I listened with surprise, almost with indignation, to this account of
the age in which I lived, for me an age of shadows and mysteries. My
grandfather had but vague ideas of chronology; not a book of any kind
was to be found at Roche-Mauprat, except, I should say, the History of
the Sons of Aymon, and a few chronicles of the same class brought by our
servants from country fairs. Three names, and only three, stood clear in
the chaos of my ignorance--Charlemagne, Louis XI, and Louis XIV; because
my grandfather would frequently introduce these into dissertations on
the unrecognised rights of the nobles. In truth, I was so ignorant that
I scarcely knew the difference between a reign and a race; and I was by
no means sure that my grandfather had not seen Charlemagne, for he spoke
of him more frequently and more gladly than of any other man.
But, while my native energy led me to admire the exploits of my uncles,
and filled me with a longing to share in them, the cold-blooded cruelty
they perpetrated on returning from their expeditions, and the perfidious
artifices by which they lured their dupes to the castle, in order
to torture them to extort ransom, roused in me strange and painful
emotions, which, now that I am speaking in all sincerity, it would be
difficult for me to account for exactly. In the absence of all ordinary
moral principles it might have been natural for me to accept the theory
which I daily saw carried into practice, that makes it right; but the
humiliation and suffering which my Uncle John inflicted on me in virtue
of this theory, taught me to be dissatisfied with it.
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