The conversation between Madam Tremblay and the Abbot was interrupted by the blustering arrival of the Count of Plouernel.
Raoul Neroweg, Count of Plouernel, then about thirty years of age, in no manner resembled his sister. In consequence of one of the most mysterious of the laws of nature, the Germanic type of the Frankish race reappeared in him as, repeatedly across the ages, it had reappeared in all its pristine purity in several of his ancestors. This son of the Nerowegs had hair and beard of a fiery red, white skin, sea-green eyes, and an aquiline nose, hooked like an eagle's beak. His rude and haughty nature was tempered by the gracefulness of the accomplished courtier. He was a sample of so many seigneurs of our times—greedy and prodigal, vainglorious and luxurious, without shame or heart, consumed by ambition and more still by the desire of drawing upon himself publicly the eyes of his master, and capable, in order to attain that purpose, of committing the vilest crimes. Accordingly, the Count had seen nothing but a natural expedient, and profitable to his own career, in the project of prostituting his sister to the King of England. This notwithstanding, the Count of Plouernel carried high his head with the pride of his name. Yet such is the moral aberration of the folks of the court that, in their eyes, the adulterous love of Kings, so far from soiling their sisters, their wives, or their daughters, honors, exalts, crowns, consecrates them. From that instant prostitution becomes august, infamy a sacred thing! The royal leman becomes a Madonna!
Monsieur Plouernel was horrified at Bertha's ill will, and at her carrying her indifference to the fortune of her brother and to the service of her King to the point of refusing to give herself up to his Majesty Charles II of England. The young girl, already a conundrum by reason of the manner in which she looked upon the things of her times, was, after that latest performance, nothing but an insane woman in her brother's eyes, and fit to be locked up for the good of his house—a step that he would at one time undoubtedly have taken, were it not for the involuntary compassion he experienced at the sight of Bertha almost dying of a languishing malady. Later, when the Duke of Chateauvieux made overtures of a double alliance between the two families to Raoul, he did not hesitate an instant to pledge his sister to the young Marquis. Accident willed it that the Marquis was a young and handsome nobleman, although a debauchee, a drunkard and a gambler, neither worse nor better than so many others of his caste; but had he been old, ugly, a cripple, rotten of body and soul, the Count's action would not have been otherwise, nor would he have recoiled before any measures to compel his sister to submit to the marriage.
When the Count of Plouernel entered Madam Tremblay's salon he was laboring under a violent irritation, caused by the information transmitted to him by his Mezlean bailiff in a letter that he had just received, advising him of Bertha's intervention in behalf of the vassals of his seigniory. He was pressed to meet the enormous financial obligations required by his ostentatious living at Versailles—his equipages, his jewelry, his banquets, his splendid balls, without taking into account his reckless gambling. Seeing the courtier's fortune consisted almost exclusively in his seigniorial domains, there was no way of increasing his revenues except by overwhelming his vassals with exorbitant imposts. The Count of Plouernel, as almost all the other members of his caste, neither felt, nor was able to feel, any pity for his vassals, whom he had the right to tax at pleasure. Were they not a conquered and disinherited race? an inferior species, standing midway between man and the brute? bent, broken and deformed by a ceaseless round of sorrows and toil? condemned by fate to labor and produce wealth for the benefit of their seigneur? The Count of Plouernel approved himself consistent with his race, his traditions and his times by exhibiting inexorable severity towards this species, which he sincerely and naïvely looked upon as an inferior race, and at all points unlike his own. Accordingly, in an angry voice, with flashing eyes, and holding out to the Marchioness the letter which he had just received, and that he crumpled with rage, he said:
"Do you know, madam, what my sister was up to during her short sojourn at Mezlean? My Mezlean bailiff informs me that he was about to execute a seizure upon several teams belonging to certain recalcitrant vassals who were evading payment of the taxes that it pleased me to impose upon them, when my sister, happening to ride by along the road, took it upon herself to forbid my bailiff to carry out his orders, or even to arrest a scamp of a poacher who deserves to hang!"
"That is unheard of! That is downright impudence!" cried the Marchioness.
"Wait, madam, that is not yet all—my bailiff and an usher of the fisc, who also had a process against those clowns, being aware of their malignant disposition, secured the escort of a squad of soldiers from the regiment of the Marquis, who has set up his headquarters at Vannes, since the Duke of Chaulnes apprehends some trouble in the province. Well, madam! Would you believe such an excess of audacity possible? The clowns dared to rebel against the escort of the bailiff, and tried to disarm them!"
"Why nephew! that is a very alarming piece of news. It is grave!"
"The sergeant of the escort, a resolute man, soon had the upper hand of the canaille. He seized three of the ringleaders in the mutiny, and had them pinioned tightly by his soldiers. And what do you imagine my sister did? No, you will not believe such audacity possible!"
"I suppose she begged mercy for them. Oh! I doubt not that she interceded in their behalf also—"