He was a tall old man, bony and cross-eyed.  I fancy I see him now as he was then.  The impression that evening made on me can never be effaced.  It was a sudden realization of all the horrors which my mother had foreshadowed when speaking of her execrable father-in-law and his brigands of sons.  The moon, I remember, was shining here and there through the dense foliage of the forest.  My grandfather’s horse was lean, hardy, and bad-tempered like himself.  It kicked at every cut of the whip, and its master gave it plenty.  Swift as an arrow it jumped the ravines and little torrents which everywhere intersect Varenne in all directions.  At each jump I lost my balance, and clung in terror to the saddle or my grandfather’s coat.  As for him, he was so little concerned about me that, had I fallen, I doubt whether he would have taken the trouble to pick me up.  Sometimes, noticing my terror, he would jeer at me, and, to make me still more afraid, set his horse plunging again.  Twenty times, in a frenzy of despair, I was on the point of throwing myself off; but the instinctive love of life prevented me from giving way to the impulse.  At last, about midnight, we suddenly stopped before a small pointed gate, and the drawbridge was soon lifted behind us.  My grandfather took me, bathed in a cold sweat as I was, and threw me over to a great fellow, lame and horribly ugly, who carried me into the house.  This was my Uncle John, and I was at Roche-Mauprat.

At that time my grandfather, along with his eight sons, formed the last relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries.  Civilization, already advancing rapidly towards the great convulsion of the Revolution, was gradually stamping out the systematic extortions of these robbers.  The light of education, a species of good taste reflected, however dimly, from a polished court, and perhaps a presentiment of the impending terrible awakening of the people, were spreading through the castles and even through the half-rustic manors of the lordlings.  Ever in our midland provinces, the most backward by reason of their situation, the sentiment of social equality was already driving out the customs of a barbarous age.  More than one vile scapegrace had been forced to reform, in spite of his privileges; and in certain places where the peasants, driven to desperation, had rid themselves of their overlord, the law had not dreamt of interfering, nor had the relatives dared to demand redress.

In spite of the prevailing tone of mind, my grandfather had long maintained his position in the country without experiencing any opposition.  But, having had a large family, endowed like himself with a goodly number of vices, he finally found himself pestered and besieged by creditors who, instead of being frightened by his threats, as of old, were themselves threatening to make him suffer.  He was obliged to devise some means of avoiding the bailiffs on the one hand,