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.