I was accordingly reduced to secretly riding two fat coach-horses or a big piebald. The latter was not Turenne’s Pie, one of those battle-steeds which the Romans called desultorios equos and trained to help their masters; it was a moon-eyed Pegasus which stamped when it was trotting and bit my legs when I set it at a ditch. I have never cared much for 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 greater elegance than sureness.

A fever, the germs of which I had brought with me from the marshes of Dol, rid me of M. Leprince. A quack happened to be passing through the village; my father, who had no faith in doctors, had great faith in charlatans: he sent for the empiric, who guaranteed to cure me in twenty-four hours. He came back the next day in a green coat trimmed with gold braid, a wide powdered wig, huge ruffles of dirty muslin, imitation diamonds on his fingers, worn black satin breeches, bluey-white silk stockings, and shoes with enormous buckles.

He opened my bed-curtains, felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue, jabbered a few words in an Italian accent on the necessity of purging me, and gave me a little piece of caramel to eat. My father approved of this treatment, for he maintained that all illness was caused by indigestion, and that for every kind of disorder you should purge a patient till he bled.

Half an hour after swallowing the caramel, I was seized with a terrible vomiting; M. de Chateaubriand was told of this, and threatened to have the poor devil thrown out of the tower window. The latter, utterly terrified, took off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, making the most grotesque gestures imaginable. With each movement, his wig turned in every direction; he echoed my cries, adding after each: ‘Che? Monsou Lavandier?’ This M. Lavandier was the village chemist, who had been called in to help. I did not know, in the midst of my pain, whether I should die from taking the man’s medicaments or from roaring with laughter at his behaviour.

The effects of this overdose of emetic were countered and I was set on my feet again. The whole of our life is spent wandering round our grave; our various illnesses are so many puffs of wind which bring us a little or a great deal nearer port. The first dead person I ever saw was a canon of Saint-Malo; he lay lifeless on his bed, his face distorted by the final convulsions. Death is beautiful, and she is our friend; yet we do not recognize her, because she appears to us in a mask and her mask terrifies us.

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

Mathematics, Greek, and Latin occupied the whole of my winter at school. What time was not devoted to study was given up to those childhood games which are the same all over the world. The little English boy, the little German, the little Italian, the little Spaniard, the little Iroquois, and the little Bedouin all bowl the hoop and throw the ball. Brothers of one great family, children lose their common features only when they lose their innocence, which is the same everywhere. Then the passions, modified by climates, governments, and customs, create different nations; the human species ceases to speak and understand the same language; society is the real Tower of Babel.

One morning I was engrossed in a game of prisoner’s base in the school playground when I was told that I was wanted. I followed the servant to the main gate. There I found a stout, red-faced man, with an abrupt, impatient manner and a fierce voice; he was carrying a stick in his hand and was wearing an untidy black wig, a torn cassock with the ends tucked into the pockets, dusty shoes, and stockings with holes in the heels.

‘You little scamp,’ he said, ‘aren’t you the Chevalier de Chateaubriand de Combourg?’

‘Yes, Monsieur,’ I replied, quite taken aback by his manner of speaking.

‘And I,’ he went on, almost foaming at the mouth, ‘I am the last of the elder branch of your family; I am the Abbé de Chateaubriand de la Guerrande; take a good look at me.’

The proud ecclesiastic put his hand into the fob pocket of a pair of old plush breeches, took out a mouldy six-franc crown piece wrapped in a piece of dirty paper, flung it at me, and stamped off, muttering his matins with a furious air. I have since discovered that the Prince de Condé had offered this rustic rector the post of tutor to the Duc de Bourbon. The scandalized priest replied that the Prince, as the owner of the Barony of Chateaubriand, ought to know that the heirs to that barony could have tutors but could not possibly be tutors. This arrogance was the cardinal failing of my family; in my father it was hateful; my brother pushed it to ridiculous lengths; it has come down to a certain extent to his eldest son. I am not sure that I myself, despite my republican inclinations, have entirely shaken it off, although I have taken every care to conceal it.

The time drew near for making my first communion, when it was customary in my family 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. Mme de Chateaubriand had come in order to be present at the first communion of a son who, after being united to his God, would be parted from his mother.

My piety appeared to be sincere; I edified the whole school; my eyes glowed with religious ardour; my fasts were so frequent as to make my masters uneasy. They feared the effects of excessive devoutness; their enlightened piety sought to temper my fervour.

My confessor was the superior of the Eudist seminary, a man of fifty with a stern appearance. Every time I presented myself at the confessional, he questioned me anxiously. Surprised at the unimportance of my sins, he did not know how to reconcile my distress with the trivial nature of the secrets I confided to him.