François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book XIV
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved.
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Book XIV: Chapter 2: Travels in the French Midi (1802)
Book XIV: Chapter 3: The years 1802 and 1803 – Monsieur de Laharpe: his death
Book XIV: Chapter 4: The years 1802 and 1803 – Interview with Napoleon
Book XIV: Chapter 5: The year 1803 – I am named as First Secretary to the Embassy in Rome
Book XIV: Chapter 6: The year 1803 – Journey from Paris to the Savoy Alps
Book XIV: Chapter 7: From Mont Cenis to Rome – Milan and Rome
Book XIV: Chapter 8: Cardinal Fesch’s palace – My tasks
Paris, 1837 (Revised in December 1846)
My life became utterly confused as soon as it ceased to be mine. I had a crowd of acquaintances instead of my usual friends. I was invited to country houses that had been restored. People returned willy-nilly to those half-unfurnished half-furnished manors, where an old armchair stood alongside a new armchair. However, some of these manor houses were still intact, such as Le Marais, inherited by Madame de La Briche, an excellent woman whose good fortune was unavoidable. I remember that My Immortality went to the Rue Saint-Dominique-d’Enfer to take a seat for Le Marais in a wretched hired carriage, where I joined Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Fezensac. At Champlâtreux, Monsieur Molé had done up a few small rooms on the second floor. His father, executed during the Revolution, was represented by a painting, in a large dilapidated sitting room, in which Mathieu Molé was depicted, preventing a riot with a mitred hat: a painting which made the difference in epochs apparent. Part of a superb trio of radiating lime-tree avenues had been felled; but one of the three avenues still survived with all the magnificence of its former foliage; it has since been merged with new plantings: and we are among poplar-trees.
On return from emigration, there was no exile so poor he did not design the windings of an English garden for the ten feet of earth or courtyard he had recovered: did I myself not long ago plant out the Vallé-aux-Loups? Did I not begin these Memoirs there? Did I not continue them in the park at Montboissier, where they were trying to revive its appearance disfigured by neglect? Did I not continue them in the park at Maintenon restored not long ago, a new target for the coming democracy? The country houses burnt in 1789 should have served as a warning to the rest of those houses to remain concealed among their ruins: though the steeples of engulfed villages piercing the lava of Vesuvius do not prevent other churches and hamlets being re-established on that same lava.
Among the bees building their hive, was the Marquise de Custine, inheritor of the long tresses of Marguerite de Provence, the wife of Saint Louis, whose lineage she shared. I helped her take possession of Fervaques, and had the honour of sleeping in the Bearnais’ bed, as I had slept in that of Queen Christina at Combourg. It was no trivial business that journey; the carriage was required to receive Astolphe de Custine, her son, Monsieur Berstecher, the tutor, an old maid from Alsace who spoke only German, Jenny the chambermaid, and Trim, a famous dog, who ate the provisions for the journey. One would have thought these colonists were returning to Fervaques forever! And yet no sooner was the chateau re-furnished than the signal to leave was given. I have seen that woman who faced the scaffold with such great courage, I have seen her, whiter than one of the Fates, dressed in black, her body deathly thin, her head adorned only with her silken hair, I have seen her smile at me, her lovely teeth between pale lips, as she left Sécherons, near Geneva, to die at Bex, at the entrance to the Valais; I have heard her coffin go past at night in the empty streets of Lausanne to occupy its eternal place at Fervaques: she hastened to be buried in the earth that, like life, she had possessed for barely a moment. I have read in a chimney-corner in her chateau these risqué lines attributed to Gabrielle’s lover:
‘The lady of Fervaques
Warrants boldness of attack.’
The soldier-king had claimed as much of many others: man’s fleeting declarations, swiftly effaced and transferred from beauty to beauty, down to Madame de Custine. Fervaques has been sold.
I had met the Duchesse
de Châtillon once more who, in my
absence during the Hundred Days, adorned my
Monsieur de Saint-Martin thought he had found certain hidden words in Atala of which I had no suspicion myself, and which proved to him that our ideas were related. Neveu, in order to unite these two brothers, had us to dinner in an upper room he inhabited in the outbuildings of the Palais-Bourbon. I arrived at the rendezvous at six; the philosopher of the heavens was already at his post. At seven, a discreet servant served some soup, retired and closed the door. We sat down and began to eat in silence. Monsieur de Saint-Martin, who, at other times, had very fine manners, only spoke a few short oracular words. Neveu replied with exclamations, changes of posture, and painterly grimaces: I said not a word.
At the end of half an
hour, the necromancer returned, took away the soup and left another plate on
the table: new dishes arrived thus one by one at long intervals. Monsieur de
Saint-Martin, gradually warming up, began to speak like an archangel; the more
he spoke, the more obscure his language became. Neveu had insinuated to me,
while shaking my hand, that we would see extraordinary things, that we would
hear noises: for six mortal hours I listened, and experienced nothing. At
I was an unruly subject for Swedenborgianism: the Abbé Faria, at a dinner at Madame de Custine’s, boasted he would kill a canary by magnetising it: the canary was all the livelier for it, and the Abbé, beside himself, was forced to leave the company, for fear of being killed by the canary: a Christian, my presence alone had rendered the experiment vain.
On another occasion, the celebrated Gall, a frequenter of Madame Custine’s, dined beside me without knowing who I was, made an error concerning my facial planes, took me for a frog and, when he knew who I was, wished to rescue his science, in such a way as to make me ashamed for him. The shape of the head can aid in distinguishing the sex of an individual, in indicating what belongs to the creature, to the animal passions; as for the intellectual faculties, phrenology is forever ignorant of them. If one could gather together the various skulls of the great men who have died since the world began, and set them before the eyes of phrenologists without telling them to whom they belonged, they would not match a single brain correctly: the study of bumps produced the most comical errors.
I feel some remorse: I have spoken of Monsieur de Saint-Martin, with a degree of mockery, and I repent. This tendency to mockery which I repress and which continually emerges in me causes me suffering; since I despise the satirical spirit as the meanest, the commonest and most trivial of all; of course I do not mean here the proceedings of high comedy. Monsieur de Saint-Martin was, in the final result, a man of great merit, with a noble and independent character. When his ideas were explicable, they were lofty and of a superior nature. Ought I not to sacrifice the two preceding pages to the generous and much too flattering statements of the author of the Portrait de Monsieur de Saint-Martin drawn by himself? I would not hesitate to erase them, if what I say might harm, to the least degree in the world, Monsieur de Saint-Martin’s great fame, and the esteem which will forever be attached to his memory. Besides I note with pleasure that my recollection is not at fault: Monsieur de Saint-Martin may not have been struck in an absolutely identical manner as I by the dinner of which I speak; but one can see that I have not invented the scene, and that Monsieur de Saint-Martin’s description basically resembles mine.
‘On
Monsieur de Saint-Martin was a thousand times better than I; the dignity of that last phrase crushes my inoffensive mockery with the weight of grave human character.
I had seen Monsieur de Saint-Lambert and Madame d’Houdetot at Le Marais, both of whom represented the opinions and freedoms of other days, carefully preserved and mounted; it was the eighteenth century, dead, and fixed in place. It is enough to survive in life, for the illegitimate to become legitimate. One acquires an infinite esteem for immorality, merely because it has not ceased to be, and because time has adorned it with wrinkles. In truth, they were two virtuous spouses, who were not spouses, and who remained united by human regard, suffering somewhat from their venerable state; they were bored with and cordially detested themselves with all the bad humour of old age: that is God’s justice.
‘Misfortune, to which the gods grant long years!’
It was difficult to understand various pages of the Confessions, when one had seen the object of Rousseau’s transports: had Madame d’Houdetot kept the letters Jean-Jacques wrote to her, and which he claimed to have been more brilliant than those of his Nouvelle Héloïse? One thinks she sacrificed herself to Saint-Lambert.
At nearly eighty years of age, Madame d’Houdetot could still write, in these pleasant lines:
‘Love consoles me, indeed!
Nothing will console me for him.’
She never retired to bed without having struck the floor three times with her slipper, while calling to the late author of Les Saisons: ‘Goodnight, dear friend!’ That was what the philosophy of the eighteenth-century was reduced to, in 1803.
That society of Madame
d’Houdetot, Diderot, Saint-Lambert,
Rousseau, Grimm, and Madame d’Épinay, rendered the
Paris, 1838
A pirated version of Le Génie du Christianisme,
produced at Avignon, summoned me to the
French Midi in the month of October 1802. I was only familiar with my humble
Lyon gave me a deep pleasure. I discovered the architecture of the Romans that I had not seen since the day when I read those pages of Atala, pulled from my haversack, in the amphitheatre at Trèves. Small sailing boats crossed the Saône from shore to shore, carrying lights at night; women piloted them; a sailor girl of eighteen, who accepted me on board, re-adjusted the cluster of flowers pinned to her hat, after every stroke of the oar. I was woken each morning by the sound of bells. The monasteries suspended from the hillsides seemed to have regained their hermits. Monsieur Ballanche’s son, owner of the printing rights to Le Génie du Christianisme after Monsieur Migneret, was my host: he became my friend. Who today does not know the Christian philosopher, whose writings shine with that peaceful clarity, on which one delights in casting one’s gaze, as on the rays of a friendly star in the sky?
On the 27th of October,
the mail-boat which carried me to
What I was writing was an article, which I had almost completed on the preceding trip down the Rhône, relating to Monsieur de Bonald’s La Législation primitive. I foresaw what has since happened: ‘French literature,’ I said, ‘is changing its aspect; new thoughts and new views on men and things were born with the Revolution. It is easy to foresee that writers will be divided. Some will strive to follow the old paths; others will endeavour to follow classical models, but present them however in a new light. It is quite likely that the latter will end by getting the upper hand over their adversaries, since by relying on the great tradition and great men they will possess the most trustworthy guides and the most fertile sources.’
The lines which ended my
criticism-while-travelling were historic; from that moment my spirit was in tune
with my age; ‘The author of this article,’ I wrote, ‘cannot resist an image
presented to him by the place in which he finds himself. At the very moment he
writes these words, he is descending one of
Arriving at
I saw Madame de Janson, a cold little woman, white and resolute, who battled with the Rhône on her property, exchanging gunshots with the riverside dwellers, and defending herself against the years.
In the past transalpine
journeys started from
In the Church of the Cordeliers, is the tomb of Madonna Laura: Francis I ordered it opened and saluted the immortalised ashes. The victor of Marignan left behind this epitaph for the new tomb which he had erected.
‘En petit lieus compris vous pouvez voir
Ce qui comprend beaucoup par renommée:
……………………………………………..
Ô gentille âme, estant tant estimée,
Qui te pourra louer qu’en se taisant?
Car la parole est toujours reprimee,
Quant le sujet surmonte le disant.’
‘Contained in brief space you may see
Whom many know of by her fame:
……………………………………
O noble soul, being so proclaimed
Who could but by silence praise her?
Since speech must ever be restrained
When the subject outdoes the speaker.’
When all is said and done, the Father of Letters, the friend of Benvenuto Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, and Le Primatice, the king to whom we owe the Diana, sister of the Apollo Belvedere, and Raphael’s Holy Family; the singer of Laura, the admirer of Petrarch, has received imperishable life from the fine arts, in gratitude.
I went to Vaucluse, to gather, at the edge of the spring, the perfumed heathers and the first olive from a young olive tree:
‘Chiara
sorgea d’un sasso, et acque fresche et dolci
spargea, soavemente mormorando;
al bel seggio, riposto, ombroso et fosco,
né pastori appressavan né bifolci,
ma ninphe et muse a quel tenor cantando:’
‘In that same grove a crystal fountain sprang from beneath a stone, and sprinkled sweet fresh water, murmuring gently: no shepherd or flocks ever approached that lovely place, secret, shadowy and dark, but nymphs and Muses singing to its tones:’
Petrarch has told how he found this valley: ‘I was enquiring’, he says, ‘about a secluded spot to which I could retire as to a harbour, when I discovered a little enclosed valley, Vaucluse, quite solitary, where the source of the Sorgue rose, queen of all springs: I established myself there. It is there where I composed my poetry in the native tongue; verse in which I described the sorrows of my youth.’
It
was in Vaucluse too that he heard, as one could still hear while I was passing
by, the sound of weapons echoing through
‘Itala mia…
..................
O diluvio raccolto
di che deserti strani
per inondar i nostri dolci campi!
....................................................
Non è questo 'l terren ch'i' toccai pria?
Non è questo il mio nido
ove nudrito fui sí dolcemente?
Non è questa la patria in ch'io mi fido,
madre benigna et pia,
che copre l'un et l'altro mio parente?’
‘My
Later,
Laura’s lover urged Urban V to
transfer the Papacy to
Fertile
age, young, sensitive, admiration for which stirs the heart; age which obeyed a
great poet’s lyre, as if it were a legislator’s law! It is to Petrarch we owe
the return of the sovereign Pontiff to the
On
my return to
Alain
Chartier was carried from
From
This very year, 1838, I
climbed again to that summit; I looked again at that sea which is now so
well-known to me, on whose far side the victorious cross and tomb were
raised. The mistral blew; I entered the
fort built by Francis I, guarded
by a single veteran of the Army of Egypt, and where a conscript destined for
‘I place my confidence,
Virgin, in your aid, etc.
What events it had taken to bring me back to the feet of the Star of the Seas, to whom I had been dedicated in childhood! When I contemplated the ex-votos, those paintings of shipwrecks hanging from the walls around me, I thought I was reading the story of my days. Virgil depicted a Trojan beneath the porticos of Carthage, amazed at the sight of a picture representing the burning of Troy, and the genius of the author of Hamlet benefited from the soul of the author who sang of Dido.
At the foot of the
cliff, once covered by the forest Lucan
sings of, I no longer recognised
If Alfieri’s memoirshad been published in 1802 I would not have left
‘After the sights,’ he says, ‘one of my amusements at Marseilles was to bathe in the sea almost every evening; I found a very pleasant little spot on a spit of land set to the right of the port, where, seated on the sand, my back against a rock, preventing anyone seeing me from the coast side, I had nothing before me but sea and sky. Between those two immensities, adorned by a setting sun, I spent, in dreaming, delightful hours; and there, I would have become a poet, if I had known how to write it in some language or other.’
I returned through
‘Something of grandeur in this world is stirring;
Your soul shall respond to it, O our young king;
Ah! Not without purpose, has Heaven displayed,
Calming our grief, through the dying, your fate;
That, from his watching sons, in the after days,
Universally seen, a proud nation might raise
You, high in its arms, on the edge of a grave!’
I had to leave my host,
but not without wishing the poet joy of the gardens of Horace. I would rather have seen him dreaming
beside the
Between
At Montpellier, I saw the sea again, to
which I would willingly have written, like the Christian king to the Swiss
Confederation: ‘My faithful ally and great friend.’ Scaliger would have liked to make
From
At
‘Garonne and the Aude, in their deep caves,
Sighed, through the years, to unite their waves,
That from their happy affection might flow
Treasures of dawn, to meet evening’s glow.
But to such fond wishes, to passions so pure
Nature, which bows to eternal law,
Proudly laid down invincible obstacles
Imprisoning frightful cliffs and pinnacles.
Earth opened its breast, the high hills fell too.
All yielded........................................................’
At Toulouse, I saw the line of the
I was struck by the architecture of the abandoned church of Saint-Sernin. This church is bound up with the history of the Albigensians, which the poem, so well translated by Monsieur Fauriel, has revived:
‘The valiant young Count, the light and the heir of his father, the cross and the sword, entered together through one of the doors. Not one young girl remained in her room or upstairs; the inhabitants of the town, young and old, all regarded the Count as the flower of the rose.’
It is from the era of Simon de Montfort that the withering of the language of Oc dates: ‘Simon, being lord of so much territory, divided it among the nobles, as much to the French as others, atque loci leges dedimus (and we gave laws to the lands),’ said the signatories, eight archbishops and bishops.
I would have liked to
have had the time in
I rushed past without
being able to stop; fate sent me back in 1838 in order to admire Raimond de Saint-Gilles city in detail, and
to speak of new acquaintances I had made; Monsieur de Lavergne, a man of talent, wit, and reason;
Mademoiselle Honorine Gasc, a future Malibran. The latter, in my new role of
servant to Clémence Isaure, reminded
me of those lines that Chapelle and Bachaumont wrote on the
‘Ah! How happy, without strife,
In this sweet place, deserving envy,
If, forever loved by Sylvie,
With her, one might spend one’s life!
Enamoured for eternity!’
Let Mademoiselle Honorine be wary of her lovely voice! Talent is made of Toulouse gold: it brings bad luck.
Bordeaux was barely rid of its
scaffolds and its cowardly Girondins. All
the towns I saw had the air of beautiful women recovering from a violent
illness who had scarce begun to breathe again. At
‘Why demolish these, the gods’ own pillars,
A tutelary monument, work of the Caesars?’
The few remains of the Amphitheatre are barely visible. If one granted an expression of regret to everything which falls, it would require too many tears.
I embarked for Blaye. I saw the chateau which was then unknown, to which, in 1833, I addressed these words: ‘Captive of Blaye! I regret my powerlessness regarding your current fate!’ I headed for Rochefort, and reached Nantes via the Vendée.
The countryside revealed, like an old warrior, scars and mutilations attributable to its courage. Remains bleached by time, and ruins blackened by flames, met one’s gaze. When the Vendéans were about to attack their enemy, they knelt to receive the priest’s blessing: the prayer pronounced over their weapons was not deemed useless, since a Vendéan who raised his sword to heaven, demanded victory and not life.
The coach, I found
myself interred in, was full of travellers who told stories of the violation
and murder with which they had glorified their lives during those wars in the
Vendée. My heart quickened, when after crossing the
Paris, 1838
I arrived in time to witness the death of a man who belonged among those superior names of the second degree in the eighteenth century, and who, forming a solid second rank within society, give that society fullness and consistency.
I had known Monsieur Laharpe in 1789: like Flins, he was seized by a strong passion for my sister, Madame la Comtesse de Farcy. He appeared with three large volumes of his works under his short arms, utterly amazed that his glory had not triumphed over the most rebellious hearts. The words lofty, the expression animated, he thundered against abuses, making do with an omelette at the houses of Ministers where he found the dinner unsatisfactory, eating with his fingers, trailing his cuffs through the dishes, speaking coarse philosophy to the grandest lords who enjoyed his effronteries; but, in sum, an honest spirit, enlightened, impartial in the midst of his passion, capable of appreciating talent, of admiring it, of weeping at a lovely line or a fine action, and possessing one of those true natures capable of repentance. He did not fail in death: I saw him die a brave Christian: his interests were broadened by religion, being a man without pride except in countering impiety, and without hatred except in countering revolutionary language.
By the time I returned from the Emigration, religion had led Monsieur de Laharpe to a favourable view of my works: the illness from which he suffered did not prevent him from working; he recited to me several passages from a poem he had composed on the Revolution; it contained powerful lines against the crimes of the age and against the honest men who had tolerated them:
‘Yet if they dared all, you have permitted all:
The viler the master is, the worse the slave.’
Forgetting that he was unwell, wearing a white nightcap, and dressed in a wadded woollen jacket, he would declaim at the top of his voice; then letting his notebook fall, he would say in a barely audible voice: ‘I can’t go on: I feel a claw like fire in my side.’ But if, by misfortune, a servant happened to appear, he would resume his Stentorian tone and bellow: ‘Off with you! Off with you! And close the door!’ I said to him one day: ‘You will live, to the benefit of religion.’ – ‘Ah, yes!’ he replied, ‘That would be pleasant of God; but he does not wish it, and I will die one of these days.’ Falling back into his armchair and pulling his cap over his ears, he atoned for his pride with resignation and humility.
At a dinner at Migneret’s house, I heard him speak of himself with the greatest modesty, declaring that he had achieved nothing of the highest order, but that he believed art and language had not degenerated in his hands.
Monsieur de Laharpe left this world on the 11th of February 1803: the author of Les Saisons died two days before him amidst all the consolations of philosophy, as Monsieur Laharpe did amidst all the consolations of religion; the former visited by men, the latter visited by God.
Monsieur de Laharpe was
buried on
For the rest, Monsieur de Laharpe had, like everything else, been diminished by the Revolution which always grew in scope: the famous hastened to withdraw before the representative of that Revolution, as danger lost its potency before him.
Paris, 1838
While we were occupied
with everyday life and death, the world’s great advance was accomplished; the
Man of his time took up his place of honour at the head of the human race. In
the midst of immense changes, the precursors of a universal movement, I had
disembarked at
After the adoption of the Concordat by the Legislative Body in 1802, Lucien, the Interior Minister, gave a reception for his brother; I was invited to attend, as one who had rallied the forces of Christianity and had led them back to the charge. I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered: he struck me agreeably; I had not seen him before except at a distance. His smile was soft and pleasant; his eyes were admirable, especially in the manner in which they were set beneath his forehead and framed by his eyebrows. There was no charlatanism in his gaze as yet, nothing theatrical or affected. Le Génie du Christianisme, which was making a considerable stir at that time, had moved Napoleon. A prodigious imagination animated that cold-blooded politician: he would not have been what he was if the Muse had not been present in him; reason carried out a poet’s ideas. All the men who lead great lives possess a dual nature, since they must be capable of inspiration and action: one conceives the project, the other executes it.
Bonaparte saw me and
recognised me, I have no idea how. When he made his way towards me, no one knew
whom he was seeking; the ranks opened successively; everyone was hoping that
the Consul would stop in front of them; he had the look of a man experiencing
some impatience with those misapprehensions. I sank back behind my neighbours;
Bonaparte suddenly raised his voice and said: ‘Monsieur de Chateaubriand!’ I
was left standing alone there, in front, since the crowd stepped back and then
quickly reformed a circle around the speakers. Bonaparte addressed me simply:
without complimenting me, without idle questions, without preamble, he spoke to
me immediately about
Bonaparte interrupted himself, and passed on to another idea without transition: ‘Christianity? Haven’t the ideologists tried to make an astronomical system out of it? If that should be the case, do they think to persuade me that Christianity is therefore trivial? If Christianity is an allegory of the movement of spheres, the geometry of stars, the free thinkers have done well, since despite themselves they have still left sufficient grandeur to l’infâme.’
Bonaparte suddenly moved away. Like Job, in my darkness, ‘a spirit passed before me; the hair of my flesh stood up; it stood still: but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice…’
My days have been only a series of visions; Hell and Heaven have continually opened beneath my feet and above my head, without granting me the time to explore their darkness and light. On the shore of two worlds, and on only one occasion in each case, I have encountered the great man of the last century and the great man of the new, Washington and Napoleon. I spoke for a moment with each; both sent me back to my solitude, the first with a kindly wish, the second through a crime.
I noticed that while circling the throng, Bonaparte glanced at me in a more profound manner than he had gazed while speaking to me. I followed him also with my eyes:
‘Chi e quell grande, che non par che curi
L’incendio?’
‘Who is that great spirit, who seems indifferent to the fire?’ (Dante).
Paris, 1837
Following
this interview, Bonaparte thought of me for
Fontanes and Madame Bacciochi told me of the satisfaction the Consul had taken in my conversation: I had not opened my mouth; that was as much as to say that Bonaparte was content with himself. They urged me to profit from my good fortune. The idea of accepting an appointment had never occurred to me; I firmly refused. Then, they asked an authority whom it was difficult to resist if he would speak to me.
The
Abbé Émery, the superior of the Seminary of
Saint-Sulpice, came to entreat me, in the name of the clergy, to accept for the
good of religion the position of First Secretary to the Embassy, Bonaparte
intending to appoint his own uncle, Cardinal Fesch as Ambassador. He gave me to understand that
the Cardinal’s intellect was not exactly remarkable, and I would soon find
myself the master of the Embassy’s affairs. A singular chance had established a
link between Abbe Émery and myself: I had travelled to the
He
failed in his first approach to me; he returned to the attack, and patiently
convinced me. I accepted the position which it was his mission to propose to me,
without being the least bit convinced of my ability for the post to which I was
nominated; I am worth nothing in a supporting role. I would probably still have
declined it, if the thought of Madame de Beaumont had not occurred to put an end to my
scruples. Madame de Montmorin’s daughter was dying; the Italian climate,
it was claimed, would be beneficial to her; my going to
Monsieur de Talleyrand held the Foreign Ministry; he forwarded me my nomination. I dined with him; thus it has lodged in my mind that he considered himself to be of the first moment. For the rest, his fine manners contrasted with those of the rogues who made up his entourage; his displays of cunning took on unimaginable importance: in the eyes of a ruthless wasp’s nest, his moral corruption appeared as genius, his slightness of wit profundity. The Revolution was too modest; it did not celebrate his superiority sufficiently: it is not the same thing to be above crime as to be beneath it.
I met the ecclesiastics attached to the Cardinal: I singled out the good-humoured Abbé de Bonnevie: once chaplain to the Army of Princes, he was involved in the retreat at Verdun; he had also been chief curate to the Bishop of Châlons, Monsieur de Clermont-Tonnerre, who left after us to claim a pension from the Holy See, in the person of Chiaramonte. Having completed my preparations, I set out: I was required to arrive in Rome before Napoleon’s uncle.
Paris, 1838
At Lyons, I met my friend Monsieur Ballanche once more. I was a witness to the renewed celebration of Corpus-Christi; I considered I had played a part in those flowery wreaths, in that heavenly joy that I had recalled to earth.
I continued my journey;
a cordial reception awaited me everywhere; my name was associated with the
re-establishment of the altars. The greatest pleasure I have known is to have
felt myself honoured in
The road from
At Chambéry, where Bayard’s chivalrous soul displayed itself so admirably, a man was welcomed by a woman, and as payment for the hospitality he had received, he considered himself philosophically obliged to dishonour her. Such is the danger of literature; the desire for fame overcomes generosity of feeling: if Rousseau had never become a celebrated writer, he would have buried the frailties of the woman who had nurtured him among the valleys of Savoy; he would have been subject to the same faults as his friend; he would have helped her in old age, instead of contenting himself with giving her a snuffbox, and vanishing. Ah! Never may the voice of friendship betrayed be raised against our tomb!
Having passed Chambéry, the Isère’s channel appears. Everywhere in these valleys one meets with crosses at the roadsides, and madonnas among the pine woods. The little churches, surrounded by trees, provide a moving contrast with the high mountains. When winter storms blow down from those ice-crowned summits, the Savoyard takes shelter in his rural temple and prays.
The valleys one enters above Montmélian are bordered by hills of various shapes, sometimes half-naked, sometimes clothed with forest.
Aiguebelle seems close
to the
The hills stand high on both sides; their flanks become perpendicular; their sterile summits begin to reveal glaciers: torrents fall to swell the Arc which flows wildly. In the midst of the tumult of waters, you find a careless waterfall falling with infinite grace beneath a curtain of willows.
Passing Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and arriving towards sunset at Saint-Michel, I failed to find a horse: obliged to halt, I took a walk beyond the village. The air over the mountain crests became translucent; their indentations were drawn with extraordinary clarity, while a deep shadow emerging from their feet climbed towards their summits. The nightingale’s voice sounded from below, the eagle’s cry from above; service-trees flowered in the valley, white snow on the mountain. A castle, the work of Carthaginians, according to popular tradition, was visible on an outcrop cut sheer from the cliff. There, one man’s hatred, more powerful than any obstacle, was enshrined in stone. The vengeance of a race which could only rise to greatness through slavery and the blood of the rest of the world, weighed on a free people.
I left at daybreak and arrived, towards two in the afternoon, at Lans-le-bourg, at the foot of Mont Cenis. Entering the village, I saw a peasant grasping an eaglet by its feet; a pitiless throng were striking at the young king, insulted in the weakness of his youth and fallen majesty; the father and mother of the noble orphan had been killed: they suggested I buy him; he died of the harsh treatment they had subjected him to before I could rescue him. I was reminded then of poor little Louis XVII; I think today of Henri V: how swiftly fall and misfortune come!
Here, one begins the
ascent of
When I found myself on
the crest of the
‘
You are unchanged by time;
Lightly, your foreheads carry those days
Weighing heavily on mine.
When, for that first time, filled with hope,
I crossed your battlements,
An immense future, the horizon, opened
To my sight and sense.
Italy beneath my feet, before me, the world!’
Did I really penetrate
that world, then? Christopher Columbus
had a vision which revealed to him the world of his daydreams, before he had
discovered it; Vasco de Gama met the
giant of the storms on the road: which of those two great men foreshadowed my
future? What I would have liked before all else would have been a life made
glorious by a brilliant end, but by its very nature obscure. Do you know whose
the first remains were to rest in
I had begun my travels
in the opposite direction to other voyagers: the ancient forests of
The French Army had
established itself, like a military colony, in the
We were a singular enemy: they found us somewhat insolent at first, a little too cheerful, too restless, instead of our turning on our heels and walking away so they might regret us. Lively, witty, intelligent, French soldiers involve themselves in the occupations of the inhabitants with whom they lodge; they draw water from the well, as Moses did for the daughters of Midian, follow the shepherds, drive lambs to the sheep-dip, chop wood, lay fires, watch the cooking-pot, carry an infant in their arms or put it to bed in its cot. Their good humour and activity gives life to everything; it is customary to regard them as adjuncts to the family. The drum beats? The lodger runs for his musket, leaves his host’s daughters weeping at the door, and quits the cottage, which he thinks no more of until he reaches the Invalides.
On my journey to
General Murat was in command of
I dined at a grand
official reception, on the 23rd of June, at Monsieur de Melzi’s, on the occasion of the baptism of
General Murat’s child. Monsieur de
Melzi had known my brother: the Vice-President of the
I reached my destination on the 27th of June in the
evening, two days before the feast of Saint Peter:
the Prince of the Apostles was waiting for me, as my patron saint has received me since in
On the 28th of June, I rushed about all day: I took a first look at the Coliseum, the Pantheon, Trajan’s Column, and Castel Sant’Angelo. In the evening Monsieur Artaud took me to a ball in a house near Saint-Peter’s Square. One could see revolving fireworks on Michelangelo’s dome, between the whirling waltzes that skimmed past the open windows; the rockets sent up from Hadrian’s Mound blossomed over Saint Onofrio, and the tomb of Tasso: silence, abandonment, and night filled the Roman Campagna.
Next day, I attended the service at Saint Peter’s. Pius VII, pale, sad and religious, was a true Pontiff of tribulations. Two days afterwards, I was presented to His Holiness: he made me sit near him. A volume of Le Génie du Christianisme lay obligingly open on his desk. Cardinal Consalvi, flexible but firm, his resistance gentle and polite, was a living example of the ancient Roman politician, representing less the faith of the times and more the tolerance of the century.
Traversing the Vatican, I stopped to contemplate the stairs which one could climb on mule’s back, those ascending galleries echoing one another, adorned with masterpieces, along which the Popes once passed in all their pomp, those Loggias which so many immortal artists decorated, so many illustrious writers admired, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Montaigne, Milton, Montesquieu, and then the kings and queens, in power or out, and finally a race of pilgrims come from the four corners of the earth: all that now silent and without movement; a theatre in which the deserted terraces, exposed to solitude, are scarcely visited by a ray of sunlight.
I was advised to walk in
the moonlight: from the heights of Trinita dei Monti, the distant edifices
seemed like an artist’s sketches or like misted shores seen from the sea, on
board ship. The moon, that globe that one takes for a complete world, slid its
pale deserts over the deserts of
What was happening
eighteen centuries ago, at this very hour in this very place? Who traversed the
shadows of the obelisks here, after these shadows had ceased to fall over the
sands of
Cardinal Fesch had taken the
I made a great mistake:
not having been forewarned, I thought I ought to visit various notable people;
I went, informally, to pay my respects to the previous King of Sardinia, who had abdicated. A
terrible fuss was made over this unusual action; all the diplomats buttoned up
tight about it. ‘He is lost! He is lost!’ the carriers of the Pope’s train and the
attachés murmured, with the pleasure people kindly take in a man’s
misadventures, whoever he may be. There was not a diplomatic clod who did not
think himself superior to me in all the elevation of his idiocy. There were
high hopes that I was about to fall, though I was nobody and counted for
nobody: no matter, somebody was falling, that was the pleasure of it all. In my
simplicity, I had no doubt I had done wrong, and, as has happened since, I could
not have cared a straw. Kings whom people thought I might have attached such
great importance to, were only bringers of misfortune to my eyes. The tale of
my appalling foolishness was sent from
However, if at first glance, and after full consideration, becoming First Secretary of the Embassy under a Prince of the Church, and Napoleon’s uncle, seemed something of note, it was nevertheless only as if I had been clerk to a prefecture. Among the problems which arose, I could find things to occupy myself, but I was not initiated into any mysteries. I applied myself conscientiously to the business of the chancery; but what was the point of wasting my time in details within the grasp of any clerk?
After my long walks, and
my visits to the shores of the
Bishop of Châlon’s
gentlemanly boasting; and the incredible lies of the future Bishop of Maroc,
the Abbé Guillon, who profiting from a
similarity of name which sounded like his own to the ear, claimed, after
miraculously escaping the massacre of the Carmelite
Convent, to have granted absolution to Madame de Lamballe, while in La Force. He boasted of
being the author of Robespierre’s
address to the Supreme Being. I tried one day to get him to say he had been to
Monsieur de La Maisonfort, a man of hidden
wit, had recourse to me, and soon Monsieur Bertin
the Elder, proprietor of Les Débats, assisted
me with his friendship in sad circumstances. Exiled to the
Towards the middle of my
stay in
In the end illness overtook me: it is a resource on which one can always rely.
Revised in December 1846
End of Book XIV