Le Vicomte de Chateaubriand
"NOTRE SANG A TEINT
LA BANNIÈRE DE FRANCE"
CONTENTS
The Translator's Note xiii
The Author's Preface xxi
The Author's Preface to the First Edition xxix
PART THE FIRST
1768-1800
BOOK I 3-36
Birth of my brothers and sisters—My own birth—PlancoËt—I am vowed—Combourg—My father's scheme of education for me—Villeneuve—Lucile—Mesdemoiselles Couppart—I am a bad pupil—The life led by my maternal grandmother and her sister at PlancoËt—My uncle, the Comte de BedÉe, at Monchoix—I am relieved from my nurse's vow—Holidays—Saint-Malo—Gesril—Hervine Magon—Fight with two ship's lads
BOOK II 37-70
A note from M. Pasquier—Dieppe—Change in my education—Spring in Brittany—An historic forest—Pelagian fields—The moon setting over the sea—Departure for Combourg—Description of the castle—Dol College—Mathematics and languages—An instance of memory—Holidays at Combourg—Life at a country-seat—Feudal customs—The inhabitants of Combourg—Second holidays at Combourg—The Conti Regiment—Camp at Saint-Malo—An abbey—A provincial theatre—Marriage of my two eldest sisters—Return to college—A revolution begins to take place in my ideas—Adventure of the magpie—Third holidays at Combourg—The quack—Return to college—Invasion of France—Games—The AbbÉ de Chateaubriand—My First Communion—I leave Dol College—A mission at Combourg—Rennes College—I meet Gesril—Moreau-LimoËlan—Marriage of my third sister—I am sent to Brest for my naval examination—The harbour of Brest—I once more meet Gesril—Lapeyrouse—I return to Combourg
BOOK III 71-96
At Montboissier—Reminiscences of Combourg—Dinan College—Broussais—I return home—Life at Combourg—Our days and evenings—My donjon—Change from childhood to manhood—Lucile—Last lines written at the VallÉe-aux-Loups—Revelations concerning the mystery of my life—A phantom of love—Two years of delirium—Occupations and illusions—My autumn joys—Incantation—Temptation—Illness—I fear and decline to enter the ecclesiastical state—A moment in my native town—Recollection of Villeneuve and the tribulations of my childhood—I am called back to Combourg—Last interview with my father—I enter the service—I bid farewell to Combourg
BOOK IV 97-123
Berlin—Potsdam—Frederic the Great—My brother—My cousin Moreau—My sister, the Comtesse de Farcy—Julie a worldly woman—Dinner—Pommereul—Madame de Chastenay—Cambrai—The Navarre Regiment—La MartiniÈre—Death of my father—My regrets—Would my father have appreciated me?—I return to Brittany—I stay with my eldest sister—My brother sends for me to Paris—First inspiration of the muse—My lonely life in Paris—I am presented at Versailles—I hunt with the King—Adventure with my mare Heureuse
BOOK V 124-183
Stay in Brittany—In garrison at Dieppe—I return to Paris with Lucile and Julie—Delisle de Sales—Men of letters—Portraits—The Rosanbo family—M. de Malesherbes—His predilection for Lucile—Appearance and change of my sylph—Early political disturbances in Brittany—A glance at the history of the monarchy—Constitution of the States of Brittany—The holding of the States—The King's revenue in Brittany—Private revenue of the province—Hearth-money—I am present for the first time at a political meeting—A scene—My mother moves to Saint-Malo—I receive the tonsure—The country round Saint-Malo—The ghost—The sick man—The States of Brittany in 1789—Riots—Saint-Riveul, my schoolfellow, is killed—The year 1789—Journey from Brittany to Paris—Movement on the road—Appearance of Paris—Dismissal of M. Necker—Versailles—Delight of the Royal Family—General insurrection—Capture of the Bastille—Effect of the capture of the Bastille on the Court—The heads of Foullon and Bertier—Recall of M. Necker—Sitting of the 4th of August 1789—The day's work of the 5th of October—The King is taken to Paris—The Constituent Assembly—Mirabeau—Sittings of the National Assembly—Robespierre—Society-Aspect of Paris—What I did amidst all this turmoil—My solitary days—Mademoiselle Monet—I draw up with M. de Malesherbes the plan of my journey in America—Bonaparte and I both unknown subalterns—The Marquis de La RouËrie—I embark at Saint-Malo—Last thoughts on leaving my native land
BOOK VI 184-262
In London as Ambassador—I cross the ocean—FranÇois Tulloch—Christopher Columbus—CamoËns—The Azores—The isle of Graciosa—Sports on board ship—The isle of Saint-Pierre—The shores of Virginia—Sunset—Danger and escape—I land in America—Baltimore—The passengers separate—Tulloch—Philadelphia—General Washington—Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte—Journey from Philadelphia to New York and Boston—Mackenzie—The Hudson River—Song of the lady passenger—Mr. Swift—I set out for the Falls of Niagara with a Dutch guide—M. Violet—My savage outfit—Hunting—Wolverine and Canadian Fox—Musk-rat—Fishing dogs—Insects—Montcalm and Wolfe—Encampment on the shore of the Onondaga Lake—Arabs—The Indian woman and her cow—An Iroquois—The Onondaga chief—Velly and the Franks—Ceremonies of hospitality—The ancient Greeks—Journey from the Onondaga Lake to the Genesee River—Clearings—Hospitality—My bed—The enchanted rattle-snake—Niagara Falls—The rattle-snake—I fall to the edge of the abyss—Twelve days in a hut—Change of manners among the savages—Birth and death—Montaigne-Song of the adder—The little Indian girl, the original of Mila—Incidents—Old Canada—True civilisation spread by religion—False civilisation introduced by commerce—Traders—Agents—Hunts—Half-breeds or Burnt-woods—Wars of the companies—The Indian languages dying out—The old French possessions in America—Regrets—A note from Lord FranÇois Conyngham—The Canadian lakes—A fleet of Indian canoes—The American rivers—Legends—Muscogulges and Siminoles—Our camp—Two Floridan beauties—Ruins on the Ohio—What the Muscogulge damsels were—Arrest of the King at Varennes—I interrupt my journey to go back to Europe—Dangers for the United States—Return to Europe—Shipwreck
VOL. I
The Vicomte de Chateaubriand
Chateaubriand's Birthplace
Combourg Castle
Louis XVI
Malesherbes
Marie Antoinette
Mirabeau
Washington
Many years ago, M. Pierre Louÿs, who had not then achieved his astonishing successes, and I sat talking literature in a Paris cafÉ. The future author of Aphrodite had praise for none save the moderns, of whom he has now become a recognized type and leader. I turned to him suddenly and asked:
"Is there any nineteenth-century French writer at all whom you others read nowadays and approve of?"
"Yes," said Louÿs, "Chateaubriand."
"How do you mean?" said I. "The novels? Atala? The essays?"
"Ah no," he answered: "but the MÉmoires d'outre-tombe, yes. That—that is monumental; that will live for ever."
Our talk drifted to other things; I remembered what Louis had said—for two days: had I come across these Memoirs in the course of my rambles along the quays, I should have bought them; I did not, and bought other books instead.
*
In the winter of 1898, I spent two months at the house of my kinsman, David Teixeira de Mattos, in Amsterdam. It stands on one of the oldest of the canals. It is a quaint, spacious seventeenth-century house, and the habits of the house are of the same date as the architecture: there are few books in it. Knowing this, I had brought books with me, but not enough to last out my stay; and, before very long, I was driven to rummage in the one small, old-fashioned book-case which contained David Teixeira's library. I found it to consist in the main of volumes bearing upon the history of the reigning House of Orange, in whose restoration my kinsman's near predecessors had been concerned; of family records; of the Dutch poets of the early nineteenth century: until, suddenly, I came across a poor little pirated edition of Chateaubriand's masterpiece, printed in Brussels in twenty small parts, and bound up into five small volumes. I carried them to my room, spent three weeks in their perusal, started to read them a second time, and came back to London determined to find a publisher who would undertake the risk of an English translation.
I found one at almost the first asking, and it will ever remain a mystery to me why no complete translation of this admirable work has seen the light in England during the more than fifty years that have elapsed since the MÉmoires d'outre-tombe were first published.
*
The British Museum Library contains two attempts at a translation. One, published in the "Parlour Library of Instruction," is entitled, "An Autobiography. By FranÇois RenÉ, Viscount de Chateaubriand. London and Belfast: Simms & M'Intyre, 1849." It consists of four slim volumes containing in all less than half of the work. The other appeared, under the title of "Memoirs of Chateaubriand. Written by Himself. London: Henry Colburn, 1848-49. To be completed in ten parts," in "Colburn's Standard Library." Only three parts were published, embracing not more than a quarter of the MÉmoires d'Outre-tombe.
In both cases the translator is anonymous; in both cases the translation seems careless and hastily made; in both cases the English version, as I have said, is far from complete.
*
The present translation, by arrangement with the publishers, is complete in so far that no attempt whatever has been made at compression or condensation; nor has a single passage been omitted without the insertion of a footnote pointing out exactly where the omission occurs. The omissions are very few, and consist of the following:
1. All that portion of Chateaubriand's account of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte which touches the period during which the author was not himself residing in France and which is of historical rather than autobiographical interest. This portion Messrs. Freemantle hope to publish later, as a supplemental volume to the Memoirs. Left where it stood, it hampered the action of the work, and its omission is in no way noticeable.
2. Part of the account of the journey to Jerusalem which Chateaubriand quotes from the Itinerary of his body-servant Julien, side by side with his own; also some discursive correspondence and quotations following upon the Itinerary.
3. A selection from the writings of Chateaubriand's sister Lucile (Madame de Caud). This selection is a short one; but it is of interest to none save the author and her brother, and nothing is lost by the omission.
4. Some of the longer quotations from the French or Italian poets, besides a few poems by Chateaubriand himself.
5. One passage, or at most two, which, without being in any sense immoral, seemed to me to contain a little too much of the esprit gaulois to prove acceptable to English taste. I was anxious that not a line should appear which would prevent the universal reading of so fine a work.
*
For the rest, I have striven to perform my task of translation, which has taken me over two years to accomplish, conscientiously, correctly, and above all respectfully. If here and there I have seemed to follow the original a little too closely, my excuse must be that I had too great a respect for this great man to take liberties with his writing. To reproduce his style in another language has been no easy matter: I have done my best.
The volumes will be found to be fully annotated. The author's own notes are so marked; those signed "B." are by M. Edmond BirÉ, the accomplished editor of the latest edition of the Memoirs, from which edition my version has, in the main, been made; those signed "T" are mine. I claim no merit of erudition for these notes: my aim has been merely to give the essential details concerning each new person, belonging to whatever period, mentioned in the work, and, whenever possible, to add the date of his birth and death. More particularly in the case of Chateaubriand's contemporaries, I thought it not without value to furnish a clue to the age and to the stage of their career which they had attained at the time when they were brought into contact with the writer. A full index of all persons mentioned in the MÉmoires d'outre-tombe will be found at the end of the last volume.
*
My thanks are due to M. Louis Cahen, of Paris, who has read and collated most of the proofs and suggested a happy solution of many a difficulty, and to Mr. Frederic J. Simmons for the care with which he has selected the illustrations to the several volumes.
A. T. de M.
Chelsea, December 1901.
Sicut nubes ... quasi naves ... velut umbra.—Job.[2]
As it is not possible for me to foresee the moment of my end; as at my age the days accorded to man are but days of grace, or rather of reprieve, I propose, lest I be taken by surprise, to make an explanation touching a work with which I intend to cheat the tedium of those last forlorn hours which we neither desire, nor know how to employ.
The Memoirs prefaced by these lines embrace and will embrace the whole course of my life: they were commenced in the year 1811 and continued to the present day. I tell in that portion which is already completed, and shall tell in that which as yet is but roughly sketched, the story of my childhood, my education, my youth, my entrance into the service, my arrival in Paris, my presentation to Louis XVI., the early scenes of the Revolution, my travels in America, my return to Europe, my emigration to Germany and England, my return to France under the Consulate, my employment and work under the Empire, my journey to Jerusalem, my employment and work under the Restoration, and finally the complete history of the Restoration and of its fall.
I have met nearly all the men who in my time have played a part, great or small, in my own country or abroad: from Washington to Napoleon, from Louis XVIII. to Alexander, from Pius VII. to Gregory XVI., from Fox, Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, Capo d'Istrias to Malesherbes, Mirabeau and the rest; from Nelson, Bolivar, Mehemet Pasha of Egypt to Suffren, Bougainville, La PÉrouse, Moreau and so forth. I have been one of an unprecedented triumvirate: three poets of different interests and nationality, who filled, within the same decade, the post of minister of Foreign Affairs—myself in France, Mr. Canning in England, SeÑor Martinez de la Rosa in Spain. I have lived successively through the empty years of my youth and the years filled with the Republican Era, the annals of Bonaparte and the reign of the Legitimacy.
I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trod the soil of the four quarters of the globe. After camping in Iroquois shelters and Arab tents, in the wigwams of the Hurons, amid the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Grenada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, in forests and among ruins; after wearing the bearskin of the savage and the silken caftan of the mameluke; after enduring poverty, hunger, thirst and exile, I have sat, as minister and ambassador, in a gold-laced coat, my breast motley with stars and ribbons, at the tables of kings, at the feasts of princes and princesses, only to relapse into indigence and to receive a taste of prison.
I have been connected with a host of personages famous in the career of arms, the Church, politics, law, science and art. I have endless materials in my possession: more than four thousand private letters, the diplomatic correspondence of my several embassies, that of my term at the Foreign Office, including documents of an unique character, known to none save myself. I have carried the soldier's musket, the traveller's cudgel, the pilgrim's staff: I have been a sea-farer, and my destinies have been as fickle as my sails; a halcyon, and made my nest upon the billows.
I have meddled with peace and war; I have signed treaties and protocols, and published numerous works the while. I have been initiated into secrets of parties, of Court and of State: I have been a close observer of the rarest miseries, the highest fortunes, the greatest renowns. I have taken part in sieges, congresses, conclaves, in the restoration and overturning of thrones. I have made history, and I could write it. And my life, solitary, dreamy, poetic, has gone on through this world of realities, catastrophes, tumult, uproar, in the company of the sons of my dreams, Chactas, RenÉ, Eudore, Aben-Hamet, of the daughters of my imagination, Atala, AmÉlie, Blanca, VellÉda, CymodocÉe. Of my age and not of it, I perhaps exercised upon it, without either wishing or seeking to do so, a three-fold influence, religious, political and literary.
There are left to me but four or five contemporaries of established fame. Alfieri, Canova and Monti have disappeared; Italy has only Pindemonte and Manzoni left over from her brilliant days. Pellico has wasted his best days in the cells of the Spielberg: the talents of the land that gave Dante birth are condemned to silence or driven to languish on foreign soil; Lord Byron and Mr. Canning have died young; Walter Scott is no longer with us; Goethe has left us, full of years and glory. France has scarce anything remaining from her abundant past; she is commencing a new era, while I linger behind to bury my period, like the old priest who, in the sack of BÉziers, was to toll the bell before falling himself when the last citizen had expired.
When death lowers the curtain between me and the world, it shall be found that my drama was divided into three acts.
From my early youth until 1800, I was a soldier and a traveller; from 1800 to 1811, under the Consulate and the Empire, my life was given to literature; from the Restoration to the present day, it has been devoted to politics.
During each of my three successive careers, I have always placed some great task before myself: as a traveller, I aimed at discovering the polar world; as a man of letters, I have striven to reconstruct religion from its ruins; as a statesman, I have endeavoured to give to the people the true system of representative monarchy, accompanied with its various liberties: I have at least assisted in winning that liberty which is worth all the others, which replaces them and serves in stead of any constitution, the liberty of the press. When, frequently, I have failed in my enterprises, there has been in my case a failure of destiny. The foreigners who have succeeded in their designs were aided by fortune; they had powerful friends behind them and a peaceful country. I have been less lucky.
Of the modern French authors of my own period, I may be said to be the only one whose life resembles his works: a traveller, soldier, poet, publicist, it is amid forests that I have sung the forest, aboard ship that I have depicted the sea, in camp that I have spoken of arms, in exile that I have learnt to know exile, in Courts, in affairs of State, in Parliament that I have studied princes, politics, law and history. The orators of Greece and Rome played their part in the republic and shared its fate. In Italy and Spain, at the end of the Middle Ages and at the Renascence, the leading intellects in letters and the arts took part in the social movement. How stormy and how fine were the lives of Dante, of Tasso, of CamoËns, of Ercilla, of Cervantes!
In France our ancient poets and historians sang and wrote in the midst of pilgrimages and battles: Thibaut Count of Champagne, Villehardouin, Joinville borrow the felicity of their style from their adventurous careers; Froissart travels the highways in search of history, and learns it from the mouths of the knights and abbots whom he meets, by whose side he rides along the roads. But, commencing from the reign of FranÇois I., our writers have been men leading detached lives, and their talents have perchance expressed the spirit but not the deeds of their age. If I were destined to live, I should represent in my person, as represented in my Memoirs, the principles, the ideas, the events, the catastrophes, the idylls of my time, the more in that I have seen a world end and a world commence, and that the conflicting characters of that ending and that commencement lie intermingled in my opinions. I have found myself caught between two ages as in the conflux of two rivers, and I have plunged into their waters, turning regretfully from the old bank upon which I was born, yet swimming hopefully towards the unknown shore at which the new generations are to land.
These Memoirs, divided into books and parts, have been written at different times and in different places: each section naturally entails a kind of prologue which recalls the occurrences that have arisen since the last date and describes the place in which I resume the thread of my narrative. In this way the various events and the changeful circumstances of my life enter one into the other; it happens that, in moments of prosperity, I have to tell of times of penury, and that, in days of tribulation, I retrace my days of happiness. The diverse opinions formed in diverse periods of my life, my youth penetrating into my old age, the gravity of my years of experience casting a shadow over my lighter years, the rays of my sun, from its rise to its setting, intercrossing and commingling like the scattered reflections of my existence, all these give a sort of indefinable unity to my work; my cradle bears the mark of my tomb, my tomb of my cradle; my hardships become pleasures, my pleasures sorrows, and one no longer knows whether these Memoirs proceed from a dark or a hoary head.
I do not say this in self-praise, for I do not know that it is good; I say what is the fact, what happened without reflection on my part, through the very fickleness of the tempests loosed against my bark, which often have left me but the rock that caused my shipwreck upon which to write this or that fragment of my life.
I have applied to the writing of these Memoirs a really paternal predilection; I would wish to be able to rise at the ghostly hour to correct the proofs: the dead go fast.
The notes accompanying the text are of three kinds: the first, printed at the end of each volume, consist of explanatory documents, proofs and illustrations; the second, printed at the foot of the pages, are contemporary with the text; the third, also printed as foot-notes, have been added after the text was written, and bear the date of the time and place at which they were written. A year or two of solitude spent in some corner of the earth would suffice to enable me to complete my Memoirs; but the only period of rest that I have known was the nine months during which I slept in my mother's womb: it is probable that I shall not recover this antenatal rest until I lie in the entrails of our common mother after death.
Several of my friends have urged me to publish a portion of my story now: I could not bring myself to accede to their wish. In the first place, I should be less candid and less veracious, in spite of myself; and then, I have always imagined myself to be writing seated in my grave. From this my work has assumed a certain religious character, which I could not remove without impairing its merit; it would be painful to me to stifle the distant voice which issues from the tomb, and which makes itself heard throughout the course of this narrative. None will be surprised that I should preserve certain weaknesses, that I should be concerned for the fate of the poor orphan destined to survive me upon earth. Should Minos judge that I had suffered enough in this world to become at least a happy Shade in the next, a little light thrown from the Elysian Fields to illumine my last picture would serve to make the defects of the painter less prominent. Life does not suit me; perhaps death will become me better.
Paris, 1 December, 1833.
TO THE FIRST EDITION[1]
Sicut nubes ... quasi naves ... velut umbra.—Job.[2]
As it is not possible for me to foresee the moment of my end; as at my age the days accorded to man are but days of grace, or rather of reprieve, I propose to make an explanation.
On the 4th of September next I shall have completed my seventy-eighth year: it is high time that I should quit a world which is quitting me and which I do not regret.
The Memoirs prefaced by these lines follow, in their divisions, the natural divisions of my several careers.
The sad necessity which has always held me by the throat has obliged me to sell my Memoirs. None can know what I have suffered by being compelled thus to hypothecate my tomb; but I owed this last sacrifice to my vows and to the consistency of my conduct. With an almost pusillanimous attachment, I looked upon these Memoirs as confidants from whom I would not care to part; my intention was to leave them to Madame de Chateaubriand; she would have published them at will, or suppressed them, as I would have desired more than ever today.
Ah, if, before quitting the earth, I could have found some one rich enough, confiding enough, to buy up the shares of the "Syndicate," and one who would not, like the Syndicate, be under the necessity of sending the work to press so soon as my knell had sounded! Some of the shareholders are my friends; several of them are obliging persons who have sought to assist me; nevertheless the shares have perhaps been sold, they will have been transferred to third parties with whom I am not acquainted, and with whom family interests must take the first place; to the latter it is natural that the prolongation of my days should mean to them, if not an annoyance, at least an actual loss. Lastly, if I were still the owner of these Memoirs, I would either keep them in manuscript or delay their appearance for fifty years.
These Memoirs have been put together at different dates and in different countries. Hence the necessary prologues, which depict the environments upon which I cast my eyes, the thoughts which occupied me at the time when I resume the thread of my narrative. The changeful circumstances of my life have in this way entered one into the other: it has happened that, in moments of prosperity, I have had to tell of times of penury; in days of tribulation, to retrace my days of happiness. My youth penetrating into my old age, the gravity of my years of experience casting a shadow over my lighter years, the rays of my sun, from its rise to its setting, intercrossing and commingling: all these have produced in my recital a sort of confusion, or, if you will, a sort of indefinable unity; my cradle bears the mark of my tomb, my tomb of my cradle; my hardships become pleasures, my pleasures sorrows, and I no longer know, as I finish reading these Memoirs, whether they proceed from a dark or a hoary head.
I cannot tell if this medley, to which I can apply no remedy, will please or displease; it is the fruit of the inconstancy of my fate; often the tempests have left me no writing-table save the rock that has caused my shipwreck.
I have been urged to publish portions of these Memoirs during my life; I prefer to speak from the depths of my grave: my narrative will then be accompanied by those voices which are in a measure consecrated, because they issue from the tomb. If I have suffered enough in this world to become a happy Shade in the next, a ray escaping from the Elysian Fields will cast a protecting light over my last pictures. Life does not suit me; perhaps death will become me better.
These Memoirs have been the object of my predilection. St. Bonaventure obtained from Heaven permission to continue his after death; I hope for no such favour, but I would wish to rise at the ghostly hour at least to correct the proofs. However, when Eternity shall with its two hands have stopped my ears, in the dusty family of the deaf, I shall hear nobody.
If any part of this work has interested me more than another, it is that which relates to my youth, the least-known side of my life. There I have had to reveal to the world what was known to myself alone; in wandering among that vanished company I have met only remembrances and silence: of all the persons I have known, how many are alive today?
The inhabitants of Saint-Malo applied to me, on the 28th of August 1828, through the medium of their mayor, on the subject of a floating dock they wished to build. I hastened to reply, begging, in exchange for my good will, a concession of a few feet of ground, for my tomb, on the Grand-BÉ[3]. This encountered some difficulty, owing to the opposition of the military engineering authorities. At last, on the 27th of October 1831, I received a letter from the mayor, M. Hovius. He said:
"The resting-place which you desire by the side of the sea, at a few steps from your birthplace, will be prepared by the filial piety of the Malouins. A sad thought is mingled with this task. Ah, may the monument remain long unoccupied! But honour and glory survive all that dies upon earth."
I quote these beautiful words of M. Hovius with gratitude; there is but one word too much: "glory."
I shall therefore rest on the shore of the sea which I have loved so well. If I die out of France, I hope that my body will not be brought back to the land of my birth until fifty years shall have been completed since my first burial. Let my remains be spared a sacrilegious autopsy; let not my chilled brain and my dead heart be searched for the mystery of my being. Death does not reveal the secrets of life. A corpse riding post fills me with horror; bones, bleached and light, are easily moved: they will be less fatigued by this last journey than when I dragged them hither and thither, laden with the burden of my cares.
Paris, 14 April, 1846.
Revised 28 July, 1846.
1768-1800
Birth of my brothers and sisters—My own birth-PlancoËt—I am vowed—Combourg—My father's scheme of education for me—Villeneuve—Lucile—Mesdemoiselles Couppart—I am a bad pupil—The life led by my maternal grandmother and her sister at PlancoËt—My uncle, the Comte de BedÉe, at Monchoix—I am relieved from my nurse's vow—Holidays—Saint-Malo—Gesril—Hervine Magon—Fight with two ship's lads.
Four years ago, on my return from the Holy Land, I purchased near the little village of Aulnay, in the neighbourhood of Sceaux[2] and ChÂtenay, a small country-house, lying hidden among wooded hills. The sandy and uneven ground attached to this house consisted of a sort of wild orchard, at the end of which was a ravine and a coppice of chestnut-trees. This narrow space seemed to me fitted to contain my long hopes: spatio brevi spem longam reseces[3]. The trees which I have planted here are thriving. They are still so small that I can shade them by placing myself between them and the sun. One day they will give me shade and protect my old age as I have protected their youth. I have selected them, in so far as I could, from the different climes in which I have wandered; they recall my travels and foster other illusions in my heart.
If ever the Bourbons reascend the throne, I will ask from them no greater reward for my loyalty than that they should make me rich enough to add to my fee-simple the skirts of the surrounding woods: I have grown ambitious, and would wish to expand my walks by a few roods. Knight-errant though I be, I have the sedentary tastes of a monk: I doubt whether, since taking up my abode in this retreat, I have thrice set foot without my boundary. If my pines, my fir-trees, my larches, my cedars ever keep their promise, the VallÉe-aux-Loups will become a veritable hermitage. When, on the 20th of February 1694,[4] Voltaire saw the light at ChÂtenay, what was then the appearance of the hill to which the author of the GÉnie du Christianisme was to retire in 1807?
This spot pleases me; it has taken the place of my paternal acres; I have bought it with the price of my dreams and my vigils; I owe the little wilderness of Aulnay to the vast wilderness of Atala; and I have not, in order to acquire this refuge, imitated the American planter and despoiled the Indian of the Two Floridas[5]. I am attached to my trees; I have addressed elegies to them, sonnets, odes. There is not one of them which I have not tended with my own hands, which I have not rid of the worm attached to its roots, the caterpillar clinging to its leaves; I know them all by their names, as though they were my children: they are my family, I have no other, and I hope to die in their midst.
Here, I have written the Martyrs, the Abencerages, the ItinÉraire and MoÏse; what shall I do now during these autumn evenings? This 4th day of October 1811, the anniversary of my saint's-day[6] and of my entrance into Jerusalem,[7] tempts me to commence the history of my life. The man who today is endowing France with the empire of the world only so that he may trample her under foot, the man whose genius I admire and whose despotism I abhor, that man surrounds me with his tyranny as it were with a new solitude; but though he may crush the present, the past defies him, and I remain free in all that precedes his glory.
The greater part of my feelings have remained buried in the recesses of my soul, or are displayed in my works only as applied to imaginary beings. To-day, while I still regret, without pursuing, my illusions, I will reascend the acclivity of my happier years: these Memoirs shall be a shrine erected to the clearness of my remembrances.
My birth and ancestry.
Let us commence, then, and speak first of my family. This is essential, because the character of my father depended in a great measure upon his position and, in its turn, exercised a great influence upon the nature of my ideas, by determining the manner of my education[8].
*
I am of noble birth. In my opinion I have improved the hazard of my cradle and retained that firmer love of liberty which belongs principally to the aristocracy whose last hour has struck. Aristocracy has three ages: the age of superiority, the age of privilege, the age of vanity; issuing from the first, it degenerates in the second to become extinguished in the third.
He who is curious for information concerning my family may consult MorÉri's[9] Dictionary, the different Histories of Brittany by d'ArgentrÉ[10], Dom Lobineau[11], Dom Morice, PÈre Du Paz' Histoire gÉnÉalogique de plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne, Toussaint de Saint-Luc, Le Borgne, and lastly PÈre Anselme's Histoire des grands officiers de la Couronne.[12]
My proofs of descent were made out by ChÉrin[13], for the admission of my sister Lucile as a canoness of the Chapter of the ArgentiÈre, whence she was to be transferred to that of Remiremont. They were reproduced for my presentation to Louis XVI., again for my affiliation to the Order of Malta, and lastly, when my brother was presented to the same unfortunate Louis XVI.
My name was first written "Brien," and then "Briant" and "Briand," following the invasion of French spelling. Guillaume le Breton says "Castrum-Briani." There is not a French name that does not present these literal variations. What is the spelling of Du Guesclin?
About the commencement of the eleventh century, the Briens gave their name to an important Breton castle, and this castle became the burgh of the Barony of Chateaubriand. The Chateaubriand arms at first consisted of fir-cones with the motto, Je sÈme l'or. Geoffrey Baron of Chateaubriand accompanied St Louis to Palestine. He was taken prisoner at the battle of the Mansourah[14], but returned, and his wife Sybil died of joy and surprise at seeing him. St. Louis, in reward for his services, granted to him and his heirs, in lieu of his old arms, an escutcheon gules, strewn with fleur-de-lis or: "Cui et ejus hÆredibus" a cartulary of the Priory of BÉrÉe bears witness, "sanctus Ludovicus turn Francorum rex, propter ejus probitatem in armis, flores lilii auri, loco pomorum pini auri, contulit."
