e abbe de Ganges, to come and live
with him. He had a third brother, who, as the second son, bore the title
of comte, and who was colonel of the Languedoc regiment, but as this
gentleman played no part in this story we shall not concern ourselves
with him.

The abbe de Ganges, who bore that title without belonging to the Church,
had assumed it in order to enjoy its privileges: he was a kind of wit,
writing madrigals and 'bouts-rimes' [Bouts-rimes are verses written to
a given set of rhymes.] on occasion, a handsome man enough, though in
moments of impatience his eyes would take a strangely cruel expression;
as dissolute and shameless to boot, as though he had really belonged to
the clergy of the period.

The chevalier de Ganges, who shared in some measure the beauty so
profusely showered upon the family, was one of those feeble men who
enjoy their own nullity, and grow on to old age inapt alike for good and
evil, unless some nature of a stronger stamp lays hold on them and drags
them like faint and pallid satellites in its wake. This was what befell
the chevalier in respect of his brother: submitted to an influence of
which he himself was not aware, and against which, had he but suspected
it, he would have rebelled with the obstinacy of a child, he was a
machine obedient to the will of another mind and to the passions of
another heart, a machine which was all the more terrible in that no
movement of instinct or of reason could, in his case, arrest the impulse
given.

Moreover, this influence which the abbe had acquired over the chevalier
extended, in some degree also, to the marquis. Having as a younger son
no fortune, having no revenue, for though he wore a Churchman's robes he
did not fulfil a Churchman's functions, he had succeeded in persuading
the marquis, who was rich, not only in the enjoyment of his own fortune,
but also in that of his wife, which was likely to be nearly doubled at
the death of M. de Nocheres, that some zealous man was needed who would
devote himself to the ordering of his house and the management of his
property; and had offered himself for the post. The marquis had very
gladly accepted, being, as we have said, tired by this time of his
solitary home life; and the abbe had brought with him the chevalier, who
followed him like his shadow, and who was no more regarded than if he
had really possessed no body.

The marquise often confessed afterwards that when she first saw these
two men, alth