Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time Part 13

DE CHaTEAUBRIAND.

THE VISCOUNT DE CHaTEAUBRIAND TO M. GUIZOT.

_Val-de-Loup, May 30th, 1809._

Sir,

Far from troubling me, you have given me the greatest pleasure in doing me the favour to communicate your ideas. This time I shall condemn the introduction of the marvellous in a Christian subject, and am willing to believe with you, that it will never be adopted in France. But I cannot admit that 'The Martyrs' are founded on a heresy. The question is not of a _redemption_, which would be absurd, but of an _expiation_, which is entirely consistent with faith. In all ages, the Church has held that the blood of a martyr could efface the sins of the people, and deliver them from their penalties. Undoubtedly you know, better than I do, that formerly, in times of war and calamity, a monk was confined in a tower or a cell, where he fasted and prayed for the salvation of all. I have not left my intention in doubt, for in the third Book I have caused it to be positively declared to the Eternal that Eudore will draw the blessings of Heaven upon the Christians through the merits of the blood of the Saviour. This, as you see, is precisely the orthodox phrase, and the exact lesson of the catechism. The doctrine of expiation, so consolatory in other respects, and consecrated by antiquity, has been acknowledged in our religion: its mission from Christ has not destroyed it. And I may observe, incidentally, that I hope the sacrifice of some innocent victim, condemned in the Revolution, will obtain from Heaven the pardon of our guilty country. Those whom we have slaughtered are, perhaps, praying for us at this very moment. Surely you cannot wish to renounce this sublime hope, which springs from the tears and blood of Christians.

In conclusion, the frankness and sincerity of your conduct make me forget for a moment the baseness of the present age. What can we think of a time when an honest man is told, "You will p.r.o.nounce on such a work, such an opinion; you will praise or blame it, not according to your conscience, but according to the spirit of the journal in which you write"! We are too happy to find critics like you, who stand up against such conventional baseness, and preserve the tradition of honour for human nature. As a conclusive estimate, if you carefully examine 'The Martyrs,' undoubtedly you will find much to reprehend; but taking all points into consideration, you will see that in plan, characters, and style, it is the best and least defective of my feeble writings.

I have a nephew in Russia, named Moreau, the grandson of a sister of my mother; I am scarcely acquainted with him, but I believe him to be an honourable man. His father, who was also in Russia, returned to France about a year ago. I have been delighted with the opportunity which has procured for me the honour of becoming acquainted with Mademoiselle de Meulan; she has appeared to me, as in all that she writes, full of mind, good taste, and sense. I much fear that I inconvenienced her by the length of my visit; I have the fault of remaining wherever I find amiable acquaintances, and especially when I meet exalted characters and n.o.ble sentiments.

I repeat most sincerely the a.s.surance of my high esteem, grat.i.tude, and devotion. I look forward with impatience to the moment when I can either receive you in my hermitage, or visit you in your solitude.

Accept, I pray you, my sincerest compliments.

DE CHaTEAUBRIAND.

THE VISCOUNT DE CHaTEAUBRIAND TO M. GUIZOT.

_Val-de-Loup, June 12th, 1809._

Sir,

I happened to be absent from my valley for several days, which has prevented me from replying sooner to your letters. Behold me thoroughly convinced of heresy. I admit that the word _redeemed_ escaped me inadvertently, and in truth contrary to my intention. But there it is, and I shall efface it from the next edition.

I have read your first two articles, and repeat my thanks for them. They are excellent, and you praise me far beyond what I deserve. What has been said with respect to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is quite correct. The description could only have been given by one who knows the localities. But the Holy Sepulchre itself might easily have escaped the fire without a special miracle. It forms, in the middle of the circular nave of the church, a kind of catafalque of white marble: the cupola of cedar, in falling, might have crushed it, but could not have set it on fire. It is nevertheless a very extraordinary circ.u.mstance, and one worthy of much longer details than can be confined within the limits of a letter.

I wish much that I could relate these particulars to you, personally, in your retirement. Unfortunately, Madame de Chateaubriand is ill, and I cannot leave her. But I do not give up the idea of paying you a visit, nor of receiving you here in my hermitage. Honourable men ought, particularly at present, to unite for mutual consolation. Generous ideas and exalted sentiments become every day so rare that we ought to be too happy when we encounter them. I should be delighted if my society could prove agreeable to you, as also to M. Stapfer, to whom I beg you will convey my warmest thanks.

Accept once more, I pray you, the a.s.surance of my high consideration and sincere devotion, and if you will permit me to add, of a friends.h.i.+p which is commenced under the auspices of frankness and honour.

DE CHaTEAUBRIAND.

The best description of Jerusalem is that of Danville; but his little treatise is very scarce. In general, all travellers are very exact as to Palestine; there is a letter in the 'Lettres edifiantes' ('Missions to the Levant'), which leaves nothing to be desired. With regard to M. de Volney, he is valuable on the government of the Turks, but it is evident that he has not been at Jerusalem. It is probable that he never went beyond Ramleh or Rama, the ancient Arimathea. You may also consult the 'Theatrum Terrae Sanctae' of Adrichomius.

No. II.

COUNT DE LALLY-TOLENDAL TO M. GUIZOT.

_Brussels, April 27th, 1811._

Sir,

You will be unable to account for my silence, as I found it difficult to understand the tardy arrival of the prospectuses you had promised me in your letter of the fourth of this month. I must explain to you that the porter here had confounded that packet with the files of unimportant printed papers addressed to a Prefecture, and if the want of a book had not induced me to visit the private study of the Prefect, I should perhaps have not yet discovered the mistake. I thank you for the confidence with which you have treated me on this occasion. You are aware that no one renders you more than I do, the full justice to which you are ent.i.tled, and you also know that I accord it equally from inclination and conviction. My generation has pa.s.sed away, yours is in full action, and a third is on the point of rising. I see you placed between two, to console the first, to do honour to the second, and to form the third. Endeavour to make the last like yourself; by which I do not mean that I wish all the little boys to know as much as you do, or all the little girls to resemble in everything, your more than amiable partner. We must not desire what we cannot obtain, and I should too much regret my own decline if such an attractive age were about to commence.

But restrain my idea within its due limits, and dictate like Solon the best laws which the infancy of the nineteenth century can bear or receive; this will abundantly suffice. Today the _mox progeniem daturos vitiosiorem_ would make one's hair stand on end.

Madame de la Tour du Pin, a Baroness of the Empire for two years, a Prefectess of the Dyle for three, and a religious mother for twenty, will recommend your journal with all the influence of her two first t.i.tles, and subscribes to it with all the interest that the last can inspire. I, who have no other pretension, and desire no other, than that of a father and a friend, request your permission to subscribe for my daughter, who, commencing the double education of a little Arnaud and a little Leontine, will be delighted to profit by your double instruction.

I believe also that the grandfather himself will often obtain knowledge, and always pleasure, from the same source. It seems to me that no a.s.sociation could be more propitious to the union of the _utile dulci_.

If I were to allow free scope to my pen, I feel a.s.sured that I should write thus like a madman to one of the two authors: "Not being able to make myself once more young, to adore your merits, I become an old infant, to receive your lessons. I kiss from a distance the hand of my youthful nurse, with the most profound respect, but not sufficiently abstracted from some of those emotions which have followed my first childhood, and which my second education ought to correct. Is it possible to submit to your rod with more ingenuousness? At least I confess my faults. As I am bound to speak the truth, I dare not yet add, _this can never happen to me again_. But the strong resolution will come with weak age; and the more I can transform myself, the nearer I shall approach perfection."

Will you be so kind as to present my respects to Madame and Mademoiselle de Meulan. Have you not a very excellent and amiable young man (another of the few who are consoled by elevation and purity of mind), the nephew of M. Hocher, residing under the same roof with yourself? If so, I beg you to recall me to his remembrance, and through him to that of his uncle, from whom I expect, with much anxiety, an answer upon a matter of the greatest interest to the uncle of my son-in-law, in the installation of the Imperial Courts. But nothing has arrived by the post.

I shall say nothing to you of our good and estimable friends of the Place Louis Quinze, for I am going to write to them directly.

But it has just occurred to me to entreat a favour of you before I close my letter. When, in your precepts to youth, you arrive at the chapter and age which treats of the choice of a profession, I implore you to insert something to this effect: "If your vocation leads you to be a publisher or editor of any work, moral, political, or historical, it matters not which, do not consider yourself at liberty to mutilate an author without his previous knowledge, and above all, one who is tenacious of the inviolability of his text more from conscience than self-love. If you mutilate him on your own responsibility, which is tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted to subst.i.tute a fict.i.tious member of your own construction for the living one you have lopped off; and be cautious lest, without being aware of it, you replace an arm of flesh by a wooden leg. But break up all your presses rather than make him say, under the seal of his own signature, the contrary of what he has written, thought, or felt. To do this is an offence almost amounting to a moral crime." I write more at length on this topic to my friends of the Place Louis Quinze, and I beg you to speak to none but them of my enigma, which a.s.suredly you have already solved; I hope that what has now offended and vexed me will not happen again. In saying what was necessary, I used very guarded expressions. I do not wish a rupture, the vengeance of which might fall on cherished memories or living friends. My letter has taken a very serious turn; I little thought, when I began, that it would lead me to this conclusion. I feel that I am in conversation with you, and carried away by full confidence. It is most gratifying to me to have added an involuntary proof of this sentiment to the spontaneous expression of all those with which you have so deeply inspired me, and the a.s.surance of which I have the honour to repeat, accompanied by my sincere salutations.

LALLY-TOLENDAL.

P.S. Allow me to enclose the addresses for the two subscriptions.

No. III.

_Discourse delivered by M. GUIZOT, on the opening of his first Course of Lectures on Modern History. December 11th, 1812._

A statesman equally celebrated for his character and misfortunes, Sir Walter Raleigh, had published the first part of a 'History of the World;' while confined in the Tower, he employed himself in finis.h.i.+ng the second. A quarrel arose in one of the courts of the prison; he looked on attentively at the contest, which became sanguinary, and left the window with his imagination strongly impressed by the scene that had pa.s.sed under his eyes. On the morrow a friend came to visit him, and related what had occurred. But great was his surprise when this friend, who had been present at and even engaged in the occurrence of the preceding day, proved to him that this event, in its result as well as in its particulars, was precisely the contrary of what he had believed he saw. Raleigh, when left alone, took up his ma.n.u.script and threw it in the fire; convinced that, as he had been so completely deceived with respect to the details of an incident he had actually witnessed, he could know nothing whatever of those he had just described with his pen.

Are we better informed or more fortunate than Sir Walter Raleigh? The most confident historian would hesitate to answer this question directly in the affirmative. History relates a long series of events, and depicts a vast number of characters; and let us recollect, gentlemen, the difficulty of thoroughly understanding a single character or a solitary event. Montaigne, after having pa.s.sed his life in self-study, was continually making new discoveries on his own nature; he has filled a long work with them, and ends by saying, "Man is a subject so diversified, so uncertain and vain, that it is difficult to p.r.o.nounce any fixed and uniform opinion on him." He is, in fact, an obscure compound of an infinity of ideas and sentiments, which change and modify themselves reciprocally, and of which it is as difficult to disentangle the sources as to foresee the results. An uncertain produce of a multiplicity of circ.u.mstances, sometimes impenetrable, always complicated, often unknown to the person influenced by them, and not even suspected by those who surround him, man scarcely learns how to know himself, and is never more than guessed at by others. The simplest mind, if it attempted to examine and describe itself, would impart to us a thousand secrets, of which we have not the most remote suspicion. And how many different men are comprised in an event! how many whose characters have influenced that event, and have modified its nature, progress, and effects! Bring together circ.u.mstances in perfect accordance; suppose situations exactly similar: let a single actor change, and all is changed. He is urged by fresh motives, and desires new objects. Take the same actors, and alter but one of those circ.u.mstances independent of human will, which are called chance or destiny; and all is changed again. It is from this infinity of details, where everything is obscure, and nothing isolated, that history is composed; and man, proud of what he knows, because he forgets to think of how much he is ignorant, believes that he has acquired a full knowledge of history when he has read what some few have told him, who had no better means of understanding the times in which they lived, than we possess of justly estimating our own.

What then are we to seek and find in the darkness of the past, which thickens as it recedes from us? If Caesar, Sall.u.s.t, or Tacitus have only been able to transmit doubtful and imperfect notions, can we rely on what they relate? And if we are not to trust them, how are we to supply ourselves with information? Shall we be capable of disembarra.s.sing our minds of those ideas and manners, and of that new existence, which a new order of things has produced, to adopt momentarily in our thoughts other manners and ideas, and a different character of being? Must we learn to become Greeks, Romans, or Barbarians, in order to understand these Romans, Barbarians, or Greeks, before we venture to judge them? And even if we could attain this difficult abnegation of an actual and imperious reality, should we become then as well acquainted with the history of the times of which they tell us, as were Caesar, Sall.u.s.t, or Tacitus?

After being thus transported to the midst of the world they describe, we should find gaps in their delineations, of which we have at present no conception, and of which they were not always sensible themselves. That multiplicity of facts which, grouped together and viewed from a distance, appear to fill time and s.p.a.ce, would present to us, if we found ourselves placed on the ground they occupy, as voids which we should find it impossible to fill up, and which the historians leave there designedly, because he who relates or describes what he sees, to others who see equally with himself, never feels called upon to recapitulate all that he knows.

Let us therefore refrain from supposing that history can present to us, in reality, an exact picture of the past; the world is too extensive, the night of time too obscure, and man too weak for such a portrait to be ever a complete reflection.

But can it be true that such important knowledge is entirely interdicted to us?--that in what we can acquire, all is a subject of doubt and error? Does the mind only enlighten itself to increase its wavering?

Does it develope all its strength, merely to end in a confession of ignorance?--a painful and disheartening idea, which many men of superior intellect have encountered in their course, but by which they ought never to have been impeded!

Man seldom asks himself what he really requires to know, in his ardent pursuit of knowledge; he need only cast a glance upon his studies, to discover two divisions, the difference between which is striking, although we may be unable to a.s.sign the boundaries that separate them.

Everywhere we perceive a certain innocent but futile labour, which attaches itself to questions and inquiries equally inaccessible and without results--which has no other object than to satisfy the restless curiosity of minds, the first want of which is occupation; and everywhere, also, we observe useful, productive, and interesting inquiry, not only advantageous to those who indulge in it, but beneficial to human nature at large. What time and talent have men wasted in metaphysical lucubrations! They have sought to penetrate the internal nature of things, of the mind, and of matter; they have taken purely vague combinations of words for substantial realities; but these very researches, or others which have arisen out of them, have enlightened us upon the order of our faculties, the laws by which they are governed, and the progress of their development; we have acquired from thence a history, a statistic of the human mind; and if no one has been able to tell us what it is, we have at least learned how it acts, and how we ought to act to strengthen its justice and extend its range.

Was not the study of astronomy for a long time directed to the dreams of astrology? Ga.s.sendi himself began to investigate it with that view; and when science cured him of the prejudices of superst.i.tion, he repented that he so openly declared his conversion, because, he said, many persons formerly studied astronomy to become astrologers, and he now perceived that they ceased to learn astronomy, since he had condemned astrology. Who then can prove to us that, without the restlessness of antic.i.p.ation which had led men to seek the future in the stars, the science, by which today our s.h.i.+ps are directed, would ever have reached its present perfection?

It is thus that we shall ever find, in the labours of man, one half fruitless, by the side of another moiety profitable; we shall then no longer condemn the curiosity which leads to knowledge; we shall acknowledge that, if the human mind often wanders in its path, if it has not always selected the most direct road, it has finally arrived, by the necessity of its nature, at the discovery of important truths; but, with progressive enlightenment, we shall endeavour not to lose time, to go straight to the end by concentrating our strength on fruitful inquiries and profitable results; and we shall soon convince ourselves that what man cannot do is valueless, and that he can achieve all that is necessary.

The application of this idea to history will soon remove the difficulty which its uncertainty raised at the outset. For example, it is of little consequence to us to know the exact personal appearance or the precise day of the birth of Constantine; to ascertain what particular motives or individual feelings may have influenced his determination or conduct on any given occasion; to be acquainted with all the details of his wars and victories in the struggles with Maxentius or Licinius: these minor points concern the monarch alone; and the monarch exists no longer. The anxiety some scholars display in hunting them out is merely a consequence of the interest which attaches to great names and important reminiscences. But the results of the conversion of Constantine, his administrative system, the political and religious principles which he established in his empire,--these are the matters which it imports the present generation to investigate; for they do not expire with a particular age, they form the destiny and glory of nations, they confer or take away the use of the most n.o.ble faculties of man; they either plunge them silently into a state of misery alternately submissive and rebellious, or establish for them the foundation of a lasting happiness.

It may be said, to a certain extent, that there are two pasts, the one entirely extinct and without real interest, because its influence has not extended beyond its actual duration; the other enduring for ever by the empire it has exercised over succeeding ages, and by that alone preserved to our knowledge, since what remains of it is there to enlighten us upon what has perished. History presents us, at every epoch, with some predominant ideas, some great events which have decided the fortune and character of a long series of generations. These ideas and events have left monuments which still remain, or which long remained, on the face of the world; an extended trace, in perpetuating the memory and effect of their existence, has multiplied the materials suitable for our guidance in the researches of which they are the object; reason itself can here supply us with its positive data to conduct us through the uncertain labyrinth of facts. In a past event there may have been some particular circ.u.mstance at present unknown, which would completely alter the idea we have formed of it. Thus, we shall never discover the reason which delayed Hannibal at Capua, and saved Rome; but in an effect which has endured for a long time, we easily ascertain the nature of its cause. The despotic authority which the Roman Senate exercised for ages over the people, explains to us the ideas of liberty within which the Senators restricted themselves when they expelled their kings. Let us then follow the path in which we can have reason for our guide; let us apply the principles, with which she furnishes us, to the examples borrowed from history. Man, in the ignorance and weakness to which the narrow limits of his life and faculties condemn him, has received reason to supply knowledge, as industry is given to him in place of strength.