Half-an-hour after swallowing the caramel, I was seized with a terrible vomiting; they sent to tell M. de Chateaubriand, who wanted to throw the poor wretch from the window of the tower. The latter, terrified, took off his coat, tucked back his shirt-sleeves, and made the most grotesque gestures. At each movement, his wig turned in every direction; he repeated my cries, adding after each: "Che, Monsou Lavandier?" This Monsieur Lavandier was the village druggist, who had been called in to lend his aid. I did not know, in the midst of my pain, whether I should die from taking the man's nostrums or from bursting with laughter at his behavior. The effects of this overdose of emetic were stopped in time, and I was set on my legs again.
The whole of our life is spent in wandering round our tomb: our illnesses are so many puffs of wind that send us more or less near to the haven. The first corpse I saw was that of a canon of Saint-Malo: he lay dead upon his bed, his features distorted with the final convulsions. Death is beautiful, he is our friend: and yet we do not recognize him, because he comes to us masked, and his mask frightens us.
I was sent back to school at the end of autumn.
*
I have been permitted to leave Dieppe, whither a police order had driven me, and to return to the Vallée-aux-Loups, where I continue my narrative. The soil trembles beneath the steps of the foreign soldier, who is invading my country at this very moment; I am writing, like the last of the Romans, to the sound of the Barbarian invasion. By day I compose pages as agitated as the events of the day[115]; at night, while the rolling of the distant cannon dies away in my woods, I return to the silence of years that sleep in the grave, to the peace of my youngest memories. How short and narrow is a man's past beside the vast present of the nations and their immeasurable future!
*
Mathematics, Greek, and Latin occupied all my winter at school. The time that was not devoted to study was given up to boyish sports, which are the same all over the world. The little Englishman, the little German, the little Italian, the little Spaniard, the little Iroquois, the little Bedouin, all trundle the hoop and throw the ball. Brothers of one great family, children do not lose their features of resemblance until they lose their innocence, everywhere the same. Then the passions, modified by climates, governments, and customs, make different nations; the human race ceases to speak and understand the same language: society is the real Tower of Babel.
The Abbé de Chateaubriand.
One morning I was taking very energetic part in a game of base in the playground, when I was told that I was wanted. I followed the servant to the front gate. There I found a stout, red-faced man, with abrupt and impatient manners and a fierce voice; he carried a stick in his hand, wore a black and ill-curled wig, a torn cassock with the ends tucked into his pockets, dusty shoes, and stockings with holes at the heels.
"You little scamp," said he, "are not you the Chevalier de Chateaubriand de Combourg?"