Chapitre XX

Who was " Madame de C- - ?"-Chateaubriand's passionate letters to her-He addresses her in verse-Madame Récamier leaves Paris in dudgeon-Ampère and Ballanche try to console her-They accompany her to Italy.

THE writer in Les Annales Romantiques goes no further than to say that he could identify Madame de C. if he chose. A contributor to the Figaro, reviewing his article, puts a dot on the i, saying that C was indeed the initial letter of her name, and that she was the wife of a future Marshal of France,¹ at that date a Colonel of Hussars, of whom Larousse writes in his Great Dictionary that "his manner towards women recalled the gallantry of a by-gone epoch." If that criticism, and all that it implies be just, then there can be no doubt that his wife punished him amply, though without his knowledge; for of all the women whom Chateaubriand loved Madame de C is the only one whom he addressed in the intimate style of "thee and thou.' He made love to the others-even to Pauline de Beaumont-in the grand manner, almost as if writing for publication. In the case of Madame de C- he was swept away by passion, and evidently wrote for no other eyes than hers—

1 The writer in the Figaro discovers his clue in the following passage in the recently published Memoirs of Baron de Frénilly- "In addition to the direction of Foreign Affairs, he had assumed the direction of the private affairs of Madame Boni de Castellane, as whose admirer he hgured openly in the days before my old friend Molé succeeded him in her favours." The Baron goes on to tell a story to the effect that Chateaubriand advised Madame de Castellane to invest a large sum of money in the loan issued by the Spanish Cortes, and subsequently intrigued, purely in her interest, to prevent King Ferdinand from repudiating the loan after his restoration to power. This, according to the Baron, was the true reason of his precipitate dismissal from his office. ↩

"My angel, my life-I know not what else to call you-I love you with all the madness of my earliest years. For you I am once again the brother of Amélie. The whole of the past is forgotten since you let me kneel at your feet.

"Come with me to the seaside. Come with me where you will, so that it is somewhere far away from the world.

" At last I have realized this dream of happiness which I have so long pursued. It is you whom I have always adored even before I knew you. ...

To-morrow at two! . . .

May Heaven never deprive me of my happiness! Yours till the end of my life."

"Never have I seen you looking so beautiful as you did yesterday evening.

"I would have given my life to hold you in my arms.

"Tell me. Was it your love for me that adorned you? Was it my burning passion for you that made you so seductive in my eyes?

"You saw-I could not stop looking at you-l could not stop kissing the golden chain you wore. When you left me, I should have liked to throw myself at your feet, and worship you as a goddess.

"Ah, if you only loved me one half as well as I love you !

"My poor head is turned, and it is for you to cure the evil which you have caused.

" At eight o'clock then! I shall await you with a beating heart »

That in September 1823, when Chateaubriand was at the summit of his political renown, conducting from Paris the war which he had organized at Verona, and cradling royalist France in the belief that it was recovering under his inspiration the lost military glories of the Napoleonic era. The letters were written in the intervals between the writing of dispatches, and on the same official giltedged notepaper. Nor was it letters only that were thus written. With the second letter there was enclosed a poem, also on official gilt-edged notepaper-the only love poem, so far as is known, that Chateaubriand ever wrote- " Par quelle illusion ai-je pu te séduire?

M'aurais-tu point, dans mon dernier soleil,

Cherché l'astre de feu qui sur moi semblait luire

Quand d'Atala je peignis le réveil ?

Je n'ai point le talent de Virgile et du Tasse

Mais quand le Ciel m'eût fait cet heureux don,

Le talent ne rend point ce que le temps efface :

La gloire, hélas ! ne rajeunit qu'un nom.

L'amant de Velléda, le frère d'Amélie,

Mes fils ingrats m'ont-ils ravi ta foi?

Ton admiration me blesse et m'humilie.

Le croirais-tu? je suis jaloux de moi.

Dédaigne, ô ma beauté, cette gloire trompeuse.

Il n'est qu'un bien: c'est le tendre plaisir.

Quelle immotalité vaut une nuit heureuse?

Pour tes baisers je vendrais l'avenir."

With more, ten stanzas in all, written on the morning after a ball at the Foreign Office. It was there, in the Foreign Office reception rooms, in the midst of princes, and princesses, and ambassadors, that René, a Foreign Minister indifferent, as he flattered himself, to all pomps and vanities and splendours, desired only to prostrate himself on the polished floor and worship a woman as a goddess.

Colonel de C— -, though present at the entertainment, may have been too busily occupied with his own endeavours to "recall the gallantry of a by-gone epoch" to notice anything; but some of the other guests noticed a good deal. The King himself remarked upon Chateaubriand's "levity." The Prime Minister gave orders to his secret police to watch developments and report. Society winked and whispered. Madame Récamier observed that Chateaubriand ceased to be punctual at his "hour" at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and had many friends who were only too eager to inform her of the reason why. The whole matter is threshed out, albeit only in dark and enigmatic allusions, in her correspondence with Ballanche, with J.-J. Ampere, with Paul David, with Mathieu de Montmorency, and even with Chateaubriand himself. Paris had become intolerable to her. She would go to Rome; and, as it was inappropriate for the Queen of Beauty to travel anywhere without a court, Ampere and Ballanche would go with her.

The ostensible pretext was her niece's health. Her niece, who afterwards became her biographer, says that the real reason was "an alteration in the character of M. de Chateaubriand's pure affection and a temporary abandonment on his part of his attitude of "respectful reserve." But this statement only shows that Mlle. Cyvoct was too young to be told the truth. The letters prove to demonstration that Madame Récamier fled from Chateaubriand, not because her virtue was threatened by the increasing ardour of his advances, but because her vanity was hurt by the diminution of his assiduities. All her friends, even those who are most ambitious of taking his vacant place, protest that he is treating her badly; and her own letters, both to them and to him, are full of complaints of a grievance which she never specifies, but of which any one who knows the facts can easily divine the nature.

She got so far, on one occasion, as to address him stiffly as " Monsieur"; and there is one remarkable letter written from Rome to Paul David, in which her reasons for delaying her return to Paris are thus given-

" If I were to come back now, I should only return to the troubles which drove me away. If M. de Chateaubriand were unkind to me, I should be terribly upset. If he were kind, I should be face to face with an embarrassment which I have made up my mind to avoid for the future. Here I find a distraction in the arts and a support in religion which will protect me from all the storms of the heart. It is very sad for me to be obliged to stay away from my friends for another ten months; but it is better to make the sacrifice, and I really feel that it is necessary. Believe me, my dear Paul, I shall never forget the benefit which I have derived from your friendship, even in these strange circumstances."

That letter is the most luminous of all the commentaries. It shows that virtue, in Madame Récamier's case, was not incompatible with something very nearly akin to passion. It shows that, while she felt herself aggrieved, she was too deeply attached to Chateaubriand to force a quarrel with him, but preferred to wait till her rival's tyranny was overpast and he returned to her. It also shows that, though she sought consolation in the triumphs of coquetry, she failed to find it.

Ballanche and Ampère-especially Ampère the young and ardent-were as devoted in their attentions as she would suffer them to be. Ampère was her constant escort, her guide, her cavaliere servente, and even her poet. " Ah! venez," he wrote-

" Ah ! venez et souffrez que mon bras vous soutienne,

Que parfois sur mon cœur je presse votre bras ;

Laissez, laissez tomber votre main dans la mienne:

Venez, sur ces hauteurs je veux guider vos pas."

And no doubt Madame Récamier did, from time to time, let her hand lie in the hand of J.-J. Ampère, and even permit him to press her hand against his heart. She went through life doing such things, and meaning little by them; but now, as is quite evident, she meant less by them than ever. Her heart was in Paris, whence Chateaubriand's letters came to her.

They did not come quite so often as of old-he protested that he was too busy to write regularly-but still they came; and it must have been very puzzling for Madame Récamier, knowing what she knew, to decide what to make of them.

For Chateaubriand would not quarrel with Madame Récamier and would not let her quarrel with him. His heart was capacious, and he saw no reason why passion should interfere with friendship. Perhaps he realized that he would want the friendship always, and remembered that his passions usually languished after a little while. So he continued to write affectionately, and sometimes even reproachfully, to Madame Récamier, even at the height of his passion for Madame de C -. "Your monsieur,' he told her, "froze my heart. You know very well that I have done nothing to deserve it;" and it often happened that he went so far as to write to her and to Madame de C - on the same day.

On October 25, for instance, Madame de C about to depart on a journey, received this passionate communication-

"Go your way, then-you are the delight and happiness of my life-but only to meet me again, and intoxicate me with your love, and make me the most glorious and most enviable of men.

" In a few days' time I shall be at your feet, and shall press your heart to mine. We shall be alone, and I shall be able to cover you with my kisses, and breathe your breath, and make my life a part of yours »

Simultaneously Chateaubriand received a letter from Madame Récamier, announcing her intention of leaving France, and concluding tearfully: "I am saying good-bye to all the joys of the earth." And to her his answer was—

"No, no. You are not saying good-bye to all the joys of the earth. You are going away, but you will soon be back again, and you will find me just as I have always been, and always shall be, in my feelings for you. You must not accuse me of what is really your own act. ... I will come and see you after the Cabinet Council. I love you with all my soul, and neither your obstinacy nor your injustice shall prevent me from doing so »

And then, just three days later, in reply to another letter which one must suppose to have been conciliatory-

"So you see you were mistaken. There was no reason whatever for this journey. If you go, you will not stay away long, and when you return, you will find me just as you left me-that is to say, very tenderly and very sincerely attached to you.... I never tire of my affections, and, however long I were to go on living, my last day would still be filled and brightened by your image."

It was true; but the truth related to the future rather than the present. Madame Récamier, apparently, understood that, and did not change her plans. She set out for Italy on November 2, closely followed by " the worthy Ballanche" and the ardent J.-J. Ampère; and it was also on November 2 that Chateaubriand set out to keep a remote and secret appointment with Madame de C