The king graciously returned my salutation, and seemed to wish to address me; but, more embarrassed than I, finding nothing to say to me, he passed on. This sovereign was Louis XVI., only six years before he was brought to the scaffold.
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 Tièrs-État 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 Tièrs-État. 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 Hôtel de Ville. Flesselles, the _prevôt 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.