He harassed the Comte de Montcornet.

He worked the peasants like puppets by hidden wires, the handling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess where the pawns were alive, the knights caracoled, the bishops, like Fourchon, gabbled, the feudal castles shone in the sun, and the queen maliciously checkmated the king.

Every day, when he got out of bed and saw from his window the proud towers of Les Aigues, the chimneys of the pavilions, and the noble gates, he said to himself: "They shall fall! I'll dry up the brooks, I'll chop down the woods." But he had two victims in mind, a chief one and a lesser one.

Though he meditated the dismemberment of the chateau, the apostate also intended to make an end of the Abbe Brossette by pin-pricks.
To complete the portrait of the ex-priest it will suffice to add that he went to mass regretting that his wife still lived, and expressed the desire to be reconciled with the Church as soon as he became a widower.
He bowed deferentially to the Abbe Brossette whenever he met him, and spoke to him courteously and without heat.

As a general thing all men who belong to the Church, or who have come out of it, have the patience of insects; they owe this to the obligation they have been under, ecclesiastically, to preserve decorum,--a training which has been lacking for the last twenty years to the vast majority of the French nation, even those who think themselves well-bred.