Memoirs of Chateaubriand Volume II — Part I Book VIII 2

* My relations with Deboffe in connection with the _Essai sur les révolutions_ had never been completely interrupted, and it was important for me to resume them in London at the earliest possible moment to support my material existence.

But whence had my last misfortune arisen?

From my obstinate bent for silence.

In order to understand this it is necessary to enter into my character.

At no time of my life have I been able to overcome the spirit of reticence and of mental solitude which prevents me from talking of my private affairs.

[Sidenote: My reserved nature.

] No one can state without lying that I have told what most people tell in a moment of pain, pleasure, or vanity.

A name, a confession of any seriousness never issues, or issues but rarely, from my lips.

I never talk to casual people of my interests, my plans, my work, my ideas, my attachments, my joys, my sorrows, being persuaded of the profound weariness which one causes to others by talking of one's self.

Sincere and truthful though I be, I am lacking in openness of heart: my soul incessantly tends to close up; I do not tell anything wholly, and I have never allowed my complete life to transpire, except in these Memoirs.

If I try to begin a story, I am suddenly terrified at the idea of its length; after four words, the sound of my voice becomes unendurable to me, and I am silent.

As I believe in nothing except religion, I distrust everything: malevolence and disparagement are the two distinctive qualities of the French mind; derision and calumny, the certain result of a confidence.

But what have I gained by my reserved nature?

To become, because I was impenetrable, a fantastic something, having no relation with my real being?

My very friends are mistaken in me, when they think that they are making me better known and when they adorn me with the illusions of their love for me.

All the small intellects of the ante-chambers, the public offices, the newspapers, the cafés have assigned ambition to me, whereas I have none at all.

Cold and dry in matters of everyday life, I have nothing of the enthusiast or the sentimentalist: my clear and swift perception quickly pierces men and facts, and strips them of all importance.

Far from carrying me away, from idealizing apposite truths, my imagination disparages the loftiest events and baffles even myself; I see the petty and ridiculous side of things first of all; great geniuses and great things scarcely exist in my eyes.

While I show myself polite, encomiastic and full of admiration for the self-conceited minds which proclaim themselves superior intelligences, my secret contempt laughs at all those faces intoxicated with incense, and covers them with Callot[195] masks.

In politics, the warmth of my opinions has never exceeded the length of my speech or my pamphlet.

In the inner and theoretical life, I am the man of all the dreams; in the outer and practical life, I am the man of realities.

Adventurous and orderly, passionate and methodical, I am the most chimerical and the most positive, the most ardent and the most icy being that ever existed, a whimsical androgynus, formed out of the different blood of my mother and my father.

The portraits, utterly without resemblance, that have been made of me, are due in the main to the reticence of my speech.

The crowd is too thoughtless, too inattentive, to see individuals as they are.

Whenever, by chance, I have endeavoured to rectify some of these false judgments in my prefaces, I have not been believed.

In the ultimate result, all things being indifferent to me, I have not insisted; an "as you please" has always rid me of the irksomeness of persuading anyone or of seeking to establish a truth.

I return to my spiritual tribunal, like a hare to its form: there I resume my contemplation of the moving leaf or the bending blade of grass.

I do not make a virtue of my guardedness, which is as invincible as it is involuntary: although it is not deceitful, it has the appearance of being so; it is not in harmony with natures happier, more amiable, more facile, more candid, more ample, more communicative than mine.

It has often injured me in matters of sentiment and business, because I have never been able to endure explanations, reconciliations brought about by protests and elucidations, lamentations and tears, verbiage and reproaches, details and apologies.

In the case of the Ives family, this obstinate silence of mine concerning myself proved extremely fatal to me.

A score of times Charlotte's mother had inquired into my family and given me the opportunity of speaking openly.

Not foreseeing whither my silence would lead me, I contented myself, as usual, with replying in short, vague sentences.

Had I not been the victim of that odious mental perversity, all misunderstanding would have become impossible, and I should not have appeared to wish to deceive the most generous hospitality; the truth, as I told it at the last moment, did not excuse me: genuine harm had none the less been done.

I resumed my work in the midst of my grief and of the just reproaches with which I covered myself.

I even took pleasure in this work, for it struck me that, by achieving renown, I should be giving the Ives family less cause to repent the interest which they had shown me.

Charlotte, with whom I thus sought to be reconciled through my glory, presided over my studies.

Her image was seated before me while I wrote.

When I raised my eyes from the paper, I lifted them upon the adored image, as though the original were in fact there.

The inhabitants of Ceylon one morning saw the luminary of day rise in extraordinary splendour; its orb opened out, and from it issued a dazzling being, who said to the Cingalese: "I have come to reign over you."

Charlotte, issuing from a ray of light, reigned over me.

Let us leave these memories; memories grow old and dim like hopes.

My life is about to change, to speed under other skies, in other valleys.

First love of my youth, you flee with all your charms!

I have just seen Charlotte again, it is true; but after how many years did I see her again?

Sweet glimpse of the past, pale rose of the twilight which borders the night, long after the sun has set!

* [Sidenote: The _Essai Historique.

_] Life has often been represented (by me first of all) as a mountain which we climb on one side and descend on the other: it would be as true to compare it to an Alp, to the bare, ice-crowned summit which has no reverse.

Following up this figure, the traveller always climbs upwards and never down; he then sees more clearly the space which he has covered, the paths which he has not taken, although by doing so he could have risen by a gentler slope: he looks down with sorrow and regret upon the point where he commenced to stray.

Thus I must mark at the publication of the _Essai historique_ the first step which led me out of the peaceful road.

I finished the first part of the great work which I had planned; I wrote the last word between the idea of death (I had fallen ill again) and a vanished dream: _In somnis venit imago conjugis.

_[196] The _Essai_, printed by Baylis, was published by Deboffe in 1797[197].

This date marks one of the turning-points in my life.

There are moments at which our destiny, whether because it yields to society, or obeys the laws of nature, or begins to make us what we shall have to remain, suddenly turns aside from its first line, like a river which changes its course with a sudden bend.

The _Essai_ offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist, a publicist, and a politician.

To say that I hoped, in so far at least as I am capable of hoping, to make a great success with the work, goes without saying: we authors, petty prodigies of a prodigious era, make a claim to keep up intelligence with future races; but we do not, I firmly believe, know where posterity lives, and we put the wrong address.

When we grow numb in our graves, death will freeze our words, written or sung, so hard that they will not melt like the "frozen words" of Rabelais.

The _Essai_ was to be a sort of historical encyclopædia.

The only volume published is in itself a fairly wide inquiry; I had the sequel in manuscript; then came, beside the researches and annotations of the annalist, the lays and roundelays of the poet, the _Natchez_, and so on.

I am hardly able to understand to-day how I could give myself up to such extensive studies amid an active wandering life, subject to so many reverses.

My obstinacy in working explains this fertility: in my young days I often wrote for twelve or fifteen hours without leaving the table at which I sat, scratching out and recommencing the same page ten times over.

Age has not caused me to lose any part of this faculty of application: to this day my diplomatic correspondence, which in no way interrupts my literary composition, is entirely from my own hand.

The _Essai_ made a stir among the Emigration: it was opposed to the opinions of my companions in misfortune; in the different social positions which I have occupied, my independence has nearly always offended the men with whom I went.

I have by turns been the leader of different armies of which the soldiers did not belong to my side: I have led the Old Royalists to the conquest of the public liberties, and especially of the liberty of the press, which they detested; I have rallied the Liberals, in the name of that same liberty, to the standard of the Bourbons, whom they hold in abhorrence.

As it happened, Emigrant opinion attached itself to my person through self-love: the English reviews having spoken of me with praise, the commendation was reflected over the whole body of the "faithful."

I had sent copies of the _Essai_ to La Harpe, Ginguené, and de Sales.

Lemierre[198], nephew of the poet of the same name[199], and translator of Gray's _Poems_, wrote to me from Paris, on the 15th of July 1797, that my _Essai_ had had the greatest success.

One thing is certain, that, if the _Essai_ became for a moment known, it was almost immediately forgotten: a sudden shadow swallowed up the first ray of my glory.

[Sidenote: Mrs. O'Larry.

] As I had become almost a personage, the upper Emigration began to seek me out in London.

I made my way from street to street; I first left Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, and advanced as far as the Hampstead Road.

Here I stopped for some months at the house of Mrs. O'Larry, an Irish widow, the mother of a very pretty daughter of fourteen, and tenderly devoted to cats.

Linked by this common passion, we had the misfortune to lose two beautiful kittens, white all over, like two ermines, with black tips to their tails.

Mrs. O'Larry was visited by old ladies of the neighbourhood with whom I was obliged to drink tea in the old-fashioned style.

Madame de Staël has depicted this scene in _Corinne_ at Lady Edgermond's: "'My dear, do you think the water has boiled long enough to pour it on the tea?'

"'My dear, I think it is a little too early[200].'

" There also came to these evenings a tall and beautiful young Irishwoman, called Mary Neale, in the charge of her guardian.

She noticed a wound lurking in my gaze, for she said to me: "You carry your heart in a sling."

I carried my heart anyhow.

Mrs. O'Larry left for Dublin; then, moving once more from the neighbourhood of the colony of the poor Emigration of the east, I arrived, from lodging to lodging, in the quarter of the rich Emigration of the west, among the bishops, the Court families, and the West Indian planters.

Peltier had come back to me: he had got married as a joke; he was the same boaster as always, lavishly obliging, and frequenting his neighbours' pockets rather than their society.

I made several new acquaintances, particularly in the society in which I had family connections: Christian de Lamoignon[201], who had been seriously wounded in the leg in the engagement at Quiberon, and who is now my colleague in the House of Lords, became my friend.

He presented me to Mrs. Lindsay, who was attached to Auguste de Lamoignon[202], his brother: the Président Guillaume[203] was not installed in this fashion at Basville, in the midst of Boileau[204], Madame de Sévigné, and Bourdaloue[205].

Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of character: the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the fireside of the last of the Ninons[206].

The old monarchy was going under, with all its abuses and all its graces.

It will be dug up one day, like those skeletons of queens, decked with necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings, which they exhume in Etruria.

At Mrs. Lindsay's I met M. Malouet[207] and Madame du Belloy, a woman worthy of affection, the Comte de Montlosier and the Chevalier de Panat[208].

The last had a well-earned reputation for wit, dirtiness, and gluttony; he belonged to that audience of men of taste who used formerly to sit with folded arms in the presence of French society: idlers whose mission was to look on at everything and criticize everything; they exercised the functions which the newspapers fulfill to-day, without the same bitterness, but also without attaining their great popular influence.

[Sidenote: The Comte de Montlosier.

] Montlosier continued to ride cock-horse on his famous phrase of the "wooden cross," a phrase somewhat smoothed down by me, when I revived it, but true at bottom.

On leaving France he went to Coblentz: he was badly received by the Princes, had a quarrel, fought a duel at night on the bank of the Rhine, and was run through.

Being unable to move and quite unable to see, he asked the seconds if the point of the sword was sticking out behind: "Only three inches," said they, feeling him.

"Then it's nothing," replied Montlosier.

"Sir, withdraw your weapon."

Thus badly received for his royalism, Montlosier went to England, and took refuge in literature, the great almshouse of the Emigrants, in which I had a pallet next to his.

He obtained the editorship of the _Courrier français.

_[209] In addition to his newspaper, he wrote physico-politico-philosophical works: in one of these works he proved that blue is the colour of life, because our veins turn blue after death, life coming to the surface of the body in order to evaporate and return to the blue sky; as I am very fond of blue, I was quite charmed.

Feudally liberal, aristocratic and democratic, with a motley mind, made up of shreds and patches, Montlosier is delivered, with difficulty, of incongruous ideas; but, once he has succeeded in extricating them from their after-birth, they are sometimes fine, above all energetic: an anti-clerical as a noble, a Christian through sophistry and as a lover of the olden times, he would, in the days of paganism, have been an eager partisan of freedom in theory and of slavery in practice, and would have had the slave thrown to the lampreys in the name of the liberty of the human race.

Wrong-headed, cavilling, stiff-necked, and hirsute, the ex-deputy of the nobles of Riom nevertheless indulges in condescendences to the powers that be; he knows how to look after his interests, but he does not suffer others to perceive this, and he shelters his weaknesses as a man beneath his honour as a gentleman.

I

do not wish to speak ill of my "smoky Auvernat," with his novels of the _Mont-d'Or_ and his polemics of the _Plaine_; I like his heteroclitous person.

His long and obscure setting forth and twisting of ideas, with parentheses, clearings of the throat, and tremulous "oh, ohs," bore me (I abominate the tenebrous, the involved, the vaporous, the laborious);

but, on the other hand, I am amused by this naturalist of volcanoes, this abortive Pascal, this mountain orator who holds forth in the tribune as his little fellow-countrymen sing in the chimney-tops[210];

I love this gazetteer of peat-bogs and castle-keeps, this Liberal explaining the Charter through a Gothic window, this shepherd-lord half married to his milkmaid, himself sowing his barley in the snow, in his little pebbly field; I shall always thank him for dedicating to me, in his chalet in the Puy-de-Dôme, an old black rock taken from a cemetery of the Gauls discovered by himself.

The Abbé Delille, another fellow-countryman of Sidonius Apollinarius, of the Chancelier de l'Hospital, of La Fayette, of Thomas, of Chamfort[211], had also come to settle in London, after being driven from the Continent by the inundation of the Republican victories.

The Emigration was proud to number him in its ranks: he sang our misfortunes, a reason the more for loving his muse.

He did a great deal of work; he could not help himself, for Madame Delille locked him up and did not release him until he had earned his day's keep by writing a certain number of verses.

I called on him one day, and was kept waiting; then he appeared with very red cheeks: it is said that Madame Delille used to box his ears; I know nothing about it; I only say what I saw.

Who has not heard the Abbé Delille recite his verses?

He told a very good story: his ugly, irregular features, lit up by his imagination, went admirably with his affected delivery, with the character of his talent, and with his clerical profession.

The Abbé Delille's masterpiece is his translation of the _Georgics_, with the exception of the sentimental pieces; but it is as though you were reading Racine translated into the language of Louis XV.

[Sidenote: The Abbé Delille.

] The literature of the eighteenth century, saving a few fine talents which dominate it, standing as it does between the classical literature of the seventeenth century and the romantic literature of the nineteenth, without lacking naturalness lacks nature; given up wholly to arrangements of words, it was neither sufficiently original as a new school, nor sufficiently pure as an ancient school.

The Abbé Delille was the poet of the modern country-houses, in the same way as the troubadours were the poets of the old castles; the verses of the one and the ballads of the other point the difference which existed between aristocracy in its prime and aristocracy in its decrepitude: the abbé describes the pleasures of reading and chess in the manor-houses in which the troubadours sang of tourneys and crusades.

The distinguished persons of our Church militant were at that time in England: the Abbé Carron, who wrote the life of my sister Julie; the Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon[212], a stern and narrow-minded prelate, who contributed more and more to estrange M. le Comte d'Artois from his country; the Archbishop of Aix[213], slandered perhaps because of his success in society; another learned and pious bishop, but so avaricious that, had he had the misfortune to lose his soul, he would never have bought it back.

Nearly all misers are men of wit: I must be a great fool.

Among the Frenchwomen in the West End was Madame de Boigne[214], amiable, witty, filled with talent, extremely pretty, and the youngest of them all; she has since, together with her father, the Marquis d'Osmond[215], represented the Court of France in England much better than my unsociability has done.

She is writing now, and her talents will reproduce admirably all that she has seen[216].

Mesdames de Caumont[217], de Gontaut[218], and du Cluzel also inhabited the quarter of the exiled felicities, if at least I am mistaking Madame de Caumont and Madame du Cluzel, both of whom I had seen for a moment in Brussels.

What is quite certain is that Madame la Duchesse de Duras[219] was in London at that time: I was not to know her till ten years later.

How often in one's life one passes by that which would constitute its charm, even as the navigator cuts through the waters of a heaven-favoured land which he has only missed by one horizon and one day's sail!

I am writing this on the banks of the Thames, and to-day a letter will go by post to tell Madame de Duras, on the banks of the Seine, that I have come across my first memory of her.

* From time to time the Revolution sent us Emigrants of new kinds and opinions; different layers of exiles were formed: the earth contains beds of sand or clay left behind by the waves of the Deluge.

One of those waves brought me a man whose loss I mourn to-day, a man who was my guide in literature, and whose friendship was both one of the honours and one of the consolations of my life.

You have read, in an earlier book of these Memoirs, that I had known M.

de Fontanes in 1789: it was in Berlin, last year, that I learnt the news of his death.

He was born at Niort of a noble Protestant family: his father had had the misfortune to kill his brother-in-law in a duel.

Young Fontanes, brought up by a brother of great merit, came to Paris.

He saw Voltaire[220] die, and that great representative of the eighteenth century inspired his first verses: his poetic attempts attracted the notice of La Harpe.

He undertook some work for the stage, and became intimate with a charming actress, Mademoiselle Desgarcins.

Living near the Odéon, wandering around the Chartreuse he celebrated its solitude.

He had made a friend destined to become mine, M. Joubert[221].

When the Revolution occurred, the poet became entangled with one of those stationary parties which always remain torn by the progressive party which pulls them forwards and the retrograde party which draws them back.

The monarchists attached M. de Fontanes to the staff of the _Modérateur.

_ When the bad days began, he took refuge at Lyons, where he married.

His wife was confined of a son: during the siege of the town, which the revolutionaries had called "Commune-Affranchie[222]," in the same way as Louis XI.

, when banishing the citizens, had called Arras "Ville-Franchise[223]," Madame de Fontanes was obliged to move her nursling's cradle in order to place it within shelter from the bombs.

Returning to Paris after the 9 Thermidor, M. de Fontanes established the _Mémorial_[224] with M. de La Harpe and the Abbé de Vauxelles[225].

He was proscribed on the 18 Fructidor, and England became his haven of refuge.

[Sidenote: The Marquis de Fontanes.

] M.

de Fontanes, together with Chénier, was the last writer of the classic school in the elder line: his prose and verse resemble each other and have a similar merit.

His thoughts and images have a melancholy unknown to the century of Louis XIV.

, which knew only the austere and holy sadness of religious eloquence.

That melancholy is mingled with the works of the chanter of the _Jours des Morts_, as it were the imprint of the period in which he lived: it fixes the date of his coming; it shows that he was born after Rousseau, while connected by taste with Fénelon.

If the writings of M. de Fontanes were reduced to two very small volumes, one of prose, the other of verse, it would be the most graceful funeral monument that could be raised upon the tomb of the classic school[226].

Among the papers which my friend left are several cantoes of his poem of the _Grèce Sauvée_, books of odes, scattered poems, and so on.

He would not have published any more himself: for that critic, so acute, so enlightened, so impartial when not blinded by his political opinions, had a horrible dread of criticism.

He was superlatively unjust to Madame de Staël. An envious article by Garat[227] on the _Forêt de Navarre_ almost stopped him short at the outset of his political career.

Fontanes, so soon as he appeared, killed the affected school of Dorat[228], but he was unable to restore the classic school, which was hastening to its end together with the language of Racine[229].

If one thing in the world was likely to be antipathetic to M. de Fontanes, it was my manner of writing.

With me began the so-called romantic school, a revolution in French literature: nevertheless, my friend, instead of revolting against my barbarism, became enamoured of it.

I could see a great wonderment on his face when I read to him fragments of the _Natchez, Atala_ and _René_; he was unable to bring those productions within the scope of the common rules of criticism, but he felt that he was entering into a new world; he saw a new form of nature; he understood a language which he could not speak.

He gave me excellent advice; I owe to him such correctness of style as I possess;

he taught me to respect the reader's ear; he prevented me from falling into the extravagance of invention and the ruggedness of execution of my disciples.

It was a great joy to me to see him again in London, received with open arms by the Emigration; they asked him for cantoes from the _Grèce Sauvée_; they crowded to hear him.

He came to live near me; we became inseparable.

We were present together at a scene worthy of those days of misfortune: Cléry[230], who had lately landed, read us his Memoirs in manuscript.

Imagine the emotion of an audience of exiles, listening to the valet of Louis XVI.

telling, as an eye-witness, of the sufferings and death of the prisoner of the Temple!

The Directory, alarmed by Cléry's Memoirs, published an interpolated edition, in which it made the author talk like a lackey and Louis XVI.

like a street-porter: this is, perhaps, one of the dirtiest of all the instances of revolutionary turpitude.

[Sidenote: Emigrant society.

] M.

du Theil[231], who had charge of the affairs of M. le Comte d'Artois in London, had hastened to seek out Fontanes; the latter asked me to take him to the agent of the Princes.

We found him surrounded by all the defenders of the Throne and the Altar who were idling about Piccadilly, by a crowd of spies and sharpers who had escaped from Paris under various names and disguises, and by a swarm of adventurers, Belgians, Germans, Irishmen, dealers in the Counter-revolution.

In a corner of the crowd was a man of thirty or thirty-two, at whom nobody looked, and who himself seemed interested only in an engraving of the Death of General Wolfe.

Struck by his appearance, I asked who he was: one of my neighbours answered: "It's nobody; it's a Vendean peasant who has brought a letter from his leaders."

This man, who was "nobody," had seen the deaths of Cathelineau[232], the first general of the Vendée and a peasant like himself; Bonchamps, in whom Bayard had come to life again; Lescure[233], armed with a hair-cloth which was not bullet-proof; d'Elbée[234], shot in an armchair, his wounds not permitting him to embrace death standing; La Rochejacquelein[235], whose body was ordered to be "verified" in order to reassure the Convention in the midst of its victories.

That man, who was "nobody," had assisted at two hundred captures and recaptures of towns, villages, and redoubts, at seven hundred skirmishes, and seventeen pitched battles; he had fought against three hundred thousand regular troops and six or seven hundred thousand recruits and national guards; he had assisted in taking one hundred guns and fifty thousand muskets; he had passed through the "infernal columns," companies of incendiaries commanded by Conventional; he had been in the midst of the ocean of fire which, three several times, rolled its waves over the woods of the Vendée; lastly, he had seen three hundred thousand Hercules of the plough, the associates of his work, die, and one hundred square leagues of fertile country change into a desert of ashes.

The two Frances met upon this soil levelled by them.

All that remained in blood and memory of the France of the Crusades fought against the new blood and hopes of the France of the Revolution.

The conqueror recognised the greatness of the conquered.

Turreau[236], the Republican general, declared that "the Vendeans would take their place in history in the first rank of soldier peoples."

Another general wrote to Merlin de Thionville[237]: "Troops which have beaten such Frenchmen as those may well hope to beat all other nations."

The legions of Probus[238], in their song, said as much of our fathers.

Bonaparte called the combats of the Vendée "combats of giants."

[Sidenote: A Vendean peasant.

] In the crowd in the parlour, I was the only one to look with admiration and respect upon the representative of those ancient "Jacques[239]," who, while breaking the yoke of their lords, repelled the foreign invasion under Charles V. [240]: I seemed to see a child of the Commons of the time of Charles VII.

[241], who, with the small provincial nobility, foot by foot, furrow by furrow, reconquered the soil of France.

He wore the indifferent air of the savage; his look was grey and inflexible as steel rod; his lower lip trembled over his clenched teeth; his hair hung down from his head like a mass of torpid snakes, ready, however, to dart erect again; his arms, hanging by his sides, gave nervous jerks to a pair of huge fists slashed with sword-cuts: one would have taken him for a sawyer.

His physiognomy expressed a homely, rustic nature, employed, by force of manners, in the service of interests and ideas contrary to that nature; the native fidelity of the vassal, the Christian's simple faith were mingled with the rough plebeian independence accustomed to value itself and to take the law into its own hands.

The feeling of liberty in him seemed to be merely the consciousness of the strength of his hand and the intrepidity of his heart.

He spoke no more than a lion; he scratched himself like a lion, yawned like a lion, sat on his flank like a bored lion, and seemed to dream of blood and forests.

What men, in every party, were the French of that time, and what a race are we to-day!

But the Republicans had their principle in themselves, in the midst of themselves, while the principle of the Royalists was outside France.

The Vendeans sent deputations to the exiles; the giants sent to ask leaders of the pigmies.

The rude messenger upon whom I gazed had seized the Revolution by the throat and cried: "Enter; pass behind me; she will not hurt you; she shall not move; I have got hold of her!"

No one was willing to pass: then Jacques Bonhomme let go the Revolution, and Charette[242] broke his sword.

* While I was making these reflections on this tiller of the soil, as I had made others of a different kind at the sight of Mirabeau and Danton, Fontanes obtained a private audience of him whom he pleasantly called "the controller-general of finance:" he came out of it greatly satisfied, for M. du Theil had promised to encourage the publication of my works, and Fontanes thought only of me.

It was impossible to be a better man than he: timid where he himself was concerned, he became all courage in matters of friendship; he proved this to me at the time of my resignation on the occasion of the death of the Duc d'Enghien[243].

In conversation, he burst into ludicrous fits of literary rage.

In politics, he reasoned falsely: the crimes of the Convention had inspired him with a horror of liberty.

He detested the newspapers, the band of false philosophers, the whole science of ideas, and he communicated that hatred to Bonaparte, when he became connected with the master of Europe.

We went for walks in the country; we stopped under some of those spreading elm-trees scattered about the fields.

Leaning against the trunk of these elms, my friend told me of his early journey to England before the Revolution, and of the verses he then addressed to two young ladies who had grown old in the shadow of the towers of Westminster: towers which he found standing as he had left them, while at their base lay buried the illusions and the hours of his youth.

We often dined at some solitary tavern in Chelsea, on the Thames, where we talked of Milton and Shakespeare: they had seen what we saw; they had sat, like ourselves, on the bank of that stream, a foreign stream to us, the national stream to them.

We returned to London, at night, by the faltering rays of the stars, drowned one after the other in the fog of the city.

We reached our lodging, guided by uncertain glimmers which scarcely showed us the road across the coal smoke hovering red around every lamp: thus speeds the poet's life.

We saw London in detail; as an old exile, I acted as _cicerone_ to the new recruits of banishment which the Revolution demanded, young or old: there is no legal age for misfortune.

In the course of one of these excursions, we were surprised by a rain-storm, mingled with thunder, and obliged to take shelter in the passage of a mean house, of which the door had been left open by accident.

There we met the Duc de Bourbon[244]: I saw for the first time, at this Chantilly[245], a prince who was not yet the Last of the Condés. [Sidenote: The Duc of Bourbon.

] The Duc de Bourbon, Fontanes and I, all three outlaws, seeking a shelter from the same storm, on foreign soil, under a poor man's roof!

_Fata viam invenient.

_ Fontanes was recalled to France.

He embraced me, expressing wishes for a speedy meeting.

On arriving in Germany, he wrote me the following letter: "28 July 1798. "If you have experienced any regrets at my departure from London, I swear to you that mine have been no less real.

You are the second person in whom, in the course of my life, I have found an imagination and a heart corresponding to my own.

I shall never forget the consolation you brought me in exile and in a foreign land.

My fondest and most constant thoughts, since I have left you, have turned upon the Natchez.

What you have read to me, especially of recent days, is admirable and will not leave my memory.

But the charm of the poetic ideas which you left in my mind disappeared for a moment on my arrival in Germany.

"The most hideous news from France followed on that which I showed you on leaving you.

I spent five or six days in the cruellest perplexity.

I even feared for persecutions directed against my family.

My fears are now greatly diminished.

The evil has even been very slight; they threaten rather than strike, and it is not those of my 'date' whom they wish to see exterminated.

The last post has brought me assurances of peace and good-will.

I can continue my journey, and shall set out early next month.

I shall live near the Forest of Saint-Germain, among my family, Greece, and my books: why can I not also say the _Natchez!

_ The unexpected storm which has just taken place in Paris was due, I am certain, to the follies of the agents and leaders you know of.

I have a clear proof of this in my hands.

Convinced as I am of this, I am writing to Great Pulteney Street[246] with all possible politeness, but also with all the caution which prudence demands.

I wish to escape all correspondence in the coming month, and I leave the greatest doubt upon the steps which I am going to take and the residence which I intend to select.

"For the rest, I am again speaking of you in the accents of friendship, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that the hopes of future usefulness which they may place in me may revive the favourable dispositions which they showed me in this matter, and which are so certainly due to your person and your great talents.

Work, work, my dear friend, and become illustrious.

You have it in your power: the future is in your hands.

I hope that the word so often given by the 'controller-general of finance' has been at least in part redeemed.

That part consoles me, for I cannot bear the thought of a fine work delayed for the sake of a little assistance.

Write to me; let our hearts be in communication, let our muses remain ever friends.

Do not doubt but that, when I am able to move about freely in my country, I shall prepare a hive and flowers for you beside my own.

My attachment is unalterable.

I shall be alone so long as I am not with you.

Talk to me of your work.

I want to gladden you in conclusion: I wrote half of a new canto on the banks of the Elbe, and I am better pleased with it than with all the rest.

"Farewell, I embrace you tenderly, and am your friend.

"FONTANES."

Fontanes tells me that he wrote verses on changing the spot of his banishment.

One can never take everything from the poet: he takes his lyre with him.

Leave the swan his wings; each evening unknown streams will re-echo the melodious plaints which he would rather have sung to Eurotas.

"The future is in your hands": did Fontanes speak truly?

Am I to congratulate myself on his prophecy?

Alas!

That promised future is already past: shall I have another?

* [Sidenote: Death of Fontanes.

] This first and affectionate letter from the first friend whom I had in my life, the friend who walked by my side for twenty-three years from the date of that letter, reminds me painfully of my gradual isolation.

Fontanes is no more; a profound sorrow, the tragic death of a son, cast him into an untimely grave.

Almost all the persons of whom I have spoken in these Memoirs have disappeared; I am keeping an obituary register.

A few years more and I, doomed to catalogue the dead, shall leave none to write my name in the book of the departed.

But if it must be that I remain alone, if not one being who has loved me is to stay by me to lead me to my last resting-place, I have less need than another of a guide: I have inquired the road, I have studied the places through which I should have to pass; I wished to see what happens at the last moment.

Often, by the side of a pit into which a coffin was being lowered with ropes, I have heard the death-rattle of those ropes; next, I have caught the sound of the first spadeful of earth falling on the coffin: at each new spadeful the hollow sound decreased; the earth, as it filled up the vault, gradually drove the eternal silence to the surface of the grave.

Fontanes, you wrote to me, "Let our muses remain ever friends:" you have not written to me in vain.

[146] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in December 1846. --T.

[147] The anniversary dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern, 21 May 1822. --T.

[148] The amount of M. de Chateaubriand's donation was £20. --T.

[149] Field-Marshal Frederick Duke of York and Albany, Bishop of Osnaburg, K. G.

(1763-1827), second son of George III.

, and Commander-in-Chief of the army.

A military commander of no capacity;

four defeats stand to his debit: Hondschoote (8th September 1793), Turcoing (1794), Alxmaar (1799), Castricum (1799), not to mention the scandals in connection with Mrs. Clarke and the sale of commissions in the army.

--T.

[150] Edward Adolphus Seymour, eleventh Duke of Somerset, K. G.

(1775-1855).

--T.

[151] Vice-Admiral George Byng, sixth Viscount Torrington (1768-1831).

--T.

[152] William Powlett Orde-Powlett, second Lord Bolton (1782-1850).

--T.

[153] George Canning (1770-1827), appointed Viceroy of India, but did not take up the appointment.

He became Premier in 1827. --T.

[154] _Times_, 22nd May 1822. Chateaubriand had asked Canning to return thanks on his behalf for the toast of "the illustrious foreign personages who honoured the society with their company."

These were Chateaubriand and the Tripolitan Ambassador, who also "returned thanks through the medium of another gentleman."

--T.

[155] Canning entered Parliament as a member of Pitt's party in 1793, and joined his ministry as Under-Secretary of State in 1796. Pitt used to speak of Canning and Arthur Wellesley as "the boys."

--T.

[156] Marie Joseph Annibal de Bedée, Comte de La Boüétardais (1758-1809).

He emigrated in 1790, after the death of his wife, never returned to France, and died in London, 6 January 1809. --B.

[157] Dr. Edmund Goodwyn (1756-1829), author of _Dissertatio Medica de morte Submersorum_ (1786), and of a translation of the same work in English (1788).

He is supposed to have been the original of Thackeray's Dr. Goodenough.

--T.

[158] "For the rest, my health, disturbed by much travel and many cares, vigils and studies, is so deplorable that I fear I shall be unable to fulfil forthwith my promise concerning the other volumes of the _Essai historique.

_"--B.

[159] _Essai historique sur les révolutions_, Book I. part i.

, Introduction.

--B.

[160] One of Peltier's first pamphlets, published October 1789, and denouncing the Duc d'Orléans and Mirabeau as the principal authors of the day's work of the 5th and 6th of October.

--B.

[161] Henri Christophe (1767-1820), King of Haiti under the title of Henry I. He led the negro insurrection in 1790, caused himself to be proclaimed President in 1806, assumed the title of Emperor in 1811, and reigned until 1820, when he committed suicide to escape being put to death by his subjects.

--T.

[162] Peltier was paid his salary as Haitian Minister by shipments of sugar and coffee, the sale of which brought him in some eight thousand pounds a year.

One of his epigrams against Louis XVIII.

, who received him coldly after the Restoration, happening to be applicable to Christophe, the supplies were stopped together with his ministerial powers, and he died a poor man.

--B.

[163] François Dominique Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier (1755-1838).

He came to London after going through the campaign of the Princes, and became editor, not of the _Courrier français_, but of the _Courrier de Londres_, which had been founded by the Abbé de Calonne.

--B.

[164] Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was buried in Westminster, but dug up at the Restoration, hanged at Tyburn, and buried under the gallows.

--T.

[165] The remains of King Charles I. are buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

--T.

[166] Robert, Count of Artois ( 1287-1343), endeavoured to recover from his brother-in-law, Philip VI.