The executioner, on his rounds, thought good to hang him without
any further formality, merely to gratify an old Mauprat, his overlord.
At the time of which I am speaking Gazeau Tower was already deserted
and falling into ruins. It was state property, and, more from negligence
than kindness, the authorities had allowed a poor old fellow to take
up his abode there. He was quite a character, used to live completely
alone, and was known in the district as Gaffer Patience.
"Yes," I interrupted; "I have heard my nurse's grandmother speak of him;
she believed he was a sorcerer."
Exactly so; and while we are at this point let me tell you what sort of
a man this Patience really was, for I shall have to speak of him more
than once in the course of my story. I had opportunities of studying him
thoroughly.
Patience, then, was a rustic philosopher. Heaven had endowed him with
a keen intellect, but he had had little education. By a sort of strange
fatality, his brain had doggedly resisted the little instruction he
might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school
at ----, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played
truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was
an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and
almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to
all authority; somewhat captious, very suspicious, and inexorable with
hypocrites.
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