"Your letter, monsieur, was the first to bring me the news of the death of M. de Chateaubriand. I had in him a sincere friend, a faithful counsellor, whose opinions I was happy to receive, whose generous thoughts I was glad to search, in my exile. For several months I had grieved at seeing that fine genius approach the end of his career; this great loss is even more painful to me at the present moment, when my heart has so much to weep for in the sorrows of my country. "How many misfortunes have I not to deplore! Those terrible battles which have stained the capital with blood; the death of so many honourable and distinguished men in the National Guard and the Army; the martyrdom of the Archbishop of Paris[519]; the wretchedness of the poor people; the ruin of our manufactures; the alarms of all France! I pray to God to stay their course. "May the spectacle of these calamities and the dread of the evils that threaten the future not carry away men's minds from the great principles of justice and public liberty which in these days, more than ever, the friends of nations and kings ought to defend and maintain. "I renew, monsieur, the assurance of my very sincere and constant affection. "HENRY. "15 _July_ 1848." On Saturday, the 8th of July, a funeral service was celebrated in the church of the Foreign Missions, in the Rue du Bac, quite close to the house of the deceased; the body was next taken down into the vaults of the chapel, to be removed, from there, to Saint-Malo. The solemn obsequies took place in that town on the 18th of July. The Mass was celebrated by the Rector of Combourg. At the Elevation, by a touching inspiration, the musicians played the melody to which Chateaubriand wrote his well-known lines: Combien j'ai douce souvenance Du joli lieu de ma naissance[520]! After the Mass, the funeral procession took its way between the ramparts and the sea towards the isle of the Grand-Bé. Two long rows of surpliced priests wound along the beach. The flags of the national guards who had come from the different towns of Brittany waved in the wind; the helmets gleamed in the sun. The cannon thundered at intervals. An innumerable crowd covered the ramparts of Saint-Malo, which rise so formidably above the perpendicular rocks and the sea. All the reefs, all the rocks bore human figures; boats dressed with mourning flags were laden with spectators. At the foot of the Grand-Bé, the coffin was shouldered by sailors and carried to the top, in the midst of a squall that resembled a storm: a last caress which the Ocean gave him who so much loved the noise of the waves and the winds. Then, suddenly, there was a great calm, and the coffin was solemnly laid on the rock which is to guard it for ever. The last prayers of the Church were recited by the Rector of Saint-Malo and holy water sprinkled on the bier.