assed on. This sovereign was Louis XVI., only six years before he
was brought to the scaffold.

_II.--In the Years of Revolution_

My political education was begun by my residence, at different times, in
Brittany in the years 1787 and 1788. The states of this province
furnished the model of the States-General; and the particular troubles
which broke out in the provinces of Brittany and Dauphiny were the
forerunners of those of the nation at large.

The change which had been developing for two hundred years was then
reaching its limits. France was rapidly tending to a representative
system by means of a contest of the magistracy with the royal power.

The year 1789, famous in the history of France, found me still on the
plains of my native Brittany. I could not leave the province till late
in the year, and did not reach Paris till after the pillage of the
Maison Reveillon, the opening of the States-General, the constitution of
the Tiers-Etat in the National Assembly, the oath of the Jeu-de-Paume,
the royal council of the 23rd of June, and the junction of the clergy
and nobility in the Tiers-Etat. The court, now yielding, now attempting
to resist, allowed itself to be browbeaten by Mirabeau.

The counter-blow to that struck at Versailles was felt at Paris. On July
14 the Bastille was taken. I was present as a spectator at this event.
If the gates had been kept shut the fortress would never have been
taken. De Launay, dragged from his dungeon, was murdered on the steps of
the Hotel de Ville. Flesselles, the _prevot des marchands_, was shot
through the head. Such were the sights delighted in by heartless saintly
hypocrites. In the midst of these murders the people abandoned
themselves to orgies similar to those carried on in Rome during the
troubles under Otto and Vitellius. The monarchy was demolished as
rapidly as the Bastille in the sitting of the National Assembly on the
evening of August 4.

My regiment, quartered at Rouen, preserved its discipline for some time.
But at length insurrection broke out among the soldiers in Navarre. The
Marquis de Mortemar emigrated; the officers followed him. I had neither
adopted nor rejected the new opinions; I neither wished to emigrate nor
to continue my military career. I therefore retired, and I decided to go
to America.

I sailed for that land, and my heart beat when we sighted the American
coast, faintly traced by the tops of some maple-trees emerging, as it
were, fro