One thing, nevertheless, delighted me: the parade. Every day the soldiers going on guard marched past, to the sound of the drum and band, at the foot of the steps in the Cour Verte. M. de Causans offered to show me the camp on the coast: my father gave his leave. I was taken to Saint-Malo by M. de La Morandais[100], a gentleman of very good family, whom poverty had reduced to accept the stewardship of the Combourg property. He wore a coat of grey camlet, with a little silver lace at the collar, and a helmet-shaped peaked cap with flaps. He set me astride behind him, on the crupper of his mare Isabelle. I held fast by the belt of his hunting-knife, which he wore outside his coat: I was delighted. When Claude de Bullion and the father of the Président de Lamoignon, as children, went to the country, "they were both carried by the same donkey, in panniers, one on one side, the other on the other, and a loaf of bread was placed on Lamoignon's side because he was lighter than his fellow, to keep the balance." (_Mémoires du président de Lamoignon[101]._) M. de La Morandais took cross-roads: Moult volontiers, de grand' manière, Alloit en bois et en rivière: Car nulles gens ne vont en bois Moult volontiers comme François[102]. We stopped for dinner at a Benedictine abbey which, for want of a sufficient number of monks, had just been incorporated in one of the chief communities of the order. We found only the father procurator, who had been left behind to dispose of the chattels and sell the timber. He ordered an excellent fish dinner to be served for us, in what was formerly the prior's library: we ate a quantity of new-laid eggs with huge pikes and carps. Through the arch of a cloister, I saw tall sycamores at the edge of a pond. The woodman's axe struck at their feet, their tops trembled in the air, and they fell to make a show for us. Carpenters, come from Saint-Malo, sawed off green branches, which dropped to the ground like the hair of a child cut for the first time, or squared the felled trunks. My heart bled at the sight of those impaired woods and that dismantled monastery. The general sack of the religious houses has since called up to my mind the spoliation of the abbey which was to me an omen. [Sidenote: The Camp at Saint-Malo.]