Part 3

There is a hospitable little inn in the Faubourg Saint-Germain endeared to many of us by memories, joyous or mournful. The Hotel de France et de Lorraine, in narrow Rue de Beaune, just south of the quay, was one of the earliest hotels in Paris, and was an approved resort of the Royalists, before emigration and after Restoration. They seem still to haunt its court and halls, where there lingers that atmosphere of decayed Bourbonism, which James Russell Lowell humorously hits off in a letter written when he was a guest here. The pervading presence is that of Châteaubriand, and our amiable hosts have a pride in keeping his apartment--on the first floor, in plain wood panelling of time-worn gray--much as it was when he wrote, in its _salon_, his letter of resignation of his post in the Diplomatic Service, to the First Consul, to be Emperor within two months. Châteaubriand was in Paris on leave of absence at the time of the shooting of the Duc d'Enghien, in the ditch of Vincennes on the night of March 20, 1804, and he refused to serve any longer the man whom he regarded as an assassin. Just seventeen years earlier these two men had arrived in Paris, both sub-lieutenants, of nearly the same age, equally obscure and ambitious, equally without heart. Napoleon Bonaparte, coming from Corsica, took a room in the Hôtel de Cherbourg, as we have seen; François-Auguste, Vicomte de Châteaubriand, coming from his natal town of Saint-Malo, found lodging in the Hôtel de l'Europe in Rue du Mail. This street, between Porte Saint-Denis, by which the coaches entered, and Place des Victoires, where they put up, was full of _hôtels-garnis_ for travellers. Installed there, Châteaubriand hunted up the great Malesherbes, a friendly counsellor who put him in the way of meeting men of note; among others Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, at the top of them all, just then, with his "Paul et Virginie." These two, the one just fifty, the other not yet twenty, then in 1787, strolled together in the Jardin du Roi, forgetting their old world and its worries, in their talks of the new world and its glories.

During the next two or three years, Châteaubriand came frequently to Paris, an intent and disgusted onlooker at its doings. He stood, with his sisters, at their windows in Rue de Richelieu, open on that September day, when the mob surged by holding aloft on pikes the heads of Foulon and Berthier. His Royalist stomach revolted, and he joined his regiment at Rouen, to retire soon from the service, and to sail in 1791 for the new United States, with dreams of distinction as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage. He dined with George Washington, to whom he carried a letter from a French officer, who had served in the colonial army. The President waved aside Châteaubriand's florid compliments, and advised him to give up his futile quest. The young Breton wandered far into the new country, and while resting in a clearing on the Scioto, where now is Chillicothe, Ohio, he read in an old newspaper of the royal flight to Varennes, and of the enforced return.

At once he started for France, to offer his sword to his King, arriving in January, 1792, and in the summer of that year he joined the growing train of _émigrés_ to England. For eight years he toiled and starved in London, and returned to Paris in 1800. His passport bore the name of "Lassague," and he posted, in company, as far as Porte de l'Étoile. Thence he went on foot down the Champs Élysées, finding none of the silence and desolation his fancy had pictured, but, on either hand, lights and music. On the spot where the guillotine had stood he stopped, provided with the proper emotions. He crossed Pont Royal, then the westernmost bridge, and betook himself to lodgings in Rue de Lille, in an _entresol_ of one of the dignified mansions, that seem still to stand aloof from their _bourgeois_ neighbors. From here, he stole out to his meals, hiding his face behind his journal, in which he had been reading impassioned praise of the new book, "Atala," and listened to the other guests speculating as to the unknown genius who had written it. The picture is to be cherished, for it is the only known portrait of Châteaubriand, modest and shrinking. He had brought the manuscript of "Atala" to Paris in his pocket, and had sought long before securing a publisher. The book found a public eager for novelty. It came in a period of sterility in letters, when all the virility of France had been spent in her colossal wars, and the new century was alert to greet the serene light of science and literature. That came from all points of the horizon, but the resplendent figures of these years were Madame de Staël and Châteaubriand.

These two had nothing in common, but they were not inimical, and Châteaubriand was one of the minor lions at Madame de Staël's receptions. For this was a little earlier than 1803, when a more beneficial air than that of Paris was ordered for her by the First Consul, whom she bored. This "cyclone of sentiment" must have bored Mr. Pitt, also, when she visited England during the Terror; for he seemed to think that the lady did protest too much about the absence of an equivalent in English for the French word "_sentiment_," and he replied: "_Mais, Madame, nous l'avons; c'est 'My eye and Betty Martin.'_" And when she got to Germany she bored Goethe, not only with her sloppy sentimentality, but with her shapely arms, too lavishly displayed. There could be no sympathy between the woman, who, in Sainte-Beuve's words, "could not help being even more French than her compatriots," and the stuff of whose dreams was a union of the theories of the dead and of the newly born centuries; and Châteaubriand, the hard-headed opponent of every revolutionary idea, who pompously labelled himself "a Bourbon by honor, a Royalist by reason, and still by taste and nature a Republican"!

A year after his "Atala," in 1802, his "Génie du Christianisme" had placed him, in the estimation of his country and of himself, on a literary throne level with the military throne of Bonaparte. The rhetorical fireworks of this book, corruscating around the Catholic Church, lighted up the night of scepticism, when worship had been abolished and God had been outlawed. Yet, as he poetized beyond recognition the North American savages in his "Atala," so now he prettified the sanctuary and "gilded the Host." The First Consul, welcoming any aid in his scheme to use the Church for his own ends, sent the author to the legation at Rome. We have seen his return. After this, he moves about Paris, lodging, for a while, he says, "in a garret" offered him by Madame la Marquise de Coislin, a stanch friend and stanch Royalist. "Hotel de Coislin" may still be read above the doorway of the stately mansion that faces Place de la Concorde, at the western corner of Rue Royale, and aggressive Bourbonism speaks from its stone pillars and pediment. His garret there was no squalid lodging. On his return from the Holy Land in 1807, Châteaubriand planted the Jerusalem pines and cedars of Lebanon he had brought back, in the garden of "_Vallée-aux-Loups_," a little place he then purchased near Aulnay, on the south of the city. Here, while the Empire lasted, he passed years of quiet content, with his wife, his plants, and his books, but writing no more romance after 1809. In 1817, having a town residence, and finding himself too poor to keep this country place, he sold it, and new buildings cover the site of his cottage and garden.

Recalled to active life by the Restoration, Châteaubriand posed as one who was more Royalist than the King, with a mental reservation of his platonic fancy for a republic. He was a pretentious statesman, none too sincere. His pamphlet, "De Buonaparte et des Bourbons," had been worth an army to the cause, said Louis XVIII., who placed him in the Chamber of Peers, and in 1822, after a short stay at the Berlin Embassy, in the Ambassador's residence in London. Lording it there, in all "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," he recalled his former years of obscurity and privation in London streets, and began his "Mémoires d'Outre Tombe." In writing about himself he was at his ease, feeling that he had a subject worthy of his best powers, and these memoirs have little of the inflated and fantastic mannerisms of his romances about other people. As to the rest, they are a colossal monument to his conceit and selfishness. Dismissed suddenly and indecently by Louis XVIII., from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Châteaubriand was made Ambassador to Rome on the accession of Charles X., in 1828. He refused to recognize the younger branch of the Bourbons in 1830, and when the crown was given to Orleans, he strode out of the Chamber of Peers, and stripped himself of his peer's robe, with great theatric effect. Appearing no more in public life, he was

## active in pamphlets and in the press as an opponent of the new

royalty, which would lead to a republic, he predicted.

"_Châteaubrillant, Vicomte de, Rue de l'Université 25_," is his address in the _Bottin_ of 1817; a record of interest in its antiquated spelling of his name, and because this is the house, on the corner of Rue du Bac, which we shall visit later with Alexandre Dumas. This three years' lease expiring in 1820, he removed to the fine old mansion, where he gave reception to young Victor Hugo, to be described later, at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique. Its site is covered by the modern building numbered 197 in Boulevard Saint-Germain, whose southern side, just here, replaces the same side of Rue Saint-Dominique, as has been already told. He kept other town addresses, to which we need not follow him, during his absences on diplomatic duty. From 1827 to 1838 we find him and Madame de Châteaubriand in their retired home, in the southern outskirts of the city. Their 84 Rue d'Enfer is now 92 Rue Denfert-Rochereau, the old street name thus punningly extended, in homage to the heroic defender of Belfort.

The dingy yellow front of the long wall and the low building is broken by a gate-way, and within is a small lodge on the left, wherein sits a woman in the costume of a sisterhood. She permits entrance into the cottage on the right, and you are in Châteaubriand's small _salon_, the remaining portion of the cottage being now in possession of the Institution des Jeunes Filles Aveugles, alongside. His portrait in pencil, and a water-color sketch of his wife, hang on the wall. Her face shows the boredom and patience that were put into it by her life with this man of irascible genius and of frequent infidelities. She is buried behind the altar of the chapel of the Marie-Thérèse Infirmary, which she founded and carried on, in the devoutness that dwelt in her soul for the Church, whose appeal to him was in its artistic endowments. A portion of the revenue that supports this institution comes from the sale of chocolate, made first to her liking by her _chef_, and made after his rule ever since. As Soeur Marie shows you out from the salesroom, alongside this little reception-room, you see the group of trees in the circular lawn, that was planted by husband and wife; on the farther side are the dilapidated buildings of their day, now used for the chocolate _fabrique_; behind the great court rise the walls of the Infirmary for aged and invalid priests. Châteaubriand had known, while in Kensington during his exile, many of the impoverished _curés_ who were, like himself, refugees from the Revolution; and some of them had followed him here, and had become domesticated pets of the household, together with the big gray cat given him by the Pope. To them and their successors in poverty and illness, he bequeathed this comfortable retreat.

There is an episode of these years that shows a kindly side of Châteaubriand, that he seldom allows us to see. He was suggested for the presidency of the republic, adventured by the political clubs for a year or two after the unwelcome accession of Louis-Philippe. Châteaubriand did not join the plotters, but he was arrested, along with many of them, and locked up for two weeks or so. Now, when the Bourbons had put Béranger in prison, in 1828, Châteaubriand had been one of the many sympathizers who had flocked to the cell of the courageous singer. In 1832 the rôles were reversed, and Béranger came in, from his cottage in Rue de la Tour-d'Auvergne, to visit the imprisoned statesman. And after Châteaubriand's release, he wrote a charming letter to Béranger, thanking him for that token of fellow-feeling, and begging him not to "break his lyre," as the veteran _chansonnier_ had threatened to do, and urging him to go on "making France smile and weep; for, by a secret known only to you, the words of your _chansons_ are gay and the airs are plaintive." Béranger's songs touch no chord now, their plaintiveness is commonplaceness, his philosophy has no loftiness, his sentimentality is of the earth earthy, and his lyre is, to us, a tinkling hurdy-gurdy.

When the young Breton officer walked through Rue du Mail first in 1787, his gaze might have turned, as our gaze turns to-day, to two striking façades in that street: that of No. 7, built by Colbert, whose emblematic serpents are carved high up in the capitals of the heavy columns; and that of No. 12, as stolid as the other is fantastic, its heaviness not lightened by the two balconies, and their massive supports, on the wide stone front. It was erected in 1792 by Berthault, the architect whose work we see at Malmaison and in the Palais-Royal. Châteaubriand might well have been attracted by this house, for it was soon to shelter the woman who became later the lasting influence of his life.

In 1793, at the very top of the Terror, Jacques Récamier brought to this house his bride not yet sixteen, who had been Mlle. Jeanne-Françoise-Julie-Adélaïde Bernard. Here they lived for five years. Their house is unaltered as to fabric, and the original heavy, circular, stone staircase still mounts to the upper floors. These are now divided by partitions into small rooms, and the lofty first story is cut across by an interposed floor; all for the needs of trade. The ceiling of the grand _salon_ retains its admirable cornice. Like other mansions on the south side of Rue du Mail, this Récamier house extended, behind a large court, now roofed over with glass, through to Rue d'Aboukir, where its rear entrance is at No. 11. On the first floor of this wing, in the oblong ceiling of a small room, is a deeply sunk oval panel, that holds a painting of that time, in good preservation.

From here Jacques Récamier, just then wealthy, removed to the newest fashionable quarter of which the centre was Rue du Mont-Blanc, now Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, whose No. 7 covers the site of his magnificent mansion. It was then a street of small and elegant _hôtels_, each in its own grounds, and M. Récamier bought the one that had belonged to Necker, and had been confiscated by the State. He bought also the adjoining house, and rebuilt the two into one. Its furniture, fittings, bronzes, and marbles were all especially designed for this new palace of a prosperous financier. Here was the scene of those balls that were the wonder of Paris during the Consulate and the early years of the Empire. The costumes of the period, both for men and women, were picturesque in cut and coloring. Among the guests shone Caroline Bonaparte, later to marry Murat, the youngest of the sisters and most resembling her great brother in face and character. M. and Mme. Récamier spent their summers in a _château_ owned by him in the suburbs of Clichy; and to it every man of note in the State and the army found his way. Napoleon said he, too, would be glad to go to Clichy, if the fair _châtelaine_ would not come to court, and sent Fouché to arrange it, but with no success. She fought shy of Napoleon, the man and the Emperor, as Madame de Staël itched for his attention, personal and political. Nor did Madame Récamier like his brother Lucien, who languished about her, to the ridicule of his equally love-lorn rivals.

His justification, and that of all her other adorers, speaks from David's unfinished canvas in the Louvre. Yet this shows only the outer shell of her loveliness; within was a lovely nature, simple and kindly, sympathetic and loyal, that made her generous in her friendships with men and women, and devoted to the welfare of her friends. The single passion of her life was her passion for goodness. Her modesty kept her unconscious of her attractions of mind and body, and thus she held, almost unaware, the widest dominion of any woman of her day. The Duchess of Devonshire put it daintily: "First she's good, next she's _spirituelle_, and after that, she's beautiful." And so, as we come to know her, we learn infinite respect for the woman, who "with an unequalled influence over the hearts and wills of men, scorned to ask a favor, and endured poverty and ... exile, which fell with tenfold severity on one so beloved and admired, without sacrifice of dignity and independence."

[Illustration: Madame Récamier. (From the portrait by Gros.)]

Comparative poverty, hurried by the Emperor, came in 1806, and the town house and the _château_ were sold, along with her plate and jewels. In 1811 she was exiled from Paris on the pretext that her _salon_ was a centre of Royalist conspiracy, and she passed the years until the Restoration in the south of France, in Italy, and in Switzerland with her beloved Madame de Staël.

Just beyond the Boulevards de la Madeleine and des Capucines, which show the line of the rampart levelled by Louis XIV., and along the course of its outer moat, a new street had started up at the end of the eighteenth century, and was completed in the early years of the nineteenth century. It began at present Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and ended at the Church of the Madeleine, then in course of construction; it was built up in the best style of that period, and it was named Rue Basse-du-Rempart. That untouched section, to the west of Rue Caumartin, shows us the admirable architecture of the early Empire in the stately fronts, that shrink back behind the boulevard in stony-faced protest against its turmoil. Eastwardly from Rue Caumartin, the northern side of Boulevard des Capucines has trampled out nearly the whole of the old street. The stones of Place de l'Opéra lie on the site of the modest house, at 18 Rue Basse-du-Rempart, taken by M. Récamier after his first business reverses, and occupied by him during his wife's exile; and the florist's shop, under the Grand Hôtel, is on the spot of their stately residence at No. 32 of the same street, after her return and until 1820. In that year, his fortune regained, he moved farther west in the same street to a more sumptuous home at No. 48. This house has been happily saved for us, and is now numbered 18 of Boulevard des Capucines; one of the three structures of the old street, which stand back from the line of modern frontage, and lower than the level of modern paving. The present No. 16 is the Récamier coach-entrance, and the huge stabling in the rear is built on the Récamier gardens. Their house preserves its wrought-iron balconies, and within is the circular staircase mentioned in her "Mémoires." Down these stairs, for the last time, she came in 1827, leaving M. Récamier to his disastrous speculations, which had at last swallowed up her own fortune, and drove to the Abbaye-aux-Bois. There was her home until her death in 1849.

The venerable mass of the convent is in sight behind the railed-in court at No. 16 Rue de Sèvres. One portion that we see was built in 1640 for the "_Annonciades_," and from them bought by Anne of Austria, in 1654, for the sisterhood of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, who had been driven from their convent near Compiègne by the civil wars of the Fronde. That wing which was burned in 1661 was speedily rebuilt, and forms part of the structure before us. Convents had then, and have still, rooms and apartments which are let or sold to lone spinsters and widows, and to "decayed gentlewomen who have seen better days." This Abbaye-aux-Bois, during the Bourbon Restoration, "when the sky had no horizon," was a favorite retreat for fashionable _dévotes_, mending their reputations by a temporary retirement. The life there is pleasantly described in the early letters of Mary Clarke--later Madame Julius Mohl--who lived there with her mother. M. Bernard, the father of Madame Récamier, had bought one of its grandest apartments for his daughter, after the first bankruptcy of her husband. When she came here it was occupied, and she rented a shabby upper floor for two or three years, and then went down to her own apartment on the first floor, to which she added another in the rear of the same floor. It is in the western wing, of modern construction, with windows on Rue de Sèvres, and on the terrace that overlooks the garden, now shorn of a goodly slice by Boulevard Raspail. We know all about this _salon_, famous for twenty years, the roll of whose frequenters holds every illustrious name in France during that period, as well as those of many charlatans and bores.

[Illustration: The Abbaye-aux-Bois.]

It is reported that Madame Récamier and Châteaubriand met first, in the earliest years of the century, at the receptions of Madame de Staël. Whenever they met to become mutually attracted, this attraction grew in him until it became the dominant sentiment of his life. With all his elevation of soul and his breadth of mind, he had no depth of feeling. "I have a head, good, clear, cold," he wrote; "and a heart that goes jog-trot for three-and-one-half quarters of humanity." The other one-eighth was Madame Récamier, and she outcounted all the rest of the world in stirring such heart as he had. "You have transformed my nature," he tried to make her believe, and he may have believed it himself. Sick with conceit as he was, spoiled by flattery, morbid from introspection, her companionship lifted him out of his melancholy and raised him into serenity. As for her, so long as Madame de Staël lived, she had no other affection to spare for anyone, and perhaps this incomparable creature never gave to Châteaubriand more than homage to her hero, tenderness to the isolated man, and medicine to a mind diseased. He may well have written, toward the last: "I know nothing more beautiful nor more good than you."