and example for my youth, and life went on merrily.
All notions of justice were scoffed at; creditors
were defrauded of both interest and capital; any law
officer who ventured to serve a summons received a
sound thrashing, and the mounted police were fired
on if they approached too near the turrets. A
plague on parliament; starvation to all imbued with
the new philosophy; and death to the younger branch
of the Mauprats—such were the watchwords
of these men who, to crown all, gave themselves the
airs of knights-errant of the twelfth century.
My grandfather talked of nothing but his pedigree
and the prowess of his ancestors. He regretted
the good old days when every lordling had instruments
of torture in his manor, and dungeons, and, best,
of all cannon. In ours we only had pitchforks
and sticks, and a second-rate culverin which my Uncle
John used to point—and point very well,
in fact—and which was sufficient to keep
at a respectful distance the military force of the
district.
Old Mauprat was a treacherous animal of the carnivorous
order, a cross between a lynx and a fox. Along
with a copious and easy flow of language, he had a
veneer of education which helped his cunning.
He made a point of excessive politeness, and had great
powers of persuasion, even with the objects of his
vengeance. He knew how to entice them to his
castle, where he would make them undergo frightful
ill-treatment, for which, however, having no witnesses,
they were unable to obtain redress by law. All
his villainies bore the stamp of such consummate skill
that the country came to view them with a sort of awe
akin to respect. No one could ever catch him
out of his den, though he issued forth often enough,
and apparently without taking many precautions.
In truth, he was a man with a genius for evil; and
his sons, bound to him by no ties of affection, of
which, indeed, they were incapable, yet acknowledged
the sway of this superior evil genius, and gave him
a uniform and ready obedience, in which there was something
almost fanatic. He was their deliverer in all
desperate cases; and when the weariness of confinement
under our chilly vaults began to fill them with ennui,
his mind, brutal even in jest, would cure them by arranging
for their pleasure shows worthy of a den of thieves.
Sometimes poor mendicant monks collecting alms would
be terrified or tortured for their benefit; their
beards would be burned off, or they would be lowered
into a well and kept hanging between life and death
until they had sung some foul song or uttered some
blasphemy. Everybody knows the story of the notary
who was allowed to enter in company with his four clerks,
and whom they received with all the assiduity of pompous
hospitality. My grandfather pretended to agree
with a good grace to the execution of their warrant,
and politely helped them to make an inventory of his
furniture, of which the sale had been decreed.
After this, when dinner was served and the king’s
men had taken their places at table, he said to the
notary:
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