The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
Chapter 243 : (259) On duty.(260) Minister for foreign affairs.(261) "We have better news. I ca

(259) On duty.

(260) Minister for foreign affairs.

(261) "We have better news. I can enter into no detail; but be calm, and love him who loves you alone.

(262) Country estate.

(263) "My dearest--All is lost! I cannot enter into details--pray, set out the sooner the better. Yours in life and death, A. d'A."

(264) A large travelling-coach.-ED.

(265) Le Bourget was the scene of some desperate fighting during the siege of Paris in 1870. It was surprised and captured from the Prussians before daybreak of October 28, by a French force commanded by General de Bellemare, but, after a gallant defence of two days, it was retaken by the Prussians. December 21, an attempt was made by the French to recapture Le Bourget, but without success.-ED.

(266) Monday, the 20th, it should be-ED.

(267) The son of Philippe Egalit?, afterwards King Louis Philippe.-ED.

(268) Brother of Louis XVIII., whom he succeeded under the t.i.tle of Charles X.-ED.

(269) Should be Tuesday-ED.

(270) "Right of the strongest."

(271) Fran?ois Ren? de Ch?teaubriand was born at Saint Malo in 1768 He visited the United States in 1789, and found, in the pathless forests of the new world, the scenery which he describes, with poetic fervour, in the pages of "Atala." The news of the king's flight to Varennes brought him back to Europe.

He married (1792) 'Mlle. de la Vigne-Buisson, joined the emigrant army which marched with Brunswick to conquer France, got wounded at Thionville, and retired to England. After the appointment of Bonaparte to the office of first Consul, Ch?teaubriand returned to France, and published his heroic- sentimental romance of "Atala." Its success with the public was great, and it was followed by "The Genius of Christianity," and other works. Under the restored Bourbons, Ch?teaubriand filled high diplomatic posts. This most sentimental of men of genius died in July, 1848.-ED.

(272) This occurred in the year 1811.-ED.

Page 334 SECTION 25 (1815)

AT BRUSSELS: WATERLOO: REJOINS M. D'ARBLAY.

SOJOURN AT BRUSSELS.

Arrived at Brussels, we drove immediately to the house in which dwelt Madame la Comtesse de Maurville. That excellent person had lived many years in England an emigrant, and there earned a scanty maintenance by keeping a French school. She had now retired upon a very moderate pension, but was surrounded by intimate friends, who only suffered her to lodge at her own home.

She received us in great dismay, fearing to lose her little all by these changes of government. I was quite ill on my arrival: excessive fatigue, affright, and watchfulness overwhelmed me.

At Brussels all was quiet and tame. The Belgians had lost their original antipathy to Bonaparte, without having yet had time to acquire any warmth of interest for the Bourbons. Natively phlegmatic, they demand great causes or strong incitement to rouse them from that sort of pa.s.siveness that is the offspring of philosophy and timidity- philosophy, that teaches them to prize 'the blessings of safety ; and timidity, that points out the dangers of enterprise. In all I had to do with them I found them universally worthy, rational, and kind-hearted ; but Slow, sleepy, and uninteresting,

in the sickroom to which I was immediately consigned, I met with every sort of kindness from Madame de Maurville, whom I had known intimately at Paris, and who had known and

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appreciated my beloved, exemplary sister Phillips in London.

Madame de Maurville was a woman that the Scotch would call long-headed; she was sagacious, penetrating, and gifted with strong humour. She saw readily the vices and follies of mankind, and laughed at them heartily, without troubling herself to grieve at them. She was good herself, alike in heart and in conduct, and zealous to serve and oblige ; but with a turn to satire that made the defects of her neighbours rather afford her amus.e.m.e.nt than concern.

I was visited here by the highly accomplished Madame de la: Tour du Pin, wife to the favourite nephew of Madame d'Henin; a woman of as much courage as elegance, and who had met danger, toil, and difficulty in the Revolution with as much spirit, and nearly as much grace, as she had displayed in meeting universal admiration and homage at the court of Marie-Antoinette, of which she was one of the most brilliant latter ornaments. Her husband was at this time one of the French ministers at the Congress at Vienna; whence, as she learned a few days after my arrival at Brussels, he had been sent on an emba.s.sy of the deepest importance and risk, to La Vend?e or Bordeaux. She bore the term of that suspense with an heroism that I greatly admired, for I well knew she adored her husband. M. la Tour du Pin had been a prefect of Brussels under Bonaparte, though never in favour, his internal loyalty to the Bourbons being well known. But Bonaparte loved to attach great names and great characters to his government, conscious of their weight both at home and abroad, and he trusted in the address of that mental diving-machine, his secret police, for warding off any hazard he might run, from employing the adherents of his enemies. His greatly capacious, yet only half-formed mind, could have parried, as well as braved, every danger and all opposition, had not his inordinate ambition held him as arbitrarily under control as he himself held under control every other pa.s.sion.

Madame de Maurville soon found us a house, of which we took all but the ground floor: the entresol was mine, the first floor was Madame d'Henin's, and that above it was for M. de Lally. It was near the cathedral, and still in a prolongation of Madame de Maurville's street, la Rue de la Montagne.

Nothing was known at Brussels, nothing at all, of the fate Of the body-guard, or of the final destination of Louis XVIII. How circ.u.mstances of such moment, nay, notoriety, could be kept from public knowledge, I can form no idea; but neither Page 336

in the private houses of persons of the first rank, in which, through Madame d'Henin, I visited, nor in any of the shops nor by any other sort of intercourse, either usual or accidental, could I gather any intelligence.

Madame la d.u.c.h.esse de Duras, ci-devant Mademoiselle Kersaint, who had visited me in Paris, and who was now in hasty emigration at Brussels, with her youngest daughter, Mademoiselle Clara de Duras, seemed sincerely moved by my distress, and wrote to various of her friends, who were emigrating within her reach, to make inquiry for me. I visited her in a shabby hotel, where I found her without suite or equipage, but in perfect tranquillity at their loss, and not alone unmurmuring, but nearly indifferent to her privations; while Mademoiselle Clara ran up and down stairs on her mother's messages, and even brought in wood for the stove, with an alacrity and cheerfulness that seemed almost to enjoy the change to hards.h.i.+ps from grandeur. Indeed, to very young people, such reverses, for a certain time, appear as a frolic. Novelty, mere novelty, during the first youth, can scarcely be bought too dear.

>From M. de la Feronaye, Madame de Duras procured me intelligence that the body-guard had been dispersed and disbanded by the Duc de Berry, on the frontiers of La Belgique they were left at liberty to remain in France, or to seek other asylums, as his majesty Louis XVIII. could not enter the kingdom of Holland with a military guard of his own. This news left me utterly in the dark which way to look for hope or information. Madame de Duras, however, said she expected soon to see the Duc de Richelieu, whose tidings might be more precise.

LETTERS FROM GENERAL D'ARBLAY.

Ten wretched days pa.s.sed on in this ignorance, from the 19th to the 29th of March, 1815, when Madame de Maurville flew into my apartment, with all the celerity of fifteen, and all the ardour of twenty years of age, to put into my hands a letter from General d'Arblay, addressed to herself, to inquire whether she had any tidings to give him of my existence, and whether I had been heard of at Brussels, or was known to have travelled to Bordeaux, as Madame d'Henin, cousin to Madame de Maurville, had been uncertain, when M. d'Arblay left me in Paris, to which of those cities she should go.

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The joy of that moment, Oh! the joy of that Moment that showed me again the handwriting that demonstrated the life and safety of all to which my earthly happiness clung, can never be expressed, and only by our meeting, when at last it took place, could be equalled. It was dated "Ypres, 27 Mars." I wrote directly thither, proposing to join him, if ", there were any impediment to his coming on to Brussels. I had already written, at hazard, to almost every town in the Netherlands. The very next day, another letter from the same kind hand arrived to Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Hurste. This was succeeded by news that the king, Louis XVIII., had been followed to Gand by his body-guard.

Thither, also, I expedited a letter, under cover to the Duc de Luxembourg, capitaine of the company to which M. d'Arblay belonged.

I lived now in a hurry of delight that scarcely allowed me breathing-time, a delight that made me forget all my losses, my misfortunes-my papers, keepsakes, valuables of various sorts, with our goods, clothes, money-bonds, and endless et ceteras, left, as I had reason to fear, to seizure and confiscation upon the entry of the emperor into Paris-all, all was light, was nothing in the scale ; and I wrote to my Alexander, and my dearest friends, to rejoice in my joy, and that they had escaped my alarm.

Next day, and again the next, came a letter from M. d'Arblay himself. The first was from Ypres, the second was from Bruges, and brought by the post, as my beloved correspondent had been a.s.sured of my arrival at Brussels by the Duc de Luxembourg, at Ghistelle, near Ostend, which M. d'Arblay was slowly approaching on horseback, when he met the carriage of Louis XVIII., as it stopped for a relay of horses, and the duke, espying him, descended from the second carriage of the king's suite, to fly to and embrace him, with that lively friends.h.i.+p he has ever manifested towards him. Thence they agreed that the plan of embarkation should be renounced, and, instead of Ostend M.

d'Arblay turned his horse's head towards Gand, where he had a rendezvous with the duke.

There he remained, to renew the offer of his services to his king, and there he was most peculiarly distinguished by M. le Duc de Feltre (General Clarke), who was still occupying the Post a.s.signed him on the restoration of Louis XVIII. of ministre de la guerre.(273)

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Relieved now--or rather blest--I was no longer deaf to the kindness of those who sought to enliven my exile ; I not only visited Madame la d.u.c.h.esse de Duras, but also cultivated an intercourse with the charming Madame de la Tour du Pin whom I was the more glad to find delightful from her being of English origin; a Mademoiselle Dillon, Whose family was transplanted into France under James II., and who was descended from a n.o.bleman whose eminent accomplishments she inherited with his blood; the famous Lord Falkland, on whose tomb in Westminster Abbey is carved

"Here lies the friend of Sir Philip Sidney."

Her sister, Miss f.a.n.n.y Dillon, had been married by Bonaparte to General Bertrand; and thus, while one of them' was an emigrant following the fortunes of the Bourbons, the other was soon after destined to accompany Bonaparte himself into exile. Le Colonel de Beaufort, also, a warm, early friend of General d'Arblay, belonging to the garrison of Metz or of Toul, I forget which, had married a lady of great wealth in La Belgique; a woman rather unhappy in her person, but possessed of a generous and feeling heart : and this she instantly demonstrated by seeking and cultivating an acquaintance with the wandering wife of her husband's early camarade. I found her so amiable, and so soothing in her commiseration during my distress, that I warmly returned the partiality she showed me.

ARRIVAL OF GENERAL D'ARBLAY.

Four days pa.s.sed thus serenely, when, on that which completed a fortnight's absence from my best friend, the Duc de Duras came to convoy his wife to Gand, where he was himself in waiting upon Louis XVIII., and shortly afterwards M. de Ch?teaubriand was made a privy counsellor and settled there also. And within a day or two after this my door was opened by General d'Arblay! Oh, how sweet was this meeting ! this blessed reunion!-- how perfect, how exquisite!

Here I must be silent.

General d'Arblay was only with me by the permission of the Duc de Luxembourg, and liable to receive orders daily to return to Gand ; for I found to my speechless dismay, yet resistless approbation, that General d'Arblay had made a

Page 339 decision as n.o.ble as it was dangerous, to refuse no call, to abstain from no effort, that might bring into movement his loyalty to his king and his cause, at this moment of calamity to both. Yet such was the hara.s.sed, or rather broken state of his health, that his mental strength and unconquerable courage alone preserved the poor shattered frame from sinking into languor and inertion.

About this time I saw the entry of the new king, William Frederick, of the new kingdom of the Netherlands.(274) Tapestry, or branches of trees, were hung out at all the windows, or, in their failure, dirty carpets, old coats and cloaks, and even mats-a motley display of proud parade or vulgar poverty, that always, to me, made processions on the continent appear burlesque.