BOOK II[75

A note from M. Pasquier--Dieppe--Change in my education--Spring in Brittany--An historic forest--Pelagian fields--The moon setting over the sea--Departure for Combourg--Description of the castle--Dol College--Mathematics and languages--An instance of memory--Holidays at Combourg--Life at a country-seat--Feudal customs--The inhabitants of Combourg--Second holidays at Combourg--The Conti Regiment-Camp at Saint-Malo--An abbey--A provincial theatre--Marriage of my two eldest sisters--Return to college--A revolution begins to take place in my ideas--Adventure of the magpie--Third holidays at Combourg--The quack--Return to college--Invasion of France--Games--The Abbé de Chateaubriand--My First Communion--I leave Dol College--A mission at Combourg--Rennes College--I meet Gesril--Moreau-Limoëlan--Marriage of my third sister--I am sent to Brest for my naval examination--The harbour of Brest--I once more meet Gesril--Lapeyrouse--I return to Combourg

On the 4th of September 1812[76] I received the following note from M. Pasquier[77], the Prefect of Police:

"Prefect's Office.

"The Prefect of Police begs M. de Chateaubriand kindly to call at his office, either at about four o'clock this afternoon or at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."

The object of Prefect of Police in sending for me was to serve an order on me to leave Paris. I withdrew to Dieppe, which was first called Bertheville and more than a hundred years ago changed its name to Dieppe, from the English word "deep[78]." In 1788, I was in garrison here with the second battalion of my regiment: to dwell in this town of red-brick houses and ivory-white shops, this town of clean streets and clear atmosphere, was to take shelter in the days of my youth. When I walked out, I came across the ruins of Arques Castle, standing in the midst of its rubbish-heaps. It will be remembered that Dieppe was the birthplace of Duquesne[79]. When I stayed indoors, the sea lay spread before my view; from the table at which I sat I gazed upon the sea which saw me born and which bathes the shores of Great Britain, where I underwent so long an exile: my eyes surveyed the billows which carried me to America, cast me back upon Europe, and again bore me to the coasts of Africa and Asia. Hail, O sea, my cradle and my image! I will relate to thee the sequel of my story: if I lie, thy waves, commingled with all my days, shall accuse me of imposture to the generations to come.

[Sidenote: Change in my education.]

My mother had constantly desired that I should be given a classical education. The career of a sailor, for which I was intended, "would perhaps," she said, "not be to my taste;" she thought that, in any event, it would be well to make me capable of following another profession. Her piety led her to hope that I should decide in favour of the Church. She therefore proposed to send me to a college where I should learn mathematics, drawing, fencing and English; she did not mention Greek or Latin for fear of scaring my father; but she intended to have me taught them, at first in secret, and later openly, when I should have made progress. My father accepted her proposal: it was arranged to send me to the college at Dol. This town was selected because it lay upon the road from Saint-Malo to Combourg.

In the very cold winter immediately preceding my school-days, the house in which we lived took fire: I was saved by my eldest sister, who carried me through the flames in her arms. M. de Chateaubriand, who had gone to his castle, sent for his wife to join him there: we did so in the spring.

Spring in Brittany is milder than in the country round Paris, and the trees bud three weeks earlier. The five birds that herald its coming, the swallow, the loriot, the cuckoo, the quail, and the nightingale, come with the breezes that nestle in the gulfs of the Armorican Peninsula. The earth grows as thick with daisies, pansies, jonquils, narcissuses, hyacinths, ranunculuses, anemones as the neglected spaces around the churches of St. John Lateran and the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in Rome. Glades deck themselves with tall and graceful ferns; fields of broom and furze glow with flowers gay as golden butterflies. The hedgerows at whose feet strawberries, raspberries and violets abound are adorned with hawthorn, honeysuckle and brambles, whose brown and twisted shoots bear glorious fruit and leaves. The country is alive with bees and birds; swarms and nests greet the children at every step. In sheltered nooks, myrtle and oleander grow in the open as in Greece; the fig-tree ripens as in Provence; each apple-tree, with its carmine-tinted blossoms, resembles the large nosegay of a village bride.

[Sidenote: Spring in Brittany.]

In the twelfth century, the cantons of Fougères, Rennes, Bécherel, Dinan, Saint-Malo and Dol were covered by the Forest of Brécheliant, which had served as a battlefield to the Francs and the races peopling the Domnonée. Wace[80] tells of the wild man seen there, of the fountain of Berenton, and a golden basin. An historic document of the fifteenth century, the _Usemens et coutumes de la forêt de Brécilien_, confirms the statement of the _Roman du Rou_: it is, say the _Usemens_, of great and wide extent: "there are four castles, a very great number of fair pools, fine chaces where are found no venomous beasts nor insects, two hundred woods, as many springs, notably the fountain of Belenton, near which Sir Pontus wrought his feats of arms."

To this day the country-side retains traces of its origin: intersected by wooded ditches, it presents at a distance the aspect of a forest, and reminds one of England; it was the abode of the fairies, and you shall see that I did, in fact, meet a sylph there. Narrow dales are watered by shallow rivulets. These dales are separated by moors and by tufts and clusters of holly-trees. The coast presents an array of beacons, lookouts, dolmens, Roman structures, ruins of mediæval castles, Renascence steeples: all bordered by the sea. Pliny calls Brittany, _Peninsula Oceani spectatrix_[81].

Between the sea and the land stretch pelagian plains, the fickle frontier of the two elements: there the field-lark flies with the sea-lark; the plough and the bark furrow the earth and the water at a stone's throw one from the other. The sailor and the shepherd borrow each other's language: the seaman says, "The waves are fleecy;" the herd speaks of "fleets of sheep." Sands of changing colours, banks variegated with shells, wreckage, fringes of silver foam line the green or yellow edge of the corn-fields. I cannot recall the name of the island in the Mediterranean in which I saw a bas-relief representing nereids decorating with festoons the hem of Ceres' robe.

But what is most admirable in Brittany is to see the moon rising on land and setting upon the sea. The moon, by divine creation governess of the deep, has her clouds, her mists, her beams, her projected shadows like the sun; but, unlike the latter, she does not set alone: a retinue of stars accompanies her. As, upon my native coast, she descends the vault of heaven, she extends her silence, and communicates it to the sea; soon she sinks to the horizon, intersects it, shows but the half of her forehead, which diminishes, dips, and disappears in the yielding intumescence of the waves. The stars attendant upon their queen, before plunging in her train, seem to pause suspended upon the crest of the billows. No sooner has the moon set, than a gust of wind from the open sea shatters the picture of the stars, like candles extinguished after a celebration.

*

I was to accompany my sisters to Combourg: we set out in the first fortnight in May. We left Saint-Malo at sunrise, my mother, my four sisters and I, in a huge, antiquated berlin, with double-gilt panels, outside steps, and purple tassels at the four corners of the roof. To this were harnessed eight horses caparisoned like the mules in Spain, with bells at their collars and bridles, and housings and fringes of wool of many colours. While my mother was sighing and my sisters talking themselves out of breath, I looked with all my eyes, listened with all my ears, was wonderstruck at each turn of the road: the first steps of a Wandering Jew who was never to stop. Even then, if man changed only his surroundings! But his days change, and his heart.

[Sidenote: First view of Combourg.]

Our horses were rested at a fishing-village on Cancale Beach. We next went through the marshes and the fever-stricken town of Dol, and after passing the gate of the college to which I was soon to return, we plunged inland. For four mortal hours we saw nothing but heaths wreathed with woods, wastes scarce touched with the hoe, fields sown with poor, black, stunted corn, and poverty-stricken patches of oats. Charcoal-burners led teams of small horses with long and shaggy manes; lank-haired peasants in goat-skin great-coats drove lean bullocks with shrill cries or tramped behind a heavy plough, like laboring fauns. At last we caught sight of a valley at the bottom of which, not far from a pond, ascended the spire of a village church; the towers of a feudal castle rose amid the trees of a wood illumined by the setting sun.

I have been obliged to stop: my heart was beating so violently as almost to push back the table at which I am writing. The recollections awakened in my memory overpower me with their number and their force: and yet, what are they to the rest of the world?

After descending the hill, we forded a stream, drove on for half-an-hour, and then turned out of the high-road. The carriage rolled along a quincunx in an avenue of yoke-elms, whose crowns were interwoven above our heads: I still remember the moment at which I entered their shade and the feeling of affrighted gladness which I experienced.

On emerging from the darkness of the woods, we crossed a fore-court planted with walnut-trees, adjoining the house and garden of the steward; thence we passed, through a stone gateway, into a grassy court called the _Cour Verte._ On the right were a long row of stables and a clump of chesnut-trees; on the left, another clump of chesnut-trees. At the end of the court-yard, the lawn of which sloped imperceptibly upwards, appeared the castle between two clusters of trees. Its severe and gloomy frontage presented a curtain crowned with a machicolated, crenulated, covered gallery. This curtain connected two towers unlike in age, materials, height and thickness, which ended in battlements surmounted by a peaked roof, like a cap placed upon a Gothic crown.

Here and there, grated windows broke the bareness of the walls. A wide flight of steps, straight and steep, twenty-two in number, without balusters or hand-rail, took the place of the drawbridge across the moat, which was now filled up: it led to the door of the castle, pierced in the middle of the curtain. Above the door one saw the arms of the Lords of Combourg and the apertures through which had formerly issued the shafts and chains of the drawbridge.

The carriage drew up at the foot of the steps; my father came down to welcome us. The meeting with his family so greatly softened his mood for the moment, that he favoured us with his most gracious looks. We climbed the steps and entered a resonant vestibule, with a pointed arch, through which we passed into a small inner court-yard. From this yard we entered the building looking south over the pond, and joined to the two smaller towers. The whole castle had the shape of a four-wheeled cart. We found ourselves on the same floor in a room formerly known as the Guard-room. A window opened out at either end; two others were cut into the side-wall. To enlarge these four windows, it had been necessary to excavate walls of eight to ten feet in thickness. Two sloping galleries, like the gallery in the Great Pyramid, issued from the two outer angles and led to the small towers. A winding staircase in one of these towers formed a communication between the Guard-room and the upper storey. Such was this portion of the building.

That contained within the frontage of the tall and of the thick tower, commanding a north aspect over the Cour Verte, consisted of a sort of square and sombre dormitory used as a kitchen, in addition to the vestibule, the steps, and a chapel. Above these apartments was the Rolls Hall, or Armoury, or Hall of Birds, or Knights' Hall, so called from a ceiling strewn with blazoned coats-of-arms and painted birds. The embrasures of the narrow trefoil windows were so deep as to form recesses, around which ran a granite seat. Add to this, in different parts of the building, secret passages and staircases, dungeons and cells, a labyrinth of covered and open galleries, and walled-up underground passages, the ramifications of which were unknown; on all sides gloom, silence, and a face of stone: and you see Combourg Castle.

[Sidenote: Combourg castle.]

A supper served in the Guard-room, at which I ate without constraint, ended the first happy day of my life. True happiness costs little; when it is dear, it is not the real metal.

So soon as I awoke the next morning, I set out to visit the castle grounds and to celebrate my advent to solitude. The steps faced north-west. Seated in the centre of the top step, one saw before him the Cour Verte, and beyond this court a kitchen-garden stretching out between two belts of trees: one, on the right, the quincunx by which we had come, was called the Little Mall; the other, on the left, the Great Mall: the latter was a wood of oaks, beeches, sycamores, elms, and chestnuts. Madame de Sévigné extolled those old shades in her day: since that time, one hundred and forty years had added to their beauty.

In the other direction, south and east, the landscape offered a quite different view: through the windows of the great hall one saw the houses of Combourg, a pond, the embankment of the pond along which ran the Rennes high-road, a water-mill, a meadow covered with herds of cows and separated from the pond by the embankment. Along the edge of this meadow stretched a hamlet forming a dependency of a priory founded in 1149 by Rivallon, Lord of Combourg, and containing his mortuary statue, recumbent in a knight's armor. Beyond the pond, the ground rose gradually and formed an amphitheater of trees, whence issued village belfries and the turrets of country-houses. On the far horizon, between the west and the south, were outlined the heights of Bécherel. On that side, a terrace lined with large coppices skirted the foot of the castle, passed behind the stables, and repeatedly joined the fountain garden which communicated with the Great Mall.

If, after this too long description, a painter were to take up his pencil, would he produce a sketch resembling the castle? I do not think so; and yet the subject lives in my memory as though I had it before my eyes: so great is the power of recollection, so small the power of words in the expression of material things. When I begin to speak of Combourg, I quote the first couplets of a ballad which will charm none but myself: ask the Tyrolean herd why he finds pleasure in the three notes or four which he sings to his goats, notes of the mountain, flung from echo to echo to resound from one side of a torrent to the other.

My first appearance at Combourg lasted but a short while. When a fortnight had passed, the Abbé Porcher arrived, the principal of Dol College; I was handed over to him, and followed him despite my tears. I was in a fashion, connected with Dol; my father was a "canon" of the town, as the descendant and representative of the house of Guillaume de Chateaubriand, Lord of Beaufort, who in 1529 founded one of the first stalls in the cathedral choir. The Bishop of Dol was M. de Hercé, a friend of my family, and a prelate of great moderation in politics, who, kneeling, and crucifix in hand, was shot at Quiberon on the Champ du Martyre, together with his brother, the Abbé de Hercé[82]. On reaching the college, I was entrusted to the special care of M. l'Abbé Leprince, professor of rhetoric and a thorough geometrician, a man of intelligence, handsome, devoted to the arts, and a fair portrait-painter. He undertook to teach me my Bezout[83]; the Abbé Égault, master of the third form, became my Latin master: I studied mathematics in my own room, Latin in the common school-room.

It took some time for an owl of my species to grow accustomed to a school cage and to measure its flight by the sound of a bell. I was not able to make those quick friends with whom fortune supplies one, for there was nothing to be made out of a poor urchin who was not even endowed with pocket-money; nor did I join any set of hangers-on, for I hated protectors. In our games, I did not claim to lead others, but neither did I wish to be led: I was fitted to be neither a tyrant nor a slave, and so I have always remained.

And yet it happened that I soon became the centre of a set; later, in my regiment, I exercised the same power: plain ensign though I were, the older officers spent their evenings with me, and preferred my quarters to the coffee-house. I do not know whence this came, unless it were due to the ease with which I entered into the minds and adopted the manners of others. I was as fond of hunting and coursing as of reading and writing. To this day, it is a matter of indifference to me whether I speak of the most commonplace things or discuss the loftiest subjects. I am very little attracted by cleverness, and find it almost disagreeable, although I am not a fool. No imperfection offends me, except mockery and self-conceit, which I have great difficulty in not defying. I find that others are always my superiors in some respect, and if perchance I feel myself to have an advantage, I am quite embarrassed in consequence.

[Sidenote: My power of memory.]

Qualities which my early training had allowed to lie dormant were awakened at college. My aptitude for work was remarkable, my memory extraordinary. I made rapid progress in mathematics, to which I brought a clearness of apprehension that astonished the Abbé Leprince. At the same time, I displayed a decided taste for languages. The rudiments, the torture of school-boys, cost me no trouble to learn; I awaited the time of the Latin lessons with a sort of impatience, as a relief from my figures and geometrical problems. In less than a year, I was well ahead in the fifth form. In an odd manner, my Latin sentences shaped themselves so naturally into pentameters that the Abbé Égault called me the Elegist, a nickname which long clung to me among my schoolfellows.

I can quote two instances of my power of memory. I learnt my tables of logarithms by heart: that is to say, a number being given in geometrical proportion, I could quote from memory its exponent in arithmetical proportion, and _vice versâ._

After evening prayers, which were said in public in the college chapel, the principal used to read to us. One of the boys, taken at random, had to give an account of what had been read. We came to prayers from our games tired and very sleepy; we flung ourselves upon the forms, trying to hide in a dark corner so as not to be seen and consequently questioned. There was a confessional, in particular, which we fought for, as offering a safe retreat. One evening I had the good fortune to gain this harbor and thought myself safe from the principal; unluckily he perceived my stratagem, and resolved to make an example. Slowly and at great length he read the second head of a sermon; every one went to sleep. By mere chance, I remained awake in my confessional. The principal, who could only see the tips of my feet, thought that I had dropped off like the rest, and suddenly called me by my name and asked me what he had been reading.

The second head of the sermon contained an enumeration of the various ways in which it is possible to offend against God. I not only related the substance of the matter, but repeated the divisions in their proper order, and recited almost word for word several pages of mystical prose, devoid of meaning to a child. A murmur of applause ran through the chapel: the principal called me to him, gave me a tap on the cheek, and in reward allowed me to stay in bed next morning till breakfast-time. I modestly withdrew from my schoolfellows' admiration, and took good care to avail myself of the favour accorded me. This memory for words, which I have partly lost, has been replaced in my case by another and more singular kind of memory, of which I shall perhaps have occasion to speak.

One thing I find humiliating: memory is often the one accomplishment that accompanies stupidity; it belongs generally to ponderous minds, which it makes yet heavier with the luggage with which it overcharges them. And yet, without memory, where should we be? We should forget our friendships, our loves, our pleasures, our business; genius would be unable to collect its ideas; the fondest heart would lose its tenderness, if it lost its memory; our existence would be reduced to the successive moments of an incessantly gliding present; there would be no longer a past. Alas, unhappy that I am! Our life is so vain as to be but a reflex of our memory.

*

I went to Combourg for the holidays. Country-house life in the neighbourhood of Paris can give no idea of country-house life in a distant province. The Combourg property consisted, as its sole domain, of moorland, a few mills, and the two forests of Bourgouët and Tanoërn, in a district where timber is of almost no value. But Combourg was rich in feudal rights. These rights were of different kinds: some fixed certain dues in exchange for certain concessions, or established customs sprung from the ancient order of politics; others seemed from the first to have been sports and nothing more.

[Sidenote: Rustic sports at Combourg.]

My father had revived some of the latter rights, so as to prevent their lapsing by prescription. When the whole family were together, we took part in these Gothic amusements; the three principal were the Fishermen's Leap, the Quintain, and a fair called the Foire Angevine. Peasants in clogs and breeches, men of a France that is past, watched these sports of a France that is past. There were prizes for the winners, forfeits for the beaten.

The Quintain kept up the tradition of the tournaments: it had doubtless some connection with the old military service of the fiefs. It is very well described in Du Cange[84] (_voce_ QUINTANA). The forfeits had to be paid in old copper money, up to the value of two _moutons d'or à la couronne of 25 sols Parisis_ each[85].

The Angevin Fair was held in the meadow by the pond on the 4th of September of each year, my birthday. The vassals had to take up arms and come to the castle to raise the liege lord's banner; thence they went to the fair to establish order and enforce the collection of a toll due to the Counts of Combourg on each head of cattle, a sort of royalty. During that time my father kept open house. We danced for three days: the gentry in the great hall, to the scraping of a fiddle; the vassals in the Cour Verte, to the squealing of a bag-pipe. We sang, cheered, fired off arquebuses. These noises mingled with the lowing of the droves at the fair; the crowd wandered through the woods and gardens, and at least once in the year one saw at Combourg something akin to merriment.

Thus have I been so singularly placed in life as to have assisted at the tilting at the Quintain and at the proclamation of the Rights of Man; to have beheld the train-bands of a Breton village and the National Guard of France, the banner of the Lords of Combourg and the flag of the Revolution. I am as it were the last surviving witness of the feudal customs.

The visitors whom we received at the castle consisted of the inhabitants of the market-town and the neighboring gentry: these good people were my first friends. Our vanity attaches too much importance to the part we play in the world. The citizen of Paris laughs at the citizen of a small town; the Court noble scoffs at the provincial noble; the well-known scorns the unknown man, without reflecting that time does equal justice to their pretensions, and that they are all equally ridiculous or insignificant in the eyes of successive generations.

The principal resident of the place was a M. Potelet[86], a retired ship's captain of the Indian Company's service, who told us long stories about Pondicherry. He related them with his elbows resting on the table, and my father always had a mind to throw his plate in his face. Next came the bonder of tobacco, M. Launay de La Billardière[87], the father of a family of twelve, like Jacob, nine girls and three boys, of whom the youngest, David, was my playmate[88]. The worthy man bethought himself of aspiring to nobility in 1789: he chose a good time! In that house there was plenty of gaiety and many debts. Gesbert[89] the seneschal, Petit[90] the procurator-fiscal, Corvaisier[91] the receiver, and the Abbé Chalmel[92], the chaplain, formed the society of Combourg. I did not at Athens meet persons more celebrated than these.

Messieurs du Petit-Bois[93], de Château d'Assie[94], de Tinténiac, and one or two other noblemen would come on Sundays to hear Mass in the parish church, and afterwards to dine with the owner of the castle. We were more intimately acquainted with the Trémaudan family, consisting of the husband[95], the wife, who was extremely beautiful, a natural sister, and several children. This family lived on a small farm, with a dove-cote for sole evidence of nobility. The Trémaudans are still living. Wiser and happier than I, they have not lost sight of the turrets of the castle which I left thirty years ago; they are still doing what they did when I went to eat brown bread at their table; they have never left the port to which I shall never return. Perhaps they are speaking of me at the very moment at which I write this page: I reproach myself for dragging their name from its protective obscurity. They long hesitated to believe that the man of whom they heard speak was "the little chevalier." The rector or curate of Combourg, the Abbé Sévin[96], to whose sermons I used to listen, at first displayed the same incredulity: he could not persuade himself that the urchin, the peasants' friend, was the same as the defender of religion; he ended by believing it, and quotes me in his sermons, after having held me on his knees. Would these good people, who import no foreign idea into their image of me, who see me as I was in my childhood and in my youth, would they recognize me today through the disguise of time? I should be obliged to tell them my name before they would feel a wish to press me in their arms.

I bring bad luck to my friends. A game-keeper called Raulx, who was attached to me, was killed by a poacher. The murder made an extraordinary impression upon my mind. What a strange mystery lies in human sacrifice! Why should it be both the greatest crime and the greatest glory to shed the blood of man? My imagination pictured Raulx holding his entrails in his hands as he dragged himself to the cottage where he expired. I conceived the idea of vengeance; I should have liked to fight his murderer. In this respect I am curiously constituted: at the first moment of an offense, I hardly feel it; but it becomes imprinted on my memory; the recollection of it grows stronger, rather than fainter, with time; it sleeps within my heart for months, for whole years, and then awakens at the least circumstance with renewed force, and my wound becomes more painful than on the first day. But if I do not pardon my enemies, I do them no harm: I bear ill-will, but am not vindictive. If ever I have the power to revenge myself, I lose the wish: I should be dangerous only in misfortune. Those who have tried to make me yield by oppressing me have deceived themselves; adversity is to me what the earth was to Antæus: I gather fresh strength in my mother's bosom. If ever Good Fortune had taken me in her arms, she would have stifled me.

*

[Sidenote: Military visitors.]

I returned to Dol, much to my regret. The next year, a plan was formed for a descent upon Jersey, and a camp was established at Saint-Malo. Troops were quartered at Combourg; M. de Chateaubriand, through courtesy, entertained in succession the colonels of the Touraine and Conti Regiments. One was the Duc de Saint-Simon[97], the other the Marquis de Causans[98]. A score of officers were invited daily to my father's table. The jokes of these strangers displeased me; their walks disturbed the peacefulness of my woods. It was from seeing the lieutenant-colonel of the Conti Regiment, the Marquis de Wignacourt[99], gallop under the trees that the idea of travelling first passed through my mind.

When I heard our guests speak of Paris and the Court, I became sad; I tried to imagine what society was: I discovered a confused and distant something; but soon I turned giddy. Casting my eyes upon the world from the tranquil region of innocence, I had a swimming in the head, as when one looks down upon the earth from the top of a tower lost in the sky.

One thing, nevertheless, delighted me: the parade. Every day the soldiers going on guard marched past, to the sound of the drum and band, at the foot of the steps in the Cour Verte. M. de Causans offered to show me the camp on the coast: my father gave his leave. I was taken to Saint-Malo by M. de La Morandais[100], a gentleman of very good family, whom poverty had reduced to accept the stewardship of the Combourg property. He wore a coat of grey camlet, with a little silver lace at the collar, and a helmet-shaped peaked cap with flaps. He set me astride behind him, on the crupper of his mare Isabelle. I held fast by the belt of his hunting-knife, which he wore outside his coat: I was delighted. When Claude de Bullion and the father of the Président de Lamoignon, as children, went to the country, "they were both carried by the same donkey, in panniers, one on one side, the other on the other, and a loaf of bread was placed on Lamoignon's side because he was lighter than his fellow, to keep the balance." (_Mémoires du président de Lamoignon[101]._)

M. de La Morandais took cross-roads:

Moult volontiers, de grand' manière, Alloit en bois et en rivière: Car nulles gens ne vont en bois Moult volontiers comme François[102].

We stopped for dinner at a Benedictine abbey which, for want of a sufficient number of monks, had just been incorporated in one of the chief communities of the order. We found only the father procurator, who had been left behind to dispose of the chattels and sell the timber. He ordered an excellent fish dinner to be served for us, in what was formerly the prior's library: we ate a quantity of new-laid eggs with huge pikes and carps. Through the arch of a cloister, I saw tall sycamores at the edge of a pond. The woodman's axe struck at their feet, their tops trembled in the air, and they fell to make a show for us. Carpenters, come from Saint-Malo, sawed off green branches, which dropped to the ground like the hair of a child cut for the first time, or squared the felled trunks. My heart bled at the sight of those impaired woods and that dismantled monastery. The general sack of the religious houses has since called up to my mind the spoliation of the abbey which was to me an omen.

[Sidenote: The Camp at Saint-Malo.]

I found the Marquis de Causans at Saint-Malo, and went through the streets of the camp under his escort. The tents, the stacked arms, the picketed horses made a fine spectacle in conjunction with the sea, the ships, the walls, and the distant steeples of the town. I saw gallop past me at full speed, in an hussar's uniform and mounted on a Barbary horse, one of those men who marked the end of a world, the Duc de Lauzun[103]. The Prince de Carignan[104] had come to the camp, and married the daughter of M. de Boisgarein, a charming creature, though a little lame: this caused a great sensation and gave rise to a law-suit in which' M. Lacretelle[105] the Elder is pleading to this day. But what have these things to do with my life? "It is pitie," says Montaigne; "I have assayed by the trial of some of my private friends: according as their memory hath ministered to them a whole and perfect matter, who recoil their narration so farre-backe, and stuff it with so many vaine circumstances, that if the story bee good, they smoother the goodnesse of it: if bad you must needs either curse the good fortune of their memorie, or blame the misfortune of their judgement.... I have heard some very pleasant reports become most irkesome and tedious in the mouth of a certaine Lord[106]." I am afraid of being that certaine Lord.

My brother was at Saint-Malo when M. de La Morandais set me down there. One evening he said to me:

"I am taking you to the play: get your hat."

I lost my head; I ran straight to the cellar to fetch my hat which was in the garret. A company of travelling play-actors had just arrived. I had seen a Punch and Judy show, and presumed that the puppets at the theatre were much finer than those in the street. With beating heart I reached a wooden building in an unfrequented street in the town. I went through dark passages, not without a certain movement of dread. A small door was opened, and I found myself with my brother in a half-full box.

The curtain was up, and the piece had commenced: they were playing the _Père de famille[107]._ I saw two men walk about the stage talking, while everybody looked on. I took them for the managers of the puppet-show, chatting before the time came for Madame Gigogne to tumble head over heels, awaiting the arrival of the audience: I was only surprised that they should discuss their business so loudly, and that they were listened to in silence. My amazement increased when other persons came upon the stage and began to make great gestures and shed tears, and when everybody began to cry in sympathy. The curtain fell without my having understood a word of all this. My brother went down to the green-room between the acts. I remained in the box among strangers, in an agony of shyness, and wished myself back at school. That was the first impression which I received of the art of Sophocles and Molière.

The third year of my life at Dol was marked by the wedding of my two eldest sisters: Marianne married the Comte de Marigny, and Bénigne the Comte de Québriac. They accompanied their husbands to Fougères: the first signal for the dispersion of a family whose members were soon to part. My sisters received the nuptial benediction at Combourg on the same day, at the same hour, at the same altar, in the castle chapel[108]. They wept, my mother wept; I was astonished at their grief: I understand it now. I never assist at a christening or a wedding without smiling bitterly or feeling anguish of heart. After the misfortune of being born, I know none greater than that of giving birth to a human being.

In this same year began a revolution, not only in my family, but in my own person. Chance caused to fall into my hands two very different books: an unexpurgated Horace and a history of _Confessions mal faites._ An incredible perturbation of ideas was produced in my mind by these two books: an unknown world arose around me. On the one side, I suspected the existence of secrets incomprehensible to one of my age, of a manner of living different from mine, of pleasures beyond my vision, of charms of an unknown nature in a sex in which I had only met a mother and sisters; on the other side, spectres dragging chains and vomiting flames threatened me with eternal torture for one sin concealed. I could not sleep; at night I thought I saw black hands and white pass by turns through the curtains of my bed: I began to imagine that the latter hands were cursed by religion, and this idea increased my terror of the infernal shades. In vain I sought in Heaven and Hell for the explanation of a two-fold mystery. Smitten at one and the same time in my moral and physical being, I continued to struggle with my innocence against the storms of premature passion and the terrors of superstition.

Thenceforward I felt escape from me some sparks of that fire which is the transmission of life. I was construing the fourth book of the _Æneid_ and reading _Télémaque_: suddenly I discovered in Dido and Eucharis beauties that delighted me; I felt the harmony of those admirable verses and of that classic prose. One day I translated Lucretius'

_Æneadum genitrix, hominum divinumque voluptas_[109]

at sight, with such spirit that M. Égault snatched the poem from my hands and set me to do my Greek roots. I stole a Tibullus: when I came to the

_Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem_[110],

these expressions of voluptuous melancholy seemed to reveal to me my own nature. The volumes of Massillon[111] which contained the sermons on the _Pécheresse_ and the _Enfant prodigue_ never left my side. I was allowed to read them, for no one suspected what I found in them. I stole short candle-ends from the chapel to enable me at night to read those alluring descriptions of the disorders of the soul. I fell asleep stammering incoherent phrases, in which I strove to employ the sweetness, the rhythm, and the grace of the writer who has been most successful in transmitting to prose the euphony of Racinian verse.

If, later, I have with some measure of truthfulness depicted the impulses which, mingled with Christian remorse, sway the heart, I am convinced that I owe this success to the chance which made me acquainted at the same moment with two hostile empires. The ravages made in my imagination by a bad book found their antidote in the terrors with which another book inspired me, and the latter were as it were allayed by the enervating thoughts drawn from pictures of the unveiled.

Misfortunes are said never to come singly, and the same may be said of passions: they come together, like the Muses or the Furies. With the propensity which began to torture me, there was born in me the sense of honor, an exaltation of the soul which preserves the heart uncorrupted in the midst of corruption, a sort of restorative principle placed beside a devouring principle, as the inexhaustible source of the prodigies which love demands of youth and of the sacrifices which it imposes.

When the weather was fine, the college boarders went out on Thursdays and Sundays. We were often taken to Mont Dol, on the top of which were some Gallo-Roman ruins: from the summit of this isolated eminence, the eye looks down on the sea and on marshes over which by night hovers the will o' the wisp, the wizard's light that burns in our lamps to this day. Another object of our walks was the fields in which stood a seminary of Eudists, after Eudes, brother of Mézeray the historian[112] and founder of their congregation. One day in May, the Abbé Égault, the prefect of the week, had taken us to this seminary. We were allowed full liberty in our games; only we were expressly forbidden to climb the trees. The master left us in a grassy lane, and walked away to say his breviary.

The lane was bordered by elms: right at the top of the tallest, a magpie's nest was clearly visible. We were all agog at the sight, pointing out to each other the mother sitting on her eggs, and smitten with the keenest longing to capture that superb prize. But who would dare to make the attempt? The orders were so strict, the prefect so near, the tree so high! Every hope was turned upon me; I climbed like a cat. I wavered, and then love of glory carried the day: taking off my coat, I flung my arms around the elm and began the ascent. The trunk had no branches, except at two-thirds of its height, where it split into a fork, one of whose extremities bore the nest.

[Sidenote: A Painful Predicament.]

Gathered beneath the tree, my friends applauded my efforts, looking up at me, looking in the direction whence the prefect might come, stamping with joy in their hope of the eggs, trembling with fear in their expectation of punishment. I approached the nest; the magpie flew away; I seized the eggs, put them inside my shirt, and began to climb down. Unfortunately, I slipped between the twin sections of the trunk and remained seated astraddle. The tree had been pruned, I could find no foothold on either side by which to raise myself and recover the outer limb, and I remained hanging in mid-air, fifty feet from the ground.

Suddenly a cry arose of "The prefect is coming!" and I saw myself incontinently abandoned by my friends, as always happens. One boy alone, called Le Gobbien, tried to assist me, and was soon obliged to relinquish his generous attempt. There was only one way to extricate myself from my painful position, which was to hang on outside, by my hands, to one of the two teeth of the fork, and to try, with my feet, to seize the trunk below the place where it split in two. I carried out this operation at the risk of my life. In the midst of my tribulations, I had not let go of my prize; I should have done better to fling it away, as I have since done with so many others. In sliding down the trunk, I rubbed the skin off my hands, bruised my legs and chest, and smashed the eggs: this last proved my ruin. The prefect had not seen me in the tree; I contrived to hide the traces of blood, but there was no concealing the brilliant yellow with which I was smeared.

"Very well, sir," he said, "you shall have the cane."

If that man had stated that he would commute this sentence to one of death, I should have experienced a thrill of joy. The notion of shame had never yet presented itself to one of my untrammeled upbringing: at no period of my life would I not have preferred any punishment to the horror of having to blush before a living creature. My heart filled with indignation; I answered the Abbé Égault, in the accents not of a child but of a man, that neither he nor any other should ever lay a hand upon me. This reply incensed him; he called me a rebel and promised to make an example of me.

"We shall see," I retorted, and began to play at ball with a coolness which confounded him.

We returned to the college; the prefect took me to his room and ordered me to prepare for punishment. My exalted sentiments gave place to floods of tears. I represented to the Abbé Égault that he had taught me Latin; that I was his scholar, his disciple, his child; that he could not wish to dishonor his pupil and make the sight of my schoolfellows unbearable to me; that he could lock me up on bread and water, stop my recreations, set me impositions; that I would thank him for his clemency and love him the more for it. I fell upon my knees, I folded my hands, I besought him in the name of Jesus Christ to spare me; he remained deaf to my entreaties. I rose in a fit of fury, and aimed at his legs a kick so violent that he yelled. He limped to the door of his room, locked it, and came back to me. I entrenched myself behind the bed; he struck out at me across the bed with a cane. I rolled myself in the bed-clothes and, heated with the fray, exclaimed:

_Macte animo, generose puer!_[113]

This brattish erudition made my enemy laugh in spite of himself; he suggested an armistice: we concluded a treaty; I agreed to refer the matter to the arbitration of the principal. Without giving his award in my favour, the principal consented to cancel the punishment which I had refused to take. When the excellent priest pronounced his acquittal, I pressed my lips to the sleeve of his gown with so great a display of heartfelt gratitude that he could not refrain from giving me his blessing. Thus ended the first combat which restored to me the honour which has been the idol of my life and which has so often cost me my repose, my pleasure, and my fortune.

[Sidenote: Holidays at Combourg.]

The holidays in the course of which I entered upon my twelfth year were sad ones. The Abbé Leprince accompanied me to Combourg. I went out only with my tutor; we took long rambles together. He was dying of consumption, and was silent and melancholy; I myself was not much livelier. We walked for hours without saying a word. One day we lost our way in the woods; M. Leprince turned to me and asked:

"Which way shall we go?"

I answered without hesitation:

"The sun is setting; it is now striking the window in the big tower; let us go that way."

M. Leprince the same evening told the incident to my father: the future traveller showed himself in that decision. Many a time, when I saw the sun set in the forests of America, have I recalled the woods of Combourg: my memories are echoes one of the other.

The Abbé Leprince wanted them to give me a horse; but according to my father's notions, the only thing a naval officer need know how to steer was his ship. I was reduced, therefore, to riding two fat coach-horses or a big piebald by stealth. The latter was not, like Turenne's _Pie_, one of those steeds which the Romans called _desultorii equi_[114] and trained to aid their masters; it was a moon-eyed Pegasus, which overreached in trotting, and bit my legs when I set it at a ditch. I never cared much about horses, although I have led the life of a Tartar; and, contrary to the effect which my early training should have produced, I ride with an elegant rather than a firm seat.

A tertiary fever, the germs of which I had brought with me from the marshes of Dol, rid me of M. Leprince. A quack passed through the village; my father, who did not believe in doctors, believed in charlatans: he sent for the empiric, who undertook to cure me in twenty-four hours. He returned the next day, in a green, gold-laced coat, a huge, powdered wig, wide ruffles of dirty muslin, false diamonds on his fingers, worn black satin breeches, bluey-white silk stockings, and shoes with enormous buckles. He pulled back my curtains, felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue, jabbered a few words with an Italian accent on the necessity for purging me, and gave me a little piece of burnt sugar to eat. My father approved of the treatment, for he maintained that all sickness came from indigestion, and that for every kind of ill you should purge your man till the blood came.

Half-an-hour after swallowing the caramel, I was seized with a terrible vomiting; they sent to tell M. de Chateaubriand, who wanted to throw the poor wretch from the window of the tower. The latter, terrified, took off his coat, tucked back his shirt-sleeves, and made the most grotesque gestures. At each movement, his wig turned in every direction; he repeated my cries, adding after each: "_Che, Monsou Lavandier?_" This Monsieur Lavandier was the village druggist, who had been called in to lend his aid. I did not know, in the midst of my pain, whether I should die from taking the man's nostrums or from bursting with laughter at his behavior. The effects of this overdose of emetic were stopped in time, and I was set on my legs again.

The whole of our life is spent in wandering round our tomb: our illnesses are so many puffs of wind that send us more or less near to the haven. The first corpse I saw was that of a canon of Saint-Malo: he lay dead upon his bed, his features distorted with the final convulsions. Death is beautiful, he is our friend: and yet we do not recognize him, because he comes to us masked, and his mask frightens us.

I was sent back to school at the end of autumn.

*

I have been permitted to leave Dieppe, whither a police order had driven me, and to return to the Vallée-aux-Loups, where I continue my narrative. The soil trembles beneath the steps of the foreign soldier, who is invading my country at this very moment; I am writing, like the last of the Romans, to the sound of the Barbarian invasion. By day I compose pages as agitated as the events of the day[115]; at night, while the rolling of the distant cannon dies away in my woods, I return to the silence of years that sleep in the grave, to the peace of my youngest memories. How short and narrow is a man's past beside the vast present of the nations and their immeasurable future!

*

Mathematics, Greek, and Latin occupied all my winter at school. The time that was not devoted to study was given up to boyish sports, which are the same all over the world. The little Englishman, the little German, the little Italian, the little Spaniard, the little Iroquois, the little Bedouin, all trundle the hoop and throw the ball. Brothers of one great family, children do not lose their features of resemblance until they lose their innocence, everywhere the same. Then the passions, modified by climates, governments, and customs, make different nations; the human race ceases to speak and understand the same language: society is the real Tower of Babel.

[Sidenote: The Abbé de Chateaubriand.]

One morning I was taking very energetic part in a game of base in the playground, when I was told that I was wanted. I followed the servant to the front gate. There I found a stout, red-faced man, with abrupt and impatient manners and a fierce voice; he carried a stick in his hand, wore a black and ill-curled wig, a torn cassock with the ends tucked into his pockets, dusty shoes, and stockings with holes at the heels.

"You little scamp," said he, "are not you the Chevalier de Chateaubriand de Combourg?"

"Yes, monsieur," I replied, quite bewildered at his manner of addressing me.

"And I," he retorted, almost foaming at the mouth, "am the last senior of your family; I am the Abbé de Chateaubriand de La Guerrande[116]: take a good look at me."

The proud ecclesiastic put his hand into the fob of a pair of old plush breeches, took out a moldy six-franc crown-piece wrapped in a piece of dirty paper, flung it at my head, and continued his journey on foot, muttering his matins as he went, with a furious air. I have since learnt that the Prince de Condé[117] had offered this rustic rector the post of tutor to the Duc de Bourbon[118]. The overbearing priest replied that the Prince, as the owner of the Barony of Chateaubriand, ought to know that the heirs of that barony could have tutors, but could not act as such. This haughtiness was the fault of my family; in my father it was hateful; my brother pushed it to a ridiculous length; it has descended in a certain measure to his eldest son. I am not sure that I myself, in spite of my republican inclinations, have entirely shaken it off, although I have been careful to conceal it.

*

The time approached for making my First Communion, when the family used to decide upon the child's future condition. This religious ceremony took the place among young Christians of the assumption of the _toga virilis_ among the Romans. Madame de Chateaubriand had come in order to be present at the First Communion of her son, who, after being united to his God, was about to part from his mother.

My piety seemed to be sincere; I edified the whole college; there was ardor in my eyes; I was so persistent in my fasting as to make my masters uneasy. They feared lest I should drive devotion to excess; their religious enlightenment sought to temper my fervor. My confessor was the superior of the Eudist Seminary, a man of fifty, of stern appearance. Each time that I presented myself at the confessional, he anxiously questioned me. Surprised at the unimportance of my sins, he did not know how to reconcile my distress with the triviality of the secrets I confided to his bosom. The nearer Easter approached, the more pressing did the priest's questions become. "Are you keeping nothing back?" he would ask. I replied, "No, father." "Have you not committed such and such a sin?" "No, father." And it was always: "No, father." He dismissed me doubtfully, sighing, gazing into my very soul, while I left his presence pale and out of face, like a criminal.

[Sidenote: Confession and Absolution.]

I was to receive absolution on the Wednesday in Holy Week. I spent the night of Tuesday in praying and in reading with terror the _Confessions mal faites._ At three o'clock on the Wednesday afternoon, we started for the seminary, accompanied by our parents. All the vain renown that has since attached itself to my name would not have given Madame de Chateaubriand one moment of the pride which she felt, as a Christian and a mother, on beholding her son prepared to participate in the great mystery of religion.

On reaching the church, I prostrated myself before the altar, and lay as though annihilated. When I rose to go to the sacristy, where the superior awaited me, my knees trembled beneath me. I flung myself at the priest's feet; it was only in the most broken accents that I was able to pronounce the _Confiteor._ "Well, have you forgotten nothing?" asked the messenger of Jesus Christ. I remained silent. He began to question me again, and the fatal "No, father," came from my lips. He lapsed into meditation, asked counsel of Him who conferred upon the Apostles the power of binding and loosing souls. Then, making an effort, he prepared to give me absolution.

Had the sky shot a bolt at me, it would have caused me less dread. I cried:

"I have not confessed everything!"

This formidable judge, this deputy of the Sovereign Arbiter, whose visage inspired me with so much fear, became the tenderest of shepherds; he took me in his arms and burst into tears:

"Come, my dear child," said he, "courage!"

I shall never experience such another moment in my life. Had the weight of mountains been lifted from me, I should not have been more relieved: I sobbed with happiness. I venture to say that it was from that day forward that I became an upright man; I felt that I should never outlive a remorse: how great must be the remorse for a crime, when I could suffer so terribly for concealing the little sins of a child! But also how divine is the religion which can thus take hold of our best instincts! What precepts of morality can ever take the place of these Christian institutions?

The first admission made, the rest cost me nothing. My suppressed childish offenses, which would have made the world smile, were weighed in the balance of religion. The superior was very much perplexed; he would have liked to postpone my Communion; but I was about to leave Dol College, soon to enter the Navy. With great perspicacity, he discerned the nature of my proclivities from the very character of my juvenile faults, insignificant though they were; he was the first man to fathom the secret of the possibilities of my life. He divined my future passions; he did not conceal from me what he thought he saw good in me, but he also predicted the evils to come.

"After all," he added, "though time is short for your repentance, you are cleansed of your sins by your courageous, if tardy, confession."

Raising his hand, he pronounced the Absolution. On this second occasion, the fulminating hand showered upon my head only the heavenly dew; I bent my brow to receive it; my feelings partook of the joy of the angels. I rose and threw myself upon the bosom of my mother, who was awaiting me at the foot of the altar. I no longer appeared the same being to my masters and school-fellows; I walked with a light step my head held high, a radiant air, in all the triumph of repentance.

On the next day, which was Holy Thursday, I was admitted to the sublime and touching ceremony which I have vainly endeavored to describe in the _Génie du Christianisme._[119] I might here have felt again my usual little humiliations: my nosegay and my clothes were less fine than those of my companions; but that day everything was of God and for God. I know exactly what Faith means: the Real Presence of the Victim in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar was as evident to me as the presence of my mother by my side. When the Host was laid upon my lips, I felt as though a light had been kindled within me. I trembled with veneration, and the only material thing that occupied my thoughts was the dread of profaning the sacramental bread.

Le pain que je vous propose Sert aux anges d'aliment, Dieu lui-même le compose De la fleur de son froment[120].--RACINE.

I conceived besides the courage of the martyrs; at that moment I could have confessed Christ on the rack or in the midst of the lions.

I delight in recalling these joys which my soul felt but a little while before it became filled with the tribulations of the world. Those who compare these ardours with the transports which I shall presently depict, who see the same heart experiencing, within a space of three or four years, all that is sweetest and most wholesome in innocence and in religion and also all that is most seductive and most baneful in the passions, will choose one of the two forms of joy; they will see in which direction to seek happiness and, above all, peace.

Three weeks after my First Communion, I left Dol College. I retain a pleasant remembrance of this house: our childhood leaves a trace of itself upon places it has beautified by its presence, as a flower communicates a perfume to the objects it has touched. To this day I am affected when I think of the scattering of my first friends and my first masters. The Abbé Leprince was appointed to a living near Rouen, but died soon after; the Abbé Égault received a cure in the Diocese of Rennes; and I saw the death of the good principal, the Abbé Porcher, at the commencement of the Revolution: he was a learned, gentle, and simple-hearted man. The memory of that obscure Rollin[121] will always be dear and venerable to me.

*

At Combourg I found a Mission on which to feed my piety; I followed its exercises. I received confirmation on the manor steps, with the peasant lads and lasses, from the hand of the Bishop of Saint-Malo. After that, a cross was erected; I helped to hold it, while it was being fixed upon its base. It still exists: it stands in front of the tower in which my father died. For thirty years, it has seen no one appear at the windows of that tower; it is no longer saluted by the castle children; every spring-time it waits for them in vain; it sees none return save the swallows, the companions of my childhood, more faithful to their nest than man to his house. How happy should I have been, had my life been spent at the foot of that mission cross, had my hair been whitened only by the years which have covered the arms of that cross with moss!

[Sidenote: I go to Rennes College.]

I did not long delay my departure for Rennes, where I was to continue my studies and complete my mathematical course, before submitting myself for examination as a Naval Guard[122] at Brest. M. de Fayolle was principal of Rennes College. The staff of that Breton Juilly[123] included three distinguished professors: the Abbé de Chateaugiron, master of the second form, the Abbé Germé, master of rhetoric, and the Abbé Marchand, of physics. There were a large number of boarders and day-scholars, and the classes were strong. Within living memory, Geoffroy[124] and Ginguené[125], who were educated at the college, would have done honour to Sainte-Barbe[126] or the Plessis. The Chevalier de Parny[127] had also studied at Rennes; I succeeded to his bed in the room allotted to me.

Rennes seemed to me a Babylon, the college a world. The crowd of masters and school-boys, the size of the buildings, garden, and play-grounds appeared immense to my eyes[128]. I grew accustomed to it, however. On the saint's-day of the principal, we had a holiday; at the top of our voices we sang in his praise superb lines of our own composing, in which we said:

Ô Terpsichore, ô Polymnie, Venez, venez remplir nos vœux; La raison même vous convie[129].

At the cost of a few buffets, I assumed over my new schoolfellows the same ascendant that I had exercised over my old companions at Dol. The young Bretons are quarrelsome monkeys; on half-holidays we sent each other challenges to fight in the shrubbery of the garden of the Benedictines, called "the Thabor." Our arms consisted of compasses fastened to the end of a walking-stick, which gradually led to a hand-to-hand fight, more or less treacherous or courteous according to the gravity of the challenge. We had umpires who decided if battle was to be waged and how the champions should use their hands. The combat did not end until one of the two parties owned himself vanquished. I found my old friend Gesril presiding over these engagements, as at Saint-Malo. He offered to be my second in an affair in which I was engaged with Saint-Riveul[130], a young noble who became the first victim of the Revolution. I fell under my adversary, refused to surrender, and paid dearly for my pride. I said, like Jean Desmarets[131] on his road to the scaffold, "I cry mercy to God alone!"

I met at this college two men who have since become famous in different ways: Moreau[132], the general, and Limoëlan[133], the author of the infernal machine, who is now a priest in America. There is only one portrait of Lucile extant, a bad miniature by Limoëlan, who turned portrait-painter during the revolutionary troubles. Moreau was a day-boy, Limoëlan a boarder. Rarely have two such singular destinies been found at the same time, in the same province, the same small town, the same school[134].

[Sidenote: My intellectual disposition.]

Although the training at Rennes College was very religious, my fervor abated: the number of my masters and schoolfellows tended to multiply the occasions for distraction. I made progress in the study of languages; I became strong in mathematics, for which I have always had a decided leaning: I should have made a good naval officer or sapper. I was born with a generally quick disposition, I was susceptible to serious and agreeable things alike: I commenced with poetry before taking up prose; the arts delighted me; I have always passionately loved music and architecture. Although disposed to be easily bored, I was capable of grasping the smallest details; gifted with a patience that was proof against anything, however wearied I might be of the subject in hand, my perseverance overcame my distaste. I have never abandoned a matter that was worth completing; there are things which I have pursued for fifteen or twenty years of my life, as full of ardor on the last day as on the first.

This intellectual suppleness was again apparent in matters of secondary importance. I was good at chess, handy at billiards, a good shot, an expert swordsman; I drew tolerably; I should have sung well, if my voice had been trained. All this, added to the manner in which I was brought up and to the life I led as a soldier and traveller, produced the result that I have never played the prig nor displayed the stupid self-sufficiency, the awkwardness, the slovenly habits of the men of letters of former days, still less the conceited assurance, the jealousy and the blustering vanity of the new authors.

I spent two years at Rennes College; Gesril left eighteen months before I did. He entered the navy. Julie, my third sister, was married in the course of these two years; she gave her hand to the Comte de Farcy[135], a captain in the Condé Regiment, and settled with her husband at Fougères, where my two eldest sisters, Mesdames de Marigny and de Québriac were already living. Julie's wedding took place at Combourg, and I was present at it. I there met the Comtesse de Tronjoli[136], who distinguished herself by her courage on the scaffold: she was the cousin and close friend of the Marquis de La Rouërie, and was implicated in his conspiracy. I had never yet seen beauty except in my own family; I was confused on perceiving it in the face of a strange woman. Each step in life opened out a new perspective before me; I heard the distant and alluring voice of the passions which were coming to me; I hastened towards those sirens, attracted by an unknown harmony. It appeared that, like the High Priest of Eleusis, I had a different incense for each divinity. But could the hymns which I sang while burning that incense be called "balsams," like the poems of the hierophant[137]?

*

After Julie's marriage, I set out for Brest. On leaving the great College of Rennes, I did not feel the same regret that I had experienced on bidding farewell to the little College of Dol; perhaps I had lost the bud of innocence which turns everything into a charm for us; time was beginning to open it. My mentor in my new position was one of my maternal uncles, Vice-Admiral the Comte Ravenel de Boisteilleul[138], one of whose sons[139], a very distinguished artillery-officer in the armies of Bonaparte, married the only daughter[140] of my sister the Comtesse de Farcy.

[Sidenote: My life at Brest.]

On my arrival at Brest, I did not find my cadet's commission awaiting me; some accident had delayed it. I remained what was called an "aspirant," and, as such, was exempt from following the regular studies. My uncle put me to board in the Rue de Siam, at a cadets' ordinary, and introduced me to the naval commander, the Comte d'Hector[141]. Left for the first time to my own resources, instead of becoming intimate with my future messmates, I indulged in my instinct for solitude. My usual society was confined to my fencing-master, my drawing-master, and my mathematical tutor.

The sea which I was to behold upon so many coasts bathed, at Brest, the extremity of the Armorican Peninsula: beyond that prominent cape lay nothing but the boundless ocean and unknown worlds. My imagination revealed in all this space. Often, seated on some mast lying along the Quai de Recouvrance, I watched the movements of the crowd: shipwrights, sailors, soldiers, custom-house officers, convicts passed to and fro before my eyes. Passengers embarked and disembarked, pilots directed the steering, carpenters squared blocks of wood, cordwainers twisted hawsers, ship's boys lit fires under coppers from which issued a thick smoke and the healthy smell of tar. Bales of merchandise, sacks of victuals were carried to and from the quay; trains of artillery were rolled from the sea to the magazines, from the magazines to the sea. Here, carts were pushed backwards into the water to receive cargoes; there, loads were hoisted with tackle, while cranes lowered stones and dredging-machines dug out the alluvium. Forts fired signals, ships' boats came and went, vessels set sail or returned to harbor.

My mind became filled with vague ideas on society, its blessings and its evils. An indefinite sadness overtook me; I left the mast on which I was sitting, walked up the Penfeld, which runs into the port, and reached a turn where the port disappeared from view. Here, with nothing before me except a turfy valley, but with the confused murmur of the sea and human voices still in my ears, I lay down upon the bank of the little river. Watching by turns the rippling of the water and the flight of the sea-mew, enjoying the silence around me or listening to the strokes of the calker's hammer, I fell into the deepest musing. In the midst of this reverie, if the wind carried to me the sound of the gun of a ship leaving port, I started, and tears moistened my eyes.

One day I had walked in the direction of the outer extremity of the harbor, to the side of the sea: it was warm; I lay down upon the beach and fell asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a grand noise; I opened my eyes like Augustus to see the triremes in the anchorage of Sicily after the victory over Sextus Pompey: reports of artillery followed one upon the other; the roads were crowded with men-of-war; the great French squadron was returning after the signing of peace[142]. The ships manœuvred under full sail, bathed themselves in flame, hoisted ensigns, turned their poops, bows, broadsides towards the shore, stopped short by dropping anchor while still under sail, or continued to skim over the billows. Nothing ever gave me a higher idea of the human intelligence: man seemed at that moment to borrow something from Him who said to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou go and no further."

All Brest hastened to the port. Boats left the fleet and landed at the mole. The officers with whom they were crowded, their faces bronzed by the sun, had that foreign look which is brought back from another atmosphere, and the indescribable air of gaiety, of pride, of daring, worn by men who had restored the honour of the national ensign. These officers, so deserving, so illustrious, these companions of Suffren[143], Lamotte-Piquet[144], Couëdic, d'Estaing[145], had escaped from the blows of the enemy only to fall beneath those of Frenchmen!

[Sidenote: I meet Gesril.]

I was watching the gallant troop march by, when one of the officers disengaged himself from the others and fell upon my neck: it was Gesril. He seemed taller, but weak and ailing from a sword-thrust he had received in the chest. He left Brest the same evening to join his family. I only saw him once since, shortly before his heroic death: I will tell the occasion of the meeting later.

Gesril's sudden appearance and departure made me take a resolve which changed the course of my life: it was written that that young man should have an absolute empire over my destiny. One can see how my character was shaping, the turn my ideas were taking, the first attacks of my genius; for I can speak of that genius as a malady, whatever it may have been, rare or vulgar, worthy or unworthy of the name I give it for want of a word wherewith to express myself. Had I been more like the rest of mankind, I should have been happier: any one who could have succeeded, without depriving me of my intelligence, in killing what is called my talent would have treated me as a friend.

When the Comte de Boisteilleul took me to M. d'Hector, I heard old and young sailors discuss their campaigns and talk of the countries they had visited: one had returned from India, another from America; this one was to set sail to go round the world, the other was about to join the Mediterranean station, to visit the shores of Greece. My uncle pointed out La Pérouse[146] to me in the crowd, a new Cook, the manner of whose death has remained the secret of the tempests. I listened to everything, I looked at everything, without uttering a word; but there was no sleep for me that night: I spent it, in imagination, in delivering combats or discovering unknown lands.

Be that as it may, on seeing Gesril return to his parents, I thought that there was nothing to prevent me from going home to my own. I should have much liked the naval service, if my spirit of independence had not disinclined me to service of any kind: I was born with an incapacity for obedience. Voyages tempted me, but I felt that I should enjoy them only in solitude, left free to follow my own will. At last, giving my first proof of fickleness, without telling my uncle Ravenel, without writing to my parents, without asking permission of anybody, without waiting for my cadet's commission, I left one morning for Combourg, where I dropped as though from the clouds.

I am to this day astonished to think how, in view of the terror with which my father inspired me, I could have dared to take such a resolve; and what is quite as astonishing is the manner in which I was welcomed. I had every reason to expect transports of the most furious anger, and I was gently received. My father was content to shake his head, as though to say, "Here's a pretty trick!" My mother embraced me with all her heart, grumbling the while, and my Lucile kissed me in an ecstasy of joy.

[75] This book was written at Dieppe in September and October 1812 and at the Vallée-aux-Loups in December 1813 and January 1814, and was revised in June 1846.--T.

[76] The author's forty-fourth birthday.--B.

[77] Étienne Denis Duc Pasquier (1767-1862), became Prefect of Police under Bonaparte in 1810, President of the Chamber of Deputies under Louis XVIII. in 1816, Foreign Minister in 1819. In 1821, on the fall of the Villèle Ministry, Pasquier received his peerage. Louis-Philippe made him President of the Chamber of Peers in 1830, Chancellor in 1837, and created him a duke in 1844. In his capacity as a peer, therefore, and also as an Academician, he eventually became Chateaubriand's colleague.--T.

[78] The River Arques, which discharges itself at Dieppe, was formerly called the Deep.--T.

[79] Abraham Marquis Duquesne (1610-1688), the famous sailor. His religion--he was a Huguenot--prevented Louis XIV. from making him an admiral; the highest rank he obtained was that of lieutenant-general. A statue of Duquesne was erected at Dieppe in 1844.--T.

[80] Robert Wace, a native of Jersey, author of the _Brut d'Angleterre_ or _Artus de Bretagne_, the _Roman du Rou_ (Rollo Duke of Normandy), and the _Chronique ascendante des ducs de Normandie._ He was reading-clerk to Henry I. and Henry II., later a canon of Bayeux, and died in England _circa_ 1184.--T.

[81] Pliny, III. X. 15.--T.

[82] Urbain René de Hercé (1726-1795), consecrated Bishop of Dol in 1757, was shot not at, but after, Quiberon, at Vannes, 28 July 1795, together with Sombreuil and fourteen other victims, including his brother, François de Hercé (1733-1795), Grand-Vicar of Dol, and Gesril (_vide supra_).--B.

[83] Étienne Bezout (1730-1783), author of a number of mathematical works employed in schools in the eighteenth century.--T.

[84] Charles Dufresne Ducange (1610-1688), a learned expert in historical research, author of the _Glossarium mediæ et infimœ Latinitatis_, in which the description of the quintain occurs, and a number of other works of value.--T.

[85] The Manuscript of 1826 here contains a short description of the sport of the quintain: "All the bridegrooms of the year within the holding of Combourg were obliged, in the month of May, to come and break a wooden lance against a post placed in a sunk road that ran above the Great Mall. The tilters were on horseback; the bailiff, who acted as lord of the lists, examined the lance, and declared that there was no fraud nor guile in the arms: it was allowed to tilt three times at the post, but at the third time, if the lance was not broken, the jibers of the rustic tournament covered the awkward tilter with pleasantries, who paid a crown-piece to the liege lord."--T.

[86] Noble Maître François Jean Baptiste Potelet, Seigneur de Saint-Mahé et de La Durantais.--B.

[87] Gilles Marie de Launay, Sieur de La Billardière, successively procurator-fiscal of Bécherel, _sénéchal des juridictions_ of the Vauruffier, the Viscounty of Besso and the Marquisate of Caradenc, and bonder of the King's tobacco taxes at Combourg.--B.

[88] I have met my friend David again since: I shall tell when and how.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832).

[89] Jean Baptiste Gesbert, Seigneur de La Noé-Sécho, seneschal of the manorial jurisdiction of Combourg.--B.

[90] Maître René Petit, procurator-fiscal of the County of Combourg.--B.

[91] Maître Julien Corvaisier or Le Corvaisier, notary and attorney of the jurisdiction.--B.

[92] The Abbé Jean François Chalmel, chaplain of Combourg Castle.--B.

[93] Jean Anne Pinot du Petitbois (1737-1789) lived in the Château du Grandval at Combourg, still occupied by his descendants.--B.

[94] Michel Charles Locquet, Comte de Château-d'Assis, lived in the Château de Triaudin, Combourg, now owned by the Vicomte Roger du Petitbois.--B.

[95] Nicolas Pierre Philippes, Seigneur de Trémaudan.--B.

[96] René Malo Sévin, rector of the parish of Combourg in 1776, refused to subscribe to the civil constitution of the clergy, and went to Jersey in 1792. He returned in 1797, was reinstated in his parish in 1803, and died at Combourg in 1817.--B.

[97] Claude Anne, successively Vicomte, Marquis, and Duc de Saint-Simon, emigrated to Spain, entered the Spanish service, and became Captain-General of Old Castile. King Charles IV. created him a grandee of Spain, King Ferdinand VII. a duke. He died in Madrid in 1819. In 1808, on the capture of Madrid by the French, he was sentenced to death by court-martial; the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life, and he was confined in the Citadel of Besançon until the fall of the Empire in 1814.--B.

[98] It gave me a genuine pleasure to renew my acquaintance, during the Restoration, with this gallant officer, so distinguished for his loyalty and his Christian virtues.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1831).

Jacques Vincent Marquis de Causans de Mauléon (1751-1824), was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general in 1814, and sat in the Chamber of Deputies as member for Vaucluse from 1815 until his death.--B.

[99] Antoine Louis Marquis de Wignacourt, Knight of St. Louis.--B.

[100] François Placide Maillard, Seigneur de La Morandais. The Maillards de La Morandais delivered proofs of eight generations of nobility in 1670. Those who had settled at Combourg had degenerated through poverty.--B.

[101] Guillaume de Lamoignon (1617-1677), First President of the Parliament of Paris, founder of a most distinguished legal family, and great-grandfather of Lamoignon de Malesherbes.--T.

[102]

"Right gladly and in brave array, By wood and river made his way: For no folk through the woods advance Right gladly like the folk of France."--T.

[103] Armand Louis de Gontaut de Biron, Duc de Lauzun (1747-1793), and Duc de Biron on the death of his father in 1788. He was one of the handsomest men at the Court of Louis XVI. In 1789 he joined the party of the Duc d'Orléans, and served as a general in the Republican army, but was guillotined on the last day of December 1793.--T.

[104] Prince Eugène de Savoie-Carignan (1753-1785), younger son of Prince Louis Victor de Savoie-Carignan, and brother of the Princesse de Lamballe. A scion of the younger branch of the Royal House of Savoy, he entered the French service under the title of Count of Villafranca, and was made colonel of the Villefranche Regiment. In 1781 he married Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Jean François Nicolas Magon, Seigneur de Boisgarein; but the marriage was annulled by parliament upon the petition of the Prince's parents. He struggled desperately to obtain a revision of the decree of annulment. On the accession of the younger branch to the throne of Sardinia in 1831, the grandson of Prince Eugène and Mademoiselle de Boisgarein was restored to his ancestral rank, and in 1888 his morganatic children received from the late King of Italy the name of Villafranca-Soisson, with the title of count.--B.

[105] Pierre Louis Lacretelle (1751-1824), known as Lacretelle the Elder, to distinguish him from his brother, Charles Joseph Lacretelle, the Younger. He was a member of the French Academy, and author of a number of legal works and political and philosophical treatises.--T.

[106] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke I. chap. 9: _Of Lyers._--T.

[107] By Diderot; printed in 1738, and first performed at the Comédie Française ten years after, when it met with indifferent success, attaining a total of seven performances.--B.

[108] 11 January 1780, Marie Anne Françoise married Jean Joseph Geffelot, Comte de Marigny; Bénigne Jeanne married Jean François Xavier Comte de Québriac, Seigneur de Patrion.--B.

[109] LUCRETIUS, I. i.--T.

[110] TIBULLUS, I. i, 45.--T.

[111] Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), Bishop of Clermont, and a famous Catholic preacher. He left nearly a hundred sermons, in addition to a great number of other religious works. Massillon was elected an Academician in 1789.--T.

[112] François Eudes de Mézeray (1610-1683). The Eudists, founded by Jean Eudes, hare still a house at Rennes. The community is also known as the Congregation of Jesus and Mary.--T.

[113] STAT., _Th._, VII. 280.--T.

[114] SUET, _Cæs._ 39.--T.

[115] _De Buonaparte et des Bourbons.--Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1831).

[116] Charles Hilaire de Chateaubriand (1708-1782), rector successively of a number of country livings.--B.

[117] Louis Joseph (Louis V.) Prince de Condé (1736-1818), fourth in descent from the Great Condé, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Emigrants, 1789-1800. At the Restoration, King Louis XVIII. made his kinsman Grand-Master of the Household and Colonel-General of the Infantry.--T.

[118] Louis Henri Joseph (Louis VI.) Duc de Bourbon (1756-1830), son of Louis V. Prince de Condé and of the Princesse Louise d'Orléans, and father of the unhappy Duc d'Enghien. The Duc de Bourbon was found strangled-whether by his own hands or those of his mistress, Madame de Feuchères, is uncertain--a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left the greater part of his large fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale.--T.

[119] Part I. book I. chap. 7: _De la communion._--T.

[120]

"The bread I offer for your taking Is that which the angels eat; It is bread of God's own baking From the first fruits of his wheat."--T.

[121] Charles Rollin (1661-1741), a famous French professor and theologian.--T.

[122] The French Naval Guard (_Garde marine_) was a body of nobles from which the naval officers were appointed.--T.

[123] The name of a celebrated Oratorian college, near Meaux, suppressed by the Revolution of 1789.--T.

[124] Julien Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), a distinguished dramatic critic. He originated the literary _feuilleton_ in the _Journal des Débats._--T.

[125] Pierre Louis Ginguené (1748-1815), Ambassador to Turin under the Directory, and author of the _Histoire littéraire d'Italie_ and some poems, mostly imitated from the Italian.--T.

[126] The famous college on the Montagne Sainte-Généviève in Paris, founded by Jean Hubert in 1430.--T.

[127] Évariste Désiré Desforges, Chevalier de Parny (1753-1814), the author of a number of elegies and love-poems, which earned for him the name of "the French Tibullus."--T.

[128] Rennes College was one of the most important in France. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1607. When they left it, in 1762, a communal college was established in the same buildings. These are now occupied by the Lycée de Rennes, which, however, is greatly diminished in size.--B.

[129]

"Listen to the vows we offer, O Terpsichore, Polyhymnia! Reason herself her prayers doth proffer."--T.

[130] André François Jean du Rocher de Saint-Riveul (1772-1789), son of Henri du Rocher, Comte de Saint-Riveul.--B. The Manuscript of 1826 mentions that he was killed in the street at Rennes, as he was going with his father to the Chamber of Nobles.--T.

[131] Jean Desmarets, advocate-general to the Parliament of Paris, beheaded in 1382 for his failure to suppress the revolt of the Maillotins.--T.

[132] Jean Victor Moreau (1763-1813), one of the greatest generals of the Revolution, and the victor of the Battles of Hochstädt and Hohenlinden. He subsequently entered into relations with the Royalist Generals Pichegru and Cadoudal, was tried and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, a sentence commuted to exile in the United States. Here he received offers from the Tsar Alexander to join the army of the Allies, which he eventually accepted; but was killed by a cannon-ball immediately after reaching the head-quarters of the Allied Army outside Dresden.--T.

[133] Joseph Pierre Picot de Limoëlan de Clorivière (1768-1826) entered the army, espoused the Royalist cause, and refused to accept the pacification of 1799. He returned to Paris, and was on the eve of marrying a charming young lady of Versailles, Mademoiselle Julie d'Albert, when the explosion of the infernal machine took place in the Rue Saint-Nicaise (24 December 1799). Limoëlan was one of the principal agents in the plot. Thanks to the devotion of his betrothed, he escaped to America, and upon his arrival in New York wrote to Mademoiselle d'Albert to come out to him and be married there. The reply came as a shock to him. Mademoiselle d'Albert had taken a vow to devote herself to God, if her lover succeeded in making good his escape. She besought him to forget the past and to think only of his eternal future. In 1808 the young officer entered the seminary at Baltimore. He commenced a new life, changed his name to Clorivière, was ordained priest in 1812, and received a curacy at Charleston. He returned to France in 1815 to collect what remained of his fortune, the whole of which he devoted to pious works in America, including the re-endowment of the Convent of the Visitation at Georgetown, founded by Miss Alice Lalor in 1805. Mademoiselle d'Albert survived Father de Clorivière for many years. She kept her vow of celibacy, but did not take the veil, for want of a vocation. At the age of fifty she was relieved by Pope Gregory XVI. from her vow. She died at Versailles, advanced in years, after a life devoted entirely to works of piety and charity.--B.

[134] I omit a short anecdote.--T.

[135] Annibal Pierre François de Farcy de Montavallon. The wedding took place in 1782.--B.

[136] Thérèse Josèphe de Moëlien (1759-1793), daughter of Sébastien Marie Hyacinthe de Moëlien, Chevalier, Seigneur de Trojolif (not Tronjoli), Kermoisan, Kerguelenet, &c. She was twenty-three years of age when Chateaubriand saw her at Combourg, and when writing his Memoirs he must have recalled her with his school-boy eyes; for contemporary evidence declares that she was not beautiful, nor even pretty. The words "and close friend of the Marquis de La Rouërie" do not occur in the Manuscript of 1826. Thérèse de Moëlien was in love, not with La Rouërie, but with Major Chafner, an American officer, whom she was to have married if she outlived the plot in which they were both engaged. She was guillotined, however, in Paris on the 18th of June 1793. Major Chafner was in London at the time of the discovery of the so-called Breton Conspiracy. He returned to Brittany, and perished at Nantes, after fighting on the side of the Vendeans to revenge the death of Mademoiselle de Moëlien.--B.

[137] An allusion to the mystical hymns of Orpheus, which were called "perfumes" (αρώματα).--B.

[138] Jean Baptiste Joseph Eugène de Ravenel du Boisteilleul (1738-1815), first cousin of Chateaubriand's mother, and therefore uncle in the manner of Brittany of the great writer.--B.

[139] Hyacinthe Eugène Pierre de Ravenel du Boisteilleul (1784-1868), a captain of artillery, and decorated on the battle-field at Smolensk, 17 August 1812.--B.

[140] Pauline Zoé Marie de Farcy de Montavallon (1784-1850) married Hyacinthe de Ravenel du Boisteilleul, 16 November 1814.--B.

[141] Vice-Admiral Charles Jean Comte d'Hector (1722-1808), commander of the port of Brest from 1780 to 1791. He joined the Princes' Army at Coblentz, and was made colonel of a regiment consisting exclusively of naval officers. He died at Reading in Berkshire at the age of eighty-six.--B.

[142] The Peace of Versailles, 1783.--T.

[143] Pierre André de Suffren-Saint-Tropez (1726-1788), known as the Bailli de Suffren, had fought the English in India by sea and land in the war of 1782.--T.

[144] Comte de Lamotte-Piquet (1720-1791), lieutenant-general of the French Navy. Between 1737 and 1783 he took part in twenty-eight campaigns, and distinguished himself especially in America.--T.

[145] Charles Hector Comte d'Estaing (1720-1794), admiral in command of the combined fleets at Cadiz on the signature of the treaty of peace. He embraced the principles of the Revolution, and served in the Republican army and naval forces; but was guillotined in 1794.--T.

[146] Jean François Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse (1741-1788[?]) set out on a voyage of discovery in 1785. He was known to have visited Japan and New Holland when, in 1788, all traces of him were lost. In 1827, Captain Dillon discovered the wrecks of his ships, the _Boussole_ and the _Astrolabe_, off the coast of Vanikoro, since called the Pérouse, one of the Santa Cruz group, between the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides.--T.