Tristan de Mauprat who ran
through his fortune, dishonoured his name, and was such a blackguard
that his memory is already surrounded by a halo of the marvelous. The
peasants still believe that his ghost appears, either in the body of a
wizard who shows malefactors the way to the dwellings of Varenne, or in
that of an old white hare which reveals itself to people meditating
some evil deed. When I came into the world the only living member of the
younger branch was Monsieur Hubert de Mauprat, known as the chevalier,
because he belonged to the Order of the Knights of Malta; a man just as
good as his cousin was bad. Being the youngest son of his family, he had
taken the vow of celibacy; but, when he found himself the sole survivor
of several brothers and sisters, he obtained release from his vow, and
took a wife the year before I was born. Rumour says that before changing
his existence in this way he made strenuous efforts to find some
descendant of the elder branch worthy to restore the tarnished family
name, and preserve the fortune which had accumulated in the hands of the
younger branch. He had endeavoured to put his cousin Tristan's affairs
in order, and had frequently paid off the latter's creditors. Seeing,
however, that the only effect of his kindness was to encourage the vices
of the family, and that, instead of respect and gratitude, he received
nothing but secret hatred and churlish jealousy, he abandoned all
attempts at friendship, broke with his cousins, and in spite of his
advanced age (he was over sixty), took a wife in order to have heirs of
his own. He had one daughter, and there his hopes of posterity ended;
for soon afterward his wife died of a violent illness which the doctors
called iliac passion. He then left that part of the country and returned
but rarely to his estates. These were situated about six leagues from
Roche-Mauprat, on the borders of the Varenne du Fromental. He was a
prudent man and a just, because he was cultured, because his father had
moved with the spirit of his century, and 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 disti