  VOLUME III BOOK V 3-41 The years 1807, 1808, 1809 and 1810—Article in the Mercure of July 1807—I purchase the VallÉe-aux-Loups and retire to it—The Martyrs—Armand de Chateaubriand—The years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814—Publication of the ItinÉraire—Letter from the Cardinal de Bausset—Death of ChÉnier—I become a member of the Institute—The affair of my speech—The decennial prizes—The Essai sur les RÉvolutions—The Natchez. PART THE THIRD 1814-1830 BOOKS I AND II 45-58 The last days of the Empire BOOK III 59-105 Entry of the Allies into Paris—Bonaparte at Fontainebleau—The Regency at Blois—Publication of my pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons—The Senate issues the decree of dethronement—The house in the Rue Saint-Florentin—M. de Talleyrand—Addresses of the Provisional Government—Constitution proposed by the Senate—Arrival of the Comte d'Artois—Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau—Napoleon's itinerary to the island of Elba—Louis XVIII. at CompiÈgne—His entry into Paris—The Old Guard—An irreparable mistake—The Declaration of Saint-Ouen—Treaty of Paris—The Charter—Departure of the Allies—First year of the Restoration—First ministry—I publish my RÉflexions Politiques—Madame la Duchesse de Duras—I am appointed Ambassador to Sweden—Exhumation of the remains of Louis XVI.—The first 21st of January at Saint-Denis BOOK IV 106-148 Napoleon at Elba—Commencement of the Hundred Days—The return from Elba—Torpor of the Legitimacy—Article by Benjamin Constant—Order of the day of Marshal Soult—A royal session—Petition of the School of Law to the Chamber of Deputies—Plan for the defense of Paris—Flight of the King—I leave with Madame de Chateaubriand—Confusion on the road—The Duc d'OrlÉans and the Prince de CondÉ—Tournai—Brussels—Memories—The Duc de Richelieu—The King summons me to join him at Ghent—The Hundred Days at Ghent—Continuation of the Hundred Days at Ghent—Affairs in Vienna BOOK V 149-184 The Hundred Days in Paris—Effect of the passage of the Legitimacy in France—Bonaparte's astonishment—He is obliged to capitulate to ideas which he thought smothered—His new system—Three enormous gamblers remain—Illusions of the Liberals—Clubs and Federates—Juggling away of the Republic: the Additional Act—Convocation of the Chamber of Representatives—A useless Champ de Mai—Cares and bitterness of Bonaparte—Resolution in Vienna—Movement in Paris—What we were doing at Ghent—M. de Blacas—The Battle of Waterloo—Confusion at Ghent—What the Battle of Waterloo was—Return of the Emperor—Reappearance of La Fayette—Renewed abdication of Bonaparte—Stormy scenes in the House of Peers—Threatening portents for the Second Restoration—The departure from Ghent—Arrival at Mons—I miss the first opportunity of fortune in my political career—M. de Talleyrand at Mons—His scene with the King—I stupidly interest myself on M. de Talleyrand's behalf—Mons to Gonesse—With M. le Comte Beugnot I oppose FouchÉ's nomination as minister: my reasons—The Duke of Wellington gains the day—Arnouville—Saint-Denis—Last conversation with the King BOOK VI 185-229 Bonaparte at the Malmaison—General abandonment—Departure from the Malmaison—Rambouillet—Rochefort—Bonaparte takes refuge on the English fleet—He writes to the Prince Regent—Bonaparte on the Bellerophon—Torbay—Act confining Bonaparte in St Helena—He passes over to the Northumberland and sets sail—Judgment on Bonaparte—Character of Bonaparte—Has Bonaparte left us in renown what he has lost us in strength?—Futility of the truths set forth above—The Island of St. Helena—Bonaparte crosses the Atlantic—Napoleon lands at St. Helena—His establishment at Longwood—Precautions—Life at Longwood—Visits—Manzoni—Illness of Bonaparte—Ossian—Reveries of Napoleon in sight of the sea—Projects of evasion—Last occupation of Bonaparte—He lies down to rise no more—He dictates his will—Napoleon's religious sentiments—The chaplain Vignale—Napoleon's speech to Antomarchi, his doctor—He receives the last sacraments—He expires—His funeral—Destruction of the Napoleonic world—My last relations with Bonaparte—St. Helena after the death of Napoleon—Exhumation of Bonaparte—My visit to Cannes LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSLouis XVIII THE MEMOIRS OF CHATEAUBRIANDVOLUME IIIBOOK V[1]The years 1807, 1808, 1809 and 1810—Article in the Mercure of July 1807—I purchase the VallÉe-aux-Loups and retire to it—The Martyrs—Armand de Chateaubriand—The years 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814—Publication of the ItinÉraire—Letter from the Cardinal de Bausset—Death of ChÉnier—I become a member of the Institute—The affair of my speech—The decennial prizes—The Essai sur les RÉvolutions—The Natchez. Madame de Chateaubriand had been very ill during my travels; her friends had often given her up for lost. In some notes which M. de Clausel has written for his children, and which he has been good enough to permit me to look through, I find this passage:
If I were destined to live, and if I could cause to live in my works all the persons who are dear to me, how gladly would I take with me all my friends! Full of hope, I brought home my handful of gleanings my period of repose did not last long. By a series of arrangements, I had become the sole proprietor of the Mercure.[2] Towards the end of June 1807, M. Alexandre de Laborde published his Journey in Spain; in July I wrote the article in the Mercure from which I have quoted certain passages when speaking of the death of the Duc d'Enghien: "When in the silence of abjection," etc. Bonaparte's successes, far from subduing me, had revolted me; I had gathered fresh energy in my opinions and in the storms. I did not in vain carry a face bronzed by the sun, nor had I exposed myself to the wrath of the heavens to tremble with darkened brow before a man's anger. If Napoleon had done with the kings, he had not done with me. My article, falling in the midst of his successes and of his wonders, stirred France: copies in manuscript were distributed broadcast; several subscribers to the Mercure cut out the article and had it bound separately; it was read in the drawing-rooms and hawked about from house to house. One must have lived at that time to form an idea of the effect produced by a voice resounding alone amid the silence of the world. The noble sentiments thrust down at the bottom of men's hearts revived. Napoleon flew out: one is less irritated by reason of the offense received than by reason of the idea one has formed of one's self. What! To despise his very glory; to brave for a second time the man at whose feet the universe lay prostrate! "Does Chateaubriand think that I am an idiot, that I don't understand him! I will have him cut down on the Steps of the Tuileries!" He gave the order to suppress the Mercure and to arrest me. My property perished; my person escaped by a miracle: Bonaparte had to occupy himself with the world; he forgot me, but I remained under the burden of the threat. My position was a deplorable one: when I felt bound to act according to the inspiration of my sense of honour, I found myself burdened with my personal responsibility and with the trouble which I caused my wife. Her courage was great, but she suffered none the less for it, and those storms successively called down upon my head disturbed her life. She had suffered so much for me during the Revolution; it was natural that she should long for a little rest. The more so in that Madame de Chateaubriand admired Bonaparte unreservedly; she had no illusions as to the Legitimacy: she never ceased predicting what would happen to me on the return of the Bourbons. * The VallÉe-aux-Loups. The first book of these Memoirs is dated from the VallÉe-aux-Loups, on the 4th of October 1811: I there give a description of the little retreat which I bought to hide me at that time[3]. Leaving our apartment at Madame de Coislin's, we went first to live in the Rue des Saints-PerÈs, in the HÔtel de Lavalette, which took its name from the master and mistress[4] of the hotel. M. de Lavalette was thick-set, wore a plum-coloured coat, and carried a gold-headed cane: he became my man of business, if I have ever had any business. He had been an officer of the buttery to the King, and what I did not eat up[5] he drank. At the end of November, seeing that the repairs to my cottage were not progressing, I determined to go and superintend them. We arrived at the VallÉe in the evening. We did not take the ordinary road, but went in through the gate at the foot of the garden. The soil of the drives, soaked through with rain, prevented the horses from going; the carriage upset. A plaster bust of Homer, placed beside Madame de Chateaubriand, dashed through the window and broke its neck: a bad omen for the Martyrs, at which I was then working. The house, full of workmen laughing, singing, and hammering, was warmed by blazing shavings and lighted by candle-ends; it looked like a hermitage illuminated at night by pilgrims, in the woods. Delighted to find two rooms made fairly comfortable, in one of which supper had been laid, we sat down to table. The next morning, awakened by the sound of the hammers and the songs of the husbandmen, I saw the sun rise with less anxiety than the master of the Tuileries. I was in an endless enchantment; without being Madame de SÉvignÉ, I went, provided with a pair of wooden clogs, to plant my trees in the mud, to pass up and down the same walks, to look again and again at every smallest corner, to hide wherever there was a tuft of brushwood, saying to myself that this would be my park in the future: for then the future was not lacking. When striving, to-day, by force of memory to re-open the closed horizon, I no longer find the same, but I meet with others. I lose myself in my vanished thoughts; the illusions into which I fall are perhaps as fair as their predecessors; only they are no longer so young: what I used to see in the splendour of the south, I now perceive by the light of the sunset. If, nevertheless, I could cease to be harassed by dreams! Bayard, summoned to surrender a place, replied: "Wait till I have made a bridge of dead bodies, to pass over with my garrison." I fear that, to go out, I shall need to pass over the bodies of my fancies. My trees, being as yet small, did not gather the sounds of the autumn winds; but, in spring, the breezes which inhaled the breath of the flowers of the neighbouring fields retained it and poured it over my valley. I made some additions to my cottage; I improved the appearance of its brick walls with a portico supported by two black marble columns and two white marble caryatides: I remembered that I had been to Athens. My plan was to add a tower to the end of my pavilion; meantime I made counterfeit battlements on the wall separating me from the road: I thus anticipated the mediÆval mania which is stupefying us at present. The VallÉe-aux-Loups is the only thing that I regret of all that I have lost; it is written that nothing shall remain to me. After the loss of my Valley, I planted the Infirmerie de Marie-ThÉrÈse[6], which also I have lately left. I defy fate now to fix me to the smallest morsel of earth; henceforth I shall have for a garden only those avenues, honoured with such fine names, around the Invalides, along which I stroll with my one-armed or limping colleagues. Not far from those walks, Madame de Beaumont's cypress lifts its head; in those deserted spaces, the great and frivolous Duchesse de ChÂtillon once leant upon my arm. Now I give my arm only to time: it is very heavy! I worked with delight at my Memoirs, and the Martyrs made progress; I had already read some books to M. de Fontanes. I had settled down in the midst of my memories as in a large library; I consulted this and then that, and next closed the register with a sigh, for I perceived that the light, in penetrating into it, destroyed its mystery. Light up the days of life, and they will no longer be what they are. In the month of July, I fell ill and was obliged to return to Paris. The doctors rendered the illness dangerous. In the time of Hippocrates, there was a dearth of dead in the lower regions, says the epigram: thanks to our modern Hippocrates, there is an abundance to-day. This was perhaps the only moment at which, when near death, I felt a desire to live. When I felt myself lapsing into faintness, which often happened, I used to say to Madame de Chateaubriand: "Do not be alarmed; I shall come to." I lost consciousness, but with great inward impatience, for I clung to God knows what. I also passionately longed to complete what I believed and still believe to be my most correct work. I was paying the price of the fatigue which I had undergone during my journey to the Levant. Bonaparte and my portrait. Girodet[7] had put the finishing touches to my portrait. He made me dark, as I then was; but he put all his genius into the work. M. Denon[8] received the master-piece for the Salon[9]; like a noble-hearted courtier, he prudently put it out of sight. When Bonaparte took his view of the gallery, after examining the pictures, he asked: "Where is the portrait of Chateaubriand?" He knew that it must be there: they were obliged to bring the outlaw from his hiding-place. Bonaparte, whose fit of generosity had evaporated, said, on inspecting the portrait: "He looks like a conspirator coming down the chimney." One day, on returning alone to the VallÉe, I was told by Benjamin, the gardener, that a fat strange gentleman had come and asked for me; that, finding me out, he had said he would wait for me; that he had had an omelette made for him; and that, afterwards, he had flung himself on my bed. I went upstairs, entered my room, and saw something enormous asleep; shaking that mass, I cried: "Hi! Hi! Who are you?" The mass gave a start and sat up. Its head was covered with a woollen cap; it wore a smock and trousers of spotted wool, all in one piece; its face was smeared with snuff, and its tongue hung out. It was my cousin Moreau! I had not seen him since the camp at Thionville. He was back from Russia and wanted to enter the excise. My old cicerone in Paris went to die at Nantes. Thus disappeared one of the early characters of these Memoirs. I hope that, stretched on a couch of daffodils, he still talks of my verses to Madame de Chastenay, if that agreeable shade has descended to the Elysian Fields. * The Martyrs. The Martyrs appeared in the spring of 1809. It was a conscientious piece of work. I had consulted critics of taste and knowledge: Messieurs de Fontanes, Bertin, Boissonade[10], Malte-Brun[11]; and I had accepted their judgment. Hundreds and hundreds of times I had written, unwritten and rewritten the same page. Of all my writings, this is the most noted for the correctness of the language. I had made no mistake in the scheme of the book: at present, when my ideas have become general, no one denies that the struggles of two religions, one ending, the other commencing, afford one of the richest, most fruitful and most dramatic subjects for the Muses. I thought, therefore, that I might venture to cherish some all too foolish hopes; but I was forgetting the success of my first book: in this country you must never reckon on two close successes; one destroys the other. If you have some sort of talent for prose, beware of showing any for poetry; if you are distinguished in literature, lay no claim to politics: such is the French spirit and its poverty. The self-loves alarmed, the jealousies surprised by an author's good fortune at the outset combine and lie in wait for the poet's second publication, to take a signal vengeance: Tous, la main dans l'encre, jurent de se venger[12]. I must pay for the silly admiration which I had obtained by trickery at the time of the appearance of the GÉnie du Christianisme; I must be made to restore what I had stolen! Alas, they need not have taken such pains to rob me of that which I myself did not think that I deserved! If I had delivered Christian Rome, I asked only for an obsidional crown[13], a plait of grass culled in the Eternal City. The executioner of the justice of the vanities was M. Hoffmann[14], to whom may God grant peace! The Journal des DÉbats was no longer free; its proprietors had no power in it, and the censors registered my condemnation in its pages. M. Hoffmann, however, forgave the Battle of the Franks and some other pieces in the work; but, if he thought CymodocÉe attractive, he was too excellent a Catholic not to grow indignant at the profane conjunction of the truths of Christianity and the fables of mythology. VellÉda did not save me. It was imputed to me as a crime that I had changed Tacitus' German druidess into a Gallic woman, as though I had wanted to borrow anything beyond an harmonious name! And behold, we see the Christians of France, to whom I had rendered such great services by setting up their altars again, stupidly taking it into their heads to be scandalized on the gospel word of M. Hoffmann! The title of the Martyrs had misled them: they expected to read a martyrology, and the tiger who tore only a daughter of Homer to pieces seemed to them a sacrilege. The real martyrdom of Pope Pius VII., whom Bonaparte had brought as a prisoner to Paris, did not scandalize them, but they were quite roused by my un-Christian fictions, as they called them. And it was M. the Bishop of Chartres[15] who undertook to punish the horrible impieties of the author of the GÉnie du Christianisme. Alas, he must realize that to-day his zeal is wanted for very different contests! M. the Bishop of Chartres is the brother of my excellent friend M. de Clausel, a very great Christian, who did not allow himself to be carried away by so sublime a virtue as the critic, his brother. I thought it my duty to reply to my censors, as I had done in the matter of the GÉnie du Christianisme. Montesquieu[16], with his defense of the Esprit des lois, encouraged me. I was wrong. Authors who are attacked might say the finest things in the world, and yet excite merely the smiles of impartial minds and the ridicule of the crowd. They place themselves on a bad ground: the defensive position is antipathetic to the French character. When, in reply to objections, I pointed out that, in stigmatizing this or that passage, they had attacked some fine relic of antiquity, beaten on the facts, they extricated themselves by next saying that the Martyrs was a mere "patchwork." When I justified the simultaneous presence of the two religions by the authority of the Fathers of the Church themselves, the reply was that, at the period in which I placed the action of the Martyrs, paganism no longer existed among great minds. I believed in good faith that the work had fallen flat; the violence of the attack had shaken my conviction as an author. Some of my friends consoled me; they maintained that the proscription was unjustified, that sooner or later the public would pronounce another verdict: M. de Fontanes especially was firm; I was no Racine, but he might be a Boileau, and he never ceased saying to me: "They'll come back to it." His persuasion in this regard was so deep-rooted that it inspired him with some charming stanzas: Le Tasse, errant de ville en ville, etc.[17], without fear of compromising his taste or the authority of his judgment. The Martyrs has, in fact, retrieved itself, has obtained the honour of four consecutive editions, and has even enjoyed particular favour with men of letters: appreciation has been shown me of a work which bears evidence of serious study, of some pains towards style, of a great reverence for language and taste. Its reception. Criticism of the subject-matter was promptly abandoned. To say that I had mixed profane with sacred things, because I had depicted two cults which existed side by side and which had each its beliefs, its altars, its priests, its ceremonies, was equivalent to saying that I ought to have renounced history. For whom did the martyrs die? For Jesus Christ. To whom were they immolated? To the gods of the Empire. Therefore there were two religions. The philosophical question, namely, whether, under Diocletian[18], the Greeks and Romans believed in the gods of Homer, and whether public worship had undergone any changes, was a question that did not concern me as a poet; as an historian, I might have had many things to say. All this no longer matters. The Martyrs has lived, contrary to my first expectation, and I have had to occupy myself only with the care of revising its text. The fault of the Martyrs has to do with the wonderful "directness" which, owing to what remained of my classical prejudices, I had unadvisedly employed. Startled at my own innovations, I thought it impossible to dispense with a "Heaven" and a "Hell." Yet the good and bad angels sufficed to carry on the action, without delivering it to worn-out machinery. If the Battle of the Franks, VellÉda, JÉrÔme, Augustin, Eudore, CymodocÉe; if all these, and the descriptions of Naples and Greece, are unable to obtain pardon for the Martyrs, Hell and Heaven will not save it. One of the passages which most pleased M. de Fontanes was the following:
The GÉnie du Christianisme will remain my great work, because it produced, or decided, a revolution and commenced the new era of the literary age. The case is different with the Martyrs: it came after the revolution had been worked, and was only a superabundant proof of my doctrines; my style was no longer a new thing, and, except in the episode of VellÉda and the picture of the manners of the Franks, my poem even feels the influence of the places which it has frequented: in it the classical dominates the romantic. Lastly, the circumstances no longer existed which contributed to the success of the GÉnie du Christianisme; the Government, far from being favourable to me, had become hostile. The Martyrs meant to me a redoubling of persecution: the frequent allusions in the portrait of Galerius[20] and in the picture of the Court of Diocletian could not fail to arouse the attention of the imperial police, the more so inasmuch as the English translator, who had no reason to observe any circumspection, and who cared not at all whether he compromised me or not, had called attention to the allusions in his preface. The publication of the Martyrs was coincident with a fatal occurrence. This did not disarm the aristarchs, thanks to the ardour with which we are animated for the powers that be; they felt that a literary criticism which tended to diminish the interest attached to my name might be agreeable to Bonaparte. The latter, like the millionaire bankers who give splendid banquets and charge their customers postage, did not disdain small profits. * Armand de Chateaubriand, whom you have seen as the companion of my childhood, who appeared before you again in the Princes' Army with the deaf and dumb Libba, had remained in England. He married in Jersey[21], and was charged with the correspondence of the Princes. Setting sail on the 25th of September 1808, he was landed, at eleven o'clock in the same evening, on the coast of Brittany, near Saint-Cast. The boat's crew consisted of eleven men; two only were Frenchmen: Roussel and Quintal. Armand de Chateaubriand. Armand proceeded to the house of M. Delaunay-BoisÉ-Lucas the Elder, who lived in the village of Saint-Gast, where the English had once been driven back to their ships: his host advised him to go back[22]; but the boat had already taken its homeward course to Jersey. Armand, having come to an arrangement with M. BoisÉ-Lucas' son, handed him the despatches with which he had been entrusted by M. Henry-LariviÈre[23], the Princes' agent.
The dauntless Armand, landed at a few steps from his paternal fields, as though on the inhospitable coast of Taurida, in vain turned his eyes over the billows, by the light of the moon, in search of the bark which could have saved him. In former days, after I had already left Combourg, with the intention of going to India, I had cast my mournful gaze over the same billows. From the rocks of Saint-Cast where Armand lay, from the cape of the Varde where I had sat, a few leagues of the sea, over which our eyes have wandered in opposite directions, have witnessed the cares and divided the destinies of two men joined by ties of name and blood. It was also in the midst of the same waves that I met Gesril for the last time. Often, in my dreams, I see Gesril and Armand washing the wound in their foreheads in the deep, while, reddened to my very feet, stretches the sea with which we used to play in our childhood[24]. Armand succeeded in embarking in a boat purchased at Saint-Malo, but, driven back by the north-west wind, he was again obliged to put back. At last, on the 6th of January, assisted by a sailor called Jean Brien, he launched a little stranded boat, and got hold of another which was afloat. He thus describes his voyage, which bears an affinity to my star and my adventures, in his examination on the 18th of March:
Armand had the wind, the waves and the imperial police against him; Bonaparte was in connivance with the storms. The gods made a very great expenditure of wrath against a paltry existence. The packet flung into the sea was cast back by it on the beach of Notre-Dame-d'Alloue, near Valognes. The papers contained in this packet served as documents for the conviction: there were thirty-two of them. Quintal, returning to the sands of Brittany with his boat to fetch Armand, had also, through an obstinate fatality, been shipwrecked in Norman waters a few days before my cousin. The crew of Quintal's boat had spoken; the Prefect of Saint-LÔ had learnt that M. de Chateaubriand was the leader of the Princes' enterprises. When he heard that a cutter manned with only two men had run ashore, he had no doubt that Armand was one of the two shipwrecked men, for all the fishermen spoke of him as the most fearless man at sea that had ever been known. Arrest of Armand. On the 20th of January 1809, the Prefect of the Manche reported Armand's arrest to the general police. His letter commences:
Armand, carried to Paris and lodged at the Force, underwent a secret interrogation at the military gaol of the Abbaye. General Hulin, who was now Military Commander of Paris, appointed Bertrand, a captain in the first demi-brigade of veterans, judge-advocate of the military commission instructed, by a decree of the 25th of February, to inquire into Armand's case. The persons implicated were M. de Goyon[25], who had been sent by Armand to Brest, and M. de BoisÉ-Lucas the Younger, charged to hand letters from Henry-LariviÈre to Messieurs Laya[26] and Sicard[27] in Paris. In a letter of the 13th of March, addressed to FouchÉ, Armand said:
These mistakes of a man with human bowels addressing himself to an hyena are painful to see. Bonaparte, besides, was not the lion of Florence: he did not give up the child on observing the tears of the mother. I had written to ask FouchÉ for an audience; he granted me one, and assured me, with all the self-possession of revolutionary frivolity, "that he had seen Armand, that I could be easy: that Armand had told him that he would die well, and that in fact he wore a very resolute air." Had I proposed to FouchÉ that he should die, would he have preserved that deliberate tone and that superb indifference with regard to himself? I applied to Madame de RÉmusat, begging her to remit to the Empress a letter containing a request for justice, or for mercy, to the Emperor. Madame la Duchesse de Saint-Leu[28] told me, at Arenberg, of the fate of my letter: JosÉphine gave it to the Emperor; he seemed to hesitate, on reading it; and then, coming upon some words which offended him, he impatiently flung it into the fire. I had forgotten that one should show pride only on one's own behalf. His execution. M. de Goyon, condemned with Armand, underwent his sentence. Yet Madame la Baronne-Duchesse de Montmorency had been induced to interest herself in his favour: she was the daughter of Madame de Matignon, with whom the Goyons were allied. A Montmorency in service ought to have obtained anything, if the prostitution of a name were enough to win over an old monarchy to a new power. Madame de Goyon, though unable to save her husband, saved young BoisÉ-Lucas. Everything combined towards this misfortune, which struck only unknown persons; one would have thought that the downfall of a world was in question: storms upon the waves, ambushes on land, Bonaparte, the sea, the murderers of Louis XVI., and perhaps some "passion," the mysterious soul of mundane catastrophes. People have not even perceived all these things; it all struck me alone and lived in my memory only. What mattered to Napoleon the insects crushed by his hand upon his diadem? On the day of execution, I wished to accompany my comrade on his last battle-field; I found no carriage, and hastened on foot to the Plaine de Grenelle. I arrived, all perspiring, a second too late: Armand had been shot against the surrounding wall of Paris. His skull was fractured; a butcher's dog was licking up his blood and his brains. I followed the cart which took the bodies of Armand and his two companions, plebeian and noble, Quintal and Goyon, to the Vaugirard Cemetery, where I had buried M. de La Harpe. I saw my cousin for the last time without being able to recognise him: the lead had disfigured him, he had no face left; I could not remark the ravages of years in it, nor even see death within its shapeless and bleeding orb; he remained young in my memory as at the time of the Siege of Thionville. He was shot on Good Friday: the crucifix appears to me at the extremity of all my misfortunes. When I walk on the rampart of the Plaine de Grenelle, I stop to look at the imprint of the firing, still marked upon the wall. If Bonaparte's bullets had left no other traces, he would no longer be spoken of. Strange concatenation of destinies! General Hulin, the Military Commander of Paris, appointed the commission which ordered Armand's brains to be blown out; he had, in former days, been appointed president of the commission which shattered the head of the Duc d'Enghien. Ought he not to have abstained, after his first misfortune, from all connection with courts-martial? And I have spoken of the death of the descendant of the Great CondÉ, without reminding General Hulin of the part which he played in the execution of the humble soldier, my kinsman. No doubt I, in my turn, had received from Heaven my commission to judge the judges of the tribunal of Vincennes. * The year 1811 was one of the most remarkable in my literary career[29]. I published the ItinÉraire de Paris À Jerusalem[30], I accepted M. de ChÉnier's place at the Institute, and I began to write the Memoirs which I am now finishing. |
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