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His marriage with one who united the violence of the Mirabeaus to the license of the Vassans was unfortunate; ... and after Louise began to reign in the big dark house of the Cours of Grasse, life never lacked for incidents." Matters were not mended by the arrival of her brother, twenty-four and wild, and supposed to be living under a "lettre de cachet" in the sleepy little town of Manosque.
In answer to their inquiries, he said that he had never known his real name; that his father had been in the habit of calling him d'Entrevergues de Rougon de Caille; that he believed he really was twenty-five years old, although two months previously he had stated his age to be twenty-three; that he had never known his godfather or his godmother; that only ten years had elapsed since he left Manosque; that he did not know the name of the street nor the quarter of the town in which his father's house was situated; that he could not tell the number of rooms it contained; and that even if he were to see it again he could not recognise it.
And yet not a ruined tower that overlooks the Provençal mountains, not a village, gate, or castle Manosque or old Saint-Maime, but speaks more vividly of the old Counts than does Forcalquier, formerly their city, now a mere country town which has lost prestige with its increasing isolation, many of its inhabitants by plagues and wars, and almost all of its picturesque Mediævalism through the destructiveness of sieges.
The marquis actually procured a lettre de cachet, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up, and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque. Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes accumulated.
And in spite of the great feast-day of July, in spite of Aptoisian pride, in spite of the devotion and prayers of faithful worshippers, the Cathedral of Apt is a church of past rather than of present glories. Just as the church-bells were chiming the morning Angelus, and the warm sun was rising on a day of the early fall, a traveller drove out of old Manosque.
He could not remember the colour of the hair, nor the appearance, nor the peculiarities of his grandmother, who had accompanied the family in its flight into Switzerland; and could not mention a single friend with whom he had been intimate, either at Manosque, or Lausanne, or Geneva.
He was conducted, according to his request, to Manosque, Caille, and Rougon, and upwards of a hundred witnesses swore that he was the man he represented himself to be.
Both he and his wife belonged to the strictest sect of the Calvinists, who were by no means favourites in the country. Their usual residence was at Manosque, a little village in Provence, and there five children were born to them, of whom three were sons and two were daughters. The two youngest sons died at an early age, and Isaac, the eldest, after living to the age of thirty-two, died also.
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