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As we were leaving Dax, a diligence passed ours, grazing one of the horses. The conductor leaped down from his seat, a stake in his hand, and was going to fell his confrèr. Those lords lived and felt something like our conductors, and the Count de Foix was such an one.
I beg pardon of the conductors; I wrong them grievously. The count, not having the fear of the police before his eyes, came at once not to fisticuffs, but to stabs. His son Gaston, while on a visit to the king of Navarre, received a black powder which, according to the king, must forever reconcile the count and his wife; the youth took the powder in a little bag and concealed it in his breast; one day his bastard brother, Yvain, saw the bag while playing with him, wanted to have it, and afterward denounced him to the count. At this the count “began to have suspicions, for he was full of fancies,” and remained so until dinner-time, very thoughtful, haunted and harassed by sombre imaginings. Those stormy brains, filled by warfare and danger with dismal images, hastened to tumult and tempest. The youth came, and began to serve the dishes, tasting the meats, as was usual when the notion of poison was not far from any mind. The count cast his eyes upon him and saw the strings of the bag; the sight fired his veins and made his blood boil; he seized the youth, undid his pourpoint, cut the strings of the bag, and strewed some of the powder over a slice of bread, while the poor youth turned pale with fear, and began to tremble exceedingly. Then he called one of his dogs to him, and gave it him to eat. “The instant the dog had eaten a morsel his eyes rolled round in his head, and he died.” The count said nothing, but rose suddenly, and seizing his knife, threw himself upon his son. But the knights rushed in between them: “For God’s sake, my lord, do not be too hasty, but make further inquiries before you do any ill to your son.”
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The count heaped malediction and insult upon the youth, then suddenly leaped over the table, knife in hand, and fell upon him like a wild beast. But the knights and the squires fell upon their knees before him weeping, and saying: “Ah, ah! my lord, for Heaven’s sake do not kill Gaston; you have no other child.” With great difficulty he restrained himself, doubtless thinking that it was prudent to see if no one else had a part in the matter, and put the youth into the tower at Orthez.
He investigated then, but in a singular fashion, as if he were a famished wolf, wedded to a single idea, bruising himself against it mechanically and brutally, through murder and outcry, killing blindly and without reflecting that his killing is of no use to him. He had many of those who served his son arrested, and “put to death not less than fifteen after they had suffered the torture; and the reason he gave was, that it was impossible but they must have been acquainted with the secrets of his son, and they ought to have informed him by saying, ‘My lord, Gaston wears constantly on his breast a bag of such and such a form.’ This they did not do and suffered a terrible death for it; which was a pity, for there were not in all Gascony such handsome or well-appointed squires.”