[Sidenote: Rustic sports at Combourg.] My father had revived some of the latter rights, so as to prevent their lapsing by prescription. When the whole family were together, we took part in these Gothic amusements; the three principal were the Fishermen's Leap, the Quintain, and a fair called the Foire Angevine. Peasants in clogs and breeches, men of a France that is past, watched these sports of a France that is past. There were prizes for the winners, forfeits for the beaten. The Quintain kept up the tradition of the tournaments: it had doubtless some connection with the old military service of the fiefs. It is very well described in Du Cange[84] (_voce_ QUINTANA). The forfeits had to be paid in old copper money, up to the value of two _moutons d'or à la couronne of 25 sols Parisis_ each[85]. The Angevin Fair was held in the meadow by the pond on the 4th of September of each year, my birthday. The vassals had to take up arms and come to the castle to raise the liege lord's banner; thence they went to the fair to establish order and enforce the collection of a toll due to the Counts of Combourg on each head of cattle, a sort of royalty. During that time my father kept open house. We danced for three days: the gentry in the great hall, to the scraping of a fiddle; the vassals in the Cour Verte, to the squealing of a bag-pipe. We sang, cheered, fired off arquebuses. These noises mingled with the lowing of the droves at the fair; the crowd wandered through the woods and gardens, and at least once in the year one saw at Combourg something akin to merriment. Thus have I been so singularly placed in life as to have assisted at the tilting at the Quintain and at the proclamation of the Rights of Man; to have beheld the train-bands of a Breton village and the National Guard of France, the banner of the Lords of Combourg and the flag of the Revolution. I am as it were the last surviving witness of the feudal customs. The visitors whom we received at the castle consisted of the inhabitants of the market-town and the neighboring gentry: these good people were my first friends. Our vanity attaches too much importance to the part we play in the world. The citizen of Paris laughs at the citizen of a small town; the Court noble scoffs at the provincial noble; the well-known scorns the unknown man, without reflecting that time does equal justice to their pretensions, and that they are all equally ridiculous or insignificant in the eyes of successive generations.