XXXVI, 11

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Chateaubriand's memoirs

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XXXVII, 1

Baptiste had scarcely left my room when Schwartz appeared waving a large letter with a large wax seal in the air, and shouting: ‘Foilà le bermis.’ (Here’s the permit.) I leapt on the despatch, and tore open the envelope; it contained the permit and a note from Monsieur de Blacas with the Governor’s letter. Here is the letter from Count Choteck:

‘Prague, 23rd May 1833.

Monsieur le Vicomte,

I am sorry that on your entry to Bohemia you have experienced problems and delays in your journey. But there are strict orders in existence at our borders regarding all travellers from France, orders that you yourself will find quite normal in the current circumstances, and I can only approve the conduct of the customs chief at Haselbach. Despite the extent of your celebrity in Europe, you must excuse this employee who had not the honour to know you personally, the more so as your passport was only stamped for Lombardy and not for all of the Austrian States. As for your plan to travel to Vienna, I have written today to Prince Metternich, and will hasten to communicate his response to you when you arrive in Prague.

I have the honour to enclose a reply from Monsieur le Duc de Blacas, and I beg you if you will to receive the assurances of the deepest consideration with which I have the honour to be, etc.

COUNT CHOTECK.’

This reply was polite and fitting; the Governor could not criticise the junior officer who after all had only been doing his duty. I had myself in Paris foreseen the trouble my old passport might cause. As for Vienna, I had spoken with a political objective, in order to reassure Count Choteck and show him I was not seeking to evade Prince Metternich.

At eight in the evening, on the 23rd of May, I entered my carriage. Who would believe it? It was with a degree of regret that I left Waldmünchen! I was already accustomed to my hosts; my hosts had grown accustomed to me. I knew all the faces at the windows and doors; when I went out they welcomed me with a kindly air. The neighbourhood turned out to watch my calash depart, which was as dilapidated as the monarchy of Hugh Capet. The men doffed their caps; the women made me little signs of congratulation. My adventure was the subject of village conversation; everyone took my part: the Bavarians and the Austrians detest each other; the former were proud to allow me through.

Several times, I had noticed a young Waldmünchen girl, with a face like that of a virgin painted in Raphael’s early manner, at the door of her cottage; her father, with the bearing of an honest farmer, saluted me brushing the ground with his wide-brimmed felt hat, and gave me good day in German which I cordially returned in French: standing behind him, his daughter would blush while gazing at me over the old man’s shoulder. I found my virgin once more, but she was alone. I waved adieu; she remained motionless; she seemed astonished; I wished to believe that her thoughts were full of some vague regret: I left her behind like some wild flower, seen beside a ditch at the side of the road, which perfumes the journey. I drove through Eumaeus’ herds; he bared his head grown grey in the service of the sheep. He had completed his journey; he had returned to sleep among his ewes, while Ulysses departed to continue his wanderings.

Before I received the permit I had said: ‘If I obtain it, I will confound my persecutor.’ Arriving in Haselbach, it so happened that like Perrin Dandin my wretched kindliness intervened; I had not the heart to triumph over him. Like a true coward I huddled in a corner of the carriage while Schwartz presented the Governor’s permit; I would have suffered too much from the customs man’s confusion. He, for his part, did not show himself, and even failed to have my wallet searched. May peace be with him! May he forgive me the abuse I gave him, yet because of a residual rancour I will not erase him from my Memoirs.

Leaving Bavaria by this border-post, a vast dark pine forest serves as the gateway to Bohemia. Mists strayed along the valleys, the light faded, and the western sky was the colour of peach blossom; the horizon almost touched the earth. Light fails at that latitude, and, with the light, life itself; all is dull, chilly, and pallid; winter seems to charge summer with guarding the frost until he returns. A little slice of glowing moon gave me pleasure; all was not lost, since I had found a face I knew. She had an air of saying to me: ‘What! You again! Remember how I’ve gazed on you in other forests? Remember the tender things you said to me when you were young? Indeed, you have not spoken too ill of me. Why your silence now? Where are you going so alone and so late? You will never leave off chasing your career then?’

O Moon, you are right; but if I spoke well of your charms, you know the services you have rendered me; you lit my footsteps when I walked with my phantom love; today my head is silvered like your face, and yet you are astonished to find me alone! And you scorn me! Yet I have passed whole nights enveloped in your veils; dare you deny our meeting among the lawns and beside the sea? How often you have seen my eyes fixed passionately on yours! Ungrateful mocking light, do you ask me where I am going so late: it is harsh to reproach me for my endless voyaging. Oh! Though I travel like you, I do not grow young again as you do, you who return to the bright crescent of your cradle every month! I will know no new moon: my waning has no other end but my utter vanishing, and when I am extinguished, I will not relight my flame as you do yours!

I travelled all night; I passed through Teinitz, Stankau and Staab. On the morning of the 24th I passed through Pilsen, through a fine barracks, in the Homeric style. The town is marked by that air of melancholy that reigns in this country. At Pilsen, Wallenstein hoped to seize the sceptre; I was also in quest of a crown, but not for myself.

The countryside is sliced and intersected by hills, called mountains in Bohemia; mounds whose tops are marked by pines, and whose slopes are delineated by the green of the crops.

Villages are sparse. A few fortresses, starved of prisoners, jut from the rocks like aged vultures. From Zditz to Beraun the hills on the right grow bald. You traverse a village, the streets are spacious, the post stations well served with mounts; everything proclaims a monarchy imitating the former France.

What sort of forest rides did Jan the Blind, at the time of Philippe de Valois, and the Ambassadors of King George at the time of Louis XI, pass through? What good are these modern German roads? They remain deserted since neither history, art, nor the climate, summon strangers to their solitary highways. For commerce, it is needless for the public roads to be so large and costly to maintain; the richest traffic on earth that of India and Persia is borne on the backs of mules, asses and horses, over narrow scarcely-visible tracks, through mountain chains or the desert sands. The vast roads of today, in sparsely populated countries, serve solely for warfare; overflows for the use of the new Barbarians who, emerging from the north with immense trains of guns, will inundate those regions favoured by intellect and the sun.

Beraun is traversed by the little river of the same name, vicious as any little cur. In 1784, it reached the level marked on the walls of the post-house. After Beraun, a succession of gorges skirts the hills, then widens out at the entrance to a plateau. From this plateau the road plunges into a vaguely-outlined valley with a hamlet at its centre. There a long ascent begins which leads to Duschnick, a post station and the last relay. Quickly descending towards the opposite hill, on whose summit rises a cross, Prague is revealed on either bank of the Moldau. It is in this city that the elder branch of the race of Saint Louis life a life of exile, that the heir of their race begins a life of proscription, while his mother languishes in a fortress in the land from which he has been driven. Frenchmen! The descendant of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, she to whom your fathers opened the doors of the Temple, you have sent to Prague; you have decided not to retain among you this unique monument to greatness and virtue! O my aged King, you whom I choose, now that you have fallen, to call my master! O child whom I was first to call king, what will you say? How dare I present myself before you, I who am not banished, I who am free to return to France, free to sigh my last breath into that air which will burn my lungs when I breathe it again for the first time, I whose bones may rest in my native soil! Captive of Blaye, I go to meet your son!