Memoirs of Chateaubriand Volume V — Book I Part 3

At the time of the plague of Athens, in the year 431 before our era, already twenty-two great plagues had ravaged the world.

The Athenians imagined that their wells had been poisoned: a popular fancy renewed in all contagions.

Thucydides has left us a description of the Attic scourge which has been copied, among the ancients, by Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan[376]; among the moderns, by Boccaccio[377] and Manzoni.

It is a remarkable thing that, when writing of the plague of Athens, Thucydides does not say a word of Hippocrates[378], in the same way as he does not name Socrates in connection with Alcibiades.

This pestilence first attacked the head, descended to the stomach, thence to the bowels, lastly to the legs; if it went out by the feet, after passing through the whole body, like a long serpent, the patient recovered.

Hippocrates called it the "divine evil" and Thucydides the "sacred fire:" they both regarded it as the fire of the heavenly wrath.

One of the most dreadful plagues was that of Constantinople, in the fifth century, under the reign of Justinian: Christianity had already modified the imagination of the peoples and given a new character to a calamity, even as it had changed poetry; the sick seemed to see ghosts hover around them and to hear threatening voices.

The black plague of the fourteenth century, known by the name of the Black Death, took rise in China: it was imagined that it moved rapidly in the shape of a fiery vapour, while spreading a noxious smell.

It carried off four-fifths of the inhabitants of Europe.

In 1575, descended upon Milan the contagion which immortalized the charity of St Charles Borromeo.

Fifty-four years later, in 1629, that unfortunate city was again exposed to the calamities of which Manzoni[379] has made a painting far superior to the celebrated picture by Boccaccio.

In 1660, the scourge was renewed in Europe and, in those two pestilences of 1629 and 1660, were reproduced the same symptoms of delirium as in the plague of Constantinople.

"Marseilles," says M. Lemontey[380], "was in 1720 concluding the festivals which had signalized the passage of Mademoiselle de Valois[381], married to the Duke of Modena[382].

Beside the galleys still decorated with garlands and filled with musicians lay some vessels which brought from the ports of Syria the most terrible calamity."

The fatal ship of which M. Lemontey speaks, having exhibited a clean bill, was for a moment admitted to pratique.

That moment was enough to poison the air: a storm increased the evil, and the plague spread to the crash of thunder.

The gates of the city and the windows of the houses were closed.

In the midst of the general silence, sometimes a window was heard to open and a corpse to fall.

The walls streamed with its cankered blood, and dogs without a master waited below to devour it.

In one quarter, all of whose inhabitants had died, they had been walled up at home, as though to prevent death from leaving the house.

From these avenues of great family-tombs, one came to open places in which the pavement was covered with sick and dying persons stretched on mattresses and abandoned without aid.

Carcases lay half rotten with old clothes mixed with mud;

other corpses stood upright against the walls, in the attitude in which they had expired.

All had fled, even the doctors; the bishop, M. de Belsunce[383], wrote: "They ought to abolish the doctors, or at least to give us abler and less timorous ones.

I have had great difficulty in having one hundred and fifty half-rotten corpses, which were lying around my house, removed."

[Sidenote: Earlier plagues.

] One day, the galley-slaves hesitated to fulfil their funeral functions: the apostle climbed into one of the tumbrils, sat down on a heap of corpses and ordered the convicts to proceed; death and virtue went off to the cemetery, drawn by vice and crime filled with dread and admiration.

On the Esplanade de la Tourette, beside the sea, bodies had been lying for three weeks; and these, exposed to the sun and melted by its rays, offered merely an infected lake to the sight On this surface of liquefied flesh, only the worms imparted some movement to crushed, vague forms which might possess human shape.

When the contagion began to relax, M. de Belsunce, at the head of his clergy, repaired to the church of the _Accoules_; mounting on an esplanade commanding a view of Marseilles, the harbours and the sea, he gave the benediction, even as the Pope, in Rome, blesses the city and the world: what braver and purer hand could there be to bring down the blessings of Heaven upon so many misfortunes?

It was thus that the plague devastated Marseilles and, five years after these calamities, the following inscription was placed upon the frontage of the Town Hall, resembling the pompous epitaphs which we read on a sepulchre: MASSILIA PHOCENSIUM FILIA, ROMÆ SOROR, CARTHAGINIS TERROR,

ATHENARUM ÆMULA.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _May_ 1832. The cholera, starting from the delta of the Ganges in 1817, has spread over a space measuring 2,200 leagues from north to south and 3,500 leagues from east to west; it has wasted 1,400 towns and mowed down 40,000,000 inhabitants.

We have a chart tracing the conqueror's march.

It has taken fifteen years to come from India to Paris: this means going as fast as Bonaparte; the latter occupied almost the same number of years in passing from Cadiz to Moscow, and he caused the death of only two or three millions of men.

What is the cholera?

Is it a mortal wind?

Is it insects which we swallow and which devour us?

What is this great black death armed with its scythe which, crossing mountains and seas, has come, like one of those terrible pagodas worshipped on the shores of the Ganges, to crush us under its chariot-wheels on the banks of the Seine?

If this scourge had fallen in the midst of us in a religious age, if it had spread amid the poetry of manners and of popular beliefs, it would have left a striking picture behind it.

Imagine a pall waving by way of a flag from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame; the cannon firing single shots at intervals to warn the imprudent traveller to turn back; a cordon of troops surrounding the city and allowing none to enter or leave;

the churches filled with a growing multitude; the priests, by day and night, chanting the prayers of a perpetual agony; the Viaticum carried from house to house with bell and candle; the church-bells incessantly tolling the funeral knell; the monks, crucifix in hand, in the open places, summoning the people to repentance, preaching the wrath and judgment of God, made manifest by the corpses already blackened by Hell's fires.

Then the closed shops; the pontiff, surrounded by his clergy, going, with each rector at the head of his parish, to fetch the shrine of St. Geneviève; the sacred relics carried round the town, preceded by the long procession of the different religious orders, brotherhoods, corporations, congregations of penitents, associations of veiled women, scholars of the University, ministers of the alms-houses, soldiers marching without arms or with pikes reversed; the Miserere chanted by the priests mingling with the hymns of girls and children: all, at certain signals, prostrating themselves in silence and rising to utter fresh complaints.

There was none of all this with us: the cholera came to us in an age of philanthropy, of incredulity, of newspapers, of material administration[384].

This scourge devoid of imagination came upon no old cloisters, nor monks, nor cellars, nor Gothic tombs: like the Terror of 1793, it stalked abroad with a mocking air, in the light of day, in a quite new world, accompanied by its bulletin, which recited the remedies that had been employed against it, the number of victims that it had made, how matters stood, the hopes that were entertained of seeing it come to an end, the precautions that had to be taken to ensure one's self against it, what one should eat, how one ought to dress.

And every one continued to attend to his business, and the theatres were filled.

I have seen drunkards at the barrier, seated outside the pot-house door, drinking, at a little wooden table, and saying, as they raised their glasses: "Here's your health, Morbus!"

[Sidenote: The visitation of 1832. ] Morbus, out of gratitude, came running up, and they fell dead under the table.

The children played at cholera, calling it "Nicholas Morbus" and "Morbus the Rascal."

And yet the cholera had its terrible side: the brilliant sunshine, the indifference of the crowd, the ordinary course of life, which was continued everywhere, gave a new character and a different sort of frightfulness to those days of pestilence.

You felt uncomfortable in every limb; you were parched by a cold, dry north wind; the atmosphere had a certain metallic flavour which hurt the throat.

In the Rue du Cherche-Midi, wagons of the artillery-depot were used to cart away the dead bodies.

In the Rue de Sèvres, which was completely devastated, especially on one side, the hearses came and went from door to door; there were not enough of them to satisfy the demand; a voice would shout from the window: "Here, hearse, this way!"

The driver answered that he was full up and could not attend to everybody.

One of my friends, M. Pouqueville, on his way to dine at my house on Easter Sunday, was stopped at the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse by a succession of biers, nearly all of which were carried by bearers.

He saw, in this procession, the coffin of a young girl, on which was laid a wreath of white roses.

A smell of chlorine spread a tainted atmosphere in the wake of this floral ambulance.

On the Place de la Bourse, where processions of workmen used to meet, singing the Parisienne, one often saw funerals pass by towards the Montmartre Cemetery as late as eleven o'clock at night, by the light of pitch torches.

The Pont-Neuf was blocked with litters laden with patients for the hospitals or dead who had expired on the road.

The toll ceased for some days on the Pont des Arts.

The booths disappeared and, as the north-east wind was blowing, all the stall-holders and all the shopkeepers on the quays closed their doors.

One met tilted conveyances preceded by a "crow," or mute, with a registrar of births, deaths and marriages walking in front, dressed in mourning, and carrying a list in his hand.

There was a dearth of these tabellions, or registrars; they had to send for more from Saint-Germain, the Villette, Saint-Cloud.

For the rest, the hearses were piled up with five or six coffins, kept in place with ropes.

Omnibuses and hackney-coaches were employed for the same purpose: it was not uncommon to see a cab adorned with a dead body stretched across the apron.

A few of the dead were laid out in the churches: a priest sprinkled holy water over those collected faithful of Eternity.

In Athens, the people believed that the wells near the Piræus had been poisoned; in Paris, the tradesmen were accused of poisoning their wine, spirits, sugar-plums and provisions.

Several individuals had their clothes torn from their backs, were dragged in the gutter, flung into the Seine.

The authorities were to blame for these stupid or guilty opinions.

How did the scourge, like an electric spark, pass from London to Paris?

It cannot be explained.

This fantastic death often fixes on a spot of the ground, on a house, and leaves the neighbourhood of that infested spot untouched; then it retraces its steps and picks up what it has forgotten.

One night, I felt myself attacked: I was seized with a shivering, together with cramp in my legs; I did not want to ring, for fear of frightening Madame de Chateaubriand.

I got up; I heaped all I could find in my room on the bed, got back under the blankets, and a copious perspiration pulled me through.

But I remained shattered, and it was in this condition of discomfort that I was obliged to write my pamphlet on the 12,000 francs of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

[Sidenote: The 12,000 francs of Madame.

] I should not have been too sorry to go, carried off under the arm of the eldest son of Vishnu, whose distant glance killed Bonaparte upon his rock at the entrance to the Indian Sea.

If all mankind, stricken with this general contagion, came to die, what would happen?

Nothing: the world, depopulated, would continue its solitary course, without need of any other astronomer to count its steps than Him who has measured them from all eternity; it would present no change to the eyes of the inhabitants of the other planets; they would see it fulfilling its accustomed functions; upon its surface, our little works, our cities, our monuments would be replaced by forests restored to the sovereignty of the lions; no void would manifest itself in the universe.

And nevertheless there would be lacking that human intelligence which knows the stars and rises to a knowledge of their Author.

What art thou then, O immensity of the works of God, in which, if the genius of man, which is equal to the whole of nature, came to disappear, it would be no more missed than the smallest atom withdrawn from Creation?

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _May_ 1832. Madame de Berry has her chamber council in Paris, as Charles X. has his: paltry sums were collected in her name to succour the poorer of the Royalists.

I proposed to distribute among the cholera patients a sum of twelve thousand francs on behalf of the mother of Henry V.

We wrote to Massa, and not only did the Princess approve of the disposition of the funds, but she would have liked us to apportion a more considerable sum: her approval arrived on the day on which I sent the money to the mayors' offices.

Thus, everything is strictly true in my explanations concerning the gift of the exile.

On the 14th of April, I sent the whole sum to the Prefect of the Seine to be distributed among the indigent class of the cholera-stricken population of Paris.

M.

de Bondy was not at the Hôtel de Ville when my letter was taken there.

The Secretary-general opened my missive, and did not consider himself authorized to receive the money.

Three days elapsed; M. de Bondy replied at last that he could not accept the twelve thousand francs, because people would see in it, beneath an apparent benevolence, "a political combination against which the entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal[385]."

Then my secretary went to the twelve mayors' offices.

Of five mayors who were present, four accepted the gift of a thousand francs; one refused it.

Of the seven mayors who were absent, five kept silence;

two refused[386].

I was forthwith besieged by an army of paupers: benevolent and charitable societies, workmen of all kinds, women and children.

Polish and Italian exiles, men of letters, artists, soldiers, all wrote, all demanded a share in the bounty.

If I had had a million, it would have been distributed in a few hours.

M.

de Bondy was wrong in saying that "the entire population of Paris would protest by its refusal:" the population of Paris will always take money from everybody.

The scared attitude of the Government was enough to make one die of laughing: one would have thought that this perfidious legitimist money was going to stir up the cholera patients, to excite an insurrection among the men dying in the hospitals to march to the assault of the Tuileries, with coffins rolling, with tolling of funeral knells, with winding-sheet unfurled under the command of Death.

My correspondence with the mayors was prolonged through the complication of the refusal of the Prefect of Paris.

Some of them wrote to me to send me back my money or to ask for the return of their receipts for the gifts of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.

I sent these back loyally, and I handed the following receipt to the office of the Mayor of the 12th Ward: [Sidenote: Attitude of the Mayors.

] "I have received from the Mayor's office of the 12th Ward the sum of one thousand francs which it had at first accepted and which it has returned to me by order of M. the Prefect of the Seine.

PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832." The Mayor of the 9th Ward, M. Cronier, was braver: he kept the thousand francs and was dismissed.

I wrote him this note: "29 _April_ 1832. "SIR, "I hear with keen sorrow of the disgrace of which Madame la Duchesse de Berry's benevolence has in your case been the cause or the pretext.

You will have, for your consolation, the esteem of the public, the sense of your independence, and the happiness of having sacrificed yourself to the cause of the unfortunate.

"I have the honour, etc. , etc." The Mayor of the 4th Ward is a very different man: M. Cadet de Gassicourt, a poet-apothecary composing little verses, writing in his time, in the time of liberty and the Empire, an agreeable classical declaration against my romantic prose and that of Madame de Staël[387].

M.

Cadet de Gassicourt is the hero who took the cross of the front of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois by assault, and who, in a proclamation on the cholera, gave us to understand that possibly those wicked Carlists were the wine-poisoners to whom the people had already done ample justice[388].

And so the illustrious champion wrote me the following letter: "PARIS, 18 _April_ 1832. "SIR, "I was not at the Mayor's office when the person sent by you called: this will explain to you the delay in my reply.

"M. the Prefect of the Seine, when declining to accept the money which you undertook to offer him, seems to me to have traced the line of conduct which the members of the Municipal Council must follow.

I shall imitate M. the Prefect's example the more readily inasmuch as I think that I know and as I share the sentiments which must have prompted his refusal.

"I will refer only in passing to the title of 4 Royal Highness' given with some affectation to the person whose mouth-piece you constitute yourself: the daughter-in-law of Charles X. is no more a 'Royal Highness' in France than her father-in-law is King[389]!

But, Sir, there is no one who is not morally convinced that this lady is very actively at work and that she is spending sums of money very much more considerable than that of which she has entrusted the employment to yourself to stir up trouble in our country and bring about civil war.

The alms which she pretends to make are but a means for drawing upon herself and her party an attention and a kindly feeling which her intentions are far from justifying.

You will therefore not think it extraordinary that a magistrate, firmly attached to the constitutional royalty of Louis-Philippe, should refuse a relief which comes from such a source and should look to true citizens for purer bounties addressed sincerely to humanity and the country.

"I am, Sir, with a very distinguished regard, etc. "F. CADET DE GASSICOURT."

[Sidenote: Cadet de Gassicourt.

] This is a very proud revolt on the part of M. Cadet de Gassicourt against "this lady" and her "father-in-law:" what a progress in enlightenment and philosophy!

What indomitable independence!

Messieurs Fleurant and Purgon dared not look people in the face except upon their knees[390]; he, M. Cadet, says, with the Cid: "Then we rise up!"

His liberty is the more courageous inasmuch as that "father-in-law" (in other words, the descendant of St. Louis) is an outlaw.

M.

de Gassicourt is above all that: he despises equally the nobility of time and of misfortune.

With the same contempt for aristocratic prejudices, he takes away my "de" and assumes it for himself, as though it were a conquest snatched from the petty gentry.

But could there not have been some ancient historic quarrels between the House of Cadet and the House of Capet?

Henry IV.

, the ancestor of that "father-in-law" who is no more King than that "lady" is a Royal Highness, was one day passing through the Forest of Saint-Germain: eight lords were lying in ambush there to kill the Bearnese; they were taken.

"One of those gallants," says L'Estoile, "was an apothecary who asked to speak with the King, of whom His Majesty having enquired of what condition he was, he answered that he was an apothecary.

"'What!'

said the King.

'Is it the habit to perform the condition of an apothecary here?

Do you lie in wait for the wayfarers to...?'

" Henry IV.

was a soldier, modesty troubled him but little, and he ran away from a word no more than from the enemy.

I suspect M. de Gassicourt, because of his ill-humour towards the descendant of Henry IV.

, of being himself the descendant of the apothecary-Leaguer.

The Mayor of the 4th Ward had doubtless written to me in the hope that I would engage him in mortal combat; but I do not care to engage M. Cadet in anything: I hope that he will forgive me for leaving him this little token of my remembrance.

Since the days when the great revolutions and the great revolutionaries passed before my eyes, everything had shrivelled greatly.

The men who caused the fall of an oak, replanted when too old to take root, applied to me; they asked me for a portion of the widow's mite to buy bread: the letter from the Committee of the _décorés de Juillet_, or "Knights of July," is a document worth noting for the instruction of posterity.

"PARIS, 20 _April_ 1832. "Please address your reply to M. Gibert-Arnaud, "Manager and Secretary to the Committee, "3, Rue Saint-Nicaise.

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE, "The members of our Committee approach you with confidence to ask you kindly to honour them with a gift in favour of the Knights of July.

Any benevolence shown to these unhappy fathers of families, at this time of plague and misery, inspires the sincerest gratitude.

We venture to hope that you will consent to allow your illustrious name to figure beside those of General Bertrand, General Exelmans, General Lamarque, General La Fayette, and several ambassadors, peers of France and deputies.

"We beg you to honour us with a word in reply, and if, contrary to our expectation, our request should meet with a refusal, be good enough to return us the present letter.

"With the gentlest sentiments, we beg you, monsieur le vicomte, to accept the homage of our respectful salutations.

"The active members of the Constitutive Committee of the Knights of July: "FAURE, Visiting Member.

"CYPRIEN DESMARAIS, Special Commissary.

"GIBERT-ARNAUD, Manager and Secretary.

"TOUREL, Assistant Member."

I was too wise not to take the advantage which the Revolution of July here gave me over itself.

By distinguishing between persons, one would create helots among the unfortunate, who, because of certain political opinions, might never obtain relief.

I lost no time in sending a hundred francs to these gentlemen, with this note: "PARIS, 22 _April_ 1832. "GENTLEMEN, "I am infinitely grateful to you for applying to me to come to the assistance of some unhappy fathers of families.

I hasten to send you the sum of one hundred francs: I regret that I am not able to offer you a more considerable gift.

"I have the honour, etc. "CHATEAUBRIAND."

The following receipt was sent to me by return: [Sidenote: The knights of July.

] "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I have the honour to thank you and to acknowledge the receipt of the sum of one hundred francs devoted by your kindness to the succour of the unfortunates of July.

"Greetings and respects.

"GIBERT-ARNAUD, "Manager and Secretary to the Committee.

"23 _April.

_" And so Madame la Duchesse de Berry gave charity to those who had driven her from the country.

The transactions show things in their true light.

How can one believe in any reality in a country where no one looks after the invalids of his party, where the heroes of yesterday are the destitute persons of to-day, where a little gold makes the multitude hurry to one like pigeons in a farm-yard flocking to the hand that flings grain to them.

Four thousand francs of my twelve remained.

I addressed myself to religion; Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris[391] wrote me this noble letter: "PARIS, 26 _April_ 1832. "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE, "Charity is catholic like faith, foreign to men's passions, independent of their movements: one of its chief distinguishing characteristics is that, as St. Paul says, it worketh no evil[392]: _non cogitat malum.

_ It blesses the hand that gives and the hand that receives, without attributing to the generous benefactor any other motive than that of doing good and without asking of the indigent poor any other condition than that of need.

It accepts with deep and feeling gratitude the gift which the august widow has charged you to confide to it to be employed for the relief of our unfortunate brothers, the victims of the plague which is devastating the Capital.

"It will distribute with the most scrupulous fidelity the four thousand francs which you have handed me on her behalf, and for which my letter is a new receipt; but I shall have the honour to send you an account of the distribution when the intentions of the benefactress have been fulfilled.

"Be so good, monsieur le vicomte, as to present to Madame la Duchesse de Berry the thanks of a pastor and a father who daily offers his life to God for his sheep and his children and who calls on every side for help capable of levelling their wretchedness.

Her royal heart has already doubtless found within itself its reward for the sacrifice which she has devoted to our misfortunes: religion ensures to her, moreover, the effect of the divine promises set forth in the book of the Beatitudes for those who are 'merciful[393].'

"The money has been divided without delay among the rectors of the twelve principal parishes of Paris, to whom I have addressed the letter of which I enclose a copy.

"Receive, monsieur le vicomte, the assurance, etc. "HYACINTHE, Archbishop of Paris."

One is always amazed to realize in how high a degree religion suits even style and gives an immediate gravity and seemliness to commonplaces.

This forms a contrast with the heap of anonymous letters which have become mixed with the letters I have quoted.

The spelling of these anonymous letters is fairly correct, the hand-writing neat: they are, properly speaking, "literary," like the Revolution of July.

They display scribbling jealousies, hatreds, vanities, safe in the inviolability of a cowardice which, refraining to show its face, cannot be made visible by a blow.

Here are some samples: "Will you let us know, you old _républiquinquiste_, the day on which you would like to grease your moccasins?

It will be easy for us to procure you some Chouan's fat, and, should you want some of your friends' blood to write their history in, there is no lack of it in the Paris mud, its element.

"You old brigand, ask your rascally and worthy friend Fitz-James if he liked the stone which he received in his feudal part Pack of scoundrels that you are, we'll pull your guts from your stomachs," etc. , etc. In another missive, I find a very well-drawn gallows, with these words: "Go down on your knees to a priest and make an act of contrition, for we want your old head to put an end to your treacheries."

For the rest, the cholera still continues: the answer which I might address to a known or unknown adversary would perhaps reach him when he was lying on his threshold.

If, on the contrary, he were destined to live, where would his reply find me?

Perhaps in that resting-place of which no one can be frightened to-day, especially we men who have lengthened out our years between the Terror and the Plague, the first and last horizons of our lives.

A truce: let the coffins pass.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, 10 _June_ 1832. General Lamarque's[394] funeral has brought about two days of bloodshed and the victory of the sham Legitimacy over the Republican Party[395].

This incomplete and divided party has made an heroic resistance.

[Sidenote: Paris in state of siege.

] Paris has been declared in a state of siege[396]: this is the censorship on the largest possible scale, a censorship in the manner of the Convention, with this difference, that a military commission takes the place of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

They are shooting, in June 1832, the men who achieved the victory in July 1830: that same Polytechnic School, that same artillery of the National Guard are being sacrificed; they conquered the power for those who are crushing, disowning and disbanding them.

The Republicans are certainly wrong to have cried up measures of anarchy and disorder: but why did you not employ such noble arms on our frontiers?

They would have delivered us from the ignominious yoke of the foreigner.

Generous, if exalted heads would not have remained to ferment in Paris, to blaze up against the humiliation of our foreign policy and the bad faith of the new Royalty.

You have been pitiless, you who, without sharing the dangers of the Three Days, have gathered their fruit.

Go now with the mothers to identify the corpses of those knights of July from whom you hold places, riches and honours.

Young men, you do not all obtain the same lot on the same shore!

You have a tomb under the colonnade of the Louvre and a place in the Morgue: some for snatching, others for bestowing a crown.

Your names, who knows them, you sacrifices and for-ever-unknown victims of a memorable revolution?

Is the blood known that cements the monuments which men admire?

The workmen who built the Great Pyramid for the corpse of an unglorious king[397], sleep forgotten in the sand near the needy root that served to feed them during their labours.

PARIS, RUE D'ENFER, _end of July_ 1832. Madame la Duchesse de Berry[398] no sooner sanctioned the measure of the 12,000 francs than she took ship for her famous adventure.

The rising of Marseilles failed; there remained but to try the West; but the Vendean glory is a thing apart: it will live in our annals; in any case, seven-eighths of France has chosen a different glory, the object of jealousy or antipathy; the Vendée is an Oriflamme venerated and admired in the treasure of Saint-Denis, under which youth and the future will henceforth gather no longer.

[Sidenote: Madame lands in France.

] Madame, when she landed, like Bonaparte, on the coast of Provence, did not see the White Flag fly from steeple to steeple: deceived in her expectation, she found herself almost alone on shore with M. de Bourmont.

The marshal wanted to make her recross the frontier at once;

she asked to have the night to think it over; she slept well among the rocks to the sound of the sea; in the morning, on waking, she found a noble dream in her thoughts: "Since I am on French soil, I will not leave it; let us set out for the Vendée." M.

de ----[399], informed by a faithful man, took her in his carriage as his wife, crossed the whole of France with her, and has put her down at -----[400].

She has remained some time in a country-house without being recognised by anybody, except the curate of the place.

The Maréchal de Bourmont is to join her in the Vendée by another road.

Informed of all this in Paris, it was easy for us to foresee the result.

The enterprise has a further drawback for the Royalist Cause: it will discover the weakness of that cause and dispel illusions.

If Madame had not gone to the Vendée, France would always have believed that in the West there was a royalist camp standing at ease, as I called it.

But however, there remained still one means of saving Madame and casting a new veil over the truth: the Princess should have left again at once; arriving at her own risk and peril, like a brave general who comes to review his army, to moderate its impatience and its ardour, she would have declared that she had hastened to tell her soldiers that the moment for action was not yet favourable, that she would return to place herself at their head when the occasion should summon her.

Madame would at least have once shown a Bourbon to the Vendeans: the shades of the Cathelineaus, the d'Elbées, the Bonchamps, the La Rochejacqueleins, the Charettes would have rejoiced.

Our committee met: while we were discoursing, there came from Nantes a captain, who told us the place where the heroine is staying.

The captain is a good-looking young man, brave as a sailor, eccentric as a Breton.

He disapproved of the enterprise; he thought it mad; but he said: "Madame is not going away: it is a question of dying, and that is all;

and then, gentlemen of the council, have Walter Scott hanged, for he is the real culprit!"

I thought that we ought to write what we felt to the Princess.

M.

Berryer[401], who was preparing to go to defend a case at Quimper[402], generously offered to take the letter and to see Madame if he could.

When it became necessary to draw up the note, no one thought of writing it: I undertook to do so[403].

Our messenger set out, and we awaited events.

I soon received, by post, the following note, which had not been sealed and which had doubtless come under the eyes of the authorities: [Sidenote: Letter from Berryer.

] "ANGOULÊME, 7 _June.

_ "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"I had received and forwarded your letter of Friday last, when, on Sunday, the Prefect of the Loire-Inférieure[404] sent word requiring me to leave the town of Nantes[405].

I was on my way and at the gates of Angoulême; I have just been taken before the Prefect, who has notified me of an order from M. de Montalivet[406] by which I am to be taken back to Nantes under an escort of gendarmes.

Since my departure from Nantes, the Department of the Loire-Inférieure has been placed under martial law, and, by this entirely illegal transfer, I am made subject to the laws of exception.

I am writing to the Minister to ask him to have me taken to Paris; he will receive my letter by the same post.

The object of my journey to Nantes seems to have been utterly misinterpreted.

Decide therefore whether, in the light of your prudence, you will think it right to mention the matter to the Minister.

I apologize for addressing this request to you; but I have no one to whom to apply but yourself.

"Pray believe, monsieur le vicomte, in my old and sincere attachment, and in my profound respect.

"Your most devoted servant, "BERRYER the Younger."

"_P.

S.

_--There is not a moment to lose if you are willing to see the Minister.

I am going to Tours, where his new orders will still find me on Sunday; he can dispatch them either by telegraph or express."

I informed M. Berryer, in the following reply, of the decision to which I came: "PARIS, 10 _June_ 1832. "I received your letter, monsieur, dated Angoulême, the 7th instant.

It was too late for me to see M. the Minister of the Interior, as you wished; but I wrote to him at once, sending him your own letter enclosed in mine.

I hope that the mistake which occasioned your arrest will soon be admitted and that you will be restored to liberty and to your friends, among whom I beg you to number myself.

"A thousand hearty compliments, with the renewed assurance of my sincere and entire devotion.

"CHATEAUBRIAND."

Here is my letter to the Minister of the Interior: "PARIS, 9 _June_ 1832. "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE L'INTÉRIEUR, "I have this moment received the enclosed letter.

As I should probably not be able to see you as quickly as M. Berryer wishes, I have decided to send you his letter.

His complaint appears to me to be justified: he will be innocent in Paris as at Nantes and at Nantes as in Paris; this is a thing which the authorities must admit and, by righting M. Berryer's complaint, they will avoid giving a retroactive effect to the law.

I venture to hope all, monsieur le comte, from your impartiality.

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

[Footnote 330: This book was written in Paris and Geneva, from October 1830 to June 1832. --T.

] [Footnote 331: This and the following pages were written in March and April 1831. --B.

] [Footnote 332: The _Études historiques.

_--B.

] [Footnote 333: The trial of the ministers before the Court of Peers commenced on the 15th and ended on the 21st of December 1830. The verdict condemned the Prince de Polignac to perpetual imprisonment on the continental territory of the Kingdom, declared him to have forfeited his titles, rank and Orders, declared him besides to be civilly dead and subject to all the other effects of the penalty of transportation.

Messieurs de Peyronnet, de Chantelauze and de Guernon-Ranville were condemned to imprisonment for life.

--B.

] [Footnote 334: The sack of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois and the pillage of the Archbishop's Palace took place on the 14th and 15th of February 1831. --B.

The Duc de Berry was murdered on the 13th of February 1820--T. ] [Footnote 335: Félix Cadet de Gassicourt the Younger (1789-1861), chemist and druggist and Mayor of the 4th Ward of Paris.

--B.

] [Footnote 336: "Mayeux," the hunchbacked type of the political versatility of the French nation, was an invention of the caricaturists and the comic papers of the year 1831. According to them, Messidor Napoleon Louis Charles Philippe Mayeux, born on the 14th of July 1789, while his father was engaged in taking the Bastille, had taken various Christian names according to the different forms of government which he had in turn espoused or repudiated.

He had not been much heard of before 1830, but the sun of July had at last brought him into the light of day.

For twelve months, Paris saw, talked, thought, swore, above all, by none save Mayeux.

He was in turns a Republican, a Bonapartist, a juste-milieu man: everything, in short, except a Carlist; for he was faithful to his resentment against a mounted Grenadier of the Royal Guard who had failed to see him behind a curb-post and had laughed at him when he said: "Take care, soldier; there's a man in front of you."

Mayeux was a National Guard: that caused his death.

One day he was struck off the roll for being guilty of making his brother _bisets_ laugh while under arms.

He died of grief and shame a few weeks later: on the 23rd of December 1821, to be exact (_Cf.

_ the chapter on _Mayeux_ in BAZIN: _L'Époque sans nom_).

--B.

] [Footnote 337: Chateaubriand's pamphlet appeared on the 24th of March 1831. --B.

] [Footnote 338: _Études et discours historiques sur la chute de l'Empire romain, la naissance et le progrès du Christianisme et l'invasion des Barbares; suivis d'une Analyse raisonnée de l'histoire de France_ (Paris: 4 vols.

8vo).

The _Études historiques_ were published on the 4th of April 1831. --B.

] [Footnote 339: The fall of the Roman Empire.

--_Author's Note.

_] [Footnote 340: Chateaubriand left for Switzerland on the 16th of May 1831; he arrived at Geneva on the 23rd of May.

--B.

] [Footnote 341: _De la Restauration et de la Monarchie élective.

--Author's Note.

_] [Footnote 342: This refers to my literary and to my political career, which had been left behind: the voids have since been filled by what I have lately written in the last two years, 1838 and 1839. --_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1839).

] [Footnote 343: Hyacinthe has the habit of copying, almost in spite of my wishes, the letters which I write and receive, because he maintains that he has observed that I am often attacked by persons who once wrote to me in terms of endless admiration and applied to me with requests for services.

When this happens, he rummages in bundles known to him alone and, comparing the insulting article with the encomiastic epistle, says to me: "You see, monsieur, that I acted well!"

I do not agree with him at all: I attach not the smallest belief nor the least importance to the opinion of men; I take them for what they are and esteem them for what they are worth.

As far as I am concerned, I will never contrast for their benefit what they have said of me in public with what they have said to me in private; but this amuses Hyacinthe.

I had kept no copy of my letters to Madame Récamier; she has had the kindness to lend them to me.

#/ --_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1836).

] [Footnote 344: This letter and those which follow are exactly true to the originals: "The letters," says Madame Lenormant, "which M. de Chateaubriand wrote to Madame Récamier during his stay in Switzerland, have been printed in the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe.

_ We have collated them with the originals and, this time, have found them to be reproduced with scrupulous fidelity" (_Souvenirs et Correspondance tirés des papiers de Madame Récamier_, Vol. II.

).

--B.

] [Footnote 345: Elleviou (1772-1842) was this "singular personage," as the enclosure shows.

Elleviou was a famous singer, during the Consulate and the Empire, at the Théâtre Feydeau.

The _Maison à vendre_, words by Alexandre Duval, music by Dalayrac, was one of the pieces in which he made most success.

He retired from the stage in 1813 and devoted himself to agriculture in the neighbourhood of Lyons.

Elleviou was, like Chateaubriand, a Breton: he was born at Rennes, where his father was a surgeon.

--B.

] [Footnote 346: It was easy for Madame Récamier's hand-writing to be smaller than that of Chateaubriand, who wrote in characters half-an-inch in height, and as though the alphabet contained only capital letters.

--B.

] [Footnote 347: Jean Chauvin, Cauvin, or Caulvin (1509-1564), generally known as John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, fled from France to Geneva in 1536, was banished in 1538, returned in 1541, and lived there till the day of his death.

He founded the Academy of Geneva in 1559. --T.

] [Footnote 348: A cousin of Benjamin Constant.

--B.