uently I was the heir to the property.

It was a terrible journey I made with my grandfather but more terrible
still was the life led at Roche-Mauprat by Tristan and his eight sons.
Beset by creditors, the Mauprats with a dozen peasants and poachers
defied the civil laws as they had already broken all moral laws. They
formed themselves into a body of adventurers, levying blackmail on the
small farms of the neighbourhood, intimidating the tax-collectors and at
times not hesitating from petty thefts at fairs. Masters and servants
were united in bonds of infamy. Debauchery, extortion, fraud, and
cruelty were the precept and example of my youth. All notions of justice
were scoffed at, and the civilisation, the light of education, and the
philosophy of social equality, then spreading in France and preparing
the way for the convulsion of the Revolution, found no entrance at
Roche-Mauprat.

The eight sons, the pride and strength of old Mauprat, all resembled him
in physical vigour, brutality of manners, and in a cunning ill-nature.
They gave themselves the airs of knights of the twelfth century. What
elsewhere was called assassination and robbery I was taught to call
battle and conquest. The frightful tortures heaped upon prisoners by my
uncles gave me a horrible uneasiness, but what kept me from admiring the
savagery that surrounded me was the ill-usage I received myself. I grew
up without conceiving any liking for vice, but a tendency to hatred was
fostered. Of virtue or simple human affection I knew nothing, and a
blind and brutal anger was nourished in my breast.

As the years went by Roche-Mauprat became more and more isolated. People
left the neighbourhood to escape our violent depredations, and in
consequence we had to go farther afield for plunder. I joined in the
robberies as a soldier serves in a campaign, but on more than one
occasion I helped some unfortunate man who had been knocked down to get
up and escape.

My grandfather died when I was fifteen. A year later and so threatened
were we by crown officers, private creditors and infuriated peasants,
that it was a question of either fleeing the country or bracing
ourselves for a decisive struggle, and if needs be finding a grave under
the ruins of the castle.

_II.--Meet my Cousin Edmee_

One night, when wind and rain beat fiercely against the old walls of the
castle and I sat at supper with my uncles, a horn was heard at the
portcullis. I had been drinki