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 savagery that surrounded me was the ill-usage I received myself.  I grew up without conceiving any liking for vice, but a tendency to hatred was fostered.  Of virtue or simple human affection I knew nothing, and a blind and brutal anger was nourished in my breast.

As the years went by Roche-Mauprat became more and more isolated.  People left the neighbourhood to escape our violent depredations, and in consequence we had to go farther afield for plunder.  I joined in the robberies as a soldier serves in a campaign, but on more than one occasion I helped some unfortunate man who had been knocked down to get up and escape.

My grandfather died when I was fifteen.  A year later and so threatened were we by crown officers, private creditors and infuriated peasants, that it was a question of either fleeing the country or bracing ourselves for a decisive struggle, and if needs be finding a grave under the ruins of the castle.

II.—­Meet my Cousin Edmee

One night, when wind and rain beat fiercely against the old walls of the castle and I sat at supper with my uncles, a horn was heard at the portcullis.  I had been drinking heavily, and boasting that I would make a conquest of the first woman brought to Roche-Mauprat—­for I had been rallied on my modesty—­when a second blast of the horn announced that it was my Uncle Lawrence bringing in a prize.

“If it is a woman,” cried my Uncle Antony, as he went out to the portcullis, “I swear by the soul of my father that she shall be yours, and we’ll see if your courage is equal to your conceit.”