At Montboissier--Reminiscences of Combourg--Dinan College--Broussais--I return home--Life at Combourg--Our days and evenings--My donjon--Change from childhood to manhood--Lucile--Last lines written at the Vallée-aux-Loups--Revelations concerning the mystery of my life--A phantom of love--Two years of delirium--Occupations and illusions--My autumn joys--Incantation--Temptation--Illness--I fear and decline to enter the ecclesiastical state--A moment in my native town--Recollection of Villeneuve and the tribulations of my childhood--I am called back to Combourg--Last interview with my father--I enter the service--I bid farewell to Combourg Three years and six months have elapsed between the last date attached to these Memoirs, Vallée-aux-Loups, January 1814, and the date of today, Montboissier, July 1817. Did you hear the Empire fall? No: nothing has disturbed the repose of this spot. Nevertheless the Empire is lost; the immense ruin has crumbled in the course of my life like Roman remains overturned in the bed of some unknown stream. But events matter little to one who does not reckon them: a few years escaping from the hands of the Eternal Father will do justice to all these reports with an endless silence. The previous chapter was written under the expiring tyranny of Bonaparte and by the light of the last flashes of his glory: I am commencing the present chapter under the reign of Louis XVIII. I have been in close proximity to kings, and my political illusions have vanished, as have the sweeter fancies of which I am continuing the tale. Let me first say what makes me resume my pen: the human heart is the toy of everything, nor can we foresee what trivial circumstance will cause its joys and sorrows. Montaigne remarked this: "There needeth no cause," he says, "to excite our minde. A doating humour without body, without substance, overswayeth and tosseth it up and down[148]." I am now at Montboissier, on the borders of the Beauce and the Perche[149]. The castle situated upon this property, belonging to Madame la Comtesse de Colbert-Montboissier[150], was sold and demolished during the Revolution; only two pavilions remain, divided by a railing, and formerly inhabited by the lodge-keeper. The park, which is now laid out in the English style, retains some traces of its former French symmetry: straight walks, copses set within hedges give it a serious aspect; it has the attraction of a ruin. Yesterday evening I was walking alone; the sky was like an autumn sky; a cold wind blew at intervals. I stopped at an opening in a thicket to look at the sun: it was sinking into the clouds above the tower of Alluye, from which Gabrielle[151], occupying that tower, saw the sun set, as I did, two hundred years ago. What has become of Henry and Gabrielle? The same that shall have become of me when these Memoirs are published.