"Ah, mon Dieu! I was forgetting a poor hack of mine in the stable. It's
a small matter. Still, you might be reprimanded for omitting it; and
as I see that you are a worthy fellow I should be sorry to mislead you.
Come with me and see it; it won't take us a moment."

The notary followed Mauprat unsuspectingly. Just as they were about to
enter the stable together, Mauprat, who was leading the way, told him to
put in his head only. The notary, anxious to show great consideration in
the performance of his duties, and not to pry into things too closely,
did as he was told. Then Mauprat suddenly pushed the door to and
squeezed his neck so violently between it and the wall that the wretched
man could not breathe. Deeming him sufficiently punished, Tristan opened
the door again, and, asking pardon for his carelessness, with great
civility offered the man his arm to take him back to dinner. This the
notary did not consider it wise to refuse; but as soon as he re-entered
the room where his colleagues were, he threw himself into a chair, and
pointing to his livid face and mangled neck, demanded justice for the
trap into which he had just been led. It was then that my grandfather,
revelling in his rascally wit, went through a comedy scene of sublime
audacity. He gravely reproached the notary with accusing him unjustly,
and always addressing him kindly and with studied politeness, called the
others to bear witness to his conduct, begging them to make allowances
if his precarious position had forced him to give them such a poor
reception, all the while doing the honours of the table in splendid
style. The poor notary did not dare to press the matter and was
compelled to dine, although half dead. His companions were so completely
duped by Mauprat's assurance that they ate and drank merrily, treating
the notary as a lunatic and a boor. They left Roche-Mauprat all drunk,
singing the praises of their host, and laughing at the notary, who fell
down dead upon the threshold of his house on dismounting from his horse.

The eight sons, the pride and strength of old Mauprat, all resembled
him in physical vigour, brutality of manners, and, to some extent, in
craftiness and jesting ill-nature. The truth is they were veritable
brutes, capable of any evil, and completely dead to any noble thought
or generous sentiment. Nevertheless, they were endowed with a sort of
reckless, dashing courage which now and then seemed to have in it an
element of grandeur. But it is time that I told you about myself, and
gave you some idea of the development of my character in the thick of
this filthy mire into which it had pleased God to plunge me, on leaving
my cradle.

I should be wrong if, in order to gain your sympathy in these early
years of my life, I asserted that I was born with a noble nature, a pure
and incorruptible soul. As to this, I know nothing. Maybe there are no
incorruptible souls. Maybe there are. That is what neither you nor any
one will ever know. The great questions awaiting an answer are these:
"Are our innate tendencies invincible? If not, can they be modified
merely or wholly destroyed by education?" For myself, I would not dare
to affirm. I am neither a metaphysician, nor a psychologist, nor a
philosopher; but I have had a terrible life, gentlemen, and if I were a
legislator, I would order that man to have his tongue torn out, or
his head cut off, who dared to preach or write that the nature of
individuals is unchangeable, and that it is no more possible to reform
the character of a man than the appetite of a tiger. God has preserved
me from believing this.

All I can tell you is that my mother instilled into me good principles,
though, perhaps, I was not endowed by nature with her good qualities.
Even with her I was of a violent disposition, but my violence was
sullen and suppressed. I was blind and brutal in anger, nervous even to
cowardice at the approach of danger, daring almost to foolhardiness when
hand to hand with it--that is to say, at once timid and brave from my
love of life. My obstinacy was revolting; yet my mother alone could
conquer me; and without attempting to reason, for my mind developed very
slowly, I used to obey her as if by a sort of magnetic necessity. This
one guiding hand which I remember, and another woman's which I felt
later, were and have been sufficient to lead me towards good. But I lost
my mother before she had been able to teach me anything seriously; and
when I was transplanted to Roche-Mauprat, my feeling for the evil done
there was merely an instinctive aversion, feeble enough, perhaps, if
fear had not been mingled with it.

But I thank Heaven from the bottom of my heart for the cruelties
heaped upon me there, and above all for the hatred which my Uncle John
conceived for me. My ill-fortune preserved me from indifference in
the presence of evil, and my sufferings helped me to detest those who
wrought it.

This John was certainly the most detestable of his race. Ever since a
fall from his horse had maimed him, his evil temper had developed
in proportion to his inability to do as much harm as his companions.
Compelled to remain at home when the others set out on their
expeditions, for he could not bestride a horse, he found his only chance
of pleasure in those fruitless little attacks which the mounted police
sometimes made on the castle, as if to ease their conscience. Then,
intrenched behind a rampart of freestone which he had had built to
suit himself, John, calmly seated near his culverin, would pick off
a gentleman from time to time, and at once regain, as he said, his
sleeping and eating power, which want of exercise had taken from him.
And he would even climb up to his beloved platform without waiting for
the excuse of an attack, and there, crouching down like a cat ready to
spring, as soon as he saw any one appear in the distance without giving
the signal, he would try his skill upon the target, and make the man
retrace his steps. This he called sweeping the path clean.

As I was too young to accompany my uncles on their hunting and
plundering expeditions, John naturally became my guardian and
tutor--that is to say, my jailor and tormentor. I will not give you all
the details of that infernal existence. For nearly ten years I endured
cold, hunger, insults, the dungeon, and blows, according to the more or
less savage caprices of this monster. His fierce hatred of me arose
from the fact that he could not succeed in depraving me; my rugged,
headstrong, and unsociable nature preserved me from his vile seductions.
It is possible that I had not any strong tendencies to virtue; to hatred
I luckily had. Rather than do the bidding of my tyrant I would have
suffered a thousand deaths. And so I grew up without conceiving any
affection for vice. However, my notions about society were so strange
that my uncles' mode of life did not in itself cause me any repugnance.
Seeing that I was brought up behind the walls of Roche-Mauprat, and that
I lived in a state of perpetual siege, you will understand that I had
precisely such ideas as any armed retainer in the barbarous ages of
feudalism might have had. What, outside our den, was termed by other men
assassinating, plundering, and torturing, I was taught to call fighting,
conquering, and subduing. My sole knowledge of history consisted of
an acquaintance with certain legends and ballads of chivalry which my
grandfather used to repeat to me of an evening, when he had time to
think of what he was pleased to call my education. Whenever I asked him
any question about the present time, he used to answer that times had
sadly changed, that all Frenchmen had become traitors and felons, that
they had frightened their kings, and that these, like cravens, had
deserted the nobles, who in their turn had been cowardly enough to
renounce their privileges and let laws be made for them by clodhoppers.
I listened with surprise, almost with indignation, to this account of
the age in which I lived, for me an age of shadows and mysteries. My
grandfather had but vague ideas of chronology; not a book of any kind
was to be found at Roche-Mauprat, except, I should say, the History of
the Sons of Aymon, and a few chronicles of the same class brought by our
servants from country fairs. Three names, and only three, stood clear in
the chaos of my ignorance--Charlemagne, Louis XI, and Louis XIV; because
my grandfather would frequently introduce these into dissertations on
the unrecognised rights of the nobles. In truth, I was so ignorant that
I scarcely knew the difference between a reign and a race; and I was by
no means sure that my grandfather had not seen Charlemagne, for he spoke
of him more frequently and more gladly than of any other man.

But, while my native energy led me to admire the exploits of my uncles,
and filled me with a longing to share in them, the cold-blooded cruelty
they perpetrated on returning from their expeditions, and the perfidious
artifices by which they lured their dupes to the castle, in order
to torture them to extort ransom, roused in me strange and painful
emotions, which, now that I am speaking in all sincerity, it would be
difficult for me to account for exactly. In the absence of all ordinary
moral principles it might have been natural for me to accept the theory
which I daily saw carried into practice, that makes it right; but the
humiliation and suffering which my Uncle John inflicted on me in virtue
of this theory, taught me to be dissatisfied with it. I could appreciate
the right of the bravest, and I genuinely despised those who, with death
in their power, yet chose life at the price of such ignominy as they
had to bear at Roche-Mauprat. But I could only explain these insults and
horrors heaped on prisoners, some of them women and mere children,
as manifestations of bloodthirsty appetites. I do not know if I was
sufficiently susceptible of a noble sentiment to be inspired with pity
for the victim; but certain it is that I experienced that feeling
of selfish commiseration which is common to all natures, and which,
purified and ennobled, has become charity among civilized peoples. Under
my coarse exterior my heart no doubt merely felt passing shocks of fear
and disgust at the sight of punishments which I myself might have to
endure any day at the caprice of my oppressors; especially as John,
when he saw me turn pale at these frightful spectacles, had a habit of
saying, in a mocking tone:

"That's what I'll do to you when you are disobedient."

All I know is that in presence of such iniquitous acts I experienced a
horrible uneasiness; my blood curdled in my veins, my throat began
to close, and I had to rush away, so as not to repeat the cries which
pierced my ears. In time, however, I became somewhat hardened to these
terrible impressions. The fibres of feeling grew tougher, and habit gave
me power to hide what they termed my cowardice. I even felt ashamed of
the signs of weakness I showed, and forced my face into the hyena
smile which I saw on the faces of my kinsmen. But I could never prevent
convulsive shudders from running through my limbs, and the coldness as
of death from falling on my heart, at the recollection of these scenes
of agony. The women, dragged half-willingly, half by force, under the
roof of Roche-Mauprat, caused me inconceivable agitation. I began to
feel the fires of youth kindling within me, and even to look with envy
on this part of my uncles' spoil; but with these new-born desires were
mingled inexpressible pangs. To all around me women were merely objects
of contempt, and vainly did I try to separate this idea from that of the
pleasure which was luring me. My mind was bewildered, and my irritated
nerves imparted a violent and sickly strain to all my temptations. In
other matters, I had as vile a disposition as my companions; if my heart
was better than theirs, my manners were no less arrogant, and my jokes
in no better taste. And here it may be well to give you an illustration
of my youthful malice, especially as the results of these events have
had an influence on the rest of my life.




III

Some three leagues from Roche-Mauprat, on your way to Fromental, you
must have noticed an old tower standing by itself in the middle of the
woods. It is famous for the tragic death of a prisoner about a century
ago. The executioner, on his rounds, thought good to hang him without
any further formality, merely to gratify an old Mauprat, his overlord.

At the time of which I am speaking Gazeau Tower was already deserted
and falling into ruins. It was state property, and, more from negligence
than kindness, the authorities had allowed a poor old fellow to take
up his abode there. He was quite a character, used to live completely
alone, and was known in the district as Gaffer Patience.

"Yes," I interrupted; "I have heard my nurse's grandmother speak of him;
she believed he was a sorcerer."

Exactly so; and while we are at this point let me tell you what sort of
a man this Patience really was, for I shall have to speak of him more
than once in the course of my story. I had opportunities of studying him
thoroughly.

Patience, then, was a rustic philosopher. Heaven had endowed him with
a keen intellect, but he had had little education. By a sort of strange
fatality, his brain had doggedly resisted the little instruction he
might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school
at ----, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played
truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was
an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and
almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to
all authority; somewhat captious, very suspicious, and inexorable with
hypocrites. The observances of the cloister inspired him with but little
awe; and as a result of once or twice speaking his mind too freely to
the monks he was expelled from the school. From that time forth he was
the sworn foe of what he called monkism, and declared openly for the
cure of the Briantes, who was accused of being a Jansenist. In the
instruction of Patience, however, the cure succeeded no better than the
monks. The young peasant, endowed though he was with herculean strength
and a great desire for knowledge, displayed an unconquerable aversion
for every kind of work, whether physical or mental. He professed a sort
of artless philosophy which the cure found it very difficult to argue
against. There was, he said, no need for a man to work as long as he did
not want money; and he was in no need of money as long as his wants were
moderate. Patience practised what he preached: during the years when
passions are so powerful he lived a life of austerity, drank nothing
but water, never entered a tavern, and never joined in a dance. He was
always very awkward and shy with women, who, it must be owned, found
little to please in his eccentric character, stern face, and somewhat
sarcastic wit. As if to avenge himself for this by showing his contempt,
or to console himself by displaying his wisdom, he took a pleasure, like
Diogenes of old, in decrying the vain pleasures of others; and if at
times he was to be seen passing under the branches in the middle of the
fetes, it was merely to throw out some shaft of scorn, a flash from his
inexorable good sense. Sometimes, too, his uncompromising morality found
expression in biting words, which left clouds of sadness or fear hanging
over agitated consciences. This naturally gained him violent enemies;
and the efforts of impotent hatred, helped by the feeling of awe which
his eccentric behaviour produced, fastened upon him the reputation of a
sorcerer.

When I said that Patience was lacking in education, I expressed myself
badly. Longing for a knowledge of the sublime mysteries of Nature,
his mind wished to soar to heaven on its first flight. From the very
beginning, the Jansenist vicar was so perplexed and startled by
the audacity of his pupil, he had to say so much to calm him into
submission, he was obliged to sustain such assaults of bold questions
and proud objections, that he had no leisure to teach him the alphabet;
and at the end of ten years of studies, broken off and taken up at the
bidding of a whim or on compulsion, Patience could not even read. It was
only with great difficulty, after poring over a book for some two hours,
that he deciphered a single page, and even then he did not grasp the
meaning of most of the words expressing abstract ideas. Yet these
abstract ideas were undoubtedly in him; you felt their presence while
watching and listening to him; and the way in which he managed to embody
them in homely phrase enlivened with a rude poetry was so marvellous,
that one scarcely knew whether to feel astounded or amused.

Always serious, always positive himself, he scorned dalliance with
any dialectic. A Stoic by nature and on principle, enthusiastic in the
propagation of his doctrine of severance from false ideas, but resolute
in the practice of resignation, he made many a breach in the poor cure's
defences; and it was in these discussions, as he often told me in his
last years, that he acquired his knowledge of philosophy. In order to
make a stand against the battering-ram of natural logic, the worthy
Jansenist was obliged to invoke the testimony of all the Fathers of the
Church, and to oppose these, often even to corroborate them, with the
teaching of all the sages and scholars of antiquity. Then Patience, his
round eyes starting from his head (this was his own expression), lapsed
into silence, and, delighted to learn without having the bother of
studying, would ask for long explanations of the doctrines of these
men, and for an account of their lives. Noticing this attention and
this silence, his adversary would exult; but just as he thought he had
convinced this rebellious soul, Patience, hearing the village clock
strike midnight, would rise, take an affectionate leave of his host, and
on the very threshold of the vicarage, would dismay the good man with
some laconic and cutting comment that confounded Saint Jerome and Plato
alike, Eusebius equally with Seneca, Tertullian no less than Aristotle.

The cure was not too ready to acknowledge the superiority of this
untutored intellect. Still, he was quite astonished at passing so many
winter evenings by his fireside with this peasant without feeling
either bored or tired; and he would wonder how it was that the village
schoolmaster, and even the prior of the convent, in spite of their Greek
and Latin, appeared to him, the one a bore, the other a sophist, in all
their discussions. Knowing the perfect purity of the peasant's life,
he attributed the ascendency of his mind to the power of virtue and the
charm it spreads over all things. Then, each evening, he would humbly
accuse himself before God of not having disputed with his pupil from a
sufficiently Christian point of view; he would confess to his guardian
angel that pride in his own learning and joy at being listened to
so devoutly had carried him somewhat beyond the bounds of religious
instruction; that he had quoted profane writers too complacently;
that he had even experienced a dangerous pleasure in roaming with
his disciple through the fields of the past, plucking pagan flowers
unsprinkled by the waters of baptism, flowers in whose fragrance a
priest should not have found such delight.

On his side, Patience loved the cure dearly. He was his only friend,
his only bond of union with society, his only bond of union, through
the light of knowledge, with God. The peasant largely over-estimated his
pastor's learning. He did not know that even the most enlightened men
often draw wrong conclusions, or no conclusions at all, from the course
of progress. Patience would have been spared great distress of mind if
he could have seen for certain that his master was frequently mistaken
and that it was the man, not the truth, that was at fault. Not knowing
this, and finding the experience of the ages at variance with his innate
sense of justice, he was continually a prey to agonizing reveries; and,
living by himself, and wandering through the country at all hours of the
day and night, wrapped in thoughts undreamed of by his fellows, he gave
more and more credit to the tales of sorcery reported against him.

The convent did not like the pastor. A few monks whom Patience had
unmasked hated Patience. Hence, both pastor and pupil were persecuted.
The ignorant monks did not scruple to accuse the cure to his bishop of
devoting himself to the occult sciences in concert with the magician
Patience. A sort of religious war broke out in the village and
neighbourhood. All who were not for the convent were for the cure,
and _vice versa_. Patience scorned to take part in this struggle. One
morning he went to see his friend, with tears in his eyes, and said to
him:

"You are the one man in all the world that I love, and I will not have
you persecuted on my account. Since, after you, I neither know nor
care for a soul, I am going off to live in the woods, like the men
of primitive times. I have inherited a field which brings me in fifty
francs a year. It is the only land I have ever stirred with these hands,
and half its wretched rent has gone to pay the tithe of labour I owe the
seignior. I trust to die without ever doing duty as a beast of burden
for others. And yet, should they remove you from your office, or rob you
of your income, if you have a field that needs ploughing, only send me
word, and you will see that these arms have not grown altogether stiff
in their idleness."

It was in vain that the pastor opposed this resolve. Patience departed,
carrying with him as his only belonging the coat he had on his back,
and an abridgment of the teachings of Epictetus. For this book he had a
great affection, and, thanks to much study of it, could read as many
as three of its pages a day without unduly tiring himself. The rustic
anchorite went into the desert to live. At first he built himself a hut
of branches in a wood. Then, as wolves attacked him, he took refuge in
one of the lower halls of Gazeau Tower, which he furnished luxuriously
with a bed of moss, and some stumps of trees; wild roots, wild fruit,
and goat's milk constituted a daily fare very little inferior to what
he had had in the village. This is no exaggeration. You have to see the
peasants in certain parts of Varenne to form an idea of the frugal diet
on which a man can live and keep in good health. In the midst of these
men of stoical habits all round him, Patience was still exceptional.
Never had wine reddened his lips, and bread had seemed to him a
superfluity. Besides, the doctrine of Pythagoras was not wholly
displeasing to him; and in the rare interviews which he henceforth had
with his friend he would declare that, without exactly believing in
metempsychosis, and without making it a rule to eat vegetables only, he
felt a secret joy at being able to live thus, and at having no further
occasion to see death dealt out every day to innocent animals.

Patience had formed this curious resolution at the age of forty. He was
sixty when I saw him for the first time, and he was then possessed of
extraordinary physical vigour. In truth, he was in the habit of roaming
about the country every year. However, in proportion as I tell you about
my own life, I shall give you details of the hermit life of Patience.

At the time of which I am about to speak, the forest rangers, more
from fear of his casting a spell over them than out of compassion, had
finally ceased their persecutions, and given him full permission to
live in Gazeau Tower, not, however, without warning him that it would
probably fall about his head during the first gale of wind. To this
Patience had replied philosophically that if he was destined to be
crushed to death, the first tree in the forest would do the work quite
as well as the walls of Gazeau Tower.

Before putting my actor Patience on the stage, and with many apologies
for inflicting on you such a long preliminary biography, I have still to
mention that during the twenty years of which I have spoken the cure's
mind had bowed to a new power. He loved philosophy, and in spite of
himself, dear man, could not prevent this love from embracing the
philosophers too, even the least orthodox. The works of Jean Jacques
Rousseau carried him away into new regions, in spite of all his efforts
at resistance; and when one morning, when returning from a visit to some
sick folk, he came across Patience gathering his dinner of herbs from
the rocks of Crevant, he sat down near him on one of the druidical
stones and made, without knowing it, the profession of faith of the
Savoyard vicar. Patience drank more willingly of this poetic religion
than of the ancient orthodoxy. The pleasure with which he listened to
a summary of the new doctrines led the cure to arrange secret meetings
with him in isolated parts of Varenne, where they agreed to come
upon each other as if by chance. At these mysterious interviews the
imagination of Patience, fresh and ardent from long solitude, was fired
with all the magic of the thoughts and hopes which were then fermenting
in France, from the court of Versailles to the most uninhabitable heath.
He became enamoured of Jean Jacques, and made the cure read as much of
him as he possibly could without neglecting his duties. Then he begged a
copy of the _Contrat Social_, and hastened to Gazeau Tower to spell his
way through it feverishly. At first the cure had given him of this manna
only with a sparing hand, and while making him admire the lofty thoughts
and noble sentiments of the philosopher, had thought to put him on his
guard against the poison of anarchy. But all the old learning, all the
happy texts of bygone days--in a word, all the theology of the worthy
priest--was swept away like a fragile bridge by the torrent of wild
eloquence and ungovernable enthusiasm which Patience had accumulated
in his desert. The vicar had to give way and fall back terrified upon
himself. There he discovered that the shrine of his own science was
everywhere cracking and crumbling to ruin. The new sun which was rising
on the political horizon and making havoc in so many minds, melted his
own like a light snow under the first breath of spring. The sublime
enthusiasm of Patience; the strange poetic life of the man which seemed
to reveal him as one inspired; the romantic turn which their mysterious
relations were taking (the ignoble persecutions of the convent making it
noble to revolt)--all this so worked upon the priest that by 1770 he had
already travelled far from Jansenism, and was vainly searching all the
religious heresies for some spot on which he might rest before falling
into the abyss of philosophy so often opened at his feet by Patience, so
often hidden in vain by the exorcisms of Roman theology.




IV

After this account of the philosophical life of Patience, set forth
by me now in manhood (continued Bernard, after a pause), it is not
altogether easy to return to the very different impressions I received
in boyhood on meeting the wizard of Gazeau Tower. I will make an effort,
however, to reproduce my recollections faithfully.

It was one summer evening, as I was returning from bird-snaring with
several peasant-boys, that I passed Gazeau Tower for the first time.
My age was about thirteen, and I was bigger and stronger than any of my
comrades; besides, I exercised over them, sternly enough, the authority
I drew from my noble birth. In fact, the mixture of familiarity and
etiquette in our intercourse was rather fantastic. Sometimes, when the
excitement of sport or the fatigue of the day had greater powers over
them than I, they used to have their own way; and I already knew how
to yield at the right moment, as tyrants do, so as always to avoid the
appearance of being compelled. However, I generally found a chance for
revenge, and soon saw them trembling before the hated name of my family.

Well, night was coming on, and we were walking along gaily, whistling,
knocking down crab-apples with stones, imitating the notes of birds,
when the boy who was ahead suddenly stopped, and, coming back to us,
declared that he was not going by the Gazeau Tower path, but would
rather cut across the wood. This idea was favoured by two others. A
third objected that we ran the risk of losing ourselves if we left the
path, that night was near, and that there were plenty of wolves about.

"Come on, you funks!" I cried in a princely tone, pushing forward the
guide; "follow the path, and have done with this nonsense."

"Not me," said the youngster. "I've just seen the sorcerer at his door
saying magic words, and I don't want to have a fever all the year."

"Bah!" said another; "he doesn't do harm to everybody. He never hurts
children; and, besides, we have only to pass by very quietly without
saying anything to him. What do you suppose he'll do to us?"

"Oh, it would be all right if we were alone," answered the first; "but
M. Bernard is here; we're sure to have a spell cast on us."

"What do you say, you fool?" I cried, doubling my fist.

"It's not my fault, my lord," replied the boy. "That old wretch doesn't
like the gentry, and he has said he would be glad to see M. Tristan and
all his sons hanging from the same bough."

"He said that, did he? Good!" I answered. "Come on, and you shall see.
All who are my friends will follow; any one that leaves me is a coward."

Two of my companions, out of vanity, let themselves be drawn on. The
others pretended to imitate them; but, after a few steps, they had all
taken flight and disappeared into the copse. However, I went on proudly,
escorted by my two acolytes. Little Sylvain, who was in front, took off
his hat as soon as he saw Patience in the distance; and when we arrived
opposite him, though the man was looking on the ground without appearing
to notice us, he was seized with terror, and said, in a trembling voice:

"Good evening, Master Patience; a good night's rest to you."

The sorcerer, roused out of his reverie, started like a man waked from
sleep; and I saw, not without a certain emotion, his weather-beaten face
half covered with a thick gray beard. His big head was quite bald, and
the bareness of his forehead only served to make his bushy eyebrows
more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash
like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was
of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a
gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face
was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire
of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not
perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled
with a sense of loathing, and determined to avenge the insult he had
offered to my name, I put a stone in my sling, and without further ado
hurled it at him with all my might.

At the moment the stone flew out, Patience was in the act of replying to
the boy's greeting.

"Good evening, lads; God be with you!" he was saying when the stone
whistled past his ear and struck a tame owl of which Patience had made a
pet, and which at the approach of night was beginning to rouse itself in
the ivy above the door.

The owl gave a piercing cry and fell bleeding at the feet of its
master, who answered it with a roar of anger. For a few seconds he stood
motionless with surprise and fury. Then suddenly, taking the palpitating
victim by the feet, he lifted it up, and, coming towards us, cried in a
voice of thunder:

"Which of you wretches threw that stone?"

The boy who had been walking behind, flew with the swiftness of the
wind; but Sylvain, seized by the great hand of the sorcerer, fell
upon his knees, swearing by the Holy Virgin and by Saint Solange, the
patroness of Berry, that he was innocent of the death of the bird. I
felt, I confess, a strong inclination to let him get out of the scrape
as best he could, and make my escape into the thicket. I had expected
to see a decrepit old juggler, not to fall into the hands of a robust
enemy; but pride held me back.

"If you did this," said Patience to my trembling comrade, "I pity you;
for you are a wicked child, and you will grow into a dishonest man. You
have done a bad deed; you have made it your pleasure to cause pain to
an old man who never did you any harm; and you have done this
treacherously, like a coward, while feigning politeness and bidding him
good-evening. You are a liar, a miscreant; you have robbed me of my only
society, my only riches; you have taken delight in evil. God preserve
you from living if you are going on in this way."

"Oh, Monsieur Patience!" cried the boy, clasping his hands; "do not
curse me; do not bewitch me; do not give me any illness; it wasn't I!
May God strike me dead if it was!"

"If it wasn't you, it was this one, then!" said Patience, seizing me by
the coat-collar and shaking me like a young tree to be uprooted.

"Yes, I did it," I replied, haughtily; "and if you wish to know my name,
learn that I am called Bernard Mauprat, and that a peasant who lays a
hand on a nobleman deserves death."

"Death! You! You would put me to death, Mauprat!" cried the old man,
petrified with surprise and indignation. "And what would God be, then,
if a brat like you had a right to threaten a man of my age? Death! Ah,
you are a genuine Mauprat, and you bite like your breed, cursed whelp!
Such things as they talk of putting to death the very moment they are
born! Death, my wolf-cub! Do you know it is yourself who deserves death,
not for what you have just done, but for being the son of your father,
and the nephew of your uncles? Ah! I am glad to hold a Mauprat in the
hollow of my hand, and see whether a cur of a nobleman weighs as much as
a Christian."

As he spoke he lifted me from the ground as he would have lifted a hare.

"Little one," he said to my comrade, "you can run home; you needn't
be afraid. Patience rarely gets angry with his equals; and he always
pardons his brothers, because his brothers are ignorant like himself,
and know not what they do; but a Mauprat, look you, is a thing that
knows how to read and write, and is only the viler for it all. Run
away, then. But no; stay; I should like you once in your life to see
a nobleman receive a thrashing from the hand of a peasant. And that is
what you are going to see; and I ask you not to forget it, little one,
and to tell your parents about it."

Livid, and gnashing my teeth with rage, I made desperate efforts to
resist. Patience, with hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an
osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed;
and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch
above my head, and the bird's blood, as it fell on me drop by drop,
caused me unspeakable horror; for though this was only the correction
we administer to sporting dogs that worry game, my brain, bewildered by
rage, despair, and my comrades' cries, began to imagine some
frightful witchcraft. However, I really think I would rather have
been metamorphosed into an owl at once than undergo the punishment he
inflicted on me. In vain did I fling threats at him; in vain did I take
terrible vows of vengeance; in vain did the peasant child throw himself
on his knees again and supplicate:

"Monsieur Patience, for God's sake, for your own sake, don't harm him;
the Mauprats will kill you."

He laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. Then, taking a handful of holly
twigs, he flogged me in a manner, I must own, more humiliating than
cruel; for no sooner did he see a few drops of my blood appear, than he
stopped and threw down the rod. I even noticed a sudden softening of his
features and voice, as if he were sorry for his severity.

"Mauprat," he said, crossing his arms on his breast and looking at me
fixedly, "you have now been punished; you have now been insulted,
my fine gentleman; that is enough for me. As you see, I might easily
prevent you from ever harming me by stopping your breath with a touch of
my finger, and burying you under the stone at my door. Who would think
of coming to Gaffer Patience to look for this fine child of noble blood?
But, as you may also see, I am not fond of vengeance; at the first
cry of pain that escaped you, I stopped. No; I don't like to cause
suffering; I'm not a Mauprat. Still, it was well for you to learn by
experience what is to be a victim. May this disgust you of the hangman's
trade, which had been handed down from father to son in your family.
Good-evening! You can go now; I no longer bear you malice; the justice
of God is satisfied. You can tell your uncles to put me on their
gridiron; they will have a tough morsel to eat; and they will swallow
flesh that will come to life again in their gullets and choke them."

Then he picked up the dead owl, and looking at it sadly:

"A peasant's child would not have done this," he said. "This is sport
for gentle blood."

As he retired to his door he gave utterance to an exclamation which
escaped him only on solemn occasions, and from which he derived his
curious surname:

"Patience, patience!" he cried.

This, according to the gossips, was a cabalistic formula of his; and
whenever he had been heard to pronounce it, some misfortune had happened
to the individual who had offended him. Sylvain crossed himself to ward
off the evil spirit. The terrible words resounded through the tower into
which Patience had just withdrawn, then the door closed behind him with
a bang.

My comrade was so eager to be off that he was within an ace of leaving
me there bound to the tree. As soon as he had released me, he exclaimed:

"A sign of the cross! For God's sake, a sign of the cross! If you don't
cross yourself you are bewitched; we shall be devoured by wolves as we
go, or else we shall meet the great monster."

"Idiot!" I said; "I have something else to think about. Listen; if you
are ever unlucky enough to tell a single soul of what has happened, I
will strangle you."

"Alas! sir, what am I to do?" he replied with a mixture of innocence and
malice. "The sorcerer said I was to tell my parents."

I raised my fist to strike him, but my strength failed. Choking with
rage at the treatment I had just undergone, I fell down almost in a
faint, and Sylvain seized the opportunity for flight.

When I came to I found myself alone. I did not know this part of
Varenne; I had never been here before, and it was horribly wild. All
through the day I had seen tracks of wolves and wild boars in the sand.
And now night had come and I was still two leagues from Roche-Mauprat.
The gate would be shut, the drawbridge up; and I should get a bullet
through me if I tried to enter after nine o'clock. As I did not know
the way, it was a hundred to one against my doing the two leagues in an
hour. However, I would have preferred to die a thousand deaths rather
than ask shelter of the man in Gazeau Tower, even had he granted it
gracefully. My pride was bleeding more than my flesh.

I started off at a run, heedless of all risks. The path made a thousand
turns; a thousand other paths kept crossing it. When I reached the plain
I found myself in a pasture surrounded by hedges. There every trace of
the path disappeared. I jumped the hedge at a venture, and fell into a
field. The night was pitch-dark; even had it been day it would have been
impossible to ascertain my way in the midst of little properties buried
between high banks bristling with thorns. Finally I reached a heath,
then some woods; and my fears, which had been somewhat subdued, now grew
intense. Yes, I own I was a prey to mortal terrors. Trained to bravery,
as a dog is to sport, I bore myself well enough before others. Spurred
by vanity, indeed, I was foolishly bold when I had spectators; but left
to myself, in the middle of the night, exhausted by toil and hunger,
though with no longing for food, unhinged by the emotions I had just
experienced, certain that my uncles would beat me when I returned, yet
as anxious to return as if I were going to find paradise on earth at
Roche-Mauprat, I wandered about until daybreak, suffering indescribable
agonies. The howls of wolves, happily far off, more than once reached
my ears and froze the blood in my veins; and, as if my position had not
been perilous enough in reality, my overwrought imagination must needs
add to it a thousand extravagant fantasies. Patience had the reputation
of being a wolf-rearer. This, as you know, is a cabalistic speciality
accredited in all countries. I kept on fancying, therefore, that I saw
this devilish little gray-beard, escorted by his ravening pack, and
himself in the form of a demi-wolf, pursing me through the woods.
Several times when rabbits got up at my feet I almost fell backwards
from the shock. And now, as I was certain that nobody could see, I made
many a sign of the cross; for, while affecting incredulity, I was, of
course, at heart filled with all the superstitions born of fear.

At last, at daybreak, I reached Roche-Mauprat. I waited in a moat until
the gates were opened, and then slipped up to my room without being
seen by anybody. As it was not altogether an unfailing tenderness that
watched over me at Roche-Mauprat, my absence had not been noticed during
the night. Meeting my Uncle John on the stairs, I led him to believe
that I had just got up; and, as the artifice proved successful, I went
off to the hayloft and slept for the rest of the day.




V

As I had nothing further to fear for myself, it would have been easy to
take vengeance on my enemy. Everything was favourable. The words he had
uttered against my family would have been sufficient without any mention
of the outrage done to my own person, which, in truth, I hardly cared to
make known. I had only to say a word, and in a quarter of an hour seven
Mauprats would have been in the saddle, delighted at the opportunity of
making an example of a man who paid them no dues. Such a man would have
seemed to them good for nothing but hanging as a warning to others.

But even if things had not been likely to reach this pitch, I somehow
felt an unconquerable aversion to asking eight men to avenge me on a
single one. Just as I was about to ask them (for, in my anger, I had
firmly resolved to do so), I was held back by some instinct for fair
dealing to which I had hitherto been a stranger, and whose presence in
myself I could hardly explain. Perhaps, too, the words of Patience had,
unknown to myself, aroused in me a healthy sense of shame. Perhaps his
righteous maledictions on the nobles had given me glimpses of the idea
of justice. Perhaps, in short, what I had hitherto despised in myself
as impulses of weakness and compassion, henceforth began dimly to take a
more solemn and less contemptible shape.

Be that as it may, I kept silent. I contented myself with thrashing
Sylvain as a punishment for having deserted me, and to impress upon him
that he was not to breathe a word about my unfortunate adventure. The
bitterness of the recollection was intensified by an incident which
happened toward the end of autumn when I was out with him beating the
woods for game. The poor boy was genuinely attached to me; for, my
brutality notwithstanding, he always used to be at my heels the instant
I was outside the castle. When any of his companions spoke ill of me, he
would take up my cause, and declare that I was merely somewhat hasty
and not really bad at heart. Ah, it is the gentle, resigned souls of the
humble that keep up the pride and roughness of the great. Well, we were
trying to trap larks when my sabot-shot page, who always hunted about
ahead of me, came back, saying in his rude dialect:

"I can see the wolf-driver with the mole-catcher."

This announcement sent a shudder through all my limbs. However, the
longing for revenge produced a reaction, and I marched straight on
to meet the sorcerer. Perhaps, too, I felt somewhat reassured by the
presence of his companion, who was a frequenter of Roche-Mauprat, and
would be likely to show me respect and afford me assistance.

Marcasse, the mole-catcher, as he was called, professed to rid the
dwellings and fields of the district of polecats, weasels, rats and
other vermin. Nor did he confine his good offices to Berry; every year
he went the round of La Marche, Nivernais, Limousin, and Saintonge,
visiting, alone and on foot, all the places that had the good sense to
appreciate his talents. He was well received everywhere, in the castle
no less than in the cottage; for his was a trade that had been carried
on successfully and honestly in his family for generations (indeed, his
descendants still carry it on). Thus he had work and a home awaiting him
for every day in the year. As regular in his round as the earth in her
rotation, he would reappear on a given day at the very place where he
had appeared the year before, and always with the same dog and with the
same long sword.

This personage was as curious as the sorcerer Patience; perhaps more
comic in his way than the sorcerer. He was a bilious, melancholy man,
tall, lean, angular, full of languor, dignity, and deliberation in
speech and action. So little did he like talking that he answered all
questions in monosyllables; and yet he never failed to obey the laws of
the most scrupulous politeness, and rarely said a word without raising
his hand to the corner of his hat as a sign of respect and civility.
Was he thus by nature, or, in his itinerant trade, had this wise
reserve arisen from a fear of alienating some of his numerous clients
by incautious chatter? No one knew. In all houses he was allowed a free
hand; during the day he had the key of every granary; in the evening,
a place at the fireside of every kitchen. He knew everything that
happened; for his dreamy, absorbed air led people to talk freely in his
presence; yet he had never been known to inform any household of the
doings of another.

If you wish to know how I had become struck by this strange character,
I may tell you that I had been a witness of my uncle's and grandfather's
efforts to make him talk. They hoped to draw from him some information
about the chateau of Saint-Severe, the home of a man they hated and
envied, M. Hubert de Mauprat. Although Don Marcasse (they called him Don
because he seemed to have the bearing and pride of a ruined hidalgo),
although Don Marcasse, I say, had shown himself as incompressible here
as elsewhere, the Coupe-Jarret Mauprats never failed to squeeze him a
little more in the hope of extracting some details about the Casse-Tete
Mauprats.

Nobody, then, could discover Marcasse's opinions about anything; it
would have been simplest to suppose that he did not take the trouble
to have any. Yet the attraction which Patience seemed to feel towards
him--so great that he would accompany him on his travels for several
weeks altogether--led one to believe that there was some witchery in the
man's mysterious air, and that it was not solely the length of his sword
and the skill of his dog which played such wonderful havoc with the
moles and weasels. There were whispered rumours of the enchanted herbs
that he employed to lure these suspicious animals from their holes into
his nets. However, as people found themselves better off for his magic,
no one dreamt of denouncing it as criminal.

I do not know if you have ever seen one of the rat-hunts. It is a
curious sight, especially in a fodder-loft. The man and dog climbing up
ladders and running along beams with marvellous assurance and agility,
the dog sniffing every hole in the wall, playing the cat, crouching down
and lying in wait until the game comes out for his master's rapier;
the man thrusting through bundles of straw and putting the enemy to the
sword--all this, when arranged and carried out with gravity and dignity
by Don Marcasse, was, I assure you, a most singular and interesting
performance.

When I saw this trusty fellow I felt equal to braving the sorcerer, and
advanced boldly. Sylvain stared at me in admiration, and I noticed that
Patience himself was not prepared for such audacity. I pretended to go
up to Marcasse and speak to him, as though quite unconcerned about
the presence of my enemy. Seeing this he gently thrust aside the
mole-catcher, and, laying his heavy hand on my head, said very quietly:

"You have grown of late, my fine gentleman!"

The blood rushed to my face, and, drawing back scornfully, I answered:

"Take care what you are doing, clodhopper; you should remember that if
you still have your two ears, it is to my kindness that you owe them."

"My two ears!" said Patience, with a bitter laugh.

Then making an allusion to the nickname of my family, he added:

"Perhaps you mean my two hamstrings? Patience, patience! The time,
maybe, is not far distant when clodhoppers will rid the nobles of
neither ears nor hamstrings, but of their heads and their purses."

"Silence, Master Patience!" said the mole-catcher solemnly; "these are
not the words of a philosopher."

"You are quite right, quite right," replied the sorcerer; "and in truth,
I don't know why I allow myself to argue with this lad. He might have
had me made into pap by his uncles. I whipped him in the summer for
playing me a stupid trick; and I don't know what happened to the family,
but the Mauprats lost a fine chance of injuring a neighbour."

"Learn, peasant," I said, "that a nobleman always takes vengeance nobly.
I did not want my wrongs avenged by people more powerful than yourself;
but wait a couple of years; I promise I will hang you with my own hand
on a certain tree that I shall easily recognise, not very far from the
door of Gazeau Tower. If I don't I will renounce my birthright; if I
spare you I will take the title of wolf-driver."

Patience smiled; then, suddenly becoming serious, he fixed on me that
searching look which rendered his physiognomy so striking. Then turning
to the weasel-hunter: