MONSIEUR L’ABBE

The childhood of the Abbe Rosselot is as secret as his origin, and no man may know whether Belfort or Bavaria smiled upon his innocence.  A like mystery enshrouds his early manhood, and the malice of his foes, who are legion, denounces him for a Jesuit of Innsbruck.  But since he has lived within the eye of the world his villainies have been revealed as clearly as his attainments, and history provides him no other rival in the corruption of youth than the infamous Thwackum.

It is not every scholar’s ambition to teach the elements, and Rosselot adopted his modest calling as a cloak of crime.  No sooner was he installed in a mansion than he became the mansion’s master, and henceforth he ruled his employer’s domain with the tyrannical severity of a Grand Inquisitor.  His soul wrapped in the triple brass of arrogance, he even dared to lay his hands upon food before his betters were served; and presently, emboldened by success, he would order the dinners, reproach the cook with a too lavish use of condiments, and descend with insolent expostulation into the kitchen.  In a week he had opened the cupboards upon a dozen skeletons, and made them rattle their rickety bones up and down the draughty staircases, until the inmates shivered with horror and the terrified neighbours fled the haunted castle as a lazar-house.  Once in possession of a family secret, he felt himself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer and to flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature.  Moreover, he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trained journalist.  So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, that neither man nor woman could deny him confidence.  And, as vinegar flowed in his veins for blood, it was his merry sport to set wife against husband and children against father.  Not even were the servants safe from his watchful inquiry, and housemaids and governesses alike entrusted their hopes and fears to his malicious keeping.  And when the house had retired to rest, with what a sinister delight did he chuckle over the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge of which he had dragged from many an unwilling sinner!  To oust him, when installed, was a plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only too glib in the surrender of another’s scandal; and as he accepted the last scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this smiling, demoniacal tutor.

But a too villainous curiosity was not the Abbe’s capital sin.