The principal resident of the place was a M. Potelet[86], a retired ship's captain of the Indian Company's service, who told us long stories about Pondicherry. He related them with his elbows resting on the table, and my father always had a mind to throw his plate in his face. Next came the bonder of tobacco, M. Launay de La Billardière[87], the father of a family of twelve, like Jacob, nine girls and three boys, of whom the youngest, David, was my playmate[88]. The worthy man bethought himself of aspiring to nobility in 1789: he chose a good time! In that house there was plenty of gaiety and many debts. Gesbert[89] the seneschal, Petit[90] the procurator-fiscal, Corvaisier[91] the receiver, and the Abbé Chalmel[92], the chaplain, formed the society of Combourg. I did not at Athens meet persons more celebrated than these. Messieurs du Petit-Bois[93], de Château d'Assie[94], de Tinténiac, and one or two other noblemen would come on Sundays to hear Mass in the parish church, and afterwards to dine with the owner of the castle. We were more intimately acquainted with the Trémaudan family, consisting of the husband[95], the wife, who was extremely beautiful, a natural sister, and several children. This family lived on a small farm, with a dove-cote for sole evidence of nobility. The Trémaudans are still living. Wiser and happier than I, they have not lost sight of the turrets of the castle which I left thirty years ago; they are still doing what they did when I went to eat brown bread at their table; they have never left the port to which I shall never return. Perhaps they are speaking of me at the very moment at which I write this page: I reproach myself for dragging their name from its protective obscurity. They long hesitated to believe that the man of whom they heard speak was "the little chevalier." The rector or curate of Combourg, the Abbé Sévin[96], to whose sermons I used to listen, at first displayed the same incredulity: he could not persuade himself that the urchin, the peasants' friend, was the same as the defender of religion; he ended by believing it, and quotes me in his sermons, after having held me on his knees. Would these good people, who import no foreign idea into their image of me, who see me as I was in my childhood and in my youth, would they recognize me today through the disguise of time? I should be obliged to tell them my name before they would feel a wish to press me in their arms.