“You shall hear. My story is a very simple one. I was only nineteen years old when I fell in love with a young girl residing in my native province. One day she asked me to bring her some flowers; it was the day after the festival of Sainte-Marie, and she wished to cover the altar with flowers, so that the Blessed Virgin would be favorable to us. Her parents troubled themselves but little about our union. I had neither garden nor flowers. Night came, and I took a stroll. When all the village was sound asleep, I reached the wall of a garden adjoining that of the Maire——”
“Robbery, with escalade, at midnight, in an inhabited house: five years in irons,” interrupted a gendarme.
“That is the penalty,” resumed the bandit; “but as I was young, had good antecedents, and the booty was only a few roses, which, sooner or later, would have been offered to the Virgin, I was let off with imprisonment for three years. When the term of my sentence expired, I found my mistress a wife. While in prison I had learned the theory of crime; and, as I was now an outcast on account of having been a convict, I was forced to commence its practice.”
“And you, old fellow,” demanded Clamens of the third criminal, “why did you steal?”
“From taste,” was the laconic reply.
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the gendarme, “there are all sorts of taste in human nature.”
CHAPTER XL.
Notwithstanding his cold and rigid aspect, M. de la Varade was not a malicious or a severe man.
From the time of Francis I. to the Revolution of ’93, the family of la Varade had always held office in a judicial capacity. The first of the judges was ennobled because he labored to please the beautiful Diana, Countess de Brézé; one of the latest was guillotined because he had displeased the fair Manon Ladri, who had considerable influence with the Revolutionary authorities.