Consequently, Bertrand was incessantly on the watch to prevent Maximilien from seeing Etienne, whose existence was carefully concealed.  All the attendants of the castle cordially hated the Marquis de Saint-Sever (the name and title borne by the younger brother), and those who knew of the existence of the elder looked upon him as an avenger whom God was holding in reserve.

Etienne’s future was therefore doubtful; he might even be persecuted by his own brother!  The poor duchess had no relations to whom she could confide the life and interests of her cherished child.  Would he not blame her when in his violet robes he longed to be a father as she had been a mother?  These thoughts, and her melancholy life so full of secret sorrows were like a mortal illness kept at bay for a time by remedies.  Her heart needed the wisest management, and those about her were cruelly inexpert in gentleness.  What mother’s heart would not have been torn at the sight of her eldest son, a man of mind and soul in whom a noble genius made itself felt, deprived of his rights, while the younger, hard and brutal, without talent, even military talent, was chosen to wear the ducal coronet and perpetuate the family?  The house of Herouville was discarding its own glory.  Incapable of anger the gentle Jeanne de Saint-Savin could only bless and weep, but often she raised her eyes to heaven, asking it to account for this singular doom.  Those eyes filled with tears when she thought that at her death her cherished child would be wholly orphaned and left exposed to the brutalities of a brother without faith or conscience.

Such emotions repressed, a first love unforgotten, so many sorrows ignored and hidden within her,—­for she kept her keenest sufferings from her cherished child,—­her joys embittered, her griefs unrelieved, all these shocks had weakened the springs of life and were developing in her system a slow consumption which day by day was gathering greater force.  A last blow hastened it.  She tried to warn the duke as to the results of Maximilien’s education, and was repulsed; she saw that she could give no remedy to the shocking seeds which were germinating in the soul of her second child.  From this moment began a period of decline which soon became so visible as to bring about the appointment of Beauvouloir to the post of physician to the house of Herouville and the government of Normandy.

The former bonesetter came to live at the castle.  In those days such posts belonged to learned men, who thus gained a living and the leisure necessary for a studious life and the accomplishment of scientific work.  Beauvouloir had for some time desired the situation, because his knowledge and his fortune had won him numerous bitter enemies.  In spite of the protection of a great family to whom he had done great services, he had recently been implicated in a criminal case, and the intervention of the Governor of Normandy, obtained by the duchess, had alone saved