That name I am doubly bound to make honorable, for it was stained with blood--that of one of her ever-accursed race.

My father won an illustrious name and, her ancestress, whom he married, was dragging it publically in the mud amid all the scandals of society, when he slew her on her couch of gilded infamy.

Ashamed of this name--not because he was indicated under it, but because she had so vilified it--his greatest desire to the friends who visited him in the condemned cell, was to have me, his son, change it.
They had me brought up at a distance under the name of Claudius Ruprecht.

It might even have happened that another country than that of my birth would receive the glory which a heaven-sent idea is to bestow upon France.

Now, I am more than ever determined that her venom shall not sully me.