'The Counts de la Bérarde were very mighty people; almost as great as their suzerains and neighbours, the Counts of Dauphiné. The cradle of their race, of which you may see one tower standing now, was set amongst the glaciers and gorges of the Val St. Christophe; it stood above the Romanche on a great slope of gneiss, with the snow mountains at its back. Up to the time of Richelieu the Bérardes were omnipotent, and they had sway as far down as the sea coast, and it is said that sea piracy, as well as stoppage of land travellers going on their horses and sumpter mules through the passes, swelled their wealth and their power not a little. All these mountain lords were robbers in those days. If you have never been up as far as the St. Christophe valley, you should go as soon as the weather opens and the roads are passable; all the _cols_ and the _combes_ are fine, well worth a little Alpine climbing; and the Pointe des Écrins may hold its own with the peaks of the Engadine.
'Well, to revert to the Counts de Bérarde: Richelieu broke the back of their power--it is odd that a Churchman, doing all he could to strengthen the hands of a king, did in truth lay the first stone of what became centuries after the Revolution!--their chiefs were beheaded on the ramparts of Briançon, their castle in the Alps was razed, and only two or three of their younger scions survived the general destruction of the race. From one of these distant branches, Jean de la Bérarde, who had a small stronghold on the sea, and who became, by all these executions, the head of the family, this old man who owns Bonaventure, and is the rudest and roughest of cruisers and farmers, is lineally descended. I have been at pains to make out his genealogy. These matters always have interest for me, and it is curious to trace how the old patrician strain comes out in the girl, his grand-daughter, though he himself is nothing more than a boor. The Bérardes never recovered the massacres and confiscations of the reign of Louis XIII., though they were small suzerains on the sea-coast up to the days of Louis XV. They then fell into poverty, and lost their hold over their neighbours; the Terror extinguished them entirely; they were swallowed up in the night of anarchy. But Jean Bérarde of Bonaventure is legally heir of the Count Alain de la Bérarde, who was taken to Toulon, and shot there by the Maratists of Freron and Barras. His only son, being a lad at the time, was saved by disguising himself as a fisherman, and, being utterly beggared by the Jacobins, took to the coasting trade, and in time saved money, married a peasant, and bought the island: my socialist friend was _his_ son.