Night came. I went down to the sitting-room of the farm-house. It was lighted only by maize-straw and husks of beans blazing in the hearth. The fire-arms of the master of the house, lying horizontally in the gun-rack, gleamed in the reflections from the fireplace. I sat down upon a stool in the chimney-corner, near a squirrel, which jumped from the back of a large dog to the shelf of a spinning-wheel and back again. A kitten installed itself upon my knee to watch this sport. The miller's wife put a large stew-pot on the fire, the flames of which played round the pot's black bottom like a radiant golden crown. While I watched the sweet potatoes boiling for my supper, I amused myself by reading by the firelight, with lowered head, an English newspaper which had fallen on the floor between my legs. Printed in large letters I read the words: FLIGHT OF THE KING. It was the story of the flight of Louis XVI., and the arrest of the unfortunate monarch at Varennes[520]. The paper also described the progress of the emigration and the gathering of the officers of the army around the flag of the French Princes. A sudden conversion took place within my mind. Rinaldo beheld his weakness in the mirror of honour in Armida's gardens; I was not Tasso's hero, but the same looking-glass showed me my image in the midst of an American orchard. The clash of arms, the world's tumult resounded in my ears under the thatch of a mill hidden in unknown woods. I abruptly interrupted my travels, and said to myself: "Go back to France." Thus it happened that my sense of duty upset my early plans, and occasioned the first of the revolutions that have marked my career. The Bourbons no more needed that a cadet of Brittany should return from across the seas to offer them his obscure devotion than they have needed his services since he has emerged from his obscurity. Had I lit my pipe with the newspaper which changed the course of my life, and continued my journey, no one would have remarked my absence; my life was at that time as unknown and weighed as little as the smoke from my calumet. A simple contest between myself and my conscience flung me upon the world's stage. I could have acted as I pleased, since I alone was a witness of the struggle; but, of all witnesses, that is the one before whose eyes I should most fear to blush. Why is it that the solitudes of Erie and Ontario present themselves to my thoughts today with a charm which the brilliant spectacle of the Bosphorus is not able to possess in my memory? It is because, at the time of my journey in the United States, I was full of illusions: the troubles of France commenced at the same time as the commencement of my existence; nothing was complete in myself or in the land of my birth. Those days are dear to me because they recall to me the innocence of sentiments inspired by the family and the pleasures of youth.