An illness, the fruits of this unruly life, put an end to the torments which brought me the first inspirations of the Muse and the first attacks of the passions. These passions with which my soul was overwrought, these yet vague passions resembled the storms at sea which rush from every point of the horizon: inexperienced pilot that I was, I knew not in which direction to spread my sail to the uncertain winds. My chest swelled, a fever laid hold of me; they sent to Bazouges, a small town some five or six leagues from Combourg, for an excellent doctor called Cheftel, whose son[173] played a part in the affair of the Marquis de La Rouërie. He examined me attentively, ordered remedies, and declared that it was essential that I should be removed from my present mode of life. I lay six weeks in danger. One morning my mother came and sat on my bed, and said: "It is time for you to take a decision; your brother is in a position to obtain a benefice for you; but before going to the seminary, you must take good counsel with yourself, for although I wish you to adopt the ecclesiastical state, I would rather see you a man of the world than a scandalous priest." Those who have read the foregoing pages will be able to judge if the proposal of my pious mother came at a good moment. I have always, in the more important events of my life, at once known what to avoid: I am prompted by a movement of honor. As a priest, I struck myself as ridiculous. As a bishop, the majesty of the sacerdotal office overawed me, and I respectfully recoiled before the altar. Should I, as a bishop, make efforts to acquire virtues, or content myself with hiding my vices? I felt myself too weak to take the first course, too candid to adopt the second. They who treat me as a hypocrite and an ambitious man know me but little; I shall never succeed in the world, precisely because I lack one passion and one vice: ambition and hypocrisy. The first of these would with me be at the most a form of injured self-love; I might sometimes wish to be a minister or king in order to laugh at my enemies; but in twenty-four hours I should throw my portfolio or my crown out of window. [Sidenote: My new career.]