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Custom-made for the daughter of a French aristocrat two centuries ago, it was a spectacular, rare one-eighth-size cello produced by Bernardel, protégé of Nicolas Lupot, violin maker to King Louis XVIII.

“It was commissioned by King Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, in 1815 and completed in 1826,” the website notes.

His successor, Louis XVIII, then commissioned the sculptor François-Joseph Bosio to create the monument that now dominates the square, completed at last in 1822: the Sun King reimagined for the new world, styled like a Roman emperor on horseback.

While Book 1 is dated 1811, most of it was completed in 1821 and 1822 when, as Louis XVIII’s ambassador to London, Chateaubriand had time to reflect on his life.

As the historian, writer and commentator Jacques Julliard pointed out: “To go from Louis XVI to Louis XVIII, that is to say from moderate absolutism to parliamentary monarchy, those maladroit foreigners would have gone by way of a Louis XVII. Instead, we went via Robespierre and Napoleon.”