Marquise De Ganges: Celebrated CrimesDumas, Alexandre
General
Marquise De Ganges: Celebrated Crimes
Dumas, Alexandre
Crime
The abbe de Ganges withdrew to Amsterdam, where he became a teacher of
languages, and where his lady-love soon after came to him and married
him: his pupil, whom his parents could not induce, even when they told
him the real name of the false Lamartelliere, to share their horror of
him, gave him assistance as long as he needed it; and this state of
things continued until upon his wife attaining her majority he entered
into possession of some property that belonged to her. His regular
conduct and his learning, which had been rendered more solid by long and
serious study, caused him to be admitted into the Protestant consistory;
there, after an exemplary life, he died, and none but God ever knew
whether it was one of hypocrisy or of penitence.
As for the Marquis de Ganges, who had been sentenced, as we have seen,
to banishment and the confiscation of his property, he was conducted to
the frontier 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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