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
General
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
"Mademoiselle somewhat recalls her father: she is fair-haired;
her blue eyes have a shrewd expression.... Her whole person is a
mixture of the child, the young girl and the young princess: she
looks up, lowers her eyes, smiles with an artless coquetry mingled
with art; one does not know if one ought to tell her fairy stories,
make her a declaration, or talk to her with respect as to a queen.
The Princesse Louise adds to the agreeable accomplishments a good
deal of information....[499]"
So soon as the marriage was announced, the Breton Royalists decided to
offer the Princess a gift, a product of local manufacture. They asked
Chateaubriand to take it to Frohsdorf and present it in their name.
"I owe," he said to their delegate, M. Thibault de La Guichardière, "I
owe Louise of France a wedding-visit; I shall be delighted to offer her
a fine specimen of the work of our Breton looms."
He wrote on this subject, on the 9th of September 1845, to his sister,
the Comtesse de Marigny[500], who was living at Dinan:
"I have received your letter, dear sister; it goes without saying
that I add my name to those of all the Bretons who wish to make
the Princess a present. You can therefore look upon me as a
subscriber for the sum which you think right to fix.... But be sure
to remember that I want to be mixed with the crowd and that I am
ambitious for no distinction but that of my eagerness and my zeal."
On the 15th of the same month, he wrote again to his sister:
"If I am specially charged, by a certain number of Bretons, to be
the bearer of their respects, that is all that I want I shall go
at my own expense. I know the young Princess; she will receive me
well, wherever she may be. I would rather that she were already
in Italy. If we are to believe the newspapers, she is already in
Venice; but the place does not matter.... You can put me down for
100 francs; once more, the amount makes no difference: it is enough
to know that I am commissioned to take a Breton subscription to
the daughter of the Duc de Berry; the choice is everything....
Your canton is more than I need to authorize me to go to Madame la
Princesse de Lucques, whose brother, moreover, has invited me to
go to present my compliments to him next spring."
Shortly before his death, Chateaubriand was anxious to give Henry of
France a last proof of his fidelity. By a disposition "outside his
will," a disposition specially recommended to his family, of which a
duplicate was forwarded to the Comte de Chambord, he gave the latter
his little collection of choice books, some of them "annotated," those
which he was "re-reading," he said, in order to serve for the Prince's
"leisure" and instruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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