Marquise De Ganges: Celebrated CrimesDumas, Alexandre
General
Marquise De Ganges: Celebrated Crimes
Dumas, Alexandre
Crime
The chevalier withdrew to Venice, took service in the army of the Most
Serene Republic, then at war with Turkey, and was sent to Candia, which
the Mussulmans had been besieging for twenty years; he had scarcely
arrived there when, as he was walking on the ramparts of the town with
two other officers, a shell burst at their feet, and a fragment of it
killed the chevalier without so much as touching his companions, so that
the event was regarded as a direct act of Providence.
As for the abbe, his story is longer and stranger. He parted from the
chevalier in the neighbourhood of Genoa, and crossing the whole of
Piedmont, part of Switzerland, and a corner of Germany, entered Holland
under the name of Lamartelliere. After many hesitations as to the place
where he would settle, he finally retired to Viane, of which the Count
of Lippe was at that time sovereign; there he made the acquaintance of a
gentleman who presented him to the count as a French religious refugee.
The count, even in this first conversation, found that the foreigner who
had come to seek safety in his dominions possessed not only great
intelligence but a very solid sort of intelligence, and seeing that the
Frenchman was conversant with letters and with learning, proposed that
he should undertake the education of his son, who at that time was nine
years old. Such a proposal was a stroke of fortune for the abbe de
Ganges, and he did not dream of refusing it.
The abbe de Ganges was one of those men who have great mastery over
themselves: from the moment when he saw that his interest, nay, the very
safety of his life required it, he concealed with extreme care whatever
bad passions existed within him, and only allowed his good qualities to
appear. He was a tutor who supervised the heart as sharply as the mind,
and succeeded in making of his pupil a prince so accomplished in both
respects, that the Count of Lippe, making use of such wisdom and such
knowledge, began to consult the tutor upon all matters of State, so that
in course of time the so-called Lamartelliere, without holding any
public office, had become the soul of the little principality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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