Note 136 — BOOK II[75]

Thérèse Josèphe de Moëlien (1759-1793), daughter of Sébastien Marie Hyacinthe de Moëlien, Chevalier, Seigneur de Trojolif (not Tronjoli), Kermoisan, Kerguelenet, &c. She was twenty-three years of age when Chateaubriand saw her at Combourg, and when writing his Memoirs he must have recalled her with his school-boy eyes; for contemporary evidence declares that she was not beautiful, nor even pretty. The words "and close friend of the Marquis de La Rouërie" do not occur in the Manuscript of 1826. Thérèse de Moëlien was in love, not with La Rouërie, but with Major Chafner, an American officer, whom she was to have married if she outlived the plot in which they were both engaged. She was guillotined, however, in Paris on the 18th of June 1793. Major Chafner was in London at the time of the discovery of the so-called Breton Conspiracy. He returned to Brittany, and perished at Nantes, after fighting on the side of the Vendeans to revenge the death of Mademoiselle de Moëlien.—B.