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was in the midst of tempests, the king announced that he had written to the princes of the Germanic body (especially to the Elector of Trèves), on the subject of the German armaments. The king's brothers, the Prince de Condé, M. de Calonne, Viscount Mirabeau, and M. de Queille, were immediately accused. previous decree, of the 9th of November, had been directed against the other emigrés; and it was in these already proscribed ranks that I was hastening to place myself; others would, perhaps, have recoiled; but the right of the strongest always inclines me to take the side of the weakest; the pride of victory is to me insupportable.

On my way from Havre to St. Malo, I had opportunity to note the divisions and misfortunes of France; châteaux burned or abandoned; the proprietors, scared by threats, had made their escape; the women had taken refuge in the towns. The hamlets and small towns groaned under the tyranny of clubs connected with the central club of the Cordeliers, afterwards united to the Jacobins. The antagonist to this club, the Societé Monarchique or Societé des Feuillans, was no longer in existence; the ignoble denomination of sans-culottes had become popular; the king was called nothing but Monsieur Veto or Monsieur Capet.

I was tenderly received by my mother and the rest of my family, who, nevertheless, deplored the inopportuneness of my

return.

My uncle, the Count de Bedée, was preparing to go to Jersey with his wife, his sons and his daughters. The question was how to find funds to enable me to join the princes. My voyage to America had made a breach in my fortune; my property was almost annihilated in my portion as younger son by the suppression of the feudal rights; the small benefices which should have fallen to me in virtue of my admission into the order of Malta, had been seized by the nation, along with the other possessious of the clergy. This concurrence of circumstances decided on the gravest act of my life ; I in order to procure made to was marry, myself the means of going to risk my life in upholding a cause for which I had no love.

There lived in retirement at St. Malo a certain M. de Lavigne, a knight of St. Louis, and formerly commandant of L'Orient. The Count d'Artois had been his guest at the latter town, when he visited Brittany, and had been so charmed with his host, that he promised to grant him any thing he might in future like to ask. This M. de Lavigne had two sons; one of them married Mademoiselle de la Placelière. Two daughters, the children of this

VOL. I.

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marriage, were early left orphans by the death of both parents. The eldest married Count du Plessis-Parscau, commander of a vessel, the son and grandson of an admiral, now himself rearadmiral of the red, and commandant of the naval college at Brest ; the youngest still lived with her grandfather, and was seventeen years old at the time of my return from America. She was fair and delicate in complexion, slight in figure, and very pretty; her fair hair fell in natural curls on her neck, like a child's. Her fortune was reckoned at five or six hundred thousand francs.

I

My sisters took it into their heads to make me marry Mademoiselle de Lavigne, who had strongly attached herself to Lucile. The affair was conducted without my knowledge. I had not seen Mademoiselle de Lavigne more than three or four times; I knew her at a distance on the Sillon, by her rose-coloured pelisse, her white dress and fair hair floating in the wind, when I was sitting on the strand enjoying the embraces of my first love, the sea. felt no qualification for the position of husband. All my illusions were still vivid and unfaded: none were yet exhausted; on the contrary, the energy of my existence seemed to have redoubled during my wanderings. I was tormented by the Muse. Lucile was fond of Mademoiselle de Lavigne, and saw an independent fortune for me in this marriage: "Be it as you like then!" said I. In my character, the public man is immovable, the private man at the mercy of any one who wishes to influence him avoid the bickering of an hour, I would enslave myself for a century.

to

The consent of the grandfather, the paternal uncle, and the principal relations, was easily obtained; the only opponent was a maternal uncle, M. de Vauvert, a great democrat; he was greatly against the marriage of his niece with an aristocrat like me—yet I was not one at all. It was thought that the matter might proceed without his consent; but my pious mother insisted that the religious marriage should be performed by a priest non assermenté, and this could only be done in secret. M. Vauvert heard of it, and set the magistracy upon us, under pretext of abduction and violation of the law, bringing forward the pretended dotage into which the grandfather, M. de Lavigne, had fallen. Mademoiselle de Lavigne, now become Madame de Chateaubriand, without my having had any communication with her, was carried off in the name of justice, and put into the convent of La Victoire in St. Malo, pending the decision of the tribunals.

There was neither abduction, nor violation of the law, nor adventure, nor romance of love in the whole affair; the marriage

The

only possessed the unattractive side of romance-truth. cause was pleaded, and the tribunal adjudged the marriage valid in a civil point of view. The families being agreed on the matter, M. de Vauvert desisted from his opposition. The constitutional curate, liberally paid, no longer exclaimed against the first nuptial benediction, and Madame de Chateaubriand quitted the convent, whither she had been accompanied by Lucile.

I had now a new acquaintance to make, and she proved all that I could desire. I know not that there has ever existed a finer intelligence than my wife's; she divines the thought and the word on the brow and lip of the person with whom she is conversing to deceive her in any thing is impossible. Possessing an original and cultivated mind, curious and inquiring in the most piquante way, relating any thing with wondrous cleverness, Madame de Chateaubriand admires me without ever having read two lines of my works; she would fear to meet in them with ideas differing from her own, or to discover that the rest of the world is not enthusiastic enough in its estimate of me. Although an impassioned judge, she is a well-informed and good one.

Madame de Chateaubriand's faults, if she has any, flow from the superabundance of her qualities: my very real faults result from the sterility of mine. It is easy to have resignation, patience, general obligingness of manner, and serenity of temper, when one takes interest in nothing, becomes weary of everything, and replies to misfortune as to good fortune by a desperate and despairing, "What does it matter?"

Madame de Chateaubriand is better than I, although of less easy intercourse. Have I been irreproachable in my conduct towards her? Have I given to my companion in life's journey all those feelings which she deserved, and to which she had a right? What happiness has she enjoyed in return for an affection which has never belied itself? She has shared my adversity, has been plunged into the dungeons of the Reign of Terror, suffered the persecutions of the Empire and the disgraces of the Restoration, and has not found in maternal joys a compensation for her troubles: without children, with whom perhaps in another union she would have been blessed, and whom she would have loved to excess: not receiving the honours, or living in the atmosphere of tenderness surrounding the mother of a family, and consoling her for the loss of her youth, she has advanced childless and solitary towards old age. Often separated from me, and with a distaste to literature, the pride of bearing my name is not a sufficient compensation. Timid and trembling for me

alone, her constantly arising fears deprive her of sleep, and of time to recover her health; I am her permanent infirmity, and the cause of her relapses. Can I for a moment weigh a few little irritations which she has caused me against the care and anxiety I have caused her? or compare my qualities, such as they are, with her virtues, which feed the poor, which have established the Infirmary of Maria Theresa, in spite of every obstacle? What are my labours beside her Christian works? When we both appear before the supreme tribunal, I shall be the one to be condemned.

And, in conclusion, when I consider the whole tendency and imperfection of my nature, is it certain that marriage has been the bane of my destiny? I should, doubtless, have enjoyed more leisure and repose; I should have been better received in certain circles, and by certain high ones of the earth; but if Madame de Chateaubriand has differed with me in politics, she has never prevented my following my own path, because in that, as in the matter of honour, I judge solely by my own feelings. Should I have produced a greater number of works had I remained independent, and would these works have been better? Have not

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circumstances occurred (as will hereafter be seen) in which, marrying out of France, I would have ceased to write, and would have renounced my country? If I had not married, would not my weakness have given me up a prey to some unworthy object of attachment? Should I not have squandered and degraded my hours like Lord Byron? Now that I am growing old, all my follies would be past, I would have left nothing behind but regrets and a painful void,—I should be an old bachelor, esteemed by none, either continuing to be deceived or painfully undeceived, an old bird, repeating a worn-out song to inattentive ears. full licence of my ideas would not have added a chord to my lyre, or an accent of deeper feeling to my voice. The restraint of my feelings, the mystery of my thoughts, have, perhaps, added to the power of my accents, and animated my writings with an inward fever, a hidden flame, which would have been dissipated in the free air of love. Bound by an indissoluble tie, I purchased, with a little bitterness at first, the enjoyments I now taste. Of the evils of my existence I have only retained the incurable portion. Tender and eternal gratitude do I owe, then, to my wife, whose attachment has been as touching as it has been profound and sincere; she has rendered my life of more weight and value, more noble and more honourable, by always inspiring me with respect for duty, if not always making me feel its full force.

London, from April till September, 1822.

PARIS-OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES-THE ABBÉ BARTHÉLEMY —

SAINT-ANGE-THE THEATRE.

I WAS married at the end of March, 1792; on the 20th of April, the Legislative Assembly declared war against Francis II., who had just succeeded his father, Leopold; on the 10th of the same month, Benoît Labre had been canonized at Rome,-here were two different worlds. The war drove the rest of the nobility out of France. On the one hand, the persecutions of the Royalists redoubled in violence; on the other, the Royalists could not attempt to remain peacefully at home, without being reputed cowards; it became necessary for me to set out to seek the camp I had come so far to join. My uncle, De Bedée, and his family left for Jersey, and I went to Paris with my wife and my two sisters, Lucile and Julie.

We had secured apartments in the little Hôtel de Villette, culde-sac Ferou, faubourg St. Germain. I hastened to seek out my former circle of acquaintance. Among the new faces, I noticed those of the learned Abbé Barthélemy, and the poet St. Ange. The abbe's description of the gymnacia of Athens bears too strong a resemblance to the salons of Chanteloup. The translator of Ovid was not a man without talent; talent is a gift, an isolated thing; it may be combined with other faculties, or it may exist separately from them. Saint-Ange was a proof of this; he held himself high in order not to display his folly, but he displayed it, nevertheless, unavoidably. Bernardin de St. Pierre, a man whose works I then admired and still admire, was wanting in intellect, and unfortunately his character was on a level with his intellect. How many pictures in the Etudes de la Nature are spoiled by the limited intelligence, by the deficiency of true elevation of soul, in the writer!

Rulhière had died suddenly in 1791, before my departure for America. I have since seen his little house at St. Denis, with the fountain and the pretty statue of Love, on the pedestal of which the following lines are inscribed:

"D'Egmont avec l'Amour visita cette rive;

Une image de sa beauté

Se peignit un moment sur l'onde fugitive:

D'Egmont a disparu; l'Amour seul est resté."

When I quitted France, the theatres of Paris were still resounding with the Reveil d'Epimenide, and with this verse: