My brother sometimes vouchsafed to spend a few moments with the hermits of Combourg. He was in the habit of bringing with him a young counsellor of the Parliament of Brittany, M. de Malfilatre[167], cousin to the unfortunate poet of the same name[168]. I believe that, unknown to herself, Lucile felt a secret passion for this friend of my brother's, and that this stifled passion lay at the root of my sister's melancholy. She possessed, moreover, Rousseau's folly without his pride: she thought that everybody was in a conspiracy against her. She came to Paris in 1789, accompanied by her sister Julie, whose loss she deplored with an affection tinged with the sublime. All who knew her admired her, from M. de Malesherbes to Chamfort[169]. Thrown into the revolutionary crypts at Rennes[170], she was on the point of being imprisoned at Combourg Castle, which had been turned into a gaol during the Terror. After her release from prison, she married M. de Caud[171], who left her a widow within a year. I met the friend of my childhood on my return from my emigration: I will tell how she disappeared, when it pleased God to afflict me. * I have returned from Montboissier, and these are the last lines that I shall trace in my hermitage; I have to leave it, filled with the tall striplings which already hide and crown their father in their close ranks. I shall not see again the magnolia which promised its blossom to the tomb of my fair Floridan, the Jerusalem pine-tree and the cedar of Lebanon consecrated to the memory of Jerome, the laurel of Granada, the Greek plane-tree, the Armorican oak, at whose feet I drew Blanca, sang Cymodocée, invented Velléda. These trees were born and grew with my dreams, of which they were the hamadryads. They are about to pass under another's sway: will their new master love them as I have loved them? He will allow them to wither, he will cut them down perhaps: I am doomed to keep nothing upon this earth. While bidding farewell to the woods of Aulnay I shall recall the farewell which long ago I bade to the woods of Combourg: my days are all farewells. * The taste for poetry with which Lucile had inspired me was as fuel added to the flames. My sensations gathered new strength; vain thoughts of fame passed through my mind; for a moment I believed in my "talent," but soon recovered a proper mistrust of my own powers, and began to entertain doubts of that talent, as I have always done. I looked upon my work as a temptation of the Evil One; I was angry with Lucile for arousing an unfortunate propensity within me: I ceased writing and began to mourn my future glory as one might mourn his glory that is past.