THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. [54]

THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. [54]

M. de Lamartine tells us in his Confidences that, as the sages pause for reflection between life and death, so his mother was in the habit of devoting an interval at the close of the day in looking back on its vanished hours, and seizing its impressions before night should have dispersed them for ever.

When all the household had retired to rest, and no sound was to be heard but the breathing of her children in their little beds around her, or the howling of the wind against the casement and the bark of the dog in the court, she would softly open the door of a little closet of books, and seat herself before an inlaid cabinet of rose-wood to record the events of the day, pour out her anxieties and sorrows, her joy and gratitude, or utter a prayer all warm from her heart. Her son says: “She never wrote for the sake of writing, still less to be admired, though she wrote much for her own satisfaction, that she might have, in this register of her conscience and the domestic occurrences of her life, a moral mirror in which she could often look and compare herself with what she had been in other days, and thus constantly amend her life. This custom of recording what was passing in her soul—a habit she retained to the end—produced fifteen or twenty little volumes of intimate communings with herself and God, which I have the happiness to preserve, and where I find her once more, living and full of affection, when I feel the need of taking refuge in her bosom.”

Of course, such a journal was not intended for the public eye, and her son is so conscious of this that, even while editing this volume of extracts from his mother’s manuscripts, he says it has no interest but for those who are allied to her by blood or sympathy of soul, and prays all others to abstain from reading it. M. de Lamartine’s financial difficulties obliging him to make capital, not only out of the private emotions and experiences of his own heart, but even of his family archives, the publication of this volume was announced previous to his death, but was deferred at his earnest request.

The interest in everything connected with so eminent a poet, the charming pictures he has drawn of his mother in his Confidences, and the influence she had in moulding his character, made us look forward with interest to this work, that we might have a clearer insight into the soul to which he owed his poetical and imaginative nature. It is always refreshing and useful whenever one ventures to lift the veil of a pure soul and allows us to read its passing emotions. But such a soul should not be exposed to the eye of curiosity, but only to that of sympathy. To scan such a book—the outpourings of a mother’s heart, written solely for her own satisfaction and her children’s—with the cool eye of a critic, would be as profane as to jeer over the grave of one whose remains have just been exhumed.

But let every tender, religious heart—especially every maternal heart—that loves the sweet odor of flowers that still give out their fragrance when drawn forth from some old drawer in which they have long lain, reverently open this volume, sacred to all the outpourings of a mother’s tenderness. In her transparent nature they can read the unusual strength of the domestic affections, but a heart large enough to take in the poor and the sufferer of every grade, a charity that constantly found excuses for the asperities of others, and a piety that breathed all through her sweet life and crowned her death.

This book is a new proof of the tender piety and sincere faith among the old noblesse of France. Madame de Lamartine is worthy of being classed with the family of the Duke d’Ayen, the La Ferronnays, and the De Guérins. The simple grace of her style, the religious element so strongly infused into her daily life, the development of her emotional nature, and the intensity of her love for her family, all remind us of Eugénie de Guérin. And like her, she had one of those sweet, pensive natures that need the retirement of country life or the shade of the cloister for full development. They were similarly demonstrative in their affections and in their piety. And where one loves and follows with anxious prayer a gifted brother, the other, with the devotedness of St. Monica, weeps and prays for her son.

M. de Lamartine, after passing one gloomy All Souls’ day in recollection near his mother’s grave at St. Point, ended it by taking out the eighteen livrets in which all her thoughts and feelings had been buried for so many years, and, while the church-bell was mournfully tolling above her grave as if to reproach the living for their silence and admonish them to pray for their dead, he opened these books one after the other, and read, sadly smiling, but oftener weeping the while. It is with some such a feeling the reader will follow him. The drama of the heart is always touching, the genuine tear, even in the eye veiled in domestic obscurity, always appealing, and in this page of life’s drama there is many a one dropped. But the eyes from which they fell are always turned heavenward, and such tears have always a gleam of heaven in them, without which the sorrows of life would be unendurable.

Madame de Lamartine was the daughter of M. des Roys, intendant-general of finances to the Duke of Orleans. Madame des Roys was the under-governess of the children of that prince, and so great a favorite of the duchess that she was employed as the confidential agent of the latter during her exile, as we learn from this volume. After the execution of Philippe Egalité and the dispersion of his family, the duchess took refuge in Spain. Her daughter, afterwards known as Madame Adelaide, who displayed so much character and exerted so great a political influence during the reign of her brother Louis Philippe, was in a German or Swiss convent. The duchess, suspicious of Madame de Genlis’ influence over her daughter, and perhaps fearful she might be made a tool of the Orleans faction, with whose aims she did not sympathize, commissioned her devoted follower, Madame des Roys, to bring her daughter to Spain. Madame des Roys succeeded in her mission. She embarked at Leghorn about the beginning of January, 1802, and arrived safely at Barcelona with her charge. Madame de Lamartine, who had all this from her mother’s lips, says the meeting of the duchess and Mademoiselle d’Orleans was extremely affecting. Madame des Roys subsequently returned to France, and died on her estates in June, 1804, worn out with fatigue, and troubles resulting from the revolution. She gave her daughter a portrait of Mademoiselle d’Orleans—a present from the duchess, and Madame de Lamartine always showed herself loyal to that family. When the poet wrote his Chant du Sacre without mentioning the Duke of Orleans among the other members of the royal family, she entreated him with tears to be mindful of what she owed the family. Lamartine yielded, but with so ill a grace that his allusion displeased the duke. Madame de Lamartine, fearful of being thought ungrateful to the family, wrote Mademoiselle d’Orleans a full explanation of the affair.

But to go back to the time when Madame des Roys was still governess in the Duke of Orleans’ family. She and her husband had apartments at that time in the Palais Royal in winter, and at St. Cloud in summer. It appears Madame des Roys and Madame de Genlis had some pitched battles in those days, or, as Madame de Lamartine afterward expresses it, deux camps opposés. Madame de Genlis kept up the grudge after the death of her former rival, and, years after, severely attacked M. de Lamartine’s poems by way of satisfaction.

Madame de Lamartine was born at the palace of St. Cloud, and passed her childhood there with Louis Philippe, sharing the lessons and sports of the Orleans children. All her earliest recollections were connected with St. Cloud, its fountains, and broad alleys, and velvet lawns, and lovely park. Many years after (in 1813), she tells in her journal that, being at Paris, her son drove her to St. Cloud in a cabriolet, and she thus writes of her visit: “This is the place where I passed so much of my childhood when my mother was bringing up the Duke of Orleans’ children. I was very happy there. I left when fifteen years old, and had not seen the place since, though I longed to, for I retained a delightful remembrance of it. I walked all over the park with Alphonse and Eugénie, pointing out tree after tree where I played when a child. I wished to see our apartments once more, but it was impossible, as they are occupied by the Empress Maria Louisa.”

When fifteen years of age, Alix des Roys was nominated by the Duke of Orleans to a vacancy in the noble Chapter of Salles, where she was placed under the protection of the Countess Lamartine de Villars, a canoness of that chapter. The Chevalier de Lamartine, visiting his sister, fell in love with the beautiful Alix, who is said to have resembled Madame Récamier, and, instead of embracing that semi-monastic life, she ultimately married him, March 6, 1790.

We can imagine the contrast between her life in the maisons de plaisance of one of the wealthiest princes in Europe, and that she afterward led in a plain country residence a hundred miles from Paris, and in limited circumstances. She afterward alludes in her journal to this change: “In my childhood I imagined it impossible to exist unless at court, in a palace like the Palais Royal, or the park at St. Cloud, where I lived with my mother. Now, O my God, I wish to be content in every place where thy will places me!”

But her new home was not without its attractions for a nature like hers. Leaving the banks of the Saône where it winds among the fertile hills of Mâcon, and going toward the old Abbey of Cluny, where Abélard breathed his last, the traveller, turning aside into a winding mountain-path, comes after an hour or two to a sharp spire of gray stone towering above a group of peasants’ houses. Beyond these, nestling in a hollow at the foot of a mountain, is Milly, familiar to every reader of Lamartine. Five broad steps lead to the door, which opens into a corridor full of presses of carved walnut containing the household linen. From it doors open into the various apartments, and access is had to the one story above. The mountain almost insensibly begins its ascent directly back of the house. Its slope is luxuriant with vines, on which depended mainly the subsistence of the family. A small garden is in the rear of the house, with its vegetables and flower-beds and clumps of trees, and its secluded “Alley of Meditation” where Madame de Lamartine walked at sunset, saying her rosary and giving herself up to holy recollections.

She seems to have taken Milly at once to her heart. She affectionately calls it her Jerusalem—her abode of peace. She often said to her son: “It is very small, but large enough if our wishes and habits are in proportion. Happiness is from within. We should not be more so by extending the limits of our meadows and vineyards. Happiness is not measured by the acre, like land, but by the resignation of the heart; for God wishes the poor to have as much as the rich, that neither may dream of seeking it elsewhere than from him!”

And again she says: “If people were convinced that, by submissively receiving all the difficulties of the position in which they are placed, they would be at peace everywhere; they would allow themselves to be sweetly guided without anxiety by circumstances and the persons to whom they owe deference. Since I decided on this, I have been infinitely more happy. There was a time when I wished everything to yield to me, and absolutely subordinate to my will. I was then incessantly tormented about the present and the future. I often saw afterward it would have been a misfortune to have had my own way. Now I abandon myself to the Infinite Sovereign Wisdom, I feel at peace exteriorly and interiorly! God be praised for ever! He alone is wise, and should overrule all!”

Poor woman, she had enough to try her flexible will. Her husband’s elder brother, who, according to the ancient régime, was regarded as the head and guide of the family, was not disposed to give up his rights. He was unmarried, and particularly fond of interfering in the domestic regulations of the family whose future prospects somewhat depended on him, particularly those of Alphonse, who was to perpetuate the name. Another brother, the Abbé de Lamartine, lived further off, and was, of course, less tempted to interfere, but seems to have given his voice on extraordinary occasions. And then there were two unmarried aunts whom Madame de Lamartine seems to have been attached to, and whom in her charity she calls saints, but very trying saints they were with their strictures on her dainty ways, her careful dress, and her indulgence to her children. To do them justice, however, they all seem to have been sincerely anxious for the prosperity of the family.

Madame de Lamartine brought up one son and five daughters, concerning whom she gives many interesting details in her journal. The daughters appear to have been lovely in person and character. Their brother has given a delightful description of them in his Nouvelles Confidences, which is confirmed by his mother’s journal.

But M. de Lamartine makes a very strange mistake in saying his mother derived her notions of educating her children from the works of Rousseau (particularly from Emile) and St. Pierre, whom he calls “the favorite philosophers of women because the philosophers of feeling,” and “whose works,” he says, “she had read and admired.”

Some of Madame de Lamartine’s earliest recollections were certainly of Gibbon, D’Alembert, Rousseau, and others of the same stamp who frequented the society of Madame des Roys. She even remembered seeing Voltaire when but seven years of age, and “his attitude, his costume, his cane, his gestures, and his words remained imprinted on my memory as the foot of some antediluvian monster on the rocks of our mountains.” But she certainly did not esteem these men or imbibe any of their opinions, and so far from having “conservé une tendre admiration pour ce grand homme,” Jean Jacques Rousseau, as her son declares, she regarded him with a certain horror, and his genius as allied to lunacy.

In the first place, Madame de Lamartine seems to have been very scrupulous about reading dangerous books. In her journal of the year 1801, she makes a resolution to deny herself all useless reading for her children’s sake, and declares frivolous books “one of the most dangerous pleasures in the world.”

Some years after, she visits her son’s chamber, during his absence, to examine his books. Among others she finds Rousseau’s Emile. She regrets it is “empoisoned with so many inconsistencies and extravagances calculated to mislead the good sense and faith of young men. I shall burn this book,” she adds, “and particularly the Nouvelle Héloïse, still more dangerous because it inflames the passions as much as it warps the mind. What a misfortune that so much talent should be allied to madness! I have no fears for myself, for my faith is beyond temptation and not to be shaken; but my son ——”

And when toward the close of her life she saw by her son’s poem Childe Harold that he had imbibed the pernicious ideas of French philosophy, she says: “I knew these famous philosophers in my youth. Grant, O my God! he may not resemble them. I firmly represent to him the danger of such ideas, but, in the language of Scripture, the wind bloweth where it listeth. When a mother has brought a son into the world, and instilled her own faith into him, what can she do? Only put her feeble hand continually between the light of this faith and the breath of the world that would extinguish it! Ah! I am sometimes proud of my son, but I am well punished afterward by my apprehensions as to his independence of mind!

“As for me, to submit and believe seems the only true wisdom in life. They say it is less poetic, but I find as much poetry in submission as in rebellion. Are the faithful angels less poetical than those who rose up against God? I would rather my son had none of these vain talents of the world than to turn them against the dogmas that are my strength, my light, and my consolation!”

Madame de Lamartine records a fact concerning Rousseau which is by no means a proof of her esteem for him. Madame des Roys, from whom she had it, was very intimate with the Maréchale de Luxembourg. Previous to the birth of one of Rousseau’s children, the maréchale, a great friend of his, fearing he would send the child to a foundling asylum as he had done three others, begged, through a third person, to have it as soon as it was born, promising to take care of it. Rousseau gave his consent. The mother was beside herself with joy, and as soon as the child was born sent word to the person who was to take it away. He came, found it was a fine, vigorous boy, and appointed an hour to come for it. But at midnight Rousseau appeared in the sick-room wrapped in a dark cloak, and, in spite of the mother’s screams, carried off his son to drop it at the asylum without a mark by which it could be recognized. “This is the man whose sensibility so many extol,” said Madame des Roys, and Madame de Lamartine adds: “And I, I say, here is the unfeeling man whose head has corrupted his heart! Alas! genius is often only a prelude to insanity when not founded on good sense. Let us welcome genius for our children if God bestows it, but pray they may have sound sense!”

Alphonse was sent at an early age to a secular school at Lyons, the religious orders not being restored. His mother thus writes:

“November 9, 1801.—To-day I am at Lyons to bring Alphonse back to school. My heart bleeds. I went to Mass this morning. I was continually looking for his beautiful fair hair in the midst of all those little heads. My God! how frightful to thus root up this young plant from the heart where it germinated, and cast it into these mercenary institutions. I was sick at heart as I came away.”

In October, 1803, she says: “I have with difficulty obtained permission from my husband and his brothers to take Alphonse away from the school at Lyons, and place him at the Jesuits’ College at Belley, on the borders of Savoy. I came with him myself. I was too much distressed to write yesterday after confiding him to these ecclesiastics. I passed half the night weeping.

“October 27.—I went this morning to look through the guichet of the court of the Jesuits’ College at my poor child. I afterward saw him at Mass in the midst of the students. He says he is satisfied with his reception from the professors and his comrades. I went to-day to see the Abbé de Montuzet, the former prior of my Chapter of Canonesses at Salles. In the evening I left for Mâcon. In passing before the college I could see the boys from the carriage playing in the yard, and heard their joyous shouts. Happily, Alphonse did not approach the guichet and see my carriage. He would have felt too badly, and I also. It is better not to soften these poor children destined to become men. Leaning back in the carriage, I wept all alone under my veil a part of the day.”

She loved to read the Confessions of St. Augustine, and, like St. Monica, she followed her son with her prayers and tears all through the vagaries of his early life, trembling for his rich gifts and susceptible nature. And with how much reason is evident from his own account. How much more she continually desired his spiritual welfare than his success in the world is evident throughout this work. In the first flush of his fame as a poet, she writes:

“January 6, 1820.—Nothing new at Paris, except I am told Alphonse is received with distinction in the best society, where his appearance and talents have excited, according to my sister, Madame de Vaux, a kind of enthusiasm. She mentions the names of many whose mothers I knew in my youth who overwhelm him with cordiality—the Princess de Talmont, the Princess de la Trémouille, Madame de Raigecourt (the friend of Madame Elizabeth), Madame de St. Aulaire, the Duchess de Broglie (Madame de Staël’s daughter), Madame de Montcalm (the Duke de Richelieu’s sister), Madame de Dolomieu, whom I knew so well at the Duchess of Orleans’; then there are many eminent men who eagerly proffer their friendship to him who was so obscure but yesterday—the young Duke de Rohan, the virtuous Mathieu de Montmorency, M. Molé, M. Lainé, said to be such a great orator, M. Villemain, the pupil of M. de Fontanes, whom he sees at M. Decazes’, the king’s favorite, and a thousand others. Thou knowest, O my God! how proud I am of this unexpected cordiality toward my son, but thou knowest also that I ask not for him what the world calls glory and honor, but to be an upright man, and one of thy servants like his father: the rest is vanity, and often worse than vanity!”

And when, still later, she goes to Paris, and meets the distinguished circle in which he moved, is received by Madame Récamier with her incomparable grace, and hears Châteaubriand, one of her favorite authors, read, and sees the prestige which her son had acquired, she confesses to a feeling of gratification at his fame, but adds: “I pray God for something higher than all this for him.”

But to return to her life at Milly. The tenderness of her nature was not confined to her own family, but was always responsive to every appeal.

To quote from her journal: “I was told after dinner that a friendless old man, whom I saw after, that lived in a hut on the mountain, with only a goat for a companion, had just been found dead. The news greatly distressed me, for I had reproached myself for not having gone to see him lately—it was so far. It is true I thought he had recovered, but I should not have trusted to that at his age. I ought to have been more attentive to him. My heart is full of remorse. In the good I do, and in everything, I am not persevering enough. I grow weary too soon and too frequently. I am too easy led away by distractions or weariness, which are not sins, but weaknesses, and hinder from a holy use of time. Was not time given us that every day and hour something might be done for God, both in ourselves and for others? I went to walk this evening with my husband and two eldest daughters. We went through the vineyard, now in bloom. The air was perfumed with their pleasant odor. Our vines are our only source of income for ourselves, our domestics, and the poor. If there are as many bunches of grapes as of blossoms, we shall be quite well off this year. May Providence preserve them from hail!

“We approached the hut above the vineyard where the poor old man died in the morning. I wished to enter it once more in order to pray beside him. My husband was not willing, fearing the sight of him would make too great an impression on me and the children. I wished to ask pardon of his soul for not having been there to utter some words of consolation and hope during his agony, and to receive his last sigh. The door was open: his goat kept going out and in, bleating as if to call assistance in its distress. The poor creature made us weep. My husband consented for me to send for it to-morrow after the burial, and give it a place with our cow and the children’s two sheep.”

Another day she writes: “I went to see an old demoiselle of eighty years, who lives on an annuity in one of the upper chambers of the château. Her only companion is a hen, who is as attached to her as a tame bird. She is called Mademoiselle Félicité. In spite of her wrinkles and hair as white as the wool on her distaff, it is evident she must have been very handsome once. My husband has consented to my wish not to disturb her in spite of the inconvenience it causes us. Old plants must not be transplanted. The places where we live become truly a part of ourselves. She is taken care of by Jeanette, the sexton’s wife, once a servant at the château, and who knows all its past history: we love to hear about those who lived before us in the same dwelling. All this excites to reflection. Some day I shall be spoken of as having been, and perhaps the day is not far off! My God, where shall I then be? Grant it may be in thy paternal arms!”

The means of the family seem to have been quite limited during the first years of her married life. This made them anxious as to the vintage on which their income chiefly depended. She thus writes: “The day has been unfortunate. There have been several showers, and the hail has crushed our vines. This is more distressing, for they were loaded with grapes. My heart is very heavy to-night on our own account and that of our poor vinedressers. This shows how much I still involuntarily cling to the things of earth. It is as if I thought happiness due me, for the least affliction immediately casts me down. My God! make me realize at last the nothingness of the things of this world, that I may set my heart only on those that are eternal!”

And later: “The will of God be done! These were the last words I wrote in my journal at the last date. They are the first on to-day’s page. The great storm yesterday was a terrible misfortune to us. The hail completely destroyed our harvest. We should have had a fine crop, and now there remains scarcely enough for our poor laborers to exist on. I am ill with sorrow and anxiety. This misfortune will oblige us to make retrenchments and privations. All our plans to go to Mâcon for the education of our children are frustrated. We shall probably have to sell our horse and char-à-bancs. But it is the will of God: this ought to be sufficient to console me for everything. The fewer pleasures I have in the world, the less I shall cling to it, and the more I shall look forward to that world which alone is important and imperishable—our eternal home. Nothing hardens the heart and so fills it with illusions as prosperity, and what seems hard to human nature is perhaps a very great grace from God, who wishes us to cling to the only real treasures by depriving us of what is only dust. I can say this with more sincerity to-day: yesterday the blow seemed too hard. My husband showed great courage—more than I—though he was greatly distressed for the moment. He said: ‘Provided neither your nor our children are taken away from me, I can resign myself to anything. My riches are in your hearts.’ Then he prayed with me. Meanwhile we could hear the noise of the hail which was breaking the branches and the glass, and the peasants in the court sobbing in despair.”

As in all the old patriarchal Catholic families, Madame de Lamartine was not unmindful of the spiritual interests of her servants: “After dinner, which is at one, I read, then sewed awhile, after which I read a meditation on the Gospel to my domestics. I am going presently to end the day at the church, whose dim light inspires devotion and recollection. It is there I fill the void during my husband’s absence.”

“September 5, 1802.—We have just established family prayers. It is a very impressive and salutary practice, if, as the Scripture says, we wish like brethren to dwell together in unity. Nothing elevates the hearts of servants so much as this daily communion with their masters in prayer and humiliation before God, who knows neither great nor small. It is also good for masters, who are thus reminded of their Christian equality with their inferiors according to the world.

“My poor aunt, who took care of me in my infancy, is dead. I am extremely uneasy about the fate of poor old Jacqueline, her femme-de-chambre, who was a second mother to me, and is now left alone, and perhaps poor. I wish at whatever cost to receive her here. The family are opposed. My husband fears, and with reason, to contradict his brothers and sisters, on whom we rely a good deal for our children. He proposes to pay secretly Jacqueline’s board in a house at Lyons, where she will no longer lack food and care, but I would like to fulfil my obligations of gratitude toward this poor woman to their utmost extent. If I were in her place, and she in mine, nothing would prevent her from receiving me, even in her bed.”

The domestics of the old families in France seemed to have been regarded as a part of the family. Service was almost hereditary, and a bond on both sides. In the French Revolution, nine out of ten of those proscribed by law who escaped were saved by the devotedness of their domestics. Madame de Lamartine shows how fully she regarded the tie that bound her to every member of her household as a sort of spiritual relationship.

“Palm-Sunday, 1805.—There is a great commotion in town and country. The emperor arrives to-day with all his court. We are très gênés, because we are to lodge Mgr. de Pradt, Bishop of Poitiers (the emperor’s chaplain; since Archbishop of Malines, so celebrated for playing the courtier at that time, and for his subsequent ingratitude towards Napoleon after his fall). I prefer this guest to any other of the retinue.”

Of course the parenthetical clause is by M. de Lamartine. It seems Mgr. de Pradt was not wholly ungrateful to the emperor, for the declaration issued by the allied sovereigns at the Congress of Laybach in 1821, so insulting to the memory of Napoleon, called forth from the Archbishop of Malines the following noble protestation:

“It is too late to insult Napoleon now: he is defenceless, after having so many years crouched at his feet while he had the power to punish. Those who are armed should respect a disarmed enemy. The glory of a conqueror depends, in a great measure, on the just consideration shown toward the captive, particularly when he yields to superior force, not to superior genius. It is too late to call Napoleon a revolutionist after having, for such a length of time, pronounced him to be the restorer of order in France, and consequently in Europe. It is odious to see the shaft of insult aimed at him by those who once stretched forth their hands to him as a friend, pledged their faith to him as an ally, sought to prop a tottering throne by mingling their blood with his.

“This representative of a revolution which is condemned as a principle of anarchy, like another Justinian, drew up, amid the din of war and the snares of foreign policy, those codes which are the least defective portion of human legislation, and constructed the most vigorous machine of government in the whole world. This representative of a revolution, vulgarly accused of having subverted all institutions, restored universities and public schools, filled his empire with the masterpieces of art, and accomplished those stupendous and amazing works which reflect honor on human genius. And yet, in the face of the Alps which bowed down at his command; of the ocean subdued at Cherbourg, at Flushing, at the Helder, and at Antwerp; of rivers smoothly flowing beneath the bridges of Jena, Serres, Bordeaux, and Turin; of canals uniting seas together in a course beyond the control of Neptune; finally, in the face of Paris, metamorphosed, as it was, by Napoleon, he is pronounced to be the agent of general annihilation! He, who restored all, is said to be the representative of that which destroyed all! To what undiscerning men is this language supposed to be addressed?”

Napoleon himself at St. Helena, though he censured Mgr. de Pradt’s course as ambassador at Warsaw, regarded the tribute he subsequently paid him as an amende honorable.

Las Cases, alluding to his notes from the emperor’s statements and those about him, says: “I, however, strike them out in consideration of the satisfaction I am told the emperor subsequently experienced in perusing M. de Pradt’s concordats. For my own part, I am perfectly satisfied with numerous other testimonies of the same nature, and derived from the same source.”[55]

It was during this visit of Napoleon at Mâcon he held some conversation with M. de Lamartine [the poet’s uncle] in Mgr. de Pradt’s presence. “What do you wish to be?” said the emperor at the close. “Nothing, sire,” was the reply. The emperor turned away with a look of anger.

“Lyons, April 26, 1805.—I came here with my sister to see the Pope. I saw him pass from the terrace of a garden near the archevêché where he stops. Yesterday I went to the Pope’s Mass at St. Jean’s Church. I had a good view of all the ceremonies, but found it difficult to reach the throne in order to kiss his slipper. However, I had this happiness. This aged man has the aspect of a saint, as well as some of the Roman prelates who were with him, especially his confessor.”

“May 12, 1805.—Our fortunes are improving. My husband has just bought M. d’Osenay’s hôtel at Mâcon. The garden is small, but the house is immense. We are furnishing it, and shall take possession of it this summer. My husband allows me six hundred francs a month, and all the provisions from our two estates, for the household expenses, and to pay for Alphonse’s board [at school]. This is more than sufficient. I cannot cease to admire the providence of God toward us, and am ever ready to give up all he bestows on me when he wishes and as he wishes.”

There is an interesting description of this new home in the Nouvelles Confidences, and of the circle of friends whom they drew around them. Madame de Lamartine desired this change for the benefit of her daughters, but her own tastes inclined her to the retirement of the country.

She thus writes September 7: “I am again at St. Point, which I prefer to any other residence in spite of the dilapidation of the château. I long for a still more profound retreat—a moral one. We must from time to time enter into the solitude and silence of our own hearts.”—“It seems to me if I were free I would consecrate myself entirely to God, apart from the world. But we are always wishing for something different from the will of God. Is it not better to desire only his will?”

She describes the life she leads with her daughters as almost conventual. They all go to Mass every morning. After breakfast they read the Bible or some religious book, and then resume their studies—history, grammar, etc. After dinner and an hour’s recreation, they sew and study. At nightfall they say the Rosary together, and in the evening she plays chess with her husband, and sometimes reads one of Molière’s comedies. “I see no harm in it,” she says with her characteristic delicacy of conscience. “I skip every dangerous word.” They finally have family prayers, at which she improvises a short meditation aloud. Her great object, she says, is to cultivate a genuine spirit of piety in her children, and to keep them constantly occupied.

“September, 1807.—I am enjoying the seclusion at Milly alone with my children. Madame de Sévigné is my society. I took a long walk to-night on Mount Craz, above the vineyard back of the house. I was all alone. I take pleasure in such long strolls at this hour in the evening. I love the autumn time, and these walks with no other company but my own thoughts. They are as boundless as the horizon and full of God. Nature elevates my heart, and fills it with a thousand thoughts and a certain melancholy which I enjoy. I know not what it is, unless a secret consonance of the infinite soul with the infinity of the divine creation. When I turn back and see from the heights of the mountain the little lights burning in my children’s chamber, I bless Divine Providence for having given me this peaceful, hidden nest in which to shelter them!

“I finish always with a prayer without many words, which is like an interior hymn, which no one hears but thee, O Lord! who hearest the humming of the insects in the tangle of furze which I tread under my feet.”

“Milly, April 11, 1810.—I passed the night here with Cécile and Eugénie. The weather is fine, and I longed to enjoy a pleasant spring morning which I find delicious. As soon as I rose I went into the garden, where I passed three hours reading, praying, meditating, thanking God for his benefits, and endeavoring to profit by them. The weather is lovely, the trees are full of buds and blossoms which perfume the air. The leaves are beginning to put forth, the birds to sing, the little insects to hum. Everything in nature is reviving and being born again. I am inexpressibly happy when I can be at peace in the country at this sweet time of early spring. Unfortunately I am obliged to return to town for I know not how long, but I wish only the good pleasure of God, and my only desire is to fulfil my duty wherever he calls me.

“Ah! how much I have to reproach myself for. I go to extremes in everything. In the world I am too worldly, in retirement too austere. Present surroundings have too sensible an effect. I am not well. I offer my sufferings to God. I pray a little. I read a good deal. I am extremely impressed by the shortness of life, and the necessity of preparing for eternity. I often endeavor to be fully penetrated with what I remember to have once written—that this life must be regarded as a purgatory, and whatever sufferings the good God sends I should look upon as sweet in comparison with what I merit.

“What makes me tremble is the establishment of my six children, and all the difficulties I foresee in this respect. But this anticipated trouble is wrong; for, after the assistance of God in so many circumstances, I ought to expect it still more in this the great object of my life.”

In fact, she succeeds wonderfully in disposing of her daughters à la Française, and, to our American eyes, they are wonderfully docile, but perhaps edifyingly so. Her lovely daughters all marry gentlemen who are so fortunate as to have the particle de to their names—a thing of vast moment with the French gentry.

One of them, Césarine, a dazzling beauty of the Italian style and said to have a lively resemblance to Raphael’s Fornarina, has her little romance, which her mother favors, but the fates frown adversely in the person of la famille, to wit, the formidable uncles and aunts. How poor Madame de Lamartine ever got such a jury to agree on the sentence of any suitor is no small proof of her talent for diplomacy. In this case the objection was for pecuniary reasons only, for the de was not wanting—“de misérables raisons de société,” says the mother, who adds: “They would not be very rich, but I could keep them at home. I am obliged to conceal from my husband’s family my inclination for this marriage; but, if I did not oppose them sometimes, I should never get my children married.”

In this instance she was at last forced to yield, and tell the aspirant, but not without tears, that Césarine could not marry him. “The family is obstinate in its refusal. I am in despair. The young man still hopes against all hope.” Luckily—at least luckily for the family peace—Césarine, though sad, is touchingly submissive—the lovers are separated for ever. The chivalric Alphonse tells his sister not to do violence to her feelings—that he will take her part against the whole set; but the gentle maiden declares—we persist in believing, in our fondness for a bit of sentiment, that she made a virtue of necessity in view of those Gorgons and chimeras dire—declares her attachment rather a feeling of gratitude for the love that had been given her, and that she is ready to marry without repugnance the estimable man destined to replace the one she has lost!

Nothing more could be said. She marries unexceptionably—M. de Vignet, the nephew of the celebrated Count de Maistre, author of Du Pape, and goes to Chambéry to become a member of a very distinguished family. She died a few years after.

Some years later, Madame de Lamartine records a visit from the discarded suitor of six years before. “We did not speak of Césarine, but his very presence and tender manner said enough. I cried heartily.”

In 1824, she records the affecting and edifying death of her daughter Suzanne, whose loss, as well as that of Césarine, her affectionate nature never recovers from. Her heart seems now to turn more fully toward heaven. The latest records in her journal evince a constantly increasing devotional frame of mind. The surviving daughters are all married, and her son’s prospects extremely flattering. She says: “I should be a happy mother had I not lost two flowers from my crown. Ah! what a void their loss makes when I walk here in the garden in the evening, and yearn to see them and hear their voices. I must detach myself more and more from the world in spite of myself.

“I have this year formed the habit of going to Mass before light. It is better to snatch the first moments of the day from the bustle and pleasures of the world, and first render to God the things that are God’s, and then to the world what belongs to the world. I sometimes find it hard to go out in all kinds of weather from my warm room to attend what is called the servants’ Mass, to which the poor go; but are we not all poor in divine grace, and all servants to our parents, our husbands, and our children? I am abundantly repaid by the recollection I feel in the dim church, the fervor of my prayers, and the calmness and strength I derive from the Divine Presence which accompanies me throughout the day after thus fulfilling a paramount obligation.”

Only a short time before the dreadful accident that caused her death, Madame de Lamartine thus reviews her past life, as if conscious of her approaching end:

“Milly, October 21, 1829.—To-day the birth-day of my first-born. I am here alone, and have consecrated the day to meditation to strengthen my soul and prepare it for death. How many times in my life I have paced up and down this alley of meditation, where no one can see me from the house, with my rosary in my clasped hands, meditating or praying! Alas! what would have become of me in all my interior and exterior trials had God not visited me in my meditations, and suggested holier and more consoling thoughts than my own! It is a great grace to have this facility for recollection in God, which has inclined me almost every day of my life to consecrate some hours, or at least some minutes, in thinking exclusively of him. He loves these heart-to-heart appeals to his divine compassion. He inclines his ear to listen to the pulsations of the pious heart that turns toward him! I felt this more than ever to-day, and came away all bathed in tears, without perceiving it while walking in the alley. It seemed as if my whole life passed before me, and before him who is my Creator and Judge!

“Oh! may his judgment, which is approaching, be merciful.

“I saw myself, as if but yesterday, a child playing in the broad alleys of St. Cloud; then, still young, a canoness, praying and chanting in the Chapel at Salles, undecided whether to make my vows like my companions, and consecrate my whole life to praising God in a place of retreat between the world and eternity; I saw my husband, young and handsome, come in his rich uniform to visit his sister, Madame de Villars, the canoness, under whose care I had been placed because she was older and more reasonable than I. I saw his attention was particularly directed to me above all the rest, and that he profited by every opportunity of visiting his sister at the chapter. As for me, I was struck with his noble features, his somewhat military air, his frankness of expression, and a haughtiness that seemed only to unbend toward me; I remember the emotion of joy shut up in my heart when he at length asked through his sister if I would consent to his demanding me in marriage; then, our first interview in his sister’s presence, our walks in the environs of the chapter with the elder canonesses, his openly expressed wish to marry me, and the continued opposition, and the many tears shed in the presence of God during three years of uncertainty to obtain the miracle of his family’s consent, which appeared impossible; finally, our years of happiness in this poor solitude of Milly, then much more humble than at present; my despair when, scarcely married, he desperately sacrificed all, even me, to fulfil his duty at Paris, defending as a simple volunteer the palace of the king on the 10th of August: the divine protection which enabled him to escape covered with blood from the garden of the Tuileries, his flight, his return here, his imprisonment, my apprehensions as to his life, my visits to the wicket of the prison, where I took my son to kiss him through the bars; my walking with my child in my arms, through the streets of Lyons and Dijon, to appeal to the rude representatives of the people, a word from whom was life or death to me; the fall of Robespierre; the return to Milly, the successive births of my seven children, their education, their marriages, the vanishing of those two angels from earth, for whose loss the remainder cannot console me!

“And now the repose after so much weariness! Repose, yes, but old age also, for I am growing old, whatever they say. These trees that I planted; the ivy I set out on the north side of the house that my son might not tell an untruth in his Harmonies where he describes Milly, and which now covers the whole wall from the cellar to the roof; these walls themselves covered with moss; these cedars which were no higher than my daughter Sophie when she was four years of age, but under which I can now walk—all this tells me I am growing old! The graves of the old peasants whom I knew when young, which I pass as I go to church, tell me plainly this world is not my abiding-place. My final resting-place will soon be prepared. I cannot refrain from tears when I think of leaving all, especially my poor husband, the faithful companion of my early years, who is not feeble, but suffers and needs me now to suffer, as he once needed me to be happy! My children, my dear children! Alphonse, his wife, by her affection and virtue, a sixth daughter; Cécile and her charming children, a third generation of hearts that love and must be loved! And then those who are wanting, but who follow me like my shadow in the Alley of Meditation! Alas! my Césarine, my pride on account of her marvellous beauty, buried far away behind that Alpine horizon which continually recalls her remembrance! Alas! my Suzanne, the saint who wore too soon the aureola on her brow, and whom God took from me that her memory might be for me an image of one of his angels of purity! Dead or absent ones, I am here alone, having borne my fruit—some fallen to the ground like that of yonder trees, and others removed far from me by the Husbandman of the Gospel! Ah! what thoughts attract me, pursue me in this garden, and then force me to leave it when they cause my heart and my eyes to overflow! Ah! this is truly my Garden of Olives!

“O my Saviour! has not every soul such a garden? Alas, yes! this was my garden of delights—and now it is laid waste and desolate. It is my Garden of Olives where I come to watch before my death! And yet it is dear to me, in spite of the vacancies time and death have made around me, even while seeking beneath yonder linden-trees for the white dresses of my children, and listening for their gay voices exclaiming over an insect or a flower in their border!

“What had I done that God should bestow on me this corner of the earth, and this small house, of whose size and barrenness I was sometimes ashamed, but which proved so sweet a nest for my numerous brood? Ah! his name be blessed! his name be blessed! and after me may it still shelter those who will always be a part of me.

“But I hear the bell at Bussières ringing the Angelus.

“Let us leave all this—it is better to pray than to write. I will dry my tears, and all alone in my alley I will say the rosary, to which my little daughters used to respond as they followed me, but which only the sparrows in their nests and the falling leaves now hear. No; no, no, it is not good to give way too much to tears. I must keep my strength for duties to be accomplished—for we have duties even on the death-bed.

“It is the will of God! Let us abandon ourselves to him entirely! The only true wisdom consists in this—to resign ourselves to his adorable will. I have been busying myself here in putting in order my old journals, which has led me to look them over with interest. This always fills me with fresh gratitude for all the grace I have received from God, and with regret for my little progress in piety, after all the good resolutions and reflections I have so often made, but with so little profit. But there is time, always time, while God gives us life, to profit by it to prepare for heaven. This is what I beg him with my whole heart as I finish this book, praying him to shed on me, and on all who belong to me, abundant spiritual blessings. As to temporal blessings, I only ask for them as far as they may be necessary for gaining heaven, but I abandon myself with all my heart to his paternal decrees. May he bless me in my children, in my friends, in all who have loved me, and whom I have so much loved on earth!”

These are the last words Madame de Lamartine wrote in her journal. Some days after, in entering a bath, she found the water too cool, and turned the faucet. The boiling water dashed up on her chest. She fainted. Her cry was heard, but it was too late. She was removed to her chamber. Consciousness returned, and she lived two days. During her last hours she constantly exclaimed: “How happy I am! How happy I am!” Being asked why, she replied: “For dying resigned and purified.”

Her son was at Paris, and did not arrive till after the funeral. Remembering her wish to be buried at St. Point, he had her removed. The grave was opened at midnight, one cold night in December, when the ground was covered with snow.

The peasants, whom she loved and who loved her, took turns in carrying the bier eight leagues, her son on foot behind. Not a word, not a whisper, was to be heard on the way. When they approached Milly, between two and three o’clock in the morning, all the peasants stood in their door-ways, with pale faces and tearful eyes, holding lamps in their trembling hands. They all came out to follow the procession to Milly, where her coffin was placed for a while at the entrance, on the very benches where every morning sat the needy to whom she used to distribute food or medicine.

All the sobbing crowd came up to sprinkle her body with holy water and utter a prayer.

M. de Lamartine afterward built a chapel over the grave of his mother at St. Point, which bears on its cornice the inscription:

“SPERAVIT ANIMA MEA.”