This letter came upon me like a thunder-bolt: to return to Paris, to be presented at Court, I who almost swooned away when I met three or four strangers in a drawing-room! To imbue me with ambition, who only dreamt of living forgotten! My first impulse was to reply to my brother that it was his duty, as the eldest, to keep up his name; that, as for me, a plain Breton younger son, I would not give up the service, as there was a chance of war; but that, though the King might have need of a soldier in his army, he had no need of a poor gentleman at his Court.
I hastened to read this romantic reply to Madame de Marigny, who uttered loud cries; she sent for Madame de Farcy, who laughed at me; Lucile would have supported me, but she dared not contend with her sisters. They tore my letter from me, and, weak as always where I myself am concerned, I informed my brother that I was ready to go.
I did go; I went to be presented at the first Court in Europe, to make the most brilliant start in life; and I looked like a man who is being dragged to the galleys or expecting a sentence of death.
*
I entered Paris by the same road which I had taken the first time; I went to the same hotel, in the Rue du Mail: I knew no other. I was taken to a room next door to my old one, but a little larger and overlooking the street.
My brother, whether because he felt embarrassed by my manners, or because he took pity upon my shyness, did not take me with him into the world, and introduced me to nobody. He lived in the Rue des Fossés-Montmartre; I went to him at three o'clock every day for dinner; we then parted and did not see one another till the next day. My fat Cousin Moreau was no longer in Paris. I walked twice or thrice past Madame de Chastenay's house, without venturing to ask the porter if she was still there.
Autumn set in. I rose at six; went to the riding-school; breakfasted. Luckily at that time I had a passion for Greek; I translated the Odyssey and the Cyropædia until two o'clock, interspersing my labours with the study of history. At two o'clock I dressed and went to my brother; he asked me what I had done, what I had seen; I replied, "Nothing." He shrugged his shoulders and turned his back upon me. One day there was a noise outside; my brother ran to the window and called to me: I refused to leave the arm-chair in which I lay stretched at the back of the room. My poor brother prophesied to me that I should die unknown, useless to myself or my family. At four o'clock I went home and sat down at my window. Two young girls of fifteen or sixteen used to come at that hour to sketch at the window of a house opposite, on the other side of the street. They had noticed my punctuality, as I had theirs. From time to time they raised their heads to look at their neighbor; I was infinitely grateful to them for this mark of attention: they formed my only society in Paris.
My life in Paris.
When night drew near, I went to the play. I took pleasure in the desert of the crowd, though it always cost me a little effort to take my ticket at the door and mix with other men. I corrected the ideas which I had formed at the Saint-Malo theatre. I saw Madame Saint-Huberti[203] as Armida; I felt that there had been something lacking in the sorceress of my creating. When I did not imprison myself in the Opera-house or at the Français, I wandered from street to street or along the quays until ten or eleven in the evening. To this day I cannot see the row of street-lamps from the Place Louis XV. to the Barrière des Bons-Hommes, without remembering the agonies which I endured when I followed that road to go to Versailles for my presentation.
On returning home, I spent a portion of the night with my head bowed over my fire, which told me nothing: I had not, like the Persians, an imagination rich enough to persuade me that the flame resembled the anemone, the cinders the pomegranate. I listened to the carriages coming, going, crossing each other; their distant rolling imitated the murmur of the sea upon the shores of my Brittany or of the wind in the Combourg woods. These worldly sounds which reminded me of those of solitude aroused my regrets; I conjured up my old trouble, or else my imagination would invent the story of the persons whom those chariots were bearing away: I saw radiant drawing-rooms, balls, loves, conquests. Soon, relapsing into myself, I saw myself as I was, alone in an inn, seeing the world through the window and hearing it by the echoes of my fireside.