Chapter 21 - Page 2

were cleaned.

A few tables, a wardrobe, and a few blue and green
armchairs in disorder encumbered more than they furnished
the room.

The adjoining salon, the furniture of which was hidden
under unbleached covers, contained nothing more remarkable
than a marble bust of Henry V. and a full-length
statuette of Chateaubriand, which were on the mantelpiece,
and on each side of a window plaster busts of Mme.
de Berri and her infant child.

Towards the close of his life Chateaubriand was almost
in his second childhood. His mind was only lucid for about
two or three hours a day, at least so M. Pilorge, his former
secretary, told me.

When in February he was apprised of the proclamation
of the Republic he merely remarked: "Will you be any
the happier for it?"

When his wife died he attended the funeral service and
returned laughing heartily--which, said Pilorge, was a
proof that he was of weak mind. "A proof that he was in
his right mind!" affirmed Edouard Bertin.

Mme. de Chateaubriand's benevolence was official, which
did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She
founded a hospice--the Marie Thérèse Infirmary--visited
the poor, succoured the sick, superintended crêches,
gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh
towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her
servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, prudish, and a
backbiter. God on high will take these things into account.

She was ugly, pitted with small-pox, had an enormous
mouth, little eyes, was insignificant in appearance, and
acted the ~grande dame~, although she was rather the wife
of a great man than of a great lord. By birth she was only
the daughter of a ship-owner of Saint Malo. M. de
Chateaubriand feared, detested, and cajoled her.

She took advantage of this to make herself insupportable
to mere human beings. I have never known anybody less
approachable or whose reception of callers was more
forbidding. I was a youth when I went to M. de
Chateaubriand's. She received me very badly, or rather she
did not receive me at all. I entered and bowed, but Mme.
de Chateaubriand did not see me. I was scared out of my
wits. These terrors made my visits to M. de Chateaubriand
veritable nightmares which oppressed me for fifteen days
and fifteen nights in advance. Mme. de Chateaubriand hated
whoever visited her husband except through the doors that she
opened. She had not presented me to him, therefore she
hated me. I was perfectly odious to her, and she showed it.

Only once in my life and in hers did Mme. de Chateaubriand
receive me graciously. One day I entered, poor
little devil, as usual most unhappy,