My lonely nights.
The window of my donjon opened upon the inner courtyard; by day I had a view of the battlements of the curtain opposite, where hart's-tongues grew and a wild plum-tree. Some martins, which in summer buried themselves, screeching, in the holes in the walls, were my sole companions. At night I could see only a small strip of sky and a few stars. When the moon shone and sank in the east, I knew it by the beams which struck my bed across the lozenged window-panes. Owls, flitting from one tower to the other, passed and passed again between the moon and me, outlining the mobile shadow of their wings upon my curtains. Banished to the loneliest part, at the opening of the galleries, I lost not a murmur of the darkness. Sometimes the wind seemed to trip with light steps; sometimes it uttered wailings; suddenly my door was violently shaken, groans issued from the basement, and then these sounds would die away, only to commence anew. At four o'clock in the morning, the voice of the master of the castle, calling the footman at the entrance to the venerable vaults, made itself heard like the voice of the last phantom of the night. This voice supplied for me the place of the sweet harmony with the sound of which Montaigne's father was wont to awaken his son[161].
The Comte de Chateaubriand's stubbornness in making a child sleep alone at the top of a tower might have had its inconvenience, but it turned out to my advantage. This violent manner of treatment left me with the courage of a man, without taking from me that vivid imagination of which it is nowadays the tendency to deprive the young. Instead of seeking to persuade me that ghosts did not exist, they obliged me to set them at defiance. When my father asked me, with an ironical smile, "Is monsieur le chevalier afraid?" he could have made me sleep with a corpse. When my excellent mother said, "My child, nothing happens without God's leave; you have nothing to fear from evil spirits so long as you remain a good Christian," I was more reassured than by all the arguments of philosophy. So complete was my success, that the night winds, in my uninhabited tower, served but as playthings for my fancies and wings for my dreams. My imagination, thus kindled, spread over every object, found nowhere sufficient nourishment, and could have devoured heaven and earth. It is this moral condition which it is now my task to describe. Immersed once more in the days of my youth, I will try to grasp myself in the past, to depict myself such as I was, such as perhaps I regret that I no longer am, despite the torments which I then endured.
*
Scarcely had I returned from Brest to Combourg when a revolution took place in my existence; the child vanished and there appeared the man, with his joys which pass and his troubles which remain. At first all became passion with me, pending the arrival of the passions themselves. When, after a silent dinner, at which I had dared neither to eat nor speak, I succeeded in escaping, my delight was incredible. I could not descend the steps then and there: I should have flung myself headlong. I was obliged to sit upon one of the steps to allow my excitement to subside; but so soon as I had reached the Cour Verte and the woods, I began to run, to leap, to bound, to skip, to rejoice until I fell down exhausted, panting, drunk with frolic and liberty.
My father took me with him shooting. I was seized with the taste for sport, and carried it to excess; I still see the field where I killed my first hare. Often, in autumn, I have stood for four or five hours to my waist in water, waiting at the edge of a pond for wild-duck; to this very day I lose my composure when I see a dog point. Nevertheless, my first ardor for sport was built upon a basis of independence; to leap ditches, to tramp over fields, marshes, moors, to find myself with a gun in an unfrequented spot, alone and powerful, all this was my natural manner of being. When out shooting, I would go so far that I had not the strength to walk back, and the keepers were obliged to carry me on twisted branches.
However, the pleasures of the chase no longer satisfied me; I was fretted with a longing for happiness which I could neither control nor understand; my mind and my heart ended by forming as it were two empty temples, without altars or sacrifices; it was not yet known which god would be worshipped there. I grew up by the side of my sister Lucile: our friendship was all our life.
*
Lucile was tall and endowed with remarkable, but serious, beauty. Her pale features were shaded with long black tresses; she often fixed her eyes on heaven or cast looks around her full of sadness or fire. Her gait, her voice, her smile, her expression showed something pensive and suffering.
Lucile.