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Other documents randomly have
different content
when, after decking her with all my extravagances, I scarce dared
lift my eyes upon my handiwork. Death, which I thought that I was
approaching, added a mystery to this vision of a world from which I
had almost departed. Did ever a look rest upon the foreigner seated
at the foot of a fir-tree? Did some fair woman divine the invisible
presence of René?
At Westminster I found a different pastime: in that
labyrinth of tombs I thought of mine ready to A night in
Westminster
open. The bust of an unknown man like myself Abbey.
would never find a place amid those illustrious
effigies! Then appeared the sepulchres of the monarchs:
Cromwell[164] was there no longer, and Charles I.[165] was not there.
The ashes of a traitor, Robert of Artois[166], lay beneath the
flagstones which I trod with my loyal steps. The fate of Charles I.
had just been extended to Louis XVI.; the steel was reaping its daily
harvest in France, and the graves of my kindred were already dug.
The singing of the choir and the conversation of the visitors
interrupted my reflections. I was not able often to repeat my visits,
for I was obliged to give to the guardians of those who lived no
more the shilling which was necessary to me to live. But then I
would turn round and round outside the abbey with the rooks, or
stop to gaze at the steeples, twins of unequal height, which the
setting sun stained red with its fiery light against the black hangings
of the smoke of the City.
One day, however, it happened that, wishing towards evening to
contemplate the interior of the basilica, I became lost in admiration
of its spirited and capricious architecture. Dominated by the
sentiment of the "dowdy vastitie of our churches[167]," I wandered
with slow footsteps and became benighted: the doors were closed. I
tried to find an outlet; I called the usher, I knocked against the
doors: all the noise I made, spread and spun out in the silence, was
lost; I had to resign myself to sleeping among the dead.
After hesitating in my choice of a resting-place I stopped near Lord
Chatham's[168] mausoleum, at the foot of the rood and of the
double stair of Henry the Seventh's and the Knights' Chapel. At the
entrance to those stairs, to those aisles enclosed with railings, a
sarcophagus built into the wall, opposite to a marble figure of death
armed with its scythe, offered me its shelter. The fold of a winding-
sheet, also of marble, served me for a niche: following the example
of Charles V.[169], I inured myself to my burial. I was in the best
seats for seeing the world as it is. What a mass of greatnesses were
confined beneath those vaults! What remains of them? Afflictions are
no less vain than felicities: the hapless Jane Grey[170] is not different
from the blithe Alice of Salisbury[171] save that the skeleton is less
horrible because it has no head; her body is beautified by her
punishment and by the absence of that which constituted its beauty.
The tournaments of the victor of Crecy[172], the sports of the Field
of the Cloth of Gold of Henry VIII.[173] will not be renewed in that
theatre of funereal spectacles. Bacon[174], Newton[175], Milton[176]
are interred as deeply, have passed away as completely, as their
more obscure contemporaries. Should I, an exile, a vagabond, a
pauper, consent to be no longer the petty, forgotten, sorrowful thing
that I am in order to have been one of those famous, mighty,
pleasure-sated dead? Ah, life is not all that! If from the shores of
this world we cannot distinctly discern matters divine, let us not be
astonished: time is a veil set between ourselves and God, even as
our eyelids are interposed between our eyes and the light.
Crouching under my marble sheet, I descended
from these lofty thoughts to the simple impressions Reflections and
release.
of the place and moment. My anxiety mingled with
pleasure was analogous to that which I used to experience in winter
in my turret at Combourg, as I listened to the wind: a breeze and a
shadow possess a kindred nature. Little by little I grew accustomed
to the darkness and distinguished the figures placed over the tombs.
I looked up at the vaults of this English Saint-Denis, whence one
might say that the years that have been and the issues of the past
hung down like Gothic lamps: the entire edifice was as it were a
monolithic temple of ages turned to stone.
I had counted ten o'clock, eleven o'clock by the abbey clock: the
hammer rising and falling upon the bell-metal was the only living
creature in those regions beside myself. Outside, the sound of a
carriage, the voice of the watchman: that was all; those distant
sounds of earth reached me as though from one world to another.
The fog from the Thames and the smoke of coal crept into the
basilica, and spread a denser dusk around.
At last a twilight spread out in a corner filled with the dimmest
shadows: with fixed gaze I watched the progressive growth of the
light; did it emanate from the two sons[177] of Edward IV.,
assassinated by their uncle? The great tragedian says:
"O thus," quoth Dighton, "lay the gentle babes,"—
"Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girdling one another
Within their alabaster innocent arms:
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which, in their summer beauty, kiss'd each other[178]."
God did not send me those two sad and charming souls; but the
light phantom of a scarcely adolescent woman appeared carrying a
light sheltered in a sheet of paper twisted shell-wise: it was the little
bell-ringer. I heard the sound of a kiss, and the bell tolled the break
of day. The ringer was quite terrified when I went out with her
through the gate of the cloisters. I told her of my adventure; she
said she had come to do duty for her father, who was sick: we did
not speak of the kiss.
*
I amused Hingant with the story of my adventure, and we made a
plan to lock ourselves in at Westminster; but our distress summoned
us to the dead in a less poetic manner.
My funds were becoming exhausted: Baylis and Deboffe had
ventured, against a written promise of reimbursement in case of
non-sale, to commence the printing of the Essai; there their
generosity ended, and very naturally; I was even astonished at their
boldness. The translations fell off; Peltier, a man of pleasure, grew
weary of his prolonged obligingness. He would willingly have given
me what he had, if he had not preferred to squander it; but to go
looking here and there for work, to do patient acts of kindness, was
beyond him. Hingant also saw his treasure diminishing; we were
reduced to sixty francs between us. We cut down our rations, as on
a vessel when the passage is prolonged. Instead of a shilling apiece,
we spent only sixpence on our dinner. With our morning tea we
reduced the bread by one half, and suppressed the butter. This
abstinence vexed my friend's nerves. His wits went wool-gathering;
he would prick his ears and seem to be listening to some one; he
would burst out laughing in reply, or shed tears. Hingant believed in
magnetism, and had disordered his brain with Swedenborg's[179]
rubbish. He told me in the morning that he had heard noises during
the night; if I denied his fancies he grew angry. The anxiety which
he caused me prevented me from feeling my own sufferings.
These were great, nevertheless: that rigorous diet, combined with
the work, chafed my diseased chest; I began to find a difficulty in
walking, and yet I spent my days and a part of my nights out of
doors, so as not to betray my distress. When we came to our last
shilling, my friend and I agreed to keep it in order to make a
pretense of breakfasting. We arranged that we should buy a penny
roll; that we should have the hot water and the tea-pot brought up
as usual; that we should not put in any tea; that we should not eat
the bread, but that we should drink the hot water with a few little
morsels of sugar left at the bottom of the bowl.
Five days passed in this fashion. I was devoured with hunger; I
burned with fever; sleep had deserted me; I sucked pieces of linen
which I soaked in water; I chewed grass and paper. When I passed
the bakers' shops, the torment I endured was horrible. One rough
winter's night, I stood for two hours outside a shop where they sold
dried fruits and smoked meats, swallowing all I saw with my eyes: I
could have eaten not only the provisions, but the boxes and baskets
in which they were packed.
On the morning of the fifth day, dropping from inanition, I dragged
myself to Hingant's; I knocked at the door: it was closed. I called
out; Hingant was some time without answering: at last he rose and
opened the door. He laughed with a bewildered air; his frock-coat
was buttoned; he sat down at the tea-table.
"Our breakfast is coming," he said in a strange voice.
I thought I saw some stains of blood on his shirt; I suddenly
unbuttoned his coat: he had given himself a wound with a penknife,
two inches deep, in his left breast. I called out for help. The maid-
servant went to fetch a surgeon. The wound was dangerous.
This new misfortune obliged me to take a resolution. Hingant, who
was a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany, had refused to take
the salary which the English Government allowed the French
magistrates, in the same way that I had declined the shilling a day
doled out to the Emigrants: I wrote to M. de Barentin[180] and
disclosed my friend's position to him. Hingant's relations hurried to
his assistance and took him away to the country. At that very
moment my uncle de Bedée forwarded me forty crowns, a touching
offering from my persecuted family. I seemed to see all the gold of
Peru before my eyes: the mite of the French prisoners supported the
exiled Frenchman.
My destitution had impeded my work. As I
delivered no more manuscript, the printing was Destitution.
suspended. Deprived of Hingant's company, I did
not keep on my room at Baylis' at a guinea per month; I paid the
quarter that was due and went away. Below the needy Emigrants
who had served as my first protectors in London were others who
were even more necessitous. There are degrees among the poor as
among the rich; one can go from the man who in winter keeps
himself warm with his dog down to him who shivers in his torn rags.
My friends found me a room more suited to my diminishing fortune:
one is not always at the height of prosperity! They installed me in
the neighbourhood of Marylebone Street, in a garret whose dormer
window overlooked a cemetery: every night the watchman's rattle
told me of the proximity of body-snatchers. I had the consolation to
hear that Hingant was out of danger.
Friends came to see me in my work-room. To judge from our
independence and our poverty, we might have been taken for
painters on the ruins of Rome; we were artists in wretchedness on
the ruins of France. My face served as a model, my bed as a seat for
my pupils. The bed consisted of a mattress and a blanket. I had no
sheets; when it was cold my coat and a chair, added to my blanket,
kept me warm. I was too weak to make my bed; it remained turned
down as God had left it.
My cousin de La Boüétardais, turned out of a low Irish lodging for
not paying his rent, although he had put his violin in pawn, came to
ask me for a shelter against the constable: a vicar from Lower
Brittany lent him a trestle-bed. La Boüétardais, like Hingant, had
been a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany; he did not possess a
handkerchief to tie round his head; but he had deserted with bag
and baggage, that is to say, he had brought away his square cap
and his red robe, and he slept under the purple by my side. Jocular,
a good musician with a fine voice, on nights when we could not
sleep he would sit up quite naked on his trestles, put on his square
cap, and sing ballads, accompanying himself on a guitar with only
three strings. One night when the poor fellow was in this way
humming Scendi propizia from Metastasio's[181] Hymn to Venus, he
was struck by a draught; he twisted his mouth, and he died of it, but
not at once, for I rubbed his cheek heartily. We held counsel in our
elevated room, argued on politics, and discussed the gossip of the
Emigration. In the evening, we went to our aunts and cousins to
dance, after the dresses had been trimmed with ribbons and the
hats made up.
They who read this portion of my Memoirs are not aware that I have
interrupted them twice: once to offer a great dinner to the Duke of
York, brother of the King of England; and once to give a rout on the
anniversary of the entry of the King of France into Paris, on the 8th
of July. That rout cost me forty thousand francs. Peers and
peeresses of the British Empire, ambassadors, distinguished
foreigners filled my gorgeously-decorated rooms. My tables gleamed
with the glitter of London crystal and the gold of Sèvres porcelain.
The most delicate dainties, wines and flowers abounded. Portland
Place was blocked with splendid carriages. Collinet and the band
from Almack's enraptured the fashionable melancholy of the dandies
and the dreamy elegance of the pensively-dancing ladies. The
Opposition and the Ministerial majority had struck a truce: Mrs.
Canning[182] talked to Lord Londonderry, Lady Jersey to the Duke of
Wellington. Monsieur, who this year sent me his compliments on the
sumptuousness of my entertainments in 1822, did not know in 1793
that, not far from him, lived a future minister who, while awaiting
the advent of his greatness, fasted over a cemetery for his sin of
loyalty. I congratulate myself to-day on having experienced
shipwreck, gone through war, and shared the sufferings of the
humblest classes of society, as I applaud myself for meeting with
injustice and calumny in times of prosperity. I have profited by these
lessons: life, without the ills that make it serious, is a child's bauble.
*
I was the man with the forty crowns; but since fortunes had not yet
been levelled, nor the price of commodities reduced, there was
nothing to serve as a counterpoise to my rapidly diminishing purse. I
could not reckon on further help from my family, exposed in Brittany
to the double scourge of the Chouans[183] and the Terror. I saw
nothing before me but the workhouse or the Thames.
Some of the Emigrants' servants, whom their
masters could no longer feed, had turned into A contrast.
eating-house keepers in order to feed their
masters. God knows the merry meals that were made at these
ordinaries! God knows, too, what politics were talked there! All the
victories of the Republic were turned into defeats, and, if by chance
one entertained a doubt as to an immediate restoration, he was
declared a Jacobin. Two old bishops, who looked like live corpses,
were walking one morning in St James's Park:
"Monseigneur," said one, "do you think we shall be in France by
June?"
"Why, monseigneur," replied the other, after ripe reflection, "I see
nothing against it."
Peltier, the man of resource, unearthed me, or rather unnested me,
in my eyry. He had read in a Yarmouth newspaper that a society of
antiquarians was going to produce a history of the County of Suffolk,
and that they wanted a Frenchman able to decipher some French
twelfth-century manuscripts from the Camden[184] Collection. The
parson at Beccles was at the head of the undertaking; he was the
man to whom to apply.
"That will just suit you," said Peltier; "go down there, decipher that
old waste-paper, go on sending copy for the Essai to Baylis; I'll make
the wretch go on with his printing; and you will come back to
London with two hundred guineas in your pocket, your work done,
and go ahead!" I tried to stammer out some objections:
"What the deuce!" cried my man. "Do you want to stay in this
palace, where I'm catching cold already? If Rivarol, Champcenetz,
Mirabeau-Tonneau and I had gone about pursing up our mouths, a
fine business we should have made of the Actes des Apôtres! Do you
know that that story of Hingant is making the devil of a to-do? So
you both wanted to let yourself die of hunger, did you? Ha, ha, ha!
Pouf!.... Ha, ha!"
Peltier, doubled in two, was holding his knees with laughter. He had
just received a hundred subscriptions to his paper from the colonies;
he had been paid for them, and jingled his guineas in his pocket. He
dragged me by main force, together with the apoplectic La
Boüétardais and two tattered Emigrants who were at hand, to dine
at the London Tavern. He made us drink port and eat roast beef and
plum-pudding till we were ready to burst.
"Monsieur le comte," he asked my cousin, "what makes you carry
your potato-trap askew like that?"
La Boüétardais, half shocked, half pleased, explained the thing as
best he could; he described how he had been suddenly seized while
singing the words, "O bella Venere!" My poor paralytic looked so
dead, so benumbed, so shabby, as he stammered out his "bella
Venere" that Peltier fell back, roaring with laughter, and almost upset
the table by striking it with his two feet underneath.
Upon reflection, the advice of my fellow-
countryman, a real character out of my other I go to Beccles.
fellow-countryman, Le Sage[185], did not appear to
me so bad. After three days spent in making inquiries and in
obtaining some clothes from Peltier's tailor, I set out for Beccles with
some money lent me by Deboffe, on the understanding that I was
going on with the Essai. I changed my name, which no Englishman
was able to pronounce, for that of Combourg, which had been borne
by my brother, and which reminded me of the sorrows and pleasures
of my early youth. I alighted at the inn, and handed the minister of
the place a letter from Deboffe, who was greatly esteemed in the
English book-world. The letter recommended me as a scholar of the
first rank. I was very well received, saw all the gentlemen of the
district, and met two officers of our Royal Navy who were giving
French lessons in the neighbourhood.
*
My strength improved; my trips on horseback restored my health a
little. England, viewed thus in detail, was melancholy, but charming;
it was the same thing, the same outlook wherever I went. M. de
Combourg was invited to every party. I owed to study the first
alleviation of my lot. Cicero was right to recommend the commerce
of letters in the troubles of life. The women were delighted to meet
a Frenchman to talk French with.
The misfortunes of my family, which I learnt from the newspapers,
and which made me known by my real name (for I was unable to
conceal my grief), increased the interest which my acquaintances
took in me. The public journals announced the death of M. de
Malesherbes; of his daughter, Madame la Présidente de Rosanbo; of
his granddaughter, Madame de Chateaubriand; and of his grandson-
in-law, the Comte de Chateaubriand, my brother, all immolated
together, on the same day, at the same hour, on the same
scaffold[186]. M. de Malesherbes was an object of admiration and
veneration among the English; my family connection with the
defender of Louis XVI. added to the kindness of my hosts.
My uncle de Bedée informed me of the persecutions endured by the
rest of my relations. My old and incomparable mother had been
flung into a cart with other victims and carried from the depths of
Brittany to the gaols of Paris, in order to share the lot of the son
whom she had loved so well. My wife and my sister Lucile were
awaiting their sentence in the dungeons at Rennes; there had been
a question of imprisoning them at Combourg Castle, which had
become a State fortress: their innocence was accused of the crime
of my emigration. What were our sorrows on foreign soil compared
with those of the French who had remained at home? And yet, what
unhappiness, amid the sufferings of exile, to know that our very
exile was made the pretext for the persecution of our kin.
Two years ago my sister-in-law's wedding ring was picked up in the
kennel of the Rue Cassette; it was brought to me, broken; the two
hoops of the ring had come apart and hung linked together; the
names were clearly legible engraved inside. How had the ring come
to be found there? When and where had it been lost? Had the
victim, imprisoned at the Luxembourg, passed by the Rue Cassette
on her way to execution? Had she dropped the ring from the
tumbril? Had the ring been torn from her finger after the execution?
I was shocked at the sight of this symbol, which, both by its broken
condition and its inscription, reminded me of a destiny so cruel.
Something fatal and mysterious was attached to this ring, which my
sister-in-law seemed to send me from among the dead, in memory
of herself and my brother. I have given it to her son[187]: may it not
bring him ill-luck!
Cher orphelin, image de ta mère,
Au ciel pour toi, je demande, ici-bas,
Les jours heureux retranchés à ton père
Et les enfants que ton oncle n'a pas[188].
This halting stanza and two or three others are the only present I
was able to make my nephew on his marriage.
Another relic remains to me of these misfortunes.
The following is a letter which M. de Contencin Execution of my
brother.
wrote to me when, in turning over the city records,
he found the order of the revolutionary tribunal which sent my
brother and his family to the scaffold:

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"There is a sort of cruelty in awaking in a mind that has suffered

much the memory of the ills which have affected it most
painfully. This consideration made me hesitate some time before
offering for your acceptance a very pathetic document, upon
which I alighted in the course of my historical researches. It is a
death-certificate, signed before the decease by a man who
always displayed himself as implacable as death itself, whenever
he found illustriousness and virtue united in the same person.
"I hope, monsieur le vicomte, that you will not take it too ill of
me if I add to your family records a document which recalls
such cruel memories. I presumed that it would have an interest
for you, since it had a value in my eyes, and I at once thought
of offering it to you. If I am not guilty of an indiscretion, I shall
be doubly gratified, as this proceeding gives me the opportunity
to express to you the feelings of profound respect and sincere
admiration with which you have long inspired me, and with I
am, monsieur le vicomte,
"your most humble, obedient servant,
 "A. de Contencin.
"Prefecture of the Seine,
"Paris, 28 March 1835."

I replied to the above letter as follows:

"I had had the Sainte-Chapelle searched, monsieur, for the

documents concerning the trial of my unfortunate brother and
his wife, but the 'order' which you have been good enough to
send me was not to be found. This order and so many others,
with their erasures and their mangled names, have doubtless
been presented to Fouquier before the tribunal of God; he will
have been compelled to acknowledge his signature. Those are
the times which people regret, and on which they write volumes
filled with admiration! For the rest, I envy my brother: he, at
least, has since many a long year quitted this sad world. I thank
you infinitely, monsieur, for the esteem which you have shown
me in your beautiful and noble letter, and I beg you to accept
the assurance of the very distinguished consideration with which
I have the honour to be, etc."

This death order is, above all, remarkable for the proof which it
affords of the levity with which the murders were committed: names
are wrongly spelt, others are effaced. These defects of form, which
would have been enough to stay the simplest sentence, did not stop
the headsmen; all they cared for was the exact hour of death: "at
five o'clock precisely." Here is the authentic document, I copy it
faithfully:

"Executor of Criminal Judgments,

"REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.
"The executor of criminal judgments will not fail to go to the
house of justice of the Conciergerie, there to execute the
judgment which condemns Mousset, d'Esprémenil, Chapelier,
 Thouret, Hell, Lamoignon Malsherbes, the woman Lepelletier
Rosambo, Chateau Brian, and his wife [proper name effaced
and illegible], the widow Duchatelet, the wife of Grammont,
formerly duke, the woman Rochechuart [Rochechouart], and
Parmentier;—14, to the penalty of death. The execution will
take place to-day, at five o'clock precisely, on the Place de la
Révolution in this city.
"H. Q. Fouquier,
"Public Prosecutor.
"Given at the Tribunal, 3 Floréal, Year II. of the French Republic.
"Two conveyances."

The 9 Thermidor saved my mother's days; but she was forgotten at

the Conciergerie. The conventional commissary found her:
"What are you doing here, citizeness?" he asked. "Who are you?
Why do you stay here?"
My mother replied that, having lost her son, she had not inquired
what was going on, and that it was indifferent to her whether she
died in prison or elsewhere.
"But perhaps you have other children?" said the commissary.
My mother mentioned my wife and sisters detained
in custody at Rennes. An order was sent to place Release of my
mother.
them at liberty, and my mother was compelled to
leave the prison.
In the histories of the Revolution, the writers have omitted to set the
picture of outer France by the side of the picture of inner France, to
depict that great colony of exiles, changing its industry and its
sorrows in accordance with the diversity of climate and the
difference in national manners.
Outside France, everything operated by individuals: changes of
condition, obscure afflictions, noiseless and unrewarded sacrifices;
and, in this variety of individuals of every rank, age and sex, one
fixed idea was preserved: that of Old France travelling with her
prejudices and her faithful sons, as formerly the Church of God had
wandered over the earth with her virtues and her martyrs.
Inside France, everything operated in the mass: Barère announcing
murders and conquests, civil wars and foreign wars; the gigantic
combats of the Vendée and on the banks of the Rhine; thrones
toppling to the sound of the march of our armies; our fleets
swallowed up by the waves; the people disinterring the monarchs at
Saint-Denis and flinging the dust of the dead kings into the eyes of
the living kings to blind them; New France, glorying in her new-
found liberties, proud even of her crimes, steadfast on her own soil,
while extending her frontiers, doubly armed with the headsman's
blade and the soldier's sword.
In the midst of my family sorrows I received some letters from my
friend Hingant, to reassure me as to his fate: letters very remarkable
in themselves; he wrote to me in September 1795:

"Your letter of the 23rd of August is full of the most touching

feeling. I showed it to a few people, whose eyes filled with tears
on reading it. I was almost tempted to say what Diderot said on
the day when J. J. Rousseau came and cried in his prison at
Vincennes:
"'See how my friends love me.'
"My illness, as a matter of fact, was only one of those nervous
fevers which cause great suffering, and for which time and
patience are the best remedies. During the fever I read extracts
from the Phædo and Timæus, and I said with Cato:
"'It must be so, Plato; thou reason'st well[189]!'
"I had formed an idea of my journey as one might form an idea
of a voyage to India. I imagined that I should see many new
objects in the 'spirit world,' as Swedenborg calls it, and above all
that I should be free from the fatigue and dangers of the
journey."
 *
Eight miles from Beccles, in a little town called Bungay, lived an
English clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Ives[190], a great Hellenist and
mathematician. He had a wife who was still young, with a charming
appearance, mind and manners, and an only daughter, fifteen years
of age. I was introduced to this household, and was better received
there than anywhere else. We took our wine in the old English
fashion, and sat two hours at table after the ladies had left. Mr. Ives,
who had been to America, liked to tell of his travels, to hear the
story of my own, to talk of Newton and Homer. His daughter, who
had become learned in order to please her father, was an excellent
musician, and sang as Madame Pasta[191] sings to-day. She
reappeared in time to pour out tea, and charmed away the old
parson's infectious drowsiness. Leaning against the end of the piano,
I listened to Miss Ives in silence.
When the music was over, the young lady questioned me about
France, about literature; asked me to set her plans of studies; she
wished particularly to know the Italian authors, and begged me to
give her some notes on the Divina Commedia and the Gerusalemme.
Gradually I began to experience a timid charm that issued from the
soul: I had decked the Floridans, I should not have ventured to pick
up Miss Ives's glove; I grew confused when I tried to translate a
passage from Tasso. I was more at my ease with that chaster and
more masculine genius, Dante.
Charlotte Ives's age and my own were suited. Into friendships
formed in the midst of one's career, there enters a certain
melancholy; when two people do not meet at the very outset, the
memories of the person beloved are not mingled with that portion of
our days in which we breathed without knowing her: those days,
which belong to another society, are painful to the memory, and as
though curtailed from our existence. When there is a disproportion
of age, the drawbacks increase: the older of the two commenced life
before the younger was born; the younger is destined to remain
alone in his turn: one has walked in a solitude this side of a cradle,
the other will cross a solitude that side of a tomb; the past was a
desert for the first, the future will be a desert for the second. It is
difficult to be in love in all the conditions that produce happiness:
youth, beauty, seasonable time, harmony of hearts, tastes,
character, graces, and years.
Having had a fall from my horse, I stayed some time with Mr. Ives. It
was winter; the dreams of my life began to flee before reality. Miss
Ives became more reserved; she ceased to bring me flowers; she
would no longer sing.
If I could have been told that I should pass the rest
of my life unknown in the bosom of this retiring Charlotte Ives.
family, I should have died of pleasure: love needs
but permanency to become at once an Eden before the fall and an
Hosanna without end. Contrive that beauty lasts, that youth
remains, that the heart can never weary, and you reproduce Heaven.
Love is so surely the sovereign felicity that it is pursued by the
phantom of perpetuity; it will consent to pronounce only irrevocable
vows; in the absence of joys, it seeks to make endless its sorrows; a
fallen angel, it still speaks the language it spoke in the incorruptible
abode; its hope is that it may never cease; in its twofold nature and
its twofold illusion here below, it strives to perpetuate itself by
immortal thoughts and never-failing generations.
I beheld with dismay the moment approach when I should be
obliged to go. On the eve of the day announced for my departure,
our dinner was a gloomy one. To my great surprise, Mr. Ives
withdrew at dessert, taking his daughter with him, and I remained
alone with Mrs. Ives: she was extremely embarrassed. I thought she
was going to reproach me with an inclination which she might have
discovered, although I had never mentioned it. She looked at me,
lowered her eyes, blushed; herself bewitching in her confusion,
there was no sentiment which she might not by right have claimed
for herself. At last, overcoming with an effort the obstacle which had
prevented her from speaking:
"Sir," she said in English, "you behold my confusion: I do not know if
Charlotte pleases you, but it is impossible to deceive a mother's
eyes; my daughter has certainly conceived an attachment for you.
Mr. Ives and I have consulted together: you suit us in every respect;
we believe you will make our daughter happy. You no longer possess
a country; you have lost your relations; your property is sold: what is
there to take you back to France? Until you inherit what we have,
you will live with us."
Of all the sorrows that I had undergone, this was the sorest and
greatest. I threw myself at Mrs. Ives's feet; I covered her hands with
my kisses and my tears. She thought I was weeping with happiness,
and herself began to sob for joy. She stretched out her arm to pull
the bell-rope; she called her husband and daughter:
"Stop!" I cried. "I am a married man!"
She fell back fainting.
I went out and, without returning to my room, left the house on foot
I reached Beccles and took the mail for London, after writing a letter
to Mrs. Ives of which I regret that I did not keep a copy.
I have retained the sweetest, the tenderest, the most grateful
recollection of that event. Before I made my name, Mr. Ives's family
was the only one that bore me good-will and welcomed me with
genuine affection. Poor, unknown, proscribed, with neither beauty
nor attraction, I was offered an assured future, a country, a
charming wife to take me out of my loneliness, a mother almost as
beautiful to fill the place of my old mother, a father full of
information, loving and cultivating literature, to replace the father of
whom Heaven had bereaved me: what did I bring to set off against
all that? No illusion could possibly enter into the choice they made of
me; there was no doubt that I was loved. Since that time, I have
met with but one attachment sufficiently lofty to inspire me with the
same confidence. As to any interest of which I may subsequently
have been the object, I have never been able to make out whether
outward causes, a noisy fame, official finery, the glamour of a high
literary or political position were not the covering which attracted the
attentions shown to me.
For the rest, if I had married Charlotte Ives, my part on earth would
have been changed: buried in an English county, I should have
become a sporting gentleman; not a single line would have fallen
from my pen; I should even have forgotten my language, for I wrote
in English, and my ideas were beginning to take shape in English in
my head. Would my country have lost much by my disappearance?
If I could put on one side that which has consoled me, I would say
that I should already have numbered days of calm, instead of the
troubled days that have fallen to my share. The Empire, the
Restoration, the divisions and quarrels of France: what would all that
have mattered to me? I should not each morning have to palliate
faults, to contend with errors. Is it certain that I possess a real
talent, and that that talent is worth the sacrifice of my whole life?
Shall I outlast my tomb? If I do go beyond it, in the transformation
which is now being brought about, in a changed world occupied with
very different things, will there be a public to hear me? Shall I not be
a man of the past, unintelligible to the new generations? Will not my
ideas, my opinions, my very style seem tedious and antiquated to a
scornful posterity? Will my shade be able to say, as the shade of
Virgil said to Dante:
"Poeta fui e cantai: I was a poet and I sang?"[192]
*
I returned to London, but found no repose: I had
fled from my fate as a miscreant from his crime. I return to
London.
How painful it must have been to a family so
worthy of my homage, of my respect, of my gratitude, to receive a
sort of refusal from the unknown man whom they had welcomed, to
whom they had offered a new home with a simplicity, an absence of
suspicion, of precaution, almost patriarchal in character! I imagined
Charlotte's grief, the just reproaches with which I was liable and
deserved to be covered: for, after all, I had taken pleasure in
yielding to an inclination of which I knew the insuperable
unlawfulness. Had I, in fact, made a vain attempt at seduction,
without taking into account the heinousness of my conduct? But
whether I stopped, as I did, in order to remain an honest man, or
overcame all obstacles in order to surrender to an inclination
stigmatized beforehand through my conduct, I could only have
plunged the object of that seduction into sorrow or regret.
From these bitter reflections I abandoned myself to other thoughts
no less filled with bitterness: I cursed my marriage, which, according
to the false perception of a mind at that time very sick, had thrown
me out of my course and was robbing me of happiness. I did not
reflect that, on account of the ailing temperament to which I was
subject, and the romantic notions of liberty which I cherished, a
marriage with Miss Ives would have been as painful to me as a more
independent union.
One thing within me remained pure and charming, although
profoundly sad: the image of Charlotte; that image ended by
prevailing over my revolts against my fate. I was tempted a hundred
times to return to Bungay, not to appear before the troubled family,
but to hide by the road-side to see Charlotte pass, to follow her to
the temple where we had the same God, if not the same altar, in
common, to offer that woman, through the medium of Heaven, the
inexpressible ardour of my vows, to pronounce, at least in thought,
the prayer from the nuptial benediction which I might have heard
from a clergyman's lips in that temple:

"O God,... look mercifully upon this thy handmaid. ... now to be
joined in wedlock.... May it be to her a yoke of love and
peace.... May she be fruitful in offspring ... that they may both
see their children's children unto the third and fourth
generation, and arrive at a desired old age[193]."

Wavering between resolve and resolve, I wrote Charlotte long letters

which I tore up. A few unimportant notes which I had received from
her served me as a talisman; attached to my steps by my thought,
Charlotte, gracious and compassionate, followed me along the paths
of my sylph, purifying them as she went. She absorbed my faculties;
she was the centre through which my intelligence made its way, in
the same way as the blood passes through the heart; she disgusted
me with all else, for I made of her a perpetual object of comparison
to her advantage. A real and unhappy passion is a poisoned leaven
which remains at the bottom of the soul, and which would poison
the bread of the angels.
The spots by which I had wandered, the hours and words which I
had exchanged with Charlotte, were engraved on my memory: I saw
the smile of the wife who had been destined for me; I respectfully
touched her black tresses; I pressed her shapely arms to my breast,
like a chain which I might have worn round my neck. No sooner was
I in some sequestered spot than Charlotte, with her white hands,
came to sit by my side. I divined her presence, as at night one
inhales the perfume of unseen flowers.
I had lost Hingant's company, and my walks, more solitary than
before, left me full liberty to carry with me the image of Charlotte.
There was not a common, a road, a church, within thirty miles of
London, that I did not visit. The most deserted places, a field of
nettles, a ditch planted with thistles, all that was neglected by men,
became favourite spots for me, and in those spots Byron already
drew breath. Leaning my head upon my hand, I contemplated the
scorned sites; when their painful impression affected me too greatly,
the memory of Charlotte came to enchant me: I was then like the
pilgrim who, on reaching a solitude within view of the rocks of
Mount Sinai, heard the nightingale sing.
In London, my habits aroused surprise. I looked at nobody, I never
replied, I did not know what was said to me: my old associates
suspected me of madness.
*
What happened at Bungay after my departure? What became of that
family to which I had brought joy and mourning?
You will have remembered that I am at present Ambassador to the
Court of George IV., and that I am writing in London, in 1822, of
what happened to me in London in 1795.
Some matters of business obliged me, a week ago, to interrupt the
narrative which I resume to-day. During this interval, my man came
and told me one morning, between twelve and one o'clock, that a
carriage had stopped at my door and that an English lady was
asking to see me. As I have made it a rule, in my public position, to
deny myself to nobody, I ordered the lady to be shown up.
I was in my study, when Lady Sutton was announced; I saw a lady
in mourning enter the room, accompanied by two handsome boys
also in mourning: one might have been sixteen, the
other fourteen years of age. I went towards the Lady Sutton.
stranger; her perturbation was such that she could
hardly walk. She said to me, in faltering accents:
"My lord, do you remember me?"
Yes, I remembered Miss Ives! The years which had passed over her
head had left only their spring-time behind. I took her by the hand, I
made her sit down, and I sat down by her side. I could not speak;
my eyes were full of tears; I gazed at her in silence through those
tears; I felt how deeply I had loved her by what I was now
experiencing. At last I was able to say, in my turn:
"And you, madam, do you remember me?"
She raised her eyes, which till then she had kept lowered, and for
sole reply gave me a smiling and melancholy glance, like a long
remembrance. Her hand still lay between mine. Charlotte said to me:
"I am in mourning for my mother; my father has been dead many
years. These are my children."
At these words, she drew away her hand and sank back into her
chair, covering her eyes with her handkerchief. Soon she resumed:
"My lord, I am now speaking to you in the language which I
practised with you at Bungay. I am ashamed: excuse me. My
children are the sons of Admiral Sutton[194], whom I married three
years after your departure from England. But I am not sufficiently
self-possessed to-day to tell you the details. Permit me to come
again."
I asked her for her address, and gave her my arm to take her to her
carriage. She trembled, and I pressed her hand to my heart.
I called on Lady Sutton the next day; I found her alone. Then there
began between us a long series of those "Do you remember?"
questions which cause a whole life-time to revive. At each "Do you
remember?" we looked at one another; we sought to discover in
each other's faces those traces of time which so cruelly mark the
distance from the starting-point and the length of the road
traversed. I said to Charlotte:
"How did your mother tell you?"
Charlotte blushed, and hastily interrupted me:
"I have come to London to ask you to interest yourself on behalf of
Admiral Sutton's children. The eldest would like to go to Bombay. Mr.
Canning, who has been appointed Governor-General of India, is your
friend; he might consent to take my son with him. I should be very
grateful to you, and I should like to owe to you the happiness of my
first child."
She laid a stress on these last words.
"Ah, madam," I replied, "of what do you remind me? What a
subversion of destinies! You, who received a poor exile at your
father's hospitable board; you, who did not scorn his sufferings; you,
who perhaps thought of raising him to a glorious and unhoped-for
rank: it is you who now ask his protection in your own country! I will
see Mr. Canning; your son, however much it costs me to give him
that name, your son shall go to India, if it only depends on me. But
tell me, madam, how does my new position affect you? In what light
do you look upon me at present? That word, 'my lord,' which you
employ seems very harsh to me."
Charlotte replied:
"I don't think you changed, not even aged. When I spoke of you to
my parents during your absence, I always gave you the title of 'my
lord;' it seemed to me that you had a right to bear it: were you not
to me the same as a husband, 'my lord and master'."
That graceful woman reminded me of Milton's Eve,
as she uttered these words: she was not born in Sentimental
memories.
the womb of another woman; her beauty bore the
imprint of the divine hand that had moulded it.
I went to Mr. Canning and to Lord Londonderry; they made as many
difficulties about a small place as would have been made in France,
but they promised, as people promise at Court. I gave Lady Sutton
an account of the measures I had taken. I saw her three times
more: at my fourth visit, she told me she was returning to Bungay.
This last interview was a sad one. Charlotte talked to me once more
of the past, of our secret life, of our reading, our walks, our music,
the flowers of yester-year, the hopes of bygone days.
"When I knew you," she said, "no one spoke your name; now, who
has not heard it? Do you know that I have a work and several letters
in your handwriting? Here they are." And she handed me a packet.
"Do not be offended if I prefer to keep nothing of yours." She began
to weep. "Farewell, farewell," she said. "Think of my son. I shall not
see you again, for you will not come to see me at Bungay."
"I will," I cried; "I shall come to bring you your son's appointment."
She shook her head with an air of doubt, and withdrew. On
returning to the Embassy, I locked myself in and opened the packet.
It contained only a few unimportant notes from myself and a
scheme of studies, with remarks on the English and Italian poets. I
had hoped to find a letter from Charlotte: there was none; but, in
the margins of the manuscript, I perceived some notes in English,
French, and Italian: the age of the ink and the youthfulness of the
hand in which they were written showed that it was long since they
had been inscribed upon those margins.
That is the story of my relations with Miss Ives. As I finish telling it,
it seems to me as though I were losing a second Charlotte in the
same island in which I lost the first. But between that which I feel at
this moment and that which I felt at the hours whose tenderness I
have recalled lies the whole space of innocence: passions have
interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. I could
no longer bring to an artless woman the candour of desire, the
sweet ignorance of a love that did not surpass the limits of a dream.
I was writing then on the wave of sadness; I am now no longer
tossed on the wave of life. Well, if I had pressed in my arms, as a
wife and a mother, her who was destined for me as a virgin and a
bride, it would have been with a sort of rage, to blight, to fill with
sorrow, to crush out of existence those seven-and-twenty years
which had been given to another after having been offered to me.
I must look upon the sentiment which I have just recalled as the first
of that kind which entered my heart; it was nevertheless in no way
sympathetic with my stormy nature: the latter would have corrupted
it and made me incapable of long enjoying such sacred delectations.
It was then that, embittered as I was by misfortunes, already a
pilgrim from beyond the seas, having begun my solitary travels, it
was then that I became obsessed by the mad ideas depicted in the
mystery of René, which turned me into the most tormented being on
the face of the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of
Charlotte, by causing a few rays of true light to penetrate to the
depths of my soul, at first dissipated a cloud of phantoms: my
dæmon, like an evil genius, plunged back into the abyss, and
awaited the effects of time in order to renew her apparitions.
*
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.
No one can state without lying that I have told
what most people tell in a moment of pain, My reserved
nature.
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!
*
Life has often been represented (by me first of all)
as a mountain which we climb on one side and The Essai
Historique.
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.
As I had become almost a personage, the upper
Emigration began to seek me out in London. I Mrs. O'Larry.
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.
Montlosier continued to ride cock-horse on his
famous phrase of the "wooden cross," a phrase The Comte de
Montlosier.
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