Why was I not allowed to die? It entered into the counsels of God to grant, in return for the vow of obscurity and innocence, the preservation of a life which a vain reputation threatened to extinguish.

After three years I was brought back to Saint-Malo; it was already seven years since my father had regained possession of the estate of Combourg. He wished to retrieve the lands where his ancestors had lived; unable to negotiate either for the seigneury of Beaufort, which had gone to the Goyon family, or for the barony of Chateaubriand, which had passed to the house of Condé, he turned his eyes towards Combourg, which Froissart calls Combour: several branches of my family had possessed it by means of marriages with the Coëtquens. Combourg defended Brittany against the Normans and the English: Junken, the Bishop of Dol, built it in 1016; the great tower dates from 1100. Marshal de Duras, who had Combourg from his wife, Maclovie de Coëtquen, the daughter of a Chateaubriand, came to an agreement with my father. The Marquis du Hallay, an officer in the mounted grenadiers of the Royal Guard who is almost too well known for his courage, is the last of the Coëtquen-Chateaubriands: M. du Hallay has a brother. The same Marshal de Duras, acting as our relation by marriage, later presented my brother and myself to Louis XVI.

I was destined for the Royal Navy: disdain for Court life came naturally to a Breton, and especially to my father. The aristocracy of our States fortified him in this feeling.

When I was brought back to Saint-Malo, my father was at Combourg and my brother at the school of Saint-Brieuc; my four sisters were living with my mother.

All the latter’s affection was concentrated on her elder son; not that she was not fond of her other children, but she showed a blind preference for the young Comte de Combourg. It is true that as a boy, as the last-comer, as the Chevalier (for so I was called), I enjoyed certain privileges over my sisters; but in the final analysis I was left in the care of the servants. Moreover my mother, being a woman of wit and virtue, was preoccupied by the cares of society and the duties of religion. Orderly as she was, she allowed her children to run wild; generous as she was, she gave an impression of avarice; gentle as she was, she was for ever scolding: my father was the terror of the servants, my mother the scourge.

These characteristics of my parents gave rise to the first feelings I can remember. I became extremely attached to the woman who looked after me, an excellent creature called La Villeneuve, whose name I write with gratitude in my heart and tears in my eyes. La Villeneuve was a sort of chief lady-in-waiting, carrying me in her arms, secretly giving me anything she could find, wiping away my tears, kissing me, throwing me in a corner, picking me up again, and all the time muttering: ‘This little fellow won’t grow up high-and-mighty! He has a good heart, he has! He isn’t hard on poor folk! Here, my love’ – and she would fill me with wine and sugar.

My childish affection for La Villeneuve was soon eclipsed by a worthier friendship.

Lucile, the fourth of my sisters, was two years older than I. The neglected youngest daughter, she was dressed in nothing but her sisters’ cast-offs. Imagine a thin little girl, too tall for her age, with ungainly arms and a timid expression, who found it difficult to talk and impossible to learn anything; give her a borrowed dress of a different size from her own; imprison her chest in a boned bodice whose points chafed her sides; encircle her neck in an iron collar trimmed with brown velvet; draw back her hair on to the crown of her head and enclose it in a black toque; and you will see the wretched creature who met my gaze when I returned home. Nobody would have suspected the existence in this pitiful Lucile of the talents and the beauty which would shine in her one day.

She was handed over to me like a toy; I did not take advantage of my power over her; instead of submitting her to my wishes, I became her defender. I was taken with her every morning to the house of the Couppart sisters, two old hunchbacks dressed in black who taught children to read. Lucile read very badly; I read even worse. She was scolded; I scratched the sisters: complaints were made to my mother. I began to acquire the reputation of a waster, a rebel, a lazy scamp, and a donkey. These ideas became firmly fixed in my parents’ minds: my father used to say that all the Chevaliers of Chateaubriand had been idle, tipsy, and quarrelsome. My mother would sigh and grumble at the state of my jacket. Though I was only a child, my father’s remark roused me to indignation; when my mother crowned her remonstrances with praise for my brother, whom she called a Cato and a hero, I felt prepared to commit all the mischief that seemed to be expected of me.

Saint-Malo is nothing but a rock. Standing in former times in the middle of a salt-marsh, it became an island as a result of the tidal wave which, in 709, hollowed out the bay and placed Mont Saint-Michel in the midst of the waves. Today, the rock of Saint-Malo is connected to the mainland only by a causeway with the poetic name of Le Sillon, or the Furrow. Le Sillon is assailed on one side by the open sea and washed on the other side by the tide which turns round Saint-Malo to enter the port. A storm almost entirely destroyed it in 1730. At low tide, the port is dry for several hours, and on the north and east a beach of the finest sand is revealed. It is then possible to walk right round my father’s home. Close at hand and in the distance are scattered rocks, forts, and uninhabited islets: Fort Royal, La Conchée, Cézembre, and Le Grand-Bé, where I am to be buried; without knowing, I chose well, for bé, in Breton, means grave.

At the end of Le Sillon, on which a calvary has been set up, there is a mound of sand at the edge of the open sea.