Memoirs of Chateaubriand Volume II — Part II Book IV 2

This so affecting and quite admirable letter is the last which I received; it alarmed me through the increase of sadness of which it bears the impress.

I hurried to the Dames Saint-Michel; my sister was walking in the garden with Madame de Navarre; she went in when she knew that I had gone up to her room.

She made visible efforts to collect her ideas, and at intervals she had a slight convulsive movement of the lips.

I entreated her to return entirely to reason, to cease writing such unjust things to me, things that rent my heart, to cease thinking that I could ever grow weary of her.

She appeared to grow a little calmer at the words which I repeated to distract and console her.

She told me that she believed that the convent was doing her harm, that she would feel better living alone, in the neighbourhood of the Jardin des Plantes, there where she could see doctors and walk about.

I urged her to please her own taste, adding that in order to help Virginie, her maid, I would give her old Saint-Germain.

This proposal seemed to give her great pleasure, in memory of Madame de Beaumont, and she assured me that she would go to look out for her new lodging.

She asked me how I was thinking of spending the summer.

I said that I should go to Vichy to join my wife, and then to M. Joubert at Villeneuve, to return to Paris from there.

I suggested to her to accompany us.

She answered that she wished to spend the summer alone, and that she was going to send Virginie back to Fougères.

I left her; she was more at ease.

Madame de Chateaubriand left for Vichy, and I prepared to follow her.

Before leaving Paris I went again to see Lucile.

She was affectionate;

she spoke to me of her little writings.

I encouraged the great poet to work; she kissed me, wished me a good journey, made me promise to come back soon.

She saw me to the landing of the staircase, leant over the baluster, and quietly watched me go down.

When I reached the bottom I stopped, and lifting my head, cried to the unhappy woman who was still looking at me: "Farewell, dear sister!

I shall see you soon!

Take great care of yourself!

Write to me at Villeneuve.

I will write to you.

I hope that next winter you will agree to live with us."

[Sidenote: Death of Lucile.

] That evening I saw the worthy Saint-Germain; I gave him orders and some money, so that he might secretly reduce the prices of anything she might require.

I enjoined him to keep me informed of everything and not to fail to call me back in case he should want to see me.

Three months passed.

When I reached Villeneuve, I found two fairly tranquillizing letters about Madame de Caud's health: but Saint-Germain forgot to speak to me of my sister's new lodging.

I had begun to write her a long letter, when suddenly Madame de Chateaubriand fell dangerously ill: I was at her bedside when I was brought a new letter from Saint-Germain;

I opened it: a withering line told me of the sudden death of Lucile.

I have cared for many tombs in my life: it fell to my lot and to my sister's destiny that her ashes should be flung to the skies.

I was not in Paris when she died; I had no relations there; kept at Villeneuve by my wife's critical condition, I was unable to go to the sacred remains;

orders sent from a distance arrived too late to prevent a common burial.

Lucile knew no one and had not a friend; she was known only to Madame de Beaumont's old servant: it was as though he had been charged to link two destinies.

He alone followed the forsaken coffin, and he himself was dead before Madame de Chateaubriand's sufferings allowed me to bring her back to Paris.

My sister was buried among the poor: in what grave-yard was she laid?

In what motionless wave of an ocean of dead was she swallowed up?

In what house did she die, after leaving the community of the Dames de Saint-Michel?

If, by making researches, if, by examining the archives of the municipalities, the registers of the parishes, I should come across my sister's name, what would that avail me[688]?

Should I find the same keeper of the cemetery?

Should I find the man who dug a grave that remained nameless and unlabelled?

Would the rough hands that were the last to touch so pure a clay have remembered it?

What nomenclator of the shades could point out to me the obliterated tomb?

Might he not make a mistake as to the dust?

Since Heaven has willed it so, let Lucile be for ever lost!

I find in this absence of locality a distinction from the burials of my other friends.

My predecessor in this world and in the next is praying to the Redeemer for me; she is praying to Him from the midst of the pauper remains among which her own lie confounded: even so does Lucile's mother and mine rest lost among the preferred of Jesus Christ.

God will certainly have been able to recognise my sister; and she, who was so little attached to earth, ought to leave no trace there.

She has left me, that sainted genius.

Not a day has passed but I have wept for her.

Lucile loved to hide herself; I have made her a solitude in my heart: she shall leave it only when I shall have ceased to live[689].

Those are the true, the only events of my real life!

What mattered to me, at the moment when I was losing my sister, the thousands of soldiers falling on the battlefields, the destruction of thrones, the changes in the face of the world?

Lucile's death struck at the sources of my soul: it was my childhood in the midst of my family, the first vestiges of my existence, that were disappearing.

Our life resembles those frail buildings, shored up in the sky by flying buttresses: they do not crumble at once, but become loose piecemeal; they still support some gallery or other, while already they have become separated from the chancel or vault of the edifice.

Madame de Chateaubriand, still bruised by Lucile's imperious whims, saw only a deliverance for the Christian who had gone to rest in the Lord.

Let us be gentle if we would be regretted; the loftiness of genius and the higher qualities are mourned only by the angels.

But I cannot enter into the consolation of Madame de Chateaubriand.

* [Sidenote: My journey to the East.

] When, returning to Paris by the Burgundy road, I caught sight of the cupola of the Val-de-Grâce and the dome of Sainte-Geneviève, which overlooks the Jardin des Plantes, my heart was broken: one more companion of my life left on the wayside!

We went back to the Hôtel de Coislin, and although M. de Fontanes, M. Joubert, M. de Clausel, M. Molé came to spend the evenings with me, I was distraught by so many memories and thoughts that I was utterly exhausted.

Remaining alone behind the objects that had quitted me, like a foreign mariner whose engagement has expired, and who has neither home nor country, I struck the shore with my foot; I longed to swim in a new ocean to refresh myself and cross it.

Nursed on Mount Pindus, a crusader to Hierosolyma, I was impatient to go to mingle my loneliness with the ruins of Athens, my tears with those of the Magdalen.

I went to see my family[690] in Brittany, returned to Paris, and left for Trieste on the 13th of July 1806; Madame de Chateaubriand accompanied me as far as Venice, where M. Ballanche came to join her.

As my life is set forth hour by hour in the _Itinéraire_, I should have no more to say here, if I had not kept some hitherto unknown letters written or received during and after my voyage.

Julien, my servant and companion, wrote his own Itinerary side by side with mine, just as passengers on a vessel keep their private logs on a journey of discovery.

The little manuscript which he places at my disposal will serve as a check upon my narrative: I shall be Cook, he will be Clarke[691].

In order to bring into clearer light the different manner in which one is impressed according to one's place in the social order and in the intellectual hierarchy, I will mingle my narrative with Julien's[692].

I shall let him begin by speaking first, because he relates some days' sailing without me from Modon to Smyrna.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We went on board[693] on Friday the 1st of August; but, the wind not being favourable to leave harbour, we waited until daybreak the next morning.

Then the harbour-pilot came to tell us that he could bring us out.

As I had never been on the sea, I had formed an exaggerated idea of the danger, for I saw none during two days.

But, on the third, a tempest rose; lightning, thunder and, in short, a terrible storm attacked us and beat up the sea frightfully.

Our crew consisted of only eight sailors, a captain, a mate, a pilot and a cook, and five passengers, including Monsieur and myself, which made seventeen men in all.

Then we all set ourselves to help the seamen in furling the sails, in spite of the rain with which we were soon drenched, having taken off our coats to move more freely.

This work filled my thoughts and made me forget the danger, which, indeed, is more terrible through the idea which one forms of it than it is in reality.

The storms followed one another during two days, which seasoned me in my first days of sea-faring; I was in no way inconvenienced.

Monsieur was afraid lest I should be ill at sea; when calm set in again, he said to me: "'Now I am reassured about your health; as you have borne these two stormy days so well, you can set your mind at rest as to any other mischance.'

"None occurred during the remainder of our crossing to Smyrna.

On the 10th, which was a Sunday, Monsieur made them heave-to near a Turkish town called Modon, where he landed to go to Greece.

Among the passengers who were with us were two Milanese, who were going to Smyrna to follow their trade of tinmen and pewter-founders.

One of the two, called Joseph, spoke the Turkish language fairly well, and Monsieur proposed that he should go with him as servant interpreter, and mentions him in his _Itinéraire.

_ He told us, on leaving us, that the journey would only take a few days, that he would join the vessel at an island where we were to pass in four or five days, and that he would wait for us in that island if he arrived there before us.

As Monsieur found that man to suit him for that short journey[694], he left me on board to continue my voyage to Smyrna and to look after all our luggage.

He had given me a letter of recommendation to the French Consul, in case he did not join us, which was what happened.

On the fourth day, we arrived at the appointed island and Monsieur was not there.

We passed the night and waited for him till seven o'clock in the morning.

The captain went back on shore to leave word that he was compelled to go on, having a fair wind and being obliged to take his crossing into consideration.

Besides, he saw a pirate who was trying to approach us, and it was urgent that we should place ourselves promptly on the defensive.

He made the men load his four pieces of cannon and bring on deck his muskets, pistols and side-arms; but, as the wind favoured us, the pirate gave us up.

We arrived, on Monday the 18th, at seven o'clock in the evening, at the port of Smyrna."

* [Sidenote: Greece.

] After crossing Greece, and touching Zea and Chio, I found Julien at Smyrna.

To-day I see Greece in my memory as one of those dazzling circles which one sometimes beholds on closing one's eyes.

Against that mysterious phosphorescence are outlined ruins of a delicate and admirable architecture, the whole rendered still more resplendent by I know not what brightness of the Muses.

When shall I see again the thyme of Mount Hymettus, the oleanders of the banks of the Eurotas?

One of the men whom I have left with the greatest envy on foreign shores is the Turkish custom-house officer of the Piræus: he lived alone, the guardian of three deserted ports, turning his gaze over bluey isles, gleaming promontories, golden seas.

There I heard nought save the sound of the billows in the shattered tomb of Themistocles and the murmur of distant memories; in the silence of the ruins of Sparta, fame itself was dumb.

In the cradle of Melesigene I left my poor dragoman, Joseph, the Milanese, at his tinman's shop, and set out for Constantinople.

I went to Pergamos, wishing first to go to Troy, from motives of poetic piety; a fall from my horse awaited me at the commencement of my road; not that Pegasus stumbled, but I slept.

I have recalled this accident in my _Itinéraire_; Julien relates it also, and he makes remarks concerning the roads and the horses to the exactness of which I can certify.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"Monsieur, who had fallen asleep on his horse, tumbled off without waking.

His horse stopped forthwith, as did mine, which followed it.

I at once alighted to know the reason, for it was impossible for me to see it at a fathom's distance.

I saw Monsieur half asleep beside his horse, and quite astonished to find himself on the ground; he assured me that he had not hurt himself.

His horse did not try to run away, which would have been dangerous, for there were precipices very near to the spot where we were."

On leaving the Soma, after passing Pergamos, I had the dispute with my guide which I describe in the _Itinéraire.

_ Here is Julien's version: JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We left that village very early, after renewing our canteen.

A little way from the village, I was greatly surprised to see Monsieur angry with our guide; I asked him the reason.

Monsieur then told me that he had arranged with the guide, at Smyrna, that he would take him to the plains of Troy on the way, and that he was now refusing, saying that the plains were infested with brigands.

Monsieur declined to believe a word of it, and would listen to no one.

As I saw that he was getting more and more out of temper, I made a sign to the guide to come near the interpreter and the janissary to explain to me what he had been told about the dangers to be risked in the plains which Monsieur wished to visit.

The guide told the interpreter that he had been assured that one had to be in great numbers not to be attacked; the janissary told me the same thing.

Thereupon I went to Monsieur and told him what they had all three said, and that, besides, we should find a little village at a day's march where there was a sort of consul who would be able to inform us of the truth.

After this statement, Monsieur composed himself, and we continued our road till we reached that place.

He at once went to the consul, who told him of all the dangers he would risk if he persisted in his wish to go in such small numbers to those plains of Troy.

Thereupon Monsieur was obliged to abandon his project, and we continued our road for Constantinople."

[Sidenote: Constantinople.

] I arrived at Constantinople.

MY ITINERARY.

"The almost total absence of women, the dearth of wheeled carriages, and the packs of ownerless dogs were the three distinctive characteristics that first struck me in this extraordinary town.

As nearly every one walks in papouches, as there is no noise of carriages and carts, as there are no bells and scarcely any hammering trades, the silence is continual.

You see around you a voiceless crowd which seems to wish to pass unnoticed, and which always looks as though it were stealing away from its master's sight.

You constantly come to a bazaar or a cemetery, as though the Turks were only there to buy, sell, or die.

The cemeteries, unwalled and placed in the middle of the streets, are magnificent cypress-woods: the doves build their nests in the cypress-trees and share the peace of the dead.

Here and there one discovers some ancient monuments which have no connection with the modern men, nor with the new monuments by which they are surrounded; it is as though they had been transported to this eastern town by the working of a talisman.

No sign of joy, no appearance of happiness shows itself to your eyes;

what you see is not a people but a herd whom an iman drives and a janissary slays.

Amidst the prisons and the gaols rises a seraglio, the capitol of servitude: it is there that a sacred guardian carefully preserves the germs of pestilence and the primitive laws of tyranny."

Julien does not soar so near the clouds[695].

MY ITINERARY.

"We were about two hundred passengers on the ship, men, women, children and old people.

As many mats lay ranged in rows on both sides of the steerage.

In this kind of republic, each kept house as he pleased: the women looked after their children, the men smoked or prepared their dinners, the popes talked together.

On every side was heard the sound of mandolines, fiddles and lyres.

They sang, they danced, they laughed, they prayed.

Every one was joyful.

They said to me, 'Jerusalem!'

pointing to the south; and I replied, 'Jerusalem!'

In short, but for the fright, we should have been the happiest people in the world; but at the least wind the seamen furled the sails, the pilgrims cried, '_Christos, Kyrie eleison!

_' When the storm had passed, we resumed our boldness."

Here I am beaten by Julien.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We had to busy ourselves with our departure for Jaffa, which took place on Thursday the 18th of September.

We embarked on board a Greek ship, where there were at least, men, women, and children, one hundred and fifty Greeks who were going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which caused much disturbance on board.

"Like the other passengers, we too had our supply of provisions and our cooking utensils, which I had bought in Constantinople.

I had, besides, a further and fairly complete supply which M. l'Ambassadeur had given us, consisting of very fine biscuits, hams, sausages, saveloys, different sorts of wine, rum, sugar, lemons, and even quinine-wine against the fever.

I was therefore furnished with a very plentiful provision, which I husbanded and only consumed with great economy, knowing that we had more than this one crossing to make: everything was locked up where the passengers were not allowed to go.

"Our crossing, which lasted only thirteen days, seemed very long to me through all sorts of unpleasantness and uncleanliness on board.

During several days of bad weather which we encountered, the women and children were sick, throwing up everywhere, so much so that we were obliged to leave our cabin and sleep on deck.

There we took our meals much more comfortably than elsewhere, as we decided to wait until all our Greeks had finished their littering."

[Sidenote: Mount Carmel.

] I passed through the Dardanelles, touched at Rhodes, and took a pilot for the Syrian coast.

We were stopped by a calm below the Asiatic continent, almost opposite the old Cape Chelidonia.

We remained two days at sea without knowing where we were.

MY ITINERARY.

"The weather was so fine and the air so mild that all the passengers spent the night on deck.

I had contended for a place on the quarter-deck with two fat caloyers, who yielded it to me only after much grumbling.

I was lying asleep there at six o'clock in the morning on the 30th of September, when I was aroused by a confused noise of voices: I opened my eyes, and saw the pilgrims looking towards the prow of the vessel.

I asked what it was; they shouted '_Signor, il Carmelo!

_' Mount Carmel!

The wind had risen at eight o'clock the previous evening, and we had arrived in sight of the Syrian coast during the night.

As I was sleeping fully dressed, I was soon on my feet, asking the whereabouts of the sacred mountain.

Everyone was eager to point it out to me;

but I perceived nothing, owing to the sun which was beginning to rise opposite to us.

That moment had about it something religious and august: all the pilgrims, their beads in their hands, had remained silently in the same attitude, awaiting the apparition of the Holy Land; the chief of the popes prayed aloud: one heard only that prayer and the sound of the running of the vessel, which the most favourable wind was impelling across a dazzling sea.

From time to time a shout rose from the prow, when one caught sight of Mount Carmel again.

At last I myself perceived the mountain, like a round patch beneath the rays of the sun.

I then went on my knees in the manner of the Latins.

I did not feel the peculiar trouble which I experienced on discovering the coast of Greece: but the sight of the cradle of the Israelites and the native land of the Christians filled me with joy and respect.

I was about to step upon the land of prodigies, near the sources of the most astounding poetry, in the region where, even humanly speaking, the greatest event took place that ever changed the face of the world.

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"The wind dropped at noon; it rose again at four o'clock; but through the ignorance of the pilot we went beyond our aim....

At two o'clock in the afternoon we saw Jaffa again.

"A boat left the shore with three monks.

I stepped into the launch with them; we entered the harbour through an opening effected between the rocks, and dangerous even for a ship's boat.

"The Arabs on the beach came out into the water to their waists, in order to take us on their shoulders.

Then there followed a rather laughable scene: my servant was dressed in a whitish frock-coat; white being the colour of distinction among the Arabs, they deemed that Julien was the sheik.

They caught hold of him and carried him off in triumph, despite his protests, while, thanks to my blue coat, I made my escape humbly on the back of a ragged beggar."

Now let us hear Julien, the principal actor in the scene: JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"What surprised me greatly was to see six Arabs come to carry me on land, while there were only two for Monsieur, which amused him much, to see me carried like a reliquary.

I do not know whether my apparel seemed to them more brilliant than Monsieur's: he wore a brown frock-coat and buttons of the same; mine was whitish, with buttons of white metal which gave off a certain gleam in the bright sunshine: this may, no doubt, have caused the mistake.

"We went, on Wednesday the 1st of October, to the monks of Jaffa, who belong to the Order of Cordeliers, speaking Latin and Italian, but very little French.

They received us very well, and did all that in them lay to procure for us all we needed."

I arrived in Jerusalem.

On the advice of the Fathers of the convent, I passed quickly through the Holy City to go to the Jordan.

After stopping at the monastery at Bethlehem, I set out with an Arab escort;

I stopped at St. Sabas.

At midnight, I found myself on the shore of the Dead Sea.

MY ITINERARY.

"When one travels in Judæa, at first the heart is seized with a great sense of tediousness; but when, as you pass from solitude to solitude, space stretches limitless before your eyes, that feeling gradually wears away, and you experience a secret terror which, far from casting down the soul, gives courage and raises the spirit.

Extraordinary views discover on every side a land laboured by miracles: the burning sun, the swooping eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all the scenes of the Scriptures are there.

Every name contains a mystery; every grotto declares the future; every summit resounds with a prophet's accents.

God Himself has spoken on those shores: the dried-up torrents, the cleft rocks, the half-open tombs testify to the working of wonders; the desert appears to be still mute with terror, and it is as though it had not ventured to break the silence since it heard the voice of the Almighty.

"We descended from the brow of the mountain, in order to go to spend the night on the shore of the Dead Sea, and next to go up to the Jordan[696].

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"We broke up our camp, and made our way for an hour and a half with excessive difficulty through a fine white dust.

We were proceeding towards a small wood of balsam-trees and tamarinds, which I saw to my great astonishment rising from the midst of a sterile soil.

Suddenly the Bethlemites stopped and pointed to something which I had not perceived, at the bottom of a ravine.

Without being able to say what it was, I caught a glimpse as though of a kind of sand moving over the immobility of the soil.

I approached this singular object, and I saw a yellow river which I had some difficulty in distinguishing from the sand of its two banks.

It was deeply embanked, and flowed slowly in a thick stream: it was the Jordan....

"The Bethlemites stripped and plunged into the Jordan.

I did not dare to follow their lead, because of the fever which still troubled me."

[Sidenote: Jerusalem.

] We returned to Jerusalem; Julien was not much struck with the sacred places: like a true philosopher, he was dry[697].

I left Jerusalem, arrived at Jaffa, and took ship for Alexandria.

From Alexandria I went to Cairo, and I left Julien with M. Drovetti, who had the kindness to charter an Austrian vessel for me for Tunis.

Julien continued his journal at Alexandria: "There are Jews here," he says, "who gamble in stocks, as they do wherever they are.

Half a league from the city stands Pompey's Column, which is in reddish granite, mounted on a block of hewn stone."

MY ITINERARY.

"On the 23rd of November, at midday, the wind having become favourable, I went on board the vessel.

I embraced M.

Drovetti on the shore, and we made mutual promises of friendship and remembrance: I am paying my debt to-day.

"We heaved the anchor at two o'clock.

A pilot brought us out of harbour.

The wind was faint and southerly.

We kept for three days within sight of Pompey's Column, which we discovered on the horizon.

On the evening of the third day we heard the evening gun of the port of Alexandria.

This was as it were the signal for our definite departure, for the north wind rose and we made sail for the west.

"On the 1st of December, the wind, veering due west, stopped our way.

Gradually it fell to the south-west and turned into a tempest which did not cease until we reached Tunis.

To occupy my time, I copied out and set in order my notes on this voyage and my descriptions for the _Martyrs.

_ At night, I walked the deck with the mate, Captain Dinelli.

Nights spent amid the waves, on a vessel beaten by the storm, are not barren; the uncertainty of our future gives objects their true value: the land, contemplated from the midst of a tempestuous sea, resembles life as it presents itself to a man about to die[698]."

We continued our voyage and anchored before the Kerkenna Isles.

MY ITINERARY.

"A gale rose, to our great delight, from the south-east, and in five days we arrived in the waters of the island of Malta.

We came into sight of it on Christmas Eve; but, on Christmas Day, the wind, shifting to west-north-west, drove us to the south of Lampedusa.

We remained for eighteen days off the east coast of the Kingdom of Tunis, between life and death.

I shall never in my life forget the day of the 28th.

"We cast anchor before the Kerkenna Isles.

For eight days we lay at anchor in the Gulf of Cabes, where I saw the commencement of the year 1807. Under how many planets and amid what varied fortunes had I already seen the years renew for me, years which pass so quickly or which are so long!

How far away from me were those times of my childhood in which, with a heart beating with joy, I received the paternal blessing and the paternal gifts!

How I used to look forward to New Year's Day!

And now, on a foreign vessel, in the middle of the sea, within sight of a barbarous land, that New Year's Day sped for me without witnesses, without pleasures, without the kisses of my family, without the fond wishes of happiness which a mother shapes with such sincerity for her sons!

That day, born in the womb of the tempests, let fall on my head nought but cares, regrets and silver hairs."

[Sidenote: The Kerkenna Isles.

] Julien is exposed to the same fate, and he rebukes me for one of those fits of impatience of which I have, fortunately, corrected myself.

JULIEN'S ITINERARY.

"We were very near the island of Malta, and we had reason to fear that we might be seen by some English vessel, which could have forced us to enter the harbour; but we encountered none.

Our crew was greatly exhausted, and the wind continued to be unfavourable to us.

The captain, seeing on his chart an anchorage called Kerkenna, from which we were at no great distance, made sail for it without telling Monsieur, who, seeing that we were approaching that anchorage, became angry at not having been consulted, and said to the captain that he ought to continue his course, having been through worse weather.

But we had gone too far to resume our course, and besides, the captain's prudence was highly approved, for that night the wind grew much stronger and the sea very bad.

Finding that we were obliged to remain in the anchoring-place four-and-twenty hours longer than was foreseen, Monsieur gave the captain lively marks of his discontent, in spite of the good reasons which the latter gave him.

"We had been a month at sea, and we only wanted seven or eight hours to reach the port of Tunis.

Suddenly the wind became so violent that we were obliged to stand out to sea, and we remained three weeks without being able to touch the port.

Thereupon Monsieur once more reproached the captain with having wasted thirty-six hours at the anchorage.

It was impossible to persuade him that a greater misfortune would have befallen us if the captain had been less foreseeing.

The misfortune which I anticipated was to see our provisions diminishing, without knowing when we should arrive."

At last I trod Carthaginian soil.

I found the most generous hospitality at the hands of M. and Madame Devoise.

Julien describes my host well;

he also speaks of the country and the Jews: "They pray and weep," says he.

An American man-of-war brig gave me a passage on board, and I crossed the lake of Tunis to go to the port.

"On the way," says Julien, "I asked Monsieur if he had taken the gold which he had put into the writing-table in his bed-room; he told me he had forgotten it, and I was obliged to return to Tunis."

I can never keep money in my mind.

When I arrived from Alexandria, we cast anchor opposite the ruins of the city of Hannibal[699].

I looked at them from the deck without guessing what they were.

I saw a few Moorish huts, a Mussulman hermitage on the point of a prominent head-land, some sheep grazing among ruins, ruins so unapparent that I could hardly distinguish them from the ground on which they stood: that was Carthage.

I visited it before embarking for Europe.

MY ITINERARY.

"From the top of Byrsa, the eye embraces the ruins of Carthage, which are more numerous than is generally believed: they resemble those of Sparta, having nothing in a good state of preservation, but occupying a considerable space.

I saw them in the month of February; the fig-trees, olive-trees, and carobs were already putting out their young leaves;

large angelicas and acanthas formed tufts of verdure among the ruins of marble of every colour.

In the distance, I turned my gaze over the isthmus, a two-fold sea, far islands, a smiling country-side, bluey lakes, azured mountains; I descried forests, ships, aqueducts, Moorish villages, Mohammedan hermitages, minarets, and the white houses of Tunis.

Millions of starlings, gathered into battalions and resembling clouds, flew above my head.

Surrounded by the greatest and most touching memories, I thought of Dido[700], of Sophonisba[701], of Hasdrubal's noble spouse[702]; I viewed the vast plains in which the legions of Hannibal, Scipio[703], and Cæsar[704] lie buried; my eyes tried to recognise the site of the Palace of Utica.

Alas, the remains of the palace of Tiberius[705] still exist at Capri, and we look in vain at Utica for the spot where stood Cato's[706] house!

Lastly, the terrible Vandals, the light Moors passed in turn before my memory, which showed me, as a final picture, St. Louis dying on the ruins of Carthage[707]."

* [Sidenote: The ruins of Carthage.

] Julien, like myself, takes his last view of Africa at Carthage[708].

Julien briefly narrates our passage from Tunis to the Bay of Gibraltar;

from Algeciras he promptly arrives at Cadiz, and from Cadiz at Granada.

Careless of Blanca, he observes only that "the Alhambra and other lofty buildings stand on rocks of immense height."

My own _Itinéraire_ does not give many more details on Granada; I content myself with saying: "The Alhambra seems to me to be worthy of note, even after the temples of Greece.

The valley of Granada is delightful, and much resembles that of Sparta: it is easy to conceive that the Moors regret so fine a country."