François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book XXXVII
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Translated by A. S. Kline © 2006 All Rights Reserved.
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Contents
Book XXXVII: Chapter 1: The Castle of the Kings of Bohemia – A first interview with Charles X
Book XXXVII: Chapter 3: A conversation with the King
Book XXXVII: Chapter 4: Henri V
Book XXXVII: Chapter 5: Dinner and an evening at the Hradschin
Book XXXVII: Chapter 6: Visits
Book XXXVII: Chapter 7: Mass – General Skrzynecki
Book XXXVII: Chapter 8: Dinner at Count Choteck’s
Book XXXVII: Chapter 9: Whit Sunday – The Duc de Blacas
Book XXXVII: Chapter 10: DIGRESSIONS: A description of Prague – Tycho Brahe - Perdita
Book XXXVII: Chapter 11: MORE DIGRESSIONS: Of Bohemia – Slavic and Neo-Latin Literature
Book XXXVII: Chapter 13: What I left behind in Prague
Book XXXVII: Chapter 14: The Duc de Bordeaux
Entering Prague on the 24th of May at seven in the evening, I arrived at the Hôtel des Bains, in the old town on the left bank of the Moldau. I wrote a note to Monsieur le Duc de Blacas to alert him to my arrival; I received the following reply:
‘If you are not too
tired, Monsieur le Vicomte, the King would be delighted to receive you this
evening, at
Accept, I beg you, my deepest compliments.
This Friday, the 24th of May, at seven.
BLACAS D’AULPS.’
I did not wait to profit
from the alternative offered me: at
The more I climbed the
more I could see of the city below. The chain of history, the fate of mankind,
the destruction of empires, the designs of
Arriving at the summit on which the Hradschin is built, we passed through an infantry post whose guards were positioned next to the exterior wicket. Beyond this door we penetrated a square courtyard, surrounded by battlements, uniformly deserted. We filed to the right down a long corridor on the ground floor lit at intervals by glass lanterns attached to the face of the walls, as in a barracks or a convent. At the end of this corridor a staircase ascended, at the foot of which two sentries walked to and fro. As I was climbing to the second storey, I met Monsieur de Blacas who was descending. With him I entered Charles X’s apartments; there, two more grenadiers were on guard. Those foreign guardsmen, those white uniforms at the King of France’s door made a painful impression on me: the idea of a prison rather than a palace came to mind.
We passed three darkened, virtually unfurnished rooms: I imagined I was wandering in the dreaded Monastery of the Escorial. Monsieur de Blacas left me in the third room in order to go and alert the King, according to the etiquette of the Tuileries. He returned to seek me, led me to His Majesty’s office, and withdrew.
Charles X approached me, and held out his hand cordially saying: ‘Good day, good day, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I am delighted to see you. I was waiting for you. You had no need to come tonight, as you must be very tired. Do not remain standing: let us sit. How is your wife?’
Nothing tugs at the heart more than simple words among the highest ranks of society, and in the great catastrophes of life. I began to weep like a child; I had difficulty stifling the sound of my crying with my handkerchief. All the harsh things I had determined to say, all the vain and merciless philosophy with which I counted on arming my discourse, failed me. I, to become an instructor to misfortune! I, to dare lord it over my King, my white-haired King, my proscribed and exiled King, preparing to leave his mortal remains on foreign soil! My aged Prince took me again by the hand seeing the distress of his merciless enemy, of that fierce opponent of the July decrees. His eyes were moist; he made me sit beside a little wooden table on which there were two candlesticks; he sat near the same table, turning his good ear towards me to hear me more clearly, alerting me in that way to his years which united common infirmity with the extraordinary calamities of his life.
I found it impossible to recover my voice, as I gazed, in the residence of the Emperors of Austria, at the sixty-eighth King of France bent beneath the weight of those reigns and his seventy-six years: of those years, twenty-four had been spent in exile, five on a tottering throne; the monarch was ending his last days in a last exile, with a grandson whose father had been assassinated and whose mother was a prisoner. Charles X, in order to relieve the silence, asked me a few questions. Then I explained the object of my journey, briefly: I told him I was bearing a letter from Madame la Duchesse de Berry, addressed to Madame la Dauphine, in which the captive of Blaye confided the care of her children to that prisoner of the Temple, as one having experience of misfortune. I added that I also had a letter for the children. The King replied: ‘Do not give it to them; they are partly unaware of what has happened to their mother; you shall give me the letter. Anyway we will talk about all this tomorrow at two: go and get some rest. You will see my son and the children at eleven, and dine with us.’ The King rose, wished me goodnight and withdrew.
I left; I rejoined Monsieur de Blacas in the ante-room; my guide was waiting on the stairs. I returned to my inn, descending the streets, over the slippery paving stones, with as much rapidity as I had shown slowness in ascending.
Next day, the 25th, I
received a visit from Monsieur le Comte de Cossé,
who was lodging in my inn. He told me about the arguments at the Palace
regarding the education of the Duke of Bordeaux.
At
Monsieur le Dauphin needed courage; his obedience to Charles X alone prevented him from showing himself to be, at Saint Cloud and Rambouillet, what he had shown himself to be at Chiclana: his unsociability has increased. He can hardly bear the sight of a new face. He often asks the Duc de Guiche: ‘Why are you here? I need no one. There is no mouse-hole small enough to hide me.’
He has often said: ‘Let no one speak of me; let no one be concerned about me; I am nothing; I wish to be nothing. I have an income of twenty thousand francs: it is more than I need. I need only think about my health and about making a good end.’ He often says: ‘If my nephew needs me, I will serve him with my sword; but I have signed my abdication, against my wishes, in order to obey him; I will not repeat it; I will sign nothing more; let them leave me in peace. My word is enough: I never lie.’
And that is true: his lips have never proffered an untruth. He reads much; he is quite learned, even in languages; his correspondence with Monsieur de Villèle during the War in Spain is prized, and his correspondence with Madame la Dauphine, intercepted and printed in the Moniteur, makes one love him. His probity is unshakeable; his religiosity is profound; his filial piety shows true virtue; but an unconquerable shyness inhibits the Dauphin’s proper employment of his abilities.
To put him at his ease,
I avoided discussion of politics and only enquired after his father’s health; a
subject on which he was voluble. The change in climate between
Escorted to the tutor’s
apartments, the doors opened: I saw Baron de Damas,
with his pupil; Madame de Gontaut with Mademoiselle, Monsieur Barrande, Monsieur Lavilatte and other devoted followers;
everyone rose. The young Prince, who was frightened, looked askance at me, and looked
at his tutor as if to ask what he should do, in what manner he should act in
this peril, or how to obtain permission to speak to me. Mademoiselle smiled a
half-smile with a shy but independent air; she seemed attentive to her brother’s
actions and gestures. Madame de Gontaut seemed proud of the education she had
given her. Having saluted the two children I advanced towards the orphan and
said: ‘May Henri V permit me to lay my respectful homage at his feet. When he
recovers his throne, he may remember that I had the honour to say to his
illustrious mother; Madame, your son is
my King. Thus I was the first to proclaim Henri V King of
The boy, astounded to hear himself saluted as King, to hear me speak of his mother whom no one spoke of, recoiled into the arms of Baron de Damas, while pronouncing a few words emphatically but in a low voice. I said to Monsieur de Damas:
‘Monsieur le Baron, my speech seems to have astonished the King. I see he knows nothing of his mother’s courage and is unaware of what his servants have had the happiness to do on occasion for the cause of the Royal Legitimacy.’
The tutor replied: ‘We teach Monseigneur what loyal subjects, such as you are yourself Monsieur le Vicomte….’ He failed to complete the sentence.
Monsieur de Damas hastened to announce that the moment for study had arrived. He invited me to the riding lesson at four.
I went to see Madame la
Duchesse de Guiche, who lodged some
distance away in another part of the Palace; it took more than ten minutes to
find the way there from corridor to corridor. As Ambassador to
Madame de Guiche had been informed of what I had said to the Duc de Bordeaux. She told me that they would part with Monsieur de Barrande; that it was a question of summoning the Jesuits; that Monsieur de Damas had suspended but not abandoned his plans.
There was a triumvirate
composed of the Duc de Blacas, Baron de Damas, and Cardinal Latil; this triumvirate wished to control any
future reign by isolating the young King, having him raised according to
principles, and by men, antipathetic to
Madame d’Agoult, devoted
body and soul to the triumvirate, had no other influence with the
Having paid my court to Madame de Guiche, I went to see Madame de Gontaut. She was waiting for me with Princess Louise.
Mademoiselle resembles her father a little: her hair is blonde; her blue eyes have a fine expressiveness; small for her age, she is not as well-formed as her portraits show. Her whole person is a mixture of child, young woman and Princess: she gazes, lowers her eyes, and smiles with a naive coquetry allied with art: one does not know whether to read her fairy stories, make a declaration, or talk to her with the respect due to a queen. Princess Louise supplements agreeable talents with considerable knowledge: she speaks English and has started to learn German; she even has something of a foreign accent and exile has already influenced her speech.
Madame de Gontaut presented me to my little King’s sister: innocent fugitives, they looked like two gazelles hiding amongst the ruins. Mademoiselle Vachon, the assistant governess, an excellent and distinguished woman, arrived. We sat down, and Madame de Gontaut said: ‘We can speak, Mademoiselle knows everything; she deplores what we see just as we do.’
Also Mademoiselle said to me: ‘Oh, Henri was very stupid this morning: he was afraid! Grandpapa said to us: “Guess who you will see tomorrow: he is a power on this earth!” We replied: “Well, is it the Emperor?” “No,” said Grandpapa. We tried, but could not guess. He said: “It is the Vicomte de Chateaubriand. I slapped my forehead for not having guessed.” And the Princess slapped her forehead, blushing like a rose, smiling spiritually with her lovely moist and tender eyes; I was dying of a respectful desire to kiss her little white hand. She went on:
‘You did not hear what Henri said to you when you recommended him to remember you. He said: “Oh yes, always!” But he said it so quietly! He was afraid of you and afraid of his tutor. I was making signs to him, did you see? You will be happier this evening; he will speak; just wait.’
This solicitude of the Princess on behalf of her brother was charming; I was almost guilty of lèse-majesté. Mademoiselle noticed it, which gave her a sweet and graceful air of conquest. I reassured her as to the impression Henri had made upon me. ‘I was very pleased’, she said, ‘to hear you speak of Mama before Monsieur de Damas. Will she soon be released from prison?’
You know I had a letter
from Madame la Duchesse de Berry for the children, but did not speak of it to
them since they were unaware of the latest details of her captivity. The King
had demanded the letter of me; I considered that I was not permitted to hand it
to him, and ought to take it to Madame la
Madame de Gontaut repeated to me what Madame de Cossé and Madame de Guiche had said. Mademoiselle groaned with childish gravity. Her governess having spoken of Monsieur Barrande’s dismissal and the probable arrival of a Jesuit, Princess Louise crossed her hands and said with a sigh: ‘That will be very unpopular!’ I could scarcely prevent myself from smiling; Mademoiselle began to smile also, still blushing.
A few moments remained before my audience with the King. I clambered back into my calash and went to find the Supreme Burgrave, Count Choteck. He lied in a country house a few miles outside the city, on the Palace side. I found him at home and thanked him for his letter. He invited me to dine with him on Monday, the 27th of May.
Returning to the Palace
at two, I was conducted to the King by Monsieur de Blacas as on the previous evening. Charles X
received me with his usual kindness and that elegance of manner that his years made
more noticeable in him. He made me sit down once more at the little table. Here
are the details of our conversation: ‘Sire, Madame la Duchesse de Berry ordered me to seek you out and
present a letter to Madame la Dauphine,
I do not know what the letter contains, even though it is unsealed; it is
written with lemon-juice, as is that to the children. But in my two letters of
instruction, the one ostensible, the other confidential, Marie-Caroline
explained her intentions. She places her children, during her captivity, as I
said to Your Majesty yesterday, under the especial protection of Madame la
The King responded harshly to me. I took his reply, for better or worse, as a complaint.
‘Pardon me, Your Majesty, but it seems that someone has inspired prejudice against her: Monsieur de Blacas must be my august client’s enemy.’
Charles X interrupted me: ‘No, but she treated him badly, because he prevented her committing various stupidities, and undertaking foolish enterprises.’ – ‘It is not given to everyone’, I replied, ‘to commit stupidities of that kind: Henri IV fought like Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and like her he had not always enough forces.’
‘Sire,’ I continued, ‘though you may not wish Madame de Berry to be a French Princess, she will be one despite you; everyone will always call her the Duchesse de Berry, the heroic mother of Henri V; her courage and her suffering tower above all; you cannot place yourself in the ranks of her enemies; you cannot follow the Duc d’Orléans’ example, and wish to destroy the mother and her children with one blow: is it so hard for you to forgive a woman her glory?’
‘– Well, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,’ said the King with a kindly emphasis, ‘let Madame la Duchesse de Berry wing her way to Palermo; let her live there maritally with Monsieur Lucchesi, in the whole world’s sight, then we can tell the children their mother is married; she can come and embrace them.’
I felt I had pushed the
matter hard enough; the principal points were three-quarters won, the
preservation of her title and admission to
In the interest of the future, I turned to the Prince’s education; on that subject, I was barely understood. Religion has made a solitary of Charles X; his ideas are cloistered. I slipped in a few words on the capacity of Monsieur Barrande and the incapacity of Monsieur de Damas. The King said: ‘Monsieur Barrande is a learned man, but he takes too much on; he was selected to teach the exact sciences to the Duc de Bordeaux, and he teaches everything, history, geography, Latin. I summoned the Abbé MacCarthy, in order to share Monsieur Barrande’s labour; he has died; I have cast my eye on another instructor; he will arrive soon.’
These words made me shudder, since the new instructor could evidently only be a Jesuit replacing a Jesuit. That, in the current state of French society, the idea of placing a disciple of Loyola with Henri V should have entered Charles X’s head is reason to despair of that race.
When I had recovered from my astonishment, I said: ‘Does the King not fear the effect on public opinion of an instructor chosen from a celebrated but slandered society?’
The King cried out: ‘Bah! Aren’t they with the Jesuits even so?’
I spoke to the King
about the elections and the Royalists’ desire to know his wishes. The King
replied: ‘I cannot say to someone: Take the oath against your conscience. Those
who believe they ought to swear it are no doubt acting with good intentions. I
have no objection to anyone, my dear friend; their past matters little to me,
if they wish sincerely to serve
The King paused as if embarrassed by the multitude of thoughts, and for fear of saying something that would offend me.
It was all very well, but what did Charles X understand by principles? Was he taking account of the cause of the conspiracies, true or false, hatched against his government? He resumed, after a moment’s silence: ‘How are your friends the Bertins? They have not protested on my behalf, you know: they are very harsh towards an exiled man, who did them no harm as far as I know. But, my dear friend, I wish none to anyone; everyone behaves according to his understanding.’
This sweetness of temperament, this Christian indulgence on the part of a King, hounded and slandered, brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to say a few words about Louis-Philippe. ‘Oh!’ the King responded… ‘Monsieur le Duc d’Orléans…he decided…what would you have? ...men are like that.’ Not a bitter word, not one reproach, not one complaint emerged from the lips of an old man three times exiled. And yet French hands had cut off his brother’s head and pierced his son’s heart; so implacable have those hands been for him in re-invoking the past!
I praised the King, great-hearted and compassionate of voice. I asked him if it had entered his mind to finish with all those secret correspondences, to dismiss all those agents who, for forty years, had deceived the Legitimacy. The king assured me that had resolved to put an end to those impotent machinations; he had already, he said, named several serious individuals, among whom I was one, to compose a sort of council in France fit to establish the truth. Monsieur de Blacas would explain it all to me. I begged Charles X to gather his followers and grant me a hearing: he referred me to Monsieur de Blacas.
I drew the King’s attention to the arrival of Henri V’s majority; I told him that a declaration made then would be useful. The King, who privately did not want such a declaration, invited me to present him with a draft. I replied with respect, but firmly, that I would never formulate a declaration at whose foot my signature did not appear below that of the King. My reason was that I did not wish to have placed to my account later changes introduced into some act by Prince Metternich and Monsieur de Blacas.
I suggested to the King
that he was too far from
A noble calculation that for a Prince who for five years had enjoyed a civil list of twenty millions, without mentioning his royal residences; for a Prince who had left to France the Algerian colony and the ancient heritage of the Bourbons, worth twenty-five to thirty millions in revenue!
I said: ‘Sire, you loyal
subjects have often thought that impoverished royalty might be in need; they
are ready to contribute, each according to his wealth, in order to free you
from dependence on a foreign power.’ – ‘I think, my dear Chateaubriand,’ said
the King, smiling, ‘that you are scarcely richer than I. How did you pay for
your journey?’ – ‘Sire, it would have been impossible for me to reach you, if Madame
la Duchesse de Berry had not ordered her banker, Monsieur Jaugé, to advance me six thousand francs.’ –
‘That’s too little!’ cried the King, ‘do you need more?’ – ‘No, Sire; I ought
rather to do the right thing, and return something to the poor prisoner; but I
scarcely know how to economise.’ – ‘You were a magnificent Signor in
‘– Oh, it shall not rest there. How much do you need, Chateaubriand, to be rich?’
‘– Sire, you would be wasting your time; you might give me four millions in the morning, and I would have not a groat by evening.’
The King patted my shoulder with his hand: ‘A fine thing! But what the devil do you do with your money?’ ‘Faith, Sire, I have no idea, for I’ve no vices and never spend anything: it’s incomprehensible! I am so foolish that on entering the Foreign Office I would not take the twenty-five thousand francs on a new appointment, and on leaving I scorned to pocket any profound secrets! You speak of my wealth, to avoid speaking of your own.’
‘It’s true,’ said the King, ‘here, in turn, is my confession: in consuming my capital in equal amounts year by year, I calculated that by the age I am now I would be able to live my life out without needing help from anyone. If I should find myself in any distress, I would prefer, as you suggest, to have recourse to Frenchmen rather than foreigners. They have offered me loans, among others one for thirty millions, which would be honoured in Holland; but I knew that such a loan, placed on the principal European markets, would devalue French funds; that prevented me endorsing the plan: nothing which would affect public wealth in France would suit me.’ Nobel sentiments expressed by a King!
In this conversation, one notes Charles X’s generosity of character, gentleness of manner, and commonsense. For a philosopher, it would have been a curious sight, that of a subject and a sovereign interrogating each other as to their wealth and making a mutual confession of their poverty in the depths of a Palace borrowed from the Kings of Bohemia!
BkXXXVII:Chap4:Sec1
Emerging from this meeting, I attended Henri’s riding lesson. He rode two horses, the first trotting, without stirrups, the second executing with stirrups various turns, without holding the reins, and with a stick passed behind his back between his arms. The boy is daring and altogether elegant in his white breeches, jacket, little ruff, and cap. Monsieur O’Hegerty the elder, his riding instructor, shouted: ‘What’s with that leg there! It’s like a stick! Relax your leg! Good! Detestable! What’s the matter with you today? etc. etc. The lesson over, the young page-king reined in his horse in the middle of the riding school, and brusquely doffing his cap to salute me where I stood, in the gallery with Baron Damas and a few Frenchmen, leapt lightly and elegantly to the ground like a little Jehan de Saintré.
Henri is slender, agile, well made; he is blond; he has blue eyes with a look in his left one which recalls his mother’s gaze. His movements are brusque; he addresses you freely; he is curious and questioning; he has none of that pedantry the newspapers attribute to him; he is just a little boy like all little boys of twelve. I complimented him for his fine appearance on horseback: ‘You’ve seen nothing,’ he said to me, ‘you should see me on my black horse; he is a wicked devil; he kicks and throws me, I remount, we leap the fence. The other day, he knocked himself and his leg swelled up as big as that. Isn’t the horse I rode last a beauty? But I was not on form.’
Henri detests Baron Damas at the moment, whose appearance, character and ideas are antipathetic to him. He often becomes very angry with him. Following these fits of temper the Prince has to do penitence; he is sometimes condemned to remain in his room: a foolish punishment. Abbé Moligny comes to confess the rebel and tries to make him fear the devil. The obstinate lad chooses not to hear and refuses to eat. Then Madame la Dauphine reasons with Henri who eats and mocks the Baron. This form of education creates a vicious circle.
What Monsieur le Duc de
If the race of Saint Louis was, like that of the Stuarts, a specific family driven out by revolution, and confined on an island, the destiny of the Bourbons would soon be something foreign to fresh generations. Our former royal power is not of that kind; it represents ancient royalty: the political, moral and religious past is born of that power and gathers around it. The fate of a race which was so involved in the social order as was, and so related to the social order which is to be, can never be a matter of human indifference. But any destiny that race was to endure, the situation of the individuals that formed it, and to whom an inimical fate could offer no respite, would be deplorable. In perpetual adversity, those individuals must travel in obscurity a course parallel to that of their family’s glorious past.
There is nothing sadder than the lives of fallen Kings; their days are no more than a tissue of reality and fiction: remaining sovereigns at their own hearth, among their servants and their memories, they no sooner cross the threshold of their home than they find ironic truth at the door: James II or Edward Stuart, Charles X or Louis d’Angoulême within, without they become James or Edward, Charles or Louis, without title, like those men of sorrows their neighbours; they have the dual inconvenience of living a Court life and a private life: the flattery, favouritism, intrigue and ambition of the one, the affronts, distress, and gossip of the other: it is a continuous masquerade with valets and ministers changing clothes. Moods are embittered by the situation, hopes weakened, regrets increased; the past is recalled; there are recriminations; there is self-reproach all the more bitter in that its expression is no longer surrounded by good taste derived of noble birth and the propriety of superior wealth; one becomes common through common suffering; the cares of a lost kingdom degenerate into the machinations of a household: Popes Clement XIV and Pius VI could never establish peace in the Pretenders’ ménages. Those un-crowned interlopers remained on guard in the midst of society, spurned by Princes as infected with adversity, suspect to nations as tainted by power.
I went off to dress: I
had been warned that I could retain my frock coat and boots when dining with
the King; but misfortune is too noble in rank for one to approach it with
familiarity. I arrived at the Palace at a
He was ever the priestling with rounded belly, pointed nose, and pallid visage, such as I had seen it, angered, in the Chamber of Peers, an ivory knife in his hand. It was said he had no influence and was fed in a corner while taking knocks; perhaps so; but there are other sorts of credit; that of a Cardinal is no less certain though hidden; he acquired it, this credit, through long years in residence with the King and from his character as a priest. The Abbé de Latil had been an intimate confidante; the memory of Madame de Polastron attached itself to the confessor’s surplice; the charm of his last human weakness and the sweetness of his first religious feeling endured in the old monarch’s heart.
Monsieur de Blacas, Monsieur Alfred de Damas, brother of the Baron, Monsieur O’Hegerty the elder, and Madame de Cossé arrived in succession. At
The dinner was meagre and quite poor. The King praised a fish from the Moldau to me, which was worthless. Four or five valets de chambre in black prowled about like lay brothers in a refectory; there was no maitre d’hôtel. Each took what was before him and offered it from the dish. The King ate well, asked for what he wished and himself served whatever he was asked for. He was in a good humour; any fear he may have had of me had passed. The conversation consisted of a round of commonplaces, on the Bohemian climate, the health of Madame la Dauphine, her journey, the celebration of Whit Sunday which would take place the following day; not a word of politics. Monsieur le Dauphin, his nose deep in his plate, occasionally emerged from his silence, and addressed Cardinal Latil: ‘Prince of the Church, was not the gospel for this morning according to St Matthew? – No, Monseigneur, according to St Mark. – What? St Mark?’ A grand dispute between St Mark and St Matthew, and the Cardinal was beaten.
Dinner lasted almost an hour; the King rose; we followed him to the salon. There were newspapers on a table; everyone sat down and began reading this and that as in a café.
The children entered,
the Duc de Bordeaux led by his
tutor, Mademoiselle by her governess. They ran to embrace their grandfather
then sped towards me; we ensconced ourselves in a window seat with a superb
view overlooking the city. I renewed my compliments on the riding lesson.
Mademoiselle hastened to tell me once more what her brother had said to me,
which I had not caught, namely that one could not come to a judgement since the
black horse was lame. Madame de Gontaut came and sat with us, Monsieur de Damas
nearby, lending an ear, in an amusing state of anxiety, as if I would eat his
pupil, let fall some phrase concerning the freedom of the Press, or to the
glory of Madame la Duchesse de Berry. I would have laughed at the fears I
inspired in him, if I could have laughed at any poor wretch after Monsieur de Polignac. Suddenly Henri said to me:
‘Have you seen any diviner’s snakes?’ – ‘Monseigneur must mean boa
constrictors: there are none in
I bowed to Mademoiselle, in thanks. ‘But you have seen other snakes?’ Henri continued. ‘Are they very nasty?’ – ‘Some of them, Monseigneur, are very dangerous others have no venom and can be taught to dance.’
The two children drew close to me in delight, fixing their fine bright eyes on mine.
‘And then there are
glass-snakes,’ I said. ‘They are superb and not harmful; they have the
transparency and fragility of glass; they shatter when they are touched.’ –
‘Can the pieces not be joined together again?’ said the Prince. – ‘No, brother’,
Mademoiselle replied for me. – ‘You went to
Madame de Gontaut spoke:
‘Monsieur de Chateaubriand has been to
As best I could I told
them about the Pyramids, the Sacred Tomb, the
After this fine conversation on serpents and cataracts, pyramids and the Holy Tomb, Mademoiselle said: ‘Will you ask me a history question?’ – ‘So, history is it?’ – ‘Yes, question me about a year, the most obscure year in the whole history of France, except the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which we have not started yet.’ – ‘Oh’, cried Henri, ‘I prefer a famous year: ask me something about a famous year.’ He was less sure of the matter than his sister.
I began by obeying the
Princess and said: ‘Well, can Mademoiselle tell me what was happening and who
ruled
‘What of my famous year, then?’ Henri asked in a half-angry tone. – ‘That’s right, Monseigneur: what happened in 1593?’ – ‘Bah’, cried the young Prince. ‘That was Henri IV’s recantation.’ Mademoiselle blushed at not being able to answer first.
Sweet children! The old crusader
related his adventures in
The Prince, led away by his tutor, invited me to his history lesson, set for the Sunday, at eleven in the morning; Madame de Gontaut withdrew with Mademoiselle.
Then another kind of scene commenced: future royalty, in the person of a child, had just involved me in his games; past royalty, in the person of an old man, now had me attend on his. A Whist party was begun, illuminated by two candles in the corner of a dark room, between the King partnering the Dauphin, and the Duc of Blacas partnering Cardinal Latil. I was the only spectator except for O’Hegerty the riding instructor. Through the open window-shutters twilight mingled its pallor with that of the candle-light: the monarchy waned between those two expiring flames. A profound silence reigned, except for the fall of the cards and an occasional annoyed exclamation from the King. Playing cards were modelled on those of the Latins to enliven Charles VI’s adversity, but under Charles X there was no longer an Ogier or a Lahire to give their names to these distractions of misfortune.
The game over, the King wished me goodnight. I passed by the empty sombre rooms I had traversed the previous day, the same stairs, the same guards, and descending the terraces of the hill, regained my inn despite getting lost among the night-time streets. Charles X remained shut in the dark mass of buildings I had left behind me: nothing could convey the melancholy of his isolation and his years.
I greatly needed a rest;
but Baron Capelle, arriving from
When a torrent falls
from a great height, the abyss it creates and by which it is swallowed draws
the gaze and renders us dumb; but I have neither patience with nor pity for
Ministers whose foolish hands allowed
I knew Monsieur Capelle: it is right to remember that he was left impoverished; his claims did not exceed his worth; he would willingly have said like Lucian: ‘If you read me in hopes of breathing amber and hearing the song of the swans…..I swear by the gods I have never spoken in such an elevated strain.’ These days modesty is a rare enough virtue, and Monsieur Capelle’s only mistake was being made a Minister.
I received a visit from Monsieur le Baron de Damas: the virtues of that brave officer had gone to his head; religious congestion had addled his brains. He makes fateful alliances: the Duc de Rivière on his deathbed recommended Monsieur de Damas as the Duc de Bordeaux’s tutor; the Prince de Polignac was a member of that set. Incapacity is a kind of Freemasonry with lodges in every land; its delving creates pits from which shafts lead, into which States vanish.
Domesticity is so
natural at Court that Monsieur de Damas, in selecting Monsieur de Lavillate, decided to grant him no title
but that of First Valet of the Chamber to Monseigneur le Duc de
I had formed the intention of hearing Mass in the Cathedral, in the precincts of the Palace; detained by visitors, I only had time to visit the basilica of the erstwhile Jesuits. There was singing accompanied by an organ. A woman, near me, possessed a voice whose tones made me turn my head. At the moment of Communion, she covered her face with both hands and did not go up to the altar table.
Alas! I have explored so many churches in the four corners of the globe, without ridding myself, even at the Saviour’s tomb, of the rough hair-shirt of my thoughts. I described Aben-Hamet wandering in the Christian mosque at Cordoba: ‘He glimpsed a motionless figure at the base of a pillar, which he at first mistook for a statue on a tomb.’
The original of the knight Aben-Hamet glimpsed was a monk I encountered in the church of the Escorial, whose faith I envied. Yet who knows the tempests in the depths of that meditative soul, or what pleas rose towards the Holy and Innocent Pontiff? I had just admired, in the empty sacristy of the Escorial, one of Murillo’s loveliest Virgins; I was with a lady; she was first to point out to me this monk deaf to the sound of the passions that passed before him in the sanctuary’s tremendous silence.
After Mass in
Before dining next day at the tutor’s, I thought it would be polite to go and visit Countess Choteck: I would have found her charming and beautiful, even if she had not quoted passages of my writings from memory.
I went to Madame de Guiche’s in the evening: there I met General Skrzynecki and his wife. He gave me an account of the Polish Insurrection and the battle of Ostrolenka.
When I rose to leave, the General asked permission to shake my venerable hand and embrace the patriarch of liberty and the Press; his wife wished to embrace me as the author of the Génie du Christianisme; the monarchy generously received a fraternal kiss from the republic. I experienced the satisfaction due an honest man; I was happy to waken a variety of titles to noble sympathy in the hearts of strangers, to be pressed to the breast of husband and wife in turn for the sake of liberty and religion.
On Monday the 27th, in the morning, the opposition came to inform me I would not be seeing the young Prince: Monsieur de Damas had tired his pupil, dragging him from church to church obeying the stations of the Jubilee. That exhaustion served as pretext for a holiday and motivated a course of action: they would hide the boy from me.
I employed the morning wandering around the city. At five I went to dine with Count Choteck.
Count Choteck’s mansion, built by his father (who was also Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia) has the external appearance of a Gothic chapel; nothing is original these days, everything is copied. From the drawing room there is a view of the gardens; they slope downwards into a valley: the light is always insipid, a greyish sun as in the rocky depths of the Northern mountains where gaunt Nature wears a hair shirt.
The table was set in the pleasure-ground, beneath the trees. We dined hatless: my head, which so many storms have insulted while carrying off my hair, was sensitive to the sighs of the breeze. While I tried to do justice to the meal, I could not prevent myself from watching the birds and the clouds flying above our feast; travellers embarked on the winds and secretly connected to my destiny; voyagers, the objects of my envy, whose aerial flight my gaze cannot follow without a kind of tenderness. I was more akin to those intruders wandering the skies than the earthbound guests sitting beside me: happy those anchorites who had a crow to serve them their food!
I cannot tell you about
Thus I only know the manners of that country as they were in the sixteenth century, as recounted by Bassompierre: he was in love with Anna-Esther, aged eighteen, widowed six months previously. He spent five days and six nights, in disguise, concealed in a room with his mistress. He played court tennis with Wallenstein at the Hradschin. Being neither Wallenstein nor Bassompierre, I pretended neither to empire nor love: modern Esthers want an Ahasueras who can, disguised though he may be, rid himself of his domino at night: one cannot lay aside the mask of the years.
Leaving the dinner, at seven, I went to see the King; there I found the same people as on the previous day, except for Monsieur le Duc de Bordeaux, who they said was suffering from his Sunday exertions. The King was reclining on a sofa, and Mademoiselle was sitting on a chair at Charles X’s knee, he stroking his grand-daughter’s arm while telling her stories. The young Princess listened attentively: when I appeared, she looked at me with a smile, like a person saying in a rational way: ‘Really, I must amuse grand-papa.’
‘Chateaubriand,’ cried the King, ‘I did not see you yesterday?’ – ‘Sire, I was advised too late that Your Majesty had done me the honour of inviting me to dinner: and then, it was Whit Sunday, a day on which it is not permitted me to see Your Majesty.’ – Why is that?’ said the King. ‘Sire, it was on White Sunday, nine years ago, that on presenting myself to pay my court to you, they forbade my entrance.’
Charles X appeared
moved: ‘No one will drive you from the Palace in
Following the game I returned the Duc de Blacas’ visit. ‘The King tells me we should talk,’ he said. I replied that the King not having judged it appropriate to convoke his council before whom I would have been able to develop my ideas on the future of France and the Duc of Bordeaux’s coming of age, I had nothing to say. ‘His Majesty has no council’, monsieur de Blacas replied with a tremulous laugh, his eyes full of self-satisfaction, ‘there is only myself, myself alone.’
The Grand Master of the
Wardrobe had the highest opinion of himself: a French malady. To listen to him,
he has done everything, he can do anything; he arranged the Duchesse de Berry’s marriage; he disposes of kings; he
leads Metternich by the nose; he has Nesselrode by the throat; he rules
Yet Monsieur Blacas is the most intelligent and moderate of that crowd. In conversation he is reasonable: he is always of your opinion: You think so! That’s precisely what I was saying yesterday. We have exactly the same idea! He complains of his servitude; he is weary of affairs, he would like to live in some unknown corner of the earth, to die there at peace with the world. As for his influence over Charles X, don’t speak of it; people imagine he controls Charles X: what error! He can do nothing with the King! The King will not listen; the King refuses something in the morning; in the evening he agrees it, without knowing why he has changed his mind, etc. While it is Monsieur de Blacas who tells you this nonsense, it is true, because he never thwarts the King; but he is not sincere, because he only inspires in Charles X wishes which agree with that Prince’s inclinations.
For the rest, Monsieur
de Blacas has courage and honour; he is not without generosity; he is loyal and
devoted. In assuming high aristocracy and entering into riches, he has taken on
their allure. He is very well born; he came from a poor but ancient house,
known for poetry and warfare. His stiff manner, his aplomb, and his rigorous
sense of etiquette have preserved for his masters that nobility which can
easily be lost in adversity: at least, in the Museum that is
Whether there is a Restoration or no; if there is to be a Restoration Monsieur de Blacas returns with titles and honour; if there is not, the fate of the Grand Master of the Wardrobe lies outside France completely; Charles X and Louis XIX will die; he will be old, that is Monsieur de Blacas; his children will remain companions to the exiled Prince, illustrious visitors to foreign courts. God be praised for everything!
Thus the Revolution, which elevated and destroyed Bonaparte, enriches Monsieur de Blacas: that is some compensation. Monsieur de Blacas, with his long immobile and colourless face, is the contractor of funeral pomp to the monarchy; he buried it at Hartwell, he buried it at Ghent, he re-buried it in Edinburgh and will bury it again in Prague, or elsewhere, always watching over the spoils of the high and noble dead, as the peasants on the coast gather shipwrecked objects that the sea throws on their shores.
On Tuesday, the 28th of May, the history lesson at which I was to be present, at eleven, not taking place, I found myself free to wander or rather review the city which I had already seen more than once in my coming and going.
I
do not know why I imagined Prague as nestling in a gap
in the mountains casting dark shadows over a cauldron of houses:
The
view from the Palace windows is very pleasant; on one side you can see orchards
in a cool valley with green slopes, enclosed by the city battlements, which
fall to the Moldau, rather as the walls of Rome descend from the Vatican to the
Tiber; on the other side, you discover the city itself traversed by the river,
the river adorned upstream by an island with plantations, and embracing an isle
downstream in leaving behind the northern suburbs. The Moldau flows into the
The
bridge over the Moldau, built in wood in 795 by Mnata was, at various times, rebuilt in stone.
While I took the bridge’s measure, Charles X walked by on the pavement; he
carried an umbrella under his arm; his son accompanied him like a hired cicerone. I said in the Conservateur that they went to the window to watch the
monarchy pass by: I saw it pass by on the bridge in
In
the buildings that compose the
Tycho
Brahe died in
If
‘Thou
art perfect then,’ says Antigonus to a mariner, in The
Winter’s Tale, ‘our ship hath touch’d upon the deserts of
Antigonus lands, charged with exposing to the elements a little girl to whom he addresses these words: ‘Blossom, speed thee well! ...The storm begins… Thou’rt like to have a lullaby too rough!’
Does
it not seem as if Shakespeare has recounted in anticipation the history of
Princess Louise, that young blossom;
that new Perdita;
transported to the deserts of
Confusion, blood, catastrophe, that is Bohemia’s history; its dukes and its kings, embroiled in civil and foreign wars, struggled with their subjects, or grappled with the dukes and kings of Silesia, Saxony, Poland, Moravia, Hungary, Austria and Bavaria.
During the reign of Wenceslas VI, who roasted his cook because
he grilled a hare badly, Jan Huss appeared,
who having studied at
‘The world full of bitterness,’ says Bossuet, ‘bore Luther and Calvin, whose teachings spread throughout Christendom.’
The Christian and Pagan
conflicts,
The ancient poems,
discovered in 1817 by Monsieur Hanka, the
librarian of the
Poles find the Bohemian dialect effeminate; it is a quarrel between the Dorian and the Ionic. A Breton from Vannes considers a Breton from Tréguier a barbarian. The Slavic like the Magyar lends itself to endless imitation: my poor Atala was dressed in a robe of Hungarian embroidery (Point de Hongrie); she also wore an Armenian dolman and an Arab veil.
Another kind of
literature has flourished in
At the time of Lobkowitz’s voyage, marvellous monuments, now overthrown, were still standing. It must have been an astonishing sight that of the Barbarians in all their power, civilisation laid low beneath their feet, the Janissaries of Mehmed II intoxicated with opium, victory and women, scimitars in hand, brows festooned with blood-stained turbans, lined up for the assault on the ruins of Egypt and Greece: and I saw the same barbarians, among those same ruins, struggling beneath the march of civilisation.
In wandering the city
and suburbs of
My review of
I kissed the Royal hand with pious respect.
‘Let me say to you’ Charles X continued, ‘that I may have been wrong not to defend myself at Rambouillet; I still had great resources…but I did not wish bloodshed on my behalf; I abdicated.’
I did not challenge that noble excuse; I replied:
‘Sire, Bonaparte twice
abdicated like Your Majesty, in order not to prolong the ills of
The children entered, and approached us. The King spoke of Mademoiselle’s age: ‘Now, little scrap,’ he cried, ‘you are fourteen already! – ‘Oh to be fifteen!’ said Mademoiselle. – ‘Well, what will you do then?’ said the King. Mademoiselle remained silent.
Charles X spoke of something: ‘I don’t remember that,’ said the Duc de Bordeaux.’ – I know, said the King, it happened the very day you were born. – ‘Oh,’ replied Henri, ‘a long time ago then!’ Mademoiselle leaning her head on his shoulder a little, raising her face towards her brother, said with a little ironic glance: ‘You were born a long time ago then?’
The children withdrew; I saluted the orphan: I was to leave that night. I said goodbye to him in French, English and German. How many languages will Henri learn in which to recount his wretched wanderings, and ask for bread and sanctuary from a stranger?
When the whist party began, I had my orders from His Majesty. ‘Go and see Madame la Dauphine in Carslbad, said Charles X. Farewell, My dear Chateaubriand. We shall have news of you from the papers.’
I went from door to door offering my last respects to the inhabitants of the Palace. I saw the young Princess again with Madame de Gontaut; she gave me a letter for her mother at the end of which were written a few lines from Henri.
I was to leave on the
30th at five in the morning; Count Choteck
had the kindness to have horses ordered for the journey: a mishap delayed me
till
I was carrying a letter
of credit for two thousand francs payable at
The sum was not available
on the evening of the 29th; on the morning of the 30th, when the horses were
already harnessed, a clerk arrived with a parcel of bills, paper from various
sources, which was discounted more or less on the spot, and which was useless
outside the Austrian States. My account was detailed on a note which showed
against the balance, in good coin. I was dumbfounded: ‘What do
you expect me to do with this?’ I asked the clerk. ‘How am I to pay for the
horses and the cost of the inns with this?’ The clerk ran off to obtain an
explanation. Another clerk came, and carried out endless calculations for me. I
sent the second clerk away; a third brought me Brabant
gold-pieces. I left, on my guard against the tenderness I might inspire, in
future, in the daughters of
My calash was
surrounded, under the archway, by the hotel staff, among whom was one pretty
Saxon girl who played a piano, whenever she had the chance between chimes of
the bell: try asking some Leonard in
I entered
I said to myself further: ‘Royal families have fallen into irreproachable error through being infatuated with a false understanding of their own nature: they sometimes view themselves as families do who are mortal and private; as occasion demands they place themselves above the common law or inside the boundaries of that law. Have they violated the political constitution? They cry that they have the right, that they are the source of the law, that they cannot be judged by ordinary rules. Do they choose to commit a domestic fault, for example to provide the heir to the throne with a dangerous education? Their reply to criticism: “A private person can act as they wish towards their children, and we cannot!”
Well, no, you cannot! You are neither a divine family nor a private family; you are a public family; you belong to society. Royal errors do not harm royalty alone; they are damaging to the whole nation: a King makes a mistake and departs; but can the nation depart? Can it feel no pain? Do not those who remain attached to absent royalty, victims of their sense of honour, find their careers interrupted, their relatives hounded, their liberty constrained, and their existence threatened? Again, royalty is not in private ownership, it is common property, undivided, and third parties are involved in the fate of the throne. I fear that in the troubled situation inseparable from misfortune royalty has not understood these realities and has done nothing to permit its return at an advantageous moment.
Another point: while recognising the immense advantages of the Salic Law, I do not deceive myself that the longevity of a race has serious disadvantages for nations and kings: for nations, because it links their destiny to that of their kings; for kings, because unending power intoxicates; they lose their sense of reality; everything which is not brought to their altar as suppliant prayer, humble wish, deep abasement, is impiety. Misfortune teaches them nothing; adversity is merely a plebeian coarseness lacking in respect, and disaster for them is merely insolence.’
Happily I was in error:
I found that Charles X had not
fallen into the noble errors born of high society; I simply found him mired in
the common illusions that attend on unexpected accident, and which are more understandable.
Everything serves to solace the self-esteem of Louis XVIII’s brother: he sees his
political world destroyed, and attributes that destruction rightly to his
epoch, not his person: did not Louis XVI
perish? Did not the Republic fall? Was not Bonaparte twice constrained to
abandon the theatre of glory did he not die a prisoner on an island? Are not
the thrones of
So things presented themselves to the unfortunate monarch; he remained immutable, waiting on events which abased and humbled his spirit. Through a refusal to be moved, he attains a certain amount of grandeur: a man of imagination, he listens to you, he is not angered by your ideas: he has the air of entering into them, without entering into them at all. General axioms one sets in front of oneself like gabions; sheltering behind them, one fires on the intellects that march by.
The mistake many people make is to be persuaded, if events recur in history, that the human race is still in a primitive state; they confound passions and ideas: the former are the same in all centuries, the latter change with successive ages. Though the material effects of various actions are the same at various epochs, the causes which produce them are different.
Charles X considers
himself a principle, and indeed there are men who, through living according to
fixed ideas, identical from generation to generation, are no more than
monuments. Certain individuals, through the lapse of time and their
preponderance, become things transformed
into people; the individuals perish when the things perish: Brutus and Cato
were each the
I have painted a portrait of Charles X elsewhere:
‘You have observed this faithful
subject, for six years, this respectful brother, this tender father, so greatly
afflicted by the death of one of his sons, so greatly consoled by the other! You
know him, this Bourbon, noble heir of old
Who is there among us who would not entrust to him their life, fortune and honour? This man whom we would all wish to have as a friend, we now have as our king. Oh, let us try to help him forget his life’s sacrifices! Let the crown weigh lightly upon the whitened hair of this Christian knight! As pious as Saint Louis, affable, compassionate and just as Louis XII, courteous as Francis I, frank as Henri IV, let him be happy in the good fortune that he has lacked for so many long years! Let the throne, where so many monarchs have experienced storms, be to him a place of repose.’
Elsewhere I have further celebrated this same Prince: the subject alone has aged, but one can still recognise him behind the youthful touches of his portrait: age withers us while taking from us a certain poetic truth which makes the hue and bloom of our complexion, and yet one loves, despite itself, the face that has faded along with our own features. I have sung hymns to the descendants of Henri IV; I would willingly begin them again to combat contempt for the Legitimacy and take upon me its disgrace once more, if it were destined to be reborn. The reason being that legitimate constitutional monarchy has always seemed to me the smoothest and surest road to complete liberty. I thought and still think that I would be carrying out the actions of a good citizen even in exaggerating the benefits of such a monarchy, in order, if it depended upon me alone, to grant it the duration necessary to accomplish the gradual transformation of society and morality.
I am doing Charles X’s memory a service by opposing the pure and simple truth to whatever might be said of him in the future. The enmity of party will present him as a man disloyal to his oaths and a violator of public freedom: he is neither. He attacked the Charter in good faith; he does not consider himself and ought not to consider himself an oath-breaker; he had the firm intention of re-establishing the Charter after saving it, in his own way and as he understood it. Charles X is as I have described him: gentle, though subject to anger, good and tender to those he knows, amiable, free and easy, without animosity, always possessing a knight’s devotion, nobility, and elegant courtesy, but dogged by frailty, which does not prevent a passive courage being shown, or the glory of dying well; incapable of following a good or bad resolution to the end; wedded to the prejudices of his century and his rank; a suitable king for an ordinary age; but in an extraordinary age a man not simply unfortunate, but condemned.
As for the Duc de Bordeaux’s supporters, they would picture him in the Hradschin as a King forever on horseback, always landing great blows with his sword. He certainly needs courage; but it is wrong to imagine that in this century right of conquest could be recognised, and that it is sufficient to act like Henri IV to recover a throne. Without courage, one cannot reign; with courage alone one can no longer reign: Bonaparte destroyed victory’s authority.
An extraordinary role might be conceived for Henri V; supposing that at twenty he was to recognise his position and say to himself: ‘I cannot remain inactive; I have a duty to fulfil towards the past, on behalf of my race, but am I obliged to trouble France solely in my own cause? Ought I to burden future centuries with the weight of centuries past? Let us decide the issue; let us inspire regret in those who unjustly exiled me in childhood; let us show them what I could do. It depends only on devoting myself to my country while consecrating myself afresh, whatever might be the outcome of the contest, to the principle of hereditary monarchy.’
Then the scion of
I am left to dream: what
I have imagined is not possible for the party who would have to adopt Henri: by
reasoning in that way, I am placed in the position of considering an order of
things beyond us; an order which, natural to an age of nobility and
magnanimity, would appear these days as a novelistic exaggeration; as if I were
to assent to the present invoking the age of the Crusades; now we are grounded
in the sad reality of a diminished human nature. Such is the attitude of mind
that Henri would meet with, apathy within
The Bourbons ruled after
the Empire because of arbitrary succession: could one imagine Henri transported
from
If one listens to the voice of passion or ignorance, the Bourbons are the authors of all our ills; the reinstallation of the elder branch would be the re-establishment of domination by the Palace; the Bourbons are the source of and accomplices to those oppressive treaties of which I have justifiably never ceased to complain: and yet nothing is more absurd than such accusations, in which dates are forgotten and facts grossly altered. The Restoration only exerted influenced in diplomatic activity at the time of the first invasion. It is recognized that no one wanted that Restoration, since they negotiated with Bonaparte at Châtillon; that, if he had wished, he could have remained Emperor of the French. On his proving stubborn and for want of anything better they adopted the Bourbons who were on the spot. MONSIEUR, the Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, then played a specific role in the transactions of the day; as one sees from the life of Alexander, we agreed to the 1814 Treaty of Paris.
In 1815 it was no longer
a question of the Bourbons; they in no way took part in the despoilers’
agreements at the second invasion; those agreements were the result of the
breaking of that banishment to the
The only moment where one sees the spirit of the Restoration is at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle; the Allies had agreed to steal our provinces in the North and East: Monsieur de Richelieu intervened. The Tsar, moved by our misfortunes, prompted by his penchant for justice, handed over to Monsieur de Richelieu the map of France on which the fatal lines had been traced. I saw this map of the Styx with my own eyes, in the hands of Madame de Montcalm, sister of the noble negotiator.
How could