The third year of my life at Dol was marked by the wedding of my two eldest sisters: Marianne married the Comte de Marigny, and Bénigne the Comte de Québriac. They accompanied their husbands to Fougères: the first signal for the dispersion of a family whose members were soon to part. My sisters received the nuptial benediction at Combourg on the same day, at the same hour, at the same altar, in the castle chapel[108]. They wept, my mother wept; I was astonished at their grief: I understand it now. I never assist at a christening or a wedding without smiling bitterly or feeling anguish of heart. After the misfortune of being born, I know none greater than that of giving birth to a human being. In this same year began a revolution, not only in my family, but in my own person. Chance caused to fall into my hands two very different books: an unexpurgated Horace and a history of _Confessions mal faites._ An incredible perturbation of ideas was produced in my mind by these two books: an unknown world arose around me. On the one side, I suspected the existence of secrets incomprehensible to one of my age, of a manner of living different from mine, of pleasures beyond my vision, of charms of an unknown nature in a sex in which I had only met a mother and sisters; on the other side, spectres dragging chains and vomiting flames threatened me with eternal torture for one sin concealed. I could not sleep; at night I thought I saw black hands and white pass by turns through the curtains of my bed: I began to imagine that the latter hands were cursed by religion, and this idea increased my terror of the infernal shades. In vain I sought in Heaven and Hell for the explanation of a two-fold mystery. Smitten at one and the same time in my moral and physical being, I continued to struggle with my innocence against the storms of premature passion and the terrors of superstition. Thenceforward I felt escape from me some sparks of that fire which is the transmission of life. I was construing the fourth book of the _Æneid_ and reading _Télémaque_: suddenly I discovered in Dido and Eucharis beauties that delighted me; I felt the harmony of those admirable verses and of that classic prose. One day I translated Lucretius' _Æneadum genitrix, hominum divinumque voluptas_[109] at sight, with such spirit that M. Égault snatched the poem from my hands and set me to do my Greek roots. I stole a Tibullus: when I came to the _Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem_[110],