MAUPRAT

by George Sand


Translated by Stanley Young



CONTENTS

George Sand Pearl Mary-Teresa Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes)

Life of George Sand Edmund Gosse

The Author's Preface

Mauprat




GEORGE SAND

Napoleon in exile declared that were he again on the throne he should
make a point of spending two hours a day in conversation with women,
from whom there was much to be learnt. He had, no doubt, several types
of women in mind, but it is more than probable that the banishment of
Madame de Stael rose before him as one of the mistakes in his career. It
was not that he showed lack of judgment merely by the persecution of a
rare talent, but by failing to see that the rare talent was pointing out
truths very valuable to his own safety. This is what happened in France
when George Sand--the greatest woman writer the world has known, or is
ever likely to know--was attacked by the orthodox critics of her time.
They feared her warnings; they detested her sincerity--a sincerity
displayed as much in her life as in her works (the hypocrite's Paradise
was precisely her idea of Hell); they resented bitterly an independence
of spirit which in a man would have been in the highest degree
distinguished, which remained, under every test, untamable. With a kind
of _bonhomie_ which one can only compare with Fielding's, with a passion
as great as Montaigne's for acknowledging the truths of experience,
with an absence of self-consciousness truly amazing in the artistic
temperament of either sex, she wrote exactly as she thought, saw and
felt. Humour was not her strong point. She had an exultant joy in
living, but laughter, whether genial or sardonic, is not in her work.
Irony she seldom, if ever, employed; satire she never attempted. It was
on the maternal, the sympathetic side that her femininity, and therefore
her creative genius, was most strongly developed. She was masculine only
in the deliberate libertinism of certain episodes in her own life. This
was a characteristic--one on no account to be overlooked or denied or
disguised, but it was not her character. The character was womanly,
tender, exquisitely patient and good-natured. She would take cross
humanity in her arms, and carry it out into the sunshine of the fields;
she would show it flowers and birds, sing songs to it, tell it stories,
recall its original beauty. Even in her moods of depression and revolt,
one recognises the fatigue of the strong. It is never for a moment the
lassitude of the feeble, the weary spite of a sick and ill-used soul. As
she was free from personal vanity, she was also free from hysteria. On
marriage--the one subject which drove her to a certain though always
disciplined violence--she clearly felt more for others than they
felt for themselves; and in observing certain households and life
partnerships, she may have been afflicted with a dismay which the
unreflecting sufferers did not share. No writer who was carried away
by egoistic anger or disappointment could have told these stories of
unhappiness, infidelity, and luckless love with such dispassionate
lucidity.

With the artist's dislike of all that is positive and arbitrary, she
was, nevertheless, subject rather to her intellect than her emotions.
An insult to her intelligence was the one thing she found it hard
to pardon, and she allowed no external interference to disturb her
relations with her own reasoning faculty. She followed caprices, no
doubt, but she was never under any apprehension with regard to their
true nature, displaying in this respect a detachment which is usually
considered exclusively virile. _Elle et Lui_, which, perhaps because
it is short and associated with actual facts, is the most frequently
discussed in general conversation on her work, remains probably the
sanest account of a sentimental experiment which was ever written. How
far it may have seemed accurate to De Musset is not to the point.
Her version of her grievance is at least convincing. Without fear and
without hope, she makes her statement, and it stands, therefore, unique
of its kind among indictments. It has been said that her fault was an
excess of emotionalism; that is to say, she attached too much importance
to mere feeling and described it, in French of marvellous ease and
beauty, with a good deal of something else which one can almost condemn
as the high-flown. Not that the high-flown is of necessity unnatural,
but it is misleading; it places the passing mood, the lyrical note,
dependent on so many accidents, above the essential temperament and the
dominant chord which depend on life only. Where she falls short of the
very greatest masters is in this all but deliberate confusion of things
which must change or can be changed with things which are unchangeable,
incurable, and permanent. Shakespeare, it is true, makes all his
villains talk poetry, but it is the poetry which a villain, were he a
poet, would inevitably write. George Sand glorifies every mind with her
own peculiar fire and tears. The fire is, fortunately, so much stronger
than the tears that her passion never degenerates into the maudlin. All
the same, she makes too universal a use of her own strongest gifts,
and this is why she cannot be said to excel as a portrait painter. One
merit, however, is certain: if her earliest writings were dangerous,
it was because of her wonderful power of idealization, not because she
filled her pages with the revolting and epicene sensuality of the new
Italian, French, and English schools. Intellectual viciousness was
not her failing, and she never made the modern mistake of confusing
indecency with vigour. She loved nature, air, and light too well and
too truly to go very far wrong in her imaginations. It may indeed be
impossible for many of us to accept all her social and political views;
they have no bearing, fortunately, on the quality of her literary art;
they have to be considered under a different aspect. In politics, her
judgment, as displayed in the letters to Mazzini, was profound. Her
correspondence with Flaubert shows us a capacity for stanch, unblemished
friendship unequalled, probably, in the biographies, whether published
or unpublished, of the remarkable.

With regard to her impiety--for such it should be called--it did not
arise from arrogance, nor was it based in any way upon the higher
learning of her period. Simply she did not possess the religious
instinct. She understood it sympathetically--in _Spiridion_, for
instance, she describes an ascetic nature as it has never been done in
any other work of fiction. Newman himself has not written passages of
deeper or purer mysticism, of more sincere spirituality. Balzac, in
_Seraphita_, attempted something of the kind, but the result was never
more than a _tour de force_. He could invent, he could describe, but
George Sand felt; and as she felt, she composed, living with and
loving with an understanding love all her creations. But it has to be
remembered always that she repudiated all religious restraint, that she
believed in the human heart, that she acknowledged no higher law than
its own impulses, that she saw love where others see only a cruel
struggle for existence, that she found beauty where ordinary visions can
detect little besides a selfishness worse than brutal and a squalor more
pitiful than death. Everywhere she insists upon the purifying influence
of affection, no matter how degraded in its circumstances or how illegal
in its manifestation. No writer--not excepting the Brontes--has shown
a deeper sympathy with uncommon temperaments, misunderstood aims,
consciences with flickering lights, the discontented, the abnormal, or
the unhappy. The great modern specialist for nervous diseases has not
improved on her analysis of the neuropathic and hysterical. There is
scarcely a novel of hers in which some character does not appear who
is, in the usual phrase, out of the common run. Yet, with this perfect
understanding of the exceptional case, she never permits any science of
cause and effect to obscure the rules and principles which in the main
control life for the majority. It was, no doubt, this balance which made
her a popular writer, even while she never ceased to keep in touch with
the most acute minds of France.

She possessed, in addition to creative genius of an order especially
individual and charming, a capacity for the invention of ideas. There
are in many of her chapters more ideas, more suggestions than one
would find in a whole volume of Flaubert. It is not possible that these
surprising, admirable, and usually sound thoughts were the result of
long hours of reflection. They belonged to her nature and a quality of
judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a
moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant
as common sense.

Her fairness to women was not the least astounding of her gifts. She is
kind to the beautiful, the yielding, above all to the very young, and in
none of her stories has she introduced any violently disagreeable female
characters. Her villains are mostly men, and even these she invests
with a picturesque fatality which drives them to errors, crimes,
and scoundrelism with a certain plaintive, if relentless, grace. The
inconstant lover is invariably pursued by the furies of remorse; the
brutal has always some mitigating influence in his career; the libertine
retains through many vicissitudes a seraphic love for some faithful
Solveig.

Humanity meant far more to her than art: she began her literary career
by describing facts as she knew them: critics drove her to examine their
causes, and so she gradually changed from the chronicler with strong
sympathies to the interpreter with a reasoned philosophy. She discovered
that a great deal of the suffering in this world is due not so much to
original sin, but to a kind of original stupidity, an unimaginative,
stubborn stupidity. People were dishonest because they believed,
wrongly, that dishonesty was somehow successful. They were cruel because
they supposed that repulsive exhibitions of power inspired a prolonged
fear. They were treacherous because they had never been taught the
greater strength of candour. George Sand tried to point out the
advantage of plain dealing, and the natural goodness of mankind
when uncorrupted by a false education. She loved the wayward and
the desolate: pretentiousness in any disguise was the one thing she
suspected and could not tolerate. It may be questioned whether she ever
deceived herself; but it must be said, that on the whole she flattered
weakness--and excused, by enchanting eloquence, much which cannot always
be justified merely on the ground that it is explicable. But to explain
was something--all but everything at the time of her appearance in
literature. Every novel she wrote made for charity--for a better
acquaintance with our neighbour's woes and our own egoism. Such an
attitude of mind is only possible to an absolutely frank, even Arcadian,
nature. She did what she wished to do: she said what she had to say, not
because she wanted to provoke excitement or astonish the multitude, but
because she had succeeded eminently in leading her own life according to
her own lights. The terror of appearing inconsistent excited her scorn.
Appearances never troubled that unashamed soul. This is the magic, the
peculiar fascination of her books. We find ourselves in the presence
of a freshness, a primeval vigour which produces actually the effect of
seeing new scenes, of facing a fresh climate. Her love of the soil,
of flowers, and the sky, for whatever was young and unspoilt, seems
to animate every page--even in her passages of rhetorical sentiment we
never suspect the burning pastille, the gauze tea-gown, or the depressed
pink light. Rhetoric it may be, but it is the rhetoric of the sea and
the wheat field. It can be spoken in the open air and read by the light
of day.

George Sand never confined herself to any especial manner in her
literary work. Her spontaneity of feeling and the actual fecundity, as
it were, of her imaginative gift, could not be restrained, concentrated,
and formally arranged as it was in the case of the two first masters of
modern French novel-writing. Her work in this respect may be compared to
a gold mine, while theirs is rather the goldsmith's craft. It must not
be supposed, however, that she was a writer without very strong views
with regard to the construction of a plot and the development of
character. Her literary essays and reviews show a knowledge of technique
which could be accepted at any time as a text-book for the critics and
the criticised. She knew exactly how artistic effects were obtained, how
and why certain things were done, why realism, so-called, could never be
anything but caricature, and why over-elaboration of small matters can
never be otherwise than disproportionate. Nothing could be more just
than her saying about Balzac that he was such a logician that he
invented things more truthful than the truth itself. No one knew better
than she that the truth, as it is commonly understood, does not exist;
that it cannot be logical because of its mystery; and that it is
the knowledge of its contradictions which shows the real expert in
psychology.

Three of her stories--_La Petite Fadette_, _La Mare au Diable_, and
_Les Maitres Mosaistes_--are as neat in their workmanship as a Dutch
painting. Her brilliant powers of analysis, the intellectual atmosphere
with which she surrounds the more complex characters in her longer
romances, are entirely put aside, and we are given instead a series
of pictures and dialogues in what has been called the purely objective
style; so pure in its objectivity and detachment that it would be hard
for any one to decide from internal evidence that they were in reality
her own composition.

To those who seek for proportion and form there is, without doubt, much
that is unsymmetrical in her designs. Interesting she always is, but to
the trained eye scenes of minor importance are, strictly speaking, too
long: descriptions in musical language sometimes distract the reader
from the progress of the story. But this arose from her own joy in
writing: much as she valued proportion, she liked expressing her mind
better, not out of conceit or self-importance, but as the birds, whom
she loved so well, sing.

Good nature is what we need above all in reading George Sand. It is
there--infectious enough in her own pages, and with it the courage which
can come only from a heart at peace with itself. This is why neither
fashion nor new nor old criticism can affect the title of George Sand
among the greatest influences of the last century and the present one.
Much that she has said still seems untried and unexpected. Writers so
opposite as Ibsen and Anatole France have expanded her themes. She is
quoted unconsciously to-day by hundreds who are ignorant of their real
source of inspiration. No woman ever wrote with such force before, and
no woman since has even approached her supreme accomplishments.

PEARL MARY-TERESA CRAIGIE.




LIFE OF GEORGE SAND

George Sand, in whose life nothing was commonplace, was born in Paris,
"in the midst of roses, to the sound of music," at a dance which her
mother had somewhat rashly attended, on the 5th of July, 1804. Her
maiden name was Armentine Lucile Aurore Dupin, and her ancestry was of
a romantic character. She was, in fact, of royal blood, being the
great-grand-daughter of the Marshal Maurice du Saxe and a Mlle.
Verriere; her grandfather was M. Dupin de Francueil, the charming friend
of Rousseau and Mme. d'Epinay; her father, Maurice Dupin, was a gay and
brilliant soldier, who married the pretty daughter of a bird-fancier,
and died early. She was a child of the people on her mother's side, an
aristocrat on her father's. In 1807 she was taken by her father, who was
on Murat's staff, into Spain, from which she returned to the house of
her grandmother, at Nohant in Berry. This old lady adopted Aurore at the
death of her father, in 1808. Of her childhood George Sand has given a
most picturesque account in her "Histoire de ma Vie." In 1817 the girl
was sent to the Convent of the English Augustinians in Paris, where she
passed through a state of religious mysticism. She returned to Nohant
in 1820, and soon threw off her pietism in the outdoor exercises of a
wholesome country life. Within a few months, Mme. Dupin de Francueil
died at a great age, and Aurore was tempted to return to Paris. Her
relatives, however, were anxious that she should not do this, and
they introduced to her the natural son of a retired colonel, the Baron
Dudevant, whom, in September, 1822, she married. She brought him to live
with her at Nohant, and she bore him two sons, Maurice and Solange,
and a daughter. She quickly perceived, as her own intellectual nature
developed, that her boorish husband was unsuited to her, but their early
years of married life were not absolutely intolerable. In 1831, however,
she could endure him no longer, and an amicable separation was agreed
upon. She left M. Dudevant at Nohant, resigning her fortune, and
proceeded to Paris, where she was hard pressed to find a living. She
endeavoured, without success, to paint the lids of cigar-boxes, and in
final desperation, under the influence of Jules Sandeau--who became her
lover, and who invented the pseudonym of George Sand for her--she turned
her attention to literature. Her earliest work was to help Sandeau in
the composition of his novel, "Rose et Blanche" Her first independent
novel, "Indiana," appeared at the close of 1831, and her second,
"Valentine," two months later. These books produced a great and
immediate sensation, and she felt that she had found her vocation.
In 1833 she produced "Lebia"; in 1834 the "Lettres d'un Voyageur" and
"Jacques"; in 1835 "Andre" and "Leone Leoni." After this her works
become too numerous and were produced with too monotonous a regularity
to be chronicled here. But it should be said that "Mauprat" was written
in 1836 at Nohant, while she was pleading for a legal separation from
her husband, which was given her by the tribunal of Bourges, with full
authority over the education of her children. These early novels all
reflect in measure the personal sorrows of the author, although
George Sand never ceased to protest against too strict a biographical
interpretation of their incidents. "Spiridion" (1839), composed under
the influence of Lamennais, deals with questions of free thought in
religion. But the novels of the first period of her literary activity,
which came to a close in 1840, are mainly occupied with a lyrical
individualism, and are inspired by the wrongs and disillusions of the
author's personal adventures.

The years 1833 and 1834 were marked by her too-celebrated relations with
Alfred de Musset, with whom she lived in Paris and at Venice, and with
whom she quarrelled at last in circumstances deplorably infelicitous.
Neither of these great creatures had the reticence to exclude the world
from a narrative of their misfortunes and adventures; of the two it was
fairly certainly the woman who came the less injured out of the furnace.
In "Elle et Lui" (1859) she gave long afterward her version of the
unhappy and undignified story. Her stay in Venice appears to have
impressed her genius more deeply than any other section of her numerous
foreign sojournings.

The writings of George Sand's second period, which extended from 1840
to 1848, are of a more general character, and are tinged with a generous
but not very enlightened ardour for social emancipation. Of these
novels, the earliest is "Le Compagnon du Tour de France" (1840), which
is scarcely a masterpiece. In the pursuit of foreign modes of thought,
and impelled by experiences of travel, George Sand rose to far greater
heights in "Jeanne" (1842), in "Consuelo" (1842-'43), and in "La
Comtesse de Rudolstade" (1844). All these books were composed in her
retirement at Nohant, where she definitely settled in 1839, after
having travelled for several months in Switzerland with Liszt and Mme.
d'Agoult, and having lived in the island of Majorca for some time
with the dying Chopin, an episode which is enshrined in her "Lucrezia
Floriani" (1847).

The Revolution of 1848 appeared to George Sand a realization of her
Utopian dreams, and plunged her thoughts into a painful disorder. She
soon, however, became dissatisfied with the result of her republican
theories, and she turned to two new sources of success, the country
story and the stage. Her delicious romance of "Francois le Champi"
(1850) attracted a new and enthusiastic audience to her, and her entire
emancipation from "problems" was marked in the pages of "La Petite
Fadette" and of "La Mare au Diable." To the same period belong "Les
Visions de la Nuit des les Campagnes," "Les Maitres Sonneurs," and
"Cosina." From 1850 to 1864 she gave a great deal of attention to
the theatre, and of her numerous pieces several enjoyed a wide and
considerable success, although it cannot be said that any of her plays
have possessed the vitality of her best novels. The most solid of the
former was her dramatization of her story, "Le Marquis de Villemer"
(1864), which was one of the latest, and next to it "Le Mariage de
Victorine" (1851), which was one of the earliest. Her successes on the
stage, such as they are, appear mainly due to collaboration with others.

In her latest period, from 1860 to 1876, George Sand returned to
her first lyrical manner, although with more reticence and a wider
experience of life. Of the very abundant fruitage of these last years,
not many rank with the masterpieces of her earlier periods, although
such novels as "Tamaris" (1862), "La Confession d'une Jeune Fille"
(1865), and "Cadio," seemed to her admirers to show no decline of force
or fire. Still finer, perhaps, were "Le Marquis de Villemer" (1861) and
"Jean de la Roche" (1860). Her latest production, which appeared after
her death, was the "Contes d'une Grand'mere," a collection full of
humanity and beauty. George Sand died at Nohant on the 8th of June,
1876. She had great qualities of soul, and in spite of the naive
irregularities of her conduct in early middle life, she cannot
be regarded otherwise than as an excellent woman. She was brave,
courageous, heroically industrious, a loyal friend, a tender and wise
mother. Her principle fault has been wittily defined by Mr. Henry James,
who has remarked that in affairs of the heart George Sand never "behaved
like a gentleman."

E. G.




PREFACE

When I wrote my novel _Mauprat_ at Nohant--in 1846, if I remember
rightly--I had just been suing for a separation. Hitherto I had written
much against the abuses of marriage, and perhaps, though insufficiently
explaining my views, had induced a belief that I failed to appreciate
its essence; but it was at this time that marriage itself stood before
me in all the moral beauty of its principle.

Misfortune is not without its uses to the thoughtful mind. The more
clearly I had realized the pain and pity of having to break a sacred
bond, the more profoundly I felt that where marriage is wanting, is
in certain elements of happiness and justice of too lofty a nature to
appeal to our actual society. Nay, more; society strives to take from
the sanctity of the institution by treating it as a contract of material
interests, attacking it on all sides at once, by the spirit of its
manners, by its prejudices, by its hypocritical incredulity.

While writing a novel as an occupation and distraction for my mind, I
conceived the idea of portraying an exclusive and undying love, before,
during, and after marriage. Thus I drew the hero of my book proclaiming,
at the age of eighty, his fidelity to the one woman he had ever loved.

The ideal of love is assuredly eternal fidelity. Moral and religious
laws have aimed at consecrating this ideal. Material facts obscure it.
Civil laws are so framed as to make it impossible or illusory. Here,
however, is not the place to prove this. Nor has _Mauprat_ been burdened
with a proof of the theory; only, the sentiment by which I was specially
penetrated at the time of writing it is embodied in the words of
_Mauprat_ towards the end of the book: "She was the only woman I loved
in all my life; none other ever won a glance from me, or knew the
pressure of my hand."

GEORGE SAND.

June 5, 1857.



TO

GUSTAVE PAPET

Though fashion may proscribe the patriarchal fashion of dedications, I
would ask you, brother and friend, to accept this of a tale which is not
new to you. I have drawn my materials in part from the cottages of our
Noire valley. May we live and die there, repeating every evening our
beloved invocation:

SANCTA SIMPLICITAS!

GEORGE SAND.





MAUPRAT


On the borders of La Marche and Berry, in the district known as
Varenne, which is naught but a vast moor studded with forests of oak
and chestnut, and in the most thickly wooded and wildest part of the
country, may be found, crouching within a ravine, a little ruined
chateau. The dilapidated turrets would not catch your eye until you were
about a hundred yards from the principal portcullis. The venerable trees
around and the scattered rocks above, bury it in everlasting obscurity;
and you would experience the greatest difficulty, even in broad
daylight, in crossing the deserted path leading to it, without stumbling
against the gnarled trunks and rubbish that bar every step. The name
given to this dark ravine and gloomy castle is Roche-Mauprat.

It was not so long ago that the last of the Mauprats, the heir to this
property, had the roofing taken away and all the woodwork sold. Then,
as if to give a kick to the memory of his ancestors, he ordered the
entrance gate to be thrown down, the north tower to be gutted, and a
breach to be made in the surrounding wall. This done, he departed with
his workmen, shaking the dust from off his feet, and abandoning his
domain to foxes, and cormorants, and vipers. Since then, whenever the
wood-cutters and charcoal-burners from the huts in the neighbourhood
pass along the top of the Roche-Mauprat ravine, if it is in daytime they
whistle with a defiant air or hurl a hearty curse at the ruins; but
when day falls and the goat-sucker begins to screech from the top of
the loopholes, wood-cutter and charcoal-burner pass by silently, with
quickened step, and cross themselves from time to time to ward off the
evil spirits that hold sway among the ruins.

For myself, I own that I have never skirted the ravine at night without
feeling a certain uneasiness; and I would not like to swear that on some
stormy nights I have not given my horse a touch of the spur, in order
to escape the more quickly from the disagreeable impression this
neighbourhood made on me.

The reason is that in childhood I classed the name of Mauprat with those
of Cartouche and Bluebeard; and in the course of horrible dreams I often
used to mix up the ancient legends of the Ogre and the Bogey with the
quite recent events which in our province had given such a sinister
lustre to this Mauprat family.

Frequently, out shooting, when my companions and I have left our posts
to go and warm ourselves at the charcoal fires which the workmen keep
up all night, I have heard this name dying away on their lips at our
approach. But when they had recognised us and thoroughly satisfied
themselves that the ghosts of none of these robbers were hiding in our
midst, they would tell us in a whisper such stories as might make one's
hair stand on end, stories which I shall take good care not to pass on
to you, grieved as I am that they should ever have darkened and pained
my own memory.

Not that the story I am about to tell is altogether pleasant and
cheerful. On the contrary, I must ask your pardon for unfolding so
sombre a tale. Yet, in the impression which it has made on myself there
is something so consoling and, if I may venture the phrase, so healthful
to the soul, that you will excuse me, I hope, for the sake of the
result. Besides this is a story which has just been told to me. And now
you ask me for one. The opportunity is too good to be missed for one of
my laziness or lack of invention.

It was only last week that I met Bernard Mauprat, the last of the
line, the man who, having long before severed himself from his infamous
connections, determined to demolish his manor as a sign of the horror
aroused in him by the recollections of childhood. This Bernard is one of
the most respected men in the province. He lives in a pretty house near
Chateauroux, in a flat country. Finding myself in the neighbourhood,
with a friend of mine who knows him, I expressed a wish to be
introduced; and my friend, promising me a hearty welcome, took me to his
house then and there.

I already knew in outline the remarkable history of this old man; but I
had always felt a keen desire to fill in the details, and above all to
receive them from himself. For me, the strange destiny of the man was
a philosophical problem to be solved. I therefore noticed his features,
his manners, and his home with peculiar interest.

Bernard Mauprat must be fully eighty-four, though his robust health, his
upright figure, his firm step, and the absence of any infirmity might
indicate some fifteen or twenty years less. His face would have appeared
to me extremely handsome, had not a certain harshness of expression
brought before my eyes, in spite of myself, the shades of his fathers.
I very much fear that, externally at all events, he must resemble them.
This he alone could have told us; for neither my friend nor myself had
known any other Mauprat. Naturally, however, we were very careful not to
inquire.

It struck us that his servants waited on him with a promptitude and
punctuality quite marvellous in Berrichon domestics. Nevertheless, at
the least semblance of delay he raised his voice, knitted his eyebrows
(which still showed very black under his white hair), and muttered a few
expressions of impatience which lent wings even to the slowest. At first
I was somewhat shocked at this habit; it appeared to savour rather too
strongly of the Mauprats. But the kindly and almost paternal manner in
which he spoke to them a moment later, and their zeal, which seemed so
distinct from fear, soon reconciled me to him. Towards us, moreover, he
showed an exquisite politeness, and expressed himself in the choicest
terms. Unfortunately, at the end of dinner, a door which had been left
open and through which a cold air found its way to his venerable skull,
drew from him such a frightful oath that my friend and I exchanged a
look of surprise. He noticed it.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said. "I am afraid you find me an odd
mixture. Ah, you see but a short distance. I am an old branch, happily
torn from a vile trunk and transplanted into good soil, but still
knotted and rough like the wild holly of the original stock. I have,
believe me, had no little trouble in reaching the state of comparative
gentleness and calm in which you behold me. Alas! if I dared, I should
reproach Providence with a great injustice--that of having allotted me
a life as short as other men's. When one has to struggle for forty or
fifty years to transform one's self from a wolf into a man, one ought to
live a hundred years longer to enjoy one's victory. 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 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 distinctive title of Hamstringer. [I
hazard "Headbreaker" and "Hamstringer" as poor equivalents for the
"Casse-Tete" and "Coupe-Jarret" of the French.--TR.] Of the sons of
Tristan, my father, the eldest, was the only one who married. I was his
only child. Here it is necessary to mention a fact of which I was long
ignorant. Hubert de Mauprat, on hearing of my birth, begged me of my
parents, undertaking to make me his heir if he were allowed absolute
control over my education. At a shooting-party about this time my
father was killed by an accidental shot, and my grandfather refused the
chevalier's offer, declaring that his children were the sole legitimate
heirs of the younger branch, and that consequently he would resist with
all his might any substitution in my favour. It was then that Hubert's
daughter was born. But when, seven years later, his wife died leaving
him this one child, the desire, so strong in the nobles of that time, to
perpetuate their name, urged him to renew his request to my mother. What
her answer was I do not know; she fell ill and died. The country doctors
again brought in a verdict of iliac passion. My grandfather had spent
the last two days she passed in this world with her.

Pour me out a glass of Spanish wine; for I feel a cold shiver running
through my body. It is nothing serious--merely the effect that these
early recollections have on me when I begin to narrate them. It will
soon pass off.

He swallowed a large glass of wine, and we did the same; for a sensation
of cold came upon us too as we gazed at his stern face and listened to
his brief, abrupt sentences. He continued:

Thus at the age of seven I found myself an orphan. My grandfather
searched my mother's house and seized all the money and valuables he
could carry away. Then, leaving the rest, and declaring he would have
nothing to do with lawyers, he did not even wait for the funeral, but
took me by the collar and flung me on to the crupper of his horse,
saying: "Now, my young ward, come home with me; and try to stop that
crying soon, for I haven't much patience with brats." In fact, after
a few seconds he gave me such hard cuts with his whip that I stopped
crying, and, withdrawing myself like a tortoise into my shell, completed
the journey without daring to breathe.

He was a tall old man, bony and cross-eyed. I fancy I see him now as he
was then. The impression that evening made on me can never be effaced.
It was a sudden realization of all the horrors which my mother had
foreshadowed when speaking of her execrable father-in-law and his
brigands of sons. The moon, I remember, was shining here and there
through the dense foliage of the forest. My grandfather's horse was
lean, hardy, and bad-tempered like himself. It kicked at every cut of
the whip, and its master gave it plenty. Swift as an arrow it jumped the
ravines and little torrents which everywhere intersect Varenne in all
directions. At each jump I lost my balance, and clung in terror to the
saddle or my grandfather's coat. As for him, he was so little concerned
about me that, had I fallen, I doubt whether he would have taken the
trouble to pick me up. Sometimes, noticing my terror, he would jeer at
me, and, to make me still more afraid, set his horse plunging again.
Twenty times, in a frenzy of despair, I was on the point of throwing
myself off; but the instinctive love of life prevented me from giving
way to the impulse. At last, about midnight, we suddenly stopped before
a small pointed gate, and the drawbridge was soon lifted behind us. My
grandfather took me, bathed in a cold sweat as I was, and threw me
over to a great fellow, lame and horribly ugly, who carried me into the
house. This was my Uncle John, and I was at Roche-Mauprat.

At that time my grandfather, along with his eight sons, formed the last
relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by
which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries.
Civilization, already advancing rapidly towards the great convulsion of
the Revolution, was gradually stamping out the systematic extortions
of these robbers. The light of education, a species of good taste
reflected, however dimly, from a polished court, and perhaps a
presentiment of the impending terrible awakening of the people, were
spreading through the castles and even through the half-rustic manors
of the lordlings. Ever in our midland provinces, the most backward by
reason of their situation, the sentiment of social equality was
already driving out the customs of a barbarous age. More than one vile
scapegrace had been forced to reform, in spite of his privileges; and
in certain places where the peasants, driven to desperation, had rid
themselves of their overlord, the law had not dreamt of interfering, nor
had the relatives dared to demand redress.

In spite of the prevailing tone of mind, my grandfather had long
maintained his position in the country without experiencing any
opposition. But, having had a large family, endowed like himself with a
goodly number of vices, he finally found himself pestered and besieged
by creditors who, instead of being frightened by his threats, as of old,
were themselves threatening to make him suffer. He was obliged to devise
some means of avoiding the bailiffs on the one hand, and, on the other,
the fights which were continually taking place. In these fights the
Mauprats no longer shone, despite their numbers, their complete union,
and their herculean strength; since the whole population of the district
sided with their opponents and took upon itself the duty of stoning
them. So, rallying his progeny around him, as the wild boar gathers
together its young after a hunt, Tristan withdrew into his castle and
ordered the drawbridge to be raised. Shut up with him were ten or twelve
peasants, his servants, all of them poachers or refugees, who like
himself had some interest in "retiring from the world" (his own
expression), and in finding a place of safety behind good stout walls.
An enormous pile of hunting weapons, duck-guns, carbines, blunderbusses,
spears, and cutlasses, were raised on the platform, and the porter
received orders never to let more than two persons at a time approach
within range of his gun.

From that day Mauprat and his sons broke with all civil laws as they had
already broken with all moral laws. They formed themselves into a band
of adventurers. While their well-beloved and trusty poachers supplied
the house with game, they levied illegal taxes on the small farms in the
neighbourhood. Now, without being cowards (and they are far from that),
the peasants of our province, as you know, are meek and timid, partly
from listlessness, partly from distrust of the law, which they have
never understood, and of which even to this day they have but a scanty
knowledge. No province of France has preserved more old traditions or
longer endured the abuses of feudalism. Nowhere else, perhaps, has the
title of the lord of the manor been handed down, as hitherto with us, to
the owners of certain estates; and nowhere is it so easy to frighten the
people with reports of some absurd and impossible political event. At
the time of which I speak the Mauprats, being the only powerful family
in a district remote from towns and cut off from communication with the
outside world, had little difficulty in persuading their vassals that
serfdom was about to be re-established, and that it would go hard with
all who resisted. The peasants hesitated, listened timorously to the few
among themselves who preached independence, then thought the matter over
and decided to submit. The Mauprats were clever enough not to demand
money of them, for money is what the peasant in such a district
obtains with the greatest difficulty, and parts from with the greatest
reluctance. "Money is dear," is one of his proverbs, because in his
eyes money stands for something different from manual labour. It means
traffic with men and things outside his world, an effort of foresight or
circumspection, a bargain, a sort of intellectual struggle, which lifts
him out of his ordinary heedless habits; it means, in a word, mental
labour, and this for him is the most painful and the most wearing.

The Mauprats, knowing how the ground lay, and having no particular need
of money any longer, since they had repudiated their debts, demanded
payments in kind only. They ruled that one man should contribute capons,
another calves, a third corn, a fourth fodder, and so on. They were
careful, too, to tax judiciously, to demand from each the commodity
he could provide with least inconvenience to himself. In return they
promised help and protection to all; and up to a certain point they kept
their word. They cleared the land of wolves and foxes, gave a welcome
and a hiding-place to all deserters, and helped to defraud the state by
intimidating the excise officers and tax-collectors.

They took advantage of their power to give the poor man a false notion
of his real interests, and to corrupt the simple folk by undermining all
sense of their dignity and natural liberty. They made the whole district
combine in a sort of secession from the law, and they so frightened
the functionaries appointed to enforce respect for it, that after a few
years it fell into a veritable desuetude. Thus it happened that, while
France at a short distance from this region was advancing with rapid
strides towards the enfranchisement of the poorer classes, Varenne was
executing a retrograde march and returning at full speed to the ancient
tyranny of the country squires. It was easy enough for the Mauprats to
pervert these poor folk; they feigned a friendly interest in them
to mark their difference from the other nobles in the province whose
manners still retained some of the haughtiness of their ancient power.
Above all, my grandfather lost 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 easy flow of
language, he had a veneer of education which helped his cunning. He made
a point of excessive politeness, and had great powers of persuasion,
even with the objects of his vengeance. He knew how to entice them to
his castle, where he would make them undergo frightful ill-treatment,
for which, however, having no witnesses, they were unable to obtain
redress by law. All his villainies bore the stamp of such consummate
skill that the country came to view them with a sort of awe akin to
respect. No one could ever catch him out of his den, though he issued
forth often enough, and apparently without taking many precautions. In
truth, he was a man with a genius for evil; and his sons, bound to him
by no ties of affection, of which, indeed, they were incapable, yet
acknowledged the sway of this superior evil genius, and gave him
a uniform and ready obedience, in which there was something almost
fanatic. He was their deliverer in all desperate cases; and when the
weariness of confinement under our chilly vaults began to fill them with
_ennui_, his mind, brutal even in jest, would cure them by arranging
for their pleasure shows worthy of a den of thieves. Sometimes poor
mendicant monks collecting alms would be terrified or tortured for their
benefit; their beards would be burned off, or they would be lowered into
a well and kept hanging between life and death until they had sung some
foul song or uttered some blasphemy. Everybody knows the story of the
notary who was allowed to enter in company with his four clerks, and
whom they received with all the assiduity of pompous hospitality. My
grandfather pretended to agree with a good grace to the execution of
their warrant, and politely helped them to make an inventory of his
furniture, of which the sale had been decreed. After this, when dinner
was served and the king's men had taken their places at table, he said
to the notary: