Raoul Neroweg, Count of Plouernel, then about thirty years of age, in no manner resembled his sister. In consequence of one of the most mysterious of the laws of nature, the Germanic type of the Frankish race reappeared in him as, repeatedly across the ages, it had reappeared in all its pristine purity in several of his ancestors. This son of the Nerowegs had hair and beard of a fiery red, white skin, sea-green eyes, and an aquiline nose, hooked like an eagle's beak. His rude and haughty nature was tempered by the gracefulness of the accomplished courtier. He was a sample of so many seigneurs of our times--greedy and prodigal, vainglorious and luxurious, without shame or heart, consumed by ambition and more still by the desire of drawing upon himself publicly the eyes of his master, and capable, in order to attain that purpose, of committing the vilest crimes. Accordingly, the Count had seen nothing but a natural expedient, and profitable to his own career, in the project of prostituting his sister to the King of England. This notwithstanding, the Count of Plouernel carried high his head with the pride of his name. Yet such is the moral aberration of the folks of the court that, in their eyes, the adulterous love of Kings, so far from soiling their sisters, their wives, or their daughters, honors, exalts, crowns, consecrates them. From that instant prostitution becomes august, infamy a sacred thing! The royal leman becomes a Madonna! Monsieur Plouernel was horrified at Bertha's ill will, and at her carrying her indifference to the fortune of her brother and to the service of her King to the point of refusing to give herself up to his Majesty Charles II of England. The young girl, already a conundrum by reason of the manner in which she looked upon the things of her times, was, after that latest performance, nothing but an insane woman in her brother's eyes, and fit to be locked up for the good of his house--a step that he would at one time undoubtedly have taken, were it not for the involuntary compassion he experienced at the sight of Bertha almost dying of a languishing malady. Later, when the Duke of Chateauvieux made overtures of a double alliance between the two families to Raoul, he did not hesitate an instant to pledge his sister to the young Marquis. Accident willed it that the Marquis was a young and handsome nobleman, although a debauchee, a drunkard and a gambler, neither worse nor better than so many others of his caste; but had he been old, ugly, a cripple, rotten of body and soul, the Count's action would not have been otherwise, nor would he have recoiled before any measures to compel his sister to submit to the marriage.