Montboissier, July 1817
BETWEEN the last date of these Memoirs, written in the Vallée-aux-Loups, January 1814, and today, in Montboissier, July 1817, three years and six months have passed. Did you hear the Empire fall? No. For nothing has troubled the sleep of these acres. And yet the Empire is obliterated. The vast ruin has crumbled in my lifetime like so much Roman rubble spilled in the current of an unknown stream. But events mean little to he who does not count on them. A few brief years from eternity’s hands will do justice to all this noise with endless silence.
The previous book was written under the dying tyranny of Bonaparte and the last lightning flashes of his glory. I begin the current chapter under the reign of Louis XVIII. But I have seen kings up close before, and my political illusions have vanished as thoroughly as those lovelier chimeras whose story I am continuing to tell. So let us speak instead of what made me pick up the pen again. The human heart is anything’s toy, and no one can anticipate what frivolous circumstance may cause it pleasure or sorrow. “No cause is needed to disturb our soul,” Montaigne observed. “A reverie without cause or subject may dominate and disturb it.”[1]
I am now in Montboissier, on the border of the Beauce and the Perche. The château here belongs to Madame la Comtesse de Colbert-Montboissier. It was sold and destroyed during the Revolution. All that remains of it today are two small buildings, separated from the main house by an iron gate, which were once inhabited by the gardener. The park, now in the English style, bears some traces of its former French symmetry. Straight alleys and copses boxed within hedgerows give it a serious look. It has the beauty of a ruin.
Yesterday evening I was walking alone. The sky was like an autumn sky, and a cold wind blew in gusts. At a break in the thicket, I stopped to watch the sun sinking in the clouds over the tower of Alluye, where Gabrielle, who lived in that tower, watched the sun set as I did, two hundred years ago. And what has become of Henri and Gabrielle? The same thing that will have become of me by the time these Memoirs are published.
I was roused from my reflections by the warbling of a thrush perched on the highest branch of a birch. This magic sound brought my father’s lands back before my eyes in an instant. I forgot the disasters I had only recently witnessed and, abruptly transported into the past, I saw again those fields where I so often heard the thrushes whistling. When I listened then I was sad, as I am today; but that first sadness was born of a vague desire for happiness: a privilege of the inexperienced. The sadness that I experience presently comes of the knowledge of things weighed and judged. The bird’s song in the woods of Combourg spoke to me of a bliss that I was sure I would attain; the same song in the park here in Montboissier reminds me of the days I have lost in pursuit of that old, elusive bliss. There is nothing more for me to learn. I walked faster than other men and have already made the tour of my life. The hours fly past and drag me onward, and I am not at all certain that I can finish these Memoirs in time. In how many places have I already begun to write them, and in what place shall I bring them to an end? How many more times shall I walk along the edge of the woods? Let me profit from the few moments that remain to me; let me hasten to describe my youth while I can still recall it. A sailor, leaving his enchanted island forever, writes his journal in sight of the land that slowly slips away. It is a land that will soon be lost.