Read Ebook: The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England Volume 4 (of 6) Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 4 by Chateaubriand Fran Ois Ren Vicomte De Teixeira De Mattos Alexander Translator

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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.

The revolution worked by this paper was unexampled: in France, it changed the majority in the Chambers; abroad, it converted the spirit of the Cabinets.

I used sometimes to laugh at the ministers, and I gave vent to that ironical propensity which I have always reproved in myself.

"The ministry has invented a new morality, the morality of interests; that of duties is abandoned to fools. Now this morality of interests, of which it is proposed to make the ground-work of our government, has done more to corrupt the people in a space of three years than the Revolution in a quarter of a century.

"That which destroys morality in the nations and, with that morality, the nations themselves is not violence, but seduction; and by seduction I mean all that is flattering and specious in any false doctrine. Men often mistake error for truth, because each faculty of the heart or the mind has its false image: coldness resembles virtue, reasoning resembles reason, emptiness resembles depth, and so on.

"The eighteenth century was a destructive century; we were all seduced. We distorted politics, we strayed into guilty innovations while seeking a social existence in the corruption of our morals. The Revolution came to rouse us: in pushing the Frenchman out of his bed, it flung him into the tomb. Nevertheless, the Reign of Terror is, perhaps, of all the epochs of the Revolution, that which was least dangerous to morality, because no conscience was forced: crime appeared in all its frankness. Orgies in the midst of blood, scandals that ceased to be so by dint of being horrible: that is all. The women of the people came and worked at their knitting round the murder-machine as round their fire-sides: the scaffolds were the public morals and death the foundation of the government. Nothing was clearer than the position of every one: there was no talk of 'speciality,' nor of 'practicality,' nor of a 'system of interests.' That balderdash of little minds and bad consciences was unknown. They said to a man, 'You are a Royalist, a nobleman, rich: die;' and he died. Antonelle wrote that no count had been found against certain prisoners, but that he had condemned them as aristocrats: a monstrous frankness, which, notwithstanding, allowed moral order to subsist; for society is not ruined by killing the innocent as innocent, but by killing him as guilty.

"Consequently, those hideous times are times of great acts of self-devotion. Then women went heroically to the scaffold; fathers gave themselves up for their sons, sons for their fathers; unexpected assistance was introduced into the prisons, and the priest who was being hunted consoled the victim by the side of the executioner who failed to recognise him.

"Morality, under the Directory, had to combat the corruption of morals rather than of doctrines; license prevailed. Men were hurled into pleasures as they had been heaped up in the prisons; they forced the present to advance joys on the future, in the fear of seeing a revival of the past. Every man, not having yet had time to create himself a home, lived in the street, on the public walks, in the public rooms. Familiarized with the scaffolds, and already half cut off from the world, they did not think it worth the trouble to go indoors. There was question only of arts, balls, fashions; people changed their ornaments and clothes as readily as they would have stripped themselves of their lives.

"Under Bonaparte the seduction commenced again, but it was a seduction that carried its own remedy: Bonaparte seduced by means of the spell of glory, and all that is great carries a principle of legislation within itself. He conceived that it was useful to allow the doctrine of all peoples to be taught, the morality of all times, the religion of eternity.

"I should not be surprised to hear some one reply:

"Duty is therefore a most positive fact, since it gives to human society the only lasting existence that the latter can have.

"Interest, on the contrary, is a fiction when it is taken as people take it to-day, in its physical and rigorous sense, since it is no longer in the evening what it was in the morning; since it changes its nature at each moment; since, founded on fortune, it has fortune's fickleness.

"He who does his duty gains esteem; he who yields to his interest is but little esteemed: it was very like the century to draw a principle of government from a source of contempt! Bring up politicians to think only of what affects them, and you shall see how they will dress out the State; by that means you will have only corrupt and hungry ministers, like those mutilated slaves who governed the Lower Empire and who sold all, remembering that they themselves had been sold.

"Mark this: interests are powerful only so long as they prosper; when times are harsh, they become enfeebled. Duties, on the contrary, are never so energetic as when they are painful to fulfil. When times are good, they grow lax. I like a principle of government which grows great in misfortune: that greatly resembles virtue.

"What can be absurder than to cry to the people:

"'Do not be devoted! Have no enthusiasm! Think only of your interests!'

"It is as though one were to say to them:

"'Do not come to our assistance, abandon us if such be your interest.'

"With this profound policy, when the hour of devotion shall have come, each one will shut his door, go to the window, and watch the Monarchy pass."

Such was this article on the morality of interest and the morality of duty.

On the 3rd of December 1819, I again mounted the tribune of the Chamber of Peers: I raised my voice against the bad Frenchmen who were able to give us as a motive for tranquillity the watchfulness of the European armies:

"Had we need of guardians? Were they still going to talk of circumstances? Were we again, by means of diplomatic notes, to receive certificates of good conduct? And should we not only have changed a garrison of Cossacks for a garrison of ambassadors?"

From that time forward, I spoke of the foreigners as I have since spoken of them in the Spanish War; I was thinking of our delivery at a moment when even the Liberals contended with me. Men opposed in opinion make a deal of noise to attain silence! Let a few years arrive, and the actors will descend from the stage and the audience no longer be there to hiss or applaud them.

Let the reader picture to himself an empty playhouse, after the catastrophe of a tragedy: the curtain raised, the orchestra deserted, the lights extinguished, the machinery motionless, the scenery fixed and smoke-blackened, the actors, the singers, the dancers vanished through the trap-doors and secret passages!

I have, in a separate work, given the life and death of M. le Duc de Berry. My reflections made at that time are still true to-day:

The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime. We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at.

Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte ?chapp?e!

Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!

"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious scion of so many kings, before descending into your last resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours with the end of your life."

M. le Duc de Bordeaux saw the light on the 29th of September 1820. The new-born was called "the child of Europe" and "the child of miracle," while waiting to become the child of exile.

Some time before the Princess' confinement, three market-women of Bordeaux, in the name of all the ladies their companions, had a cradle made, and chose me to present them, their cradle and themselves, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Mesdames Dast?, Duranton and Aniche came to see me. I hastened to ask the gentlemen in attendance for a ceremonial audience. Suddenly, M. de S?ze thought that this honour was his by right: it was said that I should never succeed at Court. I was not yet reconciled with the Ministry, and I did not seem worthy of the office of introducer of my humble ambassadresses. I got out of this great negociation, as usual, by paying their expenses.

All this became an affair of State; the pother found its way into the papers. The Bordeaux ladies were aware of this, and wrote me the following letter on the subject:

"MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,

"We owe you our thanks for the kindness which you have had to lay our joy and our respects at the feet of Madame la Duchesse de Berry: this time at least you will not have been prevented from being our interpreter. We heard with the greatest concern of the stir which M. le Comte de S?ze has made in the newspapers, and, if we have kept silence, it is because we feared to give you pain. Still, monsieur le vicomte, none is better able than yourself to do homage to truth and to undeceive M. de S?ze as to our real intentions in our choice of an introducer to Her Royal Highness. We make you the offer to state all that has passed in a newspaper of your own choosing; and, as no one has the right to choose a guide for us, and as we had been pleased to think until the last moment that you would be that guide, what we shall state in this respect will necessarily silence all tongues.

"That is what we have determined upon, monsieur le vicomte; but we thought it our duty to do nothing without your consent. Rely upon it that we will most gladly publish the handsome way in which you behaved towards everybody in the matter of our presentation. If we are the cause of the mischief, we are quite ready to redress it.

"We are, and always shall be,

"Monsieur le vicomte,

"Your most humble and most respectful servants,

"Wives DAST?, DURANTON, ANICHE."

I replied to these generous ladies, who were so unlike the great ladies:

"I thank you, my dear ladies, for the offer you make me to publish in a newspaper all that has happened with regard to M. de S?ze. You are excellent Royalists, and I also am a good Royalist: we must remember before all that M. de S?ze is an honourable man, and that he has been the defender of our King. That fine action is not wiped out by a little movement of vanity. So let us keep silence: I am content with your good accounts of me to your friends. I have already thanked you for your excellent fruits: Madame de Chateaubriand and I eat your chesnuts every day and talk of you.

"Now permit your host to embrace you. My wife sends you a thousand messages, and I remain

"Your servant and friend,

"CHATEAUBRIAND.

"Paris, 2 November 1820."

But who thinks of these futile discussions to-day? The joys and feasts of the christening are far behind us. When Henry was born, on Michaelmas Day, did not people say that the archangel was going to trample the dragon under foot? It is to be feared, on the contrary, that the flaming sword was drawn from its scabbard only to drive out the innocent from the earthly paradise and to guard its gates against him.

However, the events which were becoming complicated determined nothing yet. The assassination of M. le Duc de Berry had brought about the fall of M. Decazes, which was not effected without heart-breakings. M. le Duc de Richelieu would not consent to afflict his aged master, save on a promise from M. Mol? to give M. Decazes a mission abroad. He set out for the Embassy in London, where I was to replace him. Nothing was finished. M. de Vill?le remained in seclusion with his fatality, M. de Corbi?re. I on my side offered a great obstacle. Madame de Montcalm never ceased urging me towards quiet: I was much inclined for it, sincerely wishing only to retire from public life, which encroached upon me and for which I entertained a sovereign contempt. M. de Vill?le, although more supple, was not at that time easy to deal with.

There are two ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de Vill?le's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for that reason that there are so few statesmen.

M. de Vill?le had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has worn the embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find him again sooner or later.

Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that, if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not, however, accept exile, unless M. de Vill?le accepted his entrance into the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lain? with my two friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that it was I who made M. de Vill?le's first ministry and who drove the Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.

I found an invincible obstinacy in M. Lain?'s character. M. de Corbi?re did not want to become a mere member of the Council; I flattered him with the hope of also obtaining the Public Instruction. M. de Vill?le, giving way only with repugnance to my desires, at first raised a thousand objections; his good wits and his ambition at last decided him to set forward: everything was arranged. Here are the irrefutable proofs of what I have just related; wearisome documents of those little facts which have justly passed into oblivion, but useful to my own history:

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