Charged by my father with a very delicate mission, I repaired, towards the end of May, 1788, to the château of Ionis, situated a dozen leagues distant, in the lands lying between Angers and Saumur. I was twenty-two, and already practising the profession of lawyer, for which I experienced but slight inclination, although neither the study of business nor of argument had presented serious difficulties to me. Taking my youth into consideration, I was not esteemed without talent, and the standing of my father, a lawyer renowned in the locality, assured me a brilliant patronage in the future, in return for any paltry efforts I might make to be worthy of replacing him. But I would have preferred literature, a more dreamy life, a more independent and more individual use of my faculties, a responsibility less submissive to the passions and interests of others. As my family was well off, and I an only son, greatly spoiled and petted, I might have chosen my own career, but I would have thus afflicted my father, who took pride in his ability to direct me in the road which he had cleared in advance, and I loved him too tenderly to permit my instinct to outweigh his wishes. It was a delightful evening in which I was finishing my ride on horseback through the woods that surrounded the ancient and magnificent castle of Ionis. I was well mounted, dressed _en cavalier_, with a species of elegance, and accompanied by a servant of whom I had not the slightest need, but whom my mother had conceived the innocent idea of giving me for the occasion, desiring that her son should present a proper appearance at the house of one of the most brilliant personages of our patronage. The night was illuminated by the soft fire of its largest stars. A slight mist veiled the scintillations of those myriads of satellites that gleam like brilliant eyes on clear, cold evenings. This was a true summer sky, pure enough to be luminous and transparent, still sufficiently softened not to overwhelm one by its immeasurable wealth. It was, if I may so speak, one of those soft firmaments that permit one to think of earth, to admire the vaporous lines of narrow horizons, to breathe without disdain its atmosphere of flowers and herbage—in fine, to consider oneself as something in this immensity, and to forget that one is but an atom in the infinite.