The most important local inhabitant was a certain M. Potelet, a retired sea-captain of the India Company, who used to tell stirring tales of Pondicherry. As he recounted these stories with his elbows on the table, my father was always tempted to throw his plate in his face. After him came the tobacco bonder, M. Launay de la Bliardière, the father, like Jacob, of a family of twelve children, nine girls and three boys, the youngest of whom, David, was a playmate of mine. This good man took it into his head to become a nobleman in 1789; he had left it rather late! In this household there was a great deal of happiness and a great many debts. The seneschal Gesbert, the fiscal attorney Petit, the tax collector Le Corvaisier, and the chaplain the Abbé Chalmel made up the society of Combourg. I have not met people of greater distinction in Athens.

I returned to Dol, much to my regret. The following year, plans were made by the army for a landing on Jersey,* and a camp was established near Saint-Malo. Troops were billeted at Combourg, and M. de Chateaubriand, out of courtesy, put up in succession the colonels of the Touraine and Conti Regiments: one was the Duc de Saint-Simon and the other the Marquis de Causans. A score of officers were invited to my father’s table every day. The pleasantries of these strangers offended me; their walks disturbed the peace of my woods. It was through seeing the lieutenant-colonel of the Conti Regiment, the Marquis de Wignacourt, galloping beneath the trees that the idea of travel first entered my head.

When I heard our guests talking about Paris and the Court I fell into a state of melancholy; I tried to guess what society was like; I gained a vague, confused impression, but soon lost my bearings. Looking at the world from the quiet realms of innocence, I felt giddy, as one does when looking down at the ground from one of those towers that soar into the sky.

One thing delighted me, however, and that was the parade. Every day the new guard would march past, led by drummer and band, at the foot of the staircase in the Green Court. M. de Causans suggested showing me the camp on the coast, and my father gave his consent.

I was taken to Saint-Malo by M. de la Morandais, a gentleman of good family, but whom poverty had reduced to being the steward of the Combourg estates. He wore a coat of grey camlet with a little silver band at the collar, and a grey felt cap with earflaps and a peak in front. He put me behind him, on the crupper of his mare Isabelle. I held on to the belt of his hunting-knife, which was fastened outside his coat: I was delighted.

We stopped for dinner at a Benedictine abbey which, for want of a sufficient number of monks, had just been incorporated in a more important community of the order. We found nobody there but the bursar, who had been given the task of disposing of the furniture and selling the timber. He provided us with an excellent meatless dinner in what had been the Prior’s library: we ate a considerable number of new-laid eggs with some huge carp and pike. Through the arcade of a cloister I could see some great sycamores bordering a pond. The axe struck at the foot of each tree, its top trembled in the air, and it fell to make a show for us. Carpenters from Saint-Malo were busy sawing off green branches as one trims a young head of hair, or squaring the fallen trunks. My heart bled at the sight of those decimated woods and that deserted monastery. The general sack of religious houses has since reminded me of that spoliation of an abbey which for me was a portent of things to come.

My brother was at Saint-Malo when M. de la Morandais left me there.