This quotation shows us that even such frigid passages in _Les Martyrs_ as the speeches of the white-robed elders had really been _felt_ by the author himself. We are touched by this young and noble woman's enthusiastic admiration for an old man, and the man himself rises in the reader's estimation from the fact of his being able, even at that age, to win the love of such a woman. But it is in strange surroundings that we come upon this outburst of strong emotion, a thing so rare with Chateaubriand that it may almost be called unique. Champagne, the songs of his political and religious opponent, Béranger, caresses and declarations of love, fits of weeping and sobbing over _Les Martyrs_, followed by more love-making! What an environment for the epic of orthodoxy! What an excess of human passion in a Seraphic poet, a former minister of state and pilgrim to Jerusalem![7]
_Les Martyrs_ shows Chateaubriand's weakest side as an author. Such a scene as that described with the best intentions by Madame Allart de Méritens shows his weakest side as a man. And yet this outburst of human passion makes almost a satisfactory impression upon us compared with the artificiality by which he is so often distinguished. God and the king are too constantly in his mouth. We must not, however, allow this artificiality to blind us to what is really great in the talent and in the life of this remarkable personage.
In order to get a complete impression of Chateaubriand it is necessary to read the twelve volumes of _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, as also those by which they are supplemented. Just as Rousseau's _Confessions_ form the most interesting of his books, so the _Mémoires_ constitute Chateaubriand's most impressive work. In them we find a complete personality--a whole man, and that a man of mark. This important personage, who possesses no great acuteness of observation as far as humanity in general is concerned, who, in fact, occupies himself very little with humanity in general, has focussed all his acuteness upon the one subject which really interests him, his own ego, and has half consciously, half unconsciously, but in any case very completely, revealed and exhibited it to us. It is an ego proud to the verge of arrogance, melancholy to the verge of despondency, sceptical to the verge of indifference, without faith in progress of any kind, profoundly persuaded of the vanity of even those things which afford it temporary pleasure, such as love, fame, worldly position, and, as time goes on, ever more saturated with ennui and ever more absorbingly occupied with itself. It is an ego which owns a warm, prolific imagination and great artistic talent, and which, at a period (the end of the eighteenth century) when taste was all in favour of the light, the pretty, the small, felt itself solitary in its love of the grand, of the beauty of magnitude.