Scarcely a fortnight had passed before I witnessed the arrival of the Abbé Portier, the principal of Dol College; I was delivered into his hands, and I followed him in spite of my tears.

I was not entirely a stranger to Dol, where my father was a canon, as the descendant and representative of the house of Guillaume de Chateaubriand, Sire de Beaufort, the founder in 1529 of 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 very moderate political views, who, on his knees and holding a crucifix, was shot with his brother the Abbé de Hercé at Quiberon, in the Field of Martyrdom. On my arrival at the school I was placed under the special care of M. l’Abbé Leprince, who taught rhetoric and had a thorough knowledge of geometry: he was a handsome man with a nice wit, who loved the arts and could paint portraits with reasonable competence. He undertook to teach me mathematics; the Abbé Égault, who was in charge of the fourth form, became my Latin master; I studied mathematics in my own room, Latin in the common schoolroom.

It took some time for an owl of my sort to accustom himself to the cage of a school and to regulate his flight by the sound of a bell. I could not win those ready friends procured by wealth, for there was nothing to be gained from a poor wretch who did not even have a weekly allowance; nor did I join a clique, for I hate protectors. In the school games I did not presume to lead others, but at the same time I refused to be led: I was not fitted to be either a tyrant or a slave, and so I have remained.

Even so it happened that quite soon I became the centre of a set; later on, in my regiment, I exerted the same power: ordinary ensign that I was, the senior officers used to spend their evenings with me and preferred my rooms to the café. I do not know why this was, unless it had something to do with my ability to enter into the spirit and join in the way of life of other people. I enjoyed hunting and running as much as reading and writing. It is still a matter of indifference to me whether I chat about the most trivial matters or discuss the most serious subjects. But I have no liking for wit, which is wellnigh repugnant to me, although I am not exactly a simpleton. No human failing shocks me with the exception of mockery and conceit, which I find it hard to suffer patiently; I find that other people are always superior to me in some respect, and if by some chance I feel that I have an advantage over them the idea embarrasses me.

Qualities which my early upbringing had left dormant awoke in me at school. My aptitude for work was remarkable, my memory extraordinary. I made rapid progress in mathematics, a subject to which I brought a clarity of conception which astonished the Abbé Leprince. At the same time I showed a decided taste for languages. The rudiments, which are the bane of most schoolboys, I found easy to acquire; I awaited the time for the Latin lesson with a sort of impatience, as a relaxation after my sums and geometrical figures. In less than a year I reached the level of a good second-former. By some singularity, my Latin phrases fell so naturally into pentameters that the Abbé Égault called me the Elegist, a name by which my schoolmates knew me for long enough.

I went to Combourg for the holidays. Château life in the vicinity of Paris can give no idea of château life in a provincial backwater.

In the way of property, the estate of Combourg possessed only some barren heaths, a few mills, and the two forests Bourgouët and Tanoërn in a part of the country where timber is practically worthless. But Combourg was rich in feudal rights; these rights were of various kinds: some determined certain rents for certain concessions, or regulated customs born of the old political order; the others seem to have been nothing but amusements to begin with.

My father had revived some of these latter rights, in order to avert their prescription. When the whole family was gathered together, we used to take part in these old-fashioned entertainments: the three principal ones were the Saut des Poissonniers, the Quintaine, and a fair called the Angevine.* Peasants in clogs and breeches, men of a France which is now no more, watched these games of a France which was then no more. There was a prize for the victor, a forfeit for the vanquished.

The Quintaine maintained the tradition of the tournaments of old: it probably had some connexion with the military service of the fiefs. The forfeits had to be paid in old copper coinage, up to the value of two moutons d’or à la couronne of 25 Parisian sols each.

The fair known as the Angevine was held in the pond meadow every year on 4 September, my birthday. The vassals were obliged to parade under arms and came to the château to raise the banner of the lord of the manor; from there they went to the fair to keep order and to enforce the collection of a toll due to the Counts of Combourg for every head of cattle, a sort of royalty. During this time my father kept open house. There was dancing for three days on end: for the masters in the great hall, to the scraping of a violin; for the vassals in the Green Court, to the nasal whine of a bagpipe. People sang and cheered and fired arquebusades. These noises mingled with the lowing of the cattle at the fair; the crowds wandered through the woods and gardens, and at least once a year Combourg saw something akin to merriment.

Thus I enjoy the singular distinction of having been present at the races of the Quintaine and the proclamation of the Rights of Man; of having seen the local militia 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 feudal life.

The visitors who were received at the château consisted of the leading inhabitants of the village and the local aristocracy: these good people were my first friends.