The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. Volume 6 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 6Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
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The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. Volume 6 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 6
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de, 1768-1848
The King had a touch of fever and had gone to bed when I arrived at
Butschirad at eight o'clock in the evening, on the 28th. M. de Blacas
introduced me into Charles X.'s bed-room, as I wrote to the Duchesse de
Berry. A little lamp was burning on the mantel-piece; in the silence
of the darkness, I heard only the loud breathing of the thirty-fifth
successor of Hugh Capet. O my old King, your sleep was painful; time
and adversity, those heavy nightmares, were seated on your breast! A
young man might approach the bed of his young bride with less love than
I felt respect as I stepped with stealthy tread towards your lonely
couch. At least, I was not a bad dream like that which woke you to go
to see your son die! I inwardly addressed you with these words, which I
could not have uttered aloud without bursting into tears:
"May Heaven protect you against all ills to come! Sleep in peace during
these nights adjoining your last sleep! Long enough have your vigils
been vigils of sorrow. May this bed of exile lose its hardness while
awaiting the visit of God: He alone can make the foreign earth lie
light upon your bones!"
Yes, I would joyfully have given all my blood to make the Legitimacy
possible for France. I had imagined that it would be with the Old
Royalty as with the dry rod of Aaron: when taken away from the Temple
of Jerusalem, it was budded, and the buds swelling it had bloomed
blossoms, which, swelling the leaves, were formed into almonds, a
token of the renewal of the covenant. I do not study to stifle my
regrets, to keep back the tears with which I would like to wash out the
last trace of the royal sorrows. The impulses which I experience in
different directions with respect to the same persons bear witness to
the sincerity with which these Memoirs are written. In Charles X., the
man moves me to pity, the Sovereign offends me: I give way to these two
impressions as they succeed one another, without seeking to reconcile
them.
On the 28th of September, after Charles X. had received me in the
morning by his bed-side, Henry V. sent for me: I had not asked to see
him. I spoke a few serious words to him on his coming of age and on the
loyal Frenchmen whose ardour had led them to offer him a pair of golden
spurs.
For the rest, it was impossible to be better treated than I was. My
arrival had given alarm; they dreaded the report of my journey in
Paris. For me, therefore, every attention; all the rest were neglected.
My companions, scattered, dying of hunger and thirst, wandered about
the passages, the staircases, the court-yards of the _château_, amid
the scare of the occupiers and the preparations for their escape.
The Austrian guards wondered at these individuals in mustachios and
mufti; they suspected them of being French soldiers in disguise,
thinking of taking Bohemia by surprise.
During this storm without, Charles X. was saying to me indoors:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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