White Lies | Page 3

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WHITE LIES
by CHARLES READE

CHAPTER I
.
Towards the close of the last century the Baron de Beaurepaire lived in
the chateau of that name in Brittany. His family was of prodigious
antiquity; seven successive barons had already flourished on this spot
when a younger son of the house accompanied his neighbor the Duke
of Normandy in his descent on England, and was rewarded by a grant
of English land, on which he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called
it Beaurepaire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper without
delay). Since that day more than twenty gentlemen of the same lineage
had held in turn the original chateau and lands, and handed them down
to their present lord.
Thus rooted in his native Brittany, Henri Lionel Marie St. Quentin de
Beaurepaire was as fortunate as any man can be pronounced before he
dies. He had health, rank, a good income, a fair domain, a goodly house,
a loving wife, and two lovely young daughters, all veneration and
affection. Two months every year he visited the Faubourg St. Germain
and the Court. At both every gentleman and every lacquey knew his

name, and his face: his return to Brittany after this short absence was
celebrated by a rustic fete.
Above all, Monsieur de Beaurepaire possessed that treasure of treasures,
content. He hunted no heart-burns. Ambition did not tempt him; why
should he listen to long speeches, and court the unworthy, and descend
to intrigue, for so precarious and equivocal a prize as a place in the
Government, when he could be De Beaurepaire without trouble or loss
of self-respect? Social ambition could get little hold of him; let
parvenus give balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand
lamps, and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for
fashionable distinction; he had nothing to gain by such foolery, nothing
to lose by modest living; he was the twenty- ninth Baron of
Beaurepaire. So wise, so proud, so little vain, so strong in health and
wealth and honor, one would have said nothing less than an earthquake
could shake this gentleman and his house. Yet both were shaken,
though rooted by centuries to the soil; and by no vulgar earthquake.
For years France had bowed in silence beneath two galling burdens--a
selfish and corrupt monarchy, and a multitudinous, privileged, lazy,
and oppressive aristocracy, by whom the peasant was handled like a
Russian serf. [Said peasant is now the principal proprietor of the soil.]
The lower orders rose upon their oppressors, and soon showed
themselves far blacker specimens of the same breed. Law, religion,
humanity, and common sense, hid their faces; innocent blood flowed in
a stream, and terror reigned. To Monsieur de Beaurepaire these
republicans--murderers of women, children, and kings--seemed the
most horrible monsters nature had ever produced; he put on black, and
retired from society; he felled timber, and raised large sums of money
upon his estate. And one day he mounted his charger, and disappeared
from the chateau.
Three months after this, a cavalier, dusty and pale, rode into the
courtyard of Beaurepaire, and asked to see the baroness. She came to
him; he hung his head and held her out a letter.
It contained a few sad words from Monsieur de Laroche-jaquelin. The
baron had just fallen in La Vendee, fighting for the Crown.
From that hour till her death the baroness wore black.
The mourner would have been arrested, and perhaps beheaded, but for
a friend, the last in the world on whom the family reckoned for any

solid aid. Dr. Aubertin had lived in the chateau twenty years. He was a
man of science, and did not care a button for money; so he had retired
from the practice of medicine, and pursued his researches at ease under
the baron's roof. They all loved him, and laughed at his occasional
reveries, in the days of prosperity; and now, in one great crisis, the
protege became the protector, to their astonishment and his own. But it
was an age of ups and downs.