François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book I
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved.
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Book
I: Chapter 2: Birth of my brothers and sisters - I arrive in the world.
Book
I: Chapter 5: Gesril – Hervine Magon – The fight with the two ship’s boys
Book
I: Chapter 7: Departure for Combourg – A description of the Château
La Vallée-aux-Loups, near Aulnay, this
BkI:Chap1:Sec1
It is four years now since, on my return from the
If ever the Bourbons return to the throne, I will ask as
recompense for my loyalty, only that they enrich me enough to join the edge of
the surrounding woods to my property: ambition possesses me; I would like to
extend my walks by a few acres: knight-errant though I am I have the sedentary
habits of a monk: since inhabiting this retreat, I don’t think I have set foot
outside my close three times. If my pines, firs, larches and cedars ever fulfil
their promise, the Vallée-aux-Loups will become a veritable charterhouse. When Voltaire was born at Châtenay, on
The place pleases me; since, for me,
it has replaced my ancestral fields; I have paid for it with the products of my
dreams and my waking hours; it is to the great wilderness of Atala that I owe the little wilderness
of Aulnay; and to create this refuge I have not, like the American settlers,
despoiled the Florida Indians. I am attached to my trees; I have addressed
elegies, sonnets, and odes to them. There is not one of them that I have not
tended with my own hands, that I have not rescued from root-beetles, from
caterpillars glued to its leaves; I know them all by name as if they were my
children: they are my family, I have no other, and I hope to die among them.
Here, I
wrote Les Martyrs, Les Abencerages,
L’Itinéraire and Moïse; what shall
I do now with these autumn evenings? This
Most of
my feelings remain buried deep in my heart, or have only been revealed in my
works as if applied to imaginary beings. Now that I miss my chimeras, without
pursuing them, I want to revive the inclinations of my best years: these Mémoires will be a mortuary temple
erected by the light of my memories.
My
father’s birth and the ordeals he endured in his early life, endowed him with
one of the most sombre characters there has ever been. This character
influenced my ideas by terrifying my childhood, saddening my youth, and
determining the nature of my upbringing.
I was
born a gentleman. As I see it, I have profited from this accident of the
cradle, maintaining that firm love of liberty that especially belongs to an
aristocracy whose last hour has struck. Aristocracy has three successive ages:
the age of superiority, the age of privilege, the age of vanity; leaving the
first behind it degenerates in the second and expires in the last.
Anyone
can enquire about my family, if the fancy takes them, in Moréri’s dictionary,
in the various histories of Brittany by D’Argentré, Dom Lobineau and Dom Morice, in the Histoire
généalogique du plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne by Père Dupaz, in Toussaint Saint-Luc, Le Borgne, and finally in
the Histoire des grands officiers de la
Couronne, by Père Anselme. (This genealogy is summarized in the Histoire généalogique et héraldique des
Pairs de France, des grands dignitaries de la Couronne, by Monsieur Le
Chevalier de Courcelles.)
The
proofs of my lineage were established by Chérin, for the
admission of my sister Lucile as a canoness
to the Chapter of L’Argentière, from which she was to pass to that of Remiremont; they were produced for my presentation to Louis XVI, again for my
affiliation to the Order of Malta, and again, for the last time, when my brother was
presented to that same unfortunate Louis XVI.
My name
was first written as Brien, then as Briant and Briand, through an invasion of French orthography. Guillaume le Breton gives it as Castrum-Briani.
There isn’t a name in
About
the beginning of the eleventh century the Briens gave their name to an important château in
The Chateaubriands split into three
branches from the very start: the first, known as the Barons de Chateaubriand, and the root-stock of the other two, originating in
the year 1000 in the person of Thiern, son of Brien, grandson of Alain III, Count or Leader of Brittany: the second, named the Seigneurs des Roches Baritaut, or Seigneurs
du Lion d’Angers; and the third going
under the name of the Sires de Beaufort.
When the line of the Sires de Beaufort
ended, in the person of Dame Renée, one Christophe II a collateral branch of this line held a share of land
at La Guérande en Morbihan. At this time, towards the middle of the seventeenth
century, there was widespread confusion in the ranks of the nobility, names and
titles having been usurped. Louis XIV ordered an enquiry, in order to re-establish
everyone’s rights. Christophe was maintained in possession, on proof of his descent
from ancient nobility, of his title, and his coat of arms, by order of the
Tribunal established at Rennes in order to re-validate the nobility of
‘Order of the Tribunal established by
the King (Louis XIV) for the re-establishment of the nobility in Brittany,
given 16th September 1669: Between the King’s Attorney-General and Monsieur
Christophe de Chateaubriand, Sieur de La Guérande: the which declares the
aforesaid Christophe to be of noble extraction, and permits him to adopt the
rank of Chevalier, and maintains his right to bear arms, of gules powdered with
golden fleurs-de-lys, to any number, and this after the production by him of
his authentic titles, of which there here appear, etc., etc., the aforesaid
order signed by Malescot.’
This
order confirms that Christophe de Chateaubriand de la Guérande was directly
descended from the Chateaubriands who were Sires de Beaufort: the Sires de Beaufort
being linked by historical documents to the first Barons de Chateaubriand. The
Chateaubriands of Villeneuve, Plessis and Combourg are cadet branches of the
Chateaubriands of La Guérande, as is shown by the descendants of Amaury, brother of Michel, which Michel was the brother of Christophe de La Guérande,
his lineage confirmed by this order of reformation of the nobility, given above
here, of
After
my presentation to Louis XVI, my brother thought to augment my fortune as a
younger son by providing me with some of those ecclesiastical benefits known as
bénéfices simples. There was only one
practical means of achieving this, since I was a layman and a soldier, which
was to enrol me in the Order of Malta. My brother sent my proofs to
The
President of the Chapter was Louis-Joseph des Escotais, Bailiff and
Grand Prior of Aquitaine, assisted by the Bailiff of Freslon, the Chevalier
de La Laurencie, the Chevalier de Murat, the Chevalier
de Lanjamet, the Chevalier de La Bourdonnay-Montluc, and the Chevalier du Bouëtiez. The request
was granted on the 9th, 10th and 11th of September 1789. It was said, in the
terms of admission of the Mémorial,
that I deserved the favour I was soliciting on
more than one ground, and that considerations of the greatest weight made
me worthy of the honour I requested.
And all
this took place after the taking of the Bastille, on the eve of
the scenes of
BkI:Chap1:Sec6
My brother’s eldest son (I am adding
this in 1831 to my original text written in 1811), Comte Louis de Chateaubriand,
had married Mademoiselle d’Orglandes,
by whom he had five daughters and a son, named Geoffroy. Christian, younger
brother of Louis, great-grandson and godchild of Monsieur de Malesherbes, and with a striking
resemblance to him, served with distinction in
By the division of the family
patrimony, Christian inherited the estate of Malesherbes, and Louis the estate
of Combourg. Christian not considering the equal division legitimate, wished,
in turning his back on the world, to relinquish the worldly goods that did not
belong to him and gave them to his elder brother.
In view of my lineage, it would be my affair
alone if I were to inherit my father’s and brother’s conceit in believing
myself a younger scion of the Dukes of Brittany, descended from Thiern, grandson of Alain III.
The aforesaid Chateaubriands have
twice mingled their blood with the blood of the English sovereigns, Geoffroy IV de Chateaubriand
having taken as his second wife Agnès de
Laval, grand-daughter of the Count of Anjou and Matilda, daughter of Henry I; Marguerite de Lusignan, widow of the English King, and
grand-daughter of Louis-le-Gros, was
married to Geoffroy V, twelfth
Baron de Chateaubriand. Regarding the Spanish royal race we find Brien, younger brother of the ninth Baron de
Chateaubriand, who was married to Jeanne,
daughter of Alphonse, King of
Aragon. Regarding the great families of
I would
never finish if I were to recount everything of which I have chosen to give
only a short summary: the note I intend to place at the end, out of
consideration for my two nephews, who are no doubt as well versed as I am in
these old woes, will replace what I omit in this text. However, these days, people
go a little too far; it has become common to declare that one is working class,
that one has the honour of being the son of a man of the soil. Are these boasts
as disinterested as they are philosophical? Are they not a way of siding with
the stronger party? The Marquesses, Counts and Barons of our day, possessing
neither land or privileges, three-quarters of them dying of hunger, denigrating
one another, refusing to recognise one another, challenging one another’s
titles; these nobles, whose own names are denied them, or who are only granted one
with reservations, can they inspire fear? However I wish to be pardoned for
having been obliged to descend to these puerile recitations, in order to
explain my father’s ruling passion, a passion which formed the crux of my
youthful drama. For my part, I neither glorify nor complain of the old social
order or the new. If, in the first, I was the Chevalier or Vicomte de
Chateaubriand, in the second I am François de Chateaubriand; I prefer my name
to my title.
My father
would readily, like a great medieval land-owner, have called God the Gentleman up there, and named Nicodemus (the Nicodemus
of the Gospels) a holy gentleman.
Now, passing by way of my begetter, we arrive at Christophe, sovereign lord of La Guérande, and descend in direct
line from the Barons of Chateaubriand to myself, Francois, vassal-less,
penniless Lord of the Vallée-aux-Loups.
Going
back through the lineage of the Chateaubriands, and its three branches, two of
the branches died out, while the third, that of the Sires de Beaufort, extended
by a branch (the Chateaubriands of La Guérande), grew poorer, an inevitable
consequence of the country’s laws: the elder sons appropriated two thirds of
the estate, according to Breton custom; the younger sons divided a mere third
of the paternal inheritance between them. The erosion of the latter’s meagre
inheritance occurred all the more rapidly through marriage; and as the same
distribution of two to one also applied to their offspring, the younger sons of
younger sons swiftly arrived at the division of a pigeon, a rabbit, a duck-pond
and a hunting dog, though they still remained noble knights and powerful lords of a dove-cote, a toad-hole, and a
rabbit-warren. In the old aristocratic families you find a quantity of younger
sons: tracing them through two or three generations, then they vanish,
descending little by little to the plough, or absorbed by the working classes,
without anyone knowing what has become of them.
The head of the family in name, and
arms, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was Alexis de
Chateaubriand, Lord of La Guérande, the son of Michel, which
Michel had a brother Amaury.
Michel was the son of that Christophe,
confirmed in his lineage from the Sires de Beaufort
and Barons de Chateaubriand by the previously mentioned order. Alexis de la
Guérande was a widower; a confirmed drunkard, spending his days in drink,
living in disorder amongst his servants, and employing the noblest title-deeds
of his house to cover jars of butter.
Contemporary with this head of the
family in name and arms, there lived his cousin François, the son
of Amaury, younger brother of Michel. Francois, born on
To complete the misery, my grandmother
was thwarted in her plans by her sons’ characters: the eldest François-Henri,
on whom the magnificent estate of Villeneuve devolved, refused to marry and
became a priest; but instead of applying for the benefices his name could have
procured and with which he might have supported his brothers, he sought nothing,
out of pride and indifference. He buried himself in a country living and was
successively rector of Saint-Launeuc
and Merdrignac in the diocese of Saint-Malo. He had a passion for
poetry; I have seen a good number of his verses. The jovial character of this
sort of aristocratic Rabelais, the cult
of the Muses practised by this Christian
priest in a presbytery excited curiosity. He gave away all he owned and died
bankrupt.
The last of the four brothers Joseph
went to
My grandmother, worn out trying to
make something of her eldest and youngest sons, could do nothing for the other
two, René, my father,
and Pierre, my uncle.
This family which has ‘scattered gold’, according to its motto, could see from
its country seat the rich abbeys it had founded, and which enclosed its
ancestors. It had presided over the States of Brittany, being possessed of one
of the nine baronies; it had added its signature to the treaties between
sovereigns, served as surety for Clisson,
and still lacked the influence to obtain a second-lieutenant’s commission for
the heir to its name.
The one recourse left to the
poverty-stricken Breton nobility was the Royal Navy: they decided to take
advantage of it in my father’s case; but it meant him going to Brest, living there, paying his instructors,
buying his uniform, weapons, books, mathematical instruments: how to defray all
these expenses? The commission requested from the Minister for the Navy failed
to arrive, for want of a patron to solicit its despatch: the lady of Villeneuve fell ill with
grief.
Then my father showed the first sign
of that determined character that I later recognised in him. He was about
fifteen years old: becoming aware of his mother’s anxiety, he approached the
bed where she lay and said: I don’t wish to be a burden on you, any longer.’ At
this my grandmother began to cry (I’ve heard my father describe this scene a
score of times). ‘René,’ she replied, ‘what would you do? Cultivate your
field.’ ‘It can’t feed us all: let me go.’ ‘Ah well,’ said his mother, ‘go
then, wherever God wishes you to go.’ She embraced him, in tears. That very evening
my father quitted his mother’s farm and went to Dinan
where one of our relations gave him a letter of recommendation to a citizen of Saint-Malo. The orphan adventurer
was signed on as a volunteer, on an armed schooner, which set sail a few days
later.
The little
My
grandmother entrusted to her son René her son Pierre, Monsieur Chateaubriand du Plessis, whose son, Armand de Chateaubriand, was shot, on Bonaparte’s orders, on
Good Friday of 1809. He was one of the last French nobles to die for the
Monarchist cause. My father undertook to look after his brother, though he had
contracted, from habitual suffering, a rigidity of character which he retained
all his life; Virgil’s Non ignara
Monsieur
de Chateaubriand was tall and gaunt; he had an aquiline nose, thin pale lips,
and small deep-set eyes, sea-green or glaucous, like those of lions or barbarians
of old. I have never seen eyes like his: when anger filled them the glittering
pupils seemed to detach themselves and issue forth to strike you like bullets.
One
passion alone gripped my father, that of his name. His habitual state was a
profound sadness that age deepened, and a silence that he only emerged from to
vent his anger. Avaricious, in the hope of restoring his family to its former
glory, haughty with the nobles at the States of Brittany, harsh with his
vassals at Combourg, taciturn, despotic and menacing at home, seeing him
one felt fear. If he had lived to experience the Revolution, and if he had been
younger, he would have played an important part, or been massacred in his
château. He certainly possessed genius: I have no doubt that in charge of the
administration or the army he would have proved an extraordinary man.
It was on his return from
My mother,
endowed with plenty of spirit and a prodigious imagination, had been formed by
reading Fénelon, Racine, and Madame de Sévigné, and fed with
anecdotes of Louis XIV’s court; she knew the whole of Cyrus by heart. Apolline de Bedée, with large features, was
small, dark, and plain; the elegance of her manners and the liveliness of her
temperament contrasted with my father’s severity and calm. Loving society as
much as he loved solitude, as high-spirited and animated as he was cold and
unmoving, she had not a single taste that was not opposed to those of her
husband. The opposition she experienced made her melancholy, instead of happy
and light-hearted. Obliged to be silent when she would have wished to speak,
she compensated for it with a kind of noisy sadness broken by sighs, which
alone interrupted my father’s mute sadness. In piety, my mother was an angel.
La Vallée-aux-Loups,
My
mother gave birth at Saint-Malo to a son who died in infancy, and who was named Geoffroy, like nearly
all the eldest sons in my family. This son was followed by another and by two
daughters who lived only a few months.
These
four children died of a rush of blood to the brain. Finally, my mother brought
a third boy into the world, named Jean-Baptiste: it was he who later became the grandson-in-law of
Monsieur de Malesherbes. After Jean-Baptiste four daughters were born: Marie-Anne, Bénigne, Julie and Lucile, all four of
rare beauty: and of whom only the two eldest survived the storms of the
Revolution. Beauty that serious frivolity remains when all the rest have gone. I
was the last of these ten infants. It is probable that my four sisters owe
their existence to my father’s desire to see his name secured by the arrival of a
second boy; I tarried, I had an aversion for life.
Here is
my baptismal certificate:
‘Extract from the civil register of the Commune of Saint-Malo
for the year 1768.
François-René de Chateaubriand, son of René de Chateaubriand and
Pauline-Jeanne Suzanne de Bedée, his wife, born on
One
sees that I was mistaken in my writings: I set myself down as being born on the
4th October not the 4th September; my Christian names are
François-René, and not François-Auguste.
The
house my parents occupied at that time is situated in a dark, narrow street in
La Vallée-aux-Loups, January 1812.
Emerging
from my mother’s womb, I suffered my first exile; they relegated me
to Plancoët, a pretty village situated between Dinan, Saint-Malo and Lamballe. My mother’s
only brother, the Comte de Bedée, had built the
Château of Monchoix close to the village.
My maternal grandmother’s property in the region extended as far as the
little market town of Corseul, the Curiosolites
of Caesar’s Commentaries. My grandmother, long a widow, lived with her sister
Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul, in a hamlet separated from Plancoët by a bridge, and
called L’Abbaye, because of the Benedictine abbey, sacred to Our Lady of
Nazareth.
My wet nurse
was found to be sterile; another poor Christian took me to her breast. She
dedicated me to the patroness of the hamlet, Our Lady of Nazareth, and promised
her I would wear blue and white in her honour until I was seven. I was only a
few hours old, and the burden of time had already marked my brow. Why did they
not let me die? It entered into God’s counsels to answer the vow, made in
obscurity and innocence, with the preservation of a life which idle fame
threatened to extinguish.
That
vow, of the Breton peasant-woman, is no longer of our century: it was however a
touching thing, which a divine Mother’s intercession established between a
child and Heaven, sharing the concerns of the earthly mother.
After
three years I was taken back to Saint-Malo; it was already seven years since my father had regained the Combourg estate. He
wished to enter again into the possessions his ancestors had held; unable to
negotiate for the lordship of Beaufort, which had passed to the Goyon family, nor
the barony of Chateaubriand, which had fallen to the house of Condé, he turned his
gaze towards Combourg, which Froissart calls Combour: several branches of my family
had owned it through marriages with the Coëtquens. Combourg
defended
I was destined for the Royal Navy: disdain for the
court was natural to all Bretons, and particularly my father. The aristocracy of our States reinforced the
sentiment in him.
When I
was brought back to Saint-Malo, my father was at Combourg, my brother at the
All the
latter’s affections were concentrated on her eldest son; not that she failed to
cherish her other children, but she showed a blind preference to the young
Comte de Combourg. It is true that as a boy, as a late-comer, as the Chevalier
(so I was called), I had certain privileges compared to my sisters; but
ultimately I was left in the hands of servants. Moreover my mother, full of wit
and virtue, was preoccupied with the cares of society and the duties of
religion. The Comtesse de Plouër, my godmother,
was her intimate friend; she also knew Maupertuis’ parents, and those of the Abbé Trublet. She loved politics;
noise; the world: for one played politics at
The
first sentiments of my life arose from these characteristics of my parents. I
was attached to the woman who cared for me, an excellent creature called La Villeneuve, whose name I write with a feeling of gratitude and
tears in my eyes. La Villeneuve was a kind of superior nurse to the household,
carrying me in her arms, secretly giving me anything she could find, wiping
away my tears, kissing me, dropping me in a corner, picking me up again and
muttering all the time: ‘This one won’t be proud! He’s good-hearted! He’s not
hard on poor folk! Here, little fellow,’ and she would fill me with wine and
sugar.
My
childish affection for La Villeneuve was soon eclipsed by a worthier
friendship.
Lucile, the fourth of
my sisters, was two years older than me. A neglected younger daughter, her
clothes were simply her sisters’ cast-offs. Imagine a thin, little girl, too
tall for her age, with gangling arms, a timid air, speaking with difficulty,
and unable to learn a thing: give her a borrowed dress of a different size than
her own; enclose her chest in a bony bodice whose points chafed her sides;
support her neck with an iron collar trimmed with brown velvet; coil her hair
on the top of her head, and hold it there with a toque of some black material;
and you behold the wretched creature who struck my sight on returning to the
paternal roof. No one would have suspected in this pitiful Lucile the talents
and beauty that would one day illuminate her.
She was
handed over to me like a toy; I did not abuse my power; instead of submitting
her to my will, I became her defender. Every morning I was taken with her to
the house of the Couppart sisters; two old hunchbacks dressed in black, who
taught children to read. Lucile read very badly; I read even worse. They
scolded her; I scratched the sisters; serious complaint was made to my mother.
I began to pass as a good-for-nothing, a rebel, an idler, ultimately a donkey.
These ideas became entrenched in my parents’ minds: my father would say that
all the Chevaliers de Chateaubriand had chased hares, were drunkards and
brawlers. My mother sighed and grumbled on seeing the state of my jacket. Child
though I was, my father’s words made me bridle; when my mother crowned her
remonstrance with a eulogy of my brother whom she called a Cato, a hero, I
felt disposed to commit every wickedness that seemed expected of me.
My
writing-master, Monsieur Després, with a sailor’s wig, was no more satisfied with me
than my parents were; he made me copy eternally, following a sample in his
style, these two lines of verse that I held in horror, not through any fault in the
language displayed:
It is you, my spirit, to whom I wish to
speak:
You possess those failings which I
cannot conceal.
He accompanied these reprimands with blows from his
fist which he landed on my neck, calling me a dizzard-head; did he mean dizzy? I don’t know what a dizzard-head is, but I take it to be something
horrible.
Saint-Malo is nothing but a rock. Once rising from the midst of
a marsh, it became an island by the invasion of the sea, which, in 709,
hollowed out the bay and set Mont Saint-Michel in the midst of the waves. Today, the rock of
At the
end of the Sillon, set with a calvary, you find a mound of sand at the edge of
the open sea. This mound is called La Hoguette; it is topped by an old gibbet: the uprights served
for our games of puss in the corner; we disputed possession with the sea-birds.
But it was not without a certain terror that we lingered in this spot.
There,
the Miels are to be found also, dunes where sheep grazed; to
the right are the meadows at the foot of Paramé, the post-road
to Saint-Servan, the new cemetery, a calvary, and windmills on
hillocks, like those which stand on Achilles’ grave at the
entrance to the Hellespont.
I reached my seventh year; my mother
took me to Plancoët, in order to be released from my wet nurse’s vow; we
stayed with my grandmother. If I have ever known happiness, it was certainly in
that house.
My grandmother occupied, in the Rue du
Hameau de L’Abbaye, a house whose gardens descended in terraces to a valley, at
the bottom of which was a spring surrounded by willows. Madame de Bedée could no longer walk, but apart from that she had
none of the disabilities of her age: she was a charming old lady, plump, white,
neat, distinguished in appearance, with fine aristocratic manners, wearing
old-fashioned pleated dresses and a black lace cap tied under the chin. Her wit
was mannered, her conversation grave, her temperament serious. She was cared
for by her sister, Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul, who resembled her only in her kindness. The latter
was a thin little creature, playful, talkative and full of raillery. She had
loved a certain Comte de Trémigon, who had vowed to marry her, but had then broken his
promise. My aunt consoled herself by celebrating her love, for she was a poet.
I often remember hearing her singing in a nasal voice, spectacles perched on
her nose, while she embroidered double-cuffs for her sister, an apologia that
began thus:
A
sparrow-hawk loved a warbler
And, so
they say, was loved by her.
which always
seemed a strange thing to me for a sparrow-hawk to do. The song ended with the
refrain:
Ah!
Trémigon, is the tale obscure?
Toora-loora.
How many things
in this world end like my aunt’s love-affair in toora-loora!
My grandmother trusted her sister with
the running of the house. She dined at eleven in the morning, followed by her
siesta; she woke at one; she was carried down the garden-terraces to the
willows by the spring, where she knitted, surrounded by her sister, her
children, and her grand-children. In those days old age was a dignity; today it
is a burden. At four, she was carried back to the drawing-room; Pierre, the servant, set out a card-table; Mademoiselle de
Boisteilleul rapped on the fire-back with the tongs and, a few moments later,
three more old ladies appeared who came from the neighbouring house at my
great-aunt’s summons. These three sisters were the Desmoiselles Vildéneux; daughters of an impoverished gentleman, who instead
of dividing their meagre inheritance enjoyed it in common, had never separated
and never left their native village. Close to my grandmother since childhood,
they lived next door and came every day at the agreed signal, sounded out on
the fire-back, to play quadrille with their friend. The game began; the good
ladies quarrelled: it was the only event in their lives, the only time when the
equanimity of their tempers altered. At eight, supper restored their serenity.
Often my uncle De Bedée, with his son and three daughters, joined the old
lady’s supper. The latter told a thousand stories of the old days; my uncle, in
turn, recounted the Battle of Fontenoy, in which he had taken part, and crowned his boasting with somewhat frank
anecdotes which made the good ladies faint with laughter. At nine, with supper
over, the servants entered; everybody knelt, and Mademoiselle de Boisteilleul
said prayers aloud. At ten the whole house was asleep, except my grandmother,
who was read to by her maid until one in the morning.
That society, the first I took note of
in my life, is also the first that vanished from my eyes. I saw death enter
that house of blessing and peace, render it more and more solitary, closing one
door and then another which opened no longer. I saw my grandmother forced to
renounce her quadrille, lacking her customary partners; I saw the number of her
loyal friends diminish, until the day when she fell, the last. She and her
sister had promised to summon each other if the one arrived before the other; they
had kept their word and Madame de Bedée only survived Mademoiselle de
Boisteilleul by a month. I am probably the only person in the world who knows
that those people existed. Twenty times, since that day, I have made the same
comment; twenty times social groups have formed around me and dissolved. The
impossibility of continuance and duration in human relationships, the profound
oblivion that follows us, the unconquerable silence that shrouds our grave and
extends from there to cover our house, continually reminds me of the need for
solitude. Any hand will do to gift us the glass of water that we may want in
our death-fever. Ah! May it not be one too dear to us! For how shall we abandon
without despair the hand that we have covered with kisses and that we would
hold to our heart for eternity?
The
Comte de Bedée’s chateau was situated a league from Plancoët, in a pleasant
elevated position. Everything there breathed joy; my uncle’s good humour was
inexhaustible. He had three daughters, Caroline, Marie and Flore, and a son,
the Comte de la Bouëtardais, a councillor in the High Court, who all shared his
lightness of heart. Monchoix was full of cousins from the neighbourhood; there was
music, dancing, hunting, merrymaking from morning to night. My aunt, Madame de Bedée, seeing my
uncle cheerfully consuming his capital and revenue, quite reasonably grew angry
with him; but nobody listened, and her bad humour increased the family’s good
humour; particularly as my aunt was herself subject to a host of fads: she always
had a large fierce hunting dog cradled in her lap, and a tame boar following
her that filled the château with its grunts. When I came to this house of
festivity and noise from my father’s house, so sombre and silent, I found
myself in a veritable paradise. The contrast became more striking once my
family were settled in the country: to travel from Combourg to Monchoix, was to
travel from the desert into the world, from the keep of a medieval baron to the
villa of a Roman prince.
On
Ascension Day 1775, I left my grandmother’s house, with my mother, my
great-aunt De Boisteilleul, my uncle De Bedée and his children, my nurse and my
foster-brother, for Notre-Dame de Nazareth. I was wearing a long white robe,
white shoes, gloves and hat, and a blue silk sash. We reached the Abbey at ten
in the morning. The monastery, sited by the roadside, was dated by a quincunx
of elms from the time of Jean V of
The
monks were already in their stalls; the altar was illuminated by a host of
candles; lamps hung from the various arches: in Gothic buildings there are
perspectives and, so to speak, successive horizons. The beadles came to meet
me, ceremoniously, at the door, and conducted me to the choir. Three chairs had
been set out: I took my place on the middle one; my nurse sat on my left; my
foster-brother on my right.
The
mass commenced: at the offertory the priest turned towards me and read out
certain prayers; after which my white clothes were removed, and hung as an ex-voto beneath an image of the Virgin.
I was then dressed in a purple habit. The prior delivered a discourse on the efficacy
of vows; he recalled the tale of that Baron de Chateaubriand who travelled to the East with Saint Louis; he told me
that I might also perhaps visit, in
Tu proverai sì comme sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com’ è duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l’atrui
scale.
E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia,
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si farà contra a te; …………………...
……………………………………….
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la prova: sì che a te fia
L’averti fatta parte per te stesso.
You’ll prove
how salt the taste, there
Of another’s
bread, how hard the path
To climb and to
descend another’s stair.
And what will
most weigh on your back
Will be that company,
vicious and bad,
With which you’ll
fall into that crack,
For all of them
ungrateful, impious, mad
Will be against
you; ……………………
………………………………………….
Their careers
will prove their brutishness
So that it will
be a worthy thing for you
To have made a party
of one of yourself.
After the
Benedictine’s exhortation, I always dreamt of the pilgrimage to
I have been
dedicated to religion; the garments of my innocence have rested on its altars:
it is not my clothing that should be hung there today, in its temples, but my
sufferings.
I was brought back to Saint-Malo.
Malo,
in Latin Maclovius, Macutus, Machutes,
having become Bishop of Aleth in 541, drawn there as he was by the celebrated
Aaron visited him. Chaplain of that hermit’s oratory, after the death of the
saint, he built a monastic church, in
proedio Machutis (on land belonging to Machutis).The name Malo was
transferred to the island, and afterwards to the town Maclovium, Maclopolis.
From
The Earl of Richmond, later Henry VII of
A Bishop of Saint-Malo was one of the
three favourites (the other two were Arthur de Montauban and Jean Hingaut) who ruined the unfortunate Gilles de Bretagne: this one can
read in the Histoire lamentable de
Gilles, seigneur de Chateaubriand et de Chantocé, prince du sang de France et
de Bretagne, étranglé en prison par les ministres du favori, le 24 avril 1450.
There was a handsome mutual capitulation
between Henri IV and Saint-Malo: the town negotiated
with strength from a position of strength, protected those who were refugees within
its walls, and achieved the right, by an ordinance of Philibert de la Guiche, Grand-Master of the French
artillery, to cast a hundred pieces of cannon. Nowhere resembled Venice (full of light and the arts) more than
that little
From the reign of Henri IV my native
town distinguished itself by its devotion and loyalty to
The inhabitants of
In 1771, the inhabitants of
Saint-Malo furnished the best sailors in our navy; their role in
general can be seen in the folio volume, published in 1682, under the title: Rôle général des officiers, mariniers et
matelots de
The
Abbé de Lamennais has left far in his wake these little literary notices
of my native place. Broussais equally was born at
Finally,
in order to omit nothing, I recall the mastiffs that form the garrison of
Encircled
by walls of various ages, classed as the great
and small, and on which the
people stroll, Saint-Malo is still defended by the château of which I spoke,
and to which the Duchesse Anne added towers, bastions and moats. Seen from without,
the island city resembles a granite citadel.
Children
gather on the shore of the open sea, between the château and Fort Royal; it is there that I have been a pupil, companion of
the waves and winds. One of the first pleasures I tasted was to contend with
the storms, to play with the breakers that retreated before me, or ran after me
along the beach. Another game was to make monuments out of sand which my
friends called fours (cakes). Since
that time, I have often seen castles built for eternity that have collapsed more
swiftly than my palaces of sand.
My fate
having been decided irrevocably, I was abandoned to an idle childhood. A few
notions of drawing, the English language, hydrography and mathematics, seemed
more than adequate an education for a little boy destined in advance for the rough
life of a sailor.
I grew
up at home, without any course of study; we no longer lived in the house where
I was born: my mother occupied a large house, in the Place Saint-Vincent, almost opposite the town-gate that lead to the Sillon.
The young urchins of the town had become my dearest friends: I filled the
stairs and courtyard of the house with them. I resembled them in every respect;
I spoke their language; I shared their manners and looks; I was dressed like
them, unbuttoned and untidy like them; my shirts were in rags; I had not a single
pair of stockings that was not mostly holes; I trailed around in shabby
down-at-heel shoes, that slipped off at every step I took; I often lost my cap,
and sometimes my jacket. My face was dirty, bruised and scratched, my hands
blackened. My appearance was so strange, that my mother, in the midst of her
anger, couldn’t help laughing and crying out: ‘How ugly he is!’
Yet I
loved and have always loved tidiness, even elegance. At night I tried to mend
my tatters; the maid Villeneuve and my Lucile helped me
repair my clothes, in order to spare me scolding and punishment; but their
patches only served to render my apparel more bizarre. I was especially
saddened when I appeared in rags among the other children, proud of their new
clothes and their elegance.
My
comrades had a foreign air that smacked of
Locked
up at night in their city by the one key, the inhabitants of Saint-Malo made up a single family. Their manners were so
innocent that young women who sent for ribbons and veils from
On
certain days during the year, the inhabitants of the town and the countryside
gathered at fairs called assemblies,
held on the islands and in the forts around
I was
the only witness to these fairs who did not share in the joy. I appeared there
without any money to buy toys or cakes. Evading the scorn that attaches to
ill-luck, I sat far from the crowd, by those pools of water that the sea
supports and renews in the hollows of the rocks. There, I amused myself
watching the puffins and gulls, gazing into the bluish distance, collecting
shells, and listening to the waves murmuring on the reefs. I was not much
happier at home in the evening; I had a fierce dislike for certain dishes: I
was forced to eat them. I used to look imploringly at La France, who removed my
plate adroitly when my father turned his head. Regarding warmth, there was the
same severity: I was not permitted to approach the fireplace. It is a long way
from those strict parents to the child-spoilers of today.
But if
I had sorrows that are unknown to childhood these days, I also had pleasures of
which it is ignorant.
No one
knows any longer what a sense of joy those solemnities of religion and family,
or the whole nation and the God of that nation, possessed: Christmas, New Year,
Twelfth Night, Easter, Whitsun, Midsummer Day were days of riches to me.
Perhaps the influence of my native rock had worked on my feelings and my interests.
In the year 1015, the inhabitants of Saint-Malo had vowed to go and help with their hands and their funds in the building of the towers of Chartres Cathedral: have
I not also worked with my hands to raise again the fallen spire of the ancient
Christian basilica? ‘The sun,’ said Father Maunoir, ‘has never illuminated
any region where a more constant and unwavering loyalty to the true faith has
been revealed, than
On the
feast days that I am about to recall, I was taken on a pilgrimage with my
sisters to the various shrines of the town, to the chapel of Saint-Aaron, to the convent
of La Victoire; my ears were struck by the sweet voices of unseen women: the
harmonies of their canticles mingled with the roar of the waves. When, in winter,
at the hour of evening service, the cathedral filled with people; when old
sailors on their knees, young women and children with little candles read from
their prayer-books; when the congregation at the moment of benediction recited
the Tantum Ergo in unison, when, in
the interval between songs, the Christmas squalls beat at the basilica’s
stained-glass windows, shaking the vaults of that nave which the lungs of
Jacques Cartier and Duguay-Trouin had caused to
echo, I experienced a deeply religious feeling. Villeneuve had no need to tell me to fold my hands, to call on
God by all the names my mother had taught me; I saw the heavens opening, the
angels offering up our incense and our prayers; I bent my head: it was not yet
charged with those cares that weigh on us so heavily that one is tempted never
to raise one’s brow again, once one has bowed it at the foot of the altar.
A
sailor leaving these ceremonies, would go on board strengthened against the
night, while another was entering port guided by the illuminated dome of the
church: so that religion and danger were continually present, and their aspects
presented themselves inseparably to my thoughts. I was scarcely born before I
heard talk of death: in the evening, a man would go through the streets ringing
a bell, calling the Christians to pray for one of their deceased brethren. Nearly
every year, boats sank in front of my eyes, and while I was playing along the
shore, the sea carried the corpses of foreign sailors, drowned far from their
home, to my feet. Madame de Chateaubriand would say to me, as Saint Monica said to her son: Nihil
longe est a Deo: ‘Nothing is far from God’. My education had been entrusted
to
Dedicated
to the Virgin, I came to know and loved my protectress, whom I
confused with my guardian angel: her image, which had cost the good Villeneuve
a half-sou, was attached with four nails to the head of my bed. I should have
lived in the days when people said to Mary: ‘Sweet Lady of heaven and earth,
mother of mercy, source of every virtue, who bore Jesus Christ in your precious
womb, most sweet and beautiful Lady, I thank you and implore you.’
The
first thing I learnt by heart was a sailor’s hymn, beginning:
I place my confidence,
Virgin, in your
aid;
Grant me your
defence,
With care, protect
my days;
And when that
final breath
Shall complete my
fate,
Grant me holiest
death,
In which to steal
away.
I have since heard that hymn sung in a shipwreck. Even
today I still repeat those humble rhymes with as much pleasure as Homer’s verse; a
Madonna graced with a Gothic crown, clothed in a robe of blue silk, bordered by
a silver fringe, inspires greater devotion in me than a Raphael Virgin.
If only
that peaceful Star of the Seas had been
able to calm my life’s disturbances! But I was to be troubled, even in
childhood; like the Arab’s date tree, my trunk had scarcely sprung from the
rock before it was battered by the wind.
La Vallée-aux-Loups, June 1812.
I have said how my precocious
rebellion against Lucile’s mistresses engendered my evil reputation; a
playmate completed it.
My uncle, Monsieur de Chateaubriand du
Plessis, who lived at
Deprived of the society of my two
cousins, I replaced it with a new friendship.
On the second floor of the hotel where
we lived, a gentleman of the name of Gesril was staying: he had a son and two
daughters. The son was brought up differently from me; a spoilt child, whatever
he did was considered charming: he loved nothing more than fighting, and above
all stirring up quarrels of which he established himself as the arbitrator.
Playing naughty tricks on the maids taking children for their walks there was
scarcely talk of anything else but his escapades, transformed into the darkest
of crimes. His father laughed at it all, and Joson, was only loved the more. Gesril became my close friend and gained an incredible
ascendancy over me: I benefited from such a leader, though my character was
entirely the opposite of his own. I loved solitary games, and never sought quarrels
with anyone: Gesril was wild for the delights of the crowd, and exulted in the
midst of brawling children. When some urchin spoke to me, Gesril would say to
me: ‘You allow that?’ At this I imagined my honour was compromised and I would
fly in the face of the impudent lad; his height and age were of no consequence.
A spectator of the fight, my friend would applaud my courage, but did nothing
to help me. Sometimes he raised an army from all the lads he met, divided his
conscripts into two gangs, and we skirmished on the shore with stones.
Another game, invented by Gesril,
appeared still more dangerous: when the tide was high and stormy, the waves,
whipped up at the foot of the château above the main beach, reached the
openings in the towers. Twenty feet above the base of one of these towers, a
granite parapet held sway, narrow, slippery, sloping, by which one reached the
outworks that defended the moat: it was necessary to seize the moment between
two breakers to cross the perilous gap, before the wave broke and covered the
tower. A mountain of water arrived with an advancing roar which, if you
hesitated a moment, could carry you off or crush you against the wall. Not one
of us refused the challenge, but I have seen children turn pale before the
attempt.
This tendency to push others into
adventures, of which he remained a spectator, might lead one to think that
Gesril would not reveal a very generous character in later life: nevertheless
it was he, who on a much smaller stage, possibly surpassed Regulus in heroism: he only lacked Rome and Titus Livy to ensure his fame. Having become a naval officer he
was captured in the Quiberon landing; the action having finished and the English
continuing to bombard the Republican army, Gesril threw himself into the sea, swam
to the ships, called to the English to cease fire, and told them of the sad
state of the émigrés, and their surrender. They wanted to save him, throwing
him a rope, and urging him to climb aboard: ‘I am a prisoner on parole,’ he
shouted from the midst of the waves, and he swam back to land: he was shot with
Sombreuil and his companions.
Gesril was my first
friend; both of us misjudged in our childhood, we were allied by an instinct of
what we might become one day.
Two
adventures brought an end to this first part of my story, and produced a
significant change in the manner of my education.
We were
on the beach one Sunday, beyond the Porte Saint-Thomas, as the tide
rose. At the foot of the chateau and along Le Sillon, large stakes
driven into the sand protected the walls against the swell. We used to scramble
on top of these stakes to see the first undulations of the flow pas beneath us.
The places were occupied as usual; there were several little girls among the
boys. I was the farthest lad out to sea, having no one in front of me but a
pretty little thing called Hervine Magon, who was
laughing with pleasure and crying with fear. Gesril was at the other end near
the shore. The wave arrived, the wind blew; already the maids and servants were
calling out: ‘Come down, Mademoiselle! Come down, Monsieur!’ Gesril waited for
a big wave: when it swept in between the piles he gave the child sitting next
to him a shove; he fell against another: and he onto the next: the whole line
collapsed like a row of cards, but each one was supported by his neighbour;
there was only the little girl at the end of the line on whom I leant, and who
unsupported by anyone, fell. The ebb swept her away; a host of shrieks ensued,
all the maids hitched up their skirts and waded into the sea, each one seizing
her charge, and boxing its ears. Hervine was fished out, but declared that
François had pushed her in. The maids descended on me; I escaped; I ran home to
barricade myself in the cellar: the female army pursued me. Fortunately my
mother and father were away. La Villeneuve defended the
door valiantly and struck at the enemy’s vanguard. The true originator of the
trouble, Gesril, lent his assistance: he climbed to his room, and with his two
sisters threw jugs of water and baked apples at the assailants. At nightfall
they raised the siege; but the tale went round the town, and the Chevalier de
Chateaubriand, aged nine, passed for a desperate character, descended from
those pirates whom Saint Aaron had purged from
his rock.
This
was the other adventure:
I went
to Saint-Servan with Gesril, a
suburb separated from Saint-Malo by the trading
port. To reach it at low tide, you cross the water-course on narrow bridges of
flat stones that the rising tide covers. The servants accompanying us had been
left far behind us. At the end of one of these bridges we saw two ship’s boys
coming towards us; Gesril said: ‘Are we going to let these beggars past?’ and
immediately shouted at them: ‘Into the water, you ducks!’ They, in their role
of ship’s boys, refused to understand the jest; Gesril retreated; we took up
position at the end of the bridge, and snatching up pebbles flung them at the lads’
heads. They descended on us, forcing us to give ground, armed themselves with
stones, and drove us back on our reserve corps, that is to say our servants. I
was not wounded in the eye, like Horatius: a stone struck
me so hard that my left ear, almost detached, hung on my shoulder.
I
thought no more of my injury, but only of my return home. When my friend
returned from his excursion with a black eye, a torn coat, he was comforted,
caressed, coddled, and given a change of clothes: in a similar circumstance, I
would be made to do penance. The blow I had received was dangerous, but nothing
La France could say would
persuade me to go home, I was so afraid I ran and hid on the second floor of
Gesril’s house, and he bound up my head in a towel. The towel put him in good
spirits: it looked to him like a mitre; he transformed me into a bishop, and
made me recite the High Mass with him and his sisters until supper time. The
pontiff was then obliged to go downstairs: my heart was beating. Surprised by
my appearance, bruised and daubed with blood, my father said not a
word; my mother let out a
shriek; La
I am
not sure if it wasn’t that year that the Comte d’Artois came to Saint-Malo: he was treated
to the spectacle of a naval battle. From the heights of the bastion of the
powder-magazine, I saw the young prince in the crowd by the sea-shore: in his
glory and my obscurity, what unknown workings of destiny! So, unless my memory
errs,
Such is
the picture of my childhood. I do not know if the harsh education I received is
good in principle, but it was adopted by my family without design, and as a
natural consequence of their temperaments. What is certain is that it made my
ideas less like those of other men; what is even more certain is that it marked
my sentiments with a melancholy character born in me from the habit of
suffering at a tender age, heedlessness and joy.
You
might think that this manner of upbringing would lead to my detesting my
parents? Not at all; the memory of their strictness is almost dear to me; I
prize and honour their great qualities. When my father died, my comrades in the
Navarre Regiment witnessed my grief. To my mother I owe the solace of my life, since
from her I acquired religion; I listened to the Christian truths that issued
from her mouth, as Pierre de Langres would study at
night in church, by the light of the lamp burning before the Blessed Sacrament.
Would my mind have been better developed by launching me into my studies
earlier? I doubt it: those waves, those winds, that solitude, that were my
first masters were perhaps better suited to my natural disposition; perhaps I
owe to these savage instructors virtues I would have lacked. The truth is that
no system of education is in itself preferable to any other: do the children of
today love their parents more because they address them as tu, and no longer fear them? Gesril was spoilt in the house where I
was scolded: we both became honest men, and affectionate and respectful sons.
Something you think bad brings out your child’s talents; something that seems
good stifles those same talents. God does well whatever he
does; it is
Dieppe, September
1812.
On
Office of the
Prefect.
‘Monsieur the Prefect of Police
requests Monsieur de Chateaubriand to have the courtesy to visit his office,
either today at four in the afternoon, or tomorrow at nine in the morning.’
It was an order for me to leave
My mother had never ceased wishing that I be given a classical
education. The sailor’s life for which I was destined ‘would not be to my
taste’, she said; it seemed wise to her, at any event, to equip me for a
different career. Her piety led her to hope that I would decide upon the
Church. She therefore proposed to send me to a college where I could learn
mathematics, drawing, fencing and English; she did not mention Greek and Latin,
for fear of alarming my father; but she counted on them being taught to me, in
secret at first, then openly when I had made progress in them. My father agreed
to the proposition: it was agreed that I would enter the
During the intensely cold winter that
preceded my scholastic internment, fire consumed the hotel where we were living:
I was saved by my elder sister who carried me through the flames. Monsieur de Chateaubriand, having retired to his chateau, called his wife to
his side: it was required to join him in the spring.
Spring, in
In the twelfth century, the cantons of
Fougères, Rennes, Bécherel, Dinan, Saint-Malo and Dol, were part of the forest of Broceliande; it served as a field of battle for the Franks and
the peoples of the Dommonée. Wace says that one could see wild men there, the fountain
of Berenton and a gold basin. A historical document from the
fifteenth century, les Usements et
coutumes de la fôret de Brécilien, confirms the roman de Rou: it is, the Usements
declares, of vast and spacious extent; ‘there are four castles, a very large
number of beautiful pools, fine hunting grounds where only beasts of the chase
live, never a blow-fly, two hundred plantations of tall trees, and as many
fountains including the fountain of Belenton, near to which the Knight Pontus
fought.’
Today the countryside retains traces
of its origins: interspersed with wooded gullies, from a distance it has the
look of a forest and recalls
Between the sea and the land pelagian
fields extend, imprecise boundaries of the two elements: skylarks from the
heath fly there with skylarks from the dunes; the plough and the sailing boat
are a stone’s throw apart, as they furrow the earth and the water. The seafarer
and the shepherd borrow each other’s terms: the sailor says that the waves flock together, the shepherd speaks of squadrons of sheep. The many-coloured
sands, the varied heaps of shells, the kelp, the ribbons of silver foam,
outline the edges of the gold or green wheat fields. I no longer remember in what
Mediterranean island I saw a bas relief depicting the Nereids attaching fringes to the hem of Ceres’ robe.
But what ought to be admired in
Established by God as the controller
of the deep, the moon has her clouds, her mists, her rays, her accompanying
shadows, like the sun: but like him she does not depart alone; a procession of
stars follows her. As she descends from the sky above my native shore she increases
its silence which she communicates to the sea; soon she sinks towards the
horizon, the intersection, shows no more than half of her waning face, yields,
and vanishes in the soft intumescence of the waves. The stars about their
queen, before following in her wake, seem to halt, suspended on the crest of
the swell. The moon is no sooner at rest, than a rising breath
from afar shatters the images of the constellations, as one extinguishes the
torches after a solemn ceremony.
I was
to accompany my sisters to Combourg: we set off on
our journey in the first fortnight of May. We left Saint-Malo at sunrise, my
mother, my fours sisters and I, in a huge old-fashioned
Our
horses were rested at a fishing village on the Cancale shore.
Afterwards we travelled through the marshes, and the busy town of Dol: passing the door of the college to which I would
soon return, we drove deeper into the countryside.
For ten
mortal miles we saw nothing but heath land encircled by woods, fallow tracts
barely cleared, fields of sparse, stunted black corn, and scanty oats. Charcoal
burners led strings of ponies with lank, tangled manes; long-haired peasants in
goatskin tunics drove gaunt oxen with shrill cries or walked behind heavy
ploughs, like labouring fauns. Finally we discovered a valley at the end of
which not far from a pond rose the spire of a village church. At the western
extremity of this village the turrets of a feudal château lifted above the tall
trees of a wood lit by the setting sun.
I have
been obliged to pause: my heart was beating to the point of shaking the table
on which I write. The memories that awaken in my mind overwhelm me with their
multiplicity and force: and yet what do they signify to the rest of the world?
Descending the hill we forded a stream; after
a half-hour drive we left the main road, and the carriage rolled along beside a
quincunx, in an avenue of trees whose summits met above our heads: I can still
remember the moment when I entered that shade, and the fearful joy I
experienced.
Leaving
the darkness of the wood, we crossed a forecourt planted with walnut-trees,
adjoining the steward’s house and garden; from there we emerged through a gateway
into a grassy court, known as the Green
Court. On the right were a run of stables and a clump of chestnut-trees. At
the end of the courtyard whose ground rose imperceptibly, the château stood between
two stands of trees. Its severe, gloomy façade displayed a curtain wall surmounted
by a machicolated covered gallery. The curtain wall linked two towers of
differing periods, material, height and thickness, the towers ending in
crenellations surmounted by a pointed roof, like a bonnet set on top of a
Gothic crown.
Here
and there barred windows showed in the bare walls. A wide staircase, straight
and steep, of twenty two steps, without banisters or parapet, crossed the
filled-in moat, in place of the old drawbridge; it led to the doorway of the château,
cut in the centre of the façade. Over this doorway one saw the arms of the
Lords of Combourg, and the slits through which the beams and chains of the
drawbridge once passed.
The
carriage stopped at the foot of the staircase; my father came forward to
greet us. The family reunion momentarily softened his mood, so much so that he
behaved very graciously to us. We climbed the stairs; we penetrated an echoing
hallway, with ribbed vaulting, and from this hallway a little inner court.
From
this court we entered the main building which looked south over the pond, and
linked two little towers. The whole chateau had the shape of a four-wheeled
carriage. We found ourselves on a level with a room once known as the Guardroom. A window opened out at each
of its extremities; two others pierced its lateral lines. To increase the size
of these four windows it had been necessary to cut through eight to ten foot
thick walls. Two corridors with a sloping incline like that of the Great Pyramid led from the
two outer corners of the room to the little towers. A spiral staircase winding
up one of these towers established a connection between the Guardroom and the
upper storey: such was the structure of this building.
That of
the façade with its tall and thick towers, facing north, over the Green Court,
consisted of a kind of square, sombre dormitory, used as a kitchen; to this was
added the entrance-hall, the staircase and a chapel. Over these rooms, was the
room of the Archives, or Arms, or Birds, or Knights: so
named from its ceiling decorated with coloured escutcheons and paintings of birds.
The recesses of the narrow trefoiled windows were so deep they formed little
rooms round each of which ran a bench of granite. Add to this, in various parts
of the edifice, secret stairs and passageways, dungeons and keeps, a labyrinth
of open and covered galleries, walled-up cellars whose ramifications were
unknown; everywhere silence; darkness and a visage of stone: behold the château
of Combourg.
A
supper served in the Guardroom, which I ate cheerfully, brought an end for me
to the first joyous day of my life. True happiness costs little; if it is
expensive, it is not of a superior kind.
I was
scarcely awake the next morning before I was off to explore the grounds of the
château, and celebrate my entrance into solitude. The staircase faced
north-west. Sitting at the head of this staircase you had the Green Court
before you, and beyond that courtyard a kitchen garden between two groves of
tall trees: the one on the right (the quincunx through which we had driven) was
called the Little Mall; the other, on
the left, the Great Mall: this was a
wood of oak, beech, sycamore, elm and chestnut. Madame de Sévigné in her time
spoke highly of these ancient shade-givers; since that age, a hundred and forty
years have been added to their beauty.
On the
opposite side, to the south and east, the countryside presented a very
different picture: from the windows of the great hall, you could see the houses
of Combourg, a pond, the causeway beside the pond along which the
highroad to Rennes passed, a water-mill, and a meadow filled with herds
of cows, separated from the pond by the causeway. Alongside this meadow stretched
a hamlet attached to a priory founded by Rivallon, Lord of
Combourg, in 1149, where one could see his mortuary statue, lying on its back
in knightly armour. From the pond, the land rose gradually, forming an
amphitheatre of trees, from which projected village spires and the turrets of
manor-houses. On the far horizon, between south and west, the heights of Bécherel were
silhouetted. A terrace bordered by large ornamental box-trees encircled the
foot of the château on that side, passed behind the stables and ran with
various twists and turns to rejoin the garden that communicated with the Grand
Mall.
If
following this over-lengthy description a painter were to take up his brush
would he produce a sketch resembling the château? I don’t know; and yet my
memory sees the object as if it were before my eyes; such is the impotence of
words and the power of memory over material things! By starting to speak of
Combourg I am reciting the first couplets of a plaintive ballad which has charm
only for myself; ask the goat-herd of the Tyrol why he loves the two or three
notes he repeats to his flock, sounds of the mountain, throwing off echo after
echo in order to resound from one side of a torrent to the other?
My
first stay at Combourg was of short duration. Scarcely a fortnight had passed
before I witnessed the arrival of Abbé Portier, the principal
of Dol
End of Book I