*
I have told how my premature revolt against Lucile's mistresses began my bad reputation: a play-fellow completed it.
My uncle, M. de Chateaubriand du Plessis, lived at Saint-Malo like his brother, and had, like him, four girls and two boys. Of my two cousins, Pierre and Armand, who were my first companions, Pierre became one of the Queen's pages, Armand was sent to college as being destined for the ecclesiastical state. Pierre, his service as a page ended, entered the navy and was drowned off the coast of Africa. Armand, after a long stay at college, left France in 1790, served throughout the emigration, made a score of intrepid descents in a small vessel upon the coast of Brittany, and at last, on Good Friday 1809[68], gave his life for the King on the Plaine de Grenelle, as I have already stated and as I shall repeat once more when I come to relate the catastrophe[69].
Deprived of the society of my two cousins, I made up for it by a new connection. On the second floor of the house in which we lived, resided a gentleman called Gesril, who had a son and two daughters. This son had been brought up differently from myself; a spoilt child, all he did was thought charming. His one pleasure consisted in fighting, and especially in raising quarrels in which he appointed himself referee. He played practical jokes on nursemaids taking children out walking, and nothing was talked of save his pranks, which were transformed into the blackest crimes. The father laughed at everything, and "Joson" was but the more petted for it.
My friend Gesril.
Gesril became my intimate friend, and acquired an incredible ascendency over me: I was his apt pupil, although my character was the entire opposite of his. I liked solitary games, and sought quarrels with nobody: Gesril doted on pleasures and crowds, and revealed in childish squabbles. When some ragamuffin addressed me, Gesril would ask, "Do you allow that?" Thereupon I thought my honour at stake, and struck out at the rash one's eyes; his age and height made no difference. My friend would watch the fight and applaud my courage, but did nothing to assist me. Sometimes he levied an army of all the gutter-snipes he knew, divided his recruits into two bands, and we skirmished on the sands with the aid of stones.
Another game invented by Gesril was still more dangerous. At high-tide, when there was a storm, the waves, beating at the foot of the Castle, on the side of the long beach, would leap to the level of the great towers. Twenty feet above the base of one of these towers ran a granite parapet, narrow, sloping, and slippery, leading to the ravelin which defended the moat. The trick was to seize the moment between two waves and clear the dangerous spot before the surge broke and covered the tower. You saw a mountain of water approach you, roaring as it came, which, if you delayed a minute, must either drag you with it or crush you against the wall. Not one of us refused the venture, but I have seen children turn pale before attempting it.
This inclination to urge others to encounters of which he remained a spectator would lead one to think that, in after life, Gesril did not display great generosity of character; and yet, although on a smaller stage, he succeeded perhaps in surpassing the heroism of Regulus: his glory only needed Rome and Titus Livy. He became a naval officer, and he was taken prisoner in the engagement of Quiberon[70]. When the action was decided, seeing that the English continued to fire upon the Republican troops, Gesril[71] sprang into the sea, swam out to the ships, and told the English to cease fire, informing them of the disaster and of the capitulation of the Emigrants. They tried to save him by throwing a rope to him, and urged him to come on board. "I am a prisoner on parole," he cried, from the midst of the waves, and swam back to land: he was shot with Sombreuil and his companions[72].
Gesril was my first friend; both of us were misunderstood in childhood, and we became intimate through an instinct that told us what we might some day be worth.