First Lines: Honore de Balzac - The Human Comedy

Early in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform to our own calendar, toward the close of September, 1799, a hundred or so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Fougeres in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain of La Pelerine, half-way between Fougeres and Ernee, a small town where travellers along that road are in the habit of resting.