st no opportunity of making the peasants
share his own hatred of his own cousin, Hubert de Mauprat. The latter,
whenever he interviewed his vassals, would remain seated in his
arm-chair, while they stood before him bareheaded; whereas Tristan de
Mauprat would make them sit down at his table, and drink some of the
wine they had brought him as a sign of voluntary homage. He would then
have them led home by his men in the middle of the night, all dead
drunk, torches in hand, and making the forest resound with ribald songs.
Libertinism completed the demoralization of the peasantry. In every
family the Mauprats soon had their mistresses. This was tolerated,
partly because it was profitable, and partly (alas! that it should
have to be said) because it gratified vanity. The very isolation of the
houses was favourable to the evil. No scandal, no denunciation were
to be feared. The tiniest village would have been sufficient for the
creation and maintenance of a public opinion. There, however, there
were only scattered cottages and isolated farms; wastes and woods so
separated the families from one another that the exercise of any mutual
control was impossible. Shame is stronger than conscience. I need not
tell you of all the bonds of infamy that united masters and slaves.
Debauchery, extortion, and fraud were both precept 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.

II

Old Mauprat was a treacherous animal of the carnivorous order, a
cross between a lynx and a fox. Along with a copious and e