The first volume opens with the pedigree of the Chateaubriand family and the author's birth at Saint-Malo amidst the tumult of an equinoctial storm. He describes his early years spent at Plancoët under the care of his maternal grandmother and the eccentricities of his uncle, the Comte de Bedée. The narrative then shifts to Combourg Castle, a stern medieval fortress where his father reigned as a silent, formidable patriarch, instilling a deep, lifelong sense of gloom and solitary wonder in his son.
The author details his education at Dol College, where he developed a precocious aptitude for mathematics and languages, varied by boisterous friendships and strict religious observances. Interspersed with these school memories are accounts of rural life, rustic sports like the quintain, and the silent, oppressive evenings spent by the huge fireplace in the company of his parents and his sister Lucile.
Lucile emerges as a central figure of spiritual and emotional affinity, whose pensive beauty and poetic temperament nourished the author's early imagination. During these lonely years at Combourg, he fed his soul on solitude, wandering through the ancient forests and developing an intense, idealised passion for an imaginary companion that bordered on madness.
After a brief interlude in the Royal Navy at Brest and a return to his studies at Rennes, the narrative follows his departure for Paris to enter the military service. The volume closes with his reluctant presentation at the court of Versailles, his participation in a royal hunt, and his first hesitant steps into the great world that was soon to vanish forever with the French Revolution.
