Aumale was appointed to the command of the Province of Tittery, in Algiers.  The Belle-Poule was ordered on a cruise along the Guinea Coast and to South America, touching first of all at Lisbon, and it was settled that Aumale should take passage on board her as far as that port.  So after a sad farewell we started together to join her at Brest.  As our mourning exempted us from all official receptions, we took the longest way round, by the Loire Valley, with its ancient castles, the wild country of Morbihan, and the picturesque scenery of Finistere.  Our first stage was to Blois, where we went to see the castle, an historic gem, then on to Amboise, Saumur, Angers, Pont-de-Ce, and Nantes.  Everything about that journey—­scenery, monuments, memories, legends—­is delightful.  It is a touching unfolding of the history of old France—­ that France of bygone days, which, with her faded glories and her chivalrous adventures, consoles those who love her for the calamities born of revolution.  We made a short stay at Nantes, whence Aumale went to Chateaubriand to look at his property with M. de la Haye-Jousselin, while I went to Karheil to see the chateau of the Coislin family.  This was for sale, and my father was anxious to buy it as a centre to the sandy tracts of Saint Gildas and Lanvaux, which he owned already, and which previous to the year 1830, he had planted with trees, which had done well.

On my way to Karheil I passed through Blain, where I saw the ruins of the famous castle of the Rohans, the cradle of that mighty race.  Only two out of the nine towers adorning it are still standing.  The rest were pulled down during the Revolution.  The heart tightens at the sight of these ruins scattered in all directions and the inevitable repetition of the phrase, “Destroyed during the Revolution.”  The Saracens and Huns did no worse things.

In the company of an aged man with powdered wig and side curls, the picture of an old-fashioned henchman, and armed with full powers from the Coislin as well as from the Rohan family, I went to see Karheil, a castle perched on a rock, encircled by a pretty stream.  The glades of the fine park were obstructed by fences, hedges, and ditches, and other artificial obstacles, which turned them into a steeplechase course—­an arrangement, so M. Bizeul told me, of M. le Marquis “for the amusement of the people coming to the chateau.”  Then he looked at me.  I know not what he read in my eyes, but a paroxysm of grief seized him, and he was almost in tears as he confided to me the sorrow he felt at seeing one of the oldest and most venerated families in Brittany go down the hill.  And the old friend of the family had good reason to be grieved.  There was good stuff in the Marquis de Coislin of that date.  As a young man he had put himself at the head of his devoted partisans, like a gallant knight, in the Duchesse de Berry’s insurrection.  Later on, I had met him in Paris, a splendid gentleman, whose deep glance breathed passion, and no doubt inspired it too.  Many years later yet, in 1871, those who saw Charette’s Zouaves fighting with the army of the Loire noticed in their ranks a tall old white-bearded man, a simple Zouave indeed, but an exemplar of courage and devotion.  That was the Marquis de Coislin.  Sad it is that it is through our revolutions and divisions the services of such men should be lost to France.