[72] Marie Joseph Chénier was born in Constantinople in 1764.--T. [73] Jean de La Bruyère (1644-1696), author of the _Caractères._--T. [74] Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), the great naturalist.--T. [75] Lucius Æmilius Paulus Macedonicus (228-160 B.C.), elected Consul in 182 and 168, defeated Perseus in 167 B.C., and subdued Macedonia.--T. [76] Perseus, the last King of Macedon (_d._ 167 B.C.), adorned his conqueror's triumph and allowed himself to die of starvation in his prison in Rome.--T. [77] Marie-Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of the Emperor Francis I., had been married to Napoleon on the 1st of April 1810.--T. [78] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duc de Reichstadt (1811-1832), created King of Rome on his birth (20 March).--T. [79] Marie Françoise Sophie Gay (1776-1852), _née_ Nichault de Lavalette, author of _Léonie de Montbreuse, Anatolie_, the _Salons célèbres_ and other successful and distinguished works, and mother of Madame Émile de Girardin.--T. [80] An epigram from the Anthology. The bird to which the Greek poet addressed it is the nightingale, "too great a friend of the author's," as M. de Marcellus very neatly observes, "for him to dare to call it by its name when about to speak ill of it."--B. [81] 4 September 1812.--B. [82] In a pamphlet entitled, _Réponse aux attaques dirigées contre M. de Chateaubriand._--B. [83] Damaze de Raymond died on the 27th of February 1813, in a duel resulting from a quarrel at the gaming-table.--B. [84] _Cf._ Vol. II. p. 116.--T. [85] Except in so far as concerns the incidents of his literary life, Chateaubriand's Memoirs give us hardly any details on the two years elapsing between 1812 and 1814. They were spent between the Vallée-aux-Loups and an apartment in the Rue de Rivoli which M. and Madame de Chateaubriand had hired from M. Alexandre de Laborde.--B. PART THE THIRD 1814-1830 BOOKS I AND II The last days of the Empire Youth is a charming thing: it sets out at life's commencement crowned with flowers, as did the Athenian fleet going to conquer Sicily and the delightful plains of Enna. The prayer is offered aloud by the priest of Neptune, libations are made from goblets of gold, the crowd lining the coast unites its invocations to those of the pilot, the pæan is sung while the sail is unfurled to the rays and to the breath of dawn. Alcibiades[86], arrayed in purple and beautiful as Love, is noticeable on the triremes, proud of the seven chariots which he has launched on the Olympian race-course. But, scarce is the isle of Alcinous[87] passed, when the illusion vanishes: Alcibiades, banished, goes to grow old far away from his country and to die pierced with arrows on Timandra's bosom. The companions of his early hopes, enslaved at Syracuse, have nothing to alleviate the weight of their chains but a few verses of Euripides.