ng with harshness
and severity a young girl, who, having brought her husband five hundred
thousand francs, could not understand why she should be refused a new
dress when she urgently needed it. After twelve months of inconceivable
unhappiness, she gave birth to a son who was baptized Louis Norbert, and
six months afterwards she sank into an untimely grave.

The Duke did not seem to regret his loss very deeply. The boy appeared
to be of a strong and robust constitution, and his mother's dowry would
go to swell the revenues of the Champdoce family. He made his recent
loss, too, the pretext for further retrenchments and economies.

Norbert was brought up exactly as a farmer's son would have been. Every
morning he started off to work, carrying his day's provisions in a
basket slung upon his back. As he grew older, he was taught to sow and
reap, to estimate the value of a standing crop at a glance, and, last
but not least, to drive a hard bargain. For a long time the Duke debated
the expediency of permitting his son to be taught to read or write; and
if he did so at last, it was owing to some severe remarks by the parish
priest upon the day on which Norbert took the sacrament for the first
time.

All went on well and smoothly until the day when Norbert, on his
sixteenth birthday, accompanied his father to Poitiers for the first
time.

At sixteen years of age, Louis Norbert de Champdoce looked fully twenty,
and was as handsome a youth as could be seen for miles round. The sun
had given a bronzed tint to his features which was exceedingly becoming.
He had black hair, with a slight curl running through it, and large
melancholy blue eyes, which he inherited from his mother. Poor girl! it
was the sole beauty that she had possessed. He was utterly uncultured,
and had been ruled with such a rod of iron by his father that he had
never been a league from the Chateau. His ideas were barred by the
little town of Bevron, with its sixty houses, its town hall, its small
chapel, and principal river; and to him it seemed a spot full of noise
and confusion. In the whole course of his life he had never spoken
to three persons who did not belong to the district. Bred up in this
secluded manner, it was almost impossible for him to understand that
any one could lead a different existence to that of his own. His only
pleasure was in procuring an abundant harvest, and his sole idea of
excitement was High Mass on Sunday.

For more than a yea