Above all, Monsieur de Beaurepaire possessed that treasure of treasures,
content. He hunted no heart-burns. Ambition did not tempt him; why
should he listen to long speeches, and court the unworthy, and descend
to intrigue, for so precarious and equivocal a prize as a place in the
Government, when he could be De Beaurepaire without trouble or loss of
self-respect? Social ambition could get little hold of him; let parvenus
give balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand lamps,
and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for fashionable
distinction; he had nothing to gain by such foolery, nothing to lose by
modest living; he was the twenty-ninth Baron of Beaurepaire. So wise,
so proud, so little vain, so strong in health and wealth and honor,
one would have said nothing less than an earthquake could shake
this gentleman and his house. Yet both were shaken, though rooted by
centuries to the soil; and by no vulgar earthquake.

For years France had bowed in silence beneath two galling burdens--a
selfish and corrupt monarchy, and a multitudinous, privileged, lazy, and
oppressive aristocracy, by whom the peasant was handled like a Russian
serf. [Said peasant is now the principal proprietor of the soil.]

The lower orders rose upon their oppressors, and soon showed themselves
far blacker specimens of the same breed. Law, religion, humanity, and
common sense, hid their faces; innocent blood flowed in a stream, and
terror reigned. To Monsieur de Beaurepaire these republicans--murderers
of women, children, and kings--seemed the most horrible monsters nature
had ever produced; he put on black, and retired from society; he felled
timber, and raised large sums of money upon his estate. And one day he
mounted his charger, and disappeared from the chateau.

Three months after this, a cavalier, dusty and pale, rode into the