d With his younger brother,
and regarded him with such hatred that he was marrying only to deprive
his brother of the inheritance that would rightfully accrue to him,
should the elder die childless. Unfortunately, the marquis soon
perceived that the step which he had taken, however efficacious in the
case of another man, was likely to be fruitless in his own. He did not,
however, despair, and waited two or three years, hoping every day that
Heaven would work a miracle in his favour; but as every day diminished
the chances of this miracle, and his hatred for his brother grew with
the impossibility of taking revenge upon him, he adopted a strange and
altogether antique scheme, and determined, like the ancient Spartans, to
obtain by the help of another what Heaven refused to himself.

The marquis did not need to seek long for the man who should give
him his revenge: he had in his house a young page, some seventeen or
eighteen years old, the son of a friend of his, who, dying without
fortune, had on his deathbed particularly commended the lad to the
marquis. This young man, a year older than his mistress, could not be
continually about her without falling passionately in love with her; and
however much he might endeavour to hide his love, the poor youth was as
yet too little practised in dissimulation to succeed iii concealing it
from the eyes of the marquis, who, after having at first observed its
growth with uneasiness, began on the contrary to rejoice in it, from the
moment when he had decided upon the scheme that we have just mentioned.

The marquis was slow to decide but prompt to execute. Having taken his
resolution, he summoned his page, and, after having made him promise
inviolable secrecy, and having undertaken, on that condition, to prove
his gratitude by buying him a regiment, explained what was expected of
him. The poor youth, to whom nothing could have been more unexpected
than such a communication, took it at first for a trick by which the
marquis meant to make him own his love, and was ready to throw
himself at his feet and declare everything; but the marquis seeing his
confusion, and easily guessing its cause, reassured him completely by
swearing that he authorised him to take any steps in order to attain the
end that the marquis had in view. As in his inmost heart the aim of
the young man was the same, the bargain was soon struck: the page bound
himself by the most terrible oaths to keep the secret; and the