er of Savoy and there set at liberty. After having spent two or
three years abroad, so that the terrible catastrophe in which he had been
concerned should have time to be hushed up, he came back to France, and
as nobody--Madame de Rossan being now dead--was interested in prosecuting
him, he returned to his castle at Ganges, and remained there, pretty well
hidden. M. de Baville, indeed, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, learned that
the marquis had broken from his exile; but he was told, at the same time,
that the marquis, as a zealous Catholic, was forcing his vassals to
attend mass, whatever their religion might be: this was the period in
which persons of the Reformed Church were being persecuted, and the zeal
of the marquis appeared to M. de Baville to compensate and more than
compensate for the peccadillo of which he had been accused; consequently,
instead of prosecuting him, he entered into secret communication with
him, reassuring him about his stay in France, and urging on his religious
zeal; and in this manner twelve years passed by.

During this time the marquise's young son, whom we saw at his mother's
deathbed, had reached the age of twenty, and being rich in his father's
possessions--which his uncle had restored to him--and also by his
mother's inheritance, which he had shared with his sister, had married a
girl of good family, named Mademoiselle de Moissac, who was both rich and
beautiful. Being called to serve in the royal army, the count brought
his young wife to the castle of Ganges, and, having fervently commended
her to his father, left her in his charge.

The Marquis de Ganges was forty-two veers old, and scarcely seemed
thirty; he was one of the handsomest men living; he fell in love with his
daughter-in-law and hoped to win her love, and in order to promote this
design, his first care was to separate from her, under the excuse of
religion, a maid who had been with her from childhood and to whom she was
greatly attached.

This measure, the cause of which the young marquise did not know,
distressed her extremely. It was much against her will that she had come
to live at all in this old castle of Ganges, which had so recently been
the scene of the terrible story that we have just told. She inhabited the
suite of rooms in which the murder had been committed; her bedchamber was
the same which had belonged to the late marquise; her bed was the same;
the window by which she had fled was before her eyes; and