That is the only word I ever had from Louis XVI. People came up from every side; they were astonished to find me "talking" with the King. The débutant Chateaubriand created a sensation with his two "adventures;" but, as has ever happened to him since, he did not know how to turn either his good or his bad fortune to account.
The King hunted three other buck. As the débutants were only allowed to hunt the first animal, I returned to Val with my companions to await the return of the hunt. The King came back to Val; he was in spirits and discussed the accidents of the chase. We drove back to Versailles. A fresh disappointment for my brother: instead of going to dress in order to be present at the unbooting, the moment of triumph and favour, I flung myself into my carriage and drove home to Paris, rejoicing at being delivered of my honors and my troubles. I told my brother that I was determined to return to Brittany. Satisfied with having made his name known, and hoping one day to bring to maturity, by means of his own presentation, what had proved abortive in mine, he placed no obstacle in the way of the departure of so eccentric a spirit[216].
Such was my first experience of the Town and the Court Society appeared even more hateful in my eyes than I had imagined it; but, though it frightened, it did not discourage me; I felt, in a confused fashion, that I was superior to what I had seen. I took an invincible dislike to the Court; this dislike, or rather this contempt, which I have been unable to conceal, will either prevent me from succeeding or will cause me to fall from the summit of my career.
For the rest, if I judged the world without knowing it, the world, in its turn, knew nothing of me. None, at my first entrance, guessed what I might be good for, and when I came back to Paris, they guessed it no more. Since attaining my sad celebrity, I have been told by numbers of people, "How we should have noticed you, if we had met you in your youth!" This obliging contention is only the illusion attaching to an established reputation. Outwardly men resemble each other; it is in vain for Rousseau to tell us that he had a pair of small, quite charming eyes; it is none the less certain, witness his portraits, that he had the appearance of a schoolmaster or a cross-grained shoemaker.
To have done with the Court, I will add that after revisiting Brittany and coming back to Paris to live with my younger sisters, Lucile and Julie, I plunged more deeply than ever into my habits of solitude. You ask what became of the story of my presentation. It remained where it was.
"Then you did not hunt with the King again?"
"No more than with the Emperor of China."
"And you never went back to Versailles?"
"I twice went as far as Sèvres; my heart failed me, and I returned to Paris."
"So you made nothing of your position?"