François-René de Chateaubriand

“ If Bonaparte had not killed the Duc d'Enghien, if he had brought me closer and closer to him (and his inclination prompted him to do so) , what would have been the result for me? My literary career would have been ended; I should at one jump have entered the political career, in which I have proved what I could have done by the Spanish War; and I should have become rich and powerful. France might have been the gainer by my association with the Emperor; I should have been the loser. Possibly I might have succeeded in maintaining some ideas of liberty and moderation in the great man's head ”

“ Chateaubriand ranks rather as a great rhetorician than as a great poet. Something of affectation or unreality commonly interferes with the enjoyment of his finest works. The Génie du christianisme is a brilliant piece of special pleading; Atala is marred by its unfaithfulness to the truth of uncivilized human nature, René by the perversion of sentiment which solicits sympathy for a contemptible character. Chateaubriand is chiefly significant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. ”

“ In each of my three careers, I placed an important object before myself: as a traveller, I aimed at discovering the polar world; as a man of letters, I have striven to reconstruct religion from its ruins; as a statesman, I have endeavoured to give the nations the system of balanced monarchy, to restore France to her rank in Europe, to give back to her the strength which the Treaties of Vienna had taken from her ”

“ He charmed one with his kindly grace, different from the manners of the Empire. The French recognised with pleasure in his person their old manners, their old politeness and their old language; the crowd pressed round him, a consoling apparition of the past, a twofold protection as he was against the conquering foreigner and against the still threatening Bonaparte. Alas, the Prince was setting his foot again on French soil only to see his son assassinated there and to go back to die in the land of exile whence he was returning: there are men round whose necks life has been flung like a chain! ”

“ Every time that he repeated this last phrase, he broke my heart:
"Why," he asked, "will you not be in public life with me, as with La Ferronnays and Portalis? Am I not your friend? I will give you all you want in Rome; in France you shall be more of the minister than I, I shall take your advice. Your retirement would bring about new divisions. You do not want to injure the Government? The King will be very much incensed if you persist in wishing to retire. I beseech you, dear viscount, not to commit that folly." ”

“ The Head inaugurated at the town-hall has never thought of any one but himself: he sacrifices Frenchmen to what he believes to be his security. When men argue about what would be fitting for the greatness of the country, they forget the nature of the Sovereign: he is persuaded that he would be undone by methods which would be the saving of France; according to him, that which would give life to the Royalty would be the death of the King. For the rest, none has the right to despise him, for every one is on the same contemptible level. ”

“ Man is as much deceived by the success of his wishes as by their disappointment: I had desired, contrary to my natural instinct, to go to the Congress; taking advantage of a prejudice of M. de Villèle's, I had induced him to force M. de Montmorency's hand. Well, my real inclination was not for that which I had obtained; I should doubtless have felt some spite, if I had been compelled to remain in England; but soon the idea of going to see Lady Sutton, of making a journey through the three kingdoms would have mastered the impulse of a superadded ambition which is not inherent in my nature. ”

“ Later, he repented him of his mistake; ideas of regular monarchy had sprung into being together with ideas of religion.
[Pg 182]
An episode in the Génie du Christianisme, which at the time caused less stir than Atala, fixed one of the characters of modern literature; but I may say that, if René did not exist, I should not now write it: if it were possible for me to destroy it, I would do so. A family of Renés, poets and prose-writers, has swarmed into being: we have heard nothing but mournful and desultory phrases ”

“ I had conceived diplomacy on a new plan: having nothing to conceal, I spoke aloud; I would have shown my dispatches to the first-comer, because I had no project for the glory of France which I was not determined to accomplish in spite of all opposition.
I have said a hundred times to Sir Charles Stuart, laughing, and I meant what I said:
"Do not pick a quarrel with me: if you throw down the gauntlet to me, I shall pick it up. France has never made war on you with a proper understanding of your position; that is why you have beaten us: but don't rely on this [303] ." ”

“ Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty; but how would you have me defend it to Louis XVIII., when every day you attack royalty and religion? I beg you, in your own interest and so as to leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts which are already three-parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought to blush to attack. Let us make a bargain: do you cease falling foul of a few feeble old men whom the Throne and the sanctuary are hardly able to protect ”

“ Suddenly he appears, and again promises Frenchmen liberty, victory and peace. The author of the most tyrannical Constitution that ever ruled [Pg 115] France, he speaks to-day of liberty! But it was he who, during fourteen years, undermined and destroyed liberty. He had not the excuse of memory, the habit of power; he was not born in the purple. It was his fellow-citizens whom he enslaved, his equals whom he loaded with chains. He had not inherited power; he desired and meditated tyranny: what liberty is he able to promise? Are we not a thousand times more free than under his empire? ”

“ Once you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I have been admirably received, I have found a government full of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy ”

“ One who has taken the oath to Louis-Philippe and who nevertheless praises the fatal Ordinances must be more acceptable to Charles X. than I, who have never forsworn myself. It is too much for a king that one should twice have been in the right: flattering treachery is preferred to austere devotion. I went, therefore, going to Prague even as the Sicilian soldier who was hung in Paris at the time of the League went to the gallows ”

“ Avaricious in the hope of restoring to his family its pristine splendour, haughty of demeanour with the nobles at the States of Brittany, harsh with his dependants at Combourg, taciturn, despotic and threatening at home, the feeling which the sight of him inspired was one of fear. Had he lived until the Revolution, and had he been younger, he would have played a great part, or got himself massacred in his castle. He was certainly possessed of genius: I have no doubt that, at the head of an administration or an army, he would have been a man out of the ordinary. ”

“ Obeying the promptings of my instinct, I had returned from America to offer my sword to Louis XVI., not to associate myself with party intrigues. The disbanding of the King's new guard, of which Murat [57] was a member; the successive ministries of Roland [58] , Dumouriez, Duport du Tertre [59] ; the little conspiracies [Pg 26] of the Court and the great popular risings filled me only with weariness and contempt. I heard much talk of Madame Roland, whom I never saw: her Memoirs show that she possessed an extraordinary strength of mind. ”

“ The Bourbons held good after the Empire, because they were succeeding an arbitrary government: can one see Henry transported from Prague to the Louvre after men have grown used to the most complete liberty? The French nation does not, at bottom, love that liberty; but it adores equality: it admits absolutism only for and through itself and its vanity commands it to obey only what it imposes upon itself. The Charter made a vain attempt to cause two nations which had become foreign to one another to live under the same law: Ancient France and Modern France ”

“ The rival of La Fayette and Lauzun, the predecessor of La Rochejacquelein, the Marquis de La Rouërie was a more spirited person than they: he had fought oftener than the first; he had carried off opera-singers like the second; he would have become the companion in arms of the third. He swept the woods in Brittany in company with an American major [421] , and with a monkey seated on his horse's crupper. The Rennes law-students loved him for his boldness of action and his liberty of ideas: he had been one of the twelve Breton nobles sent to the Bastille. ”

“ The war hurried the remaining nobles out of France. Persecutions were being redoubled on the one hand; on the other, the Royalists were no longer permitted to stay at home without being accounted as cowards: it was time for me to make my way to the camp which I had come so far to seek. My uncle de Bedée and his family took ship for Jersey, and I set out for Paris with my wife and my sisters Lucile and Julie. ”

“ Marshal Ney kissed the King's hands, swore to bring him Bonaparte locked up in an iron cage, and handed over to the latter all the corps under his command. And the King of France, alas? He declared that, at the age of sixty years, he could not better end his career than by dying in defense of his people ... and fled to Ghent! At sight of this incapacity for truth in men's feelings, at the want of harmony between their words and their deeds, one feels seized with disgust for the human kind. ”

“ Certainly the woman who, at the foot of the guillotine, asked for pen and ink to describe the last moments of her journey, to write down the discoveries she had made in the course of her progress from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, that woman displayed an absorption in futurity, a contempt for life, of which there are few examples. Madame Roland possessed character rather than genius: the first can give the second, the second cannot give the first. ”

“ When any one puts forward that the Legitimacy will necessarily come about, that it cannot be dispensed with, that it is enough to wait, for France to come crying mercy to it on her knees, he is putting forward an illusion. The Restoration may never return, or may last for but a moment, if the Legitimacy seeks its strength where it does not exist.
My letter to the Dauphiness.
"Yes, Madame, I say it sorrowfully, Henry V. might remain a foreign and banished Prince: a young and new ruin of an edifice already fallen, but, in short, a ruin. ”

“ If he could serve as a soldier in some far-off foreign war, one ought not to dread to expose him. He has a resolute air; he seems to have in his heart the blood of his father and of his mother; but, if he could ever experience anything but the sense of glory in danger, let him abdicate: without courage, in France, there is no crown.
"Madame, on seeing me extend into a long future the thought of the education of Henry V., you will naturally [Pg 33] suppose that I do not think him destined to ascend the throne so soon. ”

“ Charlotte blushed, and hastily interrupted me:
"I have come to London to ask you to interest yourself on behalf of Admiral Sutton's children. The eldest would like to go to Bombay. Mr. Canning, who has been appointed Governor-General of India, is your friend; he might consent to take my son with him. I should be very grateful to you, and I should like to owe to you the happiness of my first child."
She laid a stress on these last words.
"Ah, madam," I replied, "of what do you remind me? What a subversion of destinies! You, who received a poor [Pg 93] exile at your father's hospitable board ”

“ Opaskin seisahtui, ja kun espanjalainen helposti ymmärtää kaikki jalot tunteet, niin hän näytti liikutetulta ja oivalsi, että Maurilainen katseli nyt entistä isänmaatansa. Vihdoin Aabenserraagi katkaisi äänettömyyden.
"Opas", hän huudahti, "ole onnellinen! Elä salaa minulta totuutta, sillä tyynyys oli vetten pinnalla sinun syntymähetkelläsi, ja uusikuu syntyi samana päivänä. Mitä torneja ovat nuot, jotka välkkyvät kuin tähdet yli vehreän metsän?"
"Se on Alhambra", vastasi opas.
"Entä tuo toinen linna tuolla toisella kunnaalla?" kysyi Aaben-Haamet. ”

“ My "ministry" kept me at Ghent; Madame de Chateaubriand, less busy, went to see Ostend, where I had embarked for Jersey in 1792. I had travelled, a dying exile, down the same canals along whose banks I now walked, still an exile, but in perfect health: there has always been something fabulous in my career! The miseries and joys of my first emigration revived in my thoughts; I saw England again, my companions in misfortune, and Charlotte, whom I was to meet once more. There is no one like myself to create a real society by calling up shadows ”

“ Mennessään pylväskäytävän ohitse Aaben-Haamet huomasi naisen, joka aikoi astua kirkkoon. Vaikka nainen oli huntuun verhottu, Aabenserraagi tunsi hänet Santa Fén herttuan tyttäreksi; hän pysähtyi häntä puhuttelemaan ja sanoi: "Tuletko hakemaan Lautrecia tästä temppelistä?"
"Jätä sikseen tuo alhainen epäluulosi", Blanca vastasi. "Jos en enää sinua rakastaisi, niin sanoisin sen sinulle; olisipa halpamielistä pettää sinut. Minä tulen tänne rukoilemaan puolestasi; sinä yksinäsi olet nyt rukousteni esine; oman sieluni unohdan sinun sielusi tähden. ”