915 



FONTENAY, MARQUISE DE. 



FONTENELLE, BERNARD LE BOVIER DE. 



916 



made director of the ' Mercure de France.' His polished manners pro" 

 duced a favourable impression on Bonaparte, who made him a frequent 

 guest ut his table, and gave him one of the private cards, which entitled 

 the bearer to immediate access to him. Fontanes likewise became a 

 favourite with Lucien Bonaparte, and Eliza, Madame Bacciochi. 



In February 1802 he was appointed a member of the Corps Legis- 

 latif, aud became its president in 1804. Fontanes has been reproached 

 with his subserviency to Napoleon I., aud has been charged with con- 

 stant adulation of his measures and acts. But it is well known that 

 in private he often refused to sanction with his approbation the violent 

 and arbitrary conduct of his benefactor. For two years after the 

 execution of the Due d'Enghien, the emperor urged the courtier in 

 vain to admit at least that the sacrifice was necessary ; and failing of 

 that, removed him from his presidency of the Corps Legislatif, 

 February 5, 1810, and created him a senator. He had already been 

 installed as grand-master of the university in September 1808, and 

 created a count about the same time. On the 1st of April 1814, the 

 Count de Fontanes voted for the deche'ance, or forfeiture, of Napoleon I., 

 gave in his adhesion to the Provisional Government on the 6th, and 

 was confirmed in all his appointments. 



During the Hundred Days, in 1815, the Count de Fontanes lived in 

 retirement ; and after the return of Louis XVIII. he was made pre- 

 sident of the electoral college of the Deux Sevres. He died of 

 apoplexy March 17, 1821, at the age of sixty-four. His name will 

 remain associated with the reign of Napoleon I., but his famous 

 addresses, annually delivered in reply to the speech from the throne, 

 so much admired at the time for their eloquence and purity of style, 

 are already passing into oblivion. 



Besides the works already mentioned, M. de Fontanes was the 

 author of ' La Chartreuse de Paris,' ' Les Livres Saints,' ' Stances a 

 M. de Chateaubriand,' ' Le Retour d'un Exile,' &c. 



FONTENAY, THERESE DE CABARRUS, MARQUISE DE, was 

 born in 1773 at Saragossa, in Spain. All that is known of her early 

 youth is, that she was even then admired for her wit, fascinating 

 manners, and remarkable personal beauty, for which she was dis- 

 tinguished through life. In 1789, at the age of sixteen, she married 

 M. Devin, marquis of Fontenay, a councillor of the third Chambre des 

 Enquetes, in the parliament of Paris. The great disparity between 

 her age and that of her husband, and the attentions she received, led 

 to disputes between them, and in 1793 Madame de Fontenay left 

 Paris with her only child to rejoin her father, in Spain. But on 

 reaching Bordeaux, she was arrested and thrown into prison, because, 

 although proviiled with a passport, she had not a ' carte de surete",' 

 at that time indispensable. In her distress she wrote to Tallieu, who 

 was then on a mission to Bordeaux with two other proconsuls, 

 Ysibeau and Baudot. Her application was successful ; she was 

 released, and a connection which lasted nine years thus originated. 

 She soon became the most influential person in that city, and though 

 little reliance can be placed on the accounts which charge her with 

 h;nin,' sold her ransoms like stock, there can be no doubt she opened 

 the prisons to many captives and prevented many heads from falling. 

 In 1794 she followed Tallien to Paris, and was immediately arrested 

 and sent to prison. Here she first met with Madame Josephine de 

 Beauharnaia, afterwards Madame Bonaparte. 



Alarmed by the increasing draughts from her own prison during 

 the firot three weeks in July, she wrote repeatedly to Tallien, upbraid- 

 ing him with his indolence and want of spirit, and conjuring him to 

 make an effort to save her. Stimulated by these letters, as well as 

 by his own sense of danger, the young Dantonist drew together the 

 various members of the Convention, who knew they were threatened, 

 and on the 9th Thermidor Robespierre was overthrown. The prisons 

 were then opened, and Madame de Fontenay, along with several 

 thousand captive.', was set at liberty. 



On the 26th December 1794 she married Tallien, her first husband 

 being still alive. They continued to live together until 1798, when 

 Tallien accompanied Bonaparte into Egypt. Their harmony however 

 had long been interrupted, and they were legally divorced April 2, 

 1802. On the 18th July 1805 she contracted a new marriage with the 

 Count Joseph de Caraman, who became Prince de Chimay the same 

 year. Her first and actual husband, the Marquis de Fontenay, was 

 still alive and did not die until 1815. In consequence of this singu- 

 larity, the church refused to admit the validity of her last engagement. 

 For ten years she struggled in vain with the feelings of society, con- 

 tinued in Paris, aud gave dinners, balls, and entertainments. The 

 great families would not attend them, and many of the cards of 

 invitation which she had addressed to them as Princess de Chimay, 

 were returned to her as Madame de Septembre. This was in allu- 

 sion to the massacres of September, in which Tallien had taken part. 

 At length she gave up the useless struggle, and retiring to Chimay, 

 in 1816, she began to lead a life of modest tranquillity amidst her 

 own family. In this peaceful retreat she continued until the 

 15th January 1835, when she died of a disease in the liver, from which 

 she had been a severe sufferer for some years. Although in her sixty- 

 second year, traces of that beauty which bad once been so remarkable, 

 were still visible. 



FONTENELLE, BEKNARD LE BOVIEH DE, born at Rouen, 

 llth February 1657 was, by his mother's side, nephew of the great 

 Corneille. Educated at the College of the Jesuits in his native city, 



he displayed, at a very early period, the quickness and the aptitude of 

 his talents, which he cultivated with the greatest diligence and 

 application. At the age of thirteen Fontenelle successfully contended 

 for the prize offered for the best composition in Latin verse ; and in 

 general literature had deserved honourable mention- on the records of 

 his college. From this time to his sixteenth year the law was the 

 study to which his attention was nominally directed. But his heart 

 was not with the science : poetry, philosophy, and histoiy engrossed 

 the time which should have been devoted to the Corpus Juris. During 

 this period principally Fontenelle acquired those vast stores of varied 

 and accurate knowledge which, giving an appearance of catholic learn- 

 ing to his works, are constantly recurring in the shape of apposite and 

 almost unconscious allusions. Having completed the term of his 

 legal studies, he lost the first cause in which he was retained, and 

 thereupon abandoning for ever the distasteful profession of the law, 

 devoted himself to the more attractive and congenial pursuits of 

 literature. 



In his private fortunes there is little to interest the curiosity so 

 commonly felt respecting the doings of men of genius ; the biographer 

 has consequently little to do but to follow him in his literary career, 

 which was neither without honour nor profit. For the last years of 

 his life he was in the enjoyment of a yearly income of nearly 900?., 

 and left behind him at his death a very considerable sum. From 1699 

 to 1741 he held the distinguished aud responsible office of secretary 

 to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and was an honorary member of 

 that of Berlin and of the Royal Society of London. Fonteuelle died 

 at Paris on the 9th January 1757, having completed his hundreth 

 year within a few weeks, and expired exclaiming "Je ne souffrde pas, 

 mes amis ; rnais je sens une certaine difficult^ d'etre." The calmness 

 with which he met his death was iu keeping with the serenity of his 

 whole life. 



In his personal character Fontenelle presents a rare instance of self- 

 command and moderation, neither confounding virtue with austerity 

 nor pleasure with excess. To the measured reserve of his character 

 there is a somewhat exaggerated allusion in his oft-repeated declara- 

 tion, that in his whole life he had never laughed nor wept. As he 

 held it to be the duty of the sage to cultivate all his senses, internal 

 as well as external, and to combine in the enjoyment of all nature the 

 exercise of all his faculties, the tone of his mind exhibited a happy 

 harmony with his personal character. The universality of his pursuits, 

 which embraced nearly the whole domain of literature, offered on the 

 one hand an insuperable obstacle to unrivalled excellence in auy 

 single department, but contributed on the other, by enlarging his 

 views and increasing his stores of knowledge, to render respectable 

 his attainments in all. 



As a poet, iu which character he made his first appearance in the 

 world of letters, he composed several tragedies and operas, most of 

 which were unfavourably received; and if the 'Thetis et PeleV 

 met with some success and the praises of Voltaire, it has since fallen 

 with the rest into neglect aud oblivion. His Pastorals, which were 

 recommended solely by their novelty, are full of extravagant conceits : 

 on the other hand, there is much of nature aud grace in the 'Ismene,' 

 which, with the 'Apologie de 1'Amour,' is aloiie worthy of being pre- 

 served. His poetic pieces occasionally display much delicacy of senti- 

 ment, and extreme polish aud elegance both in the thought and 

 diction ; but in all of them the poetic feeling is weak, aud there is 

 little invention, and a decided want of originality and force. 



The 'Dialogue des Morts,' published in 1683, first laid the founda- 

 tion of his literary fame, which was firmly established by the 

 appearance two years afterwards of the ' Entretieus sur la Pluralite" 

 des Mondes,' one of the ablest of his works, and exhibiting a rare 

 combination of science and wit. The object of the latter was to 

 familiarise his countrymen with the Cartesian astronomy; and in the 

 preface he compares himself to Cicero presenting the philosophy of 

 Greece iu a form and language intelligible to the Romans. For the 

 execution of such a task Fontenelle was eminently qualified, and 

 rarely, if ever, haa it been so ably accomplished. By the happiness 

 and point of his illustrations, he interests while he instructs his 

 reader : quick to discover in common things uuimagined beauties, he 

 adduces aud presents new truths in so obvious a light, that even when 

 most opposed to received opiniou, they are at once adopted as old and 

 firmly established. In the ' Eloges,' which, as secretary of the Aca- 

 demy, he pronounced upon its deceased members, and by which he is 

 best known to posterity, his peculiar talents are most felicitously dis- 

 played. Of a mixed character, between memoirs and criticism, they 

 combine history and encomium with such tact and delicacy, that the 

 panegyric is almost imperceptible, and the commendation the highest 

 when apparently least intended. 



The ' Histoire des Oracles,' even if it has no claims to originality, 

 being taken entirely from the learued work of Van Daale, is deservedly 

 celebrated for clearness and precision in the style, which is an exact 

 and distinct image of the thought, aud for the regular march of the 

 reasoning, which is so natural aud so easy as to present no difficulty 

 to the understanding, and to need no divining. It scarcely deserves 

 however the high title of history. It comprises two essays, in oue of 

 which the object is to show that the oracles were not given by the 

 supernatural agency of demons ; the other, that they did not cease 

 with the appearance of Christ. Lastly, the ' Ge'orne'trie de 1'Infiui,' 



