CHAPTER IX 



POLAND AND ARMENIA 



I left Newbuildings on the 5th, Anne coming up to London to see 

 the last of me (for I was going abroad alone), and as my first stage to 

 Gros Bois. 



" 8th Sept. — Gros Bois. We are much occupied here with a new 

 catalogue Wagram is having made of the family papers. Many of 

 them are most interesting. Wagram's ancestor, the father of Marshal 

 Berthier, seems to have performed on a certain occasion some small 

 service at Versailles — he was in a very subordinate position — help- 

 ing to put out a fire in the stables and also designing a star and baton 

 for the Marshals of France, and for these was ennobled by Louis XV. 

 The son was therefore not quite a parvenu when Bonaparte attached 

 him to his fortunes. He eventually became ' Due de Neuchatel et 

 Valangin, par la grace de Dieu et l'acte imperial de Napoleon I, Em- 

 pereur des Franqais * (such is the inscription over one of the doors of 

 Gros Bois) and was at one time possessor of Chambord. He died 

 while Napoleon was at Elba, and so avoided the final debacle. But 

 the Marshal's son signed an act of renunciation of the Duchy of 

 Neuchatel. and restored Chambord to its royal owners, since when 

 the descendants have remained Princes of Wagram at Gros Bois, a far 

 more enjoyable if less splendid possession. M. Jusserand was here 

 last night, and we looked through these papers together, with Duphot 

 the young man who is making the catalogue. 



" Jusserand is a very small dark man, with large head of the brachi- 

 cephalic type — left at the present moment in charge of the Foreign 

 Office, his superiors being away aux eaux — a clever talker, and, I 

 should say, a very able official as well as literary man. He was 

 Chauvinist enough to show emotion when reading the original of the 

 capitulation of Ulm signed by Mack, and later the document signed 

 by Ney and others, settling the line of military demarcation in France 

 with the Allies. There are among the documents some interesting let- 

 ters from Napoleon and one from Marie Louise signed ' Louise.' 



" Another interesting man here yesterday was Ludovic Halevy, who 

 gave us reminiscences of the Second Empire when he was Clerk in the 

 Chamber of Deputies, and acted in some sort as temporary Secretary 

 to Morny. His reading of the Empire is that which all who were much 



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