"He was so feared and detested by everybody, that he was universally known as the cheti' monsieur, and with good reason.
"His son, now Marquis de Bois-Doré, whose baptismal name is Sylvain, suffered so heavily from his father's cruel disposition, that he began at an early age to take an entirely different view of life, and showed toward his father's prisoners and vassals a gentleness and condescension that were perhaps too great on the part of a man of war toward rebels and of a noble toward inferiors; witness the fact that these qualities, instead of making him popular, caused him to be despised by the majority, and that the peasants, who are ungrateful and suspicious as a class, said of him and his father:
"'One weighs more than he ought to; the other weighs nothing at all.'
"They considered the father a hard man, but of sound understanding, fearless, and quite capable, after squeezing and tormenting them, of protecting them against the exactions of the tax-gatherer and the pillaging of the brutal soldiery; whereas, in their opinion, young Monsieur Sylvain would allow them to be devoured and trampled upon for lack of heart and brain.
"Now I don't know what it was that passed through Monsieur Sylvain's brain one fine day, when he was sadly bored at the château; but the result was that he fled from Briantes, where his good father blushed for him, and considering him an imbecile, would never permit him to rise above the station of a page, and joined the moderate Catholics, who were then called the third party. As you know, that party many a time lent a hand to the Calvinists; so that, proceeding from one error to another, Monsieur Sylvain found himself one fine morning a full-fledged Huguenot, and a close friend and well-beloved servitor of the young king of Navarre. His father, having learned of it, cursed him, and, to be even with him, conceived the scheme of marrying in his old age and presenting him with a brother.
"That meant a reduction by one-half of Monsieur Sylvain's already slender inheritance; for, as a Huguenot, he was in danger of losing his right of primogeniture, and the cheti' monsieur was not very rich, his estates having been laid waste many times by the Calvinists.
"But observe the young man's natural goodness of heart! Far from being angry, or even complaining of his father's marriage and the birth of the child who bit his future crowns in two, he drew himself up proudly when he heard the news.
"'Look you!' he said to his companions. 'Monsieur my father has passed his sixtieth year, and here he is begetting a fine boy! I tell you that's good blood, which I trust that I inherit!'
"He carried his good-humor farther than that; for, seven years later, his father having left Berry to join Le Balafré against Monsieur d'Alençon's expedition, and our soft-hearted Sylvain having heard that his stepmother was dead, which left the child almost unprotected at the château of Briantes, he returned secretly to the province, to defend him at need, and, also, he said, for the pleasure of seeing him and embracing him.
"He passed the whole winter with the little fellow, playing with him and carrying him in his arms, as a nurse or governess would have done; the which made the neighbors laugh and think that he was far too simple-minded—innocent—to use the term they apply to a man deprived of his reason.