the year 1000, in the person of Thiern, the son of Brien, and the grandson of Alain III., Count or Lord of Brittany. The second branch were surnamed Seigneurs des Roches Baritaut, or of the Lion d'Angers; and the third branch appeared under the title of Sires de Beaufort.

The line of the Sires de Beaufort, having become extinct in the person of the Lady Renée, Christophe II., a collateral branch of that line, became heir to the estate of Guérande, in Morbihan. At that time (about the middle of the seventeeth century), vast confusion prevailed in the order of nobility; and many titles and names were usurped. In consequence, Louis XIV. ordered an inquiry, having for its object a just reinstatement of ranks. Christophe, by reason of authentic attestations of his ancient descent, retained his title and armorial bearings, in conformity with a decree of the Chamber established at Rennes, for the re-construction of the nobility of Brittany. That decree, which was issued on the 16th of September, 1669, was as follows:

"Decree of the Chamber for the re-establishment of nobility in the province of Brittany, issued September 16, 1669.-The Procureur-Général du Roi declares M. Christophe de Chateaubriand, Sieur de la Guérande, to be the descendant of an ancient and noble family; he is in consequence entitled to the rank of Chevalier, and to take for his armorial bearings gules, scattered with gold fleurs-de-lys, without limited number; and this, after production of his authentic claims thereto, &c. &c." The said decree being signed "Malescot."

This document shows that Christophe de Chateaubriand of la Guérande was directly descended from the Chateaubriands, Sires de Beaufort. Historical documents distinctly connect the Sires de Beaufort with the first Barons de Chateaubriand. That the Chateaubriands of Villeneuve, of Plessis and of Combourg were younger branches of the Chateaubriands of la Guérande is proved by the lineage of Amaury, the brother of Michel; the said Michel being the son of Christophe of la Guérande, whose extraction was confirmed by the decree above-quoted.

After my presentation to Louis XVI., my brother wished

to augment my fortune, by settling on me some of those benefices called bénéfices simples. There was but one mode of effecting this object, I being a layman, and holding a military commission: it was to obtain my admission into the Order of Malta. My brother forwarded to Malta my testimonials of nobility, and shortly afterwards he presented a petition in my behalf to the Chapter of the Grand Priory of Aquitaine, held at Poitiers, to the end that commissioners should be appointed to pronounce on my claim to admittance. M. Pontois was

at that time archivist, vice-chancellor and genealogist of the Order of Malta at the Priory.

The President of the Chapter was Louis-Joseph des Escotais, Bailli and Grand Prior of Aquitaine. His coadjutors were the Bailli of Freslon, the Chevalier de la Laurencie, the Chevalier de Murat, the Chevalier de Lanjamet, the Chevalier de la Bourdonnaye-Montluc, and the Chevalier de Bouetiez. The petition was heard on the 9th, 10th, and 11th of September, 1789. The memorial for granting my admission, states that I deserved, by more than one claim, the favour I sought, and that considerations of the greatest weight rendered me worthy of the satisfaction I solicited.

And all this took place after the taking of the Bastille-on the eve of the scenes of the 6th of October, 1789, and of the removal of the royal family from Paris. In its sitting of the 7th of August of that same year, 1789, the National Assembly abolished titles of nobility! How happened it that the Knights, and the examiners of my attestations, found that I merited, by more than one claim, the favour I solicited, &c.— I, who was then only a sub-lieutenant of infantry, unknown, without influence, without favour, and without fortune?

My brother's eldest son (I add this in 1831 to the original text written in 1811), Count Louis de Chateaubriand, married Mademoiselle d'Orglandes, by whom he had five daughters and one son, the latter named Geoffroy. Christian, the younger brother of Louis, the great grandson and godson of M. Malesherbes (and bearing a striking resemblance to that celebrated man), served honourably in Spain, as a captain in the dragoons of the guard, in 1823. Subsequently, he became

a Jesuit at Rome. Jesuits' Colleges are places of refuge to those who seek the solitude now gradually diminishing from the earth. Christian died recently at Chieri, near Turin. I who am old and infirm, might well have expected to be called hence before him; but his virtues had prepared him for Heaven, whilst I have yet many faults to repent of.

In the distribution of his family patrimony, Christian had the estate of Malesherbes; and the estate of Combourg fell to the share of Louis. Christian, regarding the equal distribution as unlawful, wished, on his retirement from the world, to resign the property which did not belong to him, and to restore it to his elder brother.

My genealogical records would have warranted me, had I inherited the ambition of my father and my brother, in believing myself to be the descendant in the branche cadet of the Dukes of Brittany, through our common descent from Thiern, the grandson of Alain III.

The blood of the Chateaubriands has on two occasions been mingled with the blood of the sovereigns of England. Geoffroy IV. de Chateaubriand, espoused, for his second consort, Agnes de Laval, grand-daughter of the Count of Anjou, and of Matilda, daughter of Henry I.; Marguerite de Lusignan, widow of the King of England and grand-daughter of Louis-le-Gros, married Geoffroy V., twelfth Baron de Chateaubriand. With the royal race of Spain they were connected through Brien, younger brother of the ninth Baron de Chateaubriand, who married Jeanne, the daughter of Alphonso, King of Arragon. Among the noble families of France, their alliances are numberless. One Croï married a Charlotte de Chateaubriand. Tinteniac, the conqueror in the combat of the Trente, and the Constable du Guesclin, contracted alliances with our family in all its three branches. Tiphaine du Guesclin, grand-daughter of the celebrated Constable Bertrand, resigned to Brien de Chateaubriand, her cousin and heir, the estate of Plessis-Bertrand. In treaties of peace, Chateaubriands were given by the Kings of France as hostages or securities. The Dukes of Brittany used to send to the Chateaubriands copies of their laws and ordi

nances.

The Chateaubriands became high officers of the crown, and illustrés in the Court of Nantes; and they received commissions to guard the safety of their province against the English. Brien I. was at the battle of Hastings: he was the son of Eudon, Count of Penthièvre. Guy de Chateaubriand was one of the nobles whom Arthur of Brittany selected to accompany his son, when he went on an embassy to the Pope, in the year 1309.

I should never end were I to give in detail the family history which I have here briefly recapitulated. The note* which I have at length resolved to insert in consideration of my two nephews, who are persons of more importance than myself in these old records, will supply what I here omit in the text. But, in their depreciation of noble lineage, people now go to an absurd extreme. It has become the custom to boast of having sprung from the labouring class, or of being the son of a man attached to the soil. Such declarations are not quite so noble-minded as they are philosophic. Are not they who make them taking part with the strongest? The Marquis, Counts and Barons of the present day have neither privileges nor possessions; three-fourths of them are starving, and degrading themselves and each other by refusing to recognise the rank to which they severally belong. Can those nobles, deprived of their own names, or permitted to bear them only for the sake of convenience, as things are named in an inventory,—can those nobles create any alarm? I hope to be pardoned for having been obliged to enter into such puerile details of family genealogy, but they were necessary for a due comprehension of my father's ruling passion, which was the knot of the drama of my youth. For my own part, I am neither disposed to glorify the old state of society nor to complain of the new. If in the former I was the Chevalier or the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, I am in the latter François de Chateaubriand. I prefer my name to my title.

Such was my father's reverence for titles, that, like a

* See note at the end of these Memoirs.

certain nobleman of the middle ages, he would not have scrupled to have surnamed Nicodemus un Saint Gentilhomme. But, leaving my father for the present, I will now go back to Christophe, Lord Suzerain of la Guérande, and descendant, in a direct line, from the Barons of Chateaubriand; from him I must conduct the reader to myself, François, Seigneur (without either vassals or revenue), of the Vallée-auxLoups.

Looking back to the genealogical tree of the Chateaubriands, we find it composed of three great branches. The two first became extinct, and the third, that of the Sires de Beaufort, (prolonged through the Chateaubriands of la Guérande, fell into poverty, the inevitable effect of the law of the country. By virtue of the common law of Brittany, the eldest brothers of noble families inherited two-thirds of the estates; and the younger brothers shared among them the remaining third of the paternal property. The scanty inheritance of these younger brothers diminished the more rapidly when they married; and as the same distribution of the twothirds, and the one-third was observed among their children, it naturally ensued, that in course of time, the younger brothers of younger brothers became sharers in a pigeon, a rabbit, a duck, or a dog; but still they were high chevaliers and puissant lords of a dovecote, a rabbit warren, or a duck-pond. We find in the old noble families a vast number of these younger sons, whose lineage is traceable through two or three generations, and afterwards disappears; the families having gradually re-descended to the plough, and become absorbed among the labouring classes, whilst no record of their existence remains.

About the commencement of the eighteenth century, the chief of my name and family was Alexis de Chateaubriand, Seigneur de la Guérande. He was the son of Michel, who had a brother named Amaury. Michel was the son of that Christophe, whose extraction from the Sires de Beaufort, and the Barons de Chateaubriand was verified by the decree I have above quoted. Alexis de Chateaubriand, who became a widower, was a man of most intemperate habits; he passed his life in