I left Paris yesterday. My last interview with M. Laubépin was painful. I feel the affection of a son for the old man. Then I had to bid Hélène farewell. It was necessary to tell her something of the truth, to make her understand why I was compelled to accept an appointment. I talked vaguely of temporary business difficulties. The poor child understood, I think, more than I had said; her large, wondering eyes filled with tears as she fell upon my neck. At last I got away. I went by train to Rennes, where I stayed the night. This morning I took the diligence, which put me down, four or five hours ago, at a little Morbilian town not far from the château of Laroque. We had travelled ten leagues or more from Rennes, and still I had seen nothing to justify the reputed picturesqueness of our ancient Armorica. A flat, green country without variety; eternal apple-trees in eternal fields; ditches and wooded slopes shutting off the view on both sides of the road; here and there a nook full of rural charm, and a few blouses and glazed hats relieving the very ordinary scene. All this strongly inclined me to think that poetic Brittany was merely a pretentious and somewhat pallid sister of Lower Normandy. Tired of disillusions and apple-trees, I had for more than an hour ceased to take any notice of the country. I was dozing heavily, when I felt suddenly that the lumbering vehicle was lurching forward heavily. At the same time the pace of the horses slackened, and a clanking noise, together with a peculiar vibration, proclaimed that the worst of drivers had applied the worst of brakes to the worst of diligences. An old lady clutched my arm with the ready sympathy excited by a sense of common danger. I put my head out of the window; we were descending, between two lofty slopes, an extremely steep hill, evidently the work of an engineer too much enamoured of the straight line.