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VOLUME IV

The year 1821--The Berlin, Embassy--I arrive in Berlin--M. Ancillon--The Royal Family--Celebrations for the marriage of the Grand-duke Nicholas--Berlin society--Count von Humboldt--Herr von Chamisso--Ministers and ambassadors--The Princess William--The Opera--A musical meeting--My first dispatches--M. de Bonnay--The Park--The Duchess of Cumberland--Commencement of a Memorandum on Germany--Charlottenburg--Interval between the Berlin Embassy and the London Embassy--Baptism of M. le Duc de Bordeaux--Letter to M. Pasquier--Letter from M. de Bernstoff--Letter from M. Ancillon--Last letter from the Duchess of Cumberland--M. de Vill?le, Minister of Finance--I am appointed Ambassador to London

BOOK X 113-146

Madame R?camier--Childhood of Madame R?camier described by M. Benjamin Constant--Letter to Madame R?camier from Lucien Bonaparte--Continuation of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Sta?l--Madame R?camier's journey to England--Madame de Sta?l's first journey to Germany--Madame R?camier in Paris--Plans of the generals--Portrait of Bernadotte--Trial of Moreau--Letters from Moreau and Mass?na to Madame R?camier--Death of M. Necker--Return of Madame de Sta?l--Madame R?camier at Coppet--Prince Augustus of Prussia--Madame de Sta?l's second journey to Germany--The Ch?teau de Chaumont--Letter from Madame de Sta?l to Bonaparte--Madame R?camier and M. Mathieu de Montmorency exiled--Madame R?camier at Ch?lons--Madame R?camier at Lyons--Madame de Chevreuse--Spanish prisoners--Madame R?camier in Rome--Albano-Canova: his letters--The Albano fisherman--Madame R?camier in Naples--The Duc de Rohan-Chabot--King Murat: his letters--Madame R?camier returns to France--Letter from Madame de Genlis--Letters from Benjamin Constant--Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return from Elba--Madame de Kr?dener--The Duke of Wellington--I meet Madame R?camier again--Death of Madame de Sta?l--The Abbaye-aux-Bois

VOL. IV

THE

MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIAND

VOLUME IV

The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled up. Their members had become bent and shrunk; the soul was lacking to the new universe so soon as Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded from view from the moment when they were no longer illuminated by the light which had given them colour and relief. At the commencement of these Memoirs, I had only myself to speak of: well, there is always a sort of paramountcy in man's individual solitude. Later, I was surrounded by miracles: those miracles kept up my voice; but at this present moment there is no more conquest of Egypt, no more Battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena, no more retreat from Russia, no more invasion of France, capture of Paris, return from Elba, Battle of Waterloo, funeral at St. Helena: what remains? Portraits to which only the genius of Moli?re could lend the gravity of comedy!

One thing strikes me, however: the little world to which I am now coming was superior to the world which succeeded it in 1830; we were giants in comparison with the society of maggots that has engendered itself.

The Restoration offers at least one point in which we can find importance: after the dignity of one man, that man having passed, there was born again the dignity of mankind. If despotism has been replaced by liberty, if we understand anything of independence, if we have lost the habit of grovelling, if the rights of human nature are no longer disregarded, we owe these things to the Restoration. Wherefore also I threw myself into the fray in order, as far as I could, to revive the species when the individual had come to an end.

Come, let us pursue our task! Let us descend, with a groan, to myself and my colleagues. You have seen me amid my dreams; you are about to see me in my realities: if the interest decreases, if I fall, reader, be just, make allowance for my subject!

I received, at my entrance, the only honour which my colleagues ever did me during my fifteen years' residence in their midst: I was appointed one of the four secretaries for the session of 1816. Lord Byron met with no more favour when he appeared in the House of Lords, and he left it for good: I ought to have returned to my deserts.

My first appearance in the tribune was to make a speech on the irremovability of the judges: I applauded the principle, but censured its immediate application. At the Revolution of 1830, the members of the Left who were most devoted to that revolution wished to suspend the irremovability for a time.

On the 22nd of February 1816, the Duc de Richelieu brought us the autograph will of the Queen. I ascended the tribune, and said:

On the 12th of March 1816, the question of the ecclesiastical pensions was discussed:

"'My only business is to take you to your death.'"

A bill had been introduced into the Hereditary Chamber relating to the elections. I declared myself in favour of the integral renewal of the Chamber of Deputies. It was not until 1824, being then a minister, that I passed it into law.

It was also in this first speech on the law governing elections, in 1816, that I said, in reply to an opponent:

"I will not refer to what has been said about Europe watching our discussions. Speaking for myself, gentlemen, I doubtless owe to the French blood that flows in my veins the impatience which I experience when, in order to influence my vote, people talk to me of opinions existing outside my country; and, if civilized Europe tried to impose the Charter on me, I should go to live in Constantinople."

On the 9th of April 1816, I introduced a motion to the Chamber relating to the Barbary Powers. The house decided that there was cause for its discussion. I was already thinking of combating slavery, before I obtained that favourable decision from the Peers, which was the first political intervention of a great Power on behalf of the Greeks:

"I have seen the ruins of Carthage," I said to my colleagues; "I have met among those ruins the successors of the unhappy Christians for whose deliverance St. Louis sacrificed his life. Philosophy can take its share of the glory attached to the success of my motion and boast of having obtained in an age of light that for which religion strove in vain in an age of darkness."

I found myself in an assembly in which my words, for three-fourths of the time, turned against myself. One can move a popular chamber; an aristocratic chamber is deaf. With no gallery, speaking in private before old men, dried-up remains of the old Monarchy, of the Revolution and of the Empire, anything that rose above the most commonplace seemed madness. One day, the front row of arm-chairs, quite close to the tribune, was filled with venerable peers, one more deaf than the other, their heads bent forward, and holding to their ears a trumpet with the mouth turned towards the tribune. I sent them to sleep, which is very natural. One of them dropped his ear-trumpet; his neighbour, awakened by the fall, wanted politely to pick up his colleague's trumpet; he fell down. The worst of it was that I began to laugh, although I was just then speaking pathetically on some subject of humanity, I forget what.

The speakers who succeeded in that Chamber were those who spoke without ideas, in a level and monotonous tone, or who found terms of sensibility only in order to melt with pity for the poor ministers. M. de Lally-Tolendal thundered in favour of the public liberties: he made the vaults of our solitude resound with the praises of three or four English Lord Chancellors, his ancestors, he said. When his panegyric of the liberty of the press was finished, came a "but" based upon "circumstances," which "but" left our honour safe, under the useful supervision of the censorship.

The Restoration gave an impulse to men's minds; it set free the thought suppressed by Bonaparte: the intellect, like a caryatic figure relieved of the entablature that bent its brow, lifted up its head. The Empire had struck France with dumbness; liberty restored touched her and gave her back speech: oratorical talents existed which took up matters where the Mirabeaus and Cazal?s had left them, and the Revolution continued its course.

"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the order of right of succession to the Crown."

I next found myself engaged in a rather long correspondence with M. the Chancellor, M. the Minister of Police and M. the Attorney-General Bellart, until the 9th of November, on which day the Chancellor informed me of the order made in my favour by the Court of First Instance, which placed me in possession of my seized work. In one of his letters, M. the Chancellor told me that he had been distressed to see the dissatisfaction which the King had publicly expressed with my work. This dissatisfaction arose from the chapter in which I stood up against the establishment of a minister of General Police in a constitutional country.

"My brother might marry again without changing anything in the succession to the throne: he would only make cadets. As for me, I should only make elders; I do not want to disinherit M. le Duc d'Angoul?me."

And he drew himself up with a capable and bantering air; but I had no intention of denying the King any power.

Without being cruel, the King was not humane; tragic catastrophes neither astonished nor touched him; he was satisfied with saying to the Duc de Berry, who apologized for having had the misfortune to disturb the King's sleep by his death:

"I have finished my night."

Nevertheless, this quiet man would fly into horrible rages when annoyed; and also, this cold, unfeeling Prince had attachments which resembled passions: thus there succeeded each other in his intimacy the Comte d'Avaray, M. de Blacas, M. Decazes; Madame de Balbi, Madame de Cayla. All these beloved persons were favourites; unfortunately they have a great deal too many letters in their hands.

So soon as M. Decazes was made a minister, the carriages blocked the Quai Malaquais in the evenings to set down in the new-comer's drawing-room all that was noblest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The Frenchman may do what he pleases, he will never be anything but a courtier, no matter of whom, provided it be a power of the day.

Soon there was formed, on behalf of the new favourite, a formidable coalition of stupidities. In democratic society, prate about liberties, declare that you see the progress of the human race and the future of things, adding to your speeches a few Crosses of the Legion of Honour, and you are sure of your place; in aristocratic society, play whist, utter commonplaces and carefully-prepared witticisms with a grave and profound air, and the fortune of your genius is assured.

Born a fellow-countryman of Murat, but of Murat without a kingdom, M. Decazes had come to us from the mother of Napoleon. He was familiar, obliging, never insolent; he wished me well; I do not know why, I did not care: thence came the commencement of my disgraces. That was to teach me that one must never fail in respect to a favourite. The King loaded him with kindnesses and credit, and subsequently married him to a very well-born person, daughter to M. de Sainte-Aulaire. It is true that M. Decazes served royalty too well; it was he who unearthed Marshal Ney in the mountains of Auvergne, where he had hidden himself.

"I shall raise him up so high that the greatest lords will be envious of him."

Madame Princeteau, M. Decazes' sister, was an agreeable, modest and excellent person; the King had fallen in love with her prospectively. M. Decazes, the father, whom I saw in the throne-room in full dress, sword at side, hat under his arm, made no success, however.

At last, the death of M. le Duc de Berry increased the ill-will on both sides and brought about the favourite's fall. I have said that "his feet slipped in the blood," which does not mean, Heaven forbid! that he was guilty of the murder, but that he fell in the reddened pool that formed under Louvel's knife.

These broils over, I remained bleeding from the wounds inflicted on me at the appearance of my pamphlet. I did not take possession of my political career without bearing the scars of the blows which I received on entering upon that career: I felt ill at ease in it, I was unable to breathe.

Shortly afterwards, an Order countersigned "Richelieu" struck me off the list of ministers of State, and I was deprived of a place till then reputed irremovable; it had been given me at Ghent, and the pension attached to that place was withdrawn from me: the hand which had taken Fouch? struck me.

I have had the honour to be thrice stripped for the Legitimacy: first, for following the sons of St. Louis into exile; the second time, for writing in favour of the principles of the Monarchy, as "granted;" the third, for keeping silence on a baleful law at the moment when I had just caused the triumph of our arms. The Spanish Campaign had given back soldiers to the White Flag, and, if I had been kept in power, I should have carried back our frontiers to the banks of the Rhine.

My nature made me quite indifferent to the loss of my salary; I came off with going on foot again and, on rainy days, driving to the Chamber of Peers in a hackney-coach. In my popular conveyance, under the protection of the rabble that surged around me, I re-entered into the rights of the proletariat of which I formed part: from my lofty chariot I looked down upon the train of kings.

I was obliged to sell my books; M. Merlin put them up to auction at the Salle Sylvestre in the Rue des Bons-Enfants. I kept only a little Greek Homer, whose margins were covered with attempts at translation and remarks in my handwriting. Soon it became necessary to take energetic measures; I asked M. the Minister of the Interior for leave to raffle my country-house. The lottery was opened at the office of M. Denis, notary. There were ninety tickets at 1000 francs each: the numbers were not taken up by the Royalists; the Dowager Madame la Duchesse d'Orl?ans took three numbers; my friend, M. Lain?, the Minister of the Interior, who had countersigned the Order of the 5th of September and consented in the Council to the striking off of my name, took a fourth ticket under a false name. The money was returned to the subscribers; M. Lain?, however, refused to withdraw his 1000 francs; he left it with the notary for the poor.

Not long after, my Vall?e-aux-Loups was sold, as they sell the furniture of the poor, on the Place du Ch?telet. I suffered much by this sale; I had become attached to my trees, planted and, so to speak, full-grown in my memories. The reserve was 50,000 francs; it was covered by M. le Vicomte de Montmorency, who alone dared to bid one hundred francs higher: the Vall?e was knocked down to him. He has since inhabited my retreat. It is not a good thing to meddle with my fortunes: that man of virtue is no more.

"With all due deference to those who have administered only during our troubles, it is not the material security but the ethics of a people that constitute the public credit. Will the new owners make good the titles of their new property? To deprive them there will be quoted to them instances of inheritances of nine centuries taken away from their former possessors. Instead of those inalienable patrimonies in which the same family outlived the race of the oaks, you will have unfixed properties in which the reeds will scarcely have time to spring up and die before they change masters. The homes will cease to be the guardians of domestic morality; they will lose their venerable authority; rights-of-way open to all comers, they will no longer be hallowed by the grandfather's chair and the cradle of the new-born child.

"Peers of France, it is your cause that I am pleading here, not mine: I am speaking to you in the interests of your children; I shall have no concern with posterity; I have no sons; I have lost my father's fields, and a few trees which I have planted will soon cease to be mine."

Because of the resemblance of opinions, then very keen, an intimacy had been established between the minorities of the two Chambers. France was learning representative government. As I had been foolish enough to take it literally and make a real passion of it, to my prejudice, I supported those who took it up, without troubling my head as to whether their opposition was not prompted by human motives rather than by a pure love like that which I felt for the Charter: not that I was a simpleton, but I idolized my lady-love and would have gone through fire to carry her off in my arms. It was during this constitutional attack that I came to know M. de Vill?le, in 1816. He was calmer; he overcame his ardour; he, too, aimed at conquering liberty, but he laid siege to it according to rule. He opened the trenches methodically: I, who wanted to carry the place by assault, advanced to the escalade, and often found myself flung back into the ditch.

I met M. de Vill?le first at the Duchesse de L?vis'. He became the leader of the Royalist Opposition in the Elective Chamber, as I was in the Hereditary Chamber. He had as a friend his colleague M. de Corbi?re. The latter never left his side, and people used to speak of "Vill?le and Corbi?re" as they speak of "Orestes and Pylades" or "Euryalus and Nisus."

To enter into fastidious details about persons whose names one will not know to-morrow would be an idiotic vanity. Obscure and tedious commotions, which one considers of immense interest and which interest nobody, bygone intrigues, which have decided no important event, should be left to those devoutly happy persons who imagine themselves to be, or to have been, the object of the world's attention.

Nevertheless, there were proud moments in which my contentions with M. de Vill?le seemed to me personally like the dissensions of Sulla and Marius, of Caesar and Pompey. Together with the other members of the Opposition, we went pretty often to spend the evening in deliberation at M. Piet's, in the Rue Th?r?se. We arrived looking extremely ugly, and sat down round a room lighted by a flaring lamp. In this legislative fog, we talked of the Bill introduced, of the motion to be made, of the friend to be pushed into the secretaryship, the questorship, the different committees. We were not unlike the assemblies of the early Christians, as depicted by the enemies of the Faith: we broached the worst news; we said that things were going to turn, that Rome would be troubled by divisions, that our armies would be routed.

After the sitting, M. de Vill?le would go away, accompanied by M. de Corbi?re. I studied many personalities, I learnt many things, I occupied myself with many interests at those meetings: finance, which I always understood, the army, justice, administration initiated me into their several elements. I left those conferences somewhat more of a statesman and somewhat more persuaded of the poverty of all that knowledge. Throughout the night, between sleeping and waking, I saw the different attitudes of the bald heads, the different expressions of the faces of those untidy and ungainly Solons. It was all very venerable, truly; but I preferred the swallow which woke me in my youth and the Muses who filled my dreams: the rays of the dawn which, striking a swan, made the shadows of those white birds fall upon a golden billow; the rising sun which appeared to me in Syria in the stem of a palm-tree, like the phoenix' nest, pleased me more.

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