This district bore the mutilations and scars due to its valour, like an old warrior. Bones bleached by time and ruins blackened by fire met the gaze. When the Vendeans were on the point of attacking the enemy, they knelt down to receive the blessing of a priest. Prayers uttered under arms were not reckoned as weakness, for the Vendean who raised his sword towards Heaven asked for victory, not for life. The diligence in which I found myself interred was full of travellers who related the rapes and murders with which they had glorified their lives in the wars of the Vendée. My heart throbbed when, after crossing the Loire at Nantes, we entered Brittany. I passed by the College of Rennes, which witnessed the last years of my childhood. I was able to remain for only four-and-twenty hours with my wife and sisters, and I returned to Paris. * I arrived in time for the death of a man who belonged to those superior names of the second rank in the eighteenth century which, forming a solid rear-line in society, gave it a certain fulness and consistency. I had known M. de La Harpe in 1789: like Flins, he had become smitten with a great passion for my sister, Madame la Comtesse de Farcy. He used to come up with three large volumes of his works under his little arms, quite astounded to find that his glory did not triumph over the most rebellious hearts. Loud-voiced, and eager in manner, he thundered against every abuse, ordered an omelette to be made for him at the ministers' houses when the dinner had not been to his taste, eating with his fingers, dragging his cuffs in the dishes, talking philosophical scurrilities to the greatest lords, who doted on his impertinences; but, when all was said, his was an upright and enlightened mind, impartial amid all its passions, with a quick sense for talent, capable of admiration, of shedding tears over fine poetry or a fine action, and possessing a foundation fit to support repentance. He was not wanting at the end; I saw him die the death of a brave Christian, with his taste enlarged by religion, and retaining no pride except as against impiety, no hatred except that of "Revolutionary language[522]." [Sidenote: Death of M. de La Harpe.] On my return from the Emigration, religion had disposed M. de La Harpe in favour of my works: the illness which attacked him did not prevent him from working himself; he read me passages from a poem which he was writing on the Revolution[523]; in it occurred notably some pithy lines directed against the crimes of the age and the "worthy men" who had permitted them: Mais s'ils ont tout osé, vous avez tout permis: Plus l'oppresseur est vil, plus l'esclave est infâme[524]. Forgetting that he was ill, dressed in a wadded spencer, with a white cotton night-cap on his head, he recited with all his might; then, dropping his copy-book, he said in a voice that hardly reached the ear: "I can't go on; I feel a grip of iron in my side."