François de Chateaubriand
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
Book XVIII
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2006 All Rights Reserved.
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Book XVIII: Chapter 1: The years 1805 and 1806 – I return to Paris – I leave for the Levant
Book XVIII: Chapter 3: From Tunis to my return to France via Spain
Book XVIII: Chapter 4: Reflection on my Travels – The Death of Julien
Book XVIII: Chapter 6: Les Martyrs
Book XVIII: Chapter 7: Armand de Chateaubriand
Book XVIII: Chapter 9: L’Essai sur les Révolutions – Les Natchez
Paris, 1839 (Revised December 1846)
When, in returning to
I went to see my
relatives in
My life having been documented hour by hour in the Itinerary, I would have nothing more to say here, if I did not possess several unpublished letters written or received during and after my voyage. Julien, my servant and companion, has, for his part, written an Itinerary to accompany mine, as passengers on board ship keep a detailed journal during a voyage of discovery. The short manuscript which he placed at my disposal has served to confirm my narration: I will be Cook, he can be Clerke.
In order to fully reveal the manner in which one was struck by the ordering of society and the hierarchy of intellects, I will interweave my narrative with that of Julien. I will let him speak first, since he covers several days sailing without me from Modon to Smyrna.
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘We embarked on Friday
the 1st of August; but, the wind not being favourable for leaving harbour, we
moored until the following dawn. Then the port pilot came aboard to advise us
that he could now allow us to leave. Since I had never been to sea, I was given
an exaggerated idea of the risks, since I saw nothing of any such for two days.
But on the third, a tempest blew up; lightning, thunder, finally a terrible
storm assailed us and whipped up the waves with terrifying force. Our crew was
made up of only eight sailors, the captain, an officer, a pilot, a cook, and
five passengers, including Monsieur and myself, making seventeen men in all. We
all set to, assisting the sailors to take in the sails, despite the rain which
we were soon passing through, having discarded our coats to work more freely.
The work occupied my mind, and made me forget the danger which, in truth, is
more frightening in concept than it is in reality. For two days, the storms
succeeded one another, which hardened me to my first days’ navigation; I was
not troubled in the least. Monsieur had feared lest I suffer from sea sickness;
when calm was re-established he said to me: ‘Now I am reassured about your
health; since you have endured these two days of storms, you can rest easy
regarding any other incidents.’ Nothing more took place during the rest of our
course to
Having crossed
I abandoned, in the
cradle of Melesigene, my poor dragoman
(interpreter) Joseph, the Milanese, in his tinsmith’s workshop, and headed for
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘Monsieur, who fell asleep on horseback, fell off without waking. As soon as the horse had halted, so did mine which was following. I quickly set foot to ground to find out the cause, since it was impossible for me to find out from six feet away. I saw Monsieur half-awake beside his horse, and quite astonished to find himself on the ground; he assured me he had suffered no hurt. His horse had not tried to bolt, which would have been dangerous, since the place where we were was close to the cliff-edge.’
Leaving Soma, having passed through
‘We left that village at
a very early hour, after having recharged our canteen. A short distance from
the village, I was extremely surprised to se Monsieur furious with our guide; I
asked the reason. Then, Monsieur told me that he had agreed with the guide, at
I arrived at
MY ITINERARY
‘The almost complete absence of women, the lack of wheeled vehicles and the packs of master-less dogs were the three distinctive characteristics that first struck me in the interior of that extraordinary city. Since nearly everybody walks about in oriental slippers, since there is no sound of carts or carriages, since there are no bells, and almost no trades requiring a hammer, the silence is continuous. You see a mute crowd around you who seem to wish to pass by without being perceived, and who always have the air of hiding from their masters. You arrive continually at a bazaar or a cemetery, as if the Turks were only there to buy, sell or die. The cemeteries, lacking walls and set in the midst of the streets, contain groves of magnificent cypress trees: the doves make their nests in these cypresses and share the peace of the dead. Here and there one finds ancient monuments which bear no relationship to modern man or later monuments, with which they are surrounded: one might imagine they were transported to this oriental city for talismanic effect. No signs of joy, no indications of happiness reveal themselves to your eyes; what one sees are not a people, but a crowd led by an imam and whose throats a janissary slits. Among prisons and penal colonies, rises a seraglio, Capitol of slavery: there a sacred guardian carefully conserves the germs of plague and the primitive laws of tyranny.’
Julien, for his part, does not lose himself thus among the clouds:
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘The interior of
MY ITINERARY
‘There were almost two
hundred passengers on board, men, women, children and old people. One saw as
many mats ranged in ranks on both sides of the tween deck. In that republic of
sorts each managed their household as they liked: women nursed their children,
men smoked or prepared their dinner, elders talked together. The sound of
mandolins, violins and lyres was heard on all sides. They sang, danced,
laughed, and prayed. Everyone was joyful. Pointing south, they cried: “
Here, I am outdone by Julien:
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘We were obliged to
attend to our departure for Jaffa, which
took place on Thursday the 18th of September. We embarked on a Greek vessel, on
which there were at least a hundred and fifty Greeks, as many men as women and
children, who were going on a pilgrimage to
We had provisions and
cooking utensils, like the other passengers, which I had bought in
Our journey, which has taken only thirteen days, has seemed long to me because of all kinds of disagreement and impropriety on board. During several days of bad weather which we have had, the women and children were sick, vomiting everywhere to the point that we were obliged to abandon our berth and sleep on the bridge. We ate there much more conveniently than elsewhere, having opted to wait until all the Greeks had finished their messing about.’
I pass the Dardanelles straits; I touch at Rhodes, and engage a pilot for the coast of
MY ITINERARY
‘The weather was so beautiful, and the breeze so gentle, that all the
passengers spent the night on deck. I disputed a small corner of the poop with
two large Greek monks who yielded to me but not without muttering. I was asleep
there on the 30th of September, at six in the morning, when I was woken by a
babble of voices: I opened my eyes, and saw the pilgrims staring towards the
prow of the vessel. I asked what was there; they shouted to me: Signor, il Carmelo! Mount Carmel! The wind had risen the previous
evening at eight, and, during the night, we had arrived in sight of the Syrian
coast. As I was lying there fully dressed, I was soon up, inquiring about the
sacred mountain. They all surrounded me to point it out; but I could see
nothing, because the sun was rising in our faces. The moment had something both
religious and majestic about it; all the pilgrims, rosary in hand, were
standing in silence in the same attitude, waiting for a sight of the Holy Land;
the head of the elders prayed in a loud voice: one heard only this prayer and
the sound of the vessel’s wake as the most favourable of winds drove it over the
gleaming sea. From time to time, a cry rose from the prow as they caught sight
of
…………………………………………………………………………….......
‘The wind dropped at
A boat left shore with three monks aboard. I descended with them into the launch; we entered harbour through a navigable opening in the rocks, dangerous even for a rowing boat.
The Arabs on shore advanced into the water to their waists, in order to take us up on their shoulders. There passed a pleasant scene; my servant was dressed in a whitish dress-coat; white being the colour of distinction among the Arabs, they decided that Julien was the sheik. They seized on him and carried him off in triumph, despite his protestations, while I, dressed in my blue coat, made off unnoticed on the back of a ragged beggar.’
Now, let us hear, Julien, the principal actor of the scene:
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘What was my astonishment on seeing half a dozen Arabs arriving to carry me to shore, while there were only two for Monsieur, it amusing him greatly to see me carried like a sacred object. I do not know if my clothing appeared more imposing than Monsieur’s to them; he had on a brown coat and buttons of the same colour, while mine was whitish, with buttons of pale metal which reflected the light of the sun; it is no doubt that which may have occasioned their error.
We entered the monastery
of the monks of
I arrive at Jerusalem. – On the advice of the Fathers
of the monastery, I cross the
MY ITINERARY
‘When one travels in Judea, a great tedium first seizes the mind; but when, in passing from solitude to solitude, the space extends itself before you, the ennui gradually dissipates, and one experiences a secret terror which, far from depressing the soul, gives one courage and raises one’s spirits. Extraordinary sights reveal on all sides a land worked on by miracles: the burning sun, the impetuous eagle, the sterile fig-tree, all the poetry, all the Scriptural tableaux are there. Every name conceals a mystery; every cave foretells the future; every summit retains the tones of some prophet. God Himself has spoken on these shores: the dried-up torrents, the shattered rocks, the half-open tombs, attest to marvels; the desert seems mute with terror still, and one would say it had not dared to break the silence since it heard the Eternal voice.’
We had descended the
rump of the mountain, in order to spend the night on the shore of the
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘We dismounted from our horses to let them rest and eat, like us, who
had a fine set of provisions that the monks of
MY ITINERARY
‘We raised camp, and
travelled for an hour and a half with exceeding difficulty, through fine white
sand. We advanced towards a little grove of trees, balm and tamarind, which to
my great astonishment, I saw rising from the midst of sterile ground. Suddenly,
the Bethlehemites stopped and pointed out, in the depths of a ravine, something
which I had not noticed. Without being able to say what it was, I half saw what
seemed like a kind of sand-flow over the motionless earth. I approached this
singular object, and saw a yellow stream that I could scarcely distinguish from
the sand of its two banks. It was deeply incised, and ran thickly with a
sluggish flow: it was the
The Bethlehemites
stripped off and plunged into the
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘We arrived at the
We returned to
Jerusalem: Julien was not much taken with the Holy Places; like a true
philosopher, he is terse: ‘Calvary,’ he says, ‘is in the same church, on a
height, similar to many other heights we have climbed, and from which you can
see nothing in the distance but uncultivated land, and nothing as to trees but
shrubs and undergrowth gnawed by animals. The Valley of Josaphat is found outside the walls of
I left
MY ITINERARY
‘On the 23rd of November
at
We raised anchor at two.
A pilot took us out of port. The wind was blowing weakly from the south. We stayed
in sight of Pompey’s Pillar which we could make out on the horizon for three
days. On the evening of the third day, we heard the sound of the night canon
from the harbour at
On the 1st of December,
the wind, steady from the west, barred our course. Gradually it swung to the
south-west and changed to a storm, which did not cease until we arrived at
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘After our exit from the harbour at
Alexandria, we did quite well for the first few days, but it did not last,
since we had continual bad weather and foul winds for the rest of the voyage.
There was an officer on watch on the bridge constantly, with the pilot and four
of the crew. When we could see, at the end of the day, that we were about to
have a bad night, we would ascend to the bridge. Around
We continue our journey
and anchor at the Kerkeni
MY ITINIERARY
‘A storm rose from the
south-west to our great joy, and in five days we arrived in the waters around
We dropped anchor at the
Julien is exposed to the same fate, and he reprimands me for one of those fits of impatience of which happily I am cured.
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘We were close to the Isle of Malta and were fearful of being seen by some English vessel which might have forced us to enter that port; but nothing came out to meet us. Our crew were exhausted and the wind continued unfavourable. The captain seeing an anchorage named Kerkeni on his chart, which we were not far off, made sail, without warning Monsieur, who, seeing us approaching an anchorage, was angry at not having been consulted, telling the captain he must continue on course, having endured worse weather. But we were too close to resume our route, and moreover the captain’s prudence was much approved of, since the night before, the wind had become stronger and the sea very rough. Having been obliged to wait there at anchor twenty four hours longer than anticipated, Monsieur showed his lively dissatisfaction with the captain, despite the logical reasons he was given.
We had been sailing for
almost a month, and we only needed seven or eight hours to reach the
I have trod the soil of Carthage at last. I have found the most generous hospitality with Monsieur and Madame Devoise. Julien gets to know my host well; he talks about the country too and the Jews: ‘They pray and weep’, he says.
An American brig of war
having granted me passage on board, I crossed the
When I arrived at
MY ITINERARY
‘From the summit of Byrsa, the
eye embraces the ruins of
Julien ends like me by
catching his last sight of
JULIEN’S ITINERARY
‘On the 7th and 8th we wandered among the ruins of
Julien tells briefly of
our voyage from
‘The Alhambra seems to me worthy of note, even
after the ruins of
In Le
Dernier des Abencérage, I
describe the
From one coast to the
other, I traversed that
Julien does not let go
of me until he has brought me back to the Place Louis XV, on
‘We left
I was there, five miles
from a château whose inhabitants my long voyage had not caused me to forget.
But the gardens of Armida, where are they? Twice
or thrice, returning to the
I arrived in
Osman Said, Pasha of the Morea, thus addresses ‘whomever it may concern’
on my firman for
‘Rulers of the towns of Mistra (Sparta) and Argos, cadis, nabobs, effendis, whose wisdom grow greater yet; honoured by your peers, and our greatness, vaivodes, and you by whom your master sees, who represent him in each of your jurisdictions, men of stature and business, whose credit cannot but grow;
We advise you that one of the noblemen of France, a nobleman (in particular) from Paris, furnished with this order, accompanied by an armed janissary and a servant as escort, has requested permission and explained his intention of travelling through various places and sites which are under your jurisdiction, in order to reach Athens, which is beyond the Isthmus, outside your jurisdiction.
You effendis, vaivodes, and all others specified above, therefore, are to take great care when the above mentioned person arrives within your jurisdiction, that he is shown respect and all the measures which friendship makes lawful, etc., etc.
Year 1221 of the Hegira.’
My passport issued in
‘To the sublime tribunal
of His Highness the Kadi of Kouds (
Accept, most excellent effendi, whom Your Highness has appointed to his august tribunal, our sincere blessings and affectionate greetings.
We advise you that a
noble person, of the
Do we protect foreign travellers in this way, in regard to the mayors and gendarmes who inspect his passport? Equally one can read in these firmans the transformation of nations: what freedom must God have given to empires, for a Tartar slave to impose his orders on a vaivode of Mistra, that is to say a magistrate of Sparta: for a Muslim to recommend a Christian to the Cadi of Kouds, that is to say of Jerusalem!
The Itinerary is one of the elements which make up my life. When I left
in 1806, a pilgrimage to
‘Monsieur le Vicomte, I
have just received a plan of the site and ruins of
With this exact plan, I have gone over all the ancient texts again, and I have determined, I think, the exterior enclosure and the other areas of Cothon, Byrsa and Megara, etc, etc. I now render you the justice due you in so many respects.
If you are not afraid of
me swooping down upon your genius with my trigonometry and my weighty
erudition, I will appear at your house at the first indication on your part. If
my father and I follow you, in literature, longissimo intervallo (at a very great distance), at least we
will try to imitate you in the noble independence of which you have given
I have the honour to be, and boast of being, your honest admirer,
DUREAU DE LA MALLE.’
A corresponding
identification of the sites would have sufficed in former days to make my name
as a geographer. Henceforth, If I still had a mania for speaking about myself,
I know not where I might not have run off to, in order to catch the public’s
attention: perhaps I might have taken up my old project once more of
discovering the North-West passage; perhaps I might have ascended the Ganges. There, I would have seen the long dark
straight line of trees that defends the Himalayas; if, after reaching the col
that connects the two principal summits near the Gangotri
glacier, I were to discover the immeasurable amphitheatre of eternal snow, if I
were to ask my guides, as Heber, the
Anglican Bishop of Calcutta did, the name of the other mountains to the East,
they would reply that they border the Empire of China. Well and good! But to
return to the Pyramids, now, is as if one were merely returning to Montlhéry. A propos of that I recall that a
pious antiquary of the neighbourhood of Saint-Denis
in
The page which terminates my Itinerary seems to have been written at that very moment, it so reflects my true feelings.
‘It was twenty years ago,’ I wrote, ‘that I dedicated myself to study among all the dangers and sorrows; diversa exilia et desertas quaerere terras: searching out differing exiles in different deserts: a large number of leaves from my books have been traced in my tent, in the desert, among the waves; I have often grasped my pen without knowing how many moments longer my existence might be prolonged…If Heaven grants me a peace I have never enjoyed, I will attempt in silence to raise a monument to my country; if Providence refuses me that peace, I can only think to spend my last days sheltering from the cares that poisoned my first. I am no longer young, I no longer love noise; I know that literature whose business is so sweet when it is secret, only draws us into the storm, outside. In any case, I have written enough if my name should live on; far too much if it should die.’
It is possible that my
Itinerary will last as a manual for the use of my kind of Wandering Jew: I have marked out the
stages scrupulously and sketched a road map. Every voyager to
‘Monsieur, you did me the honour, some weeks ago, to receive me at your house, with my friend Monsieur de Saint-Laumer: in bringing you a letter from Abou-Gosch, we happened to mention how many new merits one finds in your Itinerary when reading it in the locations themselves, and how one appreciates even in its very title, such a humble and modest choice of yours, when seeing it justified at every step by the scrupulous accuracy of its descriptions, still true today, except for a few ruins more or less, the only change in those countries, etc.
JULES FOLENTLOT
Rue Caumartin, no 23.’
My accuracy is due to my plain commonsense; I am of the race of Celts and tortoises, a pedestrian race; not of the blood of Tartars and birds, races equipped with horses and wings. Religion, it is true, sometimes ravished me in its embrace; but when it returned me to earth, I walked on, leaning on my stick, resting by a milestone to eat my olives and brown bread. If I often rode in the wood, as many a François gladly did, I have never, despite that, loved change for change’s sake; travel bores me; I only love a voyage because of the freedom it grants me, as I incline towards the countryside, not for the countryside, but for the solitude. ‘All the heavens are one to me,’ says Montaigne, ‘to live among our own people, to go and murmur and die among strangers.’
I have some other
letters from those Eastern lands, which reached their address several months
after they were dated. Fathers of the
Monsieur Caffe, not losing sight of what was happening
around him, telling me news of his world, sends word from Alexandria: ‘Since your departure, the
country has not improved, though peace reigns. Though your Leader has nothing
to fear from the Mamelukes, still
refugees in
On
‘Monseigneur,
Your Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem has reached Zea, and I have read, in the midst of my family, what Your Excellency obligingly chose to say of it. Your stay among us was so short that we do not really merit the praise Your Excellency has bestowed on our hospitality, and the overly familiar manner with which we received you. We have also realised, with the greatest satisfaction, that Your Excellency, has been re-appointed due to the latest events, and that you occupy a rank due to your merit as much as your birth. We congratulate you on it, and we hope that, at the pinnacle of greatness, Monsieur le Comte de Chateaubriand will gladly choose to remember Zea, and the numerous family of old Pangalo his host: that family in whom the French consulate has resided since the glorious reign of Louis-le-Grand, who signed our ancestors’ patent. That old man, so enduring, is no more; I have lost my father; I find myself, in mediocre circumstances, charged with supporting the whole family; I have my mother, six sisters to marry off and several widows and their children in my charge. I have recourse to Your Excellency’s goodness; I beg you to come to the aid of my family, in ensuring that the Vice-Consulate of Zea, which is extremely necessary for harbouring the King’s boats, has a salary like the other Vice-Consulates; being agent, as I am, I might be Vice-Consul, with the salary attached to that rank. I believe Your Excellency would find it easy to obtain this request because of my ancestors’ long service, if he would deign to pursue it, and that he will excuse the importunate familiarity of his Zea hosts, who rely on your generosity.
‘I am with the most profound respect,
Monseigneur,
Your Excellency’s
Very humble and very obedient servant,
Monsieur –G Pangalo.
Zea,
Every time a little laughter
rises to my lips, I am punished for it as if it were a fault. This letter made
me feel remorse when re-reading a passage (softened, it is true, by expressions
of gratitude) regarding the hospitality of our Consuls in the
Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman?
Monsieur Pangalo, gave little cries, the cockerels crowed, and the memories of Ioulis, Aristaeus, Simonides were completely erased.’
The requests for assistance almost always
arrived in the midst of my discredit and woe. Even at the very beginning of the
Restoration, on
‘Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,
Mademoiselle Dupont, of Saint-Pierre et
I have the honour to be, etc.
DUPONT’
I had forgotten that young lady, from the
epoch when I voyaged over the ocean, so ungrateful is memory! Yet, I had
retained a perfect remembrance of the unknown girl who sat by me in those sad
frozen
‘A young fisher-girl appeared on the upper slopes of the hill; she had bare legs, despite the cold, and was walking through the dew; etc.’
Circumstances, independent of my will,
prevented me from seeing Mademoiselle Dupont. If, by chance, she was Guillaumy’s fiancée, what had been the
effect on her of a quarter of a century? Had she suffered from the winters of
the
In the introduction to
an excellent translation of the Letters
of Saint Jerome, Messieurs Collombet and Grégoire are pleased to discover
in their summary, a resemblance between that saint and myself, apropos of
‘In foco l’amor mi mise,
In foco l’amor mi mise
(Love sets me in the flames)’
I like to receive letters from overseas; these letters seem to bring me a murmur of their breezes, a ray of their suns, some emanation of the diverse destinies that waves part, and the memories of hospitality bind.
Would I revisit those
distant countries? One or two, may be. The skies of
Fénelon, on leaving for
‘Various little
incidents kept delaying my return to
When will the blood of
Turks mingle with that of the Persians on the plains of Marathon, and leave all of
…Arva beata
Petamus arva, divites et insulas.
(let us seek out the fields,
the golden fields, the islands of the blest)
I will not forget you, O island consecrated by celestial visions to the Beloved Disciple, O happy Patmos, I will go and kiss the footsteps of the Apostle on your soil, and I believe I will see the heavens open. There, I will feel myself filled with indignation against the false prophet, who wished to expand the oracles of truth, and I will bless the All-Powerful, who far from throwing down the Church like Babylon, bound the dragon and rendered the Church victorious. I already see the schism ending, East and West reuniting, and Asia seeing the dawn anew after so long a night; earth sanctified by the Saviour’s footsteps and watered with his blood, delivered from those who profane it, and clothed in a fresh glory; and the children of Abraham, scattered through all the earth, and more numerous than the stars of the firmament, who, assembling, at last, from its four corners, will come, en masse, to recognise the Christ they crucified, and reveal a resurrection at the end of time. Enough, Monseigneur, you will be pleased to know that this is my final letter, and an end to my enthusiasm, which bothers you perhaps. Forgive such, in my desire to speak to you from afar, impatient until I might do so from nearer to you.
FR. de FÉNELON.’
Here is the true modern Homer, alone
worthy of singing
The sites of
‘The ex-slave searched up and down the beach until he found the decayed remains of a small fishing boat, sufficient to make a pyre for a poor naked corpse. As he was gathering and assembling it, an old man appeared, a Roman who had served as a youth under Pompey in the wars. “Ah,” said the Roman, “you shall not have this honour all to yourself, I beg you, let me be your companion in so saintly and pious a task, since I shall have no cause for regret after all, owning this recompense for all the hardship I have endured, knowing at least this good fortune, to be able to touch with my hands and help in the burial of the greatest general Rome has known.”’
Caesar’s rival no longer
has a tomb in
‘Born in
The winds have scattered
those individuals of
I am in some ways the
last visitor to the
What became of Julien, Ulysses’ friend? He requested of me, in submitting his manuscript to me, that he might become the concierge of my house on the Rue d’Enfer: that situation was occupied by an old doorman and his family whom I could not dismiss. The will of heaven having made Julien self-willed and a drunkard, I supported him for a long time; finally, we were obliged to part. I gave him a small sum of money and allowed him a tiny pension from my privy purse, a light enough one, but always copiously filled with excellent mortgage receipts from my castles in Spain. I made Julien enter the Hospice for the Old according to his own wish: there he completed the last and greatest voyage. I will soon occupy his empty bed, as I once slept, in the Khan of Demir-Capi, on the mat from which they had just removed a plague-ridden Muslim. My calling is definitely to be found in some hospital or in the midst of the old society, which makes a semblance of being alive and is none the less involved in its own death-pangs. When it expires, it will decompose in order to reproduce itself in new forms, but it must first succumb; the primary necessity for nations, like men, is to die: ‘By the breath of God the frost is given’, says Job.
Paris, 1839 (Revised June 1847)
Madame de Chateaubriand had been very ill during my voyage; my friends several times thought me lost. In letters which Monsieur de Clausel wrote to his children and which he has kindly allowed me to read, I find this passage:
‘Monsieur de
Chateaubriand left on his voyage to Jerusalem
in the month of July 1806: during his absence I went to Madame de
Chateaubriand’s house every day. Our traveller did me the kindness to write to
me a lengthy letter, from Constantinople,
which you will find in the drawer in our library at Coussergues. During the winter of 1806
and 1807, we knew that Monsieur de Chateaubriand was at sea returning to
If I had been certain to survive, and if I could have perpetuated in my works those people who are dear to me, with what pleasure I would have taken my friends along with me!
Full of hope, I carried my handful of gleanings back home; my peace and quiet was not of long duration.
After a series of agreements, I became sole proprietor of the Mercure.
Towards the end of June
1807, Monsieur Alexandre de Laborde
published his travels in
My situation was deplorable: while I felt I had to act according to my sense of honour, I found myself burdened with personal responsibilities, and the anxieties I was causing my wife. Her courage was great, but she none the less suffered, and these storms falling in succession on my head troubled her life. She had suffered so much on my behalf during the Revolution! It was natural that she longed for a little peace. The more so in that Madame de Chateaubriand admired Bonaparte without reservation; she had no illusions about the Legitimacy; she was forever predicting what would happen to me if the Bourbons returned.
The first chapter of
these Memoirs is dated
Monsieur de Lavalette, stocky, dressed in a violet-coloured morning-coat, and carrying a gold-knobbed cane, had become my business manager, if indeed I have ever had any business. He had been a cup-bearer in the Royal household, and what I did not eat, he drank.
Towards the end of November, seeing that the repairs to my cottage were making no progress, I decided to go and supervise them. We arrived at the Vallée in the evening. We did not take the usual road; we entered through the gate at the end of the garden. The soil in the drives, soaked with rain, prevented the horses from going on; the carriage overturned. The plaster bust of Homer, placed beside Madame de Chateaubriand, was thrown through the window, and shattered its neck: a bad omen for Les Martyrs on which I was then working.
The house, filled with laughing, singing, hammering workmen, was warmed by a fire of wood-shavings and lit by candle-ends: it resembled a hermitage in the woods illuminated at night by pilgrims. Delighted to find two rooms quite passable, in one of which a table had been laid, we sat down to dine. Next day, awakened by the noise of hammering, and the songs of the colonists, I watched the sun rise with less anxiety than that master of the Tuileries.
I was surrounded by
endless enchantments; though no Madame de Sévigné,
I went out, furnished with a pair of clogs, to plant trees in the mud, traverse
the same walks over and over, look once and again into every little corner,
conceal myself wherever there was a clump of bushes, imagining what my park
would be like in the future, since then the future was uncompromised.
Searching, today, to re-open that vista which has closed, I no longer find that
same one indeed, though I meet with others. I lose myself among vanished
memories; perhaps the illusions I come across are as lovely as those earlier
ones; only they are not as youthful; what I saw in the splendour of
My trees, being still quite small, were not filled with the sound of the autumn winds; but, in spring, the breezes that breathed the flowery fragrance of the neighbouring fields held their breath, and released it over my valley.
I made a few additions to my cottage; I embellished its brick wall with a portico supported by two black marble columns and two white marble caryatids: I remembered I had been to Athens. My plan was to add a tower to the end of the building; in the meantime, I simulated battlements along the wall that bordered the road: thus I anticipated the obsession regarding the Middle Ages which currently stupifies us. Of all the possessions I have lost, the Vallée-aux-Loups is the only one I regret; it is written that nothing will remain to me. After my Valley was lost, I planted out the Marie-Thérèse Infirmary, and I have just left that too. I defy fate to attach me to the smallest plot of earth now; henceforth, I will only have as my garden those avenues, honoured with such fine names, around the Invalides, where I walk with my lame and one-armed colleagues. Not far from these walks, Madame de Beaumont’s cypress lifts its head; in these deserted spaces, the great, light-hearted Duchesse de Châtillon once leant on my arm. I only give my arm to time, now: who is heavy enough!
I worked at my Memoirs with pleasure, and Les Martyrs progressed; I had already read several chapters to Monsieur de Fontanes. I was established amongst my memories as in a vast library: I consulted here, and then there and finally closed the volume with a sigh, when I perceived that the light, by penetrating, destroyed the mystery. Shed light on the days of your life, and they will no longer be as they were.
In July 1808, I fell
ill, and was obliged to return to
That was perhaps the
only time when, near to death, I longed for life. When I felt myself to be
weaker, which often happened, I would say to Madame de Chateaubriand: ‘Don’t
worry; I will recover.’ I would lose consciousness, but with a mounting
impatience within, since I was holding on, God knows to what. Also I was
possessed with desire to complete what I thought, and still think, to be my
most perfect work. I was reaping the reward for the fatigue I had often
experienced during my travels in the
Girodet had given the last touches to my portrait. He made it melancholy, as I then was; but he filled it with his genius. Monsieur Denon accepted the masterpiece for the Salon; as a noble courtier he placed it prudently out of the way. When Bonaparte arrived to review the gallery, he looked at the paintings and then asked: ‘Where is the portrait of Chateaubriand?’ He knew it must be there: they were obliged to lift the curtain on its hiding place. Bonaparte, exhaling a fulsome breath, said, on gazing at the portrait: ‘He has the air of a conspirator who has come down the chimney.’
On returning to the
Vallée alone one day, Benjamin, the
gardener, told me that a large foreign gentleman had come asking for me; that on
finding me not there, he had declared his intention of waiting for me; that he
had ordered an omelette and had then laid himself down on my bed. I walked
upstairs, entered my bedroom, and saw something huge asleep; shaking this mass,
I shouted: ‘Hey! Hey! Who is this?’ The mass quivered and sat up. Its head was
covered with a hairy bonnet, it wore a matching jersey and trousers of flecked
wool, its face was stained with snuff and its tongue was sticking out. It was
my cousin Moreau! I had not seen him
since camp at Thionville. He was back
from
In the spring of 1809 Les Martyrs was published. It was a work of conscience: I had consulted critics of knowledge and taste in Messieurs Fontanes, Bertin, Boissonade, and Malte-Brun, and I had submitted to their arguments. I wrote, un-wrote and re-wrote the same pages a hundred times and more. Of all my writings, it is the one where the language is most perfect.
I was not mistaken in my plan; now that my ideas have become common currency, no one denies that the struggle between two religions, the one ending, the other beginning, offers the Muses one of the richest, most fertile and most dramatic of subjects. So I thought I might nourish some not too outlandish hopes; but I forgot about the success of my first work: in this country, never count on two successes close together; one destroys the other’s chances. If you have any talent for prose, take care not to reveal yourself in verse; if you are a distinguished man of letters, have no pretensions towards politics: such is the French spirit and its miseries. Self-esteem alarmed, and envy surprised by some author’s happy debut, band together and lie in wait for the poet’s second publication, in order to take a glittering revenge:
Every hand at the inkwell, swore to be revenged.
I had to pay for the
foolish admiration I had gained by fraud on publication of Le Génie du
Christianisme; I was forced to return what I had stolen. Alas! It was not
necessary to put me through so much pain to rob me of that which I myself did
not think I merited! If I had saved Christian Rome,
I only requested an obsidional crown, of
wreathed grasses gathered in the
The executor of justice
in regard to all vanities was Monsieur Hoffman,
to whom may God bring peace! The Journal
des Débats was no longer
free; its proprietors no longer had power over it, and censorship consigned me
to condemnation there. Yet Monsieur Hoffman showed mercy towards the
The true martyrdom, of Pope Pius VII whom Bonaparte had brought to Paris as his captive, caused no scandal, but they were all stirred by my fictions, which displayed little Christianity, they said. And it was the Bishop of Chartres who took it upon himself to mete out justice in regard to the terrible impieties of the author of Le Génie du Christianisme. Alas! One must say that these days his zeal is required in a good many other causes.
The Bishop of Chartres is the brother of my excellent friend, Monsieur de Clausel, a very fine Christian who will not allow himself to be carried away by as sublime a virtue as his brother, the critic.
I thought I ought to reply to this censure, as I had done in regard to Le Génie du Christianisme. Montesquieu, with his defence of L’Esprit des Lois, was my example. I was in error. Authors who are attacked may make the finest reply in the world, but only raise a smile from impartial minds and mockery from the crowd. They place themselves on treacherous ground: a defensive stance is antipathetic to the French character. When, in order to respond to the objections, I showed that in stigmatising such and such a passage, one was attacking some fine relic of antiquity; defeated by the facts, they abandoned the affair saying then that Les Martyrs was merely a pastiche. If I justified the simultaneous presence of two religions by employing the authority of the Fathers of the Church, they replied that in the era in which I had set the action of Les Martyrs, paganism no longer existed as far as great minds were concerned.
I thought in all good faith that the work had failed; the violence of the attack had shaken my confidence as an author. Friends consoled me; they maintained that the proscription was unjustified, that the public, sooner or later, would take a different view; Monsieur de Fontanes especially stood firm: I was not Racine, but he could have been Boileau, and he never stopped saying to me: ‘They will come round to it.’ His persuasiveness in this regard was so profound that it inspired him to delightful verse:
‘Tasso, wandering from town to town, etc. etc.’
without fear of compromising his taste or the authority of his judgement.
Indeed Les Martyrs revived; it achieved the honour of four consecutive editions; it has even enjoyed special favour among men of letters: they were grateful to me for a work which testified to serious study, to some care for style, to an elevated respect for language and taste.
The criticism of its content was swiftly abandoned. To say that I had intermingled the sacred and the profane, because I had depicted two cults existing side by side, each of which had its adherents, its altars, its priests, its ceremonies, was to say that I should have renounced all claim to be writing history. For whom did the martyrs die? – For Jesus Christ. Whom were they sacrificed to? – To the gods of the Empire. There were two religions, then.
The philosophical question, as to whether, under Diocletian, the Romans and Greeks believed in the gods of Homer, and whether public observance underwent change, that question, as a poet, did not concern me; as a historian I would have had much to say.
All of that is no longer an issue. Les Martyrs lives on, contrary to my initial expectation, and I have only had to occupy myself in carefully revising the text.
The failings of Les Martyrs lie in the direct presentation of the marvellous
which, along with the rest of my Classical prejudices, I employed at the wrong
moments. Frightened of innovation, it seemed impossible to me to avoid hell and heaven. The good and evil angels however were adequate for the course
of the action, without delivering it over to hackneyed mechanisms. If the
‘Cymodocée sat in front of the prison window, and resting her head, adorned with a martyr’s veil, on her hand, sighed out these harmonious words:
“Fragile Italian
vessels, cleave the calm and shining sea; slaves of
Fly, Libyan birds, whose
sinuous necks curve so gracefully, fly to the summit of Ithome, and say that a daughter of Homer goes to gaze on the laurels of
When shall I return to my bed of ivory, to the light of day so dear to mortals, to the meadows scattered with flowers that a pure stream waters, that modesty adorns with its breath!”’
Le Génie du Christianisme will remain my great work, because it produced or orchestrated a revolution in thought, and began a new era in the century’s literature. It was not the same with Les Martyrs; it came after that revolution had been carried through, it was merely an overabundant demonstration of my thesis; my style was no longer a novelty, and, except in the episode of Velléda and in the depiction of the manners of the Franks, my poem even suffers from the places which it frequented: the classical in it dominates the romantic.
Finally, the circumstances which contributed to the success of Le Génie du Christianisme no longer existed; the government, far from favouring me, was opposed to me. Les Martyrs earned me a redoubling of my persecution: the striking allusions shown in the portrait of Galerius and the depiction of Diocletian’s court did not escape the Imperial police; particularly since the English translator, who had no responsibilities to guard, and to whom it was all the same if he compromised me, highlighted the allusions in his preface.
The publication of Les Martyrs coincided with a fatal incident. It did not disarm the critics, graced with the ardour with which we grow heated in the corridors of power; they felt that literary criticism which tended to diminish the interest attached to my name might be agreeable to Bonaparte. He, like those millionaire bankers who give grand dinners and charge one for posting one’s letters, did not neglect his lesser profits.
Armand de Chateaubriand
whom you have seen as a companion of my childhood and met again in the Army of
the Princes, with the deaf and dumb girl Libba,
had remained in
Armand arrived at the house of Monsieur Delaunay-Boisé-Lucas, the elder, who lived in the village of Saint-Cast, where the English were once forced to re-embark: his host advised him to leave again; but the boat was already on course for Jersey once more. Armand, having so agreed with Monsieur Boisé-Lucas’ son, gave him the packets entrusted to him by Monsieur Henri Larivière, the Princes’ agent.
‘I returned to the coast on the 29th of September,’ he says during one of his interrogations, ‘where I remained for two nights without seeing the boat. The moon being very full, I left again and came back on the 14th or 15th of October. I stayed there till the 24th. I spent each night amongst the rocks, but to no avail; since my boat did not arrive, and, during the day I went back to the Boisé-Lucas’ house. The same boat with the same crew, including Roussel and Quintal, was supposed to fetch me. As for precautions taken in conjunction with Monsieur Boisé-Lucas the elder, there were none apart from those I have already detailed.’
The intrepid Armand,
landing a few steps from his paternal home, as if on the inhospitable shores of
the