Chapitre XV

Life at La Vallée-aux-Loups-Chateaubriand's prediction of Napoleon's fall-The events of 1814-Chateaubriand's pamphlet, De Bonaparte et des Bourbons--The danger of writing it-The Restoration-The influence of Madame de Duras-Chateaubriand's appointment as Ambassador to Sweden-His urgent appeals for an augmentation of salary-Napoleon escapes from Elba-Louis XVIII starts for Ghent-Chateaubriand follows him.

THE nets were, at last, closing round Napoleon; and there can be no reader whom it is necessary to remind that 1812 was the year of the campaign of Russia, 1813 the year of the campaign of Germany, and 1814 the year of the campaign of France. Chateaubriand seems to have been one of those who foresaw the end even before the calamitous retreat from Moscow, though not one of those who perceived how " the Spanish ulcer" would contribute to it. " His fate,' he told a certain M. Genoude who conversed with him at La Vallée-aux-Loups, " will be that of Crassus. The Russians will retire before him like the Parthians, and this will be the rock on which his power will split »

Two years, however, were to elapse before that was to happen; and the Mémoires tell us practically nothing of Chateaubriand's life during the period, except that Napoleon first smiled on him and then frowned-talked of creating an office for him, at a princely salary, as Superintendent of the Libraries of France, and then sent him orders, through M. Pasquier, the Prefect of Police, who was his personal friend, to leave Paris at once. He went to Dieppe, where, long since, as a young officer in the royal service, he had drilled recruits on the beach, but was allowed to return after a month's exile. Pasquier remained his friend and came to see him. " But even when he called on his friends," writes Madame de Chateaubriand, " Pasquier did not forget his trade. I found him one day reading a manuscript which he had fished out from its hiding-place under the sofa

From Madame de Chateaubriand again we get a pleasant picture of Chateaubriand feeling ill, and believing that he was on the point of death, and of the " madames " displaying what she considered a " fussy "

interest in his health. She was herself quite sure, she says, that he was only suffering from " nerves"; but Madame de Lévis was tormented by anxiety, and insisted that he should see the celebrated physician, Dr. Laennec. She even brought her carriage and insisted on driving him, there and then, to the consulting-room. Madame de Chateaubriand "let him go, but was quickly stricken by remorse, and followed in hot haste.

"I concealed myself," she writes, " until after the consultation was over. Laennec arrived. I cannot describe the agonies which I endured until his departure. I lay in wait for him as he was going out, and asked him what was the matter with my husband. ' Nothing at all,' he answered, and wished me goodday, and walked off. And sure enough, five minutes afterwards, I heard the invalid singing as he came down the stairs."

Nothing was the matter with him, it appeared, except a slight touch of rheumatism, which he had mistaken for an aneurism of the heart. Possibly the rheumatism affected his temper, for, a few days later, we find Madame de Chateaubriand writing to Joubert-

"We expect to be in Paris in a fortnight's time, and I shall be glad to get there. I make that confession to you alone, for how shall I venture to say to any one else that I am boring myself with M. de Chateaubriand at Val de Loup? If I did so, a dozen madames would scratch my face, and even tear out my heart, if they still believed, after such an avowal, that I had one."

It was at about this date, too, that Chateaubriand finished his Moses; but about that the less said the better, for it is a dull work and adds nothing to his glory¹.! Even Madame de Duras did not pretend to admire it. Nor need we pause over Sismondi's picture of him, "talking about religion in Madame Duras' drawing-room," and exhibiting " much inconsistency and far more bad faith than I should have expected from him." Religion was no longer the topic of the hour, and Chateaubriand had a journalist's flair for actualities. The pressing questions were, or were soon to be, political. The feeling was in the air that the Empire was on its last legs, and that the time for taking sides was near at hand. That was Chateaubriand's opportunity.

1 Moses was ultimately produced, in the reign of Louis-Philippe, at Versailles, but failed hopelessly. ↩

It was not only the devout women who looked to him for guidance. The "Catholic drawing-room militia" were also disposed to accept him as a leader. They remembered that he had quitted the imperial service on account of the Duc d'Enghien's execution; they remembered the sardonic article which had caused the confiscation of the Mercure; they remembered the suppressed address to the Academy. He was a man whose voice, when he had the chance of speaking out, was always heard. If, therefore, he now wrote and published a pamphlet- - He sat down to the task, writing "like the last of the Romans in the midst of the barbarian invasion."

The undertaking was not without its risks. Napoleon was not yet beaten to his knees. He was still winning battles though he was losing the campaign; and his vengeance on pamphleteers could be swift and terrible. For a much milder pamphlet than that which Chateaubriand had in hand, he had ordered Berthier to have Palm the publisher shot at Nuremberg; and the sentence had been carried out within three hours of the trial. Nor could the pamphleteer even flatter himself that he would be safe as long as his pamphlet remained in manuscript. Domiciliary visits were always possible, and spies abounded. If Pasquier should once more come to dinner and look for manuscripts under the sofa!

So Chateaubriand took such precautions as occurred to him-precautions which suggest the cloaked conspirators of comic opera-sleeping with his manuscript under his pillow and a brace of loaded pistols on the table by his bed-side; but even so he was not careful enough to satisfy his wife. In this enterprise, at any rate, her sympathies were with him-very likely it was an enterprise which she believed to have been foreshadowed in the Revelation of St. John the Divine; and she tells us how, knowing the peril, she lived in fear and trembling-

" Often, when he went out, he forgot his papers and left them on the table. Even when he was so prudent as to hide them under the pillow, he did so in the presence of a man-servant, who, though an honest fellow, might not have been proof against temptation. Consequently I lived in a state of hysterical alarm, and, whenever he left the room, I took the manuscript and concealed it about my person.

"One day, while crossing the Tuileries gardens, I perceived that I had not got it. I was positive that I had taken it with me, and could not doubt that I had lost it in the street. I pictured it already in the hands of the police and M. de Chateaubriand under arrest. So I fainted in the middle of the garden, and some worthy people picked me up and carried me home....

"As I approached my husband's room I nearly fainted again. At last I entered-and there was nothing on the table. I went up to the bed, passed my hands over the pillow-and could feel nothing. Then I lifted the pillow-and there was the roll of paper. My heart still palpitates whenever I think of it. Never in my life have I felt such a shock of joy."

Thus, while the ring of foreign bayonets was narrowing round the capital, the pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons was finished and even printed. The allies having entered Paris on March 31, 1814, Chateaubriand published it on April 5. It was, of course, a glowing royalist manifesto, and a rhetorical denunciation of the Empire and all its works. " I flung it," says Chateaubriand, "into the balance. The whole world knows what an effect it had."

Its effect may have seemed to be greater than it actually was. Talleyrand's defection and intrigues did a good deal more than Chateaubriand's burning words to determine the course of events; and his eloquence in fact only supported a cause that was already won. But it had its value none the less in whipping up enthusiasm, and it was warmly appreciated by the returning royal exiles. Louis XVIII read the pamphlet, and said that it had been of as much service to his cause as an additional army corps. Chateaubriand, in short, found himself the hero of the hour, and believed, for the moment, that his political fortune was made.

He soon discovered his mistake. Louis XVIII, though complimentary to him about his pamphlet, dic not like him. He regarded him as a poet, and he said to his intimates: "Never let poets be mixed up in public affairs. They ruin everything. Poets are no good." Moreover, there were many applicants for all the offices, and Legitimists could not be allowed to monopolize them. It was not their loyalty but the defection of the Bonapartists that had given the King his own again; and the latter had to be considered first in the distribution of the spoils. They claimed, indeed, to take the lead, not only in public functions, but also in popular demonstrations of enthusiasm; and Madame de Chateaubriand draws a graphic picture of Madame Talleyrand driving slowly through the streets of Paris in an open carriage, and singing hymns in honour of " the pious Bourbons."

Nor was that all. Bonapartist enthusiasts for the restored monarchy went so far, one day, as to invade the apartments of the Chateaubriands and request them to honour the Bourbons by draping the windows with white flags. When assured that there were no white flags in the house, they implored them, as a pis-aller, at least to hang out some of Madame de Chateaubriand's white underclothing ; and Madame de Chateaubriand needed all her petulance and all her firmness to resist the strange request.

Such were the picturesque circumstances in which Chateaubriand discovered that the King had no intention of doing anything for him if he could help it. The Duc de Duras, however, was not only a peer of France, but had also been named First Gentleman of the Chamber in the Royal Household, and assigned apartments in the two palaces of the Tuileries and Saint-Cloud; and the Duchesse de Duras had been one of the first of the great ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to seek the honour of being received by the King at Compiègne. She was now, therefore, at last in a position to pull wires, and Chateaubriand appealed to her to do so. On October 6 he wrote to her at Dieppe.

He had written an article for the Débats, he said, which had made a great sensation. The King had been so pleased with it that he had sent the Minister of Police to thank him for it, and copies of the paper containing it had gone to a premium and fetched as much as five francs. Evidently he was the only political writer to whom the public was disposed to listen. The Government ought to give him a good appointment at home, so that his pen might be a weapon always ready to their hands. And so: "Come back and work for me.... Lose no time in coming »

She came, and visited him at La Vallée-aux-Loups, and told him that she was doing her best and hoped for good results. Persuaded that his dreams were coming true, he appealed to her to "buy the house next door to me and pull down the party wall"; but at the same time he protested that, if his dreams did not come true, he would retire to Switzerland in dudgeon. " Perhaps,' he reflects in the Mémoires, " it would have been well for me if I had done so. Should I not have been happier in those deserts to which Napoleon proposed to send me as his ambassador to the mountains than I have been in the Palace of the Tuileries?" But that is the voice of René rather than of Chateaubriand. What Chateaubriand wanted at the moment was not solitude, but office-high office with emoluments proportionate to its dignity.

Madame de Duras could, to a certain extent, influence M. de Blacas¹; and M. de Blacas could, to a certain extent, influence the King. The result was that "they unearthed a vacant embassy-the embassy to the Court of Sweden." That was all, and it seemed disappointingly little; for Stockholm was a remote, insignificant, hyperborean capital, and the salary of the French ambassador to Sweden was only 33,000 francs. In his next letter, therefore, Chateaubriand mourns over the prospect of being torn away from his dear home, recalls the sentimental memories connected with it, and then proceeds to a practical review of his pecuniary situation.

1 The Duc de Blacas was then head of Louis XVIII's household, and afterwards served as Minister at Naples. His extreme royalist and clerical opinions made him unpopular, and most of the other ministers objected on that account to have him as a colleague. He attended Charles X in exile. ↩

He is thinking, he says, of the long days "passed in the hope of seeing Natalie for a moment alone"- the days when he " dreamt of her and Les Martyrs," -the days when he was " in love, inspired, unfortunate, yet happy « —

"And to-day I am ambassador to Sweden! A pretty end to it all! I am to abandon my work, my dreams, and everything! Ah, my poor valley, when shall I see you again? Never, I dare say. How old I am getting! How far behind me I have left all that! I no longer feel that I live, and the remainder of my life is not worth living. I ought to have died on the day on which the King entered Paris."

And then follow the pecuniary details.

Thirty-three thousand francs! What can a man do-what at any rate can an ambassador do-with thirty-three thousand francs? He will have to spend twenty thousand francs at least on plate, linen, horses, and carriages. That will leave him thirteen thousand francs-£520-to live on. How can an ambassador live on the ridiculous sum of f520 a year? It is preposterous-especially if the ambassador has debts; and Chateaubriand is obliged to admit to Madame de Duras that he has many. He presents her with a statement of his assets and liabilities.

With the proceeds of the subscriptions of the joint stock company and of the sale of the Itinéraire he has paid off debts to the amount of fifty-four thousand francs; but other debts have since accumulated. He owes ten thousand francs borrowed on the security of M. de Tocqueville's name from Madame de Coislin. He has mortgaged La Vallée-aux-Loups for a loan of twenty thousand francs, and he has given various creditors bills amounting in all to fifteen thousand francs. His total liability, therefore, is forty-five thousand francs, with interest running at the rate of seven per cent.; and he has no assets whatsoever except the manuscript of Le dernier Abencérage, but recently redeemed from pawn. He must have

"you must use all your influence and get them to give me a hundred thousand francs.

That was more, however, than Madame de Duras was able to do-at all events in the time at her disposal. She was still at work, and Chateaubriand was still in Paris, awaiting the result of her solicitations, when Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed at Fréjus, and bade the eagle of the Empire " fly from steeple to steeple until it reaches the towers of Notre Dame."

We need not follow the rapid history of those exciting days. Enough to note that Madame de Duras remembered Chateaubriand in the midst of the turmoil, and rendered him a last service on the very eve of the flight of the royal family.

The King, after announcing his intention to remain and resist, had decided at the eleventh hour to retreat. The news was brought to Madame de Duras in her apartment in the Tuileries, and she instantly went to see M. de Vitrolles, the Head of the King's Household, and M. d'André, the Director-General of the Police. Had they, she asked, or had they not considered the danger to which they were exposing M. de Chateaubriand? They replied that they had not, and then she insisted that they must. Napoleon's first thought on re-entering Paris would assuredly be to order M. de Chateaubriand to be shot; and M. de Chateaubriand was unable to seek safety in flight because he had no money. Could he not be sent on a special mission to Vienna and paid for his services in advance?

No, replied M. de Vitrolles, he could not ; and then Madame de Duras fainted in M. de Vitrolles' arms, and M. de Vitrolles had to lay her on a sofa and apply restoratives, and sent for the doctor. Then she recovered consciousness and renewed her eloquent entreaties. Something had to be done to pacify her, and time was precious, and there was a little public money in the Treasury, and it might just as well be given to Chateaubriand as left for Napoleon to seize. So apparently M. de Vitrolles argued; and the upshot of the strange interview was that Madame de Duras carried off in triumph the sum of twelve thousand francs-an advance payment on account of Chateaubriand's services in connection with the Embassy of which it was known that Napoleon would, as a matter of course, deprive him before two days had passed.

At any rate, however, thanks to Madame de Duras, he had money enough for his immediate needs, and could hire a carriage and drive to Belgium.