ppointed the writer _attache_ to the French legation at Rome, whither
he was followed by Mme de Beaumont, who died there.

When his insubordinate and intriguing spirit compelled his recall he was
transferred as envoy to the canton of the Valais. The murder of the duke
of Enghien (21st of March 1804) took place before he took up this
appointment. Chateaubriand, who was in Paris at the time, showed his
courage and independence by immediately resigning his post. In 1807 he
gave great offence to Napoleon by an article in the _Mercure de France_
(4th of July), containing allusions to Nero which were rightly taken to
refer to the emperor. The _Mercure_, of which he had become proprietor,
was temporarily suppressed, and was in the next year amalgamated with
the _Decade_. Chateaubriand states in his _Memoires_ that his life was
threatened, but it is more than possible that he exaggerated the danger.
Before this, in 1806, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, undertaken, as
he subsequently acknowledged, less in a devotional spirit than in quest
of new imagery. He returned by way of Tunis, Carthage, Cadiz and
Granada. At Granada he met Mme de Mouchy, and the place and the meeting
apparently suggested the romantic tale of _Le Dernier Abencerage_,
which, for political reasons, remained unprinted until the publication
of the _OEuvres completes_ (1826-1831). The journey also produced
_L'Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ ... (3 vols., 1811), a record of
travel distinguished by the writer's habitual picturesqueness; and
inspired his prose epic, _Les Martyrs, ou le triomphe de la religion
chretienne_ (2 vols., 1809). This work may be regarded as the argument
of the _Genie du christianisme_ thrown into an objective form. As in the
_Epicurean_ of Thomas Moore, the professed design is the contrast
between Paganism and Christianity, which fails of its purpose partly
from the absence of real insight into the genius of antiquity, and
partly because the heathen are the most interesting characters after
all. _Rene_ had appeared in 1802 as an episode of the _Genie du
christianisme_, and was published separately at Leipzig without its
author's consent in the same year. It was perhaps Chateaubriand's most
characteristic production. The connecting link in European literature
between _Werther_ and _Childe Harold_, it paints the misery of a morbid
and dissatisfied soul. The representation is mainly from the life.
Chateaubriand betrayed amazing egotism in