CHATEAUBRIAND

Memoirs From Beyond the Grave

The "Memoires d'Outre-Tombe," which was partly published
before Chateaubriand's death, represents a work spread over a
great part of Chateaubriand's life, and reveals as no other of
his books the innermost personality of the man.
(Chateaubriand, biography: see FICTION.)

_I.--Youth and Its Follies_

Four years ago, on my return from the Holy Land, I purchased a little
country house, situated near the hamlet of Aulnay, in the vicinity of
Sceaux and Chatenay. The house is in a valley, encircled by thickly
wooded hills. The ground attached to this habitation is a sort of wild
orchard. These narrow confines seem to me to be fitting boundaries of my
long-protracted hopes. I have selected the trees, as far as I was able,
from the various climes I have visited. They remind me of my wanderings.

Knight-errant as I am, I have the sedentary tastes of a monk. It was
here I wrote the "Martyrs," the "Abencerrages," the "Itineraire," and
"Moise." To what shall I devote myself in the evenings of the present
autumn? This day, October 4, being the anniversary of my entrance into
Jerusalem, tempts me to commence the history of my life.

I am of noble descent, and I have profited by the accident of my birth,
inasmuch as I have retained that firm love of liberty which
characterises the members of an aristocracy whose last hour has sounded.
Aristocracy has three successive ages--the age of superiority, the age
of privilege, and the age of vanity. Having emerged from the first age,
ft degenerates in the second age, and perishes in the third.

When I was a young man, and learned the meaning of love, I was a mystery
to myself. All my days were _adieux_. I could not see a woman without
being troubled. I blushed if one spoke to me. My timidity, already
excessive towards everyone, became so great with a woman that I would
have preferred any torment whatsoever to that of remaining alone with
one. She was no sooner gone than I would have recalled her with all my
heart. Had anyone delivered to me the most beautiful slaves of the
seraglio, I should not have known what to say to them. Accident
enlightened me.

Had I done as other men do, I should sooner have learned the pleasures
and pains of passion, the germ of which I carried in myself; but
everything in me assumed an extraordinary character. The warmth of
imagination, my bashfulness and solitude, caused me to