The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 2 (of 6) by Chateaubriand François-René vicomte de

Author:Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de [Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783734060946
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Outlook Verlag
Published: 2019-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

General Murat was in command at Milan. I had a letter for him from Madame Bacciochi. I spent the day with the aides-de-camp; these were not so poor as my comrades before Thionville. French politeness reappeared under arms; it was bent upon showing that it still belonged to the days of Lautrec[538].

I dined in state, on the 23rd of June, with M. de Melzi[539], on the occasion of the christening of a son of General Murat[540]. M. de Melzi had known my brother; the manners of the Vice-President of the Cisalpine Republic were distinguished; his household resembled that of a prince who had never been anything else. He treated me politely and coldly; he found me in exactly the same disposition as himself.

First glimpses of Rome.

I reached my destination on the evening of the 27th of June, the day before the eve of St. Peter's Day[541]. The Prince of Apostles was awaiting me, even as my indigent patron[542] received me since at Jerusalem. I had followed the road of Florence, Siena, and Radicofani. I hastened to go to call upon M. Cacault[543], whom Cardinal Fesch was succeeding, while I was replacing M. Artaud[544].

On the 28th of June, I ran about all day, and cast a first glance upon the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Trajan Column, and the Castle of St. Angelo. In the evening, M. Artaud took me to a ball at a house in the neighbourhood of the Piazza San-Pietro. One saw the fiery girandole of the dome of Michael Angelo in between the whirling waltzes spinning before the open windows; the rockets of the fireworks on the Molo d'Adriano spread out brilliantly at Sant' Onofrio, over Tasso's tomb: silence, solitude and night filled the Roman Campagna.

The next day, I assisted at the St. Peter's Mass. Pius VII.[545], pale, sad and religious, was the real pontiff of tribulations. Two days later I was presented to His Holiness: he made me sit beside him. A volume of the Génie du Christianisme lay open, in an obliging fashion, upon his table. Cardinal Consalvi[546], supple and firm, gently and politely resistant, was the living embodiment of the old Roman policy, minus the faith of those days and plus the tolerance of the century.

When going through the Vatican, I stopped to contemplate those staircases which one can ascend on mule-back, those sloping galleries folding one upon the other, adorned with master-pieces, along which the popes of old used to pass with all their pomp, those loggie decorated by so many immortal artists, admired by so many illustrious men, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Montaigne, Milton, Montesquieu, and queens and kings, mighty or fallen, and a whole people of pilgrims from the four quarters of the globe: all that now without movement or sound; a theatre whose deserted tiers, open to solitude alone, are scarce visited by a ray of the sun.

I had been advised to take a walk by moonlight: from the top of the Trinità-del-Monte, the distant buildings looked like a painter's sketches or like softened coast-lines seen from the deck of a ship at sea.

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