Story of the Month

In the middle of the eighteenth cen-tury — that is, sometime between

1745 and 1750 — the Viscount de Rabastens set out with a band of his companions on a journey of touring and pleasure through the province of Dauphiné, and on a summer's day they reached the old château of Montségur.

The Viscount was twenty years old, and his companions were of about the same age.

As for the château of Montségur,

it was one of those historic castles fallen into ruin, empty of inhabitants for some thirty years.

In ages past this château had been the seat of the Baron des Adrets, a member of the Huguenot sect, famed for his courage, his cruelty, and his cunning. In the reign of King Henry IV the Baron struck terror into the hearts of the inhabitants; he was forever at war with his neighbors, and in vain did his enemies try to lay hands on him, for whenever danger closed in on him he would vanish from sight into a hiding place whose secret approach no one knew.

The belief prevailed among the people that the château of Montségur, the Baron's seat, was inhabited by spirits, that demons frolicked within it, and that troubling noises issued from its vaults, so that no one dared enter it or move about its dark halls and corridors.

When the young men reached the château, they were received by a caretaker who lived in a small house beside it, and he went about with them through its precincts, repeating to them what people told of the Baron des Adrets. When in their rounds they came to a terrace overlooking the valley, the caretaker pointed to a plaque on which these words were inscribed:

"Lucie de Bracontal" "June 25, 1715."

And he told them the following strange tale:

In the last years of the reign of King Louis XIV, there lived in this château the noble family of Bracontal, made up of the Marquis de Bracontal, who spent most of his time at the King's court or at the wars; the Marquise his wife, pure and charitable, whom the poor loved and honored; and their daughter Lucie, beautiful and gentle, whom all the inhabitants praised for her kind heart, her intelligence, and her graciousness.

In the spring of 1715 Lucie turned eighteen; the Viscount de Quinsonnas asked for her hand, and it was announced that the marriage would take place on the twenty-fifth of June of that year.

The wedding was indeed cele-brated on that date. Prayers were held in the château's little chapel, and then the guests sat down at the table laid in the great hall. The bride took her place at the head of the table, exquisite in her loveliness, magnificent in her beauty, with her abundant fair hair, her gown of blue silk, and the jewels and gems she had