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CHATEAUBRIAND 



CHATELET-LOMONT 



regiment of Navarre. In 1791 he sailed to North 

 America, and spent eight months there in the 

 travels which are recounted in his Voyage en 

 Amerique. On hearing of the arrest of Louis 

 XVI. he returned to France and joined the 

 army of the emigres. During the Prussians' 

 retreat he was left behind for dead near Namur, 

 but contrived to make his way to that town, 

 and thence, with no little difficulty, to England. 

 For some years he maintained himself in London 

 by teaching and writing translations ; in 1797 he 

 published an Essai sur les Revolutions, and in 

 1800 he was enabled to return to France. Atala, 

 a love-story of savage life, the scene of which 

 is laid in the American forests and prairies, 

 appeared in 1801, and established Chateaubriand's 

 literary reputation. The Genie du Ckristianisme 

 ( 1802), a vindication of the Church of Rome, raised 

 him to the foremost position among the French 

 men of letters of the day. He was neither a sound 

 thinker nor a skilful controversialist, and the 

 merit of his famous treatise lies almost entirely 

 in its brilliant passages of description. These, 

 however, are often curiously out of place in a work 

 of the kind. Sainte-Beuve, who spoke of the 

 Genie as a coup de theatre et d'autel, declared that 

 many of them would have been more warrantably 

 included in a Genie du Paganisme. But the book 

 appeared when there was a widespread reaction 

 against scepticism, and its eloquent pleadings 

 were favourable to the conciliatory policy which 

 Napoleon had adopted in regard to the pope. 

 Its success in consequence was enormous. Its 

 author was in 1803 appointed secretary to the 

 embassy at Rome, where he wrote his Lettres sur 

 I' Italic, and in 1804 was sent as ambassador to 

 the little republic of Valais. But on the murder 

 of the Due d'Enghien, Chateaubriand refused to 

 hold office under Napoleon. He set out to the 

 East in 1806, visited Greece, Palestine, and Egypt, 

 and returned to France in 1807. Two years later 

 he issued Les Martyrs, a prose epic, of which the 

 action passes in the days of Diocletian. There is 

 much that is false, much that is extravagant in 

 this singular book, and the borrowed epical machin- 

 ery works clumsily throughout. But there is 

 genuine passion in the episode of Velleda ; and in 

 calling up a vision of the beauty of the ancient 

 world the writer exhibits an almost unsurpassable 

 mastery of ornate prose. In 1814 Chateaubriand 

 published a pamphlet, De Bonaparte et des Bourbons, 

 which Louis XVIII. declared to be worth an army 

 to the Legitimist cause. From 1814 to 1824 he 

 gave a thorough-going support to the Restoration 

 monarchy. He was made a peer and a minister 

 of state, and from 1822 to 1824 held the post of 

 ambassador extraordinary at the British court. It 

 was his ambition to become the guiding power in 

 French politics ; he believed that it lay in him 

 to reconcile Legitimism and liberty. He was 

 disappointed, however, in his hope of becoming 

 prime-minister, and from 1824 to 1830 he figured 

 as a Liberal politician. On the downfall of Charles 

 X. he refused to swear allegiance to Louis- Philippe, 

 and went back to the Royalist party. His changes 

 of front were not due to mere selfish ambition. A 

 Breton noble, he was by his birth and associations 

 a Royalist ; his writings prove that he was deeply 

 imbued with the anti-social sentimentalism of 

 Rousseau (he claimed Byron as his pupil) ; he had 

 almost no logical faculty, and he was by tempera- 

 ment imperious and rebellious. ' In natural dis- 

 position, he wrote in 1831, ' I am still a Republican. ' 

 His politics were thus a tissue of inconsistencies, 

 but to regard him as a mere time-server is to 

 misunderstand his character. During the reign 

 of Louis-Philippe he withdrew from public affairs, 

 and occupied himself in preparing his Memoires 



d'outre Tombe for posthumous publication. Parts 

 of this eloquent autobiography appeared, however, 

 before his death, which occurred on July 4, 1848. 

 Besides those mentioned above, his writings include 

 the Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem ; Les Natchez, 

 a prose epic dealing with savage life in North 

 America ; and two works of fiction, Rene and Le 

 ' Dernier des Abencerages. 



Chateaubriand is a writer whom it is difficult 

 to criticise justly. He was not a thinker, and he 

 produced no book which has the unity and sustained 

 excellence of an enduring work of art. He dealt in 

 false sentiment and extravagant imagery ; he was 

 blind to the virtues of simplicity and restraint. 

 Sainte-Beuve said he transferred the capital of prose 

 from Rome to Byzantium and introduced the style 

 of the lower empire. But when he is at his best his 

 brilliant and glowing diction acts on the reader like 

 an enchantment. His writings revealed new capa- 

 bilities in the French language. There is no 

 French author of earlier date whose prose can 

 compare with Chateaubriand's in the power of 

 conveying the beauty and mystery of nature. His 

 style, with its magical play of colour, its cunning 

 felicity of descriptive phrase, was a new thing in 

 French literature. It fascinated readers accus- 

 tomed to the cold and polished prose of the 

 classical school, and marked the beginning of a 

 new literary epoch. Chateaubriand has been justly 

 called the father of the romantic school, and the 

 beauty and grandeur of his finest descriptive pass- 

 ages have been surpassed by none of his followers. 

 See Sainte-Beuve's Chateaubriand et son Groupe 

 Litteraire (2 vols. 1877). 



Chateauhriailt, a town in the French depart- 

 ment of Lower Loire, on the Chere, 40 miles NNE. 

 of Nantes by rail, with several old churches and a 

 castle, iron-founding and bell-casting, and produc- 

 tive iron -mines close by. Pop. 5450. 



Chateaudun, a pretty town in the French 

 department of Eure-et-Loir, on the Loir, a tribu- 

 tary of the Loire, 83 miles SW. of Paris by rail. 

 It was almost destroyed by fire in 1723, and on 

 18th October 1870 was captured by the Germans 

 after an obstinate resistance. Dunois is buried 

 in the chapel of the stately castle. Pop. 6709. 



Chateau Gaillard. See ANDELYS. 



Chateail-Gontier, a town in the French de- 

 partment of Mayenne, on the Mayenne, 180 miles 

 WSW. of Paris by rail. It has linen and woollen 

 manufactures. Pop. 7334. 



Chateau Margaux. See MARGAUX. 



Chateauroux, the capital of the French de- 

 partment of Indre, on the left bank of the river 

 Indre, 88 miles S. of Orleans by rail. It has manu- 

 factures of woollens, iron, leather, and tobacco. 

 General Bertrand was born and died here, and a 

 statue was erected to him in 1854. Pop. (1872) 

 16,858; (1886)21,995; (1891)20,503, 



Chateau-Thierry, a town in the French de- 

 partment of Aisne, 59 miles E. by N. of Paris 

 by rail, with manufactures of mathematical and 

 musical instruments, dye-works, and quarries. 

 It has the ruins of an old castle (720), and is 

 the birthplace of Lafontaine ; here, too, Napoleon 

 defeated the Prussians and Russians, 12th Feb- 

 ruary 1814. Pop. 6405 



Chatelaine, the wife of the chatelain or Cas- 

 tellan (q.v. ), the commander of a feudal castle. A 

 chaine cndtelaine or simply chdtelaine, a chain such 

 as a lady chatelaine might wear (cf. the English 

 housewife), is a chain depending from the waist, to 

 which are attached keys, scissors, &c. 



Chatelard. See CHASTELARD. 



Chatelet-Lomont, GABRIELLE EMILIE, MAR- 

 QUISE DU, a very learned Frenchwoman, notorious 



