Madame de Chateaubriand has not yet arrived: I shall take a trip to Constance. M. A. Dumas[453] is here; I had already seen him at David's, while he was being modelled by the great sculptor. Madame de Colbert[454], with her daughter Madame de Brancas, is also passing through Lucerne[455]. It was at Madame de Colbert's, in Beauce, that, nearly twenty years ago, I wrote, in these Memoirs, the story of my youth at Combourg[456]. The places seem to travel with me: they are as mobile, as fleeting as my life. The mail-post brings me a very fine letter from M. de Béranger, in reply to that which I wrote to him on leaving Paris: this letter has already been printed as a note, with a letter from M. Carrel, in the Congrès de Vérone[457]. [Sidenote: Constance.] GENEVA, _September_ 1832. Going from Lucerne to Constance, one passes through Zurich and Winterthur. Nothing pleased me at Zurich, except the memory of Lavater[458] and Gessner[459], the trees of an esplanade overlooking the lakes, the course of the Limmat, an old crow and an old elm; I prefer this to all Zurich's historic past, with due deference even to the Battle of Zurich. Napoleon and his captains, passing from victory to victory, brought the Russians to Paris. Winterthur is a new and industrial little market-town, or rather one long clean street. Constance has an air of belonging to nobody; it is open to all the world. I entered it, on the 27th of August, without seeing a custom-house officer or a soldier and without being asked for my passport. Madame Récamier had arrived, three days earlier[460], to pay a visit to the Queen of Holland. I was waiting for Madame de Chateaubriand, who was coming to join me at Lucerne. I proposed to weigh whether it would not be preferable to settle first in Swabia, remaining free to go down into Italy later.