The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 12

Benvenuto was deputed by the sculptors of Florence to attend the obsequies of his great master and friend, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, who had died on February 18, 1564. Benvenuto died on December 13, 1569, and was buried by his own direction in the Chapter House of the Church of the Annunziata, Florence, with great pomp.

CHATEAUBRIAND

Memoirs From Beyond the Grave

The "Memoires d'Outre-Tombe," which was partly published before Chateaubriand's death, represents a work spread over a great part of Chateaubriand's life, and reveals as no other of his books the innermost personality of the man.

(Chateaubriand, biography: see FICTION.)

_I.--Youth and Its Follies_

Four years ago, on my return from the Holy Land, I purchased a little country house, situated near the hamlet of Aulnay, in the vicinity of Sceaux and Chatenay. The house is in a valley, encircled by thickly wooded hills. The ground attached to this habitation is a sort of wild orchard. These narrow confines seem to me to be fitting boundaries of my long-protracted hopes. I have selected the trees, as far as I was able, from the various climes I have visited. They remind me of my wanderings.

Knight-errant as I am, I have the sedentary tastes of a monk. It was here I wrote the "Martyrs," the "Abencerrages," the "Itineraire," and "Moise." To what shall I devote myself in the evenings of the present autumn? This day, October 4, being the anniversary of my entrance into Jerusalem, tempts me to commence the history of my life.

I am of n.o.ble descent, and I have profited by the accident of my birth, inasmuch as I have retained that firm love of liberty which characterises the members of an aristocracy whose last hour has sounded.

Aristocracy has three successive ages--the age of superiority, the age of privilege, and the age of vanity. Having emerged from the first age, ft degenerates in the second age, and perishes in the third.

When I was a young man, and learned the meaning of love, I was a mystery to myself. All my days were _adieux_. I could not see a woman without being troubled. I blushed if one spoke to me. My timidity, already excessive towards everyone, became so great with a woman that I would have preferred any torment whatsoever to that of remaining alone with one. She was no sooner gone than I would have recalled her with all my heart. Had anyone delivered to me the most beautiful slaves of the seraglio, I should not have known what to say to them. Accident enlightened me.

Had I done as other men do, I should sooner have learned the pleasures and pains of pa.s.sion, the germ of which I carried in myself; but everything in me a.s.sumed an extraordinary character. The warmth of imagination, my bashfulness and solitude, caused me to turn back upon myself. For want of a real object, by the power of my vague desires, I evoked a phantom which never quitted me more. I know not whether the history of the human heart furnishes another example of this kind.

I pictured then to myself an ideal beauty, moulded from the various charms of all the women I had seen. I gave her the eyes of one young village girl, and the rosy freshness of another. This invisible enchantress constantly attended me; I communed with her as with a real being. She varied at the will of my wandering fancy. Now she was Diana clothed in azure, now Aphrodite unveiled, now Thalia with her laughing mask, now Hebe bearing the cup of eternal youth.

A young queen approaches, brilliant with diamonds and flowers--this was always my sylph. She seeks me at midnight, amidst orange groves, in the corridors of a palace washed by the waves, on the balmy sh.o.r.e of Naples or Messina; the light sound of her footsteps on the mosaic floor mingles with the scarcely heard murmur of the waves.

Awaking from these my dreams, and finding myself a poor little obscure Breton, who would attract the eyes of no one, despair seized upon me. I no longer dared to raise my eyes to the brilliant phantom which I had attached to my every step. This delirium lasted for two whole years. I spoke little; my taste for solitude redoubled. I showed all the symptoms of a violent pa.s.sion. I was absent, sad, ardent, savage. My days pa.s.sed on in wild, extravagant, mad fashion, which nevertheless had a peculiar charm.

I have now reached a period at which I require some strength of mind to confess my weakness. I had a gun, the worn-out trigger of which often went off unexpectedly. I loaded this gun with three b.a.l.l.s, and went to a spot at a considerable distance from the great Mall. I c.o.c.ked the gun, put the end of the barrel into my mouth, and struck the b.u.t.t-end against the ground. I repeated the attempt several times, but unsuccessfully.

The appearance of a gamekeeper interrupted me in my design. I was a fatalist, though without my own intention or knowledge. Supposing that my hour was not yet come, I deferred the execution of my project to another day.

Any whose minds are troubled by these delineations should remember that they are listening to the voice of one who has pa.s.sed from this world.

Reader, whom I shall never know, of me there is nothing--nothing but what I am in the hands of the living G.o.d.

A few weeks later I was sent for one morning. My father was waiting for me in his cabinet.

"Sir," said he, "you must renounce your follies. Your brother has obtained for you a commission as ensign in the regiment of Navarre. You must presently set out for Rennes, and thence to Cambray. Here are a hundred louis-d'or; take care of them. I am old and ill--I have no long time to live. Behave like a good man, and never dishonour your name."

He embraced me. I felt the hard and wrinkled face pressed with emotion against mine. This was my father's last embrace.

The mail courier brought me to my garrison. Having joined the regiment in the garb of a citizen, twenty-four hours afterwards I a.s.sumed that of a soldier; it appeared as if I had worn it always. I was not fifteen days in the regiment before I became an officer. I learned with facility both the exercise and the theory of arms. I pa.s.sed through the offices of corporal and sergeant with the approbation of my instructors. My rooms became the rendezvous of the old captains, as well as of the young lieutenants.

The same year in which I went through my first training in arms at Cambray brought news of the death of Frederic II. I am now amba.s.sador to the nephew of this great king, and write this part of my memoirs in Berlin. This piece of important public news was succeeded by another, mournful to me. It was announced to me that my father had been carried off by an attack of apoplexy.

I lamented M. de Chateaubriand. I remembered neither his severity nor his weakness. If my father's affection for me partook of the severity of his character, in reality it was not the less deep. My brother announced to me that I had already obtained the rank of captain of cavalry, a rank ent.i.tling me to honour and courtesy.

A few days later I set out to be presented at the first court in Europe.

I remember my emotion when I saw the king at Versailles. When the king's levee was announced, the persons not presented withdrew. I felt an emotion of vanity; I was not proud of remaining, but I should have felt humiliated at having to retire. The royal bed-chamber door opened; I saw the king, according to custom, finishing his toilet. He advanced, on his way to the chapel, to hear ma.s.s. I bowed, Marshal de Duras announcing my name--"Sire, le Chevalier de Chateaubriand."

The king graciously returned my salutation, and seemed to wish to address me; but, more embarra.s.sed than I, finding nothing to say to me, he pa.s.sed on. This sovereign was Louis XVI., only six years before he was brought to the scaffold.

_II.--In the Years of Revolution_

My political education was begun by my residence, at different times, in Brittany in the years 1787 and 1788. The states of this province furnished the model of the States-General; and the particular troubles which broke out in the provinces of Brittany and Dauphiny were the forerunners of those of the nation at large.

The change which had been developing for two hundred years was then reaching its limits. France was rapidly tending to a representative system by means of a contest of the magistracy with the royal power.

The year 1789, famous in the history of France, found me still on the plains of my native Brittany. I could not leave the province till late in the year, and did not reach Paris till after the pillage of the Maison Reveillon, the opening of the States-General, the const.i.tution of the Tiers-etat in the National a.s.sembly, the oath of the Jeu-de-Paume, the royal council of the 23rd of June, and the junction of the clergy and n.o.bility in the Tiers-etat. The court, now yielding, now attempting to resist, allowed itself to be browbeaten by Mirabeau.

The counter-blow to that struck at Versailles was felt at Paris. On July 14 the Bastille was taken. I was present as a spectator at this event.

If the gates had been kept shut the fortress would never have been taken. De Launay, dragged from his dungeon, was murdered on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Flesselles, the _prevot des marchands_, was shot through the head. Such were the sights delighted in by heartless saintly hypocrites. In the midst of these murders the people abandoned themselves to orgies similar to those carried on in Rome during the troubles under Otto and Vitellius. The monarchy was demolished as rapidly as the Bastille in the sitting of the National a.s.sembly on the evening of August 4.

My regiment, quartered at Rouen, preserved its discipline for some time.

But at length insurrection broke out among the soldiers in Navarre. The Marquis de Mortemar emigrated; the officers followed him. I had neither adopted nor rejected the new opinions; I neither wished to emigrate nor to continue my military career. I therefore retired, and I decided to go to America.

I sailed for that land, and my heart beat when we sighted the American coast, faintly traced by the tops of some maple-trees emerging, as it were, from the sea. A pilot came on board and we sailed into the Chesapeake and soon set foot on American soil.

At that time I had a great admiration for republics, though I did not believe them possible in our era of the world. My idea of liberty pictured her such as she was among the ancients, daughter of the manners of an infant society. I knew her not as the daughter of enlightenment and the civilisation of centuries; as the liberty whose reality the representative republic has proved--G.o.d grant it may be durable! We are no longer obliged to work in our own little fields, to curse arts and sciences, if we would be free.

I met General Washington. He was tall, calm, and cold rather than n.o.ble in mien; the engravings of him are good. We sat down, and I explained to him as well as I could the motive of my journey. He answered me in English and French monosyllables, and listened to me with a sort of astonishment. I perceived this, and said to him with some warmth: "But is it less difficult to discover the north-west pa.s.sage than to create a nation as you have done?"

"Well, well, young man!" cried he, holding out his hand to me. He invited me to dine with him on the following day, and we parted. I took care not to fail in my appointment. The conversation turned on the French Revolution, and the general showed us a key of the Bastille. Such was my meeting with the citizen soldier--the liberator of a world.

_III.--Paris in the Reign of Terror_

In 1792, when I returned to Paris, it no longer exhibited the same appearance as in 1789 and 1790. It was no longer the new-born Revolution, but a people intoxicated, rushing on to fulfil its destiny across abysses and by devious ways. The appearance of the people was no longer curious and eager, but threatening.

The king's flight on June 21, 1791, gave an immense impulse to the Revolution. Having been brought back to Paris on June 25, he was dethroned for the first time, in consequence of the declaration of the National a.s.sembly that all its decrees should have the force of law, without the king's concurrence or a.s.sent. I visited several of the "Clubs."

The scenes at the Cordeliers, at which I was three or four times present, were ruled and presided over by Danton--a Hun, with the nature of a Goth.

Faithful to my instincts, I had returned from America to offer my sword to Louis XVI., not to involve myself in party intrigues. I therefore decided to "emigrate." Brussels was the headquarters of the most distinguished _emigres_. There I found my trifling baggage, which had arrived before me. The c.o.xcomb _emigres_ were hateful to me. I was eager to see those like myself, with 600 livres income.

My brother remained at Brussels as an aide-de-camp to the Baron de Montboissier. I set out alone for Coblentz, went up the Rhine to that city, but the royal army was not there. Pa.s.sing on, I fell in with the Prussian army between Coblentz and Treves. My white uniform caught the king's eye. He sent for me; he and the Duke of Brunswick took off their hats, and in my person saluted the old French army.