Chateaubriand's memoirs, II, 2

Dieppe, October 1812.

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

The estate of Combourg had for its whole domain only some heath land, a few mills, and two forests, Bourgouët and Tanoërn, in a part of the country where timber is almost valueless; but it was rich in feudal rights; these rights were of various kinds: some determined certain rents for certain concessions, or enshrined practices born of the old political order; others seemed to have had their origin only in amusements.

My father had revived some of these latter rights, in order to prevent their prescription. When all the family were gathered together, we took part in these medieval pleasures: the three principal ones were the Saut des poissonniers, the Quintaine, and the fair called the Angevine.Peasants in clogs and laced breeches, men of a France that is no more, watched those games of a France that was already no more. There was a prize for the victor, a forfeit for the vanquished.

The Quintaine preserved the tradition of the tournament: it surely had some connection with the ancient military duties of the fiefs. It is well described in Du Cange (Voce, Quintana). Forfeits had to be paid in old copper coinage to the value of two moutons d’or à la coronne of 25 Parisian sols each.

The fair known as the Angevine was held in the Pond Meadow, on the 4th of September each year, my birthday. The vassals were obliged to take up arms, and came to the château to raise the banner of their lord; from there they went to the fair to keep order, and to enforce the collection of a toll due to the Counts of Combourg on every head of cattle, a sort of royalty. During that time my father kept open house. There was dancing for three days: by the masters in the grand hall to the scraping of a violin; for the vassals in the Green Court to the nasal whine of a bagpipe. They sang, cheered, and fired arquebusades. These noises mingled with the lowing of cattle at the fair; the crowds wandered through the gardens and the woods, and at least once a year Combourg saw something resembling joy.

So I enjoyed the singular distinction in life of having assisted at the races of the Quintaine and at the proclamation of the Rights of Man; of having viewed the bourgeois militia of a Breton village and the National Guard of France, the banner of the Lords of Combourg, and the flag of the Revolution. It is as if I were the last witness to feudal custom.

The visitors who were received at the château comprised the leading inhabitants of the village, and the local nobility: these good people were my first friends. Our vanity sets too much importance on the role we play in the world. The Parisian bourgeoisie laugh at the bourgeoisie from a small town; the Court nobility mock the provincial nobility: the famous man scorns one who is unknown, without reflecting that time serves equal justice on their pretensions, and that they are all equally ridiculous or tedious in the eyes of succeeding generations.

The most important local inhabitant was a Monsieur Potelet, a retired sea-captain of the India Company who recalled tall tales of Pondicherry. As he told them with his elbows on the table my father always wished to throw his plate in his face. After him came the tobacco bonder, Monsieur Launay de La Billardière, the father, like Jacob, of a family of twelve children, in his case nine girls and three boys, of whom the youngest, 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 his household there was a good deal of happiness and plenty of debt. The seneschal Gébert, the fiscal attorney Petit, the tax-collector Le Corvaisier, and the chaplain the Abbé Charmel, completed Combourg society. I have met no-one more distinguished since in Athens.

Messieurs du Petit-Bois, de Chateau-d’Assie, de Tinténiac, and one or two other gentlemen, would come, on Sunday, to hear mass in the parish, and to dine afterwards with the lord of the manor. We were especially close to the Trémaudan family, comprising the husband, his very pretty wife, her sister and several children. The family lived in a tenant farm which only declared its nobility by means of a dovecote. The Trémaudans live there still. Wiser and more fortunate than I, they have never lost sight of the towers of that château which I left thirty years ago; they still live as they lived when I went to eat brown bread at their table; they have never left that refuge which I have never re-entered. Perhaps they are speaking of me at the same instant that I am writing this page: I reproach myself for dragging their name from its sheltering obscurity. They doubted for a long time as to whether the man whom they heard of was indeed their petit chevalier. The rector or curé of Combourg, the Abbé Sévin, the same whose extolling of virtue I have listened to, has shown the same incredulity; he could not be persuaded that the little rascal, the friend of peasants, was the defender of religion; he ended by believing, and quotes me in his sermons, having once held me on his knee. These worthy men, who blend not one unfamiliar concept into their portrait of me, who see me as I was in my childhood and youth, would they know me today under the disguises of time? I would be obliged to tell them my name before they would wish to clasp me in their arms.

I bring misfortune to my friends. A game-keeper, called Raulx, who was attached to me, was killed by a poacher. This murder made an extraordinary impression on me. What a strange mystery there is in human sacrifice! Why must it be that the greatest crime and the greatest glory lie in shedding human blood? My imagination showed me Raulx, holding his entrails in his hands, dragging himself to the cottage where he died. I conceived the notion of vengeance; I would have liked to attack the assassin. In this respect I was oddly endowed at birth: in the first moment of injury, I scarcely feel it; but it imprints itself on my memory; the remembrance instead of waning, waxes with time; it remains in my heart for months, entire years, then it wakes on the least occasion with fresh force, and my wound becomes more vivid than on the first day. But if I never forgive my enemies, I do them no harm; I bear a grudge but am not vindictive. Having the power to revenge myself, I lose the desire; I could only be dangerous in misfortune. Those who thought me ready to yield to their oppression were wrong; adversity is for me what the earth was to Antaeus: I gather strength at my mother’s breast. If ever good fortune has taken me in its arms, it has suffocated me.