Stay in Brittany--In garrison at Dieppe--I return to Paris with Lucile and Julie--Delisle de Sales--Men of letters--Portraits--The Rosanbo family--M. de Malesherbes--His predilection for Lucile--Appearance and change of my sylph--Early political disturbances in Brittany--A glance at the history of the monarchy--Constitution of the States of Brittany--The holding of the States--The King's revenue in Brittany--Private revenue of the province--Hearth-money--I am present for the first time at a political meeting--A scene--My mother moves to Saint-Malo--I receive the tonsure--The country round Saint-Malo--The ghost--The sick man--The States of Brittany in 1789--Riots--Saint-Riveul, my schoolfellow, is killed--The year 1789--Journey from Brittany to Paris--Movement on the road--Appearance of Paris--Dismissal of M. Necker--Versailles--Delight of the Royal Family--General insurrection--Capture of the Bastille--Effect of the capture of the Bastille on the Court--The heads of Foullon and Bertier--Recall of M. Necker--Sitting of the 4th of August 1789--The day's work of the 5th of October--The King is taken to Paris--The Constituent Assembly--Mirabeau--Sittings of the National Assembly--Robespierre--Society-Aspect of Paris--What I did amidst all this turmoil--My solitary days--Mademoiselle Monet--I draw up with M. de Malesherbes the plan of my journey in America--Bonaparte and I both unknown subalterns--The Marquis de La Rouërie--I embark at Saint-Malo--Last thoughts on leaving my native land. All that has been read in the previous chapter was written in Berlin. I have returned to Paris for the christening of the Duc de Bordeaux[219], and have resigned my embassy through political fidelity to M. de Villèle[220], who has left the Cabinet. Restored to leisure, let me write. The more these Memoirs become filled with my years that have passed, the more do they remind me of the lower bulb of an hour-glass which marks what has fallen from my life: when all the sand shall have passed through, I would not turn over my glass clock, if God gave me power to do so. * The new solitude into which I entered in Brittany, after my presentation, was no longer that of Combourg; it was not so entire, nor so serious, nor, to tell the truth, so forced: I was free to leave it; it lost its value. An old armorial lady of the castle, an old escutcheoned baron, watching over their last son and their last daughter in a feudal manor, presented what the English call "characters:" there was nothing provincial, nothing narrow in that life, because it was not the common life. With my sisters, provincial life went on as usual amid the fields: neighbours danced at each other's houses or acted plays, in which I performed occasionally and very badly. In the winter one had, at Fougères, to submit to the society of a small town, with its balls, assemblies, and dinners, and I could not live forgotten, as in Paris.