M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 279 



At ihe birth of the Due de Bourdeaux he proclaimed him "V enfant 

 du miracle*' and was enchanted at being able r "to produce for the 

 infant prince's baptism, in 1820, the bottle containing the waters of 

 Jordan, which, happily for him, had been missing at the birth of the 

 son of Napoleon in 1811. Shortly after he obtained the portefeuille 

 of the minister for foreign affairs, and was soon afterwards necessitated 

 to resume his spurs and once more buckle on his sword, in order, as 

 the representative of a great and free people, to break his lance 

 against Spanish liberty in the tournament of Verona,* where the 

 flower of the crowned chivalry of Europe were then assembled. 

 Notwithstanding his zeal for despotism however, his political blun- 

 ders occasioned him again to be driven out of the ministry by M. de 

 Villele, who expelled him from the hotel of the minister for foreign 

 affairs in the most unceremonious manner, through the medium of a 

 subordinate clerk carrying only a note containing two lines, and with- 

 out any other formality. 



Mocked, deluded, and betrayed by the Bourbons, for whom he 

 had sacrificed all that is held most valuable in the world, Chateaubri- 

 and joined the opposition, and became the leader of the liberals in the 

 chamber of peers. Here he distinguished himself by speeches of ad- 

 mirable vigour and eloquence in favour of the liberty of the press, 

 and it is but justice to say that he powerfully contributed to its pre- 

 servation. The people, who know not on one day the history of thepre- 

 ceding, admired him, praised him to the skies, and attributed to 

 themselves and to their cause all which had been solely inspired by the 

 vexation of having been disgraced and driven from the ministry by 

 M. de Villele. Power being now beyond his reach, he wrote nobly and 

 eloquently for Greece, which is in reality much indebted to him. Still, 

 however, his writings for the public papers, his defences of the Greeks, 

 and his discourses in the Chamber of Peers, formed a theatre too nar- 

 row for his vast genius ; and, accordingly not finding himself suffi- 

 ciently the object of public monoculte,\iz threatened France with 

 his departure, hoping that he might make his country long la- 

 ment his absence, and eagerly solicit his return. He made his fare- 

 well, as if about to depart for the other world, and retired into Switz- 

 erland, hoping from thence to hear the sighs of his ungrateful coun- 

 try. During his retirement he busied himself in re-editing a com- 

 plete set of his works, which he sought to arrange "before the tomb 

 closed over him ;" but at length, disappointed at the nonchalance and 

 forgetfulness = with which his self-imposed exile had been treated by 

 his countrymen, he returned to Paris in order to add a fresh volume 

 to the edition which had been irrevocably fixed as the last. Charles 

 X., who from the commencement of the liberal ministry of Martig- 

 nac had thought of once more seizing the sceptre of Louis XIV., sent 

 Chateaubriand to Rome, a commission at which the latter was en- 

 chanted, for he thought that he was about to enact a fine part there, 

 and would be sure to cut a fine figure among the monks ; and in a 

 short space of time he pronounced the best capucinades in the world. 



* We allude here to the Congress of Verona in 1823, at which Chateaubriand acted 

 as the French plenipotentiary. 



