Chapitre XXIV

Hortense Allart de Méritens-Her many lovers-Her frank predilection for free love-Her presentation to Chateaubriand in Rome-Les Enchantements de Prudence-Identification of Prudence with Hortense-Her account of Chateaubriand's infatuation-They both return to Paris-Fall of Martignac-Polignac Prime Minister-Chateaubriand resigns his embassy.

HORTENSE ALLART, born in 1801, was the first cousin of Delphine Gay.¹ She was attractive, clever, passionate, high-spirited ; and she was left an orphan, absolutely unprovided for. For a little while she was a governess ; but such women do not remain governesses for long. Either they marry, or else they throw their bonnets over the windmill. Hortense threw her bonnet over the windmill, and never regretted it, though she lived to be seventy-seven.

1 Madame de Girardin. ↩

Her lovers were the Portuguese Comte de Sampayo, Chateaubriand, Sir Henry Bulwer, afterwards Lord Dalling, the Italian Jacopo Mazzei, and Sainte-Beuve. Possibly the list is not complete ; but this is not the place in which to try to extend it. The essential fact is that, though most of them treated her badly, she never quarrelled with any of them. The only man with whom she quarrelled was her husband, whom she deserted because of the violence of his temper, and whose wedding ring she threw away in the middle of the high road; but she always remained the friend of the men of whom she had been the mistress.

She was not only clever, but well-informed, and even erudite. She wrote novels, and also a History of Florence, and other learned books-quite good books though a little disjointed, and not, as it happened, successful. Thiers does not seem to have tried to kiss her, as he once tried to kiss George Sand, but he enjoyed her conversation. She corresponded with Bulwer about high politics, and disputed with Sainte-Beuve on points of criticism.

Sainte-Beuve was only her lover for a few days. He was too busy, he said, to follow up his advantages; he was also, as Hortense had reason to know, too much occupied with Mesdames d'Agoult¹ and d'Arbouville. His intimacy with her was only the " clou d'or" which riveted the chains of friendship, and he considered the chain so strong that a single rivet sufficed. She was disappointed, but she was not offended. Willing to allow others the liberty which she claimed for herself, she contented herself with rallying him on his comparative austerity, and continued to write to him on all subjects under the sun, but chiefly about herself-the varying degrees of attachment which she had felt for her various lovers, and her view of love and the place which should be assigned to it in a wellordered scheme of life.

1 For a long time the mistress of Liszt. 29б ↩

Her letters, lately published by M. Léon Séché, are a full and candid revelation. Hortense hides nothing, and excuses nothing; she has no hypocrisy, no remorse, no scruples. She is quite satisfied that it is proper to pray to God that such love affairs as hers may prosper. She declares, when engaged to be married, that marriage should be preceded by "at least two years' intimacy," and that it is tempting Providence to marry without first testing the estate of matrimony by experiment; and after her marriage, but before her separation from her husband, we find her exclaiming with fervour: "Oh, my lovers, my delightful lovers, lovers whom I loved for a day, and lovers whom I loved for a decade; lovers whom I loved in pique, and lovers whom I loved indeed-how charming it is to remember them all, now that I am alone and am ill-treated." And then, in colder blood, philosophizing—

" I think the moralists are wrong. ... If ever on my way through life I should meet a girl who was at once finely nurtured, of bright intelligence, and vigorous, I would tell her to do as I have done and follow nature nobly. Better to fight one's battle in the midst of passions than to fight the passions themselves. A girl who has a lover, though he be but a poor creature, lives her own life, weeps, enjoys, and yields to a divine law. The girl who resists nature has only torment for her lot. It is a terrible and gloomy state of things. All the machinery is out of gear, and falls to pieces; and it would be much better for her to die."

Such was Hortense, and such was her philosophythe philosophy of George Sand put frankly and without the sentimental unction. She did not merely fling it out in occasional moods of petulant disappointment, but was always ready to formulate it whenever the opportunity occurred. She did so again apropos of Sainte-Beuve's proposition that three lovers were enough for any one. "Don't limit the number," she wrote. "Say only that one should be straightforward, and should keep one's self-respect, and do nothing, whether due to passion or not, which God cannot accept as resulting from the irresistible law which He has imposed »

It is the most frank profession of faith which we meet in the whole history of the Romantic Movement; and it is professed repeatedly and unconditionally. One feels that the woman who professed it was the woman of all others whom it behoved Chateaubriand to meet-not merely for the enlargement of his ex-perience, but also because he was bound to find her an antagonist worthy of his steel. Only, of course, the encounter was not quite fair; for he was over sixty, and she was not yet twenty-eight.

He met her in Rome, where she was staying with her sister, Madame Gabriac, the wife of a French merchant, in the quarter del Quatro Fontane. Madame Hamelin-the same Madame Hamelin of whom, as we have seen, Madame de C- - was jealous-wrote to her advising her to call on him. She at once bought and read Atala in order to prepare herself for the ordeal; and then she asked and received permission to present herself at the Embassy. The Ambassador received her " with coquetry," and said that he would like to see her again. He returned her visit, in fact, in the course of the following afternoon, "wearing all his orders," according to M. d'Haussonville, and made his arrangements for other and less ostentatious interviews. The task was one, says M. d'Haussonville, of which the junior members of the Embassy would gladly have relieved him; and that is credible enough. And one can also believe that Chateaubriand was in earnest when he wrote to his friend, Marcellus: "If only Madame de Chateaubriand would go back to Paris, I should be very pleased to spend the summer here »

There is no hint of the story in the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe.¹ Hortense only figures there as a writer whose name is casually mentioned in the midst of a long list of writers. She wrote her own recollections of the interlude, however, and lent the manuscript to Sainte-Beuve, who quoted a long extract from it in an appendix to Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire. Indignant critics declared that the " Unpublished Memoirs" from which he professed to be citing were apocryphal, but that was not the case. Long afterwards, in 1872, the entire volume of reminiscences appeared under the title of Les Enchantements de Madame Prudence de Saman d'Esbatz.

1 Sainte-Beuve reproaches Chateaubriand for omitting it. ↩

George Sand knew enough to divine the author's identity. She wrote to her to tell her that she had done so, and that she considered her "a great woman and she reviewed the book for Le Temps, "

expressing abundant sympathy for this fervent Tops,

and asking what moralist would dare to cast the first stone at her.

It was Barbey d'Aurévilly, the most truculent of French critics, who cast it. He cast, in fact, not only the first stone, but the second, and the third, and all the stones that he could lay his hand upon. Prudence (which is to say Hortense) is for him "a female Rousseau," and also " a member of the old society of France boasting of her love affairs after they are over, as the cowards boast after the battle!" He talks of " pigsties" and of " the companions of Ulysses turned into swine and wallowing at the feet of Circe." In fact, though Hortense was then seventy-two, he showed no mercy to her grey hairs, with the result that her son, Marcus, took the matter up. He challenged Barbey; and when Barbey refused to fight him, he called at the office of the Constitutionnel to assault him, and, failing to find him there, assaulted one of the sub-editors instead, with the result that he was cast in damages to the extent of two hundred francs, and sent to prison for a month.

The story is true, however. It bears the stamp of truth, and the correspondence amply corroborates it. Even Barbey did not doubt its truth, but only shrieked that it ought to have been left untold in the interest of a great Catholic reputation. Perhaps it ought, but there it is; and the picture of the Great Catholic Ambassador who had restored religion to France, who had the Pope for his friend, who composed "forms of prayer" for the use of women, and to whom little children were brought to recite his touching words about the " first communion," gains an added touch of humanity from the details which Hortense gives us.

" He had a wonderful way with him," she writes, "for he was very fond of feminine society. He used to call on me with a flower in his button-hole, wellgroomed, and fashionably dressed. His smile was charming; his teeth were of a dazzling whiteness; he was frivolous and appeared to be happy. Already his newly acquired gaiety was the talk of Rome; and Italy, which he had at first revisited with a sense of melancholy, had now a fresh attraction for him."

He argued with her about his war, and made her his confidante concerning his political ambitions. He sent her his books, writing: " Both they and I myself are yours to dispose of." Just as he had previously talked of winning glory in order to earn the love first of Natalie de Noailles-Mouchy, and afterwards of Madame de C— -, so now he told Hortense that his only object in seeking power was to give her pleasure, and that he hoped to "lay France as a trophy at her feet." And then, when he had made up his mind to return to France and exploit his triumph at the Conclave—

« He came to me and asked for a confession, and a word of hope. I had to speak or else lose him, for he was going away. I saw that matters were moving too fast, but I gave way, leaving reflection until afterwards. I gave him the promise which he asked for, and he was delighted. He demanded proofs."

And presumably Hortense gave him proofs, for Chateaubriand speaks of this year as the happiest of his life.

His political machinations, indeed, came to nothing Charles X did not like him very much, and liked still less the Liberal opinions which he had developed while in opposition, writing for the Journal des Débats. Perhaps, he said, he would have Chateaubriand in his Cabinet some day, but he could not have him there just yet. Meanwhile he was in the hands of the extreme Catholic party; and so, instead of giving the Foreign Office to Chateaubriand, he gave it to Polignac.

How far Chateaubriand's objections to Polignac, at this stage, were personal and how far they were political, is not quite clear. Presumably, as Polignac had not yet shown his hand, they were mainly personal. Polignac had once served under Chateaubriand,¹ and therefore Chateaubriand could not, without damage to his vanity, serve under him. He therefore flung his resignation in Polignac's face, waited for Polignac to develop a policy, and then proceeded to oppose it; and as Polignac was not merely a Catholic, but a fanatic, in love with the cause of reaction, Chateaubriand, by the pressure of circumstances, became more and more avowedly and decidedly a Liberal.

1 As Ambassador at London when Chateaubriand was Foreign Minister. ↩

His happiness, therefore, can by no means be attributed to political success. It would be more plausible, indeed, to attribute it to political failure and the popularity which it brought in its train. Chateaubriand was once more the idol of the people-hardly less their idol than Béranger-liable at any moment to be carried in triumph on their shoulders. He always liked that sort of thing, even though the loss of official emoluments compelled him, as he complained, to " work as a bookseller's hack." Moreover, Madame de Chateaubriand had left him for a season, to stay at Nice for the benefit of her health, and that also was a relief. And finally, and chiefly, he had won the love and was enjoying the homage of Hortense, who had also returned to Paris.

The politics can wait, and we will return • to Hortense (or Prudence) and her Enchantments which caused her sexagenarian lover to sigh, as she tells us : " Ah, me! How I wish I were only fifty!" And then, when she suggested that twenty-five would be still better: "No, no! If I could go back to fifty, that would be far enough »