Chapter 12

The poet not being able to see the Duc de Reichstadt privately, at least did not mean to leave Vienna without seeing him in public. He learnt, one day, that the prince was to go that night to the theatre; he took a stall and seated himself opposite the Court box.

His lines will tell better than my prose what effect that appearance made upon him:—

"Bientôt, dans une loge où nul flambeau ne brille,Arrivent gravement César et sa famille,De princes, d'archiducs, inépuisable cour,Comme l'aire d'un aigle ou le nid d'un vautour.On lisait sur leurs fronts, dans leur morne attitude,Les ennuis d'un plaisir usé par l'habitude.Un lustre aux feux mourants, descendu du plafond,Mêlait sa lueur triste au silence profond;Seulement, par secousse, à l'angle de la salle,Résonnait quelquefois la toux impériale.Alors, un léger bruit réveilla mon esprit;Dans la loge voisine, une porte s'ouvrit,Et, dans la profondeur de cette enceinte obscure,Apparut tout à coup une pâle figure ...Éteinte dans ce cadre au milieu d'un fond noir,Elle était immobile, et l'on aurait cru voirUn tableau de Rembrandt chargé de teintes sombres,Où la blancheur des chairs se détache des ombres.Je sentis dans mes os un étrange frisson;Dans ma tête siffla le tintement d'un son;L'œil fixe, le cou roide et la bouche entr'ouverte,Je ne vis plus qu'un point dans la salle déserte:Acteurs, peuple, empereur, tout semblait avoir fui;Et, croyant être seul, je m'écriai: 'C'est lui!'C'était lui! Tout à coup, la figure isoléeD'un coup d'œil vif et prompt parcourut l'assemblée.Telle, en éclairs de feu, jette un reflet pareilUne lame d'acier qu'on agite au soleil.Puis, comme réprimant un geste involontaire,Il rendit à ses traits leur habitude austère,Et s'assit. Cependent, mes regards curieuxDessinaient à loisir l'être mystérieux:Voyant cet œil rapide où brille la pensée,Ce teint blanc de Louise et sa taille élancée.Ces vifs tressaillements, ces mouvements nerveux,Ce front saillant et large, orné de blonds cheveux;Oui, ce corps, cette tête où la tristesse est peinte,Du sang qui les forma portent la double empreinte!Je ne sais toutefois ... je ne puis sans douleurContempler ce visage éclatant de pâleur;On dirait que la vie à la mort s'y mélange!Voyez-vous comme moi cette couleur étrange?Quel germe destructeur, sous l'écorce agissant,A sitôt défloré ce fruit adolescent?Assailli, malgré moi, d'un effroi salutaire,Je n'ose pour moi-même éclaircir ce mystère.Le noir conseil des cours, au peuple défendu,Est un profond abîme où nul n'est descendu:Invisible dépôt, il est, dans chaque empire,Une énigme, un secret qui jamais ne transpire;C'est ce secret d'État que, sur le crucifix,Les rois, en expirant, révèlent à leurs fils!Faut-il vous répéter un effroyable doute?Écoutez ... ou plutôt que personne n'écoute!S'il est vrai qu'à ta cour, malheureux nourrisson,La moderne Locuste ait transmis sa leçon,Cette horrible pâleur, sinistre caractère,Annonce de ton sang le mal héréditaire;Et peut-être aujourd'hui, méthodique assassin,Le cancer politique est déjà dans ton sein!Mais non! mon âme, en vain de terreurs obsédée,Repousse en frissonnant, une infernale idée;J'aime mieux accuser l'étude aux longues nuits,Des souvenirs amers ou de vagues ennuis.Comme une jeune plante à la tige légère.Que poussa l'ouragan sur la terre étrangère,Loin du sol paternel languit et ne produitQue des fleurs sans parfum et des boutons sans fruit,Sans doute, l'orphelin que la grande tempêteEmporta vers le Nord dans son berceau de fête,Aujourd'hui, comprimant de cuisantes douleurs,Tourne vers l'Occident des yeux chargés de pleurs!..."

The poet had collected as much as he could during his voyage: he had seen the poor Imperial child from afar,at the back of a box! He went away predicting, as we see, a precocious and early death.

If we believe M. de Montbel, after the departure of BarthélemyNapoléon en Égyptewas read by the Imperial family in the presence of the Duc de Reichstadt, who listened to the reading with the profoundest indifference: he merely contented himself with saying that they had done right not to let the author of such a work have access to him.

Was he really so indifferent, so deceitful and ungrateful?

Journey of the Duc de Reichstadt—M. le Chevalier de Prokesch—Questions concerning the recollections left byNapoléon en Égypte—The ambition of the Duc de Reichstadt—The Comtesse Camerata—The prince is appointed lieutenant-colonel—He becomes hoarse when holding a review—He falls ill—Report upon his health by Dr. Malfatti

In the month of June 1830 the Emperor of Austria left Vienna, as was his custom every year, to visit some of his provinces; this year it was Styria's turn to be honoured with the emperor's tour. His Majesty took with him Marie-Louise and her son, and they arrived at Gratz. There they found Lieutenant-Colonel Prokesch of Osten, who had just been travelling in Greece, Asia Minor, the Holy Land, Egypt and Nubia. He was a distinguished man, both by birth and by personal qualities; he had published several military treatises; among others one on the campaign of 1812 and one on that of 1815. The emperor invited him to dinner, and he was placed at table next to the Duc de Reichstadt. The prince addressed him first.

"I have known you for a long while," he said to him, "and I am very much interested in you."

"How have I managed to deserve such interest on your part, monseigneur?" asked the Chevalier de Prokesch.

"I have read and studied your work on the battle of Waterloo, and I was so pleased with it that I have translated it into French and Italian."

After dinner, the prince addressed numerous questionsabout the East to the traveller, about its actual condition and the character of its inhabitants.

"What do they remember of my father in Egypt?" he asked.

"They remember him as a meteor which passed dazzlingly through their country."

"You are talking, monsieur," the duke replied, "of men of superior ideas like Mohamet-Ali, Ibrahim-Pacha; but I am speaking of the people, the Turks and Arabs and Fellahs; I ask you what all those folk think of General Bonaparte? Having had to bear the evil effects of the wax, do they not harbour a deep resentment?"

"Yes, doubtless. At first there was unfriendly feeling; but, later, it gave place to other sentiments, and there now only remains a great admiration for the memory of your illustrious father. The hatred which exists between the Turks and the Arabs is so great that, to-day, present evils have totally effaced the memory of the evils they had to endure at another period."

"I am aware of that explanation," said the duke; "but the multitude generally considers a great man after the manner in which it looks at a beautiful picture, without the power to account for what goes to constitute its merit: so the impression he leaves in their memories must be but ephemeral. Only superior minds can appreciate great men and preserve the memory of them."

"You are mistaken in this case, monseigneur: the people are faithful to their religion. Great men are gods who do not permit other divinities, or who discuss them before admitting them. The people judge by their feelings, and not by mental appreciation; and they worship the immortals from enthusiasm."

The Duc de Reichstadt often spoke of the captains of antiquity, preferring Cæsar to Alexander, and Hannibal to Cæsar. The following is the eulogium which, according to the Chevalier de Prokesch, he gave on the conqueror of the Trebia, Trasimena and of Cannes.

"He is the finest military genius of antiquity; the cleverest man in strategy of his age. He has been reproached—by whom? by academic pedants and library strategists,—for not knowing how to take advantage of the success he had obtained; but conceive the difference there existed between Hannibal, chief of an empire, freely disposing of his resources, and the simple general of a jealous republic? of a senate made up of those who envied him, and of narrow minds which, by shameful schemings, refused the means of assuring the triumph of his arms? Hannibal has the merit of having trained Scipio for his victories; and one of the greatest phenomena of ancient times is to see this general, by his genius, make a nation of shopkeepers successful for so long as a military people."

We will not criticise these ideas beyond saying that they are a little stilted, after the classical style. Did the son of the man whose incoherent style strode with giant steps or with lion-like leaps, bursting ever into images, talk thus? M. de Montbel and M. le Chevalier de Prokesch will reply. And then the style of the lines we have just read will explain what follows.

"You have a noble aim before you, monseigneur," said M. de Prokesch to the young duke. "Austria has become your adopted country.... (Poor child, he remembered the Cossacks because they had brought him out of France!). Austria has become your adopted country, and with your talents you can prepare yourself to do it immense services in the future!"

"I feel it as you do, monsieur," replied the Duc de Reichstadt. "My ideas must not demean themselves by disturbing France; I do not wish to be an adventurer, I do not particularly wish to serve as the instrument and laughing-stock of Liberal views. It will be a sufficiently noble ambition for me to try some day to walk in the footprints of Prince Eugène de Savoie. But how am I to prepare myself for so great a rôle? How am I to attainto such a height? I want to find round me men whose talents and experience will facilitate the means, if possible, of providing this honourable career."

Is this in the very least the style you would have supposed the son of the man of the proclamations of Marengo, of the Pyramids and of Austerlitz to have used! True, when we borrow from Reichstadt through M. de Montbel it is translated from Carlism, and when he borrows from M. de Prokesch it is translated from the Austrian.

The revolution of July came and made itself heard throughout the whole world. This time the eyes of a whole party turned towards Napoleon II., and, strange to say, it was M. de Talleyrand who took upon himself to be the organ of that party at Vienna! Needless to say, all proposals were rejected. Then a woman of sturdy courage, of the Napoleon family, both in spirit and in face, tried to arouse in the young prince's mind something of what Ulysses meant to demand from Achilles, lost amongst the daughters of Deidamia. This woman was the Comtesse Camerata, daughter of Elisa Bacciochi. She arrived in Vienna one day, and lodged at the Hôtel du Cygne in the rue de Carinthia.—It was about the beginning of November 1830. One night, when returning to the house of M. d'Obenaus, his tutor, the Duc de Reichstadt found a young woman, wrapped in a Scotch plaid, waiting for him on the staircase landing. When she caught sight of the duc, she moved quickly towards him, took his hand, pressed it and then carried it to her lips with an expression of the liveliest tenderness. The prince stopped, amazed.

"Madame," M. d'Obenaus asked, who accompanied the Duc de Reichstadt, "what are you doing, and what do you want?"

"Who shall prevent me from kissing the hand of the son of my sovereign?"

Then she vanished. A few days later, the duke found a letter in an unknown writing on his table, and opened it.

It was dated 17 November, and contained the following lines:—

"PRINCE,—I write to you for the third time. Tell me if you have received my letters, and whether you mean to act as an Austrian archduke or as a French prince. In the first case, deliver up my letters: by destroying me you will acquire a more lofty position, and this act of devotion will redound to your glory. But if, on the contrary, you take advantage of my advice, if you play the man, you shall see how obstacles will give way before a calm and strong will. You will find a thousand means of speaking to me, which I cannot compass alone. You can only have hope in yourself: do not let the thought of putting confidence in some one else even enter your mind! You know that if I asked to see you even before a hundred witnesses my request would be refused; you know that you are dead to all that is French and to your family. In the name of the horrible tortures to which the king of Europe has condemned your father; in thinking of that anguish of banishment by which they have made him expiate the crime of being too generous towards them, remember that you are his son, that his dying looks were settled on your face; steep yourself in these horrors, and impose upon them the punishment of seeing you seated on the throne of France! Take advantage of this chance, prince!... I have perhaps said too much: my fate is in your hands, and I can tell you that if you make use of my letters to destroy me the thought of your cowardice will give me more suffering than anything they may make me endure! The man who hands you this letter is commissioned also to bring back your reply. If you are honourable you will not refuse me one."NAPOLEONE CAMERATA"

This letter frightened the young prince dreadfully: it was an appeal straight, clear and positive. "Are you an Austrian archduke or a French prince?" That was the question. The duke opened his heart to the Chevalier de Prokesch concerning this incident and the uneasiness it caused him.

"You know very well," he said to him, "that I shallnot take as guide of my conduct, and as guarantors of my future, persons of so exalted a character; but I find myself in a genuinely embarrassing position. It is due to my feelings towards the emperor (when the Duc de Reichstadt talks ofthe emperorhe always means the Emperor Francis II.), as also to the dignity of my situation, that I should not hide either my troubles or my doings; it would seem acting wrongly to him to be silent about this circumstance. On the other hand, I do not wish to injure the countess; she is wanting in prudence, but she has a right to my consideration.... Besides, she is a woman. Yet my first duty is towards the emperor. Could you not go to the Comte de Dietrichstein for me, and confide to him what has happened, and ask him to settle matters so that the Comtesse Camerata shall not be put to any persecution or any unpleasantness and not be compelled to go away from Vienna?"

After looking carefully into the affair, the Chevalier de Prokesch approved of the prince's resolution, and willingly undertook the mission His Highness had confided to him. Next day he received a note as follows:—

"Since I saw you I have received a fresh letter from the Comtesse Camerata. It was d'Obenaus' valet de chambre who put the first one on my table, which I confided to your care—send it me back; it is expedient and necessary for me to speak of it to Obenaus. I will arrange things so as to avoid all mischief-making and scandal; but I will not reply. Let there be no further question about that. I hope to see you at six o'clock to resume our reading.FRANÇOIS DE REICHSTADT"

Although the Comtesse Camerata had received no reply, she did not look upon herself as beaten. At the risk of what might happen to her, she still remained for three weeks in Vienna, putting herself everywhere in the prince's path: at the theatre, at Prater and at Schönbrünn. But the Duc de Reichstadt showed no signs of knowing her! Tired of this silence, she finally went away toPrague. The prince's conduct met with its reward: that same month the emperor—the Emperor Francis II. of course—made him a lieutenant-colonel; but, as though fate wished to make him understand that he must be Cæsar or nothing—Aut Cæsar aut nihil—at the first words of command he tried to utter his voice became hoarse, and he was obliged to discontinue his duty. A frequent cough followed the hoarseness. The prince fell ill of the disease which was to cause his death.

Let us hear what his own doctor said about it—Dr. Malfatti:—

"I was called in by the Duc de Reichstadt as his regular doctor in the month of May 1830. I succeeded three men of high reputation: the celebrated Frank and Drs. Goëlis and Standenheimer. M. de Herbeck had filled the office of surgeon-in-ordinary to the prince. These doctors had not left any diary of the young duke's health. M. le Comte de Dietrichstein was good enough to supply this deficiency by informing me of many particulars which it was indispensable to know."The prince ate very little, and without appetite; his stomach seemed too weak to bear the nourishment which his singularly rapid and even alarming rate of growth required: at the age of seventeen he had attained the height of five feet three inches! He suffered from slight throat ailments from time to time; he was subject to a habitual cough and a daily discharge of mucus. Dr. Standenheimer had already manifested great anxiety about the prince's predisposition towards phthisis of the trachea. I made note of the prescriptions that had been used against these disquieting symptoms."I was guided in my early research by the personal knowledge that I possessed of a morbid hereditary disposition in the Napoleon family, and I ascertained the existence of a cutaneous affection (herpes farinaceum.) I could not approve the use of cold baths and swimming, which the surgeon, M. de Herbeck, had also fought against, probably solely because of the knowledge he had discovered of the weak constitution of the prince's chest. With the object of acting on the cutaneous system, Imade use of muriatic baths and seltzer water mixed with milk. The prince was to go into the army the following autumn; there lay all his hopes and desires: he had obtained the much-solicited leave. I did not commend myself to his good graces, as you may imagine, when I positively opposed this change of living. I disclosed my reasons to his august parents in a memorandum, which I addressed to them on 15 July 1830. I stated that, in his excessive rate of growth, out of proportion to the development of the various organs and the general disposition to weakness, especially of the chest, any additional illness might be extremely dangerous, whether now or in the future, and that, consequently, it was imperative to protect the prince from every possible atmospheric influence, and any effort of voice, to which he would be continually exposed in military service."My memorandum was well received by the emperor, and the entrance upon military service was adjourned for six months. By means of assiduous care and artificial methods of diverting the disease, the alarming symptoms visibly subsided. The winter passed by happily, but he still continued to grow."In the spring of the year 1831 the prince entered upon his military career. From that moment he threw aside all my advice; I was merely a spectator of an uncontrolled enthusiasm and an unbridled excitement over his new duties. He would henceforth not listen to anything but his passion, which led his feeble body into privations and fatigues absolutely beyond his strength. He looked upon it as a shame and cowardly to complain when under arms. Besides, in his eyes I had committed the grave offence of delaying his military career: he seemed to fear my professional observations might yet stop it. So, although he treated me with extreme kindness in social relations, as a doctor he did not tell me a single word of the truth. It was impossible for me to make him continue the use of sea-water baths and mineral waters which had been very valuable to him during the previous year. He said he hadn't time. Several times I caught him by surprise at the barracks, in a state of extreme fatigue. One day, especially, I found him lying on a sofa, exhausted and worn out. Not able to deny, then, thepainful condition to which I saw he was reduced, he said to me—"'I am annoyed with my wretched body, which cannot keep up with my mental energies!'"'It is, indeed, trying,' I replied, 'that your Highness has not the power of changing your body as you change your horses when they are tired. But I entreat you, monseigneur, to take heed that you have an iron spirit in a body of crystal, and that the abuse of your will can only be disastrous to you.'"His life was then, indeed, like a consuming fire. He scarcely slept for four hours, although, naturally, he needed much sleep; he ate hardly anything; his life was wholly concentrated on tactical manœuvres and all kinds of military exercises. He took no rest, his growing tallness did not stop him; he gradually became thinner, and his complexion became livid in colour. To all my questions he always replied—"'I am perfectly well!'"In the month of August he was attacked by a violently feverish catarrh, and the only thing I could get him to do was to keep to his bed and room for one day. We conferred with General Comte Hartmann upon the necessity of putting a stop to a régime that was very dangerous for his frail existence. You will remember the dire period of the invasion of cholera in Vienna, the misfortunes which followed upon the first outbreak of that scourge, the generous conduct of the inhabitants of Vienna, the wise precautions of those in authority, the help and example the emperor and the members of the Imperial family gave, impervious to the fear to which the disease gave rise on its appearance. The Duc de Reichstadt would not be separated from his soldiers or leave their barracks; the emperor could not but appreciate this sentiment, which was but compatible with the duties of a prince; but we had a sacred and urgent duty on our side, to rescue this young man from a position which evidently tended to his destruction. I put to him the imminent dangers he could allay by a speedy change of his way of living and absolute rest; in a situation so critical as his the least attack of the prevailing disease would be fatal. Comte Hartmann undertook to presentthis report to the emperor, who sent orders I was to come and repeat it verbally in the presence of the Duc de Reichstadt, at the end of the military review he was to conduct next day at Schmolz, near Vienna. I went punctually at the appointed hour, to the field where the manœuvres were held, where the emperor, wishful to reassure people against their terror of contagion, was mingling with his troops and subjects. When the review was over, I went to His Majesty and repeated my report. The emperor then addressed the young prince—"'You have heard what Dr. Malfatti says. You will immediately go to Schönbrünn.'"The duke bowed respectfully in token of obedience, but, when he stood up again, he flung me an indignant glance."'It is you, then, who have had me put under arrest?' he said angrily, and he walked rapidly away."

"The prince ate very little, and without appetite; his stomach seemed too weak to bear the nourishment which his singularly rapid and even alarming rate of growth required: at the age of seventeen he had attained the height of five feet three inches! He suffered from slight throat ailments from time to time; he was subject to a habitual cough and a daily discharge of mucus. Dr. Standenheimer had already manifested great anxiety about the prince's predisposition towards phthisis of the trachea. I made note of the prescriptions that had been used against these disquieting symptoms.

"I was guided in my early research by the personal knowledge that I possessed of a morbid hereditary disposition in the Napoleon family, and I ascertained the existence of a cutaneous affection (herpes farinaceum.) I could not approve the use of cold baths and swimming, which the surgeon, M. de Herbeck, had also fought against, probably solely because of the knowledge he had discovered of the weak constitution of the prince's chest. With the object of acting on the cutaneous system, Imade use of muriatic baths and seltzer water mixed with milk. The prince was to go into the army the following autumn; there lay all his hopes and desires: he had obtained the much-solicited leave. I did not commend myself to his good graces, as you may imagine, when I positively opposed this change of living. I disclosed my reasons to his august parents in a memorandum, which I addressed to them on 15 July 1830. I stated that, in his excessive rate of growth, out of proportion to the development of the various organs and the general disposition to weakness, especially of the chest, any additional illness might be extremely dangerous, whether now or in the future, and that, consequently, it was imperative to protect the prince from every possible atmospheric influence, and any effort of voice, to which he would be continually exposed in military service.

"My memorandum was well received by the emperor, and the entrance upon military service was adjourned for six months. By means of assiduous care and artificial methods of diverting the disease, the alarming symptoms visibly subsided. The winter passed by happily, but he still continued to grow.

"In the spring of the year 1831 the prince entered upon his military career. From that moment he threw aside all my advice; I was merely a spectator of an uncontrolled enthusiasm and an unbridled excitement over his new duties. He would henceforth not listen to anything but his passion, which led his feeble body into privations and fatigues absolutely beyond his strength. He looked upon it as a shame and cowardly to complain when under arms. Besides, in his eyes I had committed the grave offence of delaying his military career: he seemed to fear my professional observations might yet stop it. So, although he treated me with extreme kindness in social relations, as a doctor he did not tell me a single word of the truth. It was impossible for me to make him continue the use of sea-water baths and mineral waters which had been very valuable to him during the previous year. He said he hadn't time. Several times I caught him by surprise at the barracks, in a state of extreme fatigue. One day, especially, I found him lying on a sofa, exhausted and worn out. Not able to deny, then, thepainful condition to which I saw he was reduced, he said to me—

"'I am annoyed with my wretched body, which cannot keep up with my mental energies!'

"'It is, indeed, trying,' I replied, 'that your Highness has not the power of changing your body as you change your horses when they are tired. But I entreat you, monseigneur, to take heed that you have an iron spirit in a body of crystal, and that the abuse of your will can only be disastrous to you.'

"His life was then, indeed, like a consuming fire. He scarcely slept for four hours, although, naturally, he needed much sleep; he ate hardly anything; his life was wholly concentrated on tactical manœuvres and all kinds of military exercises. He took no rest, his growing tallness did not stop him; he gradually became thinner, and his complexion became livid in colour. To all my questions he always replied—

"'I am perfectly well!'

"In the month of August he was attacked by a violently feverish catarrh, and the only thing I could get him to do was to keep to his bed and room for one day. We conferred with General Comte Hartmann upon the necessity of putting a stop to a régime that was very dangerous for his frail existence. You will remember the dire period of the invasion of cholera in Vienna, the misfortunes which followed upon the first outbreak of that scourge, the generous conduct of the inhabitants of Vienna, the wise precautions of those in authority, the help and example the emperor and the members of the Imperial family gave, impervious to the fear to which the disease gave rise on its appearance. The Duc de Reichstadt would not be separated from his soldiers or leave their barracks; the emperor could not but appreciate this sentiment, which was but compatible with the duties of a prince; but we had a sacred and urgent duty on our side, to rescue this young man from a position which evidently tended to his destruction. I put to him the imminent dangers he could allay by a speedy change of his way of living and absolute rest; in a situation so critical as his the least attack of the prevailing disease would be fatal. Comte Hartmann undertook to presentthis report to the emperor, who sent orders I was to come and repeat it verbally in the presence of the Duc de Reichstadt, at the end of the military review he was to conduct next day at Schmolz, near Vienna. I went punctually at the appointed hour, to the field where the manœuvres were held, where the emperor, wishful to reassure people against their terror of contagion, was mingling with his troops and subjects. When the review was over, I went to His Majesty and repeated my report. The emperor then addressed the young prince—

"'You have heard what Dr. Malfatti says. You will immediately go to Schönbrünn.'

"The duke bowed respectfully in token of obedience, but, when he stood up again, he flung me an indignant glance.

"'It is you, then, who have had me put under arrest?' he said angrily, and he walked rapidly away."

But he was obliged to obey the emperor's commands all the same, and that was what Dr. Malfatti desired.

The Duc de Reichstadt at Schönbrünn—Progress of his disease—The Archduchess Sophia—The prince's last moments—His death—Effect produced by the news at Paris—Article of theConstitutionnelupon this event

The Duc de Reichstadt's stay at Schönbrünn was favourable to his health. The prince went on horseback daily to the great manœuvres, but with the commander-general; this was the emperor's expedient for saving his grandson from using his voice and tiring his lungs. Once only, when the emperor was present at the review, the duke urged to be allowed to take the command of his battalion and obtained leave to do so.

The hunting season came, and the emperor expressed a desire that his grandson should not be exposed to the fatigue of long chases and to the inclemency of the chilly autumn days; but the Duc de Reichstadt insisted and followed the hounds. At the second he was obliged to return without being present at the "gone away," and the old symptoms again appeared. These were an irritating cough, principally from the trachea and bronchial tubes; weakness, which led to constant desire to sleep; and dyscrasia of the whole cutaneous system. Henceforward Dr. Malfatti advised the prince most carefully to avoid all efforts of any nature, and principally those of the vocal organs. This advice meant a complete breaking off of all the prince's military habits; so he hid his sufferings as much as possible, and had, at least, strength of will enough not to show it if he could not prevent being ill. Several times the duke urged the emperor to let him takeup his military service again, but the emperor always opposed it. Three important men died at Vienna towards the end of the year: Comte de Giulay, Baron de Frémont and Baron de Siegenthal. The young prince, who for some days had pretended to be much better, begged the emperor's leave to follow Baron de Frémont's funeral cortège with the troops. The Emperor yielded, and a fresh indisposition was the result of this condescension. Finally, for the last time—it was at General de Siegenthal's funeral service—the prince appeared with his troops on the place Joseph. The temperature was very cold; in the middle of the commands he was giving to his battalion he lost his voice. When he returned home he felt ill enough to allow the doctor to be called in, and confessed that he had gone out that morning when he was in a high state of feverishness. It was found to be rheumatic, bilious and catarrhal fever, and soon took an acute form; it reached its crisis on the seventh day, after which it passed from the nature of sub-continuous fever to that of intermittent quotidian fever. Dr. Malfatti decreed that, as soon as the season allowed, the prince should go to the waters of Ischl. At last, once more, they succeeded in arresting the fever; but fresh imprudent actions revived the disease.

"It seemed," said the doctor, in despair, "as though this unfortunate young man was possessed of a fatal obsession, which compelled him towards suicide!"

The spring was still more disastrous to the invalid than the winter had been; it was impossible to stop him from going out. Overtaken two or three times by rain, he was taken with shivering fits, which led to fever and congestion of the liver.

In the month of April his pulse quickened, shiverings came on and he grew visibly thinner and thinner. Drs. Raiman and Vichrer, who were called in to take the place of Dr. Malfatti, who was ill with gout, were frightened: in concert with the prince's ordinary physician, theyprescribed baths of soup: the wasting away on account of the failure of the digestive powers compelled them to this method, which was to feed the invalid by means of absorption. Again signs of improvement showed themselves, and after a while the duke was well enough for the emperor to allow him, on the advice of the doctors, to take the air on horseback and in a carriage, but only on condition these exercises should be indulged in most moderately. He submitted to these orders for some days; then, having persisted in going out in cold and damp weather, he was tempted by the invigorating air to put his horse to the gallop instead of returning home. That same night, when he should have gone to bed and kept warm, he drove to the Prater in an open carriage. The Prater is situated on an island in the Danube, and is extremely damp; but that did not prevent the prince from staying there until after sunset. This imprudence resulted in such weakness on his return that, when a wheel of his carriage broke and he sprang out on the road, he had not strength enough to hold himself up and fell on his knees. Next day inflammation of the lungs set in, and the prince became deaf with the left ear. The situation was so serious that Dr. Malfatti asked that Drs. Vivenot, Vichrer and Turcken might be called in for consultation. He was charged from the emperor to tell them that, without troubling themselves about political considerations, which until then had restricted the Duc de Reichstadt's journeying to Austria, they might order him a voyage to any country which they might deem suitable to restore his health, except France. They prescribed a journey to Italy and a stay at Naples. The invalid could not believe such a favour had been granted him, and sent Dr. Malfatti to M. de Metternich to make certain from the lips of the minister that no embargo would be put upon his travels.

"Tell the prince," replied M. de Metternich, "that with the exception of France, the gates of which it does not depend on me to open, he can go into whatever countryhe likes, the emperor putting the restoration of his grandson's health before all other considerations."

The invalid had cause for fear: soon he grew so weak that there could not even reasonably be any question of travelling for him. They informed the Archduchess Marie-Louise of the state of her son, and told him that the moment for receiving the viaticum had come.

The etiquette of the Court of Vienna decreed that the princes of the Imperial family should take part in this sad ceremony in the presence of the whole Court. No one dared speak of it to the duke, not even Michel Wagner, the palace chaplain, who had been his religious director in his youth, so strict a matter was it at the Court of Vienna. A woman it was who undertook both to warn the invalid, and also to put the news in a form which should hide part of the horrible truth from the prince. This woman was the Archduchess Sophia.

She told the prince that, as she was soon going to communicate, she wished to do so by his bedside, in hope that her prayers to heaven for his cure might be more efficacious when made during the mysterious act of the Eucharist; and she begged the sick man to take the sacrament at the same time as she did, so that their prayers might go up to heaven together.

The Duc de Reichstadt acceded.

It can be imagined how profound was the meditation and how sad the ceremony. The prince prayed for the safe delivery of the Archduchess Sophia, who was near her accouchement; she prayed for the cure of the Duc de Reichstadt, who was near his death! The invalid, who was then at Vienna, desired to be moved to Schönbrünn, and the return of spring having warmed the air the doctor supported the prince's wish. The removal took place without serious accident, and the prince even seemed a little better after it. Unfortunately, one day, in spite of all the entreaties that could be made to prevent him, he wanted to drive to Laxenbourg, two leagues fromSchönbrünn, and in an open carriage. He stayed out an hour, and received the respectful greeting of the officers, talked much, and came back through a violent storm. During the night following this day of imprudent acts he was seized by a feverish attack, accompanied with a burning thirst; obstinate coughing brought on expectoration, almost a vomiting of blood, and, for the first time, the prince complained of sharp pain in his side.

A fresh consultation was held, and the doctors looked upon the invalid's condition as hopeless.

The Archduchess Marie-Louise arrived. She had passed through Trieste in order to see the emperor, who was there at the time; she there fell ill herself, and had been obliged to stay for fifteen long days. Still ill, her anxiety, however, overcame her weakness. She continued her journey, and arrived on the evening of 24 June. The prince wished to go to his mother, but at the first attempt at locomotion he realised his strength was inadequate. Nevertheless the joy of seeing his mother once more had a happy effect upon him; there had been a sensible improvement in the disease for the last three weeks, at any rate there was an arrest of the malady; the fever lessened, the nights passed over without very great perspirations, and the prince could lie on either side without pain. But the crafty and deceptive course of disease of the lungs is well known, usually fastening upon young and vigorous constitutions who do not want to die; the disease seems at times, like the invalid himself, to have need of rest and to stop fatigued; but nearly always this moment of stoppage is made use of by the direful miner to dig a fresh sap, and the subterranean work is revealed suddenly by fresh symptoms, which show that, during the feigned halt, the disease has made cruel progress. The heat had become very great and the fever redoubled its efforts; the cough became more obstinate than ever; a second hæmorrhage happened, and the prince threw up blood in quantity.

The population of Vienna took a very lively interest in the fate of this unhappy lad; they stopped any one in the streets whom they knew belonged to his household; from all parts letters arrived pointing out remedies. These innocent empirics at least showed anxious sympathy, though they were deficient in scientific knowledge.

A terrible storm broke out during the night of 27 June; one of those storms which the pride of kings believed to have been let loose by the hand of the Lord because of them; the lightning struck one of the eagles on the palace of Schönbrünn. From this time the people's opinion coincided with that of the doctors, and they gave up hope. As the lightning had struck an eagle, the son of Napoleon was going to die. The prince went out no more; only when the fighting for breath, which was almost continuous, made him think that he would find some relief in the outer air, did they carry him out on the balcony. Soon it was impossible for him to leave his bed; at the least movement of his body he fainted away. Then he began to talk of his approaching death, and to show the distaste he had always had for an existence which had opened out with a vast horizon, whilst fate had forced him to vegetate in a narrow circle. Was it actual disgust with life, or was it a desire to comfort those around him? Only on 21 July did he confess that he was suffering dreadfully, and murmured several times, "O my God! my God! when shall I die?"

His mother entered when one of these outcries was escaping him, and he at once repressed the expression of pain which had spread over his face, received her with a smile and, to her questions about his health, replied that he was doing well, and made plans with her for the journey to the north of Italy. That evening Dr. Malfatti announced that he feared a mortal crisis would take place during the night; Baron de Moll watched in a neighbouring room, unknown to the prince, who had never allowed any one to sit up with him. About one o'clockin the morning he seemed to be dozing; but at half-past three he sat up suddenly, and, after violent and vain efforts for breath, he exclaimed—

"Mutter! mutter! ich gehe unter!" ("Mother! mother! I am dying!")

At this cry the Baron de Moll and the valet de chambre entered and seized him in their arms, trying to quieten him; but he was battling with death.

"Mutter! mutter!" he repeated.

Then he fell back. He had not expired, but he was in that twilight state which separates life from death. They hastened to tell the Archduchess Marie-Louise and the Archduke François, in whose arms the Duc de Reichstadt had expressed a desire to die. All the princes came hurriedly; Marie-Louise had not strength to stand, nor even to reach him; she fell on her knees and crawled the few steps between herself and her son. The sick man could not speak any more; but his nearly-closed eyes could still settle on his mother, and he showed her by a look that he recognised her. Five o'clock in the morning struck; he seemed to hear the vibrations of the pendulum, and to count the strokes. Eternity had just sounded for him on the bronze! He soon made a sound of farewell; the priest who was present showed him heaven opening before him and, at eight minutes past five, without a convulsion or a struggle, without even any pain, he gave up his last sigh. He had lived for twenty-one years, four months and two days. His life had been obscure; his death made a less vivid sensation in France than might have been expected. To the French, and in the eyes of the French, the prince was an Austrian.

Our nation is a proud one; not even at the cost of its throne would it have let the Emperor Maximilian, even if he had been the Son of God, give it to his eldest son; it did not at all like such a prince to show no expression of regret, and preferred the man who, to reconquer it, madealmost mad efforts, to the one who lay down quietly in resignation to the decrees of Providence.

By a singular freak of fate the Duc de Reichstadt, as we have already mentioned, died in the same bed that Napoleon, as conqueror, had slept in twice: the first time after Austerlitz, the second after Wagram! The father and son slept their last sleep in it with a space of eleven years between them, and now they slept on the bosom of their common mother—only, the ocean rolled between their two dead bodies.

Perhaps our readers will be curious to know how, after the lapse of twenty-two years, the French press appreciated this event, which contained something both fatal and providential in it, and happened at the moment when a new king was trying to found a new dynasty on the soil of France, a country ever rebellious against dynasties. The news was only known in Paris on 1 August. We will open a newspaper which we had sent for for another purpose, and we there read the article we are about to place before our readers. The paper is theConstitutionnel;we do not know by whom the article is written, but it seems a good one.

"PARIS, 1August"The son of Napoleon is dead. This news, which had been long expected, has produced in Paris a sorrowful but calm sensation. So obscure an end to a life which gave promise of a splendid destiny, a pale, last ray of vast glory, such as that which has just died out, affords a melancholy subject for meditation! The people will mourn deeply and seriously, for it is in the people especially that the memories of Imperial glory have left enduring traces."The details of the last moments of Napoleon's son are still wanting to us; his death has been surrounded by mystery, as was his life. We are, however, assured that he saw the approach of death with a fortitude worthy of his father. When he realised that the fatal hour had come, he disposed of the few remaining worldly goodswhich he had left, in conformity with the wishes previously expressed by the Emperor of the French, in favour of young Louis-Napoleon, son of the ex-King of Holland, who fought in the ranks of the last defenders of Italian liberty. We understand that a letter written by the illustrious dying man to inform his cousin of the bequest contains evidence of the troubles which poisoned and, no doubt, shortened his existence."It must indeed have been a bitter one! Tom away from the cradle, from his country and his family, to be confined in a sumptuous prison; deprived of guidance at the age when his mind had much need of direction; submitted to tyrannical etiquette; a stranger in the midst of a Court, which beset him with doubtful loyalty, to whom could he confide if not in the watchful attendants commissioned to deceive him, perhaps to corrupt him? From whom could he obtain information of what he most wanted to know—of his fate, his future, his duties? His tutors, we are assured, left him for a long time in ignorance of his father's history! If the few friends he had been allowed to meet are to be believed, the young Napoleon had been endowed by nature with an upright mind and a generous heart; barren gifts, which only served to make his loneliness more crushing and death a welcome boon! His life has ended opportunely for the honour of the name he bore: he will not have dragged that great name through a long time of inaction; he will not have dishonoured it in the service of politics, of courts or of party intrigues; he will not have played the ridiculous and odious rôle of a pretender, and history will not have to reproach him with having been a scourge to his country."The young Napoleon has, in the hands of Austria, been both an object of terror to herself and a bugbear to the France of the Restoration. His name alone, uttered by M. de Metternich, would have made Louis XVIII. and Charles X. tremble, and been sufficient to repulse every attempt that was contrary to Austrian politics; and yet, prudence would never have let them realise the menace contained in such a name. Such menace would, perhaps, not have been without effect, even after the Revolution of 1830, on the statesmen who havecontrolled our politics, although it would not have been more serious now than at any other period."Austria, therefore, is delivered from her fears, and robbed of the instrument of trouble which she had at her disposal against us."Napoleon II. had, in France, at least, a number of partisans, if not exactly a party. It is a heritage factions will dispute over amongst themselves and with the government, a heritage which will remain to those who know best how to rally the popular masses to a sense of the true interests of the country."

"PARIS, 1August

"The son of Napoleon is dead. This news, which had been long expected, has produced in Paris a sorrowful but calm sensation. So obscure an end to a life which gave promise of a splendid destiny, a pale, last ray of vast glory, such as that which has just died out, affords a melancholy subject for meditation! The people will mourn deeply and seriously, for it is in the people especially that the memories of Imperial glory have left enduring traces.

"The details of the last moments of Napoleon's son are still wanting to us; his death has been surrounded by mystery, as was his life. We are, however, assured that he saw the approach of death with a fortitude worthy of his father. When he realised that the fatal hour had come, he disposed of the few remaining worldly goodswhich he had left, in conformity with the wishes previously expressed by the Emperor of the French, in favour of young Louis-Napoleon, son of the ex-King of Holland, who fought in the ranks of the last defenders of Italian liberty. We understand that a letter written by the illustrious dying man to inform his cousin of the bequest contains evidence of the troubles which poisoned and, no doubt, shortened his existence.

"It must indeed have been a bitter one! Tom away from the cradle, from his country and his family, to be confined in a sumptuous prison; deprived of guidance at the age when his mind had much need of direction; submitted to tyrannical etiquette; a stranger in the midst of a Court, which beset him with doubtful loyalty, to whom could he confide if not in the watchful attendants commissioned to deceive him, perhaps to corrupt him? From whom could he obtain information of what he most wanted to know—of his fate, his future, his duties? His tutors, we are assured, left him for a long time in ignorance of his father's history! If the few friends he had been allowed to meet are to be believed, the young Napoleon had been endowed by nature with an upright mind and a generous heart; barren gifts, which only served to make his loneliness more crushing and death a welcome boon! His life has ended opportunely for the honour of the name he bore: he will not have dragged that great name through a long time of inaction; he will not have dishonoured it in the service of politics, of courts or of party intrigues; he will not have played the ridiculous and odious rôle of a pretender, and history will not have to reproach him with having been a scourge to his country.

"The young Napoleon has, in the hands of Austria, been both an object of terror to herself and a bugbear to the France of the Restoration. His name alone, uttered by M. de Metternich, would have made Louis XVIII. and Charles X. tremble, and been sufficient to repulse every attempt that was contrary to Austrian politics; and yet, prudence would never have let them realise the menace contained in such a name. Such menace would, perhaps, not have been without effect, even after the Revolution of 1830, on the statesmen who havecontrolled our politics, although it would not have been more serious now than at any other period.

"Austria, therefore, is delivered from her fears, and robbed of the instrument of trouble which she had at her disposal against us.

"Napoleon II. had, in France, at least, a number of partisans, if not exactly a party. It is a heritage factions will dispute over amongst themselves and with the government, a heritage which will remain to those who know best how to rally the popular masses to a sense of the true interests of the country."

The rest of the paper contained a manifesto from the English press, telegraphic despatches about Don Pedro's expedition and an analysis ofMademoiselle de Liron—a novel by M. E. J. Deléchuze.

Lucerne—The lion of August 10—M. de Chateaubriand's fowls—Reichenau —A picture by Conder—Letter to M. le duc d'Orléans—A walk in the park of Arenenberg

I have already said that I have no intention of beginning over again my account of my peregrinations through Switzerland. However, I will ask my reader's leave to place before him three small extracts from myImpressions de Voyage,which are indispensable to the course of these Memoirs. They were published in 1834, and concern M. de Chateaubriand, Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans and Her Majesty Queen Hortense; they contain my own independent opinions; and some strange light will be shed now and then on the future of the poet. If a statesman had written what I am about to quote, he would have been looked upon as a prophet.

Let us follow the order of my visits to Lucerne, to Reichenau and to Arenenberg, and begin by M. de Chateaubriand.

A tout seigneur, tout honneur."M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND'S FOWLS"The first news I learned on arriving at theHôtel du Cheval blancwas that M. de Chateaubriand was living in Lucerne. It will be recollected that, after the revolution of July, our great poet, who had dedicated his pen to the defence of the fallen dynasty, voluntarily exiled himself, and did not return to Paris until he was recalled to it bythe arrest of the Duchesse de Berry. He lived at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I soon dressed myself with the intention of going to pay him a call. I did not know him personally: at Paris I had not dared to present myself, but, out of France, at Lucerne, isolated as he was, I thought it might be some pleasure to him to see a compatriot. I therefore boldly presented myself at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I asked the hôtel waiter for M. de Chateaubriand. He replied that he had just gone out to feed his fowls. I made him repeat it, thinking I had heard wrongly; but he made me the same reply the second time. I left my name, at the same time asking the favour of being received the next day."Next morning a letter was handed to me from M. de Chateaubriand, sent the previous evening: it was an invitation to breakfast at ten o'clock; it was nine then, so I had no time to lose. I leapt out of bed and dressed. For a very long time I had wanted to see M. de Chateaubriand; my admiration for him was the religion of my childhood; he was the man whose genius had been the first to stray out of the beaten paths to mark out for our young literature the road it has since followed; he had alone excited more hatred than all the cenacula put together; he was the rock against which the jealous waves, still stirring against us, had beaten in vain for fifty years; he was the file on which the teeth were used which had tried to bite us."So, when I put foot on the first step of the staircase, my heart nearly failed me. Entirely unknown, I felt that I should be at least crushed under such immense superiority; for at that time the point of comparison was wanting by which to measure our respective heights, and I had not resource enough to say, as Stromboli might to Monte Rosa, 'I am only a hill, but I contain a volcano!' When I reached the landing I stopped.... I believe I should have hesitated less to knock at the door of a conclave. Perhaps at that moment M. de Chateaubriand thought I was keeping him waiting out of politeness, while I dared not go in from feelings of veneration. Finally, I heard the waiter coming up the stairs; I could not stay any longer outside the door, so I knocked. M. de Chateaubriand himself came and opened it; he must have formeda strange opinion of my manners if he did not attribute my embarrassment to its true cause. I stuttered like a country bumpkin; I did not know whether I ought to go in in front of him or behind. I think that, like M. Parseval before Napoleon, if he had asked me my name, I should not have known what to reply. But he did better than that: he held out his hand to me."During breakfast we talked. One after the other he reviewed all the political questions which were being discussed at that period, from the tribune to the club, with the lucidity of a man of genius who went to the bottom of things, and like a man who estimates principles and interests at their right value and has no illusions about anything. I was convinced that M. de Chateaubriand looked upon the party to which he belonged as henceforth lost, believing that the whole future rested in a socialistic Republicanism, and that he remained attached to his cause more because he saw it was unfortunate than because he thought it good. It is thus with all great souls: they must devote themselves to something; when it is not to women, it is to kings; when not to kings, then to God. I could not resist remarking to M. de Chateaubriand that his theories, though Royalist in form, were fundamentally Republican."'Does that surprise you?' he said, smiling. 'It surprises me still more! I have progressed without willing it, like a rock rolled along by the torrent; and now, behold! I find I am nearer to you than you are to me!... Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?'"'Not yet.'"'Well, let us go and see it.... It is the most important monument in the town. You know upon what occasion it was erected?'"'In memory of 10 August.'"'That was it.'"'Is it a beautiful thing?'"'It is better than that: it is a beautiful idea!'"'There is but one drawback: the blood shed for the monarchy was bought from a republic, and the dead Swiss Guards were but the strict payment of a bill of exchange.'"'That is no less remarkable in a time when there were many people who let their bills be protested.'"As will be seen, we differed in our ideas on that point; that is the misfortune of opinions which are divided into two opposite principles; every time necessity brings them together, they understand one another in theory but they separate over facts."We reached the monument, which is situated at some distance from the town, in General Pfyffer's garden. It is a rock cut perpendicularly, with its base bathed by a circular pool; a grotto forty-four feet long by forty-eight feet high has been hollowed out in the rock, and in this grotto a young sculptor from Constance, named Ahrorth, has carved a colossal lion after a plaster model by Thorwaldsen. Pierced through by a spear, with the broken fragment left in the wound, the lion is dying, covering with its body the fleur-de-lis emblazoned shield which it can no longer defend. Above the grotto are the words, 'Helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti,'and below this inscription the names of the officers and soldiers who perished on 10 August. The officers numbered twenty-six and the soldiers seven hundred and sixty. This monument, moreover, acquired a greater interest from the fresh revolution which had just taken place, and from the renewed fidelity displayed by the Swiss. Yet it was an odd thing! the disabled soldier who watches over the lion spoke much to us of 10 August but did not say a word of 29 July. The more recent of the two catastrophes was that which he had already forgotten. It is quite simple: 1830 had but driven a king away, 1792 had driven out royalty. I pointed out to M. de Chateaubriand the names of those men who had done honour to their signature, and I asked him which names would be inscribed on the gravestone of royalty to balance these popular names if a similar monument were raised in France."'Not one!' he replied."'Do you really mean that?'"'Perfectly; the dead do not get themselves killed.'"The history of the July Revolution lay entirely in those words: 'Nobility is loyalty's true buckler; so long as she has worn it on her arm, she has driven back foreign warfare and smothered civil war; but, from the day when, in anger, she imprudently breaks it, she is defenceless. Louis XI. had slain the great vassals;Louis XIII. the grand seigneurs and Louis XIV. the aristocrats, so that, when Charles X. called to his aid the d'Armagnacs, the Montmorencys and the Lauzuns, his voice only called up shades and phantoms.'"'Now,' said M. de Chateaubriand, 'if you have seen all you want to see, we will go and feed my fowls.'"'By the way, that reminds me of something; when I called yesterday at your hôtel the waiter told me you had gone out to fulfil that country occupation. Does your scheme of retirement go so far as make you a farmer?'"'Why not? A man whose life has been like mine, driven by caprice, poetry, revolutions and exile over the four quarters of the globe, will be happy, I think, to possess—if not a châlet among the mountains (I do not like the Alps)—a meadow in Normandy or a farm in Brittany. I am decidedly of opinion that this is the vocation for my old age.'"'Allow me to doubt it.... You remember Charles Quint at Saint-Just; you are not one of the emperors who abdicate or one of the kings whom people dethrone: you are one of those princes who die under a canopy and are interred like Charlemagne, with his feet on a shield, his sword by his side, a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand.'"'Take care! it is so long since I have been flattered, and I am quite capable of letting myself be carried away by it. Come, let us go and give the chickens their food.'"Upon my honour, I could have fallen on my knees before this man, so simple and yet at the same time so great was he. We went by the bridge of la Cour, which crosses an arm of the lake; after Rapperssweil's bridge, it is the longest covered one in Switzerland. We stopped about two-thirds of the way across, at some distance from a spot covered with reeds. M. de Chateaubriand drew a piece of bread from his pocket which he had put there after breakfast, and began to crumble it in the lake. Soon a dozen water-fowls came out from a kind of isle formed by the reeds, and began hastily to fight over the repast prepared for them by the hand that had written theGénie du Christianisme, les MartyrsandLe dernier des Abencerrages.For a long while, without saying anything, I watched the singular spectacle of this man leaning overthe bridge, his lips curved in smiles, but with sad, grave eyes. Gradually his occupation became mechanical, his face assumed an expression of deep melancholy, his thoughts passed across his broad brow as clouds across a sky; among them were memories of country, family and tender friendships, more gloomy than others. I guessed that this moment was reserved by him wherein to meditate on France, and I respected his meditation as long as it lasted. In the end, he made a movement and heaved a sigh. I went nearer, and he remembered I was there and held out his hand."'But if you regret Paris so much,' I said to him, 'why not go back to it? Nothing exiles you from it, and everything calls you back.'"'What would you have me do?' he replied. 'I was at Cauterets when the July Revolution took place. I returned to Paris: I behold one throne in blood and another in the mud, lawyers drawing up a charter and a king shaking hands with rag-and-bone men.... It was sad unto death, especially when, as in my case, one is filled with great traditions of the monarchy. I went away from it all.'"'From some words you let drop this morning, I believe you recognise popular sovereignty?'"'Yes, there is no doubt it is good from time to time for royalty to be tempered again at its source, which is election; but, this time, they knocked off a bough of the tree, a link of the chain: it was Henri V. they should have elected and not Louis-Philippe.'"'You are wishing but a sad wish for the poor child,' I replied. 'Kings of the name of Henri are unlucky in France: Henri I was poisoned, Henry II. killed in a tournament, Henris III. and IV. were assassinated.'"'Very well, but, at all events, it is better to die by poison than in exile; it is sooner over and one suffers less!'"'But shall you not return to France?'"'If the Duchesse de Berry, after having committed the madness of returning to la Vendée, commits the foolishness of letting herself be captured there, I shall return to Paris to defend her before her judges, if my advice has not prevented her from appearing there.'"'If not?'"'If not,' pursued M. de Chateaubriand, crumbling up a second piece of bread, 'I shall continue to feed my birds.'"

A tout seigneur, tout honneur.

"The first news I learned on arriving at theHôtel du Cheval blancwas that M. de Chateaubriand was living in Lucerne. It will be recollected that, after the revolution of July, our great poet, who had dedicated his pen to the defence of the fallen dynasty, voluntarily exiled himself, and did not return to Paris until he was recalled to it bythe arrest of the Duchesse de Berry. He lived at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I soon dressed myself with the intention of going to pay him a call. I did not know him personally: at Paris I had not dared to present myself, but, out of France, at Lucerne, isolated as he was, I thought it might be some pleasure to him to see a compatriot. I therefore boldly presented myself at the Hôtel de l'Aigle. I asked the hôtel waiter for M. de Chateaubriand. He replied that he had just gone out to feed his fowls. I made him repeat it, thinking I had heard wrongly; but he made me the same reply the second time. I left my name, at the same time asking the favour of being received the next day.

"Next morning a letter was handed to me from M. de Chateaubriand, sent the previous evening: it was an invitation to breakfast at ten o'clock; it was nine then, so I had no time to lose. I leapt out of bed and dressed. For a very long time I had wanted to see M. de Chateaubriand; my admiration for him was the religion of my childhood; he was the man whose genius had been the first to stray out of the beaten paths to mark out for our young literature the road it has since followed; he had alone excited more hatred than all the cenacula put together; he was the rock against which the jealous waves, still stirring against us, had beaten in vain for fifty years; he was the file on which the teeth were used which had tried to bite us.

"So, when I put foot on the first step of the staircase, my heart nearly failed me. Entirely unknown, I felt that I should be at least crushed under such immense superiority; for at that time the point of comparison was wanting by which to measure our respective heights, and I had not resource enough to say, as Stromboli might to Monte Rosa, 'I am only a hill, but I contain a volcano!' When I reached the landing I stopped.... I believe I should have hesitated less to knock at the door of a conclave. Perhaps at that moment M. de Chateaubriand thought I was keeping him waiting out of politeness, while I dared not go in from feelings of veneration. Finally, I heard the waiter coming up the stairs; I could not stay any longer outside the door, so I knocked. M. de Chateaubriand himself came and opened it; he must have formeda strange opinion of my manners if he did not attribute my embarrassment to its true cause. I stuttered like a country bumpkin; I did not know whether I ought to go in in front of him or behind. I think that, like M. Parseval before Napoleon, if he had asked me my name, I should not have known what to reply. But he did better than that: he held out his hand to me.

"During breakfast we talked. One after the other he reviewed all the political questions which were being discussed at that period, from the tribune to the club, with the lucidity of a man of genius who went to the bottom of things, and like a man who estimates principles and interests at their right value and has no illusions about anything. I was convinced that M. de Chateaubriand looked upon the party to which he belonged as henceforth lost, believing that the whole future rested in a socialistic Republicanism, and that he remained attached to his cause more because he saw it was unfortunate than because he thought it good. It is thus with all great souls: they must devote themselves to something; when it is not to women, it is to kings; when not to kings, then to God. I could not resist remarking to M. de Chateaubriand that his theories, though Royalist in form, were fundamentally Republican.

"'Does that surprise you?' he said, smiling. 'It surprises me still more! I have progressed without willing it, like a rock rolled along by the torrent; and now, behold! I find I am nearer to you than you are to me!... Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?'

"'Not yet.'

"'Well, let us go and see it.... It is the most important monument in the town. You know upon what occasion it was erected?'

"'In memory of 10 August.'

"'That was it.'

"'Is it a beautiful thing?'

"'It is better than that: it is a beautiful idea!'

"'There is but one drawback: the blood shed for the monarchy was bought from a republic, and the dead Swiss Guards were but the strict payment of a bill of exchange.'

"'That is no less remarkable in a time when there were many people who let their bills be protested.'

"As will be seen, we differed in our ideas on that point; that is the misfortune of opinions which are divided into two opposite principles; every time necessity brings them together, they understand one another in theory but they separate over facts.

"We reached the monument, which is situated at some distance from the town, in General Pfyffer's garden. It is a rock cut perpendicularly, with its base bathed by a circular pool; a grotto forty-four feet long by forty-eight feet high has been hollowed out in the rock, and in this grotto a young sculptor from Constance, named Ahrorth, has carved a colossal lion after a plaster model by Thorwaldsen. Pierced through by a spear, with the broken fragment left in the wound, the lion is dying, covering with its body the fleur-de-lis emblazoned shield which it can no longer defend. Above the grotto are the words, 'Helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti,'and below this inscription the names of the officers and soldiers who perished on 10 August. The officers numbered twenty-six and the soldiers seven hundred and sixty. This monument, moreover, acquired a greater interest from the fresh revolution which had just taken place, and from the renewed fidelity displayed by the Swiss. Yet it was an odd thing! the disabled soldier who watches over the lion spoke much to us of 10 August but did not say a word of 29 July. The more recent of the two catastrophes was that which he had already forgotten. It is quite simple: 1830 had but driven a king away, 1792 had driven out royalty. I pointed out to M. de Chateaubriand the names of those men who had done honour to their signature, and I asked him which names would be inscribed on the gravestone of royalty to balance these popular names if a similar monument were raised in France.

"'Not one!' he replied.

"'Do you really mean that?'

"'Perfectly; the dead do not get themselves killed.'

"The history of the July Revolution lay entirely in those words: 'Nobility is loyalty's true buckler; so long as she has worn it on her arm, she has driven back foreign warfare and smothered civil war; but, from the day when, in anger, she imprudently breaks it, she is defenceless. Louis XI. had slain the great vassals;Louis XIII. the grand seigneurs and Louis XIV. the aristocrats, so that, when Charles X. called to his aid the d'Armagnacs, the Montmorencys and the Lauzuns, his voice only called up shades and phantoms.'

"'Now,' said M. de Chateaubriand, 'if you have seen all you want to see, we will go and feed my fowls.'

"'By the way, that reminds me of something; when I called yesterday at your hôtel the waiter told me you had gone out to fulfil that country occupation. Does your scheme of retirement go so far as make you a farmer?'

"'Why not? A man whose life has been like mine, driven by caprice, poetry, revolutions and exile over the four quarters of the globe, will be happy, I think, to possess—if not a châlet among the mountains (I do not like the Alps)—a meadow in Normandy or a farm in Brittany. I am decidedly of opinion that this is the vocation for my old age.'

"'Allow me to doubt it.... You remember Charles Quint at Saint-Just; you are not one of the emperors who abdicate or one of the kings whom people dethrone: you are one of those princes who die under a canopy and are interred like Charlemagne, with his feet on a shield, his sword by his side, a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand.'

"'Take care! it is so long since I have been flattered, and I am quite capable of letting myself be carried away by it. Come, let us go and give the chickens their food.'

"Upon my honour, I could have fallen on my knees before this man, so simple and yet at the same time so great was he. We went by the bridge of la Cour, which crosses an arm of the lake; after Rapperssweil's bridge, it is the longest covered one in Switzerland. We stopped about two-thirds of the way across, at some distance from a spot covered with reeds. M. de Chateaubriand drew a piece of bread from his pocket which he had put there after breakfast, and began to crumble it in the lake. Soon a dozen water-fowls came out from a kind of isle formed by the reeds, and began hastily to fight over the repast prepared for them by the hand that had written theGénie du Christianisme, les MartyrsandLe dernier des Abencerrages.For a long while, without saying anything, I watched the singular spectacle of this man leaning overthe bridge, his lips curved in smiles, but with sad, grave eyes. Gradually his occupation became mechanical, his face assumed an expression of deep melancholy, his thoughts passed across his broad brow as clouds across a sky; among them were memories of country, family and tender friendships, more gloomy than others. I guessed that this moment was reserved by him wherein to meditate on France, and I respected his meditation as long as it lasted. In the end, he made a movement and heaved a sigh. I went nearer, and he remembered I was there and held out his hand.

"'But if you regret Paris so much,' I said to him, 'why not go back to it? Nothing exiles you from it, and everything calls you back.'

"'What would you have me do?' he replied. 'I was at Cauterets when the July Revolution took place. I returned to Paris: I behold one throne in blood and another in the mud, lawyers drawing up a charter and a king shaking hands with rag-and-bone men.... It was sad unto death, especially when, as in my case, one is filled with great traditions of the monarchy. I went away from it all.'

"'From some words you let drop this morning, I believe you recognise popular sovereignty?'

"'Yes, there is no doubt it is good from time to time for royalty to be tempered again at its source, which is election; but, this time, they knocked off a bough of the tree, a link of the chain: it was Henri V. they should have elected and not Louis-Philippe.'

"'You are wishing but a sad wish for the poor child,' I replied. 'Kings of the name of Henri are unlucky in France: Henri I was poisoned, Henry II. killed in a tournament, Henris III. and IV. were assassinated.'

"'Very well, but, at all events, it is better to die by poison than in exile; it is sooner over and one suffers less!'

"'But shall you not return to France?'

"'If the Duchesse de Berry, after having committed the madness of returning to la Vendée, commits the foolishness of letting herself be captured there, I shall return to Paris to defend her before her judges, if my advice has not prevented her from appearing there.'

"'If not?'

"'If not,' pursued M. de Chateaubriand, crumbling up a second piece of bread, 'I shall continue to feed my birds.'"

Two hours after this conversation, I left Lucerne in a boat rowed by two rowers. Some time afterwards, I was at the Grisons, not far from the little town of Reichenau, whose name awakened in my memory a singular recollection.

During my term in the offices of the Duc d'Orléans I had been for a long time instructed to give tickets to persons desirous of visiting the apartments of the Palais-Royal or of walking in the park at Monceaux. They could see the rooms on Saturdays and walk in the park on Thursdays and Sundays. On the days when the apartments were visited, the duke and duchess and Madame Adélaïde and the rest of the princely family kept themselves to one or two rooms, where they lived in retirement from ten in the morning till four in the evening, and yet it often happened that some inquisitive visitor, whilst the footman was engaged in another direction, would turn a key, half open the door, stretch out his head and plunge into the ducal retreat. The first thing people went to see above everything else was the picture gallery—not that all the pictures were good, far from it, indeed! but there were several which were the cause of talk at the time; these were the battle-pictures by Horace Vernet, four masterpieces, marvellous productions, to which I have already referred—the battles ofMontmirail, Hanau, Jemmapesand ofValmy.There was one point particularly in theBattle of Montmirailwhich attracted attention: in the background, under a grove of trees, hidden in the mist, was a horseman trotting on a white horse. Horse and rider between them were only four inches in breadth by two in height, and yet that little white-and-grey spot had been enough to exclude the picture from the Salon of 1821. The microscopic cavalierwas, as we said when we were specially occupied with Horace Vernet, no other than the Emperor Napoleon.

When they had looked well at these four battle-pictures, for which they had come on purpose to the Palais-Royal, the footman said, "Messieurs et mesdames, will you come this way, please?" They followed him, and he took the inquisitive ones to a littlegenrepainting, representing a handsome young man in a blue coat and leather breeches, with his eyes raised to heaven, pointing out, to a dozen children who surrounded him, the wordFrancewritten on a terrestrial globe. This fine youth was the exiled Duc d'Orléans, giving geography and mathematical lessons at the Reichenau College.

I saw that small picture by Couder once again; I was, as I have said, a few miles from Reichenau, and I decided to go and see the room in which the actual King of France had spent one of the most honourable years of his life, earning 5 francs per day. I have often heard it said that, in spite of his sixteen millions from the Civil List, and his Château des Tuileries, perhaps even because of these, he at times would murmur, "O Reichenau! Reichenau!..."

I therefore did those few miles—two or three followed the banks of the Rhine, which is slate colour at this spot and yet blue in Germany—and I reached Reichenau. I wrote the following letter the same day to the Duc d'Orléans, which will be found produced in its entirety in myImpressions de Voyage:—

"MONSEIGNEUR,—The date of this letter and the place from whence it is sent will readily explain the sentiment to which I am yielding in addressing Your Highness. I am not speaking to the royal hereditary prince of the crown of France, of His Majesty King Louis-Philippe, now reigning, but to the Duc de Chartres, pupil of Henri IV., of the Duc d'Orléans, teacher at Reichenau. I write to Your Highness from the very room in which your exiled father taught arithmetic and geography; or, rather, from that same room, pressed by the post time,I send to Your Highness the page I have just torn from my album.""REICHENAU"The little Grisons village is in no way remarkable except for the strange story with which its name is associated. Towards the end of last century burgomaster Tscharner, from Coire, had set up a school at Reichenau. They were looking out in the canton for a teacher in French, when a young man presented himself to M. Boul, headmaster of the establishment, bearing a letter of recommendation signed by bailie Aloys Toost of Zizers. The young man was French, spoke his mother tongue, English and German, and, besides these three languages, could teach mathematics, physics and geography. The find was too marvellous and too rare for the headmaster of the college to let him escape; besides, the youth was modest in his claims. M. Boul settled with him to come at 1400 francs per annum, so the new professor was immediately installed and entered upon his duties. This young professor was Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de Chartres, to-day King of France."It was, I admit, with emotion intermingled with pride that, in this very place, in the room situated in the middle of the corridor, with its folding door, its flower-painted side doors, its corner chimney-places, its pictures of Louis XV. surrounded with gilt arabesques and its decorated ceiling; it was, I say with keen emotion, that, in this room, where the Duc de Chartres had taught, I gathered information concerning the strange vicissitudes of a royal personage who, not wishing to beg the bread of exile, worthily bought it with his work."One single teacher, a colleague of the Duc d'Orléans, and a single scholar, one of his pupils, still lived in 1832, the period at which I visited Reichenau. The teacher was, the novel-writer Zschokke, and the scholar was burgomaster Tscharner, son of the man who had founded the school. The worthy bailie Aloys Toost died in 1827, and was buried at Zizers, his native village. Now, there remains nothing more of the college where a future King of France had taught save the schoolroom we have described and the chapel adjoining the corridor withits reading-desk and altar surmounted by a crucifix painted in fresco. The rest of the buildings have been turned into a kind of villa belonging to Colonel Pastalluzzi, and this memorial, so honourable for every Frenchman that it deserves to rank among our national memorials, threatens to disappear with the generation of old men who are dying out, were there not living a man of artistic feeling, who is noble and great, who will not, we hope, let anything be forgotten which is honourable for himself and for France. That man is yourself, Monseigneur Ferdinand d'Orléans, who, having been our schoolfellow, will also be our king; you who, from the throne which you will one day ascend, will lay one hand on the old monarchy and the other on the young republic; will inherit the galleries which contain pictures of the battles ofTaülebourg, Fleurus, Bouvinesand ofAboukir,ofAgincourtand ofMarengo; you who are ignorant that the fleurs-de-lis of Louis XIV. are the lance-heads of Clovis; you who know so well that all the glories of a country are glorious no matter when they saw birth, or what sun made them flourish; you, in fact, who by your royal fillet can bind together a thousand years of memories, and assume the consular dignity of the lictors who will march in front of you!"So it will be a delight to you, monseigneur, to recall the little lonely port, the voyager beaten by the sea of exile, the sailor driven by the wind of proscription, where your father found a noble shelter against the tempest; it will be worthy of you, monseigneur, to give orders that the hospitable roof shall be again raised for hospitality, and, on the very site where the old building fell in ruins shall be erected a new one, destined to receive every son of exile who shall come, staff of exile in hand, to knock at its doors as your father came, irrespective of his opinions and country; whether he be threatened by the anger of peoples or pursued by the hatred of kings; for, monseigneur, the future, though serene and blue for France, which has accomplished its revolutionary work, is big with storms for the rest of the world! We have sowed the seeds of liberty so broadcast in our excursions through Europe that, on all sides, they spring up like corn in May; so well that it only needs a ray of sunshineto ripen the most distant harvests.... Throw your glance back over the past, monseigneur, and then concentrate it upon the present. Have you ever felt more shaking of thrones, or encountered more discrowned travellers on the highways? You see, indeed, that it will be necessary, some day, to found an asylum, were it but for the sons of kings whose fathers cannot, like yours, be teachers at Reichenau!"

"The little Grisons village is in no way remarkable except for the strange story with which its name is associated. Towards the end of last century burgomaster Tscharner, from Coire, had set up a school at Reichenau. They were looking out in the canton for a teacher in French, when a young man presented himself to M. Boul, headmaster of the establishment, bearing a letter of recommendation signed by bailie Aloys Toost of Zizers. The young man was French, spoke his mother tongue, English and German, and, besides these three languages, could teach mathematics, physics and geography. The find was too marvellous and too rare for the headmaster of the college to let him escape; besides, the youth was modest in his claims. M. Boul settled with him to come at 1400 francs per annum, so the new professor was immediately installed and entered upon his duties. This young professor was Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de Chartres, to-day King of France.

"It was, I admit, with emotion intermingled with pride that, in this very place, in the room situated in the middle of the corridor, with its folding door, its flower-painted side doors, its corner chimney-places, its pictures of Louis XV. surrounded with gilt arabesques and its decorated ceiling; it was, I say with keen emotion, that, in this room, where the Duc de Chartres had taught, I gathered information concerning the strange vicissitudes of a royal personage who, not wishing to beg the bread of exile, worthily bought it with his work.

"One single teacher, a colleague of the Duc d'Orléans, and a single scholar, one of his pupils, still lived in 1832, the period at which I visited Reichenau. The teacher was, the novel-writer Zschokke, and the scholar was burgomaster Tscharner, son of the man who had founded the school. The worthy bailie Aloys Toost died in 1827, and was buried at Zizers, his native village. Now, there remains nothing more of the college where a future King of France had taught save the schoolroom we have described and the chapel adjoining the corridor withits reading-desk and altar surmounted by a crucifix painted in fresco. The rest of the buildings have been turned into a kind of villa belonging to Colonel Pastalluzzi, and this memorial, so honourable for every Frenchman that it deserves to rank among our national memorials, threatens to disappear with the generation of old men who are dying out, were there not living a man of artistic feeling, who is noble and great, who will not, we hope, let anything be forgotten which is honourable for himself and for France. That man is yourself, Monseigneur Ferdinand d'Orléans, who, having been our schoolfellow, will also be our king; you who, from the throne which you will one day ascend, will lay one hand on the old monarchy and the other on the young republic; will inherit the galleries which contain pictures of the battles ofTaülebourg, Fleurus, Bouvinesand ofAboukir,ofAgincourtand ofMarengo; you who are ignorant that the fleurs-de-lis of Louis XIV. are the lance-heads of Clovis; you who know so well that all the glories of a country are glorious no matter when they saw birth, or what sun made them flourish; you, in fact, who by your royal fillet can bind together a thousand years of memories, and assume the consular dignity of the lictors who will march in front of you!

"So it will be a delight to you, monseigneur, to recall the little lonely port, the voyager beaten by the sea of exile, the sailor driven by the wind of proscription, where your father found a noble shelter against the tempest; it will be worthy of you, monseigneur, to give orders that the hospitable roof shall be again raised for hospitality, and, on the very site where the old building fell in ruins shall be erected a new one, destined to receive every son of exile who shall come, staff of exile in hand, to knock at its doors as your father came, irrespective of his opinions and country; whether he be threatened by the anger of peoples or pursued by the hatred of kings; for, monseigneur, the future, though serene and blue for France, which has accomplished its revolutionary work, is big with storms for the rest of the world! We have sowed the seeds of liberty so broadcast in our excursions through Europe that, on all sides, they spring up like corn in May; so well that it only needs a ray of sunshineto ripen the most distant harvests.... Throw your glance back over the past, monseigneur, and then concentrate it upon the present. Have you ever felt more shaking of thrones, or encountered more discrowned travellers on the highways? You see, indeed, that it will be necessary, some day, to found an asylum, were it but for the sons of kings whose fathers cannot, like yours, be teachers at Reichenau!"

I wish to return from Reichenau by way of Arenenberg. The comparison of a teacher of mathematics King of France with an exiled Queen of Holland pleases the imagination of poets. Besides, indeed, when quite a child, I had heard much ill spoken of Napoleon and much good of Joséphine! Now what did I see in Queen Hortense but Joséphine's case over again? I persisted, therefore, in seeing Queen Hortense, and any détour, however long, was but nothing compared with that desire. But, since I do not wish these lines to be taken for tardy flattery—I insist on being thought incapable of flattering any one but exiles or dead people—I will write here what I wrote about Queen Hortense in 1832. I copy the following passage from myImpressions de Voyage:—

"As the château d'Arenenberg is only a league's distance from Constance, I was seized by a great desire to pay my homage at the feet of fallen majesty and to see what remained of a queen in a woman when fate has torn the crown from her head, the sceptre from her hand and the robes from her shoulders; from that queen, moreover, who was the gracious daughter of Joséphine Beauharnais, sister of Eugène, and the diamond in Napoleon's crown."I had heard so much of her in my youth as a beauteous and good fairy, most gracious and charitable, from the daughters to whom she had given a dowry, the mothers whose children she had redeemed, and the prisoners for whom she had obtained pardon, that I worshipped her. Add to this, the remembrance of the romances which my sister sang about the queen, which were so impressed on my heart by memory that even now, although it istwenty years since I heard these lines and music, I could repeat both without forgetting a word, and I could jot down the music without transposing a note. These romances about a queen are sung by a queen; a combination which can only be seen in theThousand and One Nights,and which has remained in my mind like a glad surprise."[1]

"I had heard so much of her in my youth as a beauteous and good fairy, most gracious and charitable, from the daughters to whom she had given a dowry, the mothers whose children she had redeemed, and the prisoners for whom she had obtained pardon, that I worshipped her. Add to this, the remembrance of the romances which my sister sang about the queen, which were so impressed on my heart by memory that even now, although it istwenty years since I heard these lines and music, I could repeat both without forgetting a word, and I could jot down the music without transposing a note. These romances about a queen are sung by a queen; a combination which can only be seen in theThousand and One Nights,and which has remained in my mind like a glad surprise."[1]

I had no letter of introduction to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu; but I hoped that my name was not entirely unknown to her; I had already written at that timeHenri III., Christine, Antony, Richard Darlington, Charles III.andLa Tour de Nesle.

When I reached Arenenberg, it was too early in the morning to present myself to the queen. I left my card with Madame Parquin, reader to the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, and sister of the noted barrister of that name, and I took advantage of a fine storm which had just risen to go for a sail on the lake. On my return, I found an invitation to dinner awaiting me at the hôtel; then a letter from France had found me out there, an act of cleverness which was a great achievement on the part of the Swiss post: it contained the manuscript ode by Victor Hugo on the death of the King of Rome. I went on foot to the queen's residence and read the letter as I went.

All the details of that gracious hospitality which the queen made me accept for three days can be seen in myImpressions de Voyage.I merely wish to reproduce here a conversation which revealed an odd profession of faith in the present—if it be borne in mind that thepresentof that time corresponded with September 1832—and a singular forecast of the future.

"A WALK IN THE PARK AT ARENENBERG"The queen and I took about a hundred steps in silence. I was the first to interrupt it."'I believe you have something to tell me, Madame la Comtesse?' I asked."'True,' she said, looking at me; 'I wanted to talk to you of Paris. What news was there when you left it?'"'Much bloodshed in the streets, many wounded in the hospitals, too few prisons and too many prisoners.'"'You saw the 5th and 6th of June?'"'Yes, madame.'"'Pardon, I am perhaps going to be inquisitive; but, from some words which you said yesterday, I believe you are a Republican.'"I smiled."'You are not mistaken, madame; and yet, thanks to the sense and to the colour which the papers representing the party to which I belong and am in sympathy with (though not with all its methods) have given to that word, before accepting the qualification which you give me, I will ask your permission to lay bare my principles before you. To any other woman such a profession would be absurd; but you, Madame la Comtesse, as queen, must have heard so many serious speeches, and, as woman, so many frivolous ones, that I shall not hesitate to tell you at what point I join myself to Republican Socialism and where I am at variance with revolutionary Republicanism.'"'You are not, then, agreed among yourselves?'"'We have the same hopes, madame, but the means by which each one of us wishes to act are different. Some talk of chopping off heads and dividing properties; these are ignorant and insane.... You are surprised that I do not employ a stronger term by which to designate them ... it is unnecessary: they are neither afraid nor to be feared; they think themselves strongly in advance and are totally behind the times; they date from 1793 and we are in 1832. Louis-Philippe's government makes a show of being in great fear of them, and would be much vexed if they did not exist; for their theories are the quiver from whence they derive their weapons. These are not Republicans, they are believers in acommonwealth.Others there are who forget that France is the oldest sister among the nations, who do not remember that her past is rich with traditions, and go searching about among the constitutions of Switzerlandand England and America for that one which shall be most applicable to our country. They are dreamers and Utopians: wrapped up in their cabinet theories, they do not perceive in their imaginary applications that the constitution of a people can only last so long; that it is born but of its geographical situation, that it springs from its nationality and that it is in unison with its customs. The result is that as no two people under heaven have the same geographical position or have identical national characteristics and habits, the more perfect a constitution is, the more individual it is and the less, consequently, is it applicable to another locality than that which gave it birth. These people are not any longer Republicans butRepublicists.Others there are who think that an opinion only means a light blue silk coat, a large lappelled waistcoat and a flowing tie and pointed hat: they are the parodists and the brayers. These excite riots, but take good care to keep out of them; they erect barricades and leave others to get killed behind them; they compromise their friends and hide themselves thoroughly as though they themselves were the compromised. These are not Republicans, they areRepubliquets! But there are others, madame, to whom the honour of France is sacred, and not to be touched; to whom a promise is a sacred engagement which they will not suffer to be broken by either king or people; a noble and immense fraternity which extends to every country that is suffering, every nation that is waking up; these have shed their blood in Belgium, Italy and Poland, and returned to be killed or captured at the Cloître Saint-Merry: they, madame, are Puritans and martyrs. A day will come when not only will the captives be released from prisons but when the bodies of the dead will be looked for in order to raise tombstones above them. The only wrong they can be accused of is of having been in advance of their age, and been born thirty years too soon. These, madame, are the true Republicans.'"'I have no need to ask you,' the queen said to me; 'you belong to that party.'"'Alas! madame,' I replied, 'I cannot wholly boast of that honour.... Certainly, all my sympathies are with them; but, instead of letting myself be carried awayby my feelings, I have appealed to my reason; I want to do for politics what Faust did for science: go down and touch the bottom. I was for a year plunged in the depths of the past; I entered it with instinctive opinion, I left it from reasoned-out conviction. I saw that the revolution of 1830 had brought us a step forward, it is true, but that it had simply led us from the aristocratic monarchy to the bourgeois monarchy, and this bourgeois monarchy was an era which must be exhausted before it could arrive at popular magistracy. Henceforth, madame, without doing anything to bring myself nearer to the government from which I had parted company, I have ceased to be an enemy to it; I watch it tranquilly running its period, and I shall probably see the end of it; I applaud what good it does, I protest against the evil; but, at the same time, without either enthusiasm or hatred. I neither accept nor reject it: I submit; I do not look on this as good fortune, but I believe it to be a necessity.'"'But to hear you talk, there will be no chance for it to change.'"'No, Madame ... not for long years at least.'"'Suppose, however, the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, and that he had made an attempt.'"'I believe he would have failed.'"'True, I forgot that, with your Republican opinions, Napoleon must appear to you a tyrant.'"'I beg your pardon, madame, I look at it from another point of view. In my opinion Napoleon was one of those men who were elected from the beginning of time, and have received a providential mission from God. One judges such men not according to their own will-power, which has made them act as they did, but according to the degree of divine wisdom which has inspired them; not according to the work they have done, but according to the result it has produced. When this mission is accomplished, God recalls them, and they believe they are dying, but they really go to render their account.'"'And, according to you, what was the emperor's mission?'"'One of liberty.'"'Do you know that others quite different from me will ask you for proof of your statement?'"'Even to you will I give it.'"Proceed! you have no idea how deeply I am interested in all this!'"'When Napoleon, or, rather, Bonaparte, appeared before our fathers, madame, France was emerging from a revolution, not from a Republic. In one of its fits of political fever it was flung so much in advance of other nations that it had disturbed the world's equilibrium. It needed an Alexander to deal with this Bucephalus, an Androcles with this lion! The 13 Vendémiaire brought them face to face: and the Revolution was beaten. The kings, who should have recognised a brother in the cannon of the rue Saint-Honoré, thought they had an enemy in the dictator of 18 Brumaire; they mistook the Consul of a Republic in him who was already the head of a monarchy, and, insane as they were, instead of keeping him prisoner in a general peace, they made European war upon him. Then Napoleon rallied round him all the youth, courage and intellect of France, and spread them abroad over the world. A reactionist, as far as we were concerned, wherever he passed among other nations he was in a state of advance, and flung the seeds of revolution broadcast: Italy, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Russia herself, turn by turn, called their sons to the sacred harvest; and he, like a tired labourer after his day's work, folded his arms and watched them gathering it in, from the top of his rock at St. Helena. Then it was that he had a revelation of his divine mission, and there dropped from his lips a prophecy of a future Republican Europe.'"'Do you believe, then, that, if the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, he would have continued his father's work?'"'In my opinion, madame, men like Napoleon have neither fathers nor sons: they are born like meteors in the twilight of the dawn, and light up the sky from one horizon to the other as they cross it before they are lost in the twilight of the night.'"'What you are saying is not consoling to those of his family who preserve some hope.'"'It is as I say, madame; for we have only given him a place in our heavens on condition that he did not leave any heir on the earth.'"'But he bequeathed his sword to his son.'"'The gift was fatal, madame, and God broke the bequest.'"'You terrify me, for his son, in turn, bequeathed it to mine.'"'It will be heavy for a simple officer of the Swiss Confederation to bear!'"'Yes, you are right, for the sword is a sceptre.'"'Take care lest you go astray, madame! I am, indeed, afraid that you only live in the deceptive and intoxicating atmosphere which exiles carry away with them; the times which continue to march for the rest of the world seem to stand still to outlaws: they still see men and things as they left them. Yet men's faces change and so do the aspect of things; the generation which saw Napoleon pass as he returned from the isle of Elba is dying out daily, madame, and that miraculous march is already more than a memory: it is a historical fact.'"'So you think it is hopeless for the Napoleon family to return to France?'"'If I were king, I would recall it to-morrow.'"'That is not what I meant.'"'Otherwise, there is very little chance.'"'What advice would you give to a member of that family who should dream of the resurrection of the glory and power of the Napoleons?'"'I would counsel him to wake up.'"'If he persisted in spite of that first advice (which in my opinion is the best), and asked you for a second piece of advice?""'Then, madame, I would tell him to obtain the cancelling of his exile, to buy a plot of ground in France and to make use of the immense popularity of his name to get himself elected a deputy, to try by his talent to win over the majority of the Chamber, and to use it to depose Louis-Philippe and become elected king in his stead.'"'You think,' said the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, with a melancholy smile, 'that all other methods would fail?'"'I am convinced of it.'"The comtesse sighed. At that moment the breakfast bell rang and we took our way back to the château, pensive and silent. The comtesse did not address a single wordto me as we returned, but, when we reached the door, she stopped, and, looking at me with an indefinable expression of anguish, said—"'Oh! I wish my son were here and could have heard what you have been saying!'"

"The queen and I took about a hundred steps in silence. I was the first to interrupt it.

"'I believe you have something to tell me, Madame la Comtesse?' I asked.

"'True,' she said, looking at me; 'I wanted to talk to you of Paris. What news was there when you left it?'

"'Much bloodshed in the streets, many wounded in the hospitals, too few prisons and too many prisoners.'

"'You saw the 5th and 6th of June?'

"'Yes, madame.'

"'Pardon, I am perhaps going to be inquisitive; but, from some words which you said yesterday, I believe you are a Republican.'

"I smiled.

"'You are not mistaken, madame; and yet, thanks to the sense and to the colour which the papers representing the party to which I belong and am in sympathy with (though not with all its methods) have given to that word, before accepting the qualification which you give me, I will ask your permission to lay bare my principles before you. To any other woman such a profession would be absurd; but you, Madame la Comtesse, as queen, must have heard so many serious speeches, and, as woman, so many frivolous ones, that I shall not hesitate to tell you at what point I join myself to Republican Socialism and where I am at variance with revolutionary Republicanism.'

"'You are not, then, agreed among yourselves?'

"'We have the same hopes, madame, but the means by which each one of us wishes to act are different. Some talk of chopping off heads and dividing properties; these are ignorant and insane.... You are surprised that I do not employ a stronger term by which to designate them ... it is unnecessary: they are neither afraid nor to be feared; they think themselves strongly in advance and are totally behind the times; they date from 1793 and we are in 1832. Louis-Philippe's government makes a show of being in great fear of them, and would be much vexed if they did not exist; for their theories are the quiver from whence they derive their weapons. These are not Republicans, they are believers in acommonwealth.Others there are who forget that France is the oldest sister among the nations, who do not remember that her past is rich with traditions, and go searching about among the constitutions of Switzerlandand England and America for that one which shall be most applicable to our country. They are dreamers and Utopians: wrapped up in their cabinet theories, they do not perceive in their imaginary applications that the constitution of a people can only last so long; that it is born but of its geographical situation, that it springs from its nationality and that it is in unison with its customs. The result is that as no two people under heaven have the same geographical position or have identical national characteristics and habits, the more perfect a constitution is, the more individual it is and the less, consequently, is it applicable to another locality than that which gave it birth. These people are not any longer Republicans butRepublicists.Others there are who think that an opinion only means a light blue silk coat, a large lappelled waistcoat and a flowing tie and pointed hat: they are the parodists and the brayers. These excite riots, but take good care to keep out of them; they erect barricades and leave others to get killed behind them; they compromise their friends and hide themselves thoroughly as though they themselves were the compromised. These are not Republicans, they areRepubliquets! But there are others, madame, to whom the honour of France is sacred, and not to be touched; to whom a promise is a sacred engagement which they will not suffer to be broken by either king or people; a noble and immense fraternity which extends to every country that is suffering, every nation that is waking up; these have shed their blood in Belgium, Italy and Poland, and returned to be killed or captured at the Cloître Saint-Merry: they, madame, are Puritans and martyrs. A day will come when not only will the captives be released from prisons but when the bodies of the dead will be looked for in order to raise tombstones above them. The only wrong they can be accused of is of having been in advance of their age, and been born thirty years too soon. These, madame, are the true Republicans.'

"'I have no need to ask you,' the queen said to me; 'you belong to that party.'

"'Alas! madame,' I replied, 'I cannot wholly boast of that honour.... Certainly, all my sympathies are with them; but, instead of letting myself be carried awayby my feelings, I have appealed to my reason; I want to do for politics what Faust did for science: go down and touch the bottom. I was for a year plunged in the depths of the past; I entered it with instinctive opinion, I left it from reasoned-out conviction. I saw that the revolution of 1830 had brought us a step forward, it is true, but that it had simply led us from the aristocratic monarchy to the bourgeois monarchy, and this bourgeois monarchy was an era which must be exhausted before it could arrive at popular magistracy. Henceforth, madame, without doing anything to bring myself nearer to the government from which I had parted company, I have ceased to be an enemy to it; I watch it tranquilly running its period, and I shall probably see the end of it; I applaud what good it does, I protest against the evil; but, at the same time, without either enthusiasm or hatred. I neither accept nor reject it: I submit; I do not look on this as good fortune, but I believe it to be a necessity.'

"'But to hear you talk, there will be no chance for it to change.'

"'No, Madame ... not for long years at least.'

"'Suppose, however, the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, and that he had made an attempt.'

"'I believe he would have failed.'

"'True, I forgot that, with your Republican opinions, Napoleon must appear to you a tyrant.'

"'I beg your pardon, madame, I look at it from another point of view. In my opinion Napoleon was one of those men who were elected from the beginning of time, and have received a providential mission from God. One judges such men not according to their own will-power, which has made them act as they did, but according to the degree of divine wisdom which has inspired them; not according to the work they have done, but according to the result it has produced. When this mission is accomplished, God recalls them, and they believe they are dying, but they really go to render their account.'

"'And, according to you, what was the emperor's mission?'

"'One of liberty.'

"'Do you know that others quite different from me will ask you for proof of your statement?'

"'Even to you will I give it.'

"Proceed! you have no idea how deeply I am interested in all this!'

"'When Napoleon, or, rather, Bonaparte, appeared before our fathers, madame, France was emerging from a revolution, not from a Republic. In one of its fits of political fever it was flung so much in advance of other nations that it had disturbed the world's equilibrium. It needed an Alexander to deal with this Bucephalus, an Androcles with this lion! The 13 Vendémiaire brought them face to face: and the Revolution was beaten. The kings, who should have recognised a brother in the cannon of the rue Saint-Honoré, thought they had an enemy in the dictator of 18 Brumaire; they mistook the Consul of a Republic in him who was already the head of a monarchy, and, insane as they were, instead of keeping him prisoner in a general peace, they made European war upon him. Then Napoleon rallied round him all the youth, courage and intellect of France, and spread them abroad over the world. A reactionist, as far as we were concerned, wherever he passed among other nations he was in a state of advance, and flung the seeds of revolution broadcast: Italy, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Russia herself, turn by turn, called their sons to the sacred harvest; and he, like a tired labourer after his day's work, folded his arms and watched them gathering it in, from the top of his rock at St. Helena. Then it was that he had a revelation of his divine mission, and there dropped from his lips a prophecy of a future Republican Europe.'

"'Do you believe, then, that, if the Duc de Reichstadt had not died, he would have continued his father's work?'

"'In my opinion, madame, men like Napoleon have neither fathers nor sons: they are born like meteors in the twilight of the dawn, and light up the sky from one horizon to the other as they cross it before they are lost in the twilight of the night.'

"'What you are saying is not consoling to those of his family who preserve some hope.'

"'It is as I say, madame; for we have only given him a place in our heavens on condition that he did not leave any heir on the earth.'

"'But he bequeathed his sword to his son.'

"'The gift was fatal, madame, and God broke the bequest.'

"'You terrify me, for his son, in turn, bequeathed it to mine.'

"'It will be heavy for a simple officer of the Swiss Confederation to bear!'

"'Yes, you are right, for the sword is a sceptre.'

"'Take care lest you go astray, madame! I am, indeed, afraid that you only live in the deceptive and intoxicating atmosphere which exiles carry away with them; the times which continue to march for the rest of the world seem to stand still to outlaws: they still see men and things as they left them. Yet men's faces change and so do the aspect of things; the generation which saw Napoleon pass as he returned from the isle of Elba is dying out daily, madame, and that miraculous march is already more than a memory: it is a historical fact.'

"'So you think it is hopeless for the Napoleon family to return to France?'

"'If I were king, I would recall it to-morrow.'

"'That is not what I meant.'

"'Otherwise, there is very little chance.'

"'What advice would you give to a member of that family who should dream of the resurrection of the glory and power of the Napoleons?'

"'I would counsel him to wake up.'

"'If he persisted in spite of that first advice (which in my opinion is the best), and asked you for a second piece of advice?"

"'Then, madame, I would tell him to obtain the cancelling of his exile, to buy a plot of ground in France and to make use of the immense popularity of his name to get himself elected a deputy, to try by his talent to win over the majority of the Chamber, and to use it to depose Louis-Philippe and become elected king in his stead.'

"'You think,' said the Comtesse de Saint-Leu, with a melancholy smile, 'that all other methods would fail?'

"'I am convinced of it.'

"The comtesse sighed. At that moment the breakfast bell rang and we took our way back to the château, pensive and silent. The comtesse did not address a single wordto me as we returned, but, when we reached the door, she stopped, and, looking at me with an indefinable expression of anguish, said—

"'Oh! I wish my son were here and could have heard what you have been saying!'"

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