Book XII
My Embassy to Rome—Three kinds of materials-Diary of the road—Letters to Madame Récamier—Leo XII. and the Cardinals—The ambassadors—The old artists and the new artists—Old Roman society—Present manners of Rome—Town and country—Letter to M. Villemain—Letter to Madame Récamier—Explanation concerning the memorandum I am about to quote—Letter to M. le Comte de La Feironnays—Memorandum on Eastern Affairs—Letters to Madame Récamier—Letter to M. Thierry—Dispatch to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays—More letters to Madame Récamier—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Death of Leo XII.—Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis—Letter to Madame Récamier.
The preceding book, which I have just written in 1839, joins this book of my Roman Embassy, written in 1828 and 1829, ten years ago. My Memoirs, as Memoirs, have gained by the story of Madame Récamier's life: other persons have been brought upon the scene; we have seen Naples under Murat, Rome under Bonaparte, the Pope set free, returning to St. Peter's; unpublished letters of Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Canova, La Harpe, Madame de Genlis, Lucien Bonaparte, Moreau, Bernadotte, Murat are preserved; the narrative of Benjamin Constant shows him in a new light. I have introduced the reader to a little "out-of-the-way canton" of the Empire, while that Empire was accomplishing its universal movement; I now find myself brought to my Roman Embassy. The distraction of a fresh subject will have been a relief from myself: all has been to the reader's advantage.
For this book of my Roman Embassy there has been no lack of materials; they are of three kinds:
The first contain the story of my innermost sentiments and of my private life, as related in the letters addressed to Madame Récamier.
The second set forth my public life: those are my dispatches.
The third are a medley of historical details concerning the popes, old Roman society, the changes that have taken place from century to century in that society, and so on.
Among these investigations are thoughts and descriptions, the fruit of my rambles. All this has been written in the space of seven months, the time of the duration of my embassy, in the midst of festivities or serious occupations. Nevertheless, my health was impaired. I could not lift up my eyes without feeling dizziness; to admire the sky, I was obliged to place it around me by climbing to the top of a palace or a hill. But I cured the lassitude of the body by means of mental application: the exercise of my thought renewed my physical vigour; what would kill another man gives me life.
In revising all this, I have been struck with one thing. On my arrival in the Eternal City, I feel a certain dislike and, for a moment, I believe that everything has changed; little by little, the fever of the ruins overtakes me and I end, like a thousand other travellers, by adoring that which left me cold at first. Nostalgia is the regret of one's native country; on the banks of the Tiber we also suffer from "home-sickness," but it produces an opposite effect to its customary effect: we are seized with the love of solitudes and the distaste for our own country. I had already felt this "sickness" at the time of my first visit, and I was able to say:
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ.
You know how, when the Martignac Ministry was formed, the mere name of Italy had dispelled what remained of my repugnance; but I am never sure of my disposition in matters of joy: no sooner had I set out with Madame Chateaubriand than my natural melancholy joined me on the way. You shall convince yourselves of this by my diary of the road:
"Lausanne, 22 September 1828.
"I left Paris on the 14th of this month; I spent the 16th at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne: what memories! Joubert is gone; the deserted Château de Passy has changed masters; I have been told, 'Be thou the cricket of the nights: Esto cicada noctium.'"
"Arona, 25 September.
"Arriving at Lausanne on the 22nd, I followed the road along which disappeared two other women who wished me well and who, in the order of nature, should have survived me. One, Madame la Marquise de Custine, came to die at Bex; the other, Madame la Duchesse de Duras, was hastening, not a year ago, to the Simplon, flying before the face of death which overtook her at Nice."
"Noble Clara, digne et constante amie,
Ton souvenir ne vit plus en ces lieux;
De ce tombeau l'on détourne les yeux;
Ton nom s'efface et le monde t'oublie!"The last letter which I received from Madame de Duras brings home to us the bitterness of that last drop of life which we shall all have to drain:
"'Nice, 14 November 1828.
"'I have sent you an asclepias carnata; it is a laurel creeper which grows in the open air, is not afraid of the cold, and has a red flower like the camélia, with an excellent smell; plant it under the windows of the Benedictine's Library.
"'I will tell you my news in a word: it is always the same thing; I droop on my sofa all day, that is to say, all the time that I am not driving or walking out, which I cannot do for more than half-an-hour a day. I dream of the past: my life has been so agitated, so varied, that I cannot say that I am violently bored: if I could only do some needle-work or rug-work, I should not feel unhappy. My present life is so far removed from my past life that it seems to me as though I were reading Memoirs or watching a play.'
"And so I have returned to Italy deprived of my friends, as I left it five and twenty years ago. But, at that first time, I was able to repair my losses; to-day, who would wish to take part in a few remaining old days? No one cares to live in a ruin.
"At the village of the Simplon itself, I saw the first smile of a happy dawn. The rocks, whose base stretched out black at my feet, gleamed with rose-colour at the mountain-top, struck by the rays of the sun. To issue from darkness, it is enough to rise towards Heaven.
"If Italy had already lost some of its brilliancy for me at the time of my journey to Verona in 1822, in this year, 1828, it appeared to me still more discoloured; I have measured the progress of time. Leaning on the balcony of the inn at Arona, I gazed at the banks of the Lago Maggiore, blazoned with the gold of the setting sun and edged with azure. Nothing was more agreeable than this landscape, which the Castle edged with its battlements. This sight afforded me neither pleasure nor sentiment. The years of spring-time wed their hopes to what they see; a young man goes a-roaming with what he loves, or with the memories of his absent happiness. If he have no bond, he seeks one; he flatters himself at each step that he will find something; thoughts of felicity haunt him: this disposition of his soul is reflected upon surrounding objects.
"However, I notice the littleness of present society less when I find myself alone. Left to the solitude in which Bonaparte has left the world, I scarcely hear the feeble generations which pass and mewl on the edge of the desert."
"Bologna, 22 September 1828.
"In Milan, in less than a quarter of an hour, I counted seventeen hunchbacks passing under the window of my inn. The German flogging has deformed young Italy.
"I saw St. Charles Borromeo in his sepulchre, after touching his birthplace at Arona. He reckoned two hundred and forty-four years of death. He was not beautiful.
"At Borgo San Donnino, Madame de Chateaubriand came running into my room in the middle of the night: she had seen her clothes and her straw hat fall off the chairs over which they were hung. She had concluded from this that we were in an inn haunted by ghosts or inhabited by robbers. I had noticed no shock as I lay in bed; nevertheless it was the case that an earthquake had been felt in the Apennines: that which overturns cities is able to throw down a woman's clothes. I said as much to Madame de Chateaubriand; I also told her that, in Spain, in the Vega del Xenil, I had passed without accident through a village which had been turned upside down the day before by a subterranean concussion. These lofty consolations did not have the smallest success, and we hastened to leave this cave of murderers.
"The continuation of my journey has displayed to me on every hand the flight of men and the inconstancy of fortune. At Parma, I found the portrait of Napoleon's widow that daughter of the Cæsars is now the wife of Count Neipperg; that mother of the conqueror's son has presented that son with brothers: she allows the debts which she piles up to be guaranteed by a little Bourbon who lives at Lucca and who, if it is expedient, is to inherit the Duchy of Parma.
"Bologna appears to me less deserted than at the time of my first journey. I have been received here with the honours with which ambassadors are pestered. I have visited a fine cemetery: I never forget the dead; they are our family.
"I have never so much admired the Carraccis as in the new gallery at Bologna. It seemed to me as though I were seeing Raphael's St. Cecilia for the first time, so much more divine is it here than at the Louvre, under our sooty sky."
"Ravenna, 1 October 1828.
"In the Romagna, a country which I did not know, a multitude of towns, with their houses coated with marble lime, are perched on the tops of different little mountains, like coveys of white pigeons. Each of those towns possesses a few master-pieces of modern art or a few monuments of antiquity. This canton of Italy contains the whole of Roman history: the traveller should go through it with his Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius in his hand.
"I passed through Imola, the bishopric of Pius VII., and Faenza. At Forli I went out of my road to visit Dante's tomb at Ravenna. As I approached the monument, I was seized with that thrill of admiration which a great renown gives, when the master of that renown has been unfortunate. Alfieri, who bore on his forehead il pallor della morta e la speranza, flung himself prone upon that marble and addressed to it his sonnet, O gran Padre Alighier! Standing before the tomb, I applied to myself this verse from the Purgatorio:
Frate,
Lo mondo è cieco, e tu vien ben da lui."Beatrice appeared to me; I saw her as she was when she inspired her poet with the longing di sospirare e di morir di pianto:
My plaintive song, take now thy mournful way,
And find the dames and damosels, to whom
Thy sisters, joyful-gay,
Were wont to bear the light of sunny gladness,
And thou, distressful daughter of my sadness,
Go thou and dwell with them in cheerless gloom!"And yet the creator of a new world of poetry forgot Beatrice when she had left the earth! He only found her again, to adore her in his genius, when he was undeceived. Beatrice reproaches him with it, when she is preparing to show Paradise to her lover:
"'These looks,' she says to the powers of Paradise,
These looks sometimes upheld him; for I show'd
My youthful eyes, and led him by their light
In upright walking. Soon as I had reach'd
The threshold of my second age, and changed
My mortal for immortal; then he left me,
And gave himself to others."Dante refused to return to his country at the price of a pardon. He replied to one of his kinsmen:
"'If there is no other way of returning to Florence than that which is opened to me, I shall not return there. I can everywhere contemplate the stars and sun.'"
Dante refused the Florentines his days and Ravenna refused them his ashes, even though Michael Angelo, the resuscitated genius of the poet, was resolving to decorate the funeral monument of him who had learnt come l'uom s'eterna.
"The painter of the Last Judgment, the sculptor of the Moses, the architect of the dome of St. Peter's, the engineer of the Old Bastion at Florence, the poet of the sonnets addressed to Dante joined his fellow-townsmen and supported the petition which they presented to Leo X. with these words:
"'Io Michel Agnolo, scultore, il medesimo a Vostra Santità supplico, offerendomi al divin poeta fare la sepoltura sua condecente e in loco onorevole in quest a città.'
"Michael Angelo, whose chisel was disappointed in its hope, had recourse to his pencil to raise another mausoleum to that other himself. He drew the principal subjects of the Divina Commedia on the margins of a folio copy of the works of the great poet; a vessel which bore this two-fold monument from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia suffered shipwreck.
"I returned much moved and feeling something of that commotion, mingled with a divine terror, which I experienced at Jerusalem when my cicerone proposed to take me to Lord Byron's house. Ah, what were Childe Harold and the Signora Guiccioli to me in presence of Dante and Beatrice! Misfortune and the centuries are still lacking to Childe Harold; let him await the future. Byron was badly inspired in his Prophecy of Dante.
"I have found Constantinople again at San Vitale and San Apollinare. Honorius and his hen were indifferent to me; I prefer Placidia and her adventures, the memory of which came back to me in the basilica of St. John the Baptist: they form the romance of the Barbarians. Theodoric remains great, even though he put Boethius to death. Those Goths were a superior race; Amalasontha, banished to an island in the Lake of Bolsena, strove, with her minister Cassiodorus, to save what remained of Roman civilization. The Exarchs brought to Ravenna the decadence of their empire. Ravenna was Lombard under Astolf; the Carlovingians restored it to Rome. It became subject to its archbishop; then it changed from a republic into a tyranny; finally, after having been Guelph or Ghibelline, after having formed part of the Venetian States, it returned to the Church under Pope Julius II. and lives to-day only through the name of Dante.
"This city, which Rome bore in her advanced age, had, from its birth, something of the old age of its mother. Upon the whole, I should not mind living here; I should like to go to the French Column, raised in memory of the Battle of Ravenna. There were the Cardinal de Medici and Ariosto, Bayard and Lautrec, brother to the Comtesse de Chateaubriand. There the handsome Gaston de Foix was killed at the age of twenty-four.
"'Notwithstanding all the artillery fired by the Spaniards,' says the Loyal Serviteur, 'the French marched on; never since God created Heaven and earth was a crueller nor fiercer assault between French and Spaniards. They rested in front of one another to recover their breath; then, lowering their visors, began again worse than ever, crying "France!" and "Spain!"'
"Of all those warriors there remained but a few knights who then, become freed-men of glory, put on the frock.
"One saw also in some cabin a young girl who, in turning her spindle, caught her dainty fingers in the hemp; she was not accustomed to that life: she was a Trivulzis. When, through her half-open door, she saw two billows join each other on the bosom of the waters, she felt her sadness increase: that woman had been beloved by a great king. She continued to go slowly, by a lonely way, from her cabin to an abandoned church and from the church to her cabin.
"The old forest through which I passed was composed of solitary pines: they resembled the masts of galleys settled in the sand. The sun was near its setting when I left Ravenna; I heard the distant sound of a bell tolling: it was summoning the faithful to prayer."
"Ancona, 3 and 4 October.
"Returning to Forli, I left it once again without having seen on its crumbling ramparts the place where the Duchess Caterina Sforza declared to her enemies, who were preparing to murder her only son, that she could still be a mother. Pius VII., born at Cesena, was a monk in the admirable convent of Madonna del Monte.
"Near Savignano, I passed across the ravine of a little torrent: when I was told that I had crossed the Rubicon, it seemed to me as though a curtain was raised and that I saw the land of Cæsar's time. My own Rubicon is life: it is long since I cleared its first bank.
"At Rimini, I met neither Francesca nor the other shade, her companion, ‘ who seemed so light before the wind:'
E paion si al vento esser leggieri.
"Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia have brought me to Ancona over roads and bridges left by the Augustuses. In Ancona they are to-day keeping the Pope's birthday; I hear the music from Trajan's triumphal arch: a double sovereignty of the Eternal City."
"Loretto, 5 and 6 October.
"We have come to sleep at Loretto. The territory offers a perfectly-preserved specimen of the Roman colonia. The peasant farmers of Our Lady are in easy circumstances and seem happy; the peasant-women, handsome and gay, wear a flower in their hair. The Prelate Governor gave us his hospitality. From the top of the steeple and the summit of some of the eminences of the city one enjoys smiling vistas over the plains, Ancona and the sea. In the evening we had a storm. I took pleasure in watching the valentia muralis and the fumitory beloved by the goats bow before the wind on the old walls. I walked under the double galleries erected after Bramante's designs. Those pavements will be beaten by the autumn rains, those blades of grass will shiver at the breath of the Adriatic long after I shall have passed away.
"At midnight, I had retired to a bed eight feet square, hallowed by Bonaparte; a night-light hardly illumined the darkness of my room; suddenly, a little door opened, and I saw a man enter mysteriously, bringing with him a veiled woman. I raised myself on my elbow and looked at them; he approached my bed and lost no time, bowing down to the ground, in offering me a thousand excuses for thus disturbing the rest of His Excellency the Ambassador: but he was a widower; he was a poor steward; he wished to marry his ragazza, here present: unfortunately he fell somewhat short of the dowry. He lifted up the orphan's veil: she was pale, very pretty, and kept her eyes lowered with becoming modesty. This family man looked as though he wanted to go away and leave the affianced bride with me to finish her story. In this urgent danger, I did not ask the obliging and unhappy man, as the good knight asked the mother of the young girl of Grenoble, if she was a maid; very much flurried, I took some pieces of gold off the table by my bed and gave them, to do credit to the King my master, to the zitella, 'whose eyes were not swollen by dint of weeping.' She kissed my hand with infinite gratitude. I did not utter a word, and, upon my falling back on my immense couch, as though I wanted to sleep, the vision of St. Anthony disappeared. I thanked my patron saint, St. Francis, whose feast it was; I remained in the darkness, half smiling, half regretting, and rapt in a profound admiration of my virtues.
"It was thus, however, that I 'scattered gold,' that I was an ambassador, entertained in pomp and state by the Governor of Loretto, in the same town where Tasso was lodged in a sorry den and where, for want of a little money, he was unable to continue his journey. He payed his debt to Our Lady of Loretto by his canzone:
Ecco fra le tempeste e i fieri venti.
"Madame de Chateaubriand made amends for my transient fortune by climbing the steps of the Santa Chiesa on her knees. After my victory of the night, I had a better right than the King of Saxony to deposit my wedding-coat in the Treasury of Loretto; but I shall never forgive myself, a puny child of the Muses, for having been so powerful and so happy in the spot where the singer of Jerusalem had been so weak and so miserable! Torquato, do not take me in this unusual moment of my inconstant prosperity; riches are not my habit; see me on my way to Namur, in my attic in London, in my infirmary in Paris, in order to find in me some distant resemblance to thyself!
"I have not, like Montaigne, left my portrait in silver at Our Lady of Loretto, nor that of my daughter, Leonora Montana, filia unica; I have never desired to survive myself; but still, a daughter, and one who should bear the name of Leonora!"
"Spoleto.
"After leaving Loretto, passing Macerata, leaving Tolentino, which marks a step of Bonaparte and recalls a treaty, I climbed the last redans of the Apennines. The mountain table-land is moist and cultivated as a hop-garden. To the left were the seas of Greece, to the right those of Iberia; I could be pressed by the breath of the breezes which I had inhaled at Athens and Granada. We descended towards Umbria, winding down the curves of the leafless gorges, where live suspended in clusters of woods the descendants of the mountaineers who furnished the Romans with soldiers after the Battle of Trasimenus.
"Foligno used to possess a Virgin by Raphael which is to-day in the Vatican. 'Vene' occupies a charming position at the source of the Clitumnus. Poussin has reproduced that warm, suave site; Byron has sung it coldly.
"Spoleto gave birth to the present Pope. According to my courier Giorgini, Leo XII. has placed the galley-slaves in that town to do honour to his birthplace. Spoleto dared to resist Hannibal. It displays several works of Lippi the Elder who, nurtured in the cloister, a slave in Barbary, a kind of Cervantes among painters, died at over sixty years of age of the poison administered to him by the relations of Lucrezia, whom he was believed to have seduced."
"Civita Castellana.
"At Monte Lupo, Count Potoçki buried himself in charming laurœ; but did not the thoughts of Rome follow him there? Did he not believe himself transported there amid 'choirs of young girls?' And I too, like St. Jerome, 'have in my time spent day and night in uttering cries, in beating my breast, until God gave me back my peace.' Plango me non esse quod fuerim.
"After passing the hermitage of Monte Lupo, we began to wind round the Somma. I had already taken that road on my first journey from Florence to Rome over Perugia, when accompanying a dying woman....
"By the nature of the light and a sort of vivacity of the landscape, I should have believed myself on one of the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains, were it not that a tall aqueduct, surmounted by a narrow bridge, recalled to me a Roman work to which the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto had put their hands: the Americans have not yet come to those monuments which follow upon liberty. I climbed the Somma on foot, walking beside Clitumnian oxen which dragged Her Excellency the Ambassadress to her triumph. A young goat-girl, as thin, light of foot and pretty as her kid, followed me with her little brother in that opulent country-side, asking me for carità: I gave it her in memory of Madame de Beaumont, whom these spots have forgotten.
Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day."I saw Terni again and its cascades. A champaign planted with olive-trees brought me to Narni; then, after passing through Otricoli, we arrived and stopped at sad Civita Castellana. I should much like to go to Santa Maria di Faleri to see a city of which nothing is left but its skin, the walls; inside, it was empty: misère humaine à Dieu ramène. Let us wait till my grandeurs are past, and I shall return to seek out the city of the Faliscans. Soon, from Nero's Tomb, I shall be showing my wife the cross of St. Peter's which commands the city of the Cæsars."
You have glanced through my diary of the road, you shall now read my letters to Madame Récamier, interspersed, as I announced, with pages of history. Alongside of these, you will find my dispatches. Here will appear distinctly the two men that exist in me.
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, 11 October 1828.
"I have crossed this beautiful country, filled with your memory; it consoled me, without being able to take from me the sadness of all the other memories that I encountered at every step. I have seen again that Adriatic Sea which I crossed more than twenty years ago, in what a disposition of soul! At Terni, I had stopped with a poor expiring woman. Finally I entered Rome. Its monuments, as I feared, appeared less perfect to me after those of Athens. My memory of the places, astonishing and cruel at once, had not allowed me to forget a single stone....
"I have seen no one yet, except the Secretary of State, Cardinal Bernetti. To have somebody to talk to, I went to call on Guérin yesterday, at sunset: he seemed delighted with my visit. We opened a window upon Rome and admired the horizon. It was the only thing that had remained, for me, such as I had seen it; either my eyes or the objects had changed, perhaps both."
The first moments of my sojourn in Rome were employed in official visits. His Holiness received me in private audience; public audiences are not customary and cost too dear. Leo XII., a prince of tall stature and of an air at once serene and melancholy, is dressed in a plain white cassock; he maintains no pomp, and keeps to a poor room, almost unfurnished. He eats scarcely anything; he lives, with his cat, on a little polenta. He knows that he is very ill and sees himself waste away with a resignation that partakes of Christian joy: he would be quite willing, like Benedict XIV., to keep his coffin under his bed. When I come to the door of the Pope's apartments, I am taken by a priest through dark passages to the refuge or sanctuary of His Holiness. He does not allow himself the time to dress, for fear of keeping me waiting; he rises, comes towards me, will never allow me to touch the ground with my knee to kiss the hem of his robe instead of his slipper, and leads me by the hand to the seat placed on the right of his own poor arm-chair. We sit down and talk.
On Monday I go at seven o'clock in the morning to the Secretary of State, Bernetti, a man of affairs and pleasure. He has an intimacy with the Princess Doria; he knows his century, and has accepted the cardinal's hat only in self-defense. He has refused to enter the Church, is a sub-deacon only by patent, and by giving back his hat can get married to-morrow. He believes in revolutions, and goes so far as to think that, if he lives long enough, he has a chance of seeing the fall of the temporal power of the Papacy.
The cardinals are divided into three factions:
The first consists of those who try to march with the times; among these are Benvenuti and Oppizoni. Benvenuti has become famous through his extirpation of brigandage and his mission to Ravenna after Cardinal Rivarola; Oppizoni, Archbishop of Bologna, has conciliated the various shades of opinion in this industrial and literary town so difficult to govern.
The second faction is formed of the zelanti, who try to go backwards: one of their leaders is Cardinal Odescalchi.
Lastly, the third faction comprises the immovable men, old men who will not or cannot go either forwards or backwards: among these old ones is Cardinal Vidoni, a kind of gendarme of the Treaty of Tolentino: tall and fat, with a red face, and a skull-cap worn on one side. When you tell him that he has a chance of the Papacy, he replies, "Lo santo Spirito sarebber dunque ubriaco!" He plants trees at Ponte-Mole, where Constantine made the world Christian. I see those trees when I leave Rome by the Porta del Popolo to return by the Porta Angelica. The moment he catches sight of me at a distance, the cardinal shouts, "Ah! ah! Signor Ambasciadore di Francia!" and then flies out against the men who plant his pines. He does not follow the cardinalist etiquette; he goes out accompanied by a single footman in a carriage to his fancy: people forgive him everything, content to call him Madama Vidoni.
My ambassadorial colleagues are Count Lützow, the Austrian Ambassador, a polished man; his wife sings well, always the same air, and is always talking of her "little children;" the learned Baron Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, and friend of Niebuhr the historian (I am in treaty with him to have the lease of his palace on the Capitol cancelled in my favour); Prince Gagarin, the Russian Minister, exiled among the past grandeurs of Rome by reason of banished loves: if he was preferred by the beautiful Madame Narischkine, who for a moment inhabited my hermitage at Aulnay, there must be some charm in his bad temper; we prevail rather through our defects than our good qualities.
M. de Labrador, the Spanish Ambassador, a faithful man, talks little, walks about alone, thinks a great deal, or does not think at all, I cannot make out which.
Old Count Fuscaldo represents Naples as winter represents spring. He has a great cardboard placard on which he studies, through his spectacles, not the rose-fields of Pæstum, but the names of suspicious foreigners to whose passports he must not put his visa. I envy him his palace (the Farnese), an admirable unfinished structure, crowned by Michael Angelo, painted by Annibale Carracci, aided by his brother Agostino, and sheltering under its portico the sarcophagus of Cæcilia Metella, who has lost nothing by the change of mausoleum. Fuscaldo, ragged in mind and body, is said to have a mistress.
The Comte de Celles, Ambassador of the King of the Netherlands, was married to Mademoiselle de Valence, who is now dead. He has had two daughters by her, who are consequently great-grand-daughters of Madame de Genlis. M. de Celles has remained a prefect because he used to be one; his character is that medley of the gossip, the petty tyrant, the recruiting sergeant and the steward which one never loves. If you meet a man who, instead of acres, yards and feet, talks to you of hectares, metres and decimetres, you have laid your hand on a prefect.
M. de Funchal, the semi-acknowledged Ambassador of Portugal, is a little, fat man, excitable, grimacing, green as a Brazil monkey and yellow as a Lisbon orange: he sings his negress, however, this modern Camoëns. A great lover of music, he keeps a sort of Paganini in his pay while awaiting the restoration of his King.
Here and there I have caught glimpses of little sly-boots of ministers of various little States, very much scandalized to see how cheaply I hold my embassy: their buttoned-up, solemn and silent importance walks close-legged and with short steps: it looks ready to burst with secrets which it does not know.
As ambassador in England in 1822, sought out the places and men that I had formerly known in London in 1793; as Ambassador to the Holy See in 1828, I hastened to visit the palaces and ruins, to ask after the persons whom I had seen in Rome in 1803: of the palaces and ruins I have found many there; of the persons, few.
The Palazzo Lancellotti, formerly let to Cardinal Fesch, is now occupied by its real owners, Prince Lancellotti and the Princess Lancellotti, daughter of Prince Massimo. The house in which Madame de Beaumont lived, on the Piazza d'Espagna, has disappeared. As to Madame de Beaumont, she has remained in her last asylum and I have prayed with Pope Leo XII. at her tomb.
Canova has also taken leave of the world. I twice visited him in his studio in 1803; he received me mallet in hand. He showed me, with the simplest and gentlest air, his enormous statue of Bonaparte and his Hercules and Lichas: he was anxious to persuade you that he was able to achieve energy of form; but even then his chisel refused to dig deep into anatomy; the nymph lingered in the flesh in spite of him, and Hebe reappeared in the wrinkles of his old men. I have met the first sculptor of my time upon my road; he has fallen from his scaffold, as Goujon fell from the scaffold at the Louvre: death is always there to continue the eternal St. Bartholomew and to lay us low with its darts.
But there is one still alive, to my great delight, and that is my old Boquet, the oldest of the French painters in Rome. Twice had he tried to leave his beloved campagne; he has gone as far as Genoa; his heart has failed him, and he has returned to his adopted home. I have cockered him up at the Embassy, as well as his son, for whom he has the tenderness of a mother. I have begun our old walks over again with him; I notice his old age only by the slowness of his steps; I feel a sort of emotion when I mimic a little child and measure my strides by his. We have neither of us much longer before us to see the Tiber flow.
The great artists, at their great period, led a very different life from that which they lead now: attached to the ceilings of the Vatican, to the walls of St. Peter's, to the partitions of the Farnese, they worked at their master-pieces suspended with them in mid-air. Raphael walked surrounded by his pupils, escorted by cardinals and princes, like a senator of Ancient Rome, preceded and followed by his clients. Charles V. sat thrice to Titian. He picked up his brush, and yielded the right to him when walking, even as Francis I. attended Leonardo da Vinci on his death-bed. Titian went in triumph to Rome; the immense Buonarotti received him there: at the age of ninety-nine, at Venice, Titian still held with a firm hand his century-old brush, the conqueror of the centuries.
The Grand-duke of Tuscany secretly disinterred Michael Angelo, who had died in Rome after laying, at the age of eighty-eight, the coping-stone of the cupola of St. Peter's. Florence, with a magnificent funeral, expiated on the ashes of its great painter the neglect which it had shown to the ashes of Dante, its great poet.
Velasquez twice visited Italy, and Italy twice rose to greet him. The precursor of Murillo resumed the road to Spain laden with the fruits of that Ausonian Hesperia, which had fallen into his hands: he carried away a picture by each of the twelve most celebrated painters of that time.
Those famous artists spent their days in adventures and feasting; they defended towns and castles; they built churches, palaces and ramparts; they gave and received mighty sword-thrusts, seduced women, took refuge in the cloisters, were absolved by the popes and saved by the princes. In an orgy described by Benvenuto Cellini we see the names figure of Michael Angelo and of Giulio Romano.
To-day the scene has greatly changed; the artists in Rome live poor and in retirement. Perhaps this life contains a poetry which is as good as the first. A society of German painters has set itself to carry painting back to Perugino, in order to restore to it its Christian inspiration. Those young neophytes of St. Luke maintain that Raphael, in his second manner, became a pagan and that his talent degenerated. Be it so; let us be pagans like the Raphaelite Virgins; let our talent degenerate and grow enfeebled as in the picture of the Transfiguration! This creditable error of the new sacred school is none the less an error; it would follow that the stiffness and bad drawing of the forms would be a proof of intuitive vision, whereas that expression of faith which we observe in the works of the painters who precede the Renascence comes from the fact, not that the figures are posed squarely and motionless as sphinxes but that painting believed as did its century. It is the thought, not the painting, of the century that is religious; so true is this, that the Spanish School is eminently pious in its expression, notwithstanding that it has the grace and movement of the painting subsequent to the Renascence. Whence does this come? From the fact that the Spaniards are Christians.
I go to see the artists separately at work; the pupil sculptor lives in some grotto, under the evergreen oaks of the Villa Medici, where he finishes his marble child giving a serpent to drink out of a shell. The painter inhabits a dilapidated house in some deserted spot; I find him alone, taking through his open window some view of the Roman Campagna. M. Schnetz's Brigand's Wife has become the mother asking of the Madonna the cure of her son. Léopold Robert, returning from Naples, passed through Rome recently, bringing with him the enchanted scenes of that lovely clime, which he has simply stuck on to his canvas.
Guérin has retired, like a sick dove, to the top of a pavilion of the Villa Medici. He listens, with his head under his wing, to the sound of the wind from the Tiber; when he wakes up, he makes a pen-drawing of the Death of Priam.
Horace Vernet is struggling to change his manner: will he succeed? The snake which he twines round his neck, the dress which he affects, the cigar which he smokes, the masks and foils with which he surrounds himself remind one too much of the bivouac.
Who has ever heard speak of my friend M. Quecq, the successor of Julius III. in the cabin of Michael Angelo, Vignola and Taddeo Zuccaro? And yet he painted the Death of Vitellius none too badly, in his nymphic grotto seized under distress. The waste garden-plots are haunted by a crafty animal which M. Quecq occupies himself in hunting: it is a fox, the great-grandson of Reynard the Fox, first of the name, and nephew of Ysengrin the Wolf.
Pinelli, between two fits of drunkenness, has promised me twelve scenes of dances, gambling and robbers. It is a pity that he starves the big dog which lies at his door. Thorwaldsen and Camuccini are the two princes of the poor artists of Rome.
Sometimes those scattered artists meet and go together, on foot, to Subiaco. On the road, they scrawl grotesque figures on the walls of the inn at Tivoli. One day, perhaps, some Michael Angelo will be recognised by the charcoal drawing which he will have made on a work of Raphael's.
I would like to have been born an artist: the solitude, the independence, the sunshine amid ruins and master-pieces would suit me. I have no wants; a piece of bread, a pitcher of the Aqua Felice would content me. My life has been wretchedly caught in the thickets on my road; how happy should I have been, had I been the free bird that sings and builds its nest in those thickets!
Nicolas Poussin bought, out of his wife's dowry, a house on the Pincian Hill, opposite another casino which had belonged to Claude Gelée, surnamed Lorraine. My other fellow-countryman, Claude, also died in the lap of the Queen of the World. If Poussin reproduces the Roman Campagna, even when the scene of his landscapes is set elsewhere, Claude Lorraine reproduces the skies of Rome, even when he paints ships and a sunset at sea.
Why was I not the contemporary of certain privileged creatures to whom I feel attracted in the different centuries? But I should have had to rise from the dead too often. Poussin and Claude Lorraine have trodden the Capitol; kings have come there and not been worth so much as they. De Brosses there met the English Pretender; I found there, in 1803, the abdicated King of Sardinia and to-day, in 1828, I see there Napoleon's brother, the King of Westphalia. Rome in her decline offers an asylum to the fallen powers; her ruins are a place of sanctuary for persecuted glory and unfortunate talents.
If I had painted Roman society, a quarter of a century ago, as I have just painted the Roman Campagna, I should be obliged to retouch my portrait; it would no longer be like. Every generation lasts thirty-three years, the life of Christ (Christ is the type of all things); every generation in our western world changes its outward aspect. Man is placed in a picture whose frame is invariable, but whose figures move. Rabelais was in this city, in 1536, with the Cardinal du Bellay; he performed the functions of house-steward to His Eminence; he "carved and handed."
Rabelais, changed into "Friar John of the Funnels," is not of the opinion of Montaigne, who heard scarce any bells in Rome and "fewer than in the most insignificant town in France;" Rabelais, on the contrary, hears many in the "Ringing Island" (Rome): "some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian Kettle."
Four and forty years after Rabelais, Montaigne found the banks of the Tiber planted, and he observed that, on the 16th of March, there were roses and artichokes in Rome. The churches were bare, without statues of saints, without pictures, less ornate and less beautiful than the French churches. Montaigne was accustomed to "the cloudy vastitie and gloomy canopies of our churches;" he speaks several times of St. Peter's without describing it, insensible or indifferent as he appears to be to the arts. In the presence of so many master-pieces, no name offers itself to Montaigne's recollection; his memory does not speak to him of Raphael nor of Michael Angelo, not yet sixteen years dead.
For the rest, ideas on the arts, on the philosophic influence of the geniuses which have magnified or protected them, were not yet born. Time does for men what space does for monuments; we judge both one and the other correctly only at a distance and from the point of view of perspective; viewed from too near, we do not see them; from too far, we no longer see them.
The author of the Essayes looked in Rome only for Ancient Rome:
"The buildings in this bastard Rome, which the moderns were raising upon, or appending to, the glorious structures of the antique world, though they sufficed enough to excite the admiration of the present age, yet seemed to him to bear a close resemblance to those nests which the rooks and the swallows construct upon the roofs and walls of the churches in France, which the Huguenots have demolished."
What sort of idea had Montaigne of Ancient Rome, if he regarded St. Peter's as a swallow's nest, hung on to the walls of the Coliseum?
The new Roman citizen by an "authenticke bull" of the year 1581 A.D. had remarked that the Roman ladies wore no masks, as they did in France; they appeared in public resplendent with pearls and precious stones, but "they had the waist exceedingly loose, which gives them all the appearance of being with child." The men were dressed in black, and although they were "dukes, marquisses, counts," they "are somewhat mean-looking."
It is not singular that St. Jerome remarks the gait of the Roman women, which gives them the appearance of being with child: solutis genibus fractus incessus?
Almost every day, when I go out through the Porta Angelica, I see a mean house not far from the Tiber with a smoky French sign-board representing a bear; it was there that Michael Lord of Montaigne landed on arriving at Rome, not far from the hospital which served as an asylum to that poor madman, "one most fitted under the ayre of true ancient poesie," whom Montaigne saw "in so piteous a plight" at Ferrara, and "rather spited than pitied him."
It was a memorable event when the seventeenth century deputed its greatest Protestant poet and its most serious genius to visit great Catholic Rome in 1638. Leaning against the Cross, holding the Old and New Testaments in her hands, with the guilty generations driven from Eden behind her and the redeemed generations descended from the Garden of Olives before her, she said to the heretic born of yesterday:
"What do you want of your old mother?"
Leonora, the Roman, bewitched Milton. Has it ever been remarked that Leonora appears once again in the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville, at the concerts of Cardinal Mazarin?
The order of dates brings the Abbé Arnauld to Rome after Milton. This abbé, who had borne arms, relates an anecdote which is curious on account of the name of one of its persons, while, at the same time, it brings before us the manners of the courtesans. The "hero of the fable," the Duc de Guise, grandson of the Balafré, going in search of his Naples adventure, passed through Rome, in 1647: he there knew Nina Barcarola. Maison-Blanche, secretary to M. Deshayes, Ambassador to Constantinople, took it into his head to become the rival of the Duc de Guise. It was a bad business for him; they substituted (it was at night, in an unlighted room) a hideous old hag for Nina:
"If the laughter was great on one side," says Arnauld, "the confusion on the other side was as great, as may well be imagined. The Adonis, extricating himself with difficulty from his divinity's embraces, ran quite naked out of the house, as though the devil were at his heels."
The Cardinal de Retz tells us nothing on the subject of Roman manners. I prefer "little" Coulanges and his two journeys of 1656 and 1689: he celebrates those "vineyards" and "gardens" whose mere names possess a charm. When I walk to the Porta Pia, I meet almost all the persons named by Coulanges: those persons? No: their grandsons and grand-daughters!
Madame de Sévigné receives verses from Coulanges; she replies to him from the Château des Rochers in my poor Brittany, at ten leagues from Combourg:
"What a sad date after yours, my amiable cousin! It suits a solitary like myself, and that of Rome suits you, whose star is a wandering one. How gently has fortune treated you, as you say, even though it have fastened a quarrel on you!!!"
Between Coulanges' first journey to Rome, in 1656, and his second journey, in 1689, thirty-three years elapsed: I reckon only twenty-five years wasted between my first journey to Rome, in 1803, and my second journey, in 1828. If I had known Madame de Sévigné, I should have cured her of the grief of growing old.
Spon, Misson, Dumont, Addison successively follow Coulanges. Spon, with Wheler, his companion, acted as my guide over the ruins of Athens.
It is curious to read in Dumont how the master-pieces which we admire were disposed at the time of his journey in 1690: one saw at the Belvedere the statues of the Nile and the Tiber, the Antinous, the Cleopatra, the Laocoon and the supposed torso of Hercules. Dumont places in the gardens of the Vatican "the bronze peacocks which once adorned the tomb of Scipio Africanus."
Addison travels as a "scholar," his trip is summed up in classical quotations tinged with English recollections; when passing through Paris, he presented his poems to M. Boileau.
Père Labat follows the author of Cato: a singular man, this Parisian monk of the Order of Preaching Friars. A missionary to the Antilles, a filibuster, an able mathematician, architect and soldier, a brave gunner levelling the cannon like a grenadier, a learned critic, who had restored the Dieppois to the possession of their original discovery in Africa, he had a mind inclined to raillery and a character to liberty. I know of no traveller who gives clearer and more exact ideas concerning the Pontifical Government. Labat walks the streets, goes to the processions, meddles in everything and laughs at nearly everything.
The Preaching Friar relates how the Capuchins, at Cadiz, gave him sheets to his bed which had been quite new since ten years, and how he saw a St. Joseph dressed in the Spanish fashion, sword at side, hat under its arm, powdered hair, and spectacles on nose. In Rome he attends a mass:
"Never," he says, "have I seen so many mutilated musicians together, nor so numerous a symphony. Those who were judges said that there was nothing so fine. I said as much, to make believe that I was a judge too; but, if I had not had the honour to form one of the train of the officiating priest, I should have left the ceremony, which lasted at least three good hours, which seemed to me quite six."
The more I come down to the time at which I write, the more do the usages of Rome begin to resemble the usages of to-day. In the time of De Brosses, the Roman women wore false hair; the custom proceeded from far back; Propertius asks his "life" why she delights in adorning her hair:
Quid juvat ornato precedere, vita, capillo?
The Gallic women, our mothers, supplied the hair of the Severinas, Piscas, Faustinas, Sabinas. Velleda says to Eudorus, speaking of her hair:
"'Tis my diadem, and I have kept it for thee.
A head of hair was not the greatest conquest of the Romans, but it was one of the most lasting: we often take from the tombs of women the whole of that ornament, which has resisted the scissors of the daughters of the night, and we look in vain for the comely brow which it adorned. The perfumed tresses, the object of the idolatry of the lightest of the passions, have outlived empires; death, which shatters all chains, has been unable to break that net. To-day the Italians wear their own hair, which the women of the people plait with coquettish grace.
De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more! Had she lived in the days of Raphael, he would have represented her in the form of one of those Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace, and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model. How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam!
De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.:
"Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder is about twenty years old, the younger fifteen. I have heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder is worth by far the more and is better loved in private; that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of Gaeta, at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up:
"'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have to go to fetch it myself one day.'"
De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany, lost his father; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited London in 1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the crowd:
"The man who is the object of all this pomp is he whom I envy least?"
The Pretender's was not a happy union; the Countess of Albany separated from him and fixed her residence in Rome: it was there that another traveller, Bonstetten, met her; the Bernese gentleman, in his old age, gave me to understand, at Geneva, that he had letters written in the first youth of the Countess of Albany.
Alfieri saw the wife of the Pretender at Florence, and fell in love with her for life:
"Twelve years afterwards," he says, "at the moment I am writing, and at an age when the illusions of the passions have ceased to operate, I feel that I become daily more attached to her, in proportion as time destroys the brilliancy of her fleeting beauty, the only charm which she owes not to herself. Whenever I reflect on her virtues, my soul is elevated, improved and tranquillized, and I dare to affirm that the feelings of her mind, which I have uniformly endeavoured to fortify and confirm, are not dissimilar to my own."
I have met Madame d'Albany at Florence; age had apparently produced in her an effect contrary to that which it generally produces: time ennobles the countenance and, when it belongs to an old race, imprints some trace of that race on the brow which it has marked; the Countess of Albany was thick-set, with expressionless features and a common air. If the women in Rubens' pictures were to grow old, they would be like Madame d'Albany at the age at which I met her. I am sorry that that heart, "fortified and confirmed" by Alfieri, should have had need of another support. I will here recall a passage from my Letter on Rome to M. de Fontanes:
"Do you know that I only once saw Count Alfieri in my life, and could you guess how? I saw him laid in his bier: I was told that he had hardly altered; his physiognomy appeared to me to be noble and grave; death doubtless gave it an added severity; the coffin was a little too short, and they bent the dead man's head upon his breast, which caused him to make a terrible movement."
Nothing is so sad as, at the end of our days, to read what we have written in our youth: all that was in the present is now in the past.
I saw for a moment in Rome, in 1803, the Cardinal of York, Henry IX., that last of the Stuarts, then seventy-nine years of age. He had had the weakness to accept a pension from George III.: the widow of Charles I. had in vain begged one from Cromwell. Thus the House of Stuart took one hundred and nineteen years to die out after losing the throne which it never recovered. Three pretenders have handed on to one another in exile the shadow of a crown; they had intelligence and courage: what did they lack? The hand of God.
Besides, the Stuarts consoled themselves at the sight of Rome; they were but one slight accident the more in those vast fragments, a small shattered column raised in the midst of a great burial-ground of ruins. Their House, in disappearing from the world, enjoyed yet this further comfort: it saw the fall of old Europe; the fatality clinging to the Stuarts dragged other kings with them to the dust, among whom was Louis XVI., whose grandfather had refused an asylum to the descendant of Charles I., and Charles X. has died in exile at the age of the Cardinal of York, and his son and his grandson are wanderers on the face of the earth!
Lalande's Journey in Italy, in 1765 and 1766, remains the best and the most exact as regards the Rome of the arts and of antiquities:
"I like to read the historians and poets," he says, "but one could not read them with more pleasure than when treading the soil which bore them, climbing the hills they describe, and watching the flow of the rivers they have sung."
That is not so bad for an astronomer who used to eat spiders.
Duclos, who is almost as lean and dry as Lalande, makes this shrewd observation:
"The plays of the different nations give a fairly correct image of their manners. Harlequin, the valet and the principal character in the Italian comedies, is always represented with a great desire for eating, which comes from an habitual need. Our own comedy valets are commonly drunkards, which may imply debauchery, but not penury."
The declamatory admiration of Dupaty offers no compensation for the aridity of Duclos and Lalande; still it makes one feel the presence of Rome; one feels by reflex that eloquence of descriptive style is born under the breath of Rousseau, spiraculum vitæ. Dupaty approaches the new school which was soon to substitute sentimentality, obscurity and mannerism for the truthfulness, clarity and naturalness of Voltaire. Nevertheless, across his affected jargon, Dupaty observes correctly; he explains the patience of the people of Rome through the age of their successive pontiffs:
"A pope," he says, "is always to them a dying king."
Dupaty sees night approach at the Villa Borghese:
"There remains but one ray of day... it is expiring on the brow of that Venus."
Would the poets of our day say better? He takes leave of Tivoli:
"Adieu, thou valley!... I am a stranger; I do not inhabit your beautiful Italy; I shall never behold you more: but perhaps my children, some at least of my children, will come to visit you one day; appear but as charming in their eyes as you have to their father."
"Some of the children" of the scholar and poet have visited Rome, and they could have seen the last ray of sunlight expire on the brow of the Venus Genitrix of Dupaty.
Scarce had Dupaty left Rome when Goethe came to take his place. Did the president of the Parliament of Bordeaux ever hear speak of Goethe? And nevertheless the name of Goethe lives on this earth whence that of Dupaty has vanished. It is not that I love the mighty genius of Germany; I have little sympathy for the poet of matter: I feel Schiller, I understand Goethe. There may be great beauties in the enthusiasm which Goethe experiences in Rome for Jupiter: excellent critics think so; but I prefer the God of the Cross to the God of Olympus. I look in vain for the author of Werther along the banks of the Tiber; I find him only in this phrase:
"My present life is as it were a dream of youth; we shall see if I am fated to enjoy it, or to recognise that this too is vain, as so many others have been."
When Napoleon's eagle allowed Rome to escape from its claws, she fell back into the bosom of her peaceful pastors: then Byron appeared at the crumbling walls of the Cæsars; he flung his distressed imagination over so many ruins, like a mourning cloak. Rome, thou hadst a name, he gave thee another; that name will cling to thee; he called thee:
"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her wither'd hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago."
After that last storm of poetry, Byron was not long in dying. I might have seen Byron at Geneva, and I did not see him; I might have seen Goethe at Weimar, and I did not see him; but I saw Madame de Staël die, who, disdaining to live beyond her youth, passed swiftly to the Capitol with Corinne: imperishable names, illustrious ashes, which have associated themselves with the name and the ashes of the Eternal City.
Thus have the changes in manners and persons proceeded from century to century in Italy; but the great transformation has been worked, above all, by our two occupations of Rome.
The "Roman Republic," established under the influence of the Directorate, ridiculous as it was with its two "consuls" and its "lictors" (scurvy facchini taken from the populace), for all that, made excellent innovations in the civil laws: it was from the prefectures, invented by that "Roman Republic," that Bonaparte borrowed the institution of his own prefects.
We brought to Rome the germ of an administration which had no existence; Rome, become the chief town of the Department of the Tiber, was superlatively well ruled. Its mortgage system it owes to us. The suppression of the convents, the sale of ecclesiastical property sanctioned by Pius VII. have diminished the faith in the permanence of the consecration of religious things. The famous Index, which still makes a little noise on our side of the Alps, makes none at all in Rome: for a few bajocchi you obtain permission to read the forbidden work with a safe conscience. The Index is one of those works which remain as evidences of the old times in the midst of the new. In the Republics of Rome and Athens, were not the titles of "King," the names of the great families adhering to the Monarchy respectfully preserved? It is only the French who foolishly take offense at their tombs and their annals, who hurl down the crosses, devastate the churches, out of grudge against the clergy of the Year of Grace 1000 or 1100. There is nothing more puerile or more stupid than those reminiscent outrages; nothing which would tend more to the belief that we are incapable of anything serious whatsoever, that the true principles of liberty will for ever remain unknown to us. Far from despising the past, we ought, as all nations do, to treat it as a venerable greybeard, who sits by our fireside telling what he has seen: what harm can he do us? He instructs and amuses us with his stories, his ideas, his language, his manners, his habits of former days; but he is without strength, and his hands are weak and trembling. Can it be that we are afraid of that contemporary of our fathers, who would already be with them in the tomb, if he could die, and who has no authority, save that of their dust?
The French, passing through Rome, left their principles there: that is what always happens when the conquest is accomplished by a people more advanced in civilization than the people which undergoes that conquest, as witness the Greeks in Asia under Alexander, as witness the French in Europe under Napoleon. Bonaparte, when snatching sons from their mothers, when forcing the Italian nobility to leave its palaces and bear arms, was hastening the transformation of the national spirit.
As to the physiognomy of Roman society, on days of concerts or balls one might have thought himself in Paris. The Altieris, the Palestrinas, the Zagarolos, the Del Dragos, the Lantes, the Lozzanos would not have felt strangers in the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: still, some of those women wear a certain frightened air which has, I believe, to do with the climate. The charming Falconieri, for instance, always stands near a door, ready to fly to the Monte Mario if you look at her: the Villa Millini belongs to her; a novel placed in that abandoned lodge, under the cypress trees, in view of the sea, would have its value.
But, whatever the changes in manners and persons, from century to century, in Italy may be, we observe a habit of greatness there which we paltry barbarians cannot approach. There still remains Roman blood in Rome and the traditions of the masters of the world. When one sees foreigners crammed into small new houses at the Porta del Popolo, or lodged in palaces which they have divided into boxes and pierced with chimneys, it is as though one saw rats scratching at the feet of the monuments of Apollodorus and Michael Angelo and gnawing holes into the pyramids.
To-day, the Roman nobles, ruined by the Revolution, immure themselves within their palaces, live parsimoniously and have become their own stewards. When you have the good fortune, which happens very rarely, to be received by them in the evening, you pass through vast halls, unfurnished and scarcely lighted, along which antique statues stand out white against the thick shadow, like phantoms or exhumed corpses. At the end of those halls, the ragged footman who leads the way ushers you into a sort of gynecæum: around a table are seated three or four, old or young, ill-dressed women, plying their needles at fancy-work, by the light of a lamp, and exchanging a few words with a father, a brother, a husband recumbent in the dim background on tattered arm-chairs. Nevertheless, there is something, I know not what, fine, sovereign, appertaining to high breeding, in this assemblage entrenched behind its master-pieces and giving a first impression of a witches' Sabbath. The species of the cicisbei is extinct, although a few shawl-bearing and footwarmer-carrying abbés survive; here and there, a cardinal still fixes himself in a woman's house like a sofa.
Nepotism and pontifical scandals are no longer possible, just as kings can no longer keep titular and honoured mistresses. Nowadays, when politics and the tragic adventures of love have ceased to fill the lives of the great ladies of Rome, how do they spend their time in the interior of their homes? It would be interesting to get to the bottom of these new manners; if I stay in Rome, I shall make it my business to do so.
I visited Tivoli in 1803; at that time I said, in a narrative which was printed then:
"This spot is suited to reflection and day-dreams; I go back into my past life; I feel the burden of the present; I seek to penetrate the future; where shall I be, what shall I be doing and what shall I be twenty years hence?"
Twenty years! It seemed a century to me; I thought myself certain of inhabiting my tomb before that century had lapsed. And it is not I that have passed away, but the master of the world and his empire that have sped!
Almost all the ancient and modern travellers saw in the Roman Campagna only what they call "its horror and its nudity." Montaigne himself, who assuredly was not lacking in imagination, says:
"Far away on the left lay the Apennines; the aspect of the foreground was exceedingly unpleasant to the eye, hilly, with every here and there deep marshes... the country ...open, barren, and altogether destitute of trees, and almost equally so of houses."
The Protestant Milton casts upon the Roman Campagna a look as dry and barren as his faith. Lalande and the Président De Brosses are as blind as Milton. Only in M. de Bonstetten's Voyage sur la scène des six derniers livres de l'Énéide, published at Geneva in 1804, one year after my Letter to M. de Fontanes (printed in the Mercure at the end of the year 1803), do we find any true sensations of that admirable solitude, and even they are mingled with objurgations:
"What a pleasure to read Virgil under the sky of Æneas and, so to speak, in the presence of the gods of Homer!" says M. de Bonstetten. "What a profound solitude in these deserts in which we behold only the sea, ruined woods, trees, great meadows, and not one inhabitant! In a vast extent of country, I saw but a single house, and that house was near me, on the summit of a hill. I went to it, it had no door; I climbed a stair-case, I entered a sort of chamber, a bird of prey had built its nest there....
"I stood some time at the window of that abandoned house. I saw at my feet that declivity, so rich and so magnificent in Pliny's day, now uncultivated."
Since my description of the Roman Campagna, they have passed from disparagement to enthusiasm. The English and French travellers who have followed me have marked all their steps from the Storta to Rome by ecstasies. M. de Tournon, in his Études statistiques, enters the road of admiration which I had the happiness to open:
"The Roman Campagna," he says, "unfolds more distinctly, at each step, the serious beauty of its immense lines, its numerous plains and its fine frame of mountains. Its monotonous grandeur impresses and elevates the thought."
I have no need to mention M. Simond, whose journey reads like a wager, so much does he amuse himself by looking at Rome upside down. I was at Geneva when he died almost suddenly. A farmer, he had just cut his hay and gaily reaped his first grain, when he went to join his mown grass and his gathered harvest.
We have a few letters of the great landscape painters; Poussin and Claude Lorraine do not say a word about the Roman Campagna. But, if their pen is silent, their brush speaks; the Agro Romano was a mysterious source of beauty, at which they drew, while hiding it by a sort of avarice of genius and as it were in fear, lest it should be profaned by the vulgar. Strange that it should be French eyes that best saw the light of Italy.
I have read again my Letter to M. de Fontanes on Rome, written five and twenty years ago, and I confess that I have found it so exact that it would be impossible for me to take away or add a word to it. A foreign company has come this winter (1829) to propose to clear the Roman Campagna: ah, gentlemen, spare us your cottages and your English gardens on the Janiculum! If ever they were to disfigure the waste lands against which the ploughshare of Cincinnatus struck, on which all the grasses bend before the breath of the centuries, I should fly Rome, never to set foot in it again. Go to drag your improved ploughs elsewhere; here the earth grows and must grow only tombs. The cardinals have closed their ears to the calculations of the commercial adventurers hastening to demolish the ruins of Tusculum, which they mistake for the castles of aristocrats: they would have made lime with the marble of the sarcophagus of Æmilius Paulus, even as they have made water-shoots with the lead of the coffins of our ancestors. The Sacred College clings to the past; besides, it has been proved, to the great confusion of the economists, that the Roman Campagna paid the owners five per cent, as pasture-land and that it would not yield more than one and a half in corn. It is not through idleness, but through practical interest, that the cultivator of the plains gives the preference to pastorizia over maggesi. The produce of an acre in the Roman territory is almost equal to the produce of the same measure in the best French departments: to convince one's self of that, one has but to read the work of Monsignore Nicolaï.
I have told you that, at first, I had a sense of weariness, at the commencement of my second journey to Rome, and that I ended by recovering under the influence of the ruins and the sun. I was still under my first impression when, on the 3rd of November 1828, I wrote to M. Villemain:
"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past, I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left, I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo my honours, overcome by the sirocco and stabbed by the tramontane. There you have all my life, save only a tomb which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left young have become old, and the ruins have become young again: what would you have one do here?
"Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled all my engagements towards my country and my friends. 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; but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one will find there.
"I thank you for being so good as to speak to me of your labours. You will write a work which will be worthy of you and increase your reputation. If you have any researches to make here, have the kindness to tell me of them: a rummage in the Vatican might furnish you with treasures. Alas, I saw but too much of that poor M. Thierry! I assure you that I am haunted by his memory: so young, so full of love for his work, and to go! And, as always happens with real merit, his mind was improving and reason, with him, taking the place of system: I still hope for a miracle. I have written on his behalf; I have not even had an answer. I have been more fortunate for you, and a letter from M. de Martignac gives me to hope at last that justice, although tardy and incomplete, will be done you. I no longer live, monsieur, except for my friends; you must permit me to include yourself in the number of those who are still left to me.
"I remain, monsieur, with as much sincerity as admiration,
"Your most devoted servant,
"Chateaubriand."
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, Saturday, 8 November 1832.
"M. de La Ferronnays informs me of the surrender of Varna, which I knew. I believe that I once told you that the whole question seemed to me to lie in the fall of that place, and that the Grand Turk would not dream of peace until the Russians had done what they did not do in their earlier wars. Our newspapers have been wretchedly Turcophile these last times. How can they ever have been able to forget the noble cause of Greece and to fall into admiration before the barbarians who spread slavery and pestilence over the country of great men and the fairest portion of Europe? That is what we are, we French: a trifle of personal discontent makes us forget our principles and the most generous sentiments. The Turks, when beaten, will perhaps arouse some pity in me; the Turks victorious would fill me with horror.
"So my friend M. de La Ferronnays remains in power. I flatter myself that my determination to follow him has got rid of the competitors for his office. But, after all, I shall have to leave this; I now long only to return to my solitude and to quit the career of politics. I thirst for independence in my last years. New generations have arisen, they will find the public liberty established for which I have fought so hard: let them then lay hold of, but let them not misuse my inheritance, and let me go to die in peace near you.
"I went two days ago to walk in the grounds of the Villa Panfili: what a beautiful solitude!"
"Rome, Saturday, 15 November.
"There has been a first ball at Torlonia's. I met all the English on earth there; I thought myself still Ambassador in London. The Englishwomen appear to me to be figurantes who are engaged to dance in the winter in Paris, Milan, Rome, Naples, and who return to London in the spring, when their engagements have expired. The hoppings on the ruins of the Capitol, the uniform manners which 'great' society puts on everywhere are very strange things: if even I had the resource of escape into the deserts of Rome!
"What is really deplorable here, what clashes with the nature of the place is that multitude of insipid Englishwomen and frivolous dandies who, holding each other linked by the arm, as the bats do by the wing, parade their eccentricity, their boredom and their insolence at your receptions, and make themselves at home in your house as at an inn. This vagrant and swaggering Great Britain makes for your seats at public solemnities, and boxes with you to turn you out of them: all day long it hastily swallows pictures and ruins and, in the evening, it comes to swallow cakes and ices at your parties, feeling that it confers a great honour upon you in doing so. I do not know how an ambassador can endure those unmannerly guests, nor why he does not show them his door."
I have spoken in the Congrès de Vérone of the existence of my Memorandum on Eastern Affairs. When I sent it, in 1828, to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the world was not what it is: in France, the Legitimacy existed; in Russia, Poland had not perished; Spain was still Bourbon; England had not yet the honour of protecting us. Many things, therefore, have become old in this Memorandum: to-day, my foreign policy would, in many respects, be different; twelve years have altered diplomatic relations, but the basis of the truths has remained the same. I have inserted this Memorandum in its entirety in order once more to revenge the Restoration for the absurd reproaches which continue to be obstinately addressed to it, in spite of the evidence of facts. The Restoration, so soon as it had chosen its ministers from among its friends, never ceased to occupy itself with the independence and honour of France: it protested against the Treaties of Vienna; it demanded protective frontiers, not for the vain-glory of pushing itself to the banks of the Rhine, but to ensure its safety; it laughed when they talked to it of the equilibrium of Europe, an equilibrium so unjustly broken where it was concerned: that was why it first wished to cover itself on the south, because it had pleased the others to disarm it on the north. At Navarino, it recovered a navy and the liberty of Greece; the Eastern Question did not take it unawares.
I have kept three opinions on the East from the time at which I wrote that Memorandum:
First, if Turkey in Europe is to be broken up, we must have a share in that distribution in the shape of an increase of territory on our frontiers and the ownership of some military point in the Archipelago. To compare the partition of Turkey with the partition of Poland is an absurdity.
Secondly, to regard Turkey, as it was during the reign of Francis I., as a useful power to our policy, is to do away with three centuries of history.
Thirdly, to pretend to civilize Turkey by giving her steamboats and railways, by disciplining her armies, by teaching her to work her fleets, is not to extend civilization to the East, but to introduce barbarism into the West. Ibrahims to come would be able to carry back the future to the time of Charles the Hammer or to the time of the Siege of Vienna, when Europe was saved by that heroic Poland on whom weighs the ingratitude of kings.
I must remark that I was the only one, with Benjamin Constant, to point out the improvidence of the Christian governments: a people whose social order is based upon slavery and polygamy is a people that must be sent back to the steppes of the Mongols.
In the last result, Turkey in Europe, become a vassal of Russia by virtue of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, no longer exists: if the question is to be decided at once, which I doubt, it would perhaps be better that an independent empire should have its seat in Constantinople and form Greece into a whole. Is that possible? I do not know. As for Mehemet Ali, the relentless tax-gatherer and custom-house officer, Egypt, in so far as French interests are concerned, is better guarded by him than she would be by the English.
But here am I exerting myself to demonstrate the honour of the Restoration: why, who troubles himself about what it has done, who, above all, will trouble himself about it some years hence? It would be as well worth my while to become excited over the interests of Tyre and Ecbatana: that past world is gone, never to return. After Alexander, the Roman power commenced; after Cæsar, Christianity changed the world; after Charlemagne, the feudal night gave birth to a new society; after Napoleon, nothing: we see no empire come, nor religion, nor barbarians. Civilization has risen to its highest level, but it is a material civilization, an unfruitful civilization, which can produce nothing, since life can be given only by moral means; we can arrive at the creation of peoples only by the roads of Heaven: railways will lead us only more swiftly to the abyss.
You now have the prolegomena which seemed to me necessary for the understanding of the Memorandum which follows, and which is also to be found at the Foreign Office.
Letter to M. le Comte de La Ferronays
"Rome, 30 November 1828.
"In your private letter of the 10th of November, my noble friend, you said:
"'I send you a brief summary of our political situation, and you will be kind enough to let me, in return, have your ideas, which are always so useful to know in matters of this sort.'
"Your friendship, noble count, judges me too indulgently; I do not in the least believe that I shall be enlightening you by sending you the Memorandum annexed: I merely obey you."
Memorandum
Part I.
"At the distance at which I am placed from the theatre of events, and in my almost total ignorance of the state of negociations, I can scarcely reason fitly. Nevertheless, as I have long had a definite system touching the foreign policy of France, as I was, so to speak, the first to call for the emancipation of Greece, I readily, noble count, submit my ideas to your judgment.
"There was as yet no question of the Treaty of the 6th of July, when I published my Note on Greece. That Note contained the germ of the treaty: I proposed to the five Great Powers of Europe to address a collective dispatch to the Divan imperatively to demand the cessation of all hostility between the Porte and the Hellenes. In case of refusal, the five Powers were to declare that they recognised the independence of the Greek Government and that they would receive the representatives of that Government.
"This Note was read by the several Cabinets. The position which I had occupied as Minister for Foreign Affairs lent some importance to my opinion: what is singular is that Prince Metternich showed himself less opposed to my Note than Mr. Canning.
"The latter, with whom I had had fairly intimate relations, was an orator rather than a great politician, a man of talent rather than a statesman. He entertained a certain jealousy of success in general, and especially of that of France. When the Parliamentary Opposition either wounded or exalted his self-esteem, he flung himself into false measures, he launched out into sarcasm or boasting. It was thus that, after the Spanish War, he rejected the demand for intervention, which I had extracted with so much difficulty from the Cabinet of Madrid, for the settlement of affairs across the Atlantic: the secret reason was that he had not himself made that demand, and he refused to see that, even according to his system (always presuming that he had one), England, represented in a general congress, would in no way be bound by the acts of that congress, and would always remain free to act separately. It was thus again that Mr. Canning moved troops into Portugal, not to defend a Charter at which he was the first to laugh, but because the Opposition reproached him with the presence of our soldiers in Spain and he wanted to be able to say that the British Army was occupying Lisbon as the French Army occupied Cadiz. Lastly, it was thus that he signed the Treaty of the 6th of July against his private opinion, against the opinion of his country, which was unfavourable to the cause of the Greeks. If he agreed to that treaty, it was solely because he was afraid of seeing us take the initiative in the question with Russia and gain the glory of a generous resolution alone. That minister, who, after all, will leave a great reputation, also thought that he was hindering Russia's movements by this very treaty; nevertheless, it was clear that the text of the instrument in no way tied down the Emperor Nicholas and in no way obliged him to waive a war of his own with Turkey.
"The Treaty of the 6th of July is a crude document hurriedly drafted, devoid of all foresight and teeming with contradictory provisions.
"In my Note on Greece, I presupposed the adhesion of the five Great Powers; as Austria and Prussia have kept aloof, their neutrality leaves them free, according to events, to declare for or against either of the belligerent parties.
"There is no longer any question of going back to the past, we must take things as they are. All that the governments are obliged to do is to make the most of the facts when they are accomplished. Let us therefore examine those facts.
"We are occupying the Morea, the towns on that peninsula have fallen into our hands. So much for what concerns ourselves.
"Varna is taken, Varna becomes an outpost at seventy hours' march from Constantinople. The Dardanelles are blockaded; the Russians will, in the course of the winter, seize Silistria and some other fortresses; numbers of recruits will arrive. In the early days of spring, all will move for a decisive campaign; in Asia, General Paskevitch has invaded three pashalics, he commands the sources of the Euphrates and threatens the road to Erzeroum. So much for what concerns Russia.
"Would the Emperor Nicholas have done better to undertake a winter campaign in Europe? I think so, if it were possible. By marching on Constantinople, he would have cut the Gordian knot and put an end to all diplomatic intrigue; people embrace the side of success; the way to secure allies is to be victorious.
"As for Turkey, it has been made clear to me that she would have declared war on us if Russia had failed before Varna. Will she have the good sense to-day to open up negociations with England and France, if only to rid herself of both? Austria would gladly advise her to adopt that course; but it is difficult to foresee the conduct of a race of men who have not European ideas. At the same time cunning as slaves and haughty as tyrants, with them anger is never tempered by anything save fear. Sultan Mahmud II. appears, in some respects, to be a superior prince to the last sultans; he has, above all, political courage; but has he personal courage? He is content to hold reviews in the suburbs of his capital, and he lets himself be entreated by the magnates not to go even so far as Adrianople. The mob of Constantinople would be better held in check by triumphs than by the presence of its master.
"Let us, however, admit that the Divan consents to a parley on the basis of the Treaty of the 6th of July. The negociation would be a very intricate one; even if one had only to fix the limits of Greece, there would be no end to it. Where shall those limits be placed on the Continent? How many islands shall be restored to liberty? Shall Samos, which has so gallantly defended its independence, be abandoned? Let us look further, suppose the conference to be established: will it paralyze the armies of the Emperor Nicholas? While the plenipotentiaries of the Turks and of the three Allied Powers are treating in the Archipelago, every step of the invading forces in Bulgaria will change the state of the question. If the Russians were repulsed, the Turks would break up the conference; if the Russians arrived at the gates of Constantinople, there would be a fine question of the independence of the Morea! The Hellenes would need neither protectors nor negociators.
"Therefore, to persuade the Divan to apply itself to the Treaty of the 6th of July is to postpone the difficulty, not to solve it. The coincidence of the emancipation of Greece and the signing of peace between the Turks and Russians is, in my opinion, necessary to extricate the Cabinets of Europe from their present embarrassment.
"What conditions will the Emperor Nicholas lay down for peace?
"In his manifesto, he declares that he waives conquests, but he speaks of indemnities for the cost of the war: that is vague and may lead to much.
"Will the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, pretending to regularize the Treaties of Akerman and Jassy demand (1) the complete independence of the two principalities; (2) liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, not only for Russia, but the other nations; (3) the repayment of the sums expended in this last campaign?
"Innumerable difficulties present themselves against the conclusion of a peace on these bases.
"If Russia desires to give the principalities sovereigns of her choosing, Austria will look upon Moldavia and Wallachia as two Russian provinces and will oppose this political transaction.
"Will Moldavia and Wallachia fall under the sway of a prince who shall be independent of any Great Power, or of a prince installed under the protectorate of several sovereigns?
"In that case, Nicholas would prefer the hospodars appointed by Mahmud, for the principalities, continuing to be Turkish, would remain vulnerable to the Russian armies.
"Liberty of commerce in the Black Sea, the opening of that sea to all the fleets of Europe and America would shake the power of the Porte to its foundations. To grant the right of passage of warships under Constantinople is, with reference to the geography of the Ottoman Empire, as though one were to recognise the right of foreign armies to cross France at all times along the walls of Paris.
"Lastly, where would Turkey find the money to pay the costs of the campaign? The so-called treasure of the Sultans is an antiquated fable. The provinces conquered beyond the Caucasus might, it is true, be ceded as security for the sum demanded: of the two Russian armies, one, in Europe, appears to me to be entrusted with the interests of Nicholas' honour; the other, in Asia, with his pecuniary interests. But, if Nicholas did not consider himself bound by the declarations of his manifesto, would England with an indifferent eye see the Muscovite soldier advancing along the road to India? Was she not alarmed already in 1827, when he took one more step forward in the Persian Empire?
"If the double difficulty arising from the carrying into effect of the treaty and from the pertinence of the conditions of a peace between Turkey and Russia were to render useless the efforts made to overcome so many obstacles; if a second campaign were to open in the spring, would the powers of Europe take sides in the quarrel? What part ought France to play? This is what I propose to examine in the second part of this Note."
Part II.
"Austria and England have interests in common, they are naturally allied through their foreign policy, whatever otherwise may be the different forms of their governments and the opposite maxims that regulate their home policy. Both are hostile to and jealous of Russia, both desire to check the progress of that Power; they will perhaps unite in an extreme case, but they feel that, if Russia does not allow herself to be overawed, she can defy that union, which is more formidable in appearance than in reality.
"Austria has nothing to ask from England; the latter, on her side, is of no use to Austria except to supply her with money. Now, England, crushed under the weight of her debt, has no money left to lend to anybody. Austria, if abandoned to her own resources, would not, in the present state of her finances, be able to set large armies in motion, especially as she is obliged to watch over Italy and to stand on her guard on the frontiers of Poland and Prussia. The present position of the Russian troops would permit them to enter Vienna earlier than Constantinople.
"What can the English do against Russia? Close the Baltic, cease buying hemp and timber in the markets of the North, destroy Admiral van Heiden's fleet in the Mediterranean, throw a few engineers and a few soldiers into Constantinople, stock that capital with food-stuffs and munitions of war, penetrate into the Black Sea, blockade the ports of the Crimea, deprive the Russian troops in the field of the assistance of their commercial and naval fleets?
"Suppose all this to be accomplished (which, to begin with, could not be done without considerable expenditure, for which there would be neither compensation nor guarantee), Nicholas would still have his huge land force. An attack on the part of Austria and England against the Cross on behalf of the Crescent would increase the popularity in Russia of what is already a national and religious war. Wars of this nature are waged without money, it is they which, by force of public opinion, hurl nations one upon the other. If the popes begin to evangelize in St. Petersburg, as the ulemas are mohammedanizing in Constantinople, they will find more soldiers than they want; they would stand a greater chance of success than their adversaries in this appeal to the passions and beliefs of men. Invasions which descend from north to south are much more rapid and much more irresistible than those which climb from south to north: the propensity of the populations inclines them to flow towards beautiful climates.
"Would Prussia remain an indifferent spectatress of this great struggle, if Austria and England declared for Turkey? There is no reason to think so.
"There exists, no doubt, in the Cabinet of Berlin a party which hates and fears the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; but this party, which, moreover, is beginning to grow old, finds an obstacle in the anti-Austrian party, and especially in the domestic affections.
"Family ties, generally weak among sovereigns, are very strong in the Prussian Family: King Frederic William III. fondly loves his daughter, the present Empress of Russia, and he likes to think that his grandson will ascend the throne of Peter the Great; Princes Frederic, William, Charles, Henry Albert are also greatly attached to their sister Alexandra; the Hereditary Prince Royal saw no objection recently to declaring in Rome that he was a 'Turk-eater.'
"By thus analyzing the interests, we perceive that France is in an admirable political position: she can become the arbitress of that great contest; she can, at her pleasure, maintain neutrality, or declare for a side, according to the time and circumstances. If she were ever obliged to go to that extremity, if her counsels were not heard, if the nobility and moderation of her conduct did not secure for her the peace which she desires for herself and for others, then, in the necessity in which she would find herself of taking up arms, all her interests would incline her to the side of Russia.
"If an alliance were formed between Austria and England against Russia, what benefit would France derive from her adhesion to that alliance?
"Would England lend ships to France?
"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if necessary, the naval forces of Russia.
"Would England furnish us with subsidies?
"England has no money; France has more than she, and the French have no need to be in the pay of the British Parliament.
"Would England assist us with soldiers and arms?
"France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers.
"Would England assure us an increase of insular or continental territory?
"Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled?
"Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England, besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her ports.
"Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human affairs succeeds.
"Let us admit, nevertheless, that, against all likelihood, our efforts were crowned with complete success in this unnatural Triple Alliance, let us suppose that Prussia remained neutral during all this strife, as well as the Netherlands, and that, free to move our forces abroad, we were not obliged to fight within sixty leagues of Paris: well, what advantage should we derive from our crusade for the deliverance of the tomb of Mahomet? Knights of the Turks, we should return from the Levant with a fur-lined coat-of-honour; we should have the glory of having thrown away a thousand million francs and two hundred thousand men to calm the terrors of Austria, to satisfy the jealousies of England, to keep up in the fairest portion of the world the plague and barbarism attached to the Ottoman Empire. Austria would perhaps have enlarged her States on the side of Wallachia and Moldavia, and England would perhaps have obtained some commercial privileges from the Porte, privileges of little interest to us if we shared in them, as we have neither so large a number of merchant ships as the English, nor so many manufactured goods to spread in the Levant. We should be completely duped by this Triple Alliance, which might fail in its object and which, if it achieved it, would achieve it only at our expense.
"But, if England has no direct means of being of use to us, could she not at least act upon the Cabinet of Vienna and engage Austrians a compensation for the sacrifices we should make for her, to allow us to recover our old departments on the left bank of the Rhine?
"No: Austria and England will always oppose any such concession; Russia alone can make it to us, as we shall see hereafter. Austria detests and fears us, even more than she hates and dreads Russia; as a choice of evils, she would prefer to see the latter Power expand on the side of Bulgaria rather than France on the side of Bavaria.
"But would the independence of Europe be threatened if the Tsars made Constantinople the capital of their Empire?
"It is necessary to explain what is understood by the independence of Europe: do we mean to say that, all equilibrium being shattered, Russia, after making the conquest of Turkey in Europe, would seize Austria, subjugate Germany and Prussia, and end by subjecting France?
"First, any empire which expands without measure loses some of its strength; it almost always becomes divided; soon we should see two or three Russias hostile one to the other.
"Next, does the equilibrium of Europe exist for France since the last treaties?
"England has retained almost all the conquests which she has made in the colonies of three quarters of the globe during the War of the Revolution; in Europe she has gained Malta and the Ionian Islands; even her Electorate of Hanover she has inflated into a kingdom and enlarged by a few baronies.
"Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland, some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy. She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that province has not devolved upon France, and it has become a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against ourselves.
"Prussia has enlarged herself by the Duchy or Palatinate of Posen, a fragment of Saxony and the chief circles of the Rhine; her advance-post is on our own territory, at ten days' march from our capital.
"Russia has recovered Finland and settled down on the banks of the Vistula.
"And what have we gained in all these partitions? We have been despoiled of our colonies; not even our old soil has been respected: Landau detached from France, Hüningen demolished leave a breach of more than fifty leagues in our frontiers; the little State of Sardinia has not blushed to clothe herself in a few shreds stolen from the Empire of Napoleon and the Kingdom of Louis the Great.
"In this position, what interest have we to safeguard Austria and England against the victories of Russia? If the latter were to extend towards the East and alarm the Cabinet of Vienna, should we be in any danger? Have we received so much consideration that we should be so sensible to the anxieties of our enemies? England and Austria have always been and will always be France's natural adversaries; we should see them cheerfully join forces with Russia to-morrow, if it were a question of fighting us and plundering us.
"Let us not forget that, while we should be taking up arms for the so-called safety of Europe, imperilled by the supposed ambition of Nicholas, it would probably happen that Austria, less chivalrous and more rapacious than we, would listen to the proposals of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg; an abrupt and sudden change of policy costs her little. With the consent of Russia, she would seize Bosnia and Servia, leaving to us the satisfaction of exerting ourselves for Mahmud.
"France is already in a state of semi-hostility with the Turks; she alone has already spent many millions and endangered twenty thousand soldiers in the cause of Greece. England would lose only a few words by betraying the principles of the Treaty of the 6th of July; France would lose honour, men and money. Our expedition would no longer be other than a real political miscarriage.
"But, if we do not unite with Austria and England, will the Emperor Nicholas then go to Constantinople? Will the equilibrium of Europe then be shattered?
"Let us, to repeat once again, leave these feigned or genuine fears to England and Austria. That the former should fear to see Russia seize upon the trade of the Levant and become a naval Power matters little to us. Is it, then, so necessary that Great Britain should remain in possession of the monopoly of the seas, that we should spill French blood to preserve the sceptre of the ocean for the destroyer of our colonies, our fleets and our commerce? Is the Legitimate Dynasty to move armies in order to protect the House which coalesces with the illegitimacy and which is, perhaps, reserving for times of discord the means which it believes itself to possess to disturb France? A fine equilibrium for us is that of Europe, when all the Powers, as I have already shown, have increased their own bulk and, with one accord, diminished the weight of France! Let them return within their old boundaries, as we have done; then we shall fly to the aid of their independence, if that independence be threatened. They made no scruples to join hands with Russia, in order to dismember us and incorporate the fruit of our victories; let them then suffer us to-day to draw closer the bonds formed between us and that same Russia, in order to recover suitable boundaries and restore the real balance of Europe!
"Besides, if the Emperor Nicholas were desirous and able to go to sign a peace in Constantinople, would the destruction of the Ottoman Empire be the strict consequence of that fact? Peace has been signed under arms in Vienna, in Berlin, in Paris; almost all the capitals of Europe have been taken in these latter days: have Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Spain perished? Twice have the Cossacks and the Pandoors come to camp in the court-yard of the Louvre; the Kingdom of Henry IV. has been under military occupation during three years; and yet we should be quite touched to see the Cossacks in possession of the Seraglio, and we should show for the honour of barbarism the susceptibility which we did not display for the honour of civilization and for our own country! Let the pride of the Porte be humbled, and then perhaps it will be obliged to recognise some of the rights of humanity which it outrages!
"I have now made evident whither I am tending and the consequence which I am preparing to deduce from all the foregoing. Here is this consequence:
"If the belligerent Powers cannot come to an arrangement during the winter, if the rest of Europe think itself bound in the spring to intervene in the quarrel, if different alliances be propounded, if France be absolutely obliged to choose between those alliances, if events force her to emerge from her neutrality, all her interests must needs determine her to unite by preference with Russia: a combination which is all the safer inasmuch as it would be easy, with the offer of certain advantages, to make Prussia enter into it.
"There is a sympathy between Russia and France; the latter has almost civilized the former in the upper classes of society; she has given her her language and her manners. Placed at the two extremities of Europe, France and Russia have no contiguous frontiers; they have no battle-field on which they can meet, they have no commercial rivalry, and the natural enemies of Russia, the English and Austrians, are also the natural enemies of France. In time of peace, let the Cabinet of the Tuileries remain allied with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and nothing can stir in Europe. In time of war, the union of the two Cabinets will dictate laws to the world.
"I have shown sufficiently that the alliance of France with England and Austria against Russia is a dupe's alliance, in which we should find only loss of blood and treasure. The Russian Alliance, on the contrary, would enable us to obtain establishments in the Archipelago and to push back our frontier to the banks of the Rhine. We can hold this language to Nicholas:
"'Your enemies are making overtures to us; we prefer peace to war, we prefer to preserve neutrality. But, however, if you cannot adjust your differences with Turkey except by arms, if you are determined to go to Constantinople, enter into an equitable partition of Turkey in Europe with the Christian Powers. Those of the Powers which are not so situated as to be able to enlarge their territory towards the East will receive compensation elsewhere. As for us, we wish to have the line of the Rhine from Strasburg to Cologne. Those are our just claims. It is to Russia's interest (your brother Alexander has said so) that France should be strong. If you consent to this arrangement and the other Powers refuse, we will not suffer them to intervene in your dispute with Turkey. If they attack you in spite of our remonstrances, we will fight them with you, always on the conditions which we have just expressed.'
"That is what we can say to Nicholas. Never will Austria, never will England give us the Rhine boundary as the price of our alliance with them: and yet it is there that France must, sooner or later, place her frontiers, both for her honour and her safety.
"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds, forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all Italy to action.
"As for hostilities with England, if they were ever to commence, we should have either to throw twenty-five thousand more men into the Morea, or promptly recall our troops and our fleet. Give up squadron formation, disperse your ships singly over all the seas, give orders that all prizes are to be sunk after the crews have been removed, multiply your letters of marque in the ports of the four quarters of the globe, and soon Great Britain, forced by the bankruptcies and outcries of her trade, will sue for the restoration of peace. Did we not see her, in 1814, capitulate before the Navy of the United States, notwithstanding that this consists to-day of only nine frigates and eleven ships?
"Considered in the two-fold respect of the general interests of society and of our own interests, the war of Russia against the Porte should give us no umbrage. On the principle of the higher civilization, the human race can only gain by the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: it is a thousand times better for the nations that the Cross should hold sway in Constantinople than the Crescent. All the elements of morality and of political society are at the root of Christianity, all the germs of social destruction are in the religion of Mahomet. They say that the present Sultan has taken steps towards civilization: is this because he has tried, with the assistance of a few French renegades, of a few English and Austrian officers, to submit his irregular hordes to regular exercises? And since when has the mechanical apprenticeship of arms constituted civilization? It is an enormous mistake, it is almost a crime, to have initiated the Turks into the science of our tactics; we must baptize the soldiers whom we discipline, unless we wish purposely to educate destroyers of society.
"The want of foresight is great: Austria, which applauds herself for organizing the Ottoman Armies, would be the first to bear the penalty of her joy; if the Turks beat the Russians they would be all the more capable of measuring their strength with the Imperials their neighbours. This time, Vienna would not escape the Grand Vizier. Would the rest of Europe, which thinks it has nothing to fear from the Porte, be in greater safety? Passionate and short-sighted men want Turkey to be a regular military Power, to enter into the common right of peace and war of civilized nations, all in order to maintain some balance or other, of which the mere word, void of sense, dispenses those men from having any idea: what would be the consequences were those wishes realized? Whenever it pleased the Sultan, under any pretext, to attack a Christian government, a well-manœuvred Constantinopolitan fleet, augmented by the fleet of the Pasha of Egypt and the naval contingent of the Barbary Powers, would declare the coasts of Spain or Italy in a state of blockade and land fifty thousand men at Carthagena or Naples. You do not wish to plant the Cross on St. Sophia: continue to discipline the hordes of Turks, Albanians, Negroes and Arabs, and, in less than twenty years, perhaps, the Crescent will gleam on the dome of St. Peter's. Will you then summon Europe to a crusade against infidels armed with the plague, slavery and the Koran? It will be too late.
"The general interests of society would therefore benefit by the success of the arms of the Emperor Nicholas.
"As to France's own interests, I have proved sufficiently that these lie in an alliance with Russia, and that they may be singularly favoured by the very war which that Power is to-day waging in the East."
Summary, Conclusion and Reflections
"To sum up:
"1. If Turkey were to consent to treat on the basis of the treaty of the 6th of July, nothing would yet be decided, since peace has not been made between Turkey and Russia; the chances of the war in the Balkan Passes would at every moment change the data and the position of the plenipotentiaries occupied with the emancipation of Greece.
"2. The probable conditions of peace between the Emperor Nicholas and Sultan Mahmud are open to the greatest objections.
"3. Russia can defy the union of England and Austria, a union more formidable in appearance than in reality.
"4. It is probable that Prussia would join hands with the Emperor Nicholas, the son-in-law of Frederic William III., rather than with the Emperor's enemies.
"5. France would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allying herself with England and Austria against Russia.
"6. The independence of Europe would not be at all threatened by Russia's conquests in the East. It is tolerably absurd, it is to ignore every obstacle, to imagine the Russians hastening from the Bosphorus to lay their yoke upon Germany and France: every empire weakens itself by extension. As to the balance of power, this has long been shattered for France; she has lost her colonies, she has shrunk back within her old boundaries, while England, Prussia, Russia and Austria have prodigiously enlarged theirs.
"7. If France were obliged to emerge from her neutrality, to take up arms for one side or the other, the general interests of civilization, as well as the particular interests of our country, must make us enter by preference into the Russian Alliance. By this means we could obtain the course of the Rhine as our frontier, and colonies in the Archipelago, advantages which the Cabinets of St. James and Vienna will never grant us.
"That is the summary of this Note. I have been able to reason only hypothetically; I do not know what England, Austria and Russia are proposing, or have proposed, at the moment of writing; there may be a piece of information or a dispatch which reduces the truths here set forth to useless generalities: that is the drawback of distances and of conjectural politics. Nevertheless, it remains certain that France holds a strong position and that the Government is so placed as to be able to make the very utmost of events, if it thoroughly realizes what it requires, if it allows no one to intimidate it, if to firmness of language it adds vigour in action. We have a revered King, an Heir to the Throne who, with three hundred thousand men, would increase, on the banks of the Rhine, the glory which he has reaped in Spain; our Morean Expedition is making us play a part filled with honour; our political institutions are excellent; our finances are in a state of prosperity unequalled in Europe: with that one can walk with one's head raised. What a fine country is that which possesses genius, courage, men and money!
"For the rest, I do not pretend to have said everything, to have foreseen everything; I have not the presumption to put forward my system as the best; I know that there is something mysterious, something indiscernible, in human affairs. If it be true that one can fairly well prophesy the last and general results of a revolution, it is no less true that one deceives one's self as to the details, that particular events are often modified in an unexpected manner and that, while seeing the end, one reaches it by roads whose very existence one did not suspect. It is certain, for instance, that the Turks will be driven from Europe; but when and how? Will the war now waging deliver the civilized world from that scourge? Are the obstacles to peace to which I have pointed insurmountable? Yes, if we confine ourselves to analogous arguments; no, if we bring into our calculations circumstances foreign to those which have occasioned the resort to arms.
"Scarcely anything to-day resembles what it has been; outside religion and morality, the majority of truths have altered, if not in their essence, at least in their relations to men and things. D'Ossat survives as an able negociator; Grotius as a publicist of genius; Pufendorf as a judicious mind; but we could not apply the rules of their diplomacy to our times, nor go back, in political law, to the Treaty of Westphalia. Nowadays, the peoples take a part in their affairs, conducted formerly by the governments alone. Those peoples no longer feel things as they used to feel them; they are no longer affected by the same events; they no longer see objects from the same point of view; reason has made progress with them at the cost of imagination; facts carry the day over exaltation and passionate determinations; a certain reason prevails on every hand. On most of the thrones and in the majority of the Cabinets of Europe are seated men weary of revolutions, surfeited with war and opposed to any spirit of adventure; those are causes of hope for peaceful arrangements. Also it is possible that nations may have internal troubles which would dispose them towards conciliatory measures.
"The death of the Dowager Empress of Russia may develop seeds of disturbance which were not wholly stifled. This Princess took little part in foreign politics, but she was a link between her sons; she is supposed to have exercised a great influence over the transactions which gave the crown to the Emperor Nicholas. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, if Nicholas began again to be afraid, this would be a reason the more for him to push on his soldiers from their native soil and to seek safety in victory.
"England, independently of her debt, which hampers her movements, is embarrassed with affairs in Ireland. Whether Catholic Emancipation pass through Parliament or not, it will be an immense event. King George's health is breaking down, that of his immediate successor is no better; if the accident foreseen were to happen soon, there would be a new parliament summoned, perhaps a change of ministers, and capable men are rare in England to-day; a long regency might perhaps come. In this precarious and critical position, it is possible that England sincerely desires peace and that she is afraid to throw herself into the chances of a great war, in the midst of which she might find herself surprised by internal catastrophes.
"Lastly, to come to ourselves, in spite of our genuine and incontrovertible prosperity, although we could make a glorious appearance on a field of battle, if called to it: are we quite prepared to figure on one? Are our fortresses in a state of repair? Have we the stores necessary for a large army? Is that army even on a complete peace footing? If we were suddenly aroused by a declaration of war from England, Prussia and the Netherlands, could we make an effective opposition against a third invasion? The Napoleonic wars have divulged a fatal secret: that it is possible to reach Paris in a few days after a successful engagement; that Paris does not defend itself; that this same Paris is much too near the frontier. The capital of France will not be safe until we possess the left bank of the Rhine. We may therefore require some time to prepare ourselves.
"Add to all this that the vices and virtues of the sovereigns, their moral strength and weakness, their character, their passions, their very habits are causes of acts and of facts which defy calculation and which enter into no political formula: the most petty influence sometimes decides the greatest event in a sense opposed to the likelihood of things; a slave can cause a peace to be signed in Constantinople which all Europe, coalesced or on its knees, would not obtain.
"If, then, one of those reasons, placed outside the limits of human foresight, should, in the course of this winter, produce demands for negociations, ought they to be rejected, if they did not agree with the principles of this Note? No, doubtless: to gain time is a great thing, when one is not ready. One can know what would be best and be content with what is least bad; political truths, above all, are relative; the absolute, in matters of State, has grave disadvantages. It would be a good thing for the human race that the Turks should be thrown into the Bosphorus; but we are not charged with the expedition, and the hour of Mohammedanism has perhaps not struck: hatred must be enlightened in order not to commit follies. Nothing, therefore, should prevent France from entering into negociations, while taking care to reconcile them as far as possible with the spirit in which this Note is drawn up. It is for the men at the helm of empires to steer them according to the winds and avoid the foul places.
"Certainly, if the powerful Sovereign of the North consented to reduce the terms of peace to the fulfilment of the Treaty of Akerman and the emancipation of Greece, it would be possible to make the Porte listen to reason; but what likelihood is there that Russia will confine herself to terms which she might have obtained without firing a gun? How could she abandon claims so loudly and so publicly expressed? One means alone, if there be one, would present itself: to propose a general congress at which the Emperor Nicholas would yield, or appear to yield, to the wishes of Christian Europe. A means of success with men is to save their self-esteem, to supply them with a reason to withdraw their word and issue from a bad plight with honour.
"The greatest obstacle to this plan of a congress would come from the unexpected success of the Ottoman arms during the winter. If, owing to the rigour of the season, the want of provisions, the insufficiency of the troops, or any other cause, the Russians were obliged to abandon the Siege of Silistria, if Varna, which, however, is hardly probable, were to fall again into the hands of the Turks, the Emperor Nicholas would find himself in a position which would no longer permit him to listen to any proposal, under the penalty of descending to the lowest rank of monarchs: then the war would continue and we should come back to the eventualities inferred in this Note. If Russia lost her rank as a military power, if Turkey replaced her in this quality, Europe would only have changed one peril for another. Now, the danger which would come upon us through the scimitar of Mahmud would be of a much more formidable nature than that with which we should be threatened by the sword of the Emperor Nicholas. If fortune, by chance, seat a remarkable prince upon the Throne of the Sultans, he cannot live long enough to change the laws and manners, even if he had the intention to do so. Mahmud will die: to whom will he leave the Empire, with its disciplined, fanatical soldiers, with its ulemas holding in their hands, thanks to the initiation of modern tactics, a new means of conquest for the Koran?
"While Austria, at last terrified by those false calculations, would be obliged to guard herself on frontiers where the janissaries gave her nothing to fear, a new military insurrection, a possible result of the humiliation of the Emperor Nicholas, would perhaps break out in St. Petersburg, spread from place to place, and set fire to the north of Germany. That is what the men do not perceive who, in politics, confine themselves to vulgar terrors and commonplaces. Petty dispatches, petty intrigues are the barriers which Austria designs to oppose to an all—threatening movement. If France and England adopted a course worthy of themselves, if they notified the Porte that, in case the Sultan should close his ears to all proposals of peace, he would find them on the battle-field in the spring, that resolution would soon have put an end to the anxiety of Europe."
The existence of this Memorandum, having transpired in the diplomatic world, attracted to me a certain consideration which I did not decline, but which I did not either aspire to. I do not too clearly see what there was to surprise the "practical" men. My Spanish War was a very "practical" thing. The incessant work of the general revolution operating in the old society, while bringing about among ourselves the fall of the Legitimacy, has upset calculations subordinate to the permanence of facts as they existed in 1828.
Do you wish to convince yourselves of the enormous difference of merit and glory between a great writer and a great politician? My works as a diplomatist have been hallowed by what is recognised as the supreme ability, success. And, still, whosoever may at any time read this Memorandum will no doubt skip it close-legged, and I should do as much in the reader's place. Well, suppose that, instead of this little diplomatic master-piece, we were to find in this writing some episode after the manner of Homer or Virgil, if Heaven had granted me their genius: do you think we should be tempted to skip the loves of Dido at Carthage or the tears of Priam in Achilles' tent?
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, Wednesday, 10 December 1828.
"I have been to the Tiberine Academy, of which I have the honour to be a member. I have heard very witty speeches and very fine verses. What an amount of wasted intelligence! To-night I have my great ricevimento; I am terrified of it as I write to you."
"11 December.
"The great ricevimento passed off admirably. Madame de Chateaubriand is delighted, because we had all the cardinals on the face of the earth. All Europe in Rome was there with Rome. Since I am condemned for some days to this business, I prefer to do it as well as another ambassador. The enemies dislike any kind of success, even the most miserable, and it is punishing them to succeed in a field where they believe themselves unequalled. Next Saturday, I transform myself into a canon of St. John Lateran, and on Sunday I give a dinner to my colleagues. An assembly more to my taste is that which takes place this evening: I dine at Guérin's with all the artists and we shall settle your monument to Poussin. A young pupil full of talent, M. Desprez, will make the bas-relief, taken from a picture by the great painter, and M. Lemoyne will make the bust. We must have only French hands here.
"To complete my History of Rome, Madame de Castries has arrived. She again is one of those little girls who have sat on my knee, like Césarine (Madame de Barante). The poor woman is very much changed; her eyes filled with tears when I reminded her of her childhood at Lormois. It seems to me that the new arrival is no longer under the spell of enchantment. What an isolation! And for whom? I tell you, the best thing for me to do is to go to see you again as soon as possible. If my Moses comes down safely from the mountain, I will borrow one of his rays, to reappear before your eyes quite brilliant and youthful."
"Saturday, 13.
"My dinner at the Academy went off admirably. The young men were pleased: it was the first time an ambassador had dined 'with them.' I announced the Poussin Monument to them; it was as though I were already honouring their ashes."
Thursday, 18 December 1828.
"Instead of wasting my time and yours in telling you the doings of my life, I prefer to send them to you all written down in the Roman newspaper. Here are another twelve months that have fallen on my head. When shall I have rest? When shall I cease to waste on the high-roads the days that were given me to make a better use of? I have spent with my eyes shut while I was rich; I thought the treasure inexhaustible. Now, when I see how it has diminished and how little time is left to me to lay at your feet, I feel a pain at my heart. But is there not a long existence after that on earth? A poor, humble Christian, I tremble before Michael Angelo's Last Judgment; I know not where I shall go, but, wherever you are not, I shall be very unhappy. I have a hundred times acquainted you with my plans and my future. Ruins, health, the loss of all illusion, all say to me, 'Go away, retire, have done.' I find nothing at the end of my day's journey but you. You wished me to mark my stay in Rome, it is done: Poussin's tomb will remain. It will bear this inscription:
F. A. de Ch. to Nicolas Poussin,
for the glory of art and the honour of france."What more have I to do here now? Nothing, especially after subscribing your name for the sum of one hundred ducats to the monument of the man whom you say you love best 'after myself:' Tasso."
"Rome, Saturday, 3 January 1829.
"I am recommencing my good wishes for the New Year: may Heaven grant you health and a long life! Do not forget me; I have hopes, for, indeed, you remember M. de Montmorency and Madame de Staël: your memory is as good as your heart. I was saying yesterday to Madame Salvage that I knew nothing in the world so beautiful as yourself or better.
"I spent an hour yesterday with the Pope. We spoke of everything, including the loftiest and gravest topics. He is a very distinguished and enlightened man and a Prince full of dignity. The adventures of my political life needed only that I should be in relations with a sovereign pontiff; that completes my career.
"Would you like to know exactly what I do? I rise at half-past five, I breakfast at seven o'clock; at eight o'clock, I go back to my study, I write to you, or do some business, when there is any to do (the detail-work in connection with the French establishments and the French poor is pretty considerable); at mid-day, I go to wander for two or three hours among the ruins, or to St. Peter's, or to the Vatican. Sometimes I pay a necessary visit before or after my walk; at five o'clock, I come home; I dress for the evening; I dine at six o'clock; at half-past seven, I go to a party with Madame de Chateaubriand, or I receive a few people at home. At eleven, I go to bed, or else I go back once more to the campagna, in spite of the robbers and the malaria. What do I do there? Nothing: I listen to the silence and watch my shadow passing from portico to portico along the moonlit aqueducts.
"The Romans are so accustomed to my 'methodical' life that they reckon the hours by me. They must be quick about it; I shall soon have been round the clock."
"Rome, Thursday, 8 January 1828.
"I am very unhappy; the finest weather in the world has changed into rain, so that I am no longer able to take my walks. And yet that is the only pleasant moment of my day. I used to go thinking of you to these deserted campagne; they linked the past and the future in my sentiments, for formerly I used to take the same walks. Once or twice a week, I go to the place where the English girl was drowned: who now remembers that poor young woman, Miss Bathurst? Her fellow-countrymen and women gallop along the river-side without thinking of her. The Tiber, which has seen many other things, does not trouble about her at all. Besides, its waters have been renewed: they are as pale and still as when they passed over that creature full of hope, beauty and life.
"I have fallen into a very lofty strain without knowing it. Forgive a poor hare imprisoned and steeped in his form. I must tell you a little story of my last 'Tuesday.' There was an immense crowd at the Embassy; I was standing with my back against a marble table, bowing to the people arriving and leaving. An Englishwoman, of whom I knew neither the name nor the appearance, came up to me, looked me straight in the face and said, with the famous accent:
"'Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you are very unhappy!'
"Astonished at this apostrophe and at this manner of entering into conversation, I asked her what she meant. She replied:
"'I mean to say that I pity you.'
"So saying, she linked her arm into that of another Englishwoman, was lost in the crowd, and I did not see her again during the rest of the evening. That eccentric stranger was neither young nor pretty: I feel grateful to her, nevertheless, for her mysterious words.
"Your newspapers continue to say the same things about me. I don't know what has possessed them. I ought to believe myself as forgotten as I wish to be.
"I am writing to M. Thierry by this post. He is at Hyères and very ill. Not a word of reply from M. de La Bouillerie."
To M. Thierry
"Rome, 8 January 1829.
"I was much touched, monsieur, to receive the new edition of your Letters, with a line which proves that you have thought of me. If that line had been in your own hand, I should have hoped for the sake of my country that your eyes would reopen to the studies which your talent turns to such wonderful account. I am greedily reading, or rather re-reading, this too short work. I am making dog's ears to every page, in order the better to mark the passages upon which I wish to rely. I shall quote you very frequently, monsieur, in the work which I have been so many years preparing, on the two first dynasties. I shall shelter my ideas and my researches behind your authority; I shall often adopt your reforms in nomenclature; lastly, I shall have the good fortune to be almost invariably of your opinion, while departing, much despite of myself, no doubt, from the system put forth by M. Guizot; but I cannot, in common with that illustrious writer, overthrow the most authentic monuments, turn all the Franks into 'nobles' and 'free-men,' and all the Roman-Gauls into 'slaves of the Franks.' The Salic Law and the Ripuarian Law have a multitude of articles based on the difference of condition among the Franks:
"'St quis ingenuus ingenuum ripuarium extra solum vendiderit, etc., etc.'
"You know, monsieur, how eagerly I wished for you in Rome. We should have sat down on some ruins: there you would have taught me history; I, an old disciple, would have listened to my young master with the sole regret that I no longer had enough years before me to profit by his lessons:
Tel est le sort de l'homme: il s'instruit avec l'âge.
Mais que sert être sage,
Quand le terme est si près?"Those lines are from an unpublished ode, written by a man who is no more, by my good and old friend, Fontanes. Thus, monsieur, does everything remind me, among the remains of Rome, of all that I have lost, of the short time that still remains to me and of the brevity of those hopes which seemed so long to me in former days: spem longam.
"Believe, monsieur, that no one admires you more, or is more devoted to you than your servant."
Dispatch to M. le Comte de La Ferronays
"Rome, 12 January 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"I saw the Pope on the 2nd of this month; he was good enough to keep me with him in private audience for an hour and a half. I must report to you the conversation which I had with His Holiness.
"We first spoke of France. The Pope began with the most sincere praise of the King.
"'At no time,' he said, 'has the Royal Family of France displayed so complete a harmony of good qualities and virtues. Now calm has been restored among the clergy; the bishops have made their submission.'
"'That submission,' I replied, 'is, in part, due to the sagacity and moderation of Your Holiness.'
"'I advised what seemed reasonable to me to be done,' answered the Pope. 'There were no spiritual matters involved in the ordinances; the bishops would have done better to leave their first letter unwritten; but, after saying, "Non possumus," it was difficult for them to withdraw. They tried to display as little contradiction as possible between their actions and their language at the moment of their adhesion: we must forgive them for it. They are pious men, firmly attached to the King and the Monarchy; they have their weaknesses in common with all men.'
"All this, monsieur le comte, was said in very clear and excellent French.
"After thanking the Holy Father for the confidence which he showed me, I spoke to him in terms of consideration of the Cardinal Secretary of State:
"'I chose him,' he said, 'because he has travelled, because he knows the general affairs of Europe and because he seemed to me to possess the sort of capacity which his post demands. He has written, with respect to your two ordinances, only what I thought and what I recommended him to write.'
"'Might I venture to give Your Holiness,' I resumed, 'my opinion of the religious situation in France?'
"'You will be doing me a great pleasure,' replied the Pope.
"I suppress a few compliments which His Holiness was good enough to address to me.
"'I think then, Most Holy Father, that the mischief arose in the first place from a mistake of the clergy: instead of supporting the new institutions, or at least keeping silence respecting those institutions, they allowed words of blame, to say no more, to escape in their charges and sermons. Irreligious persons, who were at a loss with what to reproach saintly ministers, seized upon those words and made a weapon of them; they cried that Catholicism was incompatible with the establishment of public liberty, that it was war to the death between the Charter and the priests. By holding the opposite conduct, our ecclesiastics would have obtained all they wanted from the nation. There is a great ground-work of religion in France and a visible inclination to forget our old misfortunes at the foot of the altars; but also there is a real attachment to the institutions introduced by the sons of St. Louis. It would be impossible to calculate the measure of power to which the clergy might have attained, if they had shown themselves at the same time friends to the King and the Charter. I have never ceased to preach this policy in my writings and in my speeches; but the passions of the moment refused me a hearing and took me for an enemy.'
"The Pope had listened to me with the greatest attention.
"'I enter into your ideas,' he said, after a moment's pause. 'Jesus Christ made no pronouncement as to the form of governments. "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's" means only, "Obey the established authorities." The Catholic religion has prospered in the midst of republics as in the bosom of monarchies; it has made immense progress in the United States; it reigns alone in Spanish America.'
"These words are very remarkable, monsieur le comte, at the very moment when the Court of Rome is strongly inclining to establish the bishops nominated by Bolivar.
"The Pope resumed:
"'You see how great is the influx of Protestant strangers to Rome: their presence does good to the country; but it is also good in another respect: the English come here with strange notions regarding the Pope and the Papacy, the fanaticism of the clergy, the slavery of the people in this country; they have not stayed here two months before they are quite changed. They see that I am only a bishop like any other bishop, that the Roman clergy are neither ignorant nor persecuting, and that my subjects are not beasts of burden!'
"Encouraged by this sort of effusion of the heart, and seeking to widen the scope of the conversation, I said to the Sovereign Pontiff:
"'Does not Your Holiness think that the moment is favourable for the recomposition of Catholic unity, for the reconciliation of the dissenting sects, by some slight concessions of discipline? The prejudices against the Court of Rome are vanishing in every quarter and, in a century which was still ardent, the work of reunion had already been attempted by Leibnitz and Bossuet.'
"'This is a great matter,' said the Pope; 'but I must await the moment fixed by Providence. I agree that the prejudices are vanishing; the division of the sects in Germany has brought about the lassitude of those sects. In Saxony, where I resided for three years, I was the first to establish a foundling hospital and to obtain that this hospital should be served by Catholics. A general outcry arose against me at the time among the Protestants; to-day those same Protestants are the first to praise and endow the institution. The number of Catholics is increasing in Great Britain; it is true that they include many foreigners.'
"The Pope pausing for a moment, I took occasion to introduce the question of the Irish Catholics:
"'If the emancipation takes place,' I said, 'the Catholic religion will increase still more in Great Britain.'
"'That is true on one side,' replied His Holiness, 'but on the other there are disadvantages. The Irish Catholics are very ardent and very incautious. Has not O'Connell, in other respects a man of merit, gone so far as to say that a concordat had been proposed between the Holy See and the British Government? There is not a word of truth in this assertion; I cannot contradict it publicly; and it has given me great pain. And so, for the union of the dissenters, it is necessary that things should be ripe and that God Himself should complete His work. The popes can only wait.'
"This was not my opinion, monsieur le comte; but my business was to inform the King of the Holy Father's opinion on so serious a subject, not to combat it.
"'What will your newspapers say?' asked the Pope, with a sort of gaiety. 'They talk a great deal! Those of the Netherlands still more; but I am told that, in your country, nobody thinks of their articles an hour after they have read them.'
"'That is absolutely true, Most Holy Father: you see how the Gazette de France deals with me,'—for I know that His Holiness reads all our newspapers, not excepting the Courrier—'and still the Sovereign Pontiff treats me with extreme kindness; I have reason to believe, therefore, that the Gazette does not make a great impression on him.'—The Pope laughed and shook his head.—'Well, Most Holy Father, there are others like Your Holiness; when the paper tells the truth, the good it says remains; if it lies, it is as though it had said nothing at all. The Pope must expect some speeches during this session: the Extreme Right will maintain that M. le Cardinal Bernetti is not a priest and that his letters on the ordinances are not articles of faith; the Extreme Left will declare that we need not have taken our orders from Rome. The majority will commend the deference of the Privy Council and will loudly praise the spirit of peace and wisdom of Your Holiness.'
"This little explanation appeared to charm the Holy Father, who was pleased to meet with some one acquainted with the workings of our constitutional machine. Finally, monsieur le comte, thinking that the King and his Council would like to know the views of the Pope on the present state of affairs in the East, I repeated some news out of the papers, not being authorized to communicate to the Holy See the positive facts of which you informed me in your dispatch of the 18th December touching the recall of our expedition to the Morea.
"The Pope did not hesitate to reply; he appeared to me to be alarmed at the imprudence of instructing the Turks in military discipline. I give his own words:
"'If the Turks are already capable of resisting Russia, what will their power be when they have obtained a glorious peace? Who will prevent them, after four or five years spent in rest and in perfecting their new tactics, from hurling themselves upon Italy?'
"I will confess, monsieur le comte, that, when I recognised these ideas and these anxieties in the mind of the Sovereign most exposed to the effects of the consequence of the enormous error that has been committed, I congratulated myself on having displayed to you in fuller detail, in my Note on Eastern Affairs, the same ideas and the same anxieties.
"'Nothing,' added the Pope, 'except a firm resolution on the part of the Allied Powers, can put an end to a misfortune which threatens the future. France and England are still in time to stop everything; but, if a new campaign open, it can set Europe on fire, and then it will be too late to extinguish it.'
"'That reflection is the more just,' I answered, 'seeing that, if Europe were to become divided, which God forbid, the presence of fifty thousand Frenchmen would stir up the whole question again.'
"The Pope made no reply; only it appeared to me that the idea of seeing the French in Italy filled him with no sort of fear. Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the Austrian yoke into a confederation against France.
"This, monsieur le comte, is a summary of my long conversation with His Holiness. I do not know that any one has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and in no way sought to deceive.
"The leanings and wishes of the Pope are evidently towards France: when he assumed the Keys of St. Peter, he belonged to the faction of the zelanti; to-day he has sought his strength in moderation: that is what the habit of power always teaches. For this reason he is not beloved by the faction of cardinals which he has quitted. Finding no man of talent in the secular clergy, he has chosen his chief advisers among the regular clergy; hence it comes that the monks are on his side, while the prelates and the simple priests make a sort of opposition to him. The latter, when I arrived in Rome, all had their minds more or less infected with the lies of our congregation; they are now infinitely more reasonable; they all, generally speaking, blame the rising in arms of our clergy. It is curious to remark that the Jesuits have as many enemies here as in France: they have as their special adversaries the other religious and the heads of Orders. They had formed a plan by means of which they would have seized upon the public instruction in Rome to the exclusion of the others: the Dominicans have foiled that plan. The Pope is not very popular, because he administers well. His little army consists of old soldiers of Bonaparte, who have a very military bearing and keep excellent order on the high-roads. If material Rome has lost in picturesqueness, it has gained in cleanliness and healthiness. His Holiness plants trees and arrests hermits and beggars: another subject of complaint for the populace. Leo XII. is a great worker; he sleeps little and eats scarcely at all. Only one taste remains to him of his youth, that of sport, an exercise necessary to his health, which, for that matter, seems to be improving. He has a few shots with a fowling-piece in the vast enclosure of the Gardens of the Vatican. The zelanti find it very difficult to forgive him this innocent diversion. The Pope is reproached with the weakness and inconstancy of his affections.
"The radical vice of the political constitution of this country is easily seized upon: it is old men who appoint as sovereign an old man like themselves. This old man, when he becomes the master, in his turn appoints old men as cardinals. Turning in this vicious circle, the enervated supreme power is in this way always at the edge of the tomb. The prince never occupies the throne for a long enough period to execute the plans of improvement which he may have conceived. A pope ought to have sufficient resolution suddenly to promote a number of young cardinals, in such a way as to ensure at the next election the majority of a young pope. But the rules of Sixtus V., which give the hat to palace employments, the empire of custom and habit, the interests of the people, who receive gratifications at each change of the tiara, the individual ambition of the cardinals, who wish for short reigns in order to multiply their chances of the papacy, these and a thousand other obstacles too long to narrate are opposed to the rejuvenation of the Sacred College.
"The conclusion of this dispatch, monsieur le comte, is that, in the present condition of affairs, the King can reckon entirely on the Court of Rome.
"Cautious as I am in my manner of seeing and feeling, if I have anything with which to reproach myself in the report which I have the honour to send you, it is that I have weakened rather than exaggerated the expression of His Holiness' words. My memory is very safe; I wrote down the conversation on leaving the Vatican and my private secretary has simply copied it word for word from my minutes. The latter, rapidly jotted down, were hardly legible to myself. You would never have been able to decipher them.
"I have the honour to be, etc."
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, Tuesday, 13 January 1829.
"Yesterday evening, at eight o'clock, I wrote you the letter which M. Du Viviers is bringing you; this morning, on waking, I am writing to you again by the ordinary post, which leaves at noon. You know the poor ladies of Saint-Denis: they have been much neglected since the arrival of the great ladies of the Trinità-del-Monte; without being the enemy of the latter, I have taken the side of the former with Madame de Ch. For the last month, the ladies of Saint-Denis have been wishing to give a fête in honour of 'M. the Ambassador' and 'Madame the Ambassadress:' it took place yesterday at mid-day. Imagine a theatre arranged in a sort of sacristy with a platform giving on to the church; as actors, a dozen young girls from eight years to fourteen, who played the Machabées. They had themselves made their helmets and cloaks. They spoke their French lines with an enthusiasm and an Italian accent which were the funniest things in the world; they stamped their feet at energetic moments: there was a niece of Pius VII., a daughter of Thorwaldsen, and another daughter of Chauvin the painter. They were incredibly pretty in their paper finery. The one who played the High Priest had a great black beard which delighted her but pricked her, and which she was constantly obliged to put right with a little thirteen-year-old white hand. As spectators, ourselves, a few mothers, the nuns, Madame Salvage, two or three priests and a further score of little school-girls, all in white, with veils. We had had cakes and ices brought from the Embassy. They played the piano between the acts. Imagine the hopes and joys which, must have preceded this fête at the convent, and the memories which will follow it! The whole ended with Vivat in æternum, sung by three nuns in the church."
"Rome, 15 January 1829.
"Yours again! Last night we had wind and rain as in France: I imagined them beating against your little window; I found myself transported to your little room, I saw your harp, your piano, your birds; you played me my favourite air, or Shakspeare's: and I was in Rome, far away from you! Four hundred leagues and the Alps separate us!
"I have received a letter from that witty lady who used sometimes to come to see me at the Foreign Office; you can judge how well she courts me: she is a furious Turcophile; Mahmud is a great man, who is in advance of his nation!
"This Rome, in whose midst I live, ought to teach me to despise politics. Here liberty and tyranny have both perished: I see the huddled ruins of the Roman Republic and the Empire of Tiberius; what is all this to-day blended in the same dust? Does not the Capuchin who sweeps that dust with his gown as he goes by seem to make the vanity of so many vanities even more perceptible? Nevertheless, I come back, in spite of myself, to the destinies of my poor country. I would wish it religion, glory and liberty, without thinking of my powerlessness to deck it with that triple crown."
"Rome, Thursday, 5 February 1829.
"Torre Vergata is a domain of monks situated at about a league from Nero's Tomb, on the left as you come from Rome, in the most beautiful and deserted spot: there is an immense number of ruins level with the ground covered with grass and thistle. I began an excavation there two days ago, on Tuesday, just after I had written to you. I was accompanied by Hyacinthe and by Visconti, who is directing the excavation. The weather was the loveliest in the world. A dozen men armed with spades and pickaxes, digging up tombs and ruins of houses and palaces amid profound solitude, offered a spectacle worthy of you. I uttered but one wish: that you might be there. I would gladly consent to live with you in a tent amid those ruins.
"I myself put my hand to the work; I discovered fragments of marble: the clues are excellent and I hope to find something to compensate me for the money wasted in this lottery of the dead; already I have a block of Greek marble large enough to make Poussin's bust. This excavation will become the object of my walks; I shall go and sit everyday in the midst of these remains. To which century, to which men did they belong? We are perhaps removing the most illustrious dust without knowing it. Perhaps an inscription will come to throw light upon some historic fact, to destroy some error, to establish some truth. And then, when I have gone away with my twelve half-naked peasants, all will fall back into oblivion and silence. Do you picture to yourself all the passions, all the interests which once bestirred themselves in these abandoned spots? There were masters and slaves, happy people and unhappy, beautiful persons who were beloved and ambitious people who wanted to be ministers. There remain a few birds and I, for but a very short time longer; soon we shall fly away. Tell me, do you think it worth while to be one of the members of the council of a little king of the Gauls, for me, an Armorican barbarian, a traveller among savages of a world unknown to the Romans and ambassador to the priests whom they used to throw to the lions? When I called to Leonidas at Lacedæmon, he did not answer: the sound of my footsteps at Torre Vergata will have roused nobody. And when I, in my turn, am in my grave, I shall not hear even the sound of your voice. I must therefore hurry to come closer to you and to put an end to all these idle fancies of the life of men. There is nothing good save retirement, nothing true save an attachment like yours."
"Rome, 7 February 1829.
"I have received a long letter from General Guilleminot; he gives me a lamentable account of what he suffered during his journeys on the coasts of Greece: and yet Guilleminot was an ambassador; he had large ships and an army under his orders. To go, after our soldiers have left, to a country in which not a house nor a corn-field remains, among a few scattered men, driven by poverty to become brigands, is an impossible project for a woman.
"I shall go to my excavation this morning: yesterday we found the skeleton of a Gothic soldier and the arm of a female statue. It was as though one had come upon the destroyer together with the ruin he had made; we have great hopes of finding the statue this morning. If the architectural remains which I am uncovering are worth the trouble, I shall not break them up to sell the bricks, as is usually done: I shall leave them standing, and they will bear my name. They belong to the time of Domitian. We have an inscription which shows this: it is the good time of the Roman arts."
Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis
"Rome, Monday, 9 February 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"His Holiness had a sudden attack this morning of the disorder to which he is subject; his life is in the most imminent danger. The order has been given to close all the theatres. I have just left the Cardinal Secretary of State, who is himself ill and who despairs of the Pope's life. The loss of this enlightened and modern Sovereign Pontiff would, at the present moment, be a real calamity for Christianity and especially for France. I thought it important, monsieur le comte, that His Majesty's Government should be warned of this probable event, so that it may be enabled to take such measures beforehand as it shall consider necessary. Consequently, I have dispatched a mounted courier to Lyons. This courier carries a letter which I am writing to Monsieur the Prefect of the Rhône, with a telegraphic dispatch which he will forward to you, and another letter which I am asking him to send you by express. If we have the misfortune to lose His Holiness, a fresh courier will bring you all the details to Paris.
"I have the honour to be, etc."
"Eight o'clock in the evening.
"The congregation of Cardinals already assembled has forbidden the Cardinal Secretary of State to give permits for post-horses. My courier will not be able to leave until after the departure of the courier of the Sacred College, in case of the Pope's death. I have tried to send a man to carry my dispatches to the Tuscan frontier. The bad roads and the absence of livery-horses have made this plan impracticable. Obliged to wait in Rome, which has become a kind of closed prison, I still hope that the news will reach you by telegraph a few hours before it is known to the other governments beyond the Alps. It might nevertheless happen that the courier sent to the Nuncio, who will necessarily leave before mine, will himself, when passing through Lyons, give you the news by telegraph."
"Tuesday, 10 February, nine o'clock in the morning.
"The Pope is dead; my courier is leaving. In a few hours he will be followed by M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the Embassy."
Rome, 10 February 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
I dispatched to Lyons, about two hours ago, the special mounted courier who will forward to you the unexpected and deplorable news of the death of His Holiness. Now I am sending off M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the Embassy, to convey to you some necessary details.
"The Pope died of the hemorrhoidal affection to which he was subject. The blood being extravasated into the bladder occasioned a retention, which an attempt was made to relieve by means of a sound. His Holiness is believed to have been wounded in the course of the operation. In any case, after four days' suffering, Leo XII. expired this morning at nine o'clock, as I came to the Vatican, where an agent of the Embassy had passed the night. The letter sent by my first courier informs you, monsieur le comte, of my useless efforts to obtain a permit for post-horses before the Pope's death.
"Yesterday I called on the Cardinal Secretary of State, who was still very ill with a violent attack of gout; I had a rather long conversation with him on the consequences of the misfortune with which we were threatened. I lamented the death of a Prince whose moderate sentiments and whose knowledge of European affairs were so useful to the repose of Christianity.
"'It is not only a great misfortune for France,' answered the Secretary of State, 'but a greater misfortune for the Roman States than you imagine. Discontent and poverty are great in our provinces and, if the cardinals think fit to adopt a different system from that of Leo XII., they will find their work cut out for them. As for myself, my functions cease with the death of the Pope and I have nothing to reproach myself with.'
"This morning I again saw Cardinal Bernetti, who has, in fact, laid down his functions as Secretary of State: he spoke to me to the same effect as on the preceding day. I asked him to let me meet him before he secluded himself in the Conclave. We agreed that we should talk of electing a sovereign pontiff who should continue the system of moderation of Leo XII. I shall have the honour to communicate to you all the information that I may gather.
"It is probable that the death of the Pope and the fall of Cardinal Bernetti will delight the enemies of the ordinances, they will proclaim this unhappy event a punishment from Heaven. It is easy already to read that thought on certain French faces in Rome.
"I regret the Pope for more than one reason; I had had the good fortune to gain his confidence: the prejudices which had been carefully instilled into his mind against me, before my arrival, had become dispelled and he did me the honour, on all occasions, to bear witness, publicly and aloud, to the esteem in which he was good enough to hold me.
"Now, monsieur le comte, permit me to enter into the explanation of a few facts.
"I was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the death of Pius VII. You will find in the boxes at the Office, if you think it advisable to look into the matter, the continuous account of my relations with M. le Duc de Laval. The custom is, on the death of a Pope, to send an extraordinary ambassador, or to accredit the resident ambassador through new letters to the Sacred College. The latter is the course which I proposed to His late Majesty, Louis XVIII., to follow. The King will do what he thinks best for his service. Four French cardinals came to Rome for the election of Leo XII. France to-day numbers five; a number of votes certainly not to be despised in the Conclave. I shall, monsieur le comte, await the King's orders. M. de Montebello, who is instructed to hand you this dispatch, will remain at your disposal.
"I have the honour to be, etc."
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, 10 February 1829, eleven d clock at night.
"I wished to write you a long letter; but the dispatch, which I was obliged to write with my own hand, and the fatigue of these last days have exhausted me.
"I regret the Pope; I had obtained his confidence. I am now charged with an important mission; it is impossible for me to know what the result will be, or what influence it will have over my destiny.
"The conclaves generally last two months, which will at least leave me free for Easter. I will soon talk to you thoroughly of all that.
"Picture to yourself that they found that poor Pope, on Thursday last, before he fell ill, writing his epitaph. They tried to divert him from such sad thoughts:
"'No, no,' he said; 'it will be over in a few days.'"
"Rome, Thursday, 12 February 1829.
"I read your newspapers. They often give me pain. I see in the Globe that Monsieur le Comte Portalis is, according to that journal, my declared enemy. Why? Do I ask his place? He is taking too much pains; I do not so much as think of him. I wish him all possible prosperity; but yet, if it were true that he wanted war, he would find me there. People seem to me to be talking nonsense about everything, both about the immortal Mahmud and the evacuation of the Morea.
"In the most probable event, this evacuation will put back Greece under the yoke of the Turks, with the loss to us of our honour and forty millions. There is a prodigious amount of wit in France, but we lack judgment and common-sense; two phrases make us drunk, we are led with words, and what is worse is that we are always ready to disparage our friends and exalt our enemies. Besides, is it not curious that they should make the King, in his Speech, use my own language on 'the agreement of the public liberties and the Royalty,' and that they should have found such fault with me for using that language? And the men who make the Crown speak thus were once the warmest partizans of the censorship! For the rest, I am going to see the election of the Head of Christianity; this spectacle is the last great spectacle that I shall witness in my life; it will close my career.
"Now that pleasures have ceased in Rome, business is commencing. I shall be obliged, on the one hand, to write of all that happens to the Government and, on the other, to fulfil the duties of my new position. I must compliment the Sacred College and attend the funeral of the Holy Father, to whom I had become attached because he was but little loved, and the more so in that, fearing that I should find an enemy in him, I found a friend who, from the chair of St. Peter, formally gave the lie to my 'Christian' calumniators. Then the French cardinals are going to come down upon me. I have written to make representations at least touching the Archbishop of Toulouse.
"In the midst of all this stir, the Poussin monument is being executed; the excavation is successful; I have found three fine heads, a draped female torso, a funeral inscription by a brother to a young sister, which touched me.
"Talking of inscriptions, I told you that the poor Pope had made his on the day before that on which he was taken ill, predicting that he was soon going to die. He has left a writing in which he recommends his indigent family to the Roman Government: only those who have loved much have such great virtues."