 I shall soon be leaving Rome, and I hope to return. I once more love passionately this Rome so sad and so beautiful. I shall have a panorama in the capitol, where the Prussian minister will give up to me the little Cafferoli Palace. At St. Onofrio I have set up another retreat. Pending my departure and my return, I never cease wondering in the Campania. There is no little road running between two hedges, that I do not know better than the Combo Glanes. From the top of the Monte Mario, and the surrounding hills, I discover the horizon of the sea in the direction of Ostia. I take my rest under the light and crumbling porticoes of the Villa Madama. In these architectural remains changed into farms, I often find only a timid young girl startled and agile as her goats, when I go by the portapia. I walk to the Ponte Lamentano over the Taborone. I admire as I pass St. Agnes, a head of Christ by Michelangelo, which keeps watch over the almost abandoned convent. The masterpieces of the great masters, thus strewn through the desert, fill the soul with profound melancholy. It distresses me that they should have collected the Roman pictures in a museum. I should have much preferred to go along the slopes of the Geniculum, under the fall of the Aquapowla, across the solitary Via delle Formaci, to seek the transfiguration in the recollect monastery of San Pietro in Montoria, where one looks at the place once occupied on the high altar of the church by the ornament of Raphael's funeral. Its heart is struck and saddened. Beyond the Ponte Lamentano, yellow pasture land stretched to the left to the Tiber. The river which bathed the gardens of Horus here flows unknown. Following the high road you find the pavement of the ancient Via Tibutina. I there this year saw the first swallow arrive. I herbarise at the tomb of Sicilia Mattela. The undulated Minionette and the Apennine Anemone make a pretty effect against the whiteness of the ruin and the ground. Following the Ostia Road I go to St. Paul's, lately fallen prey to the flames. I sit down to rest on some calcined porphyry, and watch the workmen silently building up a new church. They pointed out to me some columns already outlined, as I descended the Simplon. The whole history of Christianity in the West begins at St. Paul's without the walls. In France when we build any bit of a house, we make a terrible noise about it, numbers of machines and multitude of men and cries. In Italy they undertake immense works almost without stirring. The Pope at this very moment is rebuilding the fallen portion of the Colosseum. Half a dozen masons labourers, without any scaffolding, are lifting up the colossus under whose shoulders died a nation changed into workmen slaves. Near Verona I used often to stop to watch a village priest, who was building a huge steeple by himself. The gleam farmer acted as mason under him. I often go round the walls of Rome on foot, as I take this circular walk. I read the history of the queen of the pagan and Christian universe, written in the diverse constructions, architectures, and ages of the walls. Again I go to discover some dilapidated villa within the walls of Rome. I visit Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran with its obelisk, Santa Croce di Giora Salem me with its flowers. I listen to the singing, I pray. I love to pray on my knees. In this way my heart is nearer the dust and endless rest. I draw nigh to my tomb. My excavations are only a variation of the same pleasures. From the upland of some hill one perceives the domes of St. Peter's. What does one pay the own of the place where treasures lie buried? The valley of the grass destroyed by the excavation. Perhaps I shall give my clay to the earth in exchange for the statue, which it will give me. We shall only be bartering a man's image, for a man's image. He has not seen Rome, who has not walked through the streets of its suburbs, interspersed with empty spaces, with gardens full of ruins, with enclosures planted with trees and vines, with cloisters where rise palm trees and cypresses, the first resembling Eastern women, the second mourning nuns. Issuing from these ruins one sees tall Roman women, poor and handsome, going to buy fruits, or to fetch water from cascades of the aqueducts of the emperors and popes. To see the native manus in their simplicity I pretend to be in search of an apartment to let. I knock at the door of a secluded house, they answer. Favrisca! And I enter. I find in a bare room either a workman pursuing his trade, or a proud Zitella knitting her wool-work, a cat upon her knees, watching me wander at random without rising from her seat. In bad weather I take shelter in St. Peter's, whilst lose myself in the museums of the Vatican, with its eleven thousand rooms and its eighteen thousand windows. What solitudes of masterpieces! You come there through a gallery, the walls of which I encrusted with epitaphs and ancient inscriptions. Death seems to be born in Rome. There are more tombs than dead in the city. I imagine that the deceased, when they feel too warm in their marble resting places, glide into another that has remained empty, even as a sick man is moved from one bed to another. One seems to hear the bodies pass during the night from coffin to coffin. The first time I saw Rome it was the end of June. The hot season increases the abandonment of the city. The visitors fly, the inhabitants of the country remain indoors. You meet no one in the streets during the day-time. The sun darts its rays upon the Coliseum, where grasses hang motionless and nothing stirs save the lizards. The earth is bare, the cloudless sky appears even more desert than the earth. But soon the night brings the inhabitants out of their palaces, and the stars out of the firmament. More than the heavens become re-peopled, Rome revives, that life silently recommencing in the darkness around the tombs has the air of the life and movement of the shades which re-descend to Erebus at the approach of day. Yesterday I roamed by moonlight in the Campania between the Porta Angelica and the Monte Mario, a nightingale singing in a narrow dale railed in with canes. I, there for the first time, found that melodious sadness of which the ancient perch speak, in connection with the bird of spring. The long whistle which we all know and which precedes the brilliant flourishes of the winged musician, was not piercing like that of our nightingales. It had a veiled sound like the whistle of the bullfinch of our woods. All its notes were lowered by a half tone. Its burden was transposed from the major to the minor key. It sang softly. It appeared to wish to charm the sleep of the dead and not to wake them. Over this untilled common land had passed Horace Lydia, Tibulus Delia, Ovid Corina, only Virgil's Philomela remained. That hymn of love was potent in that spot and at that hour. It gave an indescribable longing for a second life. According to Socrates, love is the desire to be born again by the agency of beauty. It was this desire that a Greek girl inspired in a youth when she said to him, If I had nothing left to me but the thread of my necklace of pearls, I would share it with the If I have the happiness to end my days here, I have arranged cherva retreat at Saint Onofrio adjoining the chamber where Tasso breathed his last. In the spare moments of my embassy I shall continue my memoirs at the window of the cell, in one of the most beautiful positions on earth, among orange trees and evergreen oaks, with all Rome under my eyes every morning. As I sit down to work, between the deathbed and the tomb of the Pert, I shall invoke the genius of glory and misfortune. In the early days after my arrival in Rome, wandering in this way at random, I met a school of young boys between the baths of Titus and the Colosseum. They were in charge of a master and a slouch hat, a torn and draggletailed gown, resembling a poor brother of Christian doctrine. As I passed near him I looked at him and thought he had a false ear of my nephew, Christian de Chateaubriand, but I did not believe my eyes. He looked at me in his turn, and without showing any surprise said, Uncle! I rushed at him, quite moved, and pressed him in my arms. With a motion of the hand he stopped his obedient and silent flock behind him. Christian was at the same time pale and brown, worn away with fever and burnt by the sun. He told me that he was prefect of studies at the Jesuit College, then taking its holiday at Tivoli. He had almost forgotten his language and expressed himself with difficulty in French, talking and teaching only in Italian. My eyes filled with tears as I looked at my brother's son, become a foreigner, clad in a black, dusty worn-out coat, a schoolmaster in Rome, covering with an old Kennebyte's hat the noble brow which so well became the helmet. I had seen Christian born, a few days before my emigration. I assisted at his baptism. His father, his grandfather, the Presidente Rosambeau, and his great-grandfather, Monsieur de Marseille, were present. The last to sponsor for him and gave him his own name, Christian. The Church of Saint Laurent was deserted and already half devastated. The nurse and I took the child from the priest's hands. European gender to Prezzi, in Brevichester, Forte Portaille. The newborn child was taken back to his mother and laid upon her bed. Where that mother and its grandmother, Madame de Rosambeau, received it with tears of joy. Two years later, the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather, the mother and the grandmother, had perished on the scaffold. And I, a witness of the christening, was wandering in exile. These were the recollections which the sudden apparition of my nephew caused to revive in my memory, amid the ruins of Rome. Christian has already passed one half of his life as an orphan. He has vowed the other half to the altar. The ever-open home of the common father of mankind. Christian had an ardent and jealous affection for Louis, his worthy brother. When Louis married, Christian left for Italy. He knew the due de Rosambeau there, and met Madame Recamier. Like his uncle, he has come back to live in Rome. He in a cloister, I in a palace. He entered religion to restore to his brother a fortune of which he did not consider himself the possessor under the new laws. And so Marseilleb and Comborg now both belong to Louis. After our unexpected meeting at the foot of the Colosseum, Christian, accompanied by a Jesuit brother, came to see me at the embassy. His bearing was sad, his aspect serious. In the old days he was always laughing. I asked him if he was happy. He answered, I suffered long, now my sacrifices made, and I feel contented. Christian inherited the iron character of his paternal grandfather, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, my father, and the moral virtues of his maternal great-grandfather, Monsieur de Marseilleb. His sentiments are locked up within himself, although he shows them without considering the prejudices of the crowd when his duties are concerned. As a dragoon in the guards, he would alight from his horse to go to the communion-table. His messmates did not laugh at him, for his valour and his kindness were their admiration. After he left the service it was discovered that he used secretly to assist a considerable number of officers and soldiers. He still has pensioners in the Paris garrants, and Louis discharges his brother's debts. One day in France I asked Christian if he would ever marry. If I were to marry, he replied, I should take one of my little cousins, the poorest. Christian spends his nights in prayer. He gives himself up to austerities at which his superiors are alarmed. The saw which formed in one of his legs came from his persistence and remaining on his knees for hours on end. Never did innocence indulge in so much repentance. Christian is not a man of this century. He reminds me of those dukes and counts of the court of Charlemagne who, after warring against the Saracens, founded convents on the desert sites of Gellone or Madibale, and became monks there. I look upon him as a saint. I would willingly invoke him. I am persuaded that his good works, added to those of my mother, my sister Julie, would obtain grace for me before the sovereign judge. I too have a leaning for the cloister. But when my hour to come I would go and ask for a solitude of the Portion Coula, under the protection of my patron saint, called Francis because he spoke French. I want to trail my sandals alone, for nothing in the world would induce me to have two heads in my frock. Upon that side where doth break its steepness most arose a sun upon the world, as Julie this from Ganges doth. Therefore let none who speak of that place say aschaisy. For its name were lamely so delivered, but the east, to call things rightly, be it henceforth styled. A dame to whom none openeth pleasures gait more than to death was gaits his father's will, his tripling choice. She bereaved of her first husband, slighted, and obscure. Thousand and hundred years and more remained without a single suitor till he came, nor ought availed that with a meekness. She was found unmoved at room of his voice. Who shook the world, nor ought her constant boldness, whereby with Christ she mounted on the cross, when Mary stayed beneath. But not to deal thus closely with thee longer. Take at large the lovestitles, Poverty and Francis. To Madame Recamier, Rome, 16th May, 1829. This letter will leave Rome a few hours after me, and will reach Paris a few hours before me. It will close this correspondence, which has not missed a single post, and which must form a volume in your hands. I feel a mixture of joy and sadness which I cannot express to you. For three or four months I rather disliked Rome. Now I have again taken to these noble ruins, to this solitude so profound, so peaceful, and yet so full of interest and remembrance. Perhaps also the unhopeful success which I have obtained here has attached me to the place. I arrived in the midst of all the prepossessions raised against me, and I have conquered all. People seem to regret me. What shall I find on returning to France? Noise, instead of silence? Excitement, instead of repose? Unreason, ambitions, contests of place and vanity? The political system which I have adopted is one which perhaps no one would care for and which besides, I shall not be placed in a position to carry out. I would still undertake to give a great glory to France, even as I contributed to obtaining a great liberty for her. But would they discard all their previous opinions to make room for me? Would they say to me, Be the master, act as you please at the peril of your head? No. So far they are from using this language to me that they would take anybody in preference to myself, and admit me only after receiving the refusals of all the mediocrities of France. Even then they would think they were doing me a great favour by relegating me to an obscure corner. I am coming to fetch you, ambassador or not, I should like to die in Rome. In exchange for small life I should at least have a great burying-place, until the day comes when I shall go to fill my cenotaph in the sand, which beheld my birth. Ah, dear, I am already many leagues nearer to you. It gave me great pleasure to see my friends again. I dreamt only of the happiness of taking them with me and ending my days in Rome. I wrote to make still more sure of the little caffarelli palace, which I contemplated hiring, on the Capitol, and of the cell which I applied for at St. Onofrio. I bought English horses and sent them to the fields of Evander. I was already in thought taking leave of my country with a joy that deserved to be punished. When one has travelled in his youth and passed many years out of his country, one is accustomed to place one's death anywhere. When crossing the seas of Greece it seemed to me that all those monuments which I perceived on the promontries were hostile race in which my bed was prepared. I went to pay my court to the king at St. Cloud. He asked me when I was returning to Rome. He has persuaded that I had a good heart and a bad head. The fact is that I was exactly the converse of what Charles X thought me. I had a very cool and a very good head, and a heart which was but so-so towards seven-eighths of the human race. I found the king very ill-disposed towards his ministry. He caused it to be attacked by certain royalist newspapers, or rather, when the illnesses of those publications went to ask him if he did not think them too hostile, he exclaimed, No, no, go on. When Monsieur de Martignac had made a speech. Well, asked Charles X. Have you heard the pastor? Monsieur E. de Neville's liberal opinions displeased him. He found well complacence in Monsieur Portales, the Frederick, who bore cupidities stamped on his face. It is to Monsieur Portales that France owes her misfortunes. When I saw him at Passy I perceived what I had in part guessed. The keep of the seals, while pretending to hold the foreign office at interim, was dying to keep it, although in any event he had provided himself with the post of president of the Court of Appeal. The king, when the questionnaire rose of the appointment of a foreign secretary, had said, I do not say that Chateaubriand shall not be my minister, but not for the present. The Prince de Laval had refused. Monsieur de la Faronnais was no longer able to apply himself to regular work. In the hope that, weary of resistance, the portfolio would remain in his hands, Monsieur Portales made no effort to persuade the king. Full of my coming delights in Rome, I abandoned myself to them without too deeply sounding the future. It suited me well enough that Monsieur Portales should keep the ad interim, under the shelter of which my position remained what it was. Not for a moment did I imagine that Monsieur de Polignac might be invested with power. His limited, unplayable and perferred mind, his fatal and unpopular name, his stubbornness, religious opinions, exalted to the pitch of fanazism, appeared to me so many causes for his eternal exclusion. He hired it as true suffered for the king, but he had been amply rewarded for it by the friendship of his master. I made the proud London Embassy, which I had given him under my ministry, in spite of Monsieur de Villal's opposition. Of all the ministers in office whom I found in Paris, with the exception of the excellent Monsieur Haydniville, not one pleased me. I felt them to possess a relentless capacity which left me uneasy, as to the duration of the empire. Monsieur de Martignac, who has endowed with an agreeable talent for speaking, had the sweet and worn-out voice of a man to whom women have given something of their seduction and their weakness. Pythagoras remembered having been a charming courtesan named Alcea. The former Secretary of Embassy to the Abbey Siaia, had also restrained self-conceit, a calm and somewhat jealous mind. I had sent him in 1823 to Spain, in a high and independent position, but he would have liked to be an ambassador. He was offended at not receiving unemployment, which he thought due to his merit. My likes or dislikes mattered little. The Chamber committed a mistake in overturning a ministry which it ought to have preserved at all costs. That moderate ministry served as a handrail to a business. It was easy to overthrow it, for it had nothing to support it, and the King was hostile to it—a reason the more for not quarrelling with those men, for giving them a majority by the aid of which they could have remained in office, and made room one day without accident for a strong government. In France people are unable to wait for anything. They loathe all that has the appearance of power, until they possess it themselves. For the rest, Monsieur de Martignac has nobly given the lie to his weaknesses by courageously expending the rest of his life in the defence of Monsieur de Polignac. My feet burned to leave Paris. I could not grow accustomed to the grey and dismal sky of France, my fatherland. What shall I have thought of the sky of Brittany, my motherland, to speak Greek? But there at least there are sea breezes and calms, tumouries, arbennes, fluctibus, or venti possuere. My orders were given to make certain necessary changes and extensions in my house and the garden, in the redont fair, so that at my death, when I bequeathed this house to Madame de Chateaubriand's infirmary, it might be more profitable. I intended this property to form a retreat for a few cicartes and men of letters. I looked up at the pale sun and said, I shall soon see you with a better face, and we shall not part again. After taking leave of the king, and hoping to rid him of my presence forever, I climbed into my carriage. I was first going to the Pyrenees to take the waters of Quartourettes. From there, passing through a longer dock and provolse, I was to go to Nice, where I would join Madame de Chateaubriand. We would drive along the Cornice together, arrive at the Eternal City, which we would cross without stopping, and, after a two-month stay in Naples at Tasso's Cradle, return to his tomb in Rome. That moment is the only one in my life at which I was completely happy, at which I longed for nothing more, at which my existence was filled, at which I saw nothing to my last hour but a series of days of rest. I was reaching the Haven. I was entering under full sail, like Palineiros, in Opinacries. My whole journey to the Pyrenees was a series of dreams. I stopped when I wished. I followed on my road the chronicles of the Middle Ages, which I found everywhere. In Bury I saw those little leafy roads, which the author of Valentine calls Tren, and which reminded me of my Brittany. Richard Coeur de Lyon had been slain at Chalus, at the foot of the Tar. Muslim and child, hold thy peace. Here comes King Richard. At Limoche I took off my hat from respect for Molière. At Perilleur, the partridges in the earthenware tombs, no longer sang with different voices, as in the time of Aristotle. I there met my old friend, Clausel de Coussère. He carried a few pages of my life with him. At Bourgeois I could have looked at Cyrano's nose without being obliged to fight that cadet of the guards. He left him in his dust with those gods whom men has made, and who have not made man. At Arc I admired the stalls sculptured after cartoons obtained from Rome at the fine period of the arts. Dossard, my predecessor, the court of the Holy Father, was born near Arc. The sun was beginning to resemble that of Italy. At Tar I should have liked to lodge at the Starr Inn, where Foir-Sarr alighted with Messier-Espagne of Lyon, valiant man and wise and fair knight, where he found good hay, good oats, and fair rivers. As the Pyrenees rose up on the horizon my heart beat. From the depth of three and twenty years issued memories to which the perspective of time gave added beauty. I was returning from Palestine in Spain when I caught sight of the summits of those mountains from the other side of their chain. I agree with Madame de Motivelle. I think that it was in one of those castles of the Pyrenees that Uganda the unknown dwelt. The past is like a museum of antiquities. In it one visits the hours that have elapsed. Each one can recognise his own. One day, walking about a deserted church, I heard footsteps dragging along the flagstones, like those of an old man in search of his tomb. I looked round and saw nobody. It was I that had awakened myself. The happy I was at Cotaret's the greatest pleasure did I take in the melancholy of what else ended. The narrow and confined valley is enliven by a mountain torrent. Beyond the town and the mineral springs it divides into two defiles, one of which, famous for its sights, ends in the pond of Spain and Glacias. I benefited by the baths. I made long excursions alone, imagining myself on the steeps of the Sabina. I made every effort to be sad and could not succeed. I wrote a few stanzas on the Pyrenees. It was impossible for me to finish my ode. I had draped my drum legubriously to beat the troop of the visions of my past nights, but ever amid these visions recalled mingled some dreams of the moment, whose happy look foiled the ear of consternation of the older fellows. One day, as I was versifying, I met a young woman seated beside the torrent. She rose and walked straight towards me. She knew by the room of the hamlet that I was at Cotaret's. It appeared that the stranger was an ossitanian lady, who had been writing to me for two years, without my ever having seen her. My mysterious anonymous correspondent unveiled. Patu dea. I went to pay a respectful visit to the Nile of the torrent. One evening she saw me to the door as I was leaving, and wanted to go with me. I was obliged to carry her indoors in my arms. I never felt so ashamed. To inspire sort of attachment at my age seemed to me really ridiculous. The more I might have been flattered by this oddness, the more humiliated was I, rightly taking it for mockery. I would gladly have hidden myself for shame among the bears, our neighbors. I was far from saying to myself, Montaigne said, Love would restore me the vigilancy, sobriety, grace, and care of my person. My dear Michael, you say charming things, but at our age you see, love does not restore us what you here suppose. There's but one thing for us to do, to stand frankly aside. And therefore, of returning to sound and wise studies, whereby I might procure more love, I have allowed the fugitive impression of my clémence is all, to fade away. The mountain breeze soon dissipated that caprice of a flower. The witty, determined, and charming stranger of sixteen was grateful to me for doing her justice. She has married. Rumours of ministerial changes had reached our fur-groves. Well-informed persons went so fast to speak of the Prans de Polyniac, but I was quite incredulous. At last the newspapers came, I opened them, and my eyes were struck by the official ordnance confirming the rumours that had been spread. I had experienced many a change of fortune since I had come into the world, but I had never received so great a shock. My destiny had once more extinguished my dreams, and this breath of fate not only put out my illusions, but carried away the monarchy. This blow hurt me terribly. I had a moment of despair, for my mind was made up at once. I felt that I must retire. The post brought me a crowd of letters, all urged me to send in my resignation. Even persons with whom I was hardly acquainted thought themselves obliged to order my retirement. I was shocked by this officious interest shown in my good fame. I thank heaven that I have never stood in need of councils of honour. My life has been one series of sacrifices, which have never been commanded of me by any one. In matters of duty I have a spontaneous mind. To me falls spell ruin, for I possess nothing save debts, debts which I contract in places where I do not remain long enough to pay them. In such a way that every time that I retire from public life, I am reduced to working as a booksellers' hireling. Some of those proud, obliging people who preached honour and liberty to me through the post, and preached it even much more loudly when I arrived in Paris, handed in their resignation as councillors of state. But some were rich, and others took care not to resign the secondary places which they held, and which left them the means of existence. They acted like the Protestants, who reject some of the dogmas of the Catholics, and keep others quite as difficult to believe in. There was no completeness in those oblations, no full sincerity. Men surrendered an income of ten or fifteen thousand francs, it is true, but returned home opulent in their patrimonies, or at least provided with the daily bread which they had prudently kept back. Where I was concerned they made less ceremony. For me they were filled with salt in ire, they could never strip themselves sufficiently of all that I possessed. Come, George Dandan, pluck up courage, Zoom, son-in-law, to us credit, off with your coat, throw out a window, two hundred thousand leavers a year, a place to your liking, a high and magnificent place, the empire of the arts in Rome, the happiness of at last receiving the reward of your long and laborious struggle, such is our good pleasure. At that price you will have our esteem. In the same way as we have stripped ourselves of our cloaks, leaving a good flannel waistcoat underneath, so you must throw off your velvet mantle and remain naked. There is perfect equality, an exact level of altar and sacrifice. And strange to relate in this generous order to turn me out, the men who intimated their wishes to me were neither my real friends, nor the joint sharers of my political opinions. I was to immolate myself forthwith to liberalism, to the doctrine which had continually attacked me. I was to run the risk of shaking the legitimate throne, in order to deserve the praises of a few paltrunes of enemies, who had not the thorough courage to starve. I was to find myself swamped by a long embassy. The entertainment which I had given had ruined me. I had not paid the expenses of my first establishment. But what broke my heart was the loss of what I had promised myself in the way of happiness for the rest of my life. I have not to reproach myself with bestowing upon anybody those Catonian councils which impoverish him who receives, not him who gives them, fully convinced as I am that those councils are of no use to the man who does not feel them within himself. My resolve was fixed, as I have said from the first. It cost me nothing to take, but it was painful to execute. When at Lord, instead of turning south and rolling towards Italy, I took the road for Pau. My eyes filled with tears. I admit my weakness. What matter, if I nonetheless accepted and held the challenge fortune sent me. I did not return quickly, in order to let the day slip by. I slowly unwound the thread of that road which I had wound up with such a lacquity. But a few weeks before, the Pranster Pollynyak dreaded my resignation. He felt that if I retired I should deprive him of royalist votes in the chambers and jeopardize his ministry. The idea was suggested to him of sending an express to me in the Pyrrhanese with orders from the king to go at once to Rome to receive the king and queen of Naples, who were coming to marry their daughter in Spain. I should have been greatly perplexed that I received that order. Perhaps I should have felt obliged to obey it, free to send in my resignation after fulfilling it. But once in Rome what might have happened? I should perhaps have been delayed. The fatal days might have surprised me at the capital. Perhaps also the indecision in which I might have remained would have given Monsieur de Pollynyak the parliamentary majority of which he was but a few votes short. Then the address would not have been passed. The ordinances resulting from that address would not have seemed necessary to their baleful authors, in disaliter visum. I found Madame de Chartebriand quite resigned in Paris. Her head was turned at the idea of being ambassadors in Rome, and assuredly many a woman said would be turned for less. But in great circumstances my wife has never hesitated to approve of what she thought calculated to add consistency to my life and to enhance my name in the public esteem. In this she has more merit than most women. She loves display, titles, and fortune. She detests poverty and a mean establishment. She despises those susceptibilities, those excesses of loyalty and self-sacrifice which she looks upon as thorough duperies for which nobody thanks you. She would never have cried, long live the king commem. But where I am in question everything changes. With a firm mind she accepts my disgraces while cursing them. I had still too fast to watch to pray for the salvation of those who took good care not to don the hair-cloth with which they hasten to cover me. I was the sacred ass. The ass laden with the dry relics of liberty, relics which they adored with great devotion, provided they did not have the trouble of carrying them. The day after my return to Paris I went to Monsieur de Polinac. I had written him this letter on my arrival. Paris, 28th August, 1829, Prince. I thought it more worthy of our old friendship, more becoming to the high mission with which I was honoured, and above all more respectful to the king to come myself, to lay my resignation at his feet, rather than send it hastily through the post. I ask a last service of you to entreat his Majesty to consent to grant me an audience, and hear the reasons that obliged me to give up the Roman Embassy. Believe me, Prince, when I say that it cost me something, at the moment when you are coming into power, to abandon that diplomatic career which I had the happiness to open to you. Prayings have the assurance of the sentiments which I have devoted to you, and of the high regard with which I have the honour to be, Prince, your most humble and most obedient servant, Chatea Breon. When replied to this letter, the following note was addressed to me from the Foreign Office. The Prince de Polignac has the honour to present his compliments to Monsieur le Viconde de Chatea Breon, and begs him to call at the Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely, tomorrow, Sunday, Saturday, four o'clock. I had once replied with this note, Paris, 29th August, 1829, evening. I have received a letter of Prince from your office inviting me to call at the Foreign Office, if possible, at nine o'clock precisely, tomorrow, the 30th. As this letter does not give me the audience of the King which I beg you to ask for, I will wait until you have some official communication to make with regard to the resignation which I desire to lay at his Majesty's feet. With a thousand regards, Chatea Breon. Thereupon Monsieur de Polignac wrote to me as follows in his own hand. I have received your little note, my dear Viconde. I shall be charmed to see you at about ten o'clock tomorrow, if that time suits you. I renew the assurance of my old and sincere attachment, the Prince de Polignac. This note seemed to me to be of ill omen. Its diplomatic reserve made me fear a refusal on the King's part. I found the Prince de Polignac in the large room which I knew so well. He ran up to me, squeezed my hand within a fusion of the heart which I would have liked to think sincere, and then throwing one arm over my shoulder made me walk with him slowly up and down the room. He told me that he did not accept my resignation, that the King did not accept it, that I must return to Rome. Every time that he repeated this last phrase he broke my heart. Why, he asked, will you not be in public life with me, as with La Faronnais and Portalis? Am I not your friend? I will give you all you want in Rome. In France you shall be more of the Minister than I. I shall take your advice. Your retirement would bring about new divisions. You do not want to injure the Government. The King will be very much incensed if you persist in wishing to retire. I beseech you, dear Viscount, not to commit that folly. I replied that I was not committing a folly, that I was acting in the full conviction of my reason, that his ministry was most unpopular, that those prejudices might be unjust, but that in fine they existed, that all France was persuaded that he would attack the public liberties, and that it was impossible for me, their defender, to row in the same boat with those who pass for the enemies of those liberties. I was somewhat embarrassed in making this rejoinder, because at bottom I had nothing immediate to object to in the new ministers. I could attack them only in a future, the existence of which they were entitled to deny. Monsieur de Polyne asked for to me that he loved the charter as much as I did. But he loved it in his own way. He loved it too closely. Unfortunately the affection which one shows to a daughter whom one has dishonoured is of little use to her. The conversation was prolonged on the same lines for nearly an hour. Monsieur de Polyne concluded by telling me that, if I consented to take back my resignation, the king would see me with pleasure and hear what I wished to say to him against his ministry. But that if I persisted in my determination to resign, his Majesty thought that it would serve no purpose to see me, and that a conversation between him and myself could be only an unpleasant thing. I rejoined. Then Prince, look upon my resignation as given. I have never retracted in my life, and since it does not suit the king to see his faithful subject, I do not insist. After those words I took my leave. I begged the Prince to restore the Roman embassy to Monsieur le Duc de Laval, if he still wished for it, and I recommended the members of my ligation to him. Then I took my way on foot along the boulevard des Amalides, for my infirmary poor wounded man that I was. Monsieur de Polyne, when I left him, appeared to me to be in that state of imperturbable confidence, which made of him a mute eminently fitter to strangle an empire. My resignation as ambassador to Rome having been sent in, I wrote to the sovereign pontiff. Most holy father. As French minister of foreign affairs in 1823, I had the happiness to be the interpreter of the wishes of the late King Louis XVIII, for the exaltation of your holiness to the Church of St. Peter. As ambassador of his Majesty Charles' attempt to the court of Rome, I had the still greater happiness to see your bare attitude raised to the sovereign pontificate, and to hear from your lips words that will always be the glory of my life. Now that I am ending the lofty mission which I had the honor to fulfill, I come to express to your holiness the very keen regrets with which I do not cease to be penetrated. It but remains for me, most holy father, to lay at your sacred feet, my sincere gratitude for your kindness, and to ask you for your apostolic blessing. I am, with the greatest veneration and the most profound respect, your holiness, most humble and most obedient servant, Chateaubriand. For several days I finished rending my bowels in my Utica. I wrote letters to demolish the edifice which I had raised with so much love. As in the death of a man it is the little details, the familiar domestic actions that touch us, as so in the death of a dream the little realities which destroy it are the keenest. In eternal exile in the ruins of Rome had been my idle fancy. Like Dante I had arranged never to return to my country. These testamentary elucidations will not possess for the readers of these memoirs the same interests that they have for me. The old bird falls from the branch where it has taken shelter. It quits life for death. Dragged away by the current it has but changed one stream for the other. End of Book 13, Part 3 Book 14, Part 1 of the memoirs of Chateaubriand, Volume 5. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nicole Lee, the memoirs of Chateaubriand, Volume 5 by François René de Chateaubriand, translated by Alexander Tixera de Matos, Book 14, Part 1. When the swallows near the moment of their departure, there was one that flies away first to announce the approaching passage of the rest. Mine were the first wings that preceded the last flight of legitimacy. Did the praises with which the newspapers loaded me charred me? Not in the least. Some of my friends tried to console me by assuring me that I was on the point of becoming Prime Minister, that this party stroke so frankly played decided my future. They thought they saw in me an ambition of which I did not possess the very germ. I do not understand how any man who has lived but eight days with me can fail to perceive my total lack of that passion, a very lawful one for that matter, which enables one to push through a political career. I was ever on the watch for the occasion to retire. If I was so devoted to the Roman Embassy, that was just because it led to nothing, and because it was a retreat in a blind alley. Lastly, at the bottom of my conscience, I had a certain fear of having already driven opposition too far. I was forcibly about to become its bond, its centre, and its object. I was frightened of it, and this fear increased my regrets for the tranquil shelter I had lost. Be this as it may, much incense was burnt before the wooden idol that had climbed down from its altar. Monsieur de la Martine, a new and brilliant light of France, wrote to me on the subject of his candidature for the Academy, and ended his letter thus, Monsieur de la Nuit, who has just been spending a few minutes with me, told me that he had left you occupying your noble leisure in raising a monument to France. Each of your voluntary and courageous disgraces will thus bring its tribute of esteem to your name and of glory to your country. This noble letter from the author de la méditation Poétique was followed by one from Monsieur de la Cretel. He, in his turn, wrote, What a moment they choose to outrage you, you the man of sacrifices, you the man to whom fine actions come as easily as fine works. Your resignation and the formation of the new ministry had appeared to me in advance, in the light of two connected events. You have accustomed us to acts of devotion, as Bonaparte accustomed us to victory, but he had many companions, wheres you have not many imitators. Two very literary men, both writers of great merit, Monsieur Abel Rémissin and Monsieur Saint-Marthe, alone at that time had the weakness to rise up against me. They were touched to Monsieur Le Baron d'Amour. I can imagine that people are a little irritated by men who despise places. That is one of those pieces of insolence that cannot be endured. Monsieur Guiseaux himself deigned to visit me in my abode. He thought he might overcome the immense distance which nature had set between us. Upon accosting me, he said these words full of all that he owed to himself. Monsieur, things are very different today. In the year 1829, Monsieur Guiseaux had need of me for his election. I wrote to the electors of Lycia, and they carried him. Monsieur de Brodlie thanked me in the note that follows. Permit me to thank you, Monsieur, for the letter which you have been good enough to address to me. I have made the right use of it, and I am convinced that, in common with all that comes from you, it will bear fruit, and salutary fruit. For my part, I am as grateful to you as though I myself were concerned, for there is no event with which I have more closely identified myself, nor which arouses in me a keener interest. The July days found Monsieur Guiseaux a deputy, and the result was that I am partly the cause of his political rise, sometimes having harkens to the prayer of the humble. Mr. Polynaque's first colleagues were Messieurs de Beaumont, de la Bordonnaie, de Chabron, de Couvoisier, and de Mambel. On the 17th of June, 1815, at Ghent, I had been waiting on the King, when I met at the foot of the stairs a man in a frock-coat, a muddy boot, who was going up to his Majesty. By his lively expression, his finely-shaped nose, his beautiful, soft, adder-like eyes, I recognized General Beaumont. He had deserted Bonaparte's army. The Count de Beaumont is a meritorious officer, skillful at extricating himself from difficult situations, but one of those men who, when placed in the front rank, see obstacles without being able to conquer them. They are made to be led, not to lead. He is fortunate in his sons, and Algiers will leave him a name. The Count de la Bordonnaie, formerly my friend, is certainly the most disagreeable personage that ever lived. He lets fly at you the instant you approach him. He attacks the speakers in the chamber, as he does his neighbours in the country. He cobbles over word, just as he goes to law about a ditch or a drain. On the very morning of the day on which I was appointed Foreign Minister, he came to tell me that he was breaking with me. I was a Minister. I laughed, and let my male termigant go about his business. Laughing himself, he looked like a thwarted bat. Monsieur de Montbel, at First Minister of Public Instruction, replaced Monsieur de la Bordonnaie at the interior when the latter resigned, and Monsieur de Guernon-Ville followed Monsieur de Montbel at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Men were preparing for war on both sides. The Ministerial Party launched ironical pamphlets against the représentatif. The opposition organised itself and spoke of refusing to pay taxes in the event of a violation of the Charter. A public association called the Breton Association was formed to resist the administration. My fellow countrymen have often taken the lead in our later revolutions. Every Breton head has something in common with the winds that fix the shores of our peninsula. A newspaper set up with the avowed object of overthrowing the Old Dynasty came to excite men's minds. The handsome young bookseller, Sautelet, pursued with suicidal mania, had several times felt the longing to make his death useful to his party by some bold stroke. He was charged with the business part of the Republican sheet. Messieurs Thiers, Minier, and Carrel were its editors. The patron of the National, M. Le Prince de Talleyrand, did not put a sue into the cash-box. He was content to defile the paper spirit by adding to the common fund his quorum of treason and rottenness. On this occasion I received the following note from Messieurs Thiers. Monsieur Not knowing whether the service of a new paper will be performed with exactness, I send you the first number of the National. All my collaborators unite with me in begging you to consent to regard yourself not as a subscriber, but as a gentle reader. If in this first article, the object of great anxiety to me, I have succeeded in expressing opinions that meet with your approval, I shall feel reassured and certain of being in the right road. Receive, Messieurs, my homage, A. Thiers. I shall return to the editors of the National. I shall tell how I have known them. But I must at once place Messieurs Carrel on one side. Superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Minier, he had the simplicity to look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as coming after writers whom he excelled. He upheld with his sword the opinions which those pen men laid bare. While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations for the Algerian expedition were being completed. General Bourmont, the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that expedition. Was it his intention to escape responsibility for the coup d'etat which he felt coming? That was likely enough to judge from his antecedents and his craftiness. But it was a misfortune for Charles X. Had the General been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands of Monsieur de Polignac. Before striking the blow, presuming that he would have agreed to it, Monsieur de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the whole of the Royal Guard in Paris. He would have got ready money and the necessary provisions, so that the soldiers should have wanted for nothing. Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from the French ports lately so abandoned. The roads were covered with ships which saluted the land as they moved away. Steamboats, a new discovery of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to the other, like sirens or the aid of the Admiral. The defense stood on shore where all the population of the town and mountains had gathered. After snatching his kinsmen, the King of Spain, from the hands of the Revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which Christianity was to be delivered. And he had believed night to be so near at hand. The times were passed in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III, not yet King of Poland. Algiers was about to become our daughter and our conquest, without anybody's permission, without England staring to prevent us from taking that emperor's fort, which we call Charles V, and the change in his fortunes. It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French spectators to greet, with Bosphorus greeting, the generous vessels, ready to break the slaves' chain with their prowess. The victory increased by the cry uttered by the eagle of Moe, when he announced the future success to the great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb for the dispersal of his dynasty. Thou shalt yield or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the spoils of Christianity. Thou said, in thy heart of greed, I hold the sea under my laws, and the nations are my prey. The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty among its young. Already thou art releasing thy slaves. Louis has shattered the irons under which thou art loading his subjects, who are born to be free under his glorious empire. The astonished pilots cry before hand, Who is like unto Tyre? And yet she kept silence in the midst of the sea. O splendid words! Could you not retard the crumbling of the throne? Nations proceed towards their destinies, like certain of Dante's shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune. Those vessels which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia were carrying away the legitimacy. That fleet under the white flag was the monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country. They who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey. It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail. Had I not friends among that crowd which on the beach of Toulon followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa, did not Monsieur du Plessis, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Le Nommal, who was awaiting the return of the friend of Champollion. What came of that flight executed in Africa—executed at a single swoop. Let us listen to Monsieur de Penhon, my fellow-Breton. Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in front of those same shores, over five hundred ships. Then sixty thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battlefield in Africa. Today, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed it to only retinue. At the moment when the guard took up arms, according to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all conversations ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that I should have shown to the Old King himself. I knelt within my heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly contemplating the symbol. The session of 1830 opened on the second of March. In the speech from the throne the king was made to say, If culpable maneuvers should raise in the way of my government obstacles which I cannot, or rather which I will not anticipate, I shall find the means of overcoming them. Charles attempt uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites himself with the sound of his own voice. The more forcible the words were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it. The address in reply was drawn up by Messier's Etienne and Guizot, it said. Sire, the charter consecrates as a right, the intervention of the country in the discussion of its public interests. This intervention renders the permanent accord between the political views of the government and the wishes of your people, the indispensable condition of the regular march of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty, our devotion, condemn us to tell you that this accord does not exist. The address was voted by a majority of two-hundred and twenty-one against one hundred and eighty-one, and a memo was moved by Messier de la Jahil to do away with the phrase relating to the refusal of concurrence. This amendment obtained only twenty-eight votes. If the two-hundred and twenty-one had been able to foresee the result of their vote, the address would have been rejected by a huge majority. Why does Providence not sometimes raise a corner of the veil that covers the future? It gives it is true a presentiment to certain men, but they do not see clear enough to make sure of their way. They fear to make a mistake, or if they venture upon predictions which are accomplished, no one believes them. God does not push aside the cloud from the background in which he acts. When he permits great evils to take place, it is because he has great plans, plans extending over a general plane, unrolled in a deep horizon beyond our view, and beyond the reach of our short-lived generations. The king, in his reply to the address, declared that his resolution was unchangeable, in other words, that he would not dismiss Messier de Polignac. The dissolution of the chamber was resolved upon. Messiers de Péronnais and de Chantolos replaced Messiers de Chabrol and Cuvacier, who resigned. Messier Capel was appointed Minister of Commerce. They had a score of men around them capable of being ministers. They might have sent for Messier de Villele again. They might have taken Messier Casimir Perrier and General Sebastiani. I had already proposed the two latter to the king when, after the fall of Messier de Villele, Diabe Fressinou was told to offer me the Ministry of Public Instruction. But no, they held capable men in abhorrence. In their fervour finality they sought as though to humiliate France, for the smallest thing she had to put out her head. They had dug up Messier Guernon de Rondville, who, however, was the bravest of the unknown band, and the Dauphin had besought Messiers de Chantolos to save the monarchy. The decrees dissolving the chamber summoned the district electoral colleges for the 23rd of June, 1830, and the departmental colleges for the 3rd of July, only twenty-seven days before the death of the elder branch. The party's, all exceedingly excited, drove everything to extremes. The ultra-royalists spoke of giving the crown the dictatorship. The Republicans jumped over a public under-directorate or convention. The tribune, the organ of the latter party, appeared and went beyond the national. The great majority of the country was still in favour of the legitimate monarchy, but with concessions and enfranchisement from court influences. Every ambition was aroused, every one hoped to become a minister. Those who wished to force Charles X to become a constitutional monarch thought they were right. They believed the legitimacy to be defrauded. They had forgotten the weakness of the man. The royalty might be driven, the king could not. It was the individual that ruined us, not the institution. The deputies of the new chamber arrived in Paris. Of the two hundred and twenty-one, two hundred and two had been re-elected. The opposition numbered two hundred and seventy votes. The ministry a hundred and forty-five. The crown party was therefore lost. The natural result would have been the resignation of the ministry. Charles X was stubbornly determined to defy everything, and the coup d'etat was resolved upon. I left for D.F. at four o'clock in the morning on the twenty-sixth of July, the very day on which the ordnance has appeared. I was in fairly good spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was followed at some distance by a terrible storm. I sucked and slept on wrong, without learning anything, regretting that I was not able to visit Saint-Ois, and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome. I arrived at D.F. the next day, the twenty-seventh and midday. I went to the hotel where Monsieur le Comte de Boissy, my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for me. I dressed and went to call on Madame Récumier. She occupied an apartment whose windows looked out on the sands. I spent a few hours in talking and watching the waves. Suddenly ear-sands appeared. He brought me a letter which Monsieur le Boissy had received, telling with great praises of the issue of the ordinances. A moment later my old friend Balon shunted. He had come straight from the diligence and held the newspapers in his hand. I opened the monitor and read the official documents, without believing my eyes. One more government which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame. I told ear-sand to ask for horses in order to set out for Paris again. I climbed back into my carriage at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in anxiety. It is true that four months past people had been murmuring something about a coup d'etat, but no one had taken any notice of the rumour which seemed absurd. Charles X had lived on the illusions of the throne. A kind of mirage is formed around Princess, and it imposes upon them by displacing the object, and making them see chimerical landscapes in the sky. I took away the monitor with me, and so soon as it was light on the twenty-eighth, I read, reread, and commented on the ordinances. The report to the king, which served as a preamble, struck me in two ways. The observations on the drawbacks of the press were just, but at the same time the authors' observations displayed a complete ignorance of the actual state of society. Without ministers to whatever shade of opinion they have belonged to have since 1814 been harassed by the newspapers, no doubt the press tends to subdue the sovereignty to force the royalty in the chambers to obey it, no doubt during the last days of the restoration. The press, listening only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian expedition, enlarged on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure. They divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated the points selected for the disembarkation. With the Carnot du Richelieu Bonaparte, I brought Europe to the feet of France, if the mystery of their negotiations had been thus revealed in advance, all the holding-places of their armies set forth. All this is both true and hateful, but the remedy? The press is an element to a lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now introduced into the world. It is speech in the shape of a thunderbolt. It is the electricity of society. How can you prevent its existence? The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion. You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with a steam engine. You must learn to use it while making it safe, either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which will henceforth govern humanity. One proof of the powerlessness of the press in certain cases is to arrive from the very reproach which you made against it, in regard to the Algerian expedition. You have taken Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had caused the war with Spain to be waged in 1823, under the hottest fire of that liberty. But what is not to be endured in the report of the ministers is that shameless pretensions, namely that the king has a power pre-existent to the laws. What then is the meaning of constitutions? Why deceive the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to alter the order of established government? And yet the signatures of the report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly quote Article 14, to which I had long been prophesying that they would confiscate the charter. They recall it, but only for memory, and as a superfluity of right of which they had no need. The first ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the press in all its parts. This is the quintessence of all that had been elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the police. The second ordinance reforms the law of election. Thus the two first liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn up by the roots, and that not by an iniquitous and yet legal act emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by ordinances, as in the days of the king's will and pleasure. The five men, not lacking common sense, were, with unexampled liberty, precipitating themselves, their master, the monarchy, France and Europe, into a whirlpool. I did not know what was happening in Paris. I was hoping that a resistance, without overturning the throne, would have obliged the crown to dismiss the ministers, and recall the ordinances. In the event of the triumph of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and speak against those unconstitutional measures. If the members of the diplomatic body exercised no direct influence upon the ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes. Absolute Europe abhorred our charter. When the news of the ordinances reached Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in their success, Monsieur Ancien exclaimed that Europe was saved, and Monsieur de Metinich displayed unspeakable delight. Soon, having learned the truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed. He declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an Austrian constitution. The nominations of councillors of state following upon the ordinances of July throw some light upon the persons who, in the anti-chambers, gave their assistance to the ordinances, either with their advice or their composition. You there see the names of the men most opposed to the representative system. Was it in the king's own closet, under the monarch's eyes, that those fatal documents were drawn up? Was it in Monsieur de Polignac's closet? Was it in the meeting of ministers alone, or assisted by a few anti-constitutional pudding-heads? Was it under seal, in some secret sitting of the ten? That those decrees were minuted by virtue of which the legitimate monarchy was condemned to be strangled on the bridge of size? Was the idea Monsieur de Polignac's alone? Perhaps history will never tell us. On arriving at Giseaux, I learnt that Paris had risen, and heard alarming things said, which proved how seriously the charter was taken by people throughout France. At Pontoise, they had still more reason, but confused and contradictory news. At Herblay, there were no horses at the post-office. I waited nearly an hour. They advised me to avoid Sainte-Denis, because I should find barricades there. At Coubevois, the postillian had already left off his jacket with a flirty list on the buttons. They had fired that morning, at a collage which he was driving in Paris through the avenue de Champs-Élysées. In consequence, he told me that he would not take me by that avenue, but that he would make for the barrière du Trocadero to the right of the barrière de L'Étoile. This barrière gives a view over Paris. I saw the trickle of flag waving. I judged that it was a case not of a riot, but of a revolution. I had a pre-sentiment that my role was about to change, that, having hurried back to defend the public liberties, I should be obliged to defend the royalty. The end there, clouds of white smoke rose among blocks of houses. I heard some cannon shots and musketry fire mixed with the droning of the toxin. It seemed to me that I saw the fall of the old Louvre from the top of the waist, upland, destined by Napoleon for the sight of the Palace of the King of Rome. The spot of observation offered one of those philosophical constellations which one rune carries to another. My carriage went down the hill. I crossed the Pont-Diena, and drove up the paved avenue, skirting the Chame-de-Mar. All was solitary. I found a picket of cavalry posted before the railings of the military school. The men looked sad, and as though forgotten there. We took the boulevard des Avelis, and the boulevard du Mont-Penace. I met a few people on foot who looked surprised to see a carriage driven post as at an ordinary time. The boulevard d'enfer was obstructed by felled elm-trees. On my street my neighbours were glad to see me arrive. I seemed to them a protection for the quarter. Madame Nechate-Abrion was both pleased and alarmed at my return. On Thursday morning, the twenty-ninth of July, I wrote Madame Récarmié, at Dieppe, a letter prolonged by Postscripts. Thursday morning, twenty-ninth July, eighteen-thirty. I write to you without knowing whether my letter will reach you, for the post no longer goes out. I entered Paris amid the booming of guns, the rattle of musketry, the clanging of the toxin. This morning the toxin is still sounding, but I no longer hear any firing. It seems that they are organising themselves, and that resistance will continue until the ordinances are appealed. There you see the immediate result, without speaking of the definite result, of the act of perjury the blame for which, at least in appearance, the ministers have allowed to fall upon the crown. The National Guard, the Polytechnic School, all have taken part in the business. I have seen no one yet. You can imagine what a state I have found Madame de Chateaubriand. People who, like her, have seen the 10th of August and the 2nd of September, have remained under the impression of terror. One regiment, the fifth of the line, has already gone over to the Charter. M. Polyniac is certainly most guilty. His want of capacity is a poor excuse. Ambition for which one has not the talent is a crime. They say that the court is at Sainte-Claire and ready to leave. I do not speak to you of myself. My position is painful, but clear. I shall betray neither the king nor the Charter, neither the legitimate power nor liberty. I have therefore nothing to say or do, but to wait and weep for my country. God knows now what is going to happen in the provinces. Already they are talking of an insurrection at wrong. On the other side the congregation will arm the chants and the vondes, on what small things do empires depend. An ordinance and half a dozen stupid or unscrupulous ministers are enough to turn the most peaceful and flourishing country into the most disturbed and unhappy country. The firing is recommencing. It appears they are attacking the Louvre, where the king's troops have entrenched themselves. The suburb in which I live is beginning to rise in insurrection. They speak of a provisional government with G. Gérard, the D. de Choisel, and M. de Lafayette at its head. This letter will probably not leave, Paris having been declared in a state of siege. Marshal Marmont is commanding in the king's name. He is said to be killed, but I do not believe it. Try not to alarm yourself unduly. May God protect you. We shall meet again. Friday This letter was written yesterday. It could not be sent. All is over. The popular victory is complete. The king yields on all points, but I fear they will not go far beyond the concessions made by the crown. I wrote to his majesty this morning. For the rest I have a complete plan of sacrifices for the future, which pleases me. He will talk of it when you are here. I am going to post this letter myself and to stroll through Paris. The ordinances dated 25th July were published in the Monitor of the 26th. Their secret had been so profoundly kept that neither the Marshal J. de Rageuse, who is Major General of the Guard on Duty, nor Monsieur Mangan, the prefecture police, had been taken into confidence. The prefect of the Seine heard of the ordinances only through the Monitor. The same was the case with the undersecretary of state for war. And this in spite of the fact that it was those several officials who disposed of the different forces of the army. The Francis de Polignac, who held Monsieur de Bourmont's portfolio ad interim, concerned himself so little with this trifling matter of the ordinances that he spent the day on the 26th presiding over an adjudication at the war-office. The King left on a hunting-party on the 26th before the Monitor had reached St. Clown, and did not return from Rambouillet till midnight. At last the De Rageuse received this note from Monsieur de Polignac. Your Excellency is aware of the extraordinary measures which the King in his wisdom and in his love for his people has thought it necessary to take for the maintenance of the rights of his crown and of public order. In these important circumstances his Majesty relies on your zeal to ensure order and tranquillity throughout the extent of your command. This audacity, displayed by the weakest men that ever lived against the force that was about to pulverize an empire, can be explained only as being a sort of hallucination resulting from the counsels of a wretched set which was no longer to be found at the hour of danger. The newspaper editors, after consulting Messieurs Dupin, Odélon Barreau, Bart and Mary Lou, resolved to bring out the impressions without authorization. in order to compel their seizure and to plead the illegality of the ordinances. They met at the office of the National. Monsieur Thier drew up a protest which was signed by 44 editors and which appeared on the morning of the 27th in the National and the top. In the evening a few deputies met at Monsieur de la Borde. They agreed to meet again the next day, Monsieur Cassemille Perriers. They appeared for the first time, one of the three powers that were to occupy the scene. The monarchy was in the chamber of deputies, the usurpation of the Palais Royale, the republic at the Hôtel de Ville. Crowds gathered at the Palais Royale in the evening. Stones were thrown at Monsieur de Polyniac's carriage. The Deux D'Or argues having seen the king at St Cloud on his return from Rambouillet, the king asked him the news from Paris. The stocks have fallen. How much? asked the Dauphin. Three francs answered the marshal. They will go up again, replied the Dauphin. And everyone went away. The day of the 27th began badly. The king invested the Deux D'Or argues with the command of Paris. This was relying on bad fortune. The marshal came to install himself at the staff office of the guard on the Place du Carousel, at one o'clock. Monsieur Mangan sent to seize the printing process of the National. Monsieur Carrelle resisted. Messieurs Minier and Thier, thinking the game lost, disappeared for two days. The Métier went to hide in the Montmorency Valley, with a madame de Couchon, a relation of the two Messieurs Bequets, of whom one had worked on the National, the other on the journal de Déba. At the tom, the matter assumed a more serious complexion. The real hero of the journalist is, incontestably, Monsieur Coste. In 1823, Monsieur Coste was managing the tablet historique. One of his collaborators, accusing him of having sold that paper, he fought a duel, and received a sword thrust. Monsieur Coste was presented to me at the Foreign Office. Discussing the liberty of the press with him, I said, Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty. But how would you have me defended to lead the eighteenth when every day you attack royalty and religion? I beg you, in your own interest, and so as to leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts, which are already three parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought to blush to attack. Let us make a bargain. Do you cease falling foul of a few feeble old men whom the throne and the sanctuary are hardly able to protect? In exchange I give you my own person. Attack me day and night, say anything about me that you please. I shall never make a complaint. I shall appreciate your legitimate and constitutional attack on the minister, so long as you leave the king out of it. Monsieur Coste has retained a grateful memory of his interview with me. The parade of constitutionalism took place at the office of the tome between Monsieur Baud and a commissary of police. The attorney general issued forty-four warrants against the signatories to the protest of the journalists. At two o'clock the monarchical faction of the revolution met at Monsieur Perrier's, as had been agreed upon the day before. They came to no conclusion. The deputies adjourned to the morrow, the twenty-eighth, that Monsieur Audrey de Pruiravoz, Monsieur Casimir Perrier, a man of ordinary wealth, did not wish to fall into the hands of the people. He continued still to cherish the hope of an arrangement with the legitimate royalty. He said sharply to Monsieur Deschonin, You ruin us by departing from lawfulness. You make us give up the superb position. This spirit of lawfulness prevailed everywhere. It showed itself at two opposite meetings, one at Monsieur Cuddy-Gasicours, the other at General Gorgos. Monsieur Perrier belonged to that middle class which had constituted itself the heir of the people and the soldier. He had courage, stability of ideas. He flung himself bravely across the revolutionary torrent to dam it, but his life was too much taken up with his health, and he was too careful of his fortune. What can you do with a man, said Monsieur Deschonin, who is always examining his tongue in a looking-glass? The mob increased in size and began to appear under arms. The officer of the gendarmerie came to inform the Marchel de Rageuse that he had not enough men, and that he feared lest he should be driven back. Then the Marshal made his military dispositions. It was half-past four in the evening of the twenty-seventh before orders reached the barracks to take up arms. The Paris gendarmerie, supported by a few detachments of the guard, tried to restore the traffic in the Rue Richelieu and Saint-Honoré. One of these detachments was assailed in the Rue de Bordeaux by a char of stones. The leader of the detachments, refrained from firing when a shot from the Hotel Royale in the Rue de Pyramide decided the question. It appeared that a certain Mr. Folks, who lived at this hotel, had taken up his gun and fired at the guard from his window. The soldiers replied with a volley at the house, and Mr. Folks fell dead with his two servants. This is the way in which those English, who live safe and sheltered in the island, go to carry revolutions to other nations. You find them in the four corners of the world, mixed up in quarrels, with which they have no concern. So long as they can sell a piece of canico, what care they about plunging a nation into every kind of calamity? What right had this Mr. Folks to shoot at French soldiers? Was it the British constitution that Charles X had violated? If anything could stigmatize the July fighting, it would be that it was begun by a bullet fired by an Englishman. The first fighting, which began the day's work of the 27th a little before five o'clock in the evening, ceased at nightfall. The gunsmiths and sword-cutlers gave up their arms to the mob. The street lamps were broken or remained unlighted. The tricolor flag was hoisted in the darkness on the towers of Notre-Dame. The seizure of the guardhouses, the capture of the arsenal in the powder magazines, the disarming of the fixed posts. All this was effected without opposition at daybreak on the twenty-eight, and all was finished at eight o'clock. The democratic or proletarian party of the revolution in Blousers, or half-naked, was under arms. It was not sparing of its misery or its rags. The mob, represented by electors from it's shows out of different bands, had succeeded in having a meeting called at Mr. Cuddy Gasecours. The party of the user-patient did not yet show itself. Its head, hiding outside Paris, did not know whether he should go to St. Gallowd or to the Palais Royale, the middle class or monarchical party. The deputy is deliberated, and were unwilling to be drawn into the movement. Mr. Polignac went to St. Gallowd, and at five o'clock in the morning, on the twenty-eight, made the king sign the ordinance placing Paris in a stage of siege. On the twenty-eight the groups formed again in greater numbers. Already the cry of liberty for ever, down with the Bourbons, was mingled with the cry of the charter for ever, which was heard on every side. They also shouted, Long live the emperor, Long live the black prince, the mysterious prince of darkness who appears to the popular imagination in all revolutions. Memories and passions had come down upon the crowd. They pulled out and burned the French arms. They hung them to the ropes of the shattered street lanterns. They tore the badges through the fleur-de-lis from the guards of the diligence and the postmen. The notaries removed the escuptions, the bailiffs their badges, the carriers their stamps, the court purveyors their coats of arms. Those who but lately had covered the Napoleonic eagles painted in oil-colours through the fleur-de-lis of the Bourbons in Distemper needed only a sponge to wipe away their loyalty. Nowadays one faces gratitude and empires with a few drops of water. The marriage-child de Rageuse wrote to the king that it was urgent that methods of pacification should be taken, and that the next day the twenty-ninth would be too late. A messenger had come from the prefect of police to ask the marshal if it was true that Paris had been declared in a state of siege. The marshal, who knew nothing about it, was astonished. He hurried to the president of the council. There he found the ministers assembled, and Monsieur de Polynaque handed in the ordinance. Because the man who had trodden the world underfoot had laid towns and provinces under marshal law, Charles X thought that he could imitate him. The ministers told the marshal that they were coming to establish themselves as the headquarters of the guard. No orders having arrived from St. Cloud at nine o'clock in the morning on the twenty-eighth, when it was no longer time to hold everything but to recapture everything. The marshal ordered the troops, which had already shown themselves in part on the preceding day, to leave Barracks. No precautions had been taken to send provisions to the carousel, the headquarters. The bay-caste, which they had forgotten to have sufficiently guarded, was carried by the mob. Monsieur le Duterte argues, a man of intelligence and merit, a brave soldier, a clever but unlucky general, proved for the thousandth time that military genius is not enough to overcome civil troubles. The first-come-police officer would have known better what was to be done than the marshal. Perhaps also his intellect was paralyzed by his memories. He remained as though stifled under the weight of the fatality of his name. Under the command of the Condescent Chameau, the first column of the guard set out from the Madeleine to proceed along the boulevard to the Bastille. No sooner had they started than the platoon commanded by Monsieur Salat was attacked. The royalist officer bristly repulsed the assault. As he advanced, the post of communication left behind on the road, two weak and two far removed, one from the other, were cut by the people and separated by fell trees and barricades. Unafraid took place, attended with bloodshed, at the port Saint-Denis and Saint-Mattin. Passing by the scene of the future exploits of Fieschi, Monsieur de Saint-Chameau encountered numerous groups of women and men on the Place de la Bastille. He called upon them to disperse, distributing some money among them. But the people persisted in firing from the surrounding houses. He was obliged to renounce his intention of reaching the Hôtel de Ville by the Ries Saint-Antoine, and after crossing the Pond d'Astelitz returned to the carousel along the south boulevard. Turin, acting on behalf of the mother of the infant Louis XIV, had been more fortunate before the Bastille, than not yet demolished. The column centre occupied the Hôtel de Ville, followed the Quai de Trullerie du Louvre and de la Colle, crossed the first half of the Pond-nerve, took the Quai de L'Age and the Machiave Fleur and reached the Place de Grave by the Pond Notre-Dame. Two platoons of guards affected a diversion by filing towards the new suspension bridge. A battalion of the Fifteenth Light Infantry supported the guards, and was to leave two platoons on the Machiave Fleur. There was some fighting as they crossed the Seine on the Pond Notre-Dame. The mob headed by a drum bravely faced the guards. The officer-in-command of the Royal Artillery explained to the mass of people that they were exposing themselves uselessly in that, as they had no guns, they would be shot down without the smallest chance of succeeding. The rabble persisted, the guns were fired. The soldiers streamed onto the Quies and the Place de Grave, where two other platoons of guards arrived by the Pond d'Arcole. They had been obliged to force their way through crowds of students from the Fillebord Saint-Jacques. The Hôtel de Ville was occupied. A barricade rose at the entrance to the Rue du Montant. A brigade of Swiss-carried the barricade, the rabble rushing up from the adjacent streets recaptured its entrenchment with loud shouts. The barricade remained finely in the hands of the guards. In all those poor and popular quarters they fought spontaneously without afterthought, mocking, heedless, intrepid, French giddiness had mounted to all heads. Glory to our nation has the lightness of champagne. The women at the windows encouraged the men in the streets. Notes were written promising the marshals' baton to the First Colonel, who should go over to the people. Just as a men marched to the sound of a violin, it was a medley of tragic and clonish scenes, of mountain-bank and triumphant spectacles, when her chouts of laughter and oaths in the midst of musket shots and the dull roar of the crowd, across masses of smoke, with foraging cap and head barefooted, improvised calm in, supplied with permits from unknown leaders, drove convoys of wounded through the combatants, who separated to let them pass. In the wealthy quarters reigned a different spirit. The national guards had resumed the uniforms of which they had been stripped, and assembled in large numbers at the mayor's office of the First Ward, to preserve order. In these engagements the guards suffered more than the people, because they were exposed to the fire of invisible enemies in the houses. Others shall give the names of the drawing-room heroes who safely ambushed behind a shutter or chimney-pot, amuse themselves by shooting down the officers of the guards whom they recognized. In the streets the animosity of the labourer and the soldier did not go beyond striking the blow. Once wounded they mutually aided one another. The mob saved several victims. Two officers, Massoud Agoyin and Massoud Houveau, after heroic defence, owed their lives to the generosity of the victors. Captain Kalman of the guards received a blow on the head from an iron bar. Dazed, and with his eyes filled with blood, he struck up with his sword the bayonets of his soldiers, who were taking aim at the workmen. The guard was full of bonaparte's grenadiers. The officers lost their lives, among others, left in it noir, a man of extraordinary valor who, in 1813, had received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Prince Eugene, four feet of arms accomplished in one of the redoubts at Caldera. Colonel de Plensel, mortally wounded at the Potsamata, had been in the wars of the Empire in Holland, in Spain, with the Grand Army, and in the Imperial Guard. At the Battle of Leipzig he took the Austrian general Merfeldt prisoner. Carried by his soldiers to the opital du Groquayu, he refused to have his wounds dressed until all the other wounded of July had been treated. Dr. Larry, whom he had met on other battlefields, amputated his leg at the thigh. It was too late to save him. Happy those noble adversaries who had seen so many cannonballs pass over their heads, if they did not fall before the bullet of one of those liberated convicts whom justice has found again, once a day of victory in the ranks of the victors. Those galley slaves were unable to pollute the National Republican Triumph. They prejudiced only the royalty of Louis Philippe. Thus perished obscurely in the streets of Paris, the survivors of those famous soldiers would escape from the cannon of the Moskva of Lutzen and Leipzig. We massacred under Charles X, those heroes whom we had so greatly admired under Napoleon. They wanted but one man. That man had disappeared at St. Helena. The following night a non-commissioned officer in disguise came to bring orders to the troops at the Atel de Ville to fall back upon the Tuileries. The retreators made hazardous because of the wounded whom they did not wish to abandon, and of the artillery which it was difficult to convey across the barricades. Nevertheless it was affected without accident. When the troops returned from the different quarters of Paris they thought that the King and Dauphin had come back also. Looking in vain for the white flag on the pavillon de l'horloge, they uttered the energetic language of the camps. It is not true, as I have shown, that the Atel de Ville was captured by the guards from the people, and recaptured from the guards by the people. When the guards entered they encountered no resistance, for there was no one there. The prefect himself had gone. This boasting beacons encasted out upon the real dangers. The guards were badly engaged in torturous streets. The line, at first by its show of neutrality, and later by its defection, completed the harm which plans, fine in theory, but unfeasible in practice, had begun. The fiftieth regiment of the line had arrived at the Atel de Ville during the fighting. Ready to drop with fatigue, they hastened to retire to the inside of the Atel, and then they exhausted comrades, their unused and useless cartridges. The Swiss battalion, which had been left on the Marché des Annussants, was released by another Swiss battalion. Together they came out at the Quid de la Colle and stood in the Louvre. For the rest barricades are entrenchments in keeping with the Persian character. They are found in all our troubles, from Charles IX to our own times. The people, says Litois, seeing those forces disposed over the streets, began to be agitated and made barricades in the manner that all know. Many Swiss were slain who were buried in a ditch dug in the enclosure of Notre-Dame. The duke of geese passing through the streets all vying and crying loudly, Long live geese, and Quothi, doffing his large hut. My friends, it is enough. Gentlemen, it is too much. Shout, long live the king. Why do our barricades, which led to such mighty results, gain so little in the telling? While the barricades of 1588, which produce nothing, are so interesting to read of. This is due to the difference in centuries and persons. The sixteenth century carried all before it. The nineteenth century has left all behind it. Monsieur de Pouavot is not quite the balafré. While this fighting was continuing, the civil and political revolution followed the military revolution on parallel lines. The soldiers locked up in the abbey were set at liberty, the detteses at Saint-Pélagie escaped, and the political prisoners were released. A revolution is a jubilee. It absolves from every crime, permitting greater crimes. The ministers sat in council at the staff office. They resolved to arrest Messieurs Lafite, Lafayette, Gerard, Marché, Salvert and Audrey de Pouavot as leaders of the movement. The marshal gave the order for their arrest, but when later they appeared before him as delegates, he did not think consistent with his honour to put his order into execution. A gathering of the monarchical party consisting of peers and deputies met at Messieurs Guiseaux. The duty broadly was there, as were Messieurs Thiers and Minier, who had made their reappearance. Messieurs Carras, although he held different ideas. It was there that the name of the duit de Lyon was first pronounced by the user-patient party. Messieurs Thiers and Messieurs Miniers went to General Sebastiani to talk to him of the prince. The general replied in an evasive manner. The duit de Lyon, he asserted, had never entertained such designs, and had not authorized him to do anything. About midday, on the same day, the twenty-eighth, the general meeting of the deputies took place at Messieurs Audrey de Pouavot. Messieurs de Lafayette, the leader of the Republican Party, had reached Paris on the twenty-seventh. Messieurs Lafite, the leader of the Oleonist Party, had arrived on the twenty-seventh at night. He went to the Palais Royal, where he found no one. He sent to Nuit, where the king in Embryo was not there. At Messieurs de Pouavot they discussed the proposal of a protest against the ordinances. This protest, which was of a more than moderate character, left the great questions untouched. Messieurs Casimir Perrier was in favour of hastening to the duit de Rageuse. While the five deputies selected were preparing to leave, Messieurs Aragot was with the Marshal. He had decided on receipt of an air from Madame de Boine, to be beforehand with the Delegates. He represented to the Marshal the necessity for putting an end to the troubles of the capital. Messieurs de Rageuse went to obtain intelligence and Messieurs de Polignac's. The latter, hearing of the hesitation among the troops, declared that, if they went over to the people, they were to be fired on like the insurgents. General de Tromla was present at the conversation and flew into passion with General de Ambrugiac. Then came the deputation. Messieurs Lafitte spoke. We come, he said, to ask you to stop bloodshed. If the fighting continues, it will carry with it not only the most frightful calamities, but a real revolution. The Marshal confined himself to a question of military honour, maintaining that it was the duty of the people first to cease fighting. Nevertheless he added this post-cript to a letter which he was writing to the King. I think it is urgent that your Majesty should avail yourself without delay of the overtures that have been made. Colonel Komirovsky, a decom to the Deutera Gues, was shown into the King's closet at St Cloud, and handed him the letter. The King said to him, I will read this letter. The Colonel withdrew and waited orders, seeing that they were not forthcoming he begged Messieurs Lafitte to Deutera to go to the King to ask for them. The Deutera replied that etiquette made it impossible for him to enter the closet. At last Messieurs Komirovsky was sent forth by the King, and told to enjoy the Marshal to hold out. General Vincent on his side hurried down to St Cloud. He forced the door which was denied him, and told the King that all was lost. My dear fellow replied Charles the Tenth, you are a good general, but these are things that you know nothing about. End of book 14, part 1.