Charlotte; there was none; but I perceived on the margins of the manuscript some notes written in English, French, and Latin, of which the faded ink and the youthful writing testified that they had long since been placed on these papers.

Such is the history of my acquaintance with Miss Whilst finishing the relation, I feel as if I am a second time losing Charlotte, in this same island where I lost her the first. But between the feelings which I now experience towards her, and those entertained at the period the tenderness of which I recal, there is all the distance of innocence: passions have interposed between Miss and Lady I could no

longer offer to an ingenuous woman the sincerity of desires, the sweet ignorance of a love bounded to the limits of a dream. I wrote then on the billows of sadness; I am no longer tossed on the sea of life. Well! had I folded in my arms as a mother and wife, her who had been destined for me when young and a bride, it could only have been with a sort of rage, to blot out, to fill with sorrow, and extinguish, those twenty-seven years given to another, after having been offered to me.

I must regard the feeling which I have just recalled as the first of that kind which ever entered my heart; it was, however, not at all in sympathy with my stormy nature; it would have corrupted it; it would have rendered me incapable of long enjoying holy delights. It was when embittered by misfortunes, already a pilgrim beyond the sea, and having begun my solitary wanderings-it was when the mad ideas described in the mystery of René took possession of me, and made me the most afflicted being on the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by causing some rays of a true light to penetrate the depths of my soul, first dissipated a cloud of phantoms; my demon, like an evil genius, plunged again into the abyss; it awaited the effect of time, in order to renew its apparitions.

London, April to September, 1822.

Revised in December, 1846.

DEFECT OF MY CHARACTER.

My connexion with M. Deboffe on the subject of the Essai sur les Révolutions had never been entirely broken off, and it

was important to me to renew it as soon as possible on my return to London, in order to maintain myself. But what had been the cause of my last misfortune? My obstinacy in keeping silence. In order to understand this, some further knowledge of my character is necessary. Throughout my whole life I have never been able to conquer that spirit of reserve and inward solitude, which prevents me from talking of what touches me most nearly. None could truly affirm of me that they have heard me relate what most people relate in a moment of sorrow, pleasure, or vanity. A name, a confession of any importance never, or very rarely, falls from my lips. I never entertain casual acquaintances with my interests, my designs, my labours, my ideas, my attachments, my joys, and my griefs, feeling convinced of the profound ennui we cause in others when we speak of ourselves. Although sincere and truthful, I am wanting in openness of heart; my soul has a constant tendency to shrink within itself; I stop in the middle of saying a thing, and these Memoirs are the only faithful expression of my inward life. If I attempt to begin a narrative, the idea of its length suddenly strikes me with affright, and after I have spoken a few words, the sound of my own voice becomes unbearable to me, and I am silent. As I have faith in nothing, except religion, I mistrust everything: malice and a disposition to taunts are the two characteristics of the French mind; mockery and calumny the certain result of any confidence. But what have I gained by my reserved nature ?-because I have been impenetrable, I have become to others a sort of imaginary being, bearing not the most distant resemblance to my real self. Even my friends are deceived in me, while they think they are making me better known, and adorning me with the illusions of their attachment. All the mediocrities of antechambers, offices, newspapers, and coffee-houses, have supposed me to have ambition-and I have none. Cold and dry in ordinary affairs, I have nothing of the enthusiast or sentimentalist about me; my clear and rapid perception quickly sees through a fact or a man, and despoils them of all importance. My imagination, far from carrying me away with it, or idealising applicable truths, swallows down the greatest events, baffles myself; the little and ridiculous side of things strikes me at first view; in my eyes great things or great geniuses scarcely exist. Polite, laudatory, and admiring in manner towards the common-places

which announce themselves as superior intelligences, my hidden contempt smiles, and puts masks à la Callot on all these incense-breathing countenances. In politics, the warmth of my opinions has never exceeded the length of my speech, or of my pamphlet. In my inward and theoretical existence, I am a man of dreams; in my outward and practical existence, a man of realities. Adventurous, yet calm and cool, impassioned yet methodical, there has never existed a being at once so chimerical and so positive, so ardent and so cold-a strange androgynus, formed from the different qualities of my father and my

mother.

The descriptions which have been given of me principally owe their utter want of resemblance to my chariness of words. The multitude are too careless, too inattentive, to give itself time, unless previously warned, to know people as they are. When I attempted to correct some of these false judgments in my prefaces, I was not believed; and at length, as I was very indifferent on the matter, I did not urge it; an 66 as you will," has always freed me from the tiresome labour of convincing any one, or seeking to establish a truth. I return to my inward tribunal, like a hare to its form; and there give myself up to the contemplation of a moving leaf or a bending blade of grass.

I make no virtue of my circumspection, invincible as it is involuntary; if it is not a duplicity, it has the appearance of one; it is not in harmony with natures more happy, more amiable, more easy, more naïve, more open and communicative than mine. It has often done me injury in the minds of others and in matters of business, because I never could endure explanations, reconciliations, and arrangements effected by protestations and clearings up, lamentations and tears, talk and reproaches, details and apologies.

In the case of the family, my obstinate silence with regard to myself was extremely injurious to me. Twenty times had Charlotte's mother made inquiries respecting my relations, and thus afforded me an opportunity to speak openly; but not foreseeing the consequences of my silence, I contented myself, as usual, with vague and brief replies. Had I not been under the influence of this odious perversity of mind, any misunderstanding would have been impossible; I should not have exposed myself to the imputation of having sought to abuse such generous

hospitality; the truth, spoken at the decisive moment, did not excuse me; I had not the less been the cause of a real evil.

I returned to my work in the midst of my vexation and of my just self-reproach. I even took a liking to my labour, for the idea had occurred to me, that by acquiring renown, I should give the family less cause to repent the interest they had shown in me. Charlotte, whom I thus sought to reconcile to me through fame, presided over my studies. Her image was seated before me when I wrote. When I raised my eyes from my paper, I fixed them on the adored image, as if its original had really been there. The inhabitants of Ceylon saw the sun rise one morning in unusual splendour; its globe parted, and a brilliant creature came forth, who said to them, "I come to reign over you." Charlotte, coming forth from a ray of light, reigned over me.

But let us quit these recollections: they grow old and fade away like hopes. The course of my life is about to change, to flow into other valleys, beneath other skies. First love of my youth, thou vanishest with all thy charms! True, I have but now seen Charlotte again, but after how many years of separation! Sweet light of the past, pale rosy twilight which tinges the hem of night's robe, long after the sun has set!

London, April to September, 1822.

THE ESSAI HISTORIQUE SUR LES RÉVOLUTIONS-ITS EFFECT-LETTER FROM LEMIÈRE, NEPHEW OF THE POET.

LIFE has often been represented (and I was one of the first to do so) as a mountain which we ascend on one side and descend on the other; it would be quite as correct to compare it to one of the Alps, with its bare brow crowned with eternal snow, and from which there is no descent. Following out this image, the traveller is always ascending and descends no more; he then has a better view of the space he has traversed, of the paths which he has not selected, and which would have led him by a gentler slope; he looks back with regret and grief on the point where he went astray. Thus the publication of the Essai Historique marks my first wandering step from the path

of peace. I finished the first part of the great work I had traced out for myself; I wrote its last word between the idea of death (my illness had returned) and a vanished dream : in somnis venit imago conjugis. The Essai was printed by Baylis, and published by Deboffe in 1797. This date is that of one of the transformations of my life. There are moments when our destiny, whether yielding to society, or obeying nature, or whether it is then beginning to mould us into the form we are to retain, suddenly changes its direction, as a river alters its course.

The Essai offers a compendium of my existence as poet, moralist, civilian, and politician. It is unnecessary to say that I hoped for great success to this work, as much at least as I could hope for any thing; we authors, little prodigies of a prodigious era, aspire to commune in spirit with future generations; but I think that we do not sufficiently know the dwelling of posterity, and put the wrong address on our communications. When we stiffen in the tomb, death will so unrelentingly freeze our words, written and sung, that they will not melt like the frozen words of Rabelais.

The Essai was designed to be a sort of historical encyclopædia. The only volume published is in itself a very extensive investigation; I had the rest in manuscript; next came, after some researches and annotations of the annalist, the lays and virelays of the poet, the Natchez, &c. I can scarcely understand now how I could have carried on such extensive study amidst an active wandering life, subject to so many vicissitudes. My perseverance in labour explains this; in my youth I often wrote for twelve or fifteen hours without moving from my seat, striking out and recomposing the same page perhaps ten times. Age has in no degree weakened this faculty of application; all my diplomatic correspondence is written by my own hand, and yet it does not interfere with my literary labours.

The Essai made a sensation among the émigrés; it was not in agreement with the feelings of my companions in misfortune. My independence in my different social positions has almost always offended those in whose company I journeyed. I have in turns been the chief of different armies, the soldiers of which were not of my party: I have led old royalists to fight for public liberties, and especially for the liberty of the press, which they detested; I have rallied liberals, in the name