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careful tut severe guide, and if ever he was softened,the marquis stepped in to chastise. Soon, too soon, thepaternal scoldings and punishments became angry repri-mands and constant disapprobation, which verged intohatred. These feelings were increased by the impru-dences and vivacity of the boy, the misjudged quarrelsof the mother, the artful manoeuvres of madame dePailly, and the bitter hatred conceived by an old ser-vant named Gervin, who, from some unknown cause,exercised extraordinary influence over the marquis.The chief fault particularised by the father was theboy’s habitual untruths. A love of or indifference totruth is one of the characteristics with which humanbeings are born. The former may be cultivated, thelatter checked, but the propensities do not the less re-main ; and it is the most painful discovery that a parentcan make, to find that his child is not by naturalinstinct incapable of falsehood. This innate and unfor-tunate vice, joined to the boy’s wildness and heedless-ness, caused the father to write of him in severe terms,scarcely suited to his childish years. “He seems to me,”he writes, “ in addition to all the baseness of his naturalcharacter, a mere fool, an unconquerable maniac. Heattends a number of excellent masters; and as every one,from his confessor to his playmate, are so many watchers,who tell me every thing, I discern the nature of theheart, and do not believe that he can come to any good.”The first master, Poisson, set over him, however, took aliking to the hoy, and praised his prodigious memory andgood heart. The father, instead of being pleased, grewangry. He declared that he would now be utterly spoilt,and took him out of his hands to place him in those of anabbe Choquart, a severe disciplinarian, who was bid notto spare punishment. The severity of the marquis maybe judged by this one circumstance, that taking his sonfrom a tutor whom he loved, and placing him in aschool to which he was sent as to a prison, he insistedthat he should go by another name. “ I did notchoose,” he writes, “ that an illustrious name should