had had him educated.  None the less he had preserved a firm character and an enterprising mind, and, like his ancestors, he was proud of hearing as a sort of surname the knightly title of Headbreaker, hereditary in the original Mauprat stock.  As for the elder branch, it had turned out so badly, or rather had preserved from the old feudal days such terrible habits of brigandage, that it had won for itself the distinctive title of Hamstringer. [I hazard “Headbreaker” and “Hamstringer” as poor equivalents for the “Casse-Tete” and “Coupe-Jarret” of the French.—­TR.] Of the sons of Tristan, my father, the eldest, was the only one who married.  I was his only child.  Here it is necessary to mention a fact of which I was long ignorant.  Hubert de Mauprat, on hearing of my birth, begged me of my parents, undertaking to make me his heir if he were allowed absolute control over my education.  At a shooting-party about this time my father was killed by an accidental shot, and my grandfather refused the chevalier’s offer, declaring that his children were the sole legitimate heirs of the younger branch, and that consequently he would resist with all his might any substitution in my favour.  It was then that Hubert’s daughter was born.  But when, seven years later, his wife died leaving him this one child, the desire, so strong in the nobles of that time, to perpetuate their name, urged him to renew his request to my mother.  What her answer was I do not know; she fell ill and died.  The country doctors again brought in a verdict of iliac passion.  My grandfather had spent the last two days she passed in this world with her.

Pour me out a glass of Spanish wine; for I feel a cold shiver running through my body.  It is nothing serious—­merely the effect that these early recollections have on me when I begin to narrate them.  It will soon pass off.

He swallowed a large glass of wine, and we did the same; for a sensation of cold came upon us too as we gazed at his stern face and listened to his brief, abrupt sentences.  He continued: 

Thus at the age of seven I found myself an orphan.  My grandfather searched my mother’s house and seized all the money and valuables he could carry away.  Then, leaving the rest, and declaring he would have nothing to do with lawyers, he did not even wait for the funeral, but took me by the collar and flung me on to the crupper of his horse, saying:  “Now, my young ward, come home with me; and try to stop that crying soon, for I haven’t much patience with brats.”  In fact, after a few seconds he gave me such hard cuts with his whip that I stopped crying, and, withdrawing myself like a tortoise into my shell, completed the journey without daring to breathe.