From Alençon, we passed the Briante, a small river, at Ville Neuve, where the road begins to skirt the Forest of Moultonue. At Mayenne, the river of that name divides the provinces. The whole of this country is singularly beautiful. I observed vast quantities of buck wheat, which the French call _bled noir_ or _sarazin_. The country was very much enclosed, producing a great contrast to the vast tracts of land through which I had passed without a single division.
At two leagues from Mayenne we crossed the river Aisne, winding through a beautiful valley, between Martigné and Louverné. On the left the river forms a small lake, surrounded by a wood at the foot of a very long and steep hill.
The town of Mayenne is ancient and irregularly built, the river Mayenne running through it. The ruins of an old wall and some decayed towers remain of the fortifications which were taken by assault, after several bloody attempts, during the siege by the English, in 1424.
At Laval, where I stopped, after again crossing the Mayenne, I entered the province of Bretagne: it is an old dirty town, completely intersected by the river, and has a manufactory for coarse cloths and cottons. The _Tête Noire_ is one of the worst inns I have met with in the country. The department of the Isle-et-Vilaine commences here.
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.