The nearer Easter came, the more pressing did the priest’s questions become. ‘Aren’t you keeping something back?’ he would ask. I replied: ‘No, father.’ ‘Haven’t you committed such and such a sin?’ ‘No, father.’ And it was always: ‘No, father.’ He dismissed me with obvious misgivings, sighing and gazing into the depths of my soul, while I left his presence looking as pale and shifty as a criminal.

I was to receive absolution on the Wednesday in Holy Week. I spent Tuesday night praying and reading with terror the book of Bad Confessions. At three o’clock on the Wednesday afternoon, we set out for the seminary, accompanied by our parents. All the vain renown which has since attached itself to my name would not have given Mme de Chateaubriand an iota of the pride which she felt as a Christian and a mother at seeing her son preparing to participate in the great mystery of our religion.

On arriving at the church, I prostrated myself before the altar and lay there as if I had been annihilated. When I stood up to go to the sacristy, where the superior was waiting for me, my knees trembled beneath me. I threw myself at the priest’s feet; it was only in the most broken of voices that I was able to say the Confiteor. ‘Well, have you forgotten nothing?’ asked the man of God. I remained silent. He started questioning me again, and the inevitable ‘No, father’ came from my lips. He lapsed into meditation, asking 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.

If Heaven had shot a thunderbolt at me, it would have caused me less dread. I cried:

‘I have not confessed everything!’

This awe-inspiring judge, this delegate of the Supreme Arbiter, whose face filled me with such fear, became the tenderest of shepherds. He clasped me in his arms and burst into tears.

‘Come now, dear child,’ he said, ‘courage!’

I shall never experience a like moment in the whole of my life. If the weight of a mountain had been lifted from me, I should not have felt more relieved: I sobbed with happiness. I venture to say that it was on that day that I became a decent, upright man; I felt that I could never survive a feeling of remorse: how great the remorse for a crime must be, when I could suffer so dreadfully for concealing the minor misdemeanours of a child! But also how divine this religion is which can thus take hold of our best instincts! What moral precepts can ever take the place of these Christian institutions?

The first admission made, the rest came easily: the childish offences which I had concealed, and which would have made the world smile, were weighed in the balance of religion. The superior was in an embarrassing position; he would have liked to postpone my communion, but I was about to leave Dol College to enter the Navy shortly afterwards. With great perspicacity he discovered in the very character of my youthful sins, insignificant though they were, the nature of my propensities; he was the first man to fathom the secret of what I might become. He divined my future passions; he did not conceal from me the good he thought he saw in me, but he also predicted the evils to come.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘even if you have little time for your penance, you have been cleansed of your sins by your courageous, though tardy, confession.’

Raising his hand, he pronounced the words of absolution. On this second occasion, the dreadful hand showered on my head nothing but the heavenly dew; I bent my brow to receive it; my feelings partook of the joy of the angels. Then I ran to embrace my mother, who was waiting for me at the foot of the altar. I no longer appeared the same person to my masters and schoolmates: I walked with a light step, my head high and a radiant expression on my face, in all the triumph of repentance.

The next day, Maundy Thursday, I was admitted to the sublime and moving ceremony which I have vainly endeavoured to describe in Le Génie du christianisme. I might have felt here as elsewhere my usual little humiliations: my nosegay and my clothes were less impressive than those of my companions; but that day everything was of God and for God. I know exactly what Faith is: the Real Presence of the Victim in the Blessed Sacrament on the altar was as manifest to me as my mother’s presence by my side. When the Host was laid on my tongue, I felt as though a light had been kindled within me. I trembled with veneration, and the only material thing that occupied my mind was the fear of profaning the sacramental bread.

Three weeks after my first communion, I left Dol College. I retain pleasant memories of that house: our childhood leaves something of itself in the places it has embellished, just as a flower communicates a perfume to the objects it has touched. To this day I feel moved when I think of the dispersal of my first companions and my first masters. The Abbé Leprince, appointed to a living near Rouen, did not survive much longer; the Abbé Égault obtained a rectorship in the diocese of Rennes; and I saw the good principal, the Abbé Portier, die at the beginning of the Revolution; he was a learned, gentle, simple-hearted man.