I bring bad luck to my friends. A game-keeper called Raulx, who was attached to me, was killed by a poacher. The murder made an extraordinary impression upon my mind. What a strange mystery lies in human sacrifice! Why should it be both the greatest crime and the greatest glory to shed the blood of man? My imagination pictured Raulx holding his entrails in his hands as he dragged himself to the cottage where he expired. I conceived the idea of vengeance; I should have liked to fight his murderer. In this respect I am curiously constituted: at the first moment of an offense, I hardly feel it; but it becomes imprinted on my memory; the recollection of it grows stronger, rather than fainter, with time; it sleeps within my heart for months, for whole years, and then awakens at the least circumstance with renewed force, and my wound becomes more painful than on the first day. But if I do not pardon my enemies, I do them no harm: I bear ill-will, but am not vindictive. If ever I have the power to revenge myself, I lose the wish: I should be dangerous only in misfortune. Those who have tried to make me yield by oppressing me have deceived themselves; adversity is to me what the earth was to Antæus: I gather fresh strength in my mother's bosom. If ever Good Fortune had taken me in her arms, she would have stifled me. * [Sidenote: Military visitors.] I returned to Dol, much to my regret. The next year, a plan was formed for a descent upon Jersey, and a camp was established at Saint-Malo. Troops were quartered at Combourg; M. de Chateaubriand, through courtesy, entertained in succession the colonels of the Touraine and Conti Regiments. One was the Duc de Saint-Simon[97], the other the Marquis de Causans[98]. A score of officers were invited daily to my father's table. The jokes of these strangers displeased me; their walks disturbed the peacefulness of my woods. It was from seeing the lieutenant-colonel of the Conti Regiment, the Marquis de Wignacourt[99], gallop under the trees that the idea of travelling first passed through my mind. When I heard our guests speak of Paris and the Court, I became sad; I tried to imagine what society was: I discovered a confused and distant something; but soon I turned giddy. Casting my eyes upon the world from the tranquil region of innocence, I had a swimming in the head, as when one looks down upon the earth from the top of a tower lost in the sky.