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Updated: June 22, 2025
There was much to make a stay in Italy attractive to Madame Récamier, if she could have forgotten Châteaubriand, Her old admirer, the Duc de Laval, was ambassador at Rome, and put his horses and servants at her disposal. The Duchess was a liberal patron of the fine arts, and the devoted friend of Cardinal Gonsalvi, from the shock of whose death she never recovered.
Chateaubriand, Bonald, De Maistre, Lamennais firmly held the dogma of an original golden age and the degradation of man, and denounced the whole trend of progressive thought from Bacon to Condorcet. Along with the discovery of the Middle Ages came the discovery of German literature.
Rousseau seems to me his point of departure, the man who suggested to him by contrast and opposition all his replies and attacks, Rousseau is revolutionary: Chateaubriand therefore writes his "Essay on Revolutions." Rousseau is republican and Protestant; Chateaubriand will be royalist and Catholic.
Chateaubriand will take possession of a new and colossal nature, of the ocean, of America; but he will make his savages speak the language of Louis XIV., he will bow Atala before a Catholic missionary, and sanctify passions born on the banks of the Mississippi by the solemnities of Catholic ceremonial.
One day after, the well-laden wagon drove from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Revolution; in it were three members of the Constituent Assembly, and to have belonged to it was the only crime they were accused of. Near these three sat the aged Malesherbes, with his sister; the Marquis de Chateaubriand, with his wife; the Duchess de Grammont, and Du Chatelet.
Josephine afterwards informed me of the only act of courage which occurred at this period namely, the resignation which M. de Chateaubriand had sent to Bonaparte. She admired his conduct greatly, and said: "What a pity he is not surrounded by men of this description! It would be the means of preventing all the errors into which he is led by the constant approbation of those about him."
He has notions of liberty and independence which will not suit my system. I would rather have him my enemy than my forced friend. At all events, he must wait awhile; I may, perhaps, try him first in a secondary place, and, if he does well, I may advance him." The above is, word for word, what Bonaparte said the first time I conversed with him about M. de Chateaubriand.
M. de Châteaubriand endeavoured to triumph with modesty, and M. de Villèle, not very sensitive to the wounds of personal vanity, treated the issue of the war as a general success of the Cabinet, and prepared to turn it to his own advantage, without considering to whom the principal honour might be due.
Wordsworth, Schiller, Chateaubriand pledge themselves its hierophants for a time! The Wahn of freedom, the eternal illusion, the dream of the human heart! First to France, then to Europe, then to all the earth Freedom!
Harriet Martineau, who for keen analysis and nice discrimination of character has few equals among historians, characterizes him as "the wordy Châteaubriand," and Guizot says of him, "It was his illusion to think himself the equal of the most consummate statesmen, and his soul was filled with bitterness because men would not admit him to be the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton."
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