the Grand Pensionary de Witt[98] with Peter Grotius[99], the second son of Hugo; in fine, the collection of diplomatic treaties has perhaps attracted your attention?

"No."

[Sidenote: My diplomatic dispatches.]

So you have read none of those sempiternal lucubrations? Well then, read them; when you have done so, pass over my Spanish War, the success of which troubles you, although it forms my chief claim to be classed as a statesman; take my dispatches from Prussia, England and Rome, place them beside the other dispatches which I have mentioned: and then, with your hand on your conscience, tell me which have bored you most; tell me if my work and the work of my predecessors are not quite similar; if the grasp of small things and of "practical" matters is not as manifest on my part as on that of the past ministers and defunct ambassadors.

First of all, you will notice that I have an eye for everything; that I occupy myself with Reshid Pasha[100] and M. de Blacas; that I defend my privileges and rights as Ambassador to Rome against all comers; that I am crafty, false (an eminent quality!) and cunning to such an extent that, when M. de Funchal, in an equivocal position, writes to me, I do not reply to him, but go to see him with astute politeness, so that he is unable to show a line in my handwriting and is nevertheless satisfied. There is not an imprudent word to be criticized in my conversations with Cardinals Bernetti and Albani, the two secretaries of State; nothing escapes me; I descend to the pettiest details; I restore the accounts of the affairs of the French in Rome in such a way that they still exist on the basis on which I have placed them. With an eagle's glance, I perceive that the Treaty of Trinità de' Monti, between the Holy See and the Ambassadors Laval and Blacas, is irregular, and that neither party had the right to conclude it. Mounting higher, and coming to the greater diplomacy, I take upon myself to give the exclusion to a cardinal, because a minister of foreign affairs has left me without instructions and exposes me to seeing a creature of Austria elected Pope. I procure the secret journal of the Conclave: a thing that no ambassador has ever been able to obtain; day by day I send the list of names and votes. Nor do I neglect Bonaparte's family: I do not despair, by means of good treatment, of persuading Cardinal Fesch to send in his resignation as Archbishop of Lyons. If a _Carbonaro_ stirs, I am informed of it and able to judge how much truth there is in the conspiracy; if an abbé intrigues, I am aware of it, and I baffle the plans that had been formed to separate the French cardinals from the French Ambassador. Lastly, I discover that a great secret has been deposited by the Cardinal de Latil in the bosom of the Grand Penitentiary. Are you satisfied? Is that a man who knows his trade? Very well, and now see: I dispatched all this diplomatic business like the first ambassador that comes, without its costing me an idea, in the same way as a booby of a Lower Norman peasant knits his stockings while watching his sheep: my sheep were my dreams.

Now here is another point of view: if you compare my official letters with the official letters of my predecessors, you will see that mine treat of general affairs as well as private affairs, that I am drawn by the character of the ideas of my century into a loftier region of the human mind. This may be observed more particularly in the dispatch in which I speak to M. Portalis of the state of Italy, in which I set forth the mistake of the cabinets which take for private conspiracies that which is only the development of civilization. The _Memorandum on the War in the East_ also exposes truths of a political order which are out of the common. I have talked with two Popes of other things than cabinet intrigues; I have obliged them to speak to me of religion, liberty, the future destiny of the world. My speech delivered at the door of the Conclave has the same character. I dared to tell old men to go forward and place religion once again at the head of the march of society.

[Sidenote: My political successes.]

Readers, wait for me to end my boasting so as next to come to the object, in the manner of the philosopher Plato making a circuit round his idea. I have become old Sidrac; age prolongs my weary road[101]. I continue: I shall be a long while yet. Several writers of our time have a mania for disdaining their literary talent in order to follow their political talent, which they value far above the former. Thank God, I am governed by a contrary instinct: I make little of politics, for the very reason that I have been lucky at the game. To succeed in public life, it is not a question of acquiring qualities, but a matter of losing them. I shamelessly admit my aptitude for practical things, without cherishing the smallest illusion touching the obstacle within myself which opposes my complete success. That obstacle has nothing to do with the Muse; it arises from my indifference to everything. With this defect, it is impossible to achieve anything completely, in practical life.

Indifference, I admit, is one of the qualities of statesmen, but of statesmen without conscience. They have to know how to look dry-eyed upon any event, to swallow bitter pills like malmsey, and, where others are concerned, to set at nought morality, justice, sufferings, provided that, in the midst of revolutions, they know how to find their own particular fortune. For, to those transcendent minds, the accident, be it good or bad, is bound to bring something; it must pay at the rate of a throne, a coffin, an oath, an outrage; the tariff is made out by the Mionnets[102] of catastrophes and affronts: I am not an expert in these numismatics. Unfortunately my indifference is a double one; I grow no more excited about my person than about facts. Contempt for the world came to St. Paul the Hermit[103] from his religious faith; contempt for society comes to me from my political incredulity. This incredulity would carry me high in a sphere of action, if, more careful of my foolish self, I were able at the same time to humiliate it and to clothe it. Do what I may, I remain a numskull of a decent man, naively stupid and quite bare, unable either to cringe or to help myself.

D'Andilly[104], speaking of himself, seems to have described one side of my character:

"I have never had any ambition," he says, "because I had too much, being unable to endure the dependence which confines within such narrow limits the effects of the inclination which God gave me for great things, glorious to the State, and capable of procuring the happiness of peoples, without its being possible for me to consider my private interests in all that. I was fit only for a king who would have reigned by himself and who would have had no other desire than to render his glory immortal."

In that case, I was not fit for the kings of the day.

Now that I have led you by the hand through the most secret winding ways of my merits, that I have made you feel all that is rare in my dispatches, like one of my colleagues at the Institute who is incessantly singing his own fame and teaching men to admire him, now I will tell you what I am leading up to with my boasting: by showing what they are able to do in public life, I wish to defend the men of letters against the men of diplomacy, the counting-house and the offices.

The latter must not be allowed to take it into their heads to think themselves above men the smallest of whom overtops them by a head: when one knows so many things, like these practical gentlemen, one should at least not display gross ignorance. You talk of "facts;" well then, recognize "facts:" the majority of the great writers of antiquity, of the middle ages, of Modern England have been great statesmen, when they have deigned to descend to public life:

"I did not wish to give them to understand," says Alfieri, refusing an embassy, "that their diplomacy and their dispatches seemed to me and certainly were for me less important than my tragedies or even those of others; but it is impossible to reclaim that kind of people: they cannot and must not be converted."

[Sidenote: Other literary diplomatists.]

Who in France was ever more literary than L'Hôpital[105], the reversioner of Horace, than d'Ossat[106], that capable ambassador, than Richelieu, that great head, who, not content with dictating "controversial treaties," with writing "Memoirs," and "histories," constantly invented dramatic subjects, and rhymed with Mailleville and Boisrobert[107], and gave birth, by the sweat of his brow, to the Academy[108] and the _Grande Pastorale?_[109] Is it because he was a bad writer that he was a great minister? But the question is not one of the possession of more or less talent; it is one of the passion for paper and ink: and M. de L'Empyrée[110] never showed more ardour nor incurred greater expense than did the cardinal to snatch the palm from Parnassus, seeing that the staging of his "tragi-comedy" of _Mirame_ cost him two hundred thousand crowns! If, in one who is both a political and a literary personage, the mediocrity of a poet caused the superiority of the statesmen, one would have thence to conclude that the weakness of the statesman would result from the strength of the poet: yet did the literary genius destroy the political genius of Solon[111], an elegist equal to Simonides[112]; of Pericles stealing from the Muses the eloquence with which he subjugated the Athenians; of Thucydides[113] and Demosthenes[114], who carried to so great a height the glory of the writer and the orator, while devoting their days to war and the public places? Did it destroy the genius of Xenophon[115], who effected the retreat of the ten thousand while dreaming of the _Cyropœdia_; of the two Scipios[116], one the friend of Lælius[117], the other associated in the fame of Terence[118]; of Cicero[119], king of letters, as he was the father of the country; of Cæsar[120], lastly, author of works of grammar, astronomy, religion, literature, of Cæsar, rival of Archilochus[121] in satire, of Sophocles[122] in tragedy, of Demosthenes in eloquence, whose _Commentaries_ are the despair of historians?

In spite of these examples and a thousand others, literary talent, which is very eminently the first of all, because it excludes no other faculty, will always in this country be an obstacle to political success. Of what use, indeed, is a high intelligence? It serves no purpose whatever. The block-heads of France, a special and wholly national type, grant nothing to the Grotiuses, the Frederics, the Bacons[123], the Thomas Mores[124], the Spensers[125], the Falklands[126], the Clarendons[127], the Bolingbrokes[128], the Burkes and the Cannings of France[129].

[Sidenote: Envy of the common herd.]

Never will our vanity recognise in a man even of genius aptitudes and the faculty of doing common things as well as they are done by a common mind. If you overpass the vulgar conception by a hairbreadth, a thousand imbeciles exclaim, "You're losing yourself in the clouds," delighted as they feel at dwelling underneath, where they insist upon thinking. Those poor envious people, by reason of their secret misery, kick against merit; they compassionately dismiss Virgil, Racine, Lamartine[130] to their verses. But, proud sirs, to what are we to dismiss you? To oblivion, which awaits you at twenty steps from your doors, while twenty verses of those poets will carry them to the furthermost posterity.

The first invasion of Rome by the French, under the Directorate, was infamous and accompanied by spoliation; the second, under the Empire, was iniquitous: but once accomplished, order reigned.

The Republic demanded of Rome, for an armistice, twenty-two millions, the occupation of the Citadel of Ancona, one hundred pictures and statues, and one hundred manuscripts, to be selected by the French commissaries. They especially wanted to have the busts of Brutus and Marcus Aurelius: so many people in France called themselves Brutus in those days, it was very simple that they should wish to possess the pious image of their putative father; but Marcus Aurelius, whose father was he? Attila, to go away from Rome, asked only a certain number of pounds of pepper and silk: in our day, she for a moment redeemed her liberty with pictures. Great artists, often neglected and unhappy, left their master-pieces to serve as a ransom for the ungrateful cities that slighted them.

The Frenchmen of the Empire had to repair the ravages which the Frenchmen of the Republic had committed in Rome; they also owed an expiation for the sack of Rome accomplished by an army led by a French Prince[131]: it was befitting that Bonaparte should set order in the ruins which another Bonaparte[132] had seen grow, and whose overthrow he described. The plan adopted by the French Administration for the excavation of the Forum was that which Raphael proposed to Leo X.: it caused to rise from the earth the three columns of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans; it laid bare the portico of the Temple of Concord; it exposed the pavement of the Via Sacra; it did away with the new buildings with which the Temple of Peace was encumbered; it removed the soil which covered the steps of the Coliseum, cleared the interior of the arena and brought to view seven or eight rooms in the Baths of Titus[133].

Elsewhere, the Forum of Trajan[134] was explored, the Pantheon, the Baths of Diocletian, the Temple of Patrician Modesty repaired. Funds were put aside for the maintenance, outside Rome, of the Walls of Falerii and the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella.

Repairing works were also undertaken for modern edifices: St. Paul's Without the Walls, which no longer exists[135], had its roofing repaired; St Agnes', San Martino ai Monti were protected against the weather. A portion of the roof and the pavement of St. Peter's was mended; lightning-conductors shielded the dome of Michael Angelo from the lightning. The sites were marked out of two cemeteries in the east and west of the city, and that on the east, near the Convent of San Lorenzo, was finished.

[Sidenote: The French in Rome.]

The Quirinal arrayed its external poverty in the luxury of porphyry and Roman marbles: designed as it was for the imperial palace, Bonaparte, before taking up his residence there, wanted to remove all traces of the abduction of the Pontiff, held captive at Fontainebleau. It was proposed to pull down the part of the city lying between the Capitol and Monte Cavallo, so that the triumpher might ride up to his Cæsarian abode through an immense avenue; events caused these gigantic dreams to fade away by destroying enormous realities.

Among the plans decided was that of building a series of quays, from Ripetta to Ripa Grande: the foundations of those quays would have been laid; the four blocks of houses between the Castle of Sant' Angelo and the Piazza Rusticucci were partly bought up and would have been demolished. A wide thoroughfare would thus have been opened on to the Square of St. Peter's, which would have been seen from the foot of the Castle of Sant' Angelo.

The French make walks wherever they go: at Cairo, I have seen a great square which they had planted with palm-trees and surrounded with cafés bearing names borrowed from the cafés of Paris; in Rome, my fellow-countrymen created the Pincio; you reach it by a flight of stairs. Going down this flight the other day, I saw a carriage pass in which was seated a woman still possessed of a certain youth: with her fair hair, the badly-outlined contour of her figure, the inelegance of her beauty, I took her for a fat, white stranger from Westphalia; it was Madame Guiccioli: nothing could go less well with the memory of Lord Byron. What matter? The daughter of Ravenna (of whom, for the rest, the poet was tired when he resolved to die) will none the less go, conducted by the Muse, to take her place in the Elysian Fields, adding one more to the divinities of the tomb.

The western portion of the Piazza del Popolo was to have been planted in the space occupied by work-yards and shops; from the end of the open place one would have seen the Capitol, the Vatican and St. Peter's beyond the quays of the Tiber: in other words, Ancient and Modern Rome.

Lastly, a wood, created by the French, rises to-day to the east of the Coliseum; one never meets anybody there: although it has shot up, it has the look of a brush-wood growing at the foot of a tall ruin.

Pliny the Younger[136] wrote to Maximus:

"Consider that you are sent to... Greece, where politeness, learning and even agriculture itself are supposed to have taken their first rise.... Revere the gods their founders, their ancient glory and even that very antiquity itself which, venerable in men, is sacred in States. Honour them therefore for their deeds of old renown, nay, their very legendary traditions. Grant to every one his full dignities, privileges, yes, and the indulgence of his very vanity. Remember it was from this nation we derived our laws; that she did not receive ours by conquest, but gave us hers by favour. Remember, it is Athens to which you go; it is Lacedæmon you govern; and to deprive such a people of the declining shadow, the remaining name of liberty would be cruel, inhuman, barbarous[137]."

When Pliny wrote those noble and touching words to Maximus, did he know that he was drawing up instructions for peoples, then barbarian, that would one day come to hold sway over the ruins of Rome?

I shall soon be leaving Rome, and I hope to return. I once more love passionately this Rome so sad and so beautiful: I shall have a panorama on the Capitol, where the Prussian Minister will give up to me the little Caffarelli Palace; at Sant' Onofrio I have set up another retreat. Pending my departure and my return, I never cease wandering in the Campagna; there is no little road, running between two hedges, that I do not know better than the Combourg lanes. From the top of the Monte Mario and the surrounding hills, I discover the horizon of the sea in the direction of Ostia; I take my rest under the light and crumbling porticoes of the Villa Madama. In these architectural remains changed into farms, I often find only a timid young girl, startled and agile as her goats. When I go out by the Porta Pia, I walk to the Ponte Lamentano over the Teverone; I admire, as I pass St Agnes', a Head of Christ by Michael Angelo, which keeps watch over the almost abandoned convent. The master-pieces of the great masters thus strewn through the desert fill the soul with profound melancholy. It distresses me that they should have collected the Roman pictures in a museum; I should have much preferred to go along the slopes of the Janiculum, under the fall of the Aqua Paola, across the solitary Via delle Fomaci, to seek the _Transfiguration_ in the Recollect Monastery of San Pietro in Montorio. When one looks at the place once occupied, on the high altar of the church, by the ornament of Raphael's funeral, one's heart is struck and saddened.

[Sidenote: Walks in Rome.]

Beyond the Ponte Lamentano, yellow pasture-lands stretch to the left to the Tiber; the river which bathed the gardens of Horace here flows unknown. Following the high road, you find the pavement of the ancient Via Tiburtina. I there this year saw the first swallow arrive.

I herborize at the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella: the undulated mignonette and the Apennine anemone make a pretty effect against the whiteness of the ruin and the ground. Taking the Ostia Road, I go to St. Paul's, lately fallen a prey to the flames; I sit down to rest on some calcined porphyry and watch the workmen silently building up a new church; they pointed out to me some columns already outlined as I descended the Simplon: the whole history of Christianity in the West begins at St. Paul's Without the Walls.

In France, when we build any bit of a house, we make a terrible noise about it; numbers of machines, and multitude of men and cries: in Italy, they undertake immense works almost without stirring. The Pope, at this very moment, is rebuilding the fallen portion of the Coliseum; half-a-dozen mason's labourers, without any scaffolding, are lifting up the colossus under whose shoulders died a nation changed into workmen slaves. Near Verona, I used often to stop to watch a village priest who was building a huge steeple by himself; the glebe farmer acted as mason under him.

I often go round the walls of Rome on foot; as I take this circular walk, I read the history of the queen of the pagan and Christian universe written in the diverse constructions, architectures and ages of the walls.

Again, I go to discover some dilapidated villa within the walls of Rome. I visit Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran with its obelisk, Santa Croce di Girusalemme with its flowers: I listen to the singing; I pray: I love to pray on my knees; in this way my heart is nearer the dust and endless rest: I draw nigh to my tomb.

My excavations are only a variation of the same pleasures. From the upland of some hill one perceives the dome of St. Peter's. What does one pay the owner of the place where treasures lie buried? The value of the grass destroyed by the excavation. Perhaps I shall give my clay to the earth in exchange for the statue which it will give me: we shall only be bartering a man's image for a man's image.

He has not seen Rome who has not walked through the streets of its suburbs interspersed with empty spaces, with gardens full of ruins, with enclosures planted with trees and vines, with cloisters where rise palm-trees and cypresses, the first resembling Eastern women, the second mourning nuns. Issuing from these ruins, one sees tall Roman women, poor and handsome, going to buy fruits or to fetch water from cascades of the aqueducts of the emperors and popes. To see the native manners in their simplicity, I pretend to be in search of an apartment to let; I knock at the door of a secluded house; they answer, "_Favorisca_," and I enter. I find, in a bare room, either a workman pursuing his trade, or a proud _zitella_, knitting her wool-work, a cat upon her knees, watching me wander at random without rising from her seat.

In bad weather, I take shelter in St. Peter's, or else lose myself in the museums of the Vatican, with its eleven thousand rooms and its eighteen thousand windows[138]. What solitudes of master-pieces! You come there through a gallery the walls of which are encrusted with epitaphs and ancient inscriptions: death seems to be born in Rome.

There are more tombs than dead in this city. I imagine that the deceased, when they feel too warm in their marble resting-places, glide into another that has remained empty, even as a sick man is moved from one bed to another. One seems to hear the bodies pass, during the night, from coffin to coffin.

The first time I saw Rome, it was the end of June: the hot season increases the abandonment of the city; the visitors fly, the inhabitants of the country remain indoors; you meet no one in the streets during the daytime. The sun darts its rays upon the Coliseum, where grasses hang motionless and nothing stirs save the lizards. The earth is bare; the cloudless sky appears even more desert than the earth. But soon the night brings the inhabitants out of their palaces and the stars out of the firmament; earth and the heavens become repeopled; Rome revives; that life silently recommencing in the darkness, around the tombs, has the air of the life and movement of the shades which redescend to Erebus at the approach of day.

[Sidenote: And in the Campagna.]

Yesterday I roamed by moonlight in the Campagna, between the Porta Angelica and the Monte Mario. A nightingale was singing in a narrow dale railed in with canes. I there, for the first time, found that melodious sadness of which the ancient poets speak in connection with the bird of spring. The long whistle which we all know, and which precedes the brilliant flourishes of the winged musician, was not piercing like that of our nightingales; it had a veiled sound like the whistle of the bullfinch of our woods. All its notes were lowered by a half tone; its burden was transposed from the major to the minor key; it sang softly; it appeared to wish to charm the sleep of the dead and not to wake them. Over this untilled common-land had passed Horace' Lydia, Tibullus' Delia, Ovid's Corinna; only Virgil's Philomela remained. That hymn of love was potent in that spot and at that hour; it gave an indescribable longing for a second life: according to Socrates, love is the desire to be born again by the agency of beauty; it was this desire that a Greek girl inspired in a youth when she said to him:

"If I had nothing left to me but the thread of my necklace of pearls, I would share it with thee."

If I have the happiness to end my days here, I have arranged to have a retreat at Sant' Onofrio adjoining the chamber where Tasso breathed his last. In the spare moments of my embassy, I shall continue my Memoirs at the window of the cell. In one of the most beautiful positions on earth, among orange-trees and evergreen oaks, with all Rome under my eyes, every morning, as I sit down to work, between the deathbed and the tomb of the poet, I shall invoke the genius of glory and misfortune.

In the early days after my arrival in Rome, wandering in this way at random, I met a school of young boys between the Baths of Titus and the Coliseum. They were in charge of a master in a slouched hat, a torn and draggle-tailed gown, resembling a poor brother of Christian Doctrine. As I passed near him, I looked at him and thought he had a false air of my nephew, Christian de Chateaubriand, but I dared not believe my eyes. He looked at me in his turn, and without showing any surprise, said:

"Uncle!"

I rushed at him, quite moved, and pressed him in my arms. With a motion of the hand, he stopped his obedient and silent flock behind him. Christian was at the same time pale and brown, worn away with fever and burnt by the sun. He told me that he was prefect of studies at the Jesuit College, then taking its holiday at Tivoli. He had almost forgotten his language, and expressed himself with difficulty in French, talking and teaching only in Italian. My eyes filled with tears, as I looked at my brother's son, become a foreigner, clad in a black, dusty, worn-out coat, a school-master in Rome, covering with an old cenobite's hat the noble brow which so well became the helmet.

I had seen Christian born; a few days before my emigration, I assisted at his baptism. His father, his grandfather, the Président de Rosanbo, and his great-grandfather, M. de Malesherbes, were present. The last stood sponsor for him and gave him his own name, Christian. The Church of Saint-Laurent was deserted and already half devastated. The nurse and I took the child from the priest's hands.

Io piangendo ti presi, e in breve cesta Fuor ti portai[139].

The new-born child was taken back to his mother and laid upon her bed, where that mother and its grandmother, Madame de Rosanbo, received it with tears of joy. Two years later, the father, the grandfather, the great-grand-father, the mother and the grandmother had perished on the scaffold, and I, a witness at the christening, was wandering in exile. These were the recollections which the sudden apparition of my nephew caused to revive in my memory amid the ruins of Rome. Christian has already passed one half of his life as an orphan; he has vowed the other half to the altar: the ever-open home of the common Father of mankind.

Christian had an ardent and jealous affection for Louis, his worthy brother: when Louis married, Christian left for Italy; he knew the Duc de Rohan-Chabot there and met Madame Récamier: like his uncle, he has come back to live in Rome, he in a cloister, I in a palace. He entered religion to restore to his brother a fortune of which he did not consider himself the possessor under the new laws: and so Malesherbes and Combourg now both belong to Louis.

[Sidenote: Christian de Chateaubriand.]

After our unexpected meeting at the foot of the Coliseum, Christian, accompanied by a Jesuit brother, came to see me at the Embassy; his bearing was sad, his aspect serious: in the old days he was always laughing. I asked him if he was happy; he answered:

"I suffered long; now my sacrifice is made and I feel contented."

Christian inherited the iron character of his paternal grand-father, M. de Chateaubriand, my father, and the moral virtues of his maternal great-grandfather, M. de Malesherbes. His sentiments are locked up within himself, although he shows them, without considering the prejudices of the crowd, when his duties are concerned: as a dragoon in the Guards, he would alight from his horse to go to the Communion Table; his messmates did not laugh at him, for his valour and his kindliness were their admiration. After he left the service, it was discovered that he used secretly to assist a considerable number of officers and soldiers; he still has pensioners in the Paris garrets, and Louis discharges his brother's debts. One day, in France, I asked Christian if he would ever marry:

"If I were to marry," he replied, "I should take one of my little cousins, the poorest."

Christian spends his nights in prayer; he gives himself up to austerities at which his superiors are alarmed: a sore which formed in one of his legs came from his persistence in remaining on his knees for hours on end; never did innocence indulge in so much repentance.

Christian is not a man of this century: he reminds me of those dukes and counts of the Court of Charlemagne who, after warring against the Saracens, founded convents on the desert sites of Gellone or Madavalle and became monks there. I look upon him as a saint: I would willingly invoke him. I am persuaded that his good works, added to those of my mother and my sister Julie, would obtain grace for me before the Sovereign Judge. I, too, have a leaning for the cloister; but, were my hour to come, I would go and ask for a solitude of the Portioncula, under the protection of my Patron Saint, called Francis because he spoke French.

I want to trail my sandals alone; for nothing in the world would induce me to have two heads in my frock.

Upon that side Where it doth break its steepness most, arose A sun upon the world, as duly this From Ganges doth: therefore let none, who speak Of that place, say Ascesi; for its name Were lamely so deliver'd; but the East, To call things rightly, be it henceforth styled. A dame, to whom none openeth pleasure's gate More than to death, was, 'gainst his father's will, His stripling choice.......................... ................................ She, bereaved Of her first husband, slighted and obscure, Thousand and hundred years and more, remain'd Without a single suitor till he came. Nor aught avail'd, that, with Amyclas, she Was found unmoved at rumour of his voice, Who shook the world: nor aught her constant boldness Whereby with Christ she mounted on the cross, When Mary stay'd beneath. But not to deal Thus closely with thee longer, take at large The lovers' titles--Poverty and Francis[140].

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 16 _May_ 1829.

"This letter will leave Rome a few hours after me and will reach Paris a few hours before me. It will close this correspondence which has not missed a single post and which must form a volume in your hands. I feel a mixture of joy and sadness which I cannot express to you; for three or four months I rather disliked Rome; now I have again taken to these noble ruins, to this solitude so profound, so peaceful, and yet so full of interest and remembrance. Perhaps, also, the unhoped-for success which I have obtained here has attached me to the place: I arrived in the midst of all the pre-possessions raised against me, and I have conquered all; people seem to regret me. What shall I find on returning to France? Noise instead of silence, excitement instead of repose, unreason, ambitions, contests of place and vanity. The political system which I have adopted is one which perhaps no one would care for and which, besides, I shall not be placed in a position to carry out I would still undertake to give a great glory to France, even as I contributed to obtaining a great liberty for her; but would they discard all their previous opinions to make room for me? Would they say to me, 'Be the master, act as you please at the peril of your head?' No; so far are they from using this language to me, that they would take anybody in preference to myself and admit me only after receiving the refusals of all the mediocrities of France. Even then they would think they were doing me a great favour by relegating me to an obscure corner. I am coming to fetch you; ambassador or not, I should like to die in Rome. In exchange for a small life, I should at least have a great burying-place until the day comes when I shall go to fill my cenotaph in the sand which beheld my birth. Adieu; I am already many leagues nearer to you."

[Sidenote: I return to France.]

It gave me great pleasure to see my friends again[141]: I dreamt only of the happiness of taking them with me and ending my days in Rome. I wrote to make still more sure of the little Caffarelli Palace, which I contemplated hiring, on the Capitol and of the cell which I applied for at Sant' Onofrio. I bought English horses and sent them to the fields of Evander. I was already, in thought, taking leave of my country with a joy that deserved to be punished. When one has travelled in his youth and passed many years out of his country, one is accustomed to place one's death anywhere: when crossing the seas of Greece, it seemed to me that all those monuments which I perceived on the promontories were hostelries in which my bed was prepared.

I went to pay my court to the King at Saint-Cloud: he asked me when I was returning to Rome. He was persuaded that I had a good heart and a bad head. The fact is that I was exactly the converse of what Charles X. thought me: I had a very cool and a very good head, and a heart which was but so-so towards seven-eighths of the human race.

I found the King very ill-disposed towards his Ministry: he caused it to be attacked by certain royalist newspapers, or rather, when the editors of those publications went to ask him if he did not think them too hostile, he exclaimed:

"No, no, go on."

When M. de Martignac had made a speech:

"Well," asked Charles X., "have you heard the Pasta[142]?"

M. Hyde de Neuville's liberal opinions displeased him; he found more complaisance in M. Portalis, the Federate, who bore cupidity stamped on his face: it is to M. Portalis that France owes her misfortunes. When I saw him at Passy, I perceived what I had in part guessed: the Keeper of the Seals, while pretending to hold the Foreign Office ad interim, was dying to keep it, although, in any event, he had provided himself with the post of President of the Court of Appeal. The King, when the question arose of the appointment of a Foreign Secretary, had said:

"I do not say that Chateaubriand shall not be my minister; but not for the present."

The Prince de Laval had refused; M. de La Ferronnays was no longer able to apply himself to regular work. In the hope that, weary of resistance, the portfolio would remain in his hands, M. Portalis made no effort to persuade the King.

Full of my coming delights in Rome, I abandoned myself to them without too deeply sounding the future; it suited me well enough that M. Portalis should keep the _ad interim_ under the shelter of which my position remained what it was. Not for a moment did I imagine that M. de Polignac might be invested with power: his limited, unpliable and perfervid mind, his fatal and unpopular name, his stubbornness, his religious opinions, exalted to the pitch of fanaticism, appeared to me so many causes for his eternal exclusion. He had, it is true, suffered for the King; but he had been amply rewarded for it by the friendship of his master and by the proud London Embassy, which I had given him under my ministry, in spite of M. de Villèle's opposition.

Of all the ministers in office whom I found in Paris, with the exception of the excellent M. Hyde de Neuville, not one pleased me: I felt them to possess a relentless capacity which left me uneasy as to the duration of their empire. M. de Martignac, who was endowed with an agreeable talent for speaking, had the sweet and worn-out voice of a man to whom women have given something of their seduction and their weakness! Pythagoras remembered having been a charming courtesan, named Alcea. The former secretary of embassy to the Abbé Sieyès[143] had also a restrained self-conceit, a calm and somewhat jealous mind. I had sent him, in 1823, to Spain, in a high and independent position[144], but he would have liked to be an ambassador. He was offended at not receiving an employment which he thought due to his merit.

My likes or dislikes mattered little. The Chamber committed a mistake in overturning a ministry which it ought to have preserved at all costs. That moderate ministry served as a hand-rail to abysses; it was easy to overthrow it, for it had nothing to support it, and the King was hostile to it: a reason the more for not quarrelling with those men, for giving them a majority by the aid of which they could have remained in office and made room one day, without accident, for a strong government. In France, people are unable to wait for anything; they loathe all that has the appearance of power until they possess it themselves. For the rest, M. de Martignac has nobly given the lie to his weaknesses by courageously expending the rest of his life in the defense of M. de Polignac.

My feet burned to leave Paris; I could not grow accustomed to the grey and dismal sky of France, my father-land: what should I have thought of the sky of Brittany, my mother-land, to speak Greek? But there, at least, there are sea-breezes and calms: _tumidis albens fluctibus_[145] or _venti posuere._[146] My orders were given to make certain necessary changes and extensions in my house and garden in the Rue d'Enfer, so that, at my death, when I bequeathed this house to Madame de Chateaubriand's Infirmary, it might be more profitable. I intended this property to form a retreat for a few sick artists and men of letters. I looked up at the pale sun and said:

"I shall soon see you with a better face, and we shall not part again."

[Sidenote: I set out again for Rome.]

After taking leave of the King, and hoping to rid him of my presence for ever, I climbed into my carriage. I was first going to the Pyrenees, to take the waters of Cauterets; from there, passing through Languedoc and Provence, I was to go to Nice, where I would join Madame de Chateaubriand. We would drive along the Cornice together, arrive at the Eternal City, which we would cross without stopping, and, after a two months' stay in Naples, at Tasso's cradle, return to his tomb in Rome. That moment is the only one in my life at which I was completely happy, at which I longed for nothing more, at which my existence was filled, at which I saw nothing to my last hour but a series of days of rest. I was reaching the haven; I was entering under full sail like Palinurus: _inopina quies._[147]

My whole journey to the Pyrenees was a series of dreams: I stopped when I wished; I followed on my road the chronicles of the middle ages, which I found everywhere; in Berry I saw those little leafy roads which the author of _Valentine_[148] calls _traînes_ and which reminded me of my Brittany. Richard Cœur-de-Lion[149] had been slain at Chalus, at the foot of the tower:

"Mussulman child, hold thy peace! Here comes King Richard!"

At Limoges, I took off my hat from respect for Molière; at Périgueux, the partridges in their earthenware tombs no longer sang with different voices as in the time of Aristotle. I there met my old friend Clausel de Coussergues; he carried a few pages of my life with him. At Bergerac, I could have looked at Cyrano's[150] nose without being obliged to fight that cadet of the Guards: I left him in his dust with "those gods whom men has made and who have not made man."

At Auch, I admired the stalls sculptured after cartoons obtained from Rome at the fine period of the arts. D'Ossat, my predecessor at the Court of the Holy Father, was born near Auch[151]. The sun was beginning to resemble that of Italy. At Tarbes, I should have liked to lodge at the Star Inn, where Froissart[152] alighted with Messire Espaing of Lyons, "valiant man and wise and fair knight," and where he found "good hay, good oats and fair rivers."

As the Pyrenees rose up on the horizon, my heart beat: from the depth of three and twenty years issued memories to which the perspective of time gave added beauty; I was returning from Palestine and Spain, when I caught sight of the summits of those mountains from the other side of their chain. I agree with Madame de Motteville; I think that it was in one of those castles of the Pyrenees that Urganda the Unknown dwelt. The past is like a museum of antiquities; in it one visits the hours that have elapsed; each one can recognise his own. One day, walking about a deserted church, I heard footsteps dragging along the flag-stones, like those of an old man in search of his tomb. I looked round and saw nobody; it was I that had awakened myself.

[Sidenote: Romance at Cauterets.]

The happier I was at Cauterets, the greater pleasure did I take in the melancholy of what was ended. The narrow and confined valley is enlivened by a mountain torrent; beyond the town and the mineral springs, it divides into two defiles, one of which, famous for its sites, ends in the Pont d'Espagne and glaciers. I benefited by the baths; I made long excursions alone, imagining myself on the steeps of the Sabina. I made every effort to be sad, and could not succeed. I wrote a few stanzas on the Pyrenees[153]; it was impossible for me to finish my ode: I had draped my drum lugubriously to beat the troop of the visions of my past nights; but ever, amid these visions recalled, mingled some dreams of the moment, whose happy look foiled the air of consternation of their older fellows.

One day as I was versifying I met a young woman seated beside the torrent; she rose and walked straight towards me: she knew, by the rumour of the hamlet, that I was at Cauterets. It appeared that the stranger was an Occitanian[154] lady who had been writing to me for two years without my having ever seen her: my mysterious anonymous correspondent unveiled: _patuit Dea._

I went to pay a respectful visit to the naiad of the torrent. One evening she saw me to the door as I was leaving, and wanted to go with me; I was obliged to carry her indoors in my arms. I never felt so ashamed; to inspire a sort of attachment at my age seemed to me really ridiculous; the more I might have been flattered by this oddness, the more humiliated was I, rightly taking it for a mockery. I would gladly have hidden myself for shame among the bears, our neighbours. I was far from saying to myself what Montaigne said:

"Love would restore me the vigilancy, sobriety, grace and care of my person[155]."

My dear Michael, you say charming things, but, at our age, you see, love does not restore us what you here suppose. There is but one thing for us to do: to stand frankly aside. Instead, therefore, of returning to "sound and wise studies, whereby I might procure more love," I have allowed the fugitive impression of my Clémence Isaure to fade away; the mountain breeze soon dissipated that caprice of a flower; the witty, determined and charming stranger of sixteen was grateful to me for doing her justice: she has married.

[Sidenote: The Polignac ministry.]

Rumours of ministerial changes had reached our fir-groves. Well-informed persons went so far as to speak of the Prince de Polignac; but I was quite incredulous. At last the newspapers came: I opened them, and my eyes were struck by the official ordinance confirming the rumours that had been spread[156]. I had experienced many a change of fortune since I had come into the world, but I had never received so great a shock. My destiny had once more extinguished my dreams; and this breath of fate not only put out my illusions, but carried away the Monarchy. This blow hurt me terribly; I had a moment of despair, for my mind was made up at once: I felt that I must retire. The post brought me a crowd of letters; all urged me to send in my resignation. Even persons with whom I was hardly acquainted thought themselves obliged to order my retirement.

I was shocked by this officious interest shown in my good fame. I thank Heaven that I have never stood in need of counsels of honour; my life has been one series of sacrifices, which have never been commanded of me by any one; in matters of duty, I have a spontaneous mind. To me, falls spell ruin, for I possess nothing save debts, debts which I contract in places where I do not remain long enough to pay them; in such a way that, every time that I retire from public life, I am reduced to working as a bookseller's hireling. Some of those proud obliging people, who preached honour and liberty to me through the post and preached it even much more loudly when I arrived in Paris, handed in their resignation as councillors of State; but some were rich, and others took care not to resign the secondary places which they held and which left them the means of existence. They acted like the Protestants, who reject some of the dogmas of the Catholics and keep others quite as difficult to believe in. There was no completeness in those oblations, no full sincerity: men surrendered an income of ten or fifteen thousand francs, it is true, but returned home opulent in their patrimonies or, at least, provided with the daily bread which they had prudently kept back. Where I was concerned, they made less ceremony; for me they were filled with self-denial, they could never strip themselves sufficiently of all that I possessed:

"Come, George Dandin, pluck up courage; zounds, son-in-law, do us credit; off with your coat! Throw out of window two hundred thousand livres a year, a place to your liking, a high and magnificent place, the empire of the arts in Rome, the happiness of at last receiving the reward of your long and laborious struggle. Such is our good pleasure. At that price you will have our esteem. In the same way as we have stripped ourselves of our cloaks, leaving a good flannel waistcoat underneath, so you must throw off your velvet mantle, and remain naked. There is perfect equality, an exact level of altar and sacrifice."

And, strange to relate, in this generous ardour to turn me out, the men who intimated their wishes to me were neither my real friends nor the joint sharers of my political opinions. I was to immolate myself forthwith to Liberalism, to the doctrine which had continually attacked me; I was to run the risk of shaking the Legitimist Throne in order to deserve the praises of a few poltroons of enemies, who had not the thorough courage to starve.

I was to find myself swamped by a long embassy; the entertainments which I had given had ruined me; I had not paid the expenses of my first establishment. But what broke my heart was the loss of what I had promised myself in the way of happiness for the rest of my life.

I have not to reproach myself with bestowing upon anybody those Catonian counsels which impoverish him who receives, not him who gives them, fully convinced as I am that those counsels are of no use to the man who does not feel them within himself. My resolve was fixed, as I have said, from the first; it cost me nothing to take, but it was painful to execute. When, at Lourdes, instead of turning south and rolling towards Italy, I took the road for Pau[157], my eyes filled with tears: I admit my weakness. What matter, if I none the less accepted and held the challenge fortune sent me? I did not return quickly, in order to let the days slip by. I slowly unwound the thread of that road which I had wound up with such alacrity, but a few weeks before.

The Prince de Polignac dreaded my resignation. He felt that, if I retired, I should deprive him of Royalist votes in the Chambers and jeopardize his ministry. The idea was suggested to him of sending an express to me in the Pyrenees with orders from the King to go at once to Rome, to receive the King[158] and Queen of Naples[159], who were coming to marry their daughter[160] in Spain. I should have been greatly perplexed had I received that order. Perhaps I should have felt obliged to obey it, free to send in my resignation after fulfilling it. But, once in Rome, what might have happened? I should perhaps have been delayed; the fatal days[161] might have surprised me at the Capitol. Perhaps, also, the indecision in which I might have remained would have given M. de Polignac the parliamentary majority of which he was but a few votes short. Then the Address would not have been passed; the Ordinances resulting from that address would not have seemed necessary to their baleful authors: _Diis aliter visum._

[Sidenote: I resign my Embassy.]

I found Madame de Chateaubriand quite resigned in Paris. Her head was turned at the idea of being Ambassadress in Rome, and assuredly many a woman's head would be turned for less; but, in great circumstances, my wife has never hesitated to approve of what she thought calculated to add consistency to my life and to enhance my name in the public esteem: in this she has more merit than most women. She loves display, titles and fortune; she detests poverty and a mean establishment; she despises those susceptibilities, those excesses of loyalty and self-sacrifice which she looks upon as thorough duperies for which nobody thanks you; she would never have cried, "Long live the King _quand même_;" but, where I am in question, everything changes: with a firm mind she accepts my disgraces, while cursing them.

I had still to fast, to watch, to pray for the salvation of those who took good care not to don the hair-cloth with which they hastened to cover me. I was the sacred ass, the ass laden with the dry relics of liberty, relics which they adored with great devotion, provided they did not have the trouble of carrying them.

The day after my return to Paris, I went to M. de Polignac.

I had written him this letter on my arrival:

"PARIS, 28 _August_ 1829.

"PRINCE,

"I have thought it more worthy of our old friendship, more becoming to the high mission with which I was honoured, and above all more respectful to the King to come myself to lay my resignation at his feet rather than send it hastily through the post. I ask a last service of you, to entreat His Majesty to consent to grant me an audience and hear the reasons that oblige me to give up the Roman Embassy. Believe me, prince, when I say that it costs me something, at the moment when you are coming into power, to abandon that diplomatic career which I had the happiness to open to you.

"Pray accept the assurance of the sentiments which I have devoted to you and of the high regard with which I have the honour to be, prince,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

In reply to this letter, the following note was addressed to me from the Foreign Office:

"The Prince de Polignac has the honour to present his compliments to M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand and begs him to call at the Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely to-morrow, Sunday.

"_Saturday_, 4 _o'clock._'

I at once replied with this note:

PARIS, 29 _August_ 1829, _evening._

"I have received a letter, prince, from your office inviting me to call at the Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely to-morrow, the 30th. As this letter does not give me the audience of the King which I begged you to ask for, I will wait until you have some official communication to make with regard to the resignation which I desire to lay at His Majesty's feet.

"With a thousand regards,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

Thereupon M. de Polignac wrote to me as follows in his own hand:

"I have received your little note, my dear viscount; I shall be charmed to see you at about ten o'clock to-morrow, if that time suits you.

"I renew the assurance of my old and sincere attachment.

"THE PRINCE OF POLIGNAC."

This note seemed to me to be of ill omen; its diplomatic reserve made me fear a refusal on the King's part. I found the Prince de Polignac in the large room which I knew so well. He ran up to me, squeezed my hand with an effusion of the heart which I would have liked to think sincere, and then, throwing one arm over my shoulder, made me walk with him slowly up and down the room. He told me that he did not accept my resignation; that the King did not accept it; that I must return to Rome. Every time that he repeated this last phrase, he broke my heart:

"Why," he asked, "will you not be in public life with me, as with La Ferronnays and Portalis? Am I not your friend? I will give you all you want in Rome; in France you shall be more of the minister than I, I shall take your advice. Your retirement would bring about new divisions. You do not want to injure the Government? The King will be very much incensed if you persist in wishing to retire. I beseech you, dear viscount, not to commit that folly."

[Sidenote: I call on M. de Polignac.]

I replied that I was not committing a folly; that I was acting in the full conviction of my reason; that his ministry was most unpopular; that those prejudices might be unjust, but that, in fine, they existed; that all France was persuaded that he would attack the public liberties, and that it was impossible for me, their defender, to row in the same boat with those who passed for the enemies of those liberties. I was somewhat embarrassed in making this rejoinder, because, at bottom, I had nothing immediate to object to in the new ministers; I could attack them only in a future the existence of which they were entitled to deny. M. de Polignac swore to me that he loved the Charter as much as I did; but he loved it in his own way, he loved it too closely. Unfortunately, the affection which one shows to a daughter whom one has dishonoured is of little use to her.

The conversation was prolonged on the same lines for nearly an hour. M. de Polignac concluded by telling me that, if I consented to take back my resignation, the King would see me with pleasure and hear whatever I wished to say to him against his ministry; but that, if I persisted in my determination to resign, His Majesty thought that it would serve no purpose to see me and that a conversation between him and myself could be only an unpleasant thing.

I rejoined:

"Then, prince, look upon my resignation as given. I have never retracted in my life, and, since it does not suit the King to see his faithful subject, I do not insist."

After those words, I took my leave. I begged the prince to restore the Roman Embassy to M. le Duc de Laval, if he still wished for it, and I recommended the members of my legation to him. Then I took my way on foot, along the Boulevard des Invalides, for my Infirmary, poor wounded man that I was. M. de Polignac, when I left him, appeared to me to be in that state of imperturbable confidence which made of him a mute eminently fitted to strangle an empire.

My resignation as Ambassador to Rome having been sent in, I wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff:

"MOST HOLY FATHER,

"As French Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1823, I had the happiness to be the interpreter of the wishes of the late King Louis XVIII. for the exaltation of Your Holiness to the Chair of St. Peter. As Ambassador of His Majesty Charles X. to the Court of Rome, I had the still greater happiness to see Your Beatitude raised to the Sovereign Pontificate, and to hear from your lips words that will always be the glory of my life. Now that I am ending the lofty mission which I had the honour to fulfil, I come to express to Your Holiness the very keen regrets with which I do not cease to be penetrated. It but remains for me, Most Holy Father, to lay at your sacred feet my sincere gratitude for your kindness, and to ask you for your apostolic blessing.

"I am, with the greatest veneration and the most profound respect,

"Your Holiness' most humble and most obedient servant,

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

For several days I finished rending my bowels in my Utica; I wrote letters to demolish the edifice which I had raised with so much love. As, in the death of a man, it is the little details, the familiar domestic actions that touch us, so, in the death of a dream, the little realities which destroy it are the keenest. An eternal exile on the ruins of Rome had been my idle fancy. Like Dante, I had arranged never to return to my country.

These testamentary elucidations will not possess for the readers of these Memoirs the same interest that they have for me. The old bird falls from the branch where it has taken shelter; it quits life for death. Dragged away by the current, it has but changed one stream for the other.

[Footnote 1: This book was written in Rome, from February to May 1829, and in Paris, from August to September 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 2: The following is the exact text of this letter, which Chateaubriand modified somewhat for publication:

"I have attended the first funeral ceremony for the Pope in the Church of St. Peter. It was a strange medley of indecency and grandeur. The strokes of the hammer nailing down a pope's coffin, some interrupted singing, the mingling of the light of the candles and the moon; lastly, the coffin raised by a pulley and hung in the shadows, to be laid across a door in the sarcophagus of Pius VII., whose ashes made room for those of Leo XII.: can you picture all this, and the ideas to which the scene gave birth?"--B.]

[Footnote 3: Leo XII.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 4: Bartolommeo Alberto Mauro Cardinal Capellari, later Pope Gregory XVI. (1765-1846), Abbot of the Camaldolian Monastery at Murano, created a cardinal in 1825. He was elected Pope after the death of Pius VIII. in 1831, when he took the name of Gregory XVI. He is the founder of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great.--T.]

[Footnote 5: Bartolommeo Cardinal Pacca, Bishop of Velletri (1756-1844), Cardinal Camerlingo to Pope Pius VII., created a cardinal in 1801. Pacca became Prime Minister in 1808, drew up the bull of excommunication hurled against Napoleon in 1809, and was arrested and imprisoned with Pius VII. He returned to Rome with the Pope in 1814 and, in 1816, was instrumental in bringing about the restoration of the Jesuits.--T.]

[Footnote 6: Emmanuele Cardinal Di Gregorio (1758-1839), created a cardinal by Pius VII. in 1816.--B.]

[Footnote 7: Giaccomo Cardinal Giustiniani, Bishop of Imola (1769-1843), created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 8: Giulio Maria Cardinal Della Somaglia (1744-1830), created a cardinal in 1795, Bishop of Frascati (1814), and of Ostia and Velletri (1820). He had been exiled with Pius VII., and imprisoned for refusing to assist at Napoleon's wedding. As Dean of the Sacred College, he presided at the Conclave in 1829. On his death he left all his property to the Propaganda.--B.]

[Footnote 9: Giuseppe Cardinal Albani (1750-1834), created a cardinal by Pius VII. in 1801, was made Legate at Bologna in 1814, and appointed Secretary of State by Pius VIII. in 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 10: Francesco Xaviero Cardinal Castiglioni, Bishop of Frascati, later Pope Pius VIII. (1761-1830). He was elected Pope on the 31st of March 1829, assumed the name of Pius VIII., and died on the 30th of November 1830, after a reign of twenty months only.--T.]

[Footnote 11: Pietro Francesco Cardinal Galleffi (1770-1837), created a cardinal by Pius VII. in 1803.--B.]

[Footnote 12: Tommaso Cardinal Arezzo (1756-1833), created a cardinal and Legate at Ferrara in 1815, and Vice-Chancellor of the Church in 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 13: There is no canonical provision which gives the Powers the right to intervene in the operations of a conclave; but, as a matter of fact, France, Spain and Austria have up to these latter times exercised what was called the _exclusion_, in other words, each of them has been able to mention to the conclave the name of a cardinal whose election would have been displeasing to her. Without recognising any right whatever, the Sacred College takes note of these indications, considering that it would lead to difficulties for the Holy See if it were to elect a pope in the face of the declared hostility of a great Catholic Power. The _exclusive_ is very different, and belongs to the members of the conclave; it results from the votes which are refused to the candidate who would otherwise receive the majority required to ensure validity of election.--B.]

[Footnote 14: Carlo Maria Cardinal Pedicini (1760-1843), created a cardinal by Pius VII. in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 15: Francesco Cardinal Bertalozzi (1754-1830), created a cardinal at the same time as Pedicini.--B.]

[Footnote 16: Placido Cardinal Zurla (1769-1834), created a cardinal at the same time as the two former.--B.]

[Footnote 17: Luigi Cardinal Micara (1775-1847), created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 18: St. Peter, first Pope (_d._ 65 or 66), martyred in Rome with St. Paul, with whom he is honoured on the 29th of June.--T.]

[Footnote 19: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (_circa_ 150--_circa_ 230), the great ecclesiastical writer, and one of the most famous Fathers of the Church.--T.]

[Footnote 20: Caius Sempronius Gracchus (_d._ 121 B.C.) was elected Tribune of the People in 123, and re-elected in 122. He failed in his election in 121, and was killed in a disturbance in the city and his body thrown into the Tiber.--T.]

[Footnote 21: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (_circa_ 169 B.C.--133 B.C.), Caius' elder brother, was assassinated when on the point of being elected Tribune of the People for the second year in succession.--T.]

[Footnote 22: St. Damasus I. (_circa_ 306-384), a native of Portugal, elected to the Papacy in 366. His election was contested by the Deacon Ursinus, who was expelled by force of arms. St. Damasus is honoured on the 11th of December.--T.]

[Footnote 23: St. Gregory I. (_circa_ 540-604), known as the Great, was elected Pope in 590. He is commemorated on the 12th of March, the anniversary of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 24: St. Leo IV. (_d._ 855), honoured 17 July, the anniversary of his death.--T.]

[Footnote 25: St. Simplicius had followed a career of arms and married. The See of Bourges was offered to him many times, and refused. He at last accepted it, in 472, when elected by St. Sidonius Apollinaris, who had been chosen arbitrator of the quarrels that had ensued at Bourges. He is honoured on the 17th of June.--T.]

[Footnote 26: Louis I. Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of France (778-840), known as the Débonnaire, son of the Emperor-King Charlemagne, whom he succeeded in 814.--T.]

[Footnote 27: Gerard of Burgundy, later Pope Nicholas II. (_d._ 1061), elected Pope in 1058.--T.]

[Footnote 28: The third Lateran Council, held under Pope Alexander III. in 1179.--T.]

[Footnote 29: Guy de Foulques, or Fulcoldi, later Pope Clement IV. (_d._ 1268), a native of Saint-Gilles in France, was first a soldier, then a lawyer, then secretary to St. Louis IX. The death of his wife led him to enter the Church. He became Bishop of Puy in 1256, Archbishop of Narbonne in 1259, a cardinal in 1262, and was elected Pope in 1265, while on a journey to England as Papal Legate.--T.]

[Footnote 30: Teobaldo di Visconti, later Pope Gregory X. (_d._ 1276), elected Pope in 1271, after an interregnum of over two years.--T.]

[Footnote 31: Pedro de Luna (_d._ 1424), a native of Aragon, anti-pope, under the style of Benedict XIII. He was elected by the French cardinals, while the Italians chose Boniface IX., after the death of the Anti-pope Clement VII. (1394).--T.]

[Footnote 32: Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI. (1431-1503), created a cardinal in 1456, Archbishop of Valencia, in succession to his uncle, Pope Calixtus III., and elected Pope in 1492. There is no doubt that Borgia's election was due to bribery.--T.]

[Footnote 33: Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480-1519), illegitimate daughter of Alexander VI. by Rosa Vanozza, married first Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, in 1493. This marriage was annulled by Alexander, who, in 1498, found a more ambitious match for her in Alphonsus of Bisceglie, a natural son of Alphonsus II. of Naples. Alphonsus having been murdered by her brother, Cesare Borgia, in 1500, she married, in 1501, Alphonsus of Este, who subsequently succeeded to the Duchy of Ferrara.--T.]

[Footnote 34: _Lambeaux_, rags; _lambels_, labels.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 35: Jacques Davy, Cardinal Duperron (1556-1618), Bishop of Evreux, later Archbishop of Sens. Himself a convert from Calvinism, Duperron was largely instrumental in converting Henry IV. to Catholicism.--T.]

[Footnote 36: Henry VIII. King of England (1491-1547) procured the title of Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X. in 1521, and severed his connection with the Faith in 1534. His successors have since continued heretical to the Faith of which they continue to style themselves the Defenders.--T.]

[Footnote 37: Donna Olimpia Pamfili (1594-1656), _née_ Maldachini, sister-in-law of Innocent X., under whose pontificate she wielded great influence and amassed immense wealth. Alexander VII. ordered her to retire to Orvieto, there to await the result of an inquiry into the origin of her fortune (1655); but she died of the plague before the end of the inquiry.--B.]

[Footnote 38: Giovanni Battista Pamfili, later Pope Innocent X. (1572-1655), elected Pope in 1644.--T.]

[Footnote 39: Fabio Chigi, later Pope Alexander VII. (1599-1667), elected Pope in 1655. It was during his pontificate that Christina Queen of Sweden was converted to Catholicism.--T.]

[Footnote 40: Lorenzo Corsini, later Pope Clement XII. (1652-1740), elected Pope in 1730.--T.]

[Footnote 41: Prospero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV. (1675-1758), elected to the Papacy in 1740.--T.]

[Footnote 42: Letter to the Abbé Cortois de Quincey from Rome, 1740.--T.]

[Footnote 43: Bernardo Gaetano Cardinal Guadagni (1674--_post_ 1733), Bishop of Arezzo (1724), and a nephew of Clement XII., who created him a cardinal in 1731. Guadagni became Vicar-General of Rome in 1732.--T.]

[Footnote 44: Pietro Cardinal Ottoboni (1668-1740), nephew to Pope Alexander VIII., and created a cardinal at the age of 22, in 1690.--T.]

[Footnote 45: Giulio Cardinal Alberoni (1664-1752) had been Prime Minister of Spain (1715-1719), thanks to the influence of Elizabeth Farnese, whose marriage to Philip V. he had brought about while in Madrid as Resident of the Duke of Parma at the Spanish Court. He was subsequently disgraced and imprisoned in a convent by order of Innocent XIII.; but, in 1723, he was reinstated in his rights as a cardinal, and remained in favour with the Court of Rome till his death in 1752.--T.]

[Footnote 46: Anton Rodolf Count Apponyi (1782-1852), Austrian Ambassador successively to Florence, Rome, London and Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 47: Giovanni Battista Cardinal Bussi, created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 48: Vincento Cardinal Macchi (1770-1860), Archbishop of Nisibis, appointed Nuncio to Switzerland, to Paris (1819), and a cardinal (1826).--B.]

[Footnote 49: Jean Baptiste Marie Anne Antoine Cardinal Duc de Latil (1761-1839) became chaplain to the Comte d'Artois in 1798, and returned to France with him in 1814. He was appointed Bishop of Amycla _in partibus_ in 1815, Bishop of Chartres in 1817, and a peer of France. On the death of Louis XVIII., the new King created Latil a count, and appointed him to the Archbishopric of Rheims. He crowned Charles X. in 1826, and received the cardinal's hat from Leo XII., the King adding the title of duke. At the Revolution of July, the cardinal fled to England, and later returned to France, where he resumed his see, but not his seat in the House of Peers, as he refused to take the oath to the usurping government--B.]

[Footnote 50: MOLIÈRE, L'_Avare_: Act II. sc. I.--T.]

[Footnote 51: Teresio Cardinal Ferrero Della Marmora (1757-1831), created a cardinal in 1824.--B.]

[Footnote 52: With the same pen with which he had just written this dispatch to the Foreign Minister, on the same day, Chateaubriand wrote M. de Marcellus, then Minister Plenipotentiary at Lucca, the following letter, which is not exactly in the style of the chanceries:

"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

"No news here. Empty and varying ballots. Rain, wind, rheumatism, and Torlonia buried sword at side, in a black coat and a laced hat. That is all. To-night, at my house, they sing at nine, sup at ten, and at midnight fast for tomorrow's ashes; with a little penetration, you can guess that I am writing to you on Shrove Tuesday. All this, Shrove Tuesday especially, makes me say with Potier, in the part of Werther:

"'My friend, do you know what life is? A wood in which we catch our legs.'

"If only mine could go a-hunting like yours! Good-bye. All this is not very serious for an ambassador to a conclave. I weep so often that, when laughter comes to me by chance, I let myself go.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."--B.]

[Footnote 53: And not Thursday, as the preceding editions have it.--B.]

[Footnote 54: Anne Louis Henri Cardinal Duc de La Fare (1752-1829), grand-nephew of the Cardinal de Bernis, became Bishop of Nancy in 1787, Archbishop of Sens in 1817, a peer of France in 1822, and a cardinal in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 55: Gustave Maximilien Juste Cardinal Prince de Croy (1773-1844), was Canon of the Grand Chapter of Strasburg in 1789. After the Emigration, he became Bishop of Strasburg in 1817, and Grand Almoner of France in 1821, a cardinal in 1822, and Archbishop of Rouen in 1824. He remained faithful to his legitimist principles in 1830, and although, in 1840, he was obliged to assist at the baptism of the Comte de Paris, he retired immediately after the ceremony.--B.]

[Footnote 56: Joachim Jean Xavier Cardinal Duc d'Isoard (1766-1839), after taking part in several royalist plots, had been appointed secretary to Cardinal Fesch in 1803. He was ordained priest in 1805, created a cardinal by Leo XII. in 1805, and Archbishop of Auch, a duke and peer of France in 1829. The Revolution of July deprived him of his peerage, but he retained his archdiocese.--B.]

[Footnote 57: Belisario Cardinal Cristaldi (1764-1831), created a cardinal in 1826.--B.]

[Footnote 58: Luigi Lambruschini (1776-1854), Archbishop of Genoa, Grand Prior of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem, and Papal Nuncio to Paris.--T.]

[Footnote 59: The Abbé Pierre (in religion, Marie Joseph) Coudrin (1768-1837) accompanied the Prince de Croy, Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen, as his conclavist. He did not deserve Chateaubriand's strictures. The Abbé Coudrin was a man of virtue and intelligence, a founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and of the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, known as the Congregation of the Picpus.--B.]

[Footnote 60: Ercole Cardinal Dandini (1759-1840), created a cardinal in 1823.--B.]

[Footnote 61: Louis I. King of Bavaria (1786-1868) ascended the throne in 1825, in succession to his father, Maximilian I., the first King of Bavaria. Louis was an ardent Philhellenist, and therefore acceptable to Chateaubriand. He neglected no effort to turn Munich into a modern Athens, and introduced an Aspasia into it in the shape of the dancer Lola Montes, whom he created Countess von Lansfeld. Louis I. was driven from his States in February 1848, and abdicated in the following month in favour of his son Maximilian II.--B.]

[Footnote 62: Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gaspardo Marchese Capponi (1792-1876), the Tuscan politician and historian, and author of, among other important works, the _Storia della Republica di Firenze_ (1875).--B.]

[Footnote 63: Chateaubriand does not give the name of the correspondent to whom he addressed this letter, but it is clearly the lady of whom he spoke as "a furious Turcophile" in his letter to Madame Récamier of the 15th of January 1829 (_vide_ Vol. IV, p. 297).--B.]

[Footnote 64: Domenico Zampieri Domenichino (1581-1641), the noted painter of the Eclectic-Bologna School.--T.]

[Footnote 65: Auguste Hilarion Comte de Kératry (1769-1859), one of the editors of the _Courrier français_, and author of the _Dernier des Beaumanoir_ (1824). He was made a peer of France by Louis-Philippe in 1837.--B.]

[Footnote 66: The Vicomte de Sesmaisons, third Secretary of Embassy, son of Donatien Comte de Sesmaisons and grandson, through his mother, of the Chancelier Dambray. The two first secretaries were Messieurs Bellocq and Desmousseaux de Givré, who will be mentioned later. Attached to the embassy were Messieurs de Montebello (the son of Marshal Lannes, referred to above), Du Viviers, de Mesnard, d'Haussonville, and Hyacinthe Pilorge, Chateaubriand's faithful secretary.--B.]

[Footnote 67: Then Ambassador to Naples.--B.]

[Footnote 68: M. Fuscaldo.--_Author's Note._

The Conte Fuscaldo was Neapolitan Ambassador to Rome.--B.]

[Footnote 69: M. Bellocq was First Secretary of the Embassy.--B.]

[Footnote 70: M. Desmousseaux de Givré (_b._ 1794) had served under Chateaubriand in London in 1822. He resigned on the accession of the Polignac Ministry, and re-entered the Diplomatic Service after 1830. Desmousseaux de Givré sat in the Chamber of Deputies, as a Conservative, from 1837 to 1848, and in the Legislative Assembly from 1849 to 1851, when he retired into private life.--B.]

[Footnote 71: _Wis._ II. 2.--T.]

[Footnote 72: Francis IV. Duke of Modena (1779-1847).]

[Footnote 73: Charles Albert King of Sardinia (1798-1849) ascended the throne on the death of his kinsman, King Charles Felix, in 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 74: The Duke of Modena defended himself against this accusation. _Cf._ MARCELLUS, _Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 363, where the matter is explained.--B.]

[Footnote 75: The Cardinal-Archbishop of Toulouse had sprained a sinew on alighting from his carriage after crossing the Arno. This accident delayed him for several days at Siena, and caused him to be the last of the French cardinals to enter the Conclave (MARCELLUS, _Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 358).--B.]

[Footnote 76: Prince Paul Charles Frederic Augustus of Wurtemberg (1785-1852), son of Frederic I. King of Wurtemberg, brother of William I. and father of the Grand-duchess Helen of Russia.--T.]

[Footnote 77: Wife of King Joseph, who had adopted the title of Comte de Survilliers, as his brother Louis had taken the name of Duc de Saint-Leu, and his brother Jerome that of Comte de Montfort.--B.]

[Footnote 78: Hildebrand, Pope St. Gregory VII. (_circa_ 1020-1085), elected Pope in 1073, one of the greatest militant Popes. It was to St. Gregory that the Emperor Henry IV. aid penance at Canossa in 1077.--T.]

[Footnote 79: The abduction of Pius VII. (5 July 1809).--T.]

[Footnote 80: Sciarra Colonna had been outlawed by Boniface VIII. and was concerned with Nogaret in the attempt to carry off the Pontiff.--T.]

[Footnote 81: Guillaume de Nogaret (_d._ 1314), Chancellor to Philip the Fair, by whose orders, in 1303, together with Sciarra Colonna, he seized the person of Pope Boniface VIII. at Anagni and subjected him to the most culpable violence. Boniface was shortly released by the populace, and Nogaret besought the Pope's absolution.--T.]

[Footnote 82: Benedict Cajetan, Pope Boniface VIII. (_circa_ 1228-1303), elected Pope in 1294, issued the bull _Clericis laicos_ against Philip the Fair in 1296 and in 1302, at a synod held in Rome, promulgated the bull _Unam sanctam_, asserting the temporal as well as the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. He died in Rome of a fever induced by the ill-treatment which he had received while under arrest at Anagni.--T.]

[Footnote 83: Michel de L'Hôpital (_circa_ 1505-1573), Superintendent of the Royal Finances (1554-1560) and Chancellor of France (1560-1568) under Francis II. and Charles IX.; a wise and tolerant French statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 84: François Olivier (1493-1560), Chancellor of France under Henry II. He was disgraced at the instance of Diane de Poitiers and deprived of the Seals, but retained the title of Chancellor. He withdrew to his estate of Montlhéri, where he was often visited by L'Hôpital.--T.]

[Footnote 85: Pierre Président Jeannin (1540-1622), the son of a tanner, became a disciple of Cujas, and rose gradually to be First President of the Parliament of Paris. He was employed on important negociations by Sully and, in 1609, signed the treaty which ensured the independence of the United Provinces. After the death of Henry IV., Marie de Medici appointed him Superintendent of Finance. His _Négociations_ were published in 1656.--T.]

[Footnote 86: Nicolas de Neufville, Seigneur de Villeroi (1542-1617), was employed by Catherine de Medici on two important negociations in Italy, and was three times Secretary of State (1567-1588, 1594 and 1610-1614). His _Mémoires d'État_ were published in 1622.--T.]

[Footnote 87: _Mémoires des sages et royales économies d'État domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henri le Grand_ (Paris: 1634).--T.]

[Footnote 88: _Histoire de la mère et du fils_ and _Histoire de la régence_, published in a complete form as _Mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France_ in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 89: 1648.]

[Footnote 90: 24 October 1648.]

[Footnote 91: Nicolas Barillon was French Ambassador to England during part of the reigns of Charles II. and James II. A very interesting portion of his Correspondence with Louis XIV. on English Affairs was published by Charles James Fox as an appendix to his _History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II._ (London: 1808).--T.]

[Footnote 92: Étienne François Comte de Stainville, later Duc de Choiseul et d'Amboise (1719-1785), Ambassador to Rome (1756), to Vienna (1756), and Foreign Minister (1758); Minister for War (1761) and, in addition, for the Navy (1763). After the death of Madame de Pompadour, his disdain for the new Favourite, the Comtesse Du Barry, procured his disgrace (1770). In 1761, he negociated the "Family Compact" between the Bourbon Kings of France, Spain and the Two Sicilies against England.--T.]

[Footnote 93: Francisco Cardinal Ximenes (1436-1517), Archbishop of Toledo (1495), a cardinal (1507), and Inquisitor-General and Regent of Spain (1516-1517).--T.]

[Footnote 94: Gasparo de Guzman, Conde de Olivarez (1587-1645), the Spanish statesman; Prime Minister from 1621-1643.--T.]

[Footnote 95: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marques de Pombal (1699-1782), the famous Portuguese statesman. He became Minister to London (1739), to Vienna (1745), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1750) and Premier (1756-1777).--T.]

[Footnote 96: _Mare liberum_ (1608).--T.]

[Footnote 97: Axel Count Oxenstiern (1583-1654), Chancellor of Sweden from 1611 to 1654, and Benedikt Oxenstiern (1623-1702), his kinsman, Chancellor under Charles XI. Christina Queen of Sweden, on Axel Oxenstiem's recommendation, appointed Grotius her Ambassador to the Court of France; he held that post from 1625-1645--T.]

[Footnote 98: Jan de Witt (1625-1672), Grand Pensionary of Holland from 1653-1672, when he was overthrown by the Orange Party and murdered, with his brother Cornelis, by the mob at the Hague.--T.]

[Footnote 99: Pieter de Groot (1610-1680), known as Peter Grotius, son of Hugo Grotius. Peter was Dutch Minister to the Courts of Denmark and Sweden, and his correspondence in that capacity with Jan de Witt appear in that statesman's _Negociations._ Peter Grotius was Ambassador to France in 1669. He fled from Holland on the restoration of the House of Orange, returned, and was afterwards arrested, tried and acquitted on a charge of betraying State secrets (1676).--T.]

[Footnote 100: Mustapha Mehemed Reshid Pasha (1802-1858), Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs under Mahmud II. and Abdul-Medjid, and Grand Vizier at the time of the Crimean War.--T.]

[Footnote 101: _Cf._ BOILEAU, _Le Lutrin_, Canto I.:

Quand Sidrac, à qui l'âge allonge le chemin, Arrive dans la chambre, un bâton à la main....--B.

When Sidrac, for whom age prolongs his weary road, His stick in his right hand, arrives at the abode....--T.]

[Footnote 102: Théodore Mionnet (1770-1842) was Assistant-keeper of the Cabinet of Antiquities at the National Library of France. He devoted thirty years of his life to compiling his _Description des médailles grecques et romaines, avec leur degré de rareté et leur estimation_ (Paris: 1806-1837, 15 vols. 8vo), which is regarded as a standard work among numismatists.--T.]

[Footnote 103: St. Paul (229-342), the first hermit, retired to the Thebaid at the age of twenty-two, and lived there for over ninety years. St. Paul the Hermit is honoured on the 7th of March. He is known also as St. Paul the Simple.--T.]

[Footnote 104: Robert Arnauld, known as Arnauld d'Andilly ( 1589-1674), son of Antoine Arnauld, known as the Great Arnauld, and father of Simon Arnauld, Marquis de Pomponne. Amauld d'Andilly left Memoirs, published in 1734, and a Journal, first published in 1857. The quotation is taken from the former.--T.]

[Footnote 105: L'Hôpital's Complete Works were edited by Dufey in 1824-1825. He excelled in Latin verse.--T.]

[Footnote 106: I have already mentioned d'Ossat's famous Letters addressed to Villeroi.--T.]

[Footnote 107: The Abbé François Le Metel, Sieur de Boisrobert (1592-1662), a poet and favourite of the Cardinal de Richelieu, who endowed him with a number of livings, nearly all of which he lost at play. He was one of the founders of the French Academy and worked on its Dictionary.--T.]

[Footnote 108: Richelieu created the French Academy in 1635.--T.]

[Footnote 109: Richelieu's literary remains include an enormous number of religious works, dramas, Memoirs, correspondence and State papers. Of these, the purely literary works are of no considerable value.--T.]

[Footnote 110: The name assumed by Damis in Piron's Comedy of _Métromanie_ (Act I. Scene VIII. ).--B.]

[Footnote 111: Solon (_circa_ 638 B.C.--_circa_ 559 B.C.), the great law-giver: "When he had carried his great reforms, elegy became the voice of his calm joy" (JEBB, _Greek Literature_).-T.]

[Footnote 112: Simonides of Amorgos (_fl. circa_ 660 B.C.) "wrote the _Archæology of Samos_ in two books of elegiacs, of which no trace now remains" (MAHAFFY, _History of Classical Greek Literature_).-T.]

[Footnote 113: Thucydides (_circa_ 471 B.C.--_circa_ 401 B.C.), the famous Greek commander and historian.--T.]

[Footnote 114: Demosthenes (385 B.C.--322 B.C.), the statesman and greatest of Greek orators.--T.]

[Footnote 115: Xenophon (_circa_ 430 B.C.--post 357 B.C.), the Greek general, historian, essayist and author of the romance of the _Cyropœdia_, led the 10,000 Greeks to the Black Sea after the Battle of Cunaxa and the murder of the Greek generals.--T.]

[Footnote 116: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major (_circa_ 234 B.C.--_circa_ 183 B.C.), and his grandson by adoption, Publius Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus Africanus Major, surnamed also Numantinus (_circa_ 185 B.C.--129 B.C.). It was the latter who was the friend of both Lælius and Terence, in some of whose comedies he is said to have collaborated.--T.]

[Footnote 117: Caius Lælius, surnamed Sapiens (_fl. circa_ 140 B.C.), the orator and philosopher, and the chief character in Cicero's _De Amicitia._--T.]

[Footnote 118: Publius Terendus Afer (_circa_ 185 B.C.--_circa_ 159 B.C.), the celebrated Roman comic poet.--T.]

[Footnote 119: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C.--43 B.C.), the Roman orator, philosopher and statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 120: Caius Julius Cæsar (100 B.C.--44 B.C.). Only the _Commentaries_ are extant of his many writings.--T.]

[Footnote 121: Archilochus (_fl. circa_ 700 B.C.), the Greek lyric poet of Paros, famous for his satiric iambic poetry.--T.]

[Footnote 122: Sophocles (495 B.C.--406 B.C.), one of the three great tragic poets of Greece.--T.]

[Footnote 123: Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), later Lord Verulam (1618), later Viscount St. Albans (1621), philosopher, jurist and statesman.--T.]

[Footnote 124: Blessed Sir Thomas More (1470-1535), statesman and author, beatified by Pope Leo XIII., 9 December 1886.--T.]

[Footnote 125: Edmund Spenser (_circa_ 1552-1599), the poet, went to Ireland in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, was in 1581 made clerk to the Irish Court of Chancery, and in 1588 clerk to the Council of Munster. In his _View of the Stoic of Ireland_, written in 1596, but not published till 1633, he advocates the most oppressive measures. His unpopularity in Ireland was extreme.--T.]

[Footnote 126: Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (_circa_ 1610-1643), politician and man of letters.--T.]

[Footnote 127: Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon (1608-1674), statesman and historian.--T.]

[Footnote 128: Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Secretary of State and writer.--T.]

[Footnote 129: I have contented myself with giving the dates of the figures celebrated in politics and literature who are here mentioned for the first time in the Memoirs. It is curious that Chateaubriand, while insisting on his not very strong point, should have omitted the name of Joseph Addison.--T.]

[Footnote 130: Alphonse Marie Louis Lamartine (1790-1869), the poet and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government of 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 131: Charles Duc de Bourbon, known as the Constable de Bourbon (1490-1527), fell in the assault of Rome which ended in the sack of the city (6 May 1527).--T.]

[Footnote 132: Giacomo Buonaparte, the first Bonaparte mentioned in history, left a narrative of the _Sack of Rome_ in 1527, of which he was an eye-witness. This document has been translated into French by Charles Napoléon Louis Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon III.--B.]

[Footnote 133: Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, Roman Emperor (40-81), the son of Vespasian, and the "Delight of Mankind." He succeeded to the throne in June 79 and, in the twenty-seven months of his reign, finished the Coliseum and built the Baths of Titus.--T.]

[Footnote 134: Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, Roman Emperor (53-117), surnamed Dacicus and Parthicus, succeeded in 98. The forum constructed under him is situated north of the Roman Forum.--T.]

[Footnote 135: St. Paul's Without the Walls, a fourth-century basilica, was burnt down in 1823.--T.]

[Footnote 136: Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus (62-113), known as Pliny the Younger, to distinguish him from his uncle, Pliny the Elder. He is the author of the Epistles and of a Eulogy of Trajan.--T.]

[Footnote 137: Melmoth's PLINY THE YOUNGER, Book I., Letter 24: To Maximus.--T.]

[Footnote 138: JUSTUS LIPSIUS.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 139: TASSO, _Gerusalemme Liberata._--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 140: Cary's DANTE: _Paradise_, Canto XI., 46-56, 59-69.--T.]

[Footnote 141: Chateaubriand returned to Paris on the 28th of May 1829. The subsequent pages, to the end of Book XIII., were written in Paris, in the Rue d'Enfer, in August and September 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 142: Madame Giuditta Pasta (1798-1865), _née_ Negri, the Italian-Jewish opera-singer, who was one of the leading sopranos in Paris and Italy from 1819 until about 1835.--T.]

[Footnote 143: The Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Comte Sieyès (1748-1836), the framer of constitutions, was Ambassador to Berlin in 1798-1799, a member of the Directory 1799 and, provisionally, a Consul. Bonaparte made him a senator and, later, a count of the Empire. He was exiled at the Restoration, and lived in Brussels until the Revolution of 1830, when he returned to Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 144: M. de Martignac was appointed head of the Duc d'Angoulême's political council on the outbreak of the Spanish War, and received the title of Civil Commissary to the Army in Spain.--B.]

[Footnote 145: OV., _Met._ XI.:

Quum mare sub noctem tumidis albescere cœpit Fluctibus.--B.]

[Footnote 146: _Æn._ VII. 27.--B.]

[Footnote 147: _Æn._ V. 857.--B.]

[Footnote 148: Armandine Lucile Aurore Baronne Dudevant, known as George Sand (1804-1876), _née_ Dupin. _Valentine_, her second novel, was published in 1832.--T.]

[Footnote 149: Richard I. King of England (1157-1199), surnamed Cœur-de-Lion, was mortally wounded while besieging Chalus, near Limoges, 6 April 1199.--T.]

[Footnote 150: Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (_circa_ 1620-1655) was born at Bergerac Castle, and entered the regiment of Guards, where he was distinguished by his enormous nose. _Post hoc vel propter hoc_, he achieved fame as a duellist, which he exchanged later for that of a man of letters, a career which he adopted after being twice severely wounded in war.--T.]

[Footnote 151: The Cardinal d'Ossat was born at the Roque-en-Magnoac, in the Diocese of Auch, on the 23rd of August 1536.--B.]

[Footnote 152: Jean Froissart (1337--_circa_ 1410), the chronicler.--T.]

[Footnote 153: I omit these verses.--T.]

[Footnote 154: Occitania, a name often given to Languedoc, and to the whole Mediterranean coast, during the middle ages.--T.]

[Footnote 155: Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III., Chap. V.: _Upon some Verses of Virgil._--T.]

[Footnote 156: The _Moniteur_ of 9 August 1829 announced the formation of a new ministry, composed as follows: the Prince de Polignac, Foreign Affairs; M. de La Bourdonnaye, Interior; M. Courvoisier, Justice; M. de Chabrol, Finance; General de Bourmont, War; Admiral de Rigny, Navy; M. de Montbel, Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction. Admiral de Rigny, a nephew of the Baron Louis, and a Liberal, had been appointed without being consulted. He refused to take office, and the Baron d'Haussez, Prefect of Bordeaux, was appointed Minister for the Navy in his stead.--B.]

[Footnote 157: In the _Moniteur_ of 27 August 1829, I find:

"We hear from Pau, 20 August:

"'M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand arrived at Pau yesterday. The illustrious author of the _Génie du Christianisme_ visited part of the town, and long surveyed the castle of Henry IV. At nine o'clock, a serenade was given to the noble peer by the town band. A considerable crowd filled the court-yard of the Hôtel de France and the streets adjoining the Place Royale. A large number of citizens were admitted to the noble viscount's apartments. Among the pieces performed in this improvised serenade the delicious ballad, _Combien j'ai douce souvenance!_ from the _Dernier des Abencerrages_, attracted particular attention. M. de Chateaubriand yielded to the assiduity of which he was the object and showed himself at one of the windows. He was received with cheers, to which he replied in these words:

"'"Gentlemen, I am extremely sensible to the honour which you have been pleased to do me; I will not own that I deserve it except for my love of my country. It is very natural that the town in which Henry IV. saw the light should have been pleased to remember my devotion to the descendants of that illustrious King."

"'Renewed cheers were raised, after which the crowd dispersed peacefully. M. de Chateaubriand left at nine o'clock this morning for Paris."--B.]

[Footnote 158: Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies (1777-1830) married, first, Clementina of Austria and, secondly,]

[Footnote 159: Maria Isabella of Spain, Queen of the Two Sicilies (1789-1848), daughter of Charles IV. King of Spain.--T.]

[Footnote 160: Maria Christina of Naples, Queen of Spain (1806-1878), married, in December 1829, as his fourth wife, to Ferdinand VII. King of Spain. It was at her instance that Ferdinand, on the 29th of March 1830, signed the Pragmatic Sanction abolishing the Salic Law in Spain, thus illegally securing the Crown to her daughter Isabella and excluding Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos (_de jure_ Charles V. King of Spain), from the succession.--T.]

[Footnote 161: The Days of 27 to 29 July 1830, ending in the overthrow of Charles X.--T.]