The Champdoce Mystery | Page 2

being shaved twice each week,
constituted the whole of his outlay upon himself. He kept an excellent
table, however; plump fowls, vegetables of all kinds, and the most
delicious fruit were never absent from it. Everything, however, that
appeared upon his well-plenished board was the produce of his fields,
gardens, or woods. The nobility and gentry of the neighborhood
frequently invited him to their hospitable tables, for they looked upon
him as the head and chief of the nobility of the county; but he always
refused their invitations, saying plainly, "No man who has the slightest
respect for himself will accept hospitalities which he is not in a position

to return." It was not the grinding clutch of poverty that drove the Duke
to this exercise of severe economy, for his income from his estates
brought him in fifty thousand francs per annum; and it was reported
that his investments brought him in as much more. As a matter of
course, therefore, he was looked upon as a miser, and a victim to the
sordid vice of avarice.
His past life might, in some degree, offer an explanation of this conduct.
Born in 1780, the Duke de Champdoce had joined the band of
emigrants which swelled the ranks of Conde's army. An implacable
opposer of the Revolution, he resided, during the glorious days of the
Empire, in London, where dire poverty compelled him to gain a
livelihood as a fencing master at the Restoration. He came back with
the Bourbons to his native land, and, by an almost miraculous chance,
was put again in possession of his ancestral domains. But in his opinion
he was living in a state of utter destitution as compared to the enormous
revenues enjoyed by the dead-and-gone members of the Champdoce
family; and what pained him more was to see rise up by the side of the
old aristocracy a new race which had attached itself to commerce and
entered into business transactions. As he gazed upon the new order of
things, the man whose pride of birth and position almost amounted to
insanity, conceived the project to which he determined to devote the
remainder of his life. He imagined that he had discovered a means by
which he could restore the ancient house of Champdoce to all its
former splendor and position. "I can," said he, "by living like a peasant
and resorting to no unnecessary expense, treble my capital in twenty
years; and if my son and my grandson will only follow my example,
the race of Champdoce will again recover the proud position that it
formerly held." Faithful to this idea, he wedded, in 1820, although his
heart was entirely untouched, a young girl of noble birth but utterly
devoid of beauty, though possessed of a magnificent dowry. Their
union was an extremely unhappy one, and many persons did not
hesitate to accuse the Duke of treating with harshness and severity a
young girl, who, having brought her husband five hundred thousand
francs, could not understand why she should be refused a new dress
when she urgently needed it. After twelve months of inconceivable
unhappiness, she gave birth to a son who was baptized Louis Norbert,

and six months afterwards she sank into an untimely grave.
The Duke did not seem to regret his loss very deeply. The boy appeared
to be of a strong and robust constitution, and his mother's dowry would
go to swell the revenues of the Champdoce family. He made his recent
loss, too, the pretext for further retrenchments and economies.
Norbert was brought up exactly as a farmer's son would have been.
Every morning he started off to work, carrying his day's provisions in a
basket slung upon his back. As he grew older, he was taught to sow and
reap, to estimate the value of a standing crop at a glance, and, last but
not least, to drive a hard bargain. For a long time the Duke debated the
expediency of permitting his son to be taught to read or write; and if he
did so at last, it was owing to some severe remarks by the parish priest
upon the day on which Norbert took the sacrament for the first time.
All went on well and smoothly until the day when Norbert, on his
sixteenth birthday, accompanied his father to Poitiers for the first time.
At sixteen years of age, Louis Norbert de Champdoce looked fully
twenty, and was as handsome a youth as could be seen for miles round.
The sun had given a bronzed tint to his features which was exceedingly
becoming. He had black hair, with a slight curl running through it, and
large melancholy blue eyes, which he inherited from his mother. Poor
girl! it was the sole beauty that she had possessed.