Born 19th August, 1780. Father an aristocrat, would be; & stuck to
the particle started by his father to avoid confusion. Mother a
whore; did not like school, preferred to sit at home & carve cherry
stones; saw the fall of the Bastille from his school roof; a beau-
tiful child, grew afterwards plain, felicitates himself on his beauty
in childhood, as it made his aunt in Peronne adopt him. Brought up
on Telemachus, Racine & Voltaires dramas. Performed at mass, with
disgrace. Heard, from the door of his aunts tavern on summer even-
ings the thunder of the cannon before Valenciennes and ever recurred
his hatred of Austrian or English. Lightning. A qui sert votre son
benite. (This aunt devote et patriote). Went to a Russian school
founded by one Bellenglise, where the boys were formed into regiments
& clubs, & Beranger pronounced addresses to the members of convention,
and wrote them to Robespierre. Wrote verses by drawing a line down the
paper; La Fontaine showed him this was not the right way; compare
this with Burns picking out sonorous verses from fourth rate poems:
query, is this a difference of men or langauge? (Shirked being old so
much that he made his beard with scissors). Taken to Paris by his
father, went through much low speculation & very low royalist intri-
gues. He says, like Burns, that poetry came to him from women. Wrote

he confesses to "a certain leaning towards Romanticism," II. 13;
and again warns a young poet to take from the Romantic school "ce qu'elle
a de large et non ce qu'elle a d'affecté."

Rouget de Lisle was the object of his unremitting attentions, he
obtained for him a large pension of 3,500 fr. and a cross, while he was
himself refusing everything.

His housekeeper dressed him; he looked like a retired merchant.

Born 19th.