A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 24

("MEMOIRES D'OUTRE TOMBE." 1851.)

57.

Chateaubriand tells us that when his mother and sisters urged him to marry, he resisted strongly-he thought it too early; he says, with a peculiar navete, "Je ne me sentais aucune qualite de mari: toutes mes illusions etaient vivantes, rien n'etait epuise en moi, l'energie meme de mon existence avait double par mes courses," &c.

So then the "_existence epuise_" is to be kept for the wife! "_la vie usee_"-"_la jeunesse abusee_," is good enough to make a husband!

Chateaubriand, who in many pa.s.sages of his book piques himself on his morality, seems quite unconscious that he has here given utterance to a sentiment the most profoundly immoral, the most fatal to both s.e.xes, that even his immoral age had ever the effrontery to set forth.

58.

"Il parait qu'on n'apprend pas a mourir en tuant les autres."

Nor do we learn to suffer by inflicting pain: nothing so patient as pity.

59.

"Le cynisme des murs ramene dans la societe, en annihilant le sens moral, une sorte de barbares; ces barbares de la civilisation, propres a detruire comme les Goths, n'ont pas la puissance de fonder comme eux; ceux-ci etaient les enormes enfants d'une nature vierge; ceux-la sont les avortons monstrueux d'une nature depravee."

We too often make the vulgar mistake that undisciplined or overgrown pa.s.sions are a sign of strength; they are the signs of immaturity, of "enormous childhood."-And the distinction (above) is well drawn and true. The real savage is that monstrous, malignant, abject thing, generated out of the rottenness and ferment of civilisation. And yet extremes meet: I remember seeing on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Huron some Indians of a distant tribe of Chippawas, who in appearance were just like those fearful abortions of humanity which crawl out of the darkness, filth, and ignorance of our great towns, just so miserable, so stupid, so cruel,-only, perhaps, less _wicked_.

60.

Chateaubriand was always comparing himself with Lord Byron-he hints more than once, that Lord Byron owed some of his inspiration to the perusal of his works-more especially to Renee. In this he was altogether mistaken.

61.

"Une intelligence superieure n'enfante pas le mal sans douleur, parceque ce n'est pas son fruit naturel, et qu'elle ne devait pas le porter."

62.

Madame de Coeslin (whom he describes as an impersonation of aristocratic _morgue_ and all the pretension and prejudices of the _ancien regime_), "lisant dans un journal la mort de plusieurs rois, elle ota ses lunettes et dit en se mouchant, 'Il y a donc une _epizootie sur ces betes a couronne_!"

I once counted among my friends an elderly lady of high rank, who had spent the whole of a long life in intimacy with royal and princely personages. In three different courts she had filled offices of trust and offices of dignity. In referring to her experience she never either moralised or generalised; but her scorn of "ces betes a couronne," was habitually expressed with just such a cool epigrammatic bluntness as that of Madame de Coeslin.

63.

"L'aristocratie a trois ages successifs; l'age des superiorites, l'age des privileges, l'age des vanites; sortie du premier, elle degenere dans le second et s'eteint dans le dernier."

In Germany they are still in the first epoch. In England we seem to have arrived at the second. In France they are verging on the third.

64.

Chateaubriand says of himself:-

"Dans le premier moment d'une offense je la sens a peine; mais elle se grave dans ma memoire; son souvenir au lieu de decroitre, s'augmente avec le temps. Il dort dans mon cur des mois, des annees entieres, puis il se reveille a la moindre circonstance avec une force nouvelle, et ma blessure devient plus vive que le premier jour: mais si je ne pardonne point a mes ennemis je ne leur fais aucun mal; je suis _rancunier_ et ne suis point _vindicatif_."

A very nice and true distinction in point of feeling and character, yet hardly to be expressed in English. We always attach the idea of malignity to the word _rancour_, whereas the French words _rancune_, _rancunier_, express the relentless without the vengeful or malignant spirit.

Such characters make me turn pale, as I have done at sight of a tomb in which an offending wretch had been buried alive. There is in them always something acute and deep and indomitable in the internal and exciting emotion; slow, scrupulous, and timid in the external demonstration.

Cordelia is such a character.

65.

Chateaubriand says of his friend Pelletrie,-"Il n'avait pas precis.e.m.e.nt des vices, mais il etait ronge d'une vermine de pet.i.ts defauts dont on ne pouvait l'epurer." I know such a man; and if he had committed a murder every morning, and a highway robbery every night,-if he had killed his father and eaten him with any possible sauce, he could not be more intolerable, more detestable than he is!

66.

"Un homme nous protege par ce qu'il vaut; une femme par ce que vous valez: voila pourquoi de ces deux empires l'un est si odieux, l'autre si doux."

67.

He says of Madame Roland, "Elle avait du caractere plutot que du genie; le premier peut donner le second, le second ne peut donner le premier."

What does the man mean? this is a mistake surely. What the French call _caractere_ never could give genius, nor genius, _caractere_. _Au reste_, I am not sure that Madame Roland-admirable creature!-had genius; but for talent, and _caractere_-first rate.

68.

"Soyons doux si nous voulons etre regrettes. La hauteur du genie et les qualites superieures ne sont pleurees que des anges."

"Veillons bien sur notre caractere. Songeons que nous pouvons avec un attachement profond n'en pas moins empoisonner des jours que nous racheterions au prix de tout notre sang. Quand nos amis sont descendus dans la tombe, quels moyens avons nous de reparer nos torts? nos inutiles regrets, nos vains repentirs, sont ils un remede aux peines que nous leurs avons faites? Ils auraient mieux aime de nous un sourire pendant leur vie que toutes nos larmes apres leur mort."

69.

"L'amour est si bien la felicite qu'il est poursuivi de la chimere d'etre toujours; il ne veut p.r.o.noncer que des serments irrevocables; au defaut de ses joies, il cherche a eterniser ses douleurs; ange tombe, il parle encore le langage qu'il parlait au sejour incorruptible; son esperance est de ne cesser jamais. Dans sa double nature et dans sa double illusion, ici-bas il pretend se perpetuer par d'immortelles pensees et par des generations intarissables."

70.

Madame d'Houdetot, after the death of Saint Lambert, always before she went to bed used to rap three times with her slipper on the floor, saying,-"Bon soir, mon ami; bon soir, bon soir!"

So then, she thought of her lover as gone _down_-not _up_?

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