part I

played too favourably, at least there lay behind his opinion an appreciation of my political value.

*

I avoided at Ghent, as far as I could, intrigues, which were opposed to my character and contemptible in my eyes; for, at bottom, I perceived in our paltry catastrophe the catastrophe of society. My refuge against the idlers and rogues was the Enclos du Béguinage. I used to walk round that little world of veiled or tuckered women, consecrated to different Christian works: a calm region, placed like the African quicksands on the edge of the tempests. There no incongruity shocked my ideas, for the sentiment of religion is so lofty that it is never irrelevant to the gravest revolutions: the solitaries of the Thebaid and the Barbarians, destroyers of the Roman world, are in no way discordant facts or mutually exclusive existences.

I was graciously received in the close as the author of the _Génie du Christianisme_: wherever I go, among Christians, the curates flock round me; next come the mothers bringing me their children: the latter recite to me my chapter on the First Communion. Then appear unhappy persons who tell me of the good I have had the happiness to do them. My passage through a Catholic town is announced like that of a missionary or a physician. I am touched by this dual reputation: it is the only agreeable memory of myself that I retain; I dislike myself in all the rest of my personality and my reputation.

I was pretty often invited to festive dinners in the family of M. and Madame d'Ops, a venerable father and mother surrounded by some thirty children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At M. Coppens', a banquet which I was obliged to accept was prolonged from one in the afternoon to eight in the evening. I counted nine courses: they began with the preserves and finished with the cutlets. The French alone know how to dine methodically, just as they alone know how to compose a book.

[Sidenote: Diversions at Ghent.]

My "ministry" kept me at Ghent; Madame de Chateaubriand, less busy, went to see Ostend, where I had embarked for Jersey in 1792. I had travelled, a dying exile, down the same canals along whose banks I now walked, still an exile, but in perfect health: there has always been something fabulous in my career! The miseries and joys of my first emigration revived in my thoughts; I saw England again, my companions in misfortune, and Charlotte, whom I was to meet once more. There is no one like myself to create a real society by calling up shadows; it goes so far that the life of my memories absorbs the feeling of my real life. Even persons with whom I have never occupied myself, if they come to die, invade my memory: one would say that none can become my companion if he has not passed through the tomb, which leads me to think that I am a dead man. Where others find an eternal separation, I find an eternal union; when one of my friends departs this earth, it is as though he had come to make my home his own; he never leaves me again. According as the present world retires, the past world returns to me. If the actual generations scorn the generations that have grown old, they waste their disdain where I am concerned: I am not even aware of their existence.

My Golden Fleece had not yet reached Bruges[279], Madame de Chateaubriand did not bring it to me. At Bruges, in 1426, "there was a man whose name was John[280]," who invented or perfected the art of painting in oils: let us be grateful to John of Bruges[281]; but for the propagation of his method, Raphael's master-pieces would be obliterated to-day. Where did the Flemish painters steal the light with which they illumined their pictures? What ray from Greece strayed to Batavia's shore?

After her journey to Ostend, Madame de Chateaubriand took a trip to Antwerp. There she saw, in a cemetery, plaster souls in purgatory, smeared all over with fire and black. At Louvain, she recruited a stammerer, a learned professor, who came expressly to Ghent to gaze upon a man so out of the ordinary as my wife's husband. He said to me, "Illus... ttt... rr...;" his speech fell short of his admiration, and I asked him to dinner. When the hellenist had drunk some curaçao, his tongue became loosened. We got upon the merits of Thucydides, whom the wine made us find clear as water. By dint of keeping up with my guest, I ended, I believe, by talking Dutch; at least, I no longer understood what I was saying.

Madame de Chateaubriand spent a bad night at the inn at Antwerp: a young Englishwoman, recently confined, lay dying; during two hours she made her groans heard; then her voice weakened, and her last moan, which the stranger's ear could scarcely catch, was lost in an eternal silence. The cries of this traveller, solitary and forsaken, might be taken as a prelude to the thousand voices of death about to rise at Waterloo.

The customary solitude of Ghent was rendered more striking by the foreign crowd which was then enlivening it and which was soon to disperse. Belgian and English recruits were learning their drill on the squares and under the trees of the public walks; gunners, contractors, dragoons were landing trains of artillery, herds of oxen, horses which struggled in the air while they were being let down in straps; canteen-women came on shore carrying the sacks, the children, the muskets of their husbands: all these were going, without knowing why and without having the smallest interest in it, to the great _rendez-vous_ of destruction which Bonaparte had given them. One saw politicians gesticulating along a canal, near a motionless angler, Emigrants trotting from the King's to "Monsieur's," from "Monsieur's" to the King's. The Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, in a green coat and a round hat, with an old novel under his arm, walked to the Council to amend the Charter; the Duc de Lévis[282] went to pay his court in a pair of old loose shoes, which dropped from his feet, because, brave man and new Achilles that he was, he had been wounded in the heel. He was very witty, as can be judged by the selection from his Reflexions.

The Duke of Wellington used to come occasionally to hold a review. Louis XVIII. went out every afternoon in a coach and six, with his First Lord of the Bed-chamber and his guards, to drive round Ghent, just as though he had been in Paris. If he met the Duke of Wellington on his road, he would give him a little patronizing nod in passing.

[Sidenote: The dignity of Louis XVIII.]

Louis XVIII. never lost sight of the pre-eminence of his cradle; he was a king everywhere, as God is God everywhere, in a manger or in a temple, on an altar of gold or of clay. Never did his misfortune wring the smallest concession from him; his loftiness increased in the ratio of his depression; his diadem was his name; he seemed to say, "Kill me, you will not kill the centuries inscribed upon my brow." If they had scraped his arms off the Louvre, it signified little to him: were they not engraved on the globe? Had commissioners been sent to scratch them off in every corner of the universe? Had they been erased in India, at Pondichéry; in America, at Lima and Mexico; in the East, at Antioch, Jerusalem, Acre, Cairo, Constantinople, Rhodes, in the Morea; in the West, on the walls of Rome, on the ceilings of Caserta and the Escurial, on the arches of the halls of Ratisbon and Westminster, in the escutcheon of all the kings? Had they been torn from the needle of the compass, where they seemed to proclaim the reign of the lilies to the several regions of the earth?

The fixed idea of the grandeur, the antiquity, the dignity, the majesty of his House gave Louis XVIII. a real empire. One felt its dominion: even Bonaparte's generals confessed it; they stood more intimidated before that impotent old man than before the terrible master who had commanded them in a hundred battles. In Paris, when Louis XVIII. accorded to the triumphing monarchs the honour of dining at his table, he passed without ceremony before those princes whose soldiers were camping in the court-yard of the Louvre; he treated them like vassals who had only done their duty in bringing men-at-arms to their liege-lord. In Europe there is but one monarchy, that of France; the destiny of the other monarchies is bound up in the fate of that one. All the Royal Houses are of yesterday beside the House of Hugh Capet[283], and almost all are its daughters. Our old royal power was the old royalty of the world: from the banishment of the Capets will date the era of the expulsion of the kings.

The more impolitic that haughtiness on the part of the descendant of St. Louis (it became fatal to his heirs), the more pleasing was it to the national pride: the French rejoiced at seeing sovereigns who, when conquered, had borne the chains of a man, bear, as conquerors, the yoke of a dynasty.

The unshaken faith of Louis XVIII. in his blood is the real might that restored his sceptre; it was that faith which twice let fall upon his head a crown for which Europe certainly did not believe, did not pretend that she was exhausting her populations and her treasures. The soldier-less exile was to be found at the issue of all the battles which he had not delivered. Louis XVIII. was the Legitimacy incarnate; it ceased to be visible when he disappeared.

*

At Ghent, I took walks by myself, as I do wherever I go. The barges gliding along narrow canals, obliged to cross ten or twelve leagues of pasture-land to reach the sea, appeared to be sailing over the grass; they reminded me of the canoes of the savages in the wild-oat marshes of Missouri. Standing at the edge of the water, while they were dipping lengths of brown holland, I let my eyes wander over the steeples of the town; its history appeared to me on the clouds in the sky: the citizens of Ghent revolting against Henri de Châtillon, the French governor; the wife[284] of Edward III.[285] bringing forth John of Gaunt[286], the stock of the House of Lancaster; the popular reign of van Artevelde[287]:

"Good people, who moves you? Why are you so incensed against me? In what can I have angered you?"

"You must die!" cried the people: it is what Time cries to all of us. Later, I saw the Dukes of Burgundy; the Spaniards came. Then the pacification, the sieges and the captures of Ghent.

When I had done musing among the centuries, the sound of a little bugle or a Scotch bagpipe would rouse me. I saw living soldiers hastening to join the buried battalions of Batavia: ever destructions, powers overthrown; and, at last, a few faded shadows and some names that had passed.

Sea-board Flanders was one of the first cantonments of the companions of Clodion[288] and Clovis. Ghent, Bruges and the surrounding country furnished nearly a tenth of the grenadiers of the Old Guard: that terrible army was in part drawn from the cradle of our fathers, and came in its turn to be exterminated beside that cradle. Did the Lys[289] give its flower to the arms of our Kings?

Spanish manners leave the impress of their character: the buildings of Ghent retraced for me those of Granada, less the sky of the Vega. A large town almost bereft of inhabitants, deserted streets, canals as deserted as the streets.... twenty-six islands formed by those canals, which were not the canals of Venice, a huge piece of ordnance of the middle ages: that is what replaced at Ghent the city of the Zegris[290], the Duero and the Xenil[291] the Generalife and the Alhambra; old dreams of mine, shall I ever see you more?

*

[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Lévis.]

Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, who had taken ship on the Gironde, came to us by way of England with General Donnadieu[292] and M. Desèze[293], of whom the latter had crossed the ocean wearing his blue ribbon across his waistcoat. The Duc and Duchesse de Lévis[294] followed in the Princess' suite: they had flung themselves into the diligence and escaped from Paris by the Bordeaux road. Their fellow-travellers talked politics:

"That scoundrel of a Chateaubriand," said one of them, "is no such fool! He had his carriage waiting packed in his court-yard for three days: the bird has flown. They would have made short work of him, if Napoleon had caught him!"

Madame la Duchesse de Lévis was a very handsome, very kind woman, and as calm as Madame la Duchesse de Duras was restless. She never left Madame de Chateaubriand's side; she was our assiduous companion at Ghent. No one has diffused more quietude in my life, a thing of which I have great need. The least troubled moments of my existence are those which I spent at Noisiel, in the house of that woman whose words and sentiments entered into your soul only to restore its serenity. I recall with regret those moments passed under the great chestnut-trees of Noisiel! With a soothed spirit, a convalescent heart, I used to look upon the ruins of Chelles Abbey and the little lights of the boats loitering among the willows on the Marne.

The remembrance of Madame de Lévis is for me that of a silent autumn evening. She passed away in a few hours; she mingled with death as with the source of all rest I saw her sink noiselessly into her grave in the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise; she is laid above M. de Fontanes, and the latter sleeps beside his son Saint-Marcellin, killed in a duel. Thus, bowing before the monument of Madame de Lévis, have I come into contact with two other sepulchres: man cannot awaken one sorrow without reawakening another; during the night, the different flowers which open only in the shade expand.

To Madame de Lévis' affectionate kindness for me was added the friendship of M. le Duc de Lévis, the father: I may now reckon only by generations. M. de Lévis wrote well; he had a versatile and fertile imagination which betrayed his noble race, as it had already displayed itself in his blood shed on the beach at Quiberon.

Nor was that to be the end of all: it was the impulse of a friendship which passed on to the second generation. M. le Duc de Lévis, the son[295], attached at present to M. le Comte de Chambord, has drawn near to me; my hereditary affection will fail him no more than will my fidelity to his august master. The new and charming Duchesse de Lévis[296], his wife, joins to the great name of d'Aubusson the brightest qualities of heart and mind: life is worth something, when the graces borrow unwearied wings from history!

*

The Pavillon Marsan[297] existed at Ghent as in Paris. Every day brought Monsieur news from France which was the offspring of self-interest or imagination.

[Sidenote: Fouché, Duc D'Otrante.]

M. Gaillard[298], an ex-Oratorian, a counsel in the royal courts, an intimate friend of Fouché's, alighted in our midst; he made himself known, and was brought into touch with M. Capelle.

When I waited upon Monsieur, which was rarely, those around him used to talk to me in covert words, and with many sighs, of "a man who (it must be admitted) was behaving admirably: he was impeding all the Emperor's operations; he was defending the Faubourg Saint-Germain, etc., etc." The faithful Marshal Soult was also the object of Monsieur's predilection and, after Fouché, the most loyal man in France.

One day a carriage stopped at the door of my inn, and I saw Madame la Baronne de Vitrolles step out of it: she had arrived bearing powers from the Duc d'Otrante. She took away with her a note, written in Monsieur's hand, in which the Prince declared that he would retain an eternal gratitude to him who saved M. de Vitrolles. Fouché wanted no more; armed with this note, he was sure of his future in case of a restoration. Thenceforward, there was no question at Ghent save of the immense obligations due to the excellent M. Fouché de Nantes[299], save of the impossibility of returning to France otherwise than by that just man's good pleasure: the difficulty was how to make the King relish this new redeemer of the Monarchy.

After the Hundred Days, Madame de Custine compelled me to meet Fouché at dinner at her house. I had seen him once, five years before, in connection with the condemnation of my poor Cousin Armand. The ex-minister knew that I had opposed his nomination at Roye, at Gonesse, at Arnouville; and, as he suspected me of being powerful, he wished to make his peace with me. The death of Louis XVI. was the best thing about him: regicide was his innocence. A prater, like all the revolutionaries, beating the air with empty phrases, he retailed a heap of commonplaces stuffed with "destiny," with "necessity," with "the right of things," mingling with this philosophic nonsense further nonsense on the march and progress of society, and shameless maxims in favour of the strong as against the weak; and he was free in his use of impudent avowals on the justice of success, the little worth of a head which falls, the equity of that which prospers, the iniquity of that which suffers, affecting to speak of the most horrid disasters with airy indifference, as though he were a genius above all such fooleries. Not a choice idea escaped him, not a remarkable thought, on any subject whatsoever. I went away shrugging my shoulders at crime.

M. Fouché never forgave me my dryness and the small effect he produced on me. He had thought he would fascinate me by causing the blade of the fatal instrument to rise and fall before my eyes, like a glory of Mount Sinai; he had imagined that I would look up, as to a colossus, to the ranter who, speaking of the soil of Lyons, had said:

"That soil shall be overturned; on the ruins of that proud and rebellious city shall rise scattered cottages which the friends of liberty will hasten to come and inhabit.... We shall have the energetic courage to walk through the vast tombs of the conspirators.... Their blood-stained corpses, hurled into the Rhône, give on both banks and at its mouth the impression of terror and the image of the omnipotence of the people. . . . . . . .

"We shall celebrate the victory of Toulon; we shall this evening send two hundred and fifty rebels under the lead of the thunder."

Those horrible trimmings did not impose upon me: because M. "de Nantes" had diluted republican crimes with imperial mire; because the _sans-culotte_, transformed into a duke, had wrapped the cord of the lantern in the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, he appeared neither the abler nor the greater for it in my eyes. The Jacobins detest men who make no account of their atrocities and who despise their murders; their pride is provoked, like that of authors whose talent one disputes.

*

[Sidenote: His underhand negotiations.]

At the same time that Fouché was sending M. Gaillard to Ghent to negociate with the brother of Louis XVI., his agents at Bâle were parleying with those of Prince Metternich[300] on the subject of Napoleon II., and M. de Saint-Léon, dispatched by this same Fouché, was arriving in Vienna to treat of the crown as a "possibility" for M. le Duc d'Orléans. The friends of the Duc d'Otrante could rely upon him no more than his enemies: on the return of the legitimate Princes, he maintained his old colleague, M. Thibaudeau[301], on the list of exiles, while M. de Talleyrand struck this or that outlaw off the list, or added that other to the catalogue, according to his whim. Had not the Faubourg Saint-Germain reason indeed to believe in M. Fouché?

M. de Saint-Léon carried three notes to Vienna, of which one was addressed to M. de Talleyrand: the Duc d'Otrante proposed that the ambassador of Louis XVIII. should push the son of Égalité on to the throne, if he saw his way! What probity in those negociations! How fortunate they were to have to do with such honest persons! Yet we have admired, censed, blessed those highway robbers; we have paid court to them; we have called them _monseigneur!_ That explains the world as it stands. M. de Montrond came in addition, after M. de Saint-Léon.

M. le Duc d'Orléans did not conspire in fact but by consent; he let the revolutionary affinities intrigue: a sweet society! In this dark lane, the plenipotentiary of the King of France lent an ear to Fouché's overtures.

Speaking of M. de Talleyrand's detention at the Barrière d'Enfer, I said what had, till then, been M. de Talleyrand's fixed idea as to the regency of Marie-Louise: he was obliged by the emergency to embrace the eventuality of the Bourbons; but he was always ill at ease: it seemed to him that, under the heirs of St. Louis, a married bishop would never be sure of his place. The idea of substituting the Younger Branch for the Elder Branch pleased him, therefore, so much so the more in that he had had former relations with the Palais Royal.

Taking that side, without however exposing himself entirely, he hazarded a few words of Fouché's project to Alexander. The Tsar had ceased to interest himself in Louis XVIII.: the latter had hurt him, in Paris, by his affectation of superiority of race; he had hurt him again by refusing to consent to the marriage of the Duc de Berry with a sister of the Emperor; the Princess was rejected for three reasons: she was a schismatic; she was not of an old enough stock; she came of a family of madmen: these reasons were not put forward upright but aslant, and, when seen through, gave Alexander treble offense. As a last subject of complaint against the old sovereign of exile, the Tsar brought up the projected alliance between England, France and Austria. For the rest, it seemed as though the succession were open; all the world claimed to succeed to the estate of the sons of Louis XIV.: Benjamin Constantin the name of Madame Murat[302], was pleading the rights which Napoleon's sister believed herself to possess over the Kingdom of Naples; Bernadotte was casting a distant glance upon Versailles, apparently because the King of Sweden came from Pau.

La Besnardière[303], head of a department at the Foreign Office, went over to M. de Caulaincourt; he drew up a hurried report on "the complaints and rejoinders of France" to the Legitimacy. After this kick had been let fly, M. de Talleyrand found means of communicating the report to Alexander: discontented and fickle, the Autocrat was struck with La Besnardière's pamphlet. Suddenly, in the middle of the Congress, the Tsar asked, to the general stupefaction, if it would not be a matter for deliberation to examine in how far M. le Duc d'Orléans might suit France and Europe as King. This is perhaps one of the most surprising things in those extraordinary times, and perhaps it is still more extraordinary that it has been so little discussed[304]. Lord Clancarty[305] made the Russian proposal fall through; His Lordship declared that he had no powers to treat so grave a question:

"As for myself," he said, "giving my opinion as a private individual, I think that to put M. le Duc d'Orléans on the throne of France would be to replace a military usurpation by a family usurpation, which is more dangerous to the sovereigns than any other usurpation."

[Sidenote: At the Congress of Vienna.]

The members of the Congress went to dinner, using the sceptre of St. Louis as a rush with which to mark the folio at which they had left off in their protocols.

Upon the obstacles encountered by the Tsar, M. de Talleyrand faced about: foreseeing that the stroke would resound, he sent a report to Louis XVIII. (in a despatch which I have seen and which was numbered 25 or 27) of this strange session of the Congress[306]; he thought himself obliged to inform His Majesty of so exorbitant a proceeding, because this news, said he, would not long delay in reaching the King's ears: a singular ingenuousness for M. le Prince de Talleyrand.

There had been a question of a declaration on the part of the Alliance, in order to make it quite clear to the world that there was no quarrel except with Napoleon, that there was no pretension to impose upon France either an obligatory form of government or a sovereign who should not be of her own choice. This latter part of the declaration was suppressed, but it was positively announced in the official journal of Frankfort. England, in her negociations with the Cabinets, always employs that Liberal language, which is only a precaution against the parliamentary tribune.

We see that the Allies were troubling themselves no more about the re-establishment of the Legitimacy at the Second than at the First Restoration: the event alone did all. What mattered it to such short-sighted sovereigns whether the mother of European monarchies had her throat cut? Would that prevent them from giving entertainments and keeping guards? The monarchs are so solidly seated to-day, the globe in one hand, the sword in the other!

M. de Talleyrand, whose interests were at that time in Vienna, feared lest the English, whose opinion was no longer so favourable to him, should begin the military game before all the armies were drawn up in line, and lest the Cabinet of St. James should thus acquire the predominance: that is why he wished to induce the King to re-enter by the south-eastern provinces, in order that he might find himself under the protection of the Austrian Empire and Cabinet. The Duke of Wellington had given a precise order not to commence hostilities; it was Napoleon who wanted the Battle of Waterloo: the destinies of such a nature are not to be arrested.

Those historic facts, the most curious in the world, have remained generally unknown; in the same way, also, a confused opinion has been formed of the Treaties of Vienna relating to France: they have been thought the iniquitous work of a troop of victorious sovereigns, implacably bent upon our ruin; unfortunately, if they are harsh, they have been envenomed by a French hand: when M. de Talleyrand is not conspiring, he is trafficking.

Prussia desired to have Saxony, which will sooner or later be her prey; France ought to have countenanced this wish, for, Saxony obtaining an indemnification within the sphere of the Rhine, Landau would have remained to us with our surrounding territories; Coblentz and other fortresses would have passed to a small friendly State, which, placed between ourselves and Prussia, prevented any point of contact; the keys of France would not have been handed over to the shade of Frederic. For three millions which Saxony paid him, M. de Talleyrand opposed the combinations of the Cabinet of Berlin; but, in order to obtain the assent of Alexander to the existence of Old Saxony, our Ambassador was obliged to abandon Poland to the Tsar, notwithstanding that the other Powers desired that a Poland of some kind should restrict the freedom of the Muscovite's movements in the North. The Bourbons of Naples redeemed themselves, like the sovereign of Dresden, with money[307]. M. de Talleyrand claimed that he was entitled to a subvention, in exchange for his Duchy of Benevento: he was selling his livery on leaving his master. When France was losing so much, could not M. de. Talleyrand also have lost something? Benevento, moreover, did not belong to the High Chamberlain: by virtue of the revival of the ancient treaties, that principality was a dependency of the States of the Church.

[Illustration: Talleyrand.]

[Sidenote: A letter from Talleyrand.]

Such were the diplomatic transactions which were being completed in Vienna while we were stopping at Ghent. In this latter residence, I received the following letter from M. de Talleyrand:

"VIENNA, 4 _April._

"I learnt, monsieur, with much pleasure that you were at Ghent, for circumstances require that the King should be surrounded with strong and independent men.

"You will certainly have thought that it was useful to refute, by means of strenuously-reasoned publications, the whole of the new doctrine which they are trying to establish in the official documents now appearing in France.

"It would be useful if something could appear of which the object would be to establish that the Declaration of the 31st of March, made in Paris by the Allies, that the Act of Deposition, that the Act of Abdication, that the Treaty of the 11th of April, which resulted from them, are so many preliminary, indispensable and absolute conditions of the Treaty of the 30th of May; that is to say that, without those previous conditions, the treaty would not have been made. This admitted, the man who violates the said conditions or seconds their violation breaks the peace which that treaty established. It is, therefore, he and his accomplices who are declaring war against Europe.

"An argument taken in this sense would do good abroad as well as at home; only it must be well done, so make it your business.

"Accept, monsieur, the homage of my sincere attachment and of my high regard.

"TALLEYRAND.

"I hope to have the honour of seeing you at the end of the month."

Our Minister in Vienna was faithful to his hatred of the great chimera escaped from the shades: he dreaded a blow from its wing. This letter shows, for the rest, all that M. de Talleyrand was capable of doing when he wrote alone: he had the kindness to teach me the "movement," leaving the "graces" to me. It was a question indeed of a few diplomatic phrases on the deposition, on the abdication, on the Treaty of the 11th of April and of the 30th of May, to stop Napoleon! I was very grateful for the instructions given me by virtue of my patent as "a strong man," but I did not follow them: an ambassador _in petto_ I was not at that moment meddling with foreign affairs; I busied myself only with my Ministry of the Interior _ad interim._

But what was taking place in Paris?

[231] Jean Baptiste Baron Dalesme (1763-1832) was a brigadier-general under Napoleon, sat in the Legislative Body as Deputy for the Haute-Vienne from 1802 to 1809, and was created a baron of the Empire in 1810. He rallied to the Restoration, which made him a lieutenant-general in October 1814. He was Governor of Elba during the Hundred Days, and left the service on the Second Restoration. He was reinstated in 1830, and died Governor of the Invalides.--B.

[232] 4 May 1814.--B.

[233] At the celebrated Congress of Erfurt, held in 1808, were present the Emperors Alexander and Napoleon and almost all the sovereigns of Germany. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria were the only crowned heads not invited to it.--T.

[234] Æneid, X. 174.--B.

[235] Marie Countess Walewice-Walewska (circa 1787-1817), _née_ Laczinska, married, first (_circa_ 1804), to Anastasius Colonna, Count Walewice-Walewski, who died in 1814, at the age of eighty-four; secondly, to General Philippe Antoine Comte d'Omano. She visited Napoleon at Elba on the 1st of September 1814, accompanied by a child of four or five years of age. She stayed about fifty hours; during this time the Emperor received no one, not even Madame Mère, who was then in Elba, at Marciana. But, after those fifty hours, Madame Walewska went to Longone to embark for the Continent in a gale so severe that the very sailors feared for her safety. She refused to listen to all representations. The Emperor sent an officer to delay her departure; but she was already out at sea, and Napoleon knew no peace of mind until he had received from the Countess Walewska herself news of her safe arrival. (_Cf._ PONS DE L'HÉRAULT, _Souvenirs et anecdotes de l'île d'Elbe_).--T.

[236] Alexandre Florian Joseph de Colonna, Comte, later Duc de Walewski (1810-1868), the reputed illegitimate son of Napoleon I., Minister of Foreign Affairs and, later, President of the Legislative Body under Napoleon III.--T.

[237] Antoine Francois Claude Comte Ferrand (1758-1825) was Postmaster-general. In 1816, he was created a peer of France and became a member of the French Academy. His best-known literary work is the Esprit de l'histoire in four volumes (1802), which has been many times reprinted.--T.

[238] Antoine Marie Chamans, Comte de Lavallette (1769-1830), was married to a Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, a niece of the Empress Joséphine. He had been Postmaster-general in 1814; lost that office on the return of the Bourbons, and resumed it, in 1816, on the flight of the Princes. He was tried for seconding the return of Bonaparte and sentenced to death, but made his escape from prison by the aid of his wife. Three English officers, Messrs. Hutchinson, Wilson and Bruce, assisted him across the frontier, and he took refuge in Bavaria. Lavallette was permitted to return to France in 1820, when he retired into private life.--T.

[239] The _Nain jaune_ was a satirical Bonapartist journal, inspired by the circle of the ex-Queen Hortense, which adopted a guise of extreme Royalism. The number for the 28th of February 1815 contains a letter from a correspondent who says:

"I have worn out ten goose-quills in writing to you, without receiving a reply; perhaps I shall be luckier if I try a duck-quill" (_plume de cane_).

On the next day, the 1st of March, Napoleon landed at Cannes on his return from Elba.--B.

[240] Carlo Andrea Count Pozzo di Borgo (1764-1842), a native of Corsica, entered the Russian diplomatic service and took part in all the congresses of the Holy Alliance. Pozzo acted as Russian Ambassador to France from 1814 to 1835, and to England from 1835 to 1839. He spent his last years in Paris.--T.

[241] Louis-Philippe Duc d'Orléans (1773-1850), afterwards "King of the French," and son (some say a changeling) of Louis Philippe Joseph Duc d'Orléans (Philippe Égalité).--T.

[242] General Drouet d'Erlon (1765-1844) was placed in command of the 1st Army Corps during the Hundred Days. He was condemned to death by contumacy in 1816, fled to Prussia, and returned to France in 1825, but did not resume service till 1830. In 1834, he was appointed Governor-General of Algeria, but was recalled in 1835 for not displaying sufficient vigour against Abd-el-Kader; nevertheless Drouet was made a marshal in 1843. The military conspiracy in which he engaged with General Lefebvre-Desnoëttes and Lallemand was of a semi-Imperialist, semi-Revolutionary character, and broke out on the 9th of March 1815, but was immediately suppressed.--T.

[243] Marshal Masséna, on the evening of the 3rd of March, sent to the Minister of War, from Marseilles, the dispatch announcing Bonaparte's landing at the Golfe Jouan. In 1815, the aerial telegraph stopped at Lyons. The message was therefore carried by a courier as far as Lyons, and did not reach Paris until mid-day on the 5th of March. Impressed by the gravity of the news, M. Chappe, the Director-General of Telegraphs (brother of the inventor), took upon himself to take the message to M. de Vitrolles, in the King's closet, instead of transmitting it to Marshal Soult. Vitrolles handed the despatch, sealed as it was, to Louis XVIII., who read it several times over and threw it on the table, saying with the greatest calm:

"It is to say that Bonaparte has landed on the coast of Provence. This letter must be taken to the Minister of War. He will see what is to be done."

The Government kept the news secret for two days, and it was only on the 7th of March that it was officially announced in the _Moniteur._--B.

[244] The Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, became "Monsieur" on the latter's accession.--T.

[245] Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke, Maréchal Comte d'Hunebourg, Duc de Feltre (1765-1818), descended from an Irish family, had been one of Napoleon's generals, and Minister of War from 1807. After rallying to the Bourbons, he managed the War Office at a time of the greatest difficulty, and was created a marshal of France after the Second Restoration, in 1816. The Duc de Feltre retired in 1817, a year before his death.--T.

[246] Caius Valerius Jovius Aulerius Diocletianus (245-313), Roman Emperor, was born at Dioclea, near Salona. Diocletian's mind became weakened in 304, and in 305 he abdicated and retired to Salona, where he cultivated his garden with his own hands.--T.

[247] Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot (1791-1873) became a prominent leader of the Opposition under Louis-Philippe, and was Prime Minister and Minister of Justice in 1848 to 1849.--T.

[248] The battalion of the pupils of the School of Law was formed on the 14th of March 1815; its effective force amounted to 1200 men. After being drilled at Vincennes, the Volunteers, to the number of about 700, joined the Body-guards at Beauvais on Easter Sunday, the 26th of March; they crossed the frontier and were cantoned at Ypres. On the 30th of July, the battalion returned to Paris, amid the cheers of an immense multitude which had come out to greet it. The professors of the school, prevented by their age from leaving France, at least refused to wait upon Napoleon, and it was only at the express invitation of the Minister of the Interior that they went so far as to send an address in which they expressed their gratitude at seeing the Emperor renounce all spirit of conquest.--B.

[249] M. de La Fayette, in some Memoirs published since his death and valuable for their facts, confirms the singular conjunction of his opinion and mine on the occasion of Bonaparte's return. M. de La Fayette was a sincere lover of honour and liberty.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840).

[250] Charles Ferdinand Duc de Berry (1778-1820), second son of the Comte d'Artois, assassinated by the fanatic Louvel on leaving the Opera, 13 February 1820.--T.

[251] Louis Antoine Duc d'Angoulême (1775-1844), eldest son of the Comte d'Artois, was Dauphin of France during the reign of the latter as Charles X. He abdicated his right to the throne immediately after his father, and was thus for only a few minutes King of France, with the title of Louis XIX. He was succeeded by his nephew, the Duc de Bordeaux (the Comte de Chambord), as Henry V. The Duc d'Angoulême died at Goritz, where he lived under the style of Comte de Marnes. He possessed many solid qualities and conciliatory intentions, without being gifted with any hyper-eminent faculties.--T.

[252] A Royal order of the 6th of March, declaring Bonaparte a traitor and rebel, and enjoining all soldiers, national guards, or private citizens "to hunt him down" (_de lui courir sus_), appears in the _Moniteur_ of the 7th of March.--B.

[253] Alexandre Maurice Blanc de La Nautte, Comte d'Hauterive (1754-1830), commenced life as a professor in the Oratorian College at Tours (1779), accompanied the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier on his embassy to Constantinople (1784), became French _Chargé d'affaires_ in Moldavia (1785), and Consul in New York (1792). In America he grew intimate with Talleyrand, who made him head of a department at the Foreign Office so soon as he obtained his ministry, and later had him appointed Keeper of the Archives (1807).--T.

[254] Alfred Frédéric Chevalier Artaud de Montor (1772-1849), after a long diplomatic career, wrote or edited a large number of historical works, including the _Vie et travaux du comte d'Hauterive_, published at a later date than that at which Chateaubriand wrote the above lines.--T.

[255] MARK ii. II.--T.

[256] Charles Du Fresne, Seigneur Du Cange (1610-1688), the noted historian and philologist, born at Amiens, 18 December 1610.--T.

[257] Robespierre was born at Arras on the 6th of May 1758.--T.

[258] _Cf._ Vol. II. p. 30.--T.

[259] Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux (1771-1842), younger brother of Louis François Bertin, known as Bertin the Elder, assisted him in founding the _Journal des Débats_ (1799), and in editing that paper, while directing a banking-house which he had established in 1801. Bertin de Vaux was sent as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1830 and raised to the peerage in 1832.--T.

[260] Amédée Bretagne Malo de Durfort, Duc de Duras (1771-1838), First Lord of the Bed-chamber to the King. He accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent and returned with him. He had been created a Peer of France in 1814. After the Revolution of 1830, he retired into private life.--B.

[261] Charles V. Emperor of Germany, King of Spain and of the Two Sicilies (1500-1558), born at Ghent, son of the Archduke Philip of Austria and of Joan, heiress of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. He was proclaimed King of Spain in 1516, during his mother's life-time, and elected to the Empire three years later. Charles V. abdicated in 1556, two years before his death.--T.

[262] The other ministers were: M. Louis, Finance; the Duc de Feltre, War; M. Beugnot, Navy; M. Dambray, Chancellor of France; M. de Jaucourt, Foreign Affairs _ad interim_, the Prince de Talleyrand being in Vienna. M. de Blacas was Minister of the King's Household. M. de Lally-Tolendal was _ad interim_ Minister of Public Instruction.--B.

[263] Bernadotte and Henry IV. were both born at Pau.--T.

[264] Thomas Arthur Comte de Lally, Baron Tolendal in Ireland (1702-1766), after contributing to the victory of Fontenoy (1745), was in 1756 appointed Governor of the French possessions in India and drove the English from the Coromandel Coast. He failed, however, before Madras, was himself besieged in Pondichéry, and obliged to surrender with a garrison of 700 men: he had resisted for several months against an army of 22,000 men and a fleet of 14 ships (1761). Nevertheless, he was accused of betraying the King's interests, sent to the Bastille and, after eighteen months' imprisonment and an informal trial, sentenced to death. He was executed on the 9th of May 1766. Voltaire published an eloquent _factum_ in the condemned man's favour and, in 1778, Louis XVI., at the instance of Lally's son, the Marquis de Lally-Tolendal mentioned above, had the iniquitous verdict revised. The sentence was unanimously quashed by a new set of judges, and Lally's memory entirely rehabilitated.--T.

[265] Marie Madeleine Comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693), _née_ Pioche de La Vergne, daughter of the Governor of the Havre, and the intimate friend of La Rochefoucauld. She made a name in letters by her novels, _Zaïde_ the _Princesse de Clèves_, etc., and also wrote an _Histoire et Henriette d'Angleterre._--T.

[266] Madame La Duchesse de Rauzan.--_Author's Note._

[267] The Duc de Bellune remained absolutely faithful to the Elder Branch after the usurpation of 1830.--T.

[268] Julie Maréchale Duchesse de Bellune, _née_ Vosch van Avesaat, married to the Maréchal Duc de Bellune in 1801. He had previously divorced his first wife, _née_ Muguet, to whom he had been married in 1791.--T.

[269] Vincent Marie Viennot, Comte de Vaublanc (1756-1845), an eager supporter of the Royalist cause and Minister of the Interior from September 1815 to May 1816. He published some political works, a few indifferent tragedies and an epic poem, the _Dernier des Césars_ (1836).--T.

[270] Guillaume Antoine Bénoît Baron Capelle (1775-1843) held various prefectures under Napoleon and Louis XVIII., and was created a baron of the Empire by the former. In May 1830, he became Minister of Public Works in M. de Polignac's Cabinet and, as a signatory of the Ordinances of July, was condemned by contumacy to perpetual imprisonment. He returned to France in 1836, after the amnesty.--B.

[271] The Abbé Martial Borye Desrenaudes (1755-1825), not d'Ernaud as the preceding editions of the Memoirs have it, was grand-vicar to the Bishop of Autun at the time of the Revolution. He had a remarkable talent as a writer, and was of the greatest use to Talleyrand as a literary assistant. After the 18 Brumaire, Desrenaudes became a member of the Tribunate, and later a councillor of the University and Imperial Censor. He retained his censorship under the Restoration.--B.

[272] Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679), was in 1643 appointed Coadjutor to his uncle, Henri de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, before himself succeeding to the archbishopric.--T.

[273] _Cf._ RACINE, _Les Plaideurs_, Act III. sc. IV.--T.

[274] Claude Philibert Édouard Baron Mounier (1784-1843), son of Joseph Mounier, the celebrated Constituent. Under the Empire, he had been Superintendent of the Crown Lands, in which post he was confirmed by Louis XVIII., and he continued to hold various political and administrative offices. He was created a peer of France in 1819.--B.

[275] Louis XVIII. himself was a great epicure of this fish, and sometimes allowed himself to be taken to this inn, which was called the Halter. (Cf. ROMBERG, _Louis XVIII. à Gand._)--B.

[276] Early in April, under the management of the two Bertins. Upon the objection of the Netherlands Government, which saw difficulties in the way of the co-existence of two _Moniteurs_ in the kingdom, the original title was changed to the _Journal universel_, which continued to be the official organ of Louis XVIII.--B.

[277] _Rapport sur l'état de la France, fait au roi dans son conseil_, May 1815.--B.

[278] A certain M. Bail, an inspector of reviews. Chateaubriand's letter to the Duc de Feltre is dated "Paris, 22 August 1826," and runs:

"A Monsieur Bail, inspector of reviews, wrote a pamphlet against me. He says that he has lost his place for this act. May I venture, monsieur le duc, to hope from your indulgence that you will be so good as to restore him to your kindness? The King's person was respected in the pamphlet. Pray forget, monsieur le maréchal, all that concerns only myself.--B."

[279] The Order of the Golden Fleece was instituted at Bruges, in 1429, by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.--T.

[280] JOHN i. 6.--T.

[281] Jan van Eyck (_circa_ 1380-1450) was born at Maaseyk near Maastricht, but settled at Bruges, with his brother Hubert, at an early age. He is usually known as Jean de Bruges in France.--T.

[282] Gaston Pierre Marc Duc de Levis (1764-1830) had been wounded at Quiberon in 1795. Between 1808 and 1814 he published his _Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets_, the _Suite des quatre Facardins_, imitated from Hamilton's Tales, _Voyage de Khani, ou Nouvelles lettres chinoises, Souvenirs et Portraits_, and L'_Angleterre au commencement du XIX^e siècle._ He became a peer of France in 1814, a privy councillor in 1815 and a member of the French Academy in 1816.--B.

[283] Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris (_d._ 996), was proclaimed King of France in 987 on the death of Louis V., the last of the Second or Carlovingian Dynasty, thus founding the Third or Capetian Dynasty of Kings of France. The House of Capet proper reigned from 987 to 1328; its two branches, the Houses of Valois and Bourbon from 1328 to 1589 and 1589 to 1830 respectively. The usurpation of Louis-Philippe gives a reign of 18 years (1830 to 1848) to the House of Orleans, or Younger Branch of Bourbon.--T.

[284] Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England (_circa_ 1314-1369).--T.

[285] Edward III. King of England (1212-1377).--T.

[286] John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1349-1399), fourth son of Edward III. and father of Henry IV., who founded the House of Lancaster after procuring the murder of Richard II., by usurping the throne to the prejudice of the descendants of Lionel Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III.--T.

[287] Jacob van Artevelde (_d._ 1345) headed a revolt of his fellow-citizens against the Count of Flanders (1336) and became for some time absolute master of Flanders. Finding himself, however, on the point of being reduced, he proposed to offer the sovereignty to Edward the Black Prince, but failed in his project, and was murdered by the populace of Ghent in 1345.--T.

[288] Clodion (_d. circa_ 448) is accepted as the second King of France (Merovingian Dynasty).--T.

[289] The Lys, or Lily, rises a little below Béthune and flows into the Scheldt at Ghent.--B.

[290] A Moorish tribe which had a violent quarrel with the Abencerrages.--T.

[291] Granada stands near the junction of the Rivers Duero and Xenil.--T.

[292] Gabriel Vicomte Donnadieu (1777-1849), an inveterate enemy of Napoleon and later of Louis-Philippe, and a fervent, although somewhat discredited Royalist.--T.

[293] Raymond Comte Desèze (1748-1828), the famous advocate. He distinguished himself early in his career by his defense of the daughters of Helvétius. In 1789 he obtained the acquittal of the Baron de Bésenval, accused of high treason; and he assisted Malesherbes and Tronchet in their defense of King Louis XVI. before the Convention. Desèze had been made a knight of the Holy Ghost by Louis XVI., which explains the allusion to the blue ribbon. Louis XVIII. made him President of the Court of Appeal and a peer of France in 1815, and a count in 1817. Desèze was, in 1816, elected a member of the French Academy.--T.

[294] Pauline Louise Françoise de Paule Duchesse de Lévis (_d._ 1819), _née_ Charpentier d'Ennery, married to the Duc de Lévis in 1785.--B.

[295] Gaston François Christophe Victor Duc de Ventadour and de Lévis (1794-1863), became aide-de-camp to the Duc d'Angoulême in 1814, and took part in the Spanish War of 1823 and the expedition to Morocco in 1828. He succeeded his father in the peerage in 1830, but refused to sit after the Revolution of July and followed the Royal Family into exile. He was for many years one of the Comte de Chambord's chief councillors, and died at Venice in 1863.--B.

[296] Marie Cathérine Amanda Duchesse de Lévis (1798-1854), daughter of Pierre Raymond Hector d'Aubusson, Comte de La Feuillade, and married to the Duc de Lévis in 1821.--B.

[297] The Pavillon Marsan formed the corner of the Tuileries bounded by the garden and the Rue de Rivoli, and was occupied under Louis XVIII. by the Comte d'Artois.--T.

At Ghent, the Comte d'Artois had his Pavillon Marsan in the Hôtel des Pays Bas, where he was lodged with his suite and his carriages and paid 1000 francs a day. Louis XVIII. lived in the house which the Comte d'Hane de Steenhuyse had placed at his disposal.-B.

[298] Gaillard had been Fouché's secretary.--B.

[299] The Duc d'Otrante was born at the Martinière, near Nantes.--T.

[300] Clemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar Prince von Metternich-Winneburg (1773-1859), the great Austrian statesman, was at this time presiding over the Congress of Vienna.--T.

[301] Auguste Clair Thibaudeau (1765-1854) had voted for the death of the King in the Convention, and became one of the most ardent servants of Napoleon, who made him a councillor of State, a prefect, and a count of the Empire (31 December 1809). He was exiled in 1815 and did not return to France until after the Revolution of July. Napoleon III. made him a senator and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. Thibaudeau left a large number of historical works.--B.

[302] Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1782-1839), _née_ Bonaparte, married to Murat in 1800.--T.

[303] Jean Baptiste de Gouy, Comte de La Besnardière (_d._ 1843), had been employed at the Foreign Office since 1795, where he had become the intimate fellow-worker of Talleyrand, who liked both him and his work. He accompanied the prince to the Congress of Vienna; on his return, the King made him a count and director of Public Works. He retired into private life in 1819.--B.

[304] A recently-published pamphlet entitled _Lettres de l'Étranger_, written apparently by an able and well-informed diplomatist, points to this strange Russian negociation in Vienna.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840).

[305] Richard Le Poer Trench, second Earl of Clancarty, later Marquis of Heusden in the Netherlands (1767-1837), British Plenipotentiary to the Congress of Vienna, and later Ambassador to the Netherlands (1816-1822).--T.

[306] It is stated that, in 1830, M. de Talleyrand had his private correspondence with Louis XVIII. removed from the Archives of the Crown, even as he had had removed from the Archives of the Empire all that he, M. de Talleyrand, had written respecting the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the affairs of Spain.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1840).

[307] Talleyrand was paid six million francs by the Neapolitan Bourbons for favouring their restoration. (_Cf._ SAINTE-BEUVE, _Nouveaux Lundis_, vol. XII.).--B.

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