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.
[Illustration: Château de Combourg]
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.