Chateaubriand's memoirs, V, 4

Paris, October 1821.

At this time, my brother, pursuing his plans, decided to obtain my admission to the Order of Malta. For this it was necessary for me to receive the tonsure: it could be given by Monsieur Cortois de Pressigny, Bishop of Saint-Malo. So I went to my native city where my good mother had settled; she no longer had her children with her; she spent the days in church, the evenings knitting. Her absent-mindedness was unbelievable: I met her in the street one morning, carrying one of her slippers under her arm, by way of a prayer-book. From time to time old friends would penetrate her retreat, and talk about the good old days. When we were alone, she would improvise beautiful stories for me in verse. In one of these stories the devil carried off a chimney along with a heathen, and the poet wrote:

‘The devil in the avenue

Marched so, to and fro,

That they lost sight of it,

In less than an hour or two.’

‘It seems to me, that the devil took his time,’ I said. But Madame de Chateaubriand proved to me that I had understood nothing: she was delightful, my mother.

She had a long ballad about the True story of a wild duck, in the town of Montfort-la-Cane-lez-Saint-Malo. A certain lord had imprisoned a young girl of great beauty in the Château de Montfort, intending to steal her honour. Through a skylight she saw the church of Saint Nicholas; she prayed to the saint, her eyes full of tears, and was miraculously transported beyond the castle walls; but she fell into the hands of the criminal’s servants, who wished to use her as they supposed their master had. The poor and desperate girl, looking for help on every side, saw only some wild ducks on the château’s lake. Renewing her prayers to Saint Nicholas, she begged him to allow these creatures to testify to her innocence, so that if she should lose her life, and could not accomplish the vows she had made to Saint Nicholas, the birds might fulfil them in their own way, in her name and on her behalf.

The girl died within a year: behold, at the translation of the bones of Saint Nicholas, on the 9th of May, a wild duck accompanied by her little ducklings came to the church of Saint Nicholas. She entered and flapped about in front of the image of the blessed Redeemer, applauding Him by beating her wings; after which she returned to the lake, having left behind one of her little ones as an offering. Some time later, the duckling returned to her without anyone noticing. For two centuries or more afterwards, the duck, always the same duck, returned, on the appointed day, with her brood, to the church of the great Saint-Nicholas at Montfort. The story was written down and printed in 1652; the author justly remarking: ‘that it was an inconsiderable thing in the sight of God, only a feeble wild duck; nevertheless she played her part in order to render homage to his grandeur; Saint Francis’ cicada was even less esteemed, and yet its humming delighted the heart of a Seraphim.’ But Madame de Chateaubriand followed a suspect tradition: in her ballad, the girl imprisoned at Montfort was a princess, who was changed into a duck, to escape her assailant’s violence. I can only remember one couplet of the verses from my mother’s ballad:

‘Duck the beautiful has come,

Duck the beautiful has come,

And flown, through the gate,

Off to a lentil-filled lake.’