ruins, he is glad to seek its shelter."--Vol. vi. p. 196, 197.
Madame de Chateaubriand, in a note, has described the circumstances
under which this memorable pamphlet was written, and the morbid
anxiety with which she was devoured during its composition:--
"Had the pages of that pamphlet been seized by the police, the
result could not have been a moment doubtful: the sentence
was the scaffold. Nevertheless the author was inconceivably
negligent about concealing it. Often, when he went out, he left
the sheets on the table: at night he only placed them under his
pillow, which he did in presence of his valet--an honest youth,
it is true, but who might have betrayed him. For my part, I
was in mortal agonies: whenever M. de Chateaubriand went out,
I seized the manuscript, and concealed it on my person. One
day, in crossing the Tuileries, I perceived I had it not upon
me, and being sure I had it when I went out, I did not doubt
that I had let it fall on the road. Already I beheld that fatal
writing in the hands of the police, and M. de Chateaubriand
arrested. I fell down in swoon in the garden, and some
kind-hearted person carried me to my house, from which I had
only got a short distance. What agony I endured when, ascending
the stair, I floated between terror, which now amounted almost
to a certainty, and a slight hope that I might have forgot the
pamphlet. On reaching my husband's apartment, I felt again ready
to faint: I approached the bed--I felt under the pillow; there
was nothing there: I lifted the mattress, and there was the
roll of paper! My heart still beats every time I think of it.
Never in my life did I experience such a moment of joy. With
truth can I say, my joy would not have been so great if I had
been delivered at the foot of the scaffold, for it was one who
was more dear to me than life itself whom I saw rescued from
destruction."--Vol. vi. p. 206, 207.
On the entrance of Louis XVIII. into Paris, on the 3d May 1814, the
Allied sovereigns, from a feeling of delicacy to that monarch, gave
orders that none but French troops should appear in the procession.
The Old Guard lined the streets next the palace, and Chateaubriand
gives the following account of the way in which they received him:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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