still remembered. My father was his eldest son, and on his death, which
occurred at a shooting party, the only living member of the younger
branch, the chevalier, Hubert de Mauprat, a widower with an infant
daughter, begged that he might be allowed to adopt me, promising to make
me his heir. My grandfather refused the offer, and when I was seven
years old and my mother died--poisoned some said by my grandfather--I
was carried off by that terrible man to his house at Roche-Mauprat. I
only knew afterwards that my father was the only son of Tristan's who
had married and that consequently I was the heir to the property.

It was a terrible journey I made with my grandfather but more terrible
still was the life led at Roche-Mauprat by Tristan and his eight sons.
Beset by creditors, the Mauprats with a dozen peasants and poachers
defied the civil laws as they had already broken all moral laws. They
formed themselves into a body of adventurers, levying blackmail on the
small farms of the neighbourhood, intimidating the tax-collectors and at
times not hesitating from petty thefts at fairs. Masters and servants
were united in bonds of infamy. Debauchery, extortion, fraud, and
cruelty were the precept and example of my youth. All notions of justice
were scoffed at, and the civilisation, the light of education, and the
philosophy of social equality, then spreading in France and preparing
the way for the convulsion of the Revolution, found no entrance at
Roche-Mauprat.

The eight sons, the pride and strength of old Mauprat, all resembled him
in physical vigour, brutality of manners, and in a cunning ill-nature.
They gave themselves the airs of knights of the twelfth century. What
elsewhere was called assassination and robbery I was taught to call
battle and conquest. The frightful tortures heaped upon prisoners by my
uncles gave me a horrible uneasiness, but what kept me from admiring the