This place is celebrated in the history of the Vendean war by the
refuge Madame de Laroche-Jaquelin sought there, after the deplorable
defeat of the royalist army at the battle of Mans, where it received
its death-blow. The wreck of that army, under M. de Laroche-Jaquelin,
were driven from it again on the following day, and from that
hour never rallied so as to make any stand against the victorious
republicans.

Quitting Laval the day after my arrival, I ascended a long and steep
hill, travelled by the side of the forest of Petre, and came to Vitré,
where I remained all night for the purpose of visiting the château of
the celebrated Madame de Sévigné,[4] whose estate has descended to a
distant branch of her family, who had the good fortune to save it from
destruction during the revolution. The grounds are kept in excellent
order. Her picture hangs in the apartment in which she composed her
interesting and elegant letters, and every article of furniture
carefully preserved is shown to strangers. The distance from Vitré to
Rennes is seven leagues, over a road which becomes gradually less and
less Interesting.

[Footnote 4: Marie de Rabutin, Marchioness de Sevigné, was the
daughter of the Baron de Chantal, and born in 1626: she espoused at
the age of eighteen the Marquis de Sévigné, who fell in a duel in
1651, leaving her with one son and a daughter, to whose education
she paid strict attention: the daughter married in 1669 the Count de
Grignan, Commandant in Provence, and it was on a visit to her that the
Marchioness caught a fever and died in 1696. Her son Charles, Marquis
de Sevigné, was one of the admirers of Ninon de L'Enclos, and had
a dispute with Madame Dacier respecting the sense of a passage in