Berlin, March 1821
I OBTAINED a furlough. M. d’Andrezel, appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Picardy regiment, was leaving Cambrai: I acted as his courier. We passed through Paris, where I didn’t want to stop for even a quarter of an hour. I saw the moors of my Brittany again with more joy than a Neapolitan, banished to our lands, would the shores of Portici or the fields of Sorrento. My family gathered at Combourg and divided the inheritance. This done, we disbanded like birds flying from the paternal nest. My brother had come from Paris and went straight back; my mother left to settle in Saint-Malo; Lucile went with Julie; and I spent a length of time with Mesdames de Marigny, de Chateaubourg, and de Farcy. Marigny, my eldest sister’s château, three leagues from the town of Fougères, was agreeably situated between two ponds in a landscape of woods, rocks, and meadows. I stayed there for a few tranquil months, until a letter from Paris came to trouble my repose.
Though on the verge of joining the military and marrying Made-moiselle de Rosambo, my brother had not yet rid himself of the long robe. For this reason, he was not allowed to ride in the King’s carriages. His hasty ambition gave him the idea of procuring the honors of the Court for me, the better to pave the way for his own advancement. Our proofs of nobility had already been drawn up for Lucile, when she was admitted to the Chapter of L’Argentière, and everything was in order: Marshal de Duras would act as my patron. My brother said that I was on the high road to fortune, that already I had the honorific and gentlemanly rank of cavalry captain, and that it would therefore be easy for me to join the Order of Malta, by means of which I would enjoy large benefices.
This letter struck me like a lightning bolt. The prospect of returning to Paris and being presented at Court—when I found myself almost sick every time I was introduced to three or four strangers in a parlor! How was I to understand my brother’s ambitions, when all I wanted was to live forgotten?
My first impulse was to reply to my brother that, being the eldest, it was his duty to uphold the family name; that, as for me, an obscure little Breton, I would not be resigning from the service, for there was a chance of war; that, though the King had need of a soldier in his army, he had no need of a poor gentleman in his Court.
I hastened to read this romantic rejoinder to Madame de Marigny, who shrieked aloud and called for Madame de Farcy, who mocked me. Lucile would have liked to take my side, but she did not dare do battle with her sisters. They snatched the letter from my hands, and, always weak in matters where I am concerned, I wrote to tell my brother that I would go.
Indeed I went; I went to be presented at the First Court of Europe, to make the most brilliant debut in life, and all the while I had the look of a man being dragged to the galley, or a man about to be sentenced to death.