You
may judge of his astonishment if he had heard that his son had been
prosecuted for shooting over his lands, his domains, his covers, under
the reign of a son of St. Louis! People were too much afraid of the
possible consequences to tell him about such trifles, Chesnel said.
The young Count indulged in other escapades in the town. These the
Chevalier regarded as "amourettes," but they cost Chesnel something
considerable in portions for forsaken damsels seduced under imprudent
promises of marriage: yet other cases there were which came under an
article of the Code as to the abduction of minors; and but for
Chesnel's timely intervention, the new law would have been allowed to
take its brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might
have ended. Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories over
bourgeois justice. He was so accustomed to be pulled out of scrapes,
that he never thought twice before any prank. Courts of law, in his
opinion, were bugbears to frighten people who had no hold on him.
Things which he would have blamed in common people were for him only
pardonable amusements. His disposition to treat the new laws
cavalierly while obeying the maxims of a Code for aristocrats, his
behavior and character, were all pondered, analyzed, and tested by a
few adroit persons in du Croisier's interests.
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