My feet burned to leave Paris; I could not grow accustomed to the grey and dismal sky of France, my father-land: what should I have thought of the sky of Brittany, my mother-land, to speak Greek? But there, at least, there are sea-breezes and calms: _tumidis albens fluctibus_[145] or _venti posuere._[146] My orders were given to make certain necessary changes and extensions in my house and garden in the Rue d'Enfer, so that, at my death, when I bequeathed this house to Madame de Chateaubriand's Infirmary, it might be more profitable. I intended this property to form a retreat for a few sick artists and men of letters. I looked up at the pale sun and said: "I shall soon see you with a better face, and we shall not part again." [Sidenote: I set out again for Rome.] After taking leave of the King, and hoping to rid him of my presence for ever, I climbed into my carriage. I was first going to the Pyrenees, to take the waters of Cauterets; from there, passing through Languedoc and Provence, I was to go to Nice, where I would join Madame de Chateaubriand. We would drive along the Cornice together, arrive at the Eternal City, which we would cross without stopping, and, after a two months' stay in Naples, at Tasso's cradle, return to his tomb in Rome. That moment is the only one in my life at which I was completely happy, at which I longed for nothing more, at which my existence was filled, at which I saw nothing to my last hour but a series of days of rest. I was reaching the haven; I was entering under full sail like Palinurus: _inopina quies._[147] My whole journey to the Pyrenees was a series of dreams: I stopped when I wished; I followed on my road the chronicles of the middle ages, which I found everywhere; in Berry I saw those little leafy roads which the author of _Valentine_[148] calls _traînes_ and which reminded me of my Brittany. Richard Cœur-de-Lion[149] had been slain at Chalus, at the foot of the tower: "Mussulman child, hold thy peace! Here comes King Richard!" At Limoges, I took off my hat from respect for Molière; at Périgueux, the partridges in their earthenware tombs no longer sang with different voices as in the time of Aristotle. I there met my old friend Clausel de Coussergues; he carried a few pages of my life with him. At Bergerac, I could have looked at Cyrano's[150] nose without being obliged to fight that cadet of the Guards: I left him in his dust with "those gods whom men has made and who have not made man." At Auch, I admired the stalls sculptured after cartoons obtained from Rome at the fine period of the arts. D'Ossat, my predecessor at the Court of the Holy Father, was born near Auch[151]. The sun was beginning to resemble that of Italy. At Tarbes, I should have liked to lodge at the Star Inn, where Froissart[152] alighted with Messire Espaing of Lyons, "valiant man and wise and fair knight," and where he found "good hay, good oats and fair rivers."