Yet what good
would that do me?" he added in a tone of sadness. "The kind fairy who
transformed me is here no more to take pleasure in her work. Bah! it is
quite time to have done with it all."

Then he turned towards me, and, looking at me with big dark eyes, still
strangely animated, said:

"Come, my dear young man; I know what brings you to see me; you are
curious to hear my history. Draw nearer the fire, then. Mauprat though
I am, I will not make you do duty for a log. In listening you are giving
me the greatest pleasure you could give. Your friend will tell you,
however, that I do not willingly talk of myself. I am generally afraid
of having to deal with blockheads, but you I have already heard of;
I know your character and your profession; you are an observer and
narrator--in other words, pardon me, inquisitive and a chatterbox."

He began to laugh, and I made an effort to laugh too, though with
a rising suspicion that he was making game of us. Nor could I help
thinking of the nasty tricks that his grandfather took a delight in
playing on the imprudent busybodies who called upon him. But he put his
arm through mine in a friendly way, and making me sit down in front of a
good fire, near a table covered with cups--

"Don't be annoyed," he said. "At my age I cannot get rid of hereditary
sarcasm; but there is nothing spiteful in mine. To speak seriously, I am
delighted to see you and to confide in you the story of my life. A man
as unfortunate as I have been deserves to find a faithful biographer to
clear his memory from all stain. Listen, then, and take some coffee."

I offered him a cup in silence. He refused it with a wave of the arm
and a smile which seemed to say, "That is rather for your effeminate
generation."

Then he began his narrative in these words:

I

You live not very far from Roche-Mauprat, and must have often passed by
the ruins. Thus there is no need for me to describe them. All I can tell
you is that the place has never been so attractive as it is now. On the
day that I had the roof taken off, the sun for the first time brightened
the damp walls within which my childhood was passed; and the lizards
to which I have left them are much better housed there than I once was.
They can at least behold the light of day and warm their cold limbs in
the rays of the sun at noon.

There used to be an elder and a younger branch of the Mauprats. I belong
to the elder. My grandfather was that old