One of the king's minions remarked to him:-- "Hey! vive Dieu! sire, she daggered him finely!" The Comte d'Herouville, one of the most rabid royalists in Normandy, kept the part of that province which adjoins Brittany under subjection to Henri IV.

by the rigor of his executions.

The head of one of the richest families in France, he had considerably increased the revenues of his great estates by marrying seven months before the night on which this history begins, Jeanne de Saint-Savin, a young lady who, by a not uncommon chance in days when people were killed off like flies, had suddenly become the representative of both branches of the Saint-Savin family.

Necessity and terror were the causes which led to this union.
At a banquet given, two months after the marriage, to the Comte and Comtesse d'Herouville, a discussion arose on a topic which in those days of ignorance was thought amusing: namely, the legitimacy of children coming into the world ten months after the death of their fathers, or seven months after the wedding day.
"Madame," said the count brutally, turning to his wife, "if you give me a child ten months after my death, I cannot help it; but be careful that you are not brought to bed in seven months!" "What would you do then, old bear ?" asked the young Marquis de Verneuil, thinking that the count was joking.
"I should wring the necks of mother and child!" An answer so peremptory closed the discussion, imprudently started by a seigneur from Lower Normandy.

The guests were silent, looking with a sort of terror at the pretty Comtesse d'Herouville.