join the ranks of the emigrants, a course practically imposed on him by
his birth and his profession as a soldier. After the failure of the duke
of Brunswick's invasion he contrived to reach Brussels, where he was
left wounded and apparently dying in the street. His brother succeeded
in obtaining some shelter for him, and sent him to Jersey. The captain
of the boat in which he travelled left him on the beach in Guernsey. He
was once more rescued from death, this time by some fishermen. After
spending some time in the Channel Islands under the care of an emigrant
uncle, the comte de Bedee, he made his way to London. In England he
lived obscurely for several years, gaining an intimate acquaintance with
English literature and a practical acquaintance with poverty. His own
account of this period has been exposed by A. le Braz, _Au pays d'exil
de Chateaubriand_ (1909), and by E. Dick, _Revue d'histoire litteraire
de la France_ (1908), i. From his English exile dates the _Natchez_
(first printed in his _OEuvres completes_, 1826-1831), a prose epic
designed to portray the life of the Red Indians. Two brilliant episodes
originally designed for this work, _Atala_ and _Rene_, are among his
most famous productions. Chateaubriand's first publication, however, was
the _Essai historique, politique et moral sur les revolutions_ ...
(London, 1797), which the author subsequently retracted, but took care
not to suppress. In this volume he appears as a mediator between
royalist and revolutionary ideas, a free-thinker in religion, and a
philosopher imbued with the spirit of Rousseau. A great change in his
views was, however, at hand, induced, according to his own statement, by
a letter from his sister Julie (Mme de Farcy), telling him of the grief
his views had caused his mother, who had died soon after her release
from the Conciergerie in the same year. His brother had perished on the
scaffold in April 1794, and both his sisters, Lucile and Julie, and his
wife had been imprisoned at Rennes. Mme de Farcy did not long survive
her imprisonment.

Chateaubriand's thoughts turned to religion, and on his return to France
in 1800 the _Genie du christianisme_ was already in an advanced state.
Louis de Fontanes had been a fellow-exile with Chateaubriand in London,
and he now introduced him to the society of Mme de Stael, Mme Recamier,
Benjamin Constant, Lucien Bonaparte and others. But Chateaubriand's
favourite resort was the salon of Pauline de Bea