ng upon his people that load of suffering and anguish
which was in after times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon
the innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.

Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent
loveliness of Melanie d'Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded
voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it
was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.

Hence, as the Abbe de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and
pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of
the odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with
the young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to
have her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and
less reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a
bride, too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject,
even if he were the noblest of the noble.

All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing
enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy
of becoming a king's paramour, and the yet baser Chevalier de la
Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to
sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving
his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and
whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.

The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors;
nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The Sieur
d'Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the
governorship of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to
support his new dignities; while the Chevalier de la Rochederrien had
become no less a personage than the Marquis de Ploermel, with a
captaincy of the mousquetaires, and heaven knows what beside of
honorary title and highly gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to
such depth of sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have
scarce undertaken as the price of exchange between his fetters and his
oar, and the great noble's splendor.

Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable
service to his king--service for which he was thus repaid; and, before
he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the
anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to
comprehension of two or