Chapitre VIII

Chateaubriand at Rome-The Pope's high opinion of him-His strained relations with Cardinal Fesch-Pauline de Beaumont's failing health-Her correspondence with Joubert-She joins Chateaubriand at Rome-Her last illness and death-The grief of Joubert-and of Chateaubriand MANY pages-one or two volumes even-have been written on the question whether Chateaubriand was a success or a failure as Secretary of Embassy at Rome. The one solid fact which emerges from the records is that there was incompatibility of temper, resulting in strained relations, between him and the Ambassador. The Ambassador's view was that the Secretary took too much upon himself. The Secretary's view is summed up in this short sentence in one of his letters to Fontanes: " The Ambassador is an ass."

It may or may not have been Chateaubriand's intention to outshine the Cardinal; in fact he did so. He arrived at Rome with a great reputation, whereas Cardinal Fesch arrived only with the reputation of a priest who had once been a superintendent of military stores. His apparent modesty seems at first to have imposed upon M. Cacault, the Secretary of Legation, to whose place he succeeded. «Citizen Chateaubriand," wrote Cacault to Talleyrand, " is not likely to make a fuss about his book, or to pose as a theologian." But Cacault, unless, indeed, he wrote this ironically, did

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not know his man. Chateaubriand was " the man of his book," and was accepted in that character by Roman society, and by the Pope himself. His letters are emphatic on the point.

He is, he tells Fontanes, " master of Rome, spoiled, lionized, caressed." All that he needs is ready money, and perhaps he can borrow some from " our protectress."¹ His book is "in everybody's hands.' The Roman Cardinals regard it as " a masterpiece of orthodoxy." The Pope has received him " as his son," distinguished him at the audience by stepping forward to greet him, made him take a seat by his side, said "the most kind and flattering things" about Le Génie du Christianisme, going so far as to " point out the page which he was then engaged in reading." What a holy pontiff, therefore! And what a respectable prince! So he expresses himself to Madame Bacciochi. And, of course, the lead of the Pontiff was followed by the ladies, with results that are described by Cardinal Fesch's biographer-

"The Ambassador soon got tired of seeing this universal consideration accorded to a subordinate. He felt himself eclipsed by the glory of his Secretary; and one day he went so far as to let fall an expression which showed bad temper. An Austrian Archduchess, the Emperor's sister, Princess Marianne, praised M. de Chateaubriand to him with exuberant enthusiasm. 'Yes, M. de Chateaubriand knows his business quite well enough to sign passports,' was the prelate's rejoinder »

1 Madame Bacciochi. ↩

The whole story of the quarrel is practically summed up in that anecdote, though it was also conducted in the grand style, and carried on in dispatches. The Cardinal formally complained that Chateaubriand had infringed diplomatic etiquette, that he regarded himself as the reorganizer of religion in France, that he inaugurated religious negotiations on his own responsibility, and that he interviewed the Pope without informing the Ambassador. Napoleon sent for Fontanes and thundered at him on the subject. " If your proťégé is not careful," he said, " I shall have him fetched home in a cart with his hands and feet tied together." Fontanes wrote to Chateaubriand imploring him to be careful and not to picture himself as the centre of the universe because of his literary reputation. Chateaubriand replied speaking of the Ambassador as " this man," and protesting that, if he were not promoted to an independent position in the diplomatic service, he would quit it: "I am not, like most men of letters, a bad man of business. All the matters of business entrusted to me have turned out well.

So the battle raged, and presently Napoleon relented. He reflected, no doubt, that there were several fools in his family, and that Cardinal Fesch was one of them. Probably he was influenced by Lucien and Madame Bacciochi, as well as by Fontanes. At all events, he put Chateaubriand's name on the list of those who were to receive preferment; and it was to receive preferment, and not to be dismissed or censured, that Chateaubriand was, in due course, summoned back to Paris. And that though he had managed to quarrel even with the priests by

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insisting that a child to whom he stood as godfather should be christened " Atala"-which is not, of course, the name of a Christian saint though of a heroine who, he said, was " quite as good as a saint"!

All these events, however, belong only to the outward life of the public man proceeding in pomp along the path of political distinction. His sentimental life meant more to him-or at all events seemed to have done so when he looked back at it and wrote of it. The time of his solicitation of diplomatic preferment, and of his bickerings with Cardinal Fesch, was also the time of the return of his devotion to Madame de Beaumont.

It has been denied, indeed, that his devotion ever did return to her. Madame de Boigne denies it with characteristic cynicism. "Although wearied by her

" she writes, "he permitted Madame de presence, Beaumont to follow him to Rome, where he abandoned her, and she died in almost complete isolation." But Madame de Boigne was a spiteful gossip who disliked Chateaubriand. Her testimony is not to be trusted. There is only a grain of truth in what she says.

Weary of Madame de Beaumont, in one sense, Chateaubriand indubitably was. That deduction from his letters to Madame de Custine is not to be resisted. He was writing to her, however, with punctual regularity. He described the Pope to her-" pale and melancholy, with all the tribulations of the Church apon his brow" ; he besought her to intercede for him and save him trom the consequences of a "gaffe' which he had committed in calling on a potentate whom the French Republic had driven from his dominions. And then the news reached him that her illness was reaching its last stage; and he was seized with the pity which is akin to love and can simulate it. He deceived her with his pity, and-almostdeceived himself. He not only "allowed her to follow"; he even, as we know from one of his sister's letters, entreated her to come.

She had left Paris for a "cure" at Mont-Dore, sick at heart as well as sick in body. Her letters thence to Chateaubriand have not been publishedperhaps they have not been preserved; but those to Joubert and his wife are very pathetic to read. She is so ill, she says, that she can hardly drag herself about; she is uncomfortably lodged; her cough shakes her to pieces; in the filthy bed of a filthy inn, the fleas devour her. The weather is now too hot and now too cold; and the mountains throw long shadows which fill her soul with melancholy. She is so weak, too, that it is a painful effort to her to write a letter; and when, for a day or two, her cough is easier, she is too feeble to be restored to hope. "I am coughing less," she writes, "but I think that only means that I shall die without making a noise."

That was at the time when Chateaubriand's quarrel with Cardinal Fesch was at its height; and Pauline de Beaumont assuredly was thinking far more of him than he was thinking of her. " Villeneuve and Rome," she wrote to Joubert, " contain all that I care for in this world" ; while Chateaubriand, disenchanted by his experiences of diplomacy, was cherishing egoistic dreams of sentimental journeys which would take him far away from her. He would travel in Greece; he would shut himself up in one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. He would return having " seen all that a man need care to see " and having " enjoyed all the literary success a man can hope for." Et cetera-there is no word of Pauline de Beaumont there. But then-one does not know exactly at what hour or in what circumstances-came the appeal to pity; and his heart responded; and the pity was akin to love.

He said, " Come!" and Pauline de Beaumont hastened to him, though both his friends and hers tried to dissuade her.

Fontanes objected on Chateaubriand's account. The journey, for him, was " a crowning act of folly" which would damage his pupil's prospects by giving calumny a handle. People would say-what would not people say? And no doubt he was right from his own point of view of sage worldly wisdom. Chateaubriand's biographer¹ is quite wrong in saying that Madame de Beaumont's " noble origin" and the respect in which her name was held rendered her proceedings " innocent in the eyes of all." People did talk, accusing Chateaubriand of an intention to divorce his wife for Pauline de Beaumont's sake-a shameful act in the eyes of all good Catholics-specially shameful, of course, on the part of a champion of Catholicism. But Chateaubriand let them talk. " Les misérables!" he retorted, and went his way in spite of them, still bidding the women who loved him come.

1 Villemain. I 2 I15 ↩

Joubert objected too-for other reasons. He had never heard, he said, that the climate of Rome was good for anybody; but, if we read between the lines of his letters, we discover a graver note and a more personal regret. He knew that, if Pauline de Beaumont went to Rome, it would be to die, and that the letter in which he wished her God-speed might be the last letter of farewell. The fulness of the heart speaks in that letter, and reveals the writer's secret-

"The pleasure which I used to take in talking is over for me for ever. I have registered a vow of silence, and I shall pass the winter here. My inner life henceforth is a secret between myself and heaven. My soul will retain its old habits, but I have lost the delight which I used to find in them.

" Farewell, farewell, you who have caused me so much anguish-you to whom I owe so much."

The truth was out. Joubert had been more than a friend-he had loved Pauline de Beaumont in the innocence of his heart, more passionately than he knew; and it cut him to the quick to think that she dragged herself painfully across Europe to die in the arms of the rival who, loving her less innocently, and also less loyally, had supplanted him. Doubtless he had felt that jealousy before-he cannot but have felt it at the time of the Savigny honeymoon-but he had stifled it in his breast. Perhaps-he was so much older than she was, and so much wiser, and so much more like a counsellor than a lover-Pauline de Beaumont had never known that he was jealous. Perhaps -we cannot tell. Now at last the cry was wrung from him, and she could not fail to understand. But her time was short, and she had to choose at once between "Villeneuve and Rome." She did not hesitate, but hurried on to Rome.

She arrived, very tired, on the Ist of October, at Milan, whence she wrote to Joubert. « The characters traced so feebly," he said in his answer, "spoke to me so eloquently of your weakness and exhaustion that the tears came to my eyes." Detained by official business, Chateaubriand could not meet her; but Bertin¹ of the Débats did so on his behalf, and took her to Florence, where they found him awaiting them. Her wasted appearance startled him. She was almost too weak to walk-almost too weak to stand-" she could do no more than smile." They let her rest for a few days, and then took her on to Rome -the carriage proceeding at a foot pace so that she might not be jolted-and there lodged her in a villa at the foot of the Pincio. She began to keep a diary, and wrote in it- " For the last ten months I have not ceased to suffer; for the last six months I have endured all the symptoms of consumption-some of them in an aggravated degree. Nothing was lacking to me but the illusions of the consumptive; and perhaps I now have the illusions too."

1 He was the founder of the Débats. Banished in 180r on the vague charge of "royalist conspiracy," he was allowed to return to France and to resume the direction of the paper, then temporarily called Journal de l' Empire, in 1804. ı17 ↩

She does not tell us what those illusions were. Chief among them, doubtless, was the illusion that Chateaubriand still loved her. She feared that it was an illusion, but she clung to it. And he helped her he made believe. He made believe so earnestly that he deceived himself, nursing his pity until he could not distinguish it from love. The sight of her sufferings, it seems, thrust Madame de Custine, for the time being, out of his thoughts; and he was not called upon to make believe for long. Pauline de Beaumont had only three more weeks to live.

At first she seemed to rally a little in the sunshine. She begged to be taken to see the cascade at Terni, but the effort was too great for her. "Ah, well, we must leave the water to fall," she said, with her sad smile, and they led her back to her carriage. At Kome, again, she found herself well enough to drive, a few times, in the sun at midday, and there was talk of moving her to Naples in the spring. Chateaubriand even spoke of resigning his appointment in order to be with her there. That, however, was only the final deceptive flicker of the failing flame. She left the house, for the last time, on an October day, to visit the Coliseum, and sat at the foot of a Christian altar in the midst of the weed-grown pagan ruins; but then: « We must go home. I am shivering," she said; and, after that, she never left her bed. Chateaubriand and Bertin watched by her side in turns. The story of her last days is told in two letters to her brother-in-law with a touching simplicity which we miss in the more ornate narrative of the Mémoires.

The day soon came when the doctor abandoned hope, and Chateaubriand had to break the news. He broke it, with tears in his eyes; and she smiled to console him. " You are a baby," she said. " Surely you knew that it would come to this." And then: " Still, I didn't think that it would come so soon. must say good-bye to you all. Send for Abbé de Bonnevie.i

They fetched the priest. He brought " the paraphernalia of death"; and she confessed to him. " Her troubles during the Revolution," she said, " had caused her to question the goodness of God, but she now acknowledged her errors, and threw herself on the Divine mercy, trusting that her sufferings in this world might be counted towards her expiation in the next." Then she called her lover, and asked him: "Well, are you pleased with me?" and then she received the last sacraments, and waited for the end, which came quickly.

A sudden pain seized her. "It is there, there," she cried, clasping her breast, and seeming delirious in her agony. Her lover bent over her and asked if she still knew him. She nodded her head feebly, and that was her last sign of life. Chateaubriand placed his hand upon her heart, and found that it was no longer beating. He called the doctor, who hurried to • her, but she was beyond his help.

So she died happily, believing that the heart of her lover had come back to her; and who shall say that it had not?

"Chateaubriand," wrote Joubert, on hearing of the inevitable loss, so long expected, " doubtless mourns her as much as I do, but he will not miss her so much or for so long." It was true, and yet it was somewhat less than true.

Joubert, indeed, never ceased to mourn for his friend. " The mark which she has branded upon my life," he said, " will never be effaced, and I shall never have a thought with which her memory and my pain at having lost her will not be mingled;" and the words were no idle, sentimental boast. He begged her portrait from Madame de Vintimille, that he might live with it. Every year he consecrated the month of October, in which she had suffered so much, as a month of memories and sighs. As late as 1822, when he was sixty-eight, his letters show that he still kept up the practice.

But, if Joubert was thus faithful, Chateaubriand also was "faithful in his fashion," more faithful to Pauline de Beaumont, at any rate, than he ever was to any other woman.

He had forsaken her, during her life, for Madame de Custine; and he was to return to Madame de Custine after her death. Many other attachments were to succeed each other in his life-at no short intervals. But he was faithful in his fashion none the less.

That he built a monument in Rome to Pauline de Beaumont's memory is nothing. It is nothing that he spent money on it lavishly, and even ran into debt that he might do so. All that might have been ostentation -the professional ostentation of a man of sentiment. But the experience of the years-so rich for him in experiences of the kind-was to demonstrate that the sentiment was deeper and the memory more abiding than he had supposed.

In his age he reviewed his youth, as we all do, and, obtaining the true perspective, could distinguish which were the affections that had really mattered. That was Pauline de Beaumont's long-delayed hour of triumph in his heart. Other women-many other women-had been dazzled by his brilliancy or his fame. Other women-many other women -had attracted him in the ordinary way of gallantry. Sincerity, if not intensity, had been lacking

there. But Pauline de Beaumont had loved him for himself when he was obscure and penniless; she had never loved any one else; she had taken a long journey, fainting by the way, doubtful of his fidelity, in order that he might be with her when she died. The recollection held his heart bound, as it were by cords, and in the end drew it back. Her love, though he had set too little store upon it when it was lavished upon him, was the love that mattered for him at the last; and the tribute which he pays to her in the Mémoires is not paid to any, of her rivals.