Marquis de Laurebourg, an old lady, who was doubtless the Marchioness,
had said, "Poor boy! he was so early deprived of a mother's care!" What
did that mean unless it was a reflection upon the arbitrary behavior of
his father? Norbert saw that these people always had their children with
them, and the sight of this filled him with jealousy, and brought tears
of anguish to his eyes. Sometimes, as he trudged wearily behind his yoke
of oxen, goad in hand, he would see some of these young scions of the
aristocracy canter by on horseback, and the friendly wave of the hand
with which they greeted him almost appeared to his jaundiced mind a
premeditated insult. What could they find to do in Paris, to which they
all took wing at the first breath of winter? This was a question which
he found himself utterly unable to solve. To drink to intoxication
offered no charms to him, and yet this was the only pleasure which the
villagers seemed to enjoy. Those young men must have some higher class
of entertainment, but in what could it consist? Norbert could hardly
read a line without spelling every word; but these new thoughts running
through his mind caused him to study, so as to improve his education.
His father had often told him that he did not like lads who where always
poring over books; and so Norbert did not discontinue his studies, but
simply avoided bringing them under his father's notice. He knew that
there was a large collection of books in one of the upstairs rooms of
the Chateau. He managed to force the lock of the door, and he found some
thousands of volumes, of which at least two hundred were novels, which
had been the solace of his mother's unhappy life. With all the eagerness
of a man who is at the point of starvation and finds an unexpected
store of provisions, Norbert seized upon them. At first he had great
difficulty in dividing fact from fiction.

He arrived at two conclusions from perusing this heterogeneous mass of
literature--one was, that he was most unhappy; and the other was, that